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. TRENTON The peoples will is being subverted. Government leaders who are a part of what one resident called possibly the most dangerous and dysfunctional epochs in Trenton history are about to award themselves with another six months in office. Council will vote Thursday on moving the capital citys nonpartisan election from May to November. If passed, the measure, sponsored by controversial legislator Robin Vaughn, shifts the runoff for mayor and council races to December from June. The council passed legislation earlier this year that allowed Trentonians to determine by referendum whether to change the election date. Vaughns latest proposal, making it exclusively councils decision, supplants the previous ordinance. The move will also extend the terms of Mayor Reed Gusciora and the seven legislators who were sworn into office in July 2018 to the end of 2022. The public has little say in the matter, as the proposal has the support from a majority of the governing body. This seems to be a really hasty push. It feels like were being stream-rolled into this, Caitlin Fair, a North Ward resident who started a petition to stop the governing body from adopting Ordinance 20-51, told The Trentonian in a phone interview Wednesday. The petition had 157 signatures as of 5 p.m. Fair opposed Vaughns bill at Tuesdays meeting, saying she wasnt against the idea of moving the election but the consequence that it gives city leaders more time in office to wreak havoc. Trump-Like Proposal Defending the ordinance, Vaughn one of three city leaders to face a recall effort touted increased voter turnout and cost savings, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, as benefits of moving the election date. Vaughn said the move would make Trenton more progressive since it remains the only municipality in Mercer County to still hold its municipal election in May. Critics contend that city leaders who failed to bring change to New Jerseys capital after more than two years in office dont deserve to have their terms extended. Increased voter turnout isnt a given, they say, adding the move could effectively turn Trentons race into a partisan affair because it will be held at the same time as other county, state and federal races. At-large councilman Jerell Blakeley, who voted against the original ordinance, called Vaughns proposal Trump-like. Donald Trump has only speculated about extending his term in office. My colleagues are actually going to do it, Blakeley told The Trentonian. He previously criticized his arch-nemesis for trying to ease her path to the mayorship if she decides to run against Gusciora in 2022. Blakeley told The Trentonian that he was not philosophically opposed to having a November election but was concerned moving the runoff to December will depress voter turnout rather than increase it. Inclement weather in the winter months may deter older, infirmed Trentonians from going to the polls, and its less likely theyll deal with those pitfalls in the spring, the councilman said. This is a poor look, he said. Addressing the councilmans slights, Vaughn suggested it was super conservative for anyone to obstruct changing the election date. Vaughn did not respond to a phone call and emailed request for comment on what some residents and the mayor suggested is the real obstructionist move: taking the decision out of the hands of voters. Gusciora said he doesnt favor the change to Vaughns bill, which if passed, supersedes Ordinance 20-14, also sponsored by Vaughn, that passed March 5 by a 5-2 vote. Council president Kathy McBride, vice president Marge Caldwell-Wilson, and councilmen George Muschal and Santiago Rodriguez joined Vaughn in support of the change. Along with the date, Gusciora believes residents should be allowed to decide whether they want comprehensive reforms to Trentons election, such as staggered terms, also adopted in March, and a shift from nonpartisan to partisan races. I do not support the change from ballot question to legislative fiat, he said by text message. No More Referendum Vaughns previous iteration of the bill empowered voters to decide the election date as a ballot question during the Nov. 3 general election. While claiming during Tuesday that a majority of her West Ward constituents support moving the election, Vaughn didnt explain why she double backed on holding the referendum. McBride suggested the only reason council revisited the ordinance was because of some type of error in the previous bill. Internal correspondence obtained by The Trentonian shows that councils attorney, Edward Kologi, reached out to city law director John Morelli in January suggesting New Jersey law didnt require a referendum to change election dates. My issue is wit [sic] Section 2 of [former city clerk Dwayne Harris] draft which refers to a referendum to effectuate this change of date, Kologi wrote Jan. 29. NJSA 40:45-7.1 makes no mention of a referendum, and the statute cited by Dwayne, NJSA 40:69A-25.1b, relates to changes in the form of Government. If I am missing something here, please let me know. Otherwise it appears that only an Ordinance is necessary to change the date, not a referendum. Thank you. Morelli said Wednesday that while he agrees with Kologis interpretation of the statute, nothing in the law precludes legislators from choosing to enact the change by vote. It may not be a good idea, but its lawful, he said of Ordinance 20-51. Quite honestly, when they were doing it by referendum, I thought that was a better option. Once changed, a provision in the law keeps Trenton from changing the election date by ordinance again for a decade, Morelli said. Enough Damage? Not everyone was pooh-poohing the bid to change the election date. Mike Ranallo, a West Ward resident who recently asked the Trenton Board of Ethics to investigate councils decision to privately discuss a redevelopment pitch with the interested party, called it a great idea. He touted an estimate from former city clerk Harris who suggested moving the election to the fall could save Trenton as much as $181,000. The capital city spent more than $237,723 on printing, advertising, equipment rentals, workers and reimbursements to the county for the 2018 municipal race. I think thats a fear tactic people are using, Ranallo said of the six-month extension. Seriously, whats six more months? Lets hope they wouldnt purposely burn the city down. For Bernard McMullan, who co-chaired the Recall Robin Vaughn committee, six months is enough time for city leaders to do a fair amount of damage. Its a half-baked idea being decided for 40,000 [voting] residents by seven people, he said. Its sort of unconscionable and unethical. He cited many of the city problems that have arisen as a result of the dysfunctional dynamic between Gusciora and legislators, including the attempted sale of the historic Roebling Wire Works building, which has sparked an investigation from the Mercer County Prosecutors Office. The city could also have control of Trenton Water Works wrested from it this week, as a state court judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit that will determine the future of the public utility. The Department of Environmental Protection sued the city this year for not complying with two state consent orders that set deadlines for lead service line replacement and other projects. DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe said the council left her agency with little choice but to sue after the legislative body voted down $83 million in bond funding for improvements to TWW. Since then, the municipalities of Hamilton, Ewing and Lawrence joined the DEP lawsuit. They have asked Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy to force the sale of the public utility or award them an ownership stake. Edward DeHope, the attorney representing the city, has advised council to pass the bonds, which go before legislators again Thursday, the same day of the hearing. Some legislators indicated they may support the bonds after a key concession from the administration on a forensic audit. Gusciora was against doing the financial deep dive but softened his stance. The council approved a walk-on resolution that will be voted on Thursday for a $250,000 contract to a firm that will perform the forensic audit. McMullan alluded to other circus sideshow issues that kick-started the Vaughn recall effort. The biggest was her homophobic meltdown during a COVID-19 call. Vaughn attacked Gusciora and councilman Joe Harrison, telling the latter to, Continue to suck Reed Guscioras d**k all you want to, motherf**ker. Residents attempted to recall Vaughn, Gusciora and Harrison, though the Harrison ouster campaign quickly faltered. McMullan said the Vaughn recall committee gathered between 800 to 900 petition signatures, short of the 3,600 required to force a recall vote. While the committee has till October, the co-chair conceded the recall effort, hampered by the COVID-19 crisis, is dead but was largely symbolic. With that in Vaughns rear-view mirror, McMullan found it tone-deaf that shell be voting for something to keep herself in power longer. Why should these [legislators] be deserving of a 13 percent increase on their terms? he said. By law, thats possible. But if everyone is for it, why isnt it going to referendum? They dont trust the voters? An innovative teacher in Chhattisgarh has come up with an interesting way of teaching students who are missing out on their classes in this pandemic. Rudra Rana, a teacher in the Koriya district of Chhattisgarh, is winning hearts on the internet for starting mohalla classes for children in the area. Speaking to news agency ANI, Rana said, As students cant go to schools, Im bringing education to their doorstep. Many students dont have access to online education, so this is helpful." Chhattisgarh: A teacher in Korea conducts 'mohalla' classes for school students on his motorcycle. "As students can't go to schools, I'm bringing education to their doorstep. Many students don't have access to online education, so this is helpful," says Rudra Rana, the teacher. pic.twitter.com/N32f6OlzCN ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2020 Just like Rana, another teacher in the Koriya districts Phatpani region travels around on his bike with an LED TV strapped to the vehicle, teaching children who do not have access to the internet. Ashok Lodhi, a government school teacher, has been hailed as Cinema Wale Babu for his creative way of teaching students from class 1-5. He says that it gives him immense pleasure when students wait for him enthusiastically as he travels around. The coronavirus pandemic has affected the education system all across the world. However, with the help of the internet, some students are able to take classes on applications like zoom and skype. In India, the situation is a bit worrying as many underprivileged children in the country are without smartphones and the internet. Multiple news reports have pointed out how the pandemic and the lockdown have affected studies of children whose only source of education is school. A few students have also died by suicide after not being able to attend online classes due to lack of resources. A class 10 student from Malappuram district of Kerala took her life recently. Another recent report showed how a 15-year-old student in Jalandhar persisted on taking back her smartphone after robbers tried to take it away. She later said that her father had bought her the smartphone to study and she could not afford to lose it. With numerous reports of children struggling to continue their education amidst pandemic, teachers like Rana and Lodhi are a ray of hope in these trying times. 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 Khoon Bahana Padega were Umar Khalids alleged words leading up to Delhi riots India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: There were three levels of conspirators behind the northeast Delhi riots, the police have said. The police said that the three levels comprised- top-level, middle-level and foot soldiers, who were the rioters. Submitting its chargesheet in the case, the police said that the evidence includes WhatsApp chats of February 24. That was the time that the violence took place and at that time the key conspirators were guiding the foot-soldiers about the violence in the area, the police further added. The conspirators used a WhatsApp group to incite the violence and a total of 25 groups were specially created for 25 protest sites. While the impression was given that the protests were about the amended citizenship law, in reality these conspirators were using the groups to guide people on the ground, the police further added. Delhi riots: Police to file charge sheet in UAPA case by Thursday, HC informed Each of these chat groups had its own role in the conspiracy. While some groups have been deleted, others have been recovered and submitted as evidence. Tahir Hussain, Md Parvez Ahmed, Md Iliyas, Saifi Khalid, Ishrat Jahan, Miran Haider, Safoora Zargar, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Shadab Ahmed, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Tasleem Ahmed, Saleem Malik, Md Saleem Khan, and Athar Khan have been named in the chargesheet. The name of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Ahmed are not part of the chargesheet as the arrests were made just a few days back. Their names would be in the supplementary chargesheet which the Delhi Police would file soon. The police also said that the conspirators used code words within the groups to convey secret messages. They also gave hate speeches at Jafrabad Metro Station and were continuously present there till the last. On Khalid, the police have quoted his alleged words: "Khoon bahana padega aise nahi chalega chakka jaam hi aakhri rasta hai hame sarkar ko ghutno ke bal laana hi hoga sanghiyon ki sarkar aise nahi maanegi. (Blood must spill and road blockade is the last resort. We have to bring the government to its knees. This right wing government will not understand) On Monday, the police got 10 days of custody of former JNU student, Umar Khalid in connection with the Northeast Delhi riots case. He was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The special cell of the Delhi Police which is probing the case is also looking into the larger conspiracy angle. 53 persons had died in the riots that took place in February. Khalid has been interrogated twice for his alleged role in the riots. He was called in for questioning on Sunday. An officer who did not wish to be named told OneIndia that the police arrested him on Sunday night. Investigation is on and we cannot reveal anything further at this stage, the officer also said. Delhi riots: Police to file charge sheet in 'larger conspiracy' case today PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News The police had told a court last month that Khalid along with other accused, former AAP councillor, Tahir Hussain and activist Khalid Saifi had hatched a conspiracy to orchestrate the riots just before the visit of US President Donald Trump in February. The UDAR party will participate in Ukraine's local elections independently, and any unification with other parties is possible only around the interests of Kyiv residents, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said. "Friends, today I learned that some other political parties support my candidacy for Kyiv mayor. I am grateful for that, because to support or not to support someone is the right of every party or politician. I understand that many political parties today want Klitschko to be their mayor. I will clearly tell everyone again: I am and will be the mayor only of Kyiv residents! And I have always been responsible only before residents of Kyiv. Because they entrusted me with implementing changes in Kyiv, having elected me the mayor of the capital," he wrote on Facebook, commenting on a statement by the European Solidarity party in support of his candidacy in the local elections. Klitschko stressed that the UDAR party would participate in the elections independently. "We are not bargaining! Any unification is possible only around the interests of Kyiv residents. Because we work with Kyiv residents and for Kyiv residents!" he said. Earlier reports said that the European Solidarity party would support incumbent Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko in the Kyiv mayoral election. op Dhaka, Sep 17 : Bangladesh's Education Ministry has shut down Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam, popularly known as Hathazari Madrasa, in Chattogram (Chittagong), until further notice in wake of protests at the seminary. Students of the Madrasa had demonstrated on Chattogram-Khagrachhari road and vandalised furniture inside the Madrasa on Wednesday demanding removal of Anas Madani, the eldest son of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh chief Shah Ahmed Shafi. An order signed by Syed Asgar Ali, Assistant Secretary, Technical and Madrasa Education Division under the Education Ministry, said: "On August 24, conditional permission was given to the qawmi Madrasas to resume academic activities and examinations. As the conditions were not fulfilled properly, Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam has been shut down until further notice. The order will come into effect immediately." On Wednesday, several hundred students of Hathazari Madrasa erupted in protest to press home their six-point demand. Locals said the demonstration was a result of the dispute between supporters of Shafi and Hefazat Secretary-General Junayed Babunagri. Police later removed the students from the highway. The law enforcers took position outside the Madrasa on Thursday, saying tensions simmered inside. The violent protest was the latest in the rift between Babunagari and Anas Madani, that surfaced when Babunagari was removed from the post of Assistant Director of the Madrasa in June this year. In the wake of raging protests of the students, the Shura Committee (highest decision-making body) of the educational institution held an emergency meeting on Wednesday night and decided to relieve Anas Madani of his duties at the Madrasa. Anas Madani has been serving as the Publicity Secretary of the radical Islamist platform and the Assistant Director of the age-old Madrasa. Tension rose in the Hathazari Madrasa in recent months over the leadership as Shafi fell ill several times. The dispute between supporters of Shafi and Junayed Babunagri sprang out in the open when the Shura Committee replaced the latter with Sheikh Ahmed in June. Each of the five jury members had to read through 162 books, getting a stack each month and then meeting in London to decide which ones advance to the next round. Then came the lockdown: no more trips to England (or anywhere else) and the books arriving as PDFs. At least, said juror Lemn Sissay, there was nothing to do but read. There will never, ever, be a judging panel that has so much time to just focus on the books. The New York Times Camper fire claims the life of two people in Marshall County It is with a great of sadness that we report the End-of-Life for OKI-Branded Hardware Effective March 31, 2021. This year OKI embarked on a new three-year mid-term plan that would reposition our company for sustained growth and long-term profitability by shifting our focus from a transactional selling approach to value-added sales and service delivery, said Sergio Horikawa, President & CEO, OKI Data Americas, Inc. Although we made significant progress in the execution of this plan, considerable shifts in printer market demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to reevaluate our ability to achieve the mid-term plan. After assessment by our management teams in the Americas and Japan, it has been determined that a new path forward is required resulting in todays announcement. In the 1980s and 1990s OKI printers were the best there was. They were built like absolute tanks. They were in many offices that were early computer adopters. The world was theirs for the taking. They did establish a line of VoIP solutions and extended into a few other areas but didnt gain much traction in the U.S. Iwatsu had bulletproof phone systems in the 1980s and 1990s. They dropped out of the business some years ago. Toshiba had great phone systems and laptops. They are out of both markets. Sony made the must-have TV but now Samsung has taken that honor. Not all Japanese companies have abandoned their leadership positions but these companies went from being great to gone in a few decades. We have written before that U.S. CEOs of these and other Japanese companies have often complained that Japan has too much control while not understanding the U.S. market. Certainly, this is a big part of the problem as Japanese CEOs think their strong domestic brands translate into the U.S. but they are generally incorrect. This leaves an opportunity for others to out-market them and put them out of business. This is likely a big part of the problem but so is an obvious lack of innovation and vision to design products that are competitive in an evolving market. Where are the Japanese UCaaS solutions and collaboration solutions for example? What about other software categories? The situation is a real shame and the world is worse off with less solid competitors in the tech market. New Delhi: The NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced umpteen policies since coming to power at the Centre in 2014. All these policies are aimed at providing the right opportunity to the ordinary Indian and also to make their lives better. Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 70 on Thursday (September 17, 2020). Here's looking at 5 major economic policies that has changed the life of the common man. Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) The Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana is one of the most remarkable schemes announced by PM Modi to provide financial inclusiveness and support to the marginalized classes. PMJDY was announced by Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address on 15th August 2014. PMJDY is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/ Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner. The basic Basic tenets of the scheme involves the following: Banking the unbanked - Opening of basic savings bank deposit (BSBD) account with minimal paperwork, relaxed KYC, e-KYC, account opening in camp mode, zero balance & zero charges Securing the unsecured - Issuance of Indigenous Debit cards for cash withdrawals & payments at merchant locations, with free accident insurance coverage of Rs. 2 lakh Funding the unfunded - Other financial products like micro-insurance, overdraft for consumption, micro-pension & micro-credit Atal Pension Yojana Atal Pension Yojana (APY) is another flagship social security scheme of the Modi Government. Launched on May 2015, APY completed five years of successful implementation this year. APY aims at delivering old age income security particularly to the workers in the unorganised sector. APY can be subscribed by any Indian citizen in the age group of 18-40 years having a bank account. APY is a government scheme administered by PFRDA through NPS architecture. The minimum age of joining APY is 18 years and maximum age is 40 years. Therefore, minimum period of contribution by the subscriber under APY would be 20 years or more. First, it provides a minimum guaranteed pension ranging from Rs 1000 to Rs 5000 on attaining 60 years of age. Secondly the amount of pension is guaranteed for lifetime to spouse on death of the subscriber. Third, in the event of death of both the subscriber and the spouse, entire pension corpus is paid to the nominee. APY has pre-defined monthly contributions. Under the APY, the subscribers would receive the fixed pension of Rs. 1000 per month, Rs. 2000 per month, Rs. 3000 per month, Rs. 4000 per month, Rs. 5000 per month, at the age of 60 years, depending on their contributions, which itself would vary on the age of joining the APY. Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) was introduced in Union Budget for FY 2016. MUDRA, which stands for Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd, is a financial institution being set- up by Government of India for development and refinancing micro unit enterprises. MUDRA is responsible for refinancing all Last Mile Financiers such as Non-Banking Finance Companies, Societies, Trusts, Section 8 Companies, Co-operative Societies, Small Banks, Scheduled Commercial Banks and Regional Rural Banks which are in the business of lending to micro/small business entities engaged in manufacturing, trading and services activities. MUDRA would also partner with State/Regional level financial intermediaries to provide finance to Last Mile Financier of small/micro business enterprises. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) The Modi Government launched Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) was launched on May 2016 with an aim to provide 8 crore deposit free LPG connections to poor households in the country. The Scheme's aim was to provide clean cooking fuel to poor households and replace the unhealthy conventional cooking fuels such as firewood, cowdung, etc. However, the target was achieved much ahead of time. Three State owned Oil Marketing Companies i.e. IOCL, BPCL and HPCL have implemented the Scheme in all the States/UTs of the country in a mission mode and achieved the target of 8 crore connections, seven months ahead of the timelines set (March 2020). Gold Monetisation Scheme The Modi government had launched Gold Monetisation Scheme in November, 2015. The Gold Monetization Scheme provides different options to the people to monetize the gold, by modifying the existing two schemes, namely, the Gold Deposit Scheme and the Gold Metal Loan Scheme. The scheme intends to mobilize the idle gold held by households and institutions in the country and to put this gold into productive use and in the long-run, to reduce the current account deficit by reducing the countrys reliance on the imports of gold to meet the domestic demand. A mother of one of the Manchester Arena bombing victims has described how she held her daughter after the attack. Lesley Callander told the public inquiry into the terrorist attack that she found 18-year-old Georgina being carried out of the foyer on a makeshift stretcher. I must be living in a nightmare, I thought, as I looked down at Georgina clutched in my arms wondering why? she said on Wednesday. Her bloodshot eyes were wide open and I was staring in a trance at her beautiful, pure, soft white skin. "As I watched a tear rolling down her face on to my arm, it was a look I felt that she was telling me, 'I'm so sorry, mummy, I guess I'm not going to get through this. I'm not going to make it. I am so sorry.' Then I realised she was dead. Ms Callander spoke in a video tribute on the third day of commemorative hearings for the 22 victims killed in the bombing on 22 May 2017. I wish it would have been me, not her, the mother said. But she was murdered by a brainwashed Isis fanatic. For me, it's a daily, living nightmare." Ms Callander said she never imagined she would have to describe the senseless, pointless murder of my beautiful, innocent daughter Georgina, and that her family was broken. Georgina, who had been accepted on to a course at Edge Hill University to study paediatrics, was an Ariana Grande superfan and had gone to the concert with a friend. She died after Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb packed with shrapnel in the arenas foyer as thousands of people flooded out of the venue. Ms Callander is one of several parents who were present when their children were killed or injured, as many had accompanied teenagers to the concert or were waiting to pick them up. On Monday, the mother of 14-year-old Sorrell Leczkowski told how her daughter died in her arms after she and her mother were injured in the blast. Samantha Leczkowski said: My life is over. As well as seeing me and my mum blown up, I have to deal with seeing Sorrell blown up and die in my arms. 14-year-old Sorrell Leczkowski (Facebook) Megan Hurley, 15, was found by her father alongside her injured brother. Her parents said she had been living her life to the fullest and that her death had left an enormous and irreparable void in our lives. Eilidh MacLeod, 14, from the island of Barra in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, was described as a very special girl during the public inquiry. Relatives of university student Courtney Boyle, 19, said she had been loving life before being killed while collecting her younger sister from the concert. The youngest victim was eight-year-old Saffie Roussos, and 10 of the victims were under 20 years old. On Wednesday, the inquiry heard tributes from the orphaned daughters of Polish couple Angelika and Marcin Klis. They were waiting to pick up Aleksandra, then aged 20, and Patrycja, then 14, in the foyer of the arena. The couple lived in York but were both born in the Polish town of Slowno and moved to the UK in the 2000s. Public inquiry into Manchester Arena bombing opens They had married in Poland in 1996 and divorced 10 years later. They only remained apart for a short time and though they did not remarry, were very much still in love, the hearing was told. A photo of the smiling couple had been taken on the evening of the bombing near Manchester Arena, as they waited to collect their daughters from the concert. "We think of our parents all the time; they are never out of our thoughts," their children said in a statement to the inquiry. "Losing our mum and dad and the pain and loss we feel is so hard to explain. Tributes have also been paid to Martyn Hett, 29, John Atkinson, 28, Kelly Brewster, 32 and Lisa Lees, 43, who died alongside her friend Alison Howe, 45, as they waited to collect their daughters. The commemorative hearings will conclude next week. The public inquiry, chaired by Sir John Saunders, will continue into next spring to examine the background to the attack and the response of the emergency services. Additional reporting by PA Many of Leonardo DiCaprios greatest performances have been delivered under the guidance of Martin Scorsese. The pair have a total of five collaborations thus far, with a sixth and seventh officially on the way. Ahead of filming on forthcoming serial killer adaptations The Devil in the White City and Killers of the Flower Moon, the Oscar-winning star reflected upon his experiences working with the filmmaker, praising his talents and revealing what he has learned under his tutelage. As a young actor standing beside him during the creative process of making a movie, I discovered that just like a painting, a sculpture, music or theatre, film was just as essential, relevant, as a matter of fact, the most integral art form of our time, DiCaprio said while presenting the GoodFellas director with the inaugural Robert Osborne Award at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2018. I felt I could truly own the term artist by working alongside him. The actor, who first collaborated with Scorsese on 2002 film Gangs of New York, stated that no one is more knowledgeable, more committed, or draws more inspiration from the film art than the director. He added: There is almost no aspect of his life, creative or personal, where he doesnt reference the history of movies. DiCaprio also starred in The Aviator, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Departed, which won Scorsese his first Oscar for Best Director. Scorseses most recent film was Netflix gangster epic The Irishman starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. In 2019, DiCaprio starred alongside Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantinos Oscar-winning Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Chick-fil-A scraps plan to open at San Antonio airport despite citys reversal amid FAA intervention Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Chick-fil-A confirmed this week that the company has canceled plans to open a restaurant at San Antonio International Airport in Texas. On Monday, a spokesperson for the Christian-owned fast-food chain said the company wont pursue plans at this time to open a restaurant in the airport after city officials last year blocked its plans do so, prompting complaints from the states attorney general, the passing of new state law, and an FAA investigation. "While we are not pursuing a location in the San Antonio airport at this time, we are grateful for the opportunity to serve San Antonians in our 32 existing restaurants, Chick-fil-A said in a statement Monday, according to The Associated Press. "We are always evaluating potential new locations in the hopes of serving existing and new customers great food with remarkable service. In March 2019, the San Antonio City Council voted to remove Chick-fil-A from a concession agreement with San Antonio International Airport amid unproven accusations of anti-LGBT behavior. The citys move came as the Chick-fil-A Foundation received media scrutiny for donating to Christian organizations, including the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which uphold biblical teachings on marriage a union between one man and one woman. Additionally, the companys head, Dan Cathy, has in the past stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, which has, over the years, led to Democrat politicians and far-left groups calling for boycotts against the restaurant chain. The city councils decision drew the ire of Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, who last March asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to look into whether city officials had unlawfully discriminated against the company "due to the expression of the owner's religious beliefs." Paxton asked for a determination as to whether city officials broke federal law and department regulations. On Monday, Paxtons office announced that the FAA reached an information resolution with the city of San Antonio. A statement from the state attorney generals office said San Antonio International Airport will offer Chick-fil-A a lease opportunity for space in Terminal A. Paxton praised the resolution, saying it was a win for religious liberty in Texas." The FAA formally announced the resolution in a letter to Paxton on Sept. 10. The letter from the FAA explained that within 45 days, Chick-fil-A was to be offered a lease opportunity in Terminal A and that the new offer will be consistent with customary business practices. In addition, the FAA will continue to monitor the Citys implementation of the above steps to ensure that they are completed in a timely, reasonable, and fair manner, the letter reads. In the event that they are not, FAA will reopen its complaint investigation, which may result in the finding of a violation of relevant nondiscrimination authorities. The city was quick to shoot down the attorney general's announcement that included the headline: "City of San Antonio Ordered to Lift Ban on Chick-filA at International Airport," arguing that the city was not ordered to lift [its] ban on Chick-fil-A at the airport. In a statement provided to local news outlet KSAT, the city argued that the FAA has not ordered the City of San Antonio to have Chick-Fil-A at its airport. The City itself offered to resolve the FAA investigation informally following Chick-Fil-As publicly stated change-of-position on its charitable giving policy, the city stated, referring to Chick-fil-As decision last year to change its charitable giving structure to no longer give to the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The City maintains that at no point did it discriminate against Chick-Fil-A. Any placement of Chick-Fil-A at the San Antonio Airport is ultimately contingent on Chick-Fil-As continued interest and approval by the City Council. The citys statement also called Paxtons comments inaccurate and said that he has not been involved in the conversations between the City and the FAA. Unfortunately, and ironically, AG Paxtons false declaration of victory significantly jeopardizes the potential for a mutually beneficial and amicable resolution, the citys statement contends. Last July, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Save Chick-fil-A bill into law, legislation that bans local governments from taking adverse actions against companies or individuals based on their religious beliefs or donations to religious groups. Canadians whove been relying on the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) to make ends meet during COVID-19 say theres a sense of desperation and panic as the program nears its end later this month. Stephanie Cohen was receiving EI payments before the pandemic as a result of losing her job as a copywriter at a digital marketing agency in Montreal. She transitioned to CERB in May and the $2,000 has kept her going since then. The money has helped her pay basic bills and assisted her mother in buying groceries and other home necessities. Even though its less than what she was making at her work, it provided a much-needed financial boost and a little bit of peace of mind during a difficult period. Having zero income would have been devastating, she said. As others do, she knows very little about the new benefits that will be offered to jobless Canadians starting Sept. 27. It is a pretty big concern, considering Im in the category of people who exhausted their previous EI benefits, Cohen said. Shes especially worried new recovery programs, which are just proposals at this point and wont be solidified until after the governments Speech from the Throne on Sept. 23, will ignore people such as she, who were job-hunting prior to COVID-19. The pandemic, she said, put her hunt on hold and the economic hit to business across a variety of sectors makes it hard to know when people will start hiring again. I havent been able to receive a clear answer as to how I move forward, she said about the lack of information on the upcoming benefit programs. If I am not eligible to re-apply for EI, Ill have zero income coming in, which would be a hard blow for me financially. A recent analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives warned millions of Canadians who depended on CERB will be hard hit by the upcoming change. CERB had been instrumental in helping Jordan Troy, a Guelph resident who had just completed college and was looking for a job as an elevator mechanic when the pandemic hit. The 23-year-old said he recently started working a few hours a week at local restaurants when they reopened, but still makes less than $1,000 per month. Im worried, of course. I dont know if I will qualify for EI or any of the new programs, and there is no information right now, he said. At least with CERB, you knew you werent going to go hungry or miss a rent payment. Now everything is up in the air. Nick Cunningham had been working in the live music industry at a Toronto talent agency, helping with the booking of venues and organizing tours for Canadian artists. For the first few months of the pandemic, his agency managed to keep a small group of employees at work as they helped artists run virtual concerts and drive-in shows. But he was laid off last month. Everything was so sudden. I was working one day and the next day I wasnt, said Cunningham. These past six months have been incredibly stressful, with so much uncertainty and repeated work, it felt like groundhog day every day, until I lost my job. So far, Cunningham has collected the CERB just twice. While he said hes grateful for the support, he is scared that the switch to EI and other programs could leave him short of what he needs to get by. Its already hard to survive in Toronto on $2,000, and I feel like its about to get even harder with these new changes, said Cunningham, who says special support for people in the live music industry is needed. Our government is not doing anything to address this industrys shutdown, and I am getting anxious. I have spent my entire life getting to where I am now, and unfortunately things feel bleak with the soon-to-be removal of CERB. At some breeding farms in Vietnam, livestock is raised in a special way: eels are bred in plastic cans, pigs eat ginseng and listen to music, and buffaloes drink wine every morning. * Bui Tan Thinh in Vi Thanh City of Hau Giang province is well known as the creator of the unique farming method in Mekong Delta. The special custard apple Previously, Thinh bred eels in cement tanks, but the eels could not grow rapidly, while the fatality rate was high. In 2013, he decided to breed eels in plastic cans in a natural water environment. He puts a bamboo section through a hole in the can, and puts eel breeders into the can to raise. One plastic can fits one kilogram of breeders, which can produce 15-16 kilograms of finished products and bring profit of VND2 million. * Nguyen Van Thuc, 50, in Nam Dinh, is following an organic farming method, with no weight gain products, antibiotics or industrial bran. At Thucs farms, pigs eat ginseng and herbs, and also listen to music. At some breeding farms in Vietnam, livestock is raised in a special way: eels are bred in plastic cans, pigs eat ginseng and listen to music, and buffaloes drink wine every morning. Thuc takes pride in his farm, saying that his pigs only eat clean food and use traditional herbs, so the pork quality is the best. His pork is sold at prices higher by VND5-10,000 per kilogram than normal pigs. The man can pocket VND100 million a month from clean pigs. *Hau Dinh Tuan in Thong Nong Town of Cao Bang province, said while other farmers feed buffaloes and cows with grass, bran and starch, he applies a special method to help animals grow rapidly. The buffaloes and cows drink a mug of liquor every morning. According to Tuan, thanks to liquor, buffalos and cows eat more and quickly get fat. With the technology, Tuan just needs 45 days to fatten buffaloes and cows for sale which can bring profit of VND3-4 million for each animal. Tuan can sell 4-5 buffaloes or cows each month, earning VND15-20 million. * Ha Nhi ethnic minority are proud of their beer which has existed for hundreds of years. This kind of beer is not available at the market, because Ha Nhi only make this beer for family use. Nearly all Ha Nhi families make the beer themselves. The beer is unlike beer distilled from barley and hops. The yeast for brewing is handcrafted from forest plant seeds, which is crushed and mixed with glutinous rice flour and brewed in straw. The longer the brew, the more delicious the beer, which turns yellow. * Tran Ngoc Huan in Lam Dong province has 100 hectares of custard apple growing area. The plants bloom 12 months after they are grown, and the fruit is 2-3 ttimes bigger than normal custard apple. It is delicious, sweet and has few pips. With 100 plants on 2,000 square meters, Huan can earn VND50 million. * Dinh Van Dan, born in 1950, is dubbed the antique King in Ninh Binh. He has collected thousands of antiques over the last 40 years. His collection has very precious items. His fortune is estimated to have the value of VND100 billion. Hanh Nguyen High-tech farming brings good profits to former graphic designer Despite hardships along the way, perseverance has brought young man success in developing a high-tech farming project in his hometown in Binh Dinh Province. Huge paintings are on display at Blenheim Palace, exploring nostalgic fantasies of the British stately home. Cecily Brown best known for her large, vivid paintings is the subject of a solo exhibition, examining the 18th century palaces history as an English country estate. Expand Close The Triumph of Death at Blenheim Palace (Jacob King/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Triumph of Death at Blenheim Palace (Jacob King/PA) Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire was Winston Churchills birthplace and was the scene of the theft of a golden toilet last year. Browns new work is described as charged reinterpretations of pastoral imagery, hunting scenes and bucolic Victorian fairy painting and explores the nostalgic fantasies of the British stately home in the popular imagination. The British artist, who lives in the US, said she wanted to look at Britain now, adding that it was thrilling for me to make work with England as its subject. My work has always dealt with conflict and turbulence, both in content and in a physical way. The wait is over... Cecily Brown's major solo exhibition at @BlenheimPalace opens today! Get a glimpse behind-the-scenes in this video and book your visit today at https://t.co/tVGw1AiMYB pic.twitter.com/fK9zY1Sn1E Blenheim Palace (@BlenheimPalace) September 17, 2020 I thought about an idealised vision of England and the contradiction between that and the reality of a nation in turmoil. Blenheim Palace seems the perfect situation in which to display images of a broken country, conflicted about its future and its place in the world. Video of the Day Michael Frahm, director of the Blenheim Art Foundation, said the exhibition continues to push the boundaries of how contemporary art can be shown at a heritage site and will be a further new experience for our visitors. The exhibition runs until January 3. Sydney, Sep 17 : Border restrictions between the Australian states tates of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria eased on Thursday to allow residents to move freely within the region due to a drop in the number of fresh Covid-19 cases. The new measures followed an easing of restrictions in Victoria announced by Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday, reports Xinhua news agency. Under the eased restrictions, Victoria residents can leave their homes for any reason, and can have a "household bubble" of five visitors. Pubs and restaurants can also serve outdoors. "I want to thank the border communities for their patience. We are able to ease restrictions on the border given the reduced risk of COVID-19 transmission in regional Victoria," NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said. Previously, residents of regional Victoria in the border area could only enter NSW for a permitted purpose. According to Hazzard, the border region will also be expanded to include some areas around Pleasant Hills, Lockhart, Benalla, Bright and Mount Beauty. "Any person with an existing border region permit will be able to take advantage of these changes, which we hope will make day to day life a lot easier for border communities," Hazzard said. The border policy change also came after a drop in confirmed cases in Victoria, which recorded 28 new cases and eight deaths overnight, the lowest spike in about three months. The state's 14-day averages also continued to fall. NSW recorded five new cases. "That is a fantastic outcome and a tribute to the hard work, sacrifice and contribution every single Victorian is making," Andrews said. However, residents in Melbourne, which moved from stage four to the first step of the roadmap for reopening since midnight of last Sunday with modest changes including more social interaction and more time outside, are still not allowed to travel to regional Victoria. People who unlawfully travel to regional Victoria from metropolitan Melbourne will be fined nearly 5,000 U.S. dollars under a new penalty designed to protect the regional areas. S even permanent checkpoints will be reinforced on major freeways. Police will also step up checks on buses and trains, targeting anyone trying to hop a ride out of the city, local media reported. Under the state government's road map, Melbourne restrictions will be partially eased on September 28 if the 14-day average for new cases is between 30 and 50. Besides the easing of border restrictions, the NSW government also announced on Thursday that selected Sydney stadiums can increase crowds from 25 to 50 per cent capacity from October 1. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the decision followed updated health advice and will help create jobs and stimulate the economy. "Safety allowing more fans at in-demand major sporting events will bring enjoyment, employment and help stimulate the NSW economy," she said. Heidi Klum had the scare of the lifetime after she was visited by an unexpected guest at her Los Angeles home over the weekend. The German supermodel, her husband Tom Kaulitz and their four children are currently living in their $9.8 million Bel-Air mansion located in a secluded gated neighborhood in Stone Ridge. Heidi Klum's LA Mansion Targeted by Intruder The "America's Got Talent" judge was alarmed after an intruder began "pounding" her front door while pointing out that he was sent by Jesus to come to her house, an insider told TMZ. The 47-year-old model, who was at home during the bizarre incident, didn't see the stranger since someone from their household answered the door. Meanwhile, law enforcement sources revealed to the outlet that after receiving a call, the Los Angeles Police Department immediately rushed to Klum's property only to find that the man had already left the property. Fortunately, after a quick search of the area, LAPD found him on a nearby road looking "confused." Moreover, based on the investigation, the authorities discovered that the stranger is suffering from mental health issues. This prompted LAPD to place him on a 5150 psychiatric hold. Heidi Klum Locked Up in Bitter Court Battle With Seal The unfortunate incident came weeks after the "Project Runway" host was tied up in a bitter court battle with her ex-husband Seal, whom she shares her children: Leni, 16, Henry, 14, Johan, 13, and Lou, 10. Last month, multiple reports cited that Klum took legal action after the three-time Grammy Award winner tried to block her from taking their kids to Germany this October. The "Making the Cut" host is set to return to her native country to film a brand new season of "Germany's Next Top Model," where she will be the lead judge and host. In the court filings, the blonde beauty claimed that her ex-husband, whose real name is Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel, can visit their kids in Germany anytime and there's no need to prevent them from traveling. "Also, as Henry has a British passport, he would be able to visit the children while they are in Germany if he wishes to do so," the supermodel wrote. Seal Believed Heidi Klum Had a Hidden Agenda The "Kiss from a Rose" hitmaker said that he has a good reason to restrain his kids from traveling with his former wife. According to reports obtained by The Blast, Seal thought that Klum had a "hidden agenda" to permanently move their kids to Germany. "Notwithstanding Heidi's request, if granted, it could in effect move the children away from me and their home here in Los Angeles to Germany for what could be an indefinite period of time," Seal mentioned in the court documents. He also pointed out the danger of leaving the country due to the global pandemic. "Given the uncertainty of the impact of COVID-19 on this country's and Germany's travel restrictions, which could change at any time and prevent the children from leaving Germany or from entering the United States." READ MORE: Kim Kardashian's Dark Secret: Larsa Pippen Could Expose Kim K! A Bengaluru court on Wednesday remanded Kannada actress Sanjjanaa Galrani to judicial custody till September 19 in an alleged drugs case. Along with her, the court also remanded to judicial custody high-profile event organiser Viren Khanna, Ravi Shankar and others till September 19. The Central Crime Branch police concluded its investigations involving Galrani and others, as a result of this, the CCB did not seek any extension of her custody with them. While in the case of another Kannada actress Ragini Dwivedi whose bail application came up for hearing, but the court postponed the hearing till September 19, which means she may have to remain in Parapappana Agrahara central prisons till then. Earlier in the day, actor-couple, Aindrita Ray and Diganth Manchale who were summoned for questioning by the Central Crime Bureau of the Bengaluru Police in the alleged drugs case involving Sandalwood stars have been let off after the first days interrogations. Confirming this to the media, Joint Commissioner of Bengaluru Police (Crime), Sandeep Patil said that the preliminary interrogations of Ray and Diganth have concluded but the police have instructed them to be present whenever they are required for further investigations. RELATED NEWS Police Custody of Ragini Dwivedi, Sanjana Galrani Extended by 3 Days Addressing the media, the actor-couple who were returning from the CCB office stated that they were ready to cooperate whenever the police summoned them in this connection. We cooperated in todays investigations, we will do it in future as well, whenever they call us, we will present ourselves in front of them," they said while getting into their vehicle and leaving. According to a senior police officer, neither Aindrita nor Diganth showed any sign of resistance during the entire course of interrogations. They cooperated fully. When we asked them to hand over their mobile phones, without resisting they handed them over. We will have to probe into these mobile phones based on inputs we may gather from these devices, we might summon them for second round of investigations," the officer added. The officer pointed out that in both cases involving Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjana Galrani, both actresses resisted besides name dropping when the police summoned them or raided their premises, and this was one of the main reasons why the police acted tough. Their behaviour was very crude when we met them for the first time. Therefore, it becomes more important for us to remain tough in those cases," he explained. Meanwhile, the CCB police have arrested an African drug peddler, who allegedly supplied drugs to be used at high-end parties and was also allegedly involved in the drugs case. The accused drug peddler has been identified as Benald Uddena, an African national and the police have also recovered 12 gms of cocaine from him. Confirming his arrest, Joint Commissioner (Crime) Bengaluru Police, Sandeep Patil described that he is a very important link in this (Sandalwood drugs) case. We were looking for three African drug peddlers based on our investigations. After digging deep into Benalds antecedents, it emerged that he is the same person who used to impersonate using three names - John, Coke, and Blackie - while selling drugs to his clients." Patil asserted that he would be taken into custody for further investigation. Benald is the second African national, while the first one was Senegal national Loum Pepper Samba who was nabbed in this case and who was remanded to judicial custody by the court last week. The North Pole. Antarctica. A lazy lap around the doldrums. There are a lot of places you wouldnt expect Singapore Airlines to fly to. But even if you shut your eyes and squeeze real tight we doubt youll be able to pick the destination of the latest route they allegedly have in the works. Flights to nowhere. Thats right: Singapore Airlines, an airline consistently ranked among the worlds best, which has been truly gut punched by the global pandemic since it does not operate domestic flights, is considering flights to nowhere Straits Times reports. Though Singapore Airlines told CNBC that none of these plans have been firmed up, the airline also didnt rule them out. If Singapore Airlines does start running these flights, which are slated to take three hours, taking off and then landing again at the same airport, it wont be the only airline in the Asia Pacific region doing them (Japans ANA has done a similar initiative). RELATED: Qantas Brings Australians Bizarre Bali Alternative CNBC reports, Such flights could be seen as a way to help the embattled national carrier of Singapore cope during a year of record losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, reports claim, while also allowing residents of the small nation a chance to leave the island if only for a few hours. The flights are allegedly set to take place by the end of October and could be bundled with staycations at nearby hotels, shopping vouchers and limousine ferry rides, according to Straits Times. The plan comes after a Singapore Air Charter survey allegedly showed a high level of interest (among the 308 participants who took part) in these types of flights. This comes in a context where, as Bloomberg reports, Singapore Airlines is eliminating 20% of its workforce despite raising about S$11 billion ($8 billion) through loans and a rights issue in June, and receiving aid from a government job-support program. Read Next CLEVELAND, Ohio A 20-year-old man died and two others, including a 15-year-old boy, were hurt when gunmen shot into an apartment in the citys Kinsman neighborhood, police said. The shooting happened about 2:30 a.m. Thursday at an apartment in the Rainbow Terrace public housing complex, according to police. No arrests have been made in the case. Kesean McClarin, 20, of Cleveland Heights, died in the shooting, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner. Nine people, including a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old, were inside the apartment at the time of the shooting, police said. At least two gunmen fired multiple shots into the apartment, and a bullet hit McClarin in the abdomen. An ambulance took him to University Hospitals, where he died. Bullets hit a 23-year-old man in the shoulder and a 15-year-old boy in the wrist, according to police. The shooting and a separate fatal shooting early Thursday morning mark the 122nd and 123rd homicides in Cleveland in 2020. There were 88 homicides through Sept. 17, 2019. The earlier homicide happened about 1 a.m. on Krather Avenue in the citys Old Brooklyn neighborhood, according to police. Neighbors reported hearing gunfire and police found a man dead of gunshot wounds on his porch. Police said they found no witnesses to the shooting. The man did not have identification on him and police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiners Office are working to identify him. No arrests have been made in the case. Read more from cleveland.com: 23-year-old woman fatally shot during argument outside Akron home, medical examiner says Cleveland man charged in deadly shooting of neighbor during argument over dog Two arrested in drive-by shooting of 10-year-old boy in Cleveland Over a year after Texas House Bill 3 changed tax rate calculations for public school districts across Texas, Cy-Fair ISD is seeing a steady drop in their tax rate. The Cy-Fair ISD board of trustees approved the tax rate for the school district, a rate of $1.3555 per $100 valuation for the 2020-2021 year, compared to a previous tax rate of $1.37 for the 2019-2020 year and $1.44 for the 2018-2019 school year. The board approved the tax rate on Sept. 14. On HoustonChronicle.com: Cy-Fair COVID Resource Guide: From food giveaways to teletherapy, heres where to find help Karen Smith, chief financial officer for the district, said the tax rate a combination of the maintenance and operations tax rate of .9555 per $100 valuation and the interest and sinking rate of .40 per $100 valuation is based on HB 3. Some tax rate-related aspects of HB 3 did not take effect until this school year, she said during her presentation to the board on Sept. 10. This year, the tax rate for the first time was based on the lower of the state compressed (tax) rate and the local compressed rate, Smith said; as opposed to last years, which was based on the state compression rate of .93. Current-year property values are a factor in determining the M&O compressed rates, she explained. If property values grow by more than 2.5 percent from one year to the next then the tax rate is compressed so the taxpayer does not see an increase more than 2.5 percent associated with their tax payments, Smith said. The state compressed rate this year is .9164 based on an estimated statewide property value increase of 4.01 percent, according to the Texas Education Agencys website. The districts local compressed tax rate is .9055. Cy-Fair ISDs M&O tax rate was calculated using this lower compressed rate, plus five golden pennies, which hold additional value and could not be subject to recapture, Smith said. Before HB 3, the school district could only access four golden pennies without holding an election. This is the first year that we could access that fifth penny. This additional penny actually provides the district approximately $11 million more in funding and its a combination of property tax revenue as well as additional state aid funding because of that golden penny. No-new-revenue tax rate Board members expressed concern regarding new verbiage the district had to use in its motion to pass the tax rate. The language for the proposed tax rate is confusing, Smith said, because, due to HB 3, the motion is required to say that the new tax rate is effectively an increase over the no-new-revenue tax rate. The no-new-revenue tax rate previously the effective tax rate describes the rate at which the school district would receive the same property tax revenue as the previous year. The no-new-revenue tax rate is $1.3455, Smith said. Because of that, even though our tax rate is going down, the district is required to have in the board motion the following item: I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of $1.3555 which is effectively a (0.74) percent increase in the tax rate. According to Smith, the owner of a $200,000 home would actually see a $20 decrease in their tax bill under the new tax rate. Board member Don Ryan and other trustees agreed they felt that the language was misleading to the public. Its not necessarily our tax rate as much as their property values going up, Ryan said. The school board approved the tax rate with language added in the motion to reflect a decrease in the actual tax rate of 0.0145 or 1.45 cents. Board member Julie Hinaman said during the Sept. 10 meeting that HB 3 has not simplified school finances like some had hoped. Although, we are grateful for some additional funding that was committed to public schools were hoping that will actually come to fruition, Hinaman said. We often talk about local control and how local school boards strive to have local control to best represent their constituents and their local citizens and its a challenge when so much is driven by state, including our tax rate. Were doing the best we can within the parameters that were given to set a tax rate that satisfies our core mission to educate our children but also to respect and serve our taxpayers as well. For more information visit www.cfisd.net/en. chevall.pryce@chron.com CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a research report "Smart City Platforms Market by Offering (Platforms (Connectivity Management Platform, Integration Platform, Device Management Platform, Security Platform, and Data Management Platform) and Services), Delivery Model, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025" published by MarketsandMarkets, the Smart City Platforms Market size is expected to grow from USD 138.7 billion in 2020 to USD 236.0 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.2% during the forecast period. The major growth drivers for the market include exponentially rising urban population actuating smart management, rising preference for platforms over standalone solutions, increasing adoption of the IoT technology for infrastructure management and city monitoring, and rising digital transformation initiatives driving the smart cities. Browse in-depth TOC on "Smart City Platforms Market" 179 - Tables 49 - Figures 247 - Page Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=236996337 Among platform types, the connectivity management platform to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period The connectivity management platform enables enterprises to deploy end-to-end connectivity solution delivering seamless integration. This platform reduces additional costs and operational overheads while delivering an intelligent network of connected things. The connectivity management platform is estimated to show the highest market share in 2018 and expected to witness strong growth characteristics in the coming years. This dominance is characterized by the ongoing smart city developments specifically in the developing regions. Among services, the managed services segment is expected to grow rapidly during the forecast period Managed services assist clients in outsourcing smart city platforms to service providers for efficiently managing their key operations of smart city infrastructure. Companies are rapidly handing over their smart city infrastructure and asset security to specialized service providers, such as Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs). Managed services secure data generated from the infrastructure and ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. In terms of regions, North America is expected to account for the largest market size duringthe forecast period North America is expected to be the major revenue contributor to the Smart City Platforms Market. The growth in this region is expected to be driven by the increasing demand for smart cities solutions, such as connected vehicles, building energy optimization, and distribution management system. Moreover, the US is one of the major countries which took up the smart city initiatives and have made notable developments in the smart city space. The deployment of smart cities solutions in different segments, such as smart transportation, smart buildings, smart utilities, and smart citizen services, is already on the rise in APAC. Speak to Analyst: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=236996337 In the Smart City Platforms Market, the key and emerging market players include Alibaba (China), AWS (US), Bosch.io (Germany), CIMCON Lighting (US), Cisco (US), Ericsson (Sweden), Fujitsu (Japan), Fybr (US), Google (US), Hitachi (Japan), Huawei (China), IBM (US), Intel (US), KaaIoT Technologies (US), Microsoft (US), NEC (Japan), Oracle (US), SAP (Germany), Schneider Electric (France), SICE (Spain), Siemens (US), Sierra Wireless (Canada), Siradel (France), Smarter City Solutions (Australia), thethings.iO (US), and Ubicquia (US). Browse Adjacent Markets: Digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT) Market Research Reports & Consulting Related Reports: IoT in Smart Cities Market by Solution (Remote Monitoring, Network Management, Reporting, and Analytics), Service, Application (Smart Transportation, Smart Building, Smart Utilities, and Smart Citizen Services), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iot-smart-cities-market-215714954.html Smart Transportation Market by Transportation Mode (Roadways, Railways, Airways, and Maritime), Solution (Smart Ticketing, PIS, Freight Management), Service, Communication Technology, Application, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/smart-transportation-market-692.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets' flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledgestore" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA : +1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected]kets.com Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/smart-city-platforms-market.asp Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/smart-city-platforms.asp SOURCE MarketsandMarkets Taipei: A senior US State Department official is due to arrive in Taiwan on Thursday afternoon to begin a three-day visit that has already drawn a warning from China. US Undersecretary of State Keith Krach is due to meet Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the island's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Krach is the highest-level official from the State Department to visit the island in decades. Taiwan's flag stands at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Credit:Bloomberg His visit follows the high-profile visit in August of US Health Secretary Alex Azar, who was the highest-level US Cabinet official to visit since a break in formal ties between the US and Taiwanese government in 1979, when the US accepted the one-China policy with Beijing as its government. However, the US has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan since the official diplomatic break and is the islands most important ally and provider of defence equipment. While Nitish is set to take oath as the chief minister, suspense is deepening over who will become the new deputy CM of Bihar. Schools that fail to teach about same-sex relationships risk being marked down by inspectors. They will have their 'readiness' to teach the Government's new relationships and sex education curriculum assessed from early next year. Oftsted will comment in their reports if they find that schools fail to teach about LGBT relationships and do not have 'adequate plans' in place to meet the requirements. From the summer term, a secondary school that does not teach about same-sex relationships will be judged as not meeting the statutory guidance. Schools that fail to teach about same-sex relationships risk being marked down by inspectors from the start of summer term 2021 It will receive a leadership and management judgment of no better than 'requires improvement'. This could also happen at primary schools if Ofsted decides the school is not meeting the guidelines, according to a report published by the education watchdog yesterday. It says: 'From the start of summer term 2021, if a primary school does not teach about LGBT relationships, this will not have an impact on the leadership and management judgment as long as the school can satisfy inspectors that it has still fulfilled the requirements of the DfE's statutory guidance. 'If it cannot do this, for example if it has failed to consult with parents, inspectors will consider this when making the leadership and management judgment. 'The school will not ordinarily receive a judgment for this better than 'requires improvement'.' The Ofsted document also states that schools are 'at liberty to teach the tenets of any faith on the protected characteristics'. It adds: 'For example, they may explain that same-sex relationships and gender reassignment are not permitted by a particular religion. 'However, if they do so, they must also explain the legal rights LGBT people have under UK law, and that this and LGBT people must be respected.' The National Secular Society attacked the guidance as contradictory last night. A spokesman said: 'It's wholly incongruent for Ofsted to penalise schools that refuse to teach about LGBT people, but turn a blind eye with faith schools that teach being LGBT is morally wrong. 'All pupils should be entitled to study in a welcoming and accepting school that doesn't make them feel ashamed about who they are.' Parents have no right to withdraw their children from relationships education in primary schools, which has led to the threat of a judicial review. The Let Kids Be Kids group, which wants the classes to be optional, is crowdfunding for legal costs. An Ofsted spokesman said: 'The Department for Education's guidance makes it clear that secondary schools must teach about LGBT issues. 'Therefore, from next summer, if secondary schools do not teach about all the protected characteristics, they will receive a judgment of 'requires improvement' for leadership and management. 'However, government guidance is that primary schools have more discretion over when LGBT issues are age appropriate, and so won't necessarily be marked down if they exclude them.' Don't look now, but Chrome OS is about to undergo the biggest and most transformative change in the platform's history. It's something we've actually been hearing about since April but that's just starting to take shape publicly for the first time this week. And while its practical, surface-level significance is without a doubt massive, the philosophical effect of the shift may be the most monumental of all. Buckle up, gang. We've got some seriously deep thinking to do. Chrome OS and the browser foundation We'll go beyond the surface to explore the next-level impact of this move in a second but first, let's address the basics of what's happening here and why it matters from a practical perspective. Google, in case you haven't heard, is working on an ambitious plan to separate Chrome the browser from Chrome OS the operating system. As it stands now, Chrome itself is an integral part of Chrome OS. It's built right into the operating system. And that creates a couple of unfortunate challenges. By having the browser integrated into the operating system, y'see, Google isn't able to update the actual browser once a Chromebook is no longer receiving OS-level upgrades. And even with Chromebooks now getting longer periods of OS support than ever, that puts 'em at a bit of a disadvantage compared to other computers as ongoing updates to the browser are typically fast, frequent, and critically important. They address endless security vulnerabilities and keep you safe whilst browsing this wobbly ol' web of ours. [Get fresh Googley insight in your inbox every Friday with JR's Android Intelligence newsletter. Exclusive extras await!] And yet, on a Chromebook, once a device is out of its active support window, it's also done getting updates to the browser and thus really isn't all that advisable to use, particularly in a security-conscious business scenario. That's a pretty big contrast to what you'd see on, say, a Windows system, where Chrome the browser is updated eternally, regardless of what's going on at the system level. On top of that, by having the browser integrated into the operating system, Google isn't able to deploy patches as quickly and efficiently as it can when the browser exists as its own standalone element. As my pal and fellow Google scholar Kevin Tofel notes, Chrome OS updates typically arrive a couple weeks after Chrome browser updates for other platforms because while the browser portion of the updates is consistent across the board, on Chrome OS, it's bundled in with that beefier operating system update, which takes longer to process and deliver. All of this is to say that, goodness gracious, separating the browser from the operating system in Chrome OS sure makes a heck of a lot of sense. It'll allow Chromebooks to remain at least reasonably viable even after their end-of-life dates, and it'll let Google deliver browser updates to them at a pace that matches what it's providing for other platforms. In a sense, it's kind of like how Google's been pulling pieces of the operating system out of Android for years now and turning them into standalone elements that can be updated quickly, frequently, and without the need for any formal OS rollouts. And big gasp all of that is just the surface-level part of the story. Chrome OS - Chrome = ? The Android analogy is nice and all, but with Chrome OS, there's a whole other layer at play (and yes, we're officially now moving on to that "next-level impact" piece of the puzzle). Chrome OS, after all, was originally designed to be the Chrome Operating System. The Chrome browser was deliberately built into its core. I mean, hell, it was the entire point of why Chromebooks were created. As Google put it at the time of Chrome OS's introduction in 2009 (with the emphasis being mine): We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping, or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be. Let's say that one more time: the Google Chrome Operating System. It's easy to forget these days that that's what Chrome OS actually represents or once did, anyway. You remember this, right? At its start, Chrome OS was quite literally just a "browser in a box" a full-screen Chrome window with no desktop, nothing so much as even resembling a traditional app, and next to no settings or options. That "browser in a box" characterization stuck around as a misleading jab at Chromebooks for far too long, but in the very beginning, it really was accurate, and it was very much that way by design. In the years since then, Chrome OS has slowly but surely moved away from being the Chrome Operating System, in that original sense. It gained traditional OS elements such as a desktop, a taskbar, and a multitasking interface and it little by little became more consistent and connected with its Android cousin. Visuals aside, the platform gained support for Android apps, then gained support for Linux apps, and is now on the brink of gaining support for Windows apps, too (at least in the enterprise environment, where Google's especially focused on expanding the Chromebook's appeal). As I put it earlier this summer, Chrome OS has gone from being the "nothing OS" to being the "everything OS" a far cry from its original purpose as, ahem, the Chrome Operating System. And this latest move, decoupling the Chrome browser entirely from the operating system, seems like the crowning step in that transition the formal acknowledgement that, regardless of what it's still called, Chrome OS is no longer the Chrome Operating System. Ultimately, of course, Chrome OS hasn't been the Chrome Operating System in anything but name for ages. I mean, really, what role does Chrome even play in Chrome OS's current incarnation? The software is basically now just an operating system that happens to use Chrome as its browser. Even the system settings, once integrated tightly with the browser settings, have been separated out as their own entity since this time last year. The de-Chromifying of Chrome OS is a change Google's been building up to for quite a while now, and this is the next logical step in that transition. So sure, the separation of Chrome and Chrome OS may seem almost like a formality at this point, but make no mistake about it: It's a colossal change from what the software was originally designed to be and a significant recognition of what it's actually become. Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get more practical tips, personal recommendations, and plain-English perspective on the news that matters. [Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld] NEWTON, Kan., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur Roland Dick, MD, is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Prominent Leader for his outstanding contributions in the field of Neurology and acknowledgment of his untimely devotion to educating students at the University of Kansas. Currently retired, Dr. Arthur Roland Dick is highly respected as one of the founding professors of the Department of Neurology at the University of Kansas. While serving as Chair, Dr. Dick is proud to have seen how tremendous the department has grown from a faculty of 3 people to a staff of 60 people. He has garnered 50 years of vast knowledge and professional experience in his specialty of neurology and teaching students. He is proficient in the diagnosis and treatment of Muscular dystrophy, stroke, and epilepsy. To prepare for his distinguished career, Dr. Dick attended Bethel University where he graduated with his undergraduate degree. Soon thereafter, he went on to receive his Master's degree and was then quickly drafted into the Army where he performed biomedical research. Following his time in the army, he continued his education and went on to receive his Medical Degree with the University of Maryland. Then, he completed his residency where he later sought a life-long career at the University of Kansas. At the early start of his career, Dr. Dick was invited for Fellowships at the University of Miami and traveled abroad to Lund in Sweden. Highly regarded as a frontrunner in his field, Dr. Dick maintained active memberships and affiliations with professional organizations. He is a noted member of the American Academy of Neurology. In light of his professional achievements, he has been honored with the Super Dr. Award for Muscular Dystrophy with the AHA for his efforts in innovative treatments and education. In his free time, Dr. Dick enjoys spending time with his wife and college sweetheart Betty and raising their daughters Julie Sparks and Amy Morgan, and grandchildren Jack, Mike, and Morgan. Dr. Dick dedicates this honorable recognition to his mentor Dr. Dewey Zigler. Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com On September 16, 2020, Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Vasyl Bodnar began a working visit to Turkey. This was reported by the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Turkey. The Ukrainian diplomat is a candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the Permanent International Secretariat of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC PERMIS) from Ukraine; therefore, during a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Turkey Faruk Kaymakc, he presented the vision of the Ukrainian side regarding the priorities for the further development of BSEC and ways to deepen cooperation between the states of the Black Sea basin. In addition, Bodnar met with Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal, with whom he discussed topical issues of cooperation between Ukraine and Turkey, in particular bilateral events planned until the end of the year and the current state of affairs in the region. ish Alexei Navalny poses in his office in Moscow, Russia. The post said that Navalny's team collected the bottle and other items that may have left toxin traces in the hotel room after hearing he fell ill.(AP File Image) Moscow: Aides of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny said Thursday they discovered traces of a Novichok nerve agent on a bottle taken from the hotel where he stayed before falling ill in a suspected poisoning attack. The 44-year-old lawyer and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin collapsed last month on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow after a campaign trip to support opposition candidates in local elections. His team wrote on Instagram that a German laboratory had found traces of a "military-grade toxin" collected from the hotel room in Tomsk where the opposition leader and his team stayed. The aides said they believed Navalny was poisoned "before he left his room to reach the airport". Navalny is being treated in a hospital in Berlin and on Tuesday said he was breathing for the first time without medical support. Germany has said it has "unequivocal evidence" that Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and this week reported that labs in France and Sweden had confirmed the findings. The post said that Navalny's team collected the bottle and other items that may have left toxin traces in the hotel room after hearing he fell ill. "It was decided to take everything that could be hypothetically useful and hand it over to doctors in Germany," the post said. "The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was also quite obvious." The anti-corruption campaigner's suspected poisoning has sparked sharp condemnation from Western leaders, who have called for a thorough investigation and for those responsible to be brought to justice. Russia has dismissed "unsubstantiated claims" over the incident and said its doctors found no trace of toxins. By PTI NEW DELHI: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday attended a virtual meeting of top security officials of five-nation grouping BRICS. The 10th meeting of the NSAs of the grouping was attended by China's State Councillor Yang Jiechi and senior security officials from Russia, Brazil and South Africa, officials said. It was hosted by Russia, the current chair of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa). The meeting exchanged views on combating terrorism and extremism besides deliberating on global and regional security issues, according to details provided by a Russian official. The official said an agreement was reached on further expanding the dialogue on security issues, and providing for closer coordination among law enforcement agencies of the member nations. BRICS represents over 3.6 billion people, or half of the world population, and they have a combined GDP of USD 16.6 trillion. OTTAWA - The federal Liberals have named broadcaster Marci Ien as their candidate in the riding formerly held by Bill Morneau. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA - The federal Liberals have named broadcaster Marci Ien as their candidate in the riding formerly held by Bill Morneau. Morneau represented Toronto Centre for the Liberals during his time in the House of Commons, which came to an abrupt end in August when he suddenly resigned as finance minister and MP. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, talks with TV personalities, from left, Marci Ien of Canada AM, Barb Higgins of CTV Calgary, and Jayne Pritchard of A-Channel Barrie/Toronto during a celebration in downtown Ottawa on Tuesday April 15, 2008, for CTV's 50th year in business. Former broadcaster Marci Ien says she is throwing her hat in the ring to win the Liberal nomination in the riding formerly held by Bill Morneau. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick In a series of tweets Thursday, Ien said she had taken a leave from Bell Media to try to be the Liberal candidate in the riding when either a byelection or general election is called. By the end of the day, the party had declared her the party's standard-bearer. TD Bank Group executive Paul Saguil had previously declared his candidacy for the nomination. The Liberals gave the same treatment to Ya'ara Saks in York Centre, left vacant by the resignation of MP Michael Leavitt at the beginning of September. Ien wrote that she has had the privilege of connecting with Canadians as a broadcaster throughout her career, and now hopes to connect in a new way. Canadians would best know Ien over her three decades as a broadcaster, including most recently as co-host of The Social, a daytime talk show on CTV. Ien was also a co-host of the network's former morning talk show, Canada AM. She was named a co-host in 2011 to replace Seamus O'Regan, who ran for the Liberals in 2015 and now sits in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet as natural resources minister. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. EDWARDSVILLE The annual Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce Halloween Parade is canceled. The Intelligencer spoke with Desiree Bennyhoff, president of the Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce, Thursday morning following Mayor Hal Pattons request for input from the citys aldermen Tuesday about Halloween ideas this year. We had some discussions internally today about how to go forward with a healthy Halloween celebration, both with Halloween Parade considerations and trick-or-treating, Patton said near the end of the forum, under New Business. Input from the aldermen would be appreciated. Well be watching for standards throughout the state. With our region being where it is today with COVID, theres a very strong likelihood that the Halloween Parade itself will be canceled. The Chamber, in conjunction with the city of Edwardsville, made the announcement, citing COVID-19 restrictions. I agree with Mayor Pattons comments during the city council meeting that the Halloween parade is unlikely to occur this year, Bennyhoff told an Intelligencer reporter Thursday morning before the announcement was made public. To support that further, the chamber has changed its web page about the parade to note that it has been postponed until Oct. 31, 2021. Each year on Halloween night, thousands of spectators line the downtown Edwardsville streets in anticipation of this annual tradition. The Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce has brought the Halloween parade to the community for nearly 100 years except for wartime and inclement weather. Marching bands, school groups, organizations, entertainers and approximately 100 floats take to the streets. MESA, Ariz., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, electric vehicle technology startup ATLIS Motor Vehicles obtained SEC qualification of its Regulation A + offering statement, paving the way for a $25 million public offering. ATLIS has opened the offering to the public at $8.24/share. ATLIS XT 100% electric pickup truck "We started ATLIS to build a better work truck. We are building trucks for workers, funded by workers. Our potential customers have always provided us the direction and motivation for our product, so it only makes sense for them to be shareholders in the company," says Mark Hanchett, CEO & Founder. "ATLIS remains focused on execution, and we won't settle for doing things the way they've always been done." ATLIS prides itself on doing things differently. ATLIS has maintained independence by being primarily funded by equity crowdfunding. This has allowed ATLIS to take a vertically integrated approach to create high-quality components in-house and to develop and protect its proprietary battery technology. The Arizona-based company is developing the XT Pickup Truck to out-perform gas and diesel-powered pickup trucks in cost, range, and towing capacity. About Reg A In 2012, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) was signed and set into motion laws that would allow the general public to invest in startup companies. The first law from the JOBS Act, known as Regulation A+ or Reg A, went into effect on June 19, 2015. With Reg A, companies can raise money by selling equity shares to the general public without having to commit to a formal registration and initial public offering. In order to accept investment, companies file a Form 1-A offering statement and offering circular and address SEC comments until it receives SEC qualification. Once they receive qualification, companies are subject to ongoing reporting requirements, including annual reports, semi-annual reports, and event reports. About ATLIS Motor Vehicles ATLIS Motor Vehicles is building an electric vehicle technology platform for heavy and light duty work trucks to make fleet ownership simple. ATLIS' subscription ownership model provides fleet owners predictable monthly payments with a lower total cost of ownership than traditional work vehicles, Subscribers will experience freedom from fluctuating gas prices and confidence that they'll always have the vehicles they need when they need them. In order to meet the towing and payload capabilities of legacy diesel-powered vehicles, ATLIS is developing proprietary battery technology and a modular system architecture capable of scaling to meet the specific vehicle needs. ATLIS' mission includes improving the charging ecosystem by developing technology to charge ATLIS vehicles within 15 minutes. For more information about use of funds, developmental roadmap, and offering details visit invest.atlismotorvehicles.com or email [email protected]. Contact: Annie Pratt 9162395776 [email protected] SOURCE Atlis Motor Vehicles (Newser) With a splash of Plymouth gin, the US ambassador to Britain officially launched a ship named Mayflower on Wednesday, 400 years to the day after a wooden vessel with that name sailed from an English port and changed the history of two continents. Unlike the merchant ship that carried a group of European Puritan settlers to a new life across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, the Mayflower christened by Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson has no crew or passengers. It will cross the sea powered by sun and wind, and steered by artificial intelligence, the AP reports. Johnson said the high-tech ship, developed by UK-based marine research organization ProMare and US tech giant IBM, showed that "the pioneering spirit of the Mayflower really lives on" in the trans-Atlantic partnership. "We're heading out with the same spirit of adventure and determination and vision for the future" as the original colonists, the American diplomat said at the ceremony in England. story continues below Like the Mayflower in 1620, the new vessel will travel from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, but on a marine research trip. The coronavirus pandemic has delayed its trip until the spring of 2021; the launch is part of Mayflower commemorations disrupted by the pandemic. They involve British, Americans, and Dutch institutionsmany 17th-century Pilgrims had fled England for Holland in the years before the voyageand the Wampanoag people, who lived for millennia in what is now New England. In 1620, the Wampanoag helped the exhausted Mayflower settlers survive their first winter. But colonial expansion, conflict and new diseases soon had a devastating impact on the indigenous peoples. Wampanoag stories have been marginalized on past Mayflower anniversaries, but they are playing a big part in events and exhibitions this time. "It's going a long way to lend balance to this story," said Paula Peters, a Wampanoag writer and educator. (Read more Plymouth stories.) Press release Stockholm, 17 September 2020 SEB is forming a new unit within the bank that will invest venture capital in green technology to contribute to a sustainable transition. The green technology sector is undergoing rapid development and will play a key role in the transition to a more sustainable society. However, there is a shortage of venture capital in the sector as investments in new, green technology often take a longer time to develop and mature than traditional venture-capital investments. SEB has therefore created a new unit, SEB Greentech, to support Nordic companies within this sector. "This is an expression of our ambition to contribute to a sustainable transition. It is critical that young greentech companies gain access to funding at an early stage so they can realise the creation of technologies, products and services that can benefit society, our customers and shareholders", says SEB's President and CEO Johan Torgeby. The unit is starting out with SEK 300m in investment capital, with an ambition for an increase to SEK 1b over time. It will invest in companies that develop solutions which in a decisive way can improve the use of natural resources and reduce negative ecological impacts. This can involve investments in renewable energy, energy storage, water and agricultural technology, circular business models and waste management, for example. "We believe we can contribute with capital to an area that is important for society and in which Sweden can build a strong position as we have exciting entrepreneurs within green technology", says Sara Ohrvall, who has the overall responsbility for the sustainability transition within SEB. For further information, contact Frank Hojem, Head of Corporate Communication, +46 70 763 9947 frank.hojem@seb.se (mailto:frank.hojem@seb.se) Press contact Niklas Magnusson, Group Press Officer +46 70 763 8243 niklas.x.magnusson@seb.se (mailto:niklas.x.magnusson@seb.se) SEB is a leading Nordic financial services group with a strong belief that entrepreneurial minds and innovative companies are key in creating a better world. SEB takes a long term perspective and supports its customers in good times and bad. In Sweden and the Baltic countries, SEB offers financial advice and a wide range of financial services. In Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, the bank's operations have a strong focus on corporate and investment banking based on a full-service offering to corporate and institutional clients. The international nature of SEB's business is reflected in its presence in some 20 countries worldwide. On June 30, 2020, the Group's total assets amounted to SEK 3,218 billion while its assets under management totalled SEK 1,909 billion. The Group has around 15,000 employees. Read more about SEB at https://www.sebgroup.com (https://www.sebgroup.com). "There is also value for the bank's customers in being closer to the technological development that is taking place to contribute to the climate transition, and it is also an opportunity to transfer competence within the sustainability area to the bank", says Sara Ohrvall.SEB Greentech will be headed by, who has been recruited from Almi Invest, where he is currently Fund Manager for Almi Invest's GreenTech fund. He will assume his new position on 1 November."With SEB Greentech and other platforms, the bank now has the entirely right tools to invest private equity that creates long-term value for companies in this sector", says Markus Hokfelt.Investment and exit decisions will be made by a newly formed Greentech Investment Committee. The unit will also appoint an external advisory board with experience within green technology. SEB Greentech will be a sister organisation of SEB Venture Capital, which invests venture capital in the fintech sector. FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed oil pump jack is seen in front of displayed stock graph and Opec logo in this illustration picture By Ahmad Ghaddar, Rania El Gamal and Alex Lawler LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has emerged as a major laggard in delivering oil output cuts in August, figures used by OPEC+ showed on Wednesday, as the group meets this week amid signs of a faltering demand recovery. Compliance with oil production cuts in August among OPEC+ members was seen at around 101%, four OPEC+ sources told Reuters on Wednesday, a figure calculated using production assessments from six secondary sources. Several of the secondary sources showed the UAE missed its target in August, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) giving OPEC's third-largest producer a score of only 10%, significantly lower than an average of around 80% from other sources. The UAE had said its overproduction was due to higher demand for associated gas for power generation, driven by hot weather and more people ditching foreign holidays, adding that it will compensate for the August rise by reducing its oil supply in the coming months. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) will reduce crude oil supplies to term buyers in October and November. A technical committee of the alliance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+, meets on Wednesday to discuss market fundamentals and compliance. One of the OPEC+ sources said the UAE will submit its plan to compensate for its overproduction in August. Secondary source data including from the IEA, price reporting agencies S&P Global Platts and Argus Media, and publication Energy Intelligence have shown that laggards Iraq and Nigeria have by and large made efforts in August to compensate for their overproduction. A higher-level ministerial monitoring committee meets on Thursday, and is unlikely to announce recommendations for expanding the oil cuts - currently at 7.7 million bpd until the end of the year - any further, sources told Reuters this week. The meeting, instead, is expected to extend the compensation period for countries such as Iraq and Nigeria for their past overproduction, and discuss underperformance from other members, including the UAE. Story continues The meetings come against the backdrop of worsening demand forecasts, including from OPEC. In its monthly report, the organisation said it expected world oil demand to fall by 9.46 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, more than the 9.06 million bpd decline expected a month ago. The OPEC forecast chimes with a worsening demand outlook outlined by the International Energy Agency and major oil industry producers and traders. (Editing by Louise Heavens and David Evans) PRISTINA, Kosovo: Kosovo war veterans said Thursday that war crime files inexplicably sent to their office have been returned to a special international court in The Hague, Netherlands, probing alleged crimes during and after the Balkan nations 1998-1999 war. Hysni Gucati, a spokesman for the association of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters said an unidentified man delivered the files to their office in Kosovos capital, Pristina, this week. He said it was the second such incident in two months. (Prosecutors) have not told us how these materials were taken out of their office, Gucati told journalists. The associations lawyer Tome Gashi said the files were original documents of the Special Court. They include names of witnesses. The court is mandated to look into allegations that KLA members committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Christopher Bennett, spokesman of the Specialist Prosecutors Office at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the court, said he had no comment on the files issue. Prosecutors have charged Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and former parliamentary speaker Kadri Veseli, among others, with crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearances, persecution and torture. Both men have denied committing any crimes. A pretrial judge hasnt made a decision on whether to proceed with Thacis case. The 1998-1999 war of the ethnic Albanian KLA members fighting for Kosovos independence from Serbia killed more than 10,000 people most of them ethnic Albanians. More than 1,600 remain unaccounted for. It ended after a 78-day NATO air campaign against Serbian troops. Kosovo, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Serbia doesnt recognize. - Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. 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 Buddhists in Cambodia on Wednesday began to celebrate the three-day traditional the Pchum Ben festival, or Ancestors' Day, after the COVID-19 situation in the kingdom has been brought under control. During the celebrations, Buddhism followers go to pagodas and make offerings to monks in order to dedicate to their relatives and loved ones who had passed away. Buddhists believe that everything they offer to the monks will reach their dead ancestors or relatives and in return, the dead will bless them with good luck. Buddhists account for over 90 percent of the kingdom's population of more than 15 million, according to the Ministry of Cults and Religions. Health Ministry's secretary of state and spokeswoman Or Vandine on Wednesday urged the pagoda goers to remain cautious about COVID-19 although the virus is under control in the kingdom. "On behalf of the Ministry of Health, I'd like to call on all people, including monks and nuns at pagodas, to keep on following prevention measures set out by the ministry in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading to communities," she said. The festival goers should wear face masks, wash hands with alcohol frequently and keep social distancing, Vandine said. According to the spokeswoman, the Southeast Asian nation has recorded a total of 275 confirmed COVID-19 cases to date, with no deaths and 274 patients cured. New Delhi/Jammu, Sep 17 : Prominent organisations of displaced Kashmiri Pandits have urged the central government to consider their demand for return and settlement of the exiled community at one single place instead of 10 districts in the Kashmir Valley. In an official statement issued jointly by prominent Kashmiri Pandit organisations like 'Roots in Kashmir' (RIK), JKVM and Youth for Panun Kashmir (Y4PK) said that media reports have indicated that the government plans to settle displaced Kashmiri Pandits in various districts of Kashmir. The organisations urged the government to not consider the 10-district settlement plans for Kashmiri Pandits in the valley and demanded 'Justice & One Place Settlement' as a prerequisite for an honourable return of the community. Spokesperson of RIK, Amit Raina said that a delegation of the organisations will meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah to present a memorandum of the community demands. Criticising the Centre, Raina said, the government has failed to analyse the reasons for the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. "Instead of drafting plans for their resettlement in various districts, they should first set up a committee to establish the reasons for the exodus and then formulate plans on the basis of the findings of the committee," he said. Dilip Matto, President, JKVM said that though more than 1,800 Kashmiri Pandits have been killed by terrorists till date, not a single conviction has happened. The poor state of affairs does show the justice system and government in poor light. The return of Kashmiri Pandits without justice and one-place settlement is not possible, he added. Lashing out at the BJP government, Vithal Chaudhary, national coordinator, Y4PK said that the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 was nothing short of genocide. "And the government instead of addressing the concerns of the genocide victims is treating us like cattle who can be driven to any place. Panun Kashmir is clear that nothing short of a one single settlement as homeland is acceptable to the organisation and the community," he said. Sanjay Sapru, former vice president of AIKS, said that the government should take into consideration the aspirations of the community, which clearly are towards "one-place settlement and justice." All the organisations unanimously demanded setting up of Special Investigation Team or Tribunal of Justice to identify the reasons of genocide and for faster delivery of justice. Besides, the outfits demanded that there should be 'One Territory or Place Settlement' of Kashmiri Pandits. "All communities irrespective of the faith are welcome to be part of the settlement, if they believe and subscribe to the Constitution of India," the statement said. In addition, they demanded that the government issue a 'Temple & Shrine Protection Ordinance' as per the proposed Temple & Shrine Bill to protect temples, and religious and cultural assets of Hindus in Kashmir. Over 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits, the indigeneous ethnic community of Kashmir, were driven out of their homeland by Islamist terrorists sponsored by Pakistan in 1990. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Amid uncertainty over that, the other 14 members of the Security Council and all but about five of the U.N.s 195 member states say the U.S. lost its legal standing to act on sanctions when Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord more than two years ago. The U.S. argues it retains the right to enact the snapback of sanctions because the council resolution that endorsed the deal refers to it as a participant. General Motors Delays to General Motors' sale of its Indian plant to Great Wall Motor due to tensions between India and China are likely to result in hefty unplanned costs for the U.S. automaker, people familiar with the matter said. Gaining Indian government approval for China-related deals is now expected to take quite some time and although the sale should still happen at some point, GM has not changed its plan to begin winding down the plant's operations next month, they said. "By next year, it will either be a closed GM site or it will be an operating site with Great Wall," said one source. GM had planned to use the expected sale proceeds of $250 million-$300 million to pay off liabilities incurred with its exit from manufacturing in India in what a second source said would have been a "no gain-no loss" situation. Although money will come through once the deal is done, it will now have to pay out of pocket for severance pay, some of which would never have occurred had the deal proceeded smoothly, as well as other costs - which could amount to a couple hundred million dollars, according to the second source. Sources also said severance pay costs could be much higher than usual due to lack of clarity about the deal's prospects and workers' demands for greater relief given the low chances of finding new jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. The sources were not authorised to discuss the deal and spoke on condition of anonymity. GM stopped selling in the world's second most populous nation at the end of 2017 after years of low sales but the factory continues to build vehicles for export. Located in the western state of Maharashtra, the plant employs about 4,000. If workers don't agree to the severance offered, GM will need local government clearance to lay off staff. That is often a long, bureaucratic process which could help stoke worker protests or political opposition, the sources said. GM said in a statement it continues to work toward ending production at the plant and closing the deal with Great Wall. Great Wall did not respond to a request for comment. ENSNARED IN TENSIONS The sale was announced in January and had been slated to close in the second half of 2020. Just when it might proceed remains highly uncertain. In April, India introduced stricter rules for investments from China and other neighbouring countries aimed at preventing pandemic-hit Indian companies being taken over at bargain prices. A number of central government ministries are now required to sign off on the deal, instead of just Maharashtra state. Then in June, a deadly border clash between the two nations resulted in a further clampdown on Chinese businesses and Maharashtra put three investment proposals from Chinese companies, including Great Wall's, on hold. Further complicating matters, GM and Great Wall did not seek central government approval until late July, the sources said. Investment proposals from Chinese companies are unlikely to be approved until tension at the border dissipates, two central government officials told Reuters. India's finance and commerce ministries did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Great Wall "now feels it is impossible to finish the transaction this year," a company source said. The hold-up has made the Chinese automaker nervous as it had planned to launch its first India-made car in the first half of 2021, said a separate person aware of the plans. The company, which plans to invest $1 billion in India, has started hiring staff, including executives to run the plant, and is in talks with auto parts suppliers, the person said. But even after the central government greenlights the project, Great Wall will still need more than three months to finalise investment terms with Maharashtra state and to revamp the plant, the person added. Melvin Martin Jr., 30, was arrested in Markham, Illinois on Tuesday after his family members discovered the body parts in his luggage about a week after he had arrived A man has admitted to dismembering his girlfriend's body and carrying the parts in suitcases on a Greyhound bus from Kentucky to his parent's house in Illinois. Melvin Martin Jr., 30, was arrested on Tuesday after his family members discovered the body parts in his luggage about a week after he had arrived. Police said Martin admitted to killing his 31-year-old girlfriend in Louisville before dismembering her body. Investigators believe she was dismembered about a month ago. He allegedly told investigators that he dumped her torso in a Louisville park and put the other body parts, including her lower half, skull, and organs, into his luggage. Martin then took the luggage with him when he caught a Greyhound bus from Louisville to Chicago where he was picked up there by relatives who took him to their home in Markham, which is about 23 miles south of Chicago. Markham Police Chief Terry White said Martin took the remains to his parents house because he still wanted to be with 'at least part of her'. 'He indicated that, as grotesque as it might sound, he still wanted to be with her. At least part of her,' White said. Martin allegedly told police he stashed the parts in a suitcase and boarded a Greyhound bus from Louisville, Kentucky to his parent's home (above) in Illinois Relatives later told investigators that Martin never unpacked the bags and they came suspicious when a foul odor started coming from his luggage. A relative opened one of the bags and discovered the body parts when Martin was at a public library Relatives later told investigators that Martin never unpacked the bags and kept asking for clothing. They became suspicious when a foul odor started coming from the bags. When Martin was at a public library on Tuesday, a relative opened one of the bags and found some of the body parts. Martin was arrested at the library after his family called 911. Police later found the woman's head and other remains in the remaining bags. Authorities are withholding the girlfriend's name until they can locate a next of kin. They did confirm that she was from Louisville and had been reported missing last week. Police said her death resulted from a domestic assault and believe her body was dismembered at least a month ago. The woman's torso was located on Wednesday in the Louisville park following Martin's arrest. Martin has been charged as a fugitive fleeing prosecution and now faces an extradition hearing back to Kentucky. 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... Alex Wong/Getty TEL AVIVAssuming last-minute disputes about mask-wearing and social distancing can be ironed out in time, the South Lawn of the White House will once more be the site of a historic Middle East peace deal signing. Two deals, in fact, as both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates normalize ties with Israel. Rejecting the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East has been a totemic political and moral commitment in the Arab world for 75 years now. Travel to or from Israel was prohibited, as was all trade and cultural exchange and sporting competition. For years even the mention of the name Israel was abjured in favor of alternative formulations like the Zionist entity. The two Arab states that did, after a series of military defeats, sign peace treaties with Israel maintained formal relations while steering clear of anything that looked like the dreaded normalization. This is a big deal then, not just for the three states involved or even the Trump administration, desperate to cough up an election season success rather than droplets of contagion, but for a rapidly shifting regional order in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. And its also an opportunity to revisit the received wisdom of the gloriously self-confident class of experts on Arab-Israeli peacenot just to mock them for being so wrong so often and so consistently in the years leading up to this breakthrough, but also for being so churlishly wrong and petty in their reactions since the agreements were announced. Trumps Peace Plan Rescues Benjamin Netanyahu. For Now. The experts told us that no Arab-Israeli peace was possible without first settling the Palestinian issue. Years and years of Palestinian rejection of peace deals did not wear down the certainty that Israel was at fault, but they did wear down the patience of some Arab states who didnt want their entire foreign policies hostage to a revenge fantasy. Its not that the Washington foreign policy brahmins were against any peace deal between Israel and an Arab state. For years they preached that the most stabilizing thing that could happen to the region would be an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights leading to a peace deal with Syria. Nine years into a Syrian civil war that has dragged in so many international actors near and far and led to the greatest refugee crisis Europe has seen in decades, one might prefer not to imagine how the whole thing would have unfolded with Syrian forces, jihadist rebels or both on the shores of Israels Sea of Galilee. But we owe it to ourselves to imagine just that scenario, because if it had been up to our betters, thats precisely where the Syrian civil war would have extended to at a minimum. Recall that for years the Israelis who opposed a Golan withdrawal were dismissed as opponents of peace with outdated notions of the security benefits that territory could bring. Story continues More recently, we were told by former diplomats and self-appointed experts that American recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital would ignite the region. The same people issuing dire warnings on the Jerusalem issue in 2017 arent always keen on being reminded of them now, but back in 2017 what they were not keen on being reminded of was that for much of the previous decade they had been touting the virtues of the moderate and democratic Islamism of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the performance of the foreign policy grandees has been no better. Israeli military action could never succeed in ending the Second Intifada, we were repeatedly assured, right up until it did succeed, at which point we were warned that a third one was inevitable and imminent (it hasnt happened yet). A fence couldnt keep out suicide bombers (it has); and assassination of Hamas leaders would only lead to more terrorists carrying out more attacks (it hasnt). Watching these same experts comment on the recent announcements of normalization agreements first between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and then between Israel and Bahrain has been edifying and even sometimes entertaining. Apparently, peace agreements no longer count as peace agreements if the countries werent at war, which is odd since Israel and Jordan were not at war when they signed a peace treaty in 1994, and neither were Israel and Egypt in 1979. Nor, for that matter, were Israel and the PLO when the Oslo Accords were signed. Come to think of it, neither were the US and Japan when they signed a peace treaty in 1951. This is a talking point, not a serious claim. Equally unserious is the bellyaching about the nondemocratic nature of the regimes in Bahrain and the UAE. This is supposed to indicate a preference on Israels part for despotic Arab regimes (as opposed to which?) or even just an agreement of one illiberal state with two others. The latter formulation has the benefit not only mischaracterizing Israeli democracy as something even comparable to absolute monarchies with non-citizen majorities, but also making Israel somehow responsible for the lack of democracy in the Arab world. This charge would be plausible if there were democratic states in the Arab world extending a hand of peace to Israel only to be met with rejection. Or if, say, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had no normal relations with other democracies besides Israel. But, of course, both countries have normal diplomatic relations with nearly every other state in the world, including all of the worlds most advanced democracies, without any of them being tainted by it. In the diplomatic Calvinball which Israel has to play, having normal relations with a non-democratic regime now makes you complicit in its domestic policies. That wasnt the rule one month ago, but it is now, and if you dont understand you just arent a very sophisticated observer of global events. 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. Attorney General William Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staff, whom he said too often injected themselves into politics and went headhunting for high profile targets. Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics, Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Donald Trump. What exactly am I interfering with? he asked. Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general. Barrs comments were remarkable, in that the head of the Justice Department cataloged all of the ways in which he thought his agency had gone astray over the years, and in its current formulation harms the body politic. Barr has drawn considerable criticism for intervening in criminal cases in ways that help benefit the presidents friends. Barr said it was he, not career officials, who have the ultimate authority to decide how cases should be handled, and derided less-experienced, less-senior bureaucrats who current and former prosecutors have long insisted should be left to handle their cases free from interference from political appointees. Barr said that argument, in essence, means the will of the most junior member of the organization would make decisions, but he insisted he would not blindly defer to whatever those subordinates want to do. Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency, Barr said. READ MORE: Justice Department seeks to defend Trump in lawsuit by columnist who claims he raped her The attorney general, the nations top law enforcement official, spent much of the speech eviscerating the idea of the Justice Department as a place where nonpolitical career prosecutors should be left to decide how sensitive cases are resolved. Barr said, throughout history, prosecutors have sought to amass glory by prosecuting prominent people, and he regularly witnessed that phenomenon during his supervision of the Justice Department. Id like to be able to say that we dont see head hunting in the Department of Justice, Barr said. That would not be truthful. I see it every day. Though Barr did not cite any particular cases, his remarks seemed to defend his recent intervention in two prosecutions of Trumps allies. In the case against the presidents longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to lawmakers as they probed Russian interference in the 2016 election, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation offered by career prosecutors shortly after Trump tweeted his dismay about the matter. All four quit the case, with two later claiming they felt the move was politically driven and inappropriate. In the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with a Russian diplomat before Trump was sworn into office, Barrs Justice Department moved to drop the charges altogether and again drew criticism for inappropriate, political intervention. A judge is now weighing the departments request. READ MORE: Michael Flynn case does not have to be immediately dismissed, appeals court rules Barr has previously defended both moves. Barr also criticized what he termed the criminalization of politics, railing against television pundits for speculating on whether an officials actions constitutes some esoteric crime. Now you have to call your adversary a criminal, and instead of beating them politically, you try to put them in jail, Barr said, asserting that America was becoming akin to an Eastern European country. If youre not in power, youre in jail or youre a member of the press, he quipped. In the course of his denunciation of officials who would seek to criminalize politics, Barr never mentioned how often his boss, the president, calls for people he dislikes to be charged with crimes. As a candidate in 2016, Trump rallies frequently featured chants of lock her up, in reference to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Since becoming president, the list of officials Trump has called to go to jail has expanded to include former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and others at the FBI involved with investigating his campaign. In a question-and-answer session after the remarks, Barr was notably critical of state coronavirus shutdown measures and of health care professionals who advocate for them over all else. Asked about suicides amid the pandemic, Barr said a doctor was not a grand seer who could set societal policy, and noted that shutdowns came with other consequences including a rise in opioid overdoses. All this nonsense about how something is dictated by science is nonsense, he said. Barr also attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that while he agreed Black lives matter, Theyre not interested in black lives. Theyre interested in props, a small number of blacks who are killed by police during conflicts with police usually less than a dozen a year who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda. "In this very challenging year, we've moved our Fest online to deliver thought-provoking films for people all over the world to enjoy from the comfort and safety of their homes," said Nina Streich, executive director of the Global Peace Film Festival. As the prospects for a traditional film festival grew dim earlier this year when the COVID-19 pandemic took a worldwide hold, organizers of the 18th annual Global Peace Film Festival (GPFF) were quick to adapt for the safety of their audiences and special guests. In this very different, challenging and tragic year, GPFF has pivoted to deliver a robust program that includes thought-provoking films and art exhibits for people all over the world to enjoy from the comfort and safety of their homes, as well as a limited number of in-person events at which people can be safely distanced. In years past, this unique festival has brought filmmakers and film-goers from all walks of life to Central Florida, inspiring them to take action in their daily lives and to leave the world a more peaceful place than they found it. GPFF now aims to continue this tradition virtually through online feature film screenings, virtual panel discussions and art exhibits. Starting on the International Day of Peace, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020, a selection of more than 20 feature films will be available for screening for just $5 each. These films highlight themes such as civil rights, environmental justice, ethics, human rights, immigration, LGBTQ+, music, social justice, voting, wellness and wildlife. For an even greater value, a White Dove pass, which provides access to all films, is available for $100, a savings of $15. With the virtual festival opening on the International Day of Peace, a film that speaks to the importance of that day is The Third Harmony (USA, 2020, 44 minutes). It aims to bring the ancient art of nonviolence into the mainstream of public consciousness by telling the story of the greatest overlooked resource in human experience. In this election year, the program includes Birddog Nation (USA, 2020, 60 minutes), timely for the U.S. election, which follows the fearless activists who helped flip the House in 2018, and Swing State Florida (USA, 2019, 90 minutes) mixes intimate portraits with expert commentary to showcase the struggles replicated in swing stages across the country and give a vision of Florida in the run-up to the 2020 election. The universal language of music is explored in Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story (UK, 2019, 63 minutes), where audiences will see the protagonist commit his life and music to screen for the first time while Mantra: Sounds into Silence (Spain, 2017, 85 minutes) shows how effective harmonious sounds can be in our noisy world of nonstop communication. 16 Bars (USA, 2018, 94 minutes) offers a rare glimpse at the human stories and songs that are locked away in our nations jails and prisons, taking the viewer into a Virginia jails makeshift recording studio, where four men collaborate on an album with Grammy-winning recording artist Todd Speech Thomas, of the hip hop group Arrested Development. Environmental films include Our Gorongosa (Mozambique, 2019, 60 minutes) that introduces the audience to a young African woman elephant ecologist who shares the inspiring story of how Gorongosa is becoming a new model for wildlife conservation and community development, and Sockeye Salmon. Red Fish (Russian Federation, 2020, 51 minutes) follows the wild sockeye salmon as it returns to its breeding grounds to complete its life cycle where the biggest threats are not the hungry bears lining the streams. A trio of films about Costa Rica features Lifting the Green Screen (USA, 2020, 90 minutes) is an ethnographic documentary that showcases the everyday complexity of conservation in practice in Costa Ricas biodiversity hotspot, the Osa Peninsula, Sweet Home Monteverde (USA, 2020, 57 minutes) traces the spiritual and geographical journey of an intrepid group of Americans who leave the U.S. in 1950 in search of a life of pacifism, and Peace With Nature in Costa Rica (USA, 2019, 50 minutes) about how Costa Rica restored its forests while providing employment and financial security for its people. Films about activism include A Concerned Citizen: Civics in Action (USA, 2019, 40 minutes) in which Dr. Riki Ott, renowned marine toxicologist, creates a civics course to help young activists become effective and Waging Change (USA, 2019, 61 minutes) that shines a spotlight on the challenges faced by restaurant workers trying to feed themselves and their families off tips. Featuring Saru Jayaraman, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the film reveals American workers struggles hidden in plain sight. The Vow from Hiroshima (USA, 2019, 82 minutes) is an intimate portrait of a passionate 85-year-old survivor of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Setsuko Thurlow was miraculously pulled out of a fiery building but was unable to save her 27 classmates who were burned to death after the blast. She made a vow to her friends: that no one should ever again experience the same horrible fate. The Great Disconnect (Cayman Islands, 2019, 87 minutes) follows wellness expert Tamer Soliman who posits that we as a society, are isolating ourselves from one another, and because of this, facing a health crisis that affects all ages, genders, races and cultures. Stories from around the world include Comrade Dov (Israel, 2019, 75 minutes) that examines the open wounds of contemporary Israeli society through a surprising and thought-provoking portrait of a unique politician. The Reformist (Denmark, 2019, 90 minutes) tells the story of Sherin Khankan, who wants to open one of the first mosques in Europe led by female imams. And scientists and humanitarians combine rigorous research and compassion to heal young Syrian refugees scarred by the devastating stress of war in Terror and Hope: The Silence of Resilience (USA, 2019, 39 minutes). Day One (USA, 2019, 81 minutes) follows a group of teenage refugees from war-torn countries who are enrolled at a unique public school for refugees and immigrants in St. Louis, where they are guided through an inspirational program of education, healing and trauma intervention by devoted educators, some of whom have chosen to relocate to the inner city to support their students. Elder Voices (USA, 2019, 49 minutes) tells the stories of Japanese Americans, European Jews and conscientious objectors who came of age during the perilous times of the Great Depression and World War II. Residing together in a retirement community, they continue to live and share the values and principles grounded in the lessons that were forged in their youth, confronted with anti-Semitism, internment camps and bigotry. Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses (USA, 2019, 41 minutes), drawing parallels between the past and present, heroic World War II veterans vividly share their liberation journeys. These powerful eyewitness accounts from Steven Spielberg's USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, share a cautionary tale and compelling reminder of what can happen when insidious hatred remains unchecked. Many of the films will be available worldwide throughout the festival, which runs through Oct. 4 while a few films are only available in the U.S. and North America, and two are available only in Florida. Check the individual film details in the film guide for more information on geographic restrictions and windows of availability. A separate selection of short films will be available for free to viewers around the world at PeaceFilmFest.org/online-film-festival. The K-12 Peace Art Exhibit, which has since 2006 annually presented the work of Orange County Public Schools students, will be presented online this year. BOMBSHELL: Masquerading Warfare, an exhibit to be presented at CityArts, at 39 S. Magnolia Ave. in downtown Orlando, visually surprises viewers with its rebellious, unconventional and elegant creations of gas masks. Avant-garde couture designer Ben Van Beusekom disrupts our perceptions and evokes beauty where once there was horror. In a world filled with chaos, his love of fantasy transforms these apocalyptic protectors into elaborate headpieces designed to titillate the senses. The exhibit highlights these glamorized saviors and recognizes the importance they have played throughout history by adorning them with texture, vivid color and dazzling bejeweling. The exhibit runs from Sept. 17 through Oct. 11. CityArts is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Learn more about the exhibit at PeaceFilmFest.org/cityarts. The films created as part of the MYgration Short Film Contest for FusionFest will be shown at Enzian Theater on Sept. 29, where audience members will vote for their favorite. Tickets for this screening are $10 each. (Virtual festival tickets will not be accepted for this event.) The films will also be shown throughout the weekend of FusionFest (Nov. 28 & 29), where a $1,000 jury prize will be awarded. Learn more at PeaceFilmFest.org/mygration-shorts-enzian. Tickets for GPFF feature films are $5 each and on sale now at PeaceFilmFest.org/program. Patrons may purchase a $100 White Dove Pass that provides access to all films during the availability window (certain geographic restrictions apply). A 10-Ticket pass can be purchased for the price of eight ($40), and a five-ticket pass can be purchased for the price of four ($20). Passes are available at PeaceFilmFest.org/passes. The Global Peace Film Festival is funded in part by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program, in part by the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of Arts and Culture and the State of Florida, and in part by United Arts of Central Florida, host of OrlandoAtPlay.com and UAArtsEd.com. Other sponsors include Thomas P. Johnson Visiting Scholar and Artist Fund, Rollins College, Valencia College Peace & Justice Institute, MSLCPAs & Advisors, Clear Channel Outdoor, Larimer & Co., Cicero Studios, Orlando Weekly, WPRK 90.5 and WUCF. About the Global Peace Film Festival The Global Peace Film Festival, established in 2003, uses the power of the moving image to further the cause of peace on earth. From the outset, the GPFF envisioned peace not as the absence of conflict but as a framework for channeling, processing and resolving conflict through respectful and non-violent means. People of good faith have real differences that deserve to be discussed, debated and contested. GPFF works to connect expression artistic, political, social and personal to positive, respectful vehicles for action and change. The festival program is carefully curated to create a place for open dialogue, using the films as catalysts for change. Visit peacefilmfest.org for more information. Follow @peacefilmfest on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Primates could be given fundamental constitutional rights in an area in Switzerland after a referendum on the proposal was given the go ahead. The northern canton of Basel-City will vote on whether to amend its constitution after campaigners amassed more than 100,000 signatures. The vote has been given the go ahead by the country's supreme court after cantonal and city governments objected saying it could violate federal law. The northern half-canton of Basel will vote on whether to amend its constitution to give primates fundamental rights after legal appeals against the proposal were dismissed Last year a complaint against the amendment's legality was dismissed by a Basel court and on Wednesday the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland rejected an appeal against that decision. The court said: 'In principle, cantons can go further than the protections guaranteed by the federal constitution. 'The initiative does not ask that federal rights accorded to humans be extended to animals, but is asking for the introduction of specific rights for non-human primates. 'While unusual, this does not in itself contradict the superior law, especially since the fundamental distinction between animal rights and fundamental human rights is not brought into question,' reported The Local. A complaint against the amendment's legality was dismissed by a Basel court and on Wednesday the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland (pictured) rejected an appeal against that decision Animal rights group Sentience Politics launched the proposal in 2016, and said it was 'thrilled at this historic decision'. The organisation said: 'Nonhuman primates have a fundamental interest in their life and physical and mental integrity. 'However, this is hardly taken into account by the Swiss animal welfare legislation.' A date for a vote on the issue is still to be set under the rules of the countrys direct democracy system. Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (26) Lacy Johnson hopes to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for the Minnesota Congressional District 5 seat. (Courtesy of Lacy Lee Johnson Campaign) 2 Aides for Ilhan Omar Challenger Lacy Johnson Shot, 1 Killed Two campaign aides for Lacy Johnson, a Republican seeking to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), were shot in Minneapolis in broad daylight this week, including a 17-year-old boy. The teenager was rushed to the hospital, where he died a short time later from his wounds, a Minneapolis police spokesman said. Officials havent officially identified the deceased but his family and school named him as Andre Conley. My nephew Andre did not deserve this, Conleys aunt, Fatemah Green, said at a vigil for the boy on Wednesday night, KARE 11 reported. Johnson said his campaign was in contact with the parents of the victims. We are reaching out to provide or help secure resources to meet their needs in such a time of grief, sorrow, and trauma, he said in a statement. We have also been in discussions with members of the community who have detailed knowledge of the sources of the sometimes violence in our community. Weve been in contact with local/national officials to both sort out the situation and discuss short and long-term solutions. His campaign said both victims of the senseless violence were paid campaign members. Today we are shocked and saddened to learn of this senseless act of violence. It is shocking and unnecessary acts of violence like this that prove why change is more needed than ever in our community. The shootings did not occur during a campaign event or outreach and we do not believe it has any connection to their work for the campaign, it said. Shooting victim Andre Conley in an undated photograph. (Lets show Andre some love./GoFundMe) Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks with media gathered outside Mercado Central in Minneapolis, Minn on Aug. 11, 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) Johnson told the local broadcaster that both youth came to me and told me that they want to do positive things with their lives. Patrick Henry High School told members of the school community that Andre, a senior, was killed this week. Over $4,900 has been raised for Andres family through a GoFundMe fundraiser. The organizer of the campaign said Andre had more ambition than I did at 17 and was loved by his peers, teachers, and principal. Police said the other victim, an adult male in his late teens, was taken for treatment for non-life-threatening wounds. A preliminary investigation found that people were standing in front of a business when a person, or persons, approached on foot and shot at the group. The suspect fled the scene prior to the arrival of officers. Omar has not commented on the shootings. The suspect was taken into custody on Thursday, a police spokesman confirmed to The Epoch Times. The suspects name is being withheld at this time under state law. TROUTVILLE, Va., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The cement industry recognized Roanoke Cement Company (RCC) with top honors for Outreach in the 2020 Portland Cement Association (PCA) Cement Industry Energy and Environment Awards this week. The Outreach category honors activities that enhance community, employee, and government relations. The award was formally announced during a virtual presentation by the PCA held on September 16, 2020. "I am so pleased that our efforts have been recognized and commended by our peer companies in the cement industry," says Lance Clark, Plant Manager at the Troutville Plant. "RCC's outreach activities connect us with our peoplecommunity, customers, and employeesand strengthens our relationships." The PCA's Energy and Environment Awards honor individual cement facilities that exemplify the spirit of continuous environmental improvement and support their resolve with action. The plants recognized exceeded government regulation and requirements of local laws to ensure that their processes and policies contributed to making their communities better places to live and work. "Outreach is its own reward," says Don Ingrassano, Vice President of Sales - Roanoke Cement and Mid-Atlantic Aggregates. "For example, last year's publicity of RCC's win of the PCA Environmental Performance Award -- and all of its components -- led to the visit by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam." "As I recall the list of events RCC sponsored, I am impressed with our breadth of promotions, initiatives and publications to our cement communities," says Kevin Baird, President, Titan America's Mid-Atlantic Business Unit. "It is gratifying to be singled out among other cement company applicants on outreach." RCC was recognized for major local outreach initiatives, including visits and tours of the plant throughout the year by various audiences like Governor Ralph Northam, the U.S. Green Building Council, the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (a program for local school students to learn about the Chesapeake Bay Watershed at the plant campus) and the Sunshine Valley School; awards including the achievement of TRUE Zero Waste Gold (RCC currently diverts 98.4% of generated waste from the landfill) and the PCA Energy & Environment, Environmental Performance Award for 2019; and events like the annual Catawba Creek Cleanup coordinated by the plant with local participation, now in its 13th year. On the global stage, RCC earned the prestigious ISO 50001 certification, the first cement company to be recognized for elite energy performance management. RCC has employed cement production using less solid fuel and more natural gas, providing energy flexibility for the plant. The Troutville plant is now running at almost 90% natural gas, a cleaner and currently cost-effective change. About Roanoke Cement Company (RCC) Roanoke Cement Company is a subsidiary of Titan America, LLC, a leading heavy building materials producer in the eastern United States. Titan America is headquartered in Norfolk, VA and its products include cement, aggregates, ready-mixed concrete and fly ash beneficiation. Its parent company, Titan Cement International, S.A., headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, is a participant of the UN Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, based on companies' commitments to implement universal sustainability principals and to support the UN goals. CONTACT: Mary Beth Kramer Kramer Consulting (215) 431-3946 SOURCE Roanoke Cement Company Mail-in primary election ballots are processed at the Chester County Voter Services office in West Chester, Pa., on May 28, 2020. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo) Pennsylvania Mail-in Ballots Received by Nov. 6 Will Count in Election Mail-in ballots received up to three days after the Nov. 3 presidential election will count, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday, provided they were postmarked or believed to be postmarked by 8 p.m. on election night. The highest court in a crucial swing state ruled 5-2 for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which had filed a lawsuit against Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, and all 67 county boards. Calling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic a natural disaster, Justice Max Baer, writing for the majority, said the primary elections earlier this year were rife with threatened disenfranchisement of thousands of voters as several county election boards struggled with the unprecedented volume of mail-in ballot applications that was allowed through Act 77, legislation which permitted mail-in voting without condition. It was passed and signed into law last year. In light of these unprecedented numbers and the near-certain delays that will occur in Boards processing the mail-in applications, we conclude that the timeline built into the Election Code cannot be met by the USPSs current delivery standards, regardless of whether those delivery standards are due to recent changes in the USPSs logistical procedures or whether the standards are consistent with what the General Assembly expected when it enacted Act 77, Baer wrote in the 63-page opinion. Under our Extraordinary Jurisdiction, this Court can and should act to extend the received-by deadline for mail-in ballots to prevent the disenfranchisement of voters, he added later. An individual deposits letters into a U.S. Postal Service collection mailbox in Philadelphia, Penn., on Aug. 14, 2020. (Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters) Any ballots mailed by voters via the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and postmarked by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 will now be accepted if it arrived by 5 p.m. Nov. 6, but the postmark requirement is flexible. Ballots received after election day that lack a postmark or other proof of mailing, or for which the postmark or other proof of mailing is illegible, will be counted unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day, the ruling stated. The move will reduce voter disenfranchisement resulting from the conflict between the Election Code and the current USPS delivery standards, given the expected number of Pennsylvanians opting to use mail-in ballots during the pandemic, the majority opinion stated. Several judges wrote concurring opinions. The extraordinary circumstances under which this years quadrennial presidential election must be contested manifestly justify an equitable remedy modifying the received by deadline for absentee and mail-in ballots to account for these exigencies and to ensure that no unnecessary impediments to each citizens exercise of the franchise be interposed that reasonably can be avoided, Justice David Wecht wrote in one of them. Chief Justice Thomas Saylor and Justice Christine Donohue in partial dissents, joined by Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy, spoke out against the extension of the deadline. I am not as comfortable as the Majority with the ability of this Court to exercise equitable powers in election matters, Donohue wrote. Because they are inherently political, elections are appropriately regulated by the political branch. Saylor added: Although the majority decision appears to be designed to accommodate only ballots actually mailed on Election Day or before, the majority does not so much as require a postmark. Particularly in combination with the allowance of drop boxes, this substantially increases the likelihood of confusion, as well as the possibility that votes will be cast after 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, thus greatly undermining a pervading objective of the General Assembly. Voters cast ballots in primary election in Philadelphia, Penn., June 2, 2020. (Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images) The Pennsylvania Democratic Party had argued argued that state election rules pertaining to voting-by-mail, as applied during the current pandemic, led to large numbers of mailed-in ballots being rejected during the recent primaries, and therefore sought a change to the rules. President Donald Trumps reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee sought to intervene in the lawsuit but were blocked from doing so last week. Trump campaign general counsel Matthew Morgan said in a statement sent to The Epoch Times: This ruling is a victory for Pennsylvania voters. Ballot harvesting by paid political operatives remains illegal. We look forward to the federal courts weighing in on what Election Day actually means, but we applaud this major win for voter integrity. He was referring in part to a separate ruling Thursday that saw justices rule that third parties cannot deliver absentee ballots. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party and the Pennsylvania Republican Party didnt immediately respond to inquiries, nor did Democratic presidential nominee Joe Bidens campaign. Pennsylvanias Supreme Court has five judges appointed by Democratic governors and two appointed by Republican ones. Trump weighed in on Twitter: State Supreme Court in Pennsylvania just affirmed that Ballot harvesting remains illegal. We will be watching that the Democrats do not Ballot Harvest a felony. In other words, the Republican Party won on the atrocious Ballot Harvesting Scam. Matthew Vadum contributed to this report. Express News Service BENGALURU: Thousands of lecturers in the state have still not got relief from Covid-19 duties despite multiple attempts. So they now have to juggle between college admissions, e-classes, final semester examinations and Covid duties.Since July, lecturers were pressed into duty for follow-up of the Covid-19 patients as block level officers, and some others were assigned as nodal officers to oversee the other teachers and lecturers who were assigned the door-to-door work.The central government had in August issued guidelines on holding online classes for college students in September and starting offline classes in October. The state government also mandated final semester examinations to be completed by September. This, and college admissions for fresh students, offline classes for final year students before the examination and Covid-19 duties, cannot all be handled together, a lecturer told TNIE.Lecturers said that although the government has relieved school teachers and even pre-university college and polytechnic college lecturers from Covid-19 duties, our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. To prevent the spread of the pandemic and due to the shortage of staff, all personnel and officials in Bengalru Urban and Rural and government and government-aided institutes, under the age of 55, were called for the task of surveillance. In the governments order of July 24, pregnant, nursing mothers and persons with disabilities were excluded. After Bengaluru, officials and personnel in other districts too were assigned similar work in their regions. However, now colleges that come under the ambit of the Karnataka state have to hold final semester examinations that need to be completed in September, and the schedule for it is already prepared. Hence, Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar has written to the BBMP Commissioner and deputy commissioners of all districts to relieve these personnel and officials who are required for conducting the final semester examination from Covid duties. Only the necessary staff for Covid duties should be retained, he said.Even this letter has not been honoured, M Manjunath, president, Karnataka Government College Teachers Association, told TNIE. (Newser) After more than 20,000 years, melting permafrost in Siberia has yielded the amazingly well-preserved body of an Ice Age cave bear. The bear, which still has intact fur and soft tissues including its nose, was found by reindeer hunters on the Bolshoy Lyakhovsky islands in the East Siberian Sea and donated to Northeastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the BBC reports. Researchers say the extinct bear species lived in the Arctic archipelago between 22,000 to 39,500 years ago. Until now, only skulls and bones had been found. story continues below "This is the first and only find of its kinda whole bear carcass with soft tissues," researcher Lena Grigorieva said in a statement, per the AP. It is completely preserved, with all internal organs in place, including even its nose, Grigorieva said. This find is of great importance for the whole world. The melting of permafrost across huge areas of Siberia has yielded numerous other discoveries in recent years, including well-preserved mammoths, woolly rhinos, and, last year, an 18,000-year-old puppy. Since the area is very lightly populated, researchers believe that for every find like the puppy or the cave bear, another 10 or 20 rot away before they are discovered, Live Science reports. (Read more paleontology stories.) BRIDGEPORT Police have charged a local man who was shot by an officer during a confrontation early Wednesday. Juan Villa, 27, of uncertain address, was charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault, fourth-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. His bond was set at $250,000. Villa, who was shot in the upper right side by Officer Eliud Henry, was listed in good condition at St. Vincents Medical Center. Villa is accused of allegedly stabbing a local man before being interrupted by Henry and Officer Sean Curran. Police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said the victim was stabbed once in the neck and had facial lacerations. He was expected to be discharged from the hospital on Thursday. Acting Police Chief Rebeca Garcia said police responded to the 300 block of Clinton Avenue around 1:10 a.m. Wednesday. Upon arrival, officers found the alleged suspect identified as Villa making stabbing motions toward the victim, Garcia said. The officers deployed a Taser to interrupt the assault, Garcia said, but it didnt work. She said thats when Henry, who joined the force in 2011, shot the suspect once. The suspect was shot one time by the officer in an attempt to stop the violent attack against the victim, Garcia said. Curran, who joined the department in 2016, did not fire his weapon. Once the victim was removed from the situation, the officers turned to the suspect, who then became combative with the officer, Garcia said. Medics took Villa to the hospital, where he underwent surgery. Ambassador Andre Haspels presents Michelle Browdy of IBM with the 2020 Holland on the Hill Heineken Award. Ambassador Andre Haspels presents Michelle Browdy of IBM with the 2020 Holland on the Hill Heineken Award. Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands presented the 2020 Holland on the Hill Heineken Award to IBM in a socially-distanced ceremony at the residence of Ambassador Andre Haspels. Michelle Browdy, Senior Vice President, Legal and Regulatory Affairs, and General Counsel, accepted the award on behalf of IBM. The Holland on the Hill Heineken Award recognizes industry and business leaders who strengthen the economic relationship between the Netherlands and the United States through entrepreneurship. In times when we have to stimulate economic recovery due to the pandemic, transatlantic cooperation remains crucial. IBM is an innovative company that excels in the fields of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. A noted leader in technology, IBM has ties firmly rooted in the United States and the Netherlands. When it comes to innovation and sustainability, IBM is a company that sets a path for others to follow. In the Netherlands, that innovation can be seen in IBMs partnerships with Dutch universities and its role in the creation of the Dutch National AI Coalition, said Ambassador Haspels. The company is forward thinking in sustainability with its Smarter Planet strategy, which complements Dutch sustainability efforts. IBM and the Netherlands are a true transatlantic economic success story anchored in shared values. IBM has been active in the Netherlands since 1920, and the company now employs several thousand people throughout the country. IBMs connections to the Netherlands run long and deep. The Netherlands is one of IBMs most strategic and important locations in Europe. With political and economic stability and an open attitude towards international trade, investment, cooperation and new ventures, the Netherlands is a natural ally and perfect fit for us,Browdy said. It is an honor to accept the Holland on the Hill Heineken Award on behalf of IBM in a year that marks the 100th anniversary of IBM doing business in the Netherlands. Story continues The Holland on the Hill Heineken Award is named after Freddy Heineken, who was sent to the United States in the 1940s to establish the Heineken brand overseas. Once he returned to the Netherlands, Heineken used the innovative marketing skills he acquired in the US to make Heineken one of the worlds most recognizable brands. By combining American marketing techniques and his Dutch entrepreneurial spirit, Heineken increased sales by 260 percent. The Holland on the Hill program was developed in 2014 to highlight the shared values between the Netherlands and the US. Jointly created by the United States Congressional Caucus of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Netherland-American Foundation, the Heineken Award has been presented to Alexander R. Wynaendts of Aegon N.V. (2019), David Hyman of Netflix (2018), Dick Boer of Ahold Delhaize ( 2017), Victoria B. Mars of Mars Inc. (2016), Paul Polman of Unilever (2015), and Werner Vogels of Amazon.com (2014). ### Attachment CONTACT: Carla Bundy Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands 202-274-2632 cy.bundy@minbuza.nl Ron Linker Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands 202-725-9743 ronald.linker@minbuza.nl F1's 'ghost race' trend of 2020 is finally ending. For the first time since the corona crisis struck, spectators - just under 3000 of them last weekend at Mugello - were back in the F1 grandstands. But even bigger crowds will attend a series of forthcoming races. Organisers at Sochi have been selling tickets, while Nurburgring boss Mirco Markfort is in talks with the local region to allow a certain number of spectators to attend the following race in October. "Each event must be approved individually," he told Kolner Express. "But as we have now seen with the DTM, this can be done at very short notice before the event. "At the moment, it is not possible to forecast how many spectators will be allowed, but every extra day that we have to sell tickets is of course a good day," Markfort added. Portimao is expecting 45,000 spectators, while Stefano Bonaccini, the president of the Emilia Romagna region in Italy, reveals that fans should be able to attend the Imola race on 1 November. "They showed at Misano that for one-off outdoor events, we are able to guarantee safety for the people," Bonaccini told Sky Italia. "It works, we have shown it, so considering the trend of the epidemiological curve, there is the possibility of reopening the doors to fans in Imola." Finally, Istanbul promoter Vural Ak admitted that the original intention was for a "full house" for Turkey's 15 November race. "The capacity is 220,000 seats in normal circumstances, but it was not possible with covid-19," he said. "We are now hoping to attract about 100,000 people." Ak revealed that 40,000 tickets, with prices starting at just 3 euros, were sold on the first day alone - and a whopping 10,000 in the first hour. (GMM) Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (18) Actress Jennifer O'Neill Hosts New Women's Movement 'Fighting for Soul of America' Women Fighting For America stages 'Heal Our Land' event at wounded warrior therapy farm in Nashville, Sun. Sept. 20 ACTRESS JOINS FIGHT FOR AMERICA: Actress Jennifer O'Neill will host a rally by Women Fighting For America (WFFA, www.WomenFightingForAmerica.com) -- a conservative women's movement -- at her Hope and Healing at Hillenglade equine center, 30 Hillenglade Drive, Nashville, Sunday, Sept. 20, starting at 4 p.m. NEWS PROVIDED BY Women Fighting For America (WFFA) Sept. 16, 2020 NASHVILLE, Sept. 16, 2020 /Standard Newswire/ -- Supported by actress Jennifer O'Neill, a new women's movement will stage an event in Nashville Sunday, Sept. 20 as part of a multi-state Heal Our Land bus tour to "fight for the soul of America" and "bring healing amid the current chaos." O'Neill -- a former CoverGirl cosmetics model who co-starred in the 1970 movie Rio Lobo with John Wayne -- will kick off the event at her Hope and Healing at Hillenglade equine center that provides therapy for wounded warriors and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress (PTSD). The bus tour has already completed several stops in Florida and Texas. "There was a time when people were proud to be Americans, when morality reigned, and our Constitution was actually respected," said Christie Hutcherson, founder and CEO of Christian conservative group Women Fighting For America (WFFA, www.WomenFightingForAmerica.com), which launched its "Heal Our Land" bus tour of 10 states and the nation's capital at the end of August. Sunday's event takes place at Hope and Healing at Hillenglade, 30 Hillenglade Drive, Nashville, starting at 4 p.m. Speakers will include Hutcherson, Michelle Swenson, Maureen Cowley, and Elizabeth Wyns Enns. With the future of America hanging in the balance, women need to step up and speak out, Hutcherson said. "If we don't rise up now as women -- fierce, bold, and strong -- I'm fearful for my children and my children's children. We're fighting for the soul of America." Calling women "the heart of the family, and the heart of America," Hutcherson said: "We must save America's children, our values, and our Constitution." The grassroots women's movement says it aims to "bring healing amid the current chaos" by restoring traditional values, educating this generation about America's Judeo-Christian roots, and protecting Constitutional freedoms. 'Silent Too Long' "Right now, evil is seen as good, and good is seen as evil," said Hutcherson, a mother-of-two and small business owner. "There's a lot at risk in our nation, and we've been silent too long." Based out of Florida -- a key battleground state in the upcoming election -- WFFA plans to have chapters across the U.S., encouraging women nationwide to come together to help shape their communities, run for school boards and other public offices, and speak out on issues at their county courthouse. The group's road tour will include events in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio -- culminating at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., two days before the Presidential election. Events will include speakers as well as prayer for the nation. A complete schedule of tour dates and locations is posted online at www.WomenFightingForAmerica.com/heal-our-land-tour. Women Fighting For America (WFFA, www.WomenFightingForAmerica.com) is a new conservative, Christian women's movement seeking to bridge the gap of divisiveness and confusion in America, restore traditional American values, protect Constitutional freedoms, and advocate for Christian virtues. SOURCE Women Fighting For America CONTACT: Matti Stevenson, 719-360-0586, mstevenson@inchristcommunications.com Indian airlines have sought interest-free credit of at least $1.5 billion from the government to enable them to cope with the loss of revenue from the coronavirus pandemic, the country's aviation minister said on Wednesday. Airlines including IndiGo, Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, SpiceJet and state-run carrier Air India, also want the government's help to persuade aircraft lessors to ease leasing terms, as well as a deferment of taxes and abolition of excise duty on aviation fuel, Hardeep Singh Puri said in a written statement to the parliament. The airlines are appealing to banks and other lenders to defer repayment of loans to the aviation industry by six months, the minister added. India halted air travel in late March to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. In May, the government allowed airlines to resume domestic operations with a third of their capacity which was later increased to 60%. But demand has been slow to pick up. Revenues of Indian airlines fell to around $500 million in the April-June quarter from about $3.5 billion in the same quarter a year ago, Puri said in his statement. Puri said to help Indian carriers the government regularly engaged with foreign aircraft lessors and financiers to ensure there were no premature withdrawals of leased aircraft, and it established bilateral air travel links with countries like Canada, France, Germany, U.K. and the United States. Also read: 28.32 lakh domestic air passengers travelled in August, 76% less than August 2019: DGCA Also read: India's GDP to shrink by 8.6% in FY21, urgent need of fiscal stimulus, says UBS They welcomed their first child, daughter Marlie-Mae Rose, in 2019. And on Thursday, The Bachelor's Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson and Laura Byrne announced they are expecting their second child together. 'Marlie-Mae learning shocked face couldn't have been timed any better.. WE'RE HAVING A BABY!' Matty, 32, wrote alongside a family photo on Instagram. Incoming! The Bachelor's Matthew Johnson and Laura Byrne announced they're expecting their second child together on Thursday. Pictured with daughter Marlie-Mae Rose 'Please brace yourself for twice the amount of dad jokes,' he added. 'I reckon we've kept this little beach ball under wraps for long enough..... Halfway to number 2,' Laura, 31, wrote in a separate post shared to her own account. 'A big shout out to @matthewdavidjohnson for his contribution,' she cheekily added. 'Youre hands down my favourite Bachelor, I love you forever and our little family.' Exciting: 'I reckon we've kept this little beach ball under wraps for long enough..... Halfway to number 2,' Laura, 31, wrote in a separate post shared to her own account Matty J and Laura's exciting announcement was quickly inundated with comments from wellwishers, including past and present Bachelor stars. Osher Gunsberg wrote: 'YES!!', while Bella Varelis said she 'couldn't wait to meet the little angel'. Anna Heinrich, who is expecting her first child with Tim Robards commented: 'Congrats. Again.' Getaway: On Monday, the couple were spotted celebrating their third anniversary together by going for a walk with their daughter in Byron Bay, NSW Growing family: Matty J and Laura's exciting announcement was quickly inundated with comments from wellwishers including past and present Bachelor stars Matty and Laura met and fell in love on The Bachelor three years ago. In April last year, the loved-up couple got engaged while on holiday in Fiji. On Monday, the couple celebrated their third anniversary by going for a walk with their daughter in Byron Bay, NSW. Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty At the end of an elegant dinner in May 2019 in downtown Kyiv, Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach handed a thick packet of papers to a former senior U.S. official hed known for years. The packet was unremarkable in its presentation, the papers clipped on the top and crunched in the corners. The packet bore no insignia, title, or index page, and did little in the way of intriguing the former U.S. official. It wasnt until months later that the official read through the pages. What was more remarkable was that U.S. intelligence had, for over a month, warned that Derkach was a stalking horse for the Russian security services and their attempts to interfere in American politics. It was the first in a series of reports, beginning in the spring of 2019, naming Derkach as part of a broader push to upend the U.S. election once again. Despite the odd nature of the handoff, the dinner was one of the earliest known attempts by Derkach, current and former officials say, to pass materials to Americans in an attempt to push the debunked conspiracy theories that the former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter were complicit in the siphoning of millions of dollars from the Ukrainian people and that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. (The latter is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services, according to President Donald Trumps former point person for the region, Fiona Hill.) Derkachs dossier was not flagged for officials inside the State Department until months later, when Derkach began holding press conferences and Trumps personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, reiterated the same talking points as Derkach on a range of issues. But officials inside the U.S. intelligence and national security apparatus, with the help of officials on the ground in Kyiv, had drafted reports warning that Russian proxies, including Derkach, were attempting to undermine the 2020 election process in America. Story continues Seven current and former U.S. officials spoke with The Daily Beast about Derkach, his relationship to Trump loyalists, and the escalating warnings about Derkachs activities. Those warnings extended to leaders on Capitol Hill who learned that Ukrainians with ties to Russia were inserting themselves in the U.S. election. Last week, the Treasury Department blacklisted Derkach as an active Russian agent. The blacklisting has caused problems for one legislator in particular: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is nearing the end of a probe into Democratic presidential nominee Joe Bidens activities in Ukrainespecifically, the discredited notion that the then-vice president halted a corruption probe that might have interfered with his son Hunters business interests there. Its a would-be controversy thats been fueled by a nexus of Trump allies and pro-Russian Ukrainians. During Trumps impeachment, the story was publicly discredited, but Johnson has said the imminent result of his probe will be damning for Biden. What our investigations are uncovering, I think, will reveal this is not somebody we should be electing president of the United States, Johnson told a local Wisconsin TV station on Tuesday. Those kinds of comments have prompted sharp rebukes, even from Republicans, about the use of a Senate committee as a vehicle for an explicitly political ventureand for Russias election-meddling hopes. In December 2019, as Politico first reported, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) warned Johnson about his investigation into the Bidens and Ukraine. Burr told Johnson that the probe may only further Russias ambitions to undermine the 2020 election, according to two individuals familiar with the matter. It is unclear whether Johnson received any intelligence briefing or other warning that specifically mentioned Derkach. According to a source familiar with the GOP probe, Derkach did not arrive on the Democratic sides radar until late 2019. Asked by The Daily Beast if Johnson had been warned, or specifically briefed, about the threat posed by pro-Russian Ukrainian figures, a spokesperson for Johnson did not provide comment as of press time. But by the early months of 2020, those observing the course of the Johnson investigation up close clearly saw Derkachs links to a Ukrainian self-described source of the investigation, the Giuliani associate and former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko. At that point, said the source, it should have been clear to all involved that Russian disinformation underpinned the Johnson inquiry. Derkach told Politico in July that hed sent materials related to Biden to members of Congress, including to Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), his partner in the probe. But despite this information, and despite Burrs overture, Johnson pushed forward. Johnson is just a contrarian in nature. If you come to him and say that the Ukraine stuff seems fishy, he will very likely just tell you its his investigation and to get lost, said a Republican close to the administration. That raised concerns among intelligence officials and fellow lawmakers that the Wisconsin Republican was promoting claims that U.S. intelligence has already debunkedand that the boosting of such material would sow further distrust in the election. On Wednesday, with the conclusion of Johnsons probe nearing, those tensions spilled onto the floor of the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate Democratic leader, introduced a resolution calling for an end to the use of congressional resources to launder Russian disinformation through Congress. Schumer said the allegations that Johnson has aired are the same ones pushed by Derkach and argued that Johnson has wittingly or unwittingly promoted Russian disinformation. Members of the Senate, followed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have been presented with specific warnings about these Kremlin-backed conspiracies and lies, again and again, including in classified settings. Johnson indignantly responded that it was Democrats who had enabled Russian meddling attempts. He strenuously denied dealing with Derkach at alland even professed not to know the Ukrainian. We did not accept any information from Mr. Derkach whatsoever, said Johnson. I dont know who Derkach is Yet Democrats persist in pushing this false allegation. As a matter of fact, Im not sure our committee has alleged anything yet. NAMING NAMES Suspicions about Derkach reached senior levels of the Trump administration by the early spring of 2019, after pro-Russian Ukrainians, aligned with Trump aides like Giuliani, ramped up a smear campaign against the then-U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch. One former senior administration official recalled contacting a colleague in the intelligence community to find out where the false narrative was coming from. That was when the official remembered first learning about Andriy Derkach. I was aware by the end of that conversation that he was more than a Ukrainian parliamentarian, the senior official told The Daily Beast. The U.S. intelligence official left no doubt that Derkach was a Russian intelligence asset. One other individual who spoke to The Daily Beast said it was somewhat unclear in the spring of 2019 how close Derkachs ties to Russia ranif he was being paid, for exampleand if the Ukrainian politician was merely passing on Russian disinformation or if he had been directed to promote it. By early April 2019, at least two intelligence reports circulated to the administration about individuals suspected of involvement in foreign initiatives to interfere in the upcoming election. Each report contained about five names, the ex-senior official said. Derkachs name was among them. It is unclear, however, if those spring 2019 reports specified that Derkach was an active Russian agent, as the Treasury Department put it. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined comment for this report. Despite U.S. intelligence warnings that Derkach was involved in foreign subversion of the 2020 election and the Yovanovitch smear, the State Department famously took no action to protect her. Foggy Bottom recalled Yovanovitch in May 2019, about a month after those warnings. By July, President Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart for a favor, though: a public announcement of a corruption investigation into Joe Biden. In May, Derkach ramped up his attempts to pass on his disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraines alleged election interference. He contacted Americans hed formerly worked with or knew from their time working in the country for the U.S. government. Giuliani flew to Kyiv that month to meet with Ukrainian politicos and businessmen in an effort to pressure the government to open an investigation into whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and into the Bidens dealings in Ukraine. On Wednesday afternoon, Giuliani told The Daily Beast he handed over documents to the State Department that hed gathered from individuals in Kyiv willing to aid his work. Giuliani planned to meet Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat, on his initial trip to Ukraine in May 2019 before he canceled. The Washington Post and BuzzFeed reported that Telizhenko met Giuliani in New York that same month. The former New York City mayor declined to answer whether he ever briefed Trump on Derkachs findings, saying, I cant tell you what I discussed with my client. SOMETIMES RUMORS ARE TRUE But even if Giuliani was explicitly warned about Derkach, such warnings might have backfired. The nature of the Trump inner circlewhether thats the president himself, people in or out of the administration, on Capitol Hill, or Rudy Giulianiis that because of their views towards the intelligence community, if you come to them and say this guy might be an asset of so and so, it just makes it more likely that they double down on the relationship. Thats how toxic things are now, said the Republican close to the administration. By the time Giuliani traveled to Ukraine in May, he was in contact with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two operators born in the former Soviet Union who helped set up meetings for the former mayor in Ukraine. Parnas and Fruman became major characters in the impeachment trial of Trump as several witnesses described their backdoor attempts to work with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine to open investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens. Both men were indicted last fall for allegedly violating campaign finance laws, activities first exposed by The Daily Beast. As Derkach circulated disinformation packets and Fruman, Parnas, and Telizhenko coalesced around the Giuliani endeavor, former U.S. officials say other Ukrainian politicos attempted to get in on the action. One former senior U.S. official said a current adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, before joining his team, reached out to Telizhenko and Giuliani in an effort to draw closer to the Trump administration. Source for Ukraine Collusion Allegations Met Devin Nunes Rudy Giuliani and His Ukraine Ally Sprint Away from Their Russian Agent Pal In the summer of 2019, as the Trump administration took steps to withhold military aid to Ukraine to force the Zelensky administration to announce a Biden investigation, additional, updated reports were drafted and circulated inside intelligence circles outlining the ways in which Russia was relying on proxies, including Ukrainian individuals, to spread disinformation relevant to the 2020 presidential election. Derkach was listed in at least one of those reports as a part of the Russian campaign, two former senior U.S. officials said. Derkach kicked his messaging campaign into high gear that fall. He held several press conferences, sometimes with other parliamentarians with close ties to Russia. And in December, during the height of the impeachment process, Giuliani appeared again in Kyiv, this time to meet with Derkach. Derkach posted a photo of the two holding documents and smiling. (Despite meeting Derkach in person in December, Giuliani said hed first connected with him in November.) By then, Derkach and Giuliani were using strikingly similar language. Derkach blasted the so-called black ledger that purported to show millions in illicit payments to former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort; Giuliani called the ledger a stinko document. Derkach claimed in a dossier he attempted to circulate around Washington that officials of the embassy of Ukraine in the United States distor[ed] the public image of the US presidential candidate D. Trump by disseminating inaccurate information. Giuliani accused Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, members of it, the [Ukrainian] ambassador, the embassy in collecting specifically dirt, described as dirt on Trump. That claim was first championed by Telizhenko, who worked in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and became a partner of Giuliani over time. (Derkach, Telizhenko, and Giuliani all appeared in an anti-Biden television series produced by the Trumpist network OAN, and Giuliani has interviewed both Derkach and Telizhenko on his YouTube video series Common Sense about the Bidens.) But Telizhenko said he soured on Derkach over time. He told The Daily Beast that he warned Giuliani about working with the Ukrainian parliamentarian. There were a lot of rumors going on about his backgroundthat he might be working for the Russian government or the Kremlin. I didnt know a lot about his background, but I had heard these things, Telizhenko said in an interview Wednesday. The rumors were also about that he was working for someoneRussian or American, I dont know. Sometimes rumors are true. Sometimes they are not. I knew he was doing something but I didnt pay attention. Two sources, a current senior administration official and an ex-official, said that in the closing months of last year, word had whipped around the upper echelons of the Trump White House about a rostera no-fly list, as the current official describedof names of individuals suspected of involvement in U.S. election interference, a key topic of scandal during the Trump-Ukraine saga and the resulting impeachment drive on Capitol Hill. Derkachs name was on it. There were several people for, if you were smart, you would avoid them and the information they were peddling, and just say, Well, Rudys just doing his own thing, I guess, said the former senior official, who said high-level aides, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, were aware of the list. (Bolton did not respond to requests for comment for this story.) This official also said they werent aware of any serious effort to persuade Trump to rein in Giuliani, nor were they aware of anyone reaching out to Giuliani to tell him to stop. Neither source knew of any time when Trump was verbally briefed on the list. What good would that have done? the current official remarked. PARALLEL TRACKS Johnson launched in earnest the probe into Burisma, the energy company that Hunter Biden consulted for, immediately after Joe Biden had won the South Carolina primary and cemented his status as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the narrative of Ukraine and supposed Democratic corruption has drawn in the Wisconsin senator for years, and during Trumps impeachment, Johnson often teased a fuller investigation into Bidens ties to Ukraine, which by then had become central to the GOPs impeachment counter-programming. Johnson, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committees panel for Europe and has frequently traveled to the region, was among the first prominent U.S. politicians to amplify claims and theories known to have been fueled by pro-Russia actors like Derkach. Johnson has endorsed the narrative that the government of Ukraine tried to undermine Trump during the last electiona story that Derkach has also been pushing since 2017. In an Aug. 10 letter describing his current investigation, Johnson explained that its origins date to 2017, when his committee focused on Ukraine as the alleged source of the real foreign collusion in the prior years presidential race. He lamented that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tasked the Intelligence Committee with the interference probe, sidelining his own investigation. Though Derkach has claimed to have sent material to GOP committees on Capitol Hill, Johnson strenuously denied speaking with him, dealing with him, or even knowing who he is. Johnson claims Democrats are the ones relying on Derkachs supposed disinformation. Our investigation relies on U.S. documents from U.S. agencies and U.S. personsthere is no Russian disinformation in our record, said Johnson during a meeting of his committee on Wednesday morning. But to Democrats who have been skeptical of Johnsons probe, the question of whether he has taken information directly from Derkach is beside the pointthanks to the frequency with which Derkach and Johnson have made similar claims. In press conferences and conversations with Giuliani on his video show Common Sense, Derkach has alleged that Hunter Biden stole more than $16 million from the Ukrainian people when he accepted a payment from the energy firm Burisma. The funds were obtained by criminal means, Derkach claimed in a November 2019 press conference. In his Aug. 10 letter, Johnson said he had not targeted the Bidens for investigation but, rather, their previous actions had put them in the crosshairsand said he could not disagree more with the idea that there was no evidence of wrongdoing or criminal activity by the Bidens in Ukraine. Derkach has also claimed that Joe Biden blocked Ukraine from investigating corruption allegations regarding Burisma. Johnson has made similar assertions, claiming that Biden had conditioned a $1 billion loan to Ukraine on the firing of a prosecutor who was probing Burisma. (This narrative is complicated by the fact that many in the U.S. and the international community had called for the firing of that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin; Johnson himself signed a 2016 letter recommending urgent reforms at the office.) To Democrats, the parallel arguments made the connection clear. The Russian government is again interfering in our election, Wyden said from the Senate floor on Wednesday. This has been confirmed by our intelligence community. Its interference campaign includes disinformation about Vice President Biden and the work he was doing to fight corruption in Ukraine. To spread this information, Russia enlists the help of characters like Andriy Derkach and Andrii Telizhenko. Read more at The Daily Beast. Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here 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. Both students are now in isolation. "There is no way to 'pivot' after people have become sick, have had serious health complications, or die as a result of contracting the virus. The damage will already have been done. A surge in our schools doesnt just impact staff and students, it impacts the entire community. Our students and staff go home to families. Those families go to workplaces. There is a domino effect that puts us all in danger," she said. The KEA's complaints come as Bristol School, also in Kenosha County, decided to close its doors beginning Thursday until Sept. 29 after two employees and one student tested positive for COVID-19. This will give time to allow the school to deep clean and for all students and staff to quarantine for two weeks. Maharashtra PWD Minister Ashok Chavan on Thursday said the state government is working on three options, including promulgating an ordinance, regarding implementation of the Maratha jobs quota whose operation has been stayed by the Supreme Court in an interim ruling. A final decision on ordinance route and other options will be taken in a day or two, said Chavan, a leader of the Congress, an ally in the Shiv Sena-led MVA government, while addressing a press meet at Nanded in central Maharashtra. Chavan, who heads the cabinet sub-committee on the Maratha quota, said there is also a proposal to file a recall application before the three-member SC bench that gave the ruling and move the Constitution bench to vacate the interim stay on operation of the 2018 reservation law. Describing the SC's interim order staying the implementation of the Maratha quota in jobs and education as"unexpected and surprising", Chavan said the law had been unanimously passed by the state legislature. The quota law was drafted after taking into account recommendations of the State Backward Class Commission and its constitutional validity had been upheld by the Bombay High Court, the former chief minister said. "The MVA government did not even change the legal team set up by the previous (BJP) government," he said. Chavan said Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will announce the stand of the state government on the Maratha reservation issue in a day or two. "The government is also exploring other avenues of howto provide relief to Marathas in jobs and admissions," he said. Chavan said some organisations protested outside his home in Nanded and later met him over the quota issue. "I told them that the interim stay on implementation of the quota has to be challenged legally and not on the streets. "If they have better legal counsel, they can hire their services. The government is doing all it can to ensure justice to Marathas," Chavan added. He said the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota law has been challenged in the SC and reservation cases related to Tamil Nadu, Tripura and other northeastern states are also pending in the apex court for several years and no stay has been given on them. "If the Maharashtra government is in favour of the quota, why protest on the streets?" Chavan said. Representative Image - The United Nations Environment Programme is organising consultations across the world to assess most pressing mineral resource governance challenges and best practices to inspire sustainable development in extraction, use and management of minerals.- It has also conducted such consultations in Asia including South Asia and during one such consultation, the involvement of communities impacted by mining as a stakeholder in the mining business emerged as a way forward for sustainable mining and development of communities.- Among the communities impacted by mining, the civil society groups highlight the impact on tribal communities especially women and seek a special emphasis for their protection. ------------------------------------------------- Mining companies come to our villages and our forests to exploit the resources underneath and everyone in the value chain makes money. But it is the tribal community that bears the brunt and has never seen the development promised by everyone, said 49-year-old tribal community leader Indu Netam while recounting her struggle to seek justice for the tribal community for the last 30 years. Netam belongs to the Gond tribe and lives in the village Marka Tola of the north Bastar region in mineral-rich Chhattisgarh in central India. She is the convener of the Adivasi Jan Van Adhikar Manch which is a network of indigenous people working on issues of forest rights, land issues and other connected issues such as water and environment. She has been opposing the mining companies in her area since the early 1990s to stop bauxite mining. In a long conversation with Mongabay-India, she recounted her communitys struggle to stop mining in their area, stating that it was threatening their forest, land and livelihood. In this process, she remembered how she and many others went to jail, were beaten up and she even lost her brother who was killed. A company had got a prospecting license but our communitys opposition has not allowed the mining to happen so far. We have struggled for long to make ourselves heard and fought to take back the land which was given to the non-tribal people on the basis of fake documents. But then our gram sabha (village council) passed a resolution that if mining has to happen, then there should be community involvement. Thus, we formed a cooperative to ensure that locals are part of whatever mining happens in our area because otherwise the local community is left with nothing, Netam told Mongabay-India while adding that anyone who protests against the companies is termed as an extremist. She stressed that there is no end to the hunger of mining companies. Today it is our area, tomorrow it will be someone elses and after that, it may be another country. They wont stop till they out everything and destroy everything. They will never be satiated. Jungle and nature are our gods and we stand to lose everything if we lose them. Netam is among many community leaders, academicians and civil society experts who are increasingly voicing their concern about unsustainable mining practices being followed across India. They have been seeking sustainable mining, the involvement of the local communities in mining and sharing of profits. Similar concerns form the bedrock of resolution adopted by the United Nations Environment Assembly in March 2019 which recognised the need to share knowledge and experience with regard to regulatory approaches, implementation practices, technologies and strategies for the sustainable management of metal and mineral resources, including over the whole life of the mine and the post-mining stage. The UN resolution encouraged governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations, academia and international institutions to promote due diligence best practice along the supply chain, addressing broad-based environmental, human-rights-, labour- and conflict-related risks in mining, including the continuing increase in transparency and the fight against corruption, with the support of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, implementation and monitoring of existing environmental standards, and accountability. The resolution also talked about sustainable mining and sourcing of raw materials in order to move towards decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation. The resolution asked the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to collect information on sustainable practices, identify knowledge gaps and options for implementation strategies, and undertake an overview of existing assessments of different governance initiatives and approaches relating to the sustainable management of metal and mineral resources. It asked the UNEP to report on it in the fifth session of the UNEA scheduled in Nairobi in February 2021. Following this, UNEP has been undertaking a series of consultations across the world to assess most pressing mineral resource governance challenges, best practices to inspire sustainable development in extraction, use and management of minerals and focus for future action including by international or United Nation bodies on mineral resource governance. It has been seeking feedback from all stakeholders through website, surveys, written and video submissions etc. During one such consultation (July 2020) that focused on the south and southeast Asia, experts from India also took part. In that consultation, Amarendra Das of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian governments National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), emphasised on the involvement of communities in the mining process. At present, the minerals are given to a company who is willing to pay the highest price through a bidding process and most of the time, the mining owner is from outside the mining locality. Most of the profit goes outside the locality, but it is the local communities that bear the environmental costs. In India, to compensate for the environmental damages and other losses, the mining companies give two percent of their profits to the District Mineral Foundation and that money will be spent on the local community But this money is not sufficient to compensate for the loss of the local community, said Das during the consultation. He recommended that there should be joint stockholding in the company where the local people should have a 50 percent share in the company so that whatever profit accrues to the company goes to the local community. In such a case there would be a lot of accountability of the mining companies when they extract the minerals they will take enough precautions not to destroy the environment. For the displacement of the local community, the losses can be taken care of...this will also ensure intragenerational and intergenerational equity. The concept of intergenerational also finds a mention in Indias National Mineral Policy 2019. Goa Foundation, a civil society organisation which has been fighting against unsustainable mining practices, has also sent a submission to the UNEP and took part in the July 2020 consultation as well. In its submission, the Goa Foundation called for implementing intergenerational equity consistently for minerals across the planet stating that it is in line with the sustainable development goals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The foundation said that it is important to understand that as long as royalties and other mineral sale proceeds are called revenue, income, earnings or tax, politicians and voters will advocate for increasing extraction. This will lead to every bit of mineral being extracted. If on the other hand minerals were understood to be a shared inheritance with the primary duty to ensure future generations inherit either the minerals or their full value, proposals for extraction will raise different questions. Do we need to sell off our inherited wealth? Since we can only extract once, is this the right time to sell? Are we saving the entire sale proceeds for our children and future generations in a new intergenerational asset (non-wasting asset)? said the Goa Foundations submission. Netam noted that in tribal areas where mining is happening, the local community only gets jobs as labourers and that too is not permanent. Even animals come to know when they are being fooled but we the Adivasis (indigenous people) are considered worse than them and not even second-grade citizens. They (companies) want to exploit us but want us to stay quiet. Tomorrow, if minerals are found beneath cities like Varanasi or Mathura will they (companies) be allowed to mine there? But there is no value of tribal people, said Netam. Indias National Mineral Policy 2019 mentions that trust is vital to Indias ability to achieve sustained growth in the mining sector and the state will endeavour continuously to increase trust level between government, miners, local communities and other stakeholders through openness, fairness, better regulation, responsiveness, inclusive policymaking. The policy notes that the existence of minerals in tribal areas with rich biodiversity requires a comprehensive assessment and that land acquisition and displacement of tribal communities due to mining projects may lead to distress in tribal communities. In areas in which minerals occur and which are inhabited by tribal communities and weaker sections, it is imperative to recognise resettlement and rehabilitation issues as intrinsic to the development process of the affected zone, said the policy while adding that a mechanism will be evolved which would actually improve the living standards of the affected population and ensure them a sustainable income. Netam however, feels that the tribal communities are not considered in the decision-making process. For instance, the government is bringing mining reforms through consultation on their website and in English. But the people and communities who will be impacted have no say in this process. What about us? Shouldnt we be in the loop or have any say? That is why local communities as stakeholders in any mining are important. The impact of mining on communities is reflected in various aspects of their lives. For instance, Bhanumathi Kalluri of Hyderabad-based Dhaatri Trust notes that in the poor and tribal communities that are impacted by mining women bear the major brunt. There are no safeguards for women impacted by mining activities. Once the mines are closed or abandoned, workers and local communities are left with no source of livelihood. In many of the coal mines affected areas, women and young girls become susceptible to sexual abuse and trafficking, Kalluri told Mongabay-India. Kalluri along with many other organisations working for the mining-affected communities have also sent a letter to the central government on the recently proposed mining reforms urging it to abandon such hasty and environmentally risk inducing privatisation of mining exploration and expansion, coal auctions and dilution of constitutional safeguards. China called on Southeast Asian countries Thursday to resist interference from the United States in territorial disputes in the South China Sea, over which Washington has been ratcheting up diplomatic pressure lately. Without identifying the U.S. by name, a statement from the Chinese embassy in Manila clearly took aim at recent rhetorical actions by the rival superpower on the issue of the contested waterway. [A] certain country outside the region is bent on interfering in the disputes in the South China Sea and the COC [Code of Conduct] consultations to serve its own geopolitical agenda. How to resist the interference is crucial for pushing forward the future consultations of COC, the statement said. For nearly two decades, China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been negotiating a Code of Conduct, which would lay out guidelines for how claimants in the sea must behave. In 2002, member-states from the bloc and China signed a Declaration of Conduct in which they expressed their willingness to settle disputes in the maritime region peacefully. During a meeting with his counterparts from the Philippines and other ASEAN countries last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Washington insisted on the rule of law and respect for sovereignty in the South China Sea, where Beijing has pursued aggressive campaigns of coercion and environmental devastation. On Tuesday, David Stilwell, the American assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, criticized China for its bullying behavior and forcing nations in the region into making a choice over the waterway, where Beijing has been building artificial islands and militarizing atolls that it claims there. In its statement, China reiterated its commitment to maintaining peace in the maritime region where it has disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. China also expressed its appreciation for Manilas commitment to pushing the negotiations on the COC forward, adding it hoped they would be finalized at the earliest. China's claims disputed Citing historical rights and the controversial Nine-Dash Line boundary that appears on Chinese maritime maps, Beijing has claimed ownership over the entire South China Sea, including in areas that effectively encroach on the exclusive economic zones of other countries. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague struck down Chinas claims. The Philippines had gone to court to seek international intervention after Beijing effectively seized control of Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in 2012. On Thursday, Philippine government officials did not immediately respond to requests from BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, for comment on the statement issued by the Chinese embassy. However, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. did comment via Twitter on the ongoing negotiations over the Code of Conduct. China has my word on that and it will be a COC with which the rest of the world will be totally comfortable, friends and enemies alike, Locsin said in a tweet Thursday. Speaking at the ASEAN Regional Forum last week, Manilas top diplomat said that the Philippines would push as hard as it can for the conclusion of [an] effective and substantive Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. The Philippine government, Locsin said then, hoped to make substantial headway on the negotiations for a draft code before the chairmanship of the talks moves to Myanmar next year. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. US Senate Democrats announced a US$350 billion plan on Thursday to confront China, a glaring signal from Washington that no matter who wins the upcoming presidential election in November, there likely will be immense bipartisan pressure from Congress to maintain a tough stance against Beijing. The bill, called the America LEADS Act, comes as US-China relations spiral to their lowest point in years, with both parties in rare agreement that China under leader Xi Jinping has become a threat to global stability and US interests around the world. Senate Republicans released their own sprawling legislation to confront China in July. Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. In a summary released on Thursday, the Democrats said their bill intends to strengthen the US medical supply chain, support new technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence, and counter Chinas predatory economic behaviour including intellectual property theft, dumping, and currency manipulation. This is an American issue. It is not a partisan issue, said James Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Photo: Reuters The bill also includes transparency requirements to target Chinas education and influence campaigns in the US, the Democrats said. They said it would also direct the president to fully enforce sanctions laws targeting malign behaviour by the Chinese government, also allow certain residents of Hong Kong and Xinjiang to apply for admission to the US, and reaffirm the US commitment to its allies in the Pacific. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday morning focused on countering China, chairman James Risch, a Republican from Idaho, said he hoped the Democrats new bill could be combined with his partys legislation introduced in July. Im hoping we can bring them all together into one bill that we can all get behind, he said. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the committee, made a similar comment in his own remarks. Story continues Im glad to hear there has been this bill introduced by the minority, said Risch. This is an American issue. It is not a partisan issue. The bill, first reported by The New York Times, was sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate. Menendez described the Democrats legislation as a plan to invest in American competitiveness, alliances and values. This moment demands a strong, strategic response, he said, to out-compete China in the generation ahead. The two parties do not agree on everything, however. Even as they seem broadly aligned on their assessment of China in the Xi era that it is not to be trusted Democrats say President Donald Trump has undermined the US position against China by attacking American allies, walking away from international organisations like the World Health Organisation, and praising Xi Jinping in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. When we fail to show up, as under President Trump we have, we should not be surprised that Chinas influence expands at our expense, said Menendez. Chinas foreign and security policy seeks to reshape the international environment around the narrow interests and authoritarian values of Beijing, said David Stilwell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. Photo: AP At the hearing, David Stilwell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told senators that Beijings actions around the world had shattered those illusions that closer engagement with China would lead the country to liberalise in any way. It is now clear to us, and to more and more countries around the world, that [Peoples Republic of China] foreign and security policy seeks to reshape the international environment around the narrow interests and authoritarian values of a single beneficiary, he said. That is the Chinese Communist Party. Senators also expressed concern at what they say are Beijings predatory investments across Latin America and coercive efforts to poach Taiwans few remaining diplomatic allies in the Caribbean. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was travelling in the region on Thursday. Julie Chung, principal deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, told senators the State Department would be adding three new officers focused on Chinas presence in the region to embassies in Panama, Uruguay and Barbados. More from South China Morning Post: This article US Senate Democrats announce US$350 billion plan to confront China first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 18:57 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c45784ba 4 Politics KPU,Pilkada-2020,#pilkada-2020,regulation,campaigns,crowd-puller,concert,konser-musik,COVID-19-in-Indonesia Free Government officials have expressed their concern over a regulation issued by the General Elections Commission (KPU) that allows crowd-pullers, including music concerts, to be held during the campaign period for Decembers elections. The regulation has been deemed counterproductive to the countrys efforts to curb COVID-19 infection, which has included restrictions on mass gatherings. The Home Ministrys politics and government affairs director general, Bahtiar, slammed the commission for allowing concerts to be held during campaigns. Concerts are banned everywhere in the world, its odd that Indonesia still allows [concerts] for the upcoming elections, Bahtiar said during a press conference on Thursday, as quoted by kompas.com. He said virtual concerts would not be a problem, but that Article 63 of KPU Regulation No.10/2020 on the staging of the regional elections stated that physical concerts were also allowed. Read also: KPU approves twist on campaign props amid pandemic In addition to concerts, art performances, harvest festivals, walk and bike events, competitions, bazaars, blood donation drives and commemoration of parties anniversaries are among the activities permitted during campaigns. Meanwhile, the National Disaster Mitigation Agencys (BNPB) deputy head of system and strategy, Wisnu Widjaja, pointed to Article 59 of the KPU regulation on public debate. The article stipulates that a public debate may be attended by as many as 50 people. That's too many, the regulation needs to be evaluated, he said on Tuesday during a webinar held by the national COVID-19 task force. The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and election activists and experts have called on the government to postpone the elections, which are set to take place on Dec. 9, because of public health risks and possible low voter turnout, particularly as 45 of 270 regions that will host elections have been declared high-risk areas. Even during the early stages of the elections, the Elections Supervision Agency (Bawaslu) has recorded more than 240 violations of health protocols by election candidates. Most of the violations involved the candidates bringing large numbers of people when they registered to run at local election offices. (aly) Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan has taken a swipe at former President and NDC flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama for labeling the sod-cutting of projects under President Akufo-Addo's administration as ''sakawa''. Sakawa is a derogatory word used for fraudsters or fraudulent enterprises but the word has recently found its way into Ghana's political realm. The word was first used by the former President when he shared an article which referred to Akyem people as "sakawa boys and grandpas" and it also got a feature in a Town Hall meeting organized by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday, September 15, 2020. Delivering a speech at the event, Mr. Mahama claimed the sod-cutting for the commencement of some infrastructural projects by the President is a scam. If they come to your town to cut sod for a project ask them two questions, let them tell you if the project were captured under the 2020 budget or whether parliament has approved a loan for the project. If theyre unable to answer then it means the sod cutting is a scam, its because of the elections. It is sakawa or 419, Mahama said. But Kwamena Duncan, speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', called out the double standards of the NDC flagbearer. He exposed Mr. Mahama saying the latter, even when he had been defeated in 2016, went ahead to cut sods before handing over to the next administration. The Central Regional Minister chronicled events where Mr. Mahama in the transition period to hand over the reins of government to President Nana Akufo-Addo stopped at nothing to go on a sod-cutting spree saying "when President Mahama had lost power, he went to this University which has not been fully built by Akufo-Addo, is it Somanya or something, to cut sod with his wailing party losers. He had lost power but there is a transition period. This is the man; this is his nature. The very thing he's talking about, he has done it in volumes". He asked Ghanaians to ignore the former President and his NDC, stressing he is untrustworthy and full of deception. "This person (Mahama) turns round, when you have indeed a solid quarter to the end of your tenure so you become disabled, you become incapacitated. Three months, clear months; this is . . . bunkum." 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 A new regulation order will be imposed to tighten quarantine protocols and provide fines for breaches, says Director Tarivonda. Photo: Kizzy Kalsakau By Julie Zhu and Kane Wu HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese online short video start-up Kuaishou aims to raise up to $5 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) as early as January, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, gearing up for the city's latest multibillion-dollar tech float. The nine-year-old company, backed by social media and gaming leader Tencent Holdings Ltd, is targeting a valuation of over $50 billion, the people told Reuters, requesting anonymity due to confidentiality constraints. Kuaishou operates its eponymous app in China and overseas ... BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Developing a China-Japan relationship that features long-term stability and friendly cooperation conforms to the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the expectations of the international community, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday. Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a news briefing when asked to comment on Yoshihide Suga's election as prime minister of Japan. Yoshihide Suga was elected to succeed Shinzo Abe as prime minister and was inaugurated Wednesday. China congratulates Suga on his election as Japan's prime minister and appreciates his willingness to build stable diplomatic relations with China and other neighboring countries, said Wang. China and Japan are friendly neighbors to each other, and are both important countries in Asia and the world, Wang said, adding that developing a China-Japan relationship that features long-term stability and friendly cooperation conforms to the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the expectations of the international community. China stands ready to work with Japan's new government, in accordance with the principles and spirit established in the four political documents between the two countries, to continuously consolidate political mutual trust, strengthen exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and jointly promote the new and greater development of China-Japan relations. Edel Coffey utilised her time on the school run to top notch success, by writing and eventually securing a major book deal for her compelling novel. Ms Coffey ditched scrolling on social media while waiting outside her childrens schools and instead started penning her novel - Breaking Point. The book has just been secured by Sphere, in a six-figure deal, following a multi-publisher auction. And the journalist and broadcaster, originally from Ballybrack in Dublin, who now lives in Galway - is looking forward to a new career as an author. The book had been rippling over the last year, said Ms Coffey, who previously worked for the Irish Indpendent. I wrote it mostly in my car, waiting outside school, to pick up the kids. I started writing instead of scrolling on Twitter or Instagram. This is a dream come true for me. Id always wanted to write a book but it was something I had never had time to do. The mother-of-four, whos married to Dr David Lappin, has crafted a real page turner, set for release in Spring 2022. The book tells the story of Susannah, a successful doctor and mother-of-two, who leaves her youngest child in a car and realises this critical error when its too late. Video of the Day A high drama court case follows, where Susannah is accused of negligence and placed under a media spotlight. Ms Coffey, whos represented by literary agent Marianne Gunn OConnor, tweeted: So amidst all the awfulness of 2020, I got some positive news...delighted to call @BooksSphere my publisher, and thanks to my amazing agent Marianne Gunn O'Connor and editor @darcy_rn. #BreakingPoint will be out Spring 2022. The disclosures came as Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if the president was not reelected. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself irrevocably committed to the socialist path if Trump lost and that the country faced a clear fork in the road. Incoming Ford CEO Jim Farley (left) and Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. pose with a 2021 F-150 during an event Sept. 17, 2020 at the company's Michigan plant that produces the pickup. DEARBORN, Mich. Amid a heated presidential election and polarizing protests over racial injustice, Ford Motor is betting there's still enough American pride to draw customers in with a new "buy American" ad campaign that touts the company's investments in the U.S. The automaker on Thursday touted its American jobs and recent investments of about $1.5 billion as it launched the new campaign, called "Built for America," ahead of production beginning later this month of its next-generation Ford F-150 pickup at a plant in metro Detroit. Automakers typically try to stay away from anything that could be considered political during a presidential election year, but Ford executives say whether President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden are in the White House next year, both parties are behind American manufacturing. "We can't have a strong economy or a strong democracy without a strong manufacturing base, and I've sat with presidents of both parties who understand this," Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said during an event Thursday at the company's F-150 plant outside Detroit. "This is not and should not be a political issue, but it does have to be a national mission. There does have to be a sense of urgency about it." Ford, great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, said the coronavirus pandemic has reaffirmed the importance of auto manufacturing to the country, as automakers were able to quickly mobilize to produce personal protection equipment, ventilators and other supplies. "In the past six months, it shows why it is so important to have a strong manufacturing base in America," he said. "More than any other automaker, Ford is built for America," he said, referring to the company's new tagline. To back up its claims, Ford commissioned Boston Consulting Group to do an analysis of its contributions, particularly that of the F-Series pickup lineup, to America. It found that at about $42 billion in revenue the F-Series is among the largest consumer products in the nation. It ranks behind Apple's iPhone but ahead of Android OS devices, Disney and all major sporting leagues, according to the study. Mammootty: A Motor Enthusiast! It is a known fact that Mammootty is a major motorhead. The actor even made it to the headlines recently for his four-wheeler collection named as the 369' garage that's unique from others for having cars with number plates marked with the three digital number. Several pictures of the actor riding bikes and bullets have also been the talk of the town when those were released on social media. Mukesh Reveals About Mammoottys Untold Bike Accident! Mammootty's friend and colleague Mukesh is known for his narrations of untold and unreported events from the sets of movies. The senior actor usually narrates them during film events and award functions which indeed entertains the audiences. Well, once while sharing the stage with Mammootty, Mukesh revealed a story which had a lot to do with the former's bike craze. When Mammootty Fell Off A Bike And Couldnt Stop Crying! Reminiscing the incident that took place during the shoot of their 1980 film Mela, Mukesh said, "I used to borrow my friend's bike, a bullet, to reach the location in Kollam. Being a motorcycle enthusiast, Mammootty used to fun ride the same bike to places close to the set. I used to accompany him seated behind. It was the third day of our ride. Somehow the bullet skidded and the very next moment we fell off. There was a very minor cut over Mammootty's forehead and it was bleeding a bit. When he saw this himself on the mirror, he started crying very badly like a kid and was really worried. He was repeating as he sobbed, Will I be able to work in films again?'" The actor apparently was worried about his skin and thought he wouldn't get films to do just because he had a minor cut on his face. Connection Between The Bike Accident And Mammoottys Mass Dialogues! Mukesh further added that at times he cannot control his laughter when he hears Mammootty's mass dialogues in films, that are usually intense, as it takes him back to the day of the accident when he saw the childlike nature of the superstar. On a related note, Mammootty is also best known for his classy-massy dialogues which indeed has not grown old like the Megastar, who is ageing gracefully. Mammoottys Upcoming Project On the work front, the actor will next be seen in political thriller One, directed by Santhosh Viswanath and mystery film The Priest, helmed by Jofin T Chacko. Mammootty is also a part of Ajai Vasudev's action thriller Shylock. CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th September, 2020) Moldovan President Igor Dodon said the government of Ion Chicu would not face resignation for the next two months, since the cabinet has the support of a parliamentary majority of 51 people. Earlier, the opposition of Moldova said that in September it would put forward a vote of no confidence in the government of Chicu, as the prime minister was not coping with the situation in the country. "The Chicu government will not resign until the end of the presidential election campaign, that is, for another two months, the government will in my opinion fulfill its duties. We have a parliamentary majority of at least 51 lawmakers who will support the government, I am happy how the cabinet copes in the difficult conditions of a pandemic and crisis," Dodon said on the Prime tv channel. TROY, N.Y. Hudson Valley Community Colleges Automotive programs, which have been training Capital Region automotive and auto body technicians for more than five decades, recently accepted the donation of a 2018 Volkswagen Atlas, the German carmakers sport utility vehicle. Volkswagen is joining with its local dealers to donate vehicles to universities, colleges, technical and trade schools with automotive programs and will assist with developing future Volkswagen-trained technicians throughout the country. Todays cars and trucks have more and more diagnostic and performance software systems, so its critical that we have access to newer vehicle models to train our automotive students, Applied Technologies Department Chair George Raneri stated. We really appreciate the generosity of Volkswagen and the support of our local dealers in offering to donate these vehicles for the benefit of our students, Raneri added. Hudson Valley is one of nine institutions from Massachusetts to Michigan that will receive a donated vehicle from Volkswagen of Americas Northeast region this fall. The selected schools will collaborate with local dealerships to provide supplemental assistance and instruction on the donated equipment. At Volkswagen, we strongly believe in investing in the next generation and with our growing model lineup, its critical we give these young technicians the opportunity to be hands-on with our vehicles to help ensure we continue to deliver a high level of customer satisfaction in the future, John Peterson, Director of Fixed Operations remarked. Peterson said donation also includes connection to its ODIS (off board diagnostic information system) that runs proprietary diagnostics specific to the Volkswagen brand. Representatives from Volkswagen as well as sales and service managers from Cooley, Fucillo, and Nemer auto groups were on hand for the donation, which took place in Cogan Halls Senior Automotive Lab. Additionally, without providing further details, the publication described Westpacs general insurance operations as a more challenging unit to sell than that of CBAs despite it being cheaper thus the need to get the ball rolling first. According to the report, the general insurance business of CBA is estimated to be worth $1 billion; Westpacs, $700 million. Over the coming months we will conduct a detailed strategic review on the best options for these businesses, said Westpac chief executive Peter King in May. This will include considering whether they would ultimately be more successful under different ownership. The CEO was referring to the groups businesses where the company doesnt have sufficient scale or where the returns are insufficient for the risk. These span superannuation and retirement products, as well as general and life insurance. I attend a well-to-do liberal-arts school in the Midwest. The professors are wonderful and the classmates impressive. However, I find myself consistently pained by one thing: Many have little to no familiarity with even the most widely known Bible stories. In the words of the adventurous Professor Indiana Jones, Any of you guys ever go to Sunday school? If the purpose of this essay were to merely shout at the heavens, proclaiming that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of rampant biblical illiteracy on Earth, many may be tempted to dismiss my concerns flippantly enough. But no, this article isnt about that . . . not exactly. The institution I look to protest on behalf of is instead the Western Canon, the Great Books. These enduring tomes, which start with the Iliad, Pentateuch, and the Odyssey and end with whichever text John J. Miller host of the Great Books podcast so declares, are threatened by the willful ignorance of we moderns. (My Catholic readers can be excused for feeling slightly alarmed when confronted with multitudinous complaints compiled by a fellow named Luther; fear not, railing against the Papacy can wait for another article.) Let us first address the practical concerns: When a class must stop at almost every biblical reference in the poetry of Emily Dickinson so that a student or the professor can explain who John the Baptist was or why the Book of Revelation is kind of a big deal the quality and pace of instruction decline. Emily Dickinson was influenced mightily by her Calvinist roots, and though somewhat heterodox in her theology, she could not help but use Christian imagery and biblical allusions throughout her writings. When a majority of the class is unfamiliar with the Crucifixion, it makes for a long, and value-deficient, class. A student attending college in the humanities should know who Noah was and what made his boat better than most. The student need not believe that Noah existed, or that his animal magnetism was as great as is said, or how long-lived his children were. Yet he ought to at least be aware of the fact that, say, the image of the dove returning to the vessel with the olive branch in its beak repeats as a symbol of peace and salvation throughout the Bible and Western literature. Story continues When schools, and the parents whose voices influence said institutions, balk at the thought of their children being exposed to the Bible not as a religious text but as an affecting collection of stories the kids are deprived of the groundwork necessary to approach the Great Books with any level of background understanding. I am not asking for seminarian depth here. Im simply suggesting that the mention of Ruth should make the reader immediately recognize she is a figure of import in the Bible and that researching her story will help to better understand Marilynne Robinsons Housekeeping. While Christianity has been on the wane in the West for some time, there seems to me to be a generational difference in religious familiarity. The older generations, while eschewing organized religion, still recognize and trade in biblical metaphor routinely. Those my age and younger, on the other hand, have entirely secular replacements. The Harry Potter series is often the choice for simile for many my age or younger. No longer is an evil man the devil or anti-Christ, but a Voldemort. An agnostic college student 60 years ago would have been more likely to recognize many of the Catholic virtues and allegories in Tolkiens and Lewiss fantasy stories, respectively. Today I very much doubt the same could be said. This generational biblical-recognition gap between the faculty and students is striking. While there are few practicing Christians or Jews on the humanities staff a national trend its rare that a professor will fail to recognize a lamb, lion, or strong mans haircut as some sort of reference to the Bible. Part of this is doubtlessly because of their familiarity with the text, their formal training, and related research. That said, I think some of their knowledge base can be attributed to their sitting in a pew many years ago and hearing these stories told to them by a priest or pastor. Things tend to stick in the mind better when they are first learned as a kid. Even if the knowledge is not called upon for 50 years, Ill bet most Sunday schooleducated sixtysomethings can tell you Moses hung out by a burning bush for a hot minute. The fear is that as those my age who are unable or unwilling to recognize biblical symbolism in texts take the places of todays professors, the Great Books will suffer misreading, misrepresentation, or even face replacement by modern books of middling quality and pregnant with leftist ideology. While some of my peers will continue to read Paradise Lost faithfully, I think the potential for degradative laziness coupled with passion for opposing views will mean a plurality of young professors will make up their own interpretations of these symbols and allusions. Degradative laziness is not meant to invoked as a slight, per se. I use it intentionally, and with full understanding of the dynamic at play. It is surely difficult and humbling work for an academic to familiarize himself or herself with a complex book like the Bible and then have to teach another exacting text correctly. How great the temptation would be to simply skip the historical background and invent new interpretations, never mind bastardizing the authors intent in the process. But perhaps these concerns fall on deaf ears. Perhaps you think the biblical background knowledge one needs to understand the Great Books is unnecessary because the Great Books themselves are unnecessary, or even problematic; that they have had their day in the sun and that it is time to move on to other books that better fit the values of the times. This would be unwise, and counter-productive. The Great Books are not great simply because they make for a satisfactory read you know, the sort of read that after finishing the final page makes you go, Hm, reading this book was a worthwhile and enjoyable use of my time. These books, while undoubtedly worthwhile for the strength of their prose, are also bound historical artifacts. They tell a story as a whole of civilizational highs and lows, and of progress in recognizing the value of all men and all women. The books use one another to better explain themselves, a dialogue sometimes called The Great Conversation. Mr. Clemens would likely bask in the irony that his own Huckleberry Finn finds itself banned today for the same reason it was banned soon after its original publication in 1884 (because his word choice isnt agreeable to modern sensibilities). Forget that it was, and still is, one of the greatest pieces of humanizing fiction written during the 19th century. It has an ugly word that was used intentionally so Huck must go. No, the Great Books cannot be replaced because to do so would be to scrub history, to cast it as a backward time of no value to our present selves. The hubris of such a line of thought beggars belief. We are just as vain, just as brutal, and just as fallen as those who came before us. Thankfully, the Great Books allow us a window into how such a vain, brutal, and fallen people as we overcame these impulses in order to have a freer, wealthier, and more peaceful world than has been seen. Indeed, it is a tale that began with some bearded, berobed figure walking down a mountain with tablets. Antiquated? Perhaps, but all the more important by the day nonetheless. More from National Review 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. Operation starts to move homeless Moria migrants to new camp Critics lament the creation of "Europe's largest illegal prison" (ANSAMed) - ATHENS, SEPTEMBER 17 - A massive police operation got underway on Thursday morning on the Greek island of Lesvos to transfer over 12,000 refugees and migrants left homeless by the huge fire that destroyed the Moria reception center to a new facility at Kara Tepe. The Kara Tempe area, which is the site of an army base and shooting rage, has already been labelled "tent city" by local media since the camp is made up purely of tents which have been hastily put up with the help of the army and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Since three fires over three days completely destroyed the notoriously overcrowded Moria camp without any casualties, thousands of homeless migrants have been camped out on by the roadside on the main leading from Moria to the main town of Mytilene, as well as in nearby fields and at the foot of nearby mountains. The operation to move the migrants began with the arrival of 70 female police officers who were flown in from Athens on Wednesday and tasked with evacuating women and children first. The Greek police (ELAS) said in a press release that this is an operation "to protect public health with a clear humanitarian element," while also publishing a video of the operation kicking off. "Moria is a thing of the past; let's move on to the establishment of a modern reception and identification center in another area," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said of the operation. Over 1,000 tents had already been installed by late on Wednesday night at the site, which still remains without electricity and sewerage. However, 300 chemical toilets arrived on Wednesday. The main concern right now is the increase in positive Covid-19 cases, which on Wednesday reached 31 out of a total of about 1,000 refugees tested. All those brought to the new site will be tested for Covid-19 before entering by a special team of Greek Public Health Ministry staff. Those who test positive will be housed in a separate area of the site. Meanwhile, there has been large-scale criticism of Greece's initiative in the creation of the new site. The Lesvos brand of opposition party Syriza characterized it as "the biggest illegal prison in Europe", and called for the immediate evacuation of the island. In related developments, the human rights group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) also heavily criticized the government's decisions. "The creation of a new camp and a system that will trap people indefinitely exposes the persistence in the same mistakes that led to this catastrophe", said Christina Psarra, director general of MSF. "The immediate evacuation of people is the only way to avoid chaos and not be repeated. Living conditions did not meet public health protocols before, so now it's worse, and they do not allow for the prevention of the transmission of Covid-19. We are clear: there should not be another Moria, and nothing like it should be built on its ashes", she added. (ANSAmed). (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc is planning to sell part of its $6.3 billion stake in Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing to raise cash, Bloomberg News reported https://bloom.bg/2RAViKg on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is in talks about the sale with Didi and SoftBank Group Corp, with a possible scenario of the Japanese conglomerate teaming up with other investors to acquire Uber's 15% stake in Didi, according to the report. Uber and Softbank were not immediately available for comment, while Didi said it had no comment on the report. In April, Uber said it expects an impairment charge of up to $2.2 billion against the carrying value of some of the company's minority equity investments due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Uber holds 37% stake in Russia's Yandex Taxi and about 18% stake in Singapore-based Grab, according to the company's 2020 investor presentation https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_financials/2020/q2/InvestorPresentation_2020_Q2.pdf dated Aug. 6. (Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru) Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-15 01:40:56|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Morocco reported 1,517 new COVID-19 cases and 36 deaths on Monday, raising the tally of infections to 88,203 and the death toll to 1,614. The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased to 68,970 after 1,442 new ones were added, said the Ministry of Health in a statement. The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco is now 1.8 percent and the current recovery rate is 78,2 percent, while 275 patients are in intensive care units. The epidemiological situation linked to the coronavirus has undergone a surge in the North African country since August with the daily new cases exceeding 1,500 on average. Moroccan government has extended the state of health emergency for the sixth time until Oct. 10. China has helped Morocco in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. A batch of medical supplies donated by the government of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was transported on June 8 to Casablanca-Settat in Morocco. On May 14, China Development Bank sent a batch of donation, including respirators and medical protective masks, to help Morocco fight the COVID-19 pandemic. China's Guizhou Province also donated 15,000 surgical gloves, 20,000 medical masks and 2,000 protective suits to help protect Moroccan medical workers fighting the pandemic. Enditem The embattled pro-chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, Wale Babalakin, has resigned from the position. Mr Babalakins spokesman, Mikail Mumini, who confirmed the development to PREMIUM TIMES, said his boss submitted the letter to the education minister in Abuja, today. Yes, it is true. He did in Abuja today. That is the nature of the country we have found ourselves. PREMIUM TIMES also learnt that the former pro-chancellor has also resigned his position as the chairman of the negotiation committee on the federal government and universities workers unions, saying he will no longer be available for the role he had been playing since 2017 without a headway. Sources at the ministry confirmed to our reporter that shortly after the visitation panel that was set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to look into the crisis that had persistently rocked the university submitted its report, Mr Babalakin visited the minister to tender his resignation letter. The crisis rocking the university reached the peak when on August 12 at an emergency meeting held at the National Universities Commission (NUC), in Abuja, the Babalakin-led governing council announced the removal of the institutions substantive vice-chancellor, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe. In reaction, the president announced the composition of a seven-member visitation panel led by a former vice-chancellor of Federal University of Technology (FUT), Minna, Niger State, Tukur Saad. The panel also has Victor Onuoha, Ikenna Onyido, Ekanem Braide, Adamu Usman, Jimoh Bankole, and Grace Ekanem as secretary. Mr Onuoha, a lawyer, retired in 2019 as a deputy executive secretary in charge of administration at the National Universities Commission (NUC). He also holds Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from UNILAG, while Mr Onyido is a professor of Chemistry and was between 2006 and 2011, the vice-chancellor of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Abia State. The panel, which was given two weeks to complete its task, sought a week extension and finally submitted its report, on Thursday. Loop is taking its effort to curb single-use packaging national with expansion to 48 states. After a successful pilot run, the revamped milkman delivery and e-commerce platform which helps to repackage beauty and consumer goods into reusable and refillable packaging is looking to facilitate greater circularity. More from WWD New Jersey-based company TerraCycle first tested its Loop venture in New York City, and later diffused the premise of circularity to consumers in the mid-Atlantic and abroad to Paris and, most recently, the U.K. And both brands and consumers are biting. Consumers across the country have urged us to bring Loop to them so weve scaled as quickly as possible to make that happen, Tom Szaky, founder and chief executive officer of Loop and TerraCycle, said in a statement. According to the company, Loop has seen substantial growth since launch, with now 100,000 customers and 80 brands signed on including Unilever, Natures Path, Soapply and Melanin Essentials comprising a 400-sku cross-category global assortment. Alongside its global brand partners, Loop essentially helps to repackage products in packaging consumers can keep. The goods are delivered and retrieved in a special reusable shipping tote by the United Parcel Service. The company handles logistics like cleaning and refilling, too, so customers dont have to worry about cleaning out the peanut butter container before sending it back to be refilled. The U.S. shopper can comb through more than 100 products on Loopstore.com from more than 30 brands, across beauty, grocery and household goods categories at present. In what appears to be a perfect storm for the company, many more U.S. customers have been turning to online grocery shopping amid the pandemic, surging from around 3 percent to 4 percent pre-pandemic to 10 percent to 15 percent, according to research by consulting firm Bain & Co. Loops assortment offering is expected to double by end of this year. Story continues Increasingly, according to Szaky, consumers are seeking a sustainable, waste-free solution for their packaging. In particular, many are hoping to stem the waste that e-commerce has drummed up, with its cardboard boxes and bubblewrap. As WWD reported, Loop was assessing the viability of grocery chain Kroger in the U.S. for brick-and-mortar penetration, but it will remain strictly online until the vision becomes reality in 2021. Next year, Loop will tackle Canada, Australia and Japan in its mission to make durable packing a norm. For More, See: How Beauty Is Trying to Solve Its Plastic Problem The Beauty Battleground Is Still Mired in Plastic, Faulty Claims Chennai, Sep 17 : India has four fully built satellites ready for launch and shipment to the rocket port out of the 12 that were built during 2019-2020, said a senior official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). India realised 12 satellites during 2019-2020 out of which eight have been launched and four are ready for launch and transfer to the rocket port at Sriharikota, said P. Kunhikrishnan, Director, U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) part of ISRO. He was speaking at a space sector conference 'Ushering the new era in Indian Space Sector' organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Antrix Corporation Limited and supported by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL). Kunhikrihnan said out of the four satellites, GISAT-1 is ready for launch at the rocket port in Sriharikota. The other three satellites - Microsat-2A, GSAT-12R and, RISAT-2BR2- are ready for shipment to the rocket port. The launch of GISAT-1 satellite slated for March 5, 2020 was postponed due to technical reasons a day before the launch. According to him, the challenge in making satellites is that all are different and not uniform. Further unlike a rocket which has to perform its task of putting a satellite into orbit in about 20 minutes, a satellite has to work in a harsh environment for about 20 years. Kunhikrishnan said the future plan for satellite manufacturing from 'build to print' to 'build to specs'. He said India has 52 satellites up in the sky. MUNCIE, Ind. - Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indianas coronavirus epicenter. Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university officials to admonish students. University President Geoffrey Mearns wrote that the cases apparently were tied not to classrooms or dormitories but to poor personal choices some students are making, primarily off campus. The actions of these students are putting our planned on-campus instruction and activities at risk, he said. Similar examples abound in other college towns across the nation. Among the 50 U.S. counties with the highest concentrations of students and overall populations of at least 50,000, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states have since Sept. 1, according to an Associated Press analysis. On average, infection rates in those 20 counties have been more than three times higher than their states overall rates. At James Madison University in Virginia, which recently sent students home through September amid a surge in cases, the county is averaging a weekly infection rate of nearly 90 cases per 100,000 people, or more than eight times the statewide average. Health officials fear that surges among college students will spread to more vulnerable people older ones and those with underlying health problems and trigger a new wave of cases and hospitalizations. Some worry that colleges could overwhelm hospitals already bracing for increasing cases of COVID-19 and flu this fall and winter. Theres this waiting game. Does it stay on college campuses or will it escape? said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at the University of Wisconsin medical centre in Madison, where cases among college students have been climbing. While universities have emerged as hot spots in nearly every state, many of the worst outbreaks have been scattered across the South and Midwest. Of the 50 college counties analyzed by the AP, James Madisons had the highest infection rate, followed by counties that are home to the University of Georgia, Florida State and Indiana University in Bloomington. In the 10 counties with the highest infection rates, colleges have reported at least 15,000 cases among students and employees in recent weeks, though testing and reporting practices vary significantly and the actual number is probably much higher. For many colleges, the return to campus was a carefully orchestrated process that took months to plan and millions of dollars to pull off. But as safe as theyve made their campuses, many colleges have struggled to curb off-campus gatherings that have been tied to thousands of infections. Parties were blamed for dozens of cases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brought students back in early August only to send them home weeks later. Other schools have cracked down on parties and disciplined students. The University of Missouri in Columbia announced this week that it expelled two students and suspended three others for violating rules meant to slow the viruss spread. The outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns. Amid a spike in cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder, county health authorities Tuesday urged all students to quarantine for two weeks. Students and others at the university have accounted for 76% of the countys 663 positive cases over the past two weeks, officials said. More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle, Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health, warned in a letter to students. In a letter to students, the schools chancellor, Philip DiStefano, warned that the quarantine will be strictly enforced and that students who violate it could face suspension or other discipline. Already, DiStefano said, more than 400 students face university discipline for violating public health orders. At Miami University in Ohio, county health authorities ordered all of the schools athletes to isolate for 14 days last month after 27 tested positive for the virus. Last week, local police cited six men at an off-campus house party that included several students who had recently tested positive. As cases increase at Boston College and the campus runs out of quarantine space, the mayor of nearby Newton is asking the school not to use any of the towns hotels or other property to isolate students. Some cities have tightened rules at bars to discourage students from gathering. As cases surged at Illinois State, the towns mayor issued an order requiring all bar customers to be seated to be served. He also limited gatherings near campus to no more than 10 people. Still, residents and officials in many college towns are rooting for universities to work through outbreaks and avoid campus closings that could further hurt the local economy. Fred Pryce, who manages a series of stores in a strip mall near Ball State, said sending students home would hurt the areas businesses big time. Thats 20,000-plus potential patrons that will vanish, Pryce said. There are ways to keep students in Muncie safely while they do their classes. Ball State, roughly 60 miles from Indianapolis, has about 22,000 students on a campus of red brick buildings and sleek, modern dorms in Muncie, where the university is the citys second-largest employer after Ball Memorial Hospital. On campus last week, sophomore LaTricia Williams, wearing a mask, said she was glad to be back instead of sitting on the couch with her laptop at her familys home, taking online classes. But I get that it comes with some risk, she said. You can give students a whole bunch of rules for what they should and shouldnt do while theyre back at the school, but theyre not going to stop doing certain things here or going out into the community. Caleb Henry, a Ball State junior who lives off campus, said that he and other students have been frequenting local bars and meeting at friends houses but that he and most others are behaving responsibly, with masks and social distancing. He said students are being vilified unfairly. Everyone seems to be getting upset at college kids right now, accusing us of spreading the virus and making us out to be these highly infectious creatures that need to be sent home, Henry said. What about all the other people around town going to bars ... having parties, weddings, whatever? Were only doing the same things they are. As cases mounted at Ball State last month, the school tried to ban students from visiting dorms other than their own, but officials reversed the rule after a backlash from students. Even so, officials say infection rates have started to subside, and the school has no plans to suspend campus instruction. While some colleges have sent students home amid outbreaks, many others are digging in. Some have moved classes online but urged students to stay where they are until cases drop. Among them is the University of Notre Dame, which paused in-person classes Aug. 18 and moved them online amid a surge that saw as many as 89 new cases per day. Weeks later, after a sharp decrease in infections, classes have started to resume on campus. Other schools are hoping to replicate that success, including the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and West Virginia University, which recently shifted classes online as the virus spread. In a recent call with governors, Dr. Deborah Birx, co-ordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cautioned against sending students home, saying that could spark outbreaks elsewhere. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also endorsed Notre Dames approach, saying colleges that work through it and find ways to isolate infected students are more likely to end up in the best place. In a letter to students at Ball State this week, the university president thanked students for helping reduce virus rates. Still, he warned: This data is not a cause for celebration. Rather, this data is a call for continued action. ___ Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. ___ Hwang reported from Atlanta and Binkley reported from Boston. "Innovative cleaning experiences have been, and always will be, foundational to our product offerings," said Keith Hartsfield, executive vice president and chief product officer at iRobot. "We have a proven track record of delivering products that make consumers' lives easier. The Roomba i3+ expands our lineup to offer not only exceptional cleaning performance and value, but greater personalization and control delivered by iRobot Genius. The iRobot Genius platform also allows the Roomba i3+ to evolve and get smarter over time, providing new ways for customers to clean their unique homes." Take vacuuming off your plate Similar to the iRobot Roomba i7+ and Roomba s9+ robot vacuums, the Roomba i3+ comes equipped with the Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal. With Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal, the robot empties debris on its own, with no intervention from the user. Consumers don't have to think about emptying the bin for months at a time or worrying the robot won't finish the job due to a full bin. The Roomba i3+ automatically empties up to 60 days' worth of dirt and debris into the Clean Base, which doubles as the robot's charging station. The debris is then locked away in the Clean Base's enclosed AllergenLock bag that uses four layers of allergen blocking material to trap 99 percent of pollen and mold. The Roomba i3+ purposefully and logically cleans in neat rows to navigate multiple rooms within the home, across hard floors and carpet. If the robot's battery runs low, the Roomba i3+ will automatically recharge and resume cleaning until the job is complete. The Roomba i3+ is also equipped with a High-Efficiency Filter that captures 99 percent of pollen, mold, dust mites, and cat and dog allergens. The robot's 3-Stage Cleaning System consists of Dual Multi-Surface Rubber Brushes that work together to effectively clean, a specially designed Edge-Sweeping Brush to get into corners, and 10X the Power-Lifting Suction as compared to Roomba 600 Series. Using patented Dirt Detect technology, the Roomba i3+ knows where dirt builds up and focuses cleaning in those specific areas. Adapts to your life, listens to your voice The Roomba i3+ brings a thoughtful new design that fits well into consumers' homes, with a durable, woven texture that minimizes fingerprints and collects less dust. The hidden-until-lit light ring helps the robot blend into the background, only lighting up to communicate robot behaviors or notifications when the robot is actively cleaning. Users can also get more out of their Roomba i3+ with the newly redesigned iRobot Home App, powered by iRobot Genius, which takes users beyond standard app control to give them a personalized cleaning experience. Available for iOS and Android devices, iRobot's state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and home understanding capabilities enable the Roomba i3+ to learn how you like to clean. The Roomba i3+ will offer personalized suggestions via the iRobot Home App, such as recommended cleaning schedules based on past cleaning jobs and helpful cleaning suggestions during pet-shedding or allergy seasons. Event-based automations can be set up directly within the iRobot Home App, an exclusive capability for iRobot customers that is powered by iRobot Genius and IFTTT Connect. Whether you're heading off to work or going for a hike, the Roomba i3+ can begin cleaning when prompted by location-based services like Life360 or from smart home devices, like the August Wi-Fi Smart Lock. When paired with Alexa enabled devices or the Google Assistant, users can control the Roomba i3+ with just the sound of their voice. The Roomba i3+ also supports Imprint Link Technology so that it can team up with the iRobot Braava jet m6 mopping robot to deliver an extra level of clean. Pricing and Availability The Roomba i3+ robot vacuum is available immediately for purchase online in the U.S. ($599 USD) and Canada ($749 CAD) on www.irobot.com and www.irobot.ca, and in retailers later this September. The Roomba i3 robot vacuum can also be purchased without the Clean Base starting at $399 USD and $499 CAD. The Roomba i3+ is expected to be available in other international markets beginning in Q1 2021. Roomba i3+ robot vacuum photos, videos and information can be found at: https://media.irobot.com/media-kits. Please join iRobot on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. About iRobot Corp. iRobot, the leading global consumer robot company, designs and builds robots that empower people to do more both inside and outside of the home. iRobot created the home robot cleaning category with the introduction of its Roomba Robot Vacuum in 2002. Today, iRobot is a global enterprise that has sold more than 30 million robots worldwide. iRobot's product line, including the Roomba and the Braava family of mopping robots, feature proprietary technologies and advanced concepts in cleaning, mapping and navigation. iRobot engineers are building an ecosystem of robots and technologies to enable the smart home. For more information about iRobot, please visit www.irobot.com. For iRobot Investors Certain statements made in this press release that are not based on historical information are forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements relating to iRobot Corporation's expectations concerning product functionality and upgrades, system interoperability, management's plans, objectives and strategies. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. iRobot undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by iRobot, see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including, without limitation, our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. SOURCE iRobot Corporation Related Links https://www.irobot.com 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 Advertisement What are the new restrictions for the North East? Matt Hancock announced in the Commons that Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, Sunderland and County Durham will be subject to new restrictions from midnight tonight to curb the spread of the virus. The new restrictions are: Residents must not socialise with other people outside of their own households or support bubble in private homes and gardens Pubs, bars and other hospitality businesses can only run table service Leisure and entertainment venues to shut between 10pm and 8am People have also been advised to adhere to the following guidelines: Not to socialise with other people outside of their own households in all public venues Only to use public transport for essential purposes, such as travelling to school or work Take holidays only within your own household or support bubble Avoid attending amateur and semi-professional sporting events as spectators The Health Secretary said they were necessary to stop the spread of the virus and prevent another lockdown. Advertisement Around 9.2million Britons have today been put under tougher local lockdown restrictions because of a spike in cases of coronavirus, as Matt Hancock confirmed the North East would be hit by a 10pm curfew on pubs and bars from tomorrow. In a desperate attempt to curb spiralling infection rates across the region, the Health Secretary also confirmed that residents living in Newcastle and six other authorities are now banned from socialising indoors or in gardens with anyone from outside their own households or support bubbles. Pubs, bars and restaurants in all the affected areas Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, Sunderland and County Durham are now only allowed to offer table service. Around 2million people live in the seven authorities, of which only three Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sunderland and Gateshead were formally named on Public Health England's most up-to-date watchlist. Council bosses argue they needed tougher measures across the region to prevent a full-blown lockdown and save lives. Announcing the drastic new measures in the House of Commons, which come into force from midnight, Mr Hancock said: 'I know, the whole house knows, that these decisions have a real impact on families, businesses and local communities. 'I can tell everyone affected we do not take these decisions lightly. We agree with the local councils that we must follow the data and act, and the data says we must act now, to control the virus and keep people safe. I know the people of the North East will come together to beat this virus, and beat it we must.' He added: 'We've seen concerning rates of infection in parts of the North East. Sunderland, for example, now has an incidence rate of 103 positive cases per 100,000 population. And in South Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle, figures are all above 70.' Around 9.2million people across the UK are now in areas of intervention, including parts of Greater Manchester, Leicester and Scotland. But neither Middlesbrough and Hartlepool in the North East, two other authorities officially named as a hotspot by Public Health England, were hit by the tough new measures. The announcement comes amid fears thousands of students returning to university in the area could cause cases to rise even further. Around 40,000 students are expected to flock back to Newcastle University in the coming days, as well as nearly 20,000 to Durham University. Rising numbers of infections in London and Leeds have prompted warnings the cities may soon head in the same direction as the North East with additional restrictions. And in North Yorkshire 'full emergency mode' has been declared after cases surged by 167 per cent in the first week of September. But mounting requests for swabs as children return to school and workers head back to their desks have left the so-called 'world-leading' testing system unable to cope. Baroness Dido Harding today revealed demand for Covid tests is up to four times the system's capacity. The Prime Minister today pleaded for Brits to 'save Christmas' by obeying his 'Rule of Six', warning that lockdown will only get stricter if the UK does not 'flatten the hump of the camel'. Ministers have been forced to fend off claims that chief medical officer Chris Whitty is pushing for a two-week national lockdown. But leading experts have insisted the current spike in Covid-19 cases is nowhere near the scale of what was seen during the darkest days of the crisis in March and April, with one telling MailOnline: 'We are not near the stage of the peak.' Coronavirus cases, hospital admissions and deaths are all on the rise, government figures revealed today. Another 3,395 Covid-19 infections and 21 fatalities were recorded figures which have risen sharply in a week. And 194 newly-infected patients needed hospital care in England, a rate which has tripled in a fortnight. In other coronavirus developments today: The testing fiasco has hit almost every school in the UK with up to 25,000 teachers in England already forced to stay at home and self-isolate; Testing tsar Dido Harding revealed the UK's coronavirus testing system is descending into chaos with demand four times higher than capacity; Boris Johnson said members of the public should not report their neighbours for breaching the the rule of six unless they are having large parties, in direct contradiction of his own Home Secretary's advice; Offices could be closed within two weeks if the rule of six fails to bring down coronavirus cases, as Londoners are warned the capital faces a curfew to head off fears of a second wave; Coronavirus cases could surge past 30million today as India dominates daily infection rates with 93,000 cases recorded every day; England and Wales post 21 more deaths from coronavirus and announce a further 3,395 Covid-19 cases. Coronavirus cases have been increasing rapidly across NE England. Newcastle has recorded a sharp rise in its weekly infection rate, up from 51.2 cases for every 100,000 people to 64.1 in the seven days to September 13 Local authority watchlist - Is your home town on the list? KEY: Infection rate per 100,000. Are cases rising or falling? Have special measures been taken? Bolton: 121.9 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Bradford: 72.2 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Oldham: 66.6 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Salford: 62.3 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Blackburn with Darwen: 61.8 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Preston: 59.9 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Pendle: 58 per 100,000. Falling. Intervention. Rochdale: 57.7 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Tameside: 56.8 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Manchester: 56.8 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Birmingham: 50.8 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Bury: 46.8 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Leicester: 43.1 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Kirklees: 36.9 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Solihull: 34.9 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Calderdale: 34.3 per 100,000. Rising. Intervention. Trafford: 31.3 per 100,000. Falling. Intervention. Sandwell: 22.6 per 100,000. Falling. Intervention. Rossendale: 80.4 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Burnley: 57.6 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. South Tyneside: 50.6 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Leeds: 47.3 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Hyndburn: 42.1 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Gateshead: 40.5 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Sunderland: 32.4 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 28 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Stockport: 20.2 per 100,000. Rising. Enhanced support. Hertsmere: 53.7 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Wirral: 43.6 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Middlesbrough: 42 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Hartlepool: 38.6 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Corby: 35.3 per 100,000. Falling. Concern. Liverpool: 31.1 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Sefton: 31.1 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Knowsley: 30.1 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Sheffield: 28.5 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Peterborough: 27.9 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Northampton: 25.8 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Stoke-on-Trent: 25 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. St. Helens: 23.3 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Great Yarmouth: 23.1 per 100,000. Falling. Concern. Norwich: 20.5 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. Swindon: 16.7 per 100,000. Falling. Concern. Breckland: 16.5 per 100,000. Falling. Concern. South Norfolk: 10.9 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. King's Lynn and West Norfolk: 4 per 100,000. Level. Concern. Broadland: 3.1 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. North Norfolk: 2.9 per 100,000. Rising. Concern. ENGLAND: 19.7 per 100,000. Rising. Source: Public Health England Advertisement Newcastle City Council's Mr Forbes told BBC Radio 4's Today programme his team had sent proposals to the Department of Health for pubs and restaurants to close at 10pm and for people to be banned from socialising outside their bubble. He said: 'We know from the tracing that we're doing, that the three main areas where we're seeing the spread of the virus at the moment are in pubs and bars, in people's homes....and in grassroots sports. 'So in pubs and restaurants, we've asked for a 10pm curfew or 10pm closure of all pubs and restaurants. And we've also asked for table service only to prevent people congregating and standing around bar areas. It's much easier for people to maintain social distancing if it's seating only. 'We've asked for people to only have contact between households if they're in a social bubble, and for people not to make contact with people outside of their own households or their own social bubble.' He said one exemption to this rule would be for extended family members who provide childcare. Mr Forbes said people needed to understand that 'if we don't get on top of this now, it's going to get out of control'. 'I think we should all be deeply concerned about the rapid increase in the number of coronavirus cases we have seen over the last week in the North East,' he said. 'And not just the rapid rise in numbers, but also the fact that the average age of people being infected is going up as well. 'Last week 60 per cent of the people that were being tested were between the ages of 18 and 30. That is now starting to reach into older age groups as well. We know that when it starts to affect older people that's when you start to get the hospitalisations and sadly also the mortality too. 'That's why we are acting now as a preventative measure to try to put off any further spread of the virus and ensure that we don't end up here in the North East in a more restrictive lockdown instead.' London could be 'weeks away' from further restrictions as its infection rate has started to double every two weeks. Redbridge, in north-east London, has the highest rate of coronavirus infections at 38 per 100,000. It is followed by Hounslow, in the south-west, with 34.6 per 100,000, and Barking and Dagenham, also in the east, at 31.5 per 100,000. Cllr Peter John, chairman of London councils, said he is 'massively worried' authorities will be forced to enact further restrictions as cases are 'only going in one direction and only going to speed up'. Kevin Fenton, PHE's director for London, has suggested that curfews could also be deployed in the capital. London boroughs have the power to order local lockdowns but, as people tend to move between local authority areas to work or study, it is not clear how this restriction would work. A No10 spokesman told the Sun: 'Specifically in London, no restrictions are currently planned, the important thing is we ask people to remain vigilant and comply with the rule of six. 'We will always keep the transmission rate under review and any measures that we deem required'. Leeds has been told it has entered a 'critical phase' in transmission. Council chief executive Tom Riordan yesterday said they are in a 'live situation' where cases are rising. Dozens of regions in the UK, including Greater Manchester and Leicester, have already been hit with local lockdowns. North Yorkshire has been put into 'full emergency mode', meaning testing facilities have been redirected to areas of greatest need, care homes receiving extra support and the brakes put onto the reopening of social care day services. The North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum - which includes emergency services, local authorities and the NHS - has labelled Selby, Harrogate and parts of Scarborough and Craven as places of concern owing to rising case numbers. Richard Flinton, the chair of North Yorkshire's resilience forum has warned they are seeing a 'worrying rise' in cases as he called on the whole county to 'act now' to stop the spread of the virus. Mr Flinton said: 'We thank everybody again for their many sacrifices. However, as we have seen nationally and around the world, cases are rising again and the threat of the virus is a real and present danger.' 'We know how quickly infection rates can change and we are calling on the whole county to act now with us in response. 'Please show extra restraint and caution and to take additional actions above and beyond those required nationally to help us try to avoid another lockdown here.' People walk along the quayside, on the banks of the River Tyne, backdropped by the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, today Government sources have told The Telegraph that Boris Johnson is desperate to tackle rising cases through placing a curfew on the hospitality sector. Downing Street officials insisted all options were still be on table, despite warnings that ordering pubs to close early like has been done in Bolton would be 'devastating'. The action comes amid warnings that schools could be forced to close by default in the coming weeks because of a massive shortage of tests across the UK. Dido Harding claims demand for testing is up to four times capacity Baroness Dido Harding (right) was grilled by MPs Demand for Covid tests is up to four times the system's capacity, Baroness Harding admitted today. The Tory peer revealed the staggering mismatch between the number of people wanting tests and the ability to carry them out as she claimed 27 per cent have no symptoms. Extraordinarily. she said no-one had 'expected' the 'sizeable' increase in demand - although it was widely predicted, blaming SAGE for getting their estimates wrong. Lady Harding has been hauled before MPs to explain the shambles that has left thousands struggling to get checked. She told the Science Committee that she did not have precise numbers for how many people wanted tests. But she said phone calls and website visits suggested it was 'three to four times the number of tests we have available'. Brazenly passing the buck for the chaos, Lady Harding said: 'We built our capacity plans based on SAGE modelling for what we should be preparing for in the Autumn.' Lady Harding confirmed the capacity now for diagnostic tests is just under 243,000 per day - a figure that the government has failed to publish for more than a week. Thousands of tests are being sent abroad to be processed, she said. She said the government was 'on track' to increase capacity to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October - although that would cover all types of tests, not just for whether people currently have coronavirus. And she conceded that will not be enough. 'I am certain we will need more as we go beyond the end of October,' she said. Advertisement 'Lockdown is the only thing that we know works, to be frank,' one government science adviser told ITV. The dire prospect has been raised amid fears that the disease is on the verge of spiralling out of control again. Although cases have spiked to nearly 4,000 a day, it had been mainly among younger people, who are less likely to be badly affected. But now Covid-19 cases are soaring among middle-aged people in England and have risen by upwards of 90 per cent in a fortnight as the outbreak continues to grow. Public Health England (PHE) data reveals 23.4 cases are now diagnosed for every 100,000 people aged between 40 and 49 up from 12.4 at the end of August. And coronavirus infection rates have nearly doubled in just a week for people in their fifties, jumping from 10.9 to 20. Boris Johnson faced MPs yesterday afternoon, telling the Liaison Committee that steps to avoid a complete national lockdown were needed. The Prime Minister told the committee: 'I don't want a second national lockdown, I think it would be completely wrong for this country. We are going to do everything in our power to prevent it. 'Can we afford it? I very much doubt that the financial consequences would be anything but disastrous, but we have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means that we set out. 'When I see the people saying, arguing against the rule of six of saying that the government is coming in too hard on individual liberties and so on, I totally understand that, I sympathise with that, but we must, must beat this disease.' Downing Street did not deny reports that curfews were being considered to slow the spread of coronavirus. Asked about reports that a curfew could be introduced in London, a Number 10 spokesman said: 'We will continue to keep the transmission rate under review. 'We've introduced the rule of six to try and bear down on the transmission rate given that it has risen recently. 'But as I say we will keep that data and the scientific evidence under review.' However, alarm has been sparked by early signs that hospitalisations are on the rise again, and infections are becoming more common among older people. The problems have been exacerbated by the testing system descending into chaos after schools returned, with high demand for children to be checked. The area of Rhondda in south Wales will be placed under a local lockdown following an increase of coronavirus cases, the Welsh Government announced this afternoon. Health minister Vaughan Gething announced that the measures, which will be reviewed within two weeks, would come into force at 6pm on Thursday. Rhondda, which has a population of around 240,000, has seen a rolling seven-day case rate of 82.1 per 100,000 people. Under the measures, people must not enter or leave the Rhondda council area without a reasonable excuse. People will only be able to meet outdoors and will not be able to meet members of their extended household indoors. All licensed premises will have to close at 11pm. The 'Rule of Six' imposed by Boris Johnson on Monday makes it illegal to have larger gatherings, although in Scotland and Wales children under 12 do not need to be counted in the numbers. People sit outside a pub and restaurant near to the River Tyne on September 17, 2020 in Newcastle upon Tyne today Ministers have suggested they are following the example of Belgium, where a surge appears to have been tackled using tight limits on gatherings and curfews. A senior member of the government told ITV's Robert Peston that there was 'no possibility of us waiting for the death rate to rise before we act'. London's infection rate 'doubles every fortnight' Passengers commute on the busy London underground London's infection rate is doubling every two weeks, the chair of the capital's councils has warned. Sounding a grim note Cllr Peter John told Times Radio he was 'massively worried' about further restrictions being hiked on the city in the coming weeks. 'We are seeing in London at the moment infection rates doubling every fortnight,' he said. 'It is only going in one direction and only going to speed up.' He also warned that testing rates for London had been cut by a fifth, leaving authorities less able to stop emerging infection spikes. It comes amid mounting concerns the return of more than half a million students could cause an additional spike in infections. A No10 spokesman told the Sun: 'Specifically in London, no restrictions are currently planned, the important thing is we ask people to remain vigilant and comply with the rule of six. 'We will always keep the transmission rate under review and any measures that we deem required'. Government data shows the number of cases has been rising in the capital since late July, but began to surge upwards at the end of August. The largest number of cases has been recorded in those aged 25 to 29, followed by 30 to 34-year-olds. Advertisement They added that the government will reassess whether the 'Rule of Six' has been enough to control the situation in fortnight - but there is a widespread view that schools should not be shut again. A leading scientific advisor reportedly said: 'I think that if we want to keep schools open, we probably have to give serious consideration to a wide range of other measures to stop a major second wave. 'And we have to think about doing that right now - which we are starting to do.' Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was forced to miss Prime Minister's Questions yesterday because of a delay in receiving a coronavirus test result for one of his children, his deputy said. Angela Rayner, standing in for Sir Keir at the despatch box on Wednesday lunchtime, told Boris Johnson that she had a message from 'a man called Keir'. She told the Commons: 'Keir wasn't able to go to work today and his children couldn't go to school because his family had to wait for their coronavirus test results despite the Prime Minister's promise of results within 24 hours. 'Keir was able to do the right thing and self-isolate and work from home, but other people aren't in this position - many of them are the very people getting us through this crisis.' Mr Johnson said he understood a negative test had been returned for Sir Keir's child, adding: 'I don't know why he is not here.' The Labour leader was advised to self-isolate on Monday while awaiting the result of a test for a member of his household who showed possible symptoms of Covid-19. Less than half an hour before PMQs was due to begin, Sir Keir said he was 'very pleased and relieved that the test result for one of my children came back negative this morning'. A decision had been made on Tuesday for his deputy, Ms Rayner, to take his place at the question session. The possibility of a harsher crackdown comes despite a major Tory backlash at the restrictions on everyday life. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland yesterday denied that the 'rule of six' would effectively cancel Christmas, following criticisms from a source close to the Archbishop of Canterbury about the social restrictions imposed this week to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the Cabinet minister said: 'Archbishop Justin (Welby) makes an important contribution to this debate and he is right to point to the huge spiritual and social significance of Christmas. 'I don't think any of us in Government want to be Oliver Cromwell-esque about this - we want to see families celebrate Christmas in a safe and happy way and we want to see our churches and indeed our other places of worship joining in that celebration.' Mr Buckland added: 'We are not going to cancel Christmas but the 'rule of six' is something that is clear and important and I do think we've committed to that and we need to stick to it.' Health Secretary Matt Hancock has batted away furious demands for young children to be exempted from the rules in England to save Christmas. He was repeatedly pressed on the 'unfair and inflexible' restrictions as he made a statement in the Commons. But while Mr Hancock insisted he understood the 'impact' the rules were having, he said 'simplicity' was crucial for them to be effective. Senior Conservatives lined up to urge the government to copy the Scottish and Welsh administrations, which have said that children aged under 12 do not count towards the limit on gatherings. Why are some areas being locked down and not others? Lockdowns are imposed on local areas in response to a rise in infections, putting people's lives at risk. There's no specific infection rate threshold after which a local lockdown is triggered, a Public Health England spokesman said, but rather it is a decision taken by local authorities and government based on advice from health professionals. The professionals watch measures including the rate of change in infection rate, number of cases, level of demand for A&E, and which demographic has the most infections, to advise when and if further restrictions should be imposed. The 'nuanced' and 'bespoke' approach means restrictions are re-imposed in regions with differing numbers of cases per 100,000. Advertisement Home Secretary Priti Patel warned on Tuesday that two families bumping into each other on the street would be breaking the new law. She said more than half-a-dozen people stopping to chat after accidentally meeting up would constitute 'mingling'. Lawyers questioned whether that was the case - but No10 offered backing, saying: 'You can expect the police to ask you to disperse.' Ms Patel also said she would report her own neighbours for any behaviour she believed was 'inappropriate' and risked spreading the virus. The comments came as police complained that they had been left in the dark on how to enforce the tough restrictions, with no guidance and widespread anger among the public. In a sign of the mounting chaos, the government has stopped publishing daily capacity figures - with the data now marked 'N/A'. Testing tsar Baroness Harding is also facing questions, with ministers demanding that schools are made a 'priority' and have 'swift' access to checks. Despite previously boasting of 'Moonshot' plans to carry out 10million tests a day, Health Secretary Matt Hancock is now rushing to create a 'priority list'. However, putting hospitals and care homes first raises the prospect of schools being left in limbo, with teachers saying 740 have already been forced to close or send children home because so many have cold or cough symptoms. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said headteachers were obliged to order that the 'bubble has to stay at home' if a pupil or teacher could not get a test to prove they were negative. 'This will feel I think like lockdown by default it will be more frustrating for parents because you can't predict whether it is going to happen,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The ASCL demanded that Mr Johnson 'personally take charge of this situation in the interests of keeping our schools and colleges open, and protecting pupils and staff'. Asked whether there was enough testing capacity, Mr Johnson replied bluntly: 'No, we don't. 'We don't have enough testing capacity now because, in an ideal world, I would like to test absolutely everybody that wants a test immediately.' He promised that there would be capacity for 500,000 tests a day by the end of October. The most up-to-date PHE data, which was released on Friday, clearly shows cases are spiralling across every age group. People in their twenties who aren't as vulnerable to the disease and are likely to escape death or serious illness are driving the spike with an infection rate of 46, which has doubled in the last three weeks Public Health England (PHE) data reveals 23.4 cases are now diagnosed for every 100,000 people aged between 40 and 49 up from 12.4 at the end of August. And coronavirus infection rates have nearly doubled in just a week for people in their fifties, jumping from 10.9 to 20 When should I get a coronavirus test? People suffering from coronavirus symptoms should get a test within five days of symptoms appearing, the NHS says. Its advice page says anyone suffering from the symptoms - a high temperature, continuous cough and loss of their sense of taste or smell - to get tested as soon as they can. 'If you have symptoms, get a test as soon as possible,' they said. 'You need to get the test done in the first five days of having symptoms'. But amid England's mounting testing fiasco - with people in virus hotspots unable to access any swabs - a message has been posted saying those unable to get tested should 'try again in a few hours'. Who should get tested for coronavirus? The NHS says that anyone who develops symptoms of coronavirus should get a test. These are: a high temperature New continuous cough Loss of sense of taste and smell They add that a select group of other people will also be able to access testing. These are people who: Live in England and have been told to get a test before entering hospital for surgery Asked to by their local council Are taking part in a government pilot project Who should not get a coronavirus test? Matt Hancock has claimed up to one-in-four tests are being given out to people who are not eligible for them. He said he has heard stories of whole schools applying for them after one case of coronavirus was recorded there, and of people getting them because they are going on holiday. This is not what the testing system has been designed for, he said. and it means that people who need a test cannot get one. Source: NHS Advertisement But he urged people without symptoms to stay away from testing centres although he acknowledged the reasons why they may want to find out if they had Covid-19. 'What has happened is demand has massively accelerated just in the last couple of weeks,' he told MPs. Professor Andrew Hayward, one of the government's SAGE experts, said around half a million people every day could be expected to display symptoms similar to coroanvirus at this time of year, even before the pandemic appeared. That would be far above the government's current claimed testing capacity of around 375,000 - although they have never carried out that many in a single day. Prof Hayward, director of University College London's Institute of Epidemiology & Health, said: 'The background to this of course is that we would expect the demand and the capacity to need to rise quite rapidly over the autumn and winter as the number of people who develop symptoms that could be Covid increase. 'Some of our research has shown that at least in the winter, you would expect about half a million people a day to develop symptoms that are typical of Covid and that would be in a winter when there was no Covid so you can see that the capacity requirements will have to increase dramatically if we are going to keep up.' Hundreds of schools have been partially or completely closed because of coronavirus cases - both proven and suspected - leading to fears of a domino effect, resulting in parents not being able to go to work and the return of empty offices. More than one in 10 children were not in classes last Thursday, figures show, amid fears the growing number of pupils and staff awaiting tests could cripple parent confidence in getting their children back to school. It comes after teachers held a protest outside the Department for Education, arguing that the lack of tests, and the inability of staff, pupils and parents to get to the front of the queue, is stopping schools returning to normal. One told the i that they had been unable to book a test for their daughter on Sunday either online or on the phone despite trying on an hourly basis. Her efforts involved driving to a local test centre, which proved to be closed, and then to Gatwick, where there were no queues but she was turned away as for not having booked. The public had been told to seek tests 'if in doubt'. But checks by the Mail found that 46 of the 49 virus hotspots including Bolton, Bradford and Oldham had no swabs to offer. Preston, one of the three areas providing tests said they were not available until January and 22 miles away. There have been reports that Mr Hancock is considering making GPs 'gatekeepers' for the system. However, that could put surgeries under massive strain, with complaints that appointment are already extremely difficult to access in many areas. Long queues were seen outside testing centres yesterday, involving many desperate people who had failed to get an online appointment but turned up anyway. Lines formed in Southend but in a sign of the general chaos other test centres such as in Leeds were nearly empty. Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, has called on the Government to prioritise the education sector for the allocation of tests. In a letter to the schools minister, Dr Roach said the union had heard of approximately 600 pupils being told to self-isolate in Bury and the situation was 'increasingly out of control'. 'Teachers, support staff and children and young people are unable to access tests where they have Covid-19 symptoms,' he wrote. 'Employers are struggling to deal with the implications and consequences.' He added: 'We have reports that schools are unable to cope with a situation that is becoming increasingly out of control.' The founder of Oasis Community Learning, which is responsible for 31,500 children at 52 academies across England, said 1,200 pupils had been sent home over the first six days of the new school year. Writing in The Sun, Steve Chalke added: 'The reason is either pupils or teachers have symptoms and can't return until they get a negative test result.' Concerns are growing about the Government's seven 'lighthouse labs' and their ability to process results, due to shortages of staff and equipment. One MP said her constituents in Twickenham, south-west London, had been told to travel to Aberdeen to book a test. Munira Wilson, Lib Dem health spokesman, said: 'We were promised a world-beating test and trace system but what we have at the moment is an utter shambles.' Mr Johnson swiped at Keir Starmer for failing to face him at PMQs today after the Labour leader revealed one of his children has tested negative for coronavirus. The Labour leader said he was 'pleased and relieved' to be out of self-isolation after two days waiting for the result. However, he skipped the showdown in the Commons this lunchtime, with deputy Angela Rayner standing in. She raised the case of 'Keir' at the despatch box, saying he had needed to miss work because he had not received the result of a test in time. But Mr Johnson pointed out that Sir Keir was now out of quarantine. 'I don't know quite why he is not here.' The premier defended the shambolic testing arrangements, despite warnings that schools are on the brink of becoming 'unsustainable' due to delays. 'Eighty-nine per cent of those that have in person tests get (results) the next day,' Mr Johnson said. 'We are working very fast to turn around all the test requests that we get.' Struggling to explain the causes of the problems, Mr Johnson said: 'The British people, quite understandably, are responding to that system, with a huge, huge surge in demand.' He insisted it was 'important that everybody follows the guidance about when they should be getting a test'. Ms Rayner called on the Prime Minister to 'get some skates on' in delivering testing and PPE to care homes ahead of winter. 'The Prime Minister has put his faith in Operation Moonshot, but meanwhile on planet Earth there are no NHS tests available for several high-infection areas,' she said. She asked: 'Can the Prime Minister confirm yes or no, do all care homes in this country have weekly tests?' Mr Johnson replied: 'Yes, to the best of my knowledge care homes in this country should get weekly tests for all staff members and tests every 28 days for those who are in the care homes, the residents in the care homes.' The premier also complained that Labour was 'carping from the sidelines' while the government tried to deal with 'one of the most difficult dilemmas' ever faced by any administration. Appearing before the education select committee today, Gavin Williamson revealed he had met the government's Test & Trace tsar Baroness Harding this week to insist there must be 'swift' screening available for schools. Covid cases rise among the middle-aged The most up-to-date PHE data, which was released on Friday, clearly shows cases are spiralling across every age group. People in their twenties who aren't as vulnerable to the disease and are likely to escape death or serious illness are driving the spike with an infection rate of 46, which has doubled in the last three weeks Covid-19 cases are soaring among middle-aged people in England and have risen by upwards of 90 per cent in a fortnight as the outbreak continues to grow, official figures show. Public Health England (PHE) data reveals 23.4 cases are now diagnosed for every 100,000 people aged between 40 and 49 up from 12.4 at the end of August. And coronavirus infection rates have nearly doubled in just a week for people in their fifties, jumping from 10.9 to 20. The most up-to-date PHE data, which was released on Friday, clearly shows cases are increasing across every age group. People in their twenties who aren't as vulnerable to the disease and are likely to escape death or serious illness are driving the spike with an infection rate of 46, which has doubled in three weeks. Fears of a second wave are growing as the number of Britons being diagnosed with Covid-19 each day has topped 3,000 for the first time since May. Ministers have also been spooked by spiralling outbreaks in Spain and France and rising hospital admissions on the continent. Hospital admissions another way of measuring the severity of the pandemic have doubled in England over the past nine days. More than 150 newly-infected patients required NHS treatment on Sunday, up from a rolling seven-day average of 52 on the last day of August. Advertisement 'We've always been conscious that with children coming back into schools there was going to be a situation where people would need more access to testing. That is why we ensured those deliveries of tests to every school in England. That is why this morning we opened the ordering system, for schools to be able to order new tests, for them to be able to get those directly from the NHS,' he said. Mr Williamson said he had stressed to Lady Harding that testing for schools must be a 'priority'. 'Just this week I met with baroness Harding from test and trace and the NHS, highlighting some concerns that schools have had in terms of the turnaround and to ensure that teachers are able to get tested as swiftly as possible, and they are able to be in a position to be back to teaching at the earliest possible stage.' Mr Williamson dodged questions over whether the government could guarantee testing results for schools within 48 hours, but added: 'The reason I had my meeting with Baroness Harding, as you can imagine, is to continue to emphasise the importance and the priority that we have to put on all our schools and education settings, about how vital it is that we always ensure there is swift testing available.' Committee chairman Robert Halfon told BBC Radio 4's World at One later that he had been told schools would be a priority under Mr Hancock's new scheme. 'As I understand it, schools will be on the priority list,' Mr Halfon told the programme. Department for Education sources said they had little control over the provision for schools, suggesting it was a 'problem in the labs'. 'We don't run testing. We don't oversee testing. It is a DHSC thing,' one source said. An ally of Mr Williamson told MailOnline they had doubts about whether schools were the main part of the extra demand, pointing out that 1.6million children went back in June and July and 'we didn't see any of this'. The ally added: 'There is definitely frustration there.' Ministers first faced a crisis over testing early on in the first wave of Covid when a campaign by the Mail led to Mr Hancock vowing to deliver 100,000 tests a day. That pledge was later raised to 200,000, then 500,000 by the end of October and now four million by next February under the ambitious 'Operation Moonshot'. However, the system has been thrown back into chaos in recent days because demand for tests has massively increased, overwhelming laboratories. The surge has resulted from a rise in daily cases, the return of schools, the rolling-out of regular swabs to care homes and an increase in outbreaks. There have also been rumours of logistical problems at laboratories. As a result, there has been a deluge of complaints that people cannot access tests locally or that they have to wait too long to find out if they are positive or negative. Schools have been closed while teachers wait for results on sick pupils. NHS leaders warn of a crisis in hospitals, with medics forced to stay away from work and operations cancelled. Figures today showed that, including antibody and surveillance screening, 221,192 tests were carried out across the UK in the previous 24 hours. That was down from 227,075 yesterday, 231,969 on Monday and from 250,839 on Sunday. The last time it was lower was September 9, when just 209,609 were conducted. However, the government has not published a figure for the overall capacity since September 10, when it was claimed to be 374,917. The Department of Health has refused to reveal how many people are trying to get swabs. The number of people actually getting tested has gone up by 23 per cent since the end of August while capacity has increased by 12 per cent - although it is now not known. Sodexo, which runs the centres, has posted job adverts for people to staff the drive- and walk-in sites as the UK scrambles to prepare for surging numbers of cases as infections are now on the rise in people of all age groups in England. Labour MPs have called the testing fiasco a 'farce' and 'unacceptable', while scientists admit they are seriously concerned that the Government hasn't prepared for what they've known for months would eventually happen. Professor Alan McNally, a geneticist at the University of Birmingham who helped set up a Government lab in Milton Keynes, told BBC Breakfast yesterday there were 'clearly underlying issues which nobody wants to tell us about'. He said: 'I think there is a surge in demand [and] I think our stated capacity is very different from actually how many tests can be run in a given day.' Dr Joshua Moon, from the University of Sussex Business School, added: 'One of the deeper issues is why we are seeing an acute shortage when total tests per day currently sit at two thirds of the government's claimed testing capacity. 'I am particularly worried about why the claimed capacity was so much higher than it actually was. 'Without proper understanding of the system's capacity, there is a fundamental weakness in ability to plan for the future.' In a round of broadcast interviews this morning, J ustice Secretary Robert Buckland said testing capacity was 'ramping up' to deal with the demand. He said Mr Hancock would put forward the 'priority' list 'in the next few days'. Speaking to Sky News, Mr Buckland said: 'I'm not shying away from the current issue but what I'm trying to explain is that rather than us sitting back and pretending all is well, we have accepted the scale of the challenge, we're ramping up the test centres, we have increased laboratory capacity, new labs coming on-stream so we can get that quick turnaround.' He added: 'The fact the Government kept on saying about the dangers of a second wave, at all times the Prime Minister, all of us, were absolutely focused on the dangers of the second wave we have seen what's happening in France. 'We absolutely are onto this in terms of understanding that through the autumn, if we are to get the balance between getting the economy back on track and getting children into school, then all of us now have a special responsibility to follow all those guidelines and do whatever it takes to beat this virus.' The testing meltdown has come in the context of a spike in coronavirus cases, with fears that the situation is on the verge of spiralling out of control again. Britons could face an even tougher lockdown within two weeks unless the Rule of Six brings down coronavirus cases, it was claimed today. Ministers and government officials insist they are ready to take more draconian steps to stop the spread, despite a wave of criticism. Options on the table could range from curfews to closing pubs - although there is a determination that schools will stay open. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 01:14:26|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DAMASCUS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A total of 186 Syrians were brought back from Jordan by the Syrian airlines on Thursday as part of the government's efforts to take home Syrians stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to state news agency SANA. The Syrian airlines will make two more trips soon to bring back Syrians from Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Syrian airlines have been bringing Syrians stranded abroad due to COVID-19 from several countries since May. The Syrian Foreign Ministry has tasked the Syrian consulates and embassies abroad to register the names of Syrians willing to return home. Enditem New Zealand plunges into recession as economy shrinks record 12% New Zealand's economy has tumbled into its first recession in more than a decade New Zealand plunged into recession for the first time in a decade Thursday, as data confirmed a record-breaking economic collapse that forced Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to defend her pandemic response ahead of next month's general election. The 12.2 percent contraction in April-June was "by far the largest" since records began, national data agency Stats NZ said, with the country put into a strict lockdown for almost two months and the country's borders closed. Ardern rejected opposition accusations that the tough measures had pushed the economy "off a cliff", saying the restrictions helped contain the virus, which allowed business to resume far earlier than in many other countries. The centre-left leader, who will go to the polls re-election on October 17, also pointed out that New Zealand had recorded just 25 Covid-19 deaths, out of a population of five million. "Success for me is saving people's lives, supporting and saving people's businesses, coming out the other side (of the crisis) faster, quicker and with more activity," she told reporters. "I back our results." She said the economic pain of lockdown in the June quarter would be followed by a rebound in July-September, when virus-related restrictions were eased significantly. Ardern retains a strong lead in opinion polls and is expected to retain office, despite the ugly pre-election economic figures. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said it could have been much worse, with budget papers in May predicting a 23.5 quarterly decline and Treasury forecasting a 16 percent drop just this week. "There is no way that any political party could claim that there would not have been a recession in New Zealand during this period," he said. "This is a one-in-100-year global economic shock." - 'This was traumatic' - The opposition National Party said the figures showed a change of government was needed because Ardern's administration could not properly manage the economy or the pandemic response. Story continues "It is now official that we are in the deepest recession in living memory and it's proof that New Zealand needs a National-led government now that has a very clear plan," National leader Judith Collins said. She said New Zealand "compares very unfavourably" with neighbouring Australia, which recorded an economic contraction of seven percent in the June quarter after adopting a more flexible approach to lockdowns and border controls. New Zealand's most recent recession was in 2008-09 and until the first three months of this year it had recorded non-stop quarterly growth since 2010. The second-quarter decline follows a 1.6-percent contraction in the first three months of 2020, confirming widespread expectations that New Zealand is in recession. Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr said the figures were unprecedented. "We've never seen anything like this. It was traumatic," he said. "Service exports were stonewalled, and down 40 percent in the quarter, consumption was down 12 percent, and investment was slashed by 20 percent." But he said the figure was a one-off that was set to be followed by a growth surge of 10 percent in the September quarter, which would also be a record. "Businesses and households have clearly adapted to trading in a world with limited face-to-face contract," he said. ns/dm/dan Actor Shah Rukh Khans daughter Suhana Khan has shared a stunning picture of herself and her friends on Instagram. The photo is a throwback picture from her school days at Ardingly College in the UK. The photo shows Suhana chilling with her friends in what seems like a dorm room. All the friends are sitting on a bed, dressed in stylish outfits. Sharing the photo, Suhana wrote, Missingg. Suhanas friends showered the girls with compliments. We there are three stunning ladies, wrote one friend. So stunning all of, read another comment. The photo got close to one lakh likes overnight and was also liked by Alia Bhatt. Recently, Suhana also shared glamourous pictures of herself enjoying a day at the beach. She was seen dressed in a flowy black and white outfit, sitting on large rocks by the beach. She also posed next to some tall palm trees and called herself, Island girl. Suhana is enrolled in a film studies course at the New York University. She returned from New York before the coronavirus lockdown was imposed in India and is currently in Mumbai with her parents. Also read: Kangana is a good actor, but what will I do on her sets?: Vikram Bhatt She also recently shared pictures from an acting project and was seen crying in one of the pictures. Congrats if u havent seen me crying~ quarantine filming, she captioned her post. She also held in-house photoshoots during the self-isolation period and posted pictures from it on social media. Suhana has starred in multiple school plays and even a short film shot by her friend, The Grey Part of Blue. Upon its release on YouTube last year, Suhana received many compliments for her acting skills. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The government is looking at bringing in a curfew on pub opening hours to stop the spread of coronavirus, the prime minister has said. Boris Johnson said he hoped the government's new "rule of six" would be enough to send the country's "R number" negative again, and said he did not want to impose a full nationwide lockdown for the sake of businesses. But asked whether further measures such as a curfew could be put into place, the prime minister told The Sun newspaper: I dont think we are yet in that position but look around the world at what other countries are doing. What I dont want to be doing is locking down sections of the economy. I remember when the pubs used to close at 11 anyway in the old days. That sort of thing, we will be looking at it. It comes amid reports that the government is planning to reintroduce rationing for coronavirus tests as part of plans to prioritise some cases over others. The testing programme has been hit by a shortage of lab capacity, with samples having to be sent abroad to more organised countries. There are widespread reports, particularly in outbreak hotspots, of people unable to get tested or told to drive to the other side of the country for a free slot. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reports that officials have drawn up a priority list where testing would again be restricted to hospital patients, care homes, certain key workers and schools. Under the plan, routine testing would no longer be offered to swathes of the public, even if they were symptomatic effectively a downgrade on what is currently available. Health minister Edward Agar told the BBC on Thursday morning that such guidelines would be unveiled "in the next few days". "It is possible there will be people who have symptoms who apply for a test who have to wait longer because we're prioritising those front line workers," he said, adding that the list would "prioritise front line, NHS care workers, teachers, and similar". The warning comes came as Britain as a whole recorded around 4,000 new Covid-19 cases in a day for the first time since the beginning of May. The figures has jumped from 3,539 to 3,991 since the day before. But despite the warning that additional restrictions could be in place, Mr Johnson was cool on the idea floated by some of his ministers that the public should report their neighbours for breaking the rules. He urged people to be "reasonable" and decried "sneak" culture suggesting people should only be reported if they were having "Animal House parties" featuring "hot tubs and so forth". UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA I have never much been in favour of sneak culture, myself," he told the newspaper. What people should do in the first instance is obviously if they are concerned is raise it with their friends and neighbours." Speaking in the same interview the prime minister also turned to the subject of Brexit negotiations, accusing the EU of being "abusive" and of not negotiating in good faith. Mr Johnsons's government has said it will break international law in order to override parts of the agreement he signed at the beginning of the year relating to Northern Ireland. Ryanair boss Michael OLeary has confirmed it is highly likely the airline will close its bases at Cork and Shannon airports over the winter months. This is despite a final decision on the matter not due to be made by the airline until the end of September. Earlier this month Ryanair said it may close the two bases over the winter season, if there was no relaxation of the Governments quarantine rules around passengers flying into the country. The closures are set to affect 130 directly-employed staff. The Government is expected to roll-out an updated green list of quarantine-free destinations next week, ahead of adopting the EUs new traffic light system for safe destinations which is due to be introduced in mid-October. However, Ryanair wants Transport Minister Eamon Ryan to introduce the new EU system immediately. Speaking after Ryanairs AGM in Dublin, Mr OLeary said: Those two airports [Cork and Shannon] are hugely dependent on Irish people being able to travel mainly for family reasons to the UK, and in-bound visitors from Germany and Italy. At the moment, were banning in-bound visitors from Germany and people cant travel to the UK. "So, if Eamon Ryan doesnt move immediately this week or early next week on adopting the EU system; not on October 15 but actually from next Monday or Tuesday I think its inevitable (that Cork and Shannon bases will close). "Our bookings are collapsing out of Cork and Shannon. We can serve most of those routes from Dublin. I know it would be inconvenient for our customers in Cork and Shannon but we have to reduce our capacity if theres no demand, he said. GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AeroNet Wireless, Puerto Rico's leading business internet service provider, introduces a new Smart Wi-Fi solution Powered by Plume's cloud-based artificial intelligence technology. AeroMesh Wi-Fi powered by Plume further improves a subscriber's online experience through self-optimizing Plume Adaptive Wi-Fi, parental controls and guest access, and advanced AI Security that provides robust protection for devices. AeroNet Wireless Broadband "Plume is an advanced solution that continuously learns about your Internet needs and performs advanced self-optimizations. This cloud-coordinated system gives customers stable and consistent Wi-Fi coverage and speed in any room/area of their business or home," explains Gino Villarini, Founder and President of AeroNet. "We are excited to be the first ISP company in Puerto Rico to bring this cutting-edge technology to the customers." AeroNet's new Managed Wi-Fi solution includes: Plume Adaptive Wi-Fi intelligently monitors, adjusts, and optimizes business and home networks for the highest Internet performance level throughout the premises. intelligently monitors, adjusts, and optimizes business and home networks for the highest Internet performance level throughout the premises. AI Security detects and protects, with motion detection and ad and malware blocking. For added protection, the system halts suspicious activity and quarantines any compromised devices. detects and protects, with motion detection and ad and malware blocking. For added protection, the system halts suspicious activity and quarantines any compromised devices. HomePass for parental controls and guest access. Manage the type of content that each device or profile can access, even block specific content by device or profile. for parental controls and guest access. Manage the type of content that each device or profile can access, even block specific content by device or profile. The Plume App provides easy setup. Delivers daily reports on business or home Wi-Fi signal strength and network activity. provides easy setup. Delivers daily reports on business or home Wi-Fi signal strength and network activity. AeroMesh Wi-Fi powered by Plume includes one SuperPodTM, with additional pods available as needed depending on the business or home size. "AeroNet is delivering a first of its kind, highly personalized Wi-Fi experience for its customers, and Plume is excited to be part of delivering that service. While we work, learn, and play from home, our Wi-Fi connectivity needs to be more intelligent and reliable," said Tyson Marian, Chief Commercial Officer at Plume. "AeroNet introduces a powerful solution for the ever-changing smart business or home." The new service will be available starting Sept. 17, 2020, and customers can add it to any plan starting at $9.95/month. For more information on AeroMesh Wi-Fi powered by Plume, visit www.aeronetpr.com. About AeroNet AeroNet is a renowned business high-speed Internet service provider and is the sole Puerto Rican ISP to extend wireless and fiber networks. The company banks on advanced commercial-grade technology support secure, reliable, and dedicated high-speed broadband access at affordable rates. AeroNet is also the first local Internet service provider to secure a listing in the Inc. 5000 list. About Plume Plume is the creator of the world's first Consumer Experience Management (CEM) Platform powered by OpenSync. As the only available and hardware-independent solution, Plume enables the curation and delivery of new Smart Home Services rapidly and at a massive scale. The Plume service bundle, which includes Plume Adaptive Wi-Fi , HomePass, AI Security, and Plume Motion, is managed by the Plume Cloud, a data- and AI-driven cloud controller currently running the largest software-defined network in the world. Plume leverages OpenSync, an open-source framework that integrates into a broad set of silicon & platform SDKs for connection to the Plume Cloud. Plume, Plume Adaptive Wi-Fi, HomePass, AI Security, Plume Motion, and OpenSync are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Plume Design, Inc. Media Contact: Meredith Lugo | (787) 692-3589 | [email protected] Related Images aeromesh-wi-fi-powered-by-plume.png AeroMesh Wi-Fi powered by Plume Related Links AeroNet Website Plume Website SOURCE AeroNet Wireless Broadband Nagaur MP Hanuman Beniwal, who was found positive for COVID-19 in the test conducted ahead of the Lok Sabha session in Delhi but later tested negative in Jaipur, has yet again tested negative for the disease at a private laboratory in Jaipur. The national convener of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP), an NDA ally, reiterated his demand for an inquiry into the contradictory test reports. Beniwal was first infected with coronavirus in July, but recovered a few days later. He gave his sample in the Lok Sabha premises on September 11 for the test before the Parliament session and was informed telephonically on September 13 that he has been found positive for the infection. The MP, who was in Jaipur when he received the call, immediately consulted doctors at the state-run SMS Hospital there and got himself tested again. The test report at SMS Hospital came negative. The RLP leader has demanded a clarification from the ICMR, Delhi and Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on the contradictory reports, saying when an MP is facing this kind of situation what would be the case for a common man. ICMR in New Delhi last week tested me for coronavirus ahead of the Lok Sabha session and the result was positive. When I was informed about it on September 13, I gave a sample in SMS government hospital Jaipur and the report was negative. I gave a sample at an authentic private lab yesterday (September 16) and the report which came today (September 17) is negative, he said. Questioning the authenticity of the ICMR report, he said, "It is surprising that there is no response from the ICMR or the Union health ministry over the contradiction in my test reports." Beniwal added that he was deprived of attending the Parliament session because of this situation and therefore, the central government should look into the matter seriously. The manager of the 1.4billion M&G Recovery Fund Tom Dobell is stepping down after two decades at the helm following many years of poor returns. He will be replaced by the fund's deputy manager Michael Stiasny, who has also spent 20 years at M&G and formerly headed the company's equity research team. The City firm said the change comes as part of a review into its mutual fund range that will 'refresh its investment approach' and put greater focus on medium-sized firms 'that have contributed most to value creation over the fund's lifetime.' Tom Dobell will depart almost exactly a year after Hargreaves Lansdown kicked the fund off its Wealth 50 list M&G chief investment officer Jack Daniels said: 'I'd like to thank Tom for his dedication to the M&G Recovery fund and its investors. 'While the environment for his style of investing over the past decade has been very challenging, his effort and commitment on behalf of customers have never faltered.' Over the past ten years, the fund has returned just 14 per cent to investors compared to an 81.9 per cent average among rival funds in the Investment Association's UK All Companies sector, ranking it near the bottom for performance. For the first half of his tenure in charge though, his value investing strategy achieved greater returns for M&G Recovery than the wider fund sector. At its height, it was managing over 8billion. But since 2012, the fund has consistently underperformed. A value fund invests in stocks that its managers believe are undervalued in price. It is often distinguished from growth funds, which focus on businesses that are expected to expand at a faster pace than the broader stock market. M&G noted that despite the fund's troubles, Dobell had attained a 127.7 per cent cumulative return after fees against a 118.4 per cent return among FTSE All-Share Index between becoming its manager and September 11 last week. Dobell thanked M&G 'for the opportunities it has given me throughout my career. It's been an immense privilege to manage the M&G Recovery fund, even throughout challenging investment cycles. 'I leave the fund's investors in the capable hands of Michael Stiasny and I wish them the very best for the future.' But since 2012, the fund has consistently under-performed, and when Hargreaves Lansdown relegated the fund from its Wealth 50 list in December 2019, it was valued at 2.1billion Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, commented 'News that Tom Dobell has stepped down from running the M&G Recovery fund, the UK's oldest unit trust, and hand responsibility to Michael Stiasny after 20 years will come as important news to the many investors who have stuck with the fund despite its poor performance over a number of years.' 'Tom delivered some fantastic performance for investors when his value style was in favour and the fund grew to be one of the largest UK equity funds at the time. 'However, as investors moved away from value and towards growth, performance really struggled, a fact perfectly illustrated by the performance chart which shows performance relative to the FTSE All Share during his tenure, Hughes continued. 'Dobell admitted himself that the fund became too large and had too many stocks in a rare moment of contrition from a fund manager.' OQ Chemicals (formerly Oxea) has entered into an agreement to license its advanced proprietary technology for the production of ethylene and propylene derivatives to Duqm Refinery and Petrochemicals Industries Company (DRPIC) in Oman. DRPIC, a joint venture between Oman Oil Company and Kuwait International Oil Company, is a planned grassroots petrochemical complex at Duqm, Oman. In all, DRPIC awarded twelve license packages to international licensors. "DRPIC is proud to have reached a major milestone with the conclusion of Front-End Engineering Design. We selected OQ Chemicals in a competitive global bidding process. As an international know-how leader, they convinced us with an excellent long-term solution to the challenge of integrating different production technologies and efficient operation of the new plants. This will support DRPIC to better serve the growing demand in Asia-Pacific," commented Dr. Salim Al Huthaili, CEO of DRPIC. OQ Chemicals has now entered into the design phase for five world-scale production units for the manufacturing of propanol, butyraldehyde, neopentyl glycol (NPG), 2-Ethylhexanol (2EH), and 2EH acid. The company will supply a process design package and support contractors during the design and construction phase. After commissioning the new units, OQ Chemicals will provide various services, including support for operations, maintenance, troubleshooting, training, and ongoing process optimization at Duqm. "At OQ Chemicals, we are pleased to provide our advanced, proven technology and know-how to DRPIC to contribute to the company's growth and the further development of the region," said Markus Heuwes, Project Director at OQ Chemicals. "We have a long-standing track record with our proprietary oxo technology and can draw on the extensive expertise of our experienced teams from engineering, construction, and operations. For the Duqm Petrochemical Project, we are applying the latest technologies that we developed for our production plants in Bay City, Texas, and Oberhausen, Germany," Oliver Borgmeier, COO of OQ Chemicals, added. About OQ Chemicals OQ Chemicals, formerly Oxea, is a global manufacturer of oxo intermediates and oxo derivatives, such as alcohols, polyols, carboxylic acids, specialty esters, and amines. These products are used for the production of high-quality coatings, lubricants, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, flavours and fragrances, printing inks and plastics. More information is available at chemicals.oq.com. OQ Chemicals is part of OQ, an integrated energy company that delivers sustainability and business excellence. OQ operates in 16 countries and covers the entire value chain from exploration and production to the marketing and distribution of its products. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005416/en/ Contacts: Thorsten Ostermann Communications and Press Relations Phone: +49 (0)2173 9993-3009 sc.communications@oq.com 'We plan to touch Rs 1 trillion of Amul brand's turnover in the next five years.' Photograph: Amul/Twitter For the first time in its history, dairy major Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation -- popularly known as Amul -- made it into Rabobank's Global Top 20 Dairy Companies list, debuting at the 16th position for its dairy turnover of $5.5 billion. Not only did this make GCMMF, which markets milk and milk products under the brand name of 'Amul', the only dairy company from India among the top 20 but also the only dairy cooperative. "If you go by our milk handling capacity, we do 11 billion litres of milk per annum which is equal to Australia's milk production," GCMMF Managing Director R S Sodhi, below, tells Vinay Umarji. GCMMF has finally debuted in the top 20 global dairy list of Rabobank... Yes. While the dairy co-operative GCMMF has been ranked at 16th globally taking its balance sheet turnover of Rs 38,500 crore ($5.5 billion), Amul brand's turnover is worth Rs 52,000 crore or $7 billion. In case of the latter, we would be ranked at 11th position. However, the GCMMF balance sheet doesn't include Amul's local dairy sales within the cities where these dairies are set up in order to avoid duplication. One of the noteworthy aspects of the rankings is that we are not multinational unlike others who have been ranked in the top 20. Amul is mainly Gujarat-based with marketing all over India. Hence, we have been able to garner such a huge turnover from such a small part of the world. In the last 10 years, our CAGR is 16 per cent. Today, with Rs 52,000 crore, we are India's biggest FMCG company, much larger than other multinationals in India. This is because of multiple factors including India being a growing food market where consumers are shifting towards branded, healthy, trustworthy and affordable brands. India is a country of lower middle class where consumers look for taste, brand, quality and affordability and we were able to encash this opportunity. On the other hand, to ensure quality consistency in dairy, especially milk, Amul always offers an average of 15 to 20 per cent higher price to Indian farmers for milk procurement than other private dairies and 5 to 7 per cent higher than other cooperatives. In fact, these days we are offering roughly 25 per cent higher prices than our competitors to farmers. How has India, as a food and dairy market, helped Amul's success? Indian farmers get 15 to 20 per cent higher prices than their counterparts in developed countries like the US and European markets, but Indian consumers pay 15= to 20 per cent lower prices than these markets. This is because affordability is a very important aspect in India as far as food is concerned. However, we have been able to encash this without lowering the quality or the image of Amul brand. Our brand appeals to and is consumed by both upscale high streets and rural villages alike. Why is there a difference between GCMMF and Amul turnovers? GCMMF markets Amul branded products all over India. But districts in Gujarat like Surat, Vadodara and Anand have their own dairies which sell milk and milk products under brand 'Amul'. To avoid duplication, these are not reflected in GCMMF's balance sheet since these are not distributed by the federation, but the dairies themselves. Hence, the Amul brand's turnover is bigger than GCMMF's balance sheet turnover though the latter has been considered for the latest ranking. Do you believe GCMMF should have been ranked earlier? Most of the dairy companies and brands ranked are mainly based out of saturated markets while GCMMF is from India, one of the leading emerging markets. If a domestic dairy or food player can become a market leader in a region like India, it shows that it can become a global player. This is now getting reflected in the latest rankings. On the back of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mantra of local to global, Amul -- which is owned and managed by farmers -- first became a leader in the domestic market and is now being recognised at the global level. What best practices, as a dairy cooperative, helped GCMMF in this global recognition? As a dairy cooperative where owners (farmers) are the suppliers, we tend to procure milk at as high price as possible but sell at as low price as possible so that we can keep a minimum loss margin or EBITDA. So benefits of supply chain efficiency and scale are passed on to either the supplier farmers or consumers so that both are happy and they keep associating with GCMMF. Currently, our EBITDA is not more than 4 to 5 per cent. In India, even a private dairy cannot survive if they try to target an EBITDA of more than 6-7 per cent. Several multinational private dairies have tried but failed either on procurement side or on marketing side with such targets. This is because of the competitive environment created in India by dairy cooperatives like us. This is also because unlike in European and American markets where farmers get only 36 per cent of consumer price, Indian farmers get 80 per cent due to competition from cooperatives like us. How has supply chain efficiency and scale helped you? What does any supply chain need, especially in FMCG? It is either profitability or return on investment (RoI). If you are able to provide scale to your supply chain, even at half the industry margins, they will be happy with their turnover. Our margins to distributors or retailers is 30 to 50 per cent lower than that of other FMCG players but our turnover to the same distributor or retailer will be 2 to 3 times than other brands. Retailers have limited shelf space. If one brand offers 20 per cent margins but is able to sell only two pieces and another is able to give less than 10 per cent but sells in volume, the dealer's profitability increases with the latter. In milk alone, we give 3.5 per cent margin, but it sells in volume. So distributors' or retailers' shelf space investments for Amul yield more returns for them. Secondly, consistency is business volumes. We have got product range that cater to every season, apart from milk which is consumed throughout the year. Thirdly, our ability to build relationships with the supply chain. For instance, during the lockdown due to COVID-19, we ensured that supply chain businesses are not disrupted as well as our milk procurement and marketing. We also gave due compensation to our partners and workers by 20 to 25 per cent extra for 120 days for the risk they took during the pandemic. Where does GCMMF stand today in terms of milk procurement? Value of dairy products in India is lower as compared to other countries. But dairy is nothing but basically how much milk you handle. If you go by our milk handling capacity, we do 11 billion litres of milk per annum which is equal to Australia's milk production. If you go by that, Amul is number ninth globally as recognised by the International Farm Comparison Network. What are your expansion plans going from here? We plan to touch Rs 1 trillion of Amul brand's turnover in the next five years. We are well penetrated in Gujarat. Hence, our expansion will now come from other states. For instance, we are going in a big way into south India. We have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Andhra Pradesh government for an Amul plant. We are expanding in Maharashtra and also putting up a new plant in West Bengal at a project cost of Rs 250 crore. There are other states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and other north eastern states where it is largely unorganised dairy market and we intend to explore them. Our current milk handling capacity is 38 million litres per day which in another five years will grow to 50 million litres per day on the back of these expansion plans. Every year we have an investment plan of around $150 million or roughly Rs 1000 crore for expansion. With this our milk procurement strategy will also evolve. Currently, around 83-84 per cent of milk is procured from Gujarat with the rest coming from other states. In next five years, other states will contribute 30-35 per cent in terms of milk procurement though in terms of volume Gujarat will not see any decline. What are your plans to repeat Amul's success in non-dairy products? We will get into only those segments where our dairy farmers' produce is being utilised, be it honey, potato or edible oil in Gujarat. For instance, we are going big in bakery using only butter fat and no vegetable oil. We are also sourcing potatos from our milk farmers for making frozen foods and ready-to-eat products where we intend to compete with similar food companies. In Gujarat, we are sourcing cottonseed, mustard, sunflower edible oil from our dairy farmers and recently launched an edible oil brand in the state. We are also experimenting on honey. However, in non-dairy segments, we will continue to focus only on Gujarat as a market for now. Michael Obeng, a Ghanaian student who is the world's 1% SAT top scorer with a total SAT score of 1560, is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Engineering degree at HKU. As a child, Michael used to be interested in cars, buildings, power stations and marvel, but what truly amazed him were the individuals who had the intelligence to put things together in that manner. That was how his love for engineering began. When asked about the dream he wishes to pursue at HKU, Michael said, "One of the major problems my country faces is transportation. Very few people have access to efficient transportation. Motor accidents are frequent and regarded as common occurrences. My dream is to use technology to put an end to motor accidents completely, first in my country Ghana, and then in the rest of the world." Having been admitted to the Faculty of Engineering, Michael hopes to learn about nanotechnology which he thinks will revolutionise modes of transportation. He aspires to create nanotech-incorporated cars, trains and drones that could move everywhere without spatial constraints, effectively cancelling out traffic jams and eventually eliminating motor accidents. "I'm very grateful to HKU for offering me the HKU Scholarship for Future Leaders, which includes a full tuition wavier and an allowance for living and accommodation. I'm confident that the University will empower me with the skills and knowledge necessary to make nanotech-incorporated vehicles a reality. Graduating from one of the best universities in the world, I'll be given the global recognition necessary in acquiring funds to make my world-changing dream come true," Michael added. Atilla Kaan Erisir, a Turkish student who is the mastermind behind an AI-based blind stick, has been admitted to HKU to study Bachelor of Science. Inspired by his visually impaired friend, Atilla and his team won the Most Innovative Award in the International Symposium for STEM Education 2019, an international symposium organised by HKU where high school students gathered to generate solutions for global issues and pitch to judges as commercial products. The team's concept has been adopted by a company for research and production. When asked why he chose HKU, Atilla said, "My first encounter with Hong Kong and HKU was the STEM Symposium where I learnt that Hong Kong is a city very supportive of technological innovations. I applied to HKU in particular because of its reputation as a leading university in Hong Kong and in the world. What attracted me to the University is the flexible curriculum that allows students to mix and match courses in an interdisciplinary manner." Having entered HKU, Atilla aspires to fulfil his dream of conducting researches on molecular biology and biotechnology in search of innovative remedies for currently incurable diseases such as paralysis. "My undergraduate studies at HKU is made possible by the generous and supportive scholarships offered by the University. I'm confident that the scholarships I've been awarded will aid my innovative projects in the future," Atilla added. The University of Hong Kong welcomes aspiring students to join the university as it is a holistic university where students are empowered to realise their dreams and maintain academic standards at the same time. Learn more about HKU: https://aal.hku.hk/admissions/international/ Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1273218/Michael_Obeng.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1273219/Atilla_Kaan_Erisir.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1273303/HKU_Logo.jpg SOURCE The University of Hong Kong LETHBRIDGE, ALTA.A former bishop of a Mormon church in southern Alberta has been sentenced to five years in prison for multiple sexual assaults on two young girls in the 1980s and 90s. Marvin Ross Harker, 52, was convicted in December of two counts of sexual assault. Lethbridge Court of Queens Bench heard the abuse took place from 1986 and 1993, when the victims were between the ages of eight and 13, near the hamlet of Diamond City. Harker was a bishop with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the nearby town of Raymond when allegations were made against him in 2016. He was removed from his role. They are crimes of violence. The victims were young ... both girls were sexually innocent and the commission of these offences at a time they were unable to understand what was happening to them has had life long consequences, Justice Johnna Kubik said during sentencing Thursday. The offences committed against the victims in this case are grave offences characterized by repeated, major sexual assaults. At the request of the Crown and the victims, Kubik removed a publication ban on Harkers identity. Kubik said Harker was between 18 and 19 years of age when the assaults began and he blamed an introduction to pornography for his distorted behaviour toward females. The assaults involved a pattern of abuse and occurred with such frequency that they became normalized for the victims. These were not rash acts, Kubik told the court. Additionally, during the trial, Mr. Harker agreed that by virtue of his upbringing and religious faith he knew that what he was doing was wrong. A psychiatric report noted that Harker is at a low risk to reoffend but aggravating factors include his extreme minimization or denial of sexual violence. It recommended his access to places with children under the age of 16 be restricted. Kubik said Harker had lived an exemplary life over the 33 years since the assaults, but his moral blameworthiness is high. She said the victims have expressed a lifetime of anxiety, guilt and belief that they are morally unclean. On the basis of all of the facts in this case, I am satisfied a period of imprisonment is required to ensure a fit and just sentence. The Crown had asked for a sentence of between five and seven years. The defence had recommended a suspended or conditional sentence. The judge sentenced Harker to 24 months on one of the charges and 36 months on the other, to be served consecutively, for a total of five years. Kubik also ordered Harker to submit his DNA and have his name added to the national sex offender registry. Read more about: 2 US Citizens Face Terror Charges After Allegedly Supporting ISIS Two men, one from Minnesota and another from Washington, were arrested and face terror charges after having allegedly supported the terrorist group ISIS, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday. One of the men, Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, 23, of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, was charged by indictment with providing material support to ISIS. He was detained overseas by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in March 2019 and recently transferred into FBI custody. He has made his first appearance in the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Al-Madioum, a native of Morocco and naturalized U.S. citizen, allegedly provided material support and resources, including personnelnamely himselfand services to ISIS from July 8, 2015, through March 15, 2019, according to an indictment (pdf) and a law enforcement affidavit (pdf). The affidavit stated that Al-Madioum told FBI agents that he connected with an ISIS facilitator through an active Twitter account called Birds of Paradise that posted ISIS propaganda. The facilitator then provided him with information on how to travel to Syria and join ISIS. Al-Madioum admitted that he had fled from his family while they were on holiday in Morocco in 2015 to join ISIS, according to the affidavit. The other man, Lirim Sylejmani, was charged with having received military training from ISIS and conspiring to provide and provided material support and resources, including personnel and services, to ISIS in Syria. The indictment said the charges relate to his activities from November 2015 through February 2019. Sylejmani, a Kosovo-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was detained overseas by the SDF in 2019 and was recently transferred into FBI custody. He had his indictment and arrest warrant unsealed Wednesday and made his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington. Sylejmani told CBS News in September 2019 that he was unrepentant, does not believe he made the wrong decision, and that he just wanted to live under Islamic law. The DOJ noted in its announcement that he has spoken to a number of media outlets about his time with ISIS. The United States is committed to holding accountable those who have left this country in order to join ISIS, Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said in a statement. The defendant is a U.S. citizen who abandoned the country that welcomed him to join ISIS in Syria, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said in a statement. He [Sylejmani] will now be held accountable for his actions in an American courtroom. Our national security prosecutors and law enforcement partners will continue to ensure that those who threaten our country are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Todays announcement should serve as a warning to those who have traveled, or attempted to travel, to join ISIS that the FBI remains steadfast in ensuring they face justice, Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBIs Counterterrorism Division said in a statement. Both mens cases resulted from investigations conducted by the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force. Nationals leader John Barilaro has promised he will honour his agreement with Premier Gladys Berejiklian and will not jeopardise the Coalition before the next state election. "I have no intentions to blow up the Coalition or create instability," Mr Barilaro said on Thursday. Deputy Premier John Barilaro in parliament on Thursday. Credit:Janie Barrett Earlier on Thursday, Ms Berejiklian said she expected the Deputy Premier to stick to his word after they made an agreement last week to retain the Liberal and Nationals Coalition. Ms Berejiklian said she took Mr Barilaro at his word, despite the Deputy Premier refusing in Parliament on Wednesday to rule out that he would threaten to split the Coalition. Washington A House committee issued a scathing report Wednesday questioning whether Boeing and government regulators have recognized problems that caused two deadly 737 Max jet crashes and whether either will be willing to make significant changes to fix them. Staff members from the Democrat-controlled Transportation Committee blamed the crashes that killed 346 people on the "horrific culmination" of failed government oversight, design flaws and a lack of action at Boeing despite knowing about problems. The committee identified deficiencies in the Federal Aviation Administration approval process for new jetliners. But the agency and Boeing have said certification of the Max complied with FAA regulations, the 246-page report said. "The fact that a compliant airplane suffered from two deadly crashes in less than five months is clear evidence that the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be repaired," the staff wrote in the report released early Wednesday. The report highlights the need for legislation to fix the approval process and deal with the FAA's delegation of some oversight tasks to aircraft manufacturer employees, said Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon. "Obviously the system is inadequate," DeFazio said. "We will be adopting significant reforms." He wouldn't give details, saying committee leaders are in talks with Republicans about legislation. He said the committee won't scrap the delegation program, and he hopes to reach agreement on reforms before year's end. A Senate committee on Wednesday delayed making changes to a bipartisan bill giving the FAA more control over picking company employees who sign off on safety decisions. The House report stems from an 18-month investigation into the October 2018 crash of Lion Air flight 610 in Indonesia and the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 in March of 2019. The Max was grounded worldwide shortly after the Ethiopia crash. Regulators are testing planes with revamped flight control software, and Boeing hopes to get the Max flying again late this year or early in 2021. Relatives of people who died in the crashes said the report exposes the truth. "It was an unforgivable crime, and Boeing still wants to return the aircraft to service quickly," said Ababu Amha, whose wife was a flight attendant on the Ethiopia Airlines jet. "All those responsible for the accident should pay the price for their actions." Paul Njoroge of Toronto, whose wife, three young children and mother-in-law died in the Ethiopia crash while traveling to Kenya to see grandparents, said the report revealed Boeing's culture of putting profit ahead of safety. "There are instances in the report where some employees within Boeing tried to raise safety concern issues. But their concerns would be slammed by people within Boeing," said Njoroge, who is among those suing the company. "This is an organization that should focus more on delivering safe planes." Eighteen months after the crash, Njoroge said he still relies on support from others. "It just doesn't go away. It never leaves my mind," he said. The investigators mainly focused on the reason Boeing was able to get the jet approved with minimal pilot training: It convinced the FAA that the Max was an updated version of previous generation 737s. Justin Silvera came off the fire lines in Northern California after a grueling 36 straight days battling wildfires and evacuating residents ahead of the flames. Before that, he and his crew had worked for 20 days, followed by a three-day break. Silvera, a 43-year-old battalion chief with Cal Fire, California's state firefighting agency, said he's lost track of the blazes he's fought this year. He and his crew have sometimes been on duty for 64 hours at a stretch, their only rest coming in 20-minute catnaps. "I've been at this 23 years, and by far this is the worst I've seen," Silvera said before bunking down at a motel for 24 hours. After working in Santa Cruz County, his next assignment was to head north to attack wildfires near the Oregon border. His exhaustion reflects the situation on the West Coast fire lines: This year's blazes have taxed the human, mechanical and financial resources of the nation's wildfire-fighting forces to an extraordinary degree. And half of the fire season is yet to come. Heat, drought and a strategic decision to attack the flames early combined with the coronavirus to put a historically heavy burden on fire teams. "There's never enough resources," said Silvera, one of nearly 17,000 firefighters battling the California blazes. "Typically with Cal Fire, we're able to attack air tankers, choppers, dozers. We're good at doing that. But these conditions in the field, the drought, the wind, this stuff is just taking off. We can't contain one before another erupts." Washington State Forester George Geissler says there are hundreds of unfulfilled requests for help throughout the West. Agencies are constantly seeking firefighters, aircraft, engines and support personnel. Fire crews have been summoned from at least nine states and other countries, including Canada and Israel. Hundreds of agreements for agencies to offer mutual assistance have been maxed out at the federal, state and local levels, he said. "We know that there's really nothing left in the bucket," Geissler said. "Our sister agencies to the south in California and Oregon are really struggling." Demand for firefighting resources has been high since mid-August, when fire officials bumped the national preparedness level to critical, meaning at least 80% of crews were already committed to fighting fires, and there were few personnel and little equipment to spare. Government spending on fighting wildfires has more than tripled since the 1990s, to an average of $1.8 billion annually. That's failed to reduce the problem as climate change, drought and millions of trees killed by pests led to more fires in the Western U.S. over the same period, particularly dangerous "megafires" that burn 100,000 acres (404 square kilometers) or more. The growing severity has spurred federal lawmakers to push prevention efforts, including controlled burns, faster approval of logging projects and upgrading homes to make them more fire resistant. "We are at a critical time: The West is burning. People are dying. The smoke is literally starting to cover our country, and our way of life as we know it is in danger," Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said Wednesday during testimony in support of an emergency wildfire bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, that would direct more resources to prevention. ___ The smoke from dozens of wildfires in the western United States is stretching clear across the country and even pushing into Mexico, Canada and Europe. While the dangerous plumes are forcing people inside along the West Coast, residents thousands of miles away in the East are seeing unusually hazy skies and remarkable sunsets. The wildfires racing across tinder-dry landscape in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington are extraordinary, but the long reach of their smoke isn't unprecedented. While there are only small pockets in the southeastern U.S. that are haze free, experts say the smoke poses less of a health concern for those who are farther away. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Administrators in Anchorage, Alaska, cranked up the volume on their annual back-to-school campaign a few weeks ago when, after scanning district attendance rolls, they realized they were more than 4,000 students off from their projected enrollment. District leaders appeared on the nightly newscasts and the morning radio shows, they extended in-person registration into the weekend, called parents of kids who were MIA, and then dispatched teachers to start knocking on students doors. For every kid who shows up for class this month and next, the district gets about $10,000 from the state, so a dip that dramatic could ultimately cost tens of millions of dollars and result in widespread layoffs . We need to do everything we can to get kids enrolled right now, said Jim Anderson, the Anchorage districts chief financial officer. This is the running of the bulls. Across the nation this fall, the coronavirus pandemic has scrambled where and how students are getting an education. Parents are home-schooling their kids, red-shirting their kindergartners, sending students hundreds of miles away to live with their grandparents, sending them to private schools, or, confused about their options, not enrolling their children at all. If states, as they typically do, use enrollment and attendance figures for September and October to determine how much money districts should receive this year and next, thousands of districts are poised to lose millions of dollars. Thats especially the case for low-income urban districts wracked by absenteeism due to coronavirus outbreaks, and those struggling to get an accurate account of who is attending online. Meanwhile, charter schools and wealthier school districts that manage to boost enrollment or get a better handle on in-person attendance will likely get more state aid this year. The debate on how to tally how many students districts are serving this year is fraught and currently being hashed out in state school board meetings and legislative committees. It will have financial implications for years to come. School this year is not inside four cinderblock walls, said Robert Hull, the president and CEO of the National Association of State Boards of Education. What this is forcing us to do is redefine what school is. Bottom-Line Impact How states compile and factor fall enrollment and attendance data into their funding formulas is incredibly complicated and differs from state to state. But, what it ultimately boils down to is, the fewer kids who show up, the less money districts get. Frantic superintendents across the nation are warning their communities that if their enrollment numbers dont rebound in the coming weeks, theyll have to either drain their savings accounts or lay off teachers. In Clark County, Nevada, enrollment is down 10,000 students, each worth around $6,100. Salt Lake City lost more than 3,000 students, which could potentially result in a $23 million budget cut. Some states have circuit breakers built into their formulas to mitigate the fiscal loss and spread it out over several years. Some districts arent waiting to act. In Santa Rosa County, Fla., the superintendent laid off 80 teachers after more than 1,200 students students failed to show up to school, which officials predict will result in $7 million in budget cuts. Within states, policymakers are at odds over how much money districts should get for students who are only attending classes online or who administrators thought would show up but didnt and how to count attendance during this falls student count dates. Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, and Washington legislatures have altered the ways in which they count a student present since so many districts are conducting classes online and having difficulty keeping track of who shows up. At least three states, including California, Illinois, and Michigan, have altered their funding formulas to factor in last years enrollment to stave off budget cuts for low-income districts, according to the Education Commission of the States. But such a move can be expensive for states, most of which are undergoing severe revenue shortfalls . Holding districts harmless might be impossible for some states based on their revenue projections, said Eric Syverson, a school finance policy researcher for ECS. Squeezed by States Rapidly growing charter schools, virtual schools, and school districts that have seen sizeable growth these past few weeks have lashed out at legislatures that want to hold harmless districts with dramatic student loss. Last month, John Adams Academy, along with two other charter organizations, sued the state of California after its legislature decided to hold harmless districts that have lost thousands of students this year. While the state has since changed the dynamics of its enrollment policy so that growing districts wont be fiscally punished, the plaintiffs say the amendment is not enough. Never in the history of California has a childs education money been held hostage like this, said Dean Forman, the founder and board chair of John Adams Academy, a network of charter schools. The state is giving money to school districts for phantom students, students who dont exist. John Adams Academy recently opened a glistening, new 96,000-square-foot campus on the outskirts of Sacramento, complete with towering windows, three libraries and a performance art stage. It received the $25 million Wall Street bond after promising investors it would be able to recruit more than 700 new students this year. While it reached that number, the state now may not completely reimburse the school to serve those students. It now risks having to take out a high-interest loan to make its annual $1.5 million bond payment. Weve counted on that money, worked toward it for seven years, and to have that rug taken out from underneath us at the last minute is a horrible situation, said Foreman. Fairness Issue Administrators in districts that have lost thousands of students say its unfair to use the first few months of this very unusual year to determine how many students they are serving. Every spring, administrators use Census Bureau data, historical birth and housing patterns, and anecdotal information to predict how many students theyll have to serve in the fall. For low-income students, students with special needs, and English-language learners, districts receive extra money from the state and federal government. They then craft a budget based off those projections. In addition to the pandemic forcing parents to reconsider how their students should receive an education this year, districts had to alter their registration procedures this summer to reduce crowding and long lines, conducting the process online or over the phone in what parent groups have described as a frustrating process. And administrators are questioning the validity of their attendance rolls since teachers are interacting with students in a myriad of ways throughout the week, both in-person, online, over e-mail, and on the phone. Alaska takes attendance over several days throughout September and October to determine the frequency and the type of students who will likely show up for the rest of the year, a period known in the state as oasis count. Anderson, Anchorages CFO, said that after the district announced it would conduct classes online this fall, he started noticing private schools promising to conduct in-person learning no matter what the local infection rate is, and an abnormal number of parents who started telling the district theyd rather just home-school their child. Other parents sent their children back to the contiguous United States to live with relatives. Most troubling, because the district wasnt able to test students with special needs over the summer due to the pandemic, the district is dozens of students off its projection for special services. It typically gets around $95,000 for each student with exceptional special needs. We certainly will lose money, Anderson said. Thats the fiscal reality. I dont blame the parents who are trying to find the best situation for their kids, but were going to have to make budget cuts, and parents are going to come back and say, This isnt what my kids classroom used to look like. Well, yeah. Thats how money works. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, will not be the subject of any debate prep for Donald Trump. He's going to wing their three debates. (AP) Donald Trump signalled earlier this week he will not formally prepare for his three debates against Democratic foe Joe Biden, and a new report suggests he will wing each session on a bet the former vice president will trip himself with gaffes and forgetfulness. The 74-year-old president for months has tried casting the 77-year-old Mr Biden as too old and mentally slow as he approaches 80 to be the so-called leader of the free world. He has tried sowing seeds of doubt into the minds of remaining undecided voters and key blocs he is trying to win back, like just enough suburban white women. The president himself made the decision to skip a 2016-like debate preparation session, when former New Jersey Governor Christie played the role of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mr Christie had reportedly been tapped to play the role of Mr Biden, but it appears that will not happen. A presidential debateisnt something you have to practice, Mr Trump told aides, unnerving some of his closest advisers, NBC News reported. He is set to go face-to-face with Mr Biden in a few weeks, and Mr Trump intends to wing it. He signalled just that during a wild 47-minute phone interview with Fox & Friends, his favorite right-leaning morning cable news and opinion show. One of the hosts asked how he plans to prepare for the three debates. Mr Trump, notably, did not describe what are sometimes called murder board sessions with Mr Christie or another GOP figure mimicking Mr Biden. Instead, the president essentially said he is too busy getting back on the campaign trail to spend hours practicing canned spiels about policy proposals and witty attack lines for his opponent. Well, I sort of prepare every day by just doing what I'm doing. I was in California yesterday (Monday). I went to Arizona, which is doing great by the way, the state is doing, is booming. And done a really good job with the virus too, you know down to, it's down to, it's very low, he said, sending a shoutout to one battleground state before mentioning another possible one that he has to hold to have any shot at a second term. Story continues An excellent governor, excellent in Texas, Mr Trump said of ally Greg Abbott, also a Republican. The president described campaign trips as the best kind of debate prep. I've been to Texas over the last few days, I've been to Louisiana, Florida, I mean, I've been all over the place, he told Fox before slamming Mr Bidens lighter schedule, which never seems to take him that far from his Delaware home. And I watch this guy (Biden) sitting home and I say, maybe I'm doing it wrong, you know what maybe I'm doing it wrong, the president said mockingly. He also contended he cannot prepare for the debates because Mr Biden performed unevenly in the Democratic primary debates. Well, I don't know which Biden is going to show up because I watched him during the debates where they had 20 people on the stage and, you know, before they started calling it out, and I watched him and he was a disaster. You don't get worse, he was grossly incompetent, Mr Trump alleged. Then, I watched him against Bernie [Sanders] and he was okay. He wasn't Winston Churchill, I can tell you that, but he was okay. Read more Bill Barr responds to Democrats' fear that Trump won't leave office: 'Ive never heard of that crap' 'I trust scientists, I trust vaccines, I don't trust Trump': Biden suggests White House is trying to rush coronavirus treatment Will there be a Big Ten Bounce?: Trump signals to Rust Belt voters he pushed conference to start football season School district officials in rural Crook County want the state to cut them a bit of slack when it comes to strict metrics for operating schools amid coronavirus. Over the last four weeks, the Central Oregon county has averaged fewer than the two new coronavirus cases that constitute its state-imposed weekly limit if it wants to educate students of all ages in classrooms. But the week before last, Crook County registered three new cases. That one coronavirus case means the difference between opening classrooms for all of the districts students or limiting attendance to kindergartners through third graders unless the state relents. Back in August, state schools chief Colt Gill and Gov. Kate Brown laid out the requirements necessary for schools to reopen: Counties cannot see more than 10 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents and test positivity rates must come back at or below 5% -- and they must hit both those marks for three consecutive weeks. Crook Countys test positivity rates have registered below 2% since the week ending Aug. 16. And cases per 100,000 residents were below 10 for every week during the same period save for that one. With three new cases, the week of Aug. 29s rate per 100,000 residents was 13. So Crook County School District officials are appealing to the state, asking state schools chief Colt Gill to allow students of every grade to return to the classroom under Oregons model for a hybrid reopening. I think we understand the metrics were designed very fast with good intentions. The hope was to save lives, Crook County School Board Chair Scott Cooper said in a release. Unfortunately, time has shown that the metrics unfairly penalize smaller communities and all good systems need periodic adjustments. Oregon Department of Education spokesman Marc Siegel said the agency does not have a mechanism to consider appeals like the one Crook County officials have submitted. The yardstick the county is challenging originally applied to the early elementary grades as well. In mid-August, however, officials added special conditions intended to return young students, those with acute needs for in-person instruction and small or extremely far-flung rural schools. Children in kindergarten through grade three, for instance, can attend class in person as long as their county registers fewer than 30 cases per 100,000 people for three straight weeks, as long as test positivity remains at 5% or lower and no student or school employee tests positive for COVID-19. Crook Countys appeal doesnt fall under any of the categories outlined in that guidance. But Siegel said Gill is committed to reviewing the districts effort. Meanwhile, Crook Superintendent Sara Johnson said her district has conducted in-person instruction for 600 students in its youngest grades since Sept. 8 and hasnt seen a single new case linked to the district. Crook County had a total enrollment of just under 3,100 students in February, according to state figures. We have extensive precautionary measures in place and were in constant communication with the Crook County Health Department, she said. Im confident this is the right approach. And were still providing the option for families to keep their students at home learning online if they have health concerns. District officials say several parents are pushing for a return to in-person instruction, citing social-emotional well-being and academic preparation as factors. Some also said they were having issues finding child care. Oregons child care facilities are currently operating at about 40% of the capacity they were before the pandemic. Crook County parents and district officials arent the only ones pushing back against the Department of Educations coronavirus guidelines. The school board for east Oregons Adrian district, which enrolls fewer than 300 students, is considering suing the state over those metrics. But officials in Crook County say they want to work with state officials, asking for a reprieve from guidelines they consider to be particularly punishing for smaller communities. When something isnt working, its time to fix it, Cooper, the board chair, said. Were not criticizing anybodys efforts. Were asking for practical and common-sense adjustment. --Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344 | @edercampuzano | Eder on Facebook Eder is The Oregonians education reporter. Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email ecampuzano@oregonian.com. Please register or log in to keep reading. No credit card required! Stay logged in to skip the surveys. Boris Johnson beleives Britons should not reort neighbours to the police unless they are having a huge 'Animal House' type party Members of the public should not report their neighbours for breaching the the rule of six unless they are having large parties, the Prime Minister has said - in direct contradiction of his own Home Secretary's advice. Any social gathering of more than six people in England is against the law, with people facing fines of up to 3,200 if they do not abide by the new measure, which applies to both indoor and outdoor settings. But Boris Johnson has now urged people to speak with rulebreakers before notifying the authorities - contradicting Home Secretary Priti Patel, who said it was 'personal responsibility' to make sure people obeyed rules. The PM said: I have never much been in favour of sneak culture, myself. What people should do in the first instance is obviously if they are concerned is raise it with their friends and neighbours. But I think what is reasonable for anyone to do is if they think there is a serious threat to public health as a result of their neighbours activities if there is some huge kind of Animal House party taking place, as I am sure, hot tubs and so forth, and there is a serious threat to public health then its reasonable for the authorities to know. Animal House is a 1978 American comedy which marked John Belushis film debut as a hard-partying college fraternity member. Ms Patel said just two days ago people should shop their neighbours if they were breaking the new rules. It comes as Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson were warned the testing fiasco is on the brink of dooming the country to a de facto lockdown with keeping schools open 'unsustainable' Covid-19 cases are soaring among middle-aged people in England and have risen by upwards of 90 per cent in a fortnight as the outbreak continues to grow, official figures show. The boss of British Airways defended his decision to cut up to 12,000 jobs and said the pandemic has left the national carrier 'fighting for survival' One hospital in Manchester accounted for a third of all Covid-19 deaths in England last week, it was revealed amid fears the life-threatening disease is spreading between wards. Boris Johnson failed to rule out a second national lockdown as he admitted the government's coronavirus testing system cannot cope The Prime Minister mentioned the party film Animal House in his advice to the nation 'Young people forget the rules' says Justice Secretary Robert Buckland the day before the new'rule of six' launches Ministers are considering a 10pm curfew for pubs next week and Justice Secretary Robert Buckland warned that young people are 'forgetting the rules' the day before the new limits on gatherings came into force. The controversial so-called 'rule of six' came in on Monday, as the government tries to tackle rising coronavirus infection rates by restricting meetings both indoors and outdoors. Ahead of the crackdown, Mr Buckland has warned the government could go even further next week and introduce curfews. He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I think that as you've seen we've been very prepared to move quickly where necessary and where the evidence points us. 'I think there's an issue about social occasions and social events and particularly young people getting together and enjoying themselves sometimes a bit too much and forgetting the importance of the rules. 'I think it would be idle of me to speculate as to what measures we might have to bring in as we approach the winter.' Prime Minister Boris Johnson is believed to be considering introducing a 10pm or 11pm curfew on restaurants, bars and pubs if local measures are unable to bring the spread of the virus under control. The move stems from a concern that adherence to social distancing measures diminishes the more people consume alcohol. It comes amid rising fears that the virus could rampage through Britain once again. On Saturday, more than 3,000 coronavirus cases were recorded overall in the UK for the second day in a row - the first time since mid-May that recorded cases have been above that level on consecutive days. The Government said that as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 3,497 lab-confirmed cases in the UK, slightly lower than the 3,539 cases recorded on Friday. Speaking about the rise in cases, Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine, Imperial College London, said a 'trickle' of cases can turn into a 'cascade', adding that if people do not abide by the 'rule of six' now then the country faces going back into 'hard lockdown'. Advertisement The Prime Ministers advice, reported in The Sun, is at odds with that of the Home Secretary, who said on Tuesday she would report breaches of coronavirus restrictions by neighbours and even suggested families stopping to talk in the street could be breaking the new laws. Ms Patel was asked if she personally would report her own neighbours two days ago - which she confirmed she would. She told Sky News: 'I'm rarely at home but if I saw something that I thought was inappropriate then, quite frankly, I would call the police. 'It's not dobbing in neighbours, it's all about us taking personal responsibility.' Ms Patel added it was a 'personal choice' on whether to report breaches, but if there was a 'big party taking place' it would be 'right to call the police'. 'Anyone that is effectively defying the rules, they will be helping to spread coronavirus,' she said. 'That is not a good thing and obviously we all have a role to play.' Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales John Apter has said that police officers on the front line were trying to interpret the rules, which came into effect on Monday. In response to a question about having more guidance on Good Morning Britain, he responded: Maybe we should have guidance, because we havent had any yet. Meanwhile, people in the North East are awaiting an announcement on Thursday on new restrictions which are expected to come into effect from midnight, while a local lockdown will begin from 6pm in south Wales. The PM's advice comes after a slew of parties and indoor gatherings hosted by young people which have descended into social distance nightmares. In Brighton police failed to break up a 100-strong house rave at the weekend claiming they were too busy. Youths flouted Covid rules and partied the night away in the house and garden and spilled out onto the street as desperate neighbours called police only to be told it was not a priority. Residents were shocked when 'hundreds' of young people turned up to the party, contravening all social distancing rules. Meanwhile on the same weekend an illegal rave took place in a leafy Surrey village as young revellers partied ahead of the new COVID crackdown. Snapchat footage from the event on Saturday night shows a large number of people dancing in very close proximity to each other. The video, which is tagged in RHS Garden Wisley, shows the partygoers listening to electronic dance music. A number of of the outlawed events have taken place throughout lockdown, with many clearly making the most of last weekend before new restrictions began to be enforced on Monday. Officers broke up house parties in Altrincham, Stockport and Flixton, all in Greater Manchester, on Saturday night, while police in Nottingham tackled a 50 person gathering in Lenton. Public Health England (PHE) data reveals 23.4 cases are now diagnosed for every 100,000 people aged between 40 and 49 up from 12.4 at the end of August. And coronavirus infection rates have nearly doubled in just a week for people in their fifties, jumping from 10.9 to 20 The most up-to-date PHE data, which was released on Friday, clearly shows cases are spiralling across every age group. People in their twenties who aren't as vulnerable to the disease and are likely to escape death or serious illness are driving the spike with an infection rate of 46, which has doubled in the last three weeks In the largest gathering said to have been broken up by officers last night, a team from Greater Manchester Police dispersed around 70 party-goers from a house in Mottram. Last night it was revealed the North East is set to have new coronavirus restrictions enforced, including pubs closing at 10pm and households banned from socialising with anyone outside their home. The new rules are expected to come into force just after midnight tonight after a dramatic rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in the area. Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes said 'additional, temporary' measures are being planned to prevent another full lockdown. He said he expected Health Secretary Matt Hancock to make an announcement later this morning. The restrictions will reportedly apply to Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead, County Durham and Sunderland - which have all seen rises in cases, according to the latest weekly rates. The lockdown measure will include a 10pm curfew on pubs, restaurants and other licensed premises and people will be banned from socialising with anyone outside their household. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "We constantly monitor infection rates across the country and keep all measures under review in consultation with local leaders. "Any changes to local restrictions will be announced in the usual way." The most recent figures show Newcastle to have recorded a sharp increase in its weekly rate, up from 51.2 to 64.1, with 194 new cases in the seven days to September 13. It comes after local measures in the likes of Greater Manchester and Birmingham have been put in place in a bid to address rising rates of infection. Sources said the Chinese army has still not confirmed a date for Corps Commander-level talks. New Delhi: There have been atleast three incidents of firing at the line of actual control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh where Indian and Chinese troops are engaged in a four month long military stand-off. Sources also said that despite an in-principle agreement for the military dialogue, the Chinese army has still not confirmed a date for Corps Commander-level talks. Out of these firing incidents, two happened at the Southern banks of Pangong Tso and one in the finger area on its northern banks. Indian Army has officially acknowledged only one firing incident which took place on September 7 at Mukhpari in the Chushul sector. However, sources said that the first firing incident actually took place earlier, between August 29-31, when Indian Army in a pre-emptive move occupied strategic heights on the Kailash range which overlook entry points of the Spanggur gap in the Chushul sector. The third and bigger firing incident happened on September 8-9 when Indian army occupied higher positions overlooking Chinese posts on the ridgelines of finger 4. Chinese troops were also trying to come near Indian positions and both sides fired more than 100 rounds. All these incidents involved warning shots being fired in the air and not directly at each other. But it remains a fact that for the first time in 45 years firing took place at the LAC by both sides. Indian Army changed the rule of engagement at LAC after the Galwan Valley clash on June 15 where Chinese had used improvised weapons, including iron rods studded with nails, to attack Indian soldiers breaching the agreements between the two countries. Now, Indian Armys local commanders are free to use any weapon under their command when threatened by Chinese troops. Sources said the situation in the Eastern Ladakh remains tense with Indian Army and Air Force at a high alert. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday that it is imperative for India to immediately correct its wrong practices, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tension along the China-India border. He said that China has not been responsible for the recent border situation, and it was India that first violated bilateral agreements, illegally crossing the border line for provocation, unilaterally changing the status quo of the border area, and firing gunshots to threaten the safety of the Chinese border troops, according to Chinese state run media Global Times. Wang hoped that India would abide by the important consensus reached by leaders of the two countries, put the differences at the proper position in bilateral relations, prevent the differences from escalating into conflict and avoid actions that might escalate the situation. "China would like to maintain communication with India through diplomatic and military channels to jointly safeguard peace in the border area," Wang said. According to a report published in South China Morning Post, Chinese troops had raised their combat readiness to the second-highest possible last week after an exchange of gunfire with India, but the alert was lowered after a meeting of the nations foreign ministers. The increase, to second level, meant more weapons and troops were deployed to the front line, and training exercises were ramped up for commanders, officers and soldiers, a military source told the South China Morning Post. The newspaper said that while the combat readiness level had been lowered, it could be reinstated if circumstances changed. LANCASTER, Pa. - Judges dramatically reduced bail amounts as high as $1 million Thursday that had been set this week for several people accused of crimes during unrest in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that included protests and vandalism to public buildings. Bail for nine of 13 defendants was lowered, in several cases so they will not have to put up any money to be released, LNP reported. Bail for two defendants was reduced from $1 million to $50,000 unsecured, clearing the way for their release pending trial, the news organization reported. In other cases, defendants will still need to post bail of $25,000-$100,000, which means they may have to come up with a portion of it in cash to pay the bail bondsman. The charges stem from unrest over the shooting by police of Ricardo Munoz, a Lancaster man who was wielding a knife after his sister sought to have him committed for mental health treatment. Police body camera video that was made public shows the 27-year-old Munoz brandishing the knife before the officer shot and killed him. Munoz had been awaiting trial on allegations he stabbed four people last year. The charging documents filed by police over the demonstrators actions described them all as instigators, which defendants family members and supporters have in some cases hotly denied. The protests Sunday night and early Monday were followed by rioting that caused damage to Lancasters police headquarters and other downtown buildings. An arson fire blocked a downtown intersection. In 2018, promoter Jimmy Koplik told New Haven Register columnist Randall Beach about his most unforgettable moment: shouting into the microphone at Toad's Place: "Please welcome the Rolling Stones!" On Aug. 16, 1989, the iconic band graced the stage at Toad's Place in front of about 700 fans. RELATED: Randall Beach: Telling the story of New Haven's mecca, Toad's Place, during a pandemic RELATED: Fans share memories of Toad's Place after owner's death It's one of the most legendary rock 'n roll moments in New Haven history, but certainly not the only one. Elvis Presley played at the New Haven Coliseum twice in July 1975 and once more in July 1976; Jim Morrison of the Doors was arrested after the band played only a few songs at the New Haven Arena on Dec. 9, 1967; Bob Dylan playing late, late into the night at Toad's Place in January 1990; the Who turning in a dramatic show at the Coliseum on Dec. 15, 1979, just 12 days after 11 of their fans were trampled to death in Cincinnati; Bruce Springsteen delivering a rave-up at the Coliseum on Aug. 25, 1978, then going over to Toad's to do a surprise encore. Check out scenes from some of New Haven's biggest music moments. President Trump on Tuesday night falsely claimed that we were short on ventilators because the cupboards were bare when we took it over. The Strategic National Stockpile, the governments repository of medicines and medicinal products, contained more than $7 billion worth of supplies when Mr. Trump took office, including more than 16,000 ventilators. Speaking at an ABC News town hall event in Philadelphia, he repeated his characterization of restrictions placed on travel from China and Europe as bans that saved thousands of lives. The restrictions only applied to foreign citizens and included exceptions, ultimately allowing 40,000 people to travel from China to the United States from the end of January to April. Similar restrictions were placed on travel from Europe, after the virus was already widespread in New York City. The president also misleadingly claimed that I was so far ahead with my closing, which he said occurred in January. In fact, states began in March to issue stay-at-home and social-distancing orders, and Mr. Trump resisted those efforts. One model showed that 36,000 fewer people would have died had those measures been in place one week earlier. Even after the federal government recommended social distancing on March 16, Mr. Trump continued to urge reopening. He wrongly claimed that crime is up 100 percent, 150 percent in New York. Over all, crime has actually decreased 2 percent in New York compared with the same period last year, though murders have increased. And he misleadingly said that the top 10 most unsafe cities are run by Democrats. There is no evidence that crime is correlated with partisanship. Crime is generally higher in major metropolitan areas than rural areas, and more than three-quarters of major cities have Democratic mayors. This is the incredible moment firefighters rushed into a California neighborhood as flames ravaged homes then had to drive through a wall of flames when the Creek Fire became too dangerous to fight. Footage from the City of Merced Fire Department shared on Wednesday showed the devastation and danger from the point of view of the heroes, providing a brief look at how brave the men and women who launched their rescue mission were within the first 12 hours of the blaze. The helmet camera footage is from nearly two weeks ago on September 4. Dozens of fires have burned some 4.5 million acres of tinder-dry brush, grass and woodlands in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, ravaging several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 34 people. Footage was released of the Creek Fire by the City of Merced Fire Department on Wednesday It provides a brief look at how brave the men and women who launched their rescue mission were within the first 12 hours of the blaze 'It is hard for our firefighters to put to words what their feelings are sometimes,' the fire department wrote in a caption to accompany the video on social media. 'They work hard and right to the edge of danger, at times they are able save homes and other times they are overran. It breaks their hearts when the fire wins.' In audio firefighters can be heard yelling to 'go!' before they drive towards the inferno and as smoke obscures much of the view. With sirens blaring in the background and fire crackling, the heroes sound incredibly focused as they instruct when to hose higher in the team effort. An establishing shot of the mountainside shows just how enormous the wildfire is. 'OES 393 along with many other engines fought until the final moments of being pinched off by the fire,' the department said. 'OES 393 along with many other engines fought until the final moments of being pinched off by the fire,' the department said Firefighters can be heard yelling to 'go!' before they drive towards the inferno to get out Smoke obscures much of the view as they battle the blazes on September 4 'The end of the road was being over ran by fire and full of engines as well. They stayed fighting as long as they 'safely' could. Then drove through a wall of flames to get out.' The department assured viewers that they waited until all residents on the street where the footage was recorded approved the release. 'We share these images so communities can see what our firefighters and many other firefighters across the nation are doing to save the homes of those they don't know,' they added. 'Please be safe out there and evacuate when told to do so.' The Creek Fire had burned 228,025 acres and was 18 percent contained on Wednesday. The fires roared to life in California in mid-August, and erupted across Oregon and Washington around Labor Day last week, many of them sparked by catastrophic lightning storms and stoked by record-breaking heat waves and bouts of howling winds. Weather conditions improved early this week, enabling firefighters to begin to make headway in efforts to contain and tamp down the blazes. But California faces more devastation from wildfires that have ravaged the West Coast, authorities warned Wednesday, with strong winds and dry heat expected to whip up flames from dozens of blazes raging across the state. Governor Gavin Newsom said although firefighters had made progress in their battle to contain more than two dozen major wildfires, so-called Santa Ana winds could fuel the relentless blazes. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said 16,600 firefighters were still battling 25 major fires on Tuesday, after achieving full containment around the perimeter of other large blazes. A shot of a helicopter over the mountainside shows just how enormous the wildfire was Firefighters in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles waged an all-out campaign to save the famed Mount Wilson Observatory and an adjacent complex of broadcast transmission towers from flames that crept near the site. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated more than $1.2 million in mission assignments to bring relief to Oregon and has deployed five urban search and rescue teams to the wildfire-torn region, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday. Search teams scoured incinerated homes for the missing as firefighters kept up their exhausting battle. The wildfires, which officials and scientists have described as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, have filled the region's skies with smoke and soot, compounding a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Scientists in Europe tracked the smoke as it bore down on the continent, underscoring the magnitude of the disaster. The European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) is monitoring the scale and intensity of the fires and the transport of the resultant smoke across the United States and beyond. 'The fact that these fires are emitting so much pollution into the atmosphere that we can still see thick smoke over 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) away reflects just how devastating they have been in their magnitude and duration,' CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington said in a statement. CAMS said it uses satellite observations of aerosols, carbon monoxide and other constituents of smoke to monitor and forecast its movement through the atmosphere. A firefighter (right) works to contain the Bobcat Fire burning down a hillside on September 15 in Monrovia, California. California's national forests remain closed due to wildfires which have already incinerated a record 2.5 million acres this year. The Bobcat Fire, burning in the San Gabriel Mountains, has grown to over 40,000 acres Dee Perez comforts Michael Reynolds in the ruins of his home destroyed in the Almeda Fire in Talent, Oregon, September 15 Governors are going ahead with plans to shut down counties after Senators failed to pass the revenue sharing formula. Speaking on Wednesday, CoG chairman Wycliffe Oparanya blamed the Senate for making a bad situation worse. The plan to shut down counties tomorrow (September 17) is on. Our bare minimum is that counties get at least 50 percent of the shareable revenue as advised by the Supreme Court, or at the very least, the release of the full allocations for the months of July, August and September, Mr Oparanya told reporters. If nothing happens, then we will have no choice but to shut down counties and no service shall be offered. The Kakamega governor suggested that the Senate should just be dissolved. These people are not serious. In fact, this Senate should just be dissolved. We asked them to pass the County Allocation Revenue Bill so we can get the money as they continue the debate on the revenue sharing formula. But they have tied everything to this formula, and it is the counties that are now suffering, added the governor. In a statement, Oparanya said all non-essential county services have been suspended and county employees advised to proceed on leave for two weeks. He also said county health facilities will not permit any new inpatient admissions. They will only provide minimal outpatient services, he said, adding: In the meantime, the council will continue to push for the speedy release of county funds. Oparanya noted that county staff, including frontline health workers, have not been paid for three months. Despite Uhurus intervention on Tuesday, the Senate for the 10th time failed to resolve the county revenue-sharing stalement. In defiance of overwhelming opposition, the United States is preparing to declare that all sanctions against have been restored. Few countries believe the move is legal, and such action could provoke a credibility crisis at the Virtually alone in the world, the Trump administration will announce on Saturday that on eased under the 2015 nuclear deal are back in force. But the other members of the UN Security Council, including US allies, disagree and have vowed to ignore the step. That sets the stage for ugly confrontations as the world body prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary at a coronavirus-restricted General Assembly session next week. The question is how the Trump administration will respond to being ignored. It already has slapped extensive sanctions on Iran, but could impose penalties on countries that don't enforce the it claims to have reimposed. A wholesale rejection of the US position could push the administration, which has already withdrawn from multiple UN agencies, organisations and treaties, further away from the community. In the midst of a heated campaign for reelection, President Donald Trump plans to address in a speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday. Officials say he will also touch on his brokering of agreements for Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalise relations in part to solidify a regional bulwark against Iran. And, as he seeks to demonstrate statesmanlike credentials ahead of the election, Trump has injected another element of uncertainty into the mix by threatening to retaliate 1,000 times harder against Iran if it attacks US personnel overseas. His tweeted warning came earlier this week in response to a report that Iran is plotting to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa in retaliation for the US killing of a top Iranian general at the beginning of the year. Neither Trump nor any other senior US official has confirmed such a plot exists, although they have said Iran has a long history of political assassinations. Amid uncertainty over that, the other 14 members of the Security Council and all but about five of the UN's 195 member states say the US lost its legal standing to act on sanctions when Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord more than two years ago. The US argues it retains the right to enact the snapback of sanctions because the council resolution that endorsed the deal refers to it as a participant. These will be valid UN Security Council (actions) and the United States will do what it always does, it will do its share as part of its responsibilities to enable peace, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday. We'll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced. Pompeo travelled to the on August 20 to formally notify the Security Council that the US was triggering snapback because Iran is not complying with the nuclear deal. He dismissed suggestions that the administration was engaged in anything legally questionable or even controversial. He said the snapback mechanism was the one thing that the previous administration got right in the nuclear deal that Trump has denounced as the worst deal ever negotiated. The agreement was a signature foreign policy achievement of President Barack Obama and gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on it nuclear programme. Yet, aside from Israel and the Gulf Arab states, almost no country in the world agrees with the US Russia and China, along with American allies Britain, France and Germany, who often disagree but remain parties to the 2015 agreement, are united in declaring the US action illegal. Nonetheless, the US special envoy for Iran, Elliott Abrams, told reporters Wednesday that all would snap back" at 8 pm EDT on Saturday. "We expect all UN member states to implement their member state responsibilities and respect their obligations to uphold these sanctions, Abrams told reporters. If other nations do not follow it, he said, I think they should be asked... whether they do not think they are weakening the structure of UN sanctions. UN diplomats said the three European countries remaining in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, who are all currently Security Council members, will likely respond by issuing a statement reiterating their position that the United States cannot trigger snapback. Trump administration officials been attacking the 2015 nuclear deal for years. They say it is fatally flawed because certain restrictions on Iran's nuclear activity gradually expire and will allow the country to eventually develop atomic weapons. The UN sanctions the US is seeking to reimpose include a ban on uranium enrichment, all missile activity, and the indefinite extension of an arms embargo that would otherwise expire on October 18. The Security Council rejected a US effort to extend the embargo in a lopsided vote that got support from only one country, the Dominican Republic. Pompeo reiterated on Wednesday that Iran remains the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism and we don't believe that them being able to trade in weapons of war with impunity is remotely acceptable". He called the US decision to reimpose sanctions good for the peoples of all nations. But opposition to the US move is widespread and strong, including from 13 of the other 14 Security Council members. (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.) TikTok starts testing paid subscriptions Israeli fighter jets, refueling planes hold massive drills aimed at Tehran Barcelona want to sign Juventus defender Ansu Fati may miss 2 months because of injury France announces gradual lifting of coronavirus restrictions Fountains in Athens' central square illuminated with Armenian tricolor Austria approves Europe's first mandatory COVID-19 vaccination mandate World War II aircraft crashed in India found after 77 years Armenian Parliament Deputy Speaker meets EU delegation Deputy Speaker of Armenian parliament meets Russian Ambassador to Armenia Cristiano Ronaldo may miss home match against West Ham Germany won't pay compensation if Nord Stream 2 doesn't comply with German, EU laws Antonio Rudiger demands annual salary of 55 million euros from Chelsea NEWS.am digest: EU special rep. is in Armenia, Roma's Mkhitaryan turns 33 today Child injured in Artsakh car accident taken to Yerevan by Russian peacekeepers' helicopter Taiwanese woman faces death penalty for setting island's deadliest fire Aston Villa sign new contract with Emiliano Martinez Turkey passes law to exempt converted lira deposits from corporate tax Blinken says he discussed Iran nuclear deal with Lavrov Erdogan says Turkey has peaceful relations with Russia like never before New German government wants to attract 400,000 skilled workers from abroad every year Israeli Attorney General orders to investigate police allegations of spyware Blinken: Any Russian invasion of Ukraine will be met with swift response Candidate: Ombudsmans institution is one of few established institutions in Armenia Main signs of stroke Lavrov summarizes the results of talks with Blinken Netflix announces creation of entire universe based on The Squid Game series AusOpen Rafael Nadal defeats Karen Khachanov UN agrees on definition of Holocaust denial Lavrov and Blinken talks kick off in Geneva Juventus make offer to Dusan Vlahovic Australian FM says issue of sending direct military aid to Ukraine is not considered Armenia PM receives EU delegation, need for full operation of Karabakh peace process is stressed Armenia National Assembly debating on new ombudspersons candidacy Katherine Tai: The world can't go back to the 2019 trading system Dollar gains value in Armenia Armenia legislature told hold secret ballot to elect TV and radio commission new members Why is Omicron strain so dangerous for children? NATO intends to hold largest military exercises beyond Arctic Circle in early March 7 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh 'Zangezur corridor' will unite Turkic world, says Azerbaijan presidential office official First film studio in space to be set up for Tom Cruise movie Armenia FM highlights need for full resumption of Karabakh peace talks Singer Robbie Williams to sell three of Banksy's works Armenia ex-defense minister: In our time it was shame to immediately turn to CSTO in case of Azerbaijan provocations UN General Assembly head calls for peace during Beijing Olympics Tottenham extend contract with Hugo Lloris Armenia Tourism Committee has new chairperson AusOpen Zverev moves into 4th round Russian MFA: Priority today is to start Azerbaijan-Armenia border delimitation, demarcation process Parliament passes, in first reading, bill restricting gambling advertising in Armenia UK considering sending hundreds of additional troops to Ukraine's neighbors American cult actor and rock musician Meat Loaf dies aged 75 Warships of Russia, Iran and China work out counteraction to maritime piracy Armenia first deputy minister of justice dismissed Roma congratulate Mkhitaryan Israeli defense minister tests positive for COVID-19 Karabakh conflict resumption likelihood is moderate, its impact on US interests is low, report says Liverpool set new record Antonio Guterres thinks Russia will not invade Ukraine Azerbaijan ambassador to Russia hastens to sweeten the sediment of statement by US embassy in Baku Virgil Abloh's latest collection for Louis Vuitton presented in Paris (VIDEO) IS fighters attack army barracks in mountainous area north of Baghdad, killing 11 soldiers Sputnik V more effective against Omicron strain than Pfizer Mourinho says he has no intention to move to Everton Thomas de Waal: Will Armenia and Turkey be able to normalize relations after 3rd attempt? Armenia Security Council secretary, visiting EU delegation discuss situation on border with Azerbaijan Foreign ministers of Israel and Turkey have talk for 1st time in 13 years Fly Arna shareholders appoint companys Board of Directors 628 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Henrikh Mkhitaryan turns 33 CSTO chief: Necessary to work on Armenia-Azerbaijan border delimitation, demarcation FBI search congressman's home in connection with Azerbaijan probe Pamela Anderson splitting with bodyguard husband of one year Newspaper: Armenia PM again goes way of black and white Rex Kalamian heads Armenian national basketball team Newspaper: Scenario devised after war to be implemented in Artsakh EU Special Representative for South Caucasus arrives in Armenia Copa del Rey: Barca are out Coppa Italia: Roma reach quarterfinals, Mkhitaryan plays 100th match and makes assist EFL Cup: Liverpool make it to the final Africa Cup of Nations: Mali, Gambia, Tunisia advance to playoffs Copa del Rey: Real reach quarterfinals Armenian Noah hosts representatives of Spanish Celta Quake hits Armenia: 28 km northwest of Jermuk Crete island lighthouse illuminated with colors of Armenian tricolor Aurora Humanitarian Initiative to allocate $500,000 to projects in Artsakh Sajid Javid: Britain must learn to live with COVID-19, it could be with us forever Erdogan suggests Putin and Zelensky meet face to face EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus meets Aliyev Mariam Mkrtchyan becomes chess champion of Armenia US imposes sanctions on Ukrainians related to 'Russian harmful foreign activities' Sabah: Ankara refuses to hold next Armenian-Turkish meeting in a third country US general discusses regional security and bilateral cooperation in Armenia Secret graves of alleged protesters discovered in Almaty Armenian side members to Armenian-American Intergovernmental Commission confirmed Juventus ready to sell De Ligt for 65 million euros WHO advises countries to lift or ease international travel restrictions Bed scene with Lady Gaga and Salma Hayek was cut from House of Gucci US sanctions against Vladimir Putin, Ruben Vardanian and members of the Russian government The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday said that it has filed a case against six private companies for allegedly transmitting pop-ups with bogus warnings to personal computers of certain individuals. In a complaint filed with central agency, it has been alleged that these companies transmitted pop-ups to the victims personal computers by sending out warnings/bogus messages that said serious technical problems including malware infection in their Microsoft Windows systems, CBI said. Later, when the victims called on the helpline number to seek a solution to the pop-up issue arising on their computer, they were allegedly asked to pay a fee by clicking on a link on the interface for providing solution to the fake problems. The central agency so far has conducted raids in six cities. Searches are being carried out on Thursday at 10 locations including Jaipur, Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad and Mainpuri (UP) at the premises of said companies and the residential premises of other persons. The employees of these six companies based in New Delhi, Noida, Gurugram and Jaipur, allegedly advise the victims to install a certain anti-virus or anti-malwares that are originally PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs). The CBI is currently investigating the matter. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Offices will be reshut within two weeks if coronavirus infection rates continue to rise, ministers have reportedly warned. The new restriction would come little more than a month after Boris Johnson told people they should be returning to the workplace. The warning was made as the national test and trace system widely considered the best way of controlling community infection rates appeared on the verge of collapse. Centres across England have been overwhelmed by demand as thousands of people report having Covid-19 symptoms. Almost 4,000 positive cases were identified on Wednesday. Government sources told The Telegraph that if the problems persisted and positive numbers continued to grow, working from home would be made mandatory where possible for the first time since the national lockdown in the spring. Business leaders have already said it would be impossible to keep people in offices without an effective testing scheme. Matthew Fell, chief policy director of the Confederation of British Industry, said: "If we are to successfully encourage more people into their workplace safely, then the test and trace system will be a key component. "Reports of people being unable to access tests in their area or waiting too long to get the results will be deeply frustrating for individuals and businesses alike. No one doubts how much effort is going in to get it right. The prize is having a faster turnaround in getting results which will let people know where they stand and whether they need to self-isolate or can return to work quickly." Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, echoed the comments. He said: "A truly comprehensive test and trace programme is essential if the UK is to manage the virus without further lockdowns, which will cripple businesses. "Continuing delays and a shortage of tests saps business, staff and consumer confidence at a fragile moment for the economy." Meanwhile, many schools are already planning how they could transform their teaching into a hybrid format with pupils in classes some days and working from home others. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, 88, who had tested positive for coronavirus, was shifted by an air ambulance from Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) in Lucknow to a private hospital in Ghaziabad on Wednesday, officials said. Doctors said he was absolutely stable and was shifted on his familys request. Singhs family, including his son Rajvir, a Lok Sabha MP, and grandson Sandeep, a minister of state in the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, were both not reachable for their comments. He was doing fine. His oxygen levels and blood pressure were all okay and he wasnt running fever, the doctors at SGPGI said. He was absolutely stable and improving, the doctors added. A staffer at Kalyan Singhs house said the former UP chief minister, who also served as Rajasthan governor, was fine and he too, couldnt say why Singh had to be shifted to Yashoda hospital in Kaushambi area of Ghaziabad. Yashoda hospital medical superintendent Anuj Agarwal told PTI that Kalyan Singh has been admitted to the hospitals Covid-19 ward. Also Read: Uttar Pradesh may fund religious travel of 1.5 crore labourers from state Singh landed at the Hindon airport on a state government aircraft at 4.35 pm, an official said. He was then taken by road to the private hospital. Singh was admitted to SGPGI on Monday with complaints of fever, dry cough and breathlessness and had tested positive for Covid-19. Also Read: Babri Masjid demolition case verdict on Advani, Joshi, Bharti on September 30 An accused in the Babri mosque demolition case, Kalyan is among the leaders, who are to appear before the special CBI court in Lucknow on September 30 when the verdict in the sensitive case will be pronounced. He had recently said that his last desire was to see the Ram temple come up at Ayodhya. (WITH PTI INPUTS) The Police Service Commission has warned police personnel deployed to Edo State for Saturdays governorship poll to eschew acts of misconduc... The Police Service Commission has warned police personnel deployed to Edo State for Saturdays governorship poll to eschew acts of misconduct during the exercise. The Head, Press and Public Relations of the commission, Mr Ikechukwu Ani, made this known in a statement on Thursday in Abuja. Ani warned the operatives on electoral duty in the state to operate within the ambits of the law and rules of engagement. He said the commission had deployed a special team to monitor the conduct of police personnel during the exercise. He said that infractions by any officer against the rules guiding election policing would be investigated with appropriate sanctions meted out. Ani said the commission had received assurances from the police authorities that adequate security arrangements had been made to ensure a hitch-free and peaceful poll. He informed the public to call the commission on 07034072677, 08050517678 or 08052265260 for complaints and commendation on the conduct of police during the election, NAN reports. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. The coronavirus (COVID-19) infection rate remains extremely low on Staten Islands three college campuses, with no new positive cases reported as of last weekend. At Wagner College, there were no new positive tests through this past weekend, and only two positive cases have been reported in the past two weeks, though four residential students remain quarantined. Of the 577 tests results received over the weekend, 572 were negative and five required reprocessing, the college reported. The Uttar Pradesh police have formed a nine-member Special Investigation Team to probe cases of interfaith marriages in Kanpur, inspector general Mohit Agarwal said. Agarwal said the SIT has been given 10 days to complete the probe after a womans family claimed she was a victim of love jihad. Radical Hindu groups have popularised the term love jihad, which they use to describe what they believe is an organised conspiracy of Muslim men to trick Hindu women into marriage. In February, junior home minister G Kishan Reddy told Parliament the term love jihad is not defined under the laws and no such case has been reported by any central agency. The SIT probe has been ordered even as the woman recorded her statement in Delhis Tis Hazari court, saying she married on her own volition. The case fell flat but the Vishwa Hindu Parishad joined the family in staging a demonstration in Kidwai Nagar alleging a pattern in five interfaith marriages. As of now, the SIT has 15 such cases to look into. Agarwal said apart from tracing links between Muslims in such cases, the team would explore the conspiracy angle and look at whether the men were receiving overseas funding. Deen Dayal Gaur, a local VHP functionary, said, They are a result of a well-hatched conspiracy to target the Hindu girls; most of them are minor as per our inputs. The SIT is pursuing the case of a Muslim man, who allegedly adopted a Hindu identity, and allegedly abused a minor after renting a room in her house. LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The California Prince Hall Masonic Family Social Justice Committee will host a peaceful Black Lives Matter Vigil for the community on Saturday September 19, 2020 in Los Angeles. The vigil will take place across the street from the Prince Hall Memorial Auditorium at 9027 S. Figueroa, Los Angeles, California 90003. The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of California sponsored this vigil in response to the disproportionate number of Black lives ended at the hands of injustice. This vigil is dedicated to the memories of those lives lost. This event will include Los Angeles Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, as the keynote speaker. Black Lives Matter Vigil Flyer Voter Registration/Census Flyer "The importance of this vigil is to remember those who have fallen victim to social injustice," said Bryan Wiggins Chair for the Vigil. "We must not forget their names or the atrocities committed against them, this vigil is a stand in solidarity with everyone who is in opposition to social injustices." According to the Washington Post, Black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the United States population but are killed by the hands of social injustice at more than twice the rate of White Americans. As the world continues to march the streets to demand awareness and change, the California Prince Hall Masonic family stands in solidarity. Participants will also have a chance to partake in the voter registration and 2020 census drive. Face mask is required to participate in the vigil. The California Prince Hall Masons are the oldest fraternal organization in the United States since 1794 in Boston, Massachusetts by 14 freed Black men. California Prince Hall Masonry began in 1852 and the Grand Lodge established in June 1855. Since its inception and currently under the leadership of the 56th Most Worshipful Grand Master the Honorable Samuel T. King, members continue to be change agents in their communities through service, academic scholarships, and mentoring the youth. The purpose of Masonry is to make good Men better. Well known Prince Hall Masons include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Congressmember John Lewis, and the Rev. Jessie Jackson. For further information about California Prince Hall Masonic Family please visit their website at https://mwphglcal.org. Media Contact: Bryan Wiggins (323) 754-2938 [email protected] SOURCE California Prince Hall Masons Related Links https://mwphglcal.org WASHINGTON The Chinese company that owns TikTok has accepted the Trump administrations changes to a deal designed to mitigate the White Houses concerns that the popular app poses a national security threat, two people with knowledge of the talks said. The Treasury Department, which leads a group reviewing the deal for national security purposes, provided TikToks owner, ByteDance, with revisions to its proposal on Wednesday, one of the people said. Some of the revisions were intended to address how TikToks data and source code would be handled and secured, one of the people said. The two sides have agreed in principle, but are still discussing some technical details, the other person said. The exact ownership structure of TikTok under the proposed deal is unclear. President Trump and some members of his administration have said ByteDance cannot retain a majority stake in TikTok if their concerns are to be satisfied. Oracle, the Silicon Valley business software maker, is set to be a technology partner for TikTok while taking an ownership stake in the app, but would not own it outright, people with knowledge of the situation have said. Any resolution on ownership could involve some tricky math. The percentage of TikTok owned by non-American interests depends partly on how officials treat the portion of ByteDance, a privately held company, that is already backed by American investors, one person said. The Bible is now available for the first time in the Pazande language spoken in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. By Godfrey Kampamba South Sudan has launched the first edition of the Bible written in the local Pazande language. It was presented on 14 September by the Bishop of the diocese of Tombura-Yambio. Entitled "Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path", the event coincided with the sixth anniversary of the death of the first bishop to be incardinated in the diocese, Bishop Joseph Gasi Abangite. Gracing the occasion was the current ordinary of the diocese, Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala. Four million people to benefit In his pastoral letter published for the presentation of this local language bible, Mgr. Kussala underscored the importance of having such an edition of Sacred Scripture. He said that this version of the Bible is going to cover more than four million faithful who speak the Pazande language. These are spread in areas found in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Vital reference point "My desire, as Ordinary of the Catholic Diocese of Tombura-Yambio, is to celebrate, study, spread and live the Word of God so that it becomes the pivot of all aspects of life. He said further that he hoped that the Bible will become a vital reference point for the life of every faithful, and for the church of Tombura-Yambio. He exhorted his flock to celebrate, read, pray and share the Word of God using this first version of the Pazande Bible. Priests: Ministers of the Word In his closing remarks Bishop Kussala invited priests of his diocese to consider the event as "a new call to be ministers of the Word". At the same time he also urged Christians to continue praying in order to defeat the global coronavirus pandemic and to abide by the given guidelines in order to help curb the spread of the virus. The ceremony, in the diocese inhabited by the countrys Pazende speaking people, was also attended by the governor of the western equatorial State, General Alfred Futuyo. In his speech, the representative of the local authority invited citizens to embrace peace and unity. He encouraged the people to unite and foster development in the State and in the country as a whole. The 2020 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM), published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), has recently been released, providing an analysis of continental and regional trends in African agricultural trade flows and policies. According to the AATM report, the third in a series of flagship reports, policy reactions among the worlds leading food and agricultural producers during the coronavirus pandemic since the beginning of the year have caused disruptions in world supply chains and threatened food-security systems in food import-dependent countries. Furthermore, measures to contain the virus have magnified the negative impact of the crisis on intra-continental trade flows and the livelihoods of millions of people across Africa. But opportunities lie in the crisis, as the foreword to the report points out. Among these is a strong political will to improve intra-African integration with the ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. This agreement, launched in July 2019, aims to eliminate tariff and non-tariff measures on goods, improve continental integration, and speed up customs procedures that remain a serious barrier to trade performance in Africa. According to the report, countries should not let the pandemic stop progress towards economic integration. It said that agreements like the AfCFTA could provide not only a solid basis for long-term economic development, but also a means of effectively fighting future pandemics by facilitating the cross-border trade of food and medical goods. According to the report, virtual negotiations on the AfCFTA could begin in the coming days and set a new start date for its implementation, possibly before 1 January 2021. A second opportunity lies in an agreement by African states to establish trade corridors and reduce duties to enable the transit of essential goods that are fundamental to combating the pandemic. These short-term measures could also clearly increase intra-African exports, the foreword to the report said. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) are the largest economic players within the continent, said the report, followed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). The current export patterns within the different African regions are sufficiently dissimilar to suggest there is room to expand intra-regional trade within the continent, the report said, calling for more coordinated efforts to create a more integrated market and reduce the negative effects of non-tariff barriers and behind-the-border barriers. African agricultural exports showed an upward trend between 2003 and 2018, said the report. Furthermore, the African countries increased exports to new destinations such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and other Asian countries, including Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Malaysia, and Pakistan. Cocoa beans, cashew nuts, tobacco, coffee, oranges, cotton, sesame seeds, black tea, cocoa paste, and fresh grapes were the 10 most exported agricultural products. Exports to the EU fell from 45 per cent of the total in 2005-2007 to 36 per cent in 2016-2018. However, in current dollar terms, EU imports of Africas agricultural products saw a sustained upward trend, despite the decrease in share, and the EU has remained the top destination for African agricultural exports. The same goes for the US and intra-African destinations, which also grew in value, though their share remained unchanged at five and 20 per cent, respectively. According to the AATM report, Africas agricultural exports have increased steadily over the past 20 years within the continent, but more so within its various regional economic communities. For example, SADC and COMESA member states retained 84 per cent and 66 per cent of their intra-Africa exports within their respective regions in 2016-2018, and ECOWAS, AMU, and ECCAS also retained 79, 60, and 46 per cent, respectively. Moreover, the share of exports within each regional economic community was significantly larger than the share of world agricultural exports. This could be explained by the geographic proximity, cultural similarities, historical trading relationships, and preferential trade agreements, it said. The report tracks increased exports of food products such as maize and wheat, but also processed foods such as soups, broths, and food preparations, reflecting growth in processed food consumption, along with demographic shifts, growing urban food demand, and changing lifestyles and habits in rural areas. Rice, cattle, apples, vegetables, sweeteners and fats, beverages, and traditional non-food products such as tea, coffee, palm oil, cotton, and tobacco, were also among the top 20 commodities traded intra-regionally. The low competitiveness of the African countries can be explained either by issues such as a lack of comparative advantage or factors such as high tariffs and domestic support for some products, in the main producers of agricultural products, the report said. It points out that tariff protection against imports from extra-regional suppliers can be as high as that on imports from world markets. Furthermore, ad valorem equivalents incorporating non-tariff measures suggest that they can be more trade-restrictive than tariffs. The removal of logistical barriers was also called for in the report, as current barriers stunt coordinated supply chains between and within the various regional economic communities, it said. African governments will have to play a critical role in enforcing the removal of non-tariff barriers to intra-continental trade. The challenge of further opening national agriculture sectors is crucial, as intra-continental destinations account for 20 per cent of Africas agricultural exports, the report says. Domestic support in both developed and emerging markets is another problem facing African agricultural exports. Emerging economies like China and Brazil and advanced economies such as the European Union and the United States are major providers of domestic support for their producers. China has the highest domestic support as a share of GDP. Non-tariff measures also constrain Africas global trade potential, the report said. While Africa accounts for 10.2 per cent of the worlds agricultural GDP, it accounts for only 2.7 per cent of global GDP and 4.2 per cent of global agricultural exports, showed the report. These figures reflect Africas lower labour productivity, lack of competitiveness in world markets, and the prevalence of non-tariff barriers affecting the continents exporters. The latter range from sanitary and phytosanitary measures to conformity assessment and domestic support in the main producers of agricultural products. The report argues that a more comprehensive approach is needed to help African exporters increase their competitiveness and reduce the negative effects of non-tariff measures. Recommended policies include harmonising trade regulation at the continental level, not only by tackling import duties but also streamlining the costly non-tariff measures that suffocate trade. Maintaining the well-being of the end consumer is also imperative, says the report. Policy-makers, investors, and businesses should prioritise culturally appropriate, nutrient-dense foods, so that trade and value-chain development benefit consumers health. Nutrition-focused trade is imperative if Africa wants to avoid the risks of obesity, metabolic disease, and malnourishment caused by processed foods with poor nutrition quality, it said. Infrastructure must also serve that purpose by providing facilities such as low-cost cool-storage and food-safety measures. The improvement of customs efficiency as well as of transportation and telecommunication infrastructure was also a must for the general good of trade, the report said. Tackling issues such as poor access to credit markets, insufficient investment in research and development, and insufficient access to fertilisers, new technology, and irrigation could raise the current low level of agricultural productivity. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Dear Amy: Ive been scammed by a hacker. Im a middle-aged woman. My fiance of five years is a chronic liar and he has cheated on me. I know in my head that I should leave him, but my heart wont let me. He is in a 12-step program, and says he is trying to change, but I stupidly tried to hire someone to hack his phone. I sent this person $300. I have an email from them stating that this was the cost. Later the same day, this person said it would cost an additional $120. I refused to send more money, because I came to believe that this was a scam. This person now refuses to return my money. Do I have any recourse? Im afraid to go to the local police. Im afraid its against the law to hack someone. Im out $300, I dont know what to do. Can I go to the police? Scammed by Hacker Dear Scammed: You seem to have fallen for an advance fee scam. I contacted the FBI field office in Chicago for an explainer. According to Agent Siobhan Johnson, FBI Chicago spokesperson: In an advance fee scheme, a victim pays for something of value only to receive little to nothing in return. This type of crime is extremely common and appears in many forms. When you engage with an online scammer, you open the door to a host of future problems from cyber intrusions, to identity theft, to extortion. Often, the only way to stop the cycle is through good cyber hygiene (changing passwords frequently, requiring two-factor authentication, etc.) and reporting the crime to law enforcement. More on cyber hygiene can be found on the FBI website: fbi.gov. The FBI is the lead investigative agency for cyber-crimes, and victims are encouraged to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaints Center (IC3) at ic3.gov. Now that you know youve been had, yes it is illegal to solicit a phone hacking. No, I dont think there is much enforcement recourse for you. The scammer might be working out of a cafe in Nigeria or Bogota. The scammer might be a 14-year-old named Skippy, or possibly your boyfriend, catfishing you. You should consider this $300 as an investment toward your own future. You do not trust your boyfriend enough to stay with him. Your judgment is quite flawed when it comes to him. If you turned over any of your (or his) personal information to the scammer (phone number, bank information, etc.), you should take steps to correct this. (And if the scammer could hack your boyfriend, couldnt he also hack you?) If the scammer turns up the pressure or threatens you in any way, you should definitely go to the police. Dear Amy: My husband passed away two months ago, and I have slowly found out things he has told his family and friends about me and our marriage that are not true! I am having such a hard time accepting that he is gone. Now that I realize he has told ugly lies about things that are so untrue I cant get any closure. I feel such a sense of betrayal, and I just dont understand his actions. His family believes everything he has said, and I feel snubbed by many of our friends. What do I do? Where do I go from here? Betrayed Dear Betrayed: Your first stop should be to a grief counselor and/or a grief support group. Your local hospice center and hospital will have recommendations for local resources. This is vital. Write down your thoughts. On paper, refute every single lie and misleading statement you are aware of. I also think that you should correct the record and defend yourself at every turn, if you have the energy (you might not). This is a terrible betrayal, and, unfortunately, you may not uncover his motivations for lying about you. Buddhist thinker Pema Chodron is my go-to sage and comfort. You can dip in and out of her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (2016, Shambhala), and find wisdom, comfort, and healing. Dear Amy: I thought your advice to Worried was way off base. It is not a daughters responsibility to take care of her dad with dementia. As long as he has a wife, he is her responsibility. The daughter can help pay for his care, if necessary. Disappointed Dear Disappointed: I hope you warn your spouse. (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 Rents in college areas (neighborhoods with 20% or more college students) were down 0.5% year-over-year in August, but were up 2.6% year-over-year in non-college areas. The gap between rents in college areas and non-college areas is as wide as it has been since at least 2017. Two million more young Americans were living with parents or grandparents in August compared to last year. Rent prices in college neighborhoods have fallen this summer as colleges and universities across the country have opted for remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The drop in college areas stands out even in a rental market that has softened since February, with rent price growth slowing and landlords offering more concessions. Average rent prices were growing 4.7% year over year in February in college areas, according to a Zillow analysis of 100 U.S. ZIP codes in which college students make up at least 20% of the population. By August, when many students would typically move back near campus, rents were down 0.5% in these areas from the year before the first such decline in these neighborhoods since January 2017. Rents in ZIP codes with a lower share of college students were up 2.6% over the same period. In May, the average rent was $19 per month lower in college areas than non- college areas. By August, that gap had widened to $63 as rents continued to fall in college areas but still rose elsewhere, the widest gap between college and non-college areas since at least 2017 (the earliest Zillow data is available). Rising unemployment and campus closures, among other factors, pushed about 2.7 million American adults to move back in with parents or grandparents last spring. Those numbers dwindled during the summer months, but there were still 2 million more 18- to 25-year-olds living at home in August than there were a year earlier, an 11% increase. The jump in the share of these college-age Americans living at home was sharpest among Black and Asian and Pacific Islander young adults. Nearly two-thirds (65.7%) of Black 18- to 25-year-olds were living at home in August, up from 56.5% last year. Story continues With demand for rentals softening, landlords are offering discounts or other incentives as they strive to attract new tenants. Rent concessions on Zillow listings across the country are nearly twice as common as they were in February. Even small discounts or short-lived vacancies can have a big impact on landlords rental owners typically spend more than half of their rental income on fixed costs of property ownership including mortgage payments, property taxes and insurance. Without more progress made in combating COVID-19, it's unlikely that rents in college areas will meaningfully recover. Pandemic-mandated campus closures and opportunities to complete courses online have provided motivation for young people to move back home in order to save on rent and be close to family. And because many leases in college areas begin and end in late summer/early fall, we can expect even greater impacts to rents in these neighborhoods as we move further into the first full semester overlapped by the pandemic. Methodology We matched 2018 1-Year American Community Survey data for ZIP codes and their share and count of college populations with ZIP codes in the largest 100 metros for which we have Zillow Observed Rent Index data. We then compared average rents between areas with at least 20% college students and areas with less than 20% college students from January 2018 to August 2020. The post College-Area Rents Are Falling Behind as Schools Move Online appeared first on Zillow Research. How Books and Buckets program in Long Beach aims to keep kids away from gang violence Madagascar's Foreign Affairs Minister Djacoba Tehindrazanarivelo inaugurated the Ambassadors' Portrait Gallery at the Indian Embassy in Antananarivo along with Indian Ambassador Abhay Kumar on Thursday, September 17. Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, both the Indian Ambassador and Foreign Minister addressed the gathered dignitaries. Hon'ble Foreign Minister of Madagascar H.E @Tehindrazanari1 inaugurated the Ambassadors' Portrait Gallery today at the Embassy of India Antananarivo. Indian Embassy opened in #Madagascar in 1960 and so far 21 Indian Ambassadors have served in #Madagascar. pic.twitter.com/ke1Jt2hLCL India in Madagascar & Comoros (@IndembTana) September 17, 2020 Read: Madagascar's Native Lemurs Are Facing The Threat Of Extinction: Report India-Madagascar Ties As per the official press note, while addressing the dignitaries, Ambassador Abhay Kumar highlighted that India was one of the first countries in the world to establish an Embassy in Madagascar. First, a Consulate General was opened in 1954 which was later upgraded to an Embassy by 1960. Ambassador Kumar mentioned that during the six decades of India's diplomatic relations with Madagascar, 21 Indian Ambassadors have tirelessly worked to strengthen the bilateral ties and added that the Portrait Gallery was a humble tribute to them. Read: China Has Had 'no Notice' Of US Ambassador Leaving Ambassador Kumar noted that India-Madagascar relationship is at an all-time high following the Indian President visit in 2018, and Madagascar Defence Minister's visit to India in February 2020. He also mentioned a Twitter exchange between Dr. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister India and the Foreign Minister of Madagascar last month on 15th August, on the occasion of India's Independence Day. During his address, the Madagascar Foreign Minister said the friendly and successful ties between the two countries were a result of tireless work of countless men and women on both sides. He went on to congratulate the Indian Embassy for its initiative and thanked them for allowing him to be a part of it. This was Madagascar Foreign Minister's first visit to the India Embassy in Antananarivo. Read: UK Summons Russian Ambassador Regarding Alexei Navalny Poisoning Read: Russian Embassy In US Proposes Face To Face Discussions On Arms Control While earlier studies have shown the significance of serological testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in pregnant women, their partners have largely been excluded. Now, a new Danish study published on the preprint server medRxiv* in September 2020 reports the impact of serologic testing in both pregnant women and their partners, as well as their newborns. Risk of COVID-19 in Pregnant Women The COVID-19 pandemic is transmitted mainly by droplets. However, several researchers have attempted to find out if vertical transmission occurs in pregnancy and parturition. Most such studies have focused on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for viral RNA. One study found that of ~700 parturient women in New York City, the prevalence of COVID-19 was 10%, and ~80% were asymptomatically infected. The incidence of Cesarean sections, post-delivery issues, and placental disease appeared to be higher in infected mothers. Serology in pregnant women has found a seroprevalence of about 6%. In the current prospective cohort study using broad serological testing, the researchers included over 1,300 women, ~1,200 partners, and 1,200 newborns, in over 1,000 families with complete serological data. Pharyngeal swabs and blood samples were obtained on admission from all the women and their partners, and a blood sample from the umbilical cord immediately after parturition. All swabs underwent PCR for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, and serological assays were carried out on the blood samples. Family pattern of SARS-CoV-2 transmission Risk Higher by 37% in Women with Seropositive Partners About 3% and 4% of mothers and their partners were seropositive, respectively, when corrected analyses are used. In families where the partner was seropositive, there was a 37% risk that the pregnant woman would be infected, which is almost half as much again compared to the risk faced by those living with seronegative partners. Seropositive women were more likely to have blood type A but had no significant differences from seronegative women. The partners of these women also had no significantly different baseline characteristics except for comorbidities. About 60% reported COVID-19 symptoms. More seropositive men had a history of prior COVID-19-positive swabs and symptoms compared to seronegative men. Overall, just over half of seropositive individuals were symptomatic. Seropositivity in Newborns Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were present in 17 newborns, but no Immunoglobulin M (IgM). Of the seropositive newborns, three were born to seronegative mothers. Thus, the risk of seropositivity in the newborn was almost 450 times greater (or the baby was at 86% higher risk for antibody detection) if the mother was seropositive, compared to those born to seronegative mothers. Of the 29 seropositive women, only one had a COVID-19 positive swab, while one in the seronegative group had a positive swab four days prior to delivery. The researchers found no apparent links between a past history of COVID-19 during pregnancy and complications to either the mother or newborn. No Obstetric or Newborn Complications Detected This study did not show any effect of the disease on the newborn in terms of weight difference, vigor or term of gestation. This contrasts with the New York City study mentioned above, where the rate of Cesarean delivery was ~46% in COVID-19 positive mothers but ~31% in uninfected women. The difference could be due to the criterial differences, where the current study relied on serology while the earlier one used PCR of nasopharyngeal swab specimens. Another possibility could be varying national guidelines for Cesarean section or variations in the baseline characteristics of the women in these two studies. These differences can cause significantly varying study outcomes, as shown by the higher frequency of cesarean delivery (at 59% and 93%, respectively) in two different recent studies in women with symptomatic COVID-19 women. The IgG antibodies in the newborns may be due to passive diffusion of antibodies across the placenta, unlike IgM. Thus they are not a reflection of vertical transmission but of maternal infection. The presence of antibodies in some seronegative mothers might be because of the concentration of maternal antibodies within the newborns circulation. Another reason to rule out infant infection is the lack of adverse neonatal outcomes, without any indication of hypoxia, acidosis, malformations, or neonatal hospitalization. Implications Parturients are, in general, hospitalized only around childbirth, and thus represent typical women of their age in the community. Their partners also offer a window for assessing community prevalence of this virus. In the Danish population, the prevalence was estimated at 1% based on a sampling of 40% of the random population sample. The higher prevalence in this study could be due to the different timelines of these two estimates. Overall, Denmark has reported low rates of infection due to an early lockdown. Still, women living with an infected partner have a higher risk of being infected themselves, even with the high rate of asymptomatic infection. Such studies are essential to understand how infection can spread within families and thus guide public health advisories and policies. The study concludes, This study reports no association between COVID-19 and obstetric or neonatal complications. On the other hand, the risk of infection in women is increased when living with a seropositive partner. *Important Notice medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information. OnRobot Sander is the latest addition to OnRobot's growing range of no-fuss, application-centered automation solutions. OnRobot has launched OnRobot Sander, an all-electric random orbital sander for automated finishing applications, including sanding and polishing. Traditional sanding automation solutions often require a background in robotics to implement and maintain. With the launch of OnRobot Sander, manufacturers now have access to a complete out-of-the-box sanding tool that's easy to use with all major collaborative and lightweight industrial robots. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005816/en/ OnRobot launches OnRobot Sander, an all-electric random orbital sander for automated finishing applications, operating at as little as 5% the cost of pneumatic sanding systems. (Photo: Business Wire) The complete Sander package incorporates everything OnRobot customers need to get their sanding application started quickly and easily: a plug-and-play sanding tool, a variety of standard sanding and polishing pads, easy-to-use programming software, an optional force/ torque sensor and a Grit Changer that enables automated switching between different sanding grits without operator intervention. Taking usability a step further Programming simple surface finishing applications on Sander is easy thanks to the intuitive built-in software. But OnRobot takes usability a step further with the addition of a "Save Position" button on the tool that allows users to set waypoints manually without using the robot's teach pendant. The Sander software comes with different path planning options handguide, shape and points, and allows users to adjust rotation speed, optimizing cycle time and consistency. "OnRobot is committed to providing small and medium-size businesses with affordable, application-centered solutions that are easy to set up and maintain. OnRobot Sander is a versatile sanding tool that provides all the features and benefits our customers expect of automated sanding technology, but without all the hassle and cost traditionally associated with automated sanding tools," says Enrico Krog Iversen, CEO of OnRobot. OnRobot Sander supports flat, curved and uneven part geometries and comes with replaceable standard pads that can be used on a wide range of materials. Adding a force/torque sensor enables the sander to adapt to surface variations or part misalignment, while improving consistency and quality and reducing scrap rate. All of the advanced features of the OnRobot Sander are supported on Universal Robots cobots, but the tool is easily integrated with any major robot brand. Significant cost savings compared to pneumatic sanders Sander is a lightweight [1.2 kg (2.64lb), with pad] solution that combines the power of its brushless electric motor power (up to 10,000 RPM) with operating costs as little as 5% of that of pneumatic sanding systems. Traditional pneumatic sanding machines use external air compressors, which are very expensive and prone to leaks. Meanwhile, Sander's brushless electric motor is durable and reliable with a lifespan equal to or greater than that of competing pneumatic systems. "OnRobot is committed to democratizing automation, product by product and application by application, by making ready-to-go solutions available to companies that are completely new to automation. We take the cost and complexity associated with automation away, leaving our customers with the all-important functionality they need to get the work done," explains Iversen. Sander provides safer work environment Sanding is often dirty and dangerous work that carries a range of potential health risks for workers, from the debilitating 'white-finger syndrome' caused by high vibration hand tools to lung damage caused by particulate matter. OnRobot Sander eliminates these risks and uses 3M clean sandpaper discs, which allow more dust to be extracted, thereby ensuring a safer environment for workers compared to competing systems. "At OnRobot we're seeing increased interest from companies that are completely new to robotics but are looking for ways to supplement existing labor through automation. These companies are looking for simple, user-friendly solutions, like OnRobot Sander, that can be easily deployed on a wide variety of tasks within each application domain," says the OnRobot CEO. Download images and video HERE. About OnRobot OnRobot product range features a wide assortment of tools for collaborative applications, including electric grippers, force/torque sensors, a vacuum gripper, the award-winning Gecko gripping technology, and tool changers. This new combination of offerings from OnRobot makes it quicker and simpler to automate tasks such as packaging, quality control, materials handling, machine tending, packaging, assembly, and surface finishing. Headquartered in Odense, Denmark, OnRobot also has offices in Los Angeles, Dallas, Soest (Germany), Barcelona, Warsaw, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore and Budapest. For more information, visit www.onrobot.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005816/en/ Contacts: Company: OnRobot: Kristian Hulgard, General Manager, Americas +1 469 442 9370 kristian.hulgard@onrobot.com Media: McCall Media: Mette McCall +1 415 800 3517 mette@mccallmedia.net Three men allegedly gang-raped a 17-year-old girl at knife-point in front of her brother-in-law while the duo was returning to their home in north-east Delhi after visiting a relatives on Tuesday night, the police said. The three suspects were arrested on Wednesday morning after the police identified them through CCTV footage, said Alok Kumar, joint commissioner of police (eastern range). Police said the girls brother-in-law suffered cuts in his palm while trying to fight off the alleged rapists, but the injury was not serious. The crime took place around 10pm on Tuesday. They got off a bus near Mandoli Jail and were walking through a deserted street when the three suspects accosted them and harassed the girl, said another senior police officer who didnt want to be identified. When the girl admonished them, they pulled out knives and forcibly led the duo to an under-construction building nearby where the three raped the teenager, said the officer. Her brother-in-law tried to put up a fight by reaching out for the knife of one of the suspects, but he suffered a cut to his hand. While leaving the crime scene, the suspects also took away the girls purse, the officer added. As soon as the suspects fled on a motorcycle, the victims raised an alarm, drawing the attention of a police team patrolling nearby. Based on the description provided by the survivor, the police team immediately began hunting for the suspects and soon spotted them not far from the crime spot. The police launched a chase that lasted three kilometres before the suspects found themselves cornered. They abandoned their motorcycle and ran into the streets and disappeared, said JCP Kumar. The police recovered the survivors robbed purse from the spot where the motorcycle was left abandoned. Tracking registration of the bike, the police got to know that it had been stolen. We then checked CCTV footage from the crime spot to the point they left their motorcycle. One camera had captured the suspects. We showed the images to local residents and people with criminal records. That helped us identify them, said JCP Kumar. The officer identified the suspects as Rajeev, Shehzad and Ikram all aged between 25 and 30 and residents of north-east Delhi and Ghaziabad. While Rajeev had once been arrested under the Arms Act by the south-east Delhi district police, the other two men had no criminal antecedents. The police have registered a case of gang rape, robbery and assault at Harsh Vihar police station. Car explosion against Playa del Carmen police station possible gang retaliation Playa del Carmen, Q.R. A car fire outside the Playa del Carmen police headquarters caused a stir and material damage late Tuesday night. Although media speculation reported a grenade as the likely reason for the explosion, the Chief of Police clarified that not to be the case. The Secretary of Public Security of Quintana Roo, Jesus Alberto Capella Ibarra reported that Tuesday at 11:45 p.m. the explosion of a vehicle was recorded outside the Q. Roo de Solidaridad. He added that according to an investigation carried out by elements of the State Attorney Generals Office (FGE) they discard the use of sophisticated explosive devices or some fragmentation grenade, adding that no injuries were reported, only material damage. The incident happened late Tuesday night outside the main facilities of the Quintana Roo Police based in Solidaridad (Playa del Carmen) located in the the Ejido neighborhood where rescue units and firefighters arrived to assist with the fire of the vehicle. Police investigate car explosion outside the Playa del Carmen station Jesus Alberto Capella Ibarra noted that in recent weeks, there have been significant arrests of alleged extortionists, murderers and drug dealers in that area. These actions simply further motivate us to remain relentless and decisive against crime. We will continue to advance, he said. We have all seen how certified young person Paul Rudd tried to appeal to the millennials to wear a face mask to curb the spread of coronavirus. Now, he might as well appeal to us to wear eyeglasses since a recent study reveals that those who wear eyeglasses are five times less likely to contract COVID-19. A research from China published in JAMA Ophthalmology Journal studied 276 patients with COVID-19 in Suizhou Zengdu Hospital in Suizhou city from January 27 to March 13. Out of 276 subjects, 16 patients had myopia and wore glasses for more than eight hours a day. The introduction of the report mentions how more than 80% of the population in China had myopia, which made wearing of eyeglasses common among Chinese individuals of all ages. However, the scientists noted that since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, very few patients with eyeglasses were contracting the virus. Scientists found that patients with COVID-19 who wore eyeglasses for more than eight hours every day were much less in number compared to those who did not wear eyeglasses. This finding led them to conclude that people who wear eyeglasses daily are less susceptible to COVID-19. Since the outbreak of pandemic, medical authorities like World Health Organisations have asked people to avoid touching their faces as the risk of virus entering the body increases. It is said that eyes, nose and mouth are the most likely places from where the virus might find its way in. The research says, Eyes usually lack protection, and an abundance of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 has been found on the ocular surface,8 through which SARS-CoV-2 can enter the human body. However, the research does come with limitations, as they did not studied a large group of people. The scientists say that their study needs to be replicated on a large scale to verify the findings. The second hearing on Iran's complaint against Washington with The Hague started late on Wednesday for violation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity by the US, Trend reports citing IRNA. This stage of the case will be held in four sessions, and the third and fourth sessions will be held next Friday and Monday. The first session of the new phase of reviewing this legal case was held on Monday, September 15th. Although this process may take some time to reach a final vote, it, as an effective legal action by the Iranian government, has challenged Washington's administration at the world's supreme legal body to counter unilateralism and resistance to US excessive demands. Iran lodged a complaint against the US with the International Court of Justice last year for violating the 1955 Amity Treaty between Tehran and Washington by the US, which led to the issuance of an interim injunction in favor of Iran, which marked an important achievement for Tehran at the outset. According to the official website of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice will hold its public hearings on the "exceptions preliminaires" of the United States from September 14 to 21, 2020, which will be held in video due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. ISTANBUL Turkey is starting clinical trials of potential vaccines for the novel coronavirus, working with drugmakers in China, the United States and other countries. On Wednesday, three Turkish health workers at an Ankara research hospital began Phase III trials of Chinese manufacturer Sinovac Biotechs vaccine, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at a news conference after a meeting with the governments coronavirus task force. The trial will eventually be expanded to 10,000 volunteers and the vaccines effectiveness in creating antibodies will become clear within a month. Turkey will also participate in US drugmaker Pfizers clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine that will soon begin in Istanbul, he said late on Wednesday. It may approve Phase III trials of a Russian treatment as early as next week once it determines that problems with the drug have been resolved, he said. He did not specify the problems. Our citizens may have genetic or regional differences. To see if this has an impact, we believe it is important to take different actions. So we are not working with just these three vaccines but are closely cooperating on other vaccines, Koca said. We are engaged in efforts to obtain at an early stage the vaccine that gives us confidence and results. The government hopes one of these treatments will be available to the general public by the end of the year. Turkey is continuing to develop its own vaccines as well, but work remains in the preclinical stages and wont be ready for production until 2021, he said. Despite the promise of a remedy, Koca warned that Turkey is grappling with its toughest days of the outbreak as the total case count approaches 300,000. Today we and the world are confronted with a more difficult period than we were at the beginning of this pandemic, he said. On Thursday, the Health Ministry said 66 people died of COVID-19 and 1,648 were diagnosed with the disease. That figure has been above 1,500 every day this month in what Koca has described as a second peak in the outbreak. More than 7,300 people have died since the virus reached Turkey in March. In an effort to curb the rise, the Interior Ministry stated in another circular that those who test positive and fail to self-isolate will be taken to dormitories or small hotels to complete their quarantine. It has recorded more than 20,000 violations of stay-at-home orders since Aug. 22. Koca said the coronavirus task force has not recommended the government impose a wider lockdown and that it was not a preferred method to curb the spread. The burden on our health care workers is four to five times higher than it was at the beginning. Hospitals are the front line in this war, and we have had losses at this front, Koca said. But health care workers are also facing attacks from politicians. The leader of the governments ultranationalist partner demanded the nations largest doctors group be outlawed for questioning the governments handling of the outbreak and that its leaders be prosecuted. Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, was outraged over what he called a poisonous and evil plot by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), which asked members to observe a moment of silence Thursday and wear a black ribbon to honor the 90 medical workers who have died after contracting COVID-19. The Turkish Medical Association is as dangerous as corona, Bahceli tweeted late on Wednesday. Telling the government, 'You cannot manage it, we are dying, we are burning out,' is a treacherous plot. He questioned the groups Turkishness, called it treasonous and said it should be immediately replaced with patriotic scientists. Despite only controlling 8% of parliamentary seats, Bahceli wields outsized influence over the ruling Justice and Development Party by delivering it the majority it needs to pass legislation and is credited with the governments sharp swerve toward nationalism. The TTB said on Thursday it would not be cowed by such threats. Sharing with the public warnings and recommendations based on scientific data for public health is the Turkish Medical Associations universal, legal and ethical responsibility. It is our debt of loyalty to remember with a black ribbon our colleagues lost to COVID-19 and their loved ones and to prevent further losses, the TTB said in a statement in response to Bahcelis salvo. The TTB has complained that doctors are facing criminal investigations for their criticism of public health policy in an effort to control information about the outbreak. Doctors as well as opposition politicians have cast doubt on the veracity of official figures, saying the likely case count is far higher. A racehorse trainer based in Wellington, Florida, and Louisville paid $325,431 in owed earnings to groomers and hot walkers and $99,567 in civil penalties after several H-2B visa program and Fair Labor Standards Act violations. Among the ways George Weaver and Weaver Racing did this, the U.S. Department of Labor said, were telling workers to lie to Labors Wage and Hour investigators and attempting to intimidate employees from participating in WHDs investigation. In a federal court consent judgment, Weaver admitted to shorting groomers and hot walkers in Elmwood and Saratoga, New York, and other employees on $150,332 overtime pay. That went to 59 employees, $2,548 per worker. For the overtime pay violations and not keeping proper records of how long employees worked, Weaver paid the government a $15,147 civil penalty. Trainer George Weaver at Louisvilles Churchill Downs in April 2015, five days before his horse, Tendencur, ran in The Kentucky Derby. The remaining $259,519 got sucked out of Weavers wallet by H-2B visa violations. The H-2B program allows employers to import workers for limited time work a one-time occurrence, seasonal need, peakload need or intermittent need, Laor say. Labor says Weaver: Collected cash from workers to cover the companys attorney and visa filing fees. Didnt pay his H-2B workers the required hourly wage, which has to at least equal whichever is the highest between the prevailing wage, the applicable federal minimum wage, the states minimum wage, or the local minimum wage. Weaver owed $175,099 to 59 workers, $3,126.76 per employee. Made the H-2B workers pay for getting to the United States for their visas. Made the H-2B workers pay the total cost of getting to and from their workplaces. Used H-2B workers in areas where Weaver Racing hadnt recruited U.S. workers as required by the H-2B program. Didnt tell potential U.S.-based workers about free housing, bonuses and overtime pay in job offers. Told workers to underreport their hours to Wage and Hour investigators Tried to intimidate employees from participating in WHDs investigation. Story continues This also earned Weaver $84,420 in civil penalties. Employers that find theyve committed overtime or minimum wage violations can self-report through the Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program. For online information on how to file a complaint, go to the Wage and Hour complaint section of the Department of Labor website. Miamis Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607. Company underpaid workers by $124,000 on senior affordable housing project in Hialeah Coral Gables-area dialysis center owes workers almost $111,000 in back pay, feds say The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the transmission of a Proceeds of Crime Recovery and Management Agency Bill to the National Assembly to facilitate the establishment of an Agency for recovered assets. Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, presented the memo at the 15th virtual Federal Executive Council meeting which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa. He said the bill when approved by NASS, would ensure the establishment of the agency which would be saddled with the responsibility of managing all recovered assets across the country. Malami told State House Correspondents that the bill which will be forwarded to National Assembly for approval is targeted and intended to have in place a legal and institutional framework through which all recovered stolen assets are pooled and managed under an agency, ending the era when various government agencies work at variance with regards to recovered asset He further explained that once the bill becomes law and the agency is established, it would see to proper documentation and management of such recovered assets and thereby guarantee transparency and accountability According to Malami the federal ministry of justice presented a Council memo today. The Council memo is about a Bill which will seek the approval of the Council to transmit to the National Assembly for passage. It is a Proceeds of Crime Recovery and Management Agency Bill. It is in essence a bill that is targeted and intended to have in place a legal and institutional framework. The legal component of it is having a law. And the institutional component of it is to have an agency that will be saddled with the responsibility of managing the assets that constitute the proceeds of crime in Nigeria. What happens before now is the proceeds of crime are scattered all over, and mostly in the hands of different and multiple agencies of government inclusive of the police, the DSS, EFCC, and ICPC. So, with that kind of arrangement which is adhoc, there is no agency of government that is saddled with the responsibility of data generation, an agency that can give you offhead the number of landed assets , number of immovable assets , the amount in cash that are recovered by the federal government by way of interim forfeiture overweigh of a final forfeiture. So, it is indeed overtime a kind of arrangement that is not uniform and consistent, he added. The AGF further added that the new law seeks to move the fight against corruption to the next level. Next level of transparency, the next level of accountability in essence, will have in place an agency of government that is exclusively responsible for anything proceeds of crime. A one-stop-shop arrangement by which all the assets that are recovered arising from crimes that are indeed vested in the federal government, you have a one-stop arrangement where you can have information. As it is for example the federal ministry of Justice is only in a position to account and give a comprehensive account of what recoveries were made by the ministry. Asked if the bill is a fall out of experience with the EFCC with particular reference to management of assets, Malami said: Let me take you through the history lane as far as the proceeds of crime bill is concerned. There was an attempt some time back in 2007 to present to the FEC, it was unsuccessful, and the bill was not passed. There was a further attempt in 2011 to present the same bill with some material amendments, and then it did not succeed in getting the blessings of FEC. And there was a further attempt in 2019 to present the Bill and it wasnt as well successful but it eventually succeeded today. Malami dismissed the suspicion that the proposed agency was informed by the fallout of the ongoing investigation of the activities of the suspended acting chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu. Meanwhile, the Council also approved a new national policy on occupational safety and health, tagged National Policy on Occupational Safety 2020. Minister of Labour and employment, Dr Chris Ngige, said the new policy is aimed at ensuring that all workers are safe at their workplaces across the country, adding that it derives from provisions of the Nigerian constitution and the International Labour Organisations (ILO) convention. The Federal executive Council today approved a new policy on occupational safety and health-2020. This policy is designed to make for safety and health of workers at workplaces. It derives from the main ground norm law of the 1999 constitution as amended, which in section 17 (3c) prescribes that the Nigerian State shall make laws and bye-laws for preservation of the health and well-being of workers in the workplaces; men and women at work. It also derives from the ILO convention 155, which Nigeria has also domesticated. Again, that talks about making the workplace conducive and ensuring the health and well-being of workers, Ngige explained. The Labour Minister also said the last time the policy was reviewed was fourteen years ago but the new one has a review period of three years. The last policy we have was approved in 2006 which makes it exactly 14 years since that was approved by the Federal Executive Council and that is the policy we have been working on. But u know that 14 years is a long span in the life of any law so in the course of operation, certain issues have been thrown up, the world has gone digital, work place mechanism and hazards have been changing and it was therefore necessary that we do a new policy. This policy we did now is what you call repeal and replace and it takes care of all that is needed for now, for the health of Nigerian workers, he said. The Minister explained that the new policy gives specific roles to agencies of government. He said It gives specific roles to agencies, National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA,) Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA,) Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA,) Standards Organisation of Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Health. Everybody has his own role now because its a cross-cutting situation as most Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government are involved. Ngige said the new policy has a review period of three years. Charlevoix man denies wrongdoing despite signing illegitimate election document Charlevoix resident John Haggard is among a group of Republicans who signed an Electoral College certificate attempting to award the states 16 votes to Donald Trump following the 2020 election a document now under federal investigation. This undated image provided by ApiJect Systems America in July 2020 shows a prototype of their "BFS" prefilled syringe. When precious vats of COVID-19 vaccine are finally ready, the ability to jab the lifesaving solution into the arms of Americans will require hundreds of millions of injections. The Trump administration has agreed to invest more than half a billion in tax dollars in ApiJect Systems America, a young company whose injector is not approved by federal health authorities and who hasnt yet set up a factory to manufacture the unapproved devices. Read more Late in the fourth year of the Trump presidency, the United States is confronting a far more dangerous war than the forever wars he says he is ending. This is a multiphase conflict begun by the president himself, with new battle fronts opened daily. The deadly combat can end only if he is voted out of office. It began as Trumps War on Science, which has cost tens of thousands of U.S. lives due to the White House failure to contain COVID-19. It has morphed into a Vaccine War, a new battle ground in which Trump contradicts his scientists with false claims that a vaccine will be generally available before the election. However, the White House politicization of science has created such mistrust that only 4 in 10 Americans say they would take a vaccine if offered prior to November. Thus the president undermines the very cure he claims will save the country. READ MORE: Why German kids can go back to school and U.S. kids can't I Trudy Rubin Moreover the price of Trumps science wars extends beyond the relentless rise in the U.S. death toll, now nearly 200,000. His reckless battles have undermined Americas reputation and security interests worldwide and the cost will mount if they dont end soon. Trumps Vaccine War was in full view on Wednesday with his public slap down Wednesday of Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Redfield told a Senate committee a vaccine wont be widely available until at least the middle of next year, with at best a very limited supply in November or December. Meantime, Redfield said, masks were the most important, powerful public health tool we have. The president publicly scorned Redfields remarks as incorrect and a mistake. This was just the latest skirmish in Trumps effort to push public agencies and private companies partnering in Operation Warp Speed to speed up production of a vaccine - so it will appear before Nov. 3. Meantime, the president continues to denigrate mask-wearing at White House ceremonies and his non-social-distanced rallies. This, despite broad scientific agreement with Redfield. Vaccines are only one of two necessary tools, along with hygienic measures, says Paul Offit, a renowned epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvanias Perelman school of Medicine. Of the two tools, masking and social distancing are more potent, Offit told a Perry World House webinar. If I mask and stand six feet from you I wont catch the virus. READ MORE: Trump's promotion of 'demon sperm' doctor bodes ill for any second term I Trudy Rubin Yet a steady stream of derogatory critiques by the administration toward its scientific advisers continues to confuse the American public. Which undercuts any trust in a future vaccine. Only recently the top communications official at the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, posted a Facebook video accusing CDC scientists of sedition, claiming they included a pro-Biden cabal who do not want America to get well. (Caputo came under such fire, he is stepping down for two months but is not resigning.) The political tinkering with CDC directives, the presidential promotion of unproven cures, the false statistics used (and later retracted) by the Food and Drug Administrations director, all point to a health bureaucracy under terrible pressure from Doctor Trump. So its no wonder that a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that only 14% of Americans expect a vaccine before November, while 50% of Democrats, 41% of independents, and 36% of Republicans would refuse to take it. As the Vaccine War rages, the number of takers is bound to drop. Trust is going to be an issue, and the current leadership has squandered trust, I was told by epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, director of Boston Colleges Public Health Program. You can bet the anti-vaxxers are gearing up. Indeed, anti-vaccination activists are mobilizing online, many of them supporters of Trump, who was once an anti-vaxxer. (Their numbers are swelled by with members of the expanding QAnon cult, also encouraged by Trump, who blame the coronavirus on a plot by Bill Gates.) Meantime, many on the left and in the center doubt the vaccine will be safe, given Trumps politicization of science. And many in the Black community are suspicious, given the history of the U.S. Public Health Services Tuskegee experiments on Black men in the 1930s. There are, of course, still U.S. safeguards. Nine leading drug companies have pledged that they wont submit vaccine candidates for FDA review until clinical trials ensure they are safe and effective. And a top FDA official, Peter Marks, pledged to resign if the FDA authorizes pre-election approval to any vaccine before data support its use. In such a case, pressure by the media, Congress, and scientists would be critical. But even if such pressure works, trust will take a further hit. And the danger from Trumps war on science extends beyond our boundaries. A recent Pew Poll shows a stunning plunge in Americas reputation among its democratic allies in Europe and Asia, in large part linked to how the United States has handled the pandemic. Across 13 countries polled, a median of just 15% said the United States had done a good job. The growing disrespect for Americas competence emboldens China and Russia, and further degrades our alliances. Trumps his disdain for science, so glaring in his Vaccine War, will continue to impose terrible costs at home and abroad if it continues. Only U.S. voters can bring this war to an end on Nov. 3. Inquirer Live: Worldview with Trudy Rubin On Sept. 25, Im hosting a live interview with foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill about Russia and the 2020 election. Join us for this free event, by registering here. Two students walk back to their dorms with takeout breakfast from a dining hall at Cal State Fullerton last month. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) A new poll shows weak support for a statewide ballot measure that would reinstate affirmation action programs in California and repeal a decades-old ban on preferential treatment by public colleges and other government agencies based on race, ethnicity or sex. The Public Policy Institute of California poll released Wednesday night found that just 31% of likely California voters surveyed said they would vote for the proposal, Proposition 16, while 47% said they oppose it. The remainder, 22%, were undecided. The poll provides a clear warning sign about the prospects of the proposition less than seven weeks before the Nov. 3 election and evidence that supporters have a lot of work to do before vote-by-mail ballots starting going out in early October, said Mark Baldassare, PPICs president and chief executive. Some explaining needs to be done if the proponents have any hopes of seeing this passed in November, Baldassare said. People are hearing about this for the first time, not knowing where it came from, what it does, who is for it, who is against it. The ballot measure, which the Legislature placed on the ballot in June, is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that would repeal Proposition 209, a highly controversial measure approved by voters 24 years ago. The 1996 measure, supported by then-Gov. Pete Wilson and championed by then-University of California Regent Ward Connerly, sharply divided Californians when it appeared on the ballot and has been a political flashpoint in the state ever since. It prohibited government bodies including the UC and California State University systems from granting preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public college admissions and government employment and contracting decisions. According to the PPIC poll, Latino likely voters were evenly split over to whether to reinstate government affirmative action programs under Proposition 16 with 41% being in favor and an equal percentage opposed. Among white voters, 51% said they opposed the proposition, compared with 26% who favored it. Story continues The poll did not provide a detailed breakdown of responses by race, but among those respondents who were neither white nor Latino, 40% supported the measure and 38% opposed it within the poll's margin of error. Republicans overwhelmingly opposed Proposition 15 72%. While a plurality of Democrats, 47%, supported the measure, a slim majority were opposed or undecided. Baldassare suspects that many California voters are unaware of the history of the issue in California as well as the intent of the proposition. "It seems many people might need a history lesson on Proposition 209 passing in 1996 and some clarity on what it does," he said. A UC Berkeley study released in August found that Californias ban on affirmative action significantly harmed Black and Latino students by reducing their enrollment at UC campuses as well as lowering their graduation rates and driving down wages when they entered the workforce. In June, the UC Board of Regents unanimously supported a repeal of Proposition 209. Posturing on all fronts, this time the J-20 is touted killing 17 planes, decisively in mock combat. But the claim is met with puzzlement by Western experts who have yet to know the full specs of the plane. So far, the PLA AF has not used it in front line combat like its J-11s. Last Wednesday, Beijing alleged that their stealth fighter was shot down 17 aggressor units. It even survived the return fire of the aggressor units, unscathed. No footage has been released to substantiate their claim too. According to aviation experts, when a new fighter is used in mock training getting that many kills is feasible. Based on the claim, it is regarded with more doubt than credibility. State media tends to make such claims that Western experts discount, reported Forbes. Saying that the J-20 did shoot down that many planes, that is where it seems farfetched. The Chengdu J-20 is kept hushed but the exact number of missiles is known. Another is the lack of an internal cannon for close-in dogfights. It said 17 enemies were taken out inside internal bays are 8 missiles only. When the missiles run out, the plane can only evade and escape with no cannon for close-in attacks. In the Himalayas, the standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India is purchasing new fighter planes. The PLA AF just deployed two Chengdu J-20s to the western Chinese border. Also read: India versus China Air Superiority: Chinese Stealth Jets Can Beat India's Newest Fighter Jets One objective is to intimidate India with claims of the Chinese stealth fighter as superior. The statement by Chinese state media that said despite one J-20, getting outnumbered by more aggressors the plane shot down all 17 planes with just 8 missiles in its bay, no cannon. Overall, the exercise was hailed as Chinese superiority in simulated combat. This story was run by the Global Times last Tuesday, from the PLA Daily. In the article, it said that the J-20 was used to demonstrate China's best fighter. Another part indirectly alludes to the stealth plane as absolutely superior to older planes of the 4th generations. Overall, the report glossed on specific details not what made it better. It was not mentioned what planes were aggressors in the simulated air combat. A majority of the PLA AF is based on the reverse-engineered Russian Su-27, which Russia did not allow. The touted J-20 is supposed to be radar invisible, flew in 2011 the first time. PLA AF claims it has 40 of them operational, but it is not confirmed. How can a Chengdu shoot down all the 17 planes with just only 8 missiles in it at one time. It could be that the stealth plane reloaded when spent, using virtual ordnance and go back to the simulation. The USAF has similar results, but the planes are fully stealth capable and armed with internal cannons. Both the F-22 and F-35 have been flown and can route 4th generation planes in actual aggressor combat, not virtual. It is a response to the Indian Rafales that are older yet as capable, and the Chinese media cannot stop making comparisons without actual engagement, even thrashing the Rafale as useless, noted CNN. Experts are discounting the Chinese claim of the J-20 with 17 kills with only 8 missiles and no internal cannon. The PLA AF has to given the details of the combat exercise. Related article: India's Commandos Ready to Face Martials Trained Chinese Army @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- On Wednesday, the City Council voted for a bill introduced by South Shore Councilman Joe Borelli (R) that allows a temporary measure for restaurants to add a COVID-19 recovery charge to customers' checks. The surcharge can be up to 10% of a patrons food bill until 90 days after indoor dining is reestablished legally in New York City. Based on the proprietors polled on the subject and general protest on social media, the idea is not going over well. Borelli emphasized it is not a tax and is purely an optional tack for a proprietor. The money goes to the business owner directly, he said. It is also not a new law, he pointed out, but a repeal on the Citys long-standing Consumer Affairs ban on business surcharges. Although it is clear to owners that it is not mandatory, restaurateurs like Joe Salimeni of Js on the Bay in Rosebank assert that it is a slap in the face to the community." With all the money that we small business pay in taxes, permitting etc. its a very cowardice proposal to pawn off the responsibilities to the community when they are in need just as much as the restaurant industry, he said. Salimeni explained, I, for one, will not be implementing it. My customers have been very generous to my restaurant and staff throughout the pandemic. I could never bring myself to hold them responsible for the support my government should be taking the responsibility for. Several owners said they would not impose the percentage as there was concern consumers would confuse it for the tip and stiff the server. If you want to help us out, order takeout from us," said Rob DeLuca of DeLucas Italian Restaurant in Tottenville. He also speaks on behalf of IROAR -- the Independent Restaurant Owners Association Rescue -- which has provided a loud voice in the pandemic for outer-borough eateries. Its not mandatory, but Im totally against it. It shouldnt have even been an option. I get that theyre trying to help but this wasnt the way," said DeLuca. If the City Council would address a more expeditious path to reopening indoor sooner than Sept. 30 with greater capacity, now that would be a conversation to be more timely and appreciated, DeLuca maintains. This isnt about the money, its about having the right to work! DeLuca contends. NYC Hospitality Alliance executive director Andrew Rigie supported the bill. He said, New York City restaurants have been financially devastated, and it only makes matters worse that a 45-year-old regulation discriminates against only the restaurant industry by prohibiting these small businesses from having the option of using a clearly surcharge, if they so choose." He added, "The passage of the Covid recovery bill will help struggling restaurants generate additional revenue to help pay for expenses like PPE for their employees, outdoor dining setups, rent, labor and other expenses to give them a fighting chance of survival. We commend the City Council for passing this important temporary legislation and urge Mayor de Blasio to sign it into law immediately. Most Staten Island restaurants have reported substantial decline in receipts without indoor dining. Owners worry that the cold weather and no clear way to legally execute outdoor heating will drive away patrons. Borelli defended his legislation and said it repeals a current Consumer Affairs law on the books that allows such a surcharge for dire situations. He said, Its repealing a rule that gives restaurant owners in NYC the option every other restaurant has in the U.S....and in New Jersey." Borelli looks at it as a temporary buoy to a business. He said a proprietor can optionally raise the prices of their menu items. The councilman said, People are fooling themselves if they think restaurants are just going to open up with a recurring loss. it just doesnt work like that. Im sure customers at some restaurants have balked at seeing their restaurant items jacked up. I think people are smart enough to realize a $10 hamburger became $13 and theyre never going to see the reduction." He believes people underestimate the costs of running a restaurant and he emphasized, This surcharge a restaurant can use for a short term. And it goes away. Councilwoman Debi Rose is one of the nine co-sponsors of the bill which de Blasio is expected to sign. She said in a statement, Our restaurants have suffered immeasurable losses during this pandemic. The ability to add a small surcharge offers these small-business owners modest, transparent aid as they continue to work at limited capacity under current health protocols. Council Minority Leader Steven Matteo said, "Restaurants on Staten Island are a vital part of our communities and a big reason why so many people choose to live and raise their families in our borough. This temporary and optional surcharge could give these restaurants the shot in the arm they need to survive right now, and I believe Staten Islanders, who have already shown how much they care about local businesses, will continue to support them. Mike Marino, a borough sales representative for Priority Payment, a credit card processing company that services the restaurant industry, calls the idea ludicrous. Even with its good intentions, he thinks customers will confuse the law with credit card surcharges where there is a percentage of the bill called cash discount" for those who use plastic. The cash discount is legal and covers the processing fees restaurants deal with for the convenience of credit cards. This is more money than a credit card surcharge and its not going to pay the bills, said Marino. Borelli is steadfast in his bills sentiment. He said, Theres a misconception. Im willing to take a little heat if it helps keep some restaurants afloat. Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor. She can be reached at silvestri@siadvance.com. The Board of Directors of the International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM) has decided to proceed with the publication of IIFM Sukuk Al Ijarah Standard Documentation which was postponed earlier this year due to Covid-19. The suite of documentation will cater to the capital market and will be launched by end of this month through a webinar. In the future, IIFM also intends to develop Sukuk Al Ijarah standard documentation for the securitisation market, the IIFM decided at its 42nd meeting held on September 8, 2020 virtually via the Zoom application. Chaired by Khalid Hamad Al-Hamad, Chairman of IIFM, the meeting discussed issues related to emerging developments in the Islamic finance industry and the role that IIFM may further play in adding more sustainable development and advancement of the industry. The IIFM Sukuk Al Mudarabah Standard Documentation for Perpetual Tier 1 is also advancing with IIFM Shariah Board guidance and is expected to be finalised before the end of this year 2020. Also the meeting agreed that in order to create a better understanding on the practical aspects of IIFMs published standards as well as to support the professional development of financial institutions human resource; IIFM will jointly develop training material with a leading training provider to offer technical workshops to the market by Q1 2021. The IIFM Board consists of senior officials representing the Central Bank of Bahrain, Labuan Financial Services Authority, Bank Indonesia, Islamic Development Bank, Central Bank of Sudan, Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam, Kuwait Finance House (Bahrain), Dubai Islamic Bank, Standard Chartered Saadiq, Bank ABC Islamic, Credit Agricole CIB, The National Commercial Bank, GFH Financial Group and National Bank of Kuwait (Bahrain). The Board of Directors discussed the unified and harmonised approach of IIFM in standardising Shariah-compliant financial documentation and product confirmations to support the systemic and robust expansion of the Islamic finance industry. The Directors also discussed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and valued IIFMs continued collaboration with other global industry bodies to remain at the forefront of market developments. Earlier this year, IIFM joined the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), International Capital Market Association (ICMA), International Securities Lending Association (ISLA), London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), UK Finance, Association of German Banks and the Australian Financial Markets Association (AFMA) to jointly assert their commitment to defining and promoting a digital future for financial markets. The collaboration proposes a series of principles and objectives across three core areas of standardisation, digitisation and distribution to global regulatory authorities. Al Hamad said: IIFM is not only setting the standard for the industry but also raising awareness on important developments and finding common solutions for inclusive progress of the Islamic finance industry. The significant strain placed on existing infrastructure due to market volatility witnessed at the beginning of the pandemic is now challenging established consensus on functioning of operations. The development of innovative new technology as well as increasing demand for digital services has pushed many firms seeking to speed up plans for more automation and digitisation. In addition, IIFM will be having couple of workshops in Q3 2020, starting with the IIFM-BAFT Virtual Workshop on Master Participation Agreements and the IIFM Webinar at Indonesia Shariah Economic Festival (ISEF 2020). Two other important elements that IIFM will be highlighting to the Islamic Finance industry by way of virtual industry consultation meetings and awareness events on Global Benchmark Rate Reform & Its Impact on Islamic Finance Transactions, and Consultation on Islamic Syndication Documentation Standardisation. Ijlal Ahmed Alvi, Chief Executive of IIFM said: Next year IIFM will be embarking on its 2021-2023 Strategic Plan which will take into account the shift required due to Covid 19 pandemic. Besides the core focus on its Standards, the value addition of IIFM will also involve joint initiatives involving digital future of financial markets; professional development, and creating awareness and finding common solutions to global financial developments which impact the Islamic finance industry. IIFM and ISDA, from time to time, issue TMA legal opinions for jurisdictions having close-out netting legislation for the enforceability of financial contracts and currently the legal opinion for UAE Federal close-out netting law is under finalisation and will be published for the benefit of members in the near future. In July, IIFM released the French language versions of six of its Standards to support the expansion of Islamic finance in new jurisdictions and territories. The annual IIFM Sukuk Report (9th Edition) was published end of July through a webinar witnessed by worldwide participants. The IIFM 2019 audited accounts prepared by the auditor, Deloitte & Touche - Middle East, were approved at the meeting. -- Tradearabia News Service The first lady of the Republic, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo- Addo has showered praises on the management of NVTI for championing TVET activities in Ghana. According to her, she was impressed by the level of professionalism displayed by staff and trainees and their enthusiasm to change the narrative of TVET in Ghana. She made the remarks at a graduation ceremony for 400 migrants who have been trained in 11 different trade areas. She also took the opportunity to urge the trainees to make good use of the training and startup kits they have received. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Sharon Stone nearly had to evacuate her Beverly Hills mansion on Tuesday. The 62-year-old Basic Instinct actress told Jimmy Fallon that there was a fire on her street that was so serious that she told her sons to pack their bags. And because she lives on a cul-de-sac there was concern they would not get out safely. 'I was just in tears yesterday,' she said. 'There was a fire on my street and we were preparing to evacuate and say goodbye to everything we put our lives into - I had Thermoses, water bottles... a to-go bag.' Scary: Sharon Stone nearly had to evacuate her Beverly Hills mansion on Tuesday she told Jimmy Fallon Her lair: The 62-year-old Basic Instinct actress said there was a fire on her street that was so serious that she told her sons to pack their bags. And because she lives in a cul-de-sac there was concern they would not get out safely The former beauty queen and model told her kids to take their computer, one pair of shoes and a sweater each. 'We had to be ready and make sure the cars had gas,' added the siren. 'If we had to go, we had to go... She added there are 600 fires in California and the smoke is overwhelming. 'It's raining ash even in the house, this is what we're breathing,' she noted. '...Our state is burning down!' 'We have to be happy in the face of disaster, it's all we have,' said the Casino star who wore a black mock turtleneck and dangling gold earrings with turquoise cuff bracelets. She laughed when Jimmy said he wanted to talk about something happier. He added the were in a 2008 movie together, The Year Of Getting To Know Us, and Sharon played his mom. She loves her big house: The Mosaic actress with her dogs in her bedroom Stressful! 'I was just in tears yesterday,' she said. 'There was a fire on my street and we were preparing to evacuate and say goodbye to everything' Too much! She told her kids to take their computer, one pair of shoes and a sweater each. 'We had to be ready and make sure the cars had gas,' added the siren Jimmy said his mother was thrilled that Stone played her as she thought it was perfect casting. And he appreciated Stone's kindness: 'You were so nice to me and great, I loved being around you. You are real,' he added. Jimmy noted she is getting rave reviews for her role in Ratched and mentioned that Ryan Murphy wrote the role with Sharon in mind but she said that gives her pause because the character is 'nuts.' This comes after Sharon talked to the October cover of Town & Country magazine. Burning Cali: She added there are 600 fires in California and the smoke is overwhelming. 'It's raining ash even in the house, this is what we're breathing,' she noted She sure has some house: The activist by the swimming pool of her massive home In the wide-ranging interview, the former model talks about how she is still asked to take her clothes off, how she feels for what Marilyn Monroe went through and that time when a director sexually harassed her by insisting she sit on his lap. Stone did not offer too many details about her sexual harassment story with the unnamed director - who denied the story to the publication. But she did convey the tension well. On a lighter note: Jimmy noted she is getting rave reviews for her role in Ratched and mentioned that Ryan Murphy wrote the role with Sharon in mind but she said that gives her pause because the character is 'nuts' 'Hed tell me that I should sit on his lap to get direction for the scene,' said Stone. Stone discussed being a sex symbol in Town & Country, from still being asked to show off her body at 62 to being sexually harassed at the height of her career 'And when I told him that I was not going to sit on his lap, he would send me back to the trailer. And that is just the way it was.' The incident took place when she was 'at the height of her earning power,' the magazine explained. Stone reportedly made her most money for Basic Instinct 2 in 2006 with over $13M. Her sex symbol image still lingers, which surprises the veteran. 'People still want to see my boobs. Im 62! Its like, "Really? Grow up!" But also, "Heres some boobs!"' she said with a theatrical gesture. As far as how she came to fame in the early Nineties, she says the public wanted a pinup. 'People, I guess, really needed a sex symbol,' said the Pennsylvania native. An icon: When playing cunning author Catherine Trammel in 1992's Basic Instinct, Sharon showed off a cold, calculated sexuality The star said she was sexually harassed on set by a director. It took place at the height of her success; seen here in Basic Instinct 2 in 2006 with David Morrissey 'I mean, I never thought I was that sexy... When I did Basic Instinct, I explored my dark side and made friends with my dark side. I got to not be afraid of my own self. I think people find that sexy.' But having people expect her to be a sex symbol all the time is taxing. 'It was very difficult for Marilyn Monroe. She did movies that really mattered, like Bus Stop, The Misfits, but she still couldnt get completely out of being that thing. Its very hard to shake,' said the mother of three. There was also a time when Sharon was hardly employed because of the old Hollywood rules that still apply. 'You dont really get work between 40 and 60. It doesnt matter if youre at the height of your career, whether you just made Casino. Thats it: no work,' said the movie queen. Casino came out in 1995. And now Stone is not letting being 62 get in her way of landing jobs. 'I think you have to choose how you want to age. People look at me as a certain thing, and it gets in the way of them casting me as things I could play,' she said. 'But Im sure that I have my own destiny, and Im now trying to meet it with as much integrity as I can, and be as open to growth as I can be.' A fabulous character: Playing Lenore Osgood in Ratched has been a thrill for her. 'Shes completely insane,' says Stone with a sly smile. 'And at the same time she thinks shes really a loving mother who has her sh*t together' A criminal: To help with her role, Sharon thought out the character's back story. 'I thought she was probably Doris Dukes best friendshe was a showgirl who married some rich guy and knocked him off,' she said Playing Lenore Osgood in Ratched has been a thrill for her. 'Shes completely insane,' says Stone with a sly smile. 'And at the same time she thinks shes really a loving mother who has her sh*t together.' Stone has something very big to look forward to in 2021: she is releasing her memoir The Beauty Of Living Twice To help with her role, Sharon thought out the character's back story. 'I thought she was probably Doris Dukes best friendshe was a showgirl who married some rich guy and knocked him off,' she said. 'She would try to be fancy, because the more fabulous she was the less people would know that she came from nowhere and was a complete criminal.' Also in the interview, Sharon talked money. She said she made less than $500,000 for her role in Basic Instinct and co-star Michael Douglas made much more; some reports say as much as $15M. And even when her star rose, she had to fight to get a good paycheck. 'When I was a global phenomenon and I wanted to make $2 million [for a movie], it was like I wanted them to give me the moon, like Id lost all reason,' said the Sliver star. 'When I wanted four, they were like, "Were not going to pay you $4 million for this movie."' Stone has something very big to look forward to in 2021: she is releasing her memoir The Beauty Of Living Twice as she discusses not just her career and marriages but also her near-death experience in 2001. Part of whats really important to us is the care work and the compassionate work that we do, especially right now going into an election season, she said. We know that people who are trying to access abortions are seeing kind of really vile things probably on their (social media) timelines ... about demonizing people who choose to have abortions. We really want to push back against that and say abortion is normal. Toby Antony By Express News Service KOCHI: Kerala Higher Education Minister K T Jaleel was questioned by India's premier anti-terror agency National Investigation Agency (NIA) for the entire day on Thursday even as opposition parties led by the Congress undertook statewide protests that led to violence and police lathi-charge in many parts. The minister who entered the NIA office in Kochi at 5:55 am came out only at 4.57 pm, spending a marathon 11 hours inside the agency's building. Jaleel was quizzed by the NIA to get details about his links with Swapna Suresh, the prime accused in the Kerala gold smuggling scandal. After Swapna's arrest in July, mobile call details retrieved by the NIA revealed that she had contacted Jaleel on several occasions. However, the minister claimed he had contacted her as per the direction of the Consul General of the UAE in Thiruvananthapuram. Police remove Youth Congress workers who reached the NIA office in Kochi, demanding the resignation of Kerala Higher Education Minister #KTJaleel, who is being questioned in connection with #KeralaGoldSmugglingCase. Express video | @sanesh_TNIE.@xpresskerala @shibasahu2012 pic.twitter.com/VCyX868ReU The New Indian Express (@NewIndianXpress) September 17, 2020 The NIA's summoning of Jaleel on Thursday comes a week after he was questioned by another central agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), on two days -- last Thursday and Friday -- for any violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). To prepare for the questioning, the NIA officers had held a meeting with the ED officers on Wednesday at the latter's office here to study the statement given by the minister. Though the NIA had asked him to appear at 9 am on Thursday, the minister arrived three hours early, a move clearly aimed to escape the media glare. The minister reached Kochi by road from the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, from where he started late last night. He halted at the PWD Rest House in Kalamassery in Kochi early this morning to freshen up, before driving to the NIA office. The minister reached the NIA office in a white Toyota Ethios, which belonged to CPM leader and former MLA A M Yousuf. Wearing his usual attire in public -- a white mundu and shirt and holding a black handbag -- the minister was seen disappearing into the NIA office at Girinagar in the city. But as the news leaked, protests erupted across the state, with opposition party activists calling for Jaleel's resignation. Scores of Youth Congress and Yuva Morch workers -- the youth wing of the Congress and the BJP -- were injured in the police lathi-charge in several parts of the state. Sources said the NIA has collected details about copies of the Quran Jaleel received from the UAE consulate which were transported in a government vehicle to various places in Kerala. Jaleel claimed that he had received around 300 copies of the Quran while over 7,500 copies are estimated to have been imported by the UAE consulate. With protesters choosing to reach the NIA office demanding the minister's resignation, police barricaded the road leading to the anti-terror agency's office in the morning. Over 50 police officials were also deployed to prevent protesters reaching the NIA office. Several activists of the Youth Congress were also arrested and removed from the place. Honor fallen deputy by thanking law officers We hope and pray that the death of Ryan Hendrix is not in vain. Ryan Phillip Hendrix died on the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 10, nine hours after an armed vehicle break-in suspect shot him in the face in a driveway in Mountain Home. He was 34. One of eight children of Donald L. and Heidi J. Hendrix, Ryan joined the Marine Corps out of high school and volunteered for a tour of duty in Iraq in 2006. He joined the Henderson County Sheriffs Office in 2012 as a jailer and earned his Basic Law Enforcement degree three years later. He became a patrol deputy, then a field training officer, SWAT team member and detective. He was doing the job he was born to do, and died doing the job he loved, his family said. By all accounts, Ryan Hendrix devoted his life to serving his country, community, church and family. A devout Christian, he even gave a lasting gift as he transcended from the church militant to the church triumphant. As their son and brother lay mortally wounded, the family made the decision that Ryan would have asked of them. His organs were donated so that others could live. I stand here today asking a special blessing on the family of Ryan Hendrix, who gave everything to assist innocent strangers, facing down the evil he found, Sheriff Lowell Griffin said the morning after the deputys death. Make no mistake about it, I have been through every aspect of the investigation. What I can tell you is that the officers there did everything right and we still suffered a tragic loss. Ryan made that sacrifice yesterday, the sheriff said. And yet I found solace in knowing that Ryan had tremendous faith and God has a plan and his plan includes Ryan. Ryan Hendrixs life is worthy of the tribute and honor that have come his way in memorial services already conducted and those to come. His life of service and his death will not have been in vain if the community here and beyond will come to understand and appreciate the courage and devotion of law officers, firefighters and emergency personnel like Ryan Hendrix who put their lives on the line every day and every night to assist innocent strangers and confront and defeat evil. They run to the shooting, run to the fire and run to the bleeding and broken bodies. We hear a lot about police-involved shootings that look questionable on smart-phone videos. In some cases, the actions of law officers truly are examples of wrongly applied deadly force. Not this time. The shooting of Ryan Hendrix drew return fire that killed the shooter. Theres no question that deadly force by Ryans fellow deputies was justified. In the end, we can move forward knowing that Ryan Phillip Hendrix died doing what he was born to do, as his family aptly put it, doing what he loved. The best way we can honor the fallen officer is to honor and support his family, his fellow sheriffs deputies and first responders everywhere. Theirs is a thankless, dangerous and sometimes deadly job. Like Ryan Hendrix, they put their lives on the line to keep us safe. * * * * * To donate to support Ryan Hendrix's family click here. The sale of Canadas largest consumer cooperative is causing a stir among local members, many of whom are disappointed to see Mountain Equipment Co-op dissolve its existing structure and change hands into private American ownership. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The sale of Canadas largest consumer cooperative is causing a stir among local members, many of whom are disappointed to see Mountain Equipment Co-op dissolve its existing structure and change hands into private American ownership. Members trickling in and out of Winnipegs MEC location on Portage Avenue Wednesday expressed frustration, disappointment and resignation in response to news of the companys sale with some going so far as to suggest they may not continue to shop at the beloved Canadian outdoors-store. Barry Kehler has been a member of MEC since the store arrived in Winnipeg nearly two decades ago. He doesnt live near the store, he said, but still makes an effort to support the co-op whenever possible. After hearing about the sale, Kehler said hes disappointed to see the company switch ownership. Los Angeles-based private investment firm Kingswood Capital Management will acquire MEC's assets, including the majority of its retail stores. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press) "Im not even sure Ill shop here in the future," Kehler said. "I have no reason to come back depending on the prices Ill give it a go, but its not as attractive." Glen Williamson, a MEC member since the 70s, was also disappointed to hear ownership of the company would be crossing the border. "Its been a great company, a great Canadian company, thats one of the things thats been a little bit disheartening," Williamson said outside the Winnipeg store Wednesday. "But if its being bought by an investment group out of the States, well, welcome to life." In a release Monday, MEC announced it would be dissolving its co-op structure and selling its assets to Kingswood Capital Management, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm, after a unanimous decision from the companys board of directors. The acquisition will take place under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), which allows the company to continue business as usual through the transition. "Kingswood has tremendous respect for MECs legacy and roots," MEC board chair Judi Richardson said in an email Wednesday. "They are working with Canadian operating partners on the acquisition who are also longstanding MEC members, so they understand what the membership means to so many Canadians." MEC has more than five million members, 22 Canadian stores and more than 2,500 employees, according to the companys 2018/19 reports. (Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press) The company boasts more than 5 million members more than 90 per cent of whom live in Canada with 22 Canadian stores and more than 2,500 employees, according to the companys 2018/19 reports. Many of those 5 million members have expressed concern that the membership was not consulted before the sale. "It seemed a bit out of the blue," said MEC member Amy Smith on Wednesday. "I didnt really see it coming and would have assumed that I would have heard a little bit more being a member of the co-op." The decision to sell the store was "very difficult," though not particularly hasty, Richardson said. The company had been working to reshuffle its business model since 2016, as competition from online shopping options and big-box retailers chipped away at the companys revenues. MEC recorded a net loss of $11.5 million on sales of $462 million in 2019, according to audited financial statements. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the existing financial trouble, Richardson said. "The choice was stark: Create a path for MEC to thrive under new ownership that would maintain a large store presence, employment opportunities and a commitment to MECs ethos or fold up the MEC tent for good," she said in an email. "Filing for CCAA protection and the acquisition was the only option that would save MEC from bankruptcy or liquidation." When MEC opened its downtown Winnipeg store in 2002, it was rated the most energy-efficient retail building in Canada, according to the company. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press) Kingswood plans to retain 17 of its 22 Canadian stores and 75 per cent of staff, though the company said its still too early to say which locations are on the chopping block. An online petition started by Paul Finch in Vancouver calling on the board to cancel the sale and hold immediate board elections had reached more than 33,000 signatures by Wednesday. 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. MEC is aware of pushback from its members, but maintains its only options were to sell or fold. "We recognize this is unsettling news for many members. It was, after all, a very difficult decision," Richardson said. "After extensive examination of options and alternatives to address the persistent financial challenges faced by MECs business in recent years, we sought a solution that not only ensured MECs short-term survival, but also its long-term success." Its unclear whether members will see any of their $5 shares returned. Richardson told the Canadian Press Monday that members would need to claim themselves as creditors to stake claims on their shares. Otherwise, former members will transition into run-of-the-mill customers under the private ownership. julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @jsrutgers Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 00:46:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday urged certain people in Australia to stop politicizing and stigmatizing the normal fulfillment of duty by Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia, and stop creating new obstacles in bilateral relations. China expressed strong dissatisfaction with and firm opposition to claims by certain Australian media regarding the Chinese consulate general in Sydney and related officials, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a press briefing. Wang said the Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia have been observing international law and basic norms governing international relations, and committed to facilitating friendly exchange and practical cooperation between the two sides. Certain media's claim of "the consulate general and its officials are involved in infiltration" is just a malicious slander, and China deplores and strongly opposes that, Wang said. He said China pursues an independent foreign policy of peace. "We have never conducted and will never conduct any interference or infiltration against another country. This is not in our genes." "Some in Australia are doing whatever they can to fan up anti-China sentiments and catch eyeballs by smearing and attacking China, which only poisons China-Australia relations," said Wang. "We urge some in Australia to reject their Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop politicizing or stigmatizing the normal fulfillment of duty by Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia, and stop creating new obstacles in bilateral relations," he said. Enditem Former FBI Director James Comey leaves the Rayburn House Office Building following a closed House Judiciary Committee meeting to hear his testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 7, 2018. (Alex Edelman / AFP via Getty Images) Comey Will Voluntarily Testify Before Senate Committee, Sen. Graham Says Former FBI Director James Comey has agreed to testify before a Senate committee, without a subpoena, regarding the bureaus probe into Russian election meddling and the campaign of President Donald Trump, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Graham said in remarks to Fox News on Wednesday that the day of reckoning is upon us when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, referring to the code name for the FBI investigation, which was later taken over by former special counsel Robert Mueller, who probed allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to sway the 2016 presidential election. Mueller ultimately didnt establish any such collusion. Comey will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, according to Graham, who said the former director can expect to be grilled, but treated with respect. I appreciate Mr. Comey coming before the committee, Graham said. He will be respectfully treated, but asked hard questions. Graham told Fox News he requested Mueller appear before the committee, but he declined. The South Carolina senator said he would seek Muellers testimony after the former special counsel wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post defending his offices prosecution of Trump associate Roger Stone, whose sentence the president commuted. I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so, Mueller wrote. Democrats on the judiciary committee requested Muellers testimony, arguing that if Republicans are probing the FBIs investigation into the Trump campaign, which morphed into Muellers probe, the former special counsel should be given the opportunity to defend his work. Apparently Mr. Mueller is willingand also capableof defending the Mueller investigation through an oped in the Washington Post, Graham wrote in a July 12 tweet. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have previously requested Mr. Mueller appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about his investigation. That request will be granted. Graham also told Fox News that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was approached for a voluntary interview and talks with him are still underway. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Graham, is one of two Republican-led Senate committees looking into the FBIs probe. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, is also conducting an investigation. His committee voted on Wednesday to give Johnson the power to subpoena dozens of former and current officials, including Comey and McCabe, as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Democrats have denounced both probes as partisan efforts targeting Trumps political foes. Our investigation is focused on uncovering and revealing the truth. But Democrats seem intent at every turn to frustrate and interfere with our oversight efforts, Johnson pushed back, in remarks at a business meeting Wednesday conducted by his committee. Night and weekend curfew in Jammu and Kashmir 2022: Know guidelines, rules: What is allowed, what is not Pulwama-type attack averted in J&K as security forces recover 52-kg explosives India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: A Pulwama-style terror strike was averted by the Indian Army with the recovery of 52 kg of explosives on Thursday in Kashmir's Karewa area which is not very far from the site of last year's dastardly attack, Army officials said here. They said the location where the explosives were recovered was near the Jammu and Kashmir highway and around 9 KM from the spot of the Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. "We have averted another Pulwama-type attack," said an Army official. A furniture shop owner played one of the most important role in the Pulwama attack The officials said the explosives were found in a Syntex water tank at Karewa area of Gadikal during a search operation around 8 AM. "There were 416 packets of explosives with each one of them weighing 125gm," said an official, adding another 50 detonators were recovered in another Syntex tank in the area in subsequent searches. The explosives are called "Super-90" or S-90 in short, the official said. On February 14 last year, a suicide bomber had rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama killing 40 soldiers. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Kashmir in recent years. Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) had taken responsibility for the attack. Twelve days after the strike, India's warplanes pounded a JeM terrorist training camp deep inside Pakistan that had triggered massive escalation in tension between the two countries. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News Last month, the NIA filed a charge sheet in the case, detailing how the attack was planned and executed by JeM. The NIA named Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar and several others in the charge sheet. Dead man propped up by two other men in attempt to collect pension at Carlow post office Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Coming, as it does, from a major global petroleum producer, its a rather startling prediction. And if it turns out to be true, the economic and environmental implications could be profound for Manitoba, Canada and the world. Energy giant BP issued a report this week forecasting an unprecedented permanent downturn in fossil fuel consumption. The companys 2020 Energy Outlook, released Monday, predicts global economic activity will only partially recover from the current COVID-19 pandemic and that while energy consumption will continue to grow at a slower pace, fossil fuels will play a significantly smaller role as societies transition to renewable sources of energy. According to BPs chief economist, Spencer Dale, the companys assessment that the world has reached "peak oil" is influenced by both the COVID-19 pandemics effects and the increased urgency of the global effort to fight climate change. The BP report offers three scenarios for future energy consumption. In the more aggressive of BPs predictions, which include a more forceful global effort to meet the goals of the Paris agreement to limit global warming to 2 C above pre-industrialized levels, demand for oil declines sharply by between 55 and 80 per cent over the next 30 years. BPs report predicts a permanent decline in oil consumption. (Alastair Grant / Associated Press files) According to Mr. Dale, each of the scenarios represents an unprecedented shift: "Never in modern history has the demand for any traded fuel declined in absolute terms." Other recent predictions, including one from the International Energy Agency, forecast a post-pandemic growth in global oil demand, but BP is sufficiently committed to its projections that it told investors this week it plans to be a carbon-neutral energy company by 2050. 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 implications for Canada, the worlds fourth-largest producer and exporter of oil, cannot be overstated. Income derived from the oil and gas sector represents 5.6 per cent of the nations GDP. And for Alberta, where fossil fuel-related revenues are expected to reach their lowest point in nearly half a century, the impact has been, and will be, devastating (Albertas current deficit projection stands at $24.2 billion). And what of Manitoba? If BPs report is to be believed, the energy sectors set to grow exponentially as oils fortunes decline include solar, wind and hydroelectric power the last of which has long been touted as this provinces perpetual clean-energy advantage. BPs prediction is that increasing global reliance on clean energy will push renewable energy sources from five per cent of global consumption to between 20 and 50 per cent by 2050. Such a future is one from which Manitoba clearly stands to benefit. In that context, this weeks reports that Manitoba Hydro International the international consulting arm of the provincial utility was recently advised to curtail its activities seems all the more puzzling. According to a leaked memo obtained by the Free Press, staff were told "MHI is not to aggressively pursue new work. This means it is not to actively pursue bids or seek out new customers." A Manitoba Hydro spokesman said the directive to pause at MHI is part of an overall strategic review of the Crown utilitys operations. MHI employees, however, have expressed concern that the subsidiarys future is in doubt. Given the clean-energy future envisioned by one of the worlds largest petroleum companies, one might expect Manitoba Hydro to be gearing up to capitalize on the opportunities that await. In the meantime, some clarity about Hydros future intentions from the company itself, or the provincial government to which its answerable would be most useful. Frank Family Vineyards wants to build a Napa Valley winery in the Rutherford area, though the proposed scale is giving critics and some county Planning Commissioners pause. Rich and Leslie Frank already run their Frank Family Vineyards winery on Larkmead Lane near Calistoga. The proposed, new winery producing up to 475,000 gallons annually is to be on their 87-acre Benjamin ranch along Conn Creek Road near Highway 128. The Napa County Planning Commission on Wednesday held a hearing and postponed the matter to a date uncertain. Such familiar themes as visitor numbers and traffic are among the items drawing attention. Is this application for a winery or an event center/restaurant? Eve Kahn of Get a Grip on Growth wrote to the county. Rich Frank is the former president of Paramount Television Group and Disney Studios and is vice chairperson of the American Film Institute board of directors. He disagreed with such characterizations of the project. We are not looking to pave paradise and were not looking to build Disneyland, he said. Attorney Scott Greenwood-Meinert on behalf of the Franks said a project of this scope has been missing in Napa County in recent years. The focus has been on smaller wineries on smaller properties down long, winding roads. This is a project on a large parcel surrounded by large parcels of vineyards, he said. There are significant wineries in the immediate vicinity. The Franks originally asked that the winery have 145,600 visitors annually, counting daily tastings and market events. They asked for 357 marketing events a year. But those requests abruptly shrank. During the meeting, Leslie Frank said they had cut this original visitation request by 40%. They cut the requested number of marketing events to eight a year. Laura Tinthoff of Napa Vision 2050 called the proposed winery a large, non-agricultural project in the agricultural preserve. The sudden changes to application are not clear to the public and the issue should be delayed to another meeting, she said. Vintner Michael Honig, who runs Honig Vineyard and Winery near the Benjamin ranch, also wanted the commission to continue the hearing. He is among those who have said the project should have an environmental impact report done. Cyril Chappellet of Chappellet winery near Lake Hennessey supported the Franks request. He noted the Rich Frank has been a local vintner for more than 25 years. These are the kind of projects we should be happy to see come to fruition, versus another hobby winery proposed by an outsider, he wrote to the county. Vintners Darioush Khaledi and Carmen Policy both wrote to the commission that the Franks proposal is in line with what the county envisions for the agricultural preserve. Resident Dylan Smith wrote that the winery would make the Rutherford area a tourist trap with traffic and people making loud noise. Dont let a Hollywood mogul destroy Rutherford, he wrote. We know you will never make everyone happy, Leslie Frank told commissioners. No matter what concessions are made, there will still be the NIMBYsnot in my backyard. But this winery wouldnt be in anyones backyard, she added, a reference to the proposed location on an 87-acre property. It seems like an appropriate winery site to me, given the location off Silverado Trail, Commissioner Andrew Mazotti said. Its not remote, its not in the hills. Commissioner Anne Cottrell agreed that the location is good, but said the scale of the proposed project is a concern. Meanwhile, Frank Family Vineyards has also applied to the county to make changes at its Larkmead Lane winery. The proposed Benjamin winery and the existing winery fit together in the Franks overall plan for making wine. The family owns more than 250 acres of vineyards at four ranches. Commissioner Joelle Gallagher said the commission isnt looking at the Franks overall plans for their entire operation. That means looking at the Benjamin winery as a stand-alone request. Rich Frank made it clear he wants to avoid delays and asked the commission to set a date for the next hearing. He expressed concern that opponents might bog the project down by submitting more comments and wanting more studies. This is a pattern that anybody who wants to delay anything in this valley takes, Rich Frank said. Thats why its almost impossible to work in this valley. Planning Commission chairperson Dave Whitmer, while acknowledging Rich Franks desire to move quickly, supported the county staff recommendation to postpone to a date uncertain. The commission is trying to give the Franks team and county team time to work together to answer questions. We could make a decision today, but Im not sure youd appreciate that decision, he said. Watch Now: The difference between coronavirus symptoms and allergies You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com. 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. DALLAS, September 17, 2020 -- An investigation of the Finnish Twin Cohort reaffirmed a link between smoking and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a type of bleeding stroke that occurs under the membrane that covers the brain and is frequently fatal. The new study by researchers in Finland is published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. In a 2010 study of nearly 80,000 twins from Denmark, Finland and Sweden, results suggested that SAH had more to do with external risk factors and very little to do with genetic influence. Twins share either all or half their genes (identical vs. fraternal) so they are valuable for studies designed to evaluate the role of genetics versus environmental factors in disease development. In this study, researchers sought to clarify the factors involved when only one twin suffered from fatal bleeding in the brain and hypothesized that smoking - the most important environmental risk factor - could play a significant role. This study utilized health care data from the Finnish Twin Cohort, a national database of 32,564 individuals (16,282 same-sex, twin pairs in Finland) who were born before 1958 and alive in 1974, and followed for over 42 years between 1976 and 2018. Researchers identified 120 fatal bleeding stroke events among the twins, and the strongest link for a fatal brain bleed was found among smokers. "Our study provides further evidence about the link between smoking and bleeding in the brain," said corresponding researcher Ilari Rautalin, B.M., a sixth-year medical and Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Data collected from surveys included smoking; high blood pressure (diagnosis or use of antihypertensive medications); physical activity; body mass index; education; and alcohol use. Participants were separated into two groups: smokers (occasional or current) or non-smokers (never and former). Current smokers were classified according to the number of cigarettes smoked per day: light, less than 10; moderate, 10-19; heavy, 20 or more. The analysis of the 120 fatal bleeding events found: Four fatalities occurred among both twins in two pairs. In the remaining 116 fatalities, one twin died of bleeding in the brain, while the other died of another cause, migrated during the follow-up or was still alive at the end of the study follow-up. Heavy and moderate smokers had 3 times the risk of fatal bleeding in the brain, while light smokers had slightly less at 2.8 times the risk. Median age at the fatal brain bleed was 61.4 years. Risk factors such as high blood pressure, lower physical activity rates and being female were not found to be significant influences in this investigation, unlike prior studies. Smoking was associated with fatal bleeding in the brain consistently in both men and women and with bleeding stroke deaths within twin pairs where only one of the twins died from a SAH. The current study did not have data on non-fatal SAH events and researchers were not able to estimate the impact of former smoking on these brain bleeds. Former smokers and never smokers were combined in the non-smoking category. Researchers were also not able to confirm the aneurysmal origin of SAHs (no patient data was available) and may have included a few non-aneurysmal SAH events. "This long-term study in twins helps to confirm the link between subarachnoid hemorrhage and smoking," said Rose Marie Robertson, M.D., FAHA, the American Heart Association's deputy chief science and medical officer and co-director of the AHA Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science, who was not involved in the study. "Not smoking or quitting if you've already started, is an essential component of primary prevention." ### Co-authors are Miikka Korja, M.D., Ph.D.; and Jaakko Kaprio, M.D., Ph.D. No disclosures were reported. The Aarne and Aili Turunen Foundation; the Paulo Foundation; the Aarne Koskelo Foundation; and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Complex Disease Genetics funded the study. Additional Resources: Available multimedia is on right column of release link - https://newsroom.heart.org/news/smoking-linked-to-bleeding-in-the-brain-in-large-long-term-study-of-twins?preview=841f33d85af49e98cdabbdf4c27c2838 Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association's policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The Association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations and health insurance providers are available at https://www.heart.org/en/about-us/aha-financial-information About the American Stroke Association The American Stroke Association is devoted to saving people from stroke -- the No. 2 cause of death in the world and a leading cause of serious disability. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat stroke. The Dallas-based association officially launched in 1998 as a division of the American Heart Association. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-888-4STROKE or visit stroke.org. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Military service members should visit Honda of Bellingham today to receive a $500 when financing or leasing a 2019 or newer Honda model. A local Honda dealership is showing its appreciation for customers who are currently serving or previously served in the Military. The Military Appreciation Offer provides Military service members with a bonus to be used toward a 2019 or newer Honda model when financing or leasing through Honda Financial Services. If they meet the qualifications, customers can apply the $500 bonus to their preferred payment option. There are a few qualifications that interested clients must have to receive the $500 bonus. They can be active duty members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard, Coast Guard and Active Reserve. U.S. Military Ready Reserve, retirees, veterans and Military spouses can also apply for this bonus. If the customer is eligible, they must provide proof of U.S. Military status with a Leave and Earnings Statement. Military spouses must provide a Military ID and their spouses Leave and Earnings Statement. After meeting eligibility requirements and proof of status, Military service members can choose to lease or finance a 2019 or newer Honda model. Honda of Bellingham offers a range of new Honda vehicles from a 2020 Honda Fit LX to a 2021 Honda Pilot Special Edition. Interested service members can find more information about this offer at hondaofbellingham.com. If they have any questions, they can reach out to the staff by calling 833-331-0699. Honda of Bellingham is open Monday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The dealership is located at 2010 Iowa St. in Bellingham. Overall, scientists from 24 countries and regions contributed, including the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, the United States, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Romania, Armenia, Chile, China (with Hong Kong as a separate participant), Turkey, Italy, and Mexico. Overall, 5,320 students have been polled. Associate Professor of the KFU's Department of Pedagogical Psychology Olga Lopukhova was one of the participants. It's well established that men and women differ in their self-perception, values, and personality traits, as well as stereotypes held with regards to representatives of one or the other sex. Men typically find themselves more active, whereas women think of themselves as more sociable. The paper pays attention to how such effects differ between cultural groups with the focus on self-construal and depressive symptoms." Olga Lopukhova, Associate Professor, KFU's Department of Pedagogical Psychology It turns out that women are more depressive, especially in societies with low gender equality rankings. Furthermore, the research showed a slightly different picture of sex differences in self-assessment among students than could be inferred from previous such polls. "In all sampling groups, we cannot find proof of sex differences in a culture as a whole. Instead, we can see that women see themselves as more interdependent in the conditions of low gender equality and more independent in high gender equality. Men self-assess as more closed, whereas women feel more connected with others. There are no noticeable sex differences in the other two parameters of self-construal or in depressive symptoms," continues the interviewee. In the Russian version, the researchers added the interaction of the congruence of students to the culture type and their inclusion into social groups with their psychological wellbeing. "The problem of psychological wellbeing and its factors becomes more and more popular in Russian and overseas research in light of the ever complicating conditions of personality adaptation to the fast-changing values, social norms, types of behavior, and interaction," says Lopukhova. "Students are such a social group prone to the risks psychological non-wellbeing because of age factors, their changing social standing, and exposedness to adaptation and information overloads." Becoming is a student is often inextricably linked with a change in cultural environment, be it moving to another country or city or moving from countryside to an urban dwelling. In any case, a student needs to go through adaptation and acculturation processes while starting their studies. The Kazanian part of the poll comprised 488 respondents, 249 of whom were female and 239 male, aged from 18 to 28 years, from various universities of the city. The results showed that students with median congruence-to-culture ratios showed better psychological wellbeing. About a third of students had pronounced depressive symptoms and unsteady self-esteem, which calls for more attention to psychological support. As KFU researchers found, the congruence (internally non-contradictory acceptance) of the normative values of the cultural environment is a cultural predictor of subjective wellbeing. Conversely, non-congruence, i. e. non-acceptance of behavioral norms, is a predictor of non-wellbeing and heightened depressive symptoms. Inclusion in social groups is also a predictor. Overall, the presence of depressive symptoms is highly dependent on cultural congruence, whereas self-esteem is not. At a Commonwealth Court hearing Thursday, the Painted Bride Art Center sought to overturn a lower court ruling stopping a sale of its building. The sale would almost certainly mean destruction of the Old City buildings well-known mosaic facade by the artist Isaiah Zagar. Last September, Philadelphia Orphans' Court Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello ruled that many individuals consider [the mosaics] to be a true treasure, and blocked the $4.85 million sale to Philadelphia-based Groom Investments, which wanted to build condominiums on the site. The Bride appealed Carrafiellos ruling to Commonwealth Court, arguing that the sale would further its mission as a charitable nonprofit by providing cash support for future operations. Marc J. Sonnenfeld, an attorney for the Bride, told the court Thursday that the monetary value of the mosaics could not be determined apart from the building, likening them to a fixture. Carrafiello had chided the Bride for not demonstrating the financial and artistic value of the mosaics, known colloquially as the skin of the Bride. The state Attorney Generals Office, which is charged with protecting the public interest in matters related to nonprofits, appeared in support of the Carrafiello ruling, arguing that it amounted to a measured approach balancing the value of the mosaic to the public and the Brides nonprofit future. During the original Orphans' Court hearing, the Attorney Generals Office did not object to the Brides effort to sell. In arguing for sale, the Bride said that its future lay with neighborhoods all over the city, not with the gentrified population of Old City. Sale of the building would provide the organization with an influx of cash for use as an endowment, and free it from the costly burdens of ownership. A widespread outcry ensued after the Brides decision became public in 2017. Eventually the Bride agreed to sell to Philadelphia-based Groom. It spurned a $2.6 million offer from Lantern Theater Company, which wanted to continue the buildings use as an arts and performance center, and preserve the Zagar mosaics. A ruling from Commonwealth Court is expected within several days. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) Initial investigation by the Justice Department-led task force showed a prevalence of corruption and anomalous activities within the embattled Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Thursday. Speaking to CNN Philippines, Guevarra said that irregularities within the state health insurer were left unchecked, as he highlighted the lack of disciplinary and legal actions for concerned personnel. If all of these irregularities were checked much sooner by people who have been more vigilant, then probably hindi magwo-worsen yung situation at PhilHealth," Guevarra said in an interview with The Source. [If all of these irregularities were checked much sooner by people who have been more vigilant, then probably the situation at PhilHealth didnt worsen.] Guevarra likewise acknowledged the possibility of a mafia in PhilHealth, saying the anomalies could not have been brought by only one individual. When we say mafia, we actually mean na parang may syndicate. So to that extent, I would say na meron, the Justice chief said. Ang nakikita ko rito ay mayroong culture of tolerance. May culture of cooperation. Kaya nagmumukha na synchronized yung mga nangyayaring irregularity, so to that extent, parang may syndicated efforts. Hindi mangyayari ito if this is committed by one or two persons only, he further explained. Allegations of corruption, which resurfaced in July, prompted various branches of government to launch separate probes on PhilHealth. The latest report by Guevarras task force found negligence on the part of key agency executives, particularly in the implementation of PhilHealths controversial interim reimbursement mechanism. The probers also found irregularities in the procurement of information and communications technology equipment. PhilHealth, which earlier denied corruption claims, said it will submit to whatever instructions are made based on the recommendations. Guevarra, meanwhile, said he was happy with the appointment of Dante Gierran as the new PhilHealth chief, saying the retired National Bureau of Investigation director has the capability to spot anomalous activities within the organization. READ: New PhilHealth chief to form management team, hire special probers after Duterte order for revamp Student Jasmine Mays, holds a COVID good package at Villanova University, where she started a COVID prevention pantry on campus. This is only the latest of many good works she has organized and taken part in on campus and in her community. Read more When rising senior Jasmine Mays got to thinking about returning to Villanova University this semester, the coronavirus weighed on her mind. I was concerned about our safety and our actual security on campus, said the psychology major and biology minor. But Mays being Mays, she did more than just think about it. She came up with a plan, and then she sprang into action, enlisting the help of Villanova friends and administrators. She raised money, she networked, she amassed donations. What came out of that effort is Villanovas COVID-19 Prevention Pantry, a free resource of cleaning and other health preservation and feel-better products for any student who requests them. Aug. 22 was the kick-off event, with 100 kits of supplies available on a first-come, first-served basis. I love helping people, she said. I always want to do stuff to help people. If Mays treats her accomplishment as no biggie, there are many who would disagree. Jasmine is a natural-born leader, said Stephen Koch, Villanovas assistant director of student involvement for leadership programs. Its been phenomenal shes been able to do this. Shes really paid attention to what the campus needs are. Its not the first time Mays has seen a need and acted on it. Apparently, its just what she does. I was a Girl Scout growing up, and we always did service projects, said Mays, 22. We used to make blankets for babies. We did Thanksgiving drives and stuff like that. While attending West Catholic High School, she worked on service projects with the scouts and also with the National Honor Society. She especially enjoyed volunteering at St. Francis Inn in Kensington, which offers free meals to people experiencing homelessness and poverty. I would always be a server, because I love talking to people, she said. But she put a lot of time and effort into her schoolwork, too. Mays grew up in West Philadelphia in a single-parent home. Her mother, who instilled her charitable values in her daughter, has had a long, ongoing struggle with a serious illness. "She went through a lot and she sacrificed a lot, Mays said, so I didnt want my mom to have to worry about putting me through [college]. Thats why I worked really hard while I was in school. Mays earned two full scholarships to Villanova: the schools merit-based Presidential Scholarship and a Gates Millennium Scholarship, which is given to outstanding students of color with significant financial need. Even before creating the prevention pantry, Mays was active at Villanova. She joined the Villanova Leadership Program, which teaches students leadership skills. She took part in the schools team-building challenge course program, an obstacle course of physical and mental tasks students do as a group; she went on to become one of its facilitators (the program is now virtual due to the pandemic). Mays joined the colleges Reach program, in which Nova students mentor high school students of color. Mays works with students from her alma mater, West Catholic, and is the programs liaison to the high school. Shes advocated for adding a service component to the universitys Presidential Scholars program. Her activism has also extended beyond Villanova, into the larger community. This summer, after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, protests and social unrest flared into rage and property damage in neighborhoods where Mays and some of her friends are from. People were looting supermarkets, and there werent ways for [residents] to get food, Mays said. We decided to do a food drive. The friends turned to Venmo and CashApp to raise funds to buy groceries. And on Juneteenth, they set up tables at Broad Street and Allegheny Avenue in North Philadelphia to give away the food. While they were doing that, serendipity struck. Tyshaan Williams, executive director of the Alternative Resource Network, a faith-based organization that provides food, goods, and clothing to groups in need, was driving by in a tractor-trailer with lots of groceries on board. I was in the drivers seat at the light, and I asked if they wanted any food, and they said sure, Williams recalled. So I pulled over. While he was unloading the provisions, he got talking to Mays. She told him about the other food giveaway they had planned for June 27 in West Philadelphia. Williams' organization has since contributed food to that event and helped with the prevention pantry. He and Mays are now talking about working together on future projects. Shes awesome, Williams said. Shes very energetic. Shes a go-getter. She has a passion. Gabby Tanson, 21, a Villanova senior who helped with the prevention pantry and the food drives, has been best friends with Mays since they met in freshman year. She offered this insight into her friends motivation. She doesnt care about who might recognize her, who might give her props and kudos. She doesnt care about any of that, said Tanson, an accounting major from Central New Jersey. She wants to do good work and do good by the people shes helping out. Nothing else matters. For now, Mays' focus is on the prevention pantry. A GoFundMe page and a Venmo account are helping to restock the pantry whenever it runs low on provisions, which range from masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaning supplies to cough drops, tea, throat lozenges, and Theraflu. The pantry has gained a following on Instagram, @VU_cpp, and Mays said even parents reach out to the page to get help for their kids. Mays altruistic projects are shaping her plans for her future by revealing to her what shes naturally good at doing. Working with Tyshaan has helped me realize I like to help people get access to resources they might not have access to on their own, she said. These days, My dream is to start a womens shelter. If theyre experiencing any kind of trouble, they can come for any kind of shelter. Its all about getting people the help they need. This is just something I love to do," she said. When I look at the highly publicized violent police incidents, it's obvious why some of them result in death. Whether it's the George Floyd "I can't breathe" situation in Minneapolis; the Michael Brown shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri; the choke-hold death of Eric Garner in New York City; or numerous other law-enforcement actions, one thing is clear: they all resisted arrest. They might all be alive today if they had simply obeyed the lawful orders of the police. That's what decent people do when confronted by those who represent the system of laws by which civilized people live. We have many "rights" in this constitutional republic, but one of them is not the right to disobey the law, or those entrusted to enforce it. During my 20 years as a cop in NYC, violent episodes during arrest situations were probably as common as they are today. The difference is, we didn't have the internet, iPhones, and social media to broadcast every unsavory moment dealing with civilian-police encounters. Now that everyone has a camera, we have millions of wannabe producers, directors, and editors, all of whom have opportunities to become instantly famous by virtue of selected video clips that can distort the "news" as cleverly as the N.Y. Times distorts stories about President Trump. What the Times editors write is the slant they want you to read. Similarly, what you view on those videos is often the slant the videographer wants you to see. Inasmuch as there seems to be no limit to what can be posted on social media, and no penalties for distortions that incite people to riot, we have entered a phase in our history in which the potential for violent insurrection has been placed in the hands of the most malevolent purveyors of hatred for our country and for those who have a natural disdain for authority. Being an active cop for two decades provided me with an education about people that few "civilians" would understand. I learned that people intuitively understand the need for a system of laws, as well as the need for officers entrusted to enforce them. Yet, intuitive, or not, people don't like getting arrested. During a serious criminal incident involving an apprehension and arrest, the offender often becomes a violent adversary with one goal: do anything necessary to get away. He may be on probation for another crime, meaning that a new arrest may result in several years' incarceration. Think about the position of the cop when he stops a man for questioning under suspicious circumstances. The man may be wanted for murder, robbery, rape, or any number of other felonies that would put him in a cell for long time. With that in mind, he might be desperate enough to use a weapon on the cop to get away. Up to that point, the cop hasn't determined the potential menace he's facing, since he's only doing a preliminary investigation. In this scenario, the offender has an advantage on the cop because he knows what he's going to do if the handcuffs come out. Faced with losing years of his life in prison, the felon is not likely to be taken easily. The following is often the way the situation unfolds. The cop determines he has enough evidence to effect an arrest and informs the offender of the charges. "Hey, man, I didn't do anything, and you're not taking me!" the guy says. In this instance, the cop has no other options. He's facing a man who broke the law, and it's his job to bring the guy in, period. He can't walk away. He can't tell the guy he's forgiven. He can't call his superior and ask for instructions. He must do what he was trained to do otherwise, turn in the badge and gun. Okay, now comes the part about getting cuffs on the guy and putting him in the patrol car. Please trust me on this: even with a partner helping you, it's very difficult and dangerous to take someone who doesn't want to go. A 110-pound woman can put up a ferocious battle to keep you from manacling her wrists together and dragging her into the car. Now imagine a 6'3", 220-pound, muscular antagonist who defies your lawful order to put his hands behind his back. The moment he refuses, the justice system is being tested. Either we enforce our laws or we turn the country over to barbarians. This brings me to the reason for the title of this column. Cops are just people who go to work at a job and look forward to returning home to their families. They know that the work is dangerous, so their adrenal glands are on high alert during physical confrontations. Being human, they may get scared, but they must respond when a crime occurs and the offender is within their grasp. Deadly force is always the last resort. Still, if they get scared enough, they will do what it takes to ensure that they go home to family that night. Hence, when deadly force is used, it's not because the cop is brutal; it's because he was trying to do his job against an offender who left him no choice. Fans of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" and experts on the U.S. Constitution will join forces to celebrate the Founding Fathers and commemorate the nation's founding document during Constitution Week at the University of North Georgia (UNG). UNG President Bonita Jacobs issued a proclamation marking Sept. 17 as Constitution Day at the university in honor of the 233 anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. "UNG commemorates this historic day through educational activities and by encouraging civic engagement among our students, faculty and staff," Jacobs said in the proclamation. UNG's Constitution Day and American Democracy Committee will host a "Hamilton" and Constitution Forum from noon to 1 p.m. Sept. 21, via Zoom. Students, faculty and staff may participate with the link https://go.ung.edu/hamiltonforum. Four UNG faculty members, including two historians, one political science expert and one music theorist, will discuss Alexander Hamilton's life, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his involvement with the U.S. Constitution and Federalist Papers as well as the composer's use of the facts in the rap and song lyrics. The four faculty members are Dr. Patrick Hightower, lecturer of history; Dr. Carl Cavalli, professor of political science; Dr. Clay Ouzts, professor of history; and Dr. Tamika Sterrs-Howard, part-time faculty member of music. A trivia game, with three short quizzes at the beginning, middle and end, will allow students to win Hamilton stickers and posters, said Dr. Lauren Bradshaw, chair of the Constitution Day and Citizenship Day Committee on UNG's Dahlonega campus. "I thought this would be a fun and engaging new way to celebrate the Constitution and one of the Founding Fathers," said the assistant professor of middle grades, secondary and science education. Bradshaw explained the musical shone a spotlight on Hamilton's life and contributions to the United States when it premiered in 2015. The musical's popularity has grown with a recording of the Broadway show being released through the Disney+ streaming service, which allows the general public to watch. "The musical displays the relevant themes of ambition and freedom that are in society today," Bradshaw said. "People who could not afford theater tickets now have the opportunity to watch it, including myself and my 8-year-old daughter." Based on the mass appeal, Bradshaw hopes UNG students from all five campuses will participate compared to previous in-person events. She explained she also opted for the online forum because of the guidelines regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. "In the past, we had a citizenship test in the Dining Hall on the Dahlonega Campus," she said. "I felt that was not appropriate this year." Bradshaw knows the importance of commemorating Constitution Week. "When our cadets are commissioned as second lieutenants, they take an oath to support and defend our Constitution," she said. "Whereas other nations have had to rewrite constitutions numerous times, our constitution provides opportunities for change, to me this highlights how our Constitution is the strongest element of the American legacy." RADIO 2 presenter Ken Bruce has pocketed a BBC pay increase of nearly 40 per cent amid claims that he was one of the corporations star names who had faced investigation by the taxman. Bruce, 69, whose mid-morning show is the most listened to radio programme in the country, was paid up to 389,999 last year, the latest salary list reveals. This is 105,000 more than his pay of up to 284,999 the previous year. It was one of the more eye-catching figures in Tuesdays annual report as it represented such a huge leap in earnings for the star. The BBC said yesterday the pay covered Bruces Radio 2 programme which has overtaken Zoe Balls breakfast show as the biggest in UK radio as well as his presenting work for the Eurovision Song Contest and Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park. RADIO 2 presenter Ken Bruce (pictured) has pocketed a BBC pay increase of nearly 40 per cent. His mid-morning show is the most listened to radio programme in the country Sources said yesterday Bruce had been one of the corporations star names contacted by HMRC over concerns about the way the BBC paid them as freelancers or through personal service companies. It is unclear if the situation has been resolved but there is no suggestion Bruce tried to avoid paying the right tax. Other stars have faced huge tax bills after the taxman said they should have been treated as employees for tax purposes. When they were paid as freelancers or through personal service firms, the BBC did not have to cover costs such as their National Insurance. Many stars were furious when they were hit with huge historical tax demands from HMRC after saying the BBC had told them they should be paid this way. The corporation has reportedly since come up with a scheme under which it contributes to paying off these demands. According to reports last year, it had put aside 12million to settle the cases of presenters. It is unclear if Bruce was paid as a traditional freelancer or through a personal service company in the past. But according to an insider, the BBC made a hash of the tax affairs of all its presenters. There are claims that Bruce was landed with a big bill as a result of the situation, which sources say he was dealing with in 2018. It is not known if it is still ongoing. Two industry sources claimed last night that his huge pay rise is a reflection of the fact that he had been underpaid for many years. They said it also took account of the fact that Bruce who gets eight million listeners had overtaken Miss Ball and now had the biggest radio show at the BBC. It is claimed he had seen how much more other stars such as Steve Wright on up to 479,999 were getting and this had caused him concern. A BBC source said: He has been underpaid for 30 years. He was put out about Steve Wrights pay and he now has more listeners than the breakfast show, so Ken has a lot of power at the station. Another media source said: This was a mess entirely of the BBCs own making. Ken is one of the good guys at the Beeb. Earlier this year Bruce called for a cull of BBC managers, saying those not working on programmes should justify your existence. He singled out money being spent on the director-generals car and having a policy unit. In a podcast interview, he admitted the BBC was a frustrating place to work sometimes, adding that it was over-managed. Bruces representatives and the broadcaster have been contacted for comment. A Co Down man has been charged with threatening to kill Northern Ireland's Health Minister. At Newtownards Magistrates Court, William Herbert Hawkes (43) was charged with making a threat to kill Robin Swann on 20 August this year, intending that he would fear it would be carried out". Hawkes, from Ardmillan Crescent in Ards, was also charged with pursuing a course of conduct which amounted to harassment of Mr Swann and with the improper use of a telecommunication network in that he allegedly sent a message or other matter that was of a menacing nature on the same date. None of the facts surrounding the allegations was opened in court but it is understood they relate to a number of online messages and comments about Mr Swann. Giving evidence to the court, a police officer said she believed she could connect Hawkes to each of the offences while the defendant himself did not appear at court. A prosecuting lawyer told the court the full file is outstanding so he was seeking an adjournment of up to eight weeks and defence counsel Kelly Doherty said she had no objection to that. Deputy District Judge Joe Rice adjourned the case to 12 November. Jim Johnston in his Sept. 16 letter says we must reelect President Donald Trump for the sake of the rule of law" (Trumps reelection will be brake against Dems). Is he talking about Trump, the founder of the now-defunct Trump Foundation who was illegally using funds from the foundation? Is he talking about Trump, the man behind the now-defunct Trump University who had to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits from students he allegedly cheated? Jim Johnstons letter was directed at a veteran who was critical of Trump. I am also one of the suckers who chose to serve during the war that President Bone Spurs avoided by dodging the draft. My problems with Trump began with his attacks on Sen. John McCains military service, and he has done nothing since then to convince me that he is in any way fit to be president. He was at the peak of his abilities when he was in reality TV, and he still thinks that is what he is doing. Robert D. Hollingsworth, Willoughby Invesco Perpetual Select Trust plc LEI: 549300JZQ39WJPD7U596 Update re forthcoming AGM In the Company's 2020 annual financial report, and the notes to the notice of AGM therein, shareholders were advised that restrictions due to Covid-19 may require that the AGM be held as a closed meeting. As at today's date, the venue for the AGM remains closed to visitors and it is not expected to reopen by 6th October, the date of the AGM. Consequently, the AGM will be held as a closed meeting, with the minimum quorum permitted by the Company's Articles, and shareholders, their proxies and corporate representatives will not be admitted. It is recommended that shareholders exercise their votes by means of registering them with the Company's registrar ahead of the meeting, online or by completing paper proxy forms, and appoint the Chairman of the meeting as their proxy. The Board invites anyone with questions on the business of the meeting, or otherwise, to address them to the Company Secretary, by email to investmenttrusts@invesco.com or, by letter, to 43-45 Portman Square, London W1H 6LY. Questions will be relayed to the Board and responses provided. . Invesco Asset Management Ltd Corporate Company Secretary 17 September 2020 Merrill and Grace Ottwein celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on Sept. 2, 2020. They were married on that date in 1950 by Rev. R. H. Mornhinweg, in Friedens Evangelical and Reformed Church (Friedens United Church of Christ) in their home town of Troy, Illinois. Both grew up in Troy and met there in grade school. They both graduated from McCray-Dewey High School in Troy, Merrill in 1947 and Grace in 1949. Gracies parents were Ted and Florence Guennewig, and Merrills were Oscar and Hilda Ottwein, all of Troy. Immediately after the marriage and a short honeymoon into mid-Missouri, the two resided in Champaign, Illinois, where Merrill finished degrees in Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, while Grace was employed at the U of I, supporting him, and managing the family rooming house, bought for these college years. Upon graduation in 1956, they moved to Glen Carbon where Merrill opened a practice in Veterinary Medicine, operating first out of their home on Highway 159, but moving to a new building in 1960 when Hawthorne Animal Hospital was established. Later, he became involved with real estate development and brokerage and is now semi-retired. They are parents to Ann Marie, (Michael) Culp, Amy Sue, (Keith) Zagar, Paul John (Amber) Ottwein, and Emily Carol Ottwein. Currently, Ann, Paul and Emily live in Edwardsville, and Amy in Southlake, Texas. They have 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Grace and Merrill have lived their entire married lives in Glen Carbon, except for the year 1967, during which the whole family lived in Honduras, Central America where Merrill worked as a veterinarian with Church World Service. Grace and Merrill regret that the current pandemic does not permit a public celebration with their friends, but they encourage personal communication to their address at 29 Lilac, Glen Carbon, 62034, or email notes to MerrillOttwein@gmail.com, 1 of 1 khaskhabar.com : , 17 2020 8:26 PM A ballerina from the world famous Bolshoi Theatre was killed and dismembered with her body dissolved in sulphuric acid, believe law enforcement sources. Russian detectives are reported to be investigating a new lead in a long-running suspected murder case over the disappearance of dancer Olga Demina, then 25, six years ago. She is believed to have been killed after she was the victim of a sting operation by a man possessing 'sexually compromising' pictures of her. Olga Demina, a ballerina with the world famous Bolshoi Theatre has been missing for six years. Detectives in Russia have long suspected that she was murdered and reports now say a suspect has confessed to dismembering the dancer and dissolving her remains in acid The suspect Malkhaz Dzhavoev is pictured with his wife Liliya (second from the left), mother (first from the left) and father(first from the right). Dzhavoev was recently jailed for five and a half years over fraud involving a flat belonging to Demina's boyfriend Malkhaz Dzhavoev, 40, variously described as the dancer's 'manager' and 'lover', was detained in Moscow in 2017 after he was extradited on an Interpol warrant from Germany, where he had fled from Russia, posing as a Kurdish refugee. Before her death, Demina is thought to have paid large sums of money to Dzhavoev to avoid 'sexually compromising' pictures of her appearing on the internet He was recently jailed for five and a half years over fraud involving a flat belonging to the ballerina's boyfriend Alexey Fetisov. Dzhavoev is also suspected of Demina's murder. Now a law enforcement official has told Komsomolskaya Pravda that Dzhavoev 'let slip' Demina's corpse 'was dismembered and dissolved in acid' with her remains probably thrown in a well near a lake. The source said: 'Search work is underway there now. 'Sulphuric acid does not have to dissolve everything to zero. 'Some body fragments should be preserved. But they still need to be found.' Dzhavoev - seen in a video at his wedding in 2012 - and his father bought sulphuric acid from an industrial source, it was reported. A discovery of a skull last year close to where Dzhavoev's mobile signal was registered on the night Demina went missing was found not to be linked to the case. The ballerina's mother Elena Demina said: 'Investigators told me new information appeared in the case. 'The killer murdered her and then dismembered the corpsethen he dissolved parts of the corpse in acid.' Immediately before she vanished Dzhavoev had taken Demina on a trip out of Moscow to dance for a group of businessmen at a nightclub. The criminal case into Demina's disappearance alleges' the criminal case: 'While in the apartment on the night of August 20, 2014, Dzhavoev allegedly attacked Demina and committed premeditated murder.' Detectives are reportedly hopeful that they will be able to find some of Demina's remains as searches are currently underway. It is thought that Demina's remains may have been disposed of in a well near a lake The dancer's family said she paid large sums of money to suspect Malkhaz Dzhavoev before she died. Dzhavoev's relationship to the missing woman is unclear with some sources describing him as her 'lover' and others calling him her 'manager' The mother told how before her death the dancer had paid large sums of money to Dzhavoev. Demina's mother said her daughter was completely at the mercy of Dzhavoev, who is suspected of killing her. Meanwhile, his lawyers claim to have information suggesting Demina was preparing to leave Russia for a life abroad 'Shortly before her death she sold her Peugeot car. She went to sell it with Malkhaz. (Dzhavoev), he took the money. 'Olya also had loans in her name - and gave the money to Malkhaz. 'She was completely at his mercy.' She had evidently feared 'sexually compromising' pictures of her would appear online - and despite paying money to prevent this, the pictures were posted. Dzhavoev's lawyer has denied any wrongdoing by his client over Demina's disappearance, and claimed ballerina may have fled abroad living on the proceeds of a housing scam. 'We have information that Olga Demina was long dreaming of leaving Russia and arranging her personal life abroad,' said a member of his legal team. Her family say she was swindled out of money from a housing deal shortly before she vanished. Kids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now. Youth prisons are hot spots for the transmission of COVID-19. They are closed, crowded environments where physical distancing is impossible. Once the virus enters a youth prison, it risks spreading like wildfire. In the US, the top 13 COVID-19 hotspots are in prisons, and more than 1000 young people in detention have tested positive for the virus. The Brisbane Youth Detention Centre in Wacol. Credit:Google Maps For months, there has been a chorus of calls across the country for state and territory governments to reduce the number of children in youth prisons as part of the public health response to COVID-19. The threat posed by COVID-19 to kids in prison extends beyond contracting the virus and includes the punitive steps taken in response to a potential outbreak. This year, we have seen children locked down in prison cells across Victoria. More recently we have seen children as young as 13 locked down indefinitely in Queensland. We understand that the children being detained in the Brisbane youth prison are "locked down" and have largely been confined to their cells for weeks following a worker testing positive for COVID-19. HISTORY THE WHITE SHIP by Charles Spencer (William Collins 25, 352 pp) On a cold but clear November night in 1120, almost exactly 900 years ago, a ship sailed out of Barfleur harbour on the Normandy coast, bound for Southampton. Everyone on board was cheerfully drunk but perfectly optimistic. The tide had turned and was with them, which was why they had waited until after dark to sail; and the wind was now in the south. They had 50 oarsmen on board as well, and although there was only a thin new moon, it should have been an easy crossing in such calm seas, bringing them back to England within a few hours. Some way ahead of them sailed the King of England himself, Henry I, fourth son of William the Conqueror. The White Ship sank in 1120 on its way from Barfleur harbour to Southampton It was carrying Henry I's only legitimate son, 17-year-old William Aetheling On the following ship, the Blanche-Nef that is, the White Ship was Henry's only legitimate son, 17-year-old William Aetheling, heir to the throne of England as well as to the Dukedom of Normandy. With his laddish encouragement, the crew as well as his cronies had been drinking hard all day. Less than a mile out to sea, disaster struck: with drunkenness and over-confidence no doubt playing a large part, the vessel hit a notorious rock called the Quilleboeuf, and her clinker-built hull was instantly ruptured. Frigid waters poured into her breached hull, and the White Ship began to list badly. A few on deck were thrown into the sea almost immediately, and as the ship groaned and finally rolled onto her side, many more followed. But at least the young Prince William was saved, bundled into the ship's only longboat by his bodyguards and rowed towards the shore. The ship's mast remained free of the water for a time, though, and two men managed to climb it and hold on, wet through and hypothermic, but still conscious. One was a nobleman called Geoffrey de l'Aigle, and the other a very determined butcher from Rouen called Berold. The story of the ship's sinking is told by Charles Spencer, the brother of Princess Diana He had travelled 100 miles from his shop in pursuit of outstanding payments from aristocratic passengers, and had pushed on board the ship after them. Now, shivering nobleman and butcher could only cling on helplessly as the flower of Anglo-Norman nobility flailed and died in the winter seas. Few but fishermen could swim in those days. Among the drowning was Matilda la Perche, Prince William's half-sister. And here the story takes on a tragic poignancy. Realising that his beloved half-sister was in the water close by, William ordered his oarsmen to turn the boat round and rescue her. But as soon as they rowed back among the drowning, desperate hands reached out and people tried to clamber aboard. The boat was swamped and capsized, and William, Margaret and the others were lost. Geoffrey de l'Aigle eventually slipped into the water. His last words were a blessing for Berold, who was the only survivor. It was from him that these astonishing details came. Spencer says that the loss of the White Ship was not only a devastating personal tragedy for Henry I, but also for the Anglo-Norman ruling class It is no exaggeration, says Charles Spencer (that is Earl Spencer, Diana's brother), to say that the loss of the White Ship was not only a devastating personal tragedy for Henry I, but also for the Anglo-Norman ruling class: a staggering 18 countesses drowned that night, along with numerous celebrated Crusader knights. It was also a disaster for England, making the succession suddenly a dangerous uncertainty. With no clear male heir, the kingdom faced that worst of outcomes, a power vacuum. Henry I had plenty of illegitimate children more than 20, it's thought being fond of women and, as King, pretty much having his pick. Rather than court ladies, though, it seems he preferred peasant girls, milkmaids and a pretty widow 'of no rank' called Ansfride, who lived in Berkshire. All very well for him but it didn't produce a legitimate heir to replace William Aetheling and nor did a second marriage, which remained childless, so Henry named his daughter Matilda as his successor. On his death in 1135, Henry's charming but feckless nephew Stephen took up arms against her, leading to agonised civil war known as The Anarchy, the bloodiest conflict 'that England has ever suffered.' For nearly 20 years, Stephen and the ambitious and arrogant Matilda fought it out. It was a hellish time of siege and counter-siege, starvation and slaughter when, as the chroniclers said, it seemed to men that 'Christ and his saints slept'. People must have looked back with longing to the days of Henry I, a tough, sometimes brutal ruler who nevertheless kept order. Spencer gives many examples of this toughness, without which no ruler would survive long in the tumultuous early medieval world. With your kingdom constantly beset by overmighty barons, riotous peasantry and threats of foreign invasion from all sides, a weak king was one who lost control and permitted disorder, while a good king was one who, by whatever means necessary, kept law and order. And Henry I's deeds were atrocious. On his orders, one group of peasants had their feet cut off for foraging for firewood where they shouldn't. Counterfeiters had their right hands cut off and were castrated as were rapists. THE WHITE SHIP by Charles Spencer (William Collins 25, 352 pp) Tough on crime as he was, Henry has gone down in history as The Lion of Justice. The law applied equally to 'high and low', and it was boasted that a girl laden with gold could cross the kingdom in perfect safety. The Anarchy ended in 1153 just before Stephen died of a fever, and Matilda's son became Henry II. For those who see parallels today in countries where the only choice seems between a ruthless strongman in absolute power or bloody anarchy, there is much food for thought. And as colourful and racy narrative history goes, this absolutely gallops. The White Ship whips through a hundred years of complex history, from the Norman Conquest to Henry II, in just under 300 pages. At times you long for a little more detail, more evocation of sights, sounds and smells though one happy aside will stay with me: Henry I's saintly first wife Matilda, 'Good Queen Maud,' gave London 'its first public lavatories'. There have been many tragic shipwrecks in our history, from the Mary Rose to the Lusitania to the Titanic. But medieval historian William of Malmesbury was surely right, when he wrote of the Blanche-Nef that 'No Ship that ever sailed brought England such Disaster.' Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins must be removed from the ballot in Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court ruled. Read more Democrats in Pennsylvania succeeded Thursday in bouncing Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins from the Nov. 3 ballot. That could prove critical in the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein won almost 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania, and Trump ultimately won the state by just 44,000 votes, or less than 0.7% of the total. Pennsylvania is again expected to be a critical battleground state in determining who wins the White House. The state Supreme Court overruled Commonwealth Court Judge J. Andrew Crompton, who last week said Hawkins could stay on the ballot but removed his vice presidential running mate, Angela Walker. The legal challenge had delayed the printing of mail ballots, which counties otherwise would have begun sending this week. Now the scramble to do so begins. There is no one single ballot, and county elections officials have to finalize hundreds or even thousands of ballot designs. Some counties, including Montgomery and Chester Counties, had begun to move forward with the Green Party on the ballot, with the hope of being able to quickly print and mail ballots once the challenge was resolved. (Its easier to redesign a ballot to remove a candidate than to add one.) Those counties will now scramble to redesign ballots so they can be sent to voters. The Green Party tripped up on the states paperwork procedures when it filed nominating petitions on Aug. 3 for two stand-in candidates from Pennsylvania Elizabeth Faye Scroggin for president and Neal Taylor Gale for vice president. No candidate affidavit was filed by the deadline for Gale, as required by state law. Scroggin faxed her affidavit to the Department of State by the deadline, but there was a delay in printing it. The Green Party replaced Scroggin and Gale on Aug. 10 with Hawkins, a retired Teamster from New York, and Walker, a labor activist who drives a dump truck in South Carolina. The Supreme Court, in a split verdict, ruled that Scroggin failed to comply with the Election Codes strict mandate that she append an original affidavit to her nominating paper. A defect fatal" to her nomination disqualified Hawkins as her replacement, the ruling said. Green Party attorney Larry Otter said this is probably the end for Hawkins' fight in Pennsylvania, though he needed to check with the party to see what, if anything, it wants to do next. This is the end of the state road," Otter said. "The only other option is federal court. Pittsburgh attorney Clifford Levine, who has done legal work for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, filed the challenge last month on behalf of Paul Stefano, chair of the Lawrence County Democratic Party, and Tony Thomas, who ran as a Democrat for City Council in Wilkes-Barre last year. An average of polling compiled by Real Clear Politics gives Biden a 4.3% lead in Pennsylvania, well within the margins of error for some pollilng. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party did not respond to requests for comment. Tottenham Hotspur are on the verge of completing a deal to sign Real Madrid forward Gareth Bale on a season-long loan, but Florentino Perez has received a very peculiar letter regarding the Welshman from O Elvas CAD, who play in the fourth division in Portugal. They wanted to know what Real Madrid were looking for when allowing Bale to go out on loan, perhaps in the faint hope Los Blancos would not want anything in return. In the letter, which was published in the Portuguese press, Elvas asked to take Bale on loan for the 2020/21 campaign, while stressing that they expect Real Madrid to inform them of the requirements needed so that an agreement could take place between both clubs and the player that suits all parties. "Pending a response, we bid farewell with our most sincere cordiality," Elvas' letter to Real Madrid concluded. Shop smart this season with these 13 companies The following company participates in our Authorized Partner Program: Audicus, Candid, Choice Home Warranty, Colonial Van Lines, DreamCloud, Eargo, Embrace Hearing, Endurance, Identity Guard, Kohler Walk-In Bath, Renewal by Andersen, Saatva and Tuft & Needle. Its that time of the year again are you prepared for the holiday (shopping) season? Black Friday is upon us, so dont sleep on these online deals, even if youre full of tryptophan from those Thanksgiving leftover... By Azernews By Akbar Mammadov A trespasser crossing the Azerbaijani border from Iran was killed and other one escaped during the armed incident near southern Beylagan region, Azerbaijan's State Border Service (SBS) press service said on September 17. The SBS reported that the trespassers disobeyed the border service guards order to stop and opened fire on the border guards. One of the violators was shot in return fire while the remaining one managed to escape taking advantage of the complex terrain. The wounded trespasser died at the scene from a gunshot wound, the SBS said. The incident took place in the service area of "Horadiz" border detachment of the Border Troops of the SBS near Ikinci Shahseven village of Beylagan region. The State Border Service Border had also found a rifle and 2 bags of drug-like substance weighing about 15 kg in the scene of the incident. In addition, Azerbaijani citizen Mammadov Adish who had illegally entered the border zone to take the trafficked cargo from the trespassers, was also detained. Azerbaijani and Iranian border officials met at the scene of the incident. The teenage boys, 15 and 17, were treated at area hospitals in critical condition. Both were shot in the abdomen, and the younger teen was also wounded in his left leg, police said. The others shot included a 21-year-old woman, taken to Swedish Hospital in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the right hand; a 27-year-old man taken to Swedish in fair condition with a graze wound to the chest; and a 37-year-old man also reported in fair condition, shot in the right leg and taken to Amita Health St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. Om Birla says it pained him that Lok Sabha did not run smoothly during Monsoon session Monsoon Session Day 4: There is mismatch between what China speaks and does, says Rajnath Singh India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Sep 17: On the fourth day of the ongoing Monsoon Session of the Parliament, the Rajya Sabha witnessed discussions on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in India. Following this, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is giving his statement on the India-China standoff in eastern Ladakh in the Upper House Even as a full-fledged discussion over the statement has been ruled out, Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, will decide the future course of action after listening to Singh. In a meeting between representatives of the government and Opposition parties on Wednesday, the Centre had agreed to a debate in Parliament on four key Opposition-sponsored topics-GST, economy and jobs, national education policy and the draft environment impact assessment. Monsoon session: Rajnath Singh to answer Opposition's questions on China today Earlier, Singh told the Lok Sabha that India is committed to a peaceful resolution to the border stand-off with China, and India and China have not arrived at a mutually acceptable solution until now. He said Indian forces are determined to protect the country's security and sovereignty and inflicted heavy casualties on Chinese forces when they clashed with them in Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15. Here are the recent developments. Congress MP Manickam Tagore has given adjournment motion notice in Lok Sabha to discuss the agriculture policies in the country. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaks on India-China border row in Rajya Sabha. "Both India and China maintains that maintaining bi-lateral relations is important. However unless this will be affected if there are tensions along the LAC," says Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. There is mismatch between what China says and does: Rajnath Singh Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said China attempted to change the status quo along the LAC with its provocative military manoeuvres late last month and that there is a mismatch between what Beijing says and does. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News Making a statement on the situation in eastern Ladakh in Rajya Sabha, the minister said India wants a peaceful solution to the boundary issue, but will not shy away from any action required to defend the sovereignty of the country. While the two sides were engaged in diplomatic and military dialogues, Singh said the "Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of 29th and 30th August in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake". NVIDIA and Arm have reached an agreement but the deal is far from finalized according to recent reports. Worries arent just being raised by others in the industry regulators. Although the opinions of those regulators will likely deliver the most weight. The UK government and stakeholders in the industry have also expressed concerns about the potential takeover. What are the concerns in this deal between Arm and NVIDIA? There are effectively three separate categories with regard to concerns expressed surrounding the buyout of Arm by NVIDIA. But each of those stems from Arms position in the mobile and technology industries. Namely, Arm is a chip design company utilized by nearly every smartphone maker on the planet. That holds even where chips are made by Qualcomm, Huawei, or Samsung. The company boasts over 500 licensees in the tech industry. So the primary source of agitation is the possibility that NVIDIA will degrade Arms neutral position. Advertisement Some of Arms largest licensees, for example, operate out of China. NVIDIA is a US company. So its takeover of Arm sets off alarm bells for that segment of the industry. Especially since the US and China are presently embroiled in a trade war thats spurred or worsened component availability for Huawei, ZTE, and others. Even apps havent avoided that fray. Coinciding with that concern, industry regulators and the UK government has expressed concerns that NVIDIA might move operations out of the UK. Arm stands as one of the UKs biggest businesses, headquartered in Cambridge. NVIDIAs response is poised but not backed by anything concrete NVIDIA has not yet addressed the concerns in its deal with Arm. Or at least not in any legally-binding manner. Arm co-founder Herman Hauser is seeking to change that. Advertisement Mr. Hauser hopes to persuade Prime Minister Boris Johnson to place conditions on the sale. Specifically, those would be conditions centered on the above-mentioned potential issues. But also conditions centering on the fact that some of Arms clientele is directly in competition with NVIDIA. For NVIDIAs part, CEO Jensen Huang claims that nothing will change at Arm in terms of jurisdiction. The company plans not only to keep everything in the UK. But also to grow the company. Including the creation of a world-class AI lab in Cambridge. The center would be designed to pull in the best computer science talent in the world and would be home to some of the regions most powerful supercomputers. NVIDIA also notes that its willing to work with the UK government to make the deal work. But that hasnt moved forward just yet. So it may take some time for the deal to be finalized if it is at all. The Bachelor's Bella Varelis put on a confident performance at Thursday night's cocktail party after receiving a rose from Locky Gilbert on their single date. And it didn't take long before Irena Srbinovska found herself overwhelmed with emotion, as she fled the scene and broke down in tears. When the 31-year-old revealed her fears that Locky was 'slipping away' from her, hearts around the country broke for the mild-mannered nurse. Scroll down for video 'All of Australia is crying right now!' Irena Srbinovska's heart broke on Thursday's episode of The Bachelor, after love rival Bella Varelis received a rose from Locky Gilbert 'All of Australia is crying right now, Irena my heart breaks!' one concerned viewer wrote on Twitter. Another tweeted: 'Just want to give Irena a hug right now.' Several fans thought Locky wasn't good enough for Irena - who is a frontline healthcare worker during the COVID-19 pandemic - and wanted the world to know it. All the feels: When the 31-year-old revealed her fears that Locky was 'slipping away' from her, hearts around the country broke for the mild-mannered nurse Feeling chipper: Irena became emotional after Bella Varelis (right) confidently paraded through the cocktail party after getting a rose from Locky (left) during their single date 'Irena doesn't need Locky, shes too good for him. So Bella can have him honestly,' wrote one viewer. Another tweeted: 'Irena is the epitome of grace. She's too good for Locky, but I'd hate to see her heart broken.' A third fan commented: 'I'm team Irena, find another man because Locky AIN'T it!' Later on Thursday's episode, Kaitlyn Hoppe was sent home after failing to receive a rose from the former Australian Survivor star. Not happy: Several fans thought Locky (pictured) wasn't good enough for Irena - who is a frontline healthcare worker during the COVID-19 pandemic - and wanted the world to know it Ouch: 'Irena is the epitome of grace. Shes too good for Locky...' tweeted one supporter The 26-year-old personal assistant was left devastated after Locky gave his four roses to Irena, Bella, Izzy Sharman-Firth and intruder Bec Cvilikas. Bella and Irena are the bookies' favourites to make it to the season finale, which airs next week. The Bachelor continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel 10 T he biggest academy chain in London has joined calls to delay GCSE and A-level exams to give children a chance to catch up on work missed during the pandemic. Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, said it is inherently unfair that some students will be more affected by school closures and lost learning, and delaying the 2021 exams would be useful. It comes as growing numbers of teachers called for clarity on next summers exam arrangements and warned the continued uncertainty is impacting students well-being. Teenagers starting in years 11 and 13 this term will take GCSEs and A-levels next summer despite having missed out on nearly half a year of face-to-face teaching due to the pandemic. A campaign has been launched to push the exams back from May to July to give students time to catch up. Sir Dan said: It would be useful to delay exams by a few weeks, given the amount of time lost so far, and which might yet be lost. He also called for the content of exams and the number of papers taken to be reduced, and suggested that online exam papers should be published throughout the year containing questions on parts of the syllabus. He added: Is already clear that schools and pupils will be differentially impacted by closures and lost learning time. This is inherently unfair on young people because it is out of their control. Vicky Bingham, head of South Hampstead High School and additional vice chair at private school group HMC, also welcomed the idea of postponing exams, adding that we, like all schools, face the risk of continued and less predictable disruption. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs on the education committee that delaying exams is under active consideration and a decision would be made by next month. Just weeks away from reopening to the public on Oct. 3, the Guggenheim Museum has announced an 11 percent reduction of its staff. On Wednesday, the museum laid off two dozen employees with another eight workers taking voluntary separation agreements. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Guggenheim has been devastating to our finances, the museums director, Richard Armstrong, said in a letter to employees. I am deeply saddened to say that the museum will not have the ability to support our previous number of staff members. The Guggenheim, closed since March because of the pandemic, has seen losses of $1.4 million every month that it has remained shuttered. In April, the museum furloughed 92 employees, although nearly half of those workers were recalled over the summer. In addition to a hiring freeze, the museum has instituted salary reductions of up to 25 percent for senior employees, including Mr. Armstrong, who will receive pay cuts through 2021. But with employee benefits and compensation accounting for 50 percent of the institutions total budget, executives saw permanent layoffs as unavoidable. As is customary, the St. Pio of Pietrelcina Society will host the eighth annual Padre Pio Feast Day Mass Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. in Holy Rosary R.C. Church, South Beach. The society was formed to promote the teachings of Padre Pio, a contemporary saint who was canonized by Pope John Paul II on June 16, 2002. St. Padre Pio was the first priest who is said to have borne the stigmata the holy wounds of Christ on his hands, his side and his feet. Interestingly, Padre Pio received the visible stigmata on Sept. 20, 1918 during the Spanish Flu Influenza Pandemic. He survived the pandemic and later conceived of the idea to build the world class hospital, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, in San Giovanni Rotundo, Italy. In keeping with the mission of St. Padre Pio, members of the St. Pio of Pietrelcina Society at Holy Rosary Church conduct prayer group meetings on the second Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. However, due to the current pandemic, phone individuals listed below to confirm. A statue of St. Padre Pio draped with bills, was on display in Holy Rosary R.C. Church during a mass in his honor. (Staten Island Advance/Carol Ann Benanti)Staten Island Advance Rev. Michael Martine, pastor of Holy Rosary, welcomes the public to participate in the mass on Sept. 23, the actual Feast Day of St. Padre Pio. Due to restrictions set in place by New York State and the New York Archdiocese that limit the capacity in the church, social distancing and masks are required and pre-registration is requested for attendance at the Mass. Though there is no procession this year, the statue of St. Padre Pio will be in place near the altar. The reception thats usually held after the Mass and the annual St. Padre Pio dinner will also be postponed to a later date. RSVP as soon as possible to Edna Besabe at 646-483-7583, Fran Brown at 718 273-9529 or Santino Consolino at 718 442-5466. Leave your name, phone number and number of seats needed. Or email denandfran@verizon.net THE company proposing to build a renewable biogas facility at Ballyduff, Tullamore, has promised it ''will design, maintain and operate the AD [Anaerobic Digester] plant to very high standards.'' Paul Carson spokesperson for Strategic Power Limited said the plant ''will be heavily regulated by numerous government departments including CRU, [Commission for Regulation of Utilities] Gas Networks Ireland, Dept for Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.'' Mr Carson was responding to concerns among residents along the Rahan road and other areas who are worried in relation to the potential for odour, vermin and an escalation in traffic and noise from the plant. Paschal Fox, Chairman of the Rahan Road, Residents Association says, ''It concerns all of Tullamore, it concerns schools, hospitals, businesses, everybody who was hoping to continue to breathe clean air in Tullamore, that's what's on the line. If this goes through, we will fight tooth and nail to turn it around. People in Tullamore run the risk of breathing polluted air from that monstrosity. It's practically in the urban area, there must be loads of countryside that wouldn't be near any home,'' he commented. Laois Offaly TD Barry Cowen has added his name to a list of submissions on the proposal. Also included on the published Offaly county council website list of submissions are, Fianna Fail Councillors Declan Harvey, Tony McCormack and Danny Owens, Fine Gael Councillor Neil Feighery and Independent Councillor Sean O'Brien. Mr Carson said it is the company's ambition to transparently communicate with all stakeholders involved through this process. ''We have reached out and have had conversations with several public representatives including the chairman of the Rahan Road residents group. While it has been disappointing that the chairman of the residents group refused our offer to meet, our door remains open. We have also tried on numerous occasions to secure a meeting with Barry Cowen TD, however he has yet to accept our invitation.'' A statement from the company said it has, ''gone above and beyond in the design of the Tullamore plant to include key elements such as a feedstock reception hall with an advanced odour filtration system which gives local residents additional security. This site will be an exemplar for the fledgling AD industry in Ireland which Strategic Power is pioneering,'' the company added. The statement continued: ''The site in Tullamore was carefully selected after a rigorous exercise which considered all planning criteria. The site is zoned industrial land in the Offaly Development plan and that zoning allows for such projects to be developed the plan was open to public consultation and subsequently signed off by local Councillors as suitable.'' The statement said it ''is working in partnership with farmers in Tullamore and across the country to develop multiple AD plants which brings significant and widespread benefits to the agriculture industry and rural economy. ''2020 has been an incredibly difficult year. The strain of Covid-19 has put significant pressure on the Irish agri-food industry. Furthermore, the coalitions Programme for Government on Climate action in addition to specific EU climate change targets requires our Irish farmers to be more sustainable. Agri AD will play an important role in helping the industry meet these demands whilst producing renewable gas,'' added Paul Carson. A decision is due today Wednesday August 16 on the development. Five people interviewed over the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol will be offered conditional cautions, a chief constable has said. The bronze memorial to the 17th century slave merchant was pulled down during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7, before being dumped in Bristol Harbour. No arrests were made at the time but officers reviewed CCTV footage and other pictures and video to identify 18 people they wanted to speak to. The bronze memorial to Edward Colston was pulled down during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7, before being dumped in Bristol Harbour Dozens of people cheered after the statue to the 17th Century slave trader was dumped into the water Andy Marsh, chief constable of Avon and Somerset Police, said eight people had been interviewed and one person had been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage to the statue. 'The law was broken, it was an act of criminal damage,' the chief constable told BBC Radio Bristol on Thursday. 'Fortunately, as far as I'm concerned, it was one crime, one act of damage in an event that carried a significant amount of risk for Bristol and the community. 'We've rolled our sleeves up, got on with the investigation. We've now interviewed nine people. Police arrested a 24-year-old man on suspicion of criminal damage No arrests were made at the time but officers reviewed CCTV footage and other pictures and video to identify 18 people they wanted to speak to 'One of them has been arrested, the other eight have voluntarily attended. 'We propose to send four of the individual cases to the Crown Prosecution Service to make a charging decision. 'We've offered the lawyers for the other five the opportunity for restorative justice. 'We propose they will pay a fine and do some acts to make good their crime. 'If they refuse to take that, and they'll have a week to make their mind up, then they will be added to the four that are going to the Crown Prosecution Service.' The statue was torn down comes amid growing tensions about Britains colonial past, sparked by global outcry following death of George Floyd in the US Police previously said that a 24-year-old man from Eastleigh, Hampshire, had been arrested in connection with the incident. Officers also arrested a 27-year-old man, who was later released with no further action taken. The statue was torn down comes amid growing tensions about Britain's colonial past, sparked by global outcry following death of George Floyd in the US. Floyd was killed when white police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds despite his desperate pleas that he 'can't breathe'. He passed out and later died in Minneapolis on May 25. His death is seen as a symbol of systemic police brutality against African-Americans sparking outrage and largely-peaceful protests first across the US before quickly spreading worldwide. The tearing down of Colston's statue during the Black Lives Matter protests sparked a number of similar actions, including graffiti on Winston Churchill's statue After Colston's statue was torn down in Bristol, protesters across the UK challenged a number of long-standing monuments which celebrated people with links to slavery or colonialism. That month, governors at Oriel College in Oxford voted to remove the statue of imperialist and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes. A statue to Winston Churchill was defaced with the words 'was a racist' and 'f*** your agenda' written underneath the memorial to the war time PM in Westminster Square, London. Slave trader Robert Milligan's was covered with a shroud and the message 'Black Lives Matter' was placed on it in West India Docks amid calls for it to be taken down. It was later removed by Tower Hamlets Council. Tower Hamlets Council removed a statue of slave trader Robert Milligan after it was covered and displayed the message 'Black Lives Matter' during last month's protests Less than a year after it was erected, 'Nazi' was scrawled underneath a statue of Nancy Astor, the first woman to take a seat in Parliament, in Plymouth. A monument to 19th-century politician Henry Vassall-Fox, the third Baron Holland, was left splattered with red paint in Holland Park. A cardboard sign reading 'I owned 401 slaves' was perched in the bronze statue's arms, with the number painted on the plinth alongside red handprints. A Grade II-listed monument to Admiral Lord Nelson, Britain's foremost naval hero, which stands in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral, was sprayed with a black 'V' in the middle of a circle - an anarchist symbol. Red paint spattered another stature of Lord Nelson at Deptford Town Hall in South London. In Kent, a former councillor wrote 'Dickens Racist' outside a museum dedicated to the beloved 19th century author. Letters sent by the Oliver Twist author showed he wished to 'exterminate' Indian citizens after a failed uprising. A statue of Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell in Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, had the words 'Cromwell is a cockroach,' 'f*** racist' and the Black Lives Matter acronym 'BLM' scrawled across it last month. Thousands of people were massacred during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. BLM was also scrawled across the Worcester Civil War memorial in Royal Park. Their petition to Bombay High Court says there are sinister designs behind the campaign The ex-DGPs want rulres to be framed for media coverage of cases that are sub judice. (PTI file photo) What made seven former DGPs and a police commissioner approach the Bombay High Court in the Sushant Singh Rajput case? The medias obsession with the Sushant Singh Rajput case has overridden the raging corona pandemic, the stalled economy and the Chinese threat on the border. After the CBI, Enforcement Directorate and sundry agencies have been brought in by the Centre, the Mumbai Police have been forced into a corner. It has been accused of political bias and for botching up the investigation, though in the freestyle mud wrestling that the nation has seen, it is hard to determine who is cleaner. Now, the former IPS officers have urged the court to put an end to the media trial and the unfair, malicious and false media campaign against the Mumbai police in the case. The petitioners include former Maharashtra DGPs M.N. Singh, P.S. Pasricha, D.K. Sivanandan, Sanjiv Dayal, Satish Mathur, K. Subramanyam and former additional DGP K.P. Raghuvanshi, and former Mumbai police commissioner D.N. Jadhav. According to the petition, the adverse media campaign appears to have been designed with sinister motives to tarnish the fair image of the Mumbai police. Significantly, the petition urges courts to frame rules or guidelines which would help media cover investigations that are sub judice. But, for now, it is a no-holds-barred approach as far as some sections of the media are concerned. Message to J&K babus The message is loud and clear from the Modi sarkar that no anti-national rhetoric, especially by government employees, will be tolerated at any cost. One year after the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A, the Jammu & Kashmir administration has set up a six-member committee, headed by chief secretary B V R Subrahmanyam, to look into cases related to government officials indulging in anti-national activities. The high-level committee has been empowered to scrutinise cases and recommend action against officials who get involved in anti-national activities under Article 311(2)(c). Apart from the J&K chief secretary, the other members of the high-level committee include the administrative secretary of the Home Department, J&K DGP, administrative secretary of the General Administration Department, additional DGP, CID and administrative secretary of the department of law, justice. Experts say any government official, including IAS and IPS officers if found guilty by the committee for anti-national activity can be dismissed from service without an inquiry. According to sources, it is rumoured that many government officers are under the scanner in Jammu and Kashmir for their involvement in anti-national activities. Modi plugs Karmayogi in pep talk to IPS probationers A total of 131 IPS probationers, including 28 women, who completed 42 weeks of their basic course phase-1 training at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy (NPA) in Hyderabad had an opportunity to interact with Narendra Modi through a video conference. He is known to do this infrequently, but it thrills those who get to do one. During the basic course training at NPA over two segments, probationers are imparted training in various indoor and outdoor subjects like law, investigation, forensics, leadership and management, criminology, public order and internal security, ethics and human rights, modern Indian policing, fieldcraft and tactics, weapons training and firing. This was their final training before field postings in their respective states. In his speech to the 2018 batch of IPS probationers, the PM urged them to use every opportunity to plug the governments new theme Mission Karmayogi, a scheme for capacity building of civil servants, a task which the NPA has been performing quite ably since its inception back in 1948. The theme immediately got national attention way beyond police lines. The academy director, Atul Karwal, a 1988-batch IPS officer from the Gujarat cadre, presided over the Dikshant (convocation) Parade and addressed the probationers. Share a babu experience! Follow dilipthecherian@Twitter.com . Lets multiply the effect. In a file photo, books on late North Korean leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung are seen on a shelf at the airport in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korean propaganda authorities sprang into action recently after images of leader Kim Jong Un and his predecessors from recycled publications were found in scrap paper, ordering inspections and ideological education in regional offices of the ruling Korean Workers Party, sources in the country told RFA. Kim Jong Un took power in 2011 on the death of his father Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, when the eldest Kim died in 1994. The Kim family the only rulers the country has known since it was founded in 1948 has been the focus of government-enforced worship for decades. When the Central Partys Propaganda and Agitation Department discovered that the so-called No. 1 publications those featuring the leadership were being treated as scrap paper, it announced the investigation, saying local officials would be held responsible for the lack of respect. While officials scrambled to prepare for visits, some residents dismissed the inspection as a way to provide more opportunities for inspectors to collect bribes, and said enforcing respect for the Kims was mostly a means of control by fear. Under the supervision of the Central Partys Propaganda and Agitation Department, the ideological inspections are being conducted on the party committees of each province, city and county, an official of North Hamgyong province, on the border with China in the countrys northeast, told RFAs Korean Service Tuesday. The purpose of this inspection is to further strengthen the ideological education of local government officials and residents through the process of censuring and criticizing the effectiveness of the local government agencies ideological education projects, said the official, who requested anonymity for security reasons. The inspection is all because people are allowing books and newspapers containing No. 1 portraits, or artwork by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un to be damaged, said the official. The people are further undermining the authority of the great people of Mt. Paekdu by selling the damaged publications as scrap paper, the source said, referring to the three North Korean leaders, who have mythical ties to the mountain sacred in Korean culture, located on the Sino-Korean border. The authorities ordered strict punishment of such acts, because they go against the party and compromise its authority and that of its leaders, the official said. Educate and control the people The order went out to officials, workers and members of the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League, a youth group modeled after the Soviet Komsomol, to thoroughly manage No. 1 publications and to educate and control the people so that they dont sell them as scrap paper. The authorities will thoroughly check each provincial party committee on how No. 1 publications are distributed to lower-level organizations. The officials are nervous because the authorities mentioned punishing responsible officials for the damaged publications, the source added. The source said that the officials in North Hamgyong are scrambling to correct any problems ahead of the inspection. The regional party committees conducted a project to pre-inspect the No. 1 publications and took countermeasures against any issues they found in preparation for the Central Committees inspection, the source said. We have not yet had inspections in this area, but because it is coming soon, the local party officials are disconcerted. They are moving fast to correct any issues found as soon as possible as it is their only way to avoid punishment, said the source. Another source, a resident of North Hamgyongs neighboring Ryanggang province, told RFA the same day that the inspection goes beyond printed materials to include old videos of the leaders that have deteriorated in quality over time. The party, labor organizations and Group 109 are also collecting substandard videos, said the resident, referring to Pyongyangs censorship unit that specializes in crackdowns on those who distribute or watch illegal videos. So far, there have been several instructions and inspections to root out the old videos, but it was concluded that nothing has improved, so the authorities are trying to find problems and take more stringent measures, said the resident, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Fear and bribes But the Ryanggang resident said the directives are aimed mainly at stoking fear and only offer more opportunities for officials to solicit bribes. The Central Committee has conducted a number of inspections under various pretexts. However, this is the first time that the Central Party ordered an inspection on damage to No. 1. Publications, so not only local party officials, but also local residents are worried, the second source said. Inspections and censorship are very common, but in reality, you can be spared from the inspections by bribing inspectors. As they inspect more, it will only increase the corruption of the inspecting officials. North Koreans are forced to display respect for the Kim family in all facets of their daily lives. Citizens must wear lapel pins bearing their visages whenever in public. The portraits of the two former leaders are also widely known to adorn every home, public building, and workplace and it is a crime to allow them to collect dust. The government even lionizes those who risk personal safety to rescue the portraits in emergency situations. State media reported in 2012 that the government posthumously honored 14-year-old Han Hyon-Gyong with the Kim Jong Il Youth Honor Award when she drowned attempting to save the portraits from her home during a flash flood. Her parents, teachers and youth league leaders also received awards, and her school was renamed after her. Those who fail to save the portraits, however, face strict punishment. South Korea-based Daily NK reported in January that the Ministry of State Security launched an investigation into a North Hamgyong woman who saved her children from a house fire instead of saving the portraits. That report said the mother was not allowed to see her children in the hospital while she was under investigation. Reported by Myung Chul Lee for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Education is a hot topic this Legislative session. Here's what bills we're watching. Here are some of the hot-button education bills were tracking at the Argus Leader. Check back each day to see where they stand as we update. John Sargent, Macmillans longtime chief executive, will leave the publishing company in January because of disagreements over its direction, according to an announcement from its parent company, Holtzbrinck, on Thursday. The news came as a shock to many in the publishing world, where Mr. Sargent has been a prominent and influential figure in a career spanning more than three decades. Macmillans president, Don Weisberg, an industry veteran, will step in as chief executive of Macmillans English-language trade publishers, which include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and Flatiron Books, in 2021. The shake-up comes after months of turmoil at Macmillan. The company was drawn into a dispute with libraries over its decision to delay the release of new e-books for library lending, a move that was meant to stabilize e-book sales but ended up angering the library market and was lifted during the coronavirus pandemic. Macmillan also imposed layoffs during the pandemic, a step most other major publishers avoided. This summer, employees at its Farrar, Straus & Giroux imprint started what became an industrywide walkout over racial inequity and the lack of diversity in publishing. And earlier this year, the company faced criticism for the decision by its Flatiron imprint to publish the novel American Dirt, which was attacked for what critics called a stereotypical and insensitive portrayal of Mexican migrants. Listen up, you [redacted]: You registered to vote, and now Samuel L. Jackson is going to teach you how to swear your face off in style. The cursing king posted on his social media accounts Tuesday that if at least 2,500 people used his Headcount link to register to vote, or make sure they were already registered, "I will teach you to swear in 15 different languages." If you've seen Snakes on a Plane or Pulp Fiction, you probably aren't surprised that many people wanted swearing lessons from Jackson. The star previously held the trophy for most curse words said on screen, while only recently being dethroned by fellow actors Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio, mainly for their roles in Wolf of Wall Street, according to a survey from Buzz Bingo. Still, Jackson has racked up a total of 301 curse words in his films. "Alright y'all, you showed up and showed out for our voter action goal," Jackson said a couple of hours after his initial post. "Now, time for me to hold up my end of the bargain. Lets do some cussing!" POLITICS & POLLS: Harris County implementing 24-hour polling locations for one day of early voting As promised, Jackson went on to teach his Twitter and Instagram followers how to say phrases like "take a hike" and "[bleep] you" in other languages, including Basque, Bemba and Haitian and Swahili. Many people were pleased with Jackson and his hilarious antics, praising the actor on Twitter for also bringing some attention to their native language. "Beautiful to hear Samuel L. Jackson fighting the good fight and cussing in fifteen languages--mine among them. Thank you, sir," said Twitter user @punkahoy. Another Twitter user, @BanaJay2, said, "The beauty/paradox of Bemba is that you just can insult and respect someone affectionately in the same phrase. Classic." Jackson asked his followers to "pass this on," but let's remember: a little kindness goes a long way. Do with that what you will. Jessica Alves has had her twelfth nose job, which she revealed to MailOnline she didn't know she was set to have. The reality personality, 37, shared a glimpse of her new nose via Instagram following the cosmetic procedure after visiting the Prof. Dr. Ali Gurlek in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, before she was seen leaving the city's W hotel the following day. Jessica explained to MailOnline: 'Throughout the years I have had a lot of problems, I have had a lot of nose jobs done in Brazil, Colombia, Iran, America and here in Istanbul with great success. EXCLUSIVE: Jessica Alves was seen leaving Istanbul's W hotel on Thursday after having her TWELFTH nose job made from ear cartilage a day earlier 'On the downside I've had infections with cartilage, but what caused problems was when they use cartilage from a donor and that's when my drama started a few years ago. 'My latest nose job was in January last year in Iran, the doctor cleared all my nose, removed all the cartilage and left it without any cartilage at all. That's why it was so shrunk. 'Now Dr. Ali Gurlek in Istanbul used cartilage from my ear and I can breathe much better now.' Jessica added that she was refused the procedure five times, as she went on: 'I saw five different surgeons and everybody declined the surgery, they said they didn't know how to do it and they were overly negative.' Recovering: The reality TV personality, 37, looked typically glamorous as she sported bandages on her sore nose Procedure: Jessica admitted she has 'had a lot of problems' with nose jobs throughout the years, but had 'great success' with the procedure in Istanbul (previous nose job pictured right) Patterns galore: The TV star stunned in a black, white and yellow maxi dress, complete with floral printing throughout Pop of colour: Jessica carried her essentials in a red quilted handbag as she posed for snaps outside the 5-star hotel The real her: The influencer came out as a transgender woman in January after spending years 'feeling like Barbie' Watch her glow: The blonde wore her tresses in a straight fashion, while she opted for neutral-toned make-up She was having her legs syringed to remove nine litres of silicone oil from her legs and feet, and had a lip lift and liposuction on her jawline as she wanted her face to be 'more feminine'. The TV personality appeared to be in recovery as she posted videos in her hotel room via Instagram, and she also gushed about the 'great job' her doctor had done with her nose. Jessica's nose appeared to have been rounded off while the bridge seemed to be more defined after being constructed from her ear cartilage. Before and after: She explained, 'In January last year in Iran, the doctor cleared all my nose, removed all the cartilage and left it without any cartilage at all. That's why it was so shrunk' Frustrating: Jessica added she was refused the procedure five times, as she went on: 'They said they didn't know how to do it and they were overly negative' Stylish: Jessica looked sensational in her social media posts, as she slipped into a flowing red gown that had a plunging neckline to show off her surgically enhanced assets She looked sensational in her social media posts, as she slipped into a flowing red gown that had a plunging neckline to show off her surgically enhanced assets. Earlier this month, Jessica shared graphic images of her botched chin filler after a trip to the beauty salon left her with a deep hole in her face. The reality personality, 37, admitted she wanted to make her chin 'pointier' after seeing others have the same procedure when she got her lashes done in Essex. However just weeks after getting the filler injected herself, Jessica noticed her chin had changed shape and she had developed an infection. Oh no! Earlier this month, Jessica shared graphic images of her botched chin filler after a trip to the beauty salon left her with a deep hole in her face Explaining her woes, Jessica told MailOnline: 'Three months ago I went to a beauty salon in Essex to have fake eyelashes fitted and while in the salon I saw a few girls coming in and out having had fillers into their lips and chin. 'I liked the results and then asked if I could also have fillers in my chin to make it more pointy. The lady who performed the injections had only finished her training course and I had 1 millilitre of filler in my chin.' Admitting that things soon took a turn, Jessica said: 'After few weeks I flew to Brazil and I started to see the shape of my chin changing. I had an infection and the fillers started to drip and form a deep hole on the centre on my chin.' Procedure: The reality personality admitted she wanted to make her chin 'pointier' after seeing others have the same procedure when she got her lashes done in Essex The Celebrity Big Brother star went on to reveal that fillers in her legs and feet caused them to swell three shoe sizes after getting the treatment done in Brazil. She said: ' From size shoes UK 7, I went up to size 9 or 1, losing all my shoes. My legs and feet became really swollen causing me pain and discomfort.' Jessica revealed all of the London surgeons she asked for help were unable to assist with her problem and she flew out to Istanbul in the hope she could find someone. However the surgeons in Turkey were also at a loss, as she revealed: 'I met with five surgeons and all of then said that they could not help. They just didn't know how to remove the fillers from my feet or how to close the hole on my chin.' Worrying: However just weeks after getting the filler injected herself, Jessica noticed her chin had changed shape and she had developed an infection Jessica admitted that the experience left her feeling 'emotional' because she worries that people think she is 'addicted' to surgery, but she insists she isn't. Jessica said: 'I had those surgeries for health reasons and also I am transitioning and few more surgeries along the line will be needed to perfect my female look. 'I just hope that people can learn from my mistakes and experiences. It isn't always pretty.' Jessica, formerly known as the Human Ken Doll Rodrigo Alves, has spent more than 600,000 on surgeries, deciding to transition earlier this year. Great expense: Jessica, formerly known as the Human Ken Doll Rodrigo Alves, has spent more than 600,000 on surgeries, deciding to transition earlier this year She has recently undergone facial feminisation surgery, breast enlargement and bottom augmentation. Jessica, whose surgeon is Ali Gurlek, lists her most recent surgeries as a nose job using ear cartilage, closing hole on the chin after fillers, lipo suction on her neck and jaw line as well as lipo on legs and feet. She previously told MailOnline she finally feels like her outside appearance reflects her inner self. She said: 'I wish I had started my transition sooner, rather than wasting time and money trying to become the man that I wasn't. 'I am much happier now and feel more like myself.' Donald Trump has insisted that two more Arab states are ready to join Bahrain and the UAE in recognising Israel. Trump said that the US is 'very down the road with about five different countries', and that two of them 'are ready to try'. 'You're going to have a whole level of peace in the Middle East without blood all over the sand,' he said on Wednesday, a day after hosting the leaders of Israel, Bahrain and the UAE in Washington to sign the pact. Donald Trump has insisted that negotiations are ongoing with five Arab states to sign a peace deal with Israel, and that two of them are 'ready to try' 'I think Saudi Arabia ultimately will come in too. This is my feeling ... it's not based on knowledge other than a couple of conversations I had with the king,' he added, according to Israel National News. Those in advanced talks with the US over Israeli relations are though to include Oman, Sudan and Morocco. Two other Arab states - Egypt and Jordan - have long-established ties with Israel. The pact signed Wednesday normalises diplomatic relations between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE, and establishes economic ties. The deal breaks with years of consensus among Arab countries that a pact recognising a Palestinian state is a necessary precursor to any accord with Israel. It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left), Bahrain Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa (second right) and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan Abraham (right) joined Trump in Washington to sign a pact with Israel Palestinian leaders bitterly oppose the deal, fearing that it will prompt Israel to give up on the peace process, destroying their hopes of statehood. Iran, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian people, also opposes the deal. Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian President, has warned the leaders of UAE and Bahrain that they will bear 'severe consequences' of signing the pact. 'How could you reach out your hands to Israel? And then you want to give them bases in the region? All the severe consequences that would arise from this are on you,' he said in televised remarks. The deal signing also sparked protests across Gaza, the West Bank and Ramallah, home of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian leaders have reacted angrily to the deal with rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, prompting Israel to launch bombing raids in return It also saw two rockets fired overnight from Gaza towards Israel, which were timed to coincide with the ceremony. Two missiles were fired from Gaza, one of which was intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system, and the other of which landed in the southern city of Ashdod. At least two people received non-life-threatening injuries, emergency services said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket fire from the various Palestinian factions operating in Gaza. But the IDF levelled blame at Hamas and warned that it would 'bear the consequences for terror activity against Israeli civilians'. BASKERVILLE, Va., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In a highly offensive move, John Deere has set up its own coalition to represent black farmers, in an apparent effort to sidestep the boycott the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) launched this week, association president John Boyd declared, in announcing that the 116,000-member group's boycott of Deere will continue. John Boyd National Black Farmers Association President Calls For Boycott Against John Deere 29th Annual National Black Farmers Association Conference - FREE to ATTEND After years of discrimination and inequitable treatment by the iconic company, Boyd said the boycott was intended to draw attention to John Deere's unfairness and gain respect and better responsiveness for black farmers. He charged that the company declines to participate in the NBFA's annual conference or display new equipment and parts as it does at other agricultural industry events. After black farmers purchase from Deere, the company responds slowly if at all to calls for service on its equipment and shuts down its tractors by computer connections if owners try to make repairs themselves. "Today's announcement from the multi-billion dollar global behemoth John Deere that it will create a Black Farm Group is one of the most offensive and egregious corporate missteps I have ever witnessed," Boyd said. "This is the equivalent of being rightly criticized on the facts by groups like the ADL and UnidosUS then creating groups to replace them." Boyd said the company that rakes in "billions of dollars a year is paying more money to consultants to blow up my phone line than it would cost them to provide inclusion and equality to their agriculture equipment customers who are black. Our boycott will continue and grow stronger." According to Boyd, Deere has demonstrated its apparent ill will against NBFA leadership by maneuvering around the association to form a group called LEAP, an acronym for "Leadership, Education, Advocacy and Production Systems." It includes such disparate and non-farming member groups as the NAACP, to which Deere has donated in the past, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, whose only connection to the NBFA complaint is that Marc Howze, an administrative officer of Deere is a board member of the Marshall Fund. Boyd said the Deere company's claim that it has "supported the National Black Farmers Association through participation in the 2019 annual conference," is false. NBFA members and conference attendees saw no such support, he said. Boyd's statement included an e-mail message from Deere representative Andrez Carberry, the company's Head of Global Talent Supply and Diversity and Inclusion, declining to participate or display any equipment at the 2019 - 29th Annual NBFA Conference held November 1-2, 2019 in Prattville, Alabama, dated October 15, 2019. Andrez wrote: "We could not make it happen for display or personnel." "The Boycott against John Deere will continue as we ask our NBFA members, African partners and allies to stop buying John Deere tractors, implements, mowers and parts," Boyd said. "We remain open to new relationships with companies who value the work of NBFA members." For interviews, please contact John Boyd at [email protected] or at 804-691-8528. http://Www.JohnBoydJr.com https://www.nationalblackfarmersassociation.org/donate SOURCE National Black Farmers Association Related Links www.blackfarmers.org OnePlus joined the mid-range fray this year with the Nord smartphone, and yet that model isn't available in the US - and it looks like we now know the reason why. According to a new rumor, the company is preparing another handset with Nord branding for launch in the States, and this one will be a bit different. Meet the OnePlus Nord N10 5G. We still don't have any leaked images of it (what you see below is the Nord), but some specs have surfaced today. Unlike the international Nord, that has the Snapdragon 765 SoC at the helm, the Nord N10 5G is going to be powered by the upcoming Snapdragon 690 chipset, which will be Qualcomm's first 6-series offering with 5G support (and we assume this means it will be cheaper than the 765). The base model will have 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The Nord N10 will have a 90 Hz FHD+ screen like the Nord, with a slightly different size: 6.49". It will swap the 48 MP main rear camera for a 64 MP unit though. Joining the main shooter will be an 8 MP ultrawide and two 2 MP "auxiliary sensors" (don't call them "useless"). The new phone is expected to launch shortly after the OnePlus 8T, which rumor has it will see the light of day in late September or early October. The Nord N10 will be sold for under $400. OnePlus is also preparing an entry-level model for its ever-expanding lineup, a handset that will go for around $200. This one should arrive later in the year. Source A man who was stabbed Wednesday evening in the Chinatown area of downtown Washington has died, according to police, who said they are searching for a woman in connection with the attack. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The district reported the highest single-day tally on Wednesday as 675 people tested positive for Covid, including one person who died. Of them, 642 were infected through local transmission. The deceased is Nijamuddeen (61) from Pappanamcode. Worryingly, 28 health workers also tested positive on the day. While a spike in cases was expected in September, the increasing numbers have left the district administration and health department scrambling for answers. A few cases in the new cluster formation at Manvila of Kulathoor where 110 people tested positive in a factory were announced on the day. Thirty cases from the factory in Manvila were reported on Tuesday while 39 were reported on Wednesday.We cannot shut down establishments for long at this point even with the cases spreading this fast. We can only implement the Covid protocol more strictly and try to ensure that establishments function following these guidelines, said a city corporation official in response to the cluster formation at the factory. As a result, the number of people under home observation is now slowly increasing. As on Wednesday, 28 more people are under home observation. Other regions in the city corporation limit also saw high number of cases including Manacaud (13), Vettucaud (11) and Vattiyoorkavu (14). Parassala towards the border reported 10 cases. On Wednesday, 2400 people were newly under observation in the district. 418 recoveries were also reported in the district. As many as 3649 people are currently under hospital isolation in the district while a total of 20889 people are under home quarantine. 726 samples were sent for testing. 402 results were received on the day.29 people who needed psychological support called the mental health help line. 3417 people in quarantine were called and offered mental support. 90 calls were made to the collectorate control room. A total of 585 people are under institutional quarantine in 72 centres in the district. 726 arrested in state for violating protocol TPuram: The police on Wednesday arrested 726 persons in connection with Covid-19 protocol violations across the state. A total of 1,632 cases were registered and 27 vehicles seized. The police identified as many as 6,063 people in the state who did not wear facemasks. A total of eight cases were registered for quarantine violations. Despite the rise in Covid-19 positive cases, Kollam rural remained top in the number of violations in the state with 676 cases. As many as 155 cases were reported from Kollam City area. In Thiruvananthapuram rural limits, 194 cases were registered and 146 persons were arrested, while 244 cases and 20 arrests were reported from the city limits. Kasaragod district recorded 135 cases and 66 arrests. Fewer violations were reported from Malappuram and Wayanad districts which had been witnessing an increase in the number of Covid cases. Wayanad reported the least violations with no arrests and three cases. The police said the patrolling and crackdown on Covid-19 protocol will be intensified in the coming days due to rise in cases with unknown sources of infection. 8 new containment zones in district TPuram: The district administration on Wednesday declared eight new containment zones. Varuvilakom colony in Kazhakoottam, Thengappura and Kavaradi in Paalkulangara in the city corporation limits, Anappara and Vattavila at Mandapakunnu in Nellanad panchayat, Udaya Garden region at Anappad in Malayinkeezhu panchayat and Mudakkal and Chemboor in Mudakkal panchayat are the new containment zones. District Collector Navjot Khosa urged people living in these zones and the neighbouring regions to maintain extra vigil. Meanwhile, Malaikkal and Panappamkunnu in Kilimanoor panchayat, Palaikkonam, Irinjal and Pallivetta in Aryanad panchayat, Maruthamcode in Athiyannoor panchayat and Thottamukku and Pulimoodu in Tholicode panchayat were removed from the list on the day. Rusesabagina is accused of terrorism for allegedly founding an anti-government group in the country. A Kigali court has denied bail to Paul Rusesabagina, whose actions during the 1994 Rwandan genocide inspired the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda, ahead of his trial on numerous charges including terrorism. Rusesabagina, who has become a high-profile government critic and has been living in exile for years, appeared last month under arrest in Kigali in murky circumstances, with his family alleging he was kidnapped abroad. Prosecutors on Monday hit him with 13 charges including terrorism, financing and founding rebel groups, murder, arson and conspiracy to involve children in armed groups. The court finds that the charges by the prosecution against Rusesabagina are grave and serious, Judge Dorothy Yankurije said as she blocked his bail request on Thursday. The court ordered that Rusesabagina be detained provisionally for at least 30 days pending his trial. Rusesabagina, who had asked to be released to seek medical care, immediately announced he would appeal the decision. He has five days to do so. The denial of bail further alarmed his family, who along with some human rights and legal groups have expressed concern that his arrest is the latest example of Rwanda targeting critics. We have no hope that he can be given fair justice in Rwanda and ask for his immediate release, his daughter Carine Kanimba said on social media. The 66-year-old Rusesabagina is a cancer survivor and suffers from a heart condition and hypertension, requiring chronic medication, his family have said previously. The health concerns brought by Mr Rusesabagina are baseless since he does not show how being in detention prevents him from accessing all the medical attention he needs, the judge said. Movie fame and government criticism Rusesabagina, who was played by Don Cheadle in the 2004 film in an Oscar-nominated role, has lived abroad since 1996 and holds Belgian citizenship and a US Green Card. Two observers from the US embassy attended the brief hearing on Thursday. Rusesabagina became famous as the former manager of a luxury hotel who sheltered hundreds of Tutsis during the genocide in which some 800,000 people mostly Tutsis but also Hutus were killed. For his efforts he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. After the genocide, Rusesabagina a Hutu became increasingly critical of President Paul Kagames Tutsi-dominated government, accusing his governing party of authoritarianism and anti-Hutu sentiment. At home, as Rusesabaginas fallout with the government grew, so did questions over his heroic tale, with survivors accusing him of profiting off their misery. He co-founded an opposition group the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD) which is said to have an armed wing called the National Liberation Front (FLN). In multiple speeches, Rusesabagina expressed support for the FLN which has carried out armed attacks and is described as a terrorist organisation by Rwanda but the extent of his involvement in its actions is unclear. In his address to the court on Monday, Rusesabagina denied forming the FLN, saying their actions should be blamed on them alone. However, he admitted to sending some 20,000 euros ($23,000) to FLN commander Callixte Nsabimana who is on trial on similar charges but said this was personal assistance to a friend and not for rebel activities. Forcibly disappeared Neither Rusesabaginas Rwandan lawyers, who have been discounted by his family as state-imposed representation, nor the prosecution have explained the circumstances under which Rusesabagina arrived in Rwanda after he visited Dubai. The Rwandan court said he was arrested at Kigali International Airport, contradicting the earlier police version that he was arrested through international cooperation. Despite serious concerns about his health and the fact he cant go nowhere without his passport, my father has been denied bail by a rwandan court. We have no hope that he can be given fair justice in Rwanda and ask for his immediate release. #FreeRusesabagina @freethehero https://t.co/Yz6wrWqn8Y Carine Kanimba (@ckanimba) September 17, 2020 Kagame has indicated that Rusesabagina may have been tricked into boarding a private plane in Dubai that took him to Rwanda. Human Rights Watch last week asserted that Rusesabagina had been forcibly disappeared, saying the lack of lawful extradition proceedings suggests Rwandan authorities do not believe their evidence would stand up to independent scrutiny. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Worldwide wellness expert, spiritual icon and New York Times bestselling author, Deepak Chopra, is launching his 91st book titled Total Meditation - Practices in Living the Awakened Life on September 22, 2020 (8am PDT) during a worldwide livestream event that will broadcast on YouTube and Facebook Live. The Total Meditation Livestream was created in conjunction with The Chopra Foundation's Never Alone Initiative, raising awareness and donations for mental health and suicide prevention for Suicide Prevention Awareness Month (September). As part of the livestream, Dr. Chopra will introduce his new book and lead a meditation in the two-part event. Those wishing to view the livestream can register here. Total Meditation (Harmony Books), from Dr. Deepak Chopra NeverAlone.Love - A Chopra Foundation Global Initiative The livestream, hosted by Gabriella Wright, co-founder of the Never Alone Initiative and an actress, activist and humanitarian, will include two parts with unprecedented access to Deepak Chopra: Part I The Future of Wellbeing Dr. Deepak Chopra will speak to the Future of Wellbeing and lead a meditation in a 45-minute program. No cost to attend this portion. Dr. will speak to the Future of Wellbeing and lead a meditation in a 45-minute program. No cost to attend this portion. Part II 7 Axioms for Waking Up ( $41.99 donation) An immersive and interactive experience with Deepak to deepen insight and practices in awakening. Includes a Q&A with the new Master Meditation in a 1.5+ hour program. The livestream donation contributes to a fundraiser for Never Alone Initiative and its programs supporting wellbeing. It also includes a signed copy of the book, Total Meditation. Total Meditation - Practices in Living the Awakened Life calls on readers to live an "awakened life" through meditation and breathing. As Chopra states in the book, "There are many good reasons to meditate, reasons that date back thousands of years. But this book was written not with a glance backward, but with a view forward. I call this the awakened life." Total Meditation is being by published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House/Penguin. The book is currently available for pre-order and will be available on September 22. For more information, to view a trailer of the event, and to register for the livestream, visit the Total Meditation website at https://totalmeditationlive.deepakchopra.com Total Meditation Synopsis: With this book, Deepak elevates the practice of meditation to a life-changing quest for higher consciousness and a more fulfilling existence. He also incorporates new research on meditation and its benefits, provides practical awareness exercises, and concludes with a 52-week program of meditations to help revolutionize every aspect of your life. Total Meditation offers a complete exploration and reinterpretation of the physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual benefits that this practice can bring. Deepak guides readers on how to wake up to new levels of awareness that will ultimately cultivate a clear vision, heal suffering in your mind and body, and help recover who you really are. Readers will undergo a transformative process, which results in an awakening of the body, mind, and spirit that will allow you to live in a state of open, free, creative, and blissful awareness twenty-four hours a day. About Deepak Chopra Dr. Chopra is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. He is the founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He is the author of 91 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as "one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century." PRESS CONTACT Marion Public Relations Kristen Marion 623-308-2638 [email protected] SOURCE The Chopra Foundation These traditional layered pastries are filled with history and childhood memories For Romanians, nothing says childhood better than placinte. These layered pies were a constant presence in our livessweet or savory, hot or cold, always cut into rectangular slices, stacked on top of each other on a plate, and left on the table to entice hungry eyes and appetites. The story of the placinta starts with the ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire. The pastry has a Greek origin, a Latin name, and a history entwined in trade routes and conquests. Long before the Roman conquest of some parts of todays Romania, the Greeks established trade settlements on the Black Sea, to connect the Middle East with Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Its possible that through these trading routes, the method of baking flatbreads in the embers of the fire, and later in clay ovens, spread throughout the continent. The Greeks were exceptional bakers; more than 80 varieties of breads and cakes were found to be offered by Greek bakeries in the third century B.C. Among them was a plain bread made with oat flour, cheese, and honey called plakon, from the Greek word for flat, plakous. The Romans used to make two types of cakes for religious celebrations and banquets, one of which was placenta, a Latin translation of its Greek counterpart. The ingredients were exactly the same: flour, cheese, and honey. A flatbread dough was rolled, repeatedly layered with a cheese and honey filling, then enveloped by one larger dough sheet that was sealed at the top. The creation was baked on bay leaves, which imparted a beautiful aroma, and also protected the pie from the direct heat of the oven. This traditional technique is still used today in Romania: we bake bread and pies on cabbage, grape, or horseradish leaves, and sometimes even linden leaves. After the fall of the Roman empire, the Greeks in the Byzantine world improved the method of milling flour, and hence, its qualities. The higher level of gluten made possible the art of filo, or phyllo, pastryphyllo meaning leaf. The name described not only the thinness of the pastry, but also that old method of baking on leaves. In Romania, we kept the ancient way of making placinte with bread dough, rather than just filo. From here, the rest of the placintas journey through history was led by the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from Persia right up to the gates of Vienna. Hence, you can find versions of the layered pastry throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. From Apples to Ground Beef In Romania, a placinta is the most versatile way of encasing a filling, and thus translates into a vast number of sweet and savory creations. There are two types of pastry dough used in various recipes: one that you can stretch and another that you can roll. We call them foi de placinta and aluat de placinta, respectively. The first is a filo-style pastry, light and delicate, often brushed with butter, that is stretched to fit the size of your baking tray. Its main role is to sandwich together the filling, using two layers of pastry to one layer of filling. The second type encompasses anything that can be rolled: a yeast- or baking soda-leavened dough, a shortcrust pastry dough, puff pastry, or simply a flatbread dough. These layers are sturdier and richer, complementing the flavors of the fillings. Dairy and especially fermented dairy, such as sour cream, are often used to give the dough a softer, velvety texture, which makes some of these recipes unique to Romania. When it comes to shaping a placinta, the most common way is to create two layers of dough and spread the filling in the middle. The filling itself can vary widely by region, depending on different available ingredients and culinary traditions. Placinta cu branza, filled with sweetened curd cheese and raisins. (Nicubunu via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0) In Transylvania and Banat, situated in the north and west of Romania, where we have German influences, placinte filled with sauerkraut are still popular. In the south, where we were ruled for centuries by the Ottoman Empire, the fillings vary from meat to vegetables, apples, cherries, and pumpkin. In Moldova in the east, the land of dairy farms bordering Ukraine, placinte take the shape of breads stuffed with sweet curd cheese, that are served at village celebrations. The most beloved placinta of all is the apple pie, placinta cu mere, for which the apples are grated and mixed with walnuts and cinnamon, then sometimes lightly stewed together before using, or simply left raw. Both ways are popular and make a refreshing, sweet, and tangy filling. Another popular version is placinta cu branza, filled with sweetened cheese curds, almost like in the ancient recipe. It is sweetened with honey (or sugar, nowadays), studded with sultanas, and enriched with eggs, for a filling that is indulgent and moreish. On the savory side, placinta cu carne is made with beef and pork mince, simmered with onions, tomatoes, and paprikaa satisfying meat pie that is delicious either warm or cold. Comfort Food Placinte are our comfort food. Coming home to placinte on the table feels reassuring and special. We even call them placintele, or little ones, as a sign of endearment. This speaks of an emotional bond that we feel towards them. Its one of those dishes that you cant make if you feel angry or distracted. It simply wont bake. You need to think of the ones you bake it for with love and gratitude. We make placinte for birthdays and religious celebrations, weddings and funerals, special guests, or simply a family member returning home after a difficult day or a long trip. Placinte are a sign of love and care, and they give people comfort and nourishmentnot just for the body, but for the soul, too. At my parents home, a 430-square-foot apartment rather snug for its five occupants, we were only allowed to eat in the kitchen. So when mum made a placinta, we would constantly float in and out to eat a piece, then inevitably come back for another one, until they were all gone. I was very fond of them. They made homework feel like a breeze, knowing that I had them as my reward. Today, when I roll the dough and prepare the filling for my own placinta, I find the process to be a perfect time machine: I am suddenly there with my mum, chatting and laughing, cooking up a piece of comfort for the family. Irina Georgescu is a food writer and author of Carpathia: Food From the Heart of Romania. Her work draws on her Romanian and Eastern European heritage, which she explores through food and history. She was born in Bucharest, Romania, and now lives in the UK. RECIPE: Romanian Apple Pie (Placinta cu Mere) RECIPE: Romanian Meat Pie (Placinta cu Carne) The Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) says the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) is welcome to probe its activities and accounts. This is in response to a petition filed by a non-governmental organisation, Kwara Advancement Initiative (KAI), which claimed it uncovered N325 million diverted from the accounts of the service. According to a petition signed by Ibrahim Sulyman, the money was diverted in guise of payments for non-existing projects awarded to one Compumetric Solutions Limited (CSL). The group demanded the ICPC to fish out the individual(s) behind the firm for the purpose of transparency and accountability to the people of Kwara. Also, KAI accused Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of non-transparency, saying citizens could no longer access information that were usually readily available on the revenue agencys website. This is why as a responsible organisation, we decided to beam searchlights and we are shocked to uncover so many financial frauds that have been carried out by top management officials of KWIRS in connivance with the ministry of finance. On the 6th of April, 2020, we notice a payment of eighty four million, two hundred and sixty four thousand, six hundred and eleven naira, forty one kobo (N84,264,611.41) as gross payment of 15% collection fees on spendable collections to Compumetric Solutions Limited with voucher number 2020/0300. This payment voucher came with another net payment of seventy three million, eight hundred and thirty one thousand, eight hundred and fifty naira (#73,831,850.00) both as payments for the month of January, 2020 Also on the 6th May, 2020, another payment of 15% collections fees on spendable collections was made to same company with voucher number 2020/0345 for another non existing project. This time, a gross sum of forty four million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, three hundred and twenty naira (N44,316,320.00) while N40,771,014.40 was the net amount paid according to that voucher. This brings the total amount paid in the two vouchers for the month of January, 2020 to the tune of N114,602,864.40 (One hundred and fourteen million, six hundred and two thousand, eight hundred and sixty four naira and forty kobo). The above stated transactions have also cost the state government a statutory sum of N18,029,844.84 deducted for VAT, WHT and developmental levy expected to be paid to the FIRS and KW-IRS, SaharaReporters reported. Mr Sulyman noted that there is no agreement sent to the internal audit department of KW-IRS indicating that Compumetrics Solution Limited was due for payment of such magnitude for the service as expected. Meanwhile, in her reaction, the chairperson of KW-IRS, Shade Omoniyi, denied the allegations saying the agency is ready to defend itself in case of a probe by ICPC. the agency welcomes the ICPC or any probe of its activities for the new leadership has nothing to hide or bother about other than its integrity and the general good of the Kwara public. In a statement issued on Thursday, she stated that the new leadership of KW-IRS inherited some consultants who supplied what was known as Amanda software but was not being used by the service anymore. She said an initial assessment carried out amongst its staff revealed that that the solution by Amanda software was not efficient to the service. The outcome of the survey affirmed that the solution was not efficient. In an attempt to resolve this issue, the platform providers were invited on 11th October 2019 to defend this position and, after deliberations and their acceptance of all the issues raised, they promised to resolve all the issues within two months. But the issues kept recurring and new ones developed even after the two months had elapsed. The system finally collapsed and users were locked out on 21st December 2019. The Service was only able to salvage the data by the proactive action backups done in-house at the inception of this administration. According to her, the new leadership developed a technical request for proposal which was sent to five different platform providers, listing all the expected deliverables of the required platform for efficient running of the Service. There were submissions of proposals and assessments of same were carried out by an internal team comprising all the necessary stakeholders in the agency, including representatives of the audit department. All the five firms made presentations to the team after which two were shortlisted for further clarifications and negotiations in line with global best practices. The KW-IRS team signed off at each milestone for the sake of due process. Mrs Omoniyi said that CSL was finally selected as the new consultants and a memorandum of understanding was duly signed and executed between both parties. The service has full records of this rigorous process. The CSL, a household name in Nigerias tax consultancy industry, works in various states of the federation. We wish to state that the CSL was engaged only after the former consultants contract was terminated. On the allegations that CSL was not rendering any service, the chairperson noted that the backend interface by the company has been deployed since January 2020, which involves the integration of the platform with all the payment platforms, solutions providers systems, and all the collecting banks platforms. Speaking on the prudence of the current administration, she said the current consultants have only been paid N357 million since the inception of this administration compared to the payout of about N3.5 billion in one year to consultants under the previous administration. Many consumer goods and food retailers are opening new shops, while others have had to shut down and give back retail premises to landlords. Covid-19 has cast a shadow on the global and Vietnamese economy. However, not all opportunities have disappeared and not all retailers are bogged down in difficulties. International investors have seen share prices of large retail corporations, including Walmart, Costco, Kroger and Target, increasing. The common characteristics of the retailers are that they sell essential goods, understand trends well, and provide enough goods to satisfy consumers needs. In Vietnam, BRG has opened 10 Hapro Food shops in its BRG Mart chain. The shops are located on the central streets of the capital city, providing essential goods at stable prices, especially the 13 categories of products listed in the Hanoi authorities price stabilization program. Bach Hoa Xanh, a brand belonging to The Gioi Di Dong, has opened 90 more sale points, a sharp increase compared with the average 30 new sale points opened in January and February. With the new shops, the total number of Bach Hoa Xanh shops has increased to 1,158, and with the new shops set in Ca Mau and Dak Lak, Bach Hoa Xanh is now present in 19 cities/provinces in the south, and four in the central region. The first Ong Bau cafe, located in district 4, HCM City, opened in February, when the pandemic broke out. However, the coffee chain has been expanding with 100 shops opened so far. The owners of the chain hope that they will open 10,000 shops throughout the country by 2022. Uniqlo, which now has four shops in Hanoi and HCM City, has announced that it will open two more shops in Hanoi. The Japanese fashion brand has been focusing on offline sales over the last six months in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Muji has opened its first experience store in HCM City, a step which is believed to pave the way for the Japanese brand to enter the Vietnamese market. The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) reported that Vietnam attracted $1.1 billion worth of investment capital to the retail industry in the first seven months of the year. Opportunities Bach Hoa Xanh reported steady growth. The number of online orders in March increased by 17 percent over February and 1.5 times over January. The representative of a retail chain said they were swimming against the stream by opening more shops. Retailers can get discount rates of 10-20 percent on rent now. Analysts are optimistic about the prospects of the retail market in Vietnam, where family spending has increased by 10.5 percent per annum in recent years. Duy Anh Japanese retailers rouse Vietnamese market, despite pandemic While most enterprises have had to scale down their business during Covid-19 and give back their retail premises to landlords, Japanese retailers have continued to open more shops in Vietnam recently. Richa Sharma By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Admitting that China was trying to obstruct the Indian Army's traditional patrolling of areas along the LAC, defence minister Rajnath Singh said on Thursday that no power in the world can stop Indian soldiers from doing so and assured that there will be no change in the pattern. Clarifying in the Rajya Sabha following a statment on the ongoing India-China standoff at the LAC in Ladakh, Singh said India will not accept any change in the traditional and well-defined patrolling pattern. Replying to a query by former defence minister AK Antony if Indian soldiers are being stopped from entering areas they used to patrol earlier, Singh said: "I want to clarify that the faceoff is because of this and patrolling is done on the traditional pattern. No power in the world can stop our soldiers from patrolling and there will be no change in the pattern." The defence minister said he would not like to explain in more detail, keeping in mind the sensitivity of the matter. Rajya Sabha members expressed solidarity with the Indian armed forces and said they all stand united behind them. Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu told Singh that the government should create a mechanism where members of all political parties are taken into confidence and regularly briefed about the situation. Many Rajya Sabha members said that the government should be careful when dealing with Beijing keeping in mind their characteristic to "betray". The defence minister said India remains committed to resolving the current issues through peaceful dialogue and consultations. "It was in pursuit of this objective that I met my Chinese counterpart on 4th September in Moscow and had an in-depth discussion with him. I conveyed in clear terms our concerns related to the actions of the Chinese side, including amassing of large number of troops, their aggressive behavior and attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo that were in violation of the bilateral agreements. I also made it clear that even as we wanted to peacefully resolve the issue and would like the Chinese side to work with us, there should also be no doubt about our determination to protect Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity," he told the upper House. On the current situation, he said that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met the Chinese Foreign Minister in Moscow on September 10. "The two have reached an agreement that, if implemented sincerely and faithfully by the Chinese side, could lead to complete disengagement and restoration of peace and tranquility in the border areas," he said. Caalling the present situation different from the past, Singh said, "In the past too we have had situations of prolonged stand-offs in our border areas with China which have been resolved peacefully. Even though the situation this year is very different both in terms of scale of troops involved and the number of friction points, we do remain committed to the peaceful resolution of the current situation. At the same time, the House can be assured that we remain prepared to deal with all contingencies." "I can assure you that the morale and motivation of our armed forces is very high. The reassuring visit by our PM has ensured that our commanders and soldiers understand that the entire nation stands behind them in support of the just cause of defending our territorial integrity. They are accordingly being provisioned with suitable clothing, habitat and the required defence wherewithal. The determination of our troops is praiseworthy. They are capable of serving at forbidding altitudes with scarce oxygen and in extremely cold temperatures, something that they have effortlessly done over the last many years at Siachen and Kargil," he added. The minister said he will not hesitate to say that the country is facing a challenge in Ladakh. "This is a time when this august House has to come together and reiterate confidence and faith in the valour of our brave armed forces and support them in the mission that they have undertaken to protect the territorial integrity of our motherland," he added. Home Minister Amit Shah, who was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on September 12 for a complete medical checkup, has been discharged from the hospital, sources told Moneycontrol. An official statement from AIIMS is expected shortly, sources said, adding that Shah is likely to attend the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament from Monday, September 21. On September 13, AIIMS had released a statement saying that Shah was admitted for a "complete medical checkup" ahead of the Parliament session. "Amit Shah was discharged from AIIMS after post-COVID care on August 30. As per advice given at the time of discharge, he has now been admitted for a complete medical checkup before the Parliament session for 1-2 days," the statement said. The 55-year-old had tested positive for the novel coronavirus infection on August 2 and was admitted to a hospital in Gurugram. He later tested negative for COVID-19 on August 14. Shah was again hospitalised for post-COVID care on August 17 after he complained of fatigue and body aches. "The Union minister has been complaining of fatigue and body aches for the last 3-4 days. He has been admitted to AIIMS for post-COVID care," said the hospital in a press release on August 18. He was discharged after spending 14 days in the hospital on August 30. (Newser) Attorney General William Barr took aim at his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, criticizing prosecutors for behaving as headhunters" in their pursuit of prominent targets and for using the weight of the criminal justice system to launch what he said were ill-conceived political probes. The comments at a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan amounted to a striking, and unusual, rebuke of the thousands of prosecutors who do the daily work of assembling criminal cases across the country, the AP reports. Barr has faced scrutiny for overruling the decisions of Justice Department prosecutors who work for him, including in criminal cases involving associates of President Trump. story continues below Rejecting the notion that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring, Barr described them instead as part of the "permanent bureaucracy" and suggested they need to be supervised, and even reined in, by politically appointed leaders accountable to the president and Congress. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target, Barr said. Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process. He added: Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but its no way to run a federal agency." (Read more William Barr stories.) The on Thursday announced two new grants as part of a commitment made in September 2018 to invest 25 million dollars (about Rs 180 crore) over five years in improving farmer livelihoods in India. The new funding which totals 4.5 million dollars (nearly Rs 33 crore) will allow non-profits Tanager and Pradan to scale their efforts to help earn more from improved output and fair market access. Both grantees will focus on increasing opportunities for women via farmer producer organisations. With these two new grants, the has invested a total of 15 million dollars (about Rs 110 crore) with eight non-government organisations (NGOs) in India, supporting programmes designed to impact more than 1.4 lakh including nearly 80,000 women farmers to date. Kathleen McLaughlin, President of and Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of Walmart Inc, said the global COVID-19 pandemic has increased pressure on India's farmers, especially women farmers shouldering extra responsibilities in the household while seeing their incomes diminish overnight. "We at the Walmart Foundation and our grantee partners are focused on supporting farmers to increase their resilience and sustainability for a better future," she said. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Group's Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Walmart Foundation Board of Directors, said there is huge potential for innovative technology solutions to help farmers in India improve productivity and yield, access valuable market information and succeed as part of a more efficient and transparent supply chain. "Farmer producer organisations are key to the foundation's strategy for empowering farmers and bringing them into the digital era," he said in a statement. Zuper was founded to enable service businesses to embrace our digital future, provide their customers with a frictionless, on-demand experience, and improve the productivity and efficiency of their workforce. Zuper, provider of a leading intelligent workforce and customer management platform, today announced it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Prime Venture Partners and participation from Gunderson Dettemer and Gemba Capital. The company also announced the appointment of former Microsoft product leader Anand Subbaraj as Chief Executive Officer. Since its founding in 2016, Zupers workforce management SaaS platform has empowered more than 500 service businesses and thousands of users globally in the residential and commercial cleaning, HVAC, electrical, Internet Service Provider, plumbing, and landscaping industries to modernize their operations and provide an on-demand booking experience for customers. To date, Zuper has facilitated more than 2 million work orders worldwide across the U.S., EMEA and APAC. The global Home Services Market is expected to grow 19% from 2019-2026 and reach USD $1.13 trillion by 2026 according to Verified Market Research. Today, many service companies fail to provide a consistent and informed experience to customers across all communication channels. They lack effective solutions to track employees, their locations and work progress and there is near zero visibility on the field-workforce. Customer behavior and expectations are changing rapidly, and companies need to evolve with on-demand service models that personalize the experience and provide customers with real-time alerts for ETA and possible service delays. Zuper was founded to enable service businesses to embrace our digital future, provide their customers with a frictionless, on-demand experience, and improve the productivity and efficiency of their workforce, said Anand Subbaraj, CEO of Zuper. The founding team formulated its hypothesis based on personal customer service experiences and started reaching out to companies in different parts of the world to understand common pain points and validate market demand. It quickly became apparent that there was a huge unmet need for a comprehensive workforce management platform focused on providing customers with the best possible experience from booking appointments to interacting with company employees. At Zuper, we are tackling this problem at scale and see a significant runway for growth, especially in our current COVID-economy. With the new capital, Zuper will continue to invest in platform innovations, as well as sales and marketing to fuel aggressive growth and expansion in North America and other key geographies. It will also invest in talent to support this growth and is hiring across all functions in the U.S. and India. "SMBs are experiencing two powerful trends - they now manage an increasingly distributed workforce while their customers expect an on-demand service experience, said Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners. Zupers mobile-first, intelligent workforce management solution provides SMBs with complete visibility to what work is being scheduled, as well as the location, employee and status for every job. At the same time, their end customers are able to request, pay and track the order through a few taps on their mobile. The pandemic has further accelerated this trend and with it the demand for Zupers solution. We are delighted to be a part of Zupers mission to transform the service delivery and management for SMBs." Zupers intelligent workforce management platform helps service organizations manage, modernize and transform the field and remote workforce. By leveraging the power of AI and Machine Learning, Zuper helps organizations improve productivity and utilization of the workforce by automating repetitive tasks that impact efficiency. The Zuper Platform includes a white-labeled mobile and web application for a modern consumer experience, back-office application to manage, govern and operationalize the workforces, native mobile applications in iOS and Android for workforce collaboration and service 360 to grow business with data. The end-to-end platform offers features such as: Smart scheduling and dispatching Work order management COVID-19 Compliance Intelligent location services Quotations and invoicing Inventory and contract management. Zuper was founded in August 2016 with offices in Seattle, U.S & Chennai by Raghav Gurumani, Karthik Rao and Vijay Narasiman. Anand Subbaraj, joined Zuper as CEO in 2020 having spent more than 13 years in Microsoft as a Head of Product in Azure Data. The enterprises and midsized businesses using Zuper across thousands of employees have benefited from significant operational advantages including a 50% increase in workforce utilization, 35% reduction in service turnaround time, 45% increase in customer adoption and profitability, and 30% reduction in costs. The company has also launched COVID-19 Compliance Pack for businesses to manage operations post lockdown. The solution helps businesses across different industries ensure their workforce stays compliant and up-to-date with the latest COVID-19 protocols and guidelines. With this investment, Prime Venture Partners has invested in nine startups in the SaaS sector including MyGate, Quizizz, and HackerEarth. The early stage fund, led by serial entrepreneurs Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya, Sanjay Swamy and Amit Somani focuses on startups that not only need capital but also require mentoring to transform them into disruptive companies. The fund has a portfolio of more than 25 companies spread across sectors such as Fintech, SaaS, Healthcare, Consumer, B2B etc. The fund recently announced the addition of Dr. Ashish Gupta as Partner Emeritus to further strengthen its investment team. About Zuper Zuper enables organizations with field service teams to collaborate seamlessly and provide the best possible customer experience through its intelligent workforce and customer management platform. By leveraging the power of AI and Machine Learning, Zuper allows service businesses such as residential & commercial cleaning, HVAC, electrical, Internet Service Providers, plumbing, and landscaping to efficiently manage their operations and workforces from anywhere and dispatch the right person with the right information at the right time. The company also helps organizations maintain COVID-19 compliance and create a safe environment for employees, customers, and the community through its ZuperCCPack. Founded in 2016, Zuper Inc. is headquartered in Seattle and has offices in India and the Middle East. For more information visit https://zuper.co/. I work for Savills - one of Ireland's largest property advisors - as an associate director in its office-leasing team. Our success is contingent on demand from office occupiers for space. What prompted me to write this piece arguing in favour of the office, is the seemingly unrelenting wave of commentary promoting the demise of the office, without debate. Dublin has changed remarkably over the last 20 years. During the Celtic Tiger period we saw huge growth in the suburbs with major shopping centres and office parks being built around the city. Over the last 10 years - in common with a trend seen around the globe, - business started to concentrate on the city centre again. This is evident to even the casual observer in the Docklands and for me, outside the front door of Savills' office, Molesworth Street has been transformed by new development. The reasons why demand has concentrated on the city centre are many. All public transport radiates from the centre so if you are located here you can appeal to the largest possible labour pool. If you work here, you have the broader range of shopping, cultural, and leisure options for lunchtime and after work activity. You are also more likely to be able to meet and mix with your peers who don't work with you. For those involved in part-time education, especially trainee professionals, access to training nearby your office is also an attraction. Because of this, Dublin city centre has developed in a vibrant and varied, exciting place to live, work and socialise. This has allowed Ireland to attract talent from overseas to work in the hugely important Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) sector in the city. These companies would not find Ireland as attractive if we didn't attract these talented people who in addition to contributing to our economic success, have by their presence transformed Dublin into a vibrant multi-racial social centre. Covid has largely shut down this wonderfully vibrant city centre, as I see every day outside our office. We need to fight for most worthwhile things in life and now is definitely the time we need to fight to restore our vibrant city centre. It's our economic dynamo and our social meeting point, with social distancing, of course. We've been living with Covid-19 for just six months, but I'll admit, it does seem more like six years at this point. Less than a month into the pandemic, various commentators began to question whether the office has a future. The benefits of working from home, it seemed, were obvious - not having to commute on a daily basis, spending more time with family and friends, and working more flexible hours. I enjoyed it myself - up to a point. After the initial novelty wore off, the downsides began to emerge. From our perspective, it became clear that the development of graduates and junior members of staff - the future of our business - was being hampered by not being in an office environment. Of course, technology has enabled us to somewhat mentor and train staff remotely, but this pales in comparison to watching and learning from others conducting business. And it's not only junior members of staff who are affected. For anyone working in an office, the ability to turn to a colleague and brainstorm an idea or walk to someone's desk and get a swift answer to a question was, until recently, taken for granted. Now, time is spent scheduling dairies for Zoom calls - or waiting for a response to an email - to obtain the same information. Don't get me wrong, I believe both have their merits, and I think employers will need to become more flexible by allowing employees to work from home on a part-time basis. However, those calling for this on an almost full-time basis, are not just overlooking the impact on their business, they are also overlooking the impact on the wider economy and, in particular, city centres. Pre-Covid, Dublin city centre was home to hundreds of thousands of office workers, not to mention tourists. The majority of office workers remain working from home - as per Government advice - and the presence of tourists is generally non-existent. The impact this is having on city centre retailers, restaurants, cafes and pubs is, to be blunt, brutal. Dublin Town, the voice of businesses in Dublin city centre recently commented that office workers are the bedrock of custom for retail and hospitality businesses. These workers are the ones who buy coffees and lunches, shop on their breaks, and engage with the city's hair and beauty offerings. As I mentioned before, we're only six months into this pandemic and, in my opinion, the novelty has not worn off for most people yet, but it is beginning to do so. I expect the attraction of office working will become increasingly apparent as we make our way through an Irish winter. In the meantime, I believe the Government - and wider business community - need to focus on ensuring employees can return to offices safely. Public transport is key to this. As it stands, Government advice is to avoid public transport, which is used by 75pc of office workers in Dublin to get to work. It is imperative that Government look at ways to make public transport safer - be it through additional capacity or more regular sanitisation between journeys. From an employer's perspective, allowing flexible starting times, the provision of PPE for staff, adjusting layouts to allow for social distancing, and the installation of additional safety equipment should be considered with, if required, Government support in the form of grants or subsidies. Kellie O'Brien is an associate director at Savills Ireland. Samsung Biologics' Plant 3 in Incheon / Courtesy of Samsung Biologics By Nam Hyun-woo Samsung Biologics said Thursday it reached a deal to develop Panolos Bioscience's solid tumor treatment candidate substance, PB101. Under this agreement, Samsung Biologics said it will provide a full scope of development services from cell line development, process development, to non-clinical and clinical material manufacturing. PB101 is expected to suppress the growth of tumors effectively by targeting various types of vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF), overcoming the limitations of existing treatments. Leveraging Samsung Biologics' capabilities and expertise in developing complex proteins, Panolos Bioscience intends to achieve successful IND approval for validation of the substance, and establish a new platform to treat various VEGF-related illnesses. "PB101 is itself a promising candidate as a treatment for solid tumors and VEGF-related diseases," Panolos Bioscience CEO Lim Hye-seong said. "Furthermore, it is also a platform technology that has demonstrated its versatility as a foundation on which multi-specific biologics can be developed. Through close collaborative efforts, Panolos will endeavor to deliver quality biopharmaceuticals to address unmet global medical needs." Panolos Bioscience The decision on the part of an Attleboro family to send their child to the citys high school this week knowing the student had the coronavirus was a reckless action, Mayor Paul Heroux said. It was really poor judgement, Heroux told WHDH in an interview. If you know that your child has coronavirus, is COVID positive, you should not send your child to school under any circumstances. After testing positive for the virus, the student went to school Monday, the first day of classes of the 2020-2021 academic year, Attleboro High School Principal Bill Runey said. In an email to the high school community Tuesday, Runey said officials learned about the positive case Monday. The student was not in school Tuesday, the principal wrote. School nurses identified 30 students as close contacts with the student who tested positive. Those students are now quarantining for two weeks, according to Runey. The mayor noted that in light of the positive case and the subsequent quarantines, it is imperative that parents keep their children home if they test positive for the viral respiratory infection. Additionally, if test results are pending, kids should be kept home, the mayor wrote in a Facebook post. If kids are showing any symptoms of COVID-19, they should probably get a test. If anyone has come in to contact with a COVID-19 confirmed individual, its best to contact either the school nurse or the city nurse to go over the different situations and what to do. We should all be vigilant and constantly be monitoring ourselves for symptoms," he added. The incident was not the result of a breakdown in the schools safety protocols, Runey claimed. Instead, delays in reporting systems prevented school officials from avoiding the situation. The principals statement was echoed by Heroux. The school department did not do anything wrong, the mayor said in his post. The school department has been taking great precautions to make sure that our 6,000 students will be as safe as possible under the circumstances. Heroux and Attleboro Public Schools David Sawyer are in agreement, though, that as a matter of sheer probability, there is no way to guarantee all students in the school are COVID-19 negative, the mayor added. Put in other words, it is highly likely that there are some students who are asymptomatic and dont even know they are COVID positive, he said. The measures that are put in place by the school department are consistent with the CDC and DPH guidelines. Those measures are there to minimize the person to person spread of this virus. To stave off transmission of the virus, the mayro urged Attleboro residents to continue to wear face coverings, sanitize their hands on a regular basis, do not put their hands to their faces and continue practicing social distancing. As we have all said since March, we are all in this together. It is critical that every person does their part, the mayor said. The mayor of Attleboro reacts to a family sending their child to school, even though they knew the teen tested positive for #COVID19 calling it reckless. Because of that case, 30 students that came into contact with that teen have to quarantine at home for 14 days #7news pic.twitter.com/R8qUvUmV83 Amaka Ubaka (@AmakaUbakaTV) September 17, 2020 Related Content: Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:54:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BAMAKO, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Mali's National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP), the country's current governing body set up by mutinous soldiers, was given one week to meet demands of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to avoid a total embargo, said CNSP's spokesperson Wednesday. The CNSP has been given a week to "comply with their (ECOWAS) demands before the sanctions be lifted," Ismael Wague said during a press briefing on ECOWAS' mini-summit held in Accra, capital of Ghana, adding that ECOWAS threatened to impose a total embargo if their demands are not met, which includes a civil political transition in the nation. "We told the ECOWAS clearly that we are at the service of the people. Since the majority spoke of a military transition, we suggested that we could go in that direction. They refused," Wague said. CNSP's President Assimi Goita went to Accra on Tuesday with a delegation to explain to ECOWAS heads of state and government the conclusions of the national consultations held here on Sept. 10-12, and discuss the lifting of sanctions on Mali. According to Wague, the two sides did not reach agreement regarding the issue of power transition in Mali. "There was no agreement on the transition in Accra. It was not our mission. We went to share with them (the ECOWAS) the results of the consultations, but not to go and sign an agreement," he said. However, he added that "we told the ECOWAS that we could not decide right away and that we will come back and discuss in accordance with what is in the Transition Charter," he said. According to the Transition Charter, which was adopted by some 500 participants from different forces of the nation after three days of the consultations, the eventual transitional president will be either a military or a civilian, appointed by a commission set up by the CNSP. But in the final communique of the mini-summit, the ECOWAS demanded the political transition be headed by a civilian, and the CNSP be immediately dissolved once the civil transition takes place. Wague said the trip to Accra "is not necessarily a failure," since Goita was "expressly invited by president of Ghana. It is a form of recognition." Enditem Chris Uhlmanns balanced and thoughtful article should be heeded by our governments, both federal and state, and Victoria in particular. His makes the point that we now know the virus, although highly contagious, has a low overall mortality rate, targeting mostly the elderly with pre-existing medical conditions. The overall mortality rate may be lower than influenza in this selected population last year when no one talked about locking down the whole country and imposing curfews. As a medical specialist, I agree with Uhlmann that the rest of the population should be liberated to get on with their lives while taking sensible health precautions. Yean Lim, Toorak Long-term impact of COVID-19 on younger people Chris Uhlmann is correct that most COVID-19 deaths are in aged care and that overall deaths are down as a result of the lockdown. That there should be more emphasis on protecting aged care is a no-brainer. However, he seems to assume that the majority of younger people contracting the virus have few symptoms. This may well be misplaced. There is increasing evidence that there are longer-term, adverse effects on the brain, heart, lungs and kidneys which are not yet understood. The under 60s exposed to the virus may come to regret a premature relaxing of restrictions. Dick Davies, North Warrandyte THE FORUM A very different time Chris Uhlmann, how can you compare deaths from COVID-19 to those from the Spanish flu? It is 2020. With what we now know of better hygiene procedures, improved health for all ages, vaccines for life-threatening conditions and longer life, we would expect to manage a pandemic better than in earlier days. Yes, mistakes have been made, but it is not about authoritarianism. We would be in an uproar if we felt that more could have been done as our families die around us, or were left with long-term health issues, just to save the economy. Also, the economy would be in ruins if people were dying or too sick to work. I am glad my parents are safe even though I cannot see them. It will be a long road to recovery. Your final comment, Rejoice. Dan Andrews has destroyed the village to save it is provocative and without merit. Susan Kelly, Highton Our very caring villages No, Chris Uhlmann, the village has not been destroyed. In the multitude of villages that is Melbourne, we now know our fellow villagers much better. We stop and talk to each other through our masks on our stage four walks. We have local, online groups which message things like, Does anyone have ...?, Does anyone need ...? and How are you coping? We are supporting each other in so many small ways. Our challenge is to maintain this into the future. Trevor Jenkins, Fitzroy North The real destruction Chris Uhlmann laments that Dan Andrews has destroyed the village to save it while Jon Faine implores the federals to fix JobKeeper rorts (Comment, 16/9). There is another, less talked about problem. Hospitals once places where we had confidence to send unwell people have become sites of trauma and distress, where sick, elderly husbands are separated from their wives. Where young mums with sick babies are denied the support of loved ones. Where patients with private insurance are denied access to a private bed and are left waiting in the emergency department until they first test negative to COVID-19. All these things have recently happened to my family members. To rephrase Uhlmanns words, we are destroying the hospital to save the sick. Surely, we can do better. Donna Wyatt, Wyndham Vale An inconvenient truth Jon Faine has highlighted a massive public policy failure when he says people are ripping off the JobKeeper scheme. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that the economy contracted in one quarter by 7per cent, the largest fall in gross domestic product since 1959. More interesting was a singular and inconvenient truth. As unemployment skyrocketed and COVID-19 slashed working hours by a record 9.8per cent, business profits increased. Why? Because business subsidies and tax cuts directly increased profits. JobKeeper subsidies worth $31billion and boosting cash flow for employers worth $16billion added an additional $3.6billion to business income. The Morrison government insisted that JobKeeper was designed to enable businesses to keep workers on by subsidising the cost of wages. This has not happened. COVID-19 has delivered a windfall profit to business with no real benefit to ordinary Australians. Faine is right to ask: Will this be fixed on October 6? Rob Watts, professor of social Policy, RMIT University Slow death of the arts Okay, the arts were the first to suffer, as always. As an actor, I lost a well-paid, Bollywood film and that was an obvious first casualty. It was never going to happen. We grin and bear it. But three months later, I was cast in a great role a new SBS series due to begin filming in November. But Dan Andrews brings out his latest edicts, quashing that and every artistic enterprise and expression of freedom. Premier, you are killing musicians and actors and restaurants and galleries and so much more. And I am a die-hard Labor man. Richard Aspel, Elwood An odd religious belief The manager of Your Nursing Agency, the company employed to supply nurses to quarantine hotels, noted security guards had informed the agency they were concerned about using hand sanitiser because it is against their religion (The Age, 17/9). When I read this, I could hear John McEnroes voice in my ear: You cannot be serious. Perhaps other employment opportunities should be sought. Jill DArcy, East Melbourne Its beautiful one day... I have moved to Queensland from Melbourne and am half-way through my quarantine in Brisbane. The Queenslanders are nailing it as far as I can see. The defence force and police run a courteous and efficient security system side by side. The hotel room is extremely clean with fresh linen deliveries every four days and the food is outstanding. The processing at the airport was streamlined and there were buses on a regular basis to move us to the hotel. I also really appreciated the policewoman who, after she finished processing my entry documents, said: Welcome to Queensland. Jennifer Sjostrom, Broadbeach, Qld Our missed opportunity Citizens are being threatened with fines of nearly $5000 if they attempt to leave Melbourne City escapees face $4957 penalty (The Age, 17/9). I respect that with the school holidays coming up, we need to stop those parents who are stuck at home with kids and are tempted to visit holiday homes. However, in the early stages of the pandemic, it would have been wise if we had worked harder at keeping COVID-19 positive people in isolation at home when we really needed to. I can understand why the community is becoming a tad cynical about our Dan Andrews. Paul Sebastiano, Strathmore Come on, dob them in They say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Perhaps people are slipping though the police checks and getting to their holiday homes (Letters, 17/9). We need our regional brothers and sisters to inform the police if they are aware of such people. It would be good for them, and good for us poor Melburnians who are doing the right thing and are also desperate to have the lockdown lifted. Brendan Douglas, Alphington Bringing them all home If stranded Aussies were to make their way to Malaysia, hire a boat, sail across the ocean and be intercepted by the navy, would they be told to go back to where they came from? Is this another way home? Louis Piscopo, Ascot Vale No tears with my onions Re Richard Cornishs advice about how to stop the tears when cutting onions Answering your vexing culinary questions (Good Food, 15/9). I stick out my tongue as I chop my onions. Looks silly, I know, but weirdly, this works. Apparently, when you slice off the ends, enzymes are released and form a gas. When this gas is mixed with water, it forms an acid. When you inhale the gas, it reacts with your tear ducts and nose, causing your eyes to water and your nose to burn. Stick out your tongue so that the saliva on your tongue reacts with most of the gas and so preventing it from entering your nose and eyes. Bingo. Nancy Zamprongo, Doncaster A fourth triple zero We continue to place unfair expectations on our police force to deliver informed and calm medical emergency interventions to persons experiencing critical mental health events (The Age, 16/9). In so doing, we limit our capacity to empathise with, and rehumanise sufferers of mental illness. And we are losing lives. Perhaps it is time for a fourth line to triple zero specifically for mental health emergencies, as proposed by mental health advocate Heidi Everett. This would bring together our wonderful support agencies, with their various specialisations, under an umbrella urgent-response team that provides a single point of emergency contact for sufferers and carers alike. David Barnes, Templestowe Lower, and Hannah Friebel, Cheltenham Whats not to love? I do not know where Stephen Downes (Comment, 16/9) has been, but eating outdoors has been serious business around the world and in Melbourne for some time. Remove the traffic and fumes, and it will be much improved. Furthermore, we will solve the problem that restaurateurs are unable or unwilling to solve the noise level. We will be able to actually have conversations without shouting at each other. Two birds, one stone. Bring it on. Derrick Brown, Kew The joy of outdoor dining Stephen Downes, weve spent six months drinking takeaway coffee on street corners. We cant wait for the luxury of outdoor seating, cutlery and yes, planter boxes. Elizabeth Long, Collingwood Recall the legislation The Morrison government seems to be damaging our relationship with China in order to win points at home. A serious government does diplomacy behind closed doors. The foreign interference legislation seems to be being used to expose foreign influence. If influence were a crime, we should take a look at other nations, even ones we count as friends like the US. It has many agents peddling influence though our politicians. This legislation should be recalled. Mick Lewin, Southbank Following Goughs steps With our relationship with China at its lowest ebb, Anthony Albanese and his cabinet should seek an invitation from the Chinese for a goodwill visit. Gough Whitlam did it in opposition and set Australia on a new path of trade and peace. They could point out that Australia has an alternative governing party that does not see China as a regrettable neighbour but one that cares for its citizenry as we do with ours. Graeme Lee, Fitzroy AND ANOTHER THING Credit:Illustration: Matt Golding Politics A gas led recovery? From the frying pan into the fire. Marsha Merory, Ivanhoe Scott Morrisons new gasbag for parliament? Wonderful, a blow-up teaching aid. Ralph Tabor, Pakenham Can we refrain from using trump, the verb, until we are rid of Trump, the (proper) noun? Jill Little, Alfredton Surely four years of Trumps tweeting, cheating and bleating is enough. Jon Smith, Leongatha Coronavirus Control isnt the thing as leadership. Someone needs to tell the Premier. Carol Jones, Docklands Andrews could take a few days off. He can pre-record his answers or show replays from the day before. Mary Wise, Ringwood Daniels press conferences provide vital information and are reassuring to those who care about getting out of lockdown. Sheridan Palmer, Ivanhoe How can you catch or spread COVID-19 by using a self-serve, automatic car wash? David Read, Boronia Re boots at the location of Andrews fathers funeral. Families should be off limits for political head kicking. Rex Condon, Ashwood Too many objectors demand rights but eschew the concomitant responsibilities. Brian Kidd, Mount Waverley TAIPEI, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- WOOTRADE, Inc. today announced financial backing from prestigious institutional investors, including Three Arrows Capital, IOSG Ventures, QSN, the ventures arm of QCP Capital, and Defi Capital. The investors are dominant global players with a proven track record of not only identifying solid startups but also providing unique value to their portfolio companies. Recently backed projects include 1inch, Synthetix, and Aave. According to IOSG Ventures' Founding Partner, Jocy Lin, liquidity fragmentation presents a fundamental barrier to faster growth in the cryptocurrency industry. Wootrade solves this by being a disruptive undertaking tackling the liquidity problem for both centralized and decentralized venues. Even the largest exchanges are not able to provide their users with sufficient liquidity to support the needs of professional traders. Wootrade's technology enables exchanges of all sizes to access deep liquidity pools, a necessity for trading platforms seeking to onboard demanding traders and institutional participants. The new capital will boost Wootrade's tech team and global marketing efforts. At present, the team has 16 full-time employees working in Taipei, Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai. CEO of Three Arrows Capital, Su Zhu was drawn to the experience of the Wootrade team. "Kronos Research is one of the most successful OTC and exchange market makers in cryptocurrency trading history, and Wootrade marks their entrance into DeFi/CeFi in a more public way. We are excited and humbled at 3AC to be a part of this journey." "We are excited to be backing the stellar team at Kronos Research and Wootrade as the first mover in bringing digital asset dark pools and quant strategies to the DeFi/CeFi space," said Sherwin Lee, Managing Partner of QSN. Having a track record of rapid success in the CeFi B2B side, the team is actively implementing support for DeFi platforms. "The hope is that users will not feel so much of a difference in terms of speed and costs when trading on DeFi venues." - Ran Yi COO of Wootrade. Even though the WOO token has not been issued, it is already in use by their institutional clients. The details of the upcoming token launch in Q4 2020 will be announced shortly. Incubated by Kronos Research, Wootrade provides exchanges, wallets, brokers, and trading institutions with zero-fee liquidity and continuously maintains the best market prices. The platform provides a depth of 100+ BTC at a spread of 10 US dollars. SOURCE WOOTRADE, Inc. Figure 1 Afema Property - Location in Cote dIvoire Afema Property - Location in Cote dIvoire Figure 2 Afema Property Prospect Location Plan Map Afema Property Prospect Location Plan Map Figure 3 Woulo Woulo Prospect Compilation Plan Map Woulo Woulo Prospect Compilation Plan Map Figure 4 Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section A A (0+80 S) Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section A A (0+80 S) Figure 5 Wolulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section B B (0+80 N) Wolulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section B B (0+80 N) Figure 6 Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section C C (1+60 S) Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section C C (1+60 S) Woulo Woulo prospect returns 1.64 g/t gold over 80.5 metres and 1.97 g/t gold over 41 metres (All amounts are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated) TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teranga Gold Corporation ("Teranga" or the "Company") (TSX: TGZ, OTCQX:TGCDF) is pleased to announce extensive gold mineralization starting at surface, numerous high-grade gold intercepts and a new discovery at the Woulo Woulo prospect from Terangas initial drill results at its Afema exploration project (Afema) in southeastern Cote dIvoire (Figure 1 in Appendix B). Afema covers more than 1,400 km2, consisting of the Afema mining license and three exploration permits Ayame, Mafere and Aboisso (Figure 2 in Appendix B). The Afema mine license has a historical near-surface oxide and sulphide resource within an area hosting several gold mineralized structures on extensions from prolific gold belts in Ghana. Teranga holds a 51% joint venture with the private investment company Sodim Limited, and has the right to earn a 70% interest in Afema through the completion of a three-year, $11-million exploration and community relations work program on the Afema mine license and exploration permits and the delivery of a positive feasibility study. A listing of all the Woulo Woulo drill results received to date including 17 diamond drill (DD) holes and 23 reverse circulation (RC) holes is presented as Table 1 in Appendix A. Drilling Highlights 80.5 m @ 1.64 g/t gold, including 21 m @ 2.79 g/t gold and 13 m @ 2.75 g/t gold from 48.5 m down hole depth (DHD) in WWDD-007 41 m @ 1.97 g/t gold, including 11 m @ 3.96 g/t gold from 119 m DHD in WWDD-005 35 m @ 1.64 g/t gold, including 15 m @ 2.23 g/t gold from 18 m DHD in WWDD-025 20 m @ 1.59 g/t gold, including 7 m @ 2.52 g/t gold from 0 m DHD in WWDD-037 83 m @ 1.10 g/t gold, including 10 m @ 1.77 g/t gold and 15 m @ 1.70 g/t gold from 10 m DHD in WWRC-001 Story continues With the discovery of the Woulo Woulo prospect and widespread results returned from recent drilling, we can now add a third shear zone for priority exploration activities to this already promising project, noted David Mallo, Vice President, Exploration. We are seeing solid grades at surface in our trenching results, which is correlating extremely well with mineralization intersected at depth across the majority of the area drilled. We are also encouraged to see the width of the mineralized felsic unit staying consistent or increasing in width at depth within many of our drill holes completed thus far. The results to date suggest that Woulo Woulo could be a large mineralized system worthy of a significant exploration and drilling evaluation. Cote dIvoire is a promising gold jurisdiction, with more than one-third of the West African Birimian Greenstone Belt located within the countrys borders, said Richard Young, President and Chief Executive Officer. We are on track to complete the current five drill, $10-million Afema exploration and drill campaign in the coming months. Based on the early stage results, we expect that Afema will become an increasing focus of the Company as we move this promising project forward. We expect, based on the early results, that Afema will further enhance our growth pipeline that already includes Massawa and Golden Hill. Woulo Woulo Prospect Overview The Woulo Woulo prospect is currently comprised of four parts: North, Central, South and East. They each exhibit a unique geologic host displaying very similar alteration, structure, veining and mineralization over a presently defined minimum strike extent approaching 3,000 metres (Figure 3 in Appendix B). The new discovery at the Woulo Woulo prospect has been outlined utilizing coincident field mapping/prospecting observations, gold-in-soil geochemistry, airborne magnetics/radiometrics imagery and excavator trenching results, all of which have culminated in an ongoing systematic RC and DD drilling evaluation. To date, we have drilled 66 DD holes and 23 RC holes at the Woulo Woulo prospect totaling 10,750 metres. The host rock geology of the gold mineralization at the Woulo Woulo prospect is an altered felsic intrusive unit within a mixed sedimentary and mafic volcanic sequence. Two distinct types of alteration have been observed, one dominated by hematite and the second dominated by sericite, both of which display similar brittle shear fracturing, occasionally brecciated, and multiple oriented fracture-controlled quartz veining with minor pyrite. The mineralized felsic unit is exposed at surface and drilling to-date has not identified a lower depth limit. In addition, the felsic unit remains open to further extension along trend both to the north and south. Three representative sections have been included as Figures 4, 5 and 6 in Appendix B that outline the excellent correlation observed from surface to drilled depths across the majority of the area successfully drill tested to-date. Woulo Woulo Prospect Trenching Highlights (Figure 2 in Appendix B) One of the primary exploration tools utilized is excavator trenching which enables lithologic and structural mapping as well as analysis prior to drilling with either RC or DC drilling. The trenching results returned from our exploration program at the Woulo Woulo prospect suggest that a broad mineralization system is present and these surface trenching results correlate extremely well with our drilling results. Highlights of the trenching program include: At WW North 41 m @ 1.62 g/t gold, including 30 m @ 2.08 g/t gold in WWTR-002 At WW North 58 m @ 1.98 g/t gold in WWTR-005 At WW Central 11 m @ 2.13 g/t gold, including 6 m @ 2.79 g/t gold in WWTR - 009 At WW South 39 m @ 1.54 g/t gold, including 19 m @ 2.78 g/t gold in WWTR-011 At WW East 30 m @ 1.34 g/t gold, including 6 m @ 3.99 g/t gold in WWTR-024 A comprehensive listing for the 30 currently available Woulo Woulo trench results is presented as Table 2 in Appendix A. Next Steps for Afema Property Continue the 2020 $10 million multi-drill exploration campaign at the Woulo Woulo prospect, the Niamienlessa structural trend and the Afema shear (Figure 2 in Appendix B). Expand trenching and drilling to new areas of interest within both the Afema mining license as well as outward onto the three regional exploration permits. Conduct early-stage metallurgical test work as well as environmental and social assessments. Update the Afema Shear oxide-resource estimate. Evaluate the assay results from the 49 current holes remaining for analysis from Woulo Woulo, plus ongoing drill results as we expand our drill program at Woulo Woulo, Afema Shear and Niamienlessa. Qualified Persons Statement Patti Nakai-Lajoie, P.Geo. has reviewed Terangas Afema exploration program data, including the drill holes and trenching results reported herein. Ms. Nakai-Lajoie is a full-time employee of Teranga, and is not independent" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101). Ms. Nakai-Lajoie has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralization under consideration and to the activity, which she is undertaking to qualify as a "Qualified Person" under NI 43-101. Ms. Nakai-Lajoie has verified and approved the technical information disclosed in this release, including the sampling, analytical and test data underlying such information in the form and context in which it appears herein. The excavator trenching, reverse circulation and diamond core samples are assayed at the Bureau Veritas Laboratory in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain statements that constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws ("forward-looking statements"), which reflects management's expectations regarding Teranga's future growth and business prospects and opportunities. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, all disclosure regarding possible events, conditions or results of operations, future economic conditions expectations and anticipated courses of action. Specific forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements and information with respect to the exploration potential of Afema and the Woulo Woulo prospect in particular and the costs and timing in respect thereof, proposed operational changes and the timing thereof, future opportunities for enhancing development at Afema, and timing for the release of the Company's disclosure in connection with the foregoing. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect management's current beliefs based upon information currently available to management and based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, such forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions, opinions and analysis that management believes to be reasonable and relevant but that may prove to be incorrect. Teranga cautions you not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that may affect forward-looking statements include, among others: the inherent risks involved in exploration and development of mineral properties, including government approvals and permitting, changes in economic conditions, changes in the worldwide price of gold and other key inputs, changes in mine plans and other factors, such as project execution delays, many of which are beyond the control of Teranga, as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in Teranga's 2019 Annual Information Form dated March 30, 2020, and in other filings of Teranga with securities and regulatory authorities which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.Teranga does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements should assumptions related to these plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions change. Nothing in this document should be construed as either an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy or sell Teranga securities. All references to Teranga include its subsidiaries unless the context requires otherwise. About Teranga Teranga Gold is transitioning into a mid-tier gold producer operating long-life, low-cost mines and advancing prospective exploration properties across West Africa, one of the worlds fastest growing gold jurisdictions. The top-tier gold complex created by integrating the recently acquired high-grade Massawa project with the Companys Sabodala mine, the successful commissioning of Wahgnion, Terangas second gold mine and a strong pipeline of early to advanced-stage exploration assets support the continued growth of Terangas reserves, production and cash flow. Through its continued success and commitment to responsible mining, Teranga creates sustainable value for all stakeholders and acts as a catalyst for social, economic, and environmental development. To learn more, visit www.terangagold.com . Contact Information Richard Young President & CEO T: +1 416-594-0000 | E: ryoung@terangagold.com Trish Moran VP, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications T: +1 416-607-4507 | E: tmoran@terangagold.com Appendix A Table 1: Selected Drill Highlights (Minimum 2-metre widths and 0.90 g/t Au grade included) Hole # Northing Easting Elevation Azimuth Dip EOH (m) Interval (m) Core length (m) Grade (g/t Au) WW North WWDD-001 599963 500937 1,004 90 -50 128 37.7-87.9 50.2 1.17 Including 40-47 7 2.14 And 63-68 5 2.03 WWDD-002 599959 500891 1,014 90 -50 185 96.5-128 31.5 0.90 Including 107-119 12 1.20 WWDD-003 600125 500956 996 90 -50 95 14-33.5 19.5 1.70 Including 29-33.5 4.5 2.54 WWDD-004 600208 500914 994 90 -50 150 71-85 14 0.91 Including 79-85 6 1.36 99-157 58 1.11 Including 124-128 4 2.36 And 138-152 14 1.73 WWDD-005 600286 500913 1,001 90 -50 200 119-160 41 1.97 Including 134-145 11 3.96 And 150-154 4 2.23 WWDD-006 600366 500966 984 90 -50 170 84.5-93.5 9 1.26 104-106 2 1.21 WWDD-007 600122 500919 999 90 -45 150 48.5-129 80.5 1.64 Including 52-73 21 2.79 Including 66-73 7 4.06 And 116-129 13 2.75 Including 126-128 2 14.21 WWDD-008 599807 500898 1,010 90 -50 185 37-74 37 1.04 Including 39-52 13 1.64 80-90 10 1.00 Including 84-88 4 1.49 WWDD-009 600046 500898 1,012 90 -50 185 75.5-136 60.5 1.02 Including 77-81.5 4.5 1.56 Including 85-89 4 2.19 101-106 5 1.78 WWDD-010 600728 500999 974 90 -45 145 81-85 4 1.46 WWDD-025 600086 500960 1,003 90 -50 85 18-53 35 1.64 Including 19-34 15 2.23 69-72 3 1.60 WWDD-026 600086 500917 1,007 90 -50 134 49-87 38 1.07 Including 49-55 6 1.51 And 69-79 10 1.51 93-95 2 1.48 115-124 9 1.20 WWDD-028 600006 500939 1,006 90 -45 110 34-67 33 1.17 Including 51-63 12 1.96 79-82 3 1.47 WWDD-049 599688 500873 1,004 90 -50 128 11-36 25 1.06 Including 11-16 5 2.21 And 24-27 3 1.59 54-56 2 1.93 WWRC-001 600211 500959 989 90 -50 95 10-93 83 1.10 Including 38-48 10 1.77 And 65-80 15 1.70 And 84-93 9 1.53 WWRC-002 600289 500957 998 90 -50 140 61-95 34 0.95 Including 61-78 17 1.65 Including 68-76 8 2.25 WWRC-003 600370 501014 989 90 -50 115 8-37 29 1.04 Including 16-20 4 1.52 And 26-30 4 2.23 43-48 5 1.17 WWRC-004 600527 501029 983 90 -50 95 21-33 12 1.00 Including 27-30 3 1.87 WWRC-005 600607 501029 996 90 -50 100 48-51 3 1.38 60-62 2 1.21 WWRC-006 600686 501038 985 90 -50 80 50-53 3 1.62 WWRC-007 600046 500939 1,007 90 -50 128 39-83 44 1.01 Including 58-68 10 1.77 WWRC-008 600125 500959 996 90 -45 95 9-67 58 1.08 Including 10-41 31 1.62 Including 16-30 14 2.55 WWRC-009 599888 500933 1,006 90 -45 128 0-72 72 1.04 Including 7-21 14 2.06 WWRC-010 599808 500936 1,006 89 -45 128 1-21 20 0.92 Including 3-6 3 1.40 And 17-19 2 1.81 WWRC-011 599731 500937 998 90 -45 128 NSR WWRC-012 599728 500898 1,003 90 -45 185 4-34 30 0.96 Including 4-13 9 1.96 39-43 4 1.07 54-69 15 1.15 Including 57-59 2 2.78 WWRC-013 600723 501043 972 90 -45 75 18-21 3 1.09 35-39 4 1.09 WWRC-014 600489 501030 975 90 -45 95 16-35 19 1.06 Including 31-35 4 2.49 WWRC-015 600413 501012 978 90 -45 120 20-55 35 0.94 Including 24-33 9 1.88 WWRC-019 600566 501028 992 90 -45 100 28-30 2 1.39 75-80 5 1.77 WWRC-020 600642 501033 995 90 -45 85 NSR WWRC-021 600328 501007 994 90 -45 115 30-38 8 0.91 58-62 4 1.58 WWRC-022 600248 500959 995 90 -45 140 56-67 11 0.91 Including 64-67 3 2.06 75-82 7 0.99 Including 79-82 3 1.82 WWRC-023 600168 500963 987 90 -45 100 0-58 58 0.95 Including 0-41 41 1.21 Including 5-19 14 1.67 WW Central WWDD-022 599136 500724 998 90 -45 159 11-21 10 1.07 65-90 25 1.03 Including 76-82 6 1.53 WWDD-024 598855 500721 992 90 -45 95 33-46 13 1.18 Including 38-42 4 1.66 63-69 6 1.39 WWRC-016 598695 500684 968 90 -45 110 50-59 9 0.95 Including 50-52 2 1.41 And 57-59 2 1.62 WWRC-017 599216 500742 993 90 -45 90 NSR WWRC-018 599137 500770 985 90 -45 80 NSR WW South WWDD-037 598141 500516 978 90 -45 110 0-20 20 1.59 Including 13-20 7 2.52 60-70 10 1.03 Including 60-62 2 2.76 75-77 2 1.21 81-86 5 1.07 Intervals calculated using a 0.2 g/t Au cut-off and 2 metres of maximum internal dilution per ten metre interval (ie. a 40 metre interval may have up to 8 metres of internal dilution). True widths are unknown; however, drill orientation is planned to intersect both the strike and dip orientations of the mineralized body as close to perpendicular as possible. UTMs are WGS84-30N. Intervals with grade x thickness (gram x metre) of 10 or higher are highlighted in bold. Table 2: Selected Trench Highlights (Minimum 5-metre widths and 0.50 g/t Au grade included) Trench # Starting Northing Starting Easting Starting Elevation Starting Azimuth Length (m) Interval (m) Sample length (m) Grade (g/t Au) WW North WWTR-001 600208 500910 994 90 166 59-106 47 0.82 Including 61-90 29 1.02 Including 61-70 9 1.54 144-166 22 0.71 Including 163-166 3 2.73 WWTR-002 600129 500957 995 90 81 11-52 41 1.62 Including 11-41 30 2.08 Including 15-24 9 3.38 WWTR-003 600370 500989 986 90 92 31-92 61 0.82 Including 31-41 10 1.45 And 57-74 17 1.01 WWTR-004 600613 501040 994 90 73 20-32 12 0.54 WWTR-005 599969 500944 1,001 90 83 13-71 58 1.98 And 60-63 3 22.22 WWTR-018 600530 500980 981 90 152 68-88 20 0.72 Including 85-88 3 1.50 WWTR-023 600803 501037 970 90 60 24-30 6 0.50 WW Central WWTR-009 599217 500693 982 90 127 27-46 19 0.76 Including 36-41 5 1.82 80-91 11 2.13 Including 80-86 6 2.79 WWTR-015 599124 500711 1,000 90 143 95-99 4 6.17 Including 98-99 1 22.90 WWTR-016 598868 500701 994 90 180 42-92 50 0.80 Including 71-76 5 2.41 WWTR-017 598687 500636 963 90 138 60-88 28 0.82 Including 67-75 8 1.87 WWTR-019 599370 500717 976 90 127 42-55 13 0.54 WWTR-022 598991 500708 1,000 90 160 19-32 13 0.69 52-64 12 0.82 WWTR-027 598615 500661 976 90 125 54-59 5 0.68 WW South WWTR-010 598146 500466 969 90 105 33-61 28 0.60 100-105 5 0.55 WWTR-011 598292 500555 988 90 104 35-74 39 1.54 Including 40-59 19 2.78 Including 54-58 4 6.41 WWTR-012 598047 500444 960 90 94 57-62 5 0.69 74-94 20 0.53 WWTR-013 598375 500532 982 90 180 93-102 9 0.55 130-134 4 1.89 WWTR-014 598206 500511 981 90 100 30-79 49 0.61 Including 37-48 11 1.08 WWTR-021 598003 500442 957 90 120 30-40 10 0.52 56-68 12 0.53 WWTR-026 597953 500452 956 90 80 17-24 7 0.61 36-41 5 0.50 WW East WWTR-006 599651 501979 992 90 94 5-15 10 0.52 26-31 5 0.54 WWTR-024 599731 501839 989 40 99 30-60 30 1.34 Including 36-42 6 3.99 Intervals calculated using a 0.2 g/t Au cut-off and 2 metres of maximum internal dilution per ten metre interval (ie. a 40 metre interval may have up to 8 metres of internal dilution). True widths are unknown. UTMs are WGS84-30N. Intervals with grade x thickness (gram x metre) of 10 or higher are highlighted in bold. Appendix B Figure 1: Afema Property - Location in Cote dIvoire https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8eebb4fe-8af3-4bcb-be29-72ef36aa568e Figure 2: Afema Property Prospect Location Plan Map https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b5b54be6-54f9-477b-a9be-8aeb3717b7c3 Figure 3: Woulo Woulo Prospect Compilation Plan Map https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b98a5514-53d7-4da6-876c-c59c80702912 Figure 4: Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section A A (0+80 S) https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ba4fed59-a784-497b-9406-9d2c9d6a4113 Figure 5: Wolulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section B B (0+80 N) https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6d02c48d-d4cb-4390-b06f-345ad43c2541 Figure 6: Woulo Woulo Prospect Representative Section C C (1+60 S) https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2105dc51-418a-404b-91f9-cafe90c6d726 The government has announced a raft of new laws aimed at keeping offenders in prison for longer, days after MPs warned that jails were running out of space. The new sentencing white paper proposes changes that would force sexual and violent criminals to spend longer in prison, allow whole life orders for under-21s and child killers and stop the automatic release of inmates who may be dangerous. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, said: Our measures will ensure the most serious violent and sexual offenders get the prison time they deserve, while new community interventions and changes to rules around criminal records will help boost rehabilitation and cut reoffending which means creating fewer victims. They were announced days after the Public Accounts Committee warned that prisons in England and Wales could run out of space by 2023 after staggering government failures. MPs found that demand for prison places had increased with the creation of numerous laws increasing sentences, while the construction of new jails had been delayed. Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the proposals had not undergone proper testing of the evidence on what works to reduce reoffending. This is tinkering around to throw red meat to the tabloids, without any evidence that it stands a chance of working, she added. None of the proposals are likely to protect victims. Indeed, by pushing more men into prisons for longer, it is likely that more victims will be created. It comes after prosecutions hit a record low in England and Wales, and a backlog of outstanding court cases passed 500,000 after coronavirus worsened delays. Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, accused ministers of reheating the failed policies of so many previous governments. He added: Sentencing has been getting tougher for three decades, with no impact on either crime or public confidence. All it guarantees is an overcrowded prison system that makes it harder for the people it holds to build a crime-free future. Talking tough is a good way to distract attention from a criminal justice system in collapse, failing both victims and offenders. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 January 2022 Willesborough Windmill, a white smock mill built in 1869 is bathed in the morning sunshine as the moon sets behind in Ashford, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 January 2022 A jet skier jumps the waves off the coast at Blyth in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 19 January 2022 Britains Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, participate in a therapy session with individuals who have experienced the care system, during a visit to the Foundling Museum in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty People wait months, even years, for cases to be heard, then at the end of a jail term prisoners leave prison with nowhere to live. Theres nothing smart about rehashing punitive rhetoric and hoping for a different outcome. David Lammy, Labours shadow justice secretary, said the party would scrutinise the proposals closely. It is totally hypocritical for Boris Johnson to play tough on law and order in the same week that he ordered his MPs to vote to break the law, he said. The Conservatives rhetoric on crime never lives up to the reality. Mr Buckland called the proposals a fundamental shift in sentencing towards a system that is fairer, smarter and ultimately better protects the public. As well as moves to increase jail time, the white paper contains initiatives to divert low-level offenders with mental health and addiction problems away from prison and into treatment programmes. The government wants to increase judges confidence in community sentences, which are an alternative to custody, after years of poor performance by outsourced companies. Problem-solving court models will be piloted in up to five courts and target repeat offenders. John Bache, chair of the Magistrates' Association, said the proposals were very welcome. The proposals would change what sentences magistrates and judges can pass He added: A third of people on a community sentence report having mental health issues or a drug addiction. Yet less than 1 per cent of community sentences include mental health treatment and only 6 per cent include drug treatment, as these services are simply not available in many areas. Nathan Dick, head of policy at rehabilitation charity the Revolving Doors Agency, said half the people jailed each year serve sentences of under six months for crimes driven by underlying and un-met needs. People in the revolving door of crime and crisis need a system that grapples with the causes of crime, not just monitoring their daily movements and assessing risks, he added, calling for the government to balance punishment with adequate and well-resourced rehabilitation. The white paper, which is the first step towards new sentencing laws to be brought forward next year, would increase powers to put offenders under curfew and expand GPS tagging to released burglars, robbers and thieves. The government is also calling for evidence on how the justice system deals with offenders with conditions including autism and dyslexia. It plans to change the way criminal records are disclosed to mean that people do not have to declare past offences to employers for as long. Prison sentences of under a year will not have to be declared after another 12 months without reoffending, while one- to four-year terms will no longer be disclosed after four crime-free years. Longer sentences which are currently shared for life regardless of the circumstances will not automatically be disclosed to employers once a seven-year period of rehabilitation has been served. The changes, which come after a major legal challenge and years of campaigning by affected people, will not apply to those that have committed serious sexual, violent or terror offences. PORTLAND A Back the Blue rally will be held in town Saturday to show support for local police. The march and rally is being organized by Hebron resident James Cosenza, a retired Meriden firefighter. This will be a peaceful march to make people aware that police are not the enemy, Cosenza said Wednesday. He previously held a similar rally in Hebron. Two members of his family are police officers, which is why Im so passionate about this, Cosenza said. The event is scheduled start at Brownstone Intermediate School at 11:30 a.m. Participants will gather there and march down Main Street to the intersection with Marlborough Street/Route 66. The rally will take place in the open space adjacent to the Portland Restaurant from noon to 2 p.m., according to Cosenza. The town previously has played host to a Black Lives Matter march in June as well as an event to mark Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. Messages have gone out to area police departments inviting them to take part in Saturdays rally. First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield, who attended both the BLM and Juneteenth events, said she intends to attend the Black the Blue rally, as well. Mr. Cosenza contacted me earlier to ensure that the rally would be COVID-compliant and to assure me that the march would be peaceful, she said Wednesday. I want to thank our police officers for all the good work they do and for keeping us safe. They really do a remarkable job. Republican state Rep. Christie Carpino, whose district includes Portland, said she intends to attend the rally. Protests against police brutality have been ongoing across the country following the death of George Floyd May 25 while be restrained by police in Minneapolis. Cosenza said there are more than 700,000 law enforcement officers across the country, and they should not be painted with a broad brush because of actions of a few. Back the Blue events throughout the country aim to show support for law enforcement. No one hates a bad officer more than a good officer, he said. jmill@middletownpress.com Roscosmos chief declared Venus is a Russian planet after a study suggested there is life on the planet. During a speech at the 2020 HeliRussia exhibition, the head of Russia's state space agency Dmitry Rogozin claimed the country was the 'first and only one' to land on the planet, The Moscow Times reports. His statement comes after experts from the UK said they had found signs of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere suggesting the planet must support unknown chemical processes, or even life. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin declared Venus is a Russian planet after a study conducted in the UK suggested there is life on the planet. Rogozin pictured at HeliRussia 2020 exhibition Experts from the UK said they had found signs of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere suggesting the planet must support unknown chemical processes, or even life But Rogozin claimed prior research by Russian scientists had shown Venus to be inhospitable, adding: 'The spacecraft gathered information about the planet, it is like hell over there.' As well as Rogozin's claims that Venus is 'Russian', Rocosmos revealed earlier this week that it plans to do its own mission to the planet. As part of the announcement it said the expedition would be conducted 'without involving wide international cooperation'. The latest mission plans will be conducted in addition to another, Venera-D, which the country is due to take part in alongside the U.S in 2026 or 2031. As well as Rogozin's claims that Venus is 'Russian', Rocosmos revealed earlier this week that it plans to do its own mission to the planet which will be conducted 'without involving wide international cooperation' In response to the revelation of possible life on Venus, the Breakthrough Initiatives programme has said it will carry out its own research into possibility - paid for by billionaire internet mogul Yuri Milner. The UK research was carried out by astronomer Jane Greaves of Wales' Cardiff University and colleagues observed Venus using both the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. On Earth, phosphine a colourless gas that smells like garlic, or decaying fish is naturally produced mainly by certain microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. It can also be released in small amounts from the breakdown of organic matter, or industrially synthesised in chemical plants. Despite the latest discovery, researchers have cautioned that life is only one possible explanation for the source of the phosphine with further investigation needed. The investigation into how the world responded to the Covid-19 pandemic begins on Thursday in which an independent panel has promised to ask hard questions about the response to a disease that appeared less than a year ago and has killed almost 1 million people. The 13 members of the WHO-initiated but independent panel including a former prime minister, a Nobel laureate and medical specialists will first set out a plan to manage this gargantuan task, called for by more than a hundred countries at a gathering of the World Health Organisations governing body earlier this year. Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and a co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Photo: Reuters Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. We will ask with the benefit of hindsight how WHO and national governments could have worked differently knowing what we now know about the disease, said panel co-chair and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark this month. Clark was appointed to lead the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, along with Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia. The co-chairs announced their pick of 11 additional members from among those nominated by countries at the start of this month. They include Chinas top Covid-19 expert Zhong Nanshan; former US ambassador Mark Dybul, who has headed the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and Preeti Sudan, former health secretary of India. Former president of the Republic of Liberia and Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is also co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Photo: Getty Images/AFP While experts say the calibre of the panel shows it has political support, it is not yet clear how far its mandate will reach in seeking answers for what went right and wrong in the global response to a health crisis that has devastated world economies, cost millions of jobs and frayed international relations. The scope and the limitations of the panels review remain to be seen, according to Tikki Pangestu, a former WHO director of Research Policy and Cooperation. Story continues But the most important thing is that it provides, hopefully, an independent platform, which is not biased either toward the WHO or toward its member countries, said Pangestu, who is a visiting professor at the National University of Singapores Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. One unknown is the extent to which the panel will address questions about the initial handling of the outbreak after it was detected in China when there was a delay of several weeks between the announcement of an outbreak and confirmation from China that a new illness was spreading between people. The early phase of the pandemic its emergence and global spread will be among the broad themes of the evaluation, according to Clark, noting this would include when and how Covid-19 emerged. Separately, the WHO said it would lead an international team to China for a scientific inquiry into the origins of the disease that was first identified in the city of Wuhan. Chinese infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan is on the investigating panel. Photo: Thomas Yau The WHO has faced criticism that it gave too much deference to China as the disease spread, a concern that was at the fore of early calls for an investigation from the United States in the lead-up to the meeting in May of the World Health Assembly, the WHOs governing body. The US, the main provider of funds to the WHO, has since announced it would pull out of the global health organisation, accusing the body of being manipulated by China and failing in its responsibilities. Adam Kamradt-Scott, an associate professor specialising in global health security at the University of Sydney in Australia, said it was unlikely that the independent panel would closely examine the internal actions of any one country, as this would be outside the domain of an international inquiry. However, how the actions of countries have served to prevent, contain or facilitate the spread of the virus internationally could be fair game, he said. That might include scrutinising the timeline of when Chinese leadership knew about the virus and reported it to the WHO or the health security impact of the United States decision this spring to pause WHO funding over concerns it pandered to China, according to Kamradt-Scott. Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said he wouldnt be surprised if [the final report] includes candid remarks about WHOs response, Chinas response, the US response, but any criticism would be constructive. The panel chairs said they would have full access to WHO internal emails and documents to examine throughout their evaluation. Whether they could take a deep dive into how countries interacted with the WHO, reported accurate data or made internal decisions depended on nations own interest in sharing that information with the panel, experts said. But while such issues may enter into the inquiry, global health experts agree that it is the role of the World Health Organisation and its ability to coordinate between countries and agencies that will be at the fore of the panels review. What is important is to see exactly what the WHO is able to do and to compare that to what WHO actually did or did not do, said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at Switzerlands University of Geneva, pointing to limitations in the powers of the organisation that bind its hands in times of crisis. Such an evaluation could help member states decide whether they would give WHO more funding or more power to be able to their meet expectations, according to Flahault. Pangestu, the former WHO official, agrees: At the end of the day, the panel is focused on how and what WHO can do better in the future the way in which that can happen is [that there] needs to be more funding, more power and a reform of the structure to make [the organisation] more fit for purpose or agile. Other themes expected to be evaluated by the panel include the impact on health systems, the disproportionate disease burden on the poor and people of colour and the spread of false information around the pandemic. Analysts acknowledge that every major health crisis prompts reviews, evaluations and reports, but that recommendations are often ignored by countries or watered down in international resolutions because of a lack of consensus. Even as this panel races to come up with timely recommendations before an interim deadline in November and their final report, expected in May, it is possible that the same pattern will happen again. Weve seen countries take these reports and stick them in their bottom drawer and not look at them again until the next global crisis comes, Kamradt-Scott said. But Pangestu said he was a little bit optimistic about what may come out of the review. Because Covid is so unprecedented and has hit the world so hard not just at the level of health, but at the level of economic survival, at the level of social stability maybe, just maybe, this time, something thats a bit more groundbreaking can come through. This article Coronavirus: investigation starts into what went right and wrong in Covid-19 response first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. Prosecutors say one of the three accused, 34-year-old Said Pourkarim Arabi, is a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite Iranian security force that is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. Another is the head of a hacking collective called the Iranian Dark Coders Team, according to the indictment. (@FahadShabbir) TASHKENT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th September, 2020) The authorities in Uzbekistan will reopen the country's borders for inbound and outbound travel by air, rail, and motor vehicle from October 1, a representative of the Central Asian nation's coronavirus disease response center told Sputnik on Thursday. The latest decision comes after the Uzbek authorities eased restrictions on the border with Kyrgyzstan on September 1. "From October 1, it will be allowed to enter and leave Uzbekistan via all air, rail, and automotive checkpoints," a representative of the response center said. International arrivals from countries that have been color-coded red, according to the Ministry of Health's guidance, must present a certificate showing a negative PCR test for the coronavirus disease. Furthermore, these arrivals must also complete a form ahead of a period of mandatory self-isolation. Individuals arriving by road from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, after conducting an express test or an antibody test for COVID-19, must spend two weeks in self-isolation in either a hotel or a private place of residence, the response center added. As of Thursday, 49,627 cases of COVID-19 have been registered in Uzbekistan. This figure includes the 612 new positive tests confirmed over the preceding 24 hours. The Uzbek government has begun easing social distancing restrictions in the country since August 15. Theaters and cinemas reopened on September 5, and children began returning to school on September 14, although some minors are taking classes remotely. After a reported surge in COVID-19 cases among the student body at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), the school administration ordered 2,230 students living on campus in the Witte and Sellery dorms into a two-week quarantine. A total of 1,800 students have now tested positive for COVID-19 at UWM. The affected students were given the choice of returning home to live with their families or remain on campus and live in the crowded COVID-infested residence halls for the duration of the quarantine period. For the less privileged students, those with no other housing option, or for those who did not want to risk infecting their families, there was no other option but to quarantine on campus and risk COVID-19 infection. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL), which has a student body of around 10,500, is having a similar outbreak of COVID-19 cases. On the same day as the UWM quarantine orders, UWL also issued a shelter in place. Students living in the Coate residence hall are under restrictions after dozens of students tested positive for COVID-19. With the sudden announcement at UWM, panic and uncertainty quickly set in as it was unclear to students how they would acquire basic necessities. Many of them rushed to the nearest grocery stores to stock up on supplies. Others resigned themselves to their predicament and took the time to take one last leisurely walk. As the restrictions went into effect, students found they were only allowed to leave their dorm floors for scheduled food deliveries three times a day. These meals will cost students $4.99 apiece. The university is claiming students get a selection of many different entrees along with appropriate sides and a fountain drink. Students, however, are reporting that the meal is less than adequate. Sometimes consisting of only sandwiches on some days while on others breakfast was water and a banana or muffin. Students have been voicing their dissatisfaction and confusion in interviews conducted by local news network WKOW 27. Freshman Grainne McDonagh, who lives in Sellery, spoke on how information and instructions are not clear. She said, Because things arent in-person, its very ambiguous through email so were still trying to figure out what we can and cant do exactly. Another freshman, Isabel Burgos said, Were all kind of wondering what the next step after we get out of quarantine will be. In August, before the reopening, Chancellor Rebecca Blank and a group of top UWM leaders held a town hall to address questions about their plans for the campus community. Questions were prepared in advance so that the school could control the discussion and support the narrative that the reopening could be done safely. Chancellor Blank argued for the importance of some on campus in-person instruction, and that the knowledge they had gained would allow them to do so. She claimed that outbreaks at other schools were due to lack of proper knowledge and adequate testing protocols. However, despite their attempt to convince students otherwise, the meeting was simply a shameless promotion for reopening. Blank remarked, nonetheless, being on campus does mean there will be interactions among students in the dorms in the residence places of students on and off campus. She continued, It lets people meet people from different countries and cultures. It lets them have some of those intense late-night discussions that are a very important part of exploring who you are and where youre going as youre in this phase of your life in college. While attempting to come off as a defender of a quality educational experience, Blank was in fact tacitly admitting that if campuses reopened an outbreak would occur. Chancellor Blank made a callous and revealing statement in an interview with PBS Wisconsin on September 11 where Blank admitted knowing an outbreak would take place. We knew that there would be some spikes. ... Students would come; there would be some partying. The amount of that rise was steeper and faster than we expected, and steeper than some of our fellow schools in the Big Ten. In essence, students, workers, faculty and the community are being subjected to an involuntary experiment in complete disregard for the protection of human life. To the administrators and the rest of the ruling elite, however, it is simply the cost the populace must bear for the sake of big business. In a similar manner in a shared statement published in August by the leaders of La Crosses higher education institutions, including UWL, Viterbo University and Western Technical College school officials wrote, We are prepared for the inevitability of COVID-19 cases on our campuses. As we have seen in recent months, no corner of our community is immune from the virus. Looking to distance themselves from responsibility they continue, Our campuses have developed testing and tracing protocols to help us pinpoint when and where cases arise, and take immediate action to prevent further spread. We have also secured isolation space, on and off campus, where infected students can safely recover. We implore everyone in our community to exercise caution. Heed the advice of health experts: Watch your distance, wear a face covering, wash your hands, and if you feel ill, stay home. The experience at UWM is not an isolated incident, but part of a global drive by the ruling class to abandon attempts to control the pandemic and return to business as normal no matter the cost to human life. The resumption of in-person classes is being done in defiance of warnings by health experts of the potential for a catastrophic resurgence of the virus. Teachers, workers and students of Wisconsins education system must take a stand in defense of health and safety. There is a growing movement against the deadly reopenings. In Michigan, graduate student instructors are striking, while in Iowa, students are conducting a sickout and 4,000 service workers at the University of Illinois walked, out joining strikes by 800 nurses at a University of Illinois hospital in Chicago. This struggle must be expanded into a broader fight of the entire working class against a social and economic system, capitalism, which subordinates the needs of society to the accumulation of profit by and for the rich. This requires a political program that is independent from the pro corporate trade unions and the two big business political parties on the basis of a socialist program. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality in the US is holding a national online meeting Thursday, at 8 p.m. EDT to organize this struggle against the reckless reopening of schools. We urge students and youth to register for the event today. In the attacks, the conspirators installed 'Cobalt Strike' malware on Indian government-protected computers, the indictment said Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael R. Sherwin speaks, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020 at the Justice Department in Washington. The Justice Department has charged five Chinese citizens with hacks targeting more than 100 companies and institutions in the United States and abroad, including social media and video game companies as well as universities and telecommunications providers. Officials announced the prosecution on Wednesday. (AP) Washington: Five Chinese nationals who have been charged by the US justice Department for hacking more than 100 companies and institutions worldwide are said to have compromised several Indian government networks. Deputy US Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on Wednesday announced three indictments have been unsealed in the matter that collectively charge five Chinese nationals with computer hacking and charge two Malaysian nationals for helping some of those hackers target victims and sell the fruits of their crime. "In about 2019, the conspirators compromised Government of lndia websites, as well as virtual private networks and database servers supporting the Government of India. The conspirators used VPS PROVIDER servers to connect to an Open VPN network owned by the Government of India," the indictment said. In the attacks, the conspirators installed 'Cobalt Strike' malware on Indian government-protected computers, it added. According to the charges, the computer intrusions affected over 100 companies worldwide. The Malaysian nationals were arrested on Sunday and the Chinese nationals have been declared fugitive, according to the US Justice Department statement. Rosen severely criticised the Chinese government. "The Department of Justice has used every tool available to disrupt the illegal computer intrusions and cyberattacks by these Chinese citizens. Regrettably, the Chinese Communist Party has chosen a different path - of making China safe for cyber-criminals so long as they attack computers outside China and steal intellectual property helpful to China," the deputy attorney general said. The victims ranged from software development, computer hardware, telecommunication, social media and video game companies. Non-profit organisations, universities, think-tanks, foreign governments, pro-democracy politicians and activists in Hong Kong were also targeted. Security researchers have tracked the intrusions using labels "APT41, Barium, Winnti, Wicked Panda, and Wicked Spider." These intrusions facilitated the theft of source code, software code signing certificates, customer account data, and valuable business information, the researchers said. These intrusions also facilitated the defendants' other criminal schemes, including ransomware and "crypto-jacking" schemes, the latter refers to the group's unauthorised use of victim computers to mine cryptocurrency. The Chinese hackers also targeted government computers and networks of Vietnam and the United Kingdom. The hackers, however, were not successful in compromising the government computer networks in the United Kingdom. The racketeering conspiracy pertained to the three defendants' conducting the affairs of Chengdu 404 Network Technology (Chengdu 404), a Chinese Government company, through a pattern of racketeering activity involving computer intrusion offenses affecting over 100 victim companies, organisations, and individuals in the United States and around the world, including in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, the Justice Department said. "Today's announcement demonstrates the ramifications faced by the hackers in China but it is also a reminder to those who continue to deploy malicious cyber tactics that we will utilise every tool we have to administer justice," said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich. Noting that the scope and sophistication of the crimes are unprecedented, Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael R Sherwin said some of these criminal actors believed their association with the Peoples Republic of China provided them free licence to hack and steal across the globe. "This scheme also contained a new and troubling cyber-criminal component -- the targeting and utilisation of gaming platforms to both defraud video game companies and launder illicit proceeds," Sherwin said. Rosen told reporters that as an additional method of making-money, several of the Chinese defendants compromised the networks of video game companies worldwide -- a billion-dollar industry -- and defrauded them of in-game resources. "Two of the Chinese defendants stand accused, with two Malaysian defendants, of selling those resources in the black market, through their illicit website," he said. Asserting that the Chinese government has the power to help stop crimes like these, Rosen alleged that the Chinese Government has made a deliberate choice to allow its citizens to commit computer intrusions and attacks around the world because these actors will also help them. Astronomers present an explanation for the mesmerising shapes of planetary nebulae. The discovery is based on an extraordinary set of observations of stellar winds around ageing stars. Contrary to common consensus, the team found that stellar winds are not spherical but have a shape similar to that of planetary nebulae. The team concludes that interaction with an accompanying star or exoplanet shapes both the stellar winds and planetary nebulae. The findings were published in Science. Dying stars swell and cool to eventually become red giants. They produce stellar winds, flows of particles that the star expels, which causes them to lose mass. Because detailed observations were lacking, astronomers have always assumed that these winds were spherical, like the stars they surround. As the star evolves further, it heats up again and the stellar radiation causes the expanding ejected layers of stellar material to glow, forming a planetary nebula. For centuries, astronomers were in the dark about the extraordinary variety of colourful shapes of planetary nebulae that had been observed. The nebulae all seem to have a certain symmetry but are almost never round. "The Sun - which will ultimately become a red giant - is as round as a billiard ball, so we wondered: how can such a star produce all these different shapes?" says corresponding author Leen Decin (KU Leuven). Her team observed stellar winds around cool red giant stars with the ALMA Observatory in Chile, the largest radio telescope in the world. For the first time ever, they gathered a large, detailed collection of observations, each of them made using the exact same method. This was crucial to be able to directly compare the data and exclude biases. What the astronomers saw, surprised them. "We noticed these winds are anything but symmetrical or round," Professor Decin says. "Some of them are actually quite similar in shape to planetary nebulae." Companions The astronomers could even identify different categories of shapes. "Some stellar winds were disk-shaped, others contained spirals, and in a third group, we identified cones." This is a clear indication that the shapes weren't created randomly. The team realised that other, low-mass stars or even heavy planets in the vicinity of the dying star were causing the different patterns. These companions are too small and dim to detect directly. "Just like how a spoon that you stir in a cup of coffee with some milk can create a spiral pattern, the companion sucks material towards it as it revolves around the star and shapes the stellar wind," Decin explains. The team put this theory into models, and indeed: the shape of the stellar winds can be explained by the companions that surround them, and the rate at which the cool evolved star is losing its mass due to the stellar wind is an important parameter. Decin: "All our observations can be explained by the fact that the stars have a companion." Up until now, calculations about the evolution of stars were based on the assumption that ageing Sun-like stars have stellar winds that are spherical. "Our findings change a lot. Since the complexity of stellar winds was not accounted for in the past, any previous mass-loss rate estimate of old stars could be wrong by up to a factor of 10." The team is now doing further research to see how this might impact calculations of other crucial characteristics of stellar and galactic evolution. The future of the Sun The study also helps to envision what the Sun might look like when it dies in 7000 million years. "Jupiter or even Saturn - because they have such a big mass - are going to influence whether the Sun spends its last millennia at the heart of a spiral, a butterfly, or any of the other entrancing shapes we see in planetary nebulae today," Decin notes. "Our calculations now indicate that a weak spiral will form in the stellar wind of the old dying Sun." "We were very excited when we explored the first images," says co-author Miguel Montarges (KU Leuven). "Each star, which was only a number before, became an individual by itself. Now, to us, they have their own identity. This is the magic of having high-precision observations: stars are no longer just points anymore." The study is part of the ATOMIUM project, which aims to learn more about the physics and chemistry of old stars. "Cool ageing stars are considered to be boring, old and simple, but we now prove that they are not: they tell the story of what comes after. It took us some time to realise that stellar winds can have the shape of rose petals (see, for example, the stellar wind of R Aquilae), but, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery said in his book Le Petit Prince: 'C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose, qui fait ta rose si importante' - 'It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important'," Decin concludes. ### About KU Leuven KU Leuven is Europe's most innovative university (Reuters) and ranks 45th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. As Belgium's largest university, KU Leuven welcomes over 60,000 students from over 140 countries. Its 7,000 researchers are active in a comprehensive range of disciplines. KU Leuven is a founding member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and has a strong European and international orientation. University Hospitals Leuven, its network of research hospitals, provides high-quality healthcare and develops new therapeutic and diagnostic insights with an emphasis on translational research. About ALMA The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA. Advertisement Alligators were seen lurking in floodwaters in Alabama after Hurricane Sally dumped more than four months of rain in four hours after it lumbered ashore on Wednesday with 105mph winds and left at least one person dead. The death happened in Orange Beach, Alabama, according to Mayor Tony Kennon, who also said that one person was missing. Kennon said he couldn't immediately release details. At least 50 people were rescued from flooded homes and taken to shelters, Kennon said. 'We got a few people that we just haven't been able to get to because the water is so high,' the mayor added. 'But they are safe in their homes. As soon as the water recedes, we will rescue them.' Moving at just 3mph, the storm made landfall at 4.45am close to Gulf Shores, Alabama, about 30 miles from Pensacola, Florida. It accelerated to a light jog as it battered the Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama, metropolitan areas encompassing nearly 1 million people. The hurricane cast boats onto land or sank them at the dock, flattened palm trees, peeled away roofs, blew down signs and knocked out power to more than 540,000 homes and businesses. The storm also caused the displacement of animals, with 10 to 12ft alligators reported swimming through residential areas in Orange Beach. Terrifying footage shows one alligator swimming outside the window of Tina Bennett's home on Old Plash Island Road, Gulf Shores, on Wednesday. In the video, the huge alligator crawls through the waters flooding the front yard of a home. Scroll down for video Alligators were seen lurking in floodwaters in Alabama after Hurricane Sally dumped more than four months of rain in four hours after it lumbered ashore on Wednesday with 105mph winds and left at least one person dead Hurricane Sally landed ashore near the Florida-Alabama line Wednesday with 105mph winds and rain swamping homes and forcing the rescue of hundreds of people. A gator is seen above in floodwaters Tina says: 'Look at that alligator, that is right outside the window. He's going into the neighbor's driveway. This is why we don't want to go outside here on the island. And there's many more. Oh he is a monster.' The alligator continues slowly forward before it stops and begins to turn around. Sally, which has now become a tropical depression, has maximum sustained winds of 30mph with additional weakening expected. Sally tore loose a barge-mounted construction crane, which then smashed into the new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay, causing a section of the year-old span to collapse, authorities said. The storm also ripped away a large section of a fishing pier at Alabama's Gulf State Park on the very day a ribbon-cutting had been scheduled following a $2.4million renovation. By the afternoon, authorities in Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, said at least 377 people had been rescued from flooded areas. More than 40 people trapped by high water were brought to safety within a single hour, including a family of four found in a tree, Sheriff David Morgan said. 'There are entire communities that we're going to have to evacuate,' the sheriff said. 'It's going to be a tremendous operation over the next several days.' Pensacola International Airport remained closed on Thursday and officials say they need to assess the safety of the runway and its facility before it reopens. In a statement Wednesday evening, the airport gave no timeline on when it would reopen. It has been closed sine Monday. The alligator crawls forward before it stops and begins to turn around. Tina says she has seen multiple 10 to 12ft alligators swimming through residential areas A general view of a flooded street on Thursday after Hurricane Sally swept through Orange Beach Alabama A boat is seen washed up on shore after Hurricane Sally passed through the area on Thursday in Pensacola, Florida Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sally's rains threatened more misery for parts of the Florida Panhandle and south Alabama on Thursday A damaged apartment is seen after Hurricane Sally hit Perdido Key, Florida, on Thursday Cars drive around downed power lines after Hurricane Sally hit Perdido Key, Florida, on Thursday A restaurant in Gulf Shores, Alabama, is seen surrounded by flood waters on Thursday A business in Gulf Shores, Alabama, is seen Thursday with at least two feet of water surrounding it This aerial image taken by a drone on Thursday shows an outer wall of the Tropic Isles complex that was torn off after Hurricane Sally passed through the area The airport typically has dozens of daily flights from airlines that include Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. It's asking passengers to contact their airlines about canceled flights. More than 2 feet of rain was recorded near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet of water covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service (NWS) reported. 'It's not common that you start measuring rainfall in feet,' said forecaster David Eversole. Authorities in Pensacola said 200 National Guard members would arrive Thursday to help. Curfews were announced in Escambia County and in some coastal Alabama towns. Sally turned some Pensacola streets into white-capped rivers early Wednesday. Sodden debris and flooded cars were left behind as the water receded. Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sally's rains threatened more misery for parts of the Florida Panhandle and south Alabama on Thursday. Jenni Guerry, the deputy director of emergency management for Baldwin County, said the county has sustained 'tremendous damage' from Hurricane Sally. At a Thursday news briefing, she said search crews have been trying to make sure people are accounted for and taking them to safety when needed. Trees and power lines are down throughout the county, one of Alabama's largest with about 225,000 people. In a social media post, the county said there are also many traffic lights still out and that has led to 'collisions and a lot of near misses'. The storm's remnants were forecast to dump up to a foot of rain and spread the threat of flooding to Georgia and the Carolinas. County sheriffs in Georgia are reporting numerous trees down and closures of flooded highways and streets as Sally moves across the South. Tony Frese walks down a flooded sidewalk on Thursday after Hurricane Sally made landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama The Gulf State Park Pier suffered damage from the Hurricane Sally. It's pictured in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Thursday Businesses surrounded by flood waters are pictured after Hurricane Sally in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Thursday A parking lot was left flooded on Thursday after Hurricane Sally made landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama Ducks swim by a vehicle flooded by Hurricane Sally in Pensacola, Florida, on Thursday Insulation covers a room due to damage done to a home from one of two falling trees caused by Hurricane Sally in Pensacola, Florida on Thursday A tree limb juts through the ceiling of a home as the homeowner turns on a flashlight to begin cleaning up the damage left by Hurricane Sally on Thursday in Guyton, Georgia An aerial view from a drone shows people walking through a flooded street after Hurricane Sally passed through Gulf Shores on Thursday An aerial view from a drone shows people walking and a vehicle driving through a flooded street after Hurricane Sally passed through Gulf Shores on Thursday In central Georgia, Robins Air Force Base closed one of its entrances Thursday morning due to flooding. In a Facebook post, the base said it would delay the start of the workday for some employees. The NWS said the system was still forecast to dump 4 inches to 8 inches of rain in southeast Alabama and central Georgia by Thursday night, with up to 1 foot in some spots. Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Some of the crests could break records, submerge bridges and flood some homes, the NWS warned. Coastal residents, meanwhile, looked to begin the recovery from a storm that turned streets into rivers, ripped roofs off buildings, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and killed at least one person. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors in flooded areas that they would need to remain vigilant as water from the hurricane subsides. A damaged apartment is pictured on Thursday after Hurricane Sally tore through Perdido Key, Florida A washed up boat lies on the street in Orange Beach, Alabama, on Thursday after Hurricane Sally hit the area A damaged apartment is pictured on Thursday after Hurricane Sally tore through the area in Perdido Key, Florida Heavy rains to the north were expected to cause flooding in Panhandle rivers in coming days. DeSantis said: 'So this is kind of the initial salvo, but there is going to be more that you're going to have to contend with.' Sally was the second hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in less than three weeks and the latest to blow in during one of the busiest hurricane seasons ever. Forecasters have nearly run through the alphabet of storm names with 2 1/2 months still to go. At the start of the week, Sally was one of a record-tying five storms churning simultaneously in the Atlantic basin. Meanwhile, Teddy has become a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105mph, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm is currently located about 625 miles east-northeast of The Lesser Antilles. Teddy is moving toward the northwest at about 12 miles per hour, the general motion it is expected to continue through the weekend. Additional strengthening is forecasted to happen during the next couple of days, and Teddy could become a major hurricane Thursday night or Friday, the center said. Forecasters said it could reach Category 4 strength before closing in on Bermuda, which took a direct hit from Hurricane Paulette only days ago. This came to a head as schools reopened in recent weeks. With 852 school districts in the state, this means there are 852 possible reopening plans. (There are) 852 different sets of decision-makers, with 852 different local realities, the MPC report said. Remote learning, in-class and hybrid contingencies need to be designed, scheduled, staffed and implemented in uncertain health and educational environments. A lot rests on school districts to create all of these scenarios in a relatively short amount of time. When you need to warm up, what's your favorite winter comfort food? live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Shares of Sadbhav Engineering fell almost 5 percent in intraday trade on BSE on September 17, a day after the company said promoter entity Shashin V Patel created a pledge of 1.85 percent of total paid-up equity of the company. In a BSE filing on September 16, the company said Patel created a pledge of 31,83,333 shares of the company on September 14. Besides, the company said rating agency India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) affirmed ratings on the company's loan, working capital facilities and NCDs. As per a BSE filing on September 17, Ind-Ra affirmed 'IND A-/Stable' on the company's long-term loan and term loan facilities. For the company's Rs 150 crore non-convertible debenture (NCDs), Ind-Ra has 'IND A-/Stable' rating. Shares of the company traded 3.61 percent lower at Rs 56.15 on BSE at 13:05 hours. Susanna Reid (NurPhoto via Getty Images) Susanna Reid is "dreading" the moment she gets back home after dropping her eldest son off at university in a few days time. The mother-of-three has opened up on the sadness she's experiencing ahead of the big life change, which she's described as a "reordering of [her] entire world". Writing in her MailOnline column, Reid shared: "Its true I wont miss nagging my son about homework and the mess in his room, but its hard to imagine the house without his calm presence and his ability to defuse any tension with a hug. Read more: Piers Morgan slams racist trolls targeting Ashley Banjo She added: "I tell myself this is just the next step. For my son, it's a natural move towards freedom, but for me it's a reordering of my entire world and, honestly, my heart aches." However, Reid noted the exam results chaos and government U-turn back in August meant she had been able to suppress her feelings for a time. Susanna Reid won't be able to enter her son's halls of residence when she takes him to university. (Getty Images) The Good Morning Britain host also reflected on how the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing measures had impacted the move as she lamented they wouldn't be able to gather relatives to say goodbye and that she was not permitted to enter 18-year-old Sams halls of residence. She said she was "disappointed" at not being able to see where her offspring would be living. Read more: Susanna Reid at breaking point over social media trolls Reid went to say the small age gap between the three sons she shares with former partner Dominic Cotton means it is the start of a "staggered period of saying goodbye". Her younger sons, Finn and Jack, are 16 and 15 years old, respectively. "I have to face the fact that what worries me most is my rapidly emptying nest, she said. A stepmother has been cleared of wrongdoing after being accused of participating in sex acts with her teenage stepson. The woman was accused of encouraging her stepson to perform oral sex on her including an act called the 'alphabet game' over a period of two years in Melbourne. At the time she was said to be 25 and 26, while the boy was only a teenager around 13 or 14. The woman was accused of encouraging her teenage stepson to perform oral sex on her including an act called the 'alphabet game' over a period of two years in Melbourne (stock image) A a trial by judge found there was insufficient evidence to prove the woman was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The Melbourne woman had been charged with two counts of gross indecency with a person under the age of 16, and two counts of incest. She was accused of a series of vile acts between 1985 to 1987, Newscorp reported. This included allegations she had performed oral sex on the teenager, and that the pair had penetrative sex. But she told the court she had never participated in any 'amorous or sexual conduct' with her stepson. She had already been convicted over the charges twice after two separate trials by jury but the charges were thrown out after an appeal. The woman was allowed to walk free after an appearance before Judge Michael Bourke at the Country Court of Victoria this week. She appeared via audio-visual link due to COVID-19 restrictions in Victoria. The woman was allowed to walk free after an appearance before Judge Michael Bourke at the Country Court of Victoria (pictured) this week In handing down the sentence Judge Michael Bourke said he was unable to find enough evidence to convict her. He said while the accuser appeared trustworthy and reliant he was unable to make his judgement based off a personal opinion. 'The complainant presented as honest and apparently reliable in his account of the alleged conduct charged,' he said. 'However, I am obliged to go beyond such subjective assessment. 'There is no support for the complainant's (account) of the amorous grooming behaviour.' Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Calcium Fluoride is used in numerous applications due to its ability to offer excellent thermal stability, durable nature, efficiency, and superior performance to the final product. Due to these factors, they are used in various applications such as aluminum metallurgy, production of welding agents, optical, glass manufacturing, and others. The global calcium fluoride market is spanned across five regions of the world namely Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Among these, Asia Pacific holds the major share of the global market and is projected to continue leading the market owing to growing consumption of calcium fluoride in aluminum metallurgy, production of welding agents, optical, glass manufacturing, and others. It is estimated that the aluminum metallurgy segment is set to observe the highest CAGR in the market due to growing use of the product to improve the physical characteristics and add extraordinary quality to the final product. Moreover, the increasing consumption of inorganic compound as a raw material for hydrochloric acid production in major industries has propelled the market to witness a rapid growth during the forecast period. These factors have led to China, India and Japan to be the major players of this region. Access Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/calcium-fluoride-market-1648 The North American market is expected to grow at a higher CAGR due to extensive consumption of product in heavy end-use sectors. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico have achieved a significant place in the market due to growing investments in the end-use industries. The growing demand for calcium fluoride in aluminum, construction sectors, and others is also estimated to drive the market during the forecast period. A notable development is achieved in the European region due to the growing demand for calcium fluoride in optical applications such as windows, lenses, thermal imaging systems, spectroscopy, telescopes, and excimer lasers. Furthermore, the growing innovation and technological advancement have propelled the market to witness a higher growth. Owing to these factors, countries such as Germany, the U.K, and Italy are the major contributors to this market. A considerable development is predicted in the Latin American region such as in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina due to the growing consumption of the product in aluminum, steel, and construction industries. Moreover, a rapid development is estimated in the Middle East & African region such as Qatar, the U.A.E, and others due to boundless use of product in welding agents, glass industries, and others. Segmentation The global calcium fluoride market is classified into the application segment. On the basis of the application, the market is bifurcated into aluminum metallurgy, production of welding agents, optical, glass manufacturing, and others. Competitive Analysis Some of the well-known players operating in the global calcium fluoride market are Solvay (Belgium), GFS Chemicals, Inc. (US), International Crystal Laboratories (US), Aldon Corporation (US), Sydor Optics (US), Glass Fab , Inc. (US), Super Conductor Materials, Inc (US), ESPICorp Inc. (US), Alufluor AB (Sweden), and Reade International Corp (US) among others. Get a Free Sample Now @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1648 Know More @ https://marketersmedia.com/calcium-fluoride-market-insights-top-players-analysis-new-business-opportunities-and-forecast-2016-to-2022/163729 NOTE: Our team of researchers are studying Covid19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. COVID-19 Study in Detail: COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Market COVID-19 Impact on 3D Printing Materials Market COVID-19 Outbreak Impact on Carbon black Market Stan Kniss Among his strengths is the ability to sell property at prices well beyond what others may think is possible, and has set records for the highest-priced condominium sales in Denver year after year. Haute Residence is pleased to welcome Stan Kniss to the exclusive Haute Residence Network as its representative in the Denver, Colorado luxury real estate market. Stan Kniss is the Managing Partner and Managing Broker of Slate Real Estate Advisors, a boutique real estate firm specializing in one-and-only properties in Denver and beyond. He began his career more than 20 years ago, and has been a top producer ever since. Stan specializes in the unique - whether it be urban infill properties, historic warehouse galleries, hotel-branded residences, such as the Four Seasons Private Residences, and The Ritz-Carlton Residences, and luxury resort real estate in Colorado. Among his strengths is the ability to sell property at prices well beyond what others may think is possible, and has set records for the highest-priced condominium sales in Denver year after year. Visit Stan Kniss' Haute Residence profile: https://www.hauteresidence.com/member/stan-kniss/ Visit Stan Kniss' website: https://www.slaterea.com/ Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the worlds most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners. The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts. HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more. Access all of this information and more by visiting http://www.hauteresidence.com LONDON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- British red meat exporters are bullish on the Chinese market, which they described as "hugely important" and are seeking closer trade cooperation in the future. "We consider China to be a very important part of our red meat export portfolio," International Market Development Director Phil Hadley from Britain's Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) told Xinhua. "We have a vibrant and growing pork trade, which continues to grow year on year. The total value of pork exports to China were around 200 million pounds (257 million U.S. dollars) in 2019, and so far this year they are up again," Hadley said. Hadley said he expected the British beef exports to China to start at the end of this year or early into next year. "We have ambitious hopes for the beef sector over the coming years," he said. Last year, China and Britain finalized details of a trade agreement, opening access for the British beef industry to the Chinese market. "We'll finalize our beef paperwork and begin to start shipping shortly," Hadley said. In order to promote British red meat to the Chinese market, the AHDB and British exports have a stand at two major exhibitions in China -- the 18th China International Meat Industry Exhibition 2020 (CIMIE 2020) and SIAL China 2020 to be held in Shanghai from Sept. 28 to Sept. 30. Due to travel restrictions as a result of COVID-19, five British exporters promoted their pork and beef through videos and virtual platform during CIMIE 2020, which was held in Qingdao from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12. "We're having very positive feedback from the show at the moment," Hadley said, "we're very keen and have supported that show (CIMIE) for a number of years. It always provides us with a very good platform to meet with both new and established Chinese businesses and buyers." AHDB Export Manager Susan Stewart said: "These two shows represent the first time this year that we have been able to reconnect our exporters with key influential buyers in China due to the ongoing challenges of COVID-19." "China is a hugely important market for our pork exports and it is vital that we maintain our strong relationship with buyers and continue to fly the flag for our red meat, especially as we are on the cusp of shipping beef to China for the first time in over 20 years," Stewart said. When talking about future trade cooperation, Hadley expressed expectation from British exporters. "We were also in a dialogue with the Chinese authorities around accelerating our sheep meat access. And then on top of that, we also have other opportunities for other lifestyle products, such as dairy," Hadley said. The AHDB is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It aims to help Britain's livestock, dairy and agriculture sectors and stimulate demand in the British and export markets. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended his right to intervene in Justice Department probes and overrule the decisions of career lawyers after facing accusations over the last several months that he has politicized the department. Because I am ultimately accountable for every decision the department makes, I have an obligation to ensure we make the correct ones, Barr said at an event hosted by Hillsdale College. After Barr in February overruled a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, President Trumps longtime associate, and recommended a more lenient sentence, some Democrats called for the attorney general to resign or face impeachment. The White House denied Trump had pressured the DOJ to show lenience to Stone. Later in May, Barr also faced criticism for dropping the governments case against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI but eventually withdrew that plea. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target, Barr said Wednesday. Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process. Earlier this month, reports broke that the DOJ is planning to bring antitrust charges against Google in the coming weeks after the attorney general decided to move forward over the objections of DOJ lawyers who say they need more preparation time to prosecute the massive technology company. Some of the more than three dozen lawyers preparing the case against Googles parent company Alphabet reportedly said they felt the deadline imposed on them by the DOJ to finish their work was arbitrary and could weaken their case. The prosecutors voiced concerns that Barr was prioritizing the antitrust case in order to take credit for cracking down on a large tech firm during the Trump administration. Justice Department officials instructed the lawyers to finish their preparations for the case by the end of September. Story continues Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency, Barr said Wednesday. Advocating for clear and defined prohibitions will sometimes mean we cannot bring charges against someone whom we believe engaged in questionable conduct, he continued. But that is what it means to have a government of laws and not of men. We cannot let our desire to prosecute bad people turn us into the functional equivalent of the mad emperor Caligula. More from National Review More than four months have gone by since the PLA upped the ante on the borders with India resulting in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. The confrontation has also been unprecedented with the largest loss of lives since the Nathu La confrontation of 1967 with 17 Div of Maj Gen Sagat Singh. The clash at PP 14 in the Galwan area resulted in the loss of Colonel Santosh Babu, the CO of 16 Bihar and 19 other ranks on the night of 15/16 June 2020 in a most barbaric and treacherous attack by the PLA despite the consensus on disengagement reached in the Corps level talks on June 6. Though the brave Indian troops inflicted a much larger number of casualties on the PLA, this tragic incident on the LAC is being recounted to remind everyone of China's duplicity and the resultant trust deficit on the Indian side on the value of China's words, particularly since China has been playing such a game ever since the Panchsheel agreement of 1954. While the Indian media has been covering the details of the day-to-day developments in these four months of confrontation, sometimes excessively so, the Chinese media, all officially controlled, has been reticent but continues with its propaganda on trying to put the blame on India for the current situation on the LAC. India put out the number of casualties on 15/16 June almost immediately and gave a widely publicised last salute to its 20 martyrs while China has kept a lid on the number of casualties on its side and almost buried the details thus disowning its losses on the lines of the Pakistanis during the Kargil War of 1999 when India had to finally give a decent burial to the Pakistani dead. Fortunately, with Chinese aggressive moves all across on various fronts in its wolf warrior diplomacy, the international community has seen through the propaganda with many other nations having suffered its salami slicing tactics, particularly in the South and East China Seas. Due to this, world opinion has rallied behind India as evident from the US moves and exercises in the South China Sea and the recent call of the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to all nations to stand up against Chinese aggression in the recently-concluded ASEAN meeting. Fortunately also, this time India has decided to stand up to Chinese designs and aggression no matter what the costs, unlike previous instances when we let China continue with its nibbling. It's nobody case that India is looking for war, with its focus on economic development and poverty alleviation in a peaceful environment and co-existence with all its neighbors. Despite the betrayal of the 1950s culminating in the war of 1962, India has continued to work towards peace on the existing borders despite its legitimate claim to the Aksai Chin and other areas illegally ceded territories by Pakistan to China. This resulted in a number of agreements since 1993, including 22 rounds of talks between the Special Representatives and two summits between the two heads of state. All of these were violated in a jiffy by the PLA in the current standoff by moving almost 50,000 troops from its so-called exercise in Tibet earlier this year and attempting to alter the status quo on the LAC. Despite these provocations from China, India has kept the door of diplomacy open. Accordingly, the two Foreign Ministers met on September 10 on the sidelines of the SCO in Moscow in an effort to find a peaceful resolution to the current imbroglio, as of writing this piece. Details of the agreement reached between the two Foreign Ministers are slowly emerging, with some hopeful indications of maintaining peace and tranquillity on the existing borders and abiding by the existing protocols and understandings on disengagement to avoid further escalation. However, lest one gets optimistic about this being an end to the stalemate, it needs to be remembered that such platitudes have been mouthed many times earlier. In a press conference on September 11, Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, still talked of India's provocations. Therefore, while India awaits the words to be converted to deeds and visible action on the ground by the PLA to disengage and withdraw to its peacetime locations, it must continue to counter Chinese moves on all fronts, economic as well as military, without letting its guard down. Economically, while China may be far ahead of India, India has sufficient military might to give more than a bloody nose to China should push come to shove. China would be making a grave error if it underestimates India's resolve and its capacity to fight when national honour and sovereignty are at stake. China certainly has taken on more than it can chew. (Air Marshal (Retd) Harish Masand served in the Indian Air Force) 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 gathering in 1776 on a plantation of enslaved and free Black people in colonial Virginia established what would become one of America's first known Black Christian congregations. Although Williamsburg's First Baptist Church has long abandoned its original sites, a group of archaeologists is digging to unearth clues into this early American group of worshippers. While worshippers met in defiance of laws barring Black people from meeting in large numbers, white landowner Jesse Cole could hear them from his home, and he often listened along with his wife. Cole offered the group a piece of property on Nassau Street to establish a physical church. By 1828, the church had a recorded 619 members. Last week, Colonial Williamsburg, a living museum and historical preservation foundation focused on Williamsburg's Historic Area, began an excavation project to find the church's first building. Connie Harshaw, president of First Baptist Church's Let Freedom Ring Foundation, said she hopes the archaeological dig will help reveal more information about the people who once worshipped at one of the oldest Black churches in the country. "We want to literally uncover the history," she said. Harshaw said the Let Freedom Ring Foundation previously learned about former members through the oral histories passed down through their descendants, but she hopes the excavation will help unearth more about a group of people that she said included Black people who could read and write, which was also illegal for Black people at the time, as well as some affluent members of the church. View of archaeological excavations at site of First Baptist Church on Nassau Street in 1957 after it was torn down. (Colonial Williasmburg) Jack Gary, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's director of archaeology, said the information passed down through descendants has been useful when planning for the excavation. "That information is invaluable to a project like this, and we want to make sure that we're incorporating it into the project. And at the same time, we want to make sure we're not exploiting that relationship, either," he said. "We see ourselves as a tool that the church and the community can use to understand its history and to tell the story. It's not our job to tell the story, but to give them the information so that they can continue to tell it in ways that are important to them." Story continues Harshaw said the members of First Baptist Church used Cole's carriage house until another structure was built on the Nassau Street property for the church in 1856. When the congregation moved to Scotland Street 100 years later, a parking lot was built on the property. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson are among the prominent figures who have visited First Baptist Church. In 2016, President Barack Obama rang the church's Freedom Bell in Washington, D.C., on loan, at the dedication of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Today, First Baptist Church holds services for its 300 congregants in its Scotland Street location after it left Nassau Street in 1956. Colonial Williamsburg used a number of methods to locate the original structure on Nassau Street, including old paper documents, such as insurance maps, and information from an excavation that occurred in the 1950s. They also collaborated with the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation to locate anomalies on the property using a ground-penetrating radar unit. "When you start to trace them out, you say, 'Oh, wow, there's a big rectangle that's in the exact same shape of a church,'" he said. A successful first phase of the excavation project, Gary said, would uncover "intact deposits, or layers of soil and areas around these foundations that have not been disturbed by anything." The 1957 archaeological excavation at the site of First Baptist Church's original permanent structure on South Nassau Street in Williamsburg, Va. This year, a partnership led by First Baptist Church and Colonial Williamsburg has resumed archaeological investigation of the site. (Colonial Williamsburg) That phase is scheduled to take about seven weeks. If phase one is a success, Gary and the rest of the team will expand their search with a second phase, which could take up to a year and a half. Gary credits Colonial Williamsburg's new president, Cliff Fleet, with identifying the excavation as an important project. He "immediately identified this as one of the most important properties that's in the historic area, and it had a parking lot on top of it," Gary said. "His recognition of that spurred us to start the planning for this project. It's definitely become more important as we see what's happening with the racial reckoning that's happening in the country right now." Gary said the project could be a much-needed conversation starter in a time of increased racial reckoning. "One thing I often point out about archaeology is that the things that come out of the ground, we can all see them and show them to people. It's tangible remains of the past," he said. "I think right now we need something we can all look at and say: 'That's a brick foundation. We can all agree on that. Here's a place where we can start our conversation.'" Harshaw said that she hopes the original structure will be restored and that Colonial Williamsburg will eventually produce programs for the community about the history of the church. Still, Harshaw acknowledges that she struggles with the notion that phase one of the excavation might not yield any new information. "I have to tell you, even if they do not find a thing, the symbolism that this project represents is that there is a recognition and acknowledgment that there was a population here that will not be forgotten. We are digging below the surface of the Earth to try to find their story," she said. "It says that our history is worth us going down and looking." CORRECTION (Sept. 17, 2020, 4:15 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the first name of the president and CEO of Colonial Williamsburg. He is Cliff Fleet, not Jim Fleet. "Stability Cannabis is honored to be voted the best cannabis retail store in Oklahoma! We are especially proud of all our dispensary employees who create the most welcoming and supportive atmosphere for patients in the entire state," said chief executive officer Denver Kitch. Stability opened the 4,000 square foot cannabis superstore in January 2020 and has served patients from 72 of Oklahoma's 77 counties. "The fact that patients have driven more than 5 hours round trip to visit Stability Cannabis tells us we are creating something special," added chief operating officer David Lewis. Stability Cannabis is located at 1043 South Meridian in Oklahoma City and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and features more than 250 products. About Stability Cannabis Oklahoma City based Stability Cannabis operates one of the largest indoor cannabis cultivation, processing and retail operations in Oklahoma with a 90,000 sq. ft. footprint. Stability provides a diverse array of award-winning cannabis products to retail dispensaries and processors, as well as operating one of Oklahoma's largest dispensaries. Learn more at StabilityCannabis.com. SOURCE Stability Cannabis Related Links https://www.stabilitycannabis.com The big anniversary -- the golden jubilee of the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history -- is still a year away, but Eric Ulis is determined to be ready. Nearly 49 years ago, on Thanksgiving Eve in 1971, a man famously dubbed D.B. Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland. Somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, he strapped on a parachute, tucked away $200,000 hed secured in exchange for passengers, lowered the Boeing 727s aft stairs and jumped out. Hes never been found or identified. A government minister has refused to commit the UK to respecting the rulings of a panel set up to resolve disputes under the Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU. Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis told MPs that it would be unhelpful and dangerous for him to say that Britain would always abide by the arbitration panels ruling. His answer got a scathing response from the chair of the House of Commons Northern Ireland Committee, Conservative Simon Hoare, who said that it risked serious damage to the UKs international reputation and its chances of securing free trade agreements with countries elsewhere in the world. Mr Hoare said it was worrying that the minister could not simply give the answer: The UK will always abide by international arbitration. End of. Giving evidence to the committee, Mr Lewis stood by his comment last week that the governments UK Internal Market Bill could result in Britain breaching international law in a specific and limited way. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty But he said that this would be an absolute last resort if the UK had been unable to resolve disputes through the Joint Committee set up with the EU to oversee the implementation of provisions for the Irish border as well as the arbitration process created under Boris Johnsons withdrawal agreement. But asked by Mr Hoare if the UK would accept a panel ruling which went against it, he replied: The problem is that of course in any situation, the technicalities and nuances are complex, they are complicated and small things can have a big impact. To get into a hypothetical about what possibly may happen is an unhelpful and dangerous place to be. Our focus is not getting to that place in the first place and getting a positive outcome from the Joint Committee negotiations. Mr Hoare - who did not vote with the government in Monday nights vote on the bill - replied: You are right that it is a hypothetical question, but one would always hope that as a country which abides by the rule of law, having entered into an arbitration process, one would accept the rulings. There are not many people in prison who accept the rulings of the judge, but they do so because thats the way that justice works. Mr Lewis insisted that other countries could be confident that the UK was a country that works in good faith to deliver on our agreements and will continue to do so. But the committee chair hit back: One would hope that that would be the case, but I dont that that would be the view of very many people in the international community and the business world at the moment. I dont think that the seriousness of the damage that could potentially be inflicted on the reputation of the UK as a country that abides by the rule of law has been yet properly understood throughout government. The obvious answer is that The UK will always abide by international arbitration, end of, hypothetical or otherwise. It is worrying that that answer cant be given. The arrangement for resolving disputes over the interpretation or application of the Brexit divorce deal was one of the most contentious elements of the agreement signed by Mr Johnson last year and pushed through parliament in the spring. Under its terms, either the UK or EU can request the establishment of a five-member panel at The Hague, made up of two nominees from each side and a chair selected by consensus from a list of five jointly nominated by London and Brussels. The agreement explicitly states that arbitration rulings are binding on the Union and the United Kingdom. The text of the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Mr Johnson says: The Union and the United Kingdom shall take any measures necessary to comply in good faith with the arbitration panel ruling and shall endeavour to agree on the period of time to comply with the ruling. Mr Lewiss admission that implementing the prime ministers bill would involve breaking international law has sparked a hail of condemnation, with all living former prime ministers and every Tory ex-leader apart from Iain Duncan Smith warning against the move. There was speculation that the government was backing away from it after Scotlands Tory Advocate General Lord Keen told the House of Lords that the bill did not breach international law and Mr Lewis had been answering the wrong question. But Mr Lewis told the Northern Ireland committee that he had since discussed the issue with Lord Keen, who now accepted he had correctly stated the government position, as confirmed in advice from Attorney General Suella Braverman. He confirmed that he was reading from a prepared text, but refused to say whether it had been written by Mr Johnsons arch-eurosceptic adviser Dominic Cummings. One teacher said his eight-year-old laptop cant support remote-learning technology. Another said shes been using her Android cellphone to communicate with parents. In internal group chats between teachers at Hamiltons public board this week, early-childhood educators have chimed in to express sympathy and informal IT support for their struggling colleagues. Oh boy ... thats gotta be frustrating, said one teacher in response to a teacher who couldnt download a remote-learning application to her phone. People are having major technical issues with everything right now, said another. As the boards prepare to bring online learning to thousands of students this week, teachers have scrambled to organize classrooms that function smoothly for both staff and students. Part of the problem, they say, is the lack of technology available to them. Its been kind of nuts, to be honest with you, said an elementary school teacher tasked with running a virtual classroom for Grade 4 students. The Spec agreed not to name him in order to protect his job security. Theres been very little direction on how to lead classes with the equipment were given. Loading The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) has offered iPads to teachers whose personal equipment cannot support the remote-learning technology needed to run classrooms. But teachers say the devices make it difficult to orchestrate video conferences, toggle between presentation slides and share their screen with students. Generally, before the pandemic, teachers got laptops or desktops for their classes. We got iPads as well, but they were supplemental devices for things like taking attendance or sending the occasional email. Youre really limited with what you can do with them, and itll be hard to keep this up for a whole semester, said the Grade 4 teacher. The school board says the devices are the only technology available. Peter Sovran, the boards associate director of learning, said there simply arent enough laptops available to accommodate teachers leading virtual classrooms. The devices we have available to use are, by and large, iPads. So thats what were making available to the teaching staff. If that really doesnt work, we can think about alternatives, Sovran told The Spec. One might prefer one device over another, but that doesnt mean we have cupboards of laptops to hand out. As the first day of online classes began Wednesday morning, teachers quickly discovered that their video conferencing tools pose a variety of technical hurdles and in elementary classrooms especially plenty of opportunities for bloopers. I had a couple kids saying inappropriate things in the video chat, but I had no way to boot them off, said the Grade 4 teacher. And the kids have the ability to put the teachers microphone on mute; Happened at least once today. The technical difficulties are to be expected given the scramble to open the boards virtual education program, which was first announced to families within the HWDSB about a month ago, said Sovran. There are definite challenges when opening a brand new program with 8,600 students, especially under these circumstances. But given that, I think everybody should be proud of what weve accomplished. Were just looking forward to getting everybody else into their classes, Sovran said. On Thursday, proprietors of Islamic schools in Kwara State appealed to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to facilitate the reopening of schools in the state. Except for the resumption of exit class students, schools across the state have been shut down since March in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 1000 lives across the country. So far, the country has recorded over 56,000 infections since the pandemic broke out in February. Although some state governments have announced dates for the reopening of schools, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has warned against hasty reopening of schools. Although the Kwara government has announced plans to work towards full resumption, no date has been announced. The chairperson of the association of Islamic schools, Abdulrazaq Oniye, who spoke with journalists in Ilorin, the state capital, said they believe the state is now safe for schools to reopen. He said the partial reopening of schools for the exit classes examinations has shown that the time is right for full reopening, adding that private school owners have lost millions of naira as a result of the lockdown. However, he urged the government to review levies and taxes on private schools in the post COVID-19 era considering the economic blows, the pandemic has dealt on their finances. Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Peoples Advocacy Network, a civil society organisation, has warned the state government against reopening schools without safety measures put in place to curb the spread of the virus in the state. This was contained in a statement signed by the organisations Assistant Publicity Secretary, Olaitan Abdulraheem. According to the copy obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, the group stated that going ahead with her plan to reopen schools without COVID-19 training for school heads and teachers amounts to endangering the lives of both staff and pupils. We are very much aware that some states in the federation like Lagos, Osun have long commenced the training programme without delay. We do hope that the KWSG will follow suit as such a training programme will ensure that teachers in the state are well abreast of global transformational teaching techniques in the post COVID-19 era. We hope the KWSG will take full responsibility if the pandemic should grow wings and destroy the lives of students and staff after school resumption as any further delay could be deadly, the statement read. Tropical Depression Sally finally moved out of Alabama on Thursday, leaving widespread damage and flooding in its wake. The National Hurricane Center issued its advisory on Sally earlier today, and the storm has weakened to a remnant area of low pressure over South Carolina as of Thursday evening. But now theres another storm in the Gulf to keep an eye on. The hurricane center on Thursday night began issuing advisories on Tropical Depression 22, which was in the southwestern Gulf. As of 6 p.m. CDT Thursday, Tropical Depression 22 was located about 330 miles southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande River and was moving northeast at 5 mph. The depression had winds of 35 mph and was expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Wilfred on Friday. Wilfred is the last name on the 2020 storm list. Forecasters will have to use the Greek alphabet to name any other storms this season. The big question is where could the new depression go? The hurricane center said it is expected to generally meander over the western Gulf of Mexico into the weekend. Newly formed Tropical Depression 22 is expected to become Tropical Storm Wilfred on Friday. The official forecast track shows the storm heading north and then eventually to the west. If that track holds it would spare the northern Gulf Coast from another hit from a tropical system. WHAT ABOUT SALLY? The worst of the rain is out of Alabama, but the National Weather Service was watching area rivers, many of which could flood in south and south-central parts of the state. Several in southwest Alabama are forecast to go into major flood stage, with others in hitting moderate stage. The National Weather Service in Mobile said that in Alabama Big Escambia Creek at Flomation, the Styx River near Elsanor, the Fish River near Silverhill and Murder Creek in Brewton will all be at major or moderate flood stage. Several rivers in southwest Alabama will be in major or moderate flood stage, and flooding could last through the weekend. Rivers in Alabama continue to rise especially in Escambia county Alabama near Brewton. Luckily rivers in Baldwin county have begun to fall but flooding will continue through today. Remember do not cross flooded roads! (2/2). pic.twitter.com/nYxlVCEa10 NWS Mobile (@NWSMobile) September 17, 2020 The National Weather Service in Tallahassee is also issuing flood warnings for the Choctawhatchee River in Alabama and the Pea River, which are in major or moderate flood stages as of Thursday. The National Weather Service in Birmingham said points along the Tallapoosa River and Catoma Creek are also expected to rise above flood stage today and flooding there could also last into the weekend. River flooding will be a major concern through at least the weekend, particularly for SW AL and NW FL. #mobwx Do you know how to read a river forecast? You can get river forecasts from our Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service webpage: https://t.co/4mD9yrMxDN pic.twitter.com/MPll6tI0ZS NWS Mobile (@NWSMobile) September 17, 2020 ELSEWHERE IN THE ATLANTIC In addition to TD 22, the hurricane center is also tracking Category 4 Hurricane Teddy, which could threaten Bermuda just days after Hurricane Paulette made a direct hit on the island, as well as the remnants of Tropical Storm Vicky and two other tropical waves. None of those are a threat to Alabama, although those in New England and Canada will be closely watching Teddys long-range path. The Atlantic hurricane season cant end soon enough, but the last day doesnt arrive until Nov. 30. WETHERSFIELD Its almost exactly in the center of the state. So, wherever you are coming from (and there is public transportation) there are options. But once you get to Wethersfield, a place you might want to visit is the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum, which will open the Buttolph-Williams House for public tours for the month of October. Why is this significant? Well, according to the museum folks, author Elizabeth George Speare, a resident of Wethersfield, used the decidedly medieval-looking house (c.1711) as the setting for her Newbery Medal-winning book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Further, the book is the basis for one of the most treasured education programs at WDS and has been read by generations of school children. Then, after a post on the WDS Facebook page about the Buttolph-Williams House drew an overwhelming response it became clear that many adults remember the book, and the house, very fondly, inspiring the museum to open it up for the entire month. Every year hundreds of students who have read the book take our Witch of Blackbird Pond tour, Acting Co-director Cindy Riccio said in a release. Its a timeless classic, exploring ignorance, slavery, prejudice, and superstition, and it resonates with any child who has ever been bullied or singled out for being different. Given the responses weve seen on Facebook, the book continues to appeal to adults, many of whom toured the house decades ago and expressed an interest in returning, Riccio said, also in the release. The museum shares that book tells the story of Kit, a newly orphaned young woman from Barbados, who arrives unannounced to live with relatives in Wethersfield. Considered an outsider, and different from other girls, she befriends the kind, elderly Hannah Tupper, who had been outlawed from the Massachusetts Colony for being a Quaker. As fellow outcasts, Kit and Hannah develop a deep bond, even after her uncle forbids the friendship. When a mob gathers to kill Hannah, the book becomes a tale of witchcraft and adventure, with honor, and the heroine, winning in the end. Witch of Blackbird Pond Tours will be offered at 10 a.m., noon, and 2 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and Sundays at 1 and 3 p.m. by advance registration. To register contact Riccio at 860-529-0612, ext. 12, or criccio@webb-deane-stevens.org. Admission: nonmembers, $10; members, $7. Note: The tours include walking on uneven ground and the use of stairs. Facemasks are required and tours are limited to groups of six. While you are there, you might want to check out the maps that illustrate the locations of events in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. The map was created by WDS guide and Wethersfield artist Phil Lohman at the request of former Wethersfield Town Librarian Laurel Goodgion, the release noted. The map and the book are available at the WDS Gift Shop. The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum manages the Buttolph-Williams House; which is owned by Connecticut Landmarks, the release also noted. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:00:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHONGQING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Singapore is an organizer of the 2020 Smart China Expo Online in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, held from Tuesday to Thursday. It is the first time China and Singapore have cooperated to host the event. The expo, which has been held twice in Chongqing since 2018, serves as a platform to promote global exchanges of smart technologies and international cooperation in the smart industry. More than 30 Singaporean companies have participated in the online exhibition at the overseas venue in Singapore, showcasing intelligent products and technological solutions. Stephen Ho, managing director of Skylab Services Pte. Ltd., said in an online interview that China has a huge market and its intelligent transformation has opened up new cooperation space between China and Singapore. Singaporean companies hope to find more partners through the expo to share in China's intelligent opportunities. "COVID-19 has made going digital central to everyday interaction. Like China and other economies, Singapore is keen to turn adversity into opportunity. Let us turn adversity into opportunity. This is even as we explore the use of digital technologies to unlock new value and business models in every sector of our economy," said Josephine Teo, Singaporean minister for manpower. In the previous two expos, Singapore participated as the guest country of honor. With the country taking an active role as an organizer of this year's expo, China-Singapore cooperation continues to deepen. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, an intergovernmental cooperation initiative covering finance, aviation, logistics and transport, as well as information and communications technology. Under the framework of the initiative, China and Singapore have signed 68 platform cooperation agreements of various types and 228 cooperation projects with a total value of approximately 32 billion U.S. dollars as of the end of July 2020. A WeChat mini-program for travel co-developed by Chinese and Singaporean companies has covered most tourist attractions in Chongqing, providing tourists with navigation, ticket purchase, catering, and personalized itinerary customization services. Representatives of Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry stated in a previous video networking meeting that Singapore hopes to strengthen cooperation and the construction of the innovation ecosystem by co-hosting the expo with China, allowing the two countries' companies to find business opportunities in the Southeast Asian and Chinese markets. Enditem For many Derry people 1972 will be forever etched in their memories, it was a year that started with Bloody Sunday and ended with killings at the Top of the Hill bar. It was the worst year of the Troubles which culminated in 480 deaths and close to 5,000 people injured. Sadly, some Derry families were already in a state of grieving having lost loved ones to violence the year before. Martin McGavigan was 11 years of age when his sister Annette (14) was shot dead during street disturbances in the Bogside on September 6, 1971. The family have always maintained that it was a British soldier who fired the bullet while the state claims she was caught in crossfire between the British Army and IRA. Annette is believed to be the first child killed in the Troubles and her family are still searching for answers. The day she died, Martin was playing in the streets nearby, he recalled: Ill never forget that day, I remember it as if it was yesterday and I always will. As a young boy I was coming home from St Peters school and instead of coming home to hot dinners, we were coming home to find my mother at the hot press hugging Annettes clothes and crying. We shouldnt have had to do that and Im sure there were other families going through the same. That will live with us and well take it to our graves, you can never block those memories out. New play, Anything Can Happen 1972: Voices from the Heart of the Troubles by Damian Gorman is inspired by personal accounts of tragedy and survival. It is part of Theatre of Witness, a form of performance that gives voice to those who have been marginalised, forgotten or are invisible in society. The play will present extraordinary, and in some cases unheard personal stories about experiences of Northern Ireland in 1972. It will be performed by the people involved themselves, telling their own stories. When the house lights go down, the Playhouses red chairs will not be empty, despite the pandemic-induced empty theatre. Instead, the seats will be filled with a series of deeply personal items, whose presence in the theatre will become a poignant extension of the stories and events unfolding onstage. On one of those seats will sit a toy dragon (below) which Annette McGavigan made. Martin explained: Annette made the teddy bear so I decided to take that and a wee poem that she always sang, Jeannies Afraid of the Dark. When I looked around yesterday and seen the photos and personal belongings, it goes straight to the heart and is very moving. EPIPHANY Resting on a seat nearby will be the dog tags of an ex-British Army soldier, Lee Lavis. His experience serving in Northern Ireland reshaped his perspective of the role of state forces in the Troubles and ultimately led to his departure from the army 1996. Full of youthful hubris, he arrived in Fermanagh as a teenager in April 1992 for a six-month tour wary but unafraid as training had hardwired the threat of the IRA and all nationalist people into his psyche. Every minute of every day, he said, soldiers were on edge waiting for a bomb to go off, to step on a pressure point mine or for a sniper to take them out - particularly soldiers based on the border. That threat remained even when soldiers were off duty. In 1995, on his second tour in Newry, already disillusioned with the army and cross-training as a medic an invitation arrived from a local youth club. Every year they went to a Celtic F.C. match for a weekend away and on this occasion the regiment was asked if theyd liked to send two soldiers along - a remarkable example of reaching across the divide. It was the first time ever I met members of the nationalist community in a situation where I wasnt wearing a uniform and didnt feel threatened. I was treated exceptionally well throughout that weekend, he remembered with emotion in his voice, they spoke to me on a very human level and for the first time ever I heard what it was like to be on the other side of the British Army. To be stopped 14 times while taking kids to school, the casual brutality of some soldiers, house searches, how a community felt when someone was killed, be them a member of the IRA or not and the rank ignorance of some soldiers just believing every member of this community was in the IRA. It proved to be an epiphanous encounter for him and humanised people he once viewed as the enemy. Lee handed in his resignation notice a week later and left the army shortly thereafter. He has since overcome personal struggles, including drug addiction and homelessness, and been on a continuous journey towards reconciliation by reaching out to people on all sides of the conflict. Now, one of his best friends is Derry woman Fiona Gallagher (pictured together below). Her brother Jim was an IRA member who was shot dead by a British soldier six days after being released from prison while travelling on a bus on the Strand Road next to Fort George. Its a friendship not just centred on those experiences, it has transcended that and we now go to concerts together as we have a shared love of music and meet up regularly, Lee added. Cast member Susan Stanley will also bring her own item to the theatre. Susan's teenage brother Paddy was killed in a bombing in Belturbet on 28 December 1972. Susan has a treasured wooden box, filled with items belonging to or concerning her brother, which will be on stage with her during the performances. DARKNESS AND LIGHT Writer Damian Gorman said his first job was not to treat performers in the play as material. These people are not material for me, theres six human beings with stories that are extraordinary in a lot of ways. To add light amongst the darkness, he came up with a character, The Caretaker of The Playhouse, who wipes down the furniture after each of them say their piece because of the current pandemic. He has his own thoughts that this is really a bad idea and people should leave it all alone, that people are talking about things from the past when they shouldnt, Damian added. Although a blackness and fear descended over Northern Ireland at the time, with thousands of people on tablets for their nerves, simultaneously there was life. People who were 18 were still 18 and out chasing boys or girls at the Borderland dancehall or elsewhere, they were trying to be young and find ways of being young so I wanted to reflect that through humour and music. There was life as well as death. When asked whether its disappointing not to be playing to an audience, he said: We wont be doing it to an empty theatre, there will be a big audience online, but theres also an audience in the theatre as these empty chairs will be occupied by people whose real presence is conjured up by their loved ones. The empty chair, as anybody whose lost somebody belonging to them knows, is a very potent, real symbol of loss. We talk about grief as being love that has nowhere to go, you can talk about a person but cant put your arm around them, but this is a place where your loss can go, you can reserve a seat at The Playhouse and put a photo or item of someone you loved there. These Theatre of Witness performances were always full and its full again. I was on the stage this morning and when youre standing there is looks like the place is full. Anything Can Happen 1972 will be performed and broadcast live from the Playhouse from 16-19 September 2020 as part of The Playhouses PEACE IV Programmes Theatre and Peacebuilding Academy. It will also be available to stream afterwards. All subsequent Playhouse productions will also be broadcast live, online, across the world. All performances will be free to all via derryplayhouse.co.uk Photo: Bogside Artist Tom Kelly, one of the performers whose 15-year-old cousin, Manus Deery, was shot dead in 1972. Theres never a note in Tribune columns that the current pension predicament is the result of actions by Republican Govs. Jim Thompson, George Ryan and Jim Edgar (yes, with help eventually from disgraced Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and of course, House Speaker Michael Madigan). There is never a suggestion of a tax such as a micro fee on financial industries' trading, which might relieve property owners of real estate tax raises. The idea that an amendment to trim the pension promises should be voted on in a referendum flies in the face of logic. No one promised those pension cost-of-living increases will vote for it, any more than rich Illinoisans such as Ken Griffin will vote for a graduated tax, which will land on him and his ilk. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office during an event commemorating the repatriation of Native American remains and artifacts from Finland in Washington, on Sept. 17, 2020. (Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images) Trump Takes Aim at Critical Race Theory, Signs Executive Order on Patriotic Education President Donald Trump said Thursday that the lefts cancel culture, including critical race theory and the New York Times 1619 Project, is toxic propaganda that must be eliminated from schools and workplaces. Later, he signed an executive order on education. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore, the president said at the National Archives in Washington. Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propagandaan ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. During the event, Trump instead proposed patriotic education, applauding a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to come up with a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nations great history. He also signed an executive order establishing a commission to promote patriotic education, which is called the 1776 Commission. Trump said that in the midst of riots and unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance, describing it as a form of tyranny. There is no better example than The New York Times totally discredited 1619 Project, Trump said, continuing his assault on the New York Times series that has been criticized as inaccurate by a number of political scientists and historians. This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom. The 1619 Project seeks to focus American history on the effects of slavery and the contributions of black individuals. The projects creator was awarded a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year. Trump also said that critical race theoryan offshoot of the Karl Marx-influenced critical theory social philosophy that was promoted by the Frankfurt School of thoughtis being forced into our childrens schools, its being imposed into workplace training, and its being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families. Some on the right have said that critical theory and critical race theory are long-term attempts to subvert the American polity to bring about socialism or communism in the United States. Police use tear gas while dispersing rioters in Portland, Ore., Sept. 5, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) Earlier this month, Trump banned critical race theory training in federal agencies, with the White House describing it as anti-American propaganda. In the address, the president went a step further and said the left-wing rioting, unrest, and overall anti-police sentiment in recent months are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools, possibly referring to critical theory in general. Meanwhile, Trump in recent weeks has assailed the New York Times 1619 Project, which claims the American Revolution was fought to preserve the institution of slavery rather than for individual liberty and natural rights. On Sept. 6, the president wrote that he would not fund schools that use the project. Trumps speech on Thursday is part of a broader effort to cast himself as the law and order candidate ahead of the November election as he pushes back against the protests, riots, and unrest triggered by Floyds death in police custody. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The countrys daily confirmed coronavirus cases breached 3,000 for the tenth consecutive day on Thursday, with the tally of infections reaching 276,289. The latest data from the Department of Health showed 3,375 more people got sick with COVID-19, of whom 963 are residents of Metro Manila. Bulacan province logged the second highest increase with 448 new infections, followed by Cavite with 274, Negros Occidental with 153, and Batangas with 119. The national recovery count also rose to 208,096 after 317 more got well, the DOH said. However, 53 more patients died of the disease, bringing the death toll to 4,785. Of the newly announced fatalities, 36 died in September, 13 in August, and four in July. The number of active cases or currently ill patients in the country is now at 63,408. Nineteen duplicates were also removed by the DOH from the total case count as part of its data cleaning process. The department added that after final validation, 11 cases previously reported as recoveries turned out to be deaths, while another 56 turned out to be active cases. President Rodrigo Duterte will extend the state of calamity declaration in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his spokesperson Harry Roque said Thursday. However, Roque did not mention how long the extension will last. Dutete declared a state of calamity on March 16, which was initially set to last for six months, to allow national and local governments to access quick response funds to address the pandemic. While announcing the decision to withdraw the minister from the Union Cabinet, Sukhbir Badal said the SAD would continue to support the government and the BJP but will oppose the anti-farmer policies. Sukhbir Badal said the three agriculture-related Bills in the Lok Sabha would sound the death knell of 20 lakh farmers, three lakh 'mandi' labourers, 30 lakh farm labourers and 30,000 aarhatiyas, besides destroying the food grain procurement system established over a period of 50 years. (Image: PTI) Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 15:28:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Moroccan government announced the signature of a 200 million euros loan agreement for financing the development of the North African country's agricultural sector, Moroccan national radio announced on Thursday. The radio quoted a joint press release as saying that the loan will "boost the implementation of the new agricultural strategy in Morocco known as the Green Generation 2020-2030." Moroccan rural bank Credit Agricole du Maroc (GCAM) will finance through this loan businesses in the agriculture sector with special attention to sectors of sustainable development, it said. The loan will focus on productive investments that generate jobs and value added, it said, adding that all food production segments such as small farms, agricultural cooperatives, small and medium-sized enterprises, will be eligible for financing. The EIB has granted Morocco since 2007, more than 5 billion euros of loans, the release said. Enditem Brad Pitt's new girlfriend shut down a critic who accused her of 'hating' Angelina Jolie. Nicole Poturalski, 27, set tongues wagging on Wednesday when she shared the cryptic quote 'Happy people don't hate,' amid reports of tension between Brad, 56, and his ex-wife, 45. However, the stunning model was quick to clear up what she meant, as she set to work taking down trolls in the comment section. Quote: Nicole Poturalski, 27, shut down a critic who accused her of 'hating' Angelina Jolie after she set tongues wagging with the cryptic quote 'Happy people don't hate' Nicole clapped back after a follower penned: 'if so, then why do you & Brad hate Angelina? Practice what you preach, girl.' Quick to respond, she replied, 'not hating anyone', but then later removed the comment and her response from her page. Asked why she was deleting negative comments and being accused of being 'immature', she hit back: 'No I delete comments that are offending because nobody needs hater on theis page thats why its ciaaaaooo immediately [sic]'. Tense? It comes after it was claimed last week that 'tensions had escalated' between Brad, 56, and ex-wife Angelina, 45, with family therapy therapy no longer taking place (pictured in 2011) Nicole went on to express her annoyance at the comments as she agreed that opinions were not needed and irrelevant. One fan penned: 'Don't get why ppl think that their opinion on someone elses relationship is RELEVANT & NEEDED. Save yrself some unneeded worry- stay out of OTHER ppls relationships. 'Especially since it's NONE of yr buisness/ not yr boyfriend/girlfriend!! Get a productive hobby & mind yr own buisness! [sic]'. Nicole responded in agreement with two prayer hand emojis. Hitting out: Nicole clapped back after a follower said she and Brad 'hated' Angelina, but then later removed the comment and her response from her page Good vibes only: Asked why she was deleting negative comments and being accused of being 'immature' she explained that she didn't want any 'haters' on her page Irrelevant: Nicole went on to express her annoyance at the comments as she agreed that opinions were not needed and irrelevant It is believed that Brad and Nicole have been dating for the best part of a year, as they both attended a performance of Kanye West's opera Nebuchadnezzar at the Hollywood Bowl in November 2019. The bombshell, who has a son, is married to Berlin-based restaurateur Roland Mary, 68, with whom she's allegedly in an open relationship with. Nicole is currently signed to Next Management in Los Angeles and A Management in Germany. Cryptic: It is believed that Brad and Nicole have been dating for the best part of a year, as they both attended a performance of Kanye West's opera Nebuchadnezzar in November 2019 Just last month, Brad and Nicole were spotted arriving in the South of France on a private jet where they visited Chateau Miraval, where he produces $390 rose Champagne. The trip coincided with what would have been his and Angelina's sixth wedding anniversary, they married at the chateau on August 24, 2014. The former couple had purchased the estate including the Chateau and vineyard in 2011 for $60 million after leasing it for three years. History: The bombshell, who has a son, is married to Berlin-based restaurateur Roland Mary, 68, with whom she's allegedly in an open relationship with The visit reportedly angered Angelina, with a source telling the Mirror: 'Angie is furious and utterly stunned Brad could stoop this low.' While last week, it was claimed that relations between the former couple, who share six children, have deteriorated to the point where they are no longer engaging in family therapy ahead of a custody trial slated for next month. 'Tensions have escalated between Brad and Angelina, with family therapy no longer taking place,' a source told Us Weekly. The former couple had appeared to reach a cordial understanding about co-parenting their kids, with the Once upon A Time... In Hollywood actor spotted leaving the actress' LA home in June after spending time with the children. However, UsWeekly claims they are now at odds again over how much time they each get with Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and 12-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. Getaway: Just last month, Brad and Nicole were spotted arriving in the South of France on a private jet where they visited Chateau Miraval, where he produces $390 rose Champagne Eldest child Maddox, 19, is allowed to choose his own timetable and is reported to no longer have any contact with his father. 'Brad wants 50/50 joint physical and legal custody of the kids. Angelina has been unagreeable to those terms,' a source told UsWeekly. The insider added that Angelina 'will only agree to talk about an agreement if the home base for the children isn't Los Angeles. The younger kids are in school in Los Angeles, which Angelina has always been opposed to.' It's previously been suggested that Jolie wants to relocate to the UK and base the children with her there. MailOnline contacted both Brad and Angelina for comment at the time. More drama: The trip coincided with what would have been his and Angelina's sixth wedding anniversary, they married at the chateau on August 24, 2014, with the actress reportedly left 'furious' (pictured in 2019) The former couple, who enjoyed the moniker Brangelina during their time together, separated in September 2016. The two had met on the set of the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith that was released in June 2005. Several months before the movie's debut, Pitt and then wife Jennifer Aniston had announced they were separating after five years of marriage, with the Friends star subsequently filing for divorce in March 2005. On January 11, 2006, Angelina finally confirmed the romance with Pitt when she revealed she was pregnant with his child. Meanwhile, a trial has been scheduled for October in Los Angeles where a judge will adjudicate on the child custody and support issues that remain unresolved between Angelina and Brad. Not ideal: While last week, it was claimed that relations between the former couple, who share six children, have deteriorated to the point where they are no longer engaging in family therapy ahead of a custody trial slated for next month (pictured in February) The two had previously signed off on the appointment of retired Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk to oversee the proceedings; he had presided over their marriage in 2014. However, last month, Angelina requested he be removed from the case claiming she feared he would be 'biased' against her because he had failed to disclose an existing relationship between himself and Brad's lawyers. Brad's legal team accused the actress of making a 'transparently tactical gambit' to delay matters, adding that it will be their own children who are 'hurt most' by the hold up. Ouderkirk denied Angelina's request that he recuse himself, stating that he is within his rights to continue working as the celebrity divorce continues to drag on and declaring that he can and will be impartial. The fairytale romance between Angelina and Brad came to an end in September 2016. There was an alleged 'altercation' that involved Brad and Maddox aboard a private jet that was heading from Nice, France to Los Angeles, California; after they landed, Angelina 'kicked him out,' according to Vanity Fair. Brad was cleared of any wrongdoing but the stage had been set for a very acrimonious divorce. Angelina filed legal documents straightaway and sought custody of their six children. Brad countered by asking for joint custody. In August 2018, the divorce battle between the pair exploded in public with Angelina accusing her ex of being a deadbeat dad and Bra revealing he has paid millions of dollars to the actress including money to buy a new home in LA. A judge overseeing the case previously cautioned Angelina for allegedly not helping the kids have a relationship with Brad and threatening to reduce her time with them. The two reached an interim custody agreement and have engaged in family therapy since then as they seek to find a way forward. Stocks to watch today: Here is a list of top stocks that are likely to be in focus in Thursday's trading session based on latest developments. Investors are also awaiting April-June quarter earnings that are scheduled to be released today. Share Market News Live: Sensex drops 180 points, Nifty at 11,540; Axis Bank, SBI, NTPC top losers Happiest Minds Technologies: Happiest Minds is set to list to the stock exchanges today. The issue, which was sold between September 7 and September 9 in the price band of Rs 165-166, was subscribed 151 times. Dhanuka Agritech: Company approved the proposal of buyback of shares worth up to Rs 100 crore and fixed September 28. SpiceJet, InterGlobe Aviation: Indian airlines have sought interest-free credit of at least $1.5 billion from the government to enable them to cope with the loss of revenue from the coronavirus pandemic, the country's aviation minister said. HCL Technologies: Company and Google Cloud expanded partnership to deliver accelerated business intelligence platform. Procter & Gamble Health: The company, reported a 10.8% rise in June quarter net profit at Rs 48.9 crore. Company reported fall in sales to Rs 200.3 crore due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as against Rs 224.9 crore in the April-June period of last year. Oil India: The state-owned company lost Rs 148 crore in revenue in 100 days from the closure of oil and gas wells in the vicinity of the Baghjan fire in Assam, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday. Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M): Mahindra & Mahindra said it has launched contactless option for accessories, extended warranty and workshop related payments for its entire range of vehicles. Tata Teleservices Maharashtra: Company board has approved raising of up to Rs 5,000 crore by issuing preferential shares to parent firm and non-convertible debentures on private placement basis, according to a regulatory filing. HSIL: The meeting of the board of directors of the company is scheduled on September 21 to consider the proposal of buyback of the fully paid-up equity shares. PNC Infratech: CARE reaffirmed long term credit rating of the company at AA-/Stable. Deepak Nitrite: CRISIL upgraded long term rating outlook of company for bank loan facilities of Rs 750 crore from 'AA-/Stable' to 'AA-/Positive'. Jindal Stainless (Hisar): CARE reaffirmed long term rating on credit facilities of company at 'A-' with a stable outlook Here are some of todays top headlines from select sources around the world. Trump fumbles during tough encounter with undecided voters President Donald Trump faced life outside his own political bubble on Tuesday, where his self-congratulation, buck passing and audacious falsehoods conspicuously failed to meet the moment when he was confronted by undecided voters. Two Gulf nations recognized Israel at the White House. Heres whats in it for all sides President Trump and Israels Benjamin Netanyahu will join the UAE and Bahrain officials at the White House to mark historic normalization agreements between Israel and the two Arab countries. Heres what you need to know. Yoshihide Suga officially named as Japans new Prime Minister, replacing Shinzo Abe Yoshihide Suga has been elected Japans new Prime Minister following a vote in the countrys Parliament on Wednesday, confirming the former cardboard factory worker and farmers son as leader of the worlds third largest economy. World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature, UN report finds In 2010, leaders from 196 countries gathered in Japan and agreed on a list of goals designed to save the Earth. Father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates dies at 94 The father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates died Monday, according to his son. William Henry Gates II was 94 years old. Trump told Woodward that he didnt see coronavirus as the leadership test of a lifetime President Donald Trump said in March that he didnt consider the coronavirus pandemic a once-in-a-lifetime leadership challenge, even as the country was going through historic shutdowns to fight the spread, according to a new interview shared by veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Apple reveals two new watches, two new iPads and a subscription bundle There may not be a new 5G iPhone just yet, but Apple tried to compensate for any disappointment by giving its fans several new devices to play with while they wait. Where is the iPhone 12? Consumers who tuned in to Apples signature early September event hoping to hear tantalizing details about the forthcoming iPhone 12 were treated instead to an hour-long infomercial detailing the companys latest Apple Watch models and a refreshed line of mid-range and low-cost iPads. Kim Kardashian West will freeze her Instagram. Heres why Kim Kardashian West, who has one of the biggest Instagram followings in the world, said Tuesday that she would be joining other high-profile users in a protest against Instagrams parent company Facebook and its handlng of misinformation and hate. Breonna Taylor settlement is among largest payouts linked to a police shooting The $12 million settlement with Breonna Taylors family is a historic move for Louisville, Kentucky, but across America its the latest financial repercussion in a police misconduct case. Black And Hispanic Kids Die From Coronavirus More Than White Kids Do, CDC says NEW YORK (AP) A detailed look at COVID-19 deaths in U.S. kids and young adults released Tuesday shows they mirror patterns seen in older patients. The report examined 121 deaths of those younger than 21, as of the end of July. India Hits New Milestone, Surpasses 5 Million Coronavirus Cases NEW DELHI (AP) Indias coronavirus confirmed cases crossed 5 million on Wednesday, still soaring and testing the countrys feeble health care system in tens of thousands of impoverished towns and villages. The Health Ministry reported 90,123 new cases in the past 24 hours, raising the nations confirmed total to 5,020,359, about 0.35% of its nearly 1.4 billion population. Trump Blames Biden, Who Isnt President, For Not Instituting National Mask Mandate President Donald Trump moved to blame his Democratic competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden, for not instituting a national mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. The claim, made at an ABC News town hall Tuesday with undecided voters in Pennsylvania, is misleading for two reasons: Biden has, in fact, urged all state governors to mandate mask-wearing to slow the spread of COVID-19. Let Me Finish My Question: Voter Confronts Trump Over Efforts To Undermine Obamacare An undecided voter confronted President Donald Trump over his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act during a town hall event on Tuesday, asking how the White House planned to protect those with preexisting conditions while actively fighting to undermine protections already in place. When My Dad Died Of COVID, I Wrote An Obituary Blaming Trump. Im Just Getting Started. If I had the money, I would have written an obituary exactly like this one for my Dad, read one of the first responses to a strangers tweet of my fathers obituary. The original tweet said: Powerful obituary in todays Arizona Republic. Regular people are starting to boil over. What is Dune? Everything you should know about Frank Herberts sci-fi epic. Are you newly Dune-curious after watching the glorious debut trailer for Denis Villeneuves upcoming adaptation? Well, Mashable has you covered. If youre already well-acquainted with the spice, Melange, and you know the difference between Stilgar and a stillsuit, youre not going to learn much here. Are Apple One plans a good deal? We crunched the numbers to find out. Apple officially announced its Apple One subscription bundles on Tuesday at its September event. They package Apple Music, Arcade, and more together for one monthly price. The big question: Are they worth the money? We broke down every Apple One plan to find out. Apple unveils eighth-generation iPad and iPad Air In addition to new Apple Watches, Apples also introduced a few new iPads to its lineup, including the eighth-generation iPad and the new iPad Air. Starting with the eighth-generation iPad: The new device packs a 10.2-inch display, along with an A12 bionic chip thats 40 percent faster and graphics that are twice as fast as the previous version. Biggie Smalls crown and other items for sale at Sothebys first hip-hop auction The Notorious B.I.G. will forever remain a king of hip-hop, but the crown that the rapper wore in the final photo shoot before his death is about to be passed down. The signed plastic crown from the 1997 K.O.N.Y. Everything Apple revealed at its September event Apple just unveiled two Apple Watches and iPads, and a lot more. Heres a look back at our livestream, featuring everything Apple revealed at its September event on Tuesday. Right off the bat, Tim Cook says Apple will focus on two products during this event: Apple Watch and iPad. Hawaii Gov. David Ige said Wednesday that starting Oct. 15, travelers arriving from out of state may bypass a 14-day quarantine requirement if they test negative for COVID-19. Travelers will have to take the test within 72 hours of arrival in the islands. Ige said that initially drug store operator CVS and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente will conduct the tests as part of an agreement with the state. The state will announce new testing partners in coming weeks. While airlines will help inform travelers of the testing requirement, the state will not provide testing at its airports, and the governor provided few details on exactly how tests will be administered, and how it will verify the validity of the tests. Lt. Governor Josh Green said that travelers will be responsible for the cost of their tests, which can range between $120 and $140, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. "Qualifying tests must be nucleic acid amplification tests, also known as NAAT a molecular test that requires a minimally invasive nasal swab sample or saliva," it reported. The test must be performed by a CLIA-certified laboratory. The state's tourism website, GoHawaii.com emphasizes that travelers must be tested before boarding flights to the islands: "Travelers are not able to test upon arrival in Hawaii because this is a pre-travel testing program," it says. Hawaii Tourism Authority If you are ready to fly to the islands this fall, fares are in your favor. A quick scan of roundtrip fares on Google Flights from Bay Area Airports to the islands in late October shows the least expensive running at $200 to $250. That's quite a good deal. And with an expected surge in demand due to the lifting of the quarantine, I expect these bargains to disappear soon. Keep in mind that in addition to your airfare and hotel costs, you'll have to factor in the cost of you COVID-19 test when budgeting for your trip. Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE weekly email alerts. Earlier this year Hawaii planned to start its pre-travel testing program on Aug. 1 only to have to postpone it as COVID-19 cases spiked on the U.S. mainland and in Hawaii. A shortage of testing supplies also forced delays. Another start date for Sept. 1 was pushed until Oct. 1. Hawaii leaders are hopeful that pre-travel testing will encourage people to return to Hawaii in a way that keeps residents safe. Tourism traffic to the state has plunged more than 90% since the pandemic began, forcing hundreds of hotels to close and pushing many people out of work. I want to emphasize that this pre-travel testing will allow us to add a greater element of safety for travel into our state, Ige said at a news conference. Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who joined the news conference via Zoom because he tested positive for the disease and is isolating at home, said the program will provide economic opportunity at a time when so many people are suffering. Upheaval from the pandemic pushed nearly one-quarter of Hawaiis workforce into joblessness. In April, Hawaii had the third-worst unemployment rate in the nation after Nevada and Michigan. "I worry about the long term impacts of economic distress and that impact this has on our people, when they cant afford their homes as easily or groceries or health care, Green said. On Wednesday, the state Department of Health reported Hawaii had an average of 118 cases per day for the past seven days. That's down from a seven-day daily average of 255 on Aug. 28. The Associated Press contributed to this report 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. BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 17 By Jeila Aliyeva - Trend: Some 17,353 tons of propylene polymer were exported from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan and Russia in 1H2020, which is 26.1 percent more than the export of propylene polymer from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan and Russia in the same period last year, totaling $15.7 million, Trend reports with reference to the Eurasian Economic Commission. Thus, the share of Russia in the total import of propylene polymer from Turkmenistan was $15.4 million, and the share of Kazakhstan $314,185. Also, during the same period, Turkmenistan exported 10,060 tons of ethylene polymers to the above-mentioned countries, totaling $8.5 million. Meanwhile, the share of Russia in the import of the above mentioned product from Turkmenistan amounted to $7.7 million, and the share of Kazakhstan - $774,501. In addition to exporting polymer products, Turkmenistan also imports them. In 1H2020, 455 kilograms of ethylene polymer were exported from Russia to Turkmenistan, totaling $2,277. Also, in 1H2020, Russia exported 600 kilograms of propylene polymers to Turkmenistan. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @JeilaAliyeva Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on September 16 hosted a reception for Dutch and Belgian Ambassadors, Elsbeth Akkerman and Paul Jansen, along with EU investors. (Photo: VNA) At the meeting, the leader stressed the Vietnamese Government always facilitates the investment of foreign firms, especially those from the EU that have potential and high technological capacity. He also highlighted all-round developments of the relations between Vietnam and Belgium and the Netherlands, saying the two countries are Vietnams important trade partners. However, PM Phuc said cooperation outcomes have yet to match potential and strength of the sides. The Dutch Ambassador expressed her impression on Vietnams efforts in the COVID-19 combat and economic development. The Dutch Government backs Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre project in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau which the EU investors are interested in, she said, adding that the Dutch Development Bank has committed 10 percent of the project investment. For his part, Ambassador Paul Jansen said that the Belgian Corporation for International Investment will also play a role in the investment. Once operational, the Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre can accommodate large container ships, helping to deliver Vietnamese goods abroad, investors said, expressing their hope that the project will soon be approved. They also committed to ensuring the progress and quality of the project, and using green transportation methods for sustainable development once it is given the green light. Ba Ria-Vung Tau has approved the 1/2000 project planning scheme and located the project, and now stands ready for site clearance. PM Phuc spoke highly of the effective cooperation between Vietnam and the two countries at multilateral and international forums such as the UN, ASEM and ASEAN-EU. He called on the two countries, together with the EU, to raise a stronger voice in protection of the respect for law at seas and oceans, as well as the East Sea stance of Vietnam and ASEAN. The leader said he believes that the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) will bring about great opportunities to Vietnamese and EU businesses in operation and market expansion. He suggested the Netherlands and Belgium help Vietnam improve its capacity for the enforcement of the deal./. Kiambu Governor James Nyoro risks being impeached like his predecessor Ferdinand Waititu after a reported fall out with Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) who were key to his ascension to the office. According to People Daily, the row escalated last weekend during a meeting convened by Nyoro at Sahara West Hotel in Ruaka. Sources reportedly revealed to the publication that the falling out is over alleged corruption and tender feuds. The ward reps are accusing the county boss of high handedness and lack of accountability while Nyoro alleges political witchhunt motivated by jealousy. On Tuesday, Ndenderu MCA Solomon Kinuthia said his colleagues are concerned about Nyoros deliberate efforts to frustrate their oversight role to cover up for possible mismanagement of Covid-19 funds. Kinthia, who chairs the Health Committee that is investigating alleged misappropriation of Covid-19 related funds, claimed Nyoro does not want to be questioned over expenditure and is instead exhibiting arrogance when challenged to exercise accountability. Events of Fridays meeting were a culmination of many things that have happened. Nyoro claimed we are asking questions out of jealousy because his officers are developing private properties. We are demanding answers regarding public funds. We have expressed concern about the county management. However, Nyoro has been trying to suppress oversight. When pressed hard, he turns rude and just the other day, he charged that he does not care even if we impeach him because he has residences in Seattle and Florida in America where he can gladly relocate to, claimed the MCA. Kinuthia further claimed Nyoro has fallen out with a section of MPs led by Woman Rep Gathoni wa Muchomba and Thikas Patrick Wainaina. Nominated MCA Njeri Bakari echoed Kinuthias sentiments, saying Nyoro is behaving like Waititu, who was ousted earlier this year. We do not have a problem with Nyoro. He is the governor, however, he has made our oversight role difficult. We worked hard to change the leadership hoping it would be better and respectable governance but it is sad he is exhibiting the same behavior that led to Waititus impeachment, she said. When reached for comment, Nyoro told People Daily: Is that a story that you can carry? Go ahead. I have nothing to say, no comment. Janet Whiting says the best thing for Melbourne right now would be for COVID-19 hostilities to cease. Ms Whiting doesnt normally shy away from an argument. As a corporate lawyer who specialises in dispute resolution, she has been in the middle of some of this citys biggest white collar barneys. NGV president Janet Whiting says the Triennial can be Melbourne's 'coming out' party. 'If we can put it on it will be amazing. And we will put it on.' Credit:Simon Schluter She is concerned, however, that if Melbourne fragments under the pressures of lockdown, it will only make it harder to find a way out. My personal view is we must, at the moment, stop the blame game, Ms Whiting told The Age. I dont care if it is postponed; all those people who want to deal with those issues, thats fine, but deal with them later. Owen Hyatt has always loved the water. His mom Dawn Hyatt said its been true of her son from the time he was a month old, relaxing in his first tub bath. And so, when she was applying for Owen to receive a wish from Make-a-Wish Foundation, a pool seemed the obvious choice. He just squeals with excitement in the pool. This wish is going to be fantastic, said Hyatt. I knew going on a trip for him is nothing; he wouldnt get anything out of it. Having a pool for him, its family time, its strengthening for him and hes just the happiest in the pool. Owen, who will turn five in a couple of weeks, was born prematurely with a rare genetic disorder. He is one of only about four children in the world who have this particular genetic disorder. Owen is also blind, nonverbal and uses a wheelchair. Susan Lott, ambassador for Make-a-Wish Niagara, said for children like Owen, these wishes make a lasting impact. Its almost like, depending on the wish, they have that time period where theyre just a normal kid. Theyre not having to go to the doctors all the time. Theyre not having people talking to them about it all the time, she said. In Owens case, having the pool, this is going to be his freedom in that pool. Lott said thats most important for Make-a-Wish Foundation and its volunteers: that the wish is something meaningful for the child. We like to know the why behind (the wish); its so important, she said. You want to make sure its what the child wants. You want it to be a very special thing for the child. And for Owen, thats a swimming pool. Hyatt said her family finds water wherever they go. They took their trailer out three times over the summer for camping and made sure there was a nearby lake for Owen. He takes private swimming lessons, and Hyatts sister has a backyard pool the family uses as often as possible. She said Owen even loves the rain. But having his own pool in the backyard? Hyatt said it will be life-changing for Owen. I just think hes going to have so much more freedom in his life, she said. Having it right in my backyard, we can go swimming any day. He would be in the water from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. if he could. The pool is an 18-foot round, heated above-ground pool that Hyatt said will be perfect in the backyard of their Niagara Falls home. Eventually my husband will make a deck and itll be like a beautiful oasis for Owen, she said. Were actually going to make a sign; its going to be Camp O-Bear because everyone calls him O-Bear. The original plan was for the Hyatts pool to be installed over the May long weekend, but it was delayed by COVID-19 and then again when the Hyatts decided to move into a home that was better suited for their family long term. Lott said a number of wishes, specifically travel ones, are on hold because of the pandemic, and others were delayed in the spring when the lockdown began. She said shes excited to see them come to fruition, especially the pool, which is the first one being put in by Make-a-Wish in Niagara. Hyatt said her son deserves the fun hell have in the pool. He is such a joy to have. He is the happiest little boy, she said. Owen has suffered and struggled so much in his whole life and ... he deserves everything. He deserves his wish. The Make-a-Wish reveal happened Sept. 10 at the Hyatts home. There were a few family members present to celebrate the moment as well as some special touches for Owens eight-year-old sister Hailey. Lott said Boston Pizza donated pizza for Hailey, who decorated a special sign for the reveal. Hailey, who finds it easy and fun being Owens big sister, said this is special for him because he loves to swim and thats really the thing he loves to do most. Lott said this is her favourite part: meeting the families and getting to know the kids. She tries not to cry when the wish is revealed, but isnt often successful. Its just so awesome, she said. Hyatt said shes proud of her son and glad she can give him this pool. (Owens) taught me so many things. I am a changed mother, Im a changed person. Hes changed me in so many ways. Victoria Gold Corp. and Orion Mine Finance announce C$50 Million bought deal secondary offering Posted by Publisher Internet Victoria Gold Corp. (TSX-VGCX) (?Victoria? or the ?Company? https://www.commodity-tv.com/play/victoria-gold-reached-commercial-production-at-the-eagle-gold-mine/ ?) and Orion Mine Finance (?Orion? or the ?Selling Shareholder?) jointly announce that they have entered into an agreement with a syndicate of underwriters led by BMO Capital Markets and CIBC Capital Markets (collectively, the ?Underwriters?), under which the Underwriters have agreed to buy, on bought deal basis from the Selling Shareholder, 2,942,000 common shares (the ?Common Shares?) at a price of C$17.00 per Common Share, for gross proceeds to Orion of approximately C$50 million (the ?Offering?). Orion has granted the Underwriters an option, exercisable at the offering price for a period of 30 days following and including the closing of the Offering, to purchase from Orion up to an additional 15% of the Offering to cover over-allotments, if any. The Offering is expected to close on or about September 30, 2020 and is subject to Victoria and Orion receiving all necessary regulatory approvals. Orion currently holds 25,903,624 Common Shares, representing approximately 41.9% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. Following the closing of the Offering (assuming no exercise of the over-allotment option), Orion will hold 22,961,624 Common Shares, representing approximately 37.2% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. Orion has also agreed, subject to certain limited exceptions, not to sell any common shares or other securities of Victoria for a period of 90 days from the closing of the Secondary Offering. ?The Victoria team has done an exceptional job constructing the Eagle Gold Mine, bringing it to commercial production, and creating significant value for all stakeholders,? stated Oskar Lewnowski, Chief Investment Officer of Orion. ?As Victoria?s largest shareholder, we have a major economic interest in the long-term success of the Company. We believe the increased trading liquidity from this sale will allow the Company to attract new institutional investors which will in turn lead to further value creation.? John McConnell, Victoria?s Chief Executive Officer noted, ?Orion has been an instrumental partner and an unwavering supporter of Victoria in funding the development of the Eagle Gold Mine. We are grateful for their ongoing support of the Company and look forward to the opportunity of continuing to deliver strong value for all our shareholders through the continued ramp-up and operation of the Eagle Gold Mine.? The Company will not receive any proceeds from this Offering. The net proceeds of the Offering will be payable only to the Selling Shareholder. The Common Shares will be offered by way of a short form prospectus in all of the provinces of Canada other than Quebec and may also be offered by way of private placement in the United States. The securities offered have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. COVID-19 Protocols The Company continues to follow strict Covid-19 protocols at the Eagle Mine site as well as across the Company\-\-s work locations. Yukon is currently in Phase 2 of lifting Covid-19 restrictions. Personnel from Yukon and British Columbia are no longer required to self-isolate prior to coming to site, however, all workers from outside the Canadian territories and BC will self-isolate in Whitehorse for 14 days prior to traveling to site. The Eagle Mine site continues to operate on a 4 week in / 4 week out schedule rather than the normal pre-Covid-19 2 week in / 2 week out schedule. About the Dublin Gulch Property Victoria Gold\-\-s 100%-owned Dublin Gulch gold property (the ?Property?) is situated in central Yukon Territory, Canada, approximately 375 kilometers north of the capital city of Whitehorse, and approximately 85 kilometers from the town of Mayo. The Property is accessible by road year round, and is located within Yukon Energy\-\-s electrical grid. The Property covers an area of approximately 555 square kilometers, and is the site of the Company\-\-s Eagle and Olive Gold Deposits. The Eagle Gold Mine is Yukon\-\-s newest operating gold mine. The Eagle and Olive deposits include Proven and Probable Reserves of 3.3 million ounces of gold from 155 million tonnes of ore with a grade of 0.65 grams of gold per tonne, as outlined in a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report for the Eagle Gold Mine dated December 3, 2019. The Mineral Resource under National Instrument 43-101 ? Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (?NI 43-101?) for the Eagle and Olive deposits has been estimated to host 227 million tonnes averaging 0.67 grams of gold per tonne, containing 4.7 million ounces of gold in the \Measured and Indicated\ category, inclusive of Proven and Probable Reserves, and a further 28 million tonnes averaging 0.65 grams of gold per tonne, containing 0.6 million ounces of gold in the \Inferred\ category. Cautionary Language and Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes certain statements that may be deemed \forward-looking statements\. All statements in this discussion, other than statements of historical facts, that address future exploration drilling, exploration activities, anticipated metal production, internal rate of return, estimated ore grades, commencement of production estimates and projected exploration and capital expenditures (including costs and other estimates upon which such projections are based) and events or developments that the Company expects, including the closing of the Offering, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include receipt of all regulatory approvals and completion of the Offering, metal prices, exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. For Further Information Contact: John McConnell President & CEO Victoria Gold Corp. Tel: +1416-866-8800 In Europe: Swiss Resource Capital AG Jochen Staiger info@resource-capital.ch www.resource-capital.ch New Delhi, Sep 17 : As India looks to expand its renewable energy capacity, a new report from IEEFA on Thursday found that Rajasthan can play a key leadership role in the country's transition to a low-cost, low-emission, profitable electricity system. Rajasthan's installed renewable energy capacity reached 9.6 gigawatts (GW) at the end of fiscal 2019-20. It also added more solar power capacity (1.7GW) in 2019-20 than any other Indian state, ahead of Karnataka (1.4GW), the state with the highest installed solar capacity, and Tamil Nadu (1.3GW). "Rajasthan has a bright future as a renewable energy leader in India," report's author Kashish Shah, Research Analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), told IANS. "But its power distribution companies (discoms) are among the worst performing in India." Expensive coal-fired capacity tariffs coupled with huge aggregate technical and commercial losses led to the Rajasthan discoms booking a loss of Rs 6,355 crore ($900m) in 2019-20 after accounting for state government subsidies. "A shift to cheaper renewable capacity could help alleviate the discoms' financial liquidity and cash flow issues," said Shah. Rajasthan has high solar radiation and wind speeds and an abundance of barren land that make it suitable for utility-scale solar parks. And it is already home to the world's largest solar park -- the 2.25 GW Bhadla Solar Park, located in Jodhpur district. "These factors make Rajasthan an attractive destination for domestic and foreign investors looking for opportunities in renewable energy, electricity grid infrastructure and associated manufacturing," said Shah. Currently, Rajasthan depends on electricity imported from other states given a power deficit during peak daytime hours. With an increase in renewable energy investment the state could become a net exporter of electricity in the coming decade, according to the report. "It makes sense for Rajasthan to export electricity to other states. Yet we estimate it imported 10.9 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2019-20," said Shah. "The state government should be taking proactive measures to fully utilise Rajasthan's renewable energy potential and build capacity to transmit power to states with energy deficits. "Revenues from the interstate export of power would help sustainably grow GDP and improve India's energy security and load balancing capacity." Today renewable energy sources form 43.5 per cent of Rajasthan's operational installed capacity and produce 17.6 per cent of its total on-grid generation. Meanwhile, the state's 9.8 GW of coal-fired capacity makes up 45 per cent of total installed capacity and produces 56.5 per cent of total on-grid generation. But Rajasthan's electricity sector could look very different by the end of this decade, IEEFA's modelling suggests. If Rajasthan fulfils its solar power potential, it could be one of the largest contributors to India's target of 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030. "We forecast that the composition of the electricity sector will shift dramatically, with renewables forming 74 per cent of capacity and 63 per cent of total generation by 2029-30," said Shah. "Our model forecasts a total of 22.6 GW of renewable energy to be added to Rajasthan's grid. This will consist of 18 GW of new solar capacity, of which 3 GW is forecast to be distributed solar capacity. "We estimate solar will supply 98 per cent of the incremental electricity demand by 2029-30; and that 4 GW of new onshore wind power capacity will serve 45 per cent of the incremental demand. "As the discoms look to cater to their incremental demand through cheaper, deflationary renewables, coal-fired plants will progressively lose out on market share to about 28 per cent or 13TWh by 2029-30." The modelling in the report takes into account India's economic slowdown and the Covid-19 pandemic which has led to falling electricity demand. IEEFA projects Rajasthan's electricity requirements to grow by only 42 per cent over the next decade -- from 81 TWh in 2019-20 to 115 TWh in 2029-30 -- a growth well below any forecasts set even two years ago. The report predicts the state will gradually retire its highly polluting, outdated and end-of-life coal-fired power plants. It models a net reduction in coal capacity of 0.7 GW by 2030. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New tests are expected on 10 October, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Workers' Party, South Korean generals say. Satellite analyzes confirm military activity at the Sinpo naval site. Last June, Kim Jong-un suspended military plans against the South. Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Kim Jong-un regime is continuing to develop its missile capabilities, reports Suh Wook, Minister of Defense in pectore. He presented the report to a hearing in Parliament to confirm his appointment. Also yesterday, the new Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Won In-choul said that on October 10, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Workers' Party, Pyongyang could test a ballistic missile - with nuclear capability - launched from a submarine. According to the South Korean general, North Korea is preparing the launch at the Sinpo naval site, where reconstruction is underway after damage caused by the recent passage of a series of typhoons. Missile activity in the area is also confirmed by satellite images captured by the specialist US based website 38 North. Last June, Kim suspended military plans against South Korea. The North Korean leader had previously threatened to send troops into the demilitarized zone between the two countries; his was a response to the launch of defamatory leaflets into North Korea by North Korean dissidents who had fled to the South. The two Koreas are technically at war; Pyongyang and Seoul never signed a peace treaty at the end of the conflict that saw them opposed from 1950 to 1953. After Kim's two meetings (in 2018 and 2019) with US President Donald Trump, North Korea had halted nuclear tests and limited missile tests. A balance must be maintained in the party's reaction to the "antics" of certain MPMs, Arakhamia believes. Head of the Servant of the People faction David Arakhamia admits that a split of the monomajority in Parliament is one of the scenarios of which he is aware. Speaking at a talk show on Ukraine 24 TV channel and asked whether the monomajority could fall apart, Arakhamia replied that "there are such scenarios, and they are being worked out." "This fact cannot be ignored on the one hand. On the other hand, we are, to a certain extent, on a political stretch," Arakhamia said. In his opinion, it is necessary to maintain a balance in reaction to the "antics" of certain MPs. "Every time someone does something journalists and the public say: 'Let's kick them out of the faction.' For me, a people's deputy means a certain number of votes in the long run. These can be very important and systemic laws for the country. If we part with these people like this, in the end we really won't be able to pass anything, we won't have enough political will to this end," Arakhamia said. Split of monomajority: background In June, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Dmytro Razumkov assured there were no grounds for the dissolution of the existing monomajority formed by the Servant of the People faction that had sealed a landslide win in the latest elections. In early July, Arakhamia said that the likelihood that President Volodymyr Zelensky would dissolve the Verkhovna Rada stood below 1%. On September 13, Razumkov predicted that in the near future there would be no serious reshuffles in government, and that there were no grounds for the Rada dissolution. Read alsoAnti-graft court rules to detain aide to lawmaker in bribery case, bail set at US$35,660Cabinet resignation prospects Rada chair Dmytro Razumkov on September 1 said there were no initiatives to sack the Cabinet of Ministers this fall. First Deputy Rada Head Ruslan Stefanchuk suggested that Minister of Economy Ihor Petrashko and Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko could soon be dismissed and that this could happen after the Cabinet tables the 2021 draft state budget. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Budi Sutrisno (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 19:33 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c457c4a9 1 City anies-baswedan,Saefullah,City-Hall,Jakarta-administration,COVID-19,COVID-19-Jakarta Free Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan is in hot water for holding a final tribute to Jakarta secretary Saefullah, who died after contracting COVID-19, by bringing his body in a hearse to City Hall before the burial on Wednesday. Public policy observer and Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) chairman Azas Tigor Nainggolan questioned Anies decision, saying that Saefullah's body should have been taken directly to a public cemetery in accordance with COVID-19 protocols. If Anies really wanted to pay his last respects, why did he not, as the governor, come see the body of the deceased at the hospital? Azas said in a statement on Wednesday. Azas argued that Anies had shown a superior attitude toward his subordinates, while also risking the lives of people gathering at City Hall on Wednesday. Anies attitude showed that he did not care and had no commitment to protect the people of Jakarta. He only made the pandemic a stage of power and arrogance, as well as a stage for imaging, he added. He asked the Health Ministry and the national COVID-19 task force to reprimand Anies for violating health protocols and order all attendees to get tested and undergo a two-week quarantine. Saefullah, who had worked as the Jakarta secretary since President Joko Jokowi Widodos time as governor, died at noon on Wednesday after previously testing positive for COVID-19. He had received treatment at the MMC hospital in South Jakarta since Sept. 8, before being transferred to one of the citys COVID-19 referral hospitals, Gatot Subroto Army Hospital, on Sunday. Prior to his burial at the Rorotan cemetery in North Jakarta on Wednesday, Anies welcomed the hearse in the City Hall yard to pay final respects. Jakarta Legislative Council (DPRD) chairman Prasetio Edi Marsudi and other working unit (SKPD) officials were present. The funeral prayer took place at Al-Khoiriyah Mosque, which is located right next to the late Saefullahs house, and was attended by dozens of residents, tribunnews.com reported. Jakarta Personnel Agency (BKD) head Chaidir said the process for paying respects to Saefullah at City Hall had been carried out in accordance with COVID-19 health protocols. Everyone followed health protocols. The body was in a coffin in a tightly closed ambulance. There was no problem, Chaidir said on Thursday. Chaidir said paying final respects to officials who died before retiring was a common practice. Moreover, he said, Saefullah had died while helping the city fight against the pandemic. We have a procedure for [paying tribute] to active officials [who die]. He was an authorized and active official, did not retire and was still took part in a plenary meeting when he got sick, he said. If you, as a leader, are let go offhand, how would you feel? he added. Chaidir argued that those criticizing the event at City Hall did not understand bureaucratic ethics and eastern customs. Allentown, PA (18103) Today Partly cloudy and very cold. Near or below zero wind chills again late at night towards sunrise. . Tonight Partly cloudy and very cold. Near or below zero wind chills again late at night towards sunrise. The city will continue funding the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program using its existing funding stream from its water utility, the City Council decided Thursday. The move comes ahead of two November ballot initiatives that would shift the programs longtime source of funding, a 1/8-cent sales tax repeatedly approved by San Antonio voters, to pay for a package of economic recovery, education and transportation uses. To answer objections from the aquifer programs backers, who fear the proposed loss of sales tax funding, the council voted 9 to 2 Thursday to commit $100 million for up to 10 years for it, with council members Roberto Trevino and Clayton Perry dissenting. We are facing an emergency, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said of the need to redirect the sales tax revenue. This is an existential threat for many of our neighbors and a pivotal moment for our citys economy. We cant abandon our neighbors who need help, he continued. Fortunately, we arent choosing between the aquifer and our neighbors. We can address the needs of both. When the current sales tax expires, it will have generated $325 million since first approved in 2000. The program has set aside more than 160,000 acres so far, to keep new development off areas west of the city where rain recharges the aquifer and to help protect San Antonios main source of water from the polluted urban runoff that comes with cars, pavement, homes and businesses. The money now will come from San Antonio Water System revenue already earmarked for transfer to the city. Last year, the city boosted the payments it receives from SAWS from 2.7 percent of the utilitys revenue to 4 percent. At the time, SAWS CEO Robert Puente warned that the move could lead to a water rate hike, and delinquent bills caused by the pandemic-induced recession this year have eaten millions of dollars from the utilitys finances. But the citys use of the money for aquifer protection starting in 2022 wont change the percentage SAWS gives the city, the source of the financial pressure, officials noted. The citys 4 percent take is not expected to cause a rate increase in the foreseeable future, Gavino Ramos, SAWS vice president for communications, said in an email Thursday. On ExpressNews.com: Aquifer protection program would continue for 10 years at $100 million Voters wont be able to keep the sales tax devoted to aquifer protection but will decide Nov. 3 whether to approve it for workforce training and higher education to help with recovery from the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic. A separate ballot measure, which Nirenberg supports, proposes to shift the sales tax to bolster VIA Metropolitan Transits hard-hit bus service after the economic recovery program expires in four years. Voters last approved the aquifer programs continuation in 2015, and its $100 million in sales tax funding is expected to be reached next spring to carry the program until September 2022. The $100 million in SAWS revenue approved Thursday will start funding aquifer protection in October 2022. On ExpressNews.com: Some City Council members question proposal to fund aquifer program Trevino and Perry, who dont support the Nov. 3 sales tax initiative and voted against the councils Aug. 13 decision to place it on the ballot, on Thursday tried to delay the aquifer funding commitment, on the chance that if voters reject the economic recovery package, the sales tax could return to aquifer protection at a later election. A portion of the 1/8-cent sales tax also funds development of creek-side greenway trails and linear parks in San Antonio. With the future of funding for the greenway trails uncertain but guaranteed for the aquifer until 2022, Trevino suggested that the council should create a better plan when we know what will happen after the November election. You and I agree: This is something we shouldnt be jumping into, Perry said in a joint Facebook appearance with Trevino on Wednesday. Trevino is perhaps the most progressive council member, while Perry is the councils lone conservative, and the two men normally find themselves on opposite sides of any given vote. But both have been critical of Nirenbergs workforce proposal and want more money for shorter-term relief. I think the mayor is in a rush to get this through before the November election to satisfy the environmentalists and the people that are really concerned about the aquifer, Perry said Wednesday. Liz Hardaway is a staff writer covering San Antonio government and politics. To read more from Liz, become a subscriber. liz.hardaway@hearst.com | Twitter: @liz_hardaway Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global market for cruelty-free cosmetics is slated to surpass USD 10 billion by 2024 with an estimated CAGR of 6% during the forecast period (2019-2024). Market Research Future (MRFR) in its detailed understanding of the market has focused on factors that can reveal insights regarding revenues and growth opportunities. Rising awareness regarding the ethical question of testing products on animals first is providing thrust to the global cruelty-free cosmetics market. In several countries, this type of testing is banned due to which the market is getting substantial tailwind to move forward. This has spurred investment in the research and development sector owing to which the market can find better growth opportunities. Segmentation: The global market for cruelty-free cosmetics has been segmented by MRFR experts based on product type, form, and distribution channel. These segments have several inputs from diverse sectors and their volume-wise and revenue-wise data have been analysed by experts to gain insights and assist in better strategic developments. By product type, the global report on the cruelty-free cosmetics market has been segmented into haircare products, makeup & color cosmetics, perfume & fragrance, skincare products, and others. The makeup & color cosmetics has the largest market share and is on a track to register the highest growth rate. By form, the study of the global cruelty-free cosmetics market has been segmented into gel, liquid, powder, cream, and others. The cream-based products have the largest market share whereas the gel segment may register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. By distribution channel, the global study on the cruelty-free cosmetics market has been segmented into store-based and non-store-based. The store-based segment includes studies on specialty stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, and others. The store-based segment will contribute the maximum part of the market revenue. However, the non-store-based segment may register the fastest growth during the forecast period of 2019 to 2024. Regional Analysis: Growing trend of veganism will boost the cruelty-free cosmetics market growth in North America. In the US and Canada, this growth would be easier as their regulations would support such progress. In Europe, ban on such tests would create grounds for future growth opportunities. Also Read : https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/cruelty-free-cosmetics-market-share-suze-value-demand-prominent-players-research-methodology-industry-highlights-and-covid-19-pandemic-impact-by-forecast-to-2024-2020-09-14 Competitive Landscape: Aveda Corporation (US), e.l.f. Cosmetics, Inc. (US), Urban Decay (L'Oreal S.A.) (US), Kose Corporation (Japan), Natura (Brasil), Too Faced Cosmetics, LLC (US), Yes To, Inc. (US), International B.V. (Brazil), Avalon Natural Products, Inc. (US), Kendo Holdings, Inc. (US), Smashbox Beauty Cosmetics, Inc. (US), Lush Group (UK), Plum Goodness (India), INIKA Organic (Australia), Physicians Formula Holdings, Inc. (US), and PHB Ethical Beauty Ltd (UK) are some of the major companies making huge impact on the global market for cruelty-free cosmetics. These companies are making big by relying on strategic moves like mergers, innovations, acquisitions, collaborations, and others. Industry News: In May 2020, Coty Inc. made an announcement regarding their latest endeavor where they have launched Kylie Skin at Douglas. This makes the brand one of the fastest-growing brands with the highest social media engagement available to customers in Europe. The brand is also known for being a cruelty-free product. Such influential voices like that of Kylie Jenners in Europe regarding cruelty-free cosmetics can ensure better market percolation. In February 2020, Unilever announced that they are increasing their cruelty-free cosmetics portfolio with their new lie called Suave. The latest product has been certified by PETA and is expected to make substantial contributions in terms of making a wider impact on the consumer psyche. Also Read : https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cruelty-free-cosmetics-market-3825 Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Eight guns have been seized and arrests made by officers of the Trinidad and Tobago Police S (Newser) The senior-most DC National Guard officer at Lafayette Square on June 1, the day protesters were forcibly removed before President Trump did a photo-op at a nearby church, has claimed federal officials sought crowd control devices too unpredictable to be used in war zones and moved in without clear, repeated warnings, which are required by law. Maj. Adam DeMarco, who served as a liaison between the National Guard and US Park Police, testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of force against protesters in Washington, DC, per the Washington Post, which received his account. He said federal officials had transferred assault rifles and ammunition to the DC Armory and sought a heat ray, or Active Denial System, which sends out invisible rays that make a person feel as if their skin is on fire. story continues below DeMarco said officials never obtained the heat ray, considered too controversial to be used in Iraq in the 2000s, or a Long Range Acoustic Device. US Park Police Chief Gregory Monahan has testified that a LRAD was used to tell protesters to disperse. But DeMarco said only a megaphone was used and he could barely hear the warnings from 30 yards away. He said protesters gave no sign that they had heard. Protesters and journalists have said they weren't warned before police moved in with tear gas, stun grenades, smoke bombs, and rubber bullets. The Trump administration painted protesters as violent, per the AP. But DeMarco said they were peaceful when faced with "unprovoked escalation and excessive use of force." Republicans have sought to discredit DeMarco, noting he ran as a Democratic House candidate in 2018, per the New York Times. (Read more excessive force stories.) The Centre in its affidavit told SC that digital media has the potential to go viral due to apps like WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook New Delhi: The Centre told the Supreme Court that if it considers regulating the media, such an exercise should be first undertaken with the digital media as news on it spreads quicker and has the potential to go viral due to applications such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. The government told the apex court that sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements already exist for the electronic and the print media. Considering the serious impact and the potential, it is desirable that if this court decides to undertake the exercise, it should first be undertaken with regard to digital media as there already exists sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements with regard to electronic media and print media, said the counter-affidavit, filed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It is submitted that while in a mainstream media (whether electronic or print), the publication telecast is a one-time act, the digital media has faster reach from wider range of viewership/ readership and has the potential to become viral because of several electronic applications like Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, it said. The affidavit was filed in a pending matter in which the top court is hearing a petition over Sudarshan TVs Bindas Bol programme whose promo had claimed that channel would show the ''big expose on conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims in government service". A bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud had on 15 September restrained the channel from telecasting its programme, saying the intent of aired episodes prima facie appears to vilify the community. The bench had suggested that a committee of apolitical experts of distinguished citizens or former judges may be appointed to help in self-regulating the electronic media. In its affidavit, the Centre has said that subject matter of the present petition namely balancing between journalist freedom and responsible journalism is a field already occupied either by the statutory provisions made by the Parliament or by the judgments of this court. It is respectfully submitted that in view of the issue having already received attention of the Parliament, as well as, of this court, the present petition be confined to only one channel namely Sudarshan TV and this court may not undertake the exercise of laying down any further guidelines with or without appointment of an amicus or a committee of persons as amicus, the affidavit said. It said that situation in each case shall have to be decided on a case-to-case basis and a broader exercise which is too general in nature is neither warranted nor permissible. The affidavit said, Even if this court considers it appropriate to undertake the said exercise, there is no justification to confine this exercise only to mainstream electronic media. The media includes mainstream electronic media, mainstream print media as well as a parallel media namely digital print media and digital web-based news portal and You Tube channels as well as over the top platforms (OTTs). Referring to earlier verdicts delivered by the apex court, the affidavit said it lays down the correct legal proposition requiring no general exercise to be undertaken merely based upon one episode or few episodes of a channel. Separately, Sudarshan TV has also filed an affidavit in the apex court claiming that it has no ill-will against any community or any individual and the programme concerns a matter of grave national interest. The channel claimed that it has used words like UPSC jihad in its programme as an institute for Muslim UPSC aspirants has received foreign funds, also from those linked to organisations that allegedly fund extremist groups. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 10:06:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Enrollments in various kinds of education in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have all reached the highest level in history, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday. In 2019, there were 453,800 full-time students studying at universities and colleges in Xinjiang, an increase of 146,200 over 2014, and 1.84 million students studying at secondary schools, an increase of 147,600 over 2014, says the white paper titled "Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang." Through vocational training, Xinjiang has built a large knowledge-based, skilled and innovative workforce that meets the requirements of the new era, it says. Every year from 2014 to 2019 Xinjiang provided training sessions to an average of 1.29 million urban and rural workers, of which 451,400 were in southern Xinjiang. The trainees mastered at least one skill with employment potential, and the vast majority of them obtained vocational qualifications, skill level certificates, or specialized skill certificates, allowing them to go on to find stable employment, says the white paper. Enditem A paper published by a Chinese virologist that claims coronavirus is man-made relies heavily on unsubstantiated sources to make some of its key arguments, a MailOnline analysis of the document has revealed. The paper, published by Li-Meng Yan, references almost two dozen articles that have yet to undergo peer review - an important process where experts review papers before they are published in journals to ensure accuracy - at crucial points. Other sources she relies upon include an anonymous blog, a LinkedIn article penned by an academic who is not a specialist in the field, and articles on an anti-GM foods website run by activists linked to a private university that practices 'consciousness-based education'. In at least one instance, MailOnline discovered that a single source was being presented as two different sources. Li's paper itself has not been peer reviewed. Experts have already blasted her work as 'unsubstantiated' and 'lacking credibility', while social media networks including Facebook and Twitter have censored it for 'containing misinformation'. Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist, has published a paper claiming that coronavirus was man-made - but it relies heavily on unsubstantiated research papers, MailOnline can reveal Li-Meng's paper does include a justification for using unverified sources, which she says is because 'scientific journals have clearly censored any opinions... that suggest a non-natural origin of [coronavirus].' She references two articles as evidence of this, one of which is a non-peer-reviewed paper by a German academic who claims 'theories that consider a possible artificial origin for [coronavirus] are censored by international scientific journals.' The other source is an interview by a Danish researcher who was due to publish a paper alleging that coronavirus was made in a lab, before that information was removed on peer-review. In the interview, he talks about 'a certain reluctance to publishing the article without proper scientific objections'. MailOnline has reached out to both researchers for comment, but had not heard back at the time of publication. Elsewhere in the paper Li-Meng - who claims to have fled China via Hong Kong in order to expose the truth behind Covid - argues that the virus was likely made in a lab because there is little evidence that it could have evolved naturally. Among other sources the paper relies upon is an anonymous blog (top) and a website run by anti-GM food activists (bottom) Central to her argument is what she describes as 'substantially convincing evidence' that Covid's closest cousin - a virus found in a bat-infested mine seven years ago - has been 'fabricated' and that, in reality, it does not exist. To back up this point she quotes six sources, all of which are articles that have not undergone peer review. Without a natural ancestor for Covid, Li-Meng argues that Chinese scientists could have genetically altered another coronavirus to create the pandemic virus. She puts forward two candidates - ZC45 and ZXC21 - which are similar to Covid but cannot infect humans. She suggests that one of these viruses was used as a 'backbone' for Covid, but deliberately altered to become 'a highly-transmissible, onset-hidden, lethal... and massively disruptive pathogen.' MailOnline has reached out to the organisations that published the paper, the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation, for comment, but had not heard back at the time of publication. It has previously been revealed that both organisations were founded by ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon, 66, and 50-year-old Chinese fugitive Guo Wengui. The study was authored by Li-Meng Yan, who purports to be a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, and who has recently appeared on Fox News in the US and ITV in the UK. Scientists have been unable to establish the precise origins of coronavirus, leading to theories that it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies the viruses (file) LiMeng's paper, which itself has not been peer reviewed, was published by a foundation founded by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon (left) and Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui Ms Yan's report has gained widespread public attention, being viewed more than 150,000 times since it was posted on the website Zenodo, which is operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research to promote open scientific data. Documents posted on the Rule of Law Society's website last year showed Bannon was the New York-based group's chairman, The Daily Beast reported. Neither the Rule of Law Society nor the Rule of Law Foundation appear to have published scientific or medical research before. Guo, a real-estate tycoon and member of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, pledged $100 million to the Rule of Law Society to be led by Bannon. The pair announced the endeavour in 2018 and Bannon told the New York Times that he would take no pay. The charities' stated mission is: 'To expose corruption, obstruction, illegality, brutality, false imprisonment, excessive sentencing, harassment, and inhumanity pervasive in the political, legal, business and financial systems of China.' Bannon and Guo have also worked together on G News, which publishes anti-Communist Part articles in both English and Chinese, and which has propagated the theory that coronavirus was manufactured in a lab. The theory was widely reported earlier this year and Trump suggested in late April that he had seen intelligence reports to support the claims. The claim was also picked up by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, though quickly dropped. Coronavirus has infected almost 30million people since it emerged late last year, and has killed more than 900,000 (a graph showing the number of new infections worldwide per day) It has since been revealed that a report suggesting a leak at a lab in Wuhan shortly before the virus emerged, which has been debunked, was circulating in Washington at the time. A widely-cited and peer-reviewed article published in Nature back in March concluded that 'the evidence shows [coronavirus] is not a purposefully manipulated virus' and 'we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible'. Scientists currently believe that the novel coronavirus originated in bats, and may have incubated in a second unknown animal before infecting humans. Researchers still do not know where the first infection occurred, or how the virus jumped from animals into humans. The first cluster of infection was detected at a seafood market in Wuhan in December last year, though doubt has been cast on whether that was the site of the initial infection. Australia has led international calls for a full and independent investigation into the origins of the virus, which prompted anger from China. The World Health Organisation is thought to be in talks with Beijing about setting up an investigation, and what its parameters would be. Coronavirus has infected almost 30million people worldwide since it was first identified in Wuhan late last year, and killed more than 900,000. However, these figures are widely thought to be underestimates due to problems with testing and the unknown number of carriers who show no symptoms. Condoling Gasti's demise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was passionate about empowering the poor and marginalised sections of society Bengaluru: Newly-elected Rajya Sabha member Ashok Gasti, who was admitted to a private hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, died on Thursday night, the hospital said. Gasti, 55, who was admitted to Manipal Hospital on Old Airport Road on 2 September and diagnosed with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, passed away at 10.31 pm, hospital director Manish Rai said in a statement. Condoling Gasti's demise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was passionate about empowering the poor and marginalised sections of society. "Rajya Sabha MP Shri Ashok Gasti was a dedicated Karyakarta who worked hard to strengthen the Party in Karnataka. He was passionate about empowering the poor and marginalised sections of society. Anguished by his passing away. Condolences to his family and friends. Om Shanti," Modi tweeted. According to Rai, Gasti was critically ill with multi-organ failure and was on life support system under constant observation of an expert panel of doctors. "We deeply regret the loss and express our condolences to his family and friends," Rai said. A grassroots worker hailing from Raichur, Gasti was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha in June on a BJP ticket. Coming from the backward community of Savita Samaj, Gasti had been an RSS worker and was an active member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Mokhles Abdulghani, his wife Hajir Saad Ghareeb and their children Razan, 6, Alwaleed, 3, and Asia, 2, arrived at their new home in Morden, Manitoba, from Jordan on August 8. The Iraqi family lived as refugees in Amman for five years before Abdulghani was picked by the City of Morden as permanent resident because his skills and knowledge as an engineer was needed in the community. The From Jordan to Morden diary is an occasional digital series that documents the highs and lows of the familys new life in Canada. Heres what they experienced after completing their two-week quarantine. Dear diary, We were able to rent a big house with three bedrooms and a wonderful backyard. We moved out of our transitional apartment on Thursday, September 3. It was a really long day. We moved in the evening after I finished work, so I would not miss a day at work. The lovely people here helped me with some furniture a cot and 4 beds from a local church and helped me to pick them up with their truck. We also received our permanent residence cards. They were mailed to the City of Morden because we had no mailing address at the time. City staff presented me with our new IDs in Canada. With the PR cards, we felt settled and safe. We had missed this feeling since we fled Iraq. Were finally permanent residents in Canada. That means we have rights now. That means a lot to me. My family and I can plan for a good future. On the weekend, we had our first barbecue trip to Lake Minnewasta with our new friends in Canada. The trip was wonderful. The charming nature, the beautiful lake, the wonderful people here, everything was amazing. My wife Hajir and I were so happy to spend some wonderful time with our friends and see our kids playing. Finally, we could spend some relaxing time together. I worked so hard in Jordan to support my family and had no time to spend with them. Life has been crazily busy since we came to Canada. We had no time to do anything for pleasure until now. My oldest one, Razan, also started Grade 1 at Minneswasta Public School. She was so happy to be able to go to school for the first time. It was amazing to see her talking in English after her first day of school. She told us how she spent her day in school. She was happy that she was able to communicate with other children. She said when she said Hi to everyone, they all said Hi back to her. She was confident that everyone could understand her, and vice versa. Her teacher told me they will monitor her progress and see if she needs additional English classes. Mokhles Abdulghani Read more about: Stephanie and Kevin Zapata spend time at the Monrovia public library with their son, Kruz, on Sept. 4. Stephanie's second baby is due in December. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times) Like many expectant parents, Kevin and Stephanie Zapata have been calculating how much time they can afford to take off work for the birth of their second child in late December. But the Monrovia couple said one aspect of their calculation became easier after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Thursday giving millions of California workers at smaller businesses job protections that will allow them to take time off to bond with a new child or care for a sick family member. Under the new law, Kevin Zapata, who works for a small e-commerce company, will have the same 12 weeks of job protections as his wife, Stephanie, who works for a larger nonprofit. "This is critical for us," Kevin Zapata said. Senate Bill 1383 by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) requires employers with five or more workers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid time off for family leave beginning Jan. 1. Currently, companies with 50 or more employees are required to provide 12 weeks of leave to care for a new child or a family member. The threshold for parental leave is lower, allowing 12 weeks of job-protected time off for workers at companies with 20 or more employees. Jackson said extending critical job protections to workers will remove a key hurdle that has kept them from applying for the state's paid family leave benefits. California workers automatically pay into the family leave program, which provides them with eight weeks of partial pay between 60% to 70% of their weekly salary. However, many employees are unaware of the benefit or say they worry they wouldn't have a job to return to if they took the time off. "The COVID-19 pandemic has only further revealed the need for a family leave policy that truly serves families and workers, especially those who keep our economy running," Newsom said in a written statement on Thursday. Jackson, who is termed out, said increasing access to paid family leave is critical to ensuring working parents can care for new babies and sick loved ones. Story continues New parents cited lack of job protection as a key reason they declined to take paid family leave when needed, according to a 2018 survey by the California Employment Development Department, which administers the program. Low-wage workers, who are more likely to work for smaller employers, were less likely to apply for paid family leave. Of the 6.8 million workers in the state who earned less than $20,000 in 2018 and paid into the program, less than 46,000 used paid family leave, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. "Equitable family leave is critical to ensuring equality for women in the workplace, a strong start for children, the health and safety of our older Californians and for ensuring fathers are full participants in their childrens lives," Jackson said in a written statement on Thursday. California became the first state in the nation in 2004 to create a paid family leave program. But Jackson said California has since fallen behind other states in expanding access and benefits in the employee-funded program to better help working families. In July, the state increased the length of time a person can qualify for paid family leave from six weeks to eight weeks. In 2016, lawmakers raised the wage replacement from 55% to 60-70% depending on a person's average weekly wage. Lawmakers lowered the threshold for job protections for parental leave from 50 employees to 20 employees in 2018. Supporters of the law said despite previous changes, 40% of California workers did not have job protections because their employers' businesses were too small. Many of the efforts to expand family leave have faced significant opposition from business groups, including the newly signed SB 1383. Republicans voting against the bill said it was reckless to place mandates on businesses during the COVID-19-induced economic crisis. The California Chamber of Commerce included SB 1383 on its annual job killer list that highlights laws corporate interests say will hurt employment and the economy. This bill will sound a death knell for even more small businesses across California, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) said prior to the bill passing the Legislature on Aug. 31. Jackson introduced SB 1383 in March, which went on to pass the Senate three months later with the bare minimum votes required. It then slowly moved through the Assembly before again garnering the bare minimum number of votes needed to pass on Aug. 31, just minutes before the legislative deadline. The new law that takes effect on Jan. 1 will also require employers to grant spouses who work for the same company with 12 weeks of family leave each, instead of allowing companies to require parents to split the time off. SB 1383 also requires companies with five or more employees to maintain employer-paid health benefits for any employee who takes leave to care for a newborn, a seriously ill loved one or themselves. For the Zapata family, the protections added are welcome for the impending arrival of their "quarantine baby." Stephanie Zapata said the new job protections will alleviate the uncertainty around how much time her husband will be able to take off from work to help her when their baby girl is born. "This helps us pay our bills and take care of our family," she said. "I'm so grateful for this new law. We will know for sure his job is protected." Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Were all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. Blame It on Biden President Trumps town hall in Philadelphia was the talk of late night on Wednesday. The audience wasnt Trumps usual rabid rally crowd it was made up of undecided voters, Stephen Colbert noted. Wow, undecided! the Late Show host said. I assume the night started with each of them being roused from a coma: What year is it? Whos president? Put me back! Put me back! OTTAWA, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Today, the Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) released a set of foundational actions that must be undertaken by the electricity industry and governments alike to meet Canada's commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and accelerating the transition to a cleaner energy future. The urgent need for a coordinated, proactive and collaborative approach to achieve Canada's vision to be carbon neutral by 2050 is essential. "The electricity industry is committed to prioritizing clean growth and investing in a resilient and modern grid of the future," said Francis Bradley, President and CEO of the Canadian Electricity Association. "Transitioning to a low-carbon economy requires sustained government partnerships to deliver an electricity system that underpins clean growth and a healthy economy." The electricity sector has been central to Canada's ability to address climate change and has already done more to decarbonize Canada's economy than any other economic sector. More than 80 percent of electricity produced in Canada is non-emitting, and the sector has reduced GHG emissions by more than 40 percent since 2005. Electricity is integral to Canada's clean energy future and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. "To meet Canada's ambitious 2050 targets, it is imperative that governments work collaboratively with the electricity industry and provide long-term, stable and predictable policy frameworks," stated Channa S. Perera, Vice President of Policy Development at CEA. "There is also a need to build greater policy flexibility to account for regional differences and meet the government's ambition of delivering clean, affordable electricity." Electricity has been-and will continue to be-the great enabler of modern society. There is nothing more fundamental to Canada's prosperity than how Canadians power their lives, their livelihoods, and their businesses. CEA calls on the government to maintain an active and continuous focus on energy transition in the years ahead. CEA and its member companies stand ready to work collaboratively and constructively with governments at all levels to implement Actions for Achieving Net-Zero GHG Emissions by 2050 and achieve Canada's clean energy goals. To read the full action plan: https://bit.ly/33zVdft About Us Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) members generate, transmit and distribute electrical energy to industrial, commercial, residential and institutional customers across Canada every day. From vertically integrated electric utilities, independent power producers, transmission and distribution companies, to power marketers, to the manufacturers and suppliers of materials, technology and services that keep the industry running smoothly -all are represented by this national industry association. Contacts Sarah Robinson Director, Communications and Marketing Work: 613.301.8526 robinson@electricity.ca Links https://bit.ly/33zVdft SOURCE: Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606531/Canadian-Electricity-Association-Urges-Aggressive-Action-for-Achieving-Net-Zero-Emissions-by-2050 A man was killed during Hurricane Sally in Orange Beach Wednesday, and a female is missing as Orange Beach city officials continue to assess the devastation from Hurricane Sally. It was the first fatality reported from the hurricane in Alabama. Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon confirmed the fatality with AL.com, but said the city had no other details, and no identifications. Kennon said he wasnt sure if the man was a resident of Orange Beach or was visiting at the time the hurricane rushed ashore during the early morning hours . Kennon said that city officials are still conducting a damage assessment to the coastal city that suffered some of the greatest damage from Hurricane Sally in Alabama. The storm dumped around 20 inches of rain and pummeled the coast with over 105 mph winds and led to flooding and roadways that remain impassable in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. Kennon, during an interview earlier in the day on FM 1065, said there wasnt a road in Orange Beach without a boat on it. He later told AL.com that his statement might have been a tad of an exaggeration, but that there were boats everywhere you look. People left them on lifts assuming they would ride it out, said Kennon. (Boats) are in the roads, businesses, backyards. Its comical in a way. He said the storm was a surprise for everyone. About 24-36 hours ago, this was going too Gulfport as a Category 1 at maximum speed, Kennon said. What difference 24 hours makes. I think we had 105 to 110 sustained winds. A curfew is in effect in Gulf Shores as crews work to remove downed trees and power lines. Orange Beachs curfew will run from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. We are letting people with a proof of ownership to Orange Beach to travel freely, said Kennon. We go in and start work tomorrow. We have to tarps on these roofs. If (residents) need some help in getting trees off houses, we dont want to hold them off from doing so. Kennon said he spent the better part of the day perusing damaged neighborhoods. He said that beachside condos were in relatively decent shape due to their concrete and reinforced construction that are able to better withstand hurricane-force winds. But as far as off the beach, I feel like we have just as much damage, flooding and trees that are down, said Kennon. A lot of water is still standing. There is no where to go. Its pretty ugly. Kennon said that Hurricane Sally is already being compared with Hurricane Ivan in 2004. That hurricane, which was the last one to make landfall in Alabama, resulted in major damage to the Alabama Gulf Coast. With (Hurricane) Ivan, we had 11 to 12 inches of rain. With this, we had 20 plus, Kennon said. That made all the difference in the world as far as flooding goes. At the event (Photo: asean.org) Hanoi The ASEAN high-level conference on Human Resource Development for the Changing World of Work was held virtually on September 16 by Vietnam as the ASEAN Chair 2020, with the participation of 150 delegates. At the opening ceremony, ASEAN labour and education ministers launched the Roadmap of ASEAN Declaration on Human Resources Development for the Changing World of Work, along with the ASEAN Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council. Human resources development is one of Vietnams priorities and the high-level conference viewed it as a highlight in its ASEAN Chairmanship Year 2020. It was also the first conference seeing the participation of ASEAN labour and education ministers. Addressing the event, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said the world has witnessed major changes such as digital transformation, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, non-traditional security issues and the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic. Human resource development in the revolution has been discussed at various global and regional forums, he noted. The Deputy PM underlined that new mechanisms are needed to help all labourers grab opportunities and come to know their responsibilities to acquire new knowledge and skills, stressing that human resources development is among the three key priorities of the ASEAN Community stated in the ASEAN Charter. Efforts in the field must be further promoted to ensure the successful implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on Human Resources Development for the Changing World of Work, he reiterated. In his remarks, ASEAN Secretary-General Dato Lim Jock Hoi affirmed that to raise the regional educational quality, attention must be paid to both general education and vocational training, along with fostering digital skills to maximise workers capacity in the current technological era. Proposition 19 aims to boost the sale of homes by older Californians through a new tax break. Here, a home for sale stands next to houses under construction on April 17, 2013 in Carlsbad, Calif. (Lenny Ignelzi/AP) Two years ago, the California Realtors Assn. put a costly, unfair and blatantly self-serving initiative on the ballot. Their measure would have offered older homeowners who already benefit from Proposition 13, the state's property-tax relief initiative another huge and permanent tax break to spur more home sales. Wisely, voters rejected the initiative. The Realtors went back to the drawing board. They retooled their original property tax change, combined it with a proposal to eliminate a generous tax break for inherited property, threw in a funding promise for firefighters and convinced the Legislature to put the package before voters. The result is Proposition 19, a cynical and unwelcome melding of good and bad tax proposals. Voters should reject it. Of all the unintended consequences of Proposition 13, perhaps the worst is that it fostered inequity and helped widen the generational wealth gap. The measure caps most property tax rates at 1% of a homes sale price and holds annual increases in assessed value to 2% or less. Older folks who purchased their home a few decades ago pay significantly less property tax than, say, their younger neighbors who bought more recently. Current law allows homeowners who are over 55, severely disabled or whose property is destroyed by a disaster to apply the artificially low valuation of their old homes to newly purchased ones, provided that the new home costs no more than the selling price of their old home. Homeowners may take advantage of that portability provision just once, and only in the county where they live or in a limited number of participating counties around the state. Realtors and other critics argue that Proposition 13 discourages longtime property owners from moving, even when they'd like to find a home that's smaller or closer to family members, because they could end up paying a lot more in property tax. That creates inefficiencies in the real estate market, with empty nesters sitting in big houses that could be sold to young families. Story continues Proposition 19 would allow more homeowners to take their property tax breaks with them when they sell their home. The initiative would allow homeowners older than 55 and other qualified groups to move anywhere in the state, up to three times, and take the tax break they've built up with them. They could even apply that break the reduction in their home's assessment below its current market value to a more expensive property. Yes, this change would probably lead to more homes being sold each year. Thats why the Realtors like it. And the increase in sales might generate some additional tax revenue as a result of long-held homes being reassessed and taxed at their actual market value; some of that funding would be dedicated to fire protection. Thats why the state firefighters union likes it. But Proposition 19 would just expand the inequities in Californias property tax system. It would grossly benefit those who were lucky enough to buy a home years ago and hold onto it as values skyrocketed. It would give them a huge tax break and greater buying power in an already expensive real estate market. It would skew tax breaks further away from people who dont own a home or who may be struggling to buy one. Heres what we do like in Proposition 19: The initiative would narrow a property tax break for people who inherit their parents home. Under current law, parents can pass their primary residence to their offspring without triggering a reassessment, as a sale would. The heirs get the tax break whether they live in or rent the home. Parents can also transfer their businesses, second homes and rentals if the total assessed value is less than $1 million. A 2018 Times article detailed how nearly two-thirds of homes inherited in L.A. County were being used as second homes or rental properties. The inheritance tax break allowed hundreds of thousands of Californians to avoid paying the higher taxes owed by newer homeowners, even as they raked in rental income. California is the only state in the country to provide such a tax break. Under Proposition 19, heirs must use the home as their primary residence within a year or the property will be reassessed at market value. Proposition 19 also would eliminate the property tax break on all other inherited property, except for farms. The inheritance tax break is yet another way Proposition 13 ingrains inequity into the tax code. Longtime property owners can enjoy years of low taxes and then pass along their tax breaks to their heirs, who then profit from their parents good fortune. And for what? Theres no compelling public purpose or societal good in passing tax breaks through generations to even the wealthiest taxpayers. That needs to be fixed through a constitutional amendment someday, but not in exchange for giving homeowners a more enduring and market-distorting tax break. Vote no on Proposition 19. Check latimes.com/endorsements for links to other Times endorsements, and check back frequently for updates. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 20:46:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SHENYANG, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The 9.18 Historical Museum in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, has received a new batch of artifacts that donors hope will allow historians to better document Japanese aggression during World War II. Six local collectors and citizens made the donation, a total of 34 items of cultural and historical significance, during a ceremony on Wednesday before the 89th anniversary of the "Sept. 18 Incident." Zhan Hongge made his 26th donation to the museum, including a commission issued by the Japanese army in Northeast China and three other historical materials. "These items are of special significance as they are convincing proof of Japanese aggression, and the museum is the place where they belong," he said. "I donated my collection to the museum as I hope people can understand the great sacrifice made by the martyrs and cherish present life," said Dong Haijiang, a 74-year-old citizen of Shenyang. The donations are of great historical significance and research value, expand collection categories and facilitate the study of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, according to Fan Lihong, the museum's curator. On Sept. 18, 1931, Japanese troops blew up a section of railway under their control near Shenyang, then accused Chinese troops of sabotage as a pretext for subsequent aggression. Enditem We are honored to take our guests on a truly magical journey, running free across five states with these magnificent American wild horses, and to draw critical attention to the plight of this American icon, said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Campaign. The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), a nonprofit organization working to ensure the future of America's iconic wild horses and the public lands where they roam, will host their first virtual fundraising event on October 1st from 5-6 pm PST featuring a majestic journey through five states with the American wild horse. The event will raise awareness about the inhumane treatment experienced by wild horses in America. Tickets for the event are $100 and all proceeds go to AWHCs work to keep wild horses wild. Americas wild horses are national symbols of freedom and the untamed spirit of the West. They live on public lands and are protected under a federal law that is supported by 80 percent of Americans. Yet the federal government manages these iconic animals in the cruelest, most outdated, and expensive way possible, using helicopters to round them up by the thousands from public lands every year. This brutal and inhumane treatment is driven by the commercial interests that seek to exploit the public lands for private profit. We are honored to take our guests on a truly magical journey, running free across five states with these magnificent American wild horses, and to draw critical attention to the plight of this American icon, said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Campaign. For a rockin wild time, the fundraiser will feature a special appearance by American Wild Horse Campaign Ambassador Kaitlynn Carter, from MTVs popular series The Hills, inspiring footage of wild horses, and celebrity musical guests including LP, Lukas Nelson, and Nathaniel Rateliff. A knock-your-boots off silent auction will include grand and majestic experiences such as a Thailand Elephant Sanctuary and Resort Experience, stay in a private Lake Tahoe estate with a tour of world-renowned Fish Springs Wild Horses, and a Two-Night Stay at Durell Ranch House in Sonoma, California. Additional exciting silent auction items include a Christopher Creek Winery VIP Tasting for Ten, an on-the-water dining experience for six in Historic Sausalito, a Chantecaille Gift Basket Filled with Hero Skincare Products and Philanthropy Makeup Cosmetics, a 'Romeo & Juliet' Kimerlee Curyl Fine Art Photography, and a 'Cowboy' From DriveBys Series, Limited Edition by Brian Bowen Smith, who will also make a special appearance at the fundraiser. A recent successful bipartisan amendment on the U.S. House floor appropriated $11M to the Bureau of Land Management to implement a PZP fertility program, a common-sense, 30-year research-backed, science-based approach to the humane treatment of wild horses, that the AWHC champions, and will save taxpayers billions of dollars in the long run. The amendment currently stands before the Senate for a pending vote, anticipated for late 2020 or early 2021. To learn more about the American Wild Horse Campaign, visit http://www.americanwildhorsecampaign.org. On social media, visit @freewildhorses Hashtag: #freewildhorses #americanwildhorse #keepwildhorseswild About American Wild Horse Campaign The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) is the nations leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse and burros in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. In addition to advocating for protection and preservation of Americas wild herds, AWHC implements the largest wild horse fertility control program in the world through a partnership with the State of Nevada for wild horses that live in the Virginia Range near Reno. Home Secretary Priti Patel has said she is 'bitterly disappointed' by a High Court ruling grounding a charter flight deporting asylum seekers to Spain. Lawyers representing three men, who arrived in Britain on small boats during the summer, mounted a successful challenge in a bid to halt the flight to Madrid, which had been chartered by Home Office officials. Ms Patel said in a statement: 'We are bitterly disappointed with the court's ruling, which has prevented us from returning people who have no right to be here. 'This case has not abated our determination and we have more flights planned in the coming weeks and months.' Home Secretary Priti Patel, pictured, said she is 'bitterly disappointed' by a High Court ruling grounding a flight to Madrid which had been chartered by Home Office officials The asylum seekers' lawyers raised concerns that passengers could end up destitute in Spain and said the three men should not be flown to Madrid until more investigations had been carried out into Spanish immigrant reception facilities. Lawyers representing Ms Patel had argued that the flight should be allowed to leave and said Spanish authorities could be trusted to comply with their obligations to asylum seekers. But Sir Duncan Ouseley on Wednesday ruled in favour of the three men, and said the flight should not leave, after considering rival arguments at a High Court hearing in London. The three men, a Syrian and two from Yemen, had travelled to Britain from north Africa, but had first set foot on the European mainland in Spain, the judge heard. Spanish authorities had agreed they should be returned and make asylum claims in Spain. Other immigrants due to be on the flight scheduled early on Thursday are thought to be in a similar position. Ms Patel pictured in Dover, Kent, last month, the day after she appointed Dan O'Mahoney to a new role, as the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Lawyers representing the three men said there had been criticism of Spanish reception facilities, with reports of asylum seekers being forced to sleep rough because the border post at Madrid Airport had been 'overwhelmed by demand'. The three men were vulnerable and had mental health issues, lawyers said. Sir Duncan said the men's lawyers had raised a serious issue related to immigrant reception facilities in Madrid. He said the charter flight should not leave until that issue had been fully investigated at a trial. The judge said that a trial should be staged in the near future. Heres an insight into how the Trump administration views citizens protesting: Federal officials, according to a whistleblower, sought a heat ray weapon that had been considered ethically dubious even in a wartime setting to use against antipolice brutality protesters outside the White House this summer. National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco told lawmakers that the Department of Defenses top military police officer sent an email June 1 asking the D.C. National Guard whether it had a weapon called an Active Denial System, or ADS. The ADS, which was designed by the military two decades ago, is a weapon that operates much likes a microwave and makes its targets feel as if their skin is burning. DeMarco was included on the email as the ranking D.C. National Guard officer that day. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Subscribe to the Slatest newsletter A daily email update of the stories you need to read right now. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. The ADS was part of a larger buildup of weapons, lethal and nonlethal, that could be deployed against protesters. The ADS can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin, the military police officer said in the email. The effect is overwhelming, causing an immediate repel response by the targeted individual. The weapon had previously been considered unsuitable even for wartime deployment, but the officer said it can provide our troops a capacity they currently do not have, the ability to reach out and engage potential adversaries at distances well beyond small arms range, and in a safe, effective, and non-lethal manner. The technology, also called a heat ray, was developed to disperse large crowds in the early 2000s but was shelved amid concerns about its effectiveness, safety and the ethics of using it on human beings, the Washington Post reports. Pentagon officials were reluctant to use the device in Iraq. In late 2018, the New York Times reported, the Trump administration had weighed using the device on migrants at the U.S.-Mexico borderan idea shot down by Kirstjen Nielsen, then the Homeland Security secretary, citing humanitarian concerns. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- American Express and World Monuments Fund (WMF) today announced $1 million in funding to support preservation efforts at seven diverse cultural sites included in the 2020 World Monuments Watch. For more than two decades, American Express has provided essential support for WMF's work to preserve cultural heritage sites around the world against the increasing threats of climate change, natural disasters, conflicts, and neglect. This continued support from American Express, which in 1996 became the Founding Sponsor of the Watch, will help ensure that generations to come will be able to experience these places of wonder. The seven sites selected to receive financial support are among the 25 included on the biennial Watch, which aims to raise awareness about their significance and needs for the future. The $1 million in grants from American Express will fund a variety of projects across all seven sites in 8 countries: Rapa Nui National Park, Easter Island , Chile ; , ; Inari-Yu Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan ; ; Bennerley Viaduct, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, United Kingdom; Central Aguirre Historic District, Puerto Rico , United States ; , ; Canal Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico ; ; Courtyard Houses of Axerquia, Cordoba, Spain ; ; Koutammakou, Benin and Togo . Among this year's key selection criteria was an emphasis on sustainable tourism. American Express and WMF are committed to addressing the current and future impacts of tourism on local economies, communities, and the environment by supporting projects that reinforce local and regional tourism, raise awareness of underrepresented heritage, and reduce the displacement of local communities. For example, the project at Bennerley Viaduct aims to stimulate local tourism and draw attention to this form of industrial heritage and the role it can play in modern life. In Cordoba, Spain, workshops and discussions will be organized in coordination with local and regional planning authorities to develop viable recommendations for the future of the historic neighborhood, including sustainable tourism strategies. In Mexico City, the Canal Nacional project will develop a series of cultural programs, enhanced site interpretation, and workshops to solidify community-led management and maintenance of the historic canal contributing to a broader recognition of its significance within the city and beyond. "As a long-time supporter of historic preservation efforts, American Express is proud to play a role in ensuring the sustainability of treasured landmarks around the world for generations to come," said Timothy J. McClimon, President of the American Express Foundation. "The sites included in the 2020 World Monuments Watch are each critical to the social and economic identities of the communities around them." "This generous support from American Express could not come at a more critical time," said Benedicte de Montlaur, CEO, World Monuments Fund. "As the current global pandemic slows travel around the world it has brought significant economic hardship to many local communities who rely on tourism, while revealing ecological and social benefits. As we begin to reopen and rebuild, it is crucial that we explore new solutions that make sustainable tourism a central priority in the future of these sites." The World Monuments Watch is a biennial selection of prominent cultural heritage sites that combine great historical significance with contemporary social impact. Since 1996, the program has issued a call to action for 861 sites and worked with their communities to safeguard them and raise awareness of their intrinsic value. For more than 20 years, American Express, the Founding Sponsor of the Watch, has given $18 million to help preserve 173 World Monuments Watch sites in 67 countries. It has also partnered with leading organizations to preserve other sites in need, build awareness and engage the public in preservation efforts across the world. About American Express American Express is a globally integrated payments company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at americanexpress.com and connect with us on facebook.com/americanexpress, instagram.com/americanexpress, linkedin.com/company/american-express, twitter.com/americanexpress, and youtube.com/americanexpress. Key links to products, services and corporate responsibility information: charge and credit cards, business credit cards, travel services, gift cards, prepaid cards, merchant services, Accertify, InAuth, corporate card, business travel, and corporate responsibility. About World Monuments Fund World Monuments Fund is the leading independent organization devoted to saving the world's treasured places. Through partnerships with local communities, funders, and governments, WMF seeks to inspire an enduring commitment to stewardship for future generations. Headquartered in New York City, the organization has offices and affiliates worldwide. Visit www.wmf.org for more information. Follow us! Twitter: twitter.com/worldmonuments Facebook: facebook.com/worldmonuments Instagram: instagram.com/worldmonumentsfund Press Contacts: Judith Walker, World Monuments Fund, [email protected], 646-573-0912 Andrew Johnson, American Express, [email protected], 212-640-8610 SOURCE World Monuments Fund Related Links http://www.wmf.org/ The coffin turns corpses into compost that enriches the soil In the Netherlands you can keep helping the planet after you die -- by opting for a living coffin made of mushrooms which speeds up the decomposition of your body. The coffin turns corpses into compost that enriches the soil thanks to mycelium, the root structure of fungi. The "Living Cocoon" is a world first, according to Bob Hendrikx, who invented the idea in his student laboratory at Delft Technical University. "This is the world's first living coffin, and actually last Saturday the first human being in the Netherlands was composted and returned into the cycle of life," he told AFP. The coffin was the final resting place for an 82-year-old woman, whose body will decompose within two to three years. If a traditional coffin with varnished wood and metal handles is used, the process normally takes more than ten years. The casket itself will meanwhile disappear within 30 to 45 days. "It's actually an organism, so it's made from mycelium which is the root structure of mushrooms," Hendrikx said. "They're the biggest recyclers in nature". "This is the most natural way to do it... we no longer pollute the environment with toxins in our body and all the stuff that goes into the coffins but actually try to enrich it and really be compost for nature." - 'Big hit' - The coffin is the same size and shape as a classic coffin but its pale colour is typical of mycelium. Inside is a bed of moss where the body -- and various insects and other soil creatures -- will lie. Overall the coffin is much lighter than a wooden casket. It's also cheaper, currently costing around 1,500 euros. Making the coffins requires a bit of foraging, first for moss from the forest, then collecting mycelium from mushrooms, and then mixing that with woodchips. "Slowly in seven days, it's actually pretty fast, it will grow into a solid material that is actually an organism," said Hendrikx. Story continues "Afterwards it's naturally dried by literally removing the mould and just letting it be. So then the mycelium, the organism, becomes inactive. "When it's in the ground, it starts to get activated again when a lot of moisture hits the organism. Then it starts the decomposition process." Hendrikx's inspiration didn't stem from a ghoulish fascination with bodies or human compost, but from serendipity. Fascinated by the applications of mushrooms, he first tried to make a "living house" for his thesis. But when someone asked what would happen with the body of his grandmother if he left her inside the house, Hendrikx had a brainwave. That has now become a start-up, called Loop, which has signed a deal with a funeral home, while also causing a stir on social media. "Looking at the reactions we had online, we're pretty sure it's going to be a big hit," he said. cvo/smt/dk/tgb/gle 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. Thriveworks, a counseling practice with over 130 locations across the United States, announces the opening of their newest counseling office in Troy, MI. To meet the needs of this community, Thriveworks is excited to offer almost immediate mental health care to their clients, by telephone and video. Finding quality, accessible mental health care is extremely difficult for many. Thriveworks understands how important it is to be readily available to those who need care the most. Thats why they offer their clients competitive benefits such as appointments within 24 hours of their first call, flexible scheduling, and online counseling. Expanding our services to provide clients with more quality mental health care furthers the Thriveworks mission of excellence in our communities. Having our newest practice in Troy, MI offers more convenience to our clients, says Thriveworks Senior Business Developer, John Izzo. With our no waitlist policy, extended hours, and dedicated care, I know that we will be able to help people manage and overcome their challenges well before they become a bigger problem. Thriveworks prides itself on selecting highly qualified and experienced mental health professionals who offer exceptional, client-focused care. At the Troy office, the therapists, counselors, and psychologists are skilled in treating clients in a variety of mental health issues as well as helping their clients through tough spots in life. Shayna AgostaLicensed Master Social Worker, Certified Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and Certified Clinical Trauma Practitionerspecializes in helping adolescents and adults work through depression, anxiety, major life transitions, addiction, trauma, and relationship issues. She takes an eclectic approach to therapy by establishing a warm and trusting environment. Agosta hopes to help each of her clients achieve the life that they are worthy of. This dedicated team of mental health professionals is readily available to help people in an online environment. New clients can look forward to scheduling with ease, as Thriveworks prioritizes an easy scheduling process. Ryan Culkin, Executive Clinic Director at Thriveworks, explains: At Thriveworks, we know that the therapeutic journey can be difficult. This is why it is our mission to make it as seamless as possible to get you connected with an excellent therapist fast. With expanded hours for scheduling, online booking, and our own billing team, we will make sure there are no barriers to getting you the help you need." Thriveworks Counseling in Troy, MI is now accepting new clients for online counseling and hopes to offer onsite counseling soon. For anyone who is interested in working with one of their mental health professionals online, they can schedule an appointment by calling (248) 764-4182 or visiting the online booking portal on the website. About Thriveworks Thriveworks Counseling was founded in 2008 by AJ Centore, PhD and remains dedicated to providing clients the help and guidance they need to live happy, successful lives. Thriveworks accomplishes this mission by connecting clients to compassionate mental health professionals quickly with the help of personable scheduling specialists. Thriveworks has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, ABC, The Boston Globe, and more. After receiving fresh guidelines from the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA), city schools are set to partially open from September 21 onwards for the first time since mid-March, and have already begun preparations to ensure that order can be maintained come Monday. The MHA guidelines state that all states/Union Territories have been permitted to call 50% of teaching and non-teaching staff for online teaching, tele-counselling and related work from September 21. The students of Classes 9 to 12 may be permitted to visit the schools on a voluntary basis for taking guidance from teachers, subject to a written consent from parents/guardians. Principal of St Johns High School, Sector 26, Kavita C Das said, Along with facemasks, we have made face shields to cover the eyes mandatory as well. Around 40% of the students had their parents consent for coming to school from Monday: Along with sanitising the students and checking their temperatures, we will also check their blood oxygen levels using oximeters to screen for asymptomaticity. An isolation room will also be allotted within the school in case any student or faculty member feels unwell, added Das. Admn yet to release detailed SOP The local administration is yet to release a detailed standard operating procedure (SOP) for schools to follow even though the reopening is right around the corner. President of the Independent School Association and chairman of Vivek High School, Sector 38B, HS Mamik said, We have given the administration our suggestions, but we are still waiting for the official directions. Mamik added the administration will need to ensure their directions are applied to all schools. In some schools, there may be only 20-30 students in a class while the number may go up to 50 in others. Instead of saying only 50% of students will be allowed in a class, a numerical limit should be set to ensure the rules can be uniformly followed, he said. They will wait for parents consent before resuming school bus service, he added. Meanwhile, it is still not clear what the timings for schools will be on Monday. Speaking about this, director of Strawberry Fields High School, Sector 26, Atul Khanna said, We plan to only allow students in the afternoon as classes are already going on in the mornings. We dont want students not coming to school to suffer any disadvantage. In the afternoon, we will have two batches of students for about an hour each with half an hour of gap in between for sanitising the classes. Khanna added that different days will be kept for different subjects like mathematics on Mondays and Hindi on Tuesdays, and students will have to seek an appointment before they are allowed to visit and ask the teachers their doubts. He added that around 25% students had volunteered to follow this norm. UT Education department holds meeting over preparations 1. The UT education department held a meeting regarding the preparations on Thursday under deputy director school education Alka Mehta in which all principals and heads of all government schools participated. 2. The schools have been instructed to provide for thermal screening along with preventing overcrowding and maintaining social distancing. Students and teachers residing in micro-containment zones will not be allowed to visit the schools. 3. Mehta who is also acting as district education officer (DEO) said, Canteens will remain closed and students will come in two batches of two hours each with a two-hour gap in between. Although drinking water facilities will be functional in the school, students will be asked to get their own drinking bottles to avoid touching the taps too much. 4. Director school education (DSE) Rubinderjit Singh Brar added that the department will submit a detailed proposal to the competent authority soon and a decision regarding the date and plan of reopening schools will be taken by them. 5. The government schools had been asked to collect consent from parents through Google forms and WhatsApp/text messages by September 15. Around 25,000 students from 90 government schools (around 50% of the total) have submitted the consent forms. The department will prepare a slot-based timetable for students before September 21. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) London Thu, September 17, 2020 13:01 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4560b92 2 News Thomas-Cook,travel,travel-agency Free The Chinese-owned Thomas Cook brand relaunched Wednesday as an online travel agency following the British group's collapse last year. "The new 'COVID-ready' travel company will initially sell holidays to destinations on the government's safe travel corridor list," said Thomas Cook, which is owned by Fosun Tourism Group. "Thomas Cook has a proud heritage and after acquiring the brand last year we wanted to quickly return it to its home in the UK," said Fosun's chairman and chief executive, Jim Qian. "Supporting the growth of the brand in China and its relaunch in the UK is a big step in our plan to turn Thomas Cook into a global success story and a key milestone in the development of the Fosun Tourism Group's strategy," he said. Fosun, which also owns France-based resort giant Club Med, acquired the brand and online assets of Thomas Cook in November. Thomas Cook's demise one year ago sparked 22,000 job losses worldwide and triggered Britain's biggest repatriation since World War II, with the government paying to fly home 140,000 stranded tourists. The 178-year-old British company had declared bankruptcy after an attempt to secure $250 million from private investors fell through. Thomas Cook's stores across the UK had struggled against fierce online competition, while the company had blamed Brexit uncertainty for a drop in bookings before its collapse. "Virtual Shorty Fest Presented by Acura" will feature Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue in the band's first show since the COVID-19 pandemic began impacting communities across America. The diverse artist lineup includes some of New Orleans most talented musicians, such as Galactic, Anders Osborne, Tank and the Bangas, The Soul Rebels and more special guests to be announced. Students from the Trombone Shorty Academy also will perform. Shorty Fest has been the Trombone Shorty Foundation's largest fundraising event and with this year's new format, there are opportunities for viewers to donate (www.paypal.me/shortyfoundation) along with a silent auction held on Facebook to support the next generation of New Orleans musicians. Also making an appearance during the Fest is the all-new 2021 Acura TLX premium sport sedan, featuring the latest award-winning ELS STUDIO 3D premium audio system, powered by Panasonic and tuned by eight-time Grammy award-winning recording engineer and music producer Elliot Scheiner. The 2021 TLX arrives at dealerships in late September. More information on "Virtual Shorty Fest Presented by Acura" programming details and schedule can be found here: https://www.tromboneshortyfoundation.org/shorty-fest/. Acura's Investment in Music Acura has been a proud sponsor of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for more than 20 years. The brand also has been the automotive partner of the Trombone Shorty Foundation for the past six years and is the presenting sponsor of "Shorty Fest," the Shorty Foundation's largest fundraising event. Acura's sponsorship of the Shorty Foundation helps support traditional jazz music education, instruction, mentorship and performance in New Orleans, empowering young musicians to continue the musical traditions of the jazz legends before them. Acura also has been the official automotive partner of the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles for the last eight years. More recently, Acura collaborated with Genius, the music media platform and the world's largest digital destination for song lyrics and music knowledge, by creating "Acura x Genius: Precision Crafted Performances." The music series features emerging artists with exclusive live showcases in major cities including Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Miami. About Acura Acura is a leading automotive nameplate that delivers Precision Crafted Performance a commitment to expressive styling, high performance and innovative engineering, all built on a foundation of quality and reliability. The Acura lineup features five distinctive models the ILX and TLX sport sedans, the RDX and MDX sport-utility vehicles and the next-generation, electrified NSX supercar. All Acura models sold in North America for the 2021 model year are made in the U.S., using domestic and globally sourced parts. Additional media information including pricing, features & specifications and high-resolution photography is available at AcuraNews.com. Consumer information is available at Acura.com. About Trombone Shorty Foundation The Trombone Shorty Foundation, founded in 2012, seeks to build the next generation of young talent: to create music industry career pathways for New Orleans youth, empower them with the skills and perspective to succeed in business and in life, and to offer mentorship and support throughout the process. The work of the Foundation is inspired by Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, who was one such youth whose community support in academics, music, and business fostered a career that represents New Orleans culture around the world. SOURCE Acura Related Links http://www.acura.com PHOENIX Democrats Joe Biden and Mark Kelly continue to lead in Arizona over President Donald Trump and Sen. Martha McSally in a new poll based on high voter turnout released Thursday. The poll, conducted by Monmouth University in New Jersey, showed a range of outcomes in the state's two most closely watched races under different turnout scenarios. Among registered voters, Biden leads Trump 48% to 44%, while Kelly leads McSally 50% to 44%. In a high-turnout model, Biden led by 2 points (48% to 46%) and Kelly led by 4 points (50% to 46%). Under a model assuming lower turnout than in 2016, the presidential race is tied at 47% and Kelly's lead falls to 1 percentage point (49% to 48%). The same poll also found Arizona's voters largely favor raising income taxes on wealthy Arizonans to boost educational funding, and narrow support for legalizing recreational marijuana. Trump won Arizona in 2016 by 3.5 percentage points, and every Republican except Bob Dole in 1996 has carried the state beginning with the 1952 election Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a Hispanic Heritage Month event, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, Fla. Monmouth found almost half of Arizonans 48% are not at all likely to vote for Trump, a sentiment that is significantly worse than the 38% who said they wouldn't vote for Biden. "Both candidates are solidifying their support in the most partisan areas of the state, but the big prize is still Maricopa County. And we see a notable swing away from Trump there compared to four years ago," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. Despite Trump's efforts in Phoenix this week to boost support from Latino voters, the poll found Biden has a 30-point lead within that group (61% to 31%), and 39 points among all voters of color in Arizona (67% to 28%), Monmouth found. MORE: Trump's outreach to Latinos also targets white suburban voters, analysts say "The Latino vote will be crucial to Bidens chances of flipping this state. At this point, it seems more about turnout rather than his margin of support," Murray said. "Latinos make up a larger share of Arizonas voter roll than four years ago, but the question is, how many will show up?" Story continues The poll found veterans and current military households think both Trump and Biden respect troops and military service, but Biden does slightly better with that demographic, which applies to one-third of the state's electorate. Trump gets poor marks from Arizonans for his handling of the pandemic, with 55% saying he's done a poor job. But those polled were not convinced Biden could do any better moving forward. Monmouth is one of only six pollsters nationally with an A+ rating from the website FiveThirtyEight. The live-telephone interview poll of 420 registered voters has a margin of error of 4.8 percentage points. Polls show Biden leading in Arizona, other swing states The Monmouth poll is the latest in a string that show Biden leading in each of the six battleground states expected to settle the election and arrives in the midst of an unprecedented blitz by the Trump campaign to keep Arizona in its column. Trump visited the state on Monday. His daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, visited on Wednesday. Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, is visiting Thursday, while Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to arrive Friday. The findings in the presidential race are in line with previous polls in Arizona. Biden has led in more than two dozen Arizona-only polls taken by various polling firms since effectively securing his party's nomination in March. In that time, Trump has led in three with one tie, according to polls tracked by Real Clear Politics. A Monmouth poll in Arizona taken in March, just before Phoenix was scheduled to host a Democratic presidential debate, showed Biden leading Trump by 3 points. That debate was moved to Washington, D.C., because of the coronavirus pandemic. Polling averages calculated by Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight both show Biden leading in the six states expected to be most competitive, ranging from a near-tie in North Carolina to a commanding advantage in Wisconsin. Earlier this week, Monmouth found Biden leading by 5 percentage points in Florida, arguably the one battleground Trump can't win without. Overall, Real Clear Politics has Biden leading by an average of 1.6 points in that state. Monmouth also found Biden leading narrowly in Pennsylvania and North Carolina in polls taken at the end of August. Kelly remains ahead of McSally In Arizona's Senate race, McSally has failed to dent Kelly's consistent leads, the Monmouth poll found. Kelly leads by 27 points among Arizona's independent voters and is broadly popular with voters, with his favorable ratings 19 percentage points higher than his unfavorable ratings. By contrast, McSally has slightly higher disapproval marks than positive. "Kelly is simply well-liked by voters, and McSally already has a recent loss under her belt. The advantage of her appointed incumbency seems to be providing limited benefit," Murray said. Kelly has led in 24 of 25 publicly released polls this year, according to Real Clear Politics. Before the Monmouth poll, he had a 7 percentage point advantage. Kelly led McSally by 6 percentage points in its March poll of Arizonans. The winner of that race will serve the remainder of the six-year term the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won in 2016. In 2018, McSally lost by 2 percentage points to now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., in her bid for the state's other Senate seat. Afterward, Gov. Doug Ducey appointed McSally to the McCain seat, which had been held by former Sen. Jon Kyl for four months after McCain's death. Monmouth found that Sinema gets high marks from voters and Ducey does not. Sinema's favorable ratings were 17 points higher than her unfavorable ratings, with 41% having no opinion of the freshman senator. Midway through his second term, Ducey's unfavorables were 13 points higher than his favorables, with 21% having no opinion of him. Both props favored to pass Proposition 207, known as the Smart and Safe Arizona Act, would legalize recreational marijuana use in the state. If turnout is higher than in 2016, that measure has a 49% to 43% advantage with voters, the poll found. In its low turnout model, support is even at 47%. The measure would allow people 21 and older to have as much as an ounce of marijuana, tax sales of it at 16% above regular sales tax levels and direct the new revenues mostly toward community colleges and public safety. The measure would ban smoking marijuana in public and allow previous marijuana convictions in Arizona to be expunged. Prop. 208, known as Invest in Ed, would impose higher state income tax bills on wealthy Arizonans. The tax would apply to individuals with annual incomes topping $250,000 and to married couples earning $500,000 or more. Monmouth found that under all its scenarios that measure had at least 60% support. The state's proposed extra tax revenue is supposed to go to public schools for hiring and retaining new teachers. For those above the income lines, it would add a 3.5% extra tax charge to the state's existing 4.54% top tax rate. Under Prop 208, an individual earning $50,000 in taxable income above the $250,000 threshold, would pay an extra $1,750 in state income tax. Reach the reporter Ronald J. Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493. Follow him on Twitter @ronaldjhansen. Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today. Subscribe to our free political podcast, The Gaggle. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Joe Biden, Mark Kelly holding their leads in Arizona, new poll finds "Succession: The Second Season": Everybody's favorite media family horror show returns with Kendall (Jeremy Strong) at his most broken, completely attached to Logan (Brian Cox) after his father has cleaned up his son's manslaughter. Meanwhile, led to believe she'll take over Waystar Royco, Shiv (Sarah Snook) sabotages her job with presidential hopeful Gil Eavis (Eric Bogosian), not to mention her surprise open relationship with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) goes behind Logan's back to get Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) on board to help the family buy out the legitimate news operation PGM via Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter). In the unhinged schemes department, Connor (Alan Ruck) proceeds with his presidential campaign, cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) proves to be less innocent than the family thought, and Marcia (Hiam Abbass) shows rightful rage at Logan's increasing betrayals. It's another flawless season from creator Jesse Armstrong, scoring 18 Emmy nominations. And it's one that provides such greatest hits as Kendall's peak cringe "L to the OG" rap, just, all of Holly Hunter (as well as every appearance of the best character of the series, which remains the theme song, composed by Nicholas Britell), and the look on Logan's face as he learns his son can be the kind of killer he can respect after all. As Twitter user ohJuliaTweets tweeted last month: "Do people understand that if they don't wear their masks and physically distance we're never going to get a third season?" Also new on DVD "Killing Eve, Season 3": The groundbreaking queer cat-and-mouse drama series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge continues as Dasha (Harriet Walter) pressures assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) to come back to work as now-ex-MI6 agent Eve (Sandra Oh) tries to stay under the radar. "Weathering with You": Animated film follows a boy who encounters a girl who can change the weather around her. In Japanese. "21 Jump Street": The 2012 film starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, as well as its "22 Jump Street" sequel, is being released on 4K Ultra HD. "Becky": A rambunctious teen (Lulu Wilson) confronts a ruthless home invader (Kevin James) while visiting her father (Joel McHale). "A House Divided, Season 2": Soap opera follows the scandals of the Sanders family. "No Safe Spaces": Documentary follows Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager touring college campuses to discuss free speech. "Outlander: Season Five": The time-traveling Starz drama series returns after Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Roger's (Richard Rankin) wedding. "Outpost: Season 2": In the second season of the CW fantasy series, Talon (Jessica Green) must face the evil Prime Order trinity. "Roman Holiday": The 1953 rom-com starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck is being released on Blu-ray with a new restoration. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "Stephen King 5-Movie Collection": Collection includes both versions of "Pet Sematary," "The Stand," "The Dead Zone" and "Silver Bullet." "Tommaso": An artist living in Italy (Willem Dafoe) struggles with addictions and martial problems with a much-younger wife (Cristina Chiriac). Digital HD "Wheels": A young Brooklyn man (Arnstar) dreams of becoming a famous DJ while caring for his family in a tough neighborhood. Sept. 18 "Mambo Man": A Cuban farmer/music promoter risks it all on an enticing deal. Stars Idolka de Erbiti, Yudexi De La Torre Mesa and Mo Fini. In Spanish.; "Murder in the Woods": Teenagers fight to survive in a cabin in the woods. "Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs": Computer-animated film follows a woman who must save a group of princes who have been turned into dwarfs. Features voice talents of Chloe Grace Moretz, Sam Claflin, Gina Gershon and Jim Rash. Katie Foran-McHale, Tribune News Service NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Wholesale gift, fashion, and lifestyle product specialist North Lane International, LLC is bringing a stable of Japanese brands together as part of DECO BOKO, the first digital tradeshow focused solely on Japanese products. It will debut on September 21st, and will be powered by BRANDBOOM's user-friendly platform. The curated B2B tradeshow will be directed by Herbert Johnson, founder of 1-81 Agency and former buyer and store manager for Japanese design institution Tortoise General Store. Buyers can expect "easy-to-sell" and "easy-to-buy" products including Japanese home goods, decor, stationery, fashion accessories, and more. DECO BOKO will run every six months (September-February and March-August) beginning this September 21st, and will include a webinar event series in October for buyers looking to learn more about the brands and their stories. Tokyo International Gift Show, the largest trade show in Japan, will be among the exhibitors, bringing its "Made in/by Japan" and "Designed in/by Japan" goods to the U.S. market. The digital tradeshow will eventually be offered in combination with a physical tradeshow (anticipated in 2021) to provide buyers with the opportunity to touch, feel, and experience the products first-hand. Those interested in registering for DECO BOKO may do so at www.deco-boko.com. Follow @decobokonyc on Instagram and sign up for show updates here. ABOUT NORTH LANE INTERNATIONAL, LLC: From new to established products, from consumers to producers, North Lane International, LLC began with a passion to connect humans, information, and products to the world. Based in New York, North Lane International, LLC is a specialist in gift, fashion, and lifestyle products, providing all-encompassing services for business expansion from the U.S. to Japan and from Japan to the U.S. MEDIA CONTACT: Mariko Reyes, [email protected] SOURCE North Lane International, LLC Related Links https://www.north-lane.com According to recent data, nearly 50% of the global combustible cigarette market is controlled by governments that claim commitment to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( WHO FCTC ), which seeks to "protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure." Eight of these FCTC countries own 100% of at least one tobacco company, including China, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, and Vietnam. Notably, China National Tobacco Corporation controls roughly 44% of the global cigarette market. "Our research underlines a clear conflict of interest among these FCTC signatories," said Daniel Malan, Assistant Professor of Business Ethics, Trinity College Dublin; member, World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Transparency and Anti-Corruption; and an author of the report. "FCTC's Article 5.3 requires parties to protect the implementation of their public health policies against the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry. Yet, this is impossible when many of the same countries are also striving to generate revenue from state-owned tobacco entities." No One-Size-Fits-All Solution The Contradictions and Conflicts report notes that state monopolies are not subject to multinational governance, and pressure from national government organizations has been largely ignored within the tobacco industry. There are also no clear differences in health policies or burden of disease data when compared with countries where there is no significant state ownership of tobacco companies. As a result, the WHO may find it challenging to identify a one-size-fits-all solution to this conflict of interest. The possible solutions for governments with state-owned tobacco interests are complex. The report suggests that shifting from the production and marketing of combustible cigarettes over time to tobacco harm-reduction products could alleviate the conflicts that the state-owned tobacco enterprises face and ultimately save lives. Leading researchers and organizations such as the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World are mobilizing globally to create solutions that help expand knowledge in cessation and harm-reduction areas, including biomarker discovery, outcomes of quitting/switching on the microbiome, and innovative clinical trial designs for cessation therapies. "The data show a clear need and opportunity to not only regulate state-owned tobacco companies, but also to encourage them to evolve their business models toward the development and promotion of innovative harm-reduction solutions," said Dr. Derek Yach, President of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. "More than 8 million people die from tobacco-related illnesses each year. Governments must act to directly address the long-term health and wellness of the people living in their countries." Later this month, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World will release the first Tobacco Transformation Index, which will reveal that leading tobacco companies are making limited, but in some cases meaningful, progress by lowering the risks of their products and addressing long-term profitability at the same time, through investments in harm reduction. A key implication from Contradictions and Conflicts is that if state-owned tobacco companies were to accelerate efforts to integrate tobacco harm reduction into long-term corporate strategy, they would not only address the conflict, but they would also simultaneously accelerate global progress toward smoking cessation. This type of business restructuring to improve health already exists. China, for example, has embraced a similar path in regard to fossil fuels by committing its domestic auto manufacturing sector to ending production and sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines. Commissioned by a research grant from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, the Contradictions and Conflicts report was co-authored by Daniel Malan and Brett Hamilton, visiting faculty member, University of Stellenbosch Business School. The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is an independent, US nonprofit 501(c)(3) private foundation with the mission of improving global health by ending smoking in this generation. The Foundation strives to achieve its mission by focusing its work on three core pillars: Health, Science, and Technology; the Agricultural Transformation Initiative; and Industry Transformation. The Foundation has received charitable contributions from PMI Global Services Inc. (PMI) in each of 2018 and 2019 in the amount of US $80 million. Under the Foundation's bylaws and its pledge agreement with PMI, Foundation shall maintain full independence, and shall make all its decisions on its own, free from the control, interim instructions, or influence from or by PMI or any other third parties. The Foundation's acceptance of any charitable contribution from PMI does not constitute an endorsement by the Foundation of any of PMI's products. For more information about the Foundation, please visit www.smokefreeworld.org. MEDIA CONTACT: Nicole Bradley Vice President of Communications [email protected] SOURCE Foundation for a Smoke-Free World Related Links http://www.smokefreeworld.org MADISONA local caterer has managed to not only survive, but thrive and expand during tough times for the food industry. Mexican Spice is the creation of sisters Andrea Teutli and Jennifer Alarcon, both born in Mexico City. Andrea said they started Mexican Spice six years ago because there was a lack of authentic Mexican food in the Madison area. After Jennifer repeatedly wowed friends with her Mexican dishes, she decided to take her food to local farmer's markets in Madison and Summit. When that was a success, the sisters rented a commercial kitchen on Cross Street and began catering and selling packaged meals. Four years ago, the business acquired a taco truck, and another avenue opened up. "We started doing weddings, birthday parties, block parties," Teutli said, "and a lot of festivals with the truck." When the pandemic began earlier this year, as most food establishments were closing and their owners stressed about revenue, Mexican Spice was well positioned. "We had the packaged meals," Teutli said, "and we had started doing take out a few months earlier, and that was going well. So when covid hit, we were ready for it." Of course, the cancellation of public gatherings took a toll on the business, and Teutli said it's possible that that portion may not come back. "We had catering events booked every weekend," she said, "so we did get tremendously hit by that, but that's when we really pushed the delivery and takeout." With the pandemic peaking in New Jersey, however, Mexican Spice was at a crossroads; outgrowing a location was normally a good thing, but those were not normal times. To supplement a badly needed move to a bigger space, the sisters decided to start a crowdfunding campaign. They were stunned by the results. "We had a goal of $32,000," Teutli said, "and in three days, we reached our goal. That was heart-warming, and we were reassured that moving to the bigger space in Chatham was the right thing to do." Story continues Mexican Spice's new location on Main Street in Chatham will open soon. Teutli said it's more than just an eatery, it's versatile. "It's gonna be a small restaurant with a few tables, but it's really mainly like a place where we're unifying our services," she said. "But people can come in and place an order to go or grab a quick, authentic Mexican taco, too." Teutli clarified that, looking to the future, she and Alarcon are as committed to the community as the community is to them. "Of course we're interested in growing," she said, "but we're not looking to expand into New York City, we're looking to grow locally." This article originally appeared on the Madison Patch Press Release 17 September 2020 Boston University's School of Hospitality Administration (BU SHA) Dean Arun Upneja, PhD, has announced the formalized relationship between two of the world's leading hospitality programs: Boston University's School of Hospitality Administration (BU SHA) and the ESSEC Business School in Paris, France. Graduate students enrolled in either program have the opportunity to earn part of their Master's degree abroad - an opportunity which involves elective courses taught by premier internationally-recognized industry practitioners and internships in Europe and / or the United States. Advertisements "What an incredible manner to experience the world and develop the true global hospitality mindset so necessary for our business, particularly today," states Dean Upneja. Boston University matriculated students will begin their Master's work in the Fall term in Boston with classes to achieve the full Master of Management in Hospitality degree. For the Spring semester in Paris, a personally-tailored set of courses on the Paris campus of ESSEC offers SHA students opportunities to expand horizons and learn from the best of the best in Europe, all while studying alongside the students working toward their MS in Hospitality Management (IMHI). Courses are taught in English, and working knowledge of French is helpful for the internship experiences. Completion of this portion of the program earns students a Graduate Certificate from ESSEC, and then the students return to Boston to complete their MMH degree. "Offering our participants the chance to study and train in the United States through this incredible partnership brings our program one step closer to our goal of increasing opportunities and further internationalizing our program. We are honored that such a prestigious institution chose our MSc in Hospitality Management as a partner. We look forward to working with them in the years to come and to welcoming American students from Boston University to Cergy," adds Patti Brown, Program Director of the MSc in Hospitality Management at ESSEC. Boston is a unique location where hospitality intersects with medicine, education, technology, tourism, and sports. An environment where students acquire the skills from a renowned academic institution to improve a hospitality establishment's day-to-day and big-picture operations. With 34 years of experience in hospitality management, ESSEC offers a unique experience with the renowned MSc in Hospitality Management (IMHI) program. Originally named Institut de Management Hotelier International (IMHI), the program was created in 1981. Recognized worldwide as a leading hospitality management program, the MSc in Hospitality Management (IMHI) is designed to prepare the next generation of young professionals to become leaders in the various areas of tourism and hospitality. About Boston University School of Hospitality Administration: Established in 1981, Boston University's School of Hospitality Administration (BU SHA) offers students a combination of rigorous academics, liberal arts curriculum, and international experiences for the pursuit of success in lodging, restaurants, food service, and other avenues of the hospitality industry. SHA has a unique relationship with the city of Boston, where the area's hotels and restaurants provide students with numerous opportunities for internships to satisfy work experience requirements for their degree. BU SHA launched its graduate program, the Masters of Management in Hospitality in 2017, to strong international acclaim. www.bu.edu/hospitality. About Boston University: Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 33,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University's research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Thursday responded to some Rajya Sabha MPs who he said had criticised the Maharashtra governments handling of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Speaking in Rajya Sabha on day four of Parliaments ongoing monsoon session, he pointed to the number of recoveries in the state. He also remarked that even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised efforts of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for bringing the situation in Dharavi under control. My mother and brother are infected with Covid-19. Many people in Maharashtra are recovering also. Today, the situation in Dharavi is under control. WHO has appreciated efforts of BMC. I want to state these facts as some members here were criticising Maharashtra government yesterday, Raut said in the Upper House. I want to ask the members how did so many people recover? Kya log bhabhi ji ke papad kha karke theek ho gaye? This isnt a political fight but a fight to save the lives of people, Raut further said. The bhabhi ji ke papad jibe was in reference to Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal s endorsement of Bhabhiji Papad, which, he had said, would help create antibodies to combat the deadly virus. However, days later, the minister himself tested positive for Covid-19. Maharashtra has been the worst-affected state in the country since the early days of the pandemic. As of Wednesday, the states Covid-19 tally stood at over 1.12 million, of which nearly eight lakh people have recovered. With a record spike of 97,894 in the last 24 hours, India has thus far recorded a total of over 5.1 million cases of coronavirus. PHOENIX - A man accused of opening fire on a federal security officer outside the U.S. courthouse in Phoenix has a long history of mental illness but had never been violent, his ex-wife said Wednesday, a day after she helped turn him in to authorities. Theres no explanation for it. Hes sick, Donna Gonzales told The Associated Press. Hopefully, hes getting the help he needs. A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court said James Lee Carr, 68, opened fire Tuesday because he said he felt the federal officer was harassing him. The officer was inspecting a UPS truck heading into the courthouse when someone in a car yelled, Hey, and then fired three shots, according to the complaint. One round struck the officer, who returned fire, shooting roughly eight rounds as the driver fled in a silver Cadillac. The officer was hit in a protective vest, city police and the FBI said. Colleen Grayman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Phoenix, said the security officer was released from the hospital Tuesday and was at home recovering. The officers name hasnt been released, but Grayman said the officer is a retired Michigan state trooper who served more than 25 years. Carr was not injured. Gonzales said her ex-husband will most likely need a court-appointed attorney. She also dismissed any notion that he was making a statement following nationwide protests over police brutality and the weekend ambush of two Los Angeles County deputies. She blamed his mental illness. Immediately after the shooting, Carr called his brother and said he was sitting in a park and wanted to die because he shot the security guard, according to the criminal complaint. The brother called Carrs son and Gonzales, who said they found him dressed in a suit and fedora sitting at the end of a slide with a revolver and rifle on a stool nearby. They got the weapons away from him and called 911. He followed my instructions, and that was the end of it, said Gonzales, who didnt know before that he had guns. I had no fear. I know the man. He would never hurt me. Gonzales said she and Carr, who also have a daughter, last spoke two months ago. She didnt know if he was taking any medication and said hes acted erratically before but has never been violent. His son said Carr told him that he snapped and shot a security guard ... because the security guard was harassing him, according to the documents. Carr has been charged with using a weapon to assault a federal officer and another weapons charge. Following the courthouse shooting and the ambush of the two Los Angeles County deputies, Phoenix police will have officers patrol in pairs for greater safety. The deputies in Compton, California, were sitting in their parked vehicle when a man walked up and fired. They were struck in the head and critically wounded but are expected to recover. The gunman hasnt been captured, and a motive hasnt been determined. Federal courthouses have been flashpoints for recent violence. In June, a federal security officer was shot and killed and his partner was wounded outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, as they guarded the building during protests over racial injustice and police brutality. An Air Force sergeant was charged with the shooting, and prosecutors say he had ties to the far-right, anti-government boogaloo movement and used the protest as cover for the crime and his escape. During demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, protesters and federal officers clashed at the federal courthouse, where people set fires and tossed fireworks and rocks, while federal authorities unleashed tear gas and made arrests. A federal appellate court left in place a lower court ruling that plaintiffs had argued allowed Eversource and Avangrid to siphon natural gas away from power plants. A cohort of customers had claimed the practice cascaded into the rates they pay for electricity as much as 20 percent more according to one study. They calculated it had resulted in an extra $3.6 billion being added to Connecticut electricity bills over three years. Eversource and Avangrid sell natural gas to more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Connecticut, in addition to transmitting electricity from power plants to local distribution lines that serve some 1.6 million customers statewide. The utilities are under intense scrutiny after customer bills spiked during this summers heat wave as more people stayed home during the pandemic, followed by prolonged power outages after Tropical Storm Isaias. A lawsuit filed in state court by customers seeking $1.5 billion in restitution was moved last week to U.S. District Court in New Haven. In a separate lawsuit filed three years ago by nearly two dozen customers including individuals in Middletown, Newington, Rocky Hill and Vernon, Eversource and Avangrid were accused of squeezing out power plants looking to buy natural gas. With the state accounting for a quarter of New Englands power consumption, the figure cited by the plaintiffs would work out to Connecticut electricity customers paying more than $500 extra each on average over that stretch. A federal appeals court dismissed that case a year ago, but a New Hampshire firm energy marketing firm called PowerNE had pressed ahead with its own appeal, only to hit a judicial dead end itself. Three years ago, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to address the practice. Blumenthal has since introduced the MPACT Act an acronym for Making Pipelines Accountable to Consumers and Taxpayers to bring about reform in the sector. The original suit came on the heels of a 2017 Environmental Defense Fund study critical of Eversources and Avangrids practices for reserving extra capacity on the Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline operated by Spectra Energy. Plaintiffs expanded on EDFs contention that Eversource and Avangrid routinely reserved more natural gas capacity on the Algonquin Pipeline than they needed, under no notice contracts that carried no penalties for last moment changes. According to the lawsuit, the utilities routinely canceled a portion of those contracts near the end of each day, preventing power plants from getting better spot market prices earlier in the day that excess capacity would allow. No one on the New England electrical grid was spared, plaintiffs wrote in their original lawsuit. If there is a shortage in natural gas supply, the unregulated spot price of natural gas will go up, and so .. will electricity prices. In its own analysis, EDF dubbed out of date the market mechanism plaintiffs accused Eversource and Avangrid of exploiting. But an appellate court noted last year that FERC allows the practice to ensure utilities have adequate access to fuel to meet their reasonable needs, given fluctuations in weather and other factors impacting natural gas demand. An Eversource spokesperson labeled the EDF study on Thursday as irresponsible and inaccurate and defended the practice of securing natural gas excess capacity as needed. We do not engage in any behavior to artificially constrain capacity, stated Caroline Pretyman, in an email response to a query. Our fundamental public-service obligation is to assure that our gas customers do not experience service interruptions on the coldest days of the winter season. ... We are following all rules and regulations and are always acting in the best interest of our customers and communities. Ed Crowder, an Avangrid spokesperson, said the company is pleased that the appeals court rejected these ill-informed and meritless claims. As we have said all along, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas manage their natural gas portfolios in a manner consistent with their legal and regulatory mandate to provide safe, reliable service to customers, Crowder said, in an emailed statement. They must be able to do this under all weather and service conditions, and appropriately take into account their supplier-of-last-resort obligation and the many variables that can impact day-to-day customer demand. U.S. District Judge Denise Casper of Massachusetts dismissed the original case two years ago, citing Eversources and Avangrids defense that a legal precedent called filed rate doctrine does not allow courts to interfere in prices set for energy under rules and procedures approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. To award monetary relief to retail electricity consumers, the [court] would be required to determine ... hypothetical rates that would have been charged but for [defendants] purported anticompetitive conduct, Casper wrote in her decision. This is exactly the analysis the filed rate doctrine prohibits. ... Plaintiffs cannot escape the fact that FERC authorized the business choices that allegedly caused ... injury. Includes prior reporting by Luther Turmelle Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman When Durga Puja 2019 ended, most bongs, especially those who live away from home, marked the dates for the 2020 edition. No, this is not unusual, people usually mark their holidays in advance as for most Bengalis from Kolkata, not being home for those 5 days of fun and enjoyment is equivalent to sacrilege. But at that time, be it people in Kolkata, or Kolkatans living outside, nobody could have known of the COVID threat which would hold the world hostage from March. Now, with the disease very much a pandemic, Durga Puja faces a major obstacle in the City of Joy. PTI Mahalaya is here and we are 5 weeks away from the start of the festivities. Normally we would be less than a week away, but Mahalaya came early this year due to a celestial anomaly. But while there is always a feel in the air ahead of Pujas, this time it is missing, for obvious reasons. Planning in place? So how is Kolkata preparing for a major festival amid a pandemic. To be brutally honest, not too well. While some major Puja franchises have shut up shop and will not be holding mass gatherings due to COVID, many are planning on going ahead as if all is well. The state government has issued some rules, but has been unusually quiet on the matter. In fact only after September 30, shall we know if Pujas shall take place with the same intensity. PTI The problem is that even if the intensity and crowds are down by half, it is still a lot of people. And that's an extremely conservative estimate too. Truth be told, we do not know what will happen, but knowing the average Bong, people will venture out into the streets, COVID or no COVID. October 22 it begins October 22 is the date it all starts. But the build-up has already started. Kolkata and Durga Puja have a love affair that is centuries old, and it's unlikely COVID is coming in the middle of it all. PTI All we can do is wait, pray and hope for some sort of sanity to prevail. Cases are on the increase as it is, we do not need to further contribute to it. Bringing back employees to offices, reopening bars and increasing capacities at restaurants and retailers should be on the table, but businesses need to proceed with caution, a panel of business leaders said at a University of Houston webinar on Wednesday. The first reopening in May happened too fast, Bob Harvey, CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, said, but now that COVID-19 cases are on a downward trend, its time to begin reopening discussions again. A lot will depend, however, on reopening schools for in-person instruction. How can we reasonably talk about bringing people back into the office if people still have children at home theyre trying to provide virtual instruction to? Harvey said. A push for a phased transition to in-person instruction is likely to happen in the next 30 to 60 days, Harvey said, but he doesnt anticipate that all businesses will wait for schools to reopen. A survey conducted over the weekend by the partnership found that half the companies in Houston have brought back at least some nonessential workers to the office. Seventy percent of those businesses that brought back workers are looking to recall more. Forty percent of the businesses that did not bring back nonessential workers are considering doing so before the end of the year, according to the survey. If businesses bring more people to the office its imperative employees and customers continue to wear masks and follow other social distancing protocols, said William McKeon, CEO of the Texas Medical Center. We think its going to be a slow roll into this fall,McKeon said. We are not at the point New York City is, which has a positivity rate below 1 percent. The postivity rate is the percentage of people testing positive for the coronavirus. The Houston region has reported 172,268 COVID-19 cases, including 3,248 deaths. Houston has about a 6 percent positivity rate. It would need to fall well below 5 percent before any kind of reopening, McKeon said. Weve seen so many cities and countries think they had it beat when they were at four or five percent,McKeon said. Then it changed everything when it reopened. becca.carballo@chron.com Shen Yueyue (4th, R), President of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), and Huang Xiaowei (3rd, L), Secretary of the Leading Party Members' Group, Vice-President and First Member of the Secretariat of the ACWF, attends the Sixth China Medical Women's Congress and the 25th anniversary commemoration of the founding of the China Medical Women's Association in Beijing on September 12. [Women of China/Fan Wenjun] Shen Yueyue, President of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), and Huang Xiaowei, Secretary of the Leading Party Members' Group, Vice-President and First Member of the Secretariat of the ACWF, attended the Sixth China Medical Women's Congress and the 25th anniversary commemoration of the founding of the China Medical Women's Association (CMWA) in Beijing on September 12. Shen Yueyue, President of the All-China Women's Federation, speaks at the Sixth China Medical Women's Congress and the 25th anniversary commemoration of the founding of the China Medical Women's Association in Beijing on September 12. [Women of China/Fan Wenjun] Shen delivered a speech at the event. She noted that women medical workers resolutely responded to the call of General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), headed to the front line without hesitation, and demonstrated their love and even contributed their lives to the anti-COVID-19 battle. Shen said that women CPC members charged ahead and fought against the virus bravely, giving full play to their exemplary and leading role. Noting that young women medical workers were not afraid of hardships, difficulties or losing lives, showed their strength and sense of responsibility on the front line of the anti-epidemic battle, Shen said women medical workers fully deserved the title of heroines for their important contributions to the epidemic containment. Shen called on women medical workers to promote the great COVID-19 combat spirit, put people and their lives first, stick to their posts, perform their duties to protect the people's health and safety, uphold medical ethics, strive to excel professionally, and contribute to advancing the cause of healthcare. Shen also urged women medical workers to stay true to their original aspiration and mission, give full play to their professional advantages, go down to the grassroots level, the urban and rural communities and the families, and contribute to the protection of the health of all the people, the happiness and well-being of all the families, and to the advancement of the Healthy China initiative. Shen hoped the CMWA will further give play to its advantages and strive to build a platform to provide more opportunities and create better conditions for women medical workers. Shen expressed that the ACWF will continue to support its group members and the development of the CMWA, care for women medical workers and their families, and join hands to better serve women and children. Huang Xiaowei (R), Secretary of the Leading Party Members' Group and Vice-President and First Member of the Secretariat of the All-China Women's Federation, gives awards to the recipients of the honorary title of the national most beautiful anti-epidemic family at the Sixth China Medical Women's Congress and the 25th anniversary commemoration of the founding of the China Medical Women's Association in Beijing on September 12. [Women of China/Fan Wenjun] During the event, Shen and Huang presented awards to advanced individuals and collectives in the country's anti-COVID-19 battle, recipients of the honorary title of the national most beautiful anti-epidemic family, and role models and groups in the anti-virus battle from the CMWA. Some women role models from the China Medical Women's Association (CMWA) in the country's anti-COVID-19 battle are honored at the Sixth China Medical Women's Congress and the 25th anniversary commemoration of the founding of the CMWA in Beijing on September 12. [Women of China/Fan Wenjun] (Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China) Serum Institute of India that is conducting clinical trials for the Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is likely to start trials for the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. This development comes after drug regulator Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) allowed SII to resume its trials for the Oxford vaccine in India. The trial was put on hold following an adverse event in a participant. Adar Poonawalla-helmed Serum Institute had partnered with Novavax in August for the production of its coronavirus vaccine. The US drug developer said on Tuesday that it is planning to double its COVID vaccine manufacturing capacity to 2 billion doses annually. As part of the expanded agreement, Serum would manufacture the antigen component of the candidate NVX CoV2373. The Novavax-Serum Institute trials will be led by ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute, Pune. According to a report in The Economic Times, the trials are set to start in October. Pune-based Serum would have exclusive rights for the Novavax vaccine in India during the term of the deal and non-exclusive rights during the 'pandemic period'. This will apply in all countries, except upper-middle or high-income countries, as designated by WHO. Novavax had said that its coronavirus vaccine produced high levels of antibodies against coronavirus, as realised from the small, early-stage clinical trial conducted by them. Stanley C Erck, President of Novavax said that they are committed to equitable global delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine. "With this arrangement, we have now put in place a global supply chain that includes the recently acquired Praha Vaccines and partnerships with leading biologics manufacturers, enabling production on three continents," said Erck. He added that they are working with "extraordinary urgency" to develop the vaccine which is now in Phase 2 of clinical trials. Erck said they hope to start Phase 3 efficacy trials around the world in the coming weeks. Also read: Serum Institute gets nod to resume clinical trials of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine in India Also read: COVID-19 vaccine: Novavax aims for 2 billion doses with Serum Institute deal The World Socialist Web Site is publishing more messages of support for Dr. Joseph Scalice, who has come under attack from the Philippine Stalinists for his powerful August 26 lecture, First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte and the Communist Parties of the Philippines. The lecture examined the support given by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the various organizations that follow its political line, to authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016. Acutely sensitive to the criticism of the CPP, its founder Jose Maria Sison, without a shred of evidence, has denounced Dr. Scalice as a paid CIA agent and an informer for Duterte. Dr. Scalice, through the establishment of the historical record about the betrayals of the CPP, has done a service to the working class in the Philippines and internationally. Dr. Joseph Scalice We encourage our readers to come to the defence of Scalice, including by sending statements of support to the WSWS opposing the slanderous attack on him by the Communist Party of the Philippines and sharing his lecture broadly. Phoebe, university student in Melbourne, Australia: Dr. Scalices lecture was eye opening in the exposure of the Stalinist-Maoist opportunism of the CPP throughout their history. Sisons attacks against Scalice only further expose the lengths Stalinists will go to in falsifying their reactionary history and continual betrayal of the Filipino working class, as Sison can offer no defence of the CPPs political role. I commend Dr. Scalice for bravely delivering this lecture in the face of these attacks and for his strong defence of historical truth. These threats must be taken seriously and I stand in support of Dr. Scalice and his historically significant work. Aditya, a student from Pakistan, in Australia: The sheer volume and depth of the evidence Joseph uses to prove his point about the deceptiveness of the CPP is incredible. The slander he is receiving from them is not just shameful, it is possibly threatening. We praise Joseph Scalice for his work as a historian, and for his well-documented honesty in the face of the fascist Duterte and the lying CPP. This evidence of the betrayal of ordinary people by pseudo-left groups like the CPP is instrumental to preventing future betrayals by educating people, and we must not allow historians like Joseph Scalice to be bullied and threatened for it. Antoinette, student in Melbourne: Joseph Scalice has presented a very well set-out and researched analysis of the history of the communist parties of the Philippines and their repeated support for dictatorial and authoritarian leaders such as the current Rodrigo Duterte. The evidence he presents clearly and calmly demonstrates this, despite claims from the leader of the CPP that attempt to deny it, and reveals it to be a consequences of their Stalinist ideology of the necessity of an economic revolution of the bourgeoisie before any socialist revolution can occur. Joseph Scalice has shown a great deal of courage by openly sharing his findings and thus defending historical truth, and his academic freedom needs to be defended. This is especially true when his work exposes glaring falsehoods whose persistence have such tangible and disastrous effects on the rights and wellbeing of the people of the Philippines. Mohammad H, an IT worker in Sydney: As a person interested in the labour movement, I watched Joseph Scalices recent lecture on the history of the Communist Parties in the Philippines and was impressed by his work ethic and historical discoveries. Scalices painstaking effort combing through records has produced findings I expect will be deemed pivotal to understanding the Filipino labour history by the academic community in years to come. The desperate attacks and accusations against Scalice, particularly the accusation of being CIA affiliated, are clear attempts to silence Scalice by those embarrassed by his revelations. Scalices own work shows that the attacks made by the CPP leadership carry the threat of political violence. I urge people to come to the defence of Scalice against these accusations and to appreciate his academic work by watching and sharing his lecture. Chris R, transport worker in New Zealand: Stalinism was and is the gravedigger of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It murdered revolutionaries, destroyed the Bolshevik Party and assassinated Leon Trotsky in a failed attempt to silence the Fourth International he created. Sison, of the wretched Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), a Stalinist-Maoist outfit, slanders and threatens historian Joseph Scalice because he cannot answer in principled debate and discussion the historical analysis of Stalinism in this country, and the disgusting crimes it has committed in the service of capitalism. The fact of the matter is that the betrayals of the CPP and previous outfits against the Philippine working class are in line with the anti-working class politics and class character of Stalinist organisations: support for the fascist President Duterte and his war-on-drugs death squads, false slanders of Trotskyists as CIA agents, support for a non-existent progressive bourgeoisie this goes all the way back to the dispute in Russia over the Stalinist bureaucracys adoption of the two-stage theory of revolution, when they opposed Trotskys theory of permanent revolution as the bureaucracy defended its privileges against those who actually made the revolution in the first place. Bob, a WSWS reader in California: I would like to add my support to historian Joseph Scalices lecture exposing the treacherous record of the Philippine CPP, its founder Jose Maria Sison, and their violence-ridden, history-distorting Stalinist program of support for the reactionary national bourgeoisie, and the Duterte fascist regime. I strongly condemn Sisons slanderous and mendacious attack on Scalice branding him as a CIA agent. This accusation and threat is an attempt to deflect attention away from the crimes of the CPP. It is scapegoating an historian for having the principles and courage to warn and tell the truth to the whole world about the dangerous anti-democratic and anti-working class role of the Stalinists. It is Stalinism, not Trotskyism, which has a long history of being the main prop for, and agency of imperialism. Hector Cordon, US: I would like to begin my comments by thanking Joseph Scalice for his courageous exposure of the crimes against the working class carried out by the Philippine Communist Party under Jose Sison. In listening to Josephs lecture, it struck me that a historical shift was being consciously documented. Harold Isaacs meticulously traced the betrayals of the Chinese Communist Party in his powerful book The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution of 1938. The defeat of this revolution contributed to the strengthening of Stalin and Stalinism. The critical difference today is that Scalices lecture and work is educating workers, youth and the oppressed in this history, before the working class enters into major revolutionary battles. By revealing the lies propagated by Sison & Co., their history of betrayals, their class orientation to the bourgeoisie and, thus, deepening their crisis, this will prepare a new generation of fighters seeking how to topple capitalism, and arm them with an understanding of Stalinisms role: as the gravedigger of the revolution. President Donald Trump has come under fire from critics who blasted him for describing the deaths of Americans using the political terminology of red states and blue states. Trump made the comment at a White House press conference Wednesday while pointing at a chart showing U.S. coronavirus deaths about to hit 200,000 compared to modeling showing they could have hit more than 2 million if the U.S. took no action. 'We're down in this territory, and that's despite the fact that the blue states had tremendous death rates,' Trump said, pointing to a chart. 'If you take the blue states out, were at a level that I dont think anybody in the world would be at, were really at a very low level,' Trump said. The president was immediately slammed for seeking to remove from the equation states with Democratic voting patterns or governors. Of the ten states worst-hit by virus deaths, five are run by Republican governors, while Michigan and Pennsylvania have Democratic governors but were won by Trump in 2016. The worst two affected states, New York and New Jersey are blue states and account for a quarter of all current deaths. While the virus first began devastating largely Democratic cities like New York in the spring, it has since spread around the country and many of the worst summer spikes in infections and deaths have been in Republican-run states like Florida and Texas. Critics immediately piled on and on Thursday Joe Biden tweeted: 'The job is to be president of all Americans. For the love of God start acting like it.' 'If you take the blue states out, were at a level that I dont think anybody in the world would be at, were really at a very low level,' President Donald Trump said at the White House Wednesday speaking about the coronavirus All the states hit by the virus have Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters living there Red state comparison: How the U.S. voted in 2016. Defining states as red or blue is not precise - THE WORST 10 STATES FOR DEATHS AND WHO'S IN CHARGE New York 32,662 - DEMOCRATIC New Jersey 16,054 - DEMOCRATIC Texas 14,803 - REPUBLICAN California 14,716 - REPUBLICAN Florida 12,938 - REPUBLICAN Massachusetts 9.245 - REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR, VOTED CLINTON Illinois 8,622 - DEMOCRATIC Pennsylvania 7,7963 - DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR, VOTED TRUMP Michigan 6,944 - DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR, VOTED TRUMP Georgia 6,2276 - REPUBLICAN Advertisement Biden's advisor Ron Klain tweeted: 'Trump said today that blue states are to blame for COVID deaths. First, it's the President's job to protect the country. The whole country. All the states. Trump failed. Second, of the six states with the most COVID deaths so far, half have Dem Govs, half have GOP Govs.' Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, a blue state,' Tweeted: 'Dear @realDonaldTrump: Please stop dividing us. We are not the Red States of America. Or the Blue States of America. We are the United States of America. At the end of the day, we are all Americans.' And Biden-supporting actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: '"If you take the blue states out..." What a f****** a******. This needs to be seen to believe,' adding the hashtag '#UnitedStatesOfAmerica.' The comments came as the president continued to praise his administration's effort against the coronavirus, brushing off questions about why the U.S. has about a quarter of global cases when it is only about 4 per cent of the world's population. 'I think we did a great job with coronavirus, except at public relations,' he told Greta Van Susteren in an interview for a Gray TV special being broadcast Thursday. 'We did a great job except public relations-wise. My people got outplayed,' Trump said. The attack on blue states' records came in a freewheeling almost hour-long briefing on coronavirus, in which Trump claimed his own CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, was 'confused' and 'mistaken' for saying vaccines will not reach the general public until next year, and saying masks are more effective than jabs. That led to Dr. Redfield walking back what he said despite it having been evidence given under oath to the Senate. Redfield told a Senate committee Wednesday 'this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine' and said a vaccine wouldn't be widely available to Americans until the second quarter of 2021. At the briefing the president said he had called Redfield to set the record straight and said the CDC boss had agreed he 'answered that question incorrectly' about the masks. Redfield responded on social media Wednesday evening, where he appeared to bow to pressure from the president insisting 'I 100% believe in the importance of vaccines and the importance in particular of a #COVID19 vaccine'. The top virologist 'clarified' he meant the current 'best defense' against the virus is masks and other 'mitigation efforts' while there is no vaccine yet on the market. Blue state lawmaker Rep. Ted Lieu - a California Democrat - blasted the comments Half the hardest hit states have GOP governors, wrote a Joe Biden advisor After the virus slammed urban areas during the spring, states with Republican governors faced a difficult summer 'I 100% believe in the importance of vaccines and the importance in particular of a #COVID19 vaccine. A COVID-19 vaccine is the thing that will get Americans back to normal everyday life,' Redfield wrote on Twitter. 'The best defense we currently have against this virus are the important mitigation efforts of wearing a mask, washing your hands, social distancing and being careful about crowds.' Social media users gave a mixed response to the virologist's tweets, with some calling on him to resign for changing his advice on the deadly virus at the behest of Trump. 'Are you confused and/or mistaken? I saw you give sworn testimony this morning. Trump says you were wrong and that he called you about it,' one person tweeted. 'Would you change your testimony after taking that phone call from him? You really should resign.' Others urged him to stand by his testimony and said he would have 'blood on your hands' if he bowed to pressure from Trump. 'Most important moment of your life. If you have an ounce of integrity, you will stick to your testimony and refute the president,' one person tweeted. 'If Trump still hangs you out to dry, you needs to quit immediately. If not, you are complicit with Trump and have blood on your hands.' Another wrote: 'Please stand your ground and stand behind your statement. We need someone we can trust with this very important information. 'The American people need you to take a stand. We need you and the qualified doctors and science to do the speaking. Please.' Social media users gave a mixed response to the virologist's tweets, with some calling on him to resign for changing his advice on the deadly virus at the behest of Trump and others urging him to stand his ground against the president Dr. Robert Redfield testified Wednesday morning before a Senate committee and said a ' face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.' He also said a COVID-19 vaccine wouldn't be widely available until quarter two or three of 2021 Told you so: How Joe Biden reacted during the freewheeling White House briefing Trump said he called Redfield who he claimed then admitted he made a mistake under oath. 'When I called up Robert today, I said to him, 'What's with the mask?' He said, 'I think I answered that question incorrectly.' I think maybe he misunderstood it, I mean you know, you have two questions - maybe misunderstood both of them.' But then Trump said he still had confidence in Redfield. 'I do, I do,' he answered. But he continued to say Redfield heard wrong. 'He sort of, I think, maybe misunderstood a question,' Trump said again. Trump even brought Dr. Scott Atlas, who's held a number of contrarian positions on the coronavirus and is not an epidemiologist, up to the podium to provide assurance the government was prepared to distribute the vaccine imminently. As the briefing unfolded Biden tweeted: 'When I said I trust vaccines, and I trust the scientists, but I don't trust Donald Trump this is what I meant.' Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has hailed the agreement normalising relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates which the two countries signed at a White House ceremony on Tuesday as a historic step that equals Israels previous peace deals with Egypt and Jordan. The Israeli leader also boasted that the agreement with the UAE vindicated his Netanyahu doctrine of peace for peace, rather than land for peace. But even peace with a country with which Israel does not share a border and has never fought a war required Netanyahu to give up his plans to annex large parts of the West Bank. So, there was a land for peace aspect to the deal after all. More important, Netanyahus doctrine practically buries the concept underlying the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative: that an Israeli-Palestinian peace should be the precondition for normalization of Arab states relations with Israel. The Arab League itself has rejected the Palestinians request to condemn the Israel-UAE deal, and the pact also signals the defeat of the Israeli lefts vision of Palestine as the key to peace with the Arab world. Throughout the many decades of Arab-Israeli antagonism, Arab states have betrayed the Palestinians no less than Israel has. In his 1979 peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made far-reaching commitments on the Palestinian question. But both leaders knew that theirs was a separate peace driven by vital strategic needs as shown by its subsequent survival despite Israels ever deepening occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands. Why, then, has Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAEs ruler, invited the rage of the betrayed Palestinians by normalising relations with the Jewish state? First, he proved to be a man with the courage to call things by their name. Read More Analysis: Collapsing Indian economy spells trouble for democracy Gulf states including the UAE and Saudi Arabia have had discreet security relations with Israel for years. As a major military and technological power in the Middle East, Israel has become a necessary ally for conservative regimes shaken by the 2011 Arab Spring, the threat of Islamist radicalism, and Irans growing regional clout. But it is mainly the fear of a withdrawal from the region by the United States that is bringing Arab states closer to Israel. They saw how US President Donald Trump refrained from any direct military response to Irans devastating September 2019 attack on Saudi Arabias oil installations. Moreover, Trump didnt even respond to Irans downing a few months earlier of a sophisticated US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz. The idea that peace with Israel also means peace with America had always been a fundamental motive behind the Arabs decision to consider reconciliation with the Jewish state. Sadat signed the 1979 peace agreement because he wanted to shift Egypts strategic orientation from the Soviet Union to the US. The $2 billion in annual military aid that Egypt still receives from the US is a direct product of that peace. And Syria, Israels staunchest Arab enemy, became interested in peace only after the Soviet Union collapsed. The Emiratis do not need Americas money, but they do need its continuous involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. Israel is the guarantee that America will always be around, and offers the UAE a path into the US Congress, where arms deals and financial packages are approved. The Trump administrations apparent decision to sell F-35 stealth fighter jets to the UAE has been an important objective in the Emirati peace strategy toward Israel. These advanced warplanes which only the US and Israel currently possess will secure Americas engagement with the UAE, and add muscle to a small country that has global ambitions and many enemies. Chief among these foes are Qatar and Turkey. Both countries support the Muslim Brotherhood, a UAE nemesis, which explains Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans virulent reaction to the normalization deal. In Libya, the UAE is fighting together with Egypt and Russia in support of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, while Turkey and Qatar are backing the internationally recognized government in Tripoli. The UAE has also sought to check Turkeys punitive incursions against Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Framing the Israel-UAE agreement as part of the continuous effort to contain Iran, as Netanyahu and the Trump administration are doing, is a convenient way to make the F-35 arms deal palatable to increasingly isolationist US public opinion. The truth is that the UAE has been pursuing a prudent strategy vis-a-vis Iran. It recently abandoned the Saudi-led coalition in the war against Irans Houthi proxies in Yemen, and has even disengaged from Trumps sanctions regime against Iran. Be that as it may, Netanyahu is right to say that the Palestinians are losing their most important strategic asset: their veto power over an all-Arab peace with Israel. Bahrain has already announced that it will follow in the UAEs footsteps, and more Arab countries are likely to do so as well. The region is changing, and the Arabs are accepting that Israel is a legitimate strategic player; Palestine, the supposed epicentre of the regions worries, has become a disposable cause. The Palestinians must recognise that they have brought this situation on themselves by their serial rejection of peace offers in the past. How could they assume that the Arab states would forever mortgage their national interests in a changing region to fulfill Palestines implausible expectations? Should they not now shift strategy and engage Israel in the search for a realistic peace plan? Balcones Heights police officers shot a man threatening residents of an apartment complex with what they initially thought was a gun, Police Chief John Jahanara said. The man was hospitalized in stable condition, and both officers have been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation At around 7 a.m. Thursday, police responded to calls of a shirtless man in his late 20s threatening people with a gun in the complex parking lot located in the 1100 block of Babcock Road. When officers arrived, the man ran in between vehicles and ignored commands to show his hands, Jahanara said. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox According to Jahanara, the man lunged for the weapon and the two officers opened fire, hitting him in his knee. The chief said he believes less than five shots were fired between the two officers. Jahanara said what witnesses and officers initially thought was a gun was a silver pipe with cloth wrapped around it. Jahanara said he could see where the weapon looked like a gun from farther away. Balcones Heights will release body camera footage from the shooting in an effort to maintain transparency with the community, the chief said. This is the department's first officer-involved shooting since Janahara took office more than a year ago. The officers involved were an 18-year veteran and a 9-year veteran with the department. Investigators are still trying to identify the man, who refused to give his name to officers. Jahanara said the man profusely apologized to the responding officers but became uncooperative once homicide detectives arrived on the scene. This shooting comes two days after San Antonio police shot and killed a man while serving an arrest warrant less than four miles away. Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway The Executive Director of the Ark Foundation, Ghana, Mrs Angela Dwamena Aboagye, has reiterated the call for medical bills of raped and defiled victims to be absorbed by the National Health Insurance Scheme. Mrs Dwamena Aboagye said another option was to allow hospitals to use their Internally Generated Fund to take care of medical bills of raped and defiled victims. In a telephone interview with the Ghana News Agency, the Executive Director noted that Section Eight of the Gender Based Violence Act made provision for victims to be treated free of charge but that was not being implemented. The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in its 2020 Election Manifesto promised to scrap the system where rape victims are required to pay for their medical bills. The Party said it would put measures in place to ensure that persons who were sexually abused had access to free medical services. Raped and defiled victims are required to pay medical bills, a situation, which denies victims, access to justice and the fight against Gender Based Violence. The Executive Director said the NDCs promise was not new and that her organisation and other institutions had over the years advocated for free services for raped and defiled victims once they were accompanied by Police Officers. She said unfortunately, some hospitals were charging between GH250.00 and GH800.00 as medical fees for victims of sexual abuse and that the practice was affecting the fight against Domestic Violence because medical report forms were crucial evidential materials in court and most parents were unable to afford the fees. We have been advocating for such free medical services for raped and defiled victims since the Domestic Violence Act, Act 732 (2007) was passed by Parliament in June 2007, she added. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Xu Nanfeng is patrolling on the Sinai Peninsula. (Photo/ courtesy of the author) By Xu Nanfeng, a UNMO from the PLA of the first batch Five Chinese military members, one of whom was me, were dispatched to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) as UN Military Observers (UNMOs) in April of 1990. This marked the beginning of Chinas participation in the UN peacekeeping operations. Even today, thirty years later, detailed memories of the history-making experience are still vivid and alive in my mind. The five of us were divided in two groups after joining the UNTSO. Two buddies and I were in the Observer Group Egypt (OGE), mainly performing missions of guarding garrison posts, patrol, and monitoring ceasefires on the Sinai Peninsula. The other two were incorporated into Observer Group Golan-Damascus (OGG-D) in Syria, mainly responsible for providing administrative and logistical support to the observers stationed in the Golan Heights. The two groups would take a rotation after half a year. The OGE has deployed six sentry posts all through the Sinai Peninsula. The natural conditions therein are quite complex along with the severe weather in the endless desert, and its road network was badly damaged. In addition, there were about a million landmines left on this land after several Middle East wars. I felt the risk during the first patrol mission in the vicinity of sentry posts. You had to passing through land forms of various kinds like hills, ravines, slopes and pits all the way, and the difficulty of driving can thereby be anticipated. Meanwhile, you could see anti-tank mines half exposed on both sides of roads now and then. I was told that only by following the ruts and special markers drawn on the sketches, could the maximum safety be guaranteed. However, these are not necessarily 100% reliable since frequent sandstorms and floods could bury the ruts, changing the landforms to a certain degree. On May 27, 1990, I was ordered to patrol along Route 4-1 of El Arish Sentry Post, which had long been cut into sections by floods. To complete the patrol, I need to make a detour by going through the desert, where the ruts that could have given directions disappeared soon after I entered the desert. After determining the approximate direction with the help of maps, compass and distant mountains, I continued to drive forward, encountering two suspected minefields and fine sand belts on the way. The worries of bumping into mines or getting trapped in sand belts made me constantly nervous. Fortunately, I finally managed to cross the desert. Later, I learned that this route had disoriented many observers. In less than two months, I got promoted from a trainee observer to a senior observer in charge of sentry posts, setting a new record for the promotion of UNMOs with the UNTSO at that time. A foreign UNMO told me following my promotion, everyone looked at you critically at the beginning due to unfamiliarity, but you have proved the strength of the Chinese servicemen in your action. He was right. Thirty years ago, the level of interaction between the Chinese military and the militaries of other countries was not comparable to that of today. UN peacekeeping operations were a brand new field to Chinese soldiers at that time, and correspondingly the Chinese servicemen were unfamiliar to the UN peacekeeping forces too. Therefore, the five of us were eager to make use of various opportunities to promote exchanges with foreign military counterparts, to increase mutual trust, and to resolve doubts in a targeted manner, while performing tasks. The UNMOs from various countries stationed in sentry posts were required to take turns to cook. When it was our turn, we would carefully prepare to let our foreign partners taste the Chinese flavor. At the table, we talked from food to culture, from China to the world, and from war to peace. Over time, we have become good friends with our partners in the post, and they have also deepened their understanding of the Chinese troops. There is a sign pole erected at St. Catherine Sentry Post, on which multiple nameplates indicating country names and distances have been nailed, witnessing the efforts of peacekeepers from various countries input for peace. Before leaving the Sinai Peninsula, I cut a rectangular arrow out of the aluminum shell of a pop can, wrote BEIJING CHINA 7500KM on it, and nailed it firmly onto the sign pole towards Beijing. The Chinese mark has been engraved on the Sinai Peninsula and Chinese peacekeepers will also be remembered by the members in the UN peacekeeping family ever after. Water bottles are seen in a hotel room where Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny stayed during his recent visit in the Siberian city of Tomsk By Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova MOSCOW (Reuters) - The nerve agent used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detected on an empty water bottle from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, suggesting he was poisoned there and not at the airport as first thought, his team said on Thursday. Navalny fell violently ill on a flight in Russia last month and was airlifted to Berlin for treatment. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden have established he was poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent, a poison developed by the Soviet military, though Russia denies this and says it has seen no evidence. A video posted on Navalny's Instagram account showed members of his team searching the room he had just left in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on Aug. 20, an hour after they learned he had fallen sick in suspicious circumstances. "It was decided to gather up everything that could even hypothetically be useful and hand it to the doctors in Germany. The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was quite obvious," the post said. The video of the abandoned hotel room shows two water bottles on a desk, and another on a bedside table. Navalny's team, wearing protective gloves, are seen placing items into blue plastic bags. "Two weeks later, a German laboratory found traces of Novichok precisely on the bottle of water from the Tomsk hotel room," the post said. "And then more laboratories that took analyses from Alexei confirmed that that was what poisoned Navalny. Now we understand: it was done before he left his hotel room to go to the airport." Previously, Navalny's aides had said they suspected he had been poisoned with a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk airport. Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and an ally of Navalny, said his team had outmanoeuvred the FSB security service with their quick thinking. "They took the evidence from under their noses and shipped it out of the country," he said. Story continues Navalny's ally Georgy Alburov told Reuters "the bottles flew with Alexei" when he was airlifted to Germany on Aug. 22. Navalny is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent political opponent but has not been allowed to form his own party. His investigations of official corruption, published on YouTube and Instagram, have reached audiences of many millions. He is being treated in a Berlin hospital. Another supporter, Lyubov Sobol, said his recovery would take a long time. "REAL INVESTIGATION" Speaking on Navalny's YouTube channel, Alburov said: "We continue to demand a serious, real investigation and we know where the results will lead. They will lead to us finding out that behind the poisoning of Alexei stand the Kremlin, Putin, the FSB, who organised all this." The Kremlin has called the accusation groundless, saying it would make no sense for it to poison Navalny and then allow him to travel for medical treatment in another country where the poison would be detected. It has said it needs to see more evidence before a formal criminal investigation is opened. Germany, France, Britain and other nations have demanded explanations from Russia, and there have been calls for new sanctions against Moscow. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday that Germany had asked it for technical assistance. The head of Navalny's anti-corruption foundation in Moscow, Ivan Zhdanov, told Reuters that an investigator from Tomsk had visited its office on Wednesday and wanted to talk to two of its employees who were with the politician on his visit to Siberia. (Additional reporting by Alexander Marrow and Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber; writing by Mark Trevelyan, editing by Kevin Liffey, Jon Boyle and Timothy Heritage) New Orleans residents living near Childrens Hospital have been unhappy for months about the hospitals decision to move its helicopter operations from one side of the Uptown campus to another during its $300 million renovation. Now a City Hall decision that made the move permanent has further upset them, enough to consider legal action, a lawyer hired by the Audubon Riverside Neighborhood Association said. From front porches on Tchoupitoulas Street, neighbors can see the helicopter when it lands at the edge of the hospital campus. Before they see it, they hear it. Its like its inside the house, said Arthur Wisdom, 59, who lives across the street from the new landing pad. When the helicopter comes in, its loud enough to shake windows and stop conversation, neighbors said. Usually there is about one landing per day, but sometimes there are two or three, they said. Children's, which is operated by LCMC Health, owns a blue-and-white striped Eurocopter, a twin-engine aircraft nicknamed Abby that is used to ferry young, often critically ill patients for medical treatment. For years, the hospital's helipad was located on the far side of the hospital campus near the Mississippi River and the Henry Clay Avenue Wharf. But during the hospital's renovation, which began in 2017 and has been projected to end in 2021, take-offs and landings of the helicopter were moved to a helipad closer to Tchoupitoulas Street between Henry Clay and Calhoun Street. That puts it about a block closer to the neighborhood and right across the street from some homes. Wisdom said he and almost 100 other neighbors aren't against Childrens use of a helicopter. They want the hospital to go back to using the older landing pad, which they said never bothered anyone who lives nearby. Childrens Hospital said that the change of the landing site was related to patient and crew safety. The hospital would not provide more specifics, though it appears that the former site of the helipad was low to the ground and near the hospital's main entrance, while the new site is atop a multi-story building and closer to the ambulance entrance. +15 Here's what's next for East Jefferson hospital after voters approved sale to LCMC Health With resounding voter approval this weekend for their purchase of East Jefferson General Hospital, LCMC Health officials now face the task of Childrens Hospital relocated the helistop for our pediatric critical-care air transport to enhance the safety of our critically ill patients and flight crew, LCMC communications director Kristen Robinson said. She added that Childrens officials met and discussed the new location of the landing site with neighbors "through a series of town hall meetings, regular email updates and providing complete and accurate information. Charlie Monge, a New Orleans resident, spent more than 100 days in Childrens Hospital in 2017 while his son, born premature at 25 weeks, gained strength. He spent many nights watching the helicopter bring in kids at the former landing site. Before the helicopter would even land, there would be doctors and nurses waiting, said Monge. A lot were NICU babies born at small hospitals across the country. They had little empty cases for the babies to put them into. After defending Children's in an online post, Monge heard from an old acquaintance who lived nearby. She invited him to her house so she could explain the associations point of view. While their children played, a helicopter landed on the new pad directly across the street. Monge, a self-described heavy sleeper and son of a pilot, said it probably wouldnt bother him. But if theres a solution for the people whom it does bother, he said, the hospital should compromise. If they still have the pad in the back, they should switch to using it, said Monge. Moving that pad, unless they had a good reason to do it, was a pretty dumb idea. 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 Not all the neighbors are bothered by noise from the helicopter. Martha Landymore, 55, is a dialysis nurse who has lived a block away from Childrens for four years. She doesn't work for the hospital, and she said the sound of the helicopter reminds her that children are getting medical care and people are working to save their lives. If I hear it, I know what its doing, so I dont care, said Landymore. I think its awesome. But others said theyre concerned about their health. Using a smartphone feature that measures sound levels, theyve registered the helicopters at 104 decibels in their yards. That's equivalent to a motorcycle, subway or shouted conversation. Childrens Hospital announced it was conducting sound surveys in July. It has not released the results, neighbors said. Pregnancy during pandemic: How providers are rewriting birthing care standards amid coronavirus At this point, the medical procedure that Lacy Smith has scheduled for Friday at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans could hardly be put off The legal fight that's brewing between the hospital and the neighbors concerns a zoning issue related to how the landing site is used. The city's Department of Safety and Permits verified the use of the site as a "helistop" in August. At the heart of the decision was whether the landing location was a helistop, a minimal space built for unloading and loading passengers and cargo, or a "heliport," a permanent storage place for the helicopter. Helistops are permitted in that area of the city, but heliports require special permits. The hospital maintains that the site is a helistop, although the helicopter is often there. Childrens owns the helicopter but leases it to Acadian Companies, which has Lakefront Airport space that it says acts as a permanent base for the aircraft. Because of the time sensitivity of pediatric critical care air transport activity, Acadian frequently positions a helicopter at the Childrens Hospital helistop so that the Childrens clinical transport team can access the air transport vehicle quickly, counsel for Childrens Hospital wrote in emails to the city on July 24. But the neighborhood associations lawyer, Henry Kinney, said the classification is incorrect, based on how often the helicopter is stored at the new landing pad and the amount of jet fuel and supplies on hand at the hospital location. Further, he said, the hospital did not secure permits for the six-story tower. There is no building permit issued for either one of those applications, said Kinney. They are operating with no building permit or any certificate of occupancy. The neighbors appealed the decision classifying the site as a helistop earlier this month. The appeal is still pending. Nobody wants Childrens Hospital to be without helicopter service for patients, Kinney said. For the last 10 years, they have operated the heliport without any objection from my clients. They need to go back to using that facility. A letter from John Nickens, the president and chief executive officer of Childrens, to neighbors on Aug. 27 said the hospital would limit its communication with neighbors after the group sought legal counsel. Wisdom said he and other neighbors care about the hospital's mission of serving the region's children. But he thinks the hospital kept neighbors in the dark about a decision that is disrupting their lives. The last two years of construction, there were neighborhood meetings. Not once did the matter of a helipad come up, said Wisdom. I want to be able to support Childrens Hospital, I really do. Whether its observing, firsthand, how a Gentoo Penguins feathers trap air or feeling the rough, tooth-like rasp of an Epaulette Sharks skin, there are countless educational moments that are only possible by visiting the Tennessee Aquarium. In the last 28 years, opportunities such as these to directly connect with the natural world have made the Aquarium an exciting destination for countless students, many of whom are homeschooled. On Wednesday the Aquarium will celebrate the indispensable role of parent-educators with discounted admission for homeschool families and groups. For homeschool families, the Aquarium offers exciting opportunities because it is a place where family members of all ages can learn together, says Dr. Brooke Gorman, the Aquariums director of science education. In a homeschool setting, there is more freedom to let students interests guide their learning, and the Aquarium offers many opportunities for one student or a group of students to get excited about different topics. On Homeschool Day, eligible guests can take advantage of discounted, timed-entry tickets at $29.95 for adults and $9 for students ages 5-18. Homeschool families visiting on Homeschool Day also can purchase IMAX tickets and Aquarium memberships at a discounted rate. Discounted tickets may be purchased in advance by visiting: https://community.tnaqua.org/events/2020/homeschool-day-at-the-tennessee-aquarium In accordance with local health mandates, all guests ages 12 and older are required to wear a face covering during their visit. All tickets are timed-entry to ensure proper physical distancing within the Aquariums buildings. At the Aquarium, homeschool students and their families will travel from the mountains to the sea on a wondrous, animal-filled journey that has captivated tens of millions of visitors for almost 30 years. As they wind their way through the River Journey and Ocean Journey buildings, guests will encounter a host of amazing species, from sleek North American River Otters and toothy American Alligators to enormous Japanese Spider Crabs and graceful Green Sea Turtles. For homeschool parents, the potential for in-the-moment education abounds during an Aquarium visit: When better to discuss the benefits of camouflage than when face to face with masters of the craft like Common Cuttlefish or a Giant Pacific Octopus? If symbiotic partnerships are on the lesson plan, the unlikely pairing of Clownfish and Anemones is a cant-miss chance to discuss natures Odd Couple survival strategy. Sexual dimorphisim is a big, scary phrase, but it basically means boys and girls look different. Theres no more adorable example of this than John and Jessie, the Aquariums newly exhibited pair of Red-collared Brown Lemurs. Its hard to ignore how wide a Paddlefishs jaw expands at mealtime or the way Southern Stingrays glide over their food when they feed. What do animals mouths say about how and what they eat? Homeschool students also will be among the first to experience the all-new Turtles of the World gallery. This collection of exhibits, including a working turtle nursery, offers a prime opportunity to learn how these amazing reptiles have survived since the age of the dinosaurs and the numerous challenges they now face while living alongside humans. The Aquarium is such a great place for so many different subjects, Dr. Gorman says. Not only can families learn about science, but also social studies, art, math, language arts and reading. I would consider planning on spending a whole day to help students see the cross-curricular nature of a place like the Aquarium. The Aquarium isnt just an educational destination but a dedicated partner to enhancing science learning well beyond its campus on the banks of the Tennessee River. With so many children homebound and in need of mental stimulation and distraction since the onset of the global health crisis, the Aquariums award-winning education department developed Weekday Wonders. This curated collection of downloadable science-at-home activities is designed to educate and inspire kids and their parents to be more active while seeking out wonder in the natural world within the confines of their own backyard. Weekday Wonders activity modules, arranged in five-day packages, represent 12 weeks worth of fun, thought-provoking activities. The included activities range from animal-themed yoga poses to try out, daily nature journaling as well as STEM-based games and crafting projects. Whether theyre homeschooled or not, parents can still take advantage of these free materials by visiting tnaqua.org/aquarium-at-home/weekday-wonders/. Despite concerns ranging from health risks to espionage, the fifth-generation technology for mobile connectivity (5G) has prompted a global adoption race and theres no going back. Contrary to conspiracy theories, its a necessary and positive step toward a fully digital economy. In Canada, the three biggest telecom companies have joined the race and announced 5G deployment in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and elsewhere. What Luddites need to understand is that 5G is not just about faster internet on smartphones. Like its predecessor 4G, which made possible the rise of the app economy with billion-dollar startups, 5G could enable $13.2 trillion(U.S.) annually worth of goods and services by 2035. It has the potential to leapfrog societies into more sophisticated business models and multiply jobs. If 4G made Uber possible, unseating a deeply-rooted monopoly, 5G will take technological disruption to the next level. This technology is needed to handle growing global data traffic. Its the result of more than a decade of multi-party investment and efforts in research and development. A key motivation was to solve the last-mile problem: the delivery of signal from service providers to users. Wiring being too expensive for competing firms, transmission had to be wireless. Qualcomm, one of the firms behind 5Gs development, estimates the 5G economy will support around 22 million jobs and produce $3.6 trillion (U.S.) value added in 2035. That year, Qualcomm expects 5Gs total contribution to real gross domestic product growth to be $2.1 trillion (U.S.), the equivalent of Italys economy. Connection speeds will jump a hundredfold, bringing a seven-minute download with 4G down to just 10 seconds with 5G. Latency the time a signal takes to go from its source to the network and back will drop to almost zero. That means flawless high-definition concerts, sports, conferences and gaming streaming. Moreover, 5Gs superior energy efficiency means less battery consumption and not just in phones. Since we will be able to connect to myriad machines such as appliances, wearables, cars and medical devices, this will be a boon for internet of things (IoT) industries. As the internet frontier expands, more IoT applications will bring smart homes, cities and schools within the reach of common citizens, not just the wealthy. The 68 billion IoT devices estimated to exist by 2026 will require manufacturers, technicians, developers and customer-service jobs. Online, suspicions about 5G seem to be spreading faster than COVID-19, leading to off-line consequences. In May, two cell towers were set on fire in Montreal, bringing the total to four in Quebec. Similar vandalism is happening across the world, giving telecoms and cities pause about rolling out the technology. The 5G infrastructure is complex and requires a costly transition. Carriers are updating their equipment and installing tons of cell sites about the size of a pizza box in closer proximity to one another. Politicians and celebrities who should know better are peddling the unsupported claims that 5G is bad for human health and is somehow linked to COVID-19. Neither is true. As Atlantic staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany summarized in her overview of the scientific evidence: We have been placing antennae on our bodies and next to our heads almost 24 hours a day for two decades, and the world has not seen an epidemic of brain cancer. However, a legitimate concern has to do with privacy. With 5G, governments and companies could access far more information from citizens and consumers as their daily lives become inextricably tied to 5G devices. The fact that Huawei, a firm with ties to the Chinese communist regime, is the worlds leading provider of 5G equipment has also fuelled fears of industrial and political espionage. Canada, the United States and the European Union, to name a few, have either barred or limited Huaweis role in 5G upgrading. Telecoms in other countries should follow the lead of Bell, Telus and Rogers. They have instead contracted Finnish equipment suppliers Ericsson and Nokia to deploy 5G in Canada. We cant let fear stop progress when the benefits so outweigh the risks. Road accidents kill thousands every year, yet we keep driving cars. They are much safer now thanks to research and development efforts that lead to life-saving technology. Technology has been one of the most powerful forces in history. We often forget that a pocket device, in a handful of years, has brought people, money and ideas together like nothing before. Let us be vigilant, but let us not lose sight of the immense prosperity ahead of us. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global eyewear market is estimated to enroll at a CAGR of 5.5% during the gauge time frame. The market is required to collect an estimation of roughly USD 185 billion before the finish of 2024. The upsurge in the number of visual inadequacies and expanding mindfulness concerning eye assessments are relied upon to give a force to the development. Developing reliance on the younger age on electronic gadgets, for example, PCs, TVs, and cell phones has prompted drawn-out presentation to radiation, causing strain on the eyes, which is bringing about the acquisition of more eyewear items. Also, a constant change in focal point solutions has brought about the customary reestablishment of exhibitions, which is relied upon to impact the interest emphatically. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/7999 Developing several ophthalmic issues, for example, nearsightedness, presbyopia, and hypermetropia among the maturing populace, is a significant supporter of the development. A considerable level of the populace in creating nations, for example, India, Brazil, and Mexico, experience visual inadequacies, which are commonly unnoticed and uncorrected. Therefore, the legislature and private organizations in these economies are leading eye care mindfulness crusades, which is required to move the development further. Besides, expanding customer spending on extravagance eyewear is relied upon to give a force to market development. Producers are presenting original and trendy eyewear for the working class, youth, and high-pay gatherings dwelling in urban regions. Also, ascend in discretionary cashflow crosswise over economies of China, India, and Brazil is required to add to the market development. Rising utilization of shades as a design adornment has brought about a change in the eyewear market. Eyewear suppliers are center around meeting the changing style needs of clients, notwithstanding offering focal points and glasses according to the specialist's solution. Moreover, they are continually endeavoring endeavors to offer tweaked eyewear, considering variables, for example, shading, style, and shape. Competitive Analysis: Some of the major companies in the global Eyewear Market Share include Fielmann AG, The Cooper Companies Inc., Bausch Health Companies Inc., Carl Zeiss AG, Luxottica Group S.p.A., Safilo Group S.p.A., Alcon Vision LLC, GrandVision, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc., Marchon Eyewear Inc., Marcolin SpA, De Rigo Vision S.p.A., Rodenstock GmbH, Essilor International, and Charmant Inc. Segmentation: The eyewear market is segmented on distribution channels, product type, and region. By product type, the global eyewear market is categorized as sunglasses, spectacles, contact lenses, and others. Of these, the spectacles segment is estimated to hold the leading market share whereas the sunglasses segment is expected to register the highest CAGR during the review period. The global eyewear market is categorized, on the basis of the distribution channel, into non-store-based and store-based. Of these, the store-based segment is further divided into specialty stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, and others. Among these, the store-based segment is anticipated to account for the larger share in the revenue of the market. However, the segment of non-store-based is probable to exhibit the growth with a faster rate during the forecast period. Regional Analysis: Regionally, the eyewear market is segmented into the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. Of these, Europe is estimated to remain dominant in the global eyewear market in the coming period owing to the increasing cases of visual deficiency, which are augmenting purchase of eyewear in the region. However, the Asia Pacific is projected to register the highest CAGR over the forecast period owing to raising awareness about treatment over visual impairment and eye protection. Moreover, the introduction of the innovative eyewear and other accessories in the region are boosting the eyewear market growth. Access Full Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/eyewear-market-7999 Industry News: In October 2019, Tata Group-owned Titan Companys Titan Eyeplus introduced smart eyewear by adding to current portfolio including lenses, frames, and sunglasses. In October 2019, Nova Eyewear introduced its nova drive lenses for driving around the clock. Introduction of newer products are estimated to propel growth of the overall market. Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com New Delhi: With global coronavirus cases exceeding 30 million on Thursday (September 17) and the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of slowing, China has claimed that it would be ready with two vaccines by November this year. The Chinese vaccines will be available for use by end of this year as the trials of two companies, Sinopharm and Sinovac, are in the final stages. Although India has become the latest epicenter of the deadly virus, the Made in China vaccine has failed to create an interest in India. China that gave coronavirus to the world is now claiming to give the vaccine to the world, but the global perception about Chinese products is showing a trust deficit. We are prone to buying Chinese goods as they come cheap but when this is related to the life-saving vaccine, people are likely to think twice as the life of people would be at stake. India, therefore, did not show any interest in buying the Chinese vaccine. The DNA report dug deep to ascertain the truth about the companies involved in making these vaccines and was surprised to know these firms are trusted by even Chinese people. The credibility of these two companies therefore is under question. Of the two vaccines, one is being made by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm Group. The trials by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, related to Sinopharm, has already entered into the second phase. In the year 2018, this company was accused of supplying substandard vaccines of Diphtheria, Tetanus, and cough to millions of children. It was sued in the Chinese courts twice and was directed to pay damages of 71,500 dollars to victims. Another Chinese company Sinovac is also busy making a vaccine for the Wuhan virus. Sinovac is also accused of greasing the palm of the concerned department with US$ 50,000 for getting approval of a drug. The company allegedly acquired drug licenses between 2002 and 2014 by paying bribes. Although the vaccine for which the trial is yet to complete, China has started claiming to sell it to many countries. The world cannot forget that when coronavirus started, China sold PPE and testing kits to many countries at high prices, but they all were of inferior quality. The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations, and even Bill Gates have stated that the coronavirus vaccine would be ready by the next year. This simply conveys that no one has so far taken cognizance of the Chinese claim. There are about 150 global companies that are in the race of making COVID-19 vaccines, but China has already started selling the vaccine. China has claimed to have signed a deal to sell the vaccine to the Philippines. Both nations have a dispute over the claims over the South China Sea. Despite claiming its rights over the three islands of the Philippines, China is learned to have said that the Philippines has agreed to buy its vaccine. In the name of the coronavirus vaccine, China has started debt diplomacy, It has also announced to extend the loan of one billion dollars to Latin America and the Caribbean nations to purchase the vaccine. China has promised Bangladesh to give it one lakh doses of corona vaccine free. Bangladesh, in turn, will allow the Sinovac to conduct the vaccine trials as China never offers a free deal. Sinopharm has sent a team to the Latin American nation, Peru, to prepare 6000 volunteers for the vaccine trial. Indonesia also wants to get the vaccine. China's intention behind giving the vaccine to the Philippines and Indonesia is to placate them so that they do not pose a problem to it. China is known for making goods in quantity but is least bothered about quality. In such a situation, if Made In China vaccine comes, how would people trust it. It has been 9 months since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Scientists from different countries, where the experiment for the vaccine is on, are saying that it is not possible to get a vaccine before 2021. It means we have to wait for at least 3 months, but China is claiming that its vaccine will be ready within 2 months. China has even claimed to have vaccinated some of its own people since July. China has further claimed that it has started emergency use of the vaccine along with its trial. This is being administered to health workers and army personnel, but the related data has not been disclosed. Chinese hurry can be understood from President XI Jinping's announcement in May that COVID-19 vaccines would be first given to developing countries. This claim can be termed as China's marketing propaganda. Assams coronavirus disease (Covid-19)-related deaths breached the 500 mark, as 19 more patients died on Wednesday. The north-easts most-populous state is also reporting a consistent surge in new Covid-19 cases. Assam has been reporting around 2,500 new Covid-19 cases almost daily for around a month. So far, the state has recorded 148,969 Covid-19 cases. Also read: India crosses 60 million mark for Covid-19 testing In September, the state reported around 40,000 new Covid-19 cases and over 200 deaths. The first Covid-19 positive case in Assam was diagnosed on March 31 and the first death due to the viral infection 10 days later. In August, Assam had reported 68,000 Covid-19 cases and another 30,000 in the first 10 days of September. If the trend continues, we may record around 90,000 new Covid-19 cases in September alone, state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said recently. The recovery and the death rate in the state is 80.10% and 0.34%, respectively, according to a bulletin issued by National Health Mission (NHM), Assam, on Wednesday. At present, the doubling rate of fresh cases is 33 days. Altogether, 2,815,285 tests, including both reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid antigen detection (RAD), have been conducted across the state. The total tests per million population stand at 83,095. Around 1,000 recovered Covid-19 patients have donated plasma across the state until Wednesday and over 1,500 patients suffering from the contagion have been given plasma treatment, the NHM bulletin stated. Private hospitals are running out of regular beds and also in intensive care units (ICUs) in the state capital Guwahati, which is a part of the Kamrup Metropolitan district, because up to 500 new Covid-19 cases are being reported daily. However, beds are available in hospitals and dedicated Covid Care Centres (CCCs), said the minister. We have adequate ICU and isolation beds in hospitals and there will be no problem in September. We are planning to increase ICU beds in a bid to cope with a rise in Covid-19 patients from October, said Sarma. Two large oxygen tanks are being set up in Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH), which will be followed by similar measures in other medical colleges in a bid to meet the increased demand of oxygen for critically ill Covid-19 patients. It will help us store oxygen for at least 15 days, he added. The minister said that there have been several cases in the state, where patients have died after recovering from Covid-19 . However, there has been no survey of the total number of such deaths, Sarma added. Though the Covid-19 situation in Assam is critical, we are geared to cope with it. The public should take precautions such as wearing masks and maintaining social distancing stringently in a bid to rein in the viral infection, said Samir Kumar Sinha, principal secretary (health), Assam. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Amidst the intra-Afghan Peace talks being held in Qatar, fierce fighting has broken out between security forces and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The long-awaited Afghan Peace talks began last week and are being seen as a historic opportunity to end decades of war in the country. As per reports, in the latest episode of violent overnight clashes erupted in three districts of Nangarhar province after security checkpoint was attacked by Taliban fighters. Clashes amid peace talks As per Sayhoon News reports, Afghan Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid has stated that the attacks by Taliban forces have actually increased since the beginning of the peace talks. Khalid also is reported to have added that in an effort to ensure the violence does not negatively impact the ongoing talks, Afghan security forces have refrained from any aggressive retaliatory measures. In a similar incidence last week, clashes between the Taliban and the Afghan security forces left six insurgents dead while three others were injured. The incident occurred in the southern province of Kandahar on September 13, just the day after the Intra-Afghan peace talks commenced in Doha. Read: Afghan Forces Clash With Taliban In Kandhar Region Ahead Of Day 2 Peace Talks In Qatar Read: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan Offer To Host Future Rounds Of Afghan Peace Talks The ongoing Afghan peace talks between the government and Taliban were made possible by a deal signed between the rebel group and the United States back in February. The deal stipulated that the US will reduce its troops in Afghanistan while the government and Taliban exchanged a pre-determined number of prisoners. The long-anticipated peace talks finally began after the Afghan government released the final batch of Taliban prisoners in August. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the first day of the Afghan peace talks in Doha and affirmed US commitment to the peace processes in the region. While the talks are currently being held in Qatar, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have offered to host any future talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan. Read: UK Welcomes Afghan Peace Talks, Asks Parties To 'seize Opportunity' In Historic Dialogue Read: Afghanistan Leader Mohammed Haneef Atmar Thanks India For Its Commitment To Afghan Peace Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said in Constanta Thursday that the Government he leads supports capitalizing on Romania's all natural resources "in a way that generates economic development potential". Present at the beginning of the works on the submarine pipeline within the Midia - MGD natural gas development project, the Executive's head stated that investments in projects for capitalizing on natural resources can "lead to an increase in the quality of life in Romania and an increase in the quality of services.""As Government, we encourage the development of other projects as well, because, from our point of view, all resources must be capitalized on in a way that generates economic development potential and, ultimately, leads to an increase in the quality of life in Romania, increased quality of services," Orban said.The prime minister mentioned the budget of one billion euros allocated by the Romanian authorities for the expansion of the gas networks."Let's not forget that the Government I lead has mobilized one billion euros for the project to establish natural gas distributions in localities where there are no such natural gas distributions, so that the Romanian gas reaches the homes of Romanians and, of course, we also support all investments through which natural gas can be capitalized on so as to generate added value, well-paid jobs and quality and competitive products," added Ludovic Orban. Construction leader John Abbott dies at 80 Journal Construction Editor By BENJAMIN MINNICK Journal Construction Editor Abbott John Abbott, founder of Seattle-based Abbott Construction, died on Aug. 7 after battling cancer. He was 80. The company announced Abbott's passing Tuesday in a news release. John Abbott taught me what it means to be a true professional in our industry, said Troy Stedman, Abbott Construction's current president and CEO, in the release. He knew the power of trusting relationships, operating with integrity and the value of giving back. John touched countless lives and will be greatly missed. Abbott was born in 1940 in a farmhouse in Minnesota. His family later moved to Washington and Abbott graduated in 1958 from Highline High School in Burien. His career began as an expediter at Boeing, followed by a change in 1959 to work for his father's construction company. In 1967, Strand Inc. hired him as an estimator/project manager, and he eventually worked his way up to executive vice president/general manager. In 1981, he joined R.C. Hedreen Co. The news release said Abbott believed there was a better way to build and that led to him founding Abbott Construction in 1983 with his wife, Dawn. Abbott led his company for two decades following these principles: quality of service, partnering relationships, talented craftspeople and open-shop construction. He retired in 2007. He lived out the principles he instilled in our company and it's because of those principles that we've continued to thrive over our 37-year history, Stedman said. Abbott Construction now has 260 employees and additional offices in Tacoma and Los Angeles. Its projects are in the health care, hospitality, public works, education, nonprofit, retail, tenant and seismic improvement categories. A company spokeswoman said Abbott was proud of all the projects his company built, but hospital jobs in Washington and California were at the top of his list. Outside of his contracting business, Abbott and others were instrumental in starting the Construction Industry Training Council of Washington, a state-licensed vocational school that provides apprenticeship and craft training in carpentry, electrical, HVAC, plumbing and several other trades. He also was active in the Associated General Contractors of Washington, where he served as president and helped establish an education endowment for students in construction. In a 1996 DJC article covering a CITC-sponsored symposium on construction workforce training, Abbott discussed his Top Gun program that pairs CITC apprentices with a skilled craftsworker who mentors the employee. The results were a trained workforce with loyalty to an employer who has invested in them. We currently have a workforce by default, he said back then. We need to begin to identify and train quality workers we need to take ownership of this problem both as individual contractors and as an industry. Abbott also was a real estate developer, with properties in numerous states. Abbott is survived by Dawn; children Debi (Joe) Froembling, Kelley (Derek) Alves, Chere (Armando) Garcia and Steve Abbott; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. A private family service was held last month. A larger event may be held later, depending on the pandemic. Benjamin Minnick can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272. Despite being still hospitalized following a car accident that fractured his pelvis, Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough still took aim at Gov. Greg Abbott for not fully opening Texas during the current COVID-19 pandemic. During a press conference Thursday, Abbott announced many businesses could expand capacity to 75 percent and for nursing homes to reopen for visitation. However, bars will remain closed for the foreseeable future. On HoustonChronicle.com: Everything you need to know about Gov. Abbott's new COVID reopening plan for Texas After allowing bars to reopen in mid-May, the governor closed bars again in late June as cases spiked. He said then that the move to reopen bars in May was premature. Abbott added bars are nationally recognized as COVID-spreading locations. Officials with the Montgomery County Public Health District confirmed 106 new cases Thursday, noting 47 were cases that tested positive prior to Aug. 28. The total cases for the county is now 10,449 with 1,568 active. The county also recorded its 135th death Thursday as a Conroe woman in her 70s died in the hospital. Officials noted she had other health condition in addition to testing positive to the virus. The total number of patients hospitalized, both county and noncounty, increased four to 51 with 14 of those in ICU. Keough balked at Abbotts comments. The actions he has taken today dont encourage personal responsibility at all, Keough posted to Facebook. We are still not open at 100 percent. While he will allow many economic sectors to return to 75 percent occupancy starting next week, that is not good enough! MORE FROM CATHERINE DOMINGUEZ: Montgomery County judge pleads with Abbott to reopen Texas 100 percent Keough went on the state 75 percent occupancy still implies 25 percent closed, which translates into 25 percent less workforce and so on. Keough disagreed with the plan to keep bars shuttered. This is devastating to their businesses and at this point it is irresponsible that the state cant find a way to give these businesses a fighting chance by letting them open to some degree, Keough stated. Seventy-five percent occupancy in a Walmart cant be any safer than 25 percent occupancy in a bar. The latest reopening plans allow for restaurants, gyms, retailers, museums, libraries, manufacturers and office-based employers to increase capacity to 75 percent by Monday. Hospitals in the approved regions may also begin offering elective procedures and surgeries immediately. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Beginning Sept. 24, Texas nursing homes and other long-term care facilities can reopen for visitation and other essential caregiver visits. These facilities must follow state health protocols to prevent an outbreak from occurring. I wholeheartedly believe that Texans can make good safe choices for ourselves and our families, Keough stated. When it comes to social distancing, staying home when sick and avoiding crowds and utilizing a face mask when appropriate. There was talk today of personal vigilance and I want to encourage the governor to set us free and let us all make those choices for ourselves and exercise the personal vigilance he encouraged. cdominguez@hcnonline.com Thousands of small businesses hard hit by the coronavirus would get radically simplified pay rules in a plan that has emerged as a favoured option under consideration by the Morrison government. Australia's largest companies and small businesses are each closing in on some of their top priorities in government-led industrial relations reform talks, but other employer organisations are feeling they may receive little from the months-long process. Small businesses such as cafes would benefit from award changes firming as a leading option from industrial talks. Credit:Getty Under a proposal for small businesses, employers in sectors including hospitality and retail would be allowed to pay their staff a single higher "loaded rate" rather than having to calculate a multitude of pay rates, penalties and allowances for everything from late night shifts to uniforms. The proposal could help reduce the risk of unintentional underpayment, common in the hospitality sector, and would come under a small business provision appended to industry awards. WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is preparing to enforce international sanctions against Iran that most other countries intend to ignore, testing the ability of the United States to impose its will on the rest of the world. The decision to plow ahead with a step that many other governments fear could kill the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is the culmination of more than three years of growing tensions between Washington and Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has branded Iran an "evil force" in the region. President Donald Trump has called the landmark nuclear agreement the "worst deal ever negotiated" and withdrew from it in 2018. Now, only weeks away from the election, the Trump administration is making its boldest move yet against Iran by triggering the "snapback" of U.N. sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal, a legal interpretation shared by only a handful of U.S. allies. Trump is expected to sharply criticize Iran and claim victory in beating back its more egregious behavior when he speaks to the United Nations General Assembly next week, an annual diplomatic extravaganza pared down to virtual appearances by most world leaders because of the coronavirus pandemic. The United States claims that, as an original participant in the deal, it has the legal right to force reimposed sanctions over the objections of the other countries that negotiated the agreement. The U.S. case was rebuffed in a Security Council meeting last month, as every member except the Dominican Republic argued the United States gave up the authority to do so when it left the deal. Even as U.S. officials are making concrete plans to slap sanctions on countries and banks that facilitate trading with Iran when an arms embargo expires, most countries at the United Nations are treating it as a nonevent. "No one's recognizing it," said a Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the open defiance planned. "The U.S. can take unilateral sanctions and say they're part of snapback. But there's not much more they can do. The council itself will actively ignore it. And hope elections go a certain way." Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, the special envoy for Iran and Venezuela, have declared that the United States will immediately begin enforcement this weekend. In Suriname on Thursday, Pompeo said Washington expects every country to uphold the sanctions, despite any misgivings. "The United States is intent on enforcing all the U.N. Security Council resolutions, and come Monday, there will be a new series of U.N. Security Council resolutions to be in force, and we intend to ask every country to stand behind them," he said. Abrams said the sanctions will bounce back into place at 8 p.m. Saturday. That could give pause to arms dealers who may have been preparing to sell conventional weapons to Iran after an embargo expires in mid-October under a clause in the nuclear deal, Abrams said. The October date will be "less significant," he added, once all sanctions are resumed. U.S. officials say their decision was prompted by the looming embargo expiration, which would allow countries to engage in the trade of conventional weapons with Iran and abet Tehran's support for Shiite militias in neighboring countries. During negotiations for the nuclear deal, Iran insisted on the embargo ending as a condition for limiting its nuclear program. The Western countries agreed to it reluctantly, reasoning Iran's nuclear program was a greater threat. Though China and Russia are both keen to engage in arms trade with Iran, they are unlikely to do anything before the arms embargo outlined in the nuclear deal expires next month. "The October deadline matters," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "On the first sale or transfer of weapons, Washington will immediately have to come down on the entity or bank that facilitated this transfer. So Washington will be in an interesting place as it uses unilateral sanctions to enforce multilateral purposes. It will have to, until more countries believe the United States is entitled to engage in snapback or Iran's behavior merits it." The European Union, which shares U.S. concerns about Iran's ballistic missile testing and support for militants in the region, fears the resumption of all sanctions could doom the nuclear agreement with Iran entirely. Josep Borrell, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, said last month that the United States is not a participant and has no right to impose snapback sanctions under the deal it left. "I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the preservation and full implementation of the JCPOA by all," he said, using the acronym for the nuclear deal's official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "The JCPOA remains a key pillar of the global nonproliferation architecture, contributing to regional security." Abrams said details on how the United States plans to enforce the sanctions will be rolled out in coming days. "We will have some announcements over the weekend and more announcements on Monday, and then subsequent days next week as to exactly how we are planning to enforce these returned U.N. sanctions," he said. "And whether those countries will in fact ignore the U.N. sanctions remains to be seen," he added. In the short term, the ramifications are likely to be minimal. "Due to the breadth of U.S. sanctions on Iran, and some of the remaining E.U. restrictions on Iran, it's not clear how much trade is going to be affected," said Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. "I think this is a very symbolic move by the United States that's part of a concerted effort to kill the JCPOA." Though Tehran has threatened several retaliatory steps, including walking away from the nuclear agreement and ramping up its nuclear program again, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday described the overwhelming opposition to Washington's move as a "victory of the Iranian nation and the disgraceful defeat of the United States in activation of the snapback mechanism." When the House voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, Rep. Paul McHale, representing the congressional district dominated by Northampton and Lehigh counties, was one of only five Democrats to vote yes. When the House voted to impeach President Donald Trump, former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who also represented the Lehigh Valley, said he likely would have bucked his party and voted yes had he still been in Congress. And the current representative, Democrat Susan Wild, isnt exactly a card-carrying left-winger. Shes tied with two others for having the lowest rating among Pennsylvanias House Democrats on the liberal Americans for Democratic Actions 2019 legislative scorecard. Politicians here know their voters dont go for that red state, blue state stuff when it comes to national races. And thats why the battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden could come down to places like this. Its always had a bit of a pragmatic history, said Christopher Borick, a professor of political science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. When you look at it as a region, its never been a hot bed of the left or the right. Get the latest updates from the Swing County, Swing State project sent to your inbox. In McHales last year in office, he was tied for third-lowest among Pennsylvanias House Democrats on the liberal groups scorecard. In Dents last full year, he was rated fourth-lowest among the commonwealths House Republicans by the American Conservative Union. (The lawmaker who bridged them, current Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, was the exception, but showed a pragmatic streak as a senator when he co-sponsored legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases.) The community of the Lehigh Valley is, and has been, populated by people of mainstream political philosophy, said McHale, who served in the House from 1993-99. They have pretty level heads on their shoulders and elect people to office to reflect that kind of mainstream judgment. He added: Im tempted to smile and say its something in the Lehigh Valley river water. This independent streak has been pivotal to national politics for at least six decades. A key example: Joseph Spirk, a Democratic Party official from Fountain Hill, was among those asked to contact John F. Kennedys home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, on Election Night 1960 out of a belief that if the area backed JFK, he was likely to be the next president. John Kennedy felt if he carried Fountain Hill, it was a very strong sign that he would win, McHale said. Dent, who served in the House from 2005-18, said his philosophy was one of simple math: There werent enough Republicans for him to win, so he needed to attract Democrats and independents. How does one win an election being an ideologue, appealing to the base of your party? Dent said. Its very difficult for a member of either party to tack too hard. You have to be able to win crossover voters. Both McHales and Dents fathers knew each other when they worked at Bethlehem Steel, the giant plant that dominated the region for decades and lifted generations of families into the middle class. Bethlehem steel built the George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Golden Gate bridges. You look at the Lehigh Valley and you look at it historically, you have men and women who earned a living with their hands, McHale said. The men worked in the steel plant and the women, if they worked outside the home, worked in the various mills or in the grocery store or other types of light industry." People saw your decency, your reliability. There was no place to hide, he said. That knocked off the hard edges. That ethos permeated the community. Hard work, integrity, religious commitment and political moderation had a strong impact on election results. If you could get that vote, you could win the election. That was something Dent said he struggled to get his fellow Republicans to understand. I cant tell you how many times I got in arguments with my Republican colleagues when they wanted to pass bills they think are really great for the base, Dent said. He said he often argued with lawmakers in rock-solid Republican congressional districts. All you ever have to do is pander to a base and thats all you need to do to win in a primary or election, Dent said he would try to explain to them. Here is the math in my district. Just pandering to a base doesnt really work for me. And my district is probably a lot more reflective of the country as a whole, and you have to have some respect for that. It just went over their heads. They couldnt fathom someone had to win Democrats and independents to win a seat in Congress. Its an area that fits into every geographical category: urban, suburban and rural. So candidates have to appeal to everyone, Dent said. Lehigh Valley is a pretty good microcosm of the country, Dent said. Most districts dont have the same level of diversity. Northampton Countys 304,564 residents account for 42% of the 731,168 people who live in the current 7th Congressional District, according to 2018 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Half of the districts population resides in Lehigh County and the remainder in Monroe County. That population is becoming more diverse. The Lehigh Valleys Hispanic population rose by one-third from 2010 to 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But while those immigrants may be changing the ethnic makeup of the region, theyre not altering its political makeup, Borick said. Any time you move to a new region, you both are shaped by the region and shape the region, Borick said. You can see the influence of new additions to the valley. Over time, in some ways, those new residents adopt to some of the political and cultural norms that you see. I dont think people come to Lehigh Valley and see it as a place with ideological fervor. Its politics dont lend itself to more extreme viewpoints. In an era where Americans are self-sorting themselves by ideology into neighborhoods of people with similar views, the Lehigh Valley remains apart, Borick said. So it attracts more moderate residents no matter what their ethnic backgrounds might be, reinforcing its reputation as a swing area. If youre looking for a progressive place or a deeply conservative place, the Lehigh Valley might not stand out as a bastion for either, Borick said. If you were really passionate and were looking for a place where you felt ideologically surrounded by people like you, perhaps the Valley isnt a good place for you. That forces politicians to play to the middle, not the extremes, McHale said. To succeed in the valley, you have to be fairly moderate, he said. If you went down an ideological path, you were probably setting yourself up for defeat. If a party is set on winning, still going to the middle is the recipe for this part of Pennsylvania. The regions latest representative, Wild, campaigned as a moderate Democrat and emerged from a six-person primary to win the nomination and the election to succeed Dent. If you have an electoral process that is free from undue influence, you are quite likely to elect people who are representative of that community, McHale said. The people who are elected to office probably share the most fundamental values of the community who have entrusted their representation to that individual. How we voted in Congress and how we approached our duties reflected the Lehigh Valley community in which we grew up. McHale, born in Bethlehem, and Dent, born in Allentown, never served together. But the Democrat said they could have crossed party lines if they did. Had we served together, we could have worked together quite easily to craft legislation that could have improved lives, McHale said. Youre not likely to find a person of character on either extreme of the political spectrum. People of character recognize that, in Lincolns words, most things are not entire wholly good or wholly evil but a combination of the two. Good people can sort that out. The people in the Lehigh Valley were less concerned about partisanship and ideology. They wanted to get a sense that you were a good person and would work hard on their behalf. This is one in a series of stories that are part of Swing County, Swing State, a collaborative project between lehighvalleylive.com and nj.com that explores Northampton Countys critical role in the upcoming presidential election. The project is being generously supported in part by a $25,000 grant from The John Farmer Memorial Journalism Fund. Read more about it here. And please consider supporting ambitious local news like this with a subscription to lehighvalleylive.com. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Mr de Blasio announced that all of his staff, including his wife and himself, must take a week of unpaid leave - John Minchillo /AP New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced he will furlough almost 500 members of his staff, including himself and his wife, for one week in an effort to close a huge budget deficit that has emerged from the coronavirus lockdown. All 495 people who work for Mr de Blasio at City Hall will take a week of unpaid leave at some point between October 2020 and March 2021, according to reporting from the New York Times. The economic shutdown has led to the city suffering a $9bn (6.9bn) loss of revenue, leading to a $7bn (5.4bn) cut in the citys annual budget. While the furlough scheme will only save about $860,000 (663,000), Mr de Blasio says it has a symbolic purpose of demonstrating willingness to make personal sacrifices. The mayor is currently locked in negotiations with labour unions over payroll savings. The mayor is currently locked in negotiations with labour unions over pay and hopes the move to furlough himself will carry symbolic weight - CARLO ALLEGRI /REUTERS "It was not a decision I made lightly," he said. "To have to do this is painful for them and their families, but it is the right thing to do at this moment in history. He also warned that, while job cuts for public sector employees were not imminent, 22,000 may be let go if unions did not show flexibility when it comes to pay. When asked whether furlough could be applied to the city's entire workforce of over 320,000, Mr de Blasio said: Everything's on the table. We're talking to labour about any and all ways to save money. The mayors budget for next year will be 12 per cent smaller. Mr de Blasio says he has requested extra funding from the New York State Legislature in Albany, but representatives have so far been reluctant to provide additional finances. Earlier this summer, Mayor de Blasio cut the NYPD budget by $1bn amid nationwide calls for police reform. In May, he announced he had no plans to cut his $250,000 annual salary. This year marks Facebook's growth from innocence to experience What a year it is turning out to be for Facebook! Its sway over voters has made incumbent governments in several countries seek to exact their pound of flesh. As a self-proclaimed proponent of free speech with limited control over content, the social media company now finds itself stuck in both legal and moral conflicts in many countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and elsewhere. The ongoing deposition before Indias parliamentary standing committee on information technology was always going to be a perfunctory but important attempt to raise questions of Facebooks influence over societies and their behaviour. The committee is multi-partisan, but the original agenda -- whether Facebook has systematically favoured the BJP -- was so politically divisive that such a panel could have never found a consensus unless the agenda was broadened to a generalisation. Potentially, the deadlock in the deposition heralds some independence for Facebook. The Congress and Trinamul Congress say Facebook has displayed a pro-BJP stance, while the government claims the contrary, even accusing Facebooks employees of abusing the prime minister. In the end, Facebook can claim that since both sides are claiming bias, they cancel each other out and that there is no real bias. That is why it was important that the parliamentary committee work pragmatically towards a united, non-partisan and achievable public goal -- helping to independently curb hate. Who's we? Economic and political power makes great negotiators. But for Facebook, this is a battle of identity. Three recent episodes are of relevance: 1. Facebook will soon add additional text to its terms of use to consolidate its position. In effect, Facebook has emerged from the shadows to stake its claim as a private company with full authority to tweak its rules, not as the public service that it can be mistaken for. 2. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad shot off a strategically timed letter -- coinciding with the parliamentary committee deposition -- accusing Facebooks staff in India of colluding to discredit the government. 3. Following Facebook India MD Ajit Mohans deposition, its global leaders Neil Potts and Mark Zuckerberg have issued statements that assure the world that Facebook is a neutral carrier and that hate speech will not be tolerated on it. On September 1, Facebook forewarned its users of an impending addition of a self-protective clause to its section (3.2): We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook. As many digital business experts point out, this is an overdue survival clause. But it underlines the arrival of a more proactive approach to censorship -- with larger implications on who gets to influence it. On the face of it, the additional clause should provide comfort to those who may view it as a sort of social media garbage disposal. But if there is one word thats ambiguous in the otherwise crystal-clear message, it is we. As much as its use in legalese is well-understood, who is this unseen hand in digital practice that restricts access, service, information or content? It could be the content desk, fact check desk, and standards-and-practices desk. However, given that algorithms are partly in control, is Facebook telling us that it will take more responsibility to rein them in? Communicating on social sites like Facebook is both public and permanent. In the absence of proper (self-)regulation, it is at once a personally empowering and socially debilitating tool. Unlike edited content on the mainstream media, the free-flowing content on social media had accepted little accountability. That may be changing. To prove the point, on the heels of the first day of the deposition, Facebook barred a known hatemonger, BJPs T. Raja Singh. If that is supposed to be exemplary somehow, it does not make the cut. Many people in our circles have abandoned the platform to avoid the mentally draining intensity and abuse. Removing the hundreds and thousands of trolls and others who indulge in hate speech alone can bring back public confidence in social media and in humanity in general. The accountability game Facebook has turned its attention over the past couple of years to issues pertaining to privacy and political complications arising from its business-to-government (b2g) deals. While governments seek a piece of the content action, is Facebooks government business jeopardising its founding principles? It is clear that many, even quasi-democratic, governments want more control over social media content and content in general. In Thailand, a constitutional monarchy, the government asked that access to a group of voices against the government be blocked, and Facebook is suing the government to dispute such a restriction. Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes supporters are known to have peddled fake news on the platform. The countrys largest news network had to shut shop recently, thanks to governmental machinations. In Australia, the battle is to make social media accountable for borrowed content. Facebook has threatened to block news from Australian newspapers in retaliation over an impending pay-per-use law that seeks to shield its news media and requires Facebook to share revenues for news items taken from the newspapers. Platforms such as Facebook face the consequences of not having thought through risks and challenges and pay the price of democratising processes. As a free marketplace of relationships and ideas -- the digital equivalent of a town square, as co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in 2019 -- Facebook needs better control over credibility. A growing number of people with Facebook accounts have chosen to stay away because they are dismayed at what they see in that ecosystem. Facebook can help by making its users media literate. As the social media grows and as we become more social media literate, the distinction between satire and fake news, between claims and opinions, and between facts and myths grows on us. Organically, media literacy is a longitudinal process. But intervention can accelerate the education. This year, and not 2016, when Facebook was first accused of gerrymandering, marks its growth from innocence to experience. How the company pivots this experience will determine its future. The writer has led reputed institutes of higher education and is the founder of Being Responsible, which does media literacy programmes for schools. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 01:37:41|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RAMALLAH, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Germany on Thursday donated nearly 63 million U.S. dollars to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In a press statement sent to Xinhua, the UNRWA said that its Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has signed the donation agreements with Christian Clages, head of the German Representative Office in Ramallah. "The contribution will strengthen education and health services in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories," the statement said. "It will also support the agency's cash-for-work opportunities in Lebanon and improve Palestine refugee camps' living conditions in Jordan and the Gaza Strip," the statement added. Enditem The other side of the 'Howdy Modi' which you might have missed Thank you for covering up for PM Modi: Rahul's snub to Jaishankar on Trump Sarkar row It is just an advertisement: NCP leader compares US President's India visit to 'Howdy Modi' Govt says it did not incur expenses for 'Howdy-Modi' event in Houston last year India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: The government on Thursday said it did not incur any expenses for the 'Howdy-Modi' event in the US city of Houston in September last year and that it was organised by a not-for-profit group. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a thunderous reception when he, accompanied by US President Donald Trump, addressed a crowd of over 50,000 Indian-Americans at the event in a stadium in Houston on September 22, 2019. Answer the 'Know Namo to win a book autographed by PM Modi "A US-based not-for-profit organisation namely the Texas India Forum Inc. organised an event titled, 'Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures in Houston on September 22, 2019," Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said in the Lok Sabha. He was replying to a written question on the event. Specifically asked whether the government incurred any financial expenses for the event or funded its organisers, Muraleedharan said "no". He said the chairperson of the Texas India Forum Inc. was Jugal Malani, an Indian community member based in Texas. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News "Prime Minister, as part of his visit to the US, participated in the event at the invitation of the organisers and addressed a gathering of members of the Indian-American community and many of their elected representatives," the minister said. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky says that NATO membership is Ukraine's strategic course, and this is provided for by the country's National Security Strategy approved on September 14. "Every time I meet with international leaders, I emphasize that the war in eastern Ukraine is a threat not only for Ukraine, it is a threat to the security and stability of all countries in Europe and the world. Our partners are absolutely in solidarity with me on this issue, which is why we united to overcome existing challenges and find mechanisms for an adequate response to them. One of these is Ukraine's integration into NATO. At the beginning of the week, I approved the National Security Strategy of Ukraine, according to which NATO membership is Ukraine's strategic course," he said during the opening of the 2020 Rapid Trident multinational exercises in Lviv region on Thursday. Zelensky said that it is necessary to achieve compatibility of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the corresponding structures of NATO member states as quickly as possible. "And also to intensify reforms that will allow receiving an invitation and joining the NATO Membership Action Plan," he said. In his opinion, the 2020 Rapid Trident exercise is not only another stage in the improvement of military skills, but also an important step on the path of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. "These important exercises will improve the operational capabilities of our troops, improve the level of compatibility between the units and headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the United States and other NATO members and partners," the president said. Zelensky thanked all the participants in the exercises and Ukraine's international partners for their continued support to contain Russian aggression and help to strengthen the combat capability of the Ukrainian army. SHELTON Officer Daniel Loris was fired Wednesday, according to the police chief, on allegations of ethics and sexual harassment violations and misconduct while on duty. In all, six officers have been fired in the past seven weeks from two separate internal affairs investigations. The department began the year with 52 officers and now, with several recent hires and the firings, has 45, a decrease of 13 percent. Police Chief Shawn Sequeira said Loris termination resulted from an internal affairs investigation that began months ago in connection with what were alleged to be photos of officers changing their clothes in the department parking lot that appeared on the Support the Shelton Police Union Facebook page in July. Your immature actions of taking these photographs were more important to you than deterring crime and protecting the citizens of the City of Shelton, Sequeira wrote in Loris termination letter. The oath of office that you took as a police officer to serve and protect the citizens of this community cannot be accomplished with this type of behavior. Michael Lewis, a police union representative, called Loris firing unjust. Dan will be grieving this unjust termination to the State Labor Board, Lewis said, speaking on behalf of Loris. We hope somebody with the authority to do so will investigate the city which is out of control. They have terminated 12 percent of the department in just the past few months. Loris is the third officer terminated after the internal affairs investigation into the photos. Officers Roger Falcone and Caroline Moretti, who are also grieving their firings, were terminated earlier this month on allegations of staging the photos and lying about them. Loris was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation and had handed in his service weapon. His locker was cleaned out Wednesday, Sequeira told Hearst Connecticut Media. More News Firings not impacting patrols or budget, chief says As our nation struggles with the current uneasy state of police-community relations, police officers who can instill community trust through their personal integrity are valuable assets, Sequeira told Loris in his termination letter. Due to your reprehensible behavior, I feel that you are a liability to the Shelton Police Department. READ MORE: Three officers fired for dereliction of duty READ MORE: Internal affairs investigating six Shelton police officers put on leave READ MORE: Chief fires fifth officer in six weeks as second investigation nears end In June, the union filed a grievance alleging three female officers were denied use of their headquarters restrooms while the 49 men had access. The police chief then limited use of headquarters locker rooms and bathrooms for both men and women and set up portable toilets for patrol officers in the parking lot. The police chief said his department launched an investigation when photos of the officers changing in the parking lot were posted on Facebook. The images, which blocked out the officers faces, appeared to show male officers changing their pants and female officers in their bras as they changed their shirts allegedly in public. Sequeira said Loris was observed on video surveillance footage taken from the parking area of the police department, and later allegedly admitted to his action on audio recordings during his internal affairs interview. Unfortunately, he took zero responsibility and did not see wrong in his action of this conduct on duty and on police grounds (which) resulted in termination, the chief told Hearst. Loris left his patrol while on duty to return to police headquarters and took an inappropriate photo of a female officer changing her clothes in the parking lot, Sequeira said the investigation showed. I have to create and ensure a safe work atmosphere for all employees, Sequeira said. That type of behavior was degrading and offensive in nature not only to myself (but to) others. Sequeira said Loris admitted that the photo was taken without the female officers consent, even though he stated that he showed the officer the pic shortly after he took the photo. Sequeria said the photo then appeared on the Support the Shelton Union Facebook page. READ MORE: After complaint female officers couldnt use restrooms, Shelton Police set up portables READ MORE: Possible indecent exposure investigation after photos allegedly show police changing outside Under the state guidelines of sexual harassment, there is zero tolerance ... even if you have a personal relationship or even consent from the alleged victim or other party, Sequeira said. The action itself was offensive and violated our state guidelines. In all, eight department members were subjects of the internal affairs investigation about the Facebook photos, Sequeira said during an update on the probe given to the Board of Aldermens Public Health and Safety Committee earlier this month. Brian McPadden, Victoria Chapman and Christopher Robek received written warnings for not using good judgment in changing outside on police grounds, the chief told Hearst. Sequeira also said the trio, whod had clean records up until then, would undergo mandatory ethics training. Officer Michael Curran and John Napoleone, the union president, were also subjects of the probe, but were not disciplined for it. Napoleone, however, was fired earlier this summer for dereliction of duty in an unrelated investigation which also resulted in the terminations of officer Michael McClain and Lt. Dave Moore. All of the officers who have been terminated or given written warnings have filed grievances. Lewis, speaking on behalf of the officers, called the discipline without cause. brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com LUND, Sweden, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hansa Biopharma ("Hansa"), the leader in immunomodulatory enzyme technology for rare IgG mediated diseases, today announced that the Company will host its 2020 Capital Markets Day (CMD) in Copenhagen on Thursday October 29, from 13:30-17:30 CET (7:30am-11:30am EST). The CMD event will be focused around Hansa Biopharma's transformation into a fully integrated and commercial stage biopharmaceutical company and will highlight the potential of the Company's unique antibody-cleaving enzyme platform beyond transplantation in areas such as autoimmunity and gene therapy. The event will feature both senior management and external guest speakers. A detailed agenda is expected to be shared to registrants a few weeks ahead of the CMD. The event will be livestreamed and available for all viewers on our web at http://www.hansabiopharma.com. If you wish to participate in the CMD virtually, kindly sign up using the following link here. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be limitations to the number of physical participants at the CMD. In-person invitations will go out separetaly by email to select institutional investors, analysts and media. CONTACT: For further information, please contact: Klaus Sindahl, Head of Investor Relations Hansa Biopharma Mobile: +46 (0) 709-298 269 E-mail: [email protected] Katja Margell Head of Corporate Communications Hansa Biopharma Mobile: +46 (0) 768-198 326 E-mail: [email protected] This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/hansa-biopharma-ab/r/hansa-biopharma-to-host-capital-markets-day-on-thursday-october-29--2020-in-copenhagen,c3195056 The following files are available for download: SOURCE Hansa Biopharma AB Association accuses new PM of mishandling coronavirus crisis as workers strike against job losses and seek higher wages. A French association of COVID-19 victims is filing a legal complaint against Prime Minister Jean Castex for alleged mishandling of the pandemic, its lawyer said. The Coronavirus Victims France association, which has 200 members, accuses the government of playing it by ear in its response to the crisis, lawyer Fabrice de Vizio told the AFP news agency. Castex took over from Edouard Philippe as prime minister in July when the worst of the epidemic so far was over in France. But the past weeks have seen a worrying surge in new cases. The latest complaint will be filed on Thursday with the Court of the Republic (CJR), the only court in France authorised to deal with cases against government ministers over alleged offences committed in office. The court has already received more than 90 legal complaints against ministers. A total of nine targeting Philippe as well as Health Minister Olivier Veran and his predecessor Agnes Buzyn have been declared valid by the court, which has begun investigating them for possible failure to fight a disaster. Di Vizio said the complaint against Castex highlighted the associations view that shortcomings had continued after he took over as prime minister from Philippe. What is striking since his arrival is that there is no strategy whatsoever of fighting the pandemic, he said, adding that the government was simply guilt-tripping the population. Di Vizio cited an absence of screening at airports during the month of July, slowness in introducing saliva tests and the governments decision to delegate the responsibility for anti-COVID measures to regional prefects. This country is being managed, not governed, he said. Contacted by AFP news agencies, Castexs office had no comment. In June, Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation for involuntary manslaughter and endangering the lives of others after receiving dozens of legal complaints over the handling of the pandemic, some targeting retirement homes. Complaints have continued to flood in, with a total of 170 received by the capitals prosecutors by the end of August. Meanwhile, on Thursday, some of the countrys most powerful labour unions held a strike and protested to denounce coronavirus-related job losses and demand wage increases. The national day of inter-professional action took place across several major cities. In the northern town of Bethune, workers protested at a Bridgestone tire factory over the companys decision to close the plant and lay off its nearly 900 workers, accusing management of using virus-driven economic concerns as a pretext. Japan-based Bridgestone has argued the factory was already struggling before the pandemic and was the companys least-performing facility in Europe. Both unions and the French government denounced the closure. Sorry! This content is not available in your region A 48,000 years old tooth that belonged to one of the last Neanderthals in Northern Italy A milk-tooth found in the vicinity of "Riparo del Broion" on the Berici Hills in the Veneto region bears evidence of one of the last Neanderthals in Italy. This small canine tooth belonged to a child between 11 and 12 that had lived in that area around 48,000 years ago. This is the most recent Neanderthal finding in Northern Italy. The study uncovering this tooth was carried out by a group of researchers from the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara, who have recently published a paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. "This work stems from the synergy between different disciplines and specializations", says Matteo Romandini, lead author of this study and researcher at the University of Bologna. "High-resolution prehistoric field-archaeology allowed us to find the tooth, then we employed virtual approaches to the analyses of its shape, genome, taphonomy and of its radiometric profile. Following this process, we could identify this tooth as belonging to a child that was one of the last Neanderthals in Italy". The genetic analysis reveals that the owner of the tooth found in Veneto was a relative, on their mother's side, of Neanderthals that had lived in Belgium. This makes this site in Veneto a key-area for comprehending the gradual extinction of Neanderthals in Europe. "This small tooth is extremely important", according to Stefano Benazzi, professor at the University of Bologna and research coordinator. "This is even more relevant if we consider that, when this child who lived in Veneto lost their tooth, Homo Sapiens communities were already present a thousand kilometres away in Bulgaria". Researchers analysed the tooth by employing highly innovative virtual methods. "The techniques we employed to analyse the tooth led to the following discovery: this is an upper canine milk-tooth that belonged to a Neanderthal child, aged 11 or 12, that lived between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago", as report Gregorio Oxilia and Eugenio Bortolini, who are co-authors of the study and researchers at the University of Bologna. "According to this dating, this little milk-tooth is the most recent finding of the Neanderthal period in Northern Italy and one of the latest in the entire peninsula". The findings retrieved from the "Riparo del Broion" are still being analysed. However, preliminary results show that this site had been used for a long period of time as there are signs of hunting activities and butchering of large prays. "The manufacturing of tools, mainly made of flint, shows Neanderthals' great adaptability and their systematic and specialized exploitation of the raw materials available in this area", adds Marco Peresanti, a professor of the University of Ferrara who contributed to the study. ### The paper reporting about the results of this study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution and its title is "A late Neanderthal tooth from northeastern Italy". Matteo Romandini, Gregorio Oxilia, Eugenio Bortolini, Simona Arrighi, Federica Badino, Carla Figus, Federico Lugli, Giulia Marciani, Sara Silvestrini and Stefano Benazzi (all from the Department of Cultural Heritage) participated in the study proudly representing the University of Bologna. This research was carried out in the framework of the ERC SUCCESS project, which is led by Stefano Benazzi and focuses on the bio-cultural changes happened in Italy during the transition between Neanderthal and Sapiens. The ultimate goals of the project are to understand when our species reached Southern Europe, the processes favouring Sapiens' adaptive success and the causes leading to Neanderthals' extinction. This project has also involved the Departments of Human Evolution and Genetics of the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (UK), the DANTE Laboratory of the La Sapienza University and the Bioarchaeology Service of the Museum of Civilization in Rome. Research at the site "Riparo del Broion" has started in 1998 and is currently under the joint scientific direction of Matteo Romandini (University of Bologna) and Matteo Peresani (University of Ferrara). This site has been made available through the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and thanks to the support of the Veneto region, Longare city council (Vicenza, Veneto), Leakey Foundation, CariVerona Foundation, the Italian Institute of Proto- and Prehistory and the ERC SUCCESS project. This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. 'How Xi Jinping will withdraw the aggression and justify it to his Communist party in case of a negotiated settlement might be his biggest headache.' 'Unless he is ready to gamble on an armed conflict, whose outcome given India's battle-readiness and determination is always uncertain,' observes Virendra Kapoor. IMAGE: Central Reserve Police Force personnel stand guard at a checkpoint along a highway leading to Ladakh, September 2, 2020. Photograph: Danish Ismail/Reuters There is no early end in sight to the border standoff. The diplomatese in the joint statement that emerged after the meeting of the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers in Moscow on Friday, September 11, pushed the issue of the disengagement into the domain of the rival generals. Military commanders of rival troops now standing eyeball-to-eyeball in a position of tense confrontation at the Ladakh border will meet to discuss the pullback. As of now, the Chinese show no intention to vacate the aggression. The PLA generals are livid after India pre-emptively occupied vantage heights on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso lake. They tried to dislodge the Indian soldiers from those heights, but were foiled. Since then, they have further fortified their positions, brought in heavy warfare equipment and seem to be digging in their heels for an armed confrontation. The Indian Army has matched the PLA build-up and appear equally determined to stand their ground. Without doubt, the Chinese were taken completely by surprise by the Indian determination to confront them frontally not only to prevent further infiltration into Indian territory, but to demand that the PLA vacate the area it had occupied in early April. That was the clearest notice to China that India served on the night of August 29-30 by occupying those vantage heights which overlook a key PLA garrison and a couple of border posts. The bold resistance to China is a new for India. Since the Chinese occupied nearly 40,000 kilometres of Indian territory in the 1962 War, they have periodically encroached on our side of the un-demarcated LAC. The PLA's salami-slicing tactics was met with little resistance by victim nations. China practiced this tactic against all its neighbours. But the 2020 India is different. China may be a bigger economic and military power, but India is capable of defending its territorial integrity and national honour. India is no pushover, period. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Modi's domestic critics fail to grasp this new assertiveness in India's relationship with its neighbours. While Rahul Gandhi can be excused for childishly asking 'what about the land China has occupied', it was surprising to find the former nhational security advisor mockingly remarking, 'If you think banning apps will work, then good luck.' This was, to say the least, unfair, knowing full well as Shivshankar Menon did about the Indian preparedness to end the Chinese infiltration. IMAGE: Indian soldiers on a highway leading to Ladakh, September 2, 2020. Photograph: Danish Ismail/Reuters At the time of the Chinese infiltration in the Sumdorong Chu Valley in 1985-1986, the media and sections of the Opposition behaved responsibly. No one sought to embarrass the government on the Chinese infiltration as Rahul Gandhi now does daily. His pow-wow with the Chinese ambassador amidst the 2017 Doklam standoff was most controversial, especially when he failed to take the government into confidence. Sharad Pawar's comment that the Opposition exercises utmost restraint discussing national security, and trusts the government to do the best thing in concert with the security experts in these matters did not prevent Rahul from parroting 'What about our land China has taken...' Let us leave Rahul Gandhi alone. The current stand-off is fraught. A negotiated pullout by the Chinese will be a setback for Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping ahead of the CCP's annual October congress. Xi cannot go to the congress with a failed adventure at the Indian border. His choice is clear. Either he emerges from the confrontation without losing face or the rival armies remain locked dangerously in combat positions in October-November and thus prepare for the long and harsh winter ahead. The third option is a shooting war. Which, by all accounts, both sides are keen to avoid. But given the red-hot tensions, a little misstep, a misunderstanding about what may be innocuous troop movement, can flare up into a deadly war. Hopefully, wisdom will prevail. War with the lethal arsenal of death on both sides should not be even the option of last resort. Since the mid-1980s, India has developed its border infrastructure, its military is in much better shape to meet the Chinese challenge. Of course, China is a much bigger economic and military power, but localised border warfare entails comparative strengths of the fighting troops. Indians are better acclimatised in mountain warfare. Besides, the morale of the Indian troops is high, particularly that they are engaged in vacating an aggression while the ordinary Chinese soldier is unclear as to the reason why he is made to put his life in jeopardy. Also, as the Galwan clash testified, in hand-to-hand combat Indians are better placed to take full measure of the PLA troops. IMAGE: Indian Army vehicles in Ladakh, September 12, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo Of course, it does not have to necessarily come to a real shooting war. But to avoid that chance flare-up, it is for China to move back and restore the status quo ante as existed in early April. Otherwise, the rival troops will stand in complete readiness, arrayed against each other in close proximity. India will not, cannot, pull back from its forward positions unless it can first verify the Chinese disengagement. The next commanders meeting is unlikely to yield an agreement. The situation has got to a point that without the intervention of the top political leadership in the two countries it is hard to see a mutual settlement. How Xi Jinping will withdraw the aggression and justify it to his Communist party in case of a negotiated settlement might be his biggest headache. Unless he is ready to gamble on an armed conflict, whose outcome given India's battle-readiness and determination is always uncertain. He is in an unenviable position. Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com The Daily Beast Reuters/Arnd WiegmannTheatrical rock superstar Meat Loaf, whose Bat Out of Hell is one of the bestselling albums of all time, has died at the age of 74. Reports say the singer and actor had recently fallen sick with COVID-19.In an emotional statement posted to Facebook early Friday, the performers family said he was with his wife when he died and had said his final goodbyes to his two daughters in the past 24 hours. The star sold 100 million albums in his five-decade career and starred in movie Huge misappropriation of funds has been found in the audit of six Delhi University colleges who are not paying salaries to their staff citing lack of funds, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Wednesday. The Delhi government has provided enough funds to these colleges for paying the salaries but in their initial observation report, the auditors have found that those funds are being directed elsewhere rather than paying the salaries to the teachers, Sisodia said at an online press conference. Projected salaries for this academic year is Rs 300 crore and the Delhi government has provided sufficient funds to the colleges under the pattern of assistance. Teachers are not getting their salaries despite the Delhi government providing timely grants, he said. Few teachers came to meet me and shared their concerns about salary payment. They shared that there is a need of proper audit of the college funds and suspected that funds are diverted towards non-salary expenses, Sisodia said. We wanted to get at the bottom of this, as there could be a case of fund misappropriation. Therefore, the Delhi government started a special audit of these colleges, he said. We asked the names of the auditors from CAG and started the process of auditing these colleges from CAG empanelled auditors. In the first week of September, six colleges were audited by them. Yesterday, we received an initial observation report from the auditors and some shocking revelations have come out, he added. The audit reports have pointed out that colleges have kept huge amount of money as fixed deposits rather than paying the salaries of their staff, he said. Pointing out that Keshav Mahavidyalaya has Rs 10.52 crores as fixed deposit, Sisodia asked if they have so much money, why are they not paying salaries to their teachers? The salary grant paid to the college was Rs 10.92 crores in the year 2014-15 and last year the government paid Rs 27.9 crores. Within five years, their salary grants have almost tripled. Even after receiving so much amount, they are not paying salaries to their teachers, Sisodia said. The closing balance of Bhagini Nivedita college shows that currently they have around Rs 2.5 crore as fixed deposits in their accounts. It is surprising that they are claiming lack of funds and at the same time, not cooperating with the auditors also, he added. The principals of the two colleges were not available for comment on the issue. These people are playing with the lives of their own staff members. They are only focused on blaming Delhi government. Under the pattern of assistance, it is clearly mentioned that provisioning of grant will be made only on net deficit basis, Sisodia said. In reality, these colleges are having surplus amount and yet they are not paying the due salaries of their hardworking teachers. This is criminal and wouldnt be tolerated, he said. New Zealand's strict COVID-19 lockdown has plunged the nation into recession for the first time in a decade. The country, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, saw its economy shrink by a record 12.2 per cent in the June quarter. The eye-watering figures, released on Thursday by Statistics New Zealand, are significantly more severe than Australia's record seven per cent plummet during the same period. The figures are also far worse the Westpac bank's prediction of an 11.5 per cent decline and marked New Zealand's first technical recession since the Global Financial Crisis in 2009. The second-quarter plunge followed a revised 1.4 per cent contraction during the first three months of 2020. The nation, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, saw its economy shrink by a record 12.2 per cent in the second quarter The popular 'Eat Street' in Rotorua, New Zealand is seen empty during the COVID-19 lockdown The second quarter reporting period, from April to June, happened in the middle of the country's first lockdown when thousands of businesses were forced to close. New Zealand went into a strict lockdown on March 25 and emerged from them on June 8 as part of an elimination strategy. Residents were ordered to stay home to prevent the deadly virus from spreading. Figures showed construction activity was down 26 per cent, manufacturing fell by 13 per cent, and household spending was down by 12 per cent when compared with the previous quarter. Stats NZ spokesman Paul Pascoe said the closure of New Zealand's borders since March 19 had also had a huge effect of some sectors of the economy. 'Industries like retail, accommodation and restaurants, and transport saw significant declines in production because they were most directly affected by the international travel ban and strict nationwide lockdown,' he said. 'Other industries, like food and beverage manufacturing, were essential services and fell much less.' The 12.2 per cent quarterly plunge in economic activity, however, was less serious than the 16 per cent plummet predicted by the government this week and fell well short of the 23.5 per cent forecast in the May budget. A relatively deserted Parnell Rise as Aucklanders return to level three lockdown on August 13, 2020 The Westpac bank is expecting Thursday's official figures to show an 11.5 per cent contraction for the June quarter - a level significantly more severe than Australia's record seven per cent plummet during the same period. Pictured is a restaurant in Wellington in June Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr said there were few surprises in the numbers. 'You lock up the economy, activity falls,' he said. 'The focus must now turn to the recovery. And the current quarter looks pretty good. It' the path we take over the next three years that needs attention.' Mr Kerr predicted GDP would jump by 10 per cent in the third quarter, but said more needs to be done over the medium term to return the nation to full employment. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the lockdown was necessary to save thousands of lives and get on top of the virus so the economy could bounce back faster. New Zealand has recorded 25 coronavirus deaths in a population of five million and cases have been largely contained since late May, aside from a flare-up in Auckland last month. Opposition leader Judith Collins (pictured)slammed the Government's handling of the pandemic, saying National would 'not let COVID-19 into New Zealand' A shopper makes his way into a store offering a closing down sale in Auckland, New Zealand But the opposition National Party said Ardern's centre-left government had failed New Zealanders by failing to keep the economy moving. National's finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith compared the response to Australia, which recorded an economic contraction of seven percent in the June quarter after adopting a more flexible approach to lockdowns and border controls. 'The lack of pragmatism and a clear plan from (Ardern's) Labour has made the economic hole deeper and the impact harder than it needed to be,' he said. 'This economic damage was recorded in three months but will last for decades to come - this is the deepest recession in living memory.' New Zealand most recent recession was in 2008-09 and until the first three months of this year it had recorded non-stop quarterly growth since 2010. New Zealand's economy shrank by a record 12.2% in the second quarter due to a strict coronavirus lockdown, but forecasts indicate activity is bouncing back During the first half of 2020, Australia's states and territories implemented more moderate Stage Three restrictions, which closed non-essential businesses like cinemas, nightclubs, gyms and restaurants. Unlike New Zealand, Australia allowed restaurants to offer takeaway meals as customers were banned from dining in from the end of March. Only Victoria has resorted to Kiwi-style restrictions but even under Labor's Stage Four lockdowns, Premier Daniel Andrews' government is still allowing restaurants to offer takeaway food. During the June quarter, the UK's economy contracted by 20.4 per cent as French GDP shrunk by 13.8 per cent while Canada's economy plunged by 11.5 per cent. Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party is the favourite to be re-elected on October 17 despite the recession. During New Zealand's last recession, Labour's last prime minister Helen Clark lost the November 2008 election - but she had already been in power for nine years. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights spent months analyzing threats to minority voting rights during the coronavirus pandemic, coming up with what one commissioner called a behemoth set of recommendations. But no one will see them. Conservative commissioners recently appointed by President Donald Trump voted to shelve the report, its findings and recommendations, even commissioners' statements. The commissioner who led the research provided a glimpse of the report's contents during an August meeting, noting it covers problems with in-person and mail-in balloting faced by voters of color, people with disabilities, and those with medical conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus. The full report, including what commission staff said should be done to overcome those obstacles, is not for public consumption, the commission said in a statement provided to USA TODAY. All Commission reports, as well as findings and recommendations, must pass by a majority vote, the commission said. That did not occur, so unfortunately we cannot share." The decision comes as the country faces a contentious presidential election amid a global pandemic while grappling with tensions over racism and police brutality. Trump has claimed without evidence the election will be rigged. People wait in line to vote in Georgia's Primary Election on June 9, 2020, in Atlanta. The commission, an independent federal agency whose work has informed landmark civil rights laws, is made up of eight members. Trumps appointments in May and August created a four-four split between conservatives and liberals. A move to release the voting-rights report failed in a tie. Conservative lawyer J. Christian Adams, who was appointed to the commission two weeks before the meeting, said in an email that he voted against releasing the report because it overlooked the disenfranchising effect of mail voting, such as ballots that are undeliverable, rejected, or lost. After he made similar assertions in June, PolitiFact ruled them mostly false. Story continues Fact check: Online post questioning voting by mail is missing context Adams was a member of Trumps voter-fraud task force, which was disbanded without finding widespread fraud in 2018. Stephen Gilchrist, a South Carolina businessman appointed in May, said in an interview he rejected the report because, coming so close to the presidential election, he found the timing "somewhat suspect." He said he didnt agree with some of its contents, which he suggested were politically motivated. I'm one of these people that's going to be very cautious and careful about ensuring that we stay focused on the issues at hand rather than trying to be political or take digs at any administration, Gilchrist said. The Democratic chair of the commission said it has been silenced on a crucial issue at a critical time. I am deeply dismayed that after months of work on a topic that is core to the commission's congressional charge and has been now for six decades for the commission not to speak to this moment, which is unlike any other in terms of an effort to vote in the history of this country, said Catherine Lhamon, a California civil rights lawyer who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016. USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll: Americans overwhelmingly support vote-by-mail push, but Republicans more wary Return to sender: Trump's strategy on mail ballots divides party before GOP convention Work on voting access report started in June The commission voted to undertake the investigation in early June. It solicited comments from voting rights groups and experts, as well as advocates for individuals with disabilities and those with limited English language skills. More than a dozen submitted nearly 300 pages of written testimony. They recounted problems with primary elections in Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Ohio, Kentucky and other states as the coronavirus spread across the country. They said there were shortages of protective gear for poll workers, many of whom are elderly, putting them and voters at risk. There were steep reductions in the number of polling places, which caused long lines. At a polling place in Nevada, the last voter didnt cast a ballot until after 3 a.m. The American Civil Liberties Union noted that Black voters have historically relied more on in-person voting, so they're more at risk of getting sick and more affected by problems at polling places. People with disabilities or limited language skills often rely on assistance at the polls to cast ballots. And requirements in some states that people have mail-in ballots witnessed or notarized could expose voters who live alone to the virus. More than 34 million voters live alone, including 13 million over 65, the group said. The testimony was uploaded to a file-sharing service, and the commission shared a link in an August press release marking the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. It said the commission is continuing its enduring commitment to voting rights by issuing a new report this fall, Navigating Voting During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations in Access for Minority Voters. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announcement But on Aug. 21, the commissioners voted against releasing the report and supporting documents. A Democratic commissioner remarked during the meeting that the decisions could damage the storied body for years to come. To simply bury it as if it never occurred is contrary to transparency; it's contrary to what we have done in the past; contrary to just the spirit of open debate and discussion, said Michael Yaki, a commissioner since 2005. He told USA TODAY in an interview afterward that he found it ridiculous and shortsighted. Politics shapes Civil Rights Commission Michael Yaki, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights The commission was set up under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to conduct investigations and make recommendations for national civil rights policy and to monitor enforcement of federal civil rights laws. Its work informed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Age Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. But the agency hasnt been insulated from political maneuvering and strife. Its focus has veered from one side of the political spectrum to the other depending on who occupied the White House. Trumps appointments simply mark the latest shift, experts say. Its a shame, its a crying shame, said Mary Frances Berry, a constitutional scholar and civil rights activist who was a member of the commission for 24 years and served as chair for 11 before she left in 2004. Commissioners serve six-year terms. Four are appointed by the president, two by the Speaker of the House and two by the president pro tempore of the Senate. They can be removed only for cause. No more than half can be from the same political party. During the George W. Bush administration, two Republican members registered as independents, circumventing that requirement and creating a conservative majority, according to The Boston Globe. The commission went on to question school desegregation efforts and affirmative action programs, and, after Obama took office, the Justice Departments handling of a case of alleged white voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party. A conservative commissioner at the time, Abigail Thernstrom, dismissed the Black Panther inquiry, telling Politico in 2010 it was driven by partisan fantasies. Obama replaced commissioners as their terms expired, creating a liberal-minded majority with two independents. But like the independents appointed by Bush, their political leanings aren't hard to discern. One was on the Democratic Party's platform committee in 2016; the other is running for Congress in North Carolina as a Democrat. In the final days of his administration, Obama installed Democrats Lhamon and Debo Adegbile, a lawyer who had failed to win Senate confirmation to lead the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division in 2014. Republicans welcome 'the Cavalry' Since then, the commission has issued scathing reports on the Trump administrations immigration policies and its civil rights record. It has voiced concerns about Trump's executive orders restricting immigration from countries with significant Muslim populations and his characterization of coronavirus as the Chinese virus. When Trump appointed Adams in August, longtime conservative commissioner Peter Kirsanow welcomed the arrival of the Cavalry in a National Review column, saying conservatives on the commission had been at the mercy of a 6-2 liberal majority for seven years. Kirsanow, a Cleveland lawyer first appointed to the commission by George W. Bush in 2001, did not return messages seeking comment. Nor did Gail Heriot, a conservative University of San Diego law school professor first appointed in 2007. Gilchrist, the Trump appointee seated in May, said he looks forward to helping forge more of a balanced approach to issues in this country as it relates to civil rights. Stephen Gilchrist, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and CEO of the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce Adams said he hopes to raise issues that are meaningful to real people, not to academics or the elites. He said government edicts prevent people from working, church worship has been curtailed, and people are being attacked for speaking their minds. These are threats very different from 60 years ago, but the Commission has a role in addressing them, Adams said. Berry, the scholar and 24-year veteran of the commission, said she believes it has lost its moral authority as partisanship on both sides has undercut its credibility. It's been lost now for a number of years, she said. Berry, who authored a 2009 book about the commission called And Justice for All," said the commission should be scrapped. She said it should be replaced with a six-member human rights panel of presidential appointees, evenly divided by party and confirmed by the Senate. Under the current system, appointees do not face Senate confirmation. The main problem is a structural issue which you can see right before your eyes, Berry said. "That's no way to run a railroad." Yaki, the longtime Democratic commissioner, said the commission is going to have to work differently if were going to be productive at all. And that includes conservatives. If these folks want to have any voice at all of their views, no matter how skewed and wrong they are, they're going to have to figure out a way to work with us and work together if important information is going to come to light at the commission, he said. Otherwise, we're going to have hearings occur in a vacuum. They occur and then they go into a black box. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump, COVID: Appointees shelved report on minority voting rights By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Indias trade deficit with China came down to $5.8 billion in the April-June 2020-21 period from $13.1 billion in the same period of the last financial year, Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. Total trade between the two nations slipped to $16.55 billion in Q1 FY21 from $21.42 billion in the April-June period of 2019-20. The government has consistently taken steps to balance our trade with China by increasing our exports to China and to reducing our dependence on imports from China, Goyal said. Indias export to China increased to $ 5.53 billion in Q1FY21, from $4.16 billion in Q1 FY20, even as both the nations observed strict lockdown to contain coronavirus outbreak during the quarter. Appropriate use of trade remedies by way of safeguard, countervailing and anti-dumping duties have been used to protect our industry from unfair trade practices adopted by trading partners. Government has made certain changes in the FDI policy and public procurement policy to safeguard the national interest, said Goyal. In FY20, Indias trade deficit with China was $48.64 billion which was lower than the trade deficit of $53.56 billion in FY19, according to the data. In a separate reply to the Lok Sabha, Goyal also said that at present, about 550 tariff lines (or products) are under the restricted/prohibited category for imports under the Foreign Trade Policy. Imports of these products are restricted from all countries, including China. CONTINUOUS STEPS TO LOWER TRADE BARRIERS The Centre has been taking steps to bridge the trade deficit by lowering trade barriers for Indian exports to China as well, Goyal said. The two nations also agreed to increase bilateral trade in a more balanced manner. NEW DELHI: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday (September 17, 2020) said that nearly 6,05,65,728 samples were tested to detect cases of coronavirus infection till September 15. Of these, 11,36,613 samples were tested on Wednesday, the ICMR said. According to the data from the ICMR, India had conducted 11,16,842 sample tests in a single day on Tuesday, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 5,94,29,115. With a massive spike of 90,123 cases, including 1,290 deaths in 24 hours, India`s tally on Wednesday crossed the grim mark of 50 lakh, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The total corona tally stood at 50,20,359 cases as of Wednesday night. Live TV On July 17, India had logged 10 lakh cases, which then doubled to 20 lakh in 20 days on August 7. The country added another 10 lakh on August 23 and went past 40 lakh on September 5. In 11 days, it added another 10 lakh cases, mounting to 50 lakh cases on Wednesday. Out of the total cases, 9,95,933 are active, 39,42,360 have been discharged, while 82,066 lost the battle against the viral disease. In the last 24 hours, 82,961 patients were discharged. While the recovery rate stands at a whooping high of 78.53 per cent, the fatality rate has come down to 1.63 per cent, the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said. Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 10,97,856 cases, including 30,409 deaths; followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. On Monday, the ministry asked Delhi, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu to ramp up their testing. These are the states whose positivity rates are faring above the national average. Meanwhile, four of these states account for more than half (53.5 per cent) of the active cases. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan congratulated Yoshihide Suga on his election as Prime Minister of Japan, the Armenian PMs Office told Armenpress. The congratulatory letter reads: I warmly congratulate you on your election as Prime Minister of Japan. I praise the fact that after the establishment of diplomatic relations Armenia and Japan have formed close relations based on mutual trust. I am convinced that the friendly partnership of our countries has a great future and express my readiness to make efforts with you to strengthen it for the benefit of our peoples. Armenia and its people are grateful to Japan for the constant support which plays an important role for our countrys development. Armenia highly values Japans significant role in the matters on ensuring international and regional peace and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. I wish you good health and success, and to the good people of Japan peace and welfare. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan No casualties as a result of the shelling were reported in the past day. Ukraine has reported two violations of the latest ceasefire agreements by Russia-controlled armed groups in the Donbas warzone on Wednesday, September 16. "Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military recorded two ceasefire violations by the Russian Federation's armed formations," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation (JFO) Command wrote on Facebook in an update as of 07:00 Kyiv time on September 17, 2020. In particular, the enemy opened fire using an under-barrel grenade launcher near the village of Katerynivka, as well as from rifles near the village of Vodiane. The Joint Forces did not return fire. No casualties as a result of the shelling were reported in the past day. "Unfortunately, a serviceman was killed near the village of Novotoshkivske as a result of careless handling of a grenade," reads the report. Since Thursday midnight, no attacks by Russian Federation's armed formations have been recorded, the JFO HQ said. The situation is under full control of the Ukrainian military. The Joint Forces are abiding by the ceasefire, being ready to adequately respond to possible attacks by the adversary, it said. Donbas ceasefire: background South Korea will hold a ceremony this week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Philippines' participation in the Korean War, the veterans affairs ministry said Thursday. The Southeast Asian country sent around 7,420 ground troops to help defend South Korea during the 1950-53 conflict, with the first batch arriving at a port in the southern city of Busan on Sept. 19, 1950, according to government data. It was the third country in the world to send troops after the United States and Britain. Of the Philippine troops, 112 were killed and 15 went missing, the data showed. This week's ceremony will be held at the Korean War Monument to the Philippine Armed Forces in the city of Goyang, north of Seoul, Friday to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers and to express gratitude for their sacrifice and commitment, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (MPVA) said. The commemoration will be attended by Patriots and Veterans Affairs Minister Park Sam-Duck, Charge de Affairs Christian L. De Jesus of the Philippine Embassy and Vice Adm. Stuart Mayer, deputy commander of the United Nations Command, the ministry added. In an expression of gratitude, South Korea sent 50,000 face masks to Korean War veterans in the Philippines in May. "My father's soul must be in Korea," the veterans ministry quoted Isabelita Yap-Aganon, daughter of Captain Conrado Yap who was killed in action in April 1951, as saying. "I hope more Koreans and Filipinos visit each other's country and have better relations." This year marks the 70th anniversary of the war, in which around 1.95 million people from 22 countries participated to help South Korea fight North Korea backed by the Soviet Union and China. (Yonhap) The claim: Churches received $7.7 billion in recovery money and USPS received none As the United States Postal Service maintains its place in the political spotlight, some supporters on social media are claiming it was treated unfairly in the disbursement of emergency COVID-19 loans or an alleged lack thereof. Are you OK with churches receiving 7.7 billion dollars of recovery money and zero for the USPS? a viral Aug. 15 Facebook post reads. A few days later, liberal Facebook page The Other 98% shared the same post, amplifying it to its audience of more than 6 million Facebook fans and followers. The pages post was shared 28,000 times. Commenters on both posts decried the claim as a slap in the face to a long-held U.S. legal principle, the separation of church and state. I believe in separation of church and state! one commenter wrote. Still cant find church included in the Constitution but found the Postal Service. Why would tax-exempt churches receive tax money?!? another wrote. In response to USA TODAYs request for comment, The Other 98% spokesperson Mark Provost said he thought the US public should have a clear and easy understanding of the total COVID relief provided to any and all religious groups. The original poster did not respond to USA TODAYs request for comment and clarification. Fact check: Postal Service will deliver ballots with insufficient or unpaid postage USPS was allocated a COVID-19 relief loan in first stimulus package The U.S. Postal Service became eligible for a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Treasury via the CARES Act, which was passed in March. A number of stipulations put in place by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin caused that money to be withheld from USPS until the end of July, when it and the Treasury reached an agreement in principle to make that aid accessible. On Aug. 22, the House passed legislation to provide an additional $25 billion in funding to USPS ahead of the November election. Its unclear whether that bill will become law, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Louisville Courier Journal that he was doubtful it could pass the Senate. Story continues Fact check: USPS collection box locks are used as security measures during large events How much money did religious organizations receive as COVID-19 relief? Religious organizations received aid from the government through the Paycheck Protection Program. The PPP and EIDL loan programs are neutral, generally applicable loan programs that provide support for nonprofit organizations without regard to whether they are religious or secular, states a press release from the U.S. Small Business Administration. (EIDL refers to the Small Business Administration's Economic Injury Disaster Loans.) The CARES Act has provided those program funds as part of the efforts to respond to the economic dislocation threatened by the COVID-19 public health emergency. As of June 30, the SBA had released 88,411 loans to religious organizations, amounting to $7.3 billion, according to that dates PPP report. That number is the only publicly available data at this time, SBA spokesperson Jim Billimoria told USA TODAY. Billimoria added that religious entities not just churches, per the claim were eligible to apply for PPP loans. Applicants received those loans based on the PPP formula of 2.5 times monthly payroll. Religion-adjacent organizations, like private religious schools, were not included in that figure, according to Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, which advocates for the separation of church and state. Religious organizations are classified separately from private elementary and secondary schools, USA TODAY confirmed. American Atheists analysis estimated that between $3.6 billion and $8.7 billion were given to private elementary and secondary schools in loans over $150,000, and in smaller loans, another $419 million. The SBA released that data. Loans under $150,000 are separated by state, and loans over $150,000 are all listed together. The U.S. Department of Education estimated in its 2013-2014 Private School Universe Survey that almost 70% of private schools in the U.S. are affiliated with a religion. Fact check: False claim that FEMA is offering hazard pay because of pandemic Do the loans impact the separation of church and state? Many commenters on the original posts feared that the government allocating taxpayer dollars to religious organizations, which are tax-exempt, is a slippery slope that could lead to allowing religion to impact government. The law most commonly cited in reference to the separation of church and state is the First Amendments Establishment Clause, which says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that the Establishment Clause was intended to build a wall of separation between the two. In the Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman, a three-part test dubbed the Lemon test was established to determine whether the government can assist religion. It can if the primary purpose of the assistance is secular, the assistance doesnt promote or inhibit religion and theres no excessive entanglement between church and state, according to the United States Courts website. More: 'A dangerous environment': As churches reopen, outbreaks sprout and some keep doors shut On the other hand, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which says Congress can make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, makes this particular situation foggier. The general rule is they can't favor religious entities; that'd be a violation of the Establishment Clause, said Frank Ravitch, the Walter H. Stowers chair of law and religion at Michigan State University. But you can't exclude religious entities in a way that would be viewed as discriminatory; that would violate the Free Exercise Clause. Ravitch said that in this situation, the government is not favoring religious entities because theyre included with other nonprofit businesses. A recent Supreme Court ruling also shed light on providing public aid to religious private schools. The court ruled in June that states offering scholarships to students in private schools cannot exclude religious schools from such programs, USA TODAY reported. States are not required to fund religious education, but they can't differentiate between religious and non-religious private schools. "A state need not subsidize private education. But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the court's majority in the case. In the case of this recent Supreme Court ruling, the funding is legal so long as religious entities aren't favored over non-religious ones, Ravitch added. "The Espinoza case reinforces the law that was already on place," he said. But Ravitch also said that favoritism toward religious organizations could violate the Establishment Clause. If a government program, he explained, "does show such favoritism in access to the program, or information about it, procedures, or amounts of funding it is likely unconstitutional. Otherwise, it is not." The way the courts are interpreting the Establishment Clause has been evolving for years, trending in the direction of permitting government involvement with religion. In 2010, I don't think there's much question it would have been brazenly unconstitutional, Ravitch said. But, you know, before a line of cases that started around 2014, 2015, the understanding was government certainly can't give religious entities lump-sum aid even if it might give nonreligious entities that aid. And it certainly cant pay the salaries of ministers, things like that. I am not so sure that today thats true. Our rating: Partly false We rate the claim that religious organizations received $7.7 billion in COVID-19 recovery money from the government when United States Postal Service received none as PARTLY FALSE, because some of it was not supported by our research. The USPS became eligible for a $10 billion loan under the CARES Act and received access to it this summer. Religious entities not churches received $7.3 billion in loans as of June 30, according to the figure made publicly available by the Small Business Administration. Our fact-check 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. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: USPS and religious organizations received COVID-19 loans File image: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal Terming three bills related to agriculture "anti-farmer", AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday demanded that the Centre withdraw them, saying his party will vote against the bills in Parliament. The AAP has three Rajya Sabha MPs and one LoK Sabha MP. "The three bills related to farming and farmers brought in the Parliament are anti-farmer. Farmers all over the country are opposing them. The central government should withdraw these three bills. The AAP will vote against them in Parliament," he tweeted in Hindi. The Centre had on Monday introduced The Farmers'' Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, and ''The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill to replace the ordinances promulgated earlier. These bills seek to provide barrier-free trade for farmers'' produce outside notified farm mandis, and empower farmers to enter into farming agreements with private players prior to production for sale of agri-produce. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:18:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KABUL, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 23 Afghan soldiers and 31 militants were killed and several fighters wounded in separate clashes in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar and western Badghis provinces during Wednesday night, as peace efforts being made, provincial officials confirmed on Thursday. In Nangarhar province, 20 soldiers and 29 militants were killed and 15 security forces and 20 militants were wounded when security forces repelled militants' attacks in Khogiani, Shirzad and Hesarak districts, provincial government spokesman Attaullah Khogiani told Xinhua. The clashes took place after Taliban militants stormed security checkpoint during the night in the region, 120 km east of Kabul, the official added. In western Badghis province, three soldiers and two militants were killed and six soldiers, two civilians and five militants wounded when security forces fought back attackers who stormed district offices in Qadis district. "Parts of district administrative office building and an armored military vehicle caught fire after security force members forced back militants who tried to overran the offices," district chief Haidar Sharifi told Xinhua. Taliban militants claimed that their fighters inflicted casualties on security forces in Badghis, but they did not give information on fightings in Nangarhar. The clashes came as peace talks between a government delegation and Taliban representatives were underway in Doha, capital of Qatar. Enditem WORCESTER Assumption University announced this week the naming of one of its schools as the DAmour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in honor of philanthropists Donald DAmour and wife, Michele. In its mission statement, Assumption University, sponsored by a religious order, says its students will benefit from 2,000 years of the Catholic intellectual tradition and explore the teachings of scientists, artists, writers and philosophers who have engaged in a search for truth across all time and all disciplines. It is a statement one assumes in agreement with Donald DAmour, a 1964 graduate who last year transitioned out of his decades-long role as chief executive officer of Springfield-based Big Y Foods, the supermarket chain co-founded by his father, as well as with his wife who has a background in education. DAmour and wife, Michele, who previously served as Big Ys educational partnership administrator, are well known for their philanthropy and said last year they have long been supporters of schools that understand that faith and reason are compatible. These schools include Assumption, to which the couple made a $4.2 million gift in 2008, the largest in the institutions history, that was used in large part to establish the Donald and Michele DAmour Chair in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as well as fund core teaching, a speakers program, and faculty grant development. As part of a restructuring process, the university has named the DAmour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. President Francesco C. Cesareo called this college the universitys largest school and one through which all students take courses as part of the universitys comprehensive and influential core curriculum. Assumptions Catholic liberal arts education provides students with a strong intellectual foundation and the skills needed to deepen and explore their sense of purpose and vocation, Cesareo said. We are grateful to Donald and Michele for their storied support of Assumption and belief in the value of a Catholic liberal education as embodied in the institutions mission and transmitted to our students. In their joint statement, the DAmours said their support of Assumption reflects our belief, and the universitys, in the transcendent importance of the questions posed by Catholic liberal education. Fewer institutions of higher education are asking these questions," the couple said. "Assumption makes them the basis of its enduring effort to form students enlivened by the pursuit of truth, the harmony of faith and reason, and the dignity of the human person. The world around us changes. These questions persist. That is why an Assumption education remains permanently relevant, and it is why we are proud to support the DAmour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Donald DAmour, who earned a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame in 1971, served as a member of the Assumption Board of Trustees during the 1990s. Michele DAmour is a graduate of Westfield State University and holds a masters degree in education from American International College in Springfield. She served as an Assumption trustee for four years, beginning in 2015, and currently serves on the advisory board for the DAmour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The college is the second school of five created in the restructuring of Assumption, which this summer gained university status, to be named, joining the Grenon School of Business. The naming of buildings, centers and classrooms are one of many ways institutions have long used to help raise funds for their facilities. According to the university, the DAmours' gift for the naming of the school was $1 million with a potential to be $2 million as the DAmours have also pledged a $500,000 challenge grant if the university raises $500,000, they will match that amount. Related content: BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 17 By Jeila Aliyeva - Trend: The World Health Organization (WHO) is ready to continue cooperation with Turkmenistan in the field of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, Trend reports with reference to the State News Agency of Turkmenistan. This was said during an online meeting organized by the WHO office in Geneva. Turkmenistan spoke about the measures taken in the country to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection, as well as preventing other infectious diseases. The country is using measures to reduce the risk of spreading various diseases following the recommendations and proposals of WHO. WHO assessed the work implemented In Turkmenistan and aimed at the health protection of its citizens, as well as measures are taken to prevent the introduction of COVID-19, said the report. Earlier, WHO/Europe experts worked in Turkmenistan at the request of the government, to support Turkmenistan in the aspects of preparedness and response to COVID-19. During the visit, the sides held a meeting where Turkmenistan presented its program to fight infectious diseases. Furthermore, the Turkmen side noted that the country follows the WHO recommendations and is currently implementing a program to ensure preparedness for countering and responding to infectious diseases. Also, Turkmenistan is working with UN agencies to develop a third national plan that covers the humanitarian component of the country's measures to combat COVID-19. To date, Turkmenistan has reported no coronavirus cases. The outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan - which is an international transport hub - began at a fish market in late December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @JeilaAliyeva A man has been jailed for two years and 10 months for a "terrifying" sex attack in the inner Sydney suburb of Haymarket, which left a woman fearing she was about to be killed. The woman had just finished work in the early hours of July 19, 2019, and was returning home but could not find her keys. As she stood outside her Goulburn Street apartment building pressing the access button about 3.40am, she was grabbed from behind by Bohyuk Kim. Kim had finished work at a nearby restaurant, then gone out drinking with friends until about 3am. He was walking along Goulburn Street when he saw the woman, watched her for several minutes, and grabbed her with both arms. On Thursday, acting NSW District Court Judge Michael Adams said the woman initially thought she was being grabbed by her boyfriend playing a trick on her but realised this was not the case when Kim grabbed her breasts. "She unsuccessfully struggled to free herself," Judge Adams said. The total number of confirmed cases grew to 166,244. Ukraine said 3,584 new active COVID-19 cases had been confirmed across the country in the past 24 hours as of September 17, 2020, marking yet another highest daily rise. The total number of confirmed cases grew to 166,244, as seen on the interactive map compiled by the National Security and Defense Council. As many as 73,913 patients, including 1,589 in the past day, have recovered. The death toll is 3,400 with 60 fatalities recorded in the past day. There were 88,931 active cases as of September 17. In total, there have been 230,061 reports on suspected COVID-19 since the beginning of 2020. Read alsoAlmost half of Ukrainians consider quarantine restrictions "optimal" pollThe highest number of new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours was registered in Kharkiv region (483 cases), Ternopil region (390), the city of Kyiv (379), Odesa region (325), and Lviv region (234). The overall incidence per region is as follows: 18,449 (+379) in the city of Kyiv; 17,664 (+234) cases in Lviv region; 13,915 (+483) in Kharkiv region; 12,640 (+147) in Chernivtsi region; 11,856 (+179) in Ivano-Frankivsk region; 10,797 (+90) in Rivne region; 10,602 (+325) in Odesa region; 10,394 (+390) in Ternopil region; 8,931 (+102) in Zakarpattia region; 7,342 (+135) in Kyiv region; 6,593 (+89) in Volyn region; 5,039 (+63) in Vinnytsia region; 4,656 (+113) in Zhytomyr region; 4,198 (+65) in Khmelnytsky region; 3,653 (+114) in Dnipropetrovsk region; 3,034 (+112) in Chernihiv region; 2,820 (+81) in Cherkasy region; 2,724 (+84) in Sumy region; 2,673 (+82) in Zaporizhia region; 2,272 (+92) in Donetsk region (Ukrainian-controlled districts); 2,252 (+81) in Mykolaiv region; 1,363 (+56) in Poltava region; 951 (+17) in Kirovohrad region; 737 (+35) in Kherson region; and 689 (+36) in Luhansk region (Ukrainian-controlled districts). Data from Russia-occupied areas the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is not available. Quarantine in Ukraine: background Five African-Americans in Hamilton County were hung and/or shot during the lynch law era in the South during the post-Civil War days. One exception to this deplorable situation was during the administration of Hamilton County Sheriff John Skillern in 1892. In May 1892, Frank Weims, a black, attempted to sexually assault a white woman in a wooded area in Hill City (North Chattanooga). Weims was caught immediately and brought to the Hamilton County Jail. Indignation was high, reflecting the bitter social feelings through the South during this time. Sheriff Skillern, recognizing the potential danger of a mob to attempt to kill the prisoner, immediately sent the prisoner out of town. As anticipated that night, a riotous crowd stormed the jail only to learn that the prisoner was not there. Two deputies, jailer Holt and deputy Frank Selcer, acting pursuant to Sheriff Skillerns orders, began a memorable journey transporting Weims from one jail to another through the state. Their job was made difficult by the practice of telegraph operators, contrary to company rules, wiring ahead to Chattanooga rioters and those along the route being informed as to their movements. At many train stations troublemakers demanded that the officers turn the prisoner over to them for lynching accompanied by threats against the law officers. Since the officers could not take the prisoner out of Tennessee they found many jails in the state closed to them. A local newspaper in Middle Tennessee reported that the jails had standing room only cards on the front of the jail and that the City of Memphis shook at even at the suggestion that Weims be brought to the Bluff City. The prisoner was incarcerated in Nashville for a while and several officers were wounded in a confrontation with a mob. It took a subterfuge of giving Weims a market basket with instructions to walk up the street smoking a cigarette in a casual manner surrounded by three officers guarding him to escape the crowd. Getting back to Chattanooga the two lawmen left for East Tennessee but were met by a howling and well organized mob at every turn. Being forewarned that an angry crowd awaited them at the Wauhatchie station, they threw Weims off the train and then jumped after him. After reaching Chattanooga they hurriedly left on a train bound for Knoxville but, after finding no room in the jail there, they went on to Morristown. In the meantime the conditions had gotten worse in Chattanooga. An armed mob had demanded that they be allowed to check the jail to see if the prisoner was there. Sheriff Skillern requested that a committee of citizens perform such task and then persuaded the crowd to disperse. This, however, did not totally appease the angry group. A public meeting was called for at the courthouse on May 26 to reverse the apparent order of the day by putting the law above the wild and wooly mob. The meeting was presided over by the Reverend T.H. McCallie who addressed those assembled on the harm that lawlessness could bring the community. After much debate a list of resolutions endorsing law and order were approved and adopted by those assembled. The citizens also applauded Sheriff Skillern and his staff for the way they had handled the case so far. The most explosive potential still remained. Weims had to be brought for trial. Sheriff Skillern met the train in broad daylight at the depot with 75 trusted, determined, well-armed citizens. They marched up the middle of the street with the prisoner who would later enter a plea to a charge of assault with intent to commit rape and received a sentence of 25 years. They once again called on the community for help and they responded in assisting the Sheriff to get Weims to the state penitentiary as armed guards to prevent any violence or unlawful demonstration. Skillern and his deputies as well as Judge John A. Moon, who presided over Weims trial, were congratulated for the manner in which the unsavory incident was handled. Hamilton County received accolades all across Tennessee for its fervent desire and strenuous effort to follow the law. Unfortunately, within a year (1893) the community failed to maintain this standard of conduct and returned to the use of the lynch law and the first hanging of a young black (Alfred Blount) was held on the Walnut Street Bridge for the assault of an elderly woman in her home in downtown Chattanooga. After his second term of office expired in 1894, Sheriff Skillern moved to Idaho where he raised sheep and became the biggest wool producer in the state. * * * Jerry Summers (If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com Higher viral loads are associated with a greater risk of death among cancer and non-cancer patients hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), researchers report September 15 in the journal Cancer Cell. Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, those with hematologic malignancies who had recently been treated for cancer had the highest levels of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19. As a community, we've only begun to understand the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 viral load and outcomes." Michael Satlin, Study Senior Author and Assistant Professor, Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, Weill Cornell Medical Center Satlin is also an assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "Currently, this quantitative information is not given to patient care teams, and providers only know if a patient's test is positive or negative. Giving this information to providers of patients with cancer who have COVID-19 could help them decide on which patients should receive more intensive monitoring when they are in the hospital and which should receive new antiviral medicines if these treatments are in short supply." Worldwide, COVID-19 has affected more than 27 million people and has resulted in approximately 900,000 deaths. Initial reports have suggested that patients with cancer may be more likely to develop severe COVID-19 than patients without cancer. Satlin and his collaborators previously found that high SARS-CoV-2 viral load upon presentation to the emergency department is associated with in-hospital mortality among the general inpatient population. But until now, it was not clear how admission viral load may affect the clinical outcomes of hospitalized patients who have both cancer and COVID-19. In the new study, Satlin and his team used two standard diagnostic tests to measure the amount of SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swab specimens obtained upon admission to three New York City hospitals between March 15 and May 14, 2020. One hundred of the patients had active cancer, and 2,914 patients did not. Among the cancer patients, some had solid tumors, whereas others had hematologic malignancies, which affect blood, blood cell-producing tissue called bone marrow, and lymph nodes - organs making up part of the circulatory and immune systems. Half of patients with hematologic malignancies had high viral loads, compared to approximately 30% of patients without cancer. Among patients with hematologic malignancies, only those who had received chemotherapy or targeted therapy during the previous six months had significantly higher viral loads than the general inpatient population with COVID-19. "We suspect that this finding may be from the underlying immunodeficiencies conferred by either the hematologic malignancies or the administered therapies, which may decrease the ability to inhibit proliferation of SARS-CoV-2," says co-first author Lars Westblade, an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a clinical microbiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "Additional studies with a larger sample size of patients with hematologic malignancies are needed to more definitely assess whether these patients have increased mortality when hospitalized with COVID-19." Overall, the in-hospital mortality rate was 38.8% among patients with a high viral load, 24.1% among patients with a medium viral load, and 15.3% among patients with a low viral load. Cancer patients showed a similar pattern, with mortality rates of 45.2%, 28.0%, and 12.1%, respectively. High viral loads in patients with cancer were associated with increased in-hospital mortality than low viral loads. This finding remained statistically significant, even after adjusting for factors such as age and need for supplemental oxygen within three hours of presentation to the emergency department. One important caveat is that it is not clear whether viral load predicts mortality rate in non-hospitalized individuals with COVID-19. "We encourage subsequent studies to assess the potential role of using SARS-CoV-2 viral load to guide care for outpatients with and without cancer," says co-first author Gagandeep Brar, an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine and an assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. For their own part, the researchers plan to conduct larger studies to confirm their findings and investigate whether specific types of cancer and cancer treatments lead to higher viral loads and worse outcomes. They would also like to assess whether measuring viral loads over time in a given patient could be used to personalize the type and duration of therapy. Daniel Andrews has set up a so-called 'ring of steel' around Melbourne to stop residents heading to regional Victoria where coronavirus restrictions have been finally relaxed. Although there are no actual fences, police will use checkpoints at major highways, automatic number plate recognition and extra patrols at bus and train stations to catch city dwellers trying to escape strict lockdown. Five million Melbourne residents, who are stuck in one of the world's longest lockdowns, will be slapped with a $4,957 fine for breaching public health rules if they dare to leave. The isolation of Australia's second biggest city is similar to the lockdown of Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis of nine million where coronavirus was identified late last year. Wuhan was shut down on 23 January as all flights, trains and buses in and out were cancelled and steel fences were set up outside apartment buildings to keep residents in their homes. The lockdown was lifted in April after 11 weeks, four weeks fewer than Melbourne's shutdown is due to last. It comes as Victoria recorded only 28 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday - its lowest daily total since 24 June. Daniel Andrews has effectively set up a 'ring of steel' around Melbourne to stop residents heading to regional Victoria Although there are no actual fences, police will use checkpoints at major highways, automatic number plate recognition and extra patrols. Pictured: A checkpoint in Geelong Premier Andrews (pictured) is desperate to stop coronavirus spreading from Melbourne to the regions Poll Has Melbourne's lockdown gone on too long? Yes No Undecided Has Melbourne's lockdown gone on too long? Yes 751 votes No 164 votes Undecided 48 votes Now share your opinion Officers say they will check cars with caravans and fishing rods as well as increase patrols at camp sites and national parks to catch any city residents who have escaped. There will also be increased checks at popular holiday destinations such as the Mornington Peninsula where many well-heeled Melburnians have second homes. On Wednesday major checkpoints were set up on the Princes Freeway at Little River heading to Geelong and the Calder Freeway near Sunbury on the way to Bendigo. Premier Andrews is desperate to stop coronavirus spreading from Melbourne to the regions, which have suffered significantly fewer case numbers and were removed from lockdown on Wednesday night. He said: 'Whether you want to call it a ring of steel or a border or whatever the term, the key aim is very simple: only those who have to go to regional Victoria and have a lawful reason to go to regional Victoria can go to regional Victoria. 'We've got to be inflexible on this.' He added: 'The police are not mucking about. If you are from Melbourne and you are in regional Victoria and do not have an appropriate excuse, you will be fined. 'Victorians have given a lot but we need to guard the low numbers in regional Victoria. 'Anyone who thinks they might take a punt on heading to regional Victoria and not getting caught, I think your odds are very poor.' Melbourne's lockdown will last 15 weeks, a month longer than the lockdown of Wuhan (pictured), the Chinese city where the virus was first identified late last year The Chinese city of Wuhan was locked down on 23 January when nine million residents (pictured) were prevented from leaving the city A worker in a protective outfit checks the body temperature of an elderly woman at the entrance of a bank, in Wuhan, China in March Mr Andrews also asked pub landlords to check customers' identification to make sure they are not from Melbourne. 'If you're not from regional Victoria, then you should not be at the pub, and that compliance will be very, very important,' he said. Victoria was placed back into lockdown on 8 July after coronavirus escaped from hotel quarantine in late May and spread rapidly. Some 700 cases were recorded in one day on 5 August and more than 700 people have died, mostly in aged care. Under Mr Andrews' road map out of restrictions, Melbourne will remain locked down until weekly average cases drop below five, which is not expected until October 26. That would mean Melbourne's lockdown would have lasted 15 weeks, a month longer than the shutdown of Wuhan. Police will try to catch city dwellers trying to escape strict coronavirus lockdown. Pictured: A checkpoint at Kalkallo Officers say they will check cars with caravans and fishing rods as well as increase patrols at camp sites and national parks. Pictured: A checkpoint at Albury For regional Victoria, the four reasons to leave home no longer apply, most workplaces are reopening and schools are returning with a staggered start. Gathering limits have increased to 10 people outdoors and up to five nominated visitors from another household bubble. Restaurants are operating with a cap of 10 seated patrons indoors and 50 outdoors. Gathering limits have also increase to 10 people at weddings, 20 mourners at funerals and 10 people plus one faith leader at outdoor religious gatherings. Children can also return to community sport and adults will be able to take part in non-contact sport. Melburnians (pictured at Elwood beach) are expected to be stuck in lockdown until October 26 Everyone in Melbourne must wear a mask when leaving home. Pictured: Residents at South Melbourne Beach Mr Andrews announced the eased restrictions for regional Victorians on Tuesday. 'I am so, so pleased and proud of every single regional Victorian who has stayed the course, follow the rules and got tested. 'There is no greater evidence to the people of Melbourne that this strategy, getting numbers low, is essential,' Mr Andrews explained. Melbourne took its first tentative steps out of lockdown on Monday, with those living alone or single parents allowed to have one visitor, outdoor exercise extended to two hours and the curfew's start time pushed back an hour to 9pm. Three days before New York City public schools were supposed to open their doors for in-person learning, officials announced Thursday that classrooms will not reopen as scheduled -- and now middle school and high school students won't be back in classrooms until October. Mayor Bill de Blasio said education labor officials had reached out with "real concerns" about staffing and safety for the nation's largest school district. MORE: Teachers concerned over COVID-19 safety as schools reopen, new cases are reported The mayor said he's confident in the safety of classrooms but "the thing we all came together on and said really had to be nailed was the staffing level." De Blasio announced Thursday that 2,500 more teachers have been hired. PHOTO: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks to reporters after visiting New Bridges Elementary School in Brooklyn, New York, to observe pandemic-related safety procedures. (John Minchillo/AP, FILE) After a conversation with the unions, the schools' new timetable "involves several phases," the mayor said. PHOTO: Students wear protective masks as they arrive for classes at the Immaculate Conception School while observing COVID-19 prevention protocols, as some private schools reopened, in The Bronx borough of New York City, Sept. 9, 2020. (John Minchillo/AP) The first phase is Monday, Sept. 21, with preschool and special education classrooms opening for blended in-person learning. MORE: Children with disabilities face additional challenges returning to school amid coronavirus On Tuesday, Sept. 29, kindergarten through fifth-grade schools and kindergarten through eighth-grade schools will open for blended learning. PHOTO: School Safety Officers check a teacher's temperature for safety reasons outside a school building, as preparations begin for the delayed start of the school year in Brooklyn, New York, Sept. 14, 2020. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters) On Thursday, Oct. 1, middle school and high schools will start blended learning. Remote learning is still continuing. In a note to parents announcing the changes, one elementary school principal said, "I share your frustration in receiving this information at such a late hour." PHOTO: Desks have been spaced out for a smaller number of students in each classroom at a Brooklyn public school as staff prepare to welcome students back after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the March closure of schools in New York City, Sept 14, 2020. (Radhika Chalasani) PHOTO: A calendar in a Brooklyn public school classroom marks the date of the first day of in-person school for New York City's public school students, in Brooklyn, New York, on Sept 14, before Mayor de Blasio announced another delayed start date. (Radhika Chalasani) But United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew stressed that "buildings must be ready, and testing and tracing procedures must be in place. A phased re-opening -- and making sure, despite budget challenges, that we have enough staff -- can help ensure that safety." MORE: NYC approves outdoor learning, but offers no plan for schools Council of School Supervisors and Administrators president Mark Cannizzaro added, "Although we are extremely disappointed that the start of in-person learning must be delayed again, it is simply not safe to open buildings to children without a teacher for every class. Our principals have communicated their staffing needs to their superintendents, and the Mayor has committed to providing." Schools will not reopen if New York City's infection rate climbs over 3%. The city infection rate currently stands at 0.63%. New York City public middle, high schools delay in-person learning until October originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Trump supporters grab signs before a rally at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. (Los Angeles Times) To the editor: I began reading David Lauter's analysis with great anticipation ("Why nothing matters to Trump voters," Sept. 11) . Finally, someone will explain to this baffled Democrat why so many Americans still support Trump after each new revelation of his horrendous character flaws, including his compulsive and dangerous lying, his gratuitous insults directed at military service members, his monstrous behavior toward women, his peculiar attraction to authoritarian leaders and his epic narcissism. But Lauter instead cites Pew Research results showing the wide disparity between Democrats and Republicans on questions of race, gender, religion and immigration. These have nothing to do with Trump's character defects, but merely reflect an intensification of what most Republicans have believed since before Trump. It's possible to share these beliefs and still find Trump's behavior appalling and unacceptable. Why have so few Republicans done that? I'm still waiting for an answer. Richard Webber, Sherman Oaks .. To the editor: I was all set for David Lauter to explain to me why many voters are loyal, unflinching supporters of Trump. Citing statistics, Lauter points out the disparity between Democrats and Republicans on issues of religion, immigration, race and women's rights. We know this already. What I want to know is, in the face of facts and science, WHY do Trump supporters take the position they do? Someone please enlighten me. Joel Miller, Torrance .. To the editor: David Lauter argues Trump supporters knew what they were getting in 2016 as reason for their continued loyalty. Did they? They voted for a man who promised he would replace Obamacare with something better, pass an infrastructure bill, and use his managerial skills to boost the economy. He failed on all three. Meanwhile, since 2016, his supporters have learned he lied to them about the coronavirus, betrayed our allies, kowtowed to dictators, attracted felons to his administration like bees to honey, sought foreign interference in a U.S. election, hijacked the DOJ for his own purposes, considers our fallen soldiers "losers" and "suckers," did nothing when Russia offered bounties for killing our soldiers and incited division and violence. Not to mention his volcano of lies and disinformation since he took office. Still, they worship him. Despite Mr. Lauter's noble attempt to explain it, I remain steadfastly mystified. Paul Gulino, Santa Monica The meeting was joint online by representatives from Ecuador's Quito, Guaranda, Shandong's capital city of Jinan and Weifang, including Chinese Ambassador to Ecuador Chen Guoyou, Li Rong, executive vice director with Shandong People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, Weifang Mayor Tian Qingying and Guaranda Mayor Luis Medardo Chimbolema. Weifang experts answered the questions raised by experts on epidemic prevention and control in Guaranda with real-life experiences. Medical experts from both sides also discussed the epidemic situation, preventive measures and therapeutic solutions in depth, and fully shared the experience and practices of epidemic prevention and control. "After the outbreak of the epidemic in Ecuador, China responded to Ecuador's request with timely assistance," said Chen. "As China and Ecuador mark the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, Weifang City and Guaranda City shared their anti-epidemic experience and established friendly and cooperative ties. This stood witness to the establishment of friendly relations between the two cities, and was also a new starting point for the two cities to deepen friendship and expand cooperation," Chen added. The City of Kites and the City of Seven Hills joined hands and the two sides have strong complementarity in practical cooperation and great potential for people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Luis Medardo Chimbolema expressed his gratitude to Weifang for sharing its anti-epidemic experience. He said that they firmly believe that the establishment of friendly and cooperative relations with Weifang will help Guaranda better achieve epidemic prevention and control goals and set an example for international cooperation in fighting the epidemic. Tian Qingying said that Weifang would donate 30,000 medical masks to support epidemic prevention and control in Guaranda and wish the city an early victory over the outbreak. The two cities mayors then signed a Letter of Intent for Twinning and Friendly Cooperation during the videoconference. Image Attachments Links: Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=371575 Caption: China's Weifang, Ecuador's Guaranda ink ties and join hands in COVID-19 fight Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=371581 Caption: China's Weifang, Ecuador's Guaranda ink ties and join hands in COVID-19 fight SOURCE The Foreign Affairs Office of Weifang Municipal Government People travelling to Syria will not have to quarantine upon entry, if they are able to produce a negative PCR test result writes Sowt Al-Asima. The Syrian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced the cancellation of hotel and precautionary quarantine measures imposed on people flying into the country, provided that they present valid PCR test results. The new decision comes into effect starting early next month. CAA Director General Bassem Mansour, said that repatriation flights will stop with the reopening of Damascus International Airport, and citizens will be able to return to the country without complication. He added in a statement to Sham FM yesterday that travellers who have a negative PCR test result, which was done in the last 96 hours, will be allowed to enter the country without the need to stay at a hotel, get tested again, or quarantine in one of the approved centers. Yesterday, the Assad government set a date for the reopening of the Damascus International Airport and for the return of flights to their normal schedule, in accordance with conditions and standards that guarantee public safety. The protocol followed at the airport provides travellers with the option to get tested and quarantine for two nights at the Ebla Hotel in exchange for 200 dollars, or to quarantine in a health center for 14 days, in addition to exchanging the 100 dollars required for Syrians entering the country by land or air. Syrians who arrived in Syria from Tehran via flight #W5142 were prevented from entering the country, despite having valid PCR test results. They were given the choice to either stay at Ebla Hotel for two nights, and pay 200 dollars, or quarantine in a health center for a 14-day period. The twenty passengers who refused the options presented to them, because they said they had a negative PCR test result that they obtained from one of the approved centers in Tehran, were taken to the notorious al-Duwair quarantine center, while the rest of the Iranians who were on the same flight were allowed to enter the country as if they were citizens of Syria. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. A senior lecturer at the University of Ghanas Department of Geography, Professor Martin Oteng Ababio says no research was conducted before a law was passed to ban okada operations in Ghana. According to him, the current law cannot stand the test of time because it has no research backing it. He added that the lack of research prior to the passage of the law is the cause of confusion around okada operations now. Section 128 (1) of the Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 (Legislative Instrument 2180), states: The licencing authority shall not register a motorcycle to carry a fare-paying passenger. The truth of the matter is that any law that is not backed by research is bound to fail. The failure of this law is not surprising to some of us. I suggest we look at the law in its totality because I dont foresee the current law standing the test of time in Ghana today and in the near future, Professor Oteng Ababio said in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, September 17, 2020. Prof. Ababio conducted research on okada operations in 2012 and recommended that banning such business will not be prudent. About eight years after the law was passed, it has generated heated debate in Ghana following a promise by John Dramani Mahama, flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress, to legalise okada if he is re-elected as president on December 7. Prof. Ababio further urged the government to take a second look at the law in question. Motorbikes are part of our transportation system and it will forever be part of it. The use of same for commercial purposes is the bone of contention now. Can we look at it and see how we can regulate it and for that matter? I agree with such calls because it is well regulated in other parts of the world. Otherwise, if we go with banter or banning and not banning, the problem will continue to exist. ---citinewsroom The UKs challenger broadband network providers are overwhelmingly in support of a common wholesale platform, according to research from the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA). Nearly nine out of ten (88.7%) of the providers are in favour of such a platform, through which they could provide wholesale services to third-party content providers, aggregating the large volume of customers they could potentially reach. It is has been estimated that there will be 11 million premises accessed via independent networks by 2025. The number of premises provided with full-fibre coverage is increasing rapidly with independent networks increasing their deployment by 50% last year to 1.2 million. However, with just over 10% of all UK premises covered with full fibre there is a long way to go, although Virgin Medias cable network makes a significant contribution to the UK governments 2025 target of gigabit-capable broadband to all homes. INCA CEO Malcolm Corbett said: For some time, it has been presumed that challenger independent providers do not have the scale to attract major brands like TalkTalk and Sky. However, that is changing rapidly and our research shows that the operators are keen to work together on a wholesale platform that can bridge the gap in the market. INCA is supporting the development of a common wholesale platform, which would enable groups of independent wholesale network providers to combine together and offer a competitive alternative to the limited number of large players that currently dominate the market. The aim is to make it as simple as possible for service providers to deliver their services over challenger networks, thus helping to foster credible competition and consumer choice in the delivery of the UKs new digital infrastructure. INCAs survey was carried out in summer 2020 in response to a call from Ofcom to have greater visibility of the industry's view on establishing a common wholesale platform. On This Day The Day Myanmars Ex-Dictator Began to Engineer a Military Coup Burma Socialist Programme Party Chairman U Ne Win (second from left) and U Khin Nyunt (left) see off U San Yu (second from right) as he leaves on a goodwill trip to Korea at the Yangon International Airport. The multi-billion dollar Pascua Lama project, which straddles Chile's border with Argentina at an altitude of 4,000 meters (13,100 feet), has been the subject of protests Chile's environmental court confirmed Thursday a final order to close Canadian company Barrick Gold's huge Pascua Lama mining project, on hold since 2013 over environmental concerns. The court dismissed a legal challenge from the company and confirmed a 2018 environmental authority ruling, ordering the "total and definitive closure" of the mine project. It also imposed a $9 million fine on the Canadian miner. "The magnitude of the danger to people's health makes it necessary to close the Pascua Lama mining project, as other alternatives for safe operation for the environment and population health do not appear to be viable," the court said. The multi-billion dollar Pascua Lama project, which straddles Chile's border with Argentina at an altitude of 4,000 meters (13,100 feet), was launched in 2009. But local groups began a legal battle to halt its construction, citing concerns over the threat of damage to waterways from the massive open pit mining project, one of the largest in the world. Barrick Gold, the world's second-largest gold producer, planned to spend up to $8.5 billion on the mine, and initially planned to start production there in 2014. However, construction was suspended in April 2013 when a Chilean court accepted a complaint filed by indigenous groups. Greenpeace said the ruling was "a very important victory for the local communities that for years have denounced and taken legal action against the serious effects that mining has had on their lands." The environmental group added that the project was an example of mining's impact on Chile's glaciers, and said it was important the government move forward with legislation that protects glaciers from similar projects. Chilean authorities said Pascau Lama had violated 33 environmental regulations and damaged native flora and fauna. Of particular concern was the discharge of acidic water into the Estrecho river that supplied the local indigenous Diaguita community. msa/db/jm Ajay Kanth By Express News Service KOCHI: The state government has set up a Special Land Acquisition unit in Thiruvananthapuram to acquire estate lands situated inside the forest regions in the state. The move aims at ending private properties inside forests.A government order (GO), dated August 28, has been issued for the creation of the special unit for a period of one year. As per the order, an 11-member team led by a special tahsildar will coordinate with the district collectors concerned for acquiring the estates situated inside the forest areas. Revenue Principal Secretary A Jayathilak told TNIE that the government has taken the decision to end private ownership of properties inside the forest by acquiring them. Private ownership of land cannot be allowed inside the forest. This results in increased human settlements putting pressure on the natural habitat. The special unit has been formed to finalise the procedures for acquiring such private estates, he said. Forest officials said the department, in coordination with the revenue department, has identified 13 estates for acquisition in the first phase. Certain modalities need to be finalised. A detailed proposal for acquiring the estate lands inside the forest has been prepared under the Rebuild Kerala initiative, said an officer of C section in Forest and Wildlife Department. Among the 13 is Bonacaud estate in Thiruvananthapuram, one of the oldest estates in the state.As per a proposal, the forest department will provide financial assistance to relocate people living inside the estate. They will be given money to purchase land and construct houses in other places. Once estates are acquired, natural vegetation will be restored, a top officer said. We hope to minimise man-animal conflicts in these identified zones once settlers are relocated, the officer said.As per forest department data, the human-animal conflicts have become a major issue in the past few years with 514 deaths reported between 2006 and 2015. 13 estates have been identified by the forest department for acquisition in the first phase It is basically over 6-12 months In another year or years It was never a real pandemic Vote View Results CLEVELAND, Ohio -- With fall near, Northeast Ohio is coming off a warmer than usual summer. The three summer months -- June, July and August -- together had an average temperature about a degree above normal, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dave Samuhel said. July was the eighth-warmest July since records began in 1871. The hottest July on record was in 1955. Over the summer, 16 days had temperatures above 90 degrees -- double the normal number of 90-plus-degree days. June was slightly above normal temperatures, and drier, with about about 70% of normal rainfall, Samuhel said. August was about average temperature, but wet rainfall: 5.64 inches compared to 3.5. National Weather Service Cleveland meteorologist Keith Jaszka agreed. Junes average temperature was 70 degrees, a degree above normal. The average temperature in July was 77 degrees, 3 degrees above normal, and Augusts average temperature was a normal 72 degrees. Compared to other parts of the nation, Clevelands weather looks peaceful. Samuhel said some cities such as Phoenix had their hottest summer ever. The West Coast has dealt with raging wildfires, with over 4 million acres of land burned in Oregon, California and Washington. Hurricane Laura hit parts of Louisiana and Texas during August. Hurricane Sally, now a tropical depression, has affected parts of Florida and Alabama. Northeast Ohio saw widespread flooding on Labor Day, and global warming could contribute to more frequent floods in the area. With Ohio not near coastal waters, though, storms and occasional tornadoes are the lone forms of extreme weather the state has to handle in the summer. Probably the biggest weather event that stands out would be the severe thunderstorm outbreak that we had on June 10, Jaszka said. That resulted in widespread, damaging wind gusts across not only northern Ohio, but the state as a whole. Though climate change is a burdening issue, Jaszka said its possible more intense thunderstorms will come in the future, but its difficult to say whether more are in store for Midwestern cities. Its tough to tell for sure, but with a warmer atmosphere, it can hold more water vapor, Jaszka said. And that combination of warmer temperatures and higher humidity results in what we call greater instability. In other words more fuel for the development and maintenance of thunderstorms. To the Editor: During President John F. Kennedys inauguration speech Jan. 20, 1961, he said, Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country. A way you could help your country is to exercise your right to vote Nov. 3. To vote, you must be registered. It is easy, and there are several ways to do it. If you just turned 18 or moved into a new town, go to your registrar of voters office in Town Hall. The last day to register to vote, both in person and online, is Oct. 27. All municipalities in Connecticut will be holding in-person voter registration at town halls from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 27, according to Middletown Democratic Registrar Elizabeth Santangelo. All mail-in voter registration applications must be received or postmarked by this date to be accepted. If you register in person, please wear a mask and follow social distancing guidelines by remaining six feet apart. You can register online at voterregistration.ct.gov/OLVR/welcome.do and follow the prompts, or you can do it at the Department of Motor Vehicles. If you turned 18, moved into a new town, or became a U.S. citizen after Oct. 27, you have until Nov. 2 to register in person at your town hall. In Connecticut, there is Election Day voter registration for those who meet certain eligibility requirements. For information in Middletown, call 860-638-4950. Frank LoGiudice, Middletown SEATTLE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jage Media Inc. announced the launch of their digital content platform, MJ Brand Insights , and the appointment of Felisa Rogers as the managing editor of the publication, targeted toward cannabis brand and retail executives. MJ Brand Insights MJ Brand Insights According to their mission statement, MJ Brand Insights is dedicated to providing a sharp, substantive, and reliable source of industry intel for cannabis brands and retailers. "Our mission is to foster the growth of the most important sub-segment in the cannabis industry," said co-founder and CMO, Kim Jage. "We're seeing a continuing surge of new brands, new retail concepts, and new ideas. And as markets mature, there's an increased demand for more specialized content. We're excited to provide this resource." Jage Media appointed Felisa Rogers as managing editor of the publication. Ms. Rogers has over twenty years of professional experience as a writer and editor, has been published in the likes of The Guardian and Salon, and has been working in the cannabis industry since 2009. "The cannabis media landscape is short on incisive, original content and meaningful analysis. We want to dive deep. As the market continues to normalize toward a more traditional CPG industry, we'll be here to provide the specialized industry intel and actionable content that our readers can use to build their brands." According to Jage Media's strategic partner and leading cannabis market intelligence provider, BDSA, the U.S. cannabis industry market is projected to have a 18% CAGR and reach $34.5 billion in legal medical and adult-use spending by 2025, a CAGR of 18%. "This growth is fundamentally tied to the innovation of brands to meet evolving consumer needs as well as increased consumer acceptance and engagement at the retail level," stated BDSA co-founder and executive chairman, Roy Bingham. "We are excited to be adding relevant market intelligence to readers through ongoing content contributions to MJ Brand Insights." Jage Media is a business-to-business cannabis media company built to foster community by providing brands and retailers with the space to connect and the resources to thrive. This May, Jage Media hosted the first virtual trade show and conference for the cannabis industry, MJ Unpacked . Nearly 500 qualified retail and CPG brand executives attended the Colorado market event, which was followed by an event for the California market, and an upcoming event for the Midwest market on September 23-24. About Jage Media Headquartered in the greater Seattle area, Jage Media produces distinctive events and focused content that accelerates growth and profitability for cannabis brands and retailers. Jage Media's event series, MJ Unpacked, is exclusive to cannabis CPG brand and retail executives and enables decision makers to drive the future of the industry, capture the next stage of market growth, and deliver a true return on investments and objectives. For media inquiries, please contact George Jage at [email protected] or 206-338-1642. Additional resources: www.mjunpacked.com , www.mjbrandinsights.com , www.jagemedia.com SOURCE Jage Media Inc. Related Links http://www.jagemedia.com The new batch came in light of the directive of the Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to intensify the airlift Egypt has expanded to help the flood-stricken country One more batch of humanitarian aid was sent from Egypt to Sudan on Wednesday to help the country amid heavy floods that have killed at least 100 people and left more than 100,000 homeless. An Egyptian military plane carrying a large quantities of foodstuffs and medical supplies has taken off from Cairo to Khartoum airport, the Egyptian military spokesman said on Wednesday. The new batch came in light of the directive of the Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to intensify the airlift Egypt has expanded to help the flood-stricken country, he added. Search Keywords: Short link: US presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he will not allow the Good Friday Agreement to become a casualty of Brexit if he is elected in November. The Democratic candidate said any trade deal between the US and UK had to be contingent on respect for the Northern Ireland peace deal. On Wednesday night, he tweeted: We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. His comments came as foreign secretary Dominic Raab was visiting Washington DC in an attempt to reassure US politicians that Britains support for the Northern Ireland peace agreement was absolute. Conor Burns, Tory MP for Bournemouth West, mocked Bidens tweet and implied the US Democratic candidate did not properly understand the Good Friday Agreement. It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesnt offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? he wrote. Here if you need help. Hey @joebiden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesn't offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I'm a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help. Conor Burns (@ConorBurnsUK) September 16, 2020 But shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said Bidens comments showed the scale of damage the UK government had done to Britains standing in the world. Theyve lost trust and undermined co-operation at the moment we most need it - and all to tear up an agreement they negotiated, she tweeted. Reckless, incompetent and utterly self-defeating. Continue reading on HuffPost JACKSON CENTER, PA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Halberd Corporation (OTC PINK:HALB) today outlined the specifics of the second stage goals of the $1.4 Million seven-phase research project with Arizona State University. The second stage of the research involves an investigation of a method using dialysis, or a variant of dialysis, to remove the fluorescent antibody-antigen complex, for the rapid identification of a Covid-19 sample. In an earlier press release, we enumerated the initial phase creation of a unique Covid-19 fluorescent antibody which may also contain an albumin moiety to facilitate the rapid identification of the Covid-19 target antigens. The use of fluorescent antibody-antigen complex targets antigens for removal through our proprietary extracorporeal dialysis mechanism. Work on the initial phase of the program is underway at ASU, with initial results expected within the next month. ASU has already identified some very promising initial findings. Our technical team is following progress very closely. Dr. Patricio Reyes, Halberd's Chief Technical Officer and Head of Neurology at the Phoenix VA, feels that these initial results may have more profound consequences and potential benefits than originally anticipated. During a recent research coordination meeting, Dr. Reyes and Dr. Qiang Chen agreed that the use of convalescent serum could be invaluable in both the diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19. William A. Hartman, Halberd Corporation Chairman, President & CEO, stated, "Dialysis is just one of the removal methods being investigated by Halberd/ASU. Covid-19 is a very complex target antigen, and we are examining several methods of removal which we believe will result in an optimum treatment or combination of treatments designed to eradicate COVID-19 and other viral infections. Other methods of our antibody-antigen removal techniques will be more fully explained in subsequent communications." The details of the Halberd-ASU research contract can be viewed here. For more information please contact: William A. Hartman w.hartman@halberdcorporation.com support@halberdcorporation.com www.halberdcorporation.com P. O. Box 25 Jackson Center, PA 16133 Twitter:@HalberdC About Arizona State University. Arizona State University is a public research university with 5 campuses in and around Phoenix, with four regional centers throughout Arizona. It is one of the largest public universities, based on enrollment, and one of the fastest growing research universities in the United States. The school boasts over 400 National Academies-honored faculty, and 77 elite programs. About Halberd Corporation. Halberd Corporation. (OTC-PINK:HALB), is a publicly traded company on the OTC Market, and is in full compliance with OTC Market reporting requirements. It is debt-free and holds the exclusive rights to the COVID-19 extracorporeal treatment technology provisional patent applications: "Method for Treating and Curing Covid-19 Infection;" "Method for Treating COVID-19 Inflammatory Cytokine Storm for the Reduction of Morbidity and Mortality in COVID-19 Patients;" and "Method for Treating and Curing COVID-19 Infection by Utilizing a Laser to Eradicate the Virus." Halberd also holds the exclusive rights to the underlying granted U.S. Patent 9,216,386 and U.S. Patent 8,758,287. Title Application No. Filing Date Priority Status Method for Treating and Curing Covid-19 Infection US 62/989981 03/16/2020 n/a Provisional application Pending Method for Treating Covid-19 Inflammatory Cytokine Storm for the Reduction of Morbidity and Mortality in Covid-19 Patients US 63/007207 04/08/2020 n/a Provisional application Pending Method for Treating and Curing Covid-19 Infection by Utilizing a Laser to Eradicate the Virus US 63/013104 4/21/2020 n/a Provisional application Pending Safe Harbor Notice Certain statements contained herein are "forward-looking statements" (as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). The Companies caution that statements, and assumptions made in this news release constitute forward-looking statements and makes no guarantee of future performance. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management at the time statements are made. These statements may address issues that involve significant risks, uncertainties, estimates made by management. Actual results could differ materially from current projections or implied results. The Companies undertake no obligation to revise these statements following the date of this news release. Investor caution/added risk for investors in companies claiming involvement in COVID-19 initiatives - On April 8, 2020, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and William Hinman, the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance, issued a joint public statement on the importance of disclosure during the COVID-19 crisis. The SEC and Self-Regulatory Organizations are targeting public companies that claim to have products, treatment or other strategies with regard to COVID-19. The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Company's operations is unknown and will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, including the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, new information may emerge concerning the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and any additional preventative and protective actions that governments, or the Company, may direct, which may result in an extended period of continued business disruption, reduced customer traffic and reduced operations. Any resulting financial impact cannot be reasonably estimated at this time. We further caution investors that our primary focus and goal is to battle this pandemic for the good of the world. As such, it is possible that we may find it necessary to make disclosures which are consistent with that goal, but which may be adverse to the pecuniary interests of the Company and of its shareholders. SOURCE: Halberd Corporation View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606483/Arizona-State-UniversityHalberd-Corp-Outline-Partnership-2nd-Stage-Goals-of-14-M-Covid-19-Program A Thai protester dressed as Superman participates in a rally at the Democracy Monument in Bangkok, Aug. 3, 2020. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha on Thursday warned of mobs swarming the capital this weekend, as police announced plans to deploy nearly 10,000 officers ahead of an anti-government demonstration which could draw 70,000 to 100,000 people, according to organizers. Such a large-scale protest could help spread COVID-19 and do more harm to an already battered economy, Prayuth said during a televised address to the nation. Let me also take this opportunity to speak directly to those who wish to gather as mobs for various reasons. When you gather in mobs you are creating an enormous risk of new infections, the prime minister said. And with that, you also create enormous risk to the livelihoods of tens of millions of fellow Thais. Any major flare up of infections will lead to terrible consequences and even worse economic destruction, the likes of which we have never seen. Prayuth pointed to similar gatherings elsewhere as being responsible for coronavirus outbreaks. In other countries, such gatherings and carelessness by some groups have now caused even more suffering to everyone, he said. In Britain and other parts of Europe, ministers are talking about imposing new lockdowns, Prayuth said. In Australia, its most populous state has imposed many restrictions on the opening of shops, offices and even on leaving home. This weekends planned rally is expected to be the largest since mid-July when thousands of high school and university students gathered to protest against the government. Since then similar rallies have sprung up where participants have called for Prayuth to dissolve parliament to make way for a new election, stop harassing activists and opposition figures, and rewrite the constitution. At an Aug. 10 rally, protest leaders announced a set of 10 demands that would diminish the power of Thailands monarchy by requiring changes to the constitution. Whether or not a constitutional amendment can be achieved, we have to see how many join the protest this weekend, Arnon Nampa, a human rights lawyer who is one of the main leaders of the protests, said on his Facebook page Thursday. The demands were seen as daring because speech deemed as insulting to the Thai monarchy is punishable by prison terms of up to 15 years under the countrys notorious Lese-Majeste law, which guards against royal defamation but has not been applied in months. Would this political uprising make us reach the goal? Its exciting, said Arnon, who has been arrested three times since the rallies began. Police have arrested 13 other protesters while 15 others have turned themselves in to law enforcement officials. Those arrested face charges including sedition, organizing gatherings of 10 or more people to incite unrest, and leading mass gatherings that could spread COVID-19. Announcing plans for a rally at the Thammasat University campus in Bangkok on Saturday afternoon followed by a 3-km (1.9-mile) march to Government House on Sunday morning organizers said they expected to draw 70,000 to 100,000 protestors. The universitys rector has said she would not allow the campus to host the rally over safety concerns, leading student organizers to vow to force open entrances to accommodate other protesters. Security efforts Police, meanwhile, planned to mobilize close to 10,000 officers to guard Government House. The Government House temporarily relocated some items especially important documents and automobiles. The police have set up a command center at a building inside as a command post, police Col. Watcharavee Thammasema of the special branch bureau told reporters on Thursday. Lt. Gen. Pakpong Pongpetra, the chief of the Bangkok Metropolitan Police, said his department had adopted a contingency plan to prepare for possible violent incidents. The plan includes negotiation efforts and the use of non-lethal weapons. Should the situation spin out of control, the military would take over and declare martial law, he said. By comparison, rallies in 2014 that led to the overthrow of the democratic government of Yingluck Shinawatra by a Prayuth-led coup drew as many as 1 million people and turned violent. Government House, which houses the prime ministers office, has been stormed by mobs on several occasions. Those include protests involving royalist Yellow Shirt protesters who marched to oust Prime Ministers Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat who were seen as the puppets for Yinglucks brother, Thaksin Shinawatra. When royalist Abhisit Vejjajiva succeeded Somchai as prime minister, a group of Red Shirts supporters of the Shinawatras rallied against him. Thaksin, who also served as prime minister, was toppled in a military coup in Sept. 19, 2006. Organizers said they chose Saturday, the 14th anniversary of the overthrow of Thaksins government, to symbolically call for no more military coups. Despite Prayuths dire warning, Thailand reported no new infections on Thursday and recorded its last COVID-19-related death on June 2. Since the outbreak began, the nation has recorded 3,490 infections. Globally, nearly 30 million COVID-19 infections and more than 942,000 deaths have been recorded, according to disease experts at U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University. - Politician Akua Donkor has kick-started her 2020 campaign as she hopes to lead Ghana - The twi-speaking flagbearer of GFP was seen on a flier which outlined her party's manifesto - Akua Donkor is looking to go up against the likes of Akufo-Addo and Mahama in the 2020 elections Our manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Founder and leader of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), Akua Donkor, has been spotted on a political campaign flier in her bid to contest for the presidency in December 2020. The flier which was spotted by YEN.com.gh on Instagram showed the popular female politician beaming with her signature smile as she looked into the camera. The flier clearly stated the politician's intent as it was written on it boldly: "Akua Donkor for President 2020" Akua Donkor. Source: Instagram/Akuadonkorposts Source: UGC READ ALSO: Side chick pushes man's wife into pool after they were caught chilling at hotel (video) On the flier, Akua Donkor had the slogan "Eny3 3no Nono" also written on it. What however caught the eyes of many was the many campaign promises that were squeezed below Akua Donkor's photo. Among many other things, the Ghana Freedom Party was planning to give a number of goodies to Ghanaians should they be voted into power come December 2020. Some of the promises made by the party included giving Ghanaians free access to all the country's ports, one-year maternity leave, free fertilizer and cutlass for farmers, inclusion of local language in parliament, free education, water and elctricity. The flier has since gone viral on social media with many sympathizers of the GFP having high hopes that their candidate would seize power from ruling NPP and Akufo-Addo. READ ALSO: Suzzy Nyame be tua wo ka - Man recounts how girl dumped him after selling his laptop for her (video) Akua Donkor has been noted to be a stauch sympathizer of the NDC and former president John Dramani Mahama. However, in recent times, she seems to have switched goalposts and is no longer a Mahama 'girl' following her comments about the Papa No saga. Meanwhile, a Ghanaian mother has given her daughter a lesson of a lifetime after she barged in on her enjoying a dancing session instead of running an errand for her. In the video sighted by YEN.com.gh, the young lady was seen dancing to Fameye's song in what appeared like a single room. READ ALSO: Meet 60-year-old Elizabeth Yamoah Ghana's oldest BECE candidate for the 2020 batch All that while, she was supposed to be running an urgent errand for her mum who was outside the room waiting on her daughter so she could finish what she was doing. Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: YEN.com.gh FILE PHOTO: Woman with a Louis Vuitton-branded shopping bag looks towards the entrance of a branch store by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton in Vienna By Sarah White and Silvia Aloisi PARIS (Reuters) - LVMH tried on Thursday to block an attempt by Tiffany to fast-track legal proceedings in the United States to force the French luxury group to honour an acquisition deal agreed last year. LVMH's $16 billion purchase of Tiffany hit the rocks last week after the Louis Vuitton owner said it could no longer complete the purchase, citing an intervention by the French government and the U.S. jeweller's weakening performance. Tiffany sued LVMH and asked a court in Delaware, where the case has been filed, to expedite proceedings, as it seeks to have a ruling before a Nov. 24 deadline for closing the acquisition. The hearing on Tiffany's fast-track request is set for Sept. 21. Should the court decide against it, Tiffany's chances of obtaining a ruling in less than two months would dim significantly. LVMH, run by France's richest man Bernard Arnault, said in a statement it saw no reason to speed up the case and argued that having a trial in six to seven months' time would allow the parties to prepare properly. "Tiffany offers no reason why this court should move mountains and conduct a full-blown trial involving complex facts and international discovery in less than two months amidst a global pandemic," LVMH said in its filing. It accused Tiffany of trying to rush a decision to avoid scrutiny of its management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tiffany has defended its handling of the health crisis, which hit the luxury sector hard, and said LVMH was trying to run out the clock and cause the deal to collapse. "We have already returned to profitability and expect to remain profitable for the balance of the year, with fourth quarter profits actually exceeding those of the fourth quarter of 2019," Tiffany said on Wednesday. The acquisition - which would be the biggest ever in the luxury industry and was meant to expand LVMH's relatively modest presence in jewellery - was agreed before the coronavirus emergency. Story continues The French group, which has said it would counter-sue, has rejected Tiffany's accusations that it deliberately stalled anti-trust filings, including with the European Union, to delay the purchase. LVMH has in turn lambasted some decisions by Tiffany's management since the purchase was agreed last November, including to pay dividends even after the pandemic hit and retailers were forced to close stores. (Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Mark Potter) When you buy shares in a company, it's worth keeping in mind the possibility that it could fail, and you could lose your money. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you can make more than 100%. For instance, the price of Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (NYSE:VAR) stock is up an impressive 129% over the last five years. It's also good to see the share price up 45% over the last quarter. See our latest analysis for Varian Medical Systems There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time. Varian Medical Systems' earnings per share are down 7.0% per year, despite strong share price performance over five years. Essentially, it doesn't seem likely that investors are focused on EPS. Because earnings per share don't seem to match up with the share price, we'll take a look at other metrics instead. In contrast revenue growth of 3.9% per year is probably viewed as evidence that Varian Medical Systems is growing, a real positive. It's quite possible that management are prioritizing revenue growth over EPS growth at the moment. The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image). 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 the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)? Investors should note that there's a difference between Varian Medical Systems' total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price change, which we've covered above. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. We note that Varian Medical Systems' TSR, at 158% is higher than its share price return of 129%. When you consider it hasn't been paying a dividend, this data suggests shareholders have benefitted from a spin-off, or had the opportunity to acquire attractively priced shares in a discounted capital raising. Story continues A Different Perspective It's good to see that Varian Medical Systems has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 49% in the last twelve months. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 21% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. Given the share price momentum remains strong, it might be worth taking a closer look at the stock, lest you miss an opportunity. 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. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Varian Medical Systems . For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. 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. Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces the US Army Corps of Engineers and the state are putting up a 250-bed field hospital at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas during a press conference at the Texas State Capitol March 29, 2020 in Austin, Texas. Texas is allowing more businesses, including retail stores, gyms and restaurants, to push forward with reopening plans after a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations over the summer has started to decline. Abbott said the state has been divided into 22 regions where officials will monitor hospital capacity and virus cases. In 19 of the 22 regions where Covid-19 patients are now less than 15% of all hospitalizations, more businesses that have been allowed to reopen at 50% capacity will be permitted to increase to 75% capacity beginning Monday, Abbott said. That includes "all retail stores, all restaurants, all office buildings, all manufacturing, all museums and libraries and all gyms," he said. Effective immediately, hospitals in those regions are allowed to resume elective procedures. Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities will be allowed to reopen for visitations beginning Sept. 24 as long as they don't have a coronavirus outbreak, he said. "Since late July, the spread of Covid-19 has steadily and significantly declined. The number of new cases and new hospitalizations have been cut by more than two-thirds. Just yesterday we had the lowest number of hospitalizations in the past three months," Abbott said. Never question the power of nostalgia. Or great furniture. Emily DelFavero didn't and neither did a group of over 2,300 Facebook users, who came together to unite the Syracuse, New York-based mechanic and guitarist with a Mackenzie-Childs chair that represents nothing less than "love" to her. DelFavero with her chair, in its new home. (Courtesy Emily DelFavero) Watch TODAY All Day! Get the best news, information and inspiration from TODAY, all day long. The story, which began on Labor Day and came to a conclusion a week later, is a combination of inspiring, unusual, hilarious and touching. DelFavero explained to TODAY Home that she spotted a painted kitchen chair on a Facebook group called "Weird Secondhand Finds" over Labor Day weekend. The chair was painted in unique patterns popularized by Mackenzie-Childs, an iconic home furnishings company. Coincidentally, DelFavero has a tattoo of the same chair design on her leg. She let the group know that. Almost immediately, members of the group sprang into action. Whether it was a combination of good-heartedness, boredom from being cooped up in quarantine, or needing something good to come out of 2020, it didn't really matter. Comments like "Emily needs this chair" transformed into GoFundMe pages designed to raise enough money to unite her with the furniture. The chair cost $699 at Second Chance, a Baltimore-based vintage store, while non-vintage chairs that look similar go for about $2,000 from Mackenzie-Childs directly. DelFavero props her leg, which features a tattoo of the chair, on the chair. (Courtesy Emily DelFavero) "I wasn't expecting this at all," DelFavero said. "I wanted to buy the chair, but I wasn't looking for donations. It was more like, 'It'd be great to meet up so I could get this chair.'" The GoFundMe pages led to a separate Facebook group, "From Baltimore to Emily D," based around the planned journey of the chair. The group quickly swelled to over 2,300 members. Donations poured in for both the chair and for fuel to have it transported. Members DelFavero had never met volunteered to ferry it in seven stages from Maryland up to New York. The enterprise took on a life of its own. Story continues Except one thing: DelFavero never owned a chair like this one. She'd seen it while visiting the Mackenzie-Childs studio in Aurora, New York, and spotted the chair in a dollhouse on display at the studio. Two years ago, she had the image of the chair tattooed on her leg. "Every time I look down at my leg, I have good memories," she said. The Mackenzie-Childs dollhouse where DelFavero first saw the chair; you can glimpse it on the lower left-hand side of the picture. (Courtesy Emily DelFavero) That's because DelFavero grew up in a house where Mackenzie-Childs designs were everywhere: dinner plates, tables, lamps. And while her living situation there wasn't great she and her mother had to leave everything behind when they escaped an abusive step-parent she says the designs stir up childhood memories of being cared for. "I loved the look of the chair and how it made me feel," she recalled. "When we would bring home new friends, my mom would serve dinner on fish plates just like the chair. So it's always represented love to me." Thea Lenna (who found the chair originally in a Facebook group) and Jen Garrard, both helped transport the chair up to New York. (Courtesy Emily DelFavero) These days, DelFavero's love for her mother Amy remains strong. The two are close, though Amy is now being treated for breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy on Sept. 3 just a few days before DelFavero spotted the chair online. "My mom has been my biggest cheerleader through all of this," said DelFavero. "Maybe there was a part of me that was doing this all for my mom. The chair has always represented love, and some people aren't lucky to get that." The chair ultimately was purchased from the vintage store (the owner lowered the price to $600) and transported over state lines. The process united a whole group of disparate strangers in a single act of random, if eccentric, kindness. Pinkies Bakery & Cafe in Binghamton, New York even created cookies inspired by the Mackenzie-Childs chair. (Courtesy Emily DelFavero) "Everyone has a uniquely tailored story about what this means to them," DelFavero said. "They're all expressing deep, personal stories to me. They've had a lot of sadness over these last months, and now the chair has brought them light and happiness. So many of the women on this journey have encountered abusive relationships, and this chair has brought people together for happiness, for good." Call them the sisterhood of the traveling chair. A chair that found a new home on Monday will now live alongside DelFavero's music equipment in her home. She's already composed a bluesy "ditty" in its honor. "I'm going to make beautiful music and art in this chair," she told TODAY. "I want it to make people think of unity and connection. This brought so many people together. The chair went on a journey, just like my mom did, just like we all do. It came from a store called Second Chance and a second chance is what it really got. It's lived up to its name." O'Neill will explode on the scene with a special entitled "The Miracles of Padre Pio," which premieres at 4:30 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Sept. 23; a new radio show, "The Miracle Hunter," which premieres 7 p.m. ET, Saturday, Oct. 3 on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network; upcoming appearances on various EWTN television and radio shows, and a Dec. 12 television special entitled "The Miracles of Our Lady of Guadalupe." "EWTN viewers are familiar with Michael O'Neill's work through his popular series, "They Might Be Saints," which chronicles the extraordinary lives of Americans whose cause for canonization is underway," said EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw. "Under the EWTN umbrella, Michael will now be able to use all of his skills as a filmmaker, producer, radio host, and author. We look forward to sharing his great work with our global audience." O'Neill couldn't be more excited. "The big news is that, as of October 3, I will be starting my first show on EWTN radio. That's a big deal," he said. "I will also continue to produce television and now write books for EWTN Publishing as well as articles for the National Catholic Register. It's great to be all together in one place. I'm beyond excited, beyond thrilled to be part of the team." O'Neill has hinted at more episodes of "They Might Be Saints" in the next 12 to 16 months. These include Mother Marie Kaupas, Bishop Alphonse Gallegos, Mother Mary Angeline McCrory, Father Aloysius Schwartz, Montse Grases, and, of course, Father Michael McGivney. O'Neill says he will be filming McGivney's October beatification, which will be a springboard for the special episode. He is especially excited about a project that is an offshoot of "They Might Be Saints." Viewers will remember the previously aired episode O'Neill filmed on Venerable Bishop Frederic Baraga, the "Snow Shoe Priest" from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. However, O'Neill says the story of the uncovering of the Baraga documents and the pushing for the cause of his canonization is of even more interest. "I have high hopes for this one!" he said. John Elson, EWTN Director of Program Acquisition and Co-Production, who has been working with O'Neill on his upcoming series, says he knows that O'Neill will build on the success of his previous offerings. "Michael's "They Might Be Saints" series has been very popular with viewers so we expect his upcoming work to be even better received as people become more familiar with his work," Elson said. O'Neill, a Stanford University-educated cradle Catholic who also hosts a popular website (www.miraclehunter.com), says he has found people love the combination of unknown stories of Americans on the path to sainthood and intercessory healing miracles. "We all struggle with how to bring the faith to our family, friends, and coworkers and these people [whose cause for canonization is being considered] have done it. When people watch this, they will feel energized to spread the faith, if they haven't before." EWTN Global Catholic Network, in its 39th year, is the largest religious media network in the world. EWTN's 11 global TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 300 million television households in more than 145 countries and territories. EWTN platforms also include radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 domestic and international AM & FM radio affiliates; a worldwide shortwave radio service; one of the largest Catholic websites in the U.S.; electronic and print news services, including Catholic News Agency, "The National Catholic Register" newspaper, and several global news wire services; as well as EWTN Publishing, its book publishing division. SOURCE EWTN Global Catholic Network Related Links http://ewtn.com The global intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUD) market is expected to grow by USD 597.40 million as per Technavio. This marks a significant market slow down compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. However, steady growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 3%. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005067/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire) Request challenges and opportunities that influence COVID-19 pandemic Request Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impacts Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Market Analysis Report by End-user (Hospitals, Gynecology clinics, and Others), Geography (Europe, North America, Asia, and ROW), Type (Hormonal intrauterine device and Copper intrauterine device), and the Segment Forecasts, 2020-2024". https://www.technavio.com/report/intrauterine-contraceptive-devices-market-industry-analysis The market is driven by the increasing initiatives by government and non-profit organizations. In addition, the increasing rate of unintended pregnancies and unwanted abortions is anticipated to boost the growth of the intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUD) market. According to estimates, more than half of the pregnancies across the world are unwanted, mistimed, or unintended. Hence, many government and non-government organizations are creating awareness programs to educate people about the importance of family planning and birth control measures. For example, in September 2015, the New York City Health Department launched a public education campaign called Maybe the IUD. The motive of the campaign was to increase the awareness of the highly effective and low-maintenance method of birth control measures such as IUDs. Such initiatives are fueling the growth of the global intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUD) market. Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free. View market snapshot before purchasing Major Five Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Companies: AbbVie Inc. AbbVie Inc. operates its business through a unified segment. The company offers intrauterine contraceptive devices under the brand, LILETTA. Bayer AG Bayer AG operates its business through segments such as Pharmaceuticals, Crop science, and Consumer health. The company offers intrauterine contraceptive devices under the brand, Mirena. DKT International DKT International operates its business through a unified segment. The company offers intrauterine contraceptive devices under the brands, SafeLoad and Silverline. EUROGINE SL EUROGINE SL operates its business through a unified segment. The company offers intrauterine contraceptive devices under the brand, Gold T. Laboratoire HRA Pharma SAS Laboratoire HRA Pharma SAS operates its business through a Unified segment. The company offers intrauterine contraceptive devices under the brand, ellaOne. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Market End-user Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2020-2024) Hospitals Gynecology clinics Others Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Market Geography Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2020-2024) Europe North America Asia ROW Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices (IUD) Market Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2020-2024) Hormonal intrauterine device Copper intrauterine device Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report Related Reports on Healthcare Include: Global Soft Tissue Repair Market Global soft tissue repair market by product (soft tissue fixation devices and accessories, cell therapy, and tissue scaffold) and geography (North America, Europe, Asia, and ROW). About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005067/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Hosting virtual conferences and trade shows is a new norm and for most, its a new way of doing business. Our immersive platform has been supporting virtual health conferences for the past 2 years, so Im happy to see other industries are now looking at alternatives. Talos Health Solutions based in Orlando, Florida announces their technology partnership with the Seminole County Chamber. This international technology firm will be supporting the chambers Seminole County Business Resource Showcase, a virtual trade show that launches on September 30, 2020. Founder and President of Talos Health Solutions, Jerome Pradier, stated As a Seminole County Chamber member we are excited about this opportunity to partner with the chamber. Traditionally our technology has supported online health conventions and tradeshows. Our platform is very flexible in that we can support other industries. Since the COVID-19 pandemic we have been approached by several other organizations outside of healthcare to use our virtual conference platform. Its exciting for us to expand into other industries and we are happy to be offering this technology so business commerce can continue to happen during these uncertain times. Hosting virtual conferences and trade shows is a new norm and for most, its a new way of doing business. Our immersive platform has been supporting virtual health conferences for the past 2 years, so Im happy to see other industries are now looking at alternatives to traditional trade shows and conferences. At the end of July, 2020 we completed AsthmaCon an online conference targeting asthmatics and their caregivers. We were in partnership with Astrazeneca for that project. The Seminole County Business Resource Showcase is an annual trade show featuring government agencies and other small businesses that are resources for business owners in Seminole County and throughout Central Florida. Sponsors for this years showcase are TechRage IT and AdventHealth. Exhibitors include the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), the UCF Business Incubator, SCORE, the IRS, TechRage IT, Strategic Online Marketing, the City of Sanford, City of Lake Mary, City of Longwood, City of DeBary, City of Oviedo, Ace Human Resources, CareerSource Central Florida, UCF Career Services, Prospera, the Seminole County Library and many, many more. Due to COVID-19 we knew that wasn't going to be feasible this year to host a regular trade show but felt businesses needed the resources this showcase provides more than ever before, says Rebekah Arthur, vice president of programming, Seminole County Chamber. We realized that exploring a partnership with Talos and utilizing their technology to provide a virtual tradeshow was going to be a much more valuable resource to businesses across the region. The showcase launches on September 30, 2020 and will be live online throughout the month of October and will close on October 31, 2020. Hosting this event virtually gives attendees the opportunity to come back multiple times over the course of a month to visit the booths and attend the breakout sessions at their leisure. Showcase attendees can visit each exhibitors booth where they will hear short video presentations and will have the opportunity to download informational PDFs. Break out sessions are also available for showcase attendees to participate in. In the breakout sessions attendees will watch video presentations from the Seminole County Chamber, the UCF Incubation Program, the IRS, Seminole County Government, SSC Center for Business Development and TechRage IT. This event is free to attend and is now open for registration. For more information or to register, visit online at: http://www.seminoleshowcase.com. About Talos Health Solutions: Talos Health Solutions, recently celebrating their 30th online conference, is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. As an industry pioneer in immersive virtual conference technology HealthWebEvents, Talos Health Solutions has partnered with major pharmaceutical leaders over the years including AstraZeneca, UCB and Roche. Through these types of partnerships Talos Health Solutions has hosted consumer and healthcare professionals virtual health conferences around the globe with the mission to democratize access to global leaders and experts. Talos Health Solutions educates consumers suffering from a variety of diseases including asthma, Rheumatoid Arthritis, addictions, cancer and many others, while protecting privacy and ensuring the anonymity of participants . Their leadership team is located internationally and spans from the U.S. to Belgium. Talos Health Solutions has made a significant impact in the healthcare virtual conference industry. Thanks to the flexibility of their immersive virtual conference platform, they are now able to accommodate virtual conferences and tradeshows in other industries outside of healthcare. Talos Health Solutions is committed to offering the most advanced virtual conference technology to all industries nationally and internationally to aid in the growth of business commerce. For more information, visit http://www.taloshealthsolutions.com About Seminole County Chamber: For more than 100 years, the Seminole County Chamber has supported the business community of Seminole County and the entire Central Florida region. Today, nearly 800 businesses of all size are members of the Seminole County Chamber and participate in a variety of innovative programming, such as regional area councils, educational events, industry-specific initiatives and much more. To become a member of the Seminole County Chamber, please visit SeminoleBusiness.org Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:08:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese medical team on Thursday departed for Sierra Leone from Changsha, capital city of central China's Hunan Province, to provide one-year medical aid to the African country. The team consists of 20 members, who are specialized in areas including internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology, obstetrics, and traditional Chinese medicine. Some of them are also experienced in dealing with the COVID-19 epidemic. It is the 22nd medical team since Hunan sent doctors to Sierra Leone in 1973. Another 10-member medical team from Hunan is slated to leave for Zimbabwe on Sept. 26 to provide healthcare services, according to the Hunan provincial health commission. "The medical teams to Africa have helped forged the friendship between Chinese and African people," said Long Kaichao, deputy director of the commission, adding that the members will strive to improve the medical treatment and public health services in Africa through their dedication. Enditem Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP, Kwame Baffoe a.k.a Abronye DC has called for proper training programmes for young Police personnel for them to understand their core mandate in the country. To him, the police administration needs to organize proper workshops for their newly recruited officers to curb indiscipline among the recruits. The young police officers should know how to conduct themselves as long as they are in the service...Even though the Ghana Police service is doing its best, there are a few among them whose actions dent their image. Therefore I'm pleading with the IGP, Mr. James Oppong-Boanuh to factor training programs to help educate the new recruits about the meaning for their slogan 'Service with Intergrity'. Abronye DC stressed that the negative reports about the security personnel prevents investors from investing into the country. Such negative news does not attract investors as a country because before an investor will go and invest in a country's economy, the first thing they look out for is their security . . . thus how strong is that country's security? . . . So, going forward, the Police administration should organize regular training and workshops for their employees to bring sanity into the system, he said on UTV's 'Adekye Nsroma'. View this post on Instagram #UTVGhana #UTVNews #DespiteMedia A post shared by UTV Ghana (@utvghana) on Sep 17, 2020 at 7:46am PDT 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 Louise F. Karther announces the release of Thin Walls Make Good Listeners WILDER, Idaho, Sept. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The many functions of our cell phones today is very intriguing to me. When I saw an ad suggesting a cell phone could be used for banking purposes, I wondered, What if...? Right after the ad came a news story about various money laundering schemes. Again, I asked myself, What if...? Louise F. Karther states. In Thin Walls Make Good Listeners (published by Archway Publishing), she tells the story of a girl who is forced to endure less than ideal circumstances after her father dies, leaving her and her mother vulnerable to a scary world and a stranger with dark intentions. Dani Lynn Lambert is a spirited and determined 12-year-old who has been forced into adverse circumstances by the abrupt death of her father. After she and her mother, Tess, move into a ghastly apartment in a dismal building, Tess struggles to keep the two of them from becoming homeless. While Dani battles a different obstacle, she suddenly finds herself drawn into a world of mystery and intrigue. Someone is determined to keep Dani from ruining a careful plan. Just when things take a turn for the worse, Dani and Tess find an unexpected ally who wants more than just friendship. Will their new ally be the protector they hope for or transform into someone else they cannot trust? This book offers a glimpse at some of todays questionable activities in a light hearted manner. It also reminds the reader that positions of trust do not necessarily mean that the person holding the position is trustworthy, Karther says. It stands out because it captures real characters just as they are, some good, some flawed, and some willing to put others, even children, at risk. Thin Walls Make Good Listeners aims for readers to remember that honesty, persistence, and self-reliance are qualities to pursue, acquire and cultivate throughout their lifetime. People in certain positions of trust are not always who they seem to be, but honesty, persistence, and self-reliance will win out in the end, Karther adds. For more details about the book, please visit https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thin-walls-make-good-listeners-louise-f-karther/1137583498?ean=9781480891708 Story continues Thin Walls Make Good Listeners By Louise F. Karther Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 164 pages | ISBN 9781480891685 Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 164 pages | ISBN 9781480891708 E-Book | 164 pages | ISBN 9781480891692 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the Author Louise F. Karther is a long-time public school, university, and Sunday school educator who loves mysteries. Her writing is inspired by her unique perspective of human nature. Louise currently resides in Wilder, Idaho. This is her first published book. Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit www.archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957. Attachment CONTACT: Marketing Services Archway Publishing 844-669-3957 pressreleases@archwaypublishing.com South Africa: President asks citizens to do Jerusalema challenge on Heritage Day President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to celebrate Heritage Day by reflecting on the countrys journey in the last six months in weathering the COVID-19 storm. He has also called on citizens to get their groove on by taking part in the Jerusalema global dance frenzy by duo Master KG and Nomcebo Zikode on 24 September. There can be no better celebration of our South Africanness than joining the global phenomenon that is the Jerusalema dance challenge, President Ramaphosa announced during his address on Wednesday. So, I urge all of you to take up this challenge on Heritage Day and show the world what we are capable of. Jerusalema has taken the world by storm and has over 139 039 790 views on YouTube and counting. The hit continues to travel beyond the countrys borders and has topped the charts including the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart in the United States. It was number one on iTunes in Africa and the top five in countries such as Spain, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It has also reached number one the Top 200 France charts and reached a peak on the Shazam Global Top 200 at number four last month. Apart from dancing to the Presidents favourite song, President Ramaphosa has also encouraged South Africans to use this public holiday as family time, remember those who have lost their lives to COVID-19, and quietly rejoice in the remarkable and diverse heritage of the nation. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Sally is now a tropical depression and is expected to become a remnant low as it moves from Alabama into Georgia and the Carolinas. As Sally remnants move east Thursday afternoon and evening, there is a threat for flooding rain from Atlanta to Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina. There is also a threat for tornadoes from central Georgia into Charleston, South Carolina, and into Wilmington and eastern North Carolina. PHOTO: As Sally remnants move east Thursday afternoon and evening, there is a threat for flooding rain from Atlanta to Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina. (ABC News) Thursday night into Friday early morning, the flooding threat moves into southern Virginia, from Norfolk to Richmond. Tornadoes will be possible for eastern North Carolina. PHOTO: Thursday night into Friday early morning, the flooding threat moves into southern Virginia, from Norfolk to Richmond. (ABC News) As Sally departs the Gulf Coast, a new tropical system is trying to develop in the southern Gulf. The National Hurricane Center gives this storm a 90% chance of becoming a tropical depression or Tropical Storm Wilfred. This next tropical system is expected to meander in the Gulf of Mexico for the next week or so, and then some of the long-term models are showing it coming north towards the Gulf Coast by the middle to end of next week, anywhere from Texas to Louisiana. PHOTO: This next tropical system is expected to meander in the Gulf of Mexico for the next week or so, and then some of the long-term models are showing it coming north towards the Gulf Coast by the middle to end of next week. (ABC News) Besides the new tropical threat in the Gulf, Hurricane Teddy is strengthening and heading close to Bermuda by early next week. Teddy is expected to become a major hurricane by Thursday night. Sally made landfall at 5:45 a.m. ET Wednesday, as a Category 2 storm with winds of 105 mph. This was the first hurricane to make landfall in Alabama since Ivan in 2004. The highest storm surge was in Pensacola, Florida, where Gulf water rose 5.6 feet. This was the third-highest surge in the citys history. An estimated 30 inches of rain fell just north of Pensacola. The highest wind gust reported on land was 99 mph in Dauphin Island, Alabama. Hurricane Sally remnants to bring flooding rain to Georgia, Carolinas originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Washington, Sep 17 : American airplane giant Boeing has responded to a US House Committee report on the globally grounded 737 MAX aircraft, saying that it has incorporated many recommendations, as well as the results of its own internal reviews, into the fleet and the overall airplane design process after two fatal crashes. The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure report concluded its 18-month investigation of the design, development and certification of the 737 MAX aircraft, and related matters, reports Xinhua news agency. According to the report, the investigation has revealed multiple missed opportunities that could have turned the trajectory of the MAX's design and development toward a safer course due to flawed technical design criteria, faulty assumptions about pilot response times, and production pressures. In its response on Wednesday, Boeing said that therevised design of the MAX has received intensive internal and regulatory review, including more than 375,000 engineering and test hours and 1,300 test flights. The company said it has learned many hard lessons as a company from the accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 that killed 346 people, and from the mistakes it has made. Once the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators have determined the MAX can safely return to service, it will be one of the most thoroughly scrutinized aircraft in history, the company noted. "We have set up a new safety organization to enhance and standardize safety practices, restructured our engineering organization to give engineers a stronger voice and a more direct line to share concerns with top management, created a permanent Aerospace Safety Committee of our Board of Directors as well as expanded the role of the Safety Promotion Center," the company said. The House Committee report said that the FAA also missed its own opportunities to change the direction of the 737 MAX based on its aviation safety mission. Boeing failed in its design and development of the MAX, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:48:02|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close VILNIUS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian and Polish governments had here on Thursday their first ever joint meeting in the modern history, with over 20 ministers from both sides taking part in the meeting chaired by the prime ministers of the two countries. Partnership between the two neighboring European countries was one of the most important subjects on the agenda. Ministers discussed the pandemic management measures, signed an agreement to strengthen strategic transport and energy infrastructure projects, and exchanged their knowledge in education, according to a press release from the Lithuanian government. Two important agreements were signed between AB Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (LTG) and the Polish State Railways (PKP) on the establishment of a joint venture for freight transport and on the Vilnius-Warsaw passenger train. Ministers of education of the two countries signed a detailed action plan for cooperation in the field of education. Regional issues including the protests in neighboring Belarus was also discussed in the meeting, said the press release. The joint government meeting was held at the invitation of Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, according to the release. Such meetings are expected to become regular, it said. Enditem Six months after COVID-19 put the brakes on jury trials, the process to get them up and running again in Toronto resumed Wednesday with a lower-than normal turnout for jury selection at the citys massive downtown convention centre. The need to get trial by juries back on track is enormous given the ever-expanding backlog of criminal cases. Yet some had presciently predicted, including a juror advocacy group that bemoans the paltry pay and support jurors receive, that turnout would be low, particularly given the recent surge of coronavirus cases. Of the 500 people receiving summonses to do their civic duty, about 150, or 30 per cent, actually showed up Wednesday, which is less than half of the 60-70 per cent that typically respond to a jury notice, according to justice system insiders. Part of the reason may be that the culling began earlier. People receiving jury summonses were asked to complete an online questionnaire about their current circumstances during the pandemic. They also had the option of calling in and answering questions over the phone. In either case, court administrators decided in advance whether a person needed to respond to their summons in person. Nevertheless, efforts to find 14 people willing to spend the next six weeks an estimate only hearing evidence in a second-degree murder trial went quickly, with a jury picked by the end of the day. Only a small handful of people asked to be excused due to financial hardship or concern about COVID-19. (While criminal trial juries are comprised of 12 people, an extra two were picked Wednesday until the trial proper gets underway.) The accused in the case is Richard Isaac, a heavy-set man in his 40s who removed his face mask before indicating he is pleading not guilty to second-degree murder. He is charged with beating 28-year-old Victoria Selby-Readman to death in a downtown Toronto condo between June 8 and 10, 2018. Superior Court Justice Brian OMarra began the proceedings Wednesday by addressing all of the prospective jurors, who were connected by video link and separated into different rooms at the other end of the Metro Toronto Convention Centres south building. As is customary during jury selection, the judge explained the important role of a juror and gave standard instructions, such as cautioning against seeking out any information, online or otherwise, about anyone connected to the trial, including the accused, lawyers or witnesses. OMarra also outlined the extensive procedures that have been followed to keep everyone connected to the trial safe and healthy. These are not normal times, he said. One of the reasons the sprawling convention centre was chosen for jury selection is because it is far easier to maintain safe social distancing than at the downtown courthouse, he explained. The trial itself, though, will be held at the downtown Superior Court at 361 University Ave., which also has strict protocols in place. Anyone seeking to enter it and any court facility, including the convention centre for the duration of jury selection, must answer a series of questions and wear face coverings, he continued. There will be exceptions to the mandatory face mask rule: such as when someone is addressing the court, testifying or making submissions. Even judges arent exempt. I wore a face covering when I entered this building, and when I was walking through the hallways, OMarra said, adding he only removed his after taking his seat and addressing the makeshift court, held in a large, windowless convention centre room. The jurors selected in this case and others due to be picked in the coming days for other trials will end up being spread out through individual courtrooms, so social distancing can be maintained, he said. You no doubt have all seen movies or television shows of court proceedings and you usually see the 12 jurors sitting side by each together in one location ... in light of the COVID-19 situation that is not what will take place. OMarra spoke of the tremendous effort that has gone into rearranging courtrooms, so jurors can maintain safe social distancing from each other, and yet very importantly, be able to observe and hear what goes on in the courtroom. The 14 people picked Wednesday were asked to return to 361 University Ave. on Monday, when the Crown is expected to opens its case. MUNCIE, Ind. Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indianas coronavirus epicenter. Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university officials to admonish students. University President Geoffrey Mearns wrote that the cases apparently were tied not to classrooms or dormitories but to poor personal choices some students are making, primarily off campus. The actions of these students are putting our planned on-campus instruction and activities at risk, he said. Similar examples abound in other college towns across the nation. Among the 50 U.S. counties with the highest concentrations of students and overall populations of at least 50,000, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states have since Sept. 1, according to an Associated Press analysis. On average, infection rates in those 20 counties have been more than three times higher than their states overall rates. At James Madison University in Virginia, which recently sent students home through September amid a surge in cases, the county is averaging a weekly infection rate of nearly 90 cases per 100,000 people, or more than eight times the statewide average. Health officials fear that surges among college students will spread to more vulnerable people older ones and those with underlying health problems and trigger a new wave of cases and hospitalizations. Some worry that colleges could overwhelm hospitals already bracing for increasing cases of COVID-19 and flu this fall and winter. Theres this waiting game. Does it stay on college campuses or will it escape? said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at the University of Wisconsin medical center in Madison, where cases among college students have been climbing. While universities have emerged as hot spots in nearly every state, many of the worst outbreaks have been scattered across the South and Midwest. Of the 50 college counties analyzed by the AP, James Madisons had the highest infection rate, followed by counties that are home to the University of Georgia, Florida State and Indiana University in Bloomington. In the 10 counties with the highest infection rates, colleges have reported at least 15,000 cases among students and employees in recent weeks, though testing and reporting practices vary significantly and the actual number is probably much higher. For many colleges, the return to campus was a carefully orchestrated process that took months to plan and millions of dollars to pull off. But as safe as theyve made their campuses, many colleges have struggled to curb off-campus gatherings that have been tied to thousands of infections. Parties were blamed for dozens of cases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brought students back in early August only to send them home weeks later. Other schools have cracked down on parties and disciplined students. The University of Missouri in Columbia announced this week that it expelled two students and suspended three others for violating rules meant to slow the viruss spread. The outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns. Amid a spike in cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder, county health authorities Tuesday urged all students to quarantine for two weeks. Students and others at the university have accounted for 76% of the countys 663 positive cases over the past two weeks, officials said. More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle, Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health, warned in a letter to students. In a letter to students, the schools chancellor, Philip DiStefano, warned that the quarantine will be strictly enforced and that students who violate it could face suspension or other discipline. Already, DiStefano said, more than 400 students face university discipline for violating public health orders. At Miami University in Ohio, county health authorities ordered all of the schools athletes to isolate for 14 days last month after 27 tested positive for the virus. Last week, local police cited six men at an off-campus house party that included several students who had recently tested positive. As cases increase at Boston College and the campus runs out of quarantine space, the mayor of nearby Newton is asking the school not to use any of the towns hotels or other property to isolate students. Some cities have tightened rules at bars to discourage students from gathering. As cases surged at Illinois State, the towns mayor issued an order requiring all bar customers to be seated to be served. He also limited gatherings near campus to no more than 10 people. Still, residents and officials in many college towns are rooting for universities to work through outbreaks and avoid campus closings that could further hurt the local economy. Fred Pryce, who manages a series of stores in a strip mall near Ball State, said sending students home would hurt the areas businesses big time. Thats 20,000-plus potential patrons that will vanish, Pryce said. There are ways to keep students in Muncie safely while they do their classes. Ball State, roughly 60 miles from Indianapolis, has about 22,000 students on a campus of red brick buildings and sleek, modern dorms in Muncie, where the university is the citys second-largest employer after Ball Memorial Hospital. On campus last week, sophomore LaTricia Williams, wearing a mask, said she was glad to be back instead of sitting on the couch with her laptop at her familys home, taking online classes. But I get that it comes with some risk, she said. You can give students a whole bunch of rules for what they should and shouldnt do while theyre back at the school, but theyre not going to stop doing certain things here or going out into the community. Caleb Henry, a Ball State junior who lives off campus, said that he and other students have been frequenting local bars and meeting at friends houses but that he and most others are behaving responsibly, with masks and social distancing. He said students are being vilified unfairly. Everyone seems to be getting upset at college kids right now, accusing us of spreading the virus and making us out to be these highly infectious creatures that need to be sent home, Henry said. What about all the other people around town going to bars having parties, weddings, whatever? Were only doing the same things they are. As cases mounted at Ball State last month, the school tried to ban students from visiting dorms other than their own, but officials reversed the rule after a backlash from students. Even so, officials say infection rates have started to subside, and the school has no plans to suspend campus instruction. While some colleges have sent students home amid outbreaks, many others are digging in. Some have moved classes online but urged students to stay where they are until cases drop. Among them is the University of Notre Dame, which paused in-person classes Aug. 18 and moved them online amid a surge that saw as many as 89 new cases per day. Weeks later, after a sharp decrease in infections, classes have started to resume on campus. Other schools are hoping to replicate that success, including the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and West Virginia University, which recently shifted classes online as the virus spread. In a recent call with governors, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cautioned against sending students home, saying that could spark outbreaks elsewhere. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also endorsed Notre Dames approach, saying colleges that work through it and find ways to isolate infected students are more likely to end up in the best place. In a letter to students at Ball State this week, the university president thanked students for helping reduce virus rates. Still, he warned: This data is not a cause for celebration. Rather, this data is a call for continued action. ___ Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. ___ Hwang reported from Atlanta and Binkley reported from Boston. As local wineries continue to struggle during the COVID-19 pandemic, the future wont offer much relief for the industry if changes arent made as soon as possible. Were facing some really significant challenges with the pandemic with sales at the wineries, said Winery and Grower Alliance of Ontario president and chief executive officer Aaron Dobbin. We appreciate people coming out, but obviously through social distancing and other safety measures the number of people is lower than in previous summers. Export sales have just disappeared, our sales through restaurants are way, way down. Its very challenging times for the wine industry. The last we needed was the WTO (World Trade Organization) complaint from Australia, he said, referring to an agreement between the Canadian and Australian governments that would end a federal excise duty exemption on wine made of 100 per cent Canadian-grown fruit effective June 30, 2022. He said the Winery and Grower Alliance agreed with the settlement, only because it was the least bad of all the options. But the excise duty adding 50 cents to a 750-ml bottle on top of other taxes wineries have described as unfair, such as a 6.1 per cent provincial tax on wine sold in private retail shops will have a devastating impact on vintners as well as vineyards, said Grape Growers of Ontario chief executive officer Debbie Zimmerman. The loss of this program is going to be huge because many of these wineries have never known anything but this exemption, Zimmerman said. We have to come up with a replacement program first and foremost because this measure was something that we lost as part of the negotiations with Australia. We need change for the future. We need to work with our partners to make that change happen and were promoting opportunities for that change for the next few years, she added. Niagara Centre MP Vance Badawey said he and other Niagara members of Parliament have been working to address concerns. Were 100 per cent behind the growers as well as the wineries with respect to resolving this, Badawey said, while stressing the importance of the industry to Niagara and Canada. He said he brought a recommendation forward to the Liberal cabinet that the excise duty exemption be replaced with an international trade compliant equivalent. Badawey said federal ministers recognize the concerns of the industry, and theyre working with us on a regular basis to come to a resolve to this. St. Catharines MP Chris Bittle said there are still several months before the exemption ends, but I think everyone would like to see something sooner rather than later. In response to news about the WTO challenge, St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik has taken to social media encouraging residents to boycott Australian wine when they visit their local LCBO store. So, Australia is one the largest exporters of wine to Canada dominates shelves and then wins a trade battle that drives up costs of local wines, Sendzik posted on Twitter earlier this week. I say boycott Australian wines and the feds need to step up to support Niagara wineries in other ways. Bittle, however, said the focus should be on buying locally produced wine. I dont know if I would go as far as to say boycott, because there are people who have their favourite wines. But I think people should have in mind that when you buy a bottle of Canadian wine youre supporting Canadian jobs and Canadian farmers, he said. Niagara residents may think back to what the wine industry used to be. Its come a long way and there are so many award-winning wines in Ontario. Zimmerman said grape growers are also facing competition for their produce within their own industry. She said international domestic blend (IDB) wines that contain 25 per cent locally produced juice and 75 per cent imported is placed on the shelves of LCBO stores, right beside wines that are 100 per cent Ontario wines. For growers who are already worrying about much of their crops going to waste, watching tanker trucks filled with imported grape juice bound for Ontario wineries is so disturbing, Zimmerman said. Not only are we being challenged by Australia, the other challenge is in our own market, she said. Were being challenged by these products the blended products and imports on the shelves that outpace all of Ontario. Were at 11 per cent. Thats the market share we have for Ontario VQAO right now. We need to change that. Dobbin, however, said those locally produced international blend wines give vintners a product that allows them to compete with imported wines. Depending on the year about one-third of the Ontario grape crop goes into international domestic blend wine, he said. RELATED STORIES Business Niagaras craft wineries facing uncertain future as impact of pandemic and taxes take hold That IDB wine allows us to compete with the cheapest heavily subsidized imports that are sold at under $10. That allows us to compete against imported wines at that price point Those wines are an important component of a strong and healthy wine industry. Although the majority of juice used in IDB wines is typically imported, Dobbin said it still allows wineries to use as much as 30,000 tonnes of grapes. Those wines eat up a lot of Ontario grapes, he said. Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff has been fighting at Queens Park to make it easier for wineries to sell their products during the pandemic, such as allowing restaurants to sell wine along with takeout orders as well as promoting Ontario wine sales at LCBO stores. Hes hoping to address concerns that wineries are facing regarding taxes on the products. Theres no two ways about it, Canada is a high-cost jurisdiction and the reality is we have to try to make sure theres margin on those bottles theyre producing, because you can produce a lot of wine but if youre losing money on every single bottle then it doesnt make a difference at the end of the day, he said. Im trying to work with the Ministry of Finance to see where some taxation issues can be resolved, recognizing, of course, that governments of all stripes are quite strapped for cash right now. Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The acting special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya, Stephanie Williams, Thursday lauded the decision by the chairman of the presidential council of the Libyan Government of National Accord, Fayez al-Sarraj, to hand over power to a new executive authority by the end of October this year Three terrorists were killed by security forces during an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Batmaloo on Thursday (September 17). A Deputy Commandant of CRPF also got injured during the encounter. A civilian also died during the exchange of fire between security forces and terrorists. Security forces are yet to reveal the identity of the dead terrorists. Search operation is still underway in the area. IGP Jammu and Kashmir Vijay Kumar said one unidentified terrorist has been killed one lady also lost life in Initial exchange of fire and a Deputy commandant of CRPF also recieved bullet wound and was shifted to army hospital for treatment." A police officer said a lady named Kausar was hit by a bullet and was immediately shifted to hospital, but she succumbed to her injuries. Earlier, in midnight on a specific input of presence of terrorists a joint team of Jammu and Kashmir police and CRPF launched a cordon-and-search-operation in the area. Live TV A police official said as the joint team cordoned the house where terrorists were hiding. The terrorists then opened fire on searching party, forcing the security forces to retaliate leading to encounter. n Wednesday (September 16), the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had said that the terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir have reduced up to 54% since the abrogation of Article 370. The Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy in Rajya Sabha said that there were 211 terrorist-related incidents in Jammu and Kashmir between August 5, 2019, and September 9, 2020, compared to 455 incidents reported between the same period in 2018 and 2019. Sen. Johnson Blocks Sen. Schumers Resolution on Biden Probe A Democratic Senate resolution calling for an end to an investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden was blocked on Wednesday by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) presented a resolution that claims that Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassleys (R-Iowa) probe into the Bidens is based on Russian disinformation to interfere with the upcoming presidential election. My colleagues and I have drafted a simple resolution. It calls for the cessation of any Senate investigation or activity that allows Congressthe United States Congressto act as a conduit for Russian disinformation, Schumer said from the Senate floor on Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) holds a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 16, 2019. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images) Schumers comments were referring to an investigation being conducted by Sens. Johnson of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Grassley of the Finance Committee that Schumer says is an attack by Republicans on the former vice president based on false information from Russia. Schumer criticized the investigation into the Bidens saying that the recent subpoenas by Johnsons committee were a part of, an ongoing effort to disparage the former vice president and his family. There is a dark similarity here to the Republican effort in the House in the previous election to discredit the Democratic presidential candidate with the Select Committee on Benghazi, Schumer added. Adding to Schumers criticism, Sen. Wyden the ranking member of the Finance Committee, said from the Senate floor on Wednesday that Russia had gifted information to Johnson and Grassley. Its interference campaign includes gift information about Vice President Biden and the work, he was doing to fight corruption in Ukraine to spread this information, Russia enlists the help of characters like Andriy Derkach and Andre Teleshinko, claimed Wyden. The resolution names Ukrainian Andriy Derkach, who Wyden says is confirmed by the intelligence community of spreading Russian disinformation to undermine Bidens campaign. Since the GOPs almost 2-month long investigation, Johnson and Grassley have consistently denied receiving any information from Derkach and Democrats have consistently accused them of doing so. As tensions flared on both sides, Johnson said about the remarks from Schumer and Wyden, if this is not violations of the Senates rules, its coming pretty darn close. Following Johnsons remark, the presiding officer on the Senate floor readout Rule 19, No senator in debate shall directly or indirectly by any form of words impugn to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator. Earlier Wednesday Republicans on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to authorize subpoena over 3 dozen people as part of the Biden investigation. The foreign information we were falsely accused of receiving to utilize purportedly comes from Ukrainian named Andriy Derkach, said Johnson. Neither Senator Grassley nor I ever sought, received, or used any information from Andriy Derkach. The media has continued to report, otherwise for weeks. Despite our repeated and unequivocal denials. Schumer called on Johnson to furnish a complete list of his Russian and Ukrainian sources. Hell deny receiving information from the particular Russian agent Ive mentioned, Mr. Derkach. But Chairman Johnson has never provided a full accounting of all the Russian and Ukrainian-linked individuals hes sought information from, Schumer said. Johnson concluded his remarks by saying, I would ask the American people to take a look at what has been happening here. The false allegations, the basic playbook Democrats engage in time and time again create a false narrative, he said. That is whats happening here. I personally am tired of it. Meanwhile, Grassley wrote in a statement Wednesday, my colleagues, Senator Schumer and Senator Wyden violated the senate rules by attempting to offer a resolution disparaging oversight work being done by me and Senator Johnson. Grassley continued his criticism of the Democrat senators saying, They argued, without evidence, that the investigation Senator Johnson and I are engaged in is advancing a Russian disinformation campaign. Grassley clarified that the investigation into the Bidens is concentrated on finding information on potential conflicts of interest and other wrongdoing regarding former Vice President Biden during his time as lead with the Obama administrations Ukraine policy. Citizen assemblies are ideal for probing the complexities of genome editing. Credit: Alice Mollon Designer babies, mutant mozzies and frankenfoods: These are the images that often spring to mind when people think of genome editing. The practice, which alters an organism's DNA in ways that could be inherited by subsequent generations, is both more complex and less dramatic than the popular tropes suggest. However, its implications are so profound that a growing group of experts believe it is too important a matter to be left only to scientists, doctors and politicians. Writing in the journal Science, 25 leading researchers from across the globe call for the creation of national and global citizens' assemblies made up of lay-people to be tasked with considering the ethical and social impacts of this emerging science. The authors come from a broad range of disciplines, including governance, law, bioethics, and genetics. The immense potential, and threat, of gene editing was vividly demonstrated in 2018, when geneticist He Jiankui announced he had used the technology to create two genetically altered babies. Dr. He was eventually jailed by Chinese authorities, but his rogue work threw crucial questions about gene-editing humans firmly into the spotlight. How should this technology be usedand who should make those decisions? The questions go well beyond our own species. Gene editing potentially offers a way to change mosquitoes and wipe out malaria, to boost crop resilience and reduce starvation, or to produce pigs full of organs easily transplanted into humans. It can also can potentially prevent conditions such as sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis and even some forms of cancer. But every good promise, at least in the popular imagination, is mirrored by a bad one: accidentally mutated disease-carrying insects, sterile crops, new treatment-resistant illnessesand babies engineered for super-strength or musicality. These implications are so important, believe researchers led by Professor John Dryzek, head of Australia's Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra, they should be examined not just by those in the field, but by the general public: teachers, plumbers, butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers. Dryzek and colleagues believe that citizens' assembliesgroups of lay-people tasked with diving deep into the ethical and moral issues thrown up by genome editingwill provide a valuable guide for scientists, doctors and politicians around the world. "The promise, perils and pitfalls of this emerging technology are so profound that the implications of how and why it is practiced should not be left to experts," Dryzek said. In the Science paper, the researchers say their proposed global assembly should comprise at least 100 peoplenone of whom would be scientists, policy-makers or activists working in the field. The international meeting will take place after several national versions have been conducted. Events in the US, UK, Australia and China are already planned and fully funded by organizations including the Kettering Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund Genomics Health Futures Mission, and the Wellcome Genome Campus. Projects in Belgium, France, Germany, Brazil and South Africa are also well advanced. "The fact that they are made up of citizens with no history of activism on an issue means they are good at reflecting upon the relative weight of different values and principles," Professor Dryzek said. "Think of how we trust juries in court cases to reach good judgements. Deliberation is a particularly good way to harness the wisdom of crowds, as it enables participants to piece together the different bits of information that they hold in constructive and considered fashion." Citizen-based deliberations are not unusual, as recent plebiscites in Ireland and Australia illustrate. However, the global assembly would be significantly different. "The issues to be discussed in this assembly are different from the types of issues examined in other forums of this naturefor example, whether same sex marriage should be legalized," said co-author Dianne Nicol, professor of law at the University of Tasmania. "I don't think the goal of the citizens' assembly should be to answer questions of whether heritable genome editing should be prohibited globally. Rather, it should be about better understanding community concerns and expectations." It will also be about social justice, added Professor Baogang He, chair of international studies at Australia's Deakin University. "A global citizens' assembly will help to develop moral and political regulation on genome editing experiments, and to ensure fair access to the technologies," he said. "It will help global civil society guard against ill use of genome editing for the interest of a few." Co-author Herve Chneiweiss, Director of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee and member of the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on the Governance of Human Genome Editing, said the selection process for the global assembly must reflect differences rather than geopolitics. "Too many people would make a real deliberation impossible, not enough should make it inefficient," he said. "Our goal should be to be representative. Thus it is not a Senate where each state would get one vote, whatever the number of its population. The '100' should represent the diversity of cultures and origins." Another co-author, genetic counselor Professor Anna Middleton from Society and Ethics Research, Wellcome Genome Campus in the UK, said new gene-altering practices will eventually impact the whole world. "For technologies such as genome editing it is crucial to understand social impact," she said. "The whole globe has the potential to be affected by this, so we must seek representation from as many public audiences as possible across the world." Professor Dryzek said funding for the global assembly was already well advanced, with funders including the Australian Research Council already on board. He hoped the interest generated by the Science paper would provide a pathway to more. The planning process and eventually the assembly itself is being recorded by Emmy Award-winning Australian documentary-makers Genepool Productions. "This is not about providing a speakers platform, rather a thinkers pool," said Genepool creative director and co-author Sonya Pemberton. "The researchers have come up with a powerful and people-focussed approach to examining a world-changing technology. Capturing this world-first event on film, I hope, will preserve the historic occasion, amplify the global conversation, and provide a template for citizen deliberation on other, equally important matters." Explore further Report: Heritable genome editing technology is not yet ready for clinical use More information: J.S. Dryzek el al., "Global citizen deliberation on genome editing," Science (2020). Journal information: Science J.S. Dryzek el al., "Global citizen deliberation on genome editing,"(2020). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi 1126/science.abb5931 The division number 5 police have arrested two accused for vehicle liftings. The accused have become a headache for police after they had stolen 10 vehicles from different parts of the city in the past one month. The arrested accuseds have been identified as Mohit Dhingra, 34, of Dashmesh Colony and Bhupinder Singh, 40, of Model House. Joint Commissioner of Police Bhagirath Singh Meena said that the police were after the accused for a long. Meanwhile the accused were captured in the CCTVs installed in Model Town area, in which the accused were captured while riding a stolen motorcycle. The police laid a trap and arrested them. The accused are so desperate that they attempt vehicle lifting bid daily. The accused told police that they used to target old scooters and motorcycles as their locks are easy to open. The accused are drug addicts and execute crime to meet their need for drugs. The Joint CP added that the accused have dumped the vehicles at an isolated place and they were trying to sell them for money. Further he added that Bhupinder Singh is already facing trial in five cases including hatching conspiracy of robbery, vehicle lifting snatching and robbery. Bhupinder Singh had bailed out from the jail on October 19, 2019. More important information has been expected from the accused during questioning. 3 1 of 3 Courtesy photo /Laredo Police Department Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Show More Show Less 3 of 3 A tip to the Laredo Police Department app landed one man behind bars on a drug charge, authorities said. Daniel Gutierrez, 29, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with possession of a controlled substance. LPD said the narcotics and vice unit arrested Gutierrez after receiving a tip along with pictures of a suspect vehicle involved in the possible sale of narcotics. Your browser does not support the audio element. Thirty-year-old Nguyen Trung Kien supports himself and several other members of his ethnic minority group in the northern Vietnamese province of Hoa Binh thanks to his innovative techniques for producing clean agriculture. Kien, a member of the Muong ethnic minority group in Doc Lap Commune, Ky Son District in Hoa Binh, had a childhood marred by the loss of his mother at a young age. To make matters worse, his father was an alcoholic who gave the neighbors little reason to respect the family. Still, despite his rough upbringing, Kien has succeeded in developing a business he not only uses to support himself but to benefit his community. His achievements secured him a seat at the Global Young Vietnamese Scholars Forum an initiative meant to applaud young intellectuals who have played a role in boosting Vietnams growth and promoting its global economic integration. I was under a lot of pressure because of the invite and wasnt sure if I was going to join. What I had been doing was nothing compared to other attendees accomplishments, Kien shared. A shining example None of Kiens three elder sisters finished school, but as a young man Kien developed a keen dedication to his studies. He never missed a day of school despite a 15-kilometer walk from the nearest bus stop to his home every day. Kien eventually made it to college and in 2009 became one of his communes first full-time college students despite murmurs in the community that he would never be successful in the urban workplace without the right connections. After graduation, he landed a job at a pesticide company in Hanoi. Helping others After entering the agriculture industry, Kien was surprised to find that several farms in Hanois outlying Dong Anh and Me Linh Districts were extremely profitable. By contrast, farmers in his hometown were struggling to make ends meet due to their dependence on rice and corn crops. He later began to build connections with the farmers in Hoa Binh through visits to paddy fields to test pesticides and training workshops he hosted for farmers. I was driven to do research into how to improve their livelihood and tap my hometowns plentiful land and labor resources, Kien shared, adding that such experiences were the inspiration for launching his first seedling and pesticide shop in Hoa Binh in 2016. Through the shop, he also provides farmers with counseling on farming techniques and guarantees outlets for their produce, particularly gourds. The products grown by the farmers in his network have since made their way to Hanoi and other northern provinces including Hai Duong and Hung Yen. As the business grew, Kien and his wife were able to open a mini supermarket to provide essentials at affordable prices for local residents. They now run four stores and mini supermarkets and use the businesses to provide jobs for local youths. In his free time, Kien teaches his Cambodian wife Vietnamese and spends time learning the Khmer language from her. He also runs a free English class for children in his neighborhood. Im so impressed with Kiens resilience in the face of adversity. He sets a shining example to local ethnic young people and also contributes to his hometowns growth, said Bui Thi Nhi, a teacher at Doc Lap Elementary and Middle School for ethnic minority students in Kien's hometown. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Bamako, Mali (PANA) - The spokesman for the National Council for the Salvation of the People (CNSP), the military junta that took power in Mali, Colonel Major Ismael Wague, announced on Wednesday in Bamako that the CNSP has begun the process of constituting the College which is to appoint the President and Prime Minister of the Transition in Mali Given the acute financial crisis that the North Delhi Municipal Corporation is currently undergoing, its commissioner Gyanesh Bharti has issued an order directing all heads of the departments to not to create any additional financial commitments. He said apart from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the corporations adverse financial condition was also due to the non-payment of grants on time by the Delhi government. This is the first time that the commissioner of a municipality has raised the issue of the city government not paying grants/dues on time. Civic functionaries said that means no new project is likely to be taken up until the situation improves. As a result, all development works, such as the construction of new drains, roads, parking spaces and allocation of councillors funds, are likely to be affected. In the circular issued on September 11, Bharti also accepted that the financial situation was so grave that the municipality was unable to pay salaries and pensions to certain categories of employees and former employees for the past five months. After the outbreak of Covid-19 and the consequent lockdown of Delhi since March 2020, the internal revenue of North DMC has decreased drastically. Further, the grant-in-aid, transfer duty and other such dues from GNCTD (Delhi government) are also not being released on time. In view of this, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation is facing a severe financial crunch that even salaries and pensions for the last five months to certain categories of employees have not been released, the circular read. Bharti further said that in view of the adverse financial condition of the north civic body, and keeping in mind the existing cash and committed liabilities, it has become expedient to avoid the creation of any further additional financial liability. All heads of departments are hereby once again directed not to create any additional financial commitments except in unavoidable circumstances, Bharti said. A similar order was issued in August 2019 by then commissioner Varsha Joshi. According to civic officials, the north corporation has a workforce of around 50,000 and it spends nearly 350 crore every month on salaries. Officials explained that other than self revenue generation, the civic body also gets a grant from the government along with a share in various taxes and advertisement revenue that the government collects on behalf of the corporation. Teachers, doctors, nurses, sanitation employees, paramedical staff, engineers and other employees in different departments of the north corporation are currently owed a salary backlog of four to five months. The civil contractors of the north corporation have not been paid their bills since March 2015. Hundreds of employees of different departments have been protesting at the Civic Centre headquarters of north and south corporations against non-payment of salaries. Jai Prakash, mayor, north corporation, said the Delhi government has to give approximately 1,600 crore to the north civic body in first two quarters of the current fiscal. Of this, the government has so far released only about 400 crore. The situation will improve if the Delhi government releases the pending 1,200 crore (approx). This is the first time that the commissioner has also raised the issue of non-payment of dues by the city government. We have been saying the same thing for past few months, Prakash said. Vikas Goel, AAP councillor and leader of opposition in the north corporation, stressed that the government had been paying its share to the corporation on time. The commissioners statement seems to have been made under pressure from the political executive, Goel said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday and noted that they have succeeded in consolidating further the traditionally good relations between Germany and India for the benefit of the peoples of the two countries. Please accept my warmest congratulations on the occasion of your 70th birthday. I am happy to take this opportunity to thank you for our trustful and constructive cooperation, Merkel said in her letter to Modi. Together over the past few years, we have succeeded in consolidating even further the traditionally good relations between India and Germany. I have fond memories, for example, of our meeting last November at the Indo-German intergovernmental consultations, she said. Merkel in her letter to Modi also vowed to work together to overcome the challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the cohesion of the international community. Only if we work together will we manage to overcome this huge challenge. With that in mind, I look forward to continuing our cooperation for the benefit of the countries and their people, she said in her letter, which was shared by the Prime Minister's Office on its Twitter handle. She wished Modi great health and success during the current unusual times. Four your political work, I wish you continued success. On a personal note, I wish you all the very best in the future particularly, in these unusual times, health, happiness and fulfilment, she said. Also read: Putin wishes PM Modi on 70th birthday, applauds contributions to bolster Indo-Russia ties In a nutshell: Logitech is upgrading the capabilities of its 'Hero' mice with a software update that unlocks tracking at up to 25,600 DPI. You'll have a hard time telling the difference, but the company wants to show gamers that its mice are using a sensor that is more than capable for the job. If you purchased a Logitech gaming mouse with a 'Hero' optical sensor, you're in for a surprise. The company has issued a firmware update that will greatly increase the maximum sensitivity it can achieve. The Hero (High Efficiency Rated Optical) sensor typically maxes out at 16,000 DPI, which is why it was dubbed the "Hero 16K" when it was introduced back in 2016. Now that moniker has been changed to "Hero 25K," which gives Logitech bragging rights for having the first mice on the market that come with a sub-micron-level mouse sensor in them. For reference, the best gaming mice out there top out at 20,000 DPI -- even Logitech admits that at 25,600 DPI the Hero 25K sensor is overkill for what gamers actually need. Still, the company wanted to showcase that it didn't make any compromises with its sensor. This essentially means that your mouse doesn't need any smoothing or corrections for erroneous counts to achieve an accuracy level of 98 percent, all while using ten times less energy when compared to previous Logitech G sensors. The upgrade is a nice gift to people who purchased a G903 Hero, G502 Lightspeed, Pro Wireless, G703 Hero, G604, G502 Hero, G403 Hero, or a Pro mouse. To install it now, open up the G Hub software and manually check for the update. A top lawyer body has offered free legal services to the countrys journalists amid increasing incidents of harassment and intimidation of reporters who have criticized the countrys government and powerful military. On September 17, the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) announced free legal representation for all journalists and activists who are facing police investigations and court cases on charges of treason and working against the state. The media is being silenced ruthlessly, and young journalists are facing a wave of oppression, Abid Saqi, vice chairman of the PBC, told opposition politicians at a conference in Islamabad. Some people are lodging treason cases against journalists in various districts to persecute them to project the impression that anyone daring to speak up will be silenced. Saqi said the crackdown on journalists is unprecedented. We will form watchdog committees to defend journalists free of cost in such cases across the country, he said. The announcement came the same day that global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on Islamabad to cease attempts to censor journalists who criticize or question the authorities on social media in Pakistan. This harassment must stop, RSF said in a September 17 statement. In the past few days alone, three journalists have been the victims of arbitrary accusations such as inciting rebellion, treason, and anti-Pakistan activities. The three journalists are newspaper editor Bilal Farooqui; Absar Alam, a former head of the governments media regulator; and Asad Ali Toor, a television producer. But Khan recently maintained there was no crackdown against journalists in his country. "I don't mind criticism, but there is blatant propaganda against the government, he told Al-Jazeera earlier this month. Unfortunately, it is the government who feels unprotected, not the media. International watchdogs, however, refute such claims. In Pakistan, arbitrary arrest, detention, and baseless criminal prosecutions are used as instruments of press censorship, Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, noted on September 10. On September 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), another media watchdog, called on Pakistan to investigate threats made to journalists Ahmad Noorani and Gul Bukhari. Using public records, Noorani published an expose detailing the alleged wealth of former army general Asim Saleem Bajwa. Journalists cannot do their essential work when they fear for their lives or their families safety, and it is the responsibility of Pakistans government to create an environment in which reporting in the public interest isnt a dangerous act, said Steven Butler, CPJs Asia program coordinator. Pakistan is deemed one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Some 61 media professionals have been killed in the country since 1992, according to CPJ. The country of 220 million ranked 145th out of 180 countries on RSF's World Press Freedom Index this year. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to stop Harsimrat Kaur Badal from exiting the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, even as it had roped in its key strategists to prevent the exit of the lone Akali Dal minister. This is the first resignation in Modi government 2.0. Harsimrat Kaur, who was the Minister for Food Processing, belongs to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) -- one of the oldest constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. In a tweet, she said: "I have resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter and sister." She called the agriculture-related bills introduced in the Monsoon Session of Parliament "anti-farmer". Harsimrat Kaur, in her resignation submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, described her party and farmers as synonymous with each other, and that it could not compromise on the interests of farmers. Even as the BJP was constantly trying to convince Harsimrat Kaur and the SAD, it did not succeed. In a press conference on Wednesday, BJP President J.P. Nadda had said that the party had held talks with the SAD over the agriculture-related bills and that confusion is being spread over the bills. He also said that party is in talks with its ally and all the confusion would be cleared. However, on Thursday, Harsimrat Kaur walked out of the cabinet as the bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha. The SAD was opposing all three bills related to agricultural reforms right from the beginning. Its Rajya Sabha Chief Whip Naresh Gujral on Wednesday had directed the party MPs to vote against them. BJP sources told IANS that talks were on between the party strategists and the SAD over the issue, and that the party had engaged a leader of its Punjab unit for negotiations along with its ally. The BJP hoped that through negotiations, it would convince the SAD to vote in favour of the agricultural bills. Scores of soldiers and other security officials on Thursday embarked on a massive show of force on the streets of Benin City ahead of Saturdays governorship election in Edo State. The combined exercise tagged Inter Agencies Show of Force is to alert Edo residents of the security agencies preparedness for the governorship election. PREMIUM TIMES reports that no fewer than 70 patrol vehicles, including two armored personnel carriers, loaded with fully armed personnel from various security agencies, paraded strategic streets and roads across the city. Their patrol caused traffic congestion along the busy Benin-Sapele Road and other major roads along with the Government Reservation Area for several hours. A similar patrol was carried out by the combined force on Saturday and Sunday. Chidi Nwabuzor, the state police public relations officer, who spoke to journalists during the exercise, restated the inter agencies commitment to ensuring that the election was violence-free, fair, free, and credible He urged voters to come out en masse on Saturday and vote as their lives and property would be protected. Some of the security agencies that participated in the exercise include the Nigerian Army, Police Mobile Force, Nigerian Police Force, Nigerian Customs Service, and the Directorate of State Services. Others were the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, Nigerian Air force, Federal Road Safety Corps, the Nigerian Correctional Service, Nigerian Immigration Service, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. The exercise started from the police command headquarters through Sapele Road, Country Home Road, and Ugbo Road. Other routes covered were the GRA, Adesuwa Road, Ihama Road, and the entire stretch of the Airport Road, Akenzua Road, Ehaekpen Street, TV Road, Five Junctions, Uselu-Lagos Road, Upper Mission Road, and Ring Road. The governorship election in Edo holds on Saturday with 14 parties participating. "Climate change is a reality and our future depends on going further and faster on our sustainability commitments. That is why we are accelerating our commitments to offer our consumers a way to drink a carbon neutral cup of coffee by 2022. A coffee, made from the finest and rarest beans, sustainably sourced. I truly believe that both our business and the coffee industry can be a force for good in the world by tackling this pressing issue," said Guillaume Le Cunff, CEO of Nespresso. Having already achieved carbon neutrality in its business operations (scopes 1 & 2) since 2017, the company's new commitment will tackle emissions that occur in its supply chain and product life cycle (scope 3). Nespresso will achieve carbon neutrality through the following initiatives: the reduction of carbon emission; the planting of trees in and around coffee farms where Nespresso sources its coffee (insetting); and through support and investment in high quality offsetting projects. 1. Carbon emission reduction: A crucial element of Nespresso's vision is to decarbonize its value chain. Immediate initiatives include: Sustainable energy usage within Nespresso's operations: Driving towards 100% renewable energy in all Nespresso boutiques and increasing the use of biogas within the manufacturing process. Driving towards 100% renewable energy in all boutiques and increasing the use of biogas within the manufacturing process. Expanded circularity of Nespresso products and packaging: Increasing the use of recycled plastic within Nespresso machines, as well as of recycled and low carbon virgin aluminium within coffee capsules. 2. Planting trees in coffee farms and the surrounding landscapes (insetting): Trees are the best way to capture carbon from the atmosphere while investing in nature and building a regenerative agricultural system. Planting trees provides the shade needed to improve the quality and quantity of a coffee harvest. The roots also help protect against soil erosion and landslides and promote soil regeneration. With its partner Pur Projet, Nespresso will triple the capacity of planting trees (with insetting) in coffee producing countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Costa Rica. 3. Accelerate to make an immediate positive impact (offsetting initiatives): Nespresso will also invest in projects to support forest conservation and restoration as well as implement clean energy solutions within farming communities. This carbon neutral commitment is part of a broader sustainability ambition that will be further communicated later this year: to preserve exceptional coffees, build a resilient and regenerative coffee agriculture system, drive sustainable livelihoods for farmers and build a circular business. QUOTES FROM OUR PARTNERS: The 2022 carbon neutrality roadmap has been endorsed by the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board (NSAB) members. GEORGE CLOONEY, NESPRESSO BRAND AMBASSADOR "Climate change is happening now, which means that we must all take responsibility and action, quickly," said George Clooney, actor, Nespresso Global Brand Ambassador and member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board. "It's clear that Nespresso understands this urgency and is putting our planet and people front and center of the choices it makes. These ambitions and vision build on a commitment to sustainability that I have been privileged to have been involved in over the last seven years. I've seen how far we've come in that time, and I'm excited to see the good that Nespresso can deliver in the next 10 years." TRISTAN LECOMTE, CO-FOUNDER, PUR PROJET "The pressure is on for all businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and Nespresso is clearly showing a strong will to tackle its own carbon emissions via this ambitious and qualitative carbon neutral program. While we all search for the technical innovations that will reduce carbon, it is urgent that businesses invest as well in the sequestration of their emissions to balance their books as quickly as possible," said Tristan Lecomte, Founder, Pur Projet, member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board. "We've been proud to support Nespresso in doing this, planting millions of trees across the globe within coffee regions in Colombia, Guatemala and Ethiopia to take carbon dioxide out of the air since 2014. We will continue working together and triple the capacity of the carbon insetting program and regenerating the ecosystems we all depend upon." NOTES TO EDITORS About Nestle Nespresso Nestle Nespresso SA is the pioneer and reference for highest-quality portioned coffee. The company works with more than 110,000 farmers in 14 countries through its AAA Sustainable Quality Program to embed sustainability practices on farms and the surrounding landscapes. Launched in 2003 in collaboration with the NGO The Rainforest Alliance, the program helps to improve the yield and quality of harvests, ensuring a sustainable supply of high-quality coffee and improving livelihoods of farmers and their communities. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, Nespresso operates in 84 countries and has 14,250 employees. In 2019, it operated a global retail network of 810 boutiques. The brand currently has more than 100,000 points to collect its used capsules globally, enabling 91% of its consumers to recycle. For more information, visit the Nespresso corporate website http://www.nestle-nespresso.com. PDF - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1275452/Nespresso_Carbon_Factsheet.pdf Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1275451/Nespresso_coffee.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1201367/Nespresso_Logo.jpg SOURCE Nespresso Tziporah Malkah was seen entering Sydney's Downing Centre court complex on Thursday. The 45-year-old, formerly known as Kate Fischer, was listed for mention in a matter involving police, which was adjourned to the same court next week. The daughter of former NSW government minister Pru Goward changed her name after she converted to the religion of Judaism. Court: Tziporah Malkah (pictured) wore a simple black dress, a white jacket and black and white sneakers as she arrived to Sydney's Downing Centre on Thursday However, court documents have listed the former actress under her birth name of Katherine Fischer. The former model wore a simple black dress with an asymmetrical hem, a white jacket and a pair of black and white sneakers as she arrived at Sydney's Downing Centre. She tied her caramel-hued locks in a high bun and had a black bag slung over her shoulder. Legal: The 45-year-old, formerly known as Kate Fischer, was listed for mention in a matter involving police, which was adjourned to the same court next week Style: She tied her hair in a high bun and had a black bag slung over her shoulder Meanwhile, in July it was revealed a bizarre love triangle involving Tziporah and two ex-partners - one a former policeman and the other a female jailbird - is set to play out before the courts. Last year the 46-year-old was pictured holding hands with Victoria Rupp at Sydney's Bondi Beach. But after their relationship fizzled, Tziporah began dating former cop Nicholas Patsidis, 40, also a one-time lover of Rupp's. Accessories: She tied her hair in a high bun and held a black bag on her shoulder Now the trio are also connected by a pair of AVOs. Police took out one of the orders to protect Malkah from Patsidis after he was charged with assaulting her. The other AVO is in place to protect Patsidis from Rupp after she was accused of bombarding the ex-cop with abusive text messages following their split. Tziporah will appear at Downing Centre Local Court again on September 25. Then-FBI official Peter Strzok confers with his legal counsel before a joint committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 12, 2018. Alex Edelman/Getty Images Besides 22 Wiped Devices, 44 Mueller Team iPhones Had Zero Records Forty-four iPhones used by members of Robert Muellers Russia investigation contained no records when they were examined by an officer assigned to the team, according to internal documents. Five more Special Counsels Office (SCO) phones contained only one record each, and four others contained fewer than 10 records per device, according to a log kept by a records officer over the course of more than 20 months. The lack of records on the phones is extraordinary given the immense scope of the probe. It is also suspicious considering that at least 22 phones belonging to members of the Mueller team were wiped, with employees offering questionable explanations for the erasures. Under U.S. law, government records are defined as all recorded information, regardless of form or characteristics, made or received by a federal agency under federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the United States government or because of the informational value of data in them. Of the 92 unique iPhones used by the Mueller team, only 12 contained a significant number of records, an Epoch Times review of available records determined. Two well-known members of the Mueller team, FBI attorney Lisa Page and Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok mentioned sending and clearing iMessages from their SCO iPhones on more than one occasion. Clear imsg Strzok wrote to Page on June 5, 2017, and again on June 8. Apples iMessage service utilizes the internet data network to send messages that bypass the cellular carriers text message service. As a result, when the SCO asked Verizon to check how many text messages Strzok and Page sent during their tenure on the Mueller team, Verizon said that none were sent, but noted that data did leave the device. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 19, 2013. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) The records officer, who isnt identified in the documents, noted that Strzoks phone contained no substantive texts, notes or reminders. Pages phone went missing under questionable circumstances after she left the Mueller team. When it was recovered more than a year later, the device was already wiped. The Department of Justice (DOJ), of which the SCO was a part, is bound by laws and regulations to preserve records and prevent them from being destroyed. The DOJs Records Management page notably contains a statutory definition of what a record is that has been outdated since late 2014, when the relevant legislation was amended by Congress. The page also incorrectly attributes the definition to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The outdated language came from Congress. The DOJ didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. The iPhones that had no records belonged to some of the key members of the special counsel team, including Mueller himself, deputy special counsel Aaron Zebley, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, and Andrew Weissman. Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August to one false statement charge in connection to an email he forged while serving as the primary FBI attorney assigned to the SCO. He edited the email as part of the process for preparing a secret-court application for a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser. Clinesmith, Page, and Strzok were among a group of officials who worked on the investigation of the Trump campaign and expressed intense bias against Trump. Strzok, who maintained an extramarital relationship with Page, spoke of stopping Trump from becoming president, mentioned an insurance policy in the unlikely case Trump won the election, and mused about impeachment around the time he joined Muellers team. I am so stressed about what I could have done differently, Clinesmith wrote to his FBI colleague Sally Moyer on the day after Trumps victory in November 2016. Im just devastated. Plus, my [expletive] name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff, he wrote a few messages later. Messages from the trio offered the public an extraordinary glimpse into the nature of the investigation and now raise questions about why more than dozens of other Mueller team phones turned up with no records. Former FBI Lawyer Lisa Page arrives to testify before a House Judiciary Committee closed-door meeting on July 13, 2018. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) The records officer assigned to the Mueller team reviewed some of the phones more than once. As a result, some of the phones were recorded as having no records at one point and as having been wiped on another occasion. For purposes of clarity, such phones were counted toward the 22 which were wiped and not part of the 42 which had no records. Some of the phones, such as the one belonging to Strzok, were reviewed for records as part of the exit procedure, wiped, and reassigned to another SCO member. Four of these reassigned phones also had no records when they were checked after being used by a new employee. One of the reassigned phones had one record. Thirteen of the phones that were logged as having three or fewer records were each also wiped on separate occasions. For example, the phone belonging to Weissmann, who has been described as the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, contained no records when it was reviewed on March 28, 2019. Prior to that, Weissmann wiped his phone twice, in March and September 2018, claiming he erased it by accident on one occasion and by entering the wrong password too many times on another. Members of Muellers team offered similar explanations to Weissmanns for wiping their phones. At least two told the records officer that their phones wiped themselves. In addition to the 22 wiped iPhones, five phones were improperly handed to the DOJ Office of Chief Information Officer and wiped before the SCO records officer could review them for records, according to the documents. Mueller took over the FBIs investigation of the Trump campaign in May 2017. The special counsel operated with Trump in the White House and with the near-certain prospect that each employees actions would eventually be reviewed either by the Congress or the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG was in regular contact with the SCO beginning less than a month after Muellers appointment and throughout 2018, documents show. The IG interviewed SCO staff in 2018 as it searched for Pages missing iPhone. With the exception of Strzoks phone, all of the phones that were logged as having no records were reviewed after the IG contacted the SCO about Pages phone in late January 2018. Trump, who has repeatedly denounced the Mueller investigation as a hoax, responded to news of the wiped phones on Twitter. It has now been determined that the Mueller Scam should never have been set up in the first place, there were no grounds, the president wrote. It was all an illegitimate Witch Hunt, & a big price must be paid. How different my life would have been if this fraud on America was never committed!!! Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote letters to the FBI and DOJ requesting more information on the deleted phones. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked the IG to open a probe into the matter. In scathing remarks against his own staff, Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that the Justice Department has recently acted "more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice" and equated some prosecutors to preschoolers and "headhunters." Too much deference is given to career prosecutors, rather than to politically appointed leaders who can be held accountable at the ballot box, he said in remarks likely to further strain relations between Barr and some of the Justice Department's career prosecutors. Barr did not mention any specific cases, but he has been criticized by current and former government lawyers for moving to abandon the prosecution of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn and seeking a less harsh sentence for Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign adviser. Career Justice Department lawyers quit the prosecution teams in both cases. More from NBC News "The notion that line prosecutors should make the final decisions within the Department of Justice is completely wrong, and it is antithetical to the basic values underlying our system," Barr said. Prosecutors too often become "headhunters, consumed with taking down their targets," he said. "In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyperaggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong, and we must stop doing it," he said in a speech at Hillsdale College's annual Constitution Day Celebration, which this year was held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, VA. Barr said he is annoyed by the claim that political officials interfere in criminal prosecutions, given that all prosecutorial power is vested by law in the attorney general. Some career attorneys are not partisan, he said, but they are often less experienced than their supervisors. "Name one successful organization where the lowest-level employees' decisions are deemed sacrosanct," he said. "There aren't any. Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it's no way to run a federal agency." Barr did not mention Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation in his prepared remarks. During the speech, however, he noted that the Trump administration has sometimes been described as lawless even though, he said, it had a better record of wins in the Supreme Court than the Obama administration. "Obama had some of the people who were in Mueller's office writing their briefs in the Supreme Court, so maybe that explains something," he said. The Obama record of wins at the Supreme Court was the worst in six decades, but Trump has fared even worse, according to an analysis by legal scholars Lee Epstein and Eric Posner. But they note that the court has been steadily less deferential to each successive administration since President Ronald Reagan's two terms. Authorities of the city of Lanzhou in northwest China on Tuesday confirmed that several thousand people have tested positive for a bacterial disease brucellosis due to a leak caused by a biopharmaceutical company in 2019. According to CNN, people might have gotten infected by the disease either by consuming the contaminated food or by breathing in the bacteria. The Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, situated in the Gansu province of China, in a press release said that it has set up a team to deal with the outbreak of brucellosis in the region. This disease happens when someone is in contact with livestock which is hosting the bacteria brucella. The Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute team headed by Secretary of the municipal party committee Li Rongcan and Zhang Weiwen, deputy secretary of the municipal party committee and mayor, the team will identify 11 public medical institutions to address the outbreak. The release said, As of September 14, 2020, a total of 21,847 people were tested, 4646 were initially screened positive, and 3,245 were confirmed by the Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention; 3,159 health files were established; a total of 23,479 consultations were held; 9 on-site medical diagnosis and treatment lectures were held and distributed. According to the team the outbreak resulted from the leakage of gas from the Lanzhou Biopharmaceutical Factory which also produces vaccine for the disease which infect animals primarily. From July 24 to August 20, 2019, Lanzhou Biopharmaceutical Factory used expired disinfectants in the production of brucella vaccine causing incomplete sterilization of waste gas from production fermentation tanks, and the waste gas carrying bacteria-containing fermentation liquid formed bacteria-containing aerosols, the statement said. The statement pointed out that due to wind flow humans came into contact with the bacteria. During the production period, the main wind direction in the area was southeast. In the downwind direction, human body inhalation or mucosal contact produced positive antibodies, resulting in a positive Brucella antibody incident... This incident was accidental and exposure (was for) a short time. According to CNN, several researchers working in the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute had fallen ill first after being exposed to the virus. Heilongjiang province, which is situated in northeast China, also saw infections due to exposure to brucella. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says exposure to brucella can lead to Malta fever or Mediterranean fever. The symptoms are usually headaches, muscle pain, fever and fatigue. The CDC says that even though the symptoms might subside eventually, there is always a risk of some of these symptoms to become chronic and patients can develop arthritis or swelling in certain organs. Brucella outbreaks in China were on the decline since 1980s due to vaccine introduction as well as improved control measures but minor outbreaks have been reported over the past few decades. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Police responded to a disorder at Kambio 2 on Bonny Oaks Drive. A man complained he went into the business, grabbed a can of beer, popped the top, paid for his slushy and was going to pay for the beer, but was told he cannot buy beer until 10 a.m. He got mad when told he was charged for the beer but could not have it.* * *Police were notified of a suspicious vehicle with a dog inside on Gunbarrel Road. Upon arrival police found that the vehicle had been reported stolen a day earlier at the same location.Police concluded that the vehicle was never stolen, and that the owner had forgot where she parked, leading her to believe it was stolen. The owner was transported by police to the location and took control over the vehicle. The vehicle was taken out of NCIC as stolen.* * *Police responded to a vandalism call on Ooltewah Cemetery Road. Upon arrival at Mayse construction site, officers spoke with the site manager who said someone had damaged the port-a-potty by setting it on fire. Officers contacted Pitstop Portables and determined the cost of the unit was approximately $530. At this time there is no further information regarding leads, witnesses or suspects.* * *Police responded to a report of shoplifting at Discount Tobacco on Lee Highway. Upon arrival an employee stated an unknown man and woman entered the store and the man picked up four cigarillos and said, "We're not paying anything." The employee said the couple left the store in a small white pick-up.* * *Police responded to a gas station on Bonny Oaks Drive and spoke with a man who said that he and his wife had been at this location fueling up their motorcycle. The man said he had not been aware that his wife had left her purse on the trunk of the motorcycle when he moved the bike away from the pumps. Store cameras were able to observe a white female driving a maroon SUV, possibly a Chevy Blazer, pull up and take the purse. Inside the purse were the wife's glasses. The purse itself is a black Harley Davidson bag.* * *A woman at a gas station on Rossville Boulevard told police she went into the store to buy cigarettes and left her car running with the keys in the ignition. She said she looked outside and saw a white male with a mustache wearing a white shirt get in her vehicle and drive away. He headed south on Rossville Boulevard towards Georgia.* * *Police responded to a suspicious person call on Bradt Street. Police made contact with a man who matched the description of a person reportedly walking around banging on trash cans with a stick. The man said he was just outside his residence banging on his trash can because he was trying to calm his nerves. The man's information came back negative for warrants. He went back inside his residence without incident.* * *Police were called to a disorder on Clermont Drive. Upon arriving, they spoke with a woman who said her boyfriend was drunk and she was tired of being called names, being cussed at and the arguing. She said she wanted him to leave. The boyfriend had residency there at the home, so police could not ask him to leave. The man said he was looking for somewhere else to live and getting boxes to move. He said he would try to leave for the night, but if he could not find somewhere to stay he would have to stay. The couple said they would not cause any more issues.* * *A woman on Grove Street Court told police she was at home sitting on her couch with the front door open. She said a black male walked in and asked her for money. She said when she told him she did not have money, he left.* * *Police spoke with a woman on Greendale Way who said someone had called her on Saturday and told her she would die within seven days. The woman said she doesn't know who made the call and she has had an increasing issue with unwanted phone calls. The woman suspects her sister may be behind the phone calls, but has no proof. She is considering changing her phone number. A Range Rover driver filmed the moment four police officers surrounded him on his own driveway in front of his wife and newborn baby. The man, named Robert, exploded into an expletive-ridden rant when the police officers pulled up to his house in Point Cook, in Melbourne's south-west, on Wednesday. His friend posted the video to Facebook, saying it was the third time the man 'has been harassed by these f**king clowns', over some 'little social media posts'. Footage shows Robert sitting in his car in front of his house waiting for the police officer to come to his window and filming them in his rear-view mirror. A police officer introduces himself and says he is from the Public Order Response Team before asking Robert for a driving licence. A Range Rover driver filmed the moment four police officers surrounded him on his own driveway in front of his wife and newborn baby 'I don't have my driver's licence on me... I can give you my name,' he responds. 'Do you want to call any more f**king police because this is f**king harassment. I don't understand any of your laws and I don't understand any of your sh*t'. He claims the police 'followed him down the road' and stopped outside his house and informs them they are filming. The police officers continue to stand around the car as they question him. 'This is the best for me, and thank you for the harassment,' Robert yells before an officer asks if he's finished. Robert then goes on a rant about how the police are 'paedophile protectors' and questions why he has been pulled over. A police officer responds: 'We saw you driving a motor vehicle on a highway'. The response sends him into a rage and gets out of the Range Rover. His wife, who is carrying his newborn baby, comes to stand next to him and also films the encounter. Robert then films all the police officer's names before questioning again, why he was pulled over. The man, named Robert, exploded into an expletive-ridden rant when the police officers pulled up to his house in Melbourne earlier this week Footage shows Robert sitting in his car in front of his house waiting for the police officer to come to his window and filming them in his rear-view mirror When an officer tells him he was pulled over for 'driving a motor vehicle on a highway' he responds saying it 'isn't an offence'. 'We didn't tell you it was for any offence, we just wanted to check your driver's license,' another officer says. Robert continues to demand the police get off his property, but they remain standing where they are. 'This is harassment,' his wife can be heard saying in the video. 'You're a bunch of gutless cowards that pick on old ladies and people,' Robert yells. 'That's right, get the f**k off my property. I told you my name, if you didn't listen then you can f**k off.' Robert continues to demand the police get off his property, but they continue to remain standing where they are The police try to explain to him that there are no charges and they just came to talk to him but Robert continues to yell and tell them to 'get off' his property. 'You gutless piece of paedophile protecting f**ks. That's right, remember who you work for,' Robert yells. 'Wait until the public wake up and take you on. Wait until that happens then you'll experience real fear, you gutless piece of sh*ts.' His wife tells him to go inside but Robert continues to walk up and down the street yelling 'paedophile protectors'. 'Save the children, they're trying to harass people,' he yells in his rant. The footage was posted to Facebook on Wednesday and has quickly garnered more than 1,000 reactions and 1,500 comments. Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia they had been made aware of the video. 'Police are aware of a video circulating on social media where a man abuses police members after being intercepted driving a motor vehicle in Point Cook yesterday,' a spokesperson said. 'Victoria Police reminds all drivers that the Road Safety Act requires that they must state their name and address and produce their driver licence when requested to do so by a police officer.' The students issued a statement through their legal representatives that takes issue with the Sansthan's newly constituted Internal Committee The students and management of Bhopals Dhrupad Sansthan remain locked in a tussle over how sexual harassment allegations against the founding familys members the late Ramakant Gundecha, and his younger brother, the pakhawaj artiste Akhilesh Gundecha are being handled. On 11 September, Firstpost reported on a collective statement from current and former students of the Sansthan who said that the gurukuls official response to the allegations, as shared with the press, didnt reflect the on-ground reality. Among the major concerns the students statement flagged was the composition of the Internal Committee constituted on 3 September to look into the harassment allegations. The students felt the members of the IC could not be deemed independent since they were connected with the Gundecha family in various capacities. The Sansthans secretary had told Firstpost at the time that the gurukul management was engaged in a constant dialogue with the students about the situation, and would be reconstituting an IC that the students would accept. A new committee was accordingly formed on 16 September, comprising Raka Arya, professor at the National Law Institute University; Gagan Sethi, a former member of the NHRC; Anu Gupta, a social activist working with the Eklavya Foundation; Ankita Athawale and CS Balasubramanian, who are students at the Dhrupad Sansthan, as members, as per an update posted to the gurukuls official Facebook page. However, the students issued a statement through their legal representatives that takes issue with this newly constituted IC. The concerns as listed in their statement include that the committee has not been constituted in consonance with Section 4 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Given the non-compliance, there are concerns about its competence to conduct a fair, just and impartial inquiry into the aforesaid matter. Further, that the Sansthan has been in violation of the provisions of the [Act] since coming into force, having never constituted an IC, and the students must be deemed apprentices based on the nature of their association with the gurukul. A complete copy of the statement can be viewed here Representation on behalf of the complainants in the sexual harassment case against Ramakant Gundecha and Ak... by Firstpost on Scribd The #MeToo accounts involving Dhrupad Sansthan were first reported by Firstpost on 4 September, when an Amsterdam-based yoga teacher and former disciple of the gurukul shared a Facebook post detailing sexual misconduct allegations against Akhilesh and the late Ramakant Gundecha. Dhrupad Sansthan founder Umakant Gundecha had said that Akhilesh was voluntarily stepping away from his association with the gurukul while the charges brought by the students were investigated. Within 172.7 Metres of 0.31 g/t Gold, 0.34% Copper, and 13.1 g/t Silver From Surface Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) -Chakana Copper Corp. (TSXV: PERU) (OTCQB: CHKKF) (FSE: 1ZX) (the "Company" or "Chakana"), is pleased to provide drill results from the first three of five drill holes completed at the Paloma East target within the expanded Soledad Project in Ancash, Peru. These results are part of the Phase 3 drill program, a fully funded 15,000 metre drill program that started August 15, 2020. Phase 3 is testing a tight cluster of high-grade, gold-enriched tourmaline breccia pipe targets within the high-priority Paloma area and will then continue onto the Huancarama breccia complex (Fig. 1). Mineralized intervals from Paloma East thus far include: Paloma East - Exploration Holes DDH # Az Dip From - To (m) Core Length (m) Au g/t Ag g/t Cu % Cu-eq %* Au-eq g/t* Note SDH20-133 325 -65 13.85 147.70 133.85 0.23 13.2 0.38 0.64 0.98 including 18.50 26.00 7.5 1.55 58.9 0.12 1.64 2.50 including 132.00 147.70 15.7 0.50 24.2 0.89 1.42 2.18 Margin zone SDH20-134 305 -70 15.20 171.00 155.80 0.15 8.8 0.31 0.48 0.74 including 15.20 102.00 86.80 0.22 12.4 0.44 0.69 1.06 including 64.00 80.00 16.00 0.12 11.3 0.93 1.11 1.69 SDH20-135 66 -66 0.00 172.70 172.70 0.31 13.2 0.34 0.66 1.00 including 5.00 14.05 9.05 1.57 15.6 0.14 1.30 1.99 including 28.00 113.00 85.00 0.37 15.4 0.63 1.00 1.54 including 44.80 60.00 15.20 0.31 38.8 2.10 2.63 4.03 Margin zone * Cu_eq and Au_eq values were calculated using copper, gold, and silver. Metal prices utilized for the calculations are Cu - US$2.90/lb, Au - US$1,300/oz, and Ag - US$17/oz. No adjustments were made for recovery as the project is an early stage exploration project and metallurgical data to allow for estimation of recoveries are not yet available. The formulas utilized to calculate equivalent values are Cu_eq (%) = Cu% + (Au g/t * 0.6556) + (Ag g/t * 0.00857) and Au_eq (g/t) = Au g/t + (Cu% * 1.5296) + (Ag g/t * 0.01307). Significant zones of mineralization were encountered in all three holes. Gold enrichment is noted in the top of holes SDH20-133 and SDH20-135, with intercepts of 7.5 metres with 1.55 g/t gold and 58.9 g/t silver from 18.5 metres depth, and 9.05 metres with 1.57 g/t gold and 15.6 g/t silver from 14.05 metres depth, respectively. Longer intervals of moderate grade mineralization are evident; in the case of SDH20-135, 172.7 metres with 0.31 g/t gold, 0.34 % copper and 13.2 g/t silver (1.00 g/t gold equivalent) was intersected from surface. Assays results for SDH20-136 and SDH20-137 are pending. Phase 3 Drill Program Update - Paloma Target Area The Paloma target area consists of two established outcropping breccia pipes, Paloma East and Paloma West (Fig. 2). Previous surface rock sampling confirmed strong anomalous gold concentrations in both the targeted breccia pipes as well as within several scattered small exposures of breccia and vein-like structures in the Paloma area. The Paloma East target is interpreted as the very top of a breccia pipe with a footprint at surface of 25 metres in diameter. All five holes completed at the Paloma East target (totaling 1,345 metres) have encountered visually mineralized tourmaline breccia. An additional hole is currently in progress testing the south-southwest margin of the Paloma East breccia pipe. Based on modeling of the first four holes drilled to the northwest and northeast (holes SDH20-133 to SDH20-136), the Paloma East breccia pipe appeared to increase in diameter from 25 metres at surface to approximately 50 metres at 150 metres depth (Fig. 3). A fifth hole (SDH20-137) was drilled to the southwest at -75 degrees to again locate the margin of the breccia, anticipated to occur at approximately 170 metres depth. Except for a few internal blocks of wall rock, the drill hole intercepted tourmaline breccia from 14.75 metres to 627 metres depth, 530 metres below surface (Fig. 2). The extent of breccia spans the entire distance between the downward projections of Paloma East and of Paloma West targets at depth, equaling a horizontal distance of approximately 150 metres. Hole SDH20-137 exited breccia at 627 metres and ended in granodiorite with quartz-sericite-tourmaline alteration and trace pyrite-chalcopyrite. Notably, a significant amount of breccia with abundant pyrite mineralization was intersected in the lower part of this drill hole. This hole has confirmed a much more expansive breccia system than previously known, revealing a much larger area to explore in all directions. David Kelley, President and CEO commented, "Assay results from the first three drill holes are very encouraging, continuing the trend of high-grade mineralization hosted in tourmaline breccia, within long runs of moderate grade mineralization as reported in other breccia pipes. We expected to find breccia beneath Paloma East and Paloma West in pipe-like mineralized bodies, however, drilling indicates that sulfide-rich tourmaline breccia extends beneath the two outcropping breccia pipes at depth for an impressive 150 metres of strike length horizontally. As there is little outcrop in this area, brecciation on the property may be much more extensive than previously thought. We look forward to sharing the assay results from additional drill holes in the near future." About Chakana Copper Chakana Copper Corp is a Canadian-based minerals exploration company that is currently advancing the high-grade gold-copper-silver Soledad Project located in the Ancash region of Peru, a highly favorable mining jurisdiction with supportive communities. The Soledad Project consists of high-grade gold-copper-silver mineralization hosted in tourmaline breccia pipes. A total of 31,641 metres of drilling has been completed to-date, testing eight (8) of twenty-three (23) confirmed breccia pipes with more than 92 total targets. Chakana's investors are uniquely positioned as the Soledad Project provides exposure to several metals including copper, gold, and silver. For more information on the Soledad project, please visit the website at www.chakanacopper.com. Sampling and Analytical Procedures Chakana follows rigorous sampling and analytical protocols that meet or exceed industry standards. Core samples are stored in a secured area until transport in batches to the ALS facility in Callao, Lima, Peru. Sample batches include certified reference materials, blank, and duplicate samples that are then processed under the control of ALS. All samples are analyzed using the ME-MS41 (ICP technique that provides a comprehensive multi-element overview of the rock geochemistry), while gold is analyzed by AA24 and GRA22 when values exceed 10 g/t by AA24. Over limit silver, copper, lead and zinc are analyzed using the OG-46 procedure. Soil samples are analyzed by 4-acid (ME-MS61) and for gold by Fire Assay on a 30g sample (Au-ICP21). Results of previous drilling and additional information concerning the Project, including a technical report prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101, are made available on Chakana's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Qualified Person David Kelley, an officer and a director of Chakana, and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, reviewed and approved the technical information in this news release. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD (signed) "David Kelley" David Kelley President and CEO For further information contact: Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations Officer Phone: 647 964 0292 Email: jjobin@chakanacopper.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking Statement Advisory: This release may contain 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 Chakana to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements or information relates to, among other things, the interpretation of the nature of the mineralization at the Soledad copper-gold-silver project (the "Project"), the potential to expand the mineralization, and to develop and grow a resource within the Project, the planning for further exploration work, the ability to de-risk the potential exploration targets, and our belief in the potential for mineralization within unexplored parts of the Project. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs but given the uncertainties, assumptions and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements or information. The Company disclaims any obligation to update, or to publicly announce, any such statements, events or developments except as required by law. Figure 1 - View looking north showing breccia pipes and occurrences within the northern Soledad cluster. Pipes that have been drilled in previous campaigns are shown in red. Targets shown in green are the focus on this 15,000m drill campaign. Other pipes and occurrences remain to be tested by drilling. Additional breccia pipes occur on the south half of the property and are not shown here. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2172/63976_29618964d4f318d0_001full.jpg Figure 2 - Map showing location of outcropping Paloma East and Paloma West breccia pipes and drill hole lithology in holes completed to date. Red represents tourmaline breccia. Note: shape of breccia not shown in plan view due to the need for additional drilling. Location of section lines for Figure 3 indicated. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2172/63976_29618964d4f318d0_002full.jpg Figure 3 - Sections looking northeast and northwest showing the modeled breccia pipe for Paloma East. Light red 3D shape is based on Leapfrog model of breccia from all holes drilled to date. Hole SDH20-137 truncated in section due to depth; tourmaline breccia intersected until 627m down hole. Section includes data from 100m in plane of section. Breccia pipe is open at depth and to the west. To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2172/63976_29618964d4f318d0_003full.jpg Figure 4 - Examples of mineralized core from drill holes reported in this release showing different styles of mineralization found in Paloma East: A) SDH20-133 - oxidized gold-bearing mosaic breccia with blocks of lithic tuff; the interval 19.3-24.0m assays 2.09 g/t Au and 58.3 g/t Ag; B) SDH20-133 - silicified mosaic breccia with chalcopyrite-pyrite cement; the interval 134.0-140.0m assays 0.20 g/t Au, 1.51% Cu, and 13.0 g/t Ag; C) SDH20-134 - silicified chaotic shingle breccia with quartz-chalcopyrite-pyrite cement; the interval 121.0-126.0m assays 0.16 g/t Au, 0.40% Cu, and 15.6 g/t Ag; D) SDH20-135 - contact between lithic tuff and tourmaline breccia with abundant pyrite-chalcopyrite at the margin; the interval 44.8-50.0m assays 0.51 g/t Au, 3.19% Cu, and 79.1 g/t Ag. To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2172/63976_figure4enhancedcapture.jpg Figure 5 - Detailed core photos from Paloma East; A) SDH20-133, 21.6m, strongly oxidized gold-bearing tourmaline breccia; B) SDH20-133, 138.7m, mosaicbreccia replaced by chalcopyrite-pyrite-tournamine; C) SDH20-134, 48.9m shingle breccia with band of massive chalcopyrite-covellite; D) SDH20-135, 168.85m, shingle breccia with tourmaline-replaced matrix and selective sulfidereplacement of clasts. If you cannot view Figure 5, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2172/63976_figure5enhancedcapture.jpg To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/63976 Press Release September 17, 2020 Bong Go co-sponsors Fire Protection Modernization Bill; vows to always prioritize welfare of less fortunate and vulnerable sectors Senator Christopher Lawrence "Bong" Go co-sponsored the Fire Protection Modernization Bill in the Senate plenary on Wednesday, September 16, a measure which seeks to strengthen the mandate and capability of the Bureau of Fire Protection. Go, who is the principal author of the bill, said that now is the right time to modernize the BFP, as he emphasized that the government should be proactive in combating any kind of catastrophe in the country. "I have the honor to co-sponsor the Fire Protection Modernization Bill, which seeks to establish a Fire Protection Modernization Program to be implemented by the Bureau of Fire Protection," Go said. "Thus, it is fitting that our firefighters at the frontlines be given the best tools to ensure their own safety and the safety of our fellow countrymen," he added. Go commended his fellow Davaoeno Senator Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa, who chairs the Senate Committee on Public Order, for prioritizing the bill. "I laud my fellow Davaoeno, Senator Bato dela Rosa, and this august chamber for prioritizing this vital measure to help our countrymen," he said. Under the Fire Protection Modernization Bill, the BFP will be responsible for implementing a fire protection modernization program, which would be beneficial not only to the firefighters, but also to the public. "The said bill will include hiring of more personnel, acquiring modern fire equipment and training for our firefighters. It also mandates the BFP to conduct monthly fire prevention campaigns and information drive in all local government units," Go said. In his previous statements, Go cited latest data from the BFP, arguing for the urgency to resolve the pressing issue of fire hazards. "In 2019, more than 16,000 fire incidents were reported throughout the country. These hazards were not only destructive to property but have even resulted to a number of deaths in a matter of minutes." The Senator also shared his experience of personally witnessing the devastating impact of these hazards to the lives of Filipinos. Go frequently visits fire victims in communities around the country to listen to their concerns and provide solutions to their daily struggles. "Ako po mismo ay saksi sa hinagpis na nararamdaman ng ating mga kababayan na biktima ng mga sunog. Labis ang kirot na nararamdaman ng aking puso sa tuwing nakakakita ako ng mga pamilyang Pilipino na nawawalan ng bahay at mga mahal sa buhay dahil lamang sa mga sakunang gaya ng sunog na maaari namang maiwasan," he previously narrated. Meanwhile, Go promised to prioritize the welfare of those who are in dire need of assistance, especially the less fortunate and those who are considered in the vulnerable sectors. He also assured the public that he will continue visiting fire victims wherever they are in the country. "Noon pa pong wala pang COVID-19 pandemic, pinupuntahan ko po ang mga nasunugan, kahit saang sulok ng Pilipinas para makapagbigay ng tulong at ngiti sa panahon ng kanilang pagdadalamhati," Go said. "Hanggang sa ngayon, patuloy pa rin po akong nagseserbisyo para sa kanila sa abot ng aking makakaya. Pinapaalala ko sa kanila na nandito ang gobyerno para magsilbi at hindi sila pinapabayaan," he added. Ending his speech, the Senator said that the passage of the measure will help the poor and vulnerable sectors prevent and mitigate the destruction of their dwellings and other properties. "For these reasons, I reiterate my support for the passage of this measure," Go said. The Committee Report sponsored in the plenary took into consideration Senate Bill 204, which Senator Go authored and filed in 2019. "Panahon na para i-upgrade ang mga pasilidad at kapabilidad ng ating Bureau of Fire Protection. Let us enhance our fire protection services and hire more personnel who are willing to dedicate their lives to ensure the safety of our communities," said Go previously. The bill also mandates BFP to conduct monthly fire prevention campaigns and information drive in all local government units, particularly in informal settlements and economically depressed areas. "Paghandaan natin ang anumang krisis o sakuna. Dapat maging mas proactive tayo. Bukod sa pagiging laging handa ng ating komunidad, dapat rin ay maging informed ang ating mga kababayan kung paano maiiwasan ang ganitong insidente tulad ng sunog," Go explained. WARSAW, Poland - Polands justice minister accused the European Union of waging an attack on democracy after the European Parliament passed a resolution criticizing lax adherence to the rule of law and discrimination against women, LGBT people and other minorities in the EU member nation. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro called the resolution absurd and an assault on the true rule of law and said Poland would fight efforts to cut the countrys EU funding over the allegations. Ziobro said the EU was trying to impose its agenda and values on Poland while disrespecting the majority views in the largely conservative and Roman Catholic nation. The minister said both Poland and fellow EU member Hungary are a constant target of leftist attacks. Once considered models for a democratic transition from communist rule, Poland and Hungary in recent years have become challenges for the bloc, with many other European countries now critical of what they see as backsliding. EU lawmakers, in their resolution on Poland this week, expressed concerns regarding the legislative and electoral system, the independence of the judiciary and fundamental rights. The resolution was adopted on a 513-148 vote, with 33 abstentions. It followed a debate on Monday in which the Polish government faced strong criticism, particularly over new national laws that have increased political control over the courts and official pronouncements against LGBT rights. The debate came after a Spanish lawmaker, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, prepared a report on fundamental rights in Poland. He said Thursday that Polish authorities continue to operate in contempt of the European legal order. The broad support for this report is the best response to the allegations about a leftist conspiracy, Lopez Aguilar said. What the Polish government has forgotten is that democracy is not about majority rule, but about respecting EU law, pluralism, the right to dissent and protecting minorities. The head of the EUs executive arm, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in her first S tate of the Union address on Wednesday, also strongly denounced the stigmatization of LGBT people by authorities in Poland. A man wanted in connection with a stolen credit card who was suspected of fleeing from Hamburg detectives Wednesday, at one point driving away with a detective partially in the car, was taken into custody Thursday morning in Buffalo. According to Hamburg Police Chief Kevin Trask, Hamburg detectives located Joel Anzalone, 49, on Broadway near Liddell Street in Buffalo and took him into custody without incident. Trask said Anzalone was turned over to Buffalo police between 10:30 and 11 a.m. Anzalone's capture was the culmination of a case that started when two Hamburg police detectives had visited the Kohl's department store on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo on Wednesday afternoon. The detectives were looking for video of Anzalone, who was a suspect in an earlier car theft. But they ended up getting a much closer look at him. Police said Anzalone arrived at the store in the stolen car, and a struggle ensued when the detectives attempted to arrest him, with Anzalone driving away with a detective partially in the car. Neither detective was seriously hurt. Sono approdati in tarda serata a Portoscuso i migranti soccorsi in mare, a 25 miglia nautiche da Sant'Antioco, dopo il naufragio del barchino su cui stavano tentando la traversata dall'Algeria alla Sardegna. All'arrivo dei soccorsi alcuni erano gia in balia delle onde, mentre altri erano a bordo del natante che stava via via affondando. Una persona risulta dispersa. Ecco il resoconto ufficiale del salvataggio da parte della Guardia costiera: "Nella tarda mattinata di oggi, a 25 miglia nautiche ad ovest di SantAntioco, la nave mercantile Med Batic, di bandiera maltese - in area di responsabilita SAR italiana - ha avvistato un barchino con 14 migranti a bordo che in breve tempo e affondato. La nave, dopo aver segnalato lemergenza alla Guardia Costiera, ha prestato subito i primi soccorsi recuperando 7 migranti. Giunta sul posto la motovedetta CP 869 della Guardia Costiera di Carloforte ha immediatamente tratto in salvo altri 6 migranti che erano in acqua in balia delle onde. Sotto il coordinamento della Guardia Costiera di Cagliari sono tuttora in corso le operazioni di ricerca di un disperso. Impiegati nel dispositivo operativo: lelicottero NEMO 15 della Guardia Costiera di Decimomannu, due motovedette della Guardia Costiera e un mezzo della Guardia di finanza, nonche tre navi mercantili presenti in zona". Riproduzione riservata (Unioneonline/l.f.) DAYTON, Ohio, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dayton Power & Light Company (DP&L), a subsidiary of The AES Corporation (NYSE: AES), today marks the announcement of its Smart Operations Center in Ohio, the first of its kind in the United States, opening a new era of innovative energy solutions. The facility represents AES' longstanding commitment to the digital transformation of the energy industry, accelerating a safer and cleaner energy future in the United States and globally. The center also demonstrates AES' investment in the State of Ohio and its people. Using leading-edge technology, the AES Smart Center will employ data to increase the efficiency of its electric operations across the US. This digital hub also represents the integration of AES' new Global Performance Monitoring and Analytics Center (PMAC) and AES' Remote Operations and Control Center (ROCC) for US-based generation assets. This consolidation is critical as the company and the energy industry as a whole intensifies its reliance on data and smart grid technologies. "The transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy future depends in large part on the adoption of digital technology," said Bernerd Da Santos, AES Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. "The new AES Smart Center will tap into the power of data and digital platforms, allowing us to monitor, remotely operate and improve the management of our power generation operations, including solar, wind, hydro, thermal and energy storage facilities across the United States and globally from one central location. This digital approach will lead the way to a greener, more sustainable future for the businesses and communities we serve." "We believe that the electric grid can become clean and unbreakable and are excited to continue accelerating the future of energy together with an inventive city like Dayton through our first US-based smart operations center," said Lisa Krueger, AES US Strategic Business Unit President. "Our selection of Dayton as the location of our first US-based smart operations center demonstrates our commitment to the region today and our belief in a strong pool of local innovators who will help us shape tomorrow while contributing to the state's economic growth." The announcement solidifies AES' renewed investment in Ohio and its commitment to supporting job creation within the state. AES, the parent company to Dayton Power & Light (DP&L), continues to contribute to Ohio's economic growth. The Smart Operations Center will foster Ohio's workforce development, as the state works to meet increasing digital technology demands. "AES' decision to stand up their Smart Operations Center in Dayton is a testament to the region's skilled workforce and Ohio's robust innovation ecosystem," said J.P. Nauseef, JobsOhio president and CEO. "The Dayton Development Coalition, JobsOhio and the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce look forward to partnering with AES as it invests in Ohio's people and infrastructure, which is critical to growing Ohio's economy." The AES Smart Operations Center is located at the AES/DP&L MacGregor Park site will attract and employ advanced technology engineers and data scientists from the City of Dayton and the wider Montgomery County and Ohio regions. About The Dayton Power and Light Company The Dayton Power and Light Company is the principal subsidiary of DPL Inc. (DPL), a regional energy provider and an AES company. DPL's primary subsidiaries include The Dayton Power and Light Company. The Dayton Power and Light Company, a regulated electric utility, provides service to over 527,000 customers in West Central Ohio. For more information about the company, visit dpandl.com. Connect with DP&L at www.twitter.com/dpltoday, www.linkedin.com/company/dayton-power-and-light, and at www.facebook.com/DPLToday. About AES The AES Corporation (NYSE: AES) is a Fortune 500 global power company. We provide affordable, sustainable energy to 14 countries through our diverse portfolio of distribution businesses as well as thermal and renewable generation facilities. Our workforce is committed to operational excellence and meeting the world's changing power needs. Our 2019 revenues were $10 billion and we own and manage $34 billion in total assets. To learn more, please visit www.aes.com. Follow AES on Twitter @TheAESCorp. SOURCE Dayton Power and Light Related Links http://www.dplinc.com A tourist visiting Gettysburg recently took some video footage of one of the historic battlefields, footage that now has people questioning if ghosts exist. According to New York Post, New Jersey resident Greg Yuelling took the clip while on a trip with his family on Sept. 2. The clip in question appears to show ghostly figures in the area of two cannons on the battlefield. Some people arent convinced. The New Jersey Paranormal Research Organization posted to their Facebook page about the clip saying water droplets are likely the culprit. Its an illusion, the organization said. The entities are actually just the light being distorted by the streak on the windshield as the background elements move into the streak. The group suggests that people are seeing ghosts because of the battlefields history. Its easy to believe the spirit of a dead Civil War soldier would be wandering the grounds at night. British tabloid The Sun spoke with Yuelling, who said his family started hearing weird noises before they spotted the figures on the battlefield, and for the people in the car, the figures were the size of humans. After watching the videos back several times, Yuelling said he is now convinced that ghosts exist. Read more on PennLive: By Azernews By Akbar Mammadov Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region has said that the Armenian authorities recent provocative statements and actions indicate that the military-political leadership of this country is preparing for another act of aggression against Azerbaijan. In a statement published on September 16, the community said that Armenia continues to make provocative statements against Azerbaijan via the separatist regime set up in Azerbaijans occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia continues to make provocative statements against our country, both on itself behalf and on behalf of the so-called regime created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, The community noted that recently, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan put forward seven groundless and provocative principles for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The same principles have been put forward by the head of the illegal regime in the Nagorno-Karbakh, the community said. It emphasized that these seven principles, which originates from impunity and arrogance, are completely unacceptable. It is stated in the statement that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev recently demanded one principle against Pashinyans seven principles the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijans occupied territories. The community also said that Armenia seeks to change the format of negotiations by distorting facts. The parties to the conflict are Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the interested parties are the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The negotiation format cannot be changed, the community noted. Furthermore, the statement said Yerevan has been rejecting the communitys proposal for negotiations. Armenia not only rejects our offer of dialogue with the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh but even denies the mere existence of our community. This is a vivid example of the Azerbaijanophobia policy pursued at the state level in Armenia, the community added. As a community, we declare that Armenia will never be able to deceive the world community. The truth is that Armenia occupied 20 per cent of the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan, carried out ethnic cleansing, expelled up to 1 million Azerbaijanis from their native lands, and created a criminal regime in our occupied lands to conceal their aggression, the community stressed. It stated that Azerbaijans biggest concession in the conflict resolution is its participation in peace negotiations for many years. The settlement of the conflict is possible only with the complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and with the return of all internally displaced persons to their homeland, the statement reads. Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Every modern democratic government is made up of elected officials and a bureaucracy. Victoria's state government is no different. Those brought to power by the people, from Premier Daniel Andrews down, are entrusted with overseeing and enacting the laws of the land, while government departments are responsible for implementation. In principle, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility ensures that it is the elected officials who are accountable for all government actions. In practice, as the state hotel quarantine inquiry is making clear, the bureaucracy must also be held to account. Professor Brett Sutton appears before the hotel quarantine inquiry. Much of the public blame for the hotel debacle has focused on the hiring of private security guards to monitor returned travellers. There is no doubt that hiring a casual workforce with poor job security who often operated across multiple workplaces was a bad call. But there is a deeper, more systemic problem that is playing out before the inquiry. Mr Andrews highlighted the issue, probably inadvertently, even before the public hearings began. When asked who he believed was at fault in making the fateful decisions leading up to the hotel outbreaks, he came up blank. WASHINGTON - Senior State Department officials told lawmakers Wednesday that President Donald Trump fired inspector general Steve Linick over poor performance and declining employee satisfaction, and not in an act of political retaliation, as Democrats have charged. But the data the officials appear to have used to support their claim shows that key federal measures of employee satisfaction at the Office of the Inspector General were higher than in most other divisions of the State Department, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's office. The House Foreign Affairs Committee's hearing was part of a broader investigation into the circumstances surrounding Linick's ouster in the spring. Panel Democrats have said Linick was fired because he was reviewing Pompeo's 2019 emergency declaration to approve $8 billion in arms sales to Persian Gulf countries while sidestepping Congress, and allegations that Pompeo used government aides to perform personal tasks. Brian Bulatao, a top adviser and confidant of Pompeo, said in his opening statement that "nothing could be further from the truth," arguing that Linick could not have been fired over the investigations because Pompeo was never briefed on the details of them. "This removal was about an IG who in my mind was increasingly falling short of expectations," he added. Bulatao testified that responses to the Office of Personnel Management's annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey raised "major red flags" about morale in Linick's office, which he said had "declined" in three key categories: employee engagement, employee satisfaction and diversity inclusion. Bulatao also said Linick's office had experienced a "double-digit decline since 2016" in employee satisfaction metrics. Bulatao also highlighted three questions from the 71-point survey to illustrate his assertions about the inspector general's office: job health and safety hazards, potential security threats and whether employees thought their work was "important." Bulatao's explanation is the most complete rationale that anyone in the Trump administration has offered to date for why the president fired Linick, one of five inspectors general dismissed over a six-week period this year. But an analysis of the government survey compiled by the Partnership for Public Service found that the inspector general's office performed better when it came to questions of whether employees were "satisfied" with their job and organization, and whether they would recommend that bureau "as a good place to work." In 2019, Linick's office posted a score of 67.6, based on those measures, which were compiled into the Partnership for Public Service's rankings on the best places to work in the federal government. That made it the third-best performing bureau, behind only the Foreign Service Institute and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. While that represented a drop of 2.6 from the previous year, its year-to-year performance was better than the Office of the Secretary, which scored significantly lower than any other of the 24 subcomponent bureaus at the State Department that appear in the rankings. Pompeo's office scored 41.6 on satisfaction-related questions in the 2019 survey breakdown - a drop of 8.9 from the previous year. Bulatao also charged that inspections decreased during Linick's last year in office, and that he was late in submitting an internal audit and failed to update the department about diversity inclusion training in his office, telling senior department officials that "these are not our core values." According to Best Places to Work's compilation of government survey answers, the Office of the Inspector General had the second-highest diversity score at the State Department - 71.2, a slight improvement over last year - while Pompeo's office again came in last, with a score of 46.5. Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary for political and military affairs, and Marik String, the department's acting legal adviser, also spoke at the hearing. Linick declined to comment Wednesday. State Department spokespeople did not return a request for comment when asked to explain how Bulatao reached his conclusions. During Wednesday's hearing, Democrats did not directly challenge the metrics Bulatao presented to buttress his case, but Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., objected to the idea of firing Linick if morale was low. "If people are going to be fired because of low morale, it starts at the top," he said, in reference to Pompeo. But panel Republicans defended the decision to oust Linick. "The only mistake the president made in firing Steve Linick was in not doing it sooner," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said. This has happened since the spring, when protesters first took to the streets over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, and has continued through the summer with protests in New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Over and over these protests earned little scrutiny for their potential to spread coronavirus, despite the fact that the Center for Infectious Disease found they did in a few discrete cases. The justification among activists was that the cause was more important than COVID-19, which you can agree with while also noting Trump supporters might say the same. Many in the media insist that Trumps indoor rallies are worse than outdoor protests and scientists would agree, but they would also warn against large, maskless gatherings outdoors, too, as Anthony Fauci and others repeatedly have. Other public health officials let their politics get in the way of common sense. New York City Council Health Committee Chairman Mark Levine tweeted, Lets be clear about something: if there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, dont blame the protesters. Blame racism. Two medics from the New York Police Department traveled to Philadelphia to bring home one of their own after his 168-day battle with the CCP virus. Lieutenant Yvan Pierre-Louis left the Good Shepherd Penn Partners rehab center on Sept. 12 to the huge relief of his comrades and fanfare from his loved ones. Pierre-Louis, 59, first fell ill with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, in late March. He was admitted to NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola on March 28 and put on a ventilator that night, according to Newsday. However, his condition deteriorated. Then on April 29, he was admitted to North Shore University Hospital in Long Island. As his condition worsened further, the lieutenants doctors regretfully informed his daughter, Diane Latham, that there was no chance her father would be able to pull through. However, the 32-year-old nurse was incredulous. I never thought it was the end, she told The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Illustration Drop of Light/Shutterstock) Pierre-Louis, a platoon commander who oversaw booking at New York Countys Criminal Court, was lying bloated and unconscious in his hospital bed, on a ventilator, covered in sores when Latham first saw him. She and her mother, Isabelle, were told he would soon be taken off his ventilator, as the apparatus was needed for other patients. It was a scary time, NYPD Captain Garfield McLeod said of the early months of the outbreak in New York City. We wore latex gloves, we tried to do a little social distancing, and we did the mask, but at the same time we were very, very nervous. McLeod described his popular colleague as very energetic, adding that Pierre-Louis treated everyone fairly, from the guy thats charged with murder to the guy charged with petty larceny. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Screenshot/Google Maps) Pierre-Louis is among 5,800 members of the NYPD who have tested positive for the virus so far. As of Sept. 1, 46 have died. The lieutenants own mother, 86-year-old Maria Lina Pierre-Louis, died from the virus in May while her son was in a coma, reports Newsday. Pierre-Louiss doctor prescribed steroids as a last-ditch attempt to quell the virus, but Latham found hope in her fathers medical chart, as he showed no signs of widespread organ failure. She arranged to have him transferred to her place of work, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Isabelle and the couples three children, Ralph Remy, Yvan Pierre-Louis Jr., and Latham, rented an apartment near the hospital and took turns to take care of Pierre-Louis. If it wasnt for my wife pressing and calling and challenging, Lathams husband, Kristian, told The Philadelphia Inquirer, his father-in-law definitely wouldnt have made it. Pierre-Louis, surrounded by family, started to make progress. He came off his ventilator on July 12 and initially battled with troubling delusions but found clarity in the grounding repetition of his daily three-hour therapy sessions. (Illustration Kiryl Lis/Shutterstock) He recovered fully enough to be discharged from the hospital three days before his birthday. Dr. Andrew Courtwright, Pierre-Louiss primary physician, called his patients prolonged sickness and successful recovery a remarkable testament to him and his family. Im an immigrant, you know, Pierre-Louis, coming through the other side of his 168-day ordeal, with 75 of them on a ventilator, explained. Thats why I work so hard for my children to be better than me. The 59-year-old journeyed to the United States from Haiti at the age of 13 and is a 29-year veteran of the NYPD. NYPD News posted footage from Pierre-Louiss hospital release on Twitter. [D]octors were not certain he would recover, they wrote. Today, he was released with a clean bill of health. Before being transferred into an ambulance for his escort home to Hempstead, Long Island, Pierre-Louis took a moment to greet his familyincluding his son Remy in full NYPD uniformand hug his grandson, Kristian, aged 3. The lieutenant has decided to retire from the profession he loves in favor of family time. I feel blessed, he told Newsday the night before his homecoming. From no hope to hope, that was a lot. The lieutenant has the full support of his unit. He got a second chance, McLeod said. At this point, he needs to just relax and enjoy life. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc The European Union`s Brexit negotiator told the bloc`s 27 national envoys to Brussels that he still hoped a trade deal with Britain was possible, stressing that the coming days would be decisive, three diplomatic sources told Reuters. Michel Barnier addressed the gathering on Wednesday and the three sources either participated in the discussion behind closed doors or were briefed on its content. "Barnier still believes a deal is possible though the next days are key," said one of the EU diplomatic sources. A second diplomat, asked what Barnier said on Wednesday and whether there was still a chance for a new agreement with the UK, said: "The hope is still there." The first source said tentative concessions offered by the UK on fisheries - a key point of discord that has so far prevented agreement on a new EU-UK trade deal to kick in from 2021 - were "a glimmer of hope". Reuters reported exclusively on Tuesday Britain has moved to break the deadlock despite that fact that publicly London has been threatening to breach the terms of its earlier divorce deal with the bloc. A third source, a senior EU diplomat, confirmed the UK offer but stressed it was not going far enough for the bloc to accept. Barnier is due to meet his UK counterpart, David Frost, around 1400 GMT in Brussels on Thursday. While many students struggle with writing, boys are twice as likely as girls to be near the bottom of the class. But Balgowlah Boys High is bucking that trend; for the past four years its students have finished near the top of the state in HSC English. Yet when Paul Sheather became principal, almost 12 years ago, the school's students were well below the state average in reading and writing. His mission was to turn that around and nurture young men who were articulate, confident and literate. The first step was carving out 20 minutes a day for years 7 to 10 to focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling. But commas and apostrophes alone were not enough to ensure the boys could express their ideas clearly on a page. Balgowlah Boys' High deputy principal Benjamin Seldon (left) with principal Paul Sheather and several students. Credit:Nick Moir The greater challenge was ensuring the students had a strong understanding of how sentences worked, so by the time they reached senior years and high-stakes exams loomed, they could direct their mental energy into working out what to say, rather than how to say it. Partnering with oil and gas producers is necessary for Amazon and other companies to achieve their climate goals, the tech giant's chief of sustainability, Kara Hurst, said during an Axios virtual event on Thursday. The big picture: Amazon aims to hit carbon neutrality in 2040, 10 years earlier than the Paris climate accord. The company plans to reach its goal in part by helping companies develop climate-friendly technologies through a $2 billion venture fund. The first recipients were announced on Thursday. What she's saying: "Amazon, like every other company you just mentioned Google, Microsoft, many tech companies works across a wide variety of industries. And I believe it's absolutely necessary to work with those types of industries to create transformation," referring to oil companies. Hurst said that Amazon is brainstorming with industry partners on "what type of technological transformation is going to be needed to deliver on something like the climate pledge, deliver decarbonization in the next 20 years." is brainstorming with industry partners on "what type of technological transformation is going to be needed to deliver on something like the climate pledge, deliver decarbonization in the next 20 years." "We can't leave any industry behind," she added. "I think that we'll continue to think about, what are the solutions we can drive through things like the fund, what are the decarbonizing technologies that we'll continue to invest in." Context: Amazon employees and environmentalists have criticized the tech giant's deals with oil companies, particularly for cloud computing. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) Dito Telecommunity is tapping American companies to provide cybersecurity services ahead of its rollout next year, with 1 billion set aside for data protection initiatives. Dito chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said the new telecommunications player has tapped the services of 12 cybersecurity solutions providers from the United States as it looks to boost digital safety. Among Dito's cybersecurity partners are Fortinet, NexusGuard, McAfee, Nessus, Veritas, Pentaho Data, IDAM Systems by BeyondTrust, Microsoft, Cisco ISE, Siemplify, ManageEngine and SolarWinds. Dito is spending 1 billion on cybersecurity measures this year, saying it "understands the importance" of assuring the public on data privacy. This forms part of the 150 billion investments which the mobile service provider has so far spent this year, to be followed by an expected 27 billion outlay for capital and operating expenses in 2021. RELATED: 27 countries sign cybersecurity pledge with digs at China and Russia Commercial rates for subscription and services have not been finalized, Tamano added, amid rumors online about Dito's fees. Dito is building 2,040 cell towers nationwide ahead of its commercial rollout in March 2021. Tamano said they are trying to make the launch date earlier, given that the company expects to complete its initial requirement of 1,300 cell sites as early as end-October. Data centers are also under construction. 'Lucky' to partner with Chinatel Dito allayed fears regarding its partnership with China Telecom (Chinatel) a state-run corporation in Beijing and argued that they are actually "fortunate" to have them on board. China Telecom owns a stake worth less than 40 percent of Dito, with majority shares held by billionaire businessman Dennis Uy's Udenna Corporation and Chelsea Logistics. This comes amid renewed concerns about data privacy and even spying mainly tied to Dito's partner, China Telecom. Fueling such fears is the recent decision to allow Dito to install cell towers and communications equipment within military camps all over the country. "Instead of complaining why we're partnering with Chinatel, I think we should actually reconsider that and see that the way forward is with a company... that will bring 5G technology to our country," Tamano said, insisting that the foreign company is merely serving as mentor and technical adviser. RELATED: I tried 5G. It will change your life if you can find it "I believe we are bringing the superior and authentic 5G technology as experienced by other countries," he added, calling Chinatel as the world leader in 5G technology. Tamano wondered why there's "unfair treatment" towards Chinese partners compared to other nationalities. The Philippines has a long-standing territorial dispute with China, as the latter continues its incursions in the West Philippine Sea despite the 2016 ruling of an international tribunal that dismissed Beijing's sweeping claims of waters and features in the South China Sea. "If, really, Chinatel is in control, they would not allow a US technology company to provide the cybersecurity solutions," Dito chief technology officer Rolando Santiago pointed out. Tensions between the US and China have been heightened in the past years over trade, and more recently on technology, as seen on its crackdown against Chinese gadget maker Huawei and video sharing platform TikTok. Any conflict that could arise between their Chinese partners and American solutions providers will have to be resolved internally, Santiago added. "China Telecom is an investor and that's all they are. Dito remains a Filipino company... We are bound and we must comply with Philippine laws," Tamano added, denying that the Chinese firm's involvement requires the network to adhere to China's National Intelligence Law, which critics said could be the vehicle for spying. All of Dito's officials and decision makers are Filipinos, he added. Tamano also cited that Santiago, a former military official, was deliberately chosen to serve as Dito's chief technology officer, given his communications expertise. "We knew that someone like this would not allow any threats to cybersecurity or any spying to be done," he added. RELATED: AFP sees low risk for spying as China-backed Dito set to install cell towers in camps Back in the early days of the Troubles it was all so very different. One of the indicators of that for me is the response of the Belfast Telegraph at a time when rioting was eroding the business prospects of people in our cities and towns; people were being injured, burnt out, killed. We didnt know then that this would last for decades. It would have been a smart reporter or newspaper editor who would have predicted the trajectory of growing sectarian violence. Indeed, in a similar way, few today have a clear backward vision of how ugly it was back then. Otherwise we would have less glorification of it, less rationalisation of murder. But lets freeze time at a moment when city streets are littered with broken glass, the glaziers are the only people doing well and many business owners see the prospect dwindling of their continuing to trade and thrive. People are fleeing their homes and taking refuge in schools and church halls or taking over the houses vacated by people fleeing from the other side. It was at that moment that the Belfast Telegraph set up an Innocent Victims Appeal. Thats a phrase that brings you back to the present, in which the concept of what constitutes an innocent victim, which seemed so obvious then, is now at the heart of political discord. Today it is simpler to blame bad history for a conflict that involved everybody, to claim we all had a responsibility for it. Back then it was all so simple. Good innocent people had suffered as a by- product of the vicious antics of others who should have known better. The paper started the fund with a donation of 1,000 to buy food and clothing for families in distress after the rioting in Derry and Belfast in August 1969. No one was interjecting then to say that the people who suffered were also part of the problem that produced the violence. That would have been an outrageous suggestion. It has often been said since, that the failing was in the whole of society, not just in truculent segments of it. The good news is that the fund did well. It raised nearly 75,000 pounds, an awful lot of money back then. And the British government donated another quarter of a million. I can read a couple of things into the decision to organise the fund. First, the setting up of the appeal for help for innocent victims expressed a sense of a newspapers role being more than to report the news and sell advertising space. It had a social responsibility beyond that. It implied that the paper was on somebodys side. It was standing four square with the innocent victims and it had no difficulty defining who they were, no foresight into a day like ours when that question would be at the heart of political deadlock. This social responsibility campaigning isnt such a radical idea in our own day when newspapers have run their own appeals but for the Tele then it was an assertion of its commitment to the welfare of the ordinary people who bought the paper. It was probably good marketing as well to reach out a helping hand to the suffering tradespeople who might be approached later on and invited to advertise in the paper. Nothing wrong with that. But there are other implications. One is that understanding that there were innocent people and guilty people. That seemed simply obvious at the time and no one foresaw that it was apolarity that would be questioned. The common word then for the good people was moderate. The bad people were extremists. The Tele was on the side of the moderates. It represented a view of life in Northern Ireland as wholesome and potentially good for all. There was the truculent few who would prefer disruption but, all in all, most of us werent like that and good sense would prevail. Malcolm Brodies book on The Tele quotes a paragraph from the outgoing editor Jack Sayers in 1968 which struggles to put the blame for trouble on a few while recognising that unjust political conditions produce violence. He seems to have been a little torn between two theories of the violence, the few- bad-people version versus the sick-society version. He wrote: The enemies of Northern Ireland are a very small body of extremists of one kind or another; the great majority of the population are responsible citizens, all of whom have a contribution to make and all of whom must have equal rights. Expand Close An inspection of the new peace line in the Bombay/Cupar Street area of Belfast in 1970 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An inspection of the new peace line in the Bombay/Cupar Street area of Belfast in 1970 Painful changes would have to be made, he said, but they will be less painful than periodic outbreaks of disorder. So there were only a few bad people causing the disorder but, paradoxically, their behaviour was an inevitable result of the denial of rights. Sayers argued that if Northern Ireland could not be kept in the Union by fair means it cant be kept by foul. And he told unionism what it did not want to hear. The threat ... comes from Protestant Ulstermen who will not allow themselves to be liberated from the delusion that every Roman Catholic is their enemy. The paper in the late sixties did not see Northern Ireland as a place that needed a thorough social and political upheaval. The granting of rights to those denied them would be sufficient to restore peace and good government. Nor did it predict that such an upheaval was coming. Expand Close Front page in 1969 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Front page in 1969 Otherwise it might have been more circumspect about raising hopes that it would always be there to appeal for money for innocent victims whenever streets were aflame. If so, it would have had little time for anything else. But the suffering had only just begun and it would be more than what he called periodic outbreaks of disorder. The Tele of 1969 cannot be criticised for being out of step with thinking today. Sayers was a brave editor confronting Protestant unionism with its responsibility to change, while criticising the rabble on the streets, and even going so far as to imply that violence was inevitable if the sectarian blinkers werent removed from the eyes of people who thought of themselves as good citizens. Today, the inheritors of political power are the forces which he saw as extremist when he hoped and firmly believed that Northern Ireland had a moderate centre that could hold. The paper, like most of its readers, saw the eruption of violence as an uncharacteristic storm that would pass. And maybe, if managed differently it would have done. PARIS When Alfons Kaisers editor at C.H. Beck contacted him last year to ask if he would write a biography of the recently deceased Karl Lagerfeld, the longtime correspondent for Germanys Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper instinctively turned down the project. I said no, because it was just two days after his death, and I found it very indiscreet or very unsuitable to even think about a biography, Kaiser recalls. Fast-forward 19 months to the release on Thursday of Karl Lagerfeld, A German in Paris, Kaisers 383-page German-language tome that explores the late designers public and private lives. The book has already caused a sensation in Germany since the publication last Sunday of an extract revealing that Lagerfelds parents were both members of the Nazi Party. So how did Kaiser get to this point? His publisher reasoned that there was no proper German biography of Lagerfeld, though many others have added their contribution to the canon sometimes with Lagerfelds cooperation, as was the case for Marie Ottavis book about his late companion Jacques de Bascher, other times despite his fierce opposition (the designer failed to block the publication of Alicia Drakes book The Beautiful Fall.) After thinking about it, I said yes, said Kaiser, who covered Lagerfeld for two decades since meeting him after a Fendi show in 1999. I was queuing up for an interview backstage, when he poured some Coke over his sleeve in the crowd. I handed him a paper handkerchief and asked: Could I ask you some questions, too? He replied: I knew that you didnt give me the tissue just like that. He was ever so ironic and clever you had to love it as a journalist, he recalls. Kaiser, who edits Frankfurter Allgemeines society and style section, was interested in delving behind Lagerfelds carefully constructed public persona, and also in dispelling some popular German myths about fashion. They thought he was like a dandy, decadent guy with too much money without doing anything. But as you know, he was extremely hard-working, he explains. Story continues And thats what I want to show, too, that he was working for so many brands, you know, with such an energy, and he was really a very good motivator, he recalls. He was a great boss. Thats why many people really worked together with him for a long time. During his 13 months of research beginning in March 2019, Kaiser conducted more than 100 interviews with classmates, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors and journalists. And I talked to some of his relatives, which was not as easy as I thought, because many of them were a bit resentful toward him since he was talking in a slightly arrogant way about people from his past and about some people of his family, he says. Among them was Gordian Tork, grandson of Lagerfelds aunt Felicitas Bahlmann, and Thoma Schulenburg, the daughter of his half-sister Thea. Along the way, Kaiser uncovered a trove of documents and photographs that shed new light on Lagerfelds childhood in Bad Bramstedt, a small town some 25 miles north of Hamburg. They moved to the countryside in 1934 when he was just one year old, and of course in the countryside, they stood out because his father was rich, he explains. Otto Lagerfeld was a successful businessman who ran Glucksklee, a manufacturer of condensed milk, while his mother Elisabeth was a former sales manager at a department store in Hamburg with a strong sense of style. I think my book really shows that Karl got two main sources of his abilities from his mother on the one hand, and his father on the other hand: business and style. Both of them came together in his person, because he was not only a great designer but of course, he was a great businessman, Kaiser reasons. Among the letters sent by Elisabeth Lagerfeld to her sister Felicitas, which are now in Torks possession, was a previously unseen five-page typed document headlined Why did I become a member of the N.S.D.A.P.? the German acronym of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Though its not signed, Kaiser believes she authored it, since she frequently typed her letters. In the document, Elisabeth Lagerfeld explains how she was initially seduced by Adolf Hitlers promise of restoring order and economic prosperity after the chaos left by World War I, but that she grew disillusioned with the party when she witnessed Jews being rounded up for deportation in Hamburg in 1941. She saw that and thought, That cant be right. And that was the moment when she realized that this was a bad ideology, and that she didnt like it anymore and she stopped wearing the party insignia, Kaiser says, although he notes she did not relinquish her party membership for fear of reprisals. She was really very open in this letter, telling how she developed and how disappointed she was by the Nazi regime, and how devastated she was by the outcome of the war, he adds. After the war, Lagerfelds mother declared in an official document that she had never been affiliated with the Nazis. Otto Lagerfeld, on the other hand, explained to the authorities that he had been a member of the party from 1933 to 1945 in the interests of his company, a common practice among businessmen at the time. Given the well-known historical context, Kaiser was surprised by the response to the revelation. German tabloid Bild on Tuesday ran an article headlined His Familys Nazi Secret alongside a colorized version of a photograph showing Karl, then four years old, looking toward the swastika flag his parents had hoisted to commemorate the annexation of Austria in 1938. There are not many people in Germany who are as famous as he was and thats why of course, they put it like that, but its wrong in a way, since it suggests that its a scandal, or something like that. Its not. It was a very normal thing to be a member of the Nazi Party thats the truth about German history, Kaiser reasons. Its no judgment. Its no direct relationship with Karl himself, he adds. Lagerfeld himself often romanticized his childhood, though Kaiser says he doesnt know if the designer, who was 11 at the end of the war, was aware of his parents political leanings. Unlike many other boys in his village, Lagerfeld did not belong to the Hitler Youth movement. Most Germans really didnt talk about all that after the war. Thats why I think that he probably didnt know what was going on in these years, and moreover he said his parents didnt talk about politics with him, he says. In later life, Lagerfeld frequently spoke out against far-right political parties, namely through the news sketches, dubbed Karlikaturen, that he regularly produced for Frankfurter Allgemeine and its magazine. Did Kaiser not think that the designer would have hated for his family history to become public? Yes, I did. But, on the other hand, he was a man who liked to speak out freely and openly, and this is just a historical fact, Kaiser says. It is mostly received like that perhaps not on Twitter, and perhaps not in the commentaries on the web site of Bild newspaper but its mostly seen as a historical fact which would come out one day anyway. So I think he would be at ease with it. Pierpaolo Righi, chief executive officer of the Karl Lagerfeld brand, says despite the brouhaha, Kaisers book will stand as a definitive account of Lagerfelds life. I really think its probably one of the most rounded books, if not the most rounded book, Ive read about Karl so far, he says. Its extremely well researched. A lot of work has gone into fact-finding, adds Righi, who is quoted in the book and read an advance copy. The book is a really good reflection of Karls life and his persona and his work, and its really inspiring to read and gives people a lot of different context, different perspectives. It reveals things that they have not heard, not in a sensational way, but in a way of really to get to know Karl better, and I think thats a good thing, he says. Righi does not believe the revelations will have an impact on the Lagerfeld brand, noting that the designer was no stranger to sparking debate. He was controversial, and people could agree with him, disagree with him, and that can have a reflection on the brand, he notes. But in this case, the events happened when Lagerfeld was too young to have a say. Who could be angry with little Karl, who happened to be born into this situation? he argues. I can only say that Karl would probably not have liked to allude to this chapter, because he hated the chapter of German history as such in general, and he very much distanced himself from all of that. And I think this is also the life Karl lived, which was very much a life of inclusion, of respecting all people of all origins and races, Righi concludes. Chanel, the French fashion house where Lagerfeld was creative director between 1983 and 2019, noted that it did not participate in the book. The recently unveiled excerpts look back at a period in Karl Lagerfelds family history that belonged to him and on which Chanel does not have to comment, the house, which is owned by the Wertheimer family, said in statement sent to WWD. Reflecting on Lagerfelds sharp mind and even sharper tongue, Kaiser says he believes the designer was shaped by his extremely demanding mother and the experience of being bullied at school in his teens. Elisabeth Lagerfeld was a very strict person, very tough, very hard with her son. I write that he developed like he did because he was not only frustrated by his mother being so hard on him, but motivated, too, so thats one psychological factor which is important in his biography. I think that he overcompensated, he says. He dedicates an entire chapter, titled Demutigung (Humiliation in English) to Lagerfelds school years. A loner who preferred sketching to sports, he was ostracized by other boys, who instinctively rejected his sophisticated clothes and aristocratic manners. He was a fine guy. That means he was not like the others, and that means he was gay. I think there was no word to describe that in those days. You wouldnt talk about it. He always said that his mother was very liberal with that and she didnt care, Kaiser explains. But of course, he was confronted with resentfulness, with hate, with being harassed by other boys, he adds. I think that really contributed to his personality since he tried to put on a mask so as not to be bullied anymore. Thats a bit of a paradox, since the mask which he developed during the decades made him famous, and he became even more exposed. But it was like a shield, he says. Kaiser still hasnt lifted the mystery about why Lagerfeld, once he arrived in Paris, started shaving five years off this age a fact revealed by Drake in her book. He notes that Raphaelle Bacque, who published a French biography of Lagerfeld last year, believes it was out of rivalry with the younger Yves Saint Laurent. He, on the other hand, believes it might be linked to Germanys Nazi past. I heard he once said, I was born in a terrible year, which was 1933, because the Nazis came to power in that year, Kaiser says. You cant prove it, but it might be one reason for him to tell people that he was born in 38. Read more from WWD: Who Inherited Karl Lagerfelds Fortune? How Karl Lagerfelds H&M Collaboration Changed Fashion EXCLUSIVE: Karl Lagerfeld Brand Taps Kenneth Ize for Capsule Best of WWD Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Newsfrom Japan Washington, Sept. 16 (Jiji Press)--The United States on Wednesday welcomed the launch of the administration of new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga the same day. "The relationship between the United States and Japan has never been stronger," and U.S. President Donald Trump "looks forward to working with Prime Minister Suga to make it even stronger," the White House press secretary said in a statement. The United States is apparently hoping for Suga to continue former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stance of attaching importance to the U.S.-Japan alliance while keeping a close watch on whether the new Japanese leader will bring his own personal flair to the bilateral ties. Trump "is ready to continue pursuing the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific that he and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe forged, including by further strengthening the United States-Japan alliance and advancing our shared goals," the statement said. However, it is unclear for Washington how much Suga is willing to invest his political capital into foreign policy, compared with Abe, who has built up a personal rapport with Trump. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] The Trump administrations move to curtail H-1B visas widely used by foreign technology workers in the US survived an initial court challenge. President Donald Trumps June 22 proclamation declaring foreign workers a risk to the US labor market amid the coronavirus pandemic triggered pushback from workers and business groups. An array of the nations biggest tech companies have warned that the policy will do irreparable harm on businesses and the nations economy. Also read: H-1B visa programme explained and what it means for Indians But in a ruling Wednesday, US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington declined to bar the administration from imposing the visa restrictions while the legal challenge to them plays out. The case was brought by a group of 169 Indian nationals who recently went back to India after living in the US on work visas and are now attempting to return. They argued that the proclamation was arbitrary and capricious and called for the government to process their visa applications. Lawyers for the plaintiffs didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. But they said in a court filing that they will appeal. The presidents visa order freezes through the end of the year new H-1B and H-4 visas, widely used by technology workers and their families, as well as L visas for intracompany transfers and most J visas for work- and study-abroad programs. Also read: US freeze on H-1B visas to hit IT firms coping with travel curbs amid Covid-19 crisis The ruling on Wednesday was the second time this month that Mehta has denied a request to suspend the proclamation. Just as he did in a Sept. 4 ruling in a related case involving a group of visa applicants, Mehta found that the Indian workers fell short of the high legal threshold for an order blocking the decree while the litigation proceeds. In both cases, the judge concluded the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed in showing that Trump exceeded his authority with the proclamation. A different federal judge in Oakland, California, is weighing another request to block the decree from business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Seen is Sarihyeon Interchange, a part of the Seoul-Munsan Expressway, which will be opened to traffic in November. / Courtesy of GS E&C By Baek Byung-yeul GS Engineering & Construction (E&C) is set to complete construction of a new highway in November that links the Gyeonggi Province cities of Paju and Goyang, the country's leading construction company said Thursday. The Seoul-Munsan Express Co., an affiliate of GS E&C and project operator of the new expressway, said the 35.2-kilometer-long expressway will be opened to the public in November. "Currently, the Seoul-Munsan Expressway section between Naepo-ri in Paju's Munsan-eup and Gangmae-dong in Goyang's Deogyang-gu is over 96 percent complete," an official of Seoul-Munsan Express Co. said. "We will be able to open the road in November." While the Seoul-Munsan Expressway Co. has been taking the role of project operator, GS E&C has been participating as project organizer for the 2.19 trillion won project. Once it is opened to the public, the Seoul-Munsan Express Co. will be responsible for operating the expressway for the next 30 years. GS E&C expects the new expressway will play a core role in the traffic network of northwestern Gyeonggi Province. Also, the expressway will be able to become the gateway to Pyongyang if the two Koreas ever reach an agreement on economic cooperation. GS E&C has successfully completed private expressway construction projects including the 1st Belt Expressway, a ring road around Seoul that connects it with satellite cities, as well as the Nonsan-Cheonan Expressway. Following these, the construction company also took part in other private highway projects including the 2nd Yeongdong Expressway that connects the Gyeonggi Province city of Gwangju with Wonju in Gangwon Province, the Guri-Pocheon Expressway, the Sangju-Yeongcheon Expressway, the Oksan-Ochang Expressway and Seobu Expressway. "With our rich experience in constructing highways, GS E&C has become a strong player in the private highway business," the GS E&C official said. "Since a consortium led by GS E&C announced its bid to join the construction of the Seoul-Munsan Expressway, we have faced a slew of difficulties such as minimizing destruction of the natural environmental. Despite the fact that the expressway passes through built-up metropolitan areas, we have carried out the construction project without any problem," an official from the Seoul-Munsan Expressway Co. said. "We will continue to do our best and have the expressway completed in November." By Jamie Freed and Chen Lin SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Qantas Airways Ltd said a seven-hour scenic flight over Australia's Outback and Great Barrier Reef had sold out in 10 minutes, as it joined a growing trend in Asia offering "flights to nowhere" that take off and land at the same airport. Tough border restrictions to keep the coronavirus under control have led to a 97.5% plunge in international travel in the region, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. Many frequent flyers miss getting on planes and airlines including Taiwan's EVA Airways Corp and Japan's ANA Holdings Inc, desperate for revenue and to keep their pilots' licences current, have offered special sightseeing flights. The Qantas flight, in a Boeing Co 787 typically used for long-haul international journeys, will fly at low levels over Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour before landing back in Sydney. Tickets cost between A$787 and A$3,787 ($575 and $2,765) depending on the seating class and the 134 available seats were quickly snapped up, a Qantas spokeswoman said on Thursday. "It's probably the fastest selling flight in Qantas history," she said. "People clearly miss travel and the experience of flying. If the demand is there, well definitely look at doing more of these scenic flights while we all wait for borders to open." Taiwan's EVA used one of its iconic Hello Kitty livery planes for a special father's day flight last month, while ANA used an Airbus SE A380 that usually flies to Honolulu for a 90-minute flight with a Hawaiian experience on board. Tickets costing $6,888 Taiwan dollars ($236) for a Tigerair Taiwan flight from Taipei that will circle over South Korea's Jeju Island reportedly sold out in four minutes. The price includes a one-year voucher for round-trip tickets from Taiwan to Korea, which can be used after COVID-19 travel bans are lifted. Chen Shu Tze, 44, an engineer from Taipei, said she signed up for the flight because the voucher made it a good deal and she missed being able to travel - especially to South Korea, a favourite destination. "The pandemic has a devasting impact on the tourism and airline industry, so I want to help boost the economy, and I miss flying," she told Reuters. Story continues All of the countries where the flights are on offer have relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases by global standards. Among other airline stunts, Thai Airways International PCL this month opened a pop-up restaurant on the ground, offering in-flight meals served from airline seats to would-be travellers. CLIMATE CONCERNS Singapore Airlines Ltd is also eyeing scenic flights from next month, the country's Straits Times newspaper reported on Sunday, an idea that received widespread criticism from environmentalists and online commenters. "First, it encourages carbon-intensive travel for no good reason and second, it is merely a stop-gap measure that distracts from the policy and value shifts necessary to mitigate the climate crisis," said awareness group SG Climate Rally. Singapore Airlines said it is considering several initiatives but no final decision has been made on whether to offer sightseeing flights. Qantas said it would pay to offset the carbon emissions on its scenic flight from Sydney, though online critics noted that would not actually reduce emissions. The concept of scenic flights is not new. Antarctica Flights has chartered Qantas jets for scenic flights over Antarctica for 26 years. An Air New Zealand Ltd sightseeing flight over Antarctica in 1979 crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board. ($1 = 1.3695 Australian dollars = 29.1490 Taiwan dollars) (Reporting by Jamie Freed in Sydney and Chen Lin in Singapore; additional reporting by John Geddie and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore and Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by Lincoln Feast.) Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Opposition leaders in the Rajya Sabha asked the government on Thursday to restore status quo ante as on April this year on the India-China border. IMAGE: Army trucks move towards eastern Ladakh. Photograph: PTI Photo Cutting across party lines, members in the Upper House of Parliament expressed their solidarity and support to the armed forces, which are facing a standoff situation against the Chinese army in eastern Ladakh. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anad Sharma and former defence minister A K Antony of the Congress asked the government to take efforts to restore the status quo ante of April and resolve the over-three-month-old border standoff. Some members such as Biju Janata Dal MP Prasanna Acharya and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut cautioned the government while entering into any agreement with China over the present situation. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement in the Rajya Sabha after the government and opposition agreed that there will be no discussion on the sensitive issue. Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, however, allowed the members to seek a few clarifications on the statement, which was almost identical to the one Singh made in the Lok Sabha on September 15. Sharma said the country is proud of its army and the sacrifices made by the soldiers to protect the border. "There should be no doubt on this and the entire nation would stand together," he said. Referring to the recent talks between the Indian defence minister and foreign minister with their Chinese counterparts and a statement on September 11, Sharma asked: "Do we understand that the restoration of the status quo ante will remain a non-negotiable and final objective for India?" Antony sought a clarification over Singh's statement in the Upper House. "You have to clarify that sovereignty means status quo ante as on the middle of April. That is the meaning of sovereignty," he said. Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh was never a disputed site, the former defence minister said. "Even at Galwan Valley, our soldiers are now not allowed to patrol at the point at which they used to patrol earlier. In the Pangong area, in a more than eight-kilometre area they are not allowing us to patrol, the area which we used to patrol. Previously, we used to patrol till Finger 8 and now we are not being allowed to patrol till Finger 8," he added. The army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police should be allowed to patrol at the point where they used to patrol earlier, the Congress leader said. Azad said he stands with the armed forces and salute their valour. Being a citizen of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Azad said the people from there are ready to sacrifice themselves to defend the territory and integrity of the nation. "On behalf of my party, I would say at least on this China issue, we stand with the government. There should be no compromise. They should go back to the position where they were in April," the Congress leader said. Janata Dal United MP RCP Singh said China is an "ungrateful' country that always follows a "policy of aggression". He suggested that the government should negotiate with the neighbouring country from a position of strength. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Tiruchi Siva and P Wilson expressed their solidarity with the armed forces. Raut said patience and valour are the traditions of India, but not of China. The neighbouring country has a "tradition of betrayal and we should always be careful with them," the Shiv Sena leader said. Asom Gana Parishad MP BP Baishya said the people of the northeast are with the armed forces and salute their sacrifice. Samajwadi Party MP Ravi Prakash Verma, Telangana Rashtra Samithi MP K Keshava Rao, Communist Party of India MP Binoy Viswam, Communist Party of India-Marxist MP Elamaram Kareem, Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh and Bahujan Samaj Party MP Veer Singh also participated in the debate and expressed their solidarity with the armed forces. A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who was shot in an ambush along with his partner last week has been released from the hospital as investigators say they have 'promising leads' in the manhunt for the gunman. The 24-year-old deputy was shot when a gunman opened fire into a patrol car in Compton on Saturday night. Both deputies were struck in the head by gunshots, but miraculously they are expected to survive. 'Great news, one of those deputies was released from the hospital today. He has a long road ahead for recovery. But he's not alone. We, as a community, are in this together,' Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a statement on Facebook Wednesday evening. Scroll down for video A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who was shot in an ambush along with another officer last week has been released from the hospital as investigators say they have 'promising leads' in the manhunt for the gunman, according to Sheriff Alex Villanueva The 24-year-old deputy was shot when a gunman (left opening fire and right fleeing the scene) opened fire into a patrol car in Compton on Saturday night. Both deputies were struck in the head by gunshots, but miraculously they are expected to survive Villanueva thanked the public for their prayers and support of the deputies and the sheriff's office, but he didn't provide an update on the second officer. The sheriff said on Tuesday that investigators have 'promising leads' in the search for the gunman. 'We're on the right path,' Villanueva said, adding that investigators are 'working day and night to identify and arrest these cowards'. Villanueva was referring to a possible getaway driver. Along with the male deputy, 31-year-old deputy Claudia Apolinar was injured in the ambush. She is a former librarian and mother of a six-year-old child. Despite taking multiple bullets one to the face and several to her upper torso Apolinar managed to get her partner to safety, apply a tourniquet and radio for help. A photo of the aftermath of the attack shows Apolinar covered in blood while giving medical help to her injured partner. Video released by cops showed the suspect approaching an LACSD vehicle parked outside the Metro Blue Line station and opening fire before he fled on foot. Moments after the gunman runs away, the passenger door of the patrol car opens and a deputy stumbles out, pressing a hand to their head. The driver's side door opens soon after. Along with the male deputy, 31-year-old deputy Claudia Apolinar was injured in the ambush. Despite taking multiple bullets one to the face and several to her upper torso Apolinar managed to get her partner to safety, apply a tourniquet and radio for help Authorities said that the deputies, who both graduated from the police academy 14 months ago, each sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Apolinar is pictured during her graduation Authorities said that the deputies, who both graduated from the police academy 14 months ago, each sustained multiple gunshot wounds. A massive manhunt is underway for that shooter, described as a 28 to 30-year-old black male. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to his capture. An additional $75,000 was donated by two private individuals. President Donald Trump said the man who opened fire should face a 'fast trial death penalty' if the deputies die. The Compton shooting sparked nationwide controversy as bystanders were filmed mocking the bloodied officers at the scene and protesting outside the hospital where they were taken for treatment. The videos of protesters enraged many critics who said the shooting was the result of anti-police sentiment fueled by a turbulent summer of demonstrations against police brutality. A GoFundMe page set up for the officers has raised nearly $600,000 as of Thursday morning. In this April 15, 2017, file photo, navy personnel sit in front of a submarine-launched "Pukguksong" ballistic missile as it is paraded across Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea could soon conduct its first underwater-launched ballistic missile test in about a year, South Korea's military said Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, amid long-stalled nuclear talks between the North and the United States. AP North Korea may soon conduct its first underwater-launched ballistic missile test in about a year, a top South Korean military official said Wednesday, amid long-stalled nuclear talks between the North and the United States. In written remarks to lawmakers ahead of a confirmation hearing, Won In-choul, the nominee for chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said North Korea has been repairing recent typhoon damage at its northeastern Sinpo shipyard, a place where it builds submarines. Shortly after the repairs are complete, there is a chance it will carry out a submarine-launched ballistic missile test, Won said. He said South Korea's military is keeping a close watch on developments there, according to a copy of his remarks provided by a lawmaker, Kang Dae-sik. In recent years, North Korea has been pushing hard to acquire the ability to launch missiles from submarines in what experts say is a worrying development because such weapons are difficult to detect before launch. A test of an underwater-launched missile by North Korea last October was the first of its kind in three years, and the most provocative weapons test since North Korea entered nuclear negotiations with the U.S. in 2018. For the past four months, United Airlines and Boeing have been flying jetliners loaded with mannequins, aerosol sprays, sensors and scientists in an effort to understand how contaminated air moves through passenger planes. The research is just one small part of a sweeping global campaign to figure out the threats posed by the coronavirus. But for the airline industry, the results could help determine how quickly carriers bounce back from the edge of disaster after the pandemic made people afraid to get on a plane. US demand for flights remains at less than a third of 2019 levels, based on airport security screening data. How big is the infection risk sitting in an airplane in close proximity to other passengers? Scientists and airlines are doing research to find out. Credit:AP The US military initiated the study when the spread of COVID-19 raised concerns about infection risks for troops transported on passenger jets. Companies - including United, Boeing and Zeteo Tech, a Maryland-based biodefence and medical device maker - are contributing equipment and expertise. Award-winning investigative journalist John Goetz testified at Assanges extradition hearing yesterday morning from Berlin, blowing out of the water US government claims that Assange had failed to redact names from US classified documents, placing the lives of US government informants at risk. Goetz, Head of Investigations for German public broadcaster NDR, was a journalist at Der Spiegel when it partnered with WikiLeaks in 2010. He travelled to London in June of that year where he worked with Assange and senior journalists from the Guardian and New York Times on what later became known as the Afghan War Diaries. Goetz had earlier worked on major stories for Der Spiegel exposing German war crimes in Afghanistan. These included the bombing in Kunduz ordered by German military officers in September 2009 resulting in civilian deaths. The story received a prestigious Nannen Award for investigative journalism. John Goetz Despite a half-hour time limit imposed by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, Goetz comprehensively refuted the US indictment that Assange published certain classified documents that contained the un-redacted names of innocent people who risked their safety and freedom to provide information to the US and its allies. His expert witness testimony established that the only harm to life came from US war crimes which Assange and WikiLeaks were trying to expose. Mark Summers QC for the defence asked Goetz about the content of the Afghan files, Were they anodyne, irrelevant? They were a fascinating first-hand eyewitness diary of what was happening in Afghanistan during the war, as it was happening, Goetz replied. I ended up working together with Nick Davies on a story about Task Force 373, which was a kind of assassination squad that existed in Afghanistan and which became then a cover story for Der Spiegel. Task Force 373 was something parallel to Operation Phoenix that existed in the Vietnam War, a team that went out and did assassinations In the documents you could follow their activities. That hadnt been known, and thats why it was a major story at the time. A second witness statement submitted by Goetz related to the plight of German citizen Khalid el-Masri, whose story of CIA kidnapping, rendition, sodomy and torture Goetz had investigated in 2005-06. At that point, Goetz explained, very few people believed it was true. Goetz later tracked down El-Masris CIA kidnappers in the United States. After NDR broadcast the story, Munichs state prosecutor issued arrest warrants for each of the 13 CIA abductors, but the warrants were never issued in the US, where the perpetrators lived. When I finally saw the diplomatic cables, one of the first things I typed in was Khalid el-Masri and I was fascinated to see the pressure that the United States had placed on the German government not to issue the arrest warrant in the United States, Goetz recalled. The Old Bailey where Assange is being tried Goetzs testimony established the extreme efforts Assange made to protect documents and redact names. Recalling his own time in the Guardians bunker, Goetz said, I remember being very annoyed and very irritated by the constant, unending reminders by Assange that we needed to be secure. That we needed to encrypt things, to use encrypted chats, and it was the first time in my life I had ever seen or used or touched a cryptophone. The amount of precautions around the safety of the material were enormous. Goetz admitted he had thought Assanges focus on data security paranoid and crazy, but later it became standard journalistic practice. He recalled interviewing Assange at the Guardians downstairs restaurant in 2010, with Assange explaining that WikiLeaks harm minimisation process was designed to protect innocents. The media partners own efforts at harm minimisation had involved contacting the White House, [T]he New York Times team we were working with based in Washington, they had the connections, they knew how to reach the White House, and they sent a delegation to the White House to discuss their concerns about the publication. Straight after the White House meeting, the Times editor Erick Schmitt relayed a request for redactions, with WikiLeaks confirming they would redact 15,000 documents from the Afghan war logs. WikiLeaks said they would be open to receiving technical assistance from the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan over the redaction of names, Goetz recalled. With the Iraq War Logs, Goetz recounted, WikiLeaks had overshot the redaction process, publishing fewer documents than had already been released by the US Department of Defence under Freedom of Information. WikiLeaks vetting and redaction process for the release of US diplomatic cables was tighter still. They were to be rolled out over the course of an entire year, on a country-by-country basis, with an expanded group of local media partners. Meanwhile, Assanges initial media partners took a conference call from US State Department officials who cited document numbers to the journalists, pointing out [the] things that were sensitive. As the 30-minute limit for the defence expired, Summers alluded to sections 30-31 of Goetzs written evidence, citing the role of Guardian journalists Luke Harding and David Leigh in publishing a codeword created by WikiLeaks to protect unredacted cables, Are you able to explain the process by which unredacted State Department cables came into the public domain if anybody wants to ask you? Yes, replied Goetz, explaining later under cross-examination that the only unredacted documents published by WikiLeaks were those already widely available via the Cryptome site, thanks to the Guardians own journalists. James Lewis QC on behalf of the US government referred to a batch of 133,000 cables released by WikiLeaks in August 2011, prior to the Cryptome release. But Goetz explained these were unclassified. Moreover, as Summers established in his re-examination of Goetz, the main source for claims that Assange had placed the lives of US informants at risk was an article by LA Times journalist Ken Dilanian, later fired for sharing stories in advance with the CIA. Lewiss cross-examination of Goetz floundered on several occasions. He mixed up dates and appeared at one point to confuse the Afghan War Logs with the US State Department Cables. Lewis later tried to block the reading into evidence, in summary form, of expert witness testimony from Khalid El-Masri, claiming its sole motive was to prejudice his client, the US government. The hearing continued in the afternoon. Kirloskar Motor (TKM) on Thursday said it remains deeply committed to the and its national objectives, refuting once again the claims by a senior company official earlier that it would stop further expansion in India due to high taxes. The automaker, which sells models like Innova and Fortuner, said it has firm belief in the core strength of the country's economic growth potential and is fully committed to continually work towards contributing to economic development. Keeping in sync with the vision of 'Grow India Grow with India, during the past two decades of presence in the country, the company has worked tirelessly to invest in creation of a world-class talent pool and for building a strong competitive local supplier ecosystem in line with the "Skill India" and the "Make in India" initiatives, TKM Managing Director Masakazu Yoshimura said in a statement. The company's operations in India are an integral part of its long-term global strategy, he added. "As part of these efforts, Group in India is targeting to invest over Rs 2,000 crore in India in the coming years on technology and electrification, both for the domestic and the exports market," Yoshimura noted. The company reaffirms that it intends to make all efforts to promote and introduce newer, cleaner and world-class technologies and services in the market, he added. TKM is a joint venture between the Japanese Motor Company and Kirloskar Group. On Tuesday, TKM Vice-Chairman and whole-time director Shekar Viswanathan in an interview said that the company would stop expanding in India ruling out future investments as the government keeps taxes on cars and motorbikes so high that find it difficult to build scale. Later, the company's Vice Chairman Vikram Kirloskar refuted the comments and said TKM planned to invest over Rs 2,000 crore in the country in the next 12 months. Reacting to Kirloskar's tweet on investment, Union Heavy Industries Minister Prakash Javadekar had tweeted: "The that Toyota Company will stop investing in India is incorrect. @vikramkirloskar has clarified that Toyota will invest more than Rs 2,000 crore in next 12 months". Endorsing the minister's remark, Kirloskar tweeted: "Absolutely! We are investing 2000+ crore in electric components and technology for the domestic customer and export. We are committed to the future of India and will continue to put all effort in society, environment, skilling and technology." Before that, TKM had also issued a statement saying its priority would be to utilise its existing capacity in India which will take time. The company has an installed capacity of 3.10 lakh units spread across two plants in Bidadi, near Bengaluru. TKM rolls out Innova, Fortuner and Vellfire (imported as CBU) from the first plant, and Yaris and Camry Hybrid from its second facility. (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.) Moderna is ramping up to have its coronavirus vaccine to the public early next year. Stephane Bancel, CEO of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company, told The Boston Globe that Moderna originally planned to determine its vaccine's effectiveness in October. But because infection rates are slowing, "which is great for the country," Bancel added, it's becoming "less and less probable" Moderna will have definitive results by then. "We've said November," Bancel said, but that timetable could stretch into December if infections slow even further. Determining a vaccine's effectiveness requires there's a good amount of coronavirus infections out there, as a developer needs to know if the vaccine protects people from a virus better than a placebo. The Food and Drug Administration requires a vaccine to prevent at least 50 percent of infections to be considered effective. More than 25,000 people are currently enrolled in Moderna's phase three trial across the country. If everything pans out, Bancel said Moderna will seek an emergency use authorization from the FDA to speed up the vaccine's approval process. And when that happens, Moderna can ship out the doses of the vaccine it has already produced to the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense pledged $1.5 billion for 100 million doses of Moderna's vaccine, but Bancel said that many doses won't be ready until early 2021. Moderna's vaccine is among several the government is helping fund in hopes of rolling out hundreds of millions of doses as soon as possible. Read more at The Boston Globe. More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment Rich Chang's Dilemma His NewFoundry has good jobs for local talent, but where are the applicants? by Trilby MacDonald Published in September, 2020 Chang is not your average tech entrepreneur. Instead of spending his days steeped in code or pouring over spreadsheets, he is trying to create the conditions for a tech savvy applicant pool to emerge in Washtenaw County so that he can hire locally. "My focus is business development and community engagement," he says. NewFoundry creates custom software solutions that range from a HIPAA-compliant cloud-based medtech application used by Michigan Medicine to a custom product configurator which is used by brands such as Sea Ray Boats and Roush Performance. "We have our hands in a lot of different industries," Change says. "If you are able to diversity you can deal with those ups and downs," And companies are looking for ways to reduce overhead. "Covid has brought to light the operational cost of staff. A lot of companies are closing or downsizing because they can't make payroll." Chang thinks Ann Arbor has the potential to become a major center of tech entrepreneurship in the country, but there are certain limitations that have to be overcome in order to maximize that potential, and lack of local talent is one. He's currently "trying to hire five new software engineers to handle all of the new work that has come in because of Covid." Chang attended the U-M himself, but says he finds the grads he hears from expensive and uninspiring. "I prefer to hire from WCC and EMU," he says. "I find them to be better problem solvers because they have had to be scrappy." But he admits that New Foundry struggles to compete with salaries offered by tech startups with deep pockets, particularly in places like San Francisco. Chang is playing the long game - he hopes to get a second chance to hire some of them. "I think it is safe to say many come back to the area at some point, especially when they want to start families," he says. He wants "to be able to provide workplace ...continued below... options for them to get a job here to help motivate that transition back."He believes that by investing his time and resources in growing the potential applicant pool by cultivating local talent and bolstering the nonprofit sector that serves the community, he is both contributing to the long term success of his company and strengthening the local economy. "We are trying to create our next skilled workforce, collaborating with WCC to get these graduates to be skilled in the areas that are in need," he says. And NewFoundry is willing to train promising applicants with less relevant experience or education, "giving opportunity to those who are typically ignored." He also volunteers his time as a director of the AAATA, United Way, Hands-On Museum, and the Michigan League for Public Policy,Another concern is the area's dire lack of affordable office space. "We can't attract companies here if there isn't a place for them to work," he says. Swisher Commercial's most recent survey, at the end of last year, found a vacancy rate of less than 6 percent.Randy Maas, associate broker at Swisher Commercial, says price per square foot of downtown office space can range from $15 to $45 depending on the floor, the age of the building, the size and layout of the space, the location, and whether maintenance and utilities are included. So far, "Prices have not dropped," he says, but "we are seeing more sublease space coming on the market as more employees are forced to work from home."Chang wishes more wealthy entrepreneurs would take their cue from Duo Security's Dug Song and invest in the community. "There have been a lot of great, successful, and lucrative exits in our region," he says. "However, you can't have a community without a viable economy and if you are hoarding that cash and not reinvesting it in the community, then the community in the end is not going to be any better for this wealth."NewFoundry does not aspire to be the next big thing. Rather, Chang advises the companies and nonprofits he works with to aim for steady growth. "Most tech companies want to create the next unicorn. We should be focused on making camels. They are resilient, self sufficient, they can deal with whatever crap comes their way."NewFoundry may not have the razzledazzle of a unicorn, but this camel hit its stride during Covid-19 - and might be hiring long after more glamorous creatures have whinnied away. For more information, visit www.thenewfoundry.com [Originally published in September, 2020.] Little has changed, except maybe the chants. For more than 100 days, protesters -- whom police leaders have labeled mostly outside agitators from the suburbs -- have marched through Michigan cities and towns demanding an end to racism and unjust violence in policing. With Bahrain following the UAE in making peace with Israel, the region has entered a new phase in its history By the time you get your copy of Al-Ahram Weekly this week, the White House would have hosted an unusual ceremony whose results would transform the Middle East that we have known for decades. In fact, it was a ceremony with a strategic objective; namely, the signing of a peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Hebrew state, Israel. A couple of weeks ago, US President Donald Trump announced that a historic deal had been reached among the United States, the UAE and Israel, stressing that other Arab countries would tread the same road, albeit without naming them. Speculation had it that the next Gulf country to follow the UAE in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel would be Bahrain. Last Friday, 11 September, President Trump confirmed the news from the Oval Office, announcing that the Kingdom of Bahrain would follow suit, calling the peace agreement with Israel and the Gulf state historic. Meanwhile, he said other Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa were expected to do the same. Arab reactions to the Friday announcement were muted save, of course, reactions from the member states in what is called the Arab Foursome that is Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi congratulated those who worked for peace between Bahrain and Israel, expressing the hope that the agreement would bring stability to the Middle East. Jordan, the second Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel back in October 1994, (after Egypt in March 1979), affirmed in an official statement that the next steps to achieve peace should be taken by Israel. In other words, the signing of Arab-Israeli peace agreements with Israel will not achieve peace in the Middle East unless Israel takes the necessary steps to implement Security Council resolutions pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the two-state solution, entailing establishing an independent and sovereign Palestine living in security side-by-side with Israel. Needless to say, Israeli official statements on the occasion did not refer to these Security Council resolutions, but dealt solely with the breakthrough in relations of Israel with Arab countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of Arab investments pouring into the Israeli economy, and cooperation in the fields of security, technology, commerce, money and banking, and tourism. Some press reports spoke of thousands of Israelis looking forward to visiting Dubai once direct air links between the UAE and Israel become operational. They are scheduled to start before this months end. The Palestinians who, expectedly, feel betrayed by some Arab brethren were furious and condemned the move by Bahrain as a stab in the back of the Palestinians. A few days earlier, the Palestinian Authority put out a directive calling on all Palestinian officials not to attack in person the leaders of Arab countries who would sign peace treaties with Israel. This directive came out after some harsh Palestinian comments in the wake of the announcement of the normalisation of relations between the UAE and Israel. The reactions, that were personally directed at the crown prince of the UAE, were nasty, and as a matter of fact counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have been emphasising in their official declarations that their peace agreements with Israel would give great impetus to the Palestinian question. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the UAE Anwar Gargash said last Saturday that old policies by the Arabs were ineffective in delivering the peace that the Arabs and Palestinians aspired to, and that the time had come to try new policies to achieve peace in the Middle East. His arguments in this respect, were almost a carbon copy of what the son-in-law of President Trump, Jared Kushner, has been claiming in the last three and a half years, particularly in selling the Trump administrations Prosperity to Peace initiative last January. The signing ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, 15 September, was, without doubt, a strategic breakthrough for American and Israeli strategies in the Middle East, especially from the standpoint of the Trump administration, that has worked tirelessly to help extremist Israelis, headed by the Israeli prime minister and his Likud Party, to decouple the Palestinian question from overall peace in the Middle East. Not only this, but also to ignore the two-state solution, save Kushner paying a lip service to the idea once. In addition, the Trump administration conceded a very precious strategic present to the Israeli extreme right when it incorporated in its official Prosperity to Peace Initiative the right of Israel to annex Palestinian territories in the West Bank, and to annex the Jordan Valley, thus bringing Israeli forces face-to-face with the Jordanian Army once the annexation is decided. It was to be announced 1 July, but American pressure postponed it. The reasons for this were probably related to the American wish not to derail its persistent campaign with Gulf countries to normalise their relations with Israel. Moreover, the Trump administration apparently linked annexation to peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Be that as it may, the Middle East in the morning after the signing ceremony at the White House, 15 September, entered into uncharted waters for the Arabs and the Palestinians, and indeed for the whole world. Will the American and Israeli peace drive end the more than century old Arab-Israeli conflict and bring about historic reconciliation between the Arabs and the Palestinians, on the one hand, and Israelis on the other? The answer lies probably in the official Jordanian reaction referred to above that stated that the next steps to achieve peace rests solely on future Israeli policies. Personally speaking, I doubt very much that the Israelis are ready to relinquish Arab and Palestinian territories that they occupied back in June 1967. With the peace agreement signed last week in the US capital, and the one signed with Bahrain, the Arab-Israeli conflict enters a new phase of uncertainty, which would become more problematic if President Trump is re-elected 3 November. The irony of the whole scene in the Middle East was quite apparent in the fact that neither the Americans nor the Israelis, and nor for that matter the Palestinians, celebrated the anniversary of the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (the PLO) and Israel, dating 13 September 1993 at the White House. The ceremony back then was chaired by a US president from the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton. The reason is that Israel, after the assassination of former prime minister Yitzak Rabin, who signed the accords with the late Yasser Arafat, never intended to honour its commitments inked in the accords. One of the Israeli politicians then who had led a fierce campaign against the accords, and was indirectly and morally responsible for removing Rabin from the scene for good, and consequently the idea of peace with the Palestinians, was a politician by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu. *The writer is former assistant foreign minister. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: 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. Altria Group (NYSE: MO) is a cheap stock at the current price with an 8% dividend yield and JUUL, IQOS and On! will be more meaningful to the companys stock in the next five years, according to a bullish thesis by Charioteer Investing. Analyzing the companys 2020 second-quarter financial report, the investor highlighted some interesting developments. The first big event is the dividend hike - a sign of cash flow stability. The company increased the annualized dividend to $3.44 per share - this 2.4% increase surpassing the investors expectations. The dividend increase marks the 55th dividend increase in the past 51 years. Feel Photo Art/Shutterstock.com The second big item was Altria reestablished the full-year EPS guidance after suspending it last quarter. Before the pandemic, EPS guidance was $4.39-4.51. Now the company expects its 2020 full-year adjusted EPS to be in a range of $4.21 to $4.38, representing a growth rate of 0% to 4% from an adjusted EPS base of $4.21 in 2019. It is a modest cut but nevertheless a sign of confidence that the situation has not gone completely negative, according to the investor. The oral products category is performing well. On! is posting strong growth with revenues increasing 9.6%, with both higher volumes and better pricing. Operating income was up 8.1%. The company plans to hit 50 million cans this year and is working to remove capacity constraints next year. On! is now sold in over 40,000 stores. On! appears to be a slam dunk and management noted that it has extremely high uptake amongst women in particular, which is an underpenetrated market segment relative to oral tobacco users. Given the extremely high margins in this segment, any organic growth here will generate massive free cash flow for shareholders. JUUL is unimpressive, but IQOS couple be a hidden gem, according to the investor. Heated Tobacco (IQOS) received approval from the FDA to be marketed as a modified risk tobacco product in July. The company reopened the IQOS boutiques in Atlanta and Richmond, and opened a new boutique in Charlotte. By the end of August, they expect HeatSticks to be in 700 retail stores across those 3 markets, and over the next 18 months, IQOS is expected to be launched in the four new markets. So, IQOS is taking some market share and as the retail footprint grows is expected to drive some very good growth numbers, according to the investor who holds shares of Altria. Story continues So, Altria looks stable despite some depressing points. The dividend is stable, and On! and IQOS seem to hold the leading positions in the market. JUUL and Cronos are susceptible to doomed fate, but Altria is above the possible loss. If JUUL fails, anyway, Altria has another option of the MarkTen, its own vape brand. A Democratic win can possibly ease the Cannabis restrictions that can prove to be a game changer for Cronos. Altria shares has gained 6.67% in the past three month and 3.84% over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Altria Group (NYSE:MO) has seen a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. The company was in 43 hedge funds portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that MO isnt among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. 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. Please subscribe to our free daily enewsletter to get our stories delivered straight to your inbox: Suggested Reading: 15 States with highest diabetes rates 15 US cities with highest murders in 2020 15 cities with highest uninsured rates in America 10 most powerful militaries in the world Disclosure: This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Nepal Police arrested Hareram Prasad Kurmi, one of the accused in the murder of Bara based journalist Birendra Shah 13 years ago. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Nepal affiliates the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) and the Nepal Press Union (NPU) are relieved at the arrest of another alleged perpetrator and urge the government to bring all those complicit in the murder of Shah to justice. Police arrested Kurmi from his hideout in Sapahi of Kolhabi municipality on September 10. He is fourth person arrested in the connection with the case. Lal Bahadur Chaudhary Dhami, another person alleged to be involved in Shahs killing is still a fugitive. According to Nepal Police they have been searching for Dhami for many years. Shah, a Bara-based journalist affiliated with Nepal FM, Dristri weekly and Avenues television was kidnapped by then Communist Party of Nepal Maoists insurgents on October 7, 2007, and his body was found buried after 34 days in a nearby Tangiya forest area in Bara district. Shah had written about the former rebels alleged profiteering from timber smuggling and also their alleged assault and abuse of opponents. Others accused of the killing, Manoj Giri, Ram Ekwal Sahani and Kundan Faujdar, have been found guilty and are serving jail terms after court sentenced them to life imprisonment and ordered that all their property be confiscated. During the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, a total of six journalists were killed and four journalists are still missing. The FNJ General Secretary Ramesh Bista said: As all the accused involved in the murder are not brought to justice, Nepali media fraternity has not realized a sense of security. The FNJ urges the government of Nepal to investigate the cases and punish the guilty. The NPU General Secretary Ajaya Babu Shiwakoti said: Although arrest of Kurmi can be taken as positive sign, Nepal governments inability to punish all the murderers of Shah, even after 13 years, indicates the poor implementation of the UN convention to protect and defend journalists. NPU urges the government to punish the guilty regardless of their political affiliation. The IFJ said: The IFJ continue to be deeply concerned about the climate of impunity for crimes against journalists and delays in tracking down and arresting the killers of BIrendra Shah. The government of Nepal must not deviate from its commitment to press freedom as enshrined in constitution of Nepal 2015. The IFJ urges authorities to bring all perpetrators involved in this murder to justice. Newarks Cardinal Tobin has said that it is more problematic to vote for Donald Trump than for Joe Biden. With all due respect, I dont know that he should be making that call in either direction. The bishops role is to inform consciences. He seems to think we are beyond single issue voting. Unfortunately, I think he buys into some cultural lies in his implication. By single issue, we, of course, know he means abortion. But heres the thing: Abortion has never been a single issue. The riots in the streets? They are about a lot more than racism. Id never do it, but Ive lately had the urge to run through the streets screaming, Were still killing babies. The primal screams we see and hear and read about in all sorts of manifestations have to do with the grave poison in our cultural, legal, and political bloodstreams. Abortion kills. And more than the baby. It harms the woman. It wrecks families. It always changes things. Think about little things in your life that have had enduring impacts. Sometimes unintentional things, sometimes evil. Abortion is evil. It pits a mother against her child. We pretend it is health care. We pretend its necessary. We dont even say necessary evil. We celebrate it (Andrew Cuomos lighting up the Freedom Tower and the bridge he named after his father always seems to be a most perverse example) and literally have women shouting their abortions. I didnt vote for Donald Trump last time. I did something I never thought I would do. As a child, maybe in the third or fourth grade, I was asked to write about my favorite day of the year. It was Election Day! I was an early C-SPAN addict. But in the last presidential election, I wrote in a name. Voting in New York, I thought I could in good conscience do that. I voted for Carl Anderson, the head of the Knights of Columbus, because in the years before he had fought genocide in Iraq and Syria. He and my friend Andrew Walther, now at EWTN made the John Kerry State Department pay attention to the plight of the Christians and other religious minorities there. Anderson and Walther were helping them like no one else was, doing things the U.S. government wouldnt and couldnt do. Anderson has executive and even White House experience. If I thought I could have convinced him to run for real, I would have. Hes a good man. I have had sitting at my right hand while working for a few weeks Peggy Noonans When Character Was King. I dont want to be nostalgic about that. I want to fight for that. Instead of telling Catholics whom they can vote for by name, Id like to see bishops talk about virtue and how we are going to get beyond this culture of death we are living in. And like Tobin, I dont just mean abortion. But, dear heavens, abortion is a scourge we are all poisoned by. Story continues I dont know what Im doing this November, but I cant vote for Joe Biden. First of all, its an insult to the intelligence of Americans to say Joe Biden is the candidate. He obviously is not quite up to the task. And Kamala Harris thinks that the man I voted for in 2016 is part of the problem in America. The largest fraternal organization in America, and one that constantly comes with aid when disaster strikes. That they oppose abortion i.e., that they follow Catholic Church teaching is beyond the pale for her. And Joe Biden is a professed Catholic who will selectively quote Pope John Paul II. The more he plays this up, the more likely I might actually consider voting for Donald Trump, who is, of course, deeply problematic. If Joe Biden were who he sometimes says he is, he could have changed not only the Democratic Party, but the United States. He could have created competition for the pro-life vote. He could have really applied Catholic social teaching to Democratic politics and public policy in transformative ways. But he didnt. Im a big believer in respecting peoples freedom; I believed this in 2016 and I believe it now. These are not the two candidates I want to be choosing between. Still, I dont think its helpful for a bishop to say what Tobin has said. Catholics and other religious believers need to be praying more. The fact of the matter is Donald Trump didnt start the fires of anger and contempt in America. It was there. Thats why this all happened. America is ailing and we need people of faith to step up to the plate like perhaps never before in our lifetimes. Certainly not in the ways we are accustomed to. This is not a time for casual Christianity. Christianity is a radical, all-encompassing call. And our nation is suffering when we are not appreciating this and living it. Thats the kind of thing I think would be more helpful than Cardinal Tobins saying its more problematic to vote for Trump than Biden. This is the pits, and its a symptom of a much bigger problem. Catholics need to start again in many ways, in how we live and participate in civil society. Its not enough to cast a vote in good conscience. We have to be involved. Part of our civic responsibility is living the Beatitudes. What does that look like in the public square? Wouldnt it be awesome to hear someone like Cardinal Tobin talk about that? One of my pet peeves, though, is people sitting around complaining about bishops and what they should or shouldnt do. So, Im done now, and will try to keep doing some of that work we often seem to assume is the purview of the bishops in the public square myself, for what its worth. Because we are all part of the Church, so we need more Catholic leaders, not fewer. Step up to the plate with God as your witness, fueled by His love for us. Imagine how that could change so much. Pray for it, rigorously and overflowing with hope and a desire to preserve and protect life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and freedom. Including the freedom to operate in good conscience going forward. We owe it to those who have given their live for the same. We owe it to the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have gone to the Supreme Court twice to protect our first freedom. Joe Biden promises to force them back. Joe Biden makes it impossible for me to vote for him. That saddens and angers me, frankly. Because if he were who he sometimes claims to be, we could be a much healthier country. More from National Review In most cases, the investigations were to expose Russian special service agents involved in intelligence and subversive operations against Ukraine. The SBU Security Service of Ukraine has launched 52 criminal proceedings since the beginning of the year to probe high treason along with 27 cases investigating the creation of terrorist groups or organizations. Two cases each were opened to investigate sabotage, espionage and terrorist attacks, as reported by the SBU's press center. Read alsoSBU detains member of notorious 'Vostok Battalion' involved in Donetsk airport battles In most cases, the investigations were to expose Russian special service agents involved in intelligence and subversive operations against Ukraine. In particular, Valeriy Shaitanov, the ex-head of the A Squadron of the Special Operations Center, who was detained in April, is facing treason and terrorism charges, as he was in contact with a colonel of Russia's FSB and passed on intelligence information to him, including about operations in the Anti-Terrorist Operation / Joint Forces Operation zone in Donbas. "A person who led a group of agents of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation's Armed Forces was also notified of suspicion. The former Ukrainian serviceman was recruited when he was in the [Russia-]occupied part of Luhansk region. After this, he and three other individuals gathered intelligence information about [Ukraine's] military facilities in Volyn," the SBU said. In addition, the SBU prevented the transfer by a resident of Luhansk region of secret technical documentation related to domestic aerospace and defense technology. The suspect turned out to be an agent of the Russian special services. He was detained while trying to transfer data to FSB representatives. In total, 221 criminal cases have been opened based on the SBU's counterintelligence materials since the beginning of the year. During this period, 73 offenders were jailed; of them, 21 verdicts were given in treason cases. In particular, ex-law enforcement officer Oleh Smorodinov, who, on the instructions of the FSB, murdered head of the Rivne detention center Ivan Mamchur, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the SBU said. Two Ukrainian citizens were sentenced to 12 years in prison for a terrorist attack in Mariupol as a result of which SBU Colonel Oleksandr Kharaberyush was killed. The two acted on the instructions of the so-called "Special Operations Center under the MGB State Security Ministry" of the Russian-controlled terrorist organization "Donetsk People's Republic." In addition, an agent of Russia's FSB who in July 2020 attempted to blow up containers with ammonia at PrJSC Severodonetsk Azot Association was sentenced to 10 years in prison with confiscation of property. A Chinese citizen, a professor of Xi'an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges he collected classified information on developments of facilities of Ukraine's defense industry. More SBU-related news reports: OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began consulting opposition leaders Thursday about next weeks throne speech, which could theoretically bring down his minority Liberal government if none of their parties support it. He spoke by phone with Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, who told Trudeau that his party wants to see a commitment to significantly boost unconditional transfer payments to the provinces for health care. And he also spoke to Elizabeth May, the Green partys parliamentary leader, who bluntly warned him that she and her two colleagues in the House of Commons are not prepared as Greens to support a speech from the throne that leaves out climate action. He is expected to speak with Conservative Leader Erin OToole who, like Blanchet, is in isolation after a staffer tested positive for COVID-19 and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Friday. Blanchet said in an interview Thursday that he outlined the Blocs expectations for the throne speech. Topping his list was a six per cent annual increase in unconditional health transfer payments to the provinces. Trudeau is likely to receive more pressure on that front Friday, when four conservative-minded premiers Quebecs Francois Legault, Ontarios Doug Ford, Albertas Jason Kenney and Manitobas Brian Pallister hold a news conference in Ottawa to detail their hopes for the throne speech. At a meeting last week in Toronto, Legault and Ford argued that provinces and territories need a significant increase in the health transfer, on top of the $19 billion Ottawa is already giving them to help cope with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, including some $10 billion for health-related expenses. The federal government will transfer almost $42 billion to provinces and territories for health care in the current fiscal year, under an arrangement that currently sees the transfer increase by at least three per cent each year. Blanchet said the Bloc also wants to see more help for seniors, which he got the impression is coming, and compensation for dairy farmers hurt by trade deals. Should the throne speech recommit the Liberal government to developing a national pharmacare program, he said the Bloc will demand provinces have the right to opt out with compensation. On Wednesday, following a cabinet retreat, Trudeau continued to say the speech will offer an ambitious plan for a healthier, safer, fairer, cleaner and more inclusive economy. However, with positive cases of COVID-19 on the rise for the past few weeks, Trudeau and his ministers were also clear that their top, almost all-consuming priority is doing everything possible to prevent a second deadly wave of the novel coronavirus. May said she wasnt able to actually be sure from her conversation with Trudeau on Thursday whether climate change crisis is getting pushed to the back burner while the government deals with the pandemic. I think you have to do both at the same time and thats what I stressed with the prime minister is we dont have the luxury of time, she said in an interview. To avoid (climate change) becoming a global catastrophe to avoid extinction, we have a very small window for action, which means we dont have the luxury of time to say, Well get to that later. In particular, the Greens want to see a commitment to invest in renewable energy, retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient and a massive tree-planting program. The throne speech will be put to a confidence vote. The Liberals will need the support of at least one of the main opposition parties to avoid losing that vote, which would trigger an election. Blanchet said the Bloc wont back down on its demands just to avoid an election in the midst of the pandemic. (Trudeau) may surf on the fear of a second wave, which would push back the possibility of an election, but we will not lower our expectations for such reasons, he said. May said neither Trudeau nor the Greens want an election. Still, she said she and the prime minister discussed the need for immediate amendments to the Canada Elections Act to ensure that Elections Canada is able, if need be, to safely conduct an election during the pandemic. Blanchet also said hes concerned that the speech may amount to little more than simply giving money to targeted clienteles to please the NDP, rather than measures to help save jobs and support Canadians who have already lost them. New Democrats have been clear they want to see billions more in federal funding for child care and affordable housing. They also want the government to back off its plan to wind down the $2,000-per-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit. Singh has said he expects the speech to be full of nice but empty words and hes more interested in what actually makes it into the subsequent federal economic update and budget. The speech is expected to focus on three main areas: further measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 and avoid another countrywide lockdown; to help Canadians stay afloat while the pandemic continues; and longer-term measures to structurally rebuild the ravaged economy. Its expected to include promises of more funding for health care, including long-term care homes that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, and child care, so that women can get back to work. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. Read more about: Gail Heikkenen raises her announces she got a bingo during Golden Hour Senior Center's weekly bring game Monday. Golden Hour Senior Center has weathered budget cuts and may need to prepare for further funding reductions. Having already taken a 5% cut in funding from the county and the loss of a state-funded program, further cuts to Golden Hour Senior Center's budget may impact services and its operating hours. Jackie Grubb, the center's executive director, said the cuts have already led to the loss of one staff position at the center, while the state has completely defunded the Wyoming Home Services program, which assists house-bound seniors with their household chores. However, Grubb said she was told to brace for further funding cuts from the county in the future. This comes as the state's leaders conside... Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Manganese X Energy Corp. (TSXV: MN) (FSE: 9SC2) (OTC Pink: MNXXF) ("Manganese" or the "Company") is pleased to confirm the appointment of Dr. Josef Daniel-Ivad to the Advisory Board of Disruptive Battery Corp., a wholly-owned green tech subsidiary of Manganese X. Dr. Josef Daniel-Ivad is an authority in the field of alkaline Manganese Zinc battery technology. He has authored over 30 technical papers and contributed book chapters to Linden's Handbook of Batteries, Besenhard's Handbook of Battery Materials and Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources. Dr. Daniel-Ivad's work in the field of alkaline batteries and charging technologies has awarded him with over 20 patents. Dr. Daniel-Ivad holds a Ph.D. in Electrochemistry from the Technical University of Graz, Austria, where he studied under legendary Prof. Dr. Karl V. Kordesch and was on the team of inventors that brought the rechargeable alkaline battery technology to life. He also holds a M.Sc. in Technical Chemistry from the Technical University of Graz, Austria. In 1991 Dr. Daniel-Ivad joined Battery Technologies Inc. (BTI), the company whose mission was to commercialize the rechargeable alkaline cell technology. Initially, Dr. Daniel-Ivad was responsible for the establishment of the research and development laboratory for Rechargeable Alkaline cells in Richmond Hill, Canada. During his 12 year tenure at BTI, Dr. Daniel-Ivad was promoted to VP, Technology Development and was responsible for all aspects of the RAM product and manufacturing process engineering and development, protections of the RAM Technology, and technology transfer to BTI licensees. Most notably, licenses included Rayovac Corporation in the United States (1993 product launch), Pure Energy Battery Corporation in Canada (1994 product launch), Young Poong Corporation of South Korea (1996 product launch) and Grand Battery Technologies of Malaysia (1998 product launch). Story continues From 2010 - 2013, Dr. Daniel-Ivad was the Chief Technology Officer - Energy Storage Solutions for Pure Energy Solutions Inc., a Boulder, CO-based company that was revolutionizing power delivery to portable electronic devices through its branded WildCharge wire-free power technology, and was a leading supplier of sustainable and environmentally responsible rechargeable battery products with its RAMcell rechargeable alkaline batteries. Since 2014, Dr. Daniel-Ivad is the President of jdi energy consulting and provides independent professional services to the battery and energy storage industry. Furthermore, he is President and Chief Technology Officer of Blizzard Technologies where he is working on re-introducing Rechargeable Alkaline (RAMcell) to the market. Martin Kepman, CEO of Manganese X, comments: "We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Josef Daniel-Ivad to the Advisory Board of our subsidiary Disruptive Battery Corp. The world is transitioning in leaps and bounds to all things green and clean and manganese has strategic seating at the table of innovation. Josef has significant experience with manganese as a high-density battery component. We intend to accelerate our efforts in the Battery space as a supplier to the EV and stored energy market especially as it relates to the North American chain." The company further confirms 200,000 stock options will be granted to Dr. Daniel-Ivad at an exercise price of 0.86 CAD for a period of 3 year from the date of grant and vesting immediately. About Manganese X Energy Manganese's mission is to acquire and advance high potential manganese mining prospects located in North America with the intent of supplying value added materials to the lithium ion battery and other alternative energy industries. In addition, our company is striving to achieve new methodologies emanating from environmentally geographically ethical and friendly green/zero emissions, while processing manganese at a lower competitive cost. For more information visit the website at www.manganesexenergycorp.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors of MANGANESE X ENERGY CORP. Martin Kepman CEO and Director Email: martin@kepman.com Tel: 1-514-802-1814 Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains "forward-looking information" including statements with respect to the future exploration performance of the Company. This forward-looking information involves 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 of the Company, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks, as well as others, are disclosed within the Company's filing on SEDAR, which investors are encouraged to review prior to any transaction involving the securities of the Company. Forward-looking information contained herein is provided as of the date of this news release and the Company disclaims any obligation, other than as required by law, to update any forward-looking information for any reason. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate and the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking information. NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE US OR THROUGH US NEWSWIRE SERVICES To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64007 Hours before law enforcement officers violently cleared protesters from a square outside the White House in June, a top military police officer sought out weaponry like powerful sound cannons and a device that causes targets to feel an unbearable heating sensation, an Army National Guard major told lawmakers in written testimony. The major, Adam DeMarco, an Iraq war veteran who serves in the District of Columbia National Guard and was called in to enforce the crackdown on protesters, told House lawmakers last month that he had received an email from a top law enforcement official at the Defense Department asking if the Guard was equipped with sound cannons or a nonlethal heat ray, known as the Active Denial System, or A.D.S. A.D.S. can provide our troops a capability they currently do not have, the officer wrote, according to Major DeMarcos testimony, reported earlier by NPR. The A.D.S. can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. The effect is overwhelming. Major DeMarco also said that federal officials stockpiled approximately 7,000 rounds of live ammunition in the hours before the clash, transferring the munitions from as far as Missouri and Tennessee to the nations capital. Hispanic Heritage Month was expanded into a month-long celebration of the Hispanic American community by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Since then credit unions have struggled with how to best observe this annual event and make inroads into the Hispanic community. The best way to observe Hispanic Heritage Month is to make a meaningful contribution to the community, and the best way to do that is to reach out and serve the Hispanic community, recruit and develop Hispanic talent, and partner with local organizations serving the community. The first point should be obvious, yet the facts show that more needs to be done. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Hispanic community is more unbanked or underbanked than the overall population because they have lower savings account ownership rates, are less likely to visit a branch, have lower rates of saving for unexpected expenses or emergencies, and are more likely not to have mainstream credit, among other statistics. Credit unions have a responsibility to help address these concerns by offering the Hispanic community the financial services and products they need. There is so much opportunity and potential for credit unions to thrive and prosper partnering with the community as its population and buying power is growing, to the point where the Hispanic-American GDP is now the eighth largest in the world. Yet the way credit unions often market to the Hispanic community fails to gain any traction. Growing up in Miami, a community with a very large Spanish speaking community, I remember watching Spanish TV and seeing ads from companies, in English. These companies didnt even bother to translate the ads into Spanish! Also the ads wouldnt feature anyone who seemed Hispanic and the messaging clearly wasnt intended for a Hispanic audience. In addition, often whenever Hispanics would actually go into a branch, they often struggle to find someone who speaks Spanish fluently. Dont just assume that if people live in the United States, that they can speak English. Over 26 Million people in this country do not speak English very well. How do you expect people to entrust their finances in products and services they dont understand due to a language barrier? Unfortunately, there is an established history of financial institutions taking advantage of the language barrier to make a quick buck at the expense of the community. Well Fargo was sued for allegedly steering Hispanics into expensive and risky loans they didnt understand and not staffing their branches with Spanish speaking loan officers. Staffing your credit union with Hispanic and Spanish speaking employees, including in managerial, executive, and board positions, will go a long way in serving the financial needs of our community. How do you know they actually speak Spanish? You can get their language skills certified through Language Testing International, as other financial institutions have done, and have the peace of mind that they can effectively communicate the value of membership in your credit union. Hispanics very much value word-of-mouth recommendations from their friends and families, and they can be among your most vocal promoters if they have a good experience at your credit union. In addition, invest the resources into developing and promoting your Hispanic employees into high profile positions within the credit union. Commitments to diversity and inclusion need to go beyond press releases and statements, and include an intentional effort to truly value your Hispanic personnel. Spotlight your Hispanic employees and highlight their cultures and contributions to your organization. Credit unions dont have to re-create the wheel. They can partner with the many types of non-profit organizations that already serve the Hispanic community. There are local Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, churches, and other philanthropic organizations that are looking for credit unions to partner with them. I also serve as the President of the Connecticut Chapter of Prospanica, a national association of Hispanic professionals, and we have worked with local credit unions to help serve the needs of our community. Its fine if a credit union publishes a statement celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. But if a credit union truly wants to honor Hispanic Heritage Month, then they need to do more. First, make an intentional effort to better serve the community by featuring Spanish ads targeting the Hispanic market and by having certified Spanish speakers serving in your branch. Then, recruit, retain, and promote Hispanic talent throughout your organization and celebrate their culture and contributions. Also, partner with local non-profits and utilize their knowledge and experience in the community. Finally, even though Hispanic Heritage Month ends in October, these steps should be practiced year-round. The benefits will far offset any costs that may be incurred. Mark Brazant, a mentally ill violent offender who attempted to murder a woman as she pushed her child in a buggy in Streatham, southwest London, has been sentenced to life in prison. The 44-year-old stabbed mother Josephine Conlon multiple times in the face and neck as she pushed her young daughter in a pushchair on 30 December last year. He handed himself in to officers three days later. Now in a hearing at the Old Bailey he has been handed a life sentence with a minimum hybrid hospital and custodial term of 11 years after admitting to attempted murder. Brazant, who had 19 previous convictions and a track record for attacking lone women in the street, had only been released from jail on Christmas Eve when he crossed paths with Ms Conlon. Neighbours said they were alerted to the incident when they heard the mothers blood-curdling scream with Ms Conlan telling the court she feared her assailant was going to rape her. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty Judge Angela Rafferty QC described it as a ferocious, unprovoked attack and said Brazant was totally unpredictable. It can only be imagined the horror and terror Josephine Conlon must have felt for her child, the judge added. Its quite apparent to me that Josephine Conlon showed extreme courage when you attacked her, she was not the defenceless woman you thought you had at your mercy. She fought back. Ms Conlon had been walking with her child after meeting up with friends at the time of the incident with the mother telling jurors she first realised she was under attack when she was shoved forcefully in the back. As the 36-year-old fell into a driveway, her young daughter rolled on to the kerb and became wedged next to a parked car. After being stabbed seven times in the face and neck, Ms Conlans assailant fled. In a victim impact statement submitted to the court, she said: It has been almost nine months since the attack and although I worked really hard to rehabilitate myself, it feels my life is on hold. I struggle with large crowds and I am unable to leave my house after dark. I am a very positive and social person and I love being busy. Before the attack I used to pack my weekends and evenings full. There have been periods where I have been very low... and it took me six months before I could go back to work. The physical wounds have been very hard to come to terms with. Having said that, I have been lucky all I have is a few scars. I also feel I failed my daughter for walking her into such a dangerous situation and witnessing the attack on me. It could have been so different. Brazant, who has paranoid schizophrenia, initially denied meaning to seriously injure his victim but admitted to the attempted murder in August. His change in plea came after the prosecution called for a retrial in response to the jurys inability to reach a verdict after more than 40 hours of deliberations. In November 2019, weeks before his assault on Ms Conlan, he had attacked four women in the space of one day punching one for laughing and grabbing another by the neck after claiming she had smiled at him. Following the incidents he pleaded guilty to three charges of battery and one of common assault however he was released on licence from Thameside Prison on Christmas Eve to spend a year on post-sentence supervision. Days before his attempted murder of Ms Conlan he was reported missing after failing to attend a supported house for people with mental health problems. Defence counsel Oliver Renton said his client was paranoid and sleep-deprived at the time, wandering the streets and sleeping on buses, and added: But for his mental illness, the attack would never have been carried out. During his original trial, Brazant, of Ealing, west London, said he chose Mrs Conlon because she was small, female, pushing a buggy and he did not think she would fight back. Having stabbed her repeatedly, he told himself, thats enough, that will do and left, he said. The court heard Brazant was on medication for his mental health condition but had stopped taking it. Additional reporting by agencies Some 495 more people in the North Gonja District of the Savannah Region have been displaced by flooding. This raises the number of displaced persons in the district to 1,245 after major flooding after the White Volta river overflew its banks due to the spillage of the Bagre Dam in Burkina Faso. This led to homes and farmlands in the communities being submerged. The Savannah Regional National Disaster Management Organisation Coordinator, Mohammed Tohir, who disclosed this to Citi News, indicated that while some relief items had been supplied to the affected victims, support from philanthropists and benevolent organisations will be highly appreciated. For now, we are appealing to all those who are touched by the situation that we face in Daboya to come to the aid to supplement what the central government has given us. Looking at the magnitude of that case, our staff has been overstretched, Mohammed Tohir said. There have been no casualties since the death of a four-year-old. Since yesterday they have buried her and we have not recorded any casualties, Mohammed Tohir indicated. Twelve communities along the White Volta were submerged after the flooding. The affected communities were Daboya, the district capital, Danbolto, Wawato, Lingbisi, Disa, Singa, Tari, Mankarigu, Yagbon, Sekpala, Kaloribeso, and Sekpege. Some victims are receiving shelter from family members and friends. Others are being housed at the Wasipe Senior High school in Daboya. ---citinewsroom Peace in the Middle East has always been elusive. Now its mysterious. What to make of the White House ceremony that delivered both Bahrain and the Emirates to Israel this week? Everything and nothing. Everyone who was anyone was invited except the Palestinians. Unveiled to a mostly-unmasked audience of cheerleaders, the accords were hailed by Donald Trump as the dawn of a new Middle East. Anytime Israelis and Arabs agree on anything it counts as progress. But in a region of perennial conflict, the signing seemed anticlimactic if only because it underscored how little has changed in what now feels like a pretend peace process. First, they arent peace treaties. Unlike neighbouring (and sometimes warmongering) Egypt and Jordan, the U.A.E. and Bahrain never came close to war with Israel and are nowhere near the Jewish state. But with an eye on the presidential campaign trail, Trump boasted that he had reprised the peacemaking of his predecessors: Jimmy Carter brought Egypt and Israel together 42 years ago at Camp David; Bill Clinton presided over detente with the Palestinians, and then Jordan, in the early 1990s. Yet neither of those seismic events were truly the precursors of this weeks signing ceremony. Rather, it was the political earthquake of Irans Islamic revolution in 1979 mere months after the Camp David Accords that still generates aftershocks to this day, leading to the latest geopolitical realignment. Then as now, the Palestinian cause that had always seemed so central to peacemaking has been pushed to the sidelines. Turns out it was less a prerequisite than a pretext. The Palestinians were never more than a convenient crutch for Arab leaders in past decades a distraction for restive citizens who could vent their anger at Israel instead of their own governments. Now, the Palestinians have once again been overtaken by the march of history the Arab Spring of a decade ago that turned on domestic discontent instead of outside events; internecine conflict in Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Yemen; and an alliance of antipathy between embattled Arab nations and Israel against Irans theocratic regime. Yes, the Hundred Years War between Israelis and Palestinians continues by other means rockets, missiles and balls of fire back and forth. But for all the death and disruption on both sides which I covered during my four years based in the Middle East for the Star the conflict is now little more than a war of attrition, a further dilution of Palestinian leverage and another reflection of lost opportunities. The overarching negotiations and tensions are no longer between immediate neighbours (Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese). The focus is now on more distant or deadly players in the Persian Gulf Iran on one side versus tiny Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the other side alongside Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with Oman onside and Qatar on the fence. Trump is claiming credit for bringing Bahrain and the Emirates together with Israel, boasting that Oman and Sudan may be next. Perversely, hes not wrong, because in the Middle East any ill-conceived action can produce unintended reactions. If not for Trumps grudge match with Iran (motivated by his determination to undo the legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama) which drove him to rip up a nuclear arms accord backed by the international community tensions would not be so high today. If not for Trumps one-sided giveaways to Israel (lending more legitimacy than ever to expanded Jewish settlements), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not have been as emboldened to threaten annexation of so much of the occupied West Bank. With Trumps wrong-headed reversals on both Irans denuclearization and the annexation of Jewish settlements the president inadvertently created the conditions for greater rapprochement between Israel and two tiny Gulf states that have their own self-serving agendas. The U.A.E. seized on Netanyahus annexation threat as a bargaining chip for weaponry offering to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel (and give Trump a campaign boost) in return for the suspension of West Bank settlements and the expansion of stealth fighter jet sales from the U.S. Far from peace in the Middle East, its more of a realignment of warring players and a recognition of the status quo. Pre-revolutionary Iran under the Persian Shah had a quiet understanding with Israel reflecting a shared fear of Arab antagonists; so too the sheikhs who rule the Arab Gulf countries have long had secret ententes with the Jewish state to keep the Islamic Republic of Iran at bay. What was once unspoken is now unveiled. Underground alliances are out in the open, but so too are the underlying assumptions that have long paralyzed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Palestinians under Yasser Arafat missed their best opportunity to reach an enduring deal at Clintons urging with left-leaning Israeli PM Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 (and in the years since). Today, however, Netanyahu couldnt even bring himself to embrace the lopsided offer made by Trump to grab one-third of the West Bank in exchange for other concessions to Palestinian statehood that he refused to fathom (opting instead for the unilateralism of annexation). Such is the stark revelation in the latest iteration of the peace process: Rapprochement with two tiny Gulf countries, recurring hostility toward Iran and enduring indifference to the Palestinians whose rejectionism is now reciprocated by Israel. As to Trumps claim that this is The dawn of a new Middle East, it feels more like the same old same old New Middle East. Which explains why the signing ceremony got so little ink in a world more preoccupied by the curse of a pandemic than the Palestinian cause. Read more about: An on-the-spot Covid test which delivers a result in 90 minutes could transform diagnosis in NHS hospitals this winter, experts say. A study published last night revealed the CovidNudge test a machine the size of a shoebox does not deliver any false positive results, meaning all those who test positive are carrying the virus. It has a specificity of 94 per cent meaning 6 per cent of those given the all-clear will actually have the virus but this is far better than the 70 per cent specificity rate seen with the standard Covid test. The NHS has already ordered 5,000 machines and 5.8million testing cartridges, at the cost of about 30 per test. DnaNudge, the Imperial College London spinout company that makes the tests, has not revealed the price of its 'NudgeBox' portable analyser, but charged the UK 161million for 5,000 of them. The cost suggests that public sector organisations can buy a machine, plus cartridges to do around 1,200 tests, for 32,200 each. This is likely to be higher for private businesses if they decide to buy and use the same kits. The CovidNudge is a machine the size of a shoebox and delivers results in 90 minutes Eventually the machines could be used in schools, theatres and even private homes. They were used by the London Symphony Orchestra last month to give musicians the all-clear to perform at the Proms. Some 10,000 people have been tested on the NHS so far, with a major roll-out due in the coming weeks. The machine is particularly useful for hospitals because it can be used at a patients bedside. Because the turnaround time is so quick, doctors can make rapid treatment decisions without waiting hours or days for laboratory results. The process involves collecting nasal and throat swabs and placing them on to a cartridge which goes into the NudgeBox for analysis. The device then looks for traces of genetic material belonging to the coronavirus. Each machine has the ability to process up to 15 tests on the spot each day. Professor Graham Cooke, of Imperial, whose evaluation of the machine was published in the Lancet Microbe journal, said: This test is particularly well suited for clinical settings when you are trying to make a rapid decision for a patient. The NHS has already ordered 5,000 machines and 5.8 million testing cartridges For example, we had a patient from last week who had a new diagnosis of Covid. We were able to get the diagnosis confirmed within two hours of arriving and start remdesivir and dexamethasone [drugs used to treat severe Covid-19] on that basis. The test is being used across eight London hospitals and is expected to be rolled out at a national level. Professor Cooke said there was no practical reason why it could not be used in someones home, but for now manufacturing was being targeted at healthcare use. And while the machine excels at speed, accuracy and ease of use, it is not the answer to the Governments current testing problems, because each machine can process only one test at a time. It is not the answer if you need millions of tests a day, Professor Cooke said. The team is also modifying the device so the test can simultaneously assess other respiratory diseases. Dr Bob Klaber, director of strategy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: Getting accurate results back to clinicians and their patients as quickly as possible makes a huge difference to how we safely manage clinical pathways and we are very much looking forward to rolling this out more widely. Professor Chris Toumazou, co-founder of DnaNudge, added: The platform is well suited to testing in primary care and community settings with potential for use in non-healthcare settings such as care homes, schools, transport hubs, offices, and, to help bring the arts back, in theatres and venues. Healthcare workers test people in their car at a COVID-19 testing center outside Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 3 2020. (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images) Nashville Mayor Disputes Charge That Officials Withheld COVID-19 Numbers Officials in Nashville on Thursday disputed emails that a local news station said showed authorities withheld COVID-19 data because of the low number of cases confirmed to have come from bars or restaurants, even as a member of Congress requested information about the alleged shielding of figures. The emails were sent between a senior adviser to Democrat Mayor John Cooper and the Metro Health Department. They were published by WZTV. According to the emails, the tracing of case origins found as of June 30 that bars and restaurants were the origin of just 22 cases, compared to over 1,000 in nursing homes. This isnt going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayors Office? a health official wrote. Benjamin Eagles, the advisor, responded: Correct, not for public consumption. A month later, a reporter for Tennessee Lookout asked the health department about the number of cases that were traced back to bars and restaurants. Health department official Brian Todd forwarded the query to five other officials, asking how he should respond. The name of who responded was chopped off, but the person who wrote back said: My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site. We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be because that number is increasing all the time and we dont want to say a specific number. Nashville Mayor John Cooper speaks during an event in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 13, 2020. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images) Councilman Steve Glover told WZTV that he confirmed the emails were authentic with a staff attorney for the health department. They are fabricating information, Glover said. Theyve blown their entire credibility Dennis. Its gone, I dont trust a thing they say going forward nothing. Mayor John Coopers press secretary, Chris Song, said Thursday that the WZTV story was published with limited information and without context, using screenshots of Metro emails to falsely accuse the Mayors office and the Metro Public Health Department of withholding public health data that had previously been shared with and published by another local news outlet, the Tennessee Lookout, on August 4th, 2020. Coopers office published three emails that it said showed the office and health officials have remained committed to providing timely, transparent access to vital public health data. One showed Eagles on July 29 directing officials to disclose that over 80 cases had been traced back to clusters at bars. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to Cooper on Thursday, saying the emails showed a disturbing discussion to conceal crucial information from the public about the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Downtown Broadway is seen in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 7, 2020. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images) Cooper was confronted over the emails during a Sept. 17 virtual press conference. Asked whether there was a deliberate attempt to withhold information about case numbers, Cooper said: Its no effort to withhold information; well do all we can to open up all information. I think the question comes with a concern that back when we were modifying phase two, that the bar case count was not at that time super high. And I think what youre hearing is that kind of story out in the community, that the bar case count was not super high, he said, adding later: The fact that back in early July, you didnt have a super high case count at that moment doesnt mean that it was not a national health priority. And then lets look at what happened, from Los Angeles to Miami: Everybody adopted the same protocol. Cooper then attacked a WZTV reporter after disclosing hed asked the station to submit a public records request regarding the veracity of the emails, accusing the reporter of having a lapse in journalistic judgment and due diligence. The reporter fired back: When you call after the newscast and say, gee, we wish you would have asked again, I mean, this isnt high school. Youre not asking a girl out on a date again who said no. If you dont have a comment up front, we dont have to come and ask you again an hour later. We have deadlines that Im asking you now. So heres a chance to answer. The back-and-forth continued with the reporter saying a city attorney verified the emails in one hour and the mayor saying the reporter should have followed up with his office. Come see me. Well get to the bottom of this, Cooper said. He also said he was grateful to all the bars and restaurants have stepped up their efforts to protect the health and safety of their patrons as he allows the establishments to fill with 50 percent capacity or 50 people per floor and 50 people outside starting Friday. Reach key decision makers with sales-ready leads that shorten your sales process. Move the needle by delivering funnel qualified leads to your sales team. Learn more The stampede from offices to working from home has strained IT security teams to their limits. As a result, SMBs find they need to get more bang for fewer bucks to fight off cybersecurity threats. Network security firm Untangle on Sept. 8 released the results of its third annual SMB IT Security Report. Polling more than 500 SMBs, the report explores major barriers for managing IT security. The results reflect the growing challenges the pandemic caused in forcing massive shifts to remote work. Nearly half of IT pros have altered their security plans as a result of large-scale breaches reported in the media. The report shows that IT teams, in addition to protecting their organizations from increasing cyberattack risks, must also contend with the unintended consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The survey revealed that as businesses consider more permanent plans for their employees, 56 percent will continue to have some employees work from home permanently. Another finding shows 38 percent of SMBs allocate US$1,000 or less annually to their IT budget. SMBs are proactively putting tools in place to combat attacks. They are able to limit their vulnerabilities even though they continue grappling with limited security budgets and resource constraints. However, dealing with these challenges during a cross-industry WFH shift has created gaping vulnerabilities within their networks. This adds another challenge to already overburdened IT departments. As the abnormal becomes our new normal, SMBs need to approach remote work by using a combination of cloud-based applications and on-premises solutions to keep employees and systems safe, and ensure business continuity, said Scott Devens, CEO at Untangle. SMBs should be looking for technologies that incorporate multilayered network security tools and hybrid network infrastructure, such as SD-WAN, to avoid large-scale network vulnerabilities, regardless of budget and resource size, he suggested. This survey revealed a critical takeaway about the changing cybersecurity climate the pandemic thrust upon SMBs, warned Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Thycotic. The report is clear that SMBs do become victims of cyberattacks and that it is better to invest upfront rather than try to survive in a post cybersecurity incident, he told TechNewsWorld. Economical Solutions If SMBs stick to their tight budgeting restrictions for their IT departments, they could find that some of the $1,000 ceilings they put in place can be eaten up for cyber insurance. A D V E R T I S E M E N T Cowbell Cybers recent survey revealed that 65 percent of SMBs will spend more on cyber insurance in the next two years, according to Isabelle Dumont, the companys vice president of market engagement. Subscribing to a standalone cyber policy is always a great step for SMBs to get financial protection against a wide range of cyber incidents and gain access to expert security resources when an incident actually occurs, she told TechNewsWorld. A growing number of SMBs continue to do more with less, according to the report. This years 38 percent budget adjustment noted above compares to 29 percent last year and 27 percent in 2018. Further, 78 percent of SMB employees are temporarily working remotely with an anticipated 56 percent suggesting some positions will be permanently remote moving forward. Nearly half (48 percent) of the surveyed organizations operate in more than two locations, making SD-WAN an ideal infrastructure. SD-WAN allows small businesses who are operating in multiple physical locations and using bandwidth-intensive applications, such as voice over IP tools (VoIP), Zoom, or Salesforce, to take advantage of this technology. Doing so allows SMBs to increase branch office network security. It also lets them increase Internet efficiency and decrease IT spending. For nearly one-third (32 percent) of the responding SMBs, budget restrictions are their greatest barrier. That result is the same as last year. Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) said their biggest challenge is employees who do not follow IT security guidelines. Limited time to research and understand emerging threats was the biggest cybersecurity protection barrier for only 13 percent of SMBs responding to the survey. Fight More Threats, Spend Less Money IT departments, even with limited resources, can implement foundational strategies to address network security issues and lay the groundwork for future investments, noted Untangle in citing some of the significant findings. The survey revealed effective strategies SMBs employ with their limited budgets. For example, SMBs rank firewalls (82 percent), antivirus protection (57 percent), endpoint security (48 percent), archiving management and backup and VPN technologies, (47percent), and Web filtering (40 percent) as their most important features when considering which IT security solutions to purchase. A majority of SMBs find economical solutions in the cloud. For instance, SMBs have adopted a hybrid on-premises/cloud-based IT infrastructure for business applications. A solid majority (71 percent) have their firewall on-site rather than in the cloud. A D V E R T I S E M E N T Nearly half (45 percent) of SMBs said they have adjusted or reevaluated their IT security roadmap based on recent security breaches and ransomware attacks. Of those SMBs surveyed who experienced a data breach within the last 12 months, 15 percent were able to stop the attack or any unauthorized access before sensitive data was extracted. Cutting Cybersecurity Corners This year, Untangle asked SMBs to rank the features they consider important when purchasing or considering an IT security solution, according to Heather Paunet, vice president of product management at Untangle. One of the lower-ranking options was identity access and management. This is especially important now as employees may either be in the office, working remotely, or a combination of both. Having identity access and management solution, such as Directory Access or Captive Portal, can help IT teams ensure that those who are logging into the network have the correct credentials to do so, she told TechNewsWorld. This ranking mirrors another finding by Varonis in their 2019 Global Data Risk Report, she noted, where 53 percent of companies have over 1,000 sensitive files open to every employee in the company. As an SMB, many files should be segmented based on employee department or credentials, so it is even more important to have a verified identity access system in place, she explained. Dangerous Insight One of the most startling findings in Untangles SMB security report is that employees actions have become the second-highest ranked barrier to cybersecurity for SMBs. In its 2019 SMB IT Survey, employees behavior ranked as the third-highest barrier, and in 2020 they have become number two. This is dangerous because many times employees are the frontline to preventing a cyberattack. If employees are not following IT security guidelines, especially with simple things like VPN connectivity, identifying emails that look suspicious, or malicious links that lead employees to a fraudulent website, then that means other protocols are falling to the wayside, added Paunet. For any SMB looking to create a multi-layered security solution, including employees as a foundational pillar of cybersecurity is necessary, she asserted. One additional observation Paunet noticed in the SMB security analysis was the pace of new technology adoption has slowed down this year compared to last year. The number of SMBs who are deploying their firewalls in the cloud has decreased from 2019 to 2020,. With SMBs relying more on cloud-based applications such as Salesforce, Slack, G Suite, and Microsoft 365, it is interesting to see their cloud-based firewall deployments decrease. It is uncertain whether the current focus on pandemic restructuring or business limitations have delayed this technology adoption, but the decrease is noticeable, she cautioned. The Hidden Cost of Skimping Cybersecurity skimping starts with an organization having an incomplete picture of the organizations IT footprint, noted Cowbell Cybers Dumont. That can lead to severe security blind spots. Getting a better understanding of security priorities should not mean needing to hire a security consultant, suggested Mark Kedgley, CTO at New Net Technologies (NNT). Plenty of effective cybersecurity controls should be adopted. Many of these do not necessarily need to eat into IT budgets, he said. For example, establishing a hardened build standard will provide protection against the attacks highlighted like phishing and ransomware. Hardened, secure configuration guidance is available for free from NNT and the Center for Internet security. Vulnerability scanning and patching can also be done on the cheap, he added. Some vendors, including Greenbone Networks, still offer a free vulnerability scanner via the Greenbone Community Edition. Finally, DDoS protection can be overlaid on any website using Cloudflares Free Plan, Kedgley suggested. SMBs are mostly leveraging free, built-in security solutions that come included with existing solutions, rather than investing into dedicated security solutions, according to Thycotics Carson. This means that they are running blind when it comes to threat intelligence with the hope that they will be lucky and avoid becoming a victim of a cyberattack. They use the do just enough approach because resources are limited and there is never enough time to spend on security, he told TechNewsWorld. Meet Minimum Security Standards Untangles Paunet recommends that the minimum IT protocols that SMBs should deploy are credential-based VPN connectivity. They also need a next-generation firewall. With credential-based authentication, SMBs, no matter how small, can connect to the network with a secured link, via VPN, and then consistently remind employees to update their credentials. That leaves them less susceptible to cybercriminals, she explained. A next-generation firewall, with advanced web filtering and virus protection, can then provide layered security for the incoming and outgoing Internet traffic, noted Paunet. Cowbell Cybers Dumont suggested multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all administrative accounts and for email is a must. It is free and takes seconds to set up, especially on cloud services. Many other security resources for SMBs are free, said Dumont. Besides firewalls, NNTs Kedgley added the need for antivirus, backups, and web filtering. He said that the must-have list should include regular vulnerability scanning and patching, together with configuration hardening. He said also essential are non-negotiable security practices for every size of the organization. SMBs should invest in strong Identity and Access Management solutions as they not only help reduce the risks from unauthorized access, they also help SMBs scale better when they grow, said Thycotics Carson in rounding out the minimum required security measures for SMBs. BRADY ANDERSON, Chariho, Wrestling, Sophomore; Anderson finished first in the 152-pound weight class at the Griswold Midseason Invitational tournament. Anderson went 3-0 in the tournament, pinning all of his opponents in the first period. Anderson is 10-4. LYDIA LASKEY, Stonington, Gymnastics, Senior; Laskey finished first in all four events in meets against NFA and Westerly. Laskey had an all-around score of 33.75 against NFA and 34.60 against Westerly. RILEY PELOQUIN, Westerly, Girls Basketball, Sophomore; Peloquin scored 22 points and had 19 rebounds in two games. Peloquin is averaging 7.6 points and 7.5 rebounds a game for the Bulldogs. DEONDRE BRANSFORD, Wheeler, Boys Basketball, Sophomore; Bransford scored 25 points and had 28 rebounds in a pair of Wheeler victories. Bransford is averaging 10.6 points and 12.1 rebounds per contest for the Lions. Vote View Results Disruption is part of the digital new normal and we have designed DeCYFIR to help the cybersecurity industry shift away from the traditional mindset of event-based approach to an intelligence-driven one. CYFIRMA, a threat discovery and cyber-intelligence platform company, funded by Goldman Sachs, Zodius Capital, and Z3Partners today announced it has been recognized by Frost & Sullivan, a leader in global business consulting, research, analysis and growth strategy, as 2020 Best Practice awardee for Cyber Intelligence Technology Innovation Leadership in APAC. Frost & Sullivans technology innovation leadership recognizes companies that lead the development and successful introduction of high-tech solutions to customers most pressing needs, altering the industry or business landscape in the process. These companies hold the potential to shape the future of technology and create change at scale. Frost & Sullivans stringent evaluation criteria consist of two key factors technology leverage and business impact. Technology leverage criteria include assessing the degree of innovation, creativity, technology incubation, commercialization, and application diversity. Business impact criteria cover financial performance, customer acquisition, operational efficiency, growth potential, and human capital. Aiming to enhance customers visibility into potential security threats, CYFIRMA provides a cloud-based threat cyber-intelligence platform that enhances customers understanding of the external threat environment. This includes areas in which cybercrimes typically originate, such as the dark web as well as hacker forums and communities. As a pioneer in cyber intelligence in Asia-Pacific, CYFIRMA demonstrates a commitment to innovation in the market. Compared to traditional cyber-intelligence platforms, the companys AI-enabled threat analytics platform collects, and analyses structured and unstructured data from various sources and converts that to actionable insights. CYFIRMAs customers indicate satisfaction with its customized threat analytics solutions, timely support, and better visibility over their threat landscape, wrote Amy Lin, Industry Analyst, Asia-Pacific Cybersecurity Practice, Frost & Sullivan, in her award citation. CYFIRMAs cloud-based, AI-powered cybersecurity platform, DeCYFIR, is designed to empower businesses with the ability to discover threats from the deepest trenches in cyberspace, decode signals from noise to gain useful insights, and apply remedial actions against cyber criminals before an actual attack occurs. With the DeCYFIR platform, businesses identify potential threats at the early planning stage of cyberattacks. DeCYFIR redefines quality cyber-intelligence in its unique ability to provide all three layers of insights (strategic, management and tactical). When the insights are harnessed in totality, business leaders can make accurate decisions and direct scarce cybersecurity resources to mitigate risks according to threat severity. Disruption is part of the digital new normal and we have designed DeCYFIR to help the cybersecurity industry shift away from the traditional mindset of event-based approach to an intelligence-driven one. We are strong advocates of the outside-in approach where cyber insights, signals, and external threat intelligence must be personalized and predictive for businesses to build more effective cybersecurity strategies, said Kumar Ritesh, Founder and CEO, CYFIRMA. We are excited to be part of Frost & Sullivans highly revered honor roll of technology innovators and this award validates our flagship product, DeCYFIRs power to serve a growing market of digitally-enabled businesses. ABOUT CYFIRMA Headquartered in Singapore and Tokyo, CYFIRMA is a leading threat discovery and cybersecurity platform company. Its cloud-based AI and ML-powered cyber intelligence analytics platform helps organizations proactively identify potential threats at the planning stage of cyberattacks, offers deep insights into their cyber landscape, and amplifies preparedness by keeping the organization's cybersecurity posture up-to-date, resilient, and ready against upcoming attacks. CYFIRMA works with many Fortune 500 companies. The company has offices and teams located in Singapore, Japan, and India. Official websites: https://www.cyfirma.com/ https://www.cyfirma.jp/ Bengaluru, Sep 17 : With Bengaluru seeing a spike in the Covid-19 cases and strapped for additional beds, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) issued final show-cause notice to as many as 36 private hospitals in the city for not dedicating 50 per cent of beds to government assigned patients. BBMP commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad, who has issued show-cause notices to all 36 hospitals individually on Wednesday late night and set the 48 hours deadline for them to fall in line. He has also warned that if the erring 36 hospitals fail to comply with the deadline, the BBMP would start initiating action under section 15 and 19 of the Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act (KPME) by immediately suspending registration besides fine and imprisonment also. Besides invoking provisions of KPME Act, the BBMP would also book these hospitals under Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Ordinance - 2020, he added. Apart from this, the BBMP commissioner has also cautioned that the erring hospitals could be booked under Disaster Management Act as well for not cooperating with the government in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. Prasad has also directed the erring hospitals to update the Suvarna Arogya Suraksh Trust portal (SAST) with all the details of government referred patients and private patients to reflect the bed occupancy. "The hospitals must furnish details of Covid-19 patients," he declared in the notice. Despite repeated efforts, many private hospitals/establishments did not comply with the June 23 government order. The government had categorised hospitals based on the number of bed occupancy. As many as 21 of the 36 hospitals have capacity of more than 100 beds. According to the show-cause notice issued to the BGS Hospital, the BBMP commissioner has charged and questioned why the private hospitals had turned away Covid patients referred by the government? "The state government had issued an order as early as June 23, to dedicate 50 per cent of their beds for government assigned patients. This only means hospitals have turned away patients referred by us (the government) and given it to private patients," the notice read. These include many of the reputed hospitals in the city like - Manipal Hospital, Vikram Hospital & Sakra hospital, Apollo Hospital, Narayana Hrudalaya Pvt Ltd, Bangalore Baptist Hospital, Chris Super Speciality Hospital, HBS Hospital Trust, Medihope Hospital, Nandana health Care Services, New Janapriya Super Speciality, Santosh Hospital, SHIFAA Hospital, SI Vega Hospital, Speciality Health System, BSG Global and, Sagar Hospital Jayanagar. Among the hospitals that had to dedicate between 50 and 100 beds, 10 have defaulted. These include Ramaiah Harsha Hospital, healthcare Global Enterprise, Suraksha Hospital Yelahanka, NU Hospital Pvt Ltd and Republic Hospital. Another five hospitals which were supposed to dedicate 20 to 50 beds have also been issued notices. One of the defaulters, BSG Global Hospital, had to dedicate 50 beds towards government referrals. Of these 40 beds were to be given in the general ward, five ICU beds and five ICU beds with ventilators. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Dhaka, Sep 17 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Bangladesh to attend the finale event of the "Mujib Borsho" celebrations on March 17, 2021. Erdogan accepted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's invitation to visit Bangladesh, said an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh. The official also said that if the President was unable to come due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he will participate in the event virtually. Bangladesh is celebrating "Mujib Barsho", marking the birth centenary of Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen met Erdogan at the Presidential Complex in Ankara on Wednesday and discussed various issues of mutual interest including the visit. Dhaka termed the meeting "very cordial" that lasted almost an hour. Erdogan conveyed his greetings to Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Hasina. He said Turkey will continue assisting Bangladesh on the Rohingya issue and they will work in partnership with International Court of Justice (ICJ). Turkey will also send more medical equipment to Bangladesh, Erdogan said, adding that if Dhaka provided a list of export items, Ankara will encourage business houses to increase trade. Bangladesh thanked the Turkey for assisting Bangladesh in repairing Frigade in Lebanon, setting up of a hospital for the Rohingya, Turkish First Lady's visit, assistance in constructing Embassy complex. Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu was also present at the meeting. Cavusoglu will also visit Dhaka to inaugurate the newly-built Turkish Embassy Complex in Dhaka. Turkey wants to explore opportunities in agro-processing industries, halal meat factory, participate in mega projects - highways, airports construction and investment in SEZs, Hi-Tech parks in Bangladesh. Erdogan said there is a lot of potentials and two countries should work together and follow up. Retail: 1 Shop Street extends over five storeys and Three has a 10 year lease starting 2016 A retail investment property at 1 Shop Street in Galway City centre sold at an online auction last week for 2,006,000. That was 256,000 over its 1.75m guide price and also over the previous 1.95m guide price quoted for the property earlier this year. It was sold jointly by BidX1 and QRE Property Advisers. The building is let entirely to telecommunications firm Three Ireland. Prominently located at the junction of Shop Street and Abbeygate Street, it comprises a five-storey over basement corner building. Its total floor area extends to a net internal area of about 307 sq m. (3,308 sq ft.) and gross internal area of 408 sq m. (4,398 sq ft.). In addition, it is listed as a protected structure. Three's 10 years lease runs from May 2016 at a contracted rent of 160,000 per annum. Meanwhile BidX1 has announced the appointment of Johnny O'Connor as head of commercial property while Steven Blanc has been appointed as head of residential and business development. O'Connor and Blanc will join Jonathan Fenn, who leads BidX1's Irish team. Formerly with CBRE's retail team, O'Connor will advise across both auction and private treaty sales. Blanc will take over responsibility for business development on the residential side of the business, having spent 16 years managing various Sherry FitzGerald branches, most notably the in the development of Sherry FitzGerald Blanc in North Dublin. Blanc has extensive experience across both sales and lettings, as well as in new home sales and development site acquisition. BidX1 has also announced that it secured funding from Enterprise Ireland, following a decision during the Covid-19 lockdown to open the platform to other agents through a joint agency model. The state agency's Agile Innovation Fund has made almost 500,000 available to the company, both to develop this partnership initiative and to enhance BidX1's digital platform in advance of further international growth. BidX1 currently operates in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Spain and Cyprus, with expansion into Portugal and Greece scheduled for the first quarter of next year. The firm has sold over 9,000 properties to date, raising more than 1.6bn. In 2019 alone, almost 25,000 bids were placed across the platform, ranging from Ireland to the US, Australia, Norway, Singapore and New Zealand. It can take a while for the series to find its way and often its the viewer who will feel as if they are missing something profound. As a prequel set in 1947, its not required that the viewer know much about Cuckoos Nest or even Louise Fletchers Oscar-winning performance as a more powerful Ratched in the 1975 movie version, other than the fact that Murphy (working here with Ian Brennan and creator Evan Romansky) is among our shrewdest and most knowing samplers of popular culture. Barr: Black Lives Matter Movement Not Interested in Black Lives, Theyre Interested in Props Attorney General William Barr recently leveled criticism at the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that its activists are not actually interested in the lives of African Americans but instead are interested in pushing a broader political agenda. Barr made the comments during a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on Wednesday, where he said that while the concept that black lives matter is valid, the activists in the movement are merely using the instances of African Americans killed by law enforcement as props. As a proposition, who can quarrel with the proposition, black lives matter? But theyre not interested in black lives, theyre interested in props. A small number of blacks that are killed by police during conflict with police, usually less than a dozen a year, who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda, the attorney general said. Barr continued saying that for him, the question of black lives is not only keeping people alive, but also having prosperity and flourishing in their communities. He said that the leading cause of death for a black person below the age of 44 is crime, where they are shot by another black person. You know, the left likes to talk about dealing with the root causes, but all their solutions depend on peaceful streets at the end of the day, Barr said. Education, after-school activities, all this stuff depends on peace. If your school is run by a gang its not going to get you anywhere. And so, as I say, the foundation of all human progress is the rule of law. Protests calling for a change in policing and police accountability erupted across the nation following the death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes while he was being arrested. The incident, Barr said, demonstrated that the country still has work to do with regard to correcting years of distrust between the African American community and law enforcement. Before the George Floyd incident, I thought we were in a good place, Barr said in a July interview. I thought that economic opportunities were expanding and the African American community was able to participate more than ever before in those opportunities. I think that this episode in Minneapolis showed that we still have some work to do in addressing the distrust that exists in the African American community toward law enforcement. Barr had previously said America is still in the process of making reforms to ensure that U.S. institutions, which had been explicitly racist prior to the 1960s, reflect the values and law of modern society. He noted in that interview with ABC that theres been some success in reforming police practices in recent years to reduce the number of African American deaths from excessive use of force by law enforcement. He added that while that area is important, the concept of black lives matter should also be expanded beyond lives lost to police abuse, something that is frequently spotlighted in national dialogues. Obviously, black lives matter. I think all lives, all human life, is sacred. I also think that its being used nowis sort of distorting the debate to some extent. Because its used really to refer exclusively to black lives that are lost to police misconduct, which have been going down, statistically. Five years ago, there were 40 such incidents. This last year, it was 10. So at least its a positive trajectory there. But then you compare it to 8,000 homicides in the African American community those are black lives that matter too, he said. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded after the death of black teen Trayvon Martin. The gunman, George Zimmerman, was charged with the second-degree murder of Martin. A jury later acquitted Zimmerman in 2013. The acquittal drew outrage and prompted Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi to launch the movement, which gained prominence in 2014 following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In a recent interview, co-founder Cullors described herself and Garza as trained Marxists. Patna, Sep 17 : The Bihar government has cracked down on the sale and use of spiked bits on horses following a complaint pertaining to animal cruelty by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India. The order was given by the director of the animal husbandry department. PETA had pointed out the rampant use of spiked or 'thorn' bits - a device with metal spikes sticking out - to control horses throughout Bihar, even though their use is explicitly banned under Rule 8 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965. Vinod Singh Gunjiyal, director of the Bihar animal husbandry department, issued the order to all district animal husbandry officers. The order directed concerned officers to ensure spiked bits are not sold or used to control equines (horses, ponies, mules, or donkeys). The order also refers to the provision under the rules which prohibits the use of harnesses or yokes with spikes, knobs, or projections or any sharp tackle or equipment in order to ride any animal or make any animal pull any vehicle. PETA India had pointed out the illegality and inhumanity of using spiked bits on equines saying "When these devices are used to control horses for weddings or rides or to force them to haul goods, they can sink deep into their mouths, ripping their lips and tongues and causing extreme pain, bloody wounds, immense psychological trauma, and lifelong damage." Amir Nabi, legal associate of PETA India, said: "These illegal torture devices lacerate horses' mouths and leave them in tremendous pain. They don't belong at joyous occasions like weddings or anywhere else." "We are grateful that the Bihar government is calling for a crackdown on the use of harmful spiked bits. PETA India stands ready to lend a hand to help enforce the law if needed," Nabi said. He pointed out that states such as Assam, Delhi, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh have issued orders mandating the enforcement of Rule 8 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965. "PETA India is campaigning not only for police to search for and confiscate the illegally sold and used devices but also for laws to be introduced to include a ban on the manufacture and sale of spiked bits, a loophole that needs to be closed," Nabi said. ANN ARBOR, MI As of Sept. 17, there have been 19 confirmed positive coronavirus cases in the South Quad residence hall at the University of Michigan, the school announced Thursday. According to a public health community notice, the areas with the most cases are the sixth and eighth floors of the building. UMs Department of Environment, Health and Safety and the Washtenaw County Health Department have been monitoring the situation, which has been identified as a cluster, the notice says. After extensive investigation, the majority of the cases were found to be connected but three cases on the sixth floor are not associated and have no known source of exposure, the notice says. While this can happen at any time during a pandemic situation, we are taking additional measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within the building. All positive cases and close contacts have been moved to isolation or quarantine. Residence of the sixth and eighth floors are expected to follow enhanced social distancing for the next two weeks, monitor their symptoms, check their temperature and stay in their rooms as much as possible, a message to sixth and eighth floor residents says. Residents will also undergo mandatory testing out of abundance of caution, the message says. In a tweet Thursday, UM said all known positive cases are no longer in the residence hall, and testing, tracing and movement of students will continue as necessary. U-M has confirmed and notified South Quad residents in accordance with our policy. All known positives are no longer in the residence hall. Testing, tracing & movement of students to quarantine will continue as necessary. https://t.co/M32ZdHog8F University of Michigan (@UMich) September 17, 2020 According to UMs COVID-19 dashboard, 16 people have tested positive for the virus since Sept. 13, including six students. South Quad has had 13 positive cases since Aug. 21, while no other residence hall at UM has had more than three, according to the dashboard. The dashboard says 12 people are in isolation housing meaning they have a positive test result and 62 are in quarantine housing, which means they were exposed or are waiting for test results. In the last two weeks, UM has administered 3,827 tests with 67 positive cases, the dashboard says. Just under 15,000 tests have been carried out since March 8 with 398 of those coming back positive. The university, in alignment with the Washtenaw County Health Department, is taking the following steps: Do not socially visit the 6th or 8th floors as they are expected to follow enhanced social distancing for the next 14 days. Continue to monitor your health daily by completing the ResponsiBLUE Symptom Tracker. This is a requirement for all individuals on campus daily. Limit social interactions within the dorm as well as on campus. Sign up for priority testing to be tested through the Community Sampling and Tracking program at this link. Anyone that has symptoms or a high risk or known exposure, should contact University Health Service (UHS) at 734-764-8320 or complete the online assessment immediately READ MORE: Cold eggs, no microwaves: University of Michigan students in quarantine housing needed help Confusion over vote of no confidence in University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel leads to review Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike The Bombay high court has granted default bail to a Nigerian national accused of possessing a commercial quantity of contraband material by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), since the agency failed to file a charge sheet within the stipulated period of time. NCB arrested Maduabuchi Igwe at Panvel railway station late in the night on December 30, 2019 and allegedly recovered 500gm of Mephedrone, 490gm of pink MDMA tablets and 75gm of grey MDMA tablets from his possession. Igwe moved the high court challenging July 1, 2020 order of the special court at Panvel, granting extension of 90 days to NCB to complete investigation and file a charge sheet under section 36A (4) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. The extension of 90 days was granted over and above the maximum period of 180 days prescribed under section 36-A (4) of the NDPS Act, which expired on June 28, 2020. Igwes counsel, Advait Tamhankar submitted that the order passed by the special court was not only illegal and perverse but was also against the mandate of section 36-A (4), since it was passed sans application of mind. He pointed out that no independent report of the prosecutor, as required under section 36-A (4), was submitted for seeking the extension. Advocate Hiten Venegaonkar, who appeared for NCB, conceded that the order did not indicate that there was an independent application of mind by the prosecutor. He, however, tried to justify the special court order saying the NCB application did have the grounds warranting the extension. Justice Prithviraj Chavan, however, rejected the request and said it is quite clear that section 36-A (4) requires a report by the public prosecutor and not the investigating officer, and the report should indicate the progress of investigation. A bare look at the impugned order demonstrates a total non-application of mind by the special court, which cursorily passed the order without assigning any reasons, which is a sine qua non for further detention of the accused in custody said justice Chavan. Also Read: Maharashtras Covid-19 case tally goes past 1.1mn It is apparent from the application dated June 23, 2020 moved by the prosecution that it was signed by the intelligence officer of the NCB, Mumbai, which is simply endorsed by the Special Public Prosecutor by putting his signature, said the judge. It, therefore, cannot be said to be a report of the public prosecutor, as the public prosecutor seems to have acted like a postman, the judge said. HC added that the right of default bail accrued to the accused in terms of section 167 (2) of CrPC has been thwarted by the special court by granting the extension. Observing that liberty of the Nigerian national needed to be protected, justice Chavan granted him bail on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and one or two sureties in the same amount. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will give an update on the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic Thursday. The governor is holding a news conference at noon in Austin. Social media is being heavily discussed again, ironically largely on its own creations. There are really three big reasons why it is in the spotlight. The first is the impending US presidential election. Ghosts of Cambridge Analytica, the social analytics firm that manipulated Facebook accounts to impact the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote, are returning to haunt us again. The US election is spawning the likes of uber-conspiracy group QAnon and stoking a divide in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, making Cambridge Analytica look gentle in comparison. The second reason is the covid pandemic. Social media has emerged as a force for good, with effective communication and lockdown entertainment, but also for evil, being used effectively by anti-vaxxers and the #Unmask movement to proselytize their dangerous agenda. The third reason has perhaps been the most stunning and appallingan innocuous drop by Netflix of a documentary called The Social Dilemma. This one-and-a-half-hour film exposes the ways in which technology giants have manipulated human psychology to influence how we behave. If this sounds frightening, it is. It explains how chiefs of tech companies severely curtail the screen time of their own children, while apparently trying to addict every other adult and child on the planet. Reportedly, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg masks his laptop camera with a tiny duct tape. As people realize that social media is a quicksand inexorably sucking them in bit by bit, a clamour has arisen for an alternative. But what is this alternative? The big problem with social networks is not the technology, or the product, or even the early objectives of their founders. It is their business model. The internet was created as a distributed set of computers communicating with one another, and sharing the load of managing the network. This was Web 1.0, and it worked very well. But it had one big problemthere was no way to make money off it. For instance, a Web 1.0 startup called Google had heavy traffic, but could not encash it. Then, in 2001, it developed AdWords, a pay-per-click, auction-based search advertising model, backed by search and monetization algorithms. Googles revenues rocketed to $2.7 billion from $87 million in three years when it went public, and now in 2020, it sits on a trillion-dollar valuation. The internet got monetized, Web 2.0 was born, and our intentions, personas and desires were identified with laser precision for sale to willing advertisers. Facebook joined the party, though with a different way of dipping into the same advertising honeypot. Come 2020, search and social media advertising has crossed $200 billion, rocketing past print at $65 billion, and TV at $180 billion. All this money comes from us users, who purportedly get these wonderful products free, forgetting that when anything is free, you are the product. This business model has led to a winner-takes-all" industry structure, creating natural monopolies and centralizing the once-decentralized internet. It is estimated that over 90% of the trillions of pictures out there are hosted by Facebook or its other platforms, WhatsApp and Instagram. An alternative is unlikely to be driven by technology or regulation. It will take new business models. The good news is that these are coming along with the emergence of Web 3.0, a revolution that promises to return the internet to users. It has a different construct and philosophy. One principle is to allow users explicit control of their data, an initiative aided by Europe-like data protection regulation. Another is to grant creators of contentartists, musicians, photographers, me and youa portion of revenues, instead of platforms taking it all (or most). The technologies that Web 3.0 leverages are newer ones, like blockchains, which are inherently decentralized. They have technology guard-rails against the accumulation of power and data in the hands of a few. Digital currencies enabled by these technologies offer a business model of users paying for services and content with micro-transactions, as an alternative to advertiser-pays. The startups driving this are still at an embryonic stage. An example is homegrown GoSocial, tellingly born of a tweet that Anand Mahindra put out when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, appealing for a new kind of social network". The path to success for these new kinds of democratic networks will be arduous. But a revolution has begun, and it is our revulsion of current models that could relieve us of our social dilemmas. Jaspreet Bindra is the author of The Tech Whisperer, and founder of Digital Matters Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. More than a dozen officers from a key national narcotics unit were recently found to be involved in a drug operation. For years, authorities in Sri Lanka have tried to rid the Indian Ocean island nation of illegal drugs, even attempting to lift a decades-old moratorium on the death penalty to be able to execute drug offenders. But a drug ring allegedly including more than a dozen officers from a key national narcotics unit has exposed how much of a challenge that goal brings. It has also cast further doubt on police forces that have struggled to restore their public image after years of fighting for the government against the rebel Tamil Tigers in the countrys long civil war that ended in 2009. The ring allegedly involved officers from the Police Narcotic Bureau who smuggled illicit drugs into the country by sea, stored them in safe houses, ran fake raids and then siphoned off a portion of the seizures to sell to drug dealers, pocketing millions in profits. Nearly two dozen suspects most of them narcotics officers have been detained so far, and an arrest warrant was issued this week for the rings alleged mastermind, who is said to be hiding overseas. This is the first time a big incident like this has taken place in the history of our police, Sri Lankas attorney general, Dappula de Livera, said in a televised speech, adding that it has eroded public confidence in the police. Sri Lanka, located off the southern tip of India, is used by international drug traffickers as a transit hub, according to authorities, but the drugs passing through the country have left a serious addiction problem in their wake. Alarming situation According to Justice Minister Ali Sabry, some 553,000 people about 2.5 percent of the population are addicted, which means one in every 40 people in the country is a drug addict. Authorities also say that nearly 60 percent of Sri Lankas 30,000 inmates are in prison for drug-related offences, crowding facilities built to accommodate only 11,700. Drug-related court cases have gone up from 6,600 in 2015 to 16,000 last year. This is an alarming situation and we will eradicate the drug menace from this land, Sabry said. Police said they uncovered the ring involving the officers after a separate police narcotics unit seized 225kg (496 pounds) of heroin on May 15 from a house in Welisara, a small town about 21km (13 miles) north of the capital, Colombo. Four civilian suspects were immediately arrested. A fifth suspect, a businessman believed to have played a key role in the ring, was picked up a month later in Minuwangoda, a town about 43km (27 miles) north of Colombo. The businessman then told authorities about a group of narcotics officers involved in the ring, according to police. In all, 18 officers from the Police Narcotic Bureau have been detained, along with five civilians. Officers would meet international drug smugglers in fishing boats out in the Indian Ocean and help bring drugs to safe houses in Sri Lanka [File: AP] On Monday, a court in Colombo issued an arrest warrant for the alleged ringleader, Udara Sampath, who is believed to be in the United Arab Emirates. This is not a new thing, said Kusal Perera, a political analyst in Colombo. On previous occasions too, some senior police officers faced allegations of having links with drug smugglers. But this is the first time we have direct evidence to establish the collaboration between law enforcement officials and drug dealers. According to the investigation, the officers would meet international drug smugglers in fishing boats out in the Indian Ocean and help bring drugs to safe houses in Sri Lanka. A portion of the drugs would then be sold to dealers, and the rest would later be seized in raids by the officers, the attorney general departments deputy solicitor general, Dileepa Peiris, told a Colombo court. In one raid that investigators said was typical of the ring, the narcotics officers seized 243kg (536 pounds) of heroin smuggled by the sea, skimming 43kg (95 pounds) to sell to traffickers and presenting authorities with only 200kg (441 pounds), said police spokesman Jaliya Senaratne. Adding insult to injury, during the three years the ring operated, the narcotics officers involved won cash awards and commendations from the government for making major drug busts, some of which were found to have been staged, according to the investigation. Social catastrophe Police say the officers amassed more than half a million dollars in assets, including land, vehicles and jewellery. Investigators found about 30 million Sri Lankan rupees (about $163,000) buried under some of the suspects land. We highly condemn these acts by a handful of officers, said Ajitha Rohana, a senior officer with the national police. We will strictly enforce the law. We will expedite investigations and our intention is to complete this probe before all other investigations. Rohana added that if the officers are convicted, his department would seek a death sentence for them. The death penalty has not been carried out in Sri Lanka since 1976. Sri Lankan police officers in protective costumes prepare to destroy a haul of seized cocaine during a ceremony at an industrial facility in Colombo, Sri Lanka [File: Eranga Jayawardena] Former Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena made an unsuccessful attempt to end the decades-long moratorium on capital punishment and implement the death penalty for those convicted of drug offences, calling the issue a social catastrophe. Since his successor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was elected to office last November, police and security forces have intensified their crackdown on drugs, with suspects arrested almost daily. But it remains an uphill battle. Perera, the political analyst, said the officers allegedly involved in the ring were hardly alone. When corruption is rampant, if anyone thinks that the narcotics bureau is clean and honest, it would have to be a joke, he said. The weekend shooting death of a man who reportedly held two people against their will has been ruled justifiable. Birmingham police on Wednesday said no criminal charges will be filed against the person who fatally shot 22-year-old Reginald Horn Saturday afternoon. Police earlier gave this account of what happened: The Jefferson County Sheriffs Office alerted Birmingham police shortly after 2 p.m. Saturday to be on the lookout for a white, four-door sedan involved in a possible domestic-related kidnapping. Shortly after that alert, Fultondale police notified Birmingham police that the vehicle was in the 2000 block of 30th Avenue North. While en route, police said, officers heard multiple gunshots. Once at the apartment complex, they found Horn on the ground outside of a vehicle suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead on the scene by Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service. The investigation showed the lookout bulletin was issued after a woman involved in a romantic relationship with Horn called 911 to report she and her sibling were being held against their will. Horn then reportedly drove them to the 2001 30th Avenue North where a physical altercation led to Horn being fatally shot. Birmingham detectives presented their evidence to the Jefferson County District Attorneys Office which deemed the shooting justified. There have been 85 homicides so far this year in Birmingham, 13 have now been ruled justifiable and once accident. Under the FBIs Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines, law enforcement agencies are not required to include justifiable slayings in their homicide counts. A demonstrator holds a "Thin Blue Line" flag in support of law enforcement, at a protest in St Paul, Minn., on June 27, 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) Bill That Would Impose Harsher Penalties on Cop Killers Blocked by Senate Democrat A bill that would elevate the penalties of people who kill police officers was blocked by a Senate Democrat this week after the House of Representatives passed it with support from both parties. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) attempted to get the Thin Blue Line Act, or S.1508, passed with unanimous consent, which bypasses a vote but allows just one senator to block passage. We hope they die. We hope they die. We hope they die. Mr. President, these are the vile words that antipolice protesters yelled on Saturday night outside St. Francis medical center in Los Angeles County, California, Toomey said on the Senate floor in Washington on Sept. 15. They were yelling that about two deputy sheriffs who at the time were clinging to life inside the hospital. They were clinging to life, just barely, Mr. President, because earlier that night those two deputy sheriffs were brutally ambushed by a gunman to shot them multiple times as they sat in their patrol car. Simply doing their jobs, patrolling the local train station. Toomey also referenced other dangerous situations that have unfolded recently, including a man in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, charging at a police officer while wielding a knife. Theres a disturbing trend of violence against police, Toomey said, citing data from the FBI. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) leaves the Senate chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 30, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) speaks at a press conference in Washington on Feb. 13, 2020. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images) My bill sends a very simple and clear message. Anyone who murders a law enforcement official should be prepared to pay the ultimate price, he added. Federal law currently makes killing a federal law enforcement official an aggravating factor for the federal jury to weigh when considering whether or not to impose the death penalty on a cop killer, but not killing a state or local law enforcement officer. The Thin Blue Line Act would make the killing of a state or local officer an aggravating factor. The House passed the act in 2017, 271-143. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) blocked the unanimous consent attempt. I do not support rushing through this bill in response to the California shootings. Under California law, murder of a law enforcement officer already makes someone eligible for the death penalty. This bill needlessly expands the federal death penalty, he said. As I understand this bill, for someone to be eligible for the death penalty, he or she would have to first be convicted of federal murder, and then it would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was killed or targeted because he or she was a law enforcement officer, he continued. I also want to point out that the death penalty itself has widespread issues in many instances of misapplication. DNA testing and other science have proven that innocent people have been executed. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Several hours of evidence from former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton at the hotel quarantine inquiry on Thursday failed to reveal who first proposed using private security guards in Victoria's botched hotel quarantine system. A series of text messages, meetings and phone calls between Mr Ashton, senior public servants and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw illustrated the rushed nature of the decision-making on the afternoon of March 27, when the rules governing hotel quarantine were established. Former police chief commissioner Graham Ashton. But the inquiry could shed no light on one of the most critical questions: who wanted private security guards as the first line of defence? "There is a complete vacuum of evidence around this, which is unsatisfactory," said Arthur Moses, SC, representing one of the security companies, Unified. Texas health officials have retracted its plan to impose a $15 million budget cut from health and safety programs. Officials instead chose to trim the agency's administrative budget to meet the requirements of a mandated budget reduction. The said budget cuts were done to brace for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission originally proposed over $132 million budget cuts to meet the mandate. This includes the $15 million in cuts to women's health services and programs created to help low-income families and children with disabilities. On Monday, a revised proposal was released with an announcement that these cuts would come from other budget areas. "Since submitting its plan in June, the agency has continued to assess potential impacts of the reductions," the proposal stated. It also noted that feedback was received from many legislative members and stakeholders. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Lake Jackson, directed state agencies and higher education institutions to reduce their budgets by five percent. This to lessen the economic impacts brought by the coronavirus pandemic, which has left the state of Texas with a projected $4.58 billion budget deficit. Many state agencies involved in Texas' COVID-19 response were exempted from the said budget cuts. Also exempted from the said budget cuts are funding for Child Protective Services and benefits delivered through Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the foster care program. The bulk of the Health and Human Services Commission cuts come from reducing administrative costs and through staff reductions. The agency also intends to allow some unspent dollars to lapse and leave some unfilled positions vacant. Health services' budget cuts would be imposed only "when further reductions to administrative funding will impact or significantly impede the faithful delivery of services." The following agencies and programs included in the $15 million budget cuts are Child Advocacy Programs, Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services, Early Childhood Intervention Respite, Epilepsy, and Family Violence. This also includes Hemophilia Assistance Program, Indigent Health Care Reimbursement, Local intellectual and developmental disability authorities, Mobile Stroke Unit, Umbilical Cord Bank Funding, and Women's Health. Some lawmakers and advocates scrutinized the cuts for weakening safety net programs and questioned why funding to women's health programs was cut. Women's health programs deliver family planning services. Meanwhile, the agency's Alternatives to Abortion Program did not see a budget reduction. Some lawmakers who objected against the budget cuts, including members of the newly-formed Texas Women's Health Caucus at the Legislature, praised the initial plan's retraction. However, Stephanie Rubin, head of Austin-based Texans Care for Children, said that the proposal poses a risk to children and families. "If the governor, lieutenant governor, and speaker of the House decide to move forward with this proposal, it would create delays for kids who need to sign up for Medicaid insurance so they can see a doctor and delays for moms who need to sign up for the Healthy Texas Women program," Rubin was quoted in a report. Check these out: Gov. Abbott Grilled Over $295M Contact Tracing Agreement Texas Governor Abbott Says No Statewide Shutdown Amid Surge in Coronavirus Cases US Gulf Coast on Alert as Two Tropical Storms Threaten Historic Blow After the 2010 census, about 36,000 people were needed in each legislative district like. This time the polygon drawn on the map will have to contain over 39,000 people. Most of the large rural districts have not gained over 3,000 people in population in the last 10 years. Most have lost population. The legislative district map will be re-drawn to account for this. Some senators will lose their current district altogether. Some will have their district grow in size to contain the needed population. Some districts will likely be moved to a different part of the state. In the end, there will be 49 new legislative districts. Some will look about the same, others will not. A new study says that New York nursing homes affiliated with labor unions had fewer COVID-19 deaths and infections than those without union representation. The study, which was published online last week in the peer-reviewed Health Affairs journal, reveals that among 355 nursing homes in the state for which COVID-19 data were available, the presence of a health care worker union was associated with a 30 percent lower mortality rate and 42 percent lower infection rate than homes without a union. The study was carried out by a political scientist and two medical doctors who say they were curious why so much of the conversation around essential worker safety during the pandemic omitted the role that labor unions may have played - or could still play - in keeping workers healthy and safe. In these discussions, everyone seemed to forget the essential thing that labor unions were originally formed to do, which is protect the health and safety of workers, said Adam Dean, an assistant professor of political science at George Washington University who studies labor politics. So we wanted to look at - where are the places where unions may have had an impact during this pandemic? They decided to study nursing homes due to the availability of infection and mortality data, which was not widely available for other essential industries, Dean said. They narrowed in on New York facilities because the state was an early epicenter of the pandemic, he said, and used data from March 1 through May 31 when the pandemic was at its height. Dean said a key limitation of the study was missing death data from the state Department of Health, which has so far only reported nursing home resident deaths that occurred inside the facilities and not at hospitals. Many believe the official state death toll of nearly 6,500 nursing home deaths is a significant undercount. A gap like that could skew results, Dean said, so the authors performed a series of so-called robustness checks which swap out baseline assumptions with plausible alternatives to see if a conclusion still stands. The findings remained robust when adjusted for a range of variations, he said. One crucial thing that leaves us much more confident about the results than we otherwise might be is that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has also released data on infections in nursing homes and theres a far greater number of nursing homes in that analysis, Dean said. And so for whatever concerns or doubts people have about the state data I would say that we find very similar results when also looking at infections according to CMS data. Union advocacy One possible explanation for the lower death and infection rates could stem from unions successful advocacy for personal protective equipment and infection control policies during the pandemic, the study concludes. CMS required homes to report PPE supplies on a weekly basis, and the study found that unionized homes were more likely to report having one-week supplies of PPE on hand over a two-week time period at the height of the pandemic than homes without a union. Of 399 facilities that reported PPE data to CMS, 96 percent reported having gloves and surgical masks, 95 percent reported having hand sanitizer, 92 percent reported having eye shields, 84 percent reported having gowns, and 83 percent reported having N95 masks. A regression analysis found that the presence of a labor union was associated with a 13.8 percent increase in access to N95 masks and 7.3 percent increase in access to eye shields compared to non-unionized homes. Results were not statistically significant for the other types of PPE, and the study acknowledges that a range of factors beyond PPE could explain the association between labor unions and better outcomes. Labor unions representing health care workers perform several functions that may reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, the study states. Unions generally demand high staff-to-patient ratios, paid sick leave, and higher wage and benefit levels that reduce staff turnover. They educate workers about their health and safety rights, work to ensure that such rights are enforced, demand that employers mitigate known hazards, and give workers a collective voice that can improve communication with employers. In New York, a number of unions that represent health care workers have rallied and advocated for safer working conditions during the pandemic, and demanded adequate supplies of PPE. The Public Employees Federation (PEF), which has members in state-run veterans nursing homes and facilities for the developmentally disabled, wrote state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker in April to demand safer working conditions. 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, which represents health care workers at hospitals and nursing homes, held rallies and vigils to advocate for better PPE, paid sick leave and more transparency from employers regarding outbreaks. The New York State Nurses Association sued the state and two downstate hospitals for failing to provide adequate PPE and safe working conditions for their members though the lawsuits were eventually dismissed. If the presence of a labor union did have something to do with the lower mortality and infection rates (the study only demonstrates correlation, not causation), 1199SEIU spokesperson Mindy Berman believes it is likely a result of the open communication between workers and management that unions can foster. One thing we heard from our members in the beginning was, We dont know whats going on, where the COVID patients are, where they arent, what our protocols are, she said. Fear was a big thing in the beginning. When youre part of a union, theres regular communication with management that we think helped reduce that uncertainty and fear. 1199SEIU Executive Vice President Milly Silva echoed that sentiment in a recent panel discussion hosted by New York Citys WBLS radio station. At the nursing homes where management actually welcomed the input of the caregivers, the professional staff, our certified nurses aides - and there was constant communication about what was going on and what were the ways that they could make sure that staff and residents were protected - we saw that there were less cases of COVID, she said. We saw that workers were less likely to get sick. Policy implications According to the studys authors, their analysis is the first to demonstrate an association between labor unions and reduced COVID-19 infections and deaths in an essential industry. One reason for that is the lack of occupational data on COVID-19 deaths. Its very difficult to study whether or not the rates at which people are getting sick or dying is associated with the union status of workers because we just dont know where many of these people work, Dean said. As it became clear early on that nursing homes were being hit hard by the pandemic (at least 40 percent of U.S. deaths have been in nursing homes), states began requiring facilities to report cases and deaths linked to residents and sometimes workers. Though there has been little uniformity to that reporting, the requirement has created unique data that is simply not available for most other industries. The studys results have significant implications for stakeholders worried about future waves of the virus, Dean said. I think the takeaway is that labor unions may play an important role in not only protecting health care workers, but also protecting nursing home residents, he said. Nursing homes are the epicenter of the pandemic not just in the state of New York, but around the United States, he continued. So I think theres a debate that should be had about the role of unions in reducing the worst outcomes from the pandemic. Future surges of COVID-19 infections in regions with fewer unionized nursing homes are particularly worrisome in light of the studys findings, the authors write. If unionization was behind the smaller mortality and infection rates, Dean said, then labor unions would be responsible for having averted roughly 1,000 COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes during the first three months of the pandemic. In this case, labor unions didnt just protect their members by fighting for PPE, they also ended up protecting residents in nursing homes and that provided a broader benefit for everybody, he said. Families were less likely to lose loved ones in nursing homes. It really speaks to the broader societal benefits that labor unions can provide beyond just their members. CAMBRIDGE Ambulance dispatchers returned to the Cambridge centre after being moved to Hamilton temporarily in late 2018 due to a staffing shortage. Stephen Van Valkenburg, chief of the Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services, welcomed the dispatchers back to the Cambridge central ambulance communications centre (CACC) this week. Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services is grateful for the return of Cambridge CACC staff to their home location in Cambridge. They continue to process 911 call for ambulance service in the Region of Waterloo and are a valued member of our emergency services family, he said. The Ministry of Health said in December 2018 that the dispatchers were being relocated temporarily to a Hamilton centre due to an unexpected staffing shortage. The ministry has a plan to stabilize staffing levels and move the 911 calls back to Cambridge as quickly and safely as possible, spokesperson David Jensen said. There will be no impact to 911 services in the Waterloo/Wellington area. Members the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents the dispatchers, held a rally at the Hamilton centre calling for improved working conditions and safe staffing levels at dispatch centres across Ontario. A regional vice-president said the shortage and high turnover is due to many staff working on contracts with little protection, low pay and high stress and the move would only add to the issue because the workers would have a long commute on top of 12-hour shifts. The union was concerned the Hamilton facility was not yet equipped with technology used to locate a caller, which could delay response time. The province said it was working to ensure Hamilton would get the needed technology and until then Waterloo Region police dispatchers could help ambulance dispatchers during a 911 call to get a location. Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife said moving dispatchers out of the region to address a staffing shortage was never the solution. Ensuring that dispatchers received appropriate pay, balanced work schedules and supports in their stressful working environment was always the solution, Fife said in an email. Instead, the province spent millions moving dispatchers to the Hamilton site with questionable supports, additional costs, adding to the strain of the job. The move also reignited calls for the region to take control of local ambulance dispatch. Regional councillors voted unanimously in January 2019 to ask the province to transfer local dispatch operations to the region, which took over control of ambulance service in 2000. The region provides ambulance service locally, but dispatch is operated by the Ministry of Health. Some other regions operate their own dispatch operations, paid for by the province. Fife asked Minister of Health Christine Elliott during a February 2019 question period at Queens Park that the region be allowed to take control of local ambulance dispatch, but Elliott did not answer directly. She continues to encourage the Ontario government to hand over the reins to the region, unless theyre going to step up. The province should learn from this wasteful and demoralizing exercise, or get out of the way and let the Region of Waterloo do a much better job, Fife said. Fauchon, one of France's most luxurious food outlets, is to close two flagship shops in Paris, blaming the combined effects of the coronavirus and months of yellow vests protests. A court confirmed the closure of the shops in the up-market Place de la Madeleine in the heart of the capital, where it has operated since it first opened 134 years ago. The closures, which will mean the loss of 77 jobs, leave the historic company with its hotel, Grand Cafe and a tea shop in Paris, on top of a global network of 73 shops. In normal times, Fauchon is major draw for well-heeled tourists from around the world. But the luxury grocers announced in June that its Paris operations would go into administration to get them back on their feet. Its sales were hit badly not just by the months-long closures imposed by the coronavirus lockdown earlier this year, but by the "yellow vest" anti-government protests of 2018-2019 and strikes over pension reforms this winter. "This isn't an easy time, but we have to move forward," Fauchon's president told AFP. "The world is moving on and we have to change our ways." Despite their best efforts, they had been unable to renegotiate the rent on their two shops in this up-market part of the capital, which was costing them three million euros a year, he said. In future, he added, they would focus on smaller shops to be closer to their customers, at a time when foreign visitors driven away by the pandemic have still not returned in numbers. Famous for its range of luxury teas and its fine pastries, Fauchon remains a flagship of the French art of fine living, with 73 shops and restaurants across the world, 30 of them in Japan, 20 in France and 15 in the Middle East. (AFP) Checkpoints along the "ring of steel" separating metropolitan and regional Victoria might be left unattended in heavy rain if police deem conditions unsafe for work. The boundary came into force on Wednesday night as country Victoria moved to eased restrictions, with Melburnians facing a new $4957 fine if they are caught travelling to regional areas without an approved reason. A checkpoint at Little River was left unattended on Thursday morning. Credit:Nathan Templeton, Sunrise program But footage from Seven News showed cars travelling through an unmanned roadblock on the Princes Freeway at Little River on Thursday morning, just hours after the new directions began. The checkpoint was unattended for about half an hour, Seven reported. MBABANE Leaked scripts and government almost losing over E18 million in overcharges are some of the findings contained in the report of the select committee which probed irregularities at the Eswatini Examinations Council (ECESWA) between 2013 and 2017. The probe was meant to investigate alleged gross irregularities relating to maladministration, production of results and other corruption practices. This was after Motshane Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Magongo moved a motion, back in September 2019, that the House appoints a seven-member select committee to investigate the alleged gross irregularities relating to maladministration, production of results and other corruption practices engulfing ECESWA. The committee was chaired by Khubuta MP Musa Mabuza. ECESWA initially had accreditation relationship with Cambridge, whose headquarters are in the United Kingdom. However, the accreditation and printing relationship was affected after Cambridge raised the issue of falling standards in question paper development and printing. Printing It is then that ECESWA moved printing of the Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education (SGCSE) examination papers to Stephen Austin and Sons (SAS), a security printing company based in the UK as well. In its findings, the committee unearthed that ECESWA Registrar Dr Edmund Mazibuko was allegedly invited by a supplier, SAS, to attend a meeting of chief executive officers of mainly awarding bodies of Sub-Saharan Africa and in 2013, the printing company replaced Cambridge for the printing services at ECESWA. This, they uncovered after submissions that were made by Director of Research Clement Dlamini, who is currently on suspension and the matter currently in court, who appeared before the committee. In his submissions, he alleged that an analysis of invoices for 2013 up to the second quarter of 2015 showed that there were attempts to make double payments to SAS, which indicated that printing with SAS was more expensive than with Cambridge. The veracity of these allegations is yet to be proved as the report is yet to be debated in Parliament. He said for example, invoices totalling E5 million were far more by 61.6 per cent than the E3 million which had been charged by Cambridge for the same job in 2012 and the E4.3 million worth of invoices in 2014 was more than the 2012 Cambridge printing charge by 39.1 per cent. Further analysis showed that the accounts department made an overpayment of E3.1 million for an invoice that was not part of the charges in the contract. When the accountant was asked how they made such a blunder, she said they had not been provided with the contract. SAS had sent two types of invoices, submitted Dlamini. Another anomaly that was picked by the committee on the contract between SAS and ECESWA was that a similar contract the company had with Lesotho showed that ECESWA was charged E4.4 million for a job of 3 682 540 pages while Lesotho was charged E2 million for that of 10 103 340 pages and this translated to ECESWA paying five times what the Exams Council of Lesotho was to pay for the same service. The report unearthed that the then Chairman of the council, Sibongile Mtshali, was informed about the irregularities in the transactions involving SAS around July and August 2015 and the matter was reported to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in 2015. An analysis of the transactions between 2013 and 2017 showed that the double payments would have cost ECESWA a minimum of about E14 million of looted funds had they not picked and reported the anomalies to Mtshali in 2015. Contract However, in light of these, the new Chairman of the council, Anderson Nxumalo, was informed about the irregularities and in the SAS contract and despite being warned, it was revealed that he allegedly led a two-man delegation in 2018 that included Mazibuko and Director Examination Administration Mprofethi Sihlabela, to extend the contract for five years. Dlamini also submitted that in 2018, the Finance Committee was afforded the opportunity of reviewing a contract proposal that was to be extended with SAS again. The Finance Committee tried in vain to get SAS to explain how they arrived at the charges to ECESWA from 2013 to 2017, more especially the double freight charges of 2017. This engagement began in March until July when it was discovered that Sihlabela had already engaged SAS by sending papers for printing. It was evident then that the Finance Committee was expected to rubberstamp the agreement and thereby, perpetuate corruption in the organisation, submitted Dlamini. Despite being given further information on this matter, it was revealed that the council proceeded to sign a three-year contract with SAS. Moscow: Colleagues of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny say that a bottle of water with a trace of the Novichok nerve agent was found in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk after he fell ill on a flight from there to Moscow last month. Navalny later was flown to Germany, where he was kept in an induced coma for more than two weeks as he was treated with an antidote at Berlin's Charite hospital. Members of his team accused the Kremlin of involvement in the poisoning, charges that Russian officials have vehemently denied. Alexei Navalny, pictured with his wife Yulia, is recovering in a German hospital. Credit:AP via Instagram The Kremlin has bristled at calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to answer questions about the poisoning, urging Germany to provide its evidence. On Tuesday, Navalny posted a picture of himself from his hospital bed, hugged by his wife and children. "I still can't do almost anything on my own, but yesterday I managed to breathe on my own for the entire day," he added in the post. A top Air Force leader in the Pacific refused to confirm or deny recent reports that a U.S. aircraft disguised itself as a Malaysian plane, allegedly "spoofing" a transponder signal to spy on Chinese military activities. But he said the U.S. didn't break any rules. Popular Mechanics last week reported that an RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft flying off of China's Hainan island electronically impersonated a Malaysian plane while transiting through the South China Sea. Read Next: Army Adds Face Mask, Better Hot Weather Gear to Soldiers Clothing Bags Speaking to reporters during the Air Force Association's virtual Air, Space & Cyber conference Wednesday, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Pacific Air Forces, objected to the term "spoofing" and claimed the aircraft was following international rules regarding transponders. "I know we follow the rules for international airspace, and we were following the rules that day," Wilsbach said. He did not offer additional details on what the Rivet Joint did during the flight. Aircraft spotters with the South China Sea Probing Initiative, a think tank launched by Beijing-based Peking University, reportedly noticed the Rivet Joint from Kadena Air Base, Japan, change its "Mode S" transponder code, which gives pilots more situational awareness in a traffic-heavy sky and transmits aircraft information to a Secondary Surveillance Radar used by air traffic control. To comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Mode S-equipped planes have a unique "hex code" to identify that particular aircraft. According to Popular Mechanics, on Sept. 8, the Rivet Joint's Mode S number "suddenly changed" from AE01CE to 750548. Per the ICAO registration, 750548 is the number "for an unknown Malaysian aircraft," the website said. The alleged move came days after China accused the U.S. of trespassing in what it deems a "no-fly zone" after a U-2 Dragon Lady reconnaissance aircraft was spotted over the Yellow Sea on its north coast. "The trespass severely affected China's normal exercises and training activities, and violated the rules of behavior for air and maritime safety between China and the United States, as well as relevant international practices," Wu Qian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, told CNN on Aug. 26. Wilsbach said the flight was not out of the ordinary for how the Air Force conducts its patrols. "We fly the U-2 almost every day, and we particularly look at Russia, China and North Korea with the U-2," he said. "It wasn't necessarily a one-off [incident] in the fact that it was flying in a track that we frequently fly in." Wilsbach said China's claims of a no-fly zone aren't in accordance with international law. While the Air Force was aware of China's restriction, he said it "chose to fly there anyway [because] it was within our rights to do so in international airspace." The U-2, which is capable of flying at 70,000-plus feet, "has some flexibility with the sensors you could put on" with superior intelligence collection systems -- providing multi-spectral imaging of targets to extreme ranges -- as compared to some other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, he said. Even though the aircraft is more than 60 years old, "it's so reliable," Wilsbach added. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214. Related: B-1 Returns to Pacific in 'Dynamic Force Employment' - Burkina Faso president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, has been welcomed to Nigeria by Muhammadu Buhari - President Kabore arrived FCT on Thursday, September 17, and was led to the Aso Rock Villa by his Nigerian counterpart - Both leaders observed social distance and could not shake hands in adherence to the safety protocols amid the Covid-19 crisis PAY ATTENTION: Click See First under the Following tab to see Legit.ng News on your Facebook News Feed! President Muhammadu Buhari has received an august visitor in the person of Roch Marc Christian Kabore of Burkina Faso. President Kabore was received by his Nigerian counterpart on Thursday, September 17, at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja. Top Nigerian government officials including the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) chairman, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, were in attendance to give a pleasant welcome to one of Africa's leaders. Although the purpose of the visit has not been officially disclosed, President Kabore was led to the Aso Villa by the Nigerian leader where he was sighted signing on the visitors' register. Donned in Burkina Faso native wear, Kabore maintained social distanced with President Buhari and both African leaders were unable to embrace and shake hands in strict adherence to the Covid-19 safety protocols. Burkina Faso president, Kabore of Burkina Faso, has been welcomed to Nigeria by Muhammadu Buhari. Credit: Twitter (Presidency Nigeria). Source: Twitter In a related development, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, August 18, had a telephone conversation with President Buhari. The conversation, according to the Saudi Press Agency, was lengthened towards how to stabilize and rebalance global oil markets. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read the best news on Nigerias #1 news app Part of the discussion was accentuated on the importance of compliance to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreement and the agreed-upon compensation mechanism by all member states. The two leaders also discussed bilateral relations between the two countries and opportunities for their further development in the future. Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that Nigeria would be celebrating its 60th independence anniversary on October 1, 2020, and the federal government said the celebration would be observed for a year, ending on September 30, 2021. This information was disclosed on Wednesday, September 16, while President Buhari announced the theme for the independence celebration at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Whos the better leader between President Buhari and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan? | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng Sisi stressed the importance of the continuation of European support for African countries facing the coronavirus Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed a number of issues with European Council President Charles Michel in a phone call on Thursday, including relations between Egypt and the European Union. Among the issues that were tackled were ways to strengthen mutual relations between the two sides at all levels, El-Sisis spokesman Bassam Rady said in the statement. El-Sisi and Michel, a Belgian politician who has been the president of the European Council since 2019, also touched on the coordination efforts on the most important regional issues, especially in light of the EU summit that is due to be held later this month, Rady said. According to the statement, the two parties reviewed the various aspects of the institutional relationship between Egypt and the EU in its political, economic and developmental dimensions. Emphasis was placed during the call on the importance of continuing to strengthen cooperation and mutual dialogue in order to consolidate the friendly relations in light of common interests and challenges, the statement said. They also tackled the coordination between Egypt and the EU on various important international and regional issues, especially the developments in the situation in the eastern Mediterranean and in Libya. In this regard, the statement said, an agreement was reached on the importance of maximising channels of consultation between the two sides. Rady said that both sides visions converged on the need to continue working to reach a comprehensive political settlement to the Libyan crisis in accordance with international references, so that stability can be restored in the region and a better future for its peoples can be provided. El-Sisi also stressed the importance of ensuring the continuation of the European support for African countries to face the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic, especially on the health and food sectors, in addition to encouraging major European companies to establish more investment projects on the continent. In addition, he also highlighted the importance of continuing joint cooperation to confront the phenomena of illegal immigration and terrorism in Africa, as they pose a threat to regional and international peace and security, the statement said. Search Keywords: Short link: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has launched an investigation into alleged human rights abuses and election fraud in Belarus. The expert commission assigned on September 17 to conduct the investigation is expected to deliver its findings within six to eight weeks. Crisis In Belarus Read our ongoing coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election, widely seen as fraudulent. The commission will look into numerous reports of human rights violations both before and after Belarus's August 9 presidential election, which gave long-standing President Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth straight term and prompted mass demonstrations against the outcome. The United States and Canada will join 15 European countries on the commission. In announcing the measure, the 17 OSCE members said in a statement that Belarus had failed to comply with the body's earlier offer to mediate between the government and the opposition. "The response of the Belarusian authorities has been to systematically target those who would engage in dialogue and to continue...violent repression of peaceful protesters, including women and young people," the statement said. With reporting by dpa and Reuters New York, 17 September 2020 -- A new High-Level Commission of advocates, experts and activists will be established today to help commitments to womens health and rights made at the November 2019 Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 stay on track, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is blocking access to essential services, such as family planning and antenatal care. The Nairobi Summit secured billions of dollars in commitments from governments, the private sector, foundations and others. It rallied support to achieve three zeros zero unmet need for family planning, zero preventable maternal deaths, zero gender-based violence and harmful practices in 10 years. UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, and the governments of Denmark and Kenya convened the Summit 25 years after the landmark International Conference on Population and Development, which culminated in a global agreement that sexual and reproductive health and rights are a necessity for growth and prosperity. But progress in securing these rights has stalled. Since the Nairobi Summit, the road to 2030 and the achievement of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all has grown steeper due to COVID-19, says UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. Yet we continue to forge ahead, to back up words with deeds and action on the ground. The new High-Level Commission will help all of us who made commitments in Nairobi keep those promises. Like the delegates at the Nairobi Summit, the membership of the High-Level Commission is radically inclusive. Chaired by H.E. Mr. Jakaya Kikwete, Former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, and H.E. Michaelle Jean, 27th Governor General of Canada, its members range from former heads of state to grassroots activists and youth. The Commission will monitor and report on progress towards fulfilling the 1,250 commitments made at the Nairobi Summit, and in particular the 12 global commitments contained in the Nairobi Statement on ICPD25, and make recommendations for removing bottlenecks so that the sexual and reproductive health and rights community maintains its momentum towards a world of rights and choices for all. More information about the High-Level Commision, its members and activities can be found here: https://unf.pa/hlc For media and interview enquiries, please contact: Eddie Wright: +1 917 831 2074; [email protected] From Commitments to Action: High-Level Commission on the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 Follow-up Name Designation and Organization 1. Mr. Hatim Aznague Founder & President of the Sustainable Development's Youth Association 2. Dr. Alvaro Bermejo Director General, IPPF 3. Mr. Rudelmar Bueno de Faria General Secretary, Action by Churches Together (ACT) Alliance 4. Ms. Franka Cadee President, International Confederation of Midwives 5. Ms. Dawn Casey Deputy CEO, National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation 6. Ms. Alexandra Chichikova Miss World Wheelchair 2017; advocate for SRHR and GBV among people with disabilities 7. Mr. Martin Chungong Secretary General, Inter-Parliamentary Union 8. Mr. Henk de Jong Chief of International Markets, Royal Philips 9. Ms. Jaha Dukureh CEO, Safe Hands for Girls 10. Dr. Mary-Ann Etiebet Executive Director, Merck for Mothers 11. Ms. Senait Fisseha Director, International Programs, Susan Buffett Foundation 12. H.E. Michaelle Jean (Co-chair) 27th Governor General of Canada; 3rd Secretary General of the International Organization of la Francophonie 13. Ms. Lorence Kabasele President of AfriYAN (ESA) 14. Mr. Martin Karadzhov Chair of the Youth Steering Committee of ILGA World (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) 15. Mr. Sangeet Kayastha Coordinator, Y-PEER Asia-Pacific Center 16. H.E. Mr. Jakaya Kikwete (Co-chair) Former President, United Republic of Tanzania 17. Mr. Hans Linde Chairman, Riksforbundet for Sexuell Upplysning (RFSU) 18. Hon. Angelica Lozano Senator, Parliament, Colombia 19. Dr. Sara Pantuliano Chief Executive, Overseas Development Institute 20. Ms. Latanya Mapp Frett President and CEO, Global Fund for Women 21. Ms. Lucy Mulenkei Executive Director, Indigenous Information Network 22. Professor Friday Okonofua Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Benin 23. Ms. Bandana Rana Vice Chair, UN CEDAW Committee 24. Professor Gamal Serour Director, International Islamic Center for Population Studies, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 25. Professor Keizo Takemi Universal Health Coverage Advocate 26. Dr. Nahid Toubia Assistant Professor at Columbia University and Director of RAINBO (Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women) 27. Ms. Jayathma Wickramanayake Envoy of the Secretary-General on Youth, UN 28. H.E. Ms. Lindiwe Zulu Secretary of the Board, Partners in Population and Development Minister of Social Development, South Africa Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor Romania must be proud of the resources it has and must work to capitalize them, because nobody wants to import gas from other producers in the Black Sea, said, on Thursday, Mark Beacom, CEO of Black Sea Oil&Gas (BSOG). We must not forget that Romania is not the only country with a Black Sea littoral. It has other neighbors, who, desperately, are trying to reach the moment it is in now. I saw and heard the Turkish President speak of a significant discovery in the Black Sea. And what is absolutely remarkable is how proud the Turkish President is when he speaks on behalf of the Turkish state about this gas discovery and how confident he is when he speaks of the future opportunities of Turkey (...) Romania should be proud of the resources it has and must work to capitalize them, it must be confident that it can put those resources in production and can capitalize its potential at its true value and it can make similar projects, said Beacom. He emphasized, on the occasion of works starting for the underwater pipeline of the natural gas development project Midia - MGD, that the project represents just a small part of the economic potential of the Romanian area of the Black Sea and that Romania shouldn't import, at this time, not even a single cubic meter of gas. I hope that this project is the starting point for Romania to kick off reaping absolutely all the benefits that it can have off the exploitations in the Black Sea. (...) I believe nobody wants, looking at Romania, to import gas from other producers in the Black Sea area, given that it has such a high potential. In fact, Romania shouldn't import at this time not even a single cubic meter of gas. All the money that is paid for imports are going outside the country, the BSOG official emphasized. He also drew attention that the project of the company is the best example in this sense, given that it is conducted with Grup Servicii Petroliere (GSP), a Romanian company, and it uses Romanian platforms, Romanian ships, Romanian employees, logistic bases in Romania and Romanian subcontractors. 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 We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So shareholders might well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in Sanne Group plc (LON:SNN). What Is Insider Buying? Most investors know that it is quite permissible for company leaders, such as directors of the board, to buy and sell stock in the company. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market. We would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing. But it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing. For example, a Columbia University study found that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own companys stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'. See our latest analysis for Sanne Group The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Sanne Group The Independent Non-Executive Director Mel Carvill made the biggest insider purchase in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for UK52k worth of shares at a price of UK5.20 each. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at around the current price of UK6.19. Of course they may have changed their mind. But this suggests they are optimistic. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. Happily, the Sanne Group insiders decided to buy shares at close to current prices. Sanne Group insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below! Story continues Sanne Group is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Insider Ownership of Sanne Group Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Sanne Group insiders own about UK9.6m worth of shares. That equates to 1.1% of the company. While this is a strong but not outstanding level of insider ownership, it's enough to indicate some alignment between management and smaller shareholders. What Might The Insider Transactions At Sanne Group Tell Us? It doesn't really mean much that no insider has traded Sanne Group shares in the last quarter. But insiders have shown more of an appetite for the stock, over the last year. We'd like to see bigger individual holdings. However, we don't see anything to make us think Sanne Group insiders are doubting the company. While we like knowing what's going on with the insider's ownership and transactions, we make sure to also consider what risks are facing a stock before making any investment decision. To assist with this, we've discovered 3 warning signs that you should run your eye over to get a better picture of Sanne Group. But note: Sanne Group may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions. 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. Haiti - Canada : Support of several million dollars to the PNH This Thursday, September 17, the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development of Canada for the strengthening of the Haitian National Police (PNH) in the presence of Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe, the ministers concerned and the Canadian Ambassador to Haiti, Stuart Savage. Based on this protocol, the Canadian contribution to the "Support for a Professional and Inclusive Police" project, valued at just over $ 12 million (12,350,000) will: - Support the national effort in terms of integrity and fight against corruption within the PNH; - Develop human and material resources; - Promote the participation of women in the police institution. The MPCE and the MJSP will facilitate the implementation of the project and provide any input and support necessary for its execution. In addition, the Ministry of Justice will ensure the participation of the various Haitian stakeholders associated with the implementation of the project. HL/ HaitiLibre NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) will host its 2020 Virtual Analyst Day on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. The event will feature presentations by Chairman and CEO Leo Denault and members of Entergy's executive management team. The business session will take place from 1:00 p.m. to approximately 3:30 p.m. ET and will be followed by a discussion with a guest speaker. A webcast of the meeting can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Entergy's website at entergy.com. Presentation slides will be made available on the Investor Relations section of Entergy's website after market close on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. A replay of the webcast will also be available on the website. About Entergy Corporation Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including 8,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of $11 billion and approximately 13,600 employees. Additional investor information can be accessed at entergy.com/investors. SOURCE Entergy Corporation Related Links http://www.entergy.com By PTI KOLKATA: Observing that no hospital can refuse to admit a COVID-19 patient if beds for such patients are available, the Calcutta High Court has given liberty to the petitioners in a PIL to draw the attention of the West Bengal Health Regulatory Commission if they have concrete instance of such refusal. In a judgement on a PIL alleging refusal of admission of COVID-19 patients (whether detected or suspected) by hospitals in some cases, a division bench comprising Chief Justice T B N Radhakrishnan and Justice Arijit Banerjee said the primary object of a hospital, be it government or private, should be to render healthcare to those who are in need of it. "The refusal on the part of a hospital to do so without valid reason, e.g., non-availability of beds, will amount to a culpable breach of the fundamental duty of a medical institution," the bench said in the judgement passed on Wednesday. It said that in case the petitioners have a concrete instance of any hospital denying admission to a COVID-19 patient despite beds being available, the petitioners will be at liberty to draw the same to the notice of The West Bengal Health Regulatory Commission. The petitioners claimed that there is no way of knowing as to how many beds for COVID-19 patients are available in the state and private hospitals at any given point of time. The counsel for the state told the court that the state government has created a database which can be accessed by anybody and which gives all requisite information regarding availability of beds in the hospitals, admission of COVID-19 patients in the hospitals, discharge of such patients from the hospitals, etc. The counsel for the state denied that there has been any case where any government hospital has denied admission to a COVID-19 patient in spite of availability of beds. ROME When Giuseppe Chiodi, 77, came down with the flu in February, he didn't think much of it. Winter in his hometown the northern Italian hamlet of Montello can be harsh. Fevers, at least for the elderly, are a seasonal nuisance. He and his wife, Giuseppina, 78, had each migrated to the north of Italy from the poorer south in the 1960s. They met in their 20s at the company for which they both worked, and they had been married for 54 years. Both were healthy. They were looking forward to spending the rest of their retirement together. Image: Giuseppe and Giuseppina Chiodi. (Courtesy Chiodi family) But shortly after Chiodi came down with the flu, his wife started vomiting and found herself unable to stand. Within days in a story that moved the pope Covid-19 had killed them both. "At that time we only learned about coronavirus from the news," said Carlo Chiodi, 50, their son. "We never thought it could happen to us." Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak In fact, the area had been entirely free of the virus. The first case of Covid-19 had been diagnosed in Codogno, an hour's drive from Montello, just one week earlier. But within weeks, the virus spread like wildfire, and the area they lived in, near Bergamo, became the deadliest in Italy. So many people died of the coronavirus there that by mid-March, the cemeteries had run out of space. The dead were convoyed out of the city in a grim parade of military trucks. Carlo Chiodi's parents weren't the only ones to fall ill during those terrifying weeks. His sister, Terry Chiodi, developed a lung infection around the same time. Her doctor told her it was just bronchitis and advised her not to visit her parents to avoid giving it to them. 'None of us was worried' "It started as a normal flu. None of us was worried," Carlo Chiodi said. "Then we heard that a man in Montello was diagnosed with coronavirus. That's when we asked my father if he knew him." In fact, he did: Both went to the town's senior citizens recreation club, where, yes, they played cards together. Story continues Image: Carlo Chiodi's family with Pope Francis. (Courtesy Chiodi family) The connection roused a suspicion that soon spiraled into a nightmare for the Chiodi family. They started calling all of the coronavirus emergency numbers, but every time they got the same advice: If your father has no serious breathing problems, he should stay home and take paracetamol (known in the U.S. as acetaminophen). Giuseppe Chiodi had no problems breathing. But the fever just wouldn't subside. Then, on March 10, he started coughing. "We were teasing him, because he sounded like he was faking it," his son said. "Like we did as children when we were pretending to be sick to skip school." But the reality was no joke. Giuseppe Chiodi's cough sounded funny to his children's ears, because his lung capacity was severely compromised. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance the same day. He never returned. "To this day I regret not having said goodbye to my father," Carlo Chiodi said. "I just watched him walk out of the house. And that was the last time I saw him." His mother's condition also deteriorated. Four days later, she, too, was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Terry Chiodi said: "I didn't expect my mother not to come back, so I just waved goodbye to her and told her to listen to the doctors. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. That's when I instinctively tried to hug her, but she stopped me from getting close to her. She knew it was probably the last time we would see each other, but she still wanted to protect me." Three hours after his wife of more than 50 years arrived at the hospital, Giuseppe Chiodi died. She died 10 days later. The same day, Terry Chiodi's family doctor also died of Covid-19 one of more than 170 health workers to have fallen victim to the virus in Italy. The coronavirus has separated families like the Chiodis in more ways than one. Once it became clear that Carlo Chiodi's parents had contracted Covid-19, health authorities asked him to remain in their home in isolation. Then the lockdown kicked in, and he couldn't see his wife and child, who live in a nearby town, for weeks. "I was alone in the house I grew up in, surrounded by memories of my parents and my childhood," Carlo Chiodi said. "My wife was given permission to come see me once in a while, but she would stand by the gate and me on the balcony to keep the distance." But he was denied more than the company of his wife and child. Because he was in isolation, he was also prevented from attending his parents' funerals to say his last goodbyes. After Italy went into lockdown on March 8, all gatherings including gatherings at funerals were banned. Terry Chiodi was one of very few relatives allowed in the cemetery during the burials, as she was an immediate family member who wasn't in isolation, unlike her brother. So she was there, first for her father's burial and, later, for her mother's. "Something weird happened when my mother was being buried, days after my father," Terry Chiodi said. "So many people died at once that the cemetery ran out of plots. So they were both placed into wall niches. But there, even there, space was limited. So they were about to put my mother in a wall away from my father's, which upset me," she said. "Then, as they were lifting her coffin, the crane stopped working. It was surreal." As her mother's coffin hung in midair and workers struggled to fix the crane, Terry Chiodi returned to visit her father in the niche in which he had been entombed a few days earlier. In Italy, coffins can be removed from their original niches after 30 years unless the family requests otherwise. Call it a miracle or call it coincidence, but when Terry Chiodi was at her father's niche, she saw that a space next to him had been freed up that very morning. "I rushed to tell everyone, and so she was finally placed right next to the man she was married to for 54 years," her daughter said. "Now they can rest together in eternity." 'I was angry at God' The story of the Chiodis just two of the more than 35,000 victims of Covid-19 in Italy so far caught the eye of Pope Francis, who invited the family to the Vatican at the end of August. They were given an apartment at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the residence inside the Vatican where the pope lives. To their surprise, the pontiff received them in private. "We were meant to just meet and greet him, but in the end, our meeting lasted half an hour," Carlo Chiodi recalled. "He was very friendly. He even called into the room a Swiss guard to ask him to take a photo of us when we asked for it. "But on a serious note, I did tell him that during those days I was angry at God," he said. "And he replied that being angry is OK. It is a sort of prayer for when we feel alone and powerless, like many of us were those days." To the Chiodis' surprise, the pope talked publicly about their meeting a few hours later during the Angelus, the traditional Sunday prayer. "This morning I heard the testimony of a family who lost their grandparents without being able to say goodbye to them," the pope said at the window of the apostolic apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square. "So much suffering, so many people who lost their lives, victims of this disease, and so many volunteers, doctors, nurses, sisters, priests who also lost their lives. Let us remember the families who have suffered because of this." Indian government has rejected Pakistans obsession with territorial aggrandisement supported by cross-border terrorism and emphasised that Islamabad should desist from laying untenable claims to Indian territories, which has neither legal validity nor international credibility, said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) here on Thursday. While responding to an unstarred question on the new political map of Pakistan, V Muraleedharan, Minister of State in the MEA, said in Rajya Sabha that Pakistan had released the so-called map making absurd assertions and laying untenable claims to territories in the Gujarat and Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The new political map of Pakistan was unveiled by Prime Minister Imran Khan on the eve of the first anniversary of the withdrawal of Jammu and Kashmirs special status under Article 370. The map depicts the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory while also incorporating Siachen as part of Pakistan. It also incorporates Sir Creek into Pakistani territory as well as parts of the erstwhile princely state of Junagadh. On 4 August 2020, a so-called political map of Pakistan was unveiled by its Prime Minister making absurd assertions and laying untenable claims to territories in the Indian state of Gujarat and our Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Muraleedharan said. Government has rejected Pakistans obsession with territorial aggrandisement supported by cross-border terrorism. It has also been emphasised that Pakistan should desist from laying untenable claims to Indian territories, which neither have legal validity nor international credibility, Muraleedharan said. The minister said the government continues to respond appropriately to Pakistans malicious actions and propaganda including on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More ICICI Direct's research report on Oberoi Realty Strategy Buy Oberoi Realty in the range of Rs 400.00418.00 for target price of Rs 485.00 with a stop loss of Rs 367.00. Time Frame: Six months Technical View The share price has resolved out of past four months healthy base formation (Rs 300-400), which was formed near lower band of past seven years rising channel, indicating acceleration of upward momentum. Thereby offering fresh entry opportunity to ride next leg of up move. We believe, the stock has undergone a healthy basing formation while pricing in many negatives. Strong support is placed at Rs300 as it is confluence of: a) 80% retracement of 2015-19 rally (Rs 212 642), placed at Rs 295. b) Price parity of 2013 decline Rs 328-153 (53%), decline projected from 2019 high of Rs 642 (54%), at Rs 290. c) As per change of polarity concept, during 2013-15 on multiple occasions stock faced stiff resistance around Rs 320 mark, which is now acting as strong support . On the oscillator front, monthly RSI logged a bullish crossover, which validates our positive stance. We expect the stock to endure its upward momentum and head towards Rs 485 levels in coming months as it is the 61.8% retracement of entire March-April decline (Rs 525-290), placed at Rs 478 Fundamental View Residential pain imminent; Consolidation in industry likely The sharp volume decline amid Covid-19 was an exacerbation of already struggling residential real estate due to weak macroeconomic conditions. The company has maintained its target to launch Thane project by Diwali, subject the normalisation of Covid-19. The company, however, termed the pandemic led dislocation to be the precursor of the industry consolidation with weak players likely to shut shop. While we concur with companys assessment, we also believe that pain could be elongated considering the big ticket size of real estate as well as relatively steeper impact on key cities including Mumbai. Given the pandemic impact, we lower ORLs sales volume estimates to 0.7 msf in FY21 (vs. 1.7 msf earlier), while we bake in 1.7 msf volumes in FY22E, with Thane/ Goregaon Phase III, kicking in. We expect the launch timelines of residential to be a function of pandemic status, rather than companys plan Commercial vertical stable; mall, hospitality outlook dim The commercial segment is the only stable vertical in the current condition. Among operational assets, the company expects Commerz I to revert back to 70% occupancy by Q2 end/Q3 beginning post fitout by a lessee. ORL has signed an agreement with Morgan Stanley to lease 1.1 million square feet at Commerz III from 2023 on a long term lease agreement of 9.5 years, which is a key positive. The Borivali mall is expected to be delayed by six months (vs. earlier target of Q4FY21E opening), while Worli hospitality (to be restructured) and mall project, has been put on hold. The company is not expecting much cash burn in Westin, given no project level leverage. Negotiation of rental waiver continues for Oberoi Mall, post which the company can recognise some revenues (recognised zero revenues in Q1) For all recommendations report, click here Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Read More The infighting in Rajasthan Congress seems unending. After a Congress MLA wrote to chief minister Ashok Gehlot demanding removal of an unnamed corrupt minister from the Cabinet, mines minister Pramod Jain Bhaya met former state party chief Sachin Pilot and then Gehlot on Wednesday, leading to speculations that all was not well in the Cabinet which is expecting a reshuffle in some days. Also read: All bodies recovered from Chambal river in Rajasthan boat tragedy Bhaya was believed to be made a minister from Pilots quota in Gehlots Cabinet but stayed with the latter even after Pilots rebellion along with 21 other MLAs. On Wednesday morning, around 11.30 am, Bhaya reached Pilots residence in Civil Lines and had a closed-door meeting till 12.15pm. He is probably the first Cabinet minister, who met Pilot, after the Congress high command was able to end Pilots rebellion mid-August by assuring him that his concerns would be addressed. Outside Pilots residence, Bhaya said he was visiting Pilot as he hadnt met the leader for a long time. When two politicians meet, they obviously talk politics, he said. Thereafter, Bhaya met Gehlot at his residence at around 2pm. The meeting lasted for about half an hour. On September 14, a letter by Congress MLA Bharat Singh had circulated on social media, in which he demanded removal of a minister (without naming anyone), calling that minister a mafia of corruption. Singh, member of state wildlife board, is considered close to Gehlot. A senior leader familiar with the development, requesting anonymity, said both the MLA and Bhaya come from Hadoti region of Rajasthan and have not been on the best of terms. The leader said Bhayas meeting with Pilot should be seen in the light of Bharat Singhs letter and that the ministers performance was discussed at meetings with party high command recently. As a reshuffle is expected soon, Bhayas meeting the two leaders could save his ministerial berth, the leader said. Bhaya refused to comment on Singhs letter, saying he was a senior and respectable leader. He can have his personal opinion. I do not want to comment. In democracy, all are free to write, he said. A second Congress leader, on the condition of anonymity, said, Certainly, the meeting has it political meanings, especially after the month-long political crisis. A clear line between Gehlot and Pilot camp is drawn, things might look settled but differences are very much there, and amid this, the meeting has created a buzz of reshuffle. Finding an opportunity to attack the Gehlot-led government, BJP leaders quoted Singhs letter to claim that corruption was prevalent in his Cabinet. Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat tweeted, It seems that part-2 of the film nakara-nikama by the Chief Minister is going to be released soon. Reacting to Shekhawats tweet, Independent MLA and Gehlot loyalist Sanyam Lodha asked who the big brother had chosen for part two of film nakara-nikama. Naming three BJP leaders, he tweeted that they had played a key role in nakara-nikama part-I. Now tell who the mota bhai (big brother) has chosen for part-II, he tweeted. Political analyst Narayan Bareth said Congress is one party that faces such issues whenever it is in power. Earlier, there were no challenges but they are a serious concern and they should keep their house in order. In every party there are rivalries, in Congress, it is out in the open whereas in BJP, it is behind close doors. They havent learnt how to run an organisation, especially when they have an opponent like (PM) Modi, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Victoria has recorded 45 new coronavirus cases and five deaths as anti-lockdown protesters prepare to rally in Melbourne again. The new cases reported on Friday come after the state's daily infections dropped to 28 on Thursday - the first time the figures have been in the 20s since June 24. The people who have died include one man in his 50s, one man in his 70s, one man in his 80s and two women in their 90s. All of those deaths are linked to aged care. The daily update comes as disgruntled Melburnians revealed they are planning to take to the streets again in protest of the city's Stage Four lockdown restrictions. Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent told 3AW's Neil Mitchell police received a warning email from a protester. Protesters have warned there will be further anti-lockdown rallies in Melbourne this weekend. Pictured: Police scuffle with protesters during an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne on Sunday September 13 Over the last two weekends protesters have clashed with police at the Shrine Of Remembrance, The Tan track and Queen Victoria Market. Police arrested 74 people and issued at least 176 infringement notices during last Sunday's protest at the market. Pictured: Police move protesters on through the Queen Victoria Market 'The organiser of the protest sent an email to us advising us that if we refuse to allow them we will be jeopardising the safety of others and Victoria Police would be putting all Victorians at risk,' he said. 'Unfortunately, we're just going to have to continue to drag police off other functions and other roles to police these people in the city.' It will be the third weekend protesters have gathered at inner-city landmarks to rally against the state government's Stage Four restrictions in Melbourne. Over the last two weekends protesters have clashed with police at the Shrine Of Remembrance, The Tan track and Queen Victoria Market. Police arrested 74 people and issued at least 176 infringement notices during last Sunday's protest at the market. 'We've had the Shrine, we've had the Tan, we've had the market,' Mr Nugent said. 'We'll just continue to enforce, I mean, the moment they turn up to protest it's a criminal offence.' Victoria recorded 45 new coronavirus cases and five deaths on Friday. Pictured: A resident walks along South Wharf in Melbourne as part of their permitted exercise on Wednesday Residents in regional Victoria are now enjoying eased coronavirus restrictions after they moved away from Stage Three lockdown at 11.59pm on Wednesday. Pubs, cafes and restaurants are able to serve people outside with strict density quotas, while outdoor gathering limits will be upped to 10. Regional Victorians are also able to leave their homes without restriction and all shops can reopen. They will still be able to travel via Melbourne to reach other parts of the state, but can only stop for three reasons including food, care and permitted work and study. Caravan parks and camping grounds in regional areas were also allowed to reopen from Thursday, but with group booking restrictions. Melbourne residents who leave the city without a lawful excuse will be fined $4,957. The new offence is designed to deter Melburnians from entering regional Victoria. It will be bolstered by beefed-up roadblocks, creating lengthy traffic delays as vehicles pass through. Melbourne's new case average must stay between 30 to 50 for some of the city's restrictions to be eased as planned on September 28. NEW DELHI: As India's covid-19 cases surged to 51,23,785, health minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said a vaccine may be available by the start of 2021, but it would still take some time to reach every citizen. During a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on covid-19 situation in the country, the minister said, We hope that we will get a covid-19 vaccine by the beginning of the next year. We are also coordinating with World Health Organization (WHO) and other bodies. India is among the few countries that have managed to isolate the virus. There are around 40,000 samples that are being studied." The discussion on covid-19 continued in the House on Thursday after a heated debate on Wednesday. Members of Parliament raised several questions regarding lockdown and availability and affordability of the vaccine. Congress leaders on Wednesday tried to corner the Narendra Modi-led NDA government over handling of the pandemic in India. Defending the Centres stand, Harsh Vardhan said even before the government could find the first case of covid-19 in India, it had started taking appropriate steps to counter the disease. The government had discussed the matter with expert groups on 8 January and 17 January onwards efforts had been initiated to fight the disease and advisories issued from time to time, Harsh Vardhan said. The first case was reported on 20 January. The number of cases as well as deaths in the US and Brazil is much higher in comparison to India. Indias recovery rate has also risen. Only America carried out more tests than us," he said. Harsh Vardhan said the mortality rate in India at 1.64% is the lowest in the world and the government is targeting to bring it down to less than 1%. Even though the number of cases may have crossed 50 million, the number of active cases is less than 20%. He said that clinical trials were being conducted for the Bacillus CalmetteGuerin (BCG) vaccine and vaccine candidates have reached phases I, II and III. We have to break the chain of transmission. The transmission is taking place because of our carelessness. We need to follow hygiene protocols, continue distancing and wear masks," the health minister said. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, also a former health minister, said India should be well placed to get the vaccine at an "affordable price" and at an "early stage" through a mechanism like pooled procurement. The government should also be extra cautious about the quality, safety and efficacy of a new vaccine, he said. The former health minister said the government had lost "golden months" to stop the spread of the disease despite a warning from WHO about a 'mysterious pneumonia' spreading in China. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said Maharashtra is yet to get 25,000 crore from the Centre that is need to fight covid-19. Raut also alleged the Centre had stopped supplies of medical equipment like PPE kits and masks from 1 September. This had put an additional burden of 350 crore on the state, he claimed. Harsh Vardhan said there was no shortage of PPE kits, testing kits and masks and there is no discrimination against any state. The number of covid-19 cases continues to rise in the country with Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu comprising close to 60% of the active cases. Around 70% of total active cases are in nine most-affected states/UTs, according to the health ministry. In the last 24 hours, 90,123 new cases have been reported in the country. With more than 20,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, Maharashtra is leading the tally, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 8846 and Karnataka at 7576, the government said. Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was discharged from Delhi's All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital on Thursday. He was dishcarged after, four days he was re-admitted for a full check-up after recovering from covid-19. He was tested positive for covid in August and was admitted to AIIMS and later to Medanta for treatment after post covid-19 complications such as fatigue. Sourced said that he may attend parliament on Monday. 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 If youre active on social media, you may have seen a fellow parent share some of this information. So how do you go about pushing back against the falsehoods? I asked three experts to weigh in. If its someone you know, talk to them privately. Start by asking broad questions about their posts, like, What is this about? Can you explain it to me? said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher and the author of The Worlds Worst Conspiracies. Youre trying to gather knowledge about their beliefs in a non-adversarial way. You dont want to try to debate or debunk, it makes them think theyre right, he said. Just ask questions and get them to explain it to you. Get them to do the thinking, said Rothschild. You cant reason someone out of a fringe belief, but you may be able to get them to see their logic isnt holding up. Approach the subject with kindness and empathy. Paul Offit, M.D., the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia who talks to parents who have encountered vaccine conspiracy theories, said that I am sympathetic to the fact that its hard to see your kids injected with a biological fluid, he said. I can see when people would be worried about that. So try to engage with what your friend is really afraid of if they are posting a lot about child trafficking. Are they scared of their child getting kidnapped? If so, why? You have to be willing to meet them where they are without calling them crazy or dismissing them out of hand. Even feigning interest in the conspiracy in order to find out what their real pain point or fear is that theyre trying to address in their lives, may give you info on how to reach them as theyre getting more and more involved in this, Donovan explained. Acknowledge when someone is not open to a discussion. If your friend is so deeply into the QAnon world that they cannot have a civil discussion about their beliefs, Let them know you love them, that youre here for them, but then drop it, said Rothschild you cant talk somebody out of a belief that they want to have. If its someone you dont know personally, respond with facts. If someone is repeating misinformation, say, in a Facebook mom group, you can gently push back with a link to correct data, said Donovan. Its appropriate to respond, I dont think this discussion has a place here, and potentially link to some of the reporting going on, she said. If that misinformation is anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim, as many of QAnon-related conspiracies tend to be, you should report those posts to either the moderator or the social media company, Donovan said. Its important to use the tools available on the platform to get these posts removed. Catie Stewart ignored all the Instagram messages that were abusive or contained threats of violence toward her or Sen. Wiener, but she said she had a decent success rate responding to constituents who were just misinformed. You helped pass a law in California for pedophiles, basically, one parent initially wrote to Wieners account over Instagram D.M., which Stewart shared with me. As a mother, I need a clear understanding of what the laws that are being passed actually mean. Coco's Law is named after Nicole Fox Fenlon, a young woman who took her own life in 2018 following a period of online abuse. Ms Fenlon, also known as Coco, suffered a campaign of bullying that prompted her mother Jackie Fox to campaign for more stringent laws. Ms Fox handed in a petition to TDs in the Dail earlier today, urging them to press ahead and pass the legislation. Just handing in the petition today, I was guaranteed now, I got an email from the Minister for Justice assuring me that Cocos law will be in before Christmas, and other TDs and Ministers said it will be in well before Christmas, Ms Fox said. Criminal offences Draft legislation of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill has included a number of new criminal offences to crackdown on online bullying and harassment. Advertisement The offences include taking and distributing intimate images without consent; online or digital harassment; a specific offence of stalking; an expanded offence of sending threatening or indecent messages; and revenge pornography. Theyre going to make online bullying a criminal offence where you could get up to seven years where it causes someone to self-harm or take their own life, its up to seven years and theres a fine of I think 2,500, Ms Fox said. Hurricane Sally uprooted trees, flooded streets and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses on Wednesday as it brought what the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) called historic and catastrophic flooding to the Alabama-Florida coast. Sally, which made landfall early Wednesday near Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 2 storm, was downgraded in the afternoon to a tropical storm as maximum sustained winds dropped to 113km/h (70mph). Some parts of the Gulf Coast had been inundated with more than 46cm (18 inches) of rain over the previous 24 hours, with more precipitation expected as the storms winds slow further, the NHC said. Several residents along the Alabama and Florida coasts said damage from the slow-moving storm caught them off guard. Normally it goes away. But with this one it was first the anxiety of it coming and then when it finally came, it didnt move, said Preity Patel, 41, who has resided in a downtown Pensacola apartment for two years. It was just constant rain and wind, Patel said. The coastal community of Pensacola, Florida, suffered up to 1.5m (five feet) of flooding, and travel was cut by damaged roads and bridges. More than 500,000 homes and businesses across the area were without power as the storm knocked over stately oak trees and tore power lines from poles. A section of the Pensacola Bay Bridge, known also as the Three Mile Bridge, is missing a significant section, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a press conference. Sally is the 18th named storm in the Atlantic this year [Gerald Herbert/AP] The storm was moving at a slow 8km/h (5mph) pace towards the Alabama-Florida border, but was predicted to pick up speed, the NHC said. The rain is what stands out with this one: Its unreal, said Cavin Hollyhand, 50, who left his home on a barrier island and took shelter in Mobile, Alabama, where he viewed the damage on Wednesday. Some isolated areas could see up to 89cm (35 inches) of rain before Sally is done, the NHC said. Upon landfall at Gulf Shores, Sallys winds were clocked at 169km/h (105mph). Along the coast, piers were ripped away by the storm surge and winds. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey told residents not to go outside to check on damage unless necessary, and to stay away from live power lines and fallen trees. We had strong winds for a long period of time, said 38-year-old Grant Saltz as he took a break from clearing debris outside his Mobile restaurant. Instead of a few hours, we got it for 12 hours. In Pensacola, where wind gusts were clocked at 124km/h (77mph) at one point, images on social media showed major floods. One witness reported hailstorms in the city as well and the NHC warned of possible tornados. Pensacola police warned of high winds and urged residents not to drive around looking at damage. We see lots of lookers out, the police department wrote on Twitter. Its slowing our progress down. Please stay at home! Electrical crews from other states have arrived in Pensacola to aid in restoration efforts. This year weve just got hurricane after hurricane, said Matt Lane, 23, a member of a crew from New Hampshire Electric Coop, who arrived late Tuesday directly from Hurricane Laura recovery efforts in Texas. Sally is the 18th named storm in the Atlantic this year and the eighth tropical storm of hurricane strength to hit the US. There are currently three other named storms in the Atlantic, highlighting one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record. Weve only got one name left, said Jim Foerster, chief meteorologist at DTN, an energy, agriculture and weather data provider, referencing the procedure to name storms and the prospect of running out of letters. Thats going to happen here soon, Wilfred, and then well be into the Greek alphabet. Hurricanes have increased in their intensity and destructiveness since the 1980s as the climate has warmed, according to researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate change is also a factor in the increasing frequency of record-breaking wildfires plaguing the western US, scientists say. Damage from Sally is expected to reach $2bn to $3bn, said Chuck Watson of Enki Research, which tracks tropical storms and models the cost of their damage. That estimate could rise if the heaviest rainfall happens over land, Watson said. As the storm moved east and inland, ports on the western Gulf Coast were reopened to travel and energy companies were beginning to return crews to offshore oil platforms. Sally shut more than a quarter of US Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas production. Two coastal oil refiners halted or slowed operations, adding to existing outages from last months Hurricane Laura and pandemic-related demand losses. WASHINGTON - The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted Wednesday that most of the American public will not have access to a vaccine against the novel coronavirus until late spring or summer of next year - prompting a public rebuke from President Donald Trump, who declared the CDC chief was wrong. At a Senate hearing on the government's response to the pandemic, CDC director Robert Redfield adhered to Trump's oft-stated contention that a safe and effective vaccine will become available in November or December - perhaps just before the presidential election seven weeks away. But Redfield said the vaccine will be provided first to people most vulnerable to covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and supplies will increase over time, with Americans who are lower priority for the protection offered the shot more gradually. For it to be "fully available to the American public, so we begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life," he said, "I think we are probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter 2021." Hours later, Trump sought to knock down Redfield's predicted timeline from the White House press briefing room, saying at a news conference, "I think he made a mistake when he said that. . . . We're ready to distribute immediately to a vast section of the country." The president said that, when he heard what the CDC director had told senators, he called him directly. Trump said Redfield "didn't tell me that," though the president declined to disclose how Redfield replied. "It was an incorrect statement. . . . We are ready at a much faster level than he said," Trump said, reiterating a recent talking point that a vaccine could be ready to begin administering as early as mid-October. Multiple experts - including top scientists leading the vaccine effort - have said it is very unlikely a vaccine will be available by then. Speaking alongside the president, Scott Atlas, a recent addition to the White House's coronavirus advisers, noted that the administration Wednesday circulated a vaccine distribution strategy to states and others. Atlas said the plan anticipates that "no later than January, all the top-priority people will be able to receive the vaccine," with other Americans receiving it starting soon after. The CDC director issued his prediction and received the presidential drubbing the same day that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden raised questions about the safety of a coronavirus vaccine approved during Trump's tenure, warning something so complex and vital to the public's well-being takes time. "Scientific breakthroughs don't care about calendars any more than the virus does," the former vice president said. Redfield said that though any individual vaccinated should benefit from a vaccine, the progressive widening of its availability means there will be a time lag between when a vaccine is approved and when it could have a measurable effect in controlling the pandemic. That might be six to nine months after the day it is approved by federal drug regulators, Redfield predicted. Redfield said that lag between when a vaccine is approved and when the public can get it reinforces the importance of safety measures, such as keeping a proper distance, washing hands and wearing masks. "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against covid than when I take a covid vaccine," Redfield said, because the vaccine is unlikely to produce the desired immune response in everyone who gets it. But Trump at his briefing continued to cast doubt on the value of masks, saying, "The mask is a mixed bag." Redfield's comments were the most detailed time frame outlined so far by the leader of the government's main public health agency. They are consistent with the perspective of Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who said in a recent interview with CNN that relatively small amounts of vaccine will be available at first. "It won't be until we get into 2021 that you'll have hundreds of millions of doses, and just the logistics, constraints in vaccinating large numbers of people," Fauci said. "It's going to take months to get enough people vaccinated to have an umbrella of immunity over the community so that you don't have to worry about easy transmission." Redfield's forecast came as Trump has latched onto the prospect of a vaccine as crucial to his prospects for a second term, with low approval ratings among voters for his handling of the worst public health crisis that the country and world have confronted in a century. A vaccine also is widely regarded as a pivot point for Americans to be unfettered from the constraints the pandemic has imposed on daily life - from recreation such as concerts and movie theaters to workplaces that remain shuttered. A race is underway internationally among pharmaceutical makers to develop vaccines that are safe and effective against the virus, which has infected nearly 6.6 million people in the United States and killed almost 200,000. Developing a vaccine typically takes years, but researchers are working with unprecedented speed. U.S. researchers in January established the goal of a world-record pace of developing an inoculation against the coronavirus within a year to 18 months. Now, three experimental vaccines have entered the final stage of testing in the United States - giving each one to thousands of people to check effectiveness and safety - before submission for federal approval. A debate is raging over whether the Food and Drug Administration should hasten a vaccine's availability by employing emergency authority it has before going through the process of a formal approval. The CDC told states this month they should be ready to receive a coronavirus vaccine as early as Nov. 1 - two days before the election - prompting allegations from critics that the date was politically motivated. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the subcommittee's senior Democrat, accused the administration of "rampant political interference in scientific decision-making." Redfield pressed back against such suggestions during an appearance Wednesday before a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Department of Health and Human Services, of which the CDC is a part. He said the advice to states was based on the pace of the science, not any electoral considerations. And he said his agency was eager to avoid a repetition of a problem that emerged during a pandemic of the H1N1 virus in 2009, when a vaccine became available and states were not ready to receive and distribute it. "We don't want to repeat that hiccup," Redfield told senators. He also said the government does not have an estimated $6 billion it needs for the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. Such funds were proposed in pandemic relief legislation that Congress has not adopted, among partisan disputes over how much more aide the government should provide for laid-off workers and a variety of other purposes. Providing that money, Redfield said, "is as urgent as getting these manufacturing facilities up." Biden's remarks Wednesday show how the pandemic has increasingly become a focal point for both candidates in the final weeks of the race. Biden campaign advisers have regarded the election as a referendum on Trump and his handling of the pandemic. The campaign continues to hold events and run advertisements squarely on this theme. The former vice president's comments, extending suspicions Biden has expressed in recent weeks, highlight the extraordinary roughness of this presidential contest. In past election cycles, calling into question whether an incumbent might risk deliberate harm to Americans to forward his political ambitions was not the norm. But speaking in Wilmington, Del., Biden expressed reservations about whether a covid-19 vaccine approved by the Trump administration would be safe, casting doubt on the incumbent's willingness to put the health of Americans before politics. "I trust vaccines. I trust scientists. But I don't trust Donald Trump," Biden said. "And at this point, the American people can't, either." Biden raised the possibility of Trump pressuring his administration's health officials to sign off on a vaccine in which scientists do not yet have full confidence in order to gain an election advantage. The Democratic nominee expressed skepticism about the CDC and FDA, as well as the president. The former vice president essentially echoed Redfield's point that vaccinating the nation will happen gradually. "It's not going to happen overnight," Biden said. "Once we have it, it's going to take months to distribute." If a vaccine is swiftly approved, it could upend the campaign, and both sides are increasingly bracing for how to deal with the political uncertainty of the coming weeks. Still, experts have questioned whether it is realistic for one to become available before the election. Biden made his remarks after receiving a briefing Wednesday about the quest for a vaccine from scientific, public health and health policy experts. Creating the drug is only "part of the battle," said Biden, who likened effective distribution to a complex military operation. He said a vaccine should be free and that priority should go to those who need it most - and that includes Black and Hispanic communities. The Democrat's view about the possibility of a vaccine has become a point of contention in the campaign, with Trump accusing Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., of spreading "anti-vaccine rhetoric." Biden said he would have no problems endorsing a vaccine - provided it met certain criteria. If the current administration allows a vaccine to be distributed, Biden said, "who will validate it was driven by science? What groups of scientists?" He added that Americans must be confident "distribution will be safe and cost-free" with a plan for doing so "without a hint of favoritism." Biden also lambasted Trump for not aggressively encouraging mask-wearing and alleging that waiters do not like to wear them. The Democrat defended his own calls for a national mask mandate, saying he would seek to implement one by working with governors but that he was not yet completely sure what legal authority he would have to deploy such a rule. She revealed via Instagram on Thursday that she is expecting her first child with husband of six years Christopher French, 38. And Ashley Tisdale stepped out after the birth announcement to visit a friend in West Hollywood. The 35-year-old High School Musical star concealed her burgeoning baby bump beneath a loose fitting floral midi dress. Mom-to-be on the move: Ashley Tisdale stepped out to visit a friend in West Hollywood on Thursday afternoon, after announcing she is expecting first child with husband Christopher French, 38 Her golden brown hair was tied back into a bun and secured with a polka dot scarf. Tisdale had on a medical grade face mask and a pair of trendy round shades that matched her gold hoop earrings. She carried a black Louis Vuitton bag in her hand and she decked out one wrist in a slew of bangles. To complete her fashion forward ensemble, Ashley slipped her feet into a pair of cheetah print pumps. Floral: The 35-year-old High School Musical star concealed her burgeoning baby bump beneath a loose fitting floral midi dress Incognito: Tisdale had on a medical grade face mask and a pair of trendy round shades that matched her gold hoop earrings Ashley arrived to her friend's West Hollywood home in her black G-Wagon, which she expertly parallel parked on the street. After getting in some girl time with her pal, the Disney Channel alum headed back to her car and moved on to her next stop. Tisdale debuted her baby bump in a sweet Instagram post on Thursday morning. Ashley and Christopher wore matching white for the twin photos, taken in a back yard. Wild thing: To complete her fashion forward ensemble, Ashley slipped her feet into a pair of cheetah print pumps Total pro: Ashley arrived to her friend's West Hollywood home in her black G-Wagon, which she expertly parked on the street Tisdale slipped her 5foot3inch frame into a white maxi dress that featured a subtle ruffle design towards the bottom. Her signature tresses were styled into a myriad of soft waves that perfectly framed her face for the sweet snapshots. Christopher, who happens to be successful composer, tenderly held onto his wife of six years as they posed prom style for one shot. He kept in theme with the white color scheme, but gave his look a rocker edge by donning a pair of black trousers. Expecting: Ashley debuted her baby bump in a sweet Instagram post on Thursday morning Twinning: Ashley and Christopher wore matching white for the twin photos, taken in a back yard The couple wed on September 8, 2014 in a small private ceremony held in Santa Barbara, California, after getting engaged in 2013. Tisdale and French were flooded with messages from friends, family, and fans congratulating them on their impending child. Overwhelmed with love, Ashley took her Instagram Story to express her gratitude. 'Thank you for all the love [and] support. So overwhelming! I can't stop smiling. I love you guys so much,' she wrote, followed by a red heart emoji. Rocker edge: Christopher kept in theme with the white color scheme, but gave his look a rocker edge by donning a pair of black trousers Gratitude: Overwhelmed with love, Ashley took her Instagram Story to express her gratitude French also expressed thanks, on behalf of himself and Ashley, via his personal Instagram Story. 'Hey everyone,' he began. 'We are so moved and filled with joy by the amazing and beautiful outpouring of Love from all over the world for this little one.' 'Thank you so much,' Christopher concluded, followed by a black heart emoji. For the little one: French also expressed thanks, on behalf of himself and Ashley, via his personal Instagram Story News of Ashley's pregnancy came after the Suite Life Of Zack And Cody star revealed to her 12.8million followers that she had her breast implants removed to better her health. Tisdale explained that she had the procedure done this year after struggling with 'minor health issues.' The implants were put in place 'years ago,' the blonde beauty also noted. iPadOS includes 100+ new features and improvements. It shares a lot of functions with iOS 14. The update also includes many iPad-specific features such as scribble anywhere, redesigned sidebars, and many UI tweaks to take advantage of a bigger screen. However, whenever a major update to an operating system drops, there are bound to be issues and bugs. One of the common issues which many will likely encounter is related to Bluetooth connectivity. No need to panic though. We have highlighted some of the common workarounds and fixes to address Bluetooth connectivity issues on iPad running iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14.7.1. Compared to an iPhone, the Bluetooth function plays a vital role on the iPad. All the major iPad accessories such as Apple Pencil, magic keyboard, and mouse need a stable Bluetooth connection to get work done on an iPad. The Bluetooth issues ultimately spoil the experience of using a shiny new iPadOS 14 on the iPad. Here are some of the Bluetooth issues that you might face on your iPad running iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14.7.1. Bluetooth unavailable or iPad unable to connect to the Bluetooth accessory Crackling sound Not seeing the Bluetooth accessory iPad keeps getting disconnected with the Bluetooth accessory Skipping, stuttering of music tracks while connected to AirPods The first step youd want to take is to ensure that the problem is with your iPad and not with the Bluetooth accessory youre trying to connect to. So try connecting to the accessory with your Mac, PC, or any other device, and see if things work fine or not. If you find out that the problem lies with your iPad running iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14.7.1, here are a few solutions you can try: How to Fix Bluetooth Issues on iPad, iPad Pro, and iPad Pro running iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14.7.1 1. Install the Latest iPadOS Update The Bluetooth issues on your iPad might be due to a buggy build released by Apple. After all, Apple isnt having good times releasing quality updates. Apple released the stable iPadOS 14 update on September 16. If the Bluetooth connectivity issue is widespread then you can bank on Apple to release bug fixes via a firmware update. Go to the Settings menu and open General > Software Update and see if there is a new firmware update available or not. The latest iPadOS 14.4 update from Apple is a pretty major one and fixes a number of issues and bugs with the OS while also adding new features to it. 2. Turn off Bluetooth and Force Reboot The first thing to try is to turn off your Bluetooth and force reboot your iPad: Turn off Bluetooth by launching the Settings app , navigating to Bluetooth, and turning off the Bluetooth toggle. , navigating to and turning off the Bluetooth toggle. Then force restart your iPad. iPad models with Face ID: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Power button until the device restarts. iPad with Home button: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons until you see the Apple logo. After the iPad has restarted, enable Bluetooth again from Control Center or by launching the Settings app, and navigating to Bluetooth, and tapping on the toggle to turn on Bluetooth. Try connecting to the device now. If the problem still isnt solved, move to the next solution. 3. Forget Device If the previous tip didnt work for you, you can try forgetting the device you paired with from Settings, and then try reconnecting using the steps below. Step 1: Launch the Settings app and go to Bluetooth. Step 2: Tap on the i icon against the device name youre having problems connecting. Step 3: Tap on the Forget This Device button and confirm your action. Step 4: Now pair your iPad with the device again, and see if the issue has been solved. The above solution should help fix issues such as skipping, stopping, or stuttering while playing music tracks in your car over Bluetooth. You can check our post if you want the iPad to stop auto-playing music when it connects to your car Bluetooth. 4. Reset Network Settings If none of the two tips worked, you could also try resetting your network settings. A side effect of doing this is that all your Wi-Fi settings will also be cleared, so you might have to rejoin Wi-Fi networks, and configure VPN all over again. Follow the steps below to learn how to Reset Network Settings on iPad. Step 1: Launch the Settings app and navigate to General > Reset Step 2: Tap Reset Network Settings Step 3: Youll be required to enter your passcode if you have one. Step 4: Confirm your action in the popup Your iPad will reboot. Once it starts up, try pairing to the device again. If your problem still isnt solved, move to the next step. 5. Reset the Bluetooth Accessory Are you still facing Bluetooth issues on iPadOS 14.7.1? Dont worry, the problem could be with your Bluetooth accessory. So, try resetting the Bluetooth device. Keep in mind, the process varies from one device to the other. Therefore, take the help of the user manual or contact the manufacturer for help if you dont know how to reset the device. 6. Restore and Setup as new iPad This is not ideal, but if none of these tips fix your issues, the last resort is to restore your iPad via iTunes or Finder in macOS Catalina/Big Sur and set it up as a new device. This way, you start afresh and get rid of possibly problematic customizations and settings on your device. Follow the instructions in the post linked below to do a clean restore to the latest version of iPadOS via iTunes. 7. Visit an Apple Store If none of the tricks are working for you then its a trip to the nearest Apple Store. You will have to visit your nearest Apple Store to know of any possible hardware-related issues. Hopefully, the Bluetooth problems are behind your back now. Let us know in the comments if you faced any Bluetooth issues after upgrading to iPadOS 14 iPadOS 14.7.1, and if so, which trick helped you to resolve the issue. This article was last updated on August 2, 2021. A 13-year-old boy has been sentenced to ten years in jail for blasphemy by a court in northern Nigeria, prompting 'deep concern' from the United Nations children's organisation. Omar Farouq was convicted by a Sharia court in Kano - a state in northwestern Nigeria - which recently handed down a death sentence to a studio assistant for blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad. Farouq's sentencing followed an accusation that he had used foul language towards Allah during an argument with a friend. 13-year-old Omar Farouq was sentenced to ten years in jail on Tuesday for blasphemy by a Sharia court in Kano State, northwestern Nigeria. The boy is said to have 'used foul language' against Allah during an argument with a friend The boy was convicted on August 10 and Wednesday's sentencing came after an unsuccessful appeal by lawyers for the child on September 7. UNICEF and Farouq's lawyer have decried the sentence, calling it unconstitutional under Nigerian law. They said it also breaks a number of international conventions on the right's of children, including the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which Nigeria ratified in 2001. Kola Alapinni, a member of Farouq's legal counsel, said his team only found out about Farouq's case when working on that of the studio assistant, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu. 'We found out they were convicted on the same day, by the same judge, in the same court, for blasphemy and we found out no one was talking about Omar, so we had to move quickly to file an appeal for him,' Alapinni told CNN. 'Blasphemy is not recognised by Nigerian law. It is inconsistent with the constitution of Nigeria,' he added. Alapinni said Kano State had not granted lawyers access to Farouq and that the boy's mother was forced to flee to a neighbouring town when an angry crowd came to her home. 'Everyone here is scared to speak and living under fear of reprisal attacks,' he said. On Wednesday, UNICEF released a statement saying it was 'deeply concerned' about the case and called on Kano's Sharia court to urgently review it 'with a view to reversing the sentencing'. 'The sentencing of this child - 13-year-old Omar Farouk - to 10 years in prison with menial labour is wrong,' said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria. 'It also negates all core underlying principles of child rights and child justice that Nigeria - and by implication, Kano State - has signed on to.' Lawyers for 13-year-old Farouq say the lengthy sentence he received for his blasphemy conviction is unconstitutional and violates international laws for the protection of children. Above, inmates at a prison in the central Nigerian city of Jos. Hawkins added that the sentencing highlights the need to 'accelerate the enactment of the Kano State Child Protection Bill so as to ensure that all children under 18, including Omar Farouq are protected. 'And that all children in Kano are treated in accordance with child rights standards.' The bill was forwarded to the Kano House of Assembly last year, according to The Punch, a Nigerian daily newspaper. As with most predominately-Muslim states in Nigeria, Kano practices Sharia law as well as secular law. The Kano State government had not responded to a request for comment at the time of this article's publication. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have travelled to Sandringham after spending six weeks at Balmoral. Scotland is traditionally where the Queen enjoys her summer break but she has moved with Prince Philip to Norfolk to spend time privately on the Sandringham Estate. The Queen, 94, normally stays at Sandringham during the Christmas and new year period and it is thought the duke has spent much of his time at the Norfolk estate since retiring from official public duties in 2017. Sandringham / Getty Images The head of state had travelled with Prince Philip to Balmoral in early August. The couple went ahead with their annual stay in the Highlands after spending the previous four months at their Berkshire residence at Windsor Castle, with a reduced household dubbed HMS Bubble. During lockdown at Windsor Castle, the Queen addressed the nation in a broadcast watched by 24 million people. She said, "We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again." Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip / REUTERS A palace spokesman said last week that the Queen and Prince Philip intended to move from Balmoral to spend time privately on the Sandringham Estate. The spokesman added: Subject to the finalisation of the autumn programme, Her Majestys intention is to return to Windsor Castle in October and to resume the use of Buckingham Palace for selected audiences and engagements. These plans will be kept under review and will of course be subject to all relevant guidance and advice. Prince Philip leaving Balmoral for Sandringham yesterday / Rex Features Future arrangements for the 99-year-old duke are still being discussed. It is not yet known whether Philip will remain at Sandringham when the Queen returns to Windsor, or whether he will join her at the castle where they spent the lockdown Sandringham is set to open to the public later this month, as it will host a weekend of drive-in movie screenings on the grounds. With tickets priced at 32.50, films such as 1917, Rocketman, The Greatest Showman and Moana will be played as guests watch from the comfort of their own socially distanced cars. Additional reporting by Press Association. You might notice something different here. As we continue our evolution, our data and market news is now available through the Fastmarkets platform and a trial of this website is no longer available. Our new delivery solution allows you to access the prices and news that matters most to you in a way that delivers value, quality and a unique, fully customizable view for you. We are working hard to develop an experience that allows you to test drive building your view of our data and news on the new platform. In the meantime, learn more about us through any of the options below. Saudia Arabia may have enough mineable uranium ore reserves to make nuclear fuel and weapons. Chinese geologists have been helping the kingdom map its uranium reserves at incredible speed as part of their nuclear cooperation agreement. Details of the stocks are contained in their confidential reports which have been seen by The Guardian. Saudia Arabia may have enough mineable uranium ore reserves to make nuclear fuel and weapons. Pictured: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman The revelation will increase concerns about Saudi Arabia's potential armament. The report states that the geologists worked throughout the year, including in the sweltering heat of the summer, to identify the reserves. They found that more than 90,000 tonnes of uranium could be produced from three main deposits in the centre and northwest of the country. More research will be necessary to confirm the reserves and work out the cost of extracting it. The Middle Eastern country has been open about its plans to go nuclear and extract its uranium domestically. A senior official previously admitted plans to move towards 'self-sufficiency' in producing its on nuclear fuel. The world's top oil exporter has said it wants to use the metal to diversify its energy mix, but uranium enrichment also opens up the possibility of military uses of the material. The revelation will increase concerns about Saudi Arabia's potential armament and weapons programme. Pictured: Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Mark Hibbs, senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said: 'If you are considering nuclear weapons development, the more indigenous your nuclear program is, the better. 'In some cases, foreign suppliers of uranium will require peaceful-use commitments from end users, so if your uranium is indigenous, you don't have to be concerned about that constraint.' The Chinese survey suggests that Saudi Arabia could have enough reserves to fuel a number of reactors as well as a surplus. The Guardian said the report could not be independently verified which had been compiled by the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology (BRIUG) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), working with the Saudi Geological Survey. The issue of uranium enrichment has been a sticking point with the US, especially after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in 2018 that the Sunni Muslim kingdom would develop nuclear arms if regional rival Shi'ite Muslim Iran did. Most of the reserves appear close to a site chosen for the planned city of Neom (artist's impression) which is the centrepiece of bin Salman's Vision 2030 project to wean the country off oil Saudi Arabia has backed President Donald Trump's 'maximum pressure' campaign against Iran after he withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear pact that curbed Iran's disputed nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The major concern is the kingdom's lack of transparency, avoiding inspections due to a 2005 agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A small quantities protocol means monitoring is not necessary up to the point that fissile fuel is put in a reactor. But the international nuclear watchdog now wants the country to accept a full monitoring programme, which has so far not been allowed. IAEA boss Rafael Grossi said on Monday: 'We are in conversation with them. They are interested in developing nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes of course.' Most of the reserves appear close to a site chosen for the planned city of Neom which is the centrepiece of bin Salman's Vision 2030 project to wean the country off oil. China has been prospecting since 2017 across nine potential sites, as it looks to strengthen diplomatic and commercial ties with Saudi Arabia. With less than two weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, many Americans are worried about voting safely during the pandemic. "As the pandemic continues to spread, its vital that we balance the right for citizens to vote along with the importance to maintain their health and safety in doing so," said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, vice chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of Americas (IDSA) global health committee and emerging leader in biosecurity fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, during a media briefing held on Sept. 2 by IDSA, a community of doctors and public health experts who specialize in infectious disease. Public health leaders agree that voting by mail is the safest method for minimizing the risk of COVID-19 infection. But it may not be feasible for all voters to use mail-in ballots, according to Myrna Perez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. At the IDSA media briefing, Perez noted that some voters' need for certain services that are best-provided at polling places, like language translation or aid for the visually or physically impaired, represents one drawback of mail-in voting. MORE: Dining at restaurants linked with increased COVID-19 transmission: CDC study "In this time of crisis, we need to make sure that voters have options," Perez said. In-person voting remains an important option for countless Americans who may not be able to vote by mail. PHOTO: People check in to vote at a polling place on April 7, 2020, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. (Andy Manis/Getty Images) Although many people are concerned about the safety of in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts say that with the proper precautions, risks can be minimized. The IDSA developed safety guidelines for those who need to vote in person, which can be accessed here. MORE: Former Stanford colleagues warn Dr. Scott Atlas fosters 'falsehoods and misrepresentations of science' It will be especially important to focus on controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the weeks leading up to the elections. "Our best chance of having a safe election is that all citizens play a role in helping to reduce community transmission," said Kuppalli. That means practicing good hand hygiene, wearing masks, maintaining physical distances of at least six feet from others and abstaining from social gatherings. Story continues PHOTO: A voter exits the polling precinct after casting their ballot in Florida's primary election at Precinct 321 on Aug. 18, 2020 in Tampa, Fla. (Octavio Jones/Getty Images) Below are answers to some common questions about voting safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. How dangerous is it to vote in person? "When it comes to COVID-19, there is no activity that is zero risk," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, FIDSA, infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, in an email to ABC News. "The riskiest aspect is likely if there is a line where people cannot social distance," he added. Can in-person voting be safe? "Voting in person can be relatively safe if people are able to social distance, wear face coverings, and avoid congregation," said Adalja. PHOTO: An election worker sanitizes and cleans the polling location to help stop the spread of COVID-19 at Boston City Hall during the Massachusetts State Primary on Sept. 1, 2020 in Boston. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) What can voters do to minimize their risk of getting COVID-19 at the polls? Our experts offered these tips: Be prepared to come early and to wait outside as long as possible. Maintain six feet of distance between yourself and other voters or poll workers. Wear a mask. Wash your hands frequently. Refrain from touching your face. Ask poll workers any questions you have about safety measures that are in place. Any sick, disabled, or high-risk voter should engage in curbside voting if available. MORE: 15% of college athletes showed signs of heart damage after COVID. Should they sit on the sidelines to be safe? What about voters who have COVID-19 or COVID-19 positive members of their households? Individuals with known COVID-19 or who have been exposed to COVID-19 should continue self-quarantining. In many states, these individuals may qualify for exemptions for mail-in ballots, according to Perez. She encouraged those with COVID-19 to apply for a vote-by-mail exemption, even if they live in a state with strict voting guidelines. PHOTO: Voters with their ballots leave the polling booths at Boston City Hall during the Massachusetts State Primary on Sept. 1, 2020 in Boston. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) Should I consider volunteering to be a poll worker? There is a push for new volunteers as most of the countrys poll workers are in high-risk categories because of their age. Consider volunteering if you are young and healthy, but Kuppalli suggests speaking to your health care provider first regarding whether it is safe for you to volunteer. Leah Croll, M.D., is a neurology resident at NYU Langone Health and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. How to stay safe when hitting the polls this election season originally appeared on abcnews.go.com With Spain already immersed in a second wave of the coronavirus, the countrys systems for detecting excess mortality rates have already identified a 10% rise in unexpected deaths over two periods: the month of August, and the second week of September. The latest report from the Mortality Monitoring System, known as MoMo, was published on Wednesday, and shows that between July 27 and August 29 there were 3,466 more deaths in Spain than were expected, and that over the last week September 8 to 13 there were an extra 533 compared to the average. The MoMo uses information about deaths from all causes supplied by the nearly 4,000 civil registries in Spain that have digitalized systems, covering 93% of the Spanish population from all of the countrys provinces. The reports estimate the expected mortality rates based on models that use historical averages based on deaths over the last 10 years. You cannot establish that this excess is due to the coronavirus, but it is plausible that it is in part Epidemiologist Jose Jonay Ojeda In the MoMos latest report, there are three periods of excess mortality this year: during the first wave of the coronavirus, which ran from March 10 and May 9, and saw 43,068 more deaths than expected; in August; and last week. The rate of excess deaths during the first wave was 63% of the average in all of Spain; in August it was 10%; and in September, 9.1%. Over the latter week there was a difference in genders, with 7.6% excess mortality for men, and 12.% for women the experts consulted for this article have not so far been able to explain this difference. The MoMo has not detected excess mortality in the majority of Spains 17 regions since the first wave of the epidemic between March and May. This is the case for Asturias, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarre, the Basque Country and La Rioja. In contrast, excess mortality in the Madrid region between September 1 and 13 came in at 29.3%. The MoMo also detected three periods of excess mortality in Andalusia: the first wave, August and September. In other regions two were noted. Aragon and the Valencia region saw periods in the first wave and the first half of August; Extremadura in the second half of July; Castilla y Leon from August 26 to 28; and Murcia August 31 to September 6. In the Balearic Islands, the two periods of excess mortality correspond to the months of April and May. The profile of coronavirus cases has changed radically since the first wave one in four is now aged between 15 and 29 Experts such as Diego Ramiro, a demographer and the director of the Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography at the CSIC public research institute, point out that the MoMo is not designed to identify the causes of death, just excess mortality. As such, it is still early to know whether these victims can be attributed directly or indirectly to the coronavirus. Whats more, they took place during the summer, meaning that some of these excess deaths in areas of Spain that suffered a heatwave could be attributed to related causes. Epidemiologist Jose Jonay Ojeda, the spokesperson for the Spanish Society for Public Health and Health Administration (Sespas), agrees: You cannot establish that this excess is due to the coronavirus, but it is plausible that it is in part, he says. Ojeda points out that now, unlike in March and April, the Spanish health system is detecting many cases of Covid-19, the majority of which are asymptomatic or with very mild symptoms. With regard to the first wave, its less likely that we are missing mortality due to the coronavirus, he says, in reference to the fact that many thousands of people are thought to have died from Covid-19 during the first wave without having been given a PCR test. Between July 27 and August 29, the second period of excess mortality identified by the MoMo, 821 people with the coronavirus died, according to statistics from the Carlos III health institute. Between September 8 and 13, the third phase with the highest excess mortality in 2020, the same institution detected 368 Covid-19 victims although it is possible that this figure could rise in the coming days given reporting delays. The data from the MoMo could similarly be adjusted, Ojeda points out. According to the latest MoMo report, between September 8 and 13, there were an extra 533 compared to the average Improvements in diagnostic capacity in Spain make comparing the infection data from the first wave with that of the second practically impossible, Ojeda adds. In March and April the healthcare system was unable to detect the majority of infections, including those that were very serious or that caused deaths. The confirmation of cases was limited to very specific circumstances, the epidemiologist explains. Now, however, while there are some differences between regions, the majority are seeing nearly all of them, he adds. The majority of cases are currently either asymptomatic or mild. That was seen in a report dated September 9 from the Covid-19 Team from the National Epidemiological Monitoring Network: just 4.7% of the more than 300,000 cases registered between May 10 and the date of the report required hospitalization, while 0.4% were admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) and 0.5% died. The profile of those being infected with the coronavirus has changed radically since the first wave. Now, one in every four cases is aged between 15 and 29. In the report from April 1, 49% of the cases notified to the network were hospitalized and 5.1% admitted to an ICU. The percentage of victims was 5.9%. More than half of the cases detected at that time 54% were aged over 60. English version by Simon Hunter. September 17 : Ever since the lockdown was announced in March this year, Bollywood actors have spent their days and months in the four corners of their homes. Now after the lockdown restrictions have been lifted to a large extent, the B-town celebs are either heading for family vacations or travelling to resume shootings. After almost six months, Kriti Sanon has also headed for a much deserved family getaway, and jetted off to an undisclosed location with her family. Taking to Instagram stories, Kriti shared a short clip today, in which a pool can be seen with a serene and mesmerising backdrop. She captioned the video clip as, My calm corner for a few days, along with a hashtag muchneededfamilygetaway Kriti Sanons sister Nupur Sanon has also shared the same video clip and wrote, Home for next few days. Image Source: Instagram/kritisanon Kriti Sanon's latest instagram post Post Sushant Singh Rajputs tragic demise, Kriti took to her Instagram handle and wrote a few heartwarming notes in remembrance of her Raabta co-star. She was also among a few Bollywood actors who attended Sushants funeral. After which, she was on a low profile like many other actors and was away from social media amidst a sensitive situation being faced by the Hindi film industry. On the work front, the Luka Chuppi actress has a number of films in her kitty. While she will be seen with Akshay Kumar once again in Bachchan Pandey, Kriti will also share screen space with Manoj Tripathi in Laxman Utekar's Mimi, which is a remake of the National Award-winning 2011 Marathi film Mala Aai Vhhaychy. Smoke from the West Coast wildfires helped set the stage for a Washington, D.C., hearing on a new wildfire and forest management bill backed by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana. The West is burning, people are dying, and the smoke is literally starting to cover our country, Republican Daines said during a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday. Our way of life as we know it is in danger. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein partnered with Daines to produce the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act (S.4431). It would give the U.S. Forest Service expanded categorical exclusion powers to cut fire breaks up to 3,000 acres large along roads, trails and power lines; accelerate post-fire restoration and reforestation work up to 10,000 acres large without administrative review; and create a new prescribed fire research center to direct more forest fuels reduction burning. Feinstein opened with a blunt recounting of fire impacts in her state of California: 25 major fires burning this year including the largest in state history at 875,000 acres; 25 Californians killed; 4,200 homes and structures burned down and 42,000 people evacuated. We have to change our approach in dealing with wildfire and our national forests, Feinstein said. She touted the bills $100 million grant program to make the removal of dead trees commercially viable, along with its provisions to help people fire-proof their homes, bury high-voltage power lines and increase the use of wildfire detection equipment in forests. Climate change is making these fires worse by the year, Feinstein said. Weve got to address it. Daines said the bill would streamline critical projects without circumventing environmental policies or judicial review. It also contains provisions to block a recent court ruling that requires the Forest Service to do extensive Endangered Species Act consultations when new scientific information indicates agency actions might affect at-risk animal habitat. And it proposes new landscape-level collaborative wildfire risk-reduction projects that could go forward with high barriers to legal challenges. Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow asked why the streamlining was needed after Congress had already granted numerous categorical exclusions and exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Forest Service in its previous three sessions. That included billions of dollars for more prescribed burning by putting the agencys firefighting expenses in a separate account from its routine activity, called "fire-borrowing." Instead of that being used to reduce wildfire risk, the Trump Administration has cut the Forest Service budget, Stabenow said. I am truly concerned and dont understand why the administration is not fully implementing the tools weve already given them. Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French said the elimination of fire-borrowing that took effect this year has helped the agency stay on track with post-fire restoration work. But it remained bogged down with the amount of analysis it still needs to do on forest activity. "The reality is the average environmental assessment for a fuels-reduction project takes somewhere around 685 days, French said. With the new categorical exclusions, its around 243 days. Our biggest issue is a matter of scale. Scale was on the minds of most committee members during the hearing. Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, noted that almost half a million people had to be evacuated in the past week due to fires that could have been prevented if only active management practices had been implemented. He said forest management had been hamstrung by excessive regulation such as Clean Air Act provisions that prevented prescribed burning due to air pollution concerns. Co-chairman Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, called on Congress to step up its pace in dealing with the fire issue. Scores of fires have hit my state harder than a wrecking ball, Wyden said. These are not your grandfathers fires. Theyre bigger, hotter, more dangerous and more powerful. The Senate committee members did not vote on the measure on Wednesday. You must be logged in to react. Click any reaction to login. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1 Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. ATTLEBORO, Massachusetts Thirty students at a high school in Massachusetts are now in quarantine after a classmate who tested positive for the coronavirus still went to the opening day of in-person classes, according to reports. This was an egregious violation of trust one parent puts into another parent, one student to another student, Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux tells WBZ Channel 4. Heroux tells CNN that the parents of the child were made aware of the positive test on Sept. 11, but thought it was OK to send the child to school after quarantining for several days. The child attended classes Monday but the school was not made aware of the positive test until Tuesday, according to reports. Anyone who was in close contact with the child was told to self-quarantine for two weeks, NBC Boston reports. District officials defended the districts protocols to prevent the spread of the virus, Boston.com reports. The parents used very poor judgment, its very frustrating, Heroux tells CNN. The school department did everything they were supposed to do. The incident is causing worry for parents of children who were exposed, WBZ reports. I dont want her to get sick because she goes down hard when shes sick, said Kim Evers, whose daughter is one of the students asked to quarantine. Ive tried to calm her down but more than anything shes worried for herself. ... I dont know how often this will happen, but it happened on the first day and it kind of shakes your confidence to think its going to be OK." Alan Hudson is the CEO of AFH Financial Group Plc (LON:AFHP), and in this article, we analyze the executive's compensation package with respect to the overall performance of the company. This analysis will also assess whether AFH Financial Group pays its CEO appropriately, considering recent earnings growth and total shareholder returns. See our latest analysis for AFH Financial Group Comparing AFH Financial Group Plc's CEO Compensation With the industry At the time of writing, our data shows that AFH Financial Group Plc has a market capitalization of UK151m, and reported total annual CEO compensation of UK710k for the year to October 2019. That's a modest increase of 7.7% on the prior year. Notably, the salary which is UK550.0k, represents most of the total compensation being paid. On examining similar-sized companies in the industry with market capitalizations between UK77m and UK308m, we discovered that the median CEO total compensation of that group was UK689k. From this we gather that Alan Hudson is paid around the median for CEOs in the industry. Moreover, Alan Hudson also holds UK21m worth of AFH Financial Group stock directly under their own name, which reveals to us that they have a significant personal stake in the company. Component 2019 2018 Proportion (2019) Salary UK550k UK483k 78% Other UK160k UK176k 22% Total Compensation UK710k UK659k 100% On an industry level, around 48% of total compensation represents salary and 52% is other remuneration. AFH Financial Group is paying a higher share of its remuneration through a salary in comparison to the overall industry. If salary dominates total compensation, it suggests that CEO compensation is leaning less towards the variable component, which is usually linked with performance. AFH Financial Group Plc's Growth Over the past three years, AFH Financial Group Plc has seen its earnings per share (EPS) grow by 48% per year. In the last year, its revenue is up 18%. Story continues This demonstrates that the company has been improving recently and is good news for the shareholders. This sort of respectable year-on-year revenue growth is often seen at a healthy, growing business. Moving away from current form for a second, it could be important to check this free visual depiction of what analysts expect for the future. Has AFH Financial Group Plc Been A Good Investment? We think that the total shareholder return of 47%, over three years, would leave most AFH Financial Group Plc shareholders smiling. This strong performance might mean some shareholders don't mind if the CEO were to be paid more than is normal for a company of its size. To Conclude... As previously discussed, Alan is compensated close to the median for companies of its size, and which belong to the same industry. Investors would surely be happy to see that returns have been great, and that EPS is up. So one could argue that CEO compensation is quite modest, if you consider company performance! Also, such solid returns might lead to shareholders warming to the idea of a bump in pay. While CEO pay is an important factor to be aware of, there are other areas that investors should be mindful of as well. We did our research and spotted 1 warning sign for AFH Financial Group that investors should look into moving forward. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a different set of stocks. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies. 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. Donbas is part of Ukraine, the former president of Ukraine has stressed. Head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on Donbas settlement Leonid Kravchuk says he forced Russia's delegate Boris Gryzlov to apologize for his comment about Donbas during the TCG video conference. "Answering questions from participants in the conference, Mr. Gryzlov turned to the Ukrainian delegation claiming that their question should be posed by the ORDLO [occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions], because this is a territory that's part of ORDLO. Of course, I could not help but react. I asked Gryzlov to apologize for inaccuracy, because this is Ukrainian territory, as it is recognized in international documents and by the Russian president by the way," Kravchuk told Ukraine 24 TV channel. According to the Ukrainian official, the Russian representative had to correct his comment. Gryzlov was forced to say he meant that this is territory is not being controlled by Ukraine. "The issue was finally settled. We cannot but respond to sensitive issues like that, but the response must be documented and objective," Kravchuk added. TCG talks: background Accordingly, the batch weighing 100 tonnes was shipped to the Netherlands by the Dong Giao Foodstuff Export Joint Stock Company. Speaking at the event, MARD Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh spoke highly of the significant efforts made by Dong Giao one of the countrys leading enterprises in the field of farm produce production, processing and export, especially with regard to fruit. With passion fruit, the ministry expects the company to continue developing sustainably and effectively, expanding its production and processing scale, and gradually conquering foreign markets, thereby affirming the quality and solid position of Vietnams agriculture in the international arena, he said. Doanh asked localities, particularly Gia Lai, to continue creating favourable conditions for fruit and vegetable processing businesses to invest in expanding intensive processing factories and the building of material areas, in addition to encouraging people to comply with proper production processes and ensure food safety as well as strengthening the inspection and supervision of compliance with regulations in production, harvesting, preliminary processing, preservation and processing. Over the past five years, Vietnams passion fruit export volume and turnover have expanded by more than 300%, bringing Vietnam into the worlds top 10 largest passion fruit exporters, below only Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador. Until now, Vietnamese passion fruit has been exported to the markets with strict quality, quarantine and food safety requirements, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan (China), and Switzerland. The MARD is currently negotiating to open the market for Vietnams fresh fruit passion fruit into other major markets, such as Australia, China, Japan and Thailand. Dong Giaos products are now present in more than 60 countries, and have conquered demanding markets, such as the US, Japan, China and especially Europe. Many products from passion fruit are being made by the company mainly at its Doveco Gia Lai factory, including passion fruit juice concentrate, NFC passion fruit juice and frozen passion fruit pulp. In addition, Dong Giao is actively growing fresh fruit according to European export standards such as fresh banana, passion fruit and especially the MD2 pineapple. After the ceremony, delegates toured the passion fruit seed production area and the export passion fruit processing and packaging plant at Dong Giaos Doveco Fruit and Vegetable Processing Centre. The pandemic has had a "massive impact" on students and there's a widening gap between those who can tap on online learning and those who can't, says Yale University's president emeritus. "It's a massive impact about 1.6 billion students were displaced from their schools, all the way from kindergarten to university. And so the impact's been huge," Richard Levin told CNBC as one of the attendees of the Singapore Summit, which is being held virtually this year. "There's been quite a bit of resiliency students are learning although there's a tremendous gap opening up between students who are most capable of taking advantage of online resources and those who can't," he added. He flagged crowded home environments which are "inhospitable" to learning digitally, as one problem. Many schools have turned to digital learning to replace classroom education as the virus spread widely across the world. As many as 192 countries shuttered schools, leaving 1.6 billion students without in-person learning, the United Nations said this week. The UN projected that at least 24 million students may still drop out of school, as millions do not have internet access or devices to participate in virtual learning. The reopening of schools has become a hot-button issue, particularly in the U.S., where President Donald Trump has pushed to reopen schools regardless of how widely the virus is spreading in the community. NEW DELHI: Mukesh Aghi, president and CEO of US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), a not-for-profit institution that works on boosting partnerships between the two countries, sees deeper economic ties around healthcare, defence, hi-tech, and agriculture, going ahead. He is also batting for a free trade agreement between the quad nations (US, Japan, Australia and India). In an interview to Mint, Aghi spoke of the recovery post covid-19, supply-chain realignments and why business imperatives could triumph political rhetoric around protectionism. Excerpts: How do you see the post-covid recovery trajectory of both the countries? There are broad differences in the recovery cycle between India and the US. We feel that the US will have a V-shaped recovery because the cost of capital is very low. Two, there is an abundance of stimulus money coming into the market for the businesses. When we look at India, our prediction is that it wont be a V-shaped recovery. It is going to be more of a U-shaped one, where the economy is going to be flat for the next 12-18 months because there has not been enough stimulus both from a demand-side or from the supply-side. India is also not an export-oriented GDP; it is still an internal consumption GDP. Unless you get the demand pick-up, the supply-side will not invest. India is caught in a vicious cycle here. But we are seeing some green shoots, especially in the rural economy. Where is the Indo-US economic relationship headed, considering that both the countries seem to have slipped into protectionism with visa curbs in the US and the narrative around self-reliance in India? I wont say that both countries have gone protectionist. H-1B (visa) is more of a political issue. The US has a shortage of over a million software engineersUS companies need these workers (on H-1B ) to make them more efficient, to make them more competitive and to make them more innovative. From the business side, there is a growing demand for these workers.On Atmanirbhar Bharat , we dont see it as protectionist. It is like the '60s when India wanted to become self sufficient in food so the green revolution took place. I think the effort is to bring in self sustainability in critical items. Lets talk about healthcare. India supplies about 40% of the US generic drug consumption. About 70% of the APIs come in from China and in certain cases, 100% of the APIs. India feels exposed there, so does the US. There is an effort by the two countries to shift the supply-chain. Yes, in a small number of cases, there is the impact of duties. But overall, the US government is supportive of the supply-chain shifting from China into India or other countries. It appears that other Asian countries are better placed to seize the opportunity on the supply-chain realignments You are right. Countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and even Bangladesh could benefit from the shift from China. I think this is an opportunity for India to usher in further reforms. Unless you are integrated into the global economy, you cannot be a global economic power. Those reforms are needed to compete with countries like Vietnam. The reason I say Vietnam is because there is an FTA with Indiacompanies are saying lets move manufacturing to Vietnam and you can still move goods duty-free into India. It is a catch-22 for India. Disclosure: Mukesh Aghi is a board member of Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd, a group company of the publishers of Mint 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 Albuquerque Economic Development has selected Danielle Casey, currently executive vice president for the Greater Sacramento Economic Council in California, as its new president, AED announced Thursday afternoon. Casey, who also previously led economic development efforts for the cities of Scottsdale and Maricopa in Arizona, will take AEDs reins on Oct. 26. She is replacing long-time president Gary Tonjes, who stepped down in July after leading the organization for 25 years. (Danielle) has the credentials, experience and poise to be an effective leader for economic development in our community, said AED chair Eric Weinstein in a news release. Danielle has demonstrated success in all facets of economic development and business. We are thrilled to have someone of her ability leading AED, and we are confident she will bring innovation and strategic direction that will be a true asset in developing the greater Albuquerque economy. Casey said shes ready to hit the ground running. I look forward to officially arriving in October and getting to work, Casey said in a statement. With the new realities brought about by COVID and an upcoming legislative session, there is no time to waste in capitalizing on our advantages. I am eager to roll up my sleeves and build on AEDs history of success in advancing regional competitiveness and generating new employment opportunities for the community. The Thursday announcement came as a surprise, as earlier that day Weinstein told attendees at the organizations virtual quarterly investors meeting that the search for Tonjes replacement was ongoing. The search committee has been hard at work over the past seven months to find a new president, Weinstein told about 190 participants in the meeting, which was the second quarterly event that AED has conducted online since the pandemic began in March. Theres no announcement today, but soon, Weinstein said during the meeting. Stay tuned, theres more to come. During the quarterly meeting, AED vice president of business development and marketing Annemarie Henton said efforts to recruit new companies to New Mexico have continued during the pandemic, albeit through virtual channels. The nonprofit is currently working on 37 different recruitment projects that, taken together, represent the potential for 1,700 jobs and $750 million in new investment. Efforts to assist existing companies to expand their operations have also continued, Henton said. So far this year, AED representatives have provided assistance to 70 local companies. Taken together, those firms have received $3 million in funding from the state Job Training Development Program, adding 242 new jobs and an additional $13 million in new annual payroll. Akseera Pharma, a Canadian startup founded by entrepreneurs of Indian origin, is planning to begin clinical trials and manufacturing of Cannabidiol (CBD), a medicinal compound derived from Cannabis, in India. CBD will be used in a potential therapy for cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeat, with a possible link to COVID-19. Cannabis in India is popularly referred to as ganja. There are three types of the plant -- cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, and cannabis ruderalis. All three are known for psychoactive properties that can alter brain functions, affecting ones mood and consciousness. Arrhythmias occur when the electrical signals that coordinate heartbeats do not work correctly. It can cause heart failure. 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 CBD is not an intoxicant CBD, which Akseera is planning to repurpose for COVID-19 treatment, is approved in many countries, including the US, to treat rare forms of childhood epilepsy or seizures such as Dravet Syndrome, for which traditional medicines don't always work. The advantage of CBD is that it is not intoxicating. We have pre-clinical data. We are ready for clinical trials, said Manit Patel, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Akseera Pharma. CBD, which is our prime candidate, already has approvals in different countries for different conditions. So we are basically suggesting repurposing of the drug, just like azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine, Patel added. Patel said Akseera is reaching out to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), and if everything goes according to plan, CBD therapy for COVID-19 would be available in India before the end of this year. Akseeras President and Co-Founder and Shreema Merchant said they are considering the drug for both adjuncts as well as a standalone therapy. How did it begin? In January, when the pandemic was gaining momentum, what we found in a research was that CBD can actually rescue cardiac cells from arrhythmias, Merchant said. Some of the repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine are found to cause arrhythmia in certain cases, a lethal side-effect that CBD can rescue. We found ourselves in a very obvious position to help make COVID treatment safer and affordable, accessible to patients with comorbidities, Merchant said. Merchant, who is a molecular biologist, and Patel, a pharma industry veteran, founded Akseera in 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. They worked with Simon Fraser University and the University of Waterloo on the research part. Also Read: Explained: Why AstraZeneca halted then resumed its trial, and the challenges in vaccinating the whole world Merchant said they started the company in Canada since Cannabis was legalised in the country in 2018. Government funding for companies engaged in research on Cannabis followed. Patel says that cannabis plant contains hundreds of chemical substances known as cannabinoids, but extracting these compounds on a commercial scale, with high purity and consistency, remains a huge challenge. But two compounds -- CBD and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) -- have been of great interest for companies like Akseera and scores of other startups. Hundreds of studies that examine CBD and various other cannabinoids to treat a wide range of ailments -- from pain to chemotherapy-induced nausea, heart disease and central nervous system conditions are underway. CBD is also known to have anti-viral properties. The approval of CBD has triggered an explosion of over-the-counter products like oils and supplements. Make-in-India plan Akseera has launched a wholly-owned subsidiary in India in March to start the manufacture, distribution and export of CBD. The company is collaborating with the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai to develop lab-based CBD as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and make formulations. Akseera says it is the only company with permission for CBD production using biosynthes to produce pharmaceutical products. Patel said they are working on sublingual formulations for CBD. Regulatory scenario In India, growing and possessing cannabis is illegal under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. The law bans cannabis production. However, state governments can grant licences to cultivate it for industrial or research purposes. The Union finance ministry has sanctioned a research and development project on compounds such as CBD and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) found in Cannabis. Ayush experts, too, have been asking the government to allow medical cannabis, especially in pain management. I have written a lot about mortgages and property in recent weeks and it has led to a number of interesting queries from readers. One in particular was asking for advice on how to decide between selling a property and renting it out. The reader bought a house in 2007 at the height of the boom and then watched the value plummet in the following years. They estimate its value dropped somewhere between 50% to 60%, possibly even a little more. They were always able to maintain repayments on the home so arrears is not an issue in this case. Now they are wondering whether to sell the house (still for less than they paid for it) or rent the property. I turned to property expert Michael ODonovan, of Savills Cork for advice, who tells he is aware of a whole cohort of people weighing up similar considerations. It is a common dilemma for those who bought at the height of the boom, Mr ODonovan says. As you and homeowners like you have endured the downturn and are now in a positive position after waiting many years to get there, the question of selling should be carefully considered and unfortunately the answer is not clear cut. He ran through the factors each individual should consider before coming to a decision. Property expert Michael ODonovan, of Savills Cork. Every year you keep your property, the more you pay off your mortgage and the greater your return on sale, he says. It is fair to say most properties have not yet reached their peak value of 2007. Whilst price growth has been consistent and reliable each year since the low point of the market in 2013, it is now likely to enter a period of marginal change." So, if it is time to move and you have the option of renting out your existing property or selling, Mr ODonovan highlights a whole range of costs associated with renting a property, some of which may be news to people to have not previously been involved in this area. [There are] costs such as continuing mortgage repayments every month, property insurance, maintenance of the property and its appliances, annual tax bill on your rental income and agent fees if you use a letting agent, he points out. Other costs to consider are painting the property between lettings if needed, or in preparation for sale, and allowing a contingency budget for months when the property is between lettings. You should also consider your time and continued responsibility that comes with owning a second property. Set against these costs are the rent. These financial commitments should be balanced against the rental income achievable each month, Mr ODonovan says. Both figures should be viewed on an annual basis. In my opinion if there is a cost to you, the property should be sold. If the property is washing its own face, you can allow some more time to pass to pay down your mortgage further and make a better return on your sale. If you do decide that renting is the best option for you, take the time to learn more about what your rights, responsibilities and obligations will be as a landlord. A good place to start is RTB.ie, the website of the Residential Tenancies Board, also known as the RTB. This public body was set up to support and develop the rental housing sector. Its role is to regulate the rental sector and provide a range of support for tenants and landlords. On its website you will find detailed information on what you should do as a landlord when beginning a tenancy, during a tenancy and when it is coming to an end. The site also has a number of forms and templates landlords can use in specific situations such as if your tenant falls into arrears. When it comes to the tax implications of renting a property, you will find detailed information on revenue.ie on how to calculate your taxable income, find out what expenses can be used to reduce this amount and learn how to file a tax return. If you feel that management of the tenancy and the property is too time consuming, you should consider engaging the services of a property management service. VILNIUS (Reuters) - Poland wants the European Union to offer Belarus financial assistance of at least 1 billion euros ($1.18 billion) as part of a "Marshal plan" to rebuild the country, Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday. Mass protests have gripped Belarus since President Alexander Lukashenko claimed a victory in Aug. 9 election that opposition says was rigged. Lukashenko, who denies the allegations, cracked down on protesters and on Monday secured a lifeline loan of $1.5 billion from Russia in a gesture of support. Morawiecki, whose call for a "Marshall Plan" alluded to Europe's reconstruction after World War Two, said the financial assistance forms part of the support package for Belarus which he will propose at the next EU summit on Sept. 24-25. "The fund should indeed be significant. ... It should be at least 1 billion euros," Morawiecki said in Vilnius after meeting Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis. International Monetary Fund (IMF) could also contribute the fund, meant to prop up Belarus currency, stabilize its economy and allow the country to borrow on its own, Morawiecki said. The plan also includes an opening of EU markets to Belarus businesses and easier visas to its citizens, to make Belarus economy less reliant on cheap energy from Russia, he said. But the opening should exclude "businessmen who stand against freedom and support the current Belarus government." Lithuania and Poland's partners in the Visegrad Four grouping - Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - support the plan, Morawiecki said. Polish daily Rzeczpospolita said on Thursday the proposed aid would be conditional on Lukashenko allowing a free presidential election. (Reporting by Andrius Sytas and Marcin Goclowski; Editing by Jason Neely and Tomasz Janowski) Healthcare professionals with so-called 'long Covid' are urging the government to take the condition seriously as they add their voices to the thousands of people suffering from lasting effects of the virus weeks, and even months, after their first symptoms. Junior anesthetist Linn Jarte, of Swansea and GP Amy Small are among those sharing their often debilitating symptoms of 'long Covid', including brain fog, constant tiredness and memory loss. In the case of Jarte, the condition has left her 'largely bed bound' five months on from her first coronavirus symptoms. She said she is 'entirely unable' to carry out her profession. Earlier this week, in a manifesto published in the British Medical Journal, a cohort of 39 doctors wrote of their battle with long Covid, and called for more research and clinical services to treat the symptoms of it. Doctors reported it was 'difficult to navigate help' for these long-term symptoms and said there needed to be a proper diagnosis of the condition in order to gain access to services. Scroll down for video GP Amy Small posted a video of herself experiencing brain fog; saying she was unable to formulate words properly and had been slurring her words (left). A second video posted a few hours' later sees Small speaking fluently with her 'brain functioning properly again' (right) At the risk of looking like a complete idiot I'm posting 2 videos filmed yesterday. The first one shows how #LongCovid can cause PEM and brain fog. It may be subtle to those of you who don't know me but was slurring words all over the place just before I switched on camera. pic.twitter.com/UZc53b7kDy Amy Small (@amyismall) September 9, 2020 This video shows me more like my usual self a few hours later. My fluency is back and brain functioning properly again. I'm lucky this episode was short lived. Really for #MedTwitter to see what is happening when so much of this illness is invisible#CountLongCovid pic.twitter.com/gg0hK216bG Amy Small (@amyismall) September 9, 2020 Nisreen Alwan, an associate professor in public health at the University of Southampton who has personal experience of long Covid, spoke about her experience in a virtual BMJ panel discussion about the condition. She defined long Covid as 'not recovering [for] several weeks or months following the start of symptoms that were suggestive of Covid, whether you were tested or not.' She noted 'profound fatigue' was a common symptom in most people but that the range of symptoms included cough, breathlessness, muscle and body aches, and chest heaviness or pressure, but also skin rashes, palpitations, fever, headache, diarrhoea, and pins and needles. She added: 'A very common feature is the relapsing, remitting nature of the illness, where you feel as though youve recovered, then it hits you back.' Alwan described the fluctuations of her own illness, saying: 'Its a constant cycle of disappointment, not just to you but people around you, who really want you to recover.' She added that she is 'fairly driven' and initially believed she could 'beat the virus'. Junior anesthetist Linn Jarte, of Swansea, had Covid in February and says she's still 'unable to carry out my profession' five months after catching the virus However friends told her to start 'accommodating the virus' in her life', and found life with the illness 'became a bit easier.' But she said it had meant she had 'dropped her baseline by 90 per cent' and she had become 'a different person.' This experience is echoed by thousands of Facebook users who have joined groups including the Long-Covid Support Group, which already has more than 21,000 members, and Post Covid 19 Syndrome Support (International), which has 3,600 members, in a search for greater support and answers to their health questions. Many have told how they have not been taken seriously by doctors when they present with symptoms of long Covid. Are there long-term symptoms of Covid-19? Covid-19 is described as a short-term illness caused by infection with the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Public health officials tend to say people will recover within two weeks or so. However it's become increasingly clear that this is not the case for everyone, and that the two-week period is only the 'acute illness' phase. Data from the COVID Symptom Study app, by King's College London and health company Zoe, suggests one in ten people may still have symptoms after three weeks, and some may suffer for months. For those with more severe disease, Italian researchers who tracked 143 people who had been hospitalised with the disease found almost 90 per cent still had symptoms including fatigue two months after first falling unwell. The most common complaints were fatigue, a shortness of breath and joint pain - all of which were reported during their battle with the illness. Another study in Italy showed one in ten people who lose their sense of taste and smell with the coronavirus - now recognised as a key sign of the infection - may not get it back within a month. The study, published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, involved 187 Italians who had the virus but who were not ill enough to be admitted to hospital. The UK's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has said the longer term impacts of Covid-19 on health 'may be significant'. Support group have popped up online for those who have suspected Covid-19 and your experience doesn't follow the textbook symptoms or recovery time. Louise Barnes, of Suffolk, who founded the Post Covid Syndrome Support Group, said members of the group have reported a total of 172 lasting symptoms. Advertisement GP Amy Small, who has experienced brain fog caused by long Covid, urged fellow medical professionals to take the symptoms seriously. She posted: 'Please help get the message out there that #LongCovid symptoms are NOT "anxiety". 'Am hearing many heartbreaking stories of folk with neuro/resp/cardiac symptoms being told it's "all anxiety". 'It's ok to say "I don't know, but I'll try to find out more".' To illustrate her point, she shared two clips of herself, one where she said she was enduring brain fog, and another feeling like her normal self. She wrote: 'At the risk of looking like a complete idiot I'm posting 2 videos filmed yesterday. The first one shows how #LongCovid can cause PEM and brain fog. It may be subtle to those of you who don't know me but was slurring words all over the place just before I switched on camera.' In the first video, Small appears tired as she describes her symptoms, saying: 'I'm just struggling to speak properly and find the words, I guess it's not always a visible thing that happens to people.' She added she couldn't 'formulate words and the fatigue is just too much'. A second video posted a few hours' later sees Small speaking fluently with her 'brain functioning properly again'. Meanwhile junior anesthetist Linn Jarte, who first fell ill in the middle of February, has also been reporting her own lengthy struggle to recover from coronavirus. Writing in the Facebook group, she said: 'This has taken almost everything that is me away from me. Im completely unable to carry out my profession.' Jarte says she's now apprehensive that her brain may never function in the way that it did before. Paul Garner, a professor at the Liverpool school of tropical medicine added his experience, had a positive anti-body test after experiencing debilitating symptoms of coronavirus for four months. He told the BBC: 'I thought I was dying at the time. It was an awful sensation. I had a thumping heartrate and terrible fatigue. 'Round about day 80 or 90, the night sweats, the drenching night sweats, started becoming less but I still wake up feeling absolutely worn out as if I've run a marathon the day before and the way to udnerstand what he disease is about is to listen to people who have got it and believe them in the first instance. 'It does give a whole variety of very different and very bizarre complaints.' Meanwhile he also warned against exercising too heavily in the months after Covid. He wrote on Twitter: 'Exercise Therapy was my life before Covid-19; now it is my nemesis. 'Dont try and exercise your way out of #LongCovid. Pace, Accommodate, Convalesce. When able, enjoy a gentle walk. Dont push it.' Speaking in the BMJ discussion he said it is a 'very bizarre disease' that had left him feeling 'repeatedly battered the first two months' and then experiencing lesser episodes in the subsequent four months with continual fatigue, according to the BMJ report on the discussion. He added: 'Navigating help is really difficult.' Professor Paul Garner, of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who is still battling fatigue six months on An article in the Irish Times featured Caroline OBrien, a public health nurse who had a positive coronavirus test back in March. She said her recovery had been uncertain and prolonged, saying: 'You just dont know whats going to hit you next. 'Sometimes for me it comes in like a tsunami. I could be fine for two days and then it hits me. I feel like Ive been run over by a train and with that comes my brain fog.' Research into the symptoms of Covid-19 is ongoing. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at Kings College London is leader of the Covid Symptoms Study, published in July, which identified six different 'types' of Covid-19. Paul Garner told how he's continuing to feel the effects of Covid-19 and now struggles to exercise Speaking in the BMJ panel discussion, Professor Spector said data suggested there were two 'types' of Covid-19 most closely associated with longer term symptoms, indicating a possible way of predicting early on what might occur. He explained: 'If youve got a persistent cough, hoarse voice, headache, diarrhoea, skipping meals, and shortness of breath in the first week, you are two to three times more likely to get longer term symptoms.' Meanwhile data suggests that long covid was about twice as common in women as in men and that the average age of someone presenting with it was about four years older than people who had what might be termed as 'short covid.' However he said these assumptions could be refined as more data is collected. Fatigue is also the most common trait in people who had symptoms lasting longer than three weeks. Another almost universal experience is that people have 'good days and bad days', with roughly 80 per cent of people reporting this, according to Nick Peters, a professor of cardiology at Imperial College London and a consultant cardiologist. Who's most likely to have long Covid? Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at Kings College London is leader of the Covid Symptoms Study, published in July. He said in a BMJ panel discussion that long covid is about twice as common in women as in men, according to data. He added the average age of someone presenting with it was about four years older than people who had what might be termed as 'short covid.' Advertisement While speaking to the BBC, Paul warned that patients aren't being taken seriously or believed when trying to seek help from healthcare professionals. He said the tests, which are not 100 per cent accurate, could actually be a hindrance to treating patients, explaining: 'This fantasy about people imagining they've got Covid has entered the narrative somewhere. You know when you had Covid. 'People have symptoms of the disease, which are then diagnosed as anxiety. Some people have problems with their heartrates going haywire, going fast and then going slow. 'They were seeing doctors and hospitals that were diagnosing this as anxiety.' He continued: 'People need to be believed. I think the proof is in the symptoms. 'The tests are getting in the way of people receiving good care.' He went on: 'We need sensible guidelines that really help people. The government is simply not doing enough with the existing medical expertise. 'It needs to be commandeered and brought together to work together.' The NHS website, Your Covid Recovery, which offers support for all patients recovering from the virus, has seen 65,000 people visiting since it was launched four weeks ago. But doctors believe there should be further, specialist advice for those with long-Covid. Martin Marshall, GP and chair of the Royal College of GPs, told the BBC: 'I think the vast majority of GPs will do what we're supposed to do which is take all symptoms seriously. 'There are exceptions, I accept that, but for the vast majority of patients, they're receiving very good care from their GPs.' But he explained there was a risk the number of cases could go 'from a trickle to a flood', saying: 'That is a potential risk. Over 50 per cent of GPs expect post-Covid and non-Covid to be a significant element of their workload over the next few months. 'I don't know whether long Covid will turn out to be a similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, but if it is than we can expect a similar small proportion of paitents with long term disability. That would be dreadful.' He said: 'We need to see a growing number of post-Covid clinics established in the same way before this crisis we had post-viral ME, chronic fatigue syndrome clinics.' He added that a small, but significant, number of people do experience the lengthy illness after battling the virus and would need specialist care and attention. Meanwhile Lynne Turner Stokes, professor of rehabilitation medicine at King's College London, worries that encouraging a DIY rehab is a risky strategy. She said: 'The one concern we have is that we can't expect we put up a few internet services and people will get better by themselves. We have to do much more than that. 'It will be very useful if we had more one stop (face to face) services where people could go to hospital. Right at the moment, we're very short of those services.' China in Focus (Sept. 16): Twitter Suspends Chinese Virologists Account Chinese virologist Dr. Yan Limengs Twitter account was banned less than 48 hours after posting a controversial report. Her new report claims that the CCP virus was made in a Chinese lab. A fruit vendor was attacked by a police-like official and defended herself with a knife. Thanks to the leaking of a surveillance video clip, and the pressure of public opinion, she avoided being sent to a detention center. A Chinese city with over 200,000 residents is under lockdown because of a CCP-virus outbreak. But part of the city was already ordered to be put on lockdown one day before the new confirmed cases were announced. So how did they know? The Chinese Communist Party now wants a bigger role in the countrys private sector. Our in-house expert says its a sign of potential monetary extortion. And more names are coming out as news about a Chinese companys massive database of global citizens continues to attract attention. Those being monitored include the 11-year-old daughter of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Subscribe to our Youtube channel for more first-hand news from China. For more news and videos, please visit our website and Twitter. Clark County public health officials are urging nearly 300 people who visited a chiropractic office in Washington last week to quarantine immediately because they may have been exposed to COVID-19 by an infected worker. The county took the unusual step of publicly announcing the case Wednesday in an effort to quickly reach visitors through media coverage. Officials expect it will take contact tracers several days to speak to everyone who visited the facility. Mask use at the office had been inconsistent and public health officials are considering everyone who visited at risk of exposure out of an abundance of caution, spokeswoman Marissa Armstrong said. We wanted to make sure that those folks who were exposed and at risk of getting sick are quarantining right away, Armstrong said. The public alert from officials in Washington is significantly different than how officials typically operate in Oregon, where authorities rarely if ever announce incidents involving potential exposure. Officials in Clark County made a similar announcement in July when four employees and 14 customers who visited a bar became infected. In the latest case, a worker who spent a substantial amount of time with patients at the chiropractic office tested positive for COVID-19 this week, Armstrong said. The facility is Chiro One Wellness Center Salmon Creek at 13800 N.E. 20th Ave., north of Vancouver. Public health officials are asking anyone who visited the office Sept. 8-11 to seek testing and to quarantine for 14 days from the date of the visit. Federal guidance considers anyone who spent at least 15 minutes within six feet of an infected person as a close contact. But because of inconsistent mask use at the facility, Clark County health officials are considering everyone who visited a close contact, Armstrong said. Among those exposed include 14 other employees at the facility. Patients who visited the office on other days, or visited other chiropractic locations, are not at risk and do not need to quarantine, officials said. Clark County officials typically would issue a public notice about potential exposure only if they could not identify people who may have been in contact with an infected individual, Armstrong said. In this case, officials have contact information for everyone who visited but nonetheless decided to announce the threat because it will take several days to reach patients by phone. We dont want those individuals out in public and carrying on with their lives and potentially spreading the virus to others, Armstrong said. Meanwhile, the Oregon Health Authority, the states public health agency, said it would be open to a similar type of notice for Oregonians if the same circumstances applied locally. The Oregon Health Authority would advise a local public health department to take any steps necessary to protect the health and safety of the public up to and including a mass notice, if other means would not be effective, Dr. Melissa Sutton, medical director for respiratory viral pathogens, said in a statement. -- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt A top detective wore a recording device in her bra in a desperate attempt to take down the leader of one of Australia's most violent gangs. The former leader of the Blacktown chapter of Brothers 4 Life, Farhad Qaumi, is serving a 60-year jail sentence for a string of crimes, including murder. But before the 37-year-old was locked away for good, detectives planned an elaborate sting in the hope Qaumi would confess to his offences. The sting is detailed in a new book which follows Detective Superintendent Deborah Wallace's 36 year career with the NSW Police. A Woman of Force, by Mark Morri, reveals how she worked to take down some of the state's most notorious gangs. Farhad Qaumi, the former leader of the Blacktown chapter of Brothers 4 Life, is serving a 60-year jail sentence for a string of crimes, including murder An excerpt from the book published in The Daily Telegraph detailed Ms Wallace's attempt to gather proof Qaumi was behind a violent rampage in Sydney's western suburbs. In November 2013, Qaumi and Ms Wallace were on the same flight back to Sydney from Thailand. Detectives investigating the murder of Mahmoud Hamzy had been following Qaumi's movements when the bikie boss was heard discussing Ms Wallace and travelling on the same plane as her. 'She is like me, a general of an army. We are both generals,' he had said. Homicide Detective Glen Browne thought authorities could use Qaumi's opinion of Ms Wallace to their advantage after the gang boss was arrested in January 2014. 'I didn't know Deb Wallace that well, but I wanted her to wear a wire and try to talk to Qaumi. It was a bit of mad idea but the boss of Homicide, Michael Willing, said if I could swing it, go ahead,' Mr Browne said. A Woman of Force by Mark Morri follows Detective Superintendent Deborah Wallace's 36 year career with the NSW Police, where she worked to take down some of the state's most notorious gangs Mr Browne organised for Qaumi to be transported to Long Bay Jail for questioning over an old murder charge he had beaten. 'The timing had to be perfect. Deb was to walk past the room with one of the prison guards at the exact moment the door was opened, so Qaumi could see her,' he said. Qaumi remains in Supermax prison after he was convicted for a 'violent underworld rampage' throughout Sydney's west in 2013 Ms Wallace was wired up with two listening devices and when she walked past the room, Qaumi called out to her. She suggested the pair go for a walk around some loading docks. Qaumi told Ms Wallace she had been a solider who worked her way to the 'top' - just like he had. He did not admit to the killings or ordering murders during the pair's hour-long conversation. He was then taken back to Goulburn Supermax. Qaumi was jailed for at least 43 years for a 'violent underworld rampage' throughout Sydney's west in 2013 involving his two brothers and Brothers 4 Life gang members. Those crimes included the murder of Joe Antoun - who was shot five times after opening the front door to his home, with his daughters just inside - and the manslaughter of Mumtaz Qaumi, 32. A Woman of Force, published by Pan McMillan, will be out on September 22. If ever there was an archetype to fit the mould of the age old adage of local boy does good then Brian Kane would invariably be it. Humble beginnings Businessman, entrepreneur with a compassion for the less well off, ill or disabled. Call him what you will, there is no denying the success of a man who levels much of his legacy at two overriding factors-perseverance and hard work and not to surrender easily. Brian prefers the American attitude towards success in their own lives, letting go in cases of dispute, harbouring no grudges in front of us. Begrudgery towards success "we could do well to shed in Ireland where its often found" Brian says. Those traits have certainly served the 79-year-old father of two and stepfather of 2, well in his own battles with ill-health over the years. I have always had that inner spirit in me to fight on and not give in, said Brian as he reminisced on his 65 year tenure in business this week. From starting out as a modest fuel merchant alongside his late brother Jimmy publican and Chair of then (LUDC) , the Longford native has amassed, building by building, borrowing and repaying to achieve a number of properties residential and commercial. Overcoming Adversity Not bad for a man, born hard of hearing, who by his own admission only made up the numbers at school having left its confines at the age of 15. Unfortunately the rumour of a legacy from America was not the case, it was matter of sound advice from his parents 'get out there Barney and make your own way in life'. Brian is a personality who doesnt suffer fools gladly. Yet he is also a character who isnt afraid to recognise honesty and sincerity when, and if, required. His admiration of hard honest grafters but in particular the welcome and understanding of Leitrim folk in his business dealings over the years, his supportive steadfast Fillipino wife Jocelyn, his friend, ex-wife to their two sons, Evelyn, the medical staff in the many hospitals he has attended including, former and 1st medical starting point Baggot Street Hospital in the fight against Cancer, St Vincents Elm Park, Dublin, and Mullingar Regional as well as his long term friend and rock Johnny Cooney are commendable. A Community of Opportunity Now, more than six decades on, Brian is keen to offer a supportive hand to his many commercially orientated tenants some of whom hail from eastern Europe, Africa and beyond. A number of them came to me, telling me they were finding things tough with Covid and asking what I could do to help?I know what its like for a lot of them. It was the same when a lot of Irish went to the UK and US in the 50s and 60s looking for work, says Brian. You have to try and give people a chance, lend them a hand if possible and with the powers that be and I have always been a great a believer like mentor and late brother Jimmy in fighting for the underdog and thats what Im doing now, says Brian. Part of that mindset emerges courtesy of his "Project Longford Visual Amenity Image drive under the guidance of local architect Liam Madden and which has seen the local businessman transform the outer curtilage of various shop units along the county towns Market Square. Madden is someone Brian credits with helping engineer the revamp in a move which has seen several other local businesses follow suit and also brought about Brians most recent moniker, the Sultan of Zanzibar. The Sultan of Zanzibar and the future When asked to comment Liam Vitruvius Madden said: "The Sultan has created an extravaganza of excellence, a cornucopia of culture and a panorama of architectural splendor. The Sultan was aided in his titanic endeavours by Brian "Michealigo" Lyons and Gary "Rembrant" Robinson. What this (Project Longford Visual Amenity Image) is about is Longford putting its best clothing on both mentally as much as visually and with a chuckle, Fr Manning Gaels win the Connolly Cup next year, then all the better, says Brian. Wishful thinking or not, Brian Kane is clearly intent on leaving a legacy that will stand the test of time. *Wherever you come from, if you've got that niggling business idea then Brian has a unit perfect for your budget at the Market Square, contact (085) 1022391. *You can also follow and get in touch with Brian by via social media by following the link: https://www.facebook.com/ brian.kane.33865 Please help support these local hard working businesses *************** Edit Print Customised Printing and Embroidery 14-15 Earl Street 085 2478000 *************** Longford Nails & Beauty & Georgina McCormack Hair Studio 16-17 Earl Street 089 4058889 ************* Top Gift 18 Earl Street 089 9635126 *************** Jasper Barber 1a Market Square 089 9760690 ************ Lotus Health Rooms 1b Market Square 087 3822054 ******************* Longford Society Protection of Cruelty to Animals 2 Market Square 043 33 47417 or 087 6856663 *************** Feelystone Headstones & Worktops 3 Market Square 0868323076 ******************* Phinewort Hair Salon 3 Kilashee Street 089 9629887 ******************** Stoncraft, 1 Cloonturk, Stonepark, 089 2496943 ********************** Stan Garage, Tyres, Parts & Recovery 2 Cloonturk, Stonepark 085 7492665 A Massachusetts inspector found in March that the elevator that killed a university lecturer had a stop-switch problem, according to information released by the Office of Public Safety and Inspections. Boston University lecturer, Carrier O'Connor, 38, was crushed to death Monday evening while trying to load a bed frame and a mattress into the elevator of her 1920s building at 1140 Commonwealth Avenue in Allston. At the time of the accident, management at the building confirmed that the elevator had been inspected recently. And according to the Boston Business Journal, which obtained the report from the inspections office, an inspector found a stop-switch problem with the elevator on March 26 during the elevator's annual inspection. According to the violation notice, the inspector only listed the 'car stop switch' as a problem without adding details about what was wrong with it. Boston University lecturer, Carrier O'Connor (left and right), 38, was crushed to death Monday evening while trying to load a bed frame and a mattress into the elevator of her 1920s building at 1140 Commonwealth Avenue in Allston A data report from the Office of Public Safety and Inspections, an inspector found a stop-switch problem with the elevator (pictured) on March 26 during the elevator's annual inspection According to the violation notice (pictured), the inspector only listed the 'car stop switch' as a problem without adding details about what was wrong with it The building's landlord was then given 60 days to make the repair, but the elevator was allowed to continue operation, according to the Boston Business Journal. On April 22, Commonwealth Elevator, which services elevators, notified the state inspections office that the violation had been addressed. According to the Journal, a mechanic swore under penalty of perjury that the problem had been fixed. The building was then given an inspection certificate that does not expire until March 2021. It's unclear if the stop-switch played a role in O'Connor's death. A DailyMail.com request for comment to Commonwealth Elevator was not immediately returned. As the investigation continued, authorities revealed that O'Connor became trapped in the doorway of the first floor and the elevator, according to a police report, obtained by the Boston Globe. O'Connor was pronounced dead at the scene and her body was extracted by Boston firefighters. Firefighters are seen outside the apartment complex in Allston, Boston on Monday Authorities (pictured exiting the building) said O'Connor was found in the elevator on the first floor. She was pronounced dead at the scene In the report, police wrote that O'Connor's 'mattress and frame were also removed from the scene and held in the garage area'. The items are being held at this time 'as evidence', police added. Following the accident, tenant Leanne Scorzoni, said the elevator didn't feel 'dangerous or broken'. 'But I will say it feels as if youre riding in an antique,' she continued. 'Its not always a good feeling.' Scorzoni also told the Boston Globe, that she spoke with a man who had been helping OConnor right before she was killed at the building located at 1140 Commonwealth Ave in Allston. While the elevator usually works via a two-door system that requires the second door to be firmly shut before moving, it's believed the weight triggered a sensor by fault. 'I heard it, he saw everything,' tenant Leanne Scorzoni said. 'He was helping her with a box into the building and he was going up the stairs, and he told her "hey, just be careful because it's an old-fashioned elevator."' Scorzoni described the scene as 'horrifying'. 'I don't know what type of elevator it is, but you have to pull the door across and then step in and then press the button,' she said. Scorzoni added that she was told the elevator had a sensor, and the man who was helping O'Connor believes that the package may have triggered the sensor, which caused it to start moving. She told the Boston Globe that there is a staircase next to the elevator, and the man helping O'Connor was talking to her as he was going up. Tenant, Leanne Scorzoni (pictured), said she spoke with a man who had been helping OConnor right before she was killed at the building located at 1140 Commonwealth Ave in Allston. Scorzoni said the man told her to 'be careful' while using the elevator 'It's a two-slide door system and unless that door is completely shut, it does not move ever,' tenant Nevada Foskit (pictured) said. 'If something did happen, it clearly had to be faulty' 'He just said "oh, I don't think that's gonna fit in there." And then she's like, "oh, I'll try it one more time". And then I heard her screaming, and I heard him screaming,' she told the publication. Scorzoni added that the man was screaming and pointing when she emerged from her first floor apartment. 'When I looked at the elevator, it was not there. Only the ceiling of the car was on my floor, so all the cables were there,' she said. Scorzoni said she did not know O'Connor, and the French lecturer had only recently moved into the building. Other residents in the building reported hearing screams at the time of the tragic accident. An unidentified witness told Boston 25 News that she 'heard just an ungodly scream'. 'We ran into the hallway and saw a gentlemen who was in distress screaming and hyperventilating and saying she's dead, she's dead'. The building's residents weren't allowed inside for about 90 minutes as police worked the scene and were told that the elevator was stuck between the first floor and the basement. In a statement, a spokesperson from the state's Division of Professional Licensure said officials from the Office of Public Safety and Inspections determined that the elevator was recently inspected and certified in accordance with state regulations The elevator became stuck between the first floor and the basement, which is where the washers and dryers are in the building The building (pictured) itself dates back to 1920, according to tax records, but it's unclear when the elevator was installed Police and officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are still investigating. Boston police sergeant Detective John Boyle said her cause of death was traumatic asphyxia, and the manner was accidental. According to O'Connor's biography on the Boston University website, she has taught 'a wide range of courses throughout her career, including French language, French for Business, Conversational French, French literature in translation, and French culture through gastronomy'. She previously taught at Bentley University, Louisiana State University, MIT, Northeastern University, and Tufts University. Though Barr did not cite any particular cases, his remarks seemed to defend his recent intervention in two prosecutions of Trumps allies. In the case against the presidents longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to lawmakers as they probed Russian interference in the 2016 election, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation offered by career prosecutors shortly after Trump tweeted his dismay about the matter. All four quit the case, with two later saying they felt the move was politically driven and inappropriate. File image It was in all probability a coincidence that the Centre at 6.59 pm on September 5, a Saturday, announced it will conduct the first stage of computer-based tests to fill 140,000 vacancies in the Railways on December 15. Earlier in the evening of September 5, celebrated as the Teachers Day, young women and men had taken to social media in significant enough numbers to complain of lack of job opportunities. If the youth are restless, sections of farmers are on the streets too, to protest the three farm sector ordinances the government introduced in the Lok Sabha on September 14. It is in this context of edgy youth and upset farmers, economic distress and joblessness, a GDP drop of 23.9 percent in the first quarter, and rising prices of electorally-sensitive vegetables such as onions, that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prepares to mark the 70th birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 17. The BJP is also galvanised to face, along with its allies, the assembly elections in Bihar, and by-polls to 64 assembly seats across 15-states, including 27 in Madhya Pradesh. Blips like the number of dislikes outstripping likes on some of his social media pages notwithstanding, Modis popularity in the hearts and minds of Indias common people is enshrined like that of only two other prime ministers in the history of Independent India. So, while it is unlikely that the government, or the BJP, will pay undue heed to calls to observe the PMs birthday as berozgari diwas (unemployment day), the BJP governments at the Centre and in the states have in recent weeks expressed intent or announced plans to fill vacancies in government jobs and disbursed loans to the self-employed. Irate youth and indignant farmers, and both at the same time, is not a good portent for any ruling party. The BJP discovered this in the Gujarat Assembly polls of December 2017, which it struggled to win amid anger among the youth and farmers, and subsequently in the assembly polls a year later in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, all of which it lost. In Madhya Pradesh and with an eye on the by-polls to 27-seats, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan last month proposed to bring a controversial law to reserve state government jobs for locals. Interestingly, the Centre has handpicked Madhya Pradesh for sanctioning and disbursing loans to street vendors under the PM Street Vendors AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (SVANidhi) scheme launched on June 1. The objective of the scheme is to provide collateral free working capital loans of up to Rs 10,000 of one-year tenure to 5 million street vendors across India. The loan processing under the scheme started on July 2. According to a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on September 16, the government said that until September 14, it received 1.159 million applications, sanctioned 406,000, and disbursed 102,000 loans under the scheme. In this, applications from Madhya Pradesh were 268,000, followed by 216,000 each from Uttar Pradesh and Telangana. All other states lagged far behind. Of the applications from Madhya Pradesh, 160,000 loans were sanctioned and 85,004 loans already disbursed. For Telangana, while 73,249 loans were sanctioned, only 4,575 disbursed. In UPs case, 41,757 loans were sanctioned and only 2,048 disbursed. It would be interesting to see if much of the disbursal of these loans might have taken place in the Gwalior region, the stronghold of BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, and where nearly all the by-polls will take place. On September 12, Modi said 1.8 million houses have been constructed under the PM Awas Yojana during the COVID-19 period, of which 175,000 constructed in MPs rural areas. In Bihar, the other poll bound state, and recovering from the onslaught of floods in 16 of its 38 districts, Modi has announced a slew of infrastructure projects. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is also on a spree to inaugurate projects and buildings, and allocations for MNREGA work could increase now that floodwaters have receded. The Rs 20,500 crore Matsya Sampada Yojana that the PM has announced will have its focus on Bihar, especially its crucial fisherfolk community of Nishads, which comprises 8 percent of the electorate. The Centre has also set up the National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to conduct tests, and to shortlist candidates for some categories of central government jobs. Last November, the government told Parliament there were 700,000 vacancies in central government jobs, and the process was on to fill 408,951. These include 103,769 vacancies for track maintainers and pointsmen that the Railway Recruitment Board first notified on February 23, 2019, on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls. These are yet to be filled. It can be expected that they will get filled by the time of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in March 2022, also the date set for building a new India to mark the 75th year of Independence. By Laman Ismayilova Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation is seeking to expand cooperation with Hungary. The foundation president Gunay Efendiyeva has recently met with the Hungarian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Viktor Szederkeny. The sides discussed measures taken by the Foundation for Turkish Culture to promote the Turkish heritage at the international arena. Gunay Efendiyeva informed Hungarian Ambassador about the future projects initiated by the foundation. Noting that Hungary is an observer country of Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation, Efendiyeva stressed the importance of mutual cooperation and joint work. Viktor Szederkeny praised the foundation's activities aimed at protection of the historical and cultural heritage of Turkic-speaking peoples. The Ambassador noted that Hungary and the Turkic-speaking peoples have the same historical roots. He emphasized the importance of the work done to promote and study Turkish rich cultural heritage. The parties also discussed the events and projects timed to the 150th anniversary of first Department of Turkology at the University of Budapest. The sides exchanged views on mutual cooperation in future. Initiated in 2012, Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation focuses on preservation of Turkic heritage in member countries as well as conducting projects in collaboration with partners in third countries. The Foundation provides assistance in the protection, study and promotion of Turkic culture and heritage through supporting and funding various activities, projects and programs. It carries out its activities in cooperation with TURKSOY and the Turkic Academy. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz BEIJING, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The China-Russia Economic and Trade Index Report (2020) was officially released by the China Economic Information Service (CEIS) on Wednesday. The report reflects the trade volume between China and its regions with Russia, and scientifically monitored the development level and trend of bilateral trade via the establishment of a quantifiable index system. Per the index result, China-Russia trade index showed a steady upward trend in 2019, up 12.66 percent from that in 2018. The monthly China-Russia economic and trade index shows that although global trade has shrunk sharply due to COVID-19, China-Russia bilateral trade has maintained an increase trend, reflecting the great resilience and potential of bilateral economic and trade cooperation. Based on the trade complementarity index, among China's exports to Russia, the products with strong trade complementarity are finished products classified by raw materials, machinery and transportation equipment, and miscellaneous finished products, including food, textiles, steel, and machinery. Among Russia's exports to China, non-edible raw materials, fossil fuels and lubricants are highly complementary. The intra-industry trade index reflects that China and Russia enjoy the highest degree of division of labor in food industry, followed by processing manufacturing. The division of labor in consumer goods retail industry is becoming increasingly optimized. The results fully reflect the scale and quality of bilateral economic and trade cooperation between the two countries have continuously improved, boasting a promising future. Harbin, the capital city of China's Heilongjiang Province, has inherent geographical advantages in trade with Russia. The release of Harbin City Radiation Index can provide decision-making support for the development of Harbin as a regional center in cooperation with Russia. Harbin City Radiation Index closed at 149.46 points in 2019, registering an increase of 13.01 percent year on year. The first report China-Russia Economic and Trade Index was officially released in June 2019. CEIS is the main body responsible for the integrated management and operation of economic information business of Xinhua News Agency. "Xinhua Finance," the national financial information platform under CEIS, serves the country's economic development and financial security. "Xinhua Indices," the first and only index service organization in all fields in China, has incubated a number of influential index products in capital market, industry, urban development and brand building. See the original link: https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/316240.html SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road Information Service Pet owners infected with COVID-19 are at risk of spreading the virus to their cats and dogs whom can also end up with respiratory systems a study has found. Veterinary experts from Canada have warned those suspected to have contracted the novel coronavirus to stay away from their furry friends for the latter's sake. While there is no evidence so far that humans con contract COVID-19 from animals, experts have said it may be possible, as the virus does not change between species. In their study, the team analysed households in which pets developed respiratory symptoms at the same time as their humans were suffering from coronavirus. Pet owners infected with COVID-19 are at risk of spreading the virus to their cats and dogs whom can also end up with respiratory systems a study has found (stock image) 'These preliminary results suggest that a substantial proportion of pets in households of persons with COVID-19 become infected,' said paper author and veterinary pathologist Dorothee Bienzle of the University of Guelph, Canada. In the study, people who owned a cat or dog and in one case a ferret and had been given a diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 were invited to have their pet swabbed. If humans were outside the two-week window of suspected infectiousness, antibody testing was offered which looked for recent or past infection, using so-called IgM and IgG antibodies, respectively. Out of the 17 cats, 18 dogs and one ferret, all cats were tested and none bar one proved infectious, but some showed signs of having been infected. Ferrets and related species like mink are highly susceptible to infection, the researchers noted. 'All cats with an indeterminate PCR or positive antibody results were reported to have had respiratory and/or other illness by their owners around the time of the owner's COVID-19 infection,' said Professor Bienzle. '20 per cent of dogs had positive IgG antibody results indicating past infection and one of these was reported to have had an episode of respiratory disease.' However, she added, 'no dogs had positive IgM results, which would have indicated more recent infection.' Veterinary experts from Canada have warned those suspected to have contracted the novel coronavirus to stay away from their furry friends for the latter's sake (stock image) 'Eligible participant number was limited by relatively low human transmission rates in the study area,' Professor Bienzle said. However, she noted, 'these preliminary results suggest that a substantial proportion of pets in households of persons with COVID-19 end up developing antibodies.' 'Due to the narrow window of time available to detect a current infection in pets especially if their owner is still sick and isolating blood testing the animal at a later time to check for previous infection is preferable for assessment of transmission.' 'Transmission from mink to humans has been reported on mink farms with a high proportion of infected animals maintained in close quarters and cared for by humans,' she continued. 'Transmission from pets to humans has not been reported, but since the virus changes minimally or not at all after transmission from humans to animals, such reverse transmission may occur.' Professor Bienzle and her colleagues have encouraged people with coronavirus to stay away from both other people and their pets. 'There is sufficient evidence from multiple studies, including ours, to recommend that SARS-CoV-2 infected persons should isolate from people and animals,' she said. The full findings of the study were presented at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Conference on Coronavirus Disease, which is being held virtually from September 2325, 2020. 'Preliminary results made available at conferences before larger more detailed peer review studies are published and replicated are useful to stimulate discussion and further work, but at this stage are just that: preliminary results,' said veterinarian Tim Morris of the University of Nottingham, who was not involved in the study. 'Constructive challenge should then begin as this abstract is presented, with questions including on how the antibody results compared with those taken before COVID-19 was first reported and if the antibody tests are specific to COVID.' The team, he added, must also 'fully exclude other animal coronaviruses and [...] other causes of respiratory infection in cats.' 'As such these results should not be over-interpreted and so cause unwarranted alarm, particularly as currently there is no evidence reported of contagious SARS-CoV-2 transmission from pets to people.' Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Geneva, Switzerland Thu, September 17, 2020 21:00 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c457fd5c 2 World WHO,health-worker,pandemic,coronavirus,COVID-19,SARS-CoV-2,COVID-19-infection,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus Free Too many doctors and nurses are paying the ultimate price while battling Covid-19, the World Health Organization said Thursday as it launched a charter aiming to boost safety for health workers. The UN health agency said that the pandemic had exposed health workers and their families to "unprecedented levels of risk". While the coronavirus crisis has taken a heavy toll overall, data from many countries and regions show that healthcare workers have been infected at a far higher rate than the general population. Health workers represent less than three percent of the population in most countries and less than two percent in low- and middle income countries, but account for around 14 percent of all Covid-19 cases reported to the WHO. In some countries, the proportion has been as high as 35 percent, the body said. On Wednesday, the International Council of Nurses said thousands of nurses had likely died in the pandemic, pointing to numbers from just 44 countries showing 1,097 deaths by mid-August. "The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded all of us of the vital role health workers play to relieve suffering and save lives," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing. "We all owe health workers an enormous debt, not just because they have cared for the sick, but because they risk their own lives in the line of duty." The risks are not only physical. The WHO pointed to "extraordinary levels of psychological stress" on health workers, who have been asked to work long, draining hours battling Covid-19, living in constant fear of being infected. Many are also living separated from their families, and facing social stigma amid fear they are carrying the virus. Depression, anxiety These strains are increasing the likelihood of depression among medical professionals, who were already more at risk of suicide than the general public in a number of countries prior to the pandemic. One in four health care workers surveyed for a recent study said they were struggling with depression and anxiety amid the pandemic, while one in three said they had suffered insomnia, the WHO said. In its charter presented Thursday, the WHO emphasized the legal and moral obligations governments have to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of health workers. The charter among other things calls on countries to develop programs that better protect the health and safety of medical workers, and to combine them with patient safety policies. It also calls for better policies for protecting health workers from violence in the workplace, and for improving access to mental health support. And it demands that minimum standards for patient safety, infection prevention and control, as well as for occupational safety are implemented across all care facilities. Access to personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as sufficient training in how to use such equipment safely should also be guaranteed, it said. "No country, hospital or clinic can keep its patients safe unless it keeps its health workers safe," Tedros said. Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky Getty/William B. Plowman Born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, left-wing author and activist Noam Chomsky has seen a lot in his lifetime from the Great Depression and World War II to the social unrest of the 1960s to Watergate to 9/11. And during an interview with the New Statesman this month, the 91-year-old Chomsky explained why he finds the events of 2020 especially perilous. "There's been nothing like it in human history," Chomsky told the Statesman. "I'm old enough to remember, very vividly, the threat that Nazism could take over much of Eurasia that was not an idle concern. U.S. military planners did anticipate that the war would end with a U.S.-dominated region and a German-dominated region . . . But even that, horrible enough, was not like the end of organized human life on Earth, which is what we're facing." Chomsky spoke to the Statesman before the first summit of the Progressive International, an organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in response to the increase in far-right authoritarian movements in different parts of the world. In 2020, Chomsky has been sounding the alarm about a variety of perils: climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump's authoritarian response to the George Floyd protests. And he told the Statesman, "We're at an astonishing confluence of very severe crises. The extent of them was illustrated by the last setting of the famous Doomsday Clock. It's been set every year since the atom bombing, the minute hand has moved forward and back. But last January, they abandoned minutes and moved to seconds to midnight, which means termination and that was before the scale of the pandemic." Chomsky has vivid memories of the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945 he was 16 at the time as well as the Cold War, which ended with the end of the Soviet Union and the Easter Bloc in the early 1990s. And Chomsky believes that in 2020, the "threat of nuclear war" is "growing" and is "probably more severe than it was during the Cold War." Adding to the peril, Chomsky told the Statesman, are "the growing threat of environmental catastrophe" and "the sharp deterioration of democracy." Story continues A key figure in that deterioration, according to Chomsky, is Trump and other troubling examples of authoritarianism he cited range from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to Hungarian President Viktor Orban, who Chomsky said is "creating a proto-fascist state." Chomsky, the Statesman's George Eaton notes, has "lived through 22 U.S. presidential elections" and he pointed out that Trump has said that he might not concede if former Vice President Joe Biden wins in November. "He's already announced repeatedly that if he doesn't like the outcome of the election, he won't leave," Chomsky told the Statesman. "And this is taken very seriously by two high-level military officers, ex-military leaders who've just sent a letter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reviewing for him his constitutional duties if the president refuses to leave office and gathers around him the paramilitary forces that he's been using to terrorize people in Portland." Related Articles Explore SIUs selection of art, music and educational classes, workshops this fall by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. Children and adults of all ages will find an array of fun, educational and enriching programs, courses and workshops this fall at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Conference and Scheduling Services offerings include assorted virtual programs and workshops for children from first grade through senior adults along with music programs for youths and adults. In addition, there are continuing education courses for high school students, language courses for high school and adult ages, programs for community listeners and continuing education classes. Fall programming will comply with state pandemic safety guidelines, but organizers have worked hard to ensure that there is a diverse assortment of offerings for all ages. Making music The SIU School of Music is hosting numerous opportunities for pre-college and community musicians to enhance their instrumental and vocal skills, either in individual or small group settings. Participants can choose private weekly lessons in a variety of formats: Entirely online. Alternating face-to-face and online. In person with social distancing guidelines. Lessons are available for cello, clarinet, flute, French horn, oboe, organ, percussion, piano, trombone/euphonium, trumpet, viola, violin and voice. Find complete details and registration information online at conferenceservices.siu.edu/camps-youth-programs/siu-school-of-music-preparatory-programs.php. High school learning enhancement options A variety of continuing education courses are available for high school students to help them prepare for college, learn new skills and explore new possibilities. Some of the classes have multiple starting dates during the semester; some offer self-paced options. Classes include: SAT/ACT prep course (parts 1 and 2 and a prep series). Introduction to journaling. Ultimate resume building. Individual excellence. Everyday math. Discover digital photography. Leadership best practices. Get your best grades ever online. Begin to build Android apps within an hour; no coding required. Check out all of the details and sign up online at conferenceservices.siu.edu/camps-youth-programs/continuing-education-for-high-school-students.php. Learn a new language Here is the opportunity to learn a new language, either for personal or professional reasons. Several non-credit courses are available for high school students and adults. Classes are as low as $115 and last up to six weeks; some are self-paced. Options include: Spanish writing to get things done toolkit. Beginning conversational French. Conversational Japanese. Discover sign language. Discover sign language II and Discover sign language series. Instant Italian. Speed Spanish. Speed Spanish II and Spanish III. Additional information and registration details are available on the website at conferenceservices.siu.edu/camps-youth-programs/learning-a-language.php. Learning never need stop Conference and Scheduling Services also offers two other types of programming for adults who are interested in personal and professional growth. The Community Listeners program gives adults the opportunity to experience SIU courses. When space is available, they can join in regular online classes and learn along with Saluki students but take no tests, receive no grades or credit hours. The fee is $50. In addition, SIU offers hundreds of online Continuing Education courses and certifications in a wide array of subjects. All are taught by expert instructors. This falls course categories within specific fields include 10 business fundamentals courses, along with professional development options for teachers. Check out the options. Art for kids, teens, adults and SIU students The Student Center Craft Shop is offering a series of activities for people of all ages. There will be virtual afterschool youth art programs for children in grades 1-8. All will be held via Zoom. Anyone age 16 and older is welcome to participate in a full slate of virtual teen and adult art workshops. And the Craft Shop is offering various hybrid workshops for SIU students as well. The details on these workshops along with other Craft Shop happenings are at news.siu.edu/2020/09/090220-SIUs-Craft-Shop-offers-assorted-virtual-or-in-person-activities-this-fall.php. Sign up several ways Sign up now for any of the classes either online, by email, fax or by calling. Register online at conferenceservices.siu.edu, by faxing 618/453-5680 or by calling 618/536-7751. Email conferenceservices@siu.edu for additional information. Oracle Corp. will get full access to review TikToks source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the companys Chinese parent to gather data on the video-sharing apps 100 million American users, according to people familiar with the matter. TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. and Oracle submitted these details in their proposal to the Trump administration with a goal of averting an outright sale of the app or a shutdown of its U.S. operations set to take effect Sept. 20. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to ban the app in a pair of executive orders issued last month based on U.S. national security concerns. The terms of the agreement seem to fall short of meeting those national security concerns expressed by administration officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to people familiar with the matter. Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and other members of the administration have been talking directly with Oracle executives, one person said. Trump, speaking Wednesday with reporters, said he is getting a briefing on the issue Thursday morning, adding that he didnt like the idea of ByteDance retaining control of TikTok. Im not prepared to sign off of anything," Trump said. I have to see the deal." TikTok has emerged as a top target in Trumps effort to crack down on China ahead of the Nov. 3 election. The president is trailing his Democratic opponent Joe Biden in the polls and seeking to use his tough stance with Beijing as a selling point to voters. TikTok declined to comment. Oracle didnt respond to requests for comment. ByteDance plans to create a new standalone company for TikToks U.S. operations in which it would remain majority owner, but give Oracle and other American investors minority stakes in the new business. Public statements made by both companies calling Oracle the newly formed companys trusted technology partner" were met with confusion, one of the people said. The new details shed light on Oracles role in the partnership and go beyond just housing data inside the software companys U.S. cloud servers, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Oracle will be able to check all source code from the algorithms that decide which TikTok videos get shown to which U.S. users to ensure there are no entry points for the Chinese parent. Oracle, the worlds second-largest software maker, will be able to continue to review the technology as updates come in to make sure there are no new points of access to the data, the people said. Under the proposed deal, the newly formed TikTok would also hire an independent board approved by the U.S. government. The new U.S.-based company would allow oversight by a third party, which will report to the U.S. government and provide continuous audits, reports and protocols for handling any incidents that may arise, according to the people. That means if, say, Beijing finds a way to infiltrate TikToks code, Oracle and the independent board would have the means and agency to spot it. Despite the terms, administration officials remain wary about the proposed new ownership structure and how much influence that would give China over the company. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has reviewed the proposed deal. Attorney General William Barr was only briefed on the deal Wednesday and is reviewing it, according to a Justice Department official who declined to comment further. Barr spoke with Oracle executives Wednesday morning, two people familiar with the situation said. Pompeo had a conversation the company officials last week. The Treasury, State and Justice departments are all part of the Committee for Foreign Investments in the U.S., or Cfius, which reviews deals for national security implications. In a meeting Tuesday afternoon, officials raised concerns about a deal that would leave a majority stake of TikToks U.S. assets in ByteDances hands, with Oracle taking a minority share, the people said. The proposal also calls for the newly formed U.S. company to hire 25,000 American workers in a wide range of jobs from content moderation, engineering, product and marketing. However, the company is not going to recreate the powerful algorithms that run the app based on data that ByteDance has collected for years, one person said. ByteDance will still have visibility into the algorithms, but Oracle will be able to monitor the data flows and review and approve all updates to the code. 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 ERS Genomics Limited, which was formed to provide broad access to the foundational CRISPR/Cas9 intellectual property (IP) co-owned by Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier, today announced it has signed an agreement with Applied StemCell, Inc., a leading provider of stem cell, animal model, antibody discovery services and reagents. Dr. Eric Rhodes ERS Genomics holds an exclusive worldwide license from Dr. Charpentier to the foundational patents covering CRISPR/Cas9. Companies can obtain licenses to this technology for internal research and commercialization of research tools, kits, reagents and genetically modified cell lines and organisms. Applied StemCell is a fast growing California based biotech company with a goal of advancing gene editing and stem cell innovation worldwide. Applied StemCell offers a wide variety of preclinical research services including cell and animal model generation, antibody discovery, and preclinical assay services to support cell/gene product development. Applied StemCell has been a leading stem cell company I have followed for many years. It is exciting to see their expertise in cell and animal models being combined with the power of CRISPR gene editing." Eric Rhodes, CEO of ERS Genomics We are extremely excited to build on the strength of our existing platform while investing our R&D in emerging technologies to drive our future growth. Ruby Tsai, CEO of Applied StemCell Financial details of the agreement are not disclosed. The 2021 Hyundai Tucson is now available at the Greg May Hyundai showroom. Customer can schedule their end-of-lease inspection and learn more about the 2021 Tucson with one visit. The Hyundai class of 2021 is starting to arrive at the Greg May Hyundai showroom. This is the time of the year when people are starting to consider their options for taking home a new vehicle. Over the last several years, leasing has become a popular financial tool to help people get the exact platform they need to meet their needs. A Hyundai lease offers incredibly affordable monthly payments as well as the peace of mind of knowing that almost any major problem that may unexpectedly occur will be taken care of quickly. But, what happens at the end of a lease? Some people might not be aware of all the options they have available. The financial experts working at Greg May Hyundai want customers to be thinking about these choices before they walk into the showroom. There are a few options to choose from when a Hyundai lease comes to an end. First, a customer can turn in their vehicle and start a new lease. Or, they can choose to buy the vehicle they have been leasing. Finally, the lease-holder can either choose to traditionally finance a new vehicle or simply walk away. When it comes time to make one of these decisions, a Hyundai lease vehicle can be dropped off at any authorized dealership even if they didnt originally get the vehicle from that location. It is not uncommon for Greg May Hyundai customers to end one leasing term and start a new one. For the upcoming model year, the 2021 Hyundai Tucson has arrived at the showroom with spirited and efficient powertrains that can produce up to 161 horsepower when it equipped with the 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine or as much as 181 horsepower when employing the 2.4-liter, four-cylinder power plant. Additionally, the interior of the 2021 Tucson will continue to be among the more flexible options in the segment, featuring up to 31 cubic-feet of cargo volume behind the rear seat or up to 61.9 cubic-feet when the rear seat is folded down. Anyone can view the entire Greg May Hyundai inventory today by visiting the dealerships website, http://www.gregmayhyundai.com. The showroom is located at 1501 West Loop 340, Waco, TX 76712. Customers can learn more about their lease-end options or schedule a test drive with the 2021 Hyundai Tucson today by calling, 254-523-0623. Stormont is considering similar measures on single use plastic bags which saw an increase in charges in England (Dominic Lipinski/PA). Stormont is considering similar measures on single-use plastic bags which saw an increase in charges in England. The fee there will be doubled to 10p and extended to all shops from April next year. Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) officials briefed their Stormont scrutiny committee on Thursday. Anthony Courtney, of the DAERA, said: There are separate strands of work ongoing around plastics. Officials are looking at whether it would be appropriate to try to introduce measures on single-use plastics in Northern Ireland similar to those being implemented in the UK. At a broader level in the UK there are legislative measures being introduced that will have a significant impact on plastics. They may result in benefits that go beyond some of the stuff coming in from Europe. Twenty-four environmental projects in Northern Ireland will receive 2.2 million raised by the plastic bag tax over the past year. Five pence is levied on every carrier bag. The charge was introduced in 2013 and has seen the number of bags used cut by more than two-thirds. DAERA officials also gave evidence about EU exit preparations. The Capitol restoration project is 90% complete and is on track to be finished in mid-2022, Stitt said. Stitt said the visitor entrance is the front door to the iconic state building. I love that the Capitol does not belong to any one person, Stitt said. It belongs to Oklahomans. Oklahoma, this is your office where you can make your voice heard, where you can bring your passions, your concerns and dreams to the table. A little more than 30 years ago, eighth-graders from Norman took a field trip to the Capitol, where they got to meet then Gov. Henry Bellmon, he said. Now, one of those eighth-graders has grown up and now walks these historic halls as the 28th governor of Oklahoma, Stitt said, referring to himself. Steve Mason, chairman of the State Capitol Restoration Expenditure Oversight Committee, said the project actually began about 25 years ago, when Keating led efforts to put a dome on the building. Mason said using the old southeast entrance on the first floor was like walking into someones garage to get into their house. The Electoral Commission (EC) has been called upon to introduce measures that will reduce the alarming incidence of spoilt ballots in Ghanas elections. Dr. Ezekiel Nortey and Dr. Kwame Asah Asante, both Senior Lecturers at the University of Ghana, who made the suggestion on TV 3 Election 360 programme on Monday, observed that the quantum of spoilt ballots as recorded by the EC since 1992, had the potential to affect the results of presidential and parliamentary elections, especially in constituencies where the differences between the votes of winners and losers are not much. In the 2008 presidential election for instance, then candidate Akufo-Addo lost to the late President Atta Mills by 40,586 votes while spoilt ballots recorded by the EC were 205,843. Also in the 2016 election, NPPs Titus Glover won the Tema East Constituency with 30,075 votes against 30,072 votes obtained by his NDC opponent, Kempes Ofosu Ware. The difference was three votes while the spoilt ballots were 658. To curb the incidence of spoilt ballots, Dr. Nortey and Dr. Asah Asante suggested that the EC should reconsider the definition of spoilt ballot. Alternatively, the Commission should explore the use of ballot papers that would eliminate the use of ink by voters to thumb print because wrong folding of the ballot paper usually causes unintended stains that make the paper void, they added. They quoted the EC as having recorded 149,813; 111,108; and 119,372 spoilt ballot in 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections respectively while In the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections, spoilt ballots were 188,123; 205,643; 243,280; and 167,349 respectively. The academics blamed the occurrence of spoilt ballots, which is described in certain circles as the Third Force, on incorrect folding of the ballot paper, deliberate spoiling of the ballot paper by voters in protest against the leading parties, and ineffective voter education by the National Commission on Civic Education and the political parties. 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 Sana Shakil By Express News Service DELHI: There is no proposal to amend the Official Languages Act to include scheduled languages other than English and Hindi as its official languages, the Centre told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai stated this while replying to a question asked by Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) founder Vaiko who enquired whether any such proposal was in the making as had been suggested by the Supreme Court. When asked how the people in Southern and Northeastern region of the country, especially villagers would be able to comprehend rules and regulations published by the government, Rai said that there is a provision of a three-language formula (Hindi, English and regional languages) as per point no. 3 of Official Language Resolution, 1968 which have been prepared in consultation with the state governments. The order of usage of languages in the name-boards/notice-boards to be displayed for the information of the public by Central Government which are located in non-Hindi speaking areas is to be in the order of (1) Regional Language, (2) Hindi, (3) English, the minister said, in a written reply. While hearing an appeal against the Delhi High Court order in the matter of Draft Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2020, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, had orally remarked that the central government should consider amending the Official Languages Act to include scheduled languages other than Hindi and English as official languages of the Government of India. There may be people in Karnataka, Nagaland, or rural Maharashtra who might not know Hindi or English. Your government should consider amending the Official Languages Act. These days, translation is the easiest task between you and Google translator. In Parliament, any language is translated. We are also translating our judgments into vernacular languages... You [Centre] can bring your Act up to date, the CJI had remarked. TechCrunch said Thursday it will no longer work with event manager Non Plus Ultra after the vendor swept the tents of homeless people and threw out their belongings last week outside of a venue used for the tech websites Disrupt conference in San Francisco. The sweep occurred shortly after midnight on Sept. 10 outside of the 10 South Van Ness Ave. venue where Disrupt is being filmed without an audience, according to a police report and a Facebook Live recording. The Facebook video posted last week shows workers putting tents, bikes and other items into a truck. This was not an action that we asked Non Plus Ultra to perform and is not something that we would ever ask them to do. Upon further investigation, we discovered that belongings and personal effects had been removed or discarded by a private company hired by Non Plus Ultra, TechCrunch said. This is absolutely unacceptable, and were working to take immediate action. TechCrunch, a subsidiary of Verizon Media, said it would not work with Non Plus Ultra on future events. Non Plus Ultra San Francisco Public Press first reported the pre-event sweep. The private sweep is the latest clash between businesses and unhoused individuals in neighborhoods surrounding San Franciscos Civic Center, after the city ceased the controversial practice of clearing tent encampments on public streets during the coronavirus pandemic. Tenderloin merchants and UC Hastings sued the city over what they called dangerously crowded sidewalks, settling the lawsuit in June. Mid-Market restaurants including Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla sued the city over tent encampments in July. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights said it was investigating the incident. This homeless sweep is not only heartbreaking and disturbing, it is blatantly illegal. Every homeless person has a right to their belongings, the group said on Twitter. Non Plus Ultra said it would work with homeless service providers Community Housing Partnership and DISH to support unhoused residents and try to return and replace property. Non Plus Ultra intends to learn from this unfortunate situation and regret any pain this might have caused to our community, as that was never our intent, Lou Pizante, Non Plus Ultras chief financial officer, said in a statement. We will continue to do everything we can to grow and learn as a business and be part of our community during this difficult time in our city. The company said the encampment had spread to the buildings loading dock and parking area along 12th Street in violation of city health and safety requirements. Non Plus Ultra said it had talked to encampment residents for weeks about needing to relocate while cleaning occurred, and would allow residents to move back after cleaning. People have since moved back to the area, as shown by recent photos. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes The property was previously a Honda dealership and has been used as a temporary event venue. A large residential tower planned by developer Crescent Heights is approved for the site. Non Plus Ultra also books events at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco Mint and the Midway. The San Francisco Police Department said officers met with a person on Sept. 11, the day after the sweep, who said a pickup truck arrived around midnight the previous day and loaded up property from the encampment. Police were told one of the encampment residents got in an argument with a person leading the cleanup and the resident was assaulted. Police declined to identify the alleged victims due to confidentiality. The challenging recent events on 12th Street represent yet another heartbreaking example of how much work our City has to do to ensure dignity and decency for our most vulnerable and least resourced residents. Housing is the only meaningful solution for those experiencing homelessness. All of us have more work to do, Doug Gary, co-director of DISH, said in a statement, adding Non Plus Ultra was one of its biggest donors. Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf Mandatory quarantine measures stop people from travelling," said Muhammad Albakri, IATAs regional vice president for Africa and the Middle East Image: IATA Thirty-five countries in Africa and the Middle East have government-imposed quarantine measures in place. This is an increase of seven countries since August. The impact is that the region effectively remains in lockdown despite borders being open. Recent public opinion research showed that 88% of travellers would not even consider travelling if quarantine measures were imposed on travelers at their destination. Mandatory quarantine measures stop people from travelling. We understand that governments priority is on protecting the wellbeing of their citizens. Quarantine destroys livelihoods. Testing is an alternative method that will also save travel and tourism jobs, said Muhammad Albakri, IATAs Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East. Travelers support testing. The latest IATA survey of passenger attitudes, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shows 72% of people surveyed agreed that those who test negative for COVID should not have to quarantine, and that 80% of people feel that COVID-19 is sufficiently under control in that country to open borders. Quarantines, closed borders and travel restrictions continue to decimate travel demand in Africa and the Middle East. Traffic levels in Africa and the Middle East saw the largest drop of all regions in July compared to 2019 levels. Total passenger traffic in Africa in July 2020 was 93.7% below 2019 levels and in the Middle East 95.5% below 2019 levels. Aviation supported more than 6.2 million jobs and $56 billion in GDP in Africa and 2.4 million jobs and $130 billion in GDP in the Middle East pre-COVID-19. The economic impact of the collapse in air traffic in 2020 due to COVID-19 could be 3.5 million lost jobs and $35 billion in GDP in Africa and 1.5 million lost jobs and $85 billion in GDP Middle East. Testing provides a safe alternative to quarantine and a solution to stop the economic and social devastation being caused by COIVID-19, said Albakri. To the Editor: Re Barr Told U.S. Attorneys to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence (news article, Sept. 17): Protesters who engage in violence may surely be arrested and charged. But with sedition? Attorney General William Barrs mind-set is that of a dictator. It is ironic that he works for President Trump, who encourages his supporters violence, or, according to Mr. Barr, sedition. In March 2016, The Times published a video aptly called Trumps History of Encouraging Violence. He can be seen saying such things as Knock the crap out of them would you? and Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt each other anymore. His encouragement of violence is awful. But is it also sedition? On April 17, he tweeted LIBERATE MICHIGAN! and LIBERATE MINNESOTA! at a time when heavily armed protesters were at the Michigan Capitol building. There has been much anti-mask and anti-lockdown violence. Mr. Barr is part of an administration that is the most guilty of inciting violence in American history. A 38-year-old homeless man has been identified as the suspect accused of stealing a utility truck and leading police on a multi-city chase from Boston to a zoo in Stoneham early Thursday, authorities said. The pursuit, which ended in a crash near Interstate 93, involved Boston and Somerville police as well as Massachusetts State Police. The chase started in Boston, but officers eventually lost track of the stolen Feeney Brothers Utility Services truck near the tunnels. The suspect was apparently driving south in the north lane, Massachusetts State Police told MassLive. Officers in Somerville picked up the pursuit. Their chase ended at the on-ramp to I-93 northbound, though, state police said. State police patrols and K-9 units then began searching for the stolen truck and tracked the vehicle to the Stone Zoo on Pond Street in Stoneham. Authorities found the stolen truck in a parking lot shortly after 1:30 a.m., according to state police. The suspect drove away from police again in the truck before crashing on the on-ramp from the Fellsway eastbound to I-93 southbound in Stoneham, state police said. Troopers arrested the suspect, who was uninjured, according to state police. He has since been identified as Joseph Maloof. The 38-year-old man is believed to be homeless. The suspect was held overnight and is expected to be arraigned in court on Thursday, state police said. Related Content: Police chase stolen Feeney Brothers utility truck from Boston to Stone Zoo in Stoneham until it crashes near Interstate 93, authorities say Pubs that do not serve food in Northern Ireland will be able to reopen next Wednesday. Enforceable regulations will be passed. New coronavirus restrictions to the BT60 area, which covers parts of Co Armagh, have also been agreed by Stormont ministers. There have been a further 149 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the last 24-hours, the Department of Health has said. This brings the total number of cases to 8,780, including 689 in the last seven days. No further deaths were reported on Thursday. The death toll stands at 573. Coronavirus restrictions in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland subjected to localised measures became legally enforceable by police on Wednesday and repeat offenders face fines of up to 960. The current estimate of the virus reproductive rate is 1.2. The average number of new positive tests per day during the last seven days was 90 and incidence based on new positive tests was 33 per 100,000. Chief scientific adviser Professor Ian Young said: Over the last week, we have seen a plateauing in cases and an increase in hospital admissions. The seven-day average number of Covid-occupied beds increased from 16 to 21. He added the proportion of cases in individuals aged more than 60 years has risen from under 10% to just under 16%, but remains significantly below wave one of the epidemic where around half of cases were in this age group. The current increase in cases in younger people is likely to lead to increasing cases in the over-60s with resulting pressure on the hospital system and, tragically, increasing deaths. Earlier on Thursday, DUP MP Gavin Robinson accused Health Minister Robin Swann of going on a solo run by imposing additional coronavirus restrictions on areas that had not agreed by the whole Executive. The East Belfast MP said the addition of new areas including Carryduff, Four Winds and Dundonald to an interactive map published by the Department of Health on Wednesday night was not discussed in official minutes of Executive decision making. Read More Members of the public in BT16 and BT8 are now restricted under new regulations the Executive said last Thursday would only apply to households in places including the Belfast City Council area and Ballymena town. Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme, Mr Robinson said it's resulted in a "lack of clarity, lack of consistency and the lack of any demonstration of necessity" around coronavirus messaging. He said: "I do not believe that BT16 and BT8 form part of [Mr Swann's] recommendations to the Executive. I do not believe they featured because they do not fall within the Belfast City Council area. "It does not form part of the official minutes of decision making of the Executive," he added. "Nor does it compare with the official messaging that has taken place since last Thursday and every day since." Read More The public information on available on official advice website NI Direct does not include those extra regulations on other areas, Mr Robinson added. Read More Follow our contacted live updates here: The Department of Veterans Affairs is sending a team of infection control experts to the Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home, Hawaii's only state nursing home for veterans, which has been hit hard in the past month by the coronavirus pandemic. A "Tiger Team" -- including an infectious disease physician and nurse, in addition to nurse managers, safety officers, industrial hygienists and engineers -- is traveling to the Big Island to manage an outbreak that has killed 14 residents and infected an additional 68 veterans and staff members. Read Next: Bill Would Clear the Way for Army Legend Alwyn Cashe to Receive the Medal of Honor According to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, the team has deployed at the request of Hawaii Gov. David Ige as part of the VA's "Fourth Mission," supporting the nation's public health response in a national emergency. Since the pandemic was first detected in the U.S. in February, the VA has issued more than 800,000 pieces of personal protective equipment, including masks, gowns, gloves and more, to state and local facilities and sent personnel to 45 states to assist in state veterans and community nursing homes, non-VA hospitals and on Native American reservations. The Hawaii effort is just one example of what's happened "all across the country," Wilkie said. "It's one of the best stories about the government out there, that VA employees -- and they're all volunteers -- went out beyond their foundational mission to help," he said Friday. The COVID-19 outbreak at the Hawaii state veterans home began Aug. 22, about the time the state began seeing a surge of cases. The facility is run by Avalon Health Systems. According to a statement from the company, health officials believe that the virus entered the facility via a staff member who had no symptoms, as well as a resident who was exposed during an off-campus dialysis appointment. "We are deeply saddened to report that 14 of our beloved Veterans who tested positive for COVID-19 have passed away. We are heartbroken over this and express our condolences to the family and friends of these residents," officials said in a written statement. The VA is responsible for annual inspections and ensuring that state veterans homes are operated up to department standards. It also provides roughly $1 billion in funding to homes across the U.S. But by law, their operations fall under the state governments. Since the beginning of the pandemic, state veterans homes have suffered some of the biggest outbreaks. But just how many veterans in these homes who have been infected or died is not known: Some homes are not required to report their rates of infection or deaths, and neither the VA nor the National Association of State Veterans Homes maintains the data. A report by an ad hoc committee at Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) found that, from late April to July 17, 2020, 1,011 residents at 47 homes in 34 states had died. The group could not obtain data for the remaining 115 state veterans homes. State veterans homes with the highest numbers of cases and deaths include the Soldier's Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which had at least 76 deaths, and the New Jersey Veterans Home in Paramus, with 81 deaths. Wilkie said in May that, while he can assist states with their response, the VA does not control the state veterans homes. "What I told the governors is, if they need us, call us -- since the national emergency was declared. The process is that the governors have to go through the [Federal Emergency Management Agency], but I can help," Wilkie told Military.com. Last year, the Government Accountability Office faulted the VA for failing to adequately monitor the contractor it hired to run inspections at state veterans homes. The GAO said the VA had not been transparent in its assessments of the quality of care available at these homes. After so many veterans died this year of COVID-19 at these homes, senators asked the GAO to renew its investigation of VA oversight and determine whether the department followed the office's recommendations for stricter oversight. In their report, members of the VVA's Subcommittee on the Aging Veteran Experience, or SAVE, made several recommendations to the VA about state veterans homes, to include recommending that VA medical center, or VAMC, staff designate an official to act as liaison with their local veterans homes; track each state's use of VA funding for the homes; conduct training with veterans homes staff; and evaluate the quality of care at these homes. "We found that state veteran homes with strong ties to the VAMC of jurisdiction fared better than those without this tie," they wrote. "Going forward, we highly recommend that the local VAMCs and state veterans homes collaborate for the mutual benefit of both systems and for the welfare of the veterans entrusted to their care." The Yukio Okutsu Veterans Home provides 95 beds for veterans. Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an Army Reserve officer, on Monday called the deaths of fellow veterans "unconscionable," a consequence of a lack of testing and contract tracing in the state. "Not only is urgent action needed to protect our veterans, urgent action is needed to protect every person in our state," Gabbard said in a statement. Throughout most of the pandemic, Hawaii avoided spikes in coronavirus cases by instituting a strict mandatory quarantine for any incoming visitors. Cases began surging at the beginning of August -- the result, state officials say, of summer celebrations and protests. Across the VA, more than 56,400 veterans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 3,219 have died, according to department statistics released Tuesday. -- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime. Related: On the Issues: Presidential Candidates Reveal Policy Plans for Military, Veterans The Delhi High Court on Thursday expressed hope that the media will exercise restraint as the bench asked the Centre, National Broadcasters Association among others to respond to a petition filed by Bollywood actor Rakul Preet Singh. Rakul Preet has highlighted media reports against her after Sushant Singh Rajputs death case accused Rhea Chakraborty named the former in a drug related case before the NCB. While passing these directions, the single judge bench said: There has to be some restraint. Media gets to know info even before the officers themselves. Reputations are getting tarnished." Justice Navin Chawla issued notice to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Prasar Bharti and the Press Council of India seeking their response over the petition filed by the Bollywood actor through advocates Aman Hingorani, Himanshu Yadav and Shweta Hingorani. It also asked the central government, Prasar Bharti and the Press Council to treat the said petition as a representation and take decision expeditiously. The next hearing on the matter will be on October 15. It is hoped that media houses and TV channels would show restraint and abide by the Program Code and other guidelines while making any report in connection with Rakul Preet Singh," the bench added in its observation. The plea filed by the actor claimed that she was shooting for a film in Telangana when she was stunned to see private TV channels, including some members of the News Broadcasters Association running breaking news" from the evening of 11.9.2020 to the effect that the Petitioner, along with Actress Sara Ali Khan and Designer Simone Khambatta, have been named as the individuals who take drugs by Actress Rhea Chakraborty in the ongoing investigation by the Narcotics Control Bureau in Mumbai into the drug angle in the June 14 death of Sushant. The Petitioner categorically states that she does not take drugs at all, and has, to the best of her recollection, has only met Sara Ali Khan twice (once at IIFA Awards and once while working out in a gym) and has not met Simone Khambatta at all," the petition said. Rakul Preet further stated that despite the fact that Rhea had already retracted her statement on 9.9.2020 as aforesaid, the private TV channels have continued since 11.9.2020 till date to run a slander campaign against her. The petition has sought the courts direction in order to ask the media not to telecast, publish or circulate on the TV channels, cable, print or social media, as the case may be, any content in context of Actress Rhea Chakrabortys narcotic drugs case that maligns or slanders the Petitioner or which contains anything defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half-truths in respect of the Petitioner, or to use sensational headlines, photographs, video-footage or social media links which invade the privacy of the Petitioner. Beijing has undertaken significant infrastructure construction along the Line of Actual Control, Rajnath Singh told the Upper House on Thursday China has shown complete disregard for bilateral agreements and violated peace in the east Ladakh, defence minister Rajnath Singh told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, two days after Congress MPs in Lok Sabha staged a walkout while claiming that the Centre is not willing to discuss the India-China border row. Rajnath said that China has, in the recent past, illegally occupied 38,000 square kilometres of India's territory in Ladakh, added that Beijing has undertaken significant infrastructure construction along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). "Our government too has stepped up the budget for border infrastructure development to about double the previous levels," Rajnath said. The defence minister added that amassing of troops by China along the LAC goes against the 1993 and 1996 agreements. China also claims approximately 90,000 sq km of Indian territory in the Eastern Sector of the India-China boundary in Arunachal Pradesh, Rajnath said in the Upper House. He further added that under the so-called Sino-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 square kilometres of Indian territory in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir to China. Referring to clashes in the region on the intervening night of 29 and 30 August, Rajnath added that China attempted to change the status quo along the LAC with its provocative military manoeuvres and that there is a mismatch between what Beijing says and does. "There were several friction areas in eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake. In response to Chinas actions, our armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that Indias security interests are fully protected, he added. Replying to clarifications sought by MPs in Rajya Sabha on his statement on the border row, the minister said skirmishes and face-off with China in the last few months have been primarily over the issue of patrolling the Ladakh border. "No force in the world can stop Indian soldiers from patrolling. Our soldiers have sacrificed their lives only for this," the minister said in response to a question from former defence minister AK Antony. The impasse was due to differing perceptions of Line of Actual Control between India and China, he said. Rajnath said, "The conduct of our armed forces throughout these incidents shows that while they maintained 'sayyam' (patience) in face of provocative actions, they also equally displayed 'shaurya' (courage) when required to protect territorial integrity of India. In a detailed statement in the Rajya Sabha, Rajnath underlined that while India was committed to peace, it was also firm on protecting its boundaries. The defence minister said it had been conveyed to the Chinese side that the situation at the boundary will also have an implication on other areas. He said that was not acceptable to India and cautioned China that "we can start a war, but its end is not in our hands." He said India is seeking a peaceful resolution through talks in the border issue between both the countries. A short discussion was held, after which Rajnath ended his address saying, There are sensitive operational issues which I cannot detail. I hope the House will understand the sensitivity of the matter. 'A very sensitive issue' Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu also lashed out at what he described as propaganda to show India is divided over the conflict. As the chairman, I want to explain Indias culture is always of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam the world is a family. We have never attacked any country. This is a very sensitive issue. Our soldiers are at the frontier. Defence minister has explained at length the situation. But there is propaganda running in international magazines that India is divided, it has major differences and all those useless comments, he said As several political parties expressed support to the government in the ongoing stand-off with China, Rajnath said the country had fought many wars and however big the challenge, we stand united behind our soldiers. Congress MP Anand Sharma sought clarification on the defence ministers statement and questioned if the restoration of the status quo ante will remain non-negotiable for India. Samajwadi Party MP Ravi Prakash Verma said the electronic media seems to have created situation of war. The defence ministers address comes a week after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Chinese doreign minister Wang Yi held a meeting on the sidelines of a conclave of the Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Moscow, Beijing put the onus of implementing the consensus to resolve military stand-offs along the disputed boundary between the two nations. They agreed that the current situation in India-China border areas was not in the interest of either side and hence the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease the tension, according to a joint statement issued on Friday. Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had said after the meeting that the most urgent task for India is to correct its wrongdoing in the India-China border areas and disengage from the points of standoff in order to defuse tension. He accused the Indian Army of first crossing the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The meeting followed stalled talks between the senior military commanders of the two nations: Lt Gen Harinder Singh and Maj Gen Liu Lin. Singh and Liu earlier had five rounds of talks, but they did not have any meetings after the fifth on 2 August. Rajnath had addressed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, saying Beijing has been very clearly conveyed that any attempt to "unilaterally" change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh is not acceptable, and that India's armed forces are ready to deal with "all contingencies" in the high-altitude region. The defence minister said that any serious situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh is bound to impact the bilateral relations between India and China. Congress had staged a walkout on Tuesday upon not being allowed to hold a discussion on India and China border stand-off. Following Rajnaths statement in the Lok Sabha, China claimed on Wednesday that it has been honouring agreements signed with India and is committed to maintaining peace in border areas. The two countries have been engaged in a stand-off since April-May and the Chinese have refused to vacate areas in the Finger area and other friction points in the eastern Ladakh area. With inputs from PTI BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.17 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: Economics and Security Committee of NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA) held a meeting in the format of the videoconference, attended by a member of the Azerbaijani delegation to the assembly, Trend reports on Sept.17 referring to Azerbaijans parliament. The event participants were also representatives of the NATO member states and the associate countries. The agenda of the meeting included draft reports on the Gulf Crisis and Global Energy Markets and the Black Sea Region: Economic and Geo-Political Tensions, as well as the organizational issues. Speaking at the meeting during the discussion of the second draft report, Azerbaijani MP, Malahat Ibrahimgizi, noted that Azerbaijan continues to make a positive contribution to the energy security of Europe. The recent military provocations on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border have demonstrated the aggravation of the situation in the region. It must be emphasized that the recent provocation in the direction of Tovuz was committed in the immediate vicinity (at a distance of 15 km) from important energy pipelines, she said. Now that the whole world is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Armenia resorts to provocations. The wife of Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Anna Hakobyan, visiting the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, took part in the military training of women, which further inflames the situation. Appealing to the NATO PA, I propose to take serious measures to suppress such steps. This is very important for ensuring the energy security of the Black Sea region," the MP added. Ibrahimgizi also congratulated Turkish colleagues on the rich gas reserves explored in the Black Sea, expressing the hope that the discovered gas fields will make a positive contribution to ensuring the energy security of Europe. She stressed that President Ilham Aliyev openly announced the official position of Azerbaijan in connection with the growing tension between Turkey and Greece. "We believe that Turkey's activities within the framework of international law in the Eastern Mediterranean will serve the peace and development in this region," Ibrahimgizi said. She pointed out that the Azerbaijani public highly appreciates the role and efforts of NATO in resolving the tension between Turkey and Greece. "Both of the countries are NATO members. Therefore, I propose that the NATO PA was more active in this issue," the MP concluded. The representative of Latvia, Chairman of the Committee, Ivans Klementjevs, expressing his gratitude to Ibrahimgizi for the speech, added that he was in Azerbaijan in 2018 and therefore he's well aware of energy issues in the region. The chairman praised Azerbaijan's contribution to ensuring energy security in Europe. After the discovery of clouds made of Phosphine, Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are considering to launch at least two planetary missions for Venus to study its atmosphere and determine whether a human life would be possible on the planet. The flammable gas phosphine detected on Venus that annihilates life-forms on Earth has yielded the signs of extraterrestrial life, as over 20 parts per billion of phosphine on the planet indicated that a lifeform such as microbes were creating it. In a research published in Nature Astronomy journal, scientists noted that any traces of phosphorus on the planet shall be in oxidized form, but the discovery of the rare, toxic chemical in Venus clouds suggested some kind of very robust organism produced it. [Phosphine, which is a biomarker on Earth, is made up of phosphorus and hydrogen. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calcada & NASA/JPL/Caltech] [Signs of phosphine first showed up in data taken with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. Will Montgomerie/JCMT/EAO/NASA] On September 16, NASAs international research team proposed four missions now under review by the panel, that asked for robotic probes on the Venusian atmosphere. The team submitted the DAVINCI+ proposal that suggests that the space agency must research Venus for habitable dirigibles. Christopher Jones of NASAs Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate described Venus as an exciting destination for both further scientific study and future human exploration in a summary document on NASAs official site. Repeatedly, he had insisted that NASA must launch a multi-phase campaign to explore and potentially settle Venus where the ground temperatures were previously detected to be 800 degrees Fahrenheit. After the recent discovery of phosphine on the planet Venus, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a release that it was the apt timing to prioritize Venus. Read: NASA Spots First Ever 'survivor Planet Orbiting Close To Star's Corpse Read: NASA Launched First Ever Mercury Spacecraft Atlas 4 (MA-4) On This Day In 1961 Life on Venus? The discovery of phosphine, a byproduct of anaerobic biology, is the most significant development yet in building the case for life off Earth. About 10 years ago NASA discovered microbial life at 120,000ft in Earths upper atmosphere. Its time to prioritize Venus. https://t.co/hm8TOEQ9es Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) September 14, 2020 Discovery Program investigations While there are no official missions to Venus yet, NASA has selected these Discovery Program investigations and proposed missions by the scientists that comprise of four nine-month studies that will receive $3 million funding by the space agency. On approval, NASA will continue the development of up to two missions towards flight. The mission (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus) DAVINCI+ would analyze Venus atmosphere to understand how it formed, evolved, and determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. The + in DAVINCI+ refers to the imaging component of the mission, which includes cameras on the descent sphere and orbiter designed to map surface rock-type, NASA explained in an official press release. The results from DAVINCI+ have the potential to reshape our understanding of terrestrial planet formation in our solar system and beyond, it added. The mission would be headed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, principal investigator James Garvin. NASA had earlier launched a project called High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) for the manned Mars mission, however, the teams at NASA had proposed a manned mission to Venus instead, that is shorter and avoids the complications of landing on a planet and launching from it for a return flight, according to NASA researchers. Read: NASA Wants A Piece Of Moon; Asks Contractors To Retrieve Lunar Regolith Above 50gm Read: NASA's Hubble Snaps Pictures Of Stars Orbiting Closely To One Another Like Swarm Of Bees A DOCTORS surgery in Henley says it has been inundated with calls for covid-19 tests. Staff at the Bell Surgery say more requests are coming in when the number of cases of coronavirus nationally is rising and when they are already very busy giving flu vaccines. Dr Shellani Knight said schools had been given misleading information on what to do if pupils showed symptoms. She said: I cant give you an exact figure but our phones are really busy. If they are phoning up with a testing issue, we wont be able to help them. The only thing we can do is direct them to 119 [the NHS test and trace line], which is also very busy. This has partly stemmed from schools because the guidelines are directing people towards their healthcare providers if you have any symptoms. The guidelines are a problem. Dr Knight, who has a child at Trinity Primary School, said: The schools have all been sent the same information and it highlights what they should do but it is not the correct information. It is very misleading for parents. What would really help is if we could guide the public towards 119 because we cant help them. If you call up and you cant get through, dont get despondent and keep trying. The total number of covid-19 cases in South Oxfordshire since March has risen to 678 this week, an increase of 10 over the last seven days. There have been 3,723 cases in Oxfordshire, an increase of 92 on last week, with the virus affecting 14.3 out of every 100,000 people across the county. In Reading, the number of confirmed cases went up by 22 to 912 in the last week. The city of Oxford is back on amber alert, which happens when cases rise above 25 people per 100,000 of the population. Nationally, hospital admissions for covid-19 are on the rise and infections are becoming more common among older people. Dr Knight believes the Government needs to improve the testing system urgently. She said: I do think it has been inadequate and I think it would help hugely if there was a better service for testing. Key workers and NHS staff can get back to work and so can parents that are having to self-isolate and work from home. It is having a knock-on effect on everybody and I think there needs to be a significant improvement. They are trying to increase capacity for testing locally due to the rising demand. We are certainly worried as a surgery that things could go in the wrong direction and we are putting things in place to make sure things can run as smooth as possible. Often patients display symptoms because of the change in seasons when colds and flus come into play and then they have to self-isolate with their family because they cant get a test. That is having a knock-on effect on the surgery and it is a concern that they cant get tested. The Hart Surgery in Henley has also received many calls about virus testing. Sarah Moberley, practice manager, said: We cant offer tests and we have no facility or lab to send things to, so we are unable to help. I do think the testing has been abused. Ive heard so many anecdotes about people who have come back from holiday or who want to go and see an elderly relative and they think about getting a test just to be safe when they dont have any symptoms. There are people who are more in need of them and that has not helped. On Tuesday, the surgery managed to administer 700 flu vaccinations to adults aged 75 and over and others deemed high-risk aged 65 or over. This was the most vaccinations it has ever given in a day. Mrs Moberley said: We used a new format this year with five clinicians who were continuously vaccinating and doing it on a walk-in basis with no prior booking and a one-way system. We were all quite worried because we had no idea how many people would turn up and we have never done it like that before. We thought 700 would be at the more optimistic end of the scale and that was exactly what we got. There were only a handful of people who had to wait for 10 to 15 minutes and most didnt have to wait at all, so I think we got the balance just right. The surgery has around 10,500 patients and about 4,000 would normally be suitable for a free flu jab. However, this year people aged 50 and over have been made eligible, which means another 2,000 people could request a free jab. Mrs Moberley added: Our target is to vaccinate 75 per cent of eligible people and NHS England is very concerned if there is a second wave of the virus that coincides with the flu. When we order our vaccinations at the start of the year, we werent aware of that additional group. We have tried to prioritise those who are at the highest risk. There is a worry that there wont be enough vaccinations for everyone. We ordered our first lot straight away but we had no idea at the time that a pandemic would take hold as it did. In addition, some people who have previously dismissed the idea of having a jab may want to have it this year. Meanwhile, the Government introduced the rule of six on Monday, making it illegal to meet in groups of seven or more. This is in response to the rise in the number of coronavirus cases nationally. Sone experts are now warning that another lockdown could happen if the trend continues. People aged 20 to 29 account for about one third of all coronavirus cases and there are fears the virus will be more prevalent during the winter months. Henley MP John Howell said: It is my hope that we will avoid a second lockdown. At the moment, I dont think it is a real risk. We have to expect the best and prepare for the worst; if you do that I think we will maintain the effort of health and safety that we have been doing from the beginning. If people stick to the six-people rule it will have a major impact but Im not going to anticipate what the Government might come up with for the future. We are quite a bit behind what is happening in places like France and Spain in terms of the number of cases. It was not a very enjoyable thing to see the number of deaths go up on Tuesday, but one day cant be used to form a trend and it is important not to make long-term predictions based on it. Mr Howell said he was aware of the problems with testing, adding: We are dealing with a situation that has never happened before. Even the medical professionals, whom the Government relies on for advice, need to acquire more knowledge. Initially scheduled for June, the event was pushed to September on account of the health crisis. A lot of interesting racing events will be held as part of the Le Mans weekend , including another stage of the one-make Porsche Carrera Cup.Starting with the 60-minute qualifying on Friday, the Cup thus resumes its usual business, and will have to make room by the end of the current season for the remaining ten rounds. All races in this competition are run as support to the ADAC GT Masters.What the Porsche Carrera Cup means is that for 45 minutes on Saturday (thats how long the race lasts), an army of 53 drivers will be fighting for the win at the wheel of identical 911 GT3 Cup cars.Were talking about a variety of the 911 bred for the racetrack. It is powered by a 4.0-liter engine capable of sending 485 hp of power and 480 Nm of torque to the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential dog-type transmission.As with any compliant race car, each and every one of the GT3s taking part come equipped with bucket seats with six-point racing safety harness, roll cage, and a fire suppressing system.Were thrilled that the season finally starts at the ultimate highlight in Le Mans of all places. Theres no other venue in the world where so many chapters in motor racing have been written especially by Porsche, said in a statement Hurui Issak, the Project Manager of the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland.Im curious to see who comes out on top at the race and will be crowned Le Mans winner in the Carrera Cup.The race will be broadcast live on Sport1. The Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court has declared unconstitutional certain provisions of the law "On the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine." A respective decision was made at a court hearing on Wednesday, September 16, the court's press service reported. "Following the consideration of the said case, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine adopted a decision recognizing certain provisions of the law as not complying with the main law of Ukraine," the report reads. In particular, the court declared unconstitutional the provisions of the law that empowered the president to form NABU, appoint and dismiss the director of the bureau, appoint three members of the commission for holding a competition for the position of the NABU director, appoint one member of the external control commission for independent evaluation (audit) the effectiveness of the activity of the bureau, its operational and institutional independence, and to approve the regulations on the Public Control Council and the procedure for its formation. At the same time, the Constitutional Court closed constitutional proceedings in the case of verifying the constitutionality of Paragraph 1 of Part 1 of Article 1 of the law regarding the definition of NABU as a "state law enforcement body." The court stated that the Verkhovna Rada should immediately bring the provisions of the legislation in line with this judgment. The provisions of the law that have been declared unconstitutional shall cease to be in force three months after the judgment was issued. The judgment of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is binding, final and cannot be appealed. On September 10, the Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court started to consider a motion filed by 50 people's deputies regarding the constitutionality of the law "On the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine." On August 28, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional a presidential decree appointing Artem Sytnyk as NABU director. The authors of the motion emphasized that the Constitution of Ukraine does not envisage the power of the head of state to appoint the NABU director, so, in their opinion, the head of state went beyond his constitutional powers and violated Part 4 of Article 5 of the Constitution prohibiting usurpation of state power. Then-President Petro Poroshenko appointed Sytnyk director of NABU in April 2015. op The Congress on Thursday termed Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Badal's resignation from the Union cabinet as theatrics and asked why she did not oppose the farm-related ordinances when they were cleared by the Cabinet. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh dubbed her resignation as "theatrics", saying it is "too late, too little". "Harsimrat Kaur's decision to quit the Union Cabinet is another in the long chain of theatrics being enacted by Shiromani Akali Dal which has still not quit the ruling coalition. It's motivated not by any concern for farmers but to save their own dwindling political fortunes. Too little too late," Singh tweeted. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala asked why the Akali Dal is still a part of the National Democratic Alliance coalition and why Badal has not resigned from the Lok Sabha in protest against the farm legislations. "The Akali Dal should stand with the truth while moving beyond symbolic moves. Why did Harsimrat ji not oppose the anti-farmer ordinances when the Union cabinet was approving them? "Why don't you resign from the Lok Sabha? Why does the Akali Dal party not withdraw support from the Modi government? Don't indulge in drama and stand with the farmers," he said in a tweet in Hindi. He also took a swipe at Jannayak Janata Party leader and Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala, saying he should have at least enacted the drama of Badal by resigning from his post. "Dushyant ji, you should have at least enacted Harsimrat's drama of resignation by quitting the post of deputy chief minister. The post is dear to you, why not the farmers? There is certainly some mystery, farmers will never forgive you. The JJP, which is BJP's ally, is a partner in BJP's crime of snatching the bread and butter of farmers," he tweeted. The Punjab Congress on Badal's resignation tweeted,"Social Distancing: Resign but stay in Government!" Congress Rajya Sabha MP Pratap Singh Bajwa said Harsimrat Kaur Badal has resigned from the Union Cabinet, yet SAD remains a member of the NDA. "This half-hearted step shows the real intention of the SAD. This resignation is not one on principle, but an attempt to hoodwink the public," he tweeted. "Till this week the SAD leaders have held press conferences fully supporting the GoI. It is clear from their stance that this is nothing more than a gimmick that the people of Punjab will see through," he said. Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar tweeted, "Double speak of Sukhbir Badal on farm ordinances led to the inevitable. Akali Dal not only lost face in the process but ended up losing ministerial berth also." The Congress has been attacking the Akali Dal leadership for standing with the BJP over the alleged anti-farmer legislations brought in Parliament for passage. A former Great Hearts Academies elementary school art teacher is calling on the charter network to implement anti-racism action plans in its schools. Lillian White, who taught at Great Hearts Western Hills, said she had tangled with an administrators order against wearing face masks that reference the current political climate by refusing to stop wearing masks with phrases that included Black Lives Matter, No Justice, No Peace and Justice delayed is justice denied, according to a months worth of e-mails that culminated in her job loss Sept. 5. She published an online petition two weeks ago that has garnered nearly 900 signatures, calling for anti-racism training for employees and board members, diverse representation in curriculum and campus-based monitoring of the plan. This is not an accusation of racism. We all have biases, and we must learn to recognize and face them in order to come together to heal and support each other, White wrote. An educational institution should not be opposed to learning. Attempts to interview White were unsuccessful. Great Hearts declined a request for an interview, citing privacy for current and former employees. Officials provided a statement that quoted a June 6 letter its interim superintendent sent to families and employees. We stand with the Black community and all who are suffering, wrote Daniel Scoggin, who is also the networks co-founder. Great Hearts deplores bigotry and its crushing effects on all those subjected to it. Great Hearts is committed to an America where racism, violence, and injustice do not happen, because such acts find no home in the hearts of a great people. Required Reading: Get San Antonio education news sent directly to your inbox The emails, which White posted online, show she contacted Andrew Ellison, executive director of Great Hearts San Antonio, on Aug. 4 to argue against the mask directive. I do not quite understand why this is a problem, she wrote in a four-page document attached to the email, adding that if anyone is offended by the idea of equal rights for all students at our school, does that really seem like the kind of person that belongs in the Great Hearts family? The Black Lives Matter movement should be seen as a human rights issue, not a political statement, White wrote. Ellisons response pointed to a board policy adopted July 29 that face coverings be devoid of visual references to popular culture, including brand logos. The policy was drafted by school leaders and teachers and posted online July 17 for review before the board voted, officials said. While this rule does not expressly exclude them, it implicitly rules out verbal messages, regardless of content, along with everything from symbols promoting autism awareness or the police lives matter movement to the Go Spurs! exhortation, Ellison wrote. On ExpressNews.com: Two new charter school operators approved to open in San Antonio next year He also referenced Scoggins letter. White asked that the letters message supporting the Black community be prominently posted, saying she would have no problem avoiding political statements mask-wise if that happened. Receiving no response, White sent the request to Scoggin on Aug. 17. He offered a 30-minute phone call, which White welcomed on the condition they both record it. Scoggin retracted the offer and wrote that he would discuss her request with his colleagues. On Sept. 3, the headmaster at Whites school, Matthew Vlahovich, emailed her about upcoming training sessions and asked her to comply with the mask policy. White responded that she would continue to wear a BLM mask until Scoggin implemented an anti-racism action plan. I will have to show up and get sent home, White wrote. I understand the consequences, but there is no way I could live with myself if I did not stay committed to this cause. Vlahovich responded Sept. 5 and said Whites refusal would be considered a quit without good cause decision. We deeply respect your convictions, and we sincerely wish you well in whatever advocacy you might choose outside the school, he wrote, but added that without a dress code designed to sustain a scholastic culture of learning our ability to serve students and families would be diminished or destroyed. Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Krista, become a subscriber. Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva Felicien Kabuga, an 87-year-old Rwandan businessman, is currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his part in one of the most gruesome massacres of the 20th century. Rwanda is a small country in central Africa, but in just 100 days in 1994 members of the Hutu ethnic majority murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. On top of that, tens of thousands of other people suffered horrific injuries. In preparation for the atrocity half-a-million machetes were imported into the country in the previous year, one for every three adult Hutus. All the charges against Kabuga relate to the genocide and he has been named as one of the main importers of the machetes, the long-bladed weapons which were used to hack their helpless victims to death. That was in 1994, but today wars and atrocities are taking place in many of the countries across equatorial Africa. There has been civil war in Somalia since 1990, with 500,000 people killed and more than 1.1 million people displaced as refugees. Islamist insurgents have been operating in northern Mozambique since 2017. Last year the rebels pledged allegiance to Islamic State and there are reports of massacres and beheadings. Film footage of some of the violence has been incorporated into Isis propaganda films. In the Democratic Republic of Congo there has been growing violence since the 1990s, with murder, rape, forced disappearances and the use of children as soldiers. In just three days in December 2018, 900 people were murdered in a tribal conflict at Yumbi, north of Kinshasha. In Ethiopia there is ongoing ethnic violence between the Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan and Gedeo peoples and, in some areas, this violence has now reached the level of genocide. Recently the Barnabas Fund, which monitors persecutions around the world, reported that hundreds of Christians have been murdered this summer by Muslim extremists in the Oromia region. In Nigeria, since 2009, the Islamist terror group Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of innocents and displaced 2.3 million people from their homes. Many have fled into neighbouring countries such as Chad, a place with its own long history of atrocities. A former President of Chad was convicted in 2016 of a litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the Central African Republic there is continuing violence between the majority community and minority Muslim militias. There is a humanitarian crisis and in some places a state of genocide. In country after country across the centre of Africa there is a pattern of atrocities on a vast scale. This is not ancient history from centuries ago; it is happening now and, in each and every case, the lives that are being taken are black lives. The victims are black, the perpetrators are also black, and it is happening on a monumental scale. Does the situation faced by black victims in central Africa not merit more attention, because that is the place where most black lives are being taken, day after day and year after year and on a scale that is hard to believe? Yet, some Black Lives Matter activists in Britain seem more interested in vandalising statues of Winston Churchill, demonising Britain and demanding that institutions be renamed, while at the same time mining British history books to identify more grievances. Some even argue that this current and recent ethnic violence among Africans is the legacy of past European colonialism, but that argument does not stand up to scrutiny. There were tribal and ethnic wars in Africa long before any Europeans arrived, and in all of these both the perpetrators and the victims were black. There was also slavery in Africa before any Europeans arrived and there was imperialism in Africa before any Europeans arrived. African Muslims actually invaded Europe as far back as the year 711. So, why do we hear so little about that history of violence? And why are Black Lives Matter activists seemingly silent about the current wars and tribal genocide in Africa? Do they not believe that all lives matter and that all black lives matter even when the perpetrators are also black? Felicien Kabuga was on the run for decades until his arrest in France, where he is currently in prison. His forthcoming trial may help to raise awareness of what is happening in Africa, even today. Vice-President of the EU Commission Margaritis Shinas was a keynote speaker at this summers Diplomatic Conference in Vienna organised by the International Institute IFIMES, Media Platform Modern Diplomacy and their partners. High dignitary of the Commission seized the occasion to express the EUs take on the 75th anniversary of victory over fascism, unfolding health crisis and to it related pressure on human and labour rights, as well as on the Unions continued efforts towards remaining a rock amid the volatile climate. It is known by now and acknowledged by the EU Commission VP that the COVID-19 crisis has had some severe implications for Human Rights and, to a lesser extent, for cooperation outlooks. In the face of the first wave, countries in Europe and elsewhere have adopted different courses of actions in order to manage the health crisis and attempt at containing its threats. Placed in an unprecedented situation, governments have undoubtedly each reacted in ways they deemed most appropriate at the time. However, the pandemic itself topped with the varied policies have caused notable restrictions on Human Rights. Most notoriously, the right to life and that to health have been challenged in extreme circumstances where, at the peak of the crisis, health institutions were so overflowed that the provision of maximal care to every single individual was compromised. The effective and equal access to healthcare has therefore quickly become a central preoccupation of many governments, drawing on some dramatic first-hand experiences. On that, I will say that if the global health crisis has been a synonym for many negative impacts, it has also been a precious opportunity to rethink carefully the existing narrative of programmatic and progressive rights such as the right to health needing no immediate attention, nor realisation. This narrative held predominantly by some Western democracies ever since the adoption of the UN International Covenants, has been unduly weakening the universal and indivisible stance of Human Rights. Needless to say, in adhering to that dangerous narrative, planning for and prioritizing health access, resources and system capabilities is undermined. This, in turn, contributes to the difficult and insufficient responses of some governments that have been witnessed. May the victims of inadequate infrastructures due to an obsolete distinction between rights serve as a poignant reminder: social, cultural and economic rights need be readily available to all. Equally interesting is the toll taken on a whole other range of Human Rights an international system built up in last 75 years on the legacy of victory of antifascist forces in Europe and elsewhere. Numerous individual freedoms have also suffered limitations, often as a direct result of actions taken to promote and ensure the right to life and the right to health for the most vulnerable. Indeed, peoples freedom of movement, that of religion (external dimension), that of assembly and association, as well as their procedural rights only to name a few have all been greatly affected during the crisis. Of course voices have raised their discontent at those restrictions put in place to mitigate the crisis, considered by many to be too incisive and too manifold when cumulated. But despite an apparent clash between two groups of interests protected by different rights, the resolution which has emerged from the approaches followed by most countries is very telling. In fact, a balancing exercise revealed that protecting the right to health and to life of the minority of people ought simply to be considered predominant in comparison to the other individual freedoms and rights of the majority. This reasoning, grounded in solidarity and the protection of minorities and vulnerable persons, is in fact very encouraging in an era of growing individualism combined with overwhelming challenges which will certainly require peoples to unite against them. Nevertheless, this does not take away from the fact that the full and optimal enjoyment of Human Rights has generally been seriously affected as many interests have been caught in the crossfire of the fight against Coronavirus harmful effects. Moreover, the crisis has also created some divides amongst European countries. This is because the sanitary emergency has caused for precarious contexts of resources shortages and sometimes unfruitful cooperation, even shift in alliances. This has naturally brought about separate criticisms and questioning of the EU cooperation strategy and security arrangements. In that sense, growing expectations are felt for the EU to uphold and promote its fundamental values including the rule of law, solidarity, non-discrimination and antifascist line. Vice-President Schinas is well aware of that reality and reiterates the EUs unalterable commitment to peaceful cooperation, human dignity, liberty, equality and solidarity in these troubled times. He further ensures that the most recent security strategies led by the Union do not and never will eat away at the protection of fundamental rights. What is more, whilst the EUs arrangements can be seen as slightly under attack currently, the VP feels that rather than seeing this period as a high-stakes test on EU democracies it should be seen as an opportunity to take a bigger stand than ever for the European common values and call for strengthened multilateralism. This necessities constructive reciprocal and respectful active engagement with the EU Mediterranean and eastern European neighbourhood. All that is because it is not too difficult to imagine that the aftermath of the C-19 crisis can open several paths of new dynamics in international relations. Yet, as it cannot be stressed enough, an upcoming change in the conception of relations between nations could be decisive for numerous other contemporary challenges namely: migration crisis, armed conflicts, climate change. While one of the paths could consist in an increase in protectionism and nationalist attitudes, another one would involve, on the contrary, a shift towards reinforced cooperation and enhanced solidarity. The latter outward approach, advocated by the EU Vice-President and believed to be the best hope for the future, is one deeply enshrined in the antifascist legacy and the very raison detre of the Union. Above all, at the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Victory Day, Excellency Schinas reminds us with much humbleness that the journey for safeguarding Human Rights is one that is perpetually underway. About the Author : Nora Wolf, of the Kingston and of Geneva University is a Swiss-based International Politics & Economics specialist. Her expertise includes Human Rights, Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law in an inter-disciplinary fashion for the EU and the UN-related thinktanks and FORAs. Clinicians, researchers, patients and the general public are invited to submit questions that could be answered by COVID-19 patient medical record data from 200+ hospitals As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there is an urgent need to determine who is at greatest risk for severe disease, better understand how the disease and treatments evolve, and predict the need for resources. But to get there, researchers and clinicians need more data about what patients have experienced so far, and what factors are associated with different patient outcomes. To provide this information, a new research consortium invites clinicians, researchers, patients and the general public to submit questions that could be answered by COVID-19 patient record data from more than 200 participating hospitals. Questions are submitted and answers are provided via a new web portal: COVID19questions.org. The consortium, called Reliable Response Data Discovery (R2D2), is led by Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at UC San Diego Health, and made possible by seed funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. R2D2 comprises 12 health systems (202 hospitals) to date: UC San Diego Health, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, San Mateo Medical Center, UC Davis Health, UC Irvine, UCLA, UCSF, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, University of Southern California, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Memorial Hermann Health System, and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System. "No single hospital alone has treated enough patients with COVID-19 to be able to see reliable patterns emerge, and use that information to guide the direction of new studies," Ohno-Machado said. "That's why we formed the R2D2 Consortium." Unlike other patient databases and registries, the R2D2 COVID-19 Questions site allows health systems to maintain control of their own data rather than pool it in a central repository. No patient-level data are ever transmitted outside of each health system, only data aggregates, and the privacy of individuals and institutions is preserved. Through advanced computational methods, complex analyses involving multiple factors can be performed. Since the system queries all patient records, not just those with COVID-19, users can ask questions about how patients with COVID-19 compare to other patients. Here's how the site works: Users submit questions about adults hospitalized with COVID-19. Consortium team members evaluate the submissions for clinical utility and likelihood that available data can provide answers. Questions are then translated into a computer code that queries a variety of electronic medical records in a way that will deliver reproducible results -- an "apples to apples" comparison, as Ohno-Machado puts it. Each health system runs the code on their own patient records and provides the results to the consortium. When sufficient results accrue to be statistically meaningful, the answers are posted back to covid19questions.org -- not as definitive conclusions, but as data in the form of charts or other graphics, which researchers can further pursue. Among the questions already asked and answered: Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19 and a history of hypertension, what is the mortality rate for those who received anti-hypertensive medications? Many adult COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized did not get admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and were discharged alive. Of those, how many returned to the hospital within a week? Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19, how does the in-hospital mortality rate compare between those who received glucocorticoids and those who didn't? How does that differ by age, ethnicity, gender and race? The COVID-19 Questions site can draw from data on more than 45 million patients, including more than 59,000 who tested positive for COVID-19 and 29,000 who were hospitalized with the infection. To position the data to best reflect U.S. demographics, the R2D2 Consortium made a point of diversifying the patient population by including not only academic health systems in wealthy metropolitan areas, but also small community hospitals, safety net hospitals and the VA. As additional health systems around the world join the consortium, Ohno-Machado said the data available will become more diverse and robust, and the team will be able to answer more questions, more efficiently. "The scientific community has talked about using electronic medical records for guiding research and for answering relevant questions for a long time," Ohno-Machado said. "But until now we haven't been doing it in a way that the public can see -- this is much different than when only scientists can ask questions and publish their findings in academic journals." ### The knobby 'horns' on top of a giraffe's head may act like dangerous lightning rods, according to a conservation scientist in South Africa. Two female giraffes were found dead at Rockwood wildlife reserve in Northern Cape after a sudden lightning storm in February. When rangers investigated, they found that one of the older giraffe's antler-like nubs, called an ossicone, was badly damaged - possibly from a direct lightning strike. 'It looked like the ossicone broke off,' Ciska Scheijen, a conservationist at Rockwood, told New Scientist. In a recent report in the African Journal of Ecology, Scheijen suggested that given that lightning tends to hit tall objects, 'the height of giraffes may make them particularly vulnerable to fatal electrocution.' That vulnerability could be influencing natural selection, she said. Scroll down for video Two female giraffes were found dead at at South Africa wildlife reserve after a lightning storm. Severe damage to one's antler, and the smell of amonia, led rangers to believe they had been killed in a lightning strike Scheijen had been studying Rockwood's herd of eight giraffes for nearly a year and was surprised when, after the storm abated, she saw only six. 'It's very rare for that group to separate,' she said. About 20 feet away from the matriarch was the lifeless body of a young female giraffe. The calf was probably killed by a side flash, when lightning jumps one object to another, or by ground current traveling from the older giraffe. In a recent report, conservationist Ciska Scheijen suggested giraffes' height makes them more vulnerable to direct strikes by lightning. She recommended more research to see if the phenomenon impacted natural selection There was also the powerful odor of ammonia, Scheijen said, typical of lightning strikes on living creatures. That smell may have kept scavengers away, as the animals' carcasses were mostly undisturbed. Given the lack of scholarship on lightning strikes on animals it's not clear if giraffes seek shelter from taller trees during thunderstorms. 'It's possible that this happens more often to giraffes than other species because of their height,' Scheijen told New Scientist. 'But I think more research is needed to see if this has an effect on the natural selection of giraffes.' Lightning kills an estimated 24,000 people a year and injures 10 times that many. Experts believe climate change is increasing the frequency of strikes and changes in land use are exacerbating their effects. But exactly how much risk giraffes are in of being struck is up for debate. 'I can think of a number of cases where a giraffe has been killed by lightning, both from a direct hit and by being struck by a tree that it was standing beneath,' Julian Fennessy, chair of the International Giraffe Working Group, told the BBC. 'But it is still quite rare... Hazarding a guess, we have one or two cases a year.' Fennessy doesn't believe giraffes are zoological lightning rods, though - any animal caught in the wrong place at the wrong time could be struck. In a thunderstorm, giraffes in the wild may seek shelter under taller trees. In zoos and safaris, though, they may be the tallest thing around. Experts believe climate change is increasing the frequency of strikes. But exactly how much risk giraffes are in is unknown, as is whether they're more at risk in the wild or in zoos Some scientists say it's the greater distance between a giraffe's legs, not their height, that make it more likely electric current will flow toward one when lightning strikes. In May 2019, two giraffes at Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, Florida, were killed instantly by lightning during a sudden thunderstorm. It's likely a bolt struck the pasture Lily and Jioni were in and the current traveled outward, safari spokesperson Haley Passeser said, rather than both animals being struck directly in two separate incidents. Workers had opened the pair's covered shelters, but Lily and Jioni didn't want to go inside. 'If they don't choose to seek shelter, there isn't a lot we can do to encourage them to,' Passeser told WPBF. 'For them it is more safe and more comfortable for them to be out in the open environment and understand what's going on around them.' But the real threat to giraffes is humans, not weather. Development threaten their habitats and poachers hunt them for bushmeat and because their brains supposedly contain a cure for HIV/AIDS Some 40 percent of giraffes have disappeared since the 1980s, with only 68,000 remaining in the wild. Of the nine subspecies of giraffe, six are listed in threatened categories, ranging from near threatened to critically endangered. Stringent conditions on the trade of giraffes were enacted last year. The Rockwood reserve focuses on rhinoceros, but it also protects a small population of giraffes for research purposes. Conservationists collect samples of the hormone glucocorticoid to determine the giraffes' stress levels. The hope is to improve their relocation process and help create viable breeding herds. Rather than take blood samples, though, researchers follow the animals on horseback and wait until they defecate. 'Then we quickly collect the feces for testing. The samples must be less than half an hour old when collected as the metabolism of the hormone continues even outside the body.' Lukashenko has closed borders with Poland and Lithuania, underlining repeated claims protests are driven by the West. Belaruss president, beleaguered by six weeks of mass protests demanding his resignation, has announced he is putting troops on high alert and closing the countrys borders with Poland and Lithuania. President Alexander Lukashenkos decision on Thursday underlined his repeated claim that the wave of protests is driven by the West. He faces increasing criticism from the United States and the European Union. Protests began after the disputed August 9 presidential election. Official results gave the authoritarian leader a sixth term in office but opponents say the results were manipulated. We are forced to withdraw troops from the streets, put the army on high alert and close the state border on the west, primarily with Lithuania and Poland, Lukashenko said at a womens forum. Lukashenko also said Belaruss border with Ukraine would be strengthened. I dont want my country to be at war. Moreover, I dont want Belarus and Poland, Lithuania to turn into a theatre of military operations where our issues will not be resolved, he said. Therefore, today in front of this hall of the most beautiful, advanced, patriotic people I want to appeal to the peoples of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine stop your crazy politicians, dont let war break out! He did not mention neighbouring Latvia, which like Poland and Lithuania is a NATO member. Identifying officers allegedly involved in violence Earlier on Thursday, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition candidate in the disputed presidential election, said activists are compiling a list of law enforcement officers who were allegedly involved in violence against protesters denouncing the results of the vote. Nearly 7,000 people were detained and hundreds were brutally beaten by police during the first several days of post-election protests. Human rights groups are working with opposition activists to identify the officers and officials, Tikhanovskaya said, adding the list will be shared with the US, the EU and Russia. Tikhanovskaya, who left for Lithuania in the wake of the election under pressure from Belarusian authorities, said the opposition will name the list in honour of Alexander Taraikovsky, a protester who died in Minsk the day after the election as police dispersed peaceful demonstrators. Authorities initially said an explosive device Taraikovsky intended to throw at police blew up in his hands and killed him. However, a video by The Associated Press news agency showed he was not holding any explosives when he fell to the ground, his shirt bloodied. A hostage to conventional cliches The US and the EU have criticised the presidential election as neither free nor fair, and urged Lukashenko to start talks with the opposition a call he has rejected. Washington and Brussels have been pondering sanctions against Belarusian officials for alleged vote-rigging and the violent response to protests. On Thursday, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution rejecting the official election results and saying it would not recognise Lukashenko as the legitimate president once his current term expires on November 5. Belaruss foreign ministry responded strongly, saying: We are disappointed that the European Parliament, positioning itself as a serious, objective and democratic structure, could not find the political will to look beyond its nose, overcome one-sidedness and not become a hostage to conventional cliches. Russia, Lukashenkos main ally and sponsor, has maintained staunch support for the Belarusian leader. Moscow announced this week it would offer a new $1.5bn loan to his government. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday during a trip to Lithuania the two countries both Belaruss neighbours will continue to offer medical and material assistance to Belarusians who were hurt and persecuted during the protests. He argued the EU and international lenders should offer at least one billion euros ($1.18bn) in economic support for Belarus and its businesses. Children in two Deis schools in Laois will receive a gift package of new books by leading Irish authors as part of an Arts Council initiative to ensure that as many people as possible can experience Culture Night (18th September). Encouraging all parents to participate with their children, the government agency for funding and developing the arts, has partnered with Childrens Books Ireland to publish a special guide to 100 of the best Irish books for children. The Books Make Things Better reading guide will be distributed free of charge through bookshops and libraries, or can be downloaded on the Internet. St. Fintan's Boys National School and Bhride National School will both benefit from the initiative. This is the first year that the Arts Council has taken on the stewardship of Culture Night, and its a year of extraordinary challenges, not least for artists and the entire arts sector, said Arts Council Director Maureen Kennelly. We believe passionately that the arts are for every single person in Ireland, and that is at the heart of the Equality, Human Rights and Diversity policy we launched last year. Thats why we have invested in broadening and diversifying audiences and participation in Culture Night. She said that because of the ongoing Covid-19 public health restrictions much of Culture Night would be virtual this year, but more than 1,000 real books would nonetheless be delivered to families around the country to promote the joy of opening and reading a book. The accompanying reading guide, with a specially commissioned illustrated cover by Oliver Jeffers, featuring the best of new Irish publications for families and young people will also wing its ways to libraries and book shops. Nespresso has been carbon neutral across its business operations since 2017 and now commits to achieving full carbon neutrality across its supply chain and product life cycle LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Nespresso today commits that every cup of Nespresso coffee, both for at-home and for professional customers, will be carbon neutral by 2022. This new ambition builds on more than 10 years of work during which Nespresso has reduced its carbon emissions and compensated the remainder through agroforestry. "Climate change is a reality and our future depends on going further and faster on our sustainability commitments. That is why we are accelerating our commitments to offer our consumers a way to drink a carbon neutral cup of coffee by 2022. A coffee, made from the finest and rarest beans, sustainably sourced. I truly believe that both our business and the coffee industry can be a force for good in the world by tackling this pressing issue," said Guillaume Le Cunff, CEO of Nespresso. Having already achieved carbon neutrality in its business operations (scopes 1 & 2) since 2017, the company's new commitment will tackle emissions that occur in its supply chain and product life cycle (scope 3). Nespresso will achieve carbon neutrality through the following initiatives: the reduction of carbon emission; the planting of trees in and around coffee farms where Nespresso sources its coffee (insetting); and through support and investment in high quality offsetting projects. 1.Carbon emission reduction: A crucial element of Nespresso's vision is to decarbonize its value chain. Immediate initiatives include: Sustainable energy usage within Nespresso's operations: Driving towards 100% renewable energy in all Nespresso boutiques and increasing the use of biogas within the manufacturing process. Driving towards 100% renewable energy in all boutiques and increasing the use of biogas within the manufacturing process. Expanded circularity of Nespresso products and packaging: Increasing the use of recycled plastic within Nespresso machines, as well as of recycled and low carbon virgin aluminium within coffee capsules. 2.Planting trees in coffee farms and the surrounding landscapes (insetting): Trees are the best way to capture carbon from the atmosphere while investing in nature and building a regenerative agricultural system. Planting trees provides the shade needed to improve the quality and quantity of a coffee harvest. The roots also help protect against soil erosion and landslides and promote soil regeneration. With its partner Pur Projet, Nespresso will triple the capacity of planting trees (with insetting) in coffee producing countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Costa Rica. 3.Accelerate to make an immediate positive impact (offsetting initiatives): Nespresso will also invest in projects to support forest conservation and restoration as well as implement clean energy solutions within farming communities. This carbon neutral commitment is part of a broader sustainability ambition that will be further communicated later this year: to preserve exceptional coffees, build a resilient and regenerative coffee agriculture system, drive sustainable livelihoods for farmers and build a circular business. QUOTES FROM OUR PARTNERS: The 2022 carbon neutrality roadmap has been endorsed by the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board (NSAB) members. GEORGE CLOONEY, NESPRESSO BRAND AMBASSADOR "Climate change is happening now, which means that we must all take responsibility and action, quickly," said George Clooney, actor, Nespresso Global Brand Ambassador and member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board. "It's clear that Nespresso understands this urgency and is putting our planet and people front and center of the choices it makes. These ambitions and vision build on a commitment to sustainability that I have been privileged to have been involved in over the last seven years. I've seen how far we've come in that time, and I'm excited to see the good that Nespresso can deliver in the next 10 years." TRISTAN LECOMTE, CO-FOUNDER, PUR PROJET "The pressure is on for all businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and Nespresso is clearly showing a strong will to tackle its own carbon emissions via this ambitious and qualitative carbon neutral program. While we all search for the technical innovations that will reduce carbon, it is urgent that businesses invest as well in the sequestration of their emissions to balance their books as quickly as possible," said Tristan Lecomte, Founder, Pur Projet, member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board. "We've been proud to support Nespresso in doing this, planting millions of trees across the globe within coffee regions in Colombia, Guatemala and Ethiopia to take carbon dioxide out of the air since 2014. We will continue working together and triple the capacity of the carbon insetting program and regenerating the ecosystems we all depend upon." NOTES TO EDITORS About Nestle Nespresso Nestle Nespresso SA is the pioneer and reference for highest-quality portioned coffee. The company works with more than 110,000 farmers in 14 countries through its AAA Sustainable Quality Program to embed sustainability practices on farms and the surrounding landscapes. Launched in 2003 in collaboration with the NGO The Rainforest Alliance, the program helps to improve the yield and quality of harvests, ensuring a sustainable supply of high-quality coffee and improving livelihoods of farmers and their communities. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, Nespresso operates in 84 countries and has 14,250 employees. In 2019, it operated a global retail network of 810 boutiques. The brand currently has more than 100,000 points to collect its used capsules globally, enabling 91% of its consumers to recycle. For more information, visit the Nespresso corporate website http://www.nestle-nespresso.com. PDF - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1275452/Nespresso_Carbon_Factsheet.pdf Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1275451/Nespresso_coffee.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1201367/Nespresso_Logo.jpg Some applicants said the same exhibits provided by consultants were scored differently for different applicants, or that the same applicant got different scores for identical applications in different regions. Many have said they never got a deficiency notice, or they corrected a deficiency but werent given credit for it. Bengaluru, Sep 17 : While avoiding giving any concrete assurance about a possible cabinet expansion in the state, Karnataka Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa on Thursday said that such issues could be taken up only after the BJP high command gives him the green signal. Speaking to reporters at Kalaburagi airport, Yediyurappa said, "I am ready for both, be it the cabinet expansion or the complete rejigging of the cabinet, provided such a direction must come from our party high command." Yediyurappa is in Kalaburagi, which is 630 kms from Bengaluru, to inaugurate the Kalyana Karnataka Utsav (celebrated to commemorate the Hyderabad-Karnataka Liberation Day and which was rechristened as Kalyana Karnataka Utsav last year). On this day, the region was liberated from the clutches of the Hyderabad Nizam. In response to a question, the Chief Minister said it all depended on the party high command's decision whether to carry out the cabinet expansion or not. "I am certainly leaving for New Delhi and going there to take part in Bhoomi Pujan (ground breaking ceremony) of the Cauveri Hostel situated in Karnataka Bhavan. As part of my tour plan, I will go and meet our party leaders as well. I will discuss everything, including the cabinet expansion," he said. He added that he was not going just for this purpose (cabinet) but was also going to demand additional funds from various ministries. "We faced floods as well as drought which is besides the Covid-19 outbreak. We, as a state, are facing several problems and we need to find solutions to tackle this. We are unable to take up any new work due to the Covid pandemic. So, I am going to meet every possible minister and demand more share of funds for us," he said. Answering a question, the Chief Minister said that he had sought an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several ministers, and most of the Union ministers have confirmed their appointments. However, he is yet to receive confirmation from the Prime Minister's Office. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Race 3 Actor Freddy Daruwala Becomes Dad Once Again, Says It's 'The Best News Of 2020' For Him And Family MOOSIC, Pa. - Joe Biden on Thursday went after President Donald Trump again and again over his handling of COVID-19, calling Trumps downplaying of the pandemic criminal and his administration totally irresponsible. Youve got to level with the American people shoot from the shoulder. Theres not been a time theyve not been able to step up. The president should step down, the Democratic presidential nominee said to applause from a CNN drive-in town hall crowd in Moosic, outside his hometown of Scranton. Speaking about Trumps admission that he publicly played down the impact of the virus while aware of its severity, Biden declared: He knew it and did nothing. Its close to criminal. Later, Biden decried Americans loss of basic freedoms as the U.S. has struggled to contain the pandemic, like the ability to go to a ballgame or walk around their neighbourhoods. I never, ever thought I would see just such a thoroughly, totally irresponsible administration, he said. Biden faced a half-dozen questions about the coronavirus and a potential vaccine in the town hall from moderator Anderson Cooper and audience members. The pandemic was not just the main topic of the night it was the cause of the unusual format of the event: a drive-in with 35 cars outside PNC Field. The cars were parked around the stage, each with small groups of people standing outside them or leaning or sitting on the hoods to watch Cooper and Biden onstage. The network erected blue and red spotlights over the dirt and gravel parking lot to make it easier to see, and each parking space was marked off with white chalk in large rectangles to ensure that each group stayed more than 6 feet (1.8 metres) apart. The town hall marked the first time that Biden had faced live, unscripted questions from voters since winning the nomination. Trump participated in a town hall Tuesday in an auditorium in Philadelphia. The appearances have been seen as tuneups before the three presidential debates, the first set for Sept. 29. Bidens uneven debate performances during the Democratic primary contributed to his initial struggles in polls and the early primary vote, and Trump has pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about Biden taking performance-enhancing drugs and has raised questions about Bidens mental acuity. Biden, meanwhile, has promised to be a fact-checker on the stage with Trump but has said he doesnt want to get drawn into a brawl with the Republican. On Thursday, Biden said he was beginning to prepare for the upcoming debate by reviewing Trumps remarks and preparing his own. Biden was also pressed on his stance on the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal from progressives in Congress that calls for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 2030. Bidens proposal doesnt go as far, but it does aim to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 and has a goal of achieving an entirely carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. Biden interrupted a questioner who suggested his climate plan embraces the Green New Deal to insist, No, it doesnt, but when asked by the moderator if he supports the proposal, he said, I dont think its too much. Still, Biden added, I have my own deal, which he noted the Democratic Party has incorporated as part of its platform. Biden also weighed in on foreign policy issues, promising to reduce Americas military footprint abroad and saying that any attempt to interfere with the election by a foreign power is a violation of our sovereignty. He promised that if hes elected and it becomes clear post-election that Russia interfered in the election, theyll pay a price for it, and itll be an economic price. Biden described Russia as an opponent, but declined to use the same word when asked about China. He instead called the nation a competitor and pledging to improve trade policy with China. Biden also criticized comments Attorney General William Barr made comparing lockdown orders during the coronavirus pandemic to slavery. I never, ever, ever thought I would see such a thoroughly, totally irresponsible administration, Biden said. Trump signalled hed been watching the town hall before he took the stage for a rally in Misonee, Wisconsin, on Thursday night. I just see hes up there tonight getting softball questions from Anderson Cooper. They dont ask me questions like that, Trump told the crowd gathered at the airport. Theyve got cars ... its the weirdest thing Ive ever seen. Trumps ABC town hall was held inside a half-empty auditorium, with attendees socially distanced and wearing masks. The format of Bidens event was a stark reminder of the issue thats been a central focus of Bidens campaign that the pandemic rages on, affecting Americans lives in ways large and small, and that stronger leadership in White House could have eased the crisis. More than 195,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus by far the highest death toll in the world. Earlier in the day, Biden joined Senate Democrats for a conference call lunch and told allies that he is taking nothing for granted in the race for the White House and the down-ballot effort to wrest the Senates majority control from Republicans. He fielded questions, particularly from senators facing reelection, about his strategy win back the chamber and defeat Trump. He just said, You know what were up against. You know why this is so important, said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said he encouraged Biden to remind workers how much he has been on their side during his many years in government. Ive said, Joe, people need to know that you recognize the dignity of the work, the people have built this country, Manchin told reporters. They need to know that you fought for their pensions, you fought for their health care ... and youre not gonna leave them behind. Bidens campaign team has come under scrutiny in recent days over its outreach efforts, particularly for what some see as short shrift with Latino voters. At the same time, Democrats have mixed views over the partys get-out-the-vote effort that largely bypasses traditional door-knocking to avoid health risks during the pandemic, instead relying on virtual outreach. ___ Jaffe reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report. According to an oft-cited and oft-lamented statistic, a mere 3% of books published in the U.S. are works in translation. In recent years, several independent publishers have strived to fill this literary chasm, with companies such as Blue Dot Kids Press, Enchanted Lion, Levine Querido, and minedition, and imprints including Archipelagos Elsewhere Editions and Restless Books Yonder specializing in bringing international childrens books to the U.S. Amid the current pandemic, when overseas travel is restricted and peoples lives have become more insular, literature in translation offers a vital means of connecting readers across the globe. In honor of World Kid Lit Month, we spoke with 10 acclaimed translators about the unique challenges and rewards of adapting international childrens books for English-speaking readers. Rhythm and Voice David Boyd, translator and assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, recalled his transformative first encounter with Japanese fiction in translation. The big moment for me was finding a Yukio Mishima novel at the public library as a teen, he said. Boyd was so intrigued that he searched out other Japanese translations and eventually began learning the language, later becoming a translator himself. Approaching a poetic picture book like Every Color of Light by Hiroshi Osada, illustrated by Ryoji Arai (Enchanted Lion, Oct.), Boyd said he weighs each word. In the original, I saw a lot of openness, so I did what I could to retain that. When I translate a picture book, I think Im even less tolerant of excessive language. Every word has to earn its place on the page. Boyd said, Ultimately, a good translation is one that captures everything you felt when you read the original work. For me, theres a lot of power in Every Color of Light, and I wanted that to come across in English. Lawrence Schimel, English/Spanish translator (bidirectional), author, and co-founder of World Kid Lit Month, is also experienced with translating the delicate poetry of picture books. For his forthcoming project, Some Days by Argentinian author-illustrator Maria Wernicke (Amazon Crossing Kids, Nov.), he said, The difficulty was polishing the language enough to make it as spare and elegant as the original. Schimel likened the process to a dance. Take Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: shes doing everything he does backwards and in heels. Like with translation, the effort is there, but you have to make it look graceful. Schimel, who is based in Madrid, said that his editor at Amazon Crossing Kids, Marilyn Brigham, was extremely supportive throughout the process for Some Days. It was clear that Marilyn fell in love with the book and cared so much about the translation, he said, noting, Amazon has been stellar in terms of including me from the very beginning. When they first announced the book in PW Bookshelf, they credited me as translator and showed a photo of me. Boyd has a similarly collaborative relationship with his editor at Enchanted Lion, for whom he previously translated What What What by Tendo Arata, illustrated by Ryoji Arai, and books in the Chirri & Chirra series. Claudia [Bedrick] was involved in the translation in the most supportive way imaginable. Once I was done with my draft for Every Color of Light, we talked on the phone and went over pretty much every line in the book. This allowed us to really listen to and think about the sonic impact of the choices we had made. Sound was key to the book, he said. What starts out as quiet becomes slowly louder, page after page. In the Japanese, that gradual buildup is conveyed through a rich onomatopoeic vocabulary. That part was a lot of fun to translate. German-English translator Elisabeth Lauffer, recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators, also spoke of honoring the voice that underscores a given text. I feel to translate convincingly the aim is for the words to sound as though they were originally written in the language they're translated into, she said. Describing the kind of rigorous work required, she mentioned her forthcoming YA translation, Beyond the Blue Border by Dorit Linke (Charlesbridge Teen, May 2021), about two teens who try to flee the German Democratic Republic in 1989just months before the Wall comes down. Lauffer said, There was tons of research involved in translating the many cultural and historical references, particularly as one of the characters is given to joking about East German and Soviet politicians and current events. The novel is dialogue-heavy, so beyond the nuances of historical setting, I had to find the right voice for a range of characters. For the teenage dialogue, she was able to channel some of my personal knowledge of late-80s/early-90s slang without being overly hokey. Daniel Hahn, a U.K.-based translator from French, Spanish, and Portuguese and co-author with Joy Court of A World of Books in Translation (SLA, 2017), is committed to translating the essential harmony between words and images in pictures books. Its a complex, hybrid storytelling form, he said. If this relationship is going to be retained, the new text needs to be mindful of this constantly. Its not enough to extract the old text, translate it, and dump the new text back on the pageyou need to see the space the text will occupy, how it relates to the detail of the page and the page turn and the rest of the books architecture. Cross-Cultural Creation For the most part, translators operate like illustrators, working independently of the books author with the editor acting as go-between (in cases where the author is still living). Summing up her work as a translator, editor, rights manager at Callisto Media, and creator of the YA imprint Fantastica Rocco in her native Brazil, Larissa Helena said, I am attracted to positions that allow me to build bridges, whether it is acquiring and agenting international books, or straight up translating them. Though Helena was not in touch with author Lucas Rocha during the translation process for Where We Go from Here (Scholastic/Push, 2018), she said, I did meet Lucas afterwards on a trip to Brazil, and it was one of those pleasant moments when you confirm that the author of a story you care about is just as nice as you imagined them to be! Helena did work closely with editor Orlando Dos Reis on bringing the book from Portuguese to English, a new process for her. I had translated several books into Portuguese when Orlando first fell in love with a couple of projects from Brazil, and asked if I would translate them into English instead. In translation studies, youll be frowned upon for translating into a language that is not your native tongue, so I was hesitant at first. But Orlando convinced me. Helena faced another editorial challenge because in Brazil YA books can be geared towards a much older audience than in the U.S. So my adaptations were on the sentence level, making sure the dialogue is fluid and that every depiction makes sense to non-Brazilians, whereas Orlando focused on the bigger picture concerning his target readers, and the needs of his imprint. By contrast, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author (Truthtelling, Delphinium, Oct.) and translator from Italian to English, was in direct contact with Silvana Gandolfi, author of Run for Your Life (Restless, 2018). Since much of the action takes place in Sicily, a good deal of the dialogue and references was in Sicilian dialect: that was the main challenge. I had to consult Silvana as well as some good dictionaries to understand the dialect and render it in English. Schwartz and Gandolfi were awarded a grant by Omi, an artists retreat in upstate New York, which brings together writers and their translators for several weeks. This was a wonderful opportunity, for which Im forever grateful. Silvana and I spent many afternoons sitting together studying the text. Their joint work paid off; Run for Your Life earned a 2019 Batchelder Honor. Whether they are in contact or not, translators and authors exist in collaboration. Mexican American author and translator David Bowles said, Certainly my experience crafting original work aids me in becoming the co-creator of the translated text... because ultimately, thats what translations are: new works that are co-created by the author and the translator to do essentially the same job as the original, but with a wholly different audience. 'Gained in Translation' Theres a common assumption that things are lost in translation, while translators are often judged in reductive terms as either remaining faithful to or betraying a text. Hahn voiced his frustration with this mindset. We seem to worry so much about the way a translation falls short of an impossible, notional perfection, rather than being thrilled at the inherent qualities of the thing it gives us, he said, What other form of art or craft is measured against perfection, rather than against possibility, or ambition, or achievement? Marcia Lynx Qualey, Arabic-English translator and founder of the ArabLit cooperative and ArabKidLitNow, said, I dont think of it as gained or lost. Things are changed in translation, just as they are changed when any reader translates a book into their head through the act of reading. No two readings of a book are the same; no two readings of a translation are the same. She added, Certainly some translations are more attentive, loving, and better. But whats gained in literary translation is that the book is accessible to a whole new audience! Francoise Bui, French-to-English translator and former acquisitions editor at Random Houses Delacorte Books for Young Readers imprint, agrees. Translated books allow readers to access different cultures and different perspectives, which is incredibly enriching. Its a way of traveling without leaving your armchair, she said. As an editor considering potential books for translation, Bui explained, I looked for many of the same qualities as for a manuscript from a homegrown talent: compelling characters, fluid narrative, plus a story that an American author wasnt likely to write, but that would resonate with readers because the emotional journey was universal. Hahn cited the numerous works of classic childrens literature to which translation afforded him access, As somebody who grew up in the English-speaking world: Pippi Longstocking, the Moomins, Asterix, Emil and the Detectives, The Little Prince and Tintinplus the Greek myths, Pinocchio, and every fairytale I ever heard. They were all gained in translation. For her part, Qualey emphasized the fun of reading books from abroad, saying, I just believe in bibliodiversity as giving readers of all ages a more imaginative and intellectual landscape. Often we look at literature in translation as being good for us or healthy, whereas the act of celebrating and delighting brings home that books in translation are just... great books. Windows to the World As the #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices movements continue to widen the contemporary childrens publishing landscape, translation offers another means of promoting more inclusive and authentic representation for young readers. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, who is a British literary translator from Arabic, German, and Russian into English, as well as a co-editor of the WorldKidLit and ArabKidLitNow blogs, said, I believe that sharing diverse childrens books with young children and engaging with translation and global reading in the classroom can foster more outward-looking perspectives and critical thinking about language, identity, and the way we interact and empathize with people from other countries and backgrounds. Bowles is mindful of geographical and literary borders as a resident of a town called Donna in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, on the border with Mexico. He believes that translation is essential to expose young readers to a broad swath of voices, thereby increasing the visibility of the global majority for themrather than erasing nearly everyone except white U.S. folks. To show communities of color with roots in other countries that their traditions and stories are valued here as well. A co-founder of #DignidadLiteraria, a coalition of Latinx members of the literary, publishing, and academic communities, Bowles said, Part of the reason behind the underrepresentation of Latinx authors in traditional publishing is a phrase that gatekeepers repeat ad nauseum: I couldnt connect with the voice. The more translated work that feeds into the U.S. market, expanding the available gamut of voices and comp titles, the more likely it is that agents and editors will stop making this ridiculous excuse, either because theyve become exposed to other narrative styles in translation, or because an enlightened readership will demand more variety. Helena added, It was quite a shock to move from a country that overvalues works in translation such as Brazil to one that undervalues it. In the U.S., there is a widespread, largely unproven belief that readers will not understand a work of literature that does not reference their daily experiences. She explained that things get worse in the childrens and YA space, which is so funny when you consider the [youth-centered] media the U.S. exports all over the world, with very non-universal yellow school buses, cheerleading squads, and beer pong with Solo cups. The beauty of translation is that emotions are universal, so we can recognize ourselves even in the most unfamiliar of contexts. This alone has the power to shed new light on our own experiences, foster empathy, and make us all feel part of humankind first, and members of a nation second. Reading Without Borders On the importance of celebrating childrens books from other languages and territories, Hahn said, Rather than just grumbling about that lack [of translated books]Im guilty of thistheres a lot to be said for being grateful also for what does exist, and finding ways of drawing readers attention to it. For children and families who are looking for resources to aid in book discovery, Lauffer suggested, As the daughter of a lifelong childrens librarian, I would say turn to your librarian! Libraries have done a lot of work to remain present in communities and in peoples lives [during the pandemic]. My local library in Burlington, Vt., is doing a lot of online and outdoor programming, particularly for kids. If your library is closed now because of Covid, go online to see what materials are available. Kemp advised readers, Explore #WorldKidLitWednesdays on the Global Literature in Libraries blog, and use the Outside in World and Planet Picture Book websites to choose a destination and fly there by book! Bui recommended that readers start by checking out the many superb titlespicture books through YAthat have been Batchelder Award recipients. And dont overlook the Honor books. During her tenure at Delacorte, Bui worked on a number of Batchelder Award-winning translations, including Jean-Claude Mourlevats The Pull of the Ocean, translated by Y. Maudet; Joelle Stolzs The Shadows of Ghadames, translated by Cathrine Temerson; and Annika Thors A Faraway Island, translated by Linda Schenck. Qualey offered the following tips: visit the WorldKidLit blog, Stephen Spender Trust, Words Without Borders, and The Common. Find a publisher that brings out kid lit in translation, whose books you love and trust. There are a growing number. As Boyd put it, Good books allow you to see the world in new ways, but books in translation can show you just how big the world really is. On the Horizon On an optimistic note, Lauffer said, Ive been very busy with work during this time, which is encouraging. It seems to me a sign that publishing itself is in decent shape, maybe because people have more time to read now. In fact, works in translation are being sought out and the demand is being maintained. The following childrens books are new and forthcoming from the translators we interviewed: Beyond the Blue Border by Dorit Linke, trans. from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer (Charlesbridge Teen, May 25, 2021) Chirri & Chirra: The Rainy Day by Colas Gutman, trans. from the Japanese by David Boyd, illus. by Marc Boutavant (Enchanted Lion, Apr. 2021) The Day Saida Arrived by Susana Gomez Redondo, trans. from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel, illus. by Sonja Wimmer, (Blue Dot Kids, Sept. 15) Every Color of Light: A Book About the Sky by Hiroshi Osada, trans. from the Japanese by David Boyd, illus. by Ryoji Arai (Enchanted Lion, Oct. 13) Fossils from Lost Worlds by Damien Laverdunt, trans. from the French by Daniel Hahn, illus. by Helene Rajcak (Gecko Press, Mar. 2, 2021) Here the Whole Time by Vitor Martins, trans. from the Portuguese by Larissa Helena (Scholastic Press, Nov. 10) How Do Bridges Work? by Roman Belyaev, trans. from the Russian by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (b small, Apr. 2021) A Mother Is a House by Aurore Petit, trans. from the French by Daniel Hahn (Gecko Press, Apr. 6, 2021) My Favorite Memories by Sepideh Sarihi, trans. from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer, illus. by Julie Volk (Blue Dot Kids, Aug. 18) The Immortal Boy by Francisco Montana Ibanez, trans. from the Spanish by David Bowles (Levine Querido, 2021) Jacobs Fantastic Flight by Philip Waechter, trans. from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer (Blue Dot Kids, Oct. 13) The Postman from Space by Guillaume Perrault, trans. from the French by Francoise Bui (Holiday House, Apr. 2020) The Postman from Space #2: Biker Bandits by Guillaume Perrault, trans. from the French by Francoise Bui (Holiday House, 2021) The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas by Maria Garcia Esperon, trans. from the Spanish by David Bowles, illus. by Amanda Mijangos (Levine Querido, Feb. 31, 2021) Some Days by Maria Wernicke, trans. from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel (Amazon Crossing Kids, Nov. 1) Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr, trans. from the Arabic by Marcia Lynx Qualey (Interlink, Sept.) Ivanka Trump has apparently endorsed products from a company whose CEO is an outspoken supporter of her father, thereby landing herself in trouble for potentially violating a government ethics law. Ms Trump tweeted a picture of herself holding a can of Goya brand black beans with the caption: If its Goya, it has to be good. Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno. (Ms Trump is not known to speak Spanish herself.) No sooner had she done this than critics pointed out that as a formally employed advisor to the president, Ms Trump is forbidden from endorsing products by a federal ethics provision under the heading use of public office for private gain. The section Ms Trump is being mocked for violation reads: An employee shall not use or permit the use of his government position or title or any authority associated with his public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise. Ms Trump is not just the presidents daughter; she is also has the title advisor to the president. While they both have formal job roles, she and her husband Jared Kushner both forgo their salaries - but this does not make them exempt from rules governing government staff. Her endorsement of the Goya brand comes after the companys CEO, Robert Unanue, appeared at a White House event featuring various business leaders. In his remarks, he called the president an incredible builder and declared the US blessed to have him as chief executive. Donald Trumps opponents, including high-profile progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Lin-Manuel Miranda, immediately sprung into boycott mode and a few days later, Ms Trump decided to take Goyas side. The presidents daughter has been criticised before for her ethical conduct while in office. She has won multiple trademarks for her various businesses in China, which sits awkwardly alongside Mr Trumps belligerent rhetoric on Beijings trade practices as well as his repeated and apparently baseless claim that Joe Bidens son, Hunter, allegedly made millions of dollars from a Chinese payoff. On another front, Ms Trump is known to have used a personal email account to conduct government business before she became an official employee. Among the emails was a message referring to a White House official as her COS, or chief of staff. By PTI KOLKATA: Forests in West Bengal will be opened for tourists from September 23, officials said on Thursday. Every year the forests close down for two months due to the monsoon -- from July 15 to September 15, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic the forests have been out of bounds for tourists since the beginning of the lockdown in March, they said. The state government decided to open the forests ahead of the festive season as the prolonged closure was bleeding the tourism economy, they added. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Ravikant Sinha said the decision to open the forests was taken at a meeting chaired by Forest Minister Rajib Banerjee on Wednesday. He said guidelines will be issued for tourists and the details will be decided at a meeting on Friday. Banerjee had earlier said that the government was working out modalities to open forests and national parks for tourists during the festive season. Worries about the coronavirus and support for continuing and even increasing state and local restrictions are highest among the states poor and communities of color, while concerns are far lower among white residents and the better-off, according to a new poll. Its a tale of two different Californias, said Mark Baldassare, CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California and the polls director. From the earliest days of the pandemic, the coronavirus has struck the Black and Latino communities hard, in the Bay Area, the state and the country. With people of color and low-income residents more likely to work in jobs that require personal contact, concerns about the disease and the chance of infection are close to the surface. While 28% of California adults overall are very concerned that they will be hospitalized because of the coronavirus, that number rises to 34% among those in households making less than $40,000 a year, 48% among African Americans and 39% among Latinos, the institutes poll found. By contrast, only 17% of people in households making $80,000 or more are very concerned, along with 19% of white respondents. In the Bay Area, only 20% of all adults are very concerned, the lowest percentage of any part of the state. The personal concerns are mirrored in peoples opinions about restrictions on public activity to control the virus. While only 34% of all California adults want tougher rules than the state or local governments now require, that number is 40% or higher among Latino, Black and Asian American respondents and people from households making less than $40,000, compared with 26% both among white respondents and those in the highest income level. We continue to see very large income, racial and ethnic disparities, as well as economic impacts, Baldassare said. The differences are stark. Its evident that the desire to keep restrictions, despite the economic impacts, is because of the concern of those who have experienced the greatest impact from the pandemic. Theres a huge difference in the income hit that six months of coronavirus restrictions have delivered. While 46% of adults say their personal financial situation is either good or excellent, that drops to 22% among people in households making less than $40,000, 32% among Black residents and 29% among Latinos. But 70% of those with family income above $80,000 say they are doing well, as do 56% of white respondents and 61% of Asian Americans. In the Bay Area, 54% of those surveyed say their finances are excellent or good. The COVID-19 crisis, the fires raging through the state and other concerns havent dampened the essential optimism of Californians. A 51% majority of adults believes the state is headed in the right direction, down from 58% in May. Its communities of color that are most upbeat about the future, with 64% of Latinos, 57% of African Americans and 56% of Asian Americans pleased with the states progress. That number drops to 14% among Republicans, 40% with independent voters and 41% among white residents. Californians see a very different situation in the United States as a whole, however. Among likely voters, 60% of those surveyed see bad financial times ahead for the country in the next year. But thats down from 70% in the May survey. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle Republicans, at 54%, are the most likely to see improving times ahead, while Democrats (17%) and independents (36%) are much less optimistic about the future. The Bay Area, where only 32% see good times ahead, is the most pessimistic region of the state. That contrast between the future prospects of the state and the nation shows up in the way Californians look at their political leaders, Baldassare said. The numbers are a reflection of state leadership versus federal leadership, he said. Voters have confidence in the leadership of their state. Less than a third of likely voters approve of the job President Trump is doing, and just 21% are pleased with what Congress has accomplished. The presidents approval ratings are underwater in every region of the state, ranging from a 56% disapproval rating in the Central Valley to a 75% unfavorable mark in the Bay Area. Those numbers are echoed in the presidential polling, where 60% of likely voters back Democrat Joe Biden and 31% support Trump. Bidens lead is narrowest in the Central Valley, where he holds just a one-point edge over the president. In the Bay Area, its 71%-18%. But despite Californias widespread problems, likely voters approve of the job Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing by a 60%-37% margin and back the Legislatures actions, 45% to 43%. Asked about the governors handling of the coronavirus pandemic, 62% like what hes done. Newsoms numbers are impressive, especially during troubled times when people are often looking for someone to blame, Baldassare said. Newsom has faced a series of crises and his approval rating is staying high, he said. Its a reflection of the fact that hes been out there every day and people have seen him doing his job. The poll is based on a telephone survey of 1,704 California adults, including 1,168 likely voters, that was taken Sept. 4-13. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5% for the entire sample and plus or minus 4.3% for likely voters. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth The National Human Right Commission (NHRC) in collaboration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has trained security personnel on mainstreaming human rights and civilian protection in Adamawa. Speaking during the two-day training, on Thursday, The Executive Secretary of NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, said the training was for key military officers who were directly involved in the counter-insurgency operations in the North East. The justification of this training cannot be overemphasised. The war against insurgency is complicated by (the) asymmetric nature of the conflict. The insurgents live within us and there is hardly (a) clear drawn battle-line between the insurgents and civilian population. There is, therefore, an extreme need to prosecute the anti-insurgency operations to win the hearts and minds of the civilian population of Nigeria, he said. He commended the Nigerian Army for working hard to protect Nigerians and encouraged the participants to actively engage in the various course sessions. In his presentation, Kabiru Aliyu, NHRC Assistant Director, Legal, said that the objectives of the training were to improve the capacity of the military on issues regarding the protection of human rights in the course of their operation. The NHRC Investigation Officer, Anthonia Nwabueze, said the mandate of the commission was to protect, promote and enforce human rights in Nigeria. She said the commission deals with all matters relating to the protection of human rights as guaranteed in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. According to her, the commission has different ways of receiving complaints across the 36 states in the federation and all services are free of charge. We monitor and investigate human rights violation and make appropriate recommendations to the Federal Government for prosecution and such other action as it may deem expedient in each circumstance, she said. (NAN) Public schools in Ontario are letting families down when it comes to developing curriculum that addresses anti-Black and other forms of racism, educators across the GTA say. At least some are concerned that such initiatives will become the new Black History Month checklist something schools and teachers can just check off without any deep interrogation of exactly why it's critical that we engage in this, said Matthew Morris, a middle school teacher in the Tornto District School Board. During the spring and summer, he and Jay Williams, another TDSB teacher, arranged #QuarantineEd. It started as regular chats with other teachers about leading virtual classrooms but quickly wound up shifting focus to racism both in and out of schools. In prepping for back to school, they say the TDSB arranged for personal development training for teachers that featured a section on anti-racism. They worry, though, it wont have a big impact and is but a tiny step down a long road in educations reckoning with race. School districts in the GTA still have not included lessons about racism in core curriculum. Several post-secondary institutions in Canada, including McMaster, Ryerson, Concordia and Kings College, are already offering courses ranging from media studies to Black history born from a summer of public uprising around race. Williams, who teaches middle school in East York, questions if schools are ready to make real change. A curriculum can only be as anti-racist as the teachers teaching it, he said. Are folks really doing the work to look at their implicit biases and their own kind of racism? And then if called on it are they going to drop their defences and really admit to themselves that they've been doing a disservice and living in this whitewashed narrative of education that has existed since the beginning of education in Canada or in North America? Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced changes this year to create better outcomes for Black students, including ending streaming in Grade 9, and suspensions for younger grades. But some parents think the measures dont go far enough. Community organizers, parents, guardians and teachers have been pushing for a shift to planning education through an anti-racist lens for years, said Andrea Vasquez Jimenez, co-director of Latinx, Afro-Latin-America, Abya Yala Education Network (LAEN). She remembers when Ontario governments organized an anti-racism secretariat when the NDP was elected, and later the Liberal government formed an anti-racism directorate at the urging of community members. Unfortunately, there tends to be a lot of public relations, Vasquez Jimenez said. We really need to prioritize anti-racist curriculum because the prioritization (will) ensure the creation of the conditions for all students to be able to thrive, she said. Vasquez Jimenez said overhauling education through an anti-racist lens could be an opportunity to involve students in the process and help create an action plan. What does that look like when we ensure that students brilliance and their lived experiences are brought forward to ensure changes in policies and structures and in systems that are negatively impacting them? Ann Lopez has been in education for 28 years as a teacher, administrator with Peel District School Board and now a professor at the University of Torontos Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I saw firsthand how inequities are manifested through education, whether it is assessment, whether it is teachers expectations of students, whether it's the way Black and brown students are treated, Lopez said. This kind of education isnt just for Black and brown students, she said. Even if their classrooms are predominately white, teachers should still have race and equity incorporated into their lesson plans. In terms of finding ways to change curriculum, Lopez suggests considering the many lists of recommended reading and material they may have come across during the start of this years racial reckoning. Maybe you've learned something over the summer that can now help you with the kind of resources that you're tapping (into). Beyond individual teachers taking initiative, Lopez said that these approaches and practices need to be embedded in the education system through policy. Equity should never be an add-on. Equity should be embedded, she said. It must be the lens through which all education activities flow. She agrees that the introducing an anti-racist lens in education lies with the province, and that initiatives in the past have stopped and started depending on the parties in power, and resources provided. This is a provincial issue, she said. The dire need for anti-racist curriculum. It's not an isolated issue. It's not a local issue. It's not just the one school board. The middle school teachers who sparked the race-related conversations among their colleauages earlier this year say they will continue to do what they've been doing for years a banner many Black educators have been left to carry on their own. Both men try to come up with ways to uplift and influence the Black boys at their schools in particular. Morris, for one, makes it a point to shatter stereotypes around Black men in his classroom, whether through the way he presents himself wearing Jordans shoes and having tattoos or the lessons he teaches. Sometimes making lessons valuable means bringing the outside world into the classroom, from talking about police shootings to talking about racist advertising. Its something Morris wishes had happened when he was a student at the same school where he now teaches. There was such a reality gap between what the world was like in the hallways compared to what the world was like inside a classroom. Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering equity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. After strengthening and weakening multiple times after entering the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend, Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 2 early Wednesday morning before diminishing to a tropical storm later in the day. With close to 20 million people in its path, Sally brought coastal flooding, record rainfall, high winds and mass power outages to a large swath of the northern Gulf Coast, stretching from southeast Louisiana to the west central coast of Florida, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate their homes amidst the still raging COVID-19 pandemic. Some areas in the region saw over two feet of rain by early Wednesday and winds of up to 100 miles per hour. Trent Airhart wades through floodwaters, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in downtown Pensacola, Fla.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) So far one person has been confirmed killed and one person is missing in Orange Beach, Alabama, just east of Gulf Shores, in an incident which a city official said appeared to be water-related. Less than a week ago the storm was classified as Tropical Depression 19 but went on to become the earliest recorded named tropical storm beginning with the letter S. It became the fourth hurricane to hit the continental US during this years hurricane season, a number which has not been seen since the 2004 season, and is the eighth storm so far this year to be named that has made landfall in the US, the highest number at this point during a hurricane season since 1916. Sally intensified very rapidly, from a tropical storm into a Category 1 hurricane in less than two hours on Monday. It became a Category 2 on Tuesday night, prompting Richard Pasch, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) National Hurricane Center (NHC), to warn that Sally is expected to be a dangerous hurricane when it moves onshore along the north-central Gulf Coast, echoing the warnings made about Hurricane Lauras rapid intensification before it made landfall on August 27. Sallys intensification was due to expected light wind shear and very warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, according to NHC Senior Hurricane Specialist Eric Blake. Exacerbated by the record slow speedreaching just 2 mph at one pointat which the hurricane moved towards the Alabama-Florida border, it began dropping torrential rains and caused flooding to the coastal areas before it made landfall. Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the NHC, told the Associated Press (AP) that Sally has a characteristic that isnt often seen and thats a slow forward speed and thats going to exacerbate the flooding, comparing the storm to Hurricane Harvey, which caused catastrophic damage to the Houston, Texas area in 2017. Commenting on the slow speed of the hurricane, Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, told the AP that, A hurricane moving at 2 mph is stalled for all intents and purposes, adding that If they arent moving along and they just kind of sit there, youre going to get a ridiculous amount of rain. Commenting on the experience of Hurricane Harvey, which is one of several hurricanes which have stalled around the world in the recent period, Timothy Hall, senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Popular Science that upon settling over Houston, the hurricane acted as a conveyor belt, just dumping huge amounts of warm Gulf water onto Houston. Hurricane Florence acted in a similar fashion, breaking almost 30 flood records when it drenched the Carolinas in 2018. The area from Dauphin Island, Alabama eastward to the Florida panhandle felt the impacts from Hurricane Sally on Tuesday before it made landfall. Over four inches of rain had fallen in Baldwin County, Alabama, which includes Gulf Shores, with the same amount accumulating over a large portion of the western Florida panhandle by midday Tuesday. Flooding also occurred as far west as Plaquemines Parish (or county) in Louisiana. Since landfall, there has been disastrous flooding reported in areas such as Orange Beach, with other coastal areas like Quietwater Beach near Pensacola being completely submerged. Over 500,000 homes and businesses were subject to a loss of electricity as Hurricane Sally made landfall, including 150,000 Alabama Power customers in the Mobile area. Commenting on the stalled patten the hurricane took, NHC director Ken Graham told CNN that nothing is going to go away anytime soon. The winds, the torrential rainfall, the slow movement and the storm surgethis is a dangerous situation all around. Meteorologist Jason Beamon, speaking to Nola.com, warned, Numerous rivers are forecast to reach major flood stage, with a few rivers in southwest Alabama/northwest Florida forecast to come close to record stage. Portions of central Alabama and Georgia, as well as parts of the Carolinas, have been put under flash flood warnings as the storm system makes it way towards the Atlantic throughout the week. Rescues of people in neighborhoods littered with homes that have been flooded and suffered roof damage from fallen trees are already been conducted in Baldwin County in Alabama and Escambia County in Florida. David Morgan, the sheriff of Escambia County, said the evacuations could literally be in the thousands. A fallen crane knocked out a large portion of the Pensacola Bay Bridge, which connects Pensacola to Gulf Breeze, Florida, leaving residents in the latter area isolated. With mid-September marking the traditional peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, this year has seen an extremely active one. This season marked the first time since 1971, according to CBS News, that five tropical cyclones swirled simultaneously in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. Combined with slow-moving tropical storms and hurricanes, and increased humidity levels that facilitate the retention of moisture in the air, human-induced climate change, which is causing warming sea surface temperatures, is compounding the rate of development and growth of hurricanes. Since 2017, there have been more hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5, which have also rapidly intensified before making landfall. Michael Brennan at the NHC told Nola.com that [w]e didnt have many for a very long period of time, and weve had a lot here in the last few years. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote Monday on the wildfires currently ravaging the US West Coast: Like hurricanes on the East Coast and in states on the Gulf of Mexico, the likelihood of natural disasters that form a perfect storm of weather conditions increases as global warming continues unabated. Hurricanes such as Sandy, Harvey and Maria, once thought of as storms of the century, are now expected to happen once every 16 years. The same is true of the infernos now raging. As long as a handful of billionaires dominates society, with every aspect of economic life geared to their personal enrichment, not a single social problemincluding climate changecan be solved. - New investment to support advancement of powerful bispecific Gamma-Delta T cell engager programs for the treatment of a broad range of cancers - Leading global life sciences venture has invested approx US$1 billion in last two years COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Novo Ventures, the ventures arm of Novo Holdings, today announced that it has co-led the oversubscribed $83 million (71 million) Series C financing in LAVA Therapeutics (LAVA), a Dutch and US biotech company pioneering the development of bispecific antibodies to engage gamma-delta T cells for cancer therapies. As a result of the financing, Nanna Luneborg, Partner at Novo Ventures, will join the company's board of directors. The financing will accelerate the advancement of LAVA's immuno-oncology pipeline and its powerful bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager programs into multiple proof-of-concept clinical trials expected to start in 2021 for the treatment of solid tumours and hematologic malignancies. LAVA's bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager platform harnesses the unique properties of these specific T cells creating a revolutionary truly tumor-targeted immunotherapy to improve outcomes for cancer patients. Gamma-delta T cells are the natural surveillance cells of the immune system, continuously patrolling the human body for the identification and targeting of tumour cells. These cells bridge the innate with the adaptive immune system and are a largely untapped opportunity in cancer treatment. Nanna Luneborg, Partner at Novo Ventures, and Board Director of LAVA Therapeutics said: "LAVA's bispecific antibody approach to targeting and engaging gamma-delta T cells has the potential to greatly enhance efficacy and safety, compared to other immune-oncology targeting technologies, and offer an off-the-shelf therapy. We are impressed by the preclinical data generated by LAVA to date, which validates the company's platform and are delighted to support such a highly experienced team as they transition into a clinical-stage organization. This investment reflects Novo Ventures' strategy of supporting world class companies by backing seasoned entrepreneurs and promising science in areas of major unmet medical need. We are proud to be one of the most active investors in Europe and we look to continue leveraging our team's experience and deep capital pool." Stephen Hurly, Chief Executive Officer of LAVA Therapeutics, said: "We believe our targeted approach, leveraging the unique features of gamma9-delta2 T cells with innovative bispecific antibodies, will deliver novel T cell-based therapies offering considerable advantages over today's oncology treatments. We are grateful for the support we have received from Novo Ventures and look forward to benefiting from their and our new and existing investors' insights and industry expertise." Novo Ventures co-led the financing alongside Sanofi Ventures, and included additional new investors: Redmile Biopharma Investments, Ysios Capital and BB Pureos Bioventures. In addition, current investors: Versant, Gilde Healthcare and MRL Ventures Fund, LLC also participated in the round. In 2019, Novo Ventures invested approximately USD 400 million in 55 companies. As one of the most active investors in Europe, Novo Ventures' investment strategy is to identify and invest in life science companies which are true leaders in their areas of expertise, developing innovative products that significantly advance patient care. Recent European investments in 2020 include lead investments in NodThera's $55 million and Freeline's $120 million financing rounds; and participation in F2G's $60.8 million and ReViral's $44 million financings. About Novo Holdings A/S Novo Holdings A/S is a private limited liability company wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. It is the holding and investment company of the Novo Group, comprising Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S, and is responsible for managing the Novo Nordisk Foundation's assets. Novo Holdings is recognized as a leading international life science investor, with a focus on creating long-term value. As a life science investor, Novo Holdings provides seed and venture capital to development-stage companies and takes significant ownership positions in growth and well-established companies. Novo Holdings also manages a broad portfolio of diversified financial assets. Further information: http://www.novoholdings.dk About LAVA Therapeutics LAVA Therapeutics is developing a proprietary bispecific antibody platform that engages gamma-delta T cells for the treatment of hematological and solid cancers. The company's first-in-class immuno-oncology approach activates V?9Vd2 T cells upon binding to membrane-expressed tumor targets. LAVA was founded in 2016 based on intellectual property originating from the Amsterdam University Medical Center. The company has established a highly experienced antibody research and development team located in Utrecht, the Netherlands (headquarters) and Philadelphia. For more information, please visit www.lavatherapeutics.com. The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed two farm bills that bring far-reaching, liberalising reforms to the agriculture sector, one to free up agricultural trade from all restrictions and the other to provide a new framework for contract farming. The bills seek to open up the farm sector to more competition, modernise supply chains by enabling bigger agribusinesses to engage with farmers more directly and create seamless access to markets, which are currently fragmented. The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, which replace similar ordinances, were passed by a majority in the lower house through a voice vote. The ordinances that will be replaced by the bills bring the full force of liberalisation to the farm economy. They were first announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 15 in the second of her series of briefings on proposed reforms, following up on the May 12 announcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of a package worth Rs 20 lakh crore to spur growth. Major parties that opposed the bills were the main opposition Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Siromani Akali Dal, Samajwadi Party, the Trinamool Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Left parties, Nationalist Congress Party, the Indian Union Muslim League and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Also read: Harsimrat Kaur ejects out of Cabinet over farm bills, her party stays in NDA The Biju Janata Dal demanded the bills be sent to select committees. Shiv Sena supported the bills, but recommended changes. Parties that supported the bills included the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Telugu Desam Party, the Janata Dal (United) and YSR Congress Party. The main provisions of the Farming Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 allow barrier-free inter-state and intra-state trade of primary agricultural commodities. Farm produce, under a decades-old system, are sold mainly in notified wholesale markets run by so-called agricultural produce marketing committees, or APMCs, under state laws. The APMCs require farmers to only sell to licensed middlemen in these notified markets, usually in the same area where the farmers reside, rather than in open markets, which economists say scuttles price discovery, hurting farm profits. The bill enables farmers and buyers of their produce to trade outside these tax-free markets and will therefore open up APMCs to competition. The bill will enable food traders to buy farmers produce from any market, rather than bind them to the specific markets where they are licensed to operate. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 lays down a new architecture for contract farming. It provides for a national framework on farming agreements, enabling a farmer to engage with agribusiness firms, processors, wholesalers, exporters or large retailers for sale of future farming produce at a mutually pre-agreed price. I am happy that everybody expressed their views on the bills. Some have opposed it, some supported. I want to say this with great responsibility; till Narendra Modi is Prime Minister, our farmers interests will be kept supreme, farm minister Narendra Tomar said, replying to the debate. Please take off your politicians lens and view the bills through the lens of a farmer. Also read| System of MSP, govt procurement retained: PM assures farmers after passage of agricultural reform bills He slammed the Congress, asking why its government never acted on the Swaminathan commissions recommendations to give farmers 1.5 times over costs in the form of support prices. In his right to reply, the Congresss Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said: Show me one farmer who is happy over this bills. Haryana and Punjab are on fire. I appreciate the sentiments of Harsimrat Kaur (the minister who resigned from Modi Cabinet) who had the gumption to oppose the bills. These bills are no silver bullet. Parties opposing the bill accused the government of intruding into states jurisdiction and taking advantage of the Covid pandemic to introduce anti-farmer legislations. Had there been no corona, farmers anger would have been visible in the streets , who does the BJP stand with, foreign investors, Adani-Ambani, dhanna seth (moneyed traders) or farmers? asked Ritesh Pandey of the Bahujan Samaj Party, registering the opposition of party chief Kumari Mayawati. Despite the political bickering, reforms in agricultural marketing or the buying and selling of farm produce have been a long time in the making. Various government panels and economists have often argued for changing existing structures of agricultural trade that are highly fragmented. Ultimately these so-called reforms are going to lead to replication of old structures outside mandis. Creating two market spaces with two completely different sets of rules is a recipe for disaster, said Kavitha Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture Government will not come to know anything about transactions in these new markets. Not knowing will give the excuse not to act. Farmers fear this, rightly so, she said. Economists said some concerns of farmers were valid and the solution was to bring appropriate regulation and oversight. Ultimately, when we open up the market, we need to open it up in a substantive way. What we need is a market-clearing mechanism. The solution is to have effective regulation, said NR Bhanumurthy of the Bengaluru Dr. BR Ambedkar School of Economics. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Australia has secured a strong opening to its 2020 Emmy campaign, with cinematographer Greig Fraser winning an award in the cinematography for a single-camera, half-hour series category. Fraser and New Zealand-born director of photography Baz Idoine won the award for their work on the critically acclaimed Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. The series, which airs on the Disney+ streaming platform, is set five years after the events of the film Return of the Jedi the sixth chapter of the nine-film Star Wars saga and follows the adventures of a Mandalorian gunslinger named Din Djarin. In his acceptance speech, Fraser acknowledged the show's creative leaders, writer/producer Jon Favreau, writer/director/producer Dave Filoni and producer Kathleen Kennedy. "Your leadership and vision are incredible," he said. The "experts" were wrong moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem did not make peace in the Middle East impossible. This week, under and with the encouragement of the Trump administration, Bahrain joined the United Arab Emirates in recognizing Israel and establishing pathways to peace. Additionally, Kosovo, a Muslim-majority country, established diplomatic ties with Israel and promised an embassy in Jerusalem. This is a truly monumental and historic moment. Finally, parts of the Sunni Arab world recognize Israel's right to exist, in peace, in their ancestral homeland. And Israel will be a great ally to them. There could be enormous prosperity in the Middle East for Jews and Arabs alike if more neighbors join this righteous cause. This should be the biggest headline of the decade. Yet this deal happened at Trump's table, so the predictable cogs are in motion to dampen the win. Nancy Pelosi called the peace deals "a distraction." Joe Biden later claimed that Trump's foreign policy is "bad for Israel." The Washington Post dedicated significant editorial space to calling the deals "a mirage." "Both the UAE and Bahrain already communicate and engage with Israel," argues Ishaan Tharoor, "and the three countries were not locked in anything close to conflict." This misses the larger picture. Yes, informal cooperation between Israel and her neighbors occurs all the time. The Middle East constantly hangs in the delicate balance of unspoken agreements and reluctant cooperation. Egypt has had peace with Israel since 1979 and Jordan since 1994. Even Israel and the Palestinians cooperate in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas knows he wouldn't still be in power if it weren't for the stability of their mutual cooperation. However, this is stalemate, not peace. It couldn't last. What happened this month isn't unspoken cooperation it is real diplomacy. The prime minister of Israel stood on the balcony of the White House shoulder to shoulder with representatives from the UAE and Bahrain to proclaim to the world that they recognize each other and want true peace. It may sound insignificant. But recognition isn't a low bar. It's huge. Israel fought for its freedom and kept itself alive through major existential wars with its neighbors in 1948 and 1967. Each narrow victory was a miraculous survival. When the Arab world then realized that they couldn't defeat Israel militarily, they launched a campaign of anti-normalization defined by three "nos." No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. These were the words directly from the Arab League in the summit of 1967. These were the words that the Middle East used to live by. For nearly 50 years, peace was hindered by this attitude among Arab countries. Each of them knew this campaign required unanimous Arab front. In many ways, these attitudes became ingrained in Arab society. From this hard line, such insidious causes as the intifadas and BDS were fed. To formally recognize Israel with diplomatic channels, to negotiate in the White House together for the whole world to see, and for the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the UAE to publicly proclaim they welcome peace with Israel make for the defeat of the anti-normalization campaign. But the headlines don't stop there. Following news of peace between the Israelis and the Emirates, the Palestinian ambassador to the Arab League drafted and submitted a resolution condemning the move. The draft resolution was rejected. If this holds, and the Arab League refuses to reignite its former stance on Israel, then region-wide peace is a real possibility. Some believe that Saudi Arabia may be the next to accept the olive branch. This is all occurring not despite America's embassy move or recognition of Israel's sovereignty in the Golan Heights. This is arguably because of it. Sunni Arab states don't see an America who may let Israel's destruction slide. They don't see Israel backing down. And they certainly don't see success in their campaign of anti-normalization. So they must recognize that their approach to Israel must change. Radical Islamic cells pose real threats to Arab domestic security. Egypt watched most of its Sinai peninsula become home to ISIS. Syria's power vacuum invites dangerous usurpers. And with an increasingly nuclearized Iran, Israel may just be the friend that the Arab world needs right now. A moment of celebration is in order for the new era an era of "yeses" to peace, recognition, and negotiations. Hooray for peace, and hooray for a new approach to a problem long hindered by Washington norms and expectations. Bryan Griffin is a lawyer, author, and senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research specializing in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He is the author of the "Encyclopedia of Militant Islam." You can imagine students waiting before school if they get there a little early (or) after school waiting to be picked up, he said. (The plaza is for) creating a small outdoor seating area with a little bit of sunscreening to keep a bit of the hotter sun out. Wolfert also showed an image of the new two-court gym that is accentuated by a row of first-story windows. In this case, with a fair amount of north light, pretty diffused light on that elevation, (it) really will change the way that space is used, the way its experienced, he said. Next, Wolfert moved onto the high schools planned improvements, which centers around the creation of a new cafeteria in the front of the school, though the buildings prominent arch shape will still remain visible to travelers on Farnham Street. Hopefully what youre seeing, and its critically important we think, is preserving the nostalgia of the school, he said. You can see the archway hopefully through the glass (of the cafeteria) here. Our intention and our hope is to save that, repurpose it and have it become a very important feature on the interior of the space. On Wednesday, the Democratic majority on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released the results of its 18-month investigation into the two crashes of Boeing 737 Max airplanes that killed a combined total of 346 passengers and crew. The 238-page report provides damning evidence that Boeing knowingly risked the lives of countless thousands of people by rushing into service an aircraft it knew to have potentially fatal design flaws. It systematically concealed the dangers from government regulators, airline customers, pilots and the general public. A Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner at the Renton, Washington assembly plant [Credit: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File] The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), even when it became of aware of the safety risks of the new plane, certified the 737 Max and failed to alert either airline workers or passengers of the dangers. The result was the horrific crash of Lion Air flight 610 some 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta on October 29, 2018, killing all 189 people on board. Even after this disaster, in which a malfunction repeatedly forced down the nose of the plane until it crashed into the Java Sea, Boeing and the FAA kept the 737 Max in the air and failed to address the automated flight control defect that caused the crash. This led less than five months later to the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, on March 10, 2019. That disaster followed the same pattern and ended with the plane plowing into the ground and killing all 157 men, women and children on board. It was only after this second crash that Boeing and the FAA agreed to ground the 737 Max, and that was only after every other major government in the world had rejected their claims that the plane was safe and banned it from their airspace. The report by the House Democrats cites the testimony of Ed Pierson, a senior plant supervisor at the Renton, Washington 737 Max production facility and retired Navy squadron commander, before the committee last December. Pierson related how in 2018 he told 737 General Manager Scott Campbell of multiple safety problems and defects at the Renton plant. For the first time in my life, Im sorry to say that Im hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane, he told Campbell, and added that the military would suspend production to address the safety issues. Campbell replied, The military is not a profit-making organization. The report, which the Republican committee members refused to endorse, makes clear that 346 lives were destroyed and countless more threatened because the aircraft maker and defense contracting giant made calculated decisions to sacrifice safety in order to maximize market share and corporate profits. But despite the incriminating evidence in its own report, the Democratic majority proposes no actions to hold either Boeing or FAA officials accountable. There are no calls for criminal prosecution, nor are any financial penalties proposed. This is under conditions where the bipartisan CARES Act passed last March effectively earmarked $17 billion in taxpayer money to prop up the company, and the Federal Reserve has backed up a $25 billion bond sale by the firm as part of the government's multi-trillion-dollar pandemic-triggered bailout of the US corporate elite. Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO throughout the latter period of 737 Max development, resigned under fire last December after receiving $80.7 million in salary, stock options and other bonuses during his tenure. Even as the House releases its damning report, moreover, the FAA is signaling that it will soon allow the 737 Max to resume commercial flights. The report cites five different areas of negligence and cover-up. Under Production Pressures, it notes, There was tremendous financial pressure on Boeing and the 737 Max program to compete with Airbus' new A320neo aircraft. In other words, Boeing, which accounted for a huge portion of the rise on Wall Street following the election of Donald Trump, was under the gun from major shareholders and banks to speed up production of its new plane and cut costs in order to win the race with its European-based rival for market share, particularly in expanding markets such as China. That market share, profit and stock price eclipsed safety for Boeing was clear from the very origins of the 737 Max. Rather than design a new generation of medium-range carriers, Boeing decided to save time and money by revamping its five-decade-old 737 model. The main innovation was a larger engine that had to be placed higher up on the wing. However, the company soon discovered that the new configuration resulted in a tendency for the plane to stall. In order to compensate for this design flaw, Boeing installed a new automated flight control system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. The House report lists Faulty Design and Performance Assumptions in connection with MCAS as the second major factor in the crashes. Boeing concealed the existence of MCAS from its airline customers and their pilots in order to avoid having to retrain pilots on flight simulators for the new aircraft, a costly and time-consuming process. Moreover, it designed MCAS to be triggered by only one of the plane's two external angle-of-attack (A-O-A) sensors, rather than by both, as is the accepted practice for functions that are critical to the safety of an aircraft. Moreover, it failed to inform airlines and pilots, as well as the FAA, that a warning alert listed as a feature of the plane, which told the cockpit that the two sensors disagreed and therefore one was malfunctioning, was inoperable on 80 percent of its active 737 Maxes. As a result, when MCAS was set off on the two doomed flights as a result of incorrect information from a faulty A-O-A sensor, the pilots were unable to determine the cause of the repeated downward plunges and incapable of stabilizing the planes. That Boeing was acutely aware of the problems with MCAS is shown by the fact that MCAS was referenced in half a million emails and other internal documents. Under the heading Culture of Concealment, the report provides a multitude of examples of Boeing withholding critical information from the FAA, its customers and Max pilots. This includes internal test data from 2016 revealing that it took a Boeing test pilot more than 10 seconds to diagnose and respond to un-commanded MCAS activation in a flight simulation. The pilot described the situation as catastrophic. Federal guidelines assume that pilots will respond to this condition within four seconds. The fourth area cited in the report is titled Conflicted Representation. This is a euphemism for the FAA's total subordination to Boeing and the lack of any serious regulatory oversight. The report cites, in particular, the policy implemented under Democratic as well as Republican administrations of delegating FAA oversight to Boeing employees. These so-called authorized representatives routinely withheld from top FAA officials safety issues that arose in the design, production and certification of the 737 Max. In other cases, the FAA higher-ups sided with Boeing and dismissed reported safety concerns. In the end, the FAA allowed Boeing to put the 737 Max into service without pilots having to undergo training on flight simulators. Instead, it authorized a total of two hours of training on an iPad. In December 2018, some weeks after the crash of Lion Air flight 610, the FAA conducted a risk assessment and estimated that, without a fix to MCAS during the life of the 737 Max fleet, there could be 15 additional fatal crashes resulting in over 2,900 deaths. Nevertheless, the FAA allowed the 737 Max to continue flying while Boeing worked on a software patch for MCAS, setting the stage for the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 just weeks thereafter. Finally, under the title Boeing's Influence Over the FAA's Oversight Structure, the report gives multiple examples of the FAA siding with Boeing and dismissing warnings from its own experts. The chairman of the House committee, Peter DeFazio (Democrat from Oregon), said upon the release of the findings: Our report lays out disturbing revelations about how Boeingunder pressure to compete with Airbus and deliver profits for Wall Streetescaped scrutiny from the FAA, withheld critical information from pilots, and ultimately put planes into service that killed 346 innocent people. Whats particularly infuriating is how Boeing and FAA both gambled with public safety in the critical time period between the two crashes. What he did not mention, however, is that he and his fellow Democrats supported passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which expanded the self-regulation of Boeing and other corporations in the airline industry. In fact, the deregulation of the airline industry was begun in 1978 under the Democratic administration of President Jimmy Carter, leading to the dismantling of the Civil Aeronautics Board and its replacement by the far weaker and more pliant FAA. What neither the Democrats nor the media speak about is the root cause of the mass deaths caused by Boeing and its government accomplicesthe capitalist profit system. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in a statement titled Boeing executives must be tried for murder: The elevation of profit above human life is the social essence of capitalism. The Max 8 disasters are not merely symptoms of corporate greed, but the end result of the capitalist system itself, which subordinates all social needs to private profit. There is a basic contradiction between the interests of society, including safe, efficient and inexpensive air travel, and the private ownership of essential industries, as well as the division of the world economy among rival nation-states. The same basic contradictions of capitalism are fueling the geopolitical and economic conflicts that threaten nuclear war and ecological disasters. The only way to prevent further disasters is to take the profit motive out of commercial flight, end the dominance of Wall Street and replace the nightmare of the capitalist market with a rationally planned and internationally organized system of air transport. This requires the nationalization of the airline and aerospace companies and their transformation into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities. Type address separated by commas Your Email: YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Investigative Committee revealed a number of circumstances over the case of obstruction of legal activity of a reporter by former police chief Vladimir Gasparyan, the Investigative Committee told Armenpress. According to the data obtained, on August 8, 2020, former police chief Vladimir Gasparyan, while in his house at Drakhtik village in Gegharkunik province, noticed that a drone is shooting the house area. In order to find out who is making the shooting, the former official moved on the direction of a drone with his own vehicle. After noticing reporter from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Robert Zargaryan and his crew, the ex-police chief started insulting the journalists, as well as threatened to use violence dangerous for life and health. Upon learning that the reporters carry out their professional activity and prepare a report about the illegally constructed buildings in the Lake Sevan basin, Vladimir Gasparyan again urged them to stop the shooting and continued insulting them. He forced them to delete the video and refuse to spread it. Based on the sufficient evidence charges have pressed against Vladimir Gasparyan for obstructing the legal activity of a reporter. Signature bond not to leave the country has been chosen as a preventive measures for the former police chief. Investigation continues. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan Polling during a pandemic: Pollsters face many unknowns heading into presidential election Election 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic will alter the voting landscape dramatically, as Americans must decide between voting in person or through the mail. In turn, that will complicate the polling process as well. Illustration by Rob Turner New course: W&M Government Professor Mackenzie Israel-Trummel teaches a course on survey and polling analysis. Submitted photo Photo - of - Hide Caption The COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenge to those who plan to vote in the Nov. 3 presidential election, as well as for those who want to study voter behavior. In-person voting is expected to decline as Americans continue to follow physical distancing measures. Some who normally vote at the polls will instead vote through the mail, while others may decide to not vote at all. Political scientists expect these changes to make it harder to predict voter outcomes. Its incredibly volatile, said William & Mary Government Assistant Professor Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, who teaches a course on survey and polling analysis. Theres so much we dont know. Israel-Trummel, who is in her first year at W&M after spending the previous five years at the University of Oklahoma, teaches a course to train students as survey researchers. Students who take the course will learn the rich context in which social science is conducted, through the lens of a more active form of learning, the professor said. Conducting the course during a pandemic and in the lead up to a presidential election certainly makes things more interesting for Israel-Trummel and her students. One of the things we're going to talk about this semester is all of the unknowns about polling and research right now, particularly when we're thinking about trying to understand how the election is going to go and who's going to win, Israel-Trummel said. How hard is it to make those predictions right now, because there's so little that we know? Models that researchers used to understand voting behaviors in the past may not be as effective during a pandemic. Not only will in-person voting decline, but the methods in which researchers collect voting data will change as well, Israel-Trummel said. Most survey research, with the exception of some exit polling, is done via the internet now. People might be afraid to show up, Israel-Trummel said. Theres a lot we dont know right now in trying to understand whos going to vote on Election Day. This is a really different situation than weve ever faced before, which makes it hard to predict and also really concerning for people in the polling world, because if they get this wrong, is it going to erode faith in democratic practice and in data generally? In 2016, pre-election polls showed Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump in key battleground states that ultimately turned the election in Trumps favor. That has led some critics to question the accuracy of polls before the votes come in. Israel-Trummel says voter turnout contributed to the miscalculations in those critical states, and that has to be taken into account even more this year, particularly during a pandemic. For a lot of people, 2016 was sort of a wake-up call to pay less attention to whos ahead in national polls, or even whos ahead in particular states, and think a little bit more deeply about what the turnout actually looks like in those places, Israel-Trummel said. And if models arent taking that into account appropriately, and if we arent good at estimating whos likely to go cast a ballot, we can be really wrong about whats going to happen on Election Day. The pandemic will alter the landscape dramatically, as Americans must decide between voting in person or through the mail. In turn, that will complicate the polling process as well. This is just a completely different landscape than weve faced for a presidential election when people are afraid to be outside, Israel-Trummel said. Voting in person is really a fear-inducing thing for a lot of people. But then there's also concerns about whether mail-in ballots be counted, and so I think all of those factors just make it very uncertain what we even know about the composition of the electorate on Election Day. I think it's making most people who look at polls nervous about trying to make any sort of predictions because of just the incredible number of unknowns this year. The City of Williamsburg is providing curbside voting and a dropbox for absentee ballots to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and make voters feel safe casting their ballots. On Friday, Sept. 18, the city will begin in-person early voting, and absentee ballots will be mailed to persons who have requested to vote by mail. In Israel-Trummels survey and polling analysis course, students will participate in the full scope of a survey research project. This includes learning the theory of survey research, developing survey measures, fielding a national survey, writing code for data analysis, and writing research papers using the data students have helped gather. It's a super hands-on class, Israel-Trummel said. The goal is that from the beginning to the end, they start as government majors or international relations majors or whatever they are, and by the end they are truly participating in political science research. They will go from being just students to being producers of knowledge. Students will learn to code in statistical software and analyze the data, as well as how to program a survey for distribution while minimizing errors. They will also develop writing skills to produce a final paper and learn to adhere to the ethical standards expected by researchers to work with human subjects. Taking this course during a presidential election year has definitely added to my enthusiasm for the course, said Leslie Davis 21, who is interested in pursuing a career in survey research after graduation. As part of the class, we are developing an original survey that will be fielded on a national sample. Having that kind of control to design a survey during a presidential election year will allow us to focus on issues and topics we are especially interested in this November, which is a great opportunity as student researchers. The 962 well talk about today has been raced by Tiff and Derek in 89, but as fate would have it, the six-cylinder land missile didnt cross the finish line. Curiously enough for such a motorsport-oriented automaker, this racing car never won a race, only settling for second at the Silverstone Superprint Supercup thanks to Needell.Martin Donnelly, Price Cobb, David Hobbs, and James Weaver are a few other names connected to this example of the breed, and following its professional career, the 962-200 was old to Murray Smith who was successful in the Historic Sportscar Racing series. Since 2003, its been with Historic Classics of Uckfield, the UK.The selling vendor is asking 985,000 pounds sterling for this piece of racing history, and as you can tell from the photo gallery, the 962-200 has recently gone through a ground-up rebuild to 1989 specifications. From the floor to the top of the roof, this job takes 1,200 to 1,500 hours according to Group C restoration specialist Katana Limited. From start to finish, that translates to approximately a year of work.As the most dominant racing car in the earliest part of its career, the 962 will always be a blue-chip collectible among Porsche enthusiasts. Between 1984 and 1991, no fewer than 91 examples were built. 16 of them were used by the factory team while the remaining 75 were sold to customer teams. Derek Bell , who won 21 times in various 962s over the years, famously said that the 962 is quite easy to drive.Care to guess how much suck-squeeze-bang-blow the 3.0-liter boxer cranks out? In its glory days, the mid-mounted boxer with a pair of KKK turbochargers ran to the tune of 780 horsepower and 524 pound-feet of torque (710 Nm) at 5,000 rpm. Dhaka, Sep 17 : Thousands of students staged protest demanding the expulsion of Anas Madani, son of chief (Amir) of the Madrasa and chief of Hifazat-e-Islami Ahmed Shafi, from Hathazari Darul Uloom Mueenul Islam Madrasa in Hathajari of Chittagong. At the same time, the students demanded the appointment of a new chief, replacing the present chief of the Madrasa. The protest against Shafi (103), who is suffering from various diseases, started after the Johar prayers on Wednesday as the students accused him for sacking at least 11 teachers and officials without any reason, under the influence of Maulana Anas Madani. Hathazari Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) and Upazila Nirbahi Officer could not be reached for comment. Image Source: IANS News Anas Madani has also been accused of influencing the Hathazari Madrasa, Hefazat-e-Islam and the Qaumi Madrasa Board (BEFAC) It is learned that Shafi has been unable to supervise the madrasa for a long time due to his too old age as he is undergoing treatment. Hifazat-e-Islam chief had reportedly made a public appearance at an event in January 2019 where he said that not allow girls to study. Shafi who also runs the Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam madrasa in Chattogram's Hathazari asked the attendees to make some promises which included the promise of growing bear following Sunnah, offering regular prayers and making girls wear hijab. The Hifazat chief in an audio said parents may let their daughters study up to grade five so that the girls can keep a tab on their husband's finances and write letters to them. Image Source: IANS News Shafi is also the chairman of Al-Haiatul Ulya Lil-Jamiatil Qawmia Bangladesh, the agency consisting of the six Qawmi education boards. He is often called 'Tentul Hujur' (Tamarind Mullah) by his critics for his misogynistic remarks because he once had compared women with 'Tentul' (tamarind), which he said make man's mouth water on 2013. Shafi's organisation made global headlines in 2013 when its members carried out mayhem in Dhaka's Motijheel after calling a rally against the government's policies on different issues, including women and education. -- Syndicated from IANS About once a month, KUHFs Houston Matters invites me to its Houston Pet Peeves call-in segment. The idea is to have some good grumbly fun, to joke about the irritations that drive Houstonians up a collective wall. And now, deep into 2020, its a giddy relief to complain about anything smaller than an apocalypse. So: What are your gripes? I asked on Facebook and Twitter before this weeks segment. Here, lightly edited and de-emojied, are some of the funniest responses. More from Lisa Gray Hotez: Scientists divided on what recent COVID decline means Gary Packwood: Lubys is closing! H-Town people should check it out while its still open so they can remember watching someone order a double serving of chicken-fried steak with white gravy and a side of red Jell-O. In 10 years nobody will believe that was possible. @kneelunge: My Marchtember hair. Karen Warren: I gave myself a haircut yesterday. It looks like I cut my hair with a blender. Kim Hogstrom: Mine looks like I used a knife and fork. Robert Searcy: Wanting to get my hair cut, but being scared to go after my stylist posted pics on social media of being at restaurants. Susan Buchanan: I hate it when I forget and put makeup on the bottom half of my face. Melissa Noriega: You cant really smile at folks with a mask on. It reduces the goodwill out there. MORE FROM LISA GRAY: 31 ways to fight despair: Protest murals. Secret acts of kindness. And homegrown tomatoes. Alecia Lawyer: I have had to get muuuch more creative with the use of my eyebrows. My dad tried early on to teach me to raise one brow, but to no avail. It is my top priority now. Dennis Cass: People who act as if being required to wear a mask is unspeakably cruel, possibly a violation of the Geneva Conventions. What kind of fabric are the complainers using? Naugahyde? Ultrasuede? Pleather? Amy Dinn: Someone sent me a fun mask lined with flannel. Its soft but definitely a wait-until-January-to-wear product. I put it on and went outside in Houston last week. It was not pretty. Becky Ardell Downs: People who wear obviously dirty masks. Brad Barber: People who dont wear masks, plus people who wear them like a chin thong. Saadia Faruqi: People acting like theres no pandemic. Leah Lax: I just drove to Tennessee and back. That mask below the nose thing is the biggest new Southern fashion trend. Annie Buford-Stephenson: My husband looks younger every day while I look like my great-grandmother. Im his Picture of Dorian Gray. Andrea Terrill: All the NASCAR wannabes on the freeways. Lighter traffic is a mixed blessing. Jackie Burdisso: All the new self-made driving rules. Jason Fuller: The drivers who realize their exit off the freeway is next and traverse six lanes to make it. Jennifer Decker: I think I have forgotten how to drive. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Balter: I was a terrible, inexperienced driver. Until moving to Houston during a pandemic. Gail Siegel: My battery died weeks ago my bad for not starting the car and I havent bothered to replace it. I forecast a post-pandemic surge of neglectful procrastinators like me at various dealerships and repair places. Randall Morton: Griping about my procrastinations when I have more time than ever. Lockdown mind! Treena Rowan: How many times will the gal next door mow her lawn this week? Deborah Quinn Hensel: Im sick of seeing discarded masks all over parking lots, sidewalks, etc. Tom Massimin: I keep leaving my face masks on the ground in different places so I will have one wherever I am. But somebody keeps stealing them! Nicole Laforet: When Im teaching a class, Im not a fan of looking at dozens of black boxes with initials. Miah Mary Arnold: The number of platforms a fifth-grader has to access to go to school! Nick Hall: With Zoom dominating school and Microsoft Teams replacing the workplace, its like all we have are meetings. Someone needs to schedule a meeting to discuss this. Barbara Grove: The 19 pounds. Cynthia Card: People who negatively comment about online recipes: Well, this dish was okay, but I did this and added that. If you made all those changes, then you didnt follow the recipe! Dennis Cass: Recipes that are preceded by long, complicated stories about How I Got This Recipe from This Real Interesting Character We Met During Our Trip to Cajun Country Several Years Ago. Bruce Bodson: Since everyone has started ordering groceries for delivery, those of us who still go to the stores ourselves have to navigate through hordes of huge, multi-decked rolling shelves being pushed by employees. Elizabeth Conley: The mass emails I get from companies that I bought from once five years ago. Do they truly care about finding me and my family in good health? Patrick Kopplin: When Bill White was mayor, you could drive through downtown and not have to stop at a stoplight. Why cant Sylvester Turner figure this out? Marty Merrit: To get through downtowns synchronized lights without stopping, you must drive 24 mph. Ive sometimes pondered whether other multiples of 24 would work. 48? 72? 96? Amy McGee: My dog misses daycare. She wakes me up four times a night. And the isolation has gotten to me: Now I care what my dog wants at 3 a.m. RENEW HOUSTON: Going back to work? Heres how to transition your pets. Christine V. Holland: I revoked my dogs concierge privileges this morning when, at 5 a.m., he only wanted breakfast. Bathroom, yes but breakfast no, you spoiled beast! @KarenRBarb: What seems like the longest hurricane season ever! Charles Ward: Mother Nature! Wheres our cool weather? @ShearCreativity: The cold front that never was. We wanna wear long pants, dang it! Liz Belile: I now have just as many invites to online events as I once had to real-life events. MT Filley: People on social media forums who use caps lock in their responses. Anne Hayden: Pity parties on social media, and those who enable them with their laments. Anne Hayden, a minute later: Wait: I seem to be griping about gripes. If you missed this months Houston Pet Peeves on KUHF-FM 88.7 FM, you can stream it on KUHFs website or find it on the Houston Matters podcast. To get in on next months griping, follow me on Facebook or Twitter. lisa.gray@chron.com, twitter.com/LisaGray_HouTX Maharashtra PWD Minister Ashok Chavan said on September 17 the state government is working on three options, including promulgating an ordinance, regarding implementation of the Maratha jobs quota whose operation has been stayed by the Supreme Court in an interim ruling. A final decision on ordinance route and other options will be taken in a day or two, said Chavan, a leader of the Congress, an ally in the Shiv Sena-led MVA government, while addressing a press meet at Nanded in central Maharashtra. Chavan, who heads the cabinet sub-committee on the Maratha quota, said there is also a proposal to file a recall application before the three-member SC bench that gave the ruling and move the Constitution bench to vacate the interim stay on operation of the 2018 reservation law. Describing the SC's interim order staying the implementation of the Maratha quota in jobs and education as"unexpected and surprising", Chavan said the law had been unanimously passed by the state legislature. NORRISTOWN While no concrete action was taken, members of the Norristown Municipal Council voted on three items pertaining to the Norristown Municipal Waste Authority during a work session, Tuesday. Its status has been a point of contention for several months following the approval of an $82 million sale to Aqua Pennsylvania in June. Norristown had first inquired about selling the assets of the Norristown Municipal Waste Authority in mid-2017, and received two bids earlier this year, according to a May 12 presentation. Borough officials held virtual meetings and informational sessions in May for Norristown Municipal Waste Authoritys customers in Norristown and West Norriton Township. Municipal staff have explored options to pay off existing debts and finance programs including establishing a scholarship fund for Norristown Area High School students, merging the boroughs fire department stations and improving the Norristown Recreation Center. However, area residents have expressed their opposition to the matter time and time again. Tuesday nights public comment portion of the meeting was no exception. By selling this public utility you are selling out your constituents, said Norristown resident Dr. Kathleen McLaughlin in a submitted statement. This is a short-term fix that will lead to long-term problems. Our wastewater authority has capacity for growth. They generate a revenue over operational cost. The rates are some of the lowest in Pennsylvania, and they know the system better than anyone. Why is this payday loan from Aqua America a good deal for the ratepayers of Norristown? asked Maccabee Hirsch. Norristown Solicitor Sean Kilkenny, who also serves as West Norriton Townships solicitor, recused himself from Tuesdays conversation surrounding the sale and turned it over to Thomas S. Wyatt, a partner at Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP, who served as council. The first piece of local legislation advertised that the ordinance [would require] the Norristown Municipal Waste Authority (The Authority) to convey the sewer system and all property and assets of the Authority to the Municipality. According to Kilkenny, the advertisement was different than a previous advertisement issued during the councils Sept. 1 meeting, which was actually more detailed than 20-13, and just to clarify this both for the public and the court, in the motion to advertise 20-14 we recommended that we make it clear that were not moving forward on 20-13 so as not to confuse anybody. According to Wyatt, there was a suit filed by the authority making certain allegations against the process and that ordinance. The lawsuit made several allegations including illegally try[ing] to operate the sewer plant without first obtaining DEP approval and misus[ing], illegally I might add, reserves of the municipal authority. In order to make sure that residents have all the information and that the record is absolutely clear as to what council intends we recommend that this new ordinance be adopted, Wyatt said. The Norristown Municipal Sewer Authority board had pressed pause on moving forward with the sale by tabling a resolution during an August meeting, according to David McMahon, a member of Norristown Opposes Privatization Efforts. A second procedural matter sought to amend the asset purchase agreement attached to the ordinance, according to Wyatt, who added that it initially had a three-party agreement involving the Municipality of Norristown, the Norristown Municipal Sewer Authority and Aqua Pennsylvania. Advertising the secondary ordinance would inform area residents of the intent to update the contract. The Municipality now desires to approve the form and substance of the revised purchase agreement which removes the authority as a party to the purchase Agreement, the ordinance states. According to Wyatt, the third action served as a regulatory house cleaning item, which would prompt the municipalitys council to file a declaratory order with the Public Utility Commission. This action would impact eight customers who live outside of the municipality that use the local authoritys services. Over the course of these continued discussions, Councilman Hakim Jones pressed for answers about future proceedings with regard to the sale and the existing sewer workers. My main point is really trying to understand the next steps in the process, and what it specifically does for the municipality as far as being a new owner of a sewer system, Jones said. Wyatt replied that it would take between nine months to one year to clos[e the] transaction. In the meantime, Wyatt said municipal officials would take over the existing collective bargaining agreement Well work very hard to make sure its a seamless transition, but theyll have a different name on their shirt, but it shouldnt have any impact on the service provided to our residents, or the job for those employees, Wyatt said. In addition to obtaining necessary permits, officials are also attempting to gain further clarity on the authoritys current debt, according to Wyatt. While right to know requests were sent to the local authority, Wyatt estimated theres roughly $6 million in debt. Wyatt said he expected to receive the exact figures later this month. So well step into the shoes of the authority, and collect revenue from customers, and pay off obligations related to the operations, Wyatt said. The two advertisements and resolution all passed in consecutive 5-2 votes with Jones, and Norristown Municipal Council Vice President Rebecca Smith dissenting. The next Norristown Municipal Council meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 6. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Reports from Uzbekistan contradict the government's claim that it has phased out its internationally-criticized policy of forcing citizens into farm fields to pick cotton every autumn. Under pressure from the Cotton Campaign, a worldwide coalition of human rights groups and businesses boycotting Uzbek cotton since 2010 over the use of child- and forced-labor in the country, officials in Tashkent say they have ended the practice. But recent complaints heard by RFE/RL from hundreds of Uzbeks around the country reveal that forced labor is continuing in Uzbekistan's cotton sector under the guise of "volunteer" work. Rather than ending forced labor, local Uzbek authorities try to make the work appear as if it is "voluntary." Those pressured to do the grueling labor say they are being forced to sign letters declaring they are "voluntarily" picking cotton for a wage of about $0.10 per kilogram. That nets the fastest and hardest-working cotton pickers about $3 a day. Working six or seven days a week, these laborers can earn slightly more than the official minimum monthly salary of $68, but far less than the $300 that some laborers in Tashkent can earn.* The paltry payments are being dressed up by authorities in Tashkent as an "employment opportunity" for the jobless and needy families. Uzbek Deputy Minister of Employment and Labor Bahodir Umrzakov said on September 5 that the harvest this year is dominated by poor families, unemployed people, and single mothers listed as "individuals in need." "A contract is signed with the picker," Umrzakov said. "Before signing the contract, the citizen determines how long they will participate in the harvest. If they want, it will last a month or 10 days." In reality, the wages earned in six full days by Uzbekistan's fastest cotton pickers is just enough to buy one kilogram of beef. Those who don't work at top speed often go into debt during the two-month stints they say they're being forced to work in the fields. That's because the cost of the meals they eat during the harvest is deducted from the meager compensation they receive for their work. In Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev's native Jizzakh region, there are reports that single mothers and women from impoverished families take their babies with them. "They take their babies to the fields and pick cotton," Gulsanam Ashurova, a Youth Union activist in the Zarbdor district of Jizzakh, told RFE/RL. "I think it should be controlled. Our women leave their children at home and take their babies to the fields to pick cotton. This is absolutely wrong." 'Cluster Farms' There also are allegations that some owners of private "cluster farms" benefiting from Uzbekistan's forced-labor practices have links to senior officials in Tashkent -- including relatives of Mirziyoev. This year, it's not only state employees who face the threat of being fired from their jobs if they refuse to do the back-breaking work. Local administrators -- with prosecutors, police, and tax authorities on their side are also pressuring private companies to provide "volunteers" to pick cotton. Faced with the possibility of stricter checks on their businesses if they don't comply, managers of those firms sign letters declaring they are "donating" their workers to the harvest "for the good of the motherland." With Uzbekistan's 2020 cotton-harvesting campaign in its second week, employees of state banks and the Emergency Situations Ministry say they also are being pressured to pick cotton. On September 14, an official from the Andijan Regional Emergency Management Agency told RFE/RL that he and others from his regional branch had been sent to Kashkadarya to pick cotton. Another ministry employee, who did not want to be named for fear of being fired, said he and his colleagues were forced to sign statements declaring they had "voluntarily gone out to pick cotton." "I was forced to go to the cotton fields against my own free will," the ministry employee told RFE/RL. "They said if you don't want to go to pick cotton, find someone instead" and pay them a monthly salary of $300, he said. "We can't afford it." Emergency departments in other regions of Uzbekistan have also been mobilizing so-called "volunteer" groups for this year's harvest. An Emergency Situations Ministry official in Tashkent told RFE/RL that he was unaware anyone was being "forced" to do the work. But that official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFE/RL that exactly 140 ministry employees from each province and from the ministry's headquarters in Tashkent had "volunteered" to pick cotton this year. "They go voluntarily," the official claimed. "No one is forcing them to do so." Pressured To 'Volunteer' Komala Ramachandra, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said Uzbekistan appears to have made "important strides" in reducing the use of forced labor in its cotton sector. But Ramachandra said the central government in Tashkent "continues to be involved in mobilizing employees of public institutions and enterprises to work on cotton farms." She said those who are being pressured fear they'll lose their jobs and social benefits, or face other reprisals, if they refuse to go into the fields. Those "mobilized" for the work are "largely mid-level civil servants, but also included emergency workers, firefighters, hospital [staff], and school employees," Ramachandra said. She noted that a nongovernmental rights group called Uzbek Forum has also obtained official documents showing that the labor mobilization continues "to be directed by authorities" or is "the result of government policy." RFE/RL has found that employees of state-owned banks and other state-funded agencies are among those being pressured to harvest Uzbekistan's cotton crop in 2020. An employee at a branch of the People's Bank in the Ak-Altyn district of the Syrdarya region told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that he was warned he would lose his job if refused to pick cotton or pay somebody else to take his place in the fields. "We are appealing on behalf of the People's Bank," that employee told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity because he risked dismissal. "We have started cotton picking. A group of workers is already out in the fields. Either they are sweating cotton, they will be fired, or they have been fired." Employees of HamkorBank and Savdogarbank in the Syrdarya region also told RFE/RL that they would be fired if they refused to pick cotton this year. Managers of those banks could not be reached by RFE/RL for comment. Pandemic Threat Meanwhile, rights activists warn of a public health threat from the coronavirus pandemic due to the crowded and unhygienic living conditions that many Uzbek forced laborers must endure. "Hundreds of people live in barracks in unsanitary conditions" during the harvest, said Elena Urlayeva, head of the Alliance of Human Rights Defenders. Others are crowded into schools, tents, or even farm buildings normally used to store fertilizer and agricultural equipment. The Uzbek Employment and Labor Ministry says it is dispatching one nurse to monitor every 100 people who are "recruited" to pick cotton. It says special medical examinations will also be set up for cotton pickers. According to a global database maintained by Johns Hopkins University, Uzbekistan had confirmed nearly 50,000 coronavirus infections with 411 deaths as of September 17. Those figures are believed by many observers to be grossly underreported. *CLARIFICATION: This article has been amended to better reflect the amount a person can make picking cotton in Uzbekistan. Written by Ron Synovitz based on reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service Slovenia is the latest country to be placed effectively off-limits for British travellers. It was added to the no-go list of countries to keep everyone safe, in the words of the transport secretary, Grant Shapps. The Department for Transport (DfT) has returned the former Yugoslav republic to the list of countries from which travellers are required to quarantine. Anyone currently in Slovenia must return to the UK before 4am on Saturday 19 September or face two weeks in self-isolation. In early summer, when the UK imposed quarantine on all foreign countries, Slovenia had some of the lowest infection rates in Europe, with almost cases during May and the first half of June. Right through until the end of August, infection rates remained well below the European average. But this month new cases have increased sharply and, according to the DfT, more than doubled in the week to 16 September. Its current rate is 29.1 cases per 100,000, compared with 34.5 for the UK. But the British government threshold is 20. The Foreign Office now warns against all but essential travel to Slovenia, deeming it an unacceptably high risk to British travellers. The official advice for UK citizens already there says: Travellers should follow the advice of the local authorities on how best to protect themselves and others, including any measures that they bring in to control the virus. Slovenia now has the same status as countries that are generally regarded as more dangerous, including parts of Afghanistan and Somalia. It has the effect of nullifying standard travel insurance policies. Guadeloupe in the French Caribbean has also been put on the no-go list though this is of no relevance to British travellers since it is impossible to get from the island to the UK without passing through a quarantine area. Mr Shapps, the transport secretary, tweeted: Latest data shows we need to remove Slovenia and Guadeloupe from the Travel Corridor list to keep everyone safe. This means if you arrive in the UK from these destinations after 4am Saturday, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days. It is not sufficient to cross from Slovenia into Italy, which has quarantine exemption; travellers must make it back to the UK. The only direct flight that will get travellers back in time is easyJets morning departure from the capital, Ljubljana, to Gatwick. It is currently priced at 257 for a flight of just over two hours. Travellers in the west of Slovenia can access Venice airport, from which British Airways has flights currently on sale at 82. The government granted quarantine exemption to both Singapore and Thailand both of which have extremely low rates of new coronavirus cases. But neither south-east Asian nation allows British travellers unless they have close ties. There was some surprise that Denmark was not added to the no-go list, as it has a rate of 33.8. Conversely, Bulgaria which has been well below the UK governments threshold for weeks is still regarded as too risky for British travellers. National Postal Mail Handlers Union Endorses Joe Biden The National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU) on Sept. 16 endorsed Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, calling him a proven advocate for members of the labor movement. In announcing the endorsement, Paul Hogrogian, national president of the NPMHU, in a statement (pdf) touted Bidens past support for the United States Postal Service (USPS) and postal workers, noting that when he served as senator, Biden supported six-day delivery and fought against privatization. The move comes after the National Association of Letter Carriers announced on Aug. 13 that it was backing Biden, calling him a fierce ally and defender of the postal service and hailing the former vice president for his unwavering dedication to improving the lives of all working people throughout this great nation. Hogrogian, in the endorsement letter, called Biden a proven advocate for members of the labor movement, understanding its value to the growth of the middle class with the development of paid leave, health and retirement benefit provisions, and the 40-hour work week. He criticized President Donald Trumps executive orders on collective bargaining rights and suggested Bidens policies would strengthen the role of labor unions. In contrast to the Trump Administrations attacks on collective bargaining rights through the use of executive orders, Joe Biden will be a leader who will support and protect the men and women of labor, he wrote. While some view unions as champions for workers rights, others see bureaucratic inefficiencies, wasted money, and stifled job growth. In May 2018, Trump issued a series of executive orders the administration said aimed to enhance efficiencies and accountability. A study by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research published in October 2019 found that job growth in states with right-to-work laws, which are state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions, was twice that in forced-union states between 2008 and 2018. The number of welfare recipients in forced-unionized states was three times higher than in right-to-work states in 2018, according to the report. The Economic Policy Institute published a report in August that indicated that unionized workers earn on average 11.2 percent more in wages than nonunionized workers in the same industry and occupation with similar education and experience. The report authors also said unions help to reduce racial disparities in pay. Biden, in a Labor Day speech at a virtual town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said hes going to be the strongest labor president weve ever had. In the endorsement announcement, Hogrogian also noted Bidens selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as running mate. Joe Biden picked a pro-postal, pro-labor running mate with Senator Kamala Harris. Currently, shes the co-sponsor of several pieces of legislation protecting USPS from privatization; supporting the organization rights of public sector employees; and aiding the Postal Service through emergency appropriations in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Hogrogian wrote. Avoid another Moria camp disaster, urges EU commissioner 'Member states must do more on voluntary relocation of migrants' (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, SEPTEMBER 17 - EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson noted Thursday during a European Parliament plenary session that the others present had surely felt the same as she had on seeing photos of Greece's Moria refugee camp after flames destroyed it. She stressed that she had worked prior to the incident on a new EU pact on asylum and migration that would solve the situation and achieve an EU-wide migration and asylum system. She added that Europe must not accept that people live in such conditions as those that were seen in the camp even before the fire. Johansson then underscored that children must be focused on and asked member states to do whatever was necessary for voluntary relocation given the dire need. She also stressed that the EU had been reminded that the people in the Moria camp were fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, who already had very little and now almost nothing at all. (ANSAmed). NAPLES - Li Beirut is the name given to a font created to raise funds for the population of the Lebanese capital after a massive explosion on August 4. More than 160 regional and international designers were involved. The font, which includes 300 decorative glyphs of isolated Arabic characters and Latin capital letters, was commissioned by Nadine Chahine, the lead designer behind the popular Dubai Font, days after the explosion. "Even outside the context of everything that's going on, the explosion is a traumatic event. But when you add an economic crisis, a pandemic and a political crisis, when you consider the fact that people are unable to access their own money in the bank. When you consider the liquidity problems. It's just unbelievable," Chahine told The National. "I lived the first 11 years of my life during the civil war and I've never seen Lebanon in such a dire state." The UAE daily added that: "This is not the first time typeface designers have come together to create a font to raise funds. Previously, the Society of Typographic Aficionados organised eight iterations of Font Aid, a charity drive that responded to a number of global tragedies, including the Nepalese earthquake in 2015 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001." Chahine said Font Aid proved that typefaces could be used as a fundraising apparatus and gave her the inspiration to start Li Beirut. She wanted to ensure that if the font was going to bear the name of the Lebanese capital, it was something special. "It felt like it was necessary that this would be something that comes out of the Lebanese community. That it was driven by Lebanese designers working alongside those from around the world," she said. "I was shocked by the amount of empathy," she says. "Many submissions came with messages of support to the people of Beirut." Esteemed designers from the Arab world, including Mamoun Sakkal, Khajag Apelian, Yara Khoury and Wael Morcos, were among the contributors. Award-winning designers from around the world - such as Jean Francois Porchez, Jessica Hische and Erik Spiekermann - were also quick to answer to the submission call. The end result is a font of more than 300 characters that, besides decorative Arabic and Latin letters, includes Arabic numerals as well as a few symbols. On Tuesday, August 18, two weeks after the Beirut port blast, the typeface was launched. "Now, we are printing the catalogue and the postcards," Chahine says. "That's an important aspect as well, that they are being printed in Beirut. There's a symbolic aspect to that." TAIPEI, Taiwan - U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for the second visit by a high-level American official in two months, prompting a stern warning and threat of possible retaliation from China. Beijing considers Taiwan its own and opposes all official contacts between other countries and the self-governing island. Krach arrived at an air force base in Taipei, the capital, for a three-day visit. Wearing a face mask, he bumped elbows in greetings with Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Harry Ho-Jen Tseng. Krach, the highest-level State Department official to visit the island in decades, is to meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the islands foreign ministry said. The visit by Krach, who is under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, follows a high-profile trip in August by U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, the highest-level U.S. Cabinet official to visit since the U.S. switched formal relations from Taiwan to China in 1979. However, the U.S. has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan since the official diplomatic break and is the islands most important ally and provider of defence equipment. Ahead of Krachs arrival, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, had lunch Wednesday with Taiwans top official in New York, a meeting she called historic and a further step in the Trump administrations campaign to strengthen relations with Taiwan. Craft said her lunch with James K.J. Lee, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, was the first meeting between a top Taiwan official and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since 1971, when the China seat at the U.N. was passed from Taipei to Beijing. Im looking to do the right thing by my president, and I feel that he has sought to strengthen and deepen this bilateral relationship with Taiwan and I want to continue that on behalf of the administration, she told The Associated Press. In Taiwan, Krach is to attend a banquet hosted by Tsai on Friday and hold discussions on the creation of a new economic and commercial dialogue, according to Taiwans de facto ambassador in the U.S., Hsiao Bi-khim. He will also attend a memorial service for former President Lee Teng-hui, who led the islands transition to democracy and died at age 97 in July. Krachs visit and Crafts lunch with Lee are certain to exacerbate mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, trade, technology, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. China condemned the visit on Thursday and warned it could retaliate. At a daily briefing Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Krachs visit violates U.S. commitments to China and bolsters the separatist forces of Taiwan independence and undermines China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, adding that Beijing had lodged solemn complaints with Washington over the matter. We urge the U.S. to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue ... immediately stop official exchanges and actions of improving substantive relations with Taiwan, and handle Taiwan-related issues cautiously, Wang said. China will make necessary responses in accordance with the development of the situation. Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that his interview with a virologist who said coronavirus was created in a lab, was suppressed by Facebook on behalf of the Chinese government. Dr Li-Meng Yan, who was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health, made headlines earlier this year when she claimed to have evidence that the Chinese government was involved in creating Covid-19, which has so far killed more than 941,541 people worldwide. Dr Yan claims that after she published her research she was forced to flee from Hong Kong to LA, and is now in hiding in an undisclosed location in the US. On Tuesday, Dr Yan reiterated her claims that the virus was man-made when she appeared on Fox News Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk about the report. During the interview, where she was referred to as a whistleblower, Dr Yan claimed: I have evidence to show why they can do it, what they have done, how [they did it]. Recommended Chinese virologist who claimed coronavirus was created in a lab and fled to US has been suspended by Twitter She added: The scientific world also keeps silent...works together with the Chinese Communist Party, they don't want people to know this truth. That's why I get suspended, I get suppressed, I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared. The interview was uploaded to the Tucker Carlson Tonight Facebook and Instagram pages later that night, but the social media sites labelled them, and wrote: The primary claims in the information are factually inaccurate. Facebook and Instagram linked to three stories from Factcheck.org and USA Today to debunk Dr Yans claims that the virus was man-made, according to Newsweek. During his show on Wednesday night, Carlson criticised Facebook for labelling the post, and claimed that the social media site had censored him. The host dedicated nearly 15 minutes of the programme on Wednesday to defending Dr Yans comments and criticised Facebook for making it harder for users to watch our segment. He added: The coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every American. And justifiably, people want to know where it came from. But Facebook still doesnt want you to know that. So Facebook suppressed the video, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government. Dr Yan made the claims about the origins of Covid-19 in a report earlier this year alongside three other colleagues. The research appeared to be affiliated with the Rule of Law Society, a group founded by president Donald Trumps former national security adviser Steven Bannon, according to Newsweek. The report, which has not been peer-reviewed, read: Natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory that the virus may have come from a research laboratory is, however, strictly censored on peer-reviewed scientific journals. The researchers claimed to have evidence that showed that Covid-19 was created in a lab, but the report did not appear to shed new information on the virus. The University of Hong Kong disputed the findings and released a statement to ITV, where they wrote: Dr Yan's statement does not accord with the key facts as we understand them. They have no scientific basis but resemble hearsay. Prior to Dr Yans appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Twitter suspended her account, which at the time had amassed more than 60,000 followers, after she posted her research in several tweets. Twitter introduced a policy in May to label posts that contain information about Covid-19, which has been disputed or is controversial. The site said the policy was introduced to provide additional explanations or clarifications in situations where the risks of harm associated with a tweet are less severe but where people may still be confused or misled by the content. DGAP Voting Rights Announcement: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. Steinhoff International Holdings N.V.: Release according to Article 40, Section 1 of the WpHG [the German Securities Trading Act] with the objective of Europe-wide distribution 17.09.2020 / 15:15 Dissemination of a Voting Rights Announcement transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. DISCLOSURE OF SUBSTANTIAL HOLDING NOTIFICATION Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. (the 'Company') The AFM (the Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets) has informed the Company on 17 September 2020 that a substantial holdings notification related to Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. had been received by the AFM. Date of transaction: 15 September 2020 Person obliged to notify: Citigroup Inc. Issuing institution: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. Registration Chamber of Commerce 63570173 Place of residence: Amsterdam Distribution in numbers (long position) Type of share Number of shares Number of voting rights Capital interest Voting rights Manner of disposal Settle-ment Swap 9 150 115.00 9 150 115.00 Potential Potential Indirectly (Citigroup Global Markets Limited) In cash Call option 75 513 318.00 75 513 318.00 Potential Potential Indirectly (Citigroup Global Markets Limited) Physical delivery Put option 100 684 415.00 100 684 415.00 Potential Potential Indirectly (Citigroup Global Markets Limited) Physical delivered Ordinary share 28 942 848.00 28 942 848.00 Real Real Indirectly (Citigroup Global Markets Limited) Distribution in percentages (long position) Type Total holding Directly real Directly potential Indirectly real Indirectly potential Capital interest 4.97% 0.00% 0.00% 0.67% 4.30% Voting rights 4.97% 0.00% 0.00% 0.67% 4.30% The above notification has been disclosed in the relevant register on the AFM website: https://www.afm.nl/nl-NL/Professionals/registers/meldingenregisters/substantiele-deelnemingen/Details?id=98387 Stellenbosch, 17 September 2020 17.09.2020 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de One of Australia's leading environmental groups has called the federal government's inclusion of gas in its renewable energy agencies' mandate "deeply concerning", and said a focused approach on new energy technologies would create three times as many jobs as fossil fuel investment in the future. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will now be able to invest in "low emissions" technologies such as gas, rather than focusing entirely on renewables, as part of the government's $1.9 billion investment package announced on Thursday. Energy Minister Angus Taylor and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was in the midst of a "world-leading boom" in renewable energy with more than $30 billion invested since 2017. "Solar panels and wind farms are now clearly commercially viable and have graduated from the need for government subsidies and the market has stepped up to invest," he said. A 22-year-old man faces federal arson and attempted arson charges, accusing him of igniting a fire in a dumpster that was pushed against a city-owned building housing the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct and other businesses during a demonstration against racial injustice and police brutality in late June. Gavaughn Gaquez Streeter-Hillerich made his first appearance Wednesday before a magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Portland after his arrest in Vancouver, Washington, on Tuesday. He was caught on video setting a fire inside a tire placed on top of an overturned dumpster that was pushed up against the wall of the building at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, between Killingsworth and Emerson streets, at 2:16 a.m. on June 26, according to Cynthia M. Chang, a fire investigator with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Due to the fire, the building sustained damage in the form of peeling paint, soot deposition, burned plywood that was affixed to the window, and burn damage to the awning above, Chang wrote in a federal affidavit. Police used a fire extinguisher and then firefighters doused the smoldering fire after ordering a crowd to back away from the fire, the affidavit said. The next day, Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell stood with Black leaders in the community at the corner and decried the actions as not only reprehensible, but theyre evil." The portion of the building most affected was the plywood covering the windows of the Mid-K Beauty Supply # 1, a retail store at the corner of Killingsworth that was closed. There were about 15 police officers and staff and four people in custody inside North Precinct at the time of the fire, according to the affidavit. A person videotaping the demonstration and fire provided footage to investigators, which included an image of a 2013 red Mitsubishi Gallant that left the scene with Streeter-Hillerich as a front-seat passenger, the affidavit said. Investigators found the car had been recently sold via Facebook Messenger and contacted the new owner, who recognized photos of Streeter-Hillerich as the man who sold the car, the affidavit said. A distinct tattoo on his arm, which was caught on video, also was helpful in identifying him, according to investigators. Streeter-Hillerich suffered a burn to his left forearm from the fire, according to Chang. According to the federal affidavit, Streeter-Hillerich told police that the original intent of the protest was to occupy the police precinct. He first denied involvement with the fire but then admitted he attempted to light the tire on fire. When the tire didnt appear to ignite, others added flammable materials to produce a more significant fire, he said, according to the affidavit. Video showed Streeter-Hillerich light something on fire inside the tire above the dumpster, and when the material flew out to the ground, he was seen picking it up and putting it back inside the tire, the affidavit said. Someone else poured alcohol on the fire and others poured chemicals onto it that they typically used to treat injured protesters, according to the affidavit. Streeter-Hillerich explained he did not think the fire would extend beyond the dumpster," thought it would remain controlled and was surprised when it extended to a canvas awning of the building, the affidavit said. Streeter-Hillerich told investigators he was angry that tear gas had been used against him during the protests and he believed igniting the dumpster would assist him in controlling his anger and getting his anger out," Chang wrote. The affidavit identifies the federal connection to the prosecution as the approximately $8.3 million in federal grants that the city of Portland receives from the U.S. Department of Justices Office of Justice Program and the estimated $114 million in CARES Act economic stimulus funding the city has received and distributed. It also notes that several of the skin and health care products for sale at the Mid-K Beauty Supply #1 have traveled in interstate commerce to be made available for sale at the Portland store. Streeter-Hillerich appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You and was order to be released pending trial. If convicted, arson carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and could bring a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Streeter-Hillerich initially was charged with arson in Multnomah County Circuit Court. He also was arrested July 8, accused of unlawful use of a weapon, riot and menacing stemming from a violent confrontation with another motorist that day on Interstate 84 while trying to block the freeway to allow protesters to march on it, according to court records. Hes accused of ramming his car into an occupied vehicle that was trying to get through, smashing the vehicles window with a snatch block pulley and then pulling a gun out, according to a probable cause affidavit. Those charges are pending. He was on probation for third-degree assault with Multnomah County at the time of both alleged offenses. -- Maxine Bernstein Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212 Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian Subscribe to Facebook page One of two men sought by police for the theft of a $4,000 aluminum brake from a Welland high school has been arrested and faces more charges resulting from a separate incident. On Wednesday, shortly after 9 a.m., Niagara Regional Police responded to the area of McNaughton and Nelles roads in response to a collision. A man driving a Blue Chevrolet Silverado collided with a parked vehicle and suffered minor injuries. Investigation revealed the truck and man matched descriptions in relation to the theft of expensive equipment that was taken from an outdoor learning area on Sept. 9 at Saint Jean de Brebeuf secondary school, formerly Jean Vanier secondary school, said a news release from the NRP Thursday. Welland resident Matthew Bastien, 38, is charged with impaired operation of conveyance by drug, break and enter and commit other than dwelling, and trafficking property obtained by crime. The aluminum brake, a device used to bend metal, was recovered and returned to the school in working order, police said. A second suspect is still sought in connection to the break-in and theft. A piece of history is up for sale: the Massachusetts mansion alleged ax murderer Lizzie Borden owned and died in is listed on Zillow. The nearly 4,000 square-foot Maplecroft mansion built in 1887 in Fall River was posted on Zillow in late August. The house Borden and her sister Emma lived in together, which has six fireplaces, seven bedrooms, and three and-a-half bathrooms, is listed for $890,000. After losing a legal battle with the city of Fall River and getting hit by the pandemic, the owners of Lizzie Bordens Maplecroft mansion are selling the property. Presenting Maplecroft the Queen Anne Victorian Mansion that once belonged to Lizzie Borden, who was accused and acquitted of the brutal ax murders of her father and Stepmother, the listing, posted on Zillow by Suzanne St. John, says. This was her final resting place that she lived in until her death, NOT the house where the murders happened. This is the second time in three years Maplecroft has been on the market, according to Boston Magazine. Previous owner Kristee Bates bought the house in 2014 and restored it, hoping to turn it into a bed and breakfast, before putting it up for sale in 2017, the magazine reported. After losing a legal battle with the city of Fall River and getting hit by the pandemic, the owners of Lizzie Bordens Maplecroft mansion are selling the property. Donald Woods and Lee-ann Wilber bought it in 2018 for $600,000, The Herald News reported. Woods and Wilber own and operate the nearby Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum where the homicides took place in 1892, according to the Herald. They bought Maplecroft with the intention of turning it into a B&B but after spending $250,000 to update the house, the city asked them to make more changes to comply with accessibility regulations, the newspaper said. After losing a legal battle with the city of Fall River and getting hit by the pandemic, the owners of Lizzie Bordens Maplecroft mansion are selling the property. Woods and Wilber appealed the citys decision to the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board of Building Regulations and Standards because they wanted to preserve the houses historical integrity. But after the coronavirus pandemic entered the picture, they decided to sell, local media reports say. The mansion will come fully furnished with exceptional period pieces that speak to the very special past inhabitants of this home, according to the Zillow listing. Story continues Borden and her sister bought the 14-room mansion in 1893 after she was acquitted, the Herald reported. Bordens sister moved out in 1905 but Borden spent the remainder of her life there until she died in 1927, according to the Herald. Bordens wake was held inside the house as well, the Herald reported. Bordens sister died just days after her, according to the newspaper. Jerry Pacheco, operations manager for the Borden B&B and museum, says the mansion offers a truly haunting experience, Boston Magazine reported. Honestly, that house has a lot of paranormal activity in it, Pacheco told the magazine Even more than [the allegedly haunted Borden B&B], I would say. After losing a legal battle with the city of Fall River and getting hit by the pandemic, the owners of Lizzie Bordens Maplecroft mansion are selling the property. NEW DELHI : Indian automakers should reduce royalty payments to foreign partners to bring down costs instead of seeking tax cuts, a finance ministry official said on Thursday, days after reports that Toyota would halt expansion in the country due to high taxes. Having suffered a 50% fall in passenger vehicle sales in the five months through August as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, automakers have lobbied the government to lower taxes. But on Tuesday, Toyota Motor Corp, the world's biggest carmaker, issued a statement saying it is committed to the Indian market after a senior executive at its local unit said the automaker would not scale up in the country if taxes remain high. The Japanese automaker issued another statement earlier on Thursday saying it plans to invest more than $272 million in India over coming years. Taxes on cars sold in India are as high as 28% and after additional levies can rise to up to 50% for some models. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has urged the government to cut the tax on cars, motorbikes and buses to 18% while warning that it would take three to four years for sales to return to their peak levels of 2018. India's tax policy on automobiles has been quite consistent for the last three decades in the form of allowing foreign investment and incentivising local manufacturing by providing reasonable protection from imports, said the finance ministry official, who did not want to be named. Automakers in India are accustomed to the country's regulatory and taxation environment and have flourished in this regime, the official said, adding that this is evident from "the huge payouts in the form of royalty" made to their parent companies abroad. India's commerce minister told representatives of automakers in the country that they should find ways to reduce royalty payments to foreign parent companies, Reuters reported last month. Representatives of Maruti Suzuki, India's biggest carmaker, and Toyota were among those that met with the minister. Maruti Suzuki paid 3,820 crore as royalty to its Japanese parent Suzuki Motor in the fiscal year ending March 31, amounting to 5% of its revenue, according to its annual report. While Toyota's India arm paid $88 million or 3.4% of revenue to its Japanese parent, government data shows. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Since then, investigators have also questioned whether the Trump Organization inflated the value of an estate in suburban New York, to increase the tax benefits of a conservation easement Trump placed on the property, promising not to develop it. They have also probed whether the Trump Organization paid proper taxes when a lender forgave more than $100 million of debt on a loan related to Trumps Chicago hotel. China's ByteDance faces an uphill struggle to convince the White House to allow it to keep majority ownership of its popular short video app TikTok in the United States, according to former national security officials and regulatory lawyers. Trump ordered ByteDance last month to divest TikTok amid U.S. concerns that the personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use the app could be passed on to China's Communist Party government. He has threatened to ban TikTok in the United States as early as Sept. 20 if ByteDance does not comply. ByteDance has submitted a plan to U.S. officials for it to keep a majority stake in TikTok's global business and create headquarters for TikTok in the United States, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The proposal is being reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a U.S. government panel chaired by the U.S. Treasury Department. "Conceptually I can tell you I don't like that (ByteDance keeping a majority ownership of TikTok). That has been reported, but it has not been told to me yet. If that is the case, I'm not going to be happy with that," Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. He added that would be briefed on the deal and consider it on Thursday. Were Trump to approve the deal, he would have to amend an executive order he signed on Aug. 14 directing ByteDance to divest TikTok in the United States, something that no U.S. President has ever done in the history of national security reviews, CFIUS experts said. "After CFIUS made a recommendation to the President and the President issued an executive order requiring divestment, it would be unprecedented for the parties to negotiate a solution short of a divestment, though it would clearly be within the authority of the President to modify his order" said Aimen Mir, who oversaw CFIUS reviews between 2014 and 2018 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Investment Security at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and is now a partner at law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. ByteDance, the White House and the Treasury did not respond to requests for comment. To be sure, CFIUS has allowed foreign firms to keep sensitive U.S. assets on several occasions, by imposing oversight and restrictions on how they are operated. China's Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp acquired U.S. wireless carrier Sprint in 2013 by agreeing to CFIUS conditions such as giving the U.S. government a say on board directors and vendor relationships. ByteDance has proposed similar measures to CFIUS, sources have said. "Even if a company's affiliate is concerning to CFIUS, as long as that affiliate is isolated to CFIUS's satisfaction, then the transaction can work. CFIUS has requested and has been satisfied with isolating mitigation measures in the past," said Nevena Simidjiyska, a regulatory lawyer at Fox Rothschild LLP. ByteDance has also explored divesting a majority stake in the U.S. business of TikTok, and in July it signed a letter of intent with Microsoft Corp that contemplated the sale of that business to the Redmond, Washington-based company. However, Microsoft said on Sunday that ByteDance had turned down its offer, and it remains unclear whether the Chinese firm would shed most of its ownership of TikTok to clinch a deal with the White House. SECURITY MEASURES Another hurdle for ByteDance, CFIUS experts said, is that it is discussing offering a minority stake in TikTok to Oracle Corp, while also having the technology giant take over the management of its user data and ensuring it is ringfenced from China. CFIUS typically calls for parties responsible for security arrangements to be independent of the companies they oversee. For example, when CFIUS allowed China Oceanwide Holdings Group Co Ltd to acquire of U.S. insurer Genworth Financial Inc two years ago, it negotiated installing a U.S.-based, third-party service provider to manage Genworth's U.S. policyholder data. That provider had no stake in Genworth's business. "For CFIUS to get comfortable with a third party having both an ownership stake and a security responsibility, they would have to have a firm basis for trusting the U.S. business partner, conclude that the security measures would be technically effective, and be convinced that it is possible for the business to be commercially successful even while strictly adhering to the security measures," Mir said. ByteDance is referring to Oracle as a "trusted technology partner". CFIUS previously rejected the use of trusted technology partners when considering whether ByteDance should divest TikTok, the video app disclosed in an Aug. 24 lawsuit against the United States challenging Trump's order to ban it. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment. 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 Scientists from Sechenov University interviewed Russian healthcare experts to find out what problems impeded the development of medical tourism in the country most and what measures would help attract foreigners. The results of the work can form the basis of the state policy in this field. Details of the study were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Medical tourism (that is, providing medical care to foreign citizens) helps to develop the host country's healthcare system: in addition to the money paid for treatment by patients or insurance companies, it receives investment and an incentive to improve the service quality and the qualifications of its staff. However, to prefer to leave their country for treatment, foreigners must be sure that they will get an appointment with professionals, that it will not be very difficult to issue documents, including a visa, and that treatment itself will not be ruinous. 'Earlier, people came to places where they got better treatment, but now they look at where it is cheaper, comparing the price-quality ratio and service quality. And we began to be late with this. The issues of medical tourism in our country were taken up only a few years ago: the first research on this topic appeared in 2010-2011, and the state's interest in this issue was shown just two years ago, in the decree of President Vladimir Putin dated May 7, 2018,' said Vladimir Reshetnikov, one of the study authors, head of the Semashko Department of Public Health and Healthcare, Sechenov University. The authors of the article asked experts to list the main problems that hinder the development of medical tourism, the measures that clinics and authorities need to take to improve the situation and the advantages of Russia that will allow it to compete with other countries. 36 heads of medical organisations took part in the survey. The three most important problems, according to the experts, were the low awareness of foreigners about medical services, the lack of doctors and staff who know a foreign language and the lack of resources (specialists, equipment, etc). Respondents also noted that it is difficult to accommodate patients and obtain the necessary documents and visas, not all clinics have international certificates, and patients sometimes cannot continue to pay for treatment in the case of complications. The largest number of experts - a quarter of them - agreed that first of all it is necessary to solve the problem of the lack of personnel and equipment. This group of measures also includes the use of the latest technologies, standards and recommendations. In the second place is informing potential patients about the services of medical organisations. This requires maintaining the clinic's website in good condition, translating materials into foreign languages, placing ads on foreign sites and offering online consultations. Experts consider word of mouth - recommendations from doctors and other patients - as well as advertising in search engines and social networks to be an effective way to promote clinic services. Another area of work is the creation of an organisation that supports the export of medical services at the federal level as well as the development of programmes for regional projects. 'The fastest thing to do is to build an organisation, create a structure that will deal with management, advertising and patient logistics. You can quickly change the legal framework, for example, to introduce medical visas. Of course, staff training will require more time,' Vladimir Reshetnikov explained. Experts named the relatively low cost of services, well-equipped clinics and highly qualified staff as well as geographical location (proximity to the CIS countries) as competitive advantages of Russian healthcare. 'The goal of our work was to understand how to organise the development of medical tourism, to determine where our niche was, and what our strengths and weaknesses were, in order to outline the plan of action. The results are already being implemented in two regions (Sverdlovsk and Moscow regions) and discussed in the Civic Chamber of Russia,' the co-author of the study added. ### Two of Japan's largest rail operators now expect to report their largest full-year net losses since their 1987 privatization, as the coronavirus pandemic brings a deep and potentially long-lasting slump in passenger traffic. East Japan Railway on Wednesday released annual earnings projections showing a 418 billion yen ($3.96 billion) loss for fiscal 2020, compared with a 198.4 billion yen profit in fiscal 2019. West Japan Railway's estimate, announced the same day, shows a 240 billion yen loss, after an 89.3 billion yen profit the previous year. Both projections came in well below the average forecasts in a QUICK consensus survey of analysts. Passengers have been slow to return since coronavirus cases spiked again in July, with revenue from rail operations at both companies slumping by half or more in August from a year earlier. And while ridership is expected to recover to some extent over the next year or two, trends including broader use of telecommuting and declining tourism are likely to weigh on business for some time. "Returning to our prior ridership levels will probably be difficult," said Shoji Kurasaka, a senior managing executive officer at JR West. The two companies see total annual revenue falling by well over a third from fiscal 2019, to 1.93 trillion yen at JR East and 920 billion yen at JR West. Both now plan to pay out annual dividends of 100 yen per share, representing cuts of 65 yen by JR East and 82.5 yen by JR West. JR East expects rail revenue to return to 75% of normal by the end of the fiscal year in March. Kiwamu Sakai, an executive director, sees the impact lingering into fiscal 2021 and beyond, with revenues coming to "slightly above 80% of pre-coronavirus levels." JR West sees income from commuter passes rebounding to around 80% to 90% of pre-pandemic levels by fiscal year-end but is less optimistic about other revenue sources, such as bullet train tickets, which are expected to reach less than 60% of previous levels over the same period. The railway has been hit especially hard due to its reliance on foreign tourism, which has all but disappeared amid restrictions on travel from abroad. Both companies are rushing to mitigate the damage by scaling back the heavy fixed costs involved in rail operation. The latest Brexit and a united Tory Party front took a U-Turn this week largely thanks to Johnsons Parliamentary majority. With the Johnson majority voting through the Bill for further debate, it was an awakening for many. Over the last few years, the Tory Party struggled to make the slightest of changes or introduce new legislation. A lack of a sizeable majority had handcuffed the British government from getting Brexit over the line. Now that the majority is there, Boris Johnson has been able to get a controversial Bill smoothly through its 1st test. The Bill has not only created a furor in Europe but also at home. Tory Party members had abstained from Mondays vote in protest, with 2 even voting against the Bill. For MPs, the biggest issue is that there had been concession at the ministerial level that it breaches international law. What is the Internal Market Bill? The Bill voted through the House of Commons on Monday looks to ensure free trade flow across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. It is designed to focus on trade and comes at a time when both sides have failed to make progress on a trade agreement. In essence, the Bill looks to address how Northern Ireland can fall under the new Bill when it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. This becomes even more convoluted when you consider the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Northern Ireland Protocol is in place to prevent the introduction of a hard border on the Emerald Isle. Because of the Protocol, Northern Ireland must currently adhere to certain EU rules to allow goods to move freely between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. For the EU and those in uproar, the issue is that the Bill, if voted through, would supersede certain facets of the Withdrawal Agreement. The key area of contention is in the fact that the Bill would empower ministers to make regulations that contravene the Withdrawal Bill. Within the Withdrawal Bill, the UK is required to use primary legislation to give full effect to the Withdrawal Agreement in domestic law. Story continues In other words, the government cannot introduce legislation that deviates from the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement. There is one caveat in all this While the Bill can exist, it is using the powers granted from the Bill that would contravene the Withdrawal Bill and break international law. Why the Uproar? Simply viewing recent comments from EU leaders and from members of parliament and Johnsons living predecessors paints a clear picture. German Chancellor Merkel ally, Detlef Seif, reportedly said that he used to think that the UK was a state that upheld the rule of law with which one could negotiate. Seif added that his behavior would rank Britain alongside depots and regimes such as Russia, Turkey, China, and North Korea. Prime Minister Johnson has yet to flinch. Number 10 even sent a message to the Lords in a bid to push through the bill. While a relationship with the EU is at stake, there is also the U.S to consider. To make matters worse for Johnson and the hardline Brexiteers Last week, through Nancy Pelosi, the U.S government stated that there would be no UK-US trade agreement if the Good Friday Agreement was jeopardized. This week the media reported that 4 senior congressmen also issued a similar warning. The U.S would block a trade agreement if the UK failed to uphold the Good Friday agreement. The Pound At the time of writing, the Pound was up by 1.38% to $1.29708 for the current week. Following last weeks Brexit frenzied 3.64% tumble to sub-$1.28 levels, the recovery is a modest one. The House of Lords will vote on the bill next week. So, the uproar is unlikely to end just yet. For the Pound, some political resistance to the Johnson Brexit line has provided welcome relief. This leaves the bills passage and the EU and UK response as the key Brexit driver. If the Bill passes, will the EU continue with negotiations? The British PM may have taken a leaf out of the U.S Presidents book. Boris Johnson will have something to concede other than UK fisheries. Whether EU negotiators see it that way is another story, however. Expect the volatility in the Pound to persist. Britain is leaving the EU, one way or another, in a matter of months This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: KIGALI, Rwanda - A Rwandan court has denied bail to Paul Rusesabagina, whose story inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, saying the terrorism and other charges against him are of serious nature and he should remain in detention for another 30 days. Rusesabagina, a Belgian citizen and U.S. permanent resident who has been a critic of President Paul Kagame, was charged this week with 13 offences that also include financing terrorism, complicity in murder, recruiting child soldiers and forming a rebel group. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. It is not clear when his trial will begin. The 66-year-old Rusesabagina had asked to be released on bail, citing poor health that has caused him to be taken to a hospital three times since he first appeared in handcuffs in Rwanda on Aug. 31. He looked frail during his court appearance. I assure the court that I will not flee from justice, Rusesabagina said. But the prosecution argued that all detainees are offered the medical treatment they need. Judge Dorothy Yankurije said the court found it necessary that Rusesabagina remain detained so that he doesnt sabotage investigations. He said he will appeal the decision. The denial of bail further alarmed his family, which along with some human rights and legal groups has expressed concern that his arrest is the latest example of Rwanda targeting critics. We have no hope that he can be given fair justice in Rwanda and ask for his immediate release, daughter Carine Kanimba said on social media. Rusesabagina earlier this week asserted that not all charges qualify as criminal offences, and he said he denied the accusations during questioning by Rwandan investigators. He distanced himself from the activities of a rebel movement that is the armed wing of his opposition political platform, saying he was not the movements leader and that the groups members should be held responsible. The armed wing has claimed responsibility for deadly attacks. Rusesabagina is credited with saving more than 1,000 lives during Rwandas 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. For his efforts he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. But he has faced criticism from Rwandan authorities in the years since he began speaking out against alleged human rights abuses by Kagames government. Neither his Rwandan lawyers who have been discounted by his family as state-imposed representation nor the prosecution have explained the circumstances under which Rusesabagina arrived in Rwanda after he visited Dubai. The Rwandan court said he was arrested at Kigali International Airport, contradicting the earlier police version that he was arrested through international co-operation. Kagame has indicated that Rusesabagina may have been tricked into boarding a private plane in Dubai that took him to Rwanda. Human Rights Watch last week asserted that Rusesabagina had been forcibly disappeared, saying that the lack of lawful extradition proceedings suggests that Rwandan authorities dont believe their evidence would stand up to independent scrutiny. Government supporters reject Rusesabaginas criticism over alleged rights abuses, saying Kagames leadership supports democracy and economic growth. CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP announces that it will be one of the first to participate in Diversity Lab's newly-launched Midsize Mansfield Rule certification process. The firm is just one of 23 midsize law firms to pilot this iteration of the Mansfield Rule that has been developed for firms with fewer than 100 lawyers. The goal of the Mansfield Rule is to boost the representation of diverse lawyers in law firm leadership by broadening the pool of candidates considered for leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, formal client pitch opportunities and senior lateral positions. Similar to the large law firm program, firms that successfully complete the Midsize Mansfield Rule criteria will be designated as "Mansfield Certified" and will have the opportunity to send their diverse partners to the Mansfield Rule Client Forums in late 2022 to build relationships with and learn from Diversity Lab's in-house counsel collaborators. To date, more than 80 legal departments have contributed to and / or hosted Mansfield Rule Client Forums, including Barclays, Facebook, Fannie Mae, Ford Motor Company, Google, McKesson Corp, MetLife, Pfizer, PNC Bank, Uber and US Bank. "We are excited to be part of the Midsize Mansfield Rule pilot program," said Jeffrey S. Sharp, managing partner at Marshall Gerstein. "Although we are already working hard to increase diversity in our talent pipeline, programs like the Midsize Mansfield Rule only enhance our efforts and move the entire legal industry forward. The countless acts of racial injustice that our country has witnessed this year further underscore the importance of these efforts, and our firm is honored to take part in the process." In addition to the Midsize Mansfield Rule certification process, Marshall Gerstein diligently works to recruit, retain and advance individuals from all backgrounds. The firm's Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan has been publicly available on its website since 2009 and Marshall Gerstein has made measurable success in achieving goals for internal education, recruiting, retention, external communication and accountability. Recent advancements include bolstering recruitment efforts to reach more diverse students earlier in their academic careers; increasing involvement and leadership in diverse bar associations and member groups; and, providing monetary support to legal and community organizations that work to advance diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the legal industry and society as a whole. Diversity Lab is an incubator for innovative ideas and solutions that boost diversity and inclusion in law. Experimental ideas are created through their Hackathons and piloted in collaboration with more than 150 top law firms and legal departments across the country. The incubator leverages data, behavioral science, design thinking and technology to further develop and test the ideas, measure the results and share the lessons learned. To learn more about the Midsize Mansfield Rule program, please visit www.diversitylab.com. Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP is exclusively focused on intellectual property law. Headquartered in Chicago, IL with a second office in Raleigh, NC, the firm provides sophisticated intellectual property advice and legal services to many of the world's largest, most innovative businesses, research institutions, universities, and entrepreneurs. Chambers & Partners has ranked Marshall Gerstein as "first-rate for litigation," and "one of the best biotechnology practices in the entire country." The firm is also ranked as a top intellectual property law firm by Managing Intellectual Property, Fortune, Intellectual Property Today and Intellectual Asset Management magazines. Learn more at www.marshallip.com and www.PTABWatch.com. Contact: Mark Levin Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP (312) 474-9543 [email protected] SOURCE Marshall Gerstein Related Links https://www.marshallip.com South Australia has just banned single-use plastics such as stirrers, straws, and utensils. These plastics pollute our environment, especially the seas and oceans where they eventually end up. (Photo : Pexels) South Australia has just banned single-use plastics such as stirrers, straws, and utensils. These plastics pollute our environment, especially the seas and oceans, where they eventually end up. Landmark Legislation The government of South Australia made history by being the first state in Australia to ban single-use plastics. Australians are happy about this new law, although there are some conditions. The ABC or Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported the signing of the historical law in the second week of this month. South Australian State Parliament passed legislation that prohibited selling, supplying, distributing, and using such products. These single-use plastic materials include many varieties, such as plastic spoons, knives, forks, beverage stirrers, and straws. However, it will not be in effect before the year 2021; the delay in implementation is attributed to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. READ: Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Disposable Masks Have Become Major Plastic Waste Exceptions and Criticisms Following the bans on plastic straws in other jurisdictions, this current ban will naturally exempt people with disabilities or other medical conditions that necessitate their use of plastic straws. Certain environmental groups criticize the ban on single-use plastics, saying that the move is too insignificant to make a difference. However, evidence exists, proving that it has a real impact. This is because Australians use approximately ten million plastic straws each day. Thus, if one of the six Australian states bans them, it could already be a significant reduction in plastic straws. Domino Effect Furthermore, this ban is just the beginning of banning all other types of single-use plastic. It may also be able to inspire other states to follow South Australia's example and legislate similar bans. Indeed, South Australia is planning to ban other single-use plastic wares once this pioneering ban is proven to be effective. READ ALSO: Persil Washing Detergent Product has Removed Its Plastic Dosing Ball and Made Its Bottles 100% Recyclable Plans According to David Speirs, minister of South Australia State Environment & Water, they first want to focus on "low-hanging fruit," such as drink stirrers, straws, cutlery, and the like; afterward, next year, they will tackle containers for takeaway. After that, the coffee cups and vegetable and fruit barrier bags will be next. Finally, Speirs says that the region will become free from single-use plastics in the next two years. The new law also includes many more plastic items to be banned in the future. These include cotton swabs, balloon ties and sticks, single-use plates, lids and cups, food containers, bags, and balloon sticks and ties. Considerations Instead of the Pandemic The government plans to implement the law next year when the pressure felt by restaurants and businesses due to the pandemic is gone. For now, the businesses are fighting for their survival, and adding this ban might be too much. Nonetheless, reusable utensils and containers are considered 100% safe against COVID-19 transmission, as long as necessary hygiene measures are employed. This is the statement of over a hundred experts on health. The experts said that the COVID-19 virus could easily be transmitted on single-use, brand new dishes as reusable ones. Proper washing is enough to guarantee safety. With enough political will, South Australia may be a success story in the fight against plastic straws and other single-use plastics. READ NEXT: Seaweed May Replace Plastic as Future Source of Fuel and Food Check out for more news and information on Microplastics on Nature World News. Child refugees in northern France who have relatives in the UK are being pushed into the hands of people smugglers and trafficking gangs due to delays in the process of joining their families through legal mechanisms, charities have warned. One 15-year-old boy whose brother is living in Britain went missing from French local authority care last week after waiting six months for his case to be processed to enable his transfer, with NGOs fearing that he is now attempting to cross the Channel alone. During an evidence session with the Home Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday, MPs heard that consistent delays in transferring children to the UK legally was driving minors to seek quicker and alternative routes to the UK, notably boat crossings, which place them at risk of exploitation. Unaccompanied children who have family members in the UK are eligible to come to the UK under the Dublin regulation, but a three-month halt on this process due to the coronavirus pandemic has added significant delays to an already slow procedure. Beth Gardiner-Smith, chief executive of Safe Passage, a charity that assists children applying to enter the UK via this route, told MPs some children were beginning to lose hope and turn to more dangerous routes across the Channel. The delays, the pressure in the system and the complete halt of the procedures during Covid has had a huge impact on those with a legal right to come to the UK. Its pushed them further into the hands of smugglers, she said. She described the tragic case of the teenager with a brother in the UK who started the family reunion process in February, but for whom everything ground to a halt due to the pandemic, leading him to give up. He was waiting in the system. He was placed in a shelter in the north of France where he didnt know anybody. He was also hearing rumours about Brexit closing down the safe routes for good. As a 15-year-old child he was distressed, he was worried, he was concerned he would not be able to unite with his brother, said Ms Gardiner-Smith. Unfortunately last week he disappeared. He absconded from the shelter he was in and we havent heard from him since. We suspect he now may be trying to make his own way from northern France that could be on a boat. Ms Gardiner-Smith said that around 11 per cent of child refugees in northern France were eligible for family reunion to join their loved ones in the UK, while a further 10 per cent had relatives in Britain but would not qualify due to them being too distant a relation to fit within the rules. At the moment quite a few children have relatives in Britain but dont fit within the rules. And if they do theyre often very difficult to access. The consistent delays in the process drive them to seek quicker and alternative routes to the UK that theyve been told by many people work, she added. Maddy Allen, field manager at Help Refugees, said that children attempting to cross via unauthorised routes were at significant risk of exploitation on both sides of the Channel. Often children are ending up in situations of debt bondage, whereby they are making the journey across to the UK, and therefore having to work in exploitative and illegal conditions once in the UK to pay back the money for that journey, she said. The concerns around family reunion are exacerbated by the fact that the British government is yet to establish an agreement with the EU on how these cases will be processed after the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December. The charities warned that if no arrangements were made, many unaccompanied children in Europe would cease to be able to join their loved ones through a legal route, which would probably prompt a further rise in dangerous crossings. They also urged the Home Office to reopen and expand its current refugee resettlement schemes, which currently remain closed after being paused in March due to the coronavirus crisis prompting claims that holiday travel and deportations are being prioritised over refugees. In June last year, the Home Office announced a new resettlement programme which would merge the existing ones, but this has not yet started due to the cessation of transfers during the pandemic, casting doubt over whether it will meet its aim to welcome 5,000 refugees by 31 March 2021. Ms Allen said: Were deeply concerned that the time window is running out for multilateral agreements to be able to be made on family reunion. In relation to the global resettlement scheme, this is impressive and something we should be proud of, but it instantly needs expanding and securing. Refugees rescued off Lesbos During a live online seminar organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews on Tuesday evening, Home Secretary Priti Patel said work is afoot within government to create new legal routes through resettlement schemes. Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: The home secretary has confirmed what we know only too well - that refugees including children are forced to put their lives in the hands of criminal smugglers when there are no safe and legal routes to reach safety in the UK. Solutions to this are long overdue and entirely in her power. It's high time she restarts the UK resettlement programme, a key safe and legal route which has not welcomed a single person since March. A Home Office spokesperson said: We are determined to put an end to these illegally facilitated crossings, where people are leaving a safe country like France, with a fully functioning asylum system. The UK does more to support unaccompanied children than any EU member state and last year, our asylum applications from unaccompanied children accounted for approximately 20 per cent of all unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) claims made in the UK and EU. Our plans for restarting depend on a variety of factors, including the lifting of restrictions imposed by the governments of host refugee countries, local authority and central government capacity, and recovery of the asylum system from the impact of Covid-19. Its always preferable to go shopping, buy something, get comfortable and then sell at your leisure, said Billy Buck, owner of Billy Buck & Associates in Arlington, Va. But thats not always possible. Many people are dependent on the profit from the sale of their current home for a down payment on the next one. If you have extra cash for the down payment on the new place then you can buy first. If you have the flexibility to buy a house first you have more options, Buck said. If buying a new home is contingent on the sale of your current home, in a runoff, youre going to lose. If there are three buyers to choose from, all else being equal, sellers are going to go with the buyer who does not need to sell his house first. The US provided strong and unambiguous support to India during its current border crisis with China, which is engaged in increasingly aggressive behaviour throughout the Indo-Pacific even during the coronavirus pandemic, a senior White House official said on Thursday. From a bilateral perspective Chinas recent actions on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India has further reinforced the importance of the US-India strategic partnership, Lisa Curtis, the deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, said in a virtual panel discussion organised by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank. Whether it was cutting off Vietnams access to its fishing waters, undermining Hong Kong self-rule, deploying military submarines to threaten Japan or contesting Indian territorial sovereignty along the LAC, Beijing has engaged in increasingly aggressive behaviour throughout the Indo-Pacific, even as the global community has grappled with coronavirus pandemic, Curtis said. The crisis has strengthened Americas resolve to work towards building its relationship with India as a bulwark against Chinese aggression, she said during the discussion on research scholar Darshana Baruahs recently released paper, India in the Indo-Pacific: New Delhis Theater of Opportunity. Throughout the crisis, the US has provided strong and unambiguous support for India, and our cooperation has certainly grown closer. We are encouraged by Indias strong yet responsible approach to the Chinese aggression, said Curtis, who is the Senior Director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House. While always seeking to de-escalate through diplomatic means India also demonstrated military and economic resolve, Curtis said as she asserted that the Indo-Pacific strategy, which was introduced in 2017 is designed to foster a stable free open and rules-based order. This order is not only for the benefit of the US. It is for the benefit of all countries that pride their sovereignty and independence. The Indo-Pacific strategy, of course prioritises building relations between the US and India, because we view India as an emerging global power that shares our goals of ensuring this region remains peaceful, stable, and with the prospect of growing prosperity, she said. Americas strategic partnership with India is really founded on shared commitments to freedom, democratic principles and the rule of law. It is based on a convergence of strategic interests, centred on promoting global security instability, she said. Noting that the Trump administration elevated the US relationship with India in ways not seen by any other administration, she said that the joint statement that was signed by President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi following the formers visit to India in February is testament to this administrations commitment to building the vital partnership. Curtis said that the US has strengthened the QUAD mechanism among the leadership of the US, Japan, India and Australia. At the outset of the Trump administration the Quad was really not even officially meeting. But starting in November 2017, we started regular dialogue of the QUAD at the Assistant Secretary Director General level. And by September 19, we had the quad meeting at the ministerial level for the first time ever. Additionally, President Trump has met twice in the trilateral format with Indian and Japan; first at the G-20 Buenos Aires in December, 2018, and then again in Osaka, at the G-20 in June 2019, she said. Both the QUAD and trilateral formats are really important for strengthening the institutional support and fostering that multinational cooperation that will contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific, Curtis said. Such mechanisms help check Chinese aggression, and which has increased since the onset of the global pandemic, she added. Tension in eastern Ladakh increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes on June 15 in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. The situation deteriorated again after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake on the intervening night of August 29 and 30. China is also engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade. China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the area. Attorney General (AG) KK Venugopal on Thursday declined to grant permission for initiation of criminal contempt of court proceedings against journalist Rajdeep Sardesai for his tweets criticising the Supreme Courts handling of the contempt of court case against lawyer Prashant Bhushan. Sardesais tweets were not of a serious nature so as to undermine the majesty of the court or lower its stature in the mind of the public, Venugopal said in his letter to advocate Om Prakash Parihar, who was representing the petitioner, Astha Khurana. The reputation of the Supreme Court as one of the great pillars of our democracy has been built assiduously over the last 70 years. Trifling remarks and mere passing criticism though perhaps distasteful are unlikely to tarnish the image of the institution, AG said in his letter. As per Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act and Rule 3 of Rules to Regulate Proceedings for Contempt of Supreme Court, the consent of AG or the solicitor general is required before the apex court can hear a criminal contempt petition filed by a private individual. Satyamev Jayate [Truth always wins]!thank you to guardians of the law and constitution, Sardesai tweeted. This is the second instance in recent weeks when Venugopal has declined consent for initiation of contempt of court proceedings. On August 23, he rejected permission to a petitioner from Karnataka seeking initiation of criminal contempt of court proceedings against Bollywood actor Swara Bhasker for her statements criticising the top court and its judgment in the Ayodhya dispute. In the Prashant Bhushan case -- where the top court, on its own, initiated criminal contempt of court proceedings against the activist-lawyer for two tweets -- the Centres top law officer urged the court not to impose any punishment on Bhushan. Venugopal appeared in that case in his personal capacity at the courts request. Your Lordships should reprimand him and tell him not to repeat it in future. But do not punish him. It will be greatly appreciated at the Bar. That will be a fitting end to this case, he said on August 20. Khurana, who hails from Panipat in Haryana, highlighted multiple tweets by Sardesai to buttress her case for initiation of contempt proceedings against him. On August 14, the day Bhushan was convicted for contempt of court, Sardesai had tweeted, Prashant Bhushan held guilty of contempt by Supreme Court, sentence to be pronounced on August 20. This even as habeas corpus petitions of those detained in Kashmir for more than a year remain pending. Later when the top court imposed a sentence of Re 1 on Bhushan on August 31, Sardesai posted the following tweet: Rs 1 token fine imposed by SC on Prashant Bhushan in contempt case. If he doesnt pay it, then 3 months jail sentence. Clearly, court looking to wriggle out of an embarrassment of its own making. Khurana also referred to older tweets in which Sardesai allegedly cast aspersions on justice Arun Mishra, who had heard Prashant Bhushans contempt case, and former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi. I do not find any warrant for initiation of proceedings for criminal contempt. I accordingly decline consent, AG stated in his letter. . Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin's Regular Press Conference on September 17, 2020 2020/09/17 CCTV: Premier Li Keqiang attended the World Economic Forum Special Virtual Dialogue with Global Business Leaders on September 15. Can you give us some details of this meeting? What signals did the Chinese leadership send to the world, especially to the international industrial and business communities? Wang Wenbin: On the night of September 15, Premier Li Keqiang attended the World Economic Forum Special Virtual Dialogue with Global Business Leaders at invitation. Premier Li delivered remarks and had discussions with representatives of business leaders. The meeting was chaired by WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab and participated by nearly 600 entrepreneurs. Premier Li Keqiang also took questions on international governance, global industrial chains, foreign trade and economic cooperation, etc. Premier Li Keqiang stressed in his remarks that faced with global challenges, the international community needs to consolidate consensus, coordinate epidemic containment and economic growth, defeat the virus as soon as possible, and work for prosperity of the world economy. All sides need to jointly shoulder responsibilities, support multilateralism, uphold international order, and give hope and confidence to people across the world. All sides need to join hands in safeguarding trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and restoring global industrial and supply chains as soon as possible, so that the world economy will be vibrant again. Premier Li Keqiang said that China can meet its major economic goals this year. He stressed the Chinese economy has deeply integrated into the world. No matter how the external environment changes, China will stay committed to deepening reform and opening-up. We will foster a new dual-cycle development architecture at home, with the domestic cycle as the mainstay and with domestic and international development reinforcing each other. It is not an isolated domestic cycle, but an open dual cycle conducive to both domestic and international development. China will further ease market access, ensure the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors, and foster a business environment where domestic and foreign enterprises can compete fairly and be treated equally. While effectively containing the virus, China will launch more "fast lanes" for people-to-people exchange and "green lanes" for transportation of goods to facilitate cross-border business operations of companies. NHK: US Under Secretary of State Keith Krach is going to visit Taiwan for commemorations of Lee Teng-hui and the US-Taiwan economic and commercial dialogue. What's your comment? Wang Wenbin: China firmly opposes any forms of official ties between the US and Taiwan. Our position is consistent and clear. The US insisting on Under Secretary of State Keith Krach's visit to Taiwan severely violates the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, bolsters "Taiwan independence" separatists, and undermines China-US relations as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. China firmly opposes it and has lodged stern representations with the US side. We urge the US to fully recognize the highly sensitive nature of the Taiwan question, strictly observe the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, immediately stop official exchange with Taiwan, make no attempts to change the nature of its relationship with Taiwan, and properly handle Taiwan-related matters. China will make necessary reaction in light of the development of the situation. PTI: Following last week's foreign ministers meeting between India and China and the five-point declaration, there supposed to be follow-up meetings between the military and diplomatic channels to work out a disengagement process. Can you give us a timeline as to when these particular meetings will take place? Wang Wenbin: Like I said in my reply to Indian correspondents yesterday, the Chinese border troops have always strictly observed the relevant agreements between the two countries and are committed to safeguarding China's territorial sovereignty and maintaining peace and stability in the border areas. What is pressing now is that the Indian side should immediately correct its mistake, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tension and lower the temperature along the border. AFP: The US Justice Department announced charges against five Chinese nationals who allegedly took part in global hacking operations. What is China's comment? Wang Wenbin: The Chinese government is a staunch defender of cyber security and firmly opposes and fights all forms of cyber attacks and crimes in accordance with law. In combating transnational cyber crimes, China has conducted fruitful cooperation with many countries through judicial assistance and other channels. Regrettably, the US has long taken the issue of cyber security as a tool for stigmatization, political manipulation and spreading of disinformation. We urge the US side to adopt an objective and rational attitude towards cyber security and work with others to jointly tackle the challenge of cyber attacks through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect. Reuters: Bytedance just announced that the relevant transaction of TikTok needs the approval of the Chinese and US governments. What is your comment? Wang Wenbin: Recently, my colleagues and I have made clear our position on this issue on many occasions. We urge the US side to respect the principles of market economy and fair competition, abide by international economic and trade rules, stop politicizing normal economic and trade cooperation, and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for foreign companies operating in the US. Shenzhen TV: China published and donated a new Global Land Cover Dataset to the United Nations for this year on September 15. What's the special significance of this donation on top of the last one in 2014? Wang Wenbin: Indeed, in 2014 China donated to the UN and shared with the world datasets of the Earth's land cover with a high resolution of 30 meters (known as the GlobeLand30) for the year 2000 and 2010. It was the first hi-tech public good China provided to the UN, which produced effective benefits. The version of the GlobeLand30 for the year 2020, published and donated by China, is another global public good for the UN at the 75th anniversary of its establishment. It is China's concrete action to practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind. Compared to the last two versions, this dataset has provided a high-resolution map of all of Antarctica for the first time, and it is also the first time that high-latitude regions of the Earth were covered by a high-resolution map, which means it covers the entire land area of the Earth. In addition, the sources of its data are more abundant and its accuracy has been improved compared to the previous ones. The three versions of the GlobeLand30 became "snapshots" of the Earth's surface in this century, taken once every ten years. They vividly demonstrate the general changes in global land use and natural views in the past two decades, which is important to in-depth research on global changes, implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, improvement of global governance system, and response to global challenges in resources and ecological environment. Under the UN framework, China will continue strengthening exchange and cooperation with others. In particular, we will support and help other developing countries to the best of our ability, so as to contribute to the fulfillment of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. Bloomberg: A group of lawmakers of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party will call on the government to further increase control over the Diaoyu Island, as reported by NHK. How would China like to see the new Suga administration address the issue of the Diaoyu Island? Wang Wenbin: The Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory. We urge the Japanese side to act in accordance with the four-point principled consensus and work with China to safeguard the overall improvement and development of China-Japan relations with concrete actions. The Oyo State governorship candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2019 elections, Olufemi Lanlehin, has rejoined the All Progressives Congress (APC). Mr Lanlehin represented Oyo South District between 2011 and 2015 on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which was one of the legacy parties that merged to form the APC. He, however, in 2015 left APC to join the Accord Party and in 2019 ran for governor on the platform of ADC. Mr Lanlehins return to the APC is coming 18 months after he gave up his ambition to support Seyi Makinde who was eventually elected governor under the PDP flag.. A former governor of the state, Rasidi Ladoja, had few days to the election, persuaded Mr Lanlehin, the Zenith Labour Party candidate, Sharafadeen Alli, and Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, Bolaji Ayorinde, to support Mr Makinde against APCs Adebayo Adelabu. Mr Lanlehin is said to be angry that Mr Makinde did not keep to the terms of the accord that drew him the support of some of his rivals for the election. Mr Lanlehin announced his return to the APC at a meeting of the partys leaders in Ibadan, the state capital. At the meeting were the Chairman, Nigerian Communication Commission(NCC), Adeolu Akande, the Chairman of Nigerian Lottery Regulatory Commission, Fatai Ibikunle, former minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, former Chairman, Oyo State Teaching Service Commission, Abu Gbadamosi, and Niyi Akintola, a governorship aspirant of APC in 2019. Others were Adesoji Akanbi, Saheed Fijabi, Olusumbo Olugbemi, Saheed Adejare, Fatai Salam, Goke Oyetunji, Isiaka Alimi, Lekan Kazeem, Jelili Agboola, Yekini Popoola, Soji Ojoawo, Niyi Olabiyi, Adekunle Muktar, Adelani Azeez and Bosun Oladele. Announcing his return to the APC at the meeting, Mr Lanlehin said, I am back home. I want to assure you that I am back in APC. I am here to be loyal and honest to the party. There is no problem. According to the communique made available to journalists after the meeting, the party members agreed to resolve their differences and work for the unity of the party. In the communique signed by a former Secretary to the State Government, Waheed Olajide (Chairman) and Mr Akande (Secretary), the party stalwarts said all contentious issues within the party had been examined and resolved. They commended the National Caretaker Committee of the APC and the Governor Abubakar Badaru-led Reconciliation Committee for the peace initiative in the party. Members of the APC in Oyo State were implored to resolve their differences and work for the unity of the party. All contentious issues that led to the crisis in the party were examined and addressed. The members were informed that there would soon be fresh registration of all members at a date to be announced. They were informed that the party will soon hold congresses to elect new executives in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory. The party will thereafter hold a convention latest by January 2021. The two groups that attended the meeting with the committee were directed to nominate three (3) members each that will oversee the fresh registration of all members with the executive committee of the party. The stakeholders commended the National Caretaker Committee of the APC and the Gov. Abubakar Badaru-led Reconciliation Committee for the peace initiative in the party. The meeting specifically thanked Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Governor of Ekiti State, for volunteering to host the meeting of the stakeholders of the APC in Oyo State and for his untiring efforts to restore peace to the party in the state. The meeting accepted all the proposals for peace as contained in the reports of representatives to the meetings in Abuja. The meeting mandated the representatives to the Abuja meetings to select the three members that will work with others on the fresh registration of members. The meeting enjoined all members of the APC to shun any action that could derail the peace initiative in the party. Dr. Reddys Laboratory Ltd., the Indian pharma giant has partnered with Russias sovereign wealth fund - Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to conduct phase-III trials of Russian vaccine Sputnik V. Once regulatory approvals are in place for conducting trials in India, RDIF will distribute 10 crore doses of the anti-coronavirus vaccine, a press note released by RDIF said. The results of the early phases (Phase 1 and 2) of trials with the vaccine were recently published in Lancet, while both India and Russia were in talks to pursue further trials and manufacture of the vaccine in India. We are pleased to partner with RDIF to bring the vaccine to India. The Phase I and II results have shown promise, and we will be conducting Phase-III trials in India to meet the requirements of the Indian regulators. Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID 19 in India, asserted G. V. Prasad, Co-Chairman and Managing Director, Dr Reddys, in a statement. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) maintains that Russia has a good track record in development of vaccines. The Sputnik V vaccine based on the adenoviral vector platform, will be available in India as early as November this year, if the trials succeed, stated Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of RDIF. RDIF is also in talks with four other Indian manufacturers who will be producing these vaccines for India. The agreement between RDIF and Dr Reddys reflects the growing awareness of countries and organizations to have a diversified anti-COVID vaccine portfolio to protect their populations, said a statement from the fund. Pune-based Serum Institute of India and Hyderabad-based Biological-E are the two other Indian companies that have tied up with vaccine developers; Oxford-AstraZeneca and Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, respectively, for domestic production of their vaccines. The development at Dr. Reddys Lab comes a week after the Indian government publicly confirmed that it was in advanced talks with the Russians on two counts; production of the vaccine in India and conducting Phase-III clinical trials of the same in the country. Russias federal government had approved emergency registration of the Sputnik V vaccine last month. The vaccine has been developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Moscow. The Russian governments early approval for the vaccine, even before the commencement of the critical Phase-III trials, was met with skepticism and criticism from scientists around the world. However, the partnership between Dr. Reddys and RDIF is an indication that the vaccine will have to go through the critical phase-III trials to test for efficacy and safety on a large number of people before it is approved by domestic regulators. Dr V.K. Paul, Head of the National Covid-19 Task Force, had said last week that there would be phase-III trials in the normal course of things and that the government was also facilitating conduct of the trials, according to requirements of science and domestic regulations. Dr. Reddys has had a very well established and respected presence in Russia for over 25 years and is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India. India is amongst the most severely impacted countries from COVID-19 and we believe our human adenovirus dual vector platform will provide a safe and scientifically validated option to India in the battle against COVID-19, Kirill Dmitriev. It is about a broad vision of health. It is about the decisions we make as a city, as a country, as a society," she continued. And I think the pandemic always is going to highlight where there is tension and where there are cracks. We have the opportunity to fight about this or we have the opportunity to recognize that this moment is a point where we should talk honestly about how weve gotten to the point where we are in Chicago with this kind of racial life expectancy gap. A psychological exam has been ordered for a Pakistani doctor who has been in custody in the U.S. state of Minnesota since his arrest in March on a terrorism charge. Muhammad Masood has been indicted on one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The former researcher at the Mayo Clinic is accused of telling paid FBI informants that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and wanted to carry out lone-wolf attacks in the United States. He also allegedly voiced his desire to travel to Syria to fight for IS. He was arrested on March 19 by FBI agents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The psychological exam is meant to judge Masood's competency to stand trial and assist in his defense, according to the order. Masood's attorney has said the defendant does not understand the court proceedings. Prosecutors say Masood was in the United States on a work visa. They allege in court documents that from January to March, Masood made several statements to paid informants pledging his allegiance to IS and its leader. He believed the informants were members of IS, they say. Court documents do not name the clinic where Masood worked. The Mayo Clinic has confirmed that Masood formerly worked at the medical center, but said he was not employed there when he was arrested. Based on reporting by AP " " The first Junkers Ju 87 Stukas flew in 1935. Although the Stuka became the most famous as a dive bomber, it also achieved considerable success as a tank buster on the Eastern front. See more flight pictures. none Some classic airplanes -- like the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka -- simply look their part. This large, angular monoplane seemed absolutely ominous in flight or at rest. Of all the many attack planes of World War II, none so captured the terror of dive-bombing as did the dreaded Stuka. Flight Image Gallery Advertisement The Stuka name derived from Sturzkampfflugzeug, the generic German word for dive-bomber. So famous was the Junkers Ju 87 that the term Stuka came to be identified with it in Western eyes. The Stuka's first advocate was pilot Ernest Udet, who, with 62 victories in World War I, was the highest-scoring German ace to survive, and a national hero. Udet was a formidable aerobatic pilot (albeit a terrible technician) who pressed the Luftwaffe to adopt dive-bombing as a principal means of attack. " " Skilled pilots helped the slow Junkers Ju 87 Stuka excel as a tank killer. none The first Junkers Ju 87 Stuka flew in the spring of 1935, and by 1939 many were ready to wreak havoc in Poland. There, the Stuka's horrific noise (given a special edge with screaming sirens) and terrifying accuracy exemplified the German Blitzkrieg. The Stuka was equally effective in the Western campaigns, where it served as mobile artillery, moving through France in close coordination with the Panzer columns. An all-metal, gull-wing aircraft with fixed gear and lots of drag, the Stuka proved too slow and too ill-armed to fight over England and was withdrawn from service there. The Stuka was very effective in the early years of the African campaigns, however, and through nearly all of the fighting with the Soviet Union in the East. The Stuka was perfectly suited to the opening days of the war, when the Germans had air superiority. What is surprising, and in its way, noble, was that the Ju 87s and their crews fought on bravely when the tide of war had turned against them. For more information on airplanes, check out: Junkers Ju 87D Specifications Wingspan: 45 ft. 3-1/2 in. Length: 37 ft. 8-3/4 in. Height: 12 ft. 9-1/4 in. Empty Weight: 8,683 lbs Gross Weight: 14,565 lbs Top Speed: 255 mph Service Ceiling: 15,520 ft. Range: 510 miles Engine/Horsepower: One Junkers Jumo 211J-1/1400 Crew: 2 Armament: Two fixed forward-firing 7.9-mm MG-17 machine guns or two 20-mm MG 151 cannons and a twin 7.9-mm MG81z machine gun in rear cockpit; one 3968-lb bomb (short range) or one 551-lb bomb under fuselage and four 110-lb bombs under wing (a wide variety of loads could be carried) Read More A Perth entrepreneur has created Australia's first "Uber for pets", a rideshare service dedicated exclusively to taking the family's companion to the groomer, the airport, and the vet. Animal lover Terry Butts came up with the idea of offering pet owners an A-grade transport service after seeing a St Bernard crammed in the front seat of a tiny Toyota Camry. Terry Butts, the chief executive of Pawba, with pet labrador Maisy. "It got me thinking, our furry friends need us to go the extra mile when it comes to transport and the existing services out there just don't cut it," Mr Butts said. "Pets are our most cherished family members and the current rideshare players treat them as an afterthought or ignore them altogether." Remember how everyone told us to score really well in our class XII boards so that we could get admission in a renowned college or university? Then we found out that most institutions had unbelievable cut-offs like 99.99%. So, even if we scored 90-something percent we were told it wasn't any good. Well, things haven't changed much even now when the world is crumbling down with a pandemic at bay. Indian colleges are still living by the cut-throat competition they have always presented to students. Not realising the kind of stress these colleges and universities put us through, Delhi University's St Stephen's college has become a topic of discussion for its cut-offs. For BA (Hons) Economics, the cut-off is 99.3 per cent while it is 98 per cent and 98.8% for Commerce, Science and Humanities, respectively. St Stephen's College According to a statement by Delhi University, the cut-offs are going to be higher than last year as most students have allegedly scored above 95 per cent in CBSE class 12 board exams this year. They had also said that high cut-offs of St Stephen's College will set an example for other institutions. However, people are obviously not happy with this since the pandemic has already placed students as well as their parents under immense stress and pressure. Not knowing what their future holds as far as their education is concerned, students' mental health is getting impacted and educational institutions should take this into consideration before setting the precedent this high. People took to social media to express their disappointment in the Indian education system. The way St. Stephen's cut off list has shattered all my hopes of getting a good college Anupriya (@anupriyaaa__) September 16, 2020 ive been told its 99.25 but honestly whats the difference ananya see (@stellarlix) September 16, 2020 Why is st. Stephen's cut off so high? Students with less than 98% marks can't be enrolled? Hindi's cut off is 97%? Are they for real? Blinkeylo (@blinked4pinks) September 15, 2020 Me :- I'm gonna make it to DU Also me after seeing the cut off released by St. Stephen's this morning, that is 99.25%:- Maybe not in this realm Mridulbahl (@BahlMridul) September 16, 2020 man it took me months of introspection and an ungodly amount of effort to console my own self that i did well in boards n shit but the way it took 42 seconds for this St Stephen's cut off list to shatter my confidence aaaghh i hate it here guri (@knowledgewhoree) September 16, 2020 My friend plans to open her institute after the"sky is not the limit" cut off released by st stephen's. You can join, course offered : honours in barbaad life policy! Urjita Roy (@UrjitaRoy) September 16, 2020 A user also commented calling the institution 'over pampered, over hyped' and we are wondering if that is the case: if the popularity of these colleges is the sole reason for them to set these unexpectedly high standards for the youth of this country. Also read: Kerala Is Doing Their Best To Transform Education And These New Govt School Pictures Are Proof After more than 36 years advising both public and private companies, Fernandez is retiring from KPMG LLP on September 30, 2020 and joining the Jacobs board effective Oct. 5, 2020. Most recently, he served as KPMG's Dallas office managing partner and market leader for the Southwest area where he led a team of more than 3,000 partners and professionals across audit, tax, and consulting. His client and market teams covered some of KPMG's most prominent clients across a variety of sectors, including industrial manufacturing, consumer products, retail and media. Fernandez has lived and worked outside the U.S., and brings strong experience working with large multi-national public companies on business operations, as well as mergers and acquisitions and public offerings. Fernandez also brings a strong focus on talent management with a passion for advancing inclusion and diversity. At KPMG he was the national managing partner for talent acquisition, hiring more than 3,000 full-time employees and 2,500 interns annually, a member of the National Inclusion and Diversity Board, as well as co-Chair of the National Hispanic / Latino employee resource group. He immigrated from Cuba at the age of eight and believes in the mantra of "you can't be what you can't see." He has walked that talk, and to that end, has been recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA). Jacobs Chair and CEO Steve Demetriou said, "As we continue to transform Jacobs, we are excited to welcome Manny Fernandez to Jacobs' Board of Directors. His exceptional leadership capabilities in business and financial operations, risk management and M&A are both aligned and complementary to the board. He also brings a passion for development and advancement of people, which aligns directly with Jacobs' culture and core values." Fernandez is also actively engaged in community and non-profit activities, serving in leadership roles on boards and committees for the Dallas Regional Chamber, American Heart Association, Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, KERA (Dallas public television), and KPMG's Family for Literacy. He is also a member of United Way's Tocqueville Society recognizing philanthropic leaders and volunteer champions who have devoted time, talent, and funds to create long-lasting changes by tackling their communities' most serious issues. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from Fairleigh Dickinson University and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts. Jacobs' Board is comprised of 12 members from diverse geographic, industry, government, technical and business backgrounds, providing a robust governance structure that aligns with the company's strong emphasis on inclusion; 50% of Jacobs' board is female or ethnically diverse. At Jacobs, we're challenging today to reinvent tomorrow by solving the world's most critical problems for thriving cities, resilient environments, mission-critical outcomes, operational advancement, scientific discovery and cutting-edge manufacturing, turning abstract ideas into realities that transform the world for good. With $13 billion in revenue and a talent force of more than 55,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of professional services including consulting, technical, scientific and project delivery for the government and private sector. Visit jacobs.com and connect with Jacobs on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements as such term is defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and such statements are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provided by the same. Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related reaction of governments on global and regional market conditions and the company's business. For a description of some additional factors that may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements, see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 27, 2019, and in particular the discussions contained under Item 1 - Business; Item 1A - Risk Factors; Item 3 - Legal Proceedings; and Item 7 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 26, 2020, and in particular the discussions contained under Part I, Item 2 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations; Part II, Item 1 - Legal Proceedings; and Part II, Item 1A - Risk Factors, as well as the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is not under any duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform to actual results, except as required by applicable law. For press/media inquiries: Kerrie Sparks 214.583.8433 SOURCE Jacobs Related Links https://www.jacobs.com/ Camila Morrone has been enjoying plenty of romantic time with boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio during quarantine. But the Argentine-American actress is ready to get back to work, as Hollywood bounces back from COVID-19. She was pure '90s vibes Wednesday in a slip dress and combat boots, as she stepped out with her stylist Micah Schifman for a coffee run in West Hollywood. '90s vibes: Camila Morrone was pure '90s vibes Wednesday in a slip dress and combat boots, as she stepped out with her stylist Micah Schifman for a coffee run in West Hollywood The 23-year-old donned a mid-length silver satin Magda Butrym dress with an oversized cornflower blue blazer, which she wore with the sleeves rolled up. She finished the look with a pair of black Oliver Peoples wayfarers, a gold Louis Vuitton necklace and laced-up black leather boots, while carrying a black patent leather handbag. Morrone has reportedly been getting closer with DiCaprio, 45, with whom she's been spending her quarantine. A source told People in June: 'He is usually very independent, spends lots of time with friends, but because of the lockdown, he has mostly spent time with Camila. He loves being with her.' Silver stunner: The 23-year-old donned a mid-length silver satin Magda Butrym dress with an oversized cornflower blue blazer, which she wore with the sleeves rolled up Quarantine romance: Morrone has reportedly been getting closer with boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio, 45, with whom she's been spending her quarantine Red carpet debut: She and the Titanic star were first romantically linked back in December of 2017, and she accompanied him to this year's Academy Awards in February (pictured in February, 2020) She and the Titanic star were first romantically linked back in December of 2017, and she accompanied him to this year's Academy Awards in February. The 'it' couple has faced plenty of criticism over their 22-year age gap, as DiCaprio has been known to date in her very specific age group. The Valley Girl actress isn't bothered by it though, which she admitted to the Los Angeles Times in December. She said: 'Theres so many relationships in Hollywood and in the history of the world where people have large age gaps. I just think anyone should be able to date who they want to date.' Morrone added of being referred to as 'Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend': 'I feel like there should always be an identity besides who you're dating... I understand the association, but Im confident that will continue to slip away and be less of a conversation.' Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:10:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- No new locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported Wednesday across the Chinese mainland, the National Health Commission said Thursday. Meanwhile, nine confirmed COVID-19 cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported -- four in Shanghai, two in Shaanxi and one each in Henan, Guangdong and Yunnan, the commission said in its daily report. One new suspected COVID-19 case was reported and no new deaths related to the disease were reported, the commission said. On Wednesday, 11 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery, the commission said. By the end of Wednesday, a total of 2,674 imported cases had been reported on the mainland. Of them, 2,533 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 141 remained hospitalized, with one in severe condition. No deaths from the imported cases had been reported. As of Wednesday, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland had reached 85,223, including the 141 patients still being treated. Altogether 80,448 people had been discharged after recovery, and 4,634 had died of the disease on the mainland, the commission said. There was one suspected COVID-19 case on the mainland, while 6,496 close contacts were still under medical observation after 728 were discharged Wednesday, according to the commission. Also on Wednesday, 14 new asymptomatic cases, all from outside the mainland, were reported. The commission said 354 asymptomatic cases, including 353 from outside the mainland, were still under medical observation. By the end of Wednesday, 4,984 confirmed cases including 102 deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), together with 46 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR and 500 cases including seven deaths in Taiwan. A total of 4,663 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR, 46 in the Macao SAR, and 477 in Taiwan had been discharged from hospitals after recovery. Enditem If you are asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we are probably looking at third late second quarter, third quarter 2021, Dr. Redfield told the senators. He also called masks the most important, powerful public health tool we have in fighting the pandemic, adding that universal use of face coverings could bring the pandemic under control in months. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, Dr. Redfield said. Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, whereas masks, worn properly, do what they are designed to do. Just the night before, during a town hall-style forum with undecided voters in Philadelphia hosted by ABC News, Mr. Trump had denigrated masks, saying that there are people that dont think masks are good. Asked which people, he cited restaurant waiters who fiddle with their masks and therefore may accidentally spread the virus as they serve food. Mr. Trump repeated that on Wednesday at his briefing with reporters. I see that in restaurants there are people with masks and theyre playing around with their mask and their fingers are in their mask and then theyre serving with plates, he said. I think theres a lot of problems with masks. He said that the mask perhaps helps but that it is a mixed bag. The president has generally refused to wear a mask in public himself, saying it was unnecessary because he is regularly tested for the coronavirus. But he has held numerous rallies and other events in recent days where most of the people were not tested, did not have face coverings and were not kept at a social distance. As he has on other occasions, Mr. Trump ridiculed Mr. Biden for regularly wearing a mask, saying his opponent did so even when he was distant from other people. Joe feels very safe in a mask, the president said. I dont know, maybe he doesnt want to expose his face. The presidents comments came at a briefing where he again presented a glossy view of the pandemic, displaying charts meant to indicate that it was under control. He framed the crisis through a partisan lens, suggesting that fatalities in states that vote for Democrats should not be counted. If you take the blue states deaths out, we are at a level I dont think anybody in the world would be at, he said. A naturist who bared all for a coronavirus-themed artwork orchestrated by Spencer Tunick has revealed participants were naked for an entire hour during the shoot - and he enjoyed every second. More than 200 volunteers stripped naked - apart from their face masks - for a socially distanced art installation by the American artist at London's Alexandra Palace, with the images unveiled today. The artist, who is known for his images of groups of naked people taken all over the world, said creating the 'Everyone Together' work to mark the Sky Arts channel becoming free from September 17 was 'liberating and life-affirming'. Meanwhile a couple who posed for the installation - after meeting on a previous Tunick shoot in Norway - added that the dawn shoot was 'a little bit chilly but not enough to give anyone hypothermia'. More than 200 volunteers stripped naked - apart from their face masks - for a socially distanced art installation by the American artist at London 's Alexandra Palace, with the images unveiled today Spencer Tunick, known for his images of groups of naked people taken all over the world, said creating the 'Everyone Together' work to mark the Sky Arts channel becoming free from September 17 was 'liberating and life-affirming' Naturist Krzysztof Czapski, 41, a warehouse manager originally from Poland but now living in Sherburn in Elmet, Yorkshire, told FEMAIL he 'loved every second' of taking part in the shoot. 'I took part in an installation in 2016 in Hull, when everyone was painted in different shades of blue,' he explained. 'That was my first time. I loved any second of it, so I knew if there was to be another occasion I would do it again. What I enjoy most is the feeling of freedom. Once people are naked, no one judge anyone by their clothes. And it gives me more confidence.' The installation, assembled in the early hours, was 'about breaking down barriers', Tunick said. Naturist Krzysztof Czapski, 41, a warehouse manager originally from Poland but now living in Sherburn in Elmet, Yorkshire, told FEMAIL he 'loved every second' of taking part in the shoot Krzysztof, circled in the shoot, said being naked around other people 'gives him confidence', adding that he enjoys the 'feeling of freedom' 'The reality of masses of people close together - shoulder to shoulder, skin touching skin - may be something of the past for now, but still the desire is there for that natural connectivity, perhaps more so now than ever,' the photographer added. Krzysztof recalled: 'We started very early, so it did get cold during the time we spent outside! But it was a good atmosphere - we survived! There were jokes and laughs, everyone encouraged everyone. 'There was an option to leave at any point if you were too cold. It took around four hours all together, and we were naked for about an hour or so. Couples were a little longer as they stayed for another set up.' A total of 220 people posed nude as they stood at least one metre apart and had their temperature checked on arrival to ensure they were Covid safe. Krzysztof said he felt very secure taking part due to the strict procedures in place to protect against the spread of coronavirus. A couple who took part in the shoot, but did not wish to be identified, added that anyone who felt uncomfortable was able to leave the shoot at any time 'It was done according to government guidelines,' he explained. '[There was] social distancing, staggered arrival times, hand sanitiser and everyone had to wear a face mask all the time.' Retired psychiatric nurse Pete Stone, who took part in the shoot with his partner, added that anyone who felt uncomfortable was able to leave the shoot at any time. 'A runner gave his jacket to a woman who was feeling the cold,' they told FEMAIL, adding that he describes himself as a 'fair weather naturist'. 'We had to arrive at around 4am to register which meant at least half an hour queuing up outside in the dark. Most of us had not slept much so you tend to feel the cold sitting and standing for long periods. 'The actual shoot starts just after dawn and takes a little under an hour for four set ups. The final set was couples only.' No arms done: The models lie on the grassy bank overlooking central London as US artist Tunick photographs them Back in the wild: Spencer Tunick has been creating nude installations on the internet during lockdown but has now returned to photo sessions in public places 'We get a signed limited edition print for participation. Everybody has their own reasons [for taking part]; a personal confidence challenge, bucket list experience, a few exhibitionists, some who participate in [Tunick's] projects all round the world as their hobby.' Pete, who has taken part in naked shoots ranging from 3,500 participants to 120, both body-painted and bare, said each one is a 'unique experience'. 'Some are better than others,' he added. 'It is great to be a brushstroke on the artist's palette. You meet all sorts of people; all ages, sizes, nationalities, some remain friends long after the event. 'The first time might be a bit nervy for some, especially in the hours travelling to the location then waiting in this crowd of strangers. Eventually Spencer gives "permission" to get undressed. 'Some people are a little shy walking out naked with people they don't know but that evaporates in minutes as you realise that you are surrounded by people older, wrinklier, fatter, thinner, more scarred, of every body and skin type: nobody is looking at you.' Tunick is best known for bringing hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of participants together to pose for striking mass nude photographs. Crack of dawn: The volunteers got up early for the photoshoot on the grassy banks in front of Alexandra Palace in London Previous installations have seen him transform sites like the Sydney Opera House into seas of exposed bodies, all in the name of art. The latest project is the first major participatory work of art for the US artist since lockdown in March. It saw him asking groups of face mask-wearing participants to strip down and assume coordinated poses before he captured them in single collage-style screenshots. With Covid-19 sending him into lockdown in New York, Tunick has had to find a new medium for his work: video conferences. The Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP clashed over the issue of Covid-19 management in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, with the AAP terming as foolish the prime ministers call to clap and beat utensils in honour of coronavirus warriors. BJPs Sudhanshu Trivedi hit back, saying the PMs move was symbolic and sought to unite the country socially just like Mahatma Gandhi chose the symbol of charkha for national cohesion during the freedom struggle. Also read: AAP to oppose anti-farmer bills in Parliament, says Kejriwal Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in March asked people to clap, beat steel plates and ring bells to express gratitude towards those risking their lives and working tirelessly during the coronavirus outbreak. Singh, while participating in the debate on Covid-19, further used the occasion to accuse the government of looking for opportunity in times of disaster and alleged corruption in the procurement of equipment to fight the disease including thermometers and oxymetres. I want to ask this government, tell me any one research in the world that shows Covid can be prevented by clamping utensils and by clapping. The entire opposition will not go home, but will clap with the prime minister and light diyas in Parliament premises. You bring such absurd and foolish schemes and expect the entire country to be befooled by you, Singh said. Countering him, Trivedi said,Burning diyas and beating utensils and clapping were symbolic in the fight against coronavirus.. Would the British have run away by the use of the charkha (spinning wheel). The charkha was symbolic which Mahatma Gandhi chose in uniting the country against the British. The same way, PM Modi made the diyas and beating utensils symbolic in bringing together all Indians in the fight against Covid, Trivedi said. Also read: In defending Maharashtras Covid-19 fight, Sanjay Raut takes bhabhi ji ke papad jibe at minister The BJP member, without naming Rahul Gandhi, also too a swipe at the former Congress president for his vision of giving an early warning about Covid-19 and said he was himself not even in the country when the Congress was seeking a ban on international flights. He also countered the opposition charge that the lockdown was not imposed early as the BJP wanted to topple the Madhya Pradesh government of the Congress, saying at that time there were only 29 coronavirus cases in the country and not a single case was reported in Madhya Pradesh at that time. NEW DELHI: Apple is turning aggressive on the services end of the business and eyeing emerging markets like India with a more cost-effective consolidated plan called Apple One. Services remained the second biggest contributor to Apples growing revenue after iPhones for several quarters. In Q3, Apples global revenue from services climbed to $13.156 billion from $11.455 billion a year ago. Apples paid subscriptions grew more than 35 million sequentially and at the end of Q3 ihad over 550 million paid subscriptions across all services, up 130 million from a year ago. Though India is still not one of its key markets, Apple has been trying to change that with mid-range models like iPhone XR and iPhone 11. Interestingly, many of the Apple users have not subscribed to their services and Apple is trying to change that with the consolidated plans. The pricing of the new plans is very aggressive and competitive compared to other markets like US, feels Navkendar Singh, research director, Client Devices & IPDS, IDC India. This will lead many Apple users who were not on any of these services to get into the service fold now. That is huge in itself for Apple. It enhances the relationship with customer from mere hardware to recurring revenue subscription of these services," added Singh. The new plans give Apple users access to all major services, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and 50GB iCloud storage, for a single monthly subscription fee of 195, for individuals. The family plan, which can be shared with up to six family members, includes all the above services with 200GB of iCloud storage. It costs 365 per month. If you look at a typical home, some users may be into TV streaming while some may be more into gaming. A consolidated plan covers all the requirements for the family in a more cost-effective manner," said Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst and co-founder, techARC. Apple claims, by subscribing to the individual plan users save over 177 per month, while family plan subscribers save over 200 per month. When subscribed individually, all three major services Music, Apple TV+ and Arcade cost 99 each, while 50GB iCloud costs 75. Kawoosa feels, a single subscription gives Apple a chance to sign many more new users, but it may not necessarily help them sell more devices, especially in markets like India, where people have access to several low cost alternatives. 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 EDINBURGH, United Kingdom, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NuCana plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for patients with cancer, announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 15,555,556 American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at a price to the public of $4.50 per ADS, for total gross proceeds of approximately $70.0 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses. Each ADS represents one ordinary share of NuCana. In addition, NuCana has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 2,333,333 additional ADSs at the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. All of the ADSs in the offering will be sold by NuCana. The offering is expected to close on or about September 21, 2020, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Jefferies, Cowen, William Blair, and Truist Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The securities are being offered pursuant to a shelf registration statement on Form F-3 which has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) and was declared effective on October 22, 2018. This offering is being made only by means of a prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus that form a part of the registration statement. A preliminary prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus relating to the offering was filed with the SEC on September 16, 2020 and is available on the SEC's website located at http://www.sec.gov. A final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus relating to the offering will be filed with the SEC and will be available for free on the SECs website located at http://www.sec.gov. Copies of the final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus relating to this offering may also be obtained, when available, by contacting Jefferies LLC, Attention: Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10022, or by telephone at (877) 547-6340 or by e-mail at Prospectus_Department@Jefferies.com , or Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, Attention: Prospectus Department, email: PostSaleManualRequests@broadridge.com , telephone: 1-833-297-2926, or William Blair & Company, L.L.C., Attention: Prospectus Department, 150 North Riverside Plaza, Chicago, IL 60606, by telephone at (800) 621-0687, or by email at prospectus@williamblair.com , or Truist Securities, Inc., 3333 Peachtree Road NE, 9th Floor, Atlanta, GA 30326, Attention: Prospectus Department; email: TruistSecurities.prospectus@Truist.com . For the avoidance of doubt, such prospectus will not constitute a prospectus for the purposes of the Prospectus Regulation (as defined below) and will not have been reviewed by any competent authority in any EEA member state or the United Kingdom. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. For readers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom In any EEA Member State and the United Kingdom (a Relevant State), this communication is only addressed to and directed at qualified investors in that Relevant State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1129) (the Prospectus Regulation). Further notice for readers in the United Kingdom There will be no offer of ADSs to the public in the United Kingdom. This communication, in so far as it constitutes an invitation or inducement to enter into investment activity (within the meaning of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 as amended (FSMA)) in connection with the securities which are the subject of the offering described in this press release or otherwise, is being directed only at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments who fall within Article 19(5) (Investment professionals) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the Order) or (iii) certain high value persons and entities who fall within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) (High net worth companies, unincorporated associations etc.) of the Order; or (iv) any other person to whom it may lawfully be communicated (all such persons in (i) to (iv) together being referred to as relevant persons). The ADSs are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such ADSs will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this document or any of its contents. This communication does not contain an offer or constitute any part of an offer to the public within the meaning of ss. 85 and 102B of FSMA or otherwise. About NuCana plc NuCana is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for cancer patients by applying our ProTide technology to transform some of the most widely prescribed chemotherapy agents, nucleoside analogs, into more effective and safer medicines. While these conventional agents remain part of the standard of care for the treatment of many solid and hematological tumors, their efficacy is limited by cancer cell resistance mechanisms and they are often poorly tolerated. Utilizing our proprietary technology, we are developing new medicines, ProTides, designed to overcome key cancer resistance mechanisms and generate much higher concentrations of anti-cancer metabolites in cancer cells. NuCanas robust pipeline includes three ProTides in clinical development. Acelarin and NUC-3373, are new chemical entities derived from the nucleoside analogs gemcitabine and 5-fluorouracil, respectively, two widely used chemotherapy agents. Acelarin is currently being evaluated in four clinical studies, including a Phase III study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase Ib study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase II study for patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer and a Phase III study for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer for which enrollment has been suspended. NUC-3373 is currently in a Phase I study for the potential treatment of a wide range of advanced solid tumors and a Phase Ib study for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Our third ProTide, NUC-7738, is a transformation of a novel nucleoside analog (3-deoxyadenosine) and is in a Phase I study for patients with advanced solid tumors. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forwardlooking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management of NuCana plc (the Company). All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the completion and timing of the public offering and the anticipated total gross proceeds from the offering. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as may, will, should, expects, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, potential or continue or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Companys actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of the Companys Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 10, 2020, subsequent reports that the Company files with the SEC and the final prospectus supplement related to this offering. Forward-looking statements represent the Companys beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forwardlooking statements for any reason after the date of this press release to conform any of the forward-looking statements to actual results or to changes in its expectations. For more information, please contact: NuCana plc Hugh S. Griffith Chief Executive Officer T: +44 131 357 1111 E: info@nucana.com Westwicke, an ICR Company Chris Brinzey T: +1 339-970-2843 E: chris.brinzey@westwicke.com Privatisation of the railways will create a win-win situation for both the Indian railways as well as the investors, and also the users, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Thursday, addressing a joint press meet, along with Railway Board chairman VK Yadav. It is like when private banks were set up in India. So many private players came in the banking sector. But that didnt lead SBI to shut. Private investment will bring in newer technologies. It will create competition in the railway sector. Competition will increase efficiency and reduce fare in the long run, Kant said. Also Read | Crack trains: How railways put goods movement on fast track during Covid 19 On airport-like user charge to be levied for redeveloped railway stations, Railway Board chairman VK Yadav said the charge, which will translate to a hike in railway fare, will be nominal. The user charge will be nominal. Also, the charge will be applicable only for redeveloped stations. Not all stations are being redeveloped at present, Yadav said. On the issue of private players being able to determine their own fares as it has been decided by the Indian Railways the railway Board chairman said as there will be competition from bus fares and air fares, private players will, in no circumstances, charge exorbitant fares. Makeshift bleachers and a Georgia Bulldogs stadium chair are all thats left of a cockfighting arena in southeast Georgia after federal officials arrested the owner 66-year-old Wendell Allan Strickland early Thursday. Strickland was charged in a federal indictment on five felony counts and one misdemeanor relating to owning and operating a cockfighting venue in Swainsboro, Georgia, known as The Red Barn, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Georgia said in a news release. Swainsboro, a city of roughly 7,500 residents, is about an hour and a half south of Augusta. Animal fighting operations are concentrated arenas of animal cruelty, and our office will aggressively pursue prosecution of anyone who seeks recreational thrills from such activities, U.S. Attorney Bobby L. Christine said in the release. Strickland was arrested during what federal investigators dubbed Operation Sunset, prosecutors said. Law enforcement arrived as the fighting pit was being dismantled, according to the release. Photos shared by the U.S. Attorneys Office show the arena was comprised of a hollowed-out dirt pit surrounded by wooden bleachers in what appears to be an insulated barn or out-building. Metal ventilation pipes run across the length of the ceiling with fluorescent lights to illuminate the arena, the photos show. A few stadium chairs are still propped up on the bleachers. Animal fighting ring inside The Red Barn in Swainsboro, Ga., surrounded by stadium-style bleacher seating. Multiple law enforcement agencies were on scene during the arrest and seized a box of cockfighting gear in the process, prosecutors said. A second photograph shows what appears to be Stricklands office with a large whiteboard for tallying the results of different fights, according to federal prosecutors. A cash box and printer sit on the desk. Office of The Red Barn animal fighting venue in Swainsboro, Ga., includes whiteboards for tallying fight results. The Red Barn is one of what prosecutors believe are the three largest animal fighting arenas in Georgia. Two other men, 48-year-old William Shannon Scott and 64-year-old Lanier Augustus Hightower Jr., have already been arrested. Story continues In coordination with our law enforcement partners, we have shut down three of these reprehensible operations and seized more than $220,000 in cash suspected to be illegal gambling proceeds, Christine said in Thursdays news release. Strickland is accused of working with Scott, who ran a larger cockfighting pit known as Little Sunset in nearby Midville, to coordinate alternating weekend cockfighting contests. The gambling business net at least $2,000 in gross revenue, sometimes more, on any given day, according to the indictment. Scott was arrested in June during a raid of a cockfighting tournament on his property, prosecutors said. Hightower was arrested last month after a federal raid on his farm during a cockfighting tournament in December 2019, according to Thursdays news release. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The Lincoln County Sheriffs Office on the Georgia-South Carolina border busted an underground cockfighting pit around the same time, scattering roughly 200 attendees in the woods while more than two dozen others were arrested, McClatchy News previously reported. It wasnt immediately clear Thursday if the two raids were connected. Strickland has been charged with: Two felony counts of sponsoring and exhibiting an animal in an animal fighting venue Two felony counts of conducting an illegal gambling business One felony count of possession and transport of an animal in an animal fighting venture One misdemeanor charge of attending an animal fighting venture He faces up to five years in prison and substantial fines and asset forfeiture if proven guilty, prosecutors said. Kroger faces lawsuit after it fires employees for refusing to wear pro-LGBT aprons Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A major supermarket chain is facing a lawsuit after firing two employees over their refusal to wear a rainbow emblem that violates their religious beliefs as part of their work uniform. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the Kroger Company Monday in response to action taken by Kroger Store No. 625 in Conway, Arkansas, against two employees. The employees were terminated after they refused to abide by the new dress code, which required them to wear an apron depicting a rainbow-colored heart emblem. The women contended that wearing the apron would amount to an endorsement of the LGBTQ movement, which contradicts their religious beliefs. According to the EEOC, one woman offered to wear the apron with the emblem covered and the other offered to wear a different apron without the emblem, but the company made no attempt to accommodate their requests. The EEOC alleged that when the women continued to refuse to wear the apron with the emblem visible, Kroger retaliated against them by disciplining and ultimately discharging them. Krogers actions violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, argued the EEOC, which is working to secure monetary relief in the form of back pay and compensatory damages for the two women as well as an injunction against future discrimination. Companies have an obligation under Title VII to consider requests for religious accommodations, and it is illegal to terminate employees for requesting an accommodation for their religious beliefs, said Delner-Franklin Thomas, district director of the EEOCs Memphis office, which has jurisdiction over the case. The EEOC protects the rights of the LGBTQ community, but it also protects the rights of religious people. The EEOC complaint comes more than a year after both women were fired from the supermarket chain. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, one of the women, Brenda Lawson, worked in the deli department at the store from 2011 until her termination on June 1, 2019. The other woman, Trudy Rickerd, worked as a cashier and file maintenance clerk from 2006 until her termination on May 29, 2019. The complaint cited a letter written by Rickerd explaining her objection to wearing the apron. I have a sincerely held religious belief that I cannot wear a symbol that promotes or endorses something that is in violation of my religious faith I am happy to buy another apron to ensure there is no financial hardship on Kroger, she said. This is not the first time that Kroger has found itself subject to a lawsuit from the EEOC. Last year, Kroger had to pay $40,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit that was filed after it fired a visually impaired new employee who requested an accommodation for a portion of the new employee orientation. The Christian Post reached out to Kroger for comment. A representative from the supermarket chain said, We cannot comment on pending litigation. Kroger is not the only supermarket chain to face scrutiny about its dress code policy. Two weeks ago, former Food Lion employee and Air Force veteran Gary Dean detailed how he left the company because he was told that he could not wear a face mask emblazoned with the American flag on the job. After thousands of Americans had viewed Deans Facebook post, Food Lion contacted Dean and told him that it was changing its mask policy to permit employees to wear American flag masks. The ex-judge in an orange jail uniform stood before a judge in black robes, swore to tell the truth and tried to make sense of her predicament. My world truly turned upside down, Alexandra Smoots-Thomas, a former Harris County civil judge, told federal Judge Lynn N. Hughes on Thursday, enumerating the heartbreaks amid tears. Her husbands unemployment. A house in foreclosure. Her cancer treatments. Her fathers cancer diagnosis. Two divorces. A childs suicide attempt. I regret wholeheartedly leaving such a terrible stain at what is the end of a wonderful and rewarding 18-year legal career, she said. I truly apologize for my actions. I apologize for the stain that this has placed on my family and even my former colleagues on the bench. The 44-year-old pleaded guilty to using campaign funds to pay personal expenses, capping off a turbulent year that included chemotherapy, remission, a failed bid to reclaim her former bench and criminal charges last month alleging she fired a shotgun at her husbands girlfriend. The government dropped six remaining counts of wire fraud. Her plea agreement details how she siphoned off campaign money to purchase a Zales engagement ring and two Prada handbags, and to make two mortgage payments and cover private school tuition for her two sons. As a convicted felon, she will no longer be permitted to practice law, the only career shes ever known, according to her lawyer in the assault case. Hughes took into consideration her admission of guilt, her hardships and her likelihood of re-offending, and sentenced her to the 36 days shed just spent in jail for a bond violation connected to the shooting charges, as well as three years of supervised release. He ordered her released from federal lockup in Conroe, and made off-handed remark to a deputy U.S. marshal to make sure she got a ride back into Houston. Prosecutor Ted Imperato, of the U.S. Attorneys public corruption unit, challenged the unreasonableness of the sentence. The judge responded, in his trademark snarky bluster, that the sentence was pure wisdom. The prosecutor had requested a sentence within the guideline range of 18 to 24 months in prison, saying the defendant abused her power and authority as a sitting judge. Imperato noted that rather than agree to a deal where she would leave the bench, She thumbed her nose at us, and, with these charges pending, ran for re-election. The federal case against Smoots-Thomas grew out of an FBI investigation of another matter, said defense lawyer Kent Schaffer. When federal agents began to scour her campaign expense account, they turned up anomalies a series of odd purchases from 2013 to 2018 from her campaign coffers that Smoots-Thomas later said shed intended to pay back. Schaffer said the fallout for his client far outweighed the harm. The so-called victims in the case, he said, were lawyers who said they were glad Smoots-Thomas had won re-election and did not care what she did with their donations. The federal judge said he would assess restitution involving $28,618 in embezzled campaign funds at a hearing on Oct. 26. Smoots-Thomas was first elected in 2008. She said her troubles began after her first divorce, when she tried to shore up funds for her family home and tuition to provide stability for her two sons, ages 15 and 11. At the time, I made a couple of careless and mistaken charges, she said, which she intended to repay. Next came a grueling and expensive re-election campaign and an intense romantic relationship with her second husband who promptly lost his job. She struggled with the mortgage on her Rice Military home and with medical insurance, car payments and tuition. I made a very poor choice of paying my delinquent mortgage from my campaign account, she told the court. At the time, I let shame and pride and fear of ridicule rule my misguided actions. Once again I acknowledged to myself that I would repay. In November 2018, she learned the government was scrutinizing her campaign account. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and her chemotherapy necessitated a leave of absence from the bench. Her youngest child suffered a true emotional breakdown because his father cut off communications and the thought that hed lose contact with both parents was too much for him. Then, came home schooling, cancer treatment, infidelity, a re-election campaign and an October 2019 indictment and suspension without pay from her judgeship. Her father was diagnosed with two forms of cancer, she said. In July she lost in the Democratic primary runoff for her bench in the 164th Civil Court. She then resigned from the remainder of her term. In August, she was arrested in connection to the discharge of a shotgun involving her estranged husbands girlfriend and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon at the womans home. Juanita Jackson, the ex-judges friend and her attorney in the assault case, said the last few years have been unbearable for Smoots-Thomas, and that she remarried in an effort to grasp onto hope. Most people could not survive what she has gone through, Jackson said. Most people couldnt wake up in the morning and fight another day, but she has to do it for her sons whose father is really not minimally in their life. Jackson said Smoots-Thomas does not deny she used the shotgun at the girlfriends home on Aug. 10, but says her client discharged the gun accidentally and only had the weapon in self defense against her romantic rival, Twyla Joseph, an assistant principal at Paul Revere Middle School. As a jurist, she was well loved and was always by all sides considered very fair very reasonable and very kind, Jackson said. She grew up in the Hiram Clarke area, where her working class parents sent her to private school, Jackson said. She graduated from University of St. Thomas and then South Texas College of Law. gabrielle.banks@chron.com Fredon Laith Botrus has been found to be the murderer who donned a motorcycle helmet and plunged a knife into a customer getting his hair cut at a Sydney barbershop. Botrus denied being the assailant, but after brief deliberations on Thursday a NSW Supreme Court jury found the 20-year-old guilty of murder. Alfredo Isho was seated and gowned when he was knifed at Bossley Park's Classico Hair Studio on January 11, 2019, with the blade puncturing his right lung and severing an artery. Fredon Laith Botrus has been found to be the murderer who donned a motorcycle helmet and plunged a knife into a customer getting his hair cut at a Sydney barbershop CCTV played to the jury showed Mr Isho outside the barbershop moments after the stabbing, pursued by several concerned witnesses. The young man soon became pale and was rushed to hospital, where he died hours later. Mr Isho's blood was on the jumper Botrus was wearing when arrested 150 minutes after the stabbing. And a white motorcycle said to have been used by the assailant was found at his family home, stripped of its petrol tank and fairings, and being cooled down with fans. Prosecutor Michael Clark said before the stabbing Botrus had received a message that there was 'a dog' in the barbershop. Using a mix of Arabic, English and emoji the message said in effect: 'Yo brother there's a dog at the hairdresser's.' Police and paramedics are seen at the scene of the stabbing After the stabbing, Botrus was said to have messaged the same account back to say 'I went and anked him' and 'is that bad'. As well as denying being the motorcyclist, Botrus denied authoring the texts found on his phone sent through encrypted application wickr . His barrister, Sam Pararajasingham, said his client had no motive to murder Mr Isho. Botrus told police he didn't know who Mr Isho was and said he'd been at home in bed at the time of the attack. Referring to Mr Isho's blood being found on the jumper Botrus was wearing, Mr Pararajasingham suggested he may have been covering up for the real killer. He urged jurors to consider how the circumstances in which police came to observe Botrus in the jumper were 'consistent with him playing a role other than that of him being the murderer'. Gaps in CCTV coverage meant the true killer had 'every opportunity' to dump the bike in the Botrus family's garage, strip it of parts and escape, he said. The jury has heard several other young men had access to the garage and rode the bike from time to time. Justice Michael Walton will conduct a sentence hearing at a later date. While the number of Indias daily cases is only a few thousands away from the one lakh-mark, health ministry data reveals that only five states are contributing to the 60 per cent of the new cases, Maharashtra topping the chart with at least 30 per cent of new cases every day. Karnataka is second with 10 per cent cases, followed by Andhra Pradesh contributing 8.9 per cent of the cases. Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and contributing six per cent and four per cent, respectively. Also Read | India crosses 60 million mark for Covid-19 testing As far as Covid-19 deaths are concerned, 1,132 deaths have been reported in the oast 24 hours, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan has said. Here too, Maharashtra is contributing a significant number with 474 deaths that constitute 40 per cent of the total deaths. #COVID19 UPDATE 1132 case fatalities have been reported in the past 24 hrs. With 474 new cases of mortality in, Maharashtra accounted for more than 40% of the new deaths. @PMOIndia @MoHFW_INDIA #IndiaFightsCorona pic.twitter.com/DIOiVXKIJ8 Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) September 17, 2020 New figures, released by the health ministry, reveals at least seven states have not reported any death in the last 24 hours. Total 19 states have recorded one to 20 deaths, three states reported 20 to 50 deaths, six states reported 50 to 100 deaths and only one state reported over 100 deaths. #COVID19 UPDATE Close to half (48.45%) of the Active Cases are concentrated in 3 States; Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Together with the States of Uttar Pradesh & Tamil Nadu, these 5 states contribute nearly 60% of the total active cases. @PMOIndia pic.twitter.com/Uhig0eIMJF Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) September 17, 2020 The issue of Maharashtras Covid-19 situation came up in the Rajya Sabha debate on Thursday, when Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut pointed to the number of recoveries and asked the detractors whether Bhabhiji Papad, endorsed by Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, was responsible for the recovery rate in the state. The first Covid-19 case in Maharashtra was confirmed on March 9 in Pune. Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks and holds a roundtable discussion with veterans at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Fla, U.S., Sept. 15, 2020. Reuters Korean film 'An Old Lady' explores why our 'normal' questions about rape tend to be extraneous. Woman, aged 69, raped by a 29-year-old man. We often read this sort of headline in newspapers. But where do we pause? At rape, or at 69 and 29? South Korean writer-director Lim Sun-aes film An Old Lady asks that question, and then she wants us to consider this: Is there an age limit to being raped? An Old Lady, which is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), opens to a black screen. We hear two people talking. It seems one is a nursing assistant, and he is with a female patient who has come for physiotherapy. She has a frozen shoulder. No one would guess your age, he says. Do you swim? Your legs You dont look old at all. He puts an infrared lamp on. How long will it take? she asks. Nine minutes. The screen lights up and we stare at a row of curtained cubicles. Theres a loud beep and in one of them and the red light goes off. We are left with the feeling that something has happened. But the patient, Hyo-jeong (Ye Su-jeong, known for her role in Train To Busan), seems normal as she chats and gently jokes with Mr Nam (Ki Joo-bong), who has come to pick her up. He owns a small book store, and she works for him. Hes published a book of poetry and she was once his nurse. At home, Hyo rubs her wrist. He notices a bruise on her arm. The nursing assistant was clumsy with the needle, she says. Later she says to him, I should report it to the police. An Old Lady is framed in a way that everything seems to be against the woman who claims she was raped by the handsome nursing assistant, Lee Joong-ho. Also, hes 29 and shes is in a live-in relationship. That makes the young cops snigger. It was not rape. It was consensual sex, Lee tells the cops. Though Hyos polygraph tells them that she may be telling the truth, and she has proof the clothes she wore that day old people, you know, they forget. They mix-up things. And in any case, he says he didnt do it. Hes 29. Handsome. The burden of proof on Hyo keeps mounting. She must convince the cops first, to even attempt a proper investigation. She must herself prove that it was rape and not consensual sex. She must prove that she didnt meet him once, earlier, at a supermarket. And that she didnt follow him to the clinic. She must produce a witness, the person who sent her to the clinic. But that was so long ago. She cant recall. Shes forgetting things. Maybe, dementia is setting in. But those flashes keep interrupting, disturbing her. The wrist mark is fading, but it still aches. A womans age, class, social status, caste, clothes, marital status, lifestyle, behaviour all these immediately come into question the moment she makes an accusation against a man. And the questions that follow are, Why would he? He could get anyone. Why would he need to rape? And why her? As if women in burqas and long ghunghats are not raped. As if rich, upper caste men rape only according to their status. As if men only rape women their age. As if only women who smoke and drink get raped. As if women who quietly go about their business, with heads bowed, are never raped. As if rape were about sexual attraction, and not a violent crime. As if rape was about how sexy a woman is and not about the perpetrators feeling of inadequacy, the desire to dominant, to exert power, to leave their mark of control and capability on another. As if rape were about women, and not men. Director Lim Sun-ae has said that she was riled up to make An Old Lady by a real-life case in which the warrant dismissal letter said, There is not much reason for a young man to rape an old woman. An Old Lady ends on an empowering note, with a nod to the #MeToo movement. But it leaves you wondering how many women must still be keeping their sexual assault, rape a secret because they are scared theyll be asked, Who will rape an old lady? The plight of Irans mountain couriers is once again under the spotlight after the Islamic Republics border guards shot dead at least 15 of them this summer, local officials said. In Iranian Kurdistan, mountain couriers are relied on to carry commodities across the Iraqi border. They are locally known as a kolbar, a Kurdish word meaning someone carrying heavy loads over their shoulders. In recent years, the term has come to be used for young Kurds who cross the rugged mountains with essential goods in a region battered by unemployment, poverty and a host of other maladies. Under Iranian law, the activity is considered smuggling and tantamount to border trespassing, an argument Iranian authorities use to justify shootings that target the couriers. The deadly practice has been in place over the past several years despite calls from human rights groups who see the killings as part of the Islamic Republics overall systematic violation of the rights of the Kurdish minority. Tough economic conditions in the rocky border area have only been hardened by skyrocketing unemployment and perceived injustice in the distribution of opportunities, increasingly pushing young Kurds toward the treacherous journey. In a fiery address to the Iranian parliament earlier this month, Kamal Hosseinpour, a lawmaker representing the border town of Sardasht, unleashed a barrage of criticism against the Iranian governments treatment of kolbars after four were shot dead by border guards Aug. 31. A commander who referred to the victims as border aggressors intensified the rage among members of the Kurdish public, including the legislator who slammed the government for treating the victims like Islamic State terrorists. Those four men were simply mountain couriers and were forced into that job to earn a living for their families, Hosseinpour said. The four deaths followed social media campaigns that had trended only days before with the aim of building pressure on the authorities to stop killing kolbars. In recent months, even some women in apparent dire economic circumstances have become kolbars. Halaleh Amini, a council member in the city of Mariwan, lamented the suffering of those women in an emotional speech. Look at the hands of those women, mostly single mothers, and you will find that the delicate texture of femininity has evaporated, she said. The deaths of young kolbars have every now and then been associated with dramatic stories, moving the Iranian public to its very core. In December, two teenage brothers, Azad and Farhad, who were carrying bags of shoes, were stranded in harsh snowy weather before freezing to death. After covering Azad with his coat, the younger brother, Farhad, apparently made an effort to head back toward their village of Ney, about 6 kilometers (3 miles) from Mariwan. The bodies of the two were recovered four days later in separate spots. During a funeral procession between Mariwan and Ney, people held up loaves of bread in a symbolic gesture to mark the two brothers martyrdom for bread as they chanted, Death to the dictator. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and the ensuing public fury, the government of President Hassan Rouhani was quick to pledge to tackle the problem of kolbars although that promise has yet to be put into action. The Iranian parliament has also refused twice to pass a bill that would prohibit firing on kolbars. According to an advocacy group monitoring the status of kolbars, in 2018 at least 86 of them, mostly in their 20s, were killed in shootings or died of other causes, such as land mine explosions, avalanches or cliff collapses. Then there is the recent case of Maani Hashemi, a 14-year-old from the town of Paveh. The talented teenage student, according to his mother, decided to join other kolbars to save up for a smartphone for himself and his sister, which they needed for their education as classes became virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. All his concern was about missing those online courses, his single mother, Ronak Hashemi, a 38-year-old kolbar, told Iranian media. While carrying bags of 150 kilos (330 pounds) of beans Sept. 4, the two were chased by border guards. Maani fell off a cliff, smacking his face right against a rock, severely damaging his nose and eyes. Ronak managed to place her bleeding son over her shoulders and claw their way to the nearest village. The teenage boy was hospitalized at a local underequipped medical center, where he was told that proper treatment is available only in the capital, Tehran. Unable to afford the transfer and medical costs in Tehran, Maani was stuck for several days until in the absence of government support public donations were collected through social media and ultimately paved his way to the capital, where he began receiving treatment. Tell everyone this is not a job. Being a kolbar is but pain, suffering and misery, Maanis mother told Irans Shahrvand daily. DUBLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Toothpaste - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. COVID-19 pandemic has doubled the emphasis on oral hygiene with dental offices around the world closed for routine consultations. This largely because the risk of COVID-19 cross infections is higher in dentistry as saliva plays a key role in human-to-human transmission. The global market for Toothpaste is projected to reach US$18. 3 billion by 2025, driven by the sustained growth in population, increasing awareness over oral hygiene, and launch of innovative toothpaste variants at affordable prices. Commoditization of the market is evident by the fact that fluoride toothpaste is today globally affordable by all and per capita consumption is hitting near saturation limiting volume growth. Also, the sea of me-too competitors is growing in whitening, cavity protection and stain removal categories, stifling revenue growth. Localization is the quiet change currently underway in the market, against a backdrop of growing diversity of consumer communities in terms of ethnicity, wealth, lifestyle, and values. Brand localization represents a key strategy adopted by multinational companies to gain market share in developing foreign markets. Other noteworthy trends in the market include high risk of dental fluorosis among toddlers and children and the ensuing demand for fluoride free toothpaste; increasing incidence of tooth sensitivity to over 35% of the global population and the resulting demand for toothpaste with potassium nitrate; growing focus on maintaining flawless white and clean teeth and the rising popularity of tartar control and whitening toothpastes; growing demand for triclosan free toothpaste on back of recent negative publicity over triclosan with the FDA banning its use in soaps. The growing trend towards natural products is spurring interest in toothpaste with aloe, eucalyptus oil, myrrh, and other plant extract as active ingredients among health conscious consumers. Colgate launched Colgate Naturals toothpaste in China, looking to tap the consumer preference for natural local ingredients. Colgate Naturals toothpaste makes use of twin lotus flow for the purpose of soothing gums. Similarly in India, the company introduced Colgate Swarna Vedshakti toothpaste, as consumers began exhibiting strong preference for natural ingredients to prevent dental problems. Asia-Pacific including China is a major market led by favorable economic environment, rising standards of living, shift away from homemade toothpaste recipes to commercial toothpastes, growing trend towards premiumisation of toothpaste packaging; growing levels of health awareness and the resulting increase in demand for organic toothpastes; and untapped demand potential in densely populated countries such as India and China. Key Topics Covered: I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & REPORT SCOPE II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. MARKET OVERVIEW Impact of Covid-19 and a Looming Global Recession Oral Care Products: Maintaining Health of Teeth & Mouth Toothpaste: An Essential Component of Routine Oral Hygiene Regimen Developing Countries Turbo Charge Future Market Growth Per Capita Consumption (in Grams per Year) of Toothpaste in Select Countries for 2019 Whitening Toothpastes Lead Global Toothpaste Market Competitive Landscape Multinationals Rule the Roost in the Toothpaste Market Factors Impacting Sales of Toothpastes in the Worldwide Market (Score on a Scale of 1-10) Global Competitor Market Shares Toothpaste Competitor Market Share Scenario Worldwide (in %): 2019 Saturation Triggers Competition and Segmentation Change in Marketers Strategy Recent Market Activity Leading Toothpaste Brands Brand Extensions: Order of the Day Advertising and Promotion Advertising - For a Brand New Smile The GEL Craze Branding - Impact on Purchases Advertising in the Children's Toothpaste Segment Distribution Channels Supermarkets Grabs the Largest Pie Strategies to Increase Market Share Emergence of Multi-Channel Buyers Online Marketing Catching Up Product Overview Types of Toothpastes Regular Anti-Caries / Fluoride Toothpastes Whitening Toothpaste Children's Toothpaste Desensitizing Toothpaste Gum Protection Toothpaste Multi-benefit Toothpaste Tartar Control Toothpaste Toothpaste Formula Toothpaste Ingredients Select Toothpaste Ingredients and their Attributes / Functions 2. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS CCA Industries, Inc. ( USA ) ) Church & Dwight Co., Inc. ( USA ) ) Colgate-Palmolive Company ( USA ) ) Colgate-Palmolive ( India ) Limited ( India ) ) Limited ( ) Dabur India Limited ( India ) ) GlaxoSmithKline plc (UK) Henkel AG & Co. KGaA ( Germany ) ) LG Household & Health Care Ltd. ( South Korea ) ) Lion Corporation ( Japan ) ) Patanjali Ayurved Limited ( India ) ) Procter & Gamble Company ( USA ) ) Ranir, LLC ( USA ) ) Sunstar Suisse S.A. ( Switzerland ) ) Unilever NV ( Netherlands ) ) Hindustan Unilever Limited ( India ) 3. MARKET TRENDS & DRIVERS Emerging Countries: Underpenetrated Markets Present Significant Growth Potential Exponential Increase in Global Urban Population World Urban Population in Million: 1950-2050P Degree of Urbanization Worldwide: Urban Population as a % of Total Population by Geographic Region for the Years 2000, 2020 & 2050 Burgeoning Middle Class Population Global Middle Class Population (in Million) by Region: 2005, 2015, 2025 & 2030 Demographic Trends Influence Marketer Strategies Herbal and Natural Toothpastes Give Tough Competition to Conventional Toothpastes Biotechnology to Enable Re-growth of Teeth BioMin Technologies Introduces Innovative Toothpaste Ingredient Rise in Value-Added Toothpastes Select Value-Added Toothpaste Products New Flavors Flood Market Mint - The Preferred Toothpaste Flavor Toothpaste Flavors: A Comparison of Global Leading Flavors Used in Toothpastes Segment Trends in the Toothpaste Market Popularity of Whitening Toothpastes Toothpastes with Natural Ingredients Gain Popularity Sensitivity Toothpastes Children's Toothpaste Remineralizing Systems Triclosan: Effective but Faces Concerns over Environmental & Health Risks Ban on Parabens in Few Markets Recyclable Toothpaste Tube - The New Trend in Oral Care Market 4. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE III. MARKET ANALYSIS IV. COMPETITION Total Companies Profiled: 113 For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gy1kys Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com Florida protesters sporting MAGA t-shirts and hats defied COVID safety rules and marched maskless through a Target store shouting 'take off your mask!' during a demonstration this week. Footage shared online shows a small group of anti-maskers marching through the aisles of the store on North Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale shouting 'take it off' at other customers and cheering when people apparently complied. The incident took place in hard-hit Florida where confirmed cases of the deadly virus have now topped 671,000 and the death toll is edging closer to 13,000. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has not issued a statewide mask mandate for public places but several businesses - including Target - have nationwide rules requiring customers and staff to sport face coverings inside their buildings. Florida protesters sporting MAGA t-shirts and hats defied COVID safety rules and marched maskless through a Target store shouting 'take off your mask!' The video shows the anti-maskers - including some children - parading through the store, with some swinging masks in their hands and none wearing them on their faces Footage shared online shows a small group of anti-maskers marching through the aisles of the store on North Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale shouting 'take it off' at other customers The video shows the anti-maskers - including some children - parading through the store, with some swinging masks in their hands and none wearing them on their faces. Some protesters were seen wearing Trump merchandise including 'Make America Great Again' t-shirts and hats while one wore a t-shirt featuring a photo of Barack Obama sporting a Trump hat. One man in a Trump top - a reference to Trump's refusal to wear a mask for much of the pandemic before backtracking in July - held aloft a speaker blasting the tune 'We're Not Gonna Take It' by Twisted Sister. The group shouted 'take it off' and 'take your mask off' at customers shopping in the store. One protester Cristina Gomez, who hit headlines in June when she claimed people wearing masks were 'obeying the devil's laws', posted the incident live on her social media account. 'If an infant doesn't wear a mask, then no one should wear a mask,' she said in her livestream. 'People looking at us like, 'What's going on?' Isn't it crazy how people now look at me like we crazy because we don't have a mask on? I think y'all crazy for having a mask.' Her footage also showed the man in the MAGA top standing on the trailer of a vehicle outside the store prior to the protest shouting about being 'sick and tired of having to wear one of these things'. Footage also showed a man in the MAGA top standing on the trailer of a vehicle outside the store prior to the protest shouting about being 'sick and tired of having to wear one of these things' The man ranted that people who don't want to wear masks shouldn't need to before dramatically hurling his mask to the floor The man ranted that people who don't want to wear masks should be protected from the virus because the people who do wear them are not spreading the virus. 'If somebody wants to wear a mask to go into a grocery store let them wear a masks but how is it that if their mask is working that I have to wear one too,' he shouted, before dramatically hurling his mask to the floor. Gomez had promoted the so-called 'anti mask flash mob' on her Facebook page prior to the event. Back in June, the anti-masker also went viral on social media when she blasted a local mask mandate at a public meeting of Palm Beach County commissioners and made unsubstantiated claims masks were 'killing people'. 'You literally cannot mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that that mask is killing people,' she said. 'Every single one of you that are obeying the devil's laws are going to be arrested and you, doctor, are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity.' Target, which requires shoppers to wear masks or face coverings in its stores nationwide, told HuffPost they were 'aware of the group of guests who came into the store last night and we asked them to leave after they removed their masks and became disruptive and rude to other shoppers.' One protester Cristina Gomez hit headlines in June when she claimed people wearing masks were 'obeying the devil's laws' at a public meeting of Palm Beach County commissioners and made unsubstantiated claims masks were 'killing people' (pictured) Florida does not have a statewide mask mandate but several businesses - including Target - have rules requiring customers and staff to sport face masks. The Target store the protest took place above The protest came less than 24 hours before the CDC head testified under oath that a face mask offers better protection against COVID than a vaccine. 'I am going to comment as the CDC director that face masks - these face masks - are the most important, powerful public health tool that we have,' CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a Senate hearing Wednesday. 'I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will.' Donald Trump has repeatedly yo-yoed on his stance on face masks. In April his administration recommended the American public wear face coverings - a backpedaling of previous claims masks were only for people who were sick. However the president continued to refuse to wear one for several more months. In July he sported one for the first time during a visit to a military hospital and claimed he had 'never been against masks' and that they 'have a time and a place'. This Tuesday he changed tact once more saying 'there are a lot of people that think that masks are not good'. When pressed, Trump's only example was that waiters could touch their masks and touch plates when serving customers. A total of 34 states and the District of Columbia have face mask mandates in public places where social distancing is not possible. A total of 196,752 Americans have been killed by coronavirus and more than 6.6 million have been infected. Sharjeel Usmani, a former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) student leader who was arrested for his alleged role in the December 15 violence during the protest against Citizenship Amendment Act in AMU, has posted a photo on the cover of his Twitter account which says 'Rebuild Babri'. It is to be noted that Usmani is currently out on bail. "Thank you all for all your prayers and support. I apologise for being able to answer to your calls and messages. My phone and other belongings are still with the ATS. It is only now that I have been able to get access to these platforms via duplicate sim card," tweeted Usmani. Thank you all for all your prayers and support. I apologise for being able to answer to your calls and messages. My phone and other belongings are still with the ATS. It is only now that I have been able to get access to these platforms via duplicate sim card. pic.twitter.com/pRX974OUVM Sharjeel Usmani (@SharjeelUsmani) September 15, 2020 Sharjeel also posted a letter with his tweet in which he has once again tried to incite the Muslim population against the government and CAA. In the last page of the tweet, he has written that after fifty years from today, if the history of India will be written without any bias then we will find two kinds of people. Good people and bad people. He added that bad people will be those who remained silent when Muslims were ill-treated in India and good people will be those who tried to stand up for Muslims by shouting slogans and displaying colourful posters. Usmani is the son of Assistant Professor Tariq Usmani of the AMUs Department of Geography. He was arrested by Uttar Pradesh's anti-terrorist squad (ATS) sleuths from Azamgarh in July 10, 2020. Live TV He was charged with several penal offences, including sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting while armed with a deadly weapon), 149 (committing offences in the prosecution of a common object of an unlawful assembly), 153 (inciting riots) and 153 A (carrying arms in a procession) of the Indian Penal Code, said Samania. The other charges are sections 188 (disobedience to public servants order), 307 (attempt to murder), 322 (inflicting grievous injuries), 353 (assaulting public servants) and 506 (making criminal intimidation) of the IPC besides the section 67 of the Information Technology Act, he added. China will hold a summit on digital transformation in October to showcase its achievements in the field and build platforms for industry exchanges and cooperation, the organizers said Thursday. The 3rd Digital China Summit will be held in the city of Fuzhou in southeast China's Fujian Province from Oct. 12 to 14, Yang Xiaowei, deputy head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said at a press conference. The summit, jointly organized by the CAC, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the provincial government of Fujian, will be held both online and offline, and will consist of seven sections including a main forum, an exhibition and 12 sub forums. A photographer has snapped the incredible moment three ducks escorted a highly venomous tiger snake that had been swimming in their lake back to the shore. Tim Kemp was in Whiteman Park north of Perth this week when he spotted the snake making its way to a patch of floating vegetation where the ducks had been sitting. He immediately braced for the worst, expecting the ducks to become the snake's next meal only to then see them calmly lead the reptile back onto dry land. Mr Kemp told Daily Mail Australia he'd never seen anything like it in all his years as a wildlife photographer. Nature photographer Tim Kemp witnessed the remarkable moment three ducks escorted a tiger snake back to shore in Whiteman Park near Perth this week Mr Kemp said he initially thought the ducks were about to become the snake's next meal before seeing them lead the reptile back to shore 'As the minutes ticked by and there weren't any feathers flying or wings splashing, I realised if the birds knew the snake was there, they didn't care,' he said. 'I think the ducks knew they weren't in any danger. None of them had a nest on the vegetation they were relaxing on. And they're just too big for the tiger snake to fit in its gob. 'Smaller birds and frogs would have been on the menu, had the snake been able to find them.' After racing to snap a few photos of the remarkable encounter Mr Kemp watched as the snake slithered onto the shore and out of sight. He was amazed the three ducks were all from different breeds but had come together to shoo away the snake - only to return to the swamp completely unfazed. 'The ducks weren't any worse for wear. Several breeding pairs swam off together. I watched a male Shelduck showing off to a female. A number of swans and ibises came gliding in for a cleaning and relaxation session on the little green island,' he said. Tiger snakes are extremely venomous to humans and can prey on small birds and mammals Mr Kemp said the birds were unfazed by the tiger snake and were far too big to be eaten The snake had swam towards a patch of vegetation where the ducks had been basking in the sunshine 'I walked back to my car, thinking about how a bunch of different species of birds worked together to guide that Tiger snake away from their hangout. 'Don't see that every day.' Mr Kemp said he'd had run ins with snakes before but had never seen one take to the water. On one occasion he credited a red-cheeked wattlebird from 'saving' him from a Tiger snake after he nearly walked right on top of it. 'As usual, I wasn't paying attention to the ground. The wattlebird's calls became louder as I approached,' he said. Mr Kemp said the ducks didn't seem to care they were swimming next to an extremely deadly snake Tiger snakes can swim underwater for up to nine minutes as well as climbing trees 'When I was about two metres from the bird, it dropped off its perch and swooped down in front of me - claws and scimitar-shaped beak flashing at the Tiger snake I'd not seen. "Phew! Thanks bird!".' Tiger snakes are highly venomous to humans and are responsible for the second highest number of snake bites in Australia. Bites can be fatal if left untreated and in January this year a 79-year-old farmer in Tasmania died after he was bitten several times on his leg and hand. If you really want to honour him, implement his inclusive ideology: SC Bose's grandnephew Agriculture reform bills will lead to increased profits for farmers, forces trying to mislead them: PM India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: Hailing the passage of three farm sector bills in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday described these proposed legislations as historic and asserted that they will rid farmers and the farm sector of middlemen and other bottlenecks. With ruling BJP ally Shiromani Akali Dal joining the opposition in protesting these bills, Modi asserted that many forces are trying to "mislead' farmers and assured the farming community that minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement of their produce will continue along with a lot of other options for them. These reforms will provide new opportunities to farmers to sell their produce and will lead to increased profits for them, he said. Modi also urged farmers and those associated with the agriculture sector to listen to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar's reply to the discussion on these bills. "These agriculture reforms will provide new avenues to farmers to sell their produce which will increase their profits. Agriculture sector will benefit from modern technology and our farmers will also be empowered," the prime minister said in a series of tweets. Many forces are trying to mislead farmers, he added, while assuring them of the benefits of these reforms. Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill. It has already passed Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill. Harsimrat Kaur Badal quits PM's cabinet over farm bills, why is SAD upset with BJP | Oneindia News The three bills will now be tabled in Rajya Sabha and become laws after the Upper House also passes them. They will replace ordinances promulgated by the Union government. The two bills were passed by voice vote in Lok Sabha earlier in the evening amid protests by opposition parties with SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal also vehemently opposing them, calling these measures as anti-farmers. The SAD's lone member in the Union Cabinet Harsimrat Kaur Badal quit the government, accusing it of not taking farmers on board. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:57:40|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RAMALLAH, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A senior Palestinian official announced on Thursday that Palestine does not intend to withdraw from the Arab League following the normalization agreements of Israel with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, told the official Palestinian radio Voice of Palestine that the Palestinian leadership decides to keep a Palestinian representation in the Arab League. On Wednesday night, the Palestinian leadership held a meeting in Ramallah to decide on a Palestinian decision against the Arab League, after the latter had failed to condemn the Arab normalization agreements with Israel. "The leadership decided to stay in the Arab League depending on the importance of influencing it, so that if we cannot take what we want, at least we can block the issuance of what we do not want ... it is important for the Palestinians to remain in the Arab League to be influential, mainly affecting the positions of the Arab states whose options towards normalization have not been decided yet," Majdalani said. Palestine "is currently counting more on the positions of parties as well as civil and popular institutions in the Arab countries than the official regimes," he added. Enditem Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris participates in a Sister to Sister Mobilization in Action event during a campaign stop Thursday in Philadelphia. Read more Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris came to Philadelphia on Thursday with an itinerary and a message aimed at reaching the citys Black and Latino voters, saying the coronavirus pandemic has been an accelerator of inequities minority communities have long faced and that President Donald Trump has worsened their plight. "It has accelerated the disparities. It has highlighted the injustices, Harris, a Senator from California, said outside City Councilmember Cherelle Parkers East Mount Airy home. "And in one way perhaps there is then an opportunity for more people to see what some of us have been knowing for generations around issues like systemic racism. Harris' whirlwind blitz through Philadelphia was her first 2020 campaign trip to what may be the most pivotal battleground state in the election. The first Black woman, the first woman of Indian descent, and the fourth woman to ever be nominated for national office by a major party, Harris made the trip as her campaign with Joe Biden embarks on a push to appeal to Black voters in key states like Pennsylvania. Democrats will likely need improved turnout in minority communities to overcome Trumps resilient popularity with white working class voters in rural areas and small Rust Belt towns. Biden was also in the state Thursday, appearing outside Scranton for a CNN town hall, two days after Trumps ABC town hall in Philadelphia. Harris first stop was in West Oak Lane, where U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) introduced her to Black business owners on Ogontz Avenue. Harris spoke with the family that owns Paul Beales Florist, which has been in business for 49 years, as well as Relish, the Southern-style restaurant known for being the preferred Election Day eatery for many of the citys Black politicians. Harris said she ate there in 2012. Passersby lined up to greet Harris, who took selfies and elbow-bumped fans. Leela Gupta, the daughter of Evans' chief of staff, Anuj Gupta, brought a copy of Harris' memoir, The Truths We Hold, which the senator signed for her. READ MORE: 5 questions that will help decide the presidential race in Pennsylvania In her afternoon stop in Parkers yard, Harris laid out her and Bidens agenda for Black communities, including a $100-billion loan program aimed at Black- and brown-owned small businesses, a $70-billion plan to increase funding for historically Black colleges and universities, and protecting the Affordable Care Act from Republican-led court challenges. The dismantling of Obamacare, she said, would worsen the racial disparities in diseases including the coronavirus. Black folks are three times as likely to contract it, twice as likely to die from it, Harris said. Montgomery County pediatric surgeon Ala Stanford, who founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium to make testing more accessible to Black Philadelphians, thanked Harris for acknowledging those disparities. My heart is beating out of my chest to hear what you said, she said. Parker pressed Harris on what a Biden administration would do for city governments, noting that Philadelphia had limited options this spring in addressing a $750 million budget gap caused by the pandemic-induced recession. Mayor Jim Kenney has repeatedly pressed the federal government for increased direct funding to cities. Mayors cant be successful, Senator, without help from Washington, Parker said. We have limited revenue-regenerating capacity. We cant close the gap between the haves and the have-nots without you. Harris said she and Biden had discussed creating a council of advisers of mayors and governors who would inform the policy on the front end, because what those leaders dont want or need is for us to tell you later what weve done to you. Parker is Councils majority leader and a potential 2023 mayoral candidate. She and Evans both hail from the storied Northwest Coalition political machine, which controls largely African American wards in Northwest Philadelphia that often post the highest Democratic turnout rates in the city. Later, Harris participated in a closed-door roundtable discussion with Latino elected officials and community leaders at Taller Puertorriqueno in Kensington. In remarks after the discussion, Harris said a Biden administration would not ignore Puerto Rico and accused Trump of doing just that in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Most Latinos in Philadelphia are of Puerto Rican descent. It has been an administration that has denied the people of Puerto Rico the dignity that they deserve, Harris said. Harris' motorcade also made a surprise stop at the Democratic City Committee headquarters, where she met privately with party chairman Bob Brady, City Council President Darrell L. Clarke and State Sen. Sharif Street (D, Phila.). In the evening, she attended a virtual fundraiser from the campaigns headquarters in Center City. State health officials announced another 15 new coronavirus deaths on Thursday, bringing the statewide death count to 9,051 since the start of the pandemic. Officials also confirmed another 419 cases of COVID-19, for a total now of at least 124,139 in Massachusetts. Thats based on 27,644 new molecular tests reported on Thursday, according to the Department of Public Health. There are currently 377 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including 64 people in intensive care. Massachusetts is one of 27 states and U.S. territories where the number of new cases remain relatively low compared to other parts of the country, according to a New York Times analysis. Cases remain elevated in parts of the South and the Midwest, including North Dakota, Missouri, Wisconsin and Arkansas, among others. As of Thursday, there are approximately 6,613,331 positive COVID-19 tests in the U.S., which is up 41,464 since Wednesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been roughly 196,277 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. On Wednesday, the DPH upgraded the COVID risk level for six communities to high," including Worcester, Nantucket, Plainville, Saugus, Tyngsborough and Wrentham. There are a total of 17 towns and cities designated high risk, including Chelsea, Dedham, Everett, Framingham, Lawrence, Lynn, Lynnfield, Monson, New Bedford, Revere and Winthrop. The states weekly public health report, which is updated every Wednesday, will now include statistics on tests, cases and positivity rate at colleges and universities statewide. Roughly 60 colleges and universities were included in this weeks report. As more colleges initiate testing, results will be added to the weekly report. Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday said positive test results from colleges and universities will be included in the daily case counts and testing data published by DPH. Since Aug. 15, there have been approximately 500 positive coronavirus tests on college campuses based on roughly 500,000 overall tests conducted since then. Thats a positive test rate thats obviously well below the statewide average and it shows that colleges, universities, and students are doing their part to make sure that they reopen safely, Baker said. These are the number of coronavirus cases in each county as of Thursday: Barnstable County: 1,693 Berkshire County: 692 Bristol County: 9,657 Dukes County: 60 Essex County: 18,815 Franklin County: 398 Hampden County: 7,933 Hampshire County: 1,200 Middlesex County: 26,469 Nantucket County: 82 Norfolk County: 9,932 Plymouth County: 9,452 Suffolk County: 23,464 Worcester County: 13,969 Unknown location: 323 Related Content: Farmers have urged the Scottish government to tackle waste crime as fears mount the issue is becoming 'increasingly more visible' in rural areas. In a letter to the Scottish government, farmers and landowners have demanded a new approach to 'turn the tables on this crime for good'. They called on the Scottish government to urgently provide clarity on how it intends to move forward its work on tackling flytipping. In the letter, leading rural groups say they would like to see a shift in focus from the 'endless task' of clearing up other people's mess to preventing it from occurring in the first place. They also warn that with every week that passes by without serious action is 'another week of beautiful countryside being used as a dumping ground'. The organisations sent the open letter to Roseanna Cunningham MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform. Scottish Land & Estates, NFU Scotland, Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime, Keep Scotland Beautiful and Woodland Trust said the negative impact flytipping had was 'significant'. "Scotlands beautiful countryside continues to be blighted by peoples rubbish on a daily basis," the groups explained. "We know that flytipping can cause a wide range of problems to the natural, social and economic environment, including harm to wildlife and livestock, disease transmission, soil contamination, and substantial clear-up costs. "Waste crime is becoming an increasingly more visible issue and we believe a new approach is needed to turn the tables on this crime for good." The Scottish governments recent review of the national litter strategy includes measures on flytipping, working with other groups on identifying action which can be taken to tackle the issue. But rural groups believe this is not enough, and have called for a 'coordinated strategic national response' to tackle flytipping in Scotland. They added that a greater use of data to better asses the scale and impact of the problem could be used to help drive action at a regional or local level. The groups said: "We believe 2020 should be the year we must start to address this issue - now is the time to bring all stakeholders to the table and agree how we can collectively tackle flytipping. "We firmly believe that by dealing with flytipping more effectively there are significant benefits for Scotlands economy, which as we recover from a pandemic could not be more important." It follows a number of high profile fly-tipping incidents which have affected farmers and landowners across the country so far this year. Last month, a Lanarkshire farmer had no choice but to pay 2,000 to clean up two tonnes of raw meat waste which was dumped on his land. Meanwhile, a Merseyside farmer took revenge on a fly-tipper who dumped hundreds of tyres on his farm. A viral clip shows the tyres being tipped back onto the pavement outside the culprit's house. Farmers and landowners across the UK are urged to report any fly-tipping incidents to their local council. Fiona Bruce pops up on my computer screen, looking like she's about to read the headlines. She is actually at home in Oxfordshire eating shortbread, but has instinctively assumed a power pose; arms stretched out, hands on the desk, just like on the News at 10. Her hair is even immaculately blow-dried - she's just been to the hairdressers and acknowledges "it's not bad". Bruce is lively company, sharing anecdotes about MPs, gleaned from her 31 years working at the BBC, and laughing conspiratorially when she tells me about the time that Amber Rudd felt awkward in the Question Time green room with Nigel Farage and suggested they put some music on to fill the silence. It's all friendly and jolly. Until, that is, I bring up the subject of pay. Bruce is the second highest paid woman at the BBC after Zoe Ball, earning 450,000 a year (Vanessa Feltz and Lauren Laverne are the only other women in the list of top-earners). That's still considerably less than the men, led by Gary Lineker who made 1.75 million last year (he's since agreed a 400,000 pay cut). Are some BBC staff paid too much? Bruce's smile disappears. "I will leave that to others to answer," she says in clipped tones. "It is unacceptable for there not to be equal pay," she expands later. "The BBC has made great strides forward in that territory, especially in the last three years - there is now a representation of women that there wasn't three or five years ago but it still has a way to go." Bruce has been at the vanguard of this change. In 2003 she became the first female presenter of the News at 10. She now presents The Antiques Roadshow and Fake or Fortune, and last year she became the first female host of Question Time, which is back tomorrow night. Expand Close Fiona Bruce hosting BBCs Question Time / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fiona Bruce hosting BBCs Question Time Her salary makes up for the years she was underpaid when she started out as a researcher on Panorama aged 25, she says. "I was not confident talking about pay at all," she says. "If I got a promotion or another job it just never occurred to me to argue about the salary. I knew from the get-go that there was a differential in how much people were paid but it just never crossed my mind to talk about it." She can laugh about it now but there is still a sense that Bruce (56) can't believe her luck. She watches all her shows back. "I think, 'what could I have done better?' Could I have got a question in quicker, should I have let a person talk more?" Does she ever feel she has nailed it? "I don't think I ever will." We are interrupted by a fluffy paw appearing in the corner of the screen and Bruce introduces me to her Irish terrier, Molly, whom she talks to in an adoring, soft voice. When she started on Question Time the pressure was on and "I was incredibly nervous". But she's relaxed into the role. Viewing figures are up and she and can't wait to get back to it. "Now that Brexit is in the news again I've dug out all my Northern Ireland notes from the end of last year," she says, taking a sip of tea from a tangerine-coloured mug that matches her bracelet. Does talking about EU politics make a refreshing change from Covid conversations? "I wouldn't say that. There has never been a more important time for people to be able to ask questions and find out information. Since we came off air in June there have been periods when I felt the lack of opportunity to give members of the public a chance to put their questions to our national leaders; during the exams crisis, with quarantine, in general the way the nation is handling coronavirus." Her daughter Mia (18) took her A-levels this year and "it was pretty challenging for that cohort". Bruce also has a son, Sam (22) and she is married to advertising executive Nigel Sharrocks. She was unimpressed with the Government's press conferences. "There were only ever two questions from the public and you know as well as I do that you may not get an answer the first time." Sounding like a headmistress, she chides me for even mentioning them in the same sentence as her show. "It's like comparing apples and oranges." Tonight, Bruce and the panel will be joined virtually by people in Oldham. Covid means there will be no chats beforehand or debrief in the green room, over "tepid white wine". "We used to have strange green rooms," she says. "There was once a Tory who went off to meditate before he went on air, which was a first for me." The biggest disappointment when she took over from David Dimbleby was that the post-show refreshments weren't better. "David has a certain status so I assumed there would be better nibbles. Not at all. Sometimes it is Domino's pizza. I'm sure there are others available but that goes down well with the team. I'm not a huge fan. I wouldn't touch a pineapple pizza. Margherita is my kind of thing." The downside of gathering the nation to have their say is that Bruce has to mediate and make sure everyone has the opportunity to speak. This puts her in the firing line for complaints about BBC bias. She doesn't "look online much". "I get criticised from all sides, which is better than if it was coming one way. Question Time is rare in that it puts people with different opinions in a room together - that's not a position people usually find themselves in. Usually they tend to read papers that accord with their political outlook or follow those people on Twitter. So obviously it can be uncomfortable to go out of that comfort zone." Expand Close David Dimbleby (Richard Lewisohn/BBC/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp David Dimbleby (Richard Lewisohn/BBC/PA) Does she see herself doing Question Time until she is 80 like Dimbleby? "Oh gawd," she sighs. "Will they want me to do it that long? When I started I couldn't even imagine having a job until I was 50 but then I sort of wised up." This is what she meant, she says, when she said recently she didn't think she would have a career after 56. "That was about my naivety about when I needed to take out a pension. I couldn't imagine having a job after 50. But there is a point about how in the not too distant past it was unusual for a woman to be working in her fifties. By and large that is something women have found more than men. There is no reason why a woman should be asking herself that question in my profession anymore." She's sanguine about the threats facing the BBC - recent accusations levelled at it include a lack of diversity and the licence fee being too expensive, as well as the ministers refusing to appear on its programmes. "When you have been at the BBC for as long as I have I cannot see a director general who did not have his work cut out for him. It is not an organisation where it ever feels like plain sailing. The challenges are different now - there is streaming - but think about the Labour years. I used to hear Alastair Campbell on the phone after the news every night not happy about what he had seen. The BBC has always felt, how should I put this?" She purses her lips. "Under scrutiny, always having to fight its corner, but so it should. Let's see how the licence fee discussion turns out. It's not the first time, there was a review in 2017." Bruce is a feminist with an aversion to mansplaining ("who wants mansplaining? Not me"), so was she disappointed that the new director general wasn't a woman? She toes the party line. "Tim is a really, you know, a good fit for the job, actually. I am interested to see what he does. Of course we will have a female director general in the next 10 years. I am sure." Expand Close Reni Eddo-Lodges book explores themes around the conversation about race in the UK (Ryan Phillips/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Reni Eddo-Lodges book explores themes around the conversation about race in the UK (Ryan Phillips/PA) After the Black Lives Matter protests she read Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge. "I wish I'd read it before. It was so thought-provoking, interesting and useful. I don't think you can read it and not challenge your own assumptions." There has been discussion about race and gender at the BBC but what about class? Bruce went to state school and was the first person in her family to go to university (she read French and Italian at Oxford and was briefly a punk). "B****y hell, I'd better get myself another biscuit," she says. "The BBC is not perfect for sure but it is always trying to do better and it is not complacent." What is annoying is that as well as being paid less, "women are held to a different standard" on TV. "There's that American anchor who wore the same suit every day for a year to make the point that no one notices what men wear and for women it gets picked up on all the time. It is a fact of life, although it is not one I appreciate." Expand Close Peter Sissons (Ian West/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Peter Sissons (Ian West/PA) She insists that she doesn't let it affect what she eats. "Peter Sissons used to tease me when we did the news together because I eat so much. I do eat big portions and working in TV is not going to change that." Question Time "takes up a lot of my headspace", which means she has to make an effort to carve out time to switch off. "If I don't go running, go riding and walk the dog that way madness lies. It is too stressful if you don't." A news alert saying that the R rate is now one pings up on her screen. Bruce looks alarmed. "I was quite anxious at the start of lockdown," she says. "I don't want to get ill so I do all the things you are supposed to do, but at the start we didn't know what the rules were. I remember seeing a woman on the high street with a branch two metres long, cutting a swathe through anyone who tried to get close." She used the time off productively, clearing out her homes (the other is in north London). "I found an autobiography of Robin Day, who used to present Question Time," she says with a warm smile. "It must have been a present from my parents when I had started working at the BBC. In it they wrote 'maybe you will be as famous as him one day'. At the time I had such a junior position and thought maybe I would become assistant producer. I am incredibly lucky." EVENING STANDARD To understand the massive capabilities and complexities of the brain, neuroscientists segment it into regions based on what they appear to do--like processing what we sense or how to move. What's been lacking, however, is an ability to tie those functional maps precisely and consistently to matching distinctions of physical structure, especially in live animals while they are performing the functions of interest. In a new study, MIT researchers demonstrate a new way to do that, providing an unprecedented pairing of functional mapping in live mice with distinguishing structural information for each region all the way through the cortex into deeper tissue below. "Our study shows for the first time that structural and functional coupling of visual areas in the mouse brain can be detected at sub-cellular resolution in vivo," wrote the authors based in the lab of Mriganka Sur, Newton Professor of Neuroscience in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. The technique could give scientists more precise ways to distinguish the borders and contents of regions they wish to study and could help them better understand the way that structural distinctions develop within individuals in different functional regions over time. Sur's lab, for instance, is intensely interested in understanding the especially complex development of vision. Humans have 35 or so distinct functional regions that contribute to processing vision, Sur notes, and even mice have 10. "There is something profound in the way that vision is represented and created in mammalian brains," Sur said. "Where do these areas come from, what do they mean and what do they do? It has not been easy to understand how they differ. The critical thing is to precisely map or match the functional representation of each area with its anatomical uniqueness." Combining function and structure To develop tools to help answer those questions, postdoc Murat Yildirim led the study published in Biomedical Optics Express. In it he describes how the research team combined a method of charting functional areas--retinotopic mapping--with deep structural information measured by a technology he has helped to pioneer--third-harmonic generation (THG) three-photon microscopy. In retinotopic mapping, researchers can identify functional regions by engineering neurons to flash when they become electrically active (and show changes in calcium) in response to a particular stimulation. For example, scientists could show a mouse a pattern moving across a screen and mark where neurons light up, with each area showing a characteristic location and pattern of response. Three-photon microscopy can finely resolve individual cells and their smaller substructures as deep as a millimeter or more--enough to see all the way through the cortex. THG, meanwhile, adds the capability to finely resolve both blood vessels and the fibers of a material called myelin that wrap the long, tendrilous axons of many neurons. THG does not require adding any labeling dyes or chemicals. Crucially, THG yields an important optical measure called effective attenuation length (EAL), which is a measure of how much the light is absorbed or scattered as it moves through the tissue. In the study, Yildirim and co-authors show that EAL specifically depends on each region's unique architecture of cells, blood vessels and myelin. They measured EAL in each of six visual functional regions and showed that the EAL significantly differed among neighboring visual areas, providing a structural signature of sorts for each functional area. Their measurements were so precise, in fact, that they could show how EAL varied within functional regions, being most unique toward the middle and blending closer to the values of neighboring regions out toward the borders. In other words, by combining the retinotopic mapping with THG three-photon microscopy, Yildirim said, scientists can identify distinct regions by both their function and structure while continuing to work with animals in live experiments. This can produce more accurate and faster results than making observations during behavior and then dissecting tissue in hopes of relocating those same exact positions in preserved brain sections later. "We would like to combine the strength of retinotopic mapping with three-photon imaging to get more structural information," Yildirim said. "Otherwise there may be some discrepancies when you do the live imaging of brain activity but then take the tissue out, stain it and try to find the same region." Especially as three-photon microscopy gains wider adoption and imaging speeds improve--right now imaging a millimeter deep column of cortex takes about 15 minutes, the authors acknowledge--the team expects its new method could be used not only for studies of the visual system but also in regions all around the cortex. Moreover it may help characterize disease states as well as healthy brain structure and function. "This advance should enable similar studies of structural and functional coupling in other sensory and non-sensory cortical areas in the brains of mice and other animal models," they wrote. "We believe that the structural and functional correlation in visual areas that we describe for the first time points to crucial developmental mechanisms that set up these areas, thus our work would lead to a better fundamental understanding of brain development, and of disorders such as Alzheimer's, stroke and aging." ### In addition to Yildirim and Sur, the paper's other authors are Ming Hu, Nhat Le, Hiroki Sugihara and Peter So. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, The JPB Foundation and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative provided funding for the study. By Kim Se-jeong As flu season approaches, the possibility of free flu vaccinations for the country's entire population has been increasingly discussed by politicians. The idea has been debated in response to growing concerns that an increasing number of flu patients, coupled with COVID-19 patients, could have a potentially devastating effect on the nation's healthcare system. So will everyone be able to receive a free flu vaccination this autumn? According to Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA), the answer is no. The KCDA said this is because the number of vaccine doses produced is decided early on in the year. "Usually, the authorities estimate the number of doses they need early in the year and start production from March, which takes about five to six months. Given the COVID-19 situation, we added 5 million more this year which brought the total to around 29.5 million," a KCDA official said. While many have asked if the government could allocate an emergency budget for more vaccination doses the official said it's not about money. Rather, it's an issue of time. She said the vaccine production usually takes five to six months. "If we start to produce more today, the extra doses will not be ready until at least January," she said. If more were ordered now they would arrive halfway through the winter season, which would be too late to have any significant effect, as after the flu vaccination it takes around a month for the body to reach its peak antibody count. In response to the question of using remaining vaccine inventory from last year the official responded, "Every February, the World Health Organization announces the recommended composition of influenza virus vaccines for use for that year and the vaccine producers make the product based on those guidelines. Unused supplies are discarded." Importing more vaccine doses from outside Korea is easier said than done, because the global vaccine supply only has a small surplus and with the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic, the flu vaccine is already in strong demand, according to the official. Korean companies don't produce all the locally administered vaccine doses and use imports help meet the quota. The idea of free vaccinations for all citizens gathered speed earlier this month. "Instead of giving everyone 20,000 won in cash, I propose giving everyone a free flu vaccination," Joo Ho-young, the leader of the main opposition People Power Party, said on Sept 11 during a National Assembly session. As autumn approaches, the government's concern is growing deeper that the number of flu patients will grow, increasing pressure on healthcare workers who are already overworked by the pandemic and stretching thin general health resources. Also, since flu symptoms are similar to COVID-19 symptoms, testing centers are likely to be busier with people when the flu season actually starts. Still, free flu vaccinations are available for those aged 18 and younger, pregnant women and people aged 62 and over. In particular, infants are required to receive the vaccination twice with an interval of one month, while others only require a single injection. There are different time slots allocated for the free shots based on age group, so those eligible are advised to check with their local health center regarding details. Those who are not eligible for the free shot but wish to be vaccinated can visit their preferred healthcare clinic. Two types of vaccines are available and estimated prices are 20,000 won and 40,000 won but prices vary slightly from clinic to clinic. For more information (Korean only), visit . When we think about the swamp that President Trump is trying to drain, we think about the one in Washington, D.C. There is also a stunning example in the Los Angeles County government. Dr. Barbara Ferrer is director of the county public health department. Seeing that she's a doctor running a health department, one naturally imagines that she's a medical doctor, but that's not the case. She has a Ph.D. in social welfare; her Bachelor of Arts is in community studies. Her salary is $465,411 per year. For context, the president of the United States is paid $400,000 (although President Trump donates all of it to worthy causes). A U.S. senator or representative gets $174,000. Dr. Ferrer has been well known recently for two things. She was recorded speaking to an internal group in the county, and, in answer to the question of when children would be allowed to go back to school, she said sometime after the election. Since the election isn't a milestone for the status of the COVID-19 virus, the obvious connection is the politically partisan plan to inflict as much inconvenience and impact on people's lives as possible, on the theory that if people are frustrated, they won't re-elect President Trump. Her second conspicuous issue has been a battle with a large church in the county, Grace Community Church, and its pastor, John MacArthur. The church has chosen to hold Sunday services every week, contrary to orders from the county and courts that have so far heard the case. The county has also sent notice that it is terminating the church's lease on a parking lot that has been in effect for 45 years. The pastor's justification for not obeying the county is, the biblical command to meet and worship, the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, and the highly exaggerated claims regarding the virus. Using figures from the Centers for Disease Control, he has pointed out that it doesn't qualify as a pandemic, and the death rate from the virus is actually quite small. Even without considering all that, the rate of new cases in Los Angeles County peaked in July and has dropped rapidly since then, as has the percentage of positive tests, which is now below 4%. So one doesn't need to look only to Washington, D.C. to find outrageous examples of career bureaucrats whose priorities are unrelated to the public good. Image: Los Angeles County Public Health Department video via YouTube, edited in Pixlr. New Delhi: A week after Indian and Chinese foreign ministers met in Russian capital city of Moscow, India on Thursday reiterated its call to China for "complete disengagement" at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, "Chinese side should sincerely work with the Indian side for complete disengagement at the earliest from all friction areas including Pangong Lake as well as de-escalation in border areas in accordance with the bilateral agreements and protocols on the maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas." Live TV He added, "We hope the Chinese side will strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control and not make further attempts to unilaterally change status quo." Both the foreign ministers had met in Moscow on September 10 (Thursday) on the sidelines of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers meet for two hours. After the meet, they came out with a joint statement calling for easing of tensions by disengagement. Since then while the Chinese side hasn't indulged in any aggression at LAC, no movement has also not happened to disengage by PLA troops. Meanwhile, statements from Beijing haven't been something that can instil confidence. Chinese foreign ministry in its daily presser on Thursday said, "It is imperative for India to immediately correct its mistakes" and "realize disengagement on the ground and take concrete action to ease up tensions in the relevant areas". India has been focusing on diplomacy and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking in both houses of the Parliament said New Delhi is committed to peaceful dialogue with the Chinese side including through diplomatic and military channels. The situation remains precarious on the ground and as winter sets in the Indian Army have started to send supplies for forces at the LAC. WASHINGTON It would be months before Louis DeJoy took the reins of the nations mail system, and the U.S. Postal Service already was mired in crisis. Mail carriers were revolting, fearful they had few protections against the newly emerging coronavirus. The Trump administration was bearing down on its finances, sending USPS officials scrambling over what they saw as a potential illegal takeover of agency operations. And then there was a looming standoff with Amazon, which privately signaled it could take some of its lucrative delivery business elsewhere. The tensions surfaced at an April 9 meeting, when Amazon executives "stated their concerns" about the Postal Service's economic plight amid the pandemic and questioned its "viability to them as a continued shipping partner," according to a once-secret memo circulated within the agency, which described the situation as an "inflection point." (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The wide-ranging headaches that so troubled the USPS in April ultimately foreshadowed a summer of upheaval, thrusting the once-venerated mail service into a political maelstrom months before a presidential election. Newly disclosed details of these struggles are laid bare in nearly 10,000 pages of emails, legal memos, presentations and other documents obtained by The Washington Post from American Oversight, a watchdog group that requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, which mostly span March and April, depict an agency in distress, as its deteriorating finances collided with a public-health emergency and a looming election that would be heavily reliant on absentee ballots. During that period, the USPS occasionally relied on the legal counsel of well-connected Republicans, including Stefan C. Passantino, who once served as a top White House lawyer under President Donald Trump. Passantino, whose role has not been previously reported, is also part of a new pro-Trump legal coalition preparing for the possibility of a contested election, a relationship that has raised new ethical flags among the administration's critics. The records also offer fresh detail about the Postal Service's precarious position in the White House's early pandemic response. At one point in April, USPS leaders drafted a news release announcing plans to distribute 650 million masks nationwide, enough to offer five face coverings to every American household. The document, which includes quotations from top USPS officials and other specifics, was never sent. But it suggests that the government's initial interest in tapping the Postal Service as part of its campaign to combat the coronavirus may have been far more advanced than initially reported this spring. The Postal Service declined to discuss its specific dealings with the White House, Treasury Department or Amazon about plans to distribute masks or its finances. David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, stressed in a statement that the mail agency is "firmly committed to being a source of constancy and reliability in every community." "Our more than 630,000 employees are working to make sure our customers can depend on us," he added. "We're on the front lines delivering needed medicines, supplies, benefit checks, financial statements and the important correspondence every family counts on." But the emails and other records offer fresh insight about the Postal Service, its philosophical shifts and the little-known board of governors overseeing its operations and finances. Lawmakers already have trained their attention on board leader Robert M. Duncan, a top Republican financier, for his political ties. The board later picked DeJoy, whose support for Trump, history of GOP fundraising and controversial USPS reforms have stoked widespread criticism. "I see President Trump's fingerprints all over," said Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight. "It's clear from the president's public comments, and the actions of his administration, he has a major agenda for the post office and we see a lot of it in black and white here." The pleas for help begin The frantic emails began reaching the Postal Service leadership in March, mere weeks after the coronavirus arrived in the United States. Mail carriers and, in some cases, their spouses practically pleaded with then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan and her top aides for help in protecting themselves on the front lines. At the time, New York City was emerging as the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic. Yet postal employees continued delivering letters and packages even as broad swaths of the state had started to shut down. A local union leader, whose name is redacted in email records shared with The Post, urged Brennan to follow suit and temporarily cease operations in the city. "I literally was on the phone today with many of my members screaming at me to do something [and] I don't want to die," the unnamed union official wrote, noting they had 12 confirmed coronavirus cases among the ranks by March 25. "You cannot expect the unions to convince the employees that if they come to work they have nothing to worry about." READ MORE: Louis DeJoys Postal Service policies delayed 7% of the nations first-class mail, a Senate report says Roughly a week later, USPS publicly pledged to stock up on personal protective equipment and allow employees to more easily take leave as soon as they felt sick. But angry notes continued to flood Brennan's inbox, as postal workers and their families expressed fears for the public health crisis to come. WHY IN GODS NAME ARE THEY DELIVERING UNESSENTIAL MAIL to EVERY HOUSE in a HIGHLY INFECTED AREA!!!! wrote an unidentified woman who identified herself as the spouse of a mail carrier in Pennsylvania. Do you want them to get the coronavirus! You as post master seem to be the ONLY ONE who can do something about the situation so DO SOMETHING, before the virus does it for you! Brennan did not respond to a request for comment. Partenheimer, the USPS spokesman, said in a statement that "supply chain issues" had affected the mail agency just as it had other businesses and institutions in the early stages of the pandemic. "However, those issues have long since been addressed and we are ensuring millions of masks, gloves and cleaning and sanitizing product are available and distributed to more than 30,000 locations every day through our Postal Service supply chain," he added. Inside the agency, though, leaders at the time appeared to be scrambling to keep operations running smoothly. The Trump administration had deemed postal workers essential, with the critical task of delivering medicine, supplies and other goods to a nation upended by the pandemic and largely confined to their homes. Unlike other elements of the economy, the U.S. Postal Service simply could not shut down. Some top administration officials even hoped to tap the mail service's vast network and its unrivaled ability to reach every U.S. Zip code to help Americans obtain personal protective equipment. The idea originated out of the Department of Health and Human Services, which suggested a pack of five reusable masks be sent to every residential address in the country, with the first shipments going to the hardest-hit areas. At the time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been working on coronavirus guidance that recommended face coverings, a reversal of its previous position, in the face of mounting evidence that people could spread the coronavirus without experiencing symptoms. The Postal Service prepared for the possibility it might be deputized in the effort, drawing up a news release touting that it was "uniquely suited" to help. The service specifically identified Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana as the first areas to receive face coverings, with deliveries shortly thereafter to King County, Wash.; Wayne County, Mich.; and New York, according to the newly unearthed document, which is labeled a draft. Before the news release was sent, however, the White House nixed the plan, according to senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Instead, HHS created Project America Strong, a $675 million effort to distribute "reusable cotton face masks to critical infrastructure sectors, companies, healthcare facilities, and faith-based and community organizations across the country." About 600 million of the 650 million masks ordered have been distributed, according to an HHS spokesperson, including 125 million set aside for schools. "There was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic," one administration official said in response to the scrapped mask plan. Operating in the red The Postal Service, meanwhile, faced a panic of its own. And it soon would try to turn to some of Trump's closest political allies for help. For years, the agency had been operating in the red. Its mandate to deliver to every U.S. Zip code had come at great cost, and it struggled to meet its workers' sky-high retirement obligations leaving it $160.9 billion in debt. The pandemic only exacerbated its financial standing, with agency officials in April predicting a $23 billion loss over the next 18 months and expressing fears the mail service could run out of money by October. To bridge the gap, the Democratically-controlled House proposed setting aside $25 billion for the USPS as part of the March debate over coronavirus relief legislation. But the Republican-led Senate whittled that down to $13 billion, and Trump soon after threatened to veto any bill that included direct aid to the agency. Ultimately, Congress replaced the funding with a $10 billion loan in the package that became known as the Cares Act, a pot of money the Treasury Department was tasked with administering. The approach appeared to spook the USPS, agency email records show. The money seemed insufficient, the law itself presented serious legal challenges, and some mail service leaders questioned the Trump administration's involvement, according to its emails and other records, prompting them to go on the offensive. To boost its legal and political standing, the USPS turned to Passantino, a partner at the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich and a former deputy White House counsel for Trump. He departed the administration in fall 2018, but he never fully severed his ties to Trump's orbit. Passantino has since helped the Trump Organization handle investigations led by House Democrats, for example, and he has consulted for a firm assisting his reelection campaign. Duncan, the USPS board chairman, brought in Passantino and his law firm in part to help ease the agency's financial stress, according to emails and people involved with high-level USPS deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a frank assessment of the agency. The board also retained Republican lobbyist Rick Hohlt and others to address lingering policy and budget issues in Washington, the records reveal. An April 1 memo also shows the USPS considered tapping one of Passantino's colleagues Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff and Republican National Committee chairman believing he could help break a Washington logjam over the need for additional stimulus aid. People familiar with the matter said Priebus never made those calls, and Priebus is barred by executive order from lobbying the White House until 2022. READ MORE: Senate report accuses Postmaster General Louis DeJoy of jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans Priebus and Hohlt declined to comment. Passantino and his law firm did not respond to requests for comment. The Postal Service did not answer detailed questions about their work, including the extent to which Passantino or Hohlt worked on matters related to the election, but it confirmed the hires came at a time when the board of governors was understaffed. Ethics watchdogs raised concerns about new evidence showing additional overlap between the Postal Service, which will deliver ballots this fall, and the Republican Party. "Why did the Postal Service need the services of Stefan Passantino when his primary claim to fame, the primary reason you hire him, is to carry out Donald Trump's personal and political defense work?" asked Evers, the head of American Oversight, who called him the "fox in the hen house." The document trove also includes three separate email chains referencing calls with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other agency officials over nine days in early April. Two people familiar with the matter say Treasury drove a hard line, demanding operating control over the agency in exchange for the $10 billion congressionally approved loan. Such a demand was unprecedented, postal experts said, and appeared to lead the USPS to hire another law firm in the spring to study the legality of the issue. That firm, Mayer Brown, concluded that Treasury's request was illegal. "Any agreement by the Postal Service to surrender its authority to the Secretary of the Treasury or to the [Federal Financing Bank] therefore would be illegal," lawyers concluded in an unreleased April 24 memo, referring to a federal borrowing entity. The Treasury Department ultimately backed away from the idea of assuming control of USPS operations, amid swelling opposition from congressional Democrats and Postal Service leaders. During an April 9 meeting between Kip Kranbuhl, a Treasury assistant secretary; Gary Grippo, a career Treasury official; and Postal Service executives, Grippo said Treasury would not seek to take operating control as part of the terms, according to notes from the meeting. But the agency continued to press the idea for weeks, insisting that any loan to the USPS should result in it assuming operational control of the mail agency, three people familiar with the talks said. READ MORE: Louis DeJoys rise as GOP fund-raiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees say Asked about the proposed arrangement, Monica Crowley, a Treasury spokeswoman, said in a statement that the USPS had been losing money so the Trump administration sought to "protect" billions of dollars in loans ultimately authorized for the mail service. "As in any arms-length negotiation, some of these proposals were rejected by USPS, while other reforms, such as enhanced monthly and quarterly financial reports, were agreed upon as part of the recent $10 billion loan that Treasury and USPS agreed to terms on last month," she said. "Treasury's proposed financing conditions have at all times been commercially reasonable and consistent with law. It is absurd to describe commonsense conditions on continued taxpayer funding as a 'takeover.' " But the revelations still troubled some White House critics on Capitol Hill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., faulted the administration in a statement for being "hell-bent on sabotaging the USPS," adding, "Congress must protect the USPS from attacks by Trump and his cronies tens of millions of Americans across the country are counting on us to act." A mighty challenge Amazon would prove to be a bigger headache, according to USPS email records, which reveal new details about the e-commerce giant's financial ties to the U.S. mail system. Trump for years has alleged without evidence that the Postal Service is undercharging companies, particularly Amazon, that rely on it to deliver to addresses the company itself can't reach or, in industry parlance, the "last mile." In April, the president even called on the agency to "raise the price of a package by approximately four times," marking the latest in a long line of attacks against the company. But the documents unearthed by American Oversight suggest Amazon is a lucrative client for the mail service. Amazon drove roughly $3.9 billion in revenue, and $1.6 billion in profit, for the USPS in fiscal 2019, according to multiple emails and financial statements obtained via open records laws. The Postal Service delivered 1.54 billion packages on Amazon's behalf last year, about 30% of the company's total volume in 2019, and deliveries and revenue increased this year, the documents also indicate. Amazon declined to answer questions about its relationship with the USPS. "For more than two decades, Amazon has partnered closely with the United States Postal Service to invent and deliver for our customers, which has resulted in significant revenue for the USPS and thousands of American jobs," company spokeswoman Rena Lunak said in a statement. "USPS continues to be a great partner in serving Amazon customers." White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said in a statement that the agency "has been losing billions of dollars for more than a decade and is projected to lose tens of billions more in the next decade." The tensions came to head in April as Amazon and the USPS attempted to negotiate a new contract to determine the cost at which the country's mail service will deliver packages on Amazon's behalf. The relationship is a crucial one for the USPS, which warned throughout the spring that it stood to "cede" control to its competitors if it raised rates on Amazon too high, according to emails and memos obtained by The Post. In response to the presidents attacks, the agency appeared to circulate a memo internally that appeared to fact-check his statements. Trump, for example, had claimed during a meeting of his coronavirus task force in late March that the agency lose[s] money every time they deliver a package for Amazon. USPS, however, countered that unfunded government mandates, such as its retirement obligations, are driving its budget woes not Amazon. "Amazon made it very clear that the USPS is alone, globally, among their partners in having this pricing uncertainty," indicated the document. It is not clear who drafted it, or to whom it was sent. The documents do not indicate the status of the Postal Service's talks with Amazon, but they do presciently list some of the e-commerce giant's lingering questions about the agency amid a roiling pandemic that had thrust the agency and its finances into doubt: "What does the USPS look like in the new few weeks, the next few months and the next several years?" _____ The Washington Posts Jay Greene contributed to this report. Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj has said he plans to step down The head of Libya's UN-recognised Government of National Accord said Wednesday he planned to step down within six weeks as part of efforts to broker a peace agreement. Libya has endured almost a decade of violent chaos since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed veteran dictator Moamer Kadhafi. Fayez al-Sarraj's GNA has battled against a rival administration in eastern Libya led by strongman Khalifa Haftar, whose offensive against the regime in Tripoli recently ground to a halt after more than a year of deadly conflict. Both sides have since met for peace talks in Morocco after last month announcing a surprise ceasefire and pledging national elections. Sarraj said during a brief televised address on Wednesday evening that he was willing to leave his post in favour of a new executive determined by the talks. "I announce to all my sincere wish to cede my functions to the next administration before the end of October at the latest," he said. The talks had outlined the process for determining a new Presidential Council and the appointment of a new head of government who would take office "peacefully", Sarraj added. He welcomed the "preliminary and promising recommendations" agreed to during the Morocco dialogue. The Morocco summit, dubbed the "Libyan Dialogue", has brought together five members of the Tripoli-based GNA and five from the rival parliament headquartered in the eastern city of Tobruk. Talks have focused on appointments to the top of the country's key institutions, with the naming of the heads of Libya's central bank, its National Oil Corporation and the armed forces the main points of dispute. Morocco also hosted talks in 2015 that led to the creation of the GNA. nd-rb/els/gle/axn As the Gulf Coast begins to assess the damage from Hurricane Sally, several organizations are organizing relief efforts. Sally blew ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Wednesday morning as a major hurricane with 105 mph winds and dumped heavy rains on cities and communities along the Gulf Coast. The American Red Cross You can give to the Red Cross here, or call 1-800-RED-CROSS or text SALLY to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Hundreds of ppl are spending the night in shelters and hotels in Gulf states tonight. If you need to find shelter, here are 3 ways: 1. call 211 2. visit https://t.co/pzTYS1CIim 3. Download the Red Cross Emergency app pic.twitter.com/VhK2yc0Ah6 Red Cross of Alabama (@RedCrossAL) September 16, 2020 The Governors Office of Volunteer Services is the designated state agency partner to lead the Governors Emergency Relief Fund. The United Way of Alabama is the designated non-profit partner and the fiscal agent for the fund. The fund provided more than $4 million to victims of the April 2011 tornado outbreaks. You can find out more here. Our friends at the @RedCross are working hard to assist AL in our #HurricaneSally recovery efforts, but theyre in need of volunteers to help with staffing their emergency lodging sites. Visit https://t.co/aYT65zZBJa or download the Red Cross Emergency app to help. #alwx Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) September 17, 2020 The United Cajun Navy, a 501(c)3 registered nonprofit organization in Louisiana, is looking for volunteers and donations. You can learn more here. The Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) announced that it will accept donations to its Disaster Response and Restoration Fund in response to Hurricane Sallys impact to Alabama and Florida. Donations can be made to the Disaster Response and Restoration Fund by visiting www.gnof.org. The Humane Society of the United States is on the ground in Escambia County, Fla. with its search and rescue team, to help animals impacted by the storm. Donations can be made here. Feeding the Gulf Coast has resumed operations as power has now been restored to the Theodore and Milton facilities Trucks are on the road making deliveries into communities that need assistance today, providing food, water, and supplies. To contribute, click here. GoFundMe launched a centralized hub for verified GoFundMe fundraisers providing help to those affected by Hurricane Sally. The hub will be updated on a regular basis. GoFundMe.org, the companys charitable and advocacy arm, has launched the Hurricane Relief Fund to help those in need. Donations to the fund will be distributed to verified GoFundMe fundraisers, as well as nonprofits, that have either been impacted themselves or are dedicated to helping those affected by hurricanes. Donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by the law. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The Automotive Robotics Market is anticipated to reach over USD 14,170 million by 2026 according to a new research published by Polaris Market Research. In 2017, the articulated robots dominated the global automotive robotics market, in terms of revenue. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the leading contributor to the global automotive robotics market revenue in 2017. There has been an increase in the demand of automotive robotics across the world owing to greater need for automation of manufacturing processes. With the increasing use of collaborative robots in automotive applications, the overall demand for robotics to also influence the automotive robotics market growth. Automotive robots are being adopted by small and medium sized organizations at a huge pace for automation of manufacturing processes. Get sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-robotics-market/request-for-sample Market players are introducing application specific robots to meet the growing needs of the automotive industry. Growing need for automation and increasing labor costs further fuels the automotive robotics market growth. In addition, availability of affordable, high quality customized robotics solutions for diverse applications in the automotive industry stimulates the market growth. With international labor safety standards becoming more stringent, robots are being employed in hazardous environments in place of humans. Robots find application in situations that are dangerous and unsafe for human beings to work, such as working in irregular terrains and handling hazardous substances. Robots enable organizations to avoid risks and reduce the number of work accidents. This factor leads to greater adoption of robotics solutions in the global automotive industry. Owing to stiff competition in the global automotive market, players are introducing low-cost and high quality robots to meet consumer demands. The advancements in technology enable developers to design new innovative products while maintaining the affordability of the product. The recently developed robots are energy efficient and designed to serve specific applications in the automotive industry. Acceptance of such robots by small and medium businesses has increased owing to its low cost and increased flexibility. Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-robotics-market Asia-Pacific generated the highest revenue in the market in 2017, and is expected to lead the global market throughout the forecast period. Growing demand from automotive industry for high quality products, along with increasing labor costs encourages companies to invest in automotive robotics. With intense competition in the automotive industry, companies are setting up manufacturing facilities in these countries for timely deliveries of products to their customers. High demand of robots from Japan and South Korea would help in the growth of the automotive robotics market in the region. Other factors driving this market include rapid industrialization and increasing need for automation in manufacturing processes. The key players operating in the market include Fanuc Corporation, Rockwell Automation, Inc., ABB Ltd., Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kuka AG, Denso Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Nachi-Fujikoshi Corporation, DiFacto Robotics and Automation Pvt. Ltd. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers. Automotive Robotics Market Size and Forecast by Type, 2018-2026 Articulated Robots SCARA Robots Cartesian Robots Cylindrical Robots Others Automotive Robotics Market Size and Forecast by Component, 2018-2026 Hardware Software Services Automotive Robotics Market Size and Forecast by Application, 2018-2026 Painting Welding Material Handling Assembly Others Automotive Robotics Market Size and Forecast by Region, 2018-2026 North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Italy Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin America Brazil Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-robotics-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Contact us- Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com A possible one-time $20 pandemic-related infusion into her tight budget is what Birdtail Sioux First Nation member Laureen Bunn might receive if she applies for her share of a $10,270 transfer through her band office. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us A possible one-time $20 pandemic-related infusion into her tight budget is what Birdtail Sioux First Nation member Laureen Bunn might receive if she applies for her share of a $10,270 transfer through her band office. Bunn is a member who lives off her reserve, which is located an hour and a half northwest of Brandon. She lives in Brandon because medical appointments are easier to access. An infection after a hip replacement surgery landed her in a wheelchair. Her hip is gone now and Bunn is on a disability pension. The transfer to Birdtail is from the Southern Chiefs Organization (SCO), which received $775,165 in July from money the federal government announced in May. Seventeen Manitoba organizations together received $8.4 million of $90 million nationally for Indigenous organizations and communities. That money was specifically for First Nation people living off-reserve and Indigenous people in urban areas, to support essential services and to prevent and respond to potential COVID-19 outbreaks. For the 501 off-reserve Birdtail members, that means $20 per person. The SCO has 34 member nations and will be administering the shares for Waywayseecappo First Nation and two others. Off-reserve members for all other First Nations need to approach their bands directly. The SCO represents approximately 80,461 First Nations people. In Canada, it is estimated roughly half of members live off-reserve. Bunn is frustrated because she has never received any financial help from Birdtail since the pandemic hit in March. She is not the only one. Meanwhile, fellow members on-reserve receive additional funds and other help. "The band just didnt help us out at all," she said, adding there are many members who live in Brandon. "We asked before, when the pandemic started. They were handing out stuff to on-reserve members, like food and money. We didnt get anything." Bunn said shes responsible to pay for her rent, hydro, water, Handi-Transit everything with her disability cheque. There isnt much left after those expenditures, and the $20 wont even get her a box of masks at Walmart. Chief Ken Chalmers is equally frustrated. As early as March 31, Chalmers told The Brandon Sun that he was receiving countless calls from off-reserve members located all over Canada. He said its the federal government, specifically Indigenous Services Canada, thats causing chaos for chiefs and councils across Canada. "If theyre going to be helping us, state what the money is for," he said, referring to million-dollar announcements that dont specify when money is to be used for on-reserve members only. Chalmers described a system that is delivering $150 a month per each First Nation house on-reserve due to COVID-19, regardless of the number of people living in the house. Birdtail is using some of its own resources to top that up, mostly with food subsidies at its own store. Should Chalmers spend any money toward helping off-reserve members, the federal government will claw it back. "In the agreements we sign, this is for on-reserve, to support the children and the poor on-reserve," he said. "It makes chief and council look like crap. Its designed that way." He said every chief is getting bombarded, and the sad part is he has no answers. Chalmers credits the SCO for handing out what funds it can find, but he said Indigenous Services should look at total membership numbers and disperse funds accordingly. Then he could provide all members with a COVID-19 supplement. "I cant sustain $400 to $500 a month for 500 people," he said. "I get no household money for that person who lives in Brandon or Winnipeg. At the end of this thing, we dont want to be bankrupt. Im not going to drive the band into bankruptcy." Chalmers cannot exactly explain why registered members are treated differently. When it comes to a core treaty negotiation currently in progress with the government, including a possible financial settlement, the entire membership is included. He said chiefs are lobbying for off-reserve members, but get tortured on Facebook, accused of stealing the money and pocketing it. "Every penny we get here is in our audit. And during COVID, here, we spent double what we got," Chalmers said, adding most of that was for food, and the check stop barring visitors from the community to keep it safe. Meanwhile, the SCO stated in an email that it is pleased to have received the funds it did, but its not enough. "Our chiefs have done an incredible job to address this crisis, but the economic environment is challenging and much more is needed to help communities deal with the hardships that COVID-19 has brought to their communities and to their off-reserve members," stated the organization. In August, the federal government announced another $305 million in funding for the Indigenous Community Support Fund, but it remains unclear where specifically that money will land. mletourneau@brandonsun.com Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism. 'The idea is to have a place where people can come together and bridge the gap. It will be a contemporary design for the future, and not have the shadows of the past.' Ritwik Sharma reports. IMAGE: Children ride bicycles near the mazar in Dhannipur where land has been offered to build a mosque. As members of the trust tasked with building a mosque to replace the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya deliberated in virtual meetings during the lockdown months, the exigencies of public health in a post-Covid world werent lost on them. With so much news focused on the global medical emergency and shortage of beds, we unanimously felt that we would be having a charitable hospital at least in the mosque complex, says Athar Hussain, secretary of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation, the trust set up by the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board. Recently, the trust picked S M Akhtar, an architecture professor at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, to design the mosque, which will be built in Dhannipur, a village 25 km from where the Babri Masjid stood. The Uttar Pradesh government had offered five acres after the Supreme Court of India ordered a mosque to be built at an alternative site in its final word on the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute last November. In the Muslim-majority village of Dhannipur, and in the city of Ayodhya, the minority community, particularly its youth, had long desired an end to the communal politics around the Babri Masjid and wished to move on. Amid the acres of government-owned farmland in Dhannipur, off the Lucknow-Gorakhpur highway, the offered plot gives ample space for other facilities besides a shrine. Hussain says Muslims in Ayodhya have aspirations, and promises the mosque complex would reflect the future. That, however, cannot be done without peeping into the past. The best way to look into the past is to highlight our shared legacy of Indo-Islamic culture, he says, and laments that the syncretic history has been pushed aside. The trust has planned to set up an Indo-Islamic cultural research centre that will highlight the shared legacy of nearly a millennium to showcase the Muslim influence on Indian society. It wants to publish material to bring out this aspect. The trust has appointed Pushpesh Pant, who retired as professor of international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, as the curator of a proposed museum and library. The museum and library will be part of the research centre, and will focus on the heritage of Awadh -- a historic region now part of north-eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is now forgotten that the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was a titular head, but North Indian rajas and nobility chose him as a regent and fought under him against the colonial rule in 1857, Hussain says. Similarly, post-1857, prominent Muslim theological schools that came up in Awadh, including in Lucknow and Bareilly, sided with the Congress during the freedom struggle. Lastly, a community kitchen has also been proposed as a part of the mosque complex. In the long-drawn-out title dispute, the Muslim parties involved hadn't sought alternative land. Some within the community had wished for a replacement mosque to be built not too far from the disputed site after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a Ram temple there. The argument is based on a functional reason -- a mosque is essentially for worshippers of a particular area. Regardless of the fact that the new mosque would be far from the city, Hussain says that there is no question of discontent among Muslims. Each and every Muslim, including litigants, had already agreed to abide by the decision," he said. The practice of naming a mosque, or popularly referring to it based on its location, could well apply to the upcoming one in Dhannipur. Hussain categorically says that the mosque will have no association with Babur or any other emperor. The vision of a secular space, and one that isnt overtly religious, is echoed by Akhtar. The idea is to have a place where people can come together and bridge the gap. It will be a contemporary design for the future, and not have the shadows of the past. I believe architecture cannot be replicated. It can only be created, he says. Brian Stepter, 61, failed to return his rental car on time and now faces eight years of prison time after he was arrested with drugs on him in 2016 A barber who failed to return his rental car on time now faces eight years in prison after he was arrested with drugs on him. Brian Stepter, 61, has had breathing difficulties since he was shot 10 times in the neck in 2001 and said he fears going into prison during the coronavirus pandemic. Stepter, who runs Cuttin' Up barbershop in Scottsdale, Arizona, has been fighting the charges since he was arrested in 2016 with 0.13 grams of crack cocaine and 4.6 grams of heroin on him. Police began surveillance on him five days after the car was due to be returned on July 5, 2016, because a neighbor tipped them off about 'potential criminal behavior'. Officer Darren Hyman phoned the rental company on July 14 to check if the Dodge Challenger had been returned on time. Stepter believed he was able to keep the car 30 days after its return date as long as he kept paying late fees of $59 per day. The car was reported stolen by the company and was recovered by police on August 3 after a woman driving it was arrested for shoplifting. Stepter, who runs Cuttin' Up barbershop in Scottsdale, Arizona, has been fighting the charges since he was arrested in 2016 with 0.13 grams of crack cocaine and 4.6 grams of heroin on him Police arrested Stepter at a Seven-11 on August 14 on five felony counts: theft of means of transportation, unlawful failure to return rented property, possession of drug paraphernalia, and two counts of possession of narcotic drugs. He fought charges while on bond and was arrested again in September 2019 for perjury and forgery after he wrongly filled out an application to set aside his conviction for a narcotic drug violation from 2011 in July 2019. As his trial approached, Stepter took a guilty plea to unlawful failure to return rented property, possession of narcotic drugs and perjury in June, agreeing to eight years in jail. Stepter took a guilty plea to unlawful failure to return rented property, possession of narcotic drugs, and perjury in June Stepter told The Appeal: 'At this stage in my life, at 61, it's almost a life sentence. And to bring up situations in the 1980s that I dealt with to crucify me. 'I lost my dad since I've been in here. My mother is 80 years old. It's scary. You never want to lose a parent while you're in here.' In the same month, Stepter was named as one of at least nine Maricopa County inmates who the Puente Human Rights Movement requested be released due to the Covid-19 pandemic in a class-action lawsuit filed against the county. The suit claimed Maricopa County had not instituted 'the most basic safeguards for incarcerated persons and staff,' reported AZCentral. Attorney's wrote at the time: 'The Covid-19 pandemic has taken hold at Maricopa County's five jails, and the virus is spreading rapidly. 'In just two weeks, the number of positive COVID-19 cases has skyrocketed from six to 313 an exponential increase of more than 5,000 percent.' Stepter has chronic respiratory problems that make it hard for him to breathe, requires oxygen treatments to clear his lungs and also takes blood pressure medication. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Matthew Green (Reuters) London, United Kingdom Thu, September 17, 2020 08:05 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4546699 2 Environment United-Nations,wildlife,conservation,wildlife-conservation,animals Free All the world's governments have fallen short on pledges made a decade ago to protect wildlife, though cases of conservation show that the destruction of nature can be slowed, and even reversed, according to a UN report published on Tuesday. The report outlined recommendations for far-reaching changes in sectors from farming to urban planning, and a rapid phase-out of the fossil fuels driving climate change, to help save a million species scientists say are at risk of extinction. "There is no doubt that the business-as-usual trends are dire," lead author David Cooper, deputy executive secretary of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters. With countries due to meet for a UN summit on biodiversity later this month, the report underlines the need not just for stronger commitments in stemming a precipitous decline in wildlife, but also in seeing those commitments through. The United Nations is pushing for governments to collectively set aside 30 percent of the planet's land and sea areas for conservation when they meet next year in China to negotiate a new wildlife pact. Currently, about 17 percent of the world's land falls into areas that receive some form of protection. Scientists have said the world may need more than 30 percent to survive, if not thrive. The report, however, was not without bright spots. For example, the endangered Japanese crested ibis, which had once almost vanished, started to produce chicks in the wild after conservationists released captive-bred birds. In Pakistan, a program is protecting the snow leopard by conserving Himalayan ecosystems. In Malawi, a community-based project is replanting the Mulanje cedar, prized for its aromatic wood and resistance to termites and fungal diseases. "We also see that governments have made efforts. And where they make those efforts, they deliver results and that's where we get some hope," Cooper said. Read also: New tiger sightings in Thailand raise conservation hopes Without conservation efforts, the number of bird and mammal extinctions would probably have been at least twice as high during the 10-year life of the pact, the report said. Concerns over the impact of industrial society on the natural world has escalated amid the coronavirus pandemic, believed to have originated in a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The destruction of wild spaces increases the risk of disease jumping from animals, scientists say. The report assessed 20 goals known as Aichi Biodiversity Targets brokered within a global pact in Japan in 2010. Those goals aim, for example, to slow deforestation, preserve wetlands and raise public awareness of the importance of nature to a healthy planet. None of the main targets had been met, the report said. However, there were signs of progress. For example, while global deforestation was not reduced by the goal of at least 50 percent, it did slow by about a third over the last 10 years relative to the previous decade. And while a third of marine fish stocks were over-fished, a higher proportion than a decade ago, stocks have bounced back quickly in areas where protections were put in place. The authors warned that conservation goals were still being undermined by subsidies supporting industrial agriculture, fishing and other businesses that damage ecosystems. Last year, the IPBES international panel of scientists said that a million species were at risk of extinction unless countries can prioritize conservation. About two-thirds of the world's animals - mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles - have vanished over the last 50 years, a report by the World Wildlife Fund said last week. "We are optimistic that the shocking findings coming out of a number of recent reports will really enable all of us to rethink our actions," Elizabeth Mrema, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters. "That's also going to put governments under pressure." Photo: BC Gov't Within a one week span, five B.C. cabinet ministers have decided to call it a career once their current term is up. Judy Darcy is the latest NDP MLA to not seek another term as talks of a possible snap provincial election is up in the air. She joins Doug Donaldson, Scott Fraser, Michelle Mungall and Shane Simpson in announcing a decision to not seek re-election. Carole James also said she won't be running for office back in March. However, Darcy says her decision is not because the campaign will take place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its been a really, really intensive seven years, especially the last three years. I dont want my energy to slow, the two-term New Westminster MLA explained. Would I be happy to do it for another couple of years? Absolutely. But when you commit, you commit for four years. I will be 75 in four years. Im turning 71 in November, so I will be 75. I know I dont have four more years in me. She served as the B.C. NDPs health critic during the partys time in opposition, and she was appointed as British Columbia and Canadas first-ever minister of mental health and addictions after the NDP formed government in July 2017. The decisions come amid talk of a possible provincial election. Premier John Horgan said recently that the circumstances have changed since the NDP struck an agreement with the Green caucus three years ago to form a minority government, fuelling speculation that he might call an election ahead of the fixed date next fall. Earlier this week, Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said the government should focus on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and overdose deaths instead of mulling an early election call. Donaldson has served three terms for the Stikine riding in northwest B.C., spending the last three years as Forests Minister Mungall was first elected to office in 2009 for the Nelson-Creston riding, began her 2017 term as Energy and Mines Minister before being shuffled to Jobs and Economic Development in January. She said she wants to spend more time with her family, including her two-year-old son. Simpson assumed the Vancouver-Hastings office in 2005 and has gone for four terms since, serving as Social Development and Poverty Reduction Minister under Horgan's government. Fraser is also a four-term politician not seeking re-election for the Mid Island-Pacific Rim (Vancouver Island) riding after serving the last three years as Indigenous Relations Minister. Advertisement The female employee at a U.S. military vacation lodge in Germany facing ten years in jail for going on a bar crawl when she had coronavirus has been revealed as 26-year-old Yasmin Adli from Florida. Adli was awaiting her test results after a recent vacation to Greece when she partied for several nights in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, despite already having a sore throat. In a screenshot of a text message allegedly sent by Adli to other co-workers who partied with her on several nights in the lead-up to her positive test, she thanked them all for coming to her 'rona party' and claimed 'I didn't know I had the rona when we went out'. A former employee claimed Adli also remained working at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort before she tested positive, setting up a conference for US military top brass about preventing the spread of coronavirus. The Munich public prosecutor has opened an investigation after the woman, named as 26-year-old Yasmin Adli, went out partying in Garmisch-Partenkirchen while awaiting test results after returning from a vacation in Greece in early September Adli pictured right with a friend. A former employee claimed she remained working at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, setting up a conference for US military top brass about preventing the spread of coronavirus before she tested positive Edelweiss Lodge and Resort serves members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families An alleged message thread with employees including Yasmin Adli in which she states: 'I didn't know I had the rona when we went out' and thanks them for going to her 'rona party' after discovering she was infected Adli faces jail time after infecting at least 23 others and exposing more than 710 people to the virus through her partying after the Greece trip in early September. On Tuesday it was reported authorities had recorded three more COVID-19 infections in people who frequented bars visited by the 26-year-old, who works at the Defense department owned Edelweiss Lodge and Resort. The location is an Armed Forces Recreation Centers (AFRC) Resorts that serve members of the U.S. Armed Forces, their families and other authorized users. Adli is said to have visited the Peaches bar on September 3 and the Irish Pub in Garmisch on September 4. A source told DailyMail.com that employees have one last blow-out with friends once their contracts come to an end. A source told DailyMail.com that on the night Adli visited Peaches, a large group of staff were leaving and she kissed several other employees. At this time, she was said to be feeling too sick to return to work. She had also worked in the hotel upon her return, serving guests and staff in the hotel's Cafe and setting up conference rooms until the day she went for a coronavirus test, it is alleged. Among them was a conference with the United States European Command about preventing the spread of Covid in the US Army. The resort has now shut down for two weeks. Yasmin Aldi from Florida is said to have visited the Peaches bar on September 3 and the Irish Pub in Garmisch on September 4 after her trip to Greece. She went straight back to work after the trip to Greece as well Pictured right, Adli with a friend. She is said to have kissed several other employees on one of the nights out in the German town before she tested positive for coronavirus. It is not known if those people were infected with coronavirus Pictured right, Yasmin Adli with a friend. She could face ten years in jail in Germany for spreading the virus A message from management to Edelweiss Lodge and Resort staff in which they were berated for their 'reckless behavior' The Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, which is reserved for members of the American military, their families and veterans, has also shut down completely for two weeks following the number of coronavirus cases found among staff The hotel issued a message to staff in which some were accused of 'reckless behavior'. Attempts made to contact Adli for comment were unsuccessful. She has since deleted her social media profiles, a source confirmed. The latest cases recorded Tuesday take the total number of recent infections in the town to 59, including 25 staff at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, which is reserved for members of the American military, their families and veterans. Lawyer Arndt Kempgens said: 'From the point of view of conditional intent, this can even lead to criminal liability for wilful and dangerous bodily harm according to Section 224 of the Criminal Code. The sentence ranges from 6 months to 10 years in prison.' District Office spokesman Wolfgang Rotzsche added: 'If the woman has actually consciously accepted this risk, then she should also be legally prosecuted.' The woman is said to have visited the Peaches bar, pictured, and the Irish Pub in Garmisch On Tuesday it was reported authorities recorded three more COVID-19 infections in people who frequented bars Adli visited US Army spokesman Donald Wrenn told Bild: 'For US civilian employees, the Bavarian regulations for the prevention of infectious diseases apply, just like for every German citizen. 'The US Army in Bavaria keeps its soldiers and civilians as well as the Bavarian ordinances with regard to limiting the spread of the virus to a high standard. Any violation of these regulations would be inconsistent with our behavior and our efforts to keep our communities safe. 'Our main focus is currently on the thorough and precise identification of contact persons as well as additional tests to limit the possible spread of COVID-19.' Anton Speer, who heads the county administration, told reporters Tuesday that authorities are still waiting for the results of about 300 tests conducted Monday and it was too soon to give the 'all-clear.' Three new infections emerged from 740 tests conducted over the weekend. On Tuesday it was reported authorities had recorded three more COVID-19 infections in people who frequented bars visited by the 26-year-old, pictured Bavaria's governor, Markus Soeder, called the outbreak in Garmisch-Partenkirchen 'a model case of stupidity' because the American had gone partying despite having COVID-19 symptoms and awaiting a test result. Soeder had said 'such recklessness must have consequences' and suggested the woman could receive a stiff fine. Breaching quarantine rules can result in fines of up to 2,000 euros ($2,375), but further penalties and liability for damages are possible if others become infected or businesses suffer economic harm as a result. Andrea Mayer, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Munich, confirmed Tuesday that her office had opened a preliminary investigation into the woman on suspicion of causing bodily harm. 'The investigation is ongoing,' she told The Associated Press. The Edelweiss resort has vacation cabins and 258 rooms and suites The outbreak has lead to a 10pm curfew on bars and restaurants and a rule that no more than five people can gather in public. John Tomassi, spokesman for the U.S. Army Europe, said the military is conducting its own investigation into the incident and is recommending any service members or others who had contact with the Edelweiss employee be tested for coronavirus. The Edelweiss resort has vacation cabins and 258 rooms and suites, but Tomassi said he did not have details on how many people had been staying there over the past two weeks. He said contact tracing was part of the investigation. Germany's disease control center on Tuesday reported 1,407 new cases across the country in the past day. The country has been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic. It has recorded over 9,360 virus-related deaths, a toll one-fourth of Britain's. (Newser) Jeffery Ryans says he was in his Salt Lake City backyard, smoking a cigarette, on April 24 when police officers approached and started shouting. The 36-year-old says he emptied his hands, put them up, and told cops how to get into the backyard. They entered, and Ryans says a K-9 officer, Nickolas Pearce, kicked him in the leg and forced him to his knees, with his hands still in the air. Then, he and his lawyer say, Pearce ordered his dog to attack and the dog latched onto Ryans' leg. Ryans, who is Black, says that even as he was placed in handcuffs by an officer who was sitting on top of him, Pearce continued to give his dog "hit" commands, resulting in the dog biting and tearing at his leg. Now, in what the Salt Lake Tribune calls an "unusual" move and the AP calls "rare," county prosecutors on Wednesday filed a criminal charge against Pearce. story continues below That's unusual because cops don't often face such charges in Utah, but in this case the DA says the decision was reached after an investigation into whether Pearce used "unlawful force." He is charged with second-degree felony aggravated assault. The probe found that Ryans "wasnt resisting arrest," the DA says, and "certainly wasnt posing an imminent threat of violence or harm to anyone and he certainly wasnt concealed. He was fenced in an area and was being compliant." Police initially responded to the home after Ryans' daughter called 911 to report he had hit her mother, and they arrested him because his wife had filed a protective order against him that barred him from being at their home. Ryans suffered severe injuries and plans to sue, and Pearce has been suspended pending the results of an internal investigation. The city is also reviewing its use of police dogs. (See video of the incident here.) ANN ARBOR, MI Two Ann Arbor City Council members are hoping to convince their colleagues to decriminalize magic mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs. On councils agenda for Monday, Sept. 21, is a resolution sponsored by Council Members Anne Bannister and Jeff Hayner, both 1st Ward Democrats. If approved, it would declare the investigation and arrest of people for using, growing, possessing, transporting and distributing entheogenic plants and fungi including hallucinogenic drugs deemed illegal under state and federal law to be the citys lowest law enforcement priority. It also would declare no city resources should be used to investigate, arrest or prosecute anyone for such offenses. A grassroots group called Decriminalize Nature Ann Arbor, or DNA2, has been lobbying city officials to take up the issue. Earlier this year, council members werent eager to sponsor the groups proposal. Its now on councils agenda for the first time. Decriminalization of naturally occurring medicines is necessary for progress, Hayner said in a DNA2 news release. We can no longer turn a blind eye towards the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the bounty the earth provides. I have been moved by the testimonies of those who have found profound relief from the use of entheogenic plants. Marijuana activists have turned their attention to the cause after winning the fight to legalize cannabis in Michigan. Entheogenic plants and fungi DNA2 hopes to decriminalize include psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, mescaline, ibogaine and others. Decriminalizing such substances has great potential to help address mental health issues, Bannister said in the DNA2 news release, adding whats proposed already exists in practice in Ann Arbor and will benefit the community. The resolution would not authorize commercial sales or manufacturing, possessing or distributing in schools, driving under the influence or public disturbances, it states. It will need at least six votes from the 11-member council to be approved. DNA2 Executive Director Julie Barron, a local therapist who practices psychedelic-integration therapy, said the group feels confident it can win council approval, but its also prepared to go to voters with a ballot initiative if needed. The resolution defines entheogenic plants as the full spectrum of plants and fungi that contain indole amines, tryptamines and phenethylamines that can benefit psychological and physical wellness, support and enhance religious and spiritual practices, and can reestablish humans inalienable and direct relationship to nature. It states psychedelic substances can be used to help address substance abuse problems, addiction, recidivism, trauma, post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, grief, cluster headaches and other debilitating conditions. The use of entheogenic plants, which can catalyze profound experiences of personal and spiritual growth, have been shown by scientific and clinical studies and traditional practices to be beneficial to the health and well-being of individuals and communities in addressing these conditions, it states. Practices with entheogenic plants have been sacred to human cultures for thousands of years, yet those seeking them today to improve their health and wellbeing fear arrest and prosecution, the resolution states. Read the full resolution. Chuck Ream, a longtime Ann Arbor marijuana activist and now DNA2 political adviser, wrote to council members this week, arguing the only reason all these magical plants are against the law is because of a lack of separation between church and state. Twisted dogma has been used to control our desire for fulfillment, for deep therapy, and for a restorative relationship with nature, he wrote. Using police power to control my relationship with nature ... is utterly anti-American! It is grossly perverted and dysfunctional, he added, arguing truly American policy recognizes the unalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We need to make clear progress with these breakthrough plant-based compounds before COVID-19 is finished, not after, Ream said in the DNA2 news release, pointing to mental health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS: University of Michigans faculty senate divided on no confidence vote in President Mark Schlissel Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike Demolition work making way for another apartment high-rise in downtown Ann Arbor Commission recommends renaming Ann Arbor park after late City Council member Plan to address Ann Arbor pollution unbelievably unacceptable, residents argue Witnesses to the dog attack which killed a 12-day-old baby in Doncaster said the animal was so powerful it needed three police officers to bring it under control. The boy was badly mauled by the family pet on Sunday afternoon and later died in hospital from his injuries. Both parents, a 35-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, but have now been released on bail pending further enquiries. A spokesperson for South Yorkshire Police declined to give any more details about the dog, including whether the force had chosen to put it down, except to add it was a crossbreed. One neighbour, who said she was driving past when the police arrived, wrote on Facebook: The dog was a big fluffy golden dog, it looked harmless at first glance. I couldnt tell you the breed but three police officers were struggling to control it to get it into the dog van. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA The dog was strong enough to be dragging three officers into the road. Its so, so sad. Floral tributes to the child and family have already been left at the home in Welfare Road, Doncaster. Absolutely devastating, one said. Two parents have just lost a child and three other children a brother in terrible circumstances. Sleep tight little man. According to the Daily Mirror, the mother had recently suffered another tragedy, when her partner and father of her three older children died about 18 months ago. Recommended One neighbour told the paper: "It is heart-breaking, it's just shocking. It's a tragedy upon a tragedy. "Her previous partner was such a loving father and appeared to be great around the house, we would always see him hanging the washing out and doing his bit. "They just looked like such a lovely family, they were always together and always happy." Detectives investigating the case have asked for anyone with information to contact them by calling 101. Gov. Phil Murphy was in Cape May County on Thursday to back Democratic congressional candidate Amy Kennedy as she announced her plans to support South Jersey infrastructure if she is able to unseat party-switching Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew. On a sandy boat launch in Cape May, backed by the Middle Thorofare Bridge to Wildwood, Kennedy said it is one of many bridges in the 2nd congressional district in dire need of repairs. Its not just bridges. Its our roads, our railroads, our airports, our schools. We need investment, she said. Kennedy promised to fight for federal funding for everything from increased public transportation and environmental infrastructure to expanded broadband and modern school buildings. The former public school teacher is running for New Jerseys 2nd congressional district in a closely-watched race against Van Drew, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but switched to the Republicans after voting against impeaching Trump. Kennedy said Thursday that Van Drew never advocated for the improvements his constituents have been asking for. He pledged his undying loyalty to President Trump, but instead of advocating for funding, he asked for a political rally. Instead of change, hes seeking personal gain, she said. The race has garnered national attention, most recently when Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden endorsed her this week. Murphy said that Kennedy will work to improve life for constituents in South Jersey regardless of party lines. It really frankly doesnt have a lot to do, especially when it comes to infrastructure, with which party were in. Its this is the hand weve been dealt. Play the damn hand, the goernor said. Gov. Phil Murphy speaks after democratic congressional candidate Amy Kennedy announced an infrastructure plan for South Jersey at the Cape May Launch Point, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020.Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com The plan Kennedy unveiled Thursday highlights the states infrastructure problems, from failing bridges to the limited broadband access that plagues many of the rural parts of South Jersey. She said she would support creating greater competition between providers and vote for the Invest in America Act, which would subsidize broadband expansion in underserved communities. Too many families in South Jersey cannot afford to access it," she wrote in the plan. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that means that thousands of our neighbors cant work remotely, cant access health care, and cant easily participate in online learning. Kennedy, backed Thursday by Wildwood Mayor Pete Byron and numerous union representatives, said the region is especially likely to face serious consequences from climate change, and the southern Jersey Shore has seen first-hand the impact of those changes and storms like Superstorm Sandy. We have to invest in things like dams and levees and pumps that are going to make sure that we are going to be ready and prepared when that happens, she said at the press conference. Her plan says federal leaders' previous patchwork transportation bills are not working and what is really necessary is consistent federal investment in roads, bridges and rail systems through grant programs and direct aid to counties and municipalities. Kennedy said she is also calling for immediate, additional federal aid to support the building upgrades and technological improvements necessary to provide a quality education during the pandemic. She also pledged her support for improving public transportation, especially in more rural areas, clean energy efforts including off-shore wind farms, and greater investments in long-term care for seniors, among other things. Itll make our infrastructure more resilient, reduce traffic and pollution, and connect families to jobs," she said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. LAKE CHARLES, La., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Smithfield Foods, Inc. has donated more than 11,000 pounds of pork loins to Operation BBQ Relief as part of ongoing recovery efforts in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Laura. The 11,000 pound donation, equivalent to more than 30,000 servings, is part of Smithfield's signature hunger-relief initiative, Helping Hungry Homes. "We are grateful for Smithfield's support in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura," said Dewayne Daniel, Director of Disaster and Field Training, Operation BBQ Relief. "Operation BBQ Relief has provided over 400,000 meals during the past month. We could not do it without the support of Smithfield and the entire pork industry." Smithfield's donation allowed Operation BBQ Relief to provide pork loin sandwiches to those who have been displaced by the storm as well as local volunteers, police, fire and emergency personnel. Hurricane Laura left more than 540,000 Louisiana residents without power and 220,000 without water. "Our Smithfield Family is proud to support Louisianans impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Laura," said Jonathan Toms, charitable initiatives manager at Smithfield Foods. "Operation BBQ Relief played an instrument role in our efforts to provide a necessary resource during a great time of need." Smithfield Foods is committed to supporting those impacted by natural disasters and continues to work with disaster-relief partners on the Pacific Coast and in Alabama to identify opportunities to help those affected by the wildfires and hurricanes. About Operation BBQ Relief Operation BBQ Relief is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports communities following natural disasters with hot barbeque meals to those in need and on the front lines. After the devastating tornado in Joplin, MO. in May 2011, competitive pitmasters from eight different states answered the call to feed displaced families and first responders and served over 120,000 meals over 13 days. This experience was the catalyst that started what Operation BBQ Relief is today. With the help of more than 14,000 volunteers, Operation BBQ Relief has provided over 8 million meals throughout the United States. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has provided over four million meals to first responders, medical workers, veterans, families and organizations affected by the pandemic. In 2017, Stan Hays, CEO and Co-Founder was recognized as one of the "CNN Heroes" for his work with Operation BBQ Relief. About Smithfield Foods, Inc. Headquartered in Smithfield, Va. since 1936, Smithfield Foods, Inc. is an American food company with agricultural roots and a global reach. Our 40,000 U.S. and 15,000 European employees are dedicated to producing "Good food. Responsibly." and have made us one of the world's leading vertically integrated protein companies. We have pioneered sustainability standards for more than two decades, including many industry firsts, such as our ambitious commitment to cut our carbon impact by 25 percent by 2025. We believe in the power of protein to end food insecurity and have donated hundreds of millions of food servings to our neighbors in need. Smithfield boasts a portfolio of high-quality iconic brands, such as Smithfield, Eckrich and Nathan's Famous, among many others. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. SOURCE Smithfield Foods, Inc. Related Links www.smithfieldfoods.com Carolyn Cole, MBR / TNS WASHINGTON Next week Hillary Clinton will headline the Texas Democratic Partys annual fundraising dinner held virtually this year the party announced on Thursday. I've seen the grit and determination of folks in Texas who are working to change American politics for the better, going back to my first trip to the state to register voters back in 1972, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said. H ealth Minister Edward Argar has rejected reports that the Government is considering a two-week national lockdown. Former World Health Organisation director Anthony Costello, who sits on the independent SAGE panel, sparked concern by suggesting that Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty was advising Boris Johnson on blanket restrictions. The Prime Minister has insisted he is doing "everything in my power" to prevent a second national lockdown, but has acknowledged that he could not dismiss the possibility. Cases have been rising over the last month with the UK recording nearly 4,000 Covid-19 cases in a day for the first time since the start of May. Asked about the reports that Mr Whitty was advising the Government to impose a two-week lockdown, Mr Argar told Sky News on Thursday: It is not something I have hard about, but it's not something I have seen within the department. The Prime Minister has been very clear on this. He doesnt want to see another national lockdown. "He wants to see people abiding by the regulations and making the local lockdowns work and getting the infections rates down." He added: "It's nothing something I've heard from Chris and I know it's something the Prime Minister has been clear he doesn't want to see." Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images Mr Costello had tweeted: "Im hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown." But he later backtracked on his initial claim, saying that Mr Whitty does not support a two-week lockdown. Meanwhile, Mr Argar said the Government believes the rise in coronavirus cases can be controlled through local measures as long as people adhere to the measures in place. Asked about whether he could rule out another national lockdown, he told BBC Breakfast: "The key to making sure that doesn't happen is people adhering to the rule of the six, adhering to the regulations. "I know it's tough. This has been an incredibly tough year for everyone with huge sacrifices made by individuals, by businesses, by families. "And the message is very clear. If we stick to that, if we stick to the hands, space and face guidance, we can avoid further national restrictions." Cases have been rising over the last month / AFP via Getty Images With further lockdowns expected to be announced in North East England , Mr Argar said the region was seeing a spike in cases similar to that in the North West. In the North East we are seeing a spike in infections. It is exactly what we have seen in the North West. We monitor that rate. Where we need to, we step in and take action, he said. Mr Argar said that in the North West, the rise had been driven in part by people not adhering to the social distancing requirements. Obviously a nighttime economy will fuel that with people having been out late into the evening. He later said the Government believes the rise in coronavirus cases can be controlled through local measures. We saw in Leicester it worked, we saw those rates come right down it does work and it does control it at a local level, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. I dont think we are at a place where we would wish to see or need to see a national level of restrictions. Mr Argar said that while the Government was ramping up testing capacity as cases rose, it would need to prioritise key workers. We will see this in the next few days, the official guidance coming out that will prioritise frontline NHS care workers, teachers and similar. It is possible that there are people with symptoms who apply for a test who have to wait longer because we are prioritising those key frontline workers we need to keep our NHS and care system working. Jammu and Kashmir government on Thursday ordered a magisterial probe into the death of twenty-three-year-old man who was detained by the police in Sopore town and was found dead on Wednesday. Deputy Commissioner Baramulla GN Ittoo on Thursday ordered magisterial probe which will be conducted by Additional District Magistrate, Baramulla, Mohammad Ahsan Mir. Young boy Irfan Ahmad Dar of Sidiq Colony Sopore was found dead near stone query at Tujjar Sharief on September 16 under the jurisdiction of Police Station Bomai under mysterious circumstances. There was a huge outcry and it is reported in the media that the deceased was picked up by Sopore police on September 15 and was in their custody. Whereas, allegations are levelled against Sopore police for custodial killing of the subject. The incident was also reported by SSP Sopore, the order of Deputy Commissioner, Baramulla, read. Whereas to find the truth, it has expedient to institute a magisterial inquiry into the incident, the order stated. To prevent the spread of protests, mobile internet was also snapped in Sopore town and its neighbouring areas. Irfans body wasnt handed over to the family and was buried at Sonmarg. Irfans relatives had termed his killing a cold-blooded murder. Javaid Ahmad, Irfans elder brother had said, My brother and I were taken away by the police on Tuesday for hiding some militant. I was kept separately from my brother. During custody, I was not feeling well. I told the policemen that there are CCTV cameras in our house and they can take the footage of the last month to see that nobody came to the house. Also read: Why is Sikh soldier a bogeyman for Chinese army at Ladakh Director-General of Police Dilbag Singh said that probe has been ordered to know the facts. Till then, we should not draw any conclusions. Police spokesman said. On Tuesday, at about 12:45 pm, an OGW (Over-Ground Worker) identified as Irfan Ahmad Dar of Sidiq colony, Sopore, was apprehended and two Chinese hand grenades were recovered from his possession. A case was registered at police station Sopore. He said during the investigation, a police team visited Chairdaji area of Tujjar-Sharief along with the OGW for some more recovery on his disclosure. However, the OGW took advantage of the darkness and managed to escape. A separate case was registered in this matter at police station Bomai. During searches, his body was found near Stone Quarry of Tujjar-Sharief, the spokesman added. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah had demanded intervention of Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor Manoj Sinha in the matter. He tweeted, The administration cant possibly win back the confidence of the people if encounters like Shopian or suspicious deaths like Sopore are allowed to pass without the facts being established & guilt, when determined, fully punished. @manojsinha_must intervene in both these cases. BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 17 By Elnur Baghishov Trend: Iranian students protested against the opening of the Armenian embassy in Israel in front of the Armenian Embassy in Iran on September 16, Trend reports referring to the Tasnim news agency. According to the report, Iranian students condemned Armenia's move under the slogan "Armenia will regret opening an embassy". Iranian students made the following statement at the rally. "As representatives of the Iranian people of 85 million people, we, the students, declare in front of the Armenian embassy that Armenia must reconsider its decision and recall its ambassador. If Armenia does not do this, it will have damaged friendly and peaceful relations with Iran," the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 13:18:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NUR-SULTAN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Kazakhstan's agricultural exports to China reached 489,000 tons, or 196 million U.S. dollars, in the first half of this year (H1), up by 15 percent year on year, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday. According to the ministry, 274,000 tons of crop products and 2,000 tons of livestock products were exported to China, up by 11 percent and 25 percent respectively. A total of 576 Kazakh enterprises have been granted permission to supply their agricultural products to China, among which 90 companies export livestock products and 486 export crop products, the ministry said. The Kazakh government has pledged to boost its production and export of agricultural products in recent years. In the first eight months of this year, the country's agricultural output reached 2.4 trillion tenge (about 5.66 billion dollars), up by 4.9 percent year on year. Enditem Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor are best friends who love to travel. In fact, theyve made two documentaries about their travels in the past. Beginning on Friday, Sept. 18, Boorman and McGregor will unveil their latest project, Long Way Up, which reunites the pair more than a decade since their last motorbike adventure around the world. We love to travel together, McGregor says. Its been a long time since 2007 and our last outing. In 2004, we did the Northern Hemisphere. It was about finding the right time. The pair did find enough time to make the trip. The first three episodes of Long Way Up premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, Sept. 18. The following episodes will be released weekly after that. One would think because the pair have traveled by motorbike across the globe that it would be an easy task. They always enjoy a challenge and decided to make the trek on electric motorbikes. The duo covers 13,000 miles over 100 days through 16 border crossings and 13 countries starting from the city of Ushuaia at the tip of South America. Boorman and McGregor journey through the glorious and underexposed landscapes of South and Central America in their most challenging expedition to date, using cutting-edge technology on the backs of their prototype electric Harley-Davidsons to contribute to the sustainability of the planet. Along the way, they have to figure out daily challenges that pop up. We didnt have much time, Boorman says. We had to get used to the bikes charging. Questions arose like Will we get up to the destination or Do we have enough charge? It was so cold when we started, that we saw the effect it had on the batteries. Those first 10 days were like we were back in school. Through the series, the pair journey through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and up through Colombia, Central America and Mexico. Joining them are their longtime collaborators, directors David Alexanian and Russ Malkin, following them in their electric Rivians. Boorman says it took a couple of weeks to get acclimated to the travel. You are experiencing a different language and culture, Boorman says. Once you get to the rhythm of it, the trip was great. Wed stop at lunch to take a charge. Not only are you plugging the bikes in, you are plugging into the people too. And getting a personal experience. Of course, there were deadlines to be met during the journey. We had Christmas at the end of the trip and we wanted to be with our family, McGregor says. For logistics sake, there were some destinations that had to be rerouted. We missed Santiago, McGregor says. There was a diversion that would have put another three days. We avoided Mexico City at the end because the time was passing by. With more than a decade passed since the duos last trip, Boorman says the pair came together and melded like no time had passed. I think that you have to trust, Boorman says of the journey. McGregor says the trip has given him a sense of human kindness. Once youve done trips like this, its inside you, McGregor says. They take you to places youve never been. Now streaming Ewan McGregor and Charley Boormans latest documentary series, Long Way Up, premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, Sept. 18. Many faith-based college groups are praising the Department of Education's final rule last Wednesday to protect religious groups on campuses freedom to choose leaders based on their own criteria. This ruling is directly related to an executive order issued by President Trump in March of 2019 that promised to withhold federal research grants from colleges and universities that are hostile to First Amendment rights of students. According to a 2 page summary of the report, the final rule is a historic step and implements Trump's executive order, called Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at College's and Universities. This rule follows controversial cases of religious groups on campus which have policies that require leaders to adhere to their faith being defunded by university administrators. The regulation - Religious Liberty and Free Inquiry Final Rule (Final Rule) - "ensures the equal treatment and constitutional rights of religious student organizations at public institutions and provides clarity for faith-based institutions" in relation to Title IX discrimination law. "[A] religious student organization would have the same rights as other student organizations at the public institution to receive official recognition, to use the institution's facilities, and to receive student fee funds." The rulemaking is based upon "months of careful deliberation" and "extensive input represented by over 17,000 public comments." The final rule sets out regulations for both public and private universities to follow in accordance with the First Amendment. The document summarizes, "The Final Rule helps ensure that public institutions of higher education uphold fundamental rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including protections for freedom of speech, association, press, religion, assembly, petition, and academic freedom, and that private institutions of higher education adhere to their own stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech, including academic freedom." The Department described existing remedies for noncompliance from schools: "Existing remedies include imposing special conditions, temporarily withholding cash payments pending correction of the deficiency, suspension or termination of a federal award, and potentially debarment." Greg Jao, director of external relations for InterVarsity Fellowship, questioned the anti-religious environment at colleges, "What made the student groups who were denied recognition different? They expected their student leaders to agree with their religious beliefs. The recognized groups did not. Universities should welcome all religious groups equally, in order to encourage tolerance, pluralism and religious diversity." Jao and many other leaders of faith-based youth groups lauded the Department's ruling on discrimination. For example, Ismail Royer, director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute, expressed the benefit for Muslim groups on college campuses. "This new regulation is an important policy for Muslim student organizations because it allows them to select their own leaders and define their own mission by their faith's principles," Royer, said. "This right should be reserved for all student religious organizations, and not usurped by university officials based on their own shifting, unpredictable standards." Other notable leaders that publicly praised the ruling included Jimmy McGee, president of the Impact Movement and Rabbi Abba Cohen, vice president for government affairs and Washington director for Agudath Israel of America. Time will tell how colleges across America and the Department of Education will abide by and enforce this ruling. Victor Coronado felt lightheaded one morning last month when he stood up to grab an iced tea. The right side of his body suddenly felt heavy. He heard himself slur his words. "That's when I knew I was going to have a stroke," he said. Coronado was rushed to Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, the hospital nearest his home on Chicago's South Side. Doctors there pumped medicine into his veins to break up the clot that had traveled to his brain. Coronado may outlive the hospital that saved him. Founded 168 years ago as the city's first hospital, Mercy survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 but is succumbing to modern economics, which have underfinanced the hospitals serving the poor. In July, the 412-bed hospital informed state regulators it planned to shutter all inpatient services as soon as February. "If something else happens, who is to say if the responders can get my husband to the nearest hospital?" said Coronado's wife, Sallie. While rural hospitals have been closing at a quickening pace over the past two decades, a number of inner-city hospitals now face a similar fate. And experts fear that the economic damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic on safety-net hospitals and the ailing finances of the cities and states that subsidize them are helping push some urban hospitals over the edge. By the nature of their mission, safety-net hospitals, wherever they are, struggle because they treat a large share of patients who are uninsured and can't pay bills or are covered by Medicaid, whose payments don't cover costs. But metropolitan hospitals confront additional threats beyond what rural hospitals do. State-of-the-art hospitals in affluent city neighborhoods are luring more of the safety-net hospitals' best-insured patients. These combined financial pressures have been exacerbated by the pandemic at a time their role has become more important: Their core patients the poor and people of color have been disproportionately stricken by COVID-19 in metropolitan regions like Chicago. "We've had three hospital closures in the last year or so, all of them Black neighborhoods," said Dr. David Ansell, senior vice president for community health equity at Rush University Medical Center, a teaching hospital on Chicago's West Side. He said the decision to close Mercy "is really criminal in my mind, because people will die as a result." Mercy is following the same lethal path as did two other hospitals with largely lower-income patient bases that shuttered last year: Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, and Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., which ended its inpatient services. Washington's only public hospital, United Medical Center in the city's poorest ward is slated to close in 2023 as well, and some services are already curtailed. Slow death of urban safety nets So far, urban hospital closures have remained infrequent compared with the cascading disappearance of their rural counterparts. But the closing of a few could portend problems at others. Even some of those that remain open may cut back crucial specialties like labor and delivery services or trauma care, forcing patients to travel farther for help when minutes can matter. Nancy Kane, an adjunct professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has studied urban safety-net hospital changes since 2010, said that "some close, but most of them have tried to get into a bigger system and hang on for a few more years until management closes them." For much of the 20th century, most cities ran their own hospitals to care for the indigent. But after the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and as the rising cost of health care became a burden for local budgets, many jurisdictions turned away from that model. Today only 498 of 5,230 general hospitals in the country are owned by governments or a public hospital district. Instead, many hospitals in low-income urban neighborhoods are run by nonprofits often faith-based and in some cases, for-profit corporations. In recent years owners have unloaded safety-net hospitals to entities with limited patience for keeping them alive. In 2018, the for-profit hospital chain Tenet Healthcare Corp. sold Hahnemann to Joel Freedman, a California private equity investor, for $170 million. A year later, Freedman filed for bankruptcy on the hospital, saying its losses were insurmountable, while separating its real estate, including the physical building, into another corporation, which could ease its sale to developers. In 2018, Tenet sold another safety-net hospital, Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago, to a private investment company. Two weeks after the sale, the firm announced it would close the hospital, which ultimately led the owners to pay Melrose Park $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging they had misled local officials by claiming before the sale they would keep it open. Some government-run hospitals are also struggling to stay open. Hoping to stem losses, the District of Columbia outsourced management of United Medical Center to private consulting firms. But far from turning the hospital around, one firm was accused of misusing taxpayer funds, and it oversaw a string of serious patient safety incidents, including violations in its obstetrics ward so egregious that the district was forced to shut the ward down in 2017. Earlier this year, the district struck a deal with Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 company with 400 hospitals and $11 billion in revenues, to run a new hospital that would replace United, albeit with a third fewer beds. Universal also operates George Washington University Hospital in the city in partnership with George Washington University. That relationship has been contentious: Last year the university accused the company of diverting $100 million that should have stayed in the medical system. In June, a judge dismissed most of the university's complaint. Victor Coronado was rushed to Chicago's Mercy Hospital & Medical Center after exhibiting signs of a stroke. Doctors pumped medicine into his veins and broke the clot that had traveled to his brain. (Taylor Glascock for KHN) No saviors for mercy Chicago has three publicly owned hospitals, but much of the care for low-income patients falls on private safety-net hospitals like Mercy that are near their homes and have strong reputations. These hospitals have been sources of civic pride as well as major providers of jobs in neighborhoods that have few. Fifty-five percent of Chicagoans living in poverty and 62% of its African American residents live within Mercy's service area, according to Mercy's 2019 community needs assessment, a federally mandated report. The neighborhoods served by Mercy are distinguished by higher rates of death from diabetes, cancer and stroke. Babies are more likely to be born early and at low weight or die in infancy. The nearest hospitals from Mercy can be 15 minutes or more away by car, and many residents don't have cars. "You're going to have this big gap of about 7 miles where there's no hospital," Ansell said. "It creates a health care desert on the South Side." Dr. Maya Rolfe, who was a resident at Mercy until July, said the loss of the hospital's labor and delivery department would cause substantial harm, especially since African American women suffer from a higher rate of maternal mortality than do white women. "Mercy serves a lot of high-risk women," she said. Mercy, a nonprofit, has been in financial trouble for a while. In 2012, it joined Trinity Health, a giant nonprofit Roman Catholic health system headquartered in Michigan with operations in 22 states. In the next seven years, Trinity invested $124 million in infrastructure improvements and $112 million in financial support. During that time, the hospital continued to be battered by headwinds facing hospitals everywhere, including the migration of well-reimbursed surgeries and procedures to outpatient settings. Likewise, patients with private insurance, which provides higher reimbursements than government programs do, departed to Chicago's better-capitalized university hospitals, including Rush, the University of Chicago Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Seventy-five percent of Mercy's revenues come from government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid. Only 42% of its beds were occupied on average, according to the most recent state data, from 2018. Mercy told state regulators it is losing $4 million a month and required at least $100 million in additional building upgrades to operate safely. Trinity said it spent more than a year shopping for a buyer. After that yielded no success, Mercy joined forces with three other struggling South Side hospitals to consolidate into a single health system planning to build one hospital and a handful of outpatient facilities to replace their antiquated buildings. They sought state financial help. The plan would have cost $1.1 billion over a decade. At the close of the legislative session, Illinois lawmakers already strapped for funding because of the economic effects of the pandemic balked at the hospitals' request for the state to cover half the cost. Lamont Robinson, a Democratic state representative whose district includes Mercy Hospital, said that was because the group did not declare where the new hospital would be built. "We were all supportive of the merger but not with the lack of information," Robinson said. Mercy said in an email that the location would have been chosen after the hospital organizations combined and chose new leaders. Trinity said in a statement: "We are committed to continuing to serve the Mercy Chicago community through investment in additional ambulatory and community-based services that are driven by high-priority community needs." Blame for Mercy's closure has been spread widely to include the city and state governments as well as Mercy's owner. Trinity Health had $8.8 billion in cash and liquid investments at the end of March and until the pandemic hit had been running a slight profit. Earlier this year in Philadelphia, Trinity Health announced it would phase out inpatient services at another of its safety-net hospitals, Mercy Catholic Medical Center-Mercy Philadelphia Campus, a 157-bed hospital that has been around since 1918. "People put their money where they want to," said Rolfe, the former medical resident at Mercy in Chicago. Noting that the city has no qualms about spending large sums to beautify its downtown while other neighborhoods are in danger of losing a major institution, she said: "It shows to me that those patients are not that important as patients that exist in other communities." Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, recently welcomed Deborah Wyatt as Vice President, Global Academic and Society Relations. Deborahwill oversee strategic partnerships withSocieties, Institutes and peak bodies for the CACTUS brand Impact Science, which offers research promotion solutions such as videos, plain-language summaries, infographics, and other high-engagement formats. Commenting on Deborahs joining, Abhishek Goel, Co-founder and CEO, CACTUS, said, As academic societies in these current times face pressures due to cancelled events, drops in subscription revenues, and decline in memberships, we aim to support them in reinventing themselves by repurposing their content to be relevant and impactful for their membership, other keystakeholder groups and the wider public. We are excited to have Deborah Wyatt, who has significant experience in working with academic societies join us to lead this initiative and help create higher impact. Deborah is a leading voice in the academic publishing industry and has over 20 years of experience working in the scholarly and scientific publishing industry across various editorial, strategy and business leadership roles. Commenting on why CACTUS is the perfect fit, Deborahsaid,I am passionate about the power of research to change lives and to solve global challenges. Through Impact Science, CACTUS partners with peak bodies worldwide to bring peer-reviewed research to life in dynamic new ways for new audiences. Im thrilled and proud to work with CACTUS and its strategic partners to amplify research and nurture evidence-based practice, policy and public awareness. Prior to joining CACTUS,Deborahserved as Vice President for Asia-Pacific Research for Wiley and was responsible for nurturing strategic relationships with partners, leaders and experts across all disciplines in the health, social, life and physical sciences. She has extensively contributedto industry groups such as International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers Organization (STM), Research Data Alliance (RDA), and Australian Health and Medical Editors Network (AHMEN). This piece was originally published in November 2019. When it came time to set fire to the hillside, Kitty Lynch paused. A 70-year-old retired waitress, Lynchs job during the controlled burn of a 2,200-acre ranch in Humboldt County, California, in June 2019 was to keep the fire in check by tamping down small, errant flames with a tool called a McLeod. Lynch had been attending lectures by Indigenous tribes in her region about prescribed fires, blazes lit intentionally to control dry brush and prevent unplanned burns, for over a decade. But she was the oldest person in this group of about 50, and she worried she wouldnt be able to keep up. Advertisement The effort was organized by the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association, a grassroots team of wildfire experts, local landowners, and community members that hosts hands-on trainings on controlled burns as a method of natural disaster prevention. The Humboldt event united unlikely allies: Trump-supporting ranchers worked side by side with retired hippies and back-to-the-landers; logging workers hammed it up with the same Save the Redwoods League activists theyd battled in the regions timber wars. Academics who studied prescribed burning watched their theory become practice. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Lynchs worries were quickly put to rest. The organizers were very welcoming, and [found] a place for everyone, she told me on a call. Timed for a clear, sunny day with low wind and moderate humidity, the burn successfully cleared medusahead, an invasive grass, from 50 acres of the ranch. Im a firm believer in the results [prescribed fire] produces, said Lynch, and its wonderful to see the whole age spectrum of dedicated people in the community helping. Advertisement Advertisement Controlled burns like these are becoming more common across the West and especially in California, where uncontrolled blazes have continued to force evacuations and scorch acres upon acres. As legislators and regulators grapple with how to prevent destructive wildfires, scientists, land management groups, and advocates are pushing another method: fighting fire with fire. The idea isnt new. For countless generations, Indigenous people have worked with fire to maintain healthy landscapes that are less prone to massive wildfires. While allowing natural fires to burn, Native Americans in California and elsewhere started some intentionally to clear dry brush, maintain species balance, and create prairies and meadows where animals graze. In the early days of Western settlement, some ranchers also adopted this practice to maintain pastureland for cattle. Advertisement Advertisement But in the 1880s, the U.S. Army began to administer Yellowstone, the first national park, and developed the idea of fighting fire. In 1910, wildfires in Idaho and Montana burned millions of acres, destroying communities and killing 86 people. The U.S. Forest Service subsequently adopted a policy of putting out all blazes, which state and federal land management agencies mimicked in an effort to protect timber supplies and human lives. Under these policies, Indigenous people and ranchers alike could be fined for burning their own lands. In 1968, the National Park Service lifted its fire ban after noticing a decline in giant sequoia trees, which depend on fire to grow. Over the next 15 years, the Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) gradually reintroduced fire to their landscapes. The Forest Service now admits that suppression backfired; excluding fire created an unnatural buildup of dry brush and overcrowding of trees thats partly fueling todays megafires. Scientists and policymakers increasingly agree that under the right conditions, intentionally burning away flammable vegetation is one of the most effective tools for reducing wildfire risk. And research shows that when wildfires do reach lands thinned by prescribed fire, far fewer trees die even under extreme fire weather, an effect that can last for up to 1520 years. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Yet we still have a long way to go. A recent analysis of government data titled Were Not Doing Enough Prescribed Fire in the Western United States to Mitigate Wildfire Risk, written by University of Idaho fire scientist Crystal Kolden, found that between 1998 and 2018, the amount of prescribed burning in the Western U.S. remained stable and even decreased in some areas. According to the Sacramento Bee, fewer than 90,000 acres of California were intentionally burned in 2018. Kolden roughly estimates that the state should be burning at least five times that amount. There is an urgency, Kolden says. We are seeing, every single year now, highly destructive and sometimes fatal wildfires. A lot of the solutions, like retrofitting buildings or restructuring communities, take a lot of time and a lot of money. [But] prescribed fire is much cheaper. It ends up being this thing that we can do now, if we have the political willpower. Advertisement Part of the problem is the slow process of obtaining the necessary permits to burn on public lands, which make up about half the states acreage. Jake Hannan, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told me that burns can take up to 18 months to plan. The process is much easier for private landowners, who can burn without permits if Cal Fire approves of their experience and methods. Even during the driest months, local air quality districts can grant permits for the smoke that results from prescribed fire on private lands. Thats why burns like the one Lynch worked on are emerging as a solution to the Wests wildfire problem. Under the right conditions, intentionally burning away flammable vegetation is one of the most effective tools for reducing wildfire risk. We arent anywhere near bringing fire back at the scale we need to, says Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension who helped lead that burn. Its important to push forward with a grassroots model that empowers people to do the work, instead of having bottlenecks with the agency thats in charge. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association, which Quinn-Davidson leads, was the first organization of its kind in the West when it started in 2018, and has already inspired similar groups to start up in Northern Californias Plumas, Nevada, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties. These groups bring landowners and neighbors together to provide the manpower that controlled burns require. Quinn-Davidson says shes hosted 25 lectures and field-based workshops in the past year to increase peoples comfort with prescribed fire, and in the past two years, shes led 20 burns on private lands. Were bringing fire back to the people, making it more cooperative and accessible, she says. When it comes to burning on private lands in the West, the roadblocks are less at the policy level and more at the experience level. Advertisement In 2013, Quinn-Davidson hosted a controlled burning workshop with the Karuk Tribe, which is largely based in Orleans, California, about 70 miles south of Oregon. Controlled burns are integral to the identity of Karuk and their neighbors, the Yurok, who both live in the Northern California mountains amid millions of trees. Decades of fire exclusion upset a delicate balance that tribes helped maintain; their forests have become monocultures dominated by conifers instead of the colorful mix of oaks and other hardwoods that would flourish with regular burning. But as interest in prescribed fire grows, the Karuks expertise is being tapped to help agencies and individuals learn to work with fire, and to follow seasonal rhythms of when and where to burn. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In October 2019, I attended a controlled burn training hosted by the Karuk in Orleans. More than 100 participants, including local landowners, renters, members of the Forest Service and Cal Fire, plus a fire unit from Spain, gathered for a two-week burn of 216 acres of Karuk ancestral lands that are now privately owned. Two days before I arrived for the training, the tribe had burned dozens of acres in a section of the forest they called the Bullpine Unit. Walking through the site, I noticed that nearly all trees survived, but the forest floor, where one might expect a tangle of brush and bramble, was virtually wiped clear, creating a feeling of spaciousness between the tall pines and firs. The area was dotted with thin plumes of smoke, rising from stumps that still smoldered. Advertisement Advertisement At another burn site, a group dripped flames across a tree-covered hill. Others were patrolling the borders of the fire, while the burn boss spoke commands into a radio. These places are a lot happier when were here, said Vikki Preston, a cultural resource technician with the Karuk Tribe who grew up observing burns and has participated in multiple trainings. The trees are healthy when were tending to them, taking really good care of them. After burns, Karuk schoolchildren take field trips into the forest to gather acorns and materials for basket weaving, traditional activities made possible by clearing the forest floor. Advertisement Preston explained how theyd chosen the correct conditions for this burn. We were coming off of it being rainy a couple weeks ago, so it had dried out enough that you could tell [the brush and leaf litter] would burn off. But it was moist enough that were not threatened by a wildfire imminently. Advertisement Yet not everyone is convinced that controlled burns are scalable. Terry Warlick, a fire battalion chief with the U.S. Forest Service who works in the Mendocino National Forest and attended the Karuk training, was enthusiastic about the historical fire regime modeled by tribes. But, he says, not all communities will be. They dont like the smoke. They dont want to see it until they have to experience a wildfire, he told me as volunteers followed the shin-high flames creeping across the hillside. It kind of seems like we got to go through, you know, an event to change our thought process. People are scared of any fire application, says Hannan, the Cal Fire chief. All theyve known is these huge fires that burn down houses and sometimes kill people. Advertisement He was referring to recent infernos like the Camp and Carr Fires, but prescribed fires occasionally wreak havoc too. A controlled burns escape started the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire in New Mexico, which scorched 47,000 acres and left over 400 families homeless. Such incidents can be almost completely prevented, says Preston, by fire crews that have intimate knowledge of the lands they are burning and follow specific techniques. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement After starting a burn, experts from her tribe work with local agencies to monitor it. All day theyre taking data, Preston says, to glean a solid projection of where the fire is headed. When a fire has lingered for too long, or threatens to move past the fire line, crews can spray water or use tools to tamp it down. But under the right conditionslow wind, high humidityit usually flickers out on its own. Advertisement Cal Fire is slowly increasing its prescribed fire targets; by the end of this fiscal year, it intends to burn 25,000 acres. The Forest Service in California burned 43,000 acres over the past fiscal year. Independent training exercises like the Karuks burned about 14,000 acres nationwide in 2018, and over 125,000 in the past decade. Preston and other Karuk tribal members, in line with scientific consensus, believe there should be more prescribed fire throughout the year. The tribes plans for this years training burns were limited by a burn ban imposed all summer and reinstated this fall due to high winds and low humidity across most of California, the same conditions that prompted the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric to shut off power lines across the state, leaving millions without electricity. Yet Preston and others say the conditions in the mountainous region of Orleans were ideal for burning. Advertisement Advertisement We should be basing these [burn ban] decisions on local factors and not sociopolitical factors, says Bill Tripp, a deputy director in the Karuk Tribes Department of Natural Resources, implying that burn bans may be intended to limit liability for utilities like PG&E or avoid the negative optics of a planned burn while wildfires wreak havoc elsewhere. The Forest Service and the local [Cal Fire] unit were with us in saying, We know this timing is right, but the decision is being made in Sacramento, where Cal Fire is headquartered. The October 2019 moratorium prevented the Karuk from burning about 100 of their 300 intended acres. Advertisement Advertisement Were not getting to scale, says Tripp, who would like to see tens of thousands of acres in the tribes region burned. Weve got people on hand who are ready and qualified, its right on our homelands, and weve been doing this for millennia. But as long as were relying on someone else to make the decision of when to act, I dont think were gonna get there. Advertisement Some Karuk leaders worry about their burn methods being co-opted by groups like the Forest Service, which have historically infringed on their ceremonies and stewardship of the land. A 2014 report on ecological sovereignty from the tribe argued that while non-Tribal agencies have attempted to gain access to Karuk knowledge, a far more effective and appropriate action these agencies can take is to remove the barriers their policies put into placein other words, stand aside and let knowledgeable tribes burn. Advertisement Advertisement A spokesperson for Cal Fire says that the statewide agency is not considering any changes to the way it implements bans, though some areas may be granted exemptions, and the permitting process for landowners who want to burn is currently being streamlined. Advertisement Yet without the support and education of non-Native communities, loosening state regulations on burning may not do much. We need strong leadership from the community itself, not coming from the government or Cal Fire, to make the burns successful, Hannan told me. The more events that occur in nearby communities, where fires arent going out of control, the more accepting people will be. In her work training people to safely adopt prescribed burning, Quinn-Davidson finds inspiration in the Karuk approach to fire. We should be striving for the level of connection and personal reflection that Indigenous cultures have with their landscapes, she said, describing a holistic mindset that non-Natives may need to learn from to care for lands more sustainably. Were in an era when we need to find a meaningful place for everyone to work on this, every kind of community member. Even a self-proclaimed inexperienced novice like Kitty Lynch. The Algonac City Council recently presented an Algonac Asset Award to the communitys fire department. Mayor Terry Stoneburner, who said she was pleased to be the one to present the award at the city councils Sept. 15 meeting, called fire department personnel up to the front of the room, including Deputy Chief Jerry Doan, Capt. Tom McCabe and Lt. Joe Vernier. Fire Chief Joe Doan was out on business. Our first responders put their lives on the line to keep up safe, and these dedicated professionals deserve our appreciation every single day, Stoneburner said. The city of Algonac would like to express our gratitude to the Algonac Fire Department, represented by these fine young men, for protecting our community and remind residents that September is also National Preparedness Month in the United States. She noted that National Preparedness Month is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. National Preparedness Month encourages Americans to take steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses, schools and communities, she said. These emergencies include national disasters and potential terrorist attacks. Stoneburner said that as of 2016, the National Household Survey revealed that while more than 75% of Americans surveyed reported having supplies set aside in their homes for disasters, less than 50% had a household emergency plan. National Preparedness Month encourages learning about possible emergencies, preparing an emergency supply kit and making a family emergency plan, and I know chief is working on that to bring our (Ready Neighborhood Program) back in and up to the forefront, she said. Were excited about that. Stoneburner then presented the Algonac Asset Award. The city of Algonac presents this award to the Algonac Fire Department to recognize their consistent and professional service to our community, she said. They are always there when help is needed. Any time of the day or night, they know exactly what to do and get right to it. Their effort invested in the care and concern shown to our residents is highly valued, and we want to express our appreciation and gratitude for it. We couldnt ask for better public servants for our city. We thank you very much for kindly choosing to work with us. Council members and those attending the meeting stood and applauded. These guys are great role models for us in our community, Stoneburner said. The younger kids, they want to be like them. And I think thats great. Other meeting items The council also unanimously approved water plant supervisory control and data acquisition system upgrades in the amount of $26,295 from UIS Group of Companies and emergency repairs to a Delta lift station pump in the amount of $1,024.22 from Electric Motor Services. Stoneburner said Algonacs water plant currently operates using a SCADA system, which is a computer system located in a control room at the treatment plant that is used by operations and management for process monitoring and automation. Our current software for the water plant is no longer supported, she said. That happens to all of us in our homes, too: We get some software to use and all of a sudden they dont support it anymore. She noted the item was budgeted in this fiscal year and that the city sent out for three quotes and two companies responded: UIS Group of Companies and DuPont for $31,657. As always, water plant expenses have to go to Clay Township for their approval, and they have approved this purchase Sept. 8, 2020 at their meeting, Stoneburner said. As for the Delta lift station pump, she said that during a heavy rain in August, both pumps at the lift station failed at the same time. I know we talked about it at our meeting then, she said. I guess literally it was a perfect storm, because it all fell apart. One pump was taken out for immediate repair in order to get the lift station operational again as soon as possible, and the other was replaced with a spare pump. One second pump that failed is still out for repairs. Council member Michael Bembas asked how old the pumps were. City Manager Denice Gerstenberg said she did not know. But I do know that were going to be ordering a new one because this continues to happen, especially since the newer ones you can repair while theyre in position, she said. Council member Jacob Skarbek asked how many pumps Algonac had. Gerstenberg said two and a spare. Bembas asked if two new ones should be ordered. We do have one spare, Gerstenberg said. We got one fixed, were getting the other one fixed and were going to be ordering a new one. Mayor Pro Tem Rocky Gillis asked if there were issues at other lift stations, as well. Gerstenberg said the Delta lift station especially has issues because of the flooding and high water. Theyve been running 24/7, which is not usual, she said. Its just during the flooding right now thats causing problems. Bembas suggested looking into replacing all of the pumps to see if it would be more cost effective, instead of repairing them several times. Gerstenberg agreed. The live-action remake of Mulan, which has been hailed as gorgeous and exhilarating, is now available to stream exclusively on Disney+ with Premier Access for an additional fee of 19.99. Some two decades after the animated original hit cinema screens, acclaimed filmmaker Niki Caro has brought back the epic tale of Chinas legendary warrior, in which a fearless young woman risks everything out of love for her family and her country to become one of the greatest fighters her country has ever known. As fans of the story will know, the film follows Hua Mulan (played by Yifei Liu), the eldest daughter of an honoured warrior, who steps in to take the place of her ailing father to serve in the Imperial Army and defend the country from Northern invaders. Disguising herself as a man, Hua Jun, she goes on a life-altering journey and earns the respect of a grateful nation and a proud father. The cast also includes Donnie Yen as Commander Tung; Tzi Ma as Zhou, Jason Scott Lee as Bori Khan; Yoson An as Honghui; Ron Yuan as Sergeant Qiang; with Gong Li as Xianniang and Jet Li as the Emperor. Yifei Liu in battle (Disney) UK viewers can watch Mulan exclusively on Disney+ with Premier Access for 19.99. The movie is available exclusively to stream on Disney+ for UK subscribers in Ultra HD, HDR and Dolby Audio. Viewers can stream and download Mulan as many times as you want, as long as youre a Disney+ subscriber. Mulan received a glowing four-star review in The Independent, with critic Clarisse Loughrey writing that Liu draws from the frazzled naivety of Ming-Na Wens original take on the character, but lets it cement into fiery determination whenever battle calls. She added: When she fights, its as if were watching the qi take hold of her limbs, imbued with equal grace and power. Shes a formidable fighter. Caros camera twists into vertiginous angles to follow the flow of the action. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up 'Mulan' (Disney) Fans and members of the press who were present at the movies world premiere in March also heaped high praise on the film, applauding the actors performances, Niki Caros direction and the battle sequences. Ive seen Mulan twice now and I must say it is grrrreat, wrote one Twitter user. Easily Disneys best live action reboot. I think its also Disneys first battle epic? It is beautiful & absorbing & rich & empowering. The cast is excellent and Niki Caros direction is just breathtaking. The cast of Mulan is fantastic in the film, said another. There are lots of little moments that nods to the animated thatll make the fans happy. Very beautiful & epic cinematography. It had more fantastical elements than I expected. Overall, a great re-telling of the animated and very fun. Subscribe to Disney+ and get Premier Access to Mulan now. Additional fee required. William LaPlante is the newly selected president and chief executive officer at Draper. Bills strategic leadership, operational excellence expertise and passion for innovation will immediately benefit Draper and our customers, by furthering our efforts to deliver excellence and corporate growth, said David Shedd, chairman of the Draper Board of Directors. The Board of Directors of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., announced today that Dr. William LaPlante, a senior executive at The MITRE Corporation, has been selected as Drapers next president and chief executive officer. LaPlante will assume his position on October 7 when Francis Kearney, interim president and CEO, steps down and transitions his roles and responsibilities. Kearney, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, has served on Drapers board of directors since 2015 and in his current role since 2020. Bills strategic leadership, operational excellence expertise and passion for innovation will immediately benefit Draper and our customers, by furthering our efforts to deliver excellence and corporate growth, said David Shedd, chairman of the Draper Board of Directors. He has built a tremendous reputation in industry and government working at the highest levels and we are fortunate to have him join the Draper executive team. LaPlante was most recently senior vice president and general manager at National Security, a sector of MITRE, which includes two of MITREs federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs)the National Security Engineering Center (NSEC) and the National Cybersecurity FFRDC. Over his career, he has 30 years of experience with organizations in defense technology and space that include the Department of the Air Force as assistant secretary for acquisition and on numerous boards and commissions, including the Defense Science Board and the non-profit consortium Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT). The appointment of LaPlante lays the groundwork for the next chapter for Draper under a new president and CEO. Kearney will resume his role as a member of Drapers Board of Directors and continue to serve in his capacities as president of Inside-Solutions-LLC, and senior advisor at Thayer Leader Development Group. Of his selection, LaPlante said, I am excited and honored to be joining Draper. Drapers talented staff and their incredible technical work is needed now more than ever in our country, and I very much look forward to being a part of this great institution with its tradition of innovation and technical excellence. Draper At Draper, we believe exciting things happen when new capabilities are imagined and created. Whether formulating a concept and developing each component to achieve a field-ready prototype or combining existing technologies in new ways, Draper engineers apply multidisciplinary approaches that deliver new capabilities to customers. As a not-for-profit engineering innovation company, Draper focuses on the design, development and deployment of advanced technological solutions for the worlds most challenging and important problems. We provide engineering solutions directly to government, industry and academia; work on teams as prime contractor or subcontractor; and participate as a collaborator in consortia. We provide unbiased assessments of technology or systems designed or recommended by other organizationscustom designed, as well as commercial-off-the-shelf. http://www.draper.com Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh has approved a proposal on resuming regular international passenger flights between Vietnam and some partners submitted by the Transport Ministry. browser not support iframe. The Governments Office on September 15 issued a document announcing the Deputy PMs conclusion at the end of a meeting on September 8 on the proposal. Accordingly, Vietnam will resume four air routes to Guangzhou (China), Taiwan (China), Seoul (the Republic of Korea), and Tokyo (Japan) from September 15, and to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and Vientiane (Laos) from September 22. The maximum number of flights will not exceed two per week on each route and may be further increased in depending on the situation. The Governments Offices document also specified the eligible people and conditions for entering Vietnam via commercial flights from the six above-mentioned partners (excluding those who transit from a third country). Passengers on such flights shall include holders of diplomatic and official passports and their family members; experts, investors, business managers, high-tech workers and their family members; and Vietnamese wishing to return home. The passengers are required to have a certificate of a negative COVID-19 RT-PCR test result issued within three days prior to departure. Immediately after arriving, they will be given RT-PCR tests at the quarantine facility, and quarantined in accordance with regulations. Deputy PM Minh agreed to consider shortening the period of concentrated quarantine (possibly to five days) for people of the above-mentioned groups after they test negative twice, and then allowing them to self-quarantine at home or offices of enterprises and organisations. Those who arrive on commercial flights after transiting a third country will have to stay in concentrated quarantine for 14 days. Foreigners arriving for short stays under 14 days will have to follow regulations of the Health Ministry. The Deputy PM tasked the Ministry of Public Security and the Foreign Ministry to shorten the time required for visa issuance to three days. The Ministry of Public Security was instructed to coordinate with local authorities to organise and supervise the implementation of quarantine rules as regulated./.VNA Belgium's heir to the throne Princess Elisabeth appears unrecognisable in a camouflage uniform and wielding a gun during her first few weeks training at a 'tough' military academy. The young royal, 18, who was previously studying at UWC Atlantic College in Wales, joined the army earlier this month in a move which hit the headlines in her homeland. Princess Elisabeth appeared almost unrecognisable in snaps released of her first weeks at the military academy, as she donned a camouflage uniform and carried a huge rifle for shooting practice. In other pictures, the pampered royal could be seen taking on tough exercise regimes, sprinting through fields and crawling across the muddy ground. Belgium's heir to the throne Princess Elisabeth, 18, can be seen donning an army uniform while wielding a gun in photographs released of her first weeks at the country's Royal Military Academy In the photographs, which were released this week, the normally pampered royal could be seen undergoing initiation training at the army camp The royal could be seen donning her camouflage uniform and a dark face mask during a training regime at the camp The teenager has joined a host of other young recruits at the military academy, which a former student said was 'tough' earlier this summer In photographs released this week, the youngster could be seen marching alongside other recruits as they prepared for exercises and workshops at the military academy. In another snap, she took to the floor in a plank as part in an initiation exercise in the pitch dark. She could also be seen taking on shooting practice, and passing out food supplies to her fellow students. Meanwhile the youngster was also photographed in the classroom at the academy, where it is believed she will learn skills including map reading. The heir to the throne could be seen taking part in target practice during her training at the army camp One of the essential skills she will learn at the military academy is target practice, with the young royal donning goggles for the exercise Princess Elisabeth wore a black face covering while studying in a classroom (left), and could be seen sprinting across a field in another exercise (right) In snaps from an exercise regime, a determined Princess Elisabeth could be seen crawling through muddy grass When the news hit the headlines, one of the training school's students has offered insight into the course and some sage words of advice ahead of Elisabeth's enrollment. Evelyn Gravez, 22, has almost completed her master's degree in social and military Sciences at the school. She told local media: 'My advice? Above all, make as many friends as possible. They'll help you through if you're having a hard time.' Speaking about what life will be like for the teenage princess, Evelyn revealed her first weeks will include learning to fire a gun, setting up an army tent, marching with a backpack, tactical training and reading maps. In another photograph, the royal wore a bandanna style face covering pulled up to her eyes as she took part in a training exercise A former student previously revealed the royal's first weeks would include learning to fire a gun, setting up an army tent, marching with a backpack, tactical training and reading maps The royal appeared unrecognisable as she joined a line-up alongside other recruits at the army camp in Butgenbach She added that the experience is 'pretty tough' and that 'they really throw you in'. She also warned that the initiation period is not for everyone and that a number of students drop out each year. However, Ms Gravez added that the camp is not like the cliches of military school often seen in Hollywood movies. She added: 'They don't yell at you when you make mistakes. Of course, sometimes they have to be strict. Princess Elisabeth appeared relaxed in the photographs from her first few weeks at the military academy, which her father also attended She wore facial camouflage while taking part in an exercise in a forest (right), and showed off her uniform during a line-up at the academy (left) 'Because mistakes, they have to be sorted out as quickly as possible. But if you are a bit slow to learn, they are there to encourage you, not to bark at you.' Although there will be tough days ahead, the student believes that the princess will get used to it and that it might even help her lead the country in the future. She added: 'I think Elisabeth will certainly get used to it. Even if she only stays one year. A former student previously warned that the experience at the school was 'pretty tough' for young recruits like Princess Elisabeth The heir-to-the-throne appeared discreet as she swept her long blonde locks into a tidy bun and could be seen wearing a multitude of face masks during her first weeks of training 'We learn to make decisions under stress, leadership techniques. That will be useful for her as head of state.' Elisabeth is the heir apparent to the Belgian throne - the eldest child of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde. A change in the law a decade ago made it possible for the eldest child, male or female, to ascend the throne in the country. The Princess, who will become Belgium's first Queen when her father abdicates, is following into King Phillipe's footsteps. He attended the school from 1978 to 1981. Pictured with King Philippe on her 18th birthday last October She will become the country's first Queen Regent if she takes up the role. How Elisabeth will become Belgium's first queen by birth On turning 18, Princess Elisabeth became legally old enough to rule without a substitute regent being appointed. It means Elisabeth is now eligible to become queen on the death of her father, although given he is in good health and aged just 60 that is not expected to be soon. When she does ascend the throne, Elisabeth will become the first ever Queen of Belgium by birth. On its foundation in 1830, the Belgian constitution stipulated that accession to the throne was reserved for the descendants of Leopold I by order of primogeniture 'to the perpetual exclusion of women'. But the Salic law was abolished in 1991. Elisabeth's great-uncle Baudouin was on the throne at the time. Her grandfather Albert II was King from Baudouin's death in 1993 until he abdicated in favour of his son King Philippe, Elisabeth's father, in 2003. Advertisement Elisabeth spent 18 months boarding at UWC Atlantic College in South Wales before returning home to Brussels in March ahead of the government lockdown. Like students across the country, the royal has been forced to finish her studies remotely and will not return to the school. She has spent lockdown living with her parents, King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, and her three siblings in Brussels. The princess, who received her International Baccalaureate Diploma this summer, will complete a one-year course in social and military sciences. There, she will learn in-depth about the four components of Belgian defense; Army, Air Force, Navy and Medical. King Philippe, 60, spent three years at the esteemed institution between 1978 to 1981. While in isolation at Laeken Palace, Elizabeth and her siblings Prince Gabriel, 16, Prince Emmanuel, 14 and Princess Eleonore, 12, spent time volunteering. They showed their support for Belgium's elderly population by calling retirement homes and delivering baked goods. Elisabeth's younger sister Princess Elenore was seen tagging along on some of her mother's engagements, doing her best to help Belgium move forward from the pandemic. On May 14 she accompanied her mother Queen Mathilde to a community kitchen providing meals for the homeless. The following day she headed back to school, with her dad King Philippe wearing a mask as he walked her to the establishment in Brussels. Carrie Underwood forgot to mention her family at the Academy Of Country Music Awards in Nashville on Wednesday evening. When the 37-year-old blonde beauty accepted the Entertainer of the Year award - which she split with Thomas Rhett - she left out husband of 10 years Mike Fisher and their kids Jacob and Isaiah out of her speech. 'I'm a dummy,' said the Cry Pretty crooner later while in the press room. An honest mistake: Carrie Underwood forgot to mention her family at the Academy Of Country Music Awards in Nashville on Wednesday evening Mike who? When the 37-year-old blonde beauty accepted the Entertainer of the Year award - which she split with Thomas Rhett - she left out husband Mike Fisher and their kids Jacob and Isaiah out of her speech; seen in 2019 The star was dressed to the nines as she held her trophy. 'First, I want to say that Im a dummy for not mentioning my husband or my children in my acceptance speech,' she began. 'You would think after this many years of seeing other people do speeches and giving some of my own, I would think of people that are important to me, so Im sorry!' She added, 'But I do love my children and my husband.' Uh-oh: 'I'm a dummy,' said the Cry Pretty crooner later while in the press room The former TV star did remember to thank God. 'Thank you, God, so much. All glory, glory to God. Thank to the ACM not just for this, but for putting me in such incredible company. I am more than happy to share this with Thomas Rhett and to have my name mentioned with his and Luke [Bryan] and Luke [Combs] and Eric Church. I am beyond honored. Thank you, gushed Underwood. Then she gave a nod to her work team. 'You guys, hold on. [Concerts] will happen again. Just hold on!' she said of lockdown. During the show the of American Idol winner of 2005 paid tribute to Dolly Parton, Patson Cline and other queens of country as she performed a medley of hits. Queens of country: Underwood paid tribute to Dolly Parton, Patson Cline and other queens of country She dazzled in a red floral gown, as she marked the 95th anniversary of the historic Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where she took the stage. She prefaced the song, speaking to the empty audience: 'Patsy and Loretta, Martina and Barbara, Reba and Dolly. These strong voices mean so much to me and to all the other female artists who stand on their shoulders. 'They are some of my heroes, and I am so honored to stand alongside them as a fellow member of the Grand Ole Opry. It's my pleasure to pay tribute to these legendary ladies as we celebrate the Opry's 95th anniversary.' Carrie launched into Cline's Crazy, before transitioning into Loretta Lynn's You Ain't Woman Enough, Barbara Mandrell's I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool and Why'd You Come in Here by Parton. Lady in red: The star dazzled in a red floral gown, as she marked the 95th anniversary of the historic Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where she took the stage Strong voices: She prefaced the song, speaking to the empty audience: 'Patsy and Loretta, Martina and Barbara, Reba and Dolly. These strong voices mean so much to me and to all the other female artists who stand on their shoulders' She also squeezed Reba McEntire's The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia and Martina McBride's A Broken Wing into the medley. The Cowboy Casanova artist made her predecessors proud when she beat out male nominees Luke Bryan, Eric Church and Luke Combs for Entertainer of the Year. She tied with Rhett for the honor, which was a first for the prestigious award show's 55-year history. Carrie and her fellow nominees previously opened the awards show with a medley of their own songs, as she performed Before He Cheats. She put on a stunning display in a sparkling gold mini dress with billowy sleeves, as she sang into a matching gold microphone. Oldie but goodie: Carrie and her fellow nominees previously opened the awards show with a medley of their own songs, as she performed Before He Cheats Stay gold: She put on a stunning display in a sparkling gold mini dress with billowy sleeves, as she sang into a matching gold microphone The Last Name artist was also nominated for Female Artist of the Year, which was ultimately awarded to Maren Morris. Carrie took to Instagram before the show, as she put rollers in her hair, while getting ready in some leopard-print leggings from her line CALIA by Carrie, writing: 'Getting ready for tonight! Lets do this, @ACMawards!' After a five month delay, amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, this year's show was moved from Las Vegas to Nashville for the first time, with no live audience. Performers like Carrie hit the stage at three iconic locations for country music, including Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium and the Bluebird Cafe. Brand loyalty: Carrie took to Instagram before the show, as she put rollers in her hair, while getting ready in some leopard-print leggings from her line CALIA by Carrie Whats new: Authorities have punished dozens of officials in North China with ties to a convicted murderer who absconded from jail for over seven years by abusing the medical parole system. Some 65 public officials in the Inner Mongolia autonomous regions prison management, high court, public prosecution, police and hospital sectors have been disciplined by the Communist Party, according to a statement (link in Chinese) published Wednesday on the website of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the partys internal graft-buster. Eight of them have been expelled from the party and turned over to prosecutors on suspicion of criminal activity, the statement said. The background: According to the CCDI, the sanctioned officials have links to the case of Wang Yunhong, who was sentenced to 15 years behind bars in 2005 for killing a teacher in regional capital Hohhot in return for 200,000 yuan ($29,541). Wang subsequently secured a succession of medical paroles totaling more than seven years, during which he worked, traveled and started a family. He returned to jail on an extended sentence last year. Wangs case has deepened public outrage over convicted criminals serving so-called on-paper sentences after a similar case from Inner Mongolia came to light earlier this month. Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com) and editor Marcus Ryder (marcusryder@caixin.com) Download our app to receive breaking news alerts and read the news on the go. President Donald Trump would support narrow legislation to provide more financial aid to airlines, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Thursday after meeting with industry executives. Meadows said the industry needs $25 billion and that 30,000 to 50,000 jobs are at risk. Airlines have warned they plan mass reductions after an existing federal prohibition on job cuts expires at the close of business on Sept. 30. Extending payroll assistance for airlines has been backed by members of both parties to avert politically treacherous layoffs a month prior to the U.S. elections, but so far there has been no agreement on how. "I never thought I'd say $25 billion was a small number, but compared to $1.5 trillion, it's a rather small amount of additional assistance that could potentially keep 30,000 to 50,000 workers on the payroll," Meadows said. "If we're going to get something separate prior to that deadline, it's going to have to happen next week," he said of an airline-only bill. That would ensure it gets to Trump's desk before layoffs begin on Oct. 1, he said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has opposed doing "piecemeal" virus relief bills as part of her strategy for Democrats to win agreement on a large multitrillion relief measure. She violated that stance however when she called the House back into session during the August recess to vote on a $25 billion Postal Service bill in the wake of mail delays. In August, 16 Republican senators signed a letter calling on leadership to add $25 billion in payroll funds in a package of covid-19 assistance. Some Republicans opposed the measure and it wasn't part of a stripped-down bill that failed to pass the chamber. A bipartisan group of House lawmakers called for more airline aid to prevent layoffs in July. The prospect of fresh assistance failed to immediately reassure airline investors. Most major U.S. carriers in a Standard & Poor's 500 gauge fell Thursday, joining a retreat in broader equity markets. The index was off less than 1% at 10:26 a.m. in New York. Carriers have been badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, which led many Americans to abandon air travel. After airline passenger counts surged somewhat around the close of summer and the Labor Day holiday, they've been declining in recent days. U.S. airport security portals screened only 30% of the number of airline passengers in the past seven days compared to the total a year ago, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The seven-day average had reached 37% earlier in the month. American Airlines Group Inc. said last month that it would cut 19,000 employees once federal payroll aid expires, capping a 30% workforce reduction since the coronavirus pandemic torpedoed travel demand. United warned of more than 16,000 cuts, saying it expected no meaningful recovery in demand until a treatment or vaccine is widely available. Delta Air Lines Inc. said this week it would be able to avoid most layoffs until the summer of 2021 at the earliest, although the company remains in talks with its pilots on ways to reduce or eliminate furloughs for almost 2,000. Delta declined to comment Thursday, as did American Airlines. United declined to comment and referred questions to Airlines for America, the airline lobby, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A pair of aid packages were created earlier this year for the industry. One extended loans to the carriers, which few accepted. The other provided money to pay salaries of employees in exchange for no layoffs until at least October. Five major airlines received the lion's share of the aid, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin approved in May. American Airlines is the largest recipient, getting $5.8 billion in payroll assistance. The money was a combination of grants and loans. Still, airlines including cargo carriers have so far left $29 billion in federal pandemic relief loans unclaimed as they wait to see whether consumer demand recovers as the economy reopens. Companies including American are in talks for the loans. Most major carriers have signed "letters of intent" to take the funds, though several have said they do not need it after raising debt in private markets. New York, US (PANA) - The continuing COVID-19 pandemic continues to top a long list of global concerns, the UN chief told journalists on Wednesday, noting that the grimmest of milestones is upon us British students have won this year's UK James Dyson Award for an invention that can capture the airborne microparticles shed by tyres as a car drives along. The team dubbed 'The Tyre Collective' made a device that captures the air- and water-polluting dust at the source and is wrapped around part of the edge of a tyre. It uses a combination of the aerodynamics of the spinning wheel and electrostatics to collect the dust, which become positively charged due to friction with the road. Tyre dust produced every time a vehicle brakes, accelerates or turns a corner is estimated to account for half of all road transport particulate emissions. In Europe alone, this wear-and-tear releases half a million tonnes of microscopic particles out into the environment, researchers have estimated. In fact, after single-use plastics, the tiny bits of rubber from tyres are the next largest source of microplastic pollutant that ends up in the world's oceans. Scroll down for video British students have won this year's James Dyson Award for an invention, depicted, that can capture the microparticles shed by tyres as a car drives along 'Everyone focuses on air pollution being directly from the engines themselves and coming out of the exhaust pipe,' Tyre Collective member and engineer Hugo Richardson told the Reuters news agency. 'But what people don't necessarily recognise is that tire wear is a huge contributor to that and that's partly down to its microscopic size and the fact that you don't obviously see it all the time.' Mr Richardson and colleagues said that when tested in a controlled environment their prototype can collect around 60 per cent of all airborne particles released from a vehicle's tyres. The collected particles can be recycled turning them into inks and dyes, or even back in new tyres. The significant reduction in traffic brought about by the coronavirus lockdown has given people a glimpse of how clean a city's air can be, Mr Richardson said. 'I think we all realise that clean air in our cities is not a pipedream any more, but something that is immediately achievable with some clever innovation and some impetus from those in charge.' The benefits to public health could be profound, the researchers have said. 'These particles are actually small enough to be inhaled,' said Siobhan Anderson, a member of the Innovation Design Engineering program offered jointly by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. 'So they can cause different lung diseases and developmental issues and they also enter our water and eventually make their way through our food chain and come back to us.' The team dubbed 'The Tyre Collective' made a device that captures the air- and water-polluting dust at the source and is wrapped around part of the edge of a tyre, as pictured The device It uses a combination of the aerodynamics of the spinning wheel and electrostatics to collect the dust, pictured, which become positively charged due to friction with the road According to the researchers, the increasing shift towards electric vehicles will likely see pollution from exhaust emissions fall but tyre particles will remain an issue. In fact, the team believes that tyre emissions may actually increase, as electric vehicles are heavier due to added battery weight causing more tyre wear. The Tyre Collective, which won in 2,000 prize money, will now progress to the international stage of the James Dyson Award the results of which will be announced on November 19, 2020. In the meantime, the team is working on securing a patent for their design and continuing the project as a start-up venture. According to the researchers, the increasing shift towards electric vehicles will likely see pollution from exhaust emissions fall but tyre particles will remain an issue. In fact, the team believes that tyre emissions may actually increase, as electric vehicles are heavier due to added battery weight causing more tyre wear Tyre dust is estimated to account for half of all road transport particulate emissions. In fact, after single-use plastics, the tiny bits of rubber from tyres are the next largest source of microplastic pollutant in the world's oceans. Pictured, the dust produced by different vehicles Mr Richardson and colleagues said that when tested in a controlled environment their prototype can collect around 60 per cent of airborne particles released from a vehicle's tyres A man has been charged with murder after a 20-year-old was fatally stabbed in south London. Emergency services were called shortly before 3pm on Tuesday to Stockwell Road after the victim was found with stab injuries. Jaden Christie, 20, was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of death was given as stab wounds to the torso, following a post-mortem examination at Greenwich mortuary. Jacob Koutouan, 22, of Stockwell Road, Lambeth, has been charged with murder following the fatal stabbing. He will appear at Croydon Magistrates Court on Friday. HRM's Value to the Ontario Health Care System HRM's impressive reach across Ontario is integrating the health care system HRM's impressive reach across Ontario is integrating the health care system TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OntarioMDs award-winning digital health service, Health Report Manager (HRM) is now delivering reports from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to family doctors, specialists and nurse practitioners. SickKids is the latest hospital added to HRMs ever expanding list of health care facilities that deliver clinical reports and notifications to community-based physicians and nurse practitioners digitally. The ability to communicate and share patient information between facilities and community-based physicians can facilitate the transition and coordination of patient care between these care settings. A smooth transition of patient care can avoid complications and hospital readmissions and may reduce patient anxiety about continuity of care. SickKids is pleased to be able to share reports with community-based family doctors and specialists through OntarioMDs HRM. This process aligns with our mission to improve the health of children through the integration of care, said Dr. Sarah Muttit, Vice President & Chief Information Officer Executive at SickKids. OntarioMD wants to ensure that the reports for some of the provinces youngest patients are delivered in real time to family physicians, specialists and nurse practitioners, said Sarah Hutchison, CEO, OntarioMD, the company that developed and manages HRM. Having smoother, online visibility into the treatment children receive while in hospital is an important digital health achievement for clinicians and patients in Ontario. To date, HRM has delivered over 80 million reports to more than 11,000 physicians and nurse practitioners from more than 500 hospital and specialty clinic sites across Ontario. Delivering reports electronically instead of faxing or mailing paper reports, along with clinicians receiving reports straight into their electronic medical records (EMRs) has provided the Ontario health care system with an annual cost avoidance of $40 million a year. This cost avoidance increases every month as more clinicians and sending sites use HRM to share patient data. Thanks to the partnership between OntarioMD and Ontario Health, HRM has been able to contribute to the integration of the health system by eliminating barriers to information flow between hospitals and clinicians. Story continues HRMs value to the health care system has been recognized in Ontarios Digital Health Playbook. Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) taking shape across the province are implementing HRM so the clinicians in each OHT can leverage this enabling technology. About OntarioMD OntarioMDs dedication to providing value to the Ontario health system through products like HRM has been recognized with multiple awards for excellence, leadership and innovation in digital health. HRM, and OntarioMDs other products and services, are supported by staff located across Ontario who have extensive knowledge of clinician practices, and the expertise to accelerate digital health in Ontario Health Teams. It is this combination of quality products and support that have made OntarioMD a successful advisor to more than 20,000 Ontario clinicians and a successful delivery partner to organizations that need to deploy their products to physicians and nurse practitioners in all parts of the province. Please visit OntarioMD.ca for more information on HRM and other OntarioMD digital health services. To sign up for an OntarioMD product or service, or to become an HRM sending site, please contact support@ontariomd.com . A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cc1b647b-7374-430c-a2f9-ec3c7da1b700 OntarioMD is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ontario Medical Association. For more information: Kathy Tudor Director, Communications & Marketing OntarioMD info@ontariomd.com BROOKLYN, Ohio -- Originally estimated at more than $1.1 million in asphalt overlay projects for city streets, Brooklyns $823,630 road program for 2020 is nearly complete. Were coming close to wrapping up our 2020 road projects, which included several local streets, plus Ridge Road from Denison Avenue to Memphis Avenue, Mayor Katie Gallagher said. The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) repaved Ridge Road from Memphis to Denison avenues. As for the citys list, that included Springwood Drive (south of Interstate 480); Autumn Lane (south of I-480); Kennedy Drive; North, East and South lanes; Pelham Drive; and East Biddulph Road. Brooklyn Director of Public Service John Verba said the latter two streets are the last to be completed, with work expected to finish this week. Part of the citys in-house road maintenance program this year included the service department crack-sealing Northcliff Avenue, Woodhaven Avenue, West Boulevard, Outlook Drive, Fairway Drive, North Amber Drive, Brookway Lane, Brookside Drive, Dellbank Drive, Parkside Drive, Shady Lane, Southfield Avenue and Plainfield Avenue. Work is also scheduled to begin next month on replacement of the existing Memphis Road bridge. Verba said the $5.8 million project, which is scheduled to be finished in the summer of 2023, is being paid for using federal, Ohio Public Works Commission and Cuyahoga County funds. The bridge is in really bad shape, Verba said. The project also includes the widening Memphis Avenue. The city is taking advantage of the work by adding a dedicated turn lane to the south side of Memphis Avenue. The estimated construction cost for that is between $350,000 and $400,000. Brooklyn plans to add a dedicated turn lane to the south side of Memphis Avenue at the Tiedeman Road intersection. (John Benson, special to cleveland.com) Were widening the roadway in this location, because currently this is a heavily traveled intersection used by both our residents and businesses in this area, Gallagher said. "As Industrial Commercial Properties (ICP) continues working with the city to bring in new businesses to the old American Greetings land, we expect traffic will continue to increase back to a previous amount when American Greetings was functioning at its highest level. Moreover, trucking companies along Memphis Avenue use this intersection as their route to I-480, so the road expansion allows drivers more room to turn safely onto Tiedeman Road," she said. Brooklyn officials are also looking ahead to the citys 2021 street program. Currently, we estimate next years road repaving program to be around $1 million for Winter Lane, Memphis Villas, Brookport Drive, Summer Lane and West 74th Street, Verba said. Gallagher added: Weve completed our street plan for the next five years, ready to present to City Council at our capital improvement meeting scheduled for next month. Road improvement, construction and preventative work will continue to remain a priority here in Brooklyn next year and for years to come. Read more news from the Parma Sun Post. On Monday, Indias cumulative tally of Covid-19 cases crossed the 50 lakh-mark as the surge in daily cases continued unabated with an addition of another 90,123 new cases. The sustained and record surge in the number of cases over the last two weeks has put a strain on medical oxygen supply in some states. Although the situation has not spiralled out of control, the Centre this week took cognizance of the issue of medical oxygen shortage in some states and directed them to not impose any restrictions on inter-state movement of life-saving commodity. The central governments directive came amidst trouble between Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra governments after the latters decision to restrict movement of medical oxygen in the wake of a spike in cases. In fact, the matter reached the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which ordered the Maharashtra government to ensure uninterrupted oxygen supply to Madhya Pradesh. There have also been similar instances of restrictions placed on the movement of oxygen between districts. News18 explains the issues surrounding medical oxygen, its use, production capacities and procurement. What is medical oxygen? Medical oxygen is an essential medicine that is used to treat a range of ailments and in several medical procedures. It figures in Indias National List of Essential Medicines, 2015, and World Health Organizations (WHO) list of essential medicines. Its medical uses primarily include, among others, treatment of respiratory illnesses, prevention of hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), neonatal care and emergency care. According to WHO, medical oxygen contains at least 82% pure oxygen and is free from contamination. Only medical grade oxygen is used as medicine. Medical oxygen is produced using various methods, such as cryogenic distillation process for making liquid oxygen and in oxygen generation plants. Cryogenic distillation involves separating oxygen from nitrogen and argon after condensing atmospheric air using air separation. Why is it crucial as a line of treatment against Covid-19? Once the Covid-19 disease sets in, it affects the patients lungs and causes a dip in the blood oxygen level. This can adversely affect other vital organs, too. In the absence of any single effective line of treatment, drug or vaccine against Covid-19, oxygen therapy has proven to be the most efficient in treating moderately ill and severely ill patients. However, it is used more often in moderately-ill patients, according to doctors. Covid-19 poses serious trouble to the lungs and if the level of oxygen in the patients blood or oxygen saturation starts dropping below normal levels, we start oxygen therapy. It has been found to be effective, especially if the therapy is timely. In 10 patients, only two require oxygen therapy, said Dr. Suresh Kumar, Director, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital. (LNJP). LNJP is Delhis biggest public hospital for Covid-19. According to the health ministry, six per cent of patients in the country required oxygen support as on September 15. This included those in intensive care units, on ventilator support and in regular Covid-19 wards. Who manufactures medical oxygen? In India, oxygen is commercially produced largely for use in manufacturing industries such as steel plants, fabrication units, chemical industries, glass manufacturing and paper and pulp industries. In pre-Covid-19 times, industrial clients accounted for the lions share of oxygen use. However, in April this year, the central government permitted companies producing industrial oxygen to produce the its medical variant in order to meet the demand created by the Covid-19 crisis. There are four to five large manufacturers in India which include Linde India, Inox Air Products and Goyal MG Gases. These companies make liquid oxygen. There are also other companies that run oxygen generation plants and many are based in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. How do hospitals procure it? Across large, medium and small hospitals and nursing homes, medical oxygen is procures in two or three different ways. Many hospitals have on-site oxygen generation plants which are connected by pipes to the wards, intensive care units and critical care units where it is administered to patients. This facility, however, requires uninterrupted power supply. Hospitals that do not have their own oxygen generation plants source it from companies like Inox and Linde in liquefied form and store it in liquid oxygen tanks on the hospital premises. Even this system requires laying a central pipeline, which needs regular maintenance. Refillable cylinders, that can be filled at oxygen generation plants, are one of the most commonly used methods to procure medical oxygen. The oxygen is stored in the cylinder in compressed form and can be connected to a patients bed or a central pipeline. Once cylinders are exhausted, they need to be refilled. In most cases, dealers who run oxygen cylinder businesses also refill them for the hospitals. Using cylinders though is heavily reliant on transportation. Following issues in supplies and to meet high demand, some districts in Maharashtra are also setting up new oxygen generation plants. Why is there a shortage? As stated earlier, in April, the government allowed industrial oxygen producers to make medical oxygen as well. However, that was during a nation-wide lockdown and industries were shut. The surge in cases has coincided with the resumption of economic activities, including industrial activity. This has meant that industrial oxygen demand is slowly going back to normal, but state governments have ordered that medical oxygen should be priority and supply to industries should be kept low. The relentless rise in the number of cases, although, has driven up the demand for medical oxygen manifold. With demand shooting up come issues of delay and hiccups in supply chains. Therein lies the main cause of shortage. There are delays in the supply chain, at the end of both liquid oxygen makers as well oxygen generation plants. These are compounded by limited availability of tankers to transport the commodity. In some cases, like is being seen in Marathwada, refilling of cylinders is taking time due to overwhelming demand. Madhav Biradar runs an agency dealing in oxygen cylinders in Osmanabad city in Maharashtras Marathwada region. Biradar said the demand is so high that oxygen that was used over six days is now getting used up in a day or two. This has put a stress on generation plants too, he said. Two months back my clients needed 25-30 cylinders per day which have a capacity of 6,000 to 7,000 litres of oxygen. Now, the demand is almost 100 cylinders per day. When I go to refill the cylinder, sometimes I have to wait for half a day. Plants outside my district are asking me to not even try coming and this is the situation is only in the city. I also have no choice but to pass on transportation overheads and delays on to the buyers, said Biradar. What is the national production capacity and how much is being consumed? Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said Tuesday that every day, India produces 6,000 metric tonnes oxygen. Of this, 2,800 MT is being used for medical purposes including for Covid-19 treatment, while 2,200 was being used in industries. There is a head room of 1,000 MT and looking at the national level, there is no shortage of oxygen. As on Tuesday morning, we had a surplus of 1,900 MT. Bhushan urged hospitals and other medical facilities to maintain an inventory management. The problem arises when there is no oxygen inventory management and when there is a possible shortage of alert generation mechanism at the hospital level which needs to be monitored by states and UTs, so that replenishment can be done in a timely manner. Health Ministry has held detailed meetings with states, in which it has been advised to start a control room for monitoring oxygen supply and requirements on a daily basis, the union health secretary said. The Justice Department explored whether it could pursue either criminal or civil rights charges against city officials in Portland, a department spokesperson said Thursday. Clashes erupted in the city night after night between law enforcement and demonstrators; more than 100 people have been arrested on federal charges related to the unrest in the last few months. The revelation that federal officials researched whether they could levy criminal or civil charges against the officials exploring whether their rhetoric and actions may have helped spur the violence in Portland underscores the larger Trump administration's effort to spotlight and crack down on protest-related violence. The majority of the mass police reform demonstrations nationwide have been peaceful. For many nights, federal officials were told that Portland police officers were explicitly told not to respond to the federal courthouse as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside, some throwing bricks, rocks and other projectiles at officers, and not to assist federal officers who were sent to try to quell the unrest. The department had done research on whether it could pursue the charges, spokesperson Kerri Kupec said. She declined to comment on the status or whether charges would be brought. But bringing criminal civil rights charges against city officials for protest-related violence would likely present an uphill court battle for federal prosecutors. Bill Barr 's, left, Justice Department explored whether it could pursue either criminal or civil rights charges against city officials in Portland, a department spokesperson said Thursday. President Donald Trump has blamed Democrats, and specifically pointed to Portland's mayor Ted Wheeler, right, who he says have not done enough to stop nights of looting and unrest rotesters gather in front of a fire near the North police precinct during a protest against racial injustice and police brutality on September 6 in Portland Justice Department officials disputed earlier news reports that Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors in the department's civil rights division to explore whether they could bring charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing some residents to establish a protest zone this summer. President Donald Trump has blamed Democrats, and specifically pointed to Portland's mayor Ted Wheeler, who he says have not done enough to stop nights of looting and unrest in cities across the U.S. Trump has called Wheeler a 'wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor' and has said the city 'will never recover with a fool for a Mayor....' Trump has heaped blame for the unrest on Democrats who are leading the cities where violence has occurred and tried to keep focus squarely on pockets of protest-related violence, instead of on the point of police reform and the larger movement of racial injustice. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, pictured, said on Thursday that a report which claimed Barr had suggested charging her with sedition for allowing the 'CHOP' zone to be created in her city is 'chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration' The FBI has said it was also shifting the agency's resources to focus more heavily on violence and federal crimes committed during nearly three months of unrest during nightly racial injustice protests in the city that often end in vandalism, clashes with police and dozens of arrests. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on Thursday that a report which claimed Attorney General Bill Barr had suggested charging her with sedition for allowing the 'CHOP' zone to be created in her city is 'chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration.' 'The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the President to target those who have spoken out against this administration's actions,' Durkan, a former US attorney, said in a statement. 'That is an act of tyranny, not of democracy.' 'Ultimately, this is not a story about me. It is about how this President and his Attorney General are willing to subvert the law and use the Department of Justice for political purposes. The 'Capitol Hill Organized Protest was a three-week long 'occupation' by anti-racism protesters in Seattle who set up a several-block perimeter where there were no police presence within the boundaries. Two people were killed and several were wounded in shootings in the CHOP Durkan called the report 'chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration.' 'The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the President to target those who have spoken out against this administration's actions,' Durkan, a former US attorney, said in a statement 'I will continue to fight for what I believe is right, and I will not be distracted by these threats from meeting the challenges facing our great city,' the Seattle mayor said 'It is particularly egregious to try to use the civil rights laws to investigate, intimidate, or deter those that are fighting for civil rights in our country.' Durkan was reacting to a Wall Street Journal report which said Barr told federal district attorneys in a conference call last week that a law against plotting to overthrow the US government was among charges they could use against participants when protests turn violent. The WSJ reported that he divulged details of two statutes that could help bring about the charges. In order to prove sedition, they would have to prove imminent danger to government officials or agents as part of a conspiracy. However without the plot it can fall under expressing violent anti-government sentiment under the First Amendment. Brian T. Moran, the US attorney for western Washington State, says he is not aware of any investigation into Durkan Another statute could bring federal charges on someone who obstructs law enforcement responding to unrest. CNN and the New York Times confirmed the recommendation by Barr. Two people on the call said Barr has asked whether charges could be brought against Durkan for allowing people to create a police-free zone. Barr said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court has determined the executive branch has 'virtually unchecked discretion' on whether to go ahead with a prosecution. But a US attorney in Washington State says that he has never heard anyone at the Justice Department discuss bringing charges against Durkan. 'Throughout this lengthy period of civil unrest, I have had multiple conversations with Department of Justice leadership,' Brian T. Moran, the US attorney for Western Washington, said in a statement. 'They have asked for information about protest activity devolving into violence, about federal interests implicated by the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, and about the cases filed in this District regarding federal crimes. 'At no time has anyone at the Department communicated to me that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is, was, or should be the subject of a criminal investigation or should be charged with any federal crime related to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). 'As US Attorney I would be aware of such an investigation.' On July 1, city crews dismantled the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area outside of the Seattle Police Department's vacated East Precinct The zone was created after protesters forced Seattle police to abandon the East Precinct In early July, Seattle police cleared away the so-called 'autonomous zone' set up by protesters in the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. The 'CHOP', which was later renamed 'CHAZ,' or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, was set up along a few square blocks of the downtown Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill on June 8. Protesters forced Seattle police to clear out of the East Precinct and insisted on keeping the area 'police-free.' TIMELINE OF VIOLENCE IN SEATTLE'S CHOP ZONE June 8: Protesters occupy the area; police abandoned the precinct June 20: A 19-year-old man is shot dead and a 33-year-old man was wounded June 24: Nearby businesses and property owners filed a federal lawsuit against the city June 29: Two teens shot - one fatally - in Jeep at zone's concrete barriers June 30: Barricades at Seattle's cop-free zone are torn down as protesters replace concrete barriers with trash cans and couches July 1: Early hours : Mayor Jenny Durkan demand all barriers are removed after a 525 per cent spike in violent crimes in the area 5am: Police swarm the zone 5:30am: Eyewitnesses say officers have cleared the area 7am: Chief Carmen Best confirms police have taken back precinct Advertisement During the CHOP/CHAZ, Durkan appeared to downplay the severity of the protesters' actions, comparing the incident to a 'block party' while insisting that 'it's not an armed takeover. It's not a military junta.' But there were a total of four shootings either in the zone or in its vicinity, killing two and wounding several others. The 'autonomous zone' was eventually cleared out in early July, though the reverberations of the Floyd protests continue to be felt. Efforts to cut spending on police - a key demand of anti-racism demonstrators in Seattle and across the nation - claimed an unlikely target: Seattle's first black police chief, who enjoyed deep support in its minority communities, stepped down in protest. Carmen Best announced her retirement last month just hours after the City Council voted to cut her annual $285,000 salary by $10,000, as well as the salaries of her command staff, and to trim as many as 100 officers from a force of 1,400 through layoffs and attrition. She said that she was OK with her pay cut, but not with having to lay off young officers, many of them minorities hired in part to improve the department's diversity. 'That, for me - I'm done. Can't do it,' she said at a news conference. 'It really is about the overarching lack of respect for the officers.' Best, a military veteran who joined the department in 1992, was named chief two years ago. Durkan initially left her off a list of finalists for the job, but selected her after an outcry from community groups who had long known Best and wanted her to be chosen. The Trump administration has seized on the violence in Seattle and other cities, including Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere to highlight the need for a stronger presence of law enforcement. President Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish the protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. While protest-related crimes usually bring only local charges, under Barr's guidance district attorneys and federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 demonstrators with crimes that bring heftier penalties. Asked about the report on Barr, Trump said his government will treat demonstrators toughly. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said, adding: 'And I think the American public wants to see that.' According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, about 93 percent of protests this summer were peaceful. Such a sedition charge has been used with extreme rarity and the most recent example, a case brought against a Michigan armed militia group, failed in 2012 due to weak and 'circumstantial evidence'. President Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said Barr's comments on Wednesday amounted to a striking, and unusual, rebuke of the thousands of prosecutors who do the daily work of assembling criminal cases across the country. Rejecting the idea that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring, Barr described them instead part of the 'permanent bureaucracy' and said they were in need of supervision from 'detached,' politically appointed leaders who are accountable to the president and Congress. 'Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target,' Barr said. 'Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.' Pan-African fintech company Interswitch plans to fire up its corporate venture arm again according to CEO Mitchell Elegbe who spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday. The Nigerian founder didn't offer much new on the Lagos-based firm's expected IPO, but he did reveal Interswitch will revive investments in African startups. Founded by Elegbe in 2002, Interswitch pioneered the infrastructure to digitize Nigerias then predominantly cash-based economy. The company now provides much of the rails for Nigerias online banking system that serves Africas largest economy and population of 200 million people. Interswitch has expanded to offer personal and business payment products in 23 African countries. The fintech firm achieved unicorn status in 2019 after a $200 million equity investment by Visa gave it a $1 billion valuation. Reviving venture investing Interswitch, which is well beyond startup phase, launched a $10 million venture arm in 2015 that has been dormant since 2016, after it acquired Vanso a Nigerian fintech security company. But Interswitch will soon be back in the business of making startup bets and acquisitions, according to Elegbe. "We've just certified a team and the plan is to begin to make those kinds of investments again." He offered a glimpse into the new fund's focus. "This time around we want to make financial investments and also leverage the network that Interswitch has and put that at the disposal of these companies," Elegbe told TechCrunch. "We'll be very selective in the companies we invest in. They should be companies that Interswitch clearly as an entity can add value to. They should be companies that help accelerate growth by the virtue of what we do and the customers that we have," he said. Recent venture events in African tech have likely pressed Interswitch to get back in the investing arena. As an ecosystem, VC on the continent has increased (roughly) by a factor of four over the last five years, to around $2 billion in 2019. But most of that has come from single-entity investment funds, while corporate venture funding (and tech M&A activity) has remained light. That's shifted over the last several months and the entire uptick has occurred in African fintech around entities that could be viewed as Interswitch competitors. In July, Dubai's Network International acquired Kenya-based mobile payment processing company DPO for $288 million. Shortly after the acquisition, DPO's CEO Eran Feinstein said the company would pursue more African acquisitions on its own. In June, another mobile-money payment processor, MFS Africa, acquired digital finance company Beyonic. And in August, South Africa's Standard Bank Africa's largest by assets and lending acquired a stake in fintech security firm TradeSafe. Story continues Since the rise of Safaricom's dominant M-Pesa mobile money product in Kenya, fintech in Africa has become infinitely larger and more competitive. The sector has hundreds of startups and now receives nearly 50% of all VC investment on the continent. The opportunity investors and founders are chasing is bringing Africa's large unbanked population and underbanked consumers and SMEs online. Roughly 66% of Sub-Saharan Africas 1 billion people dont have a bank account, according to World Bank data, and mobile-based finance platforms have presented the best use cases to shift that across the region. Interswitch has established itself as a leader in Africa's digital finance race. But it's hard to envision how it can maintain or extend that role without an active venture arm that invests in and acquires innovative, young fintech startups. No news on IPO Elegbe had less to offer on Interswitch's long-anticipated IPO. Asked if the company still planned to list publicly, he offered up a non-answer answer. "At this point in time we're focused on growing the business and creating value for our customers and that is our primary focus." When pressed "yes or no" on whether an IPO was still a possibility, Elegbe confirmed it was. "We have private equity investors and at some point in the life of the business they want exits," he said. "When it is time for them to exit there are various options on the table and an IPO is an option." There's been talk of an Interswitch IPO for years. In 2016, Elegbe told TechCrunch a dual-listing on the Lagos and London Stock Exchanges was possible. Then word came through other Interswitch channels that it was delayed due to recession and currency volatility in Nigeria in 2017. In November 2019, a source with knowledge of the situation told TechCrunch on background, an IPO is still very much in the cards; likely sometime in the first half of 2020. Then came the COVID-19 crisis and the accompanying global economic slump, which may have delayed Interswitch's IPO plans yet again. If and when the company goes public, it would be a major event for Nigerian and African fintech. No VC-backed fintech firm on the continent has listed globally. Exits for Interswitch's investors would likely attract to Nigeria and broader Africa more VC from major funds many of which remain on the fence about startup opportunities on the continent. Focus on Africa On global product expansion, Interswitch plans to maintain an African focus for now, Elegbe explained. "There are enough opportunities for Interswitch on the continent. We'd like to be in as many African countries as possible...and position Interswitch as the (financial) gateway to the continent," he said. Elegbe explained the company would continue to work through alliances with major financial services firms to open up global financial access for its African client base. In August 2019, Interswitch launched a partnership that allows its Verve cardholders to make payments on Discovers global network. CEO Mitchell Elegbe concluded his Disrupt session with some perspective on balancing the stigmas and possibilities of doing business in Nigeria. Over recent years the country has shifted to become an unofficial hub for big tech expansion, VC investment and startup formation in Africa. But Nigeria continues to have a difficult operating environment with regard to infrastructure and is often associated with political corruption and instability in its Northeast region due to the Boko Haram insurgency. "Nigeria has a very large population and a very large market. We have lots of challenges that need to be solved, but it makes sense to me that lots of money is finding its way to Nigeria because the opportunity is there," he said. Elegbe's advice to tech investors considering the country, "Don't take a short-termist view. There are good people on the ground doing fantastic work honest people who want to make impact. You need to seek those people out." Recognizing the anticipated budgetary challenges that state government expects to face next year, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agencys board opted to not ask the commonwealth for more money for the state grant program in 2021-22. It voted on Thursday to ask Gov. Tom Wolf and the General Assembly for $310.7 million for this aid program that helps tens of thousands of Pennsylvania college students pay their college bills. The state grants require no repayment and lessens students' need to borrow money to cover their college expenses. This year, that level of state funding was supplemented with $30 million in federal CARES Act dollars the commonwealth received, which along with some funding from PHEAAs earnings from its student loan business enabled the maximum grant award to be raised by $402, to $4,525. That is the second highest maximum grant amount in the programs more than half a century history. Only in 2007-08 was the maximum grant amount, at $4,700, higher. PHEAA officials said they expect to be able to maintain the maximum grant award at this years level through the use of supplemental funding sources to make up for the $30 million that the CARES Act provided. That would include using some of the $56 million in agency earnings from 2019-20 as well as any money left over from this years grant program. To date, Kyle Lefever, the agencys chief accounting officer, told the board PHEAA has invested more than $750 million of agency earnings over the past decade in the state grant program. The agency began this practice after media attention was paid to how it spent lavishly on sponsorships, promotional items, advertisements for its student loan business, bonuses for executives, and trips to ritzy resorts for board members and top-level executives, instead of using it to help students. The boards leadership at the time defended that decision saying they were concerned it would lead to the General Assembly becoming fully dependent on the agency to fund the entire program. A subsequent change in agency and board leadership ended the excessive spending practices and using agency earnings to help students' access higher education became their priority. Also on Thursday, PHEAAs board approved asking the state to provide for level funding for the institutional assistance grant program, which provides grants to private colleges based on the number of state grant recipients they enroll, as well as eight other special student aid program it administers for the state. In a separate matter related to the grant program this year, the board directed the agencys President and CEO James Steeley to temporarily suspend or relax rules for the fall semester that could impact Pennsylvania students ability to receive aid due to operational changes made by their schools in response to COVID-19. That includes, for example, a relaxing of the rule that limits students taking at least half of their classes online to be eligible for only 75% of the maximum grant award given to students who take mostly in-person classes. That change helps students who attend the many colleges and universities that have moved to strictly remote instruction or allowed students the choice of taking their classes online due to public health concerns related to the coronavirus. The board first initiated this relaxation of its rules when the pandemic hit the state in March and applied it to aid received for the winter, spring and summer semesters. Agency officials say this action aided approximately 100,000 students who may have faced the potential of having to refund a portion of their grants. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. Thousands of illegal migrants were deported to Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia and other countries as concern over the coronavirus grew earlier this year Ethiopia will repatriate nearly 2,000 migrants from Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, a government minister said on Thursday, amid growing international concern over conditions in migrant detention camps. Ethiopia is estimated to have tens of thousands of workers in Saudi Arabia and is under pressure to bring them home after the coronavirus left many stranded there with no work and no money. But Tsion Teklu, a state minister for foreign affairs, said the country did not have the resources to bring back the estimated 14,000 detained in Saudi camps that the United Nations this week warned were overcrowded and unsanitary. The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment. "With the high number of migrants in various host countries, the government will not have sufficient resources to repatriate everyone at the same time," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. Thousands of illegal migrants were deported to Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia and other countries as concern over the coronavirus grew earlier this year, leading the United Nations to call for the suspension of forced returns. The Ethiopian government began repatriating people last week and plans to bring back about 2,000, mainly women and children, before mid-October, said Tsion. "When you do repatriate people, I think you need to really focus on the reintegration, if not, it's just a waste truly speaking," she said. The UN migration agency (IOM) said on Tuesday it was "alarmed" by reports that Ethiopian migrants were being held in inhumane conditions in Saudi Arabia and that detention should be "a very last resort". "Both governments should work with IOM o ensure that Ethiopians who want to return home can do so safely and voluntarily as soon as possible," said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Search Keywords: Short link: The Grand Alliance (GA) parties in Bihar including the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress are hoping to make unemployment their chief poll plank to counter issues raised by the ruling dispensation in the upcoming state assembly polls. The opposition parties are enthused after their recent initiatives to draw youths attention to the issue delivered good results. The web portal launched by RJD to register the unemployed youth has so far seen about 5 lakh youth registering and the drive by Bihar Pradesh Youth Congress (BPYC) to garner support of the youth is also receiving good response, claim leaders from the two parties. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had on September 5 launched a dedicated portal and a toll free number for preparing a data base of unemployed youths in Bihar. We will soon come out with a roadmap to provide jobs to all the youths, who registered themselves with the portal, said RJD spokesman Mrityunjay Tiwari, adding that the party was committed to formulate policies for creating job opportunities if it comes to power in the state. On the other hand, the BPYC on Thursday launched the series of padyatras across the state to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modis birthday as unemployed day. The march in Patna started from Patna university campus and eended near Ambedkar Chauraha in Musallahpur hat area. Later, similar protest marches would be carried out across the state, said BPYC chief Gunjan Patel. The BPYCs initiative to mobilize the youth has led to more than 2.25 lakh people registering themselves with the wings website so far. Patel claimed that the wing had so far received more than 6 lakh missed calls and wing workers are helping them to register themselves with the BPYC portal. All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for Bihar, Shaktisinh Gohil, has already announced that those registering themselves would be given priority in the appointments if the Congress or the GA formed the government in the state. Also Read: Ahead of Bihar elections, LJP drives hard bargain Former director of AN Sinha institute of social studies DM Diwakar said that unemployment was a major issue, which the ruling dispensation was evading. Joblessness, which was triggered due to demonetisation, has assumed the worst proportion after the Covid crisis. Although its an important poll issue, everything depends on how the opposition rakes it up. It will definitely yield results if the party workers directly reach out to the masses and seek their support, said Diwakar. Diwakar, who is also a socio-political analyst, said that the ruling party leaders have been tactfully using sentimental issues like the deaths of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and senior politician Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Ram Janmbhumi issue, removal of Article 370, NRC and other nationalist issues in an attempt to unite the electorate. Also Read: Take feedback from people: Nitish Kumars party after LJPs faith swipe Congress leader and MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said the state might ignore the joblessness issue at its own peril. Bihars unemployment rate increased 31.2 percentage points, rising to 46.6% in April 2020, according to a survey conducted by the centre for monitoring Indian economy (CMIE). Over a longer time period, unemployment has moved from 1.6% in April 2017 to its current rate, he added. . NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Blaine Bortnick, Esq., managing partner of the New York office for Rasco Klock; along with James Halter, Esq., special counsel to the firm; recently won a case on a motion to dismiss in federal court in New York City, New York. Bortnick's client, Jan Gerner of the Czech Republic among other defendants filed the motion to dismiss a $1 billion lawsuit brought by New York-based hedge fund Kingstown Capital Management LP and its affiliates. Blaine Bortnick, Esq. James Halter, Esq. Gerner had previously purchased publicly traded shares in ORCO Property Group, S.A., a Luxembourg-based real estate development company, whose shares traded on European exchanges. ORCO's controlling shareholder is Radovan Vitek, who was also a defendant in the case. Kingstown alleged that Vitek secretly acquired control over the ORCO board of directors and stripped ORCO of valuable assets to the detriment of minority shareholders like Kingstown. Gerner, among other defendants, were alleged to have acted together with Vitek. Kingstown had previously filed a similar action in Luxembourg, although Gerner is not a defendant in that case. Although their Luxembourg Action remained pending, the New York-based investors of Kingstown filed this Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) action seeking recovery from Vitek and others for essentially the same misconduct litigated in the Luxembourg case. Along with the other defendants' attorneys, Bortnick and Halter sought dismissal of Kingstown's claims on numerous grounds. Relying on two of Rasco Klock's many arguments, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York determined that the Luxembourg action should take precedence and accordingly dismissed the New York federal court case. As a result, she did not decide the other arguments in favor of the motion to dismiss. "This $1 billion case was an incredible win for Blaine and James," said Ramon E. Rasco, firm managing partner, founder, and head of the firm's Business Law Department. "With years of experience in securities and complex commercial litigation matters in federal and state courts, they were able to achieve success for our client in this highly complicated case." For more information about Bortnick, please visit www.rascoklock.com/team-member/blaine-bortnick/, or contact him at [email protected] or (646) 970-4770. For more information about Halter, please visit www.rascoklock.com/team-member/james-halter/, or contact him at 4 [email protected] or (646) 970-4770. About Rasco Klock: Rasco Klock, a minority-owned law firm, provides well-reasoned, efficient and practical solutions to the diverse business needs of market leading companies and high net worth individuals who invest or do business in South Florida, New York and the New York City metro area, and the Americas. Nearly half of Rasco Klock's lawyers have been recognized for their legal excellence by independent third parties such as Chambers, Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, and Top Lawyers. Their experience ranges from structuring offshore investment in the U.S. to the day-to-day operations of a going concern, including distribution, licensing, leasing, taxation, government procurement and employment issues. Its attorneys represent individuals, private and public corporations, and major financial institutions in all aspects of corporate transactions (including mergers, acquisitions, financing, and placements), lending, commercial litigation and arbitration, employment litigation and compensation, bankruptcy and bankruptcy litigation, foreclosures, taxation, trademark monitoring, trademark and trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, false advertising, and infringement of the rights of publicity and internet domain disputes. Led by a joint J.D./Ph.D. in marine biology, they have handled complex environmental cases. They also represent individuals and families domestically and internationally regarding the management, taxation, preservation, and transfers of wealth, as well as the use and administration of trusts and estates. The New York office is located at 555 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor; and the Florida office is located at 2555 Ponce de Leon Blvd, Ste 600, Coral Gables. For more information, visit www.rascoklock.com. Contact: Duree & Company, Inc. 954-723-9350 T [email protected] SOURCE Rasco Klock Related Links http://www.rascoklock.com Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus. 1. Social distance proves key as respiratory route found to be the most common way to spread COVID-19 COVID-19 is spread most often through respiratory droplets or aerosols and little evidence exists supporting transmission through surfaces. As such, social distance and proper ventilation are key determinants of transmission risk. Findings from a review of published research, articles, and reports is published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers from Montefiore Medical Center, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women's Hospital studied scientific articles published between January and September 2020, as well as relevant articles and institutional or governmental reports, to determine the viral, host, and environmental factors that contribute to transmission of COVID-19. They found that although several experimental studies suggest that virus particles could live for hours after inoculation in aerosols or on surfaces, the real-world studies that detect viral RNA in the environment report very low levels on surfaces, and few have isolated viable virus. Strong evidence from case and cluster reports indicates that respiratory transmission is dominant, with proximity and ventilation being key determinants of transmission risk. In the few cases where direct contact or transmission from materials or surfaces was presumed, respiratory transmission could still not be ruled out. The researchers also identified patterns in virus transmission. The evidence showed that COVID-19 virus peaks around a day before symptom onset and declines within a week of symptom onset. All transmissions occur early on and none have ever been documented after a patient has had symptoms for about a week. Most persons do not transmit the virus, whereas some cause many secondary cases in transmission clusters called "superspreading events." According to the authors, their findings should help to inform evidence-based policies and practices to help educate the public and slow the spread of this virus. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5008. Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. Author Eric A. Meyerowitz, MD can be reached through Elaine Landoli at elaine.iandoli@einsteinmed.org and author Aaron Richterman, MD can be reached through Alex Gardner at alex.gardner@pennmedicine.upenn.edu. 2. Novel, rapidly deployable community isolation quarantine facilities help to manage COVID-19 A substantial proportion of stable patients with COVID-19 can be isolated safely outside a hospital setting with a small health care team. Researchers from Singapore General Hospital discuss how isolation facilities can be created rapidly to care for patients without serious adverse outcomes. An article describing their process and outcomes is published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Singapore is one of the most densely populated small island-states in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore implemented large-scale institutional isolation units called Community Care Facilities (CCFs) to combat the outbreak in the community. They housed stable, low-risk COVID-19 patients in CCFs from April to August 2020. These CCFs were created rapidly by converting existing public spaces into isolation facilities, and each was augmented by telemedicine to enable a low health care worker-patient ratio (98 health care workers for 3,200 beds). In the first month, a total of 3,758 patients were admitted to 4 halls and 4,929 in-house medical consults occurred. The authors report that 136 patients were transferred to a hospital and only 1 patient died 2 weeks after discharge. No health care workers became infected. These results demonstrate that such facilities can successfully provide holistic patient care in the face of a public health crisis when health care resources are lean. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4746. Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. To speak with the lead author, Kheng Sit Lim, B.Comp, MBBS, MMed(Surg), please contact Carol Ang at carol.ang@sgh.com.sg. ### A military whistleblower says federal officials sought some unusual crowd control devices - including one thats been called a 'heat ray' - to deal with protesters outside the White House on the June day that law enforcement forcibly cleared Lafayette Square. National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco testifies July 28 during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on actions taken on June 1 at Lafayette Square In written responses to questions from a House committee, National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco said the Defense Departments lead military police officer for the National Capital Region sent an email asking if the D.C. National Guard possessed a long-range acoustic device - used to transmit loud noises - or an 'Active Denial System,' the so-called heat ray. DeMarco said he responded that the Guard was not in possession of either device. National Public Radio and The Washington Post first reported DeMarco's testimony. Use of either the acoustic device or the Active Denial System would have been a significant escalation of crowd control for the Guard members, particularly since the Defense officials ordered that the Guard troops not be armed when they went into D.C. The military's Active Denial System - or 'heat ray - was requested by federal officials ahead of protests at Lafayette Square in Washington DC A Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy stands ready to use the Long Range Acoustic Device, the so-called sound cannon. Feds also asked about the availability of such a device before violently clearing protesters from Lafayette Square on June 1 Law enforcement personnel were armed. And although active-duty military troops were sent to the region, they remained at bases outside the District in case they were needed but never actually entered the District. The Active Denial System was developed by the military nearly two decades ago, and was unveiled to the public around 2007. Its not clear that its ever actually been used in combat, although there are reports it has deployed. The system, which emits a directed beam of energy that causes a burning heat sensation, was considered a non-lethal way to control crowds, particularly when it may be difficult to tell the enemy from innocent civilians in war zones. Use of the device appeared to stall amid questions about whether it actually caused more serious injuries or burns than initially thought. The Long Range Acoustic Device, also called a sound cannon, sends out loud messages or sounds and has been used by law enforcement to disperse crowds. The U.S. military has, in recent years, ordered the LRAD for the Navys Military Sealift Command to be used by ships to hail or warn other vessels. Protesters clash with US Park Police after they attempted to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square A protester shouts at a line of police during a standoff in Lafayette Square DeMarco testified in late July before the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating the use of force against crowds in Lafayette Square that night. His remarks on the crowd control devices came in response to follow-up questions from the committee. DeMarcos lawyer sent his answers to the committee on Aug. 28; NPR posted the document online Wednesday. The Trump administration has said that vicious attacks by protesters led federal forces to turn on what appeared to be a largely peaceful crowd June 1 in the square in front of the White House. Law enforcement and security officers that night clubbed and punched protesters and unleashed mounted officers and chemical agents against them in one of the most controversial confrontations at the height of this years nationwide protests over the killing of Black people at the hands of police. The forceful clearing of Lafayette Square, long one of the nations most prominent venues for demonstrations, came minutes before President Donald Trump appeared in the area, on his way to stage a photo event in front of a historic church nearby. Tank crews from the Chinese troops participating in the Kavkaz-2020 strategic exercise conduct driving training at a training range in the Astrakhan Region, Russia. By Luo Shunyu, Yang Xiaobo, Li Hui, Wang Xueyu, Wang Lianbin Chinese troops who are participating in Kavkaz-2020 strategic exercise in the Astrakhan Region, Russia, have quickly got used to Russian equipment with the help of their Russian counterparts after several days of practice. The mutual trust in the exchange and cooperation between the two militaries displays the profound friendship between the two countries. On the morning of September 14, after equipment transfer to the Chinese troops, a captain from the Russian side explained the performance, operation and troubleshooting steps of the equipment to the Chinese soldiers, who went into targeted training including driving techniques, command and communication and firing practice soon after that. Russia-made equipment is different from our own in the positioning of function areas and we need some intensified training to get familiar with the dashboard and various buttons, said Zhao Jiaxing, a Chinese staff sergeant. With Russia instructors assistance, Ssg. Zhao and his crew members quickly mastered operation and driving of the Russian infantry fighting vehicles within two hours. "What's the height of the ballistic trajectory? How to quickly lock targets? Sgt Tan Shi asked his Russian instructor. He was learning the performance of an air defense missile and operational procedures of the missile launcher with the help of interpreter and sometimes they used gestures to know each other. "It only cost them two hours to master the driving techniques of our fighting vehicles. Those Chinese servicemen are surprisingly smart!" said a Russian lieutenant colonel responsible for the arrangement of the on-spot training. 'Li Beirut' font to raise funds for Lebanon's capital 300 Arabic and Latin characters, idea of international designers (ANSAmed) - NAPLES, SEPTEMBER 17 - Li Beirut is the name given to a font created to raise funds for the population of the Lebanese capital after a massive explosion on August 4. More than 160 regional and international designers were involved. The font, which includes 300 decorative glyphs of isolated Arabic characters and Latin capital letters, was commissioned by Nadine Chahine, the lead designer behind the popular Dubai Font, days after the explosion. "Even outside the context of everything that's going on, the explosion is a traumatic event. But when you add an economic crisis, a pandemic and a political crisis, when you consider the fact that people are unable to access their own money in the bank. When you consider the liquidity problems. It's just unbelievable," Chahine told The National. "I lived the first 11 years of my life during the civil war and I've never seen Lebanon in such a dire state." The UAE daily added that: "This is not the first time typeface designers have come together to create a font to raise funds. Previously, the Society of Typographic Aficionados organised eight iterations of Font Aid, a charity drive that responded to a number of global tragedies, including the Nepalese earthquake in 2015 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001." Chahine said Font Aid proved that typefaces could be used as a fundraising apparatus and gave her the inspiration to start Li Beirut. She wanted to ensure that if the font was going to bear the name of the Lebanese capital, it was something special. "It felt like it was necessary that this would be something that comes out of the Lebanese community. That it was driven by Lebanese designers working alongside those from around the world," she said. "I was shocked by the amount of empathy," she says. "Many submissions came with messages of support to the people of Beirut." Esteemed designers from the Arab world, including Mamoun Sakkal, Khajag Apelian, Yara Khoury and Wael Morcos, were among the contributors. Award-winning designers from around the world - such as Jean Francois Porchez, Jessica Hische and Erik Spiekermann - were also quick to answer to the submission call. The end result is a font of more than 300 characters that, besides decorative Arabic and Latin letters, includes Arabic numerals as well as a few symbols. On Tuesday, August 18, two weeks after the Beirut port blast, the typeface was launched. "Now, we are printing the catalogue and the postcards," Chahine says. "That's an important aspect as well, that they are being printed in Beirut. There's a symbolic aspect to that." (ANSA). Announcing the ASCAP Citizen launch, ASCAP Chairman of the Board and President Paul Williams reminded his fellow songwriters why their voice matters: "We are music creators, from all walks of life. Our music has the power to change the world. That's why we work so hard for it to be heard. Now, we need our votes to be heard. It's time to embrace our role as ASCAP Citizens." To kick off ASCAP Citizen, @ASCAP social media channels will feature photos and videos with personal messages about voting from ASCAP members each day during the week of September 21. The initial list includes: Jermaine Dupri, Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of The Go-Gos, John Nolan of Taking Back Sunday, Matt Berninger of The National, Brothers Osborne, Avenue Beat, Ingrid Michaelson, Joe Godino of The Menzingers, film composer Pinar Toprak, mxmtoon, Donna Missal and The Maine, among many others. ASCAP will also amplify the "get out the vote" messages of other top members who are engaged in their own vote campaigns, including such names as Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Diplo, John Stamos and others partnered with HeadCount. ASCAP Chief Executive Officer Beth Matthews explained the rationale behind the non-partisan campaign: "As the only U.S. PRO founded by songwriters and governed by its members, ASCAP has always been of, by and for music creators. Through ASCAP Citizen, we are reminding music creators and music fans alike of the extraordinary power that they all have to shape the future of our democracy during these unprecedented times. Voting is a fundamental first step, but we want to encourage our members to be engaged in continuous advocacy efforts as we all work to protect the rights of music creators and defend the value of music." "This partnership celebrates the role of musicians and songwriters as citizens. We applaud ASCAP for its leadership in giving members all the resources they need to help turn out the vote," said Andy Bernstein, HeadCount's founder and Executive Director. As part of ASCAP's new partnership with HeadCount, anyone can visit www.headcount.org/ascap or text VOTER ASCAP to 40649 to register to vote or verify and update their voter registration status. HeadCount is a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy. ASCAP is also an official partner in National Voter Registration Day (Sept. 22). To extend the momentum of that effort, ASCAP will invite all music creators and fans to share their own ASCAP Citizen messages on social media using the hashtag #ASCAPCitizen to inspire their followers to register to vote ahead of upcoming state voter registration deadlines. The ASCAP Citizen campaign will shift its focus to getting out the vote in the weeks leading up to the November 3rd election. More information about ASCAP Citizen, including a free social media toolkit, can be found at www.ascap.com/citizen. About ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a professional membership organization of songwriters, composers and music publishers of every kind of music. ASCAP's mission is to license and promote the music of its members and foreign affiliates, obtain fair compensation for the public performance of their works and to distribute the royalties that it collects based upon those performances. ASCAP members write the world's best-loved music and ASCAP has pioneered the efficient licensing of that music to hundreds of thousands of enterprises who use it to add value to their business - from bars, restaurants and retail, to radio, TV and cable, to Internet, mobile services and more. The ASCAP license offers an efficient solution for businesses to legally perform ASCAP music while respecting the right of songwriters and composers to be paid fairly. With more than 775,000 members representing more than 11.5 million copyrighted works, ASCAP is the worldwide leader in performance royalties, service and advocacy for songwriters and composers, and the only American performing rights organization (PRO) owned and governed by its writer and publisher members. Learn more and stay in touch at www.ascap.com, on Twitter and Instagram @ASCAP and on Facebook. About HeadCount HeadCount is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that promotes participation in democracy through music, culture, and digital media. Since 2004 the organization has registered over 700,000 voters and worked with a long list of musicians and partners including Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello, Dave Matthews Band, JAY-Z, Beyonce, March for Our Lives, RuPaul's DragCon, MTV, and Dead & Company. With 40,000 volunteers, street teams in most major U.S. cities, and presence at more than 1,000 events each year, HeadCount ranks as one of the most active grassroots civic participation organizations in the United States. Following COVID-19 restrictions, the organization quickly pivoted to an all-digital approach that led to innovation and online initiatives to fill the needs of the public in using their voices in democracy. For more information, visit HeadCount.org . SOURCE ASCAP Related Links http://www.ascap.com The Internet has been very kind to Michael Holston over the last few years. Without social media, very few outside South Florida would know much about the man known as The Real Tarzann online. His online persona has millions of followers on different social media platforms, and he is one of the most famous animal educators and conservationists in the eyes of the younger generation right now. Behind all the exotic animals, interactions with celebrities, and more, he is a man focused on using his influence to help out globally. From spreading educational information to raising funds, Holston is someone who believes he has a responsibility to make the most of his voice to make the world a better place. Handle with care With every new animal interaction, Holston spends a lot of time behind the scenes learning from experts on how to handle and treat certain animals properly. Some might think that a man with no real formal education involving animals might be making things up as they go, but he put a lot of time and effort into doing things the right way. Holston is a very strong advocate for education, and he wants to make it more accessible to people around the world. So many are interested in animals, but they do not have the funds to go through educational programs to pursue what they would like. Even experienced conservationists like Holston are learning new things every day. More viewers than ever before are paying attention to what he does and how animals react to his presence. If the perfect set up ends up pressuring the animals in some way, he will not insist on staying there to get a shot. Animal safety and comfort comes before everything else. He does not do much of it right now, but Holston would love to hold clinics and educational classes on handling individual animals correctly. This can relate to exotic animals as well as common household pets, which is why the information could be valuable down the road. Handling animals the right way can significantly impact the comfort level they have. It is one of the secrets to Holston's success in being around some of the more exotic species. Nonprofits in need of assistance Proper funding for non-profit organizations can be a major struggle. Holston understands that a lot of people fighting for animal rights and related topics are doing so out of passion more than anything. To make changes, money is needed. There is also strength in numbers, and a combination of the two is what Holston can provide with help from his followers. Holston is large enough as a social media star now that he has followers in all corners of the world. He is sure to share information on non-profit organizations he is passionate about, as they can potentially connect with locals wanting to help out. Even if people are not local, some want to donate money to help them grow. Nonprofits focused on fighting against animal abuse tend to grab Holston's attention in particular. He has witnessed animal abuse firsthand in some of his travels, making it personal. It is sad to see animals abused at all, but it is particularly frustrating for endangered species that may not have high-quality ways of life. Animal abuse can be curtailed to a certain degree, but the effort starts locally. Without a proper set up locally to help with the fight, change is hard to see happening. Dedicating a little time and effort to start something bigger can make a huge impact anywhere in the world. With the help of celebrities who might also be for the cause, Holston has more of an impact through social media if he goes down that route. Local meetups, cleanups, and more Influencers online have a lot of fans who are eager to engage when given the opportunity. Holston had some idea on how this worked, but it was not until he had a meetup and clean up on South Beach. He expected just a few people to stop by and chip in, but many showed up ready and eager to help out the community. A teenager visiting on spring break gained notoriety for going around South Beach in Miami and cleaning up the mess left by others. Holston, who calls South Florida home, noticed that it was a truly remarkable idea and one that he wanted to help out. He asked to get involved, and before long, he was motivating many of his followers living in the area to get out and pitch in. During the first cleanup, locals as well as tourists in the area showed up and got to work. It was not the most organized event, but Holston did not expect to have that amount of people show up. Many seemed interested in helping, but they did not know what exactly they needed to do before somebody took the time to put it together. Since then, Holston has built out the idea considerably. Not only are local cleanup days becoming more of the norm, but he is hoping to inspire expansion to other parts of the globe as well. Many beaches need regular cleaning, and it can expand to parks and other open areas as well. There is no such thing as too much help around the community, which is why Holston believes this could be the start of something massive. The responsibility of a social media star Social media has birthed many stars over the last few years that have gained a massive following. Michael Holston continues to become more and more recognizable not only online, but in more traditional media as well. This level of celebrity has its benefits, but he also believes it comes with a lot of responsibility. Instead of focusing on monetization, selling merchandise, picking up new followers, and other factors, Holston believes that too many people are straying away from the responsibility and opportunity to provide some educational value. Specifically, those posting photos and videos of animals have perfect opportunities to teach people along the way. It might not be what every single viewer cares about, but enough people are going to see the value in learning without having to sit through a lecture or open up a book. Holston is not planning on replacing formal education anytime soon, but he does believe that there is a certain level of responsibility all social media influencers have. If a person is truly passionate about a topic, there is a little reason not to share quality information from time to time. In doing so, platforms like Instagram and YouTube can become a bit more valuable to the masses instead of being viewed as a place to waste time when bored. It is hard for any person to plan out their use of a social media platform since many rely on a bit of luck to get to where they are. From his early rise, Holston knew he wanted to have a greater impact on the world than just being that social media guy handling unique animals. With some of his bigger plans already in place, he's on the right path. MEP Bartolo urges obligatory migrant relocation mechanism Automatic, sanctions for states not complying (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, SEPTEMBER 17 - Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Pietro Bartolo called Thursday during a debate the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos for an EU-wide obligatory mechanism for migrant relocation. ''Did you see the burnt camp Moria? A fleeing child asked her father 'Are we going to die?' What can a father answer? What do you want him to answer? But yes, we must answer. With extreme firmness. The sad spectacle that Europe is offering is unacceptable,'' he said. ''There is a moral and political imperative that obliges us to demand, now and immediately, for the immediate evacuation of the camp and an acceleration of relocations from the islands to other member states, especially of minors and the most vulnerable,'' he added, noting that ''it is good that (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel has pledged to welcome 2,750 people from the islands but there is the need for a change in the asylum system.'' Bartolo then underscored, ahead of a new pact on migration, that at stake was the ''credibility of institutions'' and that ''changes should be changed: there is the need for an obligatory solidarity mechanism entailing automatic relocation. And sanctions for those not complying. It is not necessary to build new camps. There is a need for structural reforms. Now, not decades from now.'' (ANSA). ~ Residents must take responsibility with social distancing.~ MARIGOT:--- Prefet Delegue Sylvie Feucher buckled to the pressure of the people that united on Wednesday morning in a protest march against the border controls. Around 4:30 pm the delegation representing the Soualiga United Movement exited the Prefecture and informed everyone there that the Prefet has agreed to remove all border point controls as of immediately however, the containers that were placed at Oyster Pond and Lowlands will be removed as early as Thursday, September 17th. Lenny Mussington said that the Prefet made clear that the population has to take full responsibility when it comes to social distancing to lower the spread of the coronavirus. Mussington said that he wants the people to know that when people are united they can never be defeated and that the joint protest march did serve its purpose. Aline Choisy also a member of the delegation said the Prefet informed them that the ARS will be meeting on Tuesday with CPS where they will work on a joint agreement to put in place a joint command center that will handle the testing for the COVID-19. In the meantime, the Prime Minister of St. Maarten Silveria Jacobs along with her delegation is scheduled to meet with her French counterparts on Thursday, September 17th, 2020. ATLANTA, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- As Hurricane Sally makes its way across Alabama, Georgia Power is ready to respond after receiving requests for assistance from Alabama Power, a Southern Company subsidiary. Due to the strength of the Southern Company system, personnel and key resources can be quickly and safely moved between system companies to assist with storm restoration. Georgia Power crews and support teams will travel to impacted areas as weather permits, while the company continues monitoring the changing weather conditions and adjusts plans and responses as needed. Georgia Power also coordinates with other utilities through the mutual assistance network. The network consists of hundreds of utilities from around the country. As part of this partnership, Georgia Power is able to respond and offer assistance, providing reinforcements when needed to restore power quickly for other utilities. The company is also able to request additional resources to help restore power to Georgia Power customers following a major storm. With each request for assistance, the company ensures that it has sufficient coverage to respond to potential local service interruptions in Georgia. Currently, Georgia Power has contributed approximately 500 company and contractor personnel to assist with restoration efforts in Alabama. As severe weather approaches Georgia, the company is able to pull resources from areas less affected by the storm and redirect them to areas needing help, all with the goal of restoring service as quickly and safely as possible. Georgia Power reminds customers to keep safety first during hurricane season and offers the following storm tips: Before a Storm: Know your risks of flooding or storm surge and tropical storm or hurricane strength winds. Check your emergency kit, unplug major appliances and charge cell phones in case you lose power. Know your risks of flooding or storm surge and tropical storm or hurricane strength winds. Check your emergency kit, unplug major appliances and charge cell phones in case you lose power. During a Storm: Take safe shelter inside a sturdy building away from windows and doors. Avoid contact with conductors of electricity appliances, metal objects and water. Take safe shelter inside a sturdy building away from windows and doors. Avoid contact with conductors of electricity appliances, metal objects and water. After a Storm: Never touch any downed or low-hanging wire, including telephone or TV wires that touch a power line. Never pull tree limbs off of power lines yourself or enter areas with debris, downed trees or standing water as downed power lines may be buried in wreckage or submerged in water or mud. Tools You Can Use to Prepare for Severe Weather Year-round Outage Alerts Subscribe to the free Georgia Power Outage Alert service to receive personalized notifications and updates via text message. Subscribe to the free Georgia Power Outage Alert service to receive personalized notifications and updates via text message. Outage & Storm Center Available at www.georgiapower.com/storm , customers can visit this site to sign up for Outage Alerts, report and check the status of outages, and access useful safety tips and information. Customers can report and check the status of an outage 24 hours a day by contacting Georgia Power at 888-891-0938. Available at , customers can visit this site to sign up for Outage Alerts, report and check the status of outages, and access useful safety tips and information. Customers can report and check the status of an outage 24 hours a day by contacting Georgia Power at 888-891-0938. Outage Map Housed within the Outage & Storm Center, Georgia Power's interactive Outage Map provides near real-time information, allowing users to see where outages are occurring across the state and track estimated restoration times. Housed within the Outage & Storm Center, Georgia Power's interactive Outage Map provides near real-time information, allowing users to see where outages are occurring across the state and track estimated restoration times. Georgia Power Mobile App Download the Georgia Power mobile app for Apple and Android devices to access storm and outage information on the go. Download the Georgia Power mobile app for and devices to access storm and outage information on the go. @GeorgiaPower on Twitter Follow @GeorgiaPower on Twitter for storm tips, outage updates, customer service and more. Follow @GeorgiaPower on for storm tips, outage updates, customer service and more. Emergency Plan and Kit Visit the Georgia Power storm page for information on how to build a family emergency plan and emergency supply kit. Storm Response Pandemic Preparations Georgia Power teams are prepared to respond to service interruptions that might occur because of severe weather while taking proactive actions including special "distancing" and other precautions to help protect customers and employees from the spread of the virus. In addition, the company's comprehensive pandemic plans help ensure readiness of the critical personnel and facilities necessary to continue providing the safe and reliable energy customers expect and deserve. In the field, the power restoration process includes these key steps: Assessing Conditions Responding crews or in major storms, damage assessment teams work to identify trouble spots and the resources needed to fix them, which could involve coming onto customers' property. Crews will employ appropriate distancing efforts and customers are asked to keep children and pets indoors and maintain safe distances from crew members as well. Responding crews or in major storms, damage assessment teams work to identify trouble spots and the resources needed to fix them, which could involve coming onto customers' property. Crews will employ appropriate distancing efforts and customers are asked to keep children and pets indoors and maintain safe distances from crew members as well. Making Repairs Georgia Power crews focus on repairs that return power to the greatest number of customers in the least amount of time. Ways you can help keep workers safe while they work in the field: If you see utility crews, please stay back a minimum of six feet much more if they are working. Please, no cookies or treats for workers during this time. Give a wave or thumbs up to workers you see. They'll understand your gratitude as they work to keep the lights on. Don't touch utility trucks or equipment. Electric providers are operating under modified conditions to keep workers safe, which includes additional cleaning and sanitation of tools and equipment. About Georgia Power Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.6 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook ( Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower ), Twitter ( Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower ) and Instagram ( Instagram.com/ga_power ). SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com Job Title: IT Associate Organisation: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Duty Station: Uganda Vacancy Notice: Internal/ External Vacancy notice no. 014/2020 Position Number: 10018196 Position Grade: GS-6 About US: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for international protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems of refugees and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a designated role under Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Job Summary: The IT Associate provides reliable and timely IT services on the application and infrastructure of UNHCR standard IT services in the Area of Responsibility (AoR). S/he normally receives technical guidance from a (Senior) IT Officer for the Telecom/IT infrastructure in the region in which the field or emergency operation exists. In offices where there is no IT Officer, direct supervision may be exercised by the (Snr) Admin Officer as applicable in the duty station. Key Duties and Responsibilities: of UNHCR Telecommunications and IT equipment. Assist in on-site needs assessment and installation and maintenanceof UNHCR Telecommunications and IT equipment. in field operations, considering the overall IT and Telecom strategy of the region, the operational needs and the security constraints. In consultation with the supervisor, establish the IT requirementsin field operations, considering the overall IT and Telecom strategy ofthe region, the operational needs and the security constraints. Telecommunications systems (HF, VHF, UHF, Microwave Links, Telephony, and satellite systems) to meet the field and emergency operations immediate IT needs. Install and configure the most appropriate type of UNHCR IT andTelecommunications systems (HF, VHF, UHF, Microwave Links, Telephony, andsatellite systems) to meet the field and emergency operations immediate ITneeds. working condition, by inspecting regularly the hardware and installations. If required, arrange promptly repairs or replacement as necessary according to established procedures. Ensure that the equipment under his/her responsibility is in goodworking condition, by inspecting regularly the hardware and installations.If required, arrange promptly repairs or replacement as necessaryaccording to established procedures. and keep the supervisor fully informed on the status of the equipment. Maintain records of the installations and repairs/replacements doneand keep the supervisor fully informed on the status of the equipment. information for their asset management records. Provide each office, where equipment is installed, with fullinformation for their asset management records. return spare parts for repair/replacement. If applicable, keep a proper inventory level of all sites spares andreturn spare parts for repair/replacement. Hubs, Patch pane, etc. to prevent faults occurring. Monitor and maintain the LAN, Network Servers, Printers, LAN points,Hubs, Patch pane, etc. to prevent faults occurring. Add or remove users from the Network. the Network. Assist in the maintenance of accurate records of users and usage ofthe Network. Carry out minor hardware maintenance. resources and users, including IPs, ensuring that they are able to maintain/use the equipment. Provide Technical Briefing/Training on the equipment to local ITresources and users, including IPs, ensuring that they are able tomaintain/use the equipment. Equipment/Kits used in field operations and emergencies. Assist in the development and configuration of IT and TelecomEquipment/Kits used in field operations and emergencies. Decide on appropriate resolution to incidents / problems. resolved with scope of responsibility. Escalate issues to supervisor if incident / problem cannot beresolved with scope of responsibility. Perform other related duties as required. Qualifications, Skills and Experience: placement should hold a High school diploma. Required. The ideal candidate for the United Nations UNHCR IT Associate jobplacement should hold a High school diploma. Required. At least three years of relevant work experience is required. or IT systems, PAMA satellite systems, PABX, Cisco routers and satellite modems is required. Experience relevant to the function or particularly on HF/VHF radioor IT systems, PAMA satellite systems, PABX, Cisco routers and satellitemodems is required. Knowledge of English is required. Certificate in Information Technology or related field is desirable. generators, lightning protection an asset and previous experience in Emergencies is desirable. Hands-on experience with wireless and VoIP systems, electricity,generators, lightning protection an asset and previous experience inEmergencies is desirable. Analytical Thinking Innovation and Creativity Technological Awareness How to Apply: All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application instructions after reviewing the job details. Click Here Deadline: 21st September 2020 For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline Westfield-owner Scentre's move to raise $4.1 billion in hybrid debt to withstand the coronavirus storm could spark more issuance of the securities as Australia's biggest companies look to shore up balance sheets without diluting their shareholders. Scentre shares rose 2.2 per cent to close at $2.32 on Thursday as shareholders breathed a sigh of relief that the company did not follow through with a widely speculated equity raising and instead raised $US3 billion ($4.1 billion) in subordinated hybrid notes. Westfield operator Scentre has priced its debt market raising Credit:Brook Mitchell Barry Sharkey, managing director at UBS, which worked with Scentre on the deal said the transaction was a good example of innovative thinking when it comes to capital management strategy. "Whilst every case is different, we would expect this form of capital will be considered by other companies in the future especially noting the ongoing investor demand for higher yielding securities in the current environment," Mr Sharkey said. (Alliance News) - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned actions to stop a second surge of coronavirus must be "tough now" in order to "protect" Christmas. His words came as stricter new measures are set to be announced for the North East of England, including a 10pm curfew on pubs and restaurants. The PM said people have to be "both confident and cautious" and that it is "crucial" the country does not re-enter "some great lockdown again that stops business from functioning". He told The Sun: "Christmas we want to protect, and we want everyone to have a fantastic Christmas. "But the only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas is to be tough now. "So if we can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump." He spoke as people in the North East await an announcement on Thursday on new measures which are expected to come into effect from midnight. Newcastle upon Tyne has also seen a sharp rise in its rate, up from 51.2 to 64.1, with 194 new cases in the seven days to September 13. There were 141 new cases in South Tyneside, up from 92 the previous week, and 198 in county Durham, a rise from 172. Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes told BBC Radio 4's Today programme his team had sent proposals to the Department of Health for pubs and restaurants to close at 10pm and for people to be banned from socialising outside their bubble. "We know from the tracing that we're doing, that the three main areas where we're seeing the spread of the virus at the moment are in pubs and bars, in people's homesaand in grassroots sports," he said. "So in pubs and restaurants, we've asked for a 10pm curfew or 10pm closure of all pubs and restaurants. "And we've also asked for table service only to prevent people congregating and standing around bar areas. It's much easier for people to maintain social distancing if it's seating only. "We've asked for people to only have contact between households if they're in a social bubble, and for people not to make contact with people outside of their own households or their own social bubble." He said one exemption to this rule would be for extended family members who provide childcare. Forbes said people needed to understand that "if we don't get on top of this now, it's going to get out of control". Some 40,000 students were expected back in the city and there was now a need for extra testing capacity to keep them safe, he added. "I think we should all be deeply concerned about the rapid increase in the number of coronavirus cases we have seen over the last week in the North East," he said. "And not just the rapid rise in numbers, but also the fact that the average age of people being infected is going up as well. "Last week 60% of the people that were being tested were between the ages of 18 and 30. "That is now starting to reach into older age groups as well. "We know that when it starts to affect older people that's when you start to get the hospitalisations and sadly also the mortality too. "That's why we are acting now as a preventative measure to try to put off any further spread of the virus and ensure that we don't end up here in the North East in a more restrictive lockdown instead." In south Wales, a local lockdown will come into force from 6pm on Thursday, meaning people must not enter or leave the Rhondda Cynon Taf area without a reasonable excuse. Under new rules, licensed pubs, bars and restaurants in the area will have to close at 11pm a and meetings with other people indoors will not be allowed, including for extended households. The area has the highest testing positivity rate in Wales, with the seven-day new case rate at 82.1 per 100,000 people in the area. Meanwhile, on Wednesday evening, Anthony Costello, a former World Health Organisation director who sits on the independent Sage panel, said England's chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, had asked for a national two-week lockdown. Costello tweeted: "I'm hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. "Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two-week national lockdown." Health minister Edward Argar played down those reports on Thursday, telling Sky News: "It is not something I have seen within the department. "The prime minister has been very clear on this. "He doesn't want to see another national lockdown. "He wants to see people abiding by the regulations and making the local lockdowns work." The spikes in infection rates come as Johnson admitted there is not enough capacity in the testing system after demand "massively accelerated" in recent weeks. He told MPs at the Liaison Committee on Wednesday: "We don't have enough testing capacity now because, in an ideal world, I would like to test absolutely everybody that wants a test immediately." He said the virus was spreading from the young to the more vulnerable elderly, with the rate of cases among the over-80s doubling in just days a and warned that would "lead to mortality". On Thursday afternoon, Dido Harding, who is interim executive chairwoman of the National Institute for Health Protection and oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Following the publication of the latest test-and-trace figures last week, the Tory peer insisted the system was "working" despite key targets being missed and the number of close contacts being reached falling to a record low. By Jane Kirby and Aine Fox, PA source: PA Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Former SAPO Head Nazar Kholodnytsky filed for resignation on August 21. Lawmaker with the ruling Servant of the People Party, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee for Legal Affairs Andriy Kostin may be appointed a new Head of Ukraine's Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). Kostin is the top contender for the post earlier held by Nazar Kholodnytsky, the RBC Ukraine news agency reported on September 17, referring to its source in the party. The nominee worked as a lawyer in the city of Odesa before being elected to the Rada, Ukraine's parliament, the publication said. When asked by journalists whether he would take part in the competition for the post of SAPO head, Kostin failed to provide an unequivocal answer. "There are a lot of interesting ideas in the media. An interesting idea is always a reason to consider it," he said. Kholodnytsky's resignation: background In July, as the coronavirus pandemic raged, Joseph R. Biden Jr. made one trip to a battleground state. In August, he again visited just one swing state. And on the second weekend in September, less than eight weeks before Election Day, Mr. Bidens only activity was going to church near his Delaware home. Mr. Bidens restraint has spilled over into his campaign operation, which was late to appoint top leaders in key states and embraced a far more cautious approach to in-person engagement than President Trump, and even some other Democratic candidates. While the Trump campaign says it is knocking on a million doors a week, the Biden team is relying heavily on TV ads and contacting voters largely through phone calls, text messaging and other digital outreach. That guarded strategy reflects the bet Mr. Bidens campaign has made for months: that American voters will reward a sober, responsible approach that mirrors the ways the pandemic has upended their own lives, and follows scientific guidance that Mr. Trump almost gleefully defies. Yet as Mr. Trump barrels ahead with crowded, risky rallies, some Democrats in battleground states are growing increasingly anxious about the trade-offs Mr. Biden has made. With some polls tightening since the beginning of the summer, they are warning him that virtual events may not be enough to excite voters, and urging him to intensify in-person outreach. (Natural News) The recent drama about Disneys Mulan film has drawn some much-needed attention to the evils of communist China a topic that is often glossed over thanks to the countrys financial support of Hollywood. Director Judd Apatow recently expressed his concerns about the issue, saying that Hollywood censors films to avoid upsetting China and Saudi Arabia. He said that studios will not tackle sensitive topics about human rights abuses if it means they will lose access to profitable markets abroad. Speaking to MSNBC, the producer of Anchorman and director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin said he was concerned about a corporate type of censorship that people dont really notice. Many TV and film companies, he says, that do business with China wont let their shows criticize them and wont air documentaries that go deep into truthful areas because they just make so much money. He added that the way that content criticizing human rights biases in China has been shut down is scary. Apatow himself is not afraid of using social media to expose human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims with tweets such as, It is shameful that no US companies and very few politicians speak up about concentration camps in China. He also said that no one in Hollywood would buy a pitch for a movie about Muslims in Chinese concentration camps. Disneys support of China drew boycotts of Mulan film The Mulan film was partly shot in Xinjiang, a region of China where the Chinese Communist Party has set up mass concentration and forced labor camps for millions of Uyghur Muslims, where they are often subjected to horrors like organ harvesting. Forced sterilization campaigns there saw the regions birth rate drop by 24 percent last year, making it meet the legal definition of genocide. In the credits of the film, Disney actually offers up a special thanks to several CCP propaganda departments in the region who were directly involved in operating or promoting mass internment camps, along with a local public security bureau branch that is subject to U.S. government sanctions on account of its role in operating such camps. This has prompted many people to boycott the film. The CCP has barred human right organizations, foreign journalists and government officials from entering the region, but they gave Disney employees special access. The films production team reportedly spent months in the area researching and doing legwork before the films production. They also refer to Xinjiang as northwest China in subtitles to appease the Chinese government. Apatow also spoke out about China, writing on Twitter last week: They are not detained they are being held in CONCENTRATION CAMPS. Apple uses that word because they dont want to anger China. Maybe Disney and Apple should SPEAK UP & try to help a million people who were abducted and put in CONCENTRATION CAMPS. According to a report by freedom of speech nonprofit PEN America, Hollywood is increasingly normalizing censorship to gain access to the vast film audiences is China. The country is the second-biggest market in the world for cinematic releases behind the U.S. The group says the movie industry tailors every aspect of making movies to win over Beijing, including casting, dialogue, plot and content. For example, they say that Disneys Marvel Studios scrapped a major Tibetan character from their 2006 film Dr. Strange as Tibet is a politically sensitive topic in China. The CCP has been accused of human rights abuses there including forced abortion and sterilization, torture and restriction of religious freedoms. The film ended up being a big hit in China, bringing in $109 million there. Last year, the trailer for the remake of Top Gun raised eyebrows when main character Mavericks jacket no longer had flags for Taiwan and Japan on it. Taiwan is viewed by the CCP as being a breakaway province. Its not just Mulan; this is a widespread problem throughout Hollywood that is unlikely to change unless more people hit them where it hurts and boycott their productions. Sources for this article include: Breitbart.com NationalReview.com DailyMail.co.uk Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Tea infusers, also known as tea strainers are primarily used to steep loose tea leaves. Tea can be easily brewed in an infuser by just adding hot water and allows making multiple servings at once. Tea infusers have gained immense popularity of late. The market is growing on the back of increasing consumption of tea worldwide and elevated awareness regarding its consumption. Fast-track urban lives require convenience products and tea infusers have been able to cater to the convenience demand of consumers. Not only are tea infusers effective but they are also easy to use. Low price range of infusers along with rising disposable income across the globe is underpinning the growth of the market. Traditionally, tea infusers were meant to make only one serving at a time but now tea infusers have evolved to make more than one servings. The global tea infuser market is also growing on the back of the sustainable practice of tea consumption in various regions. Consumers are always looking for new practices which align with health and sustainability goals. Within such a context, the consumption of tea has increased dramatically across the globe. Tea infusers are the perfect product to help consumers enjoy their favorite drink at work, the gym, or on the go. Market Research Future (MRFR) has added the global tea infuser market to its portfolio of reports. As per MRFR's analysis, the global Tea Infuser market manufacturers is due to reach USD 769.5 Bn at a CAGR of 4.73% by the end the forecast period of 2019-2024.Tea infusers, also known as tea strainers are primarily used to steep loose tea leaves. Tea can be easily brewed in an infuser by just adding hot water and allows making multiple servings at once. Tea infusers have gained immense popularity of late. The market is growing on the back of increasing consumption of tea worldwide and elevated awareness regarding its consumption.Fast-track urban lives require convenience products and tea infusers have been able to cater to the convenience demand of consumers. Not only are tea infusers effective but they are also easy to use. Low price range of infusers along with rising disposable income across the globe is underpinning the growth of the market.Traditionally, tea infusers were meant to make only one serving at a time but now tea infusers have evolved to make more than one servings. The global tea infuser market is also growing on the back of the sustainable practice of tea consumption in various regions. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2910 The current trend in the market is to create next-generation functional products that prioritize health, sustainability, convenience, and wellness of consumers. The tea infuser market is rife with various product innovations which is anticipated to drive the growth of the market. Introduction of various travel-ready and easy-to-use tea infusers have been key to the growth of the market. In addition, the launch of various organic and healthy tea products is boosting the growth of the market. Market players have introduced innovative products such as bottles or teacups that include infuser and such products have gained widespread acceptance among consumers. Segmentation The current trend in the market is to create next-generation functional products that prioritize health, sustainability, convenience, and wellness of consumers. The tea infuser market is rife with various product innovations which is anticipated to drive the growth of the market. Introduction of various travel-ready and easy-to-use tea infusers have been key to the growth of the market. In addition, the launch of various organic and healthy tea products is boosting the growth of the market. Market players have introduced innovative products such as bottles or teacups that include infuser and such products have gained widespread acceptance among consumers.Segmentation The tea infuser market has been segmented based on type and distribution channel. By type, the tea infuser market has been segmented into tea infuser baskets, tea ball infusers, travel mugs & tea mugs, infuser teapots, and others. By distribution channel, the tea infuser market has been segmented into store-based and non-store-based. The store-based segment is further divided into supermarkets & hypermarkets, convenience stores, and others. Regional Analysis Region-wise, the tea infuser market has been segmented into North America, Rest-of-the-World (RoW), Europe, and Asia Pacific (APAC). North America is at the forefront of the global tea infuser market. Tea infuser is believed to have been originated in North America and given the region's inclination towards technologically advanced products, the tea infuser market is expanding in the region. Some of the major market players are based in the US, which gives the region a leverage over others. The consumption of tea has increased considerably in the region on account of increasing awareness regarding the health benefits aligned with it. The US, Mexico, and Canada are the key country-specific markets within the North America market. APAC tea infuser market is likely to exhibit substantial growth in the coming years. The consumption of tea is indigenous to the tradition and culture of countries in the region such as China and India. Increasing disposable income in the region and increasing demand for convenience products is driving the growth of the market in the region. Europe, being an early adopter of tea infusers, the market for tea infuser is anticipated to demonstrate steady growth in the coming years. Consumers are Europe are reportedly drinking loose leaf tea and are mixing their favorite combinations. Competitive Landscape Newell Brands Inc. (US), LoyalTea B.V. (Netherlands), Magic TeaFit LLC (US), Fred & Friends (US), True Fabrications, Inc. (US), Shenzhen Milabao Housewares Co. Ltd (China), House Again Inc. (US), Lifetime Brands, Inc. (US), Bar Brat (US), and Gifbera Inc. (US) are the emninent players in the global tea infuser market. Industry Updates May 2019 - Smiths Mason Jars, a UK-based company offering a range of premium quality jars for multiple uses, launched a sensible and environment friendly loose tea leaf infuser in Asia. The tea infuser has been designed to keep tea warma nd fresh throughout the day. Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Union minister Prahlad Singh Patel on Thursday said he has tested positive for Covid-19. The Bharatiya Janata Party MP has requested those who came in contact with him to be cautious. Last night my coronavirus report came positive, I request those who met me on Tuesday to be cautious, Prahlad Singh Patel wrote on Twitter. On Wednesday, Union minister Nitin Gadkari had announced testing positive for Covid-19 and going into self isolation. So far, Patel and Gadkaris colleagues such as Amit Shah, Shripad Naik, Dharmendra Pradhan, Gajendra Shekhawat have tested positive for coronavirus. Recently seventeen people including staff and family members living at BJPs Delhi office, tested positive for coronavirus. All the staff members and their families who live on the Delhi BJP office premises were tested through rapid antigen test on Tuesday. Seventeen of them including a guard, a driver and two peons have tested positive, PTI quoted Delhi BJP media cell head Ashok Goel as saying. Those who tested positive for Covid-19, were sent to COVID care centre, he added. U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday, at the start of a three-day trip that will see him attend a memorial service for the island's first directly elected leader. Krach, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan since Washington cut ties with the island in 1979, touched down with his delegation at Taipei's Songshan Airport to be met by his counterpart Harry Tseng. Krach is scheduled to attend a memorial service for former President Lee Teng-hui, who died July 30 at the age of 97, as well as a banquet hosted by President Tsai Ing-wen. Foreign minister Joseph Wu said Krach's visit is highly significant for Taiwan. "The U.S. State Department is sending a very high-level undersecretary of the State Department to Taiwan to attend the memorial service of former President Lee," Wu told journalists on Thursday. "The Taiwan government expresses a very high level of welcome." Wu said Krach's attendance at the memorial service "is evidence of the closeness of the relationship between Taiwan and the United States." Yen Chen-sheng, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, said Krach's visit is a diplomatic breakthrough. "No Under Secretary of State has visited Taiwan since the U.S. broke off diplomatic ties," Yen said. He said Krach's visit could also facilitate future purchases of oil and natural gas, and diversify the bilateral trade portfolio. Visit still low-key Chiou Jiun-rong, a former deputy minister of Taiwan's National Development Council, said Krach's visit was still fairly low-key, with considerable uncertainty around the level of formality that would be accorded to bilateral trade and economic talks. But he said Krach could at least pave the way for future bilateral trade talks. "If we are defined as a relatively independent political entity at the diplomatic level, then we can talk about a possible bilateral trade agreement or free trade agreement," Chiou said. China said it would make a necessary response to Krach's visit, and lodged a complaint with Washington, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. We urge the U.S. side to fully recognize the extreme sensitivity of the Taiwan issue, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing in Beijing. China will make a necessary response depending on how the situation develops. Krach's visit comes at a time of heightened military tension in the Taiwan Strait, following large-scale exercises by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) in nearby waters and the encroachment into Taiwan's airspace by PLA aircraft. Chinas Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration reported on the eve of Krach's arrival that the PLA would hold military exercises in the East China Sea from 8.00 a.m. to 6.00 pm on Sept. 17. PLA planes also made an incursion into Taiwan's airspace during the visit last month by U.S. Secretary of Health Alex Azar. 'A serious provocation' Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement last week: "Military maneuvers by Chinas government constitute a serious provocation to Taiwan and a grave threat to regional peace and stability." "Taiwan does not seek confrontation, but neither will it back down," the statement said. "The Chinese government is introducing a factor of extreme instability in the region." It called on the international community to play close attention to increasingly aggressive moves by China. The United States plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles, and drones to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions said, Reuters reported on Thursday. Washington has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as Fortress Taiwan, as Beijings military makes increasingly aggressive moves in the region, the agency reported. Taiwans Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report, which said weapons packages from Lockheed Martin Co LMT.N, Boeing BA.N, and General Atomics are moving their way through the export process, citing three people familiar with the deals. A senior U.S. official told Reuters: There is no equilibrium today. It is out of balance. And I think that is dangerous. The Pentagon said in a report to Congress published in September that China has strengthened and modernized its military capabilities in recent years to the point where the PLA is already ahead of the United States in some areas. US adjusting its policy Former lawmaker Lin Yufang, now convener of the National Security group at Taiwan's Institute for National Policy Research, said the U.S. does appear to be adjusting its policy on China.. "Of course [this] diplomacy means that the United States is adjusting its China policy," Lin told RFA. "The United States has gradually gotten rid of the line of strategic thinking that it needs mainland China. China's value as a strategic partner has plummeted." "Now, they need to improve ties with Taiwan to counter the rapidly expanding power and influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)," he said. Lin said ongoing arms sales by Washington to Taiwan might suggest the U.S. would be reluctant to become embroiled in any military conflict across the Taiwan Strait, however. "This is something that successive U.S. presidents have wanted to avoid since the Vietnam War, so they think that maybe by selling these weapons to the Republic of China, they may be able to deter China from launching a military attack on Taiwan," Lin said. "[The idea is that] Taiwan could deploy enough military strength to deal with China without the need for the U.S. military to rush into war," he said. The editor in chief of Military and Aviation News, Shih Hsiao Wei, said the package of arms reported by Reuters suggested Taiwan would gain the ability to hit the source of conventional ballistic missiles targeting the island. "Before the PLA launches its short-range ground-to-ground ballistic missiles, just after launch, there is a radio emission to establish communication with command headquarters," Shih said. "Drones can search and detect these fleeting electronic signals." "Then it is possible to attack the source of the missile using a cruise missile," he said. Shih said the reported arms package includes airdropped mines, pointing to the threat of attempts at amphibious landings or blockades by the PLA. Threats from China China has said Taiwan, a democratic island that has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party nor formed part of the Peoples Republic of China, must unify with China or face a potential invasion by the PLA. President Tsai has repeatedly said that Taiwan's 23 million people have the right to determine their own future, and have no wish to give up their freedom or sovereignty. The island has been officially governed by the 1911 Republic of China since it occupied the island at the end of World War II, ending 50 years of Japanese rule. Earlier this month, it issued a newly designed passport on which "Taiwan" is more prominently displayed in English on the front cover, with the words "Republic of China" relegated to a tiny font size. Reported by Hwang Chun-mei for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Chung Kuang-cheng for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the Shiromani Akali Dals (SAD) lone minister in the Narendra Modi government, on Thursday resigned to protest the three agriculture bills that were later passed by voice vote in the Lok Sabha. She has submitted her resignation to the Prime Ministers Office (PMO), said Harcharan Bains, principal advisor to SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal. I have resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter and sister," Kaur said in a tweet. I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 Thousands of farmers are on the streets. I did not want to be part of the government that got the bills passed in the House without addressing the apprehensions of farmers, that is why I resigned," Kaur said later. My decision symbolises my partys vision, its glorious legacy and its commitment to go to any extent to safeguard the interests of the farmers," the MP wrote in a four-page resignation letter addressed to the PM. We stand with the farmers and will do anything for them. The next course of action will be taken by our party for which there will be a meeting shortly," said Badal. Large-scale protests from farmers in Punjab against these measures have put the regional party, which draws its support majorly from peasants, under pressure, culminating in the resignation of its only representative in the government. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill Badal announced in Lok Sabha that Kaur will quit the the government, shortly after which the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries submitted her resignation. Badal in Parliament said the proposed laws will destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. Vehemently opposing the bills, he recalled the states massive contribution to making India self-sufficient in food grain production. Badal also refuted suggestions that his party initially supported three ordinances, which these bills seek to replace, and asserted that Kaur had expressed her concerns in the Cabinet meeting and also written to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, highlighting flaws" in the proposed legislations. Hitting out at the Congress, which has sought to corner the SAD over these bills, he accused the party of double speak" on the issue and noted that the abolition of the APMC Act was part of its manifesto in both the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab. The SAD on Wednesday had issued a whip to its MPs to vote against the ordinances, which have triggered protests by farmers across Punjab. It had also protested against the first of the three bills, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha. Earlier in the day, the Congress said the farm sector legislations defeat the purpose of the Green Revolution and will be a death knell for the future of farming", alleging that the Modi dispensation, akin to the coronavirus pandemic, was attacking the lives and livelihood of farmers. Opposing the bills, Congress MPs staged a protest in front of Mahatma Gandhis statue in Parliament Complex and raised slogans against the government. Some Congress MPs from Punjab also burnt copies of the farm bills brought in by the government inside the Parliament Complex. Farmers have protested over the three ordinances that the government is likely to promulgate and pass in the monsoon session. The government claims these ordinances will help farmers get better prices for their crops, by legalising contract farming for instance. A statement issued by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) in June said these ordinances will give farmers the freedom to produce, hold, move, distribute and supply will lead to harnessing of economies of scale and attract private sector/foreign direct investment into agriculture sector. It will help drive up investment in cold storages and modernisation of food supply chain". But farmers who have been protesting against these ordinances for several weeks claim they will corporatise" the agriculture sector and further cripple them financially. (With PTI inputs) ALBANY At first glance, the proposed law sounds insane. Democrats in the state Legislature really want to require 500 hours of training and certification for anyone who shampoos at a hair salon or barbershop? What kind of madness is this? I mean, I've been shampooing my own head for years without any training whatsoever! Sure, I get a little soap in my eyes from time to time, but after a good, hearty cry I'm usually fine. But get this: Getting a cosmetology license, the usual license acquired for anyone daring to work as a shampoo assistant in New York, already requires 1,000 hours of training. So in that case, the change proposed by Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, a Democrat from Round Lake, would take the state's training requirement from INSANELY insane to just a regular level of insane. "This is about going from 1,000 hours to 500," Woerner told me. "This is about not having to get all the way to 1,000 of training before you can work at a salon. It's about making it easier to work, not harder." New York law says a license is needed for, among other things, shampooing, arranging, twisting, wrapping, weaving, extending, locking or braiding a person's hair or beard beard?! by hand or mechanical appliances. The state's "natural hair license" for braiding practitioners also allows license holders to shampoo and requires 300 hours of training. Still, there seems to be confusion over whether shampooing requires a license, leading some salons to unknowingly break the law by hiring unlicensed workers as shampoo assistants. Assemblyman John McDonald, a Cohoes Democrat, said he agreed to co-sponsor Woerner's bill in part because the state can fine unlicensed shampoo assistants up to $2,500. And those fines, McDonald and Woerner said, are given to the worker and not the salon owner. More insanity, in other words. The larger issue here is about the barriers governments place in the way of work. Too often, even entry-level jobs require significant licensing investments that can make it difficult for the poor to break into the workforce. Put it this way: If we require a $15,000 investment, which is the going rate for at least one local cosmetology program, before somebody can do something as simple as shampoo hair, how can we be surprised when so many people are trapped in poverty? "States must end the practice of excessive licensure," noted a recent tweet written by ... wait for it ... Ivanka Trump. "In 1950, less than 5% of occupations were licensed. Today it is closer to 30%. The Americans hurt the most by this overreaching regulatory regime are those living on the margins". Trump is absolutely right. And she's not alone: The Obama administration also warned against excessive licensing by states, noting, among other things, that the restrictions often limit physical and economic mobility. Imagine for a second that you're a licensed toenail cutter in New York. You're struggling to get by because there just isn't enough toenail work here. You notice that there's an abundance of overgrown toenails in, say, New Hampshire and you don't move because the licensing requirements are different there. You're stuck. But though that and other problems associated with excessive licensing are widely recognized, they continue because licensing requirements are usually imposed by state lawmakers who just can't help themselves. In some cases, lawmakers are dissuaded from loosening restrictions by workers who are already licensed and want to restrict new competition. Or they're encouraged to impose tougher requirements by schools that will benefit from new students. (As my colleague Chris Bragg recently reported, the father of Woerner's legislative director founded the New York State Association of Salon and Spa Professionals, which represents cosmetology schools.) Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Often, license mandates are framed around the issue of safety and protecting consumers from harm. That's reasonable, of course. It's probably wise to require that crane operators and "hazardous materials transporters" be licensed, as New York does. But do we really need to license, say, farriers? Does a person really need 1,000 or even 500 hours of cosmetology training to give a shampoo? "If you're going to reduce it, why make it 500?" asked David Catalfamo, who is Woerner's Republican opponent in the 113th state Assembly district. "Why stop there?" It's a good point, and I put the question to Woerner. Can't we just get eliminate the training requirement for shampoo assistants altogether? "It's 1,000 hours now," she said. "If we can reduce it by 50 percent and horrible things don't happen and the world doesn't stop spinning on its axis, maybe we can cut it by another 50 percent." Progress will be gradual, in other words. Rome wasn't built in a day. Note: This column was updated to reflect that holders of the state's "natural hair license" may also shampoo hair. It also said that a cosmetology license was needed for hair services such as braiding and weaving hair; a natural hair license also permits those services. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill Treasurer Josh Frydenberg sits as he listens to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speak in the House of Representatives during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Sept. 2, 2020. (David Gray/Getty Images) Aussie PM Prepared to Quarantine for Queensland State Election Prime Minister Scott Morrison is prepared to go into 14-day hotel quarantine if he travels to Queensland during the state election campaign. All travellers from NSW, the ACT and Victoria must go into quarantine upon arrival in the state under the governments strict COVID-19 rules. This means federal politicians, including the prime minister and opposition leader, will have to comply if they decide to campaign in Queensland ahead of the Oct. 31 election. While Morrison might not have time to get on the hustings, with the federal budget due on Oct. 6 and a parliamentary sitting, hes prepared to undergo quarantine. Whether I was ever going to get to Queensland anyway was a sort of secondary issue. I have a federal responsibility, the prime minister told Sevens Sunrise program on Sept. 17. But I should be subject to the same rules like everybody else. I dont think there should be double standards about these things. I think the same rules should apply. But the prime minister may not need to quarantine after the Queensland government indicated on Wednesday border restrictions with the ACT and NSW could be eased at the end of this month. Morrison again called on the Queensland government to implement a fairer quarantine exemption system. We have to deal with the virus, not let the virus destroy the way we live, he said. Compassionate quarantine exemptions have become a potent issue in the run-up to the state election. The LNP has branded Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk heartless, while the government has accused the opposition of using family tragedies for political gain. Last week, a case involving a quarantining Canberra woman who was denied permission to attend her fathers funeral rose to national prominence after Morrison tried to intervene. The woman was eventually allowed to view her fathers body in private after the funeral, while dressed in full personal protective equipment. The womans step-sister later wrote an open letter criticising Morrisons involvement, saying he had whipped up a media storm to further his political agenda. By Marty Silk Mumbai: An accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case has been allowed by a special NIA court to file his nomination papers for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.Accused Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay had last week moved the court seeking permission to fill his nomination form which the court has allowed today, special public prosecutor Avinash Rasal told PTI. Upadhyay has said he wants to contest the polls but has not specified the constituency.He had made a similar application during the 2009 general elections. Rasal said Upadhyay has also sought interim bail for a month stating February 4 and the court is likely to hear the case on January 23. A bomb strapped to a motorcycle had exploded in Malegaon on September 29, 2008, killing seven people and injuring around 100. According to the investigating agencies, the blast was carried out by right-wing extremists and 11 people are at present in jail in the case, including Lt Col Prasad Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Dir: Sarah Gavron. Cast: Bukky Bakray, Kosar Ali, D'angelou Osei Kissiedu, Shaneigha-Monik Greyson, Ruby Stokes, Tawheda Begum. 12A cert, 93 mins. Olusholas (Bukky Bakray) friends all remember the time she stepped in to defend her best mate Sumaya (Kosar Ali) from bullies. Its why they call her Rocks now solidarity is part of what defines her. This is girlhood as seen through the lens of director Sarah Gavron, best known for 2015s Suffragette. Here, to be a young woman is to be as steady and immutable as the most ancient of mountain ranges. The film drops us into the middle of Rockss east London clique as they excitedly plan the junk food theyll binge on after class, argue over whether someone can lose their virginity to a tampon, and start food fights in the middle of home economics. Gavron, alongside casting director Lucy Pardee, assembled the films teen stars (many of them making their debuts here) before a single word of its script had been written. Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson then crafted a story drawn directly from the world and experiences of its cast. The result is the most authentic film about British teens in years. Rockss mother (Layo-Christina Akinlude) waves her and her brother Emmanuel (Dangelou Osei Kissiedu) goodbye, as they head off to school. The camera lingers for a moment. It studies her face, as its emotions start to slip down some imaginary drain. Somethings off. The siblings return to an empty home and a note explaining that their mother has gone to clear her head. Rocks doesnt seem worried, at first. This has happened before. But every day that passes without her mother there, a chunk of her innocence is quietly knocked away, while she watches Emmanuel spiral helplessly into confusion and disarray. One day, hell stand waiting by the window like a dejected puppy, the other hell start screaming that he never wants to see his mother again. Rocks always sticks up for others, but she has a tougher time sharing her own vulnerabilities. Its the biggest test her friendships will have to face. Ikoko and Wilsons script subtly explores the small hollows created between people by class and race. All of her friends want to help, but a middle-class white girl (Ruby Stokess Agnes) wont necessarily know the right way to fix a working-class black girls problems. Good intentions have a tendency to turn sour. Gavron, meanwhile, finds depth in Rocks surroundings. Theres neither a house nor a street here that doesnt tell its own story. Sumayas Somali family are in the middle of celebrating an engagement, their living room draped in silks and crowded with plates of bite-sized delicacies. The girls always hang out on the same rooftop, where central Londons skyline rises up like sharp, jagged daggers behind them. The world of corporate deals and crisp suits seems a million miles away. The events of Rocks are tragic, but the film much like its hero refuses to get knocked down by despair. Rocks can always find joy (even if its fleeting) in her friends. They may struggle to understand her pain, but do what they can to soothe it. Theyll make her giggle in dance class or whisk her off to a day at the seaside. Rocks is a heartfelt testament to the resilience of teenage girls. Rocks is in UK cinemas from Friday 18 September Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner will step in for Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs on Wednesday while he continues to self-isolate, the party has said. A member of the leader of the oppositions household is still awaiting the results of a test for Covid-19, after the party said on Monday that they had developed possible symptoms. Keir Starmer is still awaiting the test result for a member of his family, the Labour leaders spokesperson said on Tuesday evening. He is therefore remaining in self-isolation and will not participate in Prime Minister's Questions tomorrow. Angela Rayner, deputy leader and shadow first secretary of state, will be taking his place. We have informed Number 10. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA Sir Keir has been self-isolating since Monday morning in line with NHS guidance, according to the party. It is understood that Boris Johnson will face off with Ms Rayner on Wednesday, despite the convention that the other faction nominates someone else to stand if the prime minister or leader of the opposition is absent. Mr Johnson's de facto deputy Dominic Raab is currently on a visit to the US. During Mondays debate on the UK Internal Markets bill, Sir Keir was replaced by former leader Ed Miliband, who castigated the prime minister over his failure to state which part of the bill voted through by MPs would prevent a blockade in the Irish Sea, the pretext by which Mr Johnson sought to persuade rebellious Tories to vote for a bill breaching his own Brexit withdrawal agreement. In last week's PMQs, Sir Keir accused the government of not being able to get the basics right following reports that people were being denied Covid-19 tests and forced to drive to test centres hundreds of miles away, telling Boris Johnson: I just want it fixed. Six days later, accusations of mismanagement of the testing system continued to rain down on the government, with Labours Wes Streeting calling it a bloody mess after Twickenham MP Munira Wilson said her constituents had found they could only access tests locally in west London if they pretended to live in Aberdeen. The symptoms in Sir Keirs household appeared amid shortages of tests across the country, with reports that at times on Monday no tests of any kind were available in the 10 areas with the highest infection rates. Speaking to the TUC congress via video link from a spare room in his London home, Sir Keir revealed that he only got a test arranged because his wife Victoria works in the NHS. People shouldn't have to traipse halfway around the country in search of a Covid test when they're sick, he said. Yesterday, my family were able to get a test quickly when we needed one, but only because my wife works in the NHS in a hospital that provides tests for staff and their families. For thousands of people across the country, its a very different story. After six months of this pandemic, that's completely unacceptable. And whatever Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock might say, it's not the British people that are to blame for these mistakes. It is not the civil servants, care home workers or a mutant algorithm. It's the government. It's the government that's holding Britain back. And we should never let them forget that. As news broke yesterday of the possible infection, a Downing Street spokesperson said: The prime minister has spoken to the leader of the opposition this morning and gave best wishes to him and his family. Additional reporting by PA The move comes as part of Egyptian General Intelligence Service's efforts to protect Egyptians in Libya and in coordination with Libyan authorities Six Egyptian workers who had been kidnapped in Libya returned to Egypt on Thursday after their release, governor of Marsa Matrouh Khaled Shoaib said after receiving them at the governorate's headquarters. The Egyptians returned home a few hours after Libyan security forces had freed them. The move, which took place in coordination with Libyan authorities, is part of Egypt's General Intelligence Service (GIS) efforts to protect Egyptians in Libya. Shoaib said the returnees had worked as construction workers in Libya and were detained by criminal human traffickers in Bani Walid region in southwestern Libya. The criminals demanded a ransom of LYD 30,000 for each of the Egyptian kidnappees, according to the governor. Shoaib hailed the GIS' success to free them, shortly after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi had assigned state agencies to swiftly take the necessary measures to bring them back home. The governor affirmed that Egypt protects its citizens in the country and abroad, expressing his appreciation to the president for taking care of the workers until they arrived home. Shoaib also thanked the Libyan authorities for cooperating with the Egyptian security agencies. Shoaib stressed Egypt has ample job opportunities that can provide workers with a decent living and preserve their dignity. Thousands of Egyptians work in Libya, a key destination for Egyptian migrant workers from rural areas, mainly in the construction and craft industries. The Egyptian foreign ministry has repeatedly called on all expats still living in Libya to return home. In 2015, Islamic State militants beheaded 20 Egyptian Christians near the Libyan city of Sirte, in a video circulated by the group's propagandists. Since then, Egypt has managed to return dozens of workers who were kidnapped in the war-torn neighbouring country. Libya, which has descended into chaos since the 2011 uprising, has been split between two rival administrations: the eastern government, represented by the Tobruk-based House of Representatives allied with the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Commander Khalifa Haftar; and the west is represented by the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). In August, President El-Sisi announced a peace initiative to end the civil war in Libya proposing a ceasefire and an elected leadership council. Search Keywords: Short link: On September 17, the School Board will have the opportunity to vote on a transformational project that promises to create 19,000 jobs in Philadelphia at a time when over 200,000 unemployment claims have been filed in the region, many by low-income and Black and brown residents. During the process of seeking approval from the School Board for a tax abatement through the Commonwealths Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) program, the Hilco development of the former refinery site has sparked important discussions about tax abatements, the dearth of diversity in the trades, and the role that developers should play in solving societal ills. When the School Board voted no August 20 on Hilcos proposal to give payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs), they made a clear statement that tax incentives will no longer be allowed without commensurate community benefit and intentionality around diversity and community revitalization. As a school board member in a nearby district, I understand the significance and challenges of the School Boards position. It should be commended for standing up for the students they have taken an oath to serve. As a property owner in Grays Ferry, I also appreciate the boards desire to support disadvantaged communities that have long suffered from disinvestment and environmental degradation. However, it is important to consider another side to the current narrative about incentives and development. READ MORE: Philly school board rejects tax break for Hilcos redevelopment of former refinery site As President and CEO of The Badger Group, an African American-owned development firm, I also know the challenges of doing business in this city. The cost of development in Philadelphia is high in comparison to some peer cities, yet we cannot command the rents of New York, Washington, D.C. or Boston. Often, incentives are the only way to make a deal financially feasible. For a site like the former refinery, where Hilco has stated that up to half a billion dollars will be invested into remediating the heavily polluted property, it will take years before Hilco even turns a profit. Without KOZ benefits, we should not underestimate the real possibility that they may choose to pull out of the deal, leaving the city with a massive, contaminated and vacant siteand even the potential of a new owner returning it to its former use as a refinery. Hilco has committed to 50% minority contractual and workforce participation, with an additional 50% commitment to local employment. It has also committed to supporting 25 Career Technical Education (CTE) graduates each year in entering apprenticeships with the trades. Further, Hilco will complete an entirely new student commitment protocol that requires all KOZ beneficiaries state their commitment to students related to exposure, experience, and job opportunities. In addition to the thousands of jobs promised for residents, many of whom live in nearby communities, the School District will collect more revenue than it would have absent a KOZ. Several opponents have made claims that the PILOTs leave the School Board with less revenue, but these claims are misrepresentations110% of the assessed real estate taxes for the entire landmass (not just the KOZ) would be paid through the PILOT, which will create greater tax revenue for the school district. Further, wage taxes on new jobs will not be abated and will generate millions of dollars in new revenue during a time when the Citys coffers are in dire need. Currently, there are no other taxes are being collected on the site. READ MORE: Philly school board already voted against a Hilco tax break. It should do so again. | Opinion The School Board has made an important statement tied to significant new policies, such as requiring School District authorization for the City to apply to the state seeking further abatement of taxes under the KOZ program. But Hilco has stepped up to meet the new expectations and demands of the Board. Developers like me are also paying close attention. We are ready to heed the call and play our part. But we also know that we alone cannot solve the decades-old problems in the city and remain in business. The solution rests with all of us, working together, to help move our city forward. The School Board should claim this victory and vote yes on Thursday. A no vote could throw away thousands of jobs, further the health risks of residents, and likely deter other companies from considering Philadelphia as a place to invest in and do business. Paul Badger is the President and CEO of The Badger Group, a real estate firm specializing in development, investments, and sales. READ MORE: Phillys school board should keep blocking Hilco from tax breaks | Opinion Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:10:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday urged the United States to abide by the one-China principle and immediately stop carrying out official exchanges and promoting a substantive relationship with Taiwan. "China will make necessary response in light of the developing situation," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily press briefing. Wang's remarks came after the U.S. side announced that U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach will visit Taiwan to attend an upcoming memorial service for former Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui. "China firmly opposes any form of official exchanges between the United States and Taiwan. This position is clear and consistent," he said. Krach's visit to Taiwan severely violates the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiques, encourages the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, and undermines China-U.S. ties as well as cross-Strait peace and stability, Wang said, adding that China has expressed firm opposition and lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Enditem While Prime Minister Scott Morrison has agreed to back down on challenging WAs hard border stance, mining billionaire Clive Palmer hasnt, with his High Court fight officially set down for November 3 and 4. Mr Palmer is arguing the states all-or-nothing approach to its border reopening is unconstitutional as it prevents citizens from other COVID-free jurisdictions, such as the Northern Territory, Tasmania, the ACT and South Australia, from travelling freely. WA Premier Mark McGowan's state border closure is being challenged by Clive Palmer. Credit:WAtoday His argument was dealt an early blow in August when a Federal Court judge, tasked with determining the facts to underpin the High Court proceedings, found WAs hard border was the most effective way to keep coronavirus out of the state. Justice Darryl Rangiah said the border closure was more effective than the hotspot model the rest of the country, bar Queensland, would move towards by Christmas, which would prevent people from areas where there was an outbreak of COVID-19 from travelling. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A. ("Gol Linhas" or the "Company") (NYSE: GOL). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980. The investigation concerns whether Gol Linhas and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. [Click here for information about joining the class action] In mid-June 2020, Gol's auditor, KPMG, raised significant concerns about Gol during the accounting firm's first annual audit of the Company after being hired in 2019, stating that it had an "adverse opinion" on the strength of Gol's internal controls regarding the preparation of financial statements, adding that there was "substantial doubt" about the airline's ability to exist a year from now." KPMG's adverse opinion prompted Gol to carry out a review of its financial reporting procedures. Then, on July 23, 2020, Gol announced the termination of KPMG as its external auditor. On this news, Gol's American depositary receipt ("ADR") price fell $0.65, or 7.05%, to close at $7.25 per ADR on July 23, 2020. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP [email protected] 888-476-6529 ext. 7980 SOURCE Pomerantz LLP Related Links www.pomerantzlaw.com Two episodes into Ratched and I am yet to find a genuine link between the lead character and the one flawlessly portrayed by Lousie Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in 1975. Evan Romanskys script, realised by producers / directors Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, is an origin story with screen favourite Sarah Paulson as a young Nurse Mildred Ratched. How did she grow into the malevolent nurse in Ken Keseys novel, later dramatised by director Milos Forman? Its a book I read so long ago, I can barely remember any backstory. In the new Netflix series it is 1947 in California. The young nurse Ratched pushes her way into an interview before Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) who is conducting radical experiments at a psychiatric hospital. She already crosses swords with Nurse Bucket (Judy Davis) who isnt ready to have her authority challenged. But Ratched is determined, with motives not fully apparent, who needles her way into the hospital when a local Governor (Vincent DOnofrio) and his press secretary (Cynthia Nixon) commandeer media coverage at the asylum. Both opportunist and manipulator, Nurse Ratched seizes on an opportunity to wedge herself towards the top of the hospital hierarchy, where she begins more clandestine work. Despite the aesthetic of art deco buildings, gleaming costumes (more teal than Wentworth) and rich art direction, beneath the veneer is Murphy darkness, not far removed from American Horror Story. Nurse Ratched operates in deception (should we have another origin story on how her personality got to this point?) and Paulson is expert at smiling while quietly smothering her babies, so to speak. Judy Davis also strides through her scenes as the toppled head nurse -watch for a delicious scene where both argue over a lunchroom peach. Cynthia Nixon is also particularly memorable with an erotically-charged feast with oysters. Its great to see Filipino-American Jon Jon Briones as the asylum doctor, while other roles go to Finn Wittrock, Charlie Carver, Hunter Parrish, Rosanna Arquette, Sharon Stone, Sophie Okonedo, Harriet Sansom Harris and Aussie Alice Englert. Special mention too for composer Mac Quayle whose string-heavy score turn this into something akin to Warner Bros. Hollywood noir or Hitchcock. Yet for all its grand monstrosity, this remains worlds apart from that of Louise Fletcher, Jack Nicholson & co. As with many Murphy productions, style often overwhelms substance, and the sheer melodrama of it all lacks the subversive horror of Formans 1975 classic. Which is not to say there is not fun to be mined from the sum of the parts. Murphy is nothing if not a master of theatrical. The challenge for all, given the task undertaken, is whether like Fletcher & Forman, we will still be talking about this screen version in 45 years time. On that point, I rather think not, so just enjoy it for the moment. Ratched begins today on Netflix. Corrected. James Fideler/Not Just Peanuts LLC En Espanol | In 1976, few would have pegged Jimmy Carter as a rock n roll rebel. He was a peanut farmer, a Southern Baptist, a Georgia governor and a former Navy officer who would soon become president. But a new documentary makes a strong case for his counterculture credentials. In Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President, director Mary Wharton examines how popular music helped a little-known politician from rural Plains, Georgia, ascend to the highest office in the land. The film opens with a clip of candidate Carter quoting Bob Dylan's It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), then jumps ahead 42 years to find the ex-president at home dropping his turntable needle on Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man. Rock & Roll President chronicles music's role in Carter's campaign, presidency and life after the White House, through archival footage and an astounding array of interviews. Musicians weighing in include Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bono, Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett, Rosanne Cash, Trisha Yearwood, Nile Rodgers, Garth Brooks and Gregg Allman (who gave one of the last interviews before his death in 2017). Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appears, as does civil rights leader Andrew Young. Filmmakers twice interviewed the now-95-year-old Carter, who asserts, Music is the best proof that people have one thing in common no matter where they live, no matter what language they speak." A t least one person has been killed and hundreds more have been rescued after Hurricane Sally smashed into the US Gulf Coast. The storm lumbered ashore near the Florida-Alabama line on Wednesday, swamping homes and forcing a major rescue mission as it pushed inland . The death happened in Orange Beach, Alabama, according to mayor Tony Kennon, who also said that one person was missing. Moving at just three mph, the storm made landfall at 4.45am close to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama / AP Sally cast boats onto land or sank them at the dock, flattened palm trees, peeled away roofs, blew down signs and knocked out power to more than 540,000 homes and businesses. A replica of Christopher Columbus's ship the Nina that had been docked at the Pensacola waterfront was missing, police said. By the afternoon, authorities in Escambia County, Florida said at least 377 people had been rescued from flooded areas. A resident wades through flood waters in downtown Pensacola after Sally made landfall / AP Authorities in Pensacola, Florida said 200 National Guard members would arrive on Thursday to help. Curfews were announced in Escambia County and in some coastal Alabama towns. Sally turned some Pensacola streets into white-capped rivers early on Wednesday. Sodden debris and flooded cars were left behind as the water receded. By early afternoon, Sally had weakened into a tropical storm. It was downgraded to a depression late Wednesday night with 35 mph sustained winds. Hurricane Sally pictured from a satellite over the US Gulf Coast / RAMMB/NOAA/NESDIS/AFP via Getty The National Weather Service said the system was still forecast to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain in southeast Alabama and central Georgia by Thursday night. At least eight waterways in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle were expected to hit their major flood levels by Thursday. Some of the crests could break records, submerge bridges and flood some homes, the National Weather Service warned. The US government has unveiled a plan to offer a COVID-19 vaccine to all Americans free of charge as early as January. The US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Defence jointly released two documents on Wednesday, outlining the Trump administrations vaccine distribution strategy amid the coronavirus pandemic.The document highlights a goal to deliver safe and effective vaccine doses to sites, with no upfront costs to providers and no out-of-pocket cost to the vaccine recipient, the strategic distribution overview reads. We are working closely with our state and local public health partners to ensure that Americans can receive the vaccine as soon as possible and vaccinate with confidence, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement Wednesday. Americans should know that the vaccine development process is being driven completely by science and the data.According to the details sketched out in the statement, initially, there may be a limited supply of vaccines available, and the focus will be on protecting health workers, other essential employees, and people in vulnerable groups. The Pentagon would be involved in the distribution of vaccines, but civilian health workers would be the ones giving shots.As part of Operation Warp Speed, we have been laying the groundwork for months to distribute and administer a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it meets FDAs gold standard, said Azar in the statement. The Trump administrations Operation Warp Speed is aimed at developing and delivering a COVID-19 vaccine to the public in record time through contracts with seven different drugmakers. ALSO READ: Taliban wont agree to ceasefire unless the reason behind war is discussed, says spokesperson Mohommed Naeem While some of the leading vaccine candidates have moved into large phase three trials, its still not clear if any of the vaccines sponsored by the administration will be successful. The aim sketched in Operation Warp Speed is to have vaccines moving to administration sites within 24 hours after an emergency authorisation.As per the latest updates by Johns Hopkins University, the US the worst affected country from the COVID-19 pandemic has a total of 6,616,458 cases and 196,436 deaths due to the pathogen. ALSO READ: 5 Chinese, 2 Malaysians hackers charged by US Justice Dept for hacking over 100 targets WASHINGTON Congress should give the nations highest civilian honor posthumously to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, a Republican and a Democratic senator said Wednesday. Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the Congressional Gold Medal is long overdue for the Till family. Till was a black teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955 by white men who were later acquitted despite eyewitness testimony tying them to the killing. He had been accused of whistling at a white woman. Mamie Till-Mobley demanded an open-casket funeral for her son in Chicago. A photograph of Tills brutalized body galvanized the Civil Rights movement. She remained a Civil Rights activist in honor of her slain son for the rest of her life. Image: Emmett Till (AP file) That legacy is still felt today and honoring it is more important than ever, Burr said in a statement announcing the bill introduction. While his lynching and the impunity that followed was unique in its horror, it revealed the persistent legacy of racialized terror and violence waged against Black Americans and reflected the stain of racism and bigotry that this nation continues to struggle with today, Booker said. Till-Mobley created the Emmett Till Players, where teenagers traveled throughout the country presenting the speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She also was one of the founders of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, which pushed for the re-investigation of Tills murder. President George W. Bush signed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act, which allows cold civil rights cases to be reopened, into law in 2008. Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This work, published in Cell and led by the UNC-Chapel Hill lab of Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, sets the stage for the discovery of new kinds of antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and treatments for substance use disorders CHAPEL HILL, NC - September 17, 2020 - Psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline cause severe and often long-lasting hallucinations, but they show great potential in treating serious psychiatric conditions, such as major depressive disorder. To fully investigate this potential, scientists need to know how these drugs interact with brain cells at the molecular level to cause their dramatic biological effects. Scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill and Stanford have just taken a big step in that direction. For the first time, scientists in the UNC lab of Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, and the Stanford lab of Georgios Skiniotis, PhD, solved the high-resolution structure of these compounds when they are actively bound to the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor (HTR2A) on the surface of brain cells. This discovery, published in Cell, is already leading to the exploration of more precise compounds that could eliminate hallucinations but still have strong therapeutic effects. Also, scientists could effectively alter the chemical composition of drugs such as LSD and psilocybin - the psychedelic compound in mushrooms that has been granted breakthrough status by the FDA to treat depression. "Millions of people have taken these drugs recreationally, and now they are emerging as therapeutic agents," said co-senior author Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "Gaining this first glimpse of how they act at the molecular level is really important, a key to understanding how they work. Given the remarkable efficacy of psilocybin for depression (in Phase II trials), we are confident our findings will accelerate the discovery of fast-acting antidepressants and potentially new drugs to treat other conditions, such as severe anxiety and substance use disorder." Scientists believe that activation of HTR2A, which is expressed at very high levels in the human cerebral cortex, is key to the effects of hallucinogenic drugs. "When activated, the receptors cause neurons to fire in an asynchronous and disorganized fashion, putting noise into the brain's system," said Roth, who holds a joint faculty appointment at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. "We think this is the reason these drugs cause a psychedelic experience. But it isn't at all clear how these drugs exert their therapeutic actions." In the current study, Roth's lab collaborated with Skiniotis, a structural biologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "A combination of several different advances allowed us to do this research," Skiniotis said. "One of these is better, more homogeneous preparations of the receptor proteins. Another is the evolution of cryo-electron microscopy technology, which allows us to view very large complexes without having to crystalize them." Roth credits co-first author Kuglae Kim, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in his lab, for steadfastly exploring various experimental methods to purify and stabilize the very delicate serotonin receptors. "Kuglae was amazing," Roth said. "I'm not exaggerating when I say what he accomplished is among the most difficult things to do. Over three years in a deliberate, iterative, creative process, he was able to modify the serotonin protein slightly so that we could get sufficient quantities of a stable protein to study." The research team used Kim's work to reveal the first X-ray crystallography structure of LSD bound to HTR2A. Importantly, Stanford investigators then used cryo-EM to uncover images of a prototypical hallucinogen, called 25-CN-NBOH, bound together with the entire receptor complex, including the effector protein Gq. In the brain, this complex controls the release of neurotransmitters and influences many biological and neurological processes. The cryo-EM image is like a map of the complex, which Kim used to illustrate the exact structure of HTR2A at the level of amino acids - the basic building blocks of proteins such as serotonin receptors. Roth, a psychiatrist and biochemist, leads the Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. This gives his lab access to hallucinogenic drugs for research purposes. Normally, these compounds are difficult to study in the lab because they are regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency as Schedule 1 drugs. Roth and colleagues are now applying their findings to structure-based drug discovery for new therapeutics. One of the goals is to discover potential candidates that may be able offer therapeutic benefit without the psychedelic effects. "The more we understand about how these drugs bind to the receptors, the better we'll understand their signaling properties," Skiniotis says. "This work doesn't give us the whole picture yet, but it's a fairly large piece of the puzzle." ### This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R37DA04567 and R01MH112205) and a cooperative agreement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (HR0011-20-2-0029). The researchers also received support from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory. Along with Roth, Skiniotis, and Kim, other others of the Cell paper are Tao Che, PhD, a Roth lab postdoctoral fellow at the time of this research and now assistant professor at St. Louis University; Stanford University staff scientist Ouliana Panova, PhD; Jeffrey DiBerto, Roth lab graduate student; Jiankun Lyu, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco; Brian Krumm, PhD, a Roth lab postdoctoral fellow; Daniel Wacker, PhD, a Roth lab postdoctoral fellow at the time of this research and now assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Michael Robertson, PhD, and Alpay Seven, PhD, both postdoctoral fellows at Stanford; David Nichols, PhD, Roth lab researcher and emeritus Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology and Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy; and Brian Shoichet, PhD, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UC-San Francisco. For the first time since the pandemic began, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz believes both the timing is right and that the community and local officials are ready for the citys bridges to reopen to tourists from Mexico. Before, certain groups were pressuring (the city to reopen). ... I just couldnt see council, and the medical authority as well internally we just werent ready. But I think were ready now, Saenz said. The limiting factor was capacity. We were at capacity in our hospitals, and thats going to be a significant indicator in making these kind of decisions. Laredos active cases have fallen below 500 for the first time in months, hospitalizations are decreasing, as is the citys positivity rate. Saenz said he understands the risk in opening up the city further, but believes that the community has become more responsible in taking precautions, which has led to this downward trend in cases. The rest of Laredo City Council appears to feel similarly. After enforcing a curfew for months, they voted to lift it on Monday, and also voted to allow restaurants to expand their outdoor dining capacity. On Thursday, Saenz is attending a Texas Border Coalition meeting, where he will ask its members if they are interesting in petitioning the federal government as a unified region to end these travel restrictions at the border. Then on Monday he plans to ask council if they would approve this resolution as well. This day will mark the end of COVID-19s 14-day incubation period following Labor Day weekend, so Saenz noted they should have a clear idea by then if there is a related uptick in cases. That should also give us reason to be more optimistic if we havent seen a spike by then, the mayor said. He hopes the bridges could open to tourists again by October so people could come over to shop during the holiday season, which will be vital to local retailers who have lost business during the pandemic. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimated in 2012 that 40-45% of Laredos retail activity comes from Mexican shoppers, and many of these shoppers cross the bridge with a tourist visa. Still, the decision to open the bridges ultimately falls on the Department of Homeland Security. Saenz said he not received any hint from federal officials that ending these travel restrictions is a possibility. None whatsoever, he said. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar last week proposed to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf that federal officials conduct health screenings for non-essential travelers at ports of entry, so that healthy travelers would be able to cross. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 08:32:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SHIJIAZHUANG/BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Beijing Daxing International Airport has opened a city terminal in Gu'an County, north China's Hebei Province, allowing residents of Gu'an and the surrounding area to complete check-in procedures ahead of time and with minimal fuss. Beijing Daxing International Airport Gu'an City Terminal is located just 10 km from Daxing airport's main site and covers an area of nearly 500 square meters, according to Wang Hui, director of operation planning at Daxing's terminal management department. Having checked in, passengers are transported to their planes at the main Daxing site by means of the airport bus line, a journey of just 40 minutes. The bus leaves every 20 to 30 minutes and costs 20 yuan (about 3 U.S. dollars) a ride. Among those to use the new terminal was Xing Li, a resident of Gu'an County, who traveled to southwest China's Chongqing on Wednesday. "In the past, I needed to leave at least three hours ahead of time to get to Daxing airport, but now with the opening of Gu'an City Terminal, I only need to leave one hour in advance," said Xing. What surprised Xing was that the terminal staff helped her with the check-in procedures. She did not have to do anything except read and wait in the rest area. "The terminal is close to the Beijing-Kaifeng Expressway and is surrounded by complete supporting facilities, such as accommodation, catering and shopping," said Wang, adding that the terminal is committed to creating a cozy check-in environment for passengers. "As the first inter-provincial city terminal of Daxing airport, Gu'an City Terminal not only expands Daxing airport's hub function, but also helps Gu'an, Langfang and other places in Hebei to use Daxing airport's hub advantages to enhance their industrial attraction," said Jiao Yongjie, manager of the public area management department at Daxing airport. Daxing airport plans to deploy multiple city terminals within the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to facilitate passenger travel in the future. Enditem Photo: https://tce-live2.s3.amazonaws.com/ A recent poll by Insights West has indicated that the opioid crisis has had a bigger negative impact on people in B.C. than COVID-19. The poll found that 37% of British Columbians felt the opioid crisis has had an extremely negative impact on their community, compared to 25% for COVID-19. The study also found that the opioid crisis had had a direct impact on 31% of B.C. residents, defined as someone in their immediate family or circle of friends either struggling with addiction or having died from an overdose. That is three times higher than the number of people who know someone who has or has had the virus. These statistics are alarming, but unfortunately not surprising. The two epidemics are intrinsically linked; for people using substances, there are additional challenges right now due to the virus, increasing the risk of harm and ultimately death. COVID-19 has made the drug supply to B.C. increasingly unpredictable, with global supply chains disrupted due to the pandemic. This means that users are having to source drugs from unknown dealers or suppliers, and the number of overdoses in B.C. has significantly increased as a result. With many people isolating and social distancing in recent months, people are also using alone, which greatly increases the risk of an overdose and subsequent death. The opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2016, and since then has claimed countless lives across B.C. and Canada. The rise in opioid related deaths can be traced back to the late 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies assured medical professionals that opioid pain medications were not addictive. This led to an increase in the number of prescriptions of opioid medications, such as morphine. The rise in prescriptions gave way to the misuse of both prescription and non-prescription opioids, and it quickly became clear that the drugs being used were highly addictive. Patients that had been started on opioids by their doctor were tapered off the drugs, but the damage had already been done. Heroin became increasingly popular as the drug of choice on the streets, and the introduction of fentanyl to street opioids in 2013 saw a sharp increase in the number of deaths from overdose. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 50-100 times more potent than morphine. It is a prescription drug, but is also made and used illegally, usually as a cheaper alternative to heroin. However, people experiencing addictions to substances may be unaware of the addition of fentanyl, thus leading to unintentional overdoses. Tackling the opioid epidemic in B.C. is a challenge that has so far gone undefeated. The B.C. government has multiple approaches to tackling the issue. One of the biggest issues is the stigma around substance use; both the government and non-profit organizations are working hard to encourage people to talk about drug use, so that people feel able to reach out when they are in need. Harm reduction is a key strategy for B.C.; overdose prevention sites and supervised consumption sites allow users to get their drugs checked and use in a safe environment, where help can be given immediately if someone overdoses. Naloxone kits are also provided without a prescription in B.C.; the medication quickly reverses the effects of an opioid overdose and can be vital in saving lives. As well as making substance use safer, the BC government offers safe, prescribed alternatives to drugs like heroin and fentanyl. Individuals experiencing substance use and addiction can use opioid agonists, prescribed by a doctor. These medications help people to avoid the harsh withdrawal effects and can be tapered off under medical supervision. Prevention is also key to the provinces approach to the crisis; education about opioids and their disastrous effects is being offered to communities across B.C. Stricter rules are also in place around prescribing opioids. The province is still in the grips of this opioid epidemic, and unfortunately the global pandemic has hindered progress made earlier in the year. However, with education, prevention, treatment and support, we hope that 2021 brings more health and happiness for people affected by both the virus and the opioid crisis. HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's premier says he wants the province's police watchdog to assess whether officers broke the law when they destroyed evidence in the case of a man who spent almost 17 years in prison before being declared innocent. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Glen Assoun is seen at his daughter's residence in Dartmouth, N.S. on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019. Nova Scotia's premier says his government will ask an independent investigatory body to look into the destruction of evidence by police in the case of a Nova Scotia man who spent almost 17 years in prison before a court declared his innocence. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's premier says he wants the province's police watchdog to assess whether officers broke the law when they destroyed evidence in the case of a man who spent almost 17 years in prison before being declared innocent. Stephen McNeil told reporters Thursday the attorney general will ask the Serious Incident Response Team to assess whether there was criminal misconduct by police during the period before the appeal of Glen Assoun's conviction. Assoun, 64, also lived under strict parole conditions for almost five more years before a Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruling in March 2019 reversed his 1999 conviction for the murder of Brenda Way. Way was found with her throat slashed in a Dartmouth, N.S., parking lot in November 1995. The crime remains unsolved. "I've asked the minister (of Justice) to refer this file to Serious Incident Response Team, the independent agency in this province," McNeil said following a cabinet meeting. "They will assess whether or not this is criminal in nature." In July 2019, a federal Justice Department report revealed an RCMP unit that included Halifax police officers had destroyed a constable's database of information about other suspects in Way's murder, along with physical evidence the officer had gathered to back up his case. The destruction of evidence occurred prior to Assoun's 2006 appeal hearing, which he lost. Const. Dave Moore had tried repeatedly to tell his superiors his work was relevant, and yet it was never disclosed, according to the Justice Department's report. The Mounties have cited an internal review about the destruction of Moore's work, and have said there was "no malicious intent." McNeil said if the watchdog determines such an inquiry is not in its mandate, then the province would "look at what are the other options for review of that process." The watchdog agency has a mandate that includes investigations of matters of "significant public interest" stemming from the actions of police officers. Agency director Felix Cacchione said Thursday his office hasn't received a request to investigate the case, "so it's inappropriate to comment at this time." Cacchione, a former judge in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, has said in an earlier interview with The Canadian Press that he felt the case falls outside his office's mandate, because the events occurred before SiRT was created. Justice Minister Mark Furey told reporters his office is preparing a request for the police oversight agency. "We've looked at what options we have available," Furey said Thursday. "One of the options is to engage SiRT on the specifics of this particular matter and determine if it's within their mandate." Furey, a former RCMP officer, said if SiRT determines that the case falls in its mandate, "then we can have further discussion about appropriate resourcing." "Right now, I'm waiting hear back through the department." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. New Delhi, Sep 17 : At a time when the ongoing pandemic has forced people to work from home and kids take online tutorials, devices in all form factors are being put to their maximum use and Samsung, with its new 'M series stack, is giving the student community an affordable yet powerful reason to continue with studies and professionals to finish office work with ease, a top company executive has stressed. According to Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Samsung India, the company is working hard to ensure millions of Indians continue their online work as well as homework seamlessly. "On the tablet side, we are seeing a very large growth in sales, search and enquiries. There has been a strong uptick in the Samsung Galaxy tab segment in the Covid and lockdown times. On the smartphone side, our Galaxy 'M51' is one such device that is 100 per cent reliable for the students as well as their parents," Warsi told IANS. The truth is that several families in India cannot afford to buy laptops or notebooks with decent configurations for a longer work or school online period that come in at least Rs 40,000 and above range. For them, affordable smartphones are the saviour in these social distancing times. "Overall, the Galaxy 'M' stack caters to the student community at large for reasons which are now obvious to all: a monster 7,000mAh battery that stays for longer period, a 6.7-inch Infinity-O display with Super AMOLED technology, Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G Octa-Core processor for multitasking, 6GB RAM and 128GB storage (expandable to 512GB via microSD card) and more at an affordable price point," Warsi elaborated. Galaxy M51, which is the company's ninth launch post lockdown, is priced at Rs 24,999 for the 6GB/128GB variant and Rs 26,999 for the 8GB/128GB variant. It also comes with an in-box Type C 25W superfast charger that aims to recharge the 7000mAh battery in less than two hours. Not just devices to empower the working professional and student communities, said Warsi, the company is offering three new innovative programmes on its online store -- Samsung Referral Programme, Samsung Student Programme and Samsung Shop 20K Advantage, which will reward customers including students when they shop online from Samsung.com. The Samsung Student Programme enables the student community to get easy access to a special catalogue of products consisting of a range of smartphones, tablets, wearable and accessories. These particular products are listed at a discounted price and come with added benefits like complimentary insurance, easy exchange offer, and convenient EMI options. Students need their official college email IDs to access this store, or be authorised by a student credentials verification agency. In addition, the 20K Advantage Programme gives users an opportunity to unlock 10 shopping vouchers worth Rs 20,000 in total value by registering on the app with their contact details. "For Samsung, the Online Store (Samsung.com) is a key focus area for growth and we are targeting 10 per cent of our overall business in mobiles and consumer electronics through this important channel," Warsi said. According to Warsi, the Galaxy 'M' series brand is a perfect reflection of its young owners, standing out as the most youthful, energetic and aspirational handset in the market. "This success is an ode to the fact that M series was designed ground-up in India for the young Indian consumers and manufactured at our factory in Noida," Warsi noted. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Coal headlines this summer have been uniformly doom-and-gloom, with stories like Renewables surpass coal in US energy generation for first time in 130 years from the Guardian, Coals Decline Continues with 13 Plant Closures Announced in 2020 from Scientific Americans E&E Energy News platform, and The U.S. Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly from Oil Price. While coal has long been struggling in the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic, of course, only made things worse. But while coal has been on the decline for a long time now in the west, its demise has been much slower in Asia, where coal exporters have managed to keep opening up new markets and the twin giants of China and India have continued to depend on coal for a considerable amount of their respective domestic energy mixes. Back in June when Oilprice wrote that 2020 Will Be A Brutal Year For Coal, the report was mostly focused on the United States coal industry, but it turns out that even Asia is looking at a bleak future for its coal sector. Coal exporters should brace for disappointment, Asia Times reported this week, remarking that Asian thermal coal exporters are fighting an uphill battle even in new markets. Exporters that have historically relied on China and India for the bulk of their sales are now having to face a future in which the twin giants of Asian industry push to develop their own coal industries, and thereby become less reliant on imports, while also making plans to turn away from coal and toward cleaner alternative energies. Indonesia, the worlds single-biggest thermal coal exporter, has so far responded by trying to push into new markets, specifically targeting Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam. Indonesias move into these new Asian markets sets off a chain reaction that impacts the global coal market. As a result, Australian and South African thermal-coal exporters arent going to have it all their own way in seeking increased deliveries to markets such as Vietnam. Related: The Secret To Survival For Canadas Oil Sands China and India are not the only major coal importers that are on track to greatly reduce their reliance on foreign coal. South Korea has been the third-largest thermal-coal export destination for Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. However, this month President Moon Jae-in announced that 30 coal-fired power plants will be closed by 2034 and wind and solar capacity tripled by 2025. Meanwhile Japan is now planning the closure of 100 coal-fired power units by 2030 as it gears up for its own push into offshore wind. Meanwhile, it looks like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the new target markets for Indonesia, are going to disappoint those hoping for more demand growth from these countries. While Bangladesh has long been considered as the most promising source of future coal imports with one of the largest coal-power project pipelines in the world, the demand growth that had been considered an inevitability is now looking more uncertain now that the nations Power Ministry has sought approval from the prime minister to cancel 13,000 megawatts of coal power. Bangladeshs pivot away from coal can be credited to ever more affordable new energy technologies and increasing difficulties securing finance for coal projects. Pakistan, another target market for Indonesia which was once seen as a safe bet for growing coal demand, has also been making a shift away from foreign coal and is now prioritizing power plants fueled by domestic coal, hydro and renewable energy. Vietnam has significantly increased their coal imports recently, but it too is pivoting towards a greener energy strategy with a renewables focus for the future. According to the IEA, it is increasing coal exports to Asian markets outside of Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan that will slow thermal coals decline under its central scenario. With the recent moves by Vietnam, Bangladesh and Pakistan, that is looking less likely, and the decline of seaborne thermal coal threatens to look more like the accelerated decline in the Sustainable Development Scenario. Asia has stood out in its allegiance to coal as the rest of the world has largely moved away from the especially dirty and emissions-heavy fossil fuel. As some of the last global holdouts, the potential death of coal in Asia has major implications. It marks the end of an era for a major global industry, but it also marks a victory for clean energy agendas and the fight against climate change. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Egypt is stepping up moves to encourage electronic payments by vendors and the general public as part of its digital transformation The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and Federation of Egyptian Banks (FEB) have launched a joint campaign to raise awareness about the merits of electronic payments that aims to increase public interaction with points of sale (POS) and increase the use of quick-response codes (QR codes) and mobile wallets to facilitate daily transactions. A statement by the FEB said vendors could acquire POS for free for a limited time, as well as QR codes. It said they could conduct free maintenance of the system through Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, the Commercial International Bank, the African-Arab International Bank, Banque du Caire, the Bank of Alexandria and the Qatar National Bank. The campaign targets people across the social and economic spectrum nationwide. It aims to promote electronic payments in a straightforward way as part of government plans to decrease the dependence on cash, said Mohamed Al-Etrebi, chairman of the FEB and president of Banque Misr. The CBE has ambitious plans to promote electronic payments, kickstarting an initiative to distribute 100,000 POS countrywide by December 2020. The CBE would bear the cost of the machines, Al-Etrebi added. Banks participating in the campaign are making facilities available to vendors to use POS and QR codes to provide the best financial services possible in the light of peoples preferences to pay electronically, he said. FEB statistics show that Egypts banks had issued 17.3 million debit cards, 16.2 million prepaid cards, and 3.3 million credit cards by the end of March, and there are 88.3 million POS and 13.3 million ATMs nationwide. In May, the CBE launched a campaign to promote electronic payments and decrease the dependence on cash as part of preventive measures against the spread of the coronavirus. The Ministry of Finance is also seeking better financial inclusion by making financial and banking services available to the public electronically and decreasing the dependence on cash. This would reduce fraud and theft, increase the use of mobile wallets, and promote services online, said Mohamed Ibrahim, head of the automation unit at the ministry. The initiative serves vendors who wish to use POS for free, since the system connects to a vendors account directly and without added fees, he said. He added that merchants who keep up with the electronic-payments system will find it easier to gain clients. The government has already been moving towards electronic payments, and most government employees and pensioners cash their monthly incomes through ATMs, Ibrahim said. After the approval of the regulations on non-cash payments, the government offered a six-month grace period for the introduction of non-cash payments. The same grace period has been provided to government authorities and private-sector companies so that they can introduce electronic payments to their employees without added fees. A law passed by parliament last year obliges government and private-sector bodies to pay their financial dues and insurance subscriptions electronically and aims at the gradual transformation of all purchases into electronic payments in a bid to reduce cash transactions. The law obliges government bodies and companies whose capital is entirely or mostly owned by the state to pay service-providers and contractors not on the regular payroll electronically if their fees exceed LE5,000, said Hamdi Hosni, head of projects at the electronic-payments unit of the Ministry of Finance. The regulations allow government bodies to give incentives to people who pay electronically, including discounts of five per cent. The Egyptian Federation of Chambers of Commerce is drawing up a list of vendors that do not pay electronically, said Ibrahim Al-Arabi, head of the federation, estimating these to add up to some five million. The federation is conducting studies with electronic-payments companies to sign protocols with all of them in order not to limit transactions to only selected companies, he said, adding that it intended to generalise the discounts available to vendors. In addition to the protocols, courses will be launched in cooperation with the Chamber of the Digital Economy to train vendors to use electronic payments and raise public awareness about the countrys digital transformation. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Theres a frantic search for a throne speech silver bullet that will resolve the income problems of the pandemic and put us all on a better path. But a guaranteed basic income is not the answer, despite all the rhetoric and goodwill that has given the idea so much momentum lately. Childcare, however, just might be, or at least as close as we can get to one. The beauty of a guaranteed basic income is its simplicity and compassion. The idea of government just making sure everyone has enough money to get by on is attractive to caring and thoughtful people across the political spectrum who believe our society is rich enough to take care of its poor. Thats why it rose to the top of the list of proposals backed by the Liberal party rank and file to take to their convention in November. Its why every political party has had a look at it over the years. And its why the United Church is lighting candles to the idea on the eve of the throne speech next Tuesday. Canadas social welfare system was designed many decades ago, when workers had regular jobs and regular hours, explains Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz, who has championed the proposal. Its worth looking at a new system that makes sure everyone has enough money to meet their basic needs, giving them the stability they need to find a job, retrain or fall back on when things turn sour. But its deceiving in its simplicity. We already have many well-entrenched programs serving many parts of the population quite well: the generous Canada Child Benefit for almost all families with children; the Guaranteed Annual Income and Old Age Security for seniors; Employment Insurance for those who lose their jobs. Training benefits, low-income worker incentives, housing subsidies, disability credits theyre all designed to support the incomes of specific segments of the population when they run into trouble. To replace many of them with a single cheque would not only be legally difficult, but would also give the federal government a blunt instrument to deal with the complex and ever-changing problems of poverty, low income and inequality. For sure, the pandemic has exposed some cracks in the existing patchwork of programs, especially when it comes to Employment Insurance. The federal government began to confront those cracks last month when it announced how it would move millions of people off the temporary Canada Emergency Response Benefit and onto an enhanced EI system. It added on a caregiving benefit, plus a benefit for self-employed people, and increased the basic amount that EI beneficiaries can collect, at least for the next year. Its a start. The federal Liberals are well aware that its not a permanent solution, nor does it close all the cracks in the system. People with disabilities and single, working-age adults are still in precarious positions, and require more attention and funding. But solutions are not as easy as just announcing a guaranteed basic income. Child care, on the other hand, has so many fringe benefits that its impossible not to relish the thought and there are many signs that the federal Liberals will make it a highlight of the throne speech next Wednesday. The pandemic lockdown exposed how central access to reliable and affordable child care is to parents ability to work, even from home. Now that we have lurched towards some reopening, good child care is essential if we want mothers to maintain their spots in the workforce. And those child-care workers need to be well paid, properly equipped and fully trained if we are all to stay safe and virus-free. Its become painfully obvious that ensuring that there are enough affordable, high-quality child-care spaces is essential for a recovery. But the benefits go beyond the near term. High-quality care sets children on the right path for life, levelling the playing field for low-income families. It increases womens participation in the workforce at a time when, over the long run, we need all the workers we can get. So the payback for government spending comes quickly. The federal government has already earmarked $625 million for the provinces for pandemic child care, and has indicated a willingness to flexible in how it issues existing funding to provinces in order to speed up the creation of daycare spots. But the long-term fix is still lacking in both funding and design. The federal Liberals promised in their last election campaign to fund before- and after-school care for school-aged children. But theyve also been unsuccessful at implementing a national child-care program in the past. This time, it looks like theyre listening carefully to advocates and experts, and indicating heavily that theyre ready to take another run at it. A national child-care program with available, affordable, high quality, inclusive and flexible child care is doable, says Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit and at the top of the federal governments contact lists these days. It would require serious federal funding, heavy negotiations with the provinces and some stringent requirements to make sure the money is spent productively. The payoff would make it all worthwhile, and give us all some peace of mind. Read more about: Marine permaculture arrays (MPAs) are man-made irrigation grids for growing kelp forests, equipped with wave-powered pumps and pipes that can restore overturning circulation the process that moves warm and cold water and nutrients around the depths and surface waters of the Atlantic lost due to climate disruption. They can be towed out to sea, establishing new kelp forests and restoring fisheries in what are increasingly becoming ocean deserts. MPAs are relatively inexpensive to build, and the resulting kelp and fish can be sold commercially. MPA inventor Brian von Herzen estimates that the arrays can remove CO2 at a cost of about $80 per ton, while producing kelp products that could dramatically offset the production cost and boost fisheries. This makes them competitive with technological solutions. According to von Herzen, growing new kelp forests in just 1 to 2 percent of the oceans would sequester enough carbon to restore the climate, provided we do our part to reduce the carbon intensity of our civilization. Brussels is standing firm on its demand for the UK to abandon plans to override key elements of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, despite ministers agreeing a compromise with Tory rebels. Boris Johnson was forced to agree to table an amendment to the UK Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before the Government can use powers which would breach the deal brokered with the EU last year. His controversial plan to break international law angered scores of his backbenchers, and prompted the European Commission to demand the provisions in the Bill relating to the Withdrawal Agreement be dropped by the end of the month. But despite the Governments compromise, Brussels said on Thursday that its position had not changed and it still wanted the clauses to be withdrawn from the legislation. Eric Mamer, chief spokesman for the European Commission, told a press briefing: We have as you know set out a position extremely clearly, it is in our statement, and it relates to those clauses being withdrawn from the law. That position has not changed and we have asked the UK to do this at the earliest possible convenience, and by the end of September at the latest. That has not changed. The spokesman also insisted the EU carries out negotiations in good faith, after the Prime Minister told MPs on Wednesday he did not believe they had acted as such in the Brexit talks. Mr Mamer said: I think that Michel Barnier showed, in the context of the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, that even on extremely complex and politically sensitive issues the Commission and indeed the EU negotiate in perfectly good faith. President @vonderleyen: Trust is the foundation of any strong partnership. The Withdrawal Agreement took three years to negotiate. We worked relentlessly. We will never backtrack. This agreement has been ratified by this House and the House of Commons. #SOTEU pic.twitter.com/XWQ2wNDr7U Michel Barnier (@MichelBarnier) September 16, 2020 It came as US presidential election frontrunner Joe Biden insisted the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland cannot become a casualty of Brexit. Story continues The Democratic Party nominee for the White House said a future trade deal between the US and UK could only happen if the peace agreement was respected. Mr Biden tweeted: We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. In response, Downing Street said the Government was working with US politicians to make sure people understood its position. We continue to remain absolutely committed to no hard border and no border infrastructure between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, a Number 10 spokesman said. We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020 And we will continue to engage with our US partners on a bipartisan basis to ensure that our positions are understood. Asked if Mr Biden was wrong, the spokesman said: We will continue to work with our US partners to ensure our position is understood, but the whole point of this, as the PM has set out, is to make sure the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is upheld. Meanwhile, Daniel Ferrie, a European Commission spokesman, said the EU is not threatening food supply to Northern Ireland. He tweeted: We are committed to the faithful implementation of the Protocol. EU rules will continue to apply to food imports into NI. This avoids a hard border on the island of Ireland. The UK agreed to this. It comes amid Government concerns that food imports may be blocked from Britain to Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the UK and European Union made some limited progress during informal discussions in Brussels over a possible trade deal, according to the Government. The UKs negotiating team had useful informal discussions with the EU this week as we seek to reach an agreement by mid-October on our future relationship, said a UK Government spokesman. These covered a broad range of issues and some limited progress was made, but significant gaps remain in key areas, including fisheries and subsidies. We will continue to work hard to bridge those gaps in talks next week, without compromising our fundamental position of being an independent country. Swathes of the North East of England are expected to be brought under local lockdown measures from Friday to stop the spread of the coronavirus, according to local media reports impacting hundreds of thousands. The Northern Echo reports measures could include a ban on socialising between different households and a 10pm curfew on pubs, adding that Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead, County Durham and Sunderland are all expected to be impacted. Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes said "additional, temporary" measures are being planned to prevent another full lockdown and that health secretary Matt Hancock is expected to make an announcement on the matter on Thursday morning. He tweeted: "Some additional, temporary restrictions are being planned to prevent another full lockdown." One Twitter user asked when the announcement would be made, adding that the "uncertainty creates lots of anxiety for people". UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 20 January 2022 A jet skier jumps the waves off the coast at Blyth in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 19 January 2022 Britains Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, participate in a therapy session with individuals who have experienced the care system, during a visit to the Foundling Museum in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty He replied: "We are waiting confirmation from government on the final version of the regulations; I am expecting an announcement by the Health Secretary at 11am tomorrow." The most recent figures show Newcastle to have recorded a sharp increase in its weekly rate, up from 51.2 to 64.1, with 194 new cases in the seven days to September 13. It comes after local measures in the likes of Greater Manchester and Birmingham have been put in place in a bid to address rising rates of infection. He told ITV's Peston show: "The number of cases has been rising rapidly in many parts of the country, but in particular in the North East, and so a decision has been made to impose further restrictions there. "And a full announcement will be made tomorrow and so people living in that part of the country should watch out for that. And the measures will come into play at midnight on Thursday evening. "So, over the course of the day a full briefing will be made available to everybody including the councils and business community." A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "We constantly monitor infection rates across the country and keep all measures under review in consultation with local leaders. "Any changes to local restrictions will be announced in the usual way." Additional reporting by agencies Bengaluru, Sep 17 : The ruling BJP's newly elected Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, Ashok Gasti is in a critical condition due to Covid-induced complications at a private hospital in the city, an official said on Thursday. "Gasti is in a critical condition. He was admitted in our hospital recently after he tested Covid positive," a Manipal Hospital spokesperson told IANS. Gasti, 55, was elected unopposed to the Upper House on June 12 along with Iranna Kadadi of the BJP. An advocate by profession, he hails from the barber community and belongs to Raichur district in the state's northern region, about 490 km away from Bengaluru. Gasti, a law graduate, is the party's former Raichur district zilla parishad president. An aircraft of Vietnam Airlines (Photo: VNA) Hanoi Nearly 280 Vietnamese citizens, stranded in 10 European countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were brought home on September 16-17 on a Vietnam Airlines flight. The flight was arranged by Vietnamese authorities and representative organisations in Europe, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, and authorities of the 10 European nations. The Vietnamese Consulate General in Frankfurt sent its staff to the airport to assist the passengers with boarding procedures. In a bid to ensure safety for citizens as well as prevent the spread of COVID-19, security, safety and hygiene measures were strictly implemented during the flight. The flight crew and all passengers were brought to quarantine sites upon their arrival at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. More repatriation flights will be conducted to bring Vietnamese citizens home, depending on their needs and quarantine capacity in Vietnam. A Dublin student who achieved six H1s in this years Leaving Cert has been left in limbo after he received no CAO offer due to a system mix-up. James Delaney was shocked when he logged on to the CAO website last Friday to see he had not been offered a place at Trinity College Dublin to study law and business, despite getting well above the points needed. The highly-competitive degree only has 25 available places and now James fears he will miss out on the course he worked tirelessly to get into. A different students Leaving Certificate examination number was allocated to his CAO number, resulting in him not receiving an offer for any of his ten choices. Read More The CAO said James must wait until round two offers are made on September 23, meaning he will not be guaranteed a place. We fear that James might fall through the cracks, and even if they do process his correct application in round two, were worried that he wont get his first choice, his father Eoin told Independent.ie. We had a very nice week after he got his results and were very calm about the CAO process as he had done so well with his results. We thought our worries with calculated grades were over, but then he realised he hadnt received any offer at all and couldnt understand it. We found an unknown student exam number included on his record and up came the results associated with that individual. The results were equated to roughly 400 points. Students were sent an email on May 15 instructing them to check and verify that all the information on their CAO application is correct and to contact them if there was an error. When I checked my application the error was not there, therefore I had no reason to inform the CAO, James said. The exam number is provided by the State Examination Commission and not the applicants. It is the responsibility of the CAO to match this data to all CAO applicants. This issue has affected a number of students across the country. A CAO spokesperson would not confirm just how many, but said it is in line with previous years. Some of the offers that are issued in round two every year are to applicants who need to be accommodated after adjustments have been made due to applicant omissions or errors, or administrative errors caused by the Higher Education Institutions or CAO. In a small number of cases, an incorrect Leaving Certificate examination number can be attributed to an applicant if, for example, there are two applicants with similar name and date of birth. We do appreciate that it can be quite upsetting for an applicant to realise their examination information was incorrect, and every effort is made by CAO and the higher education institutes to facilitate such applicants in round two. However, the spokesperson added that in rare cases this may not be possible. The CAO stated that for applicants presenting higher education qualifications, the Application Handbook clearly states that: If you have completed a course you should include an academic transcript or a certified photocopy of an academic transcript with your postal documents. Sarah OConnor Cole (19) from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford also missed out on a round one offer after her results werent uploaded to the CAO system. She had just completed a level 6 higher certificate in culinary arts at Waterford Institute of Technology. My results were posted out to me on June 8, 2020 and I received an overall distinction. I applied back in February to the CAO for teaching courses. I assumed when I received my results they would be automatically uploaded to the CAO like my Leaving Cert results in 2018. With about a month to go, there was still no sign. I contacted the CAO and they said they would be up in time for round 0. By August 8, there was still no sign of her results on the application, so she called the CAO again. "I contacted ministers and was eventually told to send a hard copy of my results to the CAO for next day delivery on September 8, in time for round one offers. My results are still not uploaded and I will yet again miss out on a college place. I am forced to work for minimum wage for the year and maybe, just maybe they might have my results up next year. I am angry and frustrated as Im trying my best to further my studies. A CAO spokesperson said: "For applicants presenting higher education qualifications, the Handbook states that:' If you have completed a course you should include an academic transcript or a certified photocopy of an academic transcript with your postal documents.'" Three undergraduate specialties offered by Georgia State Universitys J. Mack Robinson College of Business are ranked as national top-10 programs, according to the 2021 Best Colleges edition released this week by U.S. News & World Report. Three undergraduate specialties offered by Georgia State Universitys J. Mack Robinson College of Business are ranked as national top-10 programs, according to the 2021 Best Colleges edition released this week by U.S. News & World Report. Atlanta, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Three undergraduate specialties offered by Georgia State Universitys J. Mack Robinson College of Business are ranked as national top-10 programs, according to the 2021 Best Colleges edition released this week by U.S. News & World Report. Robinsons undergraduate program in risk management & insurance is No. 4; its undergraduate computer information systems program is No. 9; and its undergraduate real estate program is No. 10. The colleges B.B.A. is No. 53 overall and No. 34 among programs offered at public universities. U.S. News determines its business program rankings by surveying deans and senior faculty at undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Its enormously gratifying that our peers recognize the excellence of our undergraduate programs, said Richard Phillips, dean of the Robinson College. These rankings are a testament to the quality of our curriculum, faculty and students. Also in the Best Colleges edition, Georgia State is ranked the No. 3 most innovative university and No. 3 for commitment to undergraduate teaching, based on a survey of presidents, provosts, and admissions deans at colleges and universities across the country. Learn more at the rankings at https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges. ### Georgia State University's J. Mack Robinson College of Business has nearly 200 faculty, 8,000 students and 75,000 alumni. Learn more at www.robinson.gsu.edu. Attachment CONTACT: Jenifer Shockey J. Mack Robinson College of Business (404) 413-7078 jshockley@gsu.edu A woman who lost her husband and three of her children in a grisly shooting in Oshawa, Ont., said she and her surviving son are struggling to come to grips with the loss, and simply getting from one day to the next sometimes feels like an "impossible task." Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A Durham Police forensics truck sits in front of a home on Parklane Avenue in Oshawa, Ont. on Friday, September 4, 2020. Mourners will gather in Oshawa, Ont., today to remember the four members of the Traynor family who were killed in a shooting earlier this month. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn A woman who lost her husband and three of her children in a grisly shooting in Oshawa, Ont., said she and her surviving son are struggling to come to grips with the loss, and simply getting from one day to the next sometimes feels like an "impossible task." Loretta Traynor, who was injured in the Sept. 4 shooting, spoke alongside her son Sam, a university student, at a funeral service for their four family members on Thursday. The four were "taken too soon, too violently, and without warning," Traynor said, adding she can't believe or accept that any good will come out of their tragic deaths. "I have lost so many parts of me that made me a better person. They were the best of me," said Traynor, who used a wheelchair during the service. "I have lost so many parts of me that made me a better person. They were the best of me." Loretta Traynor "But with Sam beside me and all of you supporting me, I have hope that those parts of Chris, Bradley, Adelaide and Joey those parts that make up the best parts of me can find their way back in." Fifty-year-old Chris Traynor and the couple's children, 20-year-old Bradley Traynor, 15-year-old Adelaide Traynor and 11-year-old Joseph Traynor were killed in their home earlier this month. Durham regional police have identified the shooter as 48-year-old Mitchell Lapa of Winnipeg, who is also related to the family. Media reports say he is Loretta Traynor's brother. Police say Lapa died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Loretta Traynor painted a vivid picture of a joyous, tight-knit family as she paid tribute Thursday to her husband and three children, her voice breaking at times. "I wish with all my heart that it could have been longer, and we could have all gone through life together." Sam Traynor Her husband Chris, she said, loved to make her laugh, and still found new ways to do so after 23 years of marriage. Together, they would laugh "until we had tears in our eyes," sometimes loudly enough to draw the kids from elsewhere in the house, she recalled. Bradley was "kind, honest and loving," and communicated his feelings through a variety of groans so distinct the family had planned to compile a guide to help others decipher them, she said. Adelaide, meanwhile, was a "firecracker and a flower wrapped into one," the kind of girl who "radiated joy" during an exercise class even though she was doing all the steps wrong, her mother said. "She took my breath away," Traynor said. Joseph, she said, was "born with a smile on his face and he never, ever stopped smiling since," and had a gift for bringing other people into whatever he was doing. Speaking after his mother, Sam Traynor described the family home as "chaotic" and "always so full of joy and love," and urged people to remember the happiness the four brought rather than the tragedy of their deaths. "I wish with all my heart that it could have been longer, and we could have all gone through life together," he said. "I wish dad could have seen me graduate from university... I wish Bradley could be the best man at my wedding. I wish I could watch Adelaide grow into the powerful young woman I could already see her becoming. I wish I could see Joey achieve his dreams of playing for the Dodgers." Saying goodbye to them has been "the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said. Mourners wore masks and sat distanced in the pews of the St. Mary of the People Catholic Church in Oshawa, Ont., on Thursday, some wiping away tears as the pair delivered their eulogies. Some masks bore the slogan "Traynor Strong." The funeral was by invitation only for family and close friends, but was live-streamed for the public. Members of the public were also able to participate Wednesday in a drive-past visitation. An online fundraiser for the family had collected more than $180,000 as of Thursday afternoon, along with countless messages of sympathy from friends and strangers alike. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. New Delhi, Sep 18 : Even as the Lok Sabha passed two of the contentious agriculture reforms bill, the Congress on Thursday upped its ante against the Narendra Modi government over the issue, terming it a conspiracy to defeat the Green Revolution. Slamming the government, Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi said: "This government has been eyeing, how they can take the farmers' land to benefit their capitalist friends, whether is the Land Acquisition Act, whether in the industrial system through weakening the labour courts and now this three-pronged attack on the Indian agricultural system through the two bills on farming - one related to APMC, the other one is related to contract farming and the third bill which is on essential commodities... a three-pronged attack on the Indian farmers." Noting the government says that this is a boon for farmers, he said: "Are farmers of India foolish that they don't understand the bill. If this bill was in the benefit of Indian farmers, why are the farmers are out on the streets? Why are the farmers in Haryana being beaten by the police?" Targeting the government, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the Modi government is akin to Covid-19 pandemic as it is attacking lives and livelihoods of farmers. "It is attacking farmers and farm labourers and was bartering agriculture at the doorsteps of crony capitalists," he said. "The draconian laws on agriculture will be a death knell for the future of farming in India," he said, alleging that the BJP-led government is hell-bent upon destroying the farmer and was bartering the agriculture at the altar of a handful of crony capitalists. Surjewala also claimed that 62 crore farmers and farm labourers have been agitating across India and over 250 farmers organisations are sitting on protest, on hunger strikes and are demonstrating across the length and breadth of India. He accused the government of dictatorially subverting the "voice of farmers" representatives inside the Parliament and has unleashed a draconian "lathi-danda regime" on protesting farming community. "The farmers and labourers will never forget the conspiracy of the Modi government to convert the disaster confronting the farmers into an opportunity for the capitalists under the garb of pandemic. The next generations of BJP will have to face the consequences of these anti-farmer misdeeds of the government," Surjewala said. Meanwhile, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that the interest of farmers and farm labourers cannot be subjugated and be subservient to the "draconian majority" of the BJP in Parliament. "The Congress shall continue to take on the dark design of a draconian, dictatorial and anti-farmer Modi government, both inside and outside the Parliament... We shall continue to voice the pain and suffering of teeming millions," he said. The Congress, along with many other opposition parties as well as NDA constituent Akali Dal, had been opposing the three farm Bills which were earlier brought in as Ordinances. All three - the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 - have been passed by the Lok Sabha. Doctors have warned that Madrid is walking 'in slow motion' towards a repeat of its 'nuclear bomb' Covid crisis in March. Spain has recorded an average of more than 10,000 new cases per day over the last week, the worst figures in Europe and the fifth highest infection rate in the world. Nearly a third of those falling sick are in Madrid which is striking fear into the capital's medics after it bore the brunt of Europe's spring outbreak - Spain has the highest per capita death rate on the continent. On September 4, Madrid recorded 4,852 cases, its highest ever number of infections in a single day, and the city today has an R-rate of 1.08 - any number greater than one means that the contagion is multiplying. MADRID: A graph of Madrid's daily coronavirus cases showing a sharp rise since the start of August, with larger spikes than it experienced in March - although testing has now increased MADRID: Madrid's R-rate stands at 1.08 - any figure over 1 is considered to be detrimental to public health because it means that the contagion is growing as it spreads SPAIN: The national coronavirus tally has surged in recent weeks, with an average of 10,140 new cases per day over the last week SPAIN: There were 239 deaths in Spain in the last 24 hours - the highest figure since May - and a total of 366 fatalities over the last seven days, which is double the previous week when there were 177 deaths Although, the figures compared to the initial outbreak must be counterbalanced by Spain's increased testing capacity, the uptick is starting to be felt in hospitals. There were 239 deaths in Spain in the last 24 hours - the highest figure since May - and a total of 366 fatalities over the last seven days, which is double the previous week when there were 177 deaths. EUROPE'S SURGING DAILY CORONAVIRUS CASES SPAIN: 10,140 FRANCE: 8,684 RUSSIA: 5,559 UNITED KINGDOM: 3,286 UKRAINE: 2,953 *All figures based on latest seven-day average reported Source: Reuters Advertisement 'In a way, it's like the situation in March but in slow motion,' said Dr. Carlos Velayos, who works as an intensive care unit physician at the public hospital in suburban Fuenlabrada. The hospital is expanding its ICU capacity from 12 to 24 beds by the end of September, as all of them are currently filling up with coronavirus patients. With 1,281 patients in ICUs as of Wednesday, Spain has roughly as many beds devoted to treat grave patients of COVID-19 as France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy together. And 359 of them are in the Madrid region, which for the past week has accounted for roughly one-third of a national average of 8,200 new infections per day. Spain's virus caseload, above 600,000, is one of the world's highest and more than 30,000 have died in the country for the new virus. Velayos said that prediction models were telling hospital administrators in Madrid that some ICU wards could reach peak capacity in the second half of September. But little or nothing has been done to avoid returning to extended shifts among many health professionals that are still recovering from the stress of the pandemic's first wave. 'In March, it was like a nuclear bomb that brought the health system as a whole to a collapse in a matter of weeks,' Velayos said. 'We might not be there yet, but thats not a reason not to be worried. We have allowed the outbreaks to reach a level of being uncontrollable.' Medical workers are this time better prepared, with lessons learned on how to treat incoming patients more effectively and they have means to better protect themselves against contagion. But operating rooms in the Madrid region, which has a population of 6.6 million, are already being turned into ICUs and surgeries have been postponed, while hospitals compete to hire professionals for the expanded capacity. Regional authorities say that the health system still has room to manage the incoming flow of patients, but following warnings by medical personnel like Velayos, officials are now reacting with stricter measures that could include selective lockdowns in parts of the city as early as next week. The five countries with the highest average number of daily cases recorded in the last week in Europe Current infection rates in Europe according to the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC), with Spain and France among the worst-affected countries in the recent rebound The restrictions, if finally adopted, will center on urban areas where the coronavirus is spreading faster, officials announced Wednesday. That's suburban towns like Fuenlabrada, but also working-class neighborhoods in southern Madrid where contagion rates have been steadily soaring since August. They also happen to be areas where less affluent residents and mostly migrant families cram into small apartments and commute on public transportation to manual work in other quarters of the Spanish capital. COUNTRIES REPORTING MOST NEW CASES/DEATHS EACH DAY CASES INDIA: 93,199 US: 38,897 BRAZIL: 31,599 ARGENTINA: 10,960 SPAIN: 10,140 DEATHS INDIA: 1,162 US: 854 BRAZIL: 808 MEXICO: 456 ARGENTINA: 207 *All figures based on latest seven-day average reported Advertisement Angela Cantos lives in the Vallecas neighborhood, one of the hot spots in the recent wave of outbreaks. She said that if her neighborhood is locked down, 'then Madrid will be paralyzed.' 'Who is going to cook and clean in other districts if they close down here?' she said. The regional deputy health chief, Dr. Antonio Zapatero, said Wednesday that 'Madrid wants to flatten the curve before the arrival of autumn and the complications that cold weather could bring,' adding that the 'drastic measures' to be taken will be decided by the weekend. Zapatero also said that people have relaxed protection measures by holding large gatherings, often forgetting about social distancing or masks. He also announced that police will monitor compliance of mandatory self-isolation since at least 90 people have been found to be skipping quarantines after testing positive for the new virus. The country brought contagion under control earlier this year with a three-month lockdown, one of the strictest anywhere, but since it relaxed restrictions in mid-June, outbreaks have spread throughout the country. The Spanish government says the country is now doing more tests and that more than half of the newly infected show no symptoms. But health centers are starting to struggle to cope with the number of virus tests required and responding to patients. In hospitals, 8.5% of the countrys beds are now treating COVID-19 patients, but in Madrid that share jumps to one in five beds. In terms of ICUs, official data shows that 38% of the region's beds have coronavirus patients, although some hospitals are already at 90% of their capacity before rolling out emergency plans for new beds, like they did in spring. 'Madrid is maintaining a steady level of infections, but we have to take into account the impact of the pandemic in primary care, in hospitals, which is totally sustainable at the moment. But we have to make that line of infections decrease,' said Zapatero, who back in March was tasked with Madrid's makeshift hospital of 1,500 temporary beds in an exhibition center. Europe's daily number of cases (shown on this chart) has reached record levels, according to WHO figures, although deaths have so far remained relatively stable This time, officials are hoping they don't have to reach that point. The regional government is spending 50 million euro (45.5 million) to build by the end of October a massive permanent new 'epidemics hospital' with more than 1,000 beds. It's also promising more resources for primary care, since health centers have now become the new bottleneck of citizens concerned that they may have contracted the virus. EUROPE WARNED TO BRACE FOR HIGHER MORTALITY RATE The WHO warned Europe this week to brace for higher mortality rates over the autumn as cases soared on the continent. Spain, France, the Netherlands, Malta, Greece, Slovenia and Ukraine are all reporting more cases than ever. In the last seven days, Spain has reported an average of 10,140 cases each day, France 8,684, Russia 5,559, the United Kingdom 3,286, and Ukraine 2,953. The countries reporting the highest average deaths over the same period were Russia 114, Spain 59, Ukraine 54, Romania 38 and France 36. 'It's going to get tougher. In October, November, we are going to see more mortality,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said on Monday. 'It's a moment where countries don't want to hear this bad news, and I understand,' Kluge said, adding that he wanted to send the 'positive message' that the pandemic 'is going to finish, at one moment or another.' Advertisement In addition to performing most of the testing, first-row doctors in Spanish health centers have now taken the burden of contact tracing. 'The problems in primary care are not from the past six months,' said Dr. Olaya Munoz, who works in a health center in the heart of Madrid. 'COVID has just been more stress for a system that was malfunctioning for at least a decade.' Munoz finds time to talk, while catching her breath, as she walks uphill to visit two elderly patients at home. After that, more than 40 appointments await her back at her community health center. Although these days they do most of them by phone, she can't devote more than an average of six minutes per patient. 'The workload is just unbearable,' she said. Dr. Maria Cruz Martin Delgado, spokeswoman for Spain's intensive care specialists' association known as Semicyuc, says that a collapse in primary care couldn't only lead to more asymptomatic cases to go undetected but also poorer or no treatment of other illnesses that eventually could lead to more patients downstream, in hospitals and ICUs. What Martin wants is a clear protocol from authorities at the national and regional levels on how to proceed. 'We need to know what is the point when we need to turn down other patients, because we doctors can't take all responsibility again having to respond to an emergency when we are not given the resources to do so,' she said. Velayos, the intensive care specialist from Fuenlabrada, said that the work overload in March and April was widely acknowledged among his colleagues 'as part of an exceptional situation that needed to be met with all the worlds generosity.' 'But right now we are talking about a situation becoming chronic, where stress is going to be the norm and routine,' he said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 10:02:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China issued a white paper on employment and labor rights in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Thursday. The white paper, published by the State Council Information Office, says Xinjiang takes the facilitation of employment as the most fundamental project for ensuring and improving people's wellbeing. Through its proactive labor and employment policies, Xinjiang has continuously improved the people's material and cultural lives, and guaranteed and developed their human rights in every field, according to the document titled "Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang." There are six chapters in the white paper: employment in Xinjiang, proactive employment policies, full respect for workers' job preferences, labor rights protection, better jobs for better lives, and application of international labor and human rights standards. Enditem The intensifying war in Rakhine state between Myanmar government troops and rebel Arakan Army soldiers, often fought in populated civilian areas, is killing and maiming increasing numbers of children, international and domestic NGOs say. A recent rise in child casualties in northern Rakhine state comes as U.N. observers note an increased use of airstrikes and heavy artillery attacks on civilian communities by the Myanmar military in its 21-month-old conflict with the Arakan Army (AA), which says it fights for autonomy for ethnic Rakhine people who live in the coastal region. Forty-two children under the age of 18 have died and 135 have been injured since December 2018 by artillery shelling, gunshots, and landmine explosions, according to groups that advocate for children. They are among nearly 300 civilians killed, and more than 640 injured in northern Rakhine state and in Paletwa township of next-door Chin state, according to an RFA tally. In a conflict exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that has resurged in Rakhine, some 200,000 civilians have fled their homes to escape fighting and now live in official or makeshift displacement camps or in the homes of relatives, according to an estimate by the Rakhine Ethnics Congress, a local NGO. On Monday, as the U.N.s human rights chief issued a report in Geneva warning that the armys actions in Rakhine could constitute war crimes, two teenagers were seriously injured by mortar shells that fell onto their village amid what witnesses said was an exchange of artillery fire by a Myanmar Navy vessel in the Mayu River and AA soldiers on land. Residents of Rathedaung townships U Gar village said Myanmar soldiers on the boat and troops in Rathedaung town fired artillery for more than an hour in response to the AAs firing. AA spokesman Khine Thukha said his armys troops did not engage in combat with Myanmar forces along the Mayu River that day, and accused two navy vessels of intentionally firing artillery at the civilian villages. A Myanmar military spokesman, however, said the troops were responding to 107-millimeter rockets and rocket-propelled grenades fired at the navy boat by the AA in a clash that lasted 30 minutes. Regarding the civilians who got injured, you cant say it for sure it was caused by the militarys artillery. You cant assume the military is responsible whenever there are artillery blasts, he said. A child injured by mortar shell explosions in western Myanmar's war-ravaged Rakhine state arrives at a hospital in Sittwe, Oct. 3, 2019. Credit: RFA Civilians directly targeted The report on Myanmar presented Monday by Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, based on interviews with more than 80 victims and witnesses whose accounts were verified, said that it was frequently the case that villages were attacked by the army without any AA provocation or presence. Tatmadaw tactics have shifted, with periodic reliance on airpower against the Arakan Army, but in some instances it appears that civilians may have been directly targeted, the report said, using the Burmese name for the military, Myanmars most powerful institution. The report went on to say that there had been a significant increase in the number of airstrikes by fighter jets, helicopter and heavy artillery attacks, and ground battles in more densely populated civilian areas. For the most part, however, it appears that the Arakan Army was not active or present in the areas where these attacks took place and no armed clashes were reported to have been ongoing at that time, the report said. Hardly a week goes by without reports of new Rakhine child casualties in conflict-affected areas. On Sept. 11, a six-year-old boy was transferred from a regional hospital to Sittwe General Hospitals emergency unit after sustaining serious injuries from an artillery blast in Rathedaungs Aung Si Kone village. Cho Cho, the boys mother, told RFA that the child was injured while the family was hiding in a bomb shelter under their house as a military boat patrolling the Mayu River approached their village and passed. They waited until the boat was far from the village and then left the bomb shelter though they were still under the house, she said. At that time, we heard the blast, Cho Cho said. It shattered a ceramic pot, house fences, and a door. Artillery fragments from the blast came under the house [and] penetrated the childs left shoulder to the bone. Myanmar woman and children who fled armed conflict in Rathedaung township, northern Rakhine state, find temporary shelter in Rakhine's capital Sittwwe, July 1, 2020. Credit: RFA Bomb shelters On Sept. 8, four civilians, including two five-year-olds, were killed, and a child was among several others injured by artillery blasts in Nyaung Khat Kan village in Rakhines Myebon township, drawing condemnation from UNICEF. Children should never be targeted during armed conflicts, said UNICEF in a statement issued the following day. They are being killed in crossfire between parties to the conflict or even deliberately shot. They are being killed and maimed by landmines and explosive remnants of war in different parts of the country, the U.N. agency said, referring to the conflict in Rakhine and in other parts of Myanmar, a multiethnic country of 54 million people. Adults have become inured to exchanges of artillery fire between AA troops and military vessels patrolling the rivers of Rakhine state. Everyone hides in bomb shelters as a precaution whenever Myanmar navy vessels are on the river, villagers said. Life during conflict is stressful for children, experts said. Children in Rakhine state are insecure, both physically and mentally, said Oo Khin Thein from Sittwe-based Arakan Youth New Generation Network, referring to minors in dire conditions in both internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and in towns and villages. I found children in towns and villages in conflict areas who were physically injured by the armed conflict, she said. They are also emotionally impacted by trauma and fear of getting injured in artillery blasts. We see more and more children living in fear. Intensifying hostilities mean that nowhere in northern Rakhine is safe for anyone, said Oo Tun Win, a lawmaker from Kyauktaw township. Many people have been killed by artillery blasts while they are at home, he told RFA. They also have been killed by stray bullets as they fled from the blasts. People have been killed in their sleep. So, Rakhine society as a whole is not safe anywhere, not to mention the safety of the children. Myanmar children who fled fighting between government troops and ethnic rebels in northern Rakhine state find temporary shelter at the Mittaparami Buddhist Monastery in Rakhine's capital Sittwe, April 11, 2020. Credit: RFA Senseless shelling of a school Myanmar forces also have detained a few minors on suspicion of having connections to the AA and charged them under the countrys Counter-Terrorism Law, said Myo Myat Hein, the director of the Thazin Legal Aid Group in Sittwe. In these cases, the accused children have not been given their rights under the Child Rights Law, [which] guarantees detainees immediate access to legal representation, though this is often not the case, he said. In many cases, the lawyers meet the detained children only when they are brought to trial. Those held in custody are sometimes subject to torture by authorities or disappear, their family members have reported, according to Myo Myat Hein, who is also known as Nyein Chan. The annual report by the U.N.s human right chief noted that schools, religious sites, and civilian homes in Rakhine have been targeted in attacks and damaged by heavy artillery and by Myanmar military patrols. In February, at least 17 schoolchildren ranging in age from five to 12 were wounded when a mortar shell hit their primary school in Khamwe Chaung village in Buthidaung township, the report said. The following month, soldiers set houses and a school ablaze and destroyed a local monastery with a rocket-propelled grenade in Minbya townships Pha Bro village, it noted. Save the Children called the injuries senseless and pointed out that they occurred on the same day that the U.N. expressed concern over the continuing humanitarian impact of conflict in western Myanmar and urged parties to respect international humanitarian law and to protect civilians. Many children are among these victims, and the actual number of casualties is likely to be higher due to limited monitoring and reporting in the conflict-affected areas, the statement by Save the Children said. UNICEF said the children of Rakhine face long-term repercussions because their education is being hampered by attacks against schools and the use of schools by parties to the conflict. Myanmar has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that governments must do everything they can to protect and care for children affected by war and armed conflicts. In 2019, the country also ratified the Optional Protocol on Children and Armed Conflict, whereby states agree to protect children from military recruitment and use in hostilities. Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nina Larson (Agence France-Presse) Geneva, Switzerland Thu, September 17, 2020 09:15 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454d7ee 2 World venezuela,Nicolas-Maduro,crimes-against-humanity,UN Free Venezuela's president and top ministers are responsible for probable crimes against humanity including extrajudicial killings and the systematic use of torture, UN investigators said on Wednesday. In their first report, the team tasked with probing a slew of alleged violations said they had found evidence that state actors, including President Nicolas Maduro, were behind serious crimes. The International Fact-Finding Mission, created by the UN Human Rights Council a year ago, "found reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have since 2014 planned and executed serious human rights violations," mission chairperson Marta Valinas said. Some of those violations, "including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture, amount to crimes against humanity," said Valinas, whose three-person team was unable to enter Venezuela but relied on remote interviews with victims, witnesses and others, as well as analysis of legal files. "Far from being isolated acts, these crimes were coordinated and committed pursuant to state policies, with the knowledge or direct support of commanding officers and senior government officials." The 411-page report identified the Venezuelan officials deemed responsible, citing "reasonable grounds to believe that both the President and the Ministers of People's Power for Interior Relations, Justice and Peace, and for Defense, ordered or contributed to the commission of the crimes documented." International 'legal action' World powers accuse Maduro of violently cracking down on dissent over Venezuela's economic collapse and on opponents in a political stand-off. Investigator Francisco Cox told reporters the team had found evidence the president had on some occasions personally informed the national intelligence service (SEBIN) who to place under surveillance and detain. "We have involvement and contribution to the crime by Mr. Maduro, either directly through the chain of command and sometimes circumventing the chain of command and giving the direct order," he said. "What we have reasonable grounds to believe is that this is a state policy... It is a political decision to target political opposition, to quash opposition." The investigators said Venezuelan authorities should conduct "independent, impartial and transparent investigations" into the violations. But they noted "an erosion of judicial independence", and suggested the International Criminal Court "should also consider legal actions against individuals responsible for violations and crimes." The report decried a vast array of abuses committed amid a gradual breakdown of democratic institutions and the rule of law. It highlighted soaring numbers of extrajudicial killings, lamenting that the vast majority of such killings by security forces had resulted in no prosecutions. The mission reviewed some 2,500 incidents since 2014 that led to more than 5,000 killings by security forces. It probed 140 so-called Operations for People's Liberation, established purportedly to fight crime, but which between 2015 and 2017 resulted in 413 people being killed, shot "sometimes at point blank range". The report said government officials had repeatedly praised such operations. 'Systematic' torture "These extrajudicial executions cannot be attributed to a lack of discipline among the security forces," Valinas said. "The killings appear part of a policy to eliminate unwanted members of society under the cover of combating crime." The investigators called for Venezuela to dismantle its Special Action Forces (FAES), which along with SEBIN was responsible for well over half of the killings. UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet had called last year for the forces to be dissolved, but Valinas said they were "still active". The investigators also decried the "systematic practice of torture" against people detained during anti-government protests or accused of rebellion and coup attempts. It listed techniques including rape, asphyxiation, beatings, electric shocks and death threats to extract confessions or as punishment. At least three people had died after being subjected to torture while in the custody. Cox stressed that commanding officers and high-level officials "had full knowledge of this pattern of crimes". He said the investigators had drawn up a list of 45 officials within the two agencies "who should be investigated and prosecuted". Boris Johnson is facing fresh warnings from senior US politicians to abandon plans to unilaterally override the Brexit withdrawal agreement, or jeopardise the prospect of a future trade deal with Washington. The joint comments from four congressmen, led by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Elliot Engel, came as the prime ministers proposed legislation cleared the first hurdle in the Commons on Monday evening. Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis conceded last week that the Internal Markets Bill breaks international law in a very specific and limited way leading to condemnation from across the political spectrum. Highlighting the potentially fatal impact of the bill on the prospect of a free trade agreement with the US, the congressmen wrote in a letter to the prime minister: We were so disturbed by the reports about your governments efforts to undermine the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal agreement that, if true, could have disastrous for the Good Friday Agreement and broader process to maintain peace on the island of Ireland. We appreciate the challenges that your country faces as it stares down the 15 October deadline for a negotiated agreement but an Ireland divided by a hard border risks inflaming old tensions that very much still fester today and undoing decades of progress that the United States, Republic of Ireland, and United Kingdom achieved together. On the prospect of a future agreement, the senior US politicians said they agreed with the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who last week claimed there would be absolutely no chance of a trade deal with Washington passing Congress should the government imperil the Good Friday Agreement. The letter, which was also signed by Mr Engels fellow Democrats Richard Neal and William Keating, as well as Republican Peter King, added: If these reported plans were to go forward, it would be difficult to see how these conditions would be met. They added: "Many in the United States and in Congress consider the issues of the Good Friday Agreement and a potential US-UK Free Trade Agreement inextricably linked. With the issues raised in this letter in mind, we therefore urge you to abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts to flout the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement and ensure that Brexit negotiations do not undermine the decades of progress to bring peace in Northern Ireland and future options for the bilateral relationship between our two countries. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is currently on an official visit to Washington, and is expected to meet with his counterpart Mike Pompeo and Ms Pelosi, in an attempt to reassure her over the governments controversial Brexit plans. In response to the letter, a Downing Street spokesperson said: The PM has been clear that were taking these steps to make sure that the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement is upheld in all circumstances and harmful defaults do not inadvertently come into play which could jeopardise the huge gains of the peace process. We are absolutely committed to no hard border and no border infrastructure between the Republic of Ireland and N Ireland. This is about a legal safety net and not having east-west checks suddenly imposed which run directly counter to Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. We will continue to engage with our US partners on a bipartisan basis to ensure that our positions are understood and to ensure we agree a trade deal with widespread support in the US. US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (AFP/Getty) The congressmens remarks also came amid signs of a compromise between rebel Conservatives and No 10 over the legislation, with the prime minister reported to have met with MPs threatening to add amendments to the bill. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, said the government was working to ensure there was a balance should the powers in the Internal Market Bill ever need to be used, as senior Tory MP Bob Neil called for ministers to create a parliamentary lock, meaning MPs would have to approve use of the powers. The issue is this we want to make sure that if we hit a situation where we have this kind of dislocation, this kind of crisis if you like, then we can act swiftly to bring into power the necessary regulations," Mr Buckland told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. And I think while, absolutely we have got parliamentary procedures to allow secondary legislation to come into force with debate and scrutiny, we have to get the balance right. I want to make sure we are fleet of foot when it comes to the crunch but that at the same time to make sure MPs have their say. Thats what the prime minister wants, thats what he said in parliament, and Im sure well find a way to do that in a manner that is acceptable to all Conservative colleagues. The Hamilton County Election Commission met Wednesday morning in preparation for the November election. The deadline for mailing out military absentee ballots is Saturday, so ensuring that the ballot was correct was needed in order to have them printed in time to send. The ballot has been checked and double checked to make sure everyone that is supposed to be on it is there, said Scott Allen, assistant administrator. Ordinances for the city of Chattanooga, have been checked by City Attorney Phil Noblett and for the city of East Ridge by City Attorney Mark Litchford. The Election Commission members were given printed copies to review for final approval. The commissioners are now satisfied with the accuracy of the ballots. Equipment to print them had been purchased before the Covid-19 outbreak, so they will be printed in-house. That equipment is secured so that only authorized people have access to it. Safety measures for in-person voting that have been taken regarding threats from the virus include having personal protective equipment that the state and county have provided. Disposable pens and folders have been purchased and voting sites will continue to be cleaned for early voting and for the November election. Covid Compliance Officers (CCO) will be at all polling places to check compliance inside the buildings. People at each voting location will include the poll workers, whose training will start next Monday. The bare minimum number of 900 poll workers are needed, and the election commission is aiming to have 1,000. A new position at each location will be a Voting Assistant Clerk who will be present to handle the more complex questions that might arise rather than hold up a line of voters while the poll worker tries to find answers. A Covid Compliance Officer will also be at each site. In all there will be 1,100 individuals working at the voting locations around Hamilton County. This year there are two additional sources of funding to help with all the expenses, said Administrator of Elections Kerry Steelman. The Cares Act will provide reimbursement at $1.50 per voter for expenses directly related to Covid-19. That amount has partially been used for the August election. The amount left is sufficient for the November election, he said. Additionally, a security grant will come from the state of Tennessee to help with securing the election and for cyber security. A physical vulnerability study by the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office has already identified security issues with the Election Commission building and they are now being addressed. It is expected there will be 25,000-30,000 absentee voters in the November election, evidenced by the number of ballots that have been requested up to this time. Mr. Steelman said that in August, 11,000 absentee voters were planned for when the actual number ended up being 10,000. There are elaborate procedures in place for securing and storing those ballots as they are received. Locked boxes can each hold 3,000 ballots. They cannot be counted until the day of the election, and then 30 workers at the election commission, who are dedicated to counting them, will have just 12 hours to do it. That short amount of time allowed for counting absentee ballots can be a problem, said Mr. Steelman, it is possible that the results will come in after the election day. The high-speed ballot scanners are unable to read some of the ballots that are stained, torn, have circles that are not completely filled in, or have miscellaneous markings on them that the scanner might pick up and not recognize what to do with it. In most cases an actual person can read what the scanner has trouble with. In these instances, there will be adjudicators present to help. For each problematic ballot, a Republican and a Democrat work together at the same table and at the same computer, will look at the ballot and make a judgement about the intent of the voter. He said that a recent change, based on a decision that was made in Davidson County, will allow any person to vote by absentee ballot, even if it is the first time they have voted or if they have never voted in person before. Electronic voter registration is allowed and there is a process to verify who requests and signs an absentee ballot. An actual signature is required at the time a person registers to vote. If it is done electronically, a printout of the document must be signed with a pen, then scanned or photographed to submit it. That signature is digitized and stored and will be compared to the one on the absentee ballot by people who are trained to recognize fraudulent hand writing. There also is an interstate cross check that is intended to detect if a ballot is requested from two different states. If that happens, one of the registrations will be cancelled. Early voting will be held in the same four locations that have been used in the past. They are the Brainerd Road Recreation Center, Collegedale City Hall, the Hixson Community Center and the Election Commission building. It starts on Oct. 14 and continues through Oct. 29. The commission members met privately in "executive session" for almost an hour. There was no word on what that was about. The election commission will meet again on Sept. 30 to address any questions that might come up. LONDON - Virgin founder Richard Branson is looking to raise $460 million to create a new special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, becoming the latest in a line of wealthy investors to do so. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the company said it intended to sell 46 million units at $10 apiece. Branson is named as the founder of VG Acquisition, which is registered on the Cayman Islands. In the filing, the company said it plans to use the money raised through the initial public offering to acquire a business that is already in operation. SPACs, also known as blank check companies, are set up for the sole purpose of acquiring another company and listing it on the stock market, usually within a couple of years. More than 50 SPAC offerings have taken place so far this year, raising over $20 billion, Goldman Sachs said August. The investment bank said SPAC offerings were up 145% on the same period a year ago. The SEC-filing for VG Acquisition states that the pandemic has brought about "a rare opportunity to invest in fundamentally strong target businesses at attractive valuations." The company said it had not yet decided which business it wants to buy. However, over the next two years, it will look for a company that operates in one of the Virgin Group's core sectors such as travel, financial services, health, technology, music, media, mobile and renewables. Branson's finances have been stretched by the Covid-19 pandemic and in April he suggested he may need to mortgage his home in the British Virgin Islands. In a filing in May, it was revealed that Branson was preparing to sell up to $504.5 million of his stake in Virgin Galactic. "Virgin intends to use any proceeds to support its portfolio of global leisure, holiday and travel businesses that have been affected by the unprecedented impact of Covid-19," the company said in a press release. There have been a number of high-profile SPACs created in recent months, with billionaire Bill Ackman raising $4 billion for his in an initial public offering in July. Meanwhile, Acquisition firm Apollo Global Management filed Wednesday to raise $750 million through a blank-check company called Apollo Strategic Growth. The worst result, after buying shares in a company (assuming no leverage), would be if you lose all the money you put in. But on the bright side, you can make far more than 100% on a really good stock. For instance, the price of Pan African Resources PLC (LON:PAF) stock is up an impressive 259% over the last five years. On top of that, the share price is up 45% in about a quarter. The company reported its financial results recently; you can catch up on the latest numbers by reading our company report. See our latest analysis for Pan African Resources In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Over half a decade, Pan African Resources managed to grow its earnings per share at 21% a year. This EPS growth is lower than the 29% average annual increase in the share price. So it's fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it did five years ago. That's not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth. You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values). We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Pan African Resources' earnings, revenue and cash flow. What About Dividends? When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Pan African Resources, it has a TSR of 323% for the last 5 years. 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 It's nice to see that Pan African Resources shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 121% over the last year. Of course, that includes the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 33% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. Given the share price momentum remains strong, it might be worth taking a closer look at the stock, lest you miss an opportunity. 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 4 warning signs for Pan African Resources that you should be aware of before investing here. There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on GB 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. WASHINGTON - Hours before law enforcement forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in early June amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd, federal officials began to stockpile ammunition and seek devices that could emit deafening sounds and make anyone within range feel like their skin is on fire, according to an Army National Guard major who was there. District of Columbia National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco told lawmakers that defense officials were searching for crowd control technology deemed too unpredictable to use in war zones and had authorized the transfer of about 7,000 rounds of ammunition to the D.C. Armory as protests against police use of force and racial injustice roiled Washington. In sworn testimony, shared this week with The Washington Post, DeMarco provided his account as part of an ongoing investigation into law enforcement and military officers' use of force against District protesters. On June 1, federal forces pushed protesters from the park across from the White House, blanketing the street with clouds of tear gas, firing stun grenades, setting off smoke bombs and shoving demonstrators with shields and batons, eliciting criticism that the response was extreme. The Trump administration has argued that officers were responding to violent protesters who had been igniting fireworks, setting fires and throwing water bottles and rocks at police. JOSE LUIS MAGANA - Getty Images But DeMarco's account contradicts the administration's claims that protesters were violent, tear gas was never used and demonstrators were given ample warning to disperse - a legal requirement before police move to clear a crowd. His testimony also offers a glimpse into the equipment and weaponry federal forces had - and others that they sought - during the early days of protests that have continued for more than 100 days in the nation's capital. DeMarco, who provided his account as a whistleblower, was the senior-most D.C. National Guard officer on the ground that day and served as a liaison between the National Guard and U.S. Park Police. A Defense Department official briefed on the matter downplayed DeMarco's allegations, saying emails asking about specific weaponry were routine inventory checks to determine what equipment was available. The Defense Department, U.S. Army and D.C. National Guard did not respond to specific questions about munitions and their intended use. The chaos that erupted on the evening of June 1 played out before millions of viewers on split-screen television broadcasts as President Donald Trump strode through the emptied park toward St. John's Episcopal Church, where he delivered remarks and posed for photos with a bible. U.S. Park Police Chief Gregory Monahan has testified that protesters were given clear warnings to disperse via a Long Range Acoustic Device. But DeMarco told lawmakers that is impossible because there was no such device on the scene at the time. Just before noon on June 1, the Defense Department's top military police officer in the Washington region sent an email to officers in the District's National Guard. It asked whether the unit had a Long Range Acoustic Device, also known as an LRAD, or a microwave-like weapon called the Active Denial System, which was designed by the military to make people feel like their skin is burning when in range of its invisible rays. The technology, also called a "heat ray," was developed to disperse large crowds in the early 2000s but was shelved amid concerns about its effectiveness, safety and the ethics of using it on human beings. Pentagon officials were reluctant to use the device in Iraq. In late 2018, the New York Times reported, the Trump administration had weighed using the device on migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border - an idea shot down by Kirstjen Nielsen, then the Homeland Security secretary, citing humanitarian concerns. But in the email, on which DeMarco was copied, the lead military police officer in the National Capital Region wrote the ADS device "can provide our troops a capacity they currently do not have, the ability to reach out and engage potential adversaries at distances well beyond small arms range, and in a safe, effective, and nonlethal manner." The email continued: "The ADS can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. The effect is overwhelming, causing an immediate repel response by the targeted individual." Federal police ultimately were unable to obtain a heat ray device - or an LRAD - during the early days of protests in the District, according to the Defense Department official. DeMarco said without an LRAD device, which can be used to make booming announcements to large crowds, Park Police officers instead issued dispersal orders to the crowd using a handheld red-and-white megaphone. Laws and court rulings require police to give demonstrators repeated, clear warnings of officers' intentions to escalate and to allow people adequate time and avenues to disperse peacefully. DeMarco told lawmakers he was standing about 30 yards from the announcer but could barely make out the order. The chanting crowd, which was even farther from the officer with the megaphone, did not appear to hear the warnings, DeMarco said. Protesters, journalists and humanitarian aid volunteers who were there that day have repeatedly said they never heard a warning before police began to move on the crowd. Advancing on foot and horseback, they pushed protesters back as explosions sent clouds of smoke and chemicals into the air, and officers fired rubber pellets into packs of retreating protesters. Monahan has said violence by protesters spurred his agency to clear the area ahead of the District's mayor's 7 p.m. curfew - instituted as a response to looting, vandalism and arson amid demonstrations on previous nights - with unusually aggressive tactics. Monahan also told members of Congress in July that Park Police had followed protocol in issuing three warnings "utilizing a Long Range Acoustic Device" - although DeMarco's testimony indicates no such device was in use. U.S. Park Police did not respond to a request for further comment this week. DeMarco first appeared before lawmakers on the House Natural Resources Committee in late July but followed up at the end of August with more specific answers to legislators' questions about munitions and equipment used by law enforcement. His answers, submitted in written form, were shared with The Post this week by congressional staff of the House Natural Resources Committee. He told lawmakers he felt compelled to come forward as a witness because he found the events at Lafayette Square "deeply disturbing." His attorney, David Laufman, said DeMarco hopes lawmakers will continue to investigate the federal response. "That anyone in the Department of Defense referred to American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights as 'potential adversaries' and even contemplated the use of an ADS on the streets of our nation's capital is deeply disturbing and calls for further investigation," Laufman said. DeMarco also testified that a stash of M4 carbine assault rifles was transferred from Fort Belvoir to the D.C. Armory on June 1 and that transfers of ammunition from states such as Missouri and Tennessee arrived in subsequent days. By mid-June, about 7,000 rounds of 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm ammunition rounds had been transferred to the D.C. Armory, DeMarco said. He did not specify what the ammunition was for, and the District's National Guard did not respond to questions about the weapons transfers. In late June, Congress opened an investigation into tactics used by federal law enforcement officers to clear protesters near Lafayette Square. Monahan and DeMarco testified on the same day in July, at which time Monahan said the area around Lafayette Square was cleared June 1 so construction crews could erect a taller fence than the temporary barricades that had closed off the area. It followed a night in which a Park Service building was set on fire. DeMarco told legislators that, having served in a combat zone where he spent time assessing various threats, he did not feel threatened at any point by protesters near the White House "or assess them to be violent." "From my observation, these demonstrators - our fellow American citizens - were engaged in the peaceful expression of their First Amendment rights," he said. "Yet they were subjected to an unprovoked escalation and excessive use of force." Over the years, various industry stakeholders have actively invested in the development and implementation of automation technologies for manufacturing operations, in order to minimize expenditure on labor, reduce manual errors and optimize their existing processes LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Roots Analysis has announced the addition of "Global Collaborative Robots (Cobots) Market, 2020-2030" report to its list of offerings. Collaborative robots or cobots allow companies to automate their processes, are easy to program and deploy, can increase productivity manifolds, and offer high returns on investment. It is worth noting that, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), over time, the cost of cobots has decreased owing to growing demand for such machines across various industries, including automobiles, electronics / electrical goods, food and beverages, as well as life sciences / pharmaceuticals. To order this 245+ page report, which features 80+ figures and 100+ tables, please visit this link Key Market Insights More than 250 cobots are currently available in the market / yet to be launched Over 70% of the aforementioned cobots are designed to have six degrees of freedom. Further, 50% cobots have payload capacity below 6 Kg. It is worth mentioning that, usually, low payload cobots are preferred by small companies, as such models are cheaper and take up less space. 20% marketed cobots are capable of performing multiple operations across various industries Around 121 cobots are being used to perform packaging operations, followed by those designed for executing operations related to picking and placing (116) and small part assembly (87). In terms of end-users, about 65% of the approved cobots are installed in life sciences / pharmaceutical industry. Currently, around 80 players are actively involved in the development of cobots Majority of the initiatives in this domain are driven by start-ups / small firms. Further, more than 45% companies engaged in this domain are mid-sized and large firms. Nearly 60% of the cobot manufacturers are based in developed regions Within Europe, most of the manufacturers are distributed across Germany, France, Switzerland and Denmark, whereas in Asia-Pacific, majority of the manufacturers are headquartered in China. Further, a significant number of such players (25%) are headquartered in North America, with 16 players based in the US. By 2030, Europe and Asia-Pacific are anticipated to capture over 65% of the market opportunity The market in European regions is anticipated to grow at a relatively faster rate. In terms of end-users, by 2030, cobots intended for use in automotive industry are likely to represent the largest share of the market, followed by those employed in the electrical industry. To request a sample copy / brochure of this report, please visit this link Key Questions Answered What are the key benefits and current limitations associated with the use of cobots? Who are the leading players engaged in the manufacturing of cobots? What are the most popular industrial applications of cobots? What is the likely cost saving opportunity associated with the use of cobots? How can end users prepare their workforce for interaction with cobots? What impact is the recent COVID-19 pandemic likely to have on the global cobots market? What opportunities are available for cobots manufacturers in emerging markets? How is the current and future opportunity likely to be distributed across key market segments? What are the anticipated future trends within the cobots market? The USD 18 billion (by 2030) financial opportunity within the global cobots market has been analyzed across the following segments: Payload Capacity Below 6 Kg Between 6 and 10 Kg Above 10 Kg Industrial Operation Small Part Assembly Case Packing Material Handling Palletizing / Depalletizing Picking and Placing Welding Other Operations End-User (Industry) Automotive Industry Food Processing Industry Electrical / Electronic Industry Plastic and Rubber Industry Life Sciences / Pharmaceutical Industry Metal Industry Others Key Geographical Regions North America Europe Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World The report features inputs from eminent industry stakeholders, according to whom, there is a significant increase in the adoption of cobots. Further, the market for global cobots is expected to grow at faster pace, as compared to market for industrial robots. The report includes detailed transcripts of the discussions held with industry experts: Mineko Ogata (Owner, ROBOMOV) (Owner, ROBOMOV) David Sands (Chief Executive Officer, ST Robotics) (Chief Executive Officer, ST Robotics) Barry Philips (Chief Marketing Officer, Fetch Robotics) (Chief Marketing Officer, Fetch Robotics) Brian Carlisle (President, Precise Automation) (President, Precise Automation) Nilabdhi Samantray (Associate Vice President, Head of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Sector Leader (Mines and Minerals), CSM Technologies) John Kehoe (Managing Director, Tekpak Automation) (Managing Director, Tekpak Automation) Andreas Czezatke (Global Project Leader, SMC Austria) Nelija Miseikiene (Sales and Marketing Specialist, F&P Robotics) Michael Murray (Sales Specialist, Productive Robotics) (Sales Specialist, Productive Robotics) Aadya Avinash (Assistant Marketing Manager, Universal Robots) The research includes profiles of prominent players engaged in this domain (listed below); each profile features an overview of the developer, details related to their product portfolio, recent developments and an informed future outlook. ABB Comau FANUC Kinova KUKA Precise Automation Robotics Systems Integration Staubli Universal Robots Yaskawa Electric For additional details, please visit https://www.rootsanalysis.com/reports/collaborative-robots-market.html You may also be interested in the following titles: 1. Deep Learning Market: Focus on Medical Image Processing, 2020-2030 2. Digital Health Market: Focus on Digital Therapeutics (2nd Edition), 2020-2030 3. AR / VR based Healthcare Digital Marketing Service Providers Market, 2020-2030 Contact: Gaurav Chaudhary +1 (415) 800 3415 +44 (122) 391 1091 Gaurav.Chaudhary@rootsanalysis.com Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/742223/Roots_Analysis_Logo.jpg STORRS The University of Connecticut has lifted a quarantine for students living in the Garrigus Suites, a residence hall on the Storrs campus, university officials announced Wednesday. The residence hall, which houses nearly 300 students, was placed under quarantine at the beginning of the month just weeks after students moved in, after 10 new cases of COVID-19 were found there. I am happy to share that, due to the conscientious actions of our Garrigus residents, the building has been lifted from residential quarantine, Dean of Students Eleanor JB Daugherty wrote in a letter to students Wednesday. She said the quarantine efforts had resulted in halting the spread of the virus in Garrigus. This is a heroic undertaking for everyone. Together, we flattened the curve, said Daugherty, who also serves as the schools associate vice president for student affairs. On Wednesday, the school reported 17 new cases among Storrs students only one of whom is living on campus, according to UConn spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz. Sixteen other students living off campus have reported they tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, since Tuesday, Reitz said. Of those off-campus students, seven were residents of The Oaks on the Square apartment complex. Students living there were ordered to quarantine for at least 14 days last week amid a spike in infections. No new infections were reported among UConn employees or the schools four other campuses. Sacred Heart University reported two students tested positive Wednesday after the lab mislabeled the positive test for another student living in the hall last week. University officials learned of the mistake Tuesday and placed the student in isolation and their roommate in quarantine, the Fairfield school said in a statement. The student attended classes, but had limited contact outside the room, SHU said Tuesday. The hall where the outbreak occurred has not been identified. In light of having three cases on the same floor, and out of an abundance of caution, we have made the decision to put the entire floor under cautionary quarantine and to move our alert status to yellow, the school said in a followup message Wednesday. Students living in the hall are being told not to leave their rooms unless they have to go to their designated bathroom, the school said. The school plans to deliver meals to them, and the students will be taking classes remotely. All students on the floor will be tested Thursday, SHU said. Four new cases were also reported Wednesday among SHU students living off campus, the school said. Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic reported six off-campus students have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Wednesday. The school currently reports no residential students are in isolation for the illness, but three resident students and 31 commuter students are in quarantine, the schools data shows. Central Connecticut State University in New Britain reported two new cases among residential students Tuesday, the most recent daily data available. Testing last week revealed six positive cases a positivity rate a little more than 3 percent including four cases among staff members. The United States Coast Guard Academy in New London reported no new cases in its surveillance testing from Sept. 4, the most recent data available. The service academy has recorded nine positive tests, and a total of 105 people there have either tested positive, shown symptoms or been quarantined, according to David Santos, the academys director of communications. Cotonou, Benin (PANA) - Benin should adopt progressive dismantling of customs duties as part of its implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) deal, according to a study available at the Beninese Ministry of Economy and Finance The ethnic Black Thai of Vietnams northwestern region value the Pieu scarf as a symbol of love and an important clothing accessory for women. All Black Thai women can weave and embroider Pieu scarves. Pieu headscarves of Black Thai women Customarily, Thai people judge a woman by her Pieu scarves. Theyre an indispensable part of the unique beauty of her costume. For all black Thai women, their Pieu scarf is the center piece of their everyday dress, a gift they offer to the chosen one of their heart, and an offering during worship ceremonies. Hoang Thi Mai, a 71-year-old craftswoman who lives in Son La province said, "The Pieu scarf is indispensable to every woman. Before her wedding, she must embroider at least 30 Pieus to give to the parents and family of her future husband. On the death of one of the two spouses, a Pieu is cut in two, and one of the halves is used to cover the face of the deceased person. The other person will keep the remaining half until the end of his or her life. At the time of his or her death, this half will be used to cover his or her face. That way, the couple will be able to meet in the other world." Any self-respecting Black Thai mother is eager to teach her daughter how to make a Pieu scarf. First she must select a beautiful piece of white fabric, preferably hand-woven. This fabric is then dyed black and embroidered with different colors. The decorations are only at the two ends of the scarf. The traditional technique is to embroider on the back the pattern that appears on the front, often a plant or flower motif. Once the embroidery is completed, the scarf is lined with red fabric throughout its length. Black Thai women carefully make their Pieus. Thai women generally wear a scarf with three leaves at each end, but when they offer a Pieu to someone else, it should have at least five leaves, says Lu Thi Chum, a Black Thai woman from Son La. She explained how to make the leaves: "To create these leaves, we roll a strip of red fabric about a centimeter wide around a core made of threads to make a cone representing the leaf. My mother taught me how to embroider. I want to share that know-how so that Thai cultural identity will never be lost. Today many young Black Thai girls no longer know how to embroider. Teaching them the traditional techniques has therefore become a priority for the authorities and women's associations in many parts of the Northwest, according to Quang Thi Vin, president of the Women's Union of Son La. "Every year, as part of the Bauhinia Flower Festival, we organize a Pieu embroidery competition. This is an opportunity for women to meet, learn from each other, perpetuate the tradition, and pass it on to future generations," Vin said. If in their daily lives Black Thai women now prefer modern clothes for comfort, it is out f the question for them to totally give up their traditional dress, especially their Pieu scarves. VOV5 Fadnavis requested Union minister Piyush Goyal to lift the ban on export of onions as the decision has disappointed farmers The Central government on Monday banned the export of all varieties of onions with immediate effect to increase availability and curb prices of the commodity in the domestic market. (PTI) Mumbai: A day after the Central governments ban on the export of onions, the prices have been slashed by Rs 800-900 per quintal at Lasalgaon Agricultural produce market committee (APMC) in Nashik district. The ban on the export of onions has also affected their procurement in APMCs. Amid this, former chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday requested the Union minister of commerce & industry Piyush Goyal to lift the ban as the decision has disappointed farmers. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra Congress unit on Wednesday staged a statewide agitation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a letter to Goyal, the former chief minister said, The ban on the export of onions of Maharashtra should be lifted immediately as they have huge demand overseas. As a result, the state farmers get a good price for the same. The ban has affected the onion growing farmers. I hope that you will immediately take appropriate decisions. State Congress president and revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat said that onion prices have collapsed due to the ban on export, and asserted that his party will fight against this injustice meted out to farmers. Farmers in the state are tackling problems arising out of cyclones and floods, and the state government is doing all it can to help them. But, the Centre is not cooperating, he said. Thorat also criticised the Centres decision and said onion prices have collapsed by Rs 700 to Rs 800 per tonne due to the ban on export. Now, when there is scope for farmers to earn some money due to onion export, the central government has stopped it. We will fight this injustice against farmers, he said. The Central government on Monday banned the export of all varieties of onions with immediate effect to increase availability and curb prices of the commodity in the domestic market. The farmers on Tuesday had staged a protest against the Central government for not allowing the APMC markets to operate. Director of APMC Lasalgaon, Jaydatta Holkar said that the procurement of onions has been reduced by 50 per cent on Wednesday. Besides, the price has also been reduced to Rs 2,200 to Rs 2,300 from Rs 3,000 per quintal. Four panellists at a presentation held on Wednesday during the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) online Business Recovery Forum said the federal governments procurement strategy is not only failing Indigenous entrepreneurs, its wasting their precious time and resources. Its no secret that Indigenous businesses have been under-represented in the supply chain of the federal government. Less than one per cent of government contracts have been awarded to Indigenous companies. Since last fall, however, the Canadian government has stated its mandate is to increase that procurement to at least five per cent. But much has to change before Canada makes this benchmark something more than just a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Sam Damm, who is the founder and president for both CLAW Environmental Services and FoxWise Technologies, said conversations about boosting Indigenous procurement have actually been around for 20 years. It seems theres a lot of talk, a lot of meetings and a lot of round tables, said Damm, a member of Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Ontario. But there hasnt been a lot of success. Garen Blais can certainly attest to that. Hes the director of business development for Gestion ADC, a Cree-owned company that specializes in food and concierge services. It has operated in Quebecs James Bay region for 24 years. Blais said his company has recently submitted 30 different bid applications for federal contracts. And it has not been awarded a single one. The process has been quite disheartening, Blais said. Its hard to take at times. Blais said his company has submitted competitive proposals, but officials have never provided any feedback as to why a bid was not successful. We have the capacity and Im sitting here in disbelief wondering why we didnt get any of them, he said. Ultimately, if it doesnt give you anything in the end, it sours the process. Based on those experiences, Blais said its unlikely his company will put in the manpower and effort for future calls from the federal government to submit procurement bids. We have a fairly negative outlook, he said. Were going to spend our time pursuing other opportunities instead. Damm was shocked to hear about the lack of success Blais company has had. Its pathetic, he said. Thirty bids and no wins. Im really taken aback by that. Victoria LaBillois, a Mikmaw entrepreneur who owns Wejipeg Excavation and is the co-owner and president of Wejuseg Construction, also blasted the way federal procurements are handled. My experiences have been less than stellar, she said. And Im being kind with that. LaBilliois said she doesnt believe the Indigenous supply chain system will become successful in the country if it is simply a voluntary one without any repercussions if it is not achieved. Its just a discourse of hope, she said. We need it to become mandatory. And there has to be mechanisms (in place) to see if this is being achieved. Hope doesnt pay bills. It needs to be mandatory. Based on her experiences, LaBillois said she would not recommend to Indigenous companies to seek federal procurements. Its just time consuming and does not result in any contracts, she said. Its not the best use of time. The panel was moderated by Philip Ducharme, CCABs director of innovation and entrepreneurship. He asked panellists whether they felt racism or bias has played a role when dealing with federal procurements. LaBillois didnt hesitate in answering this question. Were (in) 2020 and were still dealing with this outdated knowledge of Indigenous people and Indigenous companies, she said. (Racism and bias are) alive and well. Thats one of the areas that needs improvement. Other panellists stated their agreement with LaBillois assessment. Wednesdays panel also included Lionel Drouin, a Metis business owner from Thunder Bay. He is now working in Ottawa and is the president of LDC Solutions, which specializes in recruitment and Indigenous inclusion programs. Drouin also believes there has to be more than just a desire from the government to boost the Indigenous supply chain. Its a policy, he said. Its a guideline. It has no teeth. Drouin believes those Indigenous businesses who are not based in the nations capital are at a disadvantage. Ive seen myself it does help to be here in Ottawa, he said. You have better visibility. Damm agreed. I feel you have to be in Ottawa, he said. It shouldnt be that way. But I think you have to be in front of the client. But that does not necessarily translate into success, Damm added. Thats because his companies have the experience and capability to do large projects. But he has found government officials often only think of awarding him small projects, worth only just a few thousand dollars. Its B.S., he said. Im tired of that. Im just tired of the thought that were small. Read more about: US President Donald Trump raised questions on Wednesday about plans by China's ByteDance to keep a majority stake in the U.S. operations of popular social media platform TikTok after six Republican lawmakers urged him to reject the proposal. Trump said he would be briefed on Thursday about a proposal that calls for Oracle Corp to become a "trusted technology provider" for TikTok's U.S. operations, but he did not favor the idea of having the Chinese firm retain control. Senator Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators on Wednesday urged the administration to reject the deal as long as ties remained to Chinese owner ByteDance, and suggested the president could block the proposal. Trump had previously threatened to ban the app unless its U.S. operations were sold to a U.S. company and the U.S. government received a share of the proceeds. "Conceptually, I can tell you that I don't like that," Trump told a news conference when asked about a reported proposal to give Oracle only a minority share. "I'm not prepared to sign off on anything. They're going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and I'll let you know." Rubio, the first senator to call on the administration to investigate TikTok over censorship concerns, cited "serious questions" remained about Oracle's role, the technology it would provide to ByteDance, and the future of the application's algorithm in a letter to Trump dated Wednesday. "We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any U.S.-based version of TikTok," he wrote. "We are heartened that this deal still requires government approval, and if reports indicating this proposed deal will retain links to ByteDance or other Chinese-controlled entities, we strongly urge the administration to reject such a proposal on national security grounds," he added. Late on Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz sent a separate letter to Trump arguing that the Oracle ByteDance deal "failed to meet the intent of the president's executive orders" and "raises serious national security concerns." White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier told reporters a decision would be made "in short order." White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said security and the ownership question were of paramount concern. The Rubio letter, also signed by Senators Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker and Dan Sullivan, is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers raising questions about the deal. On Monday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who heads a national security panel reviewing the proposal, calling for the deal to be scuttled, if it does not allow for the "full emancipation of TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control." U.S. national security officials fear that ByteDance could provide American user data to the Chinese government. But Trump may not want to alienate 100 million-odd American TikTok users so close to the Nov. 3 elections. Trump has also said he is a fan of Oracle's co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison, one of few tech executives to openly support him. Meanwhile, China has updated its export control rules to give it a say over the transfer of technology, such as TikToks recommendation algorithm, to a foreign buyer. Chinese officials have said ByteDance should not be coerced by the United States into a deal. Oracle announced on Monday it was part of a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the U.S. Treasury Department to serve as "trusted technology provider," to ByteDance, providing no further details on the terms of the deal. Following are the latest Corporate Social Responsibility news releases and story ideas available from Business Wire. These recaps, curated by Business Wire, provide reporters and bloggers around the globe instant access to the latest news releases, providing relevant and trending content to share with their audiences. Discover more news via Business Wire's Hot Topic recaps or create a custom news feed specific to your needs here. This service is provided at no charge to members of the media and financial communities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005135/en/ PITTSBURGH CHICAGO -- Kraft Heinz Renews Global Commitments in 2020 Environmental Social Governance Report Source: The Kraft Heinz Company LONDON -- Mary Kay Inc. Partners With the Arbor Day Foundation to Plant 5,000 Trees in Ireland Source: Mary Kay Inc. PARIS -- Teleperformance Earns 11th Consecutive Great Place to Work Certification in Brazil Source: Teleperformance ST. LOUIS -- NUSO Announces New Charitable Partnerships to Strengthen St. Louis Communities and Local Families Source: NUSO NEW YORK -- Moody's Named to 2020 Working Mother Best Companies Lists Source: Moody's Corporation Investor Relations NEW YORK -- HSBC Launches Thought Leadership Webinar Series During Climate Week NYC Source: HSBC LONDON -- Anita McBain to Join Citi Research as Head of EMEA ESG Research Source: Citi LONDON -- Quinbrook Invests in Flexible Generation, Grid Support and Demand Response Source: Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners OAKVILLE, Ontario -- FCT Announces Multi-City Effort to Support Homeless and At-Risk Youth Source: FCT DENVER -- The Western Union Foundation Supports International Students Impacted by COVID-19 Source: The Western Union Company TORONTO -- TraceSCAN Starts Shipping Wearable Devices Source: Facedrive Inc. LONDON -- The Vertex Foundation Announces 1 Million Donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities at the New Children's Hospital in Ireland Source: Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated PEMBROKE, Bermuda -- Athene Deepens Commitment to Community Education Initiatives Source: Athene Holding Ltd. BOSTON -- The RepTrak Company Links Reputation and ESG to Business Performance for New York Stock Exchange-Listed Companies Source: The RepTrak Company HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Sintavia and Siemens Agree to Collaborate on Accelerating Digital Automation for Industrial Additive Manufacturing Source: Sintavia, LLC TORONTO -- Facedrive Acquires Steer and Accepts Strategic Investment From Exelon Subsidiary Exelorate Source: Facedrive Inc. GENEVA, Switzerland -- The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities Hosted A Roundtable Event Covid-19: Faith as a Moral Framework for our Communities Source: The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities GUATEMALA CITY -- AgroAmerica Contributes Once Again to the Development of the Central American Region Source: AgroAmerica STUTTGART, Germany THE HAGUE, Netherlands PARIS -- Daimler AG Joins Forces With Terre des Hommes and the Responsible Mica Initiative to Improve Mica Supply Chains and Eliminate Child Labour Source: Responsible Mica Initiative SPRINGFIELD, Va. -- Interstate Partners with The Salvation Army in the Fight Against Hunger and Food Insecurity in Our Community Source: Interstate Moving Relocation Logistics TORONTO -- Facedrive Health's Custom TraceSCAN Wearable Solutions for Businesses are Market Ready Source: Facedrive Inc. PARIS -- Green Finance, Bruno Boggiani, CEO of Green Finance Strateggyz Castex Post-Crisis Recovery Plan Source: Green Finance About Business Wire Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in news release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Investor relations, public relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire for secure and accurate distribution of market-moving news and multimedia. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals, and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX Network. Business Wire has 18 newsrooms worldwide to meet the needs of communications professionals and news media. Learn more at www.businesswire.com. Follow us on Twitter @businesswire. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005135/en/ Contacts: Business Wire 212-752-9600 According to Mai Van Khiem, Director of the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, the storm would directly affect central provinces, especially Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue and Da Nang with wind speeds of 90-100 km per hour and sometimes hitting 135 km per hour. Heavy rain will blanket the central provinces from September 17 afternoon to September 18 night, he said, warning about high risk of flash flood and landslides in the central region. The fifth storm to enter the East Sea this year is heading to the central region of Vietnam. (Photo: kttv.gov.vn) By 1 pm on September 16, the storms eye was about 680 km away to the south east of Hoang Sa (Paracel) with the strongest wind of 60-75 km per hour, sometimes reaching 90-100 km per hour. The storm is moving west-northwest. Its expected that by 1pm on September 18, the storm eye will be on the waters close to provinces from Quang Binh to Quang Ngai with wind at the storm eye reaching 100-135 km per hour or more. After making landfall in central provinces from Quang Binh to Da Nang on September 18 afternoon or evening, the storm would be weakened to become a tropical low pressure. About 1am on September 19, the heart of the tropical low pressure is on the border area of Lao and Thailand with strongest wind reducing to 40-50 km per hour. Meeting with ministries and agencies on Wednesday morning to make preparations, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung raised alert levels, calling for active and timely actions to respond to the storms movements. He asked localities, border guards and the transport sector to tighten control over the operation of fishing vessels and tourist ships at sea so the vessels/ships would avoid entering storm-affected areas and find safe shelter. By 10am on September 16, border guards informed 285,384 people on 58,345 vessels about the storm and instructed them to keep away from possibly affected areas. According to Border Guard Command, by September 17 morning, about 700 vessels were in the areas possibly affected by the storm. The number does not include vessels/boats/ships that are operating in coastal areas. Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung asked localities to instruct vessels to head to shelters, ensure safety for human life and property, particularly assist people to move/reinforce aquaculture growing facilities as the central region was a hub of aquaculture production with high economic value in Vietnam. Localities were also asked to have evacuation plans in place to ensure safety for people living in vulnerable areas like coastal areas, river mouths and landslide/flood-prone areas. Anti-flood measures must be taken into account to protect urban areas and agriculture production. The Deputy PM asked for review and promptly fix problems at dams and reservoirs of hydropower plants. Now, many reservoirs in the central region are dry, so their operators must closely oversee and adjust the storage of water to ensure the reservoirs safety. He assigned specific tasks to ministries and agencies, urging them to make use available resources for actively, effectively and timely responding to the storm. Vice head of the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disasters Prevention and Control Tran Quang Hoai said that proper attention must be paid to reservoirs because damages were found at 55 reservoirs in the central region including 16 ones Thanh Hoa, ten in Nghe An, eight in Ha Tinh, 12 in Quang Binh, six in Quang Tri and three in Thua Thien-Hue. Another 41 reservoirs are under construction and 99 locations along key sea dyke system from Thanh Hoa to Da Nang need to be protected when the storm makes landfall. There are also 26 dyke works including 13 carried out on sea dyke system or rivers mouths are being built./. BERLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Infarm, the world's fastest growing urban farming network, today announced $170 million investment raised in the first close of a Series C funding round expected to reach $200 million. Led by LGT Lightstone, the first round included participation by investors Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, and was supported by existing Infarm investors Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures. With a mix of equity and debt financing, the fresh capital infusion brings Infarm's total funding to date to more than $300 million, underscoring consumer and retailer appetite for Infarm's innovative approach to fresh, sustainable and local food production in the wake of this year's pandemic. By 2025, Infarm's farming network is expected to reach more than 5,000,000 square feet to become the largest distributed farming network in the world as it builds towards helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production. The investment will be used to deepen the regional and local penetration of Infarm's global farming network and complete development of Infarm's new generation of vertical cloud-connected farms, capable of generating the crop-equivalent of acres of farmland and amplifying the diversity of produce currently available through vertical farming. An integration of advanced engineering, software and farming technology, these farms will save labour, land, water, energy, and food-miles, while contributing to a more sustainable food system. Erez Galonska, Co-founder and CEO of Infarm, said: "The coronavirus pandemic has put a global spotlight on the urgent agricultural and ecological challenges of our time. At Infarm, we believe there's a better, healthier way to feed our cities: increasing access to fresh, pure, sustainable produce, grown as close as possible to people. As we scale to 5,000,000 sq ft in farming facilities across Europe, North American and Asia by 2025, this investment will help us make a truly global impact through our network, preserving the thousands of acres of land, millions of liters of water and ultimately change the way people grow, eat and think about food." In the past 12 months alone, Infarm has formed new partnerships with the world's largest retailers, including Albert Heijn (Netherlands), Aldi Sud (Germany), COOP/Irma (Denmark), Empire Company Ltd (Sobeys, Safeway, Thrifty Foods - Canada), Kinokuniya (Japan), Kroger (United States), Marks & Spencer (United Kingdom) and Selfridges (United Kingdom), driving market expansion beyond Germany, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan. With operations across 10 countries and 30 cities worldwide, Infarm harvests 500,000+ plants monthly and growing while using 99.5% less space than soil-based agriculture, 95% less water, 90% less transport and zero chemical pesticides. Today, 90% of electricity use throughout the Infarm network is from renewable energy and the company has set a target to reach zero emission food production next year. Dharmash Mistry, Partner of LGT Lightstone, said: "We are excited to partner with the Infarm team to accelerate their urban vertical farm vision, ultimately creating a more sustainable food system for a growing population. Fresher, tastier and healthier food using 95% less land and water, no pesticides and 90% less transport. With over $1bn of customer demand, partnerships with 17 of the top 50 global grocers, Infarm is set to revolutionise the market behind a unique 'demand led' modular business model. We look forward to working with Erez, Guy and Osnat to create a better, healthier, and tastier future." Pasha Romanovski, Co-founding Partner of Hanaco Ventures, said: "We are big believers in vertical farming as we see the traditional industry going through (much needed) rapid disruption these days. We were deeply impressed by Infarm's founders and management, with their ability to move fast and execute. What is extremely appealing about Infarm is their innovative and modular approach, using cutting edge technology that unlocks added value throughout the supply chain, benefiting both the retailers and end-customers. We see a massive demand in the market for sustainable, environment-friendly, and healthy food - and Infarm has just the right team in place to make this happen." Founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm is dedicated to creating a future where local super fresh produce is available for everyone. The farms are placed in various locations in the city, like supermarkets, restaurants and distribution centers, so that vegetables grow and are harvested close to the moment of purchase or consumption. These controlled growing environments are connected to a central cloud-based farm-brain, which gathers more than 50,000 data points through a plant's lifetime, allowing the platform to learn, adapt and improve itself constantly, so that every plant grows better than the one before. This modular, data-driven, and distributed approach a combination of big data, IoT, and cloud analytics, in addition to rapid growth at a global scale sets Infarm apart from any other urban farming solution. About Infarm Infarm was founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska. Passionate to become self-sufficient and eat better, they were growing their own food, enjoying all the flavor and nutrients, without the chemical pesticides and transport kilometers. With the aim to share the goodness of own-grown produce with everyone, they developed a smart modular farming system, that allows distribution of farms throughout the urban environment, growing fresh produce in any available space and fulfilling any market demand. Today, with cutting edge R&D, patented technologies, and a leading multi-disciplinary team, Infarm is growing a worldwide farming network helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production while significantly improving the safety, quality, and environmental footprint of our food. With a multinational team of 600 people globally, Infarm has partnered with more than 30 major food retailers including Albert Heijn, Aldi Sud, Amazon Fresh, Auchan, Casino, E.Leclerc, Edeka, Empire Company Ltd (Safeway, Sobeys, ThriftyFoods), Farmdrop, Intermarche, Irma, Kinokuniya, Kroger, Marks & Spencer, Metro, Migros, Selfridges and Selgros in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland, deployed more than 1000 farms in stores and distribution centres, saved more than 7,000,000 gallons of water and 400,000 square feet of land, while harvesting 500,000+ plants monthly and growing. SOURCE Infarm Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The Smart Antenna Market is anticipated to reach around USD 9,705 million by 2026 according to a new research published by Polaris Market Research. In 2017, MIMO segment dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to the global smart antenna market revenue during the forecast period. The growing demand for smart antenna in wireless communication networks coupled with rising need for efficient and stable network performance has boosted the adoption of smart antenna. The rising penetration of smartphones, and increasing adoption of mobile-connected devices further support the growth of this market. The growing demand for high speed communication services, high demand for wireless broadband services, and declining costs of connected devices would accelerate the adoption of smart antenna during the forecast period. However, high costs associated with smart antenna is expected to restrict the growth of the market to a certain extent. Growing demand from emerging economies, increasing adoption of IoT and advancements in cellular networks are expected to provide numerous growth opportunities in the coming years. Get Sample Copy @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-antenna-market/request-for-sample North America generated the highest revenue in the market in 2017, and is expected to lead the global smart antenna market throughout the forecast period. The presence of established telecom and cloud infrastructure in this region, and growing trend of IoT drive the smart antenna market growth in the region. The growing demand of mobile devices, and technological advancements further support market growth in the region. The use of smart technologies in varied sectors and growing need for high speed communication services for increased efficiency in diverse industries is expected to support smart antenna market growth in this region during the forecast period. The key players operating in the smart antenna market include Texas Instruments Incorporated, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Broadcom Limited, Airgain, Inc., Motorola Solutions, Inc, Ruckus Wireless, Airgo Netwroks Inc., Interdigital communications Corp., Lucent technologies, and Sierra Wireless. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers. Get Special Discount On this Research Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-antenna-market/request-for-discount-pricing Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon, floor leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), talks with other DPK lawmakers at the plenary chamber in the National Assembly in Seoul, Thursday. Some DPK members have recently made remarks defending Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae against allegations surrounding her son's military service, but they have invited criticism from the opposition and the public. Yonhap By Jung Da-min The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is going too far in trying to save Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae from allegations surrounding her son's military service. Many party members are defending Choo saying that she did not peddle her influence as then head of the party and that her son received no special treatment during his compulsory service. They even say that her son, surnamed Seo, deserved compliments rather than criticism as he fulfilled his military service despite being in poor health. But their remarks are not helping Choo. They are instead backfiring as they lack rationality and any legal foundation; rather they make inappropriate comparisons and are full of misinformation. In particular, DPK spokesman Rep. Park Sung-joon's remarks, in which he compared Choo's son to the late independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun, have brought strong criticism from the opposition and the public. Choo earlier claimed that her son insisted on serving in the military although he could have been given an exemption due to his history of knee surgery although there are different views over whether such surgery constituted a cause for an exemption. Citing Choo's account, Rep. Park said in a statement, Wednesday, "Choo's son lived up to what independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun said: 'it is soldiers' duty to sacrifice themselves for the country.'" Park was referring to the famous remark Ahn made when he was in prison after assassinating Hirobumi Ito, Japan's first resident governor of Korea, in 1909. This statement immediately drew harsh criticism for "belittling the achievements of patriot Ahn," and "tarnishing the history of the country's independence movement," according to the main opposition People Power Party (PPP). "The ruling party is bringing on bigger trouble while trying to cover up the truth. Lacking a comparison for the issue, they have now damaged and insulted Ahn's great spirit," Rep. Sung Il-jong said in a PPP meeting, Thursday. Spokesman Yoon Hee-seok also said in a commentary, Thursday, that DPK members, sunk in groupthink, are losing all forms of rational judgment while blindly defending Choo without question. Before Rep. Park, other DPK members were embroiled in controversy while siding with Choo. In a radio interview, Sept. 8, Rep. Jung Chung-rae talked about the allegations that one of Choo's aides called the military to illicitly extend Seo's leave after he had a second knee operation during his military service. "If you ask a restaurant owner to bring kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) fast, is it a solicitation?" Jung said. Regarding this, political critic Chin Jung-kwon wrote on Facebook, "It seems the DPK people make solicitations as often as they order kimchi jjigae at restaurants." Seo served as a member of the Korea Augmentation Troops to the United States Army (KATUSA), a position that Rep. Woo Sang-ho was apparently derogatory about in describing the "easy" duty of such soldiers when he tried to defend Choo against the allegations that she used her influence to have him assigned to an "easier" post. "Serving as a KATUSA is an easy posting itself, so the dispute is meaningless," Woo said in a media interview, Sept. 9. "Taking leave or not, or having a post or another these are meaningless as a KATUSA." His remarks led KATUSA reservists calling for an apology. Seo had knee surgery in 2015 before being posted as a KATUSA a year later for his mandatory military service that would end 2018. In June 2017, he had two consecutive sick leaves for a combined 19 days for knee surgery, and also took an additional four days of personal annual leave. But it is alleged that there are no military records regarding 13 out of the 23 days total leave, which was also rather long compared to other cases. DPK floor leader Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon said Tuesday during a party meeting that soldiers could extend their leave through SNS messaging such as using Kakao Talk, which brought controversy as SNS messages are deemed inappropriate for making official requests to extend military leave. Madam Josephine Nkrumah, Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has underscored the need to strengthen democratic institutions to enhance accountability and transparency. She said strong institutions were critical to consolidating Ghanas democratic gains and ensure sound governance, minimise corruption, enhance public accountability and increase citizen participation. Madam Nkrumah said this in Accra at a national dialogue on the assessment of anti-corruption and public accountability institutions in Ghana based on a study on: Public Opinion on Corruption, Public Accountability and Environmental Governance". The dialogue was organised by the NCCE and Accountability, Rule of Law and Anti-corruption Programme (ARAP), with support from the European Union. The Eighth ARAP National Dialogue, on the theme: Strengthening Our Democratic Institutions, aimed at engaging, educating and empowering the citizenry to actively participate in the governance process. It focuses on strengthening Ghanas democratic institutions to complete other focal points in the seven previous national dialogues including Anti-corruption, Public Accountability, Environmental Governance, Whistleblowing and Right to Information. Madam Nkrumah called on stakeholders to advocate the much needed reform to strengthen democratic institutions so that as a sovereign people, indeed we secure for ourselves and posterity the true blessings of liberty, equality of opportunity and prosperity. Madam Maria-Luisa Troncoso, the Head of Governance at the European Union (EU) Mission in Ghana, commended Ghana for its democratic credentials and encouraged stakeholders to remain committed to the cause for another successful election on December 7. She said aside elections, the rule of law, separation and balance of power, independence of the judiciary and other essential elements of democratic governance would help consolidate Ghanas democracy and the fight against corruption. For instance, the rule of law, transparent and accountable governance and respect for human and political rights can be deepened on the back of resilient institutions including the Judiciary, NCCE, Ghana Police Service, and Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, she added. Madam Troncoso said it was for that reason that the EU had supported the Government of Ghana to build the capacity of state institutions in the public sector, through provision of grants for institutional strengthening, activity implementation, and equipment over the years. 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 One of the nations most senior police officers has said described a tactic deployed by Extinction Rebellion activists to ensure they peacefully cause as much disruption as possible while being arrested a flipping nuisance. Sir Steve House, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said his officers had urged protesters to stop their bodies falling limp as they are taken away a peaceful disruption tactic deployed by the environmental group that forces the police to deploy extra officers to conduct arrests. At the beginning of September, more than 680 activists were arrested in 10 days of protests across the capital designed to highlight the ongoing threat of the climate crisis and demand political action. Speaking to the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee said the tactic was "a flipping nuisance" and "a complete pain in the neck". "We have asked them to stop being floppy, he added. It might seem like a silly thing to say, but when we arrest them and pick them up they go all floppy, which is why you see four or five officers carrying them away. Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 Show all 22 1 /22 Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS/Henry Nicholls Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 PA Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS Extinction Rebellion block roads at London Fashion Week, February 2020 REUTERS "It's a complete waste of officers' time, and a complete pain in the neck. If they could just behave like sensible adults you've made your point, you wanted to be arrested, you've been arrested, get up and walk away with one officer and stop wasting police time. "This is a real issue, and they will not do it, and it is a flipping nuisance." Sir Steve added: "The problem with them going floppy and four officers carrying them away is that it looks to the general public like the police are overreacting here. "We're not making them go floppy they're just being a nuisance." Across this years action, which did not reach the level of participation seen in 2019 when more than a thousand were taken in by officers, alleged offences including obstructing the highway, criminal damage and breaching the legal conditions set on the demonstration. However the police response to the protests came under scrutiny after activists blockaded the print works of several UK newspapers with Home Secretary Priti Patel calling the group eco-crusaders turned criminals Following the blockade she added: The very criminals who disrupt our free society must be stopped. And together we must all stand firm against the guerilla tactics of Extinction Rebellion. India on Thursday said China should take forward the process for complete disengagement of troops from all friction points including the Pangong lake area in eastern Ladakh, and asked it not to make unilateral attempts to change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control. At a media briefing, external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said both sides should focus on easing tensions in the friction areas by refraining from any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation. There have been at least three attempts by the Chinese People's Liberation Army to "intimidate" Indian troops along the northern and southern bank of Pangong lake area in the last three weeks where even shots were fired in the air for the first time at the LAC in 45 years. "The Chinese side should sincerely work with the Indian side for complete disengagement at the earliest from all friction areas including Pangong Lake as well as de-escalation in border areas in accordance with the bilateral agreements and protocols on maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas," Srivastava said. The assertion by Srivastava came in the backdrop of remarks by Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday that it was for India to initiate the process to disengage and restore peace along the border areas. "We hope the Chinese side will strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control and not make further attempts to unilaterally change status quo," said Srivastava. The MEA spokesperson also referred to the "consensus" arrived at separate meetings between defence ministers and foreign ministers of the two countries in Moscow on September 4 and September 10 respectively. "There was consensus between the ministers of the two sides, during both the meetings, that there should be quick and complete disengagement of troops from all friction areas along the LAC," Srivastava said. "Both sides should, therefore, focus on easing tensions in the friction areas by refraining from any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation. This requires strict adherence to the bilateral agreements and protocols and not making unilateral attempts to change the status quo," he added. The MEA spokesperson also referred to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's comments on the border standoff in Parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, saying he has categorically stated that India is committed to a peaceful dialogue with the Chinese side, including through diplomatic and military channels. Both sides reached a five-point agreement to resolve the border row at a meeting between External Affairs S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on September 10 on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meet in Moscow. The agreement included measures like quick disengagement of troops, avoiding action that could escalate tensions, adherence to all agreements and protocols on border management and steps to restore peace along the LAC. Tension in eastern Ladakh increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes on June 15 in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. The situation deteriorated again after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake on the intervening night of August 29 and 30. India occupied a number of strategic heights on the southern bank of Pangong lake and strengthened its presence in Finger 2 and Finger 3 areas in the region to thwart any Chinese actions. China has been occupying the areas between Finger 4 and Finger 8. The mountain spurs in the area is called Fingers. China has strongly objected to India's move. However, India has maintained that the heights are on its side of the LAC. India has also rushed in additional troops and weapons to the sensitive region following China's transgression attempts. Following China's fresh attempts to change the status quo in the southern bank of Pangong lake, India has further bolstered its military presence in the region. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Sean Harsha (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 11:16 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c455925c 1 Opinion COVID-19-cluster,klaster-COVID-19,klaster-rumah-tangga,COVID-19-Jakarta Free Untraceable and invisible. Contagious and dangerous. These words describe the infection clusters at kos-kosan (rooming houses) that are seldom discussed, yet require serious attention if Indonesia truly wants to start taking control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infection clusters are nothing new. They have been popping up left and right ever since the start of the health crisis, most notably at office buildings, where the rate of infection has spiked as some companies prioritize business over health, forcing employees to commute to work from home. As reported by The Jakarta Post on July 29, Jakarta alone saw at least 90 distinct office clusters emerge a number that has continued to rise due to poor ventilation, a lack of space for social distancing and the lax enforcement of health protocols. When the workers at these offices return to their rooming houses, they bring the disease with them. And herein lies the problem. The government is not spending on COVID-19 preventive measures in the places where people spend most of their time: their homes. Its not for a lack of trying. In response to the pandemic, the administration of President Joko Jokowi Widodo announced a relief package worth more than Rp 400 trillion (US$27 billion). This amount was to be divvied up on spending for healthcare infrastructure, social safety nets, industrial support and the national economic recovery program. However, its earnest intentions aside, the relief package has not sufficed in holding citizens accountable to proper preventive practices, nor does it enforce such measures in communal living areas as reported by Bloomberg, 60.6 percent of Indonesians surveyed by independent pollster Indikator Politik oppose tough mobility restrictions. This is precisely why bringing strict, standardized health safety to communal spaces may be the next best solution. Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said during a video briefing on July 24 that offices and communal areas were the most prone to COVID-19 transmission. Jakarta Health Agency head Widyastuti echoed a similar concern a day earlier, telling reporters that the workers who risked infection at the office also risked infection at home. Therefore, communal areas across Indonesia would be wise to adopt standardized health protocols, especially considering the successes of global hospitality platforms in enforcing them to mitigate health risks. One of these platforms, RoomMe, appears to take health very seriously and lucky for Indonesia, it is a local company. A virtual kos-kosan or kost aggregator established in 2017, RoomMe helps tenants find places to stay, while also managing and marketing properties for kost owners on its platform. According to RoomMe cofounder Glen Ramersan, for businesses registered with RoomMe, it is required that all tenants and employees wear masks in common areas, including kitchens, living rooms and laundry rooms. In addition, hand sanitizer is required at the front desk of every one of its kos-kosan, no more than two people are allowed in a common area at the same time and thermal guns must be available for temperature checks, including on all incoming guests prior to entry. Once a month, a deep cleaning of the entire building occurs to remove any bacteria that may have snuck its way through. An oft-ignored health risk is the treatment of packages, which offices and apartments regularly fail to safely handle. RoomMe doesnt take any chances. Packages are not allowed in the premises of its koskosan at least not before they enter designated delivery posts, where they are isolated before being safely delivered to the recipient. There has yet to be a positive case of COVID-19 at a RoomMe establishment, according to Glen, but a standard operating procedure is in place should the worst happen. Any tenant who tests positive will be sent to their neighborhood clinic accompanied by front desk personnel, who will also handle transportation to ensure the virus doesnt spread. I have no affiliation with RoomMe, but it is clear what they are doing has set the heath safety benchmark in Indonesia for koskosan and therefore needs to be replicated by all other hospitality platforms citywide, if not outright adopted into regulation by the Jakarta administration, or at the very least by the hospitality businesses and community heads that supervise them. --- Half-American, half-Indonesian writer, poet and journalist Illustrative image (Photo: VNA) Hanoi The Ministry of Transport is scheduled open bids on five public-private partnership (PPP) component projects of the North-South Expressway from October 2-5. Adjustments to bidding documents for the projects are expected to be ratified on September 18-20. Project management boards informed the short-listed investors on July 20-21, who have 60 days to prepare. The ministry will negotiate and sign contracts with investors in December, with construction to begin in early 2021 and complete in 2023, as set by the National Assembly and the Government. The five component projects cover five sections along the North-South Expressway: National Highway No 45-Nghi Son (Thanh Hoa), Nghi Son-Dien Chau (Nghe An), Dien Chau-Bai Vot (Ha Tinh), Nha Trang-Cam Lam (Khanh Hoa), and Cam Lam-Vinh Hao (Binh Thuan). The North-South Expressway project has a total length of 654km and is divided into 11 sub-projects, including six under public investment and five under PPP. Investment for the sub-projects totals 100.8 trillion VND (4.3 billion USD), of which 78.4 trillion VND is from the State budget. Municipalities across the nation have been clobbered by the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Tax receipts are down thanks to business closings and people losing their jobs and Covid-related expenses are up. So what to do? State leaders appear to be betting that Democrat Joe Biden will win the presidency and deliver the aid to states and localities that the Trump administration and Republican Senate wont pass. Thats a risky bet for everyone, but it may be especially risky for Buffalo. The City of Buffalos $519 million operating budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 counts on $65 million in federal pandemic aid; $11 million in casino money that the Seneca Nation still refuses to pay; and restoration of a temporary $20 million withholding of state aid. This after Buffalo borrowed $25 million to finish the $509 million 2019-20 budget. On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings announced it downgraded Buffalos credit rating, from A+ to A, and changed the citys rating outlook from stable to negative. The credit agency cited the citys overly optimistic fiscal assumptions. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 08:15 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454770e 1 City COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,Depok,Depok-Mayor-Mohamad-Idris,APBI,curfew,jam-malam Free Two weeks after Depok, West Java, imposed curfews to counter the rising number of cases of COVID-19, the city has seen businesses beginning to close down. The Indonesia Department Store Association (APBI) has reported that roughly 40 percent of total merchants in the city have been forced to stop their operations because of the curfews. In a quick response, Depok Mayor Mohammad Idris said he was mulling the idea of tweaking the curfews. We will probably change the curfews since we are concerned about the economic recovery issue, Idris said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com. We can push back the curfew for outdoor activity to 9 p.m., and 8 p.m. for businesses. We will be strict on these possible updated policies. On Sept. 1, the Depok mayor announced that public places, such as restaurants, malls and supermarkets, were only allowed to operate until 6 p.m., while courier services are allowed to operate until 9 p.m. Residents are prohibited from conducting activities outside of their homes after 8 p.m. Read also: COVID-19 office clusters outside Depok create family clusters in the city: Official However, Depok APBI chairman Sutikno Pariyoto said the curfews had hit businesses, most of which operated at night, with significant revenue losses in the two weeks since the policy had come into effect. Most of the businesses customers are workers, who regularly spend their money on food and other things after they finish work. Employees usually return from their work at around 6 p.m., and they often visit the malls to have dinner, to have some coffee, or to shop, but [because of the curfew] theyre going straight home, Sutikno said on Tuesday, adding that after 6 p.m. was the perfect time for businesses to operate. He said he was relieved to hear about the mayors plan to tweak the curfews. As of Wednesday, Depok had recorded 856 active cases of COVID-19. (dpk) THE British owners of Ulster Bank are considering closing it down. Any such move would put the jobs of 2,500 people at risk and would see the closure of its 88 branches. It is thought the run-down of the loss-making bank would take six years, but would be a massive blow to banking competition in this country. Parent company NatWest is also considering merging Ulster Bank with another bank here, but that outcome is said to be less likely. Nat West, which was called Royal Bank of Scotland until recently, is more inclined to shut down its banking operation in this State, according to a report in the Irish Times. No final decision has been made but any closure would mean current account customers and savers having to find another bank. Its mortgage book would likely be sold off. There was no comment from spokespersons from Ulster Bank or NatWest. The Financial Services Union (FSU) said it was shocked at the revelation that closure of the bank was being considered and called on the bank to immediately reassure staff and the union that NatWest is committed to its future. FSU general Secretary John OConnell said: If this story is substantiated we are shocked and angry at how the bank is treating staff. We have been engaged in good faith in a restructure process over the last number of weeks to secure jobs and minimise redundancies and the bank reassured us of the commitment from NatWest to Ulster Bank. It is understood there are no plans to shut the Northern Irish operation. In August, NatWest chief executive Alison Rose said all options were being considered for Ulster Bank. She said at the time: So as you know, our strategy was and is to grow that business organically and safely and we have been successful in growing both the person(al) mortgage and some of the commercial share in 2019. That strategy hasnt changed. Clearly Covid-19 presents different challenges to the economy and we will continue to consider all strategic options in relation to that business. Ulster Bank made a loss of 276m for the first half of the year. It has struggled to gain market share because of its small scale. Ulster Bank got a bailout of 15bn (16bn) from its British parent after the financial crash more than a decade ago. Much of this money came from British taxpayers. It has since sold a number of mortgage accounts that are in arrears, cut jobs and has closed branches. Despite this, its owners are understood to have lost patience with it, particularly as the pandemic has made returning a profit in banking a massive challenge. The news broke within hours of Ulster Bank naming insurance and banking industry veteran Ruairi OFlynn as its new chairman. Hell now potentially face the task of overseeing the complex task of dismantling, selling off and shutting down of one of the countrys oldest and biggest financial institutions. Amidst the different factors causing turbulence in the Eastern Mediterranean, observers ought to know where to look. Five factors merit thinking about, for they will shape the Eastern Mediterranean in the foreseeable future. IRAN IN SYRIA AND LEBANON? It is not certain that at the core of the confrontation between, on the one hand, the US and Israel, and on the other hand, Iran, it is not just Irans nuclear capability, but also its strong presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, that the former see as threatening Israels national security. Other players, such as the large Sunni Arab countries (most notably Saudi Arabia), as well as institutions such as the Maronite Church in Lebanon, see in Irans strong presence in the region a major disruption of the traditional balance of power between the different sects. For Iran, however, building this strong presence transcends projecting power and gaining prestige. It is compelled by its history as well as by geo-politics to look east. And the undying spark of empire in its soul, as well as elements from Shia history, have always ignited in Iran a desire to have and to exert influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. There will not be a US-Iran confrontation anytime soon. But the war of wills between the two sides on ejecting Iran from, versus entrenching it in, the Eastern Mediterranean will be crucial to the evolution of the region in the coming years. ISRAEL AND IRANIAN PRESENCE: Israel has been bombing Iranian targets in the Eastern Mediterranean for several years now, but these strikes have so far been surgical. This is because Israel has been waiting for (and trying to influence) the outcome of the war of wills between the US and Iran. But if the outcome turns out to be an entrenched Iranian presence, anchored in enhanced military capabilities (directly in Syria and indirectly through the Shia group Hizbullah in Lebanon), Israel will not tolerate it. A strong line of thinking within Israels security establishment sees any enhanced Iranian presence as a threat to its national security. Thus, Israel will escalate its strikes, targeting key military nodes of the Iranian architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean. This could result in a major war with exacting costs for Syria, Lebanon and Israel and far-reaching consequences for the region. SYRIAS FUTURE: The regime led by Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad has won the war to topple it. But a major international power, Russia, has also now entrenched its position in Syria, and this has consequences. Russia now sees its military bases in northern Syria as crucial to its interests in Eastern Mediterranean gas, to its stemming of the threat of militant Islamism in the region (all the way to its southern borders), and to its ability to influence the interests of others (the US, Europe and Turkey). All this means Russia wants a stable Syria in which the costs of its presence in the country are limited. Russia will likely orchestrate the emergence of a new political order in Syria that is a continuation of the nationalist idea that the Al-Assad (Baath Party) regime has always put forward. But it will also be an order that is more congruent with the demographic realities of the Syrian population, so as to avoid future flare-ups, especially given the immense amount of blood that has been spilled in Syria over the past decade. A key milestone here would be a political transition aiming to balance the power of president Al-Assad with that of an elected parliament. In this case, Syria would undergo a process not only of reconstruction, but also, and crucially, of reconciliation. This would be of the utmost importance to the future of the Eastern Mediterranean because Syria is the biggest demographic concentration in the region, the historical and cultural seat of Sunni Islam in the Levant, and the centre of gravity of important constituencies, such as the Sunnis of Lebanon as well as various Palestinian groups, which are naturally attracted to it. EGYPT AND THE LEVANT: From the early 19th century and until the early 1970s, Egypt had a major political presence in the Levant. Since then, Egypt has been missing from the Levants socio- and geo-politics. However, as Egypt seems to be resuscitating its older engagements in different parts of its neighbourhood, the Levant will increasingly feature more prominently in its thinking. This is because whereas Egypts interests have historically extended south (to Africa, especially to where the Nile originates) and west (to Tunisia and Morocco, from which some of the most influential Islamic movements in Egypts history have come), its most compelling interests have always been in the east (the Levant). Whether during Pharaonic, Christian, early Islamic, Ayyubid, Mameluke or modern times from Mohamed Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha in the early 19th century, Egypt has seen and pursued opportunities as well as threats in the Levant. Today, there are forces in the region that miss Egypt and want it to return to the Levant for example, many Lebanese who believe in the centrality of an Arab identity to the idea and identity of Lebanon. Other forces, however, do not want Egypt in the region, either fearing its potential influence, or seeing the Levant as already too crowded for another regional behemoth to enter. Yet, if indeed the Levant exerts its traditional pull on Egypt, the countrys return will change many power dynamics there. TURKEYS AMBITIONS IN THE LEVANT: Turkey is an established power in the Eastern Mediterranean. But since the late 19th century, its reach has been primarily maritime in the areas around its southern shores. Its decisive influence in Levantine politics came to an end when Egypts Ibrahim Pasha chased its army out of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1830s, and Turkey has never showed any real interest in returning to the region since. In the second half of the 19th century, the Ottomans effectively ceded control of the Levant to Britain and France. In the 20th century, the Turkey of Ataturk and his followers never looked south. Even under the currently ruling AKP Party, Turkey has primarily focused on ideological struggles in the Arab world, especially for and against Islamism. However, Turkey has now begun to establish a land presence in the north of the Eastern Mediterranean, and it seems interested in expanding that presence southwards, at least through political influence, especially within some Sunni Muslim communities. This remains a nascent trend, however, and it might be linked to security concerns as opposed to a strategic drive. But if it turns out to be the latter, it will affect all the previous four factors. One elderly commentator from the region once remarked that la terre the land, or the earth in this part of the world has absorbed much love, joy and creativity, as well as much blood. For the sake of generating more joy and creativity, and avoiding more bloodshed, the people of the region will need to navigate the tricky dynamics that will arise from a combination of the five factors above. *The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010). *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Pakistani and international rights groups and media watchdogs are warning of increased police and judicial harassment of journalists who criticize or question the country's authorities on social media. This harassment must stop, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement on September 17 after three Pakistani journalists faced arbitrary accusations such as inciting rebellion, treason, and anti-Pakistan activities. Those journalists targeted in recent days included Bilal Farooqi, a news editor at the English-language Express Tribune newspaper, who was detained in Karachi on the evening of September 11. Farooqi, who has posted messages on Facebook and Twitter regarded as critical of the military, was interrogated at the police station before being released on his lawyers personal guarantee the next day. The police were acting on a complaint filed by a member of the public accusing him of inciting citizens to rebel against the military and inciting sectarian hatred -- an accusation that Farooqi said could put his life in danger because it could be exploited by extremist religious groups. Also on September 11, police in Punjab Province opened an investigation into journalist Absar Alam for suspected sedition and treason, acting on a complaint filed by a lawyer accusing him of posting highly inappropriate comments on social media. Alam, who used to head the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, has criticized Prime Minister Imran Khan and the army. The alarming increase in such actions against journalists confirms that the government is bent on muzzling freedom of expression, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) tweeted earlier this week. Meanwhile, a journalist working for Samaa TV said on Twitter on September 14 that he was the target of a complaint by the police in Rawalpindi accusing him of anti-Pakistan posts and propagating against the Pakistan army on social media. In recent weeks, Asad Ali Toor tweeted articles about alleged corruption involving Asim Saleem Bajwa, a retired army general who now heads the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor, a package of infrastructural development projects. The accusations against Farooqi, Alam, and Toor -- which they reject -- are baseless and constitute judicial harassment aimed at suppressing all criticism of the government, in particular, on social media, said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSFs Asia-Pacific desk. Pakistan is ranked 145th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2020 World Press Freedom Index. Changing skins Cells are surrounded by a layer of membrane lipids that protect them from changes in their environment such as temperature, much in the same way that our skin changes when we are cold or exposed to the sun. Lead author and NIOZ senior scientist Laura Villanueva explains why they make such interesting biomarkers. 'When a cell dies, these lipids preserve like fossils and hold ancient-old information on Earths' early environmental conditions.' Our tree of life includes small and simple cells (Bacteria and Archaea) and more complex cells (Eukaryotes), including animals and humans. Bacteria and Eukaryotes share a similar lipid membrane. Looking at Archaea, their 'skin' or membrane looks very different and is primarily designed to help these microorganisms to survive in extreme environments. Villanueva: 'This "lipid divide", or difference in membranes between Bacteria and Eukaryotes on the one hand and Archaea on the other, is believed to have happened after the emergence of Bacteria and Archaea from the last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA).' Missing piece hidden in the deep Black Sea The leading theory is that Eukaryotes evolved from a symbiosis event between archaeal and bacterial cells in which the archaeal cell was the host. But how does this work when their 'skins' are so different and share no sign of common ancestry? Villanueva: 'To explain the creation of more complex life-forms, the archaeal membrane must have made a switch to a bacterial type membrane. Such a switch likely needed a transition period in which the two membrane types were mixed.' However, mixed lipid membranes had never been found in microbes until the team of Villanueva made an unexpected discovery in de deep waters of the Black Sea. Villanueva: 'We found a possible missing piece of this puzzle in the Black Sea. Here, an abundant group of bacteria thrive in the deep-sea, absent of oxygen and with high sulfide concentration. We discovered that the genetic material of this group did not only carry pathway genes for bacterial lipids but archaeal ones as well.' The peculiarity was also found in the genetic material of other, closely related Bacteria and supports the idea that this ability to create 'mixed' membranes is more widespread than previously thought. This discovery sheds new light on the evolution of all cellular life forms and may have important consequences for the interpretation of archaeal lipid fossils in the geological record and paleoclimate reconstructions. ### The research team from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Utrecht University have published their findings in the prestigious ISME Journal. Villanueva, L., von Meijenfeldt, F.A.B., Westbye, A.B., Yadav, S., Hopmans, E.C., Dutilh, B.E., Sinninge Damste, J.S. Bridging the membrane lipid divide: bacteria of the FCB group superphylum have the potential to synthesize archaeal ether lipids. ISME J (2020) The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Itse Sagay, has criticised a proposed bill for the amendment of the law establishing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. There have been reports of a new bill proposed by the Attorney-General of the Federation Abubakar Malami, that seeks the creation of a new office of the Director-General of the EFCC in replacement of the Office of the Chairman of the EFCC. According to the reports, the director-general will be recommended by the office of the AGF and subject to the appointment by the lresident and confirmation by the Senate. Nigerian law currently empowers the AGF to institute, continue or discontinue criminal proceedings against any person in any Nigerian court, even if such cases were filed by agencies like the EFCC. But Mr Malami has denied reports of an attempt to pursue more powers to control the federal agency under its supervision. Mr Malami said, The legislative function is vested in the National Assembly and by way of further expansion, the office of the Attorney-General is by no means craving for further powers with institutions, agencies under its supervision. He added that his office is already saddled with enough powers to control the anti-graft agencies in the country. In his reaction, Mr Sagay, in a statement on Wednesday, described the alleged amendment proposal as an attempt to weaken the anti-corruption infrastructure of Nigeria. The senior lawyer, who did not mention who was responsible for the proposed bill, also accused those behind the bill of representing the corrupt establishment that has dominated the countrys reputation internationally. He said the replacement of the Executive Chairman of the EFCC with a Director-General, who is effective to be appointed by the Attorney-General, eliminates the EFCCs freedom and autonomy and replaces it with an entity under the complete control of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. There is an on-going very sinister and dangerous attempt to demolish the Anti-corruption infrastructure of Nigeria and return it to the situation it was in during the dark days before 2015. Scrapping of the commission and replacing it with a weak agency, which is going to be effectively, a department in a Federal Ministry of Justice under the Attorney General of the Federation. Those behind it are the representatives of the corrupt establishment that brought this country to its knees and subjected us to humiliation as a result of an extremely negative reputation internationally. It can be said without equivocation that this is the mother of corruption fighting back. The replacement of the Board of EFCC with Directors who are effective to be appointees of the Attorney-General. The Elimination of the position of the Secretary of the EFCC, a critical officer who serves as the institutional memory and the Administrative Head of the Agency. Citing Section 11 of the proposed bill, Mr Sagay said, The Annual Report of the EFCC is not to be submitted to the National Assembly until it has been passed through the Attorney-General for onward transmission to the National Assembly; thus making the Attorney-General the reporting officer of the Agency rather than the Chairman of the Director-General, as the new Bill is proposing. The bill follows letters to President Muhammadu Buhari, by Mr Malami, whose complaint led to the suspension of Ibrahim Magu as acting EFCC chairman, and his current investigation before the presidential panel headed by Ayo Salami, a former president of the appeal court. Mr Malami accused the suspended EFCC boss of corruption and insubordination. Mr Magu has repeatedly denied the allegations, describing them as baseless. Zak Brown insists that selling McLaren's factory for about $350 million is a "very good decision". The American, who emerged as the famous brand's supremo in the wake of a power struggle and Ron Dennis' departure some years ago, says the money can be used more wisely. "I think most companies in the world do not own real estate themselves. They're tenants," Brown told formel.de. "We are talking about a lot of money, and it's not a very productive use of that when you're investing in your business," he added. "So we're going to sell it to someone, and then we're going to get an extremely long lease. We'll invest that money in our business to grow it. "We're not a real estate company, we're a racing team and an automotive company so I think it is a very good decision." On the face of it, though, selling the factory - on top of laying off some 1200 staff earlier this year - appears to indicate financial trouble at McLaren. Brown denies that. "From a cash flow perspective, we are doing well," he insists, although he admits that the corona crisis "drained a lot of cash" from the business. "We have some debt and now (executive chairman) Paul (Walsh) is making decisions to improve our bottom line." Brown also clarified that the finances of McLaren's Formula 1 team and the struggling road car division are entirely separate. "What happens in racing has no impact on automotive, and vice versa," he insists. However, he does admit that it is "a major concern for everyone" that the current covid-19 pandemic is likely to race into 2021. "I do expect that Covid will continue to have some impact in 2021, yes," said Brown. (GMM) Jerry Harris, one of the breakout stars of Netflixs documentary series Cheer, has been arrested on a child pornography charge. The US Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois announced the arrest on Thursday. A complaint filed that same day charges Harris with one count of producing child pornography. Harris is accused of allegedly enticing an underage boy to produce sexually explicit videos and photos of himself, the US Attorneys Office said in a release. A spokesperson for Harris has previously disputed the allegations in a statement. Harris was arrested on Thursday morning and was scheduled to make a court appearance later in the day. Production of child pornography is punishable by a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years. Allegations regarding Harris emerged earlier this week, when a lawsuit was reportedly filed against him in Texas. A spokesperson for Harris told People in reaction to that complaint: We categorically dispute the claims made against Jerry Harris, which are alleged to have occurred when he was a teenager. We are confident that when the investigation is completed the true facts will be revealed. Harris, now 21, was 19 years old at the time of some of the alleged facts. The Independent has contacted his representative for further comment. Cheer, a six-part docu-series focusing on a nationally ranked cheerleading team, was released on Netflix in January this year. The programme has won two Emmy Awards and is nominated in the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program, which will be announced during this years ceremony on Sunday 20 September. Huawei was expected to unveil the flagship 5nm Kirin chipset during its IFA 2020 keynote earlier this month in Berlin. However, the company has indefinitely postponed the unveiling to avoid unnecessary attention. According to the latest report from China, Huawei was able to procure only 8.8 million Kirin 9000 chipsets. This is almost 40 percent less than the 15 million order the company is expected to have placed with Taiwanese contract chipmaker TSMC. With such a low amount of stock, the company might not be able to match up with the demand. For comparison, Huawei has sold 12 million Mate 30 smartphones in the first three months of launch. Huawei only procured 60 percent of the expected Kirin 9000 chipsets Huaweis upcoming Mate 40 smartphones will come powered by the companys all-new 5nm Kirin chipset. The company is expected to launch these new flagship smartphones by the end of September or early October. However, a recent report suggests the company has reportedly postponed the launch to early 2021. Advertisement Moreover, the Kirin 9000 could have been the worlds first mobile chipset to be built on the 5nm process. With the newly launched 4th-gen iPad Air, Apple introduced the A14 Bionic as the worlds first 5nm chipset. Will it be the worlds first 5nm chipset with an integrated 5G modem? If launched before the upcoming Snapdragon 875 SoC, the Kirin 9000 could become the worlds first 5nm chipset with an integrated 5G modem. According to the source, there are a total of 22,000 5nm wafers. With an output of around 400 good dies per wafer, total production might not exceed the reported 8.8 million mark. Huawei cant even replace its own Kirin chipset with alternatives from companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek. The suppliers also need to get permission from the US government to supply their chipsets to the banned Chinese company. Advertisement As per recent reports, Qualcomm, Samsung, and SMIC have requested approval from the US to supply to Huawei. Since domestic semiconductor companies in China lack the advanced technologies to produce 5nm chips, Huaweis HiSilicon unit has to completely depend on foreign companies for their flagship chipsets. The orders from the US Commerce Department, released in May this year, banned all the chipmakers using American technology from working with Huawei. While TSMC immediately stopped accepting new orders from Huawei, it did receive permission to fulfill the previous orders by September 14. Currently, Huawei cannot do anything but wait for its suppliers to get permission from the US government. Well have to wait and see how this plays out for its flagship lineup. Of the 50 children admitted at two city hospitals, 11 reported severe Covid-19 symptoms including multisystem inflammatory and six of those eleven showed impact on their brain, said treating doctors. As more cases are now being reported among children, the complications among the paediatric patients are also coming forward. The hospitals are defining children as anyone below 18 years of age. Of the six kids, a 13-year old girl child lost her life during the course of her treatment two months ago at Sahyadri hospital. Doctors at both the hospitals have now studied these kids and found that the virus has evolved which is leading to such complications in kids who could be saved through earlier detection and treatment. Dr Sagar Lad, a senior paediatric intensivist consultant at Sahyadri and Jehangir Hospital said Among the six we lost one child who was admitted just six to eight hours ago, the other five are now healthy and discharged. We noticed that these children report paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporarily associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS-TS) or multisystem inflammatory syndrome of childhood (MIS-C). The children tested Covid-19 antibody-positive so they were once infected but are now not infective. The antibodies developed during the course of the infection by the body ended up damaging their own system. Dr Lad also said, The children showed symptoms of brain involvement, excessive sleepiness, altered sensorium, convulsions and severe headache. Since the antibody test is positive so these are the post-infection complications. The children who might test negative for the infection may show such symptoms later so they must be watched for signs including rashes, swelling, fever for over 48-72 hours, swelling on joints, redness, excessive sleepiness, irritating behaviour. However, it must be emphasised that not all children report this and with timely intervention, the child could be saved as the recovery rate is good among children. Dr Pradeep Suryawanshi - head, department of Paediatrics and Neonatology, Sahyadri Speciality Hospital who was also part of the study said, Covid-19 was assumed to be a relatively benign disease in children but since the last three months there are various cases coming up with hyperinflammatory syndrome secondary to Covid-19 infection. Generally, children are less affected because receptors, where Covid virus attaches in the breathing tract, are less in children. But PIMS TS disease is seen 3-4 week after Covid-19 infection. There is a formation of auto-antibodies which damages the blood vessels in the body, especially of heart causing disease called Kawasaki like disease and also produces a shock. These patients need aggressive treatment. If we diagnose it early and treat appropriately chances of recovery are good and do not produce any complications. Hence, prompt recognition of PIMS/MIS-C is of utmost importance as it can improve outcomes, said the doctors. The doctors also cleared that not all children with Covid-19 land up in PIMS as it depends on the childs immune system to handle such infection. Only a few cases have been reported in the world so far. Veteran BJP leader Eknath Khadse says he will expose Devendra Fadnavis in a forthcoming book. IMAGE: Bharatiya Janata Party leader Eknath Khadse, left, with then Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Photograph: PTI Eknath Khadse, former leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra assembly, and later revenue minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government, was forced to resign in 2016 after allegations of corruption were levelled against him. Khadse is now itching for a fight with his bete noire, then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. While speculation is rife that he may soon form a political party or join either the Shiv Sena or Nationalist Congress Party -- a possibility which the six-time legislator from Muktainagar in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district has strongly denied -- the 68-year-old veteran BJP leader isn't shy of sparring with Fadnavis, who he says, sidelined him to strengthen his position in the party's state unit. Khadse, who has been lying low since his ouster from the Maharashtra cabinet, has levelled a flurry of charges against Fadnavis and challenged the former CM to a verbal duel. In another sensational revelation, Khadse claims he has nude pictures of a minister's personal assistant in a compromising position with a woman, which he thinks is enough to conduct an inquiry against the minister. "How can I tell you who this gentleman is?" Khadse asks Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com, shying away from revealing more. "You will know the day I go public with it," he says. Khadse says he was misquoted by the media when they reported that he had incriminating videos of some BJP leaders. "I did not say I have videos of any BJP leader. What I said was I have intimate, nude, pictures of a minister's personal assistant in a compromising position with a woman," he says. Indicating that he is biding his time to "expose this minister's PA", he has now threatened to take these pictures to senior BJP leaders at the Centre. Khadse hints that the minister in question whose PA's photographs he claims to possess could even be somebody from "this Cabinet (the Uddhav Thackeray government)." Ask him if the minister in question does not belong to the BJP, then what action could senior BJP leaders in Delhi take against this minister, Khadse says, "The Union home ministry belongs to us." Citing his example, where he was targeted and made to resign over charges of corruption against his personal assistant in the MIDC land grab case, Khadse makes it clear that there could be reason to take action against this minister. "An inquiry was initiated against me by levelling charges of corruption against my PA and later I was made to resign because of these allegations. These are also photos of the PA of a minister," he says. "I will be bringing it to the notice of my senior party leaders," he says. "Was I or am I the owner of the MIDC property? I had no connection with it, but still (I was dragged into the case and made to resign)," he says. "If my detractors allege that I benefitted because of my being a minister, then was it not misuse of power when Devendraji (Fadnavis) deposited money in the Axis Bank (there were allegations that the Fadnavis government transferred the salary accounts of the state police department to the Axis Bank eight days after forming the government in Maharashtra; Fadnavis's wife Amruta is a senior manager at the bank)?" "When he (Fadnavis's wife) does shows with Amitabh Bachchan (Amruta Fadnavis had recorded a music album with Bachchan in 2016) then it is good use of power and post. There are so many questions that arise then," Khadse says, raising issues of impropriety by people holding public office. "The MIDC plot was bought following due rule of law and that parcel of land still is entitled to its rightful owner," he says, defending his position in the case for which he later got a clean chit from the Anti-Corruption Bureau. Reacting to Khadse's charge that the then CM sidelined him in the BJP, Fadnavis reportedly called Khadse for a discussion. "I have no problem in discussing issues with him. I have been waiting for this moment for the last four years," says Khadse. "Were he willing to discuss issues in the last four years, then I would have had no need to come out in the open with my grievances." "The people of Maharashtra know why I was sidelined by Devendraji. I was the only competitor to him for the post of chief minister," says Khadse. "Being the leader of the Opposition (when the BJP was in the Opposition) I was the rightful claimant to become chief minister. Since the party decided his name (for the post of CM) I accepted it humbly and was working for the welfare of my people," adds Khadse. "We are soldiers of the party. I have issues with individuals in the party, not with the party," he says. Despite Fadnavis's peace balloon, the BJP strongman from Jalgaon who belongs to the influential Leva Patil community in north Maharashtra is in no mood to announce a truce with the former CM. Khadse says he will expose Fadnavis in his forthcoming book which, he says, will be titled on the lines of Fadnavisanche Barabhai Karasthan, a chapter from the history of the Peshwas that pitted family and friends against each other for their rightful claim to the Maratha throne in the 18th century. Ask him how explosive his revelations in the book could turn out to be, Khadse asks, "If I were to disclose everything about the book to you, then who will buy the book?" In the same breath, he adds, "The book will highlight all the injustices done to me; what happened to my claim of chief ministership; why and how I was sidelined by whom; why only I was singled out and the rest of the leaders were given a clean chit by the 'washing machine' in the BJP (an acerbic taunt against Fadnavis)." "I will be answering all the unanswered questions that the people of this state have been asking." Ask if he has any evidence to prove Fadnavis's complicity in his ouster, he says, "Every proof that I possess today, and I have many, point in his direction." U.S. Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Keith Krach arrives at an airport in Taipei, Taiwan September 17, 2020. / Reuters-Yonhap (Central News Agency/Pool via REUTERS) U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for the second visit by a high-level American official in two months, prompting a stern warning and threat of possible retaliation from China. Beijing considers Taiwan its own and opposes all official contacts between other countries and the self-governing island. Krach arrived at an air force base in Taipei, the capital, for a three-day visit. Wearing a face mask, he bumped elbows in greetings with Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Harry Ho-Jen Tseng. Krach, the highest-level State Department official to visit the island in decades, is to meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the island's foreign ministry said. The visit by Krach, who is under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, follows a high-profile trip in August by U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, the highest-level U.S. Cabinet official to visit since the U.S. switched formal relations from Taiwan to China in 1979. However, the U.S. has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan since the official diplomatic break and is the island's most important ally and provider of defense equipment. Ahead of Krach's arrival, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, had lunch Wednesday with Taiwan's top official in New York, a meeting she called historic and a further step in the Trump administration's campaign to strengthen relations with Taiwan. Craft said her lunch with James K.J. Lee, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, was the first meeting between a top Taiwan official and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since 1971, when the China seat at the U.N. was passed from Taipei to Beijing. "I'm looking to do the right thing by my president, and I feel that he has sought to strengthen and deepen this bilateral relationship with Taiwan and I want to continue that on behalf of the administration," she told The Associated Press. In Taiwan, Krach is to attend a banquet hosted by Tsai on Friday and hold discussions on the creation of a new economic and commercial dialogue, according to Taiwan's de facto ambassador in the U.S., Hsiao Bi-khim. He will also attend a memorial service for former President Lee Teng-hui, who led the island's transition to democracy and died at age 97 in July. Krach's visit and Craft's lunch with Lee are certain to exacerbate mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, trade, technology, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. China condemned the visit on Thursday and warned it could retaliate. At a daily briefing Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Krach's visit violates U.S. commitments to China and "bolsters the separatist forces of Taiwan independence and undermines China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," adding that Beijing had "lodged solemn complaints" with Washington over the matter. "We urge the U.S. to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue ... immediately stop official exchanges and actions of improving substantive relations with Taiwan, and handle Taiwan-related issues cautiously," Wang said. "China will make necessary responses in accordance with the development of the situation." (AP) The logo of Samsung Electronics is pictured at the company's factory (Jorge Duenes/Reuters) China Desperate to Stop South Korean, Japanese Firms from Leaving Market: Leaked Documents Amid a crippling trade war with the United States, declining demand, and supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign companies are leaving China in droves. South Korean companies, Japanese companies, Taiwanese companies, and American companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all moving their production out of China. The Epoch Times received a set of internal documents from the Huizhou city government in Guangdong Province, showing that amid the exodus of foreign companies, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued an urgent order to keep Japanese and South Korean companies [from leaving,] for both economic reasons and the Partys political agenda. In October 2019, South Korean tech giant Samsung closed its Huizhou factory and stopped manufacturing mobile phones in China. In June 2020, Samsung announced that its display screen production would be relocated from China to Vietnam. Samsungs withdrawal from China hits Huizhous economy hard. According to an Aug. 10 government report drafted by the Huizhou Commerce Bureau and sent to the local foreign affairs bureau, in the year 2020 thus far, import and export trade in Huizhou fell by 77.4 and 89.5 percent respectively compared to the same period last year. Authorities stated that Huizhous economy was affected by the Sino-U.S. trade war, pandemic prevention and control, and Samsung Electronics withdrawal of Huizhou and many other factors that have compounded the impact. An Urgent Order In a work plan document issued by the city government, it disclosed that the city received a lettermarked extra-urgentfrom the Guangdong provincial governments foreign affairs office, requesting the city to hold onto Japan and South Korea. Use [the idea of] fighting the pandemic together as an opportunity to pull in neighboring countries such as Japan and South Korea, the provincial government stated. In order to do that, the Huizhou commerce bureau suggested a few measures, such as promoting the China-South Korea (Huizhou) Industrial Park at both the China (Guangdong)-Korea Exchange Conference and the Japan-Guangdong Economic Promotion Conference, which took place in June. It also suggested that during the conference, officials should arrange for Japanese and South Korean companies to visit Huizhou for investment opportunities. In addition, the Huizhou commerce bureau disclosed its recent exchanges and cooperation projects with the two countries, including the establishment of a new Huizhou Economic and Trade Representative Office in South Korea. It was listed for operation at the end of August. The projects include convincing Japanese, South Korean, and Singaporean companies and institutions to visit Huizhou, visiting key enterprises in those countries, and carrying out investment promotion. Current affairs commentator Li Linyi interpreted that this letter showed that the Chinese regime was desperate to stop foreign companies from moving production out of China and to protect Chinas regional industrial chain. Hoping to Expand Belt and Road Initiative The Huizhou governments internal documents revealed that the order to hold Japan and South Korea not only had economic considerations, but also is a political task for the Partys Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Rolled out by Beijing in 2013, it is the regimes signature infrastructure investment project aimed at advancing its influence worldwide. But critics say the BRI places developing countries into a debt trap by offering unsustainable loans, while exploiting their natural resources like timber, crude oil, and minerals to drive the Chinese economy. The BRI office of Huizhou said in a work vision document dated Jan. 14 that it hoped to expand BRI into East Asian countries, especially South Korea. The city would promote local businesses to expand to markets in East Asia, make multiple visits to Japan and South Korea to promote and attract investments, and plan for the construction of the China-Korea (Huizhou) Industrial Park. Authorities also hoped to promote BRI through sister city relationships. A document from the Huizhou foreign affairs office noted that the city previously forged 5 friendship cities: Seongnam in South Korea, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom, North Vancouver in Canada, Milpitas in the United States, and Pyramid of St. Martin in Mexico. But among these five cities, only Seongnam was still active due to special cultivation [of the relationship], the document stated. The other four city relations were in occasional contact or had stopped. In the past five years, Huizhou and Seongnam have interacted every year, from youth exchanges and government visits to cooperation in the fields of economy, tourism, and education, the document noted. Commentator Li said it was clear Chinese authorities were hoping to lure South Korea into BRI by strengthening economic and trade cooperation with it. He also noted that Beijing had two purposes for exploiting the relationship with South Korea: tapping its economic and technological resources to alleviate Chinas economic crisis, and exerting political influence on South Korea to go along with Beijings agenda. China is currently South Koreas largest trading partner and largest export market. Li said that the South Korean governments lack of a position on Beijings growing encroachment of Hong Kong could be indicative of its fear of upsetting Beijing due to economic interests. Li also stated that these internal documents indicate that the Chinese regime is attempting to cushion the severe impact of economic sanctions from the international community by trying its best to hold onto Japan and South Korea. The owner of several Houston substance abuse recovery facilities has been accused of sexual assaulting three women he met as patients, according to court records. Michael Ray Hubacek Jr., 42, was charged Tuesday in connection to three allegations, documents show. The investigation spanned more than two years and garnered complaints stemming from two incidents in 2018 and a third that was reported in January of this year. In each of the complaints, Hubacek lured the women to his home. Hubacek has since posted bond on two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of sexual assault of an adult, jail records show. Hubacek met the women while running Sober Living Houston a chemical dependency program with multiple facilities for men and women. Police said he founded the program, with records showing that happened in the years after he completed probation for a 1997 drunken driving wreck that killed a father of two and the nanny to those children. Former district judge and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe oversaw the case and ordered that Hubacek, then 19, carry pictures of the victims in his wallet. Hubacek at times stood at the intersection of Richmond and Fountainview with a sign announcing that he was responsible for their deaths. During a news conference Thursday, Detective Dawn Baker said each of the sexual assault accusers had something in common. He has a type, Baker said. He has an m-o. He likes to focus on victims who are typically considered attractive but theyre struggling with addiction. Often times, they are asked, or advised to, complete a court-mandatory program, Baker continued, adding that at least two of the women were under the influence when the assaults are said to have happened. Defense attorney Brent Mayr said that while Hubacek remains the owner and operator for Sober Living Houston, he has been attempting to sell off the companies which include a residential facility amid the coronavirus pandemic. When he was active with the programs, he often worked with patients in group meetings and helped them make appointments. He was not a licensed counselor, Mayr said. Mayr condemned the HPD probe as an ambush. They never reached out to Hubacek, to allow him to tell his side of the story, Mayr said. Thats not justice. It is designed to exploit him. This is a man who has committed himself to living a sober lifestyle and who wanted to help others do the same, he continued, adding that Hubacek has been sober for two decades. According to court documents, the first accuser, then 27, came forward soon after Hubacek attacked her in February 2018 at his home. He took her out to lunch to talk about a letter he was writing to a judge about her probation. The two then went back to his apartment, where he then asked her to perform a sex act, investigators said in charging papers. If you do me this favor, he began. I will do you a favor and write this letter to your judge. If she didnt comply, Hubacek allegedly said this is the only way (you) arent going to jail. Hubacek then grabbed her hair and slapped her in the face, the accuser said. The sexual assault lasted 15 minutes and he took her back to the recovery center, records show. Police contacted Hubacek about the allegation that month and he said the encounter was consensual. Baker said the charges were not approved following that interview because of a lack of evidence. The accuser did not seek out a rape kit. What has changed is that more women have come forward, she continued. Two more women lodged similar complaints to police accusing Hubacek of assaulting them while they were enrolled in a recovery center. In March, a 35-year-old woman told investigators she met Hubacek in July 2018 through Take Action Recovery, where she was seeking treatment for a controlled substance case out of California, according to court documents. Hubacek identified himself as the director of that facility and Sober Living Houston to the woman and her mother. The next month, the woman relapsed during a night out and Hubacek messaged her to come to his home. At his apartment, he asked her if she liked it rough and then knocked her unconscious. She woke up to Hubacek sexually assaulting her, court records show. The woman did not undergo a rape kit either but did seek medical treatment at a hospital for a concussion. The woman revealed what happened to her lawyer and left the recovery center. A third accuser said Hubacek gave her money in January of this year to buy heroin after she relapsed on Xanax, court records continued. She used the heroin in his apartment and next remembers him raping her. She did not want to back to Sober Living Houston after that incident, investigators wrote. She did not have anywhere else to go. Hubacek has since made bond on the three charges. Baker said she has heard from additional women whose allegations, some of which date back to 2016, may result in more charges. Please come forward, Baker urged. It may have been two years ago, four years ago, it does not matter. We want to hear your story. nicole.hensley@chron.com Romania's Justice Ministry (MJ) provided clarifications on Wednesday on the procedure of nominating the country's delegated prosecutors to the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), emphasising that the information and statements publicly carried that Romania would block the process of establishing the number of European prosecutors is not grounded in reality. "The procedure for establishing the number of Romanian prosecutors delegated to the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) was initiated at the end of 2019, with the Ministry of Justice being the first to initiate a dialogue with the European Public Prosecutor (EPP) on this matter in a letter from the minister of justice of November 8, 2019. The procedure for determining the number of prosecutors involves a dialogue between each relevant national authority in each EU member state and the EPP. The procedure is still ongoing both between the Romanian Ministry of Justice and the EPP, and between other ministries of justice from other member states and the EPP. The information and statements publicly carried that Romania would block the process of establishing the number of European prosecutors are not grounded in reality," reads a Justice Ministry press statement released on Wednesday.According to the statement, Romania, through MJ, recommended 10 prosecutors and 20 support specialists (police, auxiliary staff, etc.) after conducting thorough and detailed consultations with both the Prosecutor's Office with the Supreme Court of Justice and Cassation and the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA)."The Ministry of Justice organised and conducted consultations (in a videoconference system) of these institutions with EPP based on an assessment of the number of cases, procedural stages of most of these cases and their complexity. The proposed number of 10 prosecutors was also established in accordance with the operational needs of the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), DNA, designated as a support unit of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, in perfect resonance with the positions of almost all national justice ministries of the EU member states expressed at the JHA meeting of January 2020 in Zagreb in the sense of supporting the gradual operationalisation of the European Public Prosecutor 's Office and the expansion of its capacity as progress is made."As a guide, as the number of delegated prosecutors, in relation to the unofficial and non-definitive figures carried so far (the consultation process is still ongoing), Romania ranks 5th, with a number of 10 prosecutors, with most states recommending two prosecutors, with the exception of six-eight states, including Romania, which proposes a number of 5, 10, 11, 14 and 20 prosecutors (two states), respectively."The Ministry of Justice reiterates that the consultation process is under way with most of the relevant authorities in the other member states and expresses its hope that the public positions adopted by various political actors on this matter will be based on a careful analysis of the real situation in relation to the peculiarities of each country and rigorous statistics." FREMONT, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- THINK Surgical, Inc., an advanced orthopedic robot technology company, announced the official launch of its new corporate website www.thinksurgical.com. The website showcases the active robot included in the TSolution One Total Knee Application. "THINK Surgical is proud to share our new and improved corporate website with patients and medical professionals who want to learn more about the orthopedic solutions we offer," said Jay Yang, acting CEO, THINK Surgical, Inc. "THINK's new website chronicles the history of our company and features surgeon and patient perspectives regarding total knee replacement utilizing our active robot technology, which is truly revolutionizing orthopedic surgery." The new website features a section for patients seeking information about osteoarthritis, the most common cause of joint pain affecting more than 30 million adults. For many patients, treatment is a total knee replacement (TKR). The website is also a resource for clinicians and orthopedic surgeons, in search of cutting-edge and innovative technologies to achieve positive outcomes in the treatment of patients with end-stage knee arthritis. In addition to the precision, accuracy and consistency provided by THINK Surgical's active robot technology, the TSolution One Total Knee Application provides surgeons a choice of implant options. The TSolution One Total Knee Application combines two exclusive innovations to advance total joint replacement surgery. The system consists of TPLAN, a 3D pre-surgical planning workstation and TCAT, an active robot. The pre-surgical planning allows the surgeon to design and prepare, in a virtual environment, the patient's unique joint replacement plan using a choice of implant options. The active robot aids the surgeon in executing the preoperative plan with precise control, performing hands-free cutting of the bone for precise placement of the implant. Other surgical systems merely guide the surgeon. The TSolution One core technology has been used in thousands of successful total joint replacements for both hip and knee worldwide. In October 2019, THINK Surgical, Inc. announced it received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the TSolution One Total Knee Application in the United States. About THINK Surgical, Inc. THINK Surgical, Inc. is committed to the future of orthopedic surgery and to improving patient care through the development of leading-edge precision technology. THINK Surgical, Inc. develops, manufactures and markets active robotics for hip and knee replacement surgery and maintains an open implant library, allowing surgeons maximum choice for their patients. For more information, please visit www.thinksurgical.com. Sheri Hensley [email protected] C. 510-602-0951 SOURCE THINK Surgical, Inc. Related Links http://www.thinksurgical.com It was a busy news week in our community. Among the stories Mainstreet Daily News covered were: ITHACA, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the 20 finalists for year two of Grow-NY, a food innovation and agriculture technology business challenge focused on enhancing the emerging food, beverage and agriculture innovation cluster in Central New York, the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier. "New York State is committed to supporting our world-renowned food and agricultural industry," Governor Cuomo said. "Once again, the Grow-NY competition has attracted a group of diverse, innovative entrepreneurs who are ready to focus on finding new, innovative ways to further transform this critical industry. It is through targeted efforts like Grow-NY that we will continue to bolster these regional economies, fostering statewide growth as we work to build back better." In all, 264 startups applied from 27 countries including Israel, Germany, and Argentina. In the U.S., 26 states were represented, including 98 entries from New York. 29% of applicants included a female founder and 32% included a founder from an underrepresented minority group. A panel of 30 independent judges comprising the spectrum of food, beverage and agriculture businesses and academics reviewed all the applications to determine the top 20 finalists that will pitch their business plans at the Grow-NY Food and Ag Summit this November. Grow-NY will award a total of $3 million in prize money to seven winners. This includes a $1 million top prize, two $500,000 prizes and four $250,000 prizes. The 20 selected finalists include: AgTrace , Florianopolis, Brazil Provides a traceability solution that incorporates farming information and captures, stores and processes data while connecting stakeholders , Florianopolis, Provides a traceability solution that incorporates farming information and captures, stores and processes data while connecting stakeholders ARPAC , Porto Alegro, Brazil Creates and integrates heavy-lifting drones that apply pesticides in a fast and localized manner, with uniformity and precision , Porto Alegro, Creates and integrates heavy-lifting drones that apply pesticides in a fast and localized manner, with uniformity and precision Asarasi , Katonah, NY Recovers the wasted 97% maple water by-products of the maple industry, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional bottled water , Recovers the wasted 97% maple water by-products of the maple industry, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional bottled water brytlife foods , Kerhonkson, NY Crafts sustainably sourced vegan artisanal cheese and yogurt with next level nutrition from 100% plants , Crafts sustainably sourced vegan artisanal cheese and yogurt with next level nutrition from 100% plants Candidus , Hull, GA Develops cost-effective supplemental lighting strategies and control systems for commercial greenhouse operations , Develops cost-effective supplemental lighting strategies and control systems for commercial greenhouse operations Crystal Creek Organics , Rochester NY Converts soluble phosphorous in liquid manure into a non-soluble, revenue-generating, solid by-product , Converts soluble phosphorous in liquid manure into a non-soluble, revenue-generating, solid by-product FreshSource , Giza, Egypt Empowers smallholder farmers by connecting them to fair, modern and transparent markets , Giza, Empowers smallholder farmers by connecting them to fair, modern and transparent markets Halomine , Ithaca, NY Develops anti-microbial products to ensure the safety of our food supply , Develops anti-microbial products to ensure the safety of our food supply InnerPlant , Davis, CA Genetically transforms plants into living sensors to increase yield and reduce agrochemical waste , Genetically transforms plants into living sensors to increase yield and reduce agrochemical waste Leep Foods , Rochester, NY Grows premium organic mushrooms using regenerative soil methods on nutrient-enriched American hardwoods for consumers and restaurants , Grows premium organic mushrooms using regenerative soil methods on nutrient-enriched American hardwoods for consumers and restaurants Nordetect , Copenhagen, Denmark Provides rapid chemical analysis for nutrients in the AgriFood industry , Provides rapid chemical analysis for nutrients in the AgriFood industry Norwhey , Ithaca, NY Transforms New York state's yogurt whey into delicious and sustainable alcoholic beverages , Transforms New York state's yogurt whey into delicious and sustainable alcoholic beverages PittMoss , Ambridge, PA Produces a next generation growing media that is proven to grow bigger, stronger plants than most peat-based mixes , Produces a next generation growing media that is proven to grow bigger, stronger plants than most peat-based mixes PureSpace , Busan, South Korea Extends shelf-life and improves food safety by decomposing ethylene gas, airborne mold, and viruses effectively and efficiently , Extends shelf-life and improves food safety by decomposing ethylene gas, airborne mold, and viruses effectively and efficiently Re-Nuble , New York, NY Transforms food waste into industrial-grade, water soluble, organic hydroponic nutrients for soilless farming , Transforms food waste into industrial-grade, water soluble, organic hydroponic nutrients for soilless farming Ripe.io , New York, NY Provides a platform to access transparent and reliable information on the origin, journey, and quality of one's food , Provides a platform to access transparent and reliable information on the origin, journey, and quality of one's food Simply Good Jars , Philadelphia, PA Expands access to sustainable, restaurant quality meals in a convenient, pre-packaged format , Expands access to sustainable, restaurant quality meals in a convenient, pre-packaged format SoFresh , Pleasant Prairie, WI Manufactures a unique packaging material with an organic vapor to extend the shelf life of fresh bread , Manufactures a unique packaging material with an organic vapor to extend the shelf life of fresh bread Soos Technology , Kidron, Israel Mitigates male-chick culling by transforming male chickens into egg-laying females , Kidron, Mitigates male-chick culling by transforming male chickens into egg-laying females Zetifi , New South Wales, Australia Enables farmers to access fast and reliable connectivity across the entirety of their property "We decided to double down on the relationships that we have with incubators, accelerators, university programs, and food and ag organizations across the globe to cast a wide net of awareness around the competition. As a result, we've seen a strong turnout, including many international entrepreneurs," said Jenn Smith, program director for Grow-NY. "We're grateful that, through the program, we can provide a much-needed ladder to help startups climb high, creating new, high-quality jobs at a time when they are urgently needed. We're eager to see which companies will win the prize money this year and hit the ground running." All finalists will receive: Dedicated mentorship from a hand-selected business advisor; Additional pitch training to hone their live pitches for the judges; Business development support and workshops to connect them to potential partners and opportunities; Networking introductions, business tours, and valuable appointments for finalist team representatives. The Grow-NY Food and Ag Summit attracted more than 900 attendees last year and, to align with safety guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the event will be held virtually this year on Nov. 17 and 18. Finalists will still have the opportunity to pitch their business plans and answer questions from a live panel of judges. Attendees can also experience a symposium featuring a series of panels discussing the biggest issues facing the food and agriculture industry. Registration is now available, and the event is free and open to the public. "In transforming this year's Grow-NY Food and Ag Summit into a virtual, we have intentionally created multiple networking opportunities where growers, start-ups, established businesses and influencers can connect," said Smith. "Food, beverage and agriculture innovation in the Grow-NY region is thriving and we are excited to draw new companies into the ecosystem by creating a welcoming environment for strong partnerships." Judges will base final award decisions on the following five criteria: Viability of Commercialization and Business Model the potential for the entrant to generate revenue and maintain a cost structure that allows for a competitive and sustainable business, demonstrate technological readiness, or innovate to fulfill its value proposition; the potential for the entrant to generate revenue and maintain a cost structure that allows for a competitive and sustainable business, demonstrate technological readiness, or innovate to fulfill its value proposition; Customer Value the degree to which the entrant is providing something for which customers are willing to pay, and addressing a substantial market; the degree to which the entrant is providing something for which customers are willing to pay, and addressing a substantial market; Food and Agriculture Innovation the extent to which the entrant is pushing what's considered state-of-the-art in the food and agriculture industries, and contributing to Upstate NY's status as a global leader in innovation in these markets; the extent to which the entrant is pushing what's considered state-of-the-art in the food and agriculture industries, and contributing to Upstate NY's status as a global leader in innovation in these markets; Regional Job Creation the potential for creating high-quality jobs in the Grow-NY footprint; and the potential for creating high-quality jobs in the Grow-NY footprint; and Team the quality and completeness of the team and its readiness to deliver. Cornell University's Center for Regional Economic Advancement is administering the competition and Empire State Development is providing funding for the Grow-NY competition through its Upstate Revitalization Initiative connected with the three regions - CNY Rising, Finger Lakes Forward and Southern Tier Soaring. The winner will be required to make a positive economic impact in the Grow-NY region which features counties within Central NY, the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier of New York State where there are vibrant farmlands as well as several major urban centers, including Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, Geneva and Binghamton. The winning business will help contribute to job growth, connect with local industry partners and contribute to a thriving economy. To learn more about the finalists and mentors, and to learn more and register for the Summit, visit grow-ny.com. About Empire State Development Empire State Development (ESD) promotes a vigorous and growing state economy, encourages business investment and job creation, and supports diverse, prosperous local economies across New York State through the efficient use of loans, grants, tax credits, real estate development, marketing and other forms of assistance. To learn more about ESD visit https://esd.ny.gov. About the Cornell Center for Regional Economic Advancement The Cornell Center for Regional Economic Advancement (CREA) supports economic impact in Upstate New York through entrepreneurship and innovation. We help people advance ideas that will create jobs in all fields in our region, to enrich the area's economic diversity. To learn more, visit https://crea.cornell.edu. Contact: Jenny LePore, [email protected] SOURCE Center for Regional Economic Advancement, Cornell University Related Links https://crea.cornell.edu Swing voters in three swing states prefer Joe Biden over President Trump on health care and the coronavirus but those aren't their most important issues, according to the latest KFF-Cook Political Report poll. The big picture: The economy is the most important issue to these voters, and they give the advantage there to Trump. But Biden dominates the next tier of issues in this poll of swing voters in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina. Details: Between 32% and 38% of swing voters in the three states picked the economy as their most important issue, far ahead of health care, policing, or the coronavirus, and they gave Trump a 7-12-point lead over Biden on the economy. But Biden has a 7-11 point lead with voters on the coronavirus, and a 7-9 point lead on health. Also in Bidens favor. Swing voters in these states are younger, and are largely political moderates and independents. Between the lines: The election is more about President Trump than it is a deep dive into issues. But the issues do matter. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:29:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JERUSALEM, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel's leading airline El Al announced on Thursday the gradual resumption of international flights. The airline stopped its regular flights in late March, about a month after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Israel, and has since postponed the resumption of flights several times. Now, the company has announced that it prepares for a gradual resumption of passenger flights starting Oct. 1, and of cargo flights starting Sept. 21. At first, a limited number of passenger flights to the United States and to Europe will be operated, as well as cargo flights to the Far East. On Aug. 16, Israel began to gradually open its skies to international flights as part of easing the strict restrictions imposed for months to curb the spread of the pandemic. On Friday, Israel will re-impose a full nationwide closure, due to the recent spike in morbidity. However, Ben Gurion international airport near the coastal city of Tel Aviv will remain open, with scheduled flights not being canceled. Enditem SELBYVILLE, Del., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on Global Market Insights Inc.'s report, the global glycidol market was estimated at $130 million in 2019, and valuation is slated to surpass $180.52 million by 2026, registering a CAGR of 4.9% from 2020 to 2026. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the wavering industry trends, key winning strategies, competitive scenarios, market estimations, as well as size, drivers and opportunities, and key investment avenues. Global Market Insights, Inc. The demand for global glycidol products is increasing rapidly due to the increasing occurrences of infection transmitted diseases like COVID-19. Furthermore, the rapidly increasing product applications in manufacturing surface-active compounds like shampoos, moisturizers, and skin creams among many others are likely to boost the glycidol market demand over the coming years. Request for Sample Report: https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/4818 In terms of grade, glycidol with a purity of 97% and 96% is slated to grow at a CAGR of more than 5.1% over the forecast time period. This growth is ascribed to its increasing applications in the production of epoxy and vinyl polymers. Moreover, increasing usage of the product as a solvent in manufacturing paints will further drive the glycidol market growth. Furthermore, rising demand for different kinds of paint from the construction and automotive sectors is expected to also boost the segmental growth. With respect to the distribution channels, the online distribution channel is likely to witness substantial growth over the coming years. Consumers prefer online channels for purchasing these products due to the options online channels offer that help consumers compare prices of various products and the simplicity of the purchase process. Consequently, numerous distributors have registered themselves across online trading sites for facilitating a much better shopping experience for customers. Meanwhile, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to changing consumer perception towards the importance of personal health & hygiene. This is further expected to increase the demand for disinfectants and detergents, thereby increasing glycidol market growth opportunities. Key reasons for glycidol market growth: Rising adoption in the paints application segment. Rapidly growing personal care sector in Europe . Increasing demand from the pharmaceutical sector. 2026 estimates anticipate the 'biocides' application segment showing appreciative growth: In terms of application, the biocides application segment is likely to reach a valuation of approximately $5.5 million by the end of the analysis time period. Rapidly increasing applications of the product in the production of biocides and pharmaceutical drugs is likely to drive the industry growth over the coming years. Moreover, rising cases of healthcare-related infections and the growing need to utilize antiseptics for treating infections in mucous membranes and damaged skin is further propelling the demand for biocides, ensuring industry growth. North America and Europe to witness remunerative growth: The glycidol market in North America is likely to reach a valuation of approximately $50 million by the end of the analysis time frame. The region is slated to grow at a CAGR of more than 5.0% over the forecast time period to reach the valuation. North America is likely to witness this strong growth due to the rapidly growing pharmaceutical sector across the region. Europe's glycidol market is slated to reach a valuation of nearly $35 million by the end of the analysis timeline. This growth is ascribed to the rising consumer awareness towards personal grooming to look much more presentable. This trend is further highlighted by the fact that, in 2019, the European cosmetics and personal care market was the largest across the globe, with a valuation of nearly $94.46 billion. Subsequently, the surging use of cosmetic products especially among women over the last few years is expected to prominently contribute towards the growth of the market in Europe. Request for customization of this report: https://www.gminsights.com/roc/4818 Leading market players: Prominent market players analyzed in the market report include LGC Group, FUJIFILM WAKO PURE CHEMICAL CORPORATION, HBCChem, Acros Organics, Meryer (Shanghai) Chemical Technology, KANTO CHEMICAL CO. INC., and Nacalai Tesque among many others. They have incorporated several strategies including partnerships, expansions, collaborations, joint ventures, and others to heighten their stand in the industry. Related Reports: Polyvinyl Alcohol Films Market Future Business Strategies and Revenue Impact Analysis - 2026 Sodium Silicate Market Future Business Strategies and Competitive Analysis - 2024 About Global Market Insights, Inc. Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider. Offering syndicated and custom research reports, growth consulting, and business intelligence services, Global Market Insights, Inc. aims to help clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data that aid in strategic decision-making. GMIPulse, our business analytics platform, offers an online, interactive option of exploring our proprietary industry research data in an easy-to-use and dynamic manner. Clients get to explore market intelligence across 11 top-level categories and hundreds of industry segments within them, covering regional, company level, and cross-sectional statistics that make our offering a stand-out for decision-makers. Contact Us: Arun Hegde Corporate Sales USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc. Phone: 1-302-846-7766 Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.gminsights.com Related Images glycidol-market-statistics-2026.jpg SOURCE Global Market Insights, Inc. Competition tsar Rod Sims will not change key elements of a draft regulatory code that would force Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for their content, despite pressure from the tech giants to water it down. Mr Sims said arbitration and non-discrimination rules were the "glue" holding the news media bargaining code together and would remain in the final version handed to the Morrison government early next month. Rod Sims' moves to find a solution to some of the problems created by the power of big tech platforms are gaining global attention. Credit:Edwina Pickles "The code will change. It's a draft. A draft is meant to elicit comment and we've got a lot of comment," Mr Sims said during a digital panel hosted by The Australia Institute. "But the core of the code can't change. You need an arbitration mechanism. You need a non-discrimination clause. They are the bits of glue that hold the code together that make it workable." Delays to General Motors' sale of its Indian plant to Great Wall Motor due to tensions between India and China are likely to result in hefty unplanned costs for the U.S. automaker, people familiar with the matter said. Gaining Indian government approval for China-related deals is now expected to take quite some time and although the sale should still happen at some point, GM has not changed its plan to begin winding down the plant's operations next month, they said. "By next year, it will either be a closed GM site or it will be an operating site with Great Wall," said one source. GM had planned to use the expected sale proceeds of $250 million-$300 million to pay off liabilities incurred with its exit from manufacturing in India in what a second source said would have been a "no gain-no loss" situation. Although money will come through once the deal is done, it will now have to pay out of pocket for severance pay, some of which would never have occurred had the deal proceeded smoothly, as well as other costs - which could amount to a couple hundred million dollars, according to the second source. Sources also said severance pay costs could be much higher than usual due to lack of clarity about the deal's prospects and workers' demands for greater relief given the low chances of finding new jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. The sources were not authorised to discuss the deal and spoke on condition of anonymity. GM stopped selling in the world's second most populous nation at the end of 2017 after years of low sales but the factory continues to build vehicles for export. Located in the western state of Maharashtra, the plant employs about 4,000. If workers don't agree to the severance offered, GM will need local government clearance to lay off staff. That is often a long, bureaucratic process which could help stoke worker protests or political opposition, the sources said. GM said in a statement it continues to work toward ending production at the plant and closing the deal with Great Wall. Great Wall did not respond to a request for comment. ENSNARED IN TENSIONS The sale was announced in January and had been slated to close in the second half of 2020. Just when it might proceed remains highly uncertain. In April, India introduced stricter rules for investments from China and other neighbouring countries aimed at preventing pandemic-hit Indian companies being taken over at bargain prices. A number of central government ministries are now required to sign off on the deal, instead of just Maharashtra state. Then in June, a deadly border clash between the two nations resulted in a further clampdown on Chinese businesses and Maharashtra put three investment proposals from Chinese companies, including Great Wall's, on hold. Further complicating matters, GM and Great Wall did not seek central government approval until late July, the sources said. Investment proposals from Chinese companies are unlikely to be approved until tension at the border dissipates, two central government officials told Reuters. India's finance and commerce ministries did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Great Wall "now feels it is impossible to finish the transaction this year," a company source said. The hold-up has made the Chinese automaker nervous as it had planned to launch its first India-made car in the first half of 2021, said a separate person aware of the plans. The company, which plans to invest $1 billion in India, has started hiring staff, including executives to run the plant, and is in talks with auto parts suppliers, the person said. But even after the central government greenlights the project, Great Wall will still need more than three months to finalise investment terms with Maharashtra state and to revamp the plant, the person added. 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 DUBLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Crop Protection Chemicals (Pesticides) Market - Canada Industry Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2020 - 2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Canadian crop protection chemicals market is projected to register a CAGR of 2.3%, during the period of 2020-2025 Canadian consumers have greater awareness about the harmful effects of synthetic pesticides in the food they consume, and this has further spurred the demand for natural alternatives to suppress the pest population. More farmers are now relying on biopesticides for crop protection. Owing to this, biopesticides are likely to witness a faster growth in comparison to synthetic chemicals in the country. BASF SE, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta AG, Corteva Agriscience, Nufarm Ltd, and FMC Corporation are the major players in the market. Key Market Trends Need For Improving Productivity by Limiting the Crop Damage The demand for pest management products is being driven by the emergence of new pests and diseases, leading to crop loss. Customers are increasingly looking for targeted and effective solutions to improve the yield. Thus, crop protection is a key strategy adopted by farmers to limit crop damage and enhance productivity. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in 2016, soybeans' yield was 29,557 hg/ha, which decreased to 26,293 hg/ha in 2017 and then amounted to 28,613 hg/ha the next year. This was mainly due to the infestation from two prominent pests namely soybean aphids and two-spotted spider mites (TSSM). The pest incidence was mitigated through the wide application of pesticides, which helped in retrieving the crops. Additionally, in 2019, BASF launched critical insecticide, Sefina, for use in Canadian soybeans and potatoes. Sefina utilizes a unique mode of action, Group 9D active ingredient Inscali, to quickly halt aphid feeding, reducing production losses and virus transmission. Bio-Based Segment Records the Faster Growth Owing to the escalating demand for food safety and quality, biopesticides are gaining popularity over their synthetic counterparts. Although the prevalence of synthetic or chemical pesticides continues, emerging preference for biological pesticides was observed in recent years in the country primarily due to the rapidity in the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, such as integrated pest management (IPM) techniques and organic farming. According to the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, organic land area in 2018 was 1.31million ha which has increased from 1.19 million ha the previous year. Furthermore growing consumer concern over the safety food is driving the organic products which lead to the use of biopesticides than to chemicals. Owing to the demand for bio-based products the companies are introducing new products in the market studied. For instance, in 2017, in collaboration with Bio-ferm, Nufarm launched a bio fungicide, Botector in Canada for the horticulture segment. Competitive Landscape Canada crop protection chemical market is a highly consolidated market. Bayer, BASF, Corteva Agriscience, and Syngenta AG are some of the major players who are operating in this market. The major players in the market are competing to hold a consistent share in the market. Mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, expansions, and product launches are some of the major business strategies adopted by the aforementioned major players. Key Topics Covered: 1 INTRODUCTION 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 MARKET DYNAMICS 4.1 Market Overview 4.2 Market Drivers 4.3 Market Restraints 4.4 Porter's Five Force Analysis 5 MARKET SEGMENTATION 5.1 Chemical Origin 5.1.1 Synthetic 5.1.2 Bio-Based 5.2 Product Type 5.2.1 Insecticides 5.2.2 Fungicides 5.2.3 Herbicide 5.2.4 Others 5.3 Crop Type 5.3.1 Grains and Cereals 5.3.2 Pulses and Oilseeds 5.3.3 Fruits and Vegetables 5.3.4 Turf and Ornamentals 6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE 6.1 Most Adopted Competitor Strategies 6.2 Market Share Analysis 6.3 Company Profiles 6.3.1 Syngenta 6.3.2 Bayer CropScience AG 6.3.3 BASF SE 6.3.4 Corteva Agriscience 6.3.5 FMC Corporation 6.3.6 Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd 6.3.7 UPL Limited 6.3.8 Nufarm 7 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS 8 IMPACT OF COVID-19 For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/b4ugoh Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com Making space weather forecasts faster and better In August 1859, a massive solar storm knocked out the global telegraph system. Some telegraph operators were hit by electric shocks; others saw sparks flying from cable pylons. Telegraph transmissions were halted for days. The damage was due to a geomagnetic storm caused by a series of coronal mass ejections--giant bursts from the sun's surface--that raced across the solar system and saturated Earth's atmosphere with magnetic solar energy. If a solar storm of similar scale occurred today, it would cause worldwide blackouts, massive network failures and widespread damage to the satellites that enable GPS and telecommunication. Worse still, it would threaten human health due to increased levels of radiation. The arrival and intensity of these solar storms can be difficult to predict. To improve the ability to forecast space weather, a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including Professor Boris Kramer at the University of California San Diego, received $3.1 million from the National Science Foundation. The researchers, led by Professor Richard Linares at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will also work on speeding up the forecasting abilities that are currently available. Speeding up forecasts "Space weather models often need to be evaluated rather quickly, for example when they are used for control of satellites, so I am excited to contribute with new data-driven reduced-order modeling approaches to this overall goal, and make space weather models not only better, but also faster," said Kramer, who is part of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. The algorithms for complex space weather models that Kramer will develop will speed up the time it takes to execute the models' simulations and lead to real-time estimations. As a result, decision makers will have real-time information to make sure satellites avoid collisions. The project will also improve satellite navigation overall. Making forecasts more accurate "A second big issue are the massive uncertainties that weather, and here specifically space weather, is subject to," he added. "There are so many parameters we don't know well, or can't measure in outer space. Our work here at UC San Diego will help tell us what uncertainties are present in our computed, predicted weather simulations, given that there are so many inputs that are uncertain. I am excited to work with the MIT Haystack Observatory to get high-quality data of the ionosphere that we can use to calibrate our predictions." Kramer will develop theory and multifidelity algorithms to quantify the uncertainty in space weather models. The goal is to at least match the accuracy of the models that predict hurricanes, which include a likely path and an estimate of other areas where hurricanes could be headed. Researchers want to be able to predict a likely path for a solar storm, for example, and also draw a cone around that path, showing the other areas it might be headed to instead. Powerful software platform The team, which also includes researchers at the University of Michigan, will create a powerful, flexible software platform using cutting-edge computational tools to collect and analyze huge sets of observational data that can be easily shared and reproduced among researchers. The platform will also be designed to work even as computer technology rapidly advances and new researchers contribute to the project from new places, using new machines. Using Julia, a high-performance programming language developed by Professor Alan Edelman at MIT, researchers from all over the world will be able to tailor the software for their own purposes to contribute their data without having to rewrite the program from scratch. The grant is part of a $17 million, three-year effort by NSF and NASA to expand the nation's space weather prediction capabilities. "Space weather involves intricate interactions between the sun, the solar wind, Earth's magnetic field and Earth's atmosphere," said Jim Spann, the space weather lead for NASA's heliophysics division at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Our ability to understand the sun-Earth system is of growing importance to economies, national security, and our society as it increasingly depends on technology. NASA and NSF through this program enable the operational organizations, NOAA and the Department of Defense, to incorporate that understanding into operational models and space weather predictions to better prepare us for potential impacts." ### This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. In this Nov. 4, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump greets Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., on stage during a campaign rally in Lexington, Ky. The paperback edition of McConnells The Long Game includes a foreword from Trump. In the foreword, Trump praises the Kentucky Republican as an ideal partner in confirming conservative judges, notably Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Read more When a precocious twentysomething named William Stickman IV wrote letters to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the early 2000s attacking the "leftist sharks' angered by then-Sen. Rick Santorums equating of homosexuality to incest and accusing the paper of anti-Catholic bias in its coverage of priest abuse scandals, the youth wasnt just showing off. Stickman was arguably showing he had what it takes to be a part of a future surge in young white male right-wing federal judges under President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Less than 14 months after Stickman now 41, whod been a Pittsburgh attorney and GOP activist won a lifetime appointment as a federal district judge in western Pennsylvania in a mostly party-line Senate vote, the young jurist showed both the state and America exactly how Trump and McConnells extreme makeover of the federal judiciary could determine the fate of U.S. democracy for decades, even if voters reject Trump in November. On Monday, Stickman stunned many legal scholars in siding with Republican lawmakers and GOP-led counties in striking down Gov. Wolfs strict spring lockdown orders over the coronavirus as unconstitutional, even as some health experts have hailed for saving thousands of Pennsylvania lives as the pandemic ravaged neighboring states. The judge opined that a solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American experiment. Never mind that constitutional experts found the legal foundation for Stickmans ruling more than a little shaky. The ruling relied heavily on a much-maligned 115-year-old pro-business ruling thats been largely undercut and arguably overturned over the last century, and even leaned on a dissent (i.e., a losing argument) by conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The judge (who, for what its worth, during his confirmation said his 2003 Santorum letter was inarticulate and no longer stands by it) amplified a key pro-Trump talking point on the pandemic in Pennsylvania, the state that may be the decider in the 2020 race. And perhaps more importantly, Stickmans controversial ruling also offered an early and arguably frightening window into how more than 200 conservative federal judges confirmed during Trumps term nearly 70% of them white men, many in their 30s or early 40s could rule deep into the 21st century on issues such as climate change, workers' rights, expanded government health care, and womens reproductive rights. Indeed, with the polls currently predicting that Trump would lose to Democrat Joe Biden, McConnells GOP-led Senate has been racing as fast as it can to install even more right-wing judges. It confirmed six more Trump nominations on Tuesday and Wednesday, even as senators fail to act on more pressing matters such as extending federal relief for millions of jobless Americans, or bailing out the U.S. Postal Service before an election in which many will vote by mail. Whats more, Trump and McConnells judicial makeover including 53 new appellate judges, none of them Black, with only one Latinx could lead to rulings on voting issues between now and November that could help the president win a second term, during which hed have a chance to name scores of additional jurists. Arguably thats already happened in Florida, where Trump and George W. Bush appointees on the 11th Circuit provided all of the votes for a 6-4 ruling uphold a state law to make former felons pay court costs before casting a 2020 ballot, which will impact hundreds of thousands of would-be votes in a Trump-Biden toss-up state. READ MORE: Mitch McConnells democracy-crushing smirk is why just getting rid of Trump isnt enough | Will Bunch All of this raises two big questions for Democrats. The first is political: With the election little more than six weeks away, why isnt the Biden campaign making a bigger deal over the issue of naming new judges especially the highest-profile example that a second term might give Trump a chance to replace two aging liberal justices on the Supreme Court, including 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? The second revolves around policy and is a lot more complicated. If Biden and the Democrats can retake both the White House and the Senate in November, are there any moves they can make to somehow counteract the influence of the Trumpian judicial surge, to prevent a situation where the will of voters in a younger and possibly more progressive electorate is routinely blocked from the bench by conservatives, even into the 2050s and 60s. The issue has been simmering below the surface for the last year. During the Democratic primaries, candidate Pete Buttigieg caused a stir with a proposal to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court from the current nine to 15 chosen in a new bipartisan system an idea to appeal to liberal voters who rightly feel that McConnell stole a High Court pick from Barack Obama in 2016 and still seethe over the 2018 confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But while the number of justices isnt fixed in the Constitution and has in fact changed over the years, the idea is a highly loaded one politically then-popular President Franklin Roosevelt failed in spectacular fashion when he tried this, for similar reasons, in the 1930s and unlikely to succeed. Ditto the notion of term limits for Supreme Court justices, which would require a constitutional amendment that makes it seemingly a non-starter. Also, those ideas do nothing about the increasingly dense thicket of right-wing justices such as Stickman in the district and appellate courts. Here, the Democrats have an option for 2021 and beyond thats received virtually no campaign attention but could have a huge impact on future policy: A long-overdue expansion of these lower courts. Throughout U.S. history, the number of federal judgeships had steadily increased to keep up with both a growing population and a higher caseload, but that process has ground to halt since 1990, as partisan gridlock began to take deeper root in Washington. The progressive group Demand Justice has backed expansion of the lower courts by at least 70 new district judges thats in line with a bipartisan proposal by Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and possibly by more. In a recent op-ed, Demand Justice co-founders Brian Fallon and Christopher Kang noted that a similar expansion in the late 1970s allowed Jimmy Carter to name a large number of non-white and women to a judiciary that had been the province of white men for 200 years. This 30-year drought has been our longest period of time without comprehensive lower court expansion, which is necessary for good government, Kang a former top White House attorney under Obama told me. "The ability of our courts to effectively administer justice requires more judges. The group has also called for Democrats to promote broader diversity if Biden and Democratic senators have to opportunity to confirm new judges not just around race and gender but also through more nominees with a social-justice background and fewer from the corporate world. Biden, for his part, has promised to name the first-ever Black woman to the Supreme Court if presented that opportunity. That would be a powerful and long-overdue move, and yet the possibility of replacing a Ginsburg already the courts most powerful liberal voice with a progressive from a more diverse background wont address the deeper threat of ideological gridlock as Trumps 200-plus judges thwart Democratic legislation. In todays warped political atmosphere, a Democratic push for what once would have been a routine bill to expand the lower courts would surely be greeted with howls of partisan power grab! from the far-right punditocracy that same voices that were silent when McConnell went to unprecedented lengths to deny even a public hearing to a Supreme Court nominee (Merrick Garland) by Americas first Black president. The often-cowed Democrats need to summon the courage to fight for this reform as the very minimum. Thats assuming the party can win this fall an effort that might be helped if they remind voters of the stakes around wholl be picking our judges between now and 2025, when it may be too late to save American democracy if Trump and Constitution-shredding Attorney General William Barr get those four more years. Judge Stickmans legally unhinged ruling on Pennsylvanias COVID-19 restrictions may or may not have a huge impact on the future of the pandemic, but it should be a dire warning for the future of America. READ MORE: SIGN UP: The Will Bunch Newsletter A woman in her 20s from Sydney's inner city has scooped the entire $60 million jackpot in Thursday night's Powerball draw. The woman initially said "this has to be some kind of joke" when told she was the only division-one winner, and was an instant multi-millionaire. The woman said she would take her family on an overseas holiday when the pandemic was over. "Are you joking?" the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told officials. "I'm trying to compose myself. I feel like this has to be some kind of joke. NEW YORK The parent of Dunkin Donuts on Tuesday agreed to upgrade its security protocols and pay $650,000 in fines and costs to settle a lawsuit by New Yorks attorney general claiming it ignored cyberattacks that compromised the online accounts of tens of thousands of customers. Attorney General Letitia James said Dunkin Brands Group Inc will notify customers affected by the attacks between 2015 and 2018, reset their passwords, and provide refunds for unauthorized use of their Dunkin-branded stored value cards. The settlement resolves a civil lawsuit filed last Sept. 26 in a New York state court in Manhattan, and requires a judges approval. Dunkin did not admit or deny wrongdoing. The case arose after hackers began in early 2015 using previously stolen user names and passwords to conduct automated brute force and credential stuffing attacks, and steal tens of thousands of dollars from accounts created through Dunkins website or free mobile app. James said the Canton, Massachusetts-based company did nothing for years to address the compromised accounts despite repeated alerts from its own app developer, including when it identified 19,715 customers targeted over a five-day period. The attorney general also said Dunkin failed to adopt safeguards against future attacks despite reports of continuing fraud. She said that came to roost in late 2018, when more than 300,000 customer accounts were accessed in new attacks. For years, Dunkin hid the truth and failed to protect the security of its customers, who were left paying the bill, James said. Its time to make amends and finally fill the holes in Dunkins cybersecurity. In a separate statement, Dunkin said the cyberattacks potentially affected less than 1% of its Perks Loyalty members, and the hackers had no access to credit card information. We have taken steps to make sure that any stored value cards associated with [digital customers] accounts are protected and secure, it added. SPS Olivier Brunet, SPS Marketing Director, declares: We are proud not only to have achieved more than one billion eBooster inductive coupling platforms but also, and even more importantly, we reached this milestone thanks to a permanent and successful collaboration with card manufacturers. After fifteen years of existence and evolutions, SPS eBooster inductive coupling technology is now used by more than 150 card manufacturers worldwide making it a standard in the smart card and documents industry. While one billion eBooster inductive coupling platforms have already been shipped by SPS, the company is now on a trend to deliver 320 million eBooster platforms in 2020, that is almost one million per day! Card manufacturers that integrate SPS eBooster inductive coupling technology acknowledge its advantages in terms of reliability and ease of integration in their manufacturing process. Working in a permanent connection with card manufacturers, SPS actively supports them in making the best of the technology. As of now, the payment card market segment has understood the numerous advantages of SPS technology for dual interface cards, capable of communicating in contact or contactless mode. More than 870 million payment cards on the field worldwide are based on SPS eBooster technology. Card manufacturers have already obtained over 1,500 certifications (Letter of Approval) from card schemes for payment cards using SPS platforms. More than 500 financial institutions worldwide are using SPS platforms for their banking cards. SPS eBooster inductive coupling technology has also gained a high recognition in the ID document market: at present, more than 170 million ID documents in more than 53 projects worldwide include SPS technology. Already 13 governments have decided to adopt SPS technology for their ePassports and 13 nations issue their national ID cards with SPS eBooster technology. Other projects include residence permits, eDriving licenses, healthcare cards, and corporate or government ID. In the eID segment, SPS inductive coupling platforms are embedded in dual interface (single-chip contact and contactless communication), contactless or hybrid (contact and contactless communication with two chips) ID documents. The first mass-deployed SPS eBooster inductive coupling platforms were delivered in 2006 for the Morocco national ID card for the ID segment, and in 2007 for the deployment of contactless payment cards in Australia for the payment segment. Since these times, SPS has been working in a permanent connection with card manufacturers on evolutions and improvements of the technology. Over the years, micromodules and inlays are smaller, significantly increasing card vendors competitiveness. The latest generation of eBooster technology now covers all card vendor needs. For instance multiple materials, PVC, PET and polycarbonate are now compatible with SPS eBooster technology, and the company is on an evolution path to proposing ecofriendly materials both for the payment and ID segments. In addition, for ID, SPS recently introduced its polycarbonate ePassport data page. In order to effectively serve all customer factories, SPS has also doubled its production capacity every two years. Olivier Brunet, SPS Marketing Director, declares, We are proud not only to have achieved more than one billion eBooster inductive coupling platforms but also, and even more importantly, we reached this milestone thanks to a permanent and successful collaboration with card manufacturers. Inductive coupling technology, which consists in using electromagnetic coupling between the antenna and the module (no physical connection between the chip and the antenna), is easy to integrate for all smart card manufacturers. They can keep on using the same equipment for contactless or dual interface cards as the one they have been using for contact cards, thus reducing their capital expenditures. With SPS eBooster inductive coupling technology, card manufacturers are able to produce all types of cards: contactless cards, dual interface cards, hybrid cards and contact cards, using the same equipment and the same process. This fact brings them not only huge savings in terms of production costs, but also a simplification of their logistics, while allowing them to provide their customers with an extensively diverse offer. High yields and insignificant return rates ensure that the whole process is extremely cost-effective and brings a high level of satisfaction for the issuers. About SPS With the SPS brand, IN Groupe opens its secure components technology to all card and document manufacturers. SPS is specialized in the design, manufacturing and sale of contactless solutions dedicated to ID cards, e-passport and dual interface banking cards. Headquartered in Rousset, France, with a subsidiary in Singapore, SPS employs 200 people. The company specializes in contactless and dual-interface products, with a recognized micro packaging expertise. SPS has filed over 120 patents supporting its exclusive technologies. More information at http://www.s-p-s.com SPS is part of the IN Groupe. A partner of the French government for close to 500 years, IN Groupe offers identity solutions and secure digital services, at the leading edge of technology and integrating electronics and biometrics. From components to services and from documents to interoperable systems, IN Groupe is a global specialist in identity and secure digital services. The company plays a daily role in facilitating everyone's life: helping states exercise their sovereignty, citizens protect their identity and businesses preserve their integrity. Whatever the challenge, IN Groupe, a company for digital sovereignty, contributes to asserting a fundamental right for everyone: the right to be you. IN Groupe runs three affiliated brands, SPS for electronic components, Surys for optical and holographic security and Nexus for workforce identity and object identity solutions, technological leaders in their markets. Key figures: 407M turnover (proforma 2019), 1,500 employees - 7 sites in Europe - +100 countries using IN Groupe solutions - 28 partner governments. Follow us on: https://www.ingroupe.com NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, TO ANY PERSON LOCATED OR RESIDENT IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, JAPAN, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH AFRICA, HONG KONG, SWITZERLAND, SINGAPORE OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFULOR REQUIRE REGISTRATION OR ANY OTHER MEASURES. THIS COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR BUY ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN. Company Announcement no. 13/2020 (17.09.2020) Reference is made to Company Announcement no. 10/2020 and 12/2020 regarding the announcement and successful completion of a written procedure initiated by European Energy A/S (the "Company") to amend the terms and conditions of the Company's outstanding EUR 200,000,000 Senior Secured Callable Floating Rate Green Bonds 2019/2023 (ISIN: DK0030448238) so as to include a permission for the Company to issue subordinated debt instruments and other matters related thereto as further set out in the notice for written procedure dated 31 August 2020 (the "Notice for Written Procedure"). Terms defined in the Notice for Written Procedure have the same meaning in this Company Announcement unless otherwise defined herein. Pursuant to the Written Resolution adopted by the Bondholders, the Amended Terms and Conditions shall become effective on the Effective Date specified by the Company in accordance with Section 3.2 (Effective Date) of the Notice for Written Procedure. The Company hereby announces that the Company has specified the Effective Date to be on 18 September 2020. The Amended Terms and Conditions are attached to this Company Announcement and are also available at the Company's website: www.europeanenergy.com . Please note that the Amended Terms and Conditions also include the conditional amendment agreed between the Company and the Agent pursuant to an amendment agreement dated 3 September 2020 as previously announced in Company Announcement no. 11/2020. Early Voting Fee Following the occurrence of the Effective Date, Bondholders who had submitted a valid Voting Instruction to the Consent Solicitation Agents prior to the Early Voting Fee Deadline (5 pm (CEST) on 8 September 2020) are entitled to receive the Early Voting Fee, whether they have voted for or against the Proposal. The Early Voting Fee will be paid by the Company via the Paying Agent no later than ten (10) Business Days after the Effective Date to the Bondholders entitled to receive such fee to the bank account identified by the relevant Bondholder in such Bondholder's Voting Instruction. For questions relating to payment of the Early Voting Fee, please contact the Paying Agent at the following e-mail address or telephone number: DNB Markets E-mail: karljohan.kulling@dnb.se Telephone: +46 704 93 48 68 Important Regulatory Notice This Company Announcement is for information purposes only and is not an offer to sell or buy any Bonds or Capital Securities. The Bonds and the Capital Securities may not be sold in the United States unless they are registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") or are exempt from registration. The Bonds and the Capital Securities described in this Company Announcement have not been and will not be registered under the Securities Act, and accordingly any offer or sale of such Bonds and the Capital Securities may be made only in a transaction exempt from registration requirements of the Securities Act. It may be unlawful to distribute this Company Announcement in certain jurisdictions. This Company Announcement is not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or to the United States, Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore or any other jurisdiction where such distribution would be unlawful or require registration or any other measures. For further information, please contact: Company European Energy A/S Jens-Peter Zink, chairman of the board E-mail: jpz@europeanenergy.dk Tel: + 45 20478220 Attachment Keanu Reeves has teased The Matrix 4 in a way fans probably were not expecting, while denying rumours the film is a prequel. The actor appeared on The One Show via a live link on Wednesday (16 September) where he let slip some details about his return as Neo. Reeves started filming on the sequel earlier this year with returning star Carrie Ann Moss and new additions Neil Patrick Harris and Watchmen actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. However, production was shut down in March following the spread of Covid-19. Filming recently got back on track in Berlin, with Reeves stating: Were out here trying to make some magic." When asked about what fans can expect from the Lana Wachowski film, the actor described it as an "inspiring love story" not what you'd expect from such a high concept film series. We have a wonderful director, Lana Wachowski, and she has written a beautiful script that is a love story, its inspiring, Reeves said. Its another version, a call to wake up and it has some great action. All will be revealed. Keanu Reeves as Neo in 'The Matrix' film series (Warner Bros) He also shut down suggestion that the film would be a prequel, saying: No, no. No going in the past. This is the first time Reeves played Neo since The Matrix Revolutions in 2003. The film is expected to be released in 2021 despite delays due to coronavirus. Reeves can currently be seen Bill & Ted Face the Music, which is in select cinemas now. The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), a 'Navratna' Central PSU, has called for applications in a prescribed format from qualified and experienced candidates for filling numerous vacancies to the post of Consultant (Business Development) through direct recruitment on a fulltime basis to be posted at HAL's MIG Complex at New Delhi in India. The offline application process towards the same started on September 15, 2020 and closes on October 14, 2020. CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Consultant (Business Development) Organisation Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Educational Qualification Degree in Engineering or equivalent Experience Refer to the advertisement Job Responsibilities null Skills Required Desirable Job Location New Delhi Salary Scale As per the HAL norms Industry Aeronautics Application Start Date September 15, 2020 Application End Date October 14, 2020 HAL Recruitment 2020: Age Criteria And Fees Candidates interested in applying for the post of Consultant through HAL Recruitment 2020 must not have exceeded 60 years of age as on September 15, 2020 with relaxation (upper age limit) for reserved categories as per the HAL Recruitment notification. For details regarding fee to apply for the post of Consultant through HAL Recruitment 2020, refer to the official HAL Recruitment notification given at the end of the article. Maharashtra Police Bharti 2020: State Likely To Recruit 12,538 Police Constables, Shipais HAL Recruitment 2020: Education And Experience Desirous candidates applying for the post of Consultant through HAL Recruitment 2020 must possess a Degree in Engineering or equivalent from a recognised University/Institute with relevant years of work experience in the concerned area as detailed in the HAL Recruitment notification. HAL Recruitment 2020: Selection And Pay Scale The selection of candidates as Consultants through HAL Recruitment 2020 will be done based on Shortlisting, Interview and Document Verification. Candidates selected as Consultants through HAL Recruitment 2020 will be paid emolument as per the HAL Recruitment norms. BTSC Recruitment 2020 For 3,270 Ayush Medical Officer Posts, Apply Online From September 25 Onwards HAL Recruitment 2020: How To Apply Candidates interested in joining as Consultants through HAL Recruitment 2020 must fill the application form in a prescribed format attached with the advertisement, and send the same along with relevant supporting documents to the "Chief Manager (HR) Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Office of CEO, MiG Complex PO Ojhar Township Nasik - 422207, Maharashtra on or before September 5, 2020" by courier/registered post on or before October 14, 2020. Download HAL Recruitment 2020 PFD Notification for Consultants WASHINGTON -- Scientists and researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), submitted their findings to ACS Nano, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, on their collaboration to develop SARS-CoV-2 nanoparticle probes that are used to study fundamental interactions between SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins and human cells. The manuscript, accepted on Aug. 18, is titled "Quantum Dot-Conjugated SARS-CoV-2 Spike Pseudo-Virions Enable Tracking of Host Cell Surface Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 Binding and Endocytosis." SARS-CoV-2 is known to attach to angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors via its external 'Spike' proteins, which cover the surface, which the virus uses to bind with and enter human cells. "We developed nanoparticle-based pseudo-virions that bind to the host cell and track themselves inside of cells without being contagious," said Eunkeu Oh, Ph.D., an NRL biophysicist. "This opens an opportunity to expand the same strategy to various other infectious diseases." Together with researchers at NCATS, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they worked to develop non-infectious probes to study SARS-CoV-2, which is the causative virus of the current COVID-19 pandemic. "Simply put, keeping the virus out of cells prevents it from replicating, propagating, and exacerbating infection," said Mason Wolak, Ph.D., acting head of NRL's Optical Nanomaterials Section. "The ultimate goals of the collaboration are to clarify the fundamental mechanisms by which SARS-CoV-2 causes infection and to screen and identify potential drugs to inhibit these mechanisms." One thing that fascinated the scientists was the potency of the quantum dot nanoparticles to induce translocation of ACE2 from the cell membrane to the interior of the cell through a process called endocytosis. Kirill Gorshkov, Ph.D., an NCATS research scientist, said experiments to block endocytosis prevented internalization of the quantum dot pseudovirus and ACE2 receptor complex. "While we had some idea that this was possible, the extent to which this occurred with very low amounts of quantum dot pseudo-virions suggested we had a powerful system to track viral attachment and effects on the cell in real time, since these quantum dots are fluorescent," said Gorshkov. The nanoparticle probes developed at NRL are comprised of multiple Spike protein subunits attached to the surface of a light-emitting quantum dot core. "We refer to these probes as 'Pseudo-virions' because they approximate the shape of the SARS-CoV-2 virus while also mimicking their physiological interactions with human cells," said Wolak. "Light emitted from the Pseudo-virions allows spatiotemporal tracking of their interaction with human cells." Wolak went on to say that binding to ACE2 is seen as the initial step of the virus towards cellular infection. Successful inhibition of this binding is an extremely high priority in the search for therapeutic interventions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on military and public health. "Protecting the health of deployed warfighters is of the utmost importance to ensure mission readiness and maintain fleet readiness," said Wolak. "Navy ships represent the ultimate 'closed system' - warfighters share close quarters where social distancing is nearly impossible to realistically enforce. This results in conditions that are ripe for rapid and extensive outbreaks, such as the one reported on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which threaten mission success." NRL and NCATS are currently designing and testing the feasibility of high-throughput cellular imaging tests to screen entire libraries of therapeutic agents for inhibition of Spike/ACE2 binding and internalization. "This also opened the door for high-throughput testing of new drugs uncovered by the other approaches at NCATS, to cross-validate the compounds with our system, and to test completely new therapeutic modalities developed at NCATS and elsewhere both biochemically at NRL, and in cell-based assays at NCATS," said Gorshkov. These tests, carried out at NCATS, would allow for screening of up to 1,536 drug targets per experiment. "Our team at NRL brings world-class expertise in the field of quantum dot/nanoparticles for biological applications," said Oh. "Merging our resources with the NCATS team's expertise resulted in research that couldn't be done by one team on its own." Further research is planned to investigate the mechanism that increases infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 with mutated Spike proteins. The NRL/NCATS team also plans to explore the possibility of using the pseudo-virions for site-specific intracellular drug delivery for purposes of disrupting SARS-CoV-2 replication mechanisms. Wolak said, "It is very important to note that the Spike-containing pseudo-virion has potential for broad application of intracellular drug delivery to combat not only COVID19, but any disease that targets cells with ACE2 receptors." Gorshkov said, he hopes the research excites and stimulates the next generation of future researchers to embark on a journey of exploration. "I hope this story serves to engage young minds into the realm of what is possible when people work together, both scientifically and otherwise," said Gorshkov. "By forging these strong relationships, we can synergize our efforts and come to novel solutions from completely different perspectives and viewpoints." ### About the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory NRL is a scientific and engineering command dedicated to research that drives innovative advances for the Navy and Marine Corps from the seafloor to space and in the information domain. NRL is located in Washington, D.C., with major field sites in Stennis Space Center, Mississippi; Key West, Florida; and Monterey, California, and employs approximately 2,500 civilian scientists, engineers and support personnel. A scene from the 1972 Australian film Alvin Purple, produced specifically to take advantage of the new R-rating classification. The new classification an "R" would mean that film censorship need no longer be inhibited by the lack of control of children's attendance at theatres. Commonwealth and State ministers yesterday agreed in principle that cinemas should be permitted to show films to audiences restricted to adults. First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on September 19, 1970 Exhibitors would be responsible for enforcing the law, which would exclude all children between six and 18. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in McCabe and Mrs Miller, the first R-rated film to be released in Australia. The Minister for Customs, Mr Chipp, said later State ministers had agreed to recommend the necessary legislation to their Governments. The Commonwealth-State meeting on censorship was the first of its kind since 1968. Mr Chipp said: "The 'R' certificate will be applied by the Commonwealth Chief Film Censor to films which it is considered are suitable only for adults. Seven of Air India's narrow-body aircraft have been leased from Ireland-based special purpose vehicles (SPVs) of Chinese companies, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday. "Presently, there is no proposal under consideration of the Ministry of Civil Aviation to ban any aircraft leasing entity," he said. group has a total of 167 planes in its fleet, Puri mentioned. has narrow-body aircraft like B737 as well as wide-body aircraft like B787 in its fleet. A narrow-body aircraft has a smaller fuel tank and therefore, it can fly for shorter distances. In his written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Puri said the vast majority of the owners or lessors of the aircraft leased to Indian airlines have their registered addresses in Ireland. "A total of seven narrow-bodied aircraft out of a fleet of 167 aircraft of the group of are leased from special purpose vehicles registered in Ireland which have been set up by Chinese companies," Puri stated. Tensions between India and China have increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes in eastern Ladakh on June 15 in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. The situation deteriorated again after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake on the intervening night of August 29 and 30. India occupied a number of strategic heights on the southern bank of Pangong lake and strengthened its presence in Finger 2 and Finger 3 areas in the region to thwart any Chinese actions. China has been occupying the areas between Finger 4 and Finger 8. The mountain spurs in the area are called Fingers. (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.) Oracle Corp. will get full access to review TikToks source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the companys Chinese parent to gather data on the video-sharing apps 100 million American users, according to people familiar with the matter. TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. and Oracle submitted these details in their proposal to the Trump administration with a goal of averting an outright sale of the app or a shutdown of its U. S. operations set to take effect Sept. 20. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor Latest released the research study by Market Research Future (MRFR) on Cardiac Catheterization Market size Technology, offers a detailed overview of the factors influencing the global business scope. Market Research Future (MRFR)s study has found out that the global cardiac implants market is expected to scale a CAGR of 7.82% CAGR during the forecast period 2018 to 2023. The study further reveals that the market is prognosticated to reach a valuation of USD 38,054.3 Mn by the close of 2023. The increasing occurrences of Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs)have revolutionized the revenue model of the healthcare sector. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has underlined in its report, which was published in 2017, that 2.7 to 6.1 million people in the U.S. alone suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common form of heart arrhythmia. People are getting increasingly aware of the risks associated with heart diseases which has led to a drastic increase in healthcare expenditure. A similar trend is expected to be exhibited in the years to come, thus, catapulting the cardiac implants market on an upward trajectory. Also Read - https://www.medgadget.com/2020/07/breast-implants-market-forecast-from-2020-2023-global-industry-analysis-by-size-share-outlook-technology-trends-application-and-demand.html Cardiac implants enable the monitoring and maintenance of normal functions of the heart and are expected to be in excessive demand over the next couple of years. The rising elderly population has unleashed growth opportunities to the cardiac implants market as cardiovascular diseases are more prevalent among them. It has been observed that the heart and blood vessels become stiff due to aging which is the root cause of increasing CVDs among the older people. It can lead to heart failure, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, etc. which is expected to motivate the growth trajectory of the market over the assessment period. Key players are focusing on the introduction of innovative implants for addressing the rising need for effective heart treatments. Technological innovations are presumed to dictate the growth pattern of the cardiac implants market in the foreseeable future. Also, the market is likely to witness the inflow of investments for research & development activities. Case to the point is, Israeli scientists have developed fully personalized tissue implants for heart, brain and spinal cord from the patients stomach cells which wont be rejected by the body. However, the high cost of implants is anticipated to check market growth in the forthcoming years. Key Players: The prominent players operating in the cardiac implants market are Abbott (US) Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (US) Amg International (Germany) B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany) Boston Scientific Corporation (US) Biotronik (US) LivaNova PLC (UK) SynCardia Systems, Inc. (Arizona) Medtronic Plc (US) Terumo Corporation (Japan) Market Segmentation: This MRFR report presents a detailed segmental analysis of the global cardiac implants market based on device, indication, and end-user. Based on device, the market has been segmented into implantable loop recorder/implantable cardiac monitor, cardiac rhythm management devices, prosthetic heart valve devices, coronary stents, ventricular assist devices, and others. By indication, the market has been segmented into arrhythmias, myocardial ischemia, acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and others. The cardiac implants market, by end-user, has been segmented into hospitals, cardiac care centers, ambulatory centers & home care, academic institutes, and others. Americas Expected to Exhibit Positive Growth The geographical assessment of the global Cardiac Implants Market spans across four major regions - Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Americas is expected to strike a healthy growth rate owing to the large-scale adoption of cardiac implantable electronic devices in North America. The region is also observing an increase in the patient population which is prognosticated to aid the proliferation of the market. Europe is forecasted to demonstrate similar growth trends in the foreseeable future. Browse the market data and information spread across 163 pages with 196 data tables and 21 figures of the report Cardiac Implants Market- Forecast 2018-2023 in-depth alongside table of content (TOC) at: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cardiac-implants-market-6726 Asia Pacific signifies strong growth potential and is poised to expand at a relatively higher CAGR through the projection period. The boom witnessed in the medical tourism of the region is one of the key factors expected to contribute towards the expansion of the cardiac implants market during the forecast period. On the contrary, the Middle East & Africa holds the least share of the market and is anticipated to signify restricted growth in the forthcoming years. Latest Industry News: Medtronic plc, the world's largest medical device company, is set to acquire EPIX Therapeutics, which is a designer of temperature-controlled, catheter-based cardiac ablation systems used for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. The move is aimed at the expansion of Medtronics cardiac ablation portfolio. CorMatrix Cardiovascular, Inc., a medical device company, has announced the launch of the study of its Cor Tricuspid ECM cardiac valve designed for treating adults suffering from endocarditis as well as pediatric patients with congenital heart valve disease. Browse Related Reports: Robotic Flight Simulator Surgery Market Optogenetics Market About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), & Consulting Services. The Latest on the 2020 presidential campaign (all times local): 3:35 p.m. Joe Biden says his presidential campaign will focus on mobilizing people to vote early, especially in places where such ballots are counted quickly, to keep President Donald Trump from declaring victory before all the results are in. Speaking on a virtual fundraiser with Colorado leaders on Thursday, Biden noted that more Trump supporters are likely to vote in person while his own supporters might cast absentee ballots because of fears about the coronavirus. Referring to Trump, Biden said, His hope is that, by the time the polls close, hed have more votes than I would have had, even though only a relatively small percentage of votes (were) counted. The former vice president said so many states now have early voting and count ballots quickly that he doesnt believe the scenario will happen. But he says his team has to stay prepared. On Friday, both Trump and Biden will travel to Minnesota, which holds its first day of early voting. ___ HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHATS HAPPENING IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE: President Donald Trump spoke at the National Archives to commemorate Constitution Day and is holding a rally in central Wisconsin on Thursday night. His Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, joined Senate Democrats for an online lunch and is participating in a drive-in CNN town hall in Moosic, Pennsylvania, on Thursday night. Read more: Trump aims to boost rural turnout in crucial Wisconsin AP-NORC poll: Trump faces deep pessimism as election nears Biden joins Senate Democrats online for lunch, questions With this school year approaching, Kristin Hoppe-Doucette enrolled her daughter Kate in a secondary math program this summer in an effort to help bolster the seventh graders skills after noticing that little-to-no new material was covered during online classes in the spring. With a son in high school, Hoppe-Doucette said shes acutely aware of how much math material builds from year-over-year. If you miss a section, you could wind up being really behind on what comes next, said Hoppe-Doucette, of Reading. The online program started with an assessment, which suggested 12-year-old Kate repeat a sixth-grade math program, something that shocked Hoppe-Doucette, who thinks some of the material in the assessment would have been covered in the spring. My daughter was a straight-A student in math, so whats happening to the kids [for whom] math is not their strong subject and then how do those kids compare to schools like, an example here is Austin Prep, who hit the ground running with its remote program, Hoppe-Doucette said. Hoppe-Doucette said she has been happy with her daughters education at the A. W. Coolidge Middle School and doesnt feel like her daughters situation is a fault of her teachers or the school system. She feels its likely consistent across all public schools because of the abrupt switch to online learning. Her math teacher was phenomenal, Hoppe-Doucette said. I was surprised but at the same time, I had a nagging feeling ... I just know how quickly math builds. And if you miss a whole section on pre-algebra I dont know how youll be able to do algebra without it. Kate has started the online program, which is a two-hour supplementary class once a week. The assessment got Hoppe-Doucette thinking that such an assessment may be necessary for all students. With the variety of learning styles happening now in schools across Massachusetts, where coronavirus is still spreading but has remained mostly contained through the summer months, Hoppe-Doucette wonders how parents will know how their children measure up academically. How do we know where they are relative to their grade compared to other schools and then how do we know where they are relative to where they should be, Hoppe-Doucette said. I just dont see how kids are going to be getting the same consistent schooling across the state given how different all of these programs are. What if we find out all of the seventh graders are really like 6.5 at the end of seventh grade? While Hoppe-Doucette said she is not a huge believer in MCAS, some sort of assessment, perhaps similar to what her daughter took, could help gauge where students stand now and again at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Hoppe-Doucette said she doesnt have concerns about her sons education because he goes to a private high school and the spring curriculum was full. Across the state, Geoffrey Moore found his family in a similar situation. Moore said he thought online classes at Agawam Junior High School for his son Bryan were pretty remedial in the spring, and noticed that only a handful of students would show up. To help this year as Bryan starts eighth grade, Moore said hes bought vocabulary and math workbooks for his son, who has also been doing Khan Academy online. Moores older son Austin, who is a sophomore at Suffield Academy in Connecticut, can help teach Bryan math problems. Without an older son who had already gone through the same math classes before, helping Bryan with remote learning would have been much more difficult, Moore said. While online education was spotty for Bryan, classes were productive for Austin at Suffield, Moore said. And, Moore heard positive stories about spring learning from friends who have children at Western Massachusetts parochial schools like Pope Francis Preparatory School. The hardest thing for us is the difference between the two, Moore said. I saw what they were getting versus what my younger son was getting in public school and hes not going to be able to compete. Thats why were doing the extra stuff because theyre getting so far behind. Though Bryan is in a hybrid program for this year, Moore worries that the online days will still not be up to par with the level of in-person schooling. You cant take Spanish II if you didnt get a good education in Spanish I, Moore said. You cant take Algebra II if you didnt get a full background in algebra. Its concerning. Austins classes are smaller and recorded, so students can go back and reference material if needed, Moore said, wondering if public schools could make similar adaptations. I think people need to recognize that teachers and administrators, they dont have a crystal ball, nor does the superintendent, Moore said. People need to be a little more flexible, but I would like to see more leadership ... you need to do whats right for the group as a whole." Districts have worked to assure parents that remote learning this fall will be more structured than the spring. I think it will go better but a little bit better than horrible is still not good enough, Moore said. Austin Moore, a sophomore at Suffield Academy, has been helping his younger brother, Bryan, with math skills during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Moore. Julie Bowder of Ware has also had to put some added attention on her 8-year-old sons school schedule while her 15-year-old son is able to navigate his hybrid learning plan at North Star on his own. Bowder owns Accurate Accounting Service in West Springfield. Online learning has meant she and her husband have had to start bringing her 8-year-old Ethan to the office with them. In mid-October, hybrid learning starts for her son, who goes to school in Belchertown. On days hes not in the classroom, hell be back in the office. The first two days of having Ethan at the office as he starts second grade werent too bad, Bowder said. The teachers are really understanding, Bowder said. Honestly, its just like you would expect. A lot of technology issues with everyone trying to get into whatever the next class was. Bowder said she eventually got her son online successfully, though Wi-Fi was an issue. Having school and work in the same office will be an adjustment, Bowder said. Either she or her husband will have to take breaks to help when things like Wi-Fi trouble pop up. For my son, it wasnt as bad, she said. A little bit of boredom because there was an hour or so break in between classes. Though there are concerns about the virus, Bowder said she can see that her son craves the social interaction that comes with school, talking with friends and playing on the playground. For now, she said shes happy with the hybrid plan even though it means adjustments for the family. If it goes too long, like another whole school year, I worry about the psychological impact on the kiddos ... They need to be with their peers, Bowder said. Theres only so much time they want to be with their parents, even at 8 years old. Bowder said she thinks the family will be able to strike the right balance. Its just like anything else, you have to get used to it, she said. You have to give it time and everybodys got to fall into that new pattern of this is how things go. Related Content: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 13:51 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4563f89 1 National Indonesian-Military,Indonesian-Air-Force,TNI,TNI-AU,cyber-attacks,cyber-war,cyber-security Free The Indonesian Air Force established a cyberunit to anticipate future threats of cyberwarfare, specifically attacks against the forces infrastructure. Air Force chief of staff Air Chief Marshal Fadjar Prasetyo inaugurated the unit in a ceremony Wednesday. The cyberunit was established under the forces security and encryption agency. Fadjar said the unit would be tasked with preventing and respond to cyberattacks committed against the Air Forces infrastructure, which was usually carried out by exploiting various security holes. Read also: On the lookout for cyberwar The increasingly unpredictable forms and threats of warfare are challenge for militaries around the world, including the Indonesian Air Force. We hope the cyberunit can address this problem, Fadjar said during the inauguration ceremony as reported in a statement. The Air Force had expressed interest in heightening awareness and intensifying security against cyberattacks and cyberwars, when then-chief of staff Air Chief Marshal Yuyu Sutisna conveyed the importance of cybersecurity in 2018. The Indonesian Military had also established a cyberunit in 2017. Then-commander Gen. (ret) Gatot Nurmantyo said the unit was tasked with protecting strategic military data, information and resources from being stolen as well as to improve the forces cyberdefense capacity. Domenici was most recently the CFO and a member of the Operating Committee at Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. Bridgewater is a pioneer in utilizing algorithmic decision making and artificial intelligence. Prior to Bridgewater, Domenici was a member of the Management Committee and Chief of Staff at Citadel Investment Group, another industry disruptor and leader in machine learning. Before Citadel, she was an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert, DLJ and Credit Suisse where she rose to Head of Middle Market Mergers and Acquisitions. "Nella will undoubtedly make an immediate impact as we accelerate the expansion of our global client base and achieve greater scalability," said Ted Bailey, founder and CEO of Dataminr. "She has been acknowledged throughout her career for her unique combination of strategic, financial and legal capabilities, and for building and motivating high performing teams. I am particularly impressed with her track record of effectively leading and managing premier, dynamic and innovative financial services organizations." "This is an exciting time to join Dataminr and I'm committed to helping the Company build upon its growing momentum," said Domenici. "Dataminr is leading the charge in the utilization of real-time data for public good as evidenced by their recent work in being the first to detect the COVID-19 pandemic in December. I want to be a part of this amazing story." Domenici graduated from Harvard Business School with High Distinction and as a George F. Baker Scholar. She holds a JD from Georgetown Law Center, where she attended the night law program and also earned an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. She currently serves on two public company boards: AllianceBernstein LP where she is on the Audit and Risk Committee, and Change Healthcare where she is on the Audit and Compliance Committee. During her extensive career, she has always made time to focus on philanthropic causes, in particular mental illness awareness and education equality. As CFO, Domenici will report directly to Mr. Bailey and will oversee the general financial operations, financial planning and analysis, accounting, legal, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and investor relations. About Dataminr: Dataminr is one of the world's leading AI businesses. The company's advanced AI platform detects the earliest signals of high-impact events and emerging risks, enabling enterprise and government clients around the globe to know critical information first, respond with confidence, and manage crises more effectively. Dataminr's products are relied on 24/7 by thousands of clients in over 70 countries to help them solve real world problems. Dataminr is one of New York's top private technology companies with nearly 650 employees across seven global offices. SOURCE Dataminr Trump sought to counter his admission to journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately "playing it down" when discussing the threat of COVID-19 to Americans earlier this year. Despite audio of his comments being released, Trump said: "Yeah, well, I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action." "My action was very strong," Trump added. "I'm not looking to be dishonest. I don't want people to panic." Trump also insisted he was not wrong when he praised China's response to the virus in January and February, saying he trusted Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader. "He told me that it was under control, that everything was and it turned out to be not true," Trump said, Trump also suggested the virus would disappear without a vaccine, claiming the nation would develop a herd immunity with time, but he didn't mention the lives that would be lost along the way. "It's going to be herd-developed, and that's going to happen. That will all happen," Trump said. "But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly." Unlike the secular New Year, the Jewish New Year, celebrated this weekend, concentrates on repentance, rather than joyous abandon. For the first time I can remember, I will not be in synagogue for the Jewish New year communal repentance being another victim of COVID-19. I am crestfallen that I will not spend time with my community acknowledging that we are all human and can all do better. Nevertheless, COVID-19 has helped me better understand the ancient rituals of the Jewish New Year. In the past, I repeated the words recited by Jews for thousands of years without necessarily feeling a personal connection born of deep understanding. This year will be different. The central prayer recited by Jews all over the world on the Jewish New Year, which dates from the eighth century, notes that we will all be judged on this day and then notes that on this day it is decided who shall live and who shall die. Furthermore, today is decreed how we will die including by plague who shall be tormented, who wealthy and who exalted. Growing up in the later 20th century in America, I did not really think about all the horrible and horribly unfair ways people died and continue to die throughout the world. Violence and plague have ravished this earth my entire life, but always somewhere else. This year the Jewish New Year occurs during a plague in America of almost biblical proportions with close to 200,000 dead already. Furthermore, we are once again reminded of those in our society who do not experience the promise of America in the same way that I have been so fortunate to live. Despite the American idea, we still live in a world where our potentialities in life are greatly influenced by our race, the wealth of our parents and even our ZIP code. Kushners comments came after the UAE and Bahrain signed normalisation agreements with Israel at the White House US President Donald Trumps senior adviser said Tuesday that both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will have more influence to solve the Palestinian issue after normalising relations with Israel. I will say that if you look at what the United Arab Emirates did today and what Bahrain did today, they will have more influence to help Israel solve the Palestinian issue, as allies and normalised countries with Israel, than they would having no say at the table, Jared Kushner told Alarabiya. Kushner praised new leadership and thinking as factors that pushed the United States to work on solving the problem of Arab-Israeli relations. But he insisted that the Arab Peace Initiative is not a viable pathway, describing this situation as the reality. People point to the Arab Peace Initiative, which was a very noble effort when it was done in 2002. But if it would have worked, then there would have been peace 15-20 years ago, Kushner told the Saudi TV channel. Kushner noted that there is a plan to develop the Palestinian economy. On Tuesday, the UAE and Bahrain officially signed US-sponsored normalisation agreements with Israel in Washington DC. The so-called Abraham Accords between the UAE and Israel involves the establishment of peace and diplomatic relations, mutual understanding, cooperation and coordination between them in the spheres of peace and stability and cooperation in a wide range of activities. Cooperation includes areas of healthcare, science, technology and peaceful uses of outer space, tourism, culture and sport, energy, environment, education, maritime agreements, telecommunications, agriculture and food security, and water and legal cooperation. Trump described the deals as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region. Including Saudi Arabia, Trump told reporters that Israel will also normalise relations with seven or eight or nine other states at the right time. Search Keywords: Short link: It began as a stunning light show on a mid-August weekend lightning bolts crackling in the skies over Northern and Central California, touching down in grasslands and vineyards. The National Weather Service warned that the dry lightning striking a parched landscape could lead to new wildfire. FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2020, file photo, flames lick above vehicles on Highway 162 as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, Calif. The blaze, part of the lightning-sparked North Complex, expanded at a critical rate of spread as winds buffeted the region. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)AP It turned out to be a huge understatement. Thousands of bolts ignited hundreds of fires in California and at least one in Oregon, setting the stage for some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. One month later, firefighters are still battling them, and at least 34 people have died in California, Oregon and Washington. FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2020, file photo, taken with a slow shutter speed, embers light up a hillside behind the Bidwell Bar Bridge as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)AP Before the cluster of lightning strikes, the Wests fire season had been slightly more severe than normal. But then came the weekend of Aug. 15-16. FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2020, file photo, firefighter Ricardo Gomez, of a San Benito Monterey Cal Fire crew, sets a controlled burn with a drip torch while fighting the Creek Fire in Shaver Lake, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)AP Its been a pretty insane 12 hours across the Bay Area, the National Weather Service forecasters reported, after the lightning storm during which white-hot bolts licked at the span of San Franciscos landmark Bay Bridge. FILE - In this Aug. 20, 2020, file photo, Thomas Henney, left, and Charles Chavira watch a plume spread over Healdsburg, Calif., as the LNU Lightning Complex fires burn. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)AP But that was just Act I. FILE - In this Sept. 5, 2020, file photo, members of a hand crew work on the fire line in Yucaipa, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)AP Act II came three weeks later, when another freak weather phenomenon occurred. FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2020, file photo, firefighters make a stand in the backyard of a home in front of the advancing CZU August Lightning Complex Fire in Boulder Creek, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)AP A vast high-pressure zone stretching from Alaska to the desert in the Southwest gave Denver a summer snowfall while pushing warm, dry winds toward the Pacific coast. FILE - In this Sept. 5, 2020, file photo, an air tanker drops retardant as a wildfire burns at a hillside in Yucaipa, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)AP Those gusts pushed the fires through trees and brush that had been drying out all summer, causing the blazes to explode in size and sending them rushing into towns and rural homes. Many residents barely had time to flee with just the clothes on their back. FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2020, file photo, a firefighter battles the Creek Fire as it threatens homes in the Cascadel Woods neighborhood of Madera County, Calif. This year's fires have taxed the human, mechanical and financial resources of the nation's wildfire fighting forces to a degree that few past blazes did. And half of the fire season is yet to come. (AP Photo/Noah Berger,File)AP Smoke covered the West Coast states, creating some of the most hazardous air quality in the world. FILE - In this Aug. 19, 2020, file photo, flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires consume a home in unincorporated Napa County, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)AP Seattles iconic Space Needle was all but hidden in brown haze, topped with an American flag that drooped as if in surrender. The smoke stretched clear across the continent and even blew over parts of Europe. FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2020, file photo, an air tanker drops retardant as the LNU Lightning Complex fires tear through the Spanish Flat community in unincorporated Napa County, Calif. Two unusual weather phenomena combined to create some of the most destructive wildfires the West Coast states have seen in modern times. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)AP (Newser) A senior US State Department official is arriving in Taiwan on Thursday for a three-day visit, prompting a threat of possible retaliation from China. US Undersecretary of State Keith Krach is to meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the island's foreign ministry said Thursday. Krach, who holds the portfolio for economic growth, energy, and the environment, is the highest-level official from the State Department to visit the island in decades. His visit follows a high-profile visit in August by US Health Secretary Alex Azar, who was the highest-level US Cabinet official to visit since the break in formal ties between the US and Taiwan in 1979, when the US switched relations to Beijing, the AP reports. story continues below Ahead of Krach's arrival, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, had lunch Wednesday with Taiwans top official in New York, a meeting she called historic and a further step in the Trump administrations campaign to strengthen relations with the self-governing island that China claims is part of its territory. China condemned the visit on Thursday and warned it could retaliate. It opposes all official interactions between other countries and the island. At a daily briefing Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Krachs visit "bolsters the separatist forces of Taiwan independence and undermines China-US relations," adding that "China will make necessary responses in accordance with the development of the situation." (Read more Taiwan stories.) They had a debate the other night, but Ill bet a lot of the viewers walked away talking about Max Linn, an independent candidate who has no chance of being elected to anything whatsoever. Linn continually announced, Ive got to be way outside the box! He also shouted Request denied! whenever the moderators tried to get him to answer their questions. It did make for more excitement than your average Senate debate, but really, if Maine voters wanted to be entertained, theyd have been watching Raised by Wolves on HBO. Small Cell Forum Publishes Guide to Help Building Owners Guarantee High-Quality Cellular Coverage Posted by Publisher Telecommunication London, UK Wednesday 16th September 2020 Small Cell Forum (SCF) has today published a comprehensive guide to assist building owners and tenants in solving the issues of poor and sub-standard cellular connectivity on their premises. Options for Indoor Cellular ? which is available as a six page user-friendly brochure for property owners and landlords, or a long form document for IT departments ? helps organizations of all sizes and the people who use them ? both landlords and tenants ? understand what they can do today to improve mobile connectivity on their property. Poor quality indoor wireless coverage is a major problem in all types of buildings, whether caused by building materials and techniques, which can have the side effect of blocking mobile signals, or geographical location. Cellular is complementary to other technologies, such as Wi-Fi, and offers connectivity that is more secure and reliable for a wide range of applications. SCF?s guide provides a clear and concise overview of the range of options available to help ensure high-quality and secure connectivity. It includes comprehensive case studies of deployments around the world at sites as diverse as hospitals, remote oil and gas plants, ports, stadia and corporate headquarters. Recent years have seen dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity afforded by adopting new mobile-first processes, but these can make significant demands on available network, requiring fast data rates combined with high quality of service. It is imperative that these demands are able to be supported indoors, where at least 75% of enterprise data traffic is generated. Issues such as poor or lack of signal in apartments, offices, venues, hotels and conference centres can cause considerable frustration, and research has shown that residential and enterprise tenants are increasingly inclined to avoid properties with poor indoor coverage. This in turn reduces yields and increases churn for landlords. Despite a clear need, to date it has been difficult for organizations to know what they can do to improve mobile signal on their premises. ?Mobile devices have become essential assets in day-to-day life and drivers for communication and productivity in the workplace ? especially during these COVID-19 times. The need has never been greater for quality, high speed, reliable mobile coverage inside residential, commercial and mixed-use premises, irrespective of the environmental and geographic constraints,? said Dr. Prabhakar Chitrapu, Chair of Small Cell Forum. ?For the wide range of deployment environments, from single shops and medium-sized offices, to large enterprises and industries, or very large stadiums and shopping malls, we have put together this guide to clearly lay out in detail the solutions which are available today that can dramatically improve the indoor cellular experience. We hope this document will be a go-to guide for various stakeholders, such as building owners and IT personnel.? 2021 Mazda CX-30 2.5 Turbo On Sale Soon Skyactiv-G 2.5 Turbo engine will deliver 250 horsepower and 320 lb-ft of torque on premium 93 octane fuel CX-30 2.5 Turbo is equipped with i-Activ all-wheel drive as standard New advanced technologies complement modern design for an all-around sophisticated driving experience IRVINE, Calif. (September 17, 2020) The Mazda CX-30s compact profile help it gracefully navigate through tight turns, while its bold proportions provide ample space to travel with all the essentials. The subcompact crossover is an ideal companion for chasing whats next. Beyond its impressive styling, CX-30 delivers an engaging driving experience that is now being amplified with more power. Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) today announces the addition of the turbocharged Skyactiv-G 2.5 Turbo engine to the 2021 CX-30. The 2021 Mazda CX-30 2.5 Turbo will help uplift itself in its class with elevated performance and capability, new advanced technologies and superb craftsmanship and design. The Skyactiv-G 2.5 Turbo engine will deliver an impressive 250 horsepower and 320 lb-ft of torque with premium (93 octane) fuel or 227 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque with regular (87 octane) fuel. The combination of the turbo engine and standard i-Activ all-wheel drive system with off-road traction assist help expand the capabilities of the CX-30 to offer fans the freedom to explore life in style, from the city to the outdoors. Advanced technologies available on the 2021 CX-30 2.5 Turbo will complement the modern, sophisticated design while also providing occupants with peace of mind. New i-Activsense safety features include Smart City Brake Support Reverse with Rear Cross-Traffic Braking, which can help a driver by automatically applying the brakes when the vehicle is reversing at speeds between 2 to 4 mph if an obstacle or when backing out of a parking space a crossing vehicle is detected. A new support feature, Traffic Jam Assist, enhances Mazda Radar Cruise Control in certain situations by providing steering inputs that can help assist the driver stay within lane markers at speeds under 40 mph. The 360 View Monitor with high-definition digital clarity is also available. These new features accompany other premium technologies that help the CX-30 2.5 Turbo stand out from its segment, such as Active Driving Display, Traffic Sign Recognition and Adaptive Front-lighting System. With more power and agile performance, the turbo engine is fulfilling the sense of passion invoked by the sleek and bold styling of the CX-30. Through Mazdas Kodo design, the CX-30 2.5 Turbos silhouette reflects the driving pleasure of the engine while continuing to accentuate the engaging experience of a Mazda. The level of craftsmanship of the interior is elegant with its seamless blending of materials, such as a frameless auto-dimming rearview mirror, black upper dash and chrome finishes. Every aspect of the interior is purposely laid out to be intuitive for the driver and its occupants. From the steering wheel controls, the location of the Bose 12-speaker audio, the proportions of the 8.8-inch large center display and support to help achieve the ideal seating position, Mazda focuses on human-centric philosophies to help offer a natural feeling while driving. The subtle enhancements to the exterior of the CX-30 Turbo highlight the new performance and capabilities with 18-inch black aluminum alloy wheels, larger tailpipes, gloss black door mirrors and a TURBO badge on the liftgate. The 2021 CX-30 2.5 Turbo is scheduled to go on sale by the end of 2020. Specific packaging and pricing details will be announced in the coming months. Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, California, and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through approximately 620 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City. For more information on Mazda vehicles, including photography and B-roll, please visit the online Mazda media center at InsideMazda.MazdaUSA.com/Newsroom. Follow MNAOs social media channels through Twitter and Instagram at @MazdaUSA and Facebook at Facebook.com/MazdaUSA. ### Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, California, and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through approximately 620 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City. Hospitalisations in Delhi during third Covid wave significantly lower than second Calcutta HC allows families of COVID-19 victims to perform last rites; Check guidelines India oi-Briti Roy Barman Kolkata, Sep 17: The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed that bodies of Covid-19 patients shall be handed over to the family for cremation after completion of hospital formalities, provided post mortem of the dead body is not required. The right to live a dignified life extends up to the point of death including the dignified procedure of death, the HC said. The petitioner, Vineet Ruia, had told the court that bodies of Covid-19 patients were being "disposed of by the administration unceremoniously and in an undignified manner without showing even a resemblance of respect to the mortal remains of the dead person", an HT reports said. After hearing the plea, chief justice T B Radhakrishnan and Justice Arijit Banerjee laid down the guidelines for the government to follow. The guidelines are: The bodies shall be handed over to the families only if post mortem examination is not required, the judges said. The body shall go directly from the hospitals to the crematorium or burial ground and not to anywhere else including the home of the victim. In case there is nobody to claim a body, it should be cremated or buried with dignity at the state expense. People handling the body should wear gloves and masks and PPE suits if possible, and the same rules would apply to the staff at the crematorium or burial ground. The hearse has to be sanitised too. The face-end of the body bag may be unzipped by the staff at the crematorium/burial ground to allow the relatives to see the body for the last time. At that time, religious rituals, such as reading from religious scripts, sprinkling holy water, offering grains and such other last rites that do not require touching of the body should be allowed. Passing the order on a PIL, the division bench directed that the government should prescribe additional reasonable measures as may be advised by medical experts. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News There have been nine hearings since June 5. The Centre was represented by three lawyers while the West Bengal government was represented by advocate general Kishore Dutta and three lawyers. President Ouattaras former ally says his candidacy is unchangeable and irrevocable despite rejection by top court. Former rebel leader Guillaume Soro has warned that Ivory Coast is teetering on the edge after a court invalidated his candidacy amid rising tensions over incumbent President Alassane Ouattaras contested bid for re-election next month. Ivory Coasts top court this week rejected 40 presidential candidates, leaving only four in contention in the highly anticipated October 31 election. The Constitutional Court validated Ouattaras candidacy bid but sidelined both Soro and former President Laurent Gbagbo on the grounds that they had been handed jail terms in absentia. On Thursday, Soro defiantly declared he would remain a candidate in the polls even as he lashed out against what he called a scheme to enshrine the 78-year-old Ouattara as president. My candidacy is firm, unchangeable and irrevocable, Soro told journalists in Paris. He said his country had been driven to the brink by Ouattaras decision to seek a third term in office, which, if successful, would amount to a coup detat, according to him. Ouattara had said in March that he would not seek a third term but made a U-turn when his preferred successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died of a heart attack in July. The argument behind his bid rests on a change to the constitution in 2016. Supporters say the modified charter has reset the two-term limits to zero, allowing Ouattara to run again. The opposition rejects this. Tensions rising Violent protests against Ouattaras candidacy killed about 15 people last month and demonstrations broke out in several cities this week including in Bonoua despite a ban on rallies. The increasing political tensions in the worlds top cocoa-producing country have revived traumatic memories of a months-long civil war that erupted after elections in 2010, claiming more than 3,000 lives. Soros help during that divisive conflict enabled Ouattara, who had claimed electoral victory over former Gbagbo, to come to power. The 48-year-old served as prime minister from 2007 to 2012 and then as speaker of parliament for seven years before falling out with the president and heading for France, the former colonial power. Soro said the October 31 election does not make any sense as it was designed to endorse the institutional state coup detat of Alassane Ouattara. He urged the public to unite against Ouattara and for opposition leaders to press the Economic Community of West African States regional bloc ECOWAS to secure transparent elections. More protests expected Meanwhile, Gbagbo supporters on Wednesday called for mass protests to block the dictatorship of Ouattara. The appeal was made by a coalition called Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS), which includes the Ivorian Popular Front party founded by Gbagbo and his influential wife, Simone. It came a day after the government extended a ban on demonstrations, introduced in August, until September 30. Gbagbo was freed conditionally by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague after he was cleared in January 2019 of crimes against humanity. He is living in Brussels pending the outcome of an appeal against the ICC ruling. On Tuesday, the African Court, a pan-African tribunal on human rights, called on the Ivorian authorities to allow Soro to contest the vote. Its ruling will have a negligible effect, as Ivory Coast in April withdrew its recognition of the courts jurisdiction. Learning is safe at MMS...Mask On! Video credit to: AP Switzer for writing, rapping, and producing! #facemask #covid #mask #skincare #coronavirus #staysafe #maskerwajah #beauty #masks #stayhome #masker #handmade #skincareroutine #facemasks #maskerorganik #fashion #quarantine #corona #teachersfollowteachers #socialdistancing #facemaskselfie #educationmatters #teacher #education #teacherofinsta #maskon #masks4all Posted by Mattacheese Middle School on Thursday, September 3, 2020 Most drivers listen to music on their way to work. Elijah Switzer used his commute last week to write it. The assistant principal at Mattacheese Middle School in Yarmouth wrote a minute-long rap to encourage students to wear masks. If songwriter wasnt enough, he added music video producer to his resume by producing a TikTok to accompany the song with cameos from school administrators. I told [Principal Michael Bovino] that day, Hey dress fancy tomorrow, were going to make a video, Switzer said. The 51-second video begins in Switzers office and with a toss of a pencil over his shoulder, he busts into a rhyme that starts, Back to school in a pandemic, well tackle some issues that are systemic, mask on. The video shifts from hallways to classroom and offices featuring staff putting masks on. From the hallway, to your class, I want you to know that you need a mask. Our students, man they should be safe, we worked all summer to prepare this place, mask on," Switzer said in the second verse. Switzer said he created the lyrics on his 45-minute drive from Woods Hole to Yarmouth and needed about 15 minutes to record it. The video took about 90 minutes to produce. Its a time where I think things feel stressful and it was really just to put smiles on peoples faces at a time thats otherwise pretty tense, Switzer said. The response has been incredible. Switzer drew inspiration from other social media videos from around the country where school administrators used social media to remind students of the importance of wearing masks. For the 28-year-old assistant principal, TikTok offered him a megaphone in a location where students were already present. Everything is going to video, Switzer said. Kids are engaged with video and images and I think TikTok and Instagram are consuming our younger generation and the generation that I am in charge of in engaging. Its not the first TikTok video Switzer has produced but it is the most popular. It was posted on Facebook last week and has more than 8,000 views. Even the districts superintendent took note and sent Switzer a personal email, thanking him for his creativity. With how busy she is right now, for her to take the time to reach out to me as an assistant principal to tell me she appreciated it, Switzer said. That meant a lot. Related Content: A Utah cop has been charged with aggravated assault after bodycam footage emerged of him ordering a K-9 to attack a black man who was on his knees with his hands in the air in his back yard. Prosecutors announced Wednesday that charges had been brought against Salt Lake City Police officer Nickolas Pearce following the April 24 incident that left Jeffery Ryans, 36, with damage and infections that could lead to his leg being amputated. The shocking footage shows Pearce told the dog to attack Ryans, then repeatedly praised it and said 'good boy' while it latched onto his left leg and Ryans begged the cop to make it 'stop'. An investigation was only launched in August - four months after the attack - when Ryans broke his silence over the incident in the wake of multiple cop killings of black men and women across America in recent months. A Utah cop has been charged with aggravated assault after bodycam footage emerged of him ordering a K-9 to attack a black man who was on his knees with his hands in the air in his back yard. Bodycam footage shows Jeffery Ryans kneeling on the floor with his hands raised The shocking footage shows the cop told the dog to attack Ryans, then repeatedly praised it and said 'good boy' while it latched onto his left leg and Ryans begged the cop to make it 'stop' Ryans' blooded lower left leg is seen above. Ryans told the Salt Lake Tribune last month he 'felt like a chew toy' District Attorney Sim Gill announced the charges against Pearce Wednesday and said cops must be held accountable for their use of force. 'Officers in their interactions with everyday citizens by virtue of who they are and the institution they represent does not absolve them from the responsibility to make sure that whatever force they use is being used in a lawful manner,' said Gill, a Democrat. Salt Lake City Police Department said Wednesday it takes the district attorney's decision 'very seriously' and it will be considered as part of its internal affairs investigation. Ryans was in his backyard on April 24 when police responded to a domestic dispute call. Ryans said he was smoking outside before he was due to leave for his job as a train engineer. The Salt Lake County district attorney's office said Ryans complied with officers' orders to raise his hands and remain in the backyard. K9 officer Pearce then told Ryans to get on the ground before kicking him in the leg, forcing him to his knees and ordering the dog to bite him, prosecutors said. On the bodycam footage, Pearce is heard repeatedly saying 'good boy' to the dog while it stayed latched onto Ryans' left leg for about 20 seconds as he was being cuffed. 'I'm on the ground, why are you biting me?' Ryans is heard saying as he begged the officers to 'stop'. Ryans told the Salt Lake Tribune last month he 'felt like a chew toy'. Ryans underwent surgery and later experienced 'prolonged loss of the use' of his leg, prosecutors said. Prosecutors announced Wednesday that charges had been brought against Salt Lake City Police officer Nickolas Pearce following the April 24 incident. Pictured Ryans in August An investigation was only launched in August into the incident - four months after the attack - when Ryans broke his silence and released the footage His attorneys said the officer caused an avoidable injury that resulted in the 36-year-old suffering nerve and tendon damage and infections that could lead to amputation. Ryans filed his intent to sue the force on July 20 but police only began investigating the incident last month after Ryans went public with his story in an article in the Tribune and his attorneys shared the bodycam footage. The police department said it hadn't heard about the incident before then and was opening an investigation. Pearce was suspended pending an investigation and the use of K-9s in apprehensions was also suspended under review. Pearce's K-9 Unit was also involved in a use of deadly force incident where another cop shot a minor driving a stolen car multiple times. It was unknown if Pearce has an attorney. A phone call to a number listed for him wasn't answered and no voicemail was set up. Ryans' attorneys, Daniel Garner and Gabriel White, didn't immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment. His attorneys said the officer caused an avoidable injury that resulted in the 36-year-old suffering nerve and tendon damage and infections that could lead to amputation It's rare for police officers to be charged with crimes amid excessive-force allegations and even rarer for them to be convicted. During his decade in office, Gill has charged three officers accused of wrongly using deadly force. None were convicted. In two of those cases, charges were later dropped while the third was thrown out by a judge. Ryans told the Tribune he came forward with his story because of the wave of recent Black Lives Matter protests and outrage over the deaths of several black men and women at the hands of American cops. Thousands have taken to the streets demanding justice and calling for an end to police brutality and racism since May following the 'murder' of black man George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop who knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes until he passed out and died. Floyd's death reignited outrage over the death of EMT Breonna Taylor, 26, who was shot eight times while sleeping in her bed when three plain clothes officers performed a no-knock arrest warrant at her Louisville apartment on March 13. Ryans said he wanted to tell his story following the multiple cop killings of black men and women in recent months In June, unarmed father Rayshard Brooks was shot dead while he ran away from cops in the drive-thru of a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta. On August 23, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a white cop in front of his three young children, leaving the father-of-six paralyzed from the waist down. A week later on August 30, Dijon Kizzee, 29, was gunned down in the street by LA cops who allegedly shot him 20 times and then handcuffed his dead body after trying to pull him over for an alleged bicycle code violation. In early September, footage was released by the family of Daniel Prude, 41, showing cops in Rochester, New York, putting a spit hood over his face and pushing his face into the ground for two minutes until he passed out and died on March 23. The Monroe County medical examiner listed the manner of death as homicide caused by 'complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint' but no charges have been brought against any of the cops. Military talks between Turkey and Greece resume in NATO HQ To avoid incidents in eastern Med (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, SEPTEMBER 17 - Talks resumed on Thursday morning at the NATO headquarters in Brussels between military delegations sent by Turkey and Greece. The talks had begun last week as an attempt to avoid more potentially explosive incidents in the eastern Mediterranean. The announcement was made by the Turkish defense ministry. The meeting is the fourth of its kind and will not seek to resolve the dispute over territorial waters. They will instead simply draw up 'deconfliction mechanisms'. (ANSAmed). DAKAR, Senegal A new law punishing child rapists with castration and death has come into force in a Nigerian state. Men convicted of raping children under age 14 will have their testicles surgically removed before being executed, under legislation that the governor of Kaduna state signed on Wednesday. Women will have their fallopian tubes cut out. Many Nigerians clamoring for action in the face of a countrywide rape crisis have greeted the new law enthusiastically, but critics say it is a populist move incompatible with the countrys Constitution. They predict it will lead to fewer rapes being reported. Kadunas governor, Nasir el-Rufai, said the new measures were required to help further protect children from a serious crime. Why rapists would be castrated if they are then going be executed was not immediately clear. School librarian Amanda Brasfield says that from now on sheall think twice about taking an ambulance unless she has a life-threatening injury or illness. She got a $1,206 out-of-network bill for a 4-mile ambulance ride in Findlay, Ohio. Read more School librarian Amanda Brasfield bent over to grab her lunch from a small refrigerator and felt her heart begin to race. Even after lying on her office floor and closing her eyes, her heart kept pounding and fluttering in her chest. The school nurse checked Brasfields pulse, found it too fast to count, and called 911 for an ambulance. Soon after the May 2018 incident, Brasfield, now 39, got a $1,206 bill for the four-mile ambulance ride across the northwestern Ohio city of Findlay more than $300 a mile. And she was on the hook for $859 of it, because the only emergency medical service in the city has no contract with the insurance plan she has through her government job. More than two years later, what was diagnosed as a relatively minor heart rhythm problem hasnt caused any more health issues for Brasfield, but the bill caused her some heartburn. I felt like it was too much, she said. I wasnt dying. Brasfields predicament is common in the U.S. health-care market, where studies show the majority of ambulance rides leave patients saddled with hundreds of dollars in out-of-network medical bills. Yet ground ambulances have mostly been left out of federal legislation targeting surprise medical bills, which happen when out-of-network providers charge more than insurers are willing to pay, leaving patients with the balance. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted temporary changes that could help some patients. For instance, ambulance services that received federal money from the CARES Act Provider Relief Fund arent allowed to charge presumptive or confirmed coronavirus patients the balance remaining on bills after insurance coverage kicks in. Also during the pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is letting Medicare pay for ambulance trips to destinations besides hospitals, such as doctors' offices or urgent care centers equipped to treat recipients' illnesses or injuries. But researchers and patient advocates said consumers need more, and lasting, protections. You call 911. You need an ambulance. You cant really shop around for it, said Christopher Garmon, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has studied the issue. A Health Affairs study, published in April, found 71% of all ambulance rides in 2013 to 2017 for members of one large national insurance plan involved potential surprise bills. The median out-of-network surprise ground ambulance bill was $450, for a combined impact of $129 million a year. And a study published last summer in JAMA Internal Medicine found 86% of ambulance rides to ERs the vast majority by ground ambulances, not helicopters resulted in out-of-network bills. Caitlin Donovan, senior director of the National Patient Advocate Foundation in Washington, said she hears from consumers who get such bills and resolve to call Uber the next time they need to get to the ER. Although experts and Uber agree an ambulance is the safest option in an emergency, research out of the University of Kansas found that the Uber ride-sharing service has reduced per-person ambulance use by at least 7%. Only ambulance in town When Brasfield was rushed to the hospital, her employer, Findlay City Schools, offered insurance plans only from Anthem, and none included the Hanco EMS ambulance service in its network. School system Treasurer Michael Barnhart said the district couldnt insist that Hanco participate. There is no leverage when they are the only such service around. If it were a particular medical procedure, we could encourage employees to seek another doctor or hospital even if it was further away, Barnhart said in an email. But you cant encourage anyone to use an ambulance service from 50 miles away. There is great disagreement about what an ambulance ride is worth. Brasfields insurer paid $347 for her out-of-network ambulance ride. She said Anthem representatives told her that was consistent with in-network rates and that Hancos $1,206 charge was simply too high. Jeff Blunt, a spokesperson for Anthem, said that 90% of ambulance companies in Ohio agree to Anthems payment rates; Hanco is among the few medical transport providers that dont participate in its network. He said Anthem reached out to Hanco twice to negotiate a contract but never heard back. Brasfield sent three letters appealing Anthems decision and called Hanco to negotiate the bill down. The companies wouldnt budge. Hanco sent her a collections notice. Rob Lawrence of the American Ambulance Association pointed out that nearly three-quarters of the nations 14,000 ambulance providers have low transport volumes but need to staff up even when not needed, creating significant overhead. And because of the pandemic, ambulance providers have seen reduced revenue, higher costs and more uncompensated care, the associations executive director, Maria Bianchi, said in an email. Widespread problem, no action Similar stories play out across the nation. Ron Brooks, 72, received two bills of more than $690 each when his wife had to be rushed about six miles to a hospital in Inverness, Fla., after two strokes in November 2018. The only ambulance service in the county, Nature Coast EMS, was out-of-network for his insurer, Florida Blue. Neither had responded to requests for comment by publication time. Brooks' wife died, and it took him months to pay off the bills. There should be an exception if there was no other option, he said. Sarah Goodwin of Shirley, Mass., got a $3,161 bill after her now-14-year-old daughter was transported from a hospital to another facility about an hour away after a mental health crisis in November. That was the balance after her insurer, Tricare Prime, paid $491 to Vital EMS. Despite reaching out to the ambulance company and her insurer, she received a call from a collection agency. I feel bullied, she said. I dont plan to pay it. Since Kaiser Health News asked the companies questions about the bill and the pandemic began, she said, she hadnt gotten any more bills or calls as of late August. Last year, an initial attempt at federal legislation to ban surprise billing left out ground ambulances. This February, a bill was introduced in the House that calls for an advisory committee of government officials, patient advocates, and representatives of affected industries to study ground ambulance costs. The bill remains pending, without any action since the pandemic began. In the meantime, consumer advocates suggest patients try to negotiate with their insurers and the ambulance providers. Michelle Mello, a Stanford University professor who specializes in health law and co-authored the JAMA Internal Medicine study that examined surprise ambulance bills, was able to appeal to her insurer to pay 90% of such a bill she got after a bike accident last year. That tactic, however, proved futile for Brasfield, the Ohio librarian. She set up a $100-a-month payment plan with Hanco and eventually paid off the bill. From now on, she said, shell think twice about taking an ambulance unless she feels her life is in imminent danger. For anything less, she said, shed ask a relative or friend to drive her to the hospital. Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. milehightraveler/iStockBy JULIA JACOBO, ABC News (NEW YORK) -- Heavy smoke from the dozens of wildfires blazing up and down the West Coast has traveled as far east as Europe -- nearly 5,000 miles -- satellite images show. Images released by the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service show the smoke moving from the western U.S. and across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. #Smoke from the unprecedented #USFires is moving back across #NorthAmerica from the #Pacific and is on its way to #Europe. Find out more about the monitoring of fires and their smoke by the #CopernicusAtmosphere Monitoring Service in our latest articlehttps://t.co/st70y5IwUC pic.twitter.com/h7MoM2IBKl Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) September 16, 2020 Meanwhile, the smoke is still creating hazardous conditions in the West. The haze is so thick that it has cooled expected record-high temperatures for September by 10 degrees, according to climate scientists. The aerosol optical depth, which is the measure of how much sunlight is blocked by aerosol particles in the atmosphere, has reached levels of seven or above, according to CAMS, which is part of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. To put this in perspective, a level one AOD measurement already implies poor air quality and hazy conditions. "The fact that these fires are emitting so much pollution into the atmosphere that we can still see thick smoke over 8,000 kilometers away reflects just how devastating they have been in their magnitude and duration," CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington said in a statement. The fires also have emitted far more carbon in 2020 than in any other year since CAMS began recording data in 2003. While crews are starting to gain containment on several fires, dozens are still burning, and millions of acres in California and Oregon have been scorched. More than two dozen people have died. Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Indian Army chief, Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane, who is currently on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir, reviewed the operational preparedness of troops and deployments at the Line of Control (LoC) on Thursday. In the Kashmir Valley, he interacted with Chinar Corps commander, Lt Gen B.S. Raju and discussed the prevailing situation in the Valley and at the LoC. Gen Naravane also checked the winter preparedness for the soldiers deployed at the LoC in harsh conditions and inhospitable terrain. He also discussed the incessant ceasefire violations carried out by Pakistan. Till July, a total of 2,662 ceasefire violation cases were reported in the Valley against 3,168 ceasefire violations last year and 1,629 in 2018. This year till July, a total of 120 terror-related cases have been reported and last year during the same period - between January and July -- 188 cases were reported. Till July, 35 security personnel lost their lives in line of duty and during the same period last year, 75 security personnel had lost their lives fighting terrorists. Earlier this month, Gen Naravane visited Ladakh and reviewed operational preparedness amid the border tensions with China. The army chief also had elaborate discussions with local commanders about the strategy to thwart Chinese incursion attempts. He also went to the forward locations and interacted with the troops. Both countries are engaged in a four-month-old standoff at the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. Despite several levels of dialogue, there has not been any breakthrough and the deadlock continues. LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Bradford Lund, grandson of the late Walt Disney, today announced the filing of his objection to a settlement of the litigation over his inheritance of the estate of his mother Sharon Lund, daughter of Walt Disney, that is being proposed by the Trustees of his inheritance. Lund, pointing to findings of competence by two separate courts, tells the Court that the Trustees have no right to force him into a settlement agreement that he does not want to sign, according to Lanny Davis, legal advisor to Mr. Lund, and according to court papers filed in the Los Angeles probate court. In April 2019, Brad Lund, the Lund parties, and the Trustees charged with protecting him and his inheritance, finally reached a global settlement in a 10 year-long litigation involving the estate that is in trust for his benefit. Under the terms of the settlement, the Trustees would be paid millions in termination fees, and Lund would be given the ability to choose his own replacement trustees, with no involvement whatsoever from the current trustees. That was the essential bargain struck. The Court did not accept the settlement and appointed a limited Guardian ad Litem ("GAL") to review the settlement and ensure that it was in Lund's best interest. Yet before the GAL could even submit her report, the Trustees submitted a revised settlement allegedly negotiated among themselves secretly behind closed doors, with all changes favoring them and self-enriching them and prejudicing their fiduciary, Brad Lund. Lund now asks for the Court to reject this proposed "revised," self-negotiated "agreement": "It is not an agreement at all: It lacks consideration to Mr. Lund, it lacks Mr. Lund's consent and authorization, and it lacks any semblance of recognized required contract principles whatsoever. It must be rejected as nothing more than a sham and a farce." Lund Reply to Trustees' Response to Lund Objections to Revised Settlement Agreement, page 4. Lund asserts that the Trustees' proposed settlement strips the only provision that benefitted Lund his ability to choose his own replacement trustees while keeping intact the provision that benefitted the Trustees the $14.5 million payout. "It is impossible to imagine how the Trustees could propose this revised settlement to Brad Lund, someone these Trustees owe a fiduciary duty to, in good faith," said Lanny J. Davis, co-counsel to Brad Lund in his federal civil rights litigation. "These Trustees owe loyalty, honesty, and transparency to their fiduciary, and yet they are proposing a settlement agreement where they get paid millions AND they get to pick the replacement trustees. How does it benefit Mr. Lund to pay millions of dollars for nothing in return?" Lund's objection also takes issue with the alleged hypocrisy of the Trustees in their opposition to Sherry Lund, Brad Lund's step-mother, being appointed as a replacement trustee. "I call on the Trustees to answer this simple question, which is it," said Davis. "Are you acting contrary to your fiduciary duty now by opposing Sherry Lund's possible appointment as trustee despite signing off on that possibility last year? Or were you acting in bad faith then by signing an agreement you then quickly attempted to invalidate?" "This pattern of breach of fiduciary duties by the Trustees, we allege, has been consistent over the years despite court decisions in Arizona and California contradicting their efforts to declare Mr. Lund lacking capacity or competence," Davis said. "We hope the time is coming soon that the current probate court, having received a favorable report from the Guardian ad Litem the court appointed, will challenge the Trustees' obvious alleged breaches of their fiduciary duties and endorse a just conclusion to this case." "If not, then we look forward to doing so at a trial, as Mr. Lund has long sought," Davis concluded. Contact: Alex Lange [email protected] (202) 480-4309 SOURCE Lanny Davis BUCHAREST, Romania - Romanias armed forces received their first shipment of U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles on Thursday, part of efforts to upgrade the countrys military capabilities. The missiles made by defence contractor Raytheon, as well as recent purchases of F-16 fighter jets, are also part of Romanias pledge to gradually increase military spending to 2% of GDP by 2024, the minimum level demanded for NATO members. In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump called on NATO members to increase defence spending to 4% of GDP. Romanias prime minister said the missiles made the country safer. The strategic partnership between the U.S. and Romania is further materialized in a military and economic relationship that is beneficial to Romania, Ludovic Orban said. Since 2016, Romania has hosted a U.S. ballistic missile system at the Deveselu military base, in the countrys south. Russia has criticized the deployment of the defence system but Washington says it is needed to ensure the safety of NATO members from potential attacks by Iran. A new survey suggests theres a secret sauce thats fuelling Canadian firms in the face of plunging revenues during the pandemic: unshaken optimism. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A new survey suggests theres a "secret sauce" thats fuelling Canadian firms in the face of plunging revenues during the pandemic: unshaken optimism. Nearly nine out of 10 business owners in Canada say theyre certain about bouncing back after COVID-19 because of their "acumen to weather previous storms," according to a poll conducted by the Royal Bank of Canada. And numbers RBC shared with the Free Press Wednesday show those figures are much higher than the general population who dont own a business. "Its a hallmark characteristic of any entrepreneur that were seeing that resilient spirit of always hoping for the best," said Lori Darlington, vice-president of small business services at RBC. "Certainly, were pleasantly surprised about still seeing this even when they face such uncertainty during what will probably be the most difficult time they can ever go through." About 82 per cent of owners polled expect their business to ride out the pandemic, and 22 percent even expect to prosper in the six months ahead. Thats compared to around two-thirds of the general population who are somewhat confident about recovery after the pandemic. "The optimism is definitely welcome," said Jonathan Alward, Prairies director for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, "but Im not so sure about how much it can actually affect and help with the reality of the numbers were seeing." Recovery figures from CFIB show only 28 per cent businesses on average are back to making regular sales, as of September. While those numbers are highest in Manitoba (at 41 per cent), less than half of all firms are staffed at normal levels in the province. "People are obviously putting their entire households, savings and family earnings on the line for these things, so of course I understand why they need to inherently be optimistic," said Alward. "Id just be cautious though about how they use that resilience to navigate their businesses." 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. While the general population might not share the same optimism as business owners, 76 percent of people surveyed in Manitoba and Saskatchewan said the pandemic has helped them recognize the value of small businesses in their community. Residents in the two provinces said their top priorities for businesses in the year ahead should be contingency planning (56 per cent), financial prudence (55 per cent), and refining core product or service offerings (48 per cent). Overall, about 36 per cent ranked perseverance and resilience as the most important skills for an entrepreneur. Meantime, business owners expect a "robust digital presence" will be key to their future. Around 90 per cent say online ordering, touchless payment and social media advertising should be considered less a "nice-to-do, but rather a key priority for forward-thinking businesses." "I think these figures are a resounding way of looking at the future," said Darlington. "And at the end of the day, it makes us hopeful about the future, too." Twitter: @temurdur Temur.Durrani@freepress.mb.ca Joe Biden made his first trip to Florida as the Democratic presidential nominee on Tuesday with an urgent mission to boost support among Latinos who could decide the election in one of the nations fiercest battleground states. More than any other time, the Hispanic community, Latino community holds in the palm of their hand the destiny of this country, Mr Biden said during a Hispanic Heritage Month kickoff event in Kissimmee. You can decide the direction of this country. A win for Mr Biden in Florida would dramatically narrow Mr Trumps path to re-election. But in a state where elections are often decided by a percentage point, there are mounting concerns Mr Biden may be slipping, particularly with the states influential Latino voters. An NBC-Marist poll released last week found Latinos in the state were roughly evenly divided between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. Democrat Hillary Clinton led Mr Trump by a 59% to 36% margin among Latinos in the same poll in 2016 and Mr Trump won Florida by about 1 percentage point. To regain lost ground, Mr Biden made the case on Tuesday that he would be a better president for Hispanics than Mr Trump, touting his commitment to immigration reform and a new plan to support Puerto Ricos economy. Donald Trump has failed the Hispanic community time and time again, and that's not a secret Joe Biden Donald Trump has failed the Hispanic community time and time again, and thats not a secret, Mr Biden said. Whether its in his heinous act of separating children from their families at our border, or his repeated attacks on Dreamers, or his neglect of the people of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, or his repeated failures to make sure essential workers have the personal protective equipment they need. Still, Hispanic voters in Florida tend to be somewhat more Republican-leaning than Hispanic voters nationwide because of the states Cuban American population. Nationally, little public polling is available to measure the opinions of Latino voters this year and whether they differ from four years ago. But Democrats are taking no chances. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg has pledged to spend at least 100 million dollars (77 million) to defeat Mr Trump in Florida. And by spending his day along what is known as the Interstate 4 corridor in central Florida, Mr Biden is devoting time to one of the most critical regions of the state. President Donald Trump narrowly won Florida in 2016 (Alex Brandon/AP) While Republicans typically post big numbers in the northern and southwestern parts of the state and Democrats are strong in coastal cities, campaigns typically battle it out for every vote in central Florida. Mr Bidens first event, in Tampa, focused on veterans and was aimed at pushing a potential opening with military voters, who broadly supported Mr Trump in 2016 but are seen as potentially persuadable because of controversial remarks the president reportedly made mocking American war dead as losers and suckers. Mr Trump has denied making the remarks, first reported through anonymous sources by The Atlantic, but many of the comments were later confirmed by The Associated Press. Nowhere are his faults more glaring and more offensive, to me at least, than when it comes to his denigration of our service members, veterans, wounded warriors who have fallen, Mr Biden said. Speaking of his late son Beau, who served overseas as a Delaware Army National Guard member, Mr Biden said, Hes gone now, but hes no sucker. Mr Bidens decision to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in Kissimmee reflects a focus on the states rapidly growing Puerto Rican community. Many Puerto Ricans relocated to Florida after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting) of Aritzia Inc. ("Aritzia", the "Company") (TSX: ATZ), a vertically integrated, innovative design house of exclusive fashion brands offering Everyday Luxury in its boutiques and online, was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, yesterday. Each of the matters voted upon at the Meeting is discussed in detail in the Company's management information circular dated July 31, 2020 (the "Circular"), which can be found under the Company's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Per TSX reporting requirements, the Company wishes to disclose that the total number of votes cast by shareholders in person and by proxy at the Meeting was 314,799,182 votes. The voting in relation to the election of directors was conducted by way of ballot at the Meeting. According to the proxies received and such vote by ballot, the results were as follows: Number of Votes Cast Name of Director Votes For Votes Withheld Aldo Bensadoun 313,602,895 252,136 John E. Currie 313,573,179 281,852 Brian Hill 312,258,953 1,596,078 Ryan Holmes 313,839,882 15,149 David Labistour 313,809,604 45,427 John Montalbano 313,603,185 251,846 Marni Payne 307,935,113 5,919,918 Glen Senk 313,706,903 14,812 Marcia Smith 313,682,749 38,966 Jennifer Wong 309,131,637 4,723,394 Each of the other matters put forward before shareholders for consideration and approval at the Meeting, as described in the Circular, was duly approved by the requisite number of votes. The Company has filed a report of voting results on all resolutions voted on at the meeting on www.sedar.com. About Aritzia Aritzia is an innovative design house and fashion boutique. We conceive, create, develop and retail fashion brands with a depth of design and quality that provides compelling value. Each of our exclusive brands has its own vision and distinct aesthetic point of view. As a group, they are united by an unwavering commitment to superior fabrics, meticulous construction and relevant, effortless design. Founded in Vancouver in 1984, Aritzia now has more than 95 locations in select cities across North America, including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. We pride ourselves on creating immersive, human and highly personal shopping experiences, both in our boutiques and on aritzia.com with a focus on delivering Everyday Luxury. SOURCE Aritzia Inc. Related Links http://www.aritzia.com BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The overnight late-session pull back on Wall Street, and lower U.S. and European futures point to a weak start for European markets Thursday morning. Brexit woes and concerns about surging coronavirus cases are among the other factors that could weigh on the markets. The Bank of England's monetary policy announcement is the key economic event for the European markets today. As widely expected, the U.S. Federal Reserve left its rates unchanged on Wednesday and said the low interest regime will continue through 2023. The Fed's latest estimates point to a 3.7% contraction in GDP in 2020, reflecting an improvement from the 6.5% plunge forecast in June. However, the Fed downwardly revised its estimates for GDP growth in 2021 and 2022 to 4% and 3%, respectively. GDP growth in 2023 was forecast at 2.5%. In his post monetary-meeting press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated that the economic downturn resulting from the pandemic is 'the most severe in our lifetime,' and said fiscal stimulus from Congress is necessary to sustain the economic recovery. The BoE is scheduled to announce its monetary policy at 7.00 am ET. Economists expect the bank to hold its key rate at a record low of 0.1%, and asset purchase programme at GBP 745 billion. There are expectations that the central bank might consider additional stimulus to limit the impact of the virus pandemic and Brexit woes on the economy. Much earlier, at 2.00 am ET, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association is slated to publish Europe's new car registration data for July/August, and Switzerland's statistical office will release the foreign trade data for August. In July, Swiss trade surplus came in at CHF 2.58 billion. At 3.00 am ET, HICP figures are due from Austria and Slovakia, and at 4.00 am ET, gross wages data from Poland, and foreign trade data from Italy are due. Eurostat will release euro area final consumer price data for August, at 5.00 am ET. According to preliminary estimate, consumer prices had dropped 0.2% annually, reversing a 0.4% rise in July. On Wednesday, most of the markets across Europe ended on positive note. Among the major markets, Germany and France closed higher, while the U.K. market ended weak. The pan European Stoxx 600 ended up 0.58%. Germany's DAX advanced 0.29% and France's CAC 40 edged up 0.13%, while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 slid 0.44%. Switzerland's SMI moved up 0.3%. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de UK PM says he has 'every hope' of avoiding no-deal with EU A handout photograph released by the UK Parliament shows Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons in London on Wednesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday said he had full confidence that Britain and the EU will avoid a potentially disastrous cliff-edge "no deal" at the end of this year. But he refused to back down on controversial new legislation that he openly admits will break international law and which has put his government at loggerheads with Brussels. The proposed law, which overrides parts of the Brexit treaty relating to trade in Northern Ireland, could torpedo already fraught trade talks with the European Union. The prospect of a "no deal" is looming larger with the talks deadlocked, and both sides insisting agreement must be struck by next month for it to be implemented at the end of the year. Johnson told MPs that a "no deal" was "not what this country wants and it's not what our EU friends and partners want from us". "Therefore I have every hope and expectation that that will not be the outcome," he told a parliamentary committee during more than two hours of questioning. The UK Internal Market Bill was put before parliament this week, despite EU calls for it to be withdrawn and stark reminders of the need to uphold treaty obligations. Johnson has claimed the EU could "blockade" food and agricultural products heading to Northern Ireland from mainland Britain by imposing higher duties and tariffs. Northern Ireland will have Britain's only land border with the EU from January 1, and remains bound by some EU rules to ensure its border with Ireland stays open. An open border was a key requirement of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to more than 30 years of violence over British rule in Northern Ireland. Johnson said EU officials had "signally failed" to rule out preventing goods reaching Northern Ireland from Britain if no trade agreement is made. "It's always possible that I'm mistaken and perhaps they will prove my suspicions wrong," he said. Story continues The bill was designed as a "belt and braces" measure to regulate trade within the UK, and an "insurance policy" against any extreme action, he added. "I prefer to have protections that guarantee the integrity of this country and protect against the potential rupture of the United Kingdom," he said. - Resignation and compromise - A "no deal" outcome to the talks would see tariffs imposed by both sides, and on Britain's side, they "would be quite formidable for some of their products", he added. EU chief executive Ursula von der Leyen earlier said the divorce deal that allowed Britain to leave the bloc could not be "unilaterally changed, disregarded or misapplied". "This is a matter of law and trust and good faith," the European Commission president said in a speech, warning the chances of securing a trade deal were fading. EU leaders have dismissed Johnson's claims as "spin", while the ramifications of the government's admission the bill would break the law rumbled on. Several of Johnson's own Conservative MPs have spoken of their unease, while every living former prime minister has warned of the risk to Britain's global reputation. US Democrats said any US-UK trade deal would unlikely get through Congress if it was seen to threaten the Good Friday Agreement. In another blow for the government, its most senior law officer for Scotland, Richard Keen, quit amid reports he opposed the plans to flout the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Further votes on the bill are expected in parliament next week, but the government agreed to a compromise with Tory rebels. It said it would allow MPs a vote before using powers which would break international law, according to a joint statement from Johnson's office, and two senior Conservatives. jit-phz/lc The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has set targets for the development of book publishing industry in 2021-2022. Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko wrote this on Facebook following his yesterday's meeting with representatives of the book publishing industry. "Compared to 2019, the book publishing industry has suffered significant losses due to the pandemic, both in terms of funding and existence. The book publishing industry in Ukraine numbers 7,626 registered market players. And measures that can provide sufficient conditions for existence and work of the industry are extremely needed, Tkachenko wrote. According to him, the ministry within the next two years intends to improve a strategy for the development of the book publishing market; promote reading among the population of Ukraine; change program 579 to raise the turnover limit of companies that can join it; start issuing certificates for the purchase of books for school-age children. In addition, it is planned to update the procedure for replenishing library funds; provide grants for the publication of book products; to promote Ukrainian literature abroad; to develop existing projects, reading promotion programs, international partnerships. At the same time, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy intends to start training programs for authors, translators, publishers, launch three digital platforms in 2021, as well as conduct research on the publishing market, reading promotion and the availability of Ukrainian books and literature in the world. iy NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP >> Newtown Township will be applying for federal funding to bolster its career firefighting force. And its crossing its fingers and hoping the third times a charm. At its Jan. 12 meeting, the board of supervisors voted unanimously to resubmit its SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to... 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. The North Dakota Department of Health reported a record 375 new cases of COVID-19 along with two new deaths Saturday. The number of active cases in the state now totals 2,325, which is a new high. Burleigh County has 425 active cases and Morton County has 126. A top White House coronavirus adviser discussed North Dakota's response to the pandemic during a visit to the state on Saturday. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White Houses coronavirus task force, has been touring the country to press for people to cover their faces and to social distance to fight the global pandemic. Birx was hosting a meeting Saturday afternoon in Fargo with Gov. Doug Burgum and other officials. Birx praised the North Dakota Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard that provides statistical information and complimented the state's testing capacity, according to a news release from the state. Not only do they have that capacity, theyve used that capacity for good, and theyve used it to really protect those that are most vulnerable among us, she said. Birx encouraged people to take steps to slow the spread of the virus, cautioning that recent increases in active cases could lead to more hospitalizations and fatalities. Sixty-five people are hospitalized with the virus in North Dakota, which is a decrease of five from Friday. The two deaths reported Saturday were a Benson County man in his 50s and a Burleigh County woman in her 80s, both with underlying health conditions. A total of 141 North Dakotans have died with COVID-19. Burleigh County has 26 new cases, and Morton County has 15. Grand Forks County reported 146 new cases, Cass County, home to Fargo, reported 39, Williams County reported 32, Ward County, home to Minot, reported 11 and Stark County, home to Dickinson, reported nine. The state also set a new record for the number of tests done in a day with 7,898. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 465,649 tests have been conducted. Since mid-March, 11,484 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 9,018 have recovered. Most people who get COVID-19 recover, experiencing only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough. Others, especially the elderly and people with existing health problems, can experience more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Sam Nelson at 701-250-8264 or sam.nelson@bismarcktribune.com. 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. A man has been charged with murder after a 54-year-old died in suspicious circumstances in Queensland. Police were called to Hope Street in Warwick, southwest of Brisbane after a disturbance at about 6pm on Wednesday. Officers found Mark Ireland with significant head injuries and he was dead at the scene. Homicide investigators set up a crime scene and commenced their inquiries, leading to the arrest of Dwayne Watts at the scene. Dwayne Watts has been charged with murder after Mark Ireland died following an altercation on Hope Street (pictured) in Warwick, southwest of Brisbane on Wednesday A 29-year-old Warwick man was charged with Mr Ireland's murder on Thursday morning. He will appear in Warwick Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon. Acting Detective Superintendent David Briese told ABC the two men were known to each other. 'They had spent part of the day together at the home, what their actual relationship is I don't know,' he said. Det Supt Briese said an argument broke out between the pair before a 'physical altercation'. 'We will be alleging it was a long-bladed weapon that was used to inflict those injuries it's something like a knife.' Investigations lead detectives to charge Mr Watts with Mr Ireland's murder on Thursday (stock image) Mr Ireland's friend Daniel Hager said the victim was a great man who was dedicated to his family and friends. 'He loved his kids, loved his grand kids, it was just unfortunate what happened,' Mr Hager said. 'He'd do anything for anyone.' After Graham Weston caught the coronavirus from his son, who hadnt shown any symptoms, the San Antonio tech entrepreneur realized that the role of silent spreaders demanded more attention. He and other prominent philanthropic leaders in the city formed a new nonprofit with the express purpose of screening hundreds and eventually thousands of people to identify who is infected and asymptomatic and keep them from unknowingly spreading the virus. The larger goal is even more ambitious: deliver an effective way of supporting societys recovery from the pandemic. We can never really suppress the virus and give people the confidence to go back (to school or work) when we have silent spreaders walking through our population, said Weston, founder of the 80 | 20 Foundation and former CEO and chairman of Rackspace Technology. The nonprofit, called Community Labs, has adopted a new approach to testing that focuses on micro populations in shared places, such as area schools and businesses. It is using an existing test developed by Thermo Fisher Scientific. The polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test relies on a sample taken from the front of the nostril easier on the person getting tested. Results will be available within 24 hours, far faster than many providers of coronavirus tests, the nonprofits leaders said Thursday during their announcement of the initiative. The nonprofit will pilot the testing effort in the Somerset Independent School District. It has the capacity to process 600 tests a day and aims to scale up to 12,000 tests a day by November, with the goal of lowering the price to $35 per test. Community Labs is working with BioBridge Global, which houses the nonprofit and conducts the testing in collaboration with UT Health San Antonio. BioBridge, which operates San Antonios blood bank, owns its own lab off Interstate 10 near Vance Jackson on the West Side. Experts estimate that up to half of people who contract the coronavirus may display no symptoms, said bank executive J. Bruce Bugg Jr., chairman and trustee of the Tobin Endowment and co-founder of Community Labs. While hospitals have widely screened patients for the coronavirus when they are scheduled for surgery, federal and local health officials have largely prioritized testing people with symptoms. On ExpressNews.com: New nonprofit aims to improve COVID-19 testing Its an approach that has persisted since early in the pandemic, when testing for the coronavirus was severely limited by regulatory, processing and supply chain bottlenecks. Health departments, including the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, initially focused their efforts on people who were severely ill, those with classic symptoms and front-line workers. Metro Health briefly tested asymptomatic people in the community earlier this year but halted the effort when a surge of cases over the summer caused demand for testing to skyrocket. While testing those with symptoms may help diagnose people with COVID-19, it does little to halt chains of transmission that stem from asymptomatic carriers. To fill that testing gap, Community Labs is taking the exact opposite approach, Bugg said. He said the goal is to create a strong testing model that screens for asymptomatic carriers and that can be replicated and applied in cities across the state. Community Labs approach hinges on quick turnaround times, which are not typical with the traditional testing. Waiting a week for results would render the value of testing asymptomatic people moot, Weston said, as they wont know to isolate themselves and already could have spread the virus to others by the time they learn they are infected. Dr. Rachel Beddard, chief medical officer of BioBridge, said the company already conducts fast, high-volume testing for communicable diseases on blood products collected by the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center and on tissue, bone marrow and stem cells gathered by GenCure, another subsidiary. Earlier this year, federal regulators granted an emergency use authorization for the coronavirus test that BioBridge is using. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio students are back in classrooms very different classrooms Somerset ISD, a seven-school system in rural Southwest Bexar County, was selected as a demonstration site after its superintendent, Saul Hinojosa, agreed to participate. With about 40 percent of all students having returned to school for in-person learning, the district will begin testing students and staff Wednesday, starting with students involved in extracurricular activities, all high school staff and all nurses and police officers. Only students whose parents sign a consent form will be tested at school, Hinojosa said. The goal is to test as many students as possible so they, their parents and staff feel comfortable returning to school. If everything goes according to plan and enough students agree to get tested, Hinojosa said, the entire district could be back learning face to face earlier than expected. We need students in the classroom because thats where they learn best, and we hope that this strategy will lessen the concern on parents, along with the anxiety, to where they feel confident that the school campus is a safe environment for the kids, he said. Unlike the deep nasal swabs that have been used to collect samples for many coronavirus tests, the test used by Community Labs uses a sample thats simpler and far less invasive to collect. Participants rub a small Q-tip inside each nostril for five seconds before dropping it into a test tube. Community Labs was co-founded by Weston, Bugg and J. Tullos Wells, managing director of the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. Weston is serving as chairman, while Bugg and Wells are vice chairmen. The Kronkosky and 80 | 20 foundations and the Tobin Endowment have contributed a combined $2.5 million to start the nonprofit. Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Lauren, become a subscriber. lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba by Nirmala Carvalho Three Reddy upper caste priests are accused of attacking a Dalit bishop. They were suspended by the bishop himself; however, all three, currently out on bail, were reinstated by his successor. Mumbai (AsiaNews) The case of three Reddy upper caste priests is sowing division and causing rifts among Indian Catholics. The three clergymen are accused of attacking a Dalit bishop. As a result of their action, they were suspended by the attacked bishop, but were reinstated by his successor. Currently, all three are out on bail. The Holy See has intervened in the affair. On 24 April 2016, three upper caste priests were reportedly involved in a premeditated attack against Bishop Gallela Prasad (pictured), the former ordinary bishop of Cuddapah, as he was returning from a religious service in the diocese. On 21 May 2016, Bishop Gallela Prasad, a Dalit, suspended the three Reddy upper caste priests. On 10 December 2018, Pope Francis accepted Bishop Prasads resignation; he was facing a lawsuit in which he was charged of embezzling diocesan funds in order to lead a life of luxury with his alleged wife and child. The Holy Father appointed Bishop Gali Bali as apostolic administrator of Cuddapah, who on 17 July reinstated Fathers Nalladimmu Raja Reddy, Lingala Vijaymohan Reddy and Sanivarappu Marreddy, and gave them parishes. For Jesuit a X J Bosco SJ, a Dalit human rights activist, speaking to AsiaNews, the appointment of Fr Sanivarappu Marreddy only reveals the caste mindset and corruption in the Church. A letter by Bishop Gali Bali, dated 11 July 2020, states that the Holy See evaluated your request (Father Marreddys) about the case concerning the suspension imposed on you by the former Bishop Gallela Prasad, based on falsely alleged offences. We know very well how the Church hierarchy works, notes A X J Bosco. Without the recommendation, support and consent of Bishop Gali Bali, the Holy See would not have revoked the suspension in such a serious case and would not have asked him to appoint Fr Marreddy. "Appointing the three Reddy priests in this scandalous criminal case, while the case is still pending in court, is nothing short of shocking and smells of caste prejudice, cherished and perpetuated even today by casteist bishops and priests. I like to pose a challenge: I know that Reddies want to follow Jesus sincerely, but often the devil succeeds in enticing them into caste discrimination and caste politics. Let them drop the suffix Reddy from their names. This may be very painful for them, but it will show their sincerity in following Jesus who proclaimed the Kingdom of God in which we love one another as equals. Mgr Sarat Chandra Nayak, chairman of the Commission for Scheduled Castes (SC)/other backward castes (BC) of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), spoke to AsiaNews about the reinstatement of the three upper caste priests who were arrested and are currently out on bail. "There are three issues here: civil legality, ecclesial-canonical legality and pastoral prudence and sensitivity, he said. First of all, it is better to look at the issue in terms of legality, be it civil or canonical, in order to reach justice based on the truth. A crime has no caste, religion, gender, authority, nationality for an equitable decision, even if these may weigh on the matter. It was widely reported that the priests physically assaulted the bishop and that the bishop suspended them for this. There is no justification for taking the law into one's own hands, be it in society or in the Church. Physical assault is a crime in both civil and canon law. In both civil and ecclesiastical society, the legal system of justice must be respected and pursued in order to obtain justice. Bishop Gali Bali's letter clearly states that the Holy See, after evaluating the application and supporting documents from the concerned suspended priests, authorised him to make the appropriate decision on the matter. Therefore, I prudently and religiously presume that the Holy See has evaluated the matter with all seriousness, including by listening to Archbishop Gallela Prasad, whatever his present state may be. Before one can analyse and question Bishop Gali Bali's decision, one needs to know if the Holy See has come to the conclusion that the said allegation against the priests was false so as to ask Bishop Gali Bali to make the appropriate decision. It does not look so, since the Holy See found it necessary to strongly advise the priests to lead an exemplary life, cooperating fully with the diocesan authorities and bearing an authentic witness to true reconciliation and ecclesial communion. If Bishop Gali Bali was left with the task of judging the veracity of the allegation and make the appropriate decision, it is expected that he has supporting facts and witnesses, beyond a reasonable doubt, to conclude that the suspension was based on falsely alleged offences. Church and civil law are certainly separate. However, except in matters of faith and morals, civil law prevails over Church law when there is a conflict between the two. The matter is before a civil court and the three priests are out on bail. Bishop Gali Bali, the apostolic administrator of Cuddapah, not only postponed the suspension, but also reinstated them [the priests] as pastors under Canon 1356. I assume he consulted Bishop Gallela Prasad before the suspension was remitted as required by Canon 1356. 2. When the matter is before a court, reinstating priests to pastoral responsibilities before allegation can be considered an appropriate decision by a seasoned bishop like Gali Bali, although others may see pastoral prudence extended beyond the limit. I have not visited the Diocese of Cuddapah, but I am aware that there is a caste problem there, just as in many other dioceses in India. The alleged assault on the bishop and the subsequent incidents are heavily loaded with caste feelings and sentiments. Not dancing to caste music is a great challenge, and only for bishops and superiors; one cannot remain naive in the face of deeply rooted caste mindsets and practices that cripple the humanity of the so-called upper castes and crush the dignity of Dalits. Drug dealer and aspiring gangster Jamie Gao may have been doomed long before he was murdered by two disgraced police officers, according to new claims. The young university student 20, was shot dead during a drug deal that went wrong inside a storage unit in Padstow in Sydney's south west in May 2014 before his body was wrapped in tarpaulin and stored in a boat before being dumped out to sea. His body was found floating off the coast of Cronulla in the city's south days later. Former NSW detectives Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara were found guilty for Gao's murder and are serving life sentences. New bombshell claims have come to light that Gao was lured to his death by Chinese triad members who sanctioned his murder. Drug dealer Jamie Gao (pictured) was shot dead by detectives Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara in 2014 Channel Nine's Australian Crime Stories revealed Gao visited the Australian Crime Commission in lead up to his murder. Crime journalist Mark Morri claims Chinese triad members supplied drugs to Gao to sell to Rogerson and McNamara, a theory he's discussed with and not ruled out by detectives. 'Roger's not an idiot,' Morri told the program. 'You don't just shoot a guy and steal $700,000 worth of drugs from the Chinese triads. 'I said is it possible that it was sanctioned that after Jamie Gao had been sent to Crime Commission to get him killed and that the contract payment was 'you keep the drugs? 'I've been told it's not a crazy theory.' Disgraced detectives Roger Rogerson (left) and Glen McNamara (right) are serving life sentences for Jamie Gao's murder Glen McNamara and Roger Rogerson dragged Gao's body out of the storage unit in a silver surfboard bag and into a vehicle at Padstow in May 2014 On the day of his murder, CCTV captures two Asian men getting out of car with Gao before he entered the storage unit with McNamara and then Rogerson. The men leave and return five hours later to pick up Gao's car. Days later, the two men are again captured on CCTV at Sydney International Airport, checking in for a flight bound for Hong Kong. 'They're out of the country, to get rid of the connections,' former detective Michael Drury said. The program also lifted the lid on discrepancies in the murder case and who really planned the operation. Mark Morri (pictured) claims Chinese triad members supplied drugs to Gao to sell to the crooked cops. 'I've been told it's not a crazy theory,' he said Gao's body (pictured) was dumped at sea and found floating off the coast of Cronulla Rogerson and McNamara both claimed innocence and blamed each other for Gao's murder. When Gao's body was taken out to sea the morning after he was murdered, McNamara claims Rogerson was with him the whole time on the boat, threatening him with a gun. But Rogerson claimed he stayed on dry land. 'If Rogerson had been on the boat when the body was thrown overboard, he would have known that they would have to have a very heavy weight to the body so that when it was thrown, it would sink immediately,' former NSW assistant police commissioner Clive Small told the program. 'Or that he had to cut the body open so there was no oxygen causing the body to float.' Jamie Gao 'It leads me to believe that for whatever reason, McNamara may have taken out the body by himself.' 'Roger Rogerson will tell you how you dispose of bodies, you don't just put it over the side because it will rise up.' Morri dismissed Rogerson's long time claim that he was 'lured to the dark side after joining the NSW Police force as a 'load of crap'. 'He is the darkness,' Morri said. 'I think Roger was born on the dark side.' Pune: Blood samples of around 400 employees of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) and CSIR-URDIP and their family members have been collected for serological tests, an official release said here on Thursday. Serological test is conducted to see if a person has developed antibodies to coronavirus. Presence of antibodies can indicate that the person has been exposed to the virus. The testing is part of a project of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), led by Delhi-based CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. This research study involves testing of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19) in the people working in the CSIR labs and their family members under Phenome India", a long-term longitudinal observational cohort study of health outcomes," said the release. The CSIR-NCL and CSIR-URDIP (Unit for Research and Development of Information Products) are located in Pune. The test is voluntary and open to all CSIR staff, including pensioners (up to the age of 70 yr), students, contractual staff and their families (aged 18 yrs and above)," the release added. 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 With the Arab-Israeli normalisation train on track, the illusion that Israel could give up land for peace has finally come to an end For over 18 years, Arab nations have repeated their proposal to end decades of conflict at the heart of Middle East problems, advocating peace with Israel hinged upon its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. Similar terms in the Arab Peace Initiative (API) made at an Arab leadership summit in March 2002 suggested that an independent Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem if Israel gives up the occupied territories. Since then Arab leaders have revived the land-for-peace offer to Israel at their annual summits seeking an end to one of the worlds longest-running and costly conflicts despite Israels repeated rejection of the formula. Now that mantra seems to have been cast aside in favour of a more down-to-earth approach that accepts the status quo and dashes hopes to end the Israeli occupation and create an independent Palestinian state. Whether discovering that the API was only a faff to operate or it is a matter of setting new priorities, the Arab world seems to be on transition towards managing rapid changes in the regions dynamics that led many regimes to prioritise regional and local threats over that coming from Israel. An Arab League ministerial gathering in Cairo last week was perhaps the venue for ushering in a new era in the Middle East and opening the door for the Arab world to reappraise its entire strategy towards Israel. The meeting of the 22-member council came on the heels of a landmark decision by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to normalise relations with Israel, described by the two countries and the US sponsor as a peace agreement. The UAE-Israel accord was the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than two decades and it promises to establish normal relations between the two countries, including full diplomatic ties and business cooperation. Palestinians were outraged by the UAEs move, fearing it would undermine efforts of the Palestine Authority (PA) to negotiate an agreement for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and establishing a Palestinian state. But at a video conference of Arab foreign ministers 9 September, the Palestinian leadership failed to persuade the Arab League to condemn the Israeli-UEA normalisation deal, a move that is expected to pave the way for more Arab countries to follow suit. It didnt take long. On Friday, Bahrain followed in the footsteps of the UAE and became the second Arab country to make peace with Israel in 30 days. Bahrains attraction to peace with Israel will now add more weight to the Abraham Accords the name given by the Trump administration to the new peace deals to be signed this week at the White House. In his desperate speech at the Arab League meeting, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyadh Al-Maliki called on his Arab counterparts to reject the UAE-Israel normalisation deal. Otherwise, our meeting will be considered a blessing to the move, or a cover-up, Al-Maliki said. The PA had originally called for an emergency meeting of the pan-Arab body against the Israeli-UAE deal, but the request was deferred to the scheduled 9 September meeting. There was no condemnation by Arab ministers of the UAEs move and the Arab League faltered in reaffirming its historic rhetoric on the Palestinian cause. While it was unlikely that Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan, which have formal peace treaties with Israel, would denounce the UAEs move, several other states have expressed public or tacit support for the deal. Moreover, some Arab countries, including Oman and Sudan, have been repeatedly mentioned as soon following the UAE lead and normalising relations with Israel in the coming weeks. Noticeably, however, in contrast to Al-Malikis tough talk and Palestinian officials initial harsh criticism of the Israeli-UAE deal, the PAs reaction remained generally mild. Having seen that the Leagues members remained deaf to their calls to rally to their defence, the PA ditched plans to present a draft resolution condemning the Israel-UAE deal and urging Arab governments to act against it. The soft side of the Palestinians hard stance, which initially labelled the Israeli-UAE accord as a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause, underlines the drastic shift in the regional balance of power that has made the deal possible. But to avoid a diplomatic explosion and probably a backlash by a furious Palestinian public, Arab ministers announced that the Arab peace plan of 2002 is still on the table. A final resolution issued by the ministers called for the reaffirmation of the fact that the two-state solution on 1967 borders is the only way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Staying onside, key Arab powerhouses such Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have said they stand firmly behind Palestinian efforts to establish a Palestinian state based on the borders in place before the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as its capital. On the face of it this looks like the Arab League has succeeded in striking a balance between attempts to override the UAE deal with Israel and the traditional stated policy of supporting Palestinian statehood. That meant a decision by member states to establish normal ties with Israel in the words of the Leagues Secretary General Ahmed Abul Gheit, was a matter of sovereignty while the Arab organisation will remain supportive of the Palestinians goal of statehood. Practically speaking, however, main challenging areas remain and divergences on some are still significant. Essentially, the new Arab Leagues stance reads that what happens in one area does not affect progress in others. Yet, on the ground, reaching a normalisation swap by any given Arab country unilaterally with Israel means that minimum Arab unity over Palestine has raptured and theres no chance left for a collective bargaining for a peace for land agreement. Also, right now, the chances of stopping Israels annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank killing the two-state solution, which the API meant to support have become slim to none. The API plan was announced by then Saudi crown prince Abdullah at the Beirut Arab League Summit in March 2002. The initiative was initially endorsed by the Leagues 22 member states and later by the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Considering the perpetual stalemate in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the API was a historic move with a flexible approach to concluding the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, and a novel step towards peace and security. The initiative crowned a series of Arab efforts to encourage peace with Israel that started with Arabs and the Palestinians accepting UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 and making several other peace gestures. More practically, while Egypt signed the Camp David Treaty with Israel in 1979, the Palestinians signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 and Jordan concluded its peace agreement with Israel a year later. Israeli prime minister at the time Ariel Sharon rejected the Arab proposal of 2002 and since then successive Israeli governments, unwilling to seize on the historic offer to end the conflict, have shunned the API. Instead, they continued the illegal grab of Palestinian land while seeking US pressure on the rest of the Arab states, or directly courting them, to quietly come to terms with Israel. Undoubtedly, the API is overambitious, and some even say naive. But given the new Arab stance, or maybe the lack of it, the question now is whether flouting the API will plunge the prospects of a final Palestinian-Israeli peace deal. Until last week the argument had been whether all parties have missed a genuine opportunity to advance the peace process through a viable framework for negotiation offered by the API. The remaining debate will be if a comprehensive peace can ever be achieved in the Middle East with the Palestinians returning to their land. The Palestinian quest for return and establishing an independent Palestinian state remain at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could only be resolved through a bilateral track between the Israelis and Palestinians and not through one-sided deals with Arabs. The demise of the API, combined with the Trumps Deal of the Century plan, could be the Palestinians worst nightmare. But that wont change the fact that new generations of Palestinians will remain committed to their right to a sovereign state. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: DEARBORN, Mich. - Ford says it will add 300 jobs at a new factory that's being built to assemble batteries and manufacture an electric version of the F-150 pickup truck. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. FILE- This Feb. 15, 2018, file photo shows a Ford logo on the grill of a 2018 Ford Explorer on display at the Pittsburgh Auto Show. Ford Motor Co. will offer early retirement incentives with hopes of cutting its U.S. white-collar workforce by 1,400 more positions. President for the Americas Kumar Galhotra told employees about the offers Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File) DEARBORN, Mich. - Ford says it will add 300 jobs at a new factory that's being built to assemble batteries and manufacture an electric version of the F-150 pickup truck. The new plant is being built in Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford is starting to produce a new version of the F-150 that's due in showrooms this November. Ford's F-series pickup is the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. with nearly 900,000 sold last year. Ford says the new electric truck will go on sale in mid-2022. The company says it's investing $700 million in its Rouge factory complex to make the new trucks. Ford also plans a plug-in gas-electric hybrid version. The company says a study done by the Boston Consulting Group found that the F-Series brings in $42 billion in U.S. revenue. That's more than whole companies such as McDonald's, Nike and Netflix. Jakob Skelton was 19 years old and in college but confused about the future. He realized he was not a fan of college life. I had no clue where I saw myself in five, 10, 15 years. I enlisted, and the rest is history, he recalled. Skelton left college and took charge of his future by enlisting in the U.S. Army, where he became a Signal Intelligence Analyst for a Special Forces unit. After serving eight years, which included two tours to Afghanistan, Sgt. Skelton was ready to enter civilian life and start his professional career. Once again, he looked to the Army for help and took advantage of many of the services offered to prepare for life post-military. Skelton located the Transition Assistance Program offered by the Army, which introduced him to a Military Apprenticeship program offered by Amazon. When Amazon comes knocking, it's hard to say no. I am currently in the Apprenticeship program as a Systems Development Engineer. This allowed me to obtain Linux+ and LPC certifications, he said. Skelton said that he would not have had access to this program as a civilian with no prior experience or education. On-the-job experience The U.S. Army has all of the tools available for a successful life and career, whether you are certain of your purpose or not. Once enlisted, a host of benefits await including career training that suits your skills and goals including jobs in science, intelligence, combat, aviation, engineering, law and more. Educational programs can help pay for college, pay off existing loans or earn college credit while on active duty. Transition programs help you succeed in careers after your service has ended. The Armys unique career match tool and on-site recruiters and mentors ensure that you are on a continuum to your personalized path to success. While enlisted, you have the opportunity to train and achieve a professional or trade certification in almost any field. You are given hands-on training and are expected to carry more responsibility than you would starting out in a comparable civilian job. In addition to technical skills, the Army also fosters the soft skills that every employer seeks. U.S. Army veterans are exceptional team members and leaders. They understand and respect hierarchies, have an amazing work ethic and are highly adaptable. These skills are invaluable to career growth and easily transferable to a civilian career. Transitioning from Soldier to Civilian Some Soldiers choose to build lifelong careers in the Army. Others decide to pursue opportunities in jobs outside the military. The valuable military training and experience one receives during their time of service often makes finding a job after the Army considerably easier. Whatever path you choose, the Army supports your decision with programs and guidance to help you succeed in post-military careers. Here are just of few of the programs designed to aid in transitioning out of the military: The Soldier For Life Transition Assistance Program (SFL-TAP) helps Soldiers prepare for futures after the Army through a program called the Transition Assistance Program (TAP). TAP helps all eligible transitioning Soldiers discover knowledge, skills and resources necessary to be competitive and successful in the global workforce. Career counselors are on hand to help Soldiers craft resumes, network with employers and determine post-Army careers that best utilize the skills learned as a Soldier. The Partnership for Youth Success (PaYS) Program, a partnership between the U.S. Army and a cross section of American corporations and public sector agencies, provides a unique opportunity to serve the country while simultaneously preparing for the future. Soldiers and ROTC cadets are guaranteed a job interview and possible employment with a PaYS partner of their choice. Its a valuable benefit that the Army is proud to offer. If you're interested in a career as a teacher following your Army service, the Army's Troops to Teachers program can help. You'll receive help identifying teacher certification requirements, programs leading to certification and employment opportunities. According to the program's website, eligible military veterans may receive a stipend of up to $5,000 to help them pay for state teacher certification and a one-time bonus of up to $10,000 for agreeing to teach in a high-needs school district. Lifelong Education The GI Bill is one of the most powerful benefits available to Army Soldiers interested in attending a four-year college, trade school or technical school. In most cases, Soldiers using the GI Bill receive full tuition for their military service. The GI Bill also provides allowances for housing and text books in varying amounts based on how long you have served. In addition to tuition, GI Bill benefits may also be applied to: Online schooling and correspondence courses Part-time schooling Entrepreneurship training for those interested in starting a small business Flight School Licensing and certification courses Vocational training and trade schools National testing On-the-job training Tutorial assistance Additionally, the Army offers graduate-level scholarships in law, medicine and the seminary. The U.S. Army health care team will pay 100 percent of your tuition for a graduate-level health care degree for any accredited medical, dental, veterinary, psychology or optometry program in the United States or Puerto Rico through the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). The Funded Legal Education Program (FLEP) authorizes the selection of 25 Active Duty Army Officers each year to obtain a legal education. Scholarships are awarded on merit to Officers ranking from Lieutenant to Captain. Whether long or short, time spent in the U.S. Army sets you on a path to success. Just ask Jake Skelton: If you are unsure of where you want your life to go or how to get there, use the military. Use it as a stepping stone to further yourself, learn about the limits you can put yourself through. If you don't test/know your limits, how are you ever going to better yourself? To learn more, visit goarmy.com/benefits. This content was produced by Brand Ave. Studios in collaboration with the U.S. Army. The news and editorial departments had no role in its creation or display. For more information about Brand Ave. Studios, contact tgriffin@brandavestudios.com. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 James Dawson (center), special agent in charge of the Criminal and Cyber Division at the FBIs Washington Field Office, announces the indictments of two Malaysians and five Chinese on cybercrime charges, Sept. 16, 2020. Malaysia has agreed to a U.S. request to extradite the chief executive and another officer of a computer gaming company who are accused in a 23-count indictment of working with Chinese nationals to hack into and steal from firms in the United States and abroad. The Malaysian duo, Wong Ong Hua, 46, and Ling Yang Ching, 32, the CEO and chief product officer of SEA Gamer Mall based in Perak, were arrested on Sept. 14 following a Department of Justice (DOJ) request that they be sent to the U.S. They are currently detained at the Sungai Buloh prison, Huzir Mohamed, director of Criminal Investigation Department of Federal Police, said in a statement. The U.S. authorities have applied for the duos extradition on Sept. 3 and the attorney general has approved it in line with Extradition Act 1992 and Extradition Treaty between Malaysian government and the United States, Huzir said. Wong and Ling can be remanded for up to 60 days under the act and treaty. The DOJ alleges that Wong and Ling targeted companies in the U.S., France, Japan, Singapore and South Korea under the mistaken belief they would evade capture because law enforcers would not be able to investigate them across national borders. As Wong explained on one occasion, it is definitely illegal. So we do it overseas, the DOJ said in a 50-page affidavit, which was dated Aug. 18 but released on Wednesday. Wong and Ling were charged with racketeering, conspiracy, identity theft, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, money laundering, violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and falsely registering domain names, according to the affidavit. The charges carry prison sentences of as much as 10 to 27 years, if they are convicted. They allegedly conspired with two Chinese hackers, identified as Tan Dailin and Zhang Haoran, along with others who were not named, in a scheme to profit from the sale of illegally obtained digital goods related to video games between June 2014 and December 2018. The affidavit alleges they obtained these goods through fraud, computer hacking, identity theft and promotional money laundering. The DOJ announced the indictments against the four and three other Chinese nationals on Wednesday. The five suspected Chinese hackers were responsible for computer intrusions affecting more than 100 victim companies in the United States and abroad, U.S. justice officials alleged. The DOJ said the five Chinese were fugitives. This case demonstrates the FBIs dedication to pursuing these criminals no matter where they are, and to whom they may be connected, said James Dawson, special agent in charge of the Criminal and Cyber Division of the FBIs Washington Field Office. Company vows to cooperate Wongs company, SEA Gamer Mall, issued a statement that it was aware of the U.S. allegations but did not name him or Ling. It also said it was committed to fully cooperating and assisting authorities. The two employees concerned are temporarily on leave pending resolution of the matter, the statement said. Without compromising the integrity of any ongoing legal process, suffice to say that the company has never engaged in any illegal activity as we are a home-grown Malaysian company with hundreds of employees and millions of customers all around the world. Meanwhile, an FBI official praised outside cooperation for the arrests of Wong and Ling without specifically naming Malaysian agencies. The arrests in Malaysia are a direct result of partnership, cooperation and collaboration. As the cyber threat continues to evolve larger than any one agency can address, the FBI remains committed to being an indispensable partner to our federal, international and private sector partners to stop rampant cybercrime and hold those carrying out these kind of actions accountable, FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said in the statement on Wednesday. Michael R. Sherwin, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said the targeting of gaming platforms was new. The scope and sophistication of the crimes in these unsealed indictments is unprecedented. The alleged criminal scheme used actors in China and Malaysia to illegally hack, intrude and steal information from victims worldwide, Sherwin said. As set forth in the charging documents, some of these criminal actors believed their association with the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] provided them free license to hack and steal across the globe. This scheme also contained a new and troubling cyber-criminal component the targeting and utilization of gaming platforms to both defraud video game companies and launder illicit proceeds. Muzliza Mustafa in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report. To minimize the number of school accidents, there must be a reasonable framework with strict and clear discipline, and if necessary, cases must be brought to court for criminal proceedings, experts say. Accidents are more common in developing countries, but not because of the gap between the poor and the rich, but because of peoples awareness. The gate of the school collapsed, killing three students There are no official statistics about the number of school accidents, but experts believe that Vietnam is among the countries with relatively high number of accidents. From mid-2019 to now, dozens of accidents occurred, causing deaths and injuries. On May 6, 2019, at a secondary school in Da Bac Town in Hoa Binh province, a concrete pillar of more than 3 meters in length fell from the 2nd floor, severely injuring two students. On August 6, 2019, Le Hoang L, a first grader of Gateway School in Cau Giay District in Hanoi died from being accidentally left on a shuttle bus (according to the court's conclusion). On October 24, 2019, Hoang Gia H, a second grader at Tuy Lai Commune Primary School in My Duc district, Hanoi, when playing with friends during the break time on the lawn behind the classroom, was electrocuted. On May 8, 2020, Nguyen Tuan A, a ninth grader of Quyet Thang Secondary School in Hai Duong province, tried to cut tree branches as per the request of the school, suffered an electrical shock, and died after being taken to the hospital. On May 26, 2020, an old tree in the school yard of Bach Dang Secondary School in district 3 in HCM City fell, causing one death and 12 injuries. Most recently, on September 7, the gate of Khanh Thuong Preschool in Van Ban district of Lao Cai province collapsed, killing three students and injuring three. Who is to blame? The irresponsibility and negligence of adults caused the heart-breaking accidents. In the case of Quyet Thang Secondary School, the leaders of the school made an arbitrary decision when asking students to fell tree branches. The students, when doing this per the request, did not have any protective equipment. The cases of the concrete pillar falling from the second floor in Da Bac Town and the student being left on the bus show the carelessness and irresponsibility of teachers and officers at the schools. The gateway collapsed because of the low quality of the construction work. After a student died on the shuttle bus, the education and local authorities released documents asking schools to reorganize student transportation. After the tree fell, they released documents to examine trees in schools and school areas. After the gateway fell, they asked for an examination of facilities. Nguyen Huy Vien Prime Minister orders investigation into school gate collapse that killed 3 Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has extended his condolences to the families of three children killed by a school gate collapse that also injured three others at a primary school in Lao Cai Province on Monday. Jackie 'O' Henderson recently moved into her new $11million property in Woollahra, Sydney, known as Cooper Park House. And on Thursday, the 45-year-old gave fans a peek inside the property as she unpacked with her nine-year-old daughter, Kitty. Posting to Instagram, the radio host shared a boomerang featuring herself and her daughter posing with several boxes from homeware store, Peter's of Kensington. Making it a home: On Thursday, Jackie O Henderson gave fans a peek inside her new home as she unpacked with her nine-year-old daughter, Kitty. Both pictured 'Making our new house a home,' she captioned the boomerang. In the clip, Jackie and her daughter looked excited as they raised their arms in the air and swayed back and forth. Jackie looked chic in a long-sleeved black shirt, and she wore her blonde locks loose with minimal makeup. Meanwhile, Kitty looked over the moon in what appeared to be a patterned white T-shirt. Home sweet home: The mother-daughter-duo (pictured) showed off the homes stunning hardwood floors and its leafy backyard view Stunning: The Woollahra estate has a large open living room with glass windows soaking in the beautiful greenery of Cooper Park Entertainers dream: It also boasts a resort-style pool and spacious outdoor entertaining area The mother-daughter-duo showed off the homes stunning hardwood floors and its leafy backyard view in the clip. The private sanctuary has extravagant design features, including Roman Travertine marble and dark timber panelling. It also boasts a resort-style pool and has a large open living room with glass windows. Luxury: The private sanctuary has extravagant design features, including Roman Travertine marble and dark timber panelling Big purchase: While it's unclear exactly how much Jackie paid for her new house, real estate agents have predicted it would sell for close to $11million While it's unclear exactly how much Jackie paid for her new house, real estate agents predicted it would sell for close to $11million. The purchase comes after Jackie and her ex-husband, Lee Henderson, sold their former marital home in Vaucluse in March for $6.675million. Jackie was married to Lee from 2003 to 2018, and they share custody of daughter, Kitty, together. Bengaluru, Sep 17 : Even as the debate on a possible Cabinet expansion in Karnataka is still raging, state Health and Family Welfare Minister B. Sriramulu on Thursday allegedly sought the blessings of famous deity Durga Devi or 'Gade Durgamma' to make him Deputy Chief Minister at the earliest by writing a letter to the deity. Sriramulu was in Yadgir to take part in Kalyana Karnataka Utsav in Kalaburagi. The famous Gonal Durga Devi temple is situated in Shahapur taluk of Yadgir district which is 500 kms from Bengaluru. Sriramulu is part of the Chief Minister's programme and several dignitaries have already landed in Kalaburagi to be part of Kalyana Karnataka Utsva, (a day celebrated to commemorate Hyderabad-Karnataka Liberation Day which was rechristened as Kalyana Karnataka Utasva from last year.) On this day the region was liberated from the rule of the Hyderabad Nizam. Prior to going to Kalaburagi, Sriramulu landed in Yadgir and he first headed to temple in Gonal village in Shahapur taluk. He performed pooja, then he placed his letter on the deity's feet and sought blessings from her. According to a source close to the minister, he wrote a letter which was signed by him containing two lines stating that he wanted to be Deputy Chief Minister at the earliest, and it must be fulfilled. The source further added that Sriramulu before going to the temple visited the temple priest, Mariswamy's house and from there both went to the temple and performed the pooja. According to the popular belief here, whoever goes to this temple and wishes something for him or her or their family, they do write a letter and place it on the feet of Durga Devi and seek her blessings to fulfil that wish. So much so that incumbent Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief D.K. Shivakumar too had visited the temple when he was released from jail after being booked by the ED. As a result of this, his followers believe that he was chosen to lead the party. Boris Johnson has bowed to pressure to offer MPs a lock on controversial plans to tear up part of the Brexit agreement with the European Union. The prime minister will push ahead with the proposals, which a cabinet minister admitted last week could break international law. But MPs will be offered another vote before the powers can be used, Downing Street announced. Around 30 Tory MPs are thought to have been planning to rebel and vote for an amendment guaranteeing a similar lock next week. After talks with two of the rebels, Conservative MPs Sir Bob Neill and Damian Green, No 10 released a joint statement saying that following talks, it is agreed that the Parliamentary procedure suggested by some colleagues provides a clearer, more explicit democratic mandate for the use of these powers, and also provides more legal certainty. The climbdown is unlikely to ease the concerns of all those who fear the Bill could wreck the UKs reputation on the world stage, however. Even as the final details were being hammered out the Government's top law officer for Scotland resigned in protest at the plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. Lord Keen of Elie QC, the Advocate General, said in his resignation letter to the prime minister that he could not reconcile the proposals with his obligations as a law officer. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, has warned Congress will never pass a free trade agreement with the UK if legislation to override the Brexit divorce settlement was to "imperil" the peace process. However, Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State told a press conference that the US trusted Britain. Vertex also recently welcomed Leon Bacon as the new vice president of Business Development for the Company's USN programs. Bacon is based at the new Pax River office and will provide customer liaison and oversight of naval aviation contracts, including recent CMMARS task orders for the RESET of the U.S. Marine Corps' CH-53E Super Stallion fleet, Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) services for U.S. Navy C-26 aircraft, and CLS services for the USMC' AV-8B Harrier II fleet. "Regarded as an expert in the total cradle to grave lifecycle support of major aviation weapon systems, Leon will be a true asset for Vertex," said Ed Boyington, Vertex CEO and president. "He is uniquely capable and strategically positioned to oversee Vertex's naval aviation portfolio and we look forward to the new business opportunities he'll manage from our Pax River site." Bacon, a native of San Jose, California, brings over 30 years of naval aviation and acquisition experience to the Vertex team. His perspective of Fleet operations and business acumen have allowed him to translate documented requirements into delivered products and capabilities. His operational experience is well recognized within the Naval Air Systems Command and throughout the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance community. "I feel privileged to receive this opportunity to lead our USN efforts and leverage Vertex's proven capabilities to alleviate pressure on the Fleet Squadrons," said Bacon. "I'm committed to continually fostering an environment of mutual understanding with our customers to keep optimization at the forefront of all we do." Some highlights of Bacon's military career include service as commanding officer of an operational P-3 Orion squadron, deputy program manager for the Acquisition Category (ACAT)-1 P-8 Poseidon developmental program, and as the ACAT-1 program manager for all USN training aircraft. About Vertex Aerospace Vertex Aerospace offers a global capability and complete solution for government and commercial customers. The mid-level aerospace Company operates in over 100 locations worldwide providing aftermarket aerospace services for more than 2,400 fixed and rotary wing airframes. Vertex's agility, rapid deployment capability, and customer optimization have distinguished it from competitors for over half a century. With a 50 percent veteran workforce, the Mississippi-based company understands the challenges faced by the defense sector. Information about Vertex can be found at vtxaero.com. POC: Rachel C. Henson Corporate Communications Manager [email protected] Wk: 601-607-6552 Cell: 601-760-9297 SOURCE Vertex Aerospace Related Links http://www.vertexaerospace.com By PTI NEW DELHI: An expert committee, set up following reports that a Chinese technology company was monitoring over 10,000 prominent Indians, has been given a month's time to study the entire issue and make its recommendations, the government said on Thursday. At a media briefing, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said the government has already taken up the matter with the Chinese side. "The government has constituted an Expert Committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study these reports, evaluate their implications, assess any violations of law and submit its recommendations within 30 days," he said. Srivastava said following media reports on the issue, the MEA had taken it up with the Chinese side. "The Chinese side has conveyed that the company is a private entity. The Chinese side has also claimed that there is no connection between the company concerned and the Chinese government," he said. ALSO READ | Five Chinese nationals charged in mega hacking scheme, Indian government networks hit: US The Indian Express newspaper reported that the Shenzhen-based technology firm was tracking over 10,000 prominent Indians from diverse fields including politics, business and civil society. Responding to a media query on the issue, Chinese embassy spokesperson Ji Rong said China has always been a "staunch defender" of cyber security. "The cyber security law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that network operators carrying out business and service activities must follow laws and administrative regulations," she said. Rong said China is willing to work with the Indian side to enhance cooperation on cyber security. REGINAThe host of a private gathering at a Saskatoon home that resulted in 21 people contracting COVID-19 has been fined $2,000. Health officials say it is the first ticket they have issued for a private get-together. The Ministry of Health wouldnt provide details of the gathering in order to protect the organizers privacy but said about 47 people attended. Saskatchewans chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, said the gathering was a super-spreader event, as 160 people have been identified as contacts of those who attended and some cases have been connected to schools. This is a cautionary tale for all of us, Shahab said at a news conference Thursday. Its very unfortunate that this happened. I dont think anyone plans an event with the view that transmission may happen. The current gathering limit is 30 people indoors when physical distancing can be maintained. In May, no fines were issued against anyone involved in two large family gatherings that led to public health declaring an outbreak in Saskatoon. Shahab wouldnt explain what was different this time around but said education remains the focus and several months have passed with rules around gathering limits. He said the fight against the spread of COVID-19 is also at an important stage because students are back in schools and cooler temperatures mean the option of gathering outdoors is disappearing. Shahab said the risk of transmission increases when people are in close quarters. Several large gatherings where food was shared, including a snowmobile rally in March, led to an uptick in cases before many COVID-19 restrictions were in place, he added. Things like this can snowball very quickly, and thats what we need to avoid as we move forward. Because you can start multiple chains of transmission that can cause secondary infections, he said. Premier Scott Moe said its disappointing that people violated the gathering limit, especially as students and staff are back in schools. Shahab said that so far, the reopening of schools has not led to a spread of COVID-19. Health officials said 14 students have tested positive for the virus. Moscow If there is life on Venus, it might want to start learning Russian. The boss of Russia's government space agency has claimed it as a "Russian planet." The bold territorial claim comes on the heels of scientific research suggesting life could exist on Earth's celestial neighbor, the second planet from the sun. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin, who's known for espousing unconventional scientific views and for frequently sarcastic anti-Western rhetoric said this week that Russia wants to send its own mission to Venus, in addition to an already-proposed joint venture with the United States called "Venera-D." Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and state space corporation Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin (L) listen to Director of Russian rocket engine manufacturer NPO Energomash Igor Arbuzov in Khimki, outside Moscow April 12, 2019. / Credit: ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty "We think that Venus is a Russian planet, so we shouldn't lag behind," Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister, told reporters on Tuesday. He noted that the Soviet Union was "the first and the only one" to land a spacecraft on Venus. "The spacecraft gathered information about the planet it is like hell over there," he said in remarks quoted by the Tass news agency. Research published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy details British and American scientists' discovery of phosphine gas in the clouds around Venus, considered a potential sign of life on the planet. The atmosphere of Venus is made up almost entirely of carbon dioxide, and it's considered the hottest planet in our solar system. The new study renewed public interest in Venus, likely prompting the Roscosmos chief to remind the world of the former Soviet Union's achievements in early space exploration. NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus and measure its extreme surface temperature in 1962. The Soviet Union launched several "Venera" spacecraft, and in 1970 Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to make a successful soft landing on the planet, though it melted within seconds. Its successor Venera 9 took the first image, and the only one to date, of the Venusian surface from the ground-level perspective. Story continues "The huge gap between the Soviet Union and its competitors in Venus research contributed to the fact that the United States called Venus 'the Soviet planet,' the space agency wrote on its website on Tuesday. Shortly after the study was published this week, the Breakthrough Initiatives program, supported by Russian-born billionaire Yuri Milner, announced that it would fund a study into the possibility of primitive life in Venus' clouds, led by Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last month, Rogozin declared Venus "more interesting than Mars," suggesting that studying the planet could help scientists understand how to address climate change on Earth. CDC predicts spike in COVID-19 cases this month, then a decline "See Us Unite" campaign looks to address hate Trucker shortage could make it harder to fill your tank this summer South Africa: COVID-19 infrastructure must be used beyond pandemic, says Mamabolo Gauteng Acting Health MEC Jacob Mamabolo has called on the department to ensure that where possible, temporary infrastructure, including fever tents that have been put up as part of the response to COVID-19 are strategically deployed beyond the pandemic. Mamabolo said this on Wednesday as he completed his preliminary audit of COVID-19 temporary structures, as part of his province-wide visit to health facilities, since his appointment as acting MEC for Health over a month ago. The department currently only has the NASREC Expo Centre as a field hospital. The Gauteng Disaster Management Provincial Command Council resolved a while back that there would be no expansion of field hospitals. This was informed by, among other factors, the burden of disease, feedback by clinicians on the ground and how well the province has done in its response to the pandemic, reducing the need for field hospitals. Mamabolo said the NASREC Expo field hospital remains operational. The MEC said the equipment invested in this facility largely belongs to the department and will be repurposed to be used in Gauteng health facilities after the pandemic. As part of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Mamabolo said the department made use of 26 fever tents, 13 of which are owned by the department. The tents were set up in July 2020, mostly at the entrances of the various facilities and have been used to assist with the screening of patients. He said that a request for services was sent through to the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure and Property Management (GDID), for suppliers to provide the tents on behalf of the department. This was done at a cost of R7 552 465.15 for rentals contracts, which were concluded through GDID, while R7 186 650 was for the total number of tents purchased to be owned by the department. The strategy of Gauteng province has always been to invest in legacy projects through major refurbishments and additional beds at existing hospitals such as Jubilee Hospital, Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and others. The projects continue to be implemented and are at various stages. They are an investment in the health system, even post the COVID-19 pandemic, Mamabolo said. Funeral undertakers strike Meanwhile, Mamabolo on Wednesday assured the public that the three-day funeral undertakers' strike had not led to services at hospital mortuaries being hindered. Undertakers demonstrated outside provincial health facilities in strike action that began on Monday and was expected to conclude on Wednesday. Mamabolo said the department had put measures in place to assist communities with the collection and storage of bodies of loved ones during the strike. He visited the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital to assess the impact of the funeral undertakers' strike at the hospital. The departments Forensic Pathology Services team has been directed to work together with the Gauteng Emergency Medical Services (EMS) team to assist with the collection of bodies of people who died at home. We are satisfied with how Chris Baragwanath Hospital is handling the management of bodies during this period, Mamabolo said. The department had also enlisted the help of the South African National Defence Force personnel to assist at facilities for the duration of the strike and after to ensure that bodies are processed quickly and handed over to families. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Nick Wagner, MBR / Associated Press Chron.com is following the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area At noon, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to provide an update on the state's response to the virus. He's hinted at easing restrictions implemented to slow the spread of the virus as active case numbers, hospitalizations and positivity rates have gone down, according to the Texas Tribune. The Chief Executive Officer Mr. Sylvester Tetteh of the National Youth Authority (NYA) has congratulated the graduates of the just-ended Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for pulling through successfully. The Authority also encouraged the graduates to be good citizens and contribute to nation-building. Mr. Sylvester Tetteh and management of the Authority as well as the staff further commended the government for its purposeful action in ensuring the smooth take-off and completion of the examination amidst the Covid19 pandemic. Read full statement below: NATIONAL YOUTH AUTHORITY CONGRATULATES 2020 BASIC EDUCATION CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION (B.E.C.E) GRADUATES The Chief Executive Officer Mr. Sylvester Tetteh, management and staff of the National Youth Authority wishes to congratulate all graduates of the just ended Basic Education Certificate Examination (B.E.C.E) for pulling through successfully. We also wish to commend the Government for its decisiveness, firmness and purposeful action in ensuring the smooth take off and completion of the examination amidst the Covid19 pandemic. In doing so we would also like to appreciate the efforts of the Ghana Education Service with support from teachers for adequately preparing the students for their maiden national exams transitioning them into Senior High School. The Authority further uses this opportunity to remind the graduates of the many interventions put in place by the government which are geared towards spurring them on to higher academic pursuits. The Free Senior High School Initiative is one classic policy of the current government that aims at this objective while enabling them to reach their fullest potentials. We encourage you to continually pursue excellence, strive to become model citizens and contribute to your community and the nation- building efforts. We are confident that your hard work and dedication will be crowned with success. CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU ALL!!! 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 (CNN) Hundreds of people near the Florida-Alabama border were being rescued from floodwaters brought on by Sally on Wednesday and authorities fear many more could be in danger in coming days. "We had 30 inches of rain in Pensacola 30-plus inches of rain which is four months of rain in four hours," Ginny Cranor, chief of the Pensacola Fire Department, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. Sally has weakened since making landfall as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday morning but its devastating toll was visible across Southern states by nightfall. By Wednesday night, it was a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center. Located about 10 miles northwest of Troy, Alabama, it had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph and was moving northeast at 9 mph. While all watches and warnings have been discontinued, Sally is still causing torrential rain over eastern Alabama and western Georgia. Pensacola and other parts of Florida and Alabama were submerged by flooding, rivers were approaching dangerous levels and numerous counties were under curfews to keep residents safe. "We are still in an evaluation and lifesaving recovery mission, and we need to be able to do that job," said Robert Bender, commissioner in Escambia County, Florida. Sally unleashed up to 30 inches of rain from the Florida Panhandle to Mobile Bay, Alabama, leading to "historic and catastrophic flooding" there and threatening even more communities as it moves north, the National Hurricane Center said. In Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, at least 377 people have been rescued from flooded neighborhoods, Jason Rogers, the county's public safety director, told reporters in a news briefing. "It's going to be a long time, folks ... to come out of this thing," Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said earlier Wednesday, warning there could be thousands of evacuations. Doris Stiers ventured outside her Gulf Shores, Alabama, beach home to asses Sally's damage Wednesday and found her community changed. "Looks like a war zone," Doris Stiers told CNN. "Lots of destruction, homes destroyed, roofs gone. I have not had any service, power or internet. Bad night." Sally made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane near Gulf Shores around 4:45 a.m. CT with sustained winds of 105 mph. The slow pace of the storm now around 7 mph was unleashing a damaging deluge across Alabama and the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday evening. Some areas already have collected more than 24 inches of rain and could receive up to 35 inches by storm's end. Sally is forecast to continue tracking northeastward through Alabama Wednesday night. The center of the storm is expected to move into Georgia and South Carolina on Thursday. A section of Pensacola's Three Mile Bridge is missing A section of the newly built Pensacola Bay Bridge that connects to the city of Gulf Breeze is missing thanks to the storm, authorities said. A barge had slammed a portion of the structure, known to locals as the Three Mile Bridge, on Tuesday and caused the damage, Brad Baker, Santa Rosa County's public safety director, said Wednesday in a Facebook video. "Anybody who uses the Three Mile Bridge, just know it's going to be a while before you get to use that again," Baker said. Baker said crews are working to catch the barge that caused damage before it hits something else. A flood emergency and a half million with no power Floodwaters have turned streets into rivers in Pensacola. and at least eight rivers in southwest Alabama and the western area of the Florida Panhandle are expected to reach major flood stages late Wednesday, the National Weather Service office in Mobile tweeted. The weather service had declared a flash flood emergency for "severe threat to human life & catastrophic damage from a flash flood." The warning zone covers parts of coastal Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, including Gulf Shores and Pensacola. Power has been knocked out for more than 500,000 customers in Alabama and Florida alone, utility tracker PowerOutage.us reported. Rainfall totals of 10 to 35 inches are possible from Mobile Bay to Tallahassee, Florida, forecasters say. Sally came ashore 16 years to the day that a Category 3 Hurricane Ivan struck roughly the same areas. Sally's slow forward speed is expected to continue through Wednesday as it turns to the north and then northeast, taking with it strong winds and more flooding potential. Central Alabama and central Georgia could eventually see 4 to 12 inches of rain, with significant flash flooding possible. Parts of the Carolinas could receive 4 to 9 inches of rain by later in the week. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for much of the coast and low-lying areas from Mississippi to Florida, and shelters opened to accommodate evacuees. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said "pretty much any body of water in Northwest Florida" could see a rise in levels over the next few days because of Sally. "There is going to be a lot of a lot of property damage," DeSantis said in a news briefing Wednesday. "When you see downtown Pensacola, you see three feet of water there, that's going to affect probably every business that's in downtown Pensacola there's just no two ways about it." Damage and flooding in Alabama In Alabama, the floor and walls on the 16th floor of a hotel on the northern rim of Mobile Bay groaned as Sally made its way ashore. The building shook as if in the throes of an extended, low-grade earthquake, and sturdy windows seemed poised to pop out, a CNN team there said. In Orange Beach, Alabama, water flowed at least a foot deep along the exterior walls of tourist shops, video taken from a moving boat by the United Cajun Navy before sunrise Wednesday shows. At the shore, a boat sat on its side not far from an upended refrigerator, according to the footage, posted to Facebook. Daylight revealed another loose boat had come to rest against an Orange Beach condominium building, a photo from resident Rich Florczyk showed. Flooded streets were littered with downed tree limbs and other debris. On Dauphin Island, south of Mobile, "we've got trees down all over the place ... (and) electricity has been shut off to the entire island," Mayor Jeff Collier said Wednesday morning. As wind and rain whipped even before midnight, enormous trees already had been felled west of Mobile. Workers in raincoats endured Sally's bands as they worked alongside a digger truck to move thick piles of branches at Campfire and Ponderosa drives, CNN affiliate WALA reported. Similar scenes unfolded around the same time still about six hours before Sally came ashore in midtown Mobile and across Mobile Bay in Fairhope, Alabama. Sally is the fourth hurricane to make landfall in the US this year the most by this point in a year since 2004. It also is the eighth named storm to make landfall in the US, the most by September 16 on record. CNN's Michelle Krupa, Hollie Silverman, Gary Tuchman, Ed Lavandera, Gabe Ramirez, David Williams, Brandon Miller and Alisha Ebrahimji contributed to this report. This story was first published on CNN.com "Sally drenched parts of Florida with '4 months of rain in 4 hours,' officials say" As many as 78 percent of those who died in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, while undergoing Covid-19 treatment succumbed to other diseases (co-morbidities), which the virus aggravated, medical experts found during an audit of Covid-19 related fatalities in the city. The district administration commissioned the audit on the directives of the state government. Dr SK Gautam, head of the death audit team, said co-morbidities had emerged as a key factor behind the deaths. It was clear that the patients had other ailments before getting infected, he added. Their immunity level kept going down. They were fighting their ailments and this virus at the same time and died as a result, he said. Kanpur has reported 554 deaths since April and the team has audited 428 of these cases. It found that 336 of these deaths were the result of co-morbidities in patients. In 60 percent of cases, the team concluded that diabetes, pneumonia, hypertension or acute respiratory distress syndrome were responsible for the deaths. Cancer, kidney, heart and gastro related ailments contributed to the other deaths, according to the audit team. Also read: Yoga in burqa - Uttarakhand boxer girl fights all odds to teach yoga to women Covid-19 claimed the lives of 78 youths. People between 12-50 years largely passed away due to delayed treatment. They received treatment at home for their symptoms, got their Covid-19 test done late and reached the hospitals at a late stage, the team concluded. By that time they reached the hospital, the virus had already infected their lungs considerably, impairing their functioning, the team observed. As a result, the oxygen saturation level recorded in most of the cases was below 40 at the time of their admission to the hospital, they said. Nine of the patients were anaemic and their haemoglobin level was found to be below 7. Five patients were injured in road accidents and tested positive for Covid-19 on being admitted to the hospital. Dr Richa Giri, superintendent in chief of Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital, which is a level-3 Covid-19 facility, said delay in seeking specialized medical help and admission in hospital was also a key reason. On finding symptoms, people should not wait. They should get themselves tested instantly, she said. The audit was necessitated following the high Covid-19 mortality rate in Kanpur. Initially, the deaths were reported from the L3 (level 3) hospitals and later a large number of fatalities was recorded from the L2 Covid-19 facilities. The audit team, however, did not mention the non-shifting of patients to L3 hospitals from L2 hospitals as the reason for deaths. The L3 hospitals did not have any space left for the new patients. Besides, another facility of 160 ICU beds30 of them with ventilatorswas delayed. Decatur Book Festival events with Emory connections African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song with Kevin Young Tuesday, Sept. 22, 6:30 p.m. Register for this event. Endnote with Natasha Trethewey Sunday, Oct. 4, 4:30 p.m. Register for this event. There are two more Emory-related events at the 2020 virtual Decatur Book Festival featuring African American poets whose papers reside in Emorys Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. On Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 6:30 p.m., poet Kevin Young, who recently compiled and edited the upcoming anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, will discuss the range of voices in African American poetry, both in his own writings and as a scholar working on this anthology. Young, a former creative writing professor at Emory and a former curator at the Rose Library who is now director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, recently placed his papers with the Rose Library. The Rose Library has a rich collection of African American poets papers, including several poets featured in Youngs new anthology, set for publication Oct. 20. In addition to Youngs archives, highlights of Emorys collections include the papers of Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, Tracy K. Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Alice Walker, Phillis Wheatley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sarah E. Wright, Mari Evans and Owen Dodson. A general listing can be found here, or specific names can be entered in the finding aids search box on the Rose Library homepage. The depth and breadth of the Rose Librarys collections enable researchers and students to explore not only individual poets, but the relationships among them. Take, for example, Young and fellow poet Tracy K. Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2012. Young and Smith met as Harvard undergraduates, became part of the Dark Room Collective a community of African American writers founded in 1988 in Boston and journeyed from rising talents to established poets. Both recently chose to archive their papers at the Rose Library. The two poets hope their collections will benefit future scholars, whether that be instructional or inspirational. I think one of the interesting things is waiting and seeing how people interact with the papers, Young said when the acquisitions were announced. I know from having seen Tracys papers, I was struck by her early work and seeing how she got to be the poet she is. Seeing that kind of development is really inspiring. I hope people find value in that and learn from that. Learn more: Intertwining paths: The papers of Tracy K. Smith and Kevin Young. Natasha Trethewey to close out festival Emory is the presenting sponsor for the AJC Decatur Book Festival, which kicked off Sept. 4 with a keynote by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Emory professor Jericho Brown. The endnote will feature poet and author Natasha Trethewey and interviewer Rosemary Magee for a discussion of Tretheweys recent release, Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir. Trethewey, former U.S. poet laureate and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is a former creative writing professor at Emory whose papers are in the Rose Library archives, where Magee was previously director. Yolanda Cooper, Emory dean and university librarian, will give the introduction. The book wrestles with the Souths history through the lens of the authors life and the life of her mother, who was murdered by Tretheweys former stepfather. Memorial Drive dives deep into a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence, but also into the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse in the American South. She further said, There are many tribal temples and religious sites. For example, temples of Devi Chaudhurani (in Jalpaiguri district), which required more attention. I have asked the state information and cultural department to start working on this unique project to map such places for their development. We want to create Maha Tirtha Bhumi (Great Pilgrimage Land) and Maha Punnya Bhumi (Great Sacred Land). On the same day, she also announced a slew of initiatives such as the creation of the Tribal Sahitya Academy, re-launch of the partys Hindi cell, a monthly allowance of Rs 1,000 and free housing for Sanatan Brahmin priests, besides calling for a renewed thrust on Sanskrit. Political experts say that these announcements are certainly a well-thought move by Mamata Banerjee ahead of the 2021 Assembly Polls in West Bengal. In the 2016 assembly elections, the BJPs vote share was 10.2 per cent and in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it went up to 40.3 per cent. There was an increase of 30.1 percentage points in the vote share primarily because of the Hindu voters gravitating towards the BJP. Most of these votes, which were once with the Left Front and the Congress, went to the BJP as there was no decline in the TMC vote share. In the 2011 assembly polls, the TMCs vote share was 39 per cent which increased to 39.56 per cent in 2019. Similarly, in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the TMCs vote share was 39.03 per cent, which grew to 43.3 per cent in 2019. Thus, there was no drop in the TMCs vote share. Notably, it increased by 5 percent in the last Lok Sabha despite the BJPs rise. As President Trump nears the end of his term, he hasnt met his goal of withdrawing U.S. troops entirely from endless wars, but he has come close. By Election Day, the United States will have 4,500 troops in Afghanistan, about 3,000 in Iraq and fewer than 1,000 in Syria. Trump may wish the numbers were zero, but if he pulled the plug completely, he would make bad situations there worse. The on Thursday declined to entertain the plea of Deepak Virendra Kochhar, husband of former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar, seeking to be transferred to a private hospital here or in Gurugram for treatment as he has tested positive for COVID-19 and suffers from other ailments. Kochhar, presently admitted at the Cancer Institute (NCI) run by AIIMS at Jhajjar in Haryana, wanted to be shifted to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram or Max Hospital or Sir Gangaram Hospital here or any other private hospital in a private ward at his expense. Justice A J Bhambhani declined to entertain the matter, saying that Kochhar was presently in the judicial custody of a special PMLA court in Mumbai and therefore, the high court cannot shuffle him from one place to another. The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which arrested him on September 7 under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with the ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case probe, said it has no objection to him being moved to a private hospital for treatment at his expense. The ED counsel further said that the only problem was that he was presently in the judicial custody of the Mumbai court which will have to pass orders for moving him. Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, who appeared for Kochhar, said that his client was infected by COVID-19 as he was locked up in a police cell at Chanakyapuri police station when ED was not questioning him and thereafter, he was admitted to AIIMS Delhi which referred him to NCI, Jhajjar. He said if he can be admitted in AIIMS, Delhi and then be shifted to NCI, Jhajjar without the Mumbai court's permission, then he can be shifted to a private hospital. Aggarwal also said that while his client was arrested in Mumbai, the ECIR (Enforcement Case Information Report) against him was lodged in Delhi. Justice Bhambhani, however, did not agree with his contentions saying if ED committed a wrong, "I cannot perpetuate it by shuffling you around". "If you were in police custody, you would have had a case. Since you are in judicial custody of the Mumbai court, I cannot shuffle you around. You are barking up the wrong tree," the judge said. The high court suggested that the petition be withdrawn and moved before the Mumbai court. Subsequently, Aggarwal said he will withdraw the petition in view of the ED stand that it was not opposed to his client being shifted to a private hospital. "Petition dismissed as withdrawn," the high court said. Aggarwal also urged the court that some directions be passed with regard to lack of social distancing or any other precautions in the lock ups of police stations as lot of people are kept in small cells there which increases risks of COVID infection. Justice Bhambhani declined to pass any such order saying when he was not entertaining the matter, he cannot issue any directions in it. The Mumbai court had sent him to ED custody till September 19. According to Kochhar's plea in the high court, ED on September 14 informed his wife that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and the very same day it moved an application before the special court seeking that he be sent to judicial custody and the prayer was granted. The ED, while pressing for his remand, had told the court that the investigation has revealed that on September 7, 2009, the ICICI bank sanctioned a loan worth Rs 300 crore to Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL). Kocchar's wife was the chairman of the bank's sanctioning committee when this loan was given to VIEL, it had contended. The ED had filed its case pursuant to an FIR registered by the CBI against Chanda Kochhar and DeepakKochhar, Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot and others. ED has accused theKochhars and their business entities of "illegal sanctioningof loans amounting to Rs 1,875 crore to the Videocon Group ofcompanies". (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, Sep 17 : Actress Sargun Mehta on Thursday lent support to farmers protesting in Punjab. Several farmers in Punjab have raised voice against the three agriculture ordinances introduced by the Central government. These are the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance. They have been protesting in different places in Punjab, claiming that the ordinances were not only against the interest of the farmers but were also against the Constitution. Reacting to the protests, Sargun wrote on Instagram: "Kisaan Virodhi Bill Da Asi Sarey Virod Karde Haan (we oppose the Bill that is against the farmers)." She shared a picture of farmers at a protest march. Meanwhile, Sargun, who is best known for her work in Punjabi films, will be next seen opposite Ammy Virk in "Qismat 2". Older women are bearing the brunt of the recession unleashed by the coronavirus crisis, new figures show. Data published by the Office of National Statistics shows 79,000 fewer women over 65 were in work between May to July than were in the previous quarter starkly higher than the 13,000 fewer men of the same age in employment during this period. Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of Womens Budget Group, told The Independent the new figures show the litany of difficulties faced by older women in the workplace. She said: Women in the 65 plus group age group are particularly likely to be caring for even older relatives who are in their eighties. One of the impacts of coronavirus is the crisis in care services. Older women whose relatives may have had carers come into their house may now have to be providing care themselves in the wake of social distancing measures. Caring responsibilities could have pushed them out of the workplace. The job losses could also be the result of discrimination against older women from employers. The combination of ageism and sexism is a big problem. This is also the group of women who have had their state pension age risen so could be more in need of their work than ever. It is a triple whammy: state pension age rise, ageism and sexism, and caring responsibilities. Dr Stephenson said the furlough scheme has offered some protection for workers adding that the fresh data should serve as a warning to the government it is too soon to end the scheme. A spate of recent studies have suggested the coronavirus crisis is exacerbating gender inequality, with a report by the University of Exeter finding women are almost twice as likely as men to have lost their job during the pandemic. Researchers found 7 per cent of women have been made redundant during the lockdown in comparison to 4 per cent of men. Sam Smethers, chief executive of leading gender equality charity, Fawcett Society, told The Independent: It is a worry that 79,000 fewer women over 65 were in work than the previous quarter, a trend not seen for men. Women over retirement age already face significant pension gaps the pandemic risks widening economic inequality for older women. The new data comes as women hit by the state pension age rise lost their Court of Appeal case against the government on Tuesday morning. Almost 4 million women were impacted by the government hiking up the state pension age from 60 to 66 for women born after March 1950. In July, The Independent reported the number of women aged 60 and over claiming universal credit and out of work benefits increased by almost five times in the last six years with campaigners attributing this sharp rise to pension age reform. The rise of women making claims for such benefits which soared from 7,578 to 36,527 between 2013 and 2019 was almost three times more than men who were aged 60 and older. Latest ONS data shows the overall number of people in paid employment in the UK has dropped by 695,000 since March when the Covid-19 lockdown started. A couple were booked for allegedly creating ruckus at a Covid-19 testing centre, damaging patients samples and testing kits in Ambegaon area here on Wednesday. Both, incidentally, tested positive for the viral infection. The couple, who were visiting the centre at Laxmibai Hazare Hostel for an antigen test, lost their temper when civic employees asked them to stand in a queue, said an official of the Bharti Vidyapeeth police station. There were two queues, one for common people and another for employees of Pune Municipal Corporation. The staff at the centre asked them to go and stand in the queue meant for common citizens, which irked them, he said. They created a scene, threw samples and testing kits on the floor and used intimidating language. We have booked them under various sections of IPC and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984, he said. Both the accused tested positive for Covid-19 and are currently undergoing treatment, he added. A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said it had intercepted and destroyed an explosive drone launched towards the kingdom on Thursday. In a statement published on Saudi state news agency SPA, a spokesman for the coalition said the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen had launched the drone at civilian targets in the southern Saudi region of Khamis Mushait, near the border with Yemen. Search Keywords: Short link: Two officials of Seneca Nation government are seeking the office of president, and a powerful political organization will decide on its endorsement Friday evening. The two candidates are the Senecas current treasurer, Matthew Pagels, 38, and Tribal Council Member John Williams Jr., 32. Both men have asked for the endorsement of the Seneca Party, the political organization that for many years has dominated Seneca Nation elections. Williams, a six-year member of the council, said one of his priorities would be dealing with outside threats to the Senecas casino business, which has been hit hard by the pandemic. Williams cited the current dispute with New York state over the tribes gaming compact renewal as a major challenge for the next president. The gaming agreement expires in three years and needs to be renewed, he said. Williams said the exclusivity fee of 25% of slot machine proceeds exceeds what federal law allows, especially since the state operates its own casinos in a territory that is supposed to be exclusive for the Seneca Nation. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) - Following the passage of Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (Bayanihan 2) into law, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) extended its special privileges to its members and their dependents amid the pandemic. Rey Balena, senior manager of PhilHealth Corporation Communication, said that hemodialysis patients are now exempted from the 45-day limit or 90-session limit per year. This means that all PhilHealth accredited facilities can accommodate such patients even beyond the abovementioned limits. Kung sakaling sila ay lumagpas na sa limit kada taon, ito ay maari paring ma-cover at bayaran ng PhilHealth, Balena told CNN Philippines. Yung 45 days [limit], days po yun, mapa-confinement or out-patient [service], ay sasagutin pa rin ng PhilHealth. [Translation: If ever they exceeded the yearly limit, it is still covered by PhilHealth. The 45-day limit, whether its confinement or out-patient service, PhilHealth will still cover it.] Balena noted that accredited healthcare facilities should have already acknowledged the exemption. However, he said that if ever patients still paid for their hospital bill or dialysis session, they can reimburse it from PhilHealth. The state health insurer also extended the filing period for reimbursement from 60 days to 120 days. Sa halip na 60 days from the date of discharge ay ma-file na yung claim, in-extend na natin ito sa mas mahabang period, 120 days, said Balena. [Translation: Instead of 60 days from the date of discharge for you to file your claims, we extended it to 120 days.] He added that COVID-19 testing can also be reimbursed. Moreover, Balena said that a status of a members contribution should not be an excuse for hospitals not to accommodate them. Batay po sa ating special privileges, hindi po dapat maging hadlang yung kakulangan sa kontribusyon para maka-avail ng benefit, he said. [Translation: According to our special privileges, the lack in contribution should not be a hindrance for one to avail of benefits] However, Balena pointed out that members should still settle their contributions after. Sinabi rin naman sa batas na yung mga kakulangan ay maaring i-settle ng miyembro pagkatapos na nilang maggamit yung benefit, he said. [Translation: The law also provides that members can settle their contributions after they used the benefit.] Signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte on Sept. 11, Bayanihan 2 is a continuation of the COVID-19 response programs under Bayanihan to Heal as One Act or Bayanihan 1, but with emphasis on economic recovery this time. Sahaya Novinston Lobo By Express News Service CHENNAI: Many people are falling victim to a new cyber crime in the city, where the fraudsters pose as Indian Armed Forces personnel on the e-commerce website OLX, and cheat gullible customers. In the last 45 days, over 100 complaints have been received from various parts of the city. I saw a poster about a two-wheeler on sale for Rs 13,000 on OLX and contacted the given number, says a victim who lost Rs 50,000 recently. The person on the other side of the conversation over WhatsApp was a man wearing army uniform. He told me he was stationed at Pallavaram, and was recently transferred from Rajasthan. The person claiming to be from the Indian Army had sent the Registration Certificate, Insurance copy, Army ID and Aadhaar over WhatsApp. The pattern has been that they call the buyers, saying that they want to see them in person. They question them with authority, making the buyer believe the transaction is genuine, says an officer. Later, the fraudster would send pics of the vehicle being packed, and demand money. He handed me a receipt on WhatsApp and sent me pictures of him working in an army base. He kept demanding money in small amounts till I gave him the total of Rs 33,000. Then he blocked my number and I never received any vehicle, said another. The police said in some cases if the fraudsters find the victim to be an elderly or a soft spoken woman, they even threaten to arrest them under Army Code for disrespecting a personnel. Preliminary investigations suggest that most of the members have been operating from Rajasthan and many victims were conned by the same fraudster. The same modus operandi is being used by fraudsters for selling other materials like sofa, cars, refrigerators, television and gadgets as well. The partys not over in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa, but it is getting a lot smaller. As of Friday, Ontario is lowering the limits on private social gatherings such as backyard barbecues and house parties in the three COVID-19 hot spots to 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors as new infections continue to rise. The limits had been 50 indoors and 100 outdoors with physical distancing. While two doctors cautioned further restrictions are needed to get the sudden spurt in cases under control, Ford said fines for scofflaws will start at $10,000 and jump to $100,000 and up to a year in jail for party organizers, with all guests in attendance facing $750 penalties. This is for people who recklessly ignore the regulations and guidelines. We will throw the book at you if you break the rule, the premier warned. When you spread COVID, thats a very serious crime. For what? A few hours of partying? Its not worth it. The new measures do not apply to events held in staffed businesses, such as restaurants, bars, cinemas, convention centres, banquet halls, gyms or performing art centres. Wedding receptions held in private residences would be affected although those in monitored facilities would not. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch of University Health Network applauded the lower limits but questioned how much impact they will have given that public health departments are unable to trace the source of half the new COVID-19 infections, according to the latest provincial statistics. This is not going to solve all our problems, said Bogoch of University Health Network, calling for more measures such as increased restrictions on bars and restaurants to slow the spread of the virus now reproducing in Toronto at a rate of 1.3 new cases for every existing one. We need to be prepared for additional targeted interventions as necessary, added Toronto medical officer Dr. Eileen de Villa. While the lower thresholds and a regional approach are the right thing to do, Bogoch cautioned they need to be backed up with constructive communication and careful enforcement to avoid the blowback that happened last spring when people faced hefty tickets for being in parks. These are big, multicultural, diverse regions and the message has to be delivered in an age, language and culturally sensitive manner so that it actually drives behaviour change, he told the Star. If no one actually listens or adheres to it, then its not worth anything. Toronto Mayor John Tory applauded the restrictions but said he was concerned Ford exempted banquet halls where some weddings have become a breeding ground for COVID-19 and warned enforcing the lower limits will be challenging. City officials have said they cant safely send bylaw enforcement officers into house parties and its difficult to determine if people gathered in parks are part of the same household. But Tory added the stiffer penalties mean our enforcement officials will have a bigger book to throw and maintained the time for education is over. Ford said it is too soon to consider extending the indoor and outdoor gathering curbs to other municipalities, such as university towns, where students are tempted to party in large groups. What we rely on is when mayors of the city call us up ... along with the chief medical officers of health, he said Thursday, noting civic leaders in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa asked him for the restrictions. Ontarios chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams, said public health authorities are constantly monitoring the case numbers elsewhere to determine if action is needed. The edict on lower gathering limits came as the province reported another 293 people have been infected with the highly contagious virus, down slightly from 315 the previous day the highest since early June. Earlier this summer, limit for gatherings were increased to 50 indoors and 100 outdoors with physical distancing as the pandemic eased over the summer and more businesses were allowed to open. Since then, there have been many cases of the illness spreading at weddings, house and yard parties, along with several in restaurants, bars and even playdates arranged by parents of young children. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath pressed Ford on the limit of 10 indoors, contrasting it to classrooms and school buses with larger numbers of children in them. None of this makes much sense at all, Horwath said in the legislatures daily question period, pointing to the premier. Hes still letting kids cram into crowded classrooms and into crowded school buses. A visibly angry Ford replied our number one priority is to protect the people and attacked Horwath as the armchair quarterback over there. The premier said it is apples and oranges to compare classrooms to parties because students are attending schools in controlled settings where masks are required and physical distancing measures are in place. Liberal House Leader John Fraser said the government sent the wrong message in the first place by allowing gatherings of 50 indoors and 100 outdoors, even with physical distancing. In hindsight, it looks like it led to a real loosening of how people saw the situation we were in, said Fraser. On Thursday, the Ministry of Health reported 85 new cases in Toronto, 63 in Peel and 39 in Ottawa, with 70 per cent of the 293 new infections in people under the age of 40. More than 35,000 tests were processed Wednesday as labs across the province aim for a capacity of 50,000 daily a month from now. Daily cases have tripled since mid-August and the number of active cases people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the last 14 days is now at 2,427, the highest since mid-June and up almost 1,000 people since last Thursday. Deaths are also on the rise, with three new fatalities, according to the Ministry of Health, bringing the tally to 12 in the last seven days, up from two in the previous seven-day period. There were 21 new cases of COVID-19 in schools, with 51 schools now reporting infections in students or staff, including one high school in Pembroke that has been closed because of an outbreak among staff. Other communities with cases in schools are Toronto, Ottawa, Brampton, Oakville, Mississauga, Pickering, Orillia, Cambridge, Waterloo, Amherstberg, Woodbridge, Maple and Markham. Hospitalizations remained low but increased by nine to 53 patients, with 21 in intensive care the highest since Aug. 11. There were 12 ICU patients on ventilators, a number that was unchanged from the previous day. Two more nursing homes are experiencing outbreaks among residents or staff, raising the number to 22. There were six new cases among staff, with Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton saying they are catching the virus in the community, not in long-term care, and 15 of the outbreaks do not involve residents. Of the more than 2,800 Ontarians who have died from COVID-19, at least 1,824 have been in nursing homes. With files from Jennifer Pagliaro and David Rider. Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robferguson1 Robert Benzie is the Stars Queens Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie Read more about: WYOMING, MI -- A 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man died after both were shot in what police think was a drive-by shooting along Division Avenue. The shooting happened about 4:50 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16 on Division Avenue at Wilbur Street. The area is north of 44th Street. Wyoming police said the two were on foot when they were shot by someone in a vehicle. Police believe the vehicle could be a dark-colored 2010-2011 GMC Acadia. It is believed the Acadia had multiple occupants. Officers arrived to find both the boy and man with gunshot wounds, near the road. The teen was pronounced dead at the scene. The 20-year-old was taken to Metro Health Hospital but did not survive. Police have not released the names of the victim. The vehicle was last seen headed south on Jefferson Avenue from Wilbur Street. Anyone with information about the shooting can call Wyoming police at 616-530-7300 or Silent Observer at 616-774-2345. More from MLive Grand Valley State stay-home order leaves some students skeptical Emergency stay-home order issued for Grand Valley State University students Grand Valley students who break stay-home order could be subject to sanctions BOSTON A federal appeals court on Wednesday appeared skeptical of arguments that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants, a claim made in a closely-watched lawsuit challenging the use of race as a factor in U.S. college admissions. Members of a three-judge 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Boston questioned why it should conclude a trial judge wrongly rejected the claims by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum. Conservatives have long criticized affirmative action. Legal experts say the case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, giving its conservative majority a chance to reconsider past decisions that allowed race to be considered as a factor in admissions. Blums group, which counts Asian-American applicants as members and has President Donald Trump administrations support, contends the Ivy League school engaged in impermissible racial balancing to benefit other preferred minority groups, such as Blacks and Hispanics. SFFA lawyer William Consovoy argued that despite high academic scores, Asian Americans were admitted a lower rates than other groups because of racial stereotyping by admissions officers who gave them low personal rating scores. Consovoy asked the court to consider how it would evaluate such low scores if they were given to well-qualified Black applicants for police or firefighting jobs. I think this court would be skeptical or concerned that this was discrimination and not that African American firefighters or police officers actually had worse personal qualities, he said. A U.S. Justice Department lawyer, Eric Dreiband, argued that Harvard in adopting its admissions system gave no serious consideration of race-neutral alternatives. But their arguments faced questions from panelists including U.S. Circuit Judge Juan Torruella, who asked what is the evidence of racial profiling here? Seth Waxman, Harvards lawyer, argued that a mountain of evidence showed it did not intentionally discriminate against Asian Americans. He urged the court to uphold U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, who last year ruled Harvard had no workable and available race-neutral alternatives to ensure a diverse student body. U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch during the arguments pointed to past Supreme Court rulings that allow universities to consider race as one factor to remedy disadvantages minority students have faced because of racial prejudice. Harvard can in fact consider other things than merely class ranking and the academic achievements of the Asian-American applicants, she said. Papua New Guinea is marking its Independence Day on Wednesday. On this occasion, the bishops of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands have issued a message urging greater commitment from those in authority in addressing the serious challenges that people still face 45 years after independence. By Robin Gomes Papua New Guinea (PNG) achieved its Independence 45 years ago but the nation has still a long way to go in addressing the many challenges that people face. The Catholic Bishops of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, who together make up a single bishops conference, made the remark in a message ahead of its Independence Day on Wednesday. Challenges Papua New Guineas journey of mastering its destiny and self-determination began on September 16 1975, noted the Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea & Solomon Islands (CBCPNGSI) in a message for Papua New Guineas Independence Day. But the struggle for universal education, health care, end of gender and domestic violence, personal honesty, prosperity for all, development and necessary infrastructures is far from won, wrote the bishops conference General Secretary, Father Giorgio Licini. Papua New Guinea achieved its independence at midnight between September 15 and 16, 1975, ending 69 years of Australian rule. It also signalled the end of 90 years of colonial rule under British, German and Australian authorities. In the message, Father Licini noted that people are happy with the simplicity of village life. But he lamented that tribal fights and family conflicts push an increasing number of individuals out of their place of origin and their ancestral land. While urban centres boom, he said, opportunities for employment are scarce, the streets are dirty and filthy and petty crime is hardly contained. Responsibility of authorities Alluding to those in authority, the PIME priest called for unity and cooperation to overcome the countrys challenges. He urged the government to be more pro-active in reaching out to civil society for input and scrutiny. Democracy does not end on election day, after which Members of Parliament are hardly seen back in their constituencies, and government Ministers hide behind locked doors in the parliament building and offices, reducing as much as possible interaction with the public, Father Licini said. Only transparency and participation, he said, lay the grounds for a new level of national progress and freedom. Coping with Covid-19 The bishops of PNG and Solomon Islands noted that this years Independence Day celebrations are taking place amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Death, sickness, strain on the health system, loss of jobs, and anxiety, they said, are the most visible effects of the virus that has attacked mankind at the beginning of the year. The bishops expressed gratitude to God and to nature that PNG is coping well with the crisis and their weaker and older citizens have been spared. They thanked countries and development agencies that came to their rescue in providing medical equipment and expertise, saying countries need and support each other especially in times of difficulty. Seventy migrants jumped overboard today and swam away from the Spanish NGO ship that had rescued them as they tried to reach Italy. They are part of a group of 270 people who have been stranded for days off the coast of the Sicilian city of Palermo on the Spanish rescue vessel Open Arms. The desperate swimmers became frustrated by the diplomatic wranglings over who should take custody of them and so headed for shore in their life jackets, the local Giornale di Sicilia reported. Open Arms rescued three separate groups in the Mediterranean between September 8 and 10. The crew are still waiting for instructions on where the migrants will be allowed to disembark. Desperate migrants jumped from the Spanish rescue vessel Open Arms on Thursday in an attempt to swim to the Sicilian City of Palermo The Sicilian coast can be seen in the background as migrants wearing orange life jackets attempt to swim to shore The Italian coastguard has ferried two pregnant women and one of their husbands onto dry land in recent days, while the rest remain on board. So far this year 47,379 migrants have arrived by sea into Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta. Another 4,837 have made the crossing into Greece and Spain via land. The United Nations estimates that around 500 migrants have died or gone missing attempting to make the crossing in 2020. The figures are similar to the last few years but a sharp drop off from the peak of the crisis in 2015 when more than a million arrived through the Mediterranean. An estimated 3,771 died or went missing that year. This year the majority of the migrants (20.3 percent) have come from Tunisia, followed by Algeria (12.7 percent), Bangladesh (8.1 percent), Afghanistan (7.5 percent) and Syria (7.3 percent). Data from the United Nations shows that so far this year 47,379 migrants have arrived by sea into Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta After being for years the primary route into Europe for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other migrants, Italy has seen a drop in arrivals after a crackdown on smuggling networks. However, numbers have picked up again in 2020 although Rome banned rescue ships from docking in its ports due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sometimes those saved at sea are transferred to ferries and quarantined there, off the Italian coast. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is all in for slow justice. Firing back at Tiffany & Co.s quest to expedite court proceedings over LVMHs $16.2 deal to buy the American jewelry, LVMH said Thursday there is no objective reason why the upcoming trial should not take place within a normal time frame. More from WWD Given the legal and financial issues at stake in the context of a pandemic that obviously weighs on the ability of a European group to organize its defense in the U.S. it seems to LVMH that sound justice requires a reasonable time be granted to rule on the matter, the French company said in a statement. It also accused Tiffany of meritless allegations and aggressive misdirection campaign tactics. It is up to the Delaware court to determine who is in his right, and not the chairman of Tiffany through the press. The jeweler sued LVMH in Delaware Chancery Court last week after LVMH said it was dropping the deal, citing a request to delay closing from the French government, which is in the midst of a trade spat with Washington. Tiffany on Wednesday accused LMVH of opposing its efforts to hold an expedited trial, preferring the court to hold off for six or seven months. In its latest statement, LVMH was clearly blowing a dart at Roger Farah, who on Wednesday let loose and accused the French group of grasping at any opportunity to delay and avoid its obligations. This includes excuses for failing to make standard antitrust filings, complaints about the pandemic and protests that LVMH previously agreed could not be considered as a valid reason to question the transaction. LVMHs opposition to our motion to expedite is the latest attempt to run out the clock to avoid fulfilling its obligations under the merger agreement. If LVMH were confident in its legal position, it would have no reason to oppose an expedited trial schedule. We urge the court to hold the trial on a timetable that will enable a decision before the Nov. 24 termination date in the merger agreement, Farah added. Story continues LVMHs statement on Thursday said Tiffany executives are seeking swift justice to avoid having to answer, notably to their shareholders, for their bad results and mismanagement and to see their arguments fall one after another. The next Tiffany results will only confirm the occurrence of a material adverse effect and the mediocrity of their management during the crisis, which mainly consisted in creating losses and increasing debts to the detriment of the companys interest. Tiffany has defended the companys performance, saying it has already returned to profitability and expects to remain profitable for the balance of the year, with fourth-quarter profits exceeding those of the same period in 2019. LVMH called these forecasts purely fanciful, even worrying. The only way to even come close to this target would be to so strongly curtail all current investment, particularly in marketing and communications, which is obviously detrimental to the future of the brand and totally contrary to the normal course of business. Tiffany clearly fears a serene and fair rendering of justice. LVMH, for its part, has full confidence in the American justice system to demonstrate that the conditions necessary for the acquisition of Tiffany are no longer met and that the fallacious arguments put forth by Tiffany are unfounded. LVMH noted that it submitted its conclusions to the Delaware court on Wednesday night, seeing that it dismiss Tiffanys request for an expedited decision. International companies are shifting their production out of China due to increasing costs and intensifying Sino-US trade friction, a top Chinese trade official has acknowledged while downplaying it as a normal market phenomenon." Meng Wei, spokesperson for the countrys planning body National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), played down the steady closures by the multinational companies which provided massive foreign direct investment (FDI) in China for decades enabling it to emerge as a global export hub. She said on Wednesday that the recent moves by international companies to shift production base out of China can be seen as normal market activities. Meng attributed the shifting of the companies to rising costs and intensifying trade friction between China and the US. The official said that China is committed to further opening up its economy and improving its environment for foreign businesses. The shift is a normal market phenomenon," Meng was quoted as saying by the state-run Global Times. China faced major disruptions to its massive supply chain industry in the last two years as US President Donald Trump pursued aggressive policies towards Beijing fuelling political and trade tensions besides the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The US on September 14 banned the import of five goods from China, including computer-parts, cotton and hair products, alleging that they are produced in forced labour camps in the restive Muslim-majority Xinjiang province. US President Donald Trump in May had ruled out renegotiating the trade deal with China. The US and China in the beginning of the year signed Phase-1 of a trade deal, ending a bitter two-year tariff war that had rattled the global economy. A number of countries including India, Vietnam and Bangladesh have announced special policies to attract the foreign firms leaving China. Also, investment between the US and China in the first half of the year dropped to the lowest level in nearly a decade, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. For the six months ending June 30, total capital deployed through direct and venture capital investments fell to an estimated USD 10.9 billion, from USD 26 billion at its 2016 peak, Post quoted a report by Rhodium Group and the non-profit National Committee on US-China Relations. Direct investment by US companies in China dropped to USD 4.1 billion during the first six months this year as well, although several large acquisitions are moving forward, including JP Morgans USD one billion deal to take control of its Chinese mutual fund joint venture, the report said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Karen Lema (Reuters) Manila, Philippines Thu, September 17, 2020 19:15 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c457a936 2 SE Asia Philippines,travel-ban,coronavirus,coronavirus-restrictions,COVID-19,COVID-19-travel-ban,COVID-19-travel-restriction,pandemic,nurse Free The Philippines is considering allowing more nurses and other medical professionals to leave for jobs abroad after banning them from travel so they can fight coronavirus at home, President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman said on Thursday. Thousands of the nurses, who call themselves "priso-nurses" have appealed to the government to be allowed to travel, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The nurses say they feel underpaid, underappreciated and unprotected at home. Health care workers from the Philippines are on the front lines of the pandemic at hospitals in the United States, Europe and the Middle East as well as back home. The labor minister has proposed to expand exemptions to those who had contracts abroad as of Aug. 31. So far it is only those with contracts as of March 8 who have been allowed to travel. Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque told a media briefing that a proposal for a relaxation would be made on Monday to President Duterte, who will have the final say. Foreign Affairs Minister Teodoro Locsin, who has called for the lifting of the ban, said in a tweet the Philippines has 400,000 nursing graduates without jobs so "they're rightly pissed." In Germany there are 430 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people. In the Philippines, there are 65. The Philippines has the highest number of recorded coronavirus infections in Southeast Asia with 276,289. Its 4,785 deaths are second only to Indonesia. Labor Minister Silvestre Bello told nurses on Sept. 11 he was confident the president would support his proposal to relax the travel ban. He said the total lifting of the ban was "under serious study". "While we don't want our nurses to leave, they are at a disadvantage. They don't have jobs here and even if they did, the salary is low," Bello said as he urged nurses to fight for their rights. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. A recent market study published by FMI on the nurse calling systems market includes the global industry analysis of 2015-2019 & opportunity assessment for 2020-2030, and delivers a comprehensive assessment of the most important market dynamics. Our analysts have conducted thorough research on the historical as well as current growth parameters of the market to obtain growth prospects with maximum precision. Nurse Calling Systems Market: Segmentation Equipment Type Button-based Systems Integrated Communication Systems Mobile Systems Intercom Systems Request a Sample of this Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-12404 Application Alarms & Communications Workflow Optimization Wanderer Control Fall Detection & Prevention Technology Wired Nurse Call Systems Wireless Nurse Call Systems End-user Hospitals Ambulatory Surgical Centers Clinics Long-term Care Centers Region North America Latin America Europe East Asia South Asia Oceania Middle East & Africa Report Chapters Chapter 01- Executive Summary The report gives a brief with the executive summary of the nurse calling systems market, which includes a summary of the key findings and statistics of the market. It also includes the demand & supply-side trends pertaining to the nurse calling systems market. Chapter 02 Market Overview In this chapter, readers can find the definition and a detailed taxonomy of the nurse calling systems market, which will help them understand the basic information about the nurse calling systems market. Along with this, comprehensive information about nurse calling systems is provided in this section. This section also highlights the inclusions and exclusions, which help readers understand the scope of the nurse calling systems market report. Chapter 03 Key Market Trends This section includes key trends impacting the market as well as the major development trends associated with equipment type development. Chapter 04- Market Background This section includes the prominent dynamics (drivers, restraints & opportunities) which are responsible for shaping the markets growth trajectory during the upcoming decades forecast. Chapter 05 COVID-19 Crisis Analysis This chapter explores the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future growth projections. It incorporates the current statistics and the probable future impact, current GDP projections and its probable impact. Furthermore, this section also incorporates the impact of the pandemic on each of the segments covered in the report, as well as the short-term, mid-term & long-term recovery scenarios. Chapter 06- Market Context This chapter explains key macroeconomic factors that are expected to influence the growth of the nurse calling systems market over the forecast period. Along with the macroeconomic factors, this section also highlights the regulatory scenario, value chain analysis and various growth strategies employed by manufacturers. Chapter 07- Global Nurse Calling Systems Market- Pricing Analysis This section of the report brings to fore the regional pricing analysis by equipment type and offers a break-up between manufacturer level pricing and distributor level pricing. The chapter also incorporates the global average pricing analysis benchmark. Chapter 08 Global Nurse Calling Systems Market Demand (in Value or Size in US$ Mn) Analysis 2015-2019 & Forecast 2020-2030 This section explains the global market value analysis and forecast for the nurse calling systems market for the forecast period of 2020-2030, in value terms. This chapter includes a detailed analysis of the historical projections of the nurse calling systems market, along with an opportunity analysis for the future. Readers can also find the absolute $ opportunity for the current year (2020), and incremental $ opportunity for the forecast period. Chapter 09- Global Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 and Forecast 2020-2030, by Equipment Type This chapter provides details about the nurse calling systems market based on type and has been classified into Button-based Systems, Integrated Communication Systems, Mobile Systems and Intercom Systems. Chapter 10 Global Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by Application This chapter provides details about the Nurse calling systems market based on application and has been classified into Alarms & Communications, Workflow Optimization, Wanderer Control and Fall Detection & Prevention. Chapter 11- Global Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by Technology This chapter provides details about the Nurse calling systems market based on end-user and has been classified into Wired Nurse Call Systems and Wireless Nurse Call Systems. Chapter 12- Global Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by End-User This chapter provides details about the Nurse calling systems market based on end-user and has been classified into Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, Clinics and Long-Term Care Centers. Chapter 13- Global Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by Region This chapter provides details about the Nurse calling systems market based on region and has been classified into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), East Asia, South Asia and Oceania. Chapter 14- North America Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the North America Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes the U.S and Canada. Readers can also find the pricing analysis, regional trends, and market growth based on material and countries in North America. Chapter 15- Latin America Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Latin America Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Rest of Latin America. Chapter 16- Europe Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the European Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Germany, Italy, France, the U.K, Spain, BENELUX, Russia and Rest of Europe. Chapter 17- South Asia Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the South Asian Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Rest of South Asia. Chapter 18- East Asia Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the East Asian Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes China, Japan and South Korea. Chapter 19- Oceania Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Oceania Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Australia and New Zealand. Chapter 20- Middle East & Africa Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Middle East & Africa Nurse calling systems market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes GCC countries, South Africa and rest of MEA. Chapter 21- Key Countries Nurse calling systems Market Analysis 20152019 and Forecast 20202030 This chapter provides the growth scenario of the Nurse calling systems market of 22 key countries by type, and form. Additionally, COVID-19 impact in the said market in all respective countries has been included. Request for Reports Methodology @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/nurse-call-systems-market#idMethodology Chapter 22- Market Structure Analysis In this chapter, readers can find detailed information about the tier analysis and market concentration of key players in the physiology equipment market, along with their market presence analysis by region and product portfolio. Chapter 23- Competition Analysis In this chapter, readers can find a comprehensive list of all the prominent stakeholders in the Nurse calling systems market, along with detailed information about each company, which includes company overview, revenue shares, strategic overview, and recent company developments. Some of the market players featured in the report are Hill-Rom Holdings Inc., Ascom, Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls International Plc, Rauland-Borg Corporation, Jeron Electronic Systems, Inc., Azure, Schrack Seconet AG, Intercall Systems Inc., Stanley Black & Decker Inc., Tunstall Group, Tektone Sound & Signal Mfg. Inc., and Igeacare Solutions Inc. Queensland's schools will break up two days early this year, with the summer holidays kicking off on December 9. The state's education chief Tony Cook made the extraordinary decision on Thursday, saying teachers deserved a break because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 'In recognition of the efforts of school-based staff during the COVID-19 health pandemic, the 2020 school year will end two days early,' a statement from the Queensland Department of Education said. Queensland's schools will break up two days early this year, with the summer holidays kicking off on December 9 (file picture) The last two days of the year - Thursday December 10 and Friday December 11 - will be student-free, with schools closed. Some schools in regional areas will close a week early. Some parents were not happy with the news. 'So because teachers worked the last six months (like the rest of us) in their safe and secure jobs (unlike the rest of us) I now need to find two extra days annual leave of which most people where forced to use or find an expensive outside school care option. Get real,' one dad said. A mum added: 'They have surely had enough extra days off this year. Also let's not forget teachers already get more than double holiday periods than other professions.' Airline order: The Boeing 737 Max was grounded after two crashed killed 346 people died in two crashes Ryanair will take advantage of the bruised global aviation market to place a fresh order for Boeing's troubled Max jet by the end of the year, Davy Stockbrokers believes. Ryanair group CEO Michael O'Leary has previously indicated that the airline has been having discussions with Boeing in relation to its Max 10 variant. Eddie Wilson, the chief executive of Ryanair, recently confirmed that talks with Boeing are continuing. In a report on the embattled airline sector published yesterday, Davy analysts Stephen Furlong and Ross Harvey said the pandemic will "hasten" consolidation within the European airline market. They pointed out that just six carriers account for 95pc of all airline earnings in Europe, but the top six airlines only account for 66pc of capacity. In the United States, the top 10 carriers control 99pc of the market. Davy predicts that in Europe some of the bigger airlines such as Lufthansa could shrink after the crisis, while weaker airlines such as Norwegian and Alitalia could also contract, with other carriers vanishing altogether. "As we enter the winter season, when cash burn is traditionally the highest, we expect more failures and heightened consolidation in the sector," noted the broker. Ryanair has already cut capacity by 20pc for September and October due to weaker forward bookings, "Demand may return quicker in leisure markets, but we should also see industry supply being at least 20pc less in 2021," added Davy. "Weak winter cashflows could see that number accelerate." Airlines have been clambering to shore up their balance sheets in order to weather the Covid storm. Last week, Aer Lingus owner IAG raised 2.74bn in a highly dilutive equity placing. Ryanair raised 400m earlier this month, saying the proceeds would be used for opportunities that arise from the crisis, but also to de-risk repayments on debt. Davy pointed out that just four airlines in the world now have an investment grade rating - Ryanair , Wizz and EasyJet in Europe, and Southwest in the United States. All are low-cost carriers. The broker noted that the "pertinent question" for network carriers, which transfer passengers through large hubs connecting long-haul destinations, is whether they can recover and if so, how long it takes, Davy also said that while corporate travel has always recovered following a global crisis, the adoption of services such as Zoom for meetings during the pandemic could mean it will be the last travel segment to do so. BAD AXE American Technical Fabricators LLC, a contact manufacturing company located in Bad Axe, recently donated a metal Thin Blue Line flag to the Bad Axe Police Department in support of the local police and the work that they do. While many who fly this flag say it stands for solidarity and support of police on a local and national level, the flag has sparked many debates as the fight for racial equality across the U.S. continues. Bryan Barwig, owner of American Technical Fabricators, said the feedback from the community regarding the donations has been extremely positive. As a company, our intent was to show support for our local police department, Barwig said. We think they do a great job and felt they deserve the recognition. Bad Axe Chief of Police David Rothe agreed that the community has responded in support of the donation. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Rothe said. As police officers, we appreciate the support of law enforcement, and that is what the flag represents to this department. It is an amazing donation, very well made, he added. We look forward to displaying it. After a similar donation caused controversy in Montgomery County, Maryland, its local police department announced that while it appreciated the donation, the flag would not be publicly displayed to avoid any conflict within the community. In a discussion with National Public Radio on the topic, Jack Lowe, a vexillolgist who studies the history and symbolism of flags, discussed the difference between defacing and modification of the American flag. People use symbols for their own purposes, Lowe told NPR, Theres nothing inherently bad about the black and white flag with the thin blue line, its just a symbol, and the interpretation of the symbol may change over time. SYSPROs Digital Transformation (DX) web series which is focused on how businesses can ensure the success of their digital transformation journey recently ran its second session. The session focused on the importance of cloud as part of the digital transformation journey and featured guest speakers Johannes Kanis, Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead at Microsoft South Africa, and Financial Manager at Gold Reef Specialty Chemicals Virginia Hughes. According to Kanis, over the last few months with the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has seen incredible acceleration of digital transformation across the globe. In fact, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the world has seen two years worth of digital transformation in only a few months. Business have had to deal with the scenarios around remote work and worker health and safety, and to accelerate that, theyve had to embrace the power of cloud. One example is Microsofts Azure business which grew 750% globally in only 4 months, as customers were moving workloads from on-premise into the cloud to deal with the situation. From a Microsoft Teams usage point of view, Microsoft has been handling over 200,000 connection per minute worldwide. Investing in partners As a partner-led organisation, Microsoft invests significantly in their partner channel which extends across the globe. In Africa, Microsoft has invested specifically in datacentre infrastructure as many of their partners need to help customers in building their capability, maintaining it, and accelerating it based on innovation. This is also an important consideration in terms of cloud adoption as you want to make sure that you have the right support in place as you journey to the cloud, said Kanis. Microsoft now has 61 data centres globally, of which two are based in South Africa, and continue to invest in points of presence across Africa. They work with key connectivity partners globally to make sure customers are modernising their networks and that they can leverage the power of the SD-WAN and use the software-as-a-service capability. For customers that have a global presence, this is especially useful, said Kanis. SYSPRO is one of these key customers and are, together with Microsoft, working to provide services based on this infrastructure. SYSPRO Managed Cloud Services Specifically developed to host your SYSPRO ERP infrastructure, SYSPRO Managed Cloud Services (MCS) offers a fully managed infrastructure, deployed by SYSPRO and hosted on Microsoft Azures cloud platform in data centers throughout the world. By shifting the management and hosting of your ERP to SYSPRO, you receive immediate value without the upfront investment or business pains typically associated with building out, maintaining, and upgrading on-premise IT infrastructure freeing you up to focus on running your business rather than your IT. It offers you 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and support in a single monthly fee allowing you to manage your expenses more effectively and is flexible enough to manage your unique needs with an option to transition to a hybrid cloud environment. It can be turned on within a few days or even hours, allowing you to be up and running quickly and you can access all your SYSPRO data at any time, any place, using any device. Watch the second session of the SYSPROs Digital Transformation (DX) web series below. Security review in J&K is message to Pak not to use Taliban win in Kashmir 11 civilians gunned down by security forces in Nagaland; CM Neiphiu Rio orders SIT probe, appeals for peace Day after Category A terrorist was killed, 2 more gunned down today in J&K 3 terrorists gunned down in encounter with security forces India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Srinagar, Sep 17: Three terrorists have been killed and two CRPF personnel injured in an encounter that broke out with the security forces at the Batamaloo area in Srinagar. The CRPF and police launched a cordon and search operation following a tip off about the presence of terrorists in the locality. The operation began at around 2.30 am on Thursday. The search operation turned into an encounter after the terrorists opened fire. A woman, identified as Kaunsar Riyaz, was killed in the exchange of fire. Two CRPF personnel, including an officer, were injured, officials said. The injured have been admitted to a hospital. The security operation was still underway, they said. By Steven Scheer JERUSALEM, Sept 17 (Reuters) - A 27-year-old U.S.-born yeshiva student has secured control of El Al Israel Airlines following a public share offering that was a government condition for the carrier to receive a 75% state-backed $250 million loan. Eli Rozenberg's newly created Kanfei Nesharim Aviation bought $107 million of shares that would give him a nearly 43% stake in Israel's flag carrier, his spokesman said Thursday. Rozenberg, who resides in Israel, is the son of Kenny Rozenberg, chief executive of New York-based nursing home chain Centers Health Care. The government bought a 15% stake for $34 million while the holdings of El Al's current owners, Knafaim Holdings, fell to 15.2% from 38%. Rozenberg in July had offered to funnel $75 million into the airline in return for a 44.99% stake. The deal needs approval from parliament's finance committee. Kanfei Nesharim's spokesman said Rozenberg will meet Finance Ministry officials next week. He said once Rozenberg is approved, he will seek to make changes to El Al's board and elsewhere to move the cash-strapped carrier forward. Kanfei Nesharim said it would invest heavily in improving El Al's service and to upgrade its food service. Rozenberg has surrounded himself with advisers including Jason Greenblatt, a former adviser to President Donald Trump. El Al suspended scheduled passenger flights in March at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak when Israel closed its borders to foreign citizens. Earlier on Thursday, it said it would resume flights to Athens on Oct. 1, followed by daily flights to New York, London and Paris starting Oct. 12. The airline has reported losses for two years and racked up debt to renew its fleet. In addition to the share offering, the government has required El Al to slash costs. Most of its 5,940 employees remain on unpaid leave and El Al said it would gradually bring a small number back. (Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Bernadette Baum) The grieving widow of slain bikie Mick Hawi is in disbelief after two men were cleared of her husband's murder. The former bikie boss was gunned down while sitting in his black Mercedes outside a Fitness First gym in Sydney's south on February 15, 2018. Yusuf Guney Nazlioglu, 39, and Jamal Eljaidi, 32, were both found not guilty of murder after a three-and-a-half week trial at the NSW Supreme Court ended last week. Hawi's wife Carolina Gonzalez says she is devastated by the outcome. 'It's destroyed us, they have destroyed everyone and they don't care,' she told Nine News. The grieving widow of slain bikie Mick Hawi, Carolina Gonzalez, said she is is disbelief two men were cleared of her husband's murder 'I was in disbelief and frustrated - where's the justice? There were a lot of things that should have been put into evidence and it wasn't.' Meanwhile shocking new footage has emerged of the bikie kingpin's final moments before his execution style murder. CCTV captures the moment Hawi casually walks past the reception of the Sydney gym just seconds before his assassination. He then hops into his Mercedes before another car pulls up and a gunman runs towards his car and pulls the trigger. Mahmoud 'Mick' Hawi, (pictured with wife Carolina Gomez) became Comancheros national president aged just 22 before relinquishing the role in 2009 CCTV captures the moment Hawi casually walks past the reception of the Sydney gym just seconds before his assassination While Nazlioglu, 39, and Eljaidi were cleared, removalist Ahmad Doudar, 40, was jailed on Thursday for disposing of the getaway car. Doudar's role in the crime involved him picking up a hidden silver Aurion with a tow truck and intending to dispose of it, alongside others, the court heard. Justice Robert Allan Hulme said on sentencing today: '(Mr Doudar) intended to assist in disposing of the vehicle in order to assist' in the murder. In handing down his sentence Justice Robert Allan Hulme said Doudar's plea of guilty and the facts he had agreed to indicated he knew 'the brazen and brutal executioner.' 'The murder itself was horrifying. It was a dangerous and violent public execution. Mr Doudar knew this.' A jury found Yusuf Nazlioglu (left, shirtless) not guilty of Hawi's murder a week ago. Ahmad Doudar (right) pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to Hawi's murder Hawi's wife Carolina Gonzalez has questioned the justice system after a court allowed two men to be acquitted of her husband's murder Bikie Mick Hawi was shot multiple times while sitting in his black Mercedes (pictured) outside a gym in Sydney's south in early 2018 The judge said murders like this 'do not happen by chance... they require the involvement of multiple people.' Doudar's motive remains unknown. 'For all I know, Mr Doudar may have been motivated by one or more other purposes,' the judge said. Hawi's wife, Carolina Gonzalez, sister Zeinab and parents Ahmad and Nahdi read statements at his sentencing hearing. They gave 'very moving accounts of the loss and grief that has resulted from the taking of their loved one in the most horrendous of circumstances.' Doudar was jailed with a non parole period of three years and four months. With time served, he will be eligible for parole at the end of 2021. WASHINGTON - Attorney General William Barr drew sharp condemnation Thursday for comparing lockdown orders during the coronavirus pandemic to slavery. In remarks Wednesday night at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, Barr had called the lockdown orders the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history since slavery. His comments, at a Northern Virginia event hosted by the school, also criticized his own prosecutors for behaving as headhunters in their pursuit of prominent targets and for using the weight of the criminal justice system to launch what he said were ill-conceived political probes. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the No. 3 House Democratic leader, told CNN that Barrs remarks were the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things Ive ever heard because they wrongly equated human bondage with a measure aimed at saving lives. Slavery was not about saving lives. It was about devaluing lives, Clyburn said. This pandemic is a threat to human life. Its not the first time Barr has condemned stay-at-home orders. He has previously said that some orders were disturbingly close to house arrest, and the Justice Department sent letters to several states warning that some of their virus-related restrictions might be unlawful. Prosecutors also filed statements of interest in several civil cases challenging some of the restrictions. Barr has faced scrutiny for overruling the decisions of Justice Department prosecutors who work for him, including in criminal cases involving associates of President Donald Trump. But in his remarks, he rejected the notion that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring. Instead, Barr described them as part of the permanent bureaucracy and suggested they need to be supervised, and even reined in, by politically appointed leaders accountable to the president and Congress. The men and women who have ultimate authority in the Justice Department are thus the ones on whom our elected officials have conferred that responsibility by presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, Barr said. That blessing by the two political branches of government gives these officials democratic legitimacy that career officials simply do not possess. Barr himself has been aggressive as attorney general in pursuing certain categories of prosecutions, including using federal statutes to charge defendants in the unrest that roiled cities after the death of George Floyd. But he warned that prosecutors can become overly attached to their cases in ways that lose perspective and judgment, listing a series of prosecutions including under previous administrations in which he said he believed the government had taken extreme positions. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target, Barr said. Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process. Barrs comments appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the fracas that arose ahead of the February sentencing of Trump confidant Roger Stone. In that case, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of the line prosecutors in favour of a lighter punishment. The move prompted the entire trial team to quit before Stones sentencing hearing. Barr has defended his intervention as in the interests of justice. In May, he sought the dismissal of the criminal case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation to lying to the FBI. Barrs request is tied up in a court fight. Also Thursday, a spokeswoman for Barr said the Justice Department had explored charging Portland officials in the civil unrest there. They researched whether they could levy criminal or civil charges against the officials exploring whether their rhetoric and actions may have helped spur the violence in Portland. The move underscored the larger Trump administrations effort to spotlight and crack down on protest-related violence. The majority of the mass police reform demonstrations nationwide have been peaceful. ___ Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP Vodafone Idea Ltd has dropped the claim of 50% faster data speed offered under its RedX premium plan for higher-paying postpaid customers, according to the companys website. The company is yet to submit a revised plan to the telecom regulator, which is investigating the scheme on the grounds of violation of service norms. We (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) have not received any modified plan as of yet. The details of this plan or any plan can be submitted to us within seven days of the launch or modification," said a senior government official. According to the telecom operator's website, the plan continues to offer priority help through our premium customer service" among other services, but does not mention priority data speeds. The plan was priced 999 at launch in November 2019, and in May, was hiked to 1,099. Dropping the 50% faster data speed claim supports Trai's and even rival Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltds view that, Vodafone Ideas premium plan will affect internet services of those who are not a part of the priority circle. In July, the telecom regulator had withheld the plan, asking Vodafone Idea to not onboard new customers. Vodafone Idea dragged the matter to the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), where the court allowed the telco to sign up new customers under the plan and directed Trai to continue its probe. The TDSAT is yet to give its final verdict in the matter. Vodafone Idea had launched its RedX premium scheme in November 2019 claiming to offer 50% faster data speed, but the matter came under the spotlight when rival Bharti Airtel Ltd rolled out a similar plan, Platinum, in July. The telco alleged that Trais probe in its plan started after a complaint by Jio, saying the regulator's decision was only to help the cause of Reliance Jio". However, Trai has called the allegations vague, clarifying that the probe began as the premium plan violated regulatory norms. Trai told the TDSAT that Voda Idea attempted to mask the information" related to the scheme. Interestingly, Reliance Jio told the TDSAT that Trais decision to withhold Voda Ideas premium plan was following a complaint it filed. The Mukesh Ambani-led telco has called the RedX plan discriminatory and misleading. 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 The Supreme Court Thursday said it would hear tomorrow the plea which has raised grievance over Sudarshan TVs Bindas Bol programme whose promo had claimed that channel would show the big expose on conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims in government service. The matter came up for hearing before a bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud which had on September 15 restrained the channel from telecasting episodes of the programme till further orders, saying the intent of aired episodes prima facie appears to vilify the community. Senior advocate Anoop George Chaudhary, appearing for the petitioner, told the bench that they have been served with a copy of reply filed by the channel today itself and they needed time to respond. Senior advocate Shyan Divan, appearing for Sudarshan TV, told the apex court that they have filed their affidavit. Injunction is running against us, and It was difficult to respond in such a time," Divan told the bench, also comprising Justices Indu Malhotra and K M Joseph. It could be taken on Monday or tomorrow or let me start today itself," he asked. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said the matter could be taken up Friday. We can request the CJI to allow us to hold the bench tomorrow. In all probability it may be done," Justice Chandrachud said, adding, We can take up the matter at 10.30 am and finish it off." The solicitor general also said, If the matter is concerned to Sudarshan TV only, then we may not have much to say but if it is the larger issue then we need to address. To this, the bench said, At present we dont know what will go on in the hearing but of course Divan will argue for vacating the injunction." During the hearing conducted through video-conferencing, Justice Joseph said the court has not yet received either the links or episodes of the programme in pen drive. One of the advocates appearing in the matter said that he would send the link of the episodes to the court master. Divan, while apologising to the court for not sending the links of four episodes which has already been telecast prior to the courts September 15 order, said they would send it to the court as soon as possible. When Chaudhary told the bench that contempt proceedings should be initiated against editor-in-chief of Sudarshan TV for his tweets after the courts order, Justice Chandrachud says, if he (Suresh Chavhanke) has said something silly, we will ignore it. Chaudhary said he just wanted to bring this issue to the notice of the court. The advocates appearing for Press Council of India and National Broadcasters Association said they would like to address the court on larger issue in the matter. Terming India as a melting pot of civilizations, cultures, religions and languages, the apex court had on September 15 said that any attempt to vilify a religious community must be viewed with grave disfavour by this court as the custodian of constitutional values and its duty to enforce constitutional values demands nothing less. The bench had suggested that a committee of apolitical experts of distinguished citizens or former judges may be appointed to help in self-regulating the electronic media specially. The Centre has filed an affidavit in the matter and said if the apex court decides on the issue of media regulation then such an exercise should be undertaken with the digital media first as it has faster reach and information has the potential to go viral due to applications like WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. The government has told the apex court that sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements exist for the electronic and the print media. Considering the serious impact and the potential, it is desirable that if this court decides to undertake the exercise, it should first be undertaken with regard to digital media as there already exists sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements with regard to electronic media and print media, said the counter affidavit, filed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Separately, Sudarshan TV has also filed an affidavit in the apex court and claimed that it has no ill-will against any community or any individual and the programme concerns a matter of grave national interest. The channel claimed that it has used word like UPSC Jihad in its programme as an institute for Muslim UPSC aspirants has received foreign funds, also from those which are linked to organisations that allegedly funds extremist groups. Harsimrat Kaur Badal Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the Akali Dal's lone minister in the Narendra Modi government, on Thursday resigned from the Union Cabinet to protest the farm bills. Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal had earlier on Thursday said in the Lok Sabha that Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the Minister for Food Processing, will resign in protest as the government tabled two more farm-sector related bills in the lower house amid widespread protests by farmers in Punjab and Haryana. The Akali Dal, a part of the National Democratic Alliance, had also protested against the first of three such bills, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha. Revelations of special treatment received by Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae's son during his mandatory military service and the Defense Ministry's attempts to shield him from scrutiny are damaging troop morale and discipline. Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told lawmakers on Wednesday, "It's true that documents have not been preserved at the unit, but no regulations were violated so there are no problems" with the justice minister's son taking nearly a month's sick leave after minor knee surgery. When asked why other soldiers who suffered much more serious injuries were not granted extended leave, Jeong said, "Their commanders did not consider the matter carefully." In other words, any discrimination is entirely somebody else's fault and has nothing to do with the fact that they have no friends in high places. Jeong himself seemed confused what the party line is. First he told lawmakers that the young man should only have taken four days off, but then he backpedaled and said he "misspoke." Perhaps he got confused trying to cobble together so many conflicting bits of information. When ruling-party lawmakers said it was perfectly okay for a soldier to request an extension of his sick leave by text message to his commander, the defense minister nodded in agreement, even though in fact a proper document has to be submitted. A career soldier who rose through the ranks by sheer hard work, Jeong is now about to cap his career by dragging the entire military through the mud because of party pressure. The nominee for Jeong's replacement, Suh Wook, also blamed the military and said, "There are several unsatisfactory areas" as well as "administrative problems." When asked about the controversy surrounding the justice minister's son, Suh said, "It is difficult for me to make an assessment, since that is a matter for the commanding officer." It is amazing to see how many people are willing to harm their own integrity in their attempt to save the justice minister. What must be going through the minds of the 500,000 soldiers who are watching this debacle? Last week, the Defense Ministry suddenly distributed a statement to reporters saying it is possible to extend a soldier's sick leave by telephone since related documents can be submitted later, and sick leave can be authorized verbally. Apparently ministry officials had been taking dictation from ruling party lawmakers. The ministry at first claimed that records of a telephone call allegedly made by Choo and her husband pressuring the military to extend their son's sick leave had been "erased," but that turned out to be false. The military appears to be more interested in protecting the government than the safety of or troop morale among conscripts. No wonder people are deriding it as the "Choo Mi-ae Defense Ministry." Choo in turn has been tasked with shielding President Moon Jae-in from a probe by prosecutors. In the end, this whole debacle is about protecting the president. The old soldiers may have saved their jobs by kowtowing to this corrupt rabble, but the damage they have done to the military will take a long time to fix. The Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by a Pune resident seeking the termination of her 23-week-long pregnancy on grounds that the foetus had a deformitya cleft lip and palate. The division bench comprising justices Nitin Jamdar and Milind Jadhav dismissed the petition, primarily due to the report of the Punes Season Hospital medical board stating that the deformity was surgically correctable. The woman had approached the high court contending that her sonogram on August 12, 2020 showed that the foetus had a cleft lip and palate. The woman said she then took a second opinion where the deformity was confirmed, and moved high court to seek permission to terminate the pregnancy as it had by then crossed the 20-week limit set by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. Also Read: RTI activists seek resumption of services of quasi-judicial bodies in Maharashtra On August 27, she was referred to a medical board of specialist doctors by the high court. In its report submitted to the high court on September 3, the board confirmed that the foetal anomalies were surgically correctable, and did not recommend medical termination of the pregnancy. But the womans lawyer submitted that the mental trauma suffered by the pregnant woman is one of the considerations, which the medical board had not looked into,and it would result from being forced to raise a child with this deformity. Also Read: Emergency parole of prisoners in Maharashtra will be automatically extended: Bombay HC The bench, however, refused to accept the submission. The likelihood of the mental trauma in the future sought to be projected by the petitioner, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, cannot be accepted as a ground for termination of pregnancy, said the bench, while rejecting the petition. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Sara Hussein and Natsuko Fukue (Agence France-Presse) Tokyo, Japan Thu, September 17, 2020 08:15 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454678d 2 World Japan,Prime-Minister,Yoshihide-Suga,coronavirus,economy Free Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged Wednesday to keep coronavirus infections under control and kickstart an economy in recession, as Shinzo Abe left office after a record-breaking tenure. In his first remarks after being elected by parliament earlier Wednesday, Suga emphasized his will be a cabinet of continuity, seeking to further the policies championed by Abe. "We need to carry forward the policies that the Abe administration was pushing, I feel that is the mission for which I have been called," Suga told reporters. He sidestepped questions on the possibility of a snap election to consolidate his position, saying that "what the public wants right now is that we manage to end the pandemic soon and at the same time we steadily restore the economy". "Achieving both the prevention of the spread of infection and rebuilding the economy is what they desire most... We hope to do our best on this issue first." He dwelled little on political ideology or foreign policy goals, instead pledging administrative reform, an end to "bureaucratic silos", and greater digitalization of government. He said he would seek continued strong ties with Washington and stable relations with China and Russia. But he offered no details and made no mention of ongoing tensions with South Korea, or any specifics of his defense strategy, particularly towards North Korea. 'Tough issues' ahead The 71-year-old takes the top job after decades in politics, most recently in the role of chief cabinet secretary, where he was a key enforcer of government policy as well as spokesman. A long-time Abe adviser and right-hand man, Suga has said his run was inspired by a desire to continue his predecessor's policies. His new cabinet is full of familiar faces, with Abe's foreign and finance ministers staying on, and the outgoing premier's brother appointed to lead the defense ministry. Suga won an easy victory in a vote in parliament, where his ruling Liberal Democratic Party holds a commanding majority. But he now faces a raft of tough challenges, from immediate problems like the coronavirus and the postponed Olympics, to longer-term issues including a declining population. "Tough issues are mounting before the Suga cabinet," said Shinichi Nishikawa, a professor of political science at Meiji University in Tokyo. "The coronavirus is the top priority to tackle. On the diplomatic front, there are many uncertain factors, including the US presidential election," he told AFP. Abe formally resigned on Wednesday along with his cabinet, ending his record run in office with a year left in his mandate. He opted to step down after a recurrence of ulcerative colitis, a bowel disease that has long plagued him and also helped force an early end to his first term in office, after just a year. 'All my strength' He hands the reins to a man who differs in many ways. While Abe prioritized foreign relations, Suga is a diplomatic novice more comfortable negotiating between ministries and resolving bureaucratic roadblocks. And unlike Abe, a political blue-blood, Suga is the son of a strawberry-farmer father and schoolteacher mother, who was raised in rural Akita and worked in a factory while he was in college. Suga's new cabinet offers further evidence of his desire for continuity, with Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi staying on along with Finance Minister Taro Aso. Just two women were appointed -- as Olympics and justice ministers -- down from the three who served in Abe's last government. On the economic front, Suga is said to be committed to his predecessor's signature "Abenomics" program of vast government spending, massive monetary easing and the cutting of red tape. Diplomatically, he is expected to prioritize the key relationship with the United States, whoever is president after November's election. He will face a trickier question on ties with China, with a global hardening of opinion against Beijing after the coronavirus and unrest in Hong Kong. Abe, who served as prime minister for a total of eight years, will stay on as a lawmaker, with some mooting the possibility he could undertake diplomatic missions. On Wednesday morning as he prepared to resign, Abe said he had given "all my strength" and was ending his tenure "with a sense of pride". "I owe everything to the Japanese people." It is given that the plurality of Jews wouldnt vote for Donald J. Trump even if Moses endorsed him. We shouldnt look for logic here. As prominent Zionist Max Nordau once observed, logic is a Greek art and Jews cant tolerate it. Tom Teicholz, the author of the new book The Worst President Ever.: Prominent Republican and Former Trump Administration Officials Speak Out Against Trump, is not an exception. In it, rather than support his case, he offers an unending barrage of selective opinions of Trump opponents and disgruntled former employees who for the most part criticize the Presidents intimidating personality and abrasive style. Having said this, we agree with him that Donald J. Trump is the worst president ever... for the Democrats/socialists. When it comes to the substance however, the worst president ever, is striving for new world order reversing his predecessors embrace of globalism, Islamism and Iran. His building blocks include a restored military, energy independence, defended borders, and notwithstanding a temporary setback caused by Coronavirus, a robust economy, not seen since the tenure of Dwight Eisenhower. This surfeit of blessing allows Trump to conduct economic and foreign policies in a manner previously unavailable to his predecessors since the decade following World War II. In effect, he ushered in a New Age of Nationalism which horrified his critics, especially Jews, who had spent the last 80 years decrying Nationalism as an evil rather than a good. Whereas, Zionism was born in the age of Nationalism and has remained true to its origins. Overall, his critics failed to grasp the essence and the benefits of Trumps statecraft and foreign policy based on raison detat -- national interests. The list of President Trumps accomplishments is well beyond the scope of this article, so we limit them to the Jewish issues. President Trump became the first US president to visit the Western (aka, "Wailing") Wall YouTube screengrab At the beginning of Trump presidency America expected an era of protracted confrontation with the Arab World. Toward the end of his first term, America is expecting an era of peace. He accomplished this coming down decidedly in Israels favor thereby convincing the Arabs that it was futile to resist Israel. Trumps the Middle East peace initiative is rival to Theodore Roosevelts balance-of-power diplomacy during the mediation of the Treaty of Portsmouth for which he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. Obama had alienated the Arabs by embracing the Mullahs of Iran and entering the nuclear deal known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump withdrew from the deal and spent the last 3.5 years pushing Iran back thereby endearing himself to the Arabs who consider Iran a mortal enemy. Trump skillfully leveraged the USA position to induce collaboration between Israelis and Arabs against their common danger. In the process, Trump: Defunded the Palestinian authority and removed them from Washington; Defunded UNWRA and put into question the multi-generational refugee status; Recognized Israel sovereignty over the Golan; Recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there; and finally Tabled the Trump Plan, Peace to Prosperity, which was decidedly better for Israel than the Arab Peace Initiative, first tabled in 2002. The publicized criticism of Trump is a surrogate for a deep underlying ideological divide in America. The old adage, There are two types of Jews -- those who believe that Judaism is about social justice and those who know Hebrew, perfectly reflects the current political environment. The idea of social justice, in terms of helping the sick and the poor, is deeply embedded in Judaism. Living in ghettos and being persecuted for two millennia, the Jewish people have been struggling to reconcile their tragic history with contemporary reality. The experience has led them to take on and support the cause of every underdog and liberal movement in sight, no matter how unworthy, no matter how illogical or no matter how it imperiled their own interests or safety. This is referred to as Tikkun Olam in the Talmud. Those who know Hebrew, know that it is an activity aimed at completing Gods work. Those who dont know Hebrew divorce this activity from completing Gods work and think of it as a good in and of itself. Their divine mission is to change society upon their verities. This phenomenon explains why Orthodox Jews by and large voted for Trump in 2016 and are expected to vote for him in 2020 even in greater numbers. The social justice crowd is not motivated by concerns for Israel and they are not motivated by the interests of the United States. Their obsession is social justice which they believe is not currently available. They believe that this can best be achieved through socialism and wealth redistribution. This Party is determined to become the ruling party once again, through any means including making false accusations, fabricating or destroying evidence and election fraud. Tom Teicholz, uses a pen, the others, such as the Jewish Community Action, a Minnesota-based group, are actively participating in demonstrations and riots in support of the so-called racial justice and economic equality. Some wealthy Jews, in an act of colossal memory loss, sponsor Antifa and Black Lives Matter just like their ancestors who financed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They forget, if they ever knew, that their ancestors ended up facing a firing squad of triumphant socialism. Thus they support a party whose every postulate is a fraud: Systemic racism is a fraud -- the country that elected a black president twice cannot be racist Black Lives Matter doesnt matter in Chicago, Detroit and other cities controlled by the Democrats Economic equality can only occur in poverty The Democrats policy of open borders or no borders is designed to open our country to a tsunami of immigrants with morals and values diametrically opposed to those of Americans, ultimately making the United States of America not united, not states, and not even American Attacks on law enforcement are an attempt create anarchy and dismantle the existing system of authority The so-called victims of police brutality are predominantly habitual criminals and drug addicts Racial inequality is the only correct postulate the Affirmative Action is a form of racial privileges They forget how good America was for Jews for 150 years and instead chase the false God of Socialism. The Chosen People have chosen the wrong side of history again. Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a conservative think hosted at Kings College, New York City, which examines national security, energy, risk-analysis and other public policy issues, He is the author of "Anatomy of a Bolshevik" and "Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. He is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC. He can be reached at info@litwinms.com. Ted Belman is the founder and publisher of Israpundit.org Katie Conrad and Derek Sherman quickly became one of the most controversial couples on Lifetimes Married at First Sight season 10 in Washington, D.C. While Derek and Katie hit it off at first, 27-year-old Katie often alarmed Married at First Sight fans with her push for Derek to profess his love to her before the eight-week filming period was up. Katies jealousy and temper, coupled with her admission that she still had feelings for her ex (with whom she hooked up shortly after filming wrapped), also made some fans wary. But Katie insisted that she and Derek simply werent a good match, and the pressure-cooker situation brought out a side of her she didnt love. Katie and Derek ultimately decided not to stay together, despite electing to try a little longer to make their marriage work on Decision Day. Since then, Katie has debuted a new man that she seems head over heels about. Recently, she took to Instagram to reveal that she even moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for her boyfriend. Katie Conrad and Brandon Eaves | Katie Conrad via Instagram Katie regularly gushes about her boyfriend on social media Katie first revealed her new man, Air Force officer Brandon Eaves, shortly after Mothers Day 2020. Showing off a picture of herself with the 28-year-oldwhom she met on the dating app Hingein his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Married at First Sight star gushed about her boyfriend and said shed already met his family. Spent the weekend celebrating this amazing guys mama in his hometown and couldnt be happier, Katie wrote in the captions. RELATED: Married at First Sight: Derek Says He Doesnt Feel Sexually Excited After His Fights With Katie Over the following weeks and months, it became even clearer that Katie and Brandon had much more than a fling going on. During one Instagram Live, Katie told a fan that she agreed to appear on Married at First Sight in hopes of meeting this dude, referring to Brandon. The couple also hinted that they were undertaking a big move together soon. Dereks ex-wife has also taken to Instagram posts and stories to point out how little they fight, as well as to add sweet captions to their cute couples photos like always better when were together. When she turned 27 in Aug. 2020, Katie wrote a poignant message of thanks to Brandon, even hinting that he might be the love of her life. Big thank you to my @brandonzeaves for the best birthday ever, she wrote on Aug. 6. Youre the best thing to happen to me and the only birthday gift I need. RELATED: Married at First Sight: Mindy Shiben Tells Elizabeth Bice She Met Her Latest Fling Through Married at First Sight The Married at First Sight star revealed that she moved for her new relationship Recently, Katie revealed that she was willing to go the distance for her relationship with Brandon. In Sept. 2020, she shared a photo of herself with Brandon tagged on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Yall look so happy! a Married at First Sight fan wrote to Katie. Did you have to give up your job to make this move? I did, Katie affirmed, adding sweetly: But theres other jobs, not another him. According to LinkedIn, Brandon started working at the Air Force base in Biloxi, MS, in July 2020. So its likely that Brandon and Katie are living somewhere near there. Katie hasnt revealed where she works now, but she is a mental health professional, so its probable that she plans to continue her work in that field. RELATED: Married at First Sight: Meka Jones Has a Surprising Reaction to Her Annulment From Michael Watson Katies castmates congratulated her about moving on in her life While Katie was a controversial figure during her time on Married at First Sight, many fansand other cast membershave offered her support for her new chapter in life. After her breakup with Derek, Katie was open about the fact that she and Derek were simply not right for each other. Now, from the looks of social media, it seems she may have found her match. Beautiful pic! Yall look so happy, Katies castmate Mindy Shiben (who was married to the infamous Zach Justice) commented on Katies latest snapshot. RELATED: Married at First Sight: Fans Speculate About Whether Katie Conrad Went On a Date With Zach Justice Meanwhile, other Married at First Sight fans called the couple too cute for words and said they were happy that she found love and hopefully met her person. Several of Katies followers assured her that things happen for a reason and that her own love story might have been no exception. The life and work of Helen Roe is celebrated in an outdoor immersive audiovisual projection by artist, Caroline Conway for Culture Night in Portlaoise. The video work will be projected onto the Old Fort wall on Friday 18 September, 8-11pm at Fitzmaurice Place Plaza. It aims will introduce audiences to the life of Helen Roe, illuminating the significance of her historical achievements and contemporary relevance to Laois. The artwork is commissioned by Laois County Council Library Services, Heritage Office and Arts Office and supported by Creative Ireland Laois as part of the Creative Ireland Programme 2017-2022 in partnership with Laois County Council. Helen Roe was born in Mountrath, County Laois in 1895. She was educated in the local national school and Preston School in Abbeyleix. During the First World War she joined the Order of St. John and enlisted in the British Red Cross as a Volunteer Aid Detachment. She served in military hospitals in Cambridge, Aldershot and Bray, County Wicklow. Following the war, Helen Roe was one of the few young women of her time to enter Trinity College. She studied Modern Languages and was conferred with a Masters Degree in 1924. She spent time travelling and teaching throughout Europe, an experience which reinforced and deepened her interest in education and art history. On return to Ireland Helen worked briefly as a teacher, before accepting the position of library assistant with the Carnegie Trust in Coleraine. When the position of Laois County Librarian arose, she was a perfect fit, bringing to the post, her knowledge in and passion for books, education and her native county. From 1926 she worked in a small apartment in the Old Gaol (now the Portlaoise Courthouse) to establish and develop the Laois County Library. The service was funded by an initial donation of 2000 by the Carnegie Trust, with ongoing financial support by Laois County Council. As with everything, Helens approach to her job was forward-thinking and democratic. She ordered books on a wide variety of subjects to support and facilitate all sections of Laois society. To engage the wider community with the library service and education, she organised lectures on the history, archaeology, nature, placenames and folklore of Laois. Her Magic Lantern projector and slides brought her subjects to life, illuminating schools, local halls and the minds of ordinary people. Helen Roe had a passion for pre-Christian art and antiquities. In her Ford Model T she travelled throughout Laois and Ireland studying and documenting archeological sites and collecting samples. When she retired from the library service in 1940, she dedicated herself to researching full time. Her study and publication on topics such as the David Cycle' and Irish High Crosses earned her national recognition. She was a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Antiquarians of Ireland. In 1965 she was given the additional honour of becoming the first female President of the Royal Society of Antiquarians. The society also named its lecture theatre the Helen Roe Theatre in her honour. On Culture Night 2020, this outdoor audiovisual experience at Fitzmaurice Place Plaza, Portlaoise will shed light on the life and work of Helen Roe - highlighting, illustrating and celebrating the impact she had on education, locally and nationally. Thanks to Laois County Library Services for access to the Helen Roe Archive and also to Regina McGinley Laois County Library Services, Historian in Residence, for her knowledge and insights on Helen Roe. Artist, Caroline Conway has been generating Heritage related video mapped projections, Vintage Luminaries for the past three years with Offline Film Festival and in 2018 projected an audiovisual work about the life of Mary Ward, a naturalist, astronomer, microscopist, author, and artist onto the Courtyard of Birr Castle as part of the Herstory Light Festival. Working with Caroline is technical expert John Johnson, bringing 3D wizardry and design support to the artworks. As part of Laois Culture Night 2020, Creative Ireland in partnership with Laois County Council says it is delighted to showcase a number of funded projects, including, local artist and photographer, Annie Hollands photographic exhibition Children of the Free State currently open to the public at Dunamaise Arts Centre until Saturday, 19 September with a late opening until 11pm on Culture Night. The exhibition features photographic portraits of older people from rural Laois born before or just after 1922. A short video The Impossible Dream directed by Naoise Kettle documents a suite of music inspired by the life of Colonel James Fitzmaurice, a pioneering aviator from Portlaoise. In 2020, Music Generation Laois commissioned, composer and musician Martin Tourish to collaborate with Music Generation Laois Trad Orchestra to create this new piece of music. The piece owes its existence to the research and dedication of Teddy Fennelly, who has worked for decades to ensure that the achievement and legacy of Col Fitzmaurice are celebrated in his native Laois. Teddy is the author of a biography of Fitzmaurice called Fitz and the Famous Flight and he generously shared his knowledge and archive with Martin Tourish in the early stages of the development of the commission. The Laois Series: A Sense of Place video commissioned for Laois Cruinniu na nOg 2020 will be available to watch again on Creative Ireland Laois YouTube channel. The video features 26 young people from Laois Youth Theatre, Laois Youth Dance Ensemble, Laois County Library Service, Music Generation Laois and Laois / Offaly Wildlife Trust. For full details on Laois Culture Night 2020 programme, go to https://culturenight.ie/events/. Culture Night is brought to you by The Arts Council in partnership with Laois County Council. DOJ Considered Taking Action Against Portland Officials Amid Rioting The Justice Department (DOJ) had considered taking action against officials of Portland, Oregon, after consecutive nights of rioting in the city caused widespread destruction to federal property and injuries, a spokesperson said on Thursday. DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec told the Associated Press and Fox News that the department had explored whether it could pursue criminal and civil charges against Portland officials for their handling of the violent rioting that erupted in the wake of George Floyds death. Kupec did not comment on whether any charges would be brought and which particular city officials were being considered. The office of Portland Mayor and Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment. Meanwhile, the DOJ did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times questions regarding the potential legal actions. Portland had seen persistent civil unrest and rioting for months, which had caused dozens of injuries and a death, as violent demonstrators and law enforcement clashed around a federal courthouse. President Donald Trump and administration officials have accused state and local officials of not fulfilling their duties to protect federal property, prompting the federal government to deploy agents to quell the unrest. Protesters walk away from crowd control munitions launched by federal officers during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Ore., on July 26, 2020.(Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo) A Department of Homeland Security officer emerges from the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse after demonstrators lit a fire in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 2, 2020 (Noah Berger/AP Photo) In response, city officials passed a resolution in July barring all Portland police officers from working with federal officers. Eventually, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reached an agreement on July 29 requiring state police officers to cooperate with federal officers to quell the violence in the city and to protect and secure the federal property, where in return federal officers would begin to withdraw from the city. However, the parties have publicly diverged on when some federal officers will leave the city. At least 100 people have been federally charged in Portland in the last few months. The FBI had also indicated that it would investigate specific violations of federal law and that it will target violent acts and property destruction in the Portland riots. Last week, Wheeler announced that Portland police officers were no longer allowed to use tear gas to control crowds during protests and riots. He also called for the community to stop the violence, which the city has seen since late May. The Portland Police Bureau responded in a statement that banning the law use of tear gas would make it very difficult to address this kind of violence without resorting to much higher levels of physical force, which would elevated risk of serious injury to members of the public and officers. CS gas is a tool which has been used sparingly in the last 104 nights. We want to clear up a misconception that it is being used as crowd control. It is not. It is being used to disperse crowds only when there is a life safety event. Most recently, it was used to disperse a crowd from which a Molotov cocktail was thrown at officers and ended up injuring a community member who was on fire. We understand that this gas seeped into nearby homes and that is not something we desire, the bureau said. CS gas is another name for tear gas. Zachary Stieber contributed to this report. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: Kazakhstan has exported 9.6 billion tons of crude oil worth $3.9 billion to Italy in 1Q2020, a source at Kazakhstans oil and gas market told Trend. The exported volume was 10.9 percent more than during 1Q2019 (8.6 billion tons), whereas the value was 5.2 percent less than in 1Q2019 ($4.1 billion). During the reporting period, Kazakhstan has also exported 15,003 tons of petroleum products to Italy, for a total of $5.3 million. Petroleum products export volume was 63.7 percent less than in 1Q2019 (41,359 tons), whereas export value was 64.3 percent less than in 1Q2019 ($14.9 million). Kazakhstans overall export of crude oil stood at 33.3 million tons worth $15.08 billion in 1H2020 which is compared to 34.6 million tons worth $16.4 billion in 1H2019. Kazakhstans overall export of petroleum products stood at 364,459 tons of products worth $1.04 million in 1H2020 which is compared to 574,297 tons worth $1.6 million in 1H2019. The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Italy amounted to $4.3 billion over 1H2020, compared to $5.01 billion during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export to Italy amounted to $3.9 billion over the period from January through June 2020, compared to $4.2 billion during the same period of 2019. In turn, Kazakhstans imports from Italy stood at about $422.4 million over the reporting period, compared to $771.1 million during the same period of 2019. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington on Aug. 1, 2020. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo) Pelosi: Democrats Likely Wont Pass Less Than $2 Trillion Stimulus Deal White House continues to apply pressure on deal Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday suggested Democrats will not accept anything that costs less than about $2 trillion on a COVID-19 stimulus deal. When we go into a negotiation its about the allocation of the resources, she told reporters in Washington. But its hard to see how we can go any lower when you only have greater needs. House Democrats passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act in May, but Republicans said they have no desire to take it up, as it would not garner bipartisan support. That deal and the CARES Act, which was passed with bipartisan support in March, are intended to offset economic losses incurred during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. We asked them to go up $1 trillion, instead they went down, not recognizing the need, Pelosi said. The needs have only grown since May 15. So were going to have to reallocate some of that money so that we can meet the needs as we see them, she added. The fact is, we shouldnt be going down because we have these needs, so that we can open up the economy. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Republicans in Congress to authorize more emergency funding, including stimulus payments. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Fox News on Thursday that members of the House should stick around and attempt to negotiate on a deal. He called on constituents to call on their House member to make sure that they stay here [and] that we negotiate, adding, At least lets use this $1.5 trillion new recommendation as a foundation for new negotiations. At the same time, a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans unveiled a smaller, $1.5 trillion deal that includes stimulus payments, some unemployment benefits, and $500 billion for state and city governments. The HEROES Act proposed nearly $1 trillion in funding to local municipalities. Then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 28, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) The fact is, we all hear back home Americans simply cant afford inaction, said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who is co-chair of the bipartisan group called the Problem Solvers Caucus, in a statement. The American people need the negotiators to get back to the table. Co-chair Rep. Tom Reed (D-N.Y.) added, Americans deserve a functioning Congress that can rise to the challenge and deliver the relief they need. Our framework reflects months of bipartisan consensus-building on the actions the federal government can take to help working families and local communities across the country as they navigate the impacts of COVID-19. However, top Democrats led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said they will not take up their deal. I think the Problem Solvers are lower than would be a responsible deal, Hoyer told reporters after it was unveiled. There are a lot of objectives that I think the Republicans have simply ignored. The Problem Solvers addressed some of them and I think thats useful and we need to move forward with that in mind. Other Democratic leaders issued statements to media outlets, saying they would not support the deal. Some moderate Democrats, including Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.), attempted to apply more pressure on Pelosi. The pressure is loud and forthright and it is bipartisan in nature, Rose told Fox News on Sept. 16, calling on party leaders to agree to a real bill. Because that pressure is reflective of where the American people are. They are sick and tired of politics. Pelosi responded to the criticism from members of her own party. You hear different things, but the fact is we want to have an agreement, and we will stay until we have an agreement, she said. Regulatory News: Not for release, publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan. This press release is not intended as an offer and is for informational purpose only Sensorion (FR0012596468 ALSEN the "Company") a pioneering clinical-stage biotechnology company which specializes in the development of novel therapies to restore, treat and prevent within the field of hearing loss disorders, intends to issue new ordinary shares of a nominal value of 0.10 (the "New Shares") for a total capital increase of approximately 30 million (US$35 million), by means of an accelerated bookbuild offering to the benefit of categories of persons (the "Reserved Offering The New Shares will be issued through a share capital increase without shareholders' preferential subscription rights pursuant to the 12th resolution of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Company held on May 20, 2020 and in accordance with Article L. 225-138 of the French Code de commerce, as decided today by the Company's Board of Directors. The Reserved Offering will be open only to the categories of persons defined by the extraordinary shareholders' meeting as follows ("Eligible Investors natural persons who wish to invest in a company with a view to benefiting from a reduction in income tax under Article 199 terdecies-0 A, for a minimum individual subscription amount in the Company of 100,000 per transaction; companies that invest on a regular basis in small and medium-sized companies that wish to invest in a company in order to allow their shareholders or partners to benefit from a reduction in income tax under Article 199 terdecies-0 A, for a minimum individual subscription amount in the Company of 100,000 per transaction; investment companies and investment funds investing on a regular basis in so-called growth companies (i.e. unlisted companies or companies whose market capitalization does not exceed 500 million when listed) having their registered office or their management company in the European Union, Israel, Norway, the United States of America or Switzerland (including, in particular, any "FCPR", "FCPI" or "FIP") for a minimum individual subscription amount of 50,000 (including the issue premium); natural or legal persons, companies, organizations, institutions or entities in any form, French or foreign, investing in the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, medical technologies or research sectors; and companies, institutions or entities, in any form, French or foreign, exercising a significant part of their activities in these sectors. The offering price per ordinary share will be determined following an accelerated bookbuilding process commencing immediately and expected to end before markets open on the market of Euronext Growth Paris ("Euronext Growth") on September 18, 2020 and will not be less than the weighted average share price on the day preceding the date on which the issuance price is set, minus a maximum discount of 20%, if applicable The Company will announce the results of the Reserved Offering and the final number of ordinary shares sold in the Reserved Offering as soon as feasible thereafter in a subsequent press release. Invus Public Equities LP and Sofinnova Partners, which are existing shareholders, have indicated an interest to participate in the Reserved Offering at the offering price, up to their prorata. The representatives of Invus Public Equities LP and Sofinnova Partners on the Company's Board of Directors did not take part in the vote for the launch of the Reserved Offering at today's meeting of the Board of Directors. The New Shares will be subject to an application for admission to trading on Euronext Growth on the same trading line as the existing shares under the same ISIN code FR0012596468 and are expected to be admitted to trading on or about September 22, 2020. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Reserved Offering to develop its current gene therapy programs (OTOF and USHER), potentially broaden its gene therapy pipeline, support its pharmacology and clinical studies for phase 3 development of SENS-401 and for working capital and general corporate purposes. The Company's amount of cash and cash equivalents is 30.4 million as of December 31, 2019, which is sufficient to cover its financing needs until the end of the third quarter 2021. Expected future milestones and estimated timelines: Gene therapy OTOF CDMO agreement in H2 2020, additional NHP data in H2 2020, Discussions with regulatory authorities H1 2021 Gene therapy USHER confirmatory preclinical PoC studies H2 2020 SENS-401 for SSNHL Phase 2 readout mid 2021 SENS-401 for Cisplatin induced ototoxicity potential clinical study initiation after SSNHL Ph2 results (H2 2021) SENS-401 for Hearing preservation after cochlear implantation final Preclinical data H2 2020 Among Eligible Investors, the Reserved Offering is open to institutional investors (i) in France and elsewhere outside Canada, Australia and Japan or the United States, in reliance on the exemption from registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act") provided by Regulation S promulgated under the Securities Act and (ii) in the United States that are "Qualified Institutional Buyers" within the meaning of Rule 144A under the Securities Act in reliance on the exemption from registration under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act. The Reserved Offering will not be subject to a prospectus to be approved by the French financial markets authority (Autorite des marches financiers the "AMF Jefferies International Limited ("Jefferies") is acting as Sole Global Coordinator and Joint Bookrunner in connection with the Reserved Offering. Bryan, Garnier Co and Kempen Co are acting as Joint Bookrunners in connection with the Reserved Offering (together with Jefferies, the "Placing Agents"). Chardan is acting as Lead Manager. Namsen Capital is acting as equity capital markets advisor. In connection with the Reserved Offering, the Company has entered into a lock-up agreement restricting the issuance of additional ordinary shares for a period ending 90 days after the execution of the placement and underwriting agreement entered into between the Company and the Placing Agents (the "Placement Agreement"), subject to customary exceptions. The Company's management, Board members and shareholders represented at the Board of Directors who hold ordinary shares of the Company are also subject to a lock-up for a period of 90 days after the execution of the Placement Agreement, subject to customary exceptions. The Company draws the public's attention to the risk factors related to the Company and its activities presented in section I.3 of the Rapport financier annuel for the year ended December 31, 2019, which is available free of charge on the website of the Company (www.sensorion-pharma.com). In addition, investors are invited to consider the following risks: (i) the market price for the Company's shares may fluctuate and fall below the subscription price of the shares issued pursuant to the Reserved Offering, (ii) the volatility and liquidity of the Company's shares may fluctuate significantly, (iii) sales of Company's shares may occur on the market and have a negative impact on the market price of the shares, and (iv) the Company's shareholders could undergo a potentially material dilution resulting from any future capital increases that are needed to finance the Company. About Sensorion Sensorion is a pioneering clinical-stage biotech company, which specializes in the development of novel therapies to restore, treat and prevent within the field of hearing loss disorders. Its clinical-stage portfolio includes one Phase 2 product: SENS- 401 (Arazasetron) for sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL). Sensorion has built a unique R&D technology platform to expand its understanding of the pathophysiology and etiology of inner ear related diseases enabling it to select the best targets and modalities for drug candidates. The Company is also working on the identification of biomarkers to improve diagnosis of these underserved illnesses. In the second half of 2019, Sensorion launched two preclinical gene therapy programs aiming at correcting hereditary monogenic forms of deafness including Usher Type 1 and deafness caused by a mutation of the gene encoding for Otoferlin. The Company is uniquely placed, through its platforms and pipeline of potential therapeutics, to make a lasting positive impact on hundreds of thousands of people with inner ear related disorders, a significant global unmet medical need. www.sensorion-pharma.com Label: SENSORION ISIN: FR0012596468 Mnemonic: ALSEN Disclaimer This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy ordinary shares of the company, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction. This announcement is an advertisement and not a prospectus within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017, as amended (the "Prospectus Regulation In France, the Reserved Offering described above will take place solely as a placement to a category of institutional investors, in accordance with Article L. 225-138 of the "Code de commerce" and applicable regulations. With respect to Member States of the European Economic Area (including France), no action has been taken or will be taken to permit a public offering of the securities referred to in this press release which would require the publication of a prospectus (pursuant to article 3 of the Prospectus Regulation) in any Member State. This press release and the information it contains is not an offer to sell, nor the solicitation of an offer to subscribe for or buy, New Shares in the United States or any other jurisdiction where restrictions may apply including notably Canada, Australia or Japan Securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration under the Securities Act or an exemption from registration thereunder. Sensorion does not intend to register the New Shares under the Securities Act or conduct a public offering of the New Shares in France, the United States, or in any other jurisdiction. This communication is being distributed only to, and is directed only at (a) persons outside the United Kingdom, (b) persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order"), and (c) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom it may otherwise lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only to relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this communication or any of its contents. Solely for the purposes of each manufacturer's product approval process, the target market assessment in respect of the New Shares has led to the conclusion in relation to the type of clients criteria only that: (i) the type of clients to whom the New Shares are targeted is eligible counterparties, professional clients and retail clients, each as defined in Directive 2014/65/EU, as amended ("MiFID II"); and (ii) all channels for distribution of the New Shares to eligible counterparties, professional clients and retail clients are appropriate. Any person subsequently offering, selling or recommending the New Shares (a "distributor") should take into consideration the manufacturers' type of clients assessment; however, a distributor subject to MiFID II is responsible for undertaking its own target market assessment in respect of the New Shares (by either adopting or refining the manufacturers' type of clients assessment) and determining appropriate distribution channels. For the avoidance of doubt, even if the target market includes retail clients, the Placing Agents have decided they will only procure investors for the New Shares who meet the criteria of eligible counterparties and professional clients. This distribution of this press release may be subject to legal or regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. Any person who comes into possession of this press release must inform him or herself of and comply with any such restrictions. This press release has not been independently verified and no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made or given by or on behalf of any of the Placing Agents or any of their parent or subsidiary undertakings, or the subsidiary undertakings of any such parent undertakings, or any of such person's respective directors, officers, employees, agents, affiliates or advisers, as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the accuracy, completeness or fairness of the information or opinions contained in this press release and no responsibility or liability is assumed by any such persons for any such information or opinions or for any errors or omissions. All information presented or contained in this press release is subject to verification, correction, completion and change without notice. The Placing Agents are acting exclusively for the Company and no one else in connection with the Reserved Offering and will not regard any other person (whether or not a recipient of this press release) as their client in relation to the Reserved Offering and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to their client nor for providing advice in relation to the proposed Reserved Offering. Jefferies is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005878/en/ Contacts: Sophie Baumont LifeSci Advisors sophie@lifesciadvisors.com +33 6 27 74 74 49 SafetyChain Plant Management Platform The Acheson Group and Norima Consulting join as sponsors for the 2020 Customer Summit. SafetyChain Software, North Americas leading Plant Management Platform, announced its first annual Customer Summit will be held on October 19th, 2020. The all-day event will be held virtually, exclusively for SafetyChain customers. The virtual summit features both morning and afternoon sessions focused on the theme, Building Results Through Resilience. Sessions will offer a variety of information-rich content, including training and education, best practices for using SafetyChain software, thought leadership, workshops, and networking. Customers are encouraged to attend the whole-day event, and may also attend just those sessions that align with their interests. Technology has played a critical role this year in helping our customers navigate COVID and gain even more value from our platform, says Brian Sharp, President of SafetyChain Software. The Virtual Customer Summit is a way to share whats new, what weve learned, and how other customers are increasing yield, maximizing productivity, and ensuring compliance with SafetyChain. The sponsors for this years summit are The Acheson Group (TAG) and Norima Consulting. Dr. David Acheson, Founder & CEO of TAG will provide the keynote presentation, titled 2021 Food Safety Landscape: Navigating the Complexity to Stay Resilient. Tracy Ouellet, Senior Business Analyst for Norima Consulting, will join the afternoon workshop Becoming a SafetyChain Expert. Details on the agenda, speakers, and registration information for SafetyChain customers can be found at info.safetychain.com/customer-summit. About SafetyChain SafetyChain is the #1 Plant Management Platform purpose-built to improve yield, maximize productivity, and ensure compliance standards for food, beverage, & CPG facilities. With fully integrated tools for production (OEE & SPC), safety and quality (QMS), and supplier compliance, our configurable cloud-based software drives real-time visibility and control to optimize performance across all of your manufacturing locations. About The Acheson Group Led by former FDA Associate Commissioner for Foods Dr. David Acheson, The Acheson Group (TAG) is a food safety and public health consulting group of subject matter experts founded to provide worldwide guidance and expertise for companies throughout the food supply chain and its associated businesses. With in-depth industry knowledge combined with real-world experience, TAGs team of experts helps companies assess their unique situation, address gaps, and deploy best practices to more effectively mitigate risks, improve operational efficiencies, and protect their brand. Visit TAG at http://www.achesongroup.com. About Norima Consulting Norima Consulting Inc. transforms businesses by leveraging the right technology, at the right time, with the right people. Acting as an innovation accelerator to improve bottom lines and enhance competitive advantages, they enable customers to operate more effectively. Working as a flexible extension for clients, Norima offers exceptional service to earn a place as trusted advisors. Visit Norima Consulting at https://norimaconsulting.com That bridge lasted until summer 1826, when floodwaters destroyed and carried away the entire structure. An article in the Virginia Herald gave a vivid description of the destruction of what it called one of our most delightful promenades. It added that Judge John Coalter, who owned Chatham Manor at that time, promised to quickly replace the bridge. That wasnt completed until 1832, and was commonly referred to as Coalters Bridge. Chatham Bridge has been destroyed and rebuilt four times since then, but Eghtessad has been unable to find much documentation to show who did the actual work prior to the 1900s. One of posts notes that some evidence has led the National Park Service to presume that the laborers included some of Chatham Manors slaves. The bridge was one of three that spanned the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg to Stafford County during the Civil War. After they were destroyed by the Confederate Army, the Union Army constructed several pontoon bridges to connect Fredericksburg and Falmouth in 1862. These relatively flimsy structures were unable to withstand frequent floods, so Washington Roebling used wire rope that hed brought with him to build a suspension bridge over the Chatham Bridges 13 remaining piers. Webb Fontaine Nigeria has described as false allegations linking it to alleged complications at the nations see ports leading to alleged loss of N110 billion in 30 days. Managing Director of Webb Fontaine Nigeria, Ope Babalola, in a statement on Thursday said contrary to revenue loss the Customs actually made more money in the last one month than it ever did. Read full text of the statement below Media Report Blaming Loss of N110b in 30 Days on Webb Fontaine is False Our attention has been drawn to a media report published online by Premium Times under the headline Customs, Importers loss N110 billion in 30 days Group The report, attributed to a Non Governmental Organisation, Transparency Awareness Group (TANGO) blamed Webb Fontaine for the loss which is unverified. It alleged that Importers could not clear their goods using the Import Duty Exemption Certificate (IDEC) platform. First of all, it is pertinent to state that the IDEC platform complained about was not developed by Webb Fontaine, nor does Webb Fontaine manage that platform. It is entirely managed by and external service provider. We advise the NGO and its promoters to address them directly. However, we are aware they have held meetings with stakeholders and are trying to correct these errors. Secondly, from our records in the course of providing trade solutions to Nigeria Customs Service, we can report that the service collected N138bn for the month of August 2020. This figure is the second highest monthly collection ever made by the service. This amount can be doubled or even tripled under the right conditions. We do not know, nor have we ever heard of such a group. We suspect most Nigerians have never heard of them either. Our service syncronises well with the Federal Government of Nigeria Ease of Doing Business and Trade Facilitation policies. We have always demonstrated commitment in helping government succeed in the drive to promote efficiency , time saving and transparency in the conduct of its businesses. We employ international best practices in all our operations across the globe. It is untrue and uncharitable for the NGO, which obviously is not knowledgeable about workings in the port, to cast blame on Webb Fontaine without verification and without inviting our comment. We are also rather disappointed that the press would publish such an article without inviting any response or comment from the subject of such a calumnious article. Ope Babalola Managing Director, Webb Fontaine Nigeria Here are the latest developments on tropical weather: BAY MINETTE, Ala. An official for an Alabama county just east of Mobile Bay says the county has sustained tremendous damage from Hurricane Sally. Jenni Guerry is deputy director of emergency management for Baldwin County. At a Thursday news briefing, she said search crews have been trying to make sure people are accounted for and taking them to safety when needed. Trees and power lines are down throughout the county, one of Alabamas largest with about 225,000 people. In a social media post, the county said there are also many traffic lights still out and that has led to collisions and a lot of near misses. Homeowners and businesses along the soggy Gulf Coast have begun cleaning up in the storms wake, even as the region braces for a delayed, second round of flooding in the coming days from rivers and creeks swollen by the storms heavy rains. MONTGOMERY, Ala. Though Hurricane Sally has passed, officials in Alabama and Florida are warning that the disaster isnt over yet. Alabama Emergency Management Agency Director Brian Hastings said Thursday morning that inland flooding remains a concern. He says flooding continues to be a problem in the states southern counties and they expect many rivers to be in moderate or major flood state at noon and continuing through the weekend. In Florida, Escambia County Emergency Management Manager Eric Gilmore warned we are not out of the woods yet, noting the dangers from cresting rivers. Sally sloshed ashore Wednesday morning on the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane. It has since weakened to a tropical depression. WARNER ROBINS, Ga. County sheriffs in Georgia are reporting numerous trees down and closures of flooded highways and streets as Sally moves across the South, dumping rain. In central Georgia, Robins Air Force Base closed one of its entrances Thursday morning due to flooding. In a Facebook post, the base said it would delay the start of the workday for some employees. Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Sally sloshed ashore Wednesday morning on the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane. It has since weakened to a tropical depression. PENSACOLA, Fla. Pensacola International Airport remains closed and officials say they need to assess the safety of the runway and its facility before it reopens after Hurricane Sally sloshed ashore on the Gulf Coast. In a statement Wednesday evening, the airport gave no timeline on when it would reopen. The airport closed Monday as Sally bore down. The airport typically has dozens of daily flights from airlines that include Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. Its asking passengers to contact their airlines about canceled flights. Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. MIAMI Sally continues to weaken as it moves over the South after hitting the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane but is still a dangerous rainmaker as it moves into Georgia on a path to the Carolinas. The tropical depressions maximum sustained winds early Thursday have decreased to near 30 mph (45 kph) with additional weakening expected. As of 5 a.m. EDT, Sally was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Montgomery, Alabama, and is moving northeast near 12 mph (19 kph). Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. MIAMI Teddy has become a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm is currently located about 625 miles (1006 km) east-northeast of The Lesser Antilles. Teddy is moving toward the northwest at about 12 miles per hour (19 kph), the general motion it is expected to continue through the weekend. Additional strengthening is forecasted to happen during the next couple of days, and Teddy could become a major hurricane Thursday night or Friday, the center said. PENSACOLA, Florida Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sallys rains could mean more problems for parts of south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Sally had diminished to a tropical depression by late Wednesday. But it was still a rainmaker as it moved into Georgia on a path to the Carolinas on Thursday. Authorities warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. The National Weather Service says the small city of Brewton, Alabama, can expect moderate to major flooding. 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 An alliance of 22 European cities urged the EU on Thursday to enact tougher rules on Airbnb and other short-term holiday rental platforms, accusing them of driving up property prices and squeezing out locals. Representatives from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence and other tourist hotspots met with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager in Paris to denounce an "outdated" legal framework that prevents officials from cracking down on the web platforms. Airbnb, which dominates the home-sharing market, has increasingly clashed with municipalities trying to balance much-wanted tourism revenue against growing resentment from residents. Several cities have imposed restrictions, in particular to combat illicit rentals that they say are siphoning off homes from the affordable housing market. But officials say that without an EU framework, Airbnb can effectively operate with only minimal oversight, by claiming it is simply a platform to put people in touch with renters. That stance was bolstered by a European Court of Justice ruling last December, which rejected a bid by Paris to force Airbnb to register as a traditional property rental firm. "It is time for a new European regulatory approach that serves first and foremost the general interest, which is for us accessibility of housing and the liveability in our cities," Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement. - Foundation of trust? - The Eurocities alliance wants the EU to force platforms to share their rental data with local authorities as part of the Digital Services Act being prepared by Vestager's office. They also want Airbnb and other platforms to be held liable when renters fail to abide by local rules, such as caps on the number of overnight stays per year or the required registration of rentals with local authorities. "Better cooperation between platforms and public authorities will be a prerequisite for a proper enforcement of the Digital Services Act," Vestager said in a statement after the meeting. Story continues The pressure on Airbnb comes as it grapples with a dramatic plunge in bookings due to the coronavirus travel restrictions, which prompted it to cut one-fourth of the workforce -- 1,900 jobs -- last May. Chief executive Brian Chesky, who is hoping to pursue a long-expected initial public offering for the home-sharing giant, has said his company is built on "a foundation of trust." But authorities worldwide have been pressing the company to take more responsibility and Airbnb has vowed to verify the accuracy of listings and set tougher rules to prevent abuses -- such as racial discrimination or rowdy parties by young renters -- and ensure safety. On Thursday, the company voiced supported for the creation of "a more coherent and efficient framework for digital service providers." "We are already working with several government and public authorities in Europe to share data that demonstrate the positive impacts of short-term vacation rentals," it added. jrp/js/sjw/bp Iranian President Hassan Rouhani anticipated "America's defeat" at the upcoming United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting next weekend, preemptively speaking about Iran's "victory over the U.S." In an address to a cabinet session on Wednesday, Rouhani predicted that "the U.S. government is going to suffer another defeat" at the UNSC after the nation's recent failure to extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)-affiliated news agency, Tasnim, reported. Rouhani said that Washington would fail to activate the "trigger mechanism" against Tehran at the UNSC's next session, a function that allows the signees of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal to request the automatic return of all international sanctions against Iran, should Iran violate its commitments stipulated in the nuclear agreement. Although Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, the nation's leaders have repeatedly argued that they can still request the trigger mechanism be activated, and attempted to restore sanctions against Iran last month. The UNSC is scheduled to decide on the case next weekend. After the UNSC failed to reimpose the international sanctions on Iran, the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced on August 27 that the United States had already begun a thirty-day process of restoring all U.N. sanctions against Iran via the snapback mechanism, and all sanctions would be reinstated from September 20 onward. In response, Iran, along with Russia and China, argued that the U.S. had previously exited the JCPOA, and, therefore the nation has no right to present such demands. Britain, France, and Germany, the European parties in the JCPOA, are also struggling to keep the agreement alive and tackle Iran's disputes in its framework. After extending the JCPOA four times during the last two years of Barack Obama's and the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency, the White House withdrew from the nuclear treaty in May 2018, subsequently reimposing sanctions on Iran. Niger's permanent envoy to the U.N., currently serving as the U.N.'s rotating president of the UNSC, has not yet commented on the case. The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, together with specialized committees and the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, are developing a draft law "On the Protection of Personal Data" that will meet European standards. The document uses the experience of implementing the European Union Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in leading countries, the website of the Ministry of Digital Transformation reported on its website on Thursday. With the support of the USAID 'Competitive Economy of Ukraine' program, the law firm Sayenko Kharenko carried out an analysis of the national legislation on the protection of personal data in different countries. Analysis of the impact of the GDPR on the national legislation of various countries, in particular, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Turkey and the state of California (United States) showed that at the international level, the GDPR as a legal regulatory framework is gaining more and more importance. According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, since the adoption of the law "On the Protection of Personal Data" in Ukraine, activity in data processing on the Internet has significantly increased, especially in the field of big data and social media. "Therefore, now there is an urgent need for a complete update of the practical regulation and application of this law in accordance with the EU standard," the Ministry of Digital Transformation stressed. The development of a modern law "On personal data," according to the ministry, in the future will make it possible to apply for an EU decision on the adequacy of personal data protection for Ukraine. And the constant implementation of European standards for the regulation of personal data protection will bring Ukraine closer to full integration into the EU's Single Digital Market. Okay, if you have ever followed the late Anthony Bourdain, you will know that he helped popularize a spot in Vietnam called The Lunch Lady. Now, unless you were traveling abroad, there would be very little opportunity to try the place. With the opening of the Vancouver location of The Lunch Lady, it has suddenly become accessible to people in North America. Well, sorta because not everyone is traveling and even if you could, there are restrictions in place. So I guess count ourselves lucky if we live in BC, specifically in the Greater Vancouver Area. Grace and I decided to check the place out for lunch (after the initial hype died down a tad). Even though the Banh Tom Chien (Crispy Prawn Fritters) have been somewhat of a hit and miss for some people, we thought they were actually quite good. I believe that initially they were too hard according to some, but for us, they were light and crispy. The prawn in the middle was meaty with a snap. Although they were put thoroughly through the deep-fryer, we didn't find them overly greasy. One of the more interesting things we had was the Bo Ne (Steak & Eggs) consisting of marinated filet of beef, 2 fried free range eggs, sauteed onions, house-made pate, Laughing Cow cheese and french fries on a sizzling skillet with a banh mi. Yes, lots of things going on here, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Steak was perfectly medium-rare and super tender. Loved dipping the crusty and airy banh mi into the runny egg yolks with the provided soy dip. Mind you, spreading the pate and cheese on it was plenty tasty too. Onto more typical items, we had the Pho Bo sporting a 24-hour beef broth, brisket, rare beef and rice noodles. We found the usual condiments on the side including mint. I found the broth to be quite impactful being well-seasoned and meaty. The meats were tender including the rare beef. As for the noodles, there was a modest amount where it was al dente and not clumpy. Overall, this was a fine bowl of pho, maybe not my favourite in town, but I have no issues with it. In actuality, we were more impressed with the feature of the day, being the Mi Quang with prawns, pork belly, quail egg, fresh rice noodles and full flavoured pork broth. I thought the broth was even more impactful and complex than the beef. There was a natural sweetness to go with the seafood as well as the ample seasoning. Although the seafood was fine, the best part was the tender and buttery pork belly. Our last dish was not the most interesting, but it was solid nonetheless. The classic Com Ga featured the usual rice, fried egg and char grilled chicken thigh topped with pork crackling and scallion oil. Let's just say the chicken was well-chared and well-brined. It was juicy and full-flavoured with the smokiness from the grilling. Much like the rest of the meal, this dish was good and it would be nit-picking to find a fault. However, there are some high expectations due to the inherent hype. Is it worth lining up for? Maybe not, but the food is prepared properly. I would be open to trying their dinner menu. The Good: - Properly prepared eats - Decent service - Some interesting items The Bad: - Worth lining up for? Probably not TOKYO, Sept 17, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Toyota Research Institute - Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD) announced today that it has received the "Creative Office Award" at the 33rd Nikkei New Office Awards held by Nikkei Inc. and the New Office Promotion Association (NOPA). By creating an office that maximizes the full potential of its employees, TRI-AD will generate new value that leverages innovation through the diversity of its people and their ideas.Office Concept "AI PALETTE"The guiding theme underlying TRI-AD's office design is the "AI PALETTE" concept--cutting edge technology that is centered around people ("AI"=Artificial Intelligence & love in Japanese), and the diversity of its employees all working together, maximizing their full potential ("PALETTE"=collaboration). Embracing the concept, TRI-AD aims to create an office where its employees can realize the three pillars of: "Inspiration," "High Productivity," and "Happy Work" through their daily activities.A New Office Brimming with IdeasTRI-AD has been incorporating many of its employees' ideas into the office design through the regular implementation of workshops that enable each and every employee to participate and put forward their ideas. Some examples include the honeycomb-style desks that promote Scrum and agile software development and the introduction of personal mobility.It has also adopted a new system called "WISH STORE / WISH TOWN" to create an office that continues to grow with its employees. At the "WISH STORE", employees register their "WISH" for something that they would like to see incorporated into the office, and if other employees agree, they can vote to support the idea. Each "WISH" appears as a building in a virtual town called "WISH TOWN," and as support for a "WISH" increases, the building grows larger and in this way "WISH TOWN" develops. By adopting a unique communication method to realize ideas from its employees, they can enjoy shaping the future of the office together.The Office Continues To Evolve In Response To Diverse Working StylesIn recent years, due to work style reforms and the impact of COVID-19, conventional ways of thinking and methods have been reviewed in terms of when and where people work and how they communicate, leading to an increased demand for flexibility and agility. With an increasing choice of work styles, the need for an office that meets the diverse needs of every employee is becoming more apparent.Ever since its founding, TRI-AD has been advancing and promoting its IT infrastructure, mobile environments including personal IT equipment, employment systems, and in-house education and information sharing about new ways of working. Through these activities, it has created an environment where its employees can work productively and comfortably regardless of time or place. TRI-AD's office will continue to evolve in response to changes in work styles in tune with societal changes, allowing its employees to work energetically in their own way. Expecting more collaborations with partners under the new Woven Planet Holdings company structure from January 2021, TRI-AD will further promote innovation by using its office not only among its employees but also with its partners.For the full release, visit https://bit.ly/2FNh62x.About Toyota Motor CorporationToyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is the global mobility company that introduced the Prius hybrid-electric car in 1997 and the first mass-produced fuel cell sedan, Mirai, in 2014. Headquartered in Toyota City, Japan, Toyota has been making cars since 1937. Today, Toyota proudly employs 370,000 employees in communities around the world. Together, they build around 10 million vehicles per year in 29 countries, from mainstream cars and premium vehicles to mini-vehicles and commercial trucks, and sell them in more than 170 countries under the brands Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino. For more information, please visit www.toyota-global.com.Source: Toyota Motor CorporationCopyright 2020 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. Clair Global, the world's largest provider of live concert amplification and infrastructure, was awarded a $71 million loan by the Federal Reserve's Main Street Lending Program. But few banks are writing these loans, threatening the economic recovery. Read more It was billed as a lifeline for Americas middle-market companies seeking cash to get through the pandemic. Yet more than two months since its launch, the Federal Reserves Main Street Lending Program isnt living up to expectations, as few banks are willing to provide the loans. Some of the nations biggest lenders have demanded such crushing terms that discussions have stalled from the get-go, while other banks have decided not to participate at all. Thats meant the take-up for the $600 billion program is just 0.2%, threatening to undercut the economic recovery and efforts to protect jobs. Data-analytics firm IDM is just one example of hundreds of midsize businesses affected by COVID-19 that have been left disappointed. It was hoping to get a Fed-assisted loan to support payroll, refinance debt, and potentially hire more employees. What the Reston, Va.-based company found instead was banks in West Virginia and Georgia that werent taking part, while it wasnt able to pursue a loan with JPMorgan Chase because the firm was asked to pledge real estate it doesnt have. "We can't even get out of the box and submit an application," said John Chung, chief operating officer at IDM, which has $30 million in annual revenue. "This whole thing is kind of a joke." Companies affected by COVID-19 and even those resilient to the outbreak have struggled to find banks willing to lend through the program. Cardinal Capital, a Baton Rouge, La.-based commercial finance brokerage firm, has been looking to borrow about $300 million for various clients. But most of the 60 banks it approached wont accept new borrowers, or work with new businesses backed by assets that fall outside the lenders usual purview, the companys partner Rob Powell said in an interview. JPMorgan, meanwhile, has had discussions with about 2,000 of its clients about Main Street loans, only to receive applications from about 5% of them, according to a person familiar with the matter who isn't authorized to speak publicly. JPMorgan spokeswoman Ashley Frost declined to comment. The Fed and Treasury Department started the program on July 6 with the aim of providing loans to companies either too small to access capital markets, or too big to get aid through the government's Paycheck Protection Program. Just $1.4 billion of Main Street loans were issued as of Sept. 10, with about $300 million more submitted or being processed, according to the Boston Fed which administers the program. In contrast, blue-chip companies have sold more than $1.2 trillion of corporate bonds since March to help weather the pandemic's economic impact, and smaller outfits have benefited from hundreds of billions of dollars in potentially forgivable loans. The government essentially set up a program that didnt do what the mandate was, which was to protect jobs, to get the funds readily available to businesses particularly businesses who were not able to benefit from the PPP, said Tom Bohn, chief executive officer of the Association for Corporate Growth, which represents middle-market companies and their lenders. Whats worrisome is that midsize companies employ about 48 million people and account for about a third of the gross domestic product in the private sector. A credit crunch for such firms could cause many to limp along or outright fail, undermining a post-pandemic recovery. Critics of the program have included U.S. Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.) and Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission for the CARES Act. Among lender concerns in the program's current state are capital charges they have to account for due to the requirement to hold 5% of the loans. Some also lack expertise after stepping back from lending to riskier middle-market companies after the last financial crisis a decade ago. And there are also questions around how potential bankruptcies would work, spooking would-be lenders fearful of facing off in court against the Fed, said Ellen Snare, a partner at King & Spalding LLP. The Treasury itself has advised banks to avoid taking any credit risk a critical component of lending telling them to target zero losses, according to bankers interviewed by Bloomberg. The Fed has already tweaked the program a few times, and regulators are looking at additional adjustments to address some of the issues. Some economists have suggested the Fed take on greater credit risk, with banks employed simply to process the loans. Other ideas put forth are offering government subsidies to lower the cost of borrowing, placing banks ahead of the government in bankruptcy workouts, and shifting to more equity-like financings. Still, only 575 lenders had said they'd participate by Sept. 4, and most of them have yet to hand out loans. One lender, City National Bank of Florida, accounts for 50% of disclosed loans, and 30% of the total amount borrowed, according to the Fed. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at a Sept. 1 Congressional hearing that loan issuance could grow to $25 billion to $50 billion, predicting a lot of volume in the next two months. That increase, even if it did happen, would still represent only 4% to 8% of the programs maximum size. Treasury Department representatives declined to comment further, as did the Federal Reserve. All told, access to credit for small and midsize companies may get worse. Already, large and regional banks are offering fewer loans of $25 million or less, according to AFS Business Intelligence, and a survey of senior lending officers indicates that lending conditions are tightening at the quickest pace since the financial crisis. I am not sure the verdict on Main Street is fully in yet, said Jeremy Stein, chairman of the Harvard University economics department and a Fed governor from 2012 to 2014. But I do think it will be a problem if the economy continues to suffer, corporate bankruptcies go up, and the program still has little take-up. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, September 18 2020 A joint team consisting of the National Police, the Indonesian Military and local stakeholders have caught hundreds of thousands of health protocol violations through Operasi Yustisi. The operation, which aimed to enforce public health protocols, was carried out on Monday and Tuesday in several regions. National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Awi Setiyono said authorities had discovered 47,752 health protocol violations the first day of the operation and 128,668 on the second day. 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 "I am excited to partner with White Deer as we work together to drive Unicat's continued growth," says Mr. Efran. White Deer Energy (White Deer) has announced the acquisition of a majority interest in Unicat Catalyst Technologies, LLC (Unicat or the Company). Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. Unicat is a leading global supplier of heterogeneous catalyst products and related services to the refinery, syngas, chemical, steel, agriculture, and green energy industries. The Company has a long track-record of success focused on providing niche catalyst solutions and high-touch technical support. Unicats team continuously serves its customers with innovative solutions to address their production needs, which has made the Company a preferred provider across its market segments. Mani Erfan, Unicats Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, will continue to oversee the business as well as roll a portion of his ownership stake. I am excited to partner with White Deer as we work together to drive Unicats continued growth, said Mr. Erfan. Jim Meneely, Partner at White Deer, commented, Mani and his team have built an incredible company with a strong brand resulting in impressive growth over the last twenty years. We look forward to partnering with Mani and the Unicat team in supporting the Companys future growth as it continues to deliver leading catalysts to its loyal customer base. Meghan Leggett, Principal at White Deer, added, Unicat is our fourth platform investment in the industrials services space. We are excited to expand that portion of our portfolio and think Unicat is uniquely levered to the growth in industrial activities in the U.S. and internationally. White Deer has a long history of partnering with entrepreneur owners and their management teams to support the growth of their businesses. White Deer was advised by Locke Lord LLP. Unicat was advised by Lundwall Law PLLC. About Unicat: Founded in 2000 and located in Alvin, Texas, Unicat is a leading global provider of heterogeneous catalyst products and related services. With over 200 unique catalyst products, Unicat has consistently provided its customers with innovative solutions. In addition to its product portfolio, the Company provides on-site technical support to assist its customers worldwide. In addition to its Alvin facility, the Company maintains offices in South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. About White Deer: White Deer is a middle market private equity firm that invests in energy and industrial services and equipment companies and midstream infrastructure. The firm, which is based in Houston and New York, has raised in excess of $2.7 billion of committed capital since its founding in 2008. Contact: James Meneely Partner; White Deer Energy jmeneely@whitedeerenergy.com Mani Erfan Chief Executive Officer, Unicat mani.erfan@unicatcatalyst.com Barr has faced scrutiny for overruling the decisions of Justice Department prosecutors who work for him, including in criminal cases involving associates of President Donald Trump. But in his remarks, he rejected the notion that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring. Instead, Barr described them as part of the permanent bureaucracy and suggested they need to be supervised, and even reined in, by politically appointed leaders accountable to the president and Congress. Based solely on the feedback from more than 25,000 employees in South Florida surveyed by the Sun Sentinel, the Top Workplace award is a major accomplishment for the organization as it serves to recognize the top workplaces and company cultures in the region. "This research reinforces the employee-based initiatives we invest in every year from a human resources standpoint," said Ellen deClaire, VP of Human Resources. "It also allows us to better gauge where we fall among other local employers, so we can remain competitive in our search to bring the best people on board." According to the Sun Sentinel, nearly 13,000 employees responded to the survey and MobileHelp was among the select 90 employers that stood out. Workplaces were evaluated by their employees through a 24-question survey administered by Energage of Philadelphia, the Sun Sentinel's research partner on the project. About MobileHelp: MobileHelp is a leading provider of mobile Personal Emergency Response Systems (mPERS) and health management solutions. MobileHelp mPERS devices are integrated with nationwide wireless voice, data and GPS technology to provide real-time medical alert monitoring services and expedited personal emergency assistance. In addition, MobileHelp offers proactive health management services through its healthcare division, Clear Arch Health. For more information about MobileHelp, please call 1-800-989-9863 or visit the company website at www.MobileHelp.com. Please direct inquiries to: Liz Kohler, 414-828-6198 [email protected] SOURCE MobileHelp Related Links http://www.mobilehelpnow.com/ Defense attorney Kevin Adams has said before that the case is about one thing and one thing only, and thats whether the state of Oklahoma gets to execute David Ware as an act of retribution for killing a police officer. Even if you hate Mr. Ware, OK, you ought to for the rest of us and for the sake of our system want the process by which the state of Oklahoma is asking to kill him to be completely and totally fair, Adams told the Tulsa World in July. Johnson and Zarkeshan had been using physical force to wrestle Ware from his car after unsuccessfully commanding him dozens of times to get out of the vehicle, as well as an unsuccessful Taser deployment. Ware also was not deterred by pepper spray, fighting back as he continued to debate with the officers about their intent to have his vehicle towed for lack of a current tag and insurance. Ware can be seen on video reaching under his seat with his right hand shortly before a gun appears in the same hand. The footage shows him firing multiple times and using two hands to stabilize his grip before firing at Johnson a final time, all within less than five seconds. LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With the help of their fans and customers, Bentley Trike USA and Posh Baby and Kids ran a campaign to raise funds for Children's Hospital of Los Angeles this August. Posh Baby and Kids donated a percentage of their sales from BentleyTrike.com and also allowed those website customers to make additional contributions. The team at Posh Baby and Kids was honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to this great cause, to help raise awareness, and raise funds for the Department of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. The tireless work put forth by the Department of Pediatrics towards the betterment of young children's lives has served as a great inspiration, and Bentley Trike USA is proud to help spread their message. "Even though our company is still navigating through a tough economic environment, Posh Baby and Kids is honored to be able to donate to Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. We have made it our mission to donate to hospitals and charitable organizations on a regular basis and have reached out to several non-profits out there doing amazing work," said Deepak Raghavan, President of Posh Baby and Kids About Children's Hospital Los Angeles: Children's Hospital Los Angeles is the top ranked children's hospital in California and fifth in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report and fifth in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report Children's Hospital Los Angeles offers more than 350 specialty programs and services to meet the needs of its pediatric patients Children's Hospital Los Angeles is also one of the country's leading research hospitals, pioneering breakthrough therapies for life-threatening pediatric disorders. There are more than 150 scientists at work finding better treatments and cures for pediatric cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes, obesity and so much more. About Posh Baby and Kids With years of experience in the baby product supply industry, Posh Baby and Kids specializes in high quality, long lasting, non-toxic and eco-friendly baby products that are also modern, stylish and affordable. The company has a simple vision of sourcing the best and safest baby products from all over the world for its customers in Canada and USA. Contact Posh Baby and Kids: Mark Taylor Phone: 866-347-1858 Email: [email protected] Website: www.poshbabyandkids.com SOURCE Posh Baby and Kids Related Links www.poshbabyandkids.com Former rebel chief Guillaume Soro on Thursday fired a verbal broadside at presidential elections in Ivory Coast next month after supporters of ex-head of state Laurent Gbagbo called for protests ahead of the vote. Soro declared he would remain a candidate for the October 31 ballot despite being barred by a court, even as he lashed the poll as a scheme to enshrine 78-year-old Alassane Ouattara as president. My candidacy is firm, unchangeable and irrevocable, Soro, a former prime minister, told journalists in Paris. He said his country had been driven to the brink by Ouattaras decision to seek a third term in office. Violent protests against Ouattaras candidacy left around 15 dead last month and demonstrations broke out in several cities this week including in Bonoua despite a ban on rallies. Tensions in the West African state, a major producer of coffee and cacao, have revived traumatic memories of a months-long civil war that erupted after elections in 2010, claiming more than 3,000 lives. Soros help during that divisive conflict enabled Ouattara, who had claimed electoral victory over Gbagbo, to come to power. He served as prime minister from 2007 to 2012 and then as speaker of parliament for seven years before falling out with the president and heading for France, the former colonial power. Soro said the October 31 poll does not make any sense as it was designed to endorse the institutional state coup detat of Alassane Ouattara. He urged the public to unite against Ouattara and for opposition leaders to press the regional bloc ECOWAS to secure transparent elections. Ivory Coasts top court, the Constitutional Council, has rejected 40 presidential election candidates, leaving only four. It validated Ouattaras contested bid but sidelined Soro and Gbagbo on the grounds that they had been handed jail terms in absentia. Protest call Gbagbo supporters on Wednesday called for mass protests to block the dictatorship of Ouattara. The appeal was made by a coalition called Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS), which includes the Ivorian Popular Front party founded by Ggagbo and his influential wife Simone. The government on Tuesday extended the ban on demonstrations, introduced in August, until September 30. Ggagbo was freed conditionally by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague after he was cleared in January 2019 of crimes against humanity. He is living in Brussels pending the outcome of an appeal against the ICC ruling. Ouattara had said in March that he would not seek a third term but made a U-turn just four months later when his preferred successor, prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died of a heart attack. The argument behind his bid rests on a change to the constitution in 2016. Supporters say the modified charter has reset the two-term limits to zero, entitling Ouattara to run again. On Tuesday the African Court, a pan-African tribunal on human rights, called on the Ivorian authorities to allow Soro to contest the vote. Its ruling will have negligible impact, as Ivory Coast in April withdrew its recognition of the courts jurisdiction. Moskalkova asks French Justice Minister for release of Russian Vinnik from detention AP/TASS 15:17 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) Russias High Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova has sent a petition to the French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti seeking release of Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik from detention, according to the ombudsmans press service. In her application Moskalkova pointed repeated hunger strikes of Vinnik and as a result the loss of his weight by more than 30%, his grave moral and psychological state. She also added that stress led his wife to a serious oncological decease threateinig her life. Vinnik has no chance to see her, his two minor children and old mother, the ombudsman stated. According to the human rights commissioner, adapted to these circumstances Vinniks defense repeatedly asked court to replace detention with any other non-custodial measure of restraint, but these motions were dismissed. Therefore, Moskalkova asked the French Justice Ministry to assist in the release of the Russian national from detention applying the principles of humanism. In case of a positive decision, Russian embassy is ready to give Vinnik a flat having no diplomatic status and open for the authorities control, the statement reads. She also asked to consider extradition of Vinnik to Russia where he is also under prosecution. Vinnik was arrested in Greece, where he went on vacation, in July 2017. The U.S. authorities earlier charged him with crypto currency fraud claiming that the Russian national, acting as an operator of BTC-e digital currency trading platform and exchange, had received $4 billion and did business in violation of anti-money laundering legislation. Vinnik pleaded not guilty. France and Russia have also sought extradition of Vinnik. In the homeland he has been put on the international wanted list on cyber fraud charges. Russian prosecutors have repeatedly sent a request for his extradition to Greek authorities. However, the man was extradited to France in late January. The financially challenged Pacific Northwest College of Art will merge with Willamette University. PNCA will become part of Salem-based Willamette but will retain its name, faculty and current campus, the two institutions said Thursday morning The merger comes after on-and-off talks and negotiations between the two schools going back five years. The talks got serious 18 months ago and the boards of the two institutions approved the deal Wednesday. Obviously we did significant due diligence, said Steve Thorsett, Willamettes president. We have pored through their financial documents. We are quite happy. As a merger of two nonprofits, no money will change hands, Thorsett said. The merger announcement comes as PNCAs financial position had weakened. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in June that the art school was downsizing, laying off some professors and cutting other costs. It had borrowed millions from the city, the Meyer Memorial Trust and others to fund an ambitious expansion plan. PNCA never came close to meeting its goal of growing its enrollment from around 600 to 1,000. The global pandemic added to the challenges. A lot of private colleges are dealing with difficult circumstances and PNCA is no exception, said Scott Musch, chair of the PNCA board of directors. The business model we had faced some challenges. Then COVID struck. From the boards point of view, a merger with a larger partner made all sorts of sense. The deal needs approval from regulators and the accrediting agencies of the two schools. Thorsett said he expects that approval and the deal to be finalized next year. The PNCA merger is another step in a quiet expansion campaign launched by Willamette. In February 2019, Willamette signed a memorandum of understanding to merge with the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, Calif. The Claremont faculty and 300 students relocated to Willamettes campus in Salem. Willamette has also launched a graduate school of data science, which will be in in the same Portland building as Willamettes Atkinson Graduate School of Management. Both the data science and the management schools will eventually move into PNCAs campus, Thorsett said. Thorsett said Willamette remains financially strong. But it faces the same demographic and cost-issues many colleges are encountering. There are fewer prospective students now compared to the millennial generation. Plus, the student debt shock and rising tuitions have scared off some students and their families. Willamettes tuition in 2020-21 is $53,000. PNCAs tuition this year is $40,750. The global pandemic has given potential students another reason to stay away. We dont have as many undergraduate students as we would like, Thorsett said. Preliminary numbers indicate that Willamettes first-year class this fall will number about 330, which is about 15% lower than last year. Willamette is employing a hybrid approach this fall. Any student who wants to take a course online can do so. But its Salem campus will be open for students who want to take class in person. For all the challenges, Thorsett is convinced the PNCA merger will be good for both institutions and the region. This coming-together builds on the distinguished histories of both institutions, which were the first in Oregon to offer art instruction, he said. Together, this combination will amplify the Northwest as a cultural and economic hub for the arts and innovative leadership. Jeff Manning jmanning@oregonian.com 971-263-5164 Actress Kangana Ranaut and Kunal Kamra locked horns on Twitter on Wednesday after the comedian took a dig at her and compared her with Indian yogi Sadhguru. Earlier in the day, Kangana had called show business absolutely intoxicating" and that the make believe world of lights and camera is designed to make one live and believe in an alternate reality, a little bubble of their own, it takes a very strong spiritual core to recognise this delusion". Kunal retweeted it and wrote: Wisdom via showman Jagga Jasoos AKA @SadhguruJV." The actress then retweeted Kamras tweet and wrote: These fools are desperate to credit my struggles, intellect, spiritual depth, guts, success and achievements to some powerful man, how it hurts their fragile egos and cotton balls to admit that I am my own person, leading my life on my own terms. DEAL WITH IT." These fools are desperate to credit my struggles, intellect ,spiritual depth, guts, success and achievements to some powerful man, how it hurts their fragile egos and cotton balls to admit that I am my own person, leading my life on my own terms. DEAL WITH IT https://t.co/gSz5ftXZoc Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 16, 2020 Following which, he wondered how a strong women like you can have Y - security where men are protecting you just for living life on your own terms". Kangana, who was provided Y-plus security by the Central government this month, then wrote: In a democracy it is the duty of the constitution to protect a revolutionary voice. Here in this case you see two aspects of the glorious democracy The protector and The protected. You will never make it to any of them. Be someone who means something to this nation." In a democracy it is the duty of the constitution to protect a revolutionary voice. Here in this case you see two aspects of the glorious democracy The protector and The protected. You will never make it to any of them. Be someone who means something to this nation https://t.co/0ul1IUmDgV Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 16, 2020 Kangana is now in her hometown Manali following the rising tension in her relationship with the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government. Carmen Green jumps rope at a closed Griffith Observatory overlooking dense smoke from Southern California wildfires. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) With massive wildfires across the West burning more than 5 million acres and displacing tens of thousands of people, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon says this is the moment for Congress to reform the nation's fire management policies, or brace for more Septembers like this one. "I want to be able to call this the day the Senate got serious about fire prevention," the Democratic senator said Monday in a floor speech. Residents in California, Oregon and Washington many still under evacuation orders or living under a layer of smoke and ash will probably have to wait longer to see that day. Feeling new urgency from a historic wildfire season, Western Republicans and Democrats have put forward legislative proposals for addressing the region's forests, which are unnaturally overgrown thanks to decades of fire suppression. The crisis has brought to the surface divisions among Democrats about how to address the problem rifts that are only likely to become more acute if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate next year, and push climate legislation through Congress. On Thursday, Wyden unveiled his plan a set of changes that would require the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to use prescribed fire more frequently to preemptively burn off excess vegetation that can otherwise become tinder for out-of-control blazes. The bill would direct new federal funding to this effort, which has been held back by lack of money, limited manpower and risk-averse federal officials. Another proposal, a bipartisan bill from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), presents a vastly different approach. It would create new exemptions to the nation's bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, limiting public review of forestry projects to speed up the removal of small trees and shrubs. It has been endorsed by both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the American Forest Resource Council, a group that represents timber interests. But most environmental groups view it as an attempt to lock the public out of decision-making, and it's likely to face resistance from progressive Democrats in the House. Story continues "I don't think the House of Representatives will support major new incursions into environmental laws right now," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). "That's what the Senate bill is." House Democrats plan to vote next week on an energy bill that would promote electrical grid resilience efforts to reduce the likelihood of transmission lines starting fires. It would also require the Environmental Protection Agency to research the impact of smoke emissions from wildfire and provide grants to help communities mitigate the smoke. Several Democrats are hoping to add their own proposals, including other plans to strengthen the electrical grid. Democrats have not yet decided which proposals might be added or get an amendment vote. Policy differences aside, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that even the worst fire season on record will force Congress to act. There are other pressing issues before lawmakers. In addition to avoiding a government shutdown this month, Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate remain at an impasse over how to help Americans who've lost their jobs during the pandemic. Struggling industries are begging lawmakers for a bailout. And the presidential election is less than two months away. Disastrous fire seasons have come and gone without federal legislative action. In 2018, wildfires killed more than 100 people and burned more than 1.8 million acres in California, a record that has since been broken by this year's infernos. But when fires the following year proved less destructive and deadly, Congress' interest in overhauling the countrys policies waned. Even if the Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate each passed separate fire bills this year, they would have to rectify the differences and get Trump's signature by the end of December, an exceedingly unlikely possibility. Still, any agreement or compromise reached this year could form the building blocks of a bill in 2021. Wyden believes there's reason for hope. "I do think this year is different," he said. "For days and days my small state, unfortunately, has led every newscast in America. ... I've had a tremendous number of people in the Congress come up to me who had no idea these fires had gotten so out of hand." Experts have warned for years that the United States needs to completely change its approach to wildfire. Decades of trying to stamp out every fire to protect the increasing number of homes built outside of cities in wildfire-prone areas has left forests crowded with vegetation. Combined with the increasing temperatures and prolonged droughts caused by climate change, this has contributed to the alarming scale of the fires the West is experiencing now. Most fire scientists agree that there's no such thing as preventing wildfires. But there is growing consensus that certain interventions, such as prescribed fires, can reduce the severity of blazes. Wyden's bill focuses narrowly on this issue. It would set aside $600 million annually, split between the Department of Interior and the Forest Service, to pay for controlled burns on federal, state and private land. Under the bill, these agencies would be required to increase the number of acres burned during the off-season each year. There would also be a $100,000 incentive program to encourage state and county governments to carry out their own burns. Another part of the bill would shield federal employees planning or conducting a prescribed burn from a range of lawsuits, except in cases of gross negligence. Craig Thomas, a California conservationist who has spent years advocating for more prescribed fire, called this change "incredibly important." One of the reasons controlled burns are still relatively rare in the West is that federal employees fear they could be held personally responsible if the blaze got out of control. "It all comes down to the fact that these people are following the rules, they have the training, and they're trying to benefit us," Thomas said of the firefighters who oversee controlled burns. "Why have them terrified?" Feinstein's proposed legislation also identifies poor forest management as a problem, but it places much of the blame on environmental regulations, a position that Republicans and the timber industry have advocated for years. An analysis of the bill by the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, found that it would set few limitations on the number of acres that could be logged without environmental review and would give the Forest Service emergency legal authority to bypass public input for certain activities, including the removal of burned trees after a fire, known as salvage logging. It would also create a $100-million grant program to increase the number of biomass facilities in the U.S., propping up an industry that generates heat and electricity and carbon dioxide by burning dead and dying trees that have no commercial value. This would "help make harvesting dead trees more commercially viable, incentivizing businesses to step in and help reduce the fuel load in our forests," Feinstein said Wednesday during a Senate committee hearing. While Feinstein's bill is unlikely to get much support from progressives in the House, a wildfire bill that has been lingering there is just as unlikely to see much enthusiasm from Republicans in the Senate. Introduced last year by Huffman and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, it would provide $1 billion annually to direct communities to develop plans to protect themselves against wildfires, including improving evacuation routes, increasing resiliency of homes and clearing brush. Susan Jane Brown, an attorney for the advocacy group Western Environmental Law Center, said lawmakers across the West are feeling under pressure to do something about fast-moving fires that have incinerated small towns and polluted the skies. But she urged caution. "There is some merit in really taking a look at these bills and picking the pieces we think work and repackaging them," she said. "But we have to be really careful about overselling simple solutions. I don't want to make bad policy because we're scared." This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Uzbek rights defenders and former political prisoners, some of whom reside abroad, have called on Switzerland, Uzbekistan, and the United States to ensure that money confiscated from the oldest daughter of the late Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Gulnara Karimova, will not be misused again. The letter, initiated by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights and signed by 13 Uzbek human and civil rights activists, was placed on the Uzbekform.org website on September 16, five days after the Swiss government said it had reached agreement with Tashkent on returning $131 million to Uzbekistan that was seized in connection with criminal proceedings against Karimova. In its statement, the Swiss government said that, according to the nonbinding framework agreement, any returned assets "shall be used for the benefit of the people of Uzbekistan." Transparency and the creation of a monitoring mechanism are among the requirements for the restitution to take place, the statement said. In their letter, the Uzbek activists hailed the Swiss-Uzbek agreement, calling it "an important step," but warned that "the agreement requires evidence of further domestic reform given the political and institutional environment in Uzbekistan." The activists say in the letter that the implementation of the agreements and other deals related to the issue must be conducted with the involvement of Uzbek and international civil society groups and "independent" NGOs not controlled by the Uzbek government. "Thirdly, we believe that the requirement of accountability simply cannot be fulfilled until rule of law is established in the country. The legal [system] is still under the direct control of the Uzbek Ministry of Justice. There are no open and transparent systems of public procurement, nor a conflict of interest clause. Due process rights are prohibited and selectively enforced. A number of other anti-corruption mechanisms have not yet been adopted by the government, without which abuse in spending the returned assets is very likely, the letter says. Switzerland froze around 800 million Swiss francs ($880 million) in 2012 in connection with criminal proceedings against Karimova, of which almost $131 million was confiscated in 2019. The remaining funds remain frozen, and the Swiss government's September 11 statement stressed that the framework agreement would cover any more assets definitively confiscated in the still-ongoing criminal case. Earlier in May, Uzbek government officials said Tashkent received from France assets worth $10 million illegally acquired by Karimova. Tashkent has sought over $1 billion from foreign jurisdictions since announcing Karimova's imprisonment in 2017. Karimova, once seen as a possible successor to Islam Karimov, was placed under house arrest in Tashkent in 2014 while her father was still alive and running the country. Karimov died in 2016 and Shavkat Mirziyoev became his successor soon afterward. Criminal investigations in Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, and the Netherlands have linked Karimova to a massive, years-long bribery scheme that revolved mainly around foreign telecommunications companies gaining access to the lucrative Uzbek market. In December 2017, Karimova was sentenced to a 10-year prison term, but the sentence was later reclassified to house arrest and shortened to five years. She was placed in jail in March 2019 for allegedly violating the terms of her house arrest. In February, she sent a letter to Mirziyoev offering to return $686 million to the country's treasury in exchange for the dismissal of the court case against her at home. But a month later, she received an additional 13 years and four months in prison after being found guilty of extortion, money laundering, and other crimes. Portland, Me. At least seven people have died in connection with a COVID-19 outbreak that continues to sicken people in Maine following a wedding reception that violated state guidelines, health authorities said. The August wedding reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket is linked to more than 175 confirmed cases of the virus, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Maine authorities have identified overlaps between the wedding reception and outbreaks elsewhere in the state. Maine health officials have said a staff member from a Madison rehabilitation center, the site of six of the seven deaths, attended the event. The virus cases stemming from the wedding have spanned hundreds of miles in a state that had largely controlled the spread of the coronavirus through the summer. Maine has reported less than 5,000 cases of the virus in total since March. But the growing number of cases related to the wedding, which exceeded the state's guidelines of 50 people or fewer at indoor gatherings, could undo some of that progress if it continues to swell. Authorities have said more than 65 people attended the wedding. The six people from the Madison rehabilitation facility who died were all residents of that facility; none of them attended the wedding reception, said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of Maine CDC. The wedding was officiated by pastor Todd Bell of Calvary Baptist Church in Sanford. The Maine CDC is currently investigating whether an outbreak at the church is connected to the wedding outbreak. That outbreak has sickened 10 people, Shah said. Calvary Baptist Church issued a statement on Tuesday that said it is taking precautions to limit the spread of the virus and will defend its right to continue holding services. Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), right, and Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), speak to each other during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 13, 2018. (Astrid Riecken/Getty Images) Sen. Enzi Calls for Review, Bipartisan Reform of Federal Housing U.S. taxpayers fund more than 160 overlapping federal housing programs at an annual cost of more than $50 billion, but America still has too few homes for low-income families, according to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). With programs scattered across multiple federal agencies, the system leads to overlap and waste and actually limits resources that should be going to those in need, Enzi told a budget panel hearing about the housing problem on Sept. 16. We should undertake a serious, bipartisan review to find improvements to the system and identify solutions and gather ideas about reform. This will allow these programs to work better for those who truly need them. But it quickly became clear that Republicans and Democrats on the panel have starkly different views of how the federal housing effort should be reformed. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), filling in for the panels ranking minority member, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was unable to be present, said streamlining federal housing efforts to make them more efficient wouldnt be enough to avoid a housing crisis. I know that the ranking member agrees that to the extent that we can find efficiencies in the federal housing program, we should do so, because we want to make sure the resources being provided travel just as far as they can go in terms of achieving affordable housing, Van Hollen said. I think it is also fair to say, and I think there would be broad agreement on this, that even if we squeeze every dollar of efficiency out of the current system, were still going to have an affordable housing crisis. Van Hollen said that 18 million American families must pay more than half of their monthly income on housing, and he said theres a shortage of at least 7.5 million affordable homes for low-income families. That leaves very little for other essentials like food and transportation and health care, much less the ability to put aside and sock away a little for getting ahead in making other important investments, he said. Enzi said he called the hearing because dealing with housing problems has been a particular concern of his since his public service career began after being elected mayor of his home town of Gillette, Wyoming. I have worked on more and better housing for people since 1975. I was mayor of a small boom town, Enzi said, noting that affordable housing was an especially critical need for workers employed in the oil and coal industries in his area. Since coming to the Senate, I have been able to raise my interest to a new level, but I am appalled at how little progress we have made. We appear to be an employment agency for thousands of federal workers. Competing regulations, duplication, and bureaucratic turf protection keeps people from having homes. Daniel Garcia-Diaz, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) managing director for Financial Markets and Community Investment, told the committee, As you know, the governments system of housing programs, tax expenditures, and other tools is exceedingly complex and fragmented. He estimated that only 30 percent of all low-income families that need housing help have been reached by the federal effort. Long waiting lists for public housing and voucher assistance are a chronic problem across many communities. In our 2020 report, we found that affordability has declined for a variety of reasons, including that the supply of low-cost rental units has not kept up with demand, more renters competing for the same units, and income not keeping up with housing costs, Garcia-Diaz said. Numerous opportunities to consolidate duplicative programs have been identified by GAO, he said, although many of them would involve trade-offs that need to be considered. Dr. Edgar Olsen of the University of Virginia told the committee that low-income housing assistance is fertile ground for reforms that would provide better outcomes for the money spent. Most current recipients are served by programs whose costs are enormously excessive for the housing provided. At least two-thirds of the poorest families in America dont benefit from the present federal housing program, he said, while others with the same incomes receive large subsidies. Olsen said offering modest assistance to all of these families would not only eliminate this inequity but would also largely end homelessness and evictions. He encouraged Congress to phase out cost-ineffective programs in favor of the cost-effective housing voucher program. This would enormously simplify the system of low-income housing assistance. Federal housing vouchers provide recipients with a subsidy they can use toward the rental of housing wherever they find it and choose to live. But most federal housing assistance dollars go to pay for construction, renovation, and maintenance of housing projects. The simplest approach to providing housing assistance is to provide a subsidy to the people we want to help that is conditional on occupying housing meeting certain standards, he said. Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc It focuses on an 11-year-old girl named Amy as she figures out what it means, to her, to be a woman in an era of TikTok celebrities and viral fame. Like Doucoure, Amy is the daughter of Senegalese immigrants. Amys parents are now raising their family in a working-class Parisian neighborhood. Their culture permits polygamy, and when the movie opens, Amys father has recently traveled back to Senegal to bring home a second wife. All I wish for them is that they marry for love, Amys mother says in a phone call to a relative. Then she hangs up and, not realizing her daughter is in the same room, bursts into tears. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Firdousabad locality in Batamaloo at around 2.30 am following a tip-off, officials said Srinagar: Three militants and a civilian woman were killed, while two CRPF personnel, including an officer, sustained injuries in a predawn gunbattle on Thursday in Batamaloo area of the city, officials said. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Firdousabad locality in Batamaloo area at around 2.30 am following information about the presence of militants there, the officials said. They said the search operation turned into an encounter after militants opened fire on security forces. One civilian identified as Kaunsar Riyaz was killed in the firing, while two CRPF personnel, including an officer, were injured, the officials said. The injured personnel were taken to hospital and the operation was still in progress, they said. In the ensuing encounter, three unidentified militants were killed, police tweeted, adding the searches were still going on. Following a subdued Ganesh Chaturthi celebration in Maharashtra, the Navratri celebrations are also expected to be low key as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise in the state. Navratri organisers HT spoke to said that while they are waiting for the state government to issue guidelines, they are sure of not celebrating the festival this year. The nine-day festival begins from October 17. Navratri is largely about garba and dandiya which is impossible with social distancing norms. So it is pretty clear that there will be no celebrations this year, said Neil Somiaya, BJP corporator from Mulund, who has been organising Navrarti fest at Mulund East since the last few years. Pravin Chheda, who has been organising dandiya nights since 25 years in Ghatkopar said, Even Ganesh Chaturthi was not celebrated the way it used to be. How can Navratri be celebrated without social gathering? The state might only allow societies to maybe do puja within the buildings. Also read: India crosses 60 million mark for Covid-19 testing HT had reported that officials from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are also fearing a spike in cases with the festivals lined-up -- Navratri, Diwali, Christmas and New Years. Mumbai had witnessed a plateauing of cases in August. However, the Ganesh festival, relaxations during Mission Begin Again and increased testing are widely believed to be behind the resurgence of cases in the city. The average daily Covid-19 cases shot up after Ganesh Chaturthi from nearly a 1,000 cases in August to 1,800+ cases in the first week of September. Some organisers, however, are considering virtual Navratri to keep up the festival spirit. Jignesh Khilani, secretary of Ghatkopar Gujarati Samaj, which also hosted Falguni Phatak in 2017, said, We are thinking on the lines of arranging virtual Navratri. We are waiting for the states guidelines on it. On Wednesday again, the state surpassed another milestone of 1.1 million Covid-19 cases with 23,365 new cases recorded. The states tally now stands at 1,121,221 cases. The same day, Mumbai recorded its highest single-day spike of 2,378 new Covid cases pushing its overall tally ro 175,974 cases. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A group of 55 Class 10 students of city school have started a crowdfunding initiative to help small farmers in Marathwada set up a basic brick and mortar storage facility, designed by a startup from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The storage facility will help farmers store their produce for up to a week and overcome the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The students, all from the Bombay Scottish School in Mahim, set out to raise around 16 lakh that can help over 100 farmers in Marathwada to set up the Subjee Cooler, a cooling unit designed by Rukart Technologies. While a unit can be set up at 30,000, many farmers do not have the funds at their disposal owing to the effects of the lockdown on the markets, said Vikas Jha, founder of Rukart. If we could find finance for half the price, farmers were willing to pay the other half, he added. The students found out about the plight of the farmers during a workshop at school with crowd-funding platformFuel a Dream. Each student then decided to raise 30,000 to be able to help two farmers set up Subjee Coolers. However, many students have already exceeded their goals and the funds will be used to help more farmers. I honestly went into the campaign thinking Id barely touch the goal of 30000 and I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Im currently at 1,29,100. The first day, I texted and called close friends and relatives about the campaign, said 14-year-old Auroni Gupta, who claimed that most contributions came through social media. So far the students have raised Rs13.87 lakh. The Subjee Cooler works on the principle of evaporative cooling and does not require any utilities except watering once a day. According to Jha, the cooling chamber temperature is lesser than the ambient temperature by a margin of 5-15C (depends on ambient relative humidity) and maintains the high relative humidity of above 85% - 90% inside the cooling chamber. The low temperature and high humidity inside the chamber preserve the vegetable crop (non-tuber) for five to eight days. Rukart and a Pune-based non-profit Swayam Sikashan Prayog, got in touch with us about the farmers in Marathwada. We have been doing workshops with students across the country and the students at Bombay Scottish showed interest. Thats how the initiative took off, said Ranganath Thota, founder of Fuel a Dream, who teaches crowdfunding as a skill to school students. 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. They will manage the receipt of the domain into one of BrandBuckets secure registrar accounts and then complete the transfer to you. 1. Verification and registrar choice After we receive the payment and verify it, we will reach out via email to confirm which registrar you want the domain transferred to. We also provide a link to our tracking system, where you can communicate with us, check on the status of your transfer, view your invoice, and download your logo files. In most cases, if a domain is moved between accounts at a single registrar, the transfer is quick and usually completes within 48 hours. If a domain changes registrars (in other words, you would like to move it away from where it is currently registered), the transfer is slower. The total transfer time can then be anywhere from 48 hours to 7 days. BrandBucket has vetted and supports the following registrars: GoDaddy Namesilo Uniregistry NameCheap Google Domains Network Solutions Name.com Dynadot Amazon Route 53 123 Reg Gandi 2. We request the name from the seller. Once we know where you would like the domain transferred, BrandBucket will request the domain from the seller. All of our sellers are very responsive, making for a quick process. 3. Transfer the name into your account As soon as we receive the name from the seller, we start the transfer into your account and guide you through the whole process. 4. Verify with the buyer that the transfer is complete Once we confirm that you have received the name, we consider the escrow process to be complete. Only then do we release payment to the domain seller. Premier Brian Pallister should be forthcoming about his intentions regarding a subsidiary of Manitoba Hydro whose future has come under a cloud in recent days, Opposition New Democrats say. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Premier Brian Pallister should be forthcoming about his intentions regarding a subsidiary of Manitoba Hydro whose future has come under a cloud in recent days, Opposition New Democrats say. According to a leaked internal memo from Manitoba Hydro International, staff were told, for the period from Sept. 2 to Oct. 7, "MHI is not to aggressively pursue new work... actively pursue bids or seek out new customers." Workers at the international consulting arm of the province's largest Crown corporation are on pins and needles about the future of the enterprise. They're wondering if it will be sold or dissolved. Manitoba Hydro has only said the profitable subsidiary was included in a recent strategic review of the energy utility's operations by a third party. MHI's business areas "were moved into a non-aggressive approach for new business development to allow the review to continue without complication," a company spokesman said this week. On Thursday, NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the premier should clear the air about MHI's future. "We cannot stand for the privatization of Manitoba Hydro, in whole or in part," he told reporters. "As Manitobans, we actually own the technology and the assets necessary to provide vast high-speed internet to everybody in the province," he said, referring to Hydro's vast fibre optic cable infrastructure. "Unfortunately, over the past number of weeks, we've seen the Pallister government interfering with Manitoba Hydro at the expense of Manitobans who want to be able to access high-speed internet." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. In January, the government told Hydro not to participate in a planned request for proposal for a lucrative government data network contract, currently held by Bell MTS, the Free Press reported this week, citing company emails obtained under freedom of information legislation. Hydro would have done so through Manitoba Hydro Telecom, a subsidiary of MHI. The NDP said when the legislature resumes sitting Oct. 7, it plans to introduce a private member's bill that would prevent the sale of a Hydro subsidiary without a referendum of Manitobans. A clause in the Manitoba Hydro Act already specifies the corporation itself cannot be privatized without a plebiscite. In a statement, Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton called accusations by the NDP that Manitoba Hydro is for sale "baseless," although he made no mention of Hydro subsidiaries. "Our government has been and remains absolutely clear: Manitoba Hydro belongs to Manitobans and will remain public," Wharton said. Asked for clarification about the minister's intentions regarding Hydro subsidiaries, a government spokesman emailed a response: "Manitoba Hydro includes its subsidiaries." larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca KAMPALA In line with the request of the Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the Uganda Museum has September 17,2020 handed over the Vintage Limousine Rolls Royce to Buganda Kingdom. This follows the cabinet approval by President Yoweri Museveni to donate the vehicle to the kingdom in 2019. Speaking at the handover ceremony at Uganda Museum, the State minister for Tourism Godfrey Kiwanda Suubi said that this is in fulfillment of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Central government and Buganda Kingdom. We hope the kingdom will keep it as a memorial treasure and will provide access to the rest of Ugandans for viewing and enjoyment. The Vintage Car was handed over to Prince David Wasajja on behalf of the Kingdom ending years of mistrust between the two agencies since the central government was claiming ownership of the car. The Rolls Royce bought in 1964 by the government of Uganda was used by the first president of the Republic of Uganda Ssekabaka Mutesa II. The vehicle was transferred to the Uganda Museum from the State House in 2013 as a vintage object that needed to be preserved. Related Organic, plant-based and multifunctional products are on the rise as consumer behavior shifts and disposable income increases, says Frost & Sullivan SANTA CLARA, California, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis, Transformative Mega Trends Driving the Global Personal Care Active Ingredients Market, 2020, finds that the personal care active ingredients market is expected to reach $4.85 billion by 2025 from $3.9 billion in 2019, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7%. The growth of the market is driven by rising disposable income, increasing demand for clean and sustainable ingredients, and expanding online and offline distribution channels for personal care products. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted the market as the demand for personal care products such as makeup, perfumes, moisturizers, and sunscreens declined during the global lockdown. However, the increasing popularity of beauty and cosmetic products among male consumers strengthens the demand for active ingredients. The shift in consumer behavior across the globe is propelling personal care companies toward manufacturing organic, plant-based and multifunctional products. For further information on this analysis, please visit: http://frost.ly/4hs "Consumers are becoming more aware of the importance of hydrating, moisturizing, and anti-aging ingredients in their care products; thus, companies must invest in research and development (R&D) and innovate to meet consumers' requirements," said Prateeksha Kaul, Chemicals, Materials & Foods Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Anti-aging personal care products are expected to witness the highest growth of 6.5% between 2019 and 2025 due to the increasing aging population across the globe." Kaul added: "Synthetic and harmful chemicals in personal care products such as Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates triggered a trend change in the industry. Consumers request cosmetic products that are free from ingredients such as parabens, phthalates, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and mineral oils. With the trend of a minimalist beauty approach, the demand for ingredients with multifunctional benefits and properties is expected to increase." The changing landscape of the cosmetic and beauty industry highlights key trends in regions across the globe, including: North America : Higher disposable income in the region leads to growing demand for luxury cosmetics and skincare products. Moreover, sales via eCommerce are increasing, and companies must establish a strong online distribution channel. Higher disposable income in the region leads to growing demand for luxury cosmetics and skincare products. Moreover, sales via eCommerce are increasing, and companies must establish a strong online distribution channel. Asia-Pacific : The rising trend of gender-neutral products in APAC allows companies to expand their user base among female and male consumers. Also, the level of consumer awareness of personal care is spreading in this region, propelling the demand for active ingredients in beauty and skincare products. The rising trend of gender-neutral products in APAC allows companies to expand their user base among female and male consumers. Also, the level of consumer awareness of personal care is spreading in this region, propelling the demand for active ingredients in beauty and skincare products. Europe : The companies in this region are leading in terms of R&D and innovation in the personal care active ingredients market. Although the COVID-19 outbreak has caused consumers to restrict their spending on personal care products, the demand is likely to bounce back after the outbreak subsides. The companies in this region are leading in terms of R&D and innovation in the personal care active ingredients market. Although the COVID-19 outbreak has caused consumers to restrict their spending on personal care products, the demand is likely to bounce back after the outbreak subsides. Gulf Cooperation Council: The demand for halal products is on the rise due to the increasing Muslim population in this region. Consequently, the need for clean and sustainable active ingredients is also expanding. The demand for halal products is on the rise due to the increasing Muslim population in this region. Consequently, the need for clean and sustainable active ingredients is also expanding. Africa : Improving living standards in the region have led to increased demand for personal care products, making it a hot spot for ingredient manufacturers. Improving living standards in the region have led to increased demand for personal care products, making it a hot spot for ingredient manufacturers. Latin America : The beauty industry accounts for 2% of Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP), which makes the active ingredient market significant to the country's economy. However, COVID-19 has severely impacted Brazil's economy, and consumption of cosmetic products in the country declined significantly. Transformative Mega Trends Driving the Global Personal Care Active Ingredients Market, 2020 is the latest addition to Frost & Sullivan's Chemicals, Materials & Foods research and analyses available through the Frost & Sullivan Leadership Council, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future. About Frost & Sullivan For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Transformative Mega Trends Driving the Global Personal Care Active Ingredients Market, 2020 K4B4 Contact: Zuzana Zukarnain Corporate Communications Phone: +60192657808 Email: zuzana.zukarnain@frost.com http://www.frost.com A heated political debate erupted in Parliament on Wednesday over Indias response to the coronavirus outbreak as the number of active cases swelled to a million and cases till date crossed the five million mark. Fresh cases per day continued to hover around the 90,000 mark with 90,123 cases reported in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra, with more than 20,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, led the tally, the government said, followed by Andhra Pradesh (8,846), and Karnataka (7,576). Parliament, sitting for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, saw the opposition launch a full assault on the government, blaming it for worsening the crisis. On the third day of the monsoon session, Congress leader Anand Sharma challenged health minister Harsh Vardhan over his claim that the lockdown prevented 1.4-2.9 million covid-19 cases and 37,000-78,000 deaths. The House must be informed what is the scientific basis on which we have reached this conclusion," Sharma said in Rajya Sabha. He also questioned Vardhans claim that Indias deaths per million of 55 was among the lowest in the world. Sri Lanka and South Africa have had a better record, he said. Covid-19 is an unprecedented event, an event that no one could have predicted... but the question is how prepared were we?" Sharma asked. The announcement of the lockdown shocked the nation, he said. The Congress leader wanted the government to speak to the states about improving the public health system. About 70% of intensive care unit beds are in the private sector. The government should have coordinated with the states before announcing the lockdown. We cant deny the image of India that was seen abroad, of migrant workers in distress. Also, if quarantine centres were set up in advance, the disease may not have reached villages," Sharma said. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe of the Bharatiya Janata Party said chief ministers were consulted several times while the decision was being taken. None of the chief ministers in about 15 meetings with the prime minister and other ministers ever said the lockdown shouldbe opposed," he said. View Full Image Graphic: Mint The Congress has objected to Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidus decision to club clarifications on the health ministers statement with a debate on the crisis. If we cannot have a full-fledged discussion on the covid-19 situation without being circumscribed by the ministers statement, what is the point of having this session of Rajya Sabha in the first place?" Congress leader Jairam Ramesh asked Naidu in a letter. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP from Tamil Nadu Tiruchi Siva said India had the strictest lockdown in the world and the worst outcome after the lockdown. Derek OBrien of the Trinamool Congress slammed the government for imposing a 21-day lockdown with four hours notice. My question to the government is this, was at least one video conference held before 26 March for coronavirus?" he said. He said that the Centre should have taken best practices from states such as covering all allied workers under insurance and make a formidable plan for the pandemic. 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 President Donald Trump spent last weekend complaining privately about Joe Biden's dominance in television advertising, according to three people familiar with the comments, only to tweet upon his return to Washington from a campaign swing that the "fake news" was exaggerating the disparity. The zigzagging messages reflected a desire by Trump and his campaign to move beyond growing Republican concern about his relatively scant advertising budget and doubts about whether he now has enough money in the bank to close the race in a strong position. "We have much more money than we had at the same time in 2016," Trump tweeted this week. "Also spending on other, and different, elements of the campaign." His advisers, meanwhile, have begun public and private efforts to fight back against the notion that the disparity between Trump's and his Democratic challenger's advertising spending showed any weakness for the president's campaign, even as allies continue to frantically tell Trump advisers that they are being outspent on the air in key states. The campaign must report its cash on hand for the end of August by Sunday's regulatory deadline. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien reassured his staff on Tuesday, telling senior aides during a meeting that they would have enough money to win the election and to expect more spending in upcoming weeks. In a news release the same day, advisers highlighted a long-planned increase in the ad budget this week of about 50% over last week. The campaign has not responded to Trump's weekend complaints by adding advertising spending beyond what was previously in the works. The three people who recounted the president's unsettled response spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Stepien earlier had slashed spending on television ads, fearing a cash crunch that could leave the campaign in financial trouble in its final 30 days. The circumstances marked a sober reversal, with the Trump campaign, long a fundraising behemoth, facing tough budgetary decisions as the once-lean Biden campaign found itself flush with cash. Biden significantly outraised Trump in August, $364.5 million to $210 million. The effort to put a positive face on the state of the Trump campaign comes as the two November rivals are pressing markedly different strategies with fewer than 50 days before the election. Like Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden is flooding the television airwaves at far greater levels than Trump, while he has all but abandoned in-person campaigning in the face of the coronavirus pandemic to try to ensure his safety and reinforce his message of abiding by health officials' advice. Trump, meanwhile, is leaning heavily on his massive ground operation, while returning to his 2016 strategy of attracting media attention with large rallies and frequent televised appearances. While Biden still goes entire days without a public event - his pace has picked up markedly lately, and he will hold a town hall event on CNN on Thursday night - Trump has been traveling the country and appearing frequently on national cable or network television. On Sunday, he defied state and federal guidelines to hold an indoor event in Nevada at which thousands cheered him, most of them maskless. "We are running a comprehensive campaign to get the message out, combining people on the ground with advertising, while Joe Biden is making virtually no voter contacts and campaigning almost exclusively by buying television ads," Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said. "We like our approach better." Biden is making voter contacts, albeit virtually, according to his campaign, which claims to have conducted 2.6 million "conversations" in August and sent more than 1 million text messages with the Democratic National Committee to encourage mail voting in Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania. "Joe Biden is working to earn every vote with a groundbreaking campaign that meets this moment," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said. "And he's doing it the way he would govern, by putting the well-being of the American families he would fight for first." Bates characterized Trump's events as "divisive, vain super-spreader events at the expense of communities hungering to overcome the pandemic." The separate campaign strategies are informed by different target voters. Biden's team is going after a population that is generally more averse to in-person interactions and more of his supporters are expected to cast ballots over the next month, either by mail or through early voting. The Trump campaign, by contrast, is expecting a bigger Election Day turnout, and is targeting a voter population that is generally more open to in-person interaction, even in cases where mass gatherings violate state guidelines. Some Trump campaign officials have come to see the public health concern of the Biden campaign as an advantage for the president, potentially offsetting the damage done to Trump by the poor public response to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. "They have, like, totally given up on trying to have an old-school campaign," said a person familiar with discussions among the Trump campaign's senior leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the campaign's internal view. "They have no cost of ground operations. They are basically saying that they are going to spend every penny on television." Bates, the Biden spokesman, pushed back by insisting that the campaign's ground operation is focused on communicating with Americans through their phones, and he said voters have been receptive. "They're in fact more reliant on their phones than ever, because Donald Trump botched the coronavirus response," he said. The Trump campaign is projected to spend nearly $16 million on television advertising this week, up from about $11 million last week, according to data provided by a Democratic firm. By comparison, the Biden campaign is projected to spent about $28 million this week, up from $27 million last week. The Trump campaign's television spending is scheduled to increase again next week, rising to about $21 million. The Biden campaign, however, is stepping up its spending as well, with $35 million in reservations for the week ending Sept. 28. The inequities have been lessened somewhat by greater spending by Republican outside groups, although that could shift in the coming weeks, as former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has promised to spend at least $100 million over the course of six weeks in Florida, a massive investment for a single state. The Trump campaign refined its strategy this week, focusing more money on urban radio ads in Florida and Pennsylvania, hoping to lure Black voters with an economic message framed around the "Great American Comback." On Monday, the Trump campaign canceled its weekly television advertising in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire, while partly cutting money from Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to Advertising Analytics, which tracks the campaign's television purchases. The latter five states are among those most competitive this year. Most of the money was reinvested in four other states: Arizona, Florida, Maine and North Carolina. Clinton won three of Maine's four electoral votes in 2016, while Trump won the three other states - but in them he faces a more difficult challenge this year from Biden, according to multiple polls. Although Clinton consistently outspent Trump on the air in 2016, Trump committed far more money to digital advertising. A report by Kantar Media after the 2016 election found that Clinton spent 6% of her media budget on digital ads, compared to 40% for Trump. Even with its current money worries, Trump's operation has been far better funded this year than in his jury-rigged 2016 effort, rolling out such luxuries as nightly Facebook-streaming talk shows and Hispanic and Black community centers in key battleground states. Top officials now say the plan is to leverage the enormous investment they have made in voter data over the past three years to mount a massive turnout operation in the final weeks. A Trump campaign official said that more than 2.1 million volunteers have taken some action for the campaign. The campaign has recorded 102 million voter contacts since it began, a category that includes unsuccessful attempts to reach people. And the campaign continues to outspend Biden on Facebook and Google, although much of that spending is for fundraising outside the key swing states. The Biden campaign, by contrast, said 183,000 volunteers have joined the campaign since the start of August, with about 2,000 more coming on every day since. Several J-K political parties and leaders have condemned the alleged extrajudicial murder of the Sopore youth SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmirs northwestern town Sopore and its neighbourhood are tense in the aftermath of alleged extrajudicial killing of a local youth. Internet services were early Wednesday withdrawn from the area and police and paramilitary reinforcements fanned out "as a precautionary measure". The police, however, claimed the youth Ifran Ahmed Dar was an 'Over Ground worker (OWG)' of a separatist militant outfit who tried to escape from their custody and that later his corpse was found in a neighbouring village. They, however, didn't say how he was killed. The family of the youth termed it as 'cock and bull story' and also denied Dar was involved in any unlawful activity. The police are lying. My brother was killed in cold-blood. He would work with me at our family shop from 7 am to 9 pm. He had nothing to do with militancy or militants, said his elder brother Javaid Ahmed. A statement issued by the J&K police here said that 23-year-old Dar was found dead after he escaped from police custody. Dar was picked up by the police from his residence in Sopores Sidiq Colony at around 12.45 pm on Tuesday and, as per the police claim, two Chinese hand grenades were recovered from his possession following which the police registered an FIR under Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act at a local police station, the statement said. According to the police, During the course of investigation, a police team visited Chairdaji area of Tujjar-Sharief (about 13-km from Sopore town) along with the OGW for effecting some more recovery on his disclosure. The police statement added, The OGW while taking advantage of darkness and terrain managed to escape regarding which a separate case FIR No. 71/2020 U/S 224 IPC was registered in Police Station Bomai and during search the body of OGW was found near a stone quarry of Tujjar-Sharief. The police statement did not say how Dar was killed. His brother Ahmed said that he too was picked up by the police for questioning a couple of hours after their house was searched by the police and his younger brother taken along. I was unwell and when they thought my condition might deteriorate, I was sent home at 11 pm, he told reporters. Strongly denying that his brother or any other family member was involved in militancy, Ahmed said, He was not just my brother, he was my friend too. He would share each and everything with me. He would work at our shop from 7 am to 9 (or 10 pm). Nothing was hidden to me. He also said that he had, in response to the polices charge that militants had stayed at their house, asked them to check the footage of the CCTV installed at their premises. You can have a look even now at the past one and a half months footage. You may also examine the mobile phones which have been in my, my brothers and other family members and are now with the police. Asked about the polices claim that two Chinese grenades were recovered from his brothers possession, he quipped, Nothing incriminating was found by the police from him or during the search of our house. If it is proved my brother or any other family member was involved in any unlawful activity we are ready to accept any punishment, he said. Several J-K political parties and leaders have condemned the alleged extrajudicial murder of the Sopore youth and termed the police statement as blatant lie. Former minister and Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone tweeted, Sopore incident just doesnt add up. They have done a bad job even at inventing a story. The guilty need to be punished. Former chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah wrote on micro-blogging site The administration cant possibly win back the confidence of the people if encounters like Shopian or suspicious deaths like Sopore are allowed to pass without the facts being established & guilt, when determined, fully punished. Seeking J-K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha's help, he said, He must intervene in both these cases. Related US diplomat says America keeps pushing to end Qatar boycott crisis The United States hopes to move forward with naming Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, a status that provides foreign nations with benefits in defense trade and security cooperation, a senior US official said on Thursday. "We're going to move ahead, we hope, with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally," Timothy Lenderking, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs, told reporters in a conference call. US and Qatari officials, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Qatar Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, met in Washington earlier this week. Major non-NATO ally (MNNA) status gives a country preferential access to US military equipment and technology, including free surplus material, expedited export processing and prioritized cooperation on training. Qatar's Government Communications Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Currently 17 countries have MNNA status, including Gulf Arab states Kuwait and Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. Qatar, host of the largest US military facility in the Middle East, has been locked in a dispute with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt since 2017. Washington has strong ties with all the states involved and sees the rift as a threat to efforts to contain Iran. It has pushed for a united Gulf front. Search Keywords: Short link: The same boy said Mr. Harris asked him for oral sex in a bathroom at a cheerleading competition they both attended. Officials said that in the Monday interview, Mr. Harris admitted to asking the boy for explicit photos, sending photos of himself and requesting oral sex, and said he knew the boy was 13. He said he sent a text message to the second boy from the lawsuit asking if he was interested in engaging in sexual acts. The boys mother discovered the messages in February, the complaint says, including explicit photos and a video that the boy told her was Mr. Harris. She said she told her son to delete the photos and videos, which he did. The second boy who filed the suit against Mr. Harris said that Mr. Harris was touchy and did odd things to him and his brother, and that Mr. Harris had requested nude photos from him via Snapchat. The second boy said he refused all of Mr. Harriss requests, as well as a request for an in-person sexual encounter. Law enforcement officials interviewed two 17-year-olds on Tuesday who had contacted them regarding Mr. Harris. One of the teenagers said he met Mr. Harris at a party this summer, at which he told Mr. Harris he was 17. He said Mr. Harris later messaged him on Snapchat and asked for photos, the complaint said. He said he did not send any then, but weeks later, he did send Mr. Harris photos in exchange for money, which was sent by an electronic payment application. The first teenager then told the other teenager about Mr. Harriss request and the second teenager took photos of himself, which he told the first boy he could send to Mr. Harris. People in Twickenham have found they can access coronavirus tests in their local area despite being told none were available by pretending their postcode is in Aberdeen, an MP has said. Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham, told the Commons she had been inundated with emails from doctors, teachers and parents who had been unable to access the tests they desperately needed. However, a number of them have also been advised that if they put an Aberdeen postcode into the system, they can get a test in Twickenham and they have succeeded, Ms Wilson said. So could the secretary of state please tell me how on earth a world-beating test and trace system is functioning in this way, and what is he doing to fix it? And in the meantime, does he recommend that I tell those constituents who desperately need a test to game the system in this way? Her comments came amid local testing shortages in the UK, with some people with Covid-19 symptoms being told to get a test at sites hundreds of miles from their homes. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, faced questions from MPs on Tuesday over the governments testing system, which has been described as a bloody mess. In response to Ms Wilsons question, Mr Hancock said MPs should tell their constituents that tests are available in large numbers and added: People should take this seriously and not game the system. However, the health secretary admitted there were operational challenges with the testing system which he said the government was working to fix. He also insisted the average distance travelled to a test site was now 5.8 miles. Jonathan Ashworth, Labours shadow health secretary, questioned Mr Hancock on why problems with the system had not been fixed over the summer. People want to know when they will get a test and when this mess will be fixed, Mr Ashworth said, warning that the country was at a perilous moment in the pandemic. California State Bar Shaken by Personnel Issues Involving Two Black Women In less than one month, the State Bar of California has been roiled in high-level personnel snafus involving two prominent Black California women. In July, the California State Bar offered Fredericka McGee, a respected California legislative attorney, the position of executive director. Then, in August, the organization which serves as an administrative arm of the State Supreme Court and is charged with protecting the public interest, reportedly rescinded that offer without an explanation. McGee has been a licensed attorney with the Bar for almost 30 years. Then, last week, Debbie Manning, a member of State Bars 13-member board the only African American serving on the governing body abruptly resigned midway through her term. Manning was appointed to a four-year term by the state Senate in 2018. ADVERTISEMENT Manning, a non-attorney member, was appointed to a four-year term by the State Senate in 2018. Previously, Manning was not only the first Black woman to join the Legislatures Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms in 1977, she was also the first woman to serve as Senate Chief Sergeant-at-Arms. She held that position from 2014 until 2017. Mannings resignation came just one week after the Bar met to discuss the hiring of the next executive director with extended public comment in support of McGee after which the board went into closed session but did not report any decision or action. Manning did not give a reason for leaving. Powerful Support: State Leaders Defend McGee at Board Meeting At the Friday, Sept. 4 State Bar public board meeting, supporters urged the body to reconsider its decision and renegotiate with McGee for the executive director position. That meeting was delayed when an individual wrote the n word several times and other profanity directed toward Black people in the Zoom meeting chat box, which caused the meeting to be delayed for almost an hour. Despite the delay, a diverse group of people spoke at the meeting in support McGee supporters say a testament to her rapport with lawmakers; attorneys of all colors and backgrounds; business leaders; members of the African American community; leaders in major service organizations, and more. Among them were representatives of the California Association of Black Lawyers, SEIU, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), speaking on behalf of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), was the first speaker to address the board of trustees. ADVERTISEMENT Weber said, speaking on accounts of published reports, that McGees situation is one of the reasons the CLBC talks about the increase of representation of people of color, particularly African Americans in all aspects. Weber said the Bars alleged withdrawal brought tremendous concern to members of the CLBC. (McGee) had accepted the position, was making efforts to move, change her residency, and basically move around for this position, and then all of sudden the position was withdrawn, Weber said. We stand united in requesting that you provide the state bar the best leader as possible, as weve always found that to be of the character and qualifications of Ms. Fredericka McGee. In closing, Weber referenced the constitutional relationship between the Legislature and the State Bar. The Legislature annually authorizes a fee bill to allow the Bar to assess lawyerss licensing fees, according to Ed Howard, a Sacramento public interest lobbyist and long-time State Bar watcher. A History of Turmoil and Mismanagement Over the years, the State Bar has been under scrutiny for some of its practices and the way its leaders have managed the organization. In 1998, then Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a bill that wouldve authorized the agency to charge lawyers in the state annual licensing fees to fund the Bar. A layoff of two-thirds of the Bars staff members was hanging in the balance and the groups attorney discipline system temporarily shut down for lack of funds. Those issues were only resolved in 1998 after the states Supreme Court intervened. Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers administration vetoed another fee authorization bill, Senate Bill 641, in 2009. Schwarzenegger justified his action by basing it on a state audit that discovered irregularities in enforcing attorney discipline, embezzlement of $675,000 by a former employee, and prohibited disclosure of the rating of a potential candidate for the appellate bench. In a written message, the governor said the Bars scandals cannot continue with business as usual, As the organization charged with regulating the professional conduct of its members, the conduct of the State Bar itself must be above reproach, Schwarzenegger stated. Regrettably, it is not. In 2016, after the California Legislature did not pass a Bar dues bill, and the states Supreme Court had to step in to authorize the agency to collect interim dues. The American Bar Association reported on Nov. 16, 2016, that both Legislative houses were at odds about the bars reform measures, introduced by the Assembly. The issue was about a study of whether the bar should break into two parts, splitting the Bars attorney discipline abilities from its trade organization tasks. Last month, the Assembly and the Senate passed Assembly Bill (AB) 3362, a bill that would again authorize the Bar to collect fees from California attorneys and restrict its board of trustees from discussing issues about the Bars exams administration in seclusion. At the moment, Gov. Gavin Newsom is reviewing the bill. At the September 4th board meeting, Fabian Nunez, a former Assemblymember, who represented the 46th District in Los Angeles County and served as speaker of the Assembly from 2004 to 2008, highlighted McGees professionalism and praised her level of dignity, depth of knowledge, ability to build relationships, and certainty of purpose. Nunez said that within his nearly five-year tenure, McGee was his general counsel and he watched her juggle and manage legal matters of the Assembly, the rules committee, and judiciary issues. Its something unmatched in California, Nunez said of McGees skill set. Quite frankly, its unique because she also possesses the skills that are so important when you are managing a large organization such as the State Bar. Gov. Newsoms former Legislative Affairs Secretary, Anthony Williams also said in support of McGee, When I heard that she was a candidate for the executive director for the State Bar, I was pleased and proud not only as a lawyer but also as a Californian who knows the important role that the State Bar plays in public protection and administration of justice. Fredericka understands that. I hope that you reconsider it, such a sensitive, personnel decision, Williams said. The board of trusteess duties includes developing the guiding policies and principles of the Bar. It comprises of five lawyers appointed by the California Supreme Court, two lawyers appointed the by legislature, and six non-attorney members (four named by the governor). The State Bars Board of Trustees Responds The governing bodys chairperson Alan Steinbrecher pointed out that the makeup of the state bar is one of diversity and inclusion and at the end of the meeting sought to provide examples of two prior African American State Bar executive directors. In my work with the state bars leadership team and with staff, I know that the commitment to diversity and inclusion is widely shared throughout the organization, Steinbrecher said. As our former executive director said, We want diversity and inclusion to be built in and not built on. I also want to note that contrary to some comments weve received, the state bar has been previously led by two capable and talented African American women that served as executive directors. Leah T. Wilson, another African American woman, served as executive director for two years before she surprised some when she left the role on Jan. 17 of this year. The Hon. Judy Johnson, also a Black woman, was the State Bars executive director from May 2000 to January 2011. Johnson is now a Superior Court Judge for Contra Costa County, first appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012. Before entering a closed session, the Bars board of trustees addressed the concerns of McGees supporters. There has been some speculation about a particular candidate who has been considered for the executive directors position, Steinbrecher said. We are not in the position to respond to specifics reported in the press because the executive directors selection process is a confidential, personnel matter. The executive director of the Bar leads the senior management team responsible for various programs. The position requires the executive director to answer to the board of trustees and advance its policies. McGee was in the process of transitioning out of her role as vice president of California government affairs and operations for the American Beverage Association (ABA). She worked out of ABAs office in Sacramento. In addition, McGee is also the founding president of the Black Youth Leadership Project, Inc., a non-profit organization that offers interactive legislative and debate programs to African American high school students throughout California. Alice Huffman, the President of the California State National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a written statement dated Sept. 3 that McGee has been recognized for her exemplary service by a multitude of organizations throughout the state and has a stellar reputation in the legislative and legal community. The California NAACP remains ready to stand with the California State Bar as we ensure a fair and transparent legal system at this pivotal time in our country as we address issues of social justice, Huffman said in a statement Again, I wholeheartedly support the California State Bar in its efforts to complete the contractual process that started with Ms. McGee. WASHINGTONOn the west coast of the U.S., forest fires have burned huge swaths of the country over the past month, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and killing at least 35 so far. Cities such as San Francisco and Portland are choked by a thick orange haze, whose spread to Canada has caused advisories to shelter indoors in Vancouver because of dangerous air quality. The evidence reached across the country to Washington, D.C., as hazy smoke partially clouded the sun over the capital this week. But the most famous resident of this city, President Donald Trump, isnt big on looking at evidence, even in a disaster. At a news conference in California on Monday, the states natural resources secretary said these fires were partly a result of a dramatically warming climate. We want to work with you to really recognize changing climate and what it means to our forests, Wade Crowfoot told Trump. The president scoffed. Itll start getting cooler, you just watch, he said. I wish science agreed with you, Crowfoot said. Trump laughed. I dont think science knows, actually, he replied. Trump denies that climate change contributes to disasters like the forest fires, even though the National Academy of Sciences and the Trump administrations own climate assessment say climate change is a huge factor. But waving away science shapes Trumps policy not just on the forest fires, but across his government. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, sued California over its cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec, tried to spike Californias auto emissions standards, expanded Arctic oil drilling and proudly repealed more than 100 environmental regulations. Just last month, Trump repealed a regulation introduced by the Obama administration to prevent methane leaks a move the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts will lead to the release of 850,000 tons of planet-warming methane over the next 10 years, according to the New York Times. Researchers warn that the decision ignores science, the Times headline read. Thats a phrase that gets a lot of work in reporting on Trumps government and not just on climate. This week, exasperated Columbia University epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman told me Trumps approach to dealing with coronavirus boils down to showing he thinks scientists and experts are full of s - - - . Shortly after that, Trump and his staff were again waving away expert opinion on how to effectively limit the viruss spread. On Wednesday, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control, told Congress that wearing masks is the most important near-term protection Americans have against the virus, potentially more so than even a vaccine. Trump said Redfield was confused. Mark Meadows, Trumps chief of staff, dismissed the mask advice Thursday, saying hed gladly wear a mask every day if that made the difference, but it doesnt. Evidence, schmevidence. During a televised town hall on Tuesday, Trump said there are a lot of people think that masks are not good, and backed up that claim with an example: Waiters. Who you gonna believe? The doctor who founded a university virology lab and then was appointed by Trump to lead the agency responsible for studying and responding to pandemics? Or the guy who comes by your table to ask if everything tastes all right? Trumps answer is clear. He is determined to insist that any threat from the pandemic has already passed and, other than a vaccine that he says will arrive imminently, no further action is needed by his government. We are going to be OK, and it is going away, Trump told the town hall, before misspeaking in a way that critics found unintentionally apt: Youll develop a herd mentality. Its the Neverland approach to government: turning away from the realities of the adult world by focusing on a happy thought. At that town hall, he showcased exactly the same attitude toward health insurance coverage, which most voters identified as the biggest issue in the U.S. before the pandemic struck. A voter born with a serious medical condition asked Trump about his governments persistent legal efforts to repeal the protections in Obamacare for those with pre-existing conditions. Amid a barrage of misrepresentations about his Democratic opponent Joe Bidens plan, Trump falsely claimed that Biden would get rid of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions while claiming his own plan will protect them. Trump talks constantly about his own beautiful government health insurance plan, and has since 2016. But no such plan exists in more than three years as president, Trump has not put one forward. Hes attempted to repeal Obamacare through the courts, while offering nothing but vague promises as an alternative. I have it all ready, and its a much better plan, he said at the town hall. Asked repeatedly what the plan is, he ignored the question. Health care, coronavirus, climate change. Those are, respectively, the biggest ongoing political issue in the U.S., the biggest immediate crisis in the U.S., and the biggest long-term existential threat to the U.S. and the world. Trump showcased an approach this week to all three that amounts to denying evidence and reality, actively doing things that could make the problems worse, and insisting vaguely that the problem is about to go away. Its a happy thought. I wish science agreed with you, Wade Crowfoot told the president on Monday to which Trump could laugh before boarding a plane and leave the locals to confront the flames consuming their state. But even as he waved the evidence away, the smoke followed the president back to Washington. Read more about: Scott Sauls on embodying Christ's gentleness in culture; why Christians should feel politically 'homeless' Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment In an us vs. them culture, Christians are called to embody the gentleness of Christ, which is the secret weapon to diffusing anger, easing tension, and defeating evil and injustice. Thats according to Scott Sauls, senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, who in an interview with The Christian Post, said hes concerned by the number of professing Christians caught up in partisan bickering. Its easy to conflate our Christianity with our politics as if the two were one and the same, he said. The reality is, neither the political left nor the right is clean in terms of their representation of the Kingdom of God. Sauls, who previously served as the lead and preaching pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City alongside Pastor Tim Keller, encouraged Christians to become more nuanced in our political engagement, become willing to critique the party that we align with, and also affirm the party that we don't align with. In some respects, we ought to feel politically homeless, he said. And that doesn't mean we all need to become moderates. But we all need to transcend the American political system just as Jesus transcended the political system that He was part of. When we give our whole selves to Jesus, it will become utterly impossible for us to give ourselves wholesale to a political party. Sauls stressed that there is a more Christian way than the partisan way, adding: We need become people of a gentle answer. According to the pastor, before Christians are able to truly practice gentleness both within the church and to the outside world, they must be in a position first to receive what Christ has for us as the one who calls Himself the one who has meek and gentle and heart who gives rest to the weary into the burdened. Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus exemplified what it means to be gentle, Sauls said. He befriends the sinner in all of us instead of rejecting us; He goes toward us in forgiveness and grace; He reforms the pharisee in us and leads us to a place of humility, and disarms the cynic in all of us, the pastor explained. Once you have an understanding of where you stand with the one who calls Himself meek and gentle, then we can get into the harder conversations of what real gentleness looks like, he continued. When we practice gentleness, we grow thicker skin. We do not anger easily. We receive criticism graciously. We forgive all the way. We bless our own betrayers. We need to understand the posture of Jesus before we can presume to become like Him, he stressed. We become like Him by being with Him. Sauls latest book, A Gentle Answer, offers a vision for how Christians can practice gentleness in a culture largely defined by outrage and cynicism. The idea for the book, Sauls told CP, was conceived two years ago, a time he described as the midway point between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. 2016 did not go very well in terms of being a unifying season, even among Christians, he recalled. So I thought 2020 would be a good time to present a better way of engaging with one another. But when 2020 hit, we didnt even start talking about the election until a few weeks ago because so much has happened between COVID-19 and racial pain and Jeffrey Epstein, etc., Sauls said. I'm actually simultaneously grieved that the world is in the condition that it is right now, but also thankful to be able to be part of the conversation with what seems like a timely release for anything that has to do with gentleness, he added. Though sometimes used interchangeably, niceness and gentleness are wildly different and sometimes opposing practices, the pastor contended. Jesus doesnt fit the description of being nice. He was gentle, he argued. Niceness is dysfunctional. It sweeps hard things under the rug. It says peace, peace when there is no peace. It treats wounds lightly and superficially. It tends to run away from pain and difficult emotions rather than dealing with them head-on. In contrast, gentleness enters in when there's pain, injustice, injury, unfair treatment, or bullying, he said. Niceness doesn't confront anything, he said. Gentleness does confront, because in order to love what is good you've also got to hate what is evil. To hate what is evil means to fight it. Christianity, when it sees what's wrong with the world, especially when human beings are being hurt and injured, stands up to the bully and it comes to the defense of the vulnerable and of the weak. True Christianity, according to Sauls, is kind, humble, politically balanced and not on the partisan edges, quick to listen, and demonstrates unparalleled generosity toward the needs of the world. And I think thats the majority of Christians, but thats not the narrative that is presented about evangelicals, he said. The statistic that 80% of evangelicals put Donald Trump in office turns into, 80% of evangelicals are enthusiasts about a man who has been predatorial toward women, tells lies, is a racist and all the other accusations about him. Theres this label that is assigned to the worst kind of caricature. But in reality, Christians are on the frontlines nationwide working toward racial reconciliation and justice, Sauls said. Christians are leading on the ground. Were not perfect, but wherever you see real repair starting to happen, you will see Christian churches and communities and individuals in the center of the conversation. The real story is very different than the public narrative, he added. Even though we do have our issues that we do not repent of, and reform is certainly necessary, the story that's told in public is often different than the story on the ground. When it comes to pastors addressing political issues from the pulpit, Sauls said congregants should leave confused as to where we stand politicly. As long as we're being comprehensive and preaching the Kingdom of God on the issues and not slanting toward a partisan direction in our preaching or using the pulpit to push an imperfect human agenda, then absolutely we should address the issues, he said. But, he added, if were preaching the whole Christ and the whole message of the Kingdom of God and the whole counsel of God, we're going to be too conservative for our liberal friends and too liberal for our conservative friends. Sauls said hes optimistic about the future of Christianity in America. He predicted that the country is in for a sifting further accelerated by the COVID-19 lockdowns. We're probably going to see a good bit of drop off from those who aren't deeply committed to Christ but maybe went to church for other reasons, while were probably going to see an even deeper commitment on the part of those who seek to follow Christ faithfully. Well also see a doubling down on faithfulness and service and loving your neighbor. What we do have is the promise that Jesus gave that He will build His church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it, he reminded. This may be a season of pruning and refining, but the Church will not go away. It will not disappear or die. We have the promise of the resurrection. Social media executives should play a key role in ensuring the legitimacy of the 2020 election, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats suggested in a New York Times op-ed Thursday. In the article, Coats, a former Trump administration official, recommended the U.S. create a new nonpartisan commission that would help reassure the American public that their votes would be counted and would aim to monitor forces attempting to undermine the election. Coats said such a panel should include "national leaders personally committed by oath to put partisan politics aside even in the midst of an electoral contest of such importance." He suggested those members could include "congressional leaders, current and former governors, 'elder statespersons,' former national security leaders, perhaps the former Supreme Court justices David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, and business leaders from social media companies." Those companies have already played a significant role in how voters view the elections. American officials and Congress found that Russian agents used social media platforms in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to sow disinformation and division. Since then, tech platforms including Facebook, Google and Twitter have taken steps to counter misinformation on their sites and inject greater transparency and accountability into their ads platforms. Twitter has stopped offering political advertisements altogether. But as the 2020 election rapidly approaches, social media companies have continued to grapple with many of the same and new challenges that they faced in 2016. Twitter has begun to ramp up its use of a new policy allowing it to flag messages that violate its standards from world leaders including President Donald Trump, without removing them. After it fact-checked Trump's tweets about mail-in voting for the first time in May, Trump soon introduced an executive order seeking to undermine a key legal shield that protects social media companies from liability for their moderation practices and users' posts. Facebook has come under fire from even its own employees for taking a more conservative approach to moderating the president's speech on its platform. The coronavirus pandemic has created a new opportunity to introduce doubt in voters' minds about whether their votes will be counted if they mail in their ballots. Twitter's first fact-check of Trump's tweets involved his message suggesting mail-in ballots would likely be subject to fraud, even though there is little evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud. Social media platforms will also have to remain vigilant about claims of victory in the days and weeks after the election, as the expected increase in mail-in voting will likely delay results past Election Day. Coats said the commission he envisions would be created by an emergency legislative action that would define the exact mandate and composition of the panel. Coats, a Republican former senator from Indiana, served as Trump's DNI from March 2017 until August 2019. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. WATCH: Can the U.S. economy survive a delayed election? The president told Ronald Lauder that the challenges the region is currently facing require more coordination and regular consultation between Egypt and the US President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi met with Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, in Cairo on Thursday, for discussions on the latest developments in the peace process in the Middle East, as well as some aspects of Egyptian-American relations. According to a presidential statement, El-Sisi said that Egypt and the United States have strategic relations, stressing the importance of strengthening the frameworks for mutual bilateral cooperation to develop these relations in all fields. El-Sisi said the challenges the region is witnessing require more coordination and regular consultation between the two friendly countries, especially with regard to pushing efforts to reach political solutions to the crises that plague the region, as well as confronting the threat of terrorism and extremist ideology. The statement said that Lauder hailed the distinguished relations between the two countries at various levels, expressed appreciation for Egypt's role in establishing peace and stability in the Middle East under the leadership of El-Sisi, in addition to confronting terrorism and extremist ideology, and promoting the values of tolerance, peace and coexistence. Presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said in the statement that the meeting, which was attended by the head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel, touched upon the latest developments in the Middle East peace process. In this regard, El-Sisi stressed the importance of pushing international efforts towards resuming negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, with the aim of a just and comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian cause in accordance with the constants of international references. This, the president said, would open horizons of stability, prosperity and peaceful coexistence for all the peoples of the region. Search Keywords: Short link: Bolton, the coronavirus hotspot of England, has only two coronavirus patients on hospital wards, the most up-to-date NHS data shows. Despite an infection rate of more than 120 cases per 100,000 people and local lockdown rules preventing people from meeting anyone they don't live with, fears about the virus spreading translate to only two people in hospital. This suggests the vast majority of Covid-19 infections there are not making people seriously ill, currently. But this could quickly change if the outbreak continues to grow. And across all the 18 'intervention' areas listed on Public Health England's watchlist, there are a total of just 141 people in hospital beds because of the disease. This is from a population of more than 5.4million people, all of whom must follow strict lockdown rules. Analysis shows this equates to just one patient in hospital with Covid-19 for every 38,000 people, in England's worst-hit areas. The NHS data, from September 3, is the most recently available and shows that a total 468 people were in hospital on that date across England. Tameside and Glossop NHS Trust had the most people in hospital, with 27, but there are hospital trusts outside of lockdown rules that have more patients than those forced into restrictions. Sheffield, for example, has 18 patients and residents face only national rules, while East Lancashire Hospitals, which treats a comparable number of patients (700,000 per year compared to one million in Sheffield) has just six patients but the areas it serves Blackburn and Pendle are in one of the strictest lockdowns in the country. Bolton Hospital (pictured) has the fewest patients in hospital of any area under a local lockdown two as of September 3 despite having the highest infection rate in England, NHS data shows Speaking to MPs today, Oxford University's Professor Carl Heneghan said hospitalisations should be taken into account when looking at local areas. He said too much emphasis is being put on infection rates and that authorities are making knee-jerk decisions when numbers of cases rise. He said in Parliament's Science and Technology Committee: '[The] question is what impact is it having? 'For instance I looked at Bolton NHS Trust and saw that there were two patients with Covid in hospital there right now. NUMBER OF COVID-19 PATIENTS ON INTENSIVE CARE VENTILATORS AT TWO-MONTH HIGH IN ENGLAND The number of Covid-19 patients on intensive care ventilators in hospitals in England has hit its highest level for two months as cases of the disease are rising. As of Tuesday, September 15, there were 115 people needing the life support machines, which force air into people's lungs when they are unable to breathe on their own. This was up 22 per cent in a week, from 80 on September 8, and the highest figure since 137 on Tuesday, July 21 eight weeks ago. Patients on ventilators are the most seriously ill of all coronavirus patients and have a survival rate of around 50 per cent. Ventilators are usually a doctor's last resort for when the patient's lungs no longer work on their own. The increase in ventilator patients has come as more people are being admitted to hospital in general with coronavirus, whether critically ill or not. As of Monday, September 14, an average 140 people per day were being admitted to NHS England hospitals each day. This was up almost three times on the average 56 per day two weeks ago and from a low of 45 in the last week of August. There were 172 admissions on September 14, compared to 79 on September 2. Advertisement 'So I think that's where you start to provide context as opposed to just throwing the [infection rate] number. 'And I think we do need to have now more data that allows people to put the information in context as opposed to just seeing a number, think it's rising and then panic.' NHS England data shows that, after Tameside, Manchester University NHS Trust was the worst affected of local lockdown areas, with 25 patients in hospital. Next was Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust, which serves Oldham, Rochdale and Bury a population of around 650,000 people where 19 people are in hospital. Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, which serves Preston, has two patients in hospital, the lowest number of any area under local restrictions. Hospital trusts outside of lockdown areas, but with relatively high numbers of patients on wards, included University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (17); West Hertfordshire Hospitals (15); Barking, Havering & Redbridge in London (14); and King's College Hospital in London (14). There have been calls in the past to take hospitalisations more seriously as a measure for local lockdown decisions, instead of looking solely at cases. Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of backbench MPs, said the number of cases was a 'volatile' measure because it is heavily influenced by how much testing is being done in an area. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Graham said: 'My view is that it would be sensible to take a broader basket of measures in making the judgement about these things. 'And in particular the thing which it seems to me is very odd not to include, is evidence on the number of hospital admissions. 'Because we have seen evidence in recent months there has been bumping about in positive test results, but the number of hospital admissions has carried on falling steadily.' But his suggestion was ridiculed by scientists who branded it 'shocking ignorance'. Professor John Ashton, a former regional director of public health for north-west England and author of Blinded by Corona, told MailOnline the comments showed 'a lack of understanding of this pandemic'. He said: 'If you only make decisions based on people being so sick they are coming into hospital, its like making decisions to have lifeguards or rescue boats downstream on a river and not doing anything about the people who are falling in the river upstream.' His time in power was marked by corruption allegations and suspicious deaths, including that of Modibo Keita in detention. But Mr. Traore also acquired a reputation for diplomatic skill while serving as chairman of the Organization of African Unity, a precursor to the African Union, working to mediate conflicts including the Mauritania-Senegal border war and first Liberian civil war. One of our goals on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast has been to look into not just our favorite creators and genres but into things that get a lot of buzz but which we really dont know anything about. Manga is a great example of a look what these crazy kids are into today kind of area for many (older) Americans. Deborah Shamoon, an American who teaches Japanese studies at the National University of Singapore and has loved manga since adolescence, here schools manga noobs Mark Linsenmayer and Brian Hirtalong with Erica Spyres, who also doesnt read manga but at least has a complicated history with anime. What are the barriers for Americans (whether comics readers or not) to appreciate manga? For some of us, manga is actually easier to appreciate than anime given the latters sound and pacing. We talk about mangas publication history, how fast to read manga, and its use of iconography to depict sound and movement. Deborah gives us the truth about the famed Osamu Tezukas place as god of comics; we discuss his Metropolis, Astro Boy and Princess Knight, which is not as you may have been told the first shojo manga, meaning aimed at girls. Shojo manga is Deborahs specialty: She wrote a book called Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls Culture in Japan . We discuss The Heart of Thomas, Sailor Moon, and how Tezuka actually copied that big-eye style from Hideko Mizunos Silver Petals. Do you need to get a handle on these old classics to appreciate the newer stuff thats made such a dent in America like Death Note? Probably not, though some Akira wouldnt hurt you. A few of the articles we looked at included: We also looked at some best of lists to know what titles to try to look at: Deborah recommends the Japanese Media and Popular Culture Site from the University of Tokyo for academic writing on manga. She wrote an article on shojo manga for that site that sums up the history conveyed in her book. Shes also been interviewed for the Japan Station and Meiji at 150 podcasts. Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus discussion that you can only hear by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network. Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast is the first podcast curated by Open Culture. Browse all Pretty Much Pop posts Lugano, Switzerland, 18 September 2020 - Access to cancer medicines is highly unequal across Europe both for new drugs in development because of uneven access to clinical trials and for currently approved drugs due to huge disparities in healthcare spending by different countries, according to results from studies presented at ESMO 2020. (1,2) Countries in Western Europe run a higher number of clinical trials for novel cancer treatments than countries in Eastern and Central Europe, showed an analysis of clinical trials active in different countries (1) that indicated large differences in access to new treatments in development for cancer patients depending on where they live. "Our study gives us proof of what we previously suspected, that there is a huge asymmetry in the number of clinical trials for cancer treatments in different countries," said study co-author Dr Teresa Amaral, from University Hospital Tubingen, Germany. "Having access to clinical trials confers several benefits to cancer patients. It means they can potentially access novel therapies earlier during the trial phase rather than having to wait for licensing and reimbursement," she explained. "Also, all trial participants benefit from the regular follow-up and monitoring involved in taking part in a clinical study." The researchers searched the Clinicaltrials.gov database for interventional clinical trials in adults with tumours between 2009 and 2019. Analysing the number of trials in 34 European countries revealed huge differences. Albania had the lowest number of active clinical trials for cancer (0.14 clinical trials per 100 000 population) while Belgium had the highest number (11.06 per 100 000). Further results showed that the total number of oncology clinical trials performed in European countries increased by 33% between 2010 and 2018, with a much greater increase in early phase trials (61% increase in phase I-II trials) than late-phase trials (7% increase in phase 2-3 trials). Amaral suggested that this might be due to a shift in clinical trial design: "There is no longer a clear progression from first-in-human studies to phase 1, phase 2 and then much larger phase 3 trials. Instead we tend to have more trials in earlier phases, namely phase II, which might expand to later phases." The increase in early phase trials was again asymmetrical and the growth rate depended on the baseline number of trials. "Countries need to have the necessary infrastructure and expertise to conduct trials of any type, including early phase trials." "A higher number of phase I trials is a sign of more active research going on in a particular country, with the appropriate infrastructure and necessary incentives to conduct clinical trials," said Thomas Cerny, Professor of medical oncology at the University of Berne, Switzerland and member of the ESMO Principles of Clinical Trials and Systemic Therapy Faculty. "And the only way to develop new cancer drugs is to be able to put patients into clinical trials," he added. "The difference in the number of clinical trials per head of population, with more trials in wealthier countries, means access to clinical trials and innovative drugs is just not possible for cancer patients living in many less wealthy countries." Although the study is descriptive, he considered it made best use of the available data to evaluate differences in clinical trial availability in different countries. He added: "Clinical studies require a solid infrastructure in terms of personnel and equipment, and this depends on a country's overall financial situation. These requirements are increasing so the gap in clinical trial capacity is not likely to reduce soon." "There is still a lot to do to increase access to clinical trials for cancer patients in different countries," agreed Amaral. "The voluntary harmonisation procedure, in which trial sponsors can submit trial documentation to several countries at the same time, has streamlined the process and reduced the approval time for trials. But more is needed to increase access to clinical trials in countries where the number of trials is currently low." The research group is currently exploring the reasons for the asymmetry to inform potential solutions. A health economics analysis also reported at ESMO 2020 showed that wealthier European countries spent ten times as much as poorer countries per inhabitant on cancer medicines in 2018, following a similar pattern to that seen for clinical trials. (2) "There was a huge difference in spending on cancer medicines," said lead author Dr Nils Wilking, from the Karolinska Instituet, Stockholm, Sweden. "We found that inequalities are mainly related to countries' economic strength and not to the disease burden of cancer." The researchers estimated cancer-specific health expenditure for 31 countries (EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK) using national figures for 2018. Results showed the top spenders on cancer medicines were Austria, Germany and Switzerland (Euros 90 to 108 per capita) while the lowest spenders were the Czech Republic, Latvia and Poland (Euros 13 to 16). The largest differences in spending between countries were seen for immuno-oncology drugs. "There are two main factors accounting for the differences in spending on cancer medicines: one is shortage of money and the other is drugs not being approved for use by some healthcare systems," suggested Wilking. He noted that, although the study did not consider data at the individual patient level, the difference observed in access to cancer medicines would affect patient outcomes. Cerny commented: "It is difficult to assess the real costs in any country because systems vary in different countries and there are many hidden costs not reflected in the databases used. But the study essentially shows the more a country has to spend, the more its inhabitants have access to cancer medicines." Considering how to widen access to cancer medicines, Wilking suggested: "We need a model in which we incentivise innovation of valuable medicines through outcome-based payment models and consider a disease area and what a society is able to pay for treatment." He added: "The work of health technology assessment organisations has been important and a critical scrutiny and evaluation of new drugs should always be applied." ### Notes to Editors Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO Virtual Congress 2020 Official Congress Hashtag: #ESMO20 Disclaimer This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of these abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct. References (1) Abstract LBA66_PR 'Disparities in access to oncology clinical trials in Europe in the period 2009-2019' will be presented by Ana Carneiro during the Proffered paper session "Public Policy" on Monday, 21 September 2020, 14:25-16:05 CEST. Annals of Oncology, Volume 31 Supplement 4, September 2020 (2) Abstract 1588MO_PR 'A comparative study on costs of cancer and access to medicines in Europe' will be presented by Niels Wilking during the Mini Oral session "Public Policy" available on demand?as of Friday, 18 September at 09:00 CEST. Annals of Oncology, Volume 31 Supplement 4, September 2020 About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With more than 25,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 160 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. ESMO is committed to offer the best care to people with cancer, through fostering integrated cancer care, supporting oncologists in their professional development, and advocating for sustainable cancer care worldwide. http://www.esmo.org LBA66_PR - Disparities in access to oncology clinical trials in Europe in the period 2009-2019 A. Carneiro1, T.M.S. Amaral2, M. Brandao3, M. Scheffler4, K. Bol5, R. Ferrara6, M. Jalving7, G. Lo Russo8, I. Marquez-Rodas9, A. Matikas10, L. Mezquita11, G. Morgan12, C.E. Onesti13, S. Pilotto14, E. Saloustros15, D. Trapani16 1 Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Oncology, Lund University, Skane University Hospital, Lund, Sweden, 2Dermatooncology Center, University Hospital Tubingen, Tuebingen, PT, Germany, 3Clinical Trial Support Unit, Institute Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium, 4Lung Cancer Group Cologne, Department I of Internal Medicine, Uniklinik Koln, Cologne, Germany, 5Medical Oncology Department, Herlev Hospital - National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, Herlev, Denmark, 6Medical Oncology, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano, Milan, Italy, 7Department of Medical Oncology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, 8Dipartimento Oncologia Toraco-Polmonare, Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano - Fondazione IRCCS, Milan, Italy, 9Medical Oncology, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Maranon - Fundacion Investigacion Biomedica, Madrid, Spain, 10Oncology-Pathology Department, Karolinska University Hospital-Solna, Stockholm, Sweden, 11Medical Oncology Department, Hospital Clinic y Provincial de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 12Oncology, Skane University Hospital, Lund, Sweden, 13Medical Oncology department, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sart Tilman, Liege, Belgium, 14Section of Oncology, Department of Medicine, University of Verona School of Medicine and Verona University Hospital Trust, Verona, Italy, 15Department of Oncology, University Hospital of Larissa, Larissa, Greece, 16IRCCS, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan, Italy Background: Clinical trials are essential for advancing cancer treatment. Yet, there is limited data on their distribution and access in Europe. To ascertain the extent of potential inequalities in access to clinical trials in Europe, we compared their distribution among European countries. Methods: The Clinicaltrials.gov database was searched for interventional clinical trials in adults with neoplasms. Available data from phase I-III trials between 06/2009 to 06/2019 in Europe were retrieved. We considered the number of clinical trials registered in each country and one "trial-entry" was defined as one trial/country. Results: In total, 18454 trial-entries were identified, of which 12% were phase I, 10% phase I/II, 32% phase II, 2% phase II/III and 44% phase III; 74% were industry-sponsored, 15% were academic and 11% were an academic/industry partnership. The number of trials per country varied from 2.48 in Central/Eastern Europe to 5.33/100 000 inhabitants in Northern Europe. The proportion of phase I-II trials was higher in the Southern and Western regions (13-15%) compared to Central/Eastern and Northern regions (4-9%). The number of trial-entries/100 000 inhabitants/country ranged from 0.14 (Albania) to 10.7 (Belgium). Between 2010 and 2018, the total number of trials per country in Europe increased by 33%. The increase in early-phase trials was larger (phase I-II, 61%) than in late-phase trials (phase II-III, 7%). Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Greece and Norway registered the largest percentage increase in early-phase trials, while Ireland, Spain, Norway, Italy and Belgium led the largest percentage increase in late-phase trials. Five countries dominated in terms of an increase in the absolute number of total trial-entries in both early- and late-phase trials: Spain (90/40), France (45/16), UK (45/13), Italy (38/19) and Belgium (35/12). During this period there was no significant variation in the distribution of industry and academic sponsored trials but an increase in industry/academic partnerships was observed (approximately 8%). Conclusions: The number of clinical trials varies greatly among European regions resulting in potential asymmetries in patients' access to clinical trials. The disparities in access to oncology trials need to be addressed by all the stakeholders. Legal entity responsible for the study: The authors Funding: Has not received any funding Disclosure: T.M.S. Amaral: Honoraria (self), Travel/Accommodation/Expenses: Novartis; Honoraria (self), Travel/Accommodation/Expenses: BMS; Honoraria (self): Pierre Fabre; Honoraria (self): CeCaVa. M. Brandao: Speaker Bureau/Expert testimony, Travel/Accommodation/Expenses: Roche/GNE. M. Scheffler: Advisory/Consultancy, Speaker Bureau/Expert testimony: Boehringer Ingelheim, AMGEN, AstraZeneca, BMS, Roche, Pfizer, Takeda; Research grant/Funding (self): AMGEN, Dracen. R. Ferrara: Advisory/Consultancy: MSD. M. Jalving: Advisory/Consultancy: MERCK, BMS, NOVARTIS, PIERRE FABRE, TESARO, ASTRA ZENECA; Research grant/Funding (self): BMS, ABBVIE, MERCK, CRISTAL THERAPEUTICS. G. Lo Russo: Advisory/Consultancy: MSD, BMS, ASTRAZENECA; Travel/Accommodation/Expenses: BMS, ROCHE. I. Marquez-Rodas: Advisory/Consultancy: BMS, MSD, NOVARTIS, ROCHE, PIERRE FABRE, AMGEN, ASTRA ZENECA, REGENERON, SANOFI, HIGHLIGHT THERAPEUTICS, INCYTE, GSK. L. Mezquita: Research grant/Funding (self): Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim; Non-remunerated activity/ies, Lectures and educational activities: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tecnofarma, AstraZeneca, Roche; Advisory/Consultancy: Roche Diagnostics, Roche; Travel/Accommodation/Expenses: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche; Research grant/Funding (self), International Mentorship Program : AstraZeneca. S. Pilotto: Advisory/Consultancy, Speaker Bureau/Expert testimony: Astra-Zeneca, Eli-Lilly, BMS, Boehringer Ingelheim, MSD and Roche. E. Saloustros: Advisory/Consultancy: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche; Speaker Bureau/Expert testimony: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche, Amgen, BMS. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest. 1588MO_PR - A comparative study on costs of cancer and access to medicines in Europe N. Wilking1, G. Bradvik2, P. Lindgren3, C. Svedman2, B. Jonsson4, T. Hofmarcher5 1 Oncology and pathology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2The Swedish Institute for Health Economics, Lund, Sweden, 3Karolinska Institutet, The Swedish Institute for Health Economics, Lund, Sweden, 4Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden, 5Lund University, The Swedish Institute for Health Economics, Lund, Sweden Background: Costs and value of new cancer treatments are often causing headlines without being discussed in a larger context. This study estimates the cost of cancer and access to medicines in Europe in 2018 and extends a previous analysis for 1995-2014. Methods: Cancer-specific health expenditure for 31 countries (EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK) were derived from national estimates. Data on cancer drug sales were obtained from IQVIA. Productivity loss from premature mortality was estimated from data from Eurostat and the WHO. Productivity loss from morbidity and informal care costs were estimated based on previous studies. Results: The total cost of cancer was EUR 199 billion in 2018. Total costs ranged from EUR 160 per capita in Romania to EUR 578 in Switzerland (after adjustment for price differentials). Health expenditure on cancer care were EUR 103 billion, of which EUR 32 billion were spent on cancer drugs. Informal care costs were EUR 26 billion. The total productivity loss was EUR 70 billion, composed of EUR 50 billion from premature mortality and EUR 20 billion from morbidity. Patient access to cancer medicines was much greater in wealthier than poorer countries in 2018, in terms of value and volume. The top spenders were Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (EUR 92 to EUR 108 per capita), whereas Czechia, Latvia, and Poland spent the least (EUR 13 to EUR 16). The largest country differences were seen in immuno-oncology medicines. Between 1995 and 2018, cancer incidence increased by 50% in Europe, but cancer mortality increased only by 20%. Health spending on cancer doubled from EUR 52 billion to EUR 103 billion (in 2018 prices and exchange rates), but the share of cancer care on the total health expenditure remained stable at around 4-7%. A shift from treatment in inpatient care to ambulatory care has likely saved costs. Expenditure on cancer medicines tripled from EUR 10 billion to EUR 32 billion between 2005 and 2018 (excluding confidential rebates). Productivity loss from premature mortality decreased over time, linked to mortality reductions in working-age patients. Conclusions: There are large and persistent country differences in spending on cancer care, access to new cancer medicines and outcomes in Europe. Inequalities are mainly related to countries' economic strength and not to the disease burden of cancer. Legal entity responsible for the study: The Swedish Institute for Health Economics, Lund, Sweden Funding: European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Brussels, Belgium (unrestricted grant) Disclosure: N. Wilking: Advisory/Consultancy, This study has been supported by an unrestricted grant from EFPIA: Bayer, BMS, EFPIA,Eisai, Oasmia, Roche, Sanofi,. G. Bravik: Advisory/Consultancy, IHE conducts research and evaluations for a large number of for-profit health care companies: IHE and EFPIA (unrestricited grant). P. Lindgren: Advisory/Consultancy, IHE conducts research and evaluations for a large number of for-profit health care companies: IHE and EFPIA (unrestricted grant). C. Svedman: Advisory/Consultancy, IHE conducts research and evaluations for a large number of for-profit health care companies: IHE and EFPIA (unrestricted grant). B. Jonsson: Advisory/Consultancy, IHE and EFPIA (unrestricted grant): Bayer, BMS, AZ, Allergan, Celgene, Jansen, Takeda, Vifor, Pfizer, Novartis. T. Hofmarcher: Advisory/Consultancy, IHE conducts research and evaluations for a large number of for-profit health care companies: IHE and EFPIA (unrestricted grant). In this article AUSC-GB A man walks past a closed and boarded up restaurant in the City of London on August 21, 2020. Tolga Akmen | AFP | Getty Images SINGAPORE The importance of China's role in the world economy has not diminished despite rising geopolitical tensions, said Douglas Flint, chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen. "I think China is hugely important to the global economy and to global trade," said Flint, who spoke to CNBC's Nancy Hungerford during this year's virtual Singapore Summit. "Seven months ago, every single company in the world virtually saw its growth opportunities in Asia, led by China. I don't think that's changed," he said on Wednesday. A very strong middle class and the desire to consume in a different way will continue to drive the economy, he said. Business operates under the umbrella of a geopolitical relationship, and when that relationship is tense, it is more difficult for business to operate. Douglas Flint chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen But Flint acknowledged that geopolitical tensions can present new challenges for companies. "Business operates under the umbrella of a geopolitical relationship, and when that relationship is tense, it is more difficult for business to operate," he said. "Having said that, at the business level, our own relationships with our counterparts and clients in China continues to be very strong. It is not impacted at that level, but obviously there's an overriding political relationship that makes things difficult." He also pointed out that there's a difference between the political rhetoric and actual moves on the ground. "There are many elements in the Chinese economy that are continuing to open up, and we've seen many of the major U.S. firms BlackRock, Vanguard, JPMorgan beginning to expand their operations, even during this period in China," Flint said. That shows continued progress toward the integration of the Chinese economy into the global economy that both sides have aspired to, he said. "But the political rhetoric is somewhat distant from what's happening on a commercial side. I think we need to try and bring the two back together and, as I said, I think that should be done through engagement." Weaning off fiscal support Flint also pointed out that many economies have become dependent on government support as a result of the coronavirus crisis, and it will be difficult to wean them off aid. "That government support was timely," he said. "It was extremely heavy in terms of its impact, but it can't go on forever." Countries rolled out generous fiscal packages to help businesses and individuals in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns. However, concern has grown over what will happen when that support is withdrawn or runs out. "I think the challenge for governments across the world is how to wean the economy off governmental support," he added. How to get the economy functioning in an independent way again ... is going to be very important. Douglas Flint chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) Revision of the manual on the granting of early release of prisoners with good behavior is done and is up for printing, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Thursday. Actual copies can be sent to the various wardens of the jails and our prison facilities and prison farms across the country, he told CNN Philippines The Source. The updated manual details offenses that would disqualify inmates from the Good Conduct Time Allowance privilege as provided by the Department of Justice. Already barred from obtaining credits under the new implementing rules of the Expanded GCTA law are heinous crime convicts, recidivists, escapees, and habitual delinquents. Guevarra said the manual provides a clearer definition and classification of heinous crime to help guide authorities in their computation of prison terms. We had to go and identify, categorize certain crimes and offenses alin dito 'yung matatawag na heinous, alin 'yung hindi (which ones can be classified as heinous, and which ones are not)? So that is one of the main obstacles that had to be clarified, the Justice chief explained. The GCTA law was thrust into the spotlight again recently following the case of United States Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton, who was released last week for good behavior. The court said Pembertons accumulated jail time had already exceeded 10 years, his original sentence for killing Filipino transgender woman Jennifer Laude. READ: Laude family's lawyer challenges basis for Pemberton's early release Debates on Pembertons qualification for GCTA credits, however, died down when President Rodrigo Duterte granted absolute pardon to the American serviceman, who was deported to the US over the weekend. Johnson is speaker at Northern State event Monday U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson will speak at the grand opening of Northern State University's Center for Public History and Civic Engagement. Derry representatives have stressed the need for long-term sustainable funding for a suicide prevention service in the city which has helped over 475 people. DUP MLA Gary Middleton tabled a motion calling for permanent funding for Derrys Community Crisis Intervention Service (CCIS). He said the Foyle constituency continues to see some of the highest rates of self-harm in the country with elevated numbers of individuals engaging in suicidal behaviour at the bridges and river. Statistics point to an increase in incidents, in 2016 there were 309 incidents and in 2018, he said, 898 incidents. Each of these are human beings within our constituency, they are not just statistics. Recent figures will point to a similar shocking trend. Whilst there are many great organisations and charities out there providing vital services, these devastating figures make the case for the need to do things differently. Far too many lives have been lost and families devastated, one life lost is one too many. After years of campaigning by bereaved families and activists, a one year pilot was established by the local council in January 2019. Since then it has received short-term funding with no commitment given to secure its long-term future. The latest announcement of 60k from the Department of Health (DoH) will enable CCIS to continue until March. Mr Middleton welcomed the latest extension but said it was unacceptable that a fight has to be put up to time and time again to have the service funded at a basic level. Employees, volunteers and service users deserve the best and last minute funding decisions only serve to add more stress and challenges in terms of retaining skilled staff. An evaluation report points to the fact it has been successful in terms of its social and economic impact. Referring to statements made by the Health Minister he said we dont need further strategies, we need funding and we need support. People are avoiding emergency departments during the pandemic which further emphasises the need for this service, he added. He recognised the workload the health minister is currently grappling with but made a plea that the same arguments dont have to be rehashed in March 2021. LIFE-SAVING Sinn Fein MLA Martin Anderson said from 1998 to 2018 there were 5,087 people who took their own lives in the North more than the number who died during the Troubles. Derry and the North West has endured a suicide and mental health epidemic, she said, it shakes communities to their core and tears families apart. Yet this service limps on month after month receiving breadcrumbs from the Department of Healths table. The SDLPs Mark H Durkan said this service has unanimous support and the council led the way by establishing the service. Ive heard from people who say they would not be here today had it not been for that community crisis intervention service. He added that the spectre of closure is not the way to run any service but particularly not a service of this nature. The rates of suicide and self-harm in the North West are shocking, theyre scandalous and its just so sad. My thoughts are with all those families devastated by suicide and people battling demons every day. They were supported by other parties during the debate including Gerry Carroll of People Before Profit who said Derry and the North West, like his own constituency of West Belfast, suffers disproportionately from the legacy of deprivation and disinvestment. REVIEW Minister Swann concluded the debate by pointing out that mental health is a cross-cutting issue and the DoH was the only department to respond to CCIS call for funding assistance. A separate funding arrangement is being explored by the DoH and Extern and funding was provided to give them space to carry out that work, he said. Over 475 people have received critical and immediate mental health support thanks to the service. I have no doubt that this has saved lives, he added. Suicide crises place pressures on the police service and he therefore believes that the justice sector should contribute in future along with other departments and authorities. The mental health action plan will review crisis services and it will be concluded by March 2021 and mental health strategy will be published by July. It will make recommendations for future delivery. A Queensland childcare worker has been charged with multiple counts of raping children among more than 100 offences that also include bestiality. Townsville child protection investigation unit detectives will allege the 39-year-old man was indecently assaulting children and recording the offences. The man was employed as a childcare worker in north Queensland. Credit:Unknown Police also said he took images of his victims and distributed them over several years. The north Queensland childcare worker has been charged with 104 offences including multiple counts of rape, indecent treatment, bestiality, making and distributing child exploitation material and supplying dangerous drugs. Actor and comedian Chris Rock opens up on racism, working on Fargo and more in a new interview. With a new show debuting soon during a pandemic, national uprisings and an presidential election, Chris Rock talks about the current state of himself and the world. Read More: Fargo season starring Chris Rock gets premiere date During an interview with the New York Times, the comedian shares how the pandemic has impacted both his comedy and acting. Back in July, Rock traveled to Yellow Springs, Ohio to perform at an event organized by Dave Chappelle. He describes doing stand-up for an audience who came out to watch his show despite the threat of coronavirus. Getty Images When youre in the clubs, you learn the rain crowd is the best crowd. Any time its raining, they really want to be there. The pandemic crowd is really good. Dude, not only do we want to be here, there is nothing else to do. Theres nothing else to watch. Thank you, he remarks. The 55-year-old actor also shares his experience completing the fiulmining for the upocoming television sries Fargo during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its weird, quarantine when youre acting. Acting can be isolating, anyway, and then you throw quarantine into that. Youre in solitary confinement with Netflix and Uber Eats, says Rock. But lets not get it too twisted. Somebody thats in solitary is like, shut the [expletive] up. And then to actually act and get tested every other day, and wear a mask whenever youre not saying your lines. And be cognizant of which zone youre in. Because for Zone A, everyones been tested, but in Zone B, not everyones been tested. Zone C is just, everyones got Covid. Read More: Chris Rock, Mariah Carey, Jamie Foxx, and more to honor Andre Harrell in BET tribute Story continues The I Think I Love My Wife star also shared his opinion on race relations in the United States. According to Rock, racism and discriminatory practices are not going away and the concept of progress being beneficial for White people, not the Black people making the landmark moves. Its real. Its not going away. I said this before, but Obama becoming the president, its progress for white people. Its not progress for Black people. Its the Jackie Robinson thing. Its written like he broke a barrier, as if there werent Black people that could play before him. And thats how white people have learned about racism, he remarks in the feature story. Humanity isnt progress its only progress for the person thats taking your humanity. If a womans in an abusive relationship and her husband stops beating her, you wouldnt say shes made progress, right? But thats what we do with Black people. Were constantly told that were making progress. SANTA MONICA, CA NOVEMBER 11: Jimmy Fallon attends the Peoples Choice Awards 2018 at Barker Hangar on November 11, 2018 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images) Rock also spoke on his Hollywood peer and friend Jimmy Fallon and his recent blackface scandal. theGrio reported, The Tonight Show host apologized back in May for a resurfaced Saturday Night Live skit from 2000 where he wore dark makeup on his face to impersonate Rock for a skit. His actions were defended by Jamie Foxx who according to theGrio called the outrage a stretch. Rock told the Times he was not offended by the blackface. Im friends with Jimmy. Jimmys a great guy. And he didnt mean anything. A lot of people want to say intention doesnt matter, but it does. And I dont think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didnt. Have you subscribed to theGrios podcast Dear Culture? Download our newest episodes now! The post Chris Rock on racism, protests: Humanity isnt progress appeared first on TheGrio. Wuhan pensioner Zhong Hanneng endured every parent's worst nightmare when coronavirus claimed her son in February, and -- alongside other bereaved relatives -- she wants to sue the local government she blames for his death. But they have had their lawsuits abruptly rejected, dozens of others face pressure from authorities not to file, and lawyers are being warned against helping them, according to people involved in the effort. The families accuse the Wuhan and Hubei provincial governments of concealing the outbreak when it first emerged there late last year, failing to alert the public, and bungling the response, allowing Covid-19 to explode out of control. It has killed nearly 3,900 in the city and over 900,000 globally so far. "They say the epidemic was a natural calamity. But these serious outcomes are man-made, and you need to find who's to blame," said Zhong, 67. "Our family is shattered. I can never be happy again." At least five lawsuits have been filed with the Wuhan Intermediate Court, said Zhang Hai, whose elderly father died of the virus and who has emerged as a vocal advocate and spokesman for families of virus victims. Plaintiffs are each seeking around two million yuan ($295,000) in damages and a public apology. But the court has rejected suits on unspecified procedural grounds, said Yang Zhanqing, a veteran Chinese activist now in the US. Yang, who is coordinating two dozen lawyers in China who are secretly advising families, said the rejections have come via curt phone calls -- not through official written explanations, as legally required -- apparently to avoid a paper trail. Staff at the Wuhan court refused AFP requests for comment. - Stonewalling - The virus emerged in Wuhan last December but city authorities initially dragged their feet, pressuring whistle-blowing doctors to keep quiet. The Communist Party continues to downplay responsibility, even questioning whether the pathogen originated in China, while trumpeting its later success in suppressing domestic infections. Story continues It held a grand ceremony in Beijing last week, where President Xi Jinping declared the nation had passed an "extraordinary and historic test" through a swift and transparent response. But Zhong tells a different story. By late January, the contagion was spreading rapidly in Wuhan, but officials had still issued no citywide alarm. With the extended Lunar New Year festival approaching, Zhong and her son Peng Yi -- a 39-year-old primary schoolteacher -- happily shopped at jam-packed stores. Millions of others left Wuhan for the holiday, taking the infection global. "We had no idea the buses were full of the virus... So we went out every day. We didn't even know about masks," Zhong told AFP. On January 24, as Wuhan finally began locking down, she and Peng fell ill. She soon recovered, but he worsened. Fear gripped their household, which included Zhong's husband, Peng's wife, and his seven-year-old daughter. For the next two agonising weeks, they spent long hours in overwhelmed hospitals begging to get him admitted, but without a positive result -- and with testing kits scarce -- he was repeatedly turned away. Peng was finally hospitalised February 6. His family never saw him alive again. He died on a respirator two weeks later. "He must have been so scared, so unhappy, with no family around. I can't imagine how sad he was," said Zhong, breaking down repeatedly. "Did he call out 'Mother'? 'Father'? I don't know." - Never give up - Zhang Hai believes his father was infected at a Wuhan hospital during treatment for an unrelated ailment. He says authorities are waging a campaign to discredit him, suspending his social media accounts and circulating disinformation that the legal efforts are a scam to bilk families. Others also have reported official intimidation, and next-of-kin chat groups have been infiltrated by police, Zhang alleged, blaming Wuhan's government. "They know if I succeed in filing a case, many other families will sue, too," he said. Wuhan's government did not respond to AFP's requests for comment. Zhang said dozens of bereaved relatives have coalesced in chat groups, but most are fearful of taking action. With his initial suit in Wuhan rejected, Zhang filed recently with a higher, provincial-level court. Zhong, the elderly pensioner, plans the same. Until then, Zhang intends to appeal all the way to China's highest court in Beijing, regardless of the personal risks. "My father is my motivation," he said. bur-dma/rox/rma/am/rbu Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 18) - The European Union Parliament denounced the deteriorating state of human rights and press freedom in the Philippines under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. The EU Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday condemning the situation in the country with 626 votes in favor, seven against, and 52 abstentions. The EU lawmakers criticized the alarming extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations committed in the Duterte government's war on drugs. In relation, the EU Parliament acknowledged the June 2020 report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights which flagged the anti-drug war in the country due to its "widespread and systematic killings." READ: UN rights chief says Duterte drug war without regard for due process, human rights It urged EU member states to support a resolution at the ongoing UN Human Rights Council 45th session, which seeks to launch an independent international investigation into human rights violations committed in the Philippines since Duterte assumed the presidency in 2016. The EU resolution also decried the "threats, harassments, intimidation, unfair prosecutions, and violence" against journalists in the country. In particular, the European lawmakers appealed to drop the case against Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. The two journalists of the online news organization were convicted of cyber libel last June 15 in a case filed by businessman Wilfredo Keng. The EU Parliament also urged the Duterte administration to renew the broadcast license of media giant ABS-CBN. The Philippine House of Representatives denied ABS-CBN's bid for a fresh franchise last July 5 citing allegations of dual citizenship of its chairman emeritus Eugenio "Gabby" Lopez III, tax-avoidance schemes, failure to regularize its employees, and biased reporting. The group also says that the Philippine government should drop all politically motivated charges against detained Sen. Leila de Lima. They also called for her release to "freely exercise her rights and duties as an elected representative." The EU lawmakers also expressed serious concerns on the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act, emphasizing that "in no circumstance can advocacy, protest, dissent, strikes and other similar exercises of civil and political rights be considered terrorist acts." The EU Parliament also condemned all forms of violence against women, children, and LGBTQI people, increasing levels of corruption in the Philippine government, and the ongoing procedures to reinstate death penalty. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Thursday the Philippine government has never neglected its responsibility to take care of victims of human rights violations. Roque made the remark in response to the speech of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet during the opening of the UN Human Rights Council's 45th session in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday. She called for an end to the government's policies that have led to killings and human rights violations in the war on drugs. READ: 62 groups ask UN for independent probe on PH killings, human rights abuses ADQ, one of the regions largest holding companies with a broad portfolio of major enterprises spanning key sectors of Abu Dhabis diversified economy, announced it has acquired approximately 22 percent of the issued share capital of Aramex, a leading global provider of comprehensive logistics and transportation solutions. Murtaza Hussain, Acting Chief Investment Officer, M&A and Alternative Investments at ADQ, said: Aramex is a global leader in logistics and transportation, and will complement our logistics investments including Abu Dhabi Ports, Abu Dhabi Airport, and Etihad Rail as we work to expand the logistics ecosystem in the UAE. "Despite the challenging market conditions, we are confident that Aramex has the right approach to continue building on its leadership position in the industry and enhances Abu Dhabis efforts to be a key player in international trade and logistics. With the surge in e-commerce demand this year, their on-the-ground operations and last mile capacity is an important growth area, he said. The shares were acquired through a series of on-market transactions and through an off-market special deal, ADQ said. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, ADQ was established in 2018 as a public joint stock company. It holds a broad portfolio of major enterprises spanning key sectors of Abu Dhabis diversified economy, including utilities, tourism and hospitality, aviation, transportation, logistics, industrial, real estate, media, healthcare, food and agriculture, and financial services. As a strategic partner of the Government of Abu Dhabi, ADQ is committed to supporting the development of Abu Dhabi as a modern, competitive, prosperous and sustainable economy. - TradeArabia News Service Chips are sold almost everywhere, Rodney Smith Jr. says. Even in the middle of nowhere. You can go to the desert in the middle of Nevada, go to a gas station, youll find a bag of chips. Now, in many places that sell snack chips, images of Smiths face will be there too - on bags of Lays potato chips. More precisely, Smiths smile will adorn those bags. As will the story of the charitable organization he founded. Its part of Lays Smiles campaign, highlighting 30 Everyday Smilers making a positive impact on their communities. Smiths organization Raising Men Lawn Care Service provides free lawn care to elderly, disabled, single parents and veterans. In 2016, he founded the organization in Huntsville, the north Alabama city where he resides. Now its spread to all 50 states he says and provides free lawn care for more than 33,000 people. For the next six to eight weeks, Smith and the other 30 Everyday Smilers will appear on literally millions of Lays potato chips bag sold in the U.S. Lays will donate up to $1 million in proceeds from sales of these chips to Operation Smile, a nonprofit dedicated to helping children and adults worldwide receive cleft palate and cleft lip care and surgery. This is the Smiles campaigns third year. Based in Plano, Texas, Lays has raised a $1 million for Operation Smile in each of the first two years. In 2019, more than 71,000 people scanned Lays Smiles bags' QR codes to hear the stories behind the Everyday Smilers. Were very grateful, Smith says, for the opportunity to share our story and also raise money for a good cause like Operation Smile. Because of coronavirus concerns, this year instead of bringing in Everyday Smilers to Dallas for a VIP photo/video shoot, honorees shot self-portraits on their smartphones. Those images were turned into CGI images for the bag designs. Other 2020 Everyday Smilers come from places such as Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, West Hollywood and Detroit. Smith is the lone representative from Alabama, something hes very proud of. Lays original Smiles campaign concept was created with the idea a smile usually triggers another smile, says Lays senior director of marketing Katie Ceclan. The tie-in with Operation Smiles was a natural. There couldnt be a better connection, Ceclan says. Amid 2020s ongoing pandemic, Smiles took on a little extra meaning. Just given everything thats happening, with people wearing masks and you cant see smiles, Ceclan says, we thought its probably the best year to continue this program. So when you are shopping you can still see smiles (on the potato chip bags) even though everyone elses smiles are covered. Hopefully its still triggering that joy for our consumers. A CGI version of Huntsville's Rodney Smith Jr.'s smile appears on potato chip bags in Lays Smiles campaign. (Courtesy Lay's) And what inspired Smith to start Raising Men Lawn Care Service? In 2015, after leaving Huntsvilles Alabama A&M University for the day, where he was studying computer science, Smith saw an elderly mowing a lawn. It looked like he was struggling, Smith says, so I pulled over and helped him out. Later that night, he decided to take the idea further and involve local youths. By having those youths do lawncare for those in need, Raising Men Lawn Care Service teaches kindness, responsibility and service. (And by the way, Smith says girls have always been a part of his organization and theres now a Raising Women Lawn Care Service, too.) It means so much to the people we mow for, he says. A lot of them are on fixed incomes and really cant afford to pay to have their lawn mowed by someone. So we come by and mow it for free and that frees them up for other things they really need. Originally from the British island territory Bermuda, Smith is currently working towards a masters degree in social work. Smith says his smile can be found on three Lays flavors: Kettle Cooked Original, Salt & Vinegar and Cheddar & Sour Cream. (As far as actually eating chips goes, hes partial to Lays Sour Cream & Onion and BBQ flavors.) To be considered for a Lays Everyday Smiler, one needs to be nominated, by someone in their community or by themselves. Smith has no idea who nominated him. And then when (Lays) called me I was really shocked, he says. As part of this years Everyday Smilers packaging, Lays is reissuing three fan-favorite limited-time-only flavors: Fried Pickles with Ranch, Hot Sauce (a Franks RedHot collabo) and Kettle Cooked Beer Cheese. An arm of Frito-Lays/PepsiCo, Lays is a $3 billion brand, Ceclan says. But during coronavirus, even a business that big has had to shapeshift their operations, everything from production to how they talk to their customers. Ceclan says in the early days of the pandemic, consumers were drawn to standby flavors, like Lays Classic, the brands top seller. I think now as people have been at home longer, consumers are looking for some new flavor experiences, she says. So Lays booted up a Flavor Trip line, featuring sapors inspired by travel destination foods, like New York pizza and Los Angeles carnitas street tacos. The 2020 Smiles bags have been on store shelves for a week or so. Smith thinks the first place he saw the packaging with his smile on it was at a Publix grocery store. Hes stocked up on about 20 bags he wants to give to some of the people Raising Men Lawn Care Service mows lawns for. And yeah, he plans on saving a bag or two as keepsakes too. MORE ON CULTURE U.S. Space & Rocket Center: 9 cool things to see/do there right now Jason Isbell concerts to use pods, but not the Spinal Tap kind 10 artists who never did MTV Unplugged but should have 20 new songs by Alabama musicians to know Alabama chef picks 5 condiments to shake up your fridge "The Postal Service is proud to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival off the coast of New England in December 1620," said dedicating official Kristin Seaver, chief retail and delivery officer and executive vice president, U.S. Postal Service. "This stamp reflects the Postal Service's commitment to honor our nation's diversity, heritage and history through our stamp program." Seaver was joined for the ceremony by Dr. George P. Garmany Jr., governor general, General Society of Mayflower Descendants; Michele Pecoraro, executive director, Plymouth 400; and Richard Pickering, deputy director, Plimoth Plantation. The virtual stamp event can be viewed on the Postal Service's Facebook and Twitter pages. Background On Dec. 16, 1620, a ship that carried 102 English passengers completed a perilous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, England, and anchored offshore of today's Plymouth, MA. The Mayflower's passengers would become known to us as Pilgrims, and the story of their settlement in America would inspire future generations and become part of the larger story of the nation's founding ideals. The Pilgrims' story is intertwined with the story of the Wampanoag People of the First Light who made an alliance with the Pilgrims and forged a treaty with them that maintained relative peace for more than 50 years. The Pilgrims might not have survived their first year without the help and advice of the Wampanoag, with whom they celebrated their first harvest in the fall of 1621. The Mayflower Compact, Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving all became part of the enduring legacy of this tiny band of settlers, whom we honor on the 400th anniversary of their arrival in America. Artist Greg Harlin illustrated the stamp, using a combination of watercolor, gouache and acrylics, with some digital refining to convey a scene of desolate beauty at the end of the Pilgrims' harrowing journey to an unfamiliar world. The stamp also features a stylized hawthorn flower printed in intaglio. In England, the hawthorn a member of the rose family is sometimes called a mayflower, as it blooms in May. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp and pane. The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp, which will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce price. News of the stamp is being shared on social media using the hashtag #MayflowerStamp. Postal Products Customers may purchase stamps and other philatelic products through the Postal Store at usps.com/shop, by calling 800-STAMP24 (800-782-6724), by mail through USA Philatelic, or at Post Office locations nationwide. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. Please Note: For U.S. Postal Service media resources, including broadcast-quality video and audio and photo stills, visit the USPS Newsroom. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the USPS YouTube channel, like us on Facebook and enjoy our Postal Posts blog. For more information about the Postal Service, visit usps.com and facts.usps.com. Contact: Roy Betts (C) 202-256-4174 [email protected] usps.com/news SOURCE U.S. Postal Service Related Links http://www.usps.com Protesters showed up to the Simcoe Street courthouse Wednesday holding signs to protest the potential release of the man arrested after a 61-year-old woman was attacked and sexually assaulted last month in Jackson Park. Corby Charles Dewitt, 29 of North Kawartha Township was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, uttering threats to cause death, assault and choking to overcome resistance in the Aug. 17 attack. The attack happened about a kilometre east of the Ackison Road entrance to the park. The woman suffered critical injuries and was airlifted to a Toronto hospital. City police praised two other women who had been in the area who intervened during the attack. Jim Reedyk, co-organizer of the protest, said the reason he wanted to be there Wednesday was because it was Dewitts first court appearance since the attack on Aug. 17. Reedyk said he plans to attend every court appearance to make sure the community knows what is going on for its safety. I dont want the injustice of him getting bail, of him getting out and it is for the safety of the community, Reedyk said. I just want accountability, so many times we dont find out if people are in or out and they always say so and so is to appear this time, so tell us what they were sentences to, tell us if they got bail. Charmaine Magumbe, co-organizer of the protest, said she wants to let the victim of this crime know the community is there in support of her and to hold Dewitt accountable. We want to let, especially the community know that we are there to support the victim, Magumbe said. This is not the first time the offender did this, we want to make it known he has done it before and he has basically gotten out on the streets and we dont want this to happen it has to stop. Linda Briden came out to protest because she was disturbed by what happened in the park and she feels a little less safe because she exercises in Jackson Park every morning with her dog. This is my community I love this community; I feel safe in this community, I walk the streets feeling safe, Briden said. I used that park pretty much every morning, all of a sudden you start to see it through a different lens, and I resent that, I resent not feeling safe in that park. Reedyk said the community should know when and if an accused gets bail and what the justice system is doing to protect the community. I worry, I really worry he might get out and the silence is upsetting, he said. Women ought to know, this community ought to know if he has been given bail or not, its just for the safety of the community. Dewitts next court appearance is set for Sept. 24. Reedyk said he will be there and he has cancelled other plans that he had to attend that day. STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan and his Minister of Defense Jalal Harutyunyan visited different sections of the frontline and were briefed on the tactical situation on September 16. Harutyunyan told the top brass that external security issues are permanently under his governments focus and no effort will be spared to resolve them, the Artsakh Presidents Office said in a news release. President Harutyunyan added that any adventurism of the adversary will receive a hard and devastating counterblow from the Armenian side. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers Thursday that antifa is an ideology, not an organization, testimony that puts him at odds with President Donald Trump, who has said he would designate it a terror group. Wray did not dispute that antifa activists were a serious concern, saying that antifa was a real thing and that the FBI had undertaken any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent extremism, including into individuals who identify with antifa. But, he said, Its not a group or an organization. Its a movement or an ideology. That characterization contradicts the depiction from Trump, who in June singled out antifa short for anti-fascists and an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups as responsible for the violence that followed George Floyd's death. Trump tweeted that the U.S. would be designating antifa as a terrorist organization, even though such designations are reserved for foreign groups and antifa lacks the hierarchical structure of formal organizations. The hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, established after the Sept. 11 attacks to confront the threat of international terrorism focused almost entirely on domestic matters, including violence by white supremacists as well as anti-government extremists. It underscored the shift of attention by law enforcement at a time of intense divisions and polarization inside the country. But one area where foreign threats were addressed was in the presidential election and Russias attempts to interfere in the campaign. Wray sought to make clear the scope of the threats while resisting lawmakers' attempts to steer him into politically charged statements. When asked whether extremists on the left or the right posed the biggest threat, he pivoted instead to an answer about how solo actors, or so-called lone wolves, with easy access to weapons were a primary concern. "We dont we dont really think of threats in terms of left, right, at the FBI. Were focused on the violence, not the ideology, he said later. The FBI director said racially motivated white supremacists have accounted for the most lethal attacks in the U.S. in recent years, though this year the most lethal violence has come from anti-government activists. Wray also affirmed the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the November election, which he said was taking the form of foreign influence campaigns aimed at sowing discord and swaying public opinion as well as efforts to denigrate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. He said that the U.S. had not yet seen targeting of election infrastructure like in 2016. What concerns me the most is the steady drumbeat of misinformation and sort of amplification of smaller cyber intrusions, Wray said. I worry over time that they will contribute over time to a lack of confidence of American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote." He added that would be a perception, not a reality." Trump has resisted the idea of Russian interference aimed at benefiting his campaign and has been eager, along with other administration officials, to talk about intelligence officials' assessment that China prefers that Trump lose to Biden. Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf had been scheduled to appear at the House hearing on worldwide threats but did not testify because of his nomination to be secretary, according to the agency. The agency said in a statement ahead of the hearing that it would be contrary to standard practice to have him testify while his nomination was pending before the Senate. Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement that he was prepared to appear in place of Wolf but that was rejected by the Democratic-controlled committee. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman, began the hearing by noting there is no law prohibiting the testimony of someone facing a confirmation hearing and that Wolf has given multiple media interviews since the president announced his nomination. The Department of Homeland Security ignored a committee subpoena issued Friday for Wolf's appearance, which the Mississippi Democrat said should appall any member of the committee. LOS ANGELESNutaku on Thursday announced its website redesign has entered open beta worldwide. Through a full visual revamp and a whole set of tailor-made features, Nutaku.net said it is set to become the first online gaming platform to roll out an inclusive interface to an adult gaming audience of more than 50 million users. The redesign seeks to pave the way for a much simpler navigation and modernized design. The new website, however, is not just offering players a UI overhaul, as its powered by several community-requested features. Among them, a dynamic search bar allowing users to seek their favorite game from Nutakus large pool of 450+ free-to-play and paid titles, and a preference selector to allow users to customize their experience and show or hide games based on sexual preferences. "The much-awaited redesign reinforces our commitment to offer a high-quality and user-friendly product to anyone looking for the ultimate experience in the adult gaming world," said Brandon Feiden, platform director at Nutaku. "The redesign is night and day compared to our existing website and we thank our dedicated community for their continuous feedback and participation in helping us get Nutaku.net to the next level. Feiden continued, "Were so excited to share this major update with our players, and the world, as this 'new' Nutaku is up to the standards our community of users and developers have come to expect as weve grown to become the industry leader. This is just the beginning, as we have tons of new features and improvements in development which will be added throughout the rest of this year." Other redesign features include: Quick Access Sidebar: Access all Nutaku essentials from any page - games, trending tags, favorites, and more Favorites: Heart your favorite games and easily access them from the sidebar or from your profile page to jump right into the action. Dark Mode: About time, right? Dynamic Search Bar: Just start typing what you're looking for and see your results appear... Visit Beta.Nutaku.net to check out the new redesign and all its newest features. Attorney General William Barr, in politically white hot comments, called Democrats concerns Donald Trump would refuse to leave office if he loses the election in November crap. Mr Barr lambasted the opposition party, which he dubbed a mob, echoing the presidents rhetoric, over everything from Covid-era mail-in ballots to allegations they are purposefully trying to sow seeds of doubt about the elections validity just hours before Mr Trump returned to Twitter and appeared to do just that. Some Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have voiced concerns that the president is attempting to stay in office for months or years beyond his term, which expires on 20 January, if former Vice President Joe Biden is declared the winner of a close election. Since many states decided to alleviate voters polling station-related health concerns amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Mr Trump and his surrogates, including his attorney general, have said mailed-in ballots would automatically bring fraud. Experts counter that with data showing states that already have gone to such a system have reported very little fraud. But Mr Barr, speaking to a Chicago Tribune reporter on Monday, seemed just as agitated by Democrats alleging Mr Trump, whose businesses all evidence suggests are being investigated by federal prosecutors in New Yorks southern district, intends to refuse to vacate the White House on the day (20 January) his successor would be sworn in. You know liberals project, said Mr Barr, whom the Chicago newspaper described as salty during the interview. You know the president is going to stay in office and seize power and all that s**t? Ive never heard of that crap. I mean, Im the attorney general. I would think I would have heard about it. Mr Barr grew agitated recently during an early prime time interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer, as well. With the Chicago newspaper, he warned the United States is closing in on being ruled by the mob, even though Republicans control the White House and executive branch, the Senate, a majority of conservative Supreme Court justices, and has packed federal benches with right-leaning judges for three years. Increasingly, the message of the Democrats appears to be Biden or no peace, he said. The Democratic nominee has condemned violent protesting, and groups that allegedly perpetrate it, like Antifa. Attorneys general have typically followed tradition by trying to avoid political debates. Not Mr Barr. As an attorney general, Im not supposed to get into politics, Barr told the newspaper. ButI think we are getting into a position where were going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to a socialist path. And I think if Trump loses this election that will be the case. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) said in a Thursday hearing that Antifa should be considered as more than a simple ideology or movement. Crenshaw made his remarks after FBI director Christopher Wray told members of the House Homeland Security Committee that he would categorize Antifa as an ideology. Antifa supporters have participated in riots across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Earlier you confirmed Antifa does indeed exist, but you considered it more of an ideology than a group, correct? Crenshaw asked Ray. The FBI director responded Yes, an ideology or maybe a movement. Crenshaw then said, That seems to me to be down-playing it.This is an ideology that has trained its members, makes shield wall phalanxes to attack federal officers. It formed an autonomous zone in an American city and besieged a federal courthouse in another, so it just seems to be more than an ideology. Crenshaw was referring to the autonomous zone formed by George Floyd rioters in Seattle, Wash., in June, as well as ongoing demonstrations in Portland, Ore., in which rioters have attacked federal officers with explosives and caused vision damage among some officers by using lasers. I want to be clear that by describing it as an ideology or movement, I by no means, mean to minimize the seriousness of the violence and criminality that is going on across the country, some of which is attributable to people inspired bythat ideology, Wray said. When pressed by Crenshaw, Wray agreed that the actions of some suspects under investigation for violent rioting could meet the definition for domestic terrorism. However, Wray said that in Title 18 of the U.S. law code which deals with terrorism, there is a legal predicament, which is that there is not currentlya domestic terrorism offense or crime as such. Some conservatives, including Attorney General William Barr, have called for charging rioters involved in violent acts over the summer with sedition. Riots have taken place in 140 cities since the death of Floyd, and have caused as much as $2 billion in property damages according to one report. More from National Review CALGARY - People may have found it odd when thieves made off with truckloads of hot tubs and beef within days of each other in rural Alberta, but experts say the capers highlight a growing crime perpetrated by sophisticated culprits. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A truck and trailer are shown in this RCMP handout image. People may have found it odd when thieves made off with truckoads of hot tubs and beef within days of each other in rural Alberta, but the Insurance Bureau of Canada says it highlights a growing type of crime perpetrated by sophisticated culprits. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-RCMP *MANDATORY CREDIT* CALGARY - People may have found it odd when thieves made off with truckloads of hot tubs and beef within days of each other in rural Alberta, but experts say the capers highlight a growing crime perpetrated by sophisticated culprits. "It's obviously not a new problem. But from what we're seeing in the statistics, the problem seems to be getting worse," said Sid Kingma, who directs the Insurance Bureau of Canada's investigative services arm in Western Canada. Last year, $35 million in cargo theft losses were reported to the bureau, compared to $2.1 million five years earlier. In 2014, when the bureau started compiling cargo theft statistics, $270,000 in stolen cargo was recovered. In 2019, that figure was $14 million. Kingma cautioned that the bureau's numbers reflect only a small snapshot of the problem based on reports it receives. The Canadian Trucking Alliance has put total losses from cargo theft at $5 billion a year. RCMP have linked the same phoney Quebec trucking company Transport Pascal Charland to the Aug. 30 theft of $230,000 worth of beef from a Brooks, Alta., beef-packing plant and the Sept. 2 theft of seven hot tubs from a manufacturer in Thorsby, southwest of Edmonton. "You can see that there was some work put into getting the proper documentation and having everything in place for that theft in order to be able to occur," said Kingma, a former Edmonton police officer. "So there's some organization involved." Household items, including food, are the most common type of stolen cargo, and most of it can't be traced with serial numbers, said Kingma. He said he's heard of trailers of toilet paper, nuts and tires being lifted. A lot of the hot merchandise is the kind that can be easily and quickly sold in settings where there's little oversight, like small shops or swap meets. "There's people out there that maybe don't have great scruples," Kingma said. Mike Proska, president of Burloak Investigative Services in Burlington, Ont., said cargo thieves frequently find their targets on load boards, online subscription services that match truckers and prospective customers. "You have the bad guys who troll these load boards and they're looking for something that whets their appetite," said the former Peel Regional Police officer. Proska said criminals use the boards to post bogus loads in order to get documents from legitimate trucking outfits looking for work. They can then use that information to pose as those companies and communicate with their marks using fake emails and burner phones. Proska said the culprits don't send their own people to pick up the cargo they're planning on stealing. Instead, they'll contract out a small trucking company that has no idea it's being roped into a crime. The main groups who operate these scams are based out of Quebec and Ontario, but Proska didn't discount the possibility that some are cropping up in the West. He said there's a smaller chance of being scammed when doing business with a big, established company than a smaller one. Often, businesses will use brokers to hire truckers to ship their merchandise. In that case, the customer should ask for details, Proska said. 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. "When you're picking a carrier, you have to do your due diligence." For instance, he said, if the business address for a carrier comes up as a house on Google Maps, "that's going to put my red flags up." The back-to-back hot tub and beef heists weren't the only crimes of this kind in Canada recently. Mounties in New Brunswick said in June that four tractor trailers filled with snow crab disappeared from two trucking terminals in Moncton. The Guelph Mercury in southwestern Ontario reported last year that a transport truck filled with cold cuts was stolen from a local meat-processing plant and that police believed the alleged thieves showed fake documents before making off with the meat. This report by The Canadian Press was first published don Sept. 17, 2020. Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. When Vanessa Grubbs first met Eli about a decade ago, he was a muscular man in his 50s. Grubbs, a doctor at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, was treating him for membranous nephropathy, a kidney condition that can lead to organ damage and failure. To take his vitals, shed get out an extra-large blood pressure cuff. Eli is not his real name. Grubbs refers to her patient as Book of Eli because when they first met, he looked like Denzel Washingtons brawny character in the 2010 action movie by that name. But over the next five years, as his condition progressed, Eli slowly lost some of his bulk. Grubbs switched to a regular-sized cuff to take his blood pressure. Eventually, the condition left Elis kidneys so damaged that it was time to consider an organ transplant. But kidneys are in short supply: About 23,400 transplants took place last year, and more than 92,000 people are on a national waitlist. To get a spot on the list, a patient must have severely compromised kidneys, which doctors watch for using a number called the glomerular filtration rate, or GFR. The figure indicates how fast a persons kidneys can filter blood. Only people with a GFR of 20 or below can get in line for a kidney from a deceased donor, the main source of kidney transplants. (Sixty is considered the threshold of normal kidney function.) The most common procedures for estimating GFR measure a substance called creatinine with a blood test, then do simple calculations that factor in a patients sex and age. They also consider the patients race. The laboratory handling the blood test will take its initial GFR score and multiply it by a race adjustment coefficient for Black patients, or instruct doctors to do the math. For the test Eli underwent, the result is multiplied by 1.212. So when Grubbs ordered a GFR test for Eli, she got two numbers back. The report said his GFR was estimated at 20 if not African American, and 24 if African American. There were no other racial categories. Story continues If Eli had been white, his blood test result would have qualified him for a spot on the transplant waitlist. Because he is Black, he did not appear to make the cut. The use of two different numbers, one for Black patients and another for everyone else, dates to a 1999 study on kidney function. Similar race adjustments (also called race corrections) crop up in all sorts of clinical algorithms in medicine. Some of the algorithms help doctors decipher test results like Elis. Others combine medical and demographic information to recommend a specific diagnostic test, or produce a risk score that helps determine whether a patient is a good candidate for a particular treatment. Algorithms like these sometimes adjust for age, sex, and other factors that can help account for broad physiological differences among patients. But the race adjustments are more controversial. Grubbs, who has long been skeptical of race-adjusted formulas, didnt stop with Eli's initial GFR test results. I didnt believe that just because he was Black he had higher kidney function, she says. Weight loss like Elis can affect some GFR estimates, and he was very close to the transplant cutoff. So Grubbs ordered a more elaborate GFR test, one that she considers to be more precise. The test is onerous, though, requiring a patient to collect urine samples over a period of 24 hours, in addition to having blood drawn. It doesnt have a race adjustment factor. The results came back with a single value: 20. Grubbs referred Eli to a transplant center, which entered his name on the kidney transplant waitlist. Now, after suffering through other health setbacks, Eli is nearing the front of the transplant line, Grubbs says, and he could get a new kidney within a year. Race in Obstetrics, the ER, and Beyond Experts say that results generated by clinical algorithms should just be one slice of the information a doctor uses to make medical decisions. But it doesnt always turn out that way. Many Black patients in Elis situation wouldnt encounter a nephrologist like Grubbs, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies how race affects medical decision-making. They might not be referred to a transplant center in the same situation, and they might never know their race had delayed a potentially lifesaving operation. Similar situations can confront Black people coping with a wide range of medical problems. A paper published online in the New England Journal of Medicine in June looked at race adjustments in 13 clinical algorithms used across specialties: cardiology, pulmonology, nephrology (kidney medicine), and several others. Algorithms like these are based on studies that report differences in measures such as organ function or responses to treatments between Black people and others. Critics say these studies tend to be unreliable because they assume that Black bodies are fundamentally different from others, a premise thats not supported by science. Differences found by the studies might be illusory, or caused by factors other than race. Supporters of the algorithms say that while race adjustments are approximations, they can still point doctors toward more effective medical care for their Black patients. The NEJM paper didnt quantify how race corrections affect health outcomes, but it raised troubling questions. In most cases, the race adjustments suggested that Black patients were less likely to be suffering from serious medical conditions than otherwise identical non-Black patients. That could make them less likely to get referred to specialists and to receive aggressive care, the authors wrote. Conversely, some race adjustments make specific procedures seem riskier for Black patients, creating a different set of concerns. That can occur in obstetrics. If a pregnant woman has had a cesarean section in the past, her doctor can use a risk score to help decide which kind of delivery to recommend. The vaginal birth after C-section risk calculator makes a vaginal delivery look more dangerous for Black and Hispanic patients than for others, the NEJM paper says. That could lead a pregnant woman to get steered toward a C-section, which generally carries more risk. Black women are more likely to undergo C-sections than members of any other racial group (PDF) in the U.S. Race matters in the emergency room, too. If a patient comes in complaining about abdominal pain, a quick formula can help medical staff decide whether to run tests to detect kidney stones. If theyre Black, the calculation suggests that they are less likely to have kidney stones, reducing the odds that theyll get tested. And in nephrology, race-adjusted risk scores can affect patients long before they need a transplant. Because a higher GFR estimate can make Black patients kidneys appear healthier than non-Black patients, they could be referred to a specialist later, or get prescribed medications at doses that are too high for people with impaired kidney function. These worries hit close to home for Nwamaka Eneanya, a nephrologist and an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Several years ago, one of Eneanyas relatives sought care for kidney disease. For a long time, he was not referred for a kidney transplant evaluation because his race-adjusted GFR value was above 20. (Like Eneanya, he is Black.) Eneanya persuaded him to switch to a new doctor, who ordered more testing, and eventually he got on the waitlist. She has this advice for people in similar situations: If you have kidney disease and are Black, ask your doctor, What does this mean for my current care? If I am unable to receive certain specialty referrals or treatments, are there alternative measurements of kidney function that can be used that do not include race? Last year, Eneanya co-authored an influential essay for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that laid out some of the ways that race-adjusted GFR equations can hurt Black patients. The delay in getting an accurate GFR estimate had real consequences for Eneanyas family member. Those few years of back-and-forth could have been spent on the transplant wait list, she tells CR. Several years were lost because of this one number. The Debate Over Race Adjustments From outside the medical world, it may seem surprising that a patients race can be used to help decide on a diagnosis and treatment plan. But theres an unwillingness to even imagine how to practice medicine outside of race, says Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies bias in healthcare. Recently, cracks have formed in the status quo. This summer, several major hospital systems announced in rapid fire that they would remove race from the GFR equation. San Francisco General, where Grubbs treated Eli, says its working on new guidelines to eliminate clinically inappropriate race-based medicine, a spokesman tells CR. And discussions have sprouted up around race in medical disciplines beyond nephrology. Critics like Roberts, Eneanya, and Grubbs say that race is given too much weight in medical decisions. Its promoting the idea that Black people as a race are distinguishable biologicallyjust because of their racefrom other human beings, Roberts says. That idea has been debunked, experts say: Theres no genetic test or biological marker that places someone in one race or another. Instead, races are loosely defined social categories that change over time. Not everyone agrees with the recent clinical changes. Neil Powe, chief of medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, says there isnt enough evidence yet for dropping race-corrected algorithms. In a July essay published in JAMA titled Black Kidney Function Matters, Powe says the race adjustment found in the most common GFR equations makes them more accurate for Black patients, and can help make sure they get the right care. The disagreement over GFR numbers comes down to some decades-old research. The 1999 study on kidney function that forms the basis of one widely used algorithm included 197 Black participants and 1,304 white participants. It found that the Black people in the study had somewhat higher concentrations of creatinine than white people whose kidneys were filtering blood at the same rate. The authors proposed that a Black persons test result be multiplied by a particular number to adjust their score. Doing that, they concluded, would give a better picture of a Black patients real kidney function. Another study published in 2009 included more Black participants and found similar differences, but with a smaller gap. No one knows exactly what caused the differences between Black people and others in the two studies. But Powe says the data can still be useful. And he worries that removing race adjustments without more research could hurt Black patients. What if their kidneys start to look worse than they really are? That could lead to overdiagnosis of kidney disease, potentially causing patients with other medical conditions to be denied adequate pain medication or chemotherapy. It could decrease access to potentially lifesaving clinical trials, he says, and even result in higher life insurance premiums. Lesley Inker, a nephrologist at Tufts University, helped develop the GFR algorithms that include race adjustments. She argues that tossing out the race variable would set GFR estimation back 30 years. For people who have Black ancestry, [this algorithm] is the best guess Ive got. Inkers research group is currently analyzing how removing the race coefficient would affect patients. In the meantime, she emphasizes that the race-adjusted GFR evaluation is meant as a first-line test. In high-stakes situations like those involving medicines with high toxicity levels, doctors should do additional testing, she says. One thing Powe, Grubbs, and others in the debate agree on: Americans health status does vary significantly by raceon average, Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to have any of an array of health problems, including diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and childhood asthma. The question is why, and how doctors should use that information. For instance, beyond race, asthma is strongly associated with environmental factors such as poverty, outdoor air pollution from sources including diesel exhaust, and smokingdoes it make more sense to note whether a child with asthma is Black, or what their living conditions are like? The U.S. has a long and often ugly history of race-based medicine, starting long before the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, in which hundreds of African-American men were kept in the dark about their diagnosis and went untreated for decades, while researchers observed the devastating progression of the disease. In one example from before the Civil War, a Southern physician named Samuel Cartwright used a device called a spirometer to compare the lung capacities of slaves and whites. Cartwright concluded that Black people have less lung capacity than white peoplea deficiency that he argued made them less mentally alert, and unfit for freedom. The idea that there are innate racial differences in lung function was latched onto by pro-slavery scientists and, later, by eugenicists who argued that certain people should be sterilized based on their disabilities, race, or ethnicity, according to Lundy Braun, a Brown University professor who chronicles the history of race and the spirometer in her book Breathing Race Into the Machine. Some of that history may have been forgotten by 1974, when race-based differences in lung capacity were codified into what may have been the first clinical algorithm with a race factor. That was a significant moment in race correction, Braun says. Spirometers are still used today to measure lung, or vital, capacity. For healthy people, the measurement varies mainly with height, age, and sex, but modern studies find that the measurement also tends to differ by race. Vital capacity for a Black person is typically lower than for a similar white patient, and test results often include a race adjustment: Some readings that seem abnormally low for a white person might fall in whats considered a normal range for a Black person. That can affect how patients are diagnosed and treated. Weve really never stopped doing these Black-white comparisons and just assuming that Black people are inherently different, Grubbs says. Medical Students Press for Change Naomi Nkinsi, now a third-year medical student at the University of Washington, in Seattle, was sitting in a lecture hall in 2018 when she first learned about race adjustments in GFR tests. It flashed by in the last slide of the lecture with no explanation of why a persons skin color would affect the way their kidneys worked. Nkinsi, who is one of just a handful of Black students in a class of approximately 100, spoke up. She says the professorand some classmatesbecame testy when she pushed for answers about the race variable. And when a nephrologist visited the class later the same week to tackle the race questions head-on, the discussion became just as heated. The points I was bringing up were shut down by the nephrologist, who said the physicians arent racist, so the algorithms arent, Nkinsi says. It all felt very personal. Thats not just an equation, Nkinsi says. Thats not just an abstract concept. Thats human beings youre talking about. Thats my body right now sitting in this chair. My moms body, my dads body, my siblings. After the tense exchanges in class, students began meeting to discuss pushing back against a race adjustment that they saw as unfounded in science. Soon, they were talking with faculty members, including Rajnish Mehrotra, the universitys interim head of nephrology, who was receptive to their arguments. UW was already planning a switch from one race-adjusted test to another, so the university began studying what it would mean to drop the race variable altogether. An internal analysis of past UW Medical Center patients found that getting rid of race adjustments would not significantly increase the number of Black patients classified as having chronic kidney disease, Mehrotra tells CR. On June 1, 2020, the university stopped including a race adjustment in its test results. Removing race from GFR estimates didnt come as easily at some other institutions. At UCSF, a group of physicians that included Elis doctor, Vanessa Grubbs, began organizing in the summer of 2019 to ask for the race adjustment to be dropped. The request set off a yearlong tug-of-war. The laboratory at the UCSF-affiliated Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital removed race from its GFR estimates late last year, then prepared to add it back in response to internal blowback. Eventually, after a petition calling on UCSF and SF General Hospital to report GFR without using race garnered several hundred signatures, the hospital said it would keep race out of its estimates. Now, UCSF is making plans to roll out a race-free GFR equation across all its Bay Area hospitals and clinics. Powe thinks this is a mistake, one thats likely to hurt Black people seeking care. To be crude, I believe whats happening is a knee-jerk response, he tells CR. We need to slow down as a community of physicians to figure out how best to do this. Stephen Richmond, a doctor who recently finished his residency training at UCSF, was one of the petitions co-organizers. He says he wasnt surprised at the resistance his group faced. We didnt expect these dominoes to fall with ease. In recent weeks, UCSF has become much more enthusiastic about removing race from GFR, Richmond says. He and other young advocates who spoke with CR attributed their recent successes in part to this years surge in Black Lives Matter protests. This is a political and social issue that requires advocacy just as much as it is a scientific one, he says. Several major institutions are making changes to the way they use race in algorithms. Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Womens Hospital, as well as hospitals affiliated with Vanderbilt University, Brown University, and the University of Colorado, have removed race factors from the GFR algorithms they use. (In 2017, Bostons Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center stopped citing race in GFR reporting, but it still uses the adjustment factor to report a range of estimated GFR numbers for every patient.) Groups at New Yorks Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the University of Southern California, and the University of Nebraska, among others, are advocating for the removal of race adjustments at their institutions, too. At the end of August, the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology announced a working group that will debate the use of race in GFR calculators. It includes Eneanya and Inker, and Powe is its co-chair. If the group recommends removing race, the decision could ripple across the U.S., reaching community clinics and rural hospitals that may be less likely to push for controversial changes than teaching hospitals in major cities. The group says its recommendations will be published later this year. But the activists arent waiting. In August, Richmond and Grubbs spoke at a well-attended online workshop from the Institute for Healing and Justice in Medicine, designed to help students at medical schools and hospitals around the country push for an end to the race adjustment in GFR estimates. And they dont intend to stop with kidneys. We dont want this to be, We fixed [the GFR test] and we fixed the whole thing, says Maddy Kane, one of the workshops co-organizers and a student at a joint UC BerkeleyUCSF degree program that teaches medicine and public health. We refuse to be a part of a system thats perpetuating harm. For now, race-adjusted algorithms remain in wide use. That leaves some people who are facing serious health problems in limbo. Should patients who are Black worry that their lab results are being skewed because of their skin color? Doctors point out that race adjustments dont come up with every medical test and procedure. Patients with certain chronic conditionskidney disease, heart disease, hypertension, and some forms of cancerare the most likely to encounter race-adjusted algorithms, says David Jones, a Harvard Medical School professor and co-author of the NEJM article on race adjustments. Patients have a right to ask about them, he says, just as they should feel free to inquire about any other aspect of their care. Id likely ask the doctor, Im just curious: Do any of the tests or practice guidelines you are using take my race or ethnicity into consideration? Jones says. If the answer is yes, Jones counsels skepticism over how the doctor is classifying your race and using it to inform the care they deliver. Outside of nephrology, the revisions to race-adjusted algorithms are just beginning. The calculator used to guide obstetricians deciding whether to recommend a C-section could be revised soon to eliminate the race multiplier. In other medical fields changes to race adjustments in algorithms could come slowly, as specialists in each discipline study how patients would be affected. No one is saying to throw away science, says Eneanya, from the University of Pennsylvania. We just want to make sure that we are not causing harm to our patients. Update: This article has been updated with additional information from Dr. Neil Powe on the potential ill effects of removing the race adjustment from common GFR tests, including his concern that overdiagnosis of kidney problems could lead to patients with other conditions receiving inadequate doses of important medicines. It was originally published on September 17, 2020. The CEO of Trinity Exploration & Production plc (LON:TRIN) is Jeremy Bridglalsingh, and this article examines the executive's compensation against the backdrop of overall company performance. This analysis will also look to assess whether the CEO is appropriately paid, considering recent earnings growth and investor returns for Trinity Exploration & Production. View our latest analysis for Trinity Exploration & Production Comparing Trinity Exploration & Production plc's CEO Compensation With the industry According to our data, Trinity Exploration & Production plc has a market capitalization of UK36m, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth US$380k over the year to December 2019. We note that's an increase of 22% above last year. We note that the salary portion, which stands at US$240.0k constitutes the majority of total compensation received by the CEO. On comparing similar-sized companies in the industry with market capitalizations below UK154m, we found that the median total CEO compensation was US$373k. From this we gather that Jeremy Bridglalsingh is paid around the median for CEOs in the industry. Component 2019 2018 Proportion (2019) Salary US$240k US$180k 63% Other US$140k US$133k 37% Total Compensation US$380k US$313k 100% On an industry level, around 71% of total compensation represents salary and 29% is other remuneration. Trinity Exploration & Production sets aside a smaller share of compensation for salary, in comparison to the overall industry. If total compensation veers towards salary, it suggests that the variable portion - which is generally tied to performance, is lower. Trinity Exploration & Production plc's Growth Trinity Exploration & Production plc has reduced its earnings per share by 104% a year over the last three years. It saw its revenue drop 18% over the last year. The decline in EPS is a bit concerning. And the impression is worse when you consider revenue is down year-on-year. It's hard to argue the company is firing on all cylinders, so shareholders might be averse to high CEO remuneration. We don't have analyst forecasts, but you could get a better understanding of its growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow. Story continues Has Trinity Exploration & Production plc Been A Good Investment? With a three year total loss of 17% for the shareholders, Trinity Exploration & Production plc would certainly have some dissatisfied shareholders. Therefore, it might be upsetting for shareholders if the CEO were paid generously. In Summary... As we noted earlier, Trinity Exploration & Production pays its CEO in line with similar-sized companies belonging to the same industry. Meanwhile, EPS growth and shareholder returns have been in the red for the last three years. It's tough to call out the compensation as inappropriate, but shareholders might not favor a raise before company performance improves. While it is important to pay attention to CEO remuneration, investors should also consider other elements of the business. That's why we did some digging and identified 1 warning sign for Trinity Exploration & Production that you should be aware of before investing. Switching gears from Trinity Exploration & Production, if you're hunting for a pristine balance sheet and premium returns, this free list of high return, low debt companies is a great place to look. 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. WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - The earth where Deshondra Dandridge was digging with her pick and trowel was packed hard and filled with stones where she knelt, searching for the bones of the old church. Buried here in the orange clay of a former parking lot on Nassau Street are the remains of a vanished history - the story of a Black congregation that didn't fit the Williamsburg narrative, whose people once worshiped, and may be buried, on this spot, and whose roots are as old as those of the United States. Dandridge and other archaeologists from Colonial Williamsburg last week began excavating the site of the old First Baptist Church, one of the oldest such churches in the country, which had buildings there in 1856, though perhaps as early as 1818, and was organized in 1776. The 1856 church - whose bell was used to dedicate the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington four years ago - was torn down in the 1950s. But its foundation and that of two earlier structures, one possibly a privy, have been detected underground. It is the earliest African American church in Williamsburg, experts said. Oral tradition holds that the site may also contain the remains of past church members. As the archaeologists began to dig on a warm morning last week and the cicadas droned in the trees, members of Williamsburg's descendant First Baptist Church gathered to watch, to voice pride in their forebears and dismay that recognition has taken so long. "There's a noticeable absence of the story of early African Americans in Williamsburg," said Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the church's Let Freedom Ring Foundation. Those who re-created the quaint Colonial attraction in the early and mid-1900s "basically erased everything that has to do with African Americans," she said. "It's a blank canvas." During the entrenched racial segregation of the time, the story of a post-Colonial Black church did not fit the Williamsburg narrative, she said. A plaque was placed at the site in 1983. But with this project, Colonial Williamsburg has "come full circle," she said. "I am just overwhelmed with joy. Weeping may last for a night, but there's joy in the morning. This is the morning." "If they don't find one thing, the fact that [Colonial Williamsburg] acknowledged that we were here" is gratifying, she said. "But they're going to find something." The Rev. Dr. Reginald Davis, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, said, "There are a lot of things . . . about Black history that have either been covered up or shoved aside due to White supremacy." Dennis Gardner, 85, was born two blocks from the site. He had attended the old church "since I was like 6 years old, following my mom and dad," until it was sold, he said. "So I've been here a long time." "Our side of the history of Williamsburg has not been told," he said. The dig is expected to last about seven weeks. "I'm just surprised the work had never been done before," Cliff Fleet, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's new president, said as he watched. "I'm surprised but I'm not surprised. . . . It's a story that needs to be told. And more people need to know it." According to the congregation's tradition, enslaved and free Black people began meeting secretly in the woods to pray and listen to a minister named Moses, and later to an enslaved tavern worker and preacher named Gowan Pamphlet. When Pamphlet, a Baptist, was ordained in 1772, he was the "only ordained black preacher of any denomination in the country," according to Colonial Williamsburg. And it was perhaps around that time that he began to lead meetings of the rural Black congregation outside town. Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, and by 1775 more than half of its 1,880 residents were Black, most of them enslaved, according to historian Linda Rowe. The church congregants had to meet in remote locales outdoors. It was dangerous for Black people to gather in numbers anywhere, for fear of arousing White suspicions of revolt. Moses, the original preacher, was regularly whipped for holding religious meetings, Rowe wrote. Pamphlet's enslaver, Jane Vobe, ran the King's Arms Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street, across from the Raleigh Tavern, a popular venue for auctions of enslaved people, Rowe wrote in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Pamphlet's congregation grew anyhow, to as many as 500 by 1791, Rowe wrote. And church tradition has it that a local White businessman, Jesse Cole, while walking his lands one day, came upon the congregation meeting and singing in an outdoor shelter made of tree limbs and underbrush. Moved by the scene, he offered them a carriage house he owned on Nassau Street, according to Rowe. At that point, the record becomes cloudy. In 1818, there is a reference to a "Baptist meeting house" on the spot, according to the project's research. "It is unclear what this building looked like or how long it had been standing on the lot by 1818," researchers wrote. Further mention came in 1834, when a tornado tore through Williamsburg and a Norfolk newspaper reported that the "colored people's meeting house" was blown down. In 1855, a stately new brick church was built with a steeple and palladian windows. The church housed a school for Black students in the 1860s. It survived a Civil War battle in 1862 that killed and wounded thousands of men, and filled the town with injured soldiers. It served its members through the end of slavery, the eras of Reconstruction, Jim Crow racial oppression, segregation and the dawn of the civil rights movement. The church shows up on a 1921 insurance map labeled "Baptist Church (Colored.)" The map notes that it was heated with "stoves" and illuminated with "lamps." It was "hot as blazes in the summer," and cold in the winter, remembers Vernon Ross, who was baptized there in 1939. It had a pump organ, a choir, and on Sundays "you could hear the singing all over that end of town," he said in a recent interview. In 1953, the researchers wrote, when the church planned to build an adjacent annex, a member of the congregation, "Sister Epps (Most likely Mrs. Fannie Epps)," said her great-grandfather was buried where the annex was supposed to go. That raised the "very real possibility that congregation members have been buried on this property, though any grave markers that they may have erected are long-since removed," the research report said. The church agreed to commemorate Epps's great-grandfather and started the annex but never finished it. The archaeologists have found what may be the annex foundation, and thus the possible location of the graves. Colonial Williamsburg subsequently bought the church and tore the old building down in 1955. The site was paved over in 1965. A new church funded by the sale - the First Baptist Church - was built about eight blocks away in 1956. After the old church was torn down, a limited archaeological dig was conducted in 1957, Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg's director of archaeology, said last week. Results were modest, he said. Since then, aside from the former parking lot, the site has been undisturbed. "Nothing else has been on the lot," he said. "No one has lived here. So any artifacts we find, even if they're jumbled up, they have to be associated with the church." "Which is really cool," he said. Care will be used if a grave is found. "We're looking for the top of the grave," he said. "As soon as we see that, and outline it, that's it, we stop. We have no intention of going down to human remains. The [descendants] of the people buried here are still in our community." "They should have some say in what happens with these graves," he said. "We want to be able to find them, so that we can protect them." If the community wanted an examination of the remains, "we would partner with a biological anthropologist," he said. "We would excavate down to the remains. We would make sure that everything is closed off." The anthropologist could then study them, and possibly remove them for laboratory examination, he said. "But we wouldn't do it without the consent of the community," he said. "This is their project." Democratic nominee Joe Biden will have an audience for his Thursday night CNN town hall in suburban Scranton as the network created a drive-in movie theater set-up inside a ball park. Biden will answer questions from Pennsylvania voters, as 35 cars with about 100 onlookers watch. The Anderson Cooper moderated Q&A will take place at PNC field, where the aptly named Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders play. It begins at 8 p.m. EST. Joe Biden will participate in a town hall Thursday night put on by CNN. For the event, the network set up a drive-in movie theater in the center of a minor league ballpark outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania Joe Biden will answer questions from Pennsylvania voters as 35 cars of people, or about 100 audience members, look on. The presidential town hall will be moderated by CNN's Anderson Cooper Joe Biden supporters celebrate the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention last month in a parking lot outside the Chase Center in Wilmington that was set up like a drive-in movie theater Supporters in the parking lot were able to see (from left) Jill and Joe Biden, as well as Douglas Emhoff and Kamala Harris, watch fireworks at the conclusion of Biden's speech accepting the Democratic nomination The old school drive-in has become a stand-in - at least on the Democratic side - for campaign rallies, as Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have preached caution about supporters attending gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Democratic Party set up a drive-in in a parking lot outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware on the final night of the Democratic National Convention so there would be an audience to cheer Biden and Harris as they emerged together as the official presidential ticket to watch fireworks. Supporters watched the virtual convention on large screens and then cheered and honked their horns when Biden and Harris briefly appeared. Additionally, in cities around the country, watch parties were set up drive-in style so Democratic supporters could watch Biden's nominating speech together. The town hall brings Biden - who was born in Scranton before moving to Wilmington - to the key swing state two days after President Donald Trump made the trek to Philadelphia for his own town hall with Pennsylvania voters. Trump's town hall was produced by ABC News and was filmed indoors at the National Constitution Center, where the only audience was the likely voters questioning the president. Joe Biden's town hall comes two days after President Donald Trump participated in a Philadelphia town hall, filmed indoors at the National Constitution Center, with only people posing questions as audience members. They wore masks and sat six feet apart They all sat six feet apart and wore masks, until they posed their questions to Trump. The president has been more cavalier about his campaigning amid a continued spread of the coronavirus. Last weekend he held his first indoor rally since June in the state of Nevada. He's packed thousands into airport hangars as well. The campaign has encouraged mask-wearing of attendees, but droves have rebelled. At a recent rally in New Hampshire, Trump supporters booed when the loudspeaker encouraged them to wear masks. The president told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he wasn't personally worried about contracting the coronavirus. 'I'm on a stage and it's very far away,' he told the paper. 'And so I'm not at all concerned.' MOSCOW, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sheremetyevo International Airport finalized coordinated procedures to be followed in the event of an aircraft accident during special tactical exercises held at the airport on September 17. The exercises were part of the current Training Plan for the personnel of JSC SIA, the handling operators, and associated organizations on actions in the event of non-routine, failure and emergency situations for 2020. During the exercise, joint actions of the crisis center and procedures for SIA Search and Rescue Flights Support Service teams to assess emergencies in cooperation with responsible government organizations were finalized, including the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Rostransnadzor (Federal Transportation Inspection Service), the Federal Air Transport Agency, the Prosecutor's Office, the Investigative Committee, the EC ATM Center and the Disaster Medicine Center. According to the exercise scenario, "After landing on runway-3 at Sheremetyevo Airport, the aircraft's left engine caught fire and heavy smoke filled the passenger compartment. The PIC decided to conduct an emergency evacuation of passengers." The first ones to arrive at the scene of the hypothetical incident were the crews of the search-and-rescue service and the airport's medical teams. The task of the rescue crews was to extinguish the fire on the aircraft and spilled fuel, assist in the evacuation of passengers and crew from the aircraft, conduct research on board the aircraft, identify victims and transfer them to medical teams, provide first aid, cordon off the scene of the accident, arrange for passengers to be collected on the airfield, and transport the uninjured to the airport terminal. After being transported from the airfield, the passengers were provided with the necessary medical assistance and counseling at the terminal, and appropriate measures were taken to inform and assist the greeters and relatives of passengers. Further, investigating authorities at the scene prepared the aircraft for removal from the airfield. More than 100 people and 40 pieces of equipment were involved in the exercise. The exercise tested the capabilities of modern fire and rescue equipment assigned to the Search and Rescue Flight Support Service of Sheremetyevo. Today the Service is fully equipped with the necessary equipment and vehicles, as well as highly qualified personnel. More than 60 search and rescue personnel are on duty around the clock in each shift who are capable of managing Category 9 fire protection of RWY-1, 2, 3 and fire protection of airport infrastructure facilities. Currently, the following specialized equipment is operated at Sheremetyevo: 12 airfield fire trucks that meet the highest requirements of world standards; tracked tank tractors for aircraft evacuation from the airfield; 1 car of gas and smoke protection service to provide fire protection of the inter-terminal junction; 1 vehicle for the ground search and rescue team; 1 armored repair and recovery vehicle. Sheremetyevo International Airport is among the TOP-10 airport hubs in Europe, the largest Russian airport in terms of passenger and cargo traffic. The route network comprises more than 230 destinations. In 2019, the airport served 49 million 933 thousand passengers, which is 8.9% more than in 2018. Sheremetyevo is the best airport in terms of the quality of services in Europe, the absolute world leader in punctuality of flights, the owner of the highest 5-star Skytrax rating. You can find additional information at http://www.svo.aero. SOURCE Sheremetyevo International Airport Related Links http://www.svo.aero Researchers offer first proof that Ultraviolet C light with a 222 nm wavelength -- which is safer to use around humans -- effectively kills the SARS-CoV-2 virus A study conducted by Hiroshima University researchers found that using Ultraviolet C light with a wavelength of 222 nanometers which is safer to use around humans effectively kills SARS-CoV-2 -- the first research in the world to prove its efficacy against the virus that causes COVID-19. Other studies involving 222 nm UVC, also known as Far-UVC, have so far only looked at its potency in eradicating seasonal coronaviruses that are structurally similar to the SARS-CoV-2 but not on the COVID-19-causing virus itself. A nanometer is equivalent to one billionth of a meter. An in vitro experiment by HU researchers showed that 99.7% of the SARS-CoV-2 viral culture was killed after a 30-second exposure to 222 nm UVC irradiation at 0.1 mW/cm2. The study is published in the American Journal of Infection Control. Tests were conducted using Ushio's Care222TM krypton-chloride excimer lamp. A 100 microliter solution containing the virus (ca. 5 106 TCID 50 /mL) was spread onto a 9-centimeter sterile polystyrene plate. The researchers allowed it to dry in a biosafety cabinet at room temperature before placing the Far-UVC lamp 24 centimeters above the surface of the plates. 222 nm vs 254 nm UVC A wavelength of 222 nm UVC cannot penetrate the outer, non-living layer of the human eye and skin so it won't cause harm to the living cells beneath. This makes it a safer but equally potent alternative to the more damaging 254 nm UVC germicidal lamps increasingly used in disinfecting healthcare facilities. Since 254 nm UVC harms exposed human tissues, it can only be used to sanitize empty rooms. But 222 nm UVC can be a promising disinfection system for occupied public spaces including hospitals where nosocomial infections are a possibility. The researchers, however, suggest further evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of 222 nm UVC irradiation in killing SARS-CoV-2 viruses in real-world surfaces as their study only investigated its in vitro efficacy. ### The Far-UVC research is one of the four COVID-19 studies conducted by Hiroshima University scientists that received funding from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development. Drs. Hiroki Kitagawa, Toshihito Nomura, and Hiroki Ohge of Hiroshima University Hospital's Department of Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Takemasa Sakaguchi of the Hiroshima University Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences were behind the study. Many laboratories in the university are conducting research on the novel coronavirus under the "Hiroshima University CoV-Peace-Project." Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 4 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en New Delhi: The Delhi High Court today asked media to show restraint in its coverage about actress Rakul Preet Singh in relation to Rhea Chakraborty case. The Bollywood actress had moved HC today for the media trial which has begun after her name popped up in the drugs conspiracy. In her petition, Rakul Preet has urged the court to ask the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to stall the coverage on her related to Rhea's case. The actress added that while she got to know that Rhea has given her name along with that of Sara Ali Khan while she was shooting a project. And ever since the media trial has begun, it is harassing for her. The High Court which refused to stop the broadcast of programmes related to Rakul Preet asked the Centre to treat the actress's petition as a representation and take an expeditious decision. Meanwhile, the Centre stated that no complaint has been filed by Rakul Preet under the Cable TV Act. Therefore, no order related to censorship should be passed as of now. BERLIN (AP) The German government on Wednesday welcomed news that poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's condition has further improved, and confirmed that Moscow has sent a second request for judicial assistance to Germany in the case. Navalny, who fell ill on a domestic flight in Russia on Aug. 20, on Tuesday posted a selfie photo from Berlin's Charite hospital where he has been treated for almost four weeks. "I still cant do almost anything on my own, but yesterday I managed to breathe on my own for the entire day, he wrote. The German government is relieved about the latest news from the Charite, according to which the health situation of Alexei Navalny has further improved," government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer told reporters, citing his social media. That is encouraging and the German government wishes Mr. Navalny a quick and complete recovery. Germany has demanded that Russia should answer questions about Navalny's poisoning, after a German military laboratory confirmed the presence in his body of Novichok a Soviet-era nerve agent previously linked to the attempted assassination of Kremlin critics. Russia has rejected the suggestion that it was involved in Navalny's poisoning. The affair has added to pre-existing friction between Berlin and Moscow over issues such as Ukraine, Syria, and alleged Russian intelligence activity on German soil. Demmer declined to say whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel planned to meet Navalny any time soon. But she confirmed that, despite speaking out prominently on the Navalny case, she has not so far discussed it directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Separately, Germany's justice ministry said it has received a second request for judicial assistance from Russia. On Sept. 14 the Russian prosecutor general approached the Federal Office of Justice with a second judicial assistance request, ministry spokesman Marius Leber said. It is currently being examined. Moscow has accused Germany of failing to provide information necessary for investigators examining the case. The establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain is a watershed moment for the Middle East, said Eli Belotsercovsky, Ambassador of the State of Israel to the Republic of Armenia. His statement runs as follows: While this region of the world is often thought to be somewhat of a dysfunctional family, the Abraham Accord represents a conscious decision to instead be a functional one. It is a historic event that marks a new beginning for the region, and in addition to peace, will bring about prosperity that will be felt immediately. The Accord represents an alternative and paradigm-shifting step forward for the region. It has fostered a revolutionary opportunity for other Arab nations to establish formal ties with the State of Israel, a concept previously deemed far-fetched and impossible. It provides a striking alternative to those radical forces who oppose peace and prefer to perpetuate conflict until victory is won over resolving conflict in a peaceful manner and reaping the benefits that cooperation can provide. Moreover, the agreement effectively strengthens the power of moderatism in the face of the extremism that Iran and its proxies sow across the region. The Accord is an important stage in ending the conflict in the Middle East, and we believe that this kind of agreement will effectively serve to immunize countries against the calamity that comes with extremism, for which peace is the only remedy. This landmark agreement, most significantly, does not come at the expense of the Palestinians, but in fact, presents them with a unique opportunity to return to direct negotiations with Israel. Israel is ready to do so and will come to the negotiating table with the principles of the American administrations Peace Initiative. The peace deal provides a practical and realistic basis upon which the two sides can begin negotiations, and in the light of the Abraham Accord, achieving a lasting resolution between Israel and the Palestinians now seems that much more attainable. Ultimately, the Abraham Accord represents an alignment of values. Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain are all facing the shared challenges of climate change, diminishing resources, and most pertinently, of disease. It is essential that we focus on agreement over disagreement, and combine our capabilities for the wellbeing of our citizens. This is exactly what this agreement has achieved. The Abraham Accord should be the guiding light for all other nations of the region of the good that can come from making peace with Israel. We call on everyone watching this historic agreement unfold to recognize the significance of this moment, express their support publicly, and encourage others to follow. Armenia is known as a natural bastion of tranquility and stability. However, like Israel, it had its share of conflicts and victims. Like Israel, it is only too well aware of the unbearable price in human lives. Like Israel, it will always follow the path of peace over war. It is precisely because of this Armenia's natural choice is the camp of peacemakers over the camp of war-mongers. The peace between Israel and the Emirates and Bahrein is good for the region, it cools the expansionist ideas of some regional powers, it strengthens the coalition for peace, and opens wide opportunities. We are sure that Armenia welcomes the new developments and looks forward to its support for the new Middle East. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:34:44|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DOHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Qatari health ministry on Thursday announced 244 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 122,693, the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported. Meanwhile, 213 more recovered from the virus, bringing the total recoveries to 119,613, while the fatalities remained 208 for the third day running as no new deaths were reported, according to a ministry statement quoted by QNA. The ministry reiterated the need to take preventive measures, including staying home and observing social distancing. A total of 709,132 people in Qatar have taken lab tests for COVID-19 so far. Enditem (L) New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a news conference in New York City on Sept. 8, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (R) Mayor Bill De Blasio speaks during a video press conference on the city's response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak held at City Hall in New York City on March 19, 2020. (William Farrington-Pool/Getty Images) Cuomo Urges de Blasio to Reduce Waste in NYC Budget, Denounces Furloughs New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sept. 16 urged Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce waste in New York Citys budget shortly after the mayor announced he will be furloughing his entire office, including himself, for one week without pay to close a budget shortfall created by the CCP virus pandemic. Responding to de Blasios Wednesday announcement, Cuomo said that there was a lot of waste in New York Citys budget, and that layoffs should be a last resort. Im saying layoffs are the last thing you want to do. Theyre the last option, especially in New York City where you have so many problems. We have a homeless problem. We have a crime problem. The city is dirty, Cuomo said. Layoffs are the last option, but in a $90 billion budget that the city has, Im sure theres a lot of waste that you can find and thats what you would need to do before you would go to borrow or lay off anyone. The mayor told reporters earlier that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak had caused the city to lose $9 billion in revenue and forced a $7 billion cut to the citys annual budget. As of October 1, every Mayors Office employee will have to take a weeks furlough, including myself. This team has worked hard for our city during the pandemic. We dont want to make them go a week without pay. But we will lead the way when difficult decisions need to be made. Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) September 16, 2020 De Blasio told reporters that while the one week furlough at some point beginning Oct. 1 will only save roughly $1 million, he hopes it may serve as a useful symbol as he continues to negotiate with labor unions representing municipal employees over broader payroll savings. The mayor himself will go without pay during the week-long furlough, meaning he will lose out on an estimated $4,972 of his $258,541 mayoral salary, according to Fox News. His wife Chirlane McCray and 493 office staff will also be affected by the move, the New York Times reported. We have to make tough choices to move this city forward and keep our budget balanced, de Blasio said. It was not a decision I made lightly. To have to do this is painful for them and their families, but it is the right thing to do at this moment in history. The mayor explained that the office budget this fiscal year will be 12 percent smaller than it was last year with the week-long furlough and other savings. He previously warned that 22,000 city jobs may be at risk if he is not able to negotiate with the labor unions and facilitate further savings. Weve already had to make some tough cuts that have affected this city and the services we provide. Weve tried everything we can to stop those cuts becoming worse, the mayor said. We dont want to take away jobs from public employees, we dont want to take away services from communities that need [them]. Reuters contributed to this report. Water Intelligence plc's (LON:WATR) price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 43.7x might make it look like a strong sell right now compared to the market in the United Kingdom, where around half of the companies have P/E ratios below 17x and even P/E's below 10x are quite common. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the highly elevated P/E. Water Intelligence has been doing a good job lately as it's been growing earnings at a solid pace. One possibility is that the P/E is high because investors think this respectable earnings growth will be enough to outperform the broader market in the near future. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a pretty hefty price for no particular reason. See our latest analysis for Water Intelligence pe We don't have analyst forecasts, but you can see how recent trends are setting up the company for the future by checking out our free report on Water Intelligence's earnings, revenue and cash flow. Does Growth Match The High P/E? In order to justify its P/E ratio, Water Intelligence would need to produce outstanding growth well in excess of the market. Taking a look back first, we see that the company grew earnings per share by an impressive 22% last year. The strong recent performance means it was also able to grow EPS by 159% in total over the last three years. Accordingly, shareholders would have probably welcomed those medium-term rates of earnings growth. Weighing that recent medium-term earnings trajectory against the broader market's one-year forecast for expansion of 2.6% shows it's noticeably more attractive on an annualised basis. In light of this, it's understandable that Water Intelligence's P/E sits above the majority of other companies. Presumably shareholders aren't keen to offload something they believe will continue to outmanoeuvre the bourse. The Key Takeaway Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-earnings ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company. Story continues As we suspected, our examination of Water Intelligence revealed its three-year earnings trends are contributing to its high P/E, given they look better than current market expectations. Right now shareholders are comfortable with the P/E as they are quite confident earnings aren't under threat. If recent medium-term earnings trends continue, it's hard to see the share price falling strongly in the near future under these circumstances. Plus, you should also learn about these 2 warning signs we've spotted with Water Intelligence. You might be able to find a better investment than Water Intelligence. If you want a selection of possible candidates, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20x (but have proven they can grow earnings). 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. - Vice President, Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia said government would not under any circumstance legalise okada' - According to him, the Okada business, is too risky - He stated that government would rather give these okada riders the alternative to own new cars on a lease Our manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Vice President, Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia has stated that the Akufo-Addo led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, would not under any circumstance legalise the commercialisation of motorbikes, popularly known as okada'. According to Dr Bawumia, the Okada business, is too much of a risky business for the government to consider legalising. He stated that government would rather give these okada riders the alternative to own new cars on a lease basis in order for them to carry out their activities in a much safer manner. Bawumia made this known at a ceremony held for the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Volkswagon and BlackIvy for the production of affordable vehicles and houses for Ghanaians. NPP will not leaglise okada; riders would be leased cars instead Bawumia Source: Facebook (John Dramani Mahama/ Dr Mahamadu Bawumia) Source: UGC READ ALSO: Election 2020: Okada will be legalised when the NDC is voted into power -Mahama ...You can have a better option, and we will give you a better option. So yes, we will not legalise the okada business in Ghana. It may be a tough decision but it is in the interest of Ghanaians. We are having discussions, but we will stick to our decision to provide a better alternative for the okada riders. Let give them an opportunity to buy safer vehicles through lease and pay over time. It is a better option than what the alternative is, he said. Meanwhile, the Minister of Transport, Kwasi Ofori Asiamah, earlier disclosed that stakeholder consultations had begun on whether or not to review the law banning the commercial use of motorcycles or implement it. Flag bearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress, (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, believes that since it is a means of livelihood for the teeming youth, why not legalise it and train those who would want to venture into that business. According to him, okada is the only means of transport for some people in some parts of the country and does not see why it should not be legalised Bawumia however, disagrees with Mahama because having to legalise okada will cause more than good to the countrys transport industry. READ ALSO: Stakeholder consultations on whether or not to legalise Okada has begun Transport Minister Meanwhile, Member of Parliament for Assin Central constituency, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, bared his teeth at former President John Dramani Mahama for saying he would legalise commercial motorbikes, popularly known as Okada. He said the promise to legalise Okada after he (Mahama) wins the December polls, reveals how visionless the NDC flagbearer is. According to him, most of the graduates who by no fault of theirs became Okada riders wouldnt have opted for that if there were better employment opportunities. READ ALSO: Mahama is visionless for promising to legalise Okada rides - Kennedy Agyapong Vox Pop: Mahama or Akufo-Addo? Who deserves to win Election 2020? | #Yencomgh Got a story you think we should know about? Get interactive via our Facebook page! Source: YEN.com.gh As much as 38,000 square kilometre of Indian territory is under Chinese occupation, said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in Rajya Sabha, without putting a mask on, while also saying India wont allow any change in status quo. So is the Chinese occupation of the 38,000 sq km in the Union Territory of Ladakh part of the status quo that is supposed to stay? These are strategic questions and for any strategy to succeed, it is important that strategic questions are not answered in public. But China also occupies 5,180 sq km of Indian land in addition to the 38,000 sq km. This land was handed over to China under the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963. Pakistan gave the land to China after taking it from India. Indian troops in Ladakh. (Photo: Reuters) India will have to take the land from China and not Pakistan, which took it in the first place. The fight, however, is not for what is gone because that is status quo. That can stay. The fight is to ensure that the status quo is not changed. To change the status quo, China has changed the playlist. Mandarin is out, Punjabi is in. Before you go gaga about the Punjabi raga, heres the spoiler: China is doing it as part of its propaganda warfare. Chinese troops posted on the forward positions in Ladakh have started playing Punjabi songs on loudspeakers. This could be Chinas way of distracting Indian soldiers and reminding them of their homes. What the Chinese bid reminds us of however is how the US got Manuel Noriega to surrender using heavy metal. Moreno was a Panamanian politician and military officer. He was the de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989. Moreno had ties with US intelligence agencies but it was the US agencies that went after him because he was drug trafficker and dictator. In 1989, the US, under President George Bush Sr, invaded Panama and Moreno knew his end was near so he took refuge in the Vatican's Embassy in Panama City, on December 25 that year. International rules dont allow countries to enter embassies because embassies are sovereign. Entering a countrys embassy without invitation is considered violating the countrys sovereignty. But music knows no borders. Manuel Noriega after his surrender. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) You cant force it to know that too. But you can force people to listen to music that they do not want to listen to. So the US got in a fleet of Humvees mounted with loudspeakers. The Humvees rolled in and rock music rolled out. Moreno tried to brave it. On January 3, he gave up and stepped out. There could be more reasons than rock music which dragged Moreno out, but the US Army has often used musical onslaught to get its way. They used Metallica and Thin Lizzy on the frontline in Afghanistan in 2010. In that respect, Chinese choice of music for India seems ill-informed. Punjabi songs only pep up Indians. Is there a possibility that China is playing the music as a goodwill gesture to make amends for the mistakes it has made? Chances of that are one in a zillion, or we would say, a zilch. Members of Parliament, who are not NDA members, say the chances of the government hiding the LAC truth are so high that they are certain the government is not telling the whole truth.Twitter is telling no one why it suspended the account of Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, who said Covid-19 virus was made in a Wuhan laboratory. The message on her suspended account page reads, Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules. Under what rules exactly the action has been taken is not known yet because it has not been told to anyone. Actor Akshay Kumar has however told everyone his next film Laxmmi Bomb will be releasing this Diwali on Disney+Hotstar. Watch Laxmmi Bomb on Diwali (if you want to) but earn Lakshmi on all days. A poster of Laxmmi Bomb. Iss Diwali aapke gharon mein laxmmi ke saath ek dhamakedar bomb bhi aayega. Aa rahi hai #LaxmmiBomb 9th November ko, only on @DisneyPlusHSVIP! Get ready for a mad ride kyunki #YehDiwaliLaxmmiBombWaali ???? #DisneyPlusHotstarMultiplex @advani_kiara @offl_Lawrence pic.twitter.com/VQgRGR0sNg Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) September 16, 2020 Diwali will be celebrated on November 14 but September 17 is being celebrated as Prime Minister Narendra Modis birthday. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was amongst the first to wish the PM, was also quick to mark the day as National Unemployment Day. The coincidence could be coincidental or intentional. Has Modi taken offence to Gandhi acting as party pooper? Chances are he hasnt noticed because his birthday celebrations arent about a day, but a week with the week marked as Sewa Saptah. Party workers, and also Modi supporters who do not work for his party, go about planting trees, donating blood, making Bharat Swachh in this week of sewa. We wish Modi a very happy birthday and also a happy birthday week, but we want to get back to the National Unemployment Day, and to mark the day we will make unemployment the Word Of The Day. The base word for unemployment is employ. Employ derives from the Latin word implicare, meaning to engage. Un means not or no in Latin. According to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), unemployment is defined as, persons above a specified age not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period. To put it simply, when a person above a specified age (differs in different countries) is available for work but has no work that pays, she is unemployed. Unemployment in India had been rising even before lockdown happened. India has been experiencing a jobless growth, that is, a growth in which GDP is growing but employment is either constant or is in fact decreasing. To tackle the problem, the government has tackled the data. There is no comprehensive data on how many jobs India has lost over the last five years. In 2018, the Birthday Boy said, jobs are not lacking; the issue is lack of data on jobs. How will the issue be addressed? One way is raising non-issues. Oxfam, however, raised a pertinent issue. The issues of vaccine distribution. According to Oxfam, 13 per cent of the worlds population has already gained access to more than half the supply of the promised vaccine supply. The 13 per cent live in the worlds wealthiest nations. The NGO is talking data. Oxfam analysed deals struck by pharmaceuticals and vaccine producers for the five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials and found that over half the stock has been bought. So access to vaccine will depend on which part of the world you are in. Supply deals exist for about 5.3 billion doses. Of this, 2.7 billion (51 per cent) have been bought by the developed world, including the US, UK, European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. We know what you are thinking. What about us in India? The remaining 2.6 billion doses have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, etc. The fact that India is the largest vaccine producer would help us get access. Since we produce, we will get to use. Fair game? Kripya dusron ki sahayata karne se pehle apna mask pehen len. If you have the vaccine, you may not need the mask. China has inoculated tens of thousands with vaccines that are still under trial. So, if everyone is getting inoculated, who is the vaccine being tested for? Could be Xi Jinping or could be no one. Everything about China is a matter of speculation. Everything for Kangana Ranaut is a matter of certainty in her parallel world that has no parallels. Ranaut in her latest has called Urmila Matondkar a 'soft porn star'. Matondkar to her credit has movies like Kaun (1994), Pinjar (2003), and Ek Hasina Thi (2004). How did Ranaut miss out on this data? Urmila Matondkar in a still from Ek Hasina Thi. Wo Stree hai, wo kuch bhi keh sakti hai. What did Sushant Singh Rajput say to himself in 2018? No smoking, spend time with Kriti. The findings have come to light after Sushants diary entries were read. Where was the diary? At his farmhouse. There are our plans and then there are lifes plans for us. What are Modis birthday plans? Looks like replying to birthday wishes coming his way. If it is your birthday today, we send our wishes your way. Stay safe. Will be back tomorrow. Now get the all-new DailyOh in your mailbox. Click here to subscribe. Also Read | Endgame Ladakh: Why India must insist on delineation and demarcation of LAC Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 09:45:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe is stepping up efforts to combat illegal trade in ozone depleting substances (ODSs), a senior environment official said Wednesday. Zimbabwe had not been spared from the smuggling schemes to move banned ODSs and contaminated refrigerants across the borders, said Zimbabwean Environment Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu. "My Ministry is working with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to train Customs Officers and equip them with tools and skills to combat illegal trade in ozone depleting substances," said Ndlovu. "A total of 16 refrigerant identifiers were distributed to all major ports of entry to help in the detection of mislabeled or contaminated refrigerants," the minister said in a speech to mark this year's International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. "Since January 2010, over 350 cylinders of contaminated and mislabeled refrigerants have been seized at our ports of entry," he said. The day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1994 for all nations of the world to reflect and take action against the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer which was signed on Sept. 16, 1987. The theme for this year's Ozone Day commemorations is "Ozone for life: 35 years of ozone layer protection". Ndlovu said Zimbabwe had managed to completely phase out the consumption of ozone depleting substance chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from a baseline level of 450 metric tons and has now reduced Hydro-Chlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) consumption by 35 percent from a baseline level of 340 metric tons. "These reductions at national level have contributed to the global efforts to preserve the ozone layer and the global climate system," the minister said. Enditem The Wolf administration on Wednesday filed a motion to stay the decision in order to ensure life-saving mitigation tools ... remain in place. Read more Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter. HARRISBURG A federal judge sent a shock wave through Pennsylvania politics this week when he ruled that several actions taken by Gov. Tom Wolf early in the coronavirus pandemic were unconstitutional. The decision handed Republican lawmakers a long-sought though possibly temporary political victory over Wolf after a string of defeats. It comes just in time for them to rally their base as many seek re-election or campaign for President Donald Trump. But the ruling leans heavily on precedent that hasnt been invoked or respected since the early 1900s, according to some legal experts. Even those who were less critical questioned if the decision accomplished anything, because it primarily deals with restrictions that are no longer in effect, and they doubted it would be upheld on appeal. The whole line of precedent that the opinion relies on was repudiated in the 1930s and has been taught as the classic error in arrogant, judicial overreach in constitutional law classes for decades, said Julian Mortenson, constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan. The ruling, issued Monday by Pittsburgh-based U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV found Wolfs stay-at-home and business closure orders, along with restrictions limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings, to be unconstitutional. The Wolf administration on Wednesday filed a motion to stay the decision in order to ensure life-saving mitigation tools ... remain in place. The administration is also appealing the ruling, which means it heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and could eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court. And if past rulings are any indication, the decision may face some tough scrutiny. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a similar case out of California related to pandemic restrictions on religious gatherings, wrote in May that elected officials should be allowed latitude when acting in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties and should not be subject to second-guessing by an unelected federal judiciary. In a separate Pennsylvania federal court case brought by business owners in Philadelphia, Bucks, and Lancaster Counties, a Philadelphia judge recently ruled that business closure orders did not infringe on business owners' constitutional rights because the restrictions were temporary. Those rulings, however, dont guarantee that the Third Circuit will overturn Stickmans decision, said Bruce Ledewitz, a constitutional law professor at Duquesne University. And because the portion of Stickmans ruling related to business closures and stay-at-home orders doesnt find fault with anything the Wolf administration is doing right now those orders have since been suspended Ledewitz said its not really a political victory for Republicans. He argued that the decision would find similar orders put in place in recent months by Republican and Democratic governors across the country to be unconstitutional as well. It is ideological, yes, but it is not political, he said. If you follow the reasoning of this opinion, a lot of the orders of Republican governors would have been found unconstitutional too. This is not aimed at Gov. Wolf. Stickman used a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Lochner v. New York, to argue that the Wolf administrations decision to designate some businesses as not life-sustaining and to order them to temporarily close violated those business owners' constitutional rights. The Lochner ruling said state laws restricting employees' hours were unconstitutional, ruling in favor of the business in question, Lochners Home Bakery in Utica, N.Y. The decision touched off a streak of decisions now known as the Lochner era, during which the Supreme Court issued several rulings that undermined state and federal laws regulating working conditions in favor of what judges viewed as protecting businesses from government overreach. Stickmans ruling noted Lochner has been "considerably recalibrated and de-emphasized, but Mortenson, of the University of Michigan, said mentioning it at all raised red flags. The reasoning in this opinion is the same kind of reasoning that could be and that has been used to strike down minimum wages, power limits, safety regulations, restrictions on child labor the basic protections of running something like a just society, rather than just leaving everything up to what private industry decides to do, Mortenson said. The principle and approach, in this case, puts all those laws into constitutional question. Jerry Dickinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who once ran for Congress as a Democrat, called the ruling a poorly reasoned ideological opinion with little precedential authority, in part because it ignored long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedent that gives deference or latitude to the judgment of elected officials, particularly during an emergency. In writing this opinion, Ledewitz said, Stickman did exactly what he was appointed by Trump to do: aggressively push the envelope and put a new generation of conservative jurisprudence into practice that challenges the political, social, and economic culture. Stickman a 41-year-old Western Pennsylvania native from a self-described blue-collar background once ran for political office as a Republican and served as vice-chair of a local GOP committee in Allegheny County. He worked as a partner with the Pittsburgh-based law firm Del Sole Cavanaugh Stroyd prior to serving on the federal court. During his time with the firm, he represented business interests in a lawsuit against the City of Pittsburgh seeking to strike down an ordinance that requires private businesses to provide workers with paid sick leave, along with another that would have required training for security guards. Allegheny County Court and Commonwealth Court ruled against the city in both cases. The state Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the city in 2019, upholding the paid sick leave ordinance but striking down the security guard training. Stickman was confirmed to the court by the Senate on July 31, 2019, in a 56-34 vote that followed written questioning about his views on issues like abortion and sodomy laws. Though he was nominated by Trump, Stickman was supported by both Pennsylvania senators Pat Toomey, a Republican, and Bob Casey, a Democrat. Regardless of the results of an appeal, Stickmans ruling likely resonated with many Pennsylvanians, especially those whose businesses or livelihoods suffered during the pandemic, said Dennis Roddy, a senior adviser at the Pittsburgh-based political consulting firm ColdSpark, which is known for working with Pennsylvania Republicans. He characterized Stickmans decision as fairly moderate, but said it touched on an issue felt by many working families. The Wolf administration has been dismissive of their very real economic anxieties, Roddy said. 100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA relies on funding from foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results. If you value this reporting, please give a gift today at spotlightpa.org/donate. Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021. Theres no arguing our local Community Policing Unit contains some of the most thoughtful and caring gardai in the county. And local Community Sergeant, Lionel Mullally has proven that by putting his exceptional writing skills to good use and penning a book of short stories to raise funds for the Little Blue Heroes Foundation. Lionel is a member of the Scriobh Creative Writing Group in Carrigallen but One More Minute and Other Stories is his first solo work. Ive always been writing but started to take it more seriously about six years ago, Lionel told the Leader over tea on Saturday afternoon. I was involved in a couple of anthologies but it was always in the back of my mind to do my own book. Its something I enjoy doing. Its something hes good at too, with each of the twelve short stories capable of bringing out every kind of emotion from amusement to sadness in the space of just a few pages. Well-written characters are brought to life in minutes as the author covers all manner of topics from sport to childhood friendships to love and loss. In fact, he has won awards in the past for his short stories. The title story, One More Minute is one such award-winning tale, which is a personal favourite of this reporter, and drives home the fact that life as we know it can change forever in just sixty seconds. One More Minute is one of Lionels favourites too and winning an award for his story of Garda John Doyle made him sit back and think, someone else likes this - thats one Im proud of. And, while the book is a great read, he didnt write it for any sort of fame or grandeur, but rather to support a charity, which is particularly close to his heart - the Little Blue Heroes Foundation. Lionel has been a long time supporter of us since we started Little Blue Heroes, said Sgt Alan Keane, who is secretary of the Foundation. Little Blue Heroes was established in 2017 by a number of guards that were able to identify families in communities that had children with very serious illnesses. The aim of the charity, Sgt Keane added, was to provide financial and practical support to families and to widen the support for families in the community - particularly in rural areas if something happens and they need somebody to call. Also, an awful lot of kids we were engaging with had a fascination with the uniform, so we wanted to make them honorary guards, said Sgt Keane. For the child, its a great distraction. A lot of them are going through treatment and some can be harsh treatments. So with our honorary guards, we organise days out, which is a distraction for them. Currently, there are 120 families from various different parts of the country who are availing of support from Little Blue Heroes. Were hampered a bit by Covid. We like to have a graduation day for the children every year where they get to come to Garda HQ and meet the commissioner and they get a certificate for their bravery and a medal, said Sgt Keane. Then we take them to see the dog unit and the mounted unit and then back to HQ for something to eat. Its a great day out for them. Then local guards, if theres an event locally like a parade or a festival, theyll get the kids involved. We are hampered a bit by Covid but were still doing the financial help for families where maybe one parent has had to give up their job to become a carer for their child and the other parent is doing the best they can, but may be affected by Covid as well. At Easter, for example, shopping vouchers and gifts for the children were sent out to families and it is hoped something similar will be done at Christmas. Funds are raised for the foundation via various events, with gardai doing charity cycles or skydives or, in Lionels case, using their talents and writing a book. Lionel has been working on this for a while. Its been an ambition of his to compile a book of short stories and it is very honourable of him that he thought of Little Blue Heroes. The funds raised from the book will go towards those services, said Sgt Keane. I think Lionel has a career in writing ahead of him. Hes a talented man. Anyone can nominate a child to become a Little Blue Hero by going to www.littleblueheroes.org, added Sgt Keane. Its inspiring when you see what these families and kids go through. Theyre heroes to us, he said. And the gardai involved, such as Alan or Lionel, are undoubtedly heroes to them. One More Minute and other stories is available on Amazon for 7, with proceeds after costs going directly to Little Blue Heroes. Longfords Community Policing Unit has always been there for the people of Longford. Support for our local Community Sergeant would mean support for the Little Blue Heroes and the children in Ireland whose lives are improved by the services of the Foundation. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:33:48|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close LUSAKA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Zambian government has acquired a new drug for the treatment of COVID-19 patients who are severely ill, a health official said on Thursday. Lloyd Mulenga, Director of the Infectious Disease Center, said the drug, Remdesivir, was effective for treatment of severely ill patients. He said during a COVID-19 update briefing that it was hoped that the new drug will give better outcomes in treating COVID-19 as it reduces the recovery rate. He said so far two patients at the country's biggest isolation centre at the Levy Mwanawasa Hospital were taking the new drug. Meanwhile, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary for Technical Services Kennedy Malama said the country will not hesitate to acquire any medicine for the treatment of COVID-19 as long as its efficacy was proved. He said the country was doing everything possible not only in intervention measures but in ensuring proper treatment for those with the virus. Meanwhile, the country recorded 41 new cases in the last 24 hours out of 785 tests done while 160 patients were discharged from various isolation centres. This brings the cumulative cases and recoveries to 13,928 and 13,029 respectively. The total death still stands at 326 as the country did not record any death in the last 24 hours. Enditem Her roles in period dramas from Downton Abbey to War & Peace have meant having to struggle into all manner of extravagant costumes. So Lily James will have welcomed the chance to slip into something more comfortable for her latest part the bath. The actress cast off her 1930s garb to share a dip with Emily Beecham in BBC1s romantic comedy The Pursuit of Love. Vintage: Lily James looked incredible in 1930s attire as she filmed for BBC One's The Pursuit Of Love in Bath on Tuesday Miss James, 31, plays the fearless, lovelorn Linda Radlett in the adaptation of Nancy Mitfords 1954 novel, with Miss Beecham, 36, taking the part of her cousin and best friend Fanny Logan. The three-parter follows the adventures and misadventures of the pair as they hunt for the ideal husband across Europe between the wars. Other new images from the drama, directed by Emily Mortimer, show Miss James taking a stroll with Freddie Fox, 31, who plays Lindas suitor Tony Kroesig. Speaking about adapting the book, Miss Mortimer said: Its an outrageously funny and honest story, whose central character the wild, love-addicted Linda Radlett still reads as a radical. Acclaimed: Other new images from the drama, directed by Emily Mortimer, show Miss James taking a stroll with Freddie Fox, 31, who plays Lindas suitor Tony Kroesig Wow: The actress cast off her 1930s garb to share a dip with Emily Beecham in BBC1s romantic comedy The Pursuit of Love will be shown next year. The series is based on Nancy Mitfords 1945 novel of the same name, which is based on the author and her family's real life experiences and is part of a trilogy. With the changing times Linda and Fanny's choices put them at odds as they question freedom, love, sex, and the human heart. Big names: Lily is also joined by Andrew Scott in the show, which is based on Nancy Mitfords 1945 novel of the same name Pursuit of love: Lily stars as a charismatic woman in search of a husband in Europe between the two World Wars, as she embraces her freedom and party-going ways Also appearing in the show is Dominic West, Dolly Wells, and Shazad Latif. It is a busy time for Lily who is also starring alongside Hollywood superstar Armie Hammer in Netflix's upcoming romantic thriller Rebecca. The pair portray newlyweds battling the shadow of the husband's first late wife in the drama, set to be released next month. Plot: With the changing times Linda and Fanny's choices put them at odds as they question freedom, love, sex, and the human heart (Lily pictured with Assaad Bouab) Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan on Thursday asserted the need to focus on creating effective health systems for improved pandemic preparedness. Addressing the joint G20 Finance and Health Ministers meeting, Vardhan extolled the virtues of investing in public health, an approach already underway in India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "We need to focus on creating effective health systems for improved pandemic preparedness. While all the other action plans are a response to a pandemic, a well-developed healthcare system can support even in containing the pandemic," he stated. Live TV Saudi Arabia bestowed with the Presidency of G20 grouping hosted the session and Vardhan attended the meeting through video conference. "The current pandemic and the global crisis arising out of that highlights, more than ever, the need for national and global solidarity," he said. "Flattening the curve globally will require international, multisectoral collaborative efforts to ensure that health systems across the world are able to maintain sufficient capacity to address the flux of complicated COVID-19 cases and protect the vulnerable and elderly in the world population," the Health Minister said. Today, I participated virtually in the #G20 Joint Finance & Health Ministers Meeting,held to assess response gaps in pandemic preparedness & deliberate on the way forward in a post #COVID19 world. #SaudiArabia, bestowed with the Presidency of #G20 hosted the session@g20org @WHO pic.twitter.com/zv7SusRArd Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) September 17, 2020 "There is a need to ensure that access to COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines is fair and equitable. Access to protection should not be a factor of ability to pay. India with a history of frugal and quality manufacturing will continue to play its role through our Make-In-India and Make-for the World endeavor and will support fully the development of research and digital capabilities for managing delivery," he said. "We all need to capitalize on existing programs such as the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), and ensure equitable global access to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, while strengthening health systems. Inspired by experiences of previous outbreaks such as SARS in 2003 and Ebola in 20142015, global solidarity is a must in order to prevent further morbidity and mortality. Examples in leadership and collaborations should be celebrated as examples to follow. Open communication and transparency will be crucial in monitoring the evolution of the disease in the global effort of flattening the curve," the Health Minister said. "India is committed to Universal Healthcare Coverage and in these stressful times, India stands together with the world to realize the shared mission to save lives and protect peoples health, and to re-energize the global economy at the earliest. This is also a time for decisive public health leadership and for preparing for future waves and the post-COVID-19 era," added Vardhan. "Public health leaders must look beyond borders. Only by learning from the global experience in our battle against a virus that respects no borders, can we honour the lives already lost and implement life-saving measures for current and future patients," he added. The city knows about the fickleness of hurricanes. But this one surprised nearly everyone. It was worst by the waterfront, where a pretty square called Plaza Ferdinand was a tangle of fallen magnolia and oak branches. Nearby, two 72-foot catamaran ferries, used to shuttle tourists out to the Gulf Islands National Seashore, were banging wildly against black metal fencing near the marina. Frank Rawley, the captain of one of the boats, was improvising a way to tie them up. He said the dock to which they had been tethered was gone. Everything got ripped away, he said. It just tore everything away. Sandy and Peter McDavid, the owners of the Palafox Wharf Reception Venue, a 19th-century building next to a marina, had come down to inspect the place, which if often rented for wedding receptions. A big blue sailboat had smashed into the railings of their deck. Water from the street had seeped onto the wooden floor on the ground level, and a skylight had blown off and let rainwater in, soaking the carpet on the second floor. We werent expecting it, Mr. McDavid said. We thought it was going to go to Alabama. Richard Fausset CANTONMENT, Fla. Omi Yoder and her husband moved to the Bristol Park subdivision two months ago. They bought a brick house with white siding generously sized but not too fancy on a cul de sac next to a creek. It is a place to nest: Ms. Yoder is due to have a baby her first child, a girl in about a month. On Wednesday, the place filled up with about two feet of water. The nursery they had been working on was ruined. They had seen the water rising up from the street and were able to scramble and move some things upstairs. But the water ruined carpets and other things, which they and some friends were dragging out to the curb in the late afternoon. Ms. Yoder did not know if the cars in the garage would start. They got water, too. She figured they would have to redo the floors. And start over again on the nursery. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tri Indah Oktavianti and Galih Gumelar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 The National Polices Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) has found evidence that the fire that ravaged the main building of the Attorney Generals Office (AGO) complex in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, in August was lit intentionally. Bareskrim chief detective Comr. Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo said the fire was caused by an open flame rather than an electrical short circuit, leading investigators to conclude in a preliminary probe that there could be criminal factors behind the fire. The police have now finished the preliminary investigation and are focusing on finding those responsible for the blaze. 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 In a case of spying, a civilian employee of the Military Engineering Services (MES) from Rewari in Haryana was arrested for passing classified information to a Pakistani Military intelligence unit after getting honey-trapped on Facebook. On September 16 (Wednesday), based on a specific input of Lucknow based Military Intelligence (MI), the Special Task Force (STF) of the Haryana Police arrested Mahesh Kumar. He was reportedly in touch with operatives of the Pakistani Military intelligence unit since the last two and a half years and has received money from them on multiple occasions. Live TV In June, the Lucknow MI received an input that user of a mobile number, used by Kumar, likely a Military Engineering Services (MES) employee posted in Jaipur, Rajasthan is sharing sensitive military information to a young woman associated with Pakistani MI in return of money. It was learnt that he addressed the Pakistani operative as "Madamji". An operation code-named "Operation Madamji" was launched by the MI unit to identify the suspect and ascertain the veracity of the input. The accused was identified as 28-year-old Mahesh Kumar, son of Rajendra Singh resident of Rewari and worked as civilian cleaning staff in MES Jaipur. He had a friendship with at least three known and established Pakistani Intelligence Operative (PIO) run Facebook accounts. It was also learnt that Kumar has received at least two payments of Rs 5,000 each from his Pakistani handlers via Kerala. The payment module was very similar to what had surfaced in the Rajasthan based espionage case, 'Op Desert Chase' wherein Vikas Kumar and Chiman Lal were arrested. In the first week of September, Mahesh Kumar was found staying around Rewari and without losing any time the case was shared with STF Haryana and a joint team of both the agencies started developing it further. A swift operation to apprehend and interrogate the suspect was planned for September 13-14. However before Lucknow MI could obtain desired sanctions and place a team near Rewari, the suspect suddenly moved out of Haryana. Subsequently, STF Haryana indicated that the suspect is likely to visit Rewari again on September 16. Hence a fresh apprehensions plan was worked out for Thursday or Friday (September 18) jointly. Jaipur-based MI unit also joined the investigation. After the arrival of the suspect at Rewari on Wednesday, the STF team learnt that he has plans to leave Haryana by afternoon. Hence he was apprehended by STF Haryana on Wednesday afternoon from Rewari along with his mobile device and was taken for initial examination and question. The accused was subjected to joint questioning by the teams of MI Lucknow, STF Haryana and MI Jaipur. During questioning Mahesh Kumar admitted to having come in contact with known PIO run Facebook account in the name of 'Harleen Gill' in July 2018, wherein he only had sent the friend request to the PIO run account. They became a friend on Facebook and used to communicate through text and audio/video chat on Facebook messenger. The account was run by a young woman, likely in her thirties who claimed to be working with Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PCDA) office in Jalandhar. The PIO's Facebook account (in name of 'Harleen Gill') subsequently got deactivated. Later, he got a friend request from the same PIO in 2019 this time from a Facebook account with the name of 'Harman Kour'. They started communicating on Facebook messenger and later graduated to WhatsApp. The accused was found to have been in touch with at least two WhatsApp numbers of the PIO. They used to exchange text and audio messages between them over WhatsApp and also used to video chat. He accepted to have shared the ORBAT of a Jaipur based Army Brigade, details of some senior officers in Jaipur, location of PCDA Jaipur, details of MES complaint records, COVID-19 state of the Jaipur Cantt and posting order of civilian MES employees. He used to gather movement-related information from by striking conversation with service personnel coming to Jaipur MES office for various purposes. He also accepted to have activated a WhatsApp number for the PIO by sharing OTP in 2019. However, he claimed that he took it back within a couple of days. The PIO asked him to send the contact of other serving personnel in Jaipur and Bikaner, details of units moving out or coming in of/to Jaipur, state of COVID-19 in Jaipur Cantt, posting details of other MES employees. To lure him more the PIO has once assured the accused that she will get him posted to Delhi. Mahesh Kumar admitted to having passed on his Punjab National Bank account details to the PIO and to have received Rs 5,000 twice in the bank account as a gift from her in September 2019 and January 2020. However, it is suspected that he had received money from the PIO on more number of occasions. Further investigation in this regard is in progress. Through the accused is a cleaning staff in MES Jaipur whose primary task is to clean offices there, he was found have photos of several letters/ notices in his mobile device including some with security classification and some giving out the details of all unit/sub-units in Jaipur Cantt. He also had photos of COVID-19 related circulars and list of MES employees with their mobile numbers in his handset. The accused was found to have deleted all his chats with PIOs. It is likely that during the two and half year of communication with the PIO the accused has passed more than what he is confessing. His mobile phone has been sent for forensic extraction and it is learnt that STF has found many documents in it that he was not supposed to keep. Apart from that, traces of his communication and passage of information to the PIO were also learnt to have been found. The accused was produced before the Duty Magistrate on September 16 night. He has been booked under violation of Official Secret Act and an FIR in this regard has been lodged at PS Dharuhera. He was expected to be produced before a court in Rewari by afternoon after undergoing a COVID-19 test. The Haryana STF may ask for police remand for few more days for further investigation into the case and to complete the formalities. While several instructions and policies are being formulated and passed at regular interval by defence authorities for making all ranks get aware about the nuances of the Pakistani espionage network, it seems many are still getting carried away and still getting honey-trapped on social media by Pakistani agencies. Among the many things COVID-19 has illuminated for parents is just how much of a struggle it is to keep everything running when a crisis hits. How many of us, for example, have someone we could ask to drop everything during an uncertain time to help? What about new Canadians or single parents? In these days when so many of us live far from extended family, Id wager a guess that the answer is very few. In early May, Dr. Jean Ngola was in the middle of a family emergency. The New Brunswick doctor, who had around 2,000 people to care for in his family practice and also worked at the local emergency room at Campbellton Regional Hospital, needed to pick up his daughter who was about 750 km away in Montreal. His ex-wife needed to fly to Africa for her fathers funeral, meaning their four-year-old daughter had to stay with Ngola in New Brunswick. Even worse, this was unfolding in the middle of the pandemic, making every aspect of the situation more complicated, especially with provinces tightening up their borders, requiring most returning residents to quarantine for 14 days upon their arrival. But as Ngola told CBCs The Fifth Estate, he called the New Brunswick COVID-19 hotline and was told he would not have to isolate upon his return. Information on the governments website indicated parents who needed to cross provincial lines because of shared custody were on the list of people who did not need to quarantine. The story of the hate piled upon Ngola when he later tested positive for COVID-19 and was blamed for an outbreak in the province will be a familiar one by now. Called out by the premier as the source of the outbreak, Ngola was suspended from work and has since left New Brunswick after receiving threats online some calling for him to be lynched, others sharing the location of his home. His legal team now includes a constitutional lawyer who says Ngolas charter rights were violated. An investigation by The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada has cast doubt on whether Ngola was the source of the outbreak that affected 40 people, two of whom died. His situation typifies not only the racist scapegoating that people of colour experience, but just how poorly families are equipped to weather a crisis. In a time when travel is being discouraged, no less, few of us have someone we could ask to drive hundreds of kilometres to deliver a young child to a provincial border so that child can cross on foot into our arms, thereby avoiding any inter-provincial travel. Evolutionary anthropologist David Samson, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga who studies how people evolved in groups, said the impact of this kind of isolation doesnt get nearly enough attention. All forms of inequality are damaging, but one of the least appreciated in modern society is that of family inequality, said Samson. He said modern society has presented many people who seek economic opportunities with a difficult tradeoff. The choice is often between living a socially connected life close to family support systems, including grandparents and other adults who can help you raise your kids with less economic opportunity, said Samson, and a life of social isolation but access to greater economic opportunity. Ngola has a brother studying in Montreal who was able to look after his daughter for the first week her mother was away. But apart from this, he seems to have experienced the kind of isolation many new Canadians face when they set out in search of better job opportunities or a safer or more stable political environment like Ngola did when he first came to Canada from the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Samson points out, COVID-19 has only added extreme pressure on parents, who find themselves with even fewer helpers than normal think daycares and schools that were closed, grandparents social distancing at home. That leaves new and single parent Canadians struggling to meet their family obligations, he said. Parenting writer and podcaster Samantha Kemp-Jackson, herself a mother of four, said she wasnt surprised to see the well-loved physician scapegoated for the spread of COVID-19 in his province. This is the day-to-day experience of many people of colour who find themselves at the brunt of larger societys blame for anything that seems to go wrong, said Kemp-Jackson, who has experienced racism herself as a Black person. The rush to judgment and accusation, and the need to put the blame somewhere often leads to dire consequences for the innocent and vulnerable. Kemp-Jackson added that most reasonable people would agree that, based on this information Ngola had at the time, and his pressing need to get his daughter back in his care, he made a right decision to pick her up. His reality of having no one to turn to make that long drive in his stead is shared by many families, she said. I cant think of who Id call either. He was really put in a difficult spot. OTTAWAWith two federal Opposition party leaders in self-isolation due to close contact with the coronavirus, growing testing backlogs in several urban centres and fears of a second wave, its now all COVID-19, all the time. For a brief month, it looked like the Liberal government would shift its sights to an ambitious governing agenda with next weeks throne speech, even if it triggered an election. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ended three days of cabinet meetings here on a more cautious note, saying his immediate and near-term priority is ensuring the health and economic well-being of Canadians. Trudeau announced Safe Restart Agreements with all the provinces and territories were completed, deals that will finally push $19 billion out the door for a range of pandemic responses by lower levels of government. We must stay focused on the task ahead, he told reporters. Healthier Canadians will mean and have already meant a healthier and stronger economy. Gone was his talk from Aug. 18 of the unprecedented opportunity presented by COVID-19. Thats when the prime minister shuffled his cabinet, suspended Parliament, and shut down committees looking into the pandemic response, racism in policing and ethics questions about the WE Charity-run student volunteer program. At that time, Trudeau primed Canadians to think beyond the short-term swath that COVID-19 was cutting. This is our moment to change the future for the better. We cant afford to miss it because this window of opportunity wont be open for long. By Wednesday, four weeks later, after hearing from experts, ambassadors abroad, the German chancellor, and cabinet colleagues, Trudeau said his government has not abandoned plans to support a clean and green relaunch of the economy, but repeatedly underscored his governments focus is squarely on the challenge of the moment. We have to remember we are not out of this pandemic yet and the actions we take every single day, not just as a government but as individual Canadians matters in how we keep each other safe and how were able to get the economy going again. Trudeau adamantly insisted he does not want an election, but he turned aside suggestions that it might be reckless to have one, saying its irresponsible to suggest as much. Trudeau said Canadas democratic institutions are strong enough to adapt to the challenges of COVID-19, and he pointed to the New Brunswick election held Monday. Still, the need for all parties to focus on the immediate crisis was sharpened when federal Conservative Leader Erin OToole revealed he, his family and other staffers are in self-isolation, after a member of his staff with whom hed travelled to Quebec, had tested positive for COVID-19. It comes a day after Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, and his entire caucus, went into isolation after a Bloc staffer tested positive. Trudeau said their situations demonstrate that it would not be responsible for Parliament to fully reconvene with a full complement of 338 MPs and advocated the Liberal proposal of a hybrid model with remote voting for MPs. Later Trudeaus House leader Pablo Rodriguez said the Liberals are prepared to agree to up to 86 MPs in the Commons as recommended by House of Commons administrative staff. For the Conservatives, OTooles isolation is unquestionably a setback. The party had been arguing for a more regular resumption of parliament including having up to 86 MPs in the Commons, and votes in person, not via an electronic voting system. My family and I are feeling well, but we take COVID-19 very seriously, said OToole in a statement. Today was going to be Jacks first day back at school, but instead we will be getting tested and self-isolating per public health guidelines. The health and safety of my family and all Canadians is my top priority. OToole, who had received a government briefing on the pandemic the night before, cancelled a Western Canada trip, and hoped to be tested Wednesday, although long lineups in Ottawas testing facilities have left many families without access to COVID-19 tests as schools reopened. Premier Doug Ford vowed the province would ramp up testing quickly, and promised to move mobile testing units to Ottawa and London, and to launch a couple of thousand additional testing areas in the days ahead at retail locations like pharmacies and large retailers. Trudeau said he knows Canadians are still very worried about the coronavirus and their jobs, and said he will still present plans in his throne speech to build back better with the level of ambition Canadians expect and to drive the most important economic recovery of our generation. Canadians deserve an ambitious plan for a healthier and safer Canada, a Canada thats fair and inclusive. A Canada thats clean and competitive, and with the speech from the throne on Sept. 23 thats exactly what our government is ready to do, he said. However, cabinet minister after cabinet minister insisted that even after the pandemic crisis passes, there will still be a climate change crisis that Canada must deal with. Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson insisted the government remains absolutely committed to exceeding its Paris emission reductions target by 2030. The Pembina Institute has said that as of the end of 2018, Canada had only achieved 0.4 per cent of the progress needed to hit its current 2030 target to reduce national emissions 30 per cent below the 2005 level. Wilkinson downplayed the prospect of a specific announcements next week, however, saying a speech from the throne will set out broad priorities and be an important signal to public servants, but its not a budget, its not a funding mechanism. Wilkinson promised a comprehensive energy framework would be ready before the next UN climate change conference. That conference had been set for November this year, but was postponed due to COVID-19 to November 2021. The agreements released Wednesday by Ottawa outline specific details of funding, and commitments by the federal and provincial governments to tackle everything from transit to vulnerable populations. One of the main goals going forward will be to ramp up testing so that 200,000 COVID-19 tests are being done each day across the country. The federal government will divvy up $4.3 billion between the provinces and territories over the next six to eight months and it will go to bolstering contact tracing, data management and testing capacity. Under the deal, each jurisdiction pledged to use the funds to help boost the amount of testing being done in their respective jurisdictions, with some pledging to double and even triple the number of tests being done daily. Canada is now reporting 138,803 total COVID-19 cases, with 9,188 deaths, and 7,775 active cases. The Public Health Agency of Canada has not released updated modelling or forecasts since Aug. 14. With files from Kieran Leavitt Read more about: How is it possible that Nicole Malliotakis, who has built her campaign for Congress in NY-11 on the single issue of law and order, applauded Trump last week when he threatened to withhold federal funding to New York City? This would crush the NYPD. Commissioner Dermot Shea said it himself: "We need that federal money.'' Malliotakis is running a single-issue campaign on showing support for our cops, and yet its her opponent, Rep. Max Rose, with the better record on the issue. Defunding the police is short-sighted and wrong, Rose wrote this in The Advance months ago. He also gave cops a raise. Make no mistake: Extremists who could hurt local law enforcement exist in both parties. And Congressman Rose is thus far the only one whos shown the guts to go against not just the opposition, but the radicals within his own party, when it matters most. Thats something Malliotakis lacks the courage to do, and she just made that clear. Malliotakis loves showing the picture of Rose at a non-violent march in support of African American constituents, which doesnt negate his record on the issue one iota. Max Rose will never defund the police. He has already proved hell do the opposite. Dont let the propaganda fool you: He has the better record on issues of law and order. (Matt Matilsky is a Midland Beach resident.) On 14 November 2019, Wessam Alieddine, an intensive care physician with close to ten years of experience, had arrived to London from her hometown of Suez. She was moving from the Suez Canal University Hospital to the reputable St Marys Hospital in London. Alieddine was joining the team of leading Egyptian-British ICU consultant Ahmed Haddad a team of around 15 physicians, seven of which are of Egyptian origin, or freshly arrived Egyptian medical doctors. It was such a big and massive change from my hometown hospital which is a university hospital and that does make it better equipped than the average public hospital to St Marys of Imperial College, which impressed me on the very first day, being so much better equipped, Alieddine said. And for a doctor at the ICU, an equipped unit could make a difference between a doctors chance to save a wounded patient or his inability to help this patient battle for his life, she added. Despite the strong support Haddad is known to offer his team, Alieddines introduction in the system was somehow challenging. This, she explained, was not about clinical experience, given that the responsibilities given to a newly arriving Egyptian medical doctor at one of the UK's National Health Service facilities (NHS) are usually below those of their years of experience in Egypt. However, a few months down the road, with the huge challenge that the newly emerging Covid-19 pandemic posed to health systems all over the world, Alieddine dropped all the inhibitions of a newcomer and was fast integrated into the life-saving system, working around the clock to help patients overcome an aggressive new virus with no clear means of treatment. The coronavirus was really a very decisive moment. I was there at the heart of the ICU units of a key London hospital and patients were coming in fast, and really ill, and there was no time to hesitate or think twice, Alieddine said. According to Alieddine, it did not take long for her or for the other younger Egyptian physicians who had joined the team to impress with their clinical skills. We come from hospitals where intensive care physicians perform under much more challenging conditions more patients, less equipment and even at times less medicine stocks and items. This meant that given better working conditions our performance would inevitably pick up even higher, she said. Moreover, Alieddine added, most Egyptian physicians, especially those of younger generations, are used to long working hours given the fact that every doctor has to do at least two to three shifts a day in no less than two hospitals to be able to make a semi-decent living. This was a big asset and the team members of Egyptian descent impressed with their ability to maintain their poise under pressure and during long working hours. Some days were both hard and long. However, it would take Alieddine only a couple of scrolls down her social media groups with doctors back home to shift from the stress she was working under to the much bigger challenge that her colleagues back home were facing, despite the fact that the number of cases recorded in Egypt from March to June was considerably less than those in the UK. Today, with the worst of the new coronavirus hopefully over, and with plans in many countries, including the UK, to expand and improve healthcare services, Alieddine is confident that many of the young Egyptian doctors and fresh graduates of schools of medicine in Egypt could easily compete for the many new openings that will follow. It is not a matter of skills or a matter of training, but a matter of easier or more challenging working conditions, she argued. Haddad, a lead neuro-critical care consultant at St Marys, who has been working non-stop in the NHS since 2013, is convinced that the incredible inspiration that one gets in the formative years in Egypt leaves one with an invaluable ability to want to work and deliver. Having graduated in the early 2000s from the renowned school of medicine at Ain Shams University, Haddads early clinical experience was at Al-Demerdash Hospital a place where thousands are treated every week. It was at this school and this hospital that Haddad learned what it means to be a physician, especially in looking after patients who have limited financial means. When I joined the school of medicine in 1993 I just thought that it was an impressive thing to be a medical doctor and I was thinking that I wanted to be like the iconic Magdi Yaccoub. But throughout my university years and during subsequent five years at Al-Demerdash, from 2002 to 2007, I saw leading medical doctors going way out of their way to help patients make it no matter the limitation of resources and no matter the volume of work, he said. It was in the early 1960s that Yaccoub, who had graduated from the school of medicine of Cairo University in 1958, went the UK to pursue his studies at Guys Hospital, where he later started his medical career in the UK, briefly interrupted with a few years in the US. After he retired as a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Imperial College, Yaccoub came back to Egypt where he started his reputable heart hospital and foundation in Aswan. Haddad is convinced that the reputation of this generation of many extraordinary medical doctors who came from Egypt has been an asset that many hard working physicians of later generations benefited from as they joined the UK's NHS. However, unlike the doctors of today who might find it easier to join medical services in Western countries, including the UK, Haddad had to work hard on getting his chance at the UK. It took him four years in a Dubai hospital after his five years at Al-Demerdash to eventually land in London in the spring of 2011. It was not easy, especially that as I was graduating the UK was turning into a place that prioritised European Union doctors, he recalled. Haddads job offer that took him to St Marys Hospital a little under a decade ago seemed very promising for this inspired and ambitious intensivist. However, it was in a matter of weeks that he had to head to Canada for family reasons where he spent a little under two years before coming back to Egypt, also for family reasons. When he landed at Cairo International Airport on 3 July 2013, Haddad was not sure about his next steps. He was then able to regain his dream job. During the subsequent seven years, Haddad established himself as a prominent medical doctor in the NHS. And when the new coronavirus hit he joined the tireless efforts of doctors there to step up to the moment of a grave global health emergency. Haddad would not wish to say that Egyptian NHS doctors necessarily stood out. What he would rather say is that those doctors did prove that they are no less capable than anyone else amid the tough challenge of an aggressive pandemic. I guess it has always been the case that the graduate of Egyptian schools of medicine could fit well in the UK medical service. What happened after the Covid-19 crisis is that the UK government decided to expand its medical services, and that this is happening at the time of Brexit means that the prioritising of EU doctors is over, and that chances are there now for keen and clever Egyptian doctors who wish to join under regulations that are being eased in view of the need to fill medical posts, Haddad said. The pursuit of an overseas career is something that many medical doctors would normally entertain in Egypt; not just because of the need to upgrade medical education, but also to pursue better rewards for hard years of study and very demanding work. Both Haddad and Alieddine agree. According to Amr Dawoud, also an ICU consultant, who has been working in the UK NHS since the early 2000s, it is becoming increasingly the case that doctors want to work in countries like the UK in pursuit of more supporting working conditions. Of course, it is perfectly legitimate for young doctors to want to have a decent living standard after long years of hard work, but there is also the factor that a doctor wants to be enabled to help his patients. This is especially the case if we are talking about doctors who work with critical conditions, or surgeons; both need highly equipped ICUs and ORs. The same applies to all other doctors, but I think in these particular cases the difference between the well-equipped and not so well-equipped hospital become very significant, Dawoud said. During the tough coronavirus influx at his hospital in Lancaster, Dawoud had some very challenging moments, including those where he needed to decide which patient had a better survival chance, to get him or her admitted into the ICU, over other patients who needed a miracle to get them back on their feet. However, during the toughest and thickest moments, Dawoud, a leading ICU consultant, knew that not at any moment would he be without basic essentials, nor would he face the sad destiny of over 160 medical doctors who died after having contracted Covid-19 while on duty. Dawoud added that despite concerns sometimes raised over the quality of medical education in Egypt, with the increasing number of students and limited resources to improve the education system, the incredible clinical skills that Egyptian doctors, even the younger ones, acquire through long hours of practice and large numbers of patients does put Egyptian doctors in a very good place, clinically speaking, especially if given a fair chance. Sometimes being denied a fair chance is a good enough for some young doctors to pursue their careers overseas. This, during the past two decades, has been the concern of some graduates of the school of medicine who complained that they were denied a fair chance to join the university staff because of questionable practices of nepotism. Haytham Rabie, a pulmonologist who graduated in the late 1990s from Ain Shams University, had to go to court to rectify the unfairness done to him on a university staff assignment. Despite this unfairness Rabie managed to pursue a successful career path both in the private sector medical service and later at the university hospital. And two years after getting his PhD, he decided to move to the UK. With a father who had for long practiced at Austria, and degrees and experience that would have allowed him a chance in the US, Rabie still preferred the UK perhaps for a certain compatibility that he and other doctors who are working there, or have worked there for a while, often talk about between the Egyptian and British systems. The move was essentially prompted by family reasons, but also by awareness that his chances to have a stable life and significant medical career would probably be more in the UK rather than in Egypt. As a leading pulmonologist at William Harvey Hospital, Rabei is in a privileged position to be well acquainted with the attempts of Oxford University to develop a vaccine against Covid-19. In Egypt, I worked with the best of pulmonologists, including Awad Tagueddine and Tarek Safwat, and I would have been in a good place had I stayed in Egypt. But here I am now working in the NHS and, being one of many good doctors who came to work in England, can either to stay for good or stay and then go back to Egypt after having had a worthwhile medical experience here, he said. For now, Rabei is anticipating a lot more doctors, especially pulmonologists, coming from Egypt to the UK, among other Western countries that are planning to expand their medical capacities. At the moment we think that around 12 to 14 per cent of patients who contracted Covid-19 could develop in the long run some lung problems, and as such the demand for pulmonologists would probably be one of the highest among specialisations, he argued. Psychiatry is another branch that is likely to gain more practitioners coming from Egypt. According to Mohamed AbdelGhani, a psychiatrist who has established himself in the NHS and started a successful private medical service in London, psychiatry is a place where cultural differences might be rather challenging for both patient and physician at the beginning, but not for long. According to AbdelGhani, the UK has during the past decade seen a considerable successful presence of psychiatrists who studied and worked first in Egypt. And they have been doing well enough to encourage the NHS system to further integrate bright and smart young psychiatrists who wish to pursue their studies and careers, partially or fully, in the UK. AbdelGhani himself is a good example of a success story. Upon his graduation in the early 2000s, AbdelGhani went off to the UK for a job that he got after he forwarded his application to 12 job openings. He started in Birmingham, then moved to Liverpool, before settling in London. In less than 15 years, as a consultant psychiatrist, AbdelGhani established the first NHS clinical TMS Service in London, in 2016. AbdelGhani was successful enough that in 2017 he became the first British doctor to be elected as a director of the Clinical TMS Society and he was re-elected to this position in 2020. AbdelGhani explained that TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) is a treatment that can primarily help people who suffer from depression, especially those who did not respond to medication. During the lockdown that came with the crisis of Covid-19, AbdelGhani noted, there has been a rise in the cases of depression, whether first time diagnosis, "perhaps as a result of the sense of lack of control, lack of certainty or lack of exercising entitlement, such as stepping out any time to buy something, or those who had been treated and relapsed with the decline of communication with their medical teams at a time where their treatment was not optimised. The restrictions imposed on socialising during the tough months of the coronavirus crisis, or the economic consequences and the psychological repercussions thereof, have been responsible for an increase of cases of anxiety and depression. I guess we are up to see a post-coronavirus mental health pandemic, he argued. This would perhaps mean more jobs for psychiatrits, although it is still not clear how much of the funds that would go to expand the health service will be allocated to mental health trusts and psychiatric services, he argued. According to medical doctors who voluntarily administer the Facebook page Doctor Nabatshi (Doctor on Duty), whatever the branch and whatever the destination, there will be a lot more medical doctors taking the opportunity of increasing demand for physicians in Western countries. They argue that the NHS will inevitably be a prime attraction, because of the long established tradition of Egyptian doctors going to the UK and because of the respect that prominent medical doctors who made successful careers in the UK keep inspiring. Today, the admins of Doctor Nabatshy say there are a little over 4,000 Egyptian doctors working in the NHS, and around 30 percent of those arrived there in the past four years in pursuit of better working conditions and better living standards. Working conditions, they argue, include a wide range of things, starting from the availability of required medical equipment to the safety of medical teams. During the past five years, the Doctors Syndicate of Egypt has been repeatedly demanding the introduction of measures to protect medical teams who work under challenging conditions from the angry reactions of families devastated by the loss of loved ones. According to the admins of Doctor Nabatshy, if a new physician has to spend over LE150,000 during his years at the school of medicine to get a little over LE2,000 monthly during his early years of practice, where he has to work at times over 18 hours, then it makes perfect sense for these doctors to wish to pursue their careers elsewhere. Currently the number of graduates of the school of medicine in Egypt is around 9,000 a year. The estimate of Doctor Nabatshy is that around 40 per cent of those will seek jobs overseas either in Western countries or Arab countries. To stop the exodus of medical doctors, the admins of Doctor Nabatshy argue there needs to be a shift up in the working conditions and levels of salaries that doctors get. Every physician knows that they have a very noble job to do, but at the end of the day those doctors need money to continue their studies, to provide for themselves and their families, and to get treatment if they fall ill, according to Doctor Nabatshy. Search Keywords: Short link: A helpline set up to help victims of so-called revenge porn has dealt with more cases so far this year than the whole of 2019. A record 2,050 reports had been made to the Government funded service as of Monday. This represents a 22 per cent rise on the 1,685 reports over 2019 its busiest ever year. The helpline set up to help victims of so-called revenge porn has dealt with more cases so far this year than the whole of 2019 Bosses believe the rise is evidence of a long-term behaviour triggered by the lockdown amid fears of a 'new normal'. The helpline, run by the charity SWGfL, part of the UK Safer Internet Centre, saw cases almost double in April compared to the same month the previous year from 122 to 242. Advisers thought the spike may settle, but despite lockdown easing, cases have remained high through to August. Over that period 1,387 reports were made, the equivalent of nine every day Last month, the helpline dealt with 285 cases, a 63 per cent increase on the 175 dealt with in August 2019. Revenge porn - the sharing of sexual images or videos of a person without their consent became an offence in England and Wales in April 2015. Around two thirds of cases reported to the helpline, which was set up in 2015, involve women. It has helped remove 22,515 images this year 94 per cent of the 23,913 reported. Its experts predict the UK total could rise to 2,700 reports by the end of the year 60 per cent higher than the 2019 total. Helpline manager Sophie Mortimer believes the sustained rise is evidence of a long-term behaviour triggered by the lockdown, amid greater awareness of the crime and support for victims. She said: 'It's interesting it hasn't dropped and for me, that really does confirm we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. 'I think it did show that there's a lot more going on behind closed doors, and the tighter those doors are closed, the more intense some of that behaviour has become, and maybe brought things to a head that otherwise would have taken a lot longer or might have taken a different shape.' Sextortion cases have also risen since lockdown, and now make up almost a fifth (18%) of the total cases dealt with by the helpline. Before the lockdown, they accounted for 13% of the total. While around three quarters of the 363 sextortion cases involved male victims this year, the figures suggest a greater number of women are being exploited. In March and July, 30% of the sextortion cases flagged to the helpline involved women. David Wright, director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, said: 'The lockdown produced an extreme set of circumstances which are bringing a lot of problems. 'What we are seeing here, however, suggests something more long-term has happened which could mean we will be busier than ever before. 'It's worrying to think this could be the new normal.' Looks like the makers of Nishabdham are turning all rumours into reality, as director Hemanth Madhukar confirms the OTT release of the thriller. Talking about the same during a recent interaction with Hyderabad Times, the director said, "Yes, we have decided to release the film on an OTT platform. We had planned for a theatrical release and tried to hold out for as long as we could but with no clarity on when theatres will reopen, we felt an OTT release is the best way forward. I hope the audience will connect with it and make it a success." Well, we are sure the news might have surely thrilled Anushka Shetty-R Madhavan fans and followers who were eagerly waiting for the big release of the film. Of lately, there were rumours suggesting that the film's digital rights have been acquired by Amazon Prime Video for a whopping Rs 20 crore. As per speculations, the film will have a massive release on October 2, 2020 on the special occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. However, a confirmation is awaited from the team for the official release date. On a related note, earlier, producer-writer of the film, Kona Venkat had put up a poll on his Twitter handle asking netizens for their opinions on where to release the film. Interestingly, both the times, the highest votes were given for OTT release. Nishabdham was earlier scheduled for a theatrical release on April 2, 2020. Notably, Anushka Shetty will be essaying the role of a mute woman who experiences paranormal activities in a haunted house. The thriller will also feature an ensemble cast including Shalini Pandey, Anjali, Subbaraju and Srinivas Avasarala in key roles. Directed by Hemant Madhukar, the film is bankrolled by Kota Venkat and TG Vishwa Prasad. The music for Nishabdham is composed by Gopi Sundar, while BGM is tuned by Girishh G. Camera for the film is cranked by Shaneil Deo. Here's Why Tollywood Makers Should Opt For OTT Platforms Skipping Conventional Theatrical Release Nishabdham: Anushka Shetty Starrer To Release On Amazon Prime On October 2? More than 110,000 jobs were created across Australia in August, delivering the nation a surprise fall in unemployment even as Victoria went into coronavirus lockdown. The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday reported the national jobless rate dropped to 6.8 per cent from 7.5 per cent. Markets had been expecting an increase in unemployment to around 8 per cent. More than 100,000 people found work in August. Credit:Phil Carrick The bureau said 110,000 jobs were added in the month, taking total employment above 12.5 million. It is back to where it was in July 2018. Of the jobs created, 74,800 were part-time positions. And despite the large jump in jobs, total hours worked only lifted by 0.1 per cent. Shops' contribution of every 10 spent online thought to have dropped by 50% John Lewis has axed its staff bonus for the first time since 1953 after losing 635million in six months and closing eight stores. Dame Sharon White, chairman of the retail group, told partners today that the announcement 'will come as a blow'. The group said it plunged to the pre-tax loss for the half year ended July 25 after being impacted by a 470million write-down on its stores. It added that, before the crisis, it was believed shops contributed about 6 of every 10 spent online - but now that figure is thought to be, on average, around 3. The group said it plunged to the pre-tax loss for the six months up to July 25. Pictured: a John Lewis shop in Birmingham's Grand Central Station, which is due to close Dame Sharon said the company, outside of exceptional circumstances, would now expect to pay out a bonus again once its profits exceed 150million. Sales across the group increased by 1.1 per cent to 5.56billion for the half-year, but the company saw higher sales of 'less profitable lines such as laptops and loo rolls'. The retail group's chairman, Sharon White, above, told partners today that the announcement 'will come as a blow' However, it also benefited from Government subsidies and expects the business rates holiday for the current year to offset pandemic-related costs by around 50million. John Lewis saw total sales slip by 10 per cent for the period, as online growth partially offset the impact of store closures. Online sales were 'strong' with 73 per cent growth during the period, Dame Sharon said. The department store business has seen sales momentum 'starting to build' since reopening sites, with sales around 30 per cent lower than the same period last year, but ahead of expectations. It said stores in retail parks are down by around 15 per cent with city centre sites particularly impacted by a slump in footfall, with London stores reporting a 40 per cent slump. The company added that a shift towards increased home working has impacted people's purchases, with increased sales of tablets and TVs, while trouser sales have fallen. Meanwhile, the group's Waitrose grocery business saw like-for-like sales increase by almost 10 per cent for the period as shoppers continued to go to supermarkets. The department store business has seen sales momentum 'starting to build' since reopening sites, with sales ahead of expectations. Pictured: a John Lewis store in Birmingham 'I know this will come as a blow to Partners' Dame Sharon White wrote a letter to partners this morning, outlining the group's interim results for the half year ended 25 July this year. Referring to the implications for staff's bonuses, she wrote: 'I said to Partners in April that I could not see the circumstances in which we would be able to pay a bonus next March. 'The Partnership Board has now confirmed that there will not be a bonus next year given our profit outlook. 'I know this will come as a blow to Partners who have worked so hard this year. The decision in no way detracts from the commitment and dedication that you have shown. 'Outside of exceptional circumstances, we would now expect to begin paying a bonus again once our profits exceed 150m and our debt ratio falls below 4 times. Once our profits rise above 300m and a debt ratio below 3 times, we would expect to pay a bonus of at least 10 per cent. 'The Partnership found itself in a similar position in 1948 when the bonus was halted following the Second World War. We came through then to be even stronger than before and we will do so again.' Advertisement It said online shopping demand has remained strong with the company now delivering around 170,000 weekly orders, up from around 60,000 before the pandemic. Waitrose.com has also seen a 'strong pick-up in demand' since ending its delivery partnership with Ocado at the start of September. The retailer also said it has plans to add 25 more locations to its rapid-delivery trial with Deliveroo as it continues to expand its online proposition. Dame Sharon said: 'The pandemic has brought forward changes in consumer shopping habits which might have taken five years into five months. 'Both brands entered the crisis with strong and established online businesses and in the case of Waitrose, plans for expansion well under way in preparation for the end of the relationship with Ocado. 'Our digital businesses have been key to underpinning our first-half performance.' She also told staff that the company's new strategy is 'taking shape' and will reveal more details next month. The update comes a day after the group revealed plans to shut four of its Waitrose supermarket stores, with the loss of 124 jobs. In July, it also announced the closure of eight John Lewis stores, in a move which put 1,300 jobs at risk. John Lewis previously announced its flagship 35million store in Birmingham will never reopen after closing during lockdown, putting 399 jobs at risk. The retailer said the affected stores were 'already financially challenged prior to the pandemic and a number of contributing factors, including the shift towards online shopping which Covid-19 has accelerated, meant these shops would not be commercially viable in the future'. In an earlier statement, the business said: 'This is a very sad occasion and one we never thought was imaginable when we first opened these shops. 'Our expectation was that we would trade in these locations for many years to come, but they were financially challenged before the pandemic and we have not been able to find a way that would allow us to turn that around. 'We are grateful to those who have expressed their support since announcing the proposed closure last month, and for the incredible professionalism our partners have shown - they remain our absolute priority and will be fully supported over the coming weeks.' Maybe this year's Ig Nobels, the spoof prizes for dubious but humorous scientific achievement, should have been renamed the Ick Nobels. An anthropologist who tested an urban legend by fashioning a knife out of frozen human feces, and a man who found that spiders oddly give scientists who study insects the heebie-jeebies, are among the 2020 winners. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Thursday's 30th annual Ig Nobel ceremony was a 75-minute prerecorded virtual affair instead of the usual live event at Harvard University. Even so, it managed to maintain some of the event's traditions, including real Nobel Prize laureates handing out the amusing alternatives. It was a nightmare, and it took us months, but we got it done, said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, the events primary sponsor. This year's winners also included a collection of world leaders who think theyre smarter than doctors and scientists, and a team of Dutch and Belgian researchers who looked at why chewing and other sounds people make drive us crazy. Metin Eren has been fascinated since high school by the story of an Inuit man in Canada who made a knife out of his own excrement. The story has been told and retold, but is it true? Eren and his colleagues decided to find out. Eren, an assistant professor of anthropology at Kent State University in Ohio and co-director of the universitys Experimental Archaeology Lab, used real human feces frozen to minus-50 degrees Centigrade and filed to a sharp edge. He then tried to cut meat with it. The poop knives failed miserably, he said in a telephone interview. Theres not a lot of basis empirically for this fantastic story. The study is a little gross but makes an important point: There are a lot of narratives out there based on phony or unproven science. The point of this was to show that evidence and fact checking are vital," he said. Richard Vetter won an Ig Nobel for his paper looking at why people who spend their lives studying insects are creeped out by spiders. His paper, Arachnophobic Entomologists: Why Two Legs Make all the Difference, appeared in the the journal American Entomologist in 2013. Vetter, a retired research associate and spider specialist who worked in the entomology department at the University of California Riverside for 32 years, found during the course of his work that many insect lovers hate spiders. It always struck me as funny that when I talked to entomologists about spiders, they would say something along the lines of, Oh, I hate spiders! he said in a telephone interview. He found that many bug lovers had had a negative experience with a spider, including bites and nightmares. The fact that spiders are often hairy, fast, silent and have all those creepy eyes freaks out entomologists, he said. This year's Ig Nobel for Medical Education was shared by a group of world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Russian President Vladimir Putin for their attitude around the pandemic. These are all individuals who realized that their judgment is better than the judgment of people who have been studying this their entire lives, and were more insistent about it," Abrahams said. Abrahams made efforts to reach out to the world leaders to accept their awards, with no luck. It would have been fun for them to take part, he said. Damiaan Denys and his colleagues earned the Ig Nobel in medicine for pioneering a new psychiatric diagnosis misophonia getting annoyed by noises others make. Denys, a professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and a psychiatrist who specializes in patients with anxiety, compulsive and impulsive disorders, was inspired by a former patient who became so enraged by people who sneezed that she felt like killing them. I had a lot of knowledge about compulsive disorder but these complaints did not meet any existing clinical picture," he said in an email. In order to keep the tradition of real Nobel Prize winners handing out the Ig Nobels, organizers came up with a bit of video wizardry. Each winner was mailed a document that they could print out that included instructions on how to assemble their own cube-shaped prize. To make it look as if the real Nobel laureates were handing them out, they handed their prizes off screen, and the winner reached off screen to pull in the one they had self-assembled. As usual, most winners welcomed the recognition that comes with the spoof prize sort of. Denys said that while the Ig Nobels ridicule legitimate scientific work, they also bring attention and publicity. Eren attended the Ig Nobel ceremony in 2003 when he was an undergraduate student at Harvard, so he was thrilled to finally win one of his own. To be honest, it was a dream come true, he said. An Idaho pastor who held services at his 1,200-member church, telling the congregation they did not have to wear masks, is now in ICU battling COVID 19. Paul Van Noy was hospitalized after opening Candlelight Christian Fellowship in Coeur d'Alene for in person services in May. Masks are mandated in public in Kootenai County; more than 36,000 people have tested positive for the virus in Idaho, the state death toll is 429 as of Thursday afternoon. But Van Noy, who compared the virus to the flu, said in July: 'We at Candlelight are exercising our freedom, and the right to allow you as members, to come into the facilities without the obligation to observe the Panhandle Health District "order." 'Therefore, if you chose to wear a mask, physically distance, etc. we support your freedom to do so. If you choose to refrain from wearing a mask, etc. we likewise support your decision.' His wife Brenda also contracted the virus, along with five other church staff. Van Noy's wife Brenda also contracted the virus, along with five other church staff. The couple are pictured together Idaho pastor Paul Van Noy, pictured, who held services at his 1,200-member church, telling the congregation they did not have to wear masks, is now in ICU battling COVID 19 Brenda said the experience had left her 'humbled', writing on September 4: 'I havent taken this Covid seriously enough. Im humbled. I have Covid and some of my friends have Covid now but more seriously my husband is in critical care in ICU with Covid and it is serious. 'Please take this serious. Pray for healing. Love each other. Pray for those who have lost loved ones because of this EVIL virus!' On August 22 she shared a picture of her wearing a Trump mask and cap, writing: 'I only wear it when I have to!' Paul Van Noy was hospitalized after opening Candlelight Christian Fellowship, pictured, in Coeur d'Alene for in person services in May But her husband pastor is said to have not changed his policy on masks and the church reopened on Sunday after a two week closure and deep clean. In a statement Eric Reade, body ministry coordinator the church, told The Spokesman Review: 'The position is, if you feel comfortable wearing a mask, you can. If you're not comfortable wearing a mask, you don't have to. 'Nobody is going to be criticized for whatever decision they make.' Van Noy said Monday: 'Having been in the ICU now for 11 daysand counting, I am really starting to turn the cornerfor the better.' On August 22 Brenda shared a picture of her wearing a Trump mask and cap, writing: 'I only wear it when I have to!' He added: 'They tell me it will be a few more days in ICU and then I will move back to a regular room for a couple of days and then to recover at home. At present I feel ok but still need quite a bit of oxygen supportespecially if and when I try to get up out of the bed.' At a vigil for Van Noy outside the hospital last week many of those in attendance did not wear masks. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who is the founder of Turning Point USA, is set to speak in person at the church on September 27. The staff of the Al-Rai al-Aam newspaper, suspended by the Sudanese authorities in January 2020, are protesting against the newspaper's suspension and demanding the payment of outstanding salaries. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Sudanese Union of Journalists (SUJ) stand in solidarity with the journalists and urge the authorities to lift the suspension and guarantee journalists' salaries. The staff of the Al-Rai al-Aam newspaper, suspended by the Sudanese authorities in January 2020, are protesting against the newspaper's suspension and demanding the payment of outstanding salaries. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Sudanese Union of Journalists (SUJ) stand in solidarity with the journalists and urge the authorities to lift the suspension and guarantee journalists' salaries. The newspaper's workers organized a protest in front of the Council of Ministers on 16 September. They claim they have not been paid for three months and that their professional future looks uncertain since the newspaper was suspended without legal justification. On January 7, the Sudanese Empowerment Committee announced the seizure of the daily newspapers Al-Rai al-Aam and al-Sudani and the TV channels Al-Shrooq and Tayba. Security forces occupied the offices, and all employees were forced to leave. The Committee, which is tasked with removing the those allegedly affiliated with the former regime from positions of power, argued the suspensions were necessary to investigate the financial status of these media and claims they were established or bought using public money. In August, a government-appointed supervisor announced the dismissal of 105 journalists and media workers of the Tayba media group. The Empowerment Committee's actions not only call in to question commitments to press freedom but it has also blatantly targeted union rights. It dissolved various trade unions, including the Sudanese Journalists Union (SJU) in December 2019. Authorities issued an arrest warrant for SJU president Al Sadig Al Rezegy on August 16. He had refused to hand over the union's assets and properties and was charged for continuing to run the banned union. KARA TEPE, Greece (AP) More than 5,000 asylum seekers left homeless after Greece's notoriously overcrowded Moria camp on the island of Lesbos burnt down have now been housed in a new facility, the country's migration minister said Thursday afternoon. Speaking on the island, Notis Mitarachi said rapid coronavirus tests found 135 of the former residents of Moria positive for the coronavirus, and these people were being kept "in special areas where they receive the appropriate medical conditions." More than 12,000 people had been sleeping rough by a roadside since the squalid Moria camp burnt down last week. Authorities said the fires were set deliberately by a small group of migrants angered by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed after an outbreak in the camp. Six Afghans, including two minors, have been arrested on suspicion of arson. Police launched an operation Thursday morning to persuade people to move from the roadside into the new camp in the island's Kara Tepe area. The operation included 70 female police officers and no violence was reported. As long as it is peaceful, we believe it is a good move, said Astrid Castelein, head of the U.N. Refugee Agencys office on Lesbos. Here on the street it is a risk for security, for public health, and its not dignity which we need for everyone. The new site consists of large family tents erected in an old army firing range by the sea. By late Wednesday, it had a capacity of around 8,000 people, according to the UNHCR. New arrivals are tested for COVID-19, registered and assigned a tent. This is an operation for the protection of public health and with a clear humanitarian mission, the police said in a statement. Moria had a capacity of just over 2,700 people, but more than 12,500 had been living in and around it when it burned down. The camp was held up by critics as a symbol of Europes failed migration policies. It is critical that Europe demonstrates tangible solidarity to the pressure that the Greek islands have had over the last few years, said Mitarachi, the migration minister. Story continues The European Union is due to issue proposals to overhaul the bloc's migration policy next week in an effort to end years of division among member states. As a frontier state, Greece is pressing for increased participation by other EU members in relocation schemes unpopular with many central and East European countries but has also suggested that alternative obligations may be assigned to countries wishing to opt out of relocation. Speaking at a debate in the European Parliament on the situation in Greece, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said that there can be no more Morias, and that it was time for a fresh start on migration. Several EU members have offered to take in refugees from Greece, led by Germany which says it will take in 1,553 refugees from Greek island camps who have had their asylum applications approved. ___ Becatoros reported from Athens. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Raf Casert and Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed. ___ Follow Becatoros at https://twitter.com/ElenaBec The proprietary automated conversion utility of DataTerrain was configured to migrate from Hyperion to OBIEE 12C. This utility analyzed native functions and complex logic embedded in BRIO reports to generate their equivalents in the OBIEE 12C platform. For a business with operations spanning 50 global offices and 300+ channel partners, software upgrades are a serious endeavor. A global leader in telecommunications and fiber optic networks had complex enterprise reporting needs that were becoming increasingly difficult to service on legacy Oracle Brio/Hyperion interactive reporting. The structure of Hyperion IR reports with each having a separate data model limited the ability to share standard reports across users and division, leading to many reporting silos, redundancies, and proliferation of reports. Besides, with Hyperion Brio product support sunset on the horizon, it became essential to migrate the #1 business in Test and Measurement, Wireless and Avionics, Banknote authentication, and 3D sensing to a newer platform. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 12C On-Premise was selected as the target platform to migrate from Hyperion/Brio due to its ability to serve complex business requirements. Built on an architecture that simplifies access to multiple data sources on a shareable enterprise data model, OBIEE 12C simplified enterprise-level reporting. Its interactive dashboards, and an extensive range of options for charting provided rich visualizations. OLAP style interaction, combined with its actionable collaboration and innovative search capabilities, were required to transform the end-user experience. OBIEE 12Cs high availability, superior scalability, security features, lifecycle configuration, and management ability simplified the system management efforts and upgrade management. The Technical Challenge The biggest technical challenge during migration was anticipated to be dashboards and formatting reports. With a need to complete the migration in a tight timeline, the effort to convert the sections or views in the Hyperion BQY files to Answers, as well as query request models and reporting information in BQY files to business and presentation models for an OBIEE 12C RPD file (metadata), was deemed to be complicated and time-consuming. DataTerrain was chosen to lead this complex migration effort due to its innovative automated conversion solution and proven track record for completing such complex migration projects on time and within budget. DataTerrains automated conversion methodology DataTerrain leveraged its structured methodology, developed and refined over numerous successful migrations. The significant phases and outcomes are summarized below: 1.) Inventory: As a first step, subject matter experts(SMEs) from DataTerrain created a list of the current repository in Hyperion and mapped it to the business functional areas and their requirements. Standard reports across function areas and redundancies were identified during this exercise. The DataTerrain team also helped the clients to prioritize the 2000 reports across 40 functions based on their business criticality. 2.) Rationalize: Using the enterprise data model capable of OBIEE 12C, the reports were structured as parent-child reports in OBIEE 12C, and the 2000 reports were rationalized down to 250 parent level reports. 3.) Automate migration: The proprietary automated conversion utility of DataTerrain was configured to migrate from Hyperion to OBIEE 12C. This utility analyzed native functions and complex logic embedded in BRIO reports to generate their equivalents in the OBIEE 12C platform. The conversion preserved years of legacy effort to perfect report look and feel of critical reports while migrating them to OBIEE 12C. Some of the significant effort savings were in: a. Generation of OBIEE 12C physical layer tables, columns, etc. b. Extending OBIEE 12C layer from accumulated BQY DM dimensions stars and snowflakes c. Tuning schemas and performance tuning during migration d. Regeneration of BI repository supporting BQY reports e. Generation of OBIEE 12C EUI objects like pivots, charts, prompts, filters, and validating results 4.) Testing and validation: The converted files and objects were tested using a combination of automated and manual testing by following the DataTerrain quality assurance process. This was followed by user validation and acceptance of the reports and dashboards. 5.) Deployment: The process of approving, packaging, and promoting to production is simplified by the automated conversion tool to eliminate cutover risks. The DataTerrain Difference In addition to its unique methodology and proprietary automation utility, here are the critical differentiators brought by DataTerrain to ensure the success of this project: 1.) Robust Project management:- Experienced project managers from DataTerrain ensured comprehensive planning and tight execution of this fast-paced project 2.) Subject Matter Experts:- The team from DataTerrain brought its several hundred years of subject matter expertise to identify migration risks and issues early and address them seamlessly. 3.) Global Delivery:- DataTerrain completed the entire project in a compressed schedule of 6 months by using a Follow the Sun approach. Members of the distributed team from DataTerrain worked across global centers, and activities were handed off and completed round the clock. Client Benefits The rationalization and reports and performance tuning during migration enabled and implemented by DataTerrain has provided the following additional benefits to the customer: 1.) A scalable and secure enterprise-level BI solution expanding quickly with the organization 2.) Standardization and lower effort for maintaining reports 3.) Faster outputs and reports distribution with lower resource utilization 4.) The existing reports look & feel was preserved for seamless user experience 5.) Rich, interactive dashboards, and enhanced user self-service OPINION: "Allowing for both a hybrid model and continued remote learning will help the district monitor problems and stay within [health department] guidelines," says TUSD Governing Board candidate Natalie Luna Rose. President Donald Trump plans to denounce school curricula that emphasize the impact of slavery and racism on American history during a roundtable discussion at the National Archives on Thursday. The president will deliver remarks on his administrations efforts to promote a more balanced, accurate, and patriotic curricula in Americas schools, the White House said in a statement. That includes criticizing what the White House calls the liberal indoctrination of Americas youth. Trump is expected to explicitly fault the New York Times 1619 Project. The Pulitzer-Prize winning public school curriculum developed by the newspaper orients American history from the date that the first slave ship arrived in what later became the U.S. Trump has sought to rally his core supporters, who are disproportionately White, ahead of the November election. He trails Democrat Joe Biden in polls, and he has tried to make his demands for law and order amid sometimes violent national protests over racism and police brutality a central issue in the campaign. Earlier this month, Trump tweeted that the Department of Education would cut off federal funding to California schools if they adopted the 1619 curriculum. Trump has repeatedly said that what he considers political correctness shouldnt obscure acknowledgment of American exceptionalism. The administration issued a memo Sept. 4 banning federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training that considers critical race theory, white privilege, or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. Critical race theory is an academic movement that gained a foothold in the 1980s, and suggests that unequal outcomes for racial groups are the result of racist power structures. U.S. racial divisions and how they are addressed by politicians and the government have come under new scrutiny since the May killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police. His death prompted months of demonstrations around the country. Trump and other top administration officials have said they dont believe that systemic racism exists, and have argued that curricula like the 1619 Project provide an unduly dark vision of Americas founding. They want you to believe that Americas institutions continue to reflect the countrys acceptance of slavery at our founding, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said during a July speech in Washington. Nikole Hannah-Jones, who developed the 1619 project, said earlier this week that she rejected criticism that her effort was divisive. The presidents criticism of the project was heightening awareness that slavery began so early in the American colonies, she said. That has been treated as an obscure date that most Americans never learn, Hannah-Jones said at the Texas Tribune Festival. Ultimately, I wanted us to force an acknowledgment of the presence of slavery as early as 1619. Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris accused the president of spending full time in a different reality, in an interview with CNN earlier this month. I dont think that most reasonable people who are paying attention to the facts would dispute that there are racial disparities and a system that has engaged in racism in terms of how the laws have been enforced, Harris said. It does us no good to deny that. Salma Hayek celebrated Mexican Independence Day by undergoing an eye-catching hair transformation on Wednesday. The 54-year-old actress, who was born in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, appeared in high spirits, as she unveiled her freshly-colored strands to her nearly 16 million Instagram followers. In the celebratory footage, which was set to festive music, she showed off sections of her hair, which were dyed green for the occasion, and her bold red lipstick. Going green: Salma Hayek celebrated Mexican Independence Day by undergoing an eye-catching hair transformation on Wednesday 'Viva Mexico!' she shouted to the camera, while sporting a Mexico t-shirt and festive earrings, which coordinated with the colors of her native country's flag. The next clip of the video showed a group of her pals also shouting the same phrase, which translates to 'Long Live Mexico.' Bold: In the celebratory footage, which was set to festive music, she showed off sections of her hair, which were dyed green for the occasion, and her bold red lipstick Within just a few hours, the Grown Ups star's latest post garnered more than 1.6 views and nearly 4,000 comments. Close-up: The 54-year-old actress, who was born in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, appeared in high spirits, as she unveiled her freshly-colored strands to her nearly 16 million Instagram followers Earlier this month, she opened up about feeling 'invigorated' by the way directors are approaching her for roles in her 50s. 'It really invigorated me that they are finding me. I always found them. But they didn't want me. And that now they're coming to me, that's what's been really invigorating,' the beauty told OK! magazine. She noted: 'It's difficult to make sense of it, you know? But that's what's been really strange. And you know what? Strange things happen to strange people.' Feeling festive: The next clip of the video showed a group of her pals also shouting the phrase, which translates to 'Long Live Mexico' In the past few years the actress has starred in Drunk Parents, Like A Boss and The Roads Not Taken. Next she will be seen in The Eternals, The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard and Bliss. Hayek rose to fame in the Mexican telenovela Teresa before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a big screen career. However, when the Hollywood actress first started out in 1988 she had no idea how things would end up. Better now: Salma Hayek feels 'invigorated' by the way directors are approaching her in her 50s. The 54-year-old movie star started her career trying to get the attention of filmmakers and convince them to cast her in their movies, but after 32 years in the industry, she is delighted they are finally approaching her for roles She believes any struggles over the years have given her the possibility to choose the right path, having dubbed her life 'completely unimaginable'. The cover girl explained: 'The things that have happened in my life are completely unimaginable. Even in my greatest ideas of my most extraordinary destiny, I never imagined how I feel right now. 'At some point in your life you just settle for doing the right thing and the best you can, instead of think about what you want and what you can didn't get get or what you're not getting or how someone's getting it and you're not getting it. Looking caliente! Hayek shared a new swimsuit photo to Instagram on Tuesday as she said the image was not a flashback. And the wife of billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault added that the next day she would be turning 54-years-old Smitten: Salma and her French businessman husband have been married since 2009, after tying the knot in a lavish Paris ceremony on Valentine's Day (pictured in 2019) 'It gives you the possibility to take roads that you never wanted to take, and you have the adventurous spirit to go and discover instead of planning so much. You may end up on roads that are much better than in your imagination,' the wife of billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault concluded. Salma and her French businessman husband have been married since 2009, after tying the knot in a lavish Paris ceremony on Valentine's Day. Their nuptials are said to have cost an eye-watering $3.5 million. Their big day took place in the famous Venice opera house Teatro La Fenice, and the lovers were joined by an A-List group of well wishers, including Penelope Cruz, Woody Harrelson and Bono. (Bloomberg Opinion) -- All political candidates make mistakes. They have to retract hasty, ill-considered statements. They find that the position they took to win their primaries is inconvenient afterward, and try to explain it away. For a lucky few candidates, the embarrassment is mitigated by the assistance of journalists who accept the explanations or, even better, dont ask for them in the first place. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, is in that enviable position. Whenever he makes a political mess, he is blessed with people, many of them not in his employ, who will clean it up for him. In a March 15 debate with Senator Bernie Sanders, Biden sounded favorable toward banning fracking, a stand that could cost him votes in crucial states such as Pennsylvania. When President Donald Trump raised the issue, Ellen Knickmeyer and Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press reported that Trump was distorting Bidens views. They explained that Biden had misstated his fracking policy in that debate but otherwise been consistent on his middle-of-the-road position. He has? During a debate in July 2019, Dana Bash of CNN asked him to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration? He responded: No, we would we would work it out. We would make sure it's eliminated. At a campaign stop two months later, he told an environmental activist: I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We're going to end fossil fuel. The activist, Rebecca Beaulieu, told me in an email that she took Bidens answer to include all fracking. Its true that he has also sometimes poured cold water on the idea of a ban. Just days before talking to Beaulieu, he said a national ban could not pass Congress. Having won the nomination, he is more emphatic. This August, he said, I am not banning fracking no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me. (He said that, not coincidentally, in Pittsburgh.) Story continues Reviewing this record, Amber Phillips reported in the Washington Post that Trump has twisted Bidens words, even while conceding that Biden has been more straightforward about opposing a ban since winning the Democratic nomination. The truth is that Biden has been inconsistent on this question, and Trump is within his rights to take political advantage of the fact. Reporters have also stepped forward to defend Biden from the accusation that he wants to confiscate guns. Reid Epstein dinged the presidents son Eric Trump in the New York Times for making that claim at the Republican convention. Reporters have been especially exercised by claims that Biden is coming for Americans guns. Biden himself has not always minded that phrase. In August 2019, Anderson Cooper raised the issue of confiscating assault weapons in a CNN interview of Biden. Cooper said that the U.S. had so many assault weapons that the ban on new ones that the U.S. maintained for a decade had not had much effect. He mentioned gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden administration means theyre going to come for my guns and Biden interjected: Bingo. Youre right if you have an assault weapon. The fact of the matter is they should be illegal, period. After a follow-up, Biden conceded only that he didnt think he could legally have law enforcement seize assault weapons from their owners by walking into their home and going through their gun cabinet. The plan youll find on Bidens campaign website doesnt say anything about forcing the sale of existing assault weapons, although it would, among other things, make owners pay $200 to keep them. But if Biden was just flubbing his own position, it wasnt the only time he has done so. In March, Biden had a testy and well publicized exchange with a gun-rights supporter, in the course of which he said, Well take your AR-14s away. He probably meant to refer to AR-15s. This protective impulse toward Biden on the part of the press is sure to express itself in all kinds of ways as the campaign goes on. In early September, the candidate said he would raise the corporate tax rate on Day 1 of his presidency. A few journalists noted that Biden would not have the power to make good on that promise, just as commentators note the many occasions when Trump engages in similar bluster. MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle pushed back on this criticism, saying Biden was just voicing a sentiment and that Trump often makes equally empty promises. When people want to dismiss the importance of Trumps inaccuracies, they sometimes say he should be taken seriously but not literally. But part of the presss job is to report when candidates are departing from the literal truth. It should not be to protect a candidate from the voters, or from himself. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News. 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. Prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) notified MP Oleksandr Yurchenko of the suspicion of committing a crime. "On September 17, on behalf of the Prosecutor General, the prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office informed Ukrainian parliamentarian of suspicion," the Prosecutor General's Office told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday. According to the investigation, the deputy in a veiled form asked to provide him through an intermediary an unlawful benefit in the amount of $13,000 for making proposals to the bill, and then $200,000 to bribe MPs-members of the Committee on Energy and Housing and Utilities Services for voting for the proposals presented to them. "The Prosecutor General, based on the results of studying the materials of the criminal proceedings, drew up and signed a message on the suspicion to the Ukrainian parliamentarian, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy and Housing and Communal Services, of obtaining an illegal profit on a large scale, as well as inciting to provide an illegal benefit to an official to a person committed repeatedly, by prior conspiracy by a group of persons (Part 4 of Article 368, Part 4 of Article 27, Part 4 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine)," the PGO said. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Melamine adhesives are synthesized by combination of melamine with formaldehyde. Characteristic features exhibited by melamine adhesives such as high moisture durability, greater flexibility, and fire & heat resistance make it more preferable over its counterparts. In addition to this, relatively low cost of the melamine based adhesives increases its competitiveness in the adhesives market. Melamine based adhesives find their applications in vast number of industries, wherein the key industries are building & construction, automotive, household, packaging, and others. Among these, the building & construction industry is driving the growth of market due to rising demand of adhesives for making construction materials. During the forecast period the demand from construction industry estimated to head north. Apart from building & construction industry, global automotive industry production is growing at Y-o-Y of 9%, fueled by rising light weight vehicle production. The materials used in complex and high risk industrial applications such as high pressure and temperature processes are preferably bound together by melamine based adhesives. Collectively, considering the trend it has been estimated that the global melamine based adhesive market may grow at double digit CAGR over the forecast period, 20172023. Access Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/melamine-adhesives-market-4150 Competitive Analysis: Key players in the global melamine based adhesives are Georgia-Pacific Chemicals LLC (U.S), OCI Nitrogen (Netherlands), National Casein (U.S.), Cornerstone Chemical Company (U.S.), SAVIOLA HOLDING SRL (Italy), Hexion (U.S.), INEOS (U.K.) and others. The study was conducted using objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to SWOT analysis of key vendors. Market Segmentation: The global melamine based adhesive market is segmented on the basis of type, end use industries, and region. Based on type the market is divided into melamine formaldehyde, urea-melamine, and melamine urea formaldehyde. Melamine formaldehyde is holding a major share in terms of demand among the others, on account of its application in construction industry. Applications of melamine formaldehyde include its use as a key constituent in manufacturing high pressure laminates such as Formica and Arborite. Apart from this, the use of melamine in making the kitchenware and utensils is driving the demand of melamine based adhesives. Following melamine formaldehyde, urea-melamine is majorly used melamine based adhesive. Its uses can be found in bonding the materials complex industrial processes such as warm water resistant grade panel and also moisture resistant grade panel. The low cost of raw material for synthesizing urea-melamine adhesive is an important factor propelling its demand over the others. Lastly, the melamine urea formaldehyde is used in making laminates such as manufacturing of flooring tiles from wood and bamboo, finger jointing of waste timber in saw mills. In addition to this, there is an increasing demand of melamine urea formaldehyde in making aesthetic wooden items, and in polymeric and glass glazing is expected to fuel growth of the global melamine based adhesives. On the basis of end use industries the global melamine market is segmented into building & construction, automotive, household, paper & packaging, and others. Among them, building & construction industry is pulling maximum demand of melamine based adhesives owing to an increasing public as well as private investment in this industry. In addition to this, the developing countries are rapidly taking up the infrastructural projects for complete economic development which is anticipated to boost the growth of overall melamine based adhesives market. The melamine based adhesives foresee growth in demand from automotive industry for bonding the light polymeric materials used in automotive parts. Moreover, the use of melamine based adhesives is increasing for making utensils and other kitchenware. In coming years, the cost intensive stainless steel utensils & kitchenware are anticipated to be replaced by those made from other light weight polymer based materials. This is projected to propel the growth of global melamine based adhesives market. The penetration of melamine based adhesives in paper & packaging industry has witnessed steady rise in the past years, which is estimated to rise further throughout the forecast period. Their uses in paper & packaging can be found in aerial packaging, vacuum packaging, and hot packaging where it is necessary for adhesive to prevent moisture & gas, and withstand heat. The culture of food on the go is poised to increasing the demand of melamine based adhesives in packaging of ready to eat food. Regional Analysis: The key regions in the global melamine based adhesives are Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. Other regions include Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is the largest market in the global melamine based adhesives, holding major share of the overall market. It account for 45% of total share in the global melamine based adhesive market. China, India, and Japan are the major market in this region due to the presence of major end use industries such as construction and automobile. Europe is following Asia Pacific in term of the market size held by the region. Countries namely, Germany, France, U.K., and Italy are majorly contributing the regional market. The established automobile industry is evolving with an advent of light and electric vehicles. Growing popularity of light weight and electric vehicles to reduce the carbon emission is the key factor favoring the market of melamine based adhesives. North America is closely following Europe in terms of growth rate. The important markets in this region are U.S, Mexico, and Canada. The demand of melamine based adhesives is driven mainly by automotive industry. Other regions are Latin America and Middle East & Africa, in which Latin America is anticipated to grow at higher CAGR on account of emerging end use industries. Middle East & Africa is expected to join the stream with leading regions in the global melamine based adhesives due to greater investment potential. Get a Free Sample Now@ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4150 Know More@ http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3465162 NOTE: Our team of researchers are studying Covid19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. COVID-19 Study in Detail: COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Market COVID-19 Impact on 3D Printing Materials Market COVID-19 Outbreak Impact on Carbon black Market Borsa Italiana non ha responsabilita per il contenuto del sito a cui sta per accedere e non ha responsabilita per le informazioni contenute. Accedendo a questo link, Borsa Italiana non intende sollecitare acquisti o offerte in alcun paese da parte di nessuno. Sarai automaticamente diretto al link in cinque secondi. Some Peterborough County politicians think cottagers and tourists from the Greater Toronto Area could still be a concern for the county as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, while some believe otherwise. Cavan Monaghan Township Mayor Scott McFadden said given that a lot of businesses are still offering employees the opportunity to work from home, it may be a nice escape for those from the GTA, especially into the late fall months, to enjoy their seasonal property that they may not have had the chance to in previous years. Itll be interesting to see how many cottagers will actually return back to their metropolitan centres, McFadden said. I would imagine theres still quite a few that are still working from their cottage properties and well have to wait and see how long that goes on. Otonabee-South Monaghan Township Mayor Joe Taylor said he isnt really worried about the cottagers and tourists at this point. Everything has a potential to be a concern, but first of all, the cottage industry is on the downhill side of the cottage season right now, and folks from the GTA, if they have regard for others, well be fine. I was concerned about it in the spring, but now the cottage industry is closing up. The timing is good on this one, Taylor said. The surge of COVID-19 cases in the GTA region lately is not good, he acknowledged. Peterborough County Warden J. Murray Jones said he doesnt think visitors from the GTA were ever a concern. I think all we ever did was ask for their co-operation; just to cool everybodys jets and stay where they are, Jones said. In my experience, theyve all co-operated and have done everything they should have done, so its not the kind of thing were totally worried about now. I think they have been really responsible, he said. Selwyn Township Deputy Mayor Sherry Senis said with schools having started and a lot of individuals going back to work, perhaps migration up to cottage country will be less, as it usually is during the fall. Im hoping that with that, that the threat remains low. Who knows though, right? If we end up with a second wave, that could send people back to their cottages again because a lot of them came up here because we had a lower rate of COVID cases and that could happen again. I guess time will tell, Senis said. Heres hoping that its the first and last time that we have to deal with something like this in our lifetime. US President Donald Trump will announce a new round of aid to farmers of about $13 billion at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Thursday night, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. Trump in April announced a $19 billion relief program to help US farmers cope with the impact of the coronavirus, including $16 billion in direct payments to producers and mass purchases of meat, dairy, vegetables and other products. It was not immediately clear which farmers would benefit from the new round of aid. China's demand for US corn and soybeans has been ... Fedor Kruse Accused of Using Solver to Cheat in High-Stakes Cash Games September 16, 2020 A fairly high-profile online poker player stands accused of cheating in high-stakes cash games, with his former roommates providing damning evidence in a TwoPlusTwo post from Sunday. According to the roommates, Fedor Kruse used a two-computer setup designed to fool mouse-tracking systems. With it, he played poker on one computer while keep a solver open on the other. When playing a hand, he'd quickly pull out an applicable pre-solved spot and follow the decision tree therein to consistently make game-theory optimal decisions. Known as real-time assistance (RTA), usage of such solvers during play is strictly forbidden at online poker sites. Evidence Presented in TwoPlusTwo Post To support their accusation, Kruse's former roommates, who identified themselves as "Manuel" and "Niklas," posted several screenshots of their conversations with Kruse, as well as photos of his setup. The photos show three monitors set up at a grind station. One of the monitors has four tables of online poker open, three on Natural8 and one on America's Cardroom. The only active hand is on the latter, and a side monitor shows a solver in use with the river dealt out. There's no way of identifying the player in action. As for the screenshots, they're a little more clear. The first shows a WhatsApp message. In it, a person alleged to be Kruse "YoUtUbE sTaR" sends a hand history in which he calls down with two pair on a four-flush board against multiple barrels in a $5/$10 no-limit hold'em game. "I'm curious what you say about it," the sender says in German, translated via Google. "Was gambled with solver anyway," comes the response. "Yes but Sandro and I were both shocked that you can really 100% call OTR." The screen name in the hand, "GlitchSystem," matches Kruse's PokerStars ID. The whistleblowers say "Sandro" is actually the person who built Kruse's setup, an individual playing as "nosuperstarr" on PokerStars and "forgermany" on GGPoker. The next shots come from a Discord conversation between Kruse and Manuel. In it, Kruse warns Manuel that he'll be destroyed by the regulars if he doesn't make use of the "dream machine." Further conversations on WhatsApp feature Kruse telling his roommates that he wants to play $1/$2 zoom games "without machine" and "won't be using solves I promise." Who is Fedor Kruse? According to VIP-Grinders, Kruse was once a popular streamer who played the "Call of Duty" video game franchise and amassed more than 400,000 subscribers. He began transitioning to poker around 2015. A group of German players began to become suspicious, they said, when Kruse began quickly ascending the stakes from $100NL, which they said he was playing about a year ago. At $200NL, they characterized him as a break-even player and said he played mostly tournaments still. Despite this, he rocketed up the stakes and has recently been seen playing as big as $200/$400 on GGPoker. During this rapid climb, the observers said Kruse made "very non-intuitive plays, which to very little surprise are all 'solver-approved.'" Also arousing their suspicions were the fact that he always played 100 big blinds deep making for perfect solver translations and used very exact bet-sizings the way a solver would be programmed. One of the roommates provided a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet documenting Kruse's cash game results while the roommate had a piece of his action. Over the course of two weeks, Kruse started by mostly playing in $5,000 buy-in games. After an initial losing stretch, Kruse caught fire on May 24. He profited in about two-thirds of the remaining sessions under the stake, piling up $92,408 in winnings and moving up to mainly $10,000 buy-in games. Kruse was also a regular participant in the big World Series of Poker tournament series at GGPoker recently. He made the final table of one of the bracelet events and even came second in a ring event during the online Circuit for $92K. No Response from Kruse The roommates acknowledged it was wrong of them to buy action from Kruse while they suspected wrongdoing, but they reported their suspicions to PokerStars. They said they evicted him from their apartment in Vienna as of Aug. 31 and decided to publicly accuse Kruse because no sanctions had taken place against him. Patrick Leonard said on Twitter he'd spoken to Kruse and Kruse would be posting his side at some point. Nothing has yet been released, though, and the sensitive nature of any potential cheating means the sites on which Kruse was playing have stayed expectedly silent on the matter thus far. A Brandon resident has claimed he has been refused entry to several local businesses for not wearing a mask, despite being medically exempt from having to wear one. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/9/2020 (496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us A Brandon resident has claimed he has been refused entry to several local businesses for not wearing a mask, despite being medically exempt from having to wear one. Dave Federowich, 46, said that he is unable to safely wear a mask due to PTSD. Covering his face triggers flashbacks to traumatic experiences, which can cause him to react violently. Federowich previously worked in corrections but has been on medical leave for six years. He said his PTSD is connected to a workplace incident. Non-medical masks have been mandatory in most public spaces in Brandon since a public health order issued on Aug. 24 placed Prairie Mountain Health under a level orange restricted COVID-19 designation. The public health order does not require certain groups of people to follow the mandatory mask rule, including children under the age of five, those who cannot put on or remove a mask without the help of another person, and those with medical conditions unrelated to COVID-19 that prevent them from safely wearing a mask. A doctors note is required to receive a medical exemption from the mandatory mask rule. According to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, "Writing a medical note is deemed the provision of medical care and must adhere to the requirements of good medical care in the practice of medicine as defined in the regulations and Standards of Practice. ... Members are expected to provide patients with appropriate education and guidance on mask-wearing in alignment with current Manitoba Public Health Guidelines." Federowich said that he had no difficulties obtaining an exemption from his doctor. "My family doctor knew my history so she knew what was coming and essentially granted the exemption based on knowing my history," he said. Including among those locations he has been denied entry have included banks and grocery stores, despite, he said, presenting his doctors note as evidence he cannot wear a mask for safety reasons. Federowich described one incident where an employee at a business said that they were going to get the manager to help deal with the situation and instead returned with security guards. He said he has even had businesses call the police on him because he was not wearing a mask. "All Im equipped with is my doctors note. However, I have been in touch with public health and I dont need to provide any proof for it, as long as I say I have a medical exemption," Federowich said. "The business or service provider is just supposed to accept that its an honour system." The only places that he said have been accommodating are his doctors office and the place where he gets his hair cut. Federowich said he has been forthcoming with businesses about his situation and even talked to the head of one grocery store in Brandon. He was told the store was not sure how to handle the situation and later that he would need to use a curbside pickup service to do his shopping. "Its forced me to just stay at home (and) become basically homebound," Federowich said, adding it has had a negative impact on his mental health. Part of the treatment for his PTSD is overcoming social anxiety by being out in the world around people, but Federowich said he has lost years of progress and hard work by being unable to go to many places outside of his home. "The way we all felt back in March when we were locked down thats how I feel right now, that Im being locked down by society." He believes the government could improve the situation for people like him by doing a better job of educating business owners and the general public about mask exemption rules and by providing those exempt with additional documentation besides just a doctors note to prove their status. Overall, Federowich said that he wishes people would take time to put themselves in other shoes and treat them with kindness. "I think people need to take the time to consider that persons situation instead of just jumping to conclusions and criticizing." Brandon Chamber of Commerce president Spencer Day said he has not received any reports of businesses refusing entry to people who have shown proof of a medical exemption. In response to an inquiry, a Manitoba Health spokesperson offered the following written statement that indicated chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin "has indicated that it would be a medical decision, so its hard to come up with a list of conditions that would be exempt or not exempt. ... People would need to speak to their physician." eklatt@brandonsun.com Twitter: @emdashklatt An American constitutional law expert said Thursday that the United States indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under an extraordinarily broad spying law that has been used in the past for politically motivated prosecutions. Speaking during Assanges extradition hearing in London, human rights lawyer Carey Shenkman called the century-old Espionage Act one of the most contentious laws in the United States. Shenkman, who co-wrote a book on the history of the act, testified as a witness for Assange, 49, who is fighting his extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. U.S. prosecutors indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Assanges defense team argues that he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing leaked documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His lawyers say he is facing a politically motivated prosecution that will stifle press freedom and put journalists around the world at risk. Shenkman also said in a written witness statement that the administration of President Donald Trump has prosecuted disclosures of national security information more aggressively than any presidency in U.S. history. He said there were eight Espionage Act prosecutions of media sources during former President Barack Obamas two terms more than any previous administration and eight in less than four years under Trump. Shenkman said there has never been a successful prosecution of a publisher under the act, although there have been attempts, including over the 1971 Pentagon Papers leak of documents about the Vietnam War. Leaker Daniel Ellsberg faced 12 Espionage Act charges and faced up to 115 years in prison, but the charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct against him. Ellsberg, one of the most famous whistleblowers in living memory, came to Assanges defense on Wednesday, telling Londons Central Criminal Court that he and the WikiLeaks founder had very comparable political opinions. The case, which is being held under coronavirus social distancing restrictions, has been plagued by technical glitches as witnesses give evidence by video link. Shenkman testified with a cellphone pressed to his ear after audio problems. Shenkman acknowledged during a testy cross-examination by Clair Dobbin, a lawyer for the U.S. government, that he was part of a team that represented Assange several years ago. He said it was not relevant to his analysis of the Espionage Act, and noted he was a very junior lawyer at the time. In the food chain of lawyers, I was plankton, he said. The U.S. government says WikiLeaks put the lives of U.S. informants in conflict zones and others at risk by publishing secret documents. Defense witness John Sloboda, co-founder of the organization Iraq Body Count, said WikiLeaks was careful to ensure names were removed before publication. He disagreed with a suggestion by a prosecution lawyer that Assange took a cavalier attitude to redaction. Sloboda, who was involved in the publication of the Iraq war papers in 2010, said they were over-redacted for caution. He said his group developed software to help speed the process by removing all words that were not in an English dictionary, though he acknowledged it was not perfect. Assange, who has been embroiled in legal battles for a decade, has been in a British prison since he was ejected from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. The extradition hearing at Londons Old Bailey criminal court is due to last until early October. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:57:29|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Health Ministry on Thursday reported 4,326 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total nationwide infections to 307,385. The ministry also confirmed 84 new deaths from the infectious disease, taking the death toll to 8,332. Meanwhile, 3,859 more patients recovered from the disease, bringing the total number of recoveries to 241,100. A total of 1,998,295 tests have been carried out across the country since the outbreak of the disease in February, with 25,206 done during the day. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Iraq Adham Ismail said in a press release that the organization continues its coordination with the Iraqi authorities to contain the spread of the disease in the country. The two sides have discussed conducting awareness campaigns to curb the increase of COVID-19 infections, Ismail said, adding that WHO will hold a major awareness campaign in the last week of September in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, some 110 km south of Baghdad, to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Iraq has taken a series of measures to contain the pandemic since February when the first coronavirus case appeared in the country. However, despite the continuing resurgence in the pandemic, the Iraqi Higher Committee for Health and National Safety, headed by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has decided to ease the anti-coronavirus restrictions by permitting people's movement among the country's provinces, reopening the border crossings, restaurants, tourist facilities of five-star hotels, and lifting the ban on sporting events. China has been helping Iraq fight the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 7 to April 26, a Chinese team of seven medical experts spent 50 days in Iraq to help contain the disease, during which they helped build a PCR lab and install an advanced CT scanner in Baghdad. Since March 7, China has also sent three batches of medical aid to Iraq. Enditem Growing Partner Network Committed to Delivering World-Class Customer Experience; Bringing Self-Service Industrial Analytics Through a Wide Variety of Channels; Expertise of the Selected Partners gets Trendminer Closer to Our Customers and Industries HOUSTON, TX and HASSELT, BELGIUM / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / TrendMiner, a Software AG company, has announced the global expansion of its partner ecosystem to the regions North and South America, the Middle East, Russia, Asia Pacific, and Australia. The new partners joining the TrendMiner family include system integrators, engineering companies, technical alliance partners, and sales partners. They are committed to delivering world-class customer experience in addition to their many years of industry expertise within markets such as oil & gas, food processing, water & wastewater, pharmaceutical, metals & mining, and other process manufacturing industries. "We are excited to have so many top tier partners around the world, supporting our efforts to grow. These strategic partners will not only help us increase our global footprint but, more importantly, provide the excellent local support our customers have come to expect and deserve," said John O'Connell, Global Partner Director TrendMiner. As demand for TrendMiner solutions accelerates, worldwide customers are asking for more local support with expertise for the industry they are in. With a growing analytics maturity and need for unlocking data silos, the new partners are selected to bring world-class consultancy and system integration expertise. The TrendMiner partners across regions and industry verticals, who will help our customers improve their operational performance and business resilience are: Global: CGI, Omicron and Actemium Russia: CROC South America: Bismark, DeBarr, ECN, P&B Controles, and PSW Canada and North America: Innovative Control, Novi Pro, TechData, and SAM Analytics Taiwan and China: Don Ho South-Korea: ISAAC Australia: N3 Middle East: TechEdge South Africa: Acusys Story continues "We are happy to welcome so many new partners to our ecosystem, helping our customers on their digitalization journey and democratizing analytics. Self-service Advanced Analytics is a crucial component in the analytics landscape of manufacturing companies. Enabling operational experts to solve more cases in less time will increase business resilience and overall profitability. Our partners share our commitment to making our customers successful, and we are looking forward to working with them," said Niels Verheijen, VP Global Sales TrendMiner. About TrendMiner TrendMiner, part of Software AG's IoT & Analytics division, delivers self-service data analytics to optimize process performance in industries such as chemical, petrochemical, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, metals & mining, and other process manufacturing industries. TrendMiner software is based on a high-performance analytics engine for time-series data that allows users to question data directly, without the support of data scientists. The plug-and-play software adds immediate value upon deployment, eliminating the need for infrastructure investment and long implementation projects. Search, diagnostic and predictive capabilities enable users to speed up root cause analysis, define optimal processes, and configure early warnings to monitor production. TrendMiner software also helps team members to capture feedback and leverage knowledge across teams and sites. In addition, TrendMiner offers standard integrations with a wide range of historians such as OSIsoft PI, Yokogawa Exaquantum, AspenTech IP.21, Honeywell Ph.D., GE Proficy Historian, and Wonderware InSQL. Founded in 2008 and now part of Software AG, TrendMiner's global headquarters is located in Belgium and has offices in the U.S., Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. Media Contact: Dawn Fontaine Ripple Effect Communications dawn@rippleeffectpr.com +1-617-536-8887 SOURCE: TrendMiner View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606451/TrendMiner-Expands-Its-Global-Partner-Network-Rapidly-to-Support-the-Growing-Demand-for-Self-Service-Advanced-Analytics Rozhovor Britskych listu 319. Jak se Polsko propada do autoritarstvi 18. 9. 2020 cas cteni 1 minuta (For English, scroll below) "V Polsku nyni bezne mlati gaye v ulicich." Jan Culik mluvi v tomto Rozhovoru Britskych listu s Majou Zoe Hebanovou, transgenderovou aktivistkou z Varsavy o desive situaci mensin v autoritarske zemi za vlady ultrapravicove strany Pravo a spravedlnost. Rozhovor se vysila na Regionalni televizi, ktera je k dispozici satelitem, pozemnim vysilanim a na kabelu i na internetu, od patku 18. zari 2020. Britske listy Interview 319. How Poland is succumbing to authoritarianism 'Gays are now frequently beaten up in the streets in Poland.' A lady was walking down the street with her thirteen-year-old niece. They were both beaten up because the attackers mistook them for a lesbian couple. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said this week that Poland's 'LGBT-free zones' have no place in EU. In this Britske listy Interview, Jan Culik talks to Maja Zoe Heban, a transgender activist living in Warsaw, about the horrifying situation of minorities in contemporary Poland under the rule of the alt-right Law and Justice Party.. The interview is broadcast on the Czech cable TV station Regionalnitelevize.cz from Friday 18th September 2020. The interview is in English with Czech subtitles. Vsechny Rozhovory Britskych listu jsou nyni k dispozici ke stazeni v audiu jako podcasty, k poslechu na vasem mobilu kdekoli. Informace ZDE 0 A commuter has been spotted using a snake as a face mask on a Manchester bus. The man boarded the Swinton bus at Salford on Monday with the reptile wrapped around his neck and mouth, in what appeared to be a satirising of coronavirus restrictions. One passenger said she initially thought the man was wearing a funky mask before she spotted it slithering over the hand rails. She said she found the incident really funny and that the animal did not seem to be bothering any of her fellow passengers, saying: No-one batted an eyelid. Pictures showed the man was not wearing a mask under the snake. Authorities said they did not consider snakes to be a valid face covering. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty Government guidance clearly states that this needn't be a surgical mask, and that passengers can make their own or wear something suitable, such as a scarf or bandana, said a Transport for Greater Manchester spokesperson. "While there is a small degree of interpretation that can be applied to this, we do not believe it extends to the use of snakeskin - especially when still attached to the snake." Using a face covering on public transport is mandatory, except for those who are exempt for reasons of age, health or disability. Additional reporting by PA Cookie Preferences Cookie List Cookie List A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website when visited by a user asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes: Strictly Necessary Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Functional Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Performance Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Sale of Personal Data We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Social Media Cookies We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Targeting Cookies We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription. Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service. For the first time in its history, Scientific American has announced its endorsement of Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The science magazine has always remained science-centric and never endorsed or opposed any presidential candidate ever. In a tweet posted on September 15, the organisation said, Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in our 175-year historyuntil now. The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President. Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in our 175-year historyuntil now. The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President.https://t.co/8TlH7shjFn Scientific American (@sciam) September 15, 2020 In a following tweet, they continued with the explanation of their decision to break protocol and endorse politics. The magazine claimed that there is evidence proving Trumps anti-science stand. In their opinion, the current president has damaged the country as well as the citizens through his actions, by rejecting science and logical evidence. Calling him ignorant, they said the current coronavirus pandemic is his biggest failure. His lack of response or sometimes denial of the severity of this pandemic led to the death of more than 190,000 US citizens. The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its peoplebecause he rejects evidence and science.The most devastating example is his willfully ignorant response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives. Scientific American (@sciam) September 15, 2020 Trump has been accused of being a climate change denier and a promotor of environmental culprits like oil and coal industry while denying wind farms and other eco-friendly resources as being non-worthy of public funding. But his biggest opposition has come in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he denied the existence of the pandemic for the first two months. Later, he claimed that its just a flu, and would resolve by April. Some of his political opposers have blamed him directly for all the lives lost due to coronavirus. As stated on its website, the Scientific American is the oldest continuously published magazine" in the country. It has a global audience of more than 10 million people and 3.9 followers on Twitter. However, that number may soon fall because people werent pleased with their political stand. USA has seen a surge of right-wing followers since Trump took the oval office. People were quick to retaliate Scientific America on its controversial tweet. Well, thats it. This loyal subscriber for over 20 years is cancelling my subscription. Today. Not surprised. Ended my subscription DECADES ago. Scientific American isnt about science. Its about the atheistic, status quo, materialistic, Big Bang, gravity centric, uniformitarian, evolution models. Any science that challenges their mindset isnt published. SA takes a knee. Not surprised. Ended my subscription DECADES ago. Scientific American isnt about science. Its about the atheistic, status quo, materialistic, Big Bang, gravity centric, uniformitarian, evolution models. Any science that challenges their mindset isnt published. SA takes a knee. ctuton (@ctuton1) September 15, 2020 Heres what another one had to say: Trump may do some real damage to science, but by far the bigger damage is being done by the science-related organizations themselves turning to the woke cult of critical social justice. Their brazen politics will lower the quality of research and destroy public trust. Wicked Guide (@wickedguide) September 16, 2020 Some others blamed the magazine for betraying 175 years of honorable, principled, scientific non-partisanship, for the sake of some cheap, short-sighted, opportunistic virtue signalling. You're betraying 175 years of honorable, principled, scientific non-partisanship, for the sake of some cheap, short-sighted, opportunistic virtue signaling, wrapped up in hyperbolic, catastrophizing rhetoric. I'm old enough to remember when your magazine had some integrity. Geoffrey Miller (@primalpoly) September 15, 2020 However, there were others who supported the magazine and their stand. (Photo : Pixabay) (Photo : Pixabay) (Photo : Pixabay) A massive cosmic object called Asteroid 2014 QJ33 is nearing the Earth's proximity, reported to be bigger than the famed London Bridge, and will enter the planet's orbit tomorrow, September 17. The public should not worry because the famed massive Asteroid will only pass-by the Earth and put on a show for all who can spot the celestial body. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) monitored the famed Asteroid 2014 QJ33, first discovered six years ago with a massive size of 110 meters or 360 feet wide. The Asteroid will fly-by the Earth on September 17 and continue with its unknown journey and trajectory. NASA's Solar System Dynamics and Jet Propulsion Laboratories closely monitored the celestial body and concluded that it would not be potential harm to the planet and its inhabitants. The giant space rock travels at a whopping 19,371 miles per hour. Asteroid 2014 QJ33 measures to be larger than London Bridge's concrete and longest span of 104 meters or 341 feet. ALSO READ: UK Space Agency Offers Nearly $1.3 Million in Funding for Seven Space-Cleaning Programs London Bridge Asteroid, is it a Potential Harm? NASA advises everyone that the vast Asteroid is not a cause of panic or alarm, for it will safely pass by the Earth at a safe distance. The space rock would be traveling at a safe distance of 1, 592, 819 miles from the planet. One million miles of distance is a massive gap between Asteroid 2014 QJ33 and the Earth. Asteroidn2014 QJ33 is a classified Near-Earth Object (NEO) hailing from the group of Apollo asteroids, according to NASA. The Asteroid would pass by with 6.67 lunar units of distance, according to the Birmingham Mail. Asteroid 2014 QJ33 Visibility The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), a division of NASA, is not alarmed by the impending arrival of the Asteroid as it poses no harm to the planet and even its citizens. The space rock that was discovered way back in 2014 can only be seen through long-exposure photographs as it moves at a rapid rate. According to Sky Live's report, Asteroid 2014 QJ33 has a current visual magnitude of 18.64. This number is relatively low, making the Asteroid very hard to spot and can only be seen using unique cameras. Telescopes would also not suffice to view the fast-moving space rock. NASA: Asteroids travel near the surface because of Gravity A strange phenomenon occurs all-around the vast space and celestial heavens due to unknown forces that lurk and contribute to the mysterious happenings. The ominous area is home to enormous bizarre happenings that even the Earth's top scientists cannot yet explain. Asteroids who travel from one place to another come from the pull of planets and different galaxy systems. The gravitational pull somewhat "invites" the space rocks to move towards the Earth and travel at a high-speed rate. NASA characterizes asteroids as lifeless rocks that orbit planets and the Sun, further supporting the celestial bodies' gravitational and electromagnetic pull. These space objects are inanimate and would not move on its own, much like Asteroid 2014 QJ33, who moves because of the Solar System's planets. ALSO READ: NASA Discovers First Planet Orbiting Around Smaller Star, Giving Hint What Earth Looks Like When Sun Dies This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Isaiah Alonzo 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Hyderabad, Sep 17 : Political parties in Telangana hoisted the national flag at their offices to mark 'Hyderabad Merger Day' on Thursday and paid tributes to the freedom fighters who fought for the merger of erstwhile Hyderabad state with the Indian Union. While the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Opposition Congress and other parties celebrated the occasion as 'Hyderabad Merger Day', the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) commemorated it as 'Telangana Liberation Day'. It was on this day in 1948 that the princely state of Hyderabad merged with the Indian Union following "police action", as the Indian military operation against the Nizam's army is popularly called. The celebrations at Telangana Bhavan, the TRS headquarters, were led by the party's Working President and Minister K. T. Rama Rao. He hoisted the national flag and garlanded the statues of 'Telugu Talli' and Telangana ideologue Professor Jayashankar. Ministers Mohammed Mehmood Ali, P. Ajay and TRS leaders participated in the programme while following Covid-19 precautions. 'Telangana Merger Day' was also celebrated at Gandhi Bhavan, the headquarters of the Congress party. State Congress Chief Uttam Kumar Reddy unfurled the national flag. He said Hyderabad merged with India, thanks to the efforts of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He claimed that only the Congress and the Communists fought for Hyderabad state's merger with India. The BJP and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) had nothing to do with the merger, he added. The Congress leader said it was unfortunate that a communal colour was being given to the historic struggle. The fight against the Nizam had nothing to do with religion but by linking it with religion, these parties were trying to distort history, the Congress leader added. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) also celebrated 'Telangana Merger Day' with their leaders hoisting the national flag. The BJP celebrated 'Telangana Liberation Day' with the hoisting of the national flag at the party office by its leader K. Laxman. He said the party would continue its fight till the state government accepts the demand to officially celebrate the day. "It was on this day that Telangana achieved real freedom and hence, it should be celebrated officially," he added. Another BJP leader Ramachandra Rao alleged that the TRS government was not celebrating the day officially due to pressure from the AIMIM. Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy hoisted the national flag at his residence in New Delhi. He said the official celebration of 'Telangana Liberation Day' will be the real tribute to all those who laid down their lives for the independence of Hyderabad state. "While India got its Independence on August 15, 1947, the then Hyderabad state ruled by the Nizam acceded to the Indian Union only on September 17, 1948. A people's movement against the Nizam and his Razakar army bore fruit when Sardar Patel launched 'Operation Polo' (police action). On September 17, people across Telangana and parts of modern day Marathwada and Karnataka celebrate a second Independence Day," Kishan Reddy added. The BJP has been demanding for the last two decades that the day be officially celebrated like in some districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka which were part of Hyderabad state. Like the previous governments in undivided Andhra Pradesh, the TRS government in Telangana has rejected demands for officially celebrating the day. The TRS leaders accused the BJP of indulging in "divisive politics". Muslim groups have been opposing any celebrations as they say that Muslims were massacred during the "police action". The AIMIM maintains that there is only one Independence Day for the entire country and hence, there was no need for separate celebrations in Telangana. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Hours after the governor took the next step in reopening Texas, San Antonio officials reported Thursday that area hospitals had admitted 37 new patients with COVID-19 nearly double the number reported the day before. Government officials said that because the number of new cases fluctuates from day to day, its too soon to know whether Labor Day gatherings spurred the slight uptick or whether it will continue. Wednesday saw 20 new hospital admissions, while Tuesday saw 28. Were watching to see how it trends, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said during the daily city-county briefing. But from one day to the next, its really hard to tell. The mayor said health officials should have a better idea of the holidays ramifications if there are any by the end of the week. Earlier in the day, Gov. Greg Abbott loosened COVID-19 occupancy restrictions for businesses including gyms, restaurants, offices and retail stores. Those businesses can now operate at 75 percent occupancy, unless theyre in Victoria, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, where hospitals are still under strain from COVID-19 patients. My instinct is that the success of the reopening and whether or not we can do it safely will hinge on whether or not people are still committed to the behaviors mask-wearing, physical distancing and also avoiding large crowds, Nirenberg said. I think if we can do that, we can keep our infections under control. Even with Thursdays increase in San Antonio, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients represents a small fraction of the 1,200 hospitalized in July. Thursday saw 214 patients in area hospitals. Of those, 100 were in intensive care units, the same as the day before, and 43 were on ventilators, up from 42 Wednesday. The increase in new coronavirus cases remained similar to recent days, with 141 new confirmed cases and two deaths reported Thursday. Officials on Wednesday reported 153 new cases and three deaths. Bexar Countys total number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic now stands at 50,425. The death toll is 1,024. In neighboring Comal County, officials reported 10 new cases, bringing that countys total cases to 3,270. With the height of flu season approaching, officials urged residents Thursday to get a flu shot so hospitals arent overwhelmed with patients sick with the flu, on top of those with COVID-19. County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez said the county is partnering with health care groups to offer free drive-thru flu shots to residents Sept. 26 at Freeman Coliseum. People dont need health insurance to get one, but they do need to make an appointment by visiting Bexar Countys website. Those without internet access can call the BiblioTech at 210-289-0963 for assistance making an appointment. 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 Lok Sabha on Thursday passed two bills relating to the agriculture sector, including the one which seek to promote barrier-free inter-state and intra-state trade in agricultural produce, amidst protests by the ruling National Democratic Alliance constituent Shiromani Akali Dal and the Opposition. Union minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the Union Cabinet to protest the two bills as well as another similar measure passed by the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday. Harsimrat Kaur Badal and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal voted against the bills. She was present in the House when the bills were being passed. Kaur submitted her resignation soon after party chief Sukhbir Badal announced in Lok Sabha that she would quit the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills. The bills passed Thursday will replace the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020 and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020 issued in June this year. Hailing the passage of three farm sector bills in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described these proposed legislations as historic and asserted that they will rid farmers and the farm sector of middlemen and other bottlenecks. Modi asserted that many forces are trying to "mislead" farmers and assured the farming community that minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement of their produce will continue along with a lot of other options for them. "These agriculture reforms will provide new avenues to farmers to sell their produce which will increase their profits. Agriculture sector will benefit from modern technology and our farmers will also be empowered," the prime minister said in a series of tweets. These reforms will provide new opportunities to farmers to sell their produce and will lead to increased profits for them, he said. Modi also urged farmers and those associated with the agriculture sector to listen to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar's reply to the discussion on these bills. Replying to the debate on these two bills amidst protest from opposition members, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said the bills are not going to abolish the Minimum Support Price mechanism and no one should have any doubt that land of farmers will be snatched by anyone as adequate protection of their ownership is in place. "I assure this House with full responsibility that MSP will continue," he said. "I assure...that the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not take any steps which is against the interest of farmers and poor. No steps will ever be taken which are detrimental to 'Gaon, Garib aur Kisan'," he said. Citing an example, Tomar said the government has remitted Rs 92,000 crore directly in the accounts of farmers under PM-KISAN Yojana and the target of crop loan was increased to Rs 15 lakh crore from Rs 8 lakh crore. The first bill seeks to provide for the creation of an ecosystem where the farmers and traders enjoy the freedom of choice relating to sale and purchase of farmers' produce which facilitates remunerative prices through competitive alternative trading channels to promote efficient, transparent and barrier-free inter-state and intra-state trade. So the bill is not going to stifle the farmers but provide freedom to them to sell their produce any where in the country which is going to provide competitive price for their harvest, the minister said. Both traders and farmers are going to benefit and help create better agriculture infrastructure in the country, he said, adding it will also create avenues for employment. The other legislation -- the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill -- permits a farmer to enter into a written farming agreement for supply of farm produce at a pre-agreed price. The agreement should clearly specify the price to be paid for the purchase of a farming produce and to clear reference for any additional amount over and above the guaranteed price. While the discussion on the two bills was taken up together they went to vote separately. The Congress, DMK and the Revolutionary Socialist Party walked out of proceedings as the bills were passed by voice vote. Opposition parties, including teh Trinamool Congress, the Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Bahujan Samaj Party opposed the agriculture sector reform bills, saying they were against the interests of small and marginal farmers. Participating in the discussion, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee said his party strongly opposes them and if the "draconian" bills are passed, they will adversely affect 60 per cent people of the country who are poor and marginal farmers and farm labourers. Banerjee said the new laws will lead to hoarding of produce and their black-marketing and the Centre has sought to take away powers of states to act against them by amending another law. The common man will suffer and there will be price rise, he alleged. DMK MP K Shanmugasundaram opposed the bills and stated that the government should have done away with the export restriction on agricultural commodities. Congress member Ravneet Singh demanded that the bills be withdrawn and wondered why the Centre was interfering when agriculture is in the concurrent list. Opposing the bills, Samajwadi Party member S T Hasan criticised the NDA government's policies towards the farmers and said that if the government has been taking welfare schemes for the farmers, why "so many farmers are committing suicide". He claimed that the "rise of prices of the fertilisers and the diesel have enhanced the burden on the farmers". BSP's Ritesh Pandey opposed the bills and said small and marginal farmers have been left to the mercy of corporate groups. Biju Janata Dal's Anubhav Mohanty urged the Centre to send the bills to a parliamentary committee, saying they have been brought in very hastily. Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant welcomed the bills but sought more clarification from the government over certain aspects. He asked the Centre to ensure that any agreement between farmers and private parties makes it clear that farm produce will be sold at a price higher than the MSP. YSR Congress MP T Rangaiah supported the proposed laws, saying they will enable farmers to have barriers-free trade in their produce. Supporting the two bills, Janata Dal-United MP Santosh Kumar said the proposed legislations are "historic" and that farmers can easily access different markets for better price for their products. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Virendra Singh Mast called the bills "historic", saying they will liberate farmers and bring in prosperity for them while helping the country become self-reliant. The proposed laws are revolutionary, he said. BJP's Jagdambika Pal said that if the two bills are approved by Lok Sabha, then the day will be celebrated as farmers empowerment day. With the legislations, the government is trying to give due prices of agriculture products of the farmers, he said. Referring to agitations launched in different parts of the country against the bills, Pal said these were not farmers' agitation but agitations sponsored by the opposition Congress. After these bills become Acts, farmers will be free to sell their products at their place of choice and buyers and there will be no levy, no cess, he added. Pal also noted that migration of youths from villages will be stopped as they will be attracted towards the farming now. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott did not challenge all Texas political candidates to sign a pledge that theyd back hungry children. He didnt ask them to pledge to back the states uninsured. He didnt ask them to pledge to support firemen, nor did he ask that they support essential workers. There are thousands of groups the governor could have asked all political candidates to back. But last week, it was only police officers for whom Abbott asked for pledges of support, because unlike hungry children, the uninsured, firemen and essential workers, its police officers who serve Abbotts immediate political purposes. At a Back the Blue press conference, Abbott signed a pledge that reads: I sign this Texas Backs the Blue Pledge to oppose any efforts to defund the police and to show my support for the brave law enforcement officers who risk their lives to protect and serve. Defunding our police departments would invite crime into our communities and put people in danger. That is why I pledge to support any measure that discourages or stops efforts to defund police departments in Texas. Our law enforcement officers have our backs every single day, and we need to show them that Texans have their backs. #TexasBacksTheBlue This is a version of a pledge sponsored by Heritage Action, a Washington-based conservative advocacy group. The mass protests for racial justice that began with George Floyds death are a movement for reforming policing, not abolishing police departments. As weve noted before, defunding isnt the best word for the goal of reallocating funds away from the police and toward programs and other city departments that would better serve communities while freeing up the police to concentrate on public safety. Municipalities across the state are struggling with how best to balance police reform, address the rising need of their residents for services and be more efficient in use of their resources within the restraints of tightening budgets. In response, Abbott and other top Texas elected leaders have chosen to demagogue any reduction of funding to police departments and threaten local governments with punitive action, such as legislation that would freeze the property tax rates of cities. Of the $150 million that Austin cut from its police department in August, $130 million was either the transfer from the department of civilian duties such as forensic, as well as victims and support services to other departments or funding toward alternative forms of public safety. In a recent video posted to social media, Abbott said defunding the police invites crime into our communities, and it threatens the safety of all Texans. Will Austins plan work? We dont know. But if voters in Austin are unhappy with this decision, then they can elect new public officials. Thats the beauty of local control. These are complex issues, requiring nuanced thinking, discussion and creative solutions, not youre either for or against us attacks or gimmicks like signing pledges in the middle of an election. Law enforcement is vital to the health and safety of a community, but its not the only factor. And there are also many instances when law enforcement may not be the appropriate or best response to a crisis. Consider the tragic case here of Damian Lamar Daniels, who was in mental distress but was killed in a confrontation with Bexar County deputies. Would a social worker been better suited for such a call? Its a fair question, not one that implies a lack of support for law enforcement. Signing a pledge is easy. Guiding a nuanced discussion about law enforcement and community safety is hard work. still need to finish watchmen but i love her so much. Reply Thread Link I need to start. Reply Parent Thread Link Watchmen was great until about the last two episodes. Reply Parent Thread Link i just finished it last night and this is exactly how i feel, thank you for being the first person ive seen so far to validate me LOL Reply Parent Thread Link wow, that was a great decision on her mom's part. She's been famous and working as an adult so long that forgetting she's a child star is easy (especially since 227 is before my time) and it's amazing that she was able to make the leap to adult stardom too. Lastly - I hope season 2 brings this sketch back LOLOL Reply Thread Link Oh! Thank you for showing me that. I was so invested. I loved 227 growing up so much. Reply Parent Thread Link This is great! My family loved watching reruns of 227. Jackee was always a scream Reply Parent Thread Link Here for 4 times Emmy winner Regina King !!! Love her Reply Thread Link A former co-worker, a musical theater reject who basically had to put her career on hold to raise her kids, is clearly grooming her daughter to be a child star and it's so uncomfortable. She shares photoshoots of the little girl in a full face of make up, doing all sorts of poses & videos of her singing/dancing where she looks completely over it, and basically exposes her daughter any way she can on social media. Obviously I won't say anything since I don't even want kids, but I find her behavior pathetic and possibly damaging. /rant over I'm glad Regina had a good role model bc those can absolutely make a world of difference. Reply Thread Link wow i hope that little girl will be okay, im sure her mother puts a lot of pressure on her Reply Parent Thread Link It definitely sounds damaging and like the kid will resent her (if she doesn't already). I hate when parents force their kids into hobbies/interests that they're clearly not into. Reminds me of the moms on Toddlers & Tiaras who are always like 'they love dancing!', whilst the kid is crying and throwing a tantrum cos they don't want to do it. Reply Parent Thread Link She's got a BIG t&t energy for sure. Last week she did a livestream on ig of her daughter singing while she played the guitar, and when the little girl finally looked like she was having fun the mom would say in a fake sweet voice shit like "find the note/you're off-key". People started replying saying the kid sounded great just the way it was and after one comment that was basically "lol your kid is not having fun" her "connection" got cut. It's insane bc I finally understand while people don't confront these moms, they're unhinged and watching it happen in real life is too bizarre to even comprehend. Reply Parent Thread Link Marla Gibbs <3 She is amazing, and should have had a career worthy of her talent. Love her. Reply Thread Link Easy to forget she was a child/young star. She has done incredibly well. Reply Thread Link I didn't know this about her! Bless her. Reply Thread Link There are so many actors you forget have been in the industry since they were kids, I feel like if you don't have connections, it's easier to get your foot in the door of the industry as a child tbh. I love her, still think she should also have an Emmy for Southland. Reply Thread Link I saw her once at the bathroom at the Emmys and she is so so so so so so so small (not her presence though) Reply Thread Link I love Regina. She is a great actor!! Reply Thread Link I feel like more child stars should be able to have that. So many are homeschooled/have a private tutor, so don't really get that socialisation outside of Hollywood. It must be incredibly isolating. Reply Thread Link Corrections and clarifications: The article has been updated to reflect that Wilmington, Del., officials had the Caesar Rodney statue removed. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Democrats and educators of attempting a "liberal indoctrination of Americas youth" through alternative views of the nation's history, while the subjects of those attacks said he is fueling racial divisions in an election year. "Our mission is to defend the legacy of Americas founding, the virtue of Americas heroes, and the nobility of the American character," Trump said during what aides billed as the first "White House Conference on American History." While Trump called for "patriotic education" and a "pro-American curriculum" in the nation's schools, opponents cast the president as a struggling re-election candidate who is seeking votes by trying to divide people along racial and cultural lines. Trump focused his attack on education projects devoted to the nation's history of slavery and racial discrimination, analysts pointed out, targets that have been the focus of ire from many pundits on the right. "Donald Trump's political career has been defined by stoking racism and hatred," said Josh Schwerin of Priorities USA Action, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates. "This is all about trying to use racism to incite the fringes of his base who he thinks can help him win an election." Locked in a tight battle for re-election with Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump has frequently criticized the violence that has at times sprung from nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and racial discrimination. In his education speech, Trump attributed street violence in part to schools, claiming that "the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools." He also said "the left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement the universal symbol of the rule of law in America." Story continues President Donald Trump speaking Thursday at a White House conference on American History. Speaking in the rotunda of the National Archives, near the original of the U.S. Constitution, Trump protested the pulling down of historic statues many of which depict slaveholders and the "desecration" of national memorials. At one point, Trump invoked the current campaign by talking about how officials in Wilmington, Del., removed a statue of Caesar Rodney, a slaveholder and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Trump attacked Biden, a Wilmington resident, for not speaking out against the dismantling of that statue. Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said Trump is failing his own test of history in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis, climate change, and "the most compelling call for racial justice in generations." "He stokes hatred and division rather than bringing this nation together to confront racism," Bates said. "History will not be kind to this president for these failures and more." Trump noted that Thursday is the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Yet, he said, nowadays "a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance" via distortions of its history. Instead, he said, the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and the system of government it created "set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history." Attendees at the first White House Conference on American History loudly applauded Trump's speech, and the meeting appeared to be consist mainly of administration officials and supporters. Princeton historian Kevin Kruse tweeted: "As near as I can tell, the White House Conference on American History panel was drawn up with no input from professional historical associations, filled mostly with non-historians & culture warriors, and kept so quiet it wasnt even on the National Archives calendar of events." During his critique, Trump singled out The New York Times' "1619" journalism project and a teaching approach known as Critical Race Theory, both of which emphasize the treatment of people of color. The "1619 Project" named for the year in which enslaved people were first brought to North America was designed "to reframe the countrys history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative," said The New York Times website. More: Enslaved Africans landed in Virginia in 1619. USA TODAY is committed to telling the story, past and present More: How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States The term "critical race theory" has many definitions. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as "the view that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color." Trump said he would respond by creating a "1776 Commission." Named for the year in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, the commission will work to promote what Trump called "patriotic education." Critics mocked the idea of "patriotic education" as near totalitarian. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, cited Russia president Vladimir Putin in tweeting: "Putin did the same years ago and now that's what you get in Russia." Joanne B. Freeman, professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, said Trump wants a whitewash of the American past, but the nation's true history involves "the bad as well as the good." "The study of history the sincere, open, and serious study of history in all its complexity is dangerous and misleading only if you have something to hide," Freeman said. "And it's impossible to understand ourselves as a nation, and to reckon with the roots and implications of our current moment, if we deny the uncomfortable parts of America's past." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump slams modern teaching of history as 'liberal indoctrination" WILTON A lawsuit between a private school and the Planning and Zoning Commission has been settled. The parties have entered into a stipulated judgment which will modify conditions the commission imposed on the school for enrollment and parking. The stipulation resolves a lawsuit filed on Dec. 31, 2019, in Superior Court by Grumman Hill Montessori Association, which runs the Montessori School at 34 Whipple Road. The case stems from the commissions approval in November 2019 of a special permit application which the school sought in order to add grades 7 and 8 to its existing student body of pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. The commissions approval allowed the addition of those grades with a capped enrollment of not more than 40 total students for both grades. Click here to sign up for the Bulletins free electronic newsletter, Online Today. However, there were two conditions on the special permit approval to which the school objected: Enrollment for the entire school, which the commission believed had been previously capped in the past to 230 students, was to remain at 230, despite the addition of the two new grades. With the schools location on Whipple Road, a cul-de-sac in a residential area, parking was prohibited on lawns and landscaped areas at the school. Off-site parking arrangements, including busing of people, was to be used when parking demands exceeded on-site capacity for school events. In its appeal, the school sought to overturn those conditions, calling them unreasonable, arbitrary, illegal and an abuse of [the commissions] discretion, and not based on enrollment or traffic evidence. Whats more, it said, the conditions hurt the school because they limited enrollment and imposed new costs such as the hiring of buses to shuttle special-event guests to and from public parking facilities. Under the stipulated agreement, those conditions were changed and lessened. The school will be allowed a total enrollment of 270 students, 40 more than in the special permit approval. Parking will be allowed on lawns and landscaped areas for special school events, with traffic cones and parking monitors used to manage parking and traffic. In addition, the school shall instruct its visitors not to park their vehicles so as to block any neighborhood residential driveways. Town Counsel Ira Bloom discussed the terms of the stipulation agreement with the commission at its meeting on Sept. 14, saying its approval of the special permit needed to be corrected. Doing a quick review of the schools long-running history of disputes with the commission, Bloom said 270, not 230, was the correct enrollment number based upon previous legal decisions. The parking condition also needed to be changed because of past legal decisions, he said. During public comment, Richard Tomasetti, the commissions chairman said they had received a number of letters from neighbors opposed to the schools plans to add the additional grades. One of those neighbors, Carolyn Reifers, spoke at the meeting, saying she felt bullied by the school and objected to the increase in traffic the two additional grades would bring to the neighborhood. There will be 1,080 car passes per day and that does not include faculty members. Thats a lot of car passes for a small street. Im upset, and feel we are being bullied. The school keeps coming back for special permits, then they sue the town. We are sick and tired of this, she said. After close of the discussion, the commission voted unanimously to approve the stipulated judgment based on Blooms review and recommendation. History with the town The Grumman Hill Montessori School first opened on Whipple Road in 1988. The site, which was purchased by the Grumman Hill Montessori Association, housed a Wilton public school between 1954 and its closing in 1974. In approving the associations initial application, the Planning and Zoning Commission excluded the school from enrolling seventh and eighth graders. Yet, it did not place a cap on enrollment. Such a cap first came about in mid-2000 as a condition of approval for expanding several classrooms. The commission imposed a cap of 216, a number it raised several months later to 230. The earlier public school had enrolled approximately 300 students each year. The school complied with the 230 enrollment cap, but in 2009 filed a special permit application that aimed to increase enrollment to 270. It also sought to increase parking at its grounds by 24 spaces. The commission denied both requests. However, several years later, the Connecticut Superior Court weighed in on those matters. Its September 2012 decision ordered the commission to approve it. In doing so it allowed the commission to impose reasonable conditions. The commission OKd the enrollment and parking increases in July 2013. However it imposed 16 stipulations under that reasonable conditions guideline. In particular, the commission required the school to build a structure that would limit access to portions of the schools new parking lot. In addition, no one could park there between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The school went back to Superior Court, arguing that the parking-related condition of the July of 2013 conditional approval was beyond the scope of the September 2012 decision [by the Superior Court]. In its filing, the school pointed out that the commission had never imposed limitations on parking and access to the school. In a September 2014 decision, the Superior Court found in favor of the school and the commission reissued its permit approval without the parking-related conditions. The next five years were without dispute until last falls application for the addition of seventh and eighth grades. Jeannette Ross contributed to this story. Fern Britton has shared a cryptic post about being 'used' and 'betrayed' eight months after announcing her split from husband Phil Vickery. The former This Morning host, 62, was married to the TV chef, 59, for 20 years until they confirmed they had parted ways in January. On Wednesday, the television personality retweeted a cryptic social media post about 'betrayal, falling out and being used' and said the words 'fit so perfectly.' It read: 'In life, you will fall out with people that you never thought you would. Get betrayed by people that you trusted with all your heart. 'You get betrayed by people you never thought': Fern Britton has shared a cryptic Twitter post eight months after announcing split from husband of 20 years Phil Vickery on Wednesday (pictured in 2009) The post in full: Fern wrote: 'Whoever wrote this KNOWS ! Xx' 'And get used by people you would do anything for. But life also has a beautiful side to it. 'You will get loved by someone you never thought you would have. Form friendships with people that will establish more meaningful and stronger relationships. And overcome things you never thought you would get over. 'We all have chapters that end with people at some point in life. But take pride in knowing that the very best part of your book is being written.' Fern then added: 'Whoever wrote this KNOWS ! Xx.' Back in June, Fern spoke about her marriage to Phil breaking down on ITV's Lorraine, saying: 'Unfortunately, we fell apart!' Fern then wrote: 'This fits so perfectly' as she shared the post once more Still friends: The television presenter and chef announced in their split statement 'we will always share a great friendship and our lovely children' back in January (pictured in 2007) The TV personality explained that she was trying to finish her book while everything in her personal life was going on, and confessed that she 'needed the rest' which was forced on her by lockdown. Fern explained: 'Unfortunately, Phil and I fell apart. And I had this book to write this book and get it out on the deadline. 'And once all that was done, lockdown happened and it's like three months of - I needed that rest, you know?' Fern and Phil share daughter Winnie, 18, whilst the Ready Steady Cook presenter also has twins Harry and Jack, 26, and Grace, 23, with former husband Clive Jones. Fern spoke about learning to be single during the coronavirus lockdown. Announcement: The couple shared matching statements on their Twitter pages to announce the end of their marriage as they thanked fans for their 'kindness and support' She said: 'We separated at the beginning of the year and fortunately it's all smooth. We just came to the end of the road, you know, which is sad. 'So, I've been adjusting to life as just me to think about, and my two daughters happen to be here because they got stuck in lockdown, happily for me. 'It's a time for me to really adjust my existence, which on the one hand is really quite exciting, but you've also got to process it for a while.' The TV host also reflected on their former relationship in an interview with Weekend Magazine: 'We had a wonderful time. We were the best of friends. And I miss that friendship.' 'There comes a point when the children are substantially off your hands and you look at each other and wonder where you're going to go from here.' 'I don't want anyone. I can do it by myself. I don't feel lonely. I like my own company. I realised not long ago that I was married, on and off, for 33 years.' On Twitter in January, both Fern and Phil wrote matching statements which read: 'After more than 20 happy years together, [we] have decided to go our separate ways. We will always share a great friendship and our lovely children. 'We would appreciate it if our privacy is respected at this time. Thank you for your continued kindness and support. [sic]' The couple tied the knot 20 years ago in 2000, after Fern had split from former husband Clive Jones in the same year following a 12-year marriage. The couple met on This Morning when Fern hosted the show alongside Philip Schofield - who now hosts with Holly Willoughby - and the star previously said she never thought she would find love again as a mother of three children. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton's recent book has reportedly sparked a criminal investigation at the Justice Department. The DOJ is investigating whether Bolton criminally disclosed classified information in his book The Room Where It Happened, and a grand jury has issued a subpoena to its publisher, Simon & Schuster, for communications records, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Bolton published his book, which is critical of the president, in June after the Trump administration attempted to prevent it from being released. The administration in June asked a judge for an order to block The Room Where It Happened, but the judge denied the request, saying "the damage" was already "done" since at that point, there were "hundreds of thousands of copies" of the book out there. The judge also said, however, that Bolton had exposed himself "to civil (and potentially criminal) liability" and "likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations." Bolton has said that the book doesn't contain classified information. Trump has accused Bolton of revealing classified information in his book while also claiming the book is full of "made up stories," and in June, he tweeted that Bolton "should be in jail." According to the Times, the director of national intelligence "referred the matter to the Justice Department last month," and the investigation was then opened by the head of the DOJ's national security division. Some lawyers for the National Security Council and the Justice Department, the Times also reports, "expressed reservations about opening a criminal case," partially because Trump's comments "made it seem like an overtly political act," while others reportedly argued the case "had merit." More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment APAC Cloud Svcs Cloud Services in APAC Cloud Services in APAC RENO, Nev., Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New Q2 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon (AWS) and Alibaba are clear leaders in the APAC region cloud market, based on quarterly revenues. Amazon is the frontrunner in four of the five APAC sub-regions, while Alibaba has a strong lead in China and is also well placed in the rest of East Asia, South & Southeast Asia and Oceania. Microsoft is ranked second in three of the sub-regions, has a strong position in Japan and is placed third in the overall APAC region. The rest of the top-ranked cloud providers are either global players with a position in multiple markets - Google and IBM - or companies with a strong position in their home markets. Beyond Alibaba the next five cloud providers in China are all local companies, while Fujitsu and NTT are well placed in Japan, Naver and KT feature heavily in South Korea, and Telstra is a challenger in the Australian market. China is by far the largest market in the region, helping Tencent and Baidu to feature among the regions leaders. While all sub-regions are growing strongly, it is South & Southeast Asia that has the highest growth rate, thanks in large part to India. APAC revenues from cloud infrastructure services were over $9 billion in Q2 and are growing at over 40% per year. Public IaaS is by far the largest segment in the region, followed by public PaaS and managed private cloud services. Public IaaS also had the highest growth rate in the quarter, though managed public cloud also features strongly due to particularly high growth in VPC and bare metal cloud services. The APAC region does not yet account for a third of the worldwide market but it is growing much more rapidly than either the North American or EMEA regional markets. After China, the largest country markets in the region are Japan, India, Australia and South Korea. China is a unique market and remains dominated by local companies, but beyond China there is strong competition between a range of global and local companies. Amazon is the leader in four of the five sub-regions, but it is not the market leader in every country, said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group. The challenge for local players is that in most ways cloud is a truly global market, requiring global presence, leading edge technology, strong brand name and credibility, extremely deep pockets and a long-term focus. For any local cloud companies looking to expand significantly beyond their home market, that is an extremely challenging proposition. Story continues About Synergy Research Group Synergy provides quarterly market sizing and segmentation data on cloud and related markets, including company revenues by segment and by region. Synergy Research Group ( www.srgresearch.com ) helps marketing and strategic decision makers around the world via its unique insights and in-depth analytics. To speak to an analyst or to find out more about how to access Synergys market data, please contact Heather Gallo @ hgallo@srgresearch.com or at 775-852-3330 extension 101. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/33946525-046c-4f3e-9abb-40e875428c18 As soon as college starts, the speeding complaints increase and in the past ten years, we have had seven pedestrian strikes. ATSs radar trailer will help to calm the community and lighten manpower issues."- Lieutenant Mike Sweitzer, Frostburg Police Department [Herndon,VA]: All Traffic Solutions Gives Back program is excited to announce it has awarded the Frostburg Police Department a SpeedAlert18 message sign to improve the safety of their community and reduce speeding- - in high pedestrian areas. All Traffic Solutions (ATS) launched the program in August to serve police departments in smaller communities that were struggling with their budget, unable to qualify for grants, and needed our signs to make their community safer and save lives. We were struggling to receive grants to purchase radar signs and trailers. The FBI recommends we should have twenty-seven policemen on board, and we have seventeen. Our crime rate is a 6, comparatively, Chicago is a 23. Its tough for Frostburg to qualify for grants given the competitive market," said Lieutenant Mike Sweitzer, Frostburg Police Department. Frostburg is a small community of 9,000 permanent residents in westernmost Maryland. It swells to a community of 15,000 when students attend Frostburg University. Most students are not used to the slower speeds of rural Maryland. Unfamiliar drivers flood the streets leading to recreation complexes within the city limits. Residents in the area flood the agency with speeding complaints. With a small sworn force of seventeen, they are unable to be everywhere at once. As soon as college starts, the speeding complaints increase and in the past ten years, we have had seven pedestrian strikes. When we receive resident complaints, we take them seriously and usually have to pull someone from service for radar surveillance, continued Lieutenant Mike Sweitzer. ATSs TraffiCloud reports will help us target enforcement areas and times of excessive speeding. Do we really need to do pull someone from a critical activity or if it is just an imagined problem? It will help us take proactive decisions in the community. Frostburg Police Departments intends to use the ATS SpeedAlert18, which they have named SAM (Speed Awareness Monitor), and the data from ATSs TraffiCloud to engage with the community. They will use SAM in various hotspot locations to baseline driving speeds at different times. The baseline data from TraffiCloud will make the community more aware of the happenings at these locations. About All Traffic Solutions: All Traffic Solutions (ATS) is a leader in traffic safety and data analytics for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and smart parking applications. We help law enforcement, municipal agencies and commercial organizations use data and cloud-supported devices such as web-enabled radar speed displays, conditional messaging technology, and lidar technology to calm traffic, optimize parking availability, share notifications, and improve traffic safety while maximizing resources and budget. https://www.facebook.com/FrostburgPolice/ https://twitter.com/alltrafficsol https://www.linkedin.com/company/all-traffic-solutions/ https://www.facebook.com/alltrafficsolutions Bengaluru, Sep 17 : Former prime minister and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda would take oath as the newly-elected Rajya Sabha member on September 20, a party official said on Thursday. "As the Rajya Sabha is working on Sunday too, Gowda has decided to take oath as a member on that day when the session begins at 9:00am and address the Upper House," party spokesman A.G. Anjanigowda told IANS here. Gowda, 87, was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from the southern state with the support of the opposition Congress on June 12 in the biennial elections held here for 4 seats that fell vacant after the previous members' terms ended on June 25. Though 45 of the 61 new members took oath on July 22 in Parliament House, Gowda could not go to New Delhi then, as he was unwell and due to Covid-induced restrictions on travelling for senior citizens amid the pandemic. "On his doctor's advice, Gowda skipped oath-taking in July and decided to do it in the monsoon session of the House so that he could attend the session too. He will reach Delhi on Saturday along with his wife Chennamma," said Anjanigowda. Gowda enters Rajya Sabha for the second time 24 years after he was elected when he was the prime minister from June 1996 to April 1997. As Gowda's regional party (JD-S) has only 34 legislators in the 225-member state assembly and fell 10 short-off the required 44 votes to win the seat, the Congress lent its surplus votes to him after electing its leader Mallikarjun Kharge. Gowda and Kharge lost in the May 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Tumkur and Gulbarga (reserved) seats in the state to the BJP candidates. Though Gowda represented the Hassan Lok Sabha seat for three consecutive terms from 2004 to 2019, he shifted to Tumkur to enable his grandson Prajwal Revanna contest and win in the May 19 general elections. Prajwal is the son of Gowda's second son and former minister H.D. Revanna. Gowda's other grandson Nikhil, son of former state chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, however, lost in the May 2019 elections to Independent Sumalatha Ambarish from Mandya, about 100km southwest of Bengaluru. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Islamabad: Pakistan's top politicians, including the speaker and leader of the Opposition have said that someone has deposited Rs 100 million each into fake accounts opened in their names, prompting a high-level probe. National Assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq, Senate chairman Raza Rabbani and leader of the Opposition Syed Khurshid Shah claimed on Thursday that fake bank accounts had been opened in their names and that transactions worth tens of millions of rupees had been made from those accounts. Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan, Kashmir Committee chairman Maulana Fazlur Rehman and others also claimed that fake accounts were being operated in their names, the Dawn reported. According to a statement issued by the National Assembly Secretariat, speaker Sadiq has ordered the State Bank governor and the Federal Investigation Agency director general to investigate the matter after he received a fake bank receipt of a fixed deposit account that he did not operate. The speaker informed the apex bank governor that these transactions were fake. The statement also claimed that the speaker did not possess any bank account in the city or the bank mentioned on the transactions receipt. "The State Bank has been informed about the issue and the speaker has clarified [that he has] nothing to do with those accounts," the statement said. Chairman Raza Rabbani informed the Senate during proceedings that he had received a receipt from the SME Bank in the mail at his Karachi residence, according to which an amount of Rs 100 million had been deposited into this account. He said he had written to the president of the bank, pointing out that he had never operated an account there and hence the question of a transaction did not arise. The leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Shah claimed that he had received a term deposit report at his National Assembly address, indicating that the SME Bank in Karachi had transacted Rs100 million from his account. "The opposition leader does not have an account in that bank, then how was that report made? When contacted, the bank declared the TDR 'fake' and said that they had...received similar complaints from other personalities as well," the statement said. It still remains a mystery as to who was behind these fake transactions or what was the motive behind depositing huge sums in bank accounts opened in the names of prominent lawmakers, the report said. Abid Qamar, a spokesperson for the State Bank of Pakistan, said that they had received information from parliament regarding the fake bank accounts, adding that the central bank would investigate the matter to ascertain how the accounts were opened. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi, Sep 17 : In the wake of Karnataka facing a severe resource crunch due the Covid pandemic, Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Thursday urged the Centre to accept the 14th Finance Commission's recommendation for a special grant of Rs 5,495 crore to the state on account of reduced devolution. Yediyurappa, who is in New Delhi to take part in the bhoomi pujan (ground breaking ceremony) of the Karnaktaka Bhavan, called on Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and asked her to accept the recommendation made by the 14th Finance Commission. In a memorandum submitted to Sitharaman, he said that the state had received only Rs 869.40 crore as a performance grant against recommendation of Rs 2,100.25 crore to urban and rural local bodies. He also requested that a balance amount of Rs 1,230.85 crore be released. Extending his gratitude for timely release of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, Yediyurappa sought early release of outstanding material dues of nearly Rs 665.09 crore and unskilled wage dues of Rs 54.65 crore. He also appealed to the Union government to notify an additional 50 days under the scheme as Karnataka was facing an unprecedented situation. Beauty company Avon has launched a new brand campaign, Watch Me Now calling on people to reconsider their views of the iconic company. Avon, which has been transforming womens lives by doing beauty differently, has evolved its positioning to better reflect the Avon of today an innovative, bold and inclusive beauty brand. Launched to coincide with Avons 135th birthday, Watch Me Now is a testimony to Avons heritage as a purpose-driven company using the power of beauty to create opportunities for people to earn on their own terms, and support causes including domestic abuse and breast cancer for more than a century. It celebrates the success of the underdog and highlights the unexpected and underestimated aspects of the Avon brand, its people, activism, and products - for which Avon has been granted more than 750 patents and 300 awards. Watch Me Now includes a new visual identity and update to the Avon logo, the first in decades, as well as a bolder more confident tone of voice that is more relevant for the brands millions of beauty advisors and customers today. The new logo has already begun appearing on products and brochures and includes reference to the curves of the original 1930s Avon logo, with the new colour gradient based on the curves of a womans face. Speaking on the occasion, Angela Cretu, Avon CEO, said: Watch Me Now signals the start of a new chapter for Avon. Avon has been doing beauty differently for 135 years and we arent stopping now were just getting started. We are taking what weve learnt over the past 135 years about the power of relationships and social selling and applying that in todays context - using new digital tools that enable our beauty advisors to earn flexibly today across their social platforms. Were continuing to innovate and evolve, through investment in research, product development and people, to ensure beauty is democratic and accessible to all. And we will continue to speak out, drive change and positive impact on causes that affect women globally. The difference is that we are doing it in a more relevant, bold and confident way to Open Up Avon and grow our business. Avon is committed to providing women with an identity of their own and the freedom to live their lives their way. Through the Watch Me Now campaign, Avon transforms itself as a dynamic, bold, modern and inclusive beauty company. It traces the journey of an individual from being beholden to the stereotype and supporting them to fight for issues that matter, such as gender-based violence and breast cancer. In India, we have been empowering women over 2 decades now and offering a flexible earning opportunity. More than 80 per cent of our sellers are women and each one of them have a story to tell. The Watch Me Now campaign brings to life the best of what the brand has always been and repositions it proudly in a way that calls to individuals and touches on collective concerns, said Swati Jain, Marketing Director at Avon India. In addition to this, we have also launched a digital film that brings out real life positive stories of women who have transformed themselves through experiential learning and mutual support. With five million representatives in more than 50 markets globally, Avon has been accelerating its innovation and business transformation over the past 12 months through increased digital tools and support for Representatives, as well as new patent-led products. New Delhi, Sep 17 : India's civil aviation sector is on a steady growth trajectory, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday. Speaking on the new 'General Aviation' terminal at IGI airport here, Puri said: "The sector is all set to emerge stronger in a post-Covid world as more routes are opening up and number of passengers are growing." "We expect a bulk of pre-Covid domestic air passengers' traffic to be back by Diwali this year, and 'General Aviation' will have a significant contribution to it." According to the Minister, the new 'General Aviation' terminal at Delhi airport is the need of the hour which will significantly support this growth." The GMR Group led consortium "Delhi International Airport Limited" on Thursday launched India's first exclusive 'General Aviation Terminal' facility for private jets at IGIA. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text At least one teacher at a Pembroke high school came to work with symptoms of COVID-19, and more were not wearing masks before an outbreak that has left at least three teachers ill and prompted the first school closure in the province, the Star has learned. All students at Fellowes High School have been ordered to learn from home, online, effective immediately ... and until further notice, the Renfrew County District School Board told parents in a letter posted Wednesday on its website. The infections occurred before the reopening of school and were a direct result of educators not abiding by public health guidelines they were not wearing masks, they attended school while being symptomatic, which obviously goes against all public health guidelines, including the guide to reopening schools, said a source familiar with details of the outbreak. Its completely unacceptable, said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation. The first teacher to become infected acquired COVID-19 in the community, the source said, before having unmasked contact in the school with another teacher, who later became infected. When a third teacher became infected, the acting chief medical officer of health for the Renfrew County and District Health Unit ordered the school shut down. The source said a fourth teacher may also have COVID-19. Fellowes has about 710 students, who returned to school full-time during the second week of September. They will all be learning virtually for the time being. Students will continue their learning online and students are asked to check their district email for information and direction from their teacher., the school board said. The well-being and safety of our students and staff is top priority during this pandemic period and the district will continue to support public health staff in any way we can as they continue to investigate. The Ontario government has started a website to update the public about COVID-19 outbreaks in schools and daycare centres. Since classes resumed, there have been a total of 41 COVID-19 cases reported in 35 of the provinces 4,828 schools. Of those, 15 are student-related cases, 18 are staff-related cases and eight are unknown. The preliminary findings of an observational study released by Sick Kids identified a few key issues with school reopenings, including children wearing masks improperly, large classes that dont allow for physical distancing, as well as crowding during entry and exit times. It also noted that staff congregating could be an issue, and urged that those involved in the direct supervision of students should be encouraged to minimize their time (outside school hours) inside the school building, especially in shared spaces like staff rooms and department work rooms. It also suggested that for staff members not directly involved in the physical supervision of students, consideration should be given to working off-site to avoid unnecessary congregating with other staff. Correction - Sept. 16, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Pembroke, Ont. A Toronto man facing removal from Canada to Nigeria tested positive for coronavirus after attending an in-person meeting at a Canada Border Services Agency office, his lawyer says. The incident from earlier this month has lawyer Robin Seligman questioning why her client wasnt offered the chance to conduct a teleconference or virtual hearing, given the ongoing global pandemic. We offered them virtual options, but they were not receptive and refused to do that, said Seligman. She said the CBSA officer told her and her client the office was unable to facilitate a virtual meeting and that her client had to attend the Sept. 2 meeting in person. What they did is reckless. The man started having sore throat, cough, fatigue and headache five days later, and was referred to a COVID-19 test at Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ont., on Sept. 11. His test result came back positive Monday. I am not sure where I got it, but I couldve been asymptomatic and accidentally spread it to other people I came into contact with, said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal and due to concerns over his personal safety should he be deported. The man said he came across six individuals at the 6900 Airport Rd. location, including a security guard and the CBSA officer in charge of the interview. The man is now in self-isolation. According to the border agency, there have been four COVID-19 cases reported by employees at its site on Airport Road since March, but there have been no new cases reported among staff since July 30. Public health agencies engage with the CBSA if a confirmed case of COVID-19 is reported through contact-tracing, said Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr, a spokesperson for the agency. No known cases involving members of the public that have visited 6900 Airport Rd. have been reported or brought to the attention of CBSA by public health agencies. She said video conferencing using Zoom or Microsoft Teams is not currently available at the 6900 Airport Rd. office due to technological limitations. Whenever possible and appropriate, the CBSA offers clients and their counsel hearings to take place via teleconference, Gadbois-St-Cyr said. Decisions regarding whether an in-person or a teleconference meeting is appropriate are made on a case-by-case basis and are informed by the individual circumstances of each client. Since the onset of the pandemic, Gadbois-St-Cyr said, measures have been put in place to prevent transmission and spread of COVID-19 within CBSA facilities. They include enhanced daily cleaning of offices, restricting public access and limiting office hours. Mask and personal protection equipment protocols have been followed according to Health Canadas occupational health advisory. At the border agencys office in Mississauga, all meetings and interviews are scheduled. The main reception has remained open by appointment to visits on Tuesdays and Thursdays since March, though some walk-ins have continued to take place. Starting this week, though, the office is being opened Monday through Friday. Seligman, for her part, said the CBSA meeting rooms are tiny and counsel are seated right next to their clients, across from the officer, divided by a security glass with an opening at the bottom to allow passage of documents. They said the counsel didnt have to be there, but its the rights of my client to be represented at these proceedings, noted Seligman, who said she had another client a cancer patient with compromised immunity being asked to attend an in-person interview in June. Gadbois-St-Cyr said officers are required to wear PPE when attending these meetings and that hand sanitizer is also available on both sides. All interview rooms are cleaned after every use. The CBSA will continue to follow recommended public health measures and protocols at its offices, to ensure the safety of both CBSA staff and the public. Read more about: 'I could see ... demons': One womans shocking possession, exorcism story Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment An Arkansas woman with no history of mental illness said she suddenly found herself in deep emotional turmoil in 2006, with doctors unable to diagnose her rapidly deteriorating condition. Within months, overtaken by suicidal thoughts, Amy plunged from a second-story window, was paralyzed and nearly died. Now, shes speaking out, explaining that she believes she experienced a dramatic demonic possession and healing. Her experience is told in detail in the new book, Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts. Ive never had any kind of mental problems, never been on medication for anything like that, Amy said in a recent interview, noting that, within days of her affliction, she went from a successful nurse to a person who couldnt think clearly. Listen to Amy share her story on The Edifi Podcast With Billy Hallowell (download the Edifi app here for powerful Christian podcasts) at the 42-minute mark: Amys personal drama unfolded one day while she was working at a hospital and dealing with a burn patient who had survived an explosion. While I was in the ER giving [a] report, something wasnt right with me, she recalled. I went upstairs to do my chart and its like my mind went out the window. Amy wondered what was unfolding; the mental duress continued to afflict her when she later went for a run and was unable to jog in a straight line. GRAB A COPY: READ PLAYING WITH FIRE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE ISSUES I told my husband, I think Im having a nervous breakdown. My mind is not right, she said. As Playing With Fireexplains, doctors put Amy on antidepresents, but she said the drugs did nothing to curb her problems and the situation further devolved. They ended up putting me in a psychiatric hospital, she said, And the psychiatrist said, We dont know what were dealing with. Weve never seen anything like this. As time went on, Amy was in and out of hospitals, with suicidal thoughts suddenly overtaking her mind and heart. Nobody knew what was going on. And this happened in April and through the summer, she said. I was so messed up. I wanted to kill myself and I just could not think how to do it. One day Amy found herself sitting in a second-floor window sill at her home, as thoughts of death once again flooded her mind. I was sitting in the window and I thought to myself, If I fall out of this window, I bet Ill die, because its so far down and its a brick patio, she said. So I fell out of the window. Amy said she doesnt remember much of what unfolded next, as she landed on her head on the hard patio two stories below. Any person in their right mind if youre falling youre going to brace yourself thats a normal reflex, she said. My legs and arms were not broken. I did not brace myself. The impact of the fall was sweeping, with Amy breaking the majority of her ribs, puncturing her lungs and breaking her back in three places; 14 years later, she is still paralyzed. They didnt think I was going to survive, she said. But while Amy lay in her hospital bed recovering, a stranger named Cindy felt compelled to visit. While there, Cindy performed what some Christians call a deliverance (similar to an exorcism). She felt really led to come see me, Amy said. [She] said when they got there I looked at her and I had a male voice come out of my mouth saying, What are you doing here? Amy believes Cindy cast a demon out, and that her life was transformed as a result. For her part, Cindy has also openly spoken about the experience. I could see the demons, she told KATV-TV last year, noting that she uttered a simple command in that hospital room: Lord, in the name of Jesus, I command that these demons release her and come out of her and that she comes to her right mind, in Jesus' name. In the end, Amy believes she was healed. My family saw a difference and they were thinking, Somethings better, she said, noting, though, that there are still mysteries surrounding her story. Amy, who was a churchgoer before the incident, isnt sure why she was afflicted. Regardless, she is now much closer to God, and is encouraging others to cling to their faith. Its brought me so much closer to God and to know that his love for me. It wasnt Him that did that of course, it was the enemy, she said. Gods love is amazing. Seek the Lord with all of your heart. For more stories like Amys be sure to read Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts, a book that dives deep through a journalistic and Christian lens into the cultural discussion about spiritual warfare, demons, exorcism in the Bible and other related topics. Billy Hallowell, author of "The Armageddon Code," has contributed to TheBlaze, the Washington Post, Human Events, the Daily Caller, Mediaite, and the Huffington Post, among other news sites. Through journalism, media, public speaking appearances, and the blogosphere, Hallowell has worked as a journalist and commentator for more than a decade. first version - on 12:51 BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: Armenia is doing everything possible to maintain the status quo in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Azerbaijani Ambassador to Belarus Latif Gandilov, Trend reports. Gandilov made the remark during a meeting with the newly appointed First Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Alexander Guryanov. "Armenia, ignoring the norms and principles of international law, is illegally resettling Armenian families from Syria and Lebanon in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, in order to change the demographic situation in the region," stressed the ambassador. The ambassador also provided extensive information on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, including on unexpected attack of the Armenian armed forces on the territories of Azerbaijan in the direction of Azerbaijans Tovuz district on July 12-16, and on the main reasons and goals of this provocation. Gandilov emphasized that Armenia is carrying out illegal construction on occupied Azerbaijani territories, massively destroying historical monuments, and trying to falsify history. During the meeting, the main directions in trade and economic areas of the Azerbaijani-Belarusian relations were discussed. The sides also exchanged views on cooperation within the international and integrative unions, as well as on conducting joint events. (Newser) Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski has penned an essay for New York magazine, in which she claims she was sexually assaulted by photographer Jonathan Leder in 2012, before making it big. Ratajkowski, who came to stardom in Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" music video, had met with Leder at his upstate New York home for an unpaid, overnight photo shoot, after which photos appeared in Darius magazine. "I knew that impressing these photographers was an important part of building a good reputation," Ratajkowski writes, noting she hardly flinched as she was asked to pose in lingerie and then nude. She says she accepted glasses of red wine though she was only 20, as "I'd been taught that it was important to earn a reputation as hardworking and easygoing." Soon, "giant black spots were expanding and floating in front of my eyes." story continues below It was at the end of the shoot, after a female makeup artist left the room, that Ratajkowski says Leder assaulted her. "I don't remember kissing, but I do remember his fingers suddenly being inside of me," she writes. "It really, really hurt. I brought my hand instinctively to his wrist and pulled his fingers out of me with force. I didn't say a word." She added she went to bed and then returned home the next morning. She "never told anyone about what happened." Lederwho went on, without Ratajkowski's permission, to publish a book of images from the shoot that was reprinted three timesdenies the allegation. "This is the girl that was naked in Treats! magazine, and bounced around naked in the Robin Thicke video at that time," he tells New York. "You really want someone to believe she was a victim?" His publisher, Imperial, suggests her allegation is for "press and publicity," per Page Six. (Read more sexual assault stories.) Britain Condemns Continued Chinese Cyber Attacks The United Kingdom has condemned the Chinese regimes continued cyber attacks on governments and businesses around the world. Today we have another example of the Chinese using malicious cyber activity for criminal ends, said British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Wednesday, after the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of five Chinese nationals and two Malaysians on charges relating to cyber attacks. Deputy Attorney General Jeffery A. Rosen talks about charges and arrests related to a hacking campaign tied to the Chinese regime, at the Department of Justice in Washington, on Sept. 16, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/AFP via Getty Images) The five Chinese nationals are allegedly responsible for cyber attacks affecting over 100 victim companies in the United States and other countries, including software development companies, computer hardware manufacturers, telecommunications providers, social media companies, video game companies, non-profit organizations, universities, think tanks, and foreign governments, as well as pro-democracy politicians and activists in Hong Kong. Three of the five defendants were accused of targeting government computer networks in the United Kingdom, though they did not manage to compromise the networks. We condemn the attempted attacks against governments and businesses. This kind of opportunistic and reckless behaviour in cyberspace is wholly unacceptable, Raab said in a statement posted on the UK government website. A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters) The UK will continue to counter those conducting such cyber attacks, and work with our allies to hold perpetrators to account, he said. In July, Raab raised concern over evidence that the Chinese regime was engaged in malicious cyber attacks against commercial, medical, and academic institutions in 11 countries, including in the UK. It followed the U.S. indictment of two Chinese hackers for stealing millions of dollars worth of trade secrets and other sensitive information, and attempting to steal research on the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. A researcher works in a lab that is developing testing for the COVID-19 coronavirus at Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation in Nutley, N.J., on Feb. 28, 2020. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images) In December 2018, the UK issued a public statement expressing serious concern over the activities of hackers linked to Chinas Ministry of State Security, who had been stealing commercial intellectual property in Europe, Asia, and the United States through a malicious global hacking campaign, widely known as Cloud Hopper. The UK is gearing up its defense against cyber threats from hostile states such as Russia and China, as part of the governments ongoing comprehensive review of its foreign, security, and defense policy. Britains Ministry of Defence is planning to pivot away from traditional defense and operate much more in the newest domains of space, cyber, and sub-sea, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in July. Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace leaves 10 Downing Street in London, on Feb. 13, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images) The shifting global picture has changed the character of warfare in ways that will challenge the West to keep pace with adversaries who do not play by the rules, said Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull, Britains chief of defence intelligence, in a media briefing last week. Conflict is bleeding into new domains such as cyber and space, threatening Britains cohesion, resilience, and global interests, he warned, adding that the Chinese regime poses the greatest threat to world order. Cathy He and Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report. Gov. John Bel Edwards adjusted his Phase 3 order for coronavirus reopening to extend the on-premises sale and consumption of alcohol until 11 p.m., giving the establishments another hour of operation. The move came after Edwards held discussions with leaders in the restaurant and hospitality industry, according to a news release from the Governor's Office. This change applies to restaurants and casinos and bars in parishes that are eligible to reopen bars. Phase 3 in Louisiana: Some bars can reopen as other businesses expand capacity to 75% Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday restaurants, businesses and churches can operate at 75% of capacity under Phase 3 for the reopening of Louis Bars are still required to close by 11 p.m. Edwards' order previously ended alcohol sales for on-site consumption at 10 p.m. Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Jefferson Davis, Plaquemines, St. Landry and Acadia parishes have met the designated criteria and have allowed bars to open. St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes have also qualified and opted in, according to press releases from both parishes. Limiting hours for alcohol consumption is designed to reduce the amount of higher risk behavior in the community," Edwards said in a statement. "This change has been implemented in several states, including Colorado, and has also been recommended by the White House Coronavirus Task Force. All individuals who were in close contact with the staff members who tested positive at Yost Elementary and Liberty Intermediate have been notified directly, according to the letter. The message also noted the Duneland School Corp. follows all isolation and quarantine requirements of the Indiana State Department of Health and the districts re-entry plan. The representatives of more than 10 national airline associations (Boards of Airline Representatives, BARs) are urging governments to collaborate on developing and implementing an international digital border solution for air travellers. Their pressing appeal is addressed to the respective governments, as well as to the European Commission and the current German EU Council Presidency. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted that such a transnational, digital solution is required as an efficient and non-bureaucratic tool contributing to public health, as emphasized by the BARs. By facilitating the rapid tracing of potential chains of infection, it can support the responsible national authorities in taking appropriate and prompt action. A harmonized, electronic solution is considerably superior to the current, mainly manual, procedures in individual countries. The first promising solutions are already in place, for example in Spain, the United Kingdom and Greece. However, what is now urgently required is a coordinating political effort to ensure a high-performance digital platform that transcends national borders and achieves a more consistent passenger experience. In order to meet the current challenges posed by Covid-19, cooperation between states is imperative. Unfortunately, travelling public are currently still experiencing cumbersome manual and uncoordinated processes. Therefore, the international community has to develop a concerted strategy, as we cannot face this global crisis single-handedly without coordination across national borders, said Michael Hoppe, Secretary General of Board of Airline representatives in Germany (BARIG). Localized, national procedures are highly inefficient and particularly lack transparency. A standardized, digital solution is, accordingly, the way to go. The representatives of the BARs operating in Europe including the executives from, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, and the UK are calling for a harmonized approach in other areas as well. Thus, in addition to the urgently needed digital solution, they are jointly campaigning for: The joint travel impact assessment of the Covid-19 situation within the EU and globally by the respective ministries of the states and superordinate institutions, such as the European Commission, as well as coordinated action on that basis. The coordinated implementation of the Take-Off Guidance Aviation Health Safety protocol developed by ICAO, EASA and ECDC. Clear and unambiguous information for passengers on possible measures, always in consultation with the travel industry. We strongly appeal to national governments and the EU to support the introduction of an international digital solution. Only by doing so can border restrictions be removed in the interest of both the people and companies. The scope of this issue must not be underestimated, as the reconstruction of air traffic is crucial for economic recovery in Europe and the world. From the international movement of goods, to visiting family and relatives, to business and vacation travel - air transport connects people and countries and benefits society as a whole, said Hoppe. Furthermore, we are committed to implementing the Take-Off Guidance protocol to ensure health protection in aviation. In this way, the currently uncoordinated individual measures and various disproportionate travel restrictions can be eliminated. TradeArabia News Service Emirates' African network will expand to 15 destinations with the restart of Luanda, Angola from October 1. The airline continues to gradually and safely restore its network, delivering on its health and safety promise as it responds to growth in passenger demand across the globe. Flights to Luanda will initially operate once a week on Thursdays. Emirates flight EK793 will depart Dubai at 0945hrs, arriving in Luanda at 1430hrs. EK794 will depart Luanda at 1825hrs, arriving in Dubai at 0510hrs the next day. Tickets can be booked on emirates.com, the Emirates App, Emirates sales offices, via travel agents as well as online travel agents. Customers can stop over or travel to Dubai as the city has re-opened for international business and leisure visitors. Ensuring the safety of travellers, visitors, and the community, Covid-19 PCR tests are mandatory for all inbound and transit passengers arriving to Dubai (and the UAE), including UAE citizens, residents and tourists, irrespective of the country they are coming from. - TradeArabia News Service bigDaddy_In BHPian Join Date: May 2020 Location: Bangalore Posts: 58 Thanked: 567 Times View My Garage Driving across the Eastern Ghats to be with family : Bangalore to Kolkata in a Ford Freestyle Ford Freestyle TDCi Tit+) early this year and many a trip were planned throughout 2020 with Goldberg. (Yes, I name all my vehicles, my KTM Duke 250 is called Rocket) I always wanted to drive/ride down to Kolkata & COVID provided the opportunity as we had some urgent/unavoidable work in Kolkata. Flights were not an option for us as we needed a vehicle at our hometown & we wanted to avoid public transportation at all costs. The date of travel was decided as 21st August. Onwards Journey: Pre-work before the actual travel included the below: Enquiring about passes needed at the states we would be entering: All the government sites were confusing and adding more trouble than giving solutions, so we started watching YouTube videos where people shared their journey details. It got cleared that Andhra & Orissa did not need any pass for transit travelers. We called up Nabanna (West Bengal Govt Home Secretariats office) and they said unless its a lockdown day no passes or quarantine was needed. Planning the route/Understanding the roads: Google maps and Youtubers again came to rescue as we got to know patches of roads that were under construction. Shopping before the actual trip: We wanted minimal outside contact so decided to carry everything we might need to stop by the road for. Multiple bottles of Hand Sanitizers, Surface disinfectant spray, pee safe, pee buddy, face shields, masks & back up masks, wet wipes, tissue papers & roll. Medicines: Our daily meds plus basics like O2, ENO, Paracetamol, Pain Relief cream etc. 12 1litre Mineral water bottles, tetra pack coffee, Red Bull, additional 2 2ltr bottles of water for miscellaneous use. Dry snacks such as Cuppa Noodles, Nut Brittle, biscuits, chips, waffles & bhujia. Puncture Repair Kit, 12v Mobile Charger(android auto acts weird when 2 AA enabled phones are plugged into the USB slots) Prepping the car: Checked the car if it had any problem and saw that the wipers had to be changed so got new ones. Refilled the wiper washer fluid reservoir & got the entire car cleaned. Food carried: We packed our first day breakfast & lunch so that we do not have to eat outside. Took a flask & cups as well if we had to stop for tea somewhere. Breakfast was bread & butter sandwich & for lunch it was Alu Paratha. Hotel Booking: We had decided we will stay at reputed hotels, so we would be sure that sanitization was done properly. We chose Marriot Vizag & HHI Bhubaneshwar. The bookings were done on the day of the trips as the rates were cheapest at that time. Loading things in: We packed our bags and other stuff that we needed to carry for our family 2 days before so that we had an idea if things would fit or not (Goldberg has a small boot). To sum it up we had used all the available space inside the car to its maximum capacity. Changing My Biological Clock: I started waking up early(4ish) 3 days in advance to get myself sleepy early the night before. As usual I did not get proper sleep the night before the trip. I was contemplating to start the trip early as laying on the bed was just a waste of time. But then A was deep into sleep so chucked the idea and waited for the alarm. Route Map. Goldberg Loaded to full capacity. :| Day 1: Destination: Vizag We had decided to start at 4 am on 21st, woke up at 3 am. Took a shower. Had some tea & bread so that we did not leave home on an empty stomach. Started at 3:56 am for the epic trip. Starting ODO. Selfie for the keeps. We reached Andhra Pradesh Nangali border check post at 5:23 am. The police were stopping everyone to check for entry passes. On informing we were transit travelers they just took down our car number and wrote in a piece of paper, signed it & handed it over. AP Transit Pass for us. :| Beutiful Sunrise. This is the highlight of every early morning road trip. Roads were smooth and bump-free till Chittoor. Post that we had to slow down as there was road widening work going on till Tirupati. We stopped at 7:30 am for breakfast & loo break. Started again at 8 am, 65 km post the breakfast stop was state highway which was single lane and there was way too much truck traffic. Road widening work near Tirupati. Beautiful Landscapes throughout. We used our own cups to have Chai bought from the shop where we stopped for a loo break and got a quite corner to have breakfast. We merged onto NH 16(Chennai Kolkata Highway) around 9:15 am. Despite White topping going on NH 16, the drive was smooth. The view was mesmerizing with greenery all around. Stopped around noon again at the reliance petrol pump for fuel & loo break. Very clean washrooms. Throughout the trip, we used the washrooms at petrol pumps and were in usable condition. Although A sprayed the hell out of the pee safe can they were clean as per her. Showstopper 1. Showstopper 2! :P Quality Roads till Vijaywada. One thing Id like to point out is that people are reckless/careless with their driving. The fact that its a National Highway and cars would be on a high speed doesnt matter to them. Random people kept popping up to cross the roads! Guntur is well developed with swanky buildings being made. We crossed Vijayawada around 2:45 pm. Post Vijayawada the roads became terrible to drive on, NH 16 had huge craters so one has to be extra cautious while driving this stretch. Stopped for lunch around 3:30 pm at a coffee shop called Beans Cafe & Bakery. Had our packed lunch & ordered a coffee & Iced tea for takeaway just to be nice to the cafe owner and get access to their washroom. The cafe seemed nice, but we still had our packed lunch. Started again around 4:05 pm and faced terrible roads near Prathipadu/Nidavolu. Maps guided us into a town to lessen around 30 km. It was a nightmare to cross the roads there. Since it was a day before Ganesh Chaturthi, roads were choked with people shopping. It didnt feel we were in a midst of a pandemic! Godavari river had a flood alert, but we saw people had driven down there to take selfies with the river. :| Pandemic, what's that? Overflowing canals coming out of Godavari! We had booked a room at Fairfield Marriott Vizag and since hospitality business has been hit, we were told restaurants are being kept open till 9:30 pm so we ordered some light dinner beforehand. Rains started around 6:30 pm & we were 184 km away from Vizag. Post lunch we did not stop anywhere and entered the hotel at 9:45 pm. Post all the formalities we checked in to our room, after a hot shower & dinner we dozed off. Rain and darkness slowed us down. Reached Vizag. Finally. :D Tripmeter at the end of day 1. Broke my previous best of 900+kms on Rocket from BLR to PNQ back in 2017 Heaven. To begin penning down this 4000+km journey I wanted to share a quick background on Aura(home minister) & me. It has been a year and a half that we are married and have known each other for 13 years. I am a junkie with all things driving and riding whereas A cannot even ride a bicycle. Sigh! We got our first car () early this year and many a trip were planned throughout 2020 with. (Yes, I name all my vehicles, my KTM Duke 250 is calledI always wanted to drive/ride down to Kolkata & COVID provided the opportunity as we had some urgent/unavoidable work in Kolkata. Flights were not an option for us as we needed a vehicle at our hometown & we wanted to avoid public transportation at all costs. The date of travel was decided as 21st August.Pre-work before the actual travel included the below:As usual I did not get proper sleep the night before the trip. I was contemplating to start the trip early as laying on the bed was just a waste of time. But then A was deep into sleep so chucked the idea and waited for the alarm.We had decided to start at 4 am on 21st, woke up at 3 am. Took a shower. Had some tea & bread so that we did not leave home on an empty stomach. Started at 3:56 am for the epic trip.We reached Andhra Pradesh Nangali border check post at 5:23 am. The police were stopping everyone to check for entry passes. On informing we were transit travelers they just took down our car number and wrote in a piece of paper, signed it & handed it over.Roads were smooth and bump-free till Chittoor. Post that we had to slow down as there was road widening work going on till Tirupati. We stopped at 7:30 am for breakfast & loo break. Started again at 8 am, 65 km post the breakfast stop was state highway which was single lane and there was way too much truck traffic.We merged onto NH 16(Chennai Kolkata Highway) around 9:15 am. Despite White topping going on NH 16, the drive was smooth. The view was mesmerizing with greenery all around. Stopped around noon again at the reliance petrol pump for fuel & loo break. Very clean washrooms. Throughout the trip, we used the washrooms at petrol pumps and were in usable condition. Although A sprayed the hell out of the pee safe can they were clean as per her.One thing Id like to point out is that people are reckless/careless with their driving. The fact that its a National Highway and cars would be on a high speed doesnt matter to them. Random people kept popping up to cross the roads!Guntur is well developed with swanky buildings being made. We crossed Vijayawada around 2:45 pm. Post Vijayawada the roads became terrible to drive on, NH 16 had huge craters so one has to be extra cautious while driving this stretch. Stopped for lunch around 3:30 pm at a coffee shop called Beans Cafe & Bakery. Had our packed lunch & ordered a coffee & Iced tea for takeaway just to be nice to the cafe owner and get access to their washroom.Started again around 4:05 pm and faced terrible roads near Prathipadu/Nidavolu. Maps guided us into a town to lessen around 30 km. It was a nightmare to cross the roads there. Since it was a day before Ganesh Chaturthi, roads were choked with people shopping. It didnt feel we were in a midst of a pandemic! Godavari river had a flood alert, but we saw people had driven down there to take selfies with the river. :|We had booked a room at Fairfield Marriott Vizag and since hospitality business has been hit, we were told restaurants are being kept open till 9:30 pm so we ordered some light dinner beforehand. Rains started around 6:30 pm & we were 184 km away from Vizag. Post lunch we did not stop anywhere and entered the hotel at 9:45 pm. Post all the formalities we checked in to our room, after a hot shower & dinner we dozed off. Last edited by bigDaddy_In : 17th September 2020 at 00:19 . Reason: Refining the write-up YPSILANTI, Mich., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Eastern Michigan University has been ranked among the best universities in the country in the social mobility category defined as the opportunities it offers students who receive federal Pell Grants and their graduation rates. Eastern was ranked 119 in the nation among 389 national universities, and among the top three national universities in Michigan. The U.S. News & World Report annual rankings are considered the gold standard of reference in recognizing various elements of college life. Challenges for lower-income students The rankings, released this week, are premised on the fact that economically disadvantaged students are less likely than others to finish college, even when controlling for other characteristics, according to the magazine. "But some colleges are more successful than others at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000," U.S. News & World Report said in announcing the rankings. The ranking aligns with EMU's core values of excellence, respect, responsibility, integrity and, most notably, inclusiveness, which states: "We create an environment that supports, represents, embraces and engages members of diverse groups and identities." Ranking notes annual symposium and MLK celebration Eastern's U.S.News & World Report ranking noted several distinct elements of the University, including the following features: "Students can show off their research projects at the annual Undergraduate Symposium, which is put on by the College of Arts & Sciences." "The university also celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day each year with community building exercises and opportunities for creative expression." Day each year with community building exercises and opportunities for creative expression." "EMU students can join more than 200 campus organizations, and take a break from it all in the Student Center." About Eastern Michigan University Founded in 1849, Eastern is the second oldest public university in Michigan. It currently serves nearly 18,000 students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, specialist, doctoral and certificate degrees in the arts, sciences and professions. In all, more than 300 majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through the University's Colleges of Arts and Sciences; Business; Education; Engineering and Technology; Health and Human Services; and, its graduate school. EMU is regularly recognized by national publications for its excellence, diversity, and commitment to applied education. For more information about Eastern Michigan University, visit the University's website. SOURCE Eastern Michigan University Related Links http://www.emich.edu New Delhi: The government on Thursday said that it did not incur any expenses for the 'Howdy-Modi' event in the US city of Houston in September last year and that it was organised by a not-for-profit group. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a thunderous reception when he, accompanied by US President Donald Trump, addressed a crowd of over 50,000 Indian-Americans at the event in a stadium in Houston on September 22, 2019. "A US-based not-for-profit organisation namely the Texas India Forum Inc. Organised an event titled, Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures' in Houston on September 22, 2019," Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said in the Lok Sabha. He was replying to a written question on the event. Live TV Specifically asked whether the government incurred any financial expenses for the event or funded its organisers, Muraleedharan said "no". He said the chairperson of the Texas India Forum Inc. Was Jugal Malani, an Indian community member based in Texas. "Prime Minister, as part of his visit to the US, particiated in the event at the invitation of the organisers and addressed a gathering of members of the Indian-American community and many of their elected representatives," the minister said. At least three Ontario school boards allow teachers to take their masks off when they are alone in their classrooms or when speaking with colleagues as long as they can remain physically distanced including in Renfrew County where three staffers at a Pembroke secondary contracted COVID, forcing its shutdown. While it was initially reported that three teachers contracted the coronavirus at Fellowes High School, it emerged Thursday that it was in fact two teachers and an educational assistant. The first case was a teacher, who acquired COVID-19 in the community and brought it into the school and then passed it along to another teacher and staffer, sources told the Star. At least one of the teachers came to the school with symptoms and more were not wearing masks, prompting public health to order the first school closure in the province a little more than a week after it had opened. All Fellowes students are now learning from home until further notice, Renfrew County public health has said. Everyone must remain vigilant if we are to prevent and contain outbreaks, deputy education minister Nancy Naylor said in a memo sent to school boards on Thursday. It is also important to reflect on the lessons learned from the experiences to date and to share them with our teams. Naylor said it is critical that educators and staff set a leading example for students, and reminded boards that they must take possible COVID-19 symptoms seriously anyone who is sick needs to stay home. Caitlin Clark, deputy director of communications for Education Minister Stephen Lecce, told the Star that we are strongly encouraging all staff to strictly adhere to public health advice including masking, hand hygiene, and not attending the workplace when experiencing symptoms of COVID-19. These infection prevention steps are necessary in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. We encourage all Ontarians, including the Fellowes High School community, to remain vigilant with public health measures in order to keep our communities, educators, parents and students safe. We are all in this together. The province publicly posts all cases of COVID-19 in schools and daycares. As of Thursday, there were a total of 62 cases 20 of them school-related student cases, 22 staff-related cases and 20 unknown. Of the provinces 4,828 schools, 51 slightly more than one per cent have reported at least one case. In Pembroke, all 710 students at Fellowes High School have been told by the Renfrew County District School Board to learn remotely for the time being after the local public health unit ordered the school to be shuttered. The infections occurred before the reopening of school and were a direct result of educators not abiding by public health guidelines they were not wearing masks, they attended school while being symptomatic, which obviously goes against all public health guidelines, including the guide to reopening schools, a source familiar with details of the outbreak told the Star. The Renfrew board insists that teachers be masked when they are around students, but allows them the choice of removing masks while alone or speaking with other adults, so long as they remain physically distanced. The Durham District School Board and the Kawartha Pine Ridge board have similar policies. The expectation is that when physical distancing cannot be maintained, staff are wearing a mask, said Robert Cerjanec, executive officer of communications in Durham. Masks can be taken off when eating as long as staff are more than six feet away from anyone, or if they are outside and able to maintain a physical distance of six feet, Cerjanec said. If unable to maintain a physical distance of six feet, staff are required to wear a face shield in addition to their mask. If a staff member is working alone at their desk, they can remove their mask. Cerjanec said the protocols were developed with the help of Durham public health. Renfrew County board communications manager Jonathan Laderoute said there is no direct policy telling staff they can remove their masks, but we do have policy and standards that when they are in the presence of students, they are to be masked. If a teacher is alone in a room during their preparation time, they may choose to remove their mask, he said, but if a student is in the vicinity, the mask is on. Even though a board document said staff must wear medical masks while at work, Laderoute said some clarifications were made with the help of public health. While there are always discussions on policy changes, its status quo for the time being, he said. Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association and a trustee for Clarington in the Kawartha board, said teachers there can doff their masks if they are outside and can be physically distanced, or in a staff room with another colleague and properly spaced. We are responsible adults, she said, noting that the kicker (in Pembroke) is the self-screening piece. The first Fellowes teacher to become ill had gone to the school while symptomatic. That person should have remained at home, she said. The Toronto District School Board requires all adults and students to be masked when indoors. Two inmates who were evacuated by bus last week with other inmates from the Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in Wilsonville to the state prison in Madras tested positive for coronavirus on Monday. The inmates, a man and a woman, had been tested on Sept. 5 and 6 but there was a delay in getting the results from a lab, according to Jennifer Black, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections. The positive COVID-19 tests and the inmates mixing with others in transports during wildfire emergencies are what lawyers and family members of inmates feared would occur in what theyve criticized as a haphazard evacuation. Once the positive results came, the two inmates were immediately isolated and taken back to Coffee Creek from the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution, according to the department. The department also is accelerating the return of all the transferred Coffee Creek inmates, Black said. The department is using its own vehicles for the transportation. It will provide personal protective equipment for all inmates and transport staff, and, unlike the initial evacuation, will ensure inmates are given bathroom breaks and meals during the return trip, Black said. The man with COVID-19 had been tested at the 10-day mark of a 14-day observation period and the woman was tested in light of her anticipated prison release later this month. Neither was displaying symptoms at the time, according to Black. Between the time they were tested and the wildfire evacuation, the two inmates remained with their units. The woman was housed with her regular unit until evacuation and then was housed in a celled unit once at Deer Ridge, Black said. But both mixed with other inmates during the hours-long bus rides from Wilsonville to Madras, Black acknowledged. The Corrections Department will continue to work with local public health authorities and the Oregon Health Authority on testing and contact tracing of inmates upon their return to Coffee Creek and will conduct symptom checks, screening and quarantining of all Coffee Creek inmates, Black said. Neither of the inmates appear to have had direct contact with the male population at Deer Ridge, Black said. The man who tested positive was housed among 200 other male inmates who were transferred from Coffee Creeks intake center to a unit in Deer Ridge, Black said. The department is continuing to monitor for symptoms and is conducting regular screenings at the Madras prison, she said. Attorney Meghan Bishop, who represents Voycetta White, a 41-year-old inmate who was moved to Deer Ridge from Coffee Creek, said shes concerned that a scheduled surgery for White will be delayed again because of the potential COVID-19 exposure. Her client also was told that inmates will face a two-week quarantine once they return to Coffee Creek, further delaying any potential visits from family. White is serving time for identity theft and robbery. Im significantly concerned about the physical risks and exposure," Bishop said. "Everything us attorneys have been concerned about and shouting from the rooftops for the last week has come to fruition. As of Tuesday, there have been six Oregon inmates who have died from COVID-19 and 907 confirmed positive cases, according to the departments website. There are two tests pending of inmates at Deer Ridge. There have been 230 staff members who have tested positive, with 196 who have recovered. -- Maxine Bernstein Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212 Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian Subscribe to Facebook page This is the incredible moment a paraglider is in perfect symmetry with his reflection while spiralling over a lake in Austria. Helmut Eichholzer, 44, was paragliding with friends at Bischling Werfenweng in Salzburg when he was able to execute a ground spiral above a crystal-clear lake. Mr Eichholzer, from Kuchi, Salzburg, grazed the surface of the water with the tip of his wing to form a perfectly aligned reflection of himself in the lake before landing just seconds later. Helmut Eichholzer, 44, from Salzburg, spirals over the lake in Bischling Werfenweng in Austria and forms a perfectly aligned reflection of himself Mr Eichholzer begins to spiral over the lake and carefully manoeuvres his wing over the water During the clip, which was filmed by fellow pilot Roland Brunnbauer on September 5, the paraglider swirls over the lake and carefully manoeuvres his equipment so that he and his reflection are in perfect symmetry. He then lightly touches the water with the tip of his wing before landing in the lake. Mr Eichholzer said several Austrian paragliders were attempting the stunt at a sunrise photoshoot. He said they had camped overnight on Mount Bischling, which at 6,017ft high is a popular spot for paragliders and hang-gliders. He added: 'We had about six pilots and started with our gliders from our sleeping place in 15-minute intervals. 'Everybody tried to do a spiral and touch the water with the wing tip. It looks easier than it is. The paraglider, who was filmed by fellow pilot Roland Brunnbauer on September 5, touches the lake with the tip of his wing Mr Eichholzer touches the lake before landing in the water just a few seconds later He said the stunt went perfectly for him, including the wing touch on the water. Mr Eichholzer added: 'My focus right after the wing touch was to swim as fast as possible to the bank. The water was quite cold. 'If I entangled with the lines of the glider, it would be really dangerous! It was worth the effort and risk.' UNSW professor Mary-Louise McLaws. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Eight more deaths were also reported, bringing the states death toll in the pandemic to 745. Professor Rubin would not comment on the merits of Victorias current contact tracing system, but said NSWs decentralised model had helped it respond to the coronavirus pandemic effectively. "A decentralised system, which is well connected with a hub and spoke system [in which the data from every public health area is collated in a central database] that's more likely to be successful, more likely to be able to control outbreaks," Professor Rubin said. University of NSW epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said the new system should roll out "as soon as it can". "Its a great time to get them out there as the numbers are falling - and Victoria is doing really well in this regard - to get [public health officers] trained with on-the-ground experience and responding rapidly, Professor McLaws, who is part of a World Health Organisation panel on COVID-19, said. Professor McLaws said it was positive that the state was already using local resources to contain an outbreak in Casey in Melbourne's south-east. "In general, this means you can spread the load more, understand the community and understand where the focus for each health district should be," she said. The Casey cluster is now linked to 34 cases of COVID-19 including five of the 28 new diagnoses. Medibank Private chief executive Craig Drummond on Thursday joined other business leaders in questioning the thresholds in the government's road map for easing restrictions. Loading "Certainly from my point of view they look like ambitious targets on the basis of where we've been," he told The Australian Financial Review. "One hopes that there's some flexibility in these numbers going forward ... all I can report is from my social network is that the last week or two of the lockdown, which is now six to seven weeks, is starting to have a real impact." The Premier flagged a likely "update" of the road map if the downward trend in daily cases continued but sounded a note of caution, "with the passage of time" an important factor in decision making. Loading Mr Andrews said that regional Victoria, which moved to stage one restrictions on Thursday after a sustained period of lower-than-expected case numbers, was an example of what might soon be possible for Melbourne. Government modelling used for its road map predicted a daily case load of more than 60 by Thursday, more than double the actual figure. "Of course if we finish up ahead of schedule, then, we will adjust things and we'll have more to say about that at the appropriate time, he said. The Premier said he believed the level of testing and data monitoring was giving authorities an accurate picture of the level of the infections in the community. Loading "At the moment we believe we have that and the moment it was to say to us, for instance, we can go faster without risking it being a short term thing, when weve got something we could lock in, then of course we would update [the road map], Mr Andrews said. Deputy Chief Health Officer Allan Cheng also indicated there could be some flexibility in the triggers for moving from step two to step three in easing restrictions. Professor Cheng said he was worried about the Casey cluster where the infection sites likely included a number of households. He said his team was applying the community hubs technique to track and trace the outbreak, working with Monash Health, the local council and community leaders, but that an official tracing hub had not been established. To The Eagle: Given the current state of the historical fires burning all up and down the West coast, one might wonder why the ineffable leader of the free world has nothing to say and nothing to offer either in platitudes or resources. Oh, I forget, all three states are strong Democratic bastions of what once was an America living with a Constitution that proscribed certain laws of governmental conduct. My impatience allowed me to start this letter before the latest news reveals that our esteemed leader did finally make it to California in time to blame poor forest management for the fires ravaging the state. In one regard he is perfectly correct but picking up the forest floor really isn't the prescribed answer. Claiming that when trees get really dry they explode was something I'd never realized before. When pressed on the climate warming he said not to worry because it would cool down. Now that's what I call real leadership! Kudos to one astute reader for noticing my letter from a couple weeks ago. It has long been my practice, whether living in Anchorage, Ak or Vancouver, Wa., to cast bait upon the public waters just to see what or who bites. Given that, I begin to fear that said reader's power of observation surpasses that of his comprehension. Within just the past week we're learning that our fearless and most thoughtful leader didn't want to alarm us with the truth in regard to the danger and lethality of the virus currently sweeping the planet. Just this evening I heard him comparing himself to Winston Churchill. Uh, I sort of remember reading that Churchill had warned his citizens about the coming horror of the night raids over London. Glad when I was an active duty Marine I could believe my leaders when they'd tell us to watch out, as if we needed to be told! Leaders lead by leading, at least it seemed so in days of yore. Ah, the good old days. Let's all make America great. You know what to do. James Roberts Elochoman Valley Aftermath: Investigators inspect the debris following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner The chief project engineer for Boeing's 737 Max jet told a committee of the US House of Representatives investigating two fatal airplane crashes that he approved a critical design change to software on the plane even though he was unaware of key details about how it worked. The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which issued its report yesterday into the aircraft at the centre of two crashes that claimed 346 lives in 2018 and 2019, among them Irish man Michael Ryan, also heard that a test pilot had issued a warning about the software system overriding pilot commands. In Indonesia in October 2018, and again in Ethiopia in March 2019, the software forced down the noses of two of the new Boeing 737 Max aircraft in a way that their pilots could not overcome. The Max 737 remains grounded by aviation chiefs worldwide, but it is expected to be cleared to fly again in the coming months, following an overhaul of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software. Yesterday's document details myriad gaps in oversight that allowed US federal regulators to certify the plane was safe to fly even though officials at both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not fully understand how it was designed. A draft "oversight report", written months after the first Max crash, "did not reveal any non-compliance" by Boeing. In effect, it meant the company was found to have followed federal safety regulations even though the result was a flawed plane. About a month after that draft report was prepared, the second Max crashed. "It was 'compliant'. But the problem is it was compliant and not safe. And people died," committee chairman Peter DeFazio said. "Obviously, the system is inadequate." The final committee report on the Max will likely be interpreted as offering the clearest indication yet that Boeing - or the unit tasked with overseeing the certification process on the FAA's behalf - could have caught flaws in the Max's flight control system during the airplane's design stage. But it failed to act on concerns that were raised about the MCAS, which was identified as a factor in both crashes. The Boeing employees were driven in part by what investigators concluded was pressure to get the new planes to customers quickly and without requiring their pilots to undergo extensive retraining. The House investigators concluded that the two crashes in less than five months "were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA". In 2016, one of the employees was worried about MCAS countering the pilot's commands during a test flight and the potential for faulty sensor data causing problems with the system. The pilot's colleagues "discounted" the concerns, according to the report. Problems with the connection between the sensors and MCAS have been identified as a major factor in the crashes. Similarly, internal Boeing documents regularly referred to the test pilot's delay of more than 10 seconds in responding to MCAS in a flight simulator, but the finding was not disseminated more widely. The crashes of Lion Air flight 610 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019 are "clear evidence that the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be repaired", investigators concluded. A spokesman for Boeing said: "We have been hard at work strengthening our safety culture." ( Washington Post) The value of Bahrains exports of national origin increased by 2% to BD190 million ($501.1 million) during August, compared to BD187vmillion for the same month of the previous year, said the Information &eGovernment Authority (iGA) in a new report. The top 10 countries in terms of the value of exports of national origin purchased from Bahrain accounted for 72% of the total value, with the remaining countries accounting for 28%. Saudi Arabia ranked first among countries receiving Bahraini exports of national origin, importing BD58 million from Bahrain. Meanwhile, the US was second with BD18 million and Oman third with BD11 million. Unwrought aluminium alloys emerged as the top products exported during August with BD40 million, Unwrought aluminium (not alloyed) was second with a value of BD26 million and Semi-finished iron and steel third with BD15 million. The total value of re-exports decreased by20%to reach BD44million during August, compared to BD55 million for the same month of the previous year. The top 10 countries accounted for 94% of the re-exported value, while the remaining countries accounted for the 6%. Saudi Arabia ranked first with BD14 million, UAE second with BD9million, and the US third with BD6 million. Four-wheel drive cars the top product re-exported from Bahrain with BD5.3 million, gold ingots came in second place with BD5million, and cigarettes containing tobacco came third with BD4.2 million. The trade balance, difference between exports and imports, the value of the deficit of the trade balance reached BD193 million during August of 2020 versus BD149million for the same month of the previous year with increase of 30%. The value of imports increased by 9%, reaching BD428 million during August2020compared to BD391 million for the same month of the previous year. The top 10 countries accounted for 74% of the value of imports, with the remaining countries accounting for 26%. According to the report, Switzerland ranked first when it came to imports to Bahrain, with a total ofBD84million, China was second with BD42million; and the Australia was third with BD36million. Central heating boilers emerged as the top product imported into Bahrain with a total value of BD39 million, while air conditioners without refrigeration unit was second withBD37 million, and aluminium oxide third with BD35 million. TradeArabia News Service So you thought youve seen it all in the Trump presidency? It just got a little crazier this week. The Wall Street Journal disclosed that Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors in a phone call that those who committed violent acts during protests in recent months should be charged with sedition one of the gravest crimes on the federal books, designed for those who plot to overthrow the U.S. government. It gets worse. Barr asked prosecutors in his civil rights division to see if they could bring criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing a police-free protest zone last summer. Process that, fellow citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave. The attorney general of the United States wants to bring an extreme case against dissidents (albeit those who should be held accountable for their actions, but ... sedition?!) and potentially jail a duly elected mayor of a major U.S. city. It gets crazier. The top communications official for the Department of Health and Human Services accused scientists in his own agency of sedition. He suggested, without evidence, that scientists deep in the bowels of the CDC were playing politics to undermine President Trump. It gets worse yet. That spokesman, Michael Caputo, predicted that Trump would win the election but Joe Biden would refuse to concede. And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin, he said on social media. The drills that youve seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because its going to be hard to get. It was announced Wednesday that Caputo would be taking a leave of absence. But it raises the question: How did someone so reckless ever get that job? And why was he not fired? Meanwhile, at almost every turn, Trump continues to lay the groundwork for what could become one of the fiercest postelection fights in American history claiming the only way he could lose if there is widespread fraud. In Nevada, for example, he said Im winning the state easily. The polls there and elsewhere suggest otherwise. Get ready, Americans, its only going to get uglier. There is only one vaccine to this growing authoritarian threat to the republic. Register. Vote. What were saying in editorials Get moving, Washington: Nearly a third of respondents to a federal survey last month reported struggling to cover basic expenses. And the demand for food assistance has tripled in parts of the Bay Area. Our editorial Vote no on Prop. 21: In the two years since Californians rejected the last attempt to double down on the failed policy by letting more cities impose and expand rent control, the reasons to vote against this falls rehash, Proposition 21, have multiplied. Our editorial Climate change? Not at the White House: Its fitting that President Trumps stop near Sacramento for a wildfire briefing Monday was belatedly tacked onto a campaign and fund-raising swing through the West. Trump has treated the fires as an afterthought when he isnt acting as a human accelerant. Our editorial Guest opinions Listen up, Mayor Breed: What does it say about the values of a city that reopens restaurants, gyms and salons before outdoor playgrounds? Read the piece Attention, Governor Newsom: Shockingly, in 2020, the California Legislature has reverted once again to racial balancing. If the governor signs AB979 into law, every publicly traded corporation that is headquartered or incorporated in California will be subject to an underrepresented community quota. Read the piece The case against Prop. 22: San Francisco has a proud history of standing up for working families. But now Uber, Lyft and others are attempting to use a deceptive statewide ballot proposition, Proposition 22, to force us to stand down. Read the piece Letter of the Week Robert Riemer of Half Moon Bay has this proposal for ending the transit turf wars: Why is there no consideration of swapping BART for Caltrain? In my youth, BART was envisioned as circling the bay, and unsurprisingly, the system was opposed by Caltrain and a host of naysayers. Now BART has succeeded in nearly circling the South Bay at least, doing it the hard way at a far greater expense. The only apparent advantage of Caltrain at present is the freedom to consume alcohol on board, and just how valuable is that? Why dont the planners stop the turf war, subdue their egos and work together to consolidate into a single system that benefits passengers to a far greater extent? Neither system is perfect; maybe reducing the problem to one will enable the fixes to happen sooner. This is a prime opportunity to put the nostalgia for Caltrain in the rearview mirror along with the key system and other anachronisms. And please check out our other letters of the day responding to this and other matters. You can send us a letter via this form. Where to follow us We have a Twitter channel, Opinion Central (@sfc_opinions). Please add it to your stream. Youll catch our editorials and opinion pieces, as well as our drive-by comments on assorted subjects in the news. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnDiazChron Just a reminder The Chronicles editorials represent the collective judgment of our Editorial Board, which includes the publisher as well as the writers and editors from the opinion team. Our editors and reporters on the news side are not involved in those decisions (including election endorsements). They are charged with reporting fairly and objectively without regard to our editorial positions. It is one of the core values here at Fifth and Mission streets. Opinion Central is a thrice-weekly newsletter from John Diaz, The Chronicles editorial page editor, and the rest of the Editorial Board. Follow along on Twitter: @sfc_opinions Sweeping failures by Boeing Co. engineers, deception by the company and significant errors in government oversight led to the two fatal crashes of the 737 Max, congressional investigators have concluded. A 245-page report issued Wednesday provides the most scathing account so far of the miscalculations that led to 346 deaths, the grounding of Boeings best-selling jet and billions of dollars in losses for the manufacturing giant. The Max crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake or mismanaged event," the report by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said. They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeings engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeings management and grossly insufficient oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)." The reportthe result of five investigative hearings, a review of about 600,000 pages of documents, interviews with top Boeing and FAA officials and information provided by whistle-blowersmakes the case for broad changes in the FAAs oversight of the aircraft industry. It offers a more searing version of events than the sometimes technical language in previous crash reports and investigations, including one conducted by the Transportation Departments Inspector General. The conclusions were drawn by the majority staff under committee chairman Peter DeFazio. DeFazio said he found it mind boggling" that Boeing and FAA officials concluded, according to the report, that the planes design had complied with regulations in spite of the crashes. The problem is it was compliant and not safeand people died," he said. Obviously, the system is inadequate." Lawmakers are drafting legislation designed to reform how the FAA oversees companies such as Boeing and reviews aircraft designs. Boeing said in a statement it had cooperated with the investigation and had taken steps to improve safety. Change is always hard and requires daily commitment, but we as a company are dedicated to doing the work," it said. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. (Photo : REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne) The COVID Tracker Ireland app used for contact tracing the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is displayed on a mobile phone, as it is held up for an illustration photograph in Galway, Ireland, July 30, 2020. Picture taken July 30, 2020. (Photo : REUTERS/Phil Noble) People queue outside a test centre to take a coronavirus test amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Bolton, Britain, September 17, 2020. COVID-19 tracing apps all over the world are one of the mitigation measures government applies to curb Coronavirus cases. Some are not impressed with this technology. But it turns out, in Scotland, this is the reason why over 100 people are now self-isolating in their houses. Do you know how to practice self-isolation properly? Scotland discovers possible next COVID-19 victims More than 100 people in Scotland were recently alarmed with their smartphones to self-isolate through the COVID-19 tracing app of the government, as reported via BBC. Through an app called 'Protect Scotland,' all of them were notified through phones to practice isolation in their own homes. This means that those people have been in close contact with other people that have positive COVID-19. First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon said via an announcement that at least one million people have already downloaded the app since its first launched. "One million is already a big enough number for us to know that the app can make a difference, and I can advise that more than 100 people have been advised to isolate as a result of using it," said her. Please keep spreading the word - the more of us who download Thanks a MILLION everyonePlease keep spreading the word - the more of us who download https://t.co/KoVcynjinI the more effective our fight against COVID. pic.twitter.com/z2zuMuTK8o Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) September 17, 2020 So far, the minister advises all citizens in Scotland to install the app in order to do the health tracking system of the government. How does the app work? As reported via Tech Times, contact-tracing apps have their different function depending on the country where you're from. In Scotland, the process starts with the bluetooth technology associated with the app. This allows the app to open its radar on individuals that had close interaction with another person. Once you agree with all its terms, the app will issue a unique code to each app owner. It lets the app access your phone without taking any private or personal info such as name, addresses, or contact numbers. If you had any interaction with a COVID positive, the app will send you a warning telling you to need to practice self-isolation. This will further curb the virus's spread, since it will mitigate the future possibility that you may contract virus. Countries like Japan, Italy, Australia, and Canada have already implemented their version of the tracing app. In the United States, different states also introduced their own apps. ALSO READ: [VIRAL] 17-Year-Old Inventor of COVID-19 Tracking App Turns Down $8 Million To Keep Site Ad-Free; Here's Why This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Jamie Pancho 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine is looking for an optimal model for providing state support for Ukrainian airlines, Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy said at an online conference of the European Business Association on Thursday. "We are still trying to find a formula for support [of the aviation industry]. Now, travel operators have been provided with albeit small, but state support. We hope that air carriers will also be able to receive support ... But there should definitely be a support mechanism not only at the level of loans, but also, possibly, interest-free assistance, or even irrevocable financial assistance," said Krykliy. He also noted that it may not be easy to resolve this issue with some airlines, since some of them have debts to the state budget. At the same time, the minister stressed that the aviation industry needs state support, since it generates income both for regional budgets and for a number of related industries. "I am interested that this support will be provided from the state not only by word, but also by deed. Unfortunately, it depends not only on our ministry," Krykliy stressed. The minister also noted that there are a number of sources, funds from which support can be directed to the aviation industry, and now this issue is being discussed with all relevant ministries. Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former Bergen County judge, on Tuesday filed a countersuit against a man who accused of him sexual assault decades ago, claiming the allegations were fabricated as part of an extortion scheme. Napolitanos suit said his accuser concocted a false story that the then-Superior Court judge forced the man to engage in a sex act in the 1980s while he had a criminal case pending before him. Napolitanos alleged victim said in his suit that his now-deceased attorney arranged the assault in exchange for a lighter sentence on arson and burglary charges. These defamatory statements have permanently maligned Former Judge Napolitanos formerly pristine reputationwhich he has spent decades buildingas a highly regarded lawyer and respected jurist, the suit said. Napolitanos suit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, claimed his accuser launched a failed months long campaign to extort a settlement from the judge-turned-news analyst before making his claim public. The false claims, the lawsuit alleges, amount to a smear campaign against the judge. Defendant filed a lawsuit against Former Judge Napolitano setting forth his fabricated sexual assault story in graphic detail and demanding $10 million, according to Napolitanos lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages. In addition, Napolitanos attorneys claim the suit was improperly filed in New York in an apparent attempt to gain widespread news coverage. NJ Advance Media does not typically use the names of alleged sexual assault victims. However, the lawyer for Napolitanos accuser, Jon L. Norinsberg, responded to the countersuit Wednesday using his clients name - Charles Corbishley - and said Napolitanos claims were patently frivolous. It is nothing more than a diversionary tactic, designed to deflect attention away from his horrific sexual assault of Mr. Corbishley as a young man. Judge Napolitanos extortion claims against Mr. Corbishley are slanderous in their own right, Norinsberg said in an email. In short, this lawsuit is another example of Judge Napolitano abusing his power and authority, and attempting to bludgeon Mr Corbishley into silence," Norinsberg said. "But this strategy has failed. Mr. Corbishley will not be cowed into silence. He is now more resolved than ever to expose the truth about what Judge Napolitano did to him including his completely fabricated claims about threats that he recently told law enforcement officials and to hold him accountable, at long last, for his horrific sexual assault of Mr. Corbishley. According to Corbishleys suit, he was facing arson charges in November 1987 and hired Robert Hollis as his defense attorney. Hollis, the suit said, was later identified as a leader of a prostitution ring. At the defense attorneys advice, he pleaded guilty without a plea deal in place, according to the suit. Hollis allegedly told the accuser, then 20, to visit Napolitano at his Hackensack home with a Christmas card and snow-shovel. The alleged victim found the driveway shoveled already before the judge made small talk and told him, you know, you could be going away for a long time, according to Corbishleys suit. The man claimed Napolitano forced him to perform oral sex during the visit. The judge reportedly allowed Corbishley to avoid jail time, instead handing down a sentence of five years of probation with 150 hours of community service. Napolitanos countersuit, however, called the accusations demonstrably false. The judge, according to his suit, lived on the 26th floor of a Hackensack high-rise at the time, not a home with a driveway. The accuser, then-local resident, could not identify the street where the purported assault occurred, his suit states. Napolitanos attorney, Thomas Clare, previously issued a statement slamming the accuser as a career criminal with a history of making violent threats against the ex-judge. A judge through the mid-90s, Napolitano regularly appears on Fox News to offer legal analysis. He was the youngest life-tenured judge in New Jersey before he left the bench at 44. He also previously taught at Seton Hall University Law School. Fox News issued a statement to the New York Post saying the senior judicial analyst denied the allegations. Judge Napolitano has assured us in the strongest possible terms that these allegations are false and he will fight them aggressively in court, the channels statement said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. What we have found is that there are a lot of systems out there that are good for physical health & can't do behavioral health, or they can do behavioral health & not work for IDD. We feel like we went through a good process to find a vendor that would meet all of our needs. said Ryan Matthews, HHS Committed to creating a vibrant community in Marion County, where all people have opportunities to live healthy, purposeful lives, Marion County Health & Human Services has chosen to replace its legacy system with DrCloudEHR, a fully integrated electronic health records management solution. Together, this partnership will enhance the Countys mission to create a safe and welcoming community where all people can access high quality health and human services, and are supported to achieve their highest level of health. "A new electronic health record is absolutely critical for our ability to meet the needs of our community. It will improve the quality of care we can provide and allow us to coordinate care with other health care providers. It allows individuals to use a patient portal to access their records It will enable us to improve and standardize our processes, have single point of entry, centralized scheduling, and other features of modern health care systems... This is something that we feel is going to benefit our entire department... We have a solution we feel really confident in and I know that our teams are really excited and ready to go." said Ryan Matthews, Health and Human Services Administrator. "What we have found is that there are a lot of systems out there that are good for physical health and can't do behavioral health, or they can do behavioral health and not work for IDD, so it really took a lot of effort to find a solution that covered our whole array of services... We feel like we went through a good process to find a vendor that would meet all of our needs and we feel really good about where we landed." Ryan added. As an organization offering diverse services to our community including developmental disabilities, behavioral health, addictions treatment, and public health, it has been extremely exciting to engage with EnSoftek's project team for a single solution, DrCloudEHR, to meet our needs. Since engaging with EnSoftek, we have confidence based on their ability to speak to the unique concerns of our specific services and call out ways their solution can help us improve our systems and processes. We have felt understood and cared for as a prospective client organization, which was a major factor in deciding to partner with them along with their flexibility to meet our needs beyond what most traditional medical EHR platforms can offer. said Trevor Plendl, MPP, CAPM, Data Analyst and Compliance Coordinator. Scott Emry, Chief Technology Officer, Marion County, recounts "Development of the replacement system specifications and selection has taken more than two years of effort and through the competitive contracting process, Marion County has selected a system from EnSoftek, Inc." We are excited to add Marion County to our growing Oregon community. DrCloudEHR provides an easy to use, agile, integrated platform that is built to meet requirements outlined today and be flexible for tomorrow. We continue to provide the latest technology advances with an eye towards the future of healthcare so that our partners can continue to thrive. says Ramana Reddy, CEO at EnSoftek. About DrCloudEHR and EnSoftek, Inc. Currently in use in 26 states throughout the country, DrCloudEHR from EnSoftek is a meaningful use stage 3 certified (supporting Interoperability), native cloud electronic health records (EHR) system designed for behavioral health and human services organizations. DrCloudEHR, available with anytime, anywhere access, helps our customers deliver better services, improve patient care, engagement, health outcomes; and provide better overall patient satisfaction making it the preferred solution for current and future behavioral health, health and human services, and integrated care providers. EnSoftek provides diversified enterprise IT solutions to both public and private sector enterprises. About Marion County. Located in the heart of the Mid-Willamette Valley, Marion County has a population of 333,950, stretches from the Willamette River to the Cascade Mountains and encompasses nearly 1,200 square miles. The county has 20 cities, including Oregons capital, Salem. Marion Countys government organization is headed by an elected Board of Commissioners and has 15 departments, seven of which are headed by elected officials. Marion County is a vibrant community where all people have opportunities to live healthy, purposeful lives. Marion County Health & Human Services provides value-based services in various programs including Mental Health and Addiction Treatment, Developmental Disabilities, and Intensive Services and Supports to Administrative Services, Communicable Disease Control, Clinical Prevention Services, Maternal Child Health and Juvenile Services and more, including outpatient and residential services. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. http://www.drcloudehr.com; http://www.ensoftek.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 10:02:05|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Enrollments in various kinds of education in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have all reached the highest level in history, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday. Enditem HONG KONG, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Homegrown virtual bank WeLab Bank has selected Solace as a core component of its technology architecture to establish multi-cloud vendor communication. Using Solace PubSub+, WeLab Bank will run its entire infrastructure on multiple clouds to ensure customer information is well protected and secured. Through the partnership with Solace, WeLab Bank can also continue to deliver innovative and game-changing financial service products to all customers. Solace's technology helps WeLab Bank connect its key backend systems, including Temenos Cloud Core Banking and Fast Payment, to enable event-driven microservices critical for real-time data flow. This allows WeLab Bank to respond to critical business events in an agile and efficient manner, providing customers with a seamless virtual banking experience. In addition, having the entire virtual bank infrastructure in the cloud with a solid foundation that supports high scalability allows it to bring next-generation digital services to customers 24/7. "Solace provides us with the scalability necessary to support our vision to become a leading virtual bank in the region. Through a microservices architecture, WeLab Bank can create and deploy innovative products such as GoSave and WeLab Debit Card, one of Asia's first numberless debit cards. Solace's secure and scalable messaging backbone has been invaluable in helping WeLab Bank shorten the time-to-market for our current and future digital bank offerings," said Kenneth Chau, Chief Technology Officer at WeLab Bank. "Solace is proud to be a part of Hong Kong's digital banking revolution by working with WeLab Bank to bring a next-generation banking experience to fruition," said Sumeet Puri, Chief Technology Solutions Officer, Solace. "Financial institutions that wish to differentiate themselves and thrive in the rapidly evolving financial services sector must seek new ways to leverage real-time data and provide innovative offerings, or they risk being left behind." About WeLab Bank WeLab Bank Limited ("WeLab Bank" or the "Bank"), is a homegrown virtual bank licensed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority ("HKMA"). Founded by a team of financial and technology experts, WeLab Bank's mission is to understand customers' needs and design a personalized, full-service banking experience that helps them manage and grow their money. WeLab Bank represents a 100% digital banking experience that is simple, intuitive and built around our customers. WeLab Bank focuses on the powerful mobile app and the numberless Debit Card, both designed with obsession with customers' experience and data security. WeLab Bank is a wholly owned subsidiary of WeLab Holdings Limited ("WeLab"), a leading fintech company in Asia. To learn more, please visit: www.welab.bank or follow us on Instagram: welab.bank About Solace Solace helps large enterprises become modern and real-time by giving them everything they need to make their business operations and customer interactions event-driven. With PubSub+, the market's first and only event management platform, the company provides a comprehensive way to create, document, discover and stream events from where they are produced to where they need to be consumed securely, reliably, quickly, and guaranteed. Behind Solace technology is the world's leading group of data movement experts, with nearly 20 years of experience helping global enterprises solve some of the most demanding challenges in a variety of industries from capital markets, retail, and gaming to space, aviation, and automotive. Established enterprises such as SAP, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Canada, multinational automobile manufacturers such as Renault and Groupe PSA, and industry disruptors such as Jio use Solace's event broker technologies to modernize legacy applications, deploy modern microservices, and build an event mesh to support their hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and IoT architectures. Learn more at solace.com. Media Contacts RICE for Solace [email protected] +65 3157 5685 SOURCE Solace Corporation Related Links https://solace.com/ YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Nuclear Power Plants administration discussed the re-extension of the lifespan of its power unit N2 beyond 2026 during a videoconference with Rosatom Service. The executives also discussed the interim results of the ongoing lifecycle extension works of the power unit N2 and the 2021 equipment and systems modernization plan. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan Amid this year's resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Chris Rock is reminding us that speaking out against racism and police violence is nothing new. In a New York Times interview published on Wednesday, Mr Rock reflected on the lesson he offered on police brutality in his 2018 Netflix special, Tamborine. In the opening minutes of that set, Mr Rock explained, "Whenever the cops gun down an innocent black man, they always say the same thing: 'Well, its not most cops. It's just a few bad apples.' "I know being a cop is hard," he continued in his set. "But some jobs cant have bad apples. You know, American Airlines can't be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'" Asked if it feels "futile" to have discussed those kinds of social issues years ago, only for nothing to change, the 55-year-old actor and comedian was candid. "I remember when Tamborine dropped, I got a lot of flak over that cop thing," Rock recalled. "There was a lot of people trying to start a fire that never really picked up. It's so weird that, two years later, it's right on. I remember watching the news and Trump said 'bad apples.' It was like, you did it! You did it!" Mr Rock pointed out, though, that he's far from the first public figure to speak out against systemic racism and police brutality against black people. Other entertainers have been doing it for decades, only to see the same issues come up again for every generation. "I did. But so did Public Enemy. So did KRS-One. So did Marvin Gaye," he noted. "It's real. It's not going away," he continued about racism in the US, likening the current moment to the second civil rights movement. He said, "Humanity isn't progress it's only progress for the person that's taking your humanity. If a woman's in an abusive relationship and her husband stops beating her, you wouldn't say shes made progress, right? But that's what we do with black people. We're constantly told that were making progress. The relationship we're in the arranged marriage that we're in it's that were getting beat less." Elsewhere in his New York Times interview, Mr Rock addressed the controversy that arose this past spring when Jimmy Fallon's blackface impression of him from an old episode of Saturday Night Live was resurfaced. Mr Rock ultimately gave his fellow comedian the benefit of the doubt, saying, "Hey, man, I'm friends with Jimmy. Jimmy's a great guy. And he didn't mean anything. A lot of people want to say intention doesn't matter, but it does. And I don't think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didn't." Mr Rock spoke to the Times to promote his starring role in Season 4 of FX's critically adored series Fargo, but the interview also touched on the upcoming presidential election, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and more. Read the full interview here. Turkey open to talks but 'not threats or blackmail' from EU Erdogan vows to remain 'determined' (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, SEPTEMBER 17 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Ankara is open to "constructive" talks but will not give in to blackmail or threats. He made this comment a week before a Council of Europe meeting which will discuss possible sanctions against Turkey due to its controversial search for energy in waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus. Turkey, Erdogan said, will not agree to be ''imprisoned'' inside its coasts, noting that it has a long Mediterranean coastline. (ANSAmed). (ANSA). Kim Kardashian and her fellow high profile celebrities are leading the move to boycott major social media platforms by conducting a so-called "Instagram freeze." In support of the "Stop Hate For Profit" movement, some A-list celebrities are participating in a 24-hour Instagram freeze on Wednesday, September 16, 2020, in the hopes of calling out Facebook to stop its repeated failures in addressing hate speech and disinformation. This online protest's ultimate goal is to pressure Facebook (which owns Instagram) to run a tighter restriction on their social media platforms, in terms of blocking misinformation and hate speech. It could be recalled that in July, big advertisers like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Verizon also joined the movement and paused their social media ads budget to push Facebook to give in to their demands. "Stop Hate For Profit" demands a lot of things from the social media giant. First is to take down Facebook Groups that promote white supremacy, hate, violent conspiracy theories, and other harmful content. Second, remove misinformation posts by having stricter fact checks. And third, block event pages calling to arm and eliminate a politician exemption running political and voting contents. The organization is now encouraging Instagram users to participate in the 24-hour freeze wherein they will only post one content criticizing Facebook and no further activities on the platform for the rest of the day. So just imagine how the famous photo and video sharing app will look like without any post, Instagram story entries, and foodie snaps? It will surely be a quiet place for everyone spending hours on their feed. Aside from the 39-year-old reality TV star, other big names also vowed to join the Instagram Freeze. This includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Katy Pery, Jamie Foxx, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael B. Jordan, Sacha Baron Cohen, Naomi Campbell, Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Kate Hudson, Rosario Dawson, Isla Fisher, Scooter Braun and more. On Tuesday night, the "KKW Beauty" mogul said she is taking part in the online protest in an Instagram post. Kim explained she would not tolerate Facebook and Instagram to continue spreading hate, propaganda, and misinformation. "I love that I can connect directly with you through Instagram and Facebook, but I can't sit by and stay silent while these platforms continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda, and misinformation - created by groups to sow division and split America apart - only to take steps after people are killed," Kim wrote, alongside the Stop Hate poster. "Misinformation shared on social media has a serious impact on our elections and undermines our democracy," she added. In the end, the mother-of-four also encouraged her 188 million followers to join her in freezing their Facebook and Instagram accounts to get the message across the platform's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. While many fans applauded Kim's decision to take a stand on social media, some still criticized her for "sacrificing" a day on Instagram as she will soon be back promoting her businesses. READ MORE: Carole Baskin Nightmare: Big Cat Lover Hunted By Missing Ex-Husband On DWTS Debut MegaDev joins Accelerator to grow its presence in Southeast Asia where gaming and esports are flourishing MUNICH, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / In the midst of the worldwide pandemic, the gaming market soared, and Asia has been a hotspot for players. According to the Games Report 2020 from market research firm Newzoo, by the end of 2020 there will be 2.7 billion players around the world, with 1.4 billion coming from the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The German Accelerator hosts a program in Singapore, in the heart of the region, and MegaDev, a single-player assistant and customization software company for esports and PC games, has been selected to participate in this highly-competitive Southeast Asia program which starts in October. MegaDev Co-founders Rob Maroschik and Christian Janicke When MegaDev joins the accelerator program, it will be especially interested in tapping into the Southeast Asia esports market with specifically designed modules for speedrun challenges. With an existing customer base of more than 250,000 game lovers, MegaDev is poised to move into a bigger esports market. This esports market is estimated by Newzoo to surpass $1.5 billion this year and the APAC region accounted for more than half of the global esports fans. Last week, MegaDev introduced a new flagship product PLITCH, which MegaDev will be promoting while participating in the Accelerator. "The German Accelerator's program in Southeast Asia is an ideal offering in a perfect place for our company. We see a huge opportunity among esports players and gamers in this geography," said Robert Maroschik, CEO and Co-founder, MegaDev. "We've built up a really strong following and we are ready to grow the business from Singapore as a central hub into this fantastic region. We see the Southeast Asia market as one which will be ready for our gaming tech." The German Accelerator Southeast Asia program is the second accelerator program for MegaDev. In 2018, MegaDev joined the German Accelerator's Silicon Valley program where the company focused on strategies to enter the U.S. market. In Singapore, MegaDev will also target business opportunities in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Story continues According to Claus Karthe, CEO of the German Accelerator's Southeast Asia program, "Asia is a huge market; it has a buzz, it has a pace, and it has many opportunities open to the one who can solve problems and who has the connections. We're excited to see what MegaDev has planned for the region and look forward to helping them with the right strategy and network to be successful in these new markets." "We are extremely pleased to have been accepted into this stellar program," Maroschik said. "The dedicated mentoring and networking we can get from the German Accelerator is going to help us move to the next level." LINK to images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18GeslLNaPcmdk69L-ICF-X547c12XfCQ About MegaDev MegaDev makes PC gaming easy, providing an ethical all-in-one game assistant enabling gamers to individualize single-player PC games by making them easier or harder. The MegaDev PC software already covers thousands of titles with tens of thousands of options to customize them. MegaDev, founded in 2015, is based in Munich, Germany with a subsidiary in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.PLITCH.com. Media Contact: Erica Zeidenberg Hot Tomato Marketing erica@hottomato.net 925-518-8159 mobile SOURCE: MegaDev View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606469/PC-Game-Assistant-Company-MegaDev-Secures-Spot-in-German-Accelerators-Southeast-Asia-Program Democrats announced the plan before a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on countering China. The legislation focuses heavily on bolstering American research and development in science and technology, authorizing $300 billion over four years for such efforts and investing another roughly $16 billion in the U.S. semiconductor industry to help the United States retain an edge over Beijing. It would also require the president to submit a plan to Congress to use the Defense Production Act to increase domestic production capabilities for semiconductor devices and require domestic sourcing for those products. The bill also aims to break Chinas chokehold on global supply chains, and would require the Pentagon to buy certain items from the United States and so-called friendly nations, rather than China. Democrats sought to portray their plan as an inherently pro-worker policy, highlighting endorsements from the American Federation of Labor and the United Steelworkers. And they framed it as a sharp contrast to Mr. Trumps policies. Rather than tackling these challenges, President Trumps policies have rolled out the red carpet for Beijing to reshape international institutions and establish global rules and norms that spread the influence of their authoritarian system, Mr. Menendez said, adding that the plan would serve as a launching pad to help our nation emerge from this dark chapter of our history. The legislation would provide $125 million in military spending over four years for the Indo-Pacific region. U.S. military officials in April called on Congress to authorize an additional $20.1 billion between 2021 and 2026 to bolster deterrence against China, in a sign that they expect tensions to flare. A Democratic aide said the proposed $125 million was intended to assure that there would be additional funds to strengthen alliances and partnerships and posture in the region. The Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Tom Sciolis science fiction and superhero stories have lately come to resemble distorted memories that have taken solid form. His subtle inks preserve the softness of the drawing underneath, and the paper is scumbled as though forgotten for decades in a basement. This thumbworn aesthetic shrouds and amplifies a ferocious, often goofy imagination. With the most poetically evocative style in the superhero genre today, Scioli is a perverse auteur: Handling all aspects of the art and writing, he breathes strange life into licensed properties. For instance, every page of this years staggering FANTASTIC FOUR: GRAND DESIGN (Marvel, 120 pp., $29.99) collapses about a years worth of Marvel Universe high jinks into a 25-panel-per-page fever dream, jammed with bonkers plot twists (We returned empty-handed only to face the most powerful man on earth, a man who could control molecules) and frenetic, lovingly drawn miniatures. So much is at stake that after a few pages, nothing is. Whats left is pure eyeball bliss. In 2019s GO-BOTS (IDW, 128 pp., $17.99), Scioli turns his essentially subliterate subjects (a line of Transformer-like toys) into players in a psychedelic apocalypse, full of mind-blowing reveals and impish wit, as when a professor explains that the mutable machines started out as a parking solution. You get to your destination and the car walks along with you. (A Go-Bot dutifully demonstrates.) Executed with the same soft colors and tawny pages, Sciolis latest graphic offering, JACK KIRBY: THE EPIC LIFE OF THE KING OF COMICS (Ten Speed Press, 201 pp., $28.99), is a biography of his comics idol. Kirby (1917-94) co-created much of the Marvel pantheon, visualizing with palpable force such figures as Spider Man, Thor, Black Panther and the X-Men. He was born Jacob Kurtzberg on the Lower East Side, to Jewish immigrants from Galicia, a region soon to be engulfed in the First World War and washed away for all time by the Holocaust. Short and pugnacious, he belongs to the Suffolk Street Gang, perpetually locked in battle with the neighboring Norfolk Street Gang. (I drew what I knew, he says. I composed violent ballets.) Thiruvananthapuram, September 17 : The congress-led opposition UDF on Thursday demanded the resignation of the CPI(M)-led LDF government in the wake of the national investigation agencys (NIA) questioning minister for higher education and minority affairs K T Jaleel in connection with the UAE consulate-linked gold smuggling case. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala charged that the government led by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan had forfeited the right to continue in office. The NIA normally probes cases related to terrorism and sedition. This is the first time that a minister in the state has been questioned by the NIA, the opposition leader said. Just as he did while appearing before the ED for questioning, Jaleel again made a bid to escape media glare by trying to appear before the NIA surreptitiously, Chennithala quipped, rhetorically asking whether the chief minister would at least now ask the minister to put in his papers. No one can save a government that is neck-deep in corruption. The chief minister is trying to trivialize the corruption charges raised by the opposition, Chennithala alleged. Congress Kerala unit (KPCC) chief Mullappally Ramachandran launched a frontal assault on Pinarayi Vijayan, accusing the chief minister of being the focal point of the state governments malfeasance. Four ministers in the LDF government were under a cloud of suspicion and the chief minister was trying to protect them, the KPCC chief alleged. Ramachandran termed the questioning of minister Jaleel by the NIA as a very serious issue. Asking Vijayan to desist from whitewashing the corruption perpetrated by his ministers, he demanded that the chief minister dissolve his cabinet and face election. Meanwhile, youth outfits of the congress and the BJP again took to the streets on Thursday demanding the resignation of Jaleel following his questioning by the NIA. Jaleel was questioned by the NIA in Kochi on Thursday. The ED had questioned him last week. The minister came under the scanner of the central agencies probing the smuggling of contraband gold in a diplomatic baggage after it emerged that he had accepted parcels addressed to the UAE consulate in violation of protocol and ferried them to north Kerala in a government vehicle. The minister explained that the consignment contained copies of the Quran meant for distribution among the faithful. The Australian Flag is seen on June 25, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images) Australia Revamps Citizenship Test Amid Foreign Interference in Ethnic Communities A revamped citizenship test will prioritise important Australian values such as the rule of law and freedom of speech, as the government ramps up efforts to curtail foreign interference in the country. The federal government will from November add five questions about Australian values to the original 20-question multiple-choice citizenship quiz, which requires a 75 percent overall mark to pass. New Australians will need to understand concepts such as parliamentary democracy, equal opportunity, and freedom of speech, marriage, association, and religion. All five values questions must be answered correctly. The current test focuses heavily on Australian history and democracy. The study resource for the test, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond has been updated to reflect the new additions. Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison poses for photos with new Australians during the citizenship ceremony at Lake Burley Griffin on Jan. 26, 2020 in Canberra, Australia. (Rohan Thomson/Getty Images) Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge flagged the changes on Australian Citizenship Day on Sept. 17, the anniversary of the renaming of the Australian Citizenship Act in 1973. The updated citizenship test will have new and more meaningful questions that require potential citizens to understand and commit to our values, he said in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times. The stronger focus on Australian values in citizenship testing will be an important part of helping protect our social cohesion into the future, he added. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the citizenship test would also place a greater emphasis on the English language. That is such an important skill that migrants who come to Australia need to have for the best possible life in Australia, Morrison noted reported AAP. It is in their interest, in Australias interests, it is our national language, it helps people get jobs, support themselves and not have to rely on welfare, he added. Minister Tudge has previously warned that foreign actors were seeking to grow division in Australia and sow distrust in the government and institutions. Tudge was particularly concerned about the reach of foreign actors in multicultural communities. Australian citizens with poor English skills were more susceptible to malign influences or propaganda being spread through some ethnic press. The Epoch Times revealed that since 2013, over 92 Australian media outlets had attended the Global Chinese Language Media Forum, which the Hoover Institute has called a platform to influence overseas Chinese-language media to tow the Communist Party line. A Home Affairs spokesperson has told The Epoch Times that the new government initiatives would help reduce the reliance of Australians on ethnic media. The government has scrapped caps on taxpayer-funded English classes, instead allowing citizens to take as many courses as possible to achieve a functional level of English. Last month, Tudge spoke of threats to Australias social cohesion saying four major factors were at work. The first was the COVID-19 lockdown, the second was foreign interference, the third was poor English-language skills, and the last was technology. Victorias state logging agency faces another possible court case, with three community environment groups accusing it of illegal logging in the Central Highlands. The groups Kinglake Friends of the Forest, Warburton Environment and the Rubicon Forest Protection Group claim VicForests has logged more than its legal quota in areas set aside as "bushfire management zones", which are placed over public land near populated areas. Logging in the Black Range State Forest this week. These allegations place further pressure on the government agency, which is now facing five different crowdfunded court challenges from community environmental groups. At least 65 Victorian logging coupes are currently subject to legal challenges. The Office of the Conservation Regulator has confirmed it is undertaking preliminary investigations of the allegations. Slightly more than 8 people per 1,000 residents of Isabella County have been infected by COVID-19, the largest proportional number of people infected but well below what would naturally stop the diseases spread. A total of 571 cases have been confirmed in Isabella County as of Thursday afternoon, an increase of three from Wednesday. While it is unwise to place much meaning in one days worth of results, the last time the countys cases were increasing by three was during the summertime lull between the mini outbreaks of early July and CMUs return to school last month. Based on the countys 2018 population estimate of 70,562, once the number of confirmed cases hits 700, 1 percent of the people living in Isabella County will have had a confirmed case of COVID-19. That is also almost double the next highest counties in mid-Michigan, Midland with 5.3 per 1,000 people and Gratiot with 5.1 cases per 1,000 people. Gratiots cases increased by six to 208, with 15 deaths. Midland Countys cases also increased by six to 442, with 11 deaths. The other counties of mid-Michigan are between 3 and 4 cases per 1,000 people. They include Clares 3.2 per 1,000, based on its 98 cases unchanged since Tuesday and four deaths; Montcalms 3.9 per 1,000, based on 252 cases three more since Wednesday and five deaths (one additional Montcalm person died overnight); Mecostas 3.7 per 1,000, based on 164 cases two more than Wednesday and three deaths (one additional Mecosta person died overnight); and Gladwins 3.2 per 1,000 cases, based on 80 cases two more since Wednesday and two deaths. There isnt anything statistically notable about 1 percent of the population being infected, although it does underscore that one approach to the disease favored by people who want to see society in general reopened completely pursuit of herd immunity by allowing it to work its way through has a long way to go before it would achieve its ends. Most epidemiologists believe that herd immunity, where the spread of the disease is slowed by a lack of available hosts because of vaccinations or immune responses from previous infections, isnt possible unless at least 60 percent of the population has durable immunity from the disease. Statewide, another 829 cases were announced for a cumulative total of 114,692, or 1.1 percent of the states 10 million people. The state also announced another nine deaths for a cumulative total of 6,632. Five of those deaths came as a result of a review of vital records. The states death rate the case fatality rate, more technically stands at 5.8 percent. READ MORE: EVERY woman knows the frustration of buying a piece of clothing in her exact size, only to try it on and realise . . . it doesn't actually fit. The solution used to be spending hours in changing rooms. But now, there are clever ways to get the perfect fit without ever leaving home. 'Fit tech' ranges from 3D body-scan apps to websites that use surveys of past customers to tell users what size to buy. With Covid rules meaning changing rooms are often out of bounds, there's more demand than ever for virtual fitting. But do these new services actually work? Four writers put them to the test . . . NO MORE MULTIPLE BUYING SIZES By Radhika Sanghani The Asos Fit Assistant promises to help me 'find the perfect size, first time'. For me, this is the online shopping dream especially from a site such as Asos that's home to dozens of brands, from Topshop to French Connection, and DKNY to Karen Millen, that all size differently. When I've bought clothes there in the past, I've had to get each garment in several sizes, only to then return three-quarters of them. Asos Fit Assistant promised to help Radhika Sanghani 'find the perfect size, first time' So I'm keen to try the free Fit Assistant service, available on the Asos website and app. It asks questions about your body and fit preferences and every time you buy an item, it recommends the perfect size. It uses information on what thousands of shoppers have bought and returned to work out what you'll be happiest in. When I sit down to fill out my information, I have a tape measure at the ready. But to my surprise, the app doesn't require my measurements. All it asks is for my weight (8 st), my height (5 ft 7 in) and what kind of fit I want. I choose an 'average' fit on my upper body, and 'on the loose side' for my lower body, because I hate it when high-waisted clothes dig into my stomach. It's so much simpler than I thought it would be that I'm now doubting whether it will work. Normally when I shop, I can be anything from a size 6 to a 10. When I start using the Fit Assistant, I'm surprised to realise the majority of my purchases come up as a size 6 including an Asos Design khaki trench coat that I would have ordered in a bigger size. Playing around with my preferences, such as saying I want upper-body clothes 'oversized' (so I can fit a big jumper under that trench coat, for example) affects the sizes, but not as much as I'd thought. And some suggestions are really confusing. With my lower body fit preference set to 'on the loose side', I'm recommended a size 6 for a pair of brown faux leather trousers from Mango. Then, without changing my preferences, I'm recommended a size 8 in a similar pair of black faux leather trousers also from Mango. This makes no sense to me, but I put my trust in the Fit Assistant. I'm recommended a size 6 for two dresses and, for tops, I'm told to buy a size 8 at & Other Stories, and a size 6 at Asos Design. Then I just order as normal through the Asos website. When they arrive, the Fit Assistant has done better than I could have imagined. I would have bought my dresses and trench coat in at least a size 10, but the 6 fits perfectly. The only time the Fit Assistant gets it slightly wrong is with those Mango trousers. The size 6 is perfect but the 8 is too loose on the waist. I want to blame the Fit Assistant, but then I remember I had my preference set to 'on the loose side'. I suspect I'd need to adjust my choices each time I buy, based on what I'm looking for. Still, I'm impressed. Though I don't understand exactly how its algorithm works, I'm going to keep using it. Not only does it stop me buying multiple sizes, it's helped me learn more about how to buy the right clothes for my body. (asos.com). CLEVER TAILORING TO GET CATWALK READY By Emily Hill 'Good things come in small packages,' my grandmother used to say, soothingly, when I was a child and complained about being so tiny. But 30 years later, I can wander in and out of clothes shops until my feet fall off and still find no outfit minuscule enough for me. I'm barely 5ft and have spent the whole of my adult life improvising. Daring mini-skirts make perfect office attire, reaching demurely to my knees. Maxi skirts swish in my wake like Meghan Markle's veil. I could have saved a fortune shopping in the children's section, except that dresses labelled '150-152cm' cannot accommodate boobs. Emily Hill was thrilled when she heard about a new service called Toshi that lets you shop online, then sends the clothes to your home along with an expert fitter to pin whatever dress you pick. It's then tailored to your body and returned by courier So I was thrilled when I heard about a new service called Toshi that lets you shop online, then sends the clothes to your home along with an expert fitter to pin whatever dress you pick. It's then tailored to your body and returned by courier. It's not cheap: Toshi's brands are essentially a Who's Who of the catwalk, from Chanel to Erdem, Galvan, Christopher Kane . . . but Toshi takes commission on whatever you buy so, personally, you don't have to pay a penny for fitting, alterations or delivery. CEO Sojin Lee, who's previously worked at Chanel and Net-a-Porter, says it's the kind of service couture brands offer just a few, super-wealthy clients. She wants to bring it to a wider audience. 'If you go to a luxury brand, they offer this type of service to their top VIPs. But in our heads it was like, 'why can you only offer it to 50 people? This should just be a normal way of shopping'.' There is one particular designer whose dresses I've always dreamed of, but never thought I could wear at my small size: Roland Mouret. His clothes tuck in tummies, hoist up boobs, and flatter the hell out of us. His signature Galaxy dress is possibly the only garment in existence capable of making Carol Vorderman look as good as Rachel Weisz. I opt for the Tikal dress on the Roland Mouret website (a shocking 850, but Toshi also works with brands that cost around half that and is exploring offering its services for lower-priced clothes). When my Toshi stylist, Eugene, arrives with my frock, the hem meant to skim my calves dangles perilously near my ankles. But this does not present a problem. He pins it expertly, chatting throughout, taking photographs so I can look, and offering options. (Do I still want a slit at the front? He thinks it will suit me better to get rid of the one at the back). I've had dresses shortened before, and would expect to pay around 50 for the privilege, but this process is free and makes me feel like a supermodel. I walk up and down so Eugene can check the dress moves right with my body and hits my leg at the most flattering point. When I get the dress back fully altered, it's perfect. I'm so short I could never have bought it off the peg, but now I've got the perfect Roland Mouret silhouette. I would very much recommend this service. It's in high demand right now due to coronavirus. And post-pandemic, it's hard to see why if you're lucky enough to be able to afford the brands Toshi works with you would ever return to the old changing room experience. (toshi.co). MIRROR TO MEASURE YOUR PERFECT BRA By Jess Wood Mirror, mirror, on the wallhelp! Which bra will give me the perkiest boobs? Lingerie company Rigby & Peller is famed for its rigorously trained fit experts or 'lingerie stylists'. But now it has gone digital with an innovative 3D 'fit mirror', installed in their Cambridge store. Stylist Jessica leads me through to a plush cream-carpeted changing room and stands outside the curtains with a tablet device she uses to activate the mirror. Jess Wood tested Rigby & Peller's innovative 3D 'fit mirror', installed in their Cambridge store Naked from the waist up in the privacy of the cubicle, I tell her my height (5ft 5in) which she taps into her tablet so the cameras can capture my upper body. Then she asks me to stand on a red laser dot on the carpet, with my arms held out to the sides. It's a bit like using the 3D security scanner pods in an airport; except I'm just peering into a normal-looking mirror fixed to the wall. Behind it lies new-fangled camera tech, developed specially by the label's owners Van de Velde. It's all so futuristic. Instructions flash up on the mirror, telling me to do a slow 360-degree turn. Once complete, Jessica receives the information through her screen outside. The camera doesn't store snaps of my naked bust, I'm relieved to hear. It scans me and gives her a suggested bra size (36D), as well as styles and shapes of bra that will suit my exact shape. She stood on a red laser dot on the carpet, with her arms held out to the sides. She was then scanned and given a suggested bra size Jessica says the mirror information doesn't replace her expertise rather, it offers shy customers a way to be fitted without having to stand topless in front of a stylist. It's also perfect timing for the contactless Covid restrictions. The bra Jessica selects is a black-and-cream balconette style with a deep band and a wide row of hooks at the back. At 104, it's more than I wanted to spend, but the quality and fit are perfect, so it's worth it. Jessica is at pains to tell me that at the end of the appointment, all customer information is deleted and shows me her screen to prove it. So I can sleep easy knowing my boobs aren't on file. Phew! TO BOOK free 3D fit-mirror appointments (at the Cambridge store only), call 01223 488 460. See rigbyandpeller.com/en-gb/ rigby-and-peller-mirror. 'It is mind-boggling that a party can be in rigor mortis even after numerous electoral defeats,' observes Ramesh Menon. IMAGE: Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi at a Congress Working Committee meeting in pre-covid times. Photograph: Altaf Hussain/Reuters No one was surprised when the first rebellion against the Indian National Congress leadership in many years tapered off into silence. As if it does not need to introspect. Or look into the mirror. When 23 senior leaders of the Congress Party shot off a letter to interim party President Sonia Gandhi demanding a change of leadership and elections at all levels to revitalise the party, what did they think it would trigger? If they expected an echo of what they wanted, they probably did not know the mindset of the Gandhis. Nor did they figure out that there would be enough sycophants who would rally around to prop up a crumbling leader. If Sonia wanted to leave the leadership to someone else when the moribund party was going downhill for so many years, she would have done it long ago. For over a year now, she has been an interim president. That is such an anachronism. For many days, there was no reaction. Predictable. But suddenly, Sonia Gandhi whipped up some action before she flew abroad for an overdue health checkup. She has been unwell since 2011. As her son Rahul Gandhi would accompany her for a couple of weeks, she probably thought it best to quell the rebellion by some sundry appointments where she would send the message that she and her son are in charge. One of them was reconstituting the Congress Working Committee, retaining her trusted aides and including close associates of her son. Clearly, it was a cosmetic move to buy time and ensure nothing happens when she is away. IMAGE: Priyanka Vadra, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo The interim president who logically should not make changes in the party did just that. She adroitly meandered away from the crucial demands the group of 23 leaders had made. It was another sign that she does not seriously intend to make drastic changes or even step down or let her son let go of the reins. The dissenters had asked for elections, not appointments. New faces who have been given more power include Randeep Surjewala and Ajay Maken who are seen to be close to Rahul. Loyalists K C Venugopal and Jitendra Singh have become office bearers. Other appointees are Pawan Bansal and Tariq Anwar at the cost of dissidents like Manish Tewari and Ghulam Nabi Azad. Other members to advise Sonia are Ahmed Patel, A K Antony, Ambika Soni and Mukul Wasnik. The new conglomeration is likely to be in charge till the first quarter of 2021. So, say goodbye to change. And inter-party reforms. Sonia has even reconstituted the party's Central Election Authority. Its convenor is Madhusudan Mistry who has been close to the Gandhis for many years. Others on the CEA are all loyalists: Rajesh Mishra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely. IMAGE: Sachin Pilot. It was hardly surprising to see that Sachin Pilot, who is a promising leader, was not even mentioned. The message was clear: Raise your voice and you will become persona non grata. The party has been going downhill for years. In 1952, the Congress won 364 seats out of 401 in the Lok Sabha. In 1971, it won 362 seats out of 518. In 1991, it won 244 out of 543. In 2014, it won 44 out of 543. In 2019, it won 52 out of 542. It is anybody's guess what 2024 is going to be like if the present stalemate, drift and self-destructive factors continue in the party. It does not require a political scientist to figure out that there needs to be a change in leadership and strategy if the Congress has to win in 2024. Rahul even lost the Amethi seat which for years was held by the Gandhi family. It was so predictable when the 23 dissenters -- who included former chief ministers, former Union ministers and regional satraps -- were instead attacked and made to look at they were not loyal and were treacherous as they had questioned the leadership. The rebellion was crushed by the old guard who rallied around Sonia and her son as if there were no other leaders who could take on the mantle of rebuilding the party. How predictable was that! Sonia has been at the helm of the party for 19 years. Her late husband Rajiv Gandhi, she and her children have been in control of the Congress for 35 years. If there is an election, it is unlikely a Gandhi would win now. So, there is no talk of an election. The dissenters's letter clearly wanted Sonia to step down to allow a new leadership to chart the party's revival. It also points out that a revival is imperative for the Congress as the country faces grave political, economic, and social challenges. When UPA-2 under Dr Manmohan Singh was being challenged, Sonia did little to get the party to fight back with facts and figures and action to ensure that the propaganda around lack of governance and corruption charges were neutralised. Actually, the drift started much before the party lost the 2014 election. How natural is it for a national party, which fancies itself as an alternative to the Narendra Damodardas Modi government, to have an interim president for a year as it cannot decide on who should step in and take charge? Whenever the next All India Congress Committee meets, there will be weak leaders who will call upon a reluctant Rahul to once again become the president though he has not shown any inclination or interest in the post. These sycophants have no following and would be rudderless with the blessings of Sonia. Or Rahul. Some of the leaders in the newly constituted CWC had lost their deposit in the last Lok Sabha election. Image: Jyotiraditya Scindia, who left the Congress in March to join the Bharatiya Janata Party. Rahul has not been able to bring in reforms or changes. Sources say he clearly wanted Jyotiraditya Scindia to become the chief minister in Madhya Pradesh and for Sachin Pilot to take the reins in Rajasthan. The old guard triumphed again. Kamal Nath is 73 and Ashok Gehlot is 69. What is the message the party is sending out? If there is no space for young leaders to grow, why should they be hanging around with the party? After so many years in the party in powerful positions, Scindia chose to quit and it should have been a red flag, but the party did not see it or even try to stop him or listen to him. That error cost the party one of the biggest states in India. Rahul may be forced to take up the party presidency again. But, he is a reluctant leader. Most of the time, the feeling that Rahul sends out is that he wants to be liberated from the toxic world of politics. The letter from the desperate leaders who were were worried about the party's future was actually a great opportunity for the leadership to look into the mirror. It was an opportunity to set things right, to make the cadres feel that there is hope and could revitalise the grassroots into becoming active again. But it was lost. It is mind-boggling that a party can be in rigor mortis like this even after numerous electoral defeats. Why did it not learn any lessons when it was routed in the 2014 parliamentary election? Could the leadership not see the fault lines in the party? Ironically, it was encouraging the organisational drift. We saw that in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and now, recently, in Rajasthan. It was just immune to electoral defeats and organisational fallacies. There was no attempt to stem the drift of the party once it lost in 2014. There was no move to build strong regional leaders as the high command in Delhi wanted a say in everything. The party was not even able to even grab the opportunity of being a strong Opposition where there are issues galore to focus on and take on the government. Look at the issues it could have focussed on and put pressure on the government to perform. In election after election, the BJP campaign was scientifically designed and unleashed on the electorate. In 1984, the BJP has just two MPs. Today, it has 303. With its grassroots support that is constantly being strengthened, the BJP is getting stronger as it is actively helped by a weak Opposition that does not seem to have any vision other than winning elections. The electorate cannot see the Congress as an alternative and the Congress is no more seen to be capable of leading the Opposition. The Congress has not jumped at the golden opportunity of questioning various flaws in the governance of the present government. They actually have a galore of issues to eloquently speak about but the voices are few and feeble. IMAGE: Kamal Nath with Rahul Gandhi. The Congress lost Madhya Pradesh when Kamal Nath was chief minister. Photograph: @INCIndia/Twitter Licking wounds from electoral battles will not help the Congress come back to power. States that were bastions of the Congress have all crumbled. Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra. Karnataka. Madhya Pradesh. Odisha. Haryana. Delhi and many others. In Delhi, it does not have even a single MLA. Think of how many years Sheila Dikshit was the unchallenged chief minister in Delhi. Over a period of time, the Congress high command ensured that that regional leaders were not nurtured as it wanted complete control. See why Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy quit the Congress to form a regional party. He is today the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Look at how the high command has refused to see the potential of someone like Shashi Tharoor. He should have been a natural choice to be appointed the party leader in the Lok Sabha given his eloquence and intellect, but the Congress high command chose Ahir Ranjan Chowdhury instead. It surprised many in the Congress itself! Instead of giving an ear to the brave signatories who have raised the flag of rebellion, the dissenters are being sidelined. The first sign was the appointment of Gaurav Gogoi as the deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, ignoring senior well-entrenched leaders who have a better standing and reputation. Ravneet Bittu was made chief whip. Have you heard of him? Pretending that all is well will not revive the party. There has to be a complete overhaul. If this does not happen, many will soon cross over to the BJP. Others who are uncomfortable with the saffron ideology will move to regional parties. Both Sonia and Rahul do not have the charm or the gravitas to woo back those who left to create breakaway regional parties like the Trinamool Congress, YSR Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party to once again become a pan-Indian party that can take on the BJP that with its financial clout and muscle power towers over all other parties. To get back to featuring in the political narrative in India, the Congress needs to reinvent itself. In the present circumstances, it seems unlikely. It also needs to tell the electorate that it has the wherewithal to emerge as a challenger to Modi and his party. It has just four years to do that. Time flies. As of now, it has no strategy. Ramesh Menon is an author, journalist, documentary film-maker, corporate trainer and editor of The Leaflet. Feature Production: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com Merck expects to deliver continued profitable growth in the coming years despite a challenging market environment. Today at its virtual Capital Markets Day, the company presented to analysts and investors the progress made in realizing the growth and expansion phase of its strategy for the period until 2022. Our ambition is clear: We want to be the vibrant science and technology company. We have made significant progress on this journey in recent years, explained Stefan Oschmann, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck. In recent months, the strengths of our business model with three innovation-driven business sectors have become particularly evident during the Covid-19 crisis, said Oschmann. As previously reported, Merck expects slight to moderate organic growth of net sales and EBITDA pre in 2020. The company continues to expect Group sales of between 16.9 billion and 17.7 billion as well as EBITDA pre in a range of 4.45 billion to 4.85 billion. Good progress in all business sectors All three business sectors of Merck have moved forward in delivering on their strategic priorities in recent years. Healthcare has seen increasing sales contributions from the medicines Bavencio and Mavenclad and has made good progress with its development pipeline. The Life Science business sector continues to deliver above-market growth and has been operating more profitably than most of its competitors. With the acquisition of Versum Materials, Performance Materials has shifted its portfolio to focus on the high-growth semiconductor business and has generated high margins. The transformation of Merck in recent years and our clear focus on science and technology have paid off. All our business sectors operate in highly attractive markets. Thats why this company has excellent prospects for the future, said Oschmann. Our Healthcare pipeline, our Process Solutions business with products and services for drug manufacturing and our Semiconductor Solutions business will be the main growth drivers of Merck in the coming years. Merck will continue to stand for steady earnings growth, high margins and a low risk profile, Oschmann added. Following the Versum acquisition last year, Merck is giving priority to organic growth while rapidly lowering its debt and pursuing a sustainable culture of cost consciousness in the period until 2022. In addition, the company announced a further development of its portfolio strategy. We don't rule out large transformative deals as of 2022, yet in view of our strong business portfolio, at present the likelihood is higher that we will complement our businesses through a number of smaller to medium-sized acquisitions after 2022, said Oschmann. Healthcare confirms its target of around 2 billion for 2022 and sees even further potential For the Healthcare business sector, Merck underscored its ambition to achieve around 2 billion in sales from its pipeline by 2022. In view of highly promising development projects, Merck also sees further significant growth potential beyond 2022. The company expect sales performance in its core business to remain at least stable through to 2022. In recent years, Healthcare has accelerated its organic growth, with increasing contributions from Mavenclad and Bavencio. Used to treat certain forms of multiple sclerosis, Mavenclad has already been approved in 80 countries, including the United States. In spring, the market environment for Mavenclad was temporarily heavily impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. However, signs of recovery emerged in June. On June 30, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the immuno-oncology medicine Bavencio for the maintenance treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC) that has not progressed with first-line platinum-containing chemotherapy. Just a few days earlier, on June 22, Merck announced that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had validated and accepted for review the Type II variation application for Bavencio for first-line maintenance treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic UC. In March, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) approved the oncology drug tepotinib for the treatment of patients with unresectable, advanced or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with METex14 skipping alterations. Moreover, on August 25 Merck announced that the FDA had accepted and granted Priority Review to the New Drug Application for tepotinib for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic NSCLC. Merck is making excellent progress with its development pipeline. In May, positive results from the Phase II open-label extension study were presented on the long-term efficacy and safety profile of investigational evobrutinib in adult patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. In June, the MHLW granted SAKIGAKE fast-track designation for the investigational bifunctional fusion protein bintrafusp alfa as a potential treatment for patients with biliary tract cancer. Merck is currently investigating bintrafusp alfa in multiple clinical trials. Life Science is poised to deliver above-market growth For the Life Science business sector, Merck expects average annual organic sales growth of 6% to 9% in the medium term, significantly above the expected growth of the life science industry of 5% to 6%. For the three Life Science business units, namely Process Solutions, Applied Solutions and Research Solutions, the company expects organic growth to be stronger than that of the respective market. In the coming years, the margin of Life Science is also likely to be significantly higher than the market average. This above-market growth is based on an advantageous portfolio as well as continued very favorable business performance. The Process Solutions business unit, which markets products and services for the entire pharmaceutical production value chain, is likely to remain the key driver of sales growth within Life Science. For Process Solutions, Merck expects annual organic sales growth in the low teens percentage range in the coming years. The business is benefiting from strong growth of the market for biopharmaceuticals, the increasing number of active pharmaceutical ingredients as well as the rapid growth of new therapeutic approaches such as gene and cell therapies. In April, Merck announced plans to expand its site in Carlsbad, California, USA, by adding a second viral vector facility to support viral and gene therapy manufacturing. In September, the company announced plans to expand its facility near Madison, Wisconsin, USA, where it manufactures antibody-drug conjugates. Merck expects annual organic sales growth in the low single-digit percentage range in the coming years in its Research Solutions business unit, which provides products and services to support life science research for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic research laboratories. In the coming years, the business should benefit from increasing research activities in the biotech sector, among other things. For the Applied Solutions business unit, which offers a broad range of products for researchers as well as industrial and scientific laboratories, Merck expects annual organic sales growth in the mid single-digit percentage range for the coming years, among other things thanks to higher demand for testing in many fields, for example food safety. Performance Materials realizing synergies faster than expected With the acquisition of Versum, the Performance Materials business sector achieved a key milestone in its Bright Future transformation program last year. Merck is making good progress with the integration of Versum. The company confirms the cost synergy target of 75 million as of 2022 and expects faster realization this year, along with additional sales synergies as of next year. The business portfolio is now clearly targeted to the electronic materials field. In the first half of 2020, the Semiconductor Solutions business unit already accounted for 56% of Performance Materials net sales. Against this background, for the Performance Materials business sector Merck expects average annual organic sales growth of 3% to 4% along with an EBITDA pre margin of around 30% in the medium term. For Semiconductor Solutions, Merck expects annual organic sales growth in the mid to high single-digit percentage range in the coming years. Semiconductor Solutions is thus expected to be the fastest-growing business unit of Performance Materials. In addition to the expected market growth, the business unit should benefit from its favorable product and service portfolio as well as from the synergies arising from the Versum integration. In view of the continuing price pressure in the Liquid Crystals business, Merck expects an annual organic decline in sales in the low single-digit percentage range for the Display Solutions business unit in the coming years. Display Solutions comprises the business with liquid crystal and OLED materials, photoresists and liquid crystal windows. By contrast, the company foresees annual sales growth in the low single-digit percentage range for its Surface Solutions business unit in the coming years. Surface Solutions offers functional and decorative solutions for automotive coatings, cosmetics and industrial applications. Britain needs to prepare for a new type of conflict with space becoming a dangerous final frontier in which hostile powers are carrying out aggressive acts, the chief of the Royal Air Force has warned. The lack of an international rule system in an increasingly crowded arena with countries seeking to establish a military presence has created a fraught and risky scenario, said air chief marshal Mike Wigston. Space is now a contested warfighting domain, so today we can no longer assume the unchallenged access to air or space that we have enjoyed for the last three decades, he said. We are struggling to find a set of international rules and norms of behaviour that operators in space can apply. People are abusing what until now has been a benign and incredibly useful domain for all of humanity, there is now a militarisation of space. The threats in space need to be confronted as much as those in other areas of combat, held the chief of air staff. Speaking at RAF Waddington, the RAFs main surveillance and reconnaissance centre, he continued: In an increasingly unstable world, what the RAF does on behalf of the nation is as important as it has ever been. Air and space power gives our government the ability to act worldwide, at range, at speed, precisely and with minimal physical and political risk. We continue the fight against the violent extremists of Daesh, but that represents just a small part of what the RAF is doing at home and abroad, from tackling Russian adventurism in eastern Europe and around our skies and shores, to monitoring threats to our national interests in Space. Last year we announced that the UK has become the first formal partner in the US-led Operation Olympic Defender a multinational military effort and collation formed to strengthen deterrence against hostile actors in space, and we are continuing to build on our ambition of a low earth constellation of responsive small satellites under the Artemis programme." The RAF currently has around a hundred personnel dealing with space security. The plan, it is believed, is to significantly raise this number in the near future. Cooperation is also being explored with private companies which are involved in putting satellites into the skies. As well as the threat posed by hostile states, there is the risk of immensely costly accidental damage. Around 900,000 pieces of defunct hardware is now estimated to be floating around in space with the risk of collisions with spacecraft. The UK Space Agency announced this week that it has handed a million pounds to a number of companies to develop advanced sensor technology and other warning systems. Air Chief Marshal Wigston was one of a number of senior military officers to speak as the Integrated Review into defence, security and foreign policy gets underway. Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnsons chief advisor, is said to have given himself a key role in the review. On Tuesday he was photographed arriving at Downing Street carrying a letter written in 1986 by a retired US Air Force general who had advocated modernisation through embracing technology of the countrys armed forces. The feeling in Whitehall is that the exposure of the letter was not accidental Mr Cummings intended the letter it to be seen by the media. Two months ago the UK and US accused Russia of launching an anti-satellite space weapon in what was claimed to be a breach of trust, and a dangerous escalation of the arms race, with risky consequences for the international community. The Western allies had previously accused the Kremlin of testing anti-satellite weapons. But this is the first time there has been an accusation that an on orbit weapon, one that is based in space, has been fired. Washington and London charge Russia with using subterfuge to hide the operation. They claim that the anti-missile weapon was sent from Cosmos 2543, which was supposedly in space for survey and inspection. Britain subsequently introduced a UN resolution on security in space, the first of its kind, calling for an urgent discussion among UN members with the aim of reaching a global agreement to avoid actions that may have grave unintended consequences. The states taking part, it is suggested, should present their views on on responsible and threatening behaviour to the UN secretary general for inclusion in a report to the UN General Assembly. State PAM, CNTC hold meeting on Naga issue CNTC members with PAM convenor T.R. Zeliang on Thursday. DIMAPUR, SEP 17 (NPN) | Publish Date: 9/17/2020 12:29:38 PM IST Political Affairs Mission (PAM) of the NPF and Central Nagaland Tribes Council (CNTC) Thursday met at the residence of Leader of Opposition and PAM convenor TR Zeliang in Dimapur and discussed the way ahead for Naga solution that the government of India intends to conclude by September. In a press release, PAM said that CNTC president T Lanu Imchen along with his team during crucial discussion and deliberation affirmed to stand by the resolution of 14 Apex Naga Tribal Hohos adopted on August 11, 2020 that solution should be based on the Framework Agreement and the Agreed Positions besides the last formal talks held on October 31, 2019, which has been agreed by GoI, NSCN IM and WC, NNPGs. According to PAM, CNTC also stated unresolved issues be taken up in the future through a political means. They also stressed the need for unity for a common Naga accord- acceptable, honourable and inclusive. CNTC asserted that Naga issue needed genuine efforts by all to come to a common platform to avoid any misunderstanding post accord. While appreciating the stand of CNTC, PAM convenor Zeliang expressed the view that all tribal apex bodies should in unison and work towards amalgamation of the various Naga political groups so that there was only one agreement and one solution. He said that with a collective effort we can come to a common platform and achieve the much desired and aspirations of the Naga people. Further, Zeliang stated that Naga issue was sacred to all the Nagas and at this critical juncture, tribal and political colours should be shunted out for the welfare and well being of all. MCCAIG/Getty Images/iStockphoto Texas was recently ranked low in a study that listed the best and worst cities to retire in the U.S. Choice Mutual, a life insurance agency, analyzed data on various factors that affect retirees for its Aug. 31 report. Out of the 50 states, Texas landed at No. 39 in the ranking. Nearly 6,800 Taiwan students have applied for mainland colleges and universities this year, a Chinese mainland spokesperson said Wednesday. Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said admissions are still in progress, congratulating and welcoming those who have been admitted to mainland universities. Addressing a regular press conference, Ma said Taiwan students will resume classes together with their mainland counterparts after completing quarantine in accordance with local regulations. If any Taiwan student cannot return to school temporarily due to various reasons, mainland universities will offer alternative options, such as online learning and tutoring, to ensure their studies, Ma said. Speaking on mainland students studying in Taiwan, Ma said they complained that the Taiwan universities they were attending did not make proper adjustments amid the epidemic, which badly affected their studies. The difficult and complicated situation they faced is a key reason for the Ministry of Education to suspend mainland students from studying in Taiwan this year, he said, adding that the mainland will continue to support mainland students in Taiwan in safeguarding their rights and interests. A Chinese virologist who fled to the USA for safety purposes has made strong claims that the coronavirus is human-made, going against the prevailing theory that the COVID-19 virus came from bats in a wet market in China. Li-Meng Yan's Controversial Paper After her claims, virologist Li-Meng Yan promised the public she would publish a paper that proves SARS-CoV-2 was made in a Wuhan laboratory, and earlier this week, the controversial research paper was indeed published. Nevertheless, many were instantly skeptical, especially experts in the field. Firstly, the research paper was published on a pre-print website, meaning it hasn't undergone thorough peer-review, which is essential for papers to be published in a scientific journal. Furthermore, the paper did not have any scientific basis and that the "scientific case is weak," according to an expert interviewed by Newsweek. Besides Yan, three other people were listed as the paper's co-authors, but it appears as though they did not have any previous research works and that their credentials were not included on the paper, as well as their role in the study. Moreover, people noticed that the controversial paper was backed up by the Rule of Law Foundation. Read Also: FACT CHECK: COVID-19 Whistleblower Li-Meng Yan Releases Paper With Other Scientists 'Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification' What is the Rule of Law Foundation? But what is the Rule of Law Foundation, who exactly are the people behind it, and why is everyone raising their eyebrows? According to a report by SCMP, the organization behind Li-Meng Yan's paper comprises of two New York-based charities that were funded by Chinese businessman Guo Wengui in 2018 when he donated $100 million. It is also linked to a former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who identifies himself as the chairman of the Rule of Law Society, which is one of the organization's constituent charities, and was also mentioned in the title page of Yan's paper. According to Bannon, the foundation was founded to help the victims of the Chinese government persecutions. Bannon and Guo's Predicaments For those who are not aware, Guo was a real estate tycoon in China; however, he fled to the United States in 2014 from the country after learning that an associate has been arrested for corruption charges. Since moving to the U.S., Guo had been very vocal against the Chinese Communist Party and has made a series of unverified allegations against the party leaders. Along with Guo was Bannon, who left the White House in 2017. Nevertheless, Bannon was arrested last month in Guo's yacht in Connecticut after he was charged with defrauding donors in a private fund-raising effort known as We Build the Wall, according to a report by The New York Times. With that, many are still doubting the legitimacy of Yan's claims, especially her paper. SCMP has tried to reach out to the foundation and the charity mentioned in Yan's paper, but neither responded. Meanwhile, the viral virologist said that the pre-print website in which the paper was published on had been hacked after the publishing happened and that soon enough, Yan's Twitter account was banned with no apparent reasons why. After Yan's claims, her colleagues at the University of Hong Kong also dismissed her theories. Read Also: Chinese Whistleblower Li-Meng Yan Interview Alleges COVID-19 was 'Released Intentionally' After 'Modifications' Made it More 'Harmful' This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Daniel Ellsberg gave powerful testimony to the Julian Assange extradition hearing yesterday, speaking via videolink to Londons Old Bailey. Ellsbergs release of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971 exposed the US governments lies and criminality in the Vietnam War. Speaking on the significance of the WikiLeaks releases, Ellsberg said, It was clear to me that these revelations, like the Pentagon papers, had the capability of informing the public that they had been seriously misled about the nature of the [Iraq and Afghan] war[s], the progress of the war, the likelihood that it would be ended successfully or at all, and that this was information of the highest importance to the American public. Characterising the wars that WikiLeaks exposed, Ellsberg explained, The Iraq war was clearly recognisable, even to a layman, as a crime against the peace, as an aggressive war. Daniel Ellsberg receiving the Olaf Palme prize in 2018. (Credit: Bjorn Qvarfordt/OLOF Palmes Minnesfond) [T]he Afghan war was immediately recognisable as what might be called Vietnam-istan. It was a rerun of the Vietnam war despite the great differences in terrain, in religion, in language [T]he basic nature of the war, as basically an invasion and occupation of a foreign country against the wishes of most of its inhabitants, was the same. And that meant the prospects were essentially the same, which were for an endless stalemate which weve now experienced in Afghanistan for 19 years. And it might have gone on that long in Vietnam had not truths that the government was trying to withhold been made public. Referring to the brutality of these occupations which the WikiLeaks releases uncovered, Ellsberg said, I saw for the first time in virtually forty years since the Pentagon papers, the release of a sufficient quantity of documentation to make patterns of decision making [in the war] very evident, to show that there were policies at work and not merely aberrant incidents. He drew special attention to how the documents had exposed a very serious pattern of actual war crimes. In the Afghan case the reports of torture and of assassination and death squads were clearly describing war crimes. I would have, by the way, been astonished to see such reports in Secret level communications [as opposed to Top Secret] in 1971 or 1964 in the Pentagon. They would have been much higher in classification. What these reports revealed was that in the intervening years, in the Iraq War and the Afghan War, torture had become so normalised, and death squads and assassination, that reports of them could be trusted to a network at the Secret level available to people with low-level clearances. Ellsberg said of the Iraq Collateral Murder video, We were watching somebody pursue with his machine gun an unarmed man, wounded, crawling for safety. I was very glad that the American public was confronted with this reality of our war. The prosecution continued with its strategy of trying to distance the Assange case as far as possible from the exposure of war crimes. James Lewis QC asked in cross examination, Do you know that Mr Assange is not being prosecuted for publishing on the internet the Collateral Murder video In so far as publishing on the internet he is only charged with three counts, 15, 16 and 17, which is limited to where the unredacted names of informants were published. Ellsberg gave this ploy short shrift, describing it as misleading Its my understanding that he is not only being charged with 15, 16 and 17. Daniel Ellsberg Lewis also tried to drive a wedge between Assanges actions and Ellsbergs in the case of the Pentagon papers. Ellsberg rejected this also, saying he felt a very great identification with both the source and with the process of publication and that he and Assange shared a great disagreement with not only the current administration but with all recent past administrations in the American government. Namely, that there was such a lack of transparency in government decision making, in really all of its declarations to the publicso many of them were untrueas to the nature of the conflict, the prospects for success, what was being done in our names, that there was no effective democracy. Earlier suggestions made by the prosecution that Assange did not have political motivations for his actions that are of relevance to his being charged were extraordinary and absurd, Ellsberg said. When Lewis argued that Ellsberg had chosen not to release four volumes of the Pentagon Papers because he had not wanted to damage the interests of the United States, Ellsberg corrected him with a more full description of his actions. He explained that he had not withheld the volumeswhich related to ongoing negotiations between the US and the North Vietnameseto hide names but to prevent the release being used by the US as an excuse for the failure of negotiations or even for stopping them. As I remember saying at the time: I want to get in the way of the war, I do not want to get in the way of negotiations. Ellsberg described how, In the forty years since the Pentagon Papers ended, Ive been subject to a great deal of defamatory comment by some people, and then a long period of neglect by the media, and all of a sudden with the Manning and Assange papers, I found my name being mentioned all the time as a very good person to use me as a foil against these new revelations which were supposedly very different from mine I totally disagree with the good Ellsberg-bad Assange theory. The prosecution attempted to suggest that there was clear evidence the release of unredacted documents by WikiLeaks had led directly to the harm of named individuals. Ellsberg countered this cynical claim robustly, at one point challenging Lewis, Am I right in believing that not one [of the individuals said by the US government to have been put at risk] actually suffered physical harm. Isnt the answer no? Shortly after this exchange, Assange rose to speak, saying, Through rhetorical sleight of hand the prosecution is suggesting that I put lives at risk. It needs to be corrected immediately. The harm to me will be irreparable. After he was silenced by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, the video link to the journalists watching was severed without explanation, only being reconnected 10 minutes later with proceedings still ongoing. The event underscored Ellsbergs warning earlier in his testimony that his own anti-democratic treatment at the hands of the US legal system now threatened Assange. He explained that at his trial under the Espionage Act, his lawyer was barred from asking him why he had copied and leaked the Pentagon Papers as irrelevant. It turns out that every single case since then, two before President Obama, nine under Obama, has been subject to this exact same interpretation of the Espionage Act the notion of motive or context is irrelevant. This is, Ellsberg said, absolutely inappropriate for being used against whistleblowing where the very purpose and context of the act is to inform the public for the good of the polity The meaning of which is I did not get a fair trial no one since me has had a fair trial under those charges. Julian Assange could not get a remotely fair trial. Ellsbergs case was eventually thrown out when it was revealed that the US government had tried to steal the notes of his psychiatrist and wiretapped his conversations. Drawing the parallel between his persecution and that of Assange, Ellsberg said, On the Espionage aspects I see no difference between the charges made against Assange and against me, and no difference in connection with the illegal acts takensurveillance which in my case involved cordless wiretaps and efforts to incapacitate me and, as I understand it, in Assanges case involved illegal wiretaps of his communications with his lawyers. The hearing continues today. The entire Irish Cabinet has been forced to self-isolate after the health minister began feeling unwell. Parliament has been adjourned for at least a week as Stephen Donnelly waits to find out whether he has Covid-19. Mr Donnelly told colleagues he was feeling unwell on Tuesday afternoon and is reported to have requested a test. Ceann Comhairle (speaker) Sean O Fearghail told the Dail (parliament): "I have very serious information. I'm told that arising out of events today, the cabinet must now self-isolate. "Therefore the possibility of proceeding with business does not arise and the house stands adjourned, I suspect, until Tuesday next. Or until I'm directed by the taoiseach (prime minister) to reconvene the house. So Dail adjourned until further notice." The announcement came on the day that the Irish government announced different levels of restrictions for the country, ranging from one to five. Recommended Irish minister resigns after breaking rules by attending golf event with 80 people Tighter restrictions were announced for Dublin, which has recorded a continuous rise of Covid-19 cases in recent weeks. Mr Donnelly was with taoiseach Micheal Martin and tanaiste (deputy prime minister) Leo Varadkar to launch the restrictions earlier in the day. Ireland has registered 48.5 cases per 100,000 people over the past 14 days, the 17th highest of 31 countries monitored by the European Union's independent European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, but the rate in Dublin is double that. Amanda Kloots, the widow of Tony nominee Nick Cordero, tearfully celebrated what would have been his 42nd birthday on Thursday. 'My angel in heaven is celebrating his birthday today,' the grieving 38-year-old wrote to her 583K Instagram followers. 'Happy 42nd Birthday baby. I bet you're having quite the celebration up there, probably singing to everyone. [Our son] Elvis and I will be singing here on Earth to you.' 'My angel in heaven is celebrating his birthday!' Amanda Kloots, the widow of Tony nominee Nick Cordero, tearfully celebrated what would have been his 42nd birthday on Thursday Amanda then shared two snaps and a short video of the Canadian triple-threat celebrating his 41st birthday one year ago at a friend's home in Laurel Canyon. Kloots wrote: 'Right after he blew out his candles I remember him saying, "Come on! I'm so blessed!"' To mark the occasion, the fitness trainer is releasing Live Your Life, an $18.87 album of Nick's cabaret act at Feinstein's/54 Below in Manhattan recorded back in April 2019. 'I've never seen my husband work so hard on a show, and boy, was he nervous,' Amanda told Broadway.com back in July. The grieving 38-year-old wrote: 'Happy 42nd Birthday baby. I bet you're having quite the celebration up there, probably singing to everyone' '[Our son] Elvis and I will be singing here on Earth to you': Amanda then shared two snaps and a short video of the Canadian triple-threat celebrating his 41st birthday one year ago at a friend's home in Laurel Canyon Kloots wrote: 'Right after he blew out his candles I remember him saying, "Come on! I'm so blessed!"' 'It was the first one-man show he had created, and he wanted to give the audience something to remember. Nick created a night of music and storytelling that was extremely personal too. It is a mix of Broadway, rock 'n' roll, standards and original music and, if you knew Nick, it was perfect!' Guest performers on the album include Kathryn Gallagher (Jagged Little Pill), Drew Gehling (Waitress), Sara Chase (First Date), and Zach Braff (Bullets Over Broadway). All proceeds from Live Your Life will benefit Kloots and their 15-month-old son Elvis Eduardo, who both rocked out to the record on Thursday. The former Radio City Rockette - who met Nick in 2014 while performing in the Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway - will also be going live on Instagram at 3pm PST to sing Cordero happy birthday. Dropped today: To mark the occasion, the fitness trainer is releasing Live Your Life, an $18.87 album of Nick's cabaret act at Feinstein's/54 Below in Manhattan recorded back in April 2019 'It's so nice to hear his voice': All proceeds from Live Your Life will benefit Amanda and their 15-month-old son Elvis Eduardo, who both rocked out to the record on Thursday Tune in! Kloots will also be going live on Instagram at 3pm PST to sing Cordero happy birthday The Waitress thespian passed away, age 41, on July 5 following a 94-day battle with coronavirus-related complications at the ICU in LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. To pay the substantial medical bills, Amanda is refinancing the mortgage on their new Laurel Canyon home and she'll receive the $1,055,240 raised (from a $480K goal) on Nick's GoFundMe page. Kloots also launched a $9.99/month subscription service for her workout videos via her website and Instagram Live as a way to make money. As of Thursday, there have reportedly been over 6.65M confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States of America leading to 197K deaths. 'Our last family photo before Nick got sick': The former Radio City Rockette met Nick in 2014 while performing in the Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway Tragic: The Waitress thespian passed away, age 41, on July 5 following a 94-day battle with coronavirus-related complications at the ICU in LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (pictured June 19) Los Angeles County Announces Millions of Dollars Will Be Put Towards COVID-19 Related Challenges, To Fight Them Head-On Los Angeles County Officials provided updated information surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. As the numbers project a level of stability, the County remains vigilant and stressed the importance of the unity needed across LA to keep this virus at bay. Director of Los Angeles Public Health Dr. Barbara Ferrer provided the latest numbers that track the movement of COVID-19 throughout the county, the statistics emphasize the significant effort that is needed from every Angeleno to stop the spread of COVID-19. Los Angeles Board of Supervisor Hilda Solis explained the major factor of stopping the spread of COVID-19 is working together. She went on and explained that all spectrums of the community have been affected, but there has been traumatic hardship among areas that were already underserved. Solis stated, Decades of distress, coupled with the significant fear residents have about losing their job, their livelihood, and more have made it challenging to reach certain ares during the pandemic. Solis announced a 30-million dollar investment that will work to face the issues head on, Supervisor Solis explained that an additional one million dollars will go towards support hyperlocal and ethnic media outlets, this is to ensure COVID-19 related information reaches every Angeleno. Another 10-million dollars will go to small businesses that have been severely impacted by coronavirus. The County allocated at least 14.9 million dollars towards technological resources addressing the concern of the digital divide. Recent statistics were disclosed by Dr. Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles Public Health Director. The reports shown on Wednesday reflect 31 additional deaths, 17 of these individuals were over the age of 80, 13 of them had underlining health conditions. Four people who died were between the ages of 65-79, three victims had preexisting health concerns. Nine individuals were between the ages of 50-64, and seven of them had underlining health problems. This brings the total COVID-19 related deaths in L.A. County to 6,303. ADVERTISEMENT There were 1,148 new COVID-19 reports. In summary, there is a total amount of 256,148 coronavirus cases in the Los Angeles region. 11,271 incidents were reported in the city of Long Beach and 2,479 cases in the city of Pasadena. The relationship between COVID-19 infection and ethnicity were provided. The racial background collected from 5,928 fatal cases showed 10% were African American, 15% were Asian, slightly less than 1% were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 51% were LatinX, 23% were White, and 1% identified as a different race or ethnicity. 92% of those who died due to COVID-19 had preexisting health concerns. The total daily average over a 7-day span, is reflecting 3.5% of tests come back positive. Over two million people have been tested, this gave the county a fuller picture of the direction COVID-19 is headed. Los Angeles Public has a target of running 15,000 diagnostic tests each day The average hospitalization has steadily decrease as well. Through multiple studies, numbers exposed that communities in compacted areas are at a higher risk to having a fatal outcome due to COVID-19. There is a need for all residents to come together. There is no room for lack of support when multiple livelihoods are looking at the bottom of their barrel. All public officials took a united front and supported the message of compassion to spread across Los Angeles. On Wednesday, United States President Donald Trump claimed that a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine would become available for distribution as early as next month despite comments from several of the government's top health officials. Arguing with health officials Trump's announcement also included that mass vaccination would follow after the treatment's approval. The Republican leader's statements undermined Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The U.S. president also said the health expert was confused with his long timeframe. According to AP News, the president also had varying views with Redfield about the efficacy of wearing face masks. Trump has continued to recommend the use of facial covering but rarely does so himself. The Republican leader stated he would be calling the medical expert about the matter. The CDC also sent a "playbook" to all 50 states across the country detailing how to distribute coronavirus vaccines to citizens at no cost once a treatment has been approved and is known to be safe and effective. Redfield said during a congressional hearing that the priority of vaccine distribution would go to health care workers, first responders, and other individuals who are considered high-risk. The medical expert suggested the vaccine would be available sometime January of next year. Inside the Senate hearing room, Redfield was seen wearing his mask at times while speaking with empathy about the importance of every individual wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus which has already taken the lives of 200,000 people in the U.S. Also Read: Chinese Virologist Releases Evidence That COVID-19 Was Concocted in Wuhan Lab With evidence currently available, Redfield estimates that a vaccine would provide about a 70 percent chance of immunity. He added that face masks would more likely have a better chance of defending against the COVID-19 virus than a vaccine. However, President Trump disagreed with the CDC director and said that a coronavirus vaccine would be several times more effective than facial covering. Coronavirus vaccine in October The Republican leader has previously claimed that the vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic would be available sometime in October despite contradicting timelines with several medical officials, as reported by CNBC. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr Anthony Fauci, said that while a coronavirus vaccine was conceivable by October, it would be unlikely that the United States is capable of producing a safe and effective treatment by then. Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, said on Sunday that Americans could expect to receive the coronavirus vaccine before the year ends. He told reporters that his company would be able to produce critical data from its late-stage trials by the end of next month that will be sent to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While the Pfizer CEO had stated that they could distribute hundreds of thousands of doses if the FDA gives their approval for the vaccine, several other candidates could be approved. The CDC said that many of the vaccine candidates would require at least two doses given at varying intervals to fight off the virus effectively. The agency also emphasized that people have to be injected with a vaccine from a single manufacturer to avoid side effects. Related Article: Game Changing Antibody That Eradicates Virus Responsible for COVID-19 Discovered @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tuolumne County Public Health View Photo Sonora, CA Tuolumne County Health officials are reporting a second day without any reported coronavirus cases. On Tuesday (Sept.15) there were zero cases, as reported here, and today makes it two consecutive days without a confirmed case. This allows the county to stay in the orange Moderate Risk category on the states 4 Tier color-coded system for reopening businesses with yellow being the least restrictive. The county is in Tier 3 and to remain at this level must not show a spike in the number of cases and the percentage of positive tests case for three weeks. Click here for additional reporting regarding the 4 Tier system. To date, the county has administered 10,945 COVID-19 tests. There are 216 total confirmed coronavirus cases in the county. Of those, one person remains hospitalized, six cases are active and 193 have recovered. A total of three deaths have been attributed to the virus with a possible fourth fatality still being investigated. *number of Tuolumne County coronavirus positive Sierra Conservation Center inmates Daily COVID-19 Cases County Active Date New Today Hospital/ ICU Alpine 0 9/15 0 0 Amador 8 9/16 1 0 Calaveras 13 9/15 7 1 Mariposa 2 9/16 1 1 Madera 503 9/16 37 14 Merced 611 9/16 47 64 Mono 1 9/16 0 0 San Joaquin 861 9/16 59 62/25 Stanislaus 488 9/16 28 109/35 Tuolumne 6 9/16 0 1 Totals (Cumulative) COVID-19 Cases County Recovered (increase) Total Positives Deaths Alpine 2 (+0) 2 0 Amador 225(+0) 248 15 Calaveras 279(+26) 305 13 Mariposa 71 (+0) 75 2 Madera 3,706(+48) 4,267 58 Merced 7,950(+49) 8,692 131 Mono 160(+0) 163 2 San Joaquin 18,363(+997) 19,623 399 Stanislaus 15,247 (+384) 16,077 317 Tuolumne 193(+6) 216(*14) 3 In alignment with the new State Health Officer Order, Dr. Liza Ortiz, Interim Tuolumne County Health Officer has issued an updated Local Health Officer Order here. This site provides more detailed information on the criteria used to determine the tier into which a county is placed and how counties can move from one tier to another. If you are having COVID-like symptoms, self-isolate and contact your healthcare provider or the Adventist Health Triage Line at 209-536-5166 Mon-Fri, or 209-536-5000 after hours. 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 recommended. The site offers to test 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. Thank you for your support and efforts to protect the safety and health of our community The latest in a long list of people who have had a war of words with Kangana Ranaut is Kunal Kamra. The comedian questioned the Y-security allotted to Kangana Ranaut after her father requested the Himachal Pradesh state government to provide her with security citing harassment. "I am wondering how a strong woman like you can have Y - security where men are protecting you just for living life on your own terms...," he tweeted. Calling herself a revolutionary voice, Ranaut said, "In a democracy it is the duty of the constitution to protect a revolutionary voice. Here in this case you see two aspects of the glorious democracy 'The protector' and 'The protected'. You will never make it to any of them. Be someone who means something to this nation." In a democracy it is the duty of the constitution to protect a revolutionary voice. Here in this case you see two aspects of the glorious democracy aThe protectora and a The protecteda. You will never make it to any of them. Be someone who means something to this nation Y https://t.co/0ul1IUmDgV a Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 16, 2020 Kunal Kamra replied to her tweet and said that she had redefined "revolutionary". The new definition includes calling Karan Johar an idiot, selecting and attacking the government of a single state, consuming Sadhguru's wisdom and joining the "casteless" upper-caste tribe. He then tweeted a video of Kangana Ranaut riding a mechanical horse in the sets of Manikarnika and said, "Also Team Kangana, I am going to work out so whatever your next tweet is my reply is this..." Also @KanganaTeam i am going to work out so whatever your next tweet is my reply is this... pic.twitter.com/5UA5MpIK2o a Kunal Kamra (@kunalkamra88) September 16, 2020 Kunal Kamra and Kangana Ranaut started the war of words after she had tweeted an image of herself applying lipstick along with the caption: Show business is absolutely intoxicating, this make believe world of lights and camera is designed to make one live and believe in an alternate reality, a little bubble of their own, it takes a very strong spiritual core to recognise this delusion... Kamra retweeted her tweet and said that her wisdom comes from Sadhguru. She lashed out at him and said that people like him want to credit her ingenuity and intellect to a man. Also read: 'Kareena Kapoor asked Sara Ali Khan not to date Sushant Singh Rajput,' says Kangana Ranaut Also read: 'Stop playing victim, name drug users in Bollywood,' says Urmila Matondkar to Kangana Ranaut Much to the dismay and fury of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the circle is closing in. No one is heeding his warnings against all who act on instructions from certain groups amid his announcements of more naval drills with live ammunition off the Cypriot coast. With US Secretary of State Mike Pompeos visit to Nicosia last Saturday, it now appears that the US has come off the fence to pit its weight alongside Brussels and squarely behind Cyprus and Greece. Speaking from Nicosia, Pompeo let it be known that Washington fully appreciates the threats looming over the island state that has been divided since the Turkish invasion and occupation of the north in 1974. The Republic of Cyprus has the right to exploit its natural resources including the right to hydrocarbons found... in its exclusive economic zone, Pompeo said, adding that the US remained deeply concerned by Turkeys ongoing operations in the vicinity. He once again urged Turkey to withdraw its drilling ships and their escort military vessels from the vicinity, stressing: Countries in the region need to resolve disagreements, including on security and energy resources and maritime issues, diplomatically and peacefully. News reports also relate that an agreement to establish a US defence training centre on the island was signed during this visit in which Pompeo met President Nicos Anastasiades and other senior Cypriot officials. Earlier this month, Washington announced that it would lift a 33-year embargo on non-lethal defence articles that was imposed on Cyprus in 1987 and deepen US security cooperation with Nicosia, Reuters reported. Moreover, just the day before Pompeos brief stop in Nicosia, it was reported that the US had begun to step up preparations to withdraw from Incirlik Air Force in southern Turkey and that it is eying a Greek island as an alternative. The move looks immanent. The US already maintains a base at Souda Bay on Crete. On 11 September, US Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Europe, told The Washington Examiner, we dont know whats gonna happen to Incirlik. We hope for the best, but we have to plan for the worst. Erdogan has often used the Incirlik base as a means to blackmail Washington, threatening to block US access to it several times since the 2016 coup attempt. His disturbing foreign policies have spurred more intense concern over US operations at the Anatolian base and inspired closer military cooperation with Greece because our presence, quite honestly, in Turkey is certainly threatened, according to the Wisconsin senator. In his remarks to the newspaper, which circulated rapidly across Turkish opposition newspapers and social networks, he said: We want to maintain our full presence and cooperation in Turkey. I dont think we want to make that strategic shift, but I think, from a defensive posture, we have to look at the reality of the situation that the path that Erdogan is on is not good... Its disturbing. Its very concerning, which is one of the reasons we certainly are increasing and improving our military cooperation with Greece. Erdogans options are clearly dwindling. Indeed, they may have been reduced to two. The first is to agree to conditional negotiations (as opposed to the unconditional negotiations Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu insists on). This would mean that Ankara would have to cease all its provocative behaviours, whether in Cypruss exclusive economic zone or in the abandoned town of Varosha in Famagusta. Negotiations would address maritime border questions but they would naturally extend to the controversial memorandum of understanding over maritime boundaries that Ankara signed with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) in November 2019. Officials with the EU Commission have charged that the MoU does not comply with the Law of the Sea, and Greece, in particular, was angered by the fact that the pact violates its economic shelf which, according to Athens, includes large inhabited Greek islands such as Crete. As for option two, it is to stay the course of his vaunted Turanic vision which, as he has said, is bound by the borders of his heart. His heart is currently set on revising the Treaty of Lausanne in a manner that would extend his countrys territory well beyond its present-day borders. If Erdogan doesnt come to his senses, as Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put it, his already strained economy will be battered by possible additional sanctions that the EU might adopt when it convenes 25 September in Brussels. In preparation for that meeting, French President Emanuel Macron hosted six other European leaders on Corsica last week in which he appealed for a responsible dialogue conducted in good faith and without naivety, and called on Turkey to cease its unilateral activities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Our Mediterranean is, today, the theatre of ongoing conflicts, in Syria, in Libya... The hegemonic games pursued by historic powers that seek to destabilise the entire region are of great concern to us in this regard, Macron said, referring to both Turkey and Russia. If Turkey does not move forward on the path of dialogue and end its unilateral activities, the EU is ready to draw up a list of additional restrictive measures, he warned, stressing that European powers need to be clear and firm with the government of President Erdogan, which today is behaving in an unacceptable manner. He also stated that Turkey is no longer a partner in the region due to its unacceptable behaviour. Ankara, naturally, lashed out at Macrons arrogant remarks that smacked of old colonialist reflexes. A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement also accused him of stoking tensions and putting Europes greater interests at risk. The seven leaders gathered in Corsica held the opposite view. It was Erdogans policies that were putting European interests and peace in the Mediterranean at risk, and it is folly to attempt to appease a government that is bent on aggressive behaviour. The charge is not misplaced. Erdogans confrontationist policies have alienated virtually everyone. While he claims that his actions conform with international law, the reverse is more the case. Turkey is the most flagrant violator of the UN arms embargo on Libya. It has violated UN Security Council resolutions on Cyprus. In Syria and Iraq, it has launched several unprovoked assaults and now occupies a significant chunk of Syrian territory. Erdogans human rights record goes from bad to worse. It is sufficient, here, to note that the European Court of Human rights has issued more than 3,645 judgements against Turkey since the courts establishment in 1959, more than any other state in its jurisdiction. It is not surprising that the number of Turkish cases before European rights bodies are on the rise since Ankara suspended parts of the European Convention on Human Rights so that Erdogan could more ruthlessly carry out the sweeping purges that he set into motion in 2016. This summer, the Turkish parliament began discussing whether Ankara should withdraw from the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, which is also known as the Istanbul Convention. Experts on contemporary Turkish politics maintain that Erdogan derives his strength from his constant quarrelling with adversaries at home and abroad. It gives him a defiant and pugnacious image that he believes wins him votes. What he apparently refuses to see is that it does very little to improve Turkeys ailing economy at a time when Turkey should be looking for friends rather than driving away nearly all of its partners. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Bangladesh has officially conveyed its deep concern over India's banning the export of onions without due notice. The Indian government on Monday banned the export of all varieties of onions with immediate effect to increase availability and curb prices of the commodity in the domestic market. The latest abrupt announcement of the Government of India on September 14, 2020 undermines the discussions that took place in 2019 and 2020 between the two friendly countries on the matter and the understanding shared, read the foreign ministry letter sent to India through its High Commission in Dhaka. The letter, dated September 15, was made available to the Bangladesh media in the late hours of Wednesday. It requests the Indian High Commission to convey the message to authorities in New Delhi and take necessary measures to resume onion exports taking into consideration the excellent ties between the neighbours. In the letter, Bangladesh expressed its "deep concern" as the sudden announcement by India directly affects the supply of essential food items in Bangladesh market. It pointed out that a secretary-level meeting between the commerce ministries of the two countries held on January 15-16, 2020 in Dhaka requested India not to impose export restriction on essential food items required by Bangladesh. The letter said the Bangladesh side also requested India to inform Dhaka ahead of time in case of any event necessitating such a restriction. The matter was also raised by Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina during her visit to India in October 2019. Earlier in the day, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said Dhaka has requested New Delhi to revoke its ban on onion export in line with an unwritten understanding. Even if, he said, India was required to take such a decision, New Delhi would inform Dhaka beforehand. "We are expecting a positive result soon in this regard, he said, while talking to reporters at his office. New Delhi in September last year had imposed a similar onion export ban, which, however, was lifted later on. Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has said the government was considering withdrawing import duty on the essential item. Also read: Why India banned onion exports Also read: Govt bans export of onion with immediate effect A man who led a police chase after nearly running over a deputy at a traffic stop was dragged off the edge of a bridge by cops. Scott Rapson, 23, tried to flee police on Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Saint Petersburg, Florida, at around 2am on Saturday. He sped away after he tried to run over a deputy who had pulled him over for swerving in the road. After a chase involving a helicopter and at least nine police cars, Rapson was pulled off the edge of the barrier wall on the bridge. Scott Rapson, 23, is dragged off the edge of a bridge by cops Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Saint Petersburg, Florida, at around 2am on Saturday Rapson led a nine-car chase after he tried to run over Deputy Jacob Miller when he pulled over for a DUI stop In helicopter footage, the police chase Rapson's pickup truck before a tyre blows out and he is forced to get out of the vehicle. Rapson walks to the edge of the bridge and sits on the ledge as police officers surround him. While being distracted by one cop, another officer manages to grab him by the waist from behind and pull him off the edge. Rapson is then detained on the ground. Rapson is arrested after he nearly ran over Deputy Jacob Miller at a DUI stop and led a car and helicopter chase Nine Manatee County Sheriff's Office cars chase Rapson across the bridge towards the unincorporated community of Terra Ceia Deputy Jacob Miller spotted the pickup truck swerving and pulled it over before a passenger got out and Rapson sped at him as he got out his car Miller told Fox13: 'That driver, as I was attempting to get out of my car attempted to run me over, reversed, drove at my car and drove off. 'Theres fear that runs through, you dont have any barriers theres a truck thats driving at you.' Miller stayed with the passenger and other deputies and a police helicopter were led in a chase down State Road 64. Police used stop sticks to damage two of Rapson's tyres before he got out of the car and perched on the edge of the bridge. Rapson gets out of the pickup truck after police use stop sticks to damage two of his tyres Rapson was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, DUI, and fleeing to elude Manatee County Sheriff's Office said: 'A man led deputies on a pursuit following a DUI traffic stop and nearly ran over a deputy before driving to the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and climbing on the edge barrier wall. 'As he sat on the barrier wall with both feet over the edge, deputies pleaded with him to get down, and when they saw an opportunity, one of the deputies selflessly pulled him to safety. 'As they helped direct deputies on the ground from above, our Aviation Unit captured video of the rescue.' Rapson was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, DUI, and fleeing to elude and has been taken to the Hillsborough County Jail. BELGRADE- Another session of EU-mediated talks between Belgrade and Pristina at the expert level opened on Thursday in Brussels. In reporting the news, Serbian media said that EU Special Representative for Kosovo Miroslav Lajcak had first met separately with the delegations and then continued on to the trilateral meeting. There are varying reports of what is on the agenda as concerns at the community of Serb municipalities in Kosovo, an issue that Belgrade holds as important and which had initially been among those to be discussed. However, Serbian media reported Wednesday that Lajcak had announced a change to the agenda, which is expected to deal only with economic, financial and property issues. The Serbian part nonetheless continues to say that the community of Serb municipalities is still the top topic of discussion, an issue that was agreed upon by the parties involved in a 2013 Brussels agreement but which has not yet been implemented due to staunch opposition by Pristina. Kosovo's leaders hold that issues concerning the internal structure of Kosovo, its sovereignty and territorial integrity cannot be put into discussion. Pristina said that the aim is still reciprocal recognition between Serbia and Kosovo. Two meetings at the summit between Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo prime minister Abdullah Hoti were held in recent days: the first on September 4 in Washington DC, where in the presence of US president Donald Trump an agreement was signed for the normalisation of economic relations between Belgrade and Pristina, and the second on September 7 in Brussels as part of EU-facilitated dialogue underway since 2011. Srinagar, Sep 17 : A Pulwama-like tragedy was averted by security forces after a large quantity of explosive material was recovered in south Kashmir's Pulwama district on Thursday. Acting on a tip-off about the presence of terrorists of proscribed terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, the police along with the Army and CRPF conducted a joint search of a nursery area near forests of village Gadikhal in Awantipora. During search of the forest area, two explosive dumps were found which were concealed underground in two different 250 litre plastic tanks. "In one plastic tank, 416 high-explosive gelatine sticks have been recovered while in another plastic tank, 50 detonators were recovered. The detonators were destroyed by the Bomb Disposal Squad on the spot, due to their risk of carrying/transporting," police said. Police said by virtue of this recovery, security forces have been able to avert a major terror attack by means of explosive substances. The spot is close to Lethpora in Pulwama on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway where 40 CRPF jawans were killed in a suicide attack in February 2019. Police have registered an FIR and started an investigation. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Piaggio Vehicles, Indias second-largest three-wheeler manufacturer, is expecting robust demand for its electric passenger three-wheelers in the coming months. The company is preparing to enter the electric cargo space in three-wheelers before the end of the year, a top official told Moneycontrol. Piaggio, which entered the electric three-wheeler space in December 2019, saw a very positive response for its swappable battery technology-enabled passenger three-wheeler in the following quarter. However, due to the lockdown and ensuing restriction over shared mobility, demand took a knock. Diego Graffi, Chairman and managing director, Piaggio Vehicles, said: The response for the electric three-wheeler has been very promising. We introduced the system of battery swapping in India with our electric three-wheeler, which was on sale between January and March. After lockdown, because of the restrictions on shared mobility, we saw quite a dip in consumer demand. Piaggio launched the Ape e-City for Rs 1.97 lakh in December with swappable-battery technology. But demand started to pick up again in the later part of July. In the next few months, demand should be at a good pace, Graffi added. Electric three-wheeler market The electric three-wheeler has found significant traction in the Indian market. So much so, that in FY19, the segment sales at 6.3 lakh overtook even the fossil-fuel powered three-wheelers sales at 5.72 lakh in the same year, as per data shared by the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicle (SMEV). The association did not share sales data for FY20. But going by sales data shared by Mahindra Electric Mobility, demand seemed to be upbeat even in FY20. The Mahindra & Mahindra-controlled EV maker saw sales of its electric three-wheelers grow to 13,636 units in FY20 -- an increase of 61 percent, as against 8,465 units in FY19. According to PRS Market Research, the Indian electric rickshaw market is projected to reach 9.35 lakh units by 2024, registering a CAGR of 15.9 percent in five years. Euler Motors, Omega Seiki and Terra Motors are some of the new companies which have entered this space. In July, Mumbai-based Greaves Cotton acquired Noida-based electric three-wheeler maker Bestway Agencies. Entry into cargo Demand from e-commerce companies for last-mile delivery vehicles has made manufacturers come out with product solutions in the electric cargo three-wheeler space. Demand was also emerging from intra-city delivery operators and partners. Introducing a cargo electric three-wheeler was in our plans for this year. We expect the later part of 2020 to see some launches in the cargo space -- both in fixed and swappable battery models. We are currently in discussion with players in the retail space in India and they have demonstrated a pretty high level of interest for our products, added Graffi. In March, Omega Seiki forayed into the cargo electric three-wheeler space with the launch of Singha and Singha Max models, priced at Rs 3.5 lakh and Rs 3.6 lakh, respectively. Both have a payload capacity of 500kg and can run for 100 km after a required charging time of 2-3 hours. KARA TEPE, Greece - More than 5,000 asylum seekers left homeless after Greeces notoriously overcrowded Moria camp on the island of Lesbos burnt down have now been housed in a new facility, the countrys migration minister said Thursday afternoon. Speaking on the island, Notis Mitarachi said rapid coronavirus tests found 135 of the former residents of Moria positive for the coronavirus, and these people were being kept in special areas where they receive the appropriate medical conditions. More than 12,000 people had been sleeping rough by a roadside since the squalid Moria camp burnt down last week. Authorities said the fires were set deliberately by a small group of migrants angered by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed after an outbreak in the camp. Six Afghans, including two minors, have been arrested on suspicion of arson. Police launched an operation Thursday morning to persuade people to move from the roadside into the new camp in the islands Kara Tepe area. The operation included 70 female police officers and no violence was reported. As long as it is peaceful, we believe it is a good move, said Astrid Castelein, head of the U.N. Refugee Agencys office on Lesbos. Here on the street it is a risk for security, for public health, and its not dignity which we need for everyone. The new site consists of large family tents erected in an old army firing range by the sea. By late Wednesday, it had a capacity of around 8,000 people, according to the UNHCR. New arrivals are tested for COVID-19, registered and assigned a tent. This is an operation for the protection of public health and with a clear humanitarian mission, the police said in a statement. Moria had a capacity of just over 2,700 people, but more than 12,500 had been living in and around it when it burned down. The camp was held up by critics as a symbol of Europes failed migration policies. It is critical that Europe demonstrates tangible solidarity to the pressure that the Greek islands have had over the last few years, said Mitarachi, the migration minister. The European Union is due to issue proposals to overhaul the blocs migration policy next week in an effort to end years of division among member states. As a frontier state, Greece is pressing for increased participation by other EU members in relocation schemes unpopular with many central and East European countries but has also suggested that alternative obligations may be assigned to countries wishing to opt out of relocation. Speaking at a debate in the European Parliament on the situation in Greece, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said that there can be no more Morias, and that it was time for a fresh start on migration. Several EU members have offered to take in refugees from Greece, led by Germany which says it will take in 1,553 refugees from Greek island camps who have had their asylum applications approved. ___ Becatoros reported from Athens. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Raf Casert and Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed. ___ Follow Becatoros at https://twitter.com/ElenaBec Read more about: Yahoo Finance Journalist talks to TikTok's Brett Armstrong and Canva's Cameron Adams. Australia officially entered its first recession in 30 years at the beginning of September as lockdown restrictions hamstrung businesses and workers across the country. Social media platform TikTok was not immune, but general manager Brett Armstrong had a set approach to dealing with the major crisis, he told the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit. I spoke to my team about this [recession] about a month ago and I literally put up a quote that read: I hear theres going to be a recession, I choose not to participate, Armstrong said. That was what Disney founder Walt Disney told his staff in the 1930s during the heights of the Great Depression and its something that resonates strongly with Armstrong. I thought of the parallels that we have, particularly as a business here. Walt Disney saw an opportunity to capture creativity and imagination and that vision came to life. It was that choice that they made not to accept fear, but to go out and have a go of it. From my team were trying to do what Walt Disney did and thats to turn a really positive creative platform into happiness, in a commercial way. Speaking on the same panel, graphic design unicorn Canva co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams noted that many successful businesses like Netflix and Uber were born out of financial downturns and said the rapid changes in consumer behaviour present significant opportunities. [People] have to change their spending, they have to change the way theyre thinking. In this pandemic weve had to change the way that we interact and communicate, Adams said. Theres always opportunity there. As a designer, I always worked within constraints, like youre looking at a system, youre looking at the constraints within the system and youre trying to figure out how to produce the right solution in there, and its exactly the same in these [economic downturns]. TikToks Armstrong said the pandemic has seen a shift in the way advertisers interact with customers from a one-way conversation to a more dynamic conversation. Story continues [Customers now] talk back to these businesses and tell them how they're feeling about the products or their messages and how they're engaging with them and what positivity that product may be bringing to them as a consumer. So it's a new and unique opportunity that a lot of businesses are really getting behind. Want to take control of your finances and your future? Join the Womens Money Movement on LinkedIn and follow Yahoo Finance Australia on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Traders with masks work on the first day of in-person trading since the closure during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 26, 2020. "If we assume that retail is long a lot of these September expiring calls in stocks like Apple and Tesla and the market continues to move lower, due to the aftermath of the Fed, market makers unwind their hedges against those long calls. In theory, that could exacerbate the move lower, but it really works in either direction," said Chris Murphy, Susquehanna Financial co-head of derivative strategy. The expiration comes as much attention has focused on large amounts of betting in options in the biggest tech and momentum names, and much of the positioning has been bullish in call options that bet the underlying stocks will go higher. Some of the action is the result of big investors, like SoftBank , but another big driver has been retail investors. "It definitely has the possibility of being very volatile," said Julian Emanuel, head of equity and derivatives strategy at BTIG. "The tendency is that all of the fireworks are on Wednesdays or Thursdays. ... There's going to be enormous stock volume tomorrow like there always is." Options on stocks, ETFs, indexes and futures expire on the third Friday of the last month of the quarter, which is this Friday. Investors either close out those positions or roll them forward. As a result, quarterly expirations create huge volume in the stock market as brokers on the other side of the options buy or sell securities into the expiration. This summer's heavy speculation in stock options helped drive frothy prices, and now it could create move volatility than normal in some of the market's best-loved stocks, as investors go through the quarterly process of expirations. Murphy said retail investors are much more involved in options on individual stocks than they were a year ago. "If you want to see the difference, equity open interest from this September to last September is up significantly, to 55 million from 40 million. That compares to open interest in ETFs. That was 29.25 million and now it's down to 28.9 million," he said. Murphy said individual investors may be more inclined to trade single stocks while institutions and bigger investors could be move involved in ETFs and indexes. Open interest, or the total open contracts, on the indexes like the S&P 500 also fell to 4.5 million from 5.1 million. With the shift in focus to individual stocks, that could make trading in those issues more volatile in both directions for the rest of the week. According to Goldman Sachs, options volumes in 50 single stocks account for 89% of the notional volumes for all individual equity options. Emanuel said he's not concerned about the potential for excessive moves in stocks around expiration, but in general he has been concerned about aggressive buying in out-of-the-money calls in a few stocks. Those calls, which bet on big moves higher, are priced at historic premiums to out-of-the-money puts, which bet on falling stock prices. Normally, it is more expensive to hedge against a downside move, but now it is more expensive in some names to hedge a move higher. "I'm worried about it within the context that it's just another one of the signs that these stocks are over-owned ad over-loved, and rightly so, given their performance and the momentum throughout August," Emanuel said. But that type of options buying is acting as a negative warning for stocks, and it still illustrates too much froth. Emanuel said there was a turn in sentiment when the market sold off on Sept. 2, but the options positioning in some high-flying names has not changed. "They are still pricing in FOMO [fear of missing out], instead of fear," he said. As for this week's expirations, Murphy said the Fed is the bigger driver of the stock market, but options positioning can be exaggerating moves in either direction. "Now that we've moved through some of the lower strikes, the market makers who are hedged with long stock, now sell the stock," said Murphy. He pointed to Apple as an interesting example. The stock was off its session lows in the afternoon, trading at $109.92, and below the level where there is a lot of options interest. "The highest open interest strike is September $112.50," he said. "Yesterday's close was above it. Today we're below it, so it's in play. ... If we make the assumption retail is long and the market maker is short, as the stock trades above $112.50, there will have to be buying to hedge and that could exacerbate a move higher. If it goes back below, there needs to be selling. They don't need as much of a hedge." Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note that investors have been concerned about the high concentration of activity in a few names, while options activity is at record levels. So Goldman studied it and found that options activity is typically concentrated in a relatively small number of stocks. For instance, since 2006, at various times, the top five stocks in terms of options activity had accounted for 25% to 75% of single stock notional volumes, the Goldman analysts wrote. Goldman studied a period in 2012 to 2013, when five stocks were at record highs and saw the most options activity. They were Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix and Booking Holdings, then Priceline. It did not have an adverse impact on the stock market. The S&P 500 returned 45% over the two years, and the VIX, the CBOE Volatility Index, declined to 14 at the end of 2013, from 24 at the end of 2011. HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- After two months of administering CARES financial assistance for renters and homeowners, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency is providing an update on the progress of both programs, which have been accepting applications since July 6. Renters' Relief For the CARES Rent Relief Program (RRP), all 67 participating county organizations are asked to provide monthly data summaries, and the data from August are now available. The data for July has also been updated. A summary of key points taken from that data provides these insights: July August Totals Applications from Renters 10,104 16,846 26,950 Applications from Landlords 5,866 7,102 12,968 Renters Assisted 895 1,927 2,822* Landlords Assisted 216 1,345 1,561* CARES RRP Assistance Requested $37,866,773 $32,331,483 $70,198,256 CARES RRP Assistance Disbursed $478,042 $3,577,034 $4,055,076 CARES Funding Distributed to Counties by PHFA $50,000,000 *The counties oversee the evaluation of all renters' applications County data for the CARES RRP are available in the tables provided for July and August. Of the $50 million in CARES aid that has been provided by PHFA to county organizations so far, $4,055,076 has been distributed by them to renters approved for relief. Homeowners' Relief PHFA is overseeing the processing of all homeowner applications. The Pandemic Mortgage Assistance Program (PMAP) has received 2,213 applications, and PHFA is providing a county-by-county breakdown of that data, as well as a county-by-county map. (The total for the counties' data does not match the official total of 2,213 because some mailed applications are not yet in the database.) The total assistance requested is $7.9 million, and the total approved assistance so far is $1.7 million. As of Sept. 15, the agency has disbursed $153,500 in PMAP relief to distressed homeowners. Of the application review decisions made to date, the approval percentage is 52.2%. A 30-day delinquency requirement was recently eliminated from the PMAP guidelines. Prior applicants who did not qualify for assistance are being reviewed again. "This data show a continuation of the trends we saw in July mainly that the application process has to be simplified and the deadline for applying should be extended if we want to help more homeowners and renters," said PHFA Executive Director and CEO Robin Wiessmann. "We're pleased the legislature has been keenly interested in the progress of both these statewide programs and is considering changes to make them work better. Our goal remains to use as much of the federal CARES dollars as possible to help Pennsylvanians stay in their homes." Background Information The federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March, provided $3.9 billion for Pennsylvania. In late May, the General Assembly directed $175 million of these CARES dollars to PHFA to provide assistance for struggling renters and homeowners. The portion for rent assistance is at least $150 million, and $25 million was set aside for mortgage assistance. During June, PHFA quickly developed two detailed, statewide programs for distributing this financial assistance expeditiously to renters and homeowners in need, following legislative requirements. This effort included extensive coordination with the organizations in all 67 counties that are processing the renters' applications. The CARES Rent Relief Program and the Pandemic Mortgage Assistance Program were both launched on schedule on June 29, as was required in the state CARES Act. Resources for Applicants Applicants with questions about the CARES Rent Relief Program should reach out to the organization in their county that is processing applications. A county contact list with phone numbers, emails and street addresses is available on the RRP webpage at: https://www.phfa.org/pacares/rent.aspx. Some of the county organizations to which CARES applications are submitted also have webpages offering useful information. Philadelphia and Allegheny counties have online applications so renters can apply electronically. Questions from homeowners about PMAP should be directed to PHFA. The agency's webpage for PMAP is available at: https://www.phfa.org/pacares/mortgage.aspx. The agency's call center is available weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to assist the public and help with questions about the program. The toll-free number is 1-855-U-Are-Home (827-3466). Callers should listen for the prompt mentioning CARES assistance for homeowners. Of course, PHFA is also getting calls from renters and is assisting them, too. In accordance with the state CARES Act, this funding for renters and homeowners must be completely distributed by Nov. 30, 2020. About PHFA The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency works to provide affordable homeownership and rental housing options for older adults, low- and moderate-income families, and people with special housing needs. Through its carefully managed mortgage programs and investments in multifamily housing developments, PHFA also promotes economic development across the state. Since its creation by the legislature in 1972, it has generated more than $14.8 billion of funding for more than 179,850 single-family home mortgage loans, helped fund the construction of 138,000 rental units, distributed more than $121 million to support local housing initiatives, and saved the homes of nearly 50,400 families from foreclosure. PHFA programs and operations are funded primarily by the sale of securities and from fees paid by program users, not by public tax dollars. The agency is governed by a 14-member board. Media contact: Scott Elliott [email protected] 717-649-6522 (cell) SOURCE Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency Related Links http://www.PHFA.org New Delhi, Sep 17 : NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Thursday asserted that privatisation of the Railways will create a "win-win" situation for the Railways as well as the investors and also the users. Addressing a press conference here along with the Indian Railways' first CEO V.K. Yadav, Kant said, "The plans of privatisation of the trains brings first-of-its-kind initiative in country where private entities will source and operate modern technology trains for undertaking passenger business, using Indian Railways' infrastructure." The NITI Aayog CEO said, "This creates a win-win situation for Indian Railways as well as investors, by tapping into the potential of huge unmet demand in passenger business." Kant was speaking on the Railways' plans of Public-Private Partnership in passenger train operations. He further asserted that the Railways is looking at 109 origin-destination pairs, divided into 12 clusters requiring 151 trains. "They are being taken up for transparent competitive bidding and some most attractive routes, based on huge unmet demand, will be put out to run premium passenger services," Kant said. He also asserted that "we are looking at about Rs 30,000 crore of private sector investment." Citing the examples of the private banks in India, Kant said that "It is like when private banks were set up in India." He said so many private players came in the banking sector but that didn't lead to SBI shutting down. "Private investment will bring in newer technologies. It will create competition in the railway sector. Competition will increase efficiency and reduce fares in the long run," Kant added. To a question over airport-like user charge to be levied for redeveloped railway stations, Yadav said the charge will be nominal. "The user charge will be nominal. Also, the charge will be applicable only for redeveloped stations. Not all stations are being redeveloped at present," Yadav said. On the issue of private players being able to determine their own fares as it has been decided by the Indian Railways, the Railways CEO said as there will be competition from bus fares and air fares, private players will, under no circumstances, charge exorbitant fares. Personal income tax cuts will be a key feature of Josh Frydenberg's recession-busting federal budget as signs emerge the recovery in the jobs market is increasingly reliant on the gig economy. Mr Frydenberg on Thursday made it clear that pulling forward previously legislated tax cuts as well as incentives for businesses to expand their operations would underpin the government's recovery plan to be revealed in the October 6 budget. Tax relief worth $158 billion, much of which will go to high income earners, is due to start in mid-2022 and mid-2024. Giving evidence to the Senate's COVID-19 committee, senior Treasury official Luke Yeaman confirmed the department had modelled the impact of changing the timing of the tax cuts. Sydney Harbour's ailing tourist hub The Rocks will be the first suburb transformed into an outdoor dining and drinking destination as part of the state government's push to save the hospitality industry and avoid COVID-19 outbreaks. NSW Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello said venues should be able to set up al fresco service within days of applying under a self-assessment regime. He said he wanted to see visible change in the industry by summer, ahead of legislative reform in the next six months. The Glenmore Hotel's rooftop bar has been a saving grace during the pandemic. Credit:Edwina Pickles "I don't want talk; I actually want to see existing cafes, restaurants, bars using whatever mechanisms that we will now change to get places on the street," Mr Dominello said on Thursday. Agitating for cultural change around hospitality, Mr Dominello said he wanted greater community tolerance of noise generated from venues and gathering spots as complaints had long been the bane of bars and pubs. 1MDB CEO post exposed to political elements, court hears The chief executive officer (CEO)'s post of 1MDB was exposed to political elements, the Kuala Lumpur High Court heard today. Former 1MDB CEO Mohd Hazem Abd Rahman (above) testified this during the RM2.28 billion 1MDB corruption trial of former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak. The 10th prosecution witness made this claim over events that occurred prior to his stepping down from the CEO post in January 2015. Hazem helmed 1MDB from March 2013 until January 2015. He alleged that in October 2014, after he came back from performing the Haj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, he shared his intention of stepping down with 1MDB-linked businessperson Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, as well as with Najib's then principal private secretary Azlin Alias. I had told Azlin to tell Low to find a candidate to replace me because all the officers who worked under me did not want to take over from me on the reason that the CEOs position is exposed to political elements, Hazem testified. The witness was testifying just before he wrapped up reading his 110-page written witness statement. However, he did not go into further detail on what he meant by "exposed to political elements". The trial before judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah will resume on Oct 5. Najib is on trial over four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering involving RM2.28 billion of 1MDBs funds. Aside from being the premier, the accused was also the finance minister and chairperson of the board of advisors of 1MDB at the time. 1MDB was fully owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated (MoF Inc). [More to follow] Editor's note: Based on legal advice, the commenting feature for the above article has been disabled. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. A recent market study published by FMI on the Electrophysiology market includes the global industry analysis of 2015-2019 & opportunity assessment for 2020-2030, and delivers a comprehensive assessment of the most important market dynamics. Our analysts have conducted thorough research on the historical as well as current growth parameters of the market to obtain growth prospects with maximum precision. Electrophysiology Market: Segmentation Product Type Electrophysiology Laboratory Devices 3D-Mapping Systems Electrophysiology Recording Systems Radiofrequency (RF) Ablation Systems Intracardiac Echoradiography (ICE) Ultrasound Imaging Systems Electrophysiology X-Ray Systems Others Electrophysiology Ablation Catheters Cryoablation Electrophysiology Catheters Radiofrequency (RF) Ablation Catheters Microwave Ablation (MWA) Systems Laser Ablation Systems Electrophysiology Diagnostic Catheters Conventional Electrophysiology Diagnostic Catheters Advanced Electrophysiology Diagnostic Catheters Ultrasound Electrophysiology Diagnostic Catheters Request a Sample of this Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-12402 Indication Atrial Fibrillation Atrial Flutter Atrioventricular Nodal Re-entry Tachycardia (AVNT) Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome Bradycardia Others End-user Hospitals Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories Ambulatory Surgery Centers Region North America Latin America Europe East Asia South Asia Oceania Middle East & Africa Report Chapters Chapter 01- Executive Summary The report gives a brief with the executive summary of the Electrophysiology market, which includes a summary of the key findings and statistics of the market. It also includes the demand & supply-side trends and the technological roadmap pertaining to the Electrophysiology market. Chapter 02 Market Overview In this chapter, readers can find the definition and a detailed taxonomy of the Electrophysiology market, which will help them understand the basic information about the Electrophysiology market. Along with this, comprehensive information about Electrophysiology is provided in this section. This section also highlights the inclusions and exclusions, which help readers understand the scope of the Electrophysiology market report. Chapter 03 Key Market Trends This section includes key trends impacting the market as well as the major development trends associated with product innovation and development. Chapter 04- Market Background This section includes the prominent dynamics (drivers, restraints & opportunities) which are responsible for shaping the markets growth trajectory during the upcoming decades forecast. The chapter also sheds light on the relevance and impact of the prominent forecast factors along with macro-economic trends such as the global GDP and healthcare outlook. Chapter 05- COVID-19 Crisis Analysis This chapter of the report sheds exclusive light on the present as well as projected future impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the market. It incorporates the current economic outlook and comparison with the 2008 financial crisis as well as quarter-wise forecast for the remainder of the current year. The chapter concludes by providing a probable recovery scenario across the short-term, medium-term and long-term forecast periods respectively. Chapter 06- Market Context This chapter elucidates on the overall market scenario, taking into account the key products unique selling proposition (USP), disease epidemiology, regulatory scenario, key promotional strategies, product adoption analysis and value chain analysis among other aspects. Chapter 07- Global Electrophysiology Market Volume Analysis 2015-2019 & Forecast 2020-2030 This section explains the global market volume analysis and forecast for the Electrophysiology market for the forecast period of 2020-2030, in value terms. This chapter includes a detailed analysis of the historical projections of the Electrophysiology market, providing historical, current and future projections in 000 units. The projections are given on a year-on-year basis. Chapter 08- Global Electrophysiology Market- Pricing Analysis In this section, the report incorporates a detailed pricing analysis at the regional as well as global levels, along with a detailed break-up demarcating the levels of manufacturing and distributor pricing. Chapter 09- Global Electrophysiology Market Value (US$ Mn) Analysis 2015-2019 and Forecast, 2020-2030 In this chapter, the report includes a year-on-year growth trend and opportunity analysis for the upcoming decade (2020-2030). It provides historical, current and future market value projections in US$ Mn. Chapter 10- Global Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 and Forecast 2020-2030, by Type This chapter provides details about the Electrophysiology market based on type and has been classified into laboratory devices, ablation catheters and diagnostic catheters. Chapter 11 Global Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by Indication This chapter provides details about the Electrophysiology market based on application and has been classified into atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, atrioventricular nodal re-entry tachycardia (AVNT), Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome, Bradycardia and others. Chapter 12- Global Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by End-User This chapter provides details about the Electrophysiology market based on end-user and has been classified into hospitals, cardiac catheterization laboratories and ambulatory surgery centers. Chapter 13- Global Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 by Region This chapter provides details about the Electrophysiology market based on region and has been classified into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), East Asia, South Asia and Oceania. Chapter 14- North America Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the North America Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes the U.S and Canada. Readers can also find the pricing analysis, regional trends, and market growth based on material and countries in North America. Chapter 15- Latin America Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Latin America Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Rest of Latin America. Chapter 16- Europe Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the European Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Germany, Italy, France, the U.K, Spain, BENELUX, Russia and Rest of Europe. Chapter 17- South Asia Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the South Asian Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Rest of South Asia. Chapter 18- East Asia Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the East Asian Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes China, Japan and South Korea. Chapter 19- Oceania Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Oceania Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes Australia and New Zealand. Chapter 20- Middle East & Africa Electrophysiology Market Analysis 2015-2019 & Opportunity Assessment 2020-2030 This chapter provides details about the growth of the Middle East & Africa Electrophysiology market, along with a country-wide assessment which includes GCC countries, Turkey, South Africa and rest of MEA. Chapter 21- Key Countries Electrophysiology Market Analysis 20152019 and Forecast 20202030 This chapter provides the growth scenario of the Electrophysiology market of 22 key countries by type, and form. Additionally, COVID-19 impact in the said market in all respective countries has been included. Chapter 22- Market Structure Analysis In this chapter, readers can find detailed information about the tier analysis and market concentration of key players in the physiology equipment market, along with their market presence analysis by region and product portfolio. Request for Reports Methodology @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/electrophysiology-market#idMethodology Chapter 23- Competition Analysis In this chapter, readers can find a comprehensive list of all the prominent stakeholders in the Electrophysiology market, along with detailed information about each company, which includes company overview, revenue shares, strategic overview, and recent company developments. Some of the market players featured in the report are Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic Plc, Koninklijke Philips N.V, Boston Scientific Corporation, Japan Lifeline, Stereotaxis, Microport Scientific Corporation, Biotronik, Acutus Medical, Baylis Medical, EP Solutions SA, APN Health LLC, Teleflex and Merit Medical Systems. Chapter 24- Assumptions & Acronyms Used This chapter includes a list of acronyms and assumptions that provides a base to the information and statistics included in the physiotherapy equipment market report. Chapter 25- Research Methodology This chapter help readers understand the research methodology followed to obtain various conclusions as well as important qualitative and quantitative information about the physiotherapy equipment market Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) San Miguel Corporation will begin a blood and convalescent plasma donation drive among its employees in the country to help more patients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the business conglomerate said on Thursday. The initiative is also the company's way of celebrating it's 130th anniversary, SMC said. The drive will be done quarterly and in coordination with the Philippine Red Cross to augment its blood supply, it added. "We just want to help in any way we can," said San Miguel President and COO Ramon Ang. "I believe, together, we can all make a difference." The project will launch online via the Zoom app on Friday in six facilities with Ang taking the lead along with Red Cross chair, Senator Ricard Gordon. The two will donate their blood simultaneously, while more than 400 other workers will also participate in the event from Purefoods Hormel Plant in General Trias, Cavite; the Manila Toll Expressway Systems, Inc. facility in Silangan Laguna, San Miguel Brewerys community clinics in San Fernando, Pampanga; Mandaue, Cebu, and Sta. Cruz, Davao Del Sur, and the SMC Head Office Complex in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila. The company said the blood donations can also be used for non-coronavirus-related needs.On the other hand, blood convalescent plasma will be useful in treating infected patients. The Department of Health earlier explained that the plasma of those who have recovered from the coronavirus disease is believed to contain antibodies that can help others fight the infection. Senate Democrats made a last-ditch attempt on Wednesday to quash a forthcoming Republican report on Hunter Bidens work for a Ukrainian energy firm, warning that the document could amplify Russian disinformation in an attempt to politically wound his father, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee. Introducing a resolution to block the report, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, argued that the Homeland Security Committees inquiry into the younger Mr. Biden was aiding a Russian attack on the election by reviving the same unsubstantiated claims about the Bidens that the American authorities have said Moscow was promoting, actions that resulted in new sanctions last week against a Ukrainian with ties to Russia. The resolution called for senators to cease any activities that allow Congress to act as a conduit for foreign election interference campaigns that launder and amplify Russian disinformation. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the committees chairman, objected to the measure, and vigorously defended his inquiry, which is slated for completion in the coming days. Mr. Johnson insisted he was not being used by Russian intelligence and accused Democrats of a smear campaign to protect Mr. Biden. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 11:11:59|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Wednesday visited a revolution-themed exhibition hall during his inspection tour in central China's Hunan Province. The exhibition chronicles the story of an impoverished villager named Xu Jiexiu, who offered shelter to three female Red Army soldiers during the Long March in the 1930s. Upon the soldiers' departure, they cut their only quilt in halves, leaving one part with Xu to show their care. Enditem A city panel rejected a request Wednesday to demolish the Toudouze Building on the near South Side and replace it with a car wash. The structure at Pleasanton Road and South Flores Street was once a store run by South Texas businessman August Charles A.C. Toudouze and a community center, but has sat vacant for years. Earlier this year, preservationists pursued a landmark designation for the building over the objection of the owner, High Cay LLC, which bought it in 2018. The Historic and Design Review Commission supported the designation, and City Council ultimately approved it. High Cay LLC is registered to GFR Entity Management LLC, which is tied to local developer Mark Granados. Granados contends that renovating the roughly 21,400-square-foot building would be too costly. The structure doesnt meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Texas Accessibility Standards or city codes, including parking stipulations, making it challenging to redevelop. SA Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox High Cay LLC provided an undated estimate showing a multi-million dollar loss for the sites renovation based on an investment of $3.2 million. But city staff said the developer failed to demonstrate an unreasonable economic hardship due to the lack of financial burden of proof documentation, the absence of evidence of good faith exploration of reuse options, as well as lack of active marketing of the property. HDRC members agreed Wednesday. The panel also gave the go-ahead Wednesday to plans to refurbish the YWCA, or Henry Terrell Building, a circa-1909 structure at 212 N. Alamo St. that sits within an opportunity zone. The program was created by President Donald Trumps 2017 tax overhaul. The work includes replacing windows and installing an aluminum storefront system, repairing the masonry and adding entrance canopies on the facade along North Alamo. Henry Terrell, a lawyer and the son of local businessman Edwin Terrell, built the structure, according to a letter by architecture firm Ford, Powell & Carson submitted to the commission. The letter also states that the owner, listed as Alamo QOZB LLC, plans to seek historic tax credits. Clearinghouse Community Development Financial Institution is handling the redevelopment as part of an opportunity zone project, said Chris McMartin, opportunity fund manager at the California lender. Plans call for office space with ground-floor retail. McMartin said they plan to retain the historical look and feel of the property. madison.iszler@express-news.net India in collaboration with other pro-reform countries has been consistently making efforts to build support among the UN Member States for expansion of the UN Security Council, in both permanent and non-permanent categories, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday. India in collaboration with other pro-reform countries has been consistently making efforts to build support among the UN Member States for expansion of the UN Security Council, in both permanent and non-permanent categories, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday.Replying to an unstarred question in the Rajya Sabha on whether the Indian government has made serious efforts to acquire a permanent seat in the UNSC, Minister of State (MoS), MEA, V Muraleedharan said, Government has accorded the highest priority to getting permanent membership for India in an expanded UN Security Council that reflects contemporary global realities. India in collaboration with other pro-reform countries has been consistently making efforts to build support among the UN Member ,States for expansion of the UNSC, in both permanent and non-permanent categories. He further said that India being one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping forces (in cumulative terms) strengthens our credentials for seeking permanent membership of the UNSC. Speaking on the reasons for India not getting a permanent seat in the UNSC even after the consent for the same was expressed by many member countries, the Minister said that the question of Indias permanent membership of the Security Council would be considered only after an agreement on the nature and extent of expansion of the Council is arrived at in accordance with the provisions of the UN Charter, which requires approval by two-thirds of the membership of the United Nations. ALSO READ: NGO moves SC seeking investigation into Chinas alleged surveillance on President, PM, judges As per decision 62/557 of the General Assembly (on the question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council), beginning 2009, discussions on UNSC reforms have started to take place in the UN General Assembly, through the Inter-Governmental Negotiation (IGN) process. The IGN is presently the principal platform for discussing various aspects of Security Council reform, including categories of membership of the Council, the question of the veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Council, etc. There is a section of UN member states that supports expansion only in the non-permanent category and is opposed to an expansion of permanent membership, he said.The question of Indias permanent membership of the Security Council would be considered only after an agreement on the nature and extent of expansion of the Council is arrived at in accordance with the provisions of the UN Charter, which requires approval by 2/3rd of the membership of the United Nations, he added. ALSO READ: India in touch with US administration on visa issues, including H1B: MoS MEA WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Penn State University Press today announced the re-release of A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women. Based on the "A Few Good Women" oral history project at the Penn State University Libraries, A Matter of Simple Justice illuminates the Nixon administration's groundbreaking efforts to expand the role of womenand the long-term significant advances for women in the American workplace. Penn State University Press At the forefront of these efforts was Barbara Hackman Franklin, a staff assistant to the president who was hired to recruit more women into the upper levels of the federal government. Franklin, at the direction of President Nixon, White House counselor Robert Finch, and personnel director Fred Malek, became the administration's de facto spokesperson on women's issues. She helped bring more than one hundred women into executive positions in the government and created a talent bank of more than a thousand names of qualified women. The Nixon administration expanded the numbers of women on presidential commissions and boards, changed civil service rules to open thousands of more federal jobs to women, and expanded enforcement of anti-discrimination laws to include gender discrimination. "In hindsight, I am so proud of the trailblazers captured in this book, all working to advance women 50 years ago! And I am gratified that Penn State Library Press has re-released this book in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guaranteed women the right to vote," said Franklin. "In 1972, I said that I hoped to see a woman elected President of the United States in my lifetime. Our work and the efforts of so many others have brought that day closer." The Honorable Barbara Hackman Franklin, the 29th US Secretary of Commerce, is President and CEO of Barbara Franklin Enterprises, a private consulting firm in Washington, DC. She advises and advocates for American companies doing business in international markets, notably China. Franklin has served five US Presidents. In 2017 TIME Magazine named her one of the "50 Women Who Made American Political History." For more information, please visit matterofsimplejustice.com. For media inquiries and event bookings, please contact: Marc Ross - +1 (202) 596-5270 or [email protected] Related Images image1.jpg SOURCE Penn State University Press Related Links http://matterofsimplejustice.com Emmy host Jimmy Kimmel and an alpaca sharing the spotlight. Winners accepting at home in designer pajamas or maybe yoga pants. More than 100 chances for a balky internet connection to bring Sundays ceremony to a crashing halt. Come for the awards, stay for the suspense of the first big Hollywood ceremony to attempt a live but socially distanced broadcast amid the coronavirus pandemic. What could possibly go wrong? Ian Stewart said drolly as he and fellow executive producer Reginald Hudlin detailed their efforts to celebrate TVs best without a theater audience or red-carpet glamour and with daunting technical challenges. Fortunately, the quick-witted Kimmel loves live TV and loves chaos, Stewart said. I think hes actually hoping things do go wrong, to tell you the truth. The comedian will hold court at the Staples Center for ABC's 8 p.m. EDT telecast, joined by a handful of yet-to-be-revealed celebrities. Morgan Freeman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, D-Nice, Patrick Stewart and Oprah Winfrey are among those with undisclosed roles in Sunday's show, along with Isabella the alpaca. H.E.R. will perform during the In Memoriam segment. The HBO limited series Watchmen is the leading nominee, with star Regina King up for honors. Top comedy and drama series contenders including Schitts Creek, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Succession and Ozark, while Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell ("The Morning Show") and Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy ("Schitt's Creek") are among those vying for acting trophies. The ceremony continues to highlight the TV turf battle, with cable, streaming and, to a far lesser extent, traditional broadcast networks jockeying for recognition and viewers in an increasingly crowded landscape. The arrival of newcomers including Apple TV+ (with its flagship series The Morning Show) has upped the competition. Nominees will be ensconced at their location of choice, whether home, hotel or otherwise, with formal wear definitely optional. There are custom Emmy PJs being made, while some may have the courage to wear what Hudlin called the freakiest, funkiest outfit in their closet or decide on the comfort of athleisure wear. When the winners names are revealed they'll deliver their speeches in the form of a very glorified Zoom call, which could make for spontaneous moments unavailable in a theater. If someones kid suddenly takes control of the mic and, suddenly, they are the star of the show, we are going to let that happen, Hudlin said. One nominee reveled in the possibility of including their dog, and the producers are being open-minded. What weve tried to do is to make it into a fun thing to do. Its not stuffy. Its not staged, Stewart said. To make the long-distance participation work and be broadcast worthy, 130 units that include a high-end camera, lighting and boom mic are being deployed to nominees scattered in 10 countries and 20 cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Tel Aviv, London and Berlin. The downtown LA Staples Center, where teams including the Lakers and Clippers play, replaced the planned venue because it has the resources to handle the night's extensive number of feeds, Hudlin said. How smoothly they flow will depend on the nominees' internet connections. The process, including COVID-19 precautions, makes it "sort of a logistic nightmare, Stewart said. It's just going to be great, a cheerful Hudlin parried. To quote the great (filmmaker) Melvin Van Peebles, sometimes trouble is opportunity in work clothes. Because the fact is, people have been hankering for a reinvention of the award show. ... and I think COVID has forced us to do that, the producer said in an interview with The Associated Press. Other recent awards shows, including the BET Awards and this week's Academy of Country Music Awards, bowed to the coronavirus with a mix of pre-taped and live segments. It's incumbent on the prime-time Emmys to do more, producers said. One of the great things about television is its immediacy and its ability to meet the moment, so we want to do that same thing with the show," Hudlin said. "We want people to have fun, and we want to celebrate achievement. But the ceremony also has to acknowledge where we are as a culture, he said. With the pandemic, the fight for social justice and fires ravaging the western U.S., it would be a failure if we didnt address all of those things in a show about television," Hudlin said. "That doesnt mean we want to be preachy. We dont want to lecture people. In the rush of hearing their name called, winners may be more likely to blurt out a laundry list of thank-yous to agents, publicists and others, Stewart said, which may well feel a little tone-deaf. We are not going to tell anyone what to say. They can say what theyd like, and they should celebrate it," he said. "But there are other things happening in the world that they might want to reference as well. Its a balance that we have to strike .... Its a balance that nominees and winners have to strike as well." ___ Online: https://www.emmys.com/ A CNN panel was stunned on CNN Tonight With Don Lemon Wednesday after Lemon read to them remarks Attorney General William Barr made earlier while speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Barr compared lockdowns due to the ongoing coronavirus to slavery, though he admitted theyre not as bad. Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. You know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history, Barr said, garnering applause from the audience. After reading Barrs statement, Lemon went to Dana Bash for comment, who, at first, couldnt even get out any words. I Im kind of speechless, Bash said after a moment of shock. I really am. Bash then went on to point out the very large hole in Barrs comparison. When people were enslaved, when human beings were enslaved in this country, they were owned by other people, Bash said. I mean, civil rights was, like, the notion of having civil rights was a pipe dream. They just had to be free, and then they could think about civil rights. White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins countered Barrs argument with the fact that, unlike slavery, Americans werent forced to do anything during the lockdowns, just urged to stay at home. People were still able to leave their homes for essential tasks. Theyre comparing this, in a way, to slavery, which he says was, quote, A different kind of restraint. Yes, it was very much a different kind of restraint, Collins said. And so, you know, to see how they responded to this, and as Sanjay was saying, no one was forced to stay in their homes in the United States. Those were recommendations made. And, as the death toll in the U.S. nears 200,000, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was taken aback by Barrs remarks, and worried that they could only make things worse. I just have a hard time, Don, I guess to your point, of conflating a dedicated scientific evidence-based public health response to some sort of civil rights intrusion, Gupta said. It takes us in the exact wrong direction. Story continues CNN Tonight With Don Lemon airs weeknights at 10 p.m. on CNN. Watch Mark Ruffalo slam salacious reporting on his hometown of Kenosha, Wisc.: Utter bulls***: For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDCs and WHOs resource guides. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. And check out our host, Kylie Mar, on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (19) RICHMOND The unfunded liability of pension funds for state employees and teachers has risen as market returns have lagged on investments by Virginias $82 billion retirement system. The funded status of the states two biggest pension funds dropped in the last fiscal year to about 71%, down from about 75% the previous year. Funded status represents the amount of money available in the Virginia Retirement System trust fund to pay for future retirement benefits and other liabilities for state employees and teachers. The drop came a year after the retirement systems decision to lower its expectation for annual investment return and coincided with a 1.4% return on investments in the last fiscal year that critics say underperformed in the stock market despite a highly paid internal investment staff. The dip is primarily attributable to market returns, VRS Director Trish Bishop told the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. The decline will not affect the rates that Virginia and its local governments pay for their share of employee retirement costs, but the states top finance official warned that could change if VRS does not improve its investment performance. The lower returns will eventually require greater general fund [budget] obligations, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne said in an interview Wednesday. The General Assembly adopted a budget in March that set retirement contribution rates for government employers for two years, beginning July 1. The rates reflect the retirement systems assets and liabilities on July 1, 2019, which reflected the decision by the VRS board of trustees to lower the long-term rate of return from 7% to 6.75% a year over 30 years. VRS will review the status of state pension funds, including the retirement plan for teachers, in October and for local governments in November, based on the results of an actuarial valuation of the retirement plans on June 30. The review will show any effect of market performance on rates, but the results will not change rates in the budget for state and local government employers. The board will certify new rates next year for the 2022-24 budget, based on an actuarial valuation of the plans on June 30, 2021. VRS officials expect that rate review to show the benefit of the state paying off contributions to the teacher pension plan the systems largest that it deferred in 2010 to balance a two-year budget crippled by the effects of the Great Recession. It will help mitigate some of the other unknown factors that could materialize, Bishop said in an interview Wednesday. The biggest unknown is the performance of VRS investments, based on the boards asset allocation strategy that emphasizes global stocks and private financial assets, such as real estate and credit, in addition to U.S. stocks and bonds. Ed Burton, a former longtime member of the VRS board and an economics professor at the University of Virginia, has been a persistent critic of the boards asset allocation strategy, which he said has resulted in lower investment returns to pay for pension liabilities. When VRS reported an estimated return of 2% on investments in July for the fiscal year that had just ended, Burton contended that VRS should have earned closer to 8%, based on the S&P 500 and Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, both indexed funds that do not require extensive management. Thats what all the heavy lifting and expense has produced a pitiful return, during a period when markets were very favorable, Burton said in an email message in early July. The estimated 2% return actually was less 1.4%. The 2% estimate was just, frankly, wrong, Chief Investment Officer Ron Schmitz said Wednesday, explaining that the error was due to a faulty calculation he had made. But Schmitz defends the approach VRS has taken to long-term investments that are crucial to the solvency of the retirement system and the benefits it is obligated to pay to more than 742,000 past or current public employees. It is the same philosophical discussion that we have been having off and on for years, he said in response to Burtons criticisms. Schmitz acknowledged that the one-year VRS return was less than the system could have earned from the S&P 500 and Barclays indices during the 2019-20 fiscal year, but he said thats because U.S. stocks, powered by high-tech companies such as Apple and Amazon, had performed much better than the global stocks and private assets that the retirement system includes in its investment portfolio. However, he said the VRS strategy compares favorably over the long-term investment horizon. For one year, we were a little behind our peers, he said. For three and five years, we were a little ahead, at less risk. Schmitz cited a study by CEM Benchmarking that puts VRS in the top quartile among U.S. public pension systems for the value of investment returns over five years at a low cost. VRS investments have returned 5.2% over three years and 5.8% over five years still below the assumed 6.75% rate of return for setting rates but rises to 8.1% over 10 years. In all cases, Schmitz said the systems returns exceed the benchmarks that estimate how much investments should earn based on market conditions, regardless of internal management decisions. The investments are based on asset allocation studies performed every three years. The boards policy is to be more global, he said. The boards policy is to be [invested in] more private assets. For public policymakers, the central concern is the employer contribution rates they must reflect in the state budget and the funded status of the pension plans. After years of underfunding contribution rates, the General Assembly enacted a series of pension reforms in the past decade that commit the state to fully funding the rates requested by VRS to lower the systems unfunded liabilities and increase the funded status of the plans. Currently, the pension plan for state employees reflects $6.3 billion in unfunded liabilities, based on market values in mid-2019 (not actuarial values that smooth out highs and lows over five years). The funded status of the plan on June 30 was 71.6%, compared with 75.2% the previous year. The teacher plan had $12.8 billion in unfunded liabilities a year ago. Its funded status on June 30 was 70.9%, down from 74.1% a year ago. The VRS board of trustees and investment staff are focused on long-term outcomes, Chairman OKelly McWilliams said in a statement earlier this month. But despite its chilling past, the sprawling property has been bought at auction for 1.1m by a mystery buyer His company put Pencoed Castle near Newport, Wales up for sale for reduced price while he serves sentence Advertisement A castle dating back to the 16th century where a jealous millionaire tycoon murdered his escort girlfriend has been sold at auction for 1.1million. Millionaire property developer Peter Morgan, 58, strangled his lover Georgina Symonds, 25, in 2016 at the sprawling Pencoed Castle near Newport, Wales. But a mystery buyer splashed out 1.1million at auction for the property despite its chilling past. A sprawling castle estate (pictured) near Newport, Gwent, where a jealous millionaire tycoon strangled his 25-year-old escort girlfriend, has been sold at an auction for 1.1million Millionaire property developer Peter Morgan, 58, strangled his lover Georgina Symonds, 25, at the sprawling castle in 2016 Married Morgan - who paid 1.7million for Pencoed Castle - was jailed for a minimum of 25 years for strangling Georgina to death in the castle grounds. He launched the horrific attack after finding out escort Georgina was planning to get her hands on his 20million fortune. Georgina had been living at a bungalow in the grounds of her 'sugar daddy's' 16th century castle - which went under the hammer with Morgan behind bars. The sprawling Pencoed Castle in Llanmartin, near Newport, Gwent, was bought by Morgan for 1.7million after it was put up for sale for 2.5million in 2001. He dreamed of converting it into a luxury holiday home mixed with business units on the historic site. He previously said: 'There is no way we would consider splitting the castle into apartments it needs to be left as one.' Peter Morgan (left), 58, strangled former burlesque dancer Georgina Symonds (right), 25, at her rent-free bungalow in the grounds of Pencoed Castle in Llanmartin, south Wales The castle is pictured above from the outside. The sprawling Pencoed Castle in Llanmartin, near Newport, Gwent, was bought by Morgan for 1.7million after it was put up for sale for 2.5million in 2001 The historic inside is seen above. Peter Morgan dreamed of converting it into a luxury holiday home mixed with business units on the historic site The castle is pictured from the outside. Peter Morgan previously said: 'There is no way we would consider splitting the castle into apartments it needs to be left as one' The 16th century castle went under the hammer with Morgan behind bars. A mystery buyer splashed out 1.1million at auction for the property despite its chilling past Key moments in the millionaire's murder plot 2015 August - Miss Symonds moves into Castle Bungalow in Llanmartin, a property owned by Peter Morgan and his estranged wife Helen. November 9 - Morgan installs a listening device at the bungalow. November 15 - Peter Deem, the partner of Miss Symonds, goes missing after arguing with her in text messages. November 17 - Mr Deem's body is found. He has taken his own life by hanging. November 21 - Miss Symonds threatens to blackmail Morgan with intimate photographs and videos. December 11 - Miss Symonds meets Mr Deem's best friend, Thomas Ballinger, at his wake. They start an affair. 2016 January 10 - Miss Symonds and Mr Ballinger discuss her plans to blackmail Morgan, which Morgan overhears. January 11 3.19am - Morgan makes a list on his iPhone reading: 'String, 02, poly, glove, snip, handle, tape, Special K, starter, rag, adapter'. 10.56am - CCTV cameras at Beech Hill Farm, Morgan's marital home, show him collecting a metal pole and rope from a workshop. January 12 9.47am - Miss Symonds speaks to best friend Alexy Butcher for three minutes. Morgan arrives at the bungalow during the conversation. 11.38am - Morgan calls Miss Symonds' mother, Deborah, and raises concerns about her drug use. He has already strangled Miss Symonds. 11.57am - CCTV cameras show Morgan arriving at Beech Hill Farm in his Porsche Cayenne and parking near the workshop. 12.01pm - Morgan removes Miss Symonds' body - wrapped in polythene and tape - from the Porsche and carries it into the workshop, along with a black bag of her belongings. 12.09pm - Morgan leaves the farm. 3.15pm - Miss Symonds fails to collect her daughter from school and her mother is alerted. 5.30pm - Miss Butcher goes to the bungalow to look for Miss Symonds and meets Morgan there. 8.14pm - Miss Butcher reports Miss Symonds missing to Gwent Police. January 13 12am - Morgan accompanies police to Maindee police station. 4.45am - Morgan tells two detectives: 'I can't take it, I need to tell you. I strangled her this morning. I took her body to Beech Hill Farm. She is in the building there. I loved her so much.' 4.47am - Morgan is arrested on suspicion of murder. He tells detectives that Miss Symonds' body is locked in an outbuilding and hands over a set of keys. 6am - Police officers attend Beech Hill Farm and discover Miss Symonds' body and the bag containing her belongings. January 14 3.57pm - Morgan is charged with the murder of Miss Symonds. January 27 - Pathologist Dr Richard Jones carries out a post-mortem examination on Miss Symonds and concludes she was strangled. November 28 - Morgan goes on trial at Newport Crown Court accused of Miss Symonds' murder. December 21 - The jury finds Morgan guilty of murder. Advertisement Killer's grisly 'shopping list' Peter Morgan wrote a chilling shopping list of items he needed to carefully dispose of his escort lover's body, his murder trial heard. The millionaire businessman typed the list into his iPhone at 3.20am five hours after he tapped Georgina Symonds's phone and learned of her plot to fleece him. Written in the early hours after he became 'enraged' by her plans, the macabre list, entitled 'String', read: 'O2, poly, glove, snip, handle, tape, Special K, starter, rag, adapter.' Hours earlier Morgan had overheard Miss Symonds tell her new love interest Thomas Ballinger that she intended to leave the millionaire and go back to escorting in London, where she would continue to 'fleece' him. Prosecutors said that on January 12 2016 a day after he wrote the list Morgan took tape, twine, a metal pole and plastic sheeting to Miss Symonds's rural bungalow in Llanmartin, near Newport. He had also bought a mobile phone SIM card a day earlier, the jury heard, and told police officers that it was to call a taxi after dumping Miss Symonds's body. After strangling the mother of one with the twine, Morgan wrapped her body in sheeting and bound it with rope and tape. He had meticulously positioned her body so it would neatly fit inside the boot of his 52,000 Porsche Cayenne, the court heard. CCTV footage taken two hours later showed Morgan driving to an outbuilding at the farmhouse he had previously shared with his wife, before taking Miss Symonds's body wrapped in sheeting and attached to a bar out of the car. Advertisement But his plans crumbled after he started his affair with Ms Symonds - and it ended in tragedy. His company put the property up for sale for a reduced price while serving out his sentence - with a guide price of 950,000. But it was sold by auctioneers Alsopp for 1,110,000 after a flurry of late bids. The auctioneers said they could not reveal the buyer. Morgan was jailed at Newport Crown Court for the 2016 murder after he secretly bugged the castle bungalow to spy on Ms Symonds. He overheard how she planned to 'do him over' with a series of sex pictures at his home. The court heard Morgan was worth at least 20million and was 'obsessed' with Ms Symonds - calling himself her 'sugar daddy.' Two days after hearing her plot he confronted her and wrapped bailing twine around her neck to strangle her. He then took Ms Symonds in the boot of his 52,000 Porsche Cayenne to an outhouse at his Beech Hill Farm in Usk. When Georgina failed to pick her five-year-old daughter from school, her worried family and friends alerted police, who tracked her smartphone to Morgan's farm. He admitted killing her and told officers: 'I can't take it. I need to tell you I strangled her this morning. 'You'll need these keys - she's locked in the outhouse.' Morgan is listed at Companies House as owning more than 75 per cent of the company owning the castle. There is planning permission in place to restore the castle, convert the outbuildings to offices and develop 12 new dwellings. The auctioneers said the total area of the site is 64.8 acres. A spokesman said: 'Extensive Shops, Bars and Restaurants are located nearby in Newport and Newport Rail Station is situated eight miles to the west. 'The property has easy Access onto the M4 Motorway.' A team of palaeontologists have discovered what they believe is the world's oldest animal sperm, frozen in tree resin 100 million years ago inside a tiny crustacean in Myanmar. The oldest known examples of fossilised animal sperm were previously a mere 17 million years old, according to the team of experts led by Wang He of the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing. The sperms were found inside an ostracod -- a type of crustacean that has existed for 500 million years and can be found in many oceans today, they said in a paper published on Wednesday in the Royal Society's Proceedings journal. They were found in the body of a female specimen, indicating that she must have been fertilised shortly before being trapped in amber, the experts said. The individual sperms were described as "giants", measuring up to 4.6 times the size of the body of the male. "This is equivalent to about 7.30 metres (24 feet) in a 1.70-metre human, so it requires a lot of energy to produce them," Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, co-author of the study, told AFP. The ostracod was also a new species that the scientists have named "Myanmarcypris hui". 'Eureka moment' Fossilised shells of ostracods are common but finding a specimen with "soft parts" is rare, the experts said. During the Cretaceous period around 145 to 66 million years ago, the ostracods in question probably lived in the coastal waters of present-day Myanmar where they became trapped in a blob of tree resin. The specimen was handed over to researchers by a Chinese collector in 2017. The tiny creatures are less than a millimetre long but the scientists made 3-D reconstructions of them to observe them more closely, leading to what Wang described as "one of those special Eureka moments in a researcher's life". As well as the sperm, the reconstructions also showed the distinctive muscular sperm pumps and penises (two of each) that male ostracods use to inseminate the females. "This specimen allowed us to confirm our hypothesis that such giant sperm cells existed 100 million years ago," Matzke-Karasz said. Until now, this theory had been based on the discovery in 2009 of large genital organs in the crustaceans, which suggested the existence of correspondingly large sperms. Most males in the animal world including humans produce tens of millions of tiny sperm cells, but ostracods are different -- for them, it's all about quality over quantity. There are several conflicting theories about the evolutionary value of such giant sperms. "For example, experiments have shown that in one group, a high degree of competition between males can lead to a longer sperm life, while in another group, a low degree of competition also led to a longer sperm life," said Matzke-Karasz. 'Co-evolution' The researcher believes the giant sperm are a sign of good health on the part of the males, a characteristic "favoured" by the females, whose genitals evolved to accommodate them in an example of "co-evolution". "Given that many ostracods can reproduce parthenogenetically, without the need for males, sexual reproduction with giant sperm cells must have a clear advantage over asexual reproduction," Matzke-Karasz said. "To show that using giant sperms in reproduction is not an extinction-doomed extravagance of evolution, but a serious long-term advantage for the survival of a species, we need to know when they first appeared." Scientists have been researching the amber of Myanmar for decades, finding all kinds of frozen treasures including frogs, snakes and a feathered dinosaur tail. Minister for Jobs, Investment and Tourism Stuart Ayres said "every time we make changes about one of these restrictions it allows more people to get back to work, but the public must remain vigilant about following social distancing instructions. Outdoor stadiums, such as ANZ, will be allowed to be filled to 50 per cent capacity. Credit:Getty Images Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said the stadiums would use a checkerboard seating pattern to separate spectators who are not in the same close-contact groups to limit the risk of aerosol and droplet transmission. Mr Ayres said spectators moving around the stadium without face masks will be asked to leave. He said more work needed to be done between NSW Health and smaller venue operators to allow them to increase their crowd capacity, including Penrith Stadium, McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, the Ken Rosewall Arena in Sydney Olympic Park, and Windsor Stadium in Wollongong. Health Minister Brad Hazzard said, from today, life has returned to normal for NSW and Victorian border bubble communities. People can now go to their favourite restaurants, go to their favourite clubs, do whatever they want to do, but with the proviso: we are still in a COVID environment, Mr Hazzard said. Previously Victorians could only cross into the NSW side of the bubble for four reasons: employment, education, health and care. Among the new cases reported today, one is a healthcare worker from the Concord Emergency Department, taking the Liverpool-Concord hospitals cluster to 21 cases, including eight staff. The newest case was in isolation while infectious. Another new case attended the Eastern Suburbs Legion Club, taking that cluster to nine cases. The individual was in isolation while infectious. Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the restrictions on stadiums would be relaxed Credit:Rhett Wyman The locally acquired case with no known source reported today is from a border community in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District and tested positive in Victoria. A subsequent test on the person has produced a negative result, but NSW Health is taking a cautious approach and asking the individual and close contacts to remain in isolation, while further testing is undertaken. Anyone who attended the Five Stars Thaitanic, Casula on Saturday 12 September from 4.20pm to 5.20pm is considered a casual contact and must monitor for symptoms and get tested immediately if they develop. After testing, they must remain in isolation until a negative test result is received. More than 20,000 tests were conducted in the last 24 hour reporting period, a sign testing rates were starting to creep back up in NSW after more than two weeks of low testing numbers. On Thursday morning Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected reports suggesting the medical expert group leading Australia's pandemic response had settled on a clear definition of a "COVID hotspot" after a draft proposal from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee was leaked. The document outlined three categories of geographical areas - COVID-Free Zones, COVID-Controlled Zones, and COVID-Community Transmission Zones (hotspots) - to guide decisions about when to open and close borders. "I think those reports are overstated," Mr Morrison said. "I'm not expecting a lot of progress on that by Friday," when the national cabinet will next meet. "The Commonwealth has its hotspot definition. I think that's a sensible definition. I think if other states want to have more extreme definitions then that's up to them ultimately," he said. The Commonwealth's definition differs substantially from the hotspot category outlined by the AHPPC, which is more vague. The Commonwealth defines a hotspot as more than 30 locally acquired cases over three consecutive days in metropolitan areas and nine cases in three consecutive days for rural or regional areas. Loading The AHPPC defines hotspot as an area where the virus is spreading through the community, cases are locally acquired from an unknown source, and "a proportion" of these cases had no known source in the previous 28 days. Queensland's Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles said he was "disappointed" Mr Morrison had rejected the draft definition for a hotspot trigger. "If you are going to take the advice of the experts, if you are going to have experts, then you have to at least consider their advice," Mr Miles said. AIRDRIE, AB, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Cycle Energy Industries Inc. (OTC: XFLS) announced today it continues to push its technology towards commercialization which includes its Non Thermal Plasmatron, the front-end reformer of the company's Gas to Liquid system and the upcoming blue hydrogen market being initiated by the Canadian government in Alberta would make Cycle Energy's Non Thermal Plasmatron an ideal fit according to Michael McLaren, CEO of Cycle Energy Industries Inc. A recent Reuters article stated Alberta is looking to develop a blue hydrogen strategy to replace Natural gas in the extraction process for steam drive oil sands sites. Blue Hydrogen is hydrogen derived from natural gas where the hydrogen is recovered, and the carbon can be captures and stored. The Article quoted Dale McNally the Honorable minster of Natural Gas for Alberta as saying they will announce a strategy no later than October of this year to develop "Blue Hydrogen" as an alternative to natural gas in this process. Using blue Hydrogen as a feedstock for steam driven extraction will allow Alberta to produce more oil without exceeding the carbon limits. "This is exciting news for our NT Plasmatron technology which we believe is the perfect technology to meet the needs of this market," said McLaren. "Our electrical driven technology is more robust and reliable than traditional steam reforming technologies. It's also far more cost effective and deployable than the alternative. By using internal production of gas we are able to add value by turning the gas into valuable chemicals and C5+ hydrocarbons at a multiple of 3x-4x which is extraordinary in our industry." McLaren also said Cycle Energy technologies has recently competed is proprietary power supply for the NT Plasmatron that will revolutionize reforming technology with intelligent control of the process. In addition, the aforementioned Reuters article stated "the federal government's draft plan three years in the making says several provinces could produce hydrogen, some using renewable energy, and by 2050 the industry could create 100,000 jobs, generate more than C$5 billion in annual revenue and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 100 megatonnes." About Cycle Energy Industries Cycle Energy Industries a Canadian corporation based in the province of Alberta, is a unique energy provider that operates three vertically integrated business units in the WCSB (Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin). We have created a vertically integrated company where each subsidiary creates value and adds support to the other. Cycle Oil and Gas focuses on acquiring & optimizing underdeveloped oil & gas assets and to employs in-house developed & licensed technologies to increase production, optimize performance & reduce costs. The company currently produces approximately 100 barrels/day of oil as well as several non-operational properties and GORRS(Gross Overriding Royalties). Cycle Energy Services supports our Exploration and Production (E&P) team with well services and end of life reclamation which gives the E&P company an unprecedented advantage over its competitors. This business plan excels by providing services that would otherwise be too costly and not financially viable for specific workovers or turn around projects. Cycle Energy Services owns and operates combo wireline-service rigs and Hydrovac Units. The focus of Cycle Energy Services is primarily end of life abandonment and reclamation of non-producing assets. The company excels by supplying fixed cost services via our custom rigs and equipment that results in reduced time onsite, faster rig in and rig out times as well as reduced number of vehicles onsite. Cycle's efficiencies reduce the amount of fuel burned to complete the abandonment and reduces the carbon footprint to abandon wells. Cycle Energy Technologies provides both with R&D capabilities as well as previously developed and licensed technologies that aid in increased production, reduced lifting and operation costs as well as gas and oil field intelligence. Cycle Energy Technologies flag ship technology is our mobile GTL (gas to liquid) system we have been developing and is currently implementing a pilot plant. This technology adds value added to the group by using internal production of gas and adding value by turning it into valuable chemicals and C5+ hydrocarbons as a 3-4x multiple which is industry groundbreaking. Safe Harbor This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Cycle Energy Industries Inc., its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Cycle Energy Industries Inc.'s ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in Cycle Energy Industries Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For further information please contact: Cycle Energy Industries Inc. Public Relations and Shareholder Information Mike McLaren +1-403-879-2998 Email: [email protected] www.cycleind.com Twitter @cycleindustries SOURCE Cycle Energy Industries Inc. Related Links https://cycleind.com CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- RLDatix, the leading global provider of intelligent patient safety solutions, today announced several initiatives that align with the World Health Organization's (WHO's) World Patient Safety Day. RLDatix's campaign, "The Person Behind the Mask," highlights frontline health workersand the administrators who support themin the critical and often unsung roles they play in delivering safe care. The campaign is focused on increasing awareness for WHO's call to speak up for health worker safety and features health workers from around the world talking about their experiences and the links between health worker safety and patient safety. "Our customers are doing amazing things every day to help keep patients safe, even if it means risking their own health to deliver care to those who need it," said Jeff Surges, CEO of RLDatix. "A vital component of our recently announced Applied Safety Intelligence framework is ensuring the wellbeing of caregivers, something that is even more critical given the impact of COVID-19. With this awareness campaign, we're honoring the commitment of health workers around the world and speaking up for their safety." World Patient Safety Day was established by the World Health Assembly in May 2019 and received an endorsement for the day to be marked annually on Sept. 17. According to WHO's website: "The overall objectives of World Patient Safety Day are to enhance global understanding of patient safety, increase public engagement in the safety of health care and promote global actions to enhance patient safety and reduce patient harm." Following are a few of the additional industry and corporate awareness campaigns RLDatix has participated in or is undertaking to support World Patient Safety Day: RLDatix co-convened a virtual event on Sept. 10 with Sovereign Sustainability & Development and the Saudi Patient Safety Center entitled "COVID-19 and Beyond: Delivering Safety for the Patient and Care for the Caregiver." It featured medical professionals and government officials from the United States , Saudi Arabia , the United Kingdom , Germany , Italy , and South Africa , among others, and focused on how the pandemic has amplified the need for health worker safety. At the conclusion of the event, a call to action was issued to place patient safety and care for caregivers at the heart of the international response to COVID-19. with Sovereign Sustainability & Development and the Saudi Patient Safety Center entitled "COVID-19 and Beyond: Delivering Safety for the Patient and Care for the Caregiver." It featured medical professionals and government officials from , , the , , , and , among others, and focused on how the pandemic has amplified the need for health worker safety. At the conclusion of the event, a call to action was issued to place patient safety and care for caregivers at the heart of the international response to COVID-19. On Sept. 17 , https://bit.ly/2E5wtD6Dr. Tim McDonald , JD, MD and RLDatix Chief Patient Safety & Risk Officer will participate via video in the Patient Safety Movement Foundation's (PSMF) #uniteforsafecare campaign where he will discuss the importance of health worker safety. , https://bit.ly/2E5wtD6Dr. , JD, MD and RLDatix Chief Patient Safety & Risk Officer will participate via video in the Patient Safety Movement Foundation's (PSMF) #uniteforsafecare campaign where he will discuss the importance of health worker safety. Increased corporate responsibility and participation in PSMF's "Walk for Patient Safety Awareness," whereby RLDatix employees are participating Sept. 8-17 by tracking their miles walked to contribute to PSMF's goal of 200,000 miles. "We know that health worker safety is inextricably linked to patient safety," continued Surges. "The current pandemic has impacted everyone around the world, and at the front lines have been health workers prepared to care for those who need it. We want to use our campaign to thank them, reinforce the need to keep them well, and acknowledge the important work they do in delivering safe care." RLDatix's "The Person Behind the Mask" campaign website can be found at rldatix.com/behindthemask. About RLDatix RLDatix is on a mission to change healthcare. We help organizations drive safer, more efficient care by providing governance, risk and compliance tools that drive overall improvement and safety. Our suite of cloud-based software helps organizations report on adverse events, reduce healthcare-acquired infections and ensure patient safety learnings are implemented across the continuum of care. With over 3,500 customers in 19 countries, RLDatix software protects hundreds of millions of patients around the world. For more information, visit www.rldatix.com. Media Contacts: Mike Etzinger VP, Marketing [email protected] Christopher Currington Amendola Communications for RLDatix 314.799.1987 [email protected] SOURCE RLDatix Related Links https://rldatix.com/en-nam Donald Trump President Donald Trump greets supporters following a Fox News Town Hall event with moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on March 05, 2020 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Among other topics, President Trump discussed his administration's response to the Coronavirus and the economy. Spencer Platt/Getty Images As the administration faced doubts about the integrity of its approval process for a coronavirus vaccine, President Donald Trump went on the attack Wednesday against CDC Director Robert Redfield's claims on the topic in a congressional hearing. Trump contradicted Redfield's remarks about the timeline for distributing the vaccine, saying one should be approved in October or November and distributed rapidly and widely thereafter. He also disputed Redfield's claim that a mask could be more protective against catching the coronavirus than a vaccine. There's no reason to believe Trump has superior knowledge over his administration's own experts instead, it's much more likely that he is intentionally lying about the vaccine's potential for his own political advantage. He has made it clear that he wants to see a vaccine approved before the November election, which has triggered fears that the administration will inappropriately and dangerously allow these political considerations to shape the approval process. Trump and his aides have already been steering and reshaping the administration's actions and messaging on the coronavirus to reflect his preferred rhetoric rather than the science. Redfield told Congress on Thursday that a vaccine may be approved by the end of the year, but it will only be available at that time for a narrow group of people. "There will be a vaccine that will initially be available sometime between November and December, but very limited supply and will have to be prioritized," he told lawmakers. "If you're asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we're probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter 2021." Story continues He also stressed why a mask can be superior to a vaccine: "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will." But Trump didn't like these answers, telling reporters Wednesday evening that Redfield was "confused" even though his answers were clear and straightforward. "I think he made a mistake when he said that," Trump said. "It's just incorrect information." He added: "As far as the mask is concerned, he made a mistake." Trump tried to cast doubt on the usefulness of masks, saying they have "problems" too. While this was initially claimed by public health experts, the scientific consensus has now decisively shifted toward the conclusion that masks are one of the best tools for preventing spread of the virus. By refusing to acknowledge that, Trump is helping the virus spread. A reporter pushed back on Trump's contradictions of the CDC director, and the president lashed out. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1306356960590143489 "I told you I don't have to go through this," Trump said. "I think he misunderstood the questions. But I'm telling you, here's the bottom line: Distribution's going to be very rapid. He may not know that." "Under no circumstances will it be as late as the doctor said," he claimed. Dr. Scott Atlas, a new coronavirus adviser Trump brought on because he's an ideological ally, appeared at the press conference and tried to lend support to the president's distortions. But in fact, he contradicted the president. While Trump said the vaccine would "immediately" get "full" distribution as soon as it was approved, Atlas acknowledged that high-risk groups would be prioritized first. (Though it should be clear that all of this remains hypothetical because no vaccine has yet been approved, even though experts are hopeful.) Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been saying he's concerned about the politicization of science but would trust expert opinion on vaccines, responded to Trump's dangerous attack on the CDC: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1306357192262590467 Related Articles Dr. Ladson-Billings Earns 2020 NNPA Leadership in Education Award When the coronavirus pandemic finally ends, America will require a hard reset, not a return to normal, said Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, a pedagogical theorist, and educator. Dr. Ladson-Billings also serves as president of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Educational Research Association. A recipient of this years National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) 2020 Leadership Award in Education, Dr. Ladson-Billings said shes working hard to spread the word about African Americans importance participating in the Census and the November elections. ADVERTISEMENT She also touted the importance of the Black Press and teaching African American history in schools. It shouldnt be an option, Dr. Ladson-Billings said about Black history courses being taught in public schools. Theres no way to understand this nations founding and economic prosperity without taking the courses. A noted author and former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education and faculty affiliate emeritus in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Dr. Ladson-Billings recounted a conversation she had with a White man in Massachusetts about just how important the contributions of African Americans are. I was standing outside a reception, and a man was bragging about how enlightened Massachusetts is, Dr. Ladson-Billings recalled. We were standing on the Merrimack River where old buildings had been converted to condos, and I asked the man what the buildings before they were condos. He said they were mills, that this is a mill town. Dr. Ladson-Billings challenged the man. ADVERTISEMENT I asked, what were they milling? He said, cotton. So, I said, where did yall get cotton? My question was to show him not to get on his high horse because all of this stuff they have was built on Black peoples backs. So many people want to say that everyone contributed, but there are some whose contributions are foundational. I do an exercise where I ask if you could imagine Black people just now coming to America like current immigrants, and theres no slavery or no Jim Crow. I ask, what kind of America would you find? So, when you tell Black people to go back to Africa, I say, we are taking all of our stuff, our culture, our music, our work, and where does that leave America? Dr. Ladson-Billings noted the devastation that the coronavirus has had on African Americans. She said Black people have four pandemics theyre currently experiencing. We have COVID, we have anti-Black, we have the very tenuous economy and we have the climate catastrophe, said Dr. Ladson-Billings. We keep saying its global warming, but we saw what has happened in Louisiana with the hurricane, and they are more frequent. This generation is trying to come into their adulthood, and, on the one hand, we talk about doom and gloom, but I also see it as an opportunity to reset. Dr. Ladson-Billings continued: Far too many people keep talking about how to get back or return to normal without understanding there can be no return to normal with the level of devastation this virus has wreaked upon the world and particularly Black people. A hard reset for this society means we have to first and foremost, forgive all debt that has accumulated during the pandemic. Debt that continued during the pandemic like student loans, car loans, mortgage debt, and credit card debt must be forgiven. Next, in education, a hard reset means we do not penalize students for conditions beyond their control. We must ignore the test scores and grades coming out of the pandemic. We all need a clean slate and a fresh start. There is no going back. There is only going forward, and we need to go forward with as much equity and justice as we can muster. We do not need to try to test our way to equity or penalize people for the devastation that was visited upon them. The author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, Dr. Ladson-Billings also serves as chair at the National Urban League. Recently, she helped to host the Urban Leagues Unity Picnic. This years event saw volunteers like Dr. Ladson-Billings handing out barbecue dinners. Because of the pandemic, it was just a drive-thru event this year, but the first question we asked people was, are you registered to vote, and have you completed the Census? If they didnt, we had a table set up for voter registration and the Census and directed them to the table and, after they had done that, then we told them to come back and pick up their plates, Dr. Ladson-Billings said. More than any other, this election cycle has seen the need for more fact-checkers, and its also seen less objective reporting by mainstream media, Dr. Ladson-Billings noted. She added that the police shootings of unarmed African Americans are reasons for accurate reporting. All of that, she said, underscores the importance of the Black Press. I heard [comedian] Chris Rock say it best. He talked about how people like to say that theres always a bad apple. Well, there are places where you cant afford to have bad apples. Imagine an airline saying of pilots, we have some bad apples. That would mean a lot of plane crashes and a lot of lives lost. We cant have bad apples among the police, Dr. Landson-Billings charged. She continued: We have data to show Black people have another viewpoint. If you look at Black and White kids in the same classroom, White kids believe the textbooks to be reliable and accurate while Black kids will say, no, my grandparents didnt relate it that way. The Black Press is so important. Look at the city of Chicago. The migration from Mississippi to Chicago was in large part due to the Chicago Defender. People could read in that newspaper that there were jobs available, and Black people were buying homes. It wasnt paradise, but it wasnt Mississippi. @StacyBrownMedia @NNPA_BlackPress @DrBenChavis @KarenCarterRich Srinagar, Sep 17 : Jammu and Kashmir's Director General Police (DGP) Dilbag Singh on Thursday said 16 terrorists have been killed in seven operations in Srinagar district this year so far, including Hizbul Mujahideen commander Junaid Sehrai. Addressing a press conference in Srinagar, he said based on the specific information police and the CRPF launched an operation in Batmaloo on Thursday in which three terrorists were killed. He said a Deputy Commandant of the CRPF leading the operation was injured while a woman, Kausar Riyaz, was killed in the exchange of fire. "Her death is an unfortunate loss, I express sympathy with the family of the deceased," he said. Giving details about the anti-terror operations in Srinagar, the DGP said so far this year 16 terrorists have been killed in seven operations in the city, including a top commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Juniad Sehrai. "Five of the 16 terrorists killed this year belonged to Srinagar while the rest of them were from other districts," he said. He said as compared to last year, 2020 was a successful year for the security forces in J&K. "72 anti-terror operations have been carried out this year in which 177 terrorists were killed, including 12 in the Jammu region," he said. He said of the 177 terrorists killed, 22 were foreign terrorists. "This shows the involvement of Pakistan in fomenting terrorism in Kashmir," the DGP said. He said Pakistan is making efforts to revive terror outfits like Al Badr and float new terror ones. "Most of the terrorist activities are planned and executed by the Pakistani agencies in Karachi," he said. He said 20 persons who had earlier joined terrorism have shunned violence and joined their families. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The ruling New Patriotic Party says the Akufo-Addo administration is committed to phasing out okadas in contrast to the promise of the opposition National Democratic Congress to legalise and regulate commercial motorbike. Speaking on Eyewitness News, the Partys Communications Director, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, said the administrations plan for the transport sector will cater adequately for okada riders. Mr Asamoa was speaking after the Vice President revealed the government's proposed alternative to offer new cars to the okada operators for them to make a living from. He stressed that the government was seeking to provide more safety, more comfort, more reliability. We have a progressive transport plan inclined towards improved safety of the commercial sector of our public transport system. It is a progressive process. We are opening up the country. We are putting out the roads. We are building an integrated automotive centre that vastly improves commercial transportation in this country, Mr Asamoa explained. Mr. Asamoa assured that the NPP government had the best interests of the okada riders at heart reminding that in spite of the existing law, we are still tolerating them. This plan for okadas is part of a bigger plan for revamping public transport, he said. We are intent on changing the dynamics in public transportation and we have a plan and that is a plan we are going to implement and it depends on the integrated industry which creates jobs and products outputs that can be adapted specifically to our roads. NPPs alternative for okadas Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia explained that the governments alternative will see an offer of new cars to okada operators on a lease basis in order for them to carry out their activities in a much safer manner. Speaking at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Volkswagon and BlackIvy for the production of affordable vehicles and houses for Ghanaians, the Vice President said this was a better option than the legalisation of okadas. Despite okada rivers welcoming the promise to legalise their work, Dr Bawumia insists that the government will not succumb to any pressure to amend the law. ---citinewsroom Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee during a hearing about 'worldwide threats to the homeland' in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 17, 2020. WASHINGTON FBI Director Christopher Wray warned lawmakers Thursday that Russia is actively interfering in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by spreading misinformation about Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Wray described Russian efforts as a "steady drumbeat of misinformation" that he said could undercut American voters' confidence in the democratic process. "I think the intelligence community's consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections," Wray told the Democratic-led House Homeland Security Committee, adding that the FBI found similarities in Russian behavior against the backdrop of the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow acted to undermine then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in order to help then-Republican nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Trump and Russia deny that Moscow's involvement affected the outcome in 2016. "We certainly have seen very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 through what I would call more the malign foreign influence side of things like social media, use of proxies, state media, online journals," Wray said, adding that the Russians are particularly focused on smearing Biden because they view him as "kind of an anti-Russian establishment." The latest warning comes less than 50 days before Election Day, although voters have already begun voting early through mail and other means. On Thursday, Trump bristled at the mail-in ballot process on Twitter saying "the Nov. 3rd election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED." "Another election disaster yesterday. Stop Ballot Madness!," Trump tweeted. In August, the nation's top U.S. counterintelligence official warned in a rare public statement that Russia, China and Iran were all trying to influence the Nov. 3 election through a slew of methods. "Foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process," William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in an Aug. 7 statement. "They may also seek to compromise our election infrastructure for a range of possible purposes, such as interfering with the voting process, stealing sensitive data, or calling into question the validity of the election results," the statement added. Dubais Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) has formed a new Business Events Stakeholders Committee, reinforcing its commitment to engaging with the industry and re-establishing its place at the heart of Dubais economic growth and development as a knowledge hub. Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of Dubai Tourism, chaired the committees inaugural meeting on September 14 at Dubai World Trade Centre, updating members on the latest progress in reactivating the sector in the aftermath of the global Covid-19 pandemic and facilitating discussions around opportunities and challenges. Comprising key industry stakeholders, the committee, which will meet regularly throughout the year, provides a platform for two-way dialogue around the continuous strategic and operational development of Dubais competitive position as a host city for international business events. Among the participants in the inaugural session were senior officials from airlines, venues, hotels, destination management companies (DMCs) and professional congress organisers (PCOs). Organisations represented included Emirates, Dubai World Trade Centre, Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts, Alpha Destination Management, MCI Middle East and Expo 2020 Dubai. Enabled by clear guidelines from Dubai Tourism and an aligned approach taken by stakeholders across the public and private sectors, the industry is looking to rapidly and safely rescale, with local business events resuming on September 15 and international business events set to return from October 1. Upcoming events in the city include The Airport Show (October 26-28), Annual Radiology Meeting (November 1-3) and Cityscapes 2020 Real Estate Summit (November 16-17). Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of Dubai Tourism, said: Guided by the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and the follow up of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, Dubai has steadily reopened key economic sectors, building on the support that was provided throughout the pandemic and the measures put in place to minimise its impact. In line with this, we have been working closely with industry stakeholders to ensure a framework is in place to resume business events that can be best-in-class while at the same time prioritising the health and safety of all participants. The formation of this committee underlines the collaborative approach we have sought to take across all our activities and in relation to all the tourism sub-sectors, and reinforces our commitment to supporting our stakeholders and ensuring Dubai leads the global post-pandemic recovery. Business events play a critical role in driving economic development and knowledge growth in Dubai and, with the citys status as the Middle Easts undisputed hub for conferences, exhibitions and meetings, the resumption of activity here will have an impact on the wider region. Underpinning the resumption of business events this month are guidelines for organisers and venues that prioritise the health and safety of all parties involved, while at the same time facilitating the meetings, conversations, networking and learning opportunities that attendees seek. These complement the measures already in place across other touchpoints across the city, including airports, hotels, attractions and dining establishments that have already paved the way for the resumption of tourism since July 7. Linda Lewis, Vice President of Global Sales Middle East and Asia Pacific at Jumeirah Group, said: It is an honour to participate in the inaugural meeting of the Business Events Stakeholders Committee. Jumeirah Group welcomes the formation of such an entity, as it reinforces the immense support that Dubais Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing provides to our industry through a diverse calendar of business events. Collaborative efforts of this scale and nature will undoubtedly support the ongoing recovery of the hospitality industry, as a platform to meet new industry players, reconnect with peers, and share insights and best practices to ensure we move forward as strongly as possible. Ajay Bhojwani, Managing Director, MCI Middle East, said: As the economy continues to open, allowing the MICE and live events sector to resume activities and start holding events again, it is imperative that it is done in the best possible manner with compete health and safety regulations in place and followed by every single stakeholder in the industry. Hence, this initiative of having one voice and bringing all stakeholders together by Dubai Business Events is timely and perfect to ensure all key players are aligned and working together to build confidence that events can be run in a smooth manner with the best possible experience still being delivered. The tourism and MICE sector is an integral contributor to the economy of Dubai and to ensure this continues to grow and move forward, an aligned vision and working collectively will be a major ingredient for success as we all strive to re-build the sector. Samir Hamadeh, General Manager, Alpha Destination Management, said: Id like to thank Dubai Business Events for this initiative and for gathering these industry professionals who can work collectively as a team to promote Dubai as a safe destination that is ready to welcome meetings and business events. Conducting this face-to-face event is in itself a message to the world that Dubai is on track for recovery. We all have to start somewhere, and I believe the discussions held today and the initiatives we will all implement, can help speed up the recovery and can help us be the first winners. TradeArabia News Service A movement opposing Guinean President Alpha Conde's controversial bid for a third term in elections next month announced Wednesday that it would stage a new round of protests from late September. "Our citizens' movement calls on the population of Conakry and the surrounding area to join a series of peaceful marches, starting on Tuesday September 29, 2020, to demand Mr. Alpha Conde's departure," said one of its leaders, Abdourahmane Sanoh. "The people of Guinea are urged to mobilise massively, in the greatest civic responsibility... to block" Conde, he said. He described the 82-year-old president as a "dictator... whose sole ambition today is to stay in power for the rest of his life." Deadly clashes erupted in the West African state last October, claiming several dozen lives, over Conde's plans. He is contesting the October 18 polls despite accusations of sidestepping limits on presidential terms by pushing through changes to the constitution. Guinea is one of Africa's most volatile countries, enjoying little stability between coups since independence from France in 1958. Ban on public gatherings Conde is a former opposition figure who was jailed under previous regimes. He became the country's first democratically elected president in 2010 and was re-elected for a second time in 2015. Guinea. By Gillian HANDYSIDE (AFP) But critics say he has become increasingly authoritarian, resorting to crackdowns to quell dissent and pushing through changes to the constitution, validated in a referendum, that he argues has reset the two-term counter to zero. Sanoh, whose statement was issued in the name of an anti-Conde coalition called the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), said a third term would be "illegal and illegitimate". Twelve candidates have been authorised to take part in the elections. The announcement of the protests came just hours after Conde declared that anti-coronavirus measures imposed in March, which include restrictions on public gatherings, would be extended for another month. Guinea has officially declared 10,111 coronavirus cases and 63 deaths. The extended state of emergency bans gatherings of more than 100 people, making it likely the fresh demonstrations will be declared illegal. Authorities have cited the ban as they have met protests in recent months with a ruthless crackdown. Human rights defenders and the opposition have accused the authorities of using the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to repress protests and political rallies ahead of the presidential election. The ban has not prevented supporters of the government from holding rallies in recent days, however. Meanwhile the leading UFDG opposition party held a successful convention to nominate its candidate, former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, last week. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-15 04:47:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close QUITO, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador on Monday lifted pandemic lockdown restrictions designed to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), including a nighttime curfew and ban on social gatherings. The changes came as a nationwide state of emergency decreed on Feb. 29 in response to the health crisis expired at midnight. Safety and social distancing measures, such as the use of face masks and hand sanitizers, remain in place. As part of this "new normal" phase, local governments will be in charge of monitoring their outbreaks and adopting restrictions if there is a rise in infections. The Ministry of Public Health on Monday said tests detected 317 new cases of infection in the previous 24 hours and 19 more deaths from the virus, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 118,911 and the death toll to 7,138, since the start of the outbreak. Another 3,784 deaths are likely to have been caused by COVID-19, but have not been verified, according to the ministry. Enditem Good morning. This is a look at our daily Express Briefing newsletter. Sign up for Express Briefing here. Subscribers get access to the full version of our Express Briefing newsletter, which includes exclusive insight and links to more of our best stories. To become a subscriber, take advantage of this special offer today. TOP STORIES Bob Owen, STAFF-photographer / Staff photographer The bridge connecting Matamoros to Brownsville used to be a symbol of hope for thousands of asylum-seekers. They made an encampment of tarp and garbage bags right next to it, their tents often facing the Rio Grande and the United States. But with court hearings postponed amid the pandemic, a lack of U.S. immigration lawyers in northern Mexico, fear of kidnapping and a recent hurricane, the migrants in Matamoros and all along the border have the slimmest of chances of getting into the U.S. Of the nearly 72,000 migrants whose cases are complete, only 525 of them - less than 1 percent - were granted asylum or another form of relief. Silvia Foster-Frau dives deeper into the numbers with this update from the border. Express-News file photo San Antonio tech entrepreneur Graham Weston is spearheading the private funding of an improved way to test for the coronavirus, seeking FDA approval with plans to demonstrate it by regularly testing all students and employees of a rural Southwest Bexar County school system. Somerset Independent School District will play host to a pilot program that backers of the new test hope will establish it as a cheap, fast and accurate option for all kinds of organizations, not just schools, sources with knowledge of the effort said. The pilot program would test students and teachers twice a week, Bexar County Commissioner Sergio Chico Rodriguez said, and the test was described as highly accurate, with a 24-hour turnaround time for results. Read more about the tests and the plan here. NEED TO KNOW Bob Owen /San Antonio Express-News THE FUN STUFF Paul Stephen / Staff Home cooks in the 1950s knew a few things that still resonate today, especially considering the scarcity and uncertainty were all facing with the coronavirus pandemic. Here are four recipes that are lighter in calories and easier on the wallet while remaining flavorful and entertaining. Common critters: This week, Rene A. Guzman teaches you how to love the common house rat or at least hate it a little less. Books: San Antonio-based writer Rudy Ruiz debut novel, The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez, charts a mans long quest to win back the heart of the woman he loves. Restaurants: The husband-and-wife team of Jerry Gonzales and Siwaporn Archariya is launching a new Thai delivery and curbside restaurant Friday called Hew by Akhanay Coffee Roasters. CHECK OUT OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS SA Inc.: Get local business news updates from behind the scenes, delivered twice a week. Texas Take: The latest in state, local and national politics, delivered every weekday morning. Real Estate: Get a sneak peek of luxe San Antonio properties, local market trends and homebuying/selling tips. Poor infection control practices including not wearing masks, insufficient physical distancing and poor hand hygiene and personal gatherings are at the heart of the biggest daily spike in COVID-19 cases in Niagara in nearly two months, says Niagaras top public health official. The public health department confirmed 12 new novel coronavirus infections Thursday, the largest single-day increase since July 21. Unlike that spike, however, none of Thursdays cases are connected to an institutional outbreak. There is no particular pattern in terms of where these cases are coming from, said Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara Regions acting medical officer of health. While the new cases are unconnected, Hirji said public health investigators have found a common theme people were not following infection control measures. Three of the 12 cases are linked to previously known infections, he said. One case involved someone in a household being infected by another family member in a case where masks and distancing were not being used. A second case involved a personal gathering that did not use masks or distancing and a third is a workplace infection. Hirji said the workplace case is a person who wore a mask, but worked closely with other people and did not distance from them. Five other cases under investigation by public health contact tracers involve people who were at personal gatherings. They were not wearing masks. They say they were distancing, but at this point we dont know how reliable that is, Hirji said. They may have hand sanitizing here or there, but it does not appear to be consistent. Four other cases have no known source of infection. This is a reminder that no single measure will protect you from COVID-19, Hirji said. The message I would have for everyone is that we really do have to police ourselves if we want to avoid the province coming in and imposing small gatherings or other restrictions. On Thursday, Premier Doug Ford announced new restrictions on gatherings in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa after gatherings were identified as the source of a wave of new infections. Indoor gatherings in those cities have been reduced to 10 from 50 and outdoor gatherings to 25 from 100. When you spread COVID, thats a very serious crime, said Ford. For what? A few hours of partying. Its not worth it. Hirji said it is not clear if Thursdays total represents the start of a significant trend. There had been a slight climb in the average daily case count from just more than one to about three in recent weeks. Household transmission of the novel coronavirus fuelled much of that rise rather than personal gatherings. Thursdays cases, which brings Niagaras total COVID-19 case count to 985, comprise the first recent cluster of cases linked to personal gatherings that involved lax infection control practices. The province has not disclosed what data it uses to determine if new restrictions will be imposed on a region to control a rise in COVID-19 infections. However, Hirji said a region-by-region approach may be the best way to handle flare-ups because it will allow unaffected communities to continue its current level of economic and social activity. However, Hirji said if Niagaras cases continue to climb, it seems clear Ford has no qualms about imposing further restrictions. We dont want to be the next Toronto, Peel or Ottawa, said Hirji, who again urged residents to practise physical distancing of two metres, wear masks and frequently wash or sanitize their hands. When used in conjunction, these measures will keep the infection rate low, he said. Niagaras rise in cases prompted the head of the local hospital system to urge residents not to become complacent about limiting the spread of COVID-19. In a statement Thursday, Niagara Health president Lynn Guerriero said hospitals have fully returned to their pre-pandemic level of service because of the regions low number of cases. There is no one being treated at local hospitals for COVID-19. Guerriero said the hospital system can only function normally if the infection rate stays low. We need the communitys unwavering support to keep the transmission of the virus down in the community. This means adhering at all times to the important public health measures that were so instrumental in Niagaras response to combatting the first wave of COVID-19 masking, physical distancing and hand washing. We know more about this virus than we did in March. We know how it spreads, and we know it can be controlled with this bundled approach, Guerriero said in the statement. We do not want to be in a position in which we need to ramp down hospital services or limit access to visitors again. We know there is pandemic fatigue, but the virus is not done with us yet, and we ask that everyone do their part. A U.S. Trident II, or D-5 missile, which when deployed carries a W-88 nuclear warhead, is test fired in this file photo. (AFP/Getty Images) Energy Watchdog Questions Management of High Explosives at Lawrence Livermore Lab DOE Inspector General reports vermin, inspection irregularities in high explosives storage facility After audits in July and August at storage facilities for high explosives at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, a report (pdf) published recently by the Department of Energys Office of the Inspector General (IG) revealed management issues at the institution tasked with taking care of Americas nuclear weapons. The audit report mentioned the labs lack of a standardized inventory management system, noncompliance with federal regulations codes, and rodent and insect infestation at one storage facility. In addition, some minor weight discrepancies were evident between explosives labels and actual inventories, though these were found to have arisen primarily from administrative errors. According to its website, the task of the LLNL is to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the United States nuclear arsenal, including stockpile stewardship. The report from the Department of Energys (DOE) IG states that the LLNL manages highly explosive materials in many of its National Laboratories and a range of other facilities, which it uses to conduct non-nuclear explosives testing for research into nuclear weapons detonation systems. The DOE watchdog says it inspected the site to ensure the LLNL was managing and storing its stockpile of explosives in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Government and the DOE, and in particular the storage, inventory, and management of same between 2016 and 2019. The inspections took place at LLNL at Livermore in northern California, and at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas, Nevada. Findings The IG audit found that while managers did track and store their explosives correctly, they did not comply fully with federal or DOE requirements. For example, procedures for conducting physical inventories of explosive materials had not been defined clearly, and the facilities did not require persons other than the normal custodians of the explosives to carry out annual inventories. In addition, it was found that the LLNL may soon experience storage space difficulties if management methods do not improve. One site audited also exhibited some physical deterioration. Part of the storage facility was found to be infested with mice, such that an inspection could not be carried out until the facility had been decontaminated. According to the report, The mice-infested magazine also had wide gaps around the doorway, which may have been a contributing factor to rodent infestation. The report states that DOE regulations stipulate the condition and nature of containers for storing explosive materials, i.e., that explosives containers should not leak and closures should protect the contents from spilling; open containers shall not be stored in magazines; and damaged containers shall be repaired or transferred to an undamaged container. However, the auditing team found 2 damaged containers (which were replaced immediately), and one infested with insects. The IG made a number of suggestions for management at the LLNL, including the creation of guidelines and written procedures for conducting inventories, the development of a standardized inventory system, the maintenance of the storage facility to prevent future issues with vermin, and management of the amount of explosives stored to address potential future storage space challengesincluding the disposition of old and legacy explosive materials. In October 2018, just under two years before the deadly Bear Fire leveled Berry Creek, the community was selected to receive an $836,000 state grant for pruning vegetation and clearing fuel from potential fire spots. Strangled by delays and red tape, the forest management project was never completed, said local officials, who are now left to stew over the what-ifs. I cant guarantee that it wouldve stopped the fire, but it would have given them a place to fight it, said Bill Connelly, a Butte County supervisor representing the district that includes Berry Creek. It very much could have made a difference. The grant was meant to go toward vegetation thinning and pruning projects near Bald Rock and Rockefeller roads key evacuation routes and Lake Madrone, an area that became ground zero of the North Complex Fire. The delay, Butte County officials said, was due to stringent environmental reviews, despite this being exactly the kind of fire-prevention work at the forefront of the states wildfire conversation. Its impossible to know whether the grant could have saved Berry Creek from a disaster like the North Complex, which has burned more than 273,000 acres and been blamed for 15 deaths but officials said it might have at least given the community a fighting chance. Calli-Jane DeAnda, the executive director of the nonprofit Butte County Fire Safe Council, recently watched a video showing green, living trees spared by fire in an area around Madrone Lake that had been cleared of potential fuel, thanks to a similar 2011 grant the community obtained from the state. Now she wonders whether a similar project could have changed the fortunes of Berry Creek. Both Connelly and DeAnda said the environmental reviews were too cumbersome and too time-consuming for a nonprofit to tackle. They required archaeological studies, landowner permission slips, bird surveys and more making the process arduous to the point of inaction, even in disaster-prone Butte County. So theyre left to wonder: What if the nonprofit had been able to fulfill those stringent, but required, environmental reviews? What if that entire process had been streamlined? The answer is difficult to stomach. About 120 acres of tangled vegetation would have been cleared in a high-risk place potentially saving lives. A frustrated DeAnda has long called for a streamlining of such environmental requirements. Connelly said he wants the state to change the law to leave the review process required under the strict California Environmental Quality Act to be left to the counties. We have to get help, Connelly said. We need to get relief from the state to allow our fire-safe council to do that. Asked for a response Thursday, a representative for Gov. Gavin Newsom said the governor signed an executive order selecting 35 fuel-management projects in some of Californias most fire-vulnerable communities for CEQA waivers during his first year of office. The Berry Creek project was not on that list. Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California The Berry Creek projects were not deep in the wilderness, DeAnda said they are along critical arteries and near civilization. One of the recommendations made by Butte County officials after the Camp Fire was to clear out primary evacuation routes. And, DeAnda said, once the fire hits, environmental regulations fly out the window. Its a very dynamic and intricate puzzle, she said. Staff writer Dustin Gardiner contributed to this report. Matthias Gafni and Michael Williams are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com, michael.williams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni, @michaeldamianw BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.17 By Fidan Babayeva Trend: The tourism sector in Azerbaijan, just like in other countries has heavily dropped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning from March 2020, Trend reports on Sept.17 referring to the State Statistics Committee. So, in the past eight months of 2020, 649,700 foreign tourists from 155 countries visited Azerbaijan, which is 3.3 times less than in the same period of 2019. Nearly 28.6 percent of the total tourists arrived from Russia, 25.6 percent from Georgia, 17 percent from Turkey, 7.8 percent - from Iran, 2.1 percent - from Ukraine, 1.9 percent - from India, 1.8 percent - from Saudi Arabia, 1.2 percent - from the UAE, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan, 1.1 percent - from Kuwait and Turkmenistan, 0.9 percent - from the UK. Furthermore, 0.8 percent of the tourists were citizens of Iraq, 0.7 percent Uzbekistan and Belarus, 0.6 percent Israel, 5.6 percent - other countries, and 0.1 percent - stateless persons. In gender terms, 77.9 percent of the tourists were men, and 22.1 percent - women. The largest drop in the tourist inflow from January through August 2020 accounted for tourists from China and South Korea 11.7 and 10.6 times, respectively. Tourist inflow from Israel also decreased (by 7.9 times). Meanwhile, fewer tourists came from Poland (drop by 7.6 times), Japan (decline by 7.5 times), Hungary (decrease by 6.4 times), the UAE (plunge by 6 times), Canada, and the US (fall by 5.7 times), France (decrease by 5.5 times), Qatar (down 4.9 times), Germany and the Netherlands (slip by 4.8 times), the UK (plummet by 4.6 times), Turkmenistan (by 4.5 times), Kazakhstan (by 4.3 times), and Italy (by 4.1 times). The total number of tourists arriving from EU states decreased by 5.2 times to 18,700 people; from the Gulf countries by 4.3 times to 88,500 people, and from the CIS countries by 3.5 times to 225,600 people. According to the committee, 78.6 percent of the tourists visited Azerbaijan by trains and cars, 19.1 percent - by planes, and 2.3 percent - by ships. ---- Follow the author on Twitter: @Fidan_Babaeva Fires continue to rage through the wilderness of the Brazilian Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, as images emerged Wednesday (16 September). Firefighters have their work cut out for them, as the fires blaze through dry underbrush and riverbanks. Lesser known than its cousin, the Amazon jungle, the 150,000-square kilometre Pantanal is sandwiched between the rainforest and Paraguay's dry forests. Since mid-July a fire has been burning, leaving in its wake a region of destruction, bigger than New York City. The Pantanal is home to roughly 1,200 vertebrate species, including 36 that are threatened with extinction. Rare birds and jaguars are also known to roam. Local animal rescue team member Eduarda Fernandes said animals are now in grave danger: "We don't see ants, crabs, and this is food for different types of animals. Animals will die not only due to the fires but also due to dehydration and hunger.'' Fires in the region are nothing new, as ranchers used them to return nutrients to the soil at a low cost. The world's largest flood plain usually fills with water during the rainy season from November to April. But this year's fires are burning with historic force, and scientists blame the drought on warming in the Atlantic Ocean. A farm worker, Dorvalino Conceicao Camargo, told Reuters he had never seen a fire as big as this: "The fields have dried up after receiving no rain for three months. We don't even know whether it will rain in September. I hope it does, otherwise, what will we do? All of my water tanks are dry. There is no water. Cattle are suffering, not only the cattle, we are all suffering.'' The largest fires in Pantanal this year are four times the size of that in the Amazon rainforest. Climate scientists warn these climate-driven fires from California to Australia could become a new normal. A regular meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) has been held through video conferencing with the participation of delegations from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and with the OSCE moderation, the President's Office has reported. According to the report, the negotiations lasted for about seven hours. The participants of the meeting stated that the ceasefire regime, introduced on July 27 this year, has been observed, despite some provocative attacks by illegal armed groups. The Ukrainian delegation called for comprehensive measures to be taken to comply with the ceasefire regime, in particular through the proper implementation of a package of additional measures to maintain the ceasefire. Head of the Ukrainian delegation Leonid Kravchuk thanked the OSCE and its Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine for their mediation efforts aimed at resolving the international armed conflict in Donbas. "We have never questioned the OSCE mandate and we are against its transfer to anyone," he said. Particular attention was paid to the implementation of the agreements reached by the leaders of the member states of the Normandy format in Paris on ensuring full and unconditional access of the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detainees. Such access is provided by the Ukrainian party in full, which is confirmed by reports on the work of international humanitarian organizations in Ukraine. Ukraine's position on the access of the ICRC to detainees in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, which must be ensured in the near future, was clearly stated. The discussion of the issue of preparation for the next stage of the mutual release of detainees under the "all for all" principle was continued. The Ukrainian party reiterated that Ukrainians illegally detained in the temporarily occupied territories should be released immediately and without any political conditions. "The adoption of laws and resolutions is the exclusive competence and prerogative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine," the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG responded to the reproach about the urgent need for the parliament to adopt an alternative resolution on local elections in 2020. At the same time, the discussion of working proposals for draft documents on self-government in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine will continue within the TCG political group, as envisaged by the package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements. Kravchuk stressed that "the Ukrainian delegation respects the Normandy format and the Minsk agreements and is ready to work constructively and consistently to restore Ukraine's territorial integrity and achieve peace". ish A Lawrence police officer was charged Thursday with lying in a police report and tampering with records during a criminal investigation last month, the Mercer County Prosecutors Office said. Officer Andres Mejia submitted an arrest report to his superiors on Aug. 16 knowing it contained false and misleading information about a witness who did not exist, the prosecutors office said in a statement. Hes been suspended without pay. The prosecutors office did not elaborate on the August case. Thailand's military-backed prime minister warned protesters on Thursday against heightening COVID-19 risks as they planned large anti-government demonstrations for the weekend. Demonstrators have held two months of near-daily rallies to demand former junta leader Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha's removal and changes to a constitution they say were designed to extend military dominance after an election last year. Prayuth, a former army chief who says he was fairly elected, said in a televised speech that he understood the grievances but urged demonstrators to put "COVID first" for now. "When you gather in mobs, you are creating an enormous risk of new infections. And with that, you also create enormous risk to the livelihoods of tens of millions of fellow Thais," he said. "Your protests delay economic recovery because you affect business confidence, and you affect the confidence of tourists to return to our country when we are ready to receive them." Thailand has not seen a local coronavirus transmission for 14 days since Sept. 3, when a prison inmate tested positive after over 100 days of no new local cases. Foes say Prayuth is exploiting the health situation. "COVID is the government's last card, the only trick left up its sleeve, to undermine the legitimacy of the protests," said Anusorn Unno, a protester and lecturer at Bangkok's Thammasat University. Protest leaders expect tens of thousands to gather at that university on Saturday and march to Government House on Sunday. The university said last week it would not allow the gathering on its campus. Police also said marching to Government House could break a law prohibiting large gatherings near restricted sites. The demonstrations, though largely peaceful, have revived memories of more than a decade of intermittent unrest and protracted street rallies that culminated in a 2014 coup led by Prayuth against the government of Yingluck Shinawatra. New Zealand has fallen into a recession after its June quarter GDP fell by 12.2 per cent. The decline covers most of the period between the end of March and mid-May, when the whole country spent seven weeks in level 4 and level 3 lockdowns. The decline in GDP per capita was even higher, at 12.6 per cent in the quarter, due to population growth. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The country's GDP slump was the worst on record. Credit:Getty Images It's the second-straight quarter of negative growth, the technical definition of entering a recession. ASB said the huge fall was close to its own estimate of a 11 per cent decline and "market expectations" of a 13 per cent drop. A California state judge has ordered a private school to immediately cease and desist from holding in-person instruction in order to comply with pandemic-related public health orders that have kept schools closed in many counties in the state. Immanuel Schools of Reedley, Calif., near Fresno, has drawn nationwide attention as one of the few schools that have defied orders to remain closed when it welcomed students back to classrooms on Aug. 13, even as Fresno County was one of about 30 on the states monitoring list for high rates of COVID-19 in the previous 14 days. The 600-student, K-12 Christian school won an initial round in court when a state judge on Aug. 25 declined a request from Fresno County officials for a temporary restraining order to shut down the school. But on Tuesday, Superior Court Judge D. Tyler Tharpe of Fresno County said there was a different standard for the preliminary injunction sought by county officials than the temporary restraining order, and that the county had demonstrated it was likely to prevail on the merits of its case to shut down the school. The evidence presented by the county amply supports a finding that the county and its residents are under threat of irreparable harm should [Immanuel Schools] be allowed to conduct in-person classroom instruction while the county and its residents are in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tharpe said in a written opinion . The judge cited a concurring opinion by U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in May in a case in which the court ruled 5-4 to deny emergency relief to a California church that had argued the states pandemic reopening rules unconstitutionally put houses of worship at a disadvantage compared with businesses and schools. Our Constitution principally entrusts the safety and the health of the people to the politically accountable officials of the states to guard and protect, Roberts wrote in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom . When those officials undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties, their latitude must be especially broad. Tharpe gave the county until 3 p.m. on Wednesday to submit a closure order for approval by the court. Ryan Wood, the superintendent of the private school, issued a statement that said the school community was disappointed by the ruling. During the last five weeks we have seen Gods hand move mightily on our campus and throughout our community, without a single COVID-related illness among our students, faculty, or families, the statement said. We have seen firsthand the importance of having school on campus based on the excitement of our students and communication with our families. The school has filed its own lawsuit challenging pandemic orders, a suit that is now in Superior Court after the California Supreme Court last week declined relief to the school in a proceeding filed directly in the state high court. Diana Rigg, who died September 10 aged 82, was a fine classical actress who struggled against over-identification with her popular successes. Like Honor Blackman before her, Riggs recognition for the television series The Avengers and an appearance as a [James] Bond girl in On Her Majestys Secret Service (Peter Hunt, 1969) threatened to overwhelm her other achievements. Rigg resisted this. She refused to sign Avengers photographs that were sent to her, saying that it would have been death to have been labelled forever by that one TV series. Her extensive, significant theatre work was a better response, but those glamorous 1960s successes were built on genuine qualities. Her sexy, knowing and self-assured performance in The Avengers remains a joy. Diana Rigg in her NBC Television show, Diana Rigg ended up successfully negotiating the transition back and forth between stage and television. She regretted not making more films, but was keen to keep exploring new ground, explaining that being doomed to the classics is as limiting as doing a series for the rest of your life. Rigg was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire. Her father, Louis, was a railway engineer, and her parents had been in India since 1925. Shortly after her birth, Louis took the family back to Jodhpur, where he was working. The family returned to Leeds in 1945, Louis rejoining them in 1948. Diana was sent to a girls boarding school run by the Moravian church. The gulf between their privileged Raj life and postwar Yorkshire furthered her feelings at school of being a fish out of water, but this helped shape a steely character. As she observed later, if things had to be said she would say them. Rigg began acting at school and earned admission to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). She was engaged at this time, and Louis advised her to choose between her marriage and drama school. She went to drama school. Her professional debut came with a RADA production in 1957. After graduating in 1959, she joined Tyrone Guthrie and Peter Halls company at Stratford-upon-Avon, which became the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Rigg was part of a dazzlingly inventive company, alongside Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Judi Dench and Ian Richardson, among others. In her time at Stratford she progressed from walk-ons to roles like a lively Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream for Hall, and Cordelia to Scofield's towering 1962 King Lear. When her RSC contract expired Rigg was without work. Extracts from some RSC productions, including her West End debut in Jean Giraudouxs Ondine (1961), had been included in the series Theatre Night, and Rigg was also involved in some theatrical adaptations, like Thomas Middletons Women Beware Women (1965), for ITVs Play of the Week. But her defining television moment came when her agent put her up to replace Blackman in The Avengers. Her three seasons there made her career. Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee in The Avengers (1961) The programme was moving from straightforward thriller to a lighter, more comedic tone. Feeling that Blackmans original replacement, Elizabeth Shepherd, lacked those qualities, the producers recast. Riggs sophisticated intelligence and knowing glamour were perfect. Mrs Emma Peel was a clever character and strikingly independent, more than able to fight her way out of trouble. This, with Riggs cool detachment and irony, enabled her to transcend somewhat the studios idea of a sex object. Rigg was undeniably sexy, but Mrs Peels relationship with John Steed (Patrick Macnee) was something more. Theirs was an intimate, flirtatious and apparently chaste friendship. Evidently built on Riggs pleasure at working with Macnee, whom she once called one of her only two friends on that set, their relationship made the series an enduring favourite. It was a clever set of thriller mysteries that stand up in their own right. Riggs second season (the shows fifth) saw the transition from black and white, and its inventive use of colour was a further revelation. By her last season The Avengers was teetering into a broader cartoonishness that is less satisfactory. Riggs determined independence was not confined to the screen. During the first series she learned that she was earning one-third the cameramans wage. I kicked up a fuss and I became incredibly unpopular as a result I was made out to be mercenary and a jumped-up actress who should be grateful for her opportunity. Her refusal to make another episode until her wages were adjusted resulted in her pay being doubled. The Avengers was hard toil, but Rigg continued to take theatre work, including Viola in Twelfth Night back at Stratford. Obituaries quoted Rigg saying "Some weeks I'd spend four days on the set of The Avengers and then head up to Stratford to be Regan to Olivier's Lear." In fact that performance was later, with Olivier's valedictory 1983 television performance. Rigg was uneasy about the public attention The Avengers generated. Throughout her life she determinedly kept part of herself outside public scrutiny. This included reticence about political opinions, although she seems to have been driven by broadly liberal aspirations. She said she had marched against the war in Iraq, and felt betrayed by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair: Did he seduce me? Yes. He, generally speaking, courted my profession. But now I disavow. She described Blairs successor, Gordon Brown, as the understudy who got the role but didnt understand it. She was an enthusiast for Barack Obama. Some film work followed The Avengers, but not as much as Rigg had hoped. That the early casting was inspired by The Avengers cannot have helped. Her movie debut, Basil Deardens The Assassination Bureau (1969), was followed by one of the weaker Bond films. Diana Rigg in The Assassination Bureau (1969) The underwhelming On Her Majestys Secret Service cast Australian model George Lazenby as Bond in his first feature. In a generous tribute, Lazenby acknowledged that Rigg undoubtedly raised my acting game. Their relationship on set was reputedly difficult, although both denied she chewed garlic before the love scenes. The few films included some interesting pieces, like The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, 1971), with a script by Paddy Chayefsky. Rigg also brought her classical skills to Charlton Hestons starry but undistinguished Julius Caesar (Stuart Burge, 1970). A theatrical commercial debutas Heloise opposite Keith Michells Abelardplayed London and Broadway but was not universally received enthusiastically. Although she may have been disappointed at the lack of films, she continued to find interesting work. In 1972, she appeared in the National Theatres premiere of Tom Stoppards philosophical comedy Jumpers to great acclaim. George C. Scott and Diana Rigg in The Hospital (1971) She played Lady Macbeth opposite Anthony Hopkins just when he was beginning to tire of the theatre (1973), to neither of their benefits. More successful was a revival of George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion the following year. During this period she began her brilliant association with classical French drama and Leeds poet Tony Harrisons theatrical adaptations. In 1973 she appeared in Harrisons rhymed version of Molieres The Misanthrope. She revisited her Raj upbringing for Harrisons Phaedra Britannica (1975), which transplanted Racine to India. There was also television, with classical and theatrical work like Noel Cowards The Marquise and Henrik Ibsens Hedda Gabler and Little Eyolf, alongside literary adaptations like Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (1985). She returned to Harrison, appearing as Clytemnestra in his exceptional reworking of Aeschyluss Oresteia trilogy. The sheer volume of television work guarantees that not all of it can be outstanding, but there were good turns as Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Mauriers Rebecca (1997) and as the obsessive mother in Mother Love (1989), for which she won a BAFTA Best Actress. Riggs directness and coolness suited her admirably to early twentieth century authors like Ibsen, Anton Chekhov and Shaw. They also fitted well the heightened rhetoric of the French classical authors and Greek tragedians. There were notable triumphs as Euripidess Medea (1991), which she called the happiest time of my professional career, and in Racines Phedre, in a version by poet Ted Hughes, and Britannicus (1998). She was also praised for performances of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams. Her 2008 Cherry Orchard in Chichester was not a success, but she returned magnificently to Pygmalion in 2011. This was one of her last stage roles, although television work continuedin Game of Thrones, as well as the charming comedy Detectorists, among much else. In 1994, she had spoken of her appetite now for really good work in the final third of my life, describing the theatre as home I dont belong anywhere else. The outstanding achievement of Diana Riggs life was to demonstrate that a great theatre actor can move to other media without losing the qualities that made them great in the first place. After Israels resounding victory over the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies in 1967, the Jewish state again offered the Arab world peace in exchange for recognition. And it was again rebuffed. Instead, the Arab League convened in Khartoum to formulate a consensus response that became known as The 3 Noes no recognition, no negotiations, and no peace with Israel. Needless to say, this posture left little room for positive dialogue. Indeed, three years before Israel had ever attained its occupied territories in the West Bank, the Arab League had already created and funded the Palestine Liberation Organization, a nationalist terror group that would not only operate within Israel but develop the tactics that would subsequently be adopted by Islamists around the world. Arab states, including those in Gulf, would support and fund this violence against Jewish civilians for decades. Fast-forward to 2020. Earlier this month, the Palestinians, who had held veto power over Arab foreign policy for years, demand nothing less than a full condemnation of the Israel-UAE normalization. The Arab League gave them nothing. Instead, a couple of weeks later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, and Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani of Bahrain all came to Washington to sign the Abraham Accords, in which all three promised to to take the necessary steps to prevent any terrorist or hostile activities against each other on or from their respective territories, as well as deny any support for such activities abroad or allowing such support on or from their respective territories. It takes only a rudimentary knowledge of modern Middle East history to comprehend the immense changes going on in the region and yet this seems lost on many contemporary journalists. There are likely a number of reasons that normalization deals between Israel and Arab nations havent received the attention and praise they deserve. The first is the most obvious: Few in legacy media want to credit Donald Trump certainly not during a presidential campaign. Had Barack Obama facilitated a deal between Israel and any Arab nation, it would have dominated coverage. Rightly so. Story continues Even the stories written about the deal attempt to diminish the role of the Trump administration. The New York Times headline, for example, is Israel, U.A.E and Bahrain Sign Accords, with an Eager Trump Hosting. Sunni nations and Israel have a number of geopolitical reasons to strengthen ties one of them the Obama administrations coddling of Iran. But it was Trump who seized on the opportunity, and for that he deserves at least as much credit as Jimmy Carter did for the EgyptIsrael peace deal or Bill Clinton did for the IsraelJordan peace deal. Second, many reporters, think-tankers, and D.C. foreign-policy experts are all part of a hive mind in which the word peace means little more than the creation of Palestinian state and an embrace of Iran. And Washingtons foreign-policy consensus has taken a body blow. In four years, Jared Kushner has done more to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East than the entire Brookings Institution foreign-policy team has in a lifetime. The John Kerrys of the world have long argued that wider peace would not be possible without acquiescing to the Palestinians first. They were wrong. After the Trump administration moved the American Embassy to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, the same people warned that an eruption of violence would envelop the Middle East. They made the same claim after Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani. Wrong. And wrong, again. The Abraham Accords also laid to rest the myth that Israel would find itself in deepening international isolation if it failed to heed Obamas efforts to create a Palestinian state. The Abraham Accords offer considerable economic benefits for all sides. Israel is already a major investment destination, and it now has economic ties to increasing numbers of prosperous Arab nations. A Dubai-based port operator has already reportedly partnered with an Israeli firm to bid on the largest shipping hub in Israel. The BDS movement and other economic boycotts of Israel are now little more than an anti-Semitic outlet for Western radicals. With economic ties come cultural ones, as the nations promise to promote tourism cooperation as well as people-to-people exchanges. For years, Arab nations have depicted Jews in the most nefarious ways. Yet, only two weeks after the announcement of IsraelUnited Arab Emirates, the latter is teaching and praising the peace initiative with the Jews. Its Islamic Studies textbook is teaching and praising the peace initiative with the Jews. Perhaps most important, the Abraham Accords may just be the beginning of the thawing. Trump says he expected Saudi Arabia the steward of Islams holiest sites to recognize Israel. At least five or six other countries may as well, Trump says. Well have to see about that. But Saudi Arabia has announced that it will permit commercial flights from Israel to pass through its airspace. Bahrain would never have agreed to a deal with Israel without the Saudis blessing. These deals only make more normalization possible. Though there are no guarantees in the Middle East, these peace deals also probably make an IsraeliPalestinian deal possible. Kushner approached Palestinian leadership to engage in these talks, and he was rebuffed. Mahmoud Abbas is waiting out Trump for a more friendly administration. Its probably too late. Since the early 1990s, every attempt to create a lasting agreement in the region has been bogged down by intractable Palestinian demands to make Jerusalem their capital and force Israel to accept the suicidal Right of Return. These are non-starters. This isnt merely a Likud position; it is the position of every major party in Israel and, increasingly, a reality accepted in wider Arab world. The Abraham Accords, for example, pledge to deal with Palestinian issues in a manner that meets the legitimate needs and aspirations of both peoples, and to advance comprehensive Middle East peace, stability and prosperity. Nowhere does it mention anything about handing over Jerusalem, a Right of Return, returning to 1967 lines, or even a Palestinian state. The decades of Middle East policy being conducted through the grievances of the PLO are likely over. Without obligatory backing from the Arab world, Palestinians may be forced to embrace reality, too. If not, theyll continue to be left behind. Some critics have pointed out that Israel has now struck deals with a number of authoritarian nations. Well, guess what, Hamas and Fatah are also authoritarians, and yet the Washington foreign-policy establishment want to give them their own state. Alas, there are the realities of the region. One hopes that Arab theocracies accelerate their liberalization, but right now it is Iran, and its proxies in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, that threaten peace. New alliances between Jews and Arabs, on the other hand, can only strengthen it. More from National Review A Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied the release of two alleged members of a prolific crew of burglars that authorities say have been ransacking North Jersey homes for decades. In detention hearings Wednesday, Judge Susan Steele denied the release of Lawal Erskine, 36, and Marc Rainey, 33, who - along with four other men - have been accused of stealing more than $450,000 in cash and jewelry from more than 30 homes. The crew of six are allegedly part of the James Bond gang that has hit North Jersey homes for decades. Both men will continue to be held in Bergen County jail. A detention hearing scheduled Wednesday for co-defendant Jihaad Holmes, 25, of East Orange, was adjourned. In her rulings, Steele agreed with Assistant Prosecutor Katie Cobb that the duos history of convictions for similar crimes, along with alleged messages on social media from the two talking about targeting houses for heists, was enough of a fear component to keep them both detained. It is really disturbing to the court, said Steele, who signed a previous order for Erskines intensive supervision program of parole. I am a big advocate of the intensive supervision program. It is an opportunity for defendants to turn the page and start a new life. On the heels of that, hes [Erskine] accused of these numerous and elaborate burglaries. It is really very disturbing to this court. On September 4, the Prosecutors Office announced the arrest of six men - including Erskine, Holmes and Rainey - who allegedly broke into 34 houses in affluent neighborhoods across North Jersey, stealing cash and valuables, primarily from the houses master bedrooms. The crew would case houses with expensive cars in the driveways and wait for the time of day when it seemed nobody was home, the Prosecutors Office has said. The crew of alleged burglars was charged with multiple crimes, including promotion of organized street crime, conspiracy to commit theft, burglary and several drug charges, according to the Prosecutors Office. The robberies happened between December 2019 and this July, with the crew going from house to house in six counties, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutors Office said. Erskines attorney Thomas Ashley told Steele that there was no proof that Erskine used his job at an Elizabeth powerwash business to case potential targets, assuring Steele that Erskine would live with his mother-in law, who he was taking care of. Adam Lustberg, Raineys attorney, told Steele that there was no way that Rainey could commit burglaries while wearing an ankle bracelet monitor and emphasized that in the more than 30 burglaries Rainey was accused of being involved in, nobody was hurt. The fact of the matter is in whatever his history was, there was no violence whatsoever, said Lustberg. But Cobb pointed to alleged messages Erskine and Rainey sent to their crew that discussed targeting homes and the false feeling of safety residents had. In some of those messages where the crew discussed burglarizing homes in Edison, they refer to the townships Indian community, allegedly using racial slurs, Cobb said. The crew ransacked nearly 15 homes in Edison, said Cobb. These defendants have violated the sanctity of over 30 different homes in the state of New Jersey that we know about by barging in their doors and ransacking their master bedrooms, said Cobb. A release order for these defendants today is an order for these defendants for future crimes. Both Rainey and Erskine have been arrested before and been convicted of crimes including receiving stolen property and conspiracy to commit theft by unlawful taking, according to court records. In 2012, when Rainey was 25, he was arrested and charged with possession of burglary tools and receiving stolen property. In November 2014, Erskine was arrested and charged with crimes that included conspiracy to commit burglary and theft. Steele also referred to a 2017 conviction for Erskine. This is no ordinary robbery: there is a sophisticated elaborate team, at least among the 3 defendants now charged, said Steele. The two men and the four other men allegedly involved in the burglaries are part of the latest iteration of an organized crew of burglars that formed in the 1980s. The first incarnation of the gang was made up mostly of Teaneck and Englewood residents and was linked to dozens of burglaries. The crew earned the name James Bond due to a BMW they would use to blend in with the affluent neighborhoods they targeted. The BMW had various secret compartments, a flip-up license plate and an oil-squirting pipe, all reminiscent of the high-tech cars the British secret agent would use in the films. Throughout the years, arrest after arrest has been made, often of repeat offenders and people alleged to be the leaders and co-founders of the gang. But the burglaries appear to continue, with the latest crew also going by the FMG crew - or Fast Money Gang, according to Cobb. 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. Four astronauts selected for the countrys first human spaceflight will return from Russia in March and undergo training modules designed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) for the mission slated for December 2021. While in Russia, their training is helping them get accustomed to conditions in space the US, Russia and China are the only three countries to have conducted human spaceflights the four astronauts will undergo mission-specific training back home. The four astronauts, who had been selected from a pool of Indian Air Force pilots, are currently undergoing basic training in GCTC (Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre) in Russia. They will be back by March next year. They will then receive specific training in India, for which the simulators have been defined. These are the areas where the industry will be contributing in a rich way to realise the simulators, Dr Unnikrishnan Nair, director, Human Spaceflight Centre of Isro, said. There will be three main parts to the training in India: a module on the overall project, a module for crew members, and a module on the flight hardware and software. Each one is more and more complex (than the previous one), he said at the International Space Conference and Exhibition organised by Confederation of Indian Industry in association with Isro and its other arms. Indias first human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, has been designed to carry three Indian astronauts to the low earth orbit an orbit of 2,000km or less for a period of five to seven days. But Isro chairperson Dr K Sivan told HT earlier this year that two unmanned flights prior to the final mission will determine whether just one or two crew members will be taken to space and whether the crew will be there for the entire duration, or for just one day, or just over two hours. Isro has planned the first unmanned flight in December 2020, the second in July 2021, and the first human spaceflight mission in December 2021 much ahead of the August 15, 2022, deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, the timeline could be affected due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to officials. Before the first unmanned flight, Isro needs to complete at least three major tests an air drop test for the parachute system that will demonstrate the ability to successfully recover an orbiting space capsule; a flight of the test vehicle; and an abort test to demonstrate the escape of the crew in case of an emergency at the launch pad. Isro has also shortlisted six experiments that will be carried out in space aboard the first unmanned flight under the Gaganyaan mission. This includes four biological experiments a study on changes in kidney stone formation in drosophila melanogaster (the common fruit fly), the study of SIRT1 gene in it, microbial contamination, and co-crystallisation under microgravity conditions. Nair said Gaganyaan will be the first of Isros human spaceflight mission, which will be expanded to the exploration of other planets and also the moon in the future. For this, Isro will partner with the industry and academia to develop technologies such as construction in space, tele-robotics and artificial intelligence. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A milk-tooth found in the vicinity of "Riparo del Broion" on the Berici Hills in the Veneto region bears evidence of one of the last Neanderthals in Italy. This small canine tooth belonged to a child between 11 and 12 that had lived in that area around 48,000 years ago. This is the most recent Neanderthal finding in Northern Italy. The study uncovering this tooth was carried out by a group of researchers from the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara, who have recently published a paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. "This work stems from the synergy between different disciplines and specializations", says Matteo Romandini, lead author of this study and researcher at the University of Bologna. "High-resolution prehistoric field-archaeology allowed us to find the tooth, then we employed virtual approaches to the analyses of its shape, genome, taphonomy and of its radiometric profile. Following this process, we could identify this tooth as belonging to a child that was one of the last Neanderthals in Italy". The genetic analysis reveals that the owner of the tooth found in Veneto was a relative, on their mother's side, of Neanderthals that had lived in Belgium. This makes this site in Veneto a key-area for comprehending the gradual extinction of Neanderthals in Europe. "This small tooth is extremely important", according to Stefano Benazzi, professor at the University of Bologna and research coordinator. "This is even more relevant if we consider that, when this child who lived in Veneto lost their tooth, Homo Sapiens communities were already present a thousand kilometres away in Bulgaria". Researchers analysed the tooth by employing highly innovative virtual methods. "The techniques we employed to analyse the tooth led to the following discovery: this is an upper canine milk-tooth that belonged to a Neanderthal child, aged 11 or 12, that lived between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago", as report Gregorio Oxilia and Eugenio Bortolini, who are co-authors of the study and researchers at the University of Bologna. "According to this dating, this little milk-tooth is the most recent finding of the Neanderthal period in Northern Italy and one of the latest in the entire peninsula". The findings retrieved from the "Riparo del Broion" are still being analysed. However, preliminary results show that this site had been used for a long period of time as there are signs of hunting activities and butchering of large prays. "The manufacturing of tools, mainly made of flint, shows Neanderthals' great adaptability and their systematic and specialized exploitation of the raw materials available in this area", adds Marco Peresanti, a professor of the University of Ferrara who contributed to the study. ### The paper reporting about the results of this study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution and its title is "A late Neanderthal tooth from northeastern Italy". Matteo Romandini, Gregorio Oxilia, Eugenio Bortolini, Simona Arrighi, Federica Badino, Carla Figus, Federico Lugli, Giulia Marciani, Sara Silvestrini and Stefano Benazzi (all from the Department of Cultural Heritage) participated in the study proudly representing the University of Bologna. This research was carried out in the framework of the ERC SUCCESS project, which is led by Stefano Benazzi and focuses on the bio-cultural changes happened in Italy during the transition between Neanderthal and Sapiens. The ultimate goals of the project are to understand when our species reached Southern Europe, the processes favouring Sapiens' adaptive success and the causes leading to Neanderthals' extinction. This project has also involved the Departments of Human Evolution and Genetics of the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (UK), the DANTE Laboratory of the La Sapienza University and the Bioarchaeology Service of the Museum of Civilization in Rome. Research at the site "Riparo del Broion" has started in 1998 and is currently under the joint scientific direction of Matteo Romandini (University of Bologna) and Matteo Peresani (University of Ferrara). This site has been made available through the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and thanks to the support of the Veneto region, Longare city council (Vicenza, Veneto), Leakey Foundation, CariVerona Foundation, the Italian Institute of Proto- and Prehistory and the ERC SUCCESS project. Joe Biden departs after campaign meetings Wednesday in Wilmington, Del. (Associated Press ) President Trump contradicted one of his administration's top scientists and announced Wednesday that widespread distribution of a coronavirus vaccine would begin as early as next month, further rattling the scientific and public health communities and stoking rival Joe Biden's claim that Trump can't be trusted to oversee development of a safe vaccine. The president's announcement came hours after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, testified to Congress under oath that large-scale vaccine distribution would not begin until late spring, at the earliest. Trump told reporters he called Redfield, and said the director had misspoken. The inconsistencies threatened to further feed many voters' worries that a rushed coronavirus vaccine could be unsafe. Biden seized on that anxiety Wednesday, warning that the president was putting Americans at risk by spreading misinformation about the virus and pressuring federal agencies to quickly deliver a breakthrough before the Nov. 3 election. We cant allow politics to interfere with vaccines in any way, Biden said, speaking to reporters in Wilmington, Del., after a briefing by public health experts. "I trust vaccines, I trust scientists. But I dont trust Donald Trump. Trump, following with his own news conference, denounced Biden as the irresponsible party. He and other Republicans accused the Biden campaign of aligning itself with the anti-vaxxers spreading fear about a vaccine at a time Americans need to be reassured. Im calling on Biden to stop promoting his anti-vaccine theories, Trump said. They are recklessly endangering lives. But mostly Trump undermined Redfield. The president promised 100 million doses of a vaccine would be delivered by the end of the year. Yet Redfield testified at length that vaccine development and distribution could take into late 2021. He also emphasized the importance of wearing masks in the meantime a precaution Trump belittled. Story continues For a vaccine to be fully available to the American public, so we begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life," Redfield said, "I think we are probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter 2021. Trump, in arguing it was Biden who is politicizing the search for a vaccine, framed the pandemic as a blue-state problem even as cases have spiked mostly in red states. He urged Democratic governors to "open up your states," despite warnings from public health officials that the spread of COVID-19 could intensify during the fall flu season. They are closing it for political reasons, Trump said. They want our numbers to be as bad as possible. Medical and public health experts are agreed that many Americans' reluctance to take the recommended precautions a sentiment fanned by Trump has played an outsized role in the nation's failure to contain the pandemic as other developed countries have done. As the U.S. death toll approaches 200,000, Trump repeated his claim that the total could have been much worse, more than 2.2 million by now. That projection, however, was based on taking no precautions at all. Biden was unyielding in his attack on Trumps credibility. Yet he had to straddle a line between warning that Trump was corrupting the vaccine development process and reassuring Americans that they should trust government scientists and regulators. The former vice president denied that his criticism of Trump would undermine public confidence in a vaccine ultimately: Im saying trust the scientists. Its one thing for Donald Trump to say the vaccine is safe. OK, then give it to the board of scientists. Have total transparency." At one point, Biden veered into a highly technical riff about the virtues of different vaccines types. It clearly seemed intended to set him apart from Trump, who has shown little familiarity with the science of the virus and vaccines and repeatedly has spread misinformation. Among the public health experts who briefed Biden on the development and distribution of a safe COVID-19 vaccine were Obama administration alumni Vivek Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general, and Margaret Hamburg, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The latest muddled messaging from the administration with scientists saying one thing and the president contradicting them comes as Trump for days has had to defend himself against charges that he knew early on that the pandemic was far more dangerous than he told the public. According to recordings of interviews with journalist Bob Woodward for a new book, Trump expressed alarm in February about the lethal virus, while he was assuring the public it was under control and no worse than a seasonal flu bug. In disputing the timeline for vaccine deployment that Redfield laid out for Congress, Trump argued that the CDC director did not understand the logistics of such an operation as well as Trump does. It is not really his thing, Trump said. He also disputed Redfields remarks on the efficacy of masks in combating the virus' spread, arguing, There are a lot of problem with masks. As far as the masks are concerned, he made a mistake, Trump said of Redfield. Yet Redfield's remarks were in keeping with published administration guidelines, as well as the scientific consensus. Trump also mocked Biden for frequently wearing a mask at public events. "Maybe he doesn't want to expose his face," Trump told reporters. The fresh inconsistencies between the president and top administration scientists fed into Biden's long-standing argument that Trump has dangerously eroded confidence in the nations public health infrastructure throughout the pandemic. "This virus is still taking nearly a thousand lives each day, and forecasts show that the numbers are likely to climb this winter," Biden said. "But, incredibly, President Trump insists that he wouldnt have done anything differently. Not one thing." Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Global pillow market is dominated by pillow made from 100% cotton which is specifically used for sleeping application across globe. Internally, pillow is consists of a filling material like foam, synthetic fiber, feathers, latex and many more. Pillows made from feather is most expensive compare to other pillow types. Pillows made from feathers are generally desired by consumer who prefers more comfort. The pillows which has anti-static and anti-bacterial features are in huge demand for medical application in hospitals to avoid any kind of allergic reaction caused by bacteria. Market Segmentation Global Sleeping Pillows Market is segmented by material, filling material, shape, feature, application and region. Market Forecast The Global Pillow Market is mainly driven by increasing consumer needs of various kinds of pillow for decoration, sleeping and travelling purpose. Availability of pillow made from different material which used for various application along with specific features is supporting the market growth. Increasing awareness among consumer about selection of a pillow which suits their sleeping position is fueling the pillow market growth. These factors will play a key role in the growth of Pillow market at the CAGR of 4.3% during 2017-2023. Also Read : https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/covid-19-pandemic-impact-on-pillow-market-global-demand-industry-projected-to-grow-at-a-cagr-of-43-during-forecast-period-2020-to-2023-2020-09-10 Downstream analysis- The use of pillow is mainly depends upon the material, filling material and shape of the pillow. Pillows made from synthetic fiber are cheap, durable and easy to wash which is boosted its sales in Middle East and Africa region. Memory foam is polyurethane with added chemicals, increasing its viscosity and density. It reacts to body heat and pressure, allowing it mold to neck and head because of these reason it is largely used for therapy and for medical treatment of patients who suffering from neck problems. Competitive analysis- The major key players in pillow market are Hollander (U.S.), American Textile Company (U.S.) Wendre (Estonia) Romatex (South Africa) Hunan Mendale Hometextile Co., Ltd (China) Luolai (China) Dohia Home Textile Co., Ltd (China) Regional Analysis The Global Pillow market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Asia Pacific has the major market share followed by Europe. Population in Asia Pacific region contributes around half of the worlds population which has created huge customer base for pillow market. Innovation by key players in pillow filling material and attractive designs and shapes of various pillows is attracting consumers from Europe and North America region. Increasing merger and acquisition activities of key players with major player from Middle East and Africa will boost the sales of pillow in that particular regions. ACCESS REPORT DETAILS @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/pillow-market-2766 Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com The End Of An Era In 1954 Bill and Andy Mortallaro's father bought the Askew Inn from his Uncle. It's been in continuous operation ever since.... until now. The brothers retired this week. They certainly have earned it, but will surely be missed. A great neighborhood bar in Northeast Kansas City. Bill and Tish Mortallaro and their children.... An old school Northeast dive ends their longstanding biz run during the pandemic and one of our favorite bloggers documents the end of an era . . . Read more: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Bernstein Liebhard, a nationally acclaimed investor rights law firm, reminds investors of the deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in a securities class action that has been filed on behalf of investors that purchased or acquired the securities of Eastman Kodak Company ("Kodak" or the "Company") (NYSE:KODK) between July 27, 2020 and August 11, 2020 (the "Class Period"). The lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey alleges violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. If you purchased Kodak securities, and/or would like to discuss your legal rights and options please visit Kodak Shareholder Lawsuit or contact Matthew E. Guarnero toll free at (877) 779-1414 or MGuarnero@bernlieb.com. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operations and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose that the Company had granted Defendant Continenza and several other Company insiders millions of dollars' worth of stock options, immediately prior to the Company publicly disclosing that it had received a $765 million loan from the DFC to produce drugs to treat COVID-19, which Defendants knew would cause Kodak's stock to immediately increase in value once the deal was announced. In addition, while in possession of this material non-public information, Defendant Continenza and other Company insiders purchased tens of thousands of the Company's shares immediately prior to the announcement, again at prices that they knew would increase exponentially once news of the loan became public. On August 1, 2020, a Reuters article reported new details of the "unusual" 1.75 million option grant to Continenza. The article stated that according to "a person familiar with the arrangement," the option award "occurred because of an understanding" between Continenza and Kodak's Board of Directors "that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public." Further, "[t]he decision to grant Continenza options was never formalized or made into a binding agreement, which is why it was not disclosed previously." Concurrently market observers questioned why Kodak, historically a technology company, had been selected for a DPA loan related to pharmaceutical supplies over companies with more experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Story continues In reaction to this news, Kodak's stock price plummeted $6.91 per share to close at $14.94 per share on August 3, 2020 - a decline of over 34% per share. On August 5, 2020, several Congressional committees sent a joint letter to Defendant Continenza seeking documents about the loan, insider trading, and stock options for their review of "DFC's decision to award this loan to Kodak despite your company's lack of pharmaceutical experience and the windfall gained by you and other company executives as a result of this loan" which raised "questions that must be thoroughly examined." The committees also sent a document request to the DFC's Chief Executive Officer on the same day, inquiring about the Kodak loan, which the letter noted was "an organization that was on the brink of failure in 2012 and was unsuccessful in its previous foray into pharmaceutical manufacturing." On August 7, 2020, after the market closed, the DFC announced, "on July 28, we signed a Letter of Interest with Eastman Kodak. Recent allegations of wrongdoing raise serious concerns. We will not proceed any further unless these allegations are cleared." On this news, the Company's stock price declined $4.15, or 28%, from $14.88 per share on August 7, 2020, to $10.73 per share on August 10, 2020. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than October 13, 2020. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as lead plaintiff. If you choose to take no action, you may remain an absent class member. If you purchased Kodak securities, and/or would like to discuss your legal rights and options please visit https://www.bernlieb.com/cases/eastmankodakcompany-kodk-shareholder-class-action-lawsuit-stock-fraud-290/apply/ or contact Matthew E. Guarnero toll free at (877) 779-1414 or MGuarnero@bernlieb.com. Since 1993, Bernstein Liebhard LLP has recovered over $3.5 billion for its clients. In addition to representing individual investors, the Firm has been retained by some of the largest public and private pension funds in the country to monitor their assets and pursue litigation on their behalf. As a result of its success litigating hundreds of lawsuits and class actions, the Firm has been named to The National Law Journal's "Plaintiffs' Hot List" thirteen times and listed in The Legal 500 for ten consecutive years. ATTORNEY ADVERTISING. 2020 Bernstein Liebhard LLP. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Bernstein Liebhard LLP, 10 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016, (212) 779-1414. The lawyer responsible for this advertisement in the State of Connecticut is Michael S. Bigin. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. Contact Information Matthew E. Guarnero Bernstein Liebhard LLP https://www.bernlieb.com (877) 779-1414 MGuarnero@bernlieb.com SOURCE: Bernstein Liebhard LLP View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606658/KODK-INVESTOR-ALERT-Bernstein-Liebhard-LLP-Reminds-Investors-of-the-Deadline-to-File-a-Lead-Plaintiff-Motion-in-a-Securities-Class-Action-Lawsuit-Against-Eastman-Kodak-Company South Korean Unification Minister Lee In-young on Wednesday called on North Korea to return to talks and restore communication channels with the South. The minister made the comments during a visit to the border truce village of Panmunjom ahead of the second anniversary of the two Koreas' summit in Pyongyang on Sept. 19, 2018. It was his first trip to Panmunjom since he assumed his post in July. Chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Prime Minister Ludovic Orban declared on Thursday evening, in Mangalia, at the launch of the party's candidates in Constanta County for the local elections on September 27, that they have the mission to put a stop to the 20 years in which the county has was "held in place" by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the PNL having the strength to defeat the existing "mafia". "We are not allowed to miss again. We are in first place. PSD is down in terms of credibility, PSD has shown its powerlessness, PSD has shown its ill will in the last 20 years in which it has made a mockery of Constanta and the county. Only PNL has the strength to defeat this mafia," said Orban. He urged his party colleagues in Constanta to mobilize even more, because they are fighting an "unscrupulous" opponent. "We are in the homestretch. From now on we have to put the pedal to the metal, we have to mobilize all the Liberal teams, because in the next few days we will have to fight for every position. We are fighting with an unscrupulous opponent who is capable of anything to get votes they don't deserve. They are capable of corruption, stealing, falsifying election minutes, intimidating employees of companies or public institutions to get them to vote against their will. We are fighting against unscrupulous individuals, who held back the city of Constanta, the county of Constanta, while the people of Constanta became impoverished. (...) None of the hundreds and thousands of investors who wanted to invest in Constanta received anything but a door in their face, because in Constanta, both in the time of [Radu] Mazare [ed.n. - former mayor of Constanta], and in the time of Fagadau [ed.n. - Decebal Fagadau, mayor of Constanta] (...), there was money only for them, while all the others were kept away from any kind of possibility to succeed in life, to develop business, to develop the county," said the PNL leader. According to Orban, the Liberals have a mission to do justice in Constanta. "It is our mission, as Liberals, to do justice in Constanta, to put a stop to these 20 years in which Constanta was held back. (...) Romania is a European country, a NATO country, Romania must develop as a democracy and a free economy, in which people are respected, have the right to succeed in life," added the PNL leader. He maintained that only the PNL, through Vergil Chitac, a candidate for Constanta City Hall, and Mihai Lupu, for the leadership of the County Council, can "bring down the mafia that has stifled Constanta". "Only the PNL has the strength to bring down this mafia that stifled Constanta and made a mockery of every citizen of Constanta. Only Vergil Chitac can beat the PSD mayor, only Mihai Lupu can beat the red baron [ed.n. - Felix Stroe, PSD candidate for the Constanta County Council], who believes that he can buy all the inhabitants of Constanta County, who goes round every day to each mayor to bargain a few tens or a few hundred votes, who uses all his resources, which are for the most part public resources, to try to buy people, individuals who have the ability to influence the vote of others," the prime minister said. Ludovic Orban stressed that the PNL cannot accept politics like that of the PSD. "We cannot accept such politics. (...) In order to increase pensions, the average salary must increase, the number of employees must increase, and this can only happen through economic development, by attracting investments that will generate well-paid jobs, that will keep Romanians at home, that will stop the exodus of intelligence, gray matter, that has been happening for 20 years," Orban added. Exclusive: In the weeds - How Bayer, U.S. government teamed up against Thailand's glyphosate ban FILE PHOTO: Logo of Bayer AG pictured at a plant of Bayer in Wuppertal By Patpicha Tanakasempipat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Chemicals giant Bayer and the U.S. government cooperated closely last year to lobby Thailand to reverse its ban on glyphosate, used in the company's controversial weedkiller Roundup, documents obtained by an environmental group and reviewed by Reuters show. The lobbying, including U.S. trade officials asking Bayer for information on Thailand's deputy agriculture minister, is detailed in more than 200 pages of partially redacted documents and emails, some directly between U.S. officials and a Bayer representative. The documents were obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, which shared them with Reuters. Thailand eventually dropped plans to ban glyphosate a few days before the ban was due to come into force in December 2019. It had approved the restriction in October citing concerns over the chemical's impact on human health. Reuters was unable to determine the reasons for the reversal or whether efforts by the United States and Bayer played a role in Thailand's decision. A government spokeswoman denied any foreign influence on the reversal of the ban. While regulators worldwide, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have determined glyphosate to be safe, Bayer agreed in June to settle nearly 100,000 U.S. lawsuits for $10.9 billion, denying claims that Roundup caused cancer. Thailand had initiated significant steps in August 2019 to ban glyphosate and other chemicals widely deemed toxic to humans. The World Health Organization's cancer research arm classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" in March 2015. As Thailand considered the ban on glyphosate, Bayer kicked off its lobbying effort. The Germany-headquartered firm, which acquired U.S. Roundup maker Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, made an appeal for help arguing against the ban to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Sept. 18 last year, the documents reviewed by Reuters show. Story continues CONSISTENT WITH LAWS, RULES -BAYER In a statement to Reuters, Bayer said, "Our engagements with all those in the public sector are routine, professional, and consistent with all laws and regulations." "The Thai authorities' reversal of the ban on glyphosate is consistent with the science-based determinations by regulatory bodies around the world." Ratchada Dhanadirek, a spokeswoman for Thailand's government, said the country supported safe agriculture and prioritised farmers' and consumers' health, noting that glyphosate was widely used internationally and there was no viable alternative. The Prime Minister's Office denied knowledge of the U.S. or Bayer's lobbying efforts when asked to comment on the documents reviewed by Reuters. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the documents and its role in the reversal of the ban. 'FOCUS ON THE PM' The documents show that deputy agriculture minister Mananya Thaiset was identified in particular by Bayer as "seeking to dramatically accelerate the imposition of a ban" on glyphosate and other farm chemicals. In July, before the documents were shared with Reuters, Mananya said she was motivated to ban glyphosate and other chemicals after attending many farmers' funerals in her previous job as a mayor. USTR officials discussed Mananya in an internal email chain dated Oct. 22, the day that Thailand approved plans to ban glyphosate, the documents show. In a separate email to Bayer, an unidentified USTR official sought more information on her from the chemicals company. "Knowing what motivates her may help with USG (U.S. government) counter-arguments" to reverse the ban, the official wrote. "She has no record of being diehard advocate of organic food and/or staunch environmentalist," Bayer's Senior Director for International Government Affairs and Trade, Jim Travis, replied. Mananya couldn't be reached for comment on whether she had been approached by Bayer or U.S. officials and her office declined Reuters' requests for comment on the documents. While Bayer and the USTR sought to understand the mindset of Mananya, whom one USTR official described as "well-connected", the documents make clear their main objective was access to the prime minister. In an emailed response to the USTR on Oct. 24, Bayer's Travis said, "All efforts should be focused on the PM," referring to Thailand's Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Prayuth could not be reached for comment on the documents. He has rarely expressed his views publicly on the chemical ban. After the glyphosate ban was reversed, he only said, he had "no problem" with the decision. GROWING MARKET On Oct. 17, Ted McKinney, the USDA Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, wrote to Prayuth, asking for a postponement of the ban. Prayuth repeatedly declined to comment on McKinney's letter when asked by reporters. "The U.S. EPA ... has found that there are no risks to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label," a USDA spokesperson said in response to Reuters' request for comment on the documents. A ban on glyphosate would have meant grain grown using it could not enter Thailand, denying U.S. exporters of bulk crops - including soybeans and wheat - access to a market that, like others in Southeast Asia, has grown massively from 2015 to nearly $1 billion in value in 2019, U.S. data shows. (Graphic: U.S. crop sales to Thailand since 2010, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/jbyvrqzggpe/USCropSalestoThailand.png) (Graphic: Southeast Asia has emerged as a key growth market for U.S. crop exporters, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/xklvynwnxpg/USBulkCropDestinations.png) Despite the initial lobbying efforts, Thailand's National Hazardous Substances Committee formally approved the ban on Oct. 22 with an effective start date in December. U.S. officials continued their efforts as late as Nov. 26, the documents show. On Nov. 27, Thailand reversed course. A government committee announced the country was abandoning the ban four days before it was due to take effect, citing concerns over foreign trade impact, alongside the impact on farmers and food and animal feed industries. (Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Kenneth Maxwell) The Florida Society of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology urge the public to celebrate with an eye on safety this holiday season. In the beloved holiday movie, A Christmas Story, Ralphie attempts to convince his parents and Santa that a Red Ryder BB gun is the perfect Christmas gift. They all reject his pleas with the same warning: "You'll shoot your eye Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Moscow, Russia Thu, September 17, 2020 15:30 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c45701a1 2 World Middle-East,Middle-East-conflict,Israel-Palestine-conflict,Israel-annexation Free Russia said on Thursday it would be a "mistake" to think lasting peace in the Middle East could be secured without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The foreign ministry statement came after Israel normalized relations with long-time foes Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the White House on Tuesday. Russia said it noted "progress" in the normalization of ties between Israel and several Arab countries but said that "the Palestinian problem remains acute." "It would be a mistake to think that without finding a solution to it that it will be possible to secure lasting stabilization in the Middle East." Moscow urged regional and global players to "ramp up coordinated efforts" to solve the issue. "Russia is ready for such joint work," including in the framework of the diplomatic Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators and in close coordination with the Arab League, the foreign ministry said. US President Donald Trump has said similar US-brokered deals are close between the Jewish state and several other nations, including Saudi Arabia. Bahrain and the UAE are the first Arab nations to establish relations with Israel since Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said Tuesday that only an Israeli withdrawal from its occupied territories could bring peace to the Middle East. President Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House on Sept. 16. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) After battling months of withering criticism for his response to the coronavirus crisis, President Trump is relying on a new defense it was Joe Biden, not him, who failed during a pandemic. His evidence: the so-called swine flu pandemic, which killed 12,469 Americans in 2009 and 2010, when Biden was vice president. That's a tiny fraction of the nearly 197,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19 in the last six months. "They did so bad on swine flu, you wouldn't even believe it," Trump said Wednesday, mentioning Biden by name. Trump has long sought to divert attention from own misjudgments and mistakes by blaming his enemies. Now, as he struggles to overcome Biden's lead in the polls, the president has turned familiar schoolyard taunts like "I'm rubber, you're glue" into a campaign strategy. "I suspect he's been doing it since the third grade, and I suspect it's always worked for him," said Rick Tyler, a Republican political consultant and critic of the president. "It's a difficult technique for grown adults to counter." Deflecting criticism is a normal part of politics, but Trump stands out for how frequently and reflexively he redirects his opponent's attacks. In psychology, the tactic is known as projection a defense mechanism to deny one's faults and attribute them to someone else. "There's a long and deep record of him understanding his own vulnerabilities and externalizing them," said Michael D'Antonio, who wrote a biography of Trump. "It hurts a little less if you can throw the criticism on someone else." The tactic was clear during Trump's final debate with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in 2016. At one point, she warned he would be a "puppet" for Russian President Vladimir Putin. "No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet," he indignantly shot back. Trump is using a similar approach against Biden this year. Story continues The president now describes negative news stories as "disinformation," echoing his critics' complaints about the flood of falsehoods from the White House. Trump obfuscates about his health, including a still-murky visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019, and he routinely mangles or mispronounces words on his teleprompter. But he mocks Biden for his verbal stumbles and claims without evidence that Biden is hiding medical and mental problems that make him unfit to serve as president. President Trump has defied health experts by packing supporters into indoor spaces, such as this one in Phoenix on Sept. 14, during the pandemic. (Associated Press) Trump has defied public health officials by staging indoor campaign rallies without requiring masks or social distancing during the pandemic. In July, three weeks after he addressed an indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., health officials reported a record surge of COVID-19 cases in the state. Trump has never acknowledged that danger, pointing to his opponent instead. "Biden's perfectly happy to endanger the lives of other people by doing something that he thinks is going to help him politically," he said last week. The president long has questioned the utility of wearing masks to limit spread of the virus, and has repeatedly pushed back at the idea of directing Americans to do so during the pandemic. But at a town-hall-style event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, he reversed course and accused Biden of failing to implement a national mask mandate. "He didn't do it. He never did it," Trump said. Biden later pointed out that he's a private citizen and unlike Trump cannot require people to wear masks. During the same event, Trump cited the medical advice of restaurant waiters over the counsel of his own medical advisors. Trump also accuses Biden of undermining the search for a reliable coronavirus vaccine. Biden has questioned whether the White House is putting politics before science in hopes of boosting the president's reelection bid. On Wednesday, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a Senate committee that even if a vaccine were approved this year, it wouldnt be ready to be widely distributed to Americans until next summer or fall. Hours later, Trump called Redfield's statements "a mistake" and insisted research is proceeding so quickly that a vaccine could be announced in October just before the Nov. 3 election. The president's support for vaccines is a shift. Before the pandemic, he spent years raising baseless concerns that childhood vaccines cause autism. D'Antonio, the biographer, said Trump's political malleability he has flip-flopped on abortion, party loyalty and other issues removes inhibitions about attacking people for things he done himself. "He doesn't have any commitment to facts or to a previously voiced belief or opinion," he said. Trump announced this month, for example, that he would bar new drilling off the coast of Florida. He did not acknowledge that his administration initially proposed expanding offshore oil and gas drilling. Sam Nunberg, who worked for Trump when he launched his first White House campaign, said the president likes "offensively being defensive." Trump compensated for his lack of military service by aggressively promoting his support for the Pentagon and veterans, Nunberg said. "It's not projection," Nunberg said. "It's strategic and tactical." Trump's critics say he was just mean-spirited, however, when he said in 2015 that Sen. John McCain of Arizona was "not a war hero." McCain was shot down and tortured during the Vietnam War, a conflict that Trump avoided by claiming he had bone spurs. Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist, says Trump's attacks on McCain, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 and died in 2018, show he isn't pursuing a grand political strategy. "I think it's more of a reflex," he said. "He's a terrible poker player. Anything he accuses someone else of, he's guilty of." Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist at Yale University who edited a book about Trump's mental health and its impact on the country, calls Trump's attacks "unconscious confessions" in which he projects his weaknesses onto others. "This is different from political strategy," she said. "This is how mental pathology works." Lee fears that Trump is harming the ability of Americans to separate fact from fiction by spewing falsehoods and conjuring alternative realities. "To cover up his incapacity, he will resort to any manner of harm to the public, the nation or the world at large," she said. Only theyre not little to us. The safety of our families isnt some little thing. The kind of history being crammed into our childrens heads isnt a little thing. Wondering if your kids will have a future in the world being made for them in this election isnt a little thing. Hearing your wifes friends wonder if they should get a gun isnt all that little. A coalition of non-governmental organisations, groups working for the welfare of the urban poor and slum residents will hold protests in Delhi and other parts of the country seeking consultations with slum residents for their rehabilitation in light of the Supreme Courts August 31 order for the removal of 48,000 slums along railway tracks in the national capital. The Centre on Monday ruled out immediate evictions and told the court that discussions were underway to implement its orders. It added no coercive action will be taken against the slum-dwellers until a decision is taken. Congress leader Ajay Maken and slum dwellers have challenged the railways demolition notices, saying they had been issued in total disregard for the policy of rehabilitating them amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Also Read: Delhi govt offers all help to railways in rehabilitating slum dwellers The Railway Basti Jan Sangharsh Morcha, the coalition, said it will hold the protests even as it welcomes the Centres promise of no coercive action against settlements on railway land for four weeks and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwals assurance to slum dwellers that they would be a part of the consultative process over the issue. Basti Suraksha Manch convener Shakeel Ahmed said they will go ahead with the national day of protest and want the governments to accept their demands. The residents should be consulted while the state and the Centre draw up a plan for their rehabilitation as it affects their homes and livelihoods. Also Read: State, Centre did little to stop SC order on removal of slums along railway tracks: Maken The coalition wants the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Boards policy for rehabilitation of slums to be followed and in-situ housing provided within 5km of the existing site. CityMakers Mission International facilitator Indu Prakash said the worst part is the court did not hear over 250,000 residents. It is a supreme injustice done to these people, especially at a time when the country is fighting a pandemic. These people should be part of the consultative process, said Prakash, who is also a member of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on monitoring of homeless shelters in Delhi. CALVERT ISLAND, British Columbia --- Researchers have identified an invasive blood-sucking parasite on mud shrimp in the waters of British Columbia's Calvert Island. The discovery represents the northern-most record of the parasite on the West Coast and is likely an indication of its ability to spread without human transport. Orthione griffenis, a cough drop-sized crustacean native to Asia and Russia, has decimated mud shrimp populations in California and Washington over the past 30 years, causing the collapse of delicate mudflat ecosystems anchored by the shrimp. By the 2000s, it had reached as far as Vancouver Island. The discovery of O. griffenis at Calvert Island, described in a new study, represents a northward leap of more than 180 miles. Scientists found the parasite during a 2017 bioblitz, organized by the Hakai Institute and the Smithsonian Institution's Marine Global Earth Observatory, in which they intensely surveyed and documented marine life. "I was on the lookout for things that seemed out of place," said study lead author Matt Whalen, a Hakai postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia who studies coastal biodiversity. "But this particular parasite wasn't initially on my radar." Most scientists believed the parasites' expansion was exclusively mediated by human transport - O. griffenisis thought to have first arrived in North America by traveling in ships' ballast water. Their appearance at Calvert Island, 150 miles from the nearest city of more than 5,000 people, shows "clearly, they can do it on their own," said study co-author Gustav Paulay, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. "This is such an astonishingly spectacular part of the planet," he said. "During the bioblitz, one of the things we talked about was that there were no invasive species at all. And then we found this thing." Whalen described the find as "a bit depressing." "We tended to associate this parasite with places that have a lot of marine traffic and aquaculture, like California and Oregon," he said in a statement. "Finding them on Calvert Island really suggests that there's very little preventing the spread because of the parasite's life cycle." The parasite is a bizarre crustacean called a bopyrid isopod. In the pre-adult part of its life, it hitches a ride on planktonic copepods - an intermediate host that allows the isopods to travel to new and far-flung mudflats in search of shrimp blood. As adults, the parasites attach to the gills of another crustacean host, in this case a mud shrimp, Upogebia pugettensis, and proceed to sap the life from it. Infected mud shrimp are so hard done by that they lack the required energy to reproduce. "They're essentially castrated," Paulay said. Mud shrimp may not be much to look at - much like crayfish with stumpier claws - but these homely crustaceans play an outsized role as environmental engineers in the mudflats of the Pacific Coast. They cycle nutrients when they filter food, pumping oxygenated water into an expansive network of tunnel dwellings, which provide housing for a suite of creatures, including gobies, worms, clams and other shrimp species. The shrimp's presence affects how the entire mudflat ecosystem functions - or doesn't. When a parasite coevolves in the same place as its host, they often reach a sort of detente, Paulay said. After all, the parasite needs a host to survive, and killing it off at once would not make a great long-term strategy. But when a parasite is introduced from elsewhere, that armistice may never arrive. "The infection rates on Calvert Island were higher than I would've anticipated," Whalen said. "About one in four hosts were parasitized. That's a pretty good chunk of the population." For now, scientists are tracking the northward spread of the parasite. The parasite's prevalence on Calvert Island shows that it may only be a matter of time before it reaches the North Coast of British Columbia and moves onward to Alaska, the upper edge of the mud shrimp's range. For Paulay, the discovery of O. griffenis also underscores how marine bioblitzes can function as early warning systems for invasions. "Every bioblitz we do, we find invasive species," he said. "If you catch them early enough, you have a chance to do something about it." ### The researchers published their findings in BioInvasions Records. Funding for the research was provided by the Smithsonian's Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and the Hakai Institute. The Hakai Institute is a scientific research institution that advances long-term research on the coastal margin of British Columbia, Canada. For more information, visit https://www.hakai.org or follow them on social media, @HakaiInstitute. The Florida Museum of Natural History has been inspiring people to value and protect the biological richness and cultural heritage of our diverse world for more than a century. Located on the University of Florida campus, the Florida Museum is home to more than 40 million specimens and artifacts, one of the nation's largest natural history collections. For more information, visit https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu or follow us on social media, @FloridaMuseum. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:02:09|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JAKARTA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A helicopter belonging to PT National Utility Helicopter (NUH) lost contact on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. local time during a trip from Nabire district in Indonesia's province of Papua to Baya Biru area in the province's district of Paniai. Gusti Anwar Mulyadi, head of the Search and Rescue (SAR) office in Papua's district of Biak, confirmed the loss on Thursday but his side is still collecting more data about the happening and making coordination with relevant parties. "We are still collecting data on the helicopter with three persons onboard consisting of a pilot, a co-pilot and a technician as well as food stuffs," Mulyadi told Antara news agency. Enditem BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: Armenia continues to voice provocative statements against Azerbaijan both on its behalf, and on behalf of the so-called regime, created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan said, Trend reports. The "head" of the so-called "regime" said that they had put forward seven "principles" for the settlement of the conflict. Some time ago, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan mentioned also seven groundless and provocative principles. In response to this, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stressed: We are putting forward only one condition - Armenia must withdraw its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. As a community, we declare that Armenia will never be able to deceive the world community. The truth is that Armenia occupied 20 percent of the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan, carried out ethnic cleansing, expelled up to 1 million Azerbaijanis from their native lands, and created a criminal regime in our occupied lands to conceal their aggression, said the community. These principles, which is originating from impunity and arrogance, are completely unacceptable. The parties to the conflict are Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the interested parties are the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The negotiation format cannot be changed, the community noted. Armenia not only rejects our offer of dialogue with the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh but even denies the mere existence of our community. This is a vivid example of the Azerbaijanophobia policy pursued at the state level in Armenia. The biggest concession of Azerbaijan is participation in peace negotiations for many years. The settlement of the conflict is possible only with the complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and with the return of all internally displaced persons to their homeland, stressed the community. The recent provocative statements and actions of Armenia indicate that the military-political leadership of the country is preparing for another act of aggression against Azerbaijan. However, as in April 2016 and July 2020, the Azerbaijani army will give the enemy a worthy rebuff, the community emphasized. Our native Karabakh will be cleared of the Armenian army and its puppet "regime". The occupation of our historical lands is temporary, and we will certainly return to our lands," the statement added. The Home Office has been forced to cancel a charter flight to Spain after the High Court found that it would place asylum seekers on board at risk of destitution or street homelessness. Ministers had planned to deport a group of men who recently crossed the English Channel on small boats to Spain on Thursday, two weeks after a group of Syrian deportees were left homeless in Madrid after being removed from the UK. The judge ordered the flight to be grounded on the grounds that there were serious concerns that the asylum seekers were at risk of becoming destitute on being returned to Spain, which could amount to a breach of their human rights. Eleven Syrian asylum seekers were left on the streets of Madrid on 3 September, hours after being deported from the UK, because the Spanish authorities didnt accept responsibility for them or provide them with any support. They were left destitute on arrival, with no accommodation, food or money and no means of claiming asylum, and they were forced to sleep on the streets or shelter in an abandoned building. The cancelled charter flight had formed part of the Home Offices wider plans to deport 1,000 asylum seekers to various EU countries under the Dublin III Regulation before the UK leaves the EU at the end of the year. There have been five charter flights since 12 August. The individuals who were due to be deported have suffered a range of ill-treatment in Yemen and Syria, followed by lengthy and traumatic journeys to reach Europe, and each of them has a strong asylum claim, according to their lawyers. One had been shot in Yemen which led to him having parts of his stomach removed. Their lawyers argued that their removal would be unlawful because there were substantial and widespread systemic and operational failures in the asylum system in Spain, and because the Home Office had not made reasonable enquiries as to whether adequate reception arrangements would be provided. The court heard that the Covid-19 pandemic had contributed to the breakdown in the Spanish asylum support system, with the process of claiming asylum at the airport not currently operational, and the option of claiming asylum elsewhere only possible online or by appointment with the earliest appointments available in six months time. A letter submitted as evidence from Amnesty International, informed by its research team based in the groups national office in Madrid, states: It is our organisations view that further Dublin returns to Spain at this time would inevitably involve a real risk that the returnees would be subject to destitution and street homelessness. Under the Dublin III law, removal is prohibited where there are substantial grounds for believing that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions in the receiving country. It comes after The Independent revealed that a number of asylum seekers who have been deported to EU countries from the UK in recent months had returned to Calais to try to cross the Channel again within days or weeks of their removal. In response to the court decision, Home Secretary Priti Patel said: We are bitterly disappointed with the courts ruling, which has prevented us from returning people who have no right to be here. This case has not abated our determination and we have more flights planned in the coming weeks and months. Campaigners said the judgement demonstrated that the UK governments plan to remove 1,000 people under the Dublin Regulation in order to curb Channel crossings was all tough talk with no sensible action, and accuse the UK of "failing to take its legal and moral responsibilities seriously. Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said: This is a landmark victory for human rights, our common humanity and the rule of law. Of course the UK must not deport those fleeing persecution to near certain homelessness and destitution. Home Office to carry out review of hostile environment following Windrush says Priti Patel "That the courts must step in to prevent this injustice should shame Priti Patel, but will instead enrage her. Three cheers for the lawyers who have ensured this government, despite its best efforts, is still not above the law." Tom Kemp, spokesperson for SOAS Detainee Support and researcher at Nottingham Trent University, said: "Forced deportations on charter flights are a violent, unnecessary and extreme response to the very manageable increase in people crossing the channel. The government should take this opportunity to stop its plans to escalate removals in the coming months. They must prioritise the safety and security of people who have travelled to Europe by offering long term settlement and safe routes across the channel. A fired up Joe Biden joined Senate Democrats for a conference call lunch Thursday, telling allies that he is taking nothing for granted in the race for the White House and the down-ballot effort to wrest the Senates majority control from Republicans. The 30-minute event was a homecoming of sorts for the former Delaware senator, now his partys presidential nominee. Yet it took place at a grave moment, with the Covid-19 crisis and economic distress hanging over an election like no other. Biden fielded questions, particularly from senators facing re-election, about his strategy win back the chamber and defeat President Donald Trump. You could tell hes really fired up and hes working hard and is going to be out there and be much as he possibly can, said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who is seeking for a new term. Biden is on offense this week over the presidents handling of the coronavirus crisis. He planned to be near Scranton, Pennsylvania, his boyhood hometown, later Thursday for a CNN town hall, following Trumps on ABC this week. The appearances have been considered tuneups before the three presidential debates; the first is Sept. 29. As Trump prepared for an evening rally in Wisconsin, Biden seized on the president openly contradicting the nations top health officials to claim a vaccine would be ready as early as next month, just before the Nov. 3 election. Mark my words if Im president, Ill always level with the American people, and Ill always tell the truth, Biden said in a statement. On the private call, Biden did not take on Trump directly, but outlined whats at stake. He just said, You know what were up against. You know why this is so important, said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., a party leader who organized the event. Bidens message, said, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., was clear: Theyre ready. Also read: Twitter places warning label on Trumps tweet about voting by mail Bidens campaign team has come under scrutiny in recent days over its outreach efforts, particularly for what some see as short shrift with Latino voters. At the same time, Democrats have mixed views over the partys get-out-the-vote effort that largely bypasses traditional door knocking to avoid health risks during the pandemic, instead relying on virtual outreach. Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris scheduled an event in Philadelphia on Thursday with Latino leaders and elected officials. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said he encouraged Biden to remind workers how much he has been on their side during his many years in government. Ive said Joe, people need to know that you recognize the dignity of the work, the people have built this country, Manchin told reporters. They need to know that you fought for their pensions, you fought for their health care... and youre not gonna leave them behind. Concerns run high among senators over Russian election interference, stalled funding to shore up state election systems and Trumps attempts to starve the US Postal Service of needed money just as many Americans will be mailing in their ballots to avoid crowds at polling stations during the virus crisis. At first senators were told there would be no questions, Manchin said, but Biden intervened. Truly the Joe Biden we know, Manchin said. Biden told senators he is making a play for every state. On a conference call later with Colorado leaders, he said his campaign will focus on mobilizing people to vote early, especially in places where such ballots are counted quickly, to keep Trump from declaring an Election Night victory before all the results are in. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a Biden confidant, said the former vice president generally has been careful not to talk too explicitly about a new administration. There was no discussion of changes to the Senates 60-vote filibuster rule. He must have said this three times, I take nothing for granted, Coons told reporters afterward. Yet looking ahead, senators were eager to discuss a potential Biden White House especially if Democrats control the Senate. Republicans have a narrow three-seat hold on the chamber, putting Democrats within reach of a flip. Bidens longest-serving adviser, Ted Kaufman, who succeeded him in the Senate when he became vice president in 2009, is leading that process. Dana Remus, the campaigns general counsel, and lawyer Bob Bauer, a White House counsel to President Barack Obama, also are playing key roles. Tops on any 2021 agenda would surely be a Covid-19 plan and economic rescue package. Whoever is president will also likely confront a battle over funding for the government, with Congress now compiling legislation to avert a shutdown for the coming months. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at the Capitol as Democrats highlighted their proposed national Covid-19 strategy to test and trace caseloads to try to crush the pandemic crisis. The Democratic approach is outlined with $75 billion in the House-passed Heroes Act, which was a nonstarter in the Senate. Senate Republicans countered with $16 billion for testing in their bill as the two sides reached an impasse. The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is after the Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper Kweku Baako asking him to retract and apologise over his assertion that its flagbearer, Mr John Dramani Mahama, while in power, cut sod for projects when his government had not yet secured funding for them. The NDC says the claims by the senior journalists cum social commentator are falsehood peddling. This follows publications by some online news portals that Mr Baako had claimed that the NDC flagbearer was cutting sods for projects without first securing funding. A statement signed by the NDC's National Communication Officer, Mr Sammy Gyamfi, on Thursday, 17 September 2020, said its attention has been drawn to a publication by some online news portals, under the caption, Kweku Baako Exposes Ex-Prez Mahama Over 'Sakawa' Projects. The main opposition party noted: In this story, the Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako is reported to have accused H.E John Dramani Mahama of cutting the sod for the commencement of some projects when funding for same had not been secured. The NDC stated unequivocally, that: The claims attributed to Mr Baako in the said publications are false. According to the NDC, Mr Baakos claim that President Mahama cut the sod for the Tema Motorway Interchange project when no budgetary allocation or funding was available for same is palpable falsehood. The facts show that even though the preparatory works and funding for the said project (a USD55 million grant from the Japanese government through JICA) was secured by the erstwhile NDC/Mahama government, H.E John Dramani Mahama never cut the sod for the commencement of the project when he was President of the Republic of Ghana between the period of 2013 to January 7, 2017. The NDC explained that: Rather, it was the construction of two (2) 105-metre span flyovers from the Flower Pot Junction to link the Tema Motorway (BOG-funded) and another to link the East Legon/Shiashi stretch projects (GOG-funded), that President John Dramani Mahama cut the sod for, on 2nd November 2016. As a matter of fact, the sod-cutting ceremony for these two (2) projects which are separate and distinct from the JICA-funded Tema Interchange project, was done on the same day that President Mahama inaugurated the 4.7-kilometre road which runs from the Congo Junction at Burma Camp, through the Airport Hills Overpass to the Flower Pot Junction on the Spintex Road. It further continued that: The Contractors for both projects were already on-site at the time President Mahama cut the sod for the commencement of the projects which were being funded from the governments own resources and expected to be completed within 24 months at a cost of GHS50 million. Therefore, the claim by Mr Baako, that President Mahama cut the sod for the Tema Interchange project when no budgetary allocation or funding was available for same, is not borne out by the facts. For emphasis, H.E John Dramani Mahama never performed any sod-cutting ceremony for the Tema Motorway Interchange project when he was President of the Republic of Ghana. Mr Baakos claim is false, hence, must be retracted and an unqualified apology publicly rendered for same. Regarding the 2nd Phase of the Kumasi Airport Expansion project by President Mahama, the NDC noted that Mr Baako acknowledges that the loan for the project had been approved by the Parliament of Ghana at the time President Mahama cut the sod for the commencement of the project in December 2016. Indeed, President Mahama performed the sod-cutting ceremony after securing parliamentary approval of a loan of 65,037,500 Euros from Banco Santander S.A. and export credit support from the United Kingdom Export Finance Agency, for onward lending in the sum of 7,762,500 Euros, to the Ghana Airports Company Limited, in November 2016. It continued that: Aside from the fact that Parliament had approved the loan facility at the time President Mahama cut the sod for the project, the contractor, who had completed the first phase of the project, had moved to site and had cleared and fenced the land for the take-off of Phase 2 of the project. The claim by Mr Baako that certain conditions precedent in the Project Agreements had not been fulfilled, hence it was 'needless' for President Mahama to have cut the sod for the commencement of the project, is totally untenable in our view. The fact still remains, that Parliament had approved the loan facility for the project and the contractor was already on-site at the time President Mahama cut the sod for the commencement of the project. The statement continued that: Mr Baakos assertion about unfulfilled conditions does not in any way contradict the statement made by President Mahama at the NDCs Kumasi Town Hall Meeting that, he vowed never to cut sod for any project until he saw a contractor on-site due to lessons he learnt from the delayed start of the Upper West Regional Hospital project. The NDC reiterated Mr Mahamas caution to the chiefs and people of Ghana not to be hoodwinked by the fake (Sakawa) sod-cutting ceremonies being performed by President Akufo Addo and other officials of his government in recent time for the commencement of various projects across the country, funding for which are neither captured in the 2020 mid-year budget nor approved by Parliament. We submit that, but for his wastefulness and unbridled penchant for profligacy and corruption, President Akufo-Addo should have been commissioning significant developmental projects by now given the unprecedented total resource envelope of GHS374 billion that has accrued to his government in the last three (3) and half years and not be performing the fake (Sakawa) sod-cutting ceremonies we are currently witnessing, which are calculated for electoral votes and nothing more. It added that: The desperate attempt by Mr Abdul Malik Kweku Baako and other government spokespersons to parry this important issue and create the false impression that President Mahama is equally guilty of the practice of fake sod-cutting ceremonies should be dismissed and roundly condemned. ---classfmonline Lukashenko didn't provide evidence to back his claim that the U.S. had any involvement in the demonstrations Belarus' authoritarian leader on Wednesday sought to disparage protesters demanding his resignation for a sixth straight week following a disputed election by accusing the United States of fomenting the unrest. In a long speech to top officials, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ranted against the alleged U.S.-led plan to destabilize the country and claimed that American allies in Europe have participated in the effort that took years to prepare, part of his attempts to cast the opposition as Western stooges. Lukashenko didn't provide evidence to back his claim that the U.S. had any involvement in the demonstrations. His main challenger in the election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, dismissed his comments as an attempt to divert public attention from rigging the vote and the violent crackdown on protests. ``There is just one reason behind the protests in Belarus and it's known to everyone: Lukashenko has lost the vote, but he doesn't want to step down,'' Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press in a written comment. ``People have denied Lukashenko their trust and support and demand that he leave.'' Protesters in Belarus have flooded the streets of the Belarusian capital and other cities denouncing Lukashenko's landslide reelection in the Aug. 9 vote as rigged. The huge demonstrations were driven by frustration with the Belarusian strongman's 26-year iron-fist rule, his cavalier response to the coronavirus and the worsening economy. The U.S. and the European Union have criticized the election as neither free nor fair, and urged Lukashenko to start talks with the opposition _ a call he has rejected. ``We had the vote and got the result, period,'' Lukashenko said in Wednesday's speech before top officials. ``It's time to stop stirring up society.'' U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Wednesday he hopes his repeated calls will be heeded for an inclusive political dialogue among Belarusians. He said re-establishing a national consensus ``is absolutely essential for the harmonious development of the country.'' Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, claimed in a statement carried by Russian news agencies Wednesday that the U.S. has funded the Belarusian opposition and encouraged the protests. In an apparent attempt to delegitimize the Belarusian protests, Naryshkin added that his agency has information that ``the U.S. is playing a key role in the current developments in Belarus.'' He alleged that the U.S. has earmarked tens of millions of dollars to finance Belarus' opposition groups, but provided no evidence. The U.S. Embassy in Minsk had no immediate comment. Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition challenger who left for Lithuania a day after the vote under official pressure, rejected Naryshkin's statement. ``It's an internal political crisis, and the protesters' demands contain nothing regarding relations with other countries or a shift in Belarus' foreign policy course,'' she said in written remarks to the AP. ``Mr. Naryshkin should better understand that instead of airing dated propaganda cliches.'' In Wednesday's speech, Lukashenko charged that the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine have helped fuel protests. All those countries have denied similar claims by Lukashenko in the past. ``The Belarusian 2020 scenario is a combination of the most effective `color' destabilization technologies that have been tested in various countries,`` he said in a reference to the color-coded protests that have ousted unpopular rulers in other ex-Soviet nations. ``They obviously count on the scale and duration of protests to wear us down and exhaust our resources. We aren't relaxing and stand ready to respond to any challenge.'' After a fierce crackdown on protests in the first days after the vote in which nearly 7,000 were detained and hundreds were brutally beaten by police, Belarusian authorities changed tactics and tried to stifle dissent with selective detentions of demonstrators and jailing of opposition leaders. Belarusian prosecutors have launched a probe against the opposition activists who created the Coordination Council to push for a new election, jailing some of its top members and forcing a few others to move abroad. Maria Kolesnikova, a leading council member who has been in jail for more than a week after she ripped her passport to avoid the forcible expulsion to Ukraine, was charged Wednesday with making calls for the seizure of power and forcible change of the constitutional order. She could face up to five years in prison if convicted. Kolesnikova was suffering from allergy in prison but remains in good spirits, said her lawyer Lyudmila Kazak. ``She wants to tell people that never regretted acting as she did even for a second,'' the lawyer said. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose country holds the European Union's rotating presidency, noted that and his colleagues from other EU countries will meet Monday to consider how to proceed with sanctions. ``I will say openly that if the violence against the peaceful opposition doesn't stop, then these measures will have to be extended to significantly more people, and then we will have to talk about Mr. Lukashenko,'' Maas told the German parliament on Wednesday. Western pressure has pushed Lukashenko to further cement ties with Russia, his main sponsor and ally. The neighboring countries have a union agreement and maintain strong political, economic and military ties. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a new $1.5 billion loan to Belarus when he hosted Lukashenko on Monday _ a financial lifeline condemned by the Belarusian opposition, which warned Moscow that it would tarnish future ties between the countries. In a bid to rally Moscow's support, Lukashenko has cast the protests as part of a Western plot to isolate Russia. Earlier this week, Russian paratroopers deployed to Belarus for the drills that will run through Sept. 25 near Brest, on the border with Poland. At a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who visited Belarus Wednesday for talks on deepening military cooperation, Lukashenko said he hopes to get more Russian weapons and suggested planning more maneuvers in the future. The German foreign minister noted that Russia ``carries a very special responsibility'' given its close ties with Belarus and warned that ``with its unconditional support for Lukashenko so far and hybrid exertion of influence, Moscow will certainly lose the sympathy of people in Belarus.'' Maas also sought to allay the Kremlin fears of Belarus falling into the Western orbit. ``For us inside the European Union as well, this is not about detaching Belarus from Russia and incorporating it in the European Union,`` he said. ``This is simply about us standing up for people in Belarus being able to decide themselves what road they take in a free and fair election.'' Search Keywords: Short link: [Read the latest updates in the Ghislaine Maxwell case.] Annie Farmer was 16 years old when she arrived at Jeffrey Epsteins ranch in New Mexico in 1996 to attend a program for high school students, only to learn that she was the sole participant. There she met Mr. Epsteins companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, who seemed friendly and asked about her classmates and her family. Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein took her shopping and lavished her with gifts, like beauty products and new cowboy boots, according to a lawsuit Ms. Farmer filed last year. The seemingly innocuous behavior was in fact part of a process to groom Ms. Farmer for sexual activity, the authorities now say. Ms. Maxwell began pressuring Ms. Farmer to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, according to the lawsuit, and the encounters escalated until Ms. Farmer says she eventually woke up one day to find Mr. Epstein entering her room, climbing into her bed and pressing his body against hers. Now, with Ms. Maxwell facing allegations that she helped Mr. Epstein recruit and ultimately abuse girls as young as 14, the concept of grooming is at the heart of the criminal case against her. References to grooming appear nine times in the 18-page indictment against Ms. Maxwell. It may be the shortest film at this years Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), spanning less than four minutes, but Strong Son is clearly leaving an everlasting impression on audiences, critics and organisers. The film, made by 34-year-old Indian-origin Sikh filmmaker Ian Bawa who is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, has made it to the top-ten lists of publications such as Now Toronto and the New York-based Film Stage. It has also been featured by national broadcaster CBC. Ian Bawas film is about the relationship between a weightlifter and his father. Bodybuilder Mandeep Sodhi was cast as the weightlifter, while the fathers role was played by the directors parent, Jagdeep Singh Bawa. The filmmaker said he managed to submit his work for this years Short Cuts section at the TIFF only because pandemic-related shutdowns gave him the time he needed to sit down, edit it and shape it. The raw footage, Ian Bawa said, had been lying with him since last year. I just needed a project and I threw all my energy into this, he said. He called his film super personal and born of pure passion, as it is based on his personal equation with his father, who had immigrated to Canada from India in the 1970s. TIFF programmer Lisa Haller described the short film as an endearing portrait of the father-son bond. The narrative of the film includes humour and thought-provoking elements, which come out prominently through the fathers voiceover, providing the cultural backdrop of the characters portrayed. In one scene, for instance, the father ruminates aloud, My son is getting older and Im worried that hes spent too much time getting strong and not enough time settling down. Ian Bawa insists that despite highlighting typical Indian family riffs, the theme of the film is universal and the work has stemmed partly from his own personal insecurities. This isnt the first time Ian Bawa has been part of a work that premiered at the TIFF. He worked with three colleagues, who call themselves the Winnipeg Collective, on the 2016 film, Imitations. This is a year everyone is going to remember and Im part of the new world of film festivals, the filmmaker said, underlining the novelty factor at this years Toronto event that was compelled to be conducted largely online due to coronavirus-related restrictions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Press Release September 17, 2020 Villanueva asks DBM to restore P300-M innovation fund to help generate opportunities for startups, laid-off workers Senator Joel Villanueva lamented the decision of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to reject the request of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to allocate P300 million for the Innovation Fund next year as unemployment is projected to remain high as a result of business closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. "We hope that the government can find a way to tap resources to fund Republic Act No. 11293, because as many experts have said, now is the best time for innovation," Villanueva said on Thursday morning at the hearing of the Senate finance committee, which is deliberating the budget of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and its attached agencies. "Our budget for fiscal year 2021 is crucial in defining the country's post-disaster landscape. We have seen how innovations provide hope especially for micro, small, and medium (MSME) enterprises amid the pandemic." "I hope ma-pondohan ito. I would rather support this than the DENR's dolomite white sand project. As reported, P349 million iyon, mas malaki pa kumpara dito. I hope the secretary would have the extra effort because you have senators here who could help you," continued the lawmaker, who chairs the Senate labor committee. Villanueva enumerated Filipino-made startup projects that have been acknowledged as among the best innovations and inventions created to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The projects included Project GreenGrass, an online community monitoring to help local government units enforce quarantine measures; Sakay's Frontliner Commuting Guide, a guide for commuters especially frontliners on the routes and schedules of P2P buses and public shuttles, amid the lack of public transportation; and Edukasyon.ph Online Education Network, an online platform that provides educational counseling services to stakeholders in senior high schools, higher education institutions, and tech-voc institutions, and also helps them migrate to online learning. Villanueva said the Innovation Act would complement the proposed Digital Workforce Competitiveness Bill, which the lawmaker sponsored for plenary action on Tuesday. Senate Bill No. 1834 "seeks to provide necessary digital infrastructures to upskill and cross-skill the Filipino workforce on digital technology and innovations," the lawmaker explained. Republic Act No. 11293 or the Philippine Innovation Act, which Villanueva co-authored in the 17th Congress, puts up an innovation fund from which grants will be issued for programs that will "strengthen entrepreneurship and enterprises engaged in developing innovative solutions benefiting the poorest of the poor." The innovation fund was supposed to be instituted in the 2020 national budget, but the P300 million allocation was discontinued to comply with the government's directive to pool its resources to finance its response to the pandemic. For next year, NEDA originally proposed another budget of P300 million for the Innovation Fund, and another P17.18 million to finance the secretariat services to the National Innovation Council, which administers the fund. Both these items were not approved by the budget department, NEDA's presentation showed. Kuala Lumpur: Irans foreign minister said that his country isnt worried and has several options if US President-elect Donald Trump rejects a nuclear agreement reached between Iran and six world powers. But Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran believes it is in the interest of everybody to stick to the deal. He told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday that if Trumps government walks away from the deal, we will make him surprised. He declined to elaborate. The deal was negotiated by Iran and the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, and was enshrined in a legally binding UN resolution. It imposed limits on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for lifting UN economic sanctions. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. A new study finds a trigger for the Little Ice Age that cooled Europe from the 1300s through mid-1800s, and supports surprising model results suggesting that under the right conditions sudden climate changes can occur spontaneously, without external forcing. The study, published in Science Advances, reports a comprehensive reconstruction of sea ice transported from the Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait, by Greenland, and into the North Atlantic Ocean over the last 1400 years. The reconstruction suggests that the Little Ice Age--which was not a true ice age but a regional cooling centered on Europe--was triggered by an exceptionally large outflow of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic in the 1300s. While previous experiments using numerical climate models showed that increased sea ice was necessary to explain long-lasting climate anomalies like the Little Ice Age, physical evidence was missing. This study digs into the geological record for confirmation of model results. Researchers pulled together records from marine sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic to get a detailed look at sea ice throughout the region over the last 1400 years. "We decided to put together different strands of evidence to try to reconstruct spatially and temporally what the sea ice was during the past one and a half thousand years, and then just see what we found," said Martin Miles, an INSTAAR researcher who also holds an appointment with NORCE Norwegian Research Centre and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Norway. The cores included compounds produced by algae that live in sea ice, the shells of single-celled organisms that live in different water temperatures, and debris that sea ice picks up and transports over long distances. The cores were detailed enough to detect abrupt (decadal scale) changes in sea ice and ocean conditions over time. The records indicate an abrupt increase in Arctic sea ice exported to the North Atlantic starting around 1300, peaking in midcentury, and ending abruptly in the late 1300s. "I've always been fascinated by not just looking at sea ice as a passive indicator of climate change, but how it interacts with or could actually lead to changes in the climate system on long timescales," said Miles. "And the perfect example of that could be the Little Ice Age." "This specific investigation was inspired by an INSTAAR colleague, Giff Miller, as well as by some of the paleoclimate reconstructions of my INSTAAR colleagues Anne Jennings, John Andrews, and Astrid Ogilvie," added Miles. Miller authored the first paper to suggest that sea ice played an essential role in sustaining the Little Ice Age. Scientists have argued about the causes of the Little Ice Age for decades, with many suggesting that explosive volcanic eruptions must be essential for initiating the cooling period and allowing it to persist over centuries. One the hand, the new reconstruction provides robust evidence of a massive sea-ice anomaly that could have been triggered by increased explosive volcanism. One the other hand, the same evidence supports an intriguing alternate explanation. Climate models called "control models" are run to understand how the climate system works through time without being influenced by outside forces like volcanic activity or greenhouse gas emissions. A set of recent control model experiments included results that portrayed sudden cold events that lasted several decades. The model results seemed too extreme to be realistic--so-called Ugly Duckling simulations--and researchers were concerned that they were showing problems with the models. Miles' study found that there may be nothing wrong with those models at all. "We actually find that number one, we do have physical, geological evidence that these several decade-long cold sea ice excursions in the same region can, in fact do, occur," he said. In the case of the Little Ice Age, "what we reconstructed in space and time was strikingly similar to the development in an Ugly Duckling model simulation, in which a spontaneous cold event lasted about a century. It involved unusual winds, sea ice export, and a lot more ice east of Greenland, just as we found in here." The provocative results show that external forcing from volcanoes or other causes may not be necessary for large swings in climate to occur. Miles continued, "These results strongly suggest...that these things can occur out of the blue due to internal variability in the climate system." The marine cores also show a sustained, far-flung pulse of sea ice near the Norse colonies on Greenland coincident with their disappearance in the 15th century. A debate has raged over why the colonies vanished, usually agreeing only that a cooling climate pushed hard on their resilience. Miles and his colleagues would like to factor in the oceanic changes nearby: very large amounts of sea ice and cold polar waters, year after year for nearly a century. "This massive belt of ice that comes streaming out of the Arctic--in the past and even today--goes all the way around Cape Farewell to around where these colonies were," Miles said. He would like to look more closely into oceanic conditions along with researchers who study the social sciences in relation to climate. ### Camilla S. Andresen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and Christian V. Dylmer, of MMT Sweden AB, were coauthors of the study. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre has conducted a surgical strike on farmers by banning onion export, the NCP alleged on Thursday, and demanded a reversal of the move. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesperson Mahesh Tapase termed the decision as Tughlaqi (ill-thought-out) as it deprived onion growers of a good price for their produce at a time when there was an increasing demand for the commodity in the international market. The NCP is a key constituent in the MVA government in Maharashtra, a major producer of onion in the country. The Centre on Monday banned the export of all varieties of onions with immediate effect, a move aimed at increasing availability and curbing prices of the commodity in the domestic market. Speaking to reporters here, Tapase also said the party will try to give justice to ex-serviceman Sonu Mahajan, who was allegedly thrashed by BJP MP Unmesh Patil and his supporters four years ago. Tapase was accompanied by other party spokesperson Sanjay Tatkare, Clyde Crasto and Mahesh Chavan on the occasion. The Modi government has conducted a surgical strike on farmers in Maharashtra and elsewhere in the country by banning onion export, Tapase charged. The NCP leader said party president Sharad Pawar had on Tuesday flagged the concerns before Union Commerce MinisterPiyush Goyal. Goyal, Tapase added, had assured farmers throughPawar that the Centre will take positive steps on the issue. It has been four days since the decision was taken, but the government has not reconsidered it yet. As a result, the issue is a burning one now, he added, apparently referring to protests by farmers on the issue in the state. Tapase claimed that owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, onion export has come down by 13 per cent, aggregating a business loss of around Rs 1,150 crore. He noted that five lakh metric tonne onion is rotting at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Nhava Sheva (in outskirts of Mumbai) and asked who is responsible for such a loss. Since the business has come to a halt, farmers naturally have found themselves in trouble. Hence, PrimeMinister Modi and Goyal should withdraw the decision, he added. Workers of the Congress, another partner in the MVAgovernment, had on Wednesday staged statewide protests over the Centres decision. Tapase also said Mahajan met Home Minister AnilDeshmukh at the party office here earlier in the day and demanded justice". The home minister has said that justice will be given to Mahajan in an unbiased manner, Tapase added. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Walmart Foundation on Thursday announced two new grants worth $4.5 million to help smallholder farmers earn more from improved output and fair market access. The grants are part of a commitment made in September 2018 to invest $25 million (nearly Rs 180 crore) over five years in improving farmer livelihoods in India. With these grants, the Walmart Foundation has invested $15 million with eight non-government organisations (NGOs) in the country, supporting programmes designed to impact more than 140,000 farmers, including nearly 80,000 women farmers, to date. "The global Covid-19 pandemic has increased pressure on India's farmers, especially women farmers shouldering extra responsibilities in the household while seeing their incomes diminish overnight," said Kathleen McLaughlin, president of Walmart Foundation and executive vice president and chief sustainability officer of Walmart. "We at the Walmart Foundation and our grantee partners are focused on supporting farmers to increase their resilience and sustainability for a better future". The new funding would allow non-profits Tanager and PRADAN to further scale their efforts to help farmers. Both grantees will focus on increasing opportunities for women farmers via farmer producer organisations (FPOs). "There is huge potential for innovative technology solutions to help farmers in India improve productivity and yield, access valuable market information and succeed as part of a more efficient and transparent supply chain,:" said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Group chief executive officer and a member of the Walmart Foundation Board of Directors. In the latest round, non-profit organisation Tanager will receive more than $2.6 million to extend its successful 'Farmer Market Readiness' (FMP) programme and help farmers in Andhra Pradesh further expand their knowledge, resources and reach. Image Source: IANS News The phase 2 of the programme will focus on strengthening the sustainability of 13 FPOs, in order to help more than 15,000 farmers, including more than 5,600 women farmers, increase their productivity and profitability. Delhi-based non-profit Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) will use its Walmart Foundation grant of $1.9 million to launch its Livelihood Enhancement through Market Access and Women Empowerment (LEAP) programme in West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. The LEAP programme is expected to reach out to 45,000 women farmers directly, benefiting a population of about 225,000 people. -- Syndicated from IANS Steve Earle has announced that he will release a new album featuring covers of songs by his son, the late musician Justin Townes Earle, with his band the Dukes. In a press statement, it was revealed that Earle plans to record the album sometime in the next month. The record will be released in January 2021, to coincide with what would have been Justins 39th birthday. Advances and royalties from the sales of the album will be placed in a trust fund for Justins daughter, Etta St James. The tracklist and title are yet to be announced. Steve Earle will record the songs by his late son Justin died aged 38 on 20 August from a probable drug overdose, according to police. News of his death was announced via an official statement, which read:It is with tremendous sadness that we inform you of the passing of our son, husband, father and friend Justin. So many of you have relied on his music and lyrics over the years and we hope that his music will continue to guide you on your journeys. Fellow artists, including Margo Price, Billy Bragg and Frank Turner, paid tribute to Justin on social media. Justins last album, The Saint of Lost Causes, was released in 2019. Government phasing out wage support for employees risks jobs, says hardest hit sectors OTTAWA, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Today, the Coalition of Hardest Hit Businesses (CHHB) launched a campaign calling on the federal government to extend the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) program at the full 75% rate for businesses facing an ongoing revenue decline of 50% or higher, and extend the program until Spring/Summer 2021. The CHHB is an industry-driven group of over 40 stakeholders representing a variety of sectors including tourism, arts and culture, events and festivals, and hospitality. "In the COVID-19 pandemic, our businesses were the first shut down, and we will be the last to recover - in short, we are the hardest hit businesses," said Charlotte Bell, President and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. "Our sectors will bounce back when COVID is behind us, but this fall we face bankruptcy and unemployment for over 2 million Canadians working in our sectors." On July 17, the federal government announced it would make the wage subsidy program more accessible for the summer months and then wind it down over the autumn. Beginning on September 26, the amount of wage subsidy funding for all businesses - including the hardest hit businesses experiencing revenue declines of over 50% - will decrease until the subsidy is eliminated entirely in December. "With COVID restrictions ongoing but government support fading, many of the hardest hit businesses will not survive and those jobs will be gone forever," added Susie Grynol, President and CEO of the Hotel Association of Canada. "Our people are one of the most diverse workforces in the country. In the hotel sector alone, women make up 60% of total employees, millennials make up 38%, immigrants represent 31%, and visible minorities make up 29%. These are the groups that the Bank of Canada identified as being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and who need additional protection and support. The best and most empowering way to support these workers is to allow them to keep their jobs." "We expected a slight bump in revenues during the summer months as economic activity returned - but that ended along with summer family travel in September," said Keith Henry, President and CEO of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada. "The CEWS program is the most accessible and successful of the government programs, and was critical to keeping Canada's Indigenous people employed during the pandemic. We need this program to be extended through Spring 2021 at the full 75% rate to keep people employed." "Meetings, events, and festivals have all been cancelled for 2020, and many will not be rescheduled until at least 2022 - that's tens of billions in economic activity that has vanished overnight," added Martin Roy, Executive Director of Major Events and Festivals Canada. "We have all complied with safety measures, and support the actions the government has taken to flatten the curve. Canadians came together to support employment with the wage subsidy before, and we need to keep that support up for our hardest hit businesses." To learn more about the CHHB and to get involved, visit www.HardestHit.ca. Click here for media backgrounder Media Inquiries: Alla Drigola alla@impactcanada.com 778-834-5517 SOURCE: Coalition of Hardest Hit Businesses View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606470/New-Coalition-Government-Must-Extend-Wage-Subsidy-to-Save-2-Million-Canadian-Jobs Richard Carranza, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, left, and Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, carry bins with supplies during a news conference at New Bridges Elementary School in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New York, U.S., August. 19, 2020. All of the city's public school students had been scheduled to return to the classroom on Monday. Only preschools and special education schools will now be allowed to reopen next week, de Blasio said. Remote learning has already started and will continue "as these phases come into play." The new plan will delay the start of in-person learning for middle and high school students in the country's largest school district to Oct. 1, de Blasio said. Kindergarten through fifth grade and K-8 schools will begin in-person instruction on Sept. 29, he said. New York City's public schools will adopt a phased reopening schedule to return students to the classroom, pushing back the start of in-person learning for middle and high school students to October, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday. This is the second time the mayor has pushed back reopening classrooms, which was supposed to begin on Sept. 10. Earlier this month, de Blasio said the public school system would push back its reopening to Sept. 21 after union leaders voiced concern about the lack of health measures to protect teachers, students and staff from the coronavirus. "We are doing this to make sure that all the standards we've set can be achieved," he said. The mayor said the changes come after a meeting Wednesday with colleagues, including United Federation of Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew, who "raised real concerns" about reopening schools. "The thousands of operational issue reports filed by UFT chapter leaders on behalf of their members demonstrated the huge teacher shortage in our schools that would have made a Sept. 21 opening a fiasco," the union tweeted following de Blasio's announcement Thursday. Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said during the press briefing that people working in the schools expressed concerned about understaffing. He said that opening Monday "would not have been safe for our students." The city will add 4,500 educators to assist with in-person learning, including graduate and adjunct professors at the City University of New York, substitute teachers and "several thousand" people who already work for the Department of Education in other roles, the mayor said. "This is a huge undertaking. It is difficult, it's challenging. It's not the easy way. It is in fact the hard way, but it's the right way," de Blasio said at his daily press briefing. Parents whose children are enrolled in New York City public schools can opt for online learning at any point during the school year, according to Katie O'Hanlon, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Education. She told CNBC that of the more than 1 million students enrolled in the upcoming school year, more than 40% have requested remote learning as of Tuesday. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to entertain submissions by a lawyer pressing for a contempt against the editor of Sudarshan News for an alleged tweet against the court, which has stayed the broadcast of the subsequent five episodes of "UPSC Jehad". The top court had said the intent and purpose of the programme is to vilify the Muslim community. Senior advocate Anoop G Chaudhary, representing the petitioner Firoz Iqbal, submitted that he wants to press for a contempt against the Editor-in-Chief of Sudarshan News for his tweet after the court stopped the broadcast of a show on the news channel. Chaudhary contended before a bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising Justices K.M. Joseph and Indu Malhotra to initiate contempt proceedings for the "contemptuous" tweet against the top court. Justice Chandrachud replied: "If he has said something silly, we will ignore it." The bench scheduled the matter for further hearing on Friday at 12 noon, which is subject to the administrative order of the Chief Justice, as this bench is not sitting tomorrow. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing Sudarshan TV, contended before the bench his client has filed a counter affidavit, where it provided details of the alleged foreign funding, by Zakat Foundation of India, to justify its programme alleging conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims into the Indian Civil Services. "I am doing investigative journalism. I feel it is my duty to awaken the citizens and the Government about anti-national and anti-social activities and the modus operandi", said Suresh Chavhanke, the Editor-in-Chief of Sudarshan News. The editor in the affidavit said there is no statement or message in the four episodes broadcast that members of a particular community should not join the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). He insisted that the UPSC is an open competitive examination and members of every community may participate in the entrance examination and qualify. "The thrust of the programme is that there appears to be a conspiracy which needs to be investigated by NIA or CBI", he added. He submitted before the court that the word "UPSC Jehad" was used because it has come to the knowledge through various sources that Zakat Foundation has received funds from various terror-linked organisations. "It is not that all contributors to the Zakat Foundation are terror-linked. However, some of the contributors are linked to organisations or are organizations that fund extremist groups. The funds received by the Zakat Foundation, in turn, are used to support aspirants for IAS, IPS or UPSC", said the affidavit. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Labour is demanding the government perform an eleventh-hour U-turn and extend the eviction moratorium until they have a credible plan to ensure people do not lose their homes as a result of the pandemic. With just six days remaining until courts can once again begin procession proceedings, shadow housing secretary Thangam Debbonaire warned of a cliff-edge facing thousands in the rental sector. Her comments came after Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, announced a brief extension to the reprieve on evictions until 20 September, following intense pressure from homelessness charities and opposition parties. In an attempt to alleviate concerns over the imminent lifting of the ban, the government extended the notice period for renters are given to leave a property from three to six months, excluding cases involving anti-social tenants. Last week, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) also said evictions will not be enforced in areas where local lockdowns have been imposed, and announced a truce on enforcement over Christmas. While welcoming the measures that would prevent the misery of tenants facing eviction over the festive period, charity Shelter warned those people who were served notices by landlords before August could still face automatic eviction when the moratorium expires. The organisation has previously warned that 174,000 tenants were threatened with eviction by landlords or letting agents by the end of June. And for renters served notice after August, the measures simply delay the threat of homelessness, they added. With the double-whammy of recession and the furlough scheme ending next month, and thousands in financial peril, the government must support the renters most in need with paying their rent. Ahead of the resumption of courts hearing eviction cases, Ms Debbonaire told a roundtable discussion on Tuesday: We have been warning the government for months about the potential rise in homelessness if they lift this ban without a plan. Echoing Shelters comments, the Labour MP said extending eviction notice periods to six months, from three, doesnt help people who were served notice before August. She added: Unfortunately the government has in my view been far too slow. The government did U-turn at the last minute last month and they brought in this very short extension. This was welcomed, but in my view theyve wasted that time and were still facing largely the same cliff-edge this Sunday that the government narrowly avoided at the end of August. I believe the government should not lift the ban until theyve got a credible for how to make sure people do not lose their homes because of coronavirus. One tenant, speaking on the condition of anonymity at the roundtable discussion hosted by campaigning group Generation Rent, said that just before the pandemic hit they were made redundant and had enough money to cover just the first rental payment of the lockdown. After that I had to tell my landlady that look Im only going to be able to cover what the government gives me and the government gives me less than a third of what my rent is, which is just below the market rate in south-east London. Ive been paying that since, but Ive gone into arrears of a few thousand pounds now. Ive been looking for work but because of the Covid situation its a lot tougher now. Ive also got mental health issues and its really impacted my anxiety severely. He added: I wanted the government to say, even temporarily while this crisis is going on, we will actually cover the market rate of the rent. At the moment its extremely tough and its having a real impact. Luckily, I havent had an eviction notice or anything yet, unlike some others. But you never know when that comes through once that comes through its the end game because Ive got nowhere else to go. A second tenant on Tuesday afternoon urged the government to extend the eviction ban amid rising cases of coronavirus and fears of the UK is experiencing a second wave of the pandemic. While the renter said they had not received an eviction note, the landlord was consistently asking whether they have found another property. Everytime he sees me, everytime he sends me a text: You find another property. Although he didnt send me an eviction note, its not good to live under that pressure." A third tenant speaking at the roundtable, who lives in an east-London block, said they had been served a section 21 notice by their landlord, dated for 21 September the day after the moratorium on evictions ceases in England and Wales. Shadow housing secretary Thangam Debbonaire (UK Parliament) A lot of people in the building are young freelancers, people working in the gig economy. So the Covid crisis hit us in a particular way, with lots of people loosing income, including my partner, who shares the rent with me, the tenant said. In an attempt to alleviate financial pressures, tenants in the building wrote a letter to the landlord asking for a rental discount during the crisis, or at least a guarantee that no-one evicted if they couldnt pay. They added: We were very surprised at the response we got. The letter received said we were supposedly saving money on cancelled holidays and lunches that we could use to pay the rent in full. So, we received no discount whatsoever. The National Residential Landlords Association, which has previously called for government support for those suffering rent arrears, however, urged the government to keep its word and ensure that urgent repossession cases can be heard again after 20 September. They added: We need the courts to deal with cases where tenants are committing anti-social behaviour or where there are long-standing rent arrears that have nothing to do with the pandemic. Over the last six months landlords have been powerless to take any action against those who cause misery for fellow tenants and neighbours. This has to end. Speaking last week, Mr Jenrick said: We have protected renters during the pandemic by banning evictions for six months the longest eviction ban in the UK. To further support renters we have increased notice period to six months, and unprecedented measure to help keep people in their homes over the winter months. It is right that we strike a balance between protecting vulnerable renters and ensuring landlords whose tenants have behaved illegally or anti-social ways have access to justice. Our legislation means such cases will be subject to shorter notice periods and then prioritised through the judiciarys new court processes. While attention relative to the Libyan conflict focuses on the bifurcation between east and west, the south is ignored despite its festering and growing security challenges, writes Khaled Okasha In Libya, which is customarily treated one-dimensionally as a case of sharp polarisation between the eastern and western parts of the country (a reductionism that is perhaps intentional on the part of some stakeholders), the south has reared its head as a bundle of threats with major security implications. These will inevitably work their way northwards with potentially destructive repercussions if the south remains ignored and if Libyans and their allies continue to lack the political resolve to incorporate that region in a concrete and integral way in the concept of the sovereign Libyan state. Today, there are signs that Libyans can reach a genuine consensus that will offer a glimmer of hope. This development was preceded by an unprecedented comprehensive vision that includes a fair and equitable consideration of the south which has paid dearly for the decade of turmoil that has mostly unfolded in the north since the beginning of the Libyan crisis. This vision was framed in an initiative proposed by Aguila Saleh, speaker of the Libyan Parliament, although the Libyans sometimes refer to it as the Egyptian initiative. However, the challenges remain formidable and it will take serious and concerted efforts to overcome them and ensure that the south does not become a hole that drains all progress achieved. Armed militias and terrorist organisations remain the most serious challenge in the south and among them the Islamic State (IS) group is the gravest threat. The terrorist organisation has been in Libya for years. After shifting locations for a while, it attempted to set up a base in the strategic city of Sirte near the petroleum crescent. After its defeat in Sirte, it turned southwards to the Fezzan region, out of range from much of the turmoil in the north, and there its members hooked up with assorted militias and smuggling gangs. IS operatives now range virtually unimpeded across much of Fezzan, a far flung region (roughly 220 square miles) inhabited by less than half a million people. If that sparse expanse is an additional security headache, it is a great advantage for armed groups. It should be added that the south contains strategic arteries that supply both oil and water to both the eastern and western regions in the north. This could become a major source of political and economic pressure should these arteries come under threat from outlaw militia groups regardless of their affiliation and aims. According to Libyan sources in Fezzan and investigators for AFRICOM who have been tracking the movements of IS fighters after their flight from Sirte, IS has formed a desert army consisting of three brigades. Units from these brigades were responsible for the extensive assault against the Great Man-Made River in 2017, followed by the destruction a large number of electricity pylons over an area of about 100 square kilometres. The brigades also frequently dispatch small contingents to carry out ambushes and raids as a means to maintain a high level of security tension, intimidate and wreak attrition on any formal national police or military entity, regardless of whether it is affiliated with the east, the west or the Libyan National Army. As this small IS army grew, it weaved its way into the weft and warp of the tribal, ethnic and factional disputes in the region. Trade and smuggling routes between the south and Libyas Sub-Saharan neighbours have long been the object of local and cross border tribal and ethnic disputes in the vicinity of the long, porous and purely secured borders. Tensions in the region increased, frequently flaring into armed skirmishes, as rivalries intensified since the onset of the Libyan crisis. Another major challenge stems from another demographic component, which involves the transborder tribal and ethnic affiliations of important segments of the southern Libyan population and the mounting tensions and conflicts along such divides since the collapse of the Libyan state which had sustained a controlling presence before the February Revolution of 2011. Until that point, there was general respect for tribal agreements that granted the Touareg control over the passes between southern Libya and Niger and Toubou control over the passes between southern Libya and Chad and other portions of Niger. These agreements broke down in 2014, setting into motion a long chain of violent clashes between these two major ethnic components whose circles of influence and control stretch across vast tracts of the south, as well as over a significant amount of both legal and illegal trade. In addition, there are strong links, common interests and occasional division of labour between them and armed opposition factions and separatist movements opposed to the regimes in some of Libyas southern neighbours. During the early years of the Libyan crisis, those border regions and the passes in particular were monitored from a French base in Madama in northeast Niger near the borders with Libya and Chad. The area became a hub of convergence between local militants and newcomers from terrorist organisations that sought to take advantage of the abovementioned surge in anarchy and fluidity. In mid-2018, after at least 10 terrorist attacks against US forces in the vicinity between 2015 and 2017, AFRICOM also established a large and sophisticated base in Niger, north of Niamey. From there, AFRICOM carries out comprehensive aerial monitoring missions, using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles to track terrorist movements and fortifications with a particular focus on IS and its affiliates. US forces have also carried out several strikes against leaders or contingents of the IS desert army, which has helped contained its expansion inside Libya, reduced its ability to infiltrate across borders and hampered its communications with armed factions in Chad and Mali. Nevertheless, despite AFRICOMs surveillance and patrols, IS operatives still have the ability, albeit somewhat restricted, to establish lines of communication with local elements that support it or share common interests, and conclude deals and arrangements that strengthen its influence and reinforce its capacities for expansion. The challenges posed by southern Libya extend beyond the security questions, as grave as they are. Standards of living in the south testify to severe deficiencies and shortages in infrastructure and public services which compounds the challenges, especially given how terrorist groups feed off such deficiencies. The interweave of such factors create situations that become impossible to remedy without comprehensive strategies that include a major security component, of course, but not exclusively. In short, a new approach has to be brought to the question of southern Libya and that approach needs to be backed by a will of steel on the part of the Libyan people and their allies in neighbouring countries. *The writer is the general manager of the Egyptian Centre for Straregic Studies. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: On Thursday morning, a portrait I painted of the Kurdish-Iranian refugee, writer and journalist Behrouz Boochani was included among the finalists for this years coveted Archibald Prize. Boochani, finally free and living in New Zealand after the Australian government held him for more than six years on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, symbolises the struggle for a more humane and compassionate approach to the way this country treats those who arrive here seeking our protection and safety. Archibald Prize finalist Angus McDonald with Behrouz Boochanis Resistance, which he says is a portrait of the refugee's unshakeable resolve. Credit:Nolan Verheij Ive known Boochani since 2018, when he collaborated on a documentary I produced about the Manus detention centre. In February this year, I flew to New Zealand and stayed with him for five days. Our conversations guided the way I chose to approach the painting, as well as providing the opportunity to get to know him better. Boochani is a kind and generous man. Surprisingly, given the prolonged struggle and creative intensity with which he indefatigably filled his years of captivity on Manus Island, he is also very funny. The event was briefed by UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowock and Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) David Shearer. Quy also welcomed the government of South Sudans role in brokering peace agreements for neigbouring Sudan. South Sudans efforts are very encouraging though the country has been challenged by various issues, particularly COVID-19, flooding and food shortages, he said. He said the ceasefire has been fundamentally abided in South Sudan, calling on its government to adopt effective solutions to end violence among local communities. The Vietnamese diplomat underscored the significance of transitional period and full implementation of the Revitalised Peace Agreement in South Sudan, based on which the UNSC sanctions against the nation to be reviewed in December. He also highly spoke of the UNSC, UNMISS and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in promoting peace and development in South Sudan, stressing that Vietnam will further contribute to the UNMISS activities. Shearer said the transitional government continues to function and activities are progressing well as ministers and state governors have been appointed. Yet, he voiced concerns over local conflicts, saying that UNMISS documented 575 incidents of subnational violence from January to July, a year-on-year increase of 300%. In Jonglei state alone, 600 people were killed in six months, women and children were kidnapped, thousands fled their homes as they were looted and torched. Echoing Shearers view, Lowock said humanitarian needs, already high after years of conflict, are again rising due to more violence, flooding and COVID-19, which brings a host of health and wider consequences, including increasing flood insecurity. The UNMISS head emphasised that his organisation maintains its clear mandate to protect civilians and will intervene if necessary. UNMISS was founded by the UNSC in July, 2011, to protect civilians, create conditions conducive to the delivery of humanitarian assistance, support the implementation of the Revitalised Peace Agreement and peace process, and monitor and investigate human rights in South Sudan. Vietnam has sent 68 military personnels to the UNMISS and set up a Level-2 field hospital in Bentiu, South Sudan, in 2018. Maharashtra Police Bharti 2020: The Government of Maharashtra is likely to release an official notification for recruiting Twelve Thousand Five Thirty Eight (12,538) Police Constables/Police Shipais offering an excellent opportunity for individuals, both male and female, who are residents of Maharashtra and meet the eligiblity criteria as prescribed by the Maharashtra Police Bharti 2020 norms to be a part of the state police force. DGCA Recruitment 2020 For 40 Flight Operations Inspector Posts, Apply Offline Before September 25 Confirming the same Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, terming it a historic decision, said the nod for mass recruitment drive for filling 12,538 'Police Shipai' posts was approved by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Dy. Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. Tweeting about the same Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said, "In a historic decision, Hon'ble CM Uddhav Thackeray Ji (@CMOMaharashtra)& Dy. CM Ajit Pawar Ji (@AjitPawarSpeaks), have approved the mass recruitment of 12,538 'Police Shipai' post. I would like to thank them for this & would also like to wish the candidates for the preparations." In a historic decision, Honble CM Uddhav Thackeray Ji (@CMOMaharashtra)& Dy. CM Ajit Pawar Ji (@AjitPawarSpeaks), have approved the mass recruitment of 12,538 'Police Shipai' post. I would like to thank them for this & would also like to wish the candidates for the preparations. pic.twitter.com/CyAAgbr7fP ANIL DESHMUKH (@AnilDeshmukhNCP) September 16, 2020 The decision regarding mass recruitment of 12,538 'Police Shipais/Constables' was arrived at a cabinet meeting held yesterday. Candidates interested in applying for Police Shipai posts through Maharashtra Police Bharti 2020 must visit the official MahaPolice website for eligibility criteria and other updates. BTSC Recruitment 2020 For 3,270 Ayush Medical Officer Posts, Apply Online From September 25 Onwards History will applaud the United States visa ban on some Nigerians undermining the electoral process but the European Union, United Kingdom and other developed nations need to consider following suit, a member of the House of Representatives, Teejay Yusuf (PDP, Kogi) has said. He called on all international bodies to help ensure that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) does not casually engineer an inconclusive election to manipulate and win in the coming Edo and Ondo governorship elections. The US had, on Monday, imposed visa restrictions on some Nigerians it said were undermining electoral processes in the run up to the Edo and Ondo polls. The spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, Morgan Ortagus, said those affected were working to undermine the Nigerian democratic process or for organising election-related violence. The move, he said, also targets individuals it accused of undermining the November 2019 governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa. In a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Yusuf said while the PDPs 16 years leadership produced only one inconclusive election, APC has produced 22 inconclusive elections within five years. We shall continue to commend the USA for wielding the big stick against those who played inglorious, despicable roles in the violent rape of democracy during Kogi states last governorship elections; replication of such visa ban by the EU, UK and other developed countries will tame APC leaders penchant for foreign trips and further reassure Nigerian democrats. It is historically regrettable for the nation that those who came to power professing positive change and progressive democracy have instead brought unprecedented nepotism, worsened insecurity, economic misery, high unemployment and grand schemes to thwart democracy through various means, including inconclusive election. All through the PDP years from May 1999 to May 2015, only one inconclusive election was recorded but sadly just between May 2015 and now, the APC leadership has given Nigeria twenty-two inconclusive elections, with clear suspicions of its inclination towards having more of such anti-democratic accomplishments, he said. The lawmaker urged the judiciary to rise to the historic occasion, adding that official deafness to voices of reason has inspired worsening mass resentment and a widening call for regionalism and even dismemberment of the nation. We pray they begin to learn to listen instead of insulting eminent voices and threatening others; Nigerians are being annihilated by economic misery, bandits and herdsmen from Mali, Niger and elsewhere wantonly murder people in farms and appointees of government routinely disparage constructive criticism as if the people have now forfeited all democratic rights. Mr Yusuf is one of many who have not only applauded the US visa restriction but called on the UK and EU to follow suit. Former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, made a similar call on Tuesday. This, he said, is necessary to send the right and strong signal that those who undermine democracy in Nigeria are enemies of the rest of the democratic world. He also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to send a message to the National Assembly when the members resume later in the month that he wants them to present to him a new Electoral Bill for assent before the end of the year. Already, the UK has threatened to impose sanctions, including visa ban and asset seizure, on Nigerians who incite or execute violence in the Edo and Ondo governorship elections. The Edo and Ondo polls are scheduled for September 19 and October 10 respectively. Less Than Half of Small Businesses Trust their Technology Provider LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology and connectivity are essential services. More than ever, businesses need the channels of communication to be ultra-reliable. Shockingly, a new survey shows that less than half of SMEs trust their main technology provider to understand and fulfil their needs properly. According to the independent survey, carried out by market research company Context Consulting, trustworthiness is hugely important to most SMEs, ranking above other factors such as adaptability or being in frequent contact. Moreover, Context found that businesses don't just depend on reactive responses (e.g. maintaining uptime and connectivity) but also proactive ones (e.g. helping them to grow and gain competitive advantage.) This is particularly important in 2020, with a pressing need to save money, develop new strategies and boost digital efficiency. Of the major vendors, IBM in scored particularly highly for trustworthiness, with respondents saying that "their many years of experience makes them reliable" and "they have extremely good customer service." These twin assets - dependable infrastructure and rapid response - have become vital. Philip Cooper of Context Consulting said: "I'm not surprised that trustworthiness is so important to small businesses. When you're running a small enterprise, the cost of technology failing can really affect the bottom line. In the long run, reliability is more important than price point. "Technology providers need to build greater trust with SMEs by responding quickly to queries, building up a bank of knowledge about their businesses, anticipating their needs quickly and not increasing their prices without improving value." Note on survey methodology: This research was conducted by independent research providers Context Consulting in July 2020, surveying 120 managers/senior managers in companies with 10-249 employees in manufacturing, retail, professional services, construction and financial services across the UK, Italy, Spain and Germany. Company Bio: Established nine years ago, Context Consulting has blazed a distinctive trail in tech, telco, services and B2B. With clients including Vodafone, BUPA, O2, Valitor and many more relying on its rigorous understanding of customers, brands and strategy. By uncovering rich, meaningful behaviours and motivations, Context design and build marketing strategy, customer experiences, brand positioning, and product development. In Wisconsin, Trump announces $13 billion in farm aid U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign event at the Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wisconsin By Steve Holland and P.J. Huffstutter MOSINEE, Wis. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new round of pandemic assistance to farmers of about $13 billion at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Thursday night, delivering aid to an important sector in a crucial battleground state. "Starting next week my administration is committing an additional ... $13 billion in relief to help farmers recover from the China virus, including Wisconsin's incredible dairy, cranberry and ginseng farmers who got hurt badly," Trump said, referring to the novel coronavirus virus. Wisconsin is known for its milk and cheese industries, which have been hard hit by both the White House's trade policies and the COVID-19 pandemic - but the amount of assistance to farmers weeks before the vote was unexpected. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin in 2016 by less than 1% of the vote - and marked the first time the state had voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 1984. Trump spoke in Mosinee, a rural town in the central part of Wisconsin, as state officials reported 2,034 new coronavirus cases, a record one-day increase. The new aid program which the agriculture department is expected to release details about on Friday is tapping into the $14 billion in additional Commodity Credit Corporation funds that Congress agreed to prepay as part of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, according to four sources familiar with the matter. Farmers are expected to be allowed to start applying for the new program on Monday, the sources said. How much certain crops will receive is not known, but the program is set to make direct payments to producers of meat, dairy, grain, vegetables and other products, the sources said. The payments will be designed similarly to an earlier aid package: calculated based on yields of crops and the impact the coronavirus pandemic had on the price of the commodities. Story continues Trump in April announced a $19 billion relief program to help U.S. farmers cope with the impact of the virus, including $16 billion in direct payments to producers and mass purchases of meat, dairy, vegetables and other products. That came on the heels of $28 billion in trade aid given to the farm sector over 2018 and 2019. A government watchdog agency said on Monday the 2019 aid favored farmers from the U.S. Southeast, primarily those growing crops like cotton or sorghum, over those in other parts of the country. China's demand for U.S. corn and soybeans has been strong in recent weeks, boosting prices, and it is also importing more meat amid a potential food supply gap. (Reporting by Steve Holland and P.J. Huffstutter; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Eric Beech; Editing by Tom Brown and Aurora Ellis) HOUSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- City and Sea Group LLC (dba CAS Group LLC), a boutique engineering and professional services consulting firm, is pleased to announce that it has received the official USPTO Notice of Publication Confirmation (U.S. Trademark SN 88670553) for "Coastlines to Skylines." The trademark reinforces CAS Group's dedication and expertise to support complex planning, design, and construction projects in both the marine environment and on land. With the recent 10-year anniversary of the company and over $2 billion in high-value infrastructure projects delivered in the last decade, the CAS Group executive team made the decision to file for trademark status. Coastlines to Skylines - CAS Group has deep expertise and extensive experience in all aspects of coastal and waterfront projects from MetOcean data gathering to design and project delivery. Founded in New York in 2010, the firm has been engaged in many important projects in NYC including coastal flood protection, waterfront parks, mixed use real estate master planning, public engagement, and more. Coastlines to Skylines - Headquartered in The Woodlands, TX north of Houston, CAS Group is well-positioned to support projects in the region as well as internationally. CAS Group provides services that enhance the resiliency of communities, create cleaner energy, and promote maritime commerce and economic development. CAS Group provides technical and strategic advisory services, coastal and marine engineering, urban planning and public engagement, and program management/construction management services to private- and public-sector clients across the United States and internationally. The company's portfolio of projects includes ports and marine terminals, LNG facilities, gas-fired powerplants, waterfront parks and real-estate projects, coastal flood protection, post-disaster recovery plans, and more. CAS Group's objective is to provide sound solutions, mitigate risk, and build value for projects from concept to completion. "We are thrilled to announce our new trademark and to be actively engaged in planning our future for the decades ahead," commented Jennifer Lindbom, AICP, President and Founder, CAS Group LLC. "Our growing portfolio of projects demonstrates our capabilities and highlights our understanding of the critical relationship between land and water. We are dedicated to our clients' successes and to the long-term future of the communities we serve. Our new trademark celebrates our commitment to deliver the highest levels of service in any environment. CAS Group is truly a firm who serves coastlines to skylines." ABOUT CAS GROUP LLC Since 2010, CAS Group has been integral to the delivery of over $2 billion worth of infrastructure projects. CAS Group is a trusted engineering, urban planning, and program management firm providing proven tactics to move projects from concept to completion across the US and around the globe. CAS Group is a registered engineering company in Texas and Florida. The firm is a woman-owned small business certified with the cities of Houston and New York; port authorities of Houston and NY/NJ; states of Texas, New York, California, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland; as well as the federal government. The firm was recently featured with the new trademark in the Port Publishing's 2020 Houston Port and Shipping Guide. Media Contact: Nataly Blumberg 516-859-6665 [email protected] SOURCE CAS Group LLC Here are the latest developments on tropical weather: MIAMI Sally is moving a lot faster but its still dumping heavy rains in southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, where forecasters also said there was a chance of tornadoes. The National Hurricane Center said Sally was travelling at 15 mph as it moved over the Carolinas and Virginia late Thursday. The storm was expected to dump as much as 8 inches (20 centimetres) in those states, prompting warnings of flash flooding and moderate river flooding. As much as 8 inches of rain fell in central Georgia on Thursday. By late Thursday, Sallys winds had dropped to 25 mph (40 kph). Hurricane Sally rolled through the area Wednesday with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 metres) of rain in many places. Hundreds of people were trapped by floodwaters and had to be rescued Thursday by emergency workers using high-water vehicles and personal watercraft. ___ MIAMI A new tropical depression has formed in the Gulf just hours after Hurricane Sally left. The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Thursday evening that Tropical Depression 22 had formed over the southwestern Gulf and was forecast to move slowly over the western Gulf into next week. There was no threat to land as of Thursday night, but the centre says the depression could become a tropical storm on Friday. The depression had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (56 kph) and was located Thursday night about 230 miles (370 kilometres) east of Tampico, Mexico, and about 330 miles (531 kilometres) southeast of the the mouth of the Rio Grande. The storm is moving about 5 mph (8 kph). Hurricane Sally rolled through the area Wednesday with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 metres) of rain in many places. Hundreds of people were trapped by floodwaters and had to be rescued Thursday by emergency workers using high-water vehicles and personal watercraft. ___ PENSACOLA, Fla. Although once-powerful Hurricane Sally is no longer a serious storm, flooding is still a problem along rivers and creeks swollen by its heavy rains. Steve Miller is with the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama. He said most rivers fed by the storm were cresting in Alabama and the Panhandle on Thursday, although the Shoal, in Florida, was still rising. He said the Shoal was expected to crest by late Thursday or Friday. Near Crestview, Florida, portions of the two main roadways running east to west through the Panhandle were closed because of flooding from the Shoal. ___ PENSACOLA, Fla. Rescuers on the Gulf Coast are using high-water vehicles to reach people cut off by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally. Authorities said crews carried out at least 400 rescues in Escambia County, Florida, on Thursday by such means as high-water vehicles, boats and water scooters. Across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, homeowners and businesses began cleaning up, and officials inspected bridges and highways for safety. Sally rolled through the area Wednesday with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 metres) of rain in many places. ___ MONTGOMERY, Ala. Though Hurricane Sally has passed, officials in Alabama and Florida are warning that the disaster isnt over yet. Alabama Emergency Management Agency Director Brian Hastings said Thursday morning that inland flooding remains a concern. He says flooding continues to be a problem in the states southern counties and they expect many rivers to be in moderate or major flood state at noon and continuing through the weekend. In Florida, Escambia County Emergency Management Manager Eric Gilmore warned we are not out of the woods yet, noting the dangers from cresting rivers. Sally sloshed ashore Wednesday morning on the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane. It has since weakened to a tropical depression. ___ WARNER ROBINS, Ga. -- County sheriffs in Georgia are reporting numerous trees down and closures of flooded highways and streets as Sally moves across the South, dumping rain. In central Georgia, Robins Air Force Base closed one of its entrances Thursday morning due to flooding. In a Facebook post, the base said it would delay the start of the workday for some employees. Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Sally sloshed ashore Wednesday morning on the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane. It has since weakened to a tropical depression. ___ PENSACOLA, Fla. Pensacola International Airport remains closed and officials say they need to assess the safety of the runway and its facility before it reopens after Hurricane Sally sloshed ashore on the Gulf Coast. In a statement Wednesday evening, the airport gave no timeline on when it would reopen. The airport closed Monday as Sally bore down. The airport typically has dozens of daily flights from airlines that include Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. Its asking passengers to contact their airlines about cancelled flights. Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. ___ MIAMI Sally continues to weaken as it moves over the South after hitting the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane but is still a dangerous rainmaker as it moves into Georgia on a path to the Carolinas. The tropical depressions maximum sustained winds early Thursday have decreased to near 30 mph (45 kph) with additional weakening expected. As of 5 a.m. EDT, Sally was centred about 50 miles (80 kilometres) southeast of Montgomery, Alabama, and is moving northeast near 12 mph (19 kph). Authorities have warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. ___ MIAMI Teddy has become a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm is currently located about 625 miles (1006 km) east-northeast of The Lesser Antilles. Teddy is moving toward the northwest at about 12 miles per hour (19 kph), the general motion it is expected to continue through the weekend. Additional strengthening is forecasted to happen during the next couple of days, and Teddy could become a major hurricane Thursday night or Friday, the centre said. ___ PENSACOLA, Florida Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sallys rains could mean more problems for parts of south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Sally had diminished to a tropical depression by late Wednesday. But it was still a rainmaker as it moved into Georgia on a path to the Carolinas on Thursday. Authorities warned that rain from the storm could swell eight waterways in Florida and Alabama to record levels. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors of possible river flooding in the coming days. The National Weather Service says the small city of Brewton, Alabama, can expect moderate to major flooding. The United States rolled out sweeping new sanctions on Thursday, blacklisting cyber actors the Donald Trump administration says are backed by Iranian intelligence and Lebanon-based targets it says are linked to Hezbollah. The US Department of Treasury sanctioned two Lebanon-based companies, Arch Consulting and Meamar Construction, for alleged links to the Iranian-backed Shiite group. Hezbollah Executive Council official Sultan Khalifah Asad, who the Treasury said had close links to the two companies, was also designated. Through Hezbollahs exploitation of the Lebanese economy and manipulation of corrupt Lebanese officials, companies associated with the terrorist organization are awarded government contracts, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement. The United States remains committed to targeting Hezballah and its supporters as they corruptly abuse Lebanese resources to enrich their leaders while the Lebanese people suffer from inadequate services, he added. Earlier this month, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on two former Lebanese ministers accused of providing political and economic favors to Hezbollah. The sanctions, which targeted Yusuf Finyanus and Ali Hassan Khalil, were aimed at tackling the rampant corruption that has fueled Lebanons worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. Foreign donors are pressuring the heavily indebted country to enact significant reforms and weed out government corruption in order to unlock much needed financial assistance. The massive blast that ripped through Beiruts port last month caused as much as $4.6 billion in damage. Also on Thursday, the United States slapped sanctions on 47 Iranian individuals and entities who, according to the Treasury, are involved in conducting cyber attacks and malware campaigns against perceived adversaries, including foreign governments, Iranian dissidents, journalists and international travel companies. The administration said both Iran's newly sanctioned Advanced Persistent Threat 39 and a front company called Rana Intelligence Computing Company are owned or controlled by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The Iranian regime uses its Intelligence Ministry as a tool to target innocent civilians and companies and advance its destabilizing agenda around the world, Mnuchin said. The United States is determined to counter offensive cyber campaigns designed to jeopardize security and inflict damage on the international travel sector. The Treasury said the 45 individuals designated Thursday worked as managers, programmers and hackers at Rana providing support for cyber attacks on international businesses, air carriers and other perceived threats. To hinder their efforts, on Thursday the FBI released eight sets of malware reportedly used by Rana to carry out computer intrusion activities. The release marked the first time the technical indicators have been publicly attributed to the Intelligence and Security Ministry by the US government, the Treasury statement said. Follow the leader is a viable strategy in stock investing, as long as you find the right leader to follow. Corporate insiders, of course, are by their nature leaders. They are the company officers who run the show, and the nature of their position, or positions, puts them in position to access knowledge, even foreknowledge, that the ordinary investors simply doesnt have. This is a case where regulators have done the right thing. Insiders can make their trades but they have to make them public. The investing public must be able to see what company officers are doing with the stock. And because these officers are not in it solely to make money for themselves, but are responsible to Boards of Directors, stock owners, and other stake holders, they usually dont start buying their own stock without good reason. Fortunately, the TipRanks' Insiders Hot Stocks page provides the scoop on which stocks the markets insiders are buying or selling so that you can make informed purchases. Weve picked three stocks with recent informative buys to show how the data works for you. HBT Financial (HBT) First on todays list is HBT Financial, a bank holding company with two subsidiaries operating in the State of Illinois. HBT owns Heartland Bank and Trust and State Bank of Lincoln. The company has a 100-year history in Central Illinois, offering a variety of banking services which today include credit cards, insurance loans, money transfer, wealth management, and other retail and commercial banking products. HBT boasts 63 branches in the state, along with $3.5 billion in total assets, $3 billion in total deposits, and $2.3 billion in total loan accounts. Retail banking was hurt by the corona crisis when the lockdown policies kept customers out of the branches. Earnings and revenues slipped in Q1 although they remained flat in Q2, and the forecast for Q3 is a modest rise. While HBT is down 34% year-to-date, it seems that insiders are willing to buy the shares on the dip. Story continues Chairman and CEO Fred Drake has bought two blocs of 20,000 shares each this month, putting down a total of $485,000 for the stock. Several other corporate offices have made significant buys in the past two weeks, but Drakes were bigger by far. Covering this stock on Wall Street is Daniel Tamayo, from Raymond James. Tamayo believes that HBT is in a good position, and writes, better-than-expected fee income due to a strong mortgage banking environment improved the overall revenue outlook and drove our PTPPI forecasts higher. Finally, deferrals have come down to <5% and are still dropping while reserves should be near a peak. Net, our bullish thesis remains intact that strong underwriting standards and capital levels justify a premium P/BTV multiple to peers for HBT shares. In line with these sentiments, Tamayo rates the stock as Outperform (i.e. Buy), and his $16 price target implies an upside of 33% for the coming year. (To watch Tamayos track record, click here) Tamayos is one of two reviews on this stock. The other gives a Hold, making the analyst consensus rating a Moderate Buy. The $15.50 average price target suggests that there is room for 29% growth from the trading price of $12.10. (See HBT stock analysis on TipRanks) OFG Bancorp (OFG) The next stock on our list is another bank holding company. OFG has three subsidiaries, providing services in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The company boasts $9.3 billion in assets, and offers a range of consumer and commercial banking services, including consumer finance, auto loans, residential and commercial mortgages, business loans, and international trade financing. In addition, OFG offers wealth management for high-net-worth clients. The companys stock fell sharply in the market collapse of February/March, and never really recovered. After a period of volatility, the shares have been trading flat since mid-June, and still down 44% year-to-date Despite the low share value, OFG showed positive quarterly results in 1H20. Revenues grew from Q4 to Q1, and while they slipped in Q2, that top line remained well above last years levels. EPS for the second quarter came in at 39 cents, 56% better than forecast. The solid top and bottom lines have allowed OFG to maintain its dividend during corona, at 7 cents per common share. The dividend yields 2.1%, in line with the average among S&P-listed companies. The insider sentiment here is strongly positive after buys by two officers: Jose Fernandez, CEO, and Ganesh Kumar, COO. Fernandez this month bought two sets of shares, 25,152 in all, for a total of $323,960. Kumar picked up 10,096 shares, also in two tranches, paying out $123,754 for the blocs. Alexander Twerdahl, writing from Piper Sandler, believes that OFG is on solid footing. He writes, We think that OFG is set up well for long-term success. The bank has experience with crises from Hurricane Maria, and that experience gives us added confidence on the credit outcome. Furthermore, PR is positioned well in terms of its allocation of federal and local stimulus programs. Looking into specifics, Twerdahl adds, Loan production numbers were stronger than we expected, but consumer, auto, and mortgage were still negatively impacted by the pandemic. Deposit balances shot up, with non-brokered deposits up 10% sequentially, clearly aided by stimulus programs. Based on these comments, Twerdahl gives OFG shares an Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating, its only review in recent weeks. His price target of $16.50 suggests the stock has a 26% upside potential in the next 12 months. (See OFG stock analysis on TipRanks) Cigna Corporation (CI) The last stock on our list is a member of the S&P 500 index. Cigna is also a major health services organization, providing to both Medicare and Medicaid, and offering health, medical, dental, disability, life, and accident insurance products through its subsidiaries. Most of Cignas plans are administered by governmental entities and non-governmental organizations. In recent years, Cigna has also moved into the Pharmacy Benefits Management market. Last year, Cigna saw total revenues of $153.6 billion. Entering 2020, the companys quarterly revenue stayed stable, at $38 billion, and rose to $39 billion in Q2. EPS grew sequentially in the first half of the year, to $4.69 in Q1 and $5.81 in Q2. Strong gains in the Health and Integrated Medical segments lay behind the solid quarterly results. On the insider front there is only one recent trade, but it is informative. Exec VP and CFO Eric Palmer bought 1,000 shares for over $168K. His move swung the needle on insider sentiment into positive territory. 5-star RBC Capital analyst Frank Morgan likes Cigna stock. The analyst puts a $270 price target on CI, indicating a robust potential upside of 60% and supporting his Buy rating on the shares. (To watch Morgans track record, click here) Amid the pandemic that is lifting all MCOS' results in the near term, CI continues to see a differentiated performance from its PBM, gaining momentum in the integrated model, and surprising resilience in the Commercial business Additionally, cash flow remains very strong, with mgmt's deleverage target in sight and further buybacks likely, Morgan wrote. Overall, CI's Strong Buy analyst consensus rating is based on 5 reviews, including 4 Buys and 1 Sell. CI shares have an average price target of $247.60, suggesting a one-year upside of 46% for this blue-chip stock. (See CI stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment. - Xian Lim and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) announced about the first ever puppetry series in the country - The series is called MALA (Movies Adapted from Literary Arts) which will be directed by the talented Kapamilya star - Xian said he feels honored to be part of the said production that will reimagine local literary classics like "Ibong Adarna" and "Florante at Laura - Netizens who are happy with Xians new achievement then wrote their congratulatory messages to the actor PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Xian Lim and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) recently announced about the Philippines first puppetry series to be directed by the actor. Xian Lim (Photo from Jopet Sy on Flickr) Source: UGC According to CCPs Facebook post, the Kapamilya male stars series called MALA (Movies Adapted from Literary Arts) reimagines local literary classics like "Ibong Adarna" and "Florante at Laura. Xian Lim's MALA (Movies Adapted from Literary Arts). MALA gives new life to local literary classics. It starts with reimagined versions of 'Ibong Adarna' and 'Florante at Laura,' as told by renowned ventriloquist Ony Carcamo and his puppet, Kulas. 'Mala' opens this October. On his Instagram page, Xian said he feels honored to be part of the said production. Honored and proud to be part of this project. PAY ATTENTION: Shop with KAMI! The best offers and discounts on the market, product reviews and feedback His post then gained a lot of congratulatory messages from netizens who are happy with Xians new achievement. Congrats Xi, another achievement in this pandemic time for this MALA project, we're so proud of you. Congrats, wow proud fan here. Congrats, Xian, U deserve it, godbless. Congrats Xi you're so talented...Goodluck sa MALA show mo... PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Xian Lim is among the famous actors in the Philippines. He is in a relationship with his on-screen partner, Kim Chiu. Some of their movies are "Bakit Hindi Ka Crush Ng Crush Mo" and "Bride for Rent." Earlier, Xian went emotional as he revealed that his grandmother is battling against a severe illness amid the pandemic. He also shared that he immediately fulfilled the wish of his grandmother, to have a room filled with clowns and figurines. Please like and share our amazing Facebook posts to support the KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinions about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts and views on different matters! Source: KAMI.com.gh The civilian death toll from Saudi Arabias disastrous air war over Yemen was steadily rising in 2016 when the State Departments legal office in the Barack Obama administration reached a startling conclusion: Top US officials could be charged with war crimes for approving bomb sales to the Saudis and their partners. Four years later, more than a dozen current and former US officials say the legal risks have only grown as President Donald Trump has made selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle East nations a cornerstone of his foreign policy. Yet rather than taking steps to address the legal issues, State Department leaders have gone to great lengths to conceal them. Even after a State Department inspector general investigation this year revealed that the department had failed to address the legal risks of selling bombs to the Saudis, agency officials ensured that details of the finding were put in a classified part of the public report released in August and then so heavily redacted that lawmakers with security clearances could not see them. At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused the State Departments top lawyer and the assistant secretary overseeing weapons sales of negligence on civilian deaths and of covering up the legal risks. Legal scholars say US officials are right to be concerned. No episode in recent US history compares to Yemen, where the United States has provided material support over five years to the Saudi-led coalition for actions that have caused the continuous killing of civilians. More than 127,000 people have died in the war, including 13,500 civilians in targeted attacks, according to an estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. US officials have had full knowledge of the pattern of indiscriminate killing, which makes them legally vulnerable. Legal scholars say prosecutors abroad including those from nations like Sweden, Germany and Argentina that assert universal jurisdiction over war crimes anywhere in the world could bring charges against US officials. Although there has been no move so far by any foreign court to do so, some State Department officials who shepherd arms sales overseas are worried enough to consider retaining their own legal counsel. Beyond courts in sovereign nations, charges against Americans over Yemen could also be brought in an international tribunal if one were set up to investigate atrocities in that war. United Nations investigators last week issued a detailed report on atrocities in Yemen that asked the Security Council to refer actions by all parties to an international tribunal for potential war crimes prosecution. State Department spokespeople declined to discuss the decision-making process but issued a statement that said the agency had a strategy to lessen civilian casualties before the last major arms sale to the Saudi-led coalition in May 2019. They added that the department had continued to work tirelessly on reducing civilian harm in Yemen and elsewhere, citing redesigned policies, expanded analyses and new training for the Saudis and the Emiratis, who are part of the Saudi-led coalition. The Obama administration had its own struggles with Yemen. When a State Department lawyer determined in 2016 that US officials could be charged with war crimes, the agencys top lawyer effectively set the opinion aside when he decided not to send the analysis to the secretary of states office. By then the administration was already taking a tougher line on civilian deaths in Yemen. That December, a month before leaving office, Obama blocked a shipment of precision-guided bombs that he had agreed to sell to the Saudis. But within months, the new Trump administration delivered the bombs Obama had halted. Then the administration sought to advance still more sales: $8.1 billion in weapons and equipment in 22 batches, including $3.8 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts made by Raytheon Company, to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Lawmakers blocked shipments for nearly two years until Secretary of State Mike Pompeo instructed his subordinates to circumvent Congress. They did so by declaring an emergency over Iran, which prompted the inspector general review. That investigation not only documented the long-standing legal worries but also created a critical report that could itself increase the legal risks, scholars said. The Specter of War Crimes In March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition first moved to dislodge Houthi rebels who had captured Sana, the Yemeni capital, Obama agreed to support the effort. His administration signed off on the sale of $1.3 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts. But it quickly became clear that the Saudis and their partners at the time, including the Emiratis, were either using the bombs negligently or deliberately aiming them at civilians. In the first 18 months of fighting, human rights groups linked US bombs to attacks on homes, apartment buildings, factories, warehouses, a cultural center, an agricultural complex, a primary school and other nonmilitary sites. As concerns over such strikes were intensifying in Washington, the State Departments legal office examined whether US officials who approved arms sales to the Saudis and their partners faced legal risks. Drawing on an international tribunal case against Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord, that the United States has cited in al-Qaida prosecutions, the legal office reached the alarming conclusion that it put in writing in a memo in 2016: US officials, including the secretary of state, could be charged with war crimes for their role in arming the Saudi coalition. But the top State Department lawyer never sent the memo to the secretary of states office. Although the analysis did not advance within the State Department, the Obama administration opened a policy review, and Secretary of State John Kerry tried to broker a cease-fire. Scrambling for a legal shield Over the spring of 2017, Trumps aides and some State Department officials worked to unfreeze the bomb delivery that Obama had halted. Still, officials in the Political-Military Affairs Bureau wanted assurances that they could do the presidents bidding on arms sales without putting themselves in legal jeopardy. During one White House meeting, Mike Miller, then a senior State Department official involved in arms sales, put the concerns bluntly: He said he was worried he could be found liable for aiding the killing of civilians. US officials set to work to address the concerns, drafting guidelines for the Saudi and US governments to follow as a condition of future arms sales. But then the officials pared back the guidelines in their effort to push through the weapons sales. After Trump abruptly fired his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in March 2018, and as Pompeo awaited Senate confirmation to lead the State Department, John Sullivan, the deputy secretary, served as the agencys acting head. Officials worried about the arms sales believed Sullivan to be attentive to the humanitarian concerns in the Yemen War. In the roughly three weeks he was running the department, they sent an appeal for legal clarity. Sullivan responded by approving a memo the officials had drafted that recommended carrying out a robust strategy to reduce civilian casualties and updating the legal analysis before the bomb sales moved forward. But the agency failed to do those, the inspector general later determined. Pompeo took over soon after. That August, a coalition jet dropped a US-made bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 54 people, including 44 children. The next month, Pompeo issued a formal certification to Congress that the Saudi-led coalition was working to minimize civilian deaths, despite news reports and internal State Department assessments to the contrary. The move provoked a backlash in Congress and strengthened lawmakers resolve to continue blocking arms sales. By April 2019, Pompeo was frustrated by the delay, and senior State Department political appointees were discussing a rarely invoked tactic to force through $8.1 billion in weapons sales without congressional approval: declaring an emergency over Iran. Pompeo announced the emergency on May 24, 2019, and the stalled weapons deals moved forward, including the sale of some 120,000 bombs and bomb parts to the Saudis and Emiratis. But no updated civilian casualty mitigation strategy or legal analysis was carried out before the equipment was shipped, according to the inspector generals report. Released this August, the report said that although Pompeo did not violate the law in declaring an emergency, the State Department had failed to take proper measures to reduce civilian casualties and the associated legal risk. Since the emergency declaration, the Saudis and their partners have sought to buy more US bombs. About $800 million in orders is now pending, held up in the same congressional review process that had frustrated Pompeo and the White House. c.2020 The New York Times Company EV We all know Bugatti. The brand's resurgence under Volkswagen's tutelage was the stuff of legends, with the Veyron setting new standards in terms of power, luxury, and opulence. It was a car built for sheiks and oligarchs and it wore that tag with pride despite the fact it came from a brand owned by the "people's car".With their ridiculously big engines employing the unusual W16 layout - essentially two V8s stacked on top of each other - and quad-turbos, the modern Bugatti models have been the epitome of automotive extravagance since their rebirth in 2005, and it didn't look like that would change any time soon.A report from British publication Car that came out today claims that Bugatti should continue life in the same vein, only with a few changes and under different custody. The scoop says that Volkswagen is ready to sell its most luxurious brand to Rimac , the Croatian electric hypercar-maker that started life by installing an electric powertrain in a beat-down BMW only a decade ago.This whole thing sounds a bit ridiculous at first glance, but it actually makes more sense than one would imagine. First of all, the new Volkswagen management wouldn't mind getting rid of Ferdinand Piech's pet projects, with Bugatti being the most obvious of them. CEO Dr. Herbert Diess would like to focus on the current market trends, and W16 quad-turbo hypercars are not among them.The big three are electrification, digitalization, and autonomous driving, and Rimac is doing quite well in at least two of them. It's not like that's any news to VW: Porsche already owns a 15.5% share in Rimac Automobili, showing the Germans had already recognized the company's potential long before there was any mention of a trade between them.The report states that Bugatti could make the switch without any money changing hands, with Rimac Automobili conceding further shares to Porsche instead. Exactly how much is still unknown, but with founder and CEO Mate Rimac holding 51 percent, anything is possible.As for Rimac, the Croatians would gain access to a lot more than just the rights to a brand name and the vehicle it makes. The biggest issue now for the emerging company is the manufacturing process and acquiring Bugatti should offer an important boost in the shape of the brand's facilities in Molsheim. It would also show intent on Rimac's part to make the jump from the "promising startup" to "important market player," something the company seems perfectly up to.That being said, we're not going to pretend this piece of news wasn't a complete surprise, but as mentioned earlier, it does start to make a lot more sense once you delve into what each of the two parties has to gain from it. One tightens the ties with a promising supplier and developer ofpowertrain parts (and Rimac's software isn't bad either) while the other gains the much-needed manufacturing capabilities to ascend to the next level in the industry. Now, let's just wait and see if there's any truth to it. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: Faced with the increasing unrest among farmers in Punjab which is Shiromani Akali Dal's (SAD) core constituency and intense pressure from within the party, the Union Minister for Food Processing Harshimrat Kaur Badal today resigned from the union cabinet. SAD is the oldest ally of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government. Sources said the SAD, a constituent of the NDA will remain part of the coalition. But it cannot be part of a government that is set to pass an anti-farmer bill. Confirming that Harsimrat has resigned from the union cabinet, Jangveer Singh, media adviser to the SAD president, said, "she has resigned as the apprehensions raised by farmers against the three farm bill tabled in the parliament, have not been addressed by the union government despite repeated requests. These bills were anti-farmer and death knell for the farmers and farm labour. "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister, she tweeted. I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 Earlier in the day, speaking on the bills in the parliament, Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced in the House that his partys member in the cabinet, Harsimrat Badal, would resign if the bills were passed. Harsimrat and her husband SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal are the only two party MPs in the Lok Sabha. ALSO READ | Minimum support price mechanism for farmers will continue: Agriculture minister In the upper house, Balwinder Singh Bhunder and Naresh Gujral are the SAD MPs, while the third MP Sukhdev Singh Dindsa who formed his own party had told the chairman of the Rajya Sabha to consider him independent. A system of mandis which was established in both Punjab and Haryana had received flak from farmer bodies and political parties fearing that the government could abolish the systems of minimum support price (MSP). The SAD had earlier urged the Centre to not present the three ordinances for approval in Parliament before the reservations of Punjab's farmers were addressed as this decision was taken in the core committee meeting of the party on Saturday. ALSO READ: Congress MPs from Punjab burn copies of farm bills, party protests in Parliament Sukhbir had already claimed that Harsimrat had expressed her reservations when the matter was taken up during a cabinet meeting. Sources said there was opposition within the SAD on the support given to the ordinances by the party leadership. The Akali leadership was under pressure to take a stand in favour of the farmers on the issue as the core vote bank of the party is farmers and the farmers' organizations had already announced that if the MPs who do not vote against these ordinances and abstain will not be allowed to enter the state. Sukhbir along with senior leader Prem Singh Chandumajra had recently met Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala who is from the JJP and tried to prepare a joint strategy against the ordinances. They had also met leaders of the Jat Mahasabha of Haryana. Besides farm organisations, the Congress and AAP are already against the ordinances. Farmer & SAD are synonymous as party is inspired by egalitarian vision of the founder of Sikh faith, Shri Guru Nanak Dev who spent nearly 20 years working in his fields at Kartarpur Sahib as a humble farmer. It's enough to show what farmers mean to SAD: Harsimrat Kaur Badal to PM https://t.co/uVbIeA0Q5n pic.twitter.com/OGqIeiwj3M ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2020 The union government had introduced the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill in Parliament on Monday to replace ordinances promulgated earlier. Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh said Harsimrats decision to quit the Union Cabinet was another in the long chain of theatrics being enacted by the SAD, which has still not quit the ruling coalition despite the slap on their face by the central government in the form of the Farm Bills. Questioning Shiromani Akali Dals decision to continue to remain a part of the BJP-led NDA coalition at the centre, he said even Harsimrats resignation was nothing more than a gimmick to befool the farmers of Punjab. "But they (the Akalis) will not succeed in misleading the farmer organisations," he said, calling it a case of "too little, too late." Theater has always been a haven for unorthodox thinkers from marginalized groups. But advocates for inclusion note that the myriad institutions that form the foundation of the industry have neglected to promote those minorities into management in meaningful numbers. New groups have formed, such as the Black Theatre Coalition, to encourage the recruitment of more managers and designers of color on Broadway where out of 11,328 plays and musicals since 1866, only 21 have been staged by Black directors. And slowly the boards of nonprofit companies across the nation are recognizing the need for diversity at the top of their organizations and bringing on dynamic younger leaders, such as Nataki Garrett at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Maria Goyanes at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Hussein Arnous was appointed Prime Minister in 2020, but has had a long career in the Assad regimes, aiding corruption and providing unwavering support. In Brief Many Syrians were surprised when Bashar al-Assad appointed Hussein Arnous as prime minister after the dismissal of Imad Khamis, in what resembled a scandal, on Aug. 30, 2020. The Syrians knew nothing about Arnous, despite him being part of the Syrian bureaucratic system for nearly thirty years. People close to him say that he lacks personality and is unable to take decisions. Background Hussein Arnous was born in al-Teh village, Maarat al-Numan, in the Idleb countryside, in 1953. He graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at University of Aleppo in 1978. He has a long history of political work with the Assad regimes of both Hafez and Bashar, and has assumed leadership positions in Assad institutions since the 80s. Arnous held several positions in the government of the Syrian regime, starting with heading the Idleb branch of the Syrian Engineers Syndicate between (1989-1994), then taking over the management of the General Company for Roads and Bridges (1992-2002). In 2004, Arnous was appointed Director General of the General Organization for Road Transport, until 2009. Bashar al-Assad appointed him Governor of Deir ez-Zor in 2009, a position he kept until 2011, when he was appointed Governor of Quneitra, until 2013. He assumed the position of Minister of Public Works and Housing on Feb. 9, 2013, and was re-selected by the government of Wael al-Halqi in 2014, and again by the government of Imad Khamis, in 2016. Syrian Revolution Hussein Arnous was not known to have participated directly in the suppression of the Syrian revolution, but some believe he is flirting with the pro-Iran leaders of the Shiite community, to please Iran and of having close ties to Tehran. He was the first prime minister from the Idleb during the era of the two Assads, father and son. Arnous absolute and continuous support for Bashar al-Assad and the narrow circle around him played a role in enhancing Assads ability to kill more Syrians. That is why Arnous was affected by the US and European sanctions imposed on the regimes ministers in 2014, in addition to a travel ban imposed on him. Role in the Syrian Government If you examine the track record of Hussein Arnous, will not stumble upon any achievement, in any of the positions he held from 1989 until today. However, what is remarkable in Arnous biography, is the large number of positions, which he started assuming early on in his life eight positions in 30 years, half or more of which he spent in public institutions related to roads. He graduated from Director of the General Company for Roads and Bridges (1992-2002) to Assistant to the Minister of Transportation (2002-2004), and finally Director General of the Public Establishment of Roads Communications (2004-2009). Even when he took over the Ministry of Public Works and Housing (2013-2018), he did not break out of the roads, sidewalks, and bridges bubble. Arnous used to work in a high-stakes sector, but we must not overlook that the latter was controlled by big contractors such as Dhu al-Himma Shalish, Riad Issa Shalish, Tamim Badr, and other corrupt people under the rule of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, who, through Arnous, made handsome amounts of money, as well as the money they stole from the Syrian people and the treasury. Some Syrian analysts point to who the godfathers of Arnous were, and who kept him in positions of power without interruption from 1989 until today, a privilege that none of the current faces in the regime enjoyed, including those in military leadership positions. The analysts add that Arnous was a tool that the corrupt used for thirty years, through which they were able to steal the countrys resources, while he remained untouchable. Arnous played a major role in sowing corruption in the Establishment of Roads Communications, and when a journalist requested information from the Ministry of Transport, the head of the ministers press office warned him against pursuing the issue. Therefore, few people have insight into the corruption of the sector or the amount of money that was stolen, which economists estimate to be tens of billions of Syrian pounds preceding 2011, most of which was pocketed by Dhul-Himma Shalish and Riad Shalish, who were also stealing raw materials from the army, executing government projects in a mediocre way, and charging huge sums for their services. The same analysts believe that the secret behind Arnous continuous rise to the top is his ability to keep the secrets of the corrupt, and most importantly, the fact that he is not greedy, for he is satisfied with very little, which could be merely a position, according to those close to him. This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Syrian Observer. Biden warns UK on Brexit: No trade deal unless you respect Northern Irish peace pact Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Biden speaks about developing and distributing a safe coronavirus vaccine during campaign event in Wilmington, Delaware By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden warned the United Kingdom that it must honour Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement as it withdraws from the European Union or there would be no separate U.S. trade deal. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is proposing new legislation that would break the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit divorce treaty that seeks to avoid a physical customs border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland. "We can't allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit," Biden said in a tweet on Wednesday. "Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period." Johnson insists he is defending not threatening the Good Friday pact, which ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland between pro-British Protestant unionists and Irish Catholic nationalists. He accuses the EU of trying to divide the United Kingdom and of putting a revolver on the table in talks to set rules for an estimated $1 trillion in annual trade after Britain's post-Brexit transition period expires at year-end. "The PM has been clear throughout that we are taking these steps precisely to make sure that the Belfast Agreement is upheld in all circumstances and any harmful defaults do not inadvertently come into play," Johnson's spokesman said. The prime minister says the United Kingdom must have the ability to break parts of its Withdrawal Agreement with the EU if London is to uphold commitments under the 1998 peace deal. The EU says any breach of the Brexit treaty could sink trade talks, propel the United Kingdom towards a messy exit when it fully departs on Dec. 31, and thus complicate the Northern Irish border, the country's only land frontier with the EU. Story continues The EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told the bloc's 27 national envoys on Wednesday that he was still optimistic, three diplomatic sources told Reuters. "Barnier still believes a deal is possible though the next days are key," said one of the EU sources. 'ABUSIVE' EU? Johnson told The Sun newspaper that the EU must not be allowed to abuse Britain and risk four decades of partnership. He said the United Kingdom must "ring-fence" the Brexit deal "to put in watertight bulkheads that will stop friends and partners making abusive or extreme interpretations of the provisions". He used the example of a potential EU demand for tariffs on food going to Northern Ireland from Britain. Societe Generale analysts said on Thursday they now see an 80% chance that Britain and the EU will fail to strike a trade deal before the end of the year. The Bank of England, which on Thursday kept interest rates unchanged, said market contacts had "reported renewed concerns over recent Brexit developments". France warned against collapsing Brexit trade talks -- a step it said could suit some in London. "We shouldn't fall into the trap," said Clement Beaune, France's European affairs minister. 'DON'T LECTURE UK' The intervention by Biden, who nationwide polls show leading the race for Nov. 3's U.S. election, prompted a sharp rebuke from an ex-leader of Johnson's Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who advised him to focus on "riots" rather than Brexit. "We don't need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden," Duncan Smith told The Times. "If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the USA to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations." Biden, who has talked about the importance of his Irish heritage, retweeted a letter from Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, to Johnson exhorting him to honour the Good Friday deal. Engel urged Johnson to "abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts to flout the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement" so as to preserve peace in the province and good U.S-British relations. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Elizbeth Piper, Sarah Young and Dhara Ranasinghe in London; and Gabriela Baczynska, Jan Strupczewski, John Chalmers in Brussels; Editing by Sarah Young, Kate Holton, William Maclean, Andrew Cawthorne, Catherine Evans) Wittingly or unwittingly the central government has kicked up a row by constituting an experts committee to study the Indian Culture for the past 12,000 years. The Committee set up by the ministry of culture has 16 members and all are from north India. It has led to a furore in the South, which believes that the Dravidian history is the oldest and Dravidians are the original inhabitants of what we call India, today. The Ministry of Culture which handles the department of archaeology has issued a notification with the names of experts tasked to study Indias ancient past on Wednesday. It says the aim is to study origin and evolution of Indian culture. Noted historians and archaeologists from the north, KN Dixit, RS Bisht, BR Mani, Santosh Shukla, RK Pandey, Makkan Lal, GN Srivastava, Mukundam Sharma, PN Shastri, RC Sharma, KK Mishra, Balram Shukla, Azad Kaushik and MR Sharma are on the committee. Former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy has launched a campaign against this committee, calling it an insult to Dravidians, who have not been appointed to the committee. In a series of tweets and statements, he has described it as an Aryan committee constituted by the BJP-led central government to ensure that Indias history is north Indian history. Speaking to News18 he said, I have serious doubts about the objective and purpose of this committee. It is full of those who are appearing to have prejudices over culture, history and heritage, besides being fully occupied by the North Indians." It does not have even one member from Karnataka or Tamil Nadu, two oldest states and cultures in India. We are Dravidians and no Dravidian from the South is on the committee. It raises serious doubts about the motives of the Centre. Sadly, it does not have even one female member," he said. Congress MP from Tamil Nadu, Manickam Tagore, has also expressed concerns over the committee calling it an insult to South and East. It seems they are studying a history which would be okayed by the RSS. How can we study Indias ancient history without any representation from the South and East? These two are much older regions. What BJP is doing is dividing India further in the name of studying our ancient culture," Tagore said. The Tamil Nadu Congress MP further said that he would raise the issue in the ongoing Parliament session to ensure that experts from South and East are also included in the committee. He demanded that all 30 States and 22 official languages should have at least one member each on the committee. Several Kannada and Tamil activists have taken to social media to question Centres motives. Most are suggesting that the findings of the committee should be dismissed by the Southerners as there have no representation. Some are calling it an RSS-guided committee to come out with a theory that north Indian history is Indias history. The RSS has always denied the very existence of Dravidian race, history and culture. Using this committee, they want to make it official," many Kannada and Tamil activists have said. If the Centre does not revise the Committee, it is likely to snowball into a bigger issue in the coming days. Thirty-one coronavirus cases on campus in seven days, Swinney Recreation Center becomes hotspot At the time of writing, UMKC reported 31 COVID-19 cases on campus since Sept. 6, more than doubling the amount from the previous week. Campus has reported a total of 50 cases since students returned to campus on Aug. 17. Here's a glimpse at pandemic numbers from the city college where, thankfully, there isn't any semblance of fun student life to further endanger scholars. Checkit: NEW YORK - Federal prosecutors brought new wire fraud charges Thursday against an associate of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who was involved in attempts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. FILE- In this Oct. 17, 2019 file photo, David Correia walks from federal court in New York. Correia and his business partner Lev Parnas, were charged with defrauding investors in a business called "Fraud Guarantee." On Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020 a superseding indictment brought by federal prosecutors also charged them with additional campaign finance violations. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle) NEW YORK - Federal prosecutors brought new wire fraud charges Thursday against an associate of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who was involved in attempts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Lev Parnas and his business partner, David Correia, were charged with defrauding investors in a business called Fraud Guarantee. A superseding indictment also charged them with additional campaign finance violations. Prosecutors said the company "purported to insure investors against corporate fraud while in fact, as alleged, they misled investors as to what would be done with their money." The indictment said the men misled investors about the strength of the company and their business model and in some cases used the invested money for personal expenses. "We couldnt say it better ourselves the behaviour alleged today is indeed fraudulent guaranteed," FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. Parnas defence attorney Joseph Bondy said that the new indictment "contains no surprises" and that his client has been on "strict home confinement for nearly one year." "We are pleased that the matter can now move forward," Bondy said, "for both Mr. Parnas and the public interest." Correias attorney declined to comment. Both men had previously faced charges of using foreign money to make illegal campaign contributions to U.S. politicians to aid their political and business interests. Parnas and Correia had been charged along with two other men, Igor Fruman and Andrew Kukushkin, a Ukrainian-born U.S. citizen, in a scheme to make illegal campaign donations to local and federal politicians in New York, Nevada and other states to try to win support for a new recreational marijuana business. 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. Parnas and Fruman also made sizable contributions while trying to get Americans interested in investigating Biden's son in Ukraine. Giuliani, a Republican, has said he knew nothing about the donations. Trumps efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens led the House to impeach Trump, though he was acquitted by the Senate earlier this year. Parnas and Fruman were arrested almost a year ago at an airport outside Washington carrying one-way tickets to Europe. They made hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to Republicans while facing lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts. Parnas and Correia also hired Giuliani to consult with Fraud Guarantee. Giuliani has said he was promised $500,000 to work with the company. That money was ultimately paid to Giuliani's company by Charles Gucciardo, a Long Island lawyer and supporter of President Donald Trump. Gucciardo's attorney previously said that the $500,000 was intended to be an investment in Fraud Guarantee. The indictment did not name the defrauded investors. Opposition leaders in the Rajya Sabha asked the government on Thursday to restore status quo ante as on April this year on the India-China border. Cutting across party lines, members in the Upper House of expressed their solidarity and support to the armed forces, which are facing a standoff situation against the Chinese army in eastern Ladakh. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anad Sharma and former defence minister A K Antony of the Congress asked the government to take efforts to restore the status quo ante of April and resolve the over-three-month-old border standoff. Some members such as Prasanna Acharya of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena cautioned the government while entering into any agreement with China over the present situation. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement in the Rajya Sabha after the government and opposition agreed that there will be no discussion on the sensitive issue. Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, however, allowed the members to seek a few clarifications on the statement, which was almost identical to the one Singh made in the Lok Sabha on September 15. Sharma said the country is proud of its Army and the sacrifices made by the soldiers to protect the border. "There should be no doubt on this and the entire nation would stand together," he said. Referring to the recent talks between the Indian defence minister and foreign minister with their Chinese counterparts and a statement on September 11, Sharma asked: "Do we understand that the restoration of the status quo ante will remain a non-negotiable and final objective for India?" Antony sought a clarification over Singh's statement in the Upper House. "You have to clarify that sovereignty means status quo ante as on the middle of April. That is the meaning of sovereignty," he said. Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh was never a disputed site, the former defence minister said. "Even at Galwan Valley, our soldiers are now not allowed to patrol at the point at which they used to patrol earlier. In the Pangong area, in a more than eight-kilometre area they are not allowing us to patrol, the area which we used to patrol. Previously, we used to patrol till Finger 8 and now we are not being allowed to patrol till Finger 8," he added. The Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) should be allowed to patrol at the point where they used to patrol earlier, the Congress leader said. Azad said he stands with the armed forces and salute their valour. Being a citizen of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Azad said the people from there are ready to sacrifice themselves to defend the territory and integrity of the nation. "On behalf of my party, I would say at least on this China issue, we stand with the government. There should be no compromise. They should go back to the position where they were in April," the Congress leader said. RCP Singh of the Janata Dal (United) said China is an "ungrateful' country that always follows a "policy of aggression". He suggested that the government should negotiate with the neighbouring country from a position of strength. Tiruchi Siva and P Wilson of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) expressed their solidarity with the armed forces. Raut said patience and valour are the traditions of India, but not of China. The neighbouring country has a "tradition of betrayal and we should always be careful with them," the Shiv Sena leader said. BP Baishya of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) said the people of the northeast are with the armed forces and salute their sacrifice. Ravi Prakash Verma of the Samajwadi Party (SP), K Keshava Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Binoy Viswam of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Elamaram Kareem of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sanjay Singh of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Veer Singh of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also participated in the debate and expressed their solidarity with the armed forces. (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.) LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Compare-autoinsurance.org (https://compare-autoinsurance.org) has launched a new blog post that explains what add-ons are the best and should be purchased with car insurance. For more info and free car insurance quotes, visit http://compare-autoinsurance.org/policy-add-ons-consider-buying Insurance companies offer several extra services to go with the standard coverage. It may be really tempting to buy some extra coverage. But choose only those services that will maximize the value of the coverage. Find out which add-ons are worth the money and get free car insurance quotes from https://compare-autoinsurance.org Accident forgiveness . This is by far the most valuable add-on. The price of auto-insurance skyrockets after committing an at-fault accident. This add-on will help drivers keep the premiums unaffected by the accident. In order to get access to this feature, the policyholder must have a clean driving history and be a client for a certain number of years. Full coverage may also be required. This feature can be used only one time. Roadside assistance . It is an extremely useful service. Clients will benefit of towing services, tires replacement, fuel delivery, etc. It is a relatively cheap add-on, but it will provide multiple benefits. Typically, it costs below $10 per month to get this service. Vanishing deductible . It is one of the best add-ons to get along comprehensive and collision coverage. As long as the client does not make any claim, the value of the deductibles will be progressively reduced. A claim-free client will have their deductibles set to zero after a couple of years with no claims. Gap insurance . This add-on pays the difference between what the drivers still owes on his car and its actual cash value. Keep in mind that companies use Actual Cash Value to calculate the difference. If the client has a leased car, it is likely that the reimbursed sum will be smaller than what the clients owes. Gap insurance will pay the difference. Story continues Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. For more information, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org "Adding some extra features may really be helpful and money-worth. Look for valuable services, like accident forgiveness or roadside assistance", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing Company Person for contact Name: Daniel C Phone Number: (818) 359-3898 Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.biz Website: https://compare-autoinsurance.org SOURCE: Internet Marketing Company View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606513/The-Best-Car-Insurance-Addons-Drivers-Should-Buy PM Narendra Modi, on Septemeber 17, thanked Nepal PM KP Sharma Oli and Bhutanese counterpart Lotay Tshering for extending birthday wishes. In two separate tweets, Modi appreciated the 'good wishes and prayers'. While responding to Oli, PM Modi wrote that the country is looking forward to further strengthening the ties between India and Nepal. In another tweet he said that the friendship between India and Bhutan is a shining example of mutual trust. Thank you, Excellency @kpsharmaoli ji! We look forward to the further strengthening of India-Nepal ties, based on our shared culture and history. https://t.co/68wkokpQk1 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 17, 2020 Thank you, Lyonchhen @pmbhutan for your warm good wishes and prayers! We cherish the India-Bhutan friendship as a shining example of mutual trust and cooperation between neighbours. https://t.co/9ntgmEMLpC Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 17, 2020 On the occasion of PM Modis 70th birthday, Oil had tweeted, Warm greeting to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on the auspicious occasion of your birthday. I wish you good health and happiness. We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries. On the other hand, Tshering said, "The people and government of Bhutan convey prayers for your success and well being on Your Excellencys 70th birth anniversary. Under your leadership, we are confident that India will continue to achieve even greater transformation. READ: PM Modi Unstoppable At 70, And From Everything We've Seen he's Just Getting Started Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin were among those to convey their best wishes to PM Narendra Modi. Several Indian leaders also congratulated PM Modi on his birthday. Wishes poured in from Bollywood stars as well, Anupam Kher, Daler Mehndi, Manoj Joshi were among those who expressed pride about having Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister, while highlighting his achievements and praising his qualities. READ: Mamata Banerjee Greets PM Modi On His Birthday BJP celebrates PM Modis birthday The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), on the other hand, has organised a Seva Saptah from September 14 to 20 to celebrate PM Modis birthday by distributing ration amongst the needy, organising blood donation camps and eye-check up camps. According to ANI, the party is also undertaking social initiative across the nation during this week-long event. BJP MP Arun Singh also flagged off a cycle rally on the occasion of PM Narendra Modi's birthday. BJP workers celebrated Modi's 70th birthday at India Gate in New Delhi on Thursday. The party workers had made a cake of 70 kg laddu to celebrate the occasion. Party leader Shyam Jaju also participated in the celebration. In Vadodara, the party has offered life insurance to over 20,000 people under the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY). As in Delhi, people in Coimbatore also celebrated the Prime Minister's birthday with 70kgs of laddu. They offered laddu to Lord Shiva ahead of his birthday. READ: Kerala Governor, CM Extend Birthday Wishes To PM Modi READ: Uttarakhand Governor, CM Congratulate PM Modi On His Birthday By PTI CHANDIGARH: SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday said her decision to resign from the Union Cabinet to protest three farm sector bills "symbolises my party's vision, its glorious legacy and its commitment to go to any extent to safeguard the interests of farmers". "I am proud that today I am able in my humble way to take that legacy forward," she said. In her four-page resignation letter addressed to the prime minister, she said, "In view of the decision of the government of India to go ahead with the Bill on the issue of marketing of agricultural produce without addressing and removing the apprehensions of farmers and decision of my party, Shiromani Akali Dal, not to be a part of anything that goes against the interest of farmers, I find it impossible to continue to perform my duties as a minister in the union council of ministers." Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill. It has already passed Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill. They will replace ordinances promulgated by the Union government. The SAD leader said that before, during and after the promulgation of the three ordinances, she had tried her best to persuade the Cabinet to take the actual stakeholders of this decision, the farmers, on board and remove their apprehensions and concerns. "All this while, I was given the impression that since an Ordinance is only a temporary arrangement, my concerns and pleas would be addressed while legislating on the issue in the Parliament." "But I write it with a very heavy heart that despite my persistent pleas as well as repeated efforts of my party, SAD, in this regard, the government has not taken the farmers on board," she wrote. "The trust farmers place in us is sacred to us," she said. "My decision symbolises my party's vision, its glorious legacy and its commitment to go to any extent to safeguard the interests of the farmers," she said. Kaur said her decision to resign was guided by the "iconic legacy" of former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for fighting to defend national interests, be it against the Emergency or for the establishment of a federal structure in the country as well as preserving external security or food security. She said that her party always followed the "great Guru Sahiban" who taught them never to compromise on one's principles and to stand up for what one strongly believes to be right. "That is precisely what I am doing today," the parliamentarian from Punjab's Bathinda said. Kaur, who held the food processing industries portfolio, said, "I and my party are deeply pained that we were not able to persuade the government to refer the Bills governing the marketing of farmers produce to a select committee." She, however, expressed satisfaction that she was able to live up to the expectations of the people who have placed their complete trust in her. Describing her tenure as minister as "a remarkable and most memorable period of my life", she said she was satisfied that the NDA-led government delivered on many critical and long-standing issues of the Sikh community, including justice for 1984 riots victims. She also recounted Goods and Services Tax waiver on 'langar', permission granted to foreign donations to the Darbar Sahib as major achievements. "But the most memorable moment for me and for every devout Sikh came with the historic opening of Kartarpur Sahib corridor for which the Sikhs had been praying in their daily ardas for three quarters of a century, she said. She also recalled the three-decades-old alliance formed by Parkash Singh Badal and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. She said she was confident that the SAD-BJP alliance would continue to work together to maintain the hard earned atmosphere of peace and communal harmony in Punjab. Talking to the media later, she said she did not consider her step as any "sacrifice" but just a natural and normal course for any proud Akali wedded to the 'Panthic' values and to the cause of the farmers. "The real sacrifices are made by the farmers themselves. I am just standing by them as their daughter and sister," she said. She said she has requested the prime minister to accept her resignation "with immediate effect." "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister," she tweeted. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dogma Therapeutics (" Dogma ") has reached an agreement for the acquisition of its oral PCSK9 program by AstraZeneca. Dogma will receive upfront as well as downstream payments linked to global regulatory and commercial milestones. The pursuit of a convenient, oral PCSK9-based therapy has been the singular focus of Dogma scientists for nearly a decade. PCSK9 is widely considered the exemplary target accredited by human genetics, as variants found in humans establish the needed directionality of a therapeutic. Both from a patient convenience standpoint and the potential for combination therapy, there is a need for widely-accessible oral therapies for the millions of people at risk for cardiovascular events. Through a series of comprehensive hit-finding and validation efforts, the Dogma team discovered small molecules that directly bind to a novel binding pocket in PCSK9. Dozens of high-resolution x-ray structures of Dogma inhibitors bound to PCSK9 allowed rapid optimization to picomolar affinity with exquisite physicochemical attributes and robust LDL-C lowering when dosed orally in preclinical models of hypercholesterolemia. "We have built a robust data package that highlights the cholesterol-lowering and safety potential of our oral PCSK9 program," noted Dogma CEO Brian Hubbard, Ph.D. "This agreement with AstraZeneca meets our strategic goal to accelerate access to patients unable to meet target LDL-C. I would like to especially thank our scientific partners - Charles River Laboratories, Viva Biotech, Anji Pharmaceuticals, and our CRO partners - for their commitment to this project and their world-class problem solving." Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca said: "Raised LDL cholesterol is a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is estimated to cause 2.6 million deaths worldwide every year. Whilst PCSK9 is a well validated target for lowering LDL cholesterol it has been a hugely challenging target to inhibit with small molecules. This agreement with Dogma Therapeutics offers us the opportunity to develop the first small molecule, orally bioavailable PCSK9 inhibitor, for patients at risk of cardiovascular disease." Since inception, Dogma has developed a highly collaborative research model that leverages scientific expertise across the globe. This collaborative model was first created with Charles River, a leading, full-service drug discovery and early-stage development company, who, with its global, integrated drug discovery and safety assessment platform , has worked on 85% of drugs approved by the FDA in 2019. In tackling this previously considered 'small molecule undruggable' target, Charles River scientists and project leads contributed medicinal and computational chemistry, structural biology, biophysics, cell biology, ADME, and PK/PD expertise. "Charles River has played an integral role in the launch and progression of Dogma with their compelling drug discovery expertise and knowledge," noted Hubbard. "Our team is extremely proud to have worked closely with Dogma throughout the development of its oral PCSK9 inhibitor program," said Birgit Girshick, Executive Vice President, Discovery & Safety Assessment at Charles River. "This ground-breaking project could prove transformational in the management of hypercholesterolemia and cardiovascular disease." Another key partner, Viva Biotech , is a leading structure-based, integrated drug discovery platform company. Viva has a full spectrum of early-stage drug discovery technologies from hit identification to development candidate nomination, combined with a unique equity-for-service (EFS) model. Viva has incubated more than 50 startup biotech companies similar to Dogma and plans to work with 100 more in the next 2 years. "It was an exceptionally rewarding experience for our team to have a close partnership with Dogma during the exciting discovery phase," said Dr. Zhixiong Ye, Chief Scientific Officer at Viva Biotech. "An orally-bioavailable small molecule PCSK9 inhibitor will greatly impact the unmet medical needs of cardiovascular patients." In addition to Viva's equity-for-service investment, Dogma received support from a syndicate of cross-border investors and corporate collaborators including JMCR Partners, CR Capital, and Anji Pharmaceuticals. The Foley Hoag LLP team of Hemmie Chang, Adrienne Ellman, David Halstead, Nicola Lemay, Kathryn Lumb, Laura Trumbull, Yuliya Kozachenko, Chasse Osborn and Kyrsten Lundh represented Dogma. More information on Dogma can be found here: www.dogmatherapeutics.com Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements that can generally be identified by words such as "will," or similar expressions. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. This press release does not require an update of any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Dogma Therapeutics Related Links https://www.dogmatherapeutics.com Maria Kolesnikova, a member of the Coordination Council formed by the opposition - Sergei Gapon/AFP Belarusian authorities have charged protest leader Maria Kolesnikova with incitement to undermine national security, which carries a maximum jail term of five years. Ms Kolesnikova was charged with calling for "actions aimed at undermining Belarusian national security," the countrys top investigative body said in a statement. She could face up to five years in jail if convicted. Ms Kolesnikova, formerly a professional musician, emerged as one of the opposition leaders last month after Belarusians took to the streets across the country to protest Alexander Lukashenkos widely disputed landslide victory in the Aug 9 presidential election. Authorities crushed the demonstrations with unprecedented violence and tortured hundreds in prison. The last of three women who spearheaded the protests to remain in the country, 38-year old Ms Kolesnikova was abducted from the streets of Minsk last week. More than 24 hours later, she was detained at the border while trying to illegally cross into Ukraine. Her associates who were forcibly expelled from Belarus said that Ms Kolesnikova ripped up her passport to stop authorities from taking her across the border by force. Ms Kolesnikova was suffering from allergies in prison but remains in good spirits, according to Lyudmila Kazak, her lawyer. Maria Kolesnikova has inspired fan art among Belarusian protesters - Efrem Lukatsky/AP The crackdown on opposition leaders came just a few days before President Lukashenko went to Russia for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, since the crackdown began. Mr Putin publicly pledged his support for Mr Lukashenko and gave the green light for a 1.2 billion loan for Belarus, which has been largely perceived as an attempt to prop up the unpopular dictator. The European Parliament on Thursday passed a resolution calling for sanctions on President Lukashenko, the day after Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in her annual speech attacked Mr Lukashenko's brutal response to the protests. Story continues The motion is largely symbolic because EU sanctions require the unanimous support of all 27 EU governments and the decision to impose them is made by the bloc's leaders in the European Council and not MEPs. EU sanctions against Belarus are expected to be agreed by the bloc's heads of state and government but are unlikely to be aimed at Mr Lukashenko himself. EU foreign ministers will meet to discuss the crisis in Belarus on Monday. The Cold War was fought not with weapons, but with information and ideas. In the struggle, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, American government-funded news outlets, were on the front lines. They were powerful not because they were propaganda, but because they werent. Today, under the leadership of conversative documentarian Michael Packappointed, of course, by Donald Trumpthe credibility of US government-funded media, built over decades, is being squandered, and experienced journalists are being dismissed, maligned, and punished with deportation. Such efforts undermine the ability of the US government to counter the malicious propaganda and misinformation being used to manipulate global public opinion. After a two-year delay, Pack, an ally and friend of Steve Bannons, was confirmed in June by the Senate as head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees the news outlets. Packs confirmation required the personal intervention of President Trump, who was furious at VOA for covering his administration with an independent streak. Following Packs confirmation, VOA director Amanda Bennett (a board member at the Committee to Protect Journalists) and her deputy Sandy Sugawara resigned. Pack then dismissed the heads of the other networks, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and replaced the members of the independent advisory boards with his lackeys. Pack is also accused of seeking to undermine the Open Technology Fund, which promotes an open internet around the world. Pack has been an elusive figure since taking over at the USAGM, refusing to answer questions from his own staff or the media. But he has agreed to appear before the House Foreign Relations Committee on September 24. Here are some questions committee members might ask. I, for one, am looking for some answers. Who are you working for? (Part one) Under its charter, VOA is bound by law to present news coverage that is accurate, objective, and comprehensive. Yet President Trump has made clear he expects US government-funded media to be a mouthpiece for his administration. You have stated that your job is to help drain the swamp, root out corruption, and deal with these issues of bias. Are you prepared to stand up to the president? Why on earth would you suggest journalists are spies? In an interview with the Federalist podcast that was aired on August 27, you strongly implied that the reason you are slow-walking visa renewals for VOA staffers is because some journalists might be spies. Do you recognize and understand how such language endangers the lives not only of VOA journalists, but journalists everywhere? American journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Daniel Pearl were all accused of espionage before being executed by Islamic militants; Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was imprisoned in Iran for eighteen months on such baseless charges. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Will you respect the firewall? When the VOA Urdu service published a subtitled video featuring Joe Biden urging people to vote, you announced an investigation into the matter and issued a statement condemning the video. Will you continue to edit VOA stories? And will you be copyediting as well? Will you fight propaganda with the truth? VOA has been recognized as a reliable news source around the world, particularly in countries where state media is a form of propaganda. Yet you appointed conspiracy theorist Frank Wuco, who has promoted false birther theories about former president Barack Obama, as a front office adviser and put him in charge of auditing USAGMs office of policy and research. How will USAGM stand up for the truth if people working for you are known to spread lies? Who are you working for? (Part two) Steve Bannon described VOA as a rotten fish from top to bottomtotally controlled by the deep-state apparatus. He has called former VOA director Bennett a classic useful idiot who kowtows to Beijings party line and a running dog for the Chinese Communist Party. Do you share his assessment? Do you think VOA was promoting Chinese propaganda? In an unprecedented statement issued in April, the Trump White House claimed that VOA had amplified Chinese propaganda by covering a light show that marked the end of the lockdown in Wuhan. As a news outlet, VOA reported on the ways in which Chinese government censorship helped fuel the spread of the coronavirus, as well as reporting that China brought the virus under control. Will you repudiate the White Houses smear? Do you have compassion for VOA employees? You have acknowledged that VOA journalists who face repression in their home countries take grave risks to report the news. So why did you decide to freeze visa renewals and contracts for journalists working in the United States, knowing that they could face violent attacks or imprisonment if they were forced to return home? How do you expect anyone to want to work for the agency when you show no loyalty or goodwill toward your staff? When the host of the Federalist podcast joked about reducing staff numbers at federal agencies by banning masks and turning off the air-conditioning, you responded, Well have to look into that one. Will VOA stand up for press freedom, including the rights of its own journalists? Heartlessly deporting your own journalists, and implying that some of them are spies, has led many at US government-funded media not only to question your commitment to their personal well-being, but to wonder if you still are willing to defend the rights of your own journalists and support the coverage of press freedom, for which VOA has been known. Will you? Who are you working for? (Part three) Bannon has said of you and your new role, Hes my guy, and I pushed him hard. President Trump has called VOA disgusting and said that Michael Pack would get in and do a great job [at the agency]. As head of the USAGM, your job is to work on behalf of the American people. How can we be sure that you are? CPJ US researcher Katherine Jacobsen contributed reporting. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Joel Simon is the outgoing executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which he led for fifteen years. A regular contributor to the Columbia Journalism Review, he has also been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. NEW DELHI : Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), on Thursday, announced the appointment of actor Ayushmann Khurrana as the brand ambassador for the soon-to-be launched SUV model Urban Cruiser ahead of the festive season. The one-year long partnership will see the actor appearing in an advertising campaign for Urban Cruiser across media platforms including television, digital and print. The company, in a statement, said that Khurrana is a personality that embodies the core value of the Toyota Urban Cruisers attributes of being unconventional yet aspirational. Having made his mark at a young age, the 36-year-old actor is known for his bold and experimental film choices which include topics like sperm donation (Vicky Donor), premature balding (Bala) and caste system (Article 15). Naveen Soni, senior vice-president, sales and service, TKM, said that Ayushmann Khurrana is an exemplar of a self-made actor, someone who is extremely versatile and respected by critics and audience alike. "We are confident that with this association, we will be able to connect with the customers, especially the young, across the nook and corners of the country. The new Urban Cruiser is an offering for those who aspire to own a SUV at an early stage in their lives," he added. This will be a part of TKMs overall marketing strategy for this year, aimed at making brand Toyota more relevant to young consumers. The core messaging of the campaign will be around respect and how it must be earned. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Gettyimagesbank By Lee Hyo-jin As working from home is becoming increasingly common amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, many people question what this means for the future of the workplace. The shift to remote work is likely to continue in Korea even after the pandemic ends, according to a recent survey, Thursday. A survey conducted by the Korea Employers Federation (KEF) among the top 100 firms in terms of domestic sales showed that they have adapted well to the new scheme triggered by the pandemic, and more than half plan to expand it even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. The data was collected through phone calls with company representatives between Sept. 7 and 8, when Seoul and its surrounding area was under level 2.5 social distancing measures, and the rest of the country under level 2. Among the respondents, 88 percent said they had applied a full or partial work-from-home scheme. Two percent of respondents said they had plans to adopt the system in the near future. Another 8 percent did not have staff working remotely and had no plans to implement the option in the future. The most popular form of remote working, chosen by 44 percent of firms, was to divide employees into groups who take turns to come into the office in order to minimize physical contact. Over 16 percent had made all but essential employees work from home. The working environment at home compared to the office was rated highly as well. When HR departments were asked to assess on a scale of 1 to 100 the productivity level of employees when working remotely compared with their productivity when working at the office, 46 percent gave them a score of more than 90 in favor of remote work. Another 25 percent gave above 80 points, and 17 percent marked above 70. Regarding the future of remote work, more than half of the firms 53 percent predicted that it will be expanded after the pandemic ends. Some 33 percent stated they expect that it will go back to pre-pandemic levels. The KEF noted that the current work-from-home system is strictly limited to white collar workers. As working from home is expected to continue in the future, the Ministry of Labor issued a manual on Wednesday about handling labor-management conflicts when employees are working remotely. The manual includes detailed guidelines for both employees and management. For example, employees who are working from home are only allowed to leave their house during working hours after getting permission from their employer. Also, injuries occurring at home during working hours fall under the category of workplace accidents. Global coronavirus cases will soar past 30 million today, with India dominating the infection rate. India's is firmly the global epicentre, accounting for around 17 percent of the total number of cases, although North and South America combined represent almost half of the infections. Global new daily case numbers reached record levels in recent days and deaths neared 1 million as the international race to develop and market a vaccine heated up. The global number of cases stands at 29,880,475 with a death toll of 940,932, according to Thursday morning's data from John Hopkins University. A man reacts as health workers help collect a nasal swab sample to test for COVID-19 in Hyderabad, India, on Thursday President Donald Trump points to a chart as he speaks about his administration's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response during a news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on Wednesday The official number of global coronavirus cases is now more than five times the number of severe influenza illnesses recorded annually, according to the WHO. Around the world, there have been almost 1 million deaths, considered a lagging indicator given the two-week incubation period of the virus. That has well exceeded the upper range of 290,000 to 650,000 annual deaths linked to influenza. COUNTRIES REPORTING MOST NEW CASES/DEATHS EACH DAY CASES INDIA: 93,199 US: 38,897 BRAZIL: 31,599 ARGENTINA: 10,960 SPAIN: 10,140 DEATHS INDIA: 1,162 US: 854 BRAZIL: 808 MEXICO: 456 ARGENTINA: 207 *All figures based on latest seven-day average reported Advertisement India on Wednesday became only the second country in the world, after the United States, to record more than 5 million cases. The south Asian nation, the world's second most populous country, has been reporting more new daily cases than the United States since mid-August and accounts for nearly 17 percent of global known cases. The United States has about 20 percent of all global cases, although it has just 4 percent of the world's population. Brazil, the third worst-hit country, accounts for roughly 15 percent of global cases. It took 18 days for global cases to surge from 25 million to more than 30 million. It took 20 days for the world to go from 20 million to 25 million and 19 days to go from 15 million to 20 million. The global rate of new daily cases is slowing, reflecting progress in constraining the disease in many countries, despite a few big surges. Health experts stress that official data almost certainly under-reports both infections and deaths, particularly in countries with limited testing capacity. The race to develop and bring to market a novel coronavirus vaccine has grown increasingly frenetic in recent weeks with about 200 candidates in development globally. U.S. President Donald Trump has said his country could have a vaccine ready for distribution before the U.S. election on November 3, while a Chinese health official this week said China may have a vaccine ready for public use as early as November. While the trajectory of the coronavirus still falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10 percent of them, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic. INDIA India reported another record jump in daily coronavirus infections with 97,894 cases in the last 24 hours, data from the health ministry showed on Thursday. Deaths are also showing a rise, with the country recording more than 1,000 deaths every day for the last two weeks. Coronavirus infections in India surged past 5 million on Wednesday, piling pressure on hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they need to treat tens of thousands of critical patients. In the big states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, some of the areas worst affected by the virus, demand for oxygen has more than tripled, doctors and government officials said, prompting urgent calls for help. Elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East Israel is recording an average of 4,493 cases per day, Iraq 4,177, the Philippines 3,970 and Indonesia 3,644. After India, Iran is reporting the most deaths - with an seven-day average of 130 fatalities per day, followed by Indonesia with 109, the Philippines with 107 and Iraq on 73. A police officer stands guards while people line up to get fish distributed by Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) members during the birthday celebrations of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a day before he will turn 70 years old, in Chennai on Thursday, 2020 EUROPE The WHO warned Europe this week to brace for higher mortality rates over the autumn as cases soared on the continent. Spain, France, the Netherlands, Malta, Greece, Slovenia and Ukraine are all reporting more cases than ever. In the last seven days, Spain has reported an average of 10,140 cases each day, France 8,684, Russia 5,559, the United Kingdom 3,286, and Ukraine 2,953. The countries reporting the highest average deaths over the same period were Russia 114, Spain 59, Ukraine 54, Romania 38 and France 36. 'It's going to get tougher. In October, November, we are going to see more mortality,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said on Monday. 'It's a moment where countries don't want to hear this bad news, and I understand,' Kluge said, adding that he wanted to send the 'positive message' that the pandemic 'is going to finish, at one moment or another.' Latin America Coronavirus has risen colossally in Latin America, however there is growing evidence that its level of infections may have plateaued. Brazil has the third highest number of cases in the world with 4.4 million and has suffered more than 134,000 deaths, second only to the US. Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Peru have all had major outbreaks and are in the global top ten for confirmed cases. The virus caught on later in South America and started to peak as Europe's coronavirus cases fell. Brazil's daily figures have been erratic, however they have clearly dropped off from a peak of nearly 70,000 on July 29. Likewise, Mexico, Peru and Colombia, have all seen new cases decline in recent weeks. Argentina has experienced a rise in August after it appeared to bring the virus under control. On September 5, it recorded more than 12,000 infections - the highest ever - and another 12,000 cases last week. UNITED STATES The US has seen a slight uptick in the average number of daily Covid cases and deaths in the past week. The average number of infections per day was at more than 37,000 on Tuesday after increasing steadily since the weekend. Cases, on average, have been trending downwards nationally since July when about 70,000 infections were being reported daily. The average number of infections per day was at more than 37,000 on Tuesday after increasing steadily since the weekend. Cases, on average, have been trending downwards nationally since July when about 70,000 infections were being reported daily Daily deaths are now averaging at just over 840 per day after the average number of fatalities dropped to 720 a week ago. Deaths in the US have been declining steadily since mid-August when an average of 1,000 American were dying each day Daily deaths are now averaging at just over 840 per day after the average number of fatalities dropped to 720 a week ago. Deaths in the US have been declining steadily since mid-August when an average of 1,000 American were dying each day. More than 195,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 and there has been over 6.6 million infections. The uptick in cases comes after health officials had warned there could be increases following the Labor Day holiday weekend. Thailand and Singapore have been added to the list of travel corridors after a decrease in the rate of coronavirus cases, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has announced. Travellers arriving in England from either south-east Asian country after 4am on Saturday will no longer need to self-isolate for 14 days. But quarantine restrictions are being imposed on travellers from Slovenia and Guadeloupe. The Department for Transport (DfT) said there has been a significant change in both the level and pace of confirmed cases of coronavirus in both destinations. Data from Slovenia shows that its seven-day rate of cases is 29.1 per 100,000 people, up from 14.4 in the previous seven days. The rate for Guadeloupe has risen more than six-fold in the past four weeks, the DfT said. A rate of 20 is the threshold above which the UK Government considers triggering quarantine conditions. The decision to remove the quarantine requirement for arrivals from Thailand and Singapore is unlikely to lead in a surge of people from England visiting the destinations. The countries are only allowing people to enter for a limited number of reasons, such as if they have a work permit or are the spouse or child of a resident. If you arrive in England fromSloveniaGuadeloupeafter 04:00 19 Sept 2020, you must self-isolate for 14 days. If you arrive from Singapore or Thailand after 04:00 19 Sept you will not need to self-isolate Find out more here https://t.co/VPEiXaZqat#TravelSafely pic.twitter.com/y83YYGcxjl Dept for Transport (@transportgovuk) September 17, 2020 Denmark retained its quarantine exemption, despite its seven-day case rate being 33.8. Story continues The DfT urged employers to be understanding of people returning from Slovenia and Guadeloupe, as they will need to self-isolate. The statement gave no update on the possible introduction of testing at airports as a way of reducing quarantine requirements. The travel industry has demanded this should take place urgently to avoid further job losses. Earlier this week British Airways boss Alex Cruz called for trials to be held for passengers flying between London and New York. He said this is imperative, adding that the airline is still fighting for our own survival. COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Traditions Health, LLC ("Traditions"), a multi-state hospice and home health provider, announced that it has acquired Physician's Choice Hospice ("Physician's Choice") and Palladium Hospice and Palliative Care ("Palladium Hospice"). These acquisitions will allow Traditions to provide a high quality of clinical care to a broader base of patients. The acquisition of Physician's Choice and its five locations in Oklahoma, alongside the recent acquisition of Faith Hospice, make Traditions a leading hospice provider in the state. "We are excited to be joining the Traditions family with its strong leadership team, highly regarded brand and leading Oklahoma industry position," said Ginger Barsotti, Founder and President of Physician's Choice. "Building this company from the ground up has been one of the greatest joys of my life. This partnership will allow us to support our long-term growth initiatives, predicated on our rich history as a private company with a dedicated and loyal employee base." The acquisition of Palladium Hospice strategically strengthens Traditions' footprint in the southeast. In acquiring Palladium Hospice, Traditions is adding six locations in South Carolina and two in Mississippi. Traditions is also bolstering its existing Georgia footprint. "We are proud to integrate our company's experience and leadership into Traditions and helping them fortify their presence in the southeast. We look forward to joining the Traditions team," said Diane Parker, CEO and President of Palladium Hospice. As a leading provider of hospice and home health services, Traditions offers skilled nursing, therapy services, and both physical and spiritual end of life care. The announcement was made by Bryan Wolfe, the President and CEO of Traditions. "I am extremely excited to expand our services to South Carolina and Mississippi and strengthen our existing presence in Oklahoma and Georgia. This is an enormous accomplishment for our organization, and we could not be more excited to welcome the employees and patients of both Physician's Choice and Palladium Hospice into the Traditions family," said Mr. Wolfe. Infinity Capital Partners acted as the sell-side advisor to Physician's Choice Hospice. Stoneridge Partners acted as the sell-side advisor to Palladium Hospice. About Traditions Health Headquartered in College Station, TX, Traditions Health is a leading provider of hospice care, home health care, consulting services and online policy manuals. The company provides care to over 3,250 patients across seven states. The company has recently been named to the 2020 Inc. Magazine's Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing businesses. Traditions Health is a portfolio company of Dorilton Capital. For more information, visit our website at www.traditionshealth.com. About Dorilton Capital Dorilton Capital is a private investment firm seeking to acquire, recapitalize and support the growth of middle market businesses across a range of industry sectors. Dorilton seeks control situations and prefers to partner with incumbent management to create value over the long term. Please visit www.doriltoncapital.com. For media inquiries or relevant opportunities, please contact [email protected] SOURCE Traditions Health, LLC Related Links http://www.traditionshealth.com Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Nicola Mining Inc. (TSXV: NIM) (FSE: HLI), (the "Company" or "Nicola") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Strategic Mining and Milling Profit Share Agreement (the "Strategic Agreement") with High Range Exploration Ltd. ("High Range" or the "Miner"). On February 25, 2015, the Company announced that it had entered into an original profit share agreement with High Range, the latter which subsequently underwent a corporate restructuring. The Strategic Agreement has terms identical to the original agreement signed between the two parties, which was the Company's first profit share agreement. Under the Agreement, High Range plans to extract mill feed from its wholly-owned Dominion Creek Property, which is located 43 kilometers northeast of the Town of Wells and about 110 kilometers east-southeast of Prince George, and then plans to ship this mill feed to Nicola for processing. During the past three months the Company and High Range have worked closely together with the intention of bringing the project towards a 10,000 tonne bulk sample permit, which the Miner plans to ship to the Company's mill for processing. Prior to shipping material from Dominion Creek Property to the mill, the groups will initially conduct a test analysis on the Miner's high-grade gold stockpile. According to the Agreement, mill feed will be stored and tested on site to confirm grades greater than 0.5 oz/tonne Au equivalent (15.552 grams/tonne Au equivalent). Once a sufficient stockpile has been achieved the material will be transported to the Company's mill. Nicola will be responsible for negotiating the sale of concentrate to a smelter or third-party purchaser. Under the Agreement, the Miner will be responsible for all costs associated with extraction and transportation to Nicola's processing facility, which is located near Merritt, B.C., while Nicola will be responsible for all costs associated with milling operations. Upon repayment of costs, according to terms of the Agreement, the parties will equally distribute the remaining proceeds from the sales of concentrates. Peter Espig, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We are very excited to work closely with High Range again. We believe High Range to be a well-run company that owns 100% of a very intriguing property with high-grade gold potential" Qualified Person Kevin Wells, P.Geo, a consulting geologist to the Company, is the independent qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for the technical disclosure contained in this news release. About Nicola Mining Nicola Mining Inc. is a junior mining company listed on the TSX Venture and Frankfurt Exchanges that maintains a 100% owned mill and tailings facility, located near Merritt, British Columbia. The fully-permitted mill can process both gold and silver mill feed via gravity and flotation processes. The Company also owns 100% of the New Craigmont Project, a high-grade copper property, and an active gravel pit that is located adjacent to its milling operations. On behalf of the Board of Directors "Peter Espig" Peter Espig CEO & Director For additional information Contact: Peter Espig Phone: (778) 385-1213 Email: info@nicolamining.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64003 A trio of Republican Congressmen worry that California's awarding of a $35M "Vote Safe" contract to SKD Knickerbocker, which boasts of being part of "Team Biden" represents a conflict of interest. The contract to produce advertising to encourage voters to participate in the November election "will undoubtedly provide a partisan firm the opportunity to use taxpayer money to influence the federal election," according to the letter sent to Alex Padilla, California's Secretary of State. Kentucky's James Comer, Illinois' Rodney Davis, and Georgia's Jody Hice have "serious questions about how the contract was awarded, whether the firm will have access to sensitive voter information and, if any of the firm's employees affiliated with 'Team Biden' will be involved in the project." They note that SKD Knickerbocker "does not hesitate to trumpet its relationship with Joe Biden's political campaign, highlighting in a bold graphic on its homepage its pride in being 'part of Team Biden.'" The firm's managing director, Anita Dunn, is a senior strategist on the campaign. The Congressmen have serious concerns "about why the contract was awarded to a firm that has such an obvious interest in the outcome of a federal election. "In fact, being awarded a $35M contract to contact voters using taxpayer money while publicly advertising its work on behalf of Joe Biden's campaign for president and employing a serious advisor to his campaign essentially provides a pro-Biden entity the opportunity to conduct get out the vote efforts." The letter also notes that SKD Knick was a target of a Russian hacking attempt. The Congressmen want to receive all documents and information relating to the award of the contract, whether SKD Knick will have access to California voter information, ensuring that employees involved with the Biden campaign are not involved in the project and hacking attempts of foreign actors on SKD Knick networks. SKD Knick, which is part of Stagwell Group, declined comment on the Republican letter. Raab at a joint press conference with US Secretary Mike Pompeo on September 16 - Reuters Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has urged US politicians to pressure Brussels into publicly ruling out a hard border on the island of Ireland, after the UK's own position was criticised by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. On the third day of a visit to Washington DC that risked being overshadowed by the very public warnings from Democrats over Brexit talks, Mr Raab used a CNN interview to try to turn the spotlight onto the European Union. I think it would be helpful for all those concerned about this to elicit the same unilateral, absolute commitment not to require any infrastructure at the border between the North and the South. So far its actually only the UK that has said that, Mr Raab said. He added: I think actually if the EU did come out and make the same commitment it would also help the negotiations. So I hope our American colleagues will reinforce that point on both sides. The call for US political figures to row in behind Britains position is a reflection of how prominent the backlash against Boris Johnsons proposed rewriting of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement has been from senior Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and a string of US congressmen have warned they would block a US-UK free trade deal if the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 Northern Irish peace deal, was undercut in any way. Critics have argued the Prime Minister's attempt to change elements of the Withdrawal Agreement which he approved less than a year ago means the UK, not the EU, is creating new instability in Northern Ireland. Just as Mr Raab was meeting Ms Pelosi to discuss their differences on Wednesday, Mr Biden released a tweet backing up the Democratic Party's position. We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit, Mr Biden wrote in his first comments on the matter. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. Story continues Such a public warning from a man who could be elected US president in a fewer than 50 days heaped pressure on the Johnson government and escalated the row. Mr Biden prides his Irish heritage. He has visited Ballina in County Mayo where his ancestors are from and recalled how his grandfather used to tell him the best drop of blood in you is Irish. Well-placed sources told The Daily Telegraph that the meeting between Mr Raab and Ms Pelosi was much less confrontational than their public statements, with the discussions described as cordial. Ms Pelosi reinforced her strong support for the Good Friday Agreement, which the US played a critical role in securing, during the meeting. But topics, including climate change, were discussed at length as well. Mr Bidens intervention triggered a wave of criticism from Conservative MPs who are firm supporters of Brexit. Some likened the remarks to meddling in UK-EU negotiations. Iain Duncan Smith told The Times: We dont need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden. If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the USA to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations. David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: Perhaps Mr Biden should talk to the EU since the only threat of an invisible border in Ireland would be if they insisted on levying tariffs. Asked if Mr Biden was wrong, a Number 10 spokesman said: We will continue to work with our US partners to ensure our position is understood, but the whole point of this - as the PM has set out - is to make sure the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is upheld. Srinagar, Sep 17 : Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday ordered a magisterial probe into the death of a youth belonging to Sopore town whose family has alleged that he was killed in custody. Sources said the District Magistrate Baramulla has ordered a magisterial probe into the death of Irfan Ahmad Dar, whose body was found with visible torture marks on Tuesday. The Additional District Development Commissioner of Baramulla has been assigned the task to carry out the probe. The youth was picked up by the police as an overground worker (OGW) of militants. Police said he was taken to Chardaji village after he was picked up in connection with the investigation. Police maintained that Irfan had taken advantage of the darkness and managed to run away. His body was found the same night some distance from the spot where the police claimed that he had escaped from their custody. The family alleges that Irfan was killed by the police since he died in their custody. Protests have rocked Sopore town after the alleged custodial killing of the youth. Political parties, including the National Conference, Peoples Democratic Party, Apni Party, Peoples Conference and others have appealed to Lt Governor Manoj Sinha to have the youth's death probed so that the guilty are brought to book. OSTERSUND, Sweden, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Skanska has, as part of a joint venture with Manafort Brothers, Inc., signed a contract with the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) to replace an elevated section of northbound Interstate 95 (I-95) in Providence, USA. The total contract is worth USD 212 M. Skanska will include its USD 106 M portion of the contract, about SEK 932 M, in the US order bookings for the third quarter 2020. The design-build project, located in the heart of downtown Providence, will optimize traffic operations by replacing the viaduct, and associated ramp and overpass structures. The contract includes staged bridge demolition and construction, bridge preservation, roadway reconstruction, etc. The Providence Viaduct spans the Woonasquatucket River, Amtrak Northeast Corridor, city roads, and interchange ramps. Construction began in July 2020 and is scheduled for completion in December 2024. Skanska is one of the leading construction- and development companies in USA, specializing in building construction, civil infrastructure and developing commercial properties in select U.S. markets. Skanska USA had sales of SEK 74 billion and about 7,900 employees in its operations in 2019. For further information please contact: Brittany Felteau Communications Manager, Skanska USA Tel +1-617-574-14-85 Olof Rundgren Media Relations Manager, Skanska AB Tel +46 (0)72-711-77-48 Direct line for media Tel +46 (0)10-448-88-99 This and previous releases can also be found at www.skanska.com. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/skanska/r/skanska-builds-the-interstate-95-northbound-viaduct-replacement-in-providence--usa--for-usd-106-m--a,c3195254 The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/95/3195254/1307063.pdf Press release 20200917 US Interstate 95 Viaduct replacement SOURCE Skanska The police in Zamfara State on Thursday said an opposition politician in the state, Habu Dan-Tabawa, was arrested by officers after he held a meeting with repentant bandits at his residence in Gusau, the states capital on Saturday . Mr Dan-Tabawa, a leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has since been released alongside 17 others taken into custody from the event. He had said the arrest was politically-motivated. But the police commissioner in the state, Usman Nagogo, at a press conference in Gusau on Thursday, said the police had been informed that certain individuals were meeting repentant bandits to entice them to return to the forest and send the state back into mayhem. No responsible security architecture will fold its arms and wait until carnage is meted to the citizens of the state before they act, the police chief said. Thus, the arrest of Alhaji Habu Mohd Dan-Tabawa and 17 others on that fateful day was based on intelligence-driven and proactive measures taken by the police to curtail any act of banditry and related criminality in the state, Mr Nagogo said. Invasion of police headquarters The commissioner said miscreants had invaded the state police command headquarters on Sunday, a day after the arrests of the politicians. He said the invasion was to destroy evidence likely to influence the outcome of police investigation of the arrested persons and to test the resolve of the police. At this juncture, let me sound a note of warning that this kind of uncivilized behaviour anywhere in the state will be dealt with squarely according to the law of the land, he added. Improved security in Zamfara Mr Nagogo said the security agents had secured the release of hundreds of abducted persons and recovered sophisticated and locally made weapons from bandits and a local militia group, Yansakai. Since then, the state government requested for more police mobile operatives who are not only used along with military to curtail the activities of unrepentant bandits but are also stationed in strategic places in the state. We have combined forces of well-armed 877 personnel stationed at strategic locations across the state as well as 100 special forces being used in case of any threat, the police chief said. Accusations against me baseless Dantabawa Earlier, Mr Dan-Tabawa had said his arrest and the allegations against him were made to tarnish his reputation. At a press conference on Tuesday, he said he came in from Kaduna to sympathise with and assist victims of floods in his hometown but that around 9 p.m. the police stormed his residence and arrested him and 16 of his friends. According to him, among those arrested were serving permanent secretaries in the state civil service and PDP members who usually visited him whenever he was around. I didnt hold meeting with bandits as claimed by the state government and the police. The police didnt tell me the crime I committed, they stormed my residence and raided the house. Following the incident, I lost a huge amount of money. I will seek redress in the court, Mr Dan-Tabawa said The politician said he and his associates had made several complaints to the police commissioner of police brutality on their supporters but nothing has been done to address their complaints. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court Thursday sought response of the Centre and AAP government on a lawyer's plea challenging the Rs 500 challan issued to him for not wearing a mask while he was driving alone. Justice Navin Chawla issued notice to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Delhi government, Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) and the police seeking their stand on the petition which seeks quashing of the challan, refund of the Rs 500 paid as fine and compensation of Rs 10 lakh for mental harassment suffered by the petitioner. The petitioner, Saurabh Sharma, has claimed in his plea that on September 9 while driving to work he was stopped by Delhi Police officials and was challaned for not wearing mask even though he was alone in the car. Sharma, represented by advocate K C Mittal, has contended that there is a Health Ministry notification clarifying that wearing of mask was not compulsory while driving alone in a car. Advocate Farman Ali Magray, appearing for the ministry, said that such a notification has been issued. Mittal also argued, during the hearing, that the guidelines issued by DDMA only states that the mask has to be worn in a public place or place of work and a private vehicle is neither. The DDMA, during the hearing, contended that its guidelines issued in April and June this year makes its mandatory to wear a mask in a public place and added that the Supreme Court has held that a private vehicle is a public place. It also said that under the guidelines issued by it, there is penalty of Rs 500 for first time breach of quarantine norms as well as for not wearing masks and for every subsequent violation there is a fine of Rs 1,000. The court listed the matter for further hearing on November 18. Director Kat Coiro confirmed Thursday that Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany has been cast in the titular role of her 2022 She-Hulk series for Disney+. The New York-born filmmaker shared Deadline's report via Instagram and commented: 'Couldn't be more excited @tatianamaslany!' Coiro also happens to be the woman helming Universal Pictures jilted bride rom-com Marry Me, starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, which will be released on Valentine's Day. Don't get her angry! Director Kat Coiro confirmed Thursday that Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (pictured April 26) has been cast in the titular role of her 2022 She-Hulk series for Disney+ The New York-born filmmaker shared Deadline's report via Instagram and commented: 'Couldn't be more excited @tatianamaslany!' The Canadian 34-year-old will officially join the Marvel Comics Universe as She-Hulk, which was one of the last major characters to be co-created by the late Stan Lee. The green-skinned superhero starts off as highly-skilled lawyer Jennifer Walters, who transforms after having a life-saving (yet gamma-irradiated) blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner/Hulk. Whenever She-Hulk gets highly emotional - cue the PMS jokes - she can potentially become the physically strongest known woman in the MCU. At the helm! Coiro (L) also happens to be the woman directing Universal Pictures jilted bride rom-com Marry Me, starring Jennifer Lopez (R) and Owen Wilson, which will be released on Valentine's Day (pictured autumn 2019) Cue the PMS jokes! The Canadian 34-year-old will officially join the Marvel Comics Universe as She-Hulk, which was one of the last major characters to be co-created by the late Stan Lee 'You've gotta make it!' The green-skinned superhero starts off as highly-skilled lawyer Jennifer Walters, who transforms after having a life-saving (yet gamma-irradiated) blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner/Hulk Tatiana recently played Radiant Assembly of God Sister preacher Alice McKeegan in HBO detective drama Perry Mason, which was renewed for a second season on July 22. Maslany gushed via Instagram on August 9: 'I love this show and loved playing the absolute creature that is Sister Alice.' Erle Stanley Gardner created the reboot of the CBS series (1957-1966), which features Matthew Rhys, John Lithgow, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk, and Shea Whigham. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Democratic Party's request to extend the deadline for mail-in votes to three days after the 2020 US election. The court ruled 5-2 in favor of the Democrats, according to the Associated Press. In order for ballots to be eligible, they must be postmarked by the time the polls close and be received by the county board of election by 5pm on 6 Nov, three days after Election Day. Republicans opposed extending the deadline. There are 18 states - half of which have Republican governments - with post-Election Day deadlines. In addition to the deadline change, the Supreme Court also voted in favor of state Democrats by allowing them to fix errors and "gray areas" of the state's mail-in voting laws, by kicking the Green Party's candidate off the November ballots and by approving the use of satellite election offices and county drop boxes for ballots. Satellite election offices are especially important in densely populated - and often more Democratic leaning - areas of the state, like Philadelphia. The satellite locations will help elections officials manage the expected tide of mail-in ballots by providing alternative in-person voting locations. A 2019 state law expanded mail-in balloting in Pennsylvania, and - due to the pandemic - state elections officials are expecting more than 3 million voters to vote by mail this year. Despite the general Republican preference for in-person voting - ostensibly to avoid voter fraud, despite numerous experts claiming that threat is minimal - Pennsylvania Republicans opposed authorizing the satellite locations, which makes voting in-person more viable. They complained that the use of offices or drop boxes was not explicitly authorized under state law. Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins ultimately was removed from the November ballot after the Supreme Court reversed a lower court's decision to include him. Democrats - who historically have worked to keep the Green Party off the ballot over fears they will split the liberal vote - argued this year that there were irregularities in the way the Green Party filed its affidavits related to the 5,000 name petition candidates must collect in order to get their names on the ballot. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment For evangelical Christians, it is difficult to look at major developments in the Middle East without wondering about biblical prophecy. Should we rejoice over the historic peace treaty between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain? Or is this leading to a dangerous, false peace that will only hasten the reign of the antichrist? Lets first recognize just how historic this peace treaty actually is. For 30 years, from 1948 until 1978, not a single Middle Eastern nation made peace with Israel. It was not until 1979 that Egypt made that historic move, ultimately factoring into the assassination of the courageous Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat. The next Middle Eastern (and Muslim) nation to make peace with Israel was Jordan in 1995, 16 years later. Since then, not a single Islamic, Middle Eastern nation has made peace with Israel. That is, until now, 25 years later. Not only so, but this is the first time ever that two nations signed peace treaties on the same day. So, what previously took 47 years (from 1948 to 1995) took place in a matter of hours. This is completely beyond anything we have seen in the modern history of Israel. Not only so, but this happened after President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem and after he officially recognized Israels possession of the Golan Heights. This makes the peace treaty all the more remarkable. Lets not forget that, for years we were told that for America to make such moves would be disastrous, leading to an all-out war with the Muslim world. Instead, the aftermath has been a path of peace. Thats why Boaz Bismuths article on Times of Israel was titled, The Event That Will Change the History of the Middle East. He wrote, Even in a pandemic, we can allow ourselves to rejoice at the first open, warm peace between Israel and Arab countries, and ignore the cynics who are seeking to downplay the importance of today's events. Obviously, the Palestinians are anything but happy with the treaty. And the details of the agreement must be carefully analyzed. But what cannot be denied is the magnitude of this treaty, which is being hailed as the Abraham Accords. As one of the official documents states, this development will help lead to a future in which all peoples and all faiths can live together in the spirit of cooperation and enjoy peace and prosperity where states focus on shared interests and building a better future. Yet it is words like this that cause some prophecy-minded evangelicals to say, Not so fast! After all, there will be no true peace in the Middle East until Jesus returns. Plus, there are prophetic scriptures that speak of a false peace orchestrated by the antichrist that will lull the world to sleep, leading to the slaughter of millions. Beware! Scriptures that would come to mind include 1 Thessalonians 5:3, where Paul wrote, While people are saying, Peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. Also relevant is Ezekiel 38:11-12, where the hostile nations will say about Israel, I will invade a land of unwalled villages; I will attack a peaceful and unsuspecting people all of them living without walls and without gates and bars. I will plunder and loot and turn my hand against the resettled ruins and the people gathered from the nations, rich in livestock and goods, living at the center of the land. Who could imagine the nation of Israel described as a peaceful and unsuspecting people all of them living without walls and without gates and bars? Who could imagine Israel putting its guard down? Yet, according to some prophecy teachers, this passage will be fulfilled at the end of this age. In that light, shouldnt the Abraham Accords, which Trump described as the dawn of a new Middle East, be viewed with great suspicion, especially if 5 or 6 other nations follow suit and join the peace process? As someone who has been studying the Bible intensively for the better part of the last 50 years, I can say with absolute confidence that I do not know. I do not know if this will prepare the way for the antichrist. I do not know if this will ultimately hurt Israel more than it helps Israel. But what I do know is that Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9). What I do know is that Paul wrote, If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18). What I do know is that it is better for Israel to have more friends than more enemies. That being said, if sudden and dramatic peace came to the Middle East, I would be both hopeful and cautious. Would this be the result of decades (if not centuries) of prayer and years of diplomacy? Or would it be the first step towards a dangerous, one-world government that will ultimately oppose God Himself? Obviously, only God knows. But when it comes to making national decisions, they must be based on pragmatism more than prophecy. Thats because religious believers from all backgrounds have often misinterpreted prophecy before it unfolds, often wrongly predicting the end of the world or the return (or coming) of the Messiah. But speaking of prophecy, this same Bible I have been quoting speaks of the day when nations like Egypt and Assyria (today, Iraq) will join together and worship the God of Israel after a time of great upheaval and judgment. As stated by the prophet Isaiah, In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance. (Isaiah 19:24-25) In fact, Isaiah prophesied about other Arabian nations turning to the God of Israel through the Messiah (see Isaiah 42:11; 60:7) And so, while only the Lord Himself knows the implications of this important peace treaty, at the least, lets be glad that leaders are meeting together rather than killing each other. And let us see the Abraham Accords as a reminder of the day when all the nations of the earth will come to Jerusalem to worship the Lord (Isaiah 2:1-4). May He hasten that day! This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions A South-African woman has become a social media sensation after photos of her constructing an extension to her house went viral. The 26-year-old female engineer became the poster girl for last months celebration of Womens Month in South Africa for her success in a field that is dominated by men. In the photos that went viral on social networks, she can be seen single-handledly working on an extension to her house. She is seen preparing the cement, making measurements, and stacking the building blocks all by herself. Many have praised her for her actions with many saying it serves as empowerment to other women that they can pursue South African website Briefly managed to track down the protagonist of the viral photos, who turned out to be a trained civil engineer named Zama Philisiwe Zungu. It is gathered that she got her passion for construction from her father who is also a builder. She enrolled at the Umgungundlovu TVET College in her home city after she made the decision to become an engineer in 2014. Speaking about her flair for construction, Zama revealed that she has never worked in construction before but the practical exams she had passed during college gave her the confidence that she could build the extension to her house by herself. She said: This is what I am good at. Renovating my home is very fun and exciting at the same time, practicals are more fun than theory. Zama dreams of running her own construction company and plans to empower more women in the engineering industry. Always put your best in everything that you do, never underestimate the power of pouring your heart in what you do. Always seek to improve and empower yourself, Zungu advised other women. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates (Bloomberg) -- Oil posted its largest three-day advance since May after Saudi Arabia forcefully renewed calls for OPEC+ members to adhere to their production quotas. Futures in New York climbed 2% on Thursday to the highest level in two weeks. During the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting, Saudi Arabias Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman condemned cartel members that have cheated on production quotas. Russias Energy Minister Alexander Novak said the group should continue to strive for high compliance. Prince Abdulaziz went as far as to warn short sellers not to challenge the kingdoms resolve. I want the guys in the trading floors to be as jumpy as possible, he said. Im going to make sure whoever gambles on this market will be ouching like hell. This week, the United Arab Emirates signaled that it would make up for pumping too much oil in the past two months. Saudi Arabias energy minister said Thursday the U.A.E. has shown its commitment to the cuts and issued a stark warning to oil speculators not to bet against OPEC+. Still, a consumption recovery remains a challenge for oil markets. During the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting, the group said it sees risk to oil demand from a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and urged members to be proactive and ready to take further action. In the U.S., a slight rebound over the summer in gasoline demand has stalled with the equivalent of a million full-sized pickup trucks off the road as the pandemic forces Americans to stay at home. Right now global demand is terrible, Paul Sankey, founder of Sankey Research, said in a note. The demand side is broken, and the oil complex is in crisis management mode. Physical markets for actual barrels of crude are showing signs of weakness, with Bakken crude for delivery at Clearbrook, Minnesota, trading in recent sessions at its largest discount to Nymex oil futures in roughly a week. Poseidon crude erased its premium against Nymex WTI futures, trading at its weakest level in about two months. The fundamentals are still very challenging for petroleum, said Andrew Lebow, senior partner at Commodity Research Group. The market is recalibrating its view of how much inventory were drawing, if any. In the U.S. Gulf Coast region, companies are beginning to return to business as usual following Hurricane Sally. Royal Dutch Shell Plcs Norco refinery in south Louisiana is preparing to raise process rates to normal levels, after reducing operations earlier this week ahead of Hurricane Sally, according to a person familiar with operations. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. People wait outside at a COVID-19 testing site at St. John's Well Child and Family Center in July 2020, in Los Angeles, California Racial minorities accounted for 78 percent of Covid-19 deaths under the age of 21 in the United States between February and July, a government report said Tuesday. Out of 121 deaths among under-21s, 45 percent were among Hispanics, 29 percent among blacks and four percent among American Indians or Alaskan Natives, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Together, these groups represent 41 percent of the US population under 21. Overall, mortality among children and youths is far lower than adults: the CDC identified 392,000 cases in the time period, which was eight percent of the total figure, and only 0.08 percent of all deaths. Under-21s make up 26 percent of the US population. But the study does offer further proof that children and adolescents are not immune to the virus and a post-viral condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which was also included in the research. As other investigations have previously established, boys and men are at greater risk and accounted for 63 percent of deaths in the current study. Three-quarters of the deaths involved people with at least one underlying condition including chronic lung disease, asthma, obesity, neurologic and developmental conditions, and cardiovascular conditions. Twelve of the children who died were less than one-year-old, while 18 to 20-year-olds accounted for nearly half of the deaths. The study, which was a part of the CDC's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports" that are closely followed by health officials and professionals, was delayed in its publication following pressure by officials in the Trump administration, according to Politico. The news site reported that a Trump appointed official had objected to the inclusion of the term "pediatric population" to describe those under the age of 21. The administration has consistently emphasized the need for children to return to in-person learning at schools. ia/ft On Tuesday night, Trump was at it again, during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast on ABC, where he was schooled by Ellesia Blaque, an assistant professor of Africana and ethnic literatures at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She told him she had a congenital illness, demanded to known what he would do to keep people like me who work hard insured and cut him off when he tried to interrupt her. The police on Thursday said they have added additional, stringent sections of the Indian Penal Code to the ongoing investigation in the case of a 47-year-old woman being brutally thrashed allegedly by her neighbour in publicly view on a road in Razapur locality of Ghaziabad on Saturday evening. Officers also said that the local police post in-charge has been sent to police lines in connection with the incident. The police action came after a video of the CCTV footage of the incident went viral over social media, in which the man was purportedly seen thrashing the woman, including hitting her with a chair. Later, the suspect, 45-year-old Sunil Chaudhary, a resident of the same locality as the woman, had been arrested following a first information report (FIR) under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation). According to police, the suspect is a storekeeper at a private engineering college on the Delhi-Meeru Road. He lives in own house with his wife and two children in the locality. We have now added IPC sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 307 (attempt to murder) to the investigation. Apart from this, we have also sent the local post in-charge to police lines for delay in action in the case. A departmental inquiry will be undertaken against him, said Abhishek Verma, superintendent of police (city). According to the FIR, the incident took place around 5.15pm Saturday when the woman was on her way to the local market and the suspect allegedly made some offensive comments about her. When she objected to this, videos on social media purportedly showed Chaudhary landing multiple punches and kicks on the woman and beating her up mercilessly even as the public remained mute spectators. The videos purportedly also show him picking up a metal chair and hitting the woman with it till she fell unconscious. Chaudhary then purportedly leaves the spot and another man helps the woman up, who helps her sit at a nearby shop before leaving. The victims family had been alleging laxity on part of the police in making arrests and said she had suffered severe injuries to her body, and that more stringent sections should be levied against the suspects. Section 354 of the IPC is added to the investigation after the suspect misbehaved with the victim. In case the family gives any further complaint, it will be made part of the investigation, the SP added. In his complaint, the womans husband alleged that the suspect would often abuse his wife and their 26-year-old daughter. He alleged that this has been going on for one-and-a-half-years. The family, meanwhile, also alleged that they had earlier complained twice to the local police in-charge and once to officials at the Kavi Nagar police station but then withdrew the complaint. It was due to intervention of elderly persons and requests from the suspects family that we took back our complaints. The man is of an aggressive nature and often misbehaves with women in the locality. It was only after I came across the footage that I came to know of the severity of injuries to my mother. The chair weighed about 12-15kgs and he banged it to her head and chest. The injury to the chest is severe and she is taking up daily treatment at a hospital, alleged the son of the victim. After the incident, when we approached the police post in-charge, he did not take the matter seriously and told us that it was a simple case of altercation, he added. Kalanidhi Naithani, senior superintendent of police (SSP), said the post in-charge has been sent to police lines and the suspect will face more action. We will recommend levying the Goonda Act against him once the chargesheet is filed in the case, the SSP said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is one of several GOP incumbents who could lose their seats this cycle. (Getty Images) A memo from the Senate Republican campaign committee suggests the GOP is worried its majority in the chamber could succumb to a blue wave this November as Democrats look to expand their electoral reach into typically red states such as Montana, South Carolina, and Georgia. Less than 50 days before the 3 November elections, the internal GOP memo, obtained and first reported by the Guardian , shows how campaign operatives see the races shaping up in 10 key states that will determine whether Democrats reclaim the Senate majority for the first time in two election cycles. "The next few weeks will define the future of our country for generations to come," the memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) reads. Democrats must net a four-seat pickup or a three-seat pickup plus the presidency to take back the majority, which determines who controls what bills come to the floor for a vote and largely informs whether the presidents judicial nominations get confirmed. The NRSC acknowledges in the September memo that its a defensive map for the party this cycle, with vulnerable incumbents in the battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina. Inside Elections with Nathan L Gonzales slightly favours the Democratic challengers in Arizona (Mark Kelly) and Colorado (John Hickenlooper), but rates the Maine and North Carolina races as tossups. The GOP memo breaks down the four firewall states of Iowa, Montana, Kansas, and Georgia where both Senate seats, held by Republicans, are up for grabs. Three of Iowas four congressional seats went blue in the 2018 midterms, although its governor and both its senators are Republicans, including the incumbent up for re-election this cycle, Joni Ernst. In Montana, term-limited Democratic Governor Steve Bullock has never lost a statewide race, despite Donald Trump winning there by 21 percentage points in 2016. Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is retiring at the end of his term this cycle, leaving that seat up for grabs in a state that has trended back towards Democrats recently. But the seat is still likely to stay in the Republican column this November. Inside Elections rates the Senate race there as Leans Republican. Story continues Despite the strong likelihood Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville defeats Senator Doug Jones in deep-red Alabama, Republicans know theyre at even odds or worse to keep the Senate gavel. Make no mistake: the Senate Majority is at risk, the NRSC memo states. Beyond the four battleground states of Colorado, North Carolina, Arizona and Maine, Democrats are going on offense in historically red states like Montana, Iowa and Georgia, it reads. They're even eyeing states like South Carolina, where [Democrat] Jaime Harrison just reported raising a staggering $10.6m in August alone. The GOP, however, does not seem worried about the Senate races in Kentucky and Texas, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his former top deputy, Senator John Cornyn, are running their respective re-election campaigns. Mr McConnell has represented the Bluegrass State in the Senate since the mid-1980s. Read more 'I trust scientists, I trust vaccines, I don't trust Trump': Biden suggests White House is trying to rush coronavirus treatment Mitch McConnell warns of Democrats' war on hamburgers in plug for 'my friend' Donald Trump Top Trump health official to take leave of absence after spreading CDC conspiracy theories Biden news live: Ex-VP surges in new polls as Trumps law-and-order message falls flat Trump shares fake video of Biden dancing to f**k the police Tesco made a commitment to stop sending food products to landfill in 2009 as part of its sustainability strategy. Photo: Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/Sipa USA Tesco (TSCO.L) has partnered with food sharing app and social enterprise Olio in a new scheme to help reduce food waste in stores across the UK. The supermarket will donate surplus food nearing its sell-by date to the app to be re-distributed free to people living nearby as well as to community groups. The food will be collected from stores by Olios local volunteer food waste heroes who will take the food back to their homes and upload the items onto the app. Olio app users will then be able to see the donated items and collect them for free from an agreed, contact-free collection point in order to observe social distancing measures. Olio is registered with the Food Standards Agency which ensures that all food collected is safe for human consumption. The partnership comes after a six-month trial held earlier this year, at 250 Tesco stores which had the most food surplus. READ MORE: Tesco to create 16,000 new permanent jobs The trial led to nearly 195,000 portions of food being saved, nearly 4,200 people being fed and the equivalent of 93,000 meals being saved, according to Olio. Some 36 tonnes of food were redistributed between December 2019 and the end of February 2020 as part of the trial. Tesco will donate surplus food to Olio where charities are unavailable to collect food items that would otherwise go to waste. Tesco made a commitment to stop sending food products to landfill in 2009 as part of its sustainability strategy and made a pledge that no food safe for human consumption will go to waste. The new partnership builds on the supermarkets existing food donations programmes, including its Community Food Connection scheme with food waste charity FareShare who redistribute surplus food to a network of charities including homeless hostels, womens refuges and breakfast clubs. READ MORE: UK supermarkets hire 136,000 staff during pandemic Tesco already donates 2 million meals every month to food charities across the UK, through the Community Food Connection scheme, according to the company. The retailer says 100 million meals have been donated to more than 7,000 charity and community groups from Tesco stores and distribution centres to date. Story continues The supermarket also uses its Tesco Food Collection programme to encourage customers to donate long-life food to The Trussell Trust, who have a network of over 400 foodbanks in the UK. Tesco head of communities, Claire De Silva said: We are very proud of our food waste work and our Community Food Connection scheme with FareShare helps thousands of charities every week. Right now we want to make sure that any surplus food is being managed and people who need it have access to it. The results of our initial trial were very positive and have allowed us to further roll out the partnership in our commitment to make sure no good food goes to waste. READ MORE: M&S trials drive-through collection Olio co-founder, Tessa Clarke said: Our partnership with Tesco means that more people than ever before will be able to benefit from access to surplus food. Theyll also be joining our community of neighbours who not only support one another, but also believe that every little counts in the fight against food waste. Niagara Regional Police are investigating a sexual assault that occurred on the Steve Bauer Trail along Prince Charles Drive in Welland Thursday morning. At about 7 a.m., officers responded to the area between Fitch Street and Thorold Road. Two police cruisers sat in front of the Borden Trail subdivision, parked near the ditch on Prince Charles Drive. A small area was blocked off with police tape and people continued to walk past on the trail. In a news release, police said a woman in her 40s was jogging on the trail when an unknown male grabbed her and forced her to the ground, where she was sexually assaulted. The male fled then ran off. The woman was taken to hospital by Niagara Emergency Medical Services paramedics. Police are seeking the publics help in locating the suspect, who is described as white and five-foot-five. He was wearing dark pants and a black hoodie. Police are asking people to remain vigilant and aware of their surroundings. A short distance away at the corner of Prince Charles Drive and Fitch Street is Fitch Street Public School. Anyone with information, who may have witnessed the incident, or may have been in the area and observed a suspect matching the description, is asked by police to contact detectives at 905-688-4111 ext. 5110. People are asked also to check their dash cams, and residents and businesses are asked to review their video footage and contact police if they observe anything suspicious. Thursday, 17 September 2020 17:20:35 (GMT+3) | Brescia Calarasi, Romania-based steel mill Donalam, part of the Italian merchant bar producer AFV Beltrame Group, will invest 11.3 million in the modernization of its hot rolling mill, as announced by the company. The investment, financed with the plant's own funds, will be completed by 2022. Donalam will equip the steel plant with a new reheating furnace and a water treatment system. The new technology, which will replace the current one dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, will reduce production-related carbon emissions by up to 40 percent. Carlo Beltrame, CEO of Donalam, underlined that the investment had been planned before the European Parliament approved the "Green Deal", i.e., the action plan aimed at achieving carbon neutrality in the EU by 2050. "In addition to the 11.3 million investment already being implemented, we are analyzing a much larger investment, of over 100 million, that would change the paradigm of the steel industry, considered to be extremely polluting," the CEO added, without elaborating. The new technology will make it possible to increase the competitiveness of the steel products made in Calarasi, importing raw materials from Germany and carrying out rolling and finishing in Romania. This will allow the development of high quality products even for industrial sectors with the highest standards. Through commercial partnerships with leading companies in Germany (GMH) and Austria (Voestalpine), Donalam's products are distributed throughout most of Europe. Last May, Donalam announced that it had completed a 4 million investment in a special plant for the treatment of steel bars, in order to manufacture steel products with increased added-value and focus on customised orders. Donalam employs approximately 270 employees and in 2019 recorded a turnover of 78 million (approximately 106,000 mt sold). A Brampton delivery driver was arrested on Monday in relation to a fatal collision that killed an 18-month-old boy, Peel police said. On Aug. 12, the delivery driver was operating a van in a parking lot near Confederation Parkway and Paisley Boulevard in Mississauga. The toddler was with his mother walking through the parking lot at the time. Peel police allege that as the driver exited the parking lot he struck the toddler. The child and his mother were then transported to the hospital by the delivery driver, where the toddler succumbed to his injuries. Arshdeep Oathi, 25, was charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and released on an undertaking. Oathi is scheduled to appear in court in Brampton on Nov. 16. Breanna Xavier-Carter is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: bxavier@thestar.ca Read more about: HELSINKI, Finland, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The ancestors and grave items, which are estimated to date back to the 13th century and were part of the National Museum of Finland's Mesa Verde collection, have been repatriated to the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Acoma, the Pueblo of Zia, and the Pueblo of Zuni, indigenous tribes of the United States, to be reburied on Saturday 12 September 2020. This repatriation respects the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its Article 12 on indigenous peoples' right to the repatriation of their human remains. This repatriation is the first to return grave findings of the indigenous peoples in the Mesa Verde region from abroad to the representatives of the descendants. The National Museum of Finland and representatives of the indigenous peoples of the Mesa Verde region carried out the return, in cooperation with the Finnish and United States authorities. The four-year repatriation process also came up in the meeting between President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinisto and President of the United States Donald Trump in October 2019. The Mesa Verde collection, which falls under the National Museum of Finland's ethnographic collections, was originally compiled by the Swedish geologist Gustaf Nordenskiold. The collection includes some 600 Pueblo artefacts from the 6th to the 14th centuries AD. The repatriation involves the remains of 20 individuals, and 28 artefacts buried with them. The rest of the collection remains in Finland. "It is great that the long-prepared repatriation has now been carried out in excellent cooperation between the parties. Throughout this delicate and emotional process, it has been of the utmost importance for us to respect the wishes of the Tribes," said Elina Anttila, Director General of the National Museum of Finland. "Finland is committed to international agreements and museum ethics principles that underline the importance of cultural property for the peoples of their countries of origin. The increasingly important task of the National Museum of Finland is to strengthen intercultural dialogue, diversity and everyone's right to their own cultural heritage," Anttila added. Because Finland's national collections are government property, the repatriation required permission from the Government. The Government decided on the repatriation in its plenary session on 13 August 2020. Annika Saarikko, Finnish Minister of Science and Culture, welcomes the decision. "This decision is also of international importance and implements the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I would like to thank the National Museum of Finland for the responsible way in which it has carried out the repatriation in amicable cooperation with the representatives of the indigenous peoples of Mesa Verde and the United States authorities. A successful repatriation is important for the peoples of Mesa Verde, but also for Finland and the National Museum of Finland." Cultural sustainability requires continued international work Today, international conventions regulate the export of cultural heritage items from their countries of origin. In the 1890s, no such agreements existed, and today's international conventions are not applied retroactively. Although exports of grave findings to Europe were not illegal at the time, it can now be concluded that the cultural and spiritual importance of graves for indigenous people was not taken into account. During the repatriation process, the indigenous peoples were represented by four tribes: the Hopi, Acoma, Zia, and Zuni, which also carried out the reburial of their ancestors. In their joint press release, the Tribes' representatives emphasised the importance and value of the fact that the ancestors of their peoples are now in peace, as well as the importance of intercultural dialogue and understanding. This repatriation also implements the spirit of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Paris 1970 convention. For additional information, please contact: The National Museum of Finland - Director General Elina Anttila, tel. +358 295 336 131, [email protected] - Director of Marketing and Communications Paivi Kukkamaki, tel. +358 295 336 181, [email protected] - Queries about the Mesa Verde collection: Keeper of Ethnographic Collections Heli Lahdentausta, tel. +358 295 336 434, [email protected] The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture - Senior Government Adviser Zabrina Holmstrom, tel. +358 295 330 114, [email protected] - Counsellor for Cultural Affairs Paivi Salonen, tel. +358 295 330 281, [email protected] - Queries about the permission from the Finnish Government: Senior Ministerial Adviser Joni Hiitola, tel. +358 295 330 108, [email protected] Press photo: In Mesa Verde area, the cliff dwelling 'Cliff Palace' had about 200 rooms. Photographed by Gustaf Nordenskiold in 1891. (Finnish Heritage Agency) The National Museum of Finland The National Museum of Finland is a national cultural history museum that maintains and develops its cultural history collections, promotes the study and use of cultural heritage and provides exhibition and public services at its museums and castles throughout Finland. Serving as a provider of social commentary and an international influencer in the field of cultural history, the National Museum of Finland is part of the Finnish Heritage Agency, which operates under the Ministry of Education and Culture. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/the-national-museum-of-finland/r/the-national-museum-of-finland-returned-pueblo-tribes--ancestral-remains-from-its-collection-for-reb,c3195985 The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/18505/3195985/1307601.pdf Press release (PDF) https://news.cision.com/the-national-museum-of-finland/i/mesa-verde--colorado,c2825916 Mesa Verde, Colorado https://mb.cision.com/Public/18505/3195985/aca2e0150c060973.pdf Tribes Press Release Finland Repatriation (PDF) SOURCE The National Museum of Finland Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 15:03 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c456a0d1 1 National COVID-19,#COVID19,health-protocol,operasi-yustisi,Jakarta-police,Semarang,Central-Java,Ganjar-Pranowo,mask-rule,masker,mask,violation,violator Free A joint team comprising the National Police, Indonesian Military (TNI) and local stakeholders have netted hundreds of thousands of health protocol violators through Operasi Yustisi. The operation, aimed at monitoring and disciplining the public in relation to health protocols, was carried out on Monday in several regions. National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Awi Setiyono said Monday that on the first day of the operation, authorities found 47,752 health protocol violators and on Tuesday 128,668. "On Monday we carried out 53,975 inspections at 2,318 locations, while on Tuesday we conducted 80,615 inspections at 5,063 locations," Awi said on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com. Authorities had given 95,595 verbal warnings and issued 5,772 letters reprimanding the violators during the operations. As many as 2,096 violators also received social work punishment from the team. The joint team also fined 1,421 people, collecting Rp 79.21 million in two days. Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Com. Yusri Yunus said officials also temporarily shut down 23 restaurants in Jakarta for providing dine-in services amid the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) imposed by the city administration. Read also: Police launch operation to monitor, sanction Jakarta PSBB violators "The Jakarta Public Order Agency [Satpol PP] sealed off 23 restaurants on the first day of Operasi Yustisi for violating regulations," Yusri said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Semarang administration punished violators by asking them to pick up trash, sing the national anthem and do push-ups. Some violators were also asked to write statements and had their ID cards confiscated for a week. Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, who took part in the operation, said officials also conducted COVID-19 rapid tests on violators. "We not only imposed social punishment on violators but they were also required to take rapid tests. The purpose of the operation is not to give harsh punishments but to educate the public on health protocols," Ganjar said on Wednesday as quoted by tempo.co. Awi said punishments for health protocol violators netted through the operation were regulated by each regional administration, so they would vary from one region to another. However, recurrent violators could face criminal charges, he added. (nal) This is the heart-warming moment a stray dog was caught on camera interrupting a street performance to comfort an actor pretending to be hurt. Numan Ertugrul Uzunsoy was lying on the floor and feigning injury during a theatrical scene in Turkey. But it wasn't long before an inquisitive canine wandered on to the stage, curled up beside him and started licking his face - much to the delight of the audience. In the clip, which was recorded earlier this month, Mr Uzunsoy can be seen in a striped shirt, black trousers and leather boots alongside the rest of his troupe. Two of his fellow actors lower him down toward the ground as he fakes an injury and begins breathing heavily. The stray dog, which appears to be a cross-breed, then appears at the top of the screen with his tail wagging before meandering across the performance space towards Mr Uzunsoy. It sits down beside the actor's head before nuzzling excitedly at his chin. Numan Ertugrul Uzunsoy was lying on the floor and feigning injury during a theatrical scene in Turkey when he was interrupted by the inquisitive canine The stray dog, which appears to be a cross-breed, wanders on to the stage before sitting down beside the actor's head and nuzzling excitedly at his chin Mr Uzunsoy reaches towards it as another of the troupe attempts to usher the dog gently out of the way. Members of the audience begin to clap as the dog rolls on to its back and is petted by the street performers. He is eventually picked up and moved off stage so that the show can go on. 'The character I played was injured and in great pain. He'd fallen off a horse, and was breathing hard,' Mr Uzunsoy told The Dodo. Mr Uzunsoy reaches toward it as another of the troupe attempts to usher the dog gently out of the way Members of the audience seem unfazed by the interruption and even begin to clap as the dog rolls on to its back and is petted by the cast of street performers He said that he was unaware what was going on at first but soon realised he had made a four-legged friend. The performer added: 'I was very happy when I felt the dog's kisses. I was very touched. He was like an angel who wanted to help me. 'It was a very emotional moment for me. I was not expecting it. My cast mates loved the dog, and the audience was very happy. Everyone cheered.' Mr Uzunsoy said he hopes that he will cross paths with the dog again so he can help the stray find a home. China on Thursday railed against a high-level visit to Taiwan by a US envoy, saying it will encourage separatist forces on the island. Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters China strongly opposes the visit by Under Secretary Keith Krach as it will encourage the arrogant attitude of Taiwan independence separatist forces. The US State Department says Krach was dispatched to Taipei to attend a memorial service for late president Lee Teng-hui on Saturday. But his visit to the island, which China claims as an indivisible part of the mainland, comes as the two superpowers eyeball each other over trade, tech dominance, security and human rights. Krachs visit seriously violates the One China Principle... and damages US-China relations and the peace and stability of the Taiwan strait, Wang said, citing the view that the island is a part of its territory. He warned Beijing will provide a necessary response, without giving further details. Last month, US cabinet member and health chief Alex Azar visited to highlight Taiwans widely praised efforts to stop Covid-19. By PTI KOLKATA: Aiming at bringing down the coronavirus death rate to below one per cent in West Bengal, it's health department will deploy medical specialists at a number of COVID-19 hospitals in the state, a senior official said on Thursday. Teams of specialists in general medicine, chest medicine, anaesthesiology,nephrology, cardiology and neurology from different medical colleges will be visiting nearby COVID-19 hospitals, he said. "The idea is to bring down the death rate due to COVID-19 below one per cent. The team will attend to patients round the clock at the hospitals," the official told PTI. In the metropolis, senior doctors from SSKM Hospital will be deployed at the MR Bangur Hospital and the KPC Medical College & Hospital, while another team of specialists from the Kolkata National Medical College & Hospital will be monitoring treatment at the CNCI in Rajarhat. Outside Kolkata, doctors from district hospitals or super speciality hospitals will be included in the team of specialists. The official said the decision to deploy experts at different COVID-19 hospitals was taken after coming to know that 86 per cent of deaths were due to comorbidities. Read what is in the news today: Politics Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Wednesday hosted a reception for Dutch and Belgian Ambassadors, Elsbeth Akkerman and Paul Jansen, along with EU investors who want to pour capital into a seaport logistics project worth nearly US$1 billion in Vietnam. Society Five more COVID-19 patients were discharged in Vietnam on Wednesday, raising the number of recoveries to 936 while the national tally stands at 1,063 infections with 35 virus-related deaths on Thursday morning, according to the Ministry of Health. The country has gone 15 days without any community transmission. A woman stood with her son at the intersection of Nguyen Dinh Chieu and Cao Thang Streets in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday morning, screaming and constantly stabbing her head, arms, and forehead due to alleged drug use, according to witnesses. The investor of the under-construction Trung Luong-My Thuan Expressway, which runs from the Trung Luong intersection in Tien Giang Province to My Thuan Commune, Vinh Long Province in Vietnams Mekong Delta, on Wednesday said that motorbikes and automobiles under 15 seats will be allowed on the expressway on the 2021 Lunar New Year holiday to ease traffic pressure during this period of high travel demand, although the project will not be put into official service in 2021. The first metro train for the Ben Thanh Suoi Tien metro line, which is the first of its kind in Ho Chi Minh City, is anticipated to arrive in Vietnam before October 5, the municipal Management Authority for Urban Railways reported on Wednesday. Three buildings at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts in District 1 have been suffering subsidence, with cracked walls and peeled tiles due to the construction of an adjacent high-rise building. Business Vietnam has climbed the ranks of the biggest suppliers to the U.S., rising from sixth in 2015 to second in 2020, according to Jungle Scout's Global Imports Report on international trade stats in 2015-20. Sports Hanoi FC have teamed up with Next Media to launch a campaign to help raise money to support the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, with a number of items of football memorabilia, including a signed Bayern Munich jersey and medals won by Hanoi FC to go under the hammer, according to the Vietnam News Agency. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Rich nations representing a fraction of the global population have already bought up over half the promised Covid-19 vaccine stocks, a study showed, as US President Donald Trump pledged to begin inoculating Americans within weeks. Big pharma is racing to produce an effective jab to counter a virus that has now killed more than 935,000 people around the world and infected almost 30 million. European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday warned against "vaccine nationalism" that she said could put lives at risk by depriving the most vulnerable in poorer nations of immunity. But a study released by Oxfam showed a group of wealthy countries representing just 13 percent of the world population has already secured the lion's share of doses. "Access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn't depend on where you live or how much money you have," said Robert Silverman of Oxfam America. "Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere." The five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials will be able to supply 5.9 billion doses, enough to inoculate about three billion people, the Oxfam report said. Some 51 percent of those jabs have been snapped up by the wealthy world, including the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. The remaining 2.6 billion have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. - 'Vaccine nationalism' - Trump on Wednesday said he would begin rolling out a vaccine in America as soon as next month, contradicting doubts expressed by a top health expert in his administration who said a jab was unlikely to be widely available until mid-2021. "We're very close to that vaccine as you know... We think we can start sometime in October" or shortly thereafter, Trump said. Democrats have expressed concern that Trump is pressuring government health regulators and scientists to approve a rushed vaccine in time to help his uphill bid for re-election in early November. Story continues "We're within weeks of getting it, you know -- could be three weeks, four weeks," the president told a town hall session with voters in Pennsylvania Tuesday. But in an implicit swipe at Trump's America First approach to the pandemic, von der Leyen said Europe would support multilateral bodies such as the World Health Organization with its attempts at a more equitable rollout. "None of us will be safe until all of us are safe - wherever we live, whatever we have," she said. "Vaccine nationalism puts lives at risk. Vaccine cooperation saves them." - 'Going hard and early' - The global economy has been devastated by the pandemic, with many nations still maintaining restrictions on their populations to contain fresh outbreaks. New Zealand was added to the list of economic casualties on Thursday when it reported it had plunged into recession for the first time in a decade. The country posted a record contraction of 12.2 percent for the April-June quarter, which coincided with a strict lockdown from March to May. The decline follows a 1.6-percent contraction in the first three months of 2020, confirming New Zealand is in recession. But there was optimism that the stage had been set for a strong recovery. "Going hard and early means that we can come back faster and stronger," finance minister Grant Robertson said. "Economists expect the current September quarter to show a record jump back to growth." Africa's most industrialised economy closed its frontiers at the start of a strict nationwide lockdown in late March. The number of new infections has dropped from an average of 12,000 per day in July to fewer than 2,000 in recent days. President Cyril Ramaphosa said in an address to the nation that international travel would "gradually and cautiously" resume from October 1. "We have withstood the coronavirus storm," he said. burs-axn/hg The minister of water resources, Suleiman Adamu, has reacted to a scorecard (rating) of his performance one year in office. In the officials reaction, sent in by Kenechukwu Offie, the ministrys director of information, Mr Adamu said he was given fewer credits than he deserved. He equally reeled a list of achievements he said were not captured in the report. PREMIUM TIMES, in recent weeks, has published reports on the performances of virtually all the ministers appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari about one year ago. Mr Adamus performance was also rated. The ratings were based on their promises upon assumption of office, challenges, their failures and achievements including objective assessments from experts in their fields of operation. In Mr Adamus case, his performance was described as woeful by an expert in the water sector. Other experts, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES said they were unable to rate him high, due to his dismal record. But Ms Offie said the analysis was wrong in view of the myriad of accomplishments under the dexterous watch of Suleiman Adamu. The Minister who sees water as having assumed human right dimension and very important to life had maintained that the relevance of water to Nigerias national development is very pivotal to population growth, urbanisation and increased efforts at agriculture and industrial development His full response is reproduced below: SCORECARD: APPRAISING THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF WATER RESOURCES UNDER ENGR. SULEIMAN H. ADAMU FNSE, FAEng. The attention of the Information Unit of Federal Ministry of Water Resources has been drawn to a scorecard evaluation on the work of Engr. Suleiman Adamu FNSE, FAEng who is the Honourable Minister following his reappointment by President Buhari in August 2019 by Premium Times, an online News Medium. In its online publication on the 16th of September, 2020, the news medium scored the Ministry under Adamu as underperforming, stating that the Ministry had been focusing more on advocacy visits to states across the country to campaign against open defecation in the last one year. The narrative opined that it is difficult to point out any achievement by the Ministry in the last one year. The report equally maintained that the Ministry failed because it did not provide potable water for Nigerians. This evaluation is very wrong and appears to be as a result of a poorly researched work in view of the myriad of accomplishments under the dexterous watch of Suleiman Adamu. The Minister who sees Water as having assumed Human right dimension and very important to life had maintained that the relevance of water to Nigerias national development is very pivotal to population growth, urbanization and increased efforts at agriculture and industrial development. This relevance he said has increasingly brought to fore very key issues of our existence, thus occasioning the need for increased access to water for Nigerians. Suffice it to note that Water Resources is on the concurrent list and the specific role of the Ministry is policy, administration and regulation of the Water Resources development and Management. The Water Sector is a pillar for food security, job creation, and water supply, sanitation and hydropower generation Adamu had said at his most recent Ministerial Press Briefing in August 2020. ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS The Ministers desire for a well repositioned sector in the last one year is borne out of the Next Level Agenda of President Muhammadu Buhari focusing on the three cardinal issues of economic diversification, social inclusiveness and security which are succinctly aligned with the vision, mission and mandate of the Ministry. Furthermore, the activities of the Ministry under the leadership of Adamu is guided by three major strongholds which are The National Water Resources Master plan (2015 2030); United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; and the Water Sector Roadmap (2016 2030). The Ministry fully implemented the WASH Action Programme in the last 12 months where 34 water supply projects have been completed, 159 rural water supply schemes in the North East, IDP camps and some Federal institutions and establishments were constructed, 895 water supply schemes in 10 States of Imo, Katsina, Jigawa, Plateau, Zamfara, Sokoto, Ondo, Osun, Delta and Bauchi are under construction, rehabilitation and upgrade leading to additional 2.4 million Nigerians gaining access to Water Supply in the last 12 months. The River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) have now been strategically placed to facilitate National Food Security and support employment opportunities.The RBDAs are being constantly revitalized to deliver on their mandate, to the extent that core and relevant Professionals are appointed to the headship of the Agencies. For optimal utilization of River Basin Development Agency land and irrigation facilities and to support diversification of the economy, guarantee food security and job creation for Nigerians, the Ministry is expanding hectares for irrigation farming as follows: Ejule-Ojebe (50 ha); Sector 1 of Gari Irrigation Project (248ha); Bakalori Irrigation Scheme (4,825ha); Kano River Irrigation Scheme (1,600ha); Hadejia Valley Irrigation Scheme (2,250ha); Rehabilitation of Duku-Lade Irrigation Project (800h). Additional 2000 Ha has been leased out to commercial farmers bringing the total to 55,000 Ha from 2016 to date. The Songhai Model, an integrated Agricultural Practice introduced to boost Agricultural production and achieve integrated rural development has been replicated in five RBDAs and till date, 253 farmlands have been leased to the private sector for commercial farming, out of which 181 are fully utilized. Also, the process of partial commercialization of four pilot RBDAs which includes Ogun-Osun, Niger-Delta, Upper Niger and Sokoto-Rima are underway. Similarly, during the year under review, the Ministrys efforts on improving Sanitation in the country led to the Flag-off of the Clean Nigeria: Use The Toilet Campaign in November, 2019 towards making Nigeria Open Defecation Free by 2025. Likewise, the promulgation of the Executive Order No. 009 in November 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari to end Open Defecation by 2025 has yielded Certification of additional 14 LGAs being Open Defecation Free (ODF) in the last 12 months while 10 LGAs are awaiting ODF validation. The Partnership for Expanded Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (PEWASH) is another flag-ship initiative of this administration where the Federal Government and the States come in partnership to provide water supply in the country, this initiative has led 22 State Governments to endorse the PEWASH protocols while 11 more States have recently signed up bringing the total to 33 states. Advertisements In line with Mr. Presidents desire to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years, the Ministry has ensured that both direct and indirect jobs are created in the Implementation of its projects and programmes. A total of 57,261 direct jobs and 111,588 indirect jobs have been created through the various dam, irrigation and water supply projects completed within the reporting period. To combat the Covid-19 pandemic, which has impacted on all aspects of our lives causing untold hardship and stress to the populace, potable water, sanitation and hygiene are critical to the eradication of the virus, the Ministry has taken strategic steps to help fight the pandemic even with budgetary constraints. The Ministry is rehabilitating 185 Water Supply Projects in the 36 States of the Federation and FCT, constructing 185 Solar Powered Water Supply Projects (5 per State and FCT), constructing 370 Public Sanitation Facilities (10 per State and FCT), supporting State Water Agencies for their operations to ensure uninterrupted Water Supply, suppling 370 Contactless Hand washing Facilities with Soap and Sanitizers (10 per State and FCT) and engaging 77,400 Youth Volunteers for Handwashing and Open Defecation Free Campaigns. The determination and unrelenting quest to improve access to potable water, reduce the incidence of water borne diseases, improve sanitation facilities, enhance food security through irrigation agriculture and the implementation of water resources projects and programmes according to international best practices has been Engr. Adamus cardinal goal since he assumed office as Minister of Water Resources. The Ministry also is in the process of commencing a Management Master Plan Study for Rivers Niger and Benue. The project is designed to improve navigation, flood control, agriculture for enhanced food production and minimize cost of dredging the river channels. It will also engender prosperity accruable from fresh water supply and other economic activities. Although this is a long-term project, the Ministry has kick-started the process of ensuring its implementation. The Agencies and Parastatals under the Ministry include the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency, Nigeria Integrated Water Resources Management Commission, National Water Resources Institute and the 12 River Basin Development Agencies (RBDAs). These agencies and parastatals are also vehicles through which the Ministry contributes to the socio-economic activities of the nation: However, even though a lot has been said about the inadequacy of water supply in the States. it is not the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide Water in households or industrial use. The Federal Government however strategically works to provide support to various States on needs basis, up to 30% for urban and 50% for rural water supply schemes respectively. It is as a result of the lack of investments of the state and local governments in providing potable water to the people that the Ministry under the leadership of the of the Hon Minister introduced the PEWASH programme in 2016 and the National WASH Action Plan which led to the formal declaration of a State Emergency in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector by President Buhari in November, 2018. It is noteworthy that upon assumption of duty in 2015, the Hon Minister embarked upon Project Prioritization and Completion. A total of 116 Nos on-going and abandoned contracts/projects were inherited in 2015, made up of: i. Irrigation & Drainage 38Nos ii. Dams & Reservoir 37Nos iii. Water Supply 41Nos Many of the projects were either abandoned or comatose because they required review of scope/cost and/or lacked consistent funding to complete. Outstanding liabilities on these contracts stood at N 88,848,112,579.77 with total contractual commitment to completion projected at N 264,990,081,982.53. 3.2.2 Early in 2016, a Technical Audit was conducted, and all the 116 uncompleted and abandoned projects were categorized into high, medium and low priorities (Summary of Technical Audit Report is available in the Ministry) Resources were committed towards completing and commissioning some of the high and medium priority projects between 2017-2020. Projects that were ascertained as non-viable by the Technical Audit have been cancelled or determined. So far, the following eleven (11) projects have been completed and commissioned: Central Ogbia Regional Water Project, Bayelsa State Northern Ishan Regional Water Supply Project, Edo State Rehabilitation of Ojirami Dam Water Supply Project, Edo State Sabke Water Supply Project, Katsina State Dutsi Water Supply Project, Katsina State Mashi Water Supply Project, Katsina State Takum Water Supply Project, Taraba State Sabke Irrigation Project, Katsina State Rehabilitation of Kargo Dam, Jaji, Kaduna State Ekeremor Water Supply Project, Bayelsa, State. Mangu Water Supply Project, Plateau State Federal University of Agriculture, Markudi Water Supply Project, Benue State The following five (5) projects have also been completed and are ready for commissioning. Kashimbila Dam, Taraba State Shagari Irrigation Project, Sokoto State Galma Dam, Kaduna State. Ahmadu Bello University Water Supply Project, Kaduna State. 3.3.4 Many more ongoing water supply, dam and Irrigation projects are scheduled to be completed between now and end of 2020, including the following: Water Supply Projects i. Inyishi Water Supply Project, Imo State ii. Zobe Water Supply Project, Katsina State iii. Ivo Water Project, Enugu State iv. Rehabilitation and Reticulation of Fugar Water Works, Edo State v. Dukku Regional Water Supply Project, Gombe State vi. Ilesha Water Supply Project, Osun State vii. Kazaure Water Supply Project, Jigawa State viii. Otor-Iyede Water Supply Project, Delta State Dam & Irrigation Projects i. Middle Ogun Irrigation Project, Oyo State ii. Middle Rima Valley Irrigation Project, Sokoto State iii. Gari Irrigation Project, Kano/Jigawa States iv. Kontagora Auna Dam Project, Niger State v. Bagwai Irrigation Project, Kano State vi. Tada Shonga Irrigation Project, Kwara State vii. Adani Rice Irrigation Project, Anambra State viii. Ekuku Dam Project, Kogi State ix. Lower Anambra Irrigation Project, Anambra State x. Ile Ife Dam Project, Osun State xi. Otukpo Multipurpose Dam Project, Benue State. Irrigation 3.3.1 Nigeria has about 3.14 million Ha of land suitable for irrigation. However, only 128,097Ha has been developed as at 2015 and about 50,000 Ha of the developed area was lost to failed infrastructure and poor operations and maintenance. The current annual water demand for irrigation in wet and dry seasons including Fadama lands is about 1.926 BCM which translates to about 0.7% of our national internally generated potential. This indicates how much the country has been under utilizing its irrigation potentials. In order to aid diversification of the economy, guarantee food security and create employment a National Irrigation Development Programme was initiated in 2016 as part of the Water Sector Road map. It is aimed to accomplish the following: i. Establish additional 100,000Ha of irrigated farmland by 2020 and achieve a total of 500,000Ha by 2030. ii. An additional 1,000,000Ha of irrigable land to be developed by the private sector and State Governments by 2030. Current efforts will enable delivery of 41,000Ha by end of 2019. Details of the status of ongoing Irrigation Projects is contained in the Department of Irrigation and Drainage Report, Volume 2. 3.3.3 The World Bank is supporting the implementation of Transforming Irrigation Management in Nigeria Project (TRIMING) with a credit facility of US$495million. The Project involves rehabilitation/expansion of about 42,000Ha of irrigation land under the first phase, to be completed by 2022, as follows: I. Bokolori Irrigation Project (Work commenced in 2017) 13,500 Ha II. Kano River Irrigation Project (Contractor commenced in early 2019) 14,400 Ha III. Hadejia Valley Irrigation Project, Construction commenced following the Flag off by President Muhammadu Buhari on 14th May, 2018) 6,000 Ha IV. Dadin Kowa Irrigation Project (Procurement process has commenced) 3,000 Ha V. Middle Rima Irrigation Project (Studies nearing completion) 5,000 Ha It is worthy of note to reiterate that the National Water Resources Bill presently at the NASS is not a new law; rather it is an amalgamation of Water Resources Laws that have been in existence as enshrined in LFN 1`2004. These Laws are: a. Water Resources Act, Cap W2 LFN 2004, the River Basin Development Authority Act, Cap R9 LFN 2004, b. the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (Establishment) Act, Cap N1100A.LFN, 2004 and c. National Water Resources Institute Act, Cap N83 LFN 2004. These Laws are being re- enacted with necessary modifications in the new Bill to actualize current global trends and best practices in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The overall objective is geared towards efficient management of the Water Resources Sector for the economic development of Nigeria and the well-being of its citizens. In conclusion, I would urge Nigerians to join hands with FG and work together to achieve National growth for the benefit of every Nigerian. The Ministry is poised to consolidate on past gains to set the water sector on the path of enviable growth and development in line with global best practices. Kenechukwu Offie Director Information FMWR. President Donald Trump is expected to decide on TikTok's fate in the U.S. in the next 24-36 hours, sources told CNBC's David Faber. To address ownership concerns, ByteDance plans to do an initial public offering of global TikTok on a U.S. stock exchange, according to people familiar with the matter. Oracle will also own a minority stake that will be less than 20% of the new global TikTok, two of the people said. Walmart will also take a stake, though its size is still unknown, according to two of the people. The Treasury Department sent major revisions about security issues on the TikTok/Oracle term sheet Wednesday night, sources told CNBC's Sara Eisen. ByteDance has fully agreed to those revisions, the sources said, although it's unclear what the changes entailed. Trump has been meeting with Cabinet members and other advisers as he decides whether or not to approve the deal, according to others familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. There are mixed points of views among his advisers, who include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, one of the people said. An initial public offering of TikTok would likely be the largest technology IPO in recent years. Private valuations of the company have been estimated to be about $50 billion. Recent public offerings, such as Snowflake, have added billions of dollars in valuation when stocks hit the public markets. CASPER Wyoming lawmakers are considering allowing the shipment of Wyoming-made liquor across state lines as a part of a package of bills allowing greater flexibility for the states small distillers amid mounting economic challenges brought on by COVID-19. Spurred by concerns of distillers like Caspers Backwards Distilling and Kirby-based manufacturer Wyoming Whiskey, members of the Legislatures Joint Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions voted almost unanimously to draft legislation allowing multiple retail licenses and the potential sale of the produ... When Brandi Rodriguez was handed an eviction notice, her heart sank. "They asked me to pay $4,500 and on top of that I would pay $1,500 each month," Rodriguez said in an interview with Chron.com. It was a struggle that Houston-area mom Rodriguez said she never expected to face. Just after her husband lost his job in the pandemic, Rodriguez was served with an eviction notice, despite a federal eviction ban issued by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention on September 4. Making matters worse, all of this happened as Rodriguez was preparing her seven children to return to school. While other moms focused on online learning, Rodriguez and her husband Mario are now desperately searching for a permanent place to call home. 'IT'S UNBELIEVABLE': More than $234K raised to help Harris County renters facing eviction The Rodriguezes realized that it would put the family deeper and deeper in debt to stay. Despite the eviction ban, renters are still expected to pay back rent and all the fees associated with it. "It put me in a hard place. After the four months when the eviction ban ends, you'll still owe all that back rent. And the homeowner has to agree to it," Rodriguez said. "It was so many shut doors. At that point, I just felt defeated." The Rodriguez family's one attempt for assistance fell through the cracks of bureaucratic red tape. Despite Harris County dedicating $60 million rental assistance program through BakerRipley to help renters facing eviction, Rodriguez's attempt to sign up before being forced from her home hit a snag. Her landlord had to participate in the rental assistance plan before it was approved, and that didn't happen in Rodriguez's case. "I was upset because I thought the whole point was that the tenant was to apply for help and provide the property owner information," Rodriguez said. "It felt like we were set up to fail." Although it was too late for Rodriguez family, Mayor Sylvester Turner urged all Houstonians who were facing eviction to still sign up for BakerRipley program even if landlords were not in agreement. "Even if your apartment complex, or landlord may not have signed up, if you're need of rental assistance, I still want you to apply," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a press conference on September 4. The Rodriguez family is now staying with friends from their congregation, Get Wrapped Church in southeast Houston. "We've had so many 'no's. We have a big family and there's nine of us," Rodriguez said. "My husband lost his job. Then I told my landlord, 'I'm gonna be late', then she filed the eviction notice." Rodriguez says she feels for other struggling tenants who have lost their jobs and are facing an uphill battle in the pandemic. "I started to see all the people who were being thrown out of their homes," Rodriguez added. "I feel for them too. The solution is not to throw people out of their homes. We're all going through this together. We have to move and adjust as much as possible." Amid all the family's seemingly insurmountable challenges, Rodriguez stands strong in unshakeable faith and perseverance. "I'm just taking it one day at a time. I'm praying. That's something that makes us positive," Rodriguez said. "Persevere. That's our big thing and staying positive. We can either choose to be joyful or choose to be miserable." Rodriguez explains how frustrating and frightening it can be to have your family facing a traumatic event like an eviction. "That was the scary thing. Those (eviction) letters are scary. An officer is at your door," Rodriguez said. The family plans to keep looking for a permanent place to call home. "For every 'no,' theres got to be a 'yes' somewhere," Rodriguez said. "Right now, we're just applying to places. Were just being hopeful. Were just going to stay positive. We're open to anything." For all Houstonians who are facing this challenge, she lends words of wisdom. "Be transparent. Be positive. Ask questions. And stay focused," Rodriguez said. "I can't be mad at them (landlords). Being mad at them is not going to change my situation. The end result is that I need to move. I have to lead with love. You've got to have compassion. You never know what the next person is going through." If you'd like to help the Rodriguez family, a GoFundMe account has been created to assist them. A U.S. flag flutters in the wind. Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images SINGAPORE The U.S. is still globally dominant in many areas including finance and technology but it's not clear if the world's largest economy remains the leading power that other countries look up to, said experts during a debate at the Singapore Summit. Speaking on the third day of the virtual conference, they discussed whether "A Leaderless and Divided World will be the New Normal." The debate took place against the backdrop of a shifting global order in which the U.S. widely considered the main superpower is seen retreating from international organizations it's led for years, while China appears to be rising and challenging American dominance on several fronts. One of the speakers, Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said he saw a world without leadership in the foreseeable future. "If there was going to be true leadership, it would need to come from" the U.S., he said. He pointed out that the U.S. is still globally dominant, with its tech firms growing stronger during the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. dollar's role as the main reserve currency and strength of American banks. But those strengths are also why the U.S. lacks the interest to lead, said Bremmer. A world without a leader doesn't hurt the U.S. the way it hurts other countries, he added. "The Americans are not going to be hugely interested or feel the impulse to fill that vacuum in the near term, so I believe that we're going to be leaderless and divided going forward for the foreseeable future." The world has an inherent need for leadership. If the U.S. genuinely can no longer provide it, someone else will. Niall Ferguson Hoover Institution, Stanford University However, Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, argued that the leadership of the U.S. has in fact been "very striking" this year. It can be seen in the U.S. Federal Reserve providing financial leadership during the depth of the pandemic-induced crisis and Washington showing technological leadership in campaigning against Chinese tech firm Huawei, he said. He also added that even if the U.S. did not step up as the global leader, someone else will because the world needs one. "The world has an inherent need for leadership. If the U.S. genuinely can no longer provide it, someone else will. Perhaps China, perhaps who knows a European Union who now seems to have its own relatively strong leadership in Berlin and Paris," Ferguson said. Taking sides: U.S. or China? The debate also centered on China's rise as a global power and its attempt to fill the leadership void left by the U.S. But the experts agreed that China is still far from playing a leading role on the international stage. China itself has repeatedly said it's not interested in replacing the U.S. or in exporting its ideology globally, said Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University. Still, the U.S.-China rivalry may force other countries to choose sides. Yan noted that increasingly, countries are seen siding with China on economic issues and relying on the U.S. for security. He cited Singapore, Japan, Germany and France as examples of those who have taken such a stance. Ngaire Woods, dean of University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, agreed that countries may need to "selectively cooperate" with either the U.S. or China. In other words, for the third countries in the world, the smaller countries, the new competition between China and United States across these institutions does not spell doom and gloom. Ngaire Woods University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government Srinagar, Sep 17 : One unidentified terrorist has been killed in an ongoing encounter at Batamaloo in Srinagar on Thursday, officials said. The firefight between terrorists and security forces took place after security forces laid a cordon and launched a search operation on the basis of a specific information about the presence of terrorists in the area. As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter. "One unidentified terrorist killed in an encounter at Batamaloo area of Srinagar. The police and the CRPF are in search of other terrorists too," police said. PARIS - A group of COVID-19 survivors and patients families is suing French Prime Minister Jean Castex, accusing him of potentially dangerous and contradictory management of the virus crisis even as infections have multiplied in recent weeks. Castex and the government have pushed to reopen the economy and learn to live with the virus, refusing to impose new nationwide lockdowns as hospitals in some French regions start to fill up with virus patients again. Lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio said he filed the lawsuit Thursday on behalf of the France Coronavirus Victims group in the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special court for prosecuting government ministers. The prime minister is accused of failing to fight a disaster likely to create a danger for public safety. Dozens of other lawsuits have been filed in other French courts against nursing homes or others accused of mismanaging the virus crisis. President Emmanuel Macron cannot be targeted by lawsuits now because sitting presidents have immunity from prosecution. The victims group questions why France hasnt yet authorized quick saliva tests for the virus, instead of insisting on nasal tests that can take days to produce results because of backlogs in saturated French labs. The government argues that the saliva tests are not reliable enough, though they are available in some other countries, and says a quicker nasal test will be available in coming days. The patients group also asks why the government pushed for mask requirements outdoors over the summer but didnt require them inside offices until Sep. 1. Scientists say the risk of virus spread is higher indoors. If the court decides to prosecute the case, Castex could face up to two years in prison and a 30,000-euro ($35,000) fine if convicted. Also Thursday, Health Minister Olivier Veran announced 20 more testing centres nationwide as he told a press conference that the virus is very active again in France. More than 30,600 people with the virus have died in France, including more than 10,000 in nursing homes. The country is now reporting more than 70 positive cases per 100,000 people, among the highest rates in the world, in part thanks to ramped-up testing. Virus hospitalizations are also rising in recent weeks. Authorities in Marseille, Bordeaux and some other areas have imposed new local restrictions on gatherings as they have become new virus hotspots. But Paris restaurants and bars are thronging with customers, and the central government ordered all schools to reopen with attendance in person this month and urged people to return to work. The Tour de France is currently racing around the country, and the French Open is due to begin later this month with spectators in the stands. Last week, the government shortened the recommended quarantine period for people with the virus from 14 to seven days drawing criticism Thursday from the World Health Organization, which warned of alarming rates of transmission of the coronavirus in parts of the continent. An investigation is already under way into alleged pandemic mismanagement by three other current or former French government ministers, after the countrys hospitals were quickly saturated with virus patients in the first wave of the pandemic. ___ Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak Read more about: Millions of Americans have been forced into new remote work arrangements during the coronavirus health crisis. The health risks are paramount, but day-to-day challenges like video conferencing and children's education have made the situation even harder for remote workers. And absent action from Congress, remote work can have consequences for these taxpayers wallets as well. Lockdowns, social distancing guidelines, care for sick loved ones and other reasons have seen Americans begin working in a state other than their normal work site since the onset of the pandemic. They may not be aware, however, that doing so could expose them to income tax filing and payment obligations in different states. Approximately 3.5 million Americans could potentially run afoul of these rules and face additional tax obligations, based on surveys of Americans switching to remote work and census data of pre-pandemic interstate commuters. This number could potentially be even higher, as taxpayers who reside in the same state as their work offices could still face new tax obligations if they work temporarily somewhere else. For Iowa specifically, this could mean just under 100,000 Iowans facing these new tax obligations. Absent action from Congress, this can have real consequences. Not only do they have to face the already substantial burden of record-keeping and updating withholding at a time when most Iowans have greater things to worry about, but working remotely in higher-tax states could lead to an unpleasant surprise when it comes time to file taxes next year. Even good samaritans are not safe from the taxman. When tens of thousands of out-of-state health care workers put themselves at risk by volunteering to travel to New York City, answering its pleas for aid during the pandemic, they thought they were doing a good deed. But New York has made clear that it will move aggressively to tax the tax income of these volunteers, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo claiming that the state was not in a position to provide any subsidies right now. Such actions are unfortunately unsurprising given New Yorks status as a high-tax state that is known for rigidly pursuing every tax dollar from people who do work in the state. An analysis of what kinds of taxes that some of these health care emergency workers may face when doing remote work in New York found that a registered nurse may see a $750 tax increase and an ER doctor could face as much as a $1,200 tax hike. Though New York is just one state aggressively pursuing remote workers tax revenues, the increased burden other states taxpayers can face from being subjected to its tax regime shows the danger of failing to rein in similarly aggressive states. And for Iowa taxpayers who normally work in one of a few states, this can work the other way as well. Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and (of course) New York enforce a so-called convenience of the employer" rule. This means that Iowans who normally work in one of these states but switched to working in Iowa for any reason other than absolute necessity can still face tax liability in that state. Often, those wages get double-taxed, meaning that Iowans can face tax bills on the same income from Iowa as well. The tax consequences of paying double state income taxes can be catastrophic to taxpayers trying to get by in a recession and a pandemic. A taxpayer making just over $42,000 a year splitting time between Connecticut and New York could see a tax increase of just under $1,400. Iowa small- and medium-sized businesses can face difficulties from these rules as well. Because just one employee working in a state can expose a business to tax obligations in that state, employees working remotely can create headaches for business tax compliance, including the need to file in additional states or apportion their taxes differently. Not only is this an additional compliance burden, but it could discourage businesses from following public health guidelines and allowing employees to work remotely. The good news is that these are eminently solvable issues. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced bipartisan legislation that would address all these problems by limiting states ability to go after the income of remote workers, volunteers and businesses on the basis of COVID-induced remote work (legislation that Iowas own Senator Joni Ernst supported). The Senates Phase Four proposal also included a version of this legislation that would likewise address the problem of states aggressively taxing remote workers. Iowans have enough on their plates in the middle of the pandemic without having to fend off overly aggressive tax bureaucrats. Fortunately, Sen. Ernst has supported legislation that would solve similar issues in the past, and is well-positioned to take the lead in protecting Iowans from unnecessary tax and filing obligations. Andrew Wilford is a policy analyst with the Washington, D.C., based National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to tax policy research and education at all levels of government. Editor's note: Thursday Topic is a weekly Opinion page feature. Each Thursday in this space, local, regional and state writers will discuss issues in the news. If you have an idea for a Tuesday Topic, please contact Editorial Page Editor Michael Gors at 712-293-4223 or mike.gors@lee.net. The Greek yogurt market in Europe is expected to grow by USD 1.33 billion as per Technavio. This marks a significant market slow down compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. However, healthy growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 8%. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005060/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Greek Yogurt Market in Europe 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire) Request challenges and opportunities that influence COVID-19 pandemic Request Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impacts Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Greek Yogurt Market in Europe Analysis Report by Product (Plain and low-fat Greek yogurt and 0% fat or non-fat Greek yogurt), Geography (France, Germany, UK, and Rest of Europe), and the Segment Forecasts, 2020-2024". https://www.technavio.com/report/greek-yogurt-market-in-europe-industry-analysis The market is driven by the nutritional benefits of Greek yogurt. In addition, the marketing initiatives adopted by the players in the market are anticipated to boost the growth of the Greek yogurt market in Europe. Greek yogurt is increasingly becoming popular among consumers due to its various nutritional benefits. It is rich in protein and has lower sodium content and carbohydrate compared to regular yogurt. For instance, a cup of plain, low-fat conventional yogurt usually contains 5-10 grams of protein. Whereas a cup of Greek yogurt contains about 13-20 grams of protein. Also, it has low lactose content and the riboflavin present in Greek yogurt helps boost the immune system. Many such benefits are increasing the consumption of Greek yogurt, which is driving the growth of the market. Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free. View market snapshot before purchasing Major Five Greek Yogurt in Europe Companies: Danone SA Danone SA operates its business through segments such as Specialized Nutrition, Essential Dairy and Plant-Based Products, and Waters. The company offers Greek yogurt under brands such as Danone, Oykos, and danio. Some of the products offered by the company include INTENSELY GREEK STYLE CHERRY, DANONE Oykos LUXURY GREEK STYLE Passion fruit, DANONE Oykos Whip 'n' Mix Papaya Pleasure, danio strawberry high protein 0% fat strained yogurt, and others. Dodoni SA Agricultural Dairy Industry of Epirus Dodoni SA Agricultural Dairy Industry of Epirus operates its business through the Unified product segment. The company offers real DODONI Greek yogurt. It is made from fresh, pasteurized milk and yogurt culture. DODONI Epirotiko Strained is another key product offered by the company. It is made of 100% Greek milk exclusively from farms in the Epirus region. Emmi Group Emmi Group operates its business through segments such as Switzerland, Americas, and Europe, and Global Trade. The company offers Greek yogurt in various flavors such as natural, strawberry, peaches, blueberry, and others. Fage International SA Fage International SA operates its business through the Unified product segment. The company offers Greek yogurt under the brand name FAGE. Some of the key products offered by the company include FAGE Total, FAGE Total 0% Split Pot Honey, FAGE Total 0.2% Split Pot Honey, FAGE Total 0% Split Pot Strawberry, FAGE Total 2%, and others. General Mills Inc. General Mills Inc. operates its business through segments such as North America Retail, Convenience Stores and Foodservice, Europe and Australia, and Asia and Latin America. The company offers Greek yogurt under the brand name Liberte. The company offers products such as 0% Fat GREEK STYLE YOGURT ON A LAYER OF BLUEBERRY, 0% Fat GREEK STYLE YOGURT ON A LAYER OF HONEY, 0% Fat GREEK STYLE YOGURT ON A LAYER OF STRAWBERRY, and 0% Fat GREEK STYLE YOGURT ON A LAYER OF MANGO. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Greek Yogurt Market in Europe Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024) Plain and low-fat Greek yogurt 0% fat or non-fat Greek yogurt Greek Yogurt Market in Europe Geography Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024) France Germany UK Rest of Europe Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report Related Reports on Consumer Staples Include: Global Dairy Desserts Market Global dairy desserts market by product (yogurt, cream, and others) and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America). Global Smoothies Market Global smoothies market by consumption patterns (out-of-home consumption and at-home consumption), product (fruit-based, dairy-based, and other smoothies), and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America). About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005060/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Germany and Poland are among seven countries on the Government's updated travel green list. However, Greece and Italy, which are popular holiday destinations for Irish travellers, have been removed from the list published this afternoon. A scaled-back green list has been announced, meaning people can travel to Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland without quarantining on their return. But this list will be updated on a weekly basis. To be included on the list, a country must have a 14-day Covid-19 incidence rate of less than 25 per 100,000 people. Read More Dublin should be at Level 4 of government plan, says Covid GP The Department of Foreign Affairs stressed that citizens considering travel to green list locations should be aware that countries continue to announce new restrictions on arrivals from abroad, including the requirements to quarantine on entry. This can include restrictions on arrivals from Ireland. The Government agreed that Ireland should broadly support the European Commission proposal for a common approach to travel within the EU / EEA, which is currently under discussion in Brussels. Between now and the EU signing off on a system, Irelands Green List will be updated on a weekly basis. "The changes announced today will come into effect on Monday. People should use our travel advice to carefully consider their need to go abroad and take into account the restrictions that other countries may have on travellers from Ireland. DFA Travel Advice and Green List have been updated to reflect the latest ECDC figures. For more information, please see: https://t.co/c1yqzTatk9 DFATravelWise (@dfatravelwise) September 17, 2020 From Monday, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Greece, Norway and Estonia will be removed from the list, and their security status rating has been changed to avoid non-essential travel. Passengers arriving in Ireland from these locations will be requested to restrict their movements. However, Aer Lingus expressed concern with the approach taken by the Department in updating the list. "On Tuesday the Government indicated that it would align with the proposals developed by the European Commission which outlines a co-ordinated approach to free movement across the European Union and European Economic Area. The green list announced today does not represent a step towards alignment with the European Commissions free movement proposal," the airline said in a statement. She has been enjoying single life since her on/off relationship with Scott Disick came to an official end last month. And Sofia Ritchie looked in great spirits as she spent time with friends at her beach house in Malibu on Wednesday. Keeping things casual in a pair of dungarees, the 22-year-old model looked effortlessly stylish on the outing. Fun with friends: She has been enjoying single life. And Sofia Ritchie looked in great spirits as she spent time with friends at her beach house in Malibu on Wednesday Sheathing her sensational figure, Sofia opted for loose fitting overalls that she rolled up at the hems to show off her white sneakers. Layering up, she donned a plain white T-shirt and accessorised with a dainty gold necklace and stack of bangles. Sweeping her ombre locks away from her face, Sofia showcased her flawless features, which were enhanced with a neutral makeup palette. Low-key look: Sheathing her sensational figure, Sofia opted for loose fitting overalls that she rolled up at the hems to show off her white sneakers Sweet: Sofia opted for loose fitting overalls that she rolled up at the hems to show off her white sneakers as she was seen playing with her friend's child Sofia's outing comes after her ex-boyfriend Scott, 37, admitted he wants another child with Kourtney Kardashian, 41. The on/off exes have been spending plenty of time together following Scott's split from Sofia, with fans wondering if they've reconciled. A new 'supertease' for season 19 of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, did little to quell the rumours, as talk turned to the pair's complicated relationship. Will they, won't they? Sofia's outing comes after her ex-boyfriend Scott, 37, admitted he wants another child with Kourtney Kardashian, 41 Ahead of the show's return on September 17, a clip saw the exes asked by Kim Kardashian if they are trying to have a fourth child. They are already parents to Mason, 10, Penelope, eight, and Reign, five. Kim is seen in a crochet top by a swimming pool as she says, 'Scott's like we're going for baby number four, is that serious I want to know.' Putting it out there: Ahead of the show's return on September 17, a clip saw the exes asked by Kim Kardashian if they are trying to have a fourth child The faces of Kourtney, Khloe and Scott are all flashed as they appear to be at a family lunch on a patio of a mansion. 'Are you pregnant?' another voice is heard asking Kourtney, who looks put on the spot and not happy about it. Her answer is not heard. Kourtney and Scott started dating in 2006 after meeting at Joe Francis' house in Mexico and in 2007 he became a fixture on KUWTK. They were on and off for years as Scott was accused many times of cheating on his partner; and checked into rehab multiple times before they called it quits in July 2015. Pentagon guidance strengthens religious liberty protections for service members Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The U.S. Department of Defense issued new guidance this month bolstering military service members' religious freedom rights, a move praised by advocates who have voiced concern for years. Instruction 1300.17 was issued on Sept. 1 establishing DoD policy in furtherance of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The instruction falls in line with President Donald Trumps 2017 executive order on religious liberty and free speech. The policy requires Defense Department entities to oversee the development and provision of education and training on the policies and procedures pertaining to the accommodation of religious practices of Service members to high-ranking military personnel. Under the instruction, those who are to receive training and education on religious freedom rights of service members include commanders, judge advocates, chaplains, recruiters and other personnel deemed appropriate by a military entity. The directive declares that Service members have the right to observe the tenets of their religion or to observe no religion at all. The policy also forbids service members from requiring chaplains to perform any rite, ritual, or ceremony that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the chaplain. The guidance also makes clear that military leadership must accommodate individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs, adding that a Service members expression of such beliefs may not, in so far as practicable, be used as the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination, or denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment. In addition to laying out the rights of service members to express their First Amendment rights, the document illustrates the responsibilities that DOD officials have in ensuring that the guidance is implemented. The third section of the directive explains the process for submitting and reviewing requests for accommodation by service members. Mike Berry, deputy general counsel for the nonprofit law firm First Liberty Institute, which is often involved in defending the First Amendment rights of military service members, told The Christian Post that the new instruction addresses the concerns that First Liberty Institute has been raising for a number of years. The guidance comes four months after the First Liberty Institute, which describes itself as the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans, wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. In the letter, Berry urged Esper to issue clear DOD guidance, consistent with Congress directive, that strongly protects religious freedom within the DOD. He argued that such guidance was necessary to slow the spread of misinformation, flawed legal arguments and religious discrimination. In 2017, the President issued Executive Order 13798-Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, the letter noted. Shortly thereafter, the United States Attorney General issued a guidance memorandum interpreting religious liberty protections in federal law. The letter expressed concern that the Department of Defense had yet to comply with Congress 2018 directive to implement a comprehensive training program for chaplains and judge advocates that further incorporates EO 13798 and the Attorney Generals guidance within DOD. First Liberty wrote the letter in response to the Armys compliance with demands from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to remove social media posts featuring Army chaplains offering words of prayer and encouragement to service members amid the coronavirus pandemic. The letter also mentioned the Armys decision to investigate an Army chaplain for sending an e-mail fellow Christian chaplains a book by theologian John Piper he had recently read. Its really a breath of fresh air to see the Department of Defense, first of all, applying federal law, applying the Constitution and following the Presidents executive order on free speech and religious liberty and applying that to the military, Berry told CP. And this is something that First Liberty and many others have been asking for. So we are very pleased to see this happen. In addition to First Liberty, members of Congress have also urged Esper to protect religious service members. Even though this is a fantastic step in the right direction and our hope is that this will provide a lot of clarity and a lot of guidance to military leaders, theres still a lot of work to be done, Berry stressed. I think there are going to continue to be issues regarding religious liberty but this new regulation should go a long way to at least providing clarity and strong protections for religious freedom in the military. This wont prevent future issues from arising, but it will certainly help ensure that when those issues arrive, that they are adjudicated properly, he continued. Berry said the debate about religious freedom in the military has never been an issue of what service members could or could not do, adding the Constitution and the First Amendment havent changed. The Department of Defense has now revised its regulations and its guidance to be far more consistent with the Constitution and the First Amendment, he asserted. Instead of it being a matter of what can troops do now that they couldnt do before, the DOD regulations now recognize and affirmatively protect the things that people were perhaps not sure whether they could do before. While some religious freedom advocates are praising the new instruction, it also has critics. MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein said in a statement shared with CP that the "all-encompassing incorporation and prominence of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act" in the instruction is "extremely concerning" for his organization. He vowed that MRFF, which advocates for the strict adherence to the principle of separation of church and state, will fight "tooth and nail" to stop the new instruction. He claimed that the new guidance buttresses the efforts of a "fundamentalist Christian religious right" that seeks to force its "version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon otherwise defenseless military subordinates. "In recent years, this 1993 Act has become the go-to law for fundamentalist Christian legal organizations in their ignoble and wholly reprehensible defense of completely unconstitutional promotions of uber-conservative Christianity in the United States armed forces," he argued. "This law is the sick epitome of the right-wing Christians tortured view of the First Amendments religion clauses as creating only a one-way wall in other words, that that the 'Free Exercise' clause of the First Amendment is THE only religion clause that matters, and that the other direction of the wall, the 'No Establishment' clause, simply doesnt even exist. Such a preposterous position is utterly bereft of any semblance of Constitutional legality and allowance." Weinstein went on to argue that the instruction is a "Constitutionally abhorrent ticking time bomb." "The critical term 'religious practice' has now been almost infinitely expanded to include 'An action, behavior, or course of conduct constituting individual expressions of religious beliefs, whether or not compelled by, or central to, the religion concerned,'" he contended. "This shocking, sudden definitional expansion, specifically the 'whether or not compelled by, or central to, the religion concerned' may well now allow military superiors to proselytize their lower-ranking troops without ANY cognizable Constitutional constraints as to time, place and manner." "And, in MRFFs considerable civil rights advocacy experience, gleaned from our over 70,000 MRFF client cases (95% of whom are practicing Christians themselves), the oppressors in this precise dynamic are fundamentalist/dominionist Christian military superiors approximately 99.9% of the time," Weinstein continued. "These miserably wretched, instantaneous DoD Instruction 1300.17 mauling actions by Trumps DoD cannot be allowed to tar and feather the Constitution's clear and incontrovertible, foundational prohibition of allowing the State to establish religion!" Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 17:31 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4575cd3 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,social-affairs-ministry,Budi-Gunadi-Sadikin,coronavirus,social-aid,low-income-people,financial-aid,Family-Hope-Program,government-aid,social-security Free The government will not provide additional social aid for the nine provinces hardest hit by COVID-19, economic recovery task force head Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Wednesday. Budi said social aid that had already been distributed by the Social Affairs Ministry was sufficient to help low-income families, including those who live in the nine provinces. We have faith in the consistency our friends in the Social Affairs Ministry have delivered, Budi said in a press conference on Wednesday. The government is currently focused on flattening the COVID-19 infection curve in nine provinces with the highest transmission rates in the country: Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, East Java, North Sumatra, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, Papua and Bali. These provinces have become the governments priority since they have contributed 75 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Indonesia. We believe that people in the prioritized provinces will be helped [by the existing programs], Budi said. As a response to COVID-19, the government prepared several social aid programs to assist low-income citizens who are hard hit by the outbreaks economic impact. One of the schemes was the Staple Food Card program, which is aimed at 20 million lower-income families. The program has so far spent 63 percent of its Rp 43 trillion (US$2.8 billion) budget. Aside from the Staple Food Card program, the government has also disbursed financial aid to 10 million low-income families through the Family Hope Program. The program has realized 77.9 percent of its Rp 37.4 trillion budget. We expect that the two programs will be able to achieve their targets by the end of the year, Budi said. (dpk) Outgoing Vice-President Joe Biden presides over the counting of 2016 electoral votes that awarded Donald Trump the presidency. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Thanks to the presidents not-so-veiled threats to refuse to accept the legitimacy of mail ballots that are likely to go overwhelmingly for his opponent in a slow count following Election Day, and some Democratic talk of refusing to acknowledge a second Trump win without a popular vote plurality, theres been a lot of justified attention focused on what happens on Election Night and immediately thereafter. Ive been one of those to warn that Trump might even declare victory on Election Night if hes ahead in key states at that point. In such a declaration, hed likely announce his win on the strength of the in-person voting Republicans are expected to dominate and claim that subsequent mail ballots are too rife with fraud to be counted. The scenario by which Trump would then nail down a purloined victory in the Electoral College (short of an actual coup to impose it) has never been all that clear, and its improbability might prevent even this lawless president to go there. To assess his options, it is necessary to go down one of the deepest rabbit holes in U.S. election law: What happens during the 37 days between December 14, when electoral college votes are cast and collected, and January 20, when the next presidential inaugural is held. Theres an even smaller and more fateful two-week window before the inauguration during which a newly elected Congress counts and certifies the Electoral Vote on January 6, and hastily makes other provisions for the presidency if neither candidate has a recognized majority. This timetable was created by the combination of vague constitutional language on how to formally elect a president, and a confusing and possibly unconstitutional statute from 1887 (ten years after an election dispute that nearly triggered a second Civil War) called the Electoral Count Act. In a normal, uncontested presidential election year, this process draws little or no attention because the outcome is ordained and is generally known (in all presidential elections since 1876 other than the 2000 cliffhanger) on or shortly after Election Day. Typically governors certify the winning electoral college slate before the ECAs safe harbor deadline six days before the electoral college ballot box is locked (which purportedly means no one can challenge them later). The votes are then cast, the vice-president, in his or her role as president of the Senate, reads them out to a Joint Session of Congress on January 6. Lawmakers then immediately certify the count, and during all this time the new administration is getting ready to assume office. This year, however, in part because of the expected slow count (and possibly recount) of ballots, and in part because of lawsuits and possibly presidential efforts to interfere with the counting of all those fraudulent mail ballots, its not at all certain that highly contested states will meet this years safe harbor deadline of December 8 for identifying a clear winner, or that when the Electoral College virtually meets on December 14, there will be just one slate per state sent in for tabulation. So depending on how much of a factual and legal quagmire a putative Republican rejection of the legitimacy of mail ballots creates, we could have pols and judges and pundits from both parties claiming victory, and big crowds in a thousand streets backing them up, by the time the new Congress takes office on January 3 and prepares to count Electoral Votes three days later. According to the constitutional scheme, the President of the Senate, who would be current Vice-President Mike Pence, would announce the votes to a joint session of the newly elected Congress. The Electoral Count Act clearly expects the states and ultimately Congress (barring a contrary vote by both Houses of Congress, gubernatorial certifications are supposed to be recognized), not the veep, to decide which slate to announce, but if Pence were to only announce Trump-Pence slates citing his constitutional prerogatives, its unclear what would happen. Again, the constitutionality of the ECA has never been tested. And the effect of its provisions governing disputed slates would totally depend on which party controlled Congress, and which party controlled the governorship of the affected states. We actually have a small and harmless example of the temptation Pence could face. In 1960, Hawaiis Republican Governor certified a very narrow Richard Nixon victory in that state. A later recount put John F. Kennedy in the lead, and Hawaii certified a second, Kennedy slate. Since Hawaiis three electoral votes didnt really matter in an election Kennedy had already won, Nixon, as President of the Senate, graciously recognized the Kennedy slate and recommended that Congress go along. In an identical situation, if the election was unresolved and it was Floridas 29 electoral votes at stake, do you think Mike Pence would help Biden and Harris get across the line? I dont think so. No wonder when Congress confronted a contested presidential election in 1877, its leaders (along with lame duck president U.S. Grant) created an extra-constitutional Election Commission to resolve the mess. But they had the luxury of a March 4 inauguration. Since 1933, presidents are inaugurated on January 20. So there wont be time for deliberations or the kind of Grand Bargain crafting that eventually brought an uneasy peace in 1877. If for whatever reason Congress cannot certify an Electoral College winner (theres even a not-entirely-implausible scenario where Trump and Biden might tie with 269 electoral votes each), then the newly-elected House would be charged with choosing a new president, under a bizarre constitutional provision giving each state delegation one vote or no vote at all in the case of ties and requiring 26 delegations for election. Currently Republicans control a bare majority of 26 House delegations, and a calculation by Larry Sabatos Crystal Ball suggests they are likely to maintain that number even if they lose some House seats in November. If the House cannot reach a decision, the newly elected Senate would have the opportunity to elect a vice-president who would fill the presidential vacancy on January 20, and if that, too, failed, the Presidential Succession Act would kick in and you could be looking at President Nancy Pelosi on Inaugural Day. If this sounds like two weeks of sweaty madness with the highest possible stakes involved and the whole world watching in horror, thats almost certainly correct. But thats the system we have inherited thanks to some especially poor eighteenth- and nineteenth-century constitutional and legislative craftsmanship, and it may offer our imperial president a shred of hope for reelection even if he seems to have lost. If we do have the kind of disputed election that forces this system to do its worst, then the silver lining is that surely an aroused populace will demand that the Electoral College be placed where it belongs, in the dustbin of history. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told his Cabinet on September 17 that he is concerned with the number of new cases of COVID-19 in the country. The Centers for Disease Control reported 257 new cases on September 16, and 295 cases on September 17. However, this is also associated with the higher number of tests being conducted. Yesterday we had 4319 tests, the day before we had 4135. As a reminder, even during the most difficult phase the maximum number of tests didnt reach 3000. But nevertheless, this trend is concerning, and I think we must draw the societys attention on this issue. For example, yesterday, for the first time since March I saw a traffic jam in Yerevan. Perhaps this has to do with the reopening of schools, PM Nikol Pashinyan said. Deputy Minister of Healthcare Anahit Avanesyan also pointed out the higher number of tests. But we are also observing a percentage growth in the tests, today it was around 7 %, and this is concerning. As a result of our analyses we believe that this growth is associated with the pre-school period and greater movement of people, for example pre-school shopping and returning from resort homes, Avanesyan said, adding that it will take two weeks to see how the reopening of schools will impact the epidemiological situation. Schools were reopened September 14. Avanesyan called on citizens to strictly adhere to the coronavirus guidelines and follow safety measures. Statistics show that only through strictly maintaining the guidelines we can suppress the trend of growth and not have an abrupt increase of numbers in autumn, Avanesyan added. Face masks are mandatory in public spaces, both indoor and outdoors. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday extended his very best wishes to Narendra Modi on the latters 70th birthday, adding that he hoped to meet the Indian Prime Minister in the near future. Johnson, who has met Modi on several occasions, has been keen on signing a free trade agreement (FTA) with India after the UKs exit from the European Union is completed on December 31. Initial talks in that direction have already begun. Johnson tweeted, Very best wishes to my friend @narendramodi on his 70th birthday. I hope to see you soon. The possibility of Johnson visiting India in 2020 had been discussed earlier this year, but the coronavirus pandemic has affected those plans. Only virtual interactions have been taking place between British and Indian ministers, largely on trade issues. Modi last visited London in April 2018 for a Commonwealth heads of government summit. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON MEHAMA Although the wind-driven Beachie Creek Fire scorched their yard and destroyed their shop on Jennie Road south of Mehama, Larry and Monica Garrison consider themselves extremely fortunate. The 150-year-old home they have lived in for 40 years was spared in an area where 19 of 29 homes were consumed by fire. Wednesday morning, under a thick blanket of smoke, the Garrisons and their friends, Victor and Donna Baumann, surveyed a neighboring house that was destroyed. Only five large stonework pillars remain. It was a lovely home, Monica Garrison said. The owner is 80 years old and is in Utah with family now. She had the most gorgeous hydrangeas, Donna Baumann said. The Garrisons evacuated their 10-acre property about 2:30 a.m. last Tuesday and did not return home until Thursday, not sure what they were going to find. We went to Stayton and then we ended up at the KOA near Home Depot in Salem, Garrison said. Garrison said the sound of giant wood chippers chewing away at limbs on the highway behind their home was reassuring. None of the familys four cows, numerous chickens or dog were harmed, although Garrison says the dog is now neurotic. The Garrisons have been sifting through what remains of their shop. There are frameworks to an ATV and a 1973 Honda motorcycle. Unless it was made of metal, it didnt survive. Some wooden fence posts appeared to be floating in air, burned away from the ground and hanging by wires and a few remaining wooden posts. Insurance adjusters are so busy and, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been asked to pull items out and take photos of what was destroyed, Larry Garrison said. Like most shops, the list is long, everything from an antique brass bed to a metal star that hung on the front of the building. It is really going to be difficult getting a handle on how many tools we lost, Garrison said. His wife said the rural community will rebuild. Come back in a year and see how it will have changed, she said. Donna Baumann said she and her husband live near Scio. We were fine, but it was close, she said. We left our home due to the smoke. We have friends in Mill City and Gates who lost everything. Our old family home up there is gone. The whole neighborhood is gone. Deputies from the Linn County Sheriffs Office were stopping vehicles at Cedar Mill Road west of Mill City. Deputy Aaron Elliott told drivers they could not enter the area unless they lived there and had a photo ID. Near Mehama, members of the Oregon National Guard were also staffing a roadblock at the intersection of Jennie Road and Highway 22. Other than two picnic tables and a decorative wishing well, little remains of the North Fork Crossing Restaurant at the southwest corner of the intersection. Nearby, on the north side of Highway 22, a home remains standing, even though all of its yard was blackened by fire. To the east of the home, the Oregon Department of Forestry compound was leveled, except for the fire danger reader board. In Lyons, Chad Namitz was raking leaves from his front yard. The owner of Chad Namitz Trucking has been told he lost a backhoe to the fire in the Breitenbush area, but hasnt been allowed to assess the damage for himself. I had been doing some thinning work up there for the last three months, Namitz said. Namitz has lived in the Lyons area all of his life and said he was about to move a bulldozer to the job site. Then Monday, the fire started, Namitz said. Adam Smith stopped his pickup to talk to Namitz and said he lost an excavator in the fire on Monument Peak. I had been building roads up there, Smith said. We had a dozer sitting right next to it and it didnt burn. Smith said he works for R&L Excavating, but is now helping the Oregon Department of Forestry fight fires on Rock Creek. At Linn Countys John Neal Memorial Park near Lyons, volunteers from the American Red Cross were waiting with a U-Haul truck to hand out free sifting kits to burned-out families. The kits include a wooden-framed sifting tool, a plastic tub, tarp, gloves, face masks, shovel, rake, gloves and two Meals Ready to Eat. The kits are being manufactured by volunteers at the Silverton Creek Fellowship church in Silverton. The truck held 75 units. The goal is to produce 12,000 kits to be distributed statewide, the volunteers said. As of Wednesday, the 191,000-acre Beachie Creek Fire was 20% contained, fire officials reported. Some 470 residences, 35 commercial structures and 783 nonresidential structures were destroyed by the fire. There has been damage to 46 residences, five commercial structures and 83 nonresidential structures. The Beachie Creek and Riverside fires remain one mile apart. The Riverside Fire is at 136,000 acres. Also Wednesday, President Donald Trump approved Gov. Kate Browns request to declare a federal disaster. The presidents action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts in Clackamas, Douglas, Jackson, Klamath, Lane, Linn, Lincoln, Marion, Tillamook and Washington counties. According to information released by the White House, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 3 Angry 0 According to reports, after Rakul Preet Singh filed a plea in Delhi High Court, the court has expressed hope that the media will exercise restraint when reporting the drug case associated with Sushant Singh Rajput's death case. The Centre and National Broadcasters Association among others have also been asked to respond to the petition by the Bollywood star. Rakul Preet while filing the petition highlighted the media reports against her after Rhea Chakraborty named her in a drug-related case before the Narcotics Control Bureau. The petition filed through advocates Aman Hingorani, Himanshu Yadav and Shweta Hingorani, stated, "The Petitioner categorically states that she does not take drugs at all, and has, to the best of her recollection, has only met Sara Ali Khan twice (once at IIFA Awards and once while working out in a gym) and has not met Simone Khambatta at all." Rakul said she was shocked to to see private TV channels, including some members of the News Broadcasters Association running "breaking news", while she was shooting for a film in Telangana. The actress further stated that despite Rhea retracting her statement on September 9, the private TV channels have continued since to run a slander campaign against her. HC Has Asked For A Response From Center The single-judge bench, Justice Navin Chawla said, "There has to be some restraint. Media gets to know info even before the officers themselves. Reputations are getting tarnished. It is hoped that media houses and TV channels would show restraint and abide by the Program Code and other guidelines while making any report in connection with Rakul Preet Singh." Next Hearing Will Be Held On October 15 A notice has also been issued to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Prasar Bharti and the Press Council of India seeking their response over the petition. It also asked the central government to treat the petition as a representation and take decision expeditiously. Apart From Rakul Preet Singh, Rhea Also Named Sara Ali Khan The next hearing on the matter will be on October 15. Apart from Rakul Preet Singh, actress Sara Ali Khan and designer Simone Khambatta have also been named as the individuals who take drugs by Rhea Chakraborty in the ongoing investigation by the Narcotics Control Bureau in Mumbai. The investigation began with Sushant Singh Rajput's death on June 14 and CBI's probe in the case. Sushant's Case: Rakul Preet Singh Approaches Delhi High Court Against Media Trial In Drug Probe Is Rakul Preet Singh Trying To Save Her Position In Tollywood? Three suspected members of an international "romance fraud" gang are still being questioned at different garda stations after Dublin District Court granted a three-day extension to the time they can be held in custody. The extension was granted late on Tuesday night after an application by Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB). The Irish Independent can reveal the massive investigation has found more victims as Garda specialists continue to work on seized mobile phones and computers which the gang used. Earlier this week, we revealed a retired Irish woman lost well over 100,000 of her savings when she was targeted by the organised crime gang as part of a heartless romance fraud scam. Three foreign nationals were arrested in Blanchardstown, Drogheda and Navan in what were the first ever detentions in Ireland for this type of crime. The woman who lost the money to the gang was "convinced to transfer large sums of cash to accounts in Ireland, Turkey, Dubai and Vietnam over a nine-month period, having met with fraudsters online via a dating site" according to gardai. The arrested suspects have been living in Ireland for some time with one of the men aged 22 and the others aged 29 and 30. In February, gardai announced the GNECB had received more than 75 reports of so-called romance fraud last year, with the victims being conned out of more than 1m. This figure is expected to increase this year. Historically, it appeared older women were falling victim to this type of crime, but the profile is changing with more males coming forward as well as younger people. "The traditional problem with this type of crime is that victims would often be too embarrassed to report it so the belief is the number of victims out there is higher than many people might think," the source said. The scammers, who operate online, convince their victims that they have met their perfect match and often use a fake profile to build up a relationship. They gradually gain the victims' trust over time, with a view to eventually asking them for money. Gardai also say romance fraudsters will often attempt to quickly move to communicate away from dating websites and ask a lot of personal questions while avoiding personal questions about themselves. They will also try to establish a bond quickly, but present obstacles and make excuses to avoid meeting in person. They may mention money problems in the hope that potential victims will offer to help. In June it emerged that a Limerick woman in her 40s was conned out of a large sum of money from a romance fraudster operating online who used a fake "sea captain" profile to scam victims out of money. In a press statement earlier this week, Detective Superintendent Michael Cryan said: "This is a novel investigation as the senders of such emails have never been arrested in Ireland before. "To date, the belief would always have been that criminal groups engaged in this activity are operating from outside this jurisdiction. "This investigation shows that this is not always the case. It is anticipated that numerous injured parties from all over the world will now be identified. We would encourage other victims of this type of fraud to report incidents to local gardai." Turkey cannot be seen as a trustworthy partner in the region until its occupation of Northern Cyprus ends and its violations of the rule of law and gunboat diplomacy are neutralised Turkey is more and more in the international news these days because of its violations of the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Cyprus and Greece. These violations in the Eastern Mediterranean threaten the stability and security of the wider region. A maritime deal signed on 6 August set out the sea boundaries between Egypt and Greece and appears to have further escalated Turkeys regional aggression. Since 2018 at least, Turkey has openly threatened the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea with invasion. Turkey has also illegally occupied the northern part of Cyprus since 1974. Moreover, the Turkish government does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus as an independent state and claims 44 per cent of the Cypriot EEZ as its own. Another sizable section of that zone is claimed by the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, an internationally unrecognised entity. Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960 following a four-year struggle against colonialism. On 20 July 1974, Turkish armed forces launched a full-scale invasion. Turkeys excuse in invading the island country was the coup engineered by the Greek military, which toppled the democratically elected Cypriot president, Archbishop Makarios III. A few days later, the coup collapsed and democratic rule in Cyprus was re-established. Yet, Turkey had other plans. On 14 August of that same year, Turkey launched a second and even more devastating invasion of the island. Many crimes were committed, including ethnic cleansing throughout the northern part. Turkey named its second offensive after Attila the Hun (ruled 434-453 CE), the leader of an ancient nomadic people and the ruler of the Hunnic Empire. Atillas name, writes US historian Joshua J Mark, was synonymous with terror among his enemies and the general populace of the territories that his armies swept through. Furthermore, the reputation of the Huns for brutality and indiscriminate slaughter was well known and sent the people of the land fleeing for their lives with whatever they could carry. This is exactly what Turkey did to the north of Cyprus in 1974. Before Turkey invaded the island, the borders of Cyprus were internationally recognised. The document granting Cypruss independence was signed by three guarantor states: the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey. These three states declared that they would recognise and guarantee the independence, territorial integrity and security of the Republic of Cyprus. The Turkish invasion, as declared by numerous UN resolutions since, was a clear violation of Turkeys commitments. The crimes committed in the north of Cyprus by Turkey include, but are not limited to, the following: indiscriminate bombings, the killings of civilians including children and pregnant women, the forcible eviction and deportation of Greek Cypriots, the systematic looting, pillage and seizures of homes, churches and other properties, torture, rape and forced prostitution, assault and battery, illegal detention and forced labour, among others. These violations were directed at Greek, Maronite and Armenian Cypriots because of their ethnicity, language and religion. The ethnic cleansing of the north of Cyprus by Turkey resulted in the displacement of more than 170,000 Greek Cypriots, about 40 per cent of the then Greek population of the island. Turkeys occupation forces have not allowed them to return home. According to the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), established in 1981, 1,508 Greek Cypriots are still officially reported as missing. These atrocities have been documented by many sources, including through eyewitness accounts, investigations by international organisations and NGOs, the European Commission of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and many international media outlets and scholars. Professor Van Coufoudakis, rector emeritus of the University of Nicosia in Cyprus and dean and professor emeritus at Indiana University-Purdue University in the US, notes in his 2008 report Human Rights Violations in Cyprus by Turkey, for instance, that the Turkish army, during and in the aftermath of the invasion, committed large numbers of documented cases of the rape of Greek Cypriot women and children from the ages of 12 to 71. It was part of the tactic to humiliate, intimidate and terrorise the Greek Cypriot civilians in occupied Cyprus. Rape and dishonouring women is a particularly heinous crime in a conservative and close-knit society such as that of Cyprus. The evidence of rape came from the testimonies of victims, witnesses, medical personnel and even from Turkish military personnel. Some of the instances of rape involved pregnant women, while others occurred in the presence of family members. Rape was carried out by Turkish soldiers and their officers. There is no evidence of any disciplinary action having been taken by the military for these actions. NORTHERN CYPRUS The northern part of Cyprus, like the rest of the island, was predominately Greek prior to the Turkish invasion. But through its atrocities, Turkey altered the demographic character of the north of Cyprus and turned it into a Turkish colony recognised by Turkey alone. As of today, over 36 per cent of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus remains under Turkish occupation. Turkey claims that by invading the island it was protecting Turkish Cypriots from Greek Cypriot violence. But even Turkish officials have confessed that the violence was mostly instigated by Turks to escalate the conflict and pave the way for a military intervention. General Sabri Yirmibesoglu, a Turkish army officer, for example, said in 2010 that Turkey had burned a mosque during the Cyprus conflict in order to foster civil resistance against Greek Cypriots. He also said that the Turkish special warfare department has a rule to engage in acts of sabotage against the respected values [of the Turks], made to look as if they were carried out by the enemy. There are also strategic reasons for Turkeys occupation and colonisation of Cyprus, which can be seen in a statement made by previous Turkish deputy prime minister Tugrul Turkes in 2017. There is misinformation that Turkey is interested in Cyprus because there is a Turkish society there, Turkes said. Even if no Turks lived in Cyprus, Turkey would still have a Cyprus issue, and it is impossible for Turkey to give up on that. Turkeys two invasions and continued occupation of Cyprus have breached the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the European Convention on Human Rights and many other post-1945 international treaties. However, Turkey remains unapologetic. Its legacy in Cyprus would most likely make Atilla the Hun proud. As the US historian Michael Lee Lanning notes, Attila and his brother valued agreements little and peace even less. It is also important to acknowledge that the Republic of Cyprus has a massive strategic importance for Egypt. Its geographical location alone could play a pivotal role against Turkeys expansionist policy in the Mediterranean. But Turkeys policies by default eliminate other countries interests regarding the Mediterranean Sea, including Egypts. Turkey aims to achieve its neo-Ottoman expansionism particularly through the doctrine of the Blue Homeland that envisages the Turkish domination of the Aegean, of most of the Mediterranean, and of the Black Sea. This threat has also been recognised by Frances President Emmanuel Macron, who advocates a Pax Mediterranea in the region. Such a pact would not only aim to block Turkish aspirations in the region, but would also become a catalyst for both commercial and geostrategic opportunities. Macron invited Egypt to join the Middle East Mediterranean (MEM) Summer Summit in 2020. This Pax Mediterranea could very well incorporate the Eastern Mediterranean (EastMed) Pipeline Project that aims to exploit the regions gas. Not only could both projects, the political and the commercial, add to already cordial Cyprus-Egypt relations, but the EastMed Pipeline could very well act as a major deterrent to Turkeys destabilising activities in the region. It should be noted that Turkey already has about 40,000 well-equipped troops stationed in Northern Cyprus and plans, as announced, to soon build a naval base there. Until Turkeys occupation of Northern Cyprus ends, and until its violations of the rule of law and gunboat diplomacy are neutralised, Turkey will not be able to be seen as a trustworthy and civilised strategic partner of Egypt, Cyprus, the East or the West. *The writer is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Reopening to foreigners not risky THAILAND: Reopening the country to foreign visitors will not raise the risks of local COVID-19 transmission from imported infections, according to the Department of Disease Control (DDC). CoronavirusCOVID-19healthSafetytourism By Bangkok Post Thursday 17 September 2020, 07:32AM Foreign diplomats and followers arrive at Suvarnabhumi airport in Samut Prakan province late last month. Photo: Wichan Charoenkiatpakul. Responding to the cabinets resolution to allow long-stay foreign tourists to enter Thailand, Tanarak Plipat, deputy director-general of the DDC, insisted the move would likely not bring in COVID-19 infections, since the visitors would be subject to a stay at state quarantine facilities for 14 days. Regarding the case of a two-year-old Myanmar boy who tested positive after returning from Thailand, Dr Tanarak said Thailand was vigorously investigating this case. No special measures had been imposed in Ayutthaya province where the boy had stayed before returning to Myanmar, he said. The deputy director-general urged businesses, particularly those based in the provinces adjacent to Myanmar, not to hire illegal migrant workers for now due to the spike in COVID-19 cases in Myanmar in recent weeks. Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) deputy governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool said tourists with a Special Tourist Visa (STV) recently authorised by the government must travel on chartered flights from overseas directly to their destinations in Thailand. The TAT predicted that around 14,400 tourists will visit the country a year under the STV programme, generating revenue of about B12.36 billion per year. Meanwhile, deputy police spokesman Pol Col Kissana Phathanacharoen said national police chief Pol Gen Chakthip Chaijinda has issued an order to police units connected to tourism to coordinate with other agencies in preparing for the arrival of foreign tourists under the STV programme. The police chiefs order followed on the directive of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha after the STV programme was announced. Foreign travellers who met the programmes criteria and passed COVID-19 screening as required by the Thai authorities were eligible for entry under the STV programme, said the deputy spokesman. The Aeronautical Radio of Thailand (ART), meanwhile, reported a 9.8% increase in flights last month. Trump peace deals for Israel, U.A.E. and Bahrain are shams. They boost oppression, not amity. Dissenting from the mainstream American foreign policy consensus, Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argues that the deal had very little to do with the danger posed by Iran, which he contends the United States and Israel have exaggerated for decades to serve politically unpopular ends. What binds Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. together is not so much the threat from Iran but the threat of the United States military leaving the Middle East, he writes. These three states have been the foremost benefactors of Americas military domination in the region, gifting them a beneficial power balance that they could not have achieved on their own. That impression is reinforced by reports that the Trump administration quietly rewarded the U.A.E. with an arms sale for its cooperation with Israel, the type of exchange that Mr. Parsi says some Gulf States view as informal defense pacts that compel U.S. military protection. Jason Pack predicts in Foreign Policy that quite the opposite of being a peace deal, it will only embolden the U.A.E. to escalate its proxy conflicts in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Viewing the deal in this light, Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and an assistant professor at Rutgers University, argues that this is not a peace agreement but rather an accord to join forces to suppress struggles for freedom. She notes that Bahrain, which also stands to benefit militarily from improved relations with the United States and Israel, is a minoritarian monarchy with a brutal record of domestic repression and complicity in the Saudi- and U.A.E.-led bombing of Yemen, which has pushed 10 million Yemenis to the brink of famine. The Bahraini people, still in a struggle for their own freedom, understand the deleterious impact of the U.S.-brokered deal on their lives, she writes. [Related: The War Pact Among Jim Crow States of the Middle East] In The Times, Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, argues that the same can be said for Palestinians. The decision to forgo any preconditions for a Palestinian state was a slap in the face, she writes, and the one ostensible concession that was extracted from Israel a promise not to illegally annex the West Bank was revealed by Mr. Netanyahu to be only temporary. And all the while, Israel has started planning the construction of a road that will allow for the creation of new settlements near the Palestinian city of Ramallah and pass through areas that Mr. Trumps peace plan had designated for a future Palestinian state. For Palestinians, this deal is not, as some have suggested, a reassuring step forward, Ms. Buttu says. Rather, its an indication of how the major parties in earlier peace attempts the U.S., Israel and Arab countries are willing to move ahead with plans that disregard Palestinian rights. Going forward, both she and Mr. Friedman argue that Palestinians will have no choice but to abandon the idea of a two-state solution and to push instead for equal rights within Israel. Its not meaningless, but neither is it a transformative, landmark event. Is it possible that this deal actually isnt very significant? Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, thinks so. The formalization of diplomatic ties between Israel and the U.A.E. is largely symbolic, he says, and wont have much of a material effect on the relationship. And while Arab governments have historically championed the Palestinian cause in name, most of them long ago abandoned it in deed. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) resolutely condemns an illegal ruling by the Southern Military Regional Court of the Russian Federation of September 16 to convict seven Ukrainian citizens in the case of the so-called second Bakhchisarai group Hizb ut-Tahrir. National President of the UCC Alexandra Chyczij said this in a statement posted on the UCC's website. "The draconian sentences handed down today by the Russian 'court' against these political prisoners are an affront to justice and internationally recognized human rights. Canada and the rest of the civilized world must react strongly to the systemic campaign of terror undertaken by the Russian occupying regime against Crimean Tatars and anyone else who opposes Russia's occupation of Crimea," Chyczij said. The UCC added that it "resolutely condemns Russia's escalating, systematic persecution of the Crimean Tatar People." "The UCC calls on Canada and the international community to respond strongly and swiftly to Russia's violations of basic human rights and implement sanctions against the Russian officials responsible," the organization said. The UCC said that the Russian "investigators," "prosecutors," and "judges" and officials responsible for their illegal detention are publicly known. "The UCC calls on the Government of Canada to use Magnitsky legislation more robustly, in the way it was intended, to hold Russian officials to account for their human rights abuses against Ukrainian prisoners being detained illegally in Russia, and to sanction the perpetrators of religious and cultural persecution against Crimean Tatars," the statement reads. In October 2017, Russian security forces arrested six residents of Bakhchisarai. These are Timur Ibragimov, Marlen Asanov, Memet Belyalov, Seyran Saliyev, Server Zekiryayev, and Ernes Ametov. On May 21, 2018, in Crimea, they also detained the coordinator of the Crimean Solidarity movement, Server Mustafayev, and a resident of the village of Dolynne, Bakhchisarai district, Edem Smailov. Russian FSB officers accused them all of participating in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization banned in Russia. On November 15, 2019, the Southern Military Regional Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, began to consider the case on the merits. On September 16, the court sentenced all defendants to long prison terms. op The first Alzheimer's Memory Walk will take place this Sunday, September 20, to mark world Alzheimer's Month 2020. Supporters are asked to walk alone, with family or friends to raise money for the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. The walk can be as long or short, and follow any route, the participant wants. The event is supported by Iceland, and beauty expert Pamela Laird is the event ambassador. The ASI is hoping that 6,000 walkers across Ireland will help it raise 100,000 for vital services that are helping to support people with dementia and their family carers across Ireland through the Covid-19 public health emergency and the aftermath of the lockdown. One of those walkers will be Pamela Laird who is delighted to back the campaign and has shared her family connection with dementia as her father, Sylvester, was diagnosed with dementia in 2016. The Dublin-based entrepreneur has said while the family started noticing changes with her father as far back as 2010, the dementia diagnosis was still very challenging for them all to deal with especially when the Covid-19 lockdown hit forcing the closure of vital face-to-face services. The former Dragons Den and the BBCs Apprentice contestant wants to put a spotlight on dementia during World Alzheimers Month and encourage others to reach out for support like a member of her own family did when they completed The ASIs family carer training course. Pamela will be doing the walk with her mam Yvonne and her chihuahua, Tallulah, and wants others to do the same. "The Alzheimer Society of Ireland does excellent work throughout the country and my family have used their supports to help my dad with his journey with dementia," said Pamela. "They need to keep fundraising to keep their services running. Through my fathers diagnosis of dementia I am all too aware of what so many families go through in Ireland the confusion, the sadness and the isolation. Its at a time like this where we need to remember those suffering alone and get them the support that they desperately need. During Alzheimers Month 2020, I really want to put a spotlight on dementia as it desperately needs our attention. Im really looking forward to taking part in Alzheimers Memory Walk on Sunday, September 20. I would encourage everyone to do the same, its so simple. Go to www.memorywalk.ie for details. Alzheimers Memory Walk is guaranteed to be a feel-good and uplifting occasion and people are being encouraged to plan their own socially-distanced walk solo, with their household or within their community. So, whether thats 5km, 10km or whatever distance people like Its Your Walk, Your Way. There are family-friendly prices 5 for kids and 18 for adults. Participants can share pictures from the day on social media, using the hashtags #ASIMemoryWalk and #LetsWalkTogether The ASI is the national leader in understanding and providing dementia-specific supports and services. With a national network of over 120 specialist services, 900 staff and 300 volunteers, each year they provide almost 900,000 hours of community-based, dementia-specific care throughout Ireland. For more information see www.alzheimer.ie For more information on the ASI's supports and services during this challenging time, please contact The Alzheimer Society of Ireland National Helpline where you can now also book in a 1:1 session with a Dementia Nurse or Dementia Adviser. The Helpline is open six days a week Monday to Friday 10am5pm and Saturday 10am4pm on 1800 341 341. Email at helpline@alzheimer.ie or via Live Chat at www.alzheimer.ie. A fisherman was mauled by a shark off the coast of Fraser Island in Queensland. The man in his 50s was fishing in a boat around 35 kilometres off shore around 3.30pm on Thursday afternoon when he hooked a whitetip shark. When he went to free the animal from his line, he was bitten on the arm. The man's fishing buddies helped free him from the shark's jaws. A fisherman has been attacked by a shark off Fraser Island in Queensland The man in his 50s caught the whitetip shark and was trying to unhook it from his fishing line when it bit his arm on Fraser Island (pictured) The man was brought to shore from Fraser Island and was airlifted to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital The man was then taken to shore and airlifted to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in a stable condition, with significant injuries to his hands. The incident is the latest in a series of recent shark encounters in Australian waters, coming just over a week after 46-year-old surfer Nick Slater was fatally mauled by a great white on the Gold Coast. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said a large tiger shark had been found since Slater's death tangled in a net off Greenmount Beach. His death is only the second fatal shark attack at one of Queensland's 85 beaches that have been protected by nets and drum lines since 1962, the state government said. Longboard rider Nick Slater, 46, was mauled to death by a shark on the Gold Coast last week Footage from a Swellnet surf camera shows Mr Slater sitting in the water at the end of the line-up before the shark grabs him and pulls him under. Water can be seen splashing around before the black silhouette of the shark swims away. Some surfers just metres away seem oblivious to what is happening. Mr Slater is then seen floating face down in the water before fellow board-riders drag him to shore. The bite stretched from his upper thigh to his knee and a tooth from the predator remained lodged in his longboard. Want to manufacture BrahMos so that no country has audacity to cast evil eye on us: Rajnath Singh IAF chopper crash: Rajnath Singh likely to be apprised of probe team's findings in next couple of days Monsoon session: Rajnath Singh to answer Opposition's questions on China today India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Sep 17: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday is expected to address the Opposition's questions in Parliament on situation at India-China border in Ladakh. According to reports, Rajnath Singh will comment on the border row in the upper house Rajya Sabha at 12 pm. Tata Projects Limited to build new parliament building for Rs 861.9 crore On Tuesday, the defence minister made a statement in Lok Sabha where he said that tension at the border was bound to negatively affect bilateral relations between India and China. China had engaged in aggressive behaviour and sought to unilaterally change the status quo at the border, he told the Lower House. Monsoon session: No data on death, injury to people during COVID-19 lockdown, says Centre PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News "The amassing of the troops by China goes against our 1993 and 1996 agreements. Respecting and strictly observing the Line of Actual Control is the basis for peace and tranquillity in the border areas and explicitly recognised in both agreements. While our armed forces abide scrupulously by it, this has not been reciprocated by the Chinese side... In the recent incidents, this year, the violent conduct of Chinese forces has been in complete violation of all mutually agreed norms," Singh said in Lok Sabha. While he accused the Chinese of not honouring the existing border agreements and pacts between the two countries, China on Wednesday claimed that it was committed to maintaining peace. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that the country has been honouring the agreements signed between China and India. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, September 17, 2020, 9:12 [IST] These problems appear to be intrinsic features of for-profit education. Markets only work well when there is a shared understanding of product quality among buyers and sellers. But in education, quality is amorphous and multidimensional. Students agree to pay up front, and only find out whether they got a good deal many years later. As a result, students are highly vulnerable to the opportunism of for-profit colleges, which are inevitably tempted to increase profits by cutting corners. By contrast, community college job training programs substantially increase participants earnings, and because tuition costs are relatively low, they typically provide a good return on public investment. But underfunding and overcrowding mean that the most valuable community college programs are often unavailable to many students. One recent study found that applicants who randomly won a slot in a lottery to attend a nursing program had 44 percent higher earnings four years later. Yet because of budgetary limitations, only one in eight applicants could attend. Separate research showed that when community college funding has increased, the money has generally been spent directly on instruction and academic support for students, boosting graduation rates. As public institutions, community colleges are not always sensitive to market signals. For-profit colleges offer a disproportionate share of short-term training programs for medical and pharmacy technicians and other fields where jobs are relatively plentiful. Companies like Google, IBM, LinkedIn, and Coursera have begun offering online courses in computer programming and data science. For programs like these, the profit motive is a strength, rather than a weakness. Nonetheless, community colleges should be the main place to train Americas workers, because they are mission-oriented and well trusted. They can do so in close partnership with local employers and, yes, private providers. Broward College in Florida offers one promising model. It has built industry certifications into its curriculum, along with internships and other work-based learning opportunities provided by local employers. This program was made possible by the U.S. Department of Labors Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program, which funded the development of thousands of similar efforts as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. A scaled-up version of the career training program, which spent $1.9 billion to fund work-based learning credentials for more than 350,000 students, could stimulate local economies that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. PENSACOLA, Fla. Hurricane Sally lumbered ashore near the Florida-Alabama line Wednesday with 105 mph winds and rain measured in feet, not inches, swamping homes and forcing the rescue of hundreds of people as it pushed inland for what could be a slow and disastrous drenching across the Deep South. Moving at just 3 mph, or about as fast as a person can walk, the storm made landfall at 4:45 a.m. close to Gulf Shores, Alabama, about 30 miles from Pensacola, Florida. It accelerated to a light jog as it battered the Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama, metropolitan areas encompassing nearly 1 million people. It cast boats onto land or sank them at the dock, flattened palm trees, peeled away roofs, blew down signs and knocked out power to more than a 540,000 homes and businesses. A replica of Christopher Columbus' ship the Nina that had been docked at the Pensacola waterfront was missing, police said. Sally tore loose a barge-mounted construction crane, which then smashed into the new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay, causing a section of the year-old span to collapse, authorities said. The storm also ripped away a large section of a fishing pier at Alabamas Gulf State Park on the very day a ribbon-cutting had been scheduled following a $2.4 million renovation. By the afternoon, authorities in Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, said at least 377 people had been rescued from flooded areas. More than 40 people trapped by high water were brought to safety within a single hour, including a family of four found in a tree, Sheriff David Morgan said. Authorities in Pensacola, where Sally turned some streets into white-capped rivers for a time, said 200 National Guard members would arrive Thursday to help. Curfews were announced in Escambia County and in some coastal Alabama towns. By early afternoon, Sally had weakened into a tropical storm, with winds down to 70 mph. Showers still fell in parts of the stricken area Wednesday evening, and the storm was expected to generate heavy rain farther inland Thursday as it moved over Alabama and into Georgia. For much of the day, it moved at just 5 mph, concentrating the rainfall. Morgan estimated thousands will need to flee rising waters in the coming days. Escambia officials urged residents to rely on text messages for contacting family and friends to keep cellphone service open for 911 calls. There are entire communities that were going to have to evacuate, the sheriff said. Its going to be a tremendous operation over the next several days. West of Pensacola, power poles leaned halfway over in Perdido Key, Florida, as Joe Mirable arrived at his real estate business to find the two-story building shattered. Digging through the ruins, Mirable pointed out a binder labeled Hurricane Action Plan. I think the professionals got this one wrong, he said before the wind blew away his hat. More than 2 feet of rain was recorded near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet of water covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service reported. Its not common that you start measuring rainfall in feet, said forecaster David Eversole. Sally was the second hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in less than three weeks and the latest blow in one of the busiest hurricane seasons ever. Forecasters have nearly run through the alphabet of storm names with 2 1/2 months still to go. At the start of the week, Sally was one of a record-tying five storms churning simultaneously in the Atlantic basin. Like the wildfires raging on the West Coast, the onslaught of hurricanes has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing slower, rainier, more powerful and more destructive storms. An emergency crew rescued two people on Dauphin Island, Alabama, after the hurricane ripped the roof off their home and the rest of the house began to crumble. As things started to peel off and fall apart, they got scared and called for assistance, Mayor Jeff Collier said. He said no one was injured. In Orange Beach, Alabama, the wind blew out the walls in one corner of a condominium building, exposing at least five floors, video posted online showed. At least 50 people were rescued from flooded homes and taken to shelters, Mayor Tony Kennon said. We got a few people that we just havent been able to get to because the water is so high, Kennon said. But they are safe in their homes. As soon as the water recedes, we will rescue them. Sallys crawl made it hard to predict where it would strike. Just two days before landfall, the storm was forecast to hit New Orleans 140 miles west of where it came ashore. So Robert Lambrisky and his husband were caught somewhat off guard when the hurricane shook their door before daybreak and forced rainwater inside their home in Sanders Beach near Pensacola. We had some warning, but this was just such a strange storm, Lambrisky said. So all of this preparing that you do, when you know the storm is coming, was something we only half did because we were convinced the storm wasnt going to hit us. Sallys effects were felt all along the northern Gulf Coast. Low-lying properties in southeastern Louisiana were swamped by the surge. Water covered Mississippi beaches and parts of the highway that runs parallel to them. Hurricane Laura pummeled southwestern Louisiana on Aug. 27. Thousands of people were still without power from that storm, and some were still in shelters. Meanwhile, far out in the Atlantic, Teddy became a hurricane Wednesday with winds of 100 mph. Forecasters said it could reach Category 4 strength before closing in on Bermuda, which took a direct hit from Hurricane Paulette only days ago. --The Associated Press Tarek El Moussa and his fiancee Heather Rae Young made another big commitment to each other by buying their first house together in Newport Beach, California. But the 39-year-old Flip Or Flop star and the 33-year-old Selling Sunset fixture still have a lot of work to do on the home, which will need to be totally updated and restored. That because Tarek originally bought the home with the intention of flipping it, only to decide it had the potential to be their dream home, according to People. Dream home: Tarek El Moussa, 39, revealed the inside of the new home that he and his fiancee Heather Rae Young bought. People reported that Tarek originally planned to flip it 'Tarek originally bought it as a flip but then they decided to make it their new home,' a representative for the couple said. On Tuesday, Tarek shared video to his Instagram Stories of him and Heather touring the new house, which the two plan to give a full makeover before moving in. 'Its their first project together!' their rep continued. 'They have a lot they want to do with it and the house needs some work so they are going to continue to live in their current home until the new home is ready.' In his Insta Stories, Tarek said the couple are already meeting with a designer to decide how to proceed with the new property. Blank canvas: On Tuesday, Tarek filmed Heather giving a tour of the bare home, which they plan to renovate before moving in Room to work: 'This is basically the blank slate,' Heather says of the bare home and its all-white kitchen, which led to the living and dining rooms 'This is basically the blank slate,' Heather says of the bare home and its all-white kitchen. The home has a spacious open floor plan, and just off the kitchen are the living room and dining room, along with a staircase up to the second floor. The couple head upstairs to the open roof top, which features gorgeous views of the area and would be perfect for a barbecue or get-together. Tarek calls the open space 'why we fell in love with this house' in his video. 'This is why we love this house: the ocean is right there,' he continues. Although Tarek and Heather didn't seem fazed by it, the sky was filled with a grayish haze from wildfires raging near Los Angeles to the north. Party space: Tarek and Heather loved the large rooftop area, which they planned to install a hot tub in and connected to the master bedroom Perfect view: The couple appreciated the great views of the ocean and Newport Beach, even though the sky was filled with smoke from wildfires burning near LA Throughout the videos, Heather points out things they're already planning to change, like one fire pit that will be removed and another that will be updated, as well as a spot where they plan to install a hot tub. The couple will have prime access to the hot tub thanks to a door going from their master bedroom upstairs to the balcony. While Tarek and Heather work on fixing up their new home, they'll continue to live in their rented house, also located nearby in Newport Beach. They've been living their together since the HGTV star sold off the home he bought with the intention of living with his children following his divorce from his Flip Or Flop costar Christina Anstead. Heather and Tarek met on July 4, 2019, after mutual friends introduced them in Newport Beach, and they got engaged on July 25 this year. Happy couple: Heather and Tarek met on July 4, 2019, after mutual friends introduced them in Newport Beach, and they got engaged on July 25 this year Christina, who previously went by Tarek's last name, separated from Tarek in May 2016 following an incident with Tarek in which he had a gun and police had to be called. The two filed for divorce in 2017 and it was finalized by early 2018. Despite the divorce, the two have remained committed co-parents, and they continue to star on Flip Or Flop together. In late 2017, Christina began dating English TV presenter Ant Anstead, and the couple were married in December 2018. On September 6, 2019, the new couple welcomed their first child together, Hudson London Anstead. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Golden Independence Mining Corp. (CSE: IGLD) ("Golden Independence" or the "Company") announced today the appointment of seasoned explorationist Donald McDowell to the Company's Board of Directors. Mr. McDowell will also serve as Project Manager on the Company's Independence Gold Project located in the Battle Mountain District of Nevada. "Don is a welcome addition to the Golden Independence Board, bringing over 30 years of western US exploration experience focussed largely on Nevada," commented Golden Independence CEO T. Tim Henneberry. "We are focussed on building a strong technical team to realize the full potential of the Independence Gold Property and Don's experience and long-time association with the project will be critical to reaching the goal," he continued. Mr. McDowell is the founding President of America's Gold Exploration, Inc., the Vendor of the Independence Project (see the Company's news release dated August 28, 2020). He has two decades of experience serving in various roles at Santa Fe Pacific Gold, Kennecott and Nippon Mining. Don currently serves as a Director and VP Corporate Development for Timberline Resources Corporation. He has served as founding corporate and technical director for Ecuador Gold and Copper, Inc. and former founding president of Great American Minerals, Inc. In connection with his appointment, Mr. McDowell has been granted 250,000 stock options exercisable into common shares of the Company at an exercise price of $0.46 for five years. About Golden Independence The Company has entered into an option to acquire up to a 75% interest in the Independence Gold Property in the Battle Mountain District of Nevada. Golden Independence's flagship property lies 800 metres to the south west of Nevada Gold Mines (Newmont / Barrick JV) Phoenix / Fortitude operation. The Independence Gold Project has a long exploration history with over US$25 million in expenditures, culminating in a 2010 historic resource estimate. Post resource exploration by the property vendor has extended the known mineralization to the north and also at depth and also identified additional resource potential by reinterpretation of the drill database. There are three areas of mineralization at Independence: shallow oxide mineralization associated with a brittle chert horizon, expandable to the north and at depth; a deeper sulfide mineralization beneath the oxides where recent exploration has also significant gold mineralization within the faults feeding the brittle chert horizon and deep gold skarn, the typical Carlin mineralization. The property is fully permitted for a 160 drill holes from 80 drill pads and lies within the current Phoenix / Fortitude Plan of Operations. Golden Independence plans an aggressive exploration program to both bring the historic estimate to a current resource and expand it. Qualified Person R. Timothy Henneberry, a Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects has approved the technical and scientific information in this press release. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: R. Tim Henneberry, Chief Executive Officer, 66 Resources Corp. Telephone: 1.604.569.1955 Email: tim@mammothgeological.com Forward Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation) that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information includes statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, and include, without limitation, statements relating to plans and results of exploration and the magnitude and quality of the Independence Property. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information in this news release, including without limitation, the following risks and uncertainties;; (i) risks inherent in the mining industry; (ii) regulatory and environmental risks; (iii) results of exploration activities and development of mineral properties and the risk that such results cause 66 Resources to elect to terminate the Option Agreement; (i) risks relating to the estimation of mineral resources; (v) stock market volatility and capital market fluctuations; and (vi) general market and industry conditions. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. This forward-looking information is based on estimates and opinions of management on the date hereof and is expressly qualified by this notice. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the Company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada at www.sedar.com. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such information unless required by applicable law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64020 By Express News Service KOCHI: A 30-year-old suspect, who was remanded in judicial custody in a case related to the repeated sexual abuse of a minor girl at Kuttampuzha and being treated for Covid-19 in the First-Line Treatment Centre at Nedumbassery, hoodwinked the police and escaped after stealing the mobile phone of a nurse on Tuesday. Muthuramakrishnan of Mamalakandam near Kuttampuzha was arrested on charges of sexually abusing the minor girl, who was her neighbour. According to the police, the suspect had abused the girl multiple times in 2019. Following a complaint lodged by the victims relatives, he was arrested by the Kuttampuzha police under relevant sections of Pocso Act on September 9. He was later sent to the FLTC at Nedumbassery for conducting the Covid test after remanding him in judicial custody. He tested positive later. Following this, he was undergoing treatment while serving the judicial custody at the centre.The authorities noticed that Muthuramakrishnan had been missing since 4pm on Tuesday. After conducting searches on the FLTC premises, the health authorities reported the matter to the Nedumbassery police. Later, it was found that a mobile phone of a nurse deputed to the centre was missing. Though the centre is under the control of health authorities, it is under the surveillance of police, leading to criticism from various corners that the suspects escape was a serious security lapse. Though police officials are deployed at the convention centre where four other accused are also lodged, their accommodation is arranged about 250 metres away to keep social distancing. P M Byju, Inspector of Nedumbassery police station, said the hunt has been intensified to trace the suspect. According to the police, several suspects have been admitted to FLTCs after testing positive for Covid-19 and undergoing treatment. Its the first time an accused, who had tested positive, escaped from a treatment centre after committing a theft. The Nedumbassery polices investigation is under way, said an officer. Though Muthuramakrishnan is a habitual offender, he had no previous police records against him. Local residents had complained about his involvement in anti-social activities earlier too, but he was arrested for the first time in a major criminal case, said an officer. Muthuramakrishnan, a daily wage labourer, is married and have children, said the police. The suspect, who has long hair, was clad in a saffron dhoti and red shirt while escaping from the FLTC.The accused is residing in a tribal hamlet at Mamalakandam near Adimali. He hailed an autorickshaw and went to Kothamangalam. From there, he is believed to have gone to Adimali. Though the police searched the area in the night itself, he could not be traced. Victoria's top cop when COVID-19 hit our shores was told Premier Daniel Andrews' office ordered private security to be used at quarantine hotels instead of police. In bombshell text messages exchanged between former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton and Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Reece Kershaw, it was revealed the order had come from the premier's office itself. The exchange took place on March 27 - days before the hotel quarantining of returned travellers began - where Mr Kershaw expresses surprise upon learning of the decision. former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton takes on oath on the bible to tell the truth at Thursday's inquiry into Victoria's disastrous hotel quarantine program Former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton text messages his federal colleague advising that the order to use private security came from the premier's office Private security has been accused of bungling the hotel quarantine operation and causing Victoria's deadly second wave of COVID-19 'Why wouldn't (Australian Federal Police) Guard people At the hotel?' he asked Mr Ashton. 'Mate my advice is ADF will do Passenger transfer and private security will be used,' Mr Ashton responded six minutes later. 'Ok, that's new,' came the response from Mr Kershaw. 'I think that's the deal set up by our DPC. I understand NSW will be a different arrangement,' Mr Ashton replied. Just moments before the text exchange, Mr Ashton had texted Premier Daniel Andrews' top bureaucrat Chris Eccles. Mr Eccles was appointed secretary of the DPC in December 2014 and leads the Victorian public service in advising the premier and the entire government of Victoria. 'Chris I am getting word from Canberra for a plan whereby arrivals from overseas are to be subjected to enforced isolation from tomorrow,' Mr Ashton texted him. 'The suggestion is Victorian arrivals are conveyed to a hotel Somewhere where they are guarded by police for 14 days. Are you aware of anything in this regard?? Graham.' Mr Ashton claims Mr Eccles did not respond and he cannot recall whether Mr Eccles or some other person telephoned him with the information regarding the use of private security before he texted Mr Kershaw. Mr Eccles, who will give evidence next week, has given a statement to the inquiry declaring he also cannot recall if he spoke to Mr Ashton at that time of the texts and that 'he didn't himself know about an arrangement about private security ... so he couldn't have been the source of the information'. Quarantine breaches involving private security guards seeded 99 per cent of Victoria's deadly second wave of COVID infections, which in turn has led to more than 700 deaths of the elderly. After more than three weeks of sitting, the inquiry has heard not a single person can identify who made the decision to hire the private security guards. Former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton texts Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Reece Kershaw An email from Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent where he states he was contacted by the premier's office about the use of private security Earlier, two of the bureaucrats tasked with leading Victoria's response to the COVID-19 pandemic claimed they were not involved in placing private security guards at quarantine hotels. Mr Ashton claimed he could not remember who it was that told him about the supposed plan from the premier's office. 'I now do not recall from whom I received the advice to which I referred in the first text ... I have reviewed the text messages and WhatsApp messages I received at around that time, and none include that information. I have also reviewed the available records for my mobile telephone, which do not disclose the incoming calls that I received on that day,' he told the inquiry. Mr Ashton further asserted that he had no issue with private security being used at the hotels. 'It wasn't my decision, but I supported that position because it made sense at the time,' Mr Ashton said. In a day of drama, the inquiry further heard that Mr Ashton's then underling, the now current Chief Commissioner Shane Patton, had made a note stating Australia Defence Force personnel had been made available to serve in Victorian quarantine hotels before the program began. Notes of his diary were revealed on Thursday during the ongoing inquiry into the disastrous hotel program. The inquiry was shown a note made by Mr Patton during a meeting in the days before the quarantine program started on March 29. The handwritten note states 'ADF available r.e hotels static guarding of those sites.' Chief Commissioner Shane Patton takes the bible during the inquiry on Thursday. He too does not know who made the decision to use private security at hotels A diary note from Mr Patton on March 27 where he notes the use of ADF personnel was available Mr Patton noted ADF wanted a visible role in Melbourne On Wednesday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews continued to stand by his earlier claims that Victoria was not offered ADF assistance with hotel quarantine. Despite making the note, Mr Patton told the inquiry he had no recollection of making it. The inquiry was further shown an email from Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent on March 28 further discussing the possible use of ADF personnel. The inquiry has heard the deadly virus leaked out of the hotels after a series of breaches by security firms. Mr Patton added to the mystery, declaring he too was unaware of who made the decision, but had been made aware none-the-less that the decision had been made. 'DC Nugent refers to having received a telephone call from a DPC representative in the evening on 27 March 2020,' Mr Patton stated. 'DC Nugent has recently informed me that he took this call while he was at home and that he is now not sure of the identity of the person who called him or whether that person was in fact from the DPC or another government department.' The respected police officer told the inquiry to his knowledge it was the first time private security guards had ever been used in Victoria to detain people against their wishes. Premier Daniel Andrews continues to claim he was not offered assistance from the ADF with his bungled hotel quarantine scheme Last week the inquiry was shown shocking photos of quarantine guests walking freely to a convenience store from a Melbourne facility Earlier, two former state controllers in the COVID-19 pandemic, Jason Helps and Andrea Spiteri, both claimed they had no role in deciding on the employment of the private security firms. It also hear that on March 29 a Department of Jobs executive had made an urgent request for Victoria Police to be stationed in hotels on the first night of hotel quarantine. Mr Patton, who was not chief commissioner at the time, told the inquiry he did not receive the request for a 24/7 police presence until July. 'I never received any request,' he said. 'Had any such request been funnelled to us through an official channel ... we would have dealt with it and engaged and risk assessed.' Mr Patton revealed police were now working as security at two Melbourne hotels currently housing infected Melburnians. The inquiry continues. Democratic candidates are leading in the race for president, senate and governor in the key battleground state of North Carolina, a new Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network Poll shows. The state, with its 15 electoral votes, is important for both President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden as they court voters ahead of Election Day. Voters in the state said the top three issues facing the next president are jobs (20.6%), COVID-19 (20.20%) and racism (13.6%), according to the survey of 500 North Carolina registered voters on cell phones and landlines this past Friday through Monday. These voters said they plan to vote in this election. The margin of error is 4.4%. The survey also says more than 42% of likely North Carolina voters would refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine if one were mandated by the federal government. Election 2020: When early voting and mail voting for president begins in every state It also found: Significant numbers plan to vote for minor-party candidates, suggesting that the Libertarian, Constitution and Green parties could influence the outcomes. Half of Republican voters are excited to vote this year, while a third are voting because they are alarmed. Meanwhile, only about a third of Democrats are excited to vote, while half of them voting from a position of alarm. 20.2% plan to vote by mail vs. 4.2% in 2016 who voted by mail). This comes as people seek to avoid the coronavirus. Another 39.4% plan to vote in person on Election Day (vs. 33.4% in 2016), and 37.6% plan to vote in-person during the early voting period (vs. 61.8% in 2016). Boxes for illegal and legal vote-by-mail ballots are shown as the the Miami-Dade County canvassing board meets to verify signatures on vote-by-mail ballots for the Aug. 18 primary election at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department in Doral, Fla. on July 30, 2020. The survey shows relatively strong support for minor party candidates that could decide who wins the races for U.S. Senate and president in this state, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. These candidates take votes that otherwise might go to the Democratic and Republican candidates. Libertarian is the key choice, that was the other takeaway from the poll, Paleologos said, noting that the Libertarian Partys U.S. Senate candidate was chosen by nearly 6% of the voters surveyed. More than 5% of those surveyed picked third-party candidates for president. Story continues Libertarian and other minor-party candidates kept the winners below 50% in North Carolina in 2014s U.S. Senate race and in the states elections for president and governor in 2016. For example, in 2014 Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis won his first Senate election with 48.82% of the vote while Libertarian Sean Haugh was marked on 3.74% of the ballots. Minor party candidates received 4% of North Carolinas votes for president in 2016. More: NC is Ground zero in 2020 election: Breaking down state's top races COVID vaccine The survey found mixed opinions about a vaccine for the coronavirus. It says 71.6% would take it 20.6% as soon as they could, and 51% after other people took it first. Meanwhile, 24% said they would not get the vaccine, and 4.4% were undecided. A Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network Poll found that 42% of North Carolina voters would reject a COVID-19 vaccine. The numbers change if the government would require people to take the drug. In that case, 48.8% said they would, 42.2% said they would not. The rest were undecided or refused to say. Most of the four-day survey was conducted prior to Democratic candidate Cal Cunninghams comment on Monday evening that he would be hesitant to take the vaccine. Cunningham said because he fears political corruption in Washington could affect whether the vaccine is approved before its proven to be safe and effective. His opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis, said he trusts the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) vetting process and he would take the vaccine after people who need it more than he does, such as medical care personnel and people with underlying health conditions, get it first. More: As Trump crisscrosses North Carolina, where are the Democrats? Presidential race The survey has Biden ahead in North Carolina, but his lead is within the poll's 4.4% margin of error, Paleologos said. Biden led Trump 46.2% to 42.80%. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen drew 4.8%. Other candidates attracted 0.6%. Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 46.2% to 42.80% in a new poll in North Carolina. Another 4.2% of the voters were undecided and 1.4% wouldnt say who they plan to vote for. When asked about Trumps performance as president, 42.8% of the voters said they approve, while 53.4% disapproved. The voters assessment of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic was 37% positive, 61.6% negative. Bidens favorability rating was 48% favorable, 45.8% unfavorable. Trumps was 40.8% favorable, 54.2% unfavorable. U.S. Senate race Democrat Cunningham was ahead of Republican Tillis but 11% of the voters remain undecided, Paleologos said. The findings: 41.6% picked Cunningham, 37.8% picked Tillis, 5.8% picked Libertarian Shannon Bray, 1.6% picked Constitution Party candidate Kevin E. Hayes, and 1.8% picked someone else. Governor Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is so far ahead of Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest in the governors race that he is most likely to win, Paleologos said. Cooper led Forest 50.40% to 38%. Libertarian Stephen DiFiore II drew 4.6% and Constitution Party candidate Al Pisano attracted 0.6%. Another 5.80% said they were undecided, and 0.20% picked someone else. Voter excitement Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed said they are excited about voting this year, while 44.4% said they are voting because they are alarmed. The survey suggests that a persons political party may correlate to how they feel about voting, with 35% of Democrats saying they are excited about voting, while 53% feel alarmed. Meanwhile, 50% of Republicans said they were excited, and 34% said they were alarmed. Among voters picking Trump for president, 49% reported being excited, while 34% were alarmed. At the same time, 33% of Biden supporters said they are excited, while 53% said they are alarmed. Biden has a challenge, Paleologos said, in getting voters energized to vote for him vs. voting because they dont like the president. Key issues Republicans prioritized jobs and the economy (33%) over COVID-19 (7%), while Democrats prioritized COVID-19 (32%) over the economy (10%). Other findings: 60.2%, said the country is on the wrong track; 27.6% said its on the right track. 38.2% said the North Carolina economy is in good to excellent condition, while 60.4% said its in fair to poor shape. 52.8% of the voters said they are better off than they were four years ago, while 28.4% said they were worse off and 17.4% said they saw no difference. Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com or 910-261-4710. This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: North Carolina poll: Joe Biden, Cal Cunningham lead in crucial swing state The Civil Society Organisations Platform for Good Governance (CSOPGG) has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to ensure free, fair and transparent elections in December. According to CSOPGG Ghana, since the beginning of the 4th Republic, the country had witnessed peaceful elections and transfer of power from one political party to another and, therefore, this year's elections should follow the same trajectory. CoronaLife Web Series This was made known by the Executive Director of Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), who is a member of the CSOPGG, Alhaji Osman Abdul-Rahman, in Tamale last Tuesday to mark the International Day of Democracy. Safeguarding our democracy Alhaji Abdul-Rahman indicated that the democracy of Ghana should be safeguarded because it was the best form of government that could lead to sustainable development and allow maximum participation in the governance process. According to him, political actors must learn from the mistakes and successes of the past elections and make the upcoming December elections more successful. "As a nation, let us do everything in our power to maintain the enviable reputation we have so far established as one of the leading countries whose democratic development is a shining example for others," he said. Vigilantism/electoral violence Alhaji Abdul-Rahman said ills such as vigilantism and electoral violence, if not checked, could have a negative impact on the countrys electoral process and put our democracy in jeopardy. Also, he said the widespread use of social media was problematic for our political discourse and democratic dispensation. "The increasing use of virtual space and electronic medium of communication has also heightened the threat of widespread use of fake news, insulting language, as well as dirty propaganda in election campaigns and political discourse," he said. Alhaji Abdul-Rahman, therefore, called on the media to uphold maximum journalistic standards, values and ethics in the reportage of electoral processes and activities to avoid the threats that came from fake news. He also called on the government to ensure that there was adequate peace and security, and to also ensure a level playground for all contesting political parties before and during the 2020 general elections. "The security agencies, especially the National Election Security Task Force (NESTF), has a special duty to ensure that the nation goes through the 2020 elections and comes out of it in peace and tranquility for greater national unity, he added. Constitutional amendment For his part, the President of CSOPGG, Alhaji Mohammed Awal, said there was the need for the amendment of some clauses of Ghana's 1992 Constitution. We cannot have a Constitution that says that power resides in the people, while the same Constitution again takes power away from the people and gives it to a privileged few," he added. He stressed the importance of decentralisation and called for an amendment to the Constitution for proper decentralisation to propel growth and development at the local level. "We can't work with a Constitution that will allow a person sit in Accra and determine what should happen in Sagnarigu. We can't work with a Constitution that gives an individual the power to decide who stays in what position," he said. 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 Jet Aviation has acquired Arlins FBO operations located at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in Montana, USA. The Bozeman FBO, which will operate as Jet Aviation Bozeman, has been providing ground handling services since 1979, including fueling, de-icing, hangarage and office space. With the acquisition, Jet Aviation acquires all assets of the FBO operation, in addition to its employees. ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Arlins FBO in Bozeman is a most welcome addition to our FBO network, said David Best, senior vice president and general manager for Jet Aviation in the Americas. As the gateway to Yellowstone National Park and in close proximity to the Yellowstone Club and Big Sky Resort, Bozeman is Montanas busiest airport and a key destination for our aircraft management and charter customers. We also look forward to welcoming Arlins employees to the Jet Aviation family. Like us, the Arlins team has established its well-respected brand through exceptional customer service for more than 40 years. Through our common values, strong capabilities and commitment to safety and customer satisfaction, we will continue to exceed our customers expectations, together. Acquisition of the Arlins Aircraft Service FBO represents an exciting strategic expansion for Jet Aviation that extends our presence to the Northwest and strengthens our global customer offering, said David Paddock, president of Jet Aviation. Our goal is to remain the partner of choice for customers and employees worldwide, and we will continue to actively explore opportunities and acquisitions that complement our portfolio and long-term vision for the company. Jet Aviation, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics, was founded in Switzerland in 1967 and is one of the leading business aviation services companies in the world. Nearly 4,000 employees cater to client needs from some 50 facilities throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and the Caribbean. The company provides maintenance, completions and refurbishment, engineering, FBO and fuel services, along with aircraft management, charter services and personnel services. Jet Aviations European and U.S. aircraft management and charter divisions jointly manage a fleet of some 300 aircraft. Prosecutors will not appeal a decision to quash the manslaughter conviction of a rapper who left the daughter of Holby City actor John Michie for dead. Drug-dealer Ceon Broughton, 31, supplied Mr Michie's daughter Louella Fletcher-Michie with the hallucinogenic 2-CP at Bestival in Dorset but was released from prison on August 18 after his eight-year sentence was overturned. Judges at the High Court had quashed the sentence and said that there should not be a retrial for manslaughter over the death. Today, Karen Harrold, Head of the Appeal & Review Unit at the CPS, said: 'After careful consideration of the Court of Appeal judgment in the Ceon Broughton case, the CPS is not taking the matter further. 'The Court of Appeal's judgment concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove with certainty that the defendant's failure to call for medical assistance resulted in the death of Ms Fletcher Michie. 'The police and prosecution built the strongest case they could, which included an expert medical witness who said it was significantly likely that with medical intervention Ms Fletcher-Michie would have survived. 'However, the appeal judgment makes it clear that it must be proven with certainty that it was a lack of medical intervention which was the cause of death, and sadly there is no further evidence available to provide the necessary certainty in this case. Prosecutors will not appeal a decision to quash the manslaughter conviction of a rapper who left the daughter of Holby City actor John Michie for dead Broughton (left, pictured in February 2019) had his conviction overturned for the manslaughter of Miss Fletcher-Michie (right), who died after taking the drug 2C-P at Bestival 'We have met with the family of Ms Fletcher-Michie to explain this decision in full and our thoughts remain with them at this difficult time.' A source told The Sun: 'This is just another hammerblow to the family. They were left stunned at the decision to quash the conviction and now this.' Timeline of the police probe into Louella Fletcher-Michie's death September 11, 2017: Louella Fletcher-Michie was found dead in a wooded area at Bestival at about 1am September 13, 2017: Ceon Broughton is arrested on suspicion of her murder and supplying a class A drug before being released under investigation February 23, 2018: Broughton is rearrested on suspicion of her manslaughter March 23, 2018: Broughton appears for the first time over the charge at Poole Magistrates' Court July 26, 2018: Broughton pleads not guilty to manslaughter at Winchester Crown Court February 4, 2019: Broughton's trial begins at Winchester Crown Court February 28, 2019: Trial jury begin their deliberations and find him guilty later that day March 1, 2019: Broughton is jailed for eight-and-a-half years August 18. 2019: Court of Appeal overturns Broughton's conviction and he walks free from prison Advertisement 'It's a horrific situation for them.' Broughton had walked free after a Court of Appeal judge ruled prosecutors failed to prove she could have lived if he had called for help. The ruling was a described as a 'kick in the teeth' which had added to Louella's family's continued agony over her death. A family source previously told MailOnline: 'To say the family is devastated is an understatement. It's been difficult enough coming to terms with Louella's loss and now she's been denied justice. 'The justice system has let her and the family down. This decision is a kick in the teeth which has just added to our pain. It's wrong and doesn't make sense.' Broughton was originally convicted after he shot harrowing footage of his younger girlfriend overdosing on his mobile phone for six hours, as she screamed 'this ain't acid. I was not expecting this'. The videos appalled former Taggart star Mr Michie and wife Carol, who had welcomed Broughton into their home and thought he was innocent in the hours after Louella's death in September 2017. He was so trusted he had even spent Christmas at the Michies' 1.2 million house in North London, worked with Louella's brother Sam and had been a guest at Mr Michie's 60th birthday dinner. But in court the hostility between them was laid bare, with Mr Michie staring him down as he spoke from the witness box. In heartbreaking evidence, he had declared 'I think Louella loved Ceon. I'm not sure he loved her. I don't know how you could ever say you loved someone if you left them to die in front of you'. Later they unexpectedly met outside court proceedings and the father had told him 'you're evil, evil', sparking Broughton into a rage where he threw a coffee table across a room and attacked a water cooler. Jurors at the 2019 Winchester Crown Court trial had sobbed as they viewed footage of Louella's distress as the effects of the drug showed her at one point trying to eat thorns. Clips showed musician Broughton turn his iPhone on himself at one point to show him smiling and playing with a fidget spinner toy and also plugging his hoodie brand. Louella was a keen festival goer and was at Bestival when she overdosed. Her boyfriend shot harrowing footage of his younger girlfriend overdosing on his mobile phone for six hours, as she screamed 'this ain't acid. I was not expecting this' Broughton was so trusted by the Michie family he was invited to their family Christmas as well as John's 60th birthday Broughton in one of the videos he shot while Louella was overdosing in front of him During one 50-minute video Louella had yelled: 'Make sure you're filming this. Put a camera on me now. You better be f****** recording Ceon. Don't f****** put this on YouTube.' She had also repeatedly shouted for him to call her mum and when they were phoned the sound of their daughter overdosing was so harrowing they jumped in their car to carry out the 130-mile drive from London to the festival site in Lulworth Castle in Dorset. They tragically arrived too late to find her alive. By 10.41pm that night footage showed Broughton holding Louella's severely scratched hand, with a still image taken by him at 11.24pm appearing to show her lifeless at his feet. But Broughton's conviction was overturned after his barrister said prosecutors had 'failed to prove' that she would have survived had she received treatment by a certain point - the key point of the original case against him. After the appeal hearing Broughton's lawyers said he remained 'devastated' by Louella's death. In a statement, they said: 'The Court of Appeal has today found that Louella's death occurred not as a result of criminal negligence but was instead a tragic accident. 'Ceon remains devastated by her death. 'He has always wished that he could have done more to save her. 'He loved Louella and she him, but he knows that no words will ever be sufficient to convey his sense of responsibility for what happened or to begin to remove the pain that others have been caused.' Ms Fletcher-Michie was found dead in woods at the edge of the festival site at Lulworth Castle on the morning of her 25th birthday on September 11, 2017. Footage of Louella and Broughton at Bestival joking around the day before she took the drug that would kill her Broughton, who raps under the stage name CEONRPG, was convicted in March 2019 of manslaughter by gross negligence and jailed for eight years and six months. Jurors were told that instead of phoning 999, Broughton stayed in the secluded wooded area with Louella. Prosecutors claimed he avoided going for help because he 'didn't want to be arrested' while on a suspended sentence. A medical centre was nearby to the area where they were sitting. But at the High Court in London today, Lord Burnett quashed the conviction, saying: 'In our view, this is one of those rare cases where the expert evidence was all that the jury had to assist them in answering the question on causation. 'That expert evidence was not capable of establishing causation to the criminal standard. 'Miss Darlow's final submission that at 9.10pm Louella was deprived of a 90 per cent chance of survival was an accurate reflection of Professor Deakin's evidence but, for the reasons we have explained, that is not enough. 'Put another way, if an operation carried a personal 10% risk of mortality, both patient and clinicians would be able confidently to say that the chances of survival were very high or very good but none could be sure. 2-CP: The drug said to have the hallucinogenic properties of LSD with the stimulant effects of ecstasy 2-CP is said to have the hallucinogenic properties of LSD combined with the stimulant effects of ecstasy. But users have reported that its effects can be intense and uncontrollable. Broughton's barrister Stephen Kamlish QC quoted a report on 2-CP in which one user described taking it as 'physically and psychologically draining'. But Mr Kamlish told the jury that 'no-one has ever been known to die from taking this drug (2-CP) or taking an overdose'. After taking the drug, Miss Fletcher-Michie became disturbed, agitated and seriously ill, groaning, scratching her flesh and attempting to eat thorns. Professor Charles Deakin, a consultant in cardiac anaesthesia and intensive care, said the footage showed she was 'not aware of her surroundings' and became 'seriously unwell and in need of urgent medical care'. Prof Deakin said sedative drugs, breathing support and monitoring of blood pressure could have been used to treat Miss Fletcher-Michie at the scene. But Broughton, who later admitted to her brother Sam that he had 'bumped up' the dose, did nothing to help her and she was found dead by a steward in woodland just 400 yards from the hospital tent. The trial heard that Broughton supplied the drug to her after her own 'pills' had been confiscated by Bestival stewards. The Talk To Frank drugs awareness website states that the 2C family of drugs can make you 'energised and alert, extra aware of colours, sounds and smells and very sensitive to touch and sexually aroused'. But it warns: 'The more you take, the more intense and uncontrollable the experience will be.' Advertisement 'In respectful disagreement with the judge, we conclude that the appellant's main argument, that the case should have been withdrawn from the jury, is established. 'Applying the Galbraith test, taken at its highest, the evidence adduced by the prosecution was incapable of proving causation to the criminal standard of proof. The appeal against conviction for manslaughter must be allowed.' At the appeal hearing, Broughton's barrister Stephen Kamlish QC argued the conviction was unsafe because prosecutors had 'failed to prove' that Miss Fletcher-Michie would have survived had she received treatment by a certain point. He also argued Broughton's sentence was 'excessive' in any event. Mr Kamlish QC told the Court of Appeal: 'The Crown cannot prove, now or at trial, that she would have lived had she been treated. 'What the Crown are arguing now is that by depriving the deceased of the chance of surviving via medical treatment she would have lived but that also means she might or might not have lived. 'That is hardly the correct text on which the Crown can prove causation. The appellant was trying to get help. So he cannot be described as criminally grossly negligent.' He said Broughton had felt unable to leave Ms Fletcher-Michie alone in the woods while she was suffering a 'bad trip', and he had not realised she was at risk of death. Mr Kamlish added: 'So in our submission when one looks at the learned judge's direction as to the ease or difficulty of obtaining help, if Louella could walk by herself it was difficult.' He said Professor Charles Deakin addressed whether medical intervention could have helped at trial while other experts focused on the cause of death. Mr Kamlish said the prosecution evidence did not prove causation against the defendant. In her final moments captured on camera, Miss Fletcher-Michie said: 'My mum and dad, my brother and sister, I love you lot.' Her mother, Carol Fletcher-Michie, said she 'dropped everything' and travelled with her husband to the festival site after making contact with Broughton and hearing her daughter in the background. Broughton, from Enfield, North London denied but was convicted by the jury of manslaughter and supplying class A drugs. His conviction for manslaughter was quashed. He did not appeal his conviction for supplying class A drugs. Broughton previously admitted supplying drugs to Miss Fletcher-Michie at Glastonbury festival, in June 2017, and was in breach of a suspended prison sentence imposed for possessing a lock knife and a Stanley knife blade. Prosecutors told jurors during his trial that Broughton failed to take 'reasonable' steps to seek medical help for Miss Fletcher-Michie. Harrowing footage shown to the court showed videos he had shot of her as she was under the influence of the drug. The first was timed at 5.53pm, with the 50-minute clip showing Louella wildly hallucinating. 'This is the best trip I've ever f***ing had,' she repeatedly told the camera. 'I'm seeing colourful taxis Magical monkey riding the forest.' Later she was seen shouting 'This is the happiest I've ever been. This is mad. I'm so happy, the best day of my life. I've taken acid before. This ain't acid. I was not expecting this.' Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, Mr Justice Sweeney and Mr Justice Murray gave their ruling on August 18. San Antonio tech entrepreneur Graham Weston is spearheading the private funding of a faster way to conduct and process testing for the coronavirus, with plans to demonstrate it with regular testing of all students and employees of a rural Southwest Bexar County school system. Somerset Independent School District will play host to a pilot program that backers hope will establish mass testing as a cheap, fast and accurate way for all kinds of organizations, not just schools, to detect the virus and slow its spread by allowing a fast response to new cases. Express-News file photo The new nonprofit, called Community Labs, had planned a Friday announcement. It issued a news release late Wednesday after learning the Express-News was preparing a story based on sources with knowledge of the effort, including elected officials who toured the lab where large-scale testing machinery is already in place. Community Labs said it could process 600 tests a day and quickly scale to up to 12,000 a day. Several sources briefed on its plans said they understood the test was awaiting FDA approval, but the method, called a Thermo Fisher Scientific test, is already developed and in use, having received emergency authoritzation from the agency last March, the nonprofit said in a subsequent statement early Thursday. The Thermo Fisher Scientific test is not being modified or altered for use by Community Labs. What IS innovative is how the test will be used to test asymptomatic populations to prevent the spread of the virus, the statement said. TOM REEL /San Antonio Express-News Community Labs said it has solved several supply chain issues to keep costs low and make it widely available at a relatively inexpensive $35 per test. Until now, testing for asymptomatic carriers was not available, as testing facilities across the country have focused on symptomatic carriers of COVID-19, Weston said, according to Wednesdays release. We want to help make San Antonio the safest city in America through our assurance testing strategy. We also hope to inspire other cities to set up their own labs and will freely share our process and lessons learned with those who ask. Community Labs is operated by the nonprofit BioBridge Global, with critical collaboration from UT Health San Antonio, the release said, and is located at BioBridges campus on Interstate 10. Weston, the founder of Rackspace Hosting Inc., did not respond to an interview request. Neither did two men who have been helping him raise money for Community Labs, banker J. Bruce Bugg Jr. and lawyer J. Tullos Wells, managing director of the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. Community Labs said it was a collaborative effort by the three, with Weston the nonprofits chairman and Bugg and Wells serving as vice chairmen. It said Westons 80/20 Foundation, the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation and the Tobin Endowment have contributed a total of $2.5 million to start it. Saul Hinojosa, the Somerset ISD superintendent, declined Wednesday to discuss the project or its timing. The district had 4,156 students enrolled in its seven schools in 2019, nearly 90 percent of them Hispanic and 83.5 percent economically disadvantaged, according to Texas Education Agency data. Weston is looking to raise about $10 million for the testing initiative, enlisting Bugg and Wells to help raise the capital, and has put in a sizable contribution himself, one source said. Graham is raising money and, at the same time, trying to find customers, the person said. Theyve been pitching this up and down Main Street. Mark Larson, a founder of the KIPP charter school network who until recently was running a nonprofit educational consultancy in San Antonio, confirmed he had worked on Westons project but said he was no longer involved. Larson briefed San Antonio City Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia last week about the impending test run at Somerset, she said. Larson and Weston showed off the new testing equipment to other officials Sept. 8. Its a whole floor almost. Its a huge place, said Bexar County Commissioner Sergio Chico Rodriguez, who was joined on the tour by Hinojosa, the school superintendent, Somerset Mayor Lydia Hernandez and fellow Commissioner Kevin Wolff. They have a total different way of testing. How they test our kids, its right at the beginning of the nose. They dont go inside your nose, Rodriguez said. The pilot program would test Somerset students and teachers twice a week, he said. This is still pretty far from baked, Wolff cautioned. Their claim right now is they can do thousands with a less than 24-hour turnaround and on top of that do it far cheaper than the private sector is doing it. Wolff said he verbally summed up the plan testing school kids as they arrive and getting results fast enough to allow Somerset and eventually other school districts to respond quickly to a positive case and Graham said, Yeah, pretty much. The test holds the promise of fast results from any sort of high volume, dense population locations including jails and businesses, Wolff said. Think of your normal cotton swab that you buy off the shelf at CVS. Its short, Wolff said. Its done with existing mass inventory of supplies thats a combination of cotton swabs and blood vial tubes. BioBridge Global is a San Antonio-based nonprofit with about 600 employees that operates several biotechnology companies. It was founded in the early 1970s as a blood bank but has grown to provide other medical products and services. Besides the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center, the local blood bank that provides blood products to area hospitals, it also oversees QualTex Laboratories, a large testing facility, and GenCure, which collects tissue, bone marrow and stem cells. Those ventures are supported by the Blood and Tissue Center Foundation, which raises funds on behalf of the company's subsidiaries. Weston has put millions of dollars into the coronavirus testing project, Wolff said. The machinery is intricate and expensive, and then to daisy chain them into an assembly line production, its a big capital investment, he said. After Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Weston and Bugg to his Strike Force to Open Texas in April, Weston immersed himself in the details of rapid COVID-19 testing, seeing it as a means to safely return homebound employees to the workplace, a source said. Weston also closely followed the work of several East Coast think tanks that promoted the idea of rapid testing at work, and San Antonio was a place where he could put theory into practice, the source said. Staff Writer Lauren Caruba contributed to this report. Andres Picon is a staff writer covering San Antonio education. To read more from Andres, become a subscriber. andy.picon@hearst.com | Twitter: @andpicon A senior official in Gov. Phil Murphys office will leave the administration next month, NJ Advance Media has learned. Matt Platkin, the governors chief counsel and among Murphys earliest supporters prior to his gubernatorial campaign, will leave next month after serving in the role for nearly three years. Platkin will take a job as partner at the politically-connected firm Lowenstein Sandler LLP. I love the guy personally and professionally, Murphy told NJ Advance Media. I think hes just an incredible talent and an incredible human being, Murphy said. He may be moving out of government but I expect to be standing side by side with him for a long time. Platkin, 33, born in Livingston and a resident of Montclair, joined Murphys team more than a year before he officially kicked off his gubernatorial run and at a time when the Democrat had a small group of advisers. Hes leaving the administration after having a hand in crafting policies the governor would run on and later advocate for as the states chief executive. Platkin was working at a New York-based law firm when the two were connected through mutual friends. The policies they championed included a $15 minimum wage for New Jerseyans. Murphy signed the landmark legislation early last year to raise the rate across the state to $15 an hour by 2024. I still have a signed copy in my desk, Platkin said. It was a really proud moment for me." He also headed efforts to create the first of its kind multi-state gun coalition designed to crack down on the flow of illegal firearms crossing state lines in the wake of the Parkland shooting in Florida. He recently led the process in which Murphy nominated Fabiana Pierre Louis to become the states first Black woman to the New Jersey Supreme Court. But Platkin also made headlines for his role in how Murphys administration responded to a rape allegation against a top staffer during his gubernatorial campaign. A legislative panel that investigated the matter, accused senior officials, Platkin among them, of mishandling the accusation, misleading lawmakers and failing the accuser, Katie Brennan. The panels final report accused Platkin of making weighty decisions based on one hour of (Equal Employment Opportunity) training and without consulting an employment lawyer, and lawmakers question his testimony. Brennan had also sued the state and later settled with New Jersey and Murphys campaign for $1 million. Platkins departure comes at a time the administration is still grappling with the fallout of what could be the defining point of Murphys time in office. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 16,000 people in New Jersey, which was an early epicenter of the pandemic in the country. Murphy and neighboring governors were among some of the first in the nation to issue unprecedented orders to shutter businesses and keep people home as the number of cases and hospitalizations ballooned peaked in April. We had gone through a little almost a year together and so we had become very close, but when youre spending probably 20 hours a day for three months straight, with one or two people mostly, you sort of build this bond, George Helmy, Murphys chief of staff since early 2019, said. Chris Porrino, a former state attorney general who also served as chief counsel under former Gov. Chris Christie, praised Platkin in a statement for his ability and very recent and in-depth government experience. Porrino is a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP and was tapped to represent Murphys administration, including Platkin, as they dealt with Brennans rape allegations. The firm had billed the state nearly $1 million for much of that work by the first half of 2019. Platkins departure is timed so he will work with the governor to hash out a budget deal with lawmakers by the end of this month. His replacement has not yet been named. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:42:56|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- China's permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) Zhang Jun on Wednesday called for efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in Syria. Zhang stressed the need to take a holistic approach to revitalize the Syrian economy. Noting the Syrian government has launched many initiatives to ease the country's economic woes, which warrant positive recognition, Zhang told the Security Council that the international community should increase assistance to Syria, and support its endeavors to develop the economy, improve livelihood, and reconstruct infrastructure, and should fulfill its humanitarian commitments to Syria without delay, with no strings attached. What needs to be done immediately is the lifting of unilateral sanctions, which are seriously undermining the ability of countries like Syria to mobilize resources, revive their economies, and respond to COVID-19, Zhang said. The UN secretary-general and his special envoy have repeatedly appealed for a waiver of unilateral sanctions. China strongly urges the relevant countries to respond positively to those appeals by lifting unilateral sanctions against Syria and other countries without delay, he said. China welcomes the recent progress in cross-line humanitarian operations, and hopes that the parties concerned will keep improving the efficiency of cross-line humanitarian operations and simplify the procedures for cross-border delivery to meet the humanitarian needs of the Syrian people, he said. Zhang asked for efforts to combat COVID-19 and support the pandemic response and life-saving efforts of Syria, adding China encourages the Syrian government to continue its proactive approach to addressing the situation, commends and supports the work of the World Health Organization in leading and coordinating countrywide COVID-19 response efforts. China calls on the international community to increase multilateral and bilateral support for the Syrian government and people's fight against COVID-19, he said, adding that China will continue to provide assistance to Syria through the bilateral channel to help its people prevail over the scourge as soon as possible. Zhang asked parties in Syria to respond positively to the UN secretary-general's global ceasefire appeal and intensify political dialogue, saying the political and security situation has a direct impact on the humanitarian situation. Since March, the overall situation on the ground in Syria has been relatively calm, creating better conditions for the protection of civilians. China commends the efforts made by all parties toward maintaining the ceasefire arrangement, and encourages the Astana process to continue playing its constructive role, he said. Syrian parties should seize this opportunity to strengthen political dialogue and advance a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process, he added. Many countries, including China, are deeply concerned about terrorist activities on Syrian soil. The ceasefire arrangement does not and must not mean giving free rein to terrorists, he noted. The international community should apply uniform standards and strengthen counterterrorism cooperation in accordance with international law and Security Council resolutions, to eradicate the terrorist forces once and for all with firm measures, he said. Enditem AEI report: Graduates of Protestant schools most likely to have intact marriages, fewer divorces Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A new report from the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute concluded that those who attended Protestant private schools as children were less likely to get divorced and have children out of wedlock than their public school peers. AEIs Institute for Family Studies examined data from the Understanding America Study from 2015 and 2016, as well as the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, first conducted in 1997. They compiled their findings in a report titled The Protestant Family Ethic: What Do Protestant, Catholic, Private, and Public Schooling Have to Do with Marriage, Divorce, and Non-Marital Childbearing? Men and women who have been educated in a private school tend to be more likely to be married, less likely to have ever divorced, and less likely to have had a child outside of wedlock, the report, released Wednesday, showed. Sixty-three percent of adults who attended Protestant schools were in an intact marriage compared to just 42% of adults who attended public schools, according to the 2015-2016 study. The share of Catholic and secular private school attendees who were in an intact marriage stood at 49% and 53%, respectively. The results of the Understanding America Study demonstrated a similar pattern regarding the differences in divorce rates among alumni of Protestant, Catholic, secular private schools, and public schools. Forty-three percent of adults who graduated from public schools have been divorced at least once. The share of Catholic School alumni who have ever been divorced stood at 40% while the share of Protestant and secular private school graduates who have been divorced stood at 21%. Among adults who attended public school, 26% have had a child out of wedlock compared to 16% of Catholic school alumni. Among Protestant and secular private school graduates, 11% said that they have had a child out of wedlock. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, cited in the AEI report, asked students who attended school in the late 1990s a series of questions about their school environments. The results of this inquiry showed that students at different types of schools had varying perceptions about morality. When asked if almost NO kids ever had sex in their grade, only 16% of public school students answered in the affirmative. A much higher share of Protestant school students (75%) reported that almost no students in their grade ever had sex while 51% of secular private school students said the same; 38% of Catholic school students said that almost none of their peers engaged in sexual activity. Just 37% of public school students reported that almost NO kids use illegal drugs; 83% of Protestant School attendees reported an almost drug-free school environment, along with 65% of secular private school students and 55% of Catholic school students. The reported difference in regular religious service attendance between students at religious schools and those who attended secular private schools and public schools was stark: 61% of Protestant school students said that almost all of their peers attended church services regularly compared to 21% of Catholic school students, 5% of public school students, and 4% of secular private school students. The results of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth indicated a noticeable difference in post-secondary school plans among public and private school students. While 20% of public school students said that almost all of their peers planned to attend college, 62% of Catholic school students said the same; 60% of Protestant school students and 57% of secular private school students reported that a high percentage of their peers planned on pursuing higher education. Twenty years later, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth looked at the marriage and family lives of the subjects they had surveyed in their 1997 report. The results demonstrated that 43% of millennials who attended secular private and public schools were in intact marriages compared to 51% of their Catholic peers and 57% of those who attended Protestant schools as children. Thirty-one percent of the millennials who attended public schools had been divorced. The share of respondents who had ever been divorced was much lower among those who attended Catholic (18%), secular private (20%), and Protestant schools (21%). The share of millennial public school graduates surveyed in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth who had a child out of wedlock (36%) was more than double that of their private school peers. Fourteen percent of Protestant school graduates, 16% of Catholic school alumni, and 19% of those who attended secular private schools had at least one child outside of marriage. In an effort to account for some of the factors that led to adults who attended different types of schools as children to see varying outcomes in their marriage and family lives as adults, the report compared the schools teachings on the controversial issues of marriage and human sexuality. When it comes to family life, public schools stress the importance of being tolerant and accepting of family diversity or just avoid talking about loaded matters touching on marriage, divorce, and non-marital childbearing, the report explained. Catholic schools often address church teaching regarding human sexuality and marriage, but some schools do not focus on these controversial teachings so much as on less controversial virtues and values, like charity, forgiveness, and the Golden Rule. In contrast to many Catholic schools, which have sought to be more catholic in the sense of being open to those of various religious and moral perspectives, including beliefs about sexual morality and marriage, the report asserted that Protestant schools are more likely to stress the importance of marriage as a good in and of itselfand of having and raising children in marriage. Religious schoolingand particularly Protestant schoolingis associated with higher rates of stable marriage, lower rates of divorce, and lower rates of out-of-wedlock births, even after controlling for key aspects of respondents backgrounds, the report continued. Explaining the impact that intact marriages and the traditional nuclear family have on society as a whole, the report emphasized, Men and women who forge strong and stable marriages are typically happier, healthier, and more prosperous. Any children they have are also more likely to be in better shape emotionally, economically, and educationally. The communities dominated by successfully married men and women are more prosperous, economically mobile, and safer. The report was authored by W. Bradford Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, Wendy Wang, the director of research at the Institute, Albert Chang, a professor at the University of Arkansas, and Patrick Wolf, a professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The page youre looking for cannot be found. Check the address and spelling are correct. If youre still encountering problems, please Contact Us. Biden cast doubt not only on Trump but also on those around him. Asked whether he trusted the CDC and FDA, Biden said he did not trust people like the fellow that just took a leave of absence. He appeared to be referring to Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, who urged Trumps supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection and accused scientists in his agency of sedition. NEW YORK Hundreds of staffers in the mayors office and Mayor Bill de Blasio himself will be placed on a weeklong, unpaid furlough as the city grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget gap, the mayor announced Wednesday. All 500 employees of the mayors office will be required to take five unpaid days off between Oct. 1 and March, saving about $1 million for the city. Thats a drop in the bucket compared to the $9 billion in revenue the city has lost due to the coronavirus crisis, but de Blasio said the move was intended to send a message that the budget pain is being felt at the top. This is a step you never want to see for good, hardworking people, he said. So it is with pain that I say they and their families will lose a weeks pay, but its something we have to do. De Blasio plans to work unpaid during his furlough, his office said. Other employees will not be expected to work while on furlough. The mayor has threatened to lay off 22,000 city employees, but has put that plan on hold amid hopes the state will give the city permission to borrow money and as he works on a deal with unions to make other labor cuts to save the $1 billion required to balance the budget. Weve already had to make some touch cuts that have affected this city, and the services we provide. Were trying to do everything we can to stop those cuts from becoming worse, he said. Fiscal hawks have called on the city to make more cuts before resorting to borrowing money, and de Blasio hoped the furloughs, first reported by The New York Times, would help persuade Albany lawmakers he is serious about cutting back. The city has asked for authority to borrow $5 billion. We have to show that were going to do anything and everything to get through this, the mayor said. The mayors office's budget will now be 12 percent less than last year, counting the furloughs and previous cuts. City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who's running to succeed de Blasio, dismissed the move as window dressing. Story continues "This is no time for empty gestures. As the Mayor well knows, cutting 1/100th of a percent of the City budget is meaningless in the context of a $4.2 billion budget deficit," he said in a statement. "Furloughing City workers with little payoff instead of scrubbing the budget for real waste and inefficiency is emblematic of the Mayors approach to budgeting: a lazy substitute for real work." Gov. Andrew Cuomo declined to follow the mayor's lead in placing himself on furlough, and took a swipe at quality of life in the city. "Im not talking about furloughs for a week," he said. "Im saying layoffs are the last thing you want to do. Theyre the last option. Especially New York City where you have so many problems you have a homeless problem, you have a crime problem, the city is dirty, so layoffs are the last option." De Blasio said moves like furloughing other city workers instead of doing layoffs would be considered. Cuts could also be achieved through wage freezes or early retirements, but unions would have to agree to such measures whereas the city has the legal authority to do layoffs unilaterally. Everythings on the table, de Blasio said. Were talking to labor about any and all ways to save money. Bill Mahoney contributed to this report. India a strong contender At present, both India and Indonesia are tough contenders in meeting the requirements of large global multinational companies. With a large skilled labor force and lower wages, multinationals would have a conducive base to operate in either country. In 2014, India launched its ambitious Make in India program to lure manufacturers to produce in India using its already skilled and trained labor force. The aim was also to create a hundred million jobs for Indians by the year 2025. However, in the last six years there has been not much visible change in the field of manufacturing and FDI has not increased as expected. Most of the FDI that enters India revolves around the three sectors of software, hardware and telecommunications. Two major concerns in India are Labor Law and land clearance. Favorable factors in Labor Law discourage many foreign investors because the law requires an agreement between the government and workers on the simplest of issues such as job description or worker responsibility. Worse still, some regulations require involvement of state authorities and officials. This has caused conflict with different regulations on the same issue, and worker unions can make it difficult for companies to operate smoothly. The other factor of land clearance has seen an improvement by way of more transparency, and easier relocation procedures under a new law enacted in 2013. However, the new law still favors the landowner over the investor and as multinationals require vast tracts of land in one area, this too is difficult to acquire. Apart from these two factors, another setback comes by way of Indias skilled workers. Most highly skilled workers are found in the field of information technology. Beside this, lack of good and convenient transportation and logistics could be negative factors for multinationals to operate smoothly in India. Indonesias biggest problem is its direction towards protectionism, as it allows only those particular multinationals to enter that are preferred by the government. Besides this, the rigid laws enforced by the government on worker rights can turn away multinationals from investing in the country. Although some barriers and restrictions were removed by President Joko Widodo when he took office in 2014, foreign investors are still concerned about the poor transport system, corruption, high risk of terrorist threats, racial discrimination and instability in politics. Vietnam in advantageous position FDI enterprises play a pivotal part in a countrys economy, and for Vietnam they have played a hugely significant part in lifting the economy and bringing about changes in all development infrastructure within the country. We must therefore recognize all out failings, shortcomings and disadvantages before offering land and other amenities to foreign investors who will employ a huge labor force in their operations. Looking at the problems currently existing in India and Indonesia, Vietnam is seemingly in a very good position to attract the best multinationals. In the entire region, Vietnam is in one of the best positions right now to attract global multinationals to function and operate smoothly. However, even when Vietnam is offering many favorable working conditions as well as advantages, foreign investors still want to milk it with more demands knowing full well that Vietnam is in need of more FDI. Some cities and provinces in Vietnam depend heavily on FDI to flourish and grow and have more or less been taken hostage by investors to provide more and more facilities and meet more of their demands. The Politburo has issued Resolution 50-NQ/TW for selecting the most appropriate FDI, aimed at quality and not quantity. Serious concerns are currently being raised in how to choose the best and most relevant sectors, favorable investors, and also how to improve on infrastructure and train more human resources. At the moment these ideas have only been drawn in theory but now they need specific planning and a determined action plan, before offers can be made concretely to multinationals. In order to participate and effectively benefit from the global supply chain, the first requirement is to train our labor force. We need to specify and target areas of training, and set specific goals and actions. We also need a professional business platform that will offer a high level of interaction with foreign investors and provide all the assistance they may need. We also need to create specific policies to encourage private enterprises to invest in the manufacturing sector and also simultaneously focus on the real estate sector and the services sector. Vietnam needs to improve its act and gear for the future with the right planning and the right moves in a focused direction. This will not happen overnight and may take several decades, but by improving on our weaknesses and disadvantages we can overcome to be in a position of strength rather than at a position where Vietnam is constantly being squeezed to offer more and more advantages to investors. (*) Member of AVSE GLOBAL, Lecturer at HCMC University of Economics, and IPAG Business School, Paris. Dr. Vo Dinh Tri (*) A month before harvest season begins in Northern India which also means the onset of an increased pollution load in Delhi on account of large scale crop residue burning in the region the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is rushing to set up a community response forum to conduct a thorough analysis of the impact of stubble burning on the national capital and its neighbouring areas, while looking at possible solutions. NASAs Universities Space Research Association (USRA) will work towards developing this community forum to cover multiple aspects of biomass burning and its impact on regional air quality in the Indian sub-continent during the winter months. Through the forum, NASA will also invite a panel of experts to share this knowledge with the public. Pawan Gupta, research scientist at the Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research (GESTAR), USRA, said, Air pollution season in India, usually associated with crop burning, will be starting soon. This year, we will be supporting satellite AQ (air quality) data analysis and forecasting through a community forum. The first meeting of the forum will be conducted on September 24, after which the expert panel will meet twice every week starting October 1, till the end of the fire season. In addition, the forum will also be used to provide training sessions on how to use various earth observations and tools available to analyse fire, smoke, and air quality data. This is also being developed as a platform for researchers to share their data and solutions providing alternatives to farmers in the agrarian belt so that the problem of mass-burning can be dealt with. Every year NASA tracks fires in the agrarian states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in real time with the help of satellite data. Because of a change in the wind patterns and lowered wind speeds at the onset of winters when stubble burning activity is at its peak the capital witnesses a drastic dip in its air quality as plumes of smoke blow into the city from Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi government data shows that last year, stubble burning accounted for 44% of Delhis air pollution. It added that Punjab produces 20 million tonnes of crop stubble out of which 9 million tonnes was burnt last year. In Haryana, 1.23 million tonnes, out of 7 million tonnes, was burnt in 2019. Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said the government was willing to explore all possible solutions to reduce crop residue burning in the neighbouring states. We are conducting regular meetings with the state governments of Punjab and Haryana, which are the two main states from where pollutants enter Delhi. We are also encouraging experts and researchers to develop technology interventions that can help farmers find alternatives to burning, Rai said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Parents and guardians in one of the UKs biggest cities have been told to wear face coverings at the school gates while dropping off and picking up children. The new guidance has been introduced across Liverpool after it was placed on the governments coronavirus watchlist following a surge in cases there. Matt Ashton, director of public health in the city, told headteachers the drastic new measure understood to be the first of its kind in England was needed because rates are high and increasing every day. In a message to school leaders, he told them: We need to take urgent action. He said: It is now essential that parents and carers in Liverpool wear face coverings when collecting and dropping off their children at school. Recommended Coronavirus testing centre shut down to make way for Brexit lorry park "All school staff should role model best practice by also wearing a face covering if supervising during collection or drop off. The message published by the Liverpool Echo on Tuesday comes just a day after the mayor Joe Anderson warned of a potential local lockdown if spiralling infection rates were not brought under control. His intervention was sparked after more than 100 new cases were identified in a single day over the weekend. It means there are now 80 people per 100,000 people testing positive for Covid-19 in Liverpool. The R rate is approaching 1.3 per cent, essentially meaning that the virus which has already killed 600 people in the city is growing. In a public statement on Monday, Mr Ashton said that, crucially, hospitalisations were now back on the rise. He said: Merseyside is now an area of concern and there is a chance of more intervention if the tide of cases does not slow. "Let us remember that already, more than 600 people in Liverpool have died from COVID-19. A-ha,, say the doubters, but many of them had underlying health conditions. "Indeed they did but try telling that to their grieving families who know that, if they hadnt contracted it, they would still be alive. "We saw how rapidly cases escalated during the first wave and we simply have to do all within our power to stop that happening again. Although individual schools across England including in Bristol and Coventry have asked parents to wear masks when picking up children, the city-wide instruction is thought to be the first of its kind in England. ALMA, MI - She dreamed of owning this historic Michigan mansion since she was a teen, now shes the innkeeper. Rochelle OShay and her husband, Kelly, are the new owners of this 19th-century mid-Michigan bed and breakfast. OShay, who is from nearby Ithaca, says she always made it a point to drive by the historic home known as Saravilla when she visited Alma. Decades later, she now lives in this three-story, 11,000-square-foot Dutch colonial and welcomes guests from all over the world. We own the house, but were just the caretakers. It really belongs to the city of Alma, the OShays told MLive as we explored the ghostly halls. Its been here for a very long time. Everyone knows the house. People frequently take pictures of it. We have a passion and love for this house and someday when we retire, well find somebody else who has the same passion for it that we do. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The OShays are the 11th owners of the mansion at 633 N. State St., located within walking distance of Alma College. The home was built in 1894 by wealthy lumberman Ammi Wright as a summer home for his daughter, Sarah Wright Lancashire. It was meant to entice her to stay near her father after her recent marriage to Dr. James Lancashire. Ammi had five children. Sarah was the only child who lived to adulthood," said Kelly OShay. When Ammi got older, he said he wanted to spend more time with his daughter. As a belated wedding gift, he built her this mansion that he called a modest home. This is that modest home. Sarah and her husband moved into the home in 1895. Saraville, appropriately named by Sarah herself, first became a B&B in 1991. It features seven guest bedrooms, each with their own full bathroom. The mansion also has a 1,200-square-foot ballroom ideal for weddings, showers and other gatherings. We feel very blessed to own the house. We want this to be a place where people can have a great backdrop for an event. The house was built with indoor plumbing and electricity, which was rare for that time period. There are seven fireplaces, four on the first floor and three on the second floor where the rooms are located. The home also has many of these original features: Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The main lobby features 8-foot tall English oak quarter-sawn wainscoting. OShay says the oak was handpicked for this room to try and get the grain to match all the way around the house. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) Above that are these handpainted wall coverings from France. The images depict gargoyles and other faces throughout. Above that is the 12-foot tall exposed beam ceiling. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) OShay says these five faces above one of the fireplaces are said to represent Sarah and her four siblings. If you look closely, each one has a different expression on their face. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The sconces are original to the 126-year-old house. A study was done in 1932 found that only 10 percent of rural America, Alma was rural, had electricity in their home. Thats almost 40 years after this home was built. When you had Wrights kind of money, you could have whatever you wanted, said OShay. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) There are these buttons throughout the home. Every single room has one. They were used to call the staff if you needed something. You would just touch the button and someone would come to help get you what you needed. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The dining room features a fireplace with its original glass brick tile. There are also numerous built-ins. The OShays say they use all of the fancy china and glassware when serving guests for breakfast and events. If we have it, we use it. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) This is the library. Its the only room in the home where the woodwork is not from Michigan. The black birch was shipped in from France. "The woodwork in this room has never been touched. 126-years-old and this is the great shape its in, said OShay. This is probably where Sarahs husband and father would do business with other business owners and leaders of the community. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The 1,200-square-foot ballroom. Sarah added this section of the home in 1902. We can sit about 50 people comfortably in here, said OShay. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) This piano was a gift from a professor at Central Michigan University. Its an 1870 square baby grand. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The Lancashire bedroom can sleep up to four people. Theres also a sitting area. This was actually Sarahs room. It features a queen bed and a twin bed and a wood-burning fireplace. The original hardwood floor is now covered with Chinese handmade rugs. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The Turret room was originally the bedroom of the master of the house. It features a king bed, wing chairs, secretary-desk and wood-burning fireplace. Saravilla Bed and Breakfast is located at 633 N. State St. in Alma. (Photo by Edward Pevos | MLive) The Ammi Wright suite features a king canopy bed and sitting room with wood-burning fireplace. The attached bathroom has a Whirlpool tub with shower and the homes original sink basin. This is my favorite room in the house, said Kelly OShay. BOOK A ROOM Prices vary depending on if its a weekday or weekend. You can check out all of the rooms and book one here. You can also call the B&B at 989 463-4078 or send the OShays an email. Check out the B&Bs Facebook page for more info and photos. MORE HISTORIC MICHIGAN B&BS FROM MLIVE: You can stay overnight at this ghostly-looking old Michigan Castle Inside Michigans oldest operating inn, built in 1835 Inn at Bay Harbor offers bed-and-breakfast package for fall vacations CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Target Capital Inc. d.b.a. CBi2 Capital (CBi2 or the Company) is pleased to announce the appointments of Ron Hozjan and Theo Zunich as directors of the Company. Mr. Hozjan has been the Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Aureus Energy Services Inc., a private water management services company, since January 2020. In addition, Mr. Hozjan is a director of: (i) YSS Corp., a public cannabis retailer; (ii) Aloha Brands Inc., the parent company of Aloha Naturals Co., a private producer and retailer of hemp-based consumer products, and of Aloha Cannabis Co., a private cannabis licensed producer applicant; and (iii) Aither Ingredient Corp., a private, joint-venture partner in Canadas only bulk cannabinoid-based active ingredient manufacturing campus, with Thar Process, Inc. Mr. Hozjan was the Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. from June 2010 until January 2020. Mr. Hozjan is a Chartered Professional Accountant with over 30 years of oil and gas experience and over 20 years of experience as a senior financial officer. Prior to Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd., Mr. Hozjan served as the Chief Financial Officer of Vaquero Resources Ltd., which was acquired by RMP Energy Ltd. Prior thereto, he was the Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer at a predecessor firm, Vaquero Energy Ltd., which grew successfully before merging with Highpine Oil & Gas Limited. Previously, Mr. Hozjan held various senior finance positions at Storm Energy Ltd., Beau Canada Exploration Ltd. and Renaissance Energy Ltd. Mr. Zunich has been the President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of YSS Corp., a public cannabis retailer, since March 2019 and, prior thereto, was the Vice President, Corporate Development of YSS Corp. since August 2018. Prior to joining YSS Corp., Mr. Zunich worked in roles of increasing responsibility at several independent investment banks, most recently as Principal, Investment Banking at Eight Capital. Mr. Zunich has over ten years of investment banking experience, during which he was involved in more than 100 M&A, financing and related advisory mandates for aggregate transaction value of over $12 billion. Mr. Zunich has extensive experience in the cannabis, energy and technology industries from both an investment banking and merchant banking perspective. Story continues The Company believes the addition of Messrs. Hozjan and Zunich will enhance the Companys ability to evaluate and consummate a transaction in the broader cannabis industry. In addition, the Company announces that each of Chad Oakes and Gregory G. Turnbull has resigned as a director of the Company. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Oakes and Mr. Turnbull for their contributions to the Company. Abo ut CBi2 Capital Target Capital Inc. d.b.a. CBi2 Capital, is a Calgary, Alberta based company executing on a cannabis focused investment strategy, where it intends to develop and manage a diversified portfolio of predominantly early stage cannabis investment opportunities. The Companys common shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and the Canadian Securities Exchange under the trading symbol TCI. For additional information please contact: Phone: 403.351.1779 Email: info@cbi2.com Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements This news release may include forward-looking statements including the Companys objectives, opinions and assumptions. When used in this document, the words will, anticipate, believe, estimate, expects, intent, may, project, should, and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are founded on the basis of expectations and assumptions made by the Company. Forward-looking statements are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties, and although the Company believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will be realized. The Company cautions that current global uncertainty with respect to the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its effect on the broader global economy may have a significant negative effect on the Company. While the precise impact of the COVID-19 virus on the Company remain unknown, rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus may have a material adverse effect on global economic activity, and can result in volatility and disruption to global supply chains, operations, mobility of people and the financial markets, which could affect interest rates, credit ratings, credit risk, inflation, business, financial conditions, results of operations and other factors relevant to the Company. Except as required by applicable laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Sept. 3 marked a dark day for journalism in southwestern Manitoba after Glacier Media announced that it is permanently shutting down four regional newspapers: the Reston Recorder, Melita New Era, Souris Plaindealer and Deloraine Times & Star. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Sept. 3 marked a dark day for journalism in southwestern Manitoba after Glacier Media announced that it is permanently shutting down four regional newspapers: the Reston Recorder, Melita New Era, Souris Plaindealer and Deloraine Times & Star. The news hit Deloraine Times & Star editor Judy Wells especially hard, since she has been single-handedly carrying this publication on her back for around a decade as its only employee. Judy Wells poses for a photo in front of the Deloraine Times & Star office in 2018. Wells worked for the Times & Star since 1999 and served as the publication's only employee for the last decade. (Submitted by Angela Long) Talking to the Sun on Sept. 6, Wells reveals how she had to fulfil the role of reporter, editor, photographer and even salesperson throughout that time, which was a simultaneously stressful and rewarding experience. "It was busy and I had to be resourceful, I guess, but I did like that," she said. "I was definitely my own boss, too, which was nice. As long as the work got done, I could come and go." Wells originally got into the news business in 1992 as a staff member of the Melita New Era, even though she previously studied social services at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon. Even without a formal education in journalism, Wells made such a good impression at the New Era that members the Times & Star invited her to join their crew in Deloraine that, in 1999, consisted of five people. However, over the years, the Times & Star staff eventually got whittled down to just Wells herself, but she was determined to keep the paper alive despite the persistent cuts in resources. After all, the paper was first established back in 1887, making it one of the oldest continuous businesses in the area. Even with this impressive legacy to live up to, Wells said she thoroughly enjoyed covering news in Deloraine for more than 20 years, especially if the stories involved local students, sports, arts or veterans. A March 27, 2020 edition of the Deloraine Times & Star. The Prairie Newspaper Group announced on Sept. 3 that it will permanently cease publication of the 133-year-old publication alongside the the Reston Recorder, Melita New Era and Souris Plaindealer. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun) And despite her status as a one-woman show at the Times & Star, Wells said she could always rely on members of the community to supply story ideas or provide her with feedback when it became time to pick a front-page photo. "I worked in an office with some lawyers, in the same building, so I would often take the photos over to them and say what do you guys think?" Wells revealed that her fellow "Corner Pocket" publications from Reston, Melita and Souris also served as a good source of sharable news content and professional camaraderie, which makes their closure earlier this month even more tragic. "I did depend on them for moral support," she said. "Just even a phone call where I said I dont know what to do about this and they would say oh, you can try such and such." Despite all her hard work, Wells figured the writing was on the wall for the Times & Star back in the spring, when Glacier suspended their publication of it and the other "Corner Pocket" papers due to the economic uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. A wall of photos decorates the Deloraine Times & Star office in 2018. (Submited by Angela Long) "Since April, I held out hope the entire time that it would open again," she said. "But in my heart I kind of knew closure was a big possibility." Thankfully, Wells revealed on Sept. 10 that shes been hired on as a reporter for the nearby Boissevain Recorder, and will try to maintain all her regular beats through that community publication. Additionally, editor Lorraine Houston told the Sun that shes thinking of expanding the Recorders regional coverage to help fill the void that was left by all the recent Glacier Media closures. But whatever the future holds, the last editor of the Times & Star is still immensely proud of everything she has accomplished working for this 133-year-old paper, including all the personal connections she has made along the way. "I do consider it a privilege to bring the local news to everybody, to attend all the local events and be part of their lives," she said. The Deloraine Times & Star first began appearing on newsstands in November 1887, although it was originally known as the Deloraine Weekly Times and Turtle Mountain and Souris River Gazette. kdarbyson@brandonsun.com Twitter: @KyleDarbyson A Tauranga road is blocked this evening following a crash between a car and a parked truck in the Poike/Ohauiti area. A caller to the 0800 SUNLIVE news hotline says a vehicle has overturned at the intersection of Poike and Ohauiti roads. "Emergency services are at scene. "At least one lane is blocked." A witness says a car hit a truck on Ohauiti Road and rolled. They say it was at the end of the road near Aspiring Place. "The truck is normally parked there. "An ambulance is at the scene. Lots of people have come out of their houses to help." A police spokesperson says a car has hit a parked truck at about 7.30pm this evening on Ohauiti and Poike Road. "The driver has suffered minor injuries. "The road was completely blocked earlier but emergency service are at the scene. "Motorists are asked to avoid the area at the moment." At the scene? Call 0800 SUNLIVE or email photos to newsroom@thesun.co.nz Mumbai, Sep 17 : As she continues facing heat from Bollywood celebrities after calling Urmila Matondkar a soft porn star, Kangana Ranaut launched a fresh attack saying fake feminists are equating being a porn star to something derogatory. "Liberal brigade once virtually lynched a renowned writer in to silence for saying people like Sunny Leone should not be our role models, Sunny is accepted by the industry and entire India as an artist, suddenly fake feminists equating being a porn star to something derogatory," Kangana tweeted on Thursday. During an interview with a news channel, Kangana reacted to an interview given by Urmila, where the latter questioned her motives while accusing Bollywood's alleged 'drug-mafia'. Reacting to it, Kangana said that Urmila is "making a mockery" about her struggles, and called her a soft porn star. Kangana's tirade against the film industry has continued over the past weeks. On Wednesday, she claimed all that Bollywood ever offered her were two-minute roles, item numbers and a romantic scene -- that too in return of sleeping with the hero. Her comments came after veteran actress and Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan, in a recent Parliament speech, criticised people who were tarnishing the film industry by badmouthing it without naming Kangana. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text A tweet from a woman in Humble, Texas helped business pick up for her father's food truck recently after she revealed he had only earned $6 in one day. Elias Aviles' Taquiera Al Torito in Atascocita suffered due to the pandemic, but this week customers were lining up once more after his 21-year-old daughter's plea on social media. 'Hey Twitter!! I wouldn't normally do this, but my dad's taco truck business is struggling, he only sold $6 today,' Giselle Aviles wrote Saturday. 'If you could retweet, I would appreciate you so much!!' In the past there had been days where he made $20 or $60 dollars but Giselle told CNN she thought, 'Are you kidding me?' when she heard about the new low. Scroll down for video Giselle Aviles wrote Saturday after her dad only made $6 in a day. 'If you could retweet, I would appreciate you so much!!' In the past there had been days where Elias Aviles (right) made $20 or $60 but Giselle (left) told CNN she thought, 'Are you kidding me?' when she heard about the new low Elias arrived to find people waiting from 6am for it to open at 8am on Monday. People are pictured Tuesday 'At that moment, when he told me $6, I said 'nothing hurts,' Giselle told Khou 11. The tweet garnered comments and 2,000 retweets by Sunday night with one person even offering to buy out the truck to feed a hospital. The day after Elias arrived to find people waiting from 6am for it to open at 8am. He had to close an hour earlier than the usual 8pm because they ran out of stock, which was being frequently topped up throughout the day. Giselle stopped by to help at one point and says there were about 100 customers during her shift. 'There were so many people, and [my dad] was kind of shocked because he didn't think there would be a turnaround that quickly,' Giselle said. He had to close an hour earlier than the usual 8pm because they ran out of stock, which was being frequently topped up throughout the day 'It feels amazing because I was just trying to just help him. Just being able to do something that's going to give him business right now, that's going to get him known.' Giselle's post got 8,000 retweets by Tuesday. She has made her personal Twitter account private and created Facebook and Instagram accounts filled with images of the food on offer. Elias started the Mexican street taco truck six years ago after his brick-and-mortar restaurant suffered due to the 2008 financial crisis. His nieces and nephews help him out. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, more than 100,000 small businesses have shut down due to the pandemic. His son told ABC 13: 'We're really grateful for the support we've been getting and the positive messages.' 'I thought it was amazing I actually saw it on my social media,' Karla de Leon told ABC News. He opened Taquiera Al Torito six years ago after his brick-and-mortar restaurant went down due to the 2008 financial crisis As Hurricane Sally took aim at coastal Mississippi and Alabama on Monday, Lars Powell felt almost certain about one thing: Waffle House restaurants in Mobile and Baldwin counties would have their lights on and the griddles in use. But Sallys forceful and unexpected punch into Alabama ruptured power lines and downed large trees throughout Baldwin County. Waffle House restaurants, like all others, have been left in the dark. And now the Georgia-based chain, which has developed a reputation for its disaster preparedness through the so-called Waffle House Index, is scrambling to get their eateries back on and power crews fed. The indexs formula is simple in that it utilizes three measures of storm damage based on stop light colors: green means the restaurant is serving a full menu and indicates utilities are functioning and damage is limited, yellow means the restaurants is serving a limited menu and that electricity might be supplied through a generator or food supplies are low and a red means the restaurant is closed and severe damage is nearby. Njeri Boss, the director of public relations with Waffle House, said that decisions are still being made about the sequence in which the restaurants in Mobile and Baldwin counties will reopen. Boss said there is no update regarding the Baldwin County restaurants. Currently, there are 36 Waffle House restaurants without power between Alabama and Florida. We have teams in the field working on reopening, Boss said. Powell, director & senior research professional at the Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research at the University of Alabama who has studied the utilization of the Waffle House Index during natural disasters said earlier this week that forecasts showed the unlikelihood of a powerful hurricane striking the coastal area. If the models hold, and the Waffle Houses do not flood, there will be bacon, hash browns, and waffles available throughout the storm. Indeed, the models changed. Powell called the forecasts junk and Sally a sneaky storm and the Waffle House Index for coastal Alabama is in the rarest of categories - Red - since most of the restaurants are closed. Some of the restaurants, such as one on U.S. 98 in Daphne, has down trees throughout its property. Panos Kouvelis, director of the Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis, said the next thing to monitor is how many Waffle House restaurants can be reopened to some extent, allowing for limited menus. The move to yellow will show speed of recovery in the area, said Kouvelis, in an email to AL.com. And hopefully, fully open soon (but in how many days?) Kouvelis has often praised the restaurant chain for its highly resilient business with a great supply chain risk management program in effect. They are able to continue operating in harsh conditions, and offer their services when they are needed the most, he said, noting that after severe hurricanes when almost nothing else is open, some warm food helps first responders and residents in the affected areas. Bigg Boss Telugu season 4 hosted by Nagarjuna Akkineni has already started airing on Star Maa from September 6. Now, after almost two weeks, we got to know the TRP ratings of Bigg Boss Telugu 4's grand premiere episode. And as expected, the show has broken all the records of its previous seasons. As per a report published in a leading portal, the premiere episode of Bigg Boss Telugu 4 has earned 18.5 points, which is indeed the best number for the first episode among all seasons. The report further suggests that Bigg Boss Telugu 1's first episode had earned 16.08 TRP rates while season 2 of the show hosted by Nani had managed to earn 15.05 points. But ever since Nagarjuna Akkineni started hosting Bigg Boss Telugu from season 3, it has been gaining solid viewership from the masses. Notably, previous season's first episode had gained 17.9 points. This season, apart from Nagarjuna's popularity, contestants like Abijeet, Syed Sohel, Noel Sean, Karate Kalyani, Gangavva and others are also catching everyone's attention with their actions in the madhouse. Also Read : Bigg Boss Marathi 3 Cancelled Due To Salman Khan's Bigg Boss 14? Amongst all, Surya Kiran got eliminated in the first week of the show and Sai Kumar Pampana entered the house as the first wild card contestant. Now, after so much drama in the first and second week, it will be interesting to see what happens in the weekend episode of Bigg Boss Telugu 4. Also Read : Bigg Boss Telugu 4 Week 2 Nominations: Nine Contestants Including Gangavva, Noel Sean On The List! What is pressing now is that the Indian side should immediately correct its mistake, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tension and lower the temperature along the border, Wang said at a daily briefing. A UN investigation alleges Venezuelan authorities have used arbitrary killings and torture to undermine human rights. The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has committed systematic human rights violations including killings and torture amounting to crimes against humanity, United Nations investigators said in a report on Wednesday. Reasonable grounds existed to believe that Maduro and his interior and defence ministers ordered or contributed to the crimes documented in the report to silence opposition, the investigators said. Specifically, they had information indicating Maduro ordered the director of the national intelligence service SEBIN to detain opponents without judicial order, Francisco Cox of the UN fact-finding mission told a news briefing. The report was based on more than 270 interviews with victims, witnesses, former officials and lawyers, and confidential documents. They included the former head of the National Intelligence Service, General Christopher Figuera, whose testimony was corroborated, the report said. Most unlawful executions by security forces and state agents have not been prosecuted in Venezuela, where the rule of law and democratic institutions have broken down, the investigators said. They said other national jurisdictions and the International Criminal Court, which opened a preliminary examination into Venezuela in 2018, should consider prosecutions. The investigative panel said it would share its database containing the names of officers identified by victims that included 20 officers from SEBIN and 25 from the military intelligence agency DGCIM. The mission found reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have since 2014 planned and executed serious human rights violations, some of which including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture amount to crimes against humanity, panel chair Marta Valinas said. The panel found that officers in the military, police and intelligence had committed extrajudicial killings and called on the government to disband the special actions forces of the police known as FAES. Planting evidence The panel said it had reasonable grounds to believe the intelligence service falsified or planted evidence on victims, and that its agents tortured detainees. They included opposition lawmaker Fernando Alban, who the government said committed suicide in 2018 but whose party said was murdered. A horrifying report citing the crimes against humanity of the illegitimate regime in #Venezuela. The world must unite to put an end to these atrocities. https://t.co/taEUYqhCbr Michael G. Kozak (@WHAAsstSecty) September 16, 2020 Navy Captain Rafael Acosta was believed to have died of torture in the custody of the military intelligence agency DGCIM last year, the UN experts said. The panel, set up by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate violations since 2014, was not granted access to Venezuela. More than 5 million people one-sixth of the population have fled the countrys political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Jorge Valero, Venezuelas ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told the forum on Tuesday that the government was cooperating with the separate office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, notably in facilitating prison visits. Valero denounced the latest sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, which he said were causing suffering and death for the Venezuelan people. The United States, along with dozens of other countries, recognises opposition politician Juan Guaido as Venezuelas legitimate interim leader. Venezuelas foreign minister on Twitter reiterated the countrys cooperation with Bachelets office and said the report was plagued with falsehoods, prepared remotely, without any methodological rigor, and illustrates the perverse practice of doing politics with human rights and not the politics of human rights. Venezuela Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza holds a picture while speaking during the United Nations Security Council meeting about the situation in Venezuela [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the report extraordinary during a phone briefing with reporters, however. I hope it will have an impact on any government that is thinking about its policy toward the Maduro regime, Pompeo said. The report found that the Venezuelan state apparatus responded with repressive tactics to opposition protests that grew especially after Maduro was re-elected in 2018 amid an outcry over the results. Security forces used lethal force against the victim when it was not strictly unavoidable to protect lives, the report said. Security forces also used less-lethal weapons in a lethal manner, which resulted in the death of the demonstrators. Cyclist Carla McGinn kept a careful eye on the sky as she pedaled north of Omaha through the Ponca Hills on Wednesday. A Gulf war veteran with asthma, McGinn pays close attention to air quality, but, based on forecasts that conditions would hold up Wednesday, she had hopped on her bike in Carter Lake and headed into Nebraska for some exercise, only to be a little surprised. Its smoky, you can see it and smell it, she said in the late afternoon. McGinn was right. Air quality in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa had deteriorated to the moderate quality category due to smoke from western wildfires. According to the Environmental Protection Agencys air monitoring system, moderate means people with compromised systems, like McGinn, might notice a change in air quality but generally dont need to alter their behavior. On Wednesday, state officials issued a health advisory, saying portions of Nebraska could be affected for the rest of the week by smoke. Smoke has been filtering across the U.S. for days now, but it has remained some 2-plus miles high in the atmosphere, so its effect in Nebraska has been cosmetic, creating a milky haze. NYPD Police officers listen as Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York President Pat Lynch and representatives from other NYPD and law enforcement unions holds a news conference at the Icahn Stadium parking lot in New York City, N.Y., on June 9, 2020. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images) Police Union Says Officers Need to Remain Vigilant: Watch Your Back The National Fraternal Order of Police called on officers around the United States to stay vigilant in the wake of several attacks and ambushes against law enforcement in recent days. This week, several law enforcement officers in several states were shot, including two Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputies in an ambush incident over the weekend. The unprovoked ambush attacks on law enforcement continue. These attacks will continue and become more violent if we dont stop the hatred and disgusting rhetoric spewed towards the brave men and women of law enforcement, the National Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the United States, said in an OFFICER SAFETY ALERT on Twitter. In the statement, the union wrote that as our nation becomes increasingly divided during this unprecedented time, law enforcement officers are the keepers of the peace and stand firm on the thin blue line, placing themselves between order and anarchy. OFFICER SAFETY ALERT The unprovoked ambush attacks on law enforcement continue. These attacks will continue and become more violent if we dont stop the hatred and disgusting rhetoric spewed towards the brave men and women of law enforcement. https://t.co/QdsHhvpMk9 pic.twitter.com/1E1tts6xqv National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) September 16, 2020 It said police officers need to exercise caution at all times, maintain constant situational awareness, be aware of their surroundings, be prepared, and watch your backand that of your partner. The union also said that officers should keep yourself and your communities safe by being vigilant on duty and off. There are individuals who are motivated solely by a desire to hurt or kill a police officer, so do not let your guard down. On Sept. 12, two deputies were shot by a gunman who was seen on video approaching the vehicle from behind. The suspect still has not been caught, and a reward of nearly $300,000 is being offered. On Wednesday, Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that one of the deputies, identified as a 24-year-old who was shot in the forehead, hand, and arms, was released from the hospital. He has a long road ahead for recovery. But hes not alone. We, as a community, are in this together, Villanueva said on social media. Police said the shooter appears to be a black male between the ages of 28 and 30. After the incident, he ran away to a black four-door sedan and sped away. The shootings follow a wave of anti-police protests and sentiment as well as calls to defund the police after George Floyds death in Minneapolis police custody in May. Trump, she said, usually was not focused on the virus but would often blindside the task force and administration officials with public comments, such as his support for the drug hydroxychloroquine, his Twitter attack on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the agencys guidance on the reopening of schools, his skeptical comments about masks and his public musings about herd immunity. Many of his comments were the opposite of what had been discussed in the Situation Room, where task force meetings were often held, and were at odds with scientific recommendations or the administrations own data, Troye said. In almost two years, fighting has left at least 42 children dead and another 135 injured. Some 200,000 civilians have fled the violence, with the coronavirus outbreak making matters worse. For the UN, the Myanmar military routinely attacks civilians in villages. This has led to a situation of insecurity, as well as physical and mental stress. Yangon (AsiaNews) The intensifying conflict in the western state of Rakhine between the Myanmar army and the mostly Buddhist Arakan Army (AA), often in inhabited areas, is causing an increasing number of victims, including children, local and international NGOs report. In northern Rakhine, the death toll has been rising recently as a result of air strikes and shelling by Myanmar forces. Since December 2018, at least 42 minors under the age of 18 have died, many of them very young children; another 135 have been seriously injured by artillery shells, firearms and landmine explosions. According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), the young victims are among the approximately 300 civilians killed and 640 wounded in Rakhine State and in Paletwa, a township in neighbouring Chin State. In a conflict exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, at least 200,000 civilians have been forced to flee their homes to escape the fighting. Sources in the Rakhine Ethnics Congress report that the displaced are living in refugee camps or with relatives. A recent report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, based on interviews with more than 80 victims and eyewitnesses, confirms that the military attacked unarmed civilians in their villages without any provocation by Arakan rebels. The account also notes an exponential increase in air strikes by planes and helicopters as well as heavy artillery shelling in densely populated areas. On 11 September, a six-year-old boy was rushed to the Sittwe General Hospital after sustaining serious injuries in an artillery attack. According to his mother, the boy was hurt while the family was hiding in a bomb shelter to avoid an army patrol looking for rebel fighters near the Mayu River. On 8 September, government soldiers attacked the village of Nyaung Khat Kan, killing four civilians, including two five-year-olds. Children in Rakhine state are insecure, both physically and mentally, said Oo Khin Thein from Sittwe-based Arakan Youth New Generation Network. They live in dire conditions in both internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and in towns and villages. They are also emotionally impacted by trauma and fear. Intensifying hostilities mean that no one in northern Rakhine is safe, said Oo Tun Win, a lawmaker from Kyauktaw township. Myanmars military has also been accused of attacking schools, places of worship and civilian homes as well as detaining minors to extract confessions from them, including through torture. Since the outbreak of the hostilities, Pope Francis has also expressed compassion for the suffering of the people of Rakhine, be they Buddhists or Rohingya Muslims. In 2017, during his visit to Myanmar, the Holy See made a cash donation on behalf of the Catholic Church. During his stay, Francis told the people of Myanmar that the future of their country must be peace, peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of every member of society, respect for each ethnic group and its identity." Through Caritas Myanmar, the Church is also engaged in local development projects in ten villages inhabited by different ethnic and religious groups. Brig. Gen. Santo Domic gives a speech while studying at the International College of Defence Studies(ICD) under the National Defense University(NDU) of China's Peoples Liberation Army(PLA)./Photo by ICD-NDU-PLA By Brigadier General Santo Domic with the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of South Sudan After more than two years of learning in China, I have gradually understood the connotation of the phrase the Chinese military and people are as inseparable as fish and water. During my past two years in China from Nanjing to Beijing, inside and outside of the military academies, I have read and heard of many stories about the close ties between the Chinese troops and people taking place in the militarys participation in earthquake rescue and disaster relief to fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic, from joining in local efforts in poverty alleviation to flood fighting. In China, the army loves the people and the people support the army, which is a tradition and I have been deeply touched by the close bond of future shared by the army, the nation and the people. As of the end of May this year, the targeted poverty alleviation campaign conducted by the Chinese military has helped 4,100 poverty-stricken villages, 293,000 poor households, and 924,000 poor people get rid of poverty. The Chinese military is a rare and unique force in the cause of poverty reduction across the world. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is the peoples army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC). While completing military tasks, the PLA will also support the economic and social development, into which the poverty alleviation falls. Furthermore, the Chinese military has possessed abundant resources and natural advantages in education, medical services and infrastructure construction. Poverty alleviation requires constant dedication. The rock-solid confidence and hard-bitten perseverance of the Chinese soldiers have left a deep impression on me. No matter what difficulties and challenges they face, they never lose courage nor give up, thanks to their fighting spirit of fearing neither hardship nor death. I have learned that many military units in China have been continuously working on poverty alleviation for many years with rotations of troops. The Chinese military loves and safeguards peace. In South Sudan, Chinese peacekeepers have protected local civilians, built roads, and provided medical and material assistance to local people. They have established a close friendship with the people of South Sudan. Also, the Chinese military is always proactive in giving a helping hand within its capacity to people in other countries in such operations as naval escort, medical assistance, and international humanitarian assistance, and so on. Eliminating poverty is a dream shared by all countries and peoples in the world. The Chinese militarys participation in the fight against poverty sets an example for other countries. The mutual love and support between the Chinese military and the people will also help China achieve greater development. (The article is written based on the interview by reporter Gong Qifang and correspondent Zhang Ziqi with the PLA Daily, and then be translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online.) Shareholders approved the Irish budget carrier's remuneration report, which included the award, with 65.8 per cent in favour, the company said in a statement. Proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) had said the pay award for the financial year ended in March "raises concerns" and was hard to justify amid the unprecedented aviation crisis sparked by Covid-19. Mr O'Leary's base salary and maximum bonus for the year to the end of March 2020 were each cut by 50 per cent to 500,000, according to the company's annual report. Speaking to Reuters in an interview last week ahead of the Annual General Meeting (AGM), Mr O'Leary said those cuts "by any measure would be indicative of the board responding appropriately to the pandemic." "I'd like to see what the chief executive of ISS, what his pay was reduced by over the past 12 months. It'll certainly be less than mine," Mr O'Leary added. Advertisement A spokeswoman for ISS said it did not disclose executive pay as it was a private company. "We don't make such disclosures," she said. O'Leary's pay has proved contentious before. His five-year bonus plan, worth up to 100 million if targets related to share price and profitability are hit, scraped through with 50.5 per cent support in a shareholder vote last September. ISS also recommended shareholders in Ryanair rival IAG, which owns Aer Lingus and British Airways, reject a payment of 883,000 (963,000) to departing chief executive Willie Walsh. That payment that was approved by shareholders last week. Ryanair did not provide any media access to its AGM, citing Covid-19 restrictions. -Reuters Universities across Italy reopen for lessons with new covid-19 rules. Italy's universities are to reopen for lessons on Monday 21 September, after a closure of more than six months due to the coronavirus emergency, announced Italian higher education minister Gaetano Manfredi. Universities will adhere to strict new rules, aimed at containing the spread of covid-19, with the obligatory wearing of masks for students, including during lessons, reports Italian news agency ANSA. "Face-to-face lessons are resuming in all universities" - Manfredi told Sky TG24 - "Some have started and most will resume on Monday." Class rooms will have a maximum 50 per capacity, with seats clearly indicated to ensure social distancing among students, and each room will be sanitised every day, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "There is a mixed model in which lecture halls are 50 per cent full and, at the same time, there is distance learning for those living far away and foreigners and everyone else who is unable to come to class for various reasons," Manfredi told Sky TG24. Students will be allotted time slots for attending class in shifts, reports La Repubblica, with only professors allowed to remove masks during lessons. "From September all exams will be in attendance but many students are asking to be able to take exams at a distance, many are using the 'mixed model' in which the student can choose how to take the exam" - Manfredi told Sky TG24 - "Universities have opened study rooms and libraries, everything that can be done to ensure the continuation of education has been done." Lessons at Italy's universities and schools were stopped on 5 March, in the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic. The majority of Italy's schools reopened on 14 September. Photo La Repubblica An eight-year-old boy who suffered brain damage after contracting a meningitis infection in the days after his birth in a Cork hospital has settled his High Court action for 22.5m. Cork University Maternity Hospital today apologised unreservedly in court to Calum Spillane and his family for the delay in diagnosing Calums infection and the injuries he suffered. Calum's counsel Dr John OMahony SC told the court it is a very sad case. Calums speech is enormously limited, he said and the boy has dyskinetic cerebral palsy. He needs 24-hour care and has to use a wheelchair. He was born in good condition and a bad infection developed. The hospital were not alert when they should have been, Calum developed meningitis and there were devastating personal sequelae for him and for the rest of his life, Dr OMahony appearing with Cian OMahony BL said. The settlement is one of the highest before the High Court for a person who has suffered extensive brain damage. The family outside court said they hope their son will now receive the therapies he requires and which were stopped because of the Covid 19 pandemic and lockdown. 22.5 million settlement for boy after cork university maternity hospital delayed in diagnosing meningitis following his birth. Calum Englishs mother Linda Spillane spoke outside court. (Video from @colmwhatyalike ) pic.twitter.com/dQ5wiedrN1 Orla O'Donnell (@Orlaodo) September 17, 2020 It was claimed that following Calums delivery at the Cork hospital on August 1, 2012, there was a delay in diagnosing and treating his Group B streptococcal infection and it progressed to the stage where he suffered meningitis and severe brain injury. It was further claimed there was a failure to ensure the appropriate assessment of the baby when midwifery personnel had noted on three occasions on the afternoon/evening of August 2 their concerns for the baby. Calums mum Linda Spillane told Mr Justice Kevin Cross Calum and her family have suffered. Picture: Collins Courts In the apology on behalf of Cork University Maternity Hospital which was read to the High Court today, it said: CUMH have learned important lessons from your experience and we continue to educate out staff regarding the importance of optimal communication and escalation across all our multidisciplinary team. It added: We can only express our sincere regret to you and your family for what has happened and wish you both and your two boys Calum and Tom the very best for the future. Dr OMahony told the court liability was admitted in the case and the settlement was reached after mediation talks. Calums parents Patrick English and Linda Spillane were in court to hear the apology. Calums mum Linda Spillane told Mr Justice Kevin Cross Calum and her family have suffered. She said Calum sees his two-year old brother Tom walking across the fields with his father and he cant tell us he if he is upset by it. She said her son has regressed since the Covid-19 lockdown when his therapies stopped. We want him now to have a team working with him and to have one to one for speech and other therapies, she said. He always has a big smile on his face and he is very sociable. She told the court that their two-year-old son has already surpassed Calum and for them that is very bitter. Calum Spillane, Mitchelstown Caves, Burncourt, Cahir, Co Tipperary had through his mother Linda Spillane sued the HSE over the provision of medical care to him around the time of his birth at Cork University Maternity Hospital. Within an hour of Calums birth, his mother developed a significant fever and testing of her blood showed a raised white cell count and neutrophilia. All of these, counsel said, were indicative of infection. Calum was unwell after his birth with excessive sleepiness, crying and moaning. It is claimed there was a failure to appreciate the possibility he had an infection when midwifery personnel on August 2 described Calum as moaning and pale. Approving the settlement, Mr Justice Kevin Cross congratulated Calum's parents, Linda Spillane and Patrick English (pictured), for the care they have given their son. Picture: Collins It was further claimed a delay occurred when the baby on August 2 at 6pm was noted to be pale and moaning and a review of the baby was requested, but that did not occur until 10.30pm. Midwifery personnel, it was claimed, had noted on three occasions around the afternoon/evening of August 2 their concerns about the baby and there was an alleged failure to appreciate the possibility the baby had an infection when the review assessment was carried out. There was, it was alleged, an incorrect conclusion Calum was behaving as a normal baby in the early hours of August 3 and there was an alleged failure to respond appropriately to repeated documenting of concerns by midwifery personnel. There was also, it was claimed, a failure to ensure that proper investigation was carried out and antibiotic therapy commenced in a timely manner. It was further alleged there was a failure to carry out blood testing in an appropriate and timely manner and blood tests between August 2 and the early hours of August 3, it was claimed, would have indicated the probability of significant bacterial infection mandating appropriate intravenous antibiotic treatment. When a diagnosis of the meningitis was made the baby suffered seizures and an MRI scan later showed the boy had suffered significant brain injury. Approving the settlement, Mr Justice Kevin Cross said it was a good one and should not be regarded as a bonus by anybody. It was to provide care for Calum for the duration of his lifetime. He wished the family well for the future and congratulated the parents for the care they have given their son. State Awards $11.1 Million in Climate Change Funding To Cities And Towns FITCHBURG, Mass. Continuing investment in climate change resiliency, the Baker-Polito Administration announced $11.1 million in grants to cities and towns through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program. This announcement brings total state investment in climate change resilience through the MVP program to over $44 million since 2017. The popular grant and designation program provides communities with funding and technical support to identify climate hazards, develop strategies to improve resilience, and implement priority actions to adapt to climate change. The grants were announced by Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito in Fitchburg as part of the Baker-Polito Administration's celebration of Climate Week in the Commonwealth. "Projects like those receiving awards today are not only critical for the resilience of our communities, but also create local jobs, contribute to the economy, and avoid future costs," Governor Charlie Baker said. "As we celebrate Climate Week, I am proud of the $44 million we've invested since 2017 through MVP, and we look forward to continuing the strong partnerships we've built with cities and towns to prepare for climate change impacts throughout the Commonwealth." "The continued success of the MVP program shows how important building resiliency in Massachusetts communities is to our municipal partners and residents," Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito said. "We are thrilled to reach 89 percent participation in this voluntary program and are excited to continue to invest in efforts to build climate resilience in the Commonwealth." With this announcement, 89% of Massachusetts cities and towns, or 312 municipalities, are now enrolled in the MVP program, which pairs local leadership and knowledge with a significant investment of resources and funding from the Commonwealth to address ongoing climate change impacts like sea-level rise, inland flooding, storms, and extreme temperatures. The program was created was created in 2017 as part of Governor Baker's Executive Order 569. The $11.1 million announced will go towards MVP Planning Grants and Action Grants. Planning Grants support communities in working with a state-certified technical assistance provider to lead a community-wide planning workshop to identify key climate-related hazards, vulnerabilities and strengths, develop adaptation actions, and prioritize next steps. Results of the workshops and planning efforts inform existing local plans, grant applications, and policies. Communities are then eligible for competitive MVP Action Grant funding to implement priority on-the-ground projects. Projects are focused on proactive strategies to address climate change impacts and may include retrofitting and adapting infrastructure, actions to invest in and protect environmental justice communities and improve public health, detailed vulnerability assessments or design and engineering studies, stormwater upgrades, dam retrofits and removals, culvert upgrades, drought mitigation, energy resilience, mosquito control initiatives, and that focus on implementing nature-based solutions such as wetland restoration and floodplain protection. "In this fourth round of MVP Action Grants, we are seeing the continuation of many projects we helped fund in the planning stage that are now ready for on-the-ground implementation," Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides said. "We are pleased to see the hard work of our municipal partners pay off in this way and are also excited for the many new communities that are just starting to take action to build resilience to climate change through the MVP planning process." The following communities will receive funding to complete the MVP planning process in 2020-2021: Applicant MVP Program Region Grant Award Ashburnham Central $22,000 Ashby Central $27,000 Berkley Southeast $15,000 Carlisle Northeast $27,000 Cheshire Berkshires & Hilltowns $32,000 Chester Berkshires & Hilltowns $26,500 Foxborough Greater Boston $17,000 Granville Berkshires & Hilltowns $27,000 Hampden Greater Connecticut River Valley $40,000 Hardwick Greater Connecticut River Valley $20,000 Heath Berkshires & Hilltowns $27,000 Holbrook Greater Boston $32,000 Hopedale Central $15,000 Leyden Greater Connecticut River Valley $27,000 Mount Washington Berkshires & Hilltowns $20,000 New Braintree Greater Connecticut River Valley $20,000 Otis Berkshires & Hilltowns $20,000 Petersham Greater Connecticut River Valley $20,000 Richmond Berkshires & Hilltowns $20,000 Stockbridge Berkshires & Hilltowns $38,000 Upton Central $20,000 West Brookfield Greater Connecticut River Valley $20,000 Westhampton Berkshires & Hilltowns $20,000 Whitman Greater Boston $29,000 Wilbraham Greater Connecticut River Valley $32,000 Wilmington Northeast $31,000 Total (26) $644,500 The following communities were awarded Action Grants: Applicant Project Title Grant Award Agawam Agawam Stormwater Master Plan $216,750 Arlington & Resilient Mystic Collaborative Wicked Hot Mystic $186,200 Athol & North Quabbin Community Coalition Lord Pond Plaza Improvement Project $117,760 Auburn Leesville Pond Water Quality Protection and Community-Wide Resiliency Improvements $209,895 Belchertown Enhancing Water Supply Reliability: Resilient Water Storage and Water Conservation Design & Implementation $698,356 Blandford Resilient Community-Driven Master Plan + Resilient Regulatory Work $102,824 Bolton, Harvard, & Devens Apple Country Ecological Climate Resiliency and Carbon Planning Assessment $250,000 Boston City of Boston Heat Resilience Planning Study $280,070 Braintree Monatiquot River Restoration Construction $750,000 Cambridge & Metro Mayors Building Resilience to Climate Driven Heat in Metro Boston $268,820 Chelsea Urban Heat Island Mitigation Project $262,996 East Longmeadow Comprehensive Master Plan $84,833 Easthampton Green Infrastructure Planning and Resiliency Design for Cherry Street $175,957 Fall River, Dighton, Somerset, & Swansea Regional Emergency Water System Interconnectivity Analysis $100,650 Fitchburg John Fitch Highway A Resilient Road Corridor $271,787 Granby Resilient Regulatory Work and Refocusing on Climate Resilience Pathway in Master Plan $34,272 Great Barrington Climate Action, Resilience, and Equity Great Barrington (CARE GB) $70,400 Haverhill Little River Dam Removal Feasibility Study $129,693 Holyoke Holyoke Urban Forest Equity Plan $135,032 Lakeville, Middleborough, Freetown, Rochester, Taunton, & New Bedford Assawompset Ponds Complex Watershed Management and Climate Action Plan $93,236 Lawrence Flood Study and DPW Yard Adaptation Plan $213,418 Leominster Monoosnoc Brook Bank Stabilization Project $200,661 Lexington & Resilient Mystic Collaborative Upper Mystic River Watershed Regional Stormwater Wetlands $670,000 Littleton Watershed Protection for Climate Resiliency- Brown's Woods Acquisition $763,050 Lowell Claypit Brook Climate Resilience Stormwater Management Capital Improvement Plan $138,000 Lynn Strawberry Brook Green Infrastructure Implementation $199,090 Malden Malden River Works $150,015 Medford Conceptualization and Community Building for Equitable, Community-Driven Resilience Hubs in Medford $202,485 Milford Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Milford Town Park $419,123 Millbury Armory Village Green Infrastructure Project - Phase II $125,600 Natick & Charles River Watershed Building Resilience Across the Charles River Watershed $264,171 Newburyport Resilient Critical Infrastructure: Adapting a Wastewater Treatment Facility, Underground Electric Lines, and Public Rail Trail to Future Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge $1,000,000 Plympton Building a Municipal Resilience Portfolio: Assessment of Critical Land in the Winnetuxet River Corridor $41,929 Provincetown Permit Level Design of the Ryder Street Outfall Relocation and Drainage Improvements $70,465 Revere Coastal Resilience Feasibility Study for the Point of Pines and Riverside Area $210,689 Salisbury Resilient Rings Island: Preventing a Neighborhood from Being Stranded by Flooding $250,000 South Hadley Climate Resilient South Hadley $105,000 Springfield People-Focused Resilient Redesign and Retrofits for Community/Civic Infrastructure and Critical Facilities $210,422 Stow & Hudson Assessing the Health of Lake Boon A Key to Climate Resiliency in Stow & Hudson, MA and Beyond $154,000 Williamstown & Mohawk Trail Woodlands Partnership Mohawk Trail Woodland Partnership Forest Stewardship, Resilience, and Climate Adaptation $164,575 Windsor River Road Site 1 Culvert $460,000 Total (41) $10,452,224 KYODO NEWS - Sep 17, 2020 - 13:19 | All, Japan Yoshihide Suga began work as Japan's new prime minister on Thursday, a day after assuming the top post and launching his Cabinet. "I want to meet people's expectations by creating a Cabinet that works for people and achieves results," Suga told reporters at the prime minister's office. He said he will appoint senior vice ministers and parliamentary vice ministers on Friday. During his first press conference as premier on Wednesday, Suga pledged to revive the economy and bring the coronavirus under control. He said he would further push forward policies laid out by his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, who stepped down due to ill health. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, who served as health minister under Abe, said the government will thoroughly execute the coronavirus response decided under the previous administration, which ranged from securing vaccines for all people to expanding tests. "The important thing is to prevent infections and bring economic and social activities back to normal and revive them," the new top government spokesman said. In the longer term, Kato said the Suga government will tackle issues such as the low birthrate and the aging of the population as well as promoting decentralization, by eliminating sectionalism and checking vested interests. On the diplomatic front, Kato reiterated Suga's pledge to establish close ties with Japan's neighbors including Russia and resolve the issue of North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s and bring the abductees home through international cooperation. Suga retained eight ministers, including Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and economic revitalization minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, reflecting his pledge of continuity with Abe. Among the five new faces joining the Cabinet was Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe's younger brother. The remaining seven members were either shifted from other posts or returned to positions they had held in the past. The appointments were spread across the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's seven major factions, including the five that carried Suga to an overwhelming victory over two rivals in the party's presidential election on Monday. Related coverage: Profiles of Japan PM Suga's Cabinet members Japan's new first lady thanks supporters as husband rises to top post Suga's hometown, constituency celebrate his election as new PM WASHINGTON Openly contradicting the governments top health experts, President Donald Trump predicted on Wednesday that a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus could be ready as early as next month and in mass distribution soon after, undermining the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and calling him confused in projecting a longer time frame. Trump also disagreed with Dr. Robert Redfield about the effectiveness of protective masks which the president recommends but almost never wears and said hed telephoned Redfield to tell him so. Earlier in the day, the CDC sent all 50 states a playbook for distribution of a vaccine to all Americans free of cost when one is proven safe and effective which is not yet the case. Redfield told a congressional hearing that health care workers, first responders and others at high risk would get the vaccine first, perhaps in January or even late this year, but it was unlikely to be available more broadly, again assuming approval, before late spring or summer. Redfield, masked at times in a Senate hearing room, spoke emphatically of the importance of everyone wearing protective masks to stop the pandemic, which has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine. Trump, who has strongly recommended all year that restaurants, stores and cities in general reopen, mentioned on Tuesday that waiters have struggled with their face coverings and do not like them. As for vaccinations, Trump said Wednesday, We think we can start some time in October. One of his recently added advisers, Dr. Scott Atlas, said as many as 700 million doses could be available by the end of March. Trump made the prediction even though the vaccine is still being tested in human subjects, and some health experts have said they believe a safe and highly effective vaccine is several months way, if not much longer. CDC sent a planning document on Wednesday to U.S. states, territories and some big cities. Adding to logistical complications, vaccines likely will have to be given in two doses spaced weeks apart and will have to be refrigerated. Redfield said states are not ready to deal with the demand for such a distribution and some $6 billion in new funding would be needed to get the nation prepared. Unswayed, Trump said, Were ready to move, and I think it will be full distribution. Redfield said any vaccine available in November or December would be in very limited supply, and reserved for first responders and people most vulnerable to COVID-19. The shot wouldnt be broadly available until the spring or summer of 2021, he estimated. The entire vaccine enterprise faces continued public skepticism. Only about half of Americans said theyd get vaccinated in an Associated Press-NORC poll taken in May. Since then, questions have only mounted about whether the government is trying to rush treatments and vaccines to help Trumps reelection chances. The Health and Human Services Department announced Wednesday that political appointee Michael Caputo would take a leave of absence to focus on his health and the well-being of his family. The news followed revelations that Caputo had tried to gain editorial control over the CDCs scientific publications on COVID-19, which he contended were hurting the Trump administration. Redfield said that the scientific integrity of his agencys reports has not been compromised and it will not be compromised under my watch. He also rejected questions about whether the CDCs timeline for states to be ready for a vaccine by Nov. 1 was politically motivated. The worst thing that could happen is if we have a vaccine delivered and were still not ready to distribute, Redfield told Senate lawmakers. There was absolutely no political thinking about it. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the committees top Democrat, said political interference from HHS had damaged public trust in the governments health information. The Trump administration needs to leave the science to the scientists immediately, Murray said. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said while campaigning that he trusts what scientists say about a potential vaccine but not Trump. Biden has said he would take a vaccine tomorrow if it were available but he would want to see what the scientists said first. As for the planned vaccine campaign, Redfield said that his agency will be working with state health officials to implement the preparations in coming days. Top-middle-foot soldiers: How the Delhi riots were orchestrated India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: The chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police in connection with the northeast Delhi riots suggest that there was a well-oiled mechanism that orchestrated the violence. The police said that there were three levels of conspirators-top-level, middle-level and foot soldiers, who were the rioters. Submitting its chargesheet in the case, the police said that the evidence includes WhatsApp chats of February 24. That was the time that the violence took place and at that time the key conspirators were guiding the foot-soldiers about the violence in the area, the police further added. Tahir Hussain, Md Parvez Ahmed, Md Iliyas, Saifi Khalid, Ishrat Jahan, Miran Haider, Safoora Zargar, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Shadab Ahmed, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Tasleem Ahmed, Saleem Malik, Md Saleem Khan, and Athar Khan have been named in the chargesheet. Khoon Bahana Padega were Umar Khalids alleged words leading up to Delhi riots The name of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Ahmed are not part of the chargesheet as the arrests were made just a few days back. Their names would be in the supplementary chargesheet which the Delhi Police would file soon. The conspirators used a WhatsApp group to incite the violence and a total of 25 groups were specially created for 25 protest sites. While the impression was given that the protests were about the amended citizenship law, in reality these conspirators were using the groups to guide people on the ground, the police further added. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News Each of these chat groups had its own role in the conspiracy. While some groups have been deleted, others have been recovered and submitted as evidence. The police also said that the conspirators used code words within the groups to convey secret messages. They also gave hate speeches at Jafrabad Metro Station and were continuously present there till the last. BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that Europe is bracing for a 'very serious situation' regarding coronavirus as it is going to transmit at alarming rates across the continent. 'We have a very serious situation unfolding before us,' WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge said while addressing a news conference. 'Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March.' 'Last week, the region's weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients.' New cases of COVID infection increased by more than 10 percent in more than half of European countries in the last two weeks. Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increasing more than two-fold in the same period. This should serve as a warning of the immediate threat, according to the top WHO official. The Czech Republic on Wednesday reported 2,139 coronavirus cases - the highest number of new cases in a single day in the country. Wales locked down one of its biggest regions, and France closed dozens of schools after reporting surge in cases. New restrictions were imposed in Spanish capital Madrid after an increase in infections. 'In the spring and early summer we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off,' he told reporters. He cited the situation in June, when cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers should serve as a 'wake-up call' for European governments, Kluge added. The WHO also insisted on maintaining the 14-day quarantine period for people exposed to coronavirus. WHO's senior emergency officer for Europe Catherine Smallwood said the recommendation is based on a scientific understanding of the virus's incubation period and tranmission. European countries are currently following different quarantine periods, varying between seven days and 14 days. 'Knowing the immense individual and societal impact even a slight reduction in the length of quarantine can have... I encourage countries of the region to make scientific due process with their experts and explore safe reduction options,' said Kluge. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Eversource Energy is asking Connecticut lawmakers to authorize $700 million in borrowing to blunt the impact of losses from Tropical Storm Isaias, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rollback of a recent rate increase. The securitization pitch to Gov. Ned Lamont and select lawmakers comes a week before the General Assembly is expected to convene a special session on bipartisan legislation requiring regulators to devise a new system of performance-based rate-setting. No shot, Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, co-chairman of the legislatures Energy and Technology Committee, said of the Eversource proposal. For them to even offer that at this time is a joke. Arconti said Eversource broached the idea in material sent Sunday to him and his co-chair, Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex. Jim Judge, the Eversource chief executive, followed up in separate meetings Tuesday with Lamont and the lawmakers. The theory behind securitization plans is simple: Rather than hit ratepayers with a big increase due to extraordinary losses by a utility, spread out the impact over time through borrowing that Eversource would call rate reduction bonds. But the details are complex, and lawmakers said Eversources proposal asks Connecticuts part-time legislature to take on a task that belongs to PURA, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Such a pitch to PURA would be subjected to a painstaking and public review over months. Its a complicated issue, Needleman said. Normally, I would never agree to the idea of taking routine expenses and securitizing them bonding them. We may be facing extraordinary losses here, but this is not the moment to look at that. Eversource did not raise the issue in its testimony last week during a hearing on the proposed energy legislation. Thats another big issue, Needleman said. Arconti said the financial impact of COVID-related delinquencies Connecticut was the among the states that suspended shut offs due to unpaid bills during the pandemic is a significant industry-wide issue and one that PURA must address. Thats what PURA is for, Arconti said. Just to legislate this away, that would set a terrible precedent. The legislation references three open cases before PURA, including the regulators investigation into how Eversource and United Illuminating responded to the Isaias, the tropical storm that blacked out more than one million customers. Arconti said the legislative language, if accepted, effectively would end the inquiry. Securitization is a tool already available to PURA, but Eversource said additional legislation was needed in this case. Mitch Gross, the spokesman for Eversource in Connecticut, said the company disagreed with the assessment that the legislation would be prescriptive on PURA, not permissive. At the legislative hearings we committed to working on ways to find solutions to the high bills customers are experiencing during COVID. Any such proposals would ultimately need to be filed with PURA for public review and approval, Gross said. We will, of course, have additional discussions as appropriate, but legislation is required for securitization. Judge, who is based in Boston, spent Tuesday in Connecticut. He and two senior executives met the governor and his chief of staff, Paul Mounds, at the Capitol, then drove to Essex, where the Eversource contingent met Needleman and talked to Arconti via a video call. In a summary given to the lawmakers, Eversource emphasized the benefit to customers, saying Securitization of these costs will reduce customer rate impacts by 65 percent over the next six years. It was accompanied by 11,200 words of suggested legislative language. While securitization never was raised by Eversource during either of two hearings recently held by the Energy and Technology Committee, Gross said the proposal was consistent with the companys promise to work with legislators and regulators to develop creative solutions to reduce rate impacts on our customers. One possible solution is to take the costs associated with recent, and future, rate increases and spread them over 20 years, Gross said. This approach would provide immediate rate relief to customers during this unprecedented time of COVID-19. Asked for the governors assessment of the proposal, an administration spokesman offered neither praise nor criticism. Gov. Lamont received Eversources proposal, which was also shared with the leadership of the General Assemblys Energy and Technology Committee, said Max Reiss, the governors communications director. Gov. Lamont remains focused on supporting legislation that holds our utilities accountable and protecting ratepayers. Eversource has had a difficult summer, with customers complaining of higher bills and poorer service. A July 1 rate adjustment coincided with a heat wave and higher residential electricity usage due to people working from home during the pandemic. Residential electric usage increased 36% from May to June and June 2020 was 26% higher than June 2019, and Eversource said that trend continued into July. Then came Isaias on Aug. 4. The storm knocked out power to more than 1.1 million customers with a peak of more than 632,000 outages at one time and damaged nearly 21,700 locations, including 8,900 fallen trees and 500 miles of downed wires. Some customers were without power for nine days, but Eversource defended its response, given the damage. The Energy and Technology Committees proposed energy bill, among other things, would set standards for compensating customers after blackouts. Needleman said the measure is bipartisan, supported by the committees two Democratic co-chairs and its two ranking Republicans, Sen. Paul Formica of East Lyme and Rep. Charles Ferraro of West Haven. Needleman said he will resist any amendments that would be unacceptable to his GOP colleagues. I have great respect for the chairs for that, Formica said of the bipartisan approach. Weve been working that way for while. But Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said he was wary of taking up an energy bill that was inspired in large measure by outrage over a blackout. What gives me concern is this is a knee-jerk reaction to an issue. Whenever we do a knee-jerk reaction, we never get it right, Fasano said. I understand people want to have a vote on it, so they have a flag to wave in the election. Lamont is expected to issue a call for the special session by Friday. It will not include the issue of police accountability, despite Republican calls for a wholesale rewrite of the law passed in special session in July, as opposed to minor revisions sought by some Democrats. School construction financing and absentee ballots also are expected to be on the agenda. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said registrars of voters are looking for new rules on when ballots can be counted, given the high percentage of votes expected to be cast by absentee due to the COVID pandemic. The caucus leaders have agreed to consider changes. Weve been contacted by registrars concerned about the amount of absentee ballots received under the current rules, Aresimowicz said. Weve been trying to figure out as leaders what kind of relief we can bring to them. Stanley Crouch died yesterday at the age of 74. Crouch is best known as a great jazz critic. His biography of Charlie Parker is a classic. But Crouch was also a literary critic and a critic of our culture. Here are some gems from his criticism: On rap: It is either infantile self-celebration or anarchic glamorization of criminal behavior. On Toni Morrison: She has a certain skill, but she has no serious artistic vision or real artistic integrity. Beloved was a fraud. It gave a fake vision of the slave trade, it didnt deal with the complicity of Africans, and it moved the males into the wings. On Spike Lee: Hes a middle-class would-be street Negro, whose films reflected fantasy versions of Black communities and the fundamental shallowness that you get from a propagandist. On Malcolm X: He was the chief black heckler of the civil rights movement. On the civil rights movement: It aspired to a complex vision of universal humanism and cultural understanding before it was hijacked by radicals. On Louis Farrakhan: Hes our most highly respected racist and all-purpose lunatic. On his African American critics: Ive been applauded by black bus drivers, subway drivers, mechanics, various people who have come up to me and said, Im sure glad somebody is saying it. Thats enough for me. I dont care what some trickle-down Negro Marxist says. On the black nationalist movement: Race pride is something that Im not unacquainted with. But thats different from racism, and a lot of people in the cultural nationalist movement are hard-core anti-white racists. And to me, racism is antithetical to the Afro-American tradition. On his education: If you came in there and said, Im from a dysfunctional family and a single parent household, they would say, Boy, Im going to ask you again. What is 8 times 8? When I was coming up, there were no excuses except your house burned down and there was a murder in the family. Crouchs no-nonsense education produced a brilliant enemy of nonsense. RIP. Girl, 9, killed, seven injured as Phuket pickup wipes out PHUKET: A 9-year-old girl died and seven others were injured when a pickup truck slid off the road and ploughed through people dining at a roadside restaurant on Thepkrasattri Rd last night (Sept 16). accidentsdeathSafety By Eakkapop Thongtub Thursday 17 September 2020, 10:53AM Maj Sornthip Chukaew of the Tha Chatchai police was notified of the accident, in front of the West Coast Ride Thailand Maikhao motorbike shop in Moo 7, Mai Khao, at around 8:30pm. Police together with Kusoldharm rescue workers rushed to the scene where they saw a black Phuket-registered Ford pickup truck rammed through the shop window of the motorbike shop. Debris from the pickup ploughing through the tables set up in front as the shops roadside restaurant were scattered everywhere. Nine-year-old girl Sirikarn Saisaya was unconscious. She was rushed to Thalang Hospital, but later pronounced dead. Seriously injured was Boonsri Wareesri, who had a large wound to her head, had blood coming out of her ears and was suffering back pain. Six other people suffered minor injuries: Ronnachai Thepparak, small scratches along his body; Theerapong Noknoi, wounds near his left eyebrow and pain along his body; Rattikarn Mundee, wounds to her mouth, two teeth had been knocked out, and she had pain along her legs; Samon Inkrab had some bruises on her forehead and cheeks and chest pains; Sasithorn Ramphu, wounds on her forehead and near her eyes; and Sompong Sairaya, wounds on his nose, scratches along his body and bruises on his head. All the injured were taken to Thalang Hospital for treatment, rescue workers confirmed. The pickup driver, Suwit Rakkarn, 31, was at the scene when police arrived, Maj Sornthip of the Tha Chatchai Police confirmed. Suwit told police that it was raining while he was driving to Phang Nga. The rain made the road slippery, he lost control of his truck and hit a car and motorbike by the side of the road, and then through the roadside restaurant and into the shop. Suwit also suffered minor injuries and was taken to hospital. At this stage, we have not decided what charge he will face, as we are still waiting for the alcohol test result and we will question him more after he is discharged from the hospital, Maj Sornthip said. A Derry school is going for gold in a prestigious award for secondary schools. Shortlisted from thousands of nominations, St. Cecilia's College is one of just 76 silver award winners in the Award for Making a Difference - Secondary School of the Year for its outstanding commitment to changing the lives of the children it works with every day. The all-girls school has been recognised for its aim of ensuring that its students are provided with opportunities to achieve qualifications, employability skills, cross-community experiences that break a cycle of deprivation. St. Cecilia's is now in the running for one of just 14 gold awards later in the year, in a programme which will be broadcast on the BBC. The awards ceremony is recognised as a 'great opportunity' to celebrate the exceptional school staff who have worked wonders during an incredibly challenging time for educators across the country. The Pearson National Teaching Awards is an annual celebration of exceptional teachers, founded in 1998 by Lord Puttnam to recognise the life-changing impact an inspirational teacher can have on the lives of the young people they work with. This year marks its 22nd year of celebrating, award-winning teachers, teaching assistants, headteachers and lecturers across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Lorraine Langham, chief executive of Future First, the education charity sponsoring this award, paid tribute to the Derry school. She said: Making a difference is what our work at Future First is all about. That's why we sponsored the Making the Difference Award. "St Cecilia's College has shown just what can be done and our heartfelt congratulations go to all concerned. A young persons start in life should not limit their future and through our alumni programmes with schools, students can be motivated and inspired to make the difference themselves and transform their own lives." Foyle Sinn Fein MLA Karen Mullan congratulated the school. She said: I would like to congratulate the principal Mrs Mulhern, staff, pupils and Board of Governors at St Cecilias on this achievement. The school can now be considered for a Gold Teaching award in the category and I wish them the best of luck in their endeavours. This is a great achievement for the school, the pupils and the local community." Ms Mullan concluded: The success in the making a difference category highlights the sterling work being carried out by staff to improve the lives of children in various positive ways. With wildfires creating a giant mass of smoke in Montana in recent days, school nurse Karen Graf worried about the challenges of assessing kids who were having trouble breathing. Is it COVID? Is it asthma? Is it influenza? Is it the smoke in the air? That's just a really hard one to determine, Graf, 55, who is based in Pioneer Elementary School in Billings and manages the countys other school nurses, told TODAY. Usually, I'm assessing and evaluating in a hallway or a space where we can be close by the classroom and then move them to an area of isolation if need be. Schools in Grafs area have been back in session for a month, with the majority of children attending class in person. The students are assigned to small cohorts of four to six kids who spend all of their time together. If someone in the group were to get COVID-19, only that little bubble would need to be quarantined, not the entire classroom. Grafs first week of school was spent addressing concerns from people freaking out over the virus, and those who didnt think it was even an issue and were upset about having to wear a mask, she said. School nurse job changes during the pandemic. (Courtesy Karen Graf) 'School nurse is more important than ever before' Across the country, school nurses are adjusting to the new normal of the epidemic. Theyre still managing everything from skinned knees and allergic reactions, to chronic disease care and mental health issues. But now theyre also on the front lines of trying to stop the spread of the new coronavirus as schools reopen. Theyre contact tracing, enforcing mask wearing, screening for symptoms, conducting disease surveillance, and educating teachers and staff about how and when to use personal protective equipment. Theyre the ones who will be called if a child or teacher is showing any warning signs of COVID-19 in class. Related: Thats if a school has a nurse at all. A quarter of U.S. schools dont employ one, according to a survey published in Journal of School Nursing in 2018. Story continues The school nurse is more important than ever before, Laurie Combe, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said in a statement in April as she requested government funding for 10,000 more positions. Purchasing 1,000 thermometers Juanita Gryfinski has a pool of 1,500 potential patients the number of students who attend the middle school in St. Charles, Illinois, where she works as a certified school nurse. She had some unusual new tasks this school year, like ordering 1,000 digital oral thermometers and teaching kids families how to use them. Temperature checks are important during the epidemic, but many people just don't keep thermometers at home, she said. Related: Gryfinskis district was one of the first ones in the Chicago area to return to in-person instruction in mid-August. High schools remain remote until October, but grade and middle schools are open with many precautions in place. Students are allowed to enter only after completing and passing a daily online symptom checker. Desks in classrooms are spaced 6 feet apart, kids come in on rotating schedules, hallways are now one-way only and classes are held outside whenever possible, with students sitting on lawn chairs. Masks are mandatory. A month into the semester, Gryfinski said following up on the daily symptom checker takes up "a big chunk of time," but she and other school nurses are energized about helping to keep in-person instruction going. Are we tired? Yes, but we know what we're doing and we're doing it well, said Gryfinski, 64, who is also president of the Illinois Association of School Nurses. I have to say Im pretty astounded how well the kids have done, even our little ones. School nurses as 'first responders' The parents were one of her biggest concerns. Gryfinski knew there would be COVID-19 cases in schools and worried students families would want to return to remote learning quickly when that happened. But even as schools have announced cases and required some students, teachers or staff to quarantine, theyve been able to demonstrate its still safe to attend class, Gryfinski said. Both she and Graf said they felt safe on the job, and wear PPE including an N-95 mask, a face shield, gown and gloves when evaluating a potentially ill student or staff member. Local mandates provide guidance for the next steps, including contact tracing, notifying the health department of a suspect case, and testing, isolating or quarantining household members. But some school nurses are worried about their COVID-19 risk while working as the first responders in aging school buildings with antiquated ventilation systems, wrote Robin Cogan, a veteran New Jersey school nurse, in USA Today. I have a sense of foreboding that we are doing something profoundly unsafe, she warned. Bracing for flu season Flu season may complicate things further. But theres more understanding now about COVID-19 symptoms in kids if there are any, Gryfinski said. Many children are asymptomatic or may have abdominal pain and congestion rather than a sore throat, cough and high fever that come with the typical flu, she noted. The concern is spreading the illness to more vulnerable people in the community. Grafs school district is constantly monitoring various metrics to decide whether schools should remain open for in-person learning. Teachers, parents and students are happy they are there, and so is she. I get such a sense of satisfaction just hearing the kids giggling on the playground, hearing the violin players start to play for the first time and screeching. I think sometimes I had forgotten what those sounds sounded like, Graf said. California faces more devastation from wildfires that have ravaged the West Coast, authorities warned Wednesday, with strong winds and dry heat expected to whip up flames from dozens of blazes raging across the state. Governor Gavin Newsom said although firefighters had made progress in their battle to contain more than two dozen major wildfires, so-called Santa Ana winds could fuel the relentless blazes. "With wind events that we are experiencing currently and what we anticipate over the coming days, we have to be mindful that even with high containment numbers, those fires are anything but behind us," he told a press briefing. Highlighting the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, Newsom said the state so far this year has experienced 7,606 fires as opposed to 4,972 in 2019. He said the flames have devoured nearly 2.3 million acres -- 1.5 million of them since mid-August -- as opposed to 118,000 last year. "These numbers bear fruit to that assertion that this is historic," he said. Newsom also appeared to hit out at US President Donald Trump, who visited the state earlier this week, saying he had "no patience for climate change deniers" who reject mounting scientific evidence that extreme weather events are linked to global warming. Trump during his visit downplayed climate concerns over the wildfires, saying that global warming will reverse on its own. "The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers" since 2003, said Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). He added that the fires are emitting so much pollution that thick smoke was visible over 8,000 kilometers (4,900 miles) away in northern Europe, underscoring the devastation of the blazes. The heaviest smoke from the fires remains over the US West Coast, with cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco registering some of the worst air quality in the world. Dee Perez comforts Michael Reynolds in the ruins of his home destroyed in the Almeda Fire in Talent, Oregon, September 15, 2020. Photo: AFP 'Ripe for wildfires' Exhausted firefighters are now battling 79 large fires, with "possible critical fire weather" expected in northeast California, the National Interagency Fire Center said Wednesday. "With no significant precipitation in sight, California remains dry and ripe for wildfires," state firefighting agency Cal Fire said, adding that warmer weather expected this weekend would bring "elevated fire danger." One of the blazes near Los Angeles, dubbed the Bobcat Fire, closed in on a historic observatory Tuesday but crews managed to protect the structure. Apart from California, which has borne the brunt of the overall death toll of more than 30, the coastal states of Oregon and Washington have also experienced record blazes that have encroached on major population centers. In Oregon, 10 people were killed in the infernos fueled by dry conditions. Rain was expected to bring some much-needed relief for parts of Oregon and Washington on Wednesday. The flames across the West Coast -- some of which were caused by lightning strikes -- have so far scorched more than five million acres (two million hectares) and displaced tens of thousands of people. The disaster has brought the issue of global warming to the forefront of the US presidential campaign, with less than two months before the election. It has been difficult historically to prove a link between individual extreme weather events and climate change. However, there is a growing evidence showing blazes like those in the US would not be so intense and widespread without the warming humanity has caused on Earth during the industrial age. In general, climate change has been shown to amplify droughts that dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. The economic impact from this year's fires is expected to be staggering, with one expert estimating the damage at more than $20 billion. Authorities have also warned that the smoke from the fires could worsen the coronavirus pandemic, as people forced to evacuate seek shelter in shared accommodation. Inhaling smoke and ash could also further weaken the lungs of people infected with the virus and undermine the immune system. The dedication of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is set to take place Thursday, even as the legacy of the World War II commander and nation's 34th president has become a subject of debate in the current presidential election. The event had originally been set for May 8, the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe, or VE-Day, a triumph that Eisenhower oversaw as commander of allied forces through the D-Day landings, the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine. It was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read Next: The Air Force Has Already Flown a Secret Plane That Could Be Its Next Fighter Thursday's ceremony, at the site off Independence Avenue near the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, is for invited guests only. It will be livestreamed on Facebook at 7 p.m. ET Thursday. President Donald Trump is on the list of invited guests, according to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, but it was unclear as of Tuesday whether he would attend the ceremony. Eisenhower, a five-star general and Republican, was ranked in a 2017 C-Span survey of historians as the fifth-greatest president. First on the list was Abraham Lincoln, followed by George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt. Thursday's ceremony will feature an address by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kans., a Marine Corps veteran and chairman of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, and recorded remarks from former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice. In a statement leading up to the ceremony, Roberts said he is "proud to honor Kansas' favorite son" at the dedication. Though Eisenhower was born in Texas, he spent much of his childhood in Abilene, Kansas. Victoria Tigwell, deputy executive director of the Memorial Commission, said, "While we have had to adjust our celebratory plans, it's important to note that Eisenhower's legacy, as honored through the memorial, transcends one moment in time and must be shared with the world." The four-acre park on which the $150 million memorial is situated will open to the public on Friday, Sept. 18; it will be operated by the National Park Service. The memorial, designed by architect Frank Gehry, combines "grand architectural elements, sculpture and green space" to record Eisenhower's rise "from his humble childhood in America's heartland, to his decisive role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II and his two terms as president," the commission said. To depict his historic career, the memorial features three bronze sculptures of Eisenhower, stone bas relief images and inscription panels from addresses he made. The park's most striking feature is a first-of-its-kind stainless steel woven tapestry by artist Tomas Osinski, which depicts the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on the Normandy beach stormed by Army Rangers in the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944. The memorial was 21 years in the making and survived a dispute between Gehry and the Eisenhower family over the design. Susan Eisenhower, the late president's granddaughter, objected to the original design, which depicted her grandfather as a barefoot boy gazing at the metal tapestry showing the Kansas prairies. The barefoot boy now has shoes, and the metal tapestry was changed to depict the cliffs in Normandy. The memorial dedication comes at a time when Eisenhower's legacy on civil rights and his warnings about the influence of the "military-industrial complex" have gained attention in the increasingly bitter back-and-forth of the current presidential campaign. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send active-duty troops to quell the nationwide protests that arose following the May 25 death in Minneapolis of George Floyd. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he is against invoking the Insurrection Act, as Eisenhower had done in 1957 to send the Army's 101st Airborne Division to enforce the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Former Vice President Joe Biden has taken a position against the use of federal troops in protests. Last week, Trump drew another comparison to Eisenhower during a broadside against Biden on Sept. 7, in which he also defended himself against charges in an Atlantic Magazine story that he had insulted military leaders and branded those who fell in battle as "losers" and "suckers." Trump charged that Biden is in favor of "endless wars" and suggested that military leaders also want wars to curry favor with the defense industry. "And it's one of the reasons the military -- I'm not saying the military is in love with me -- the soldiers are," Trump said at a news conference. "The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy." Trump later that day posted tweets comparing himself to Eisenhower, whose final address before leaving office in early 1961 focused on the power of the "military-industrial complex." However, Trump may have missed the nuances in Eisenhower's speech. The late president noted the "imperative need for this development" of close cooperation between the military and industry to counter the threat of the Soviet Union, while warning of the implications of its abuse. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," Eisenhower said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Related: Report: Trump Disparaged US War Dead as 'Losers,' 'Suckers' Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Japanese Ambassador to Seoul Koji Tomita last week to discuss various topics, including an easing of entry restrictions for businesspeople, diplomatic sources said Thursday. South Korea and Japan have imposed entry curbs over coronavirus concerns, further dampening bilateral exchanges already strained by disputes over wartime forced labor. "Ambassador Tomita is said to have met Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong as part of his diplomatic activities and they apparently talked about various things," a diplomatic source said. During the meeting, which took place over a meal on Sept. 10, Lee is believed to have explained the difficulties faced by businesses due to the entry restrictions. Seoul and Tokyo have been in talks to ease the entry restrictions for business travelers since July but no progress has been reported. (Yonhap) India's confirmed coronavirus infections passed 5 million on Wednesday, still soaring and testing the feeble health care system in tens of thousands of impoverished towns and villages. The world's second-most populous country has added more than 1 million cases this month alone and is expected to become the pandemic's worst-hit country within weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 6.6 million people have been infected. India's Health Ministry reported 90,123 new cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 5,020,359, about 0.35 per cent of the nation's nearly 1.4 billion people. Its record daily high of 97,570 cases was reported on 11 September. The ministry said 1,290 more people died in the past 24 hours, for a total of 82,066, which is the third-highest toll in the world. Experts warned that India's fatality rate could increase in coming weeks with lockdown restrictions relaxed except in high-risk areas. But authorities ruled out imposing a second countrywide lockdown as recoveries were growing at more than 78 per cent. Its fatality rate is 1.6 per cent, far lower than 3 per cent in the United States and Brazil, according to tallies by Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, an infectious diseases expert from Christian Medical College in the southern Indian state of Vellore, said the increase in cases in India was inevitable. But she said the country still has a chance to limit the growth through a strategy of testing and isolating affected places. She said "the goal was for India to do enough testing to bring down the test positivity rate, or fraction of tests that test positive to less than 5 per cent or even less than 1 per cent." Most of India's deaths are concentrated in its large cities Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune. But smaller urban centers in Mahrashtra such as Nagpur or Jalgaon have also reported more than 1,000 deaths. Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Tuesday that only about 6 per cent of the coronavirus patients in India were on oxygen 0.31 per cent on ventilators, 2.17 per cent on intensive care unit beds with oxygen and 3.69 per cent on oxygen beds. Maharashtra state, with more than 1 million cases, remains the worst-affected region, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. These states account for more than 60 per cent of coronavirus cases in the country. Referring to media reports that some hospitals in Maharashtra state are facing a shortage of oxygen cylinders, Bhushan said the supplies are adequate in the country, but state governments should monitor the situation. "The problem happens when at a facility level, there is no inventory management," Bhushan said. Health workers collect a swab sample to test for Covid-19 in Mumbai (AP) The Health Ministry said 155 health workers, including 46 doctors, have died so far due to Covid-19. India's meager health resources are poorly divided across the country. Nearly 600 million Indians live in rural areas, and with the virus spreading fast across India's vast hinterlands, health experts worry that hospitals could be overwhelmed. Nationwide, India is testing more than 1 million samples per day, exceeding the World Health Organization's benchmark of 140 tests per 1 million people. But many of these are antigen tests, which look for virus proteins and are faster but less accurate than RT-PCR, which confirm the coronavirus by its genetic code. With the economy contracting by a record 23.9 per cent in the April-June quarter, leaving millions jobless, the Indian government is continuing to relax lockdown restrictions that were imposed in late March. The government in May announced a $266bn(205 bn)stimulus package, but consumer demand and manufacturing are yet to recover. A large number of offices, shops, businesses, liquor shops, bars and restaurants have reopened. Restricted domestic and international evacuation flights are being operated along with train services. Schools will reopen for high school students for consultation with teachers next week. Associated Press OLD SAYBROOK Despite public concern over accountability, the Board of Police Commissioners recently voted overwhelmingly not to change point of contact listed on its webpage from the police chief to members of the board. The town website does not provide contact information for any police board members. It lists one key contact for the board: Chief of Police Michael Spera. But during the public comment portion of an Aug. 24 meeting, town resident Linda Mahal said, Michael Spera is not an elected official nor is he a disinterested clerk. Tonight I ask the board to add to its bylaws a commitment to add email contact info for at least one majority and one minority member, Mahal said. Commissioner Renee Shippee made the motion for contact information on the website to be changed from Spera to the board chairperson and the ranking minority member. Commissioner Alfred Wilcox seconded the motion, which failed by a vote of 5-2, with Wilcox and Shippee representing the only yes votes. I think having the chief of police be the contact point for the commission discourages citizens from trying to communicate candidly with the commission, and I think that is a mistake, Wilcox said . If they [citizens] have an issue with an incident, a policy, a procedure they should be free to communicate without concern about how that might provoke a response from the chief of police. Chairman Frank Keeney, Vice Chairman Kenneth Reid, Secretary Joseph Maselli, Commissioner Susan Quish and Commissioner Carl Von Dassel all voted against Shippees motion. Quish, Maselli and Von Dassel could not be reached for comment, while Reid deferred to Keeney. The police commission didnt set up the contact point, Keeney said Thursday, adding that the webpages structure aligned with that of other departments, and that he saw no reason to change it. Keeney also pointed out a roadblock to a website change: commissioners do not have town email addresses to share to the website. If the town were to assign municipal email accounts to all elected officials, Keeney would favor such a move, he said. Keeney sees the question of who is listed as the point of contact as an issue for the towns full-time government, and not for the police board, he said, suggesting the matter be directed to First Selectman Carl Fortuna. Keeney also was unsure whether the commission even had the ability to change the point of contact. Still, he indicated he was open to reconsidering a change in the future. I would always reconsider the point of contact issue, but, as I said, i think the town is a driver of this, Keeney said. Fortuna said in an email that the contact information is consistent with other departments, but that if the police commission chooses to change the point of contact, they may do that. Shippee, who motioned for the change, said Tuesday that just because the point of contact has always been set up a certain way, that doesnt mean it should continue that way. For his part, Spera did not choose to be the key contact listed on the webpage, he said in an email , noting that other department webpages had the same setup - the contact for the Board of Finance, for example, is the finance director. Whomever designed the webpage must have made this decision, Spera wrote. If the Commission chose to change the Key Contact on their webpage they most certainly could with no objection from me. Spera also said that per the commissions by-laws, the point of contact for the board is its chairman. One attendee of the Aug. 24 meeting, who identified himself as Old Saybrook resident Mark Hand, said during public comments that it was inappropriate for the chief to be the sole contact for the commission when the communication could be about him. Hand asked that contact information for individual commissioners be made publicly available. Open and accessible government is a hallmark of a free and democratic society, he said. At the Aug. 24 meeting, Spera proposed new bylaws that would help guide the process by which communications make their way from the Police Department to the Board of Police Commissioners. I am confident that any communication that comes in that is destined for the commission comes to the commission, Keeney said. The commission indicated it would reconsider the proposal at a future meeting, after counsel reviewed it. meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Cygnus Capital Management, LLC and the Estate of Richard Ventrilla, Cygnus's former owner, for defrauding at least 22 investors who invested a total of nearly $1 million. According to the SEC's complaint, from at least September 2015 through March 2020, Cygnus and Ventrilla, a Clarence, New York resident who died on September 2, 2020 and was previously convicted of extortion in 1999, made false and misleading statements to investors and misappropriated assets from investment advisory clients. The complaint alleges that Ventrilla told investors that he would invest their funds in publicly traded securities and repay them with trading profits, promising a guaranteed rate of return between 7% and 8%. The complaint alleges that, in reality, Ventrilla had no basis for these statements and used only approximately ten percent of total investor funds to trade securities, spending the majority of investor funds to support his lifestyle or to repay other investors. The complaint also alleges that Ventrilla led at least sixteen investors who had become investment advisory clients to believe that he would manage their assets using separately managed accounts and pay himself a reasonable investment advisory fee. Instead, Ventrilla allegedly misappropriated a significant amount of their funds to support his lifestyle and lied to the clients about their purported portfolio holdings. The SEC's complaint, filed in federal district court in Buffalo, New York, charges Cygnus and, for Ventrilla's misconduct, the Estate of Ventrilla, with violations of the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The SEC is seeking against Ventrilla's estate disgorgement plus prejudgment interest thereon, and against Cygnus, permanent injunctive relief, civil penalties, and disgorgement plus prejudgment interest thereon. The SEC's investigation has been conducted by Gerald Gross, James Hanson, and Alexander Vasilescu of the New York Regional Office, and the litigation will be handled by Messrs. Vasilescu and Hanson. The case is being supervised by Sanjay Wadhwa. Drew Barrymore launched her new daytime talk show on Monday, Sept. 14 and welcomed Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu as two of her first guests. Barrymore is known for her cheerful disposition and viewers were treated to a reunion with her Charlies Angels co-stars and a 50 First Dates skit with Adam Sandler. But Barrymore put her hosting skills on full display weeks before the official launch of The Drew Barrymore Show, and fans learned a few things about her life including a special moment with Keanu Reeves. Drew Barrymore | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust; Keanu Reeves | Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images Drew Barrymore chatted with SpongeBob Squarepants cast members While promoting her show, Barrymore made it clear in interviews that shes serving up optimism, celebration, and human interest stories. Viewers may have caught a dose of that when she shared a video segment for Drews Movie Nite with SpongeBob actors Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke. They spent time discussing The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, and Keanu Reeves name came up. For those who dont know, he makes a cameo in the film in a golden-haloed tuft of tumbleweed. Barrymore wanted to confirm his appearance in the movie, and that led to her sharing her own story about Reeves. RELATED: How Drew Barrymore Keeps It Real On Instagram Reeves attended Barrymores 16th birthday bash As many fans know, Barrymore has been acting since childhood. Her lengthy list of film credits includes 1986s Babes in Toyland, which she starred in with Reeves. Barrymore told Kenny and Fagerbakke that she was just a kid when they shot the movie and it was her first time meeting Reeves. She also shared a story about when he came to her 16th birthday party. How many people can say that? I did a movie with him when I was 11 years old in Munich, Germany for six months a TV movie called Babes in Toyland, said Barrymore. And, so that would be 1986 and then he showed up at my 16th birthday party and took me on a motorcycle ride I will never forget. We just blasted through the streets. It was at night and the streets were empty, and it was one of those moments where Ill never forget it. Not only did Reeves get into motorcycles in his early 20s, but hes also part owner of a motorcycle business. RELATED: Keanu Reeves Has a Side Business Thats as Cool as Him Reeves once called Barrymore one of his close friends Reeves keeps his personal life relatively private, and in the past, admitted that he didnt make a habit of hanging out with celebrities. In a 1993 interview with Germanys Kino magazine (archived on Whoaisnotme.net), Reeves was asked about spending time with famous friends, and he stated the circle was small. However, Barrymores name was on the list. Only when theyre my friends. I get together with River Phoenix, Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp, and I was friends with Drew Barrymore for a long time, he said. I also spend a lot of time with the people I work with. But I am not one those actors who sleep with their co-stars. Im almost a virginal monk! I was with an unknown actress for a while, and I was seeing Sophia Coppola. But the majority of my friends are not famous. Though they dont dish on their friendship, Ryder and Barrymore are still two of Reeves buddies. Flipkart may go public as early as next year at a valuation of $40-45 billion, a person familiar with the development said, as Indias largest online retailer benefits from accelerated adoption of digital platforms for shopping and payments by customers because of the coronavirus pandemic. Flipkart would look at an overseas listing, either in the US, where its parent Walmart Inc. is based, or another country, the person said on condition of anonymity. Walmart had in 2018 acquired a majority stake in Flipkart for $16 billion, valuing the Bengaluru-based company at $21 billion. At that time, Doug McMillion, president and CEO of Walmart, said that Flipkart will go public within four years of closing the deal. The IPO should be done at no less a valuation than that at which Walmart invested in the Indian e-commerce firm, Walmart had then said in a regulatory filing. As per Walmarts timeline, the IPO could be done by 2022. But the digital transformation in India, with customers increasingly moving online to shop, has been so rapid, that it has made Flipkart grow much faster. Therefore the IPO plan could also be fast-tracked. Flipkart would get the best valuation if the IPO happens in the US, the person said on the condition of anonymity. A Flipkart spokesperson did not respond to emailed queries. Reuters first reported the news about Flipkarts IPO plans earlier in the day. In July, Walmart led a $1.2 billion investment in Flipkart Group, valuing the company at around $25 billion, in its largest fund-raising since its acquisition in 2018. In India, Flipkart competes with Amazon and Reliance Retail, which has been ramping up its JioMart e-commerce business. Flipkarts subsidiary, PhonePe, is also looking to turn profitable by 2022 and go public by 2023. Mint first reported on PhonePes IPO plans on April 22. The digital payments company, which competes with Paytm, Google Pay and Amazon Pay, is most likely to go public in the US at a valuation of $10 billion. Recently, Flipkart, as a part of its funding announcement from Walmart, said PhonePe is currently processing annualized total payments value of $180 billion, and witnesses more than 500 million transactions each month on its platform. It looks to exit 2020 with more than 275 million users on its platform. The focus of Flipkart, however, is growth right now, and the IPO timeline is not fixed yet. But the global guidance and Walmarts acquisition was to always create the right processes and build the company to eventually take it public, said a second person. Insights on Financial Toxicity, Anxiety, and Side Effect Concerns Shed Light on True Patient Experience New York, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Cancer Support Community (CSC) released the findings of its 2020 Cancer Experience Registry Report. Capturing the voices of thousands of individuals affected by cancer, the report sheds light on the physical, emotional, social, practical, and financial aspects of the patient and caregiver experiences. Of particular interest, the reports financial-related findings show that seven out of 10 respondents reported that no one from their health care team talked to them about the cost of their care. In addition, one out of three participants said they depleted savings or used money from retirement to cover treatment costs, while others did not fill prescriptions due to costs, a decision which can negatively impact recovery and survival. The lack of communication about the financial consequences of cancer is particularly concerning given a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report estimating that, as of mid-May, 27 million Americans may have lost their health insurance amid rising unemployment. One of the primary reasons we do this research is to capture the experience of patients and caregivers that are not recorded anywhere else, said Kim Thiboldeaux, CEO of the Cancer Support Community. Our findings provide a list of tangible ways to improve patient care and communication with health professionals. For instance, we are in a moment when millions of Americans have lost health coverage in the wake of the economic downturn related to COVID-19, yet we document that, even in the best of circumstances, only 30 percent of patients talk to their medical teams about the cost of their care. We want to empower individuals affected by cancer to have an honest exchange about what their treatment will cost, especially if theyre experiencing economic turmoil. The data analyzed by the PhD-level teams at CSCs Research & Training Institute in Philadelphia, identified several areas that, if addressed, should lead to superior care, improve quality of life, and increase access to required services. Story continues The Cancer Support Communitys 2020 Cancer Experience Registry Report should be required reading for anyone who cares for people with cancer, to ensure that the patient remains at the center of all decisions and recommendations made by their care team, Dr. Thomas Leblanc of Duke Cancer Institute said. As an oncologist, palliative care physician, and patient experience researcher, I greatly appreciate and value this Registry, which captures thousands of patient and caregiver experiences in an unprecedented way. This extensive and deep report gives us an unmatched view of the cancer experience overall, along with a deeper dive into its 11 specific cancer focus areas, allowing us to better understand similarities, differences, and opportunities to improve care. The Anxiety Question We Should Be Asking Cancer Patients One-half of Registry participants were at risk for clinically significant anxiety, while four out of 10 were at risk for clinically significant depression. Patients have long been screened for depression, but new federal clinical guidelines and standards, most notably from the Commission on Cancer Care, also require that patients be screened more comprehensively for psychosocial distress, which can be an important tool in helping identify sources of anxiety. Not routinely providing comprehensive psychosocial distress screening means that practitioners could be missing meaningful information about the mental health of the patient, resulting in an incomplete assessment of their status and potentially insufficient response from their care team. Innovators and Regulators Must Improve Ways to Capture Patient Experience Recognizing that patients are the foremost experts in their disease, their experiences living with, treating, and/or managing their disease provides crucial information not otherwise captured through the clinical trial process. Side effects can impact outcomes in overall quality of life and long-term side effects can impact ability to return to work, an increasingly critical issue as survivorship rates progress.. Clinical trial design, trial endpoint selection, regulatory reviews, and post-market surveillance should all include the collection, measurement, and incorporation of patient experience data. Nine out of 10 respondents rated quality of life as a very important factor when weighing treatment options whereas regulatory stakeholders and clinicians continue to focus on survival measures as the ultimate outcomes measure. Four out of 10 respondents felt inadequately prepared to manage the side effects of treatment. Another four out of 10 did not recall receiving information about long- term side effects of treatment. Importantly, one out of three held back from telling their healthcare team about side effects and symptoms. Attention Must Be Paid to Caregivers One-half of caregiver respondents reported anxiety levels that were substantially worse than the national average. One out of three experienced fatigue and/or depression levels that were substantially worse. The fatigue, in particular, is consistent with the substantial support caregivers provide. Some caregivers in our Registry reported providing over 100 hours of care per week, and many reported a decline in their own personal health. Cancer is a family disease and the impact to caregivers must not be overlooked. Supporting caregivers is an ongoing health care need and vital to achieving the best health outcomes for the patient. The role of the caregiver cannot be overstated. Thiboldeaux added, This unique research reveals a deeper, more personal account of what challenges, choices, and changes face individuals dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Whats more, this perspective underscores a core reality: behind every diagnosis is a real person, a family, and a team of caregivers invested in the best possible outcomes. Read the entire report here. Attachment CONTACT: Nathalie Casthely Cancer Support Community 9175724517 ncasthely@cancersupportcommunity.org Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 20:54:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Four people were killed and two others injured in a fire in a private drug treatment clinic in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Thursday, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said. In the early hours of Thursday, the fire started on an area of 10 square meters in an office on the ground floor of a six-story residential building, where the clinic is located, it said. The fire was put out and rescuers managed to evacuate 16 people, both residents of the building and patients of the clinic, it added. The Russian Investigative Committee said in a separate statement that the cause of the fire was arson. Investigators, while watching surveillance camera footage, found that one of the patients had set a fire in the interior of the building, causing the fire to spread rapidly through the ward. The arsonist is not among the dead and the suspect is being confirmed, it said. Enditem From left, Democrat Sarah Chatterley and Republican Dan Burrill. The pair are squaring off this November for the Kent County Commissions open 8th District seat. (Photos supplied to MLive) WYOMING, MI -- A Wyoming city councilman and planning commissioner are squaring off in the Nov. 3 general election for the Kent County Commissions open 8th District seat. Republican Dan Burrill and Democrat Sarah Chatterley are vying for the seat left open after longtime Kent County Commissioner Harold Voorhees decided against running for reelection. Burrill is a Wyoming city councilman and real estate agent. Chatterley is a planning commissioner for the city. The 8th District encompasses the western half of Wyoming, as well as some northern portions. Voorhees, a Republican, is a former state representative, who has represented the countys 8th District since 2002. He owns Steenstra Cookies. This year, MLive Media Group partnered with the League of Women Voters of Michigan to provide candidate information for readers. Each candidate was asked to outline their stances on a variety of public policy issues. Information on all state and federal races and many of Michigans county and local races will be available at Vote411.org, an online voter guide created by the League of Women Voters. Heres background information on both candidates: Burrill, 46, is a current member of the Wyoming City Council and has served on the body for more than 10 years. He previously served on the Grandville Board of Education. Burrill is also a real estate agent, licensed builder and owner of several small businesses. He has a bachelors degree in business administration from Aquinas College. Chatterley, 33, has served as a planning commissioner for Wyoming since 2019. She has worked as a sustainability intern and, later, a sustainability policy analyst with the city of Grand Rapids from 2019 to mid-2020. She holds a masters degree in public administration, with a focus on urban and regional policy and planning, from Grand Valley State University. All responses in the voter guide were submitted directly by the candidate and have not been edited by the League of Women Voters, except for a necessary cut if a reply exceeded character limitations. Spelling and grammar were not corrected. Publication of candidate statements and opinions is solely in the interest of public service and should NOT be considered as an endorsement. The League never supports or opposes any candidates or political parties. Heres a look at what the candidates had to say about what is compelling them to run for office and other questions about how theyd approach the job of commissioner: Why are you running for office? Chatterley: I am running for office because I am passionate about issues that are facing Kent County. I want to make sure that county government is adequately and equitably serving each of our residents - all 650,000 of them. I am excited to meet constituents, hear their ideas and concerns, and advocate for our community on a variety of issues, including: Equitable distribution of county resources and funding; Instilling sustainability and social equity into the Countys Strategic Plan; Protection of our water, land, and air; Funding education, with a focus on early childhood education; Access to fair and affordable housing; Accessible services for Veterans, seniors, and those with disabilities; Robust healthcare and mental health services; Parks & Recreation that are accessible and equitably funded; Supporting local businesses. Burrill: Ive been serving my community for over 15 years and I find it a privilege and honor to serve the citizens of Wyoming. I want to make a difference in my community and have served on the School Board for 5 years and the last 10 years on the Wyoming City Council. I believe its my duty to serve and give back to the place I call home and have raised my family. My experience and leadership at the local level will give me the insight to operate effectively at the County level and help me represent and serve the citizens of Wyoming like they deserve. What is the greatest challenge facing the office you seek? How will you address it? Burrill: This challenge has changed in the last few months. We need to bring Kent County together as one and realize that were all in this community together and together we can make a big difference. We need to do this in both the economic areas and the way we treat one another. Lets give each other the grace that we deserve and move this community forward as one! Being a small business owner, I know the frustrations that businesses can have at all areas of government. As a County Commissioner in the 8th district, I will always support less government control and be there to give businesses the tools they need, when asked. We need to promote community togetherness and start accepting and treating each other with respect and dignity that we all deserve. This starts with local leaders and will help bring and show that unity as a County Commissioner. Chatterley: Health and economic inequities, including environmental justice issues, that existed before and were exacerbated by the pandemic. I look forward to engaging in a countywide effort to addressing disparities and making sure that our community has all that it needs to recover. This includes help for members of our community who are already struggling to make ends meet: vulnerable populations, including ALICE households (households that are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, & Employed), households experiencing poverty, and marginalized communities. Nearly one third of households across Kent County are ALICE households, struggling to afford the basic necessities. About 11 percent of Kent County households are living in poverty, and approximately 1 in every 7 children in Kent County live in poverty (Source: https://poverty.umich.edu/data-tools-poverty-and-well-being-map-2020/). It will be important to pay attention to how these numbers change due to the pandemic and respond appropriately. What strategies would you use to remain responsive and accountable to the public between elections? Chatterley: I would connect regularly with constituents in a multitude of ways - community coffee hours, newsletters, staying active and engaged on social media, replying to constituent letters, attending community events, etc. Additionally, Commission meetings should be held in the evenings when more people are able to attend them. I will advocate for this change once I am elected. I look forward to partnering with area organizations and institutions that are working hard to bring positive changes to our community. County issues cannot be solved in a silo. Rather, bringing the community together to work collectively on county issues will make us stronger and more effective. Burrill: Being held accountable begins with doing the right thing. Being engaged in your county district and staying in touch with the voters that elected you is what holds a person accountable. If someone gets elected and doesnt talk and stay in touch with their community, quickly they stop representing the people that elected them in the first place. Knowing what your communities wants and needs are are vital in being an effective leader and I will do this if elected in August and November. Read more: Three candidates square off in 73rd state House District race Republican Peter Meijer, Democrat Hillary Scholten seek to replace Justin Amash in Congress Whitmer, Benson urge Legislature to do more ahead of expected record voter turnout The S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty50 both rallied by about 50 percent each from March 24 lows, but the focus is now slowly tilting towards the broader markets especially after the new SEBI guidelines on multicap funds. Although the situation is still evolving, the earlier notion of a huge amount of money coming into the small and midcaps space might not be relevant after SEBI clarification but selective companies who show consistent growth could get disproportionate premium, said Amit Shah, Head of India Equity Research, BNP Paribas in D-Street Talk podcast. We dont believe Rs 400 billion will move from largecap to mid or smallcap. It is simply not doable because of low liquidity. The impact cost of getting into smallcaps would be too high, he said. Shah believes that the reaction would be mixed. In some cases, especially for larger funds, they may end up changing their schemes to largecaps, and in some cases, one would see buying in mid and small caps. Historically, the valuation gap between the smallcap and largecaps has been phenomenal and that is largely due to the volatility associated as well as the poor set of companies in the BSE500. Going forward, every time a small & midcap quality company does well as in they are able to report earnings growth consistently they will get a disproportionate premium, explains Shah. (Please tune into the podcast for more) : The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 05:52:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SANTIAGO, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chile's scheduled October plebiscite on redrafting the Constitution will take place as planned despite a possible resurgence in novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases due to national holiday celebrations between Sept. 17 and 19, Health Minister Enrique Paris said on Wednesday. "What happens over the weekend can in no way change the issue of the plebiscite," Paris told reporters at a press conference. The poll should be carried out "under the best possible sanitary conditions," he added. On Oct. 25, Chileans will vote on whether or not to draft a new constitution. For the coming weekend holiday, "the most important thing is that people take care of themselves, that they respect the rules, that we have a family celebration" instead of attending large gatherings with strangers, said Paris. The Ministry of Health on Wednesday reported 1,305 new daily cases of COVID-19 infection, taking the total caseload to 439,287, while 18 more patient deaths in the past 24 hours pushed the death toll to 12,058. Chile has made headway in containing the pandemic, said Paris, urging residents to not risk "all these achievements during the national holidays." Enditem President Donald Trump at Tuesday night's town hall hosted by ABC. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images After President Donald Trump was unable to answer basic questions from undecided voters at an ABC town hall event Wednesday night, his debate prep strategy or lack thereof became apparent. Asked on "Fox & Friends" how he's getting ready for the first presidential debate against Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Sept. 29, Trump said, "I sort of prepare every day, by just doing what I'm doing." Setting Trump's penchant for winging it aside, first-term presidents have historically seen a modest incumbency disadvantage going into debates against challengers who got plenty of practice during the primaries. The Obama-Romney opening debate in 2012, along with Carter vs. Reagan in 1980 and even the first Bush vs. Gore debate in 2000 demonstrate how the insulatory effects of incumbency can spell trouble. Despite the president's holding pattern of being cocooned in fawning praise, Tuesday night should serve as a wakeup call as Biden heads into the debate with both more practice and lower expectations thanks to the Trump campaign's own "cognitive decline" attacks. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Asked recently how he's preparing for the upcoming debates against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, President Donald Trump gave an answer reminiscent of a high-schooler caught off guard about an exam. "I sort of prepare every day by just doing what I'm doing," Trump said on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. Trump's performance at an ABC News town hall event later that night highlighted the "sort of" in that quote especially with the first presidential debate being less than two weeks away on Sept. 29. The president was unable to answer basic questions from undecided voters for large stretches of the evening. At one point, a voter asked Trump a straightforward question on what he would do about unemployment stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The president quickly veered off on a series of tangents, jumping around from sanctuary cities to China and then back to "Democrat-run cities" before the ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos had to cut to commercial. Story continues The event featured other equally bizarre moments, like when Trump said that "a lot of people think the masks are not good." "Who are those people?" Stephanopoulos asked. "Waiters," Trump replied. Putting Trump's penchant for winging it aside, first-term presidents have historically seen a modest incumbency disadvantage going into debates against challengers who got plenty of practice during the primaries. In 2012, Barack Obama was widely considered to have been "trounced" and caught flat-footed by Sen. Mitt Romney in their first debate, with polls showing solid margins in favor of the Republican challenger's performance. In 1980, Ronald Reagan trailed incumbent Jimmy Carter by three points going into their one and only debate. Carter's attacks on Reagan didn't stick, and the Gipper went on to beat the sitting president by 10 points on Election Day. The isolating effects of incumbency are not limited to the president. In 2000, then-Vice President Al Gore was expected by many to school George W. Bush in their first debate, wielding his sharp policy knowledge to fillet the more plainspoken Texan on live TV. The Bush campaign began prepping in April, while Gore's team remained confident in his intellectual acuity. A series of sighs from Gore and his repeated use of the term "lockbox" wound up becoming the big takeaway from the night as Bush exceeded expectations, going on to win the race. Biden has reportedly been doing debate prep since before the conventions, and he's not only had practice during the primaries, but also key high-stakes, one-on-one debates against Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan when he was Obama's running mate. On the expectations front, the Trump campaign's efforts to paint Biden as senile have already backfired with the former vice president's convention speech, yet the president and his surrogates keep doubling down. Trump even repeated his 2016 line on how Hillary Clinton was juicing with performance-enhancing drugs, telling "Fox & Friends" that Biden must be "taking something, or taking something that gives him some clarity Maybe he had 15 cups of coffee." Whether the debates really matter remains an open question, particularly after 2016. However, with Trump still down six to seven points behind Biden in national polling averages, the debates may matter a lot more for him now than they did four years ago. If Wednesday night gave undecided voters any takeaways, it proved how "sort of" preparing for the debates in cruise control may not be enough for Trump to catch up to Biden in time for Nov. 3. Read the original article on Business Insider Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category Lily Aldridge was among the star-studded lineup of presenters for the Academy of Country Music Awards' ceremony on Wednesday from Nashville, Tennessee. The 34-year-old supermodel made a very glamorous return to the red carpet, after the ongoing coronavirus outbreak halted glitzy premieres and public gatherings in mid-March. As she sported a flowing black and maroon gown, all eyes were on her thigh-high slit, which hovered several inches above her right knee. Leggy display: Lily Aldridge was among the star-studded lineup of presenters for the Academy of Country Music Awards' show on Wednesday from Nashville, Tennessee In addition to flashing her sensational legs, the dress' daring opening allowed Lily to show off her opened-toed, jewel-encrusted stilettos. Her black belt emphasized her trim waist, as she opted to style her lustrous raven tresses in loose waves. Later in the evening, she presented Old Dominion with Group of the Year and stood several feet away from the five-member country music band, as they accepted their trophy. Grateful: The 34-year-old supermodel made a very glamorous return to the red carpet, after the ongoing coronavirus outbreak halted glitzy premieres and public gatherings in mid-March Making an entrance: In addition to flashing her sensational legs, the dress' daring opening allowed Lily to show off her opened-toed, jewel-encrusted stilettos Six feet: she presented Old Dominion with Group of the Year and stood several feet away from the five-member country music band, as they accepted their trophy While she did not wear a mask, as she called the group forward, all but one member of the band sported facial coverings, as they approached the stage. On Instagram, however, she posed in her ensemble with a white mask and put up two peace signs. 'First time out in A MINUTEEE,' the star captioned her series of snaps, which were taken outside of a private bus. Toned: Her black belt emphasized her trim waist, as she opted to style her lustrous raven tresses in loose waves In her post, she thanked the show for inviting her, as well as her glam team, which included Marwa Bashir, Lindsay Doyle and Emma Jade Morrison. Additionally, Aldridge tagged a Nashville-based nail artist, named Annie, who goes by @gelhiigh on Instagram. The manicurist was also responsible for doing the nails of country star, Marren Morris. 'First time out in A MINUTEEE,' the star captioned her series of snaps, which were taken outside of a private bus Thus, Navalny was poisoned in the hotel, not at the airport as previously thought. The nerve agent used to poison Russian opposition's Alexei Navalny was detected on an empty water bottle collected from the hotel room he was staying at in the Siberian city of Tomsk. This suggests he was poisoned in the hotel, not at the airport, as previously thought, his team said on Thursday, according to Reuters. A video posted on Navalny's Instagram account showed members of his team searching the room he had just left in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on August 20, shortly after they learned he had abruptly fallen sick on board the plane. "It was decided to gather up everything that could even hypothetically be useful and hand it to the doctors in Germany. The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was quite obvious," the post said. Read alsoNavalny intends to return to Russia mediaIt showed Navalny's team packing a few empty bottles of mineral water, among other items, while wearing protective gloves. "Two weeks later, a German lab found traces of Novichok precisely on the water bottle from the Tomsk hotel room," the post said. "And then more laboratories that took analyses from Alexei confirmed that that was what poisoned Navalny. Now we understand: it was done before he left his hotel room to go to the airport," the team wrote. Navalny poisoning: Background PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday renewed his calls for national dialogue after meeting Catholic bishops and other clerics in Harare, as he bids to end the countrys decades-old myriad challenges, the Daily News reports. At the same time, Mnangagwa also hailed his partys engagement with South Africas ruling African National Congress (ANC) which recently dispatched a high-powered delegation to Harare for talks aimed at assisting Zimbabwe as its political and economic crises deepen. All this comes as calls for much-needed national dialogue have now reached a crescendo, amid the determined efforts by South Africa to help end Zimbabwes recurrent problems. Addressing the Zanu PF politburo yesterday, Mnangagwa repeated his calls for dialogue among Zimbabweans, to 2engender local peace. This morning I was pleased to receive a delegation from the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations which comprised the leadership of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, Catholic bishops, Zimbabwe Council of Churches and the indigenous churches. Dialogue must be encouraged throughout all inceptions of our society in the spirit of constructive engagement, among others. This is the culture of the second republic, of national building peace harmony unity and love as we develop the Zimbabwe we love, Mnangagwa said. The meeting with clerics, especially the Catholic bishops, came after they issued sharp criticism of the governments handling of the foiled July 31 mass protests. In particular, the Catholic bishops letter in which they said the march is not ended, was not received well by the government which issued a strong warning against clerics dabbling in politics. In an address to the Zanu PF politburo last month, Mnangagwa said the ruling party had generally always enjoyed cordial relations with the Church, dating back to the years of Zimbabwes liberation struggle. However, it is most unfortunate when men of cloth begin to use the pulpit to advance a nefarious agenda for detractors of our country. Those who want to enter the political realm are welcome to do so. They must come out and form political parties. As Zanu PF, we are ready for the 2023 elections. We are a peoples party, a party that believes in unity, love, peace and in championing development. We fought for the empowerment of our people. Zanu PF is a party that fought for democracy, upholds constitutionalism and the rule of law. Those that choose otherwise will be exposed and rejected, Mnangagwa said. In their stinging letter, the Catholic bishops also accused the government of carrying out human rights abuses and instilling fear among the populace. They said the country was suffering from a multi-layered crisis including economic collapse, deepening poverty, corruption and human rights abuses. Fear runs down the spine of many of our people today. The crackdown on dissent is unprecedented. Is this the Zimbabwe we want? To have a different opinion does not mean to be an enemy, they said. All this came as the government was accused of launching a brutal crackdown against the organisers of the thwarted July 31 mass protests. Rights groups later claimed that dozens of opposition figures and activists had been tortured and assaulted in a retributive exercise by suspected State security agents. On its part, the government refuted the allegations claiming instead that the opposition is working with foreigners to destabilise the country. Yesterday, Mnangagwa heaped praise on the clerics despite them having been part of various groups which criticised his administration and also called for him to hold much-needed national talks with the opposition and other key stakeholders. During his address to the politburo yesterday, Mnangagwa hailed the ANC for its recent visit. The party (Zanu PF) received a delegation from our sister party, the ANC and as we continue as former liberation movements to show experiences and strategies in view of the on-going onslaught by our detractors and neo-colonialist, solidarity and exchanges must be strengthened across all the leagues of our parties. As I explained before, the truth must be told that presidential envoys must remain presidential envoys from one president to another. Party envoys must remain party envoys from one party to another. Those who dream otherwise are allowed in democracy to dream, Mnangagwa said in a clear dig at the opposition that hopes to meet both President Cyril Ramaphosas envoys and the ANC. This comes as the ANC this week also praised Zanu PF for allowing it to meet with the opposition and civil society groups in future a decision which it described as constructive. Ramaphosa, apart from sending the ANC delegation to Zimbabwe, has also appointed his own special envoys who met Mnangagwa in the capital last month, as part of South Africas push to help its neighbour to emerge from its long-standing crises. Earlier this month, Mnangagwa also said the countrys deepening challenges required unity of purpose among all Zimbabweans to mitigate them. Speaking at a meeting of the Political Actors Dialogue (Polad), he said the door remained open for MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa and others who had snubbed the platform to join him there and work together to deal with Zimbabwes problems. I wish to unequivocally state that there is no crisis in Zimbabwe as elections were held in July 2018 and a winner was declared in terms of the countrys Constitution. All contestants were invited to join this dialogue in the national interest. The door is still open for those outside Let me say the challenges facing our country call for continued unity of purpose across the political divide. Your continued commitment to the call to serve the country is acknowledged and will surely result in making our country great, Mnangagwa said, emphasising that all dialogue would be held under the auspices of Polad. Daily News BRIDGEPORT A local man awaiting trial for allegedly sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in 2015 has been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 2017. Brian McAllister, 42, was served Friday with the new arrest warrant in prison, where he is being held in lieu of bond on the earlier case. He is charged in the warrant with second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor. Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton ordered McAllister held in lieu of an additional $150,000 bond and continued the case to Oct. 7. McAllisters public defender, Jared Millbrandt, declined comment on the arrest. The alleged assault on the 11-year-old girl was one of several cases the Bridgeport detective bureau worked on after the Youth Bureau was disbanded in 2018, in part because cases assigned to the Youth Bureau were often not followed up. Over the past year, several of the cases started by the Youth Bureau and moved to the detective bureau have resulted in charges against alleged perpetrators. On Jan. 20 of this year, McAllister was charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child, risk of injury to a child and fourth-degree sexual assault based on a complaint by the 11-year-old girl in 2015. Police said in the newest case, McAllister is accused of sexually assaulting a then-14-year-old in an office at Housatonic Community College. According to the new arrest warrant affidavit, in March 2019, the victim reported to the state Department of Children and Families that in 2017 she was visiting Housatonic Community College with a friend when she met McAllister, who invited her to wait for her friend in his office at the colleges Mens Center. According to the affidavit, college officials told police McAllister was a work-study student there. We are deeply distressed to learn that a former student, who attended HCC from 2016 to 2018, is accused of committing a serious crime while on the campus, college spokeswoman Evelyn Gard said Thursday. The incident, which we are told occurred in 2017, was not reported to anyone on campus, therefore college officials were unaware of any misconduct. The matter has been, and remains, in the hands of the Bridgeport Police. Police said, during a forensic interview, the girl told them McAllister warned her to stay away from boys then sexually assaulted her, the affidavit said. The assaults continued into 2018, the affidavit said, with the girl estimating she was sexually assaulted in the college office and McAllisters car more than 10 times. The affidavit said that McAllister and the victims DNA was found on the office couch. Dr. Wale Babalakin, Pro-Chancellor, University of Lagos, UNILAG has stepped down from the position citing bias from the Federal Governments Visitation Panel. Babalakin-led Governing Council had sacked the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe from office over alleged corruption and others. Ogundipe took the matter to court and the Federal Government had to wade in by setting up a Visitation Panel to look into the crisis rocking the institution. The panel has submitted its report. But Babalakin resigned his appointment as Pro-Chancellor, thanking President Muhammadu Buhari for giving him the opportunity to serve. He said he led the Governing Council of the University to remove the Vice-Chancellor of the University from office for among other reasons as corruption and financial recklessness; forgery; complicity in the collapse of the University library and planned cover up; deliberate policy of wrongfully concealing information and so on. In a letter of resignation to the president, Babalakin said it was noteworthy that all the Federal Government Representatives who were the independent members on the Governing Council voted for the removal of the Vice-Chancellor. After calm had been restored in the University, the Visitor acting within his powers, set up a Presidential Visitation Panel to review the actions taken by Governing Council. The Vice-Chancellor (who had been removed from office) and myself were told to recuse ourselves for the duration of the Visitation Panel. I find it difficult to understand how a non-executive Chairman of a Governing Council could be requested to recuse himself during the visitation, he said. According to him, the Vice-Chancellor could only recuse himself if he were still in office, saying that implicit in this position was that the Vice-Chancellor was acknowledged as still being in office despite his removal. He added that the terms of reference of the Visitation Panel clearly indicated to any discerning person that the Visitation Panel was empanelled to exonerate the Vice-Chancellor and implicate the Pro-Chancellor. As stated earlier, the Vice-Chancellor was removed for various reasons and not just as a result of the findings contained in the Dagari Report. Items (b) and (c) were directed at the Pro-Chancellor and Governing Council. Unfortunately, those items deal with the interpretation of the laws of the land. The appropriate forum to determine the laws of the land is a court of law or a judicial tribunal. It cannot be determined by academics of a different discipline no matter how distinguished. These terms of reference are ultra-vires the Visitation Panel as constituted, he said. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates All monetary amounts are expressed in Canadian Dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Pasofino Gold Limited. (TSXV: VEIN) (FSE: N071) ("Pasofino" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its press release of July 9, 2020, it has completed its acquisition of all the issued and outstanding shares of ARX Resources Limited ("ARX"). Pursuant to the transaction, Pasofino issued an aggregate of 134,860,049 shares (the "Consideration Shares") to the shareholders of ARX (the "Vendors"). The Consideration Shares issued to the Vendors will be subject to a two-year contractual lock-up, released in 25% installments every six months, with the release of the first 25% of the Consideration Shares to occur six months from today. ARX is party to an earn-in agreement with Hummingbird Resources PLC ("Hummingbird PLC") in respect of the Dugbe Gold Project in Liberia (the "Project") whereby, in accordance with the earn-in agreement (the "Option Agreement"), ARX is entitled to earn a 49% interest (not including the 10% carried interest issuable to the Government of Liberia) in Hummingbird Resources (Liberia) Inc. ("Hummingbird Liberia"), which owns 100% of the Project and is subject to various conditions. These include the payment by ARX to Hummingbird Liberia of a non-refundable deposit of US$2 million ("Deposit") with the Deposit funds to be used in connection with the Project. When the 10% carried interest is issued by Hummingbird Liberia to the Government of Liberia, the interest earned or held by ARX will be a 44.1% economic interest (consisting of a 39% shareholding interest in Hummingbird Liberia and economic rights in 5.1% of the equity securities of Hummingbird Liberia held by Hummingbird PLC). In addition, Hummingbird PLC will transfer to ARX 49% of the inter-company loans owing by Hummingbird Liberia to Hummingbird PLC. Prior to the closing, the Company advanced approximately US$2.2 million to ARX pursuant to a secured loan in order to fund the Deposit and to cover certain expenses related to the Project. In order to earn its interest under the Option Agreement, ARX is required to complete a Feasibility Study, under joint management committee oversight, on the Project, undertake the mutually agreed exploration program; and cover the overhead and operating costs associated with the Project during the two year earn-in period. In addition, ARX is required to fund during the term of the Option Agreement approximately US$700,000 of the payment obligations of Hummingbird Liberia under the Mineral Development Agreement with the Government of Liberia. The Project is subject to a secured 2% net smelter royalty payable to an affiliate of Anglo Pacific Group PLC ("APG"). This royalty provides that following the date that is six months from the commencement of commercial production in the event that quarterly sales of gold produced are less than 50,000 oz, additional quarterly payments will be required until such time as the cumulative royalty paid is US$15 million (the maximum total payment in any such quarter is equivalent to the royalty that would have arisen on sales of 50,000 oz of gold). Following this period, the royalty is 2% except where both the average gold price is above US$1,800 and sales of gold are less than 50,000 oz, in which case it increases to 2.5% in respect of that quarter. US$15 million is repayable to APG in certain limited circumstances, such as a change in control of Hummingbird Liberia and the concurrent termination of the royalty by APG. Certain events of default under the royalty, (e.g. non-payment of the royalty), are secured by legal charges over the assets of Hummingbird Liberia and a legal charge over the shares of Hummingbird Liberia, including the shares issuable to ARX under the Option Agreement. In addition to the Project, Hummingbird Liberia is subject to an option to acquire a mineral exploration license number MEL 9000518 covering approximately 204 sq. km for the exploration of gold (the "License"). The mineral property subject to the License provides Hummingbird Liberia the opportunity to consolidate its land package around the Project. The amount remaining payable under this option (should Hummingbird Liberia wish to continue with the option) is US$500,000 within five business days of the approval of the assignment of the License to Hummingbird Liberia by the Government of Liberia (not yet obtained) and US$900,000 by June 4, 2021. Pasofino is also pleased to announce an update to the closing of the C$10,020,000 bought deal private placement led by Stifel GMP, on its own behalf and on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters (together with Stifel GMP, the "Underwriters") first announced by the Company on August 21, 2020 (the "Offering"). The TSX Venture Exchange has conditionally approved the Offering, which is scheduled to close on or about September 22, 2020. The Pasofino technical team has mobilised and is now on the ground at the Dugbe Project in Liberia where preparation for the start of the Mineral Resource development and exploration program is underway. In addition, the drill contractor is now in country and has started to prepare for mobilisation to site with four drill rigs. Rehabilitation of the access road to site from the port of Greenville is about to start with completion of initial access planned before year end. Capital equipment to support the operation is in transit to the country including a new 70-man camp. The selection of the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment ("SEIA") and Feasibility Study ("FS") consultants is almost complete, and the work is expected to be awarded next week. As the project has now started, the timeline to completion of the FS, SEIA and Mineral Resource and exploration program, is planned for the end of the third quarter 2021 with drilling of the first targets planned for early November this year. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the 1933 Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act, as amended, and application state securities laws. About Pasofino Gold Limited Pasofino Gold Ltd. Is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company. For further information, please visit www.pasofinogold.com or contact: Steve Dunn, President & CEO T: (416) 361-2827 E: sdunn@pasofinogold.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Statements. This news release contains "forward-looking statements" that are based on expectations, estimates, projections and interpretations as at the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "seek", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "suggest", "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's intentions and ability to meet its obligations under the Option Agreement, the anticipated completion date of the Offering, the ability to raise the funds to finance its ongoing business activities including the acquisition of mineral projects and the exploration and development of its projects. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to, the results of exploration activities; the ability of the Company to complete further exploration activities; the ability of the Company to complete transactions on terms announced; timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms and those risk factors outlined in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis as filed on SEDAR. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws. THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64066 DUBAI, U.A.E, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Market Insights in its latest market research, the global refrigeration leak detector market is poised to record 3.1% CAGR during the assessment period, 2020-2030. The refrigeration leak detector market has witnessed increased uptake in recent years as it helps to eradicate the harmful effect of climate change and global warming. These detectors aid in holding harmful gases leakage through several approaches. Moreover, in recent times, prominence on multifunctional detectors that offer other benefits has amplified. The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in sluggishness, with the worldwide economy reflecting acute signs of depression. Consequently, the market might record a significant decline. Nationwide lockdowns have notably hindered the supply of refrigeration systems in various nations. Following an optimistic approach, FMI forestalls the worldwide economy to recoil amid the next 5 to 8 quarters, mainly supported by increasing infrastructure investments and healthcare spending. As a result, the market for a refrigerator leak detector will experience moderate recovery throughout the consequent years. "The refrigeration leak detector market will be profoundly influenced by strict environmental regulations, stimulating players to dole out sophisticated devices on the basis of innovations, allowing them to carve a niche for themselves," opines FMI analyst. Download a Sample Report with Table of Contents and Figures: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-12421 Refrigeration Leak Detector Market - Key Takeaways In terms of end-use, the Industrial-grade category will remain significant, holding close to 60% of the revenue. Based on product type, increased demand for efficacy is escalating the implementation of handheld leak detectors. Electric detectors category will be towering in the worldwide market as well as will be touching a valuation of US$ 133.3 Mn towards 2030 end. South Asia & Pacific will contribute close to a quarter of the overall market share, due to amplifying emission levels. Refrigeration Leak Detector Market - Key Trends Growing trend of utilizing IoT and smart sensors for monitoring the refrigeration will allow the production of these detectors in a flexible manner and offer precise conditions in the market. High price of replacing the refrigerant offsets the expenditure sustained on repairing and locating potential leaks, this boosts the market demand for refrigeration leak detectors from residential and commercial grade appliance users in the coming years. Refrigeration Leak Detector Market - Regional Analysis North America is projected to record notable progression in the forthcoming decade. The region will generate an incremental $ opportunity valuing US$ 5.5 Mn towards 2030 end, with the U.S putting up the highest revenue share. is projected to record notable progression in the forthcoming decade. The region will generate an incremental $ opportunity valuing towards 2030 end, with the U.S putting up the highest revenue share. South Asia & the Pacific will record a huge rise as the majority of the population resides in the tropical areas, exposing individuals to extremely higher temperatures. & the Pacific will record a huge rise as the majority of the population resides in the tropical areas, exposing individuals to extremely higher temperatures. Increasing industrialization as well as the growth of trade & commerce has increased the implementation of cooling and refrigerating systems over prominent verticals in the East Asian nation. China is at the vanguard of the East Asian expansion, contributing the highest revenue share. For any Queries Linked with the Report, Ask an [email protected] https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-12421 Refrigeration Leak Detector Market - Competitive Landscape Leading companies functioning in the global refrigeration leak detector market include Fieldpiece Instruments Inc., Elitech Technology Inc., CPS Products Inc., MSA Safety, AGPTEK, ACME Engineering Products Ltd., Bacharach Inc., KANE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, Emerson Electric Co., Ritchie Engineering Inc., Robinair, INFICON, and Testo SE & Co. KGaA. Prominent companies in the scenario are focusing on developing multi-functional leak detectors, a combination of IoT as well as leveraging e-commerce platforms to enter potential markets. Furthermore, partnerships and collaborations are assisting them in increasing their distribution networks all over the world. Refrigeration Leak Detector Market - Taxonomy Product Type Halide Detector Electronic Detector Operation Hand-held Benchtop End-Use Industrial Research & Academia Maintenance Service Providers Regional Outlook: North America Latin America Europe South Asia & Pacific & Pacific East Asia Middle East & Africa (MEA) Get full Report Now https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/12421 Get Valuable Insights into the Refrigeration Leak Detector Market Future Market Insights, in its new offering, provides an unbiased analysis of the global refrigeration leak detector market, presenting historical demand data and forecast statistics for the period from 2020-2030. The study divulges compelling insights on the refrigeration leak detector market, allowing readers to glean qualitative and quantitative information which will enable them to make informed market decisions in the upcoming forecast period. Explore Extensive Coverage on FMI's Technology Landscape Water Leak Sensing Cables Market: The global internet of everything market is anticipated to surpass an impressive revenue threshold by the end of the forecast period ranging from 2020 to 2030, concludes FMI's recently published research report on the market. Hvac Blower And Fan Systems Market: FMI's compelling study on the HVAC blower & fan system market sheds light on the prominent dynamics influencing the growth trajectory for the upcoming forecast period 2020-2030 through detailed segmental and regional analyses. Bonded Magnets Market: The bonded magnets market report offers a 360-degree analysis, bringing to the fore insights that can help stakeholders identify key challenges and opportunities across the upcoming decade's growth trajectory. About Future Market Insights (FMI) Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis help businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers. Contact Mr. Abhishek Budholiya Unit No: AU-01-H Gold Tower (AU), Plot No: JLT-PH1-I3A, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates MARKET ACCESS DMCC Initiative For Sales Enquiries: [email protected] For Media Enquiries: [email protected] Report: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/refrigeration-leak-detector-market Press Release Source: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release/refrigeration-leak-detector-market SOURCE Future Markets Insights Syracuse, N.Y. Onondaga County today reported 16 new cases of coronavirus since Tuesday, bringing the total to 3,953 cases since March. There have been no new deaths from Covid-19 since Sept. 6, according to the county health department website. A total of 205 county residents have died from the virus. There are 10 Covid-19 patients in local hospitals today. One of the patients is in intensive care, the county reported. Of the 16 new cases, six occurred in households with previous infections; five were attributed to community spread; three were blamed on travel from outside the area; and two were still under investigation. There are currently 125 active cases of Covid-19 in the county, up two since Tuesday. According to the state health department, 1.2% of people who received individual diagnostic tests in Onondaga County were positive for the virus during the seven days ending Tuesday. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Are coronavirus cases in CNY schools, colleges cause for alarm? Cuomo says he wont ban Halloween trick-or-treating amid coronavirus New York removes 6 states, 1 territory from coronavirus quarantine list Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com News tips? Contact reporter Tim Knauss of syracuse.com/The Post-Standard: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023 More Democratic lawmakers are frustrated and now pushing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to find a deal on the new stimulus package before they will return home to focus on the campaign. There is now a growing tension within the rank of Pelosi who did not only reject the stimulus bill that Republican lawmakers offered but also the relief aid with bipartisan support that worth $2 trillion. Pelosi is now hearing more complaints from her own party. The Democratic lawmakers want the passage of a new stimulus bill after a series of talks with the White House had been stalled due to political reasons. During a conference call on Tuesday with the New Democrats Coalition, a group of moderate members, several implored Pelosi to keep the House in session until more relief aids are passed, including the stimulus bill. Traditionally, lawmakers go home to their states a month before the election and campaign for reelection. But this time, lawmakers want to go home after reaching an agreement on the next stimulus package. They firmly believed that this will affect the reelection campaign for both parties. The frustration is coming largely from Democratic representatives who are facing very tough and competitive races. They knew that with the series of Pelosi's rejection towards the Republican-led and bipartisan proposed stimulus, there is a slim chance that they will win in the election. Some of them believed that voters will penalize them for not producing the new coronavirus relief aid that millions of Americans needed. If the bill will not be passed, chances are the most of the Democrats will lose the election and Republicans will have control in the Congress. This is the reason why the Democratic lawmakers are pushing Pelosi to reach an agreement for a new stimulus package. It can also be remembered that more than 100 Democrats signed a letter and demanded Pelosi to vote on a bill that would extend weekly unemployment payments and other benefits. Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger said that she is hearing from her constituents every day, begging for Congress to help. "My conviction is to actually do my goddamn job and come up with a solution for the American people," she noted. She issued this statement as a response to another lawmaker who argued that Democratic members should not give in to Republicans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed the Senate for not taking the stimulus bill seriously. However, Democratic members said that blaming the Senate will not satisfy the voters who are dealing with health and economic issues. Candidates strongly believed that one of the ways for them to win the election is having a campaign and bringing with them a new stimulus. Even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they will not leave the House and would stay in session until a stimulus deal is done, she has yet to lay out her strategy on how to advance with any legislation. Check these out! (Natural News) A Black nationalist group has filmed themselves terrorizing small businesses in Portsmouth, Virginia over the past several weeks seemingly without any repercussions. (Article by Chris Menahan republished from InformationLiberation.com) The Original Black Panthers Of VA just recently filmed themselves terrorizing the Church Food Mart in Portsmouth and demanding an immigrant employee apologize to a Black queen for allegedly pulling a gun on her. Video of the incident was proudly shared on September 5 by Black Panthers leader Mike Pain on Facebook and racked up nearly 300,000 views. The video description reads: General Mike Pain and The Original Black Panthers Of VA got a call that a now ex-employee of Church Food Mart in Portsmouth pulled a gun on a Queen from our community and called her a Monkey Bitch! Watch what happens, WE DONT PLAY BOUT OUR PEOPLE! #weshutshitdown Darryl King Rick Farmer II Dr-Malik Zulu Shabazz The video was highlighted Tuesday morning on Twitter by the popular user Kitty Shackleford, who noted that the shop employee appeared to be ordered seemingly at gunpoint (offscreen) to stay where he is and put his arms up in response. You can see the gun on the counter in this clip when the employee starts to come out from behind. One of the men with the Black Panther group picks up the gun. 3/4 pic.twitter.com/zcIGChL2Fn Kitty Shackleford (@KittyLists) September 15, 2020 The employee is heard protesting the allegations against him but is clearly too afraid to push back against the intimidating mob. The Original Black Panthers Of VA pulled a similar stunt at Paradise Pizzas in Portsmouth in another video posted on August 1: So this account has *tons* of videos of this group harassing and intimidating local businesses and residents for disrespecting the black community this one is a Pizza shop. Chants of no justice no peace & promising that they will be back, Shackleford, who found the video, noted. Shackleford shared another video from Mike Pain intimidating a local landlord for disrespecting a Queen by not letting her put a fence up. This is what Black Lives Matter are talking about when they say they want community policing. As a reminder, Facebook last year announced they were banning all White nationalist groups as well as any praise, support and representation of White nationalism and separatism but said Black nationalist groups are just fine. Thousands of popular conservatives from Alex Jones to Paul Joseph Watson and Gavin McInnes have been banned from Facebook for their political views but Black Panther groups are allowed to spread Black Power propaganda and terrorize small businesses without any repercussions! Read more at: InformationLiberation.com A former presidential liaison officer to the National Assembly, Muhammed Abba-Aji, has been appointed the Executive Secretary of the newly formed Northeast Governors Forum (NEGF). Mr Abba-Ajis appointment was conveyed to him in a letter signed by the forums chairman and Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum. A statement by the governors spokesperson, Isa Gusau, said the former Borno senators appointment starts immediately and is renewable after two years. The appointment letter reads: Following the unanimous decision of the Governors of the North East Forum, and in my capacity as the Chairman of the North East Governors Forum (NEGF), it is my honour and pleasure to offer you the position of the Executive Secretary of the North East Governors Forum from the date of this letter. The forum said Mr Abba-Aji was appointed based on his academic background and wealth of experience in both public and the private sector. The appointment letter also mentioned Mr Abba-Ajis legislative experience in the National Assembly and corporate experience in the financial sector as reasons that informed the decision of the Forum on your choice. Governor Zulum said the new Executive Secretarys skills and wealth of experience would be valuable to the forum.. Mr Abba-Ajis job is to coordinate the forums affairs, head the secretariat and provide administrative and policy assistance towards the attainment of the Forums vision and objectives. We look forward to your positive response to this offer and the pleasure of working with you to build a positive working relationship that will benefit the people of the North East region Governor Zulums letter read. Mr Abba-Aji, a lawyer, was a former member of the All Progressives Congress before he defected to the Peoples Democratic Party in 2018 after he was denied the ticket to re-contest the senatorial seat of Borno Central. During the 2019 election, Mr Abba-Aji was a vicious critic of the election that brought all the APC-dominated Borno state elected public office holders, stressing that his party (PDP) was deliberately rigged out and robbed of their supposed mandate. He made a similar statement during the primary elections in 2003 when be defected from the PDP to the defunct ANPP where he secured an automatic ticket to emerge senator. He later defected back to the PDP in 2007 citing the same reason. The NEGF was formed in March when the governors of the northeast states first met in Gombe. In August, the governors met in Maiduguri for the second time during which Mr Zulum was elected chairman for a period of two years. Our mission is to retrain Virginians for todays workforce and help place them in high-demand jobs, and business partners like Bank of America are absolutely critical for achieving that goal. Were grateful for their partnership. -Glenn A. Youngkin, chairman and co-founder of VA Ready The Virginia Ready Initiative (VA Ready), a non-profit dedicated to retraining unemployed Virginians across the Commonwealth and helping them return quickly to work, welcomed Bank of America today as the Initiatives newest Strategic Business Partner. Bank of America is the ideal partner for VA Ready, because just like all our other great business partners, theyre committed to helping people throughout Virginia get back to work, said Glenn A. Youngkin, chairman and co-founder of VA Ready. Our mission is to retrain Virginians for todays workforce and help place them in high-demand jobs, and business partners like Bank of America are absolutely critical for achieving that goal. Were grateful for their partnership. VA Ready was launched in June 2020 in response to the unprecedented impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on unemployment in the Commonwealth. Partnering with leading businesses and Virginias community colleges, VA Ready equips people currently out of work with skills required to land jobs in high-growth sectors. VA Ready has built a platform for business leaders in Virginia to work together and create a pipeline for trained, certified people with the skills employers need now said Larry Di Rita, Bank of America's market president for Greater Washington DC. It is a proven approach that Bank of America is following elsewhere across the country. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than one million Virginians have filed claims for unemployment benefits. Hardest hit by the economic downturn have been low-wage earners and minority communities. At the same time, demand is projected to grow for specialized jobs in the fields of technology, healthcare, manufacturing and other skilled trades. Virginias strength lies in its people and its business partners, said Caren Merrick, CEO of VA Ready. By working together, thousands of out-of-work Virginians will be able to secure new employment while Virginia businesses will be able to hire more of the skilled workers they need. VA Ready rewards out-of-work Virginians who commit themselves to training for these in-demand jobs. Through FastForward, a state-led short-term workforce credential program to train Virginians for in-demand jobs across the Commonwealth, students can take pre-approved classes at any of the Virginia Community College Systems (VCCS) 23 community colleges. Upon achieving their credential, VA Ready Scholars receive a $1,000 Credential Achievement Award and are offered opportunities to interview with VA Readys business partners. As a VA Ready Strategic Business Partner, Bank of America will be supporting the initiative in several important ways, including: Financial support for Credential Achievement Awards and awareness efforts; Input on offerings and curricula to VA Readys Talent Task Force with VCCS to ensure training program success; Participation in the VA Ready Job Exchange, providing job interview opportunities to VA Ready Scholars. For more information on VA Ready including how the recently unemployed can apply, or how a business can become an employer partner visit http://www.vaready.org. About Bank of America At Bank of America, were guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better, through the power of every connection. Were delivering on this through responsible growth with a focus on our environmental, social and governance (ESG) leadership. ESG is embedded across our eight lines of business and reflects how we help fuel the global economy, build trust and credibility, and represent a company that people want to work for, invest in and do business with. Its demonstrated in the inclusive and supportive workplace we create for our employees, the responsible products and services we offer our clients, and the impact we make around the world in helping local economies thrive. An important part of this work is forming strong partnerships with nonprofits and advocacy groups, such as community, consumer and environmental organizations, to bring together our collective networks and expertise to achieve greater impact. Learn more at about.bankofamerica.com, and connect with Bank of American on Twitter (@BofA_News). About the Virginia Ready Initiative (VA Ready) VA Ready is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization launched in June 2020 to retrain Virginians impacted by the economic hardships created by COVID-19. VA Readys mission is to help thousands of unemployed Virginians access the short-term training needed to get back to work in todays most in-demand jobs. With its Public-Private-Partnership design, VA Ready brings together the Virginia Community College System's (VCCS) 23 colleges and their FastForward career training program, and more than 20 business partners who employ millions of Virginians. VA Ready Scholars have access to 30 healthcare, technology and other skilled training programs; learn the skills needed to secure one of today's most in-demand positions; receive $1,000 upon credential completion; and are connected to VA Ready's business partners for interview opportunities. Learn more at http://www.vaready.org Slower growing broiler chickens experience higher welfare than commercial fast growing breeds of birds, according to a new study. An independent commercial scale farm trial is the first to highlight the welfare differences between fast and slower growing broilers. It concludes that, while there are benefits of providing chickens with more space by slightly lowering density, changing to a slower growing breed results in better health and more positive experiences for birds. The majority of broilers produced for public consumption are conventional, fast growing breeds. The study, carried out by researchers from FAI Farms, the University of Bristol and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, is published in Scientific Reports. Annie Rayner, FAIs lead researcher, said: "Our seminal study found slow growing birds to have better health and perform more positive behaviours than conventional fast growing broilers. "A shift away from fast-growing breeds would provide the most significant improvement for the lives of the 142 million chickens produced in Europe every week. The trial explored a suite of positive and negative welfare indicators in four production systems varying in stocking density and breed. One slower growing breed - the slowest - was stocked at a planned maximum density of 30 kg/m2, a second slower growing breed at planned densities of 30 kg/m2 and 34 kg/m2, and the welfare outcomes were compared to those of a standard fast-growing breed stocked at 34kg/m2. At the lower density, the slowest growing breed was found to have slightly better welfare than the other slower growing breed - as indicated by lower mortality, fewer rejections at processing and better walking ability. Differences in welfare of the slower growing breed stocked at two densities were small. However, prominent differences were found between the standard fast-growing birds stocked at 34kg/m2 and birds in the three other systems. The standard birds experienced poorer health as indicated by higher levels of mortality, hock burn and pododermatitis as well as greater rejections at processing. Furthermore, the conventional birds showed less perching on enrichment bales as well as fewer positive play and exploration behaviours. Dr Siobhan Mullan, Senior Research Fellow in Animal Welfare at the Bristol Vet School, said that the trial provided 'robust evidence' of the benefits of slower growing breeds. "We hope that it will help to drive changes in supply chains and large companies to bring about real improvements to chicken welfare." By Express News Service NEW DELHI: There has been no infiltration along the India-China border in the last six months, while 47 infiltration bids have been reported along the India-Pakistan border during the period, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanad Rai said told the Rajya Sabha. He was responding to questions posed by BJP parliamentarian Anil Agrawal. He said that 594 attempts of infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani militants have been reported in the last three years, of which 312 were successful. On terror related incidents in J&K since the revocation of Article 370 in 5 August, 2019, the government told the Housec that least 71 civilians and 74 security personnel have been killed. MoS, Home, G Kishan Reddy said that 45 civilians were killed in terror-related incidents and 26 lost their lives in ceasefire violations. Similarly, 49 security personnel were killed in terror incidents while 25 died in incidents of ceasefire violation. Rajnath to speak in RS The Defence Minister will make a state-ment in the RS on Thursday on the row with China in Ladakh. later, opposition MPs will speak and Singh may give a clarifi-cation, if required and if Chair permits Knock Knock Knock Cast: Shantilal Mukherjee, Phuden Sherpa Direction: Sudhanshu Saria Rating: * * * and 1/2 (three and a half stars) By Vinayak Chakravorty Brevity is not always an essential attribute in cinema, while setting up narrative and aesthetic brilliance. Which is what makes the short film an exciting challenge. The ability to create an entire fictional universe within minutes is a craft quite unlike any other format of cinematic storytelling. Writer-director Sudhanshu Saria's Knock Knock Knock aims to take that challenge up by a level, because most of what would constitute as traditional plot progression happens on a cerebral plane rather than a physical one, and between just two characters. We meet an elderly gentleman who is simply addressed all through the film's runtime as Dada (Shantilal Mukherjee), who sits at a corner table of a quaint cafe in Darjeeling, designing crosswords. He takes off a month every year from his hectic grind in Kolkata, we are told, to be in Darjeeling and pursue his passion and pastime. Dada's self-imposed lonely calm is disturbed one afternoon when a young guy (Phuden Sherpa) at the cafe notices the crossword he is meticulously creating. The 20-something youngster, a tattoo artiste, cannot help but come forward to introduce himself, eager to strike a friendship with the older man. Dada is reluctant at first but the youngster, lively and unconventional in his ability to gauge everything around, is unlike the millions he normally abhors. A connection of wits is soon established between the two. Saria's treatment is quietly effective, as the young tattoo artiste lets himself into Dada's extremely private world. These are two men who are similar yet different. As creative artistes, they realise there is an intricate likeness that binds their respective arts. Yet, the older man's reluctance to let the world impinge upon his private space is in contrast to the youngster's willingness to reach out. The filmmaker uses that last-mentioned notion to introduce a dark edge into the narrative, and also insert a dose of unsettling suspense. The film has an uncompromising approach -- there is no attempt to simplify the psychological subtext that propels its storytelling. It works for the narrative. Saria's primary triumph lies in his writing. He has successfully defined his protagonists within a short runtime without the aid of a back story. In turn, that lets him extract flawless performances from two excellent artistes who have largely been unknown to most of India. Shantilal Mukherjee, a successful character actor in Bengali cinema and television who owes his roots to theatre, is phenomenal in his understated approach while essaying of Dada's complex mannerisms. Phuden Sherpa balances his on-screen traits as an extrovert youngster and a social misfit with ease. Their behavioral traits, in contrast and yet in harmony, set up an irresistible watch. Knock Knock Knock ends on a note that may not find favour with all. It could open up a debate over whether the protagonist's stance about the purpose of life is valid. Come to think of it, good films are meant to open up debates about life, not silence them. Saria has done so in 38 minutes. (Vinayak Chakravorty can be reached at vinayak.c@ians.in) -- Syndicated from IANS Fox News has drawn our attention to the fact that George Soros is bankrolling the leftist district attorneys who are fostering so much rioting in America's blue cities, based on their refusal to prosecute looters and rioters. But probably not in the way the network meant to. Here's what went down over at the semi-cheesy news commentary show called Outnumbered, whose format is a group of leggy women sitting on a circular sofa with some man in the news and grilling him with chick-like excited shouts and exclamations. It's now a Zoom thing without the leg business. In this case, it led to a very unexpected outcome: This is one of the weirdest exchanges Ive ever seen on TV. @newtgingrich correctly points out that George Soros threw an unprecedented amount of money into DA races all over the country to elect radicals and Fox News basically told him to shut up. WTF? pic.twitter.com/IxwcLG2gOH Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 16, 2020 What an amazingly insulting way to treat a supposedly honored guest, a former speaker of the House. Look at the shock on Newt's face at that shutdown. They invited him on, they asked him his take on the leftist riots in America's blue cities, and they got an answer: Gingrich pointed out that the riots were happening because of district attorneys, financed by George Soros, who refuse to prosecute rioting. It wasn't really news. Nor was it controversial. It's been reported in detail by conservative outfits for years. Fox News itself, news division, reported it. What was strange was that bizarrely unprofessional reaction from this one show, and from hosts whom most viewers have trusted and respected, such as Harris Faulkner and Melissa Francis. The leftist flak for the Obama administration, Marie Harf, no journalist, could be dismissed, given that she is no stranger to boldface lying for her bosses to sing for her supper. But why was Francis the first to bring it up, only to have Harf as her growling dog backing her up with her absolutely adamant call not to engage Gingrich? What did he say that was so evil and unfit for TV? Note that Harf was unable to cite any reasons she has none; she just wanted to play commissar censor and, like all commissar censors, had a whiff of fear of those above her. Note that booming, croaking, dead-toned angry adamant voice, like that of an upset socialite or desperate high school principal. Shut up, she explained. It really was remarkable. She really didn't want any discussion or even mention of Soros. But why did Faulkner coolly move on after cutting Newt off? The strange behavior of Francis and Faulkner actually drew more attention to the issue because we expected better. Had they not done that, the whole thing would have rolled out like water off a duck's back, not news, easily forgotten, because, well, everyone knows it everyone read it on Fox News. What we didn't know was that Fox News's commentary show, at least one of them, maybe more, seems to be on some kind of mission to protect Soros from scrutiny, which is rather unfitting for a news outfit that calls itself "fair and balanced." Are they in hock to him? Does one of their board members have business ties to him? Are they under some kind of legal threat? Because how else can we explain the bizarre attempt by two respected anchors to gaslight us? They are trying to dismiss any scrutiny of Soros, and let's face it: Newt put his finger on it, as something we can see with our own eyes, but they are effectively (and falsely in the case of Harf) saying it isn't happening. It's creepy, really. We didn't know this about Fox News. Now we do. Far-left Daddy Warbucks George Soros has been financing far-left candidates in district attorneys' races across the country since 2015. Houston, Albuquerque, Chicago, races in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida they've all gotten their cut. According to Capital Research: Since 2015, he has spent more than $17 million on district attorney and other local races in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Arizona, but also in large, predominantly left-of-center states such as California and New York. In 2016, Soros dropped $2,000,000 into a single sheriff race in Maricopa County, Arizona, helping progressive candidate Paul Penzone win the election with ease over longtime incumbent Joe Arpaio. He has given millions of dollars in grants to candidates in several other counties as well. These huge contributions often make it almost impossible for the other candidates to compete because district attorney elections are on such a small scale and the campaigns typically do not need to raise millions to run local ads and mobilize voters. Constituents are swamped with propaganda, and the opposing conservative candidates are victims of unfair character assassinations, such as defaming them as racists and white supremacists. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner got a $118,000 bagload in the wake of the Ferguson riots, and once elected, filed false and scurrilous charges against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitans, which were thrown out. In 2020, she got $78,000 from Daddy Warbucks. Rioters of course have since run free and but the McCloskeys, trying to defend their home, were prosecuted. Over in Chicago, State's attorney Kim Foxx has been attacked by her city's own mayor for her failure to prosecute rioters. She also was heavily involved in the Jussie Smollett racial hoax fiasco, something that had the fingerprints of Kamala Harris and other Democrats on it. There's some kind of power game going on. Democrats, through their control of the DA's offices, can perpetuate and keep riots flowing until election day in a bid to make voters cry 'uncle' and vote for Joe Biden to make it stop. We often view Antifa as the instigator of this, or the trained Marxists of Black Lives Matter, and they certainly have a role. But they would never be able to do what they do without the connivance of the DAs who refuse to prosecute their violent crimes. And Fox News, at least some parts of it, is covering the whole racket up. Michelle Malkin has pointed out that they have shut down other truth-tellers about Soros, citing this case from 2018: If you read #openbordersinc, you remember that Fox banned the great Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch in 2018 for reporting on Soros-funded NGOs propping up illegal alien caravans. If you've been paying attention to Fox's ever-expanding blacklist, none of this is a surprise. https://t.co/rzmFiCbDDT Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) September 16, 2020 And it may or may not be related to the current protection racket going on to shield Soros, but ten years ago, Fox got rid of Glenn Beck, who also criticized Soros. One thing we do know, is that Soros is powerful, and he uses his money to wield power. He's also on record as trying to overhaul the justice system. It might not just be the district attorneys that he controls for this, based on this shabby treatment of Gingrich, he might just control at least some of Fox News. That's disturbing. That gets our attention. We didn't know this until this shutdown maneuver against Gingrich. Gingrich, who just wanted to please them, certainly didn't either, based on his startled response. Now we know. And now we've been reminded for sure that Soros is running the district attorney show, the very reason why the riots are continuing -- because nobody is being prosecuted. Thanks, Fox News, for getting that out there, reminding us of the big stakes, and letting us know that someone doesn't want us to know. Thanks for letting us know. Image credit: World Economic Forum. swiss-image.ch/Photo by Sebastian Derungs // CC BY-SA 2.0. Processed with Graphite. Declaration of Principles for the Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks And so this march must go beyond this historic moment. We must support the strong. We must give courage to the timid. We must remind the indifferent, and we must warn the opposed. Civil rights, which are God-given and constitutionally guaranteed, are not negotiable in 1963. National Urban League President Whitney M. Young, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice Fifty-seven years to the day after Whitney M. Young stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to declare that civil rights are not negotiable, I stood on the very same spot to say: racial justice is not negotiable in 2020. Transforming our racially-biased criminal justice system and mass incarceration crisis is not negotiable. ADVERTISEMENT Protecting and defending our sacred right to vote against racially-motivated suppression and foreign sabotage is not negotiable. Dislodging the structural racism that infects our institutions and paving a patriotic pathway to shared prosperity, economic parity and educational opportunity is not negotiable. Last weeks Commitment March, Get Your Knee Off Our Necks, was convened in support of police accountability in solidarity with the families of African Americans killed or injured at the hands of the police. In conjunction with the March, the convening organizations National Urban League, National Action Network, NAACP, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., along with along with Martin Luther King, III have issued a Statement of Principals to established a shared civil rights and social justice agenda. These principles are: Fundamentally Transforming the Criminal Justice System Protect and Defend Voting Rights During the Pandemic and Beyond Achieve Economic Parity for African Americans Promote Equity in Educational Opportunity Promote a Fair and Accurate Census Promote a Healthier Nation by Eliminating Disparities and Prioritizing Testing, Treatments and Cures for Covid-19 in Communities of Color The Commitment March, like the March in 1963, happened as people all across the country are taking to the streets to demand justice. The cycle of lawlessness against Black people extends back through the centuries. Police have shot and killed an average of approximately 1,000 people in the United States in each of the past three years, and 2020 is on track to meet or exceed that number. Moreover, Black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed by police. We support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year. We urge the U.S. Senate to pass, and the president to the bill into law. When we gathered to march in 1963, the white establishment stopped Black people from voting with violence, literacy tests and poll taxes. Today, they are sabotaging the Postal Service. Reductions of early voting, restrictive identification requirements, onerous registration procedures, exact name match requirements, purges of voting rolls, foreign and domestic disinformation campaigns, and mandated in-person voting during a pandemic are all efforts designed to undermine the rights of African- Americans to the franchise. We urge the Senate to pass and the president to sign the Voting Rights Advancement Act. This is the most fitting tribute to the late Congressman John Lewis, who dedicated his life to the advancement of voting and civil rights. The pandemic has thrust long-standing economic injustices into the forefront of our consciousness. Our leaders must adopt a fair response to the Covid-19 pandemic that has destroyed the nations economic output, thrown tens of millions of people out of work, left families with greater food insecurity, cut off millions of school-age children from learning, and has left municipal and state budgets for public services in shambles. In the immediate term, we believe that the HEROES Act, passed by the U.S House of Representatives on May 15, 2020, represents the best response to the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. We urge the Senate to pass the HEROES Act and the president to sign it into law immediately. The disparity in educational investment in minority communities and the resulting achievement gap among Black youth is the biggest threat to equality and upward mobility. Therefore, we support progressive funding mechanisms that promote quality and direct more resources to those areas where the need is greatest more often in high poverty and minority communities. We support a universal early childhood curriculum that prepares our youngsters to learn and achieve at a competitive level. We believe college should be an attainableand affordablegoal, and that federal resources should be structured to ensure that financial aid does not become a barrier to the development of the next generation of leaders in business and government. ADVERTISEMENT For several years, concerned communities across the country have worked tirelessly to spread the word about the importance of the 2020 Census and the need for everyoneespecially Black Americansto participate. Even so, Black America is facing an historic crossroad due to low participation in the 2020 Census. To make matters worse, the current Administration is trying to end all counting efforts by September 30th, a month sooner than previously announced. The National Urban league has sued to stop it. We urge the Senate to include much-needed language and allocation of fund in the next COVID relief package to extend the statutory reporting deadlines for the 2020 Census by four months. According to one recent estimate, Covid-19 is the third-leading cause of death among Black Americans. For too many people of color, healthcare is tied directly to employment. High unemployment means low access to healthcare. Furthermore, low wage workers often do not have employer-provided healthcare and too few states have opted into Medicaid expansion. During the Covid-19 pandemic, too few African Americans have access to rapid testing, antibody testing, therapeutics, and vaccines. We support prioritizing the availability of testing in communities of color. Personal protective equipment, paid for by employers, should be made available to front-line workers. We also encourage funding for research into the long-term health effects of Covid-19 infection. By providing access to quality and affordable health care for all, promoting community-based prevention efforts, and expanding Medicaid to our most vulnerable citizens, the Affordable Care Act will play a pivotal role in reducing the human cost of these disparities. Read the full Statement of Principles here: https://nul.org/commitment-march-declaration-of-principles The Ontario government introduced its proposed rent freeze legislation for 2021 in the provincial legislature on Thursday. The freeze, which drew the ire of both landlord and tenant groups when it was announced last month, would prevent increases for most renters in units ranging from apartments, condos and houses to care facilities including units that arent covered by rent control. The freeze would also apply in cases where landlords have already given their tenants notice of increased rent for 2021. And the proposed legislation would cap rents that are geared to a households income at 2020 levels. There are exemptions, the province says, including certain above-guideline increases approved by the Landlord and Tenant Board where a property owner is repairing or upgrading a building, or cases where a landlord and tenant agreed to a rent increase in exchange for extra services or facilities. The province offered the examples of added air conditioning and parking. Above-guideline increases wouldnt be allowed due to increases in municipal property taxes unless they were approved by the Landlord and Tenant Board before the bill becomes law, the province said. The proposed legislation has been anticipated for several weeks, after Housing Minister Steve Clark pledged a freeze to cover the vast majority of renters last month. The maximum allowable rent increases each year are set out by the province, though landlords can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for steeper escalations. For 2021, the province says the maximum increase would have been 1.5 per cent. That will be brought down to zero for next year, though landlords can give notice of increases 90 days in advance, to take effect Jan. 1, 2022. The decision to freeze rents was panned by both tenant and landlord advocates when the province announced its intentions, though Clarks office vowed to work with both on the bill. Tony Irwin, president of the Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario, said in August his group was surprised and disappointed by the news, and urged the government to instead focus on assisting tenants who couldnt pay their rent whether it was frozen or not. This will be providing relief to many tenants who, quite frankly, arent in dire straits, Irwin said at the time. Renter advocates said that the province wasnt offering nearly enough protection for tenants, and should focus its attention elsewhere. One advocate said that simply freezing rents in 2021 gave landlords more of a financial incentive to evict their current renters, given a lack of regulation over rent increases between different tenancies. The bill introduced Thursday also proposes to extend a temporary ban on evictions for commercial tenants, to align with an extension of the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program. The eviction moratorium would apply to businesses that are deemed eligible for the assistance program, but their landlord elected not to apply for it. The Ford government has been criticized by tenant advocates for lifting a moratorium on residential evictions at the end of August, and for passing legislation this summer that allows landlords to apply for eviction orders without a hearing if their tenant falls behind on an agreed-upon repayment plan. More than 6,000 applications to evict tenants for nonpayment of rent were processed by Ontarios Landlord and Tenant Board between March 17 and July 19. The bill is expected to become law this fall. Victoria Gibson is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering affordable housing. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email: victoriagibson@thestar.ca Read more about: South Etobicoke resident Sapna Shah said shes feeling angry, hurt and scared after recently receiving two anonymous letters, one of which had clear racial undertones, in her mailbox. It all began about three weeks ago when the mother of two hired a local artist to paint a unique mural on the garage door of her townhome. Two days later, Shah said she received a note written in red marker addressed To the owner of the house that said You do not live in a house! This is a community! I couldnt believe someone wrote this to me. Thats not how you treat a member of the community by leaving an anonymous note of this nature, she said Wednesday morning. Shah, who has lived in her home near Royal York Road and The Queensway for about a year and a half, shared the upsetting incident on a local Facebook group. Everybody was so supportive, she said, adding the vast majority of those who commented couldnt believe someone would do that. Just over a week ago, Shah said she received a second letter, which this time was typed in all caps and placed in an envelope with a stamp. Addressed to GHETTO GARAGE DOOR, the notes author charges Shah devalued all of the homes in this area with that hideous graffiti at the front of your house. It has made the entire neighbourhood look like a low income ghetto, they went on to say, adding Shah has no consideration for anyone but (her) tasteless self and erecting this mural is a total lack of respect for her neighbours. The writer then calls the mural an expletive and ends the note with Shame on you! You have no class! I was just getting over the first note when I got the second one. It was horrifying to receive this letter, she shared. Theres so many undertones of racism, elitism, and classism. Their racism is hidden under their property value excuse, Shah said. Were a brown family. How dare you say low-income ghetto to anyone, let alone a brown family. I think we were targeted because were brown. Shah said shes never dealt with this kind of racism or bigotry before. I grew up in south Harlem and there I experienced more class, more integrity, and more sense of community, she said. For a second time, Shah decided to stand up to her would-be bullies by sharing the upsetting incident on social media. Her post on Facebook has received hundreds of likes, mostly positive comments, and dozens of shares. Graham Rowlands, who administers the South Etobicoke Community Facebook group, said the person(s) who sent these letters is not representative of the community at all. I think clearly from the responses on the (Facebook) group, (sending these letters) is something most people do not agree with and think is disgusting, he said, adding it makes no sense for someone to be taking out their personal frustrations on Shah. Further, Rowlands, who is a local realtor, said the assertion this garage door art will negatively impact property values is just outrageous. Shah, who has since installed a full secure camera system at her home, has called Toronto police twice to file a report, but said shes still waiting to hear back. I dont know what else is going to come next, said Shah, adding she has no intention of removing the mural. What I wanted to do was something nice for my garage, for my children. I dont expect everybody to like it, but they dont have to. If you dont like my garage, dont look at it. A document has been unearthed that proves that the SNP secretly approached the Tories to do a deal after the general election. No matter what Nicola Sturgeon may say, they were anticipating if not hoping for a Conservative victory. The price they demanded for co-operation was a free vote on devolution. But this was a while ago. On 18 November 1976, to be precise. The approach was made by the late Hamish Watt, the SNP Whip in the Commons, and the father of Maureen Watt, Scotlands minister for public health. He talked to a Tory whip, Bernard Weatherill, a future Speaker, who reported to Margaret Thatcher that I gained the impression that since the SNP were likely to be the dominant force in Scotland after the general election and since we were likely to be the next government, he was anxious to come to some sort of working arrangement with us. Weatherills note is in the archives of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at Churchill College, Cambridge. There is no record of any response from Thatcher. Exonerated after mistaken identity In Tory-held Stourbridge, in the West Midlands, the Labour candidate Pete Lowe was accused of misleading voters with his Born, bred and believes campaign, after the Ukip candidate, James Carver MEP, uncovered his birth certificate, which shows that he was born in Wolverhampton. Lowe says he has always lived in Stourbridge, but in 1968, when his mother was expecting twins, there was a complication and she was rushed to Wolverhampton hospital. One twin died; Pete Lowe was the other. Mr Carver has apologised, by phone and on Twitter. Thatchers insult legitimised Speaking at an event in Leyton and Wanstead for Labours John Cryer, Rodney Bickerstaffe, who created the Unison trade union from a merger of smaller unions, mentioned that he was conceived in 1944 in Whipps Cross Hospital in the constituency, where his mother was a nurse. His parents were not married and his father took off before the baby arrived, a month before the war ended. That was considered scandalous in those days. It meant, Bickerstaffe said, that when Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair called him a bastard, they were right. Sibling of the day As the oldest of three siblings I would be very upset if one of my younger siblings started trying to compete on my turf. David Camerons biographer, Isabel Oakeshott, gives Sky News her very personal reason for thinking Ed Miliband should not have run for the Labour leadership. Quote of the Day We should stick pompous Michael Fallon on the end of a nuclear missile and fire it off into space. The world would be a happier place. Michael Fallon got personal with Ed Miliband, so Ken Livingstone got personal with him. A lesson on the limits of the Union Leaders of six parties in Scotland held their debate in Aberdeen University against a backdrop that included a set of five fascinating works of art known as the Black Paintings. Painted by an unknown hand about 360 years ago, they used Old Testament images to warn Charles II to stay faithful to the National Covenant of 1637, which laid down the terms on which Scottish Presbyterians were prepared to accept union with England. Despite their obvious relevance, nobody so much as mentioned them. The Independent has got together with May2015.com to produce a poll of polls that produces the most up-to-date data in as close to real time as is possible. Click the buttons below to explore how the main parties' fortunes have changed: All data, polls and graphics are courtesy of May2015.com. Click through for daily analysis, in-depth features and all the data you need. (All historical data used is provided by UK Polling Report) Mumbai, Sep 17: A BJP Lok Sabha MP has filed an FIR about a fake Facebook account being operated in his name, a police official said on Thursday. According to the official, the city MP lodged the FIR with the Mulund Police station. The incident came to light after a Mulund resident got a friends request from the BJP leaders purported Facebook account earlier this week, he said. After sometime, he got a message requesting for on- line transfer of Rs 10,000, the official said. The recipient got suspicious and contacted local BJP functionaries and informed them about the fake account, he said. The MP came to know about the incident on Tuesday and sent a written complaint to the police. An identified person was booked under IPC sections 419 (cheating by personification) and 420 (cheating) along with relevant sections of the IT Act, the police official said. PTI ZA RSY RSY 09180033 NNNN. 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 Joseph Cole swung from reluctance to outright combativeness as he gave what could prove to be crucial testimony during a Harrisburg murder trial Thursday morning. Cole, a city man with a lengthy criminal record, was reticent when he told the Dauphin County jury about what Julius Allen supposedly told him soon after 22-year-old Kevin Royster was shot and killed on the evening of Sept. 28, 2018. He said, I shot somebody, Cole said under questioning by Senior Assistant District Attorney Jack Canavan. But it was Chief Deputy Public Defender Eric Delp who really drew Coles anger when, on cross examination, Delp kept inferring that Cole was concocting his testimony to get a break in his own latest criminal case. Cole, a friend of both Allen, 30, and Royster, testified on the fourth day of Allens trial on homicide and burglary charges. Canavan and Assistant District Attorney Lando Porter are contending that, after losing a fistfight with Royster, Allen went to Roysters apartment in the 1300 block of Berryhill Street, kicked in the door and killed Royster with a shotgun. After saying he didnt want to testify at the trial, Cole told the jury about conversations he had with Allen outside a speakeasy an unlicensed bar in the citys Allison Hill section before and immediately after Roysters slaying. Canavan had Cole refer to a statement he gave a city detective when Cole repeatedly said he couldnt recall details. During their first encounter, Allen told him he had just been in a fight with a Philly dude, Cole said. He noted that Royster originally was from Philadelphia. He wasnt upset. He wasnt, like, angry, Cole said of Allen. He said he refused when Allen asked him to accompany him back to the Philly dudes house. Did he tell you he had a gun somewhere? Canavan asked. Allen said he had a gun stashed in an alley, Cole replied. Hes smart, a good kid. I didnt believe him, Cole said. He said Allen left, but returned in about 15 minutes. It was then, Cole said, that Allen told him, I shot somebody. Did he tell you who? Canavan asked. No, Cole said. When he told you he shot somebody did you believe him? the prosecutor continued. No, Cole answered. He said Allen told him he had left the gun at the shooting scene. Police recovered a 20-gauge shotgun they say was used in the slaying. It was lying on Roysters blood-soaked back porch. Cole turned argumentative from the moment Delp started to cross-examine him. Its safe to say youre having trouble remembering things today? Delp asked. Uh huh, Cole said. Delp gave a rundown of Coles 20-plus-year criminal record, which included convictions for perjury robbery and forgery. In 98 I had an attempted homicide, too, Cole chimed in. He bristled when the defense attorney asked why he waited until May 2019, after he had been placed in the county work-release center for a probation violation, to tell police what he supposedly knew about Roysters murder. Cole angrily denied that he testified to get favorable treatment in his latest criminal case. Dude, Ive done state time. Whats three weeks in Dauphin County work-release? Are you serious? he said. Youre totally off with what youre trying to say? Youd never lie to the police to help yourself? Delp asked. Would lie to the police to help myself? Cole repeated. Yeah. This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact The Chanute Tribune office at 620-431-4100 if you have any questions A former model has alleged she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, then a real estate magnate, two decades ago at his VIP box in the US Open stands in New York. He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off, Amy Dorris, the former model, told The Guardian in an interview. And then thats when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything, the British newspaper quoted her as saying. I was in his grip, and I couldnt get out of it, she added. I dont know what you call that when youre sticking your tongue just down someones throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue. Trump was 51 at the time and was married to his second wife Marla Maples. Dorris was 24. President Trumps lawyers have denied the incident took place at all and raised several questions about her account, the news publication said. There would have been witnesses at such a public place as the US Open, they have said and asked why did she, who was there with her then boyfriend, continue to visit and meet Trump after the alleged incident and even sat with him at the memorial service for Gianni Versace. Dorris did not report the incident, which took place on September 5, 1997, to law enforcement, but she told a friend and her mother about it. She also spoke about it to other people and a therapist in the intervening years. The Guardian said it has corroborated her account with people she had confided in at the time. The former model, who is a mother of twin daughters and lives in Florida, has said that she did consider speaking out about the assault in 2016, when Trump was the Republican candidate for president. But she changed her mind because she feared she might end up harming her family. Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you dont let anybody do anything to you that you dont want, she has said. And Id rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didnt stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable. Dorris joins a long list of women who have accused Trump over the years of forcing himself on them, groping or sexually assaulting them. While Trump and his lawyers have strenuously dismissed those allegations, he has bragged about assaulting women and forcing himself on them, as he did on the infamous Access Hollywood tapes that nearly ended his campaign in October of 2016. E Jean Carroll, a columnist who has alleged that Trump raped her at a Manhattan department store decades ago, filed a defamation suit against the president in 2019 for accusing her of totally lying while rejecting her claims. The president is being defended by justice department lawyers in a very unusual move, starting early this month. It is news to many people that in Montana voters elect our Supreme Court Justices. Often, come Election Day, many voters wonder about who they should support to serve on Montanas highest court. Do not let that happen to you. Keeping the court out of the hands of dark money and corporate control is in the balance. During his 2005 confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court stressed that Justices are servants of the law, not the other way around, and they are like umpires -- the job is to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat. They must have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent shaped by other Justices who served before them. Justice McKinnon has spent too much time in the batters box swinging at wild pitches. After moving to Montana from the East Coast, Justice McKinnon was elected in 2012 with the help of dark money poured into Montana by wealthy out of state interests. Since then, she has voted in favor of her dark money benefactors in cases before the Supreme Court without even disclosing they spent many thousands of dollars to get her elected and before this dark money spending became public. Justice McKinnon has also repeatedly wrote and joined opinions against the majority of the other Justices. These opinions show she does not: (1) respect established Montana law protecting a womans right to choose and the fundamental right to privacy in the Montana Constitution; (2) respect established Montana law protecting consumers and working people from unfair practices by insurance companies and large corporations; and (3) respect established Montana law protecting access to our public land and water for hiking, biking, floating, hunting and fishing. Justice McKinnon has an agenda, working over and over against the fundamental rights guaranteed to Montanans by the Montana Constitution. She does not merely call balls and strikes like an umpire. She too often stands in the batters box as an advocate, hoping to hit a home run for her wealthy patrons and to overturn settled Montana law. In June 2019, Justice McKinnon announced she would retire and return to the East Coast. She bought a home in North Carolina and public records indicate her North Carolina home became her principal residence. Late last year, after a trip to the East Coast where she reported, They kind of poured a little cement down my spine, and convinced her to run again. She has never identified who they are, or why. Was she promised more dark money support? The voters deserve an explanation from her and a commitment she will serve out her term if she wins the election. That is why you need to pay close attention to the 2020 Montana Supreme Court race. Do you want the Big Sky Countrys highest court to lean even more toward the interests of wealthy dark money donors, large corporations and insurance companies? Or will you stand with me, Mike Black, and support my candidacy for the Court? My friends call me a man of the people and they are right. Everybody will get equal and fair consideration if you elect me to serve Montana on our Supreme Court. I was born and raised here -- I am not going anywhere. I stand with Montanans. I will call balls and strikes, respecting and following settled Montana law and the Montana Constitution. Mike Black is a candidate for Montana Supreme Court. Love 9 Funny 3 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 5 Lucknow, Sep 17 : The Lucknow Customs team has seized around 3.8 kg of gold biscuits valued at over Rs 2 crore at the Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport (CCSI) from a passenger travelling from Saudi Arabia. This was the second seizure in two days and showed clear link to the Middle East gold smuggling cartel. "In the night of 16.09.2020-17.09.2020, Lucknow team Customs CCSI Airport seized 33 Gold Biscuits (each biscuit weighing at 116.64 grams) total weighing 3,849.12 grams and valued at Rs 2,09,77,704/ from a passenger travelling from Riyadh to Lucknow in flight no G8 6451," a statement said. The Gold biscuits were wrapped in cellotape and kept in a black coloured pouch which was in his undergarment. He was thoroughly checked by Custom officers on suspicion which led to the detection of the 33 Gold biscuits. The person was arrested. Earlier on Tuesday, the Lucknow Customs at the same airport had made another seizure of gold biscuits weighing 583.2 grams and valued at Rs 31,78,440/ from a passenger travelling from Dubai to Lucknow in flight no. FZ 8325. Those gold biscuits were wrapped in multiple layers of carbon paper and cellotape and kept in a rubber material in cylindrical shape which was further wrapped in cellotape and kept in hand baggage. The passenger was arrested, a statement said. Responding to the Opposition, Kerala law minister AK Balan said Jaleel had not been arraigned as an accused, and that NIA's interrogation was to 'seek information' as per protocol Kochi/Thiruvananthapuram: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing the terror link of the gold smuggling case in Kerala on Thursday grilled state higher education minister KT Jaleel who is facing allegations of accepting consignments of the Holy Quran brought from UAE through diplomatic channel, violating FCRA norms. Jaleel reached the NIA office at around 6 am in a private car after being summoned by the agency, nearly a week after he was interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the acceptance of the consignments. Multiple rings of police security were thrown around the NIA office as the news broke about the minister's appearance before the NIA team probing the gold smuggling case. Protests erupted across the state by Opposition parties including the Congress and the BJP seeking resignation of the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government, while Jaleel was being interrogated at the NIA office. Several activists of the Congress, the BJP, and the Muslim League were injured in police action against participants of protest marches organised separately by these parties in various district headquarters, seeking the resignation of the chief minister. MLA VT Balaram, who was injured in police lathicharge against the Congress workers in Palakkad, alleged that the police action was without any provocation and demanded an enquiry. "At least 12 officials were injured when protesters clashed with the police at Palakkad. Shoulders of three officials were dislocated while one official was injured with a sharp object on his cheek. He got 12 stitches," a police official told PTI. The NIA office premises also witnessed separate protests by activists belonging to youth wings of the Congress and the BJP. As the Opposition sharpened its attack against the ruling LDF, the leadership of the CPM rallied behind the embattled minister, saying "seeking information" was part of the procedure of investigation and there was no need for anyone to resign. Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, Ramesh Chennithala said the government should resign and face elections. In response, state law minister and senior CPM leader AK Balan said "seeking information" was part of the procedure of investigation. "The NIA normally questions someone for a scheduled crime. At least now, the Chief Minister should seek the resignation of Jaleel. It seems like the Chief Minister is refusing to seek the resignation because he fears the probe will reach his office. The government should resign under these circumstances and face an election," Chennithala said at a press conference at Haripad, his home constituency in Alappuzha district. Balan hit back at the Opposition leader and told the media in Palakkad that the demand for resignation would have had some sense if Jaleel had been arraigned as an accused in any case. "It's just part of the procedure that the investigating agency seeks information on the matters. There is no need for anyone to resign just because some allegations were raised. If he (Jaleel) is arraigned as an accused, then there is a sense in demanding the resignation but now there is no need for it...," Balan said. Meanwhile, BJP state chief K Surendran said the allegations faced by Jaleel were serious and sought his resignation and asked the government to step down. "The chief minister should understand that it's not right for someone who can be influential to remain in power while the investigation is on. The allegations he (Jaleel) is facing are quite serious. All his phone calls details show he had regular contact with the gold smuggling accused," Surendran said at a press conference. Last week, Jaleel had appeared before the ED here and his statement was recorded. The minister had earlier admitted that a consignment containing Holy Quran had been received from the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram which a top Customs official had referred to as "prima facie violation of FCRA" (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act). After the media reported about his interrogation by the ED, the minister had later posted on Facebook: "Truth will prevail. Only the truth. Even if the whole world opposes it, nothing else will happen." Officials had said Jaleel is under the scanner of the central agencies after he publicly claimed that the consignments brought to Thiruvananthapuram during Ramzan month contained Holy Quran for distribution in his constituency. Earlier, the call records of Swapna Suresh, a prime accused in the gold smuggling case, had revealed that Jaleel was in touch with her. Suresh's call records had revealed that she and the minister had spoken over the phone nine times between 1 and 26 June. The minister had said that these calls were strictly professional as Suresh was working with the consulate of the UAE in Thiruvananthapuram. He had said calls were made after the Consulate General assigned Suresh to coordinate the distribution of food kits. Jaleel had also released screenshots of his conversation with the Consulate General on the matter. Nairobi Regional Commander Rashid Yakub has maintained that all police officers must wear the new Persian blue uniforms while on duty. Last week, Rashid issued a directive ordering all police officers to secure the new uniforms. It has been observed that some officers of other ranks are wearing the old uniforms while reporting on duty with some members of inspectorate still wearing the old khaki uniforms. This is despite the fact that the new medium blue uniforms for all general duty police officers were launched in late 2018 and have been on the issue since then, said Rashid in a memo dated September 11. All officers must be in the new medium blue uniform, except for the formed-up units who have their own order of dressing. In addition, all officers are cautioned against mixing uniforms or wearing non-uniform items alongside the uniform. Failure to comply with these instructions will attract serious disciplinary action, Yakub said. This sparked protests from a section of junior officers who complained that they have to dig into their own pockets. However, the Nairobi regional commander has downplayed the complaints saying the directive was well thought out and aimed at ensuring discipline in the Nairobi police force. It is common that some people will always be opposed to any change. The noise you are hearing about the blue uniform for the last few days is no different but we are not ceding ground, all officers must put on the blue uniform, he told the Star on Wednesday. We want to put an end to a culture where officers are just wearing anything in the name of uniform. In fact, we have directed that no officer should wear the old jacket on the new uniform. Yakub said there is a worrying a culture where some police officers laze around while others hide from discharging their duties. I have not come to Nairobi for a show, I must perform and for me to perform, my juniors must also perform. If I wake up early and report to work, why should an officer not report to their station? we must embrace a culture of being honest to our duties. If you are in charge of traffic, clear the jam and not just about collecting Sh50 as a bribe if you should be on patrol please do so and dont hide, said Yakub. Who thought it would be a good idea to move thousands of teenagers and young adults across the country to college campuses, where, unencumbered by parental supervision, many college kids did what college kids do? But that model failed to take into account that kids who test positive for the virus, whether sick or asymptomatic, might continue to party. From Aug. 16, when campus reopened, to Sept. 14, more than 1,900 new cases of COVID-19 were detected, according to the universitys COVID-19 dashboard. One thousand cases occurred in the first two weeks of the fall semester. What is not in the models is that students will actually fail to isolate, said Goldenfeld during a Sept. 2 press briefing, that they would go to a party even if they knew they were COVID-positive or that they would host a party while they were COVID-positive. We didnt include that behavior in the model. Many other colleges across the country also thought through how to bring students back to campus. Several schools looked at computer models to see how COVID-19 would affect students and staff. But, as with the plan developed at Illinois, these models were sometimes based on a set of assumptions that ended up being wrong. In other cases, models that showed what could happen without mitigation strategies were ignored by university administrators, who went forward with plans to bring students back. Either way, the great student migration has resulted in COVID outbreaks on college campuses nationwide. The University of Central Florida: 378 cases since the week ending Aug. 8. Texas Christian University: 600 cases in August and 220 in September so far. The University of Iowa: 1,804 cases from Aug. 18 to Sept. 11. The University of South Carolina: 2,185 cases since Aug. 1. Making matters worse, some afflicted schools are setting off a second student migration by sending their students back home. The administration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign asked students to lock down for two weeks on Sept. 2. And Goldenfeld said during a Sept. 2 news conference that it was too early for him to make a new prediction whether COVID cases could be kept under control for the semester. He said he and Maslov would adjust their model but were waiting to see how students would respond to the lockdown. Cases of COVID-19 on campus declined since the implementation of the lockdown, which was lifted Sept. 16. The administration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has collaborated directly with Goldenfeld and Maslov, and has been transparent about the model on which it is basing its decisions. Other universities havent been as upfront. After hearing that Penn State planned to open again for the fall, a concerned faculty group, Coalition for a Just University, created a model predicting what COVID-19 spread would look like at the University Park campus in State College, Pennsylvania. The coalitions modeling group, composed of engineering and science faculty, chose to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the university. Its predictive model showed that more than 1,800 students could become sick and two could die of COVID-19 during the semester if only 1% of students were tested each day, which is Penn States plan. Since Aug. 28, 1,100 students at the University Park campus (attended by some 47,000 students total) have tested positive for COVID-19. The team sent the model to university administrators but received no response. A Penn State spokesperson told the Centre Daily Times, a local newspaper, that the methodology of the model was flawed and that the group that released it had advocated against any reopening of campuses. The coalition is advocating for Penn State to move classes entirely online, at least temporarily until the testing plan is improved, or for the whole semester if the testing procedure isnt changed, said a spokesperson for the group. The Penn State spokesperson later said the university had developed its own predictive model but declined to share its results with the paper. Penn State did not respond to a request for comment. Penn State isnt alone in its lack of transparency. Edwin Michael, a professor of epidemiology who recently left the University of Notre Dame to work at the University of South Florida, said he created a simulation in April to show how COVID-19 could spread on Notre Dames campus in South Bend, Indiana. He said he shared it with university officials but never heard back. The model showed that on a campus of 20,000 people, if 25 students returned to campus with COVID-19 and there were no mitigation strategies, up to 7,500 students could soon be infected. Roughly 470 would need hospitalization and 365 would need treatment in the intensive care unit. It was a dire prediction with a purpose. He said it was created simply to highlight that an outbreak is inevitable if students were to return infected. Dennis Brown, a spokesperson for Notre Dame, said that Michaels predictive model was forwarded to members of the planning committee in May and subsequently taken into consideration. However, because it made certain assumptions that did not align with the plans being made at Notre Dame, we did not find it relevant to our situation and decided to use other predictive models, Brown wrote in an email. Brown declined to give more information on what predictive models Notre Dame did use. Notre Dame has implemented mitigation strategies, such as requiring mask-wearing on campus at all times and limiting gatherings to 10 people, but on Aug. 18 imposed two weeks of remote classes for all students after a spike in cases on campus the first week back. The university has documented 649 cases among students since Aug. 3. In-person classes started phasing in on Sept. 2. Professors elsewhere have, like Michael, developed models not necessarily to make accurate predictions, but to make a point that without some kind of mitigation strategy there would inevitably be a COVID-19 outbreak on campus and that part has held true. On Aug. 15, five days before the University of Georgia started classes for the fall semester, John Drake, director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Disease there, predicted that from 210 to 1,618 students could bring COVID-19 back with them to campus. He also predicted that without any type of risk mitigation, reopening campus could result in more than 30,000 infections among the campus population about 60% of all students and staff. Campuses should anticipate explosive localized outbreaks, Drake wrote when making his model public. (Like most of the university COVID models mentioned here, his was not peer-reviewed or published in a journal.) Theres no way to know whether Drakes prediction was right, since the University of Georgia didnt conduct entry testing for students who returned. Instead, the university is conducting voluntary randomized testing of asymptomatic individuals on campus and asking anyone who has symptoms to get tested. On Sept. 9, the university reported more than 1,400 cases of COVID-19 among students in a week. University officials did not respond to questions about whether they had used Drakes model or others when opting to reopen. About 70 miles away, Joshua Weitz, a professor who studies viral dynamics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, created his own predictive model, this one with a more dire message: Without any mitigation strategies, 50% of people on Georgia Techs campus of about 31,500 would be infected with COVID-19 and 75 would die. The majority of those deaths would be among older faculty and staffers. He hoped the extreme scenario would show why the school needed to test everyone once a week. Although Georgia Tech has enough tests available and encourages students to be tested once a week, it is not mandatory. Georgia Tech confirmed that Weitzs model had been taken into consideration when it planned its COVID-19 response. Georgia Tech reported 571 cases of COVID-19 for the month of August. While some professors created models without mitigation strategies as a cautionary tale to show university administrators what would happen without interventions, others were developed to help campuses adopt a framework to reduce infections once students arrived. Though the limitations of these models run the gamut, their message seems to be the need for constant agility in enforcement policies and awareness about COVID-19s local spread. After all, models cant change one underlying risk that continues regardless of testing plans and other public health strategies: In the end, some college students are still going to be college students, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. (The University of Minnesota delayed the moving of students into university housing by two weeks and started classes online on Sept. 8. The university has had 87 students test positive for COVID-19 through Sept. 10, though students are just this week beginning to move back into residence halls.) You dont need a model to understand that bringing together all the young adult population in college campuses around the country is putting a lit match in a gas can. You dont need a model to know whats going to happen next, Osterholm said. David Cameron has conceded that better work could have been done" in ensuring the UK was prepared for the coronavirus pandemic. The former Tory prime minister, who resigned in 2016 after finding himself on the wrong side of the result in his own Brexit referendum, suggested that too much emphasis had been placed on dealing with a possible flu pandemic. We did make a pandemic a Tier 1 risk, ie one of the most serious and most likely, Mr Cameron told Times Radio in a segment to be broadcast on Thursday. "But I think it is fair to say that the pandemic planning, I think, focused too much on a flu pandemic rather than on a respiratory disease pandemic. And so the difficulty is being prepared, not just generally, but for the right thing and I think obviously better work could have been done there. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty It echoes assessments made by experts with knowledge of workings of the governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) that much of its prior strategy was based on dealing with an akin to the Spanish influenza pandemic. In May, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt described the governments focus on flu as one of the biggest failures of scientific advice to ministers in our lifetimes. Despite some experts ranking the UK second-best in the world in terms of pandemic preparedness as recently as last October, some have accused the government of failing to implement lessons learned from a government simulation of an influenza pandemic codenamed Exercise Cygnus in 2017, which prompted grim warnings of unpreparedness. And in mid-May, a British Medical Journal editorial on the handling of the pandemic pointed a finger at the devastating impact of Mr Camerons austerity policies upon Britains public health capabilities. Meanwhile, others have suggested that Brexit, of which Mr Cameron was the unwitting architect, diverted ministers attention from the growing threat of Covid-19. His comments come after excerpts from Lady Swires tell-all new book, Diary of an MPs Wife: Inside and Outside Power claimed that he drowned his sorrows after the Brexit referendum with a lethal negroni cocktail followed by wine, whisky and a fat Cuban cigar during a dinner with friends. Over the last several weeks, record-setting wildfires - fueled by winds, dry conditions and climate change - have been ravaging the West Coast. California has borne the brunt with more than 3.2 million acres of forest and grassland burned, but devastating flames have also swept across Oregon, Washington and other nearby states. Smoke wafted into cities such as Portland and Seattle, with agencies deeming their air quality last weekend worse than any other major metropolitan area in the world - and the smoke as spread as far as Washington, DC and Northern Europe. At least 35 people have died, tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated from their homes, and hundreds of houses and businesses have been destroyed. But this wildfire season is one like no other because it is intersecting with the coronavirus pandemic that has taken the US by storm. Experts tell DailyMail.com that breathing toxic smoke plumes and ash from the wildfires could damage the lungs and blood vessels and weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of contracting respiratory diseases such as COVID-19. Authorities are worried that shelters, hotels and clean-air spaces could become overcrowded as people displaced by the fires seek safety, making social distancing impossible. Plus, as states like California and Oregon are forced to divert their resources to fighting the fires and citizens flee from them, the number of people being tested for coronavirus could plummet to lows not seen since the early days of the pandemic. More than five million acres have been burned by wildfires across California, Oregon, Washington and other West Coast states. Pictured: A firefighter works at the scene of the Bobcat Fire burning on hillsides near Monrovia Canyon Park in Monrovia, California, September 15 The area impacted by smoke is 50 times larger than the fire burning and has spread as far as Washington, DC and Northern Europe. Pictured: Firefighters work to contain the Bobcat Fire in Monrovia, California, September 15 Experts say the toxic smoke plumes could increase the risk of contracting coronavirus by inflaming the lungs and weakening the immune system. Pictured: A person takes a walk along the waterfront near the Golden Gate Bridge, which is shrouded in heavy haze in San Francisco, California, September 14 'What we're seeing vividly, unfortunately, is wildfire smoke blowing far beyond the area affected by the flames,' Dr Vijay Limaye, a climate change fellow at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told DailyMail.com. 'The area impacted by smoke is 50 times larger than the fire burning. The smoke generates all sorts of toxic compounds, ozone smog which is formed in the atmosphere, so it's this perfect storm.' Limaye says that the most dangerous health concern surrounding wildfires is the burning of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. Because they are so tiny - with a width about thirty times smaller than that of a human hair - PM2.5 particles stay in the air longer than heavy particles, increasing the risk of inhalation. This allows them to enter through the nose and mouth and bury themselves deep into the lungs and bloodstream. 'Exposure to smoke can cause inflammation of the lungs and affect how our immune system responds to infections, thus increasing susceptibility to respiratory infections like COVID-19,' Dr Anh Nguyen, Providence Senior Medical Director for Immediate Care Clinics - Oregon, told DailyMail.com. Wildfire smoke also contains other pollutants such as hydrogen cyanide, a colorless gas that can deprive the organs of vital oxygen. These toxins have led public health experts and authorities to worry that being exposed to harmful air now could lead to more severe COVID-19 cases in the autumn. 'A number of risks pop into mind,' Limaye said. 'The lungs are already inflamed from exposure in addition to toxic compounds. This harms your underlying ability to fight infection. We've seen exposure to ozone pollution impact lung capacity to fight infection.' New research has found a link between high levels of air pollution and increased risk of death from COVID-19. The smoke also contains tiny PM2.5 particles that increase the risk of heart disease, lung disease, asthma, bronchitis and even cancer. Pictured: A satellite image shows the August Complex wildfire, burning to the west of Chico, California, to the north of Big Signal Peak, September 14 In April, a study found that someone living in high-particulate pollution is 8% more likely to die from COVID-19 than a person living in an area with one unit less of pollution. Pictured: George Coble rests at what remains of his property destroyed by a wildfire in Mill City, Oregon, September 12 Authorities are also worried that testing numbers will plummet, due to testing sites being closed and people with mild symptoms foregoing screenings. Pictured (left to right): Michael Garcia, Arath Ramirez and Leonard Barila prop up the front door to Ramirez's burned down home in Taleny, Oregon, September 15 In April, a pre-print study from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that someone living in an area of high-particulate pollution is eight percent more likely to die from the virus than a person living in an area with one unit less of pollution. 'A small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate,' the authors concluded. Smoke exposure is also linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes because PM2.5 enters the blood stream, which leads to inflammation and clotting. Doctors have noticed an increasing number of coronavirus patients with blood clots, which could occur much more easily if they've been breathing in hazardous air. 'We're worried about people experiencing harms from chronic exposureseven tiny increases can bring in health problems for the population,' Limaye said. Experts are also concerned about the lack of being able to social distance among evacuees who have had to flee their homes. 'That's a major problem,' Dr J Randall Curtis, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told DailyMail.com. 'You know, in the past, when they've never been this bad, we have set up clean areas, clean air areas that people can go if they're being evacuated or if they're homeless or don't have a safe place to be. 'And that's really challenging if not impossible now because of the concern about spreading COVID in that context.' In a recent press conference, Dr Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services, said the agency has taken precautions to ensure evacuees are safe from being infected by the coronavirus. As thousands are forced to evacuate, many fear people will be crowded into shelters and hotels, unable to socially distance. Pictured: American Red Cross volunteer Faith Reihing stands outside a pop-up shelter for evacuees from the Cameron Peak wildfire at Cache la Poudre Middle School in Laporte, Colorado, September 7 Some officials say they have rules in place such as mandatory masks and temperature checks at evacuation sites. Pictured: Wildfire evacuees camp in tents or in their cars at an evacuation center for residents displaced by Riverside Fire and Beachie Creek Fires, in Oak Grove, Oregon, September 13 HOW DO WILDFIRES AFFECT LOCAL TEMPERATURES? Wildfire smoke lingering in the air can block out the sun enough to cause measurable temperature differences at the surface, even after the flames have died down. Scientists say the interactions between smoke and the sun's rays can either cool the air or warm it. When the rays are scattered, the air becomes cooler, while temperatures rise when the rays are absorbed. A study published in 2018 found that the cooling effect can even extend to river and stream temperatures. Brown carbon, in particular, has been found to have a significant effect, as it is more likely than black carbon to reach higher levels of the atmosphere, according to NASA. But, the space agency explains, 'as particulate matter in the atmosphere, both can interfere with solar radiation by absorbing and scattering the sun's rays.' Brown carbon is a major product of wildfires, as it's created when grasses, wood, and other biological material burns. 'Most of the brown carbon released into the air stays in the lower atmosphere, but we found that a fraction of it does get up into the upper atmosphere, where it has a disproportionately large effect on the planetary radiation balance much stronger than if it was at the surface,' Rodney Weber, a professor at Georgia Tech's School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, said in 2017 in a study on the phenomenon. Fires can also cause temperatures to drop by transforming the landscape, and increasing a property known as albedo or the measure of light reflected by a surface. As vegetation is destroyed in the fires, there is less foliage to absorb the sunlight and its warmth. Studies in recent years have found that the resulting cooling effect can linger for years, particularly during the winter months. Advertisement This includes the majority of people staying in hotel rooms by themselves or with family members and no shared eating areas. For those in shelters and hotels, evacuees have their temperatures checked, are required to wear masks and must follow social distancing guidelines. Doctors are also worried that more people will enter overcrowded ERs with symptoms that resemble coronavirus infection but are really from smoke inhalation. 'For people who don't have COVID, one of the real challenges is that the symptoms associated with heavy wildfire smoke exposure can overlap with COVID symptoms,' Curtis said. 'It can cause runny nose, cough, sore throat, watery eyes, all of which could be consistent with COVID symptoms. So that's a real challenge for people in figuring out whether they need to get tested or self-quarantine.' Limaye says his friends in wildfire danger zones have reported signs similar to those infected with the virus. 'I've had friends in California complaining of headaches after a few minutes, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing,' he said. 'There is worry that there could be some overlapping of symptoms. Even an hour of wildfire smoke exposure has been linked to heightened hospital admissions and ER visits.' At the same time, authorities say the wildfires could have another long-term impact as people forego testing. On Monday, the Oregon Health Authority reported that early data showed a 35 percent drop in coronavirus testing last week compared to the week before. The state could record fewer than 20,000 tests this week, the lowest numbers since the spring. Officials say this is due to a mix of testing locations being shut down because of wildfires and people with mild symptoms choosing not to get screened. It remains to be seen whether the wildfires will help coronavirus transmission decrease as people stay inside or increase as people evacuate and have to live in close quarters with others. The experts all recommend wearing masks, staying indoors, and use a High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter to clean rooms. 'Confirm your evacuation plans, buy a respirator to reduce some smoke exposure and keep monitoring local air quality and smoke plumes,' Limaye said. Nguyen adds: 'Cloth face coverings will not protect you from the smoke, so try and get an N95 mask if you need to be outside. 'Be prepared to evacuate ahead of time, make sure you have a full tank of gas in your car, pack at least a week's worth of your prescribed medication and make sure you have your important documents ready to go! ' Crown Princess Mary of Denmark took a moment to pay tribute to fallen soldiers at the inauguration of the Australian War Memorial in Copenhagen. The 48-year-old arrived at Churchill Park on Thursday, where she participated in a wreath-laying ceremony and unveiled a plaque. The Australian-born princess was the picture of grace and elegance as she touchingly honoured her connection to both countries at the event. Touching: Crown Princess Mary of Denmark took a moment to pay tribute to fallen soldiers at the inauguration of the Australian War Memorial in Copenhagen The mother-of-four looked stylish in a black and white floral Ralph Lauren dress which she paired with a structured Max Mara blazer. She accentuated her trim waist with a belt and wore a gold pearl broach on her jacket. The future Queen of Denmark finished her look with a pair of textured nude heels and toted a tan clutch and beige gloves. Tribute: The Australian-born princess was the picture of grace and elegance has she touchingly honoured her heritage at the event Well styled: The mother-of-four looked stylish in a black and white floral Ralph Lauren dress which she paired with a structured Max Mara blazer She wore her luscious brown locks in an updo and kept her makeup simple with eyeliner and a pale pink lip. Princess Mary was beaming as she arrived at the ceremony, where she unveiled a plaque with the Australian ambassador MaryEllen Miller. The inscription on it reads: 'Their valiant sacrifice stands a testament to the common devotion to freedom and democracy that our nations share'. Duties: Princess Mary was beaming as she arrived at the ceremony, where she unveiled a plaque with the Australian ambassador MaryEllen Miller (pictured) The inscription on the memorial read: 'Their valiant sacrifice stands a testament to the common devotion to freedom and democracy that our nations share' Divine: Princess Mary was the picture of elegance and grace as she carried out her royal duties Touching: Following the unveiling, a somber princess rested a wreath on the memorial that featured a ribbon emblazoned with her monogram The Australian War Memorial commemorates the Australian military and service personnel who contributed to the liberation of Denmark during World War II as well as the fallen Australian soldiers from the First World War. Following the unveiling, Princess Mary rested a wreath on the memorial that featured a ribbon emblazoned with her monogram. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Wednesday marked the first day New York City public school students reconnected with schools for the 2020-2021 academic year, as part of a remote instructional orientation period -- and some families have already faced technical issues, according to a report. In-person instruction for the upcoming year will begin in phases, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday morning. But the New York Post reported that families faced several problems remotely on Wednesday, such as trouble logging into online programs and tools -- amping up parent concerns that their kids wont be able to tune into their online classes. One Brooklyn parent, who asked to be anonymous, told the Post she was unable to connect her two elementary school children to their classes Wednesday morning. She said she spent over an hour trying to reach out to the teachers, and wasnt able to resolve the issue by the afternoon. I understand that its the first day, but it seems like they had a lot of time to figure this out, the mother told the media outlet. She told the Post shes hoping for the best, but that its reminiscent of last school year -- when all public schools moved online in one week when school buildings shut down to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** Another Brooklyn mother tweeted that her daughters online class was hijacked by hackers who flooded the virtual session with photos of President Donald Trump and porn, an alleged security breach the city Department of Education (DOE) said they are probing, the New York Post reported. Parents also learned late Tuesday night that students participating in the citys blended learning model may not get live instruction on the days they are learning remotely, according to a NY1 report. For the upcoming school year, families have the choice of their child learning remotely full-time or returning to school under the citys blended learning plan, in which students will return to their classroom one to three days per week, learning virtually the rest of the time. The last-minute decision on blended learning sparked outrage among parents, who were assured their children would receive some live instruction -- even on remote days. Kerryann Hassan, the parent of two Staten Island public school students, said she is furious that her children may not receive live instruction when they are distance-learning. The blended learning model at their schools only has them on campus once or twice a week. My son is a 10th-grader in New Dorp [High School], and they can only accommodate him [in school] one day a week, Hassan explained. They cant possibly think that he can just have no live interaction for four days a week. Hassans daughter is in sixth grade at Barnes Intermediate School (I.S. 24) in Great Kills. As of Monday, 58% of New York City students -- or over 422,000 -- had requested blended learning for the start of the 2020-2021 school year, according to the DOE. Related stories: NYC to bring in 2,000 more educators for the start of school as de Blasio pushes forward with Sept. 21 reopening NYC blended learning: Live instruction no longer required on remote days, report says 3 S.I. schools see positive coronavirus cases, union says Coronavirus: How to find ventilation inspection results for your childs school NYC school year delayed; in-person learning to start Sept. 21 Reopening of NYC schools delayed: What you need to know Heres how coronavirus testing will work in NYC schools Coronavirus: Reopening plans for Staten Island charter schools Coronavirus: How NYC plans to safely reopen schools in fall 2020-2021 academic year: Reopening plans for schools across Staten Island FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. Indian lawyer or Queen's counsel must represent Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pak: MEA India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: India on Thursday called for the appointment of an Indian lawyer or a Queen's counsel for Indian death-row prisoner Kulbhushan Jadhav to ensure a free and fair trial in the review of his death sentence in Pakistan. The assertion by India comes days after Pakistan's Parliament has extended for four months an ordinance that allowed Jadhav to file an appeal against his conviction in a high court as required by the International Court of Justice. Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said the government of Pakistan has not been able to fulfil its obligations on implementation of the ICJ judgment in letter and spirit. "It has not yet addressed the core issues, which include provision of all documents related to the case, providing unconditional and unimpeded consular access to Kulbhusan Jadhav and appointment of an Indian lawyer or a Queen's counsel to ensure a free and fair trial," he said at an online media briefing. Pakistan dismisses any option to amend any local laws for Kulbhushan Jadhav Queen's Counsel is a barrister or advocate, appointed Counsel to the UK Crown on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. Earlier this month, the Islamabad High Court in Pakistan directed the federal government to give India another chance to appoint a lawyer to represent Jadhav and adjourned hearing for a month. In 2017, India approached the ICJ against Pakistan for denial of consular access to Jadhav and challenging the death sentence handed to him by a military court. The Hague-based ICJ ruled in July 2019 that Pakistan must undertake an "effective review and reconsideration" of the conviction and sentence of Jadhav and also to grant consular access to India without further delay. India has slammed Pakistan for adopting a "farcical" approach in denying available legal remedies to Jadhav against his death sentence in contravention of the ICJ order. Fifty-year-old retired Indian Navy officer Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017. In response to questions on India walking out of a meeting of the national security advisors of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in protest after the Pakistani representative used a "fictitious" map showing Indian territories as part of Pakistan, Srivastava said before, during and after this meeting, India had conveyed its strong objection to the chair as well as to the SCO member states. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News "Our objection was noted by the chair. The use of this fictitious map by Pakistan is in complete disregard to the advisory by the chair as well as it is in violation of the norms of the meeting," he said. Belgian Doctor Ignace Demeyer points to a scanner image of the lungs of a patient suffering from COVID-19 in March. Yves Herman/Reuters First, the bad news: Six weeks after leaving the hospital, a majority of COVID-19 patients still showed signs of lung damage, according to a recent report. But the research, which was presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress earlier this month, also offered some hope: Some patients showed signs of improvement after 12 weeks. For the study, which is still ongoing, researchers in Austria looked at 86 patients who'd previously been hospitalized with the coronavirus. They found that 88% showed white patches on their CT scans six weeks after they were discharged. These patches, known as ground glass opacities, indicate the presence of fluid and inflammation in the lungs. But six weeks after that (12 weeks after discharge), only 56% of the patients had lung damage on their CT scans. Some patients also seemed to be breathing easier. Only 39% of patients said they had trouble breathing by the 12-week mark, compared to 47% at six weeks. The research confirms that the virus can produce long-lasting physical damage, but it also suggests that patients' lungs might be capable of healing over time. That's good news for the growing share of COVID-19 patients whose recovery processes have lasted well beyond their hospital visits. An Italian study in July found that 87% of patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 still had symptoms including difficulty breathing two months after their illness began. And last month, a UK study that's still awaiting peer review found that 12% of COVID-19 patients had abnormal chest X-rays 12 weeks after they were admitted to the hospital. Story continues Lung scans show improvement over time Scientists worry that lung scarring known clinically as pulmonary fibrosis among coronavirus patients could be permanent and lead to a lifetime of breathing problems. But the Austrian researchers found that fewer parts of the lung were damaged after six weeks relative to when the patients arrived at the hospital, and further improvement was seen after twelve weeks. One 56-year-old male patient studied contracted COVID-19 in March and was admitted to the ICU with severe lung damage, shown in red in the scan below. Prof. Gerlig Widmann, Dr. Christoph Schwabl, Dr. Anna Luger - Department of Radiology, Innsbruck Medical University The man was discharged in late April. Six weeks later, his scans had drastically improved, as visible in the scan on the left below. After 12 weeks (the scan on the right), the majority of his lungs had started to heal. Prof. Gerlig Widmann, Dr. Christoph Schwabl, Dr. Anna Luger - Department of Radiology, Innsbruck Medical University "You're going to take one of three trajectories: either this will all reverse within the next three to six months, this is where you'll plateau, and for some patients, it may get gradually worse," Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center who wasn't involved in the research, told Business Insider. Right now, he said, predicting the odds of permanent lung damage among coronavirus patients is like flipping a coin. "The long-term damage that we would see, like fibrosis, doesn't happen quickly," he said. "That can take up to a year before it develops. You can see early signs, of course, in a CAT scan, but even then it's hard to know if that's going to reverse or not." Scarring is permanent, but it doesn't always lead to breathing problems To see how a patient is recovering from the coronavirus, doctors also perform breathing tests to evaluate lung function, measuring how much air a patient can inhale or how much oxygen passes from the lungs to the blood. Patients who have trouble breathing don't always have signs of damage on their CT scans. And patients with abnormal lung scans may not have trouble breathing. "I have patients, believe it or not, coming in and their CAT scans still look horrible, but they're feeling great. They're like, 'No, I'm back to running a mile,'" Galiatsatos said. "That to me is part of the healing process." Galiatsatos said he doesn't typically declare anything permanent until it has persisted for a year or more. But once lung tissue has been replaced with scar tissue, the physical damage can't be undone. Still, even patients with scar tissue may eventually feel like their normal selves again. "I definitely put a lot more stock in endurance," Galiatsatos said. "People with scarring can still live a happy life." Ventilators may cause some damage Galiatsatos said most of the lung damage among COVID-19 patients is likely caused by the virus, but other factors may contribute. As doctors learn more about how to treat severe cases, they've started to rethink the use of mechanical ventilators for all but the most severe cases. A July study from New York University found that 22% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients were put on mechanical ventilators at the height of the pandemic in New York City. These patients had a higher rate of lung damage from the ventilators than patients who'd been intubated for other illnesses. But Galiatsatos said ventilators shouldn't cause much damage if administered properly. "Like any medical intervention, if not done well, it can pose a risk to the patient," he said. "If somebody goes in and turns up that ventilator to the highest pressure setting, you may cause permanent damage to the lungs over time." A patient suffering from the coronavirus wears a snorkeling mask converted into a ventilator in Paris, France, on April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo What's more concerning, he said, is that patients on ventilators don't exercise their breathing muscles particularly if they spend weeks to months in the hospital. Compared to most ICU visits, hospital stays for COVID-19 patients are abnormally long, Galiatsatos said: One of his patients has been in the ICU since April. Lung function can improve through rehab Other recent research suggests that physical therapy can speed up the recovery process for COVID-19 patients with lung damage. A coronavirus rehab program at the Dieulefit Sante clinic in France recently tracked the recovery of 17 patients who'd spent three weeks, on average, in the ICU. The patients who recovered faster spent less time bedridden, they found. "The sooner rehabilitation started and the longer it lasted, the faster and better was the improvement in patients' walking and breathing capacities and muscle gain," Yara Al Chikhanie, a PhD student leading the research, said in a statement. "Patients who started rehabilitation in the week after coming off their ventilators progressed faster than those who were admitted after two weeks." A coronavirus patient undergoes physical therapy at the Dieulefit Sante clinic in France. Pulmonary rehabilitation centre Dieulefit Sante Galiatsatos also runs a rehabilitation clinic for coronavirus patients at Johns Hopkins. "I always tell patients: There's no a medication to make your lung stronger. The only way to make them stronger is by using them," he said. "Every time you do some exercise and so forth, more blood flow gets to the lungs. More blood flow means more healing cells will come to heal the parts that are damaged." In that regard, the recovery process for COVID-19 patients is akin to repairing a torn muscle or broken bone. "I have a patient right now that came to the clinic [after they] lost 20% of their lung function," Galiatsatos said. "Right now, because of rehab, they feel as they felt prior to COVID." Read the original article on Business Insider A security guard at a federal building for the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New York City pointed a gun at protesters in a shocking threat caught on video. On Wednesday a protest to abolish ICE unfolded in Manhattan following a whistleblower complaint that immigrant women detained in Georgia allegedly received hysterectomies without consent. Demonstrators gathered inside the Jacob K. Javits Federal building at 26 Federal Plaza to decry the allegedly forced gynecological procedures where they raised their fists, chanted in unison and blared blowhorns. Video from the protest shows the moment a female security guard brandishes a gun and points it directly at the protesters. A female security guard at the Javits Federal building in downtown Manhattan, New York City pointed a gun at protesters who stormed the lobby on Wednesday Protesters were rallying to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and stormed the lobby of the building on Wednesday. As they chanted the guard brandished the gun, pointed it threateningly, then put it away and waved protesters towards the door Demonstrators gathered at 26 Federal Plaza to decry the bombshell report that ICE allegedly forced hysterectomies on immigrant women. The protesters raised their fists, chanted in unison and blared blowhorns in the lobby of the building The protesters shout even louder when they see the gun and the guard puts it back in its holster and waves for the crowd to leave the building. The security guard works for the private firm Paragon Systems. 'It got intense. We are out here every day putting our lives on the line so that everyone else can be safe,' another guard said to the New York Post on Thursday. Demonstrators left about 20 minutes after the gun incident. The Federal Protective Service, which oversees the security guards, said the incident is under investigation. DailyMail.com has reached out for comment. 'It got intense. We are out here every day putting our lives on the line so that everyone else can be safe,' another guard said to the New York Post on Thursday A group of protesters pictured gathering outside thefederal building on Wednesday in their protest against ICE A large group of protesters entered the lobby of the building where they demanded ICE be abolished and dissolved following the report of forced gynecological procedures A view of the 41-story Jacob K. Javits building in downtown Manhattan above Protesters vandalized the building spraying 'Abolish' and 'Free them all' on the walls of the heavily fortified tower Wednesday. Many carried signs that said Protesters 'ICE & DHS agents of genocide' and argued with news photographers saying they weren't allowed to take their photos without their 'consent.' The doors to the building's Duane Street entrace were also smashed and covered with plywood on Thursday. On Monday a whistleblower who previously worked at an ICE facility in Georgia filed a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general saying 'mass hysterectomies' on immigrant women and alleged medical neglect unfolded there. Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, said in the complaint some women may have required a hysterectomy but 'everybodys uterus cannot be that bad.' She testified that the immigrant women were referred to one unnamed doctor outside the facility for the 'high rate of hysterectomies' and that a number of migrant women told her they were undergoing surgery without fully understanding why. Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, around 200 miles south of Atlanta 'Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy - just about everybody,' Wooten said. 'He's even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady.' ICE said in a statement that only two immigrants held at the center had been referred to an outside gynecologist for hysterectomies since 2018. The Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation into the allegations. 'The accusations will be fully investigated by an independent office, however, ICE vehemently disputes the implication that detainees are used for experimental medical procedures,' Ada Rivera, the medical director of the Healh Service Corps said to the Wall Street Journal. The reopening of Northern Ireland's pubs which only serve alcohol has been hailed as a "vital lifeline" for many businesses - but there are fears new regulations will mean some venues will be forced to remain shut. The so-called wet pubs had been given the initial date of this Monday, September 21, but this was extended by two days until Wednesday, September 23, so new regulations for the hospitality sector could be put in place. The Executive has issued a series of mandatory requirements for the reopening, which include no dancing in venues, customer details to be collected for track and trace, and customers remaining seated at tables. A maximum of six people from any number of households can be seated at a table. Children aged 12 and under will be discounted from the total. More than six will be permitted if they all belong to a single household. In addition face coverings should be worn to enter and leave the venue and for movement inside. The Executive says they are not required once seated. Read More All service will be seated at tables, with no standing or service at the bar. It was also announced that 'beer bikes' will not be permitted to operate. The bikes have been seen operating in recent weeks but will no longer be allowed to under the new rules. The regulations apply to any venue serving alcohol or where alcohol can be brought in and consumed by customers. Meanwhile, regulations limiting indoor gatherings in houses to six people from two households have been amended so that children aged 12 and under from those two households are not included in the total. This does not include those areas where additional localised restrictions apply. On Thursday, the Department of Health announced a further 149 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours. This brings the total number of cases to 8,780, including 689 in the last seven days. No further deaths were reported. In the Republic of Ireland an additional 240 confirmed cases were confirmed by health officials, while one further virus-linked death was announced. Hospitality Ulster chief executive Colin Neill welcomed confirmation that pubs will reopen here next week, but said support mechanisms are needed for those who cannot reopen due to the regulations. He said: "Although it is two days after the intended date, we recognise that it is better to delay by a couple of days to get the new regulations right to support a Covid-secure environment." He continued: "Over the last six months, we have campaigned tirelessly to secure the safe reopening of this vital sector of the economy and understand just how important this is for so many. For the hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees, this news will be a vital lifeline and will hopefully reassure those who were concerned for their future." Mr Neill acknowledged, however, there will be challenges ahead. "First and foremost, the health and wellbeing of customers, staff and the wider public will be the priority for all publicans. "We have provided detailed guidance in this respect and will continue to engage with the NI Executive and the statutory bodies to ensure compliance of the new regulations right across the industry. "Nobody should be in any doubt that the hospitality sector locally is taking Covid-19 seriously." He added: "It is important to acknowledge however, that for some individuals, due to the continued restrictions, it simply will not be possible to reopen. We need to continue to look at how these individuals can be supported in the time ahead." Hitting a measured yet aggressive note, in his statement on the India-China border row, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that no power in the world can stop our soldiers from patrolling. In response to a question asked by the former Defence Minister and Congress leader AK Antony on whether Indian soldiers on the conclusion of the diplomatic and military discussions between India and China, will be able to return to their patrolling duties, Singh said that patrolling pattern of Indian soldiers is a traditional exercise and is well defined. Our soldiers have laid down their lives just for this, Singh said referring to the right of Indian soldiers to patrol till the area where they used to before the April standoff. There will be no change in this pattern I would like to assure the former Defence Minister Ak Antony. More than this, due to operational reasons, I cannot reveal at this moment, Singh added. Senior Congress leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and AK Antony had sought clarifications from the Defence Minister on whether the discussions India was having with China via the diplomatic and military channels was meant to restore the status quo ante of April 2020. In his address to the Upper House, Singh also asserted, We will not back down from taking any big and tough step in the interest of our country. Sending across a stern message to Beijing, Singh also added, it is apparent from Chinese activities that their words dont match their actions. A case in point is that even when the discussions were going on, the Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of August 29 and 30 in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake. However, at the end of Singhs speech, leaders from all the parties present in the house expressed solidarity with the armed forces and the incumbent government, prompting the Defence Minister to say any amount of praise for such a show of unity from India could not be appreciated enough. This house has assured the country that the challenge may be however big, the country will stand united behind its soldiers, Singh said. Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu also expressed solidarity with the force and said that some leaders in India, whom he did not wish to name, were being quoted in foreign media saying things that are being used as fuel in the propaganda against India. Such statements should not be made. We should remain together and speak with one voice on this issue," Naidu said. Singh also mentioned that Chinas repeated attempts to carry out provocative military actions in Ladakh while commanders of the armies of both countries were engaged in dialogue reflected a disregard of our various bilateral agreements." The Chinese side has mobilized a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC as well as in the depth areas. There were several friction areas in Eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake. In response to Chinas actions, our armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that Indias security interests are fully protected, he added. Singh had earlier spoken over the issue at the Lok Sabha on Tuesday during the ongoing monsoon session. The Defence Minister had stated that India is ready to deal with any situation regarding the India Defence-China border tension. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev sent a congratulatory letter to Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Japan. "Dear Mr. Prime Minister, I sincerely congratulate you on your election as the Prime Minister of Japan. We attach a particular importance to the comprehensive development of our friendly and cooperative relations with Japan. I believe that we will put joint efforts to further strengthen the ties between our countries and successfully develop our mutually beneficial collaboration. I extend my best wishes to you and wish you strong health, happiness and success in your responsible endeavor for the sake of prosperity of the friendly people of Japan," the letter said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell (R-Ky.) (C) walks to a press conference with fellow Republicans following the weekly Republican policy luncheon in Washington on July 30, 2019. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) Senate Republicans Looking for Early Break Ahead of Elections, Thune Says Several GOP leaders in the Senate said they are eyeing an early break that would allow their colleagues to go on the campaign trail next week, noting that COVID-19 relief measures arent likely to be approved before Election Day despite calls to action on a bill from President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters on Sept. 17 that working on a continuing resolution to fund federal agencies after Sept. 30 is the priority for the current congressional session. That would be ideal if we could get that wrapped up. That will involve a high level of cooperation on both sides, Thune said, according to The Hill website. That would be great. Both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate would likely support freeing up candidates to campaign ahead of the November election, he said. Im sure both sides like to have their members out there, he said. I think once we get the [continuing resolution] done, I dont know there is going to be a lot more business to be transacted. Ideally if we could get things wrapped up by the end of next week with the Jewish holidays coming the following week I think that would be a good outcome for everyone and then well take it up again after November, he said. His comments come after Trump on Sept. 16 called on Republicans to pass a CCP virus stimulus package greater than $500 billion. Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!), he wrote on Twitter. Later, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump absolutely wants to get a stimulus deal done, she told reporters on Sept. 16, adding that Trump was referring to a Republican bill that didnt include direct payments and hes very keen to see these direct payments. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) welcomed the presidents acknowledgment that another, larger stimulus bill is needed. We are encouraged that after months of the Senate Republicans insisting on shortchanging the massive needs of the American people, President Trump is now calling on Republicans to go for the much higher numbers in the next coronavirus relief package, they said. However, it still isnt clear when White House officials would meet with Pelosi and Schumer. House Democrats in May passed a $3 trillion bill called the HEROES Act that would include new $1,200 stimulus checks. However, the White House and Senate Republicans rejected numerous other provisions in the measure, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) describing it in July as a socialist manifesto. Deep-sea coral reefs face challenges as changes to ocean chemistry triggered by climate change may cause their foundations to become brittle, a study suggests. The underlying structures of the reefs - which are home to a multitude of aquatic life - could fracture as a result of increasing ocean acidity caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide. Hundreds of metres below the surface of the ocean in Southern California, researchers measured the lowest - therefore the most acidic - pH level ever recorded on living coral reefs. The corals were then raised in the lab for one year under the same conditions. Scientists observed that the skeletons of dead corals, which support and hold up living corals, had become porous due to ocean acidification and rapidly become too fragile to bear the weight of the reef above them. Previous research has shown that ocean acidification can impact coral growth, but the new study demonstrates that porosity in corals - known as coralporosis - leads to weakening of their structure at critical locations. This causes early breakage and crumbling, experts say, that may cause whole coral ecosystems to shrink dramatically in the future, leaving them only able to support a small fraction of the marine life they are home to today. The findings complement recent evidence of porosity in tropical corals, but demonstrate that the threat posed by ocean acidification is far greater for deep-sea coral reefs. Research was led by University of Edinburgh scientists, under the EU-funded ATLAS and iAtlantic projects, with researchers from Heriot-Watt University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The team identified how reefs could become fractured by analysing corals from the longest-running laboratory studies to date, and by diving with submersibles off US Pacific shores to observe how coral habitat is lost as the water becomes more acidic. Dr Sebastian Hennige, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, said: "This study highlights that a major threat to these wonderful deep-sea ecosystems is structural weakening caused by ocean acidification, driven by the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide we produce. While deep-sea reefs exist out of sight they are certainly not out of mind, and our work highlights how scientists from different disciplines and countries can join together to tackle global challenges." The corals in Southern California - one the most acidified reefs studied to date - are already experiencing the effects of climate change and exist in conditions that most deep-sea reefs are expected to encounter by the end of the century, scientists say. Dr. Peter Etnoyer, of NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, said: "Deep-sea corals growing off Southern California are a window into the future ocean. The region is a natural laboratory to study the effects of ocean acidification." Submersibles were launched from NOAA ships off Southern California, and were guided by Dr. Peter Etnoyer and graduate student Leslie Wickes. The US team sampled live corals and returned them to the laboratory for experiments. The UK team applied engineering principles to demonstrate the rapid weakening of the skeletons and discovered a striking similarity to the weakening observed in human bones from osteoporosis. The team says that the link between osteoporosis and coralporosis opens up a range of methods and concepts that can be adapted in the challenge of monitoring and predicting the fate of such fragile deep-sea ecosystems and the life they support. Dr. Uwe Wolfram, of Heriot-Watt University, said: "By being able to adapt strategies to coral reefs that are used routinely to monitor osteoporosis and assess bone fracture risk, we may have powerful non-invasive tools at our disposal to monitor these fragile ecosystems." Tools developed as part of the project will aid understanding of when ocean ecosystems will change and how it will affect marine life. This will better equip society to deal with how these vulnerable ecosystems can be protected in the future, and will support the UN Decade of Ocean Science - which starts in 2021 - to deliver the science we need, for the ocean we want, the team says. Professor J Murray Roberts, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who leads the ATLAS and iAtlantic programmes, said: "Cold-water corals are truly the cities of the deep-sea providing homes to countless other animals. If we lose the corals the city crumbles. This project is a great example of how we can work across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to understand the impacts of rapidly changing ocean conditions." ### The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. It was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, Marine Alliance of Science and Technology for Scotland, Diamond Light Source, NOAA, UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund and the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme's ATLAS and iAtlantic projects. Egypts nominee for the post of World Trade Organization (WTO) director-general, Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh, told Reuters on Thursday that he was out of the race. The veteran trade adept was nominated by Egypt in June as the first Egyptian national in the running to lead the WTO. Director-General Roberto Azevedo announced in May that he would step down from his position in August, a year before his second term ends. Mamdouh, an international trade expert with 35 years experience, including years inside the WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), told Ahram Online in an interview that he was running for the post because "I truly believe in the system." I believe in the values that the system stands for, the values of non-discrimination, rules-based trading relations and the strategic importance of trade itself as an engine for trade and economic development in general and especially for the development of countries, he said. Eight candidates were running for the position of the WTO director-general. According to the WTO, from 15 to 17 July, all the candidates met with WTO members at a special General Council meeting, at which they had the opportunity to present their views and take questions from the membership. The second phase of the process in which the candidates make themselves known to members ended on 7 September. The WTO is scheduled to announce on Friday which five of the eight candidates will go on to a second round of voting among members to choose the next director general of the global trade body. On Thursday, Reuters said that Mamdouh, as well as the Mexican and Moldovan candidates, were out of the race, quoting four sources with knowledge of the situation. Mamdouh told the agency himself he was out, Reuters said. The five remaining candidates are from Britain, South Korea, Kenya, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, although a US source told Reuters that the Saudi candidate had also been ousted in an unexpected move given that only three candidates were expected to be ousted in the current round of voting. Search Keywords: Short link: Princess Beatrice's husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and his ex-fiancee Dara Huang proved they're on excellent terms this week as the architect visited the site of his company's latest luxurious development, branding it 'gorgeous'. London-born Edo, 37, runs the property development and interior design firm Banda, which he started age 23. Its aim is to design homes for affluent clients in 'undervalued' parts of London, getting them value for money. American-Chinese architect Dara, 38, who shares four-year-old son Wolfie with property developer Edo, shared a snap of her outside a Banda property in Notting Hill to Instagram on Tuesday. American-Chinese architect Dara Huang, 38, who shares four-year-old son Wolfie with her property developer ex-fiance Edo, 37, shared a snap of her outside a glamorous Banda property in Notting Hill on Instagram on Tuesday Edo, pictured with Princess Beatrice on their wedding day, dated Dara Huang for three years before they split months before he began a romantic relationship with Beatrice Having pitched up on an electric scooter, Dara captioned the image: 'My new mode of transport and work wear. Visiting a gorgeous site designed by @banda.property (off of #westbournegrove) such a cool street and design.' It is believed Dara was visiting the Banda project 13-19 Leinster Square, which comprises of five luxurious maisonettes, eight expansive lateral apartments and two stunning penthouses. The company's Instagram page recently shared a series of images of the glamorous refurbishment, which is on the cusp of Westbourne and Notting Hill. In January, a friend of Dara and Edo insisted the estranged couple remain close, with Dara even cutting Edo's hair and occasionally buying him clothes. It is believed Dara was visiting the Banda project 13-19 Leinster Square, which comprises of five luxurious maisonettes, eight expansive lateral apartments and two stunning penthouses. Pictured: a snap shared by Dara this week of the street Dara offered a sneak peak inside the property with her series of photos. Banda's Instagram page recently shared a series of images of the glamorous refurbishment, which is on the cusp of Westbourne and Notting Hill Their amicable relationship meant Dara was on the original guest list for Edo's wedding to Beatrice, 32, before the coronavirus pandemic forced the couple to cancel their May nuptials. Beatrice and Edoardo later secretly tied the knot on July 17 in Windsor, with the Queen and Prince Philip in attendance and Wolfie acting as best man. Dara and Edo dated for three years before splitting in 2018. Edo and Beatrice, who were long-time family friends, started dating in October 2018 and got engaged during a romantic trip to Italy's Amalfi Coast in September last year, after an 11-month whirlwind romance. When news of Edo and Beatrices romance became public in December 2018, Daras father Po-Tien accused the Royal Family of helping to rob his daughter of the chance to walk down the aisle with Edo. Dara and Edo dated for three years before splitting in 2018. They share a four-year-old son Wolfie (pictured together) Why would they want to go and break this up? the retired Nasa scientist said. I cant understand it. Its not fair, but the Royal Family are very powerful. However, her fathers apparent frustration did not result in Dara cutting ties with her ex-partner. Dara has recently found love again with 37-year-old London-based financier Filippos Kodellas de la Morena, the son of 'a Greek diplomat and a well-connected Spanish mother', according to the Daily Mail diarist Richard Eden. Filippos is also reportedly director of La Perla. Earlier this week Bea was on stepmum duties as she popped into a London branch of Waitrose to pick up some groceries with Wolfie while Edo waited in their Range Rover outside. The princess, the eldest daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, made sure Wolfie was safely in the back seat before climbing in the passenger seat next to her husband. It was the first time they had been seen out together since their secret wedding. Dara has recently found love again with 37-year-old London-based financier Filippos Kodellas de la Morena, the son of 'a Greek diplomat and a well-connected Spanish mother', according to the Daily Mail diarist Richard Eden. Filippos is also reportedly director of La Perla Beatrice dressed down for the Waitrose outing over the weekend, pairing a casual blue button-down shirt with a white skirt with blue detailing. She wore her hair loose around her shoulders, adding a ruby red velvet hairband for her own styling twist. It is the third time Beatrice has been seen running errands in London in recent days. Last week she was seen picking up a bag of organic groceries and stopping off at baby shop The Little White Company to pick up a gift. The outings suggest she and Edo are settling into married life in London. Wolfie also plays an important part in their lives together in the city, with friends previously speaking of the good relationship Beatrice has with her new stepson. Beatrice and Edoardo headed off to France for a low-key honeymoon shortly after their private wedding on July 17. The couple exchanged vows in front of immediate family, including the Queen and Prince Philip, at All Saints Church, Windsor. When news of Edo and Beatrices romance became public in December 2018, Daras father Po-Tien accused the Royal Family of helping to rob his daughter of the chance to walk down the aisle with Edo. Pictured: Edo and Beatrice after announcing their engagement in September 2019 A source told the Mail on Sunday that Beatrice and Edo had planned to skip a traditional honeymoon, but decided at the last minute to take a trip across the Channel. The wedding was arranged in a couple of weeks, and with lockdown their choice of honeymoon destinations was severely curtailed. They werent going to bother but at the last minute they decided to pack up the car and head out. Theyre a very down-to-earth couple. It is understood that they are planning a trip to Lamu Island, off Kenya, where Edos family own a home and where he took Beatrice in the early days of their romance. South Africa on Thursday bade farewell to George Bizos, the "hero" anti-apartheid lawyer who represented Nelson Mandela at his trial for treason, at a state funeral filled with emotional tributes. Bizos, a revered, soft-spoken figure, died at his Johannesburg home last week of natural causes at the age of 92. His flag-draped coffin was wheeled into a Greek community hall by military pall-bearers on Thursday, with President Cyril Ramaphosa in attendance, before it was driven to a cemetery on a ceremonial military gun carriage. Speakers before a small gathering of family and other dignitaries -- due to coronavirus restrictions -- paid heartfelt tributes to the man who became Mandela's personal friend and defended human rights to the end of his life. Ramaphosa described Bizos as a "hero", a "lover of freedom" and likened him to a "baobab tree". "We are here to celebrate and also to bid farewell to a titan of the legal profession whose defence of the cause of justice was as tenacious and it was lifelong," said Ramaphosa. Farewell: Pallbearers bring the coffin into the Hellenic Cultural Centre in Johannesburg / POOL/AFP At the height of the apartheid era, Bizos secured a life sentence for Mandela and others fighting white-minority rule at the landmark Rivonia Trial in 1964. Against all expectations, the defendants were spared the death penalty and instead given long jail terms -- a verdict that turned them into the living embodiment of the anti-apartheid struggle. - Mandela 'waiting to welcome you' - Bizos arrived in South Africa as a 13-year-old war refugee from Greece and trained as a lawyer. In a long career, he represented a string of activists against the white-minority regime and later helped draw up the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa. For 30 years, he struggled to acquire South African citizenship -- thanks to his activism against the white minority regime. "The apartheid government punished him quite severely by denying him citizenship for over three decades and there he was living stateless in a country that he had adopted," Ramaphosa said. The regime told him "he was not fit and proper to become a South African citizen," said the president. Yet Bizos was a "patriot" and "the embodiment of a fit and proper South African citizen," Ramaphosa said. Mandela described Bizos as a lifelong friend and "a man who combined a sympathetic nature with an incisive mind" / AFP/File He continued working until he was past 90 years old, with one of his last major cases securing government payouts in 2014 for the families of 34 miners gunned down two years earlier. His passing further reduces the number of surviving leaders of the apartheid struggle, whose status wields huge moral and political influence in modern-day South Africa. Although a junior member of the defence team when he represented Mandela, Bizos was credited with the tactic of proposing that Mandela deliver a statement from the dock to present the group's cause, rather than submit him to cross-examination. The speech was electrifying, notably Mandela's often-cited lines on his hope for democracy: "It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." Bizos would say later that he advised Mandela to avoid challenging the court over the possibility of a death sentence by adding the words "if needs be". In his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" (1994), Mandela describes Bizos as a lifelong friend and "a man who combined a sympathetic nature with an incisive mind". Bizos continued to represent Mandela throughout his 27-year-jail term and also acted on behalf of his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, on more than 20 occasions. Ramaphosa concluded his eulogy saying: "Madiba your friend of 65 years is waiting to welcome you". BATON ROUGE, La. Drive-thru Disaster Recovery Centers will open in Abbeville on Thursday, Sept. 17 to help Hurricane Laura survivors. A new feature of centers is an easy and COVID-safe way for Laura survivors to have documents scanned into their case file. The drive-thru center will operate under strict COVID-19 protocols to ensure visitors are safe. Masks or face coverings are required for entry and service. Survivors remain in their cars. A specialist wearing a face mask will receive documents through the window and return them. No appointments are necessary. Hours of operation are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week. The drive-thru center will be located at: Vermilion Parish LSU AG Center 1105 West Port St. Abbeville, LA 70510 Additional centers are already open in Louisiana. Survivors may visit any open center. To locate the closest center, call the FEMA Helpline, visit www.DisasterAssistance.gov or egateway.fema.gov/ESF6/DRCLocator or download the FEMA Mobile App at fema.gov/about/news-multimedia/app. Survivors do not need to visit a drive-thru center to apply or update their application. To ask individual questions or submit information: Call the FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362 or TTY 800-462-7585 Visit disasterassistance.gov/ Download the FEMA Mobile App at fema.gov/about/news-multimedia/app U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Hurricane Laura Disaster Loans For businesses of any size and private nonprofit organizations: up to $2 million for property damage. For small businesses, small businesses engaged in aquaculture, most private nonprofits: up to $2 million for disaster working capital needs even if they had no property damage. There is a $2 million maximum business loan for any combination of property damage and working capital needs. For homeowners up to $200,000 to repair or replace their primary residence. For homeowners and renters up to $40,000 to replace personal property, including vehicles. Businesses and residents can apply online at www.sba.gov/funding-programs/disaster-assistance. For questions and assistance completing an SBA application call 800-659-2955 or email FOCWAssistance@sba.gov. For the latest information on Hurricane Laura, visit www.fema.gov/disaster/4559 or follow the FEMA Region 6 Twitter account at twitter.com/FEMARegion6. Theres nothing better than a good whiskey. Bushmills Irish Whiskey has partnered with Australias largest whisk(e)y subscription service, The Whisky Club (TWC), to reward Australian discerning drinkers with the exclusive release of the first spirit to fall under The Causeway Collection. A curated collection of limited-edition single malts from The Old Bushmills Distillery the oldest licensed distillery in the world The Causeway Collection, named after the famous Giants Causeway UNESCO World Heritage Site situated near the old distillery, brings to life a series of rare and innovative cask finishes never seen or sipped before. Bushmills 2006 Marsala Cask is the first release from this collection, one made exclusively for members of TWC, and the only way to get a taste of the fine drop here in Australia. A triple wood maturated, non-chill filtered fusion of fruits and spices weighing in at 47.2% ABV with no colour added, the Bushmills 2006 Marsala Cask is crafted for the most indulgent of drinking occasions. Notes of vanilla, spice, and dried fruit shine through, derived from the artful aging practices over 12 years in a combination of oloroso sherry and bourbon casks before finishing in marsala casks for an additional 18 months. How does TWC work? Glad you asked. Its free to sign up and once you do, youll get fine and exclusive bottles delivered right to your door. Theres no minimum purchase, no lock-in, and you only pay for what you drink. Sign up for The Whisky Club and choose your membership level ahead of October 4th to ensure your access to the Bushmills 2006 Marsala Cask from The Causeway Collection. Youll be kicking yourself if you dont. Bushmills encourages you to drink responsibly. The Causeway Collection is only available to whisk(e)y lovers aged 18 years and over. Join The Whisky Club Read Next A German police force has suspended 29 officers accused of sharing pictures of Adolf Hitler and logging into far-right chatrooms. The officers from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), west Germany, risk losing their jobs as an investigation into the matter is conducted. Those involved, who include men and women, are also accused of sharing pictures of refugees in gas chambers and using chat rooms where swastikas and Nazi symbols were shared. Some of the officers were accused of failing to report their colleagues. The state's interior minister Herbet Reul said on Wednesday: "This news has hit the police at its core. It is a disgrace for the NRW police." Mr Reul added that the investigation involves more than 100 pieces of "disgusting neo-Nazi, racist and anti-refugee vitriol". "Right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have absolutely no place in the North Rhine-Westphalia police, our police," he said. It is illegal to display Nazi symbols in Germany and some of the 29 officers could face charges of disseminating Nazi propaganda and hate speech. It comes after prosecutors said in July that they had arrested a former police officer and his wife who are facing accusations of sending threats to well-known figures of immigrant backgrounds. Their alleged victims are said to include several lawmakers of Turkish descent. The emails were signed "NSU 2.0", a reference to the "National Socialist Underground" neo-Nazi gang, which killed 10 people between 2000 and 2007. British police said Wednesday that three historically and religiously important bronze sculptures are being returned from the U.K. to a temple in India from which they were stolen more than 40 years ago. Police said in a statement that the works were removed in 1978 from a temple in the Tanjavur district of Tamil Nadu. Although the thieves were caught and convicted in India, the bronzes remained missing for the next four decades. The High Commission of India in London tweeted photos of the bronzes, describing them as priceless statues from the Vijayanagara period, which dated from the 14th to the 17th century. In 2019, the High Commission alerted specialist art and antiques detectives at the Metropolitan Police that one of the sculptures was being offered for sale by a U.K.-based dealer. Police said the dealer had bought the sculpture in good faith and no criminal offence was committed. The dealer agreed to send it back to India, and also identified and surrendered the other two missing idols. Once he was aware that they had been stolen, he immediately recognised that they should return to India, Detective Chief Inspector Tim Wright said. He said the sculptures were historically significant and also of religious importance. Dublin, Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Fiber Optic Components Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type, Amplifiers, Splitters, Connectors, Circulators, Transceivers, and Others); Data Rate; Application" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. According to this report the market was valued at US$ 16,546.7 million in 2019 and is projected to reach US$ 39,150.3 million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.27% from 2020 to 2027. Asia Pacific dominated the fiber optic components Market in 2019 with a share of 35.8% followed by North America. The fiber optic components market in APAC is analyzed based on historical, current, and future trends across the region. The fiber optic components market in APAC is further segmented into China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Rest of APAC. The adoption of fiber optics is high in this region owing to development in the communications applications; thus, the fiber connectivity in this region is likely to surge. In March 2018, the consortium of APAC network operators signed a contract with NEC Corporation, a Japan-based company to design a submarine cable (SJC2), which connects Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and Korea. Several companies contributed to the SJC2 cable, such as Chuan Wei, China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Singtel, KDDI, SK Broadband, VNPT, and Facebook. In this region, 5G technology is likely to have a positive impact on the fiber optic industry for 5G network infrastructure. The upcoming 5G network installations would offer new market opportunities for fiber optic cables and other high-speed connectivity products. The fiber optic cables connect micro base stations and edge nodes in the 5G network infrastructure; this would be an important factor driving the growth of fiber optic demand. The 5G high reliability and low latency application need edge computing solutions, which are anticipated to surge the demand for fiber optic cables. APAC has arisen as the largest consumer market of the fiber optic cable industry owing to major investments by the government to deploy fiber optic cable. In 2019, North America stood second in the Fiber Optic Components market with a decent market share, and it is anticipated to witness a steady CAGR from 2020 to 2027. North American region comprises significant countries, such as the US, Canada, and Mexico. Technological advancements have led to highly competitive markets across North America, with the US being a developed country in terms of acceptance of modern technology electronic components. The region hosts several technological giants that invest significant amounts in the development of robust technologies. With the growing demand for better quality and efficiency of electronic devices among North Americans, the OEMs focus on the development of advanced technological components. The fiber optic components market is anticipated to grow further in the region owing to growing industrialization and infrastructural development. The government focuses on investing in telecommunication infrastructure since it spurs economic growth and creates employment. Companies adopt inorganic market strategies to expand their footprints across the world and meet the growing demand. The fiber optic components market players mainly focus on the acquisition strategy to expand their business and maintain their brand name globally. For instance, in 2020, Fujitsu Optical Components Limited (FOC) introduced compact and low power consumption 400Gbps ZR transceivers. These transceivers are compliant to the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) Implementation Agreement 400ZR for cloud data center interconnects (DCI) of up to 120km transmission. Impact of COVID-19 on Fiber Optic Components market According to the latest situation report from World Health Organization (WHO), the US, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Iran, and China are among the worst affected countries due to COVID-19 outbreak. The outbreak first began in Wuhan (China) during December 2019, and since then, it has spread at a fast pace across the world. The COVID-19 crisis is affecting the industries worldwide, and the global economy is anticipated to take the worst hit in 2020 and 2021. The outbreak has created significant disruptions in the construction sector. The sharp decline in the international trade is negatively impacting the growth of the global economy. The production shutdowns, restrictions on supply chain, procurement management, labor scarcity, and border lockdowns to combat and contain the outbreak have adversely affected the construction sector. The production slowdown in the construction industry is directly affecting the adoption of various ad-hoc technologies and solutions such as fiber optic components, as the telecommunication companies have reduced their spending on adopting several technology solutions to deal with the current scenario. Reasons to Buy: Story continues 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 fiber optic components 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 global 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 type, data rate and application. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 2. Key Takeaways 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Coverage 3.2 Secondary Research 3.3 Primary Research 4. Global Optic Fiber Component Market-Key Dynamics 4.1 Market Drivers 4.1.1 Escalating data centres across the globe 4.1.2 Increasing penetration of internet 4.2 Market Restrains. 4.2.1 Risk of physical damage and transmission loss 4.3 Market Opportunity 4.3.1 Emergence of 5G 4.4 Future Trends 4.4.1 Emergence of smart cities 4.5 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints 5. Fiber Optic Components Market Landscape 5.1 Overview 5.2 PEST Analysis 5.2.1 North America 5.2.2 Europe 5.2.3 APAC 5.2.4 MEA 5.2.5 SAM 5.3 Expert Opinions 6. Fiber optic components Market - Global Market Analysis 6.1 Fiber optic components Market Global Overview 6.2 Global Fiber optic components Market Forecast and Analysis 6.3 Market Positioning - Five Key Players 7. Fiber optics components Market Analysis- By Type 7.1 Overview 7.2 Global Fiber optics components Market Breakdown, by Type, 2019 & 2027 7.3 Cables 7.3.1 Overview 7.3.2 Cables Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.4 Active Optical Cables 7.4.1 Overview 7.4.2 Active Optical Cables Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.5 Amplifiers 7.5.1 Overview 7.5.2 Amplifiers Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.6 Splitters 7.6.1 Overview 7.6.2 Splitters Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.7 Connectors 7.7.1 Overview 7.7.2 Connectors Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.8 Circulators 7.8.1 Overview 7.8.2 Circulators Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.9 Transceivers 7.9.1 Overview 7.9.2 Transceivers Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 7.10 Others 7.10.1 Overview 7.10.2 Others Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 8. Fiber optics components Market Analysis- By Data Rate 8.1 Overview 8.1.1 10G 8.2.1 Overview 8.2.210G Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 8.3 40G 8.3.1 Overview 8.3.40G Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 8.4100G 8.4.1 Overview 8.4.2100G Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 8.5 Above 100G 8.5.1 Overview 8.5.2 Above 100G Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 9. Fiber optics components Market Analysis- By Application 9.1 Overview 9.2 Global Fiber optics components Market Breakdown, by Application, 2019 & 2027 9.3 Communications 9.3.1 Overview 9.3.2 Communications Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 9.4 Distributed Sensing 9.4.1 Overview 9.4.2 Distributed Sensing Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 9.5 Analytical and Medical Equipment 9.5.1 Overview 9.5.2 Analytical and Medical Equipment Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 9.6 Lighting 9.6.1 Overview 9.6.2 Lighting Market Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million) 10. Fiber Optic Components Market - Geographic Analysis 10.1 Overview 10.2 North America: Fiber Optic Components Market 10.3 Europe: Fiber Optic Components Market 10.4 APAC: Fiber Optic Components Market 10.5 MEA: Fiber Optic Components Market 10.6 SAM: Fiber Optic Components Market 11. Fiber optic components Market- COVID-19 Impact Analysis 11.1 Overview 11.2 North America 11.3 Europe 11.4 Asia-Pacific 11.5 Middle East and Africa 11.6 South America 12. Global Fiber Optic Component Market-Industry Landscape 12.1 Overview 12.2 Market Initiative 12.3 Merger and Acquisition 13. Company Profiles 13.1 Accelink Technology Co. Ltd. 13.2 Broadcom, Inc. 13.3 EMCORE Corporation 13.4 FUJITSU LIMITED 13.5 Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. 13.6 II-VI Incorporated 13.7 Lumentum Operations LLC 13.8 O-NET TECHNOLOGIES (GROUP) LIMITED 13.9 Reflex Photonics Inc. 13.10 Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. 14. Appendix 14.1 About the Publisher 14.2 Word Index For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9xebu4 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 VANCOUVERPolice say the latest statistics suggesting an increase in crime for the first half of the year in Vancouver are concerning. Vancouver police say violent crime increased by more than five per cent and was largely driven by a rise in serious assaults. However, police say there was a significant decrease in break-ins to cars because of fewer vehicles being parked downtown as people work from home during the pandemic. But they say the pandemic also exposed closed businesses to thieves, with a 47.9 per cent increase in break-ins to commercial and business premises. Police say they recorded increases in crime in all parts of the city, but areas including Strathcona, downtown and Yaletown recorded particularly high numbers. They say officers are paying special attention to Strathcona, the site of a growing homeless encampment, where calls for service about weapons went up by 50 per cent and break-ins went up by 68 per cent. Read more about: Britain is adrift. This week the British government proceeded with its threat to breach international law by overriding the protocol on Northern Ireland it had agreed with the EU. This protocol, signed only last January, was designed to protect the fragile peace process by preventing the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The bill passed its first reading with a majority of 77. Time and again, Brexit Britain shows it is adamant to go it alone, whatever the cost. In the midst of the first wave of Covid-19, it even refused to participate in the European plan to procure medical equipment. Doctors and nurses had to make their own PPE out of trash bags. Britain's current isolationism bewilders its allies - but it is not accidental. This stance is linked to a distorted view of its glorious past and inborn genius that became the official history of the government in 2013, three years before the nation narrowly voted to leave the EU. The "long and illustrious history" is set out in the official book Life in the UK. It was launched by Theresa May - then the Conservative home secretary, who would later become prime minister - and has been "approved by ministers" ever since. It presents a Britain that is never wrong, almost always white, and never needs international partners. The rewriting of the national past gives us a worrying window on how Britain sees itself and its place in the world. But it isn't only symbolic: The official history is required reading for about 100,000 people every year who apply for citizenship or settlement. Migrants have to remember the information, which is then tested in a multiple-choice computer exam. So distorted is this official account that more than 600 historians are asking for it to be scrapped until there has been a proper review (I helped organise the petition.) The criticism focuses on the airbrushing of slavery and colonial violence. The handbook, for example, tells new citizens that slavery within the British Isles was "illegal" by the 18th century and purely an overseas operation; in fact, judges debated the issue - and enslaved people within Britain were openly advertised for sale in newspapers - in the 18th century. The unwinding of Britain's vast colonial project is summed up as "for the most part, an orderly transition". But that ignores the chaos and violence in many places, such as the 1947 partition of India and the extrajudicial killings in the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya from 1952- 1960. These are not accidental mistakes. They are part of a consistent pattern of deliberate cuts and rewriting. Comparison with earlier editions published under the previous Labour governments shows that migrants used to be taught that enslaved people died in the Middle Passage. In the current version, they are only "travelling in horrible conditions" - an unfortunate wording, given that about 400,000 of them died on board British ships. A previous description of the slave trade as "evil" was cut, as was the fact that Liverpool and Bristol profited handsomely from it. Ireland falls victim to similar revisionism. Instead of colonising Ulster by force in the early 17th century, James I now merely "encouraged" English and Scottish Protestants to settle there. The Great Famine of 1846 is still mentioned, but the fact that Britain might have done more to help the Irish has been excised. The deployment of the British army in Northern Ireland after 1969 vanishes altogether. This wilful blindness to Ireland's past might explain how the British government can play so casually today with its future. Any mistake or sign of national weakness is stripped from the record. Appeasement in 1938 cannot be mentioned - even though this means Winston Churchill can no longer be celebrated for opposing it. One can read this official history as an Anglo-Saxon fantasy of Britain after Brexit - one where, if people of non-European descent feature at all, they do so only as faceless migrants. They are almost never part of British society. Africans and people who escaped slavery and lived in 18th-century Britain have been deleted. Among more than 200 personalities one needs to remember, the only people who are not white are a handful of athletes, the architect Zaha Hadid, and Sake Dean Mahomed, a co-founder of England's first curry house in 1810. The British Home Office has been so scrupulous in taking out race that it even cut the previous reference to Hitler's "racist ideology". In its place, migrants are now told "he believed that the conditions imposed on Germany by the Allies after the First World War were unfair; he also wanted to conquer more land for the German people". That is it. There is plenty about World War II, studded with famous quotes from Churchill, but you would not know it was a war of extermination. In more than 180 pages, the Holocaust is not mentioned once. The British government trumpets its vision of a new "Global Britain" and dreams of striking quick free-trade deals with the United States and other countries around the world. But judging by this official text, it fundamentally misunderstands what international exchange is about. When the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol in June, prime minister Boris Johnson tweeted that "we cannot now try to edit or censor our past". In its own official history, this is precisely what his government is doing. Washington Post live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Larsen & Toubro (L&T) shares were trading in the red after falling over a percent in the morning trade on BSE on September 17 despite the company said L&T Construction bagged Rs 1,000-2,500 crore contracts for its metallurgical and material-handling business. "Metallurgical and material-handling business of L&T Construction has secured an order from Northern Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India Limited (CIL), for a coal-processing and load-out package to be installed at the Dudhichua Mines located in Uttar Pradesh," L&T said in a regulatory filing. "The scope of work involves EPC for double stream coal sizing Et transportation system covering semi-mobile sizing system, high-capacity specialty conveyors and an automated loading system," the company said. Rising net cash flow from operating activity has been the company's key strength. The infrastructure company and its construction arm have received multiple orders across business segments in the domestic market recently. According to Moneycontrol SWOT Analysis powered by Trendlyne, the debt of the company is increasing and the company has reported a decline in quarterly net profit with a falling profit margin on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. Moneycontrol daily technical rating is 'very bearish' for the stock with moving averages and technical indicators being bearish. The company, on July 22, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 303 crore for the quarter ended June 2020, registering a 79 percent decline year-on-year (YoY). The company's consolidated gross revenue came in at Rs 21,260 crore for Q1FY21, registering a YoY decline of 28 percent. A CNBC-TV18 poll had estimated revenue to come at Rs 21,377 crore. At around 12pm, shares of L&T were trading 1.16 percent down at Rs 911.25 on BSE. The Big Construction program and plans to increase the share of cement concrete roads in Ukraine give reason to hope for the growth of the cement industry, Director of the Ukrcement cement producers association Roman Skilsky has said. "The main reason for optimism is the Big Construction program... This will mean a noticeable increase in demand for cement, which will allow domestic companies to increase the number of idle reserve capacities," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. Skilsky said that early August, the Shulgin State Road Research Institute, together with Ukrainian Automobile Roads Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor), presented a concept and program for the construction of cement concrete roads in Ukraine, which envisage an increase in the number of such roads from 1% to 5% in the next five years. According to him, the process of approval of these documents by the relevant central executive authorities is underway. At the same time, he said that in the Czech Republic the share of such roads is 22%, and in Germany 42%. The head of Ukrcement also counts on the positive impact of the law on the supply of construction products in the market on the industry. The document was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on September 2 within the framework of European integration, which implements the provisions of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the Council of Europe regarding construction products. Skilsky said that the industry harmonized national and European standards three years ago, but was forced to wait for this law. The document also introduces new rules in the field of public market supervision, which will significantly complicate the falsification of cement products. In addition, the head of the association pins hopes on the investigation of the import of Portland cement and clinker cement from Turkey to Ukraine, launched early September by the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade. According to him, this import increased 9-fold in 2019 and 13-fold in January-August 2020 versus January-August 2019, and by the end of the year it may exceed 1 million tonnes. The head of Ukrcement explained such an increase in imports by a sharp reduction in Turkey's domestic market, a strong weakening of the lira against the backdrop of a strong hryvnia and simple maritime logistics, and added that the Turkish cement industry is ten times larger than the Ukrainian one. "The market in Ukraine is not growing, it has been fluctuating between 9.2-9.5 million tonnes for the third year in a row, so this deformation means worsening conditions for Ukrainian producers, and these are four large industrial groups, two of which are international," Skilsky said. He said that Ukrainian producers will be able to easily replace this volume of imports, and the replacement of Portland cement and clinker imported from Russia, Belarus and Moldova after the introduction of anti-dumping duties on the import of Portland cement and clinker from these countries last year is evidence of this. "The cement industry can increase production further, the capacity reserve is sufficient for at least 20% growth. The question is whether there is a market for such growth," the head of Ukrcement said. He said that at the beginning of 2020 there was hope for a 20% growth that the construction market showed in 2019. However, the pandemic has made negative adjustments, and in the first seven months of this year, the decline in construction was already 4.6%, including in the housing construction sector by 22%, and there is only a slight increase in infrastructure construction, Skilsky said. According to the State Statistics Service, the production of Portland cement in January-July 2020 in Ukraine increased 3.7%, to 5.04 million tonnes, and clinker grew by 1.5%, to 3.9 million tonnes, including in July 2020 compared with July 2019, the growth was 5.9% and 12.2%, respectively. President Uhuru Kenyatta has called for urgent and bold interventions to deal with the challenges posed by climate change in Africa. The President noted that the recent climate change attributed desert locust invasion of Eastern Africa as well as intermittent droughts and floods are a growing socioeconomic burden to the region. Exacerbated by climate change, the desert locust invasion of Kenya and other Eastern Africa countries has devastated livelihoods of farmers and poses an unprecedented threat to food security, he said. President Kenyatta spoke Wednesday at State House, Nairobi during the virtual launch of the African chapter of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA Africa). The launch was hosted by the President of African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi Adesina and addressed by several African leaders among them Presidents Nana Akufo-Addo (Ghana) and Sahle-Work Zewde (Ethiopia). President Kenyatta said effects of climate change have been worsened by the global Covid-19 health crisis. Challenges posed by these climate-related events have been compounded by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Though not directly linked to climate change, the global resources allocated to fighting Covid-19 and to mitigate its negative impact on the economy, have, no doubt, reduced what is available to address climate change, he said. President Kenyatta called for the integration of adaptation measures into Covid-19 recovery packages and urged development partners to support Africas climate initiatives. He challenged GCA Africa to spearhead the up scaling of pilot adaptation projects such as Kenyas livestock insurance scheme, the first of its kind in Africa, to the rest of the continent. Additionally, several adaptation initiatives that have been piloted in Africa should be scaled up by the centre we are launching today. These include the Kenya Livestock Insurance Programme, the first government livestock insurance scheme in Africa, and which protects pastoralists against drought; and the mangrove protection and restoration project as is being piloted in Gazi, Kenya, he said. The President thanked AfDB for its support in setting up IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Center (ICPAC) in Nairobi, a facility he said assists the region to receive timely climate prediction data. In his opening remarks, Mr Adesina announced that AfDB is working on raising amounts available for investment in Africas climate smart projects to 25 billion USD by 2025. The AfDB boss singled out Kenyas Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, the continents largest wind power financed by the continental bank saying the plant represents the future of Africas adaptation in the energy sector. Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said climate change is the biggest threat to the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa while Ethiopias Sahle-Work Zewde called for the redoubling of global climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. Nevadas economic development board has signed off on a combined $33 million worth of tax incentives for a Google data center and a lithium battery mining operation, even as state leaders promise to tighten up requirements for tax abatements. Amid unanimous approval of the two applications during the Wednesday meeting of the Governors Office of Economic Development (GOED) board, GOED Director Michael Brown said he planned to bring recommendations to the board composed of Gov. Steve Sisolak, other elected leaders and several business representatives at its next meeting in December raising the threshold level needed for new or expanding businesses to receive tax abatements. Approval of the applications come despite Sisolaks past concerns with the states system for tax abatements and incentives, which he has criticized in the past as attracting too many low-wage jobs without opportunity for advancement. He said Wednesday that he decided to accept the incentive application after doing his due diligence on the proposal amid the states highest-in-nation unemployment rate. Initial ideas include raising the wage requirement from 100 percent of state average wage to 125 percent, increasing the requirement of in-state employment from 75 to 90 percent, and potentially adding additional requirements for health insurance coverage. I think a company that receives a public abatement should demonstrate a larger commitment to the state and its residents, Brown, a former top mining executive said during the meeting. I came from an industry that had robust corporate social responsibility plans, as we meet with new applicants we are pressing them. We want to see a larger commitment to the state if youre going to get an abatement of state tax dollars. Brown said the higher thresholds for incentives would not apply to applications currently in the pipeline or that might come up during the boards next meeting in December. But his comments on Wednesday follow on promises previously made by Gov. Steve Sisolak, who chairs the GOED board and last year promised major changes to the tax incentive and abatement system. Former Gov. Brian Sandoval oversaw the current economic development boards restructuring in 2011, transforming it into a mechanism by which hundreds of companies received abatements on sales and use taxes, property taxes and payroll taxes as long as they met certain capital investment, jobs created or minimum hourly wage targets. But since his election in 2018, Sisolak has taken a more cautious approach toward the states system of tax abatements, ordering a temporary halt on new or pending applications last year amid a search for a new GOED director and criticizing the current structure as attracting too many low-wage jobs that dont have any room for advancement. A Nevada Independent assessment last year estimated that roughly 13,000 employees of businesses that have received state tax incentives were paid low enough to qualify for Medicaid. But Sisolak nevertheless said Wednesday he would support the application of the Google subsidiary company, Design LLC for $25 million in abatements for a large data center to be built in Storey Countys Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park (which houses the Tesla Gigafactory). The $600 million project is expected to be completed by 2021. Sisolak reiterated the states dire economic outlook amid fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the proposed project would generate more than $94 million in direct and indirect tax revenue over the next 20 years, while employing nearly 2,700 construction workers to help construct the estimated $433 million project. Its no secret that Ive had reservations over some of our existing abatement programs, he said. I dont make these decisions lightly. Its also no secret that the current structure of our state economy has once again put us in a position of being the state most impacted by this national crisis. Trust me, Im aware of this reality, and my goal is to work towards breaking the cycle and creating more stability for a state moving forward. Sisolak moved to accept the application on a provisional basis, based on Google agreeing to committing professional certificate training programs offered for free to Nevada students and educators. He also announced that the company was planning a $600 million expansion of its existing Henderson data center. The GOED board previously approved $25 million in tax abatements for Googles $600 million data center in Henderson in late 2018. Members of the board also voted unanimously to approve the incentive application made by Lithium Nevada Corp., which is in the process of designing and permitting a lithium mine and processing facility in rural Humboldt County. In its application, the company said it planned to hire 113 people at an average wage of $37.84, with an expected $103 million spent on equipment. The lithium company will receive a total of $8.6 million in tax abatements, including a partial sales tax abatement worth $5 million, a $3.3 million property tax abatement and about $225 million in payroll tax abatements. Per its application, it expects to bring in more than $65.8 million in new local and state tax revenue. Wednesdays meeting was just the second GOED Board meeting of the 2020 calendar year, following a June meeting that primarily focused on economic recovery plans. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 By Christian Akorlie ACCRA (Reuters) - West African mediators failed to persuade leaders of a military coup in Mali to immediately hand over power to a civilian government during talks on Tuesday, the chairman of the regional bloc said. Leaders of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met the heads of a junta that on Aug. 18 overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, in the bloc's latest attempt to quicken the transition from military leadership. ECOWAS imposed economic sanctions after the coup, and said a new president should be appointed by Tuesday. Those actions, and multiple diplomatic interventions, appear to have had little effect so far, reinforcing the difficulty regional powers face in shaping events inside the turbulent country. "We have not reached any agreement with the military junta," said Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo, the acting ECOWAS chair, after the talks. He said that a mediating mission would return to Mali next week to try to resolve outstanding issues. "We need a civilian leadership of the transition and we have also made it clear that the minute that leadership input is in place...the sanctions...would be lifted," he said. Regional leaders fear the coup could set a dangerous precedent in West Africa and undermine a fight in Mali and neighbouring countries in the Sahel region against Islamist militants with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State. Before the talks began this morning, Akufo-Addo said that the junta leaders needed to hand over power to a transitional government immediately. But the junta pushed through a charter on Saturday that says the interim president can be a soldier or a civilian and has not yet indicated when the new government would be named. A spokesman for the junta did not respond to a request for comment after the talks. West African leaders have not said what the consequences would be for failing to meet the deadline. The sanctions include border closures and the suspension of financial flows, though these were eased so they did not hit ordinary civilians. The leaders said that they would be willing to allow a transitional government to stand for 18 months, longer than the original year it asked for, Akufo-Addo said. (Writing by Edward McAllister and Aaron Ross; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) We have today informed the Russian ambassador that one of his employees is unwanted in Norway and has been asked to leave the country. This is because the person in question has performed actions that are not compatible with his role and status as a diplomat, Siri R. Svendsen told The Associated Press. Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest human footprints ever found in the Arabian peninsula. They are believed to be around 120,000 years old and lie at the site of an ancient lake in the modern-day Nefud Desert. This region was crucial in the migration of humans out of Africa and into the rest of the world, serving as the gateway between Africa and Eurasia. It is thought humans appeared in Africa around 300,000 years ago and did not reach the Levant for more than 150,000 years. Experts previously believed humans made this journey along coastal routes, but the researchers behind the latest finding believe this may not necessarily be true. They theorise that instead of following the ocean, humans may have taken inland routes and followed lakes and rivers. Alongside the human marks are 233 fossils and 369 animal tracks, including 44 elephant and 107 camel footprints, indicating the lake was a popular watering hole. This photo shows one of the seven hominin footprints discovered at the Alathar ancient lake in the modern-day Nefud Desert. Experts believe it was created by Homo sapiens and not another hominin species, such as Neanderthals This picture provides a digital elevation model (DEM) of the footprint ad shows a distinctive human-like footprint A map showing the relative dates at which humans arrived in the different Continents, including Europe 45,000 years ago. All humanity began in Africa, and moved into the Levant around 120,000 years ago The footprints were found in northern Saudi Arabia, at a place historically called Alathar 'The presence of large animals such as elephants and hippos, together with open grasslands and large water resources, may have made northern Arabia a particularly attractive place to humans moving between Africa and Eurasia,' says the study's senior author Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute. Today, the Arabian Peninsula is characterised by vast, arid deserts that would have been inhospitable to early people and the animals they hunted down. But research over the last decade has shown this wasn't always the case and it would have been lush and humid in a period known as the last interglacial. Professor Ian Candy from Royal Holloway, co-author of the study, says this period of time is 'an important moment in human prehistory'. 'Environmental changes during the last interglacial would have allowed humans and animals to disperse across otherwise desert regions, which normally act as major barriers during the less humid periods, such as today,' he adds. 'These findings suggest human movements beyond Africa during the last interglacial extended into Northern Arabia, highlighting the importance of this region for the study of human prehistory.' The footprints were discovered in 2017 when erosion removed sediment which sat on top of the immortalised footprints, exposing them to view. 'Footprints are a unique form of fossil evidence in that they provide snapshots in time, typically representing a few hours or days, a resolution we tend not to get from other records,' the paper's first author Mathew Stewart, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, told AFP. The prints were dated using a technique called optical stimulated luminescence - blasting light at sand grains and measuring the amount of energy they emit. Sand grains that are uncovered after a long time protected from sunlight act as a 'natural clock', the researchers say. Today, the Arabian Peninsula is characterized by vast, arid deserts (pictured). But research over the last decade has shown this wasn't always the case and would have been much greener and more humid in a period known as the last interglacial Alongside the human marks are 369 animal tracks, including 44 elephant (left)and 107 camel (right) footprints, indicating the lake was a popular watering hole This photo shows animal fossils eroding out of the surface of the Alathar ancient lake deposit. A total of 233 fossils were found at the site, as well as footprints This photo shows a view of the edge of the Alathar ancient lake deposit and surrounding landscape As soon as they are exposed again, measurements of the quartz reveals how long has elapsed since they were last visible. Of the hundreds of prints discovered at the site, a total of seven were found to be from hominins. Four of them, the researchers say with confidence, came from a small group of two or three people travelling together. The researchers claim the footprints are from Homo sapiens and not another similar species, such as Neanderthals. They came to this conclusion by estimating height, gait and mass of the individuals that created the imprints. Neanderthals are also not known to have been in the region at this time. The wide range of prints indicates this was a popular area and humans did not live by the lake as there are no stone tools. As a result, the researchers believe the lake was used by humans to collect water, and probably to hunt animals who also flocked to its banks. The research is due to be published in Science Advances. WASHINGTON - A Senate committee on Wednesday set aside a planned vote on the Trump administration's controversial nominee to head the Office of Personnel Management amid growing opposition. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had been scheduled to vote on the nomination of John Gibbs, who for the past three years has been a senior official at the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD). "We're going to hold over his nomination because some of our members would like to request some additional information from the nominee," said chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. There was no further discussion of Gibbs, who faced skeptical questioning at his confirmation hearing last week from senators of both major political parties regarding comments he had made and tweets he had sent while a political commentator before going to HUD. Those included tweets that senators said could be viewed as anti-Islamic and others supportive of fringe concepts or people, including a baseless conspiracy theory involving senior Democrats and Satanic worship. In February 2016, for example, he tweeted, "JFK's Dem party: Tax cuts, Anti-commie, strong defense, lunar landing. Today's Dem party: Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, 'u racist!' " When asked at the hearing last week whether he regretted making those comments, Gibbs said, "I regret that it's unfortunately become an issue" and did not disavow them. He said that as a Black man who has experienced discrimination, he would not allow it as federal personnel director. This week the National Treasury Employees Union, one of the largest federal employees unions, urged the committee to reject Gibbs, as had the Senior Executives Association, which represents top career executives just below the level of political appointees. "Mr. Gibbs is not qualified for this important position," NTEU President Tony Reardon said in an emailed statement. "We hope this delay is a sign that committee members of both parties are having reservations about putting someone in charge of federal personnel management policy that has shown a distinct lack of respect for the principles of a non-political merit system." Gibbs has little experience in federal personnel matters, having worked mainly in the software industry before going to HUD, where he oversees a community planning and development office. The two OPM directors previously confirmed during the Trump administration - both of whom resigned after about half a year after disputes with White House officials - had extensive backgrounds in those issues. The OPM is being headed on an acting basis by its deputy director, Michael Regas, who has been nominated to become the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. The committee on Wednesday approved three nominees for the five-seat governing board of the Thrift Savings Plan, the 401(k)-style retirement savings program for federal and military personnel. They were nominated just as the program prepared to expand one of its available investment funds to also reflect about two dozen emerging-market countries, including China. At the confirmation hearing all three expressed serious reservations about that change, which is on indefinite hold, though they did not explicitly rule it out. Odisha has hiked the ex-gratia amount, payable to the next of kin of police personnel, forest department personnel, home guards, gram rakhis and special police personnel apart from other state government employees dying in Maoist violence, by Rs 10 lakh. A finance department resolution released on Wednesday evening said Rs 10 lakh would be paid in retrospective effect from 2017 to the next of the kin of all police personnel, gram rakhis as well as state government employees in addition to the ex-gratia that was being paid to them. Though, the next of kin of police personnel, gram rakhis and forest guards were getting an insurance amount of Rs 10 lakh since early 2000, it had been stopped in 2017 after the state government stopped paying premium to insurance companies as the casualties of security forces declined considerably. However, next of kin of slain policemen were getting the non-insurance ex-gratia of Rs 10-20 lakh depending on their rank. While the families of slain gram rakhis were getting Rs 10 lakh, those of sub-inspector got Rs 16 lakh. The new ex-gratia announced by the state government would benefit the families of at least four policemen including the two from the special operations group, killed by the Maoists during an encounter on Kalahandi-Kandhamal border last week. It would also ensure that the polling personnel, who lost their lives to Maoist violence during last years Lok Sabha polls would get an ex-gratia amount of Rs 10 lakh. Also Read: Odisha CM urges top cop to be strict on Covid rules Home department officials said the provision of Rs 10 lakh as insurance money was started as casualties among policemen in Maoist-affected areas increased after 2008. Between 2008 and 2020, Odisha police have lost 139 security personnel in the fight against the Maoists. The highest casualties came between 2008 and 2010 when 94 policemen were killed in the Maoist-affected districts of Malkangiri, Koraput and Rayagada. However, the state government stopped paying an annual premium of Rs 5 crore to insurance companies after 2017 as the casualties among policemen went down considerably--only 15 deaths reported among security forces since then. Also Read: Odisha to amend GST Act to make fraud in input tax credit non-bailable Odisha recently recommended that five districts in the state be dropped from the list of 15 Maoist-affected districts. Between 2015 and 2019, 161 Maoists surrendered while 83 Maoists were killed. In Odisha, 16 battalions of Central paramilitary force, 41 anti-Maoist SOG teams, 848 DVF jawans, 56 platoons of India Reserve Battalion, 74 platoons of State Security Battalion and 18 platoons of Odisha Special Striking Force are currently fighting the rebels. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi, Sep 17 : Tightening its noose on separatist leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday filed a supplementary charge sheet against Bilquis Shah, wife of separatist leader Shabir Shah in a terror funding case, officials said. A senior ED official here said that the agency filed a charge sheet against Bilquis under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The official said Bilquis has been made accused for her role in the commission of offence of money laundering for carrying out illegal activities. Earlier, the ED has attached properties of Shabir Shah, his wife and daughters in Srinagar's upscale Effandi Bagh neighbourhood. According to ED, Shabir Shah has been found to be carrying out illicit activities along with his accomplice Mohammad Aslam Wani, who is an activist of banned militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). The official said that Shah was using Wani as a carrier for collecting hawala money sent by his Pakistan based outfits through hawala operators to deliver the same to him and his wife for carrying illegal activities. During investigation it was revealed that Shabir, without having any legitimate sources of income, had received money for carrying out separatist activities in J&K and had acquired various properties through a maze of dubious transactions, the official said. Bilquis also received illegitimate money from Wani on various occasions, the official said. The ED case is based on the FIR and charge sheet filed by Delhi Police Special Cell against Wani. According to the Special Cell charge sheet, Wani was apprehended with 5 kg of explosives, one pistol with 15 live cartridges and a cash of Rs 62.96 lakh. MEDIA COURTHOUSE A Philadelphia man who attempted to bribe a police officer after getting caught with a little more than an ounce of cocaine was sentenced Tuesday to time served after serving one day in prison. Ryan Deloatche, 27, of 5800 block of Osage Avenue, entered negotiated guilty pleas before Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Cappelli to possession with intent to deliver, an ungraded felony, and bribery, a felony of the third degree. Deloatche received a sentence of time served to 23 months with one year of consecutive probation for the possession charge and a second consecutive year of probation for the bribery charge under the negotiated plea worked out by Assistant District Attorney Matt DeNucci and defense counsel Evan Hughes. Court records indicate Deloatche was arrested Oct. 22, 2019 and was released the following day after posting 10 percent of $50,000 bail. Upper Darby police officers Richard Howell and Louis P. Garay Jr. pulled Deloatche over about 1:37 p.m. Oct. 22 after his red Buick sedan fail to stop at a posted stop sign, according to an affidavit of probable cause. The officers noticed Deloatche was shaking, moving around and reaching in various spots in and around the console, the affidavit says. After asking Deloatche to step out of the vehicle, the officers spotted a sandwich bag in the side door containing a hard white substance, according to the affidavit. The officers placed Deloatche into custody and continued searching the car, finding an additional 79 small Ziploc baggies filled with the same hard white substance. DeNucci said the total volume was 32.65 grams, or slightly more than an ounce. Those substances later tested positive for cocaine, according to the affidavit. Also recovered from the sedan were three cell phones and $30 in cash. While en route to police headquarters, Deloatche allegedly asked Garay, How much to make this go away? Deloatche told Garay he would pay him $2,000 to let him go, according to the affidavit. When Garay refused, Deloatche allegedly upped the amount to $3,000. As part of the plea, Deloatche was ordered to forfeit the $30 and cell phones, provide a DNA sample to state police and pay $176 in cost assessments and lab fees. Other charges including drug possession and possession of paraphernalia were dismissed. Readers of newspapers like The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star will probably have to choose a presidential candidate in November without the help of their local editorial boards, according to a memo circulated by the company that owns the newspapers, McClatchy. McClatchys 30 papers will be permitted to make a presidential endorsement only if they conduct interviews with both Joseph R. Biden Jr. and President Trump, who is not in the habit of talking to local newspaper editorial boards. The companys policy was distributed internally by Colleen McCain Nelson, McClatchys national opinion editor. If we dont interview the candidates, we wont make a recommendation for president, the memo says. Most readers arent turning to us for national political commentary, and they can choose among dozens of news organizations that deploy journalists to cover the presidential campaign full-time. If were simply observing the race from afar, our ability to provide unique content and our own reporting is severely limited. The decision is part of an attempt to keep the newspapers, which were recently purchased out of bankruptcy by a hedge fund, Chatham Asset Management of New Jersey, focused on their local mission. Local, Local, Local, reads one section of the memo, which was first circulated in January, according to a McClatchy spokeswoman, but had not been previously reported. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:15:07|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WINDHOEK, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's President Hage Geingob on Thursday announced that the State of Emergency in the country will not be extended when it expires on Thursday evening, after six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Geingob said over the six-month period the country succeeded in scaling down the rate of infections of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Namibia is now at its defining moment in its combat of COVID-19 and everyone needs to play their part," he said. According to Geingob moving forward, the government will monitor the situation for a period of 14 days, to determine the way forward, under a new dispensation. "As from Sept. 18, new directives will be issued by the Minister of Health, in terms of the provisions of the Public and Environmental Act," he said. Meanwhile, Geingob said the possibility of a second wave of infections remains real and is a risk that people must manage, proactively. "We are not out of the woods yet and not by a long shot. Now is the time to exercise maximum personal responsibility and vigilance," he added. Geingob declared the State of Emergency on March 17. Enditem Leading figures in the Irish wool industry have met with the aim of charting a way forward for the wool sector with a specific focus on increasing the potential of the wool industry and increasing the return to sheep farmers for their wool. The group discussed the feasibility of a scouring plant for wool in Ireland and it was agreed that it should be further investigated. Currently wool is exported to the UK for this process and it may become more problematic in the context of Brexit. Following the online meeting, ICSA sheep chair Sean McNamara said Todays gathering brought together stakeholders from across the wool spectrum. We were joined by primary producers, merchants and those in the textile industry. All were agreed that the status of wool must be elevated, and that it must be viewed as a unique and valued natural resource. ICSA organics chair Fergal Byrne added, Over 5 million kg of wool are produced in this country annually and we must endeavour to put it all to good use. We are not satisfied that under current EU guidelines wool is classified as a waste product and believe that this must change. Going forward wool must be considered an important commodity that can generate jobs in the green economy and also be of financial benefit to sheep farmers. The reality is the future should be bright for wool. We do not want to see a repeat of scenes earlier this year when farmers had no choice but to dump wool when we know there is a variety of different uses that it can be put to. Together as a group we are determined that this environmentally friendly natural resource no longer goes to waste, concluded Mr Byrne. VIENNA, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CEBINA GmbH, an Austrian biotech company, today announces further positive results in its collaborative COVID-19 drug repurposing project, demonstrating that a common allergy nasal spray medication containing azelastine has potent efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 in a human 3D nasal tissue model. Azelastine, a generic anti-histamine medication, has previously been identified as a potential anti-COVID-19 drug by CEBINA in collaboration with Professor Robert Konrat, a renowned structural biologist (Department of Structural and Computational Biology, University of Vienna, Austria) who applied a novel computational prediction approach and Professor Ferenc Jakab and his group (Head of National Laboratory of Virology at the Szentagothai Research Centre, University of Pecs, Hungary), providing experimental confirmation. The potent anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of azelastine formulated in a nasal spray was demonstrated in an experimental reconstituted human nasal tissue model and was evident at a lower dose than present in commercially available products. "The confirmation of the efficacy of azelastine in human nasal tissue can have major implications in the fight against COVID-19 as we witness the second wave of coronavirus infections, with record rises in the number of new cases registered daily. We believe a nasal spray formulation containing azelastine could be an immediate prophylactic or post-exposure solution to prevent nasal colonization with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as well as preventing the progression to symptomatic disease in infected individuals and the spread of the virus in the population," - commented Eszter Nagy, MD PhD, CEO and founder of CEBINA GmbH. "Using the reconstituted human nasal tissue model, we simulated the clinical situation of nasal colonization by SARS-CoV-2 and have observed the strong inhibition of viral propagation. This translational data indicates that azelastine is a potent antiviral agent," said Professor Ferenc Jakab. "The experimental confirmation of our computational prediction demonstrates that our novel approach to drug repurposing is an effective way to quickly identify new medical uses for existing, immediately available medicines with known safety profiles," commented Professor Robert Konrat. CEBINA, jointly with its research collaborators, has submitted its findings for publication (under peer-review) and has issued the manuscript on a preprint server for immediate dissemination (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.15.296228). CEBINA is planning a proof-of-concept clinical trial to confirm the efficacy of azelastine against nasal colonization and is in discussion with potential licensing partners for worldwide production and distribution of an anti-COVID-19 azelastine nasal spray. ABOUT CEBINA CEBINA GmbH Central European Biotech Incubator and Accelerator (www.cebina.eu) is an Austrian-based company offering in house research, development, financing and management capabilities to early and medium stage biotech companies as well as pursuing its own development projects in particular in infectious diseases. CEBINA recently announced it has initiated multiple research projects to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. CONTACT Sophie Zettl, PhD Vice President Business Development CEBINA GmbH +43 676 3731595 [email protected] SOURCE Cebina Jones Day, a global law firm with a major presence across five continents, said it had acted as the legal counsel for Marafiq consortium on the financial closing of Saudi Arabias largest privately-financed sewage treatment plant, the Jeddah Airport 2 ISTP. The project forms part of the Saudi Governments Vision 2030 and will bring significant benefits to the city of Jeddah. Jones Day acted on all aspects of the Jeddah A2 ISTP for the consortium of sponsors who are investing in the plant, consisting of The Power and Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu (Marafiq), AlAmwal AlKhaleejiah AlThaniya and Veolia Middle East. The Firm advised as international legal counsel on the project, and, through its associated offices in the Kingdom, arranged for the provision of Saudi Arabian law advice. The project will be developed as an Independent Sewage Treatment Project (ISTP) by Jeddah Althaniya Water Company (JAWC), a project company owned by the sponsors. JAWC has signed a 25-year sewage treatment agreement (STA) with Saudi Water Partnership Company, an entity owned by the Saudi Ministry of Finance. The overall cost of developing the project will be approximately $275 million. A Shariah-compliant credit facility is being provided by The National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia under the finance agreements. The initial phase of the project has a treatment capacity of 300,000 cu m/day, while an expansion option is available to allow capacity to increase by up to a further 200,000 cu m/day. The project is located adjacent to King Abdulaziz International Airport and will serve the Jeddah urban area, providing a major upgrade to the wastewater facilities in the city. Sheila Shadmand, Partner-in-Charge of Jones Days Middle East & Africa Region, said: This is a landmark project for the city of Jeddah and under Saudi Arabias Vision 2030. Jones Day is delighted to have supported the three consortium members in reaching a successful financial close." "The firm has substantial project finance and infrastructure capabilities in the Middle East, and we expect to see more projects of this kind in coming years, both in the kingdom and across the wider GCC. The Jeddah A2 ISTP will be truly transformative for Jeddahs infrastructure and marks a major achievement in terms of regional project financing in 2020, she added.-TradeArabia News Service The World Health Organization on Thursday warned of "alarming rates of transmission" of Covid-19 across Europe and cautioned against shortening quarantine periods as countries in the region scrambled to find ways to reduce infections without resorting to new lockdowns. The WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said a September surge -- Europe set a new record last week, with some 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours -- "should serve as a wake-up call for all of us." "Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region," he told an online news conference from Copenhagen. In Britain, new restrictions will take effect Friday, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that pubs may have to close earlier to help avoid a "second hump" of coronavirus cases. Residents of northeast England, including the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland, will no longer be allowed to meet people outside their own homes or immediate social circles. A square in the Spanish city of Valencia was temporarily renamed "Coronavirus Square" as part of a public awareness campaign. By JOSE JORDAN (AFP) The government already imposed rules across England on Monday limiting socialising to groups of six or fewer, as daily cases reached levels not seen since early May. Britain has been Europe's worst-hit country, with the government registering nearly 42,000 deaths. The city of Madrid meanwhile backtracked on a plan for targeted lockdowns and said it would instead move to "reduce mobility and contacts" in areas with high infection rates. WHO Europe said the UN health body would not change its guidance calling for a 14-day quarantine period for those exposed to the virus. The recommendation is "based on our understanding of the incubation period and transmission of the disease. We would only revise that on the basis of a change of our understanding of the science," WHO Europe's senior emergency officer Catherine Smallwood said. France hs reduced the recommended length for self-isolation to seven days, while it is 10 days in the UK and Ireland. Several more European countries, such as Portugal and Croatia, are also considering shorter quarantines. Vaccines for the rich? Elsewhere, a study released by Oxfam found that rich nations have already bought up over half the promised Covid-19 vaccine stocks. "Access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn't depend on where you live or how much money you have," said Robert Silverman of Oxfam America. Drugs companies are racing to produce an effective jab to counter a virus that has now killed more than 940,000 people around the world and infected almost 30 million. A handful of vaccine candidates are currently in late-stage trials. By SILVIO AVILA (AFP) The five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials will be able to supply 5.9 billion doses, enough to inoculate about three billion people, Oxfam said. Some 51 percent of those jabs have been snapped up by the wealthy world, including the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. The remaining 2.6 billion have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. US President Donald Trump pledged to begin inoculating Americans within weeks. He said he would begin rolling out a vaccine as soon as next month, despite doubts expressed by a top government health expert who said a jab was unlikely to be widely available until mid-2021. Democrats have expressed concern that Trump is pressuring government health regulators and scientists to approve a rushed vaccine in time to help his uphill bid for re-election in early November. Graphic looking at countries with the highest coronavirus death tolls, and their respective death rates.. By John SAEKI (AFP) But in an implicit swipe at Trump, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that Europe would support multilateral bodies such as the WHO and a more equitable rollout. "None of us will be safe until all of us are safe -- wherever we live," she said. "Vaccine nationalism puts lives at risk. Vaccine cooperation saves them." As tragedies multiply, governments face legal action from citizens for alleged response failures. A French association of Covid-19 victims plans to file a legal complaint against Prime Minister Jean Castex over France's handling of the pandemic, its lawyer said. The 200-member group accuses the government of "playing it by ear" in its response, lawyer Fabrice de Vizio told AFP. In China, however, bereaved relatives have had their lawsuits abruptly rejected while dozens of others face pressure from authorities not to file, according to people involved in the effort. The families accuse the Wuhan and Hubei provincial governments of concealing the outbreak when it first emerged there late last year, failing to alert the public and bungling the response. burs-gd/adp A top US diplomat landed in Taiwan Thursday, the highest-ranking State Department official to visit in 40 years, in a further sign of Washington's willingness to defy China and its campaign to isolate the self-ruled island. Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, will attend a memorial service for late president Lee Teng-hui on Saturday, the US State Department has announced. The trip, by the second highest-ranking US official to visit to the island since Health Secretary Alex Azar met with President Tsai Ing-wen on 10 August, triggered an angry response from Beijing. Krachs visit to bring misfortune to Taiwan reads an editorial in the Beijing-controlled Global Times. The US and the island of Taiwan continue to adopt the salami tactics to expand the space for their ties, increasing US arms sales to the island, and attempting to force the Chinese mainland to swallow such a trend, according to the newspaper, which will lead to Taiwans inhabitants being "plunged into misery. If that day comes, Taiwan authorities will be an unforgivable sinner for both the island and the rest of China. Inseparable part Beijing rejects any official recognition of Taiwan, where nationalist troops fled after the civil war that was won by Mao Zedongs Communist Party in 1949. Since then, Beijing systematically demands any country that wants to establish diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China to recognise that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the mainland. As a result of aggressive lobbying, the number of countries that recognise Taiwans diplomatic relations has dwindled to only 15, with Palau, Nauru, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu in the Pacific; Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is Taiwans only diplomatic tie with Africa. Vatican City Taiwans diplomatic stronghold is Latin America, with embassies in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Haiti, St. Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and Paraguay. The island's only tie with a western country is the one with Vatican City, that has a centuries-old feud with Beijing over who is in charge of China's millions of Catholics. Story continues But Since 2016, the Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati have severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour of diplomatic relations with China. Most other countries have non-diplomatic Trade or Commercial offices, most of them manned by professional diplomats. Turning point Taiwans increasing isolation started in 1979 when Washington switched ties from Taipei to Beijing a direct result of the visit by the US President Richard Nixon to China in 1972. Most other countries then followed. But the US issued the Taiwan Relations Act guaranteeing support to Taipei in case of an invasion by the mainland, and providing yearly arms sales to beef up Taiwans military forces. In 2019, US Congress added the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (Taipei) Act which reiterates that the US conducts regular transfers of defense articles to Taiwan that are tailored to meet the existing and likely future threats from the Peoples Republic of China, and encourages the travel of high-level United States officials to Taiwan, in accordance with the Taiwan Travel Act. Drones, mines and missiles Coinciding with the Krach visit, Reuters reported that the US pushes an arms sale surge to Taiwan, intending to sell seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones. This latest move contributed to an increasing hostility between Beijing and Washington, where ties were already strained by a trade war, US criticism of Chinas human rights violations in Xinjiang, Beijings increasing influence in Hong Kong, Chinas aggressive expansion into the South China Sea while violating decrees issued by the International Court of Justice, accusations involving cyber spying and warfare, and US accusations that China is responsible for the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic. A woman who was a teenager at an elite Sydney private school when a teacher seduced her has stared him down in court. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a 17-year-old schoolgirl when Ben Fenner began sending her sexualised messages via WhatsApp. 'All the messages on here are encrypted ... great for secrets,' he messaged her, according to the agreed facts. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a 17-year-old schoolgirl when Ben Fenner (left) began sending her sexualised messages via Whatsapp Fenner has pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual intercourse with a person under 18 and under his care. He asked Judge Robert Weber to take into account a further eight matters of sexual intercourse with his former student. On Thursday in the District Court the woman read out her victim impact statement saying it's taken a long time to realise she was manipulated and groomed by her teacher. 'I thought this was a normal thing ... a normal relationship,' she said. 'He knew the rules and the code of conduct ... he used me ... I was a vulnerable 17-year-old, you were 33.' At the time of the abuse she was suffering from depression and anxiety and had panic attacks after the loss of a family member. 'I feel you have taken so much away from me ... my friends and high school experience,' she said. 'All the messages on here are encrypted ... great for secrets,' Fenner messaged her, according to the agreed facts She said she was proud she reported the 'perverted mess' to the police so that Fenner could not use his position of power to abuse anyone again. After finishing her statement she stared straight at Fenner who had his head bowed. Giving evidence, Fenner apologised for causing her grief and pain, and ruining the time leading up to her Higher School Certificate. When asked if he knew what he was doing was wrong, a serious beach of trust and an abuse of the teacher-student relationship, he continually answered 'yes'. 'You noticed there was some marks on her neck you thought were hickeys ... After that you asked what she liked sexually,' crown prosecutor Roger Kimbell said. 'That was completely inappropriate wasn't it?' Fenner was born in England but moved to Sydney to start a new life after the breakdown of his marriage in 2011. Fenner has pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual intercourse with a person under 18 and under his care He described the philosophy at the eastern suburbs school where he taught biology as significantly different to other schools he had worked at. Teachers were encouraged to give students their personal phone numbers and to be available for contact out of regular school hours. His text messages to his victim turned sexual before organising to meet up outside school grounds over a three-month period. In one instance she thought they were going to the beach for a school assignment, but instead he had sexual intercourse with her. Defence lawyer Phillip Gibson said Fenner felt unable to extricate himself from the situation, fearing the depression and anxiety he experienced in past relationship breakdowns. While Fenner was not suffering a severe mental illness at the time, leading up to the period of offending he had regressed to an 'low point emotionally'. The Crown said there has been a gross power imbalance between a child and adult. 'It's not a case of a relationship between two consenting adults,' Mr Kimbell said. 'He's an intelligent professional man in his 30s almost twice her age.' Judge Weber will hand down his sentence on October 9. The family of a Hong Kong teenager detained in mainland China after he tried to flee to the democratic island of Taiwan says he hasn't been allowed to see a lawyer, and that they have had scant assistance from the Hong Kong authorities. Cheng Tsz-Ho, 18, is among 12 Hongkongers aged 16 to 33 being held on suspicion of "illegal immigration" at the Yantian Detention Center in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. They were intercepted by the China Coast Guard after they tried to escape by speedboat to the democratic island of Taiwan last month. All 12 are suspected of committing crimes in Hong Kong, according to the city's security bureau, with 10 of them wanted for manufacturing or possessing explosives, arson, rioting, assaulting police officers, or possession of offensive weapons. Cheng didn't tell his family where he was going when he joined the speedboat in a bid to smuggle himself illegally into Taiwan, and the first his family knew of his plight was from a police officer who informed them of his detention, passing on a photocopied certificate of detention "on suspicion of illegally crossing the border" on Aug. 23. "I don't think the Hong Kong government has offered any assistance at all," Cheng's sister told RFA in a recent interview. "My father did receive several phone calls from the government, asking if they could send someone to visit my brother." "My father asked what they could do to help, but they couldn't answer that, and they had a pretty casual attitude," she said, adding that the lawyer they tried to hire to represent her brother has been dismissed by the mainland authorities. Detention center staff in Yantian have claimed that they are unable to verify the credentials of several lawyers hired by families in Hong Kong, and have denied them access to their clients. At least four lawyers have been forced to relinquish their instructions in this way, RFA has learned, and not one has been allowed to meet with a client. "Political tensions are rising in mainland China and it's getting harder and harder to find a lawyer," Cheng's sister said. "I got a lawyer, but then he quit under political pressure and referred me to a different lawyer." Cheng said she is pursuing every avenue to keep the lawyer she hired, but expects her application to be rejected on the grounds that her brother has already been allocated a lawyer by the authorities. Cheng's family was among several who attended a news conference to hit out at the authorities for their lack of support for the 12 detainees. Chief executive Carrie Lam and her officials have said it is entirely appropriate to allow the mainland authorities to process their cases "according to law," given that many had "absconded" after facing criminal charges linked to the pro-democracy and anti-extradition protests. Concerns over lack of help But while the families have called for the return of the detainees, they have also raised concerns over the lack of assistance for those who need medical treatment, as well as the lack of visits by lawyers or relatives. Incommunicado detention is a known risk factor for torture and other forms of mistreatment in detention, and has been linked to several high-profile torture cases in mainland China in recent years. "It is normal for the families [of detainees] to appoint the lawyers and it is also our right," Cheng's sister said. "I don't think this counts as interfering with mainland Chinese law enforcement; that is irrelevant." "What worries me the most is that he will be charged with separatist activity [under the new National Security Law for Hong Kong] and won't be allowed to come back here for as long as he lives," she said. Cheng said the normally happy family is distraught and constantly on edge, waiting for news. "I fear that there will never come another day when the whole family gathers to eat our meals together," she said. "Sometimes I burst out crying when I see my parents," she said. "I don't even know if my brother has enough to eat." "My mom cries a lot and has difficulty sleeping. I often dream about my brother, that he has gotten thin and has been hurt," she said. "He is 18 years old. He usually spends all of his time studying or having fun." "I don't know how he will cope in a detention center," she said. "I am giving more media interviews so more people will know about these cases, and to stop my brother getting 'disappeared'." "Right now, we can only take one day at a time," she said. "If the government won't help us, we will have to support ourselves." Thousands arrested, hundreds prosecuted Authorities in Hong Kong are bringing hundreds of protest-related prosecutions dating from the anti-extradition and pro-democracy protests that began in June 2019 on a range of charges including unlawful assembly, assault, arson, and rioting. While thousands of people have been arrested since the movement began, a U.S. State Department report warned in March that the prosecutions of activists had infringed on the rights of Hongkongers to peaceful assembly and protest. A Hong Kong court on Thursday convicted a man of "rioting" and common assault in connection with the siege by unarmed protesters of the Hong Kong police headquarters in June 2019. Prosecutions under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party on July 1 are also gathering pace. U.S.-based pro-democracy group Freedom House on Thursday said the Hong Kong protest movement was among the recipients of its 2020 Freedom Award. "As the Chinese government has heightened repression at home and expanded efforts to export its authoritarianism abroad, Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement a leaderless, people-led effort has inspired the world," the group said in a statement announcing the awards. "Beijings sudden imposition of a repressive new national security law has made these efforts tremendously dangerous," it said. "Yet the people of Hong Kong remain committed to defending their rights for future generations in new and creative ways." Reported by Gigi Lee for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Peoples Democratic Party MP Mir Mohammad Fayaz on Thursday in the Rajya Sabha raised the issue of the continued detention of Jammu and Kashmir's former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and other political leaders. Fayaz said, "The former Chief Minister ran a coalition government with the ruling party at the Centre, and now she is branded as an anti-national." She has been an MP, MLA and the Chief Minister of the erstwhile state. Her father was the Home Minister of the country, said Fayaz. The PDP MP demanded that she and other political leaders should be released immediately. He said, "There is a fear in the state. If you speak, you will be put in jail." The Jammu and Kashmir government extended the detention of former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti under the Public Safety Act (PSA) for another three months on July 31 'Fairview', which was Mehbooba Mufti's official residence as the Chief Minister, has been declared as a subsidiary jail, and she is lodged there. Mehbooba Mufti, the President of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was detained after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. Two other Chief Ministers, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah were also detained last year, but were freed a few months back. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Gov. Phil Murphy has struck a deal with fellow Democrats who control the state Legislature to raise taxes on high-income earners in New Jersey and write rebate checks to households in the state with income below $150,000 and at least one child, NJ Advance Media has learned. The deal breaks a years-long impasse over the so-called millionaires tax, which Murphy has sought since the beginning of his term but the Legislature rejected twice in previous state budget talks. Third times the charm, though. State Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, hatched the agreement, which came together Wednesday, three sources familiar with the talks told NJ Advance Media. The sources were not authorized to publicly disclose the talks and requested anonymity. The New Jersey Globe was first to report the leaders were close to a deal. Spokespeople for Murphy, Coughlin, and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, declined to comment Wednesday night. Murphy, Coughlin, and Sweeney are scheduled to formally announce the agreement Thursday at 10 a.m. during a news conference at the Trenton War Memorial. WATCH HERE: Gov. Phil Murphy to announce budget deal. How to watch the press conference live today. Under the plan, the states gross income tax rate on income between $1 million and $5 million would increase from 8.97% to 10.75%. People with income over $5 million already pay that top marginal tax rate. Murphys administration is estimating this will bring in $390 million from 16,491 New Jersey residents and 19,128 nonresidents. Someone making $2 million would pay about $18,000 more in gross income taxes, while someone making $5 million would pay about $71,000 more. In exchange, households with income below $150,000 and with at least one child would receive a $500 rebate check, sources said. Its unclear how soon that check would come. Sources said the rebate checks carry a $350 million price tag. Other key details of the bill are still being ironed out, sources said. Murphy, an avowed progressive, campaigned on raising the millionaires tax and twice failed to get the tax hike through the Democratic-controlled Legislature. After passing the millionaires tax five times under Republican Gov. Chris Christie, Democrats soured on it, saying New Jersey was already taxed enough and the states high-income earners took a hit under Republican President Donald Trumps federal tax overhaul. The tax deal resolves one piece of the latest state budget, which must be adopted by Sept. 30. Murphy has called for about $1 billion in tax increases and $4 billion in borrowing to offset his administrations projected tax losses due to the coronavirus pandemic. Coughlin and Sweeney hinted last month they were still leery of tax increases, especially when so many families and workers have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Sources said Coughlin agreed to the millionaires tax on the condition there be a tax break for middle-class residents, as well. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Nowadays, its a rare moment when Kanye Wests name isnt in the news. The rapper and presidential hopeful recently made headlines again after he took to Twitter and shared a video of himself urinating on one of his Grammy awards on Sept. 16. Afterward, he went on a lengthy rant about contracts with record labels and owning the rights to his master recordings. While Kanye Wests outrageous video make come as a shock to some, the fashion and sneaker tycoon has quite a storied history with the Grammy Awards. From impassioned acceptance speeches to on-stage encounters, West has never shied away from sharing his thoughts on the esteemed ceremony. Kanye West gave a fiery first-win acceptance speech Kanye West | Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images) RELATED: Why Did Kanye West Share a Video Peeing on 1 of His Grammy Trophies? In 2005, West attended his first-ever Grammy Awards. There was a ton of speculation about who would win the awards in the Rap category that year, but West came out on top, taking home the awards for Best Rap Album with The College Dropout and Best Rap Song with Jesus Walks. He rounded things out with a songwriting credit for Alicia Keys You Dont Know My Name, which earned a win for Best R&B song. During his acceptance speech, West spoke told the viewing audience to never take life for granted, because nothing in life is promised except death, according to the Grammy website. He shared his party plans for later that night, then provided a classic mic drop moment for those who wondered what hed do if he lost. I guess well never know. Yeezy wore two outrageous suits on Grammys night Kanye West during his Grammys afterparty Photo by Shareif Ziyadat/FilmMagic) West had a lot to celebrate in 2006 when he won three Grammys. Late Registration won Best Rap Album, Diamonds From Sierra Leone won Best Rap Song, and Gold Digger won Best Rap Solo Performance, and West definitely wanted to make an impression when he showed up to claim his awards; he arrived wearing sunglasses, black leather gloves, and suit that he would later describe as ultra Travolta. Later that night, he switched fits to a lavender suit and donned white gloves, walking around with an I TOLD YOU SO sign. West boycotted the awards after a major snub Although West did not attend the Grammys in 2012, he still made waves. West had recently released what many viewed to be his magnum opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but failed to earn an Album of the Year nomination. Many fans were outraged by the snub, and West shared his thoughts during a show in Chicago a few days later, according to MTV. I figured out though, thats my fault, for dropping Watch the Throne and Dark Fantasy in the same year. I shouldve just spaced it out just a little bit more. West skipped the awards ceremony afterward. The Louis Vuitton Don stormed the stage, but let Beck finish in 2015 2015 Beck Album of the Year In 2015, Beck beat out Beyonce for the Album of the Year award, which some felt was the wrong decision. West was one of those people and during Becks acceptance speech he walked onto the stage, seemingly about to repeat his horrible debacle with Taylor Swift just a few years prior. It became clear West was joking after he hopped back off stage without a word, although he did say later on that Beck needs to respect artistry, he should have given his award to Beyonce. Yeezus bashed the Grammys during a Twitter tirade West took to his favorite platform in 2016 to share his thoughts on the Grammys; during a long rant on Twitter, West expressed his displeasure with the Grammy awarding system, saying the Grammy awarding system is way off and completely out of touch, according to Variety. The tweets have since been deleted, but the controversial rapper fired off over a dozen incendiary tweets about the Grammy Awards and the RIAA. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Delhi High Court on Thursday expressed hope that the media will exercise restraint as the bench asked the Centre, National Broadcasters Association among others to respond to a petition filed by Bollywood actor Rakul Preet Singh. Rakul Preet has highlighted media reports against her after Sushant Singh Rajput's death case accused Rhea Chakraborty named the former in a drug related case before the NCB. While passing these directions, the single judge bench said: "There has to be some restraint. Media gets to know info even before the officers themselves. Reputations are getting tarnished." Justice Navin Chawla issued notice to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Prasar Bharti and the Press Council of India seeking their response over the petition filed by the Bollywood actor through advocates Aman Hingorani, Himanshu Yadav and Shweta Hingorani. It also asked the central government, Prasar Bharti and the Press Council to treat the said petition as a representation and take decision expeditiously. The next hearing on the matter will be on October 15. "It is hoped that media houses and TV channels would show restraint and abide by the Program Code and other guidelines while making any report in connection with Rakul Preet Singh," the bench added in its observation. The plea filed by the actor claimed that she was shooting for a film in Telangana when she was stunned to see private TV channels, including some members of the News Broadcasters Association running "breaking news" from the evening of 11.9.2020 to the effect that the Petitioner, along with Actress Sara Ali Khan and Designer Simone Khambatta, have been named as the individuals who take drugs by Actress Rhea Chakraborty in the ongoing investigation by the Narcotics Control Bureau in Mumbai into the drug angle in the June 14 death of Sushant. "The Petitioner categorically states that she does not take drugs at all, and has, to the best of her recollection, has only met Sara Ali Khan twice (once at IIFA Awards and once while working out in a gym) and has not met Simone Khambatta at all," the petition said. Rakul Preet further stated that despite the fact that Rhea had already retracted her statement on 9.9.2020 as aforesaid, the private TV channels have continued since 11.9.2020 till date to run a slander campaign against her. The petition has sought the court's direction in order to ask the media not to telecast, publish or circulate on the TV channels, cable, print or social media, as the case may be, any content in context of Actress Rhea Chakraborty's narcotic drugs case that maligns or slanders the Petitioner or which contains anything defamatory, deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half-truths in respect of the Petitioner, or to use sensational headlines, photographs, video-footage or social media links which invade the privacy of the Petitioner. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery Sidharth Shoots For Special Promo With Chess As Theme? The Instagram handle 'biggbosskhabri' shared a video with chess board in the background. It also stated that the promo video will be having the concept of chess. Also, recently, Sidharth Shukla was spotted at Filmcity and many speculated that he was shooting for the promo. He looked dashing in black attire. Karan Patel Denies Participation Coming back to the contestants list, Kasautii Zindagii Kay 2 actor Karan Patel was one of the rumoured contestants for this season. When India-Forum reached out to Karan to confirm the news, the actor denied his participation. He said, "It's not true." Alleged Ex-Couple Pavitra Punia & Pratik Sehajpal Although Pavitra Punia and Pratik Sehajpal never made their relationship official, it was said that the couple was dating last year. However, things didn't work out between them, and apparently, they broke-up. As per Spotboye report, the duo will be locked inside the Bigg Boss 14 house! Sara Gurpal In Bigg Boss 14! A source close to the show revealed, "Pavitra Punia and Pratik Sehajpal both will be seen as a contestant this season. The channel is very excited to show their equation to the world. Two of them got closer to each other last year and were in love but with time, things faded out and the two have reportedly broken up. Hence, makers have decided to lock them together and chances are their reconciliation will be shown to the audience." It is also being said that Punjabi sensation, Sara Gurpal is entering the show. She was apparently spotted at Mumbai airport and rumours suggest that she has already gone under isolation at a sub-urban hotel. As per the portal's report, she will be shooting for her act on October 1, but before that she had to isolate herself for 14 days and undergo a COVID-19 test. Hence, Sara has been locked at a hotel in Goregaon (Mumbai) already. Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (27) While the first-year students were already introduced to their new schools over the past two days, today marks the start of the new school year for the rest of the secondary school students. A total of 48,836 students are enrolled in Luxembourg's public and private secondary schools for the upcoming school year. On a side note, with 1,914 enrolled, Lycee Mathias Adam in Petange is the secondary school with the most students in the Grand Duchy. After President Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity last month he would send law enforcement to polling places to monitor for voter fraud, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey offered a reminder to residents this week that state and federal laws have long protected against voter intimidation. The prosecutors office released an advisory Tuesday to Massachusetts residents to make clear that election interference at the hands of law enforcement and private actors is illegal. The advisory aims to inform residents their right to vote is free from intimidation, harassment and coercion, according to the attorney general. We wont sit idle in the face of President Trumps dangerous threats to undermine our electoral process and suppress votes, Healey said in a statement. We are issuing this advisory to ensure citizens of Massachusetts know they are entitled to free and fair elections and to put President Trump on notice that any attempt to interfere with our democracy will not be tolerated. In a televised interview with Hannity on Aug. 20, Trump was asked whether he would send poll watchers to monitor elections for possible voter fraud. The Republican incumbent president answered, Were going to have everything. Were going to have sheriffs and law enforcement and were going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and were going to have everybody, and attorney generals, but its very hard. The presidents threats to increase the presence of law enforcement at polling locations will lead to the intimidation of voters of color and immigrants, who have been targeted by the administrations racist and xenophobic policies and rhetoric in the past four years, said Beth Huang, director of the Massachusetts Voter Table, a nonpartisan voter engagement organization. The right to vote has become a pressing issue heading into the 2020 presidential election during the coronavirus pandemic. Many voters have looked to mail-in voting as a way to stave off transmission of the virus and cast their ballots safely. More than 1 million ballots were mailed in last month as part of Massachusetts' primary on Sept. 1, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin. Earlier this month, Healey also joined multiple state attorney generals in filing legal action to halt changes to the United States Postal Service the officials alleged could prevent employees from delivering mail. The changes to the USPS, the prosecutors claimed, were illegal, including ordering letter carriers to depart for their delivery routes at set times and to no longer make extra trips that might otherwise ensure mail is efficiently delivered In their lawsuit, the attorney generals argued actions within the USPS from July harmed veterans, seniors and rural communities. The changes also led to significant delays and could disrupt the general election in November without intervention from the courts. Healeys statement Tuesday reminded voters that state law prohibits intimidation of voters and interference with elections officers by anyone, including law enforcement officers and private citizens. While local police officers are required to be stationed at polling places to help election officials and to ensure voters are not obstructed from casting their ballots, they are generally barred from entering the immediate voting areas, the attorney general noted. The prosecutors advisory, which was made available in English and Spanish, also clarified that an array of statutes prevent the president from sending military or federal law enforcement officers to monitor polling places. Violators of such statutes can face fines and imprisonment, according to Healey. The presidents authority also does not extend to state and local law enforcement, who can face criminal sanctions if they interfere an election, the attorney general added. There are permissible forms of election monitoring, though, Healey noted. For instance, state law requires that elections must open to public observation. Poll observers are therefore allowed inside polling locations unless they are disorderly or obstruct voters' ability to cast their ballots, the prosecutor said. Federal observers are allowed to monitor voting conditions in certain jurisdictions as well to ensure the right to vote is being protected, according to the attorney general. Healeys office urged anyone who has had their voting rights threatened or interfered with to call the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney Generals Office at 617-963-2917. Information about voter registration and procedures in Massachusetts can be found on the secretary of the commonwealths website. Related Content: Mining giant BHP was aware of traditional owners' concerns about works affecting sacred sites at one of its West Australian iron ore mines before it obtained approval to destroy them. BHP executives on Thursday said the company received legal permission for the works at its $4.6 billion South Flank mine earlier this year, but had since halted plans that would disturb heritage sites in the area amid intense public backlash against Rio Tinto's blasting of the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters in May. BHP obtained approval to destroy 40 Aboriginal heritage at its South Flank mine. Credit:Michele Mossop The comments were made under questioning by a federal parliamentary inquiry launched in the wake of the Rio Tinto blast, which is examining the mining sector's approach to cultural heritage. Rio Tinto's decision to destroy the ancient rock shelters without traditional owners' consent last week resulted in the resignation of chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques and two of his deputies, and has put the entire industry on notice. Over recent months, BHP has told traditional owners it would not act on its existing approvals known as Section 18 approvals under the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act to affect sites until it had re-engaged with traditional owner representatives. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 23:28:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TAIPEI, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Three people tested positive for COVID-19 in Taiwan on Thursday, raising the island's total number of COVID-19 cases to 503, the local epidemic monitoring agency said. The new patients are two women and one man and are all Taiwan residents, but are believed to have contracted the virus during their stay abroad, the agency said in a press release. One of the new patients, a woman in her 40s, returned to Taiwan on Sept. 13 from Myanmar. She took the COVID-19 test upon arrival since she had dined with a confirmed patient in Myanmar, the statement said. The second case, a woman in her 20s, developed symptoms of a sore throat and diarrhea while being quarantined at her residence after returning from Britain on Sept. 6. The last one, a man in his 30s, had a cough, a stuffy nose and chest tightness before returning from the Philippines on Sept. 13. His infection was confirmed after two tests, the statement said. Among the confirmed cases, 18 are in isolation wards, and seven have died, according to the agency. Enditem There is a common belief that in the celebrity world, someone can hardly find friends. This is because most of them see one another as rivals or even foes. The celebrities motivated by such thinking have no room for friendships because all they think about is being the best. That is why there are few celebrity best friends even among those that have worked together for a very long time. Photo: canva.com (modified by author) Source: UGC It is not entirely true that there cannot be celebrities who are best of friends in real life. Some were friends before they became celebrities while others met as celebrities and could not resist the chemistry. 10 celebrity best friends It is not always a walk in the park to be a celebrity because there is so much pressure and expectations. It is that kind of pressure that pushes many people to depression and a life of solitude. Here is a list of celebrity friends who have been together through thick and thin: 1. Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC There friendship is evident on social media as the two continuously pop up on each others Insta feeds. They always have sweet words for one another. In one of Selena Gomezs Instagram live sessions, she was asked by a fan about the whereabouts of Taylor Swift. Selena responded that she had spoken to her that day and that she is incredible. She added that she loves Taylor because she is like her big sister. 2. Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC Timberlake and Jimmy have been friends since the time when Jimmy was still on SNL. Timberlake recalled an incident during his wedding when Jimmy interrupted him in the middle of his speech. Timberlake had only paused for a moment while giving a speech when from the crowd, Jimmy started shouting a joke. Justin had to improvise and went on with the trick for about 10 minutes keeping all the wedding guests roaring uncontrollably with laughter. READ ALSO: 30 most beautiful women in the world 3. Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC People who know the two wonder why it took them so long to work together because they have been close friends for decades. The pair only got to work together for the first time in 2013 for Baz Luhrmanns adaptation of The Great Gatsby. DiCaprio and Maguire met at an audition in the 1990s when he was about 12 years old, and they bonded instantly. Their relationship earns them a spot on the list of celebrity best friends. 4. Brad Pitt and George Clooney Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC Pitt and Clooney have been friends since 2001 when they were shooting Oceans 11. Theirs is a friendship like any other as they are never scared of pranking one another. At one time, Clooney put offensive bumper stickers on Brads car. Brad had his revenge when he told everyone on set not to talk to George or even look him in the eye. Their friendship has only blossomed with time and fans can only pray for a project from the best friends. READ ALSO: List of beautiful black actresses in their 30s 5. Rihanna and Cara Delevingne Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC The two cutest celebrity best friends met at a red-carpet event five years before they were featured in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. They struck a friendship that is unbreakable from the first moment they met. They have both reiterated that no matter where they are in the world, they can pick up the phone and speak about anything. If the two were to compete for a pageant, the contest would have to be to death because both are equally beautiful. 6. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC Ben Affleck and Matt Damon could not resist being friends because they have a lot in common. The celebrity best friends have known each other for a long time. They went to the same high school in Massachusetts at Bostons Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. They also happened to co-write the Good Will Hunting, thus bringing them even closer than they were before. 7. Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC Snoop Dogg has created an image of a carefree individual who does things his way, but he has a soft spot for Martha Stewart. Snoop had always expressed his admiration for Martha and supported her even when she was in prison. They accept each other as they are, and that is what has kept their friendship going. They always host other celebrities for an on-air cook-off, and that has turned to be one of the fun activities they enjoy doing together, thus strengthening their bond as celebrity best friends in real life. READ ALSO: 10 most beautiful Kenyan models in 2020 8. Meghan Markle and Serena Williams Image: instagram.com, @Serena Williams Source: UGC During the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Serena was one of the guests invited because of her ties to Meghan. The two famous celebrity best friends met in 2010 when Markel was introduced to Serena at a Super Bowl Party. The two became friends from that moment often getting together for fun activities such as teaming up in a DirectTVs Celebrity Beach Bowl. 9. Hillary Clinton and Meryl Streep Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC Despite having a busy life, former US presidential candidate Hillary has time for her inner circle of friends which includes Meryl Streep. Streep has openly voiced her support for Clintons political ambitions. Streep has openly noted that Clinton is the voice of her generation. The actress was one of the people who spoke on behalf of Clinton at the 2016 Democratic Convention. READ ALSO: 20 hottest actresses in Hollywood 10. James Corden and Dominic Cooper Image: gettyimages.com Source: UGC With James Cordens personality, it is impossible not to make friends wherever he goes. Corden and Cooper are funny celebrity best friends who have known each other since 2004. The two lived together for some time. Cooper is the one who introduced Corden to his wife, Julia Carey. During one of Cordens show, they tested their friendship with a physical shock quiz game. This revealed how much they know about each other. Celebrities need friends with whom they can share their problems. There is no better person to be a celebrity's friend other than another star. It is based on such mutual interests that most celebrity best friends forge life-long relationships. READ ALSO: Top 10 richest Bollywood actresses in 2020 Tuko.co.ke shared on 4th August a list of the top 10 richest Bollywood actresses in 2020. These are the women who have worked very hard to be where they are now. Some of the include Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Kareen Kapoor Khan among others. Most of these actresses have other businesses and endorsements, which largely contribute to their attractive net worth. Going by the figures paid to these actresses, acting is for sure a rewarding career, to those who become committed to it. READ ALSO: List of female Kenyan celebrities 2020 Source: TUKO.co.ke Pastor Treks 800-Mile Trail to Raise Funds for Abandoned Mothers and Children Pastor Luke Barnett Annalee Barnett Dream City Church Pastor Luke Barnett passionate about the plight of forgotten people NEWS PROVIDED BY Dream City Church Sept. 17, 2020 PHOENIX, Sept. 17, 2020 /Standard Newswire/ -- Approximately 7,000 abandoned mothers and children remain in Colorado City after the leader of their polygamous sect, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to life plus 20 years in 2007 for his child bride sexual abuse with some victims as young as 12 years of age. After his sentencing, one of Jeffs nearly 80 wives requested to obtain Jeffs' compound and was granted approval to purchase the property. Within a few months, she began working with Dream City Church and the Phoenix Dream Center to see if the organization could help turn the place of horror into a place of healing. Pastor Luke Barnett shares, "As one of the leading non-profit organizations in the world, The Dream Center addresses the human trafficking crisis, while also serving struggling families, addicts, homeless and the disadvantaged, we could not say no. This is who we are. This is what we do. Our compassionate, non-profit organization transforms buildings to transform lives and communities." Named the Short Creek Dream Center after a sandy wash that runs through the community, the church mobilized volunteers and repurposed Jeff's 29,000 square foot compound, which includes two kitchens, dining rooms, conference rooms, and 44 bedrooms. Also, the ministry partners with several food banks to feed the residents of the community with a weekly distribution of food, even delivering boxes of food directly to the homes of those in need. Even though much work has been done, much work is left to do to rebuild both the new Short Creek Dream Center and the Colorado City community. Today, the ministry challenge is to support and expand the ministry of the Short Creek Dream Center so that they can continue to provide refuge to those who need housing, hope and healing. But the need is much greater. Left behind or excommunicated by the sect, 70% of the households is 17 years of age or younger with an average 4th grade education, and an annual income that consistently ranks as the second poorest city in the state. "Our goal is to raise $1,000,000 or more to continue this ministry of offering crisis housing, trauma counseling, feeding the hungry, creating an education center, and developing skills training and commerce for jobs," Pastor Luke states. Pastor Luke and his daughter, Annalee, are hiking the 800-mile Arizona Trail beginning September 27th at the Utah/Arizona border. The moniker for this endeavor is "Adventure Your Life," and their goal is to hike twenty miles per day over the next 40 days to reach the Arizona/Mexico border, completing the trek. They are asking for support by donating any amount per mile. To donate go to Dream City Foundation's Adventure Your Life website: https://bit.ly/2QGIRvS. Dream City Foundation is an Arizona 501c3 organization. Dream City Church led by Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Co-Pastor Tommy Barnett. The church has four campuses in Arizona Phoenix, Scottsdale, Glendale and Lakeside in the White Mountains. Dream City Church has a mission to lead people into a fully devoted relationship with Jesus Christ by loving people, cultivating community and inspiring hope. Short Creek Dream Center is an AZ non-profit organization led by Angel Barnett and the Dream Institute, a UT nonprofit organization, with operations in Hildale UT, Colorado City, AZ and the White Mountain Dream Center near Show Low, AZ. SOURCE Dream City Church CONTACT: Pastor Franklin Santagate, Director of Marketing, 602-404-7454 Related Links https://dreamcitychurch.us https://adventureyourlife.org/ Thomas Pytel, Jr. Joins CopperPoint as Vice President, Chief Marketing and Corporate Communications Officer Pytels responsibilities include leading the Marketing and Communications functions for the CopperPoint Family of Insurance Companies across the companys core 10 state western footprint. Pytels responsibilities include leading the Marketing and Communications functions for the CopperPoint Family of Insurance Companies across the companys core 10 state western footprint. PHOENIX, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CopperPoint Insurance Companies, a western-based super regional commercial insurance company, announced that Thomas Pytel, Jr. has joined the company as Vice President, Chief Marketing and Corporate Communications Officer. Thomass responsibilities include leading the Marketing and Communications functions for the CopperPoint Family of Insurance Companies across the companys core 10 state western footprint. He will be instrumental in driving compelling marketing and communications programs to support the CopperPoint value proposition to agency/broker partners and insureds. Pytels areas of responsibility include brand strategy, advertising, corporate communications, digital marketing, consumer research and creative services. He will also oversee enterprise and regional community giving to support brand awareness through the companys community giving partnerships. Thomas is an experienced marketing executive who brings an extensive insurance background to CopperPoint at an important time in our growth, said Marc Schmittlein, President and Chief Executive Officer, CopperPoint Insurance Companies. As we continue to execute our vision, we are confident that his skills and expertise will build upon CopperPoints marketing and brand strategies throughout our core states. We are excited to welcome him to the company. Most recently, Thomas served as Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Communications for Mutual Insurance Company of Arizona. Prior to MICA, he was Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications for Nautilus Insurance Group (a Berkley Company). His career also includes time as Vice President, Marketing & Communications for CAMICO Mutual Insurance Company, and as the Global Head of Creative Services for Allied World Assurance Company. Thomas has also served on the Board of Directors for the Insurance Marketing and Communications Association (IMCA). Story continues A nationally recognized and award-winning marketing and communications professional and designer, Thomas brings with him more than 18 years of experience, 14 of which have been in the Property and Casualty insurance industry. He has served in various senior marketing roles for standard and non-standard carriers, both domestically and internationally. Pytel received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. About CopperPoint Insurance Companies Founded in 1925, CopperPoint Insurance Companies, www.copperpoint.com , is a western-based super regional commercial insurance company and a leading provider of workers compensation and commercial insurance solutions. With an expanded line of insurance products and a growing 10 state footprint in the western United States, CopperPoint is in a strong position to meet the evolving needs of our brokers, agents and customers. It has $4.8 billion in total assets and an enterprise surplus of over $1.4 billion. CopperPoint Mutual Insurance Holding Company is the corporate parent of CopperPoint Insurance Companies, Pacific Compensation Insurance Company and Alaska National Insurance Company. All companies are rated A (Excellent) by AM Best. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/649384b1-f547-4e97-b7e8-0ab4d8c114d7 CONTACT: Contact: Thomas Pytel, Jr. tpytel@copperpoint.com 602.622.3998 Is there a collective noun for coalitions? Ahead of the House of Representatives elections there should be The National Elections Authority (NEA) blindsided many commentators when it announced on 10 September that the door for candidate registration will open as early as 17 September, and remain so until 26 September. The two-stage poll will then kick off on 21 October and wrap up on 14 December. The first stage, between 21 October and 30 November, will cover 14 governorates: Giza, Fayoum, Beni Sweif, Minya, Assiut, the New Valley, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, the Red Sea, Alexandria, Beheira, and Marsa Matrouh. The second stage, between 4 November and 14 December, will cover the remaining 13 governorates: Cairo, Qalioubiya, Daqahliya, Menoufiya, Gharbiya, Kafr Al-Sheikh, Sharqiya, Damietta, Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, North Sinai, and South Sinai. Political forces, the majority of which had expected the candidate registration period to open next month, rushed to hold meetings to prepare for the polls. In a press conference on Sunday, representatives from 12 political parties announced that they had formed a coalition to contest the 284 seats reserved for party lists. The National Unified List coalition will be led by the pro-government Mostaqbal Watan (Future of the Homeland) Party and, according to Ashraf Rashad, deputy head of Mostaqbal Watan, already comprises 12 political parties Watan, the Wafd, the Guardians of the Nation, Modern Egypt, the Egyptian Socialist Democratic Party, the Peoples Republican Party, the Reform and Development, Tagammu, the Generations Will, the Egyptian Freedom, the Justice, and the Congress parties with negotiations underway with four more. The two parties most likely to join are the Free Egyptians and the Ghad. Candidates will compete for 568 seats in the upcoming poll. An additional 28 seats (five per cent) will be filled by presidential appointees, bring the total number of MPs to 596. The 568 seats are split equally between individual and party list candidates. The latter will be elected from four mega districts, two containing 100 seats each, and two 42 seats each. The 284 individual candidates will be elected from 143 districts each of which will return two candidates. Rashad said the National Unified List Coalition will include political forces with different ideological platforms but united in their love for their country. A month ago a near identical coalition contested the Senate polls and won all party list seats unopposed. Hossam Al-Khouli, Mostaqbal Watans second deputy head, boasted the new coalition included the most active political parties in Egypt. They are politically different, but they all see the coalition as their best chance to win party list seats, he said. Bahaaeddin Abu Shoka, chairman of the Wafd, said the party had joined the National Unified List in order to ensure the next parliament contains a wide range of parties. Hazem Omar, chairman of the Republican Peoples Party, argued that the coalition would help guarantee Egypt did not return to single party rule. Egypt became a one party state in 1953, and in 2012 the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhoods political wing, tried to hijack parliament. Now, Omar says, the coalition, which includes diverse political forces, can act as a bulwark against single party control. Anwar Al-Sadat, head of the Reform and Development Party, said that while his party had voiced concerns over political developments in Egypt in recent years it had no choice but to join the coalition for the sake of the country. What I hope for now is that the candidates on the coalitions Unified List will win the confidence of voters, he said. Abdel-Moneim Imam, head of the Adl (Justice) Party, said the country was still passing through difficult times which make it almost impossible for political parties to run on their own for the sake of stability it is better they join a coalition so they can gain representation. Farid Zahran, chairman of the Egyptian Socialist Democratic Party, insisted the coalition would allow both loyalist and opposition parties to join the next parliament and have a voice. Joining the Unified List coalition, however, has led to internal rifts within some political parties. Two leading members of the Wafd organised a sit-in to protest party chairman Bahaa Abu Shokas decision to join the coalition and have demanded Abu Shoka resign if the party is allocated less than 40 seats on the National Unified List. Ayman Abul-Ela, parliamentary spokesperson of the Free Egyptians Party, resigned in protest at party chairman Essam Khalils decision to join the National Unified List. He pointed out that the Free Egyptians Party won the largest number of seats in the 2015 parliamentary elections and argued it was capable of standing alone. Amina Al-Naqash, editor-in-chief of the leftist Tagammu Partys mouthpiece Al-Ahali, threatened that the party would quit the coalition if less than 15 Tagammu candidates were included on the list. The Civilian Movement coalition, currently composed of four political parties, the Popular Socialist Alliance, the Karama (Dignity), the Constitution, and the Bread and Freedom which reject the House of Representatives election law, is also preparing to stand. It is rumoured that the Conservatives Party, led by business tycoon Akram Qortam, will also join. The National Current coalition, led by former governor of Alexandria Tarek Al-Mahdi, said the NEAs decision to open the door to candidate registration on 17 September had come as a surprise and forced us to step up efforts to launch the National Current and join the election. Another coalition, the Alliance of Independents, also says it will contest the 284 party list seats. Spokesman Sayed Mahrous said the coalition includes the Araby Party for Justice and Equality, the Voice of the Peoples party, the Nasr (Victory) Party, the Union of Cooperatives and the General Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions (GEFTU). Mahrous said the coalition will depend on the support of millions of workers and farmers across Egypt. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: CANBERRA, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Australia's national science agency has released a plan for the economic recovery from the COVID-19-induced recession. In a report published on Wednesday, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) identified the opportunities for key industries in the country, "to leverage science and technology and help restore economic growth and resilience." It highlighted six industries - agriculture, manufacturing, digital, mineral resources, health and energy - that could capitalize on the trends to create jobs and investment opportunities over the next 6-24 months. "At this pivotal time in our history, the inclination is to batten down the hatches and postpone investments, when actually we need to double down on Australian innovation, because science and technology can drive our recovery from this pandemic-led recession and land us back in a much stronger position," Larry Marshall, chief executive of the CSIRO, said in a statement. "COVID-19 has disrupted every element of our lives, and while the devastating loss of life can't be understated, we have an opportunity to determine the new kind of Australia we want to emerge from this crisis. "Just as science and technology have been guiding our health and emergency response, so too will they drive our economic response and recovery from this pandemic." The report found that Australia has advantages in each industry. In the digital industry it said that Australia has "world-leading expertise", in energy it has "exceptional natural resources and geography", in agriculture a "history of world-class research", in health a "global reputation for quality", in manufacturing "untapped education and research skills" and in minerals an "endowment of natural resources." Katherine Wynn, CSIRO Futures Lead Economist, said by acting now those industries could increase productivity and cost efficiencies and lead the nation's recovery from its first recession in 29 years. "Energy efficient technologies is one immediate way to reduce energy costs, emissions and demand on the grid while creating local jobs, and we see many opportunities for increased productivity, such as energy efficient appliances in buildings and electric vehicles in transport that use mature technologies that are readily adoptable today," she said. The report was published one day after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed a plan for a gas-led recovery from the economic crisis. The plan, which includes developing five key basins, establishing an Australian Gas Hub and setting up a National Gas Infrastructure Plan, has been met with opposition by environmentalists. "Renewables are getting cheaper and gas keeps getting more expensive, so Scott Morrison's plan to tie Australia to gas is just a plan to throw public money at his mates in the gas industry," Adam Bandt, the leader of the Greens Party, said recently, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In late August, a coalition of 25 leading climate scientists sent an open letter to Alan Finkel, Australia's Chief Scientist, warning his advocacy for increased use of gas-fired electricity was at odds with the Paris climate agreement. "The combustion of natural gas is now the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the most important greenhouse gas driving climate change," the scientists' letter said. The unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic elevated the importance of data-driven decisions and made state and local government data leaders key figures in the response processes. PARTICIPANTS We thank the following data leaders for their time, informative contributions and service to the public: John Rager,* Acting Chief Data Officer and State Data Experts, State of New York Carlos Rivero, Chief Data Officer, Commonwealth of Virginia Poonam Soans, Chief Data Officer, State of New Jersey Tamara Roust, Chief Data Officer, State of Illinois Josh Martin, Chief Data Officer, State of Indiana Scott Gaul, Chief Data Officer, State of Connecticut Greg Useem, Chief Performance Officer, City of Alexandria, Va. Dave Gottesman, CountyStat Manager, Montgomery County, Md. *New Yorks response to the pandemic has been a true multi-agency team effort including its application of data to the problem. The answers to our questions have been submitted jointly by Mr. Rager and data experts at Empire State Developments Economic Analysis & Research division. the New York State data team. When the pandemic hit, public-sector data leaders had to quickly establish capabilities and access to new data, operating a nimble, innovative, coordinated and collaborative fashion to meet the data needs of key policy decision-makers and the public. Chief data officers and data leaders in state and local government found themselves on the front lines, supporting decision-makers with data to help control the epidemic and encourage economic recovery. We talked with a number of state and local government data leaders during this historic crisis to find out what they learned, what they see as emerging data trends and how they think the data industry can be better positioned to help solve future societal challenges. When gathering economic data for policy responses, New York states CDO John Rager said the traditional datasets were only available at a significant lag -- often requiring a wait of weeks or months -- which, in a crisis, is too slow. To get more up-to-date information, New Yorks Empire State Development team expanded the number of economic datasets it reviewed and began to quickly analyze more preliminary and prepublication government data. In addition, the state also relied on untraditional private-sector partners such as Womply and Descartes Labs, which shared e-commerce and geospatial data to help them closely monitor trends for labor, fiscal activity, business activity and consumer behavior by region and industry. Its not just policy-makers who required COVID-related data from data leaders. There has been unprecedented interest in data from citizens, advocacy groups and other researchers to understand the pandemic. This is something I have not seen before that has been sustained for months, Connecticut CDO Scott Gaul said. We have received a lot of different questions about the numbers, people really want to understand what they mean. State and local agencies that have adopted a data-driven approach to navigating the pandemic and economic recovery have thrust data leaders into a mission-critical role. Illinois CDO Tamara Roust shared the following experience: We came in to help automate reporting, and then as a result of that effort, we moved laterally to improve data quality, develop metrics and provide management with near-real-time views of the data. A hospital utilization metrics system, for example, was using flat files that were manually downloaded and analyzed, making it difficult for analysts to identify trends and share data. We created a central data repository, automated the data ingest, developed data quality checks and developed dashboards for use by the public health agencies, emergency management and the governors office, Roust said. The data repository powering those dashboards also feeds websites such as the Department of Public Healths Illinois Restore and hospital utilization website. In another example of COVID-inspired innovation, Indiana CDO Josh Martin described how his states analytics portal, the Management Performance Hub, launched an Enhanced Research Environment. This secure, monitored portal allows for collaboration around data without the need to release data outside of the environment, he said. Most of our multiagency COVID-19 response collaboration has happened within the ERE. The importance of state and local data leaders and other data leaders ultimately hinges upon how important data is to support mission and crisis activities. While its too early to tell what the long-term organizational impacts will be, the importance of ready, reliable data has been showcased, and the importance of CDOs and data leaders has risen naturally from that, Rager said. CDOs will only be valued when data is valued. He cited New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos understanding that reliable data and data-driven decisions were key to an effective response. Our focus moving forward is to ensure access to reliable data becomes part of normal business. If this occurs, it should reinforce the role of the CDO, Rager said. Whether its navigating the pandemic, economic recovery or normal business operations, trusted data will continue to be -- and should be -- the bedrock that supports state and local decision-making and policy-setting. Dave Gottesman, manager of Montgomery County, Md.s ConuntyStat performance and analytics program, said he expects recovery will be extremely gradual and will be grounded in the public health data. Every data leader that we engaged with agreed that data has become more important due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People are seeing more clearly how important data is in solving problems, Alexandria, Va., Chief Performance Officer Greg Useem said. As such, state and local data leaders will continue to be critical in supporting public-sector organizations and should learn from the emerging data trends and insights surfaced during the pandemic. Among the lessons learned, not surprisingly, was that fancy emerging data capabilities like artificial intelligence/machine learning were not as important as more foundational capabilities like data governance and data quality. Crisis has illustrated the importance of basic data hygiene and data quality, as well as data governance, Roust said, citing management of data throughout its life cycle, which is data governance, as a rising trend. The importance of governance was also stressed by Virginias CDO Carlos Rivero who said data governance is a linchpin that drives everything, as it is a foundation for everything else. Gaul also sees data governance as an important principle that public agencies need to embrace along with creating data supply chains to enable timely analysis and decision-making. He also highlighted the importance of data quality, saying, [The] public watches closely the governor's COVID-19 updates on [a] daily basis, and such critical data requires accurate reporting. Martin agreed with the importance of data governance and data quality, but he added that he sees a need for increased education around data literacy, both for those engaging in data work on a daily basis and for those public citizens trying to understand data and the stories it can tell. Data literacy and identification of tools to effectively manage and use data are key elements for data-driven public organizations as noted by New Yorks data team. Data collection, public-private data partnerships and intergovernmental data sharing are critical activities that are likely to emerge, Rager said. Additionally, more effective discovery of data, along with metadata management and data cataloging, are trends that data practitioners should note. Government should never have to hunt for its own data --and especially not during times of emergency, Ragers team observed. Crisis highlights weaknesses, and COVID-19 is forcing local governments to innovate at an accelerated pace, Gottesman said. One pressing need surfaced by the pandemic is digitization of services, data leaders said. This will have a significant impact for data practitioners as digitization will provide even more data that needs to be analyzed at scale. Even though data quality, interoperability of systems of records and analytics capabilities are all critical ingredients for leveraging data for public good, the key still is peoples ability to come together and jointly apply data to solving problems. Soft skills such as relationship development, collaboration and facilitation proved invaluable during the recent crisis. The rapid responses to the barrage of data requests required data leaders, in many instances, to leverage their network of relationships across public-sector agencies (or rapidly build one) to help navigate complex data issues. Useem said, Regional cooperation between data leaders has emerged to share experiences in using data. Rivero agreed, adding that CDOs will emerge as facilitators and catalysts for engagement and collaboration. Providing data leadership is about people, not just technology, Rivero said. A [data] domain previously seen as a technology-driven enterprise needs to break out and have ability to connect to people and build partnership and trust. Connecting to colleagues and building relationships is also critical. The advice I give is always the same: Build your bridge before you need to use it, said Roust, who has worked both in public and private sectors. The first task of any CDO should be to reach out to their state, local, and federal counterparts and develop relationships. Roust also noted that data leaders need to stay humble and rely on the subject matter expertise of the data owners who understand their data the best. Gaul agreed, adding that being a data leader is about providing support and finding the right working relationships. Data has not been a standard part of emergency response, and the pandemic revealed that data-centered leaders need to become a part of the emergency response playbook, Gaul said. That will require data leaders to be ready for the next crises. The time to get your data house in order is not when the next emergency hits, but now, Rager said. Besides ensuring that their data inventory is robust, data leaders should also begin to identify agencies or sectors where greater data sharing would likely be of value for a comparable response effort, he advised. Start building those relationships now. Partnerships among data leaders is something New Jerseys CDO Poonam Soans thinks would be important for the community of data practitioners. She pointed to a State CDO Network at Georgetown Universitys Beeck Center, where she and her peer state data leaders work to leverage data as a strategic asset and unlock it for public good. The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented crisis, elevating the importance of data-driven decisions. State and local government data leaders have become key figures in this process, identifying data governance, data quality, data literacy, data sharing and public-private partnerships as key trends. More important, however, is the collaboration, partnerships and relationship building that are critical success factors to leveraging data to solve societal problems. We agree. It is all about people. A disconnect between the provinces assurances of smaller in-person class sizes and the reality playing out in Ontarios classrooms has left parents surprised and doctors worried. As thousands of students return to schools this week in the age of COVID-19, some parents expecting smaller classes were shocked to learn their children are in classes roughly the same size or larger than usual. I think theres a huge disconnect between the messaging coming from the government and the reality that parents are experiencing, said parent Laura Boudreau, who was initially told last Friday that her five-year-old son, Miller, a student at Howard Junior Public School near Roncesvalles Ave. and Bloor St. W., would be in a senior kindergarten class of 15 students. Then, on Monday night the day before school started Boudreau and her husband Ian received an email from the school with final classroom allocations and were stunned to see that Miller would be in a kindergarten class with a total of 29 students. Experts from the Hospital for Sick Children have said keeping classroom numbers low enough to enable physical distancing is key to curbing transmission of COVID-19 in schools. I was beside myself. I didnt know what to do. We ran through all the options we could think of: should he stay home? Should he go to school? Can we go to private school? Should we have a learning pause? said Boudreau, who works for a national literacy organization. Boudreaus older son, Tobin, is going into Grade 2 at Howard in a class of 18 students. Were playing pandemic roulette with our children. Everyday I give Miller a bright smile and send him off to school and I come home all day to work at home and worry, she said. For now, Miller will continue to go to school while Boudreau and her husband advocate in any way they can to help see Millers class size reduced. Reports from parents of higher class sizes echo what some teachers across the province have been already saying. At the same time, school boards in larger urban areas have been working to bring high school classes to about 15 students. Carlene Jackson, interim director of the Toronto Distric School Board, said parents opting to move kids to online learning has affected staffing, but now that final decisions are in, boards can allocate teachers as needed. She said any schools with larger class sizes will be given extra teachers to bring numbers down. Both the TDSB and Toronto Catholic District School Board are putting extra staff in schools in the areas of the city hardest hit by COVID-19. Research has shown that young children seem less likely to exhibit severe symptoms of COVID-19 and may also be less likely to spread the disease. What parents and medical experts fear, however, is that children may contract the virus and spread it to their families and teachers, resulting in further community transmission. And for older adults, the risk for developing severe illness due to COVID-19 increases. A spokesperson for the ministry of education said in an email that school boards are responsible for making class organization decisions at the local level. As such, individual school boards may have different policies regarding the number of classes needed and how to organize them, said spokesperson Ingrid Anderson. The province has given boards funding to hire extra teachers, as has the federal government, and also allowed boards to dip into their reserves to fund additional staff. However, boards have said the money is inadequate to have any real impact on class size, and Jackson said Tuesday that its nowhere near enough to fund classes of 15 kids. Reorganization that typically takes place in early October when enrolment numbers are finalized is happening now on a large scale, particularly with more students opting for online education. Some school boards delayed the start of in-person classes and the TDSB cited rising enrolment numbers on Monday when it announced it was delaying the start of online classes until Sept. 22. In less than a week we have gone from approximately 66,000 students to more than 72,000 students in the Virtual School resulting in the addition of more than 200 virtual classrooms all requiring a teacher, Jackson said in a statement Monday. Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, said that school boards were wise to delay the start of school by a week to provide more runway for planning, but are still left with an insufficient amount of teachers. He said the province should have ensured there was an excess of teachers this fall to give school boards wiggle room no matter how many students signed up for in-class or online learning. They should have said were going to commit to X number of teachers because were expecting a large number of students to go online, he said. Were going to have some inefficiencies and some classes that are smaller than they ought to be, but because of that were not going to have any classes that are bigger, he said. Instead, theyve done it the other way around. Theyve made sure no classes are too small by clawing back teachers. So if theres going to be a mistake, the mistake is on the wrong side. So theyre not erring on the side of caution, theyre erring on the side of danger. While schools reorganize classes within the first few weeks of school every year as they shore up enrolment, Furness said the sooner larger classes can be split into smaller ones, the better. Class sizes have to be the single biggest issue and concern in Halton, added Trustee Tracey Ehl Harrison, who represents Oakville wards. Stuart Miller, Haltons director of education, concurred, saying class size is on the minds of parents across the province, and noted Ontarios four main teachers unions have appealed to the labour board because of it. In Durham Region, the public board is adding about 130 classroom staff in elementary schools, and will be adding educators to high schools because of enrolment. Full-day kindergarten classrooms there are about 21 students on average, with Grades 1 through 3 sitting at 19. From Grades 4 to 8, classes grow to about 23 kids. In the Halton District School Board, Chair Andrea Grebenc said in-person class sizes have been lowered by hiring extra staff, and that the board targeted kindergarten in particular because of concerns about larger numbers. During a recent board meeting, Debra McFadden, Haltons executive officer of human resources, told trustees that some 24 teachers and 13 early childhood educators will be added to kindergarten classes. As a result, classes that had averaged 29 students now average 20. In the primary grades, the board has 450 classes of students in Grades 1 through 3 where the usual cap of 20 is down to 18.5. Even in Grades 4 to 8, where boards have struggled to get numbers down, the average is down from 24.5 to 22.6. No class has more than 27 students, McFadden added, and about 50 classes out of a total 809 have 25 or 26 kids. We have built classes with a view to keeping them as small as possible and weve been largely successful, she said. Grace Soares-Sabino said she was surprised to find out her older son, Christian, 12, would be going into a Grade 8 class with 28 students at DArcy McGee Catholic School near Oakwood Ave. and Vaughan Rd. (Her younger son, Tyler, 6, is going into a Grade 1 class of 18 students). Initially we were told that classes were going to be smaller but then when they started collapsing classes, we lost teachers at our school, said Soares-Sabino, who says she first became concerned when she noticed that many teachers who had been at DArcy McGee for a long time werent on the list of classes sent out by her principal. Soares-Sabino, who has been working from home since March, says while she believes her boys need to interact with their friends and teachers in person for their mental health, I feel like as a parent Im throwing them into a lions den. When I drop them off tomorrow, all I will do is be crying because I will be afraid for what Ive potentially put my children into, she said. Jessica Dee Humphreys, whose 11-year-old son Finn is in a Grade 7 gifted class at King Edward Public School in downtown Toronto, said she recently received a photo from Finns teacher showing how students were sitting three to a desk with tape marking out each position. She says the class enrolment is at the cap of 25, a level it has never reached before. Its heartbreaking, she said, adding that returning Finn back to school is like sending him into the coal mines. Its something like you would look back in history and say, well I would never do that to my kid and yet Im doing it today, she said. Correction Sept. 17, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to remove incorrect information provided by a parent about the size of a Grade 4 class at Thorncliffe Park Public School. In fact, there are 20 students in the class, not 30. Kenyon Wallace is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @KenyonWallace or reach him via email: kwallace@thestar.ca With files from Canadian Press Our Cyborg Future: 16-nation study finds support for human augmentation, but doubts remain September 2020 by Kaspersky The research commissioned by security firm Kaspersky - found that 92% of us would change a physical aspect of ourselves if we could while nearly two thirds (63%) of us would consider augmenting our bodies with technology to improve them either permanently or temporarily. The wide-reaching study of 14,500 adults across 16 countries in Europe and North Africa found that Italians are the most likely to consider human augmentation (81%) and Brits the least (33%). Some respondents even expressed the desire to connect smartphones to their bodies. Most people were clear that they wanted human augmentation to be used for the good of humanity, with 53% of people saying it should be used to improve quality of life. Across the board, in every country, the objective for any human augmentation was to improve overall physical health (40%) or eyesight (33%). Some doubts remain though, with respondents stating that they feared augmentation would be limited to the wealthy (69%), while nearly nine in 10 (88%) people stated that they feared their bodies could be hacked by cyber criminals. Previously the preserve of science fiction, the concept of human augmentation the process of recreating or enhancing our physical and mental abilities - has gained currency recently as digital technology has become an increasingly important part of our daily lives. Marco Preuss, Director of the Global Research & Analysis Team, Europe, for Kaspersky, commented: Human augmentation is one of the most significant technology trends today. Were already seeing a wide range of practical applications being deployed across the everyday areas of our lives like health and social care, sport, education and transport. Exoskeletons for fire and rescue or the bioprinting of organs are a couple of examples. But people are right to be wary. Augmentation enthusiasts are already testing the limits of whats possible, but we need commonly agreed standards to ensure augmentation reaches its full potential while minimising the risks. Kasperskys research also found: Adults in Southern Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, along with Morocco, are among the most open to human augmentation Adults in the UK and France appear to be most sceptical about human augmentation, with 36% of Brits and 30% of French adults against the concept. More than half of adults in France (53%) and the UK (52%) believe human augmentation will be dangerous for society, way above the study average of 39% Being able to an augment a more attractive body appealed to more than a third (36%) of women and just a quarter (25%) of men, while men are more interested in improving their strength (23%) than women (18%) Nearly half (47%) of those interviewed believe governments should regulate human augmentation. The UK is most in favour of government intervention (77%) and Greece is the most resistant (17%) A third of people (33%) are excited by the idea of human augmentation, but women (21%) are slightly more likely than men (15%) to say they are more concerned than excited by augmentation Kaspersky launched the findings ahead of hosting a round-table debate hosted by technology journalist Kate Russell, which also included: Zoltan Istvan, Author and Founder of the Transhumanist Party Professor Julian Savulescu, Oxford University Professor and Uehiro Chair Practical Ethics David Jacoby, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Marco Preuss, Director of Global Research & Analysis Team for Kaspersky Europe The title of the debate is The Human Augmentation Debate I think the majority of people are going to be willing to be augmented, as long as its baby steps and they see economic and medical benefits for it, Zoltan Istvan commented. Historically, people often dont like technology innovations at first, but they accept them because they realise that their jobs, and livelihood and national security is at stake. For Professor Julian Savulescu, the most important area of human augmentation is psychological improving our cognitive abilities and moral capacities. The greatest threat we face is human inequality in capacities for human behaviour, including moral behaviour. Savulescu warns. Human augmentation has the potential to compound existing inequalities, so the challenge for governments worldwide is how to harness the potential of human augmentation for good. David Jacoby, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky concluded: Throughout history, bad actors have always exploited new technologies but generally speaking these technological advancements have been positive for humanity - and Im certain this will be the case with human augmentation. That said, we must remain vigilant about the threat of misuse or attack so that when human augmentation becomes an everyday reality, security is not an afterthought. About the research The fieldwork was conducted by Opinium Research between 9-27 July, 2020. Opinium canvassed 14,500 adults in 16 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. (Philadelphia, PA) - The COVID-19 pandemic has increasing numbers of doctors caring for patients virtually. While critical to protecting patient health during a pandemic, however, virtual care presents unique challenges, especially when it comes to diagnosis. Now, cardiologists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM), have come up with a virtual screening tool that greatly simplifies the process of diagnosing a complex form of heart failure known as pulmonary hypertension. The new method--known as the virtual echocardiography screening tool (VEST)--makes use of initial screening data from echocardiography, which captures images of the heart. The ability of VEST to accurately and remotely diagnose pulmonary hypertension, based on simple analysis of multiple echocardiogram features, represents a major advance in virtual patient care. "VEST enables physicians to quickly evaluate patients for pulmonary hypertension by simply searching for routine key measures indicated in echocardiogram reports," explained Anjali Vaidya, MD, FACC, FASE, FACP, Co-Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension, Right Heart Failure & CTEPH Program at Temple University Hospital, Associate Professor of Medicine at LKSOM and lead author on the new study. The report describing VEST was published online September 17 in the journal Pulmonary Circulation. Pulmonary hypertension occurs when there is high pressure in the blood vessels connecting the right and left sides of the heart and can lead to right-sided heart failure. The condition typically is diagnosed based on right heart catheterization, which distinguishes specific types of the disease. Because patients with pulmonary hypertension are at high risk of serious illness if infected with COVID-19, due to pre-existing heart and lung disease, traveling to a Pulmonary Hypertension Center of Comprehensive Care or visiting a hospital to undergo invasive right heart catheterization for diagnosis is not as readily available as it had previously been. Most patients who are referred for invasive testing with right heart catheterization and evaluation previously have undergone echocardiography. The new study shows that VEST is especially effective in distinguishing between the two most common, though very different, subtypes of pulmonary hypertension - the first caused by left heart disease, and the other by pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Patients with pulmonary hypertension due to PAH frequently suffer poor survival. Delays in diagnosis (often up to 2-3 years) and treatment greatly impact these outcomes. To evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of VEST, Dr. Vaidya and colleagues analyzed data from patients with pulmonary hypertension who underwent right heart cardiac catheterization as well as echocardiography. To predict the subtype of pulmonary hypertension from echocardiography, the researchers looked at select reported echocardiogram features, including size and shape of the heart chamber and Doppler features. Scores derived from these measures were used to predict PAH versus pulmonary hypertension due to left heart disease. "This is the first time that routine interpretation of echocardiogram reports, without direct advanced review of imaging, has proven to be effective," Dr. Vaidya said. "By using parameters routinely reported in echocardiograms to assess hemodynamic profiles, VEST truly facilitates the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension." "VEST makes early recognition of the condition possible, allowing patients to receive more timely referral for appropriate evaluation. The fact that this can be done remotely during virtual telemedicine visits is especially relevant in the COVID-19 era." The next step for VEST centers on investigating its long-term impact on patient outcomes. "Now that we have a tool for assisting virtual diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension that any physician could use, we have a real opportunity to examine long-term outcomes in patients referred for treatment based on VEST findings," Dr. Vaidya added. ### Other researchers who contributed to the new study include Jessica R. Golbus, Cardiovascular Division, University of Michigan; Natasha A. Vedage and Paul R. Forfia, Cardiovascular Division, Pulmonary Hypertension, Right Heart Failure & CTEPH Program, Lewis Katz School of Medicine; Jeremy Mazurek, Cardiovascular Division, Heart Failure and Pulmonary Hypertension Program, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; and Farhan Raza, Cardiovascular Division, University of Wisconsin. About Temple Health Temple University Health System (TUHS) is a $2.2 billion academic health system dedicated to providing access to quality patient care and supporting excellence in medical education and research. The Health System consists of Temple University Hospital (TUH); TUH-Episcopal Campus; TUH-Jeanes Campus; TUH-Northeastern Campus; The Hospital of Fox Chase Cancer Center and Affiliates, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center; Temple Transport Team, a ground and air-ambulance company; Temple Physicians, Inc., a network of community-based specialty and primary-care physician practices; and Temple Faculty Practice Plan, Inc., TUHS's physician practice plan comprised of more than 500 full-time and part-time academic physicians in 20 clinical departments. TUHS is affiliated with the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. Temple Health refers to the health, education and research activities carried out by the affiliates of Temple University Health System (TUHS) and by the Katz School of Medicine. TUHS neither provides nor controls the provision of health care. All health care is provided by its member organizations or independent health care providers affiliated with TUHS member organizations. Each TUHS member organization is owned and operated pursuant to its governing documents. It is the policy of Temple University Health System that there shall be no exclusion from, or participation in, and no one denied the benefits of, the delivery of quality medical care on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, disability, age, ancestry, color, national origin, physical ability, level of education, or source of payment. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Schweiger Dermatology Group (SDG), the fastest-growing dermatology practice in the Northeast, announced it has completed the acquisitions of Dr. Lillian Graf in Bayside, New York and Dr. Leopold Laufer in Brooklyn, New York. "I am proud to further grow our footprint in New York City by adding two well-respected practices to the Schweiger Dermatology Group family," says Dr. Eric Schweiger, C.E.O. and founder of SDG. "Drs. Graf and Laufer both bring high quality dermatology care, many years of experience and a true dedication to their patients to our practice." Dr. Graf has been in private dermatology practice in Bayside since 1981. She earned her undergraduate degree from Barnard College in New York City, where she graduated Cum Laude. She graduated from New York University, School of Medicine medical school in 1977 and continued on to complete her residency in dermatology from NYU. "It has been my greatest pleasure to provide excellent and compassionate care to generations of patients," says Dr. Graf. "By joining the Schweiger Dermatology Group, my patients will benefit from Dr. Schweiger's commitment to patient care and also from the greater resources and standard of excellence within the group." "By joining the Schweiger Dermatology Group family, I can focus on excellence in patient care, while the practice management aspects are taken care of," says Dr. Leopold Laufer, who will continue to treat his patients via telemedicine. Schweiger Dermatology Group is adding Jarrett Kaczmarski, PA-C to Dr. Laufer's Brooklyn practice so patients can be seen in-person at that location. Dr. Leopold Laufer has been practicing medicine for over 30 years. He graduated from Oberlin College and received his medical degree from Tulane Medical School. Dr. Laufer completed his residency in dermatology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has served as a part time clinical instructor and part time assistant professor and New York University. The new Schweiger Dermatology Group locations are: Schweiger Dermatology Group Bayside 21418 24th Ave. Bayside, NY 11360 Schweiger Dermatology Group Sheepshead Bay 1810 Voorhies Ave., Ste 2 Brooklyn, NY 11235 About Schweiger Dermatology Group Schweiger Dermatology Group is the largest group dermatology practice in the Northeast with over 65 offices and 200 healthcare providers. SDG provides both medical and cosmetic dermatology services to over 600,000 patients annually. Schweiger Dermatology Group was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in America for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and to the Crain's New York Fast 50, honoring the fastest growing companies in New York for 2017, 2018 and 2019. To learn more, visit schweigerderm.com . CONTACT: Melissa Kleinman, [email protected] SOURCE Schweiger Dermatology Group Related Links http://www.schweigerderm.com A storm system is poised to bring rain showers to parts of Oregon over the next two days, helping clear out wildfire smoke. But the change in weather has prompted a pair of new concerns: flash flooding and debris flows. The National Weather Services Portland office said severe thunderstorms and flash flooding appear possible Thursday evening. Flash flood watches cover a swath of land extending through parts of Hood River, Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Linn, Lane, Douglas, Coos, Jackson and Klamath counties for parts of Thursday. Heavy rains are possible across parts of the Cascades, according to the weather service. The rain may cause flash flooding that carries debris from the Riverside, Beachie Creek, Lionshead and Holiday Farm fire areas. Places such as the southern Oregon town of Glide, parts of Oregon 138 near the Archie Creek fire and the area around Diamond Lake could also see debris flows, according to the weather service. The weather service said people, structures and roads below steep slopes, in canyons and near the mouths of canyons may be at serious risk from fast-moving flash floodwaters packed with debris. Because the thunderstorms will be accompanied by rain, theyre not expected to cause more wildfires. Firefighters are still handling 10 large blazes around the state. They have taken 7 others off the map, as crews have established containment lines that have held for 72 hours or more, according to the Oregon Department of Forestrys chief of fire protection, Doug Grafe. Some of those fires include the Echo Mountain Complex on the coast, the Almeda fire near Ashland and the Powerline fire in Washington County. Crews are still working to establish containment lines around several other major fires, such as the Beachie Creek, Riverside and Holiday Farm fires. Fires on the east side of the state are still of high concern, Grafe said. He said crews are still battling the Two Four Two fire in Klamath County and the Brattain fire in Lake County. Here is the latest on the fires. This report will be updated throughout the day Thursday. View all currently active wildfires in the U.S. on The Oregonian/OregonLives interactive wildfire map. Marion County fires As the Beachie Creek fire continues to burn in Marion County and scores of residents remain evacuated from their homes in Santiam River canyon, officials warned Wednesday that many areas remain unsafe. The Beachie Creek fire has scorched more than 191,000 acres and is 20% contained. Detroit, Idanha, Gates and several smaller towns remain evacuated. County officials at a Board of Commissioners meeting on Wednesday ran down a daunting list of what needs to happen before residents can return. As many as 100,000 trees, possibly more, may need to be removed along Oregon 22 and some side roads before the burned areas will be accessible, according to state transportation officials. Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast said he drove up the canyon recently and much of the area is still unsafe due to fallen trees, rocks and the danger of landslides. Marion County Public Works Director Brian Nicholas said many utilities in the canyon had suffered extensive loss and that, while some areas have spotty cellphone service, service to nearly all land lines has been interrupted and most places had lost their power lines. Water service in Detroit and Gates has been completely knocked out, Nicholas said, though it appeared to be intact in Lyons. The Lionshead fire has also grown to an estimated 189,316 acres and remains 10% contained. Officials said Thursday that fire activity was expected to continue to moderate with the weather. Grafe said crews have been working on establishing control lines, including from the communities of Estacada to Lyons. Clackamas County Firefighters have made progress on the Riverside fire, which is now 137,000 acres and 6% contained a figure that has doubled since Wednesday. Oregon City, Canby and Sandy had all evacuation orders lifted Wednesday. Mollala was downgraded to a Level 1 get ready order, as well. Conditions in Estacada also improved, with evacuation orders dropped to Level 2 get set. The areas near the Dowty, Unger and Riverside fires remained under Level 3 go evacuation orders and Mt. Hood National Forest was still closed. Possible heavy rains also put Clackamas County at risk of flash flooding and landslides. Heavy rain is possible late tonight which could result in flash flooding and debris flows around areas recently burned by the Riverside fire, including the Highway 224 corridor between Estacada and Ripplebrook. Avoid the area tonight if possible. https://t.co/Vfa9mmAJpM pic.twitter.com/bep7k348s9 Clackamas County, OR (@clackamascounty) September 17, 2020 Lane County State officials on Wednesday said more than 500 homes and other buildings have been destroyed by the Holiday Farm fire, which swept through rural communities along the McKenzie River east of Eugene and Springfield. Crews have so far assessed 770 structures in the burn area of the blaze, whose 260-mile perimeter, roughly the length of Portland to Medford, stretches into Lane and Linn counties. On Thursday, some Level 3 evacuations in the McKenzie Bridge area were lowered to Level 2. Firefighters have contained 10% of the 170,637-acre blaze. Grafe said crews are working on establishing 260 miles of control line, using existing road systems when available. Lake County Fire officials said Thursday is another critical day for firefighters on the Brattain Fire as another red flag warning will be in place from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. The blaze is now about 34,000 acres and is now 30% contained, Grafe said on Thursday afternoon. Paisley, population 270, is among the areas under a mandatory evacuation order. Douglas County The Archie Creek fire east of Roseburg has grown over 2,500 acres to a total of 128,020 acres. It remains 20% contained. Meanwhile, the Douglas County Sheriffs Office on Wednesday night reissued a Level 3 evacuation notice for residents of Little River Road between New Bridge Road and the end of Little River Road, including all side roads between those points. Fire officials said showers and thunderstorms are likely Thursday afternoon and evening. The fire area may also get gusty winds, small hail and heavy rain. Grafe said he remains concerned with the Thielsen fire near Diamond Lake, which has grown nearly 870 acres to a cumulative 8,645 acres. Its still 1% contained. He said that area is tougher to access, and is mainly being handled by hand crews. Jackson County The South Obenchain fire near Medford has grown less than 800 acres. It now covers 32,814 acres and is 25% contained. Josephine County The Slater fire, which burned into Oregon from northern California, now covers 141,403 acres and remains 10% contained. Klamath County Firefighters have increased containment of the 14,473-acre Two Four Two fire at Chiloquin to 29%. Fire officials said theres a slight chance light rain will fall in the fire area Thursday night. My hope is that holds over the next 24 to 48 hours and we can put that one behind us, Grafe said. Lincoln County Some firefighting resources are beginning to be demobilized from the Echo Mountain Complex, which remains 2,552 acres and is now 45% contained, fire officials said Thursday. Crews are continuing to identify and mitigate hazardous trees, focusing on ones that might threaten structures, infrastructure and travel routes, according to fire officials. Authorities have also reduced evacuation levels for some areas to Level 2. The Oregon Department of Transportation has reopened a stretch of Oregon 18 that was previously closed, as well. The highway heads inland from U.S. 101 near Lincoln City. NEWS UPDATES 10:20 a.m.: Numerous air quality monitoring sites run by the Environmental Protection agency in Oregon appeared to be offline Thursday morning, causing some apps and websites to show healthy air where it was in fact still hazardous due to inundation from wildfire smoke. Monitors from The Dalles to Grants Pass to Baker City all showed a result of N/A for current conditions as of 9 a.m. Thursday morning on the agencys website. According to the Apple weather app, the current Air Quality Index in Northeast Portland was 5 with air quality rated as good. The states air quality map showed a different, more accurate, story. Air quality for much of the state is still unhealthy, with the Portland metro area blanketed under hazardous clouds of smoke. 8:55 a.m.: The Oregonian/OregonLive has rounded up ways to seal your home from smoke, rid indoor air and furnishings from the smell, and quickly make your yard more fire resistant. 8:45 a.m. Thursday: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and federal partners have deployed teams to Oregon, FEMA said in a news release Thursday. FEMA also said 1.4 million N-95 masks for emergency responders, shelter operations and health care workers will be shipped from an agency distribution center to Oregon by next week. Wednesday: FEMA announced that those affected by Oregons wildfires can apply for federal disaster assistance. FEMAs individual assistance program is now available to residents of Clackamas, Douglas, Jackson, Klamath, Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Marion counties. Assistance includes grants for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses. To apply for the program, visit DisasterAssistance.gov or call 1-800-621-3362 (FEMA) or TTY 1-800-462-7585 for people with speech and hearing disabilities. -- Jim Ryan jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Kale Williams, Jayati Ramakrishnan Shane Dixon Kavanaugh of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report. Associates of Aleksei Navalny say traces of the nerve agent used to poison the Russian opposition politician were found on a water bottle in the hotel room he was staying in in the Russian city of Tomsk. Navalny, 44, felt unwell while on a plane on his way from Tomsk to Moscow in late August, forcing the airliner to make an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where he was rushed to a hospital. He was later flown to the Charite clinic in Berlin, Germany, where toxicology tests provided "unequivocal evidence" that the gravely ill Kremlin-critic had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Soviet-style Novichok chemical group. Navalny's blog on Instagram said on September 17 that his associates were still in the Xander hotel in Tomsk when news of the politician's illness broke. They immediately rushed to Navalnys vacated and yet-to-be-cleaned room, where they collected any suspicious items they saw, including an opened bottle of mineral water with the brand name that translates as "Holy Spring" and is also referred to as "Saint Spring." The Proekt website on September 17 quoted one of Navalny's associates who said that the bottle was taken to Berlin by one of Navalny's team members, Maria Pevchikh, who is a resident of the United Kingdom. The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on September 17 that it is providing technical assistance to Germany in investigating Navalny's case of poisoning with the nerve agent. In Brussels, the European Parliament demanded tough EU sanctions on Russia over the Navalny poisoning, accusing the Kremlin of trying to assassinate him to silence dissent. Members of the assembly said the poisoning of Navalny was part of a "systemic effort" by President Vladimir Putin's government to stifle opposition. "Political assassinations and poisonings in Russia are systemic instruments of the regime deliberately targeting the opposition," the European Parliament said in a nonbinding resolution, adding that Novichok was "only available to military structures and secret services in Russia." "The attempted assassination of Aleksei Navalny was part of a systemic effort to silence him and other dissident voices, and to deter him and those voices from further exposing serious corruption in the regime and deter political opposition in the country in general." EU diplomats are currently working on a new EU sanctions regime punishing human rights abusers. According to sources RFE/RL have spoken with, work on the framework should be completed by the end of this year. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell earlier this week floated the idea that the sanctions be named after Navalny. Germany has demanded that Russia explain the incident, but Russia has vehemently denied any involvement and has pressed Germany to share the evidence that led to the verdict Navalny was poisoned. Meanwhile, an investigator from Tomsk visited Navalny's Moscow office on September 17, the head of the office told Reuters. Russian investigators are conducting a preliminary probe into the case and want to question two of the foundation's employees, Ilya Pakhomov and Maria Pevchikh, who were with Navalny in Tomsk before he fell ill last month, Ivan Zhdanov said. Navalny has led nationwide protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has been attacked with a dangerous chemical and fallen ill in Russian custody in the past. Among the Kremlin opponents who have been killed or targeted in recent years are investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, former Russian security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, and former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, among others. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by Novichok in the British city of Salisbury in 2018, and British investigators have implicated Russian security agencies. OPCW tests confirmed use of the highly toxic substance. Members of the OPCW agreed in November 2019 to expand the agency's list of banned "Schedule 1" chemicals for the first time to include the Novichok family of nerve agents. That ban went into effect on June 7, 2020. The OPCW was established in 1997 as a technical body to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention. It has played an active role in monitoring the use of banned chemical weapons in the Syrian war, which has made its work highly political. With reporting by Proekt and Reuters The Dakota Access oil pipeline will continue operating at least until the end of the year when a federal court will be ready to rule on a lawsuit demanding that the pipeline be shut down. December 2020 is the earliest time the court will be able to make a decision after reviewing all relevant documentation, Bloomberg reported. Before that, Native American communities who oppose the pipeline will have until October 16 to file a new request to shut it down, then Energy Transfer, the Army Corps Of Engineers, and their lawyers will have until November 20 to respond to the new request. Ultimately, the plaintiffs will have until December 18 for reactions. The Dakota Access has had a complicated history fraught with protests that escalated in clashes with the police a few years ago. The opposition is still strong, and this summer, the opponents scored a victory: a federal judge ordered the pipeline emptied and shut down until an extensive environmental review was conducted to reveal whether opponents claims the pipeline endangered the water source of the Standing Rock tribe were substantiated or not. Energy Transfer, however, appealed this ruling, and the appeals court ruled in favor of the project, allowing the pipeline to continue operating while the review was being conducted. Yet this was not all. The federal judge that ordered the pipeline shut down also revoked an easement for the section that crosses the Missouri Riverthe allegedly endangered riverand the appeals court put the Army Corps in charge of deciding what to do about it. For now, the Army Corps has not decided on the easement problem but launched the environmental review of the Dakota Access and its impact on the Missouri River. Meanwhile, Energy Transfer is making plans to increase the pipelines capacity even as uncertainty about its future persists. According to the company, the DAPLs 570,000-bpd capacity was fully committed to date. It would need to expand that, however, to accommodate newer commitments made in recent open seasons. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: China Wields Billion-Dollar Campaign to Influence Dissidents, Foreigners Beijing pours billions of dollars each year to fund its influence operations worldwide, which seeks to silence dissidents, suppress minority groups, and acquire foreign technology, a new report has found. Chinese diplomats have insisted that united front groupsstate-affiliated organizations in charge of spreading Beijings agenda at home and abroadare benign bureaucratic missions facilitating foreign exchange based on openness, transparency, [and] equality. These groups are overseen by either the United Front Work Department or Chinese government agencies that are ultimately controlled by the department. But the scale of such operations funding appears to contradict Chinese authorities claims. An analysis of 160 recent state budget reports revealed that the central government spends at least $1.4 billion annually on united front-related work, while yearly spending from 31 Chinese provinces and regions surpasses $1.3 billion, according to a report published by the think tank Jamestown Foundation on Sept. 16. The sum of the two surpasses the budget for Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had a budgeted spending of around $2.07 billion in 2019. The reports do not include the amount for the Central United Front Work Department, whose data is not available but likely to add another $400 million to the total, if not more, the think tank report estimated. There is a universal truth known to government bureaucrats in every country: budgets speak louder than words, analyst Ryan Fedasiuk wrote in the report for Jamestown Foundation. The influence efforts focus heavily on suppressing ethnic and religious groups; according to the budget reports, the regime spends more than $1.2 billion each year. Next on Beijings target list are foreigners and overseas Chinese communities, which the regime dedicates $585 million to. One of Chinas united front agencies, the Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Offices (FOCAO), is responsible for spreading overseas propaganda, preaching reunification ideas to residents of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, attracting foreign talents, and censoring information it deems as related to foreign interference. The offices have central and local government branches. The Chinese regime considers Taiwan, a self-ruled island, as part of its territory. It also maintains a tight grip on Hong Kong and Macau, two former European colonies that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 and 1999 respectively, despite promising in handover agreements to respect their autonomy. Some of the FOCAOs budget documents also indicate cooperation with the regimes national security and intelligence departments to supervise and inspect the implementation of foreign affairs discipline and foreign-related confidentiality systems, the report noted, citing a 2019 budget document from southeastern Jiangxi Province. In light of the facts, Id ask this question: If theres really nothing nefarious going on with the united front, why do some provinces feel compelled to classify information about their [united front works] as secret? Fedasiuk wrote in a Sept. 16 tweet about his findings. And why does an admin org occupy so much of the [Chinese government]s resources? He noticed that regional budgets for united front work were nearly as much as their propaganda budgets, which shows how highly the Party values the united front as a tool for both domestic and foreign influence, he wrote. Fedasiuks research is one of a series that the Foundation released on Sept. 16 detailing Chinese united front work in Western countries. Boxes containing face masks are unloaded from a plane in Bournemouth, England, on May 23, 2020. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images) In the United States, a major Chinese front group is the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, one of the most prominent Chinese entities funding lobbying efforts over the past decade, according to one report. The organization has repeatedly denied its ties with the regime and claims to be independent, despite its chairman being the current vice chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body to the Chinese Communist Party. The organization and the Chinese embassy paid $313,200 and $144,000 respectively in the first half of 2020 to a U.S.-based public relations firm BLJ Worldwideone of seven such firms it contractedto compensate for services related to promoting Chinas public image in the media and influencing China-U.S. policy. In the Czech Republic, united front groups organized propaganda efforts involving first hoarding and shipping medical equipment to China, then later sending supplies to countries to burnish its image as a world savior. Known as coronaprop in Europe, the effort has demonstrated the effectiveness of united front tactics, according to Czech-based united front work researcher Filip Jirous. In Sweden, where tensions with China have escalated since Beijings jailing of Swedish citizen and bookseller Gui Minhai, united front efforts have struggled to pick up steam. The Belt and Road Institute in Sweden, which promotes the Nordic country joining the regimes scheme to build infrastructure projects around the world, saw one of its leaders expelled from the local Christian Democrats party after media reports revealed her connections with United Front Work Department officials. Malaika Arora reveals she worked and travelled through her pregnancy, says marriage was never a hindrance Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 03:19:09|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga (3rd L) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd R) in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, Sept. 16, 2020. (Photo by Huo Wen/Xinhua) ULAN BATOR, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga met with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday, both committing to strengthening bilateral cooperation across the board. During the meeting, Battulga asked Wang to convey his sincere greetings to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mongolia attaches great importance to Mongolia-China relations, and since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the two countries have supported and helped each other to fight the epidemic together, Battulga said. He added that Mongolia is willing to deepen cooperation with China in various fields, continuously scale up trade, increase exports of high-quality agricultural and animal husbandry products to China, strengthen border ports and cross-border transportation cooperation, and continue to inject new connotations into the Mongolia-China comprehensive strategic partnership. Wang conveyed President Xi's best wishes to President Battulga. Wang said that China and Mongolia have helped each other and overcome difficulties together, which vividly demonstrates the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind. China appreciates that Mongolia always regards the development of relations with China as a priority in the country's foreign policy, and Mongolia will always be a priority in China's neighborhood diplomacy, Wang said. He noted that the two neighbors should strengthen cooperation in the normalization of epidemic prevention and control to jointly safeguard the health of the people of the two countries, and step up planning for cooperation in various fields during the post-epidemic era to help each other's economic recovery and development. China and Mongolia are permanent neighbors and should be good friends forever, the Chinese senior official said. "This is the general direction we must adhere to." Wang added that the two sides should strengthen political mutual trust, consolidate the political foundation of bilateral relations, and ensure the long-term healthy and stable development of bilateral relations. During his two-day visit on Tuesday and Wednesday, Wang met with Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh. He also held talks with Mongolian Foreign Minister Nyamtseren Enkhtaivan, signed cooperation documents and met the press. The two sides reaffirmed that China and Mongolia will respect each other's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, will not interfere in each other's internal affairs, and will jointly maintain the political foundation of bilateral relations. Enditem Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Fayez al-Sarraj, chairman of the presidential council of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) recognized by the international community, Wednesday announced his intention to hand over to a new executive latest by October BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: Everybody knows that Armenia is pursuing a policy of terrorism at the state level, Azerbaijani MP Tural Ganjaliyev said during the meeting of the Human Rights Committee of the Azerbaijani parliament, Trend reports on Sept. 17. The resettlement of the Armenians from Lebanon to the occupied Azerbaijani territories not only is the violation of international law, but also a crime, the MP said. "I think that we must raise this issue before the international organizations." 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 Mayo man who is studying to become an engineer was told that cannabis would slow him down by Judge Catherine Staines at last week's sitting of Tullamore District Court. Cian Cunniffe, 2, Rockwell, Killala Road, Ballina was found in possession of cannabis at the Aura Leisure Centre, Cloncollig, Tullamore on December 26, 2019, by Garda Fergus Collins. Judge Staines asked the 22-year-old student if he had stopped taking cannabis. He said he had. She told him it was in the interests of his health to do so and also advised him that cannabis would de-motivate him and slow him down. If he wanted to be an engineer then it could interfere with his studies, she added. Judge Staines struck out the offences against him but warned him not to come back before her again. The national security advisers of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (Brics) grouping on Thursday discussed a draft anti-terrorism strategy that is expected to be approved at an upcoming summit. The five NSAs, who joined a virtual meeting hosted by Russia, also discussed challenges and threats to global, regional and national security. Contrary to speculation, there were no bilateral discussions by the Indian and Chinese NSAs on the margins of the meeting against the backdrop of the border standoff. This was a virtual meeting and bilateral talks are not possible in this format, external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a weekly news briefing. A statement issued by the Russian side after the meeting said the five countries had prepared a draft anti-terrorism strategy that will be submitted for approval during the upcoming Brics summit. The draft strategy reflects fundamental aspects of the Brics states, such as respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs, adherence to international law and recognition of the UNs central role in security matters, the statement said. Also read: Ball in Beijings court: MEA on parleys The NSAs also discussed biological security cooperation and information and communications technology security, and there was a proposal to continue work on a system for countering security threats in the sphere of information. The participants expressed concern over the escalation of tensions around Iran, Venezuela and Syria, according to the Russian statement. It added that the Brics states are cooperating within the framework of building a multi-polar system based on justice and equality. There was no official word from the Indian side on the outcomes of the meeting, which was chaired by Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russias security council, and joined by Indian NSA Ajit Doval, Chinese NSA Yang Jiechi, Brazils M Innosencio, and South Africas minister of state security Ayanda Dlodlo. The Russian side also criticised the deployment of weapons in space by the US and the use of outer space for military operations. It also proposed the creation of new mechanisms in the field of countering epidemiological threats and to conduct expert consultations on bio-safety in the Brics format. The five countries agreed to work on deepening coordination at key international organisations and forums, especially the UN. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.17 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan amounted to $418.1 million over the first seven months of 2020, compared to $509.08 million during the same period of 2019, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Statistics Committee. The share of Kyrgyzstan in the total value of Kazakhstans trade turnover stood at 0.85 percent during the reporting period compared to 0.93 percent during the same period of 2019 indicating it was nearly flat year-on-year. Kazakhstans export to Kyrgyzstan amounted to $288.5 million over the period from January through July 2020, compared to $345.06 million during the same period of 2019 Kyrgyzstans share in the total volume of Kazakhstans export amounted to 1.007 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 1.04 percent during the same period of 2019. In turn, Kazakhstans imports from Kyrgyzstan amounted to nearly $129.5 million over the reporting period, compared to $164.02 million during the same period of 2019. Kyrgyzstans share in the total volume of Kazakhstans import amounted to 0.6 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 0.8 percent during the same period of 2019. The total volume of Kazakhstans trade turnover amounted to $48.7 billion over the period from Jan. through July 2020 which indicates a decrease from $54.5 billion during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export amounted to $28.6 billion during the reporting period of 2020 ($33.03 billion in the same period of 2019), whereas imports amounted to $20.1 billion ($21.5 billion in 2019). During the reporting period, main articles of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan trade turnover were food products, agricultural products, as well as products of the chemical industry. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh Dr Reddys, one of Indias top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said A Russian medical worker adminsters a shot of Russia's experimental Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Moscow, Russia. Russian health authorities have launched advanced trials of the vaccine among 40,000 volunteers, a randomized, placebo-controlled study. (AP) Moscow: Russias sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine to Indian drug company Dr Reddys Laboratories, the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad. The deal for its Sputnik-V vaccine candidate comes after the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to produce 300 million doses of the shot in India, also a major consumer of Russian oil and arms. The agreement brings the total number of doses Russia has so far announced that it will supply abroad to just over 200 million - half to Latin America and half to India. RDIF has said it has received requests totalling 1 billion doses. Deliveries to India, which has a population of more than 1.3 billion, could begin in late 2020, RDIF said, adding this was subject to the completion of trials and Sputnik-Vs registration by regulatory authorities in India. Phase III trials, involving at least 40,000 people, are ongoing in Russia. Initial results are expected in October or November, RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev has said. Dr Reddys, one of Indias top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said. Following the news, Dr Reddys shares rallied to close 4.18% higher in India on Wednesday. The Indian trials could start as early as next month, Dmitriev told Reuters, adding trial results could be followed soon after by domestic regulatory approval of Sputnik-V for mass use in India. India said last week it was considering granting an emergency authorisation for a coronavirus vaccine, particularly for the elderly and people in high-risk workplaces. EMERGENCY USE Russia was the first country to grant regulatory approval for a novel coronavirus vaccine, and did so before large-scale trials were complete, stirring concern among scientists and doctors about the safety and efficacy of the shot. Several countries are now considering adopting emergency use authorisation measures that would fast-track approval of a vaccine in a similar way, however. We expect emergency use authorisation for Sputnik-V vaccine in major markets, Dmitriev said. Results of early-stage clinical trials of the Russian shot, which were published in international medical journal The Lancet earlier this month, showed promise, G V Prasad, co-chairman of Dr Reddys, was cited in the RDIF statement as saying. Sputnik-V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID-19 in India, he said. There was no detail about the price of Sputnik-V, but RDIF has said previously it was not aiming to make a profit, just to cover costs. In a press briefing late on Tuesday, Balram Bhargava, who heads Indias clinical research agency, the Indian Council of Medical Research, said high-level talks between India and Russia around the vaccine had been ongoing. There is a high-level committee of the government of India for vaccines that are in dialogue with the Russians, he said, adding Russia had a good track record in vaccine development and the early-stage overseas trials of Sputnik-V had been promising. It was not immediately clear whether those talks had been instrumental in the deal between RDIF and Dr Reddys. The agreement comes as Indias coronavirus cases surged past five million on Wednesday, piling pressure on hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they need to treat tens of thousands of critically ill patients. This is Dr Reddys first foray into a coronavirus vaccine. It has struck a licensing deal with Gilead Sciences Inc to make and sell COVID-19 treatment remdesivir in 127 countries, including India; launched its generic version of remdesivir under the brand name Redyx, and has also tied up with Fujifilm Holdings Corp to launch Fujifilms anti-flu drug Avigan (favipiravir) in India as a COVID-19 treatment. Medicine containing chlorine dioxide is seen at the Farmacia Boliviana, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Cochabamba, Bolivia, July 21, 2020. REUTERS/Danilo Balderrama Dozens of people are being hospitalised in Bolivia after taking Miracle Mineral Solution, a type of bleach, to ward off COVID-19. A Business Insider investigation has identified the network of alternative medicine advocates promoting the substance, led by a self-proclaimed expert with no medical qualification. Despite an absence of proof, they have persuaded many desperate Bolivians that taking the bleach is effective. The country's lawmakers despite warnings are in the process of making the substance an official COVID-19 treatment. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Dozens of Bolivians are falling ill, and at least one is said to have died, after drinking a toxic bleach endorsed by the country's lawmakers as a COVID-19 treatment, a Business Insider investigation has found. In August, the Latin American country's lawmakers passed a bill seeking to legalize chlorine dioxide, a toxic substance used as an industrial bleach, as a COVID-19 treatment. Only the country's president is preventing it from being made law. Many advocates also know the substance as Miracle Mineral Solution, or MMS. The development is one of the most startling in the spread of medical misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. In July there were reports of three people poisoned by the substance in El Alto, and 10 in the city of Cochabamba. In the city of Trinidad, doctors believe a woman's death was caused by consuming the bleach. There are no official figures for how many people are affected, but activists in the country have told Business Insider it is likely in the thousands. Business Insider has identified the network of alternative medicine advocates responsible for promoting the substance in Bolivia, who Bolivian lawmakers pushing to legalize the substance have consulted as experts. They include Andreas Kalcker, a German man with no medical qualifications who has long promoted chlorine dioxide as a curative substance. Story continues He has worked with a group of Latin American doctors called COMUSAV, who have treated people using the toxic bleach in the east of the city, and whose activities have been condemned by an influential Spanish medical regulatory body. Both Kalcker and COMUSAV have claimed that their research proves that the bleach is effective as a COVID-19 treatment in statements. Read the original article on Business Insider Ms. Barnett and Ms. Butler join Board of Directors members Rachel Roff, Founder and CEO of Urban Skin Rx, Steven Skoler, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Friend Skoler & Co., and Cheryl Moss, Director of Friend Skoler & Co. Friend Skoler & Co., an investment firm focused on leading brands in the smaller end of the middle market, recently made an investment to support the rapid growth of the company. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Urban Skin Rx was founded in 2010 and quickly became a revolutionary force in the industry by advocating for accessible clinical skincare, including addressing the concerns of women with melanin-rich skin tones. "Rachel and the Urban Skin Rx team care deeply about their consumer. From building self-confidence through skincare to actively advocating for under-voiced communities, they had equity and inclusion at the center of their work long before these were trending topics," said Deisha Barnett. "I'm inspired by the team's vision and the example they are setting in the beauty industry. Together, we will focus on growing retail and direct-to-consumer channels and supporting the longevity of Urban Skin Rx's overall brand vision." Melissa Butler brings her perspective as a fellow beauty brand founder, commenting, "I'm a big fan of companies that see the market as it should be and not as it is. Urban Skin Rx helped revolutionize skincare for people of color when no one else dared to invest in or market to Black and Brown women. I'm confident in the continued growth of the brand because I know that customer satisfaction and product efficacy is at the core of what they do incredibly well." "In founding Urban Skin Rx, my goal was to bring more inclusivity to the skincare industry, especially for the consumer with melanin-rich skin. This responsibility not only applies to creating innovative formulas, but also to being a firm advocate and ally for the customers we serve and the issues they face every day," notes Founder and CEO, Rachel Roff. "I'm thrilled to welcome Deisha and Melissa, who are each tremendously talented and bring executive experience to our company. Throughout this brand's trajectory, our mission has remained the same, but with their expertise I know we can support our customers even further." Over the last decade, Ms. Roff and her growing team have created a best-selling line of clinical skincare products that has attracted a loyal following by offering innovative, high-quality formulas and exceptional customer service. Today, Urban Skin Rx products are available online at www.urbanskinrx.com , Dermstore.com, QVC.com, and HSN.com, and at over 5,000 retail locations across the U.S., including Target, Ulta, and CVS. The company also recently achieved its first international retail presence with distribution in Nigeria. About Urban Skin Rx Urban Skin Rx was founded in Charlotte, NC in 2010 to develop clinical skincare products that address the needs of consumers with melanin-rich skin tones. Urban Skin Rx products deliver blends of high-strength ingredients formulated to address the most common skincare concerns of women of color, including improving the appearance of hyperpigmentation and uneven skin tone. Urban Skin Rx products are sold at www.urbanskinrx.com and at over 5,000 retail locations across the U.S. For more information on Urban Skin Rx, please visit www.urbanskinrx.com . For press inquiries, please contact Rebecca Leiby, mml PR at [email protected] . SOURCE Urban Skin Rx Related Links https://urbanskinrx.com/ You think only with your eyes, so you are easy to fool! screengrab/netflix Youd be lying if you didnt get motivated to learn Kung Fu after watching The Karate Kid. More than the martial art form, it was the desire to train under a teacher like Jackie Chan that piqued our interest in Kung Fu back in 2010. Yes, this Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan starrer was a remake of the original one that revolved around Daniel San, Mr Miyagi and the infamous Crane Technique but it was just as brilliant as the original, if not more. twitter This movie has a special place in our hearts more because it became an integral part of our life, courtesy Set Max. If you rack your brains, youd recall that it wasnt just Sooryavansham that was a regular occurrence on this channel, watching The Karate Kid in Hindi was how we spent the weekend back in the day. (Here's a clip to jog your memories:) 10 years have gone by, Jaden Smith is a grown up man and a rapper now but we still cant help but think fondly of this film. Interestingly, with Cobra Kai premiering on an OTT platform, its vital that we rewatch it as this series serves as a sequel to The Karate Kid Franchise. To celebrate this phenomenal film, lets take a look at why this movie is so dear to many of us: The big move from the US to China for Dre and his mother Sherry gives us a bittersweet feeling. screengrab The film opens to Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) in a somber mood, trying to come to terms with the fact that he has to leave behind his life in the USA and move to China and start afresh as his mother Sherry (Taraji P Henson), has been transferred by her company. He is soaking in his old apartment one last time. The contrasting feelings of him and his mother are so typical for a lot of us as our parents are always trying to highlight the positive side of every situation in life even though they know that we are hating on 'new changes'. Sherry is looking forward to learning basic Mandarin/Chinese to help her get by in the new country. Dre, on the other hand. is cynical and sceptical of what is about to happen. netflix Much to Dres dismay, things went south right from the start. He becomes a victim of bullying on his very first day and we all knew that things are only going to get worse. netflix Bullying at school and college isnt uncommon, regardless of the country. While the optimistic part of our head wants to believe that things are changing for the better, it is not something that can be taken lightly. If we talk about this movie, this forms the main plot of the film. Dres fear makes him want to learn Kung Fu so that he can defend himself from his bullies who are more powerful physically than he is. official poster The only saving grace among all this is his friendship with Meiying. Even though it started on a promising note, even their friendship had to undergo testing times. While Dre resents his life, circumstances led him towards Mr Han who eventually becomes his mentor. This teacher-student duo goes on the path of self-discovery during the course of their friendship. netflix Dont know about you all, but the way Jackie Chan comes to the rescue of Dre, when he is chased by Cheng and his gang still gives me goosebumps. After much coaxing from Dre, Mr Han decides to take him under his wing and teach him the true art of Kung Fu unlike Chengs teacher Mr Li who teaches his students to show no mercy to their enemies. netflix The training begins with moves inspired from routine life which irks Dre. He envisioned heavy punches and power but Mr Han taught him that to master real Kung Fu, it takes serenity and maturity. The trip to a Taoist Temple in the Wudang Mountains, Cobra move and drinking the tastiest water from an ancient Taoist well, this part of the movie is so beautiful that one can never get bored of watching it over and over again. gfycat Personally, this is the best part of the movie and Id be lying if I say that I didnt try the cobra move several times. Dre and Mr Hans trip to the temple included their encounter with a woman at the top of a cliff, hypnotising a cobra and making it reflect her moves. Dre is entranced by this scene and just like us. Every. Single. Time. And then comes D-Day, the Kung Fu tournament that acted as a decider of whether Dre will overcome his fear or will always live in hiding, running away from his bullies. netflix Despite being highly predictable, the climax of the film is so inspiring to watch. Not only did this little boy from the USA learn martial arts, he even aced it because of his determination and perseverance. The best part is that Cheng respected Dre's achievement and accepted his defeat with dignity. To the extent that he even presented the trophy to his nemesis with a big smile on his face. tumblr Mr Lis students bow down, accept Mr Han as their new master and leave him behind. Life will knock you down. You can choose whether to get back up or not. netflix This is one of the best lines from the movie mouthed by Jackie Chan aka Mr Han. This movie had so many underlying lessons to teach but the best one comes out from this very line. Life is unpredictable and full of setbacks. It might not go according to plan. As unfair as it may seem, what matters is the way you respond to a situation. netflix The key to success is to never give up no matter how many times you get knocked down. Being resilient towards whatever comes your way is perhaps the most important thing in life. And as they say, whatever doesnt kill you makes you stronger! With more hotels joining, quarantine facilities may become cosier, Photo: Norfolk Hotel Nguyen The Khai, CEO of Perfect Tour Service Co., Ltd. flew back from the United States in late July with nearly 300 other people and was taken to an isolation ward in Ninh Hoa town of Khanh Hoa province. On his personal Facebook account, Khai described the facility as spacious and airy, but with too many people in one room, which could raise the risk of cross-contamination. Khai proposed that while resort facilities are short of tourists, the insertion of guests here ensures both safety and helps hotels to get more revenue during the pandemic. Many of the 4-star resorts can charge VND1 million ($43) per night, and people with higher needs could go to a more high-end resort for VND3-4 million ($130-170) a night. Many people who shared a room with me during the quarantine were willing to pay to stay in more comfortable places, said Khai. Two months later, Vietnam was set to organise fee-based isolations at select hotels and resorts. Of the more than 200 registered hotels and establishments across the country, eight 3- to 5-star hotels have been selected by Ho Chi Minh City as quarantine places for foreign experts and investors entering Vietnam via Tan Son Nhat International Airport. In Hanoi, hotels in the 3- to 5-star segment, such as Metropole Hanoi, InterContinental West Lake, Crowne Plaza, and Muong Thanh Grand Hanoi, are also on the list of quarantine points with fees for professionals, highly-skilled foreign employees, and diplomats. This paid isolation is purely voluntary and comes from the need of businesses wishing to have a place with good facilities and services, helping professionals feel comfortable during their 14 days. Starting in September, Vietnam has decided to charge quarantine fees for immigrants. This has opened up new opportunities for many hotels and resorts, especially in the context that most hotels lack guests and have to offer discounts of up to 70-80 per cent to keep their rooms occupied. Quarantine at hotels is not so common in countries around the world. In Southeast Asia, Thailand is one of the countries that has long applied this model to support Thais returning from abroad, in addition to the quarantine facilities of the medical and military sectors. Thailands government has agreed to allow a small number of 5-star hotels to provide quarantine services to those wishing to pay with the desire to enjoy better services. From a business perspective, these services are generating good revenue and are expected to grow even more as the number of entries increases in the near future. In Vietnam, many hotels are looking to become a place to serve foreign guests and have prepared the necessary conditions as required. Nguyen Minh Luan, assistant general manager of Norfolk Hotel shared, Upon receiving the news from the authority, Norfolk Hotel has quickly adjusted its function, and worked with the departments to receive foreign experts. At the moment, it is our pleasure to operate under the governments guidance, and start to welcome guests. Dao Xuan Thinh, owner of Le Champ Tu Le Resort in the northern province of Yen Bai confirmed that, instead of receiving a small number of visitors every week at a cost just enough to maintain operations, his resort is ready to welcome more foreign visitors who enter Vietnam for business. However, the opportunities for us are not many because there are very few foreign experts working in mountainous localities, Thinh said. Meanwhile, some hotels also reported that they are not ready to receive guests in isolation. The representative of the Hotel des Arts Saigon told VIR that they did not register as a quarantine place because the hotel has no experience isolations need. Vietnam is once again showing positive signs as no new cases have been detected in the community for more than a week, and many famous tourist attractions are returning to normalcy. Good pandemic control will create a premise for Vietnam to welcome many foreign experts and investors and hotels can contribute to reducing the workload of health and state-owned segregation facilities, while getting some income. 5 Seconds Of Summer frontman Luke Hemmings, 24, catapulted to global stardom after launching his pop rock group almost one decade ago in Australia. But many wouldn't know there is another Hemmings brother busy carving out his own successful career Down Under. Luke's little-known brother Jack quit his job as a qualified builder several months to start his own clothing line, a streetwear label called Hemm. Scroll down for video EXCLUSIVE Inside the private life of 5SOS star Luke Hemming's little-known brother Jack. Pictured: Brothers Ben, Jack and Luke Hemmings 'Eventually I decided to have a crack at it [the fashion label] and it's been going well. It's mainly for a female audience, but we have the intention of going into the male space as well,' Jack told Daily Mail Australia. He co-founded the project in 2019 with his partner Celeste Rochele - who he also works with on social media content via her production company, Lens Loop. Creative path: Luke's little-known brother Jack quit his job as a qualified builder several months to start his own clothing line, a streetwear label called Hemm Social media star: With more than 300k followers on Instagram, Jack says part of his growing success on the platform has been due to his association with famous brother, Luke Pays to be a Hemmings! Jack has been fortunate enough to land sponsored posts and collaborations with well-known brands thanks to Luke's large following With more than 300k followers on Instagram, Jack says part of his growing success as a social media star has been due to his association with famous brother. Jack has been fortunate enough to land sponsored posts and collaborations with well-known brands thanks to Luke's large following. Jack documents his everyday life on the app, which includes his laid back beachside lifestyle, foodie outings and his passion for CrossFit. Keeping fit: Jack documents his everyday life on Instagram, which includes his laid back beachside lifestyle, foodie outings and his passion for CrossFit While he jokes his 'commitment level isn't there yet' to enter a CrossFit competition, he says his mates are close to convincing him to sign up for one soon. Living an active lifestyle which includes surfing, skateboarding and CrossFit, Jack recently installed an infrared sauna from Luxo Living inside his Sydney home to help decrease muscle soreness and increase recovery from his strength-training sessions. 'It's been awesome! The sauna is super quick and easy to set up and use, and has saved me heaps of money that I would have spent going to another facility that has one,' he said. Recovery mode: Jack recently installed an infrared sauna from Luxo Living at his Sydney home to help with muscle soreness from his CrossFit training 'Whenever I see him it's like brothers hanging out': While Luke has been in the limelight for almost a decade, thanks to 5SOS, Jack said he's remained grounded. Pictured: Brothers Ben, Luke and Jack Hemmings Jack introduced his famous brother Luke to the guitar when he was in school, and his younger sibling's obsession with the instrument quickly led him to global acclaim. While Luke has been in the limelight for almost a decade thanks to 5SOS, Jack said he often doesn't register how successful he is. 'Whenever I see him it's like brothers hanging out, but it really hits home when I see some big statistic or see one of his live shows, then it's like "woah". But when I call, text or see him, it's just normal,' he explained. Blast from the past: Australian pop rockers 5 Seconds Of Summer first burst onto the music scene as fresh-faced teens back in 2011. Pictured L to R: Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings, Ashton Irwin and Calum Hood Australian pop rockers 5 Seconds Of Summer first burst onto the music scene as fresh-faced teens back in 2011. They have since released four studio albums, with their third album 'Youngblood' earning them the title of the first Australian act with three number-one albums in the US by topping the Billboard 200 chart. Their fourth album 'Calm' was released in March, 2020. The Don't Stop hit-makers reside in the US. A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science is changing the way that biological oceanographers view the swimming and sinking behaviors of open ocean, or pelagic, snails. Pteropods and heteropods are small marine snails, most measuring on the order of millimeters to centimeters, that are found throughout the world's ocean from the surface to depths of 3000 feet (1000 meters). Although small in size, these organisms play a vital role in the ocean's food web and biogeochemical cycles, as well as the global carbon cycle. Led by Ferhat Karakas, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of South Florida (USF), the study was co-authored by Jordan Wingate, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) intern at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS); Leocadio Blanco-Bercial and Amy Maas, both associate scientists at BIOS; and David Murphy an assistant professor at USF. The study looked at the movements, or swimming kinematics, of nine species of warm water pelagic snails found in the waters off Bermuda: seven thecosome pteropods (which may have coiled, elongated, or globular shells), one gymnosome pteropod (which loses its juvenile shell during development), and one heteropod (which has a spiral shell). Pteropods, perhaps the most well-known among the pelagic snails, are often referred to as "sea butterflies," as their snail foot has evolved into a pair of wing-like appendages that appear to "flap" as they move through the water. Historically, study of these delicate organisms has been difficult, as they cannot be grown and maintained in a laboratory environment. However, the proximity of BIOS to the open ocean allowed living organisms to be collected and transported back to shore in under than one hour. Data collection began immediately upon return and most experiments were completed within one day of collection. Using a low magnification, high speed 3-D photography system, the research team was able to study the swimming behaviors of the snails, developing detailed models showing their swimming paths (trajectories) through the water column, swimming speeds, "flapping" rates of their appendages, and even the speeds at which they sank and how their shells were oriented as they did so. "While different large-scale swimming patterns were observed, all species exhibited small-scale sawtooth-shaped swimming trajectories caused by reciprocal appendage flapping," Blanco Bercial said. The researchers then analyzed zooplankton samples collected from the surface to 3000 feet (1000 meters) with a MOCNESS net system (an array of long, tapered nets and sensors towed behind a research vessel) to determine the abundance and distribution of these organisms off Bermuda. When combined with molecular data and imaging using ZooScan, a device used to make digital images of zooplankton, the team was also able to relate swimming behaviors to night time and day time vertical distributions. Larger species sank down and swam up much faster and could be active at much greater depths, whereas the slower and smaller species were limited to shallower depths. This indicates that size does play a role in the vertical structure of habitat, as well as in predator-prey interactions. "This project combined the expertise of engineers, molecular biologists, and ecologists, as well as a variety of different technologies, to look at the movement, ecology, and distribution of this beautiful group of organisms," Maas said. "This type of transdisciplinary collaboration doesn't happen very often and it allowed us to learn about an aspect of ocean science that has previously been understudied." Adding to the uniqueness of this investigation is the role of the study's second author, Jordan Wingate, who was an NSF REU intern at BIOS in 2018 while attending Georgia Military College. During the course of her three-month internship, Wingate worked with Maas on a project that became the basis for this paper, eventually presenting the results of their research at the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, California. "I feel so accomplished to be a published author in a peer-reviewed scientific journal as an undergraduate student," said Wingate, who will graduate from the University of West Florida in the fall of 2021 with a bachelor's degree in marine biology. "I was very fortunate to be able to see this project through from start to finish and I'm grateful to Amy for her mentorship and guidance as I worked through the challenges of learning about pteropods, new computer programming languages, and the data analysis skills required to get this study published." ### The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences is an independent U.S. not-for-profit marine research and educational organization with 501(c)(3) status and a Bermuda Registered Charity (#116). Visit us in Bermuda or at http://www.bios.edu The Uganda military is using aircraft and foot patrols to search for over 200 inmates who escaped from a prison in north-east Uganda, they said Thursday. A total of 219 inmates escaped from the prison near the remote town of Moroto, about 500 kilometres from the capital Kampala, on Wednesday, breaking into an armoury and seizing guns, the area's army spokesman Peter Mugisha told dpa. A soldier and three escapees died in an exchange of fire, and another seven have been rearrested, Mugisha said. "We lost one of our soldiers when these guys fired back during the operation. We are pursuing them and we are using a helicopter to guide the foot troops," Mugisha 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 Kenneth Clark, 1969. Courtesy Getty Images. The impact that Civilisation had on American cultural life when it first premiered on television in the United States in 1970 was profound and provided Americans with a perspective on our rich shared Western cultural tradition an impact and a message still meaningful today. Connecticut-based independent filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton of 217 Films announce the September 30, 2020 release date of their new film project, Civilisation and America their eighth in 15 years and their seventh essay in film highlighting the impact that Lord Kenneth Clarks epic thirteen-part television series "Civilisation" had on America and Americans in 1970 when it premiered on public television and as we struggled with our national conscience during the Vietnam War. Civilisation and America will be available via digital streaming on Vimeo on September 30, 2020 and through a separate announcement. Meanwhile, these Vimeo links provide previews as excerpts from the film: https://vimeo.com/457447081 https://vimeo.com/457488569 https://vimeo.com/457924566 Were happy to announce that renowned British author and Clark biographer James Stourton appears in our film, said Michael Maglaras, the films writer and director. Weve also secured the important cooperation of the BBC, and as a result this film will include significant segments from Clarks original 'Civilisation' footage. To view a Directors Statement by Michael Maglaras, please follow this link: https://two17films.blogspot.com/2020/09/civilisation-and-america-directors.html The film was shot in America and the United Kingdom. Im delighted to be participating in this new film about Kenneth Clarks 'Civilisation', said James Stourton, author of "Kenneth Clark: Life Art and Civilisation"...the definitive biography of Lord Clark. Michael has chosen to make a film on the American experience with this incredible documentary series. The impact that 'Civilisation' had on American cultural life when it was first premiered on television in the United States in 1970 was profound and provided Americans with a perspective on our rich shared Western cultural tradition an impact and a message still meaningful today about the value of our collective cultural DNA. "Civilisation", produced by the BBC, had its first United States screening at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1969, thanks to the vision of its then director J. Carter Brown, and was quickly taken up as one of the first important television programs of what was then the new Public Broadcasting Service. Fifty years later, and with an America facing new political and social challenges, Lord Kenneth Clarks thirteen hours of "Civilisation" reminds us not only of the permanence of art and the permanent value of the human spirit in its creation, but also of the value of institutions and Clarks belief that society must be made to work. Also featuring interviews with Professor Michael Murray, whose life was greatly affected by viewing "Civilisation" at the age of 21 and by the series brilliant writing, camera work, and innovative use of music. Using archival footage of an America struggling with itself during the height of the Vietnam War and with commentary by Sir David Attenborough... Civilisation and America will remind us yet again of the value of the arts in American society and in the lives of American citizens. For more information: 217 Films Website: http://www.two17films.com 217 Films Blog: http://www.two17films.blogspot.com The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 933 new coronavirus cases Thursday, raising the statewide total to 147,923. The number of tests administered within the last week has seen a total 5,700 positive results. Health officials remain concerned over the increase in number of cases amongst younger adults, specifically those 19 to 24 years old. This number has overshadowed those in groups of 50 and 64 years old as well as those older than 65. Due to this, state officials continue to stress the importance of students returning to college campus to practice social distancing and to avoid large gatherings. We know that congregation, especially in college and university settings, yields increased case counts. The mitigation efforts in place now are essential to flattening the curve and saving lives, states Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine. Wearing a mask, practicing social distancing, and following the requirements set forth in the orders for bars and restaurants, gatherings, and telework will keep our case counts low. Together, as Pennsylvanians, all of our efforts are designed to support our communities to ensure that cases of COVID-19 remain low. Below are the regions that saw the most significant increases among 19 to 24 year-olds: NC: Approximately 7 percent of cases in April to nearly 71 percent as of September. SE: Approximately 4 percent of cases in April to nearly 32 percent as of September. NE: Approximately 6 percent of cases in April to nearly 39 percent as of September. SW: Approximately 5 percent of cases in April to nearly 29 percent as of September. NW: Approximately 7 percent of cases in April to nearly 20 percent as of September. SC: Approximately 7 percent of cases in April to nearly 17 percent as of September. The total number of deaths across the state has risen by 10, increasing from 7,903 to 7,913. Most of the cases which have occurred were that of those aged 65 or older. There are currently 225 cases of those who tested positive in their viral antigen test. The number of patients who tested negative for the virus remains at around 1.7 million. The Department of Health has calculated that 10,251 of cases are among health care workers. The age breakdown of those who have tested positive for the coronavirus is as follows: TORONTO - Terry Ritchie, who splits his time between Calgary and Phoenix, Ariz., and his son, a WestJet pilot, often find themselves facing a dilemma: Should they pony up fees to transfer some money from their U.S. accounts to Canada, or be patient and use a slower, more complicated process that costs less. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Canadian dollar coins, or Loonies, are displayed on a map of North America in Montreal, Jan. 9, 2014. When sending money across the border to the U.S. it comes down to a trade-off between cost and convenience. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson TORONTO - Terry Ritchie, who splits his time between Calgary and Phoenix, Ariz., and his son, a WestJet pilot, often find themselves facing a dilemma: Should they pony up fees to transfer some money from their U.S. accounts to Canada, or be patient and use a slower, more complicated process that costs less. "(Cross-border transfers) come up an awful lot," says Ritchie, partner at Cardinal Point Capital Management Inc., which specializes in cross-border wealth management and financial planning. For clients, common issues range from accepting payments for U.S. work contracts, sending money to relatives, or making payment on their snowbird properties. Many people who choose to send money from their bank accounts to the U.S. dont realize how the costs can add up, says Mahima Poddar, senior vice-president of strategy and digital banking at Equitable Bank. "When we looked at international money transfers, that is one area where we found that there was quite a bit of mark-up fees, lack of transparency, and other inconveniences. It takes multiple days to get to the money. In some cases, your only option is to go to a branch to set up a wire transfer which costs like $25," Poddar says. Ritchie says there are two general options when it comes to sending money to the U.S. that comes down to a trade-off between cost and convenience. The "retail" route offers fast, easy transfers through traditional banks, but can be a bit more expensive, while the "wholesale" route, where people can use a middleman service, is cheaper, but takes longer. Canadian banks with U.S. affiliates such as RBC Bank, N.A., TD Bank, N.A., and BMO Harris usually allow Canadians to open accounts without U.S. addresses or social security numbers, says Ritchie. To do so, a Canadian will need to turn in an Internal Revenue Service Form, W-8BEN. Sending money this way means you, the account holder, can access money more quickly and use online banking, says Ritchie, even if the exchange rates do take a bite. Having a U.S. account also means that relatives down south can send peer-to-peer e-transfers including common options like Venmo, PayPals Xoom or banking app Zelle. To get a better deal on a larger sum, Ritchie instead suggests third parties like Knightsbridge Foreign Exchange Toronto or OFX. Some banks allow users to add intermediaries as a bill payee in their online banking to facilitate transfers. These services can generally take longer, unless the user pays extra for a wire service, Ritchie says. EQ Bank, which uses an intermediary called TransferWise, doesnt require the Canadian account holder to have a U.S. bank account. Poddar says it works like an e-transfer service, but the recipient can be in another country. EQ Bank expanded its international money transfer services earlier this year, after its research found that many people did not realize that in addition to paying a fee for the transfer itself they were also paying for higher exchange rates, or that the recipient bank was taking a cut. EQ is not the only bank trying to woo customers seeking international transfer options. TD Bank announced a new service, Visa Direct, at the end of 2019 to help Canadians move their money between their Canadian and U.S. accounts. 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 role of banks is key, since showing up with a large wad of cash on its own isn't enough to get you through the door for many foreign exchange services, due to anti-money-laundering laws, Ritchie says. Anyone moving large sums of money should be prepared to provide extra information, such as a passport, as well as official bank account details, Ritchie says. Unfortunately, the proliferation of international transfer services and apps also means consumers must be more discerning when it comes to picking a product. Poddar encourages people to ask how much of their money will appear in the recipient bank account after all the fees and foreign exchange charges are added together. "I think it really brings to life like how much of a cost difference there really is once you include the exchange rate impact," says Poddar. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. Companies in this story: (TSX:EQB) No tricks at this Ohio house on Halloween just treats. For everyone. Seeking a fun activity to do with his 6-year-old daughter during the coronavirus pandemic, Halloween-obsessed Andrew Beattie of Cincinnati began looking around the house for ways to keep the spooky holiday alive for kids in his neighborhood this year. We took a tube from an Amazon package and got out the spray paint and the duct tape, Beattie told TODAY Parents. The end result was a 6-foot candy chute that Beattie affixed to the handrail of his porch and shared in a Facebook post. This will be a completely touch-free experience for trick or treaters, the post reads. There will be a sign at the bottom of the tube showing them where to hold their bags and buckets so the candy can drop right in. Within hours, Beatties candy chute idea went viral. This was just my daughter and I doing something cool and the next thing I know, I have people a few hours later saying, You have 300 shares! he said. Andrew Beattie shares his excitement for Halloween with his 6-year-old daughter. (Courtesy of Andrew Beattie) The Facebook post, which has been shared more than 80,000 times, has garnered more than 9,000 comments from across the country. Theyve been mostly supportive, Beattie said. I love that its taken off. I tried to respond to them all at first, but its taken on a life of its own. Related: Trick-or-treating may look different and many large events are being canceled but there are plenty of safe, creative ideas in the works. What began as a quick COVID craft also solved a persistent porch predicament. Beattie said he has always known the concrete steps in front of his home presented an accessibility obstacle for trick-or-treaters, but the coronavirus pandemic motivated him to find a solution. We knew we needed to come up with something different this year, Beattie said. People in wheelchairs or people with baby strollers whatever the case may be. Different people have different capabilities with their mobility (and) we don't want this to be difficult. Story continues Andrew Beattie decorates his porch in Cincinnati, Ohio, every year for Halloween and dresses up to hand out candy for trick-or-treaters. (Courtesy of Andrew Beattie) Beatties love for Halloween has been a lifelong pursuit, and it's one he now shares with his daughter. Ive grown up having a little bit of a passion for horror movies, special effects and haunted houses, he said, adding that a spare room in their home is so dedicated to the holiday that it resembles a Halloween store. Having a little girl, Ive tried to change it up over the years, so you might walk in and see a little girl dancing to Kidz Bop with a Freddy Krueger mask. Related: Looking for masks that can do double duty as a costume AND protection? These masks are so cute it's spooky. While several Facebook users have criticized Beatties social share, he remains optimistic. This is a holiday built around covering your face and staying away from strangers, he said. Its a great opportunity to get back to some sort of mental wellness. Take care of each other and yourselves and look for ways to be part of your community again. Watch TODAY All Day! Get the best news, information and inspiration from TODAY, all day long. Related video: Credit: Duncan Andison/Shutterstock A no-deal Brexit could cost up to 5,000 jobs in Ireland's fisheries, but it's not just access to the UK's coastal waters that the country is hoping to hold on to in any post-Brexit arrangement. Perhaps more important to Ireland is the UK's motorway network. Every year, more than 150,000 trucks transport over 3 million tons of freight to and from Ireland to the rest of the single market across the UK land bridge. One route involves goods being shipped from Dublin to Holyhead by ferry and then by road to Dover before being shipped to Calais. It's difficult to overestimate the importance of this land bridge for Ireland. A 2017 study found that 40% of Ireland's exports to the EU reached the continent via the UK's roads, with an estimated value of 18.2 billion (16.3 billion). Journey times to the EU market are less than 20 hours by the land bridge, but up to 40 to 60 hours by sea. That's why it's the preferred route for companies moving food, live animals and other high-value goods, such as heavy machinery and transport equipment. A no-deal outcome could sever Ireland's most important route to EU markets. But what might the loss of Ireland's land bridge mean for the UK? Our research has found that it could entail substantial benefits for air quality and roads throughout the country. Irish freight, British pollution From January 1 2021, British goods will be treated as third-country freight by the EU, meaning they will be subject to customs and regulatory controls at European ports. These ports aren't yet able to differentiate between British and Irish freight, but once they are, a two-speed processing system would ensure Irish trucks are fast tracked through the system and UK trucks subject to regulatory delays. The Irish government is keen to ensure that the land bridge isn't considered a major negotiating point in UK-EU trade negotiations. But for the UK, there is another dimension to the land bridge that has been completely overlooked. All the benefits that come from it accrue to Ireland and the EU, while all the negatives are borne by British citizens and companies. The 150,000 truck journeys that Ireland's imports and exports add to the UK's road network often cause local congestion. Lorries also cause more damage to road surfaces than most other vehicles, with one study calculating that a six-axle, 44-ton truck is over 138,000 times more damaging to the foundations of a road than a small, one-ton car with two axles. These extra costs are covered by the UK taxpayer. For the UK, the land bridge means that a third country is directly contributing to national air pollution, with all the health consequences that entails. Exposure to nitrogen dioxide pollution can trigger and exacerbate asthma symptoms, and it's also associated with heart disease and birth complications. Inhaling fine particulate matter (often called "PM2.5," as these particles are smaller than 2.5 micrometers) is linked to a host of medical conditions, including lung cancer. We calculated the quantities of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and PM2.5 produced from 150,000 heavy goods vehicle journeys from Holyhead to Felixstowe (329 miles, or 529 kilometers) and found that it results in an additional 34 tons of NOx and 0.7 tons of PM2.5 per year being emitted across Wales and England. The PM2.5 calculation is based on exhaust emissions only though, it excludes particulates shed from brakes and tires. Total UK road transport NOx emissions in 2018 were 258,000 tons. The Irish lorry fleet is also quite a lot older than the UK's. By 2020, 90% of UK lorries were at Euro VI standard and none were Euro III. In comparison, the latest data for the Irish fleet reveals that almost 20% is Euro III and only 22% Euro VI. This matters, as Euro III engines emit about 30 times more NOx than Euro VI. Brexit has made visible a source of UK air pollution that is unrelated to the UK economy. The UK-EU trade negotiations should include air pollution and any agreement should include regulations that prevent highly polluting heavy goods vehicles from using the land bridge. Perhaps one of the strangest outcomes of a no-deal Brexit may be that, for all the potential economic consequences for both Ireland and the UK, Britain's air pollution problem might substantially improve. Explore further Research finds air pollution in Ireland associated with strokes This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. San Francisco, Sep 17 : US California has suffered 7,860 wildfires, which have burned more than 3.4 million acres (about 13,759 sq km) this year, state Governor Gavin Newsom said. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and the US Forest Service continue to battle the blaze, aided by crews from Montana, Utah, Texas and New Jersey, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. The state has more than 17,000 firefighters and 2,200 engines on the fire lines, Newsom said. The August Complex Fire in Mendocino County, the state's largest-ever, continued growing Wednesday. It has burned through 796,651 acres (about 3,224 sq km) with 30 per cent containment. The Creek Fire, held at 220,025 acres (about 890 square km) in Fresno and Madera counties, was 18 per cent contained Wednesday morning. The North Complex fires in Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties remained stable with 273,335 acres (about 1,106 sq km) burned and containment reaching 36 per cent, Cal Fire reported. According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, a European Commission science agency, smoke from the deadly wildfires in US west coastal California, Oregon and Washington will go across the Atlantic Ocean to affect the atmosphere above Europe by this weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Wednesday. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Nashville Mayor John Cooper's office has been accused of concealing coronavirus data about bars and restaurants after emails purportedly sent between top city officials were leaked. Cooper is pictured in February The Nashville mayor's office and health department have been accused of concealing some coronavirus data after emails purportedly sent between top officials were leaked. The emails obtained by WZTV appear to show Mayor John Cooper's senior adviser and officials in the Metro Nashville Health Department (MNHD) discussing how much information they should release publicly about cases linked to bars and restaurants on lower Broadway - the heart of the city's nightlife scene. In at least two instances in June and July, the officials chose not to release the specific numbers which showed that relatively few cases had been linked to bars and restaurants. Meanwhile, bars and restaurants around Davidson County, which includes Nashville, were struggling to stay afloat with limited capacity after being forced to close down for two months from March to May. While the correspondence revealed in WZTV's report is limited - showing only parts of email threads with portions cut off - it has raised questions about why officials would seek to hide data about a public health emergency from the people directly affected by it. Neither the mayor's office nor the MNHD would verify the authenticity of the emails, the outlet reported, but City Councilmember Steve Glover said he received confirmation that they were real. Glover accused city officials of orchestrating a cover-up as they used unreleased data to justify restrictions that have run dozens of establishments out of business. Emails obtained by WZTV appear to show Mayor Cooper's senior adviser and officials in the Metro Nashville Health Department discussing how much information they should release publicly about cases linked to bars and restaurants on lower Broadway (pictured) Nashville City Councilmember Steve Glover (pictured) accused city officials of orchestrating a cover-up as they refused to release the data they were using to justify business restrictions The first email thread from June 19 showed Mayor Cooper's senior adviser Benjamin Eagles and MNHD epidemiologist Leslie Waller discussing a small contract tracing study of known coronavirus clusters. The results showed that more than a thousand COVID-19 cases had been linked to construction and nursing homes - while bars and restaurants had just 22 cases. 'This isn't going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor's Office?' Waller wrote. 'Correct, not for public consumption,' Eagles replied. The first email thread from June 19 showed Mayor Cooper's senior adviser Benjamin Eagles (left) and MNHD Epidemiologist Leslie Waller (right) discussing a small contract tracing study of known coronavirus clusters 'This isn't going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor's Office?' Waller wrote in an email show above Eagles replied to Waller's inquiry saying: 'Correct, not for public consumption' Critics have argued that the contract tracing results should have been released because they showed that just 22 cases had been linked to bars and restaurants on Broadway (pictured) About a month after that conversation, a reporter for the Tennessean newspaper reached out to MNHD Communications Director Brian Todd on July 30 seeking clarification on the agency's claim that 'more than 80 cases' had been traced to bars and restaurants. The reporter, Nate Rau, posed a simple question: 'If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson [County] and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn't that mean restaurants and bars aren't a very big problem?' Todd forwarded Rau's email to five colleagues and asked: 'Please advise how you recommend I respond.' One of the officials replied instructing Todd to remain vague on the issue. 'My two cents,' the sender, whose name was cut off, wrote to all six people on the thread. 'We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site and there are other data release standards prohibiting the release of a total count that is less than 10 per small geographic area. 'We do have 2 bars now where the counts are over 10 but then that would single out those two and not the others. 'We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be "because that number is increasing all the time and we dont want to say a specific number."' In another email thread from July 30, Tennessean reporter Nate Rau reached out to MNHD Communications Director Brian Todd seeking clarification on the agency's claim that 'more than 80 cases' had been traced to bars and restaurants Todd forwarded Rau's email to five colleagues and asked: 'Please advise how you recommend I respond' One of the officials, whose name was not visible in the emails reported by WZTV, replied instructing Todd to remain vague on the issue After the mayor's office and MNHD declined to verify the emails to WZTV without an official Freedom of Information Act request, Councilmember Glover had a metro staff attorney look into it. 'I was able to get verification from the Mayor's Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real,' the staff attorney said. Glover charged that the emails proved city officials have been 'fabricating information' about Nashville's coronavirus crisis. 'They've blown their entire credibility,' he told WZTV. 'It's gone. I don't trust a thing they say going forward. Nothing.' The councilman said he's been contacted by an 'endless stream' of bartenders, waitresses and restaurant owners in downtown who are demanding to know why the city didn't release the low numbers of COVID-19 cases linked to their establishments. 'We raised taxes 34 percent and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes, their apartments, et cetera, and we did it on bogus data,' Glover said. 'That should be illegal.' As of September 1, restaurants in Nashville are limited to 50 percent capacity for indoor dining and bars are allowed to serve a maximum of 25 patrons inside (file photo) The mayor's office and MNHD did not immediately return DailyMail.com's request for comment. As of Thursday, 27,563 coronavirus cases and 284 deaths have been reported in Davidson County. The city modified Phase 2 of its reopening plan on September 1, allowing for 50 percent capacity for indoor dining at restaurants and a maximum of 25 patrons inside bars. Both bars and restaurants are required to close at 10.30pm. Bars are allowed to serve a maximum of 25 patrons inside and 25 outside, if social distancing can be maintained at that level. A running list by Eater Nashville indicates that at least 24 restaurant and bars in the city have been forced to close their doors due to the pandemic. Museums have been a talking point this week. Author and historian William Dalrymple has said UK needs a museum of colonialism" where children will be able to learn about the really terrible things that happened in our past" in a year when statues of imperialists and racists have been toppled around the world. A few days earlier, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath had said Agras upcoming Mughal Museum will be renamed for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj because there was no place for symbols of slavery" in his state. The past seems to be a subject of current debate. For more national and world news, heres Mint Lite. Shut old coal plants, save 1.1 trillion View Full Image Exit-coal campaigners would approve of this new report from environment consultancy firm Climate Risk Horizons (CRH) Exit-coal campaigners would approve of this new report from environment consultancy firm Climate Risk Horizons (CRH). It estimates that the shutting down of older and under-construction coal power plants could not only cut greenhouse gas emissions but also save the government, power distribution utilities and the consumers around 1.1 trillion. Just shutting power plants older than 20 years could save up to 530 billion over five years in 11 states. The savings will come in two ways: shutting down 36,536MW of older, inefficient coal projects will save an estimated 188 billion on investments in retrofit emission control systems. Getting electricity from renewables or the power exchange instead of thermal projects could lead to additional savings of 70 billion a year based on current tariffs. It said shutting down older plants is a more economical option than trying to retrofit them to make them emissions-compliant. Retro-fitting pollution control systems was a suggestion made in a recent paper from the Central Electricity Regulatory Committee, but this requires additional expenditure. The era of vaccine diplomacy View Full Image So far, 172 countries have joined WHOs Covax initiative, which aims to procure and distribute 2 billion doses of approved vaccines by the end of 2021. Friday is the last day for governments to decide whether to take part in Covax, an $18 billion initiative that aims to give lower-income countries the same access to vaccines as wealthier nations. So far, 172 countries have joined WHOs Covax initiative, which aims to procure and distribute 2 billion doses of approved vaccines by the end of 2021.The US, which has signed direct deals with pharma majors and secured its own supply, has refused to join Covax. Beijing has said it supports" Covax but it hasnt said that it will put money into the project. For Covax, getting China on board and providing doses to its 1.4 billion people means greater negotiating power with drug makers. Diplomatic experts say signing up would help China repair its image in the world. Its received flak for its handling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, and subsequently over issues in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the border conflict with India. Uneven gains on the index View Full Image Since 23 March, when India locked down and the markets fell, Reliance Industries stock has surged 164% Since 23 March, when India locked down and the markets fell, Reliance Industries stock has surged 164%. Its boosted the Sensex despite the gloomy econ-omic environment. In that time, Reliances surge accounted for 43% of the Sensex rally. In comparison, a rise in US most valuable stocksFacebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google-Alphabet, collectively known by the acronym FAANGmade up 22% of the S&P 500s surge during the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. US largest stock, Apple, contributed 11% to the S&P 500s jump since March even as iPhone makers market cap crossed $2 trillion. Reliances market value has nearly doubled to more than $200 billion this year as it shifted focus to digital and drew funds from Facebook, Google and others. Multiplex owners worries mount View Full Image The film, directed by Raghava Lawrence, will be streamed from 9 November, just ahead of the Diwali weekend, which, in the pre-covid world, drew large numbers of people to movie halls At a time when multiplex chains are staring at huge losses because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, one of Indian film industrys biggest actors Akshay Kumar has announced the release date for his horror-comedy Laxmmi Bomb on streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar, causing further anxiety among the countrys cinema hall owners. The film, directed by Raghava Lawrence, will be streamed from 9 November, just ahead of the Diwali weekend, which, in the pre-covid world, drew large numbers of people to movie halls. Multiplex and single-screen owners have been desperately waiting for reopening permits, despite knowing that they have no content to bank on, as many films are opting for release on OTT channels. Estimates show the movie exhibition sector, which provides employment to lakhs of people, has lost an estimated 9,000 crore in the past six months. Virus delays Spains Sagrada Familia View Full Image The long-awaited completion of one of Spains top tourist attractions, Sagrada Familia, will no longer happen in 2026 because the pandemic The long-awaited completion of one of Spains top tourist attractions, Sagrada Familia, will no longer happen in 2026 because the pandemic. The architectural masterpiece, which received a building permit only last year, has been under construction for nearly 140 years. Construction work came to an abrupt halt in March when the Spanish government ordered a national lockdown to slow the spread of the virus. Theres no confirmed date yet on when the work will resume since parts of Spain is facing a second wave of covid-19. Only one facade of the basilica was finished when its designer, modernist architect Antoni Gaudi, died in a trolley accident in 1926. The ornate cathedral is now 70% finished. Once complete, it will feature 18 towers, with its highest steeple reaching 564ft into the air, and dedicated to religious figures including the Virgin Mary and the four evangelistsMatthew, Mark, Luke and John. Curated by Shalini Umachandran and Pooja Singh. Have something to share with us? Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com or tweet to @shalinimb Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Elon Musk is hailed as an innovator and disruptor who went from knowing next to nothing about building cars to running the world's most valuable automaker in the space of 16 years. But his record shows he is more of a fast learner who forged alliances with firms that had technology Tesla lacked, hired some of their most talented people, and then powered through the boundaries that limited more risk-averse partners. Now, Musk and his team are preparing to outline new steps in Tesla's drive to become a more self-sufficient company less reliant on suppliers at its "Battery Day" event on Sept. 22. Musk has been dropping hints for months that significant advances in technology will be announced as Tesla strives to produce the low-cost, long-lasting batteries that could put its electric cars on a more equal footing with cheaper gasoline vehicles. New battery cell designs, chemistries and manufacturing processes are just some of the developments that would allow Tesla to reduce its reliance on its long-time battery partner, Japan's Panasonic, people familiar with the situation said. "Elon doesn't want any part of his business to be dependent on someone else," said one former senior executive at Tesla who declined to be named. "And for better or worse - sometimes better, sometimes worse - he thinks he can do it better, faster and cheaper." Tesla has battery production partnerships with Panasonic, South Korea's LG Chem and China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) that are expected to continue. But at the same time, Tesla is moving to control production of cells - the basic component of electric vehicle battery packs at highly automated factories, including one being built near Berlin, Germany and another in Fremont, California where Tesla is hiring dozens of experts in battery cell engineering and manufacturing. "There has been no change in our relationship with Tesla," Panasonic said in a statement provided by a company spokeswoman. "Our relationship, both past and present has been sound. Panasonic is not a supplier to Tesla; we are partners. There's no doubt our partnership will continue to innovate and contribute to the betterment of society." Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Since he took over the fledgling company in 2004, Musk's goal has been to learn enough - from partnerships, acquisitions and talent recruitment - to bring key technologies under Tesla's control, people familiar with Tesla's strategy said. They said the aim was to build a heavily vertically integrated company, or a digital version of Ford Motor Co's iron-ore-to-Model-A production system of the late 1920s. "Elon thought he could improve on everything the suppliers did - everything," said former Tesla supply chain executive Tom Wessner, who is now head of industry consultancy Imprint Advisors. "He wanted to make everything." Batteries, a big chunk of the cost of an electric car, are central to the Musk method. While subordinates have argued for years against developing proprietary Tesla battery cells, Musk continues to drive toward that goal. "Tell him 'No', and then he really wants to do it," said a third former Tesla veteran. The changes in battery design, chemistry and production processes Tesla expects to reveal next week are aimed at reworking the math that until now has made electric cars more expensive than carbon-emitting vehicles with combustion engines. Reuters reported in May that Tesla is planning to unveil low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles. Tesla is also working to secure direct supplies of key battery materials, such as nickel, while developing cell chemistries that would no longer need expensive cobalt as well as highly automated manufacturing processes to speed up production. Panasonic is partnered with Tesla at the $5 billion Nevada "Gigafactory", while CATL and LG Chem supply cells to Tesla's Shanghai factory, where battery modules and packs are assembled for its Model 3 sedan. Panasonic recently said it is planning to expand its production lines in Nevada, which supply the cells that then go into the battery modules assembled next door by Tesla. But the Nevada Gigafactory partnership almost didn't happen, according to two former Tesla executives. Musk ordered a team to study battery manufacturing in 2011, according to one former executive, but eventually partnered with Panasonic in 2013. Now, Tesla is testing a battery cell pilot manufacturing line in Fremont and is building its own vast automated cell manufacturing facility in Gruenheide in Germany. The roller-coaster relationship with Panasonic mirrors other Tesla alliances. During its development alliance with Germany's Daimler, which was an early investor in Tesla, Musk became interested in sensors that would help keep cars within traffic lanes. Until then the Tesla Model S, which Mercedes-Benz engineers helped refine, lacked cameras or sophisticated driver assistance sensors and software such as those used in the Mercedes S-Class. "He learned about that and took it a step further. We asked our engineers to shoot for the moon. He went straight for Mars," said a senior Daimler engineer said. Meanwhile, an association with Japan's Toyota, another early investor, taught him about quality management. Eventually, executives from Daimler and Toyota joined Tesla in key roles, along with talent from Alphabet Inc's Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, as well as rival carmakers Ford, BMW and Audi. THE MUSK SPIN Some relationships did not end well, however. Tesla hooked up with Israeli sensor maker Mobileye in 2014, in part to learn how to design a self-driving system that evolved into Tesla's Autopilot. "Mobileye was the driving force behind the original Autopilot," said a former Mobileye executive, who declined to be named. Mobileye, which is now owned by Intel, also recognized the risk of sharing technology with a fast-moving startup like Tesla, which was on the brink of collapse at the end of 2008 and now has a market value of $420 billion. But Tesla and Mobileye had an acrimonious and public split after a driver was killed in 2016 when a Model S using the Autopilot system crashed. At the time, Amnon Shashua, who is now Mobileye president and chief executive, said Tesla's Autopilot was not designed to cover all possible crash situations as it was a driver assistance system, not a driverless system. U.S. tech firm Nvidia followed Mobileye as a supplier for Autopilot, but it too was ultimately sidelined. "Nvidia and Tesla share a common strategy of developing software-defined vehicles powered by high-performance AI computers. Elon is very focused on vertical integration and wanted to make his own chips," said Nvidia's senior director of automotive, Danny Shapiro. Both Shapiro and the former Mobileye executive said there was no question of Tesla improperly using their technology. In addition to partnerships, Musk went on an acquisition spree four years ago, buying a handful of little-known companies - Grohmann, Perbix, Riviera, Compass, Hibar Systems - to rapidly advance Tesla's expertise in automation. Maxwell and SilLion further boosted Tesla's ability in battery technology. "He learned a lot from those people," said Mark Ellis, a senior consultant at Munro & Associates, which has studied Tesla extensively. "He leveraged a lot of information from them, then put his spin on making it better." 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 The faculty advisory board of the International Human Rights Program (IHRP) at the University of Torontos Faculty of Law has resigned following a controversy over the hiring of a new director for the program. Edward Iacobucci, dean of the prestigious law school, has come under fire, accused of rescinding an offer of directorship to prominent international academic Valentina Azarova. Several national and international scholars wrote to the university to express their consternation that the reversal came after reports of pressure from a sitting judge a major donor to the faculty. He reportedly expressed concerns in private over Azarovas past work on the issue of Israels human rights abuses in Palestine. All the letters mentioned here have been seen by the Star. The recent search for an executive director has generated substantial controversy, including allegations of outside interference in the hiring process, Vincent Chiao, Trudo Lemmens and Anna Su, three members of the faculty advisory committee, wrote to Iacobucci on Wednesday. We are disappointed by this outcome, the lack of fair process, including the failure to provide reasons for the decision taken. Audrey Macklin, who chaired that committee, and was part of the selection panel that unanimously found Azarova the best candidate for the job, resigned from the board last week. In a statement to the Star, the university cited confidentiality in personnel matters, but said, We can confirm that no offer of employment was made to any candidate, and therefore, no offer was revoked. The Faculty of Law has cancelled the search. No offers were made because of technical and legal constraints pertaining to cross-border hiring at this time, said Kelly Hannah-Moffat, vice-president of human resources and equity. Azarova, who is based in Germany, declined to speak to the Star. But a letter to Iacobucci from two past directors of the IHRP on Sept. 12 contradicts the universitys assertion that no offer of employment was made. Azarova the hiring committees top candidate accepted the facultys offer in mid-August, wrote Carmen Cheung and the most recent director, Samer Muscati. The Faculty of Law put Dr. Azarova in touch with immigration counsel to advise her on her options for securing a permit to work in Canada, and Dr. Azarova began planning to move with her partner from Germany to Toronto, where her stepchildren reside. Azarova has taught law and international law and has worked to establish human rights enforcement mechanisms in Europe and beyond and has consulted for United Nations fact-finding missions, among other accomplishments. The dean cited confidentiality, and offered one statement to faculty at a meeting on Monday and to individual letter writers. The uninformed and speculative rumours have reached such a level that, no offer of employment having been made, the University has decided to cancel the search for a candidate at this time. Letters to the university from international scholars, members of an alumni steering committee and other faculty strongly condemned what they saw as improper external pressure and impropriety of such interference by alumni. The mere perception of interference has the potential to undermine the integrity of the Faculty of Laws hiring process and the reputation and future work of the IHRP, says a letter from two co-chairs of the IHRP Alumni Steering Committee. Cancelling the search effectively maintains the status quo that the IHRP remains without a permanent director. Trudo Lemmens of the faculty advisory committee said he was hoping for a firm statement either confirming an attempt to interfere and detailing the universitys response or refuting the allegations. As a faculty member of an academic institution which values academic freedom and human rights issues, I have no clear understanding of why the appointment didnt take place. Thats why I joined colleagues in resigning because Im not in a position to firmly defend the process and the decision. This is particularly important because I so strongly believe in the value of the program and the integrity of the program. A professor at U of T Law said: He (the dean) alludes to the rumours but he does not deny them. Of course, we can only speculate we dont know what the person told him and what he did. If theres no basis for this rumour, were misinformed. So please inform us. That carefully crafted lawyerly response is non-responsive. The IHRP has been without a permanent director for more than a year. Academics and legal experts who are familiar with Azarovas work told the Star she was a perfect candidate. Shes a human rights practitioner in a wide variety of areas, said Itamar Mann, associate professor, the University of Haifa Faculty of Law, who worked closely with Azarova at the non-profit Global Legal Action Network on migration and refugee issues in Europe. She is a fellow at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester, speaks multiple languages and has lived in the Middle East and Africa. The university program itself is known to offer learning opportunities for students, exposing them to national and international human rights concerns. Professors told the Star that while even controversial views cannot be censored, those espoused by Azarova are not radical and adhere to mainstream legal consensus on Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. Her criticism of Israel is extremely legitimate within Israel, Mann said. Its a criticism that I share. Its a criticism of long-standing human rights violations of international law, primarily through the project of settlements which is unquestionably illegal and thats the kind of majority position around the world. Its not an exotic position to take at all. Even from the perspective of people who imagine themselves as helping defend or support Israel, I think this would be a grave mistake. Being able to debate is an essential part of democracy. Shree Paradkar is a Toronto-based columnist covering issues around race and gender for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @ShreeParadkar By Lynne Jackson As Confederate and other statues that are viewed as symbols of slavery and racism are being removed from public parks, museums and buildings, there is a statue on the south lawn of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis that should remain: Dred and Harriet Scott. The bronze memorial, commissioned by the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation and dedicated in 2012, depicts Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, standing close, holding their heads high, eyes directed toward a horizon of a freedom that they believed they would one day experience. Dred Scott, my great-great grandfather, was an enslaved African American who unsuccessfully sued for his and his familys freedom in the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford U.S. Supreme Court case. In what became a combined case, he and my great-great grandmother argued they should be granted freedom because he lived in Illinois, and they had lived in the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal. The laws of that area of the U.S. said slaveholders gave up their rights to own slaves if they stayed for an extended period. The U.S. Supreme Court verdict against Dred Scott stated that all people of African descent, despite having been born in this country, were not U.S. citizens, nor did they have standing to bring a lawsuit in federal court. In addition, the court ruled that his emancipation was unconstitutional because, citing the Fifth Amendment, it would improperly deprive Scotts owner of his legal property. The 1857 landmark decision prompted outrage and was a major catalyst to an inevitable Civil War. The seeds of that outrage, the disrespect for human life, are still haunting us 163 years later. Statues are memorials, edifices or structures created to help remind us of a person place or event. The key point is to remember. History is factual, so remembering the facts of who we are and where we have come from is well served by the creation of these monuments. No one wants to see evil prominently displayed, yet in our hypocrisy, many of our citizens participate in it every day. The hubris of our society to think that we are so much better than our ancestors is unthinkable. Until we actually are better in virtue, integrity and true honor we have not a leg to stand on. In the meantime, I and many like me see a much greater value in adding statues or appropriate memorials for historical context to finally tell the whole truth. Yes, some statues are offensive and should be removed not destroyed to a common place of acknowledgement for what they mean and what we should learn about them. Destroying our history is insane, and when statues of President Abraham Lincoln, buffalo soldiers, and even Jesus are turned into targets, we have failed on several fronts to teach our history and to give value to life and creation. In reference to the Confederate statues ordered for removal in New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said, These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for. I believe these words were heartfelt and true. Some actions are understandable as in the context in which he spoke, and others need considerable rethinking. The statue of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who read the 1857 decision, was erected in Annapolis, Maryland. It was removed as its prominent position was an affront to many, and his family could understand that. I would have preferred consideration been given to adding a bust of Dred Scott along with the Taney bust in the old Supreme Court Chambers rather than removing it. The Taney bust has been removed. The Dred and Harriet Scott statue represents a fight for liberty and dignity, through grace and perseverance. These are American values and principles that many other statues represent as well. A new monument at Dred Scotts grave at Calvary Cemetery is proposed to give honor and diction to his cause and legacy. In the three-part PBS series, "A More or Less Perfect Union," which is viewable online at pbs.org, I tell the story of my great-great grandfather and the landmark Supreme Court case. As decisions are made about which statues should be removed, we need to consider the American values they represent and honor slavery, violence, and ignorance or liberty, justice, and dignity as well as how to provide a teachable moment. My hope is that the Dred and Harriet Scott statue continues to inspire the latter. Lynne Jackson is president of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. It wasnt supposed to be like this. The Democratic Party was supposed to have learned its lesson back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump amid a scandal within the Democratic Party Caucus. That was the first proverbial slap in the face for Democratic leaders that they needed to embrace progressive causes. The second was the elections of progressive women to the 2018 Congress. The third was the feverish resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in May of this year, when yet another unarmed black man, George Floyd, was slowly asphyxiated to death by a police officer as he managed to repeatedly gasp, I cant breathe. And then the pandemic hit. On top of issues such as access to quality healthcare, police brutality against African Americans, and corruption at the highest levels of government, there was now a whole new stake to consider in the upcoming elections. For minorities, especially black people, native Americans and the Latinx community, major socio-economic disparities already existed, and the pandemic simply put them on display for white Americans and the world to gawk at. But Trumps massive mishandling of the crisis brought the entire economy to the brink of economic depression and put working-class families, working mothers and especially those groups within the black, native American and Latinx communities in further danger. I spoke with my friend Anisa, a progressive woman of colour, small-business owner and activist. She asked that I not use her last name because business has been hard during the pandemic and shes concerned that her political views might negatively influence her remaining clientele. Anisa chose not to vote in 2016 because she was opposed to her choices on the ballot, and told me that this year she will be doing the same thing, for the same reasons. The mechanism we have available to us is a sham the candidates are chosen by the DNC or RNC despite popular opinion (we saw this with the DNC essentially staging a coup against Bernie), and with systems in place such as voter suppression, polling place closures, redlining; it isnt a fair system to begin with, and its designed to give the illusion of democracy. She went on to say, I do vote I vote for all the people and policies that consider human rights, not for corporate shills. So why participate in a sham? Yes, Trumps claim that Joe Biden pushed out a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating his sons involvement with a large private gas company was bogus. But that bogus claim doesnt change the fact that, to me, its completely unacceptable that Biden helped get his son on the board of a company he had no business being on; its corruption, its nepotism, its elitism and its wrong. In my view, its unforgivable how Biden headed up the 1991 Anita Hill hearings; his authoring of the 1994 crime legislation is responsible for our wildly disproportionate population of incarcerated black and Latinx men, and his support for segregationists is just as inexcusable. When I asked about whether shed vote for Biden, Christina Abraham, a civil and human rights attorney in Chicago, told me: Im still on the fence about it because I dont think the Democratic Party has fully taken seriously people of colour and people who are marginalised. It feels like theyre using them to pass their own elitist establishment agenda. Were torn because we dont want to keep being used as a facade in this constant competition between parties, neither of which are taking our interests into consideration. The only person who I thought did that was Bernie Sanders and he was completely treated unfairly. On the other hand, we see Trump and the pandemic as a threat to democracy in the US and our system of governance. Thats why the Democratic Party is struggling. Trump should be able to be beaten by any competent professional; its not because Trump is good that we run the risk of him actually winning again. Its because people dont have faith in the Democratic Party theyre not listening to the things people actually need like economic and socio-economic equality. The Democratic Party doesnt have my respect. Trump reacts to Antifa.com redirecting to Biden's website You may be wondering whether Kamala Harris on Bidens ticket convinced me more? It didnt. Yes, I am happy to see a black and Asian American woman as a running mate for vice president because representation in government is very important. And I will admit I have enjoyed her grill Trump administration officials in Senate hearings. But Bidens choice to make her his VP is a simple act of tokenism; its all for the sake of appearing progressive. Ive written before about a Biden-Harris ticket and how shes a centrist, establishment Democrat with a track record as attorney general of California that doesnt substantively reflect most progressive values. I feel backed into a corner. On one side, the fate of my country dangles in front of me with what I believe is a maniacal, traitorous, misogynistic, racist, incompetent, malignant narcissist at its helm. On the other, a vote for the same corrupt establishment politics that led us to the mass incarceration rates of minorities, public disregard for survivors of sexual assault, and the perpetuation of socio-economic disparities that have made communities of colour so vulnerable to the health and economic effects of the pandemic in the first place. I am disgusted; I feel I have no choice but to vote for the lesser of the two evils this time, even though I know that this is not what progress looks like. A true democracy must offer more than the status quo, two-party candidates, at the presidential level; we need a viable, progressive third-party candidate and a chance for that person to actually win. The end does not justify the means in a real democracy. Washington: A day ahead of his inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump arrived in Washington on Friday, leaving New York City that has been his home and bears the real estate tycoon's imprints. The Republican billionaire, who enters the White House with the promise of transforming US politics over the next four years, began his day with tweeting: "The journey begins and I will be working and fighting very hard to make it a great journey for the American people. I have no doubt that we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Earlier, 70-year-old Trump and his family left New York City for Washington, this time not flying in his private plane that bears his name but in a military jet headed to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland near the nation's capital. Donald Trump's Presidential Inauguration: Know all about time, place and events schedule Trump's plane touched down at the Andrews air base around 12:08 (local time) in the afternoon. Trump's family, including his daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner, his sons Don and Eric, their wives and young children descended the military plane first. Trump and his wife Melania were greeted by senior military officials as they left the aircraft and got into a heavily secured motor car. The motorcade waited at the tarmac for a few minutes before leaving the air base. Trump's motorcade will undertake the 20 minute drive from the air force base into Washington DC. Trump will stay at the Blair House, the official Guest House of the President of the US. Joined by his family, Trump will take the oath of office as the leader of the world's most powerful nation on Friday as hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington to both support and protest his inauguration. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. By Shlomo Ben-Ami NASHVILLE, TENN.Participation in clinical trials among Black people is low, according to Food and Drug Administration statistics. Still, including them in coronavirus vaccine trials has been a stated priority for the pharmaceutical companies involved, since African American communities, along with those of Latinos, have suffered disproportionately from the pandemic. The ongoing trials are moving at a pace that is unprecedented for medical research, with the Trump administrations vaccine acceleration effort dubbed Operation Warp Speed. Yet recruiting minority participants requires sensitivity to a mistrust borne of past and current medical mistreatment. Trust-building cannot be rushed. So far, participation by minority volunteers in coronavirus trials has increased only slightly compared with typically low levels for other clinical trials and targeted outreach efforts to recruit more minorities have been slow to launch. Some of that outreach is taking place at historically black colleges and universities, which are trusted institutions for many Black Americans. At Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, researchers have set up in-person meetings with patients they already know. Earlier this month, a half-dozen patients gathered in a cramped conference room on campus. They snacked on turkey sandwiches and potato chips and listened to the pitch from their physician, Dr. Vladimir Berthaud. Whats the best hope to get rid of this virus? he asked them. Vaccination, they replied. Then Berthaud followed up: So raise your hand if you would like to take the vaccine? Some hands shot up, but not all. I aint going to be the first one, now, said Lanette Hayes. Listen to Alex Boyd discuss the road to a vaccine Katrina Thompson said she does eventually want to get a shot for protection against the coronavirus. She explained shes especially worried about all the residents of her apartment building who dont seem to be doing the basics of covering their coughs. The word vaccination dont scare me, she said. The word trial do. Black Americans have reason to be suspicious stemming beyond the well-known Tuskegee experiments, in which Black men with syphilis were deceived and mistreated as part of an experiment that went on for decades. Many Black Americans report ongoing mistreatment by medical providers today. Berthaud is recruiting patients for a clinical trial site he will oversee in Nashville, and he would like more than 300 people of colour to enrol. Berthaud, who is Black and from Haiti, appeals to his patients sense of duty. If you dont have enough people like you in those vaccine trials, you will not know if it works for you, he told them. You will not know. For most of the current coronavirus vaccine trials, recruitment mainly takes place online which often results in mostly white people enrolling. Thats why Meharry researchers are wooing Black patients with a personal invitation. But theyre not recruiting for the phase 3 trials underway. Meharrys first trial, for a vaccine candidate by Novavax, doesnt launch until October. Other pharmaceutical companies are nearly done recruiting. Moderna said it chose nearly 100 trial sites for their representative demography. The company did not respond to requests for comment but publicizes demographic statistics about the clinical volunteers every week. While somewhat more inclusive than the typical clinical trial, it still is not a good representation of the diversity of the U.S. For the coronavirus vaccine in particular, the National Institutes of Health has suggested minorities should be overrepresented in testing perhaps at rates that are double their percentage of the U.S. population. We say we want to have everybody included, but really the effort for the vaccinations in a sense (is) starting the same way theyve always been, said Dr. Dominic Mack, of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. Hes working with the NIH to make sure people of colour are included in COVID-19 research. Mack said there are no shortcuts if medical research is going to reflect the diversity of the U.S. It takes time to build trust and meaningful relationships with people who have endured a history of abuse or neglect by medical providers, and exclusion from biomedical research and decision-making. Now, that being said, the only thing we can do is what were doing, he said by which he means respectful, unrushed outreach and dialogue. The primary effort, called the COVID-19 Prevention Network, taps into four existing clinical trial networks designed to advance HIV research. Those networks are based in Seattle, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Durham, North Carolina. One project will be led by the Rev. Edwin Sanders II of the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church in Nashville. It will involve seven faith ambassadors and 30 clergy consultants in the African American community working to dispel myths and increase trust in the clinical trial process. But Sanders cautioned this is not about a hard sell. Its not his job to preach trial participation from the pulpit, he said. We are not out beating the drum, he said, acknowledging that congregants may have legitimate concerns. I am not going to do anything more than make sure people are able to make an informed choice. The danger in lunging for big diversity goals is that it could spark a backlash, meaning minorities might be even less willing to participate, said associate professor Rachel Hardeman, who studies health equity at the University of Minnesota. Its important that the doctors doing the asking look like the people theyre appealing to, she said. Its racial concordance, she explained. It offers this feeling of, You know who I am, you know where I come from, you have my best interests at heart. Historically Black medical institutions in the U.S. are uniquely positioned to do this work. While they havent been on the leading edge of recruitment for vaccine trials, they intend to play an important part. The president of Nashvilles Meharry Medical College, Dr. James Hildreth, is an infectious disease researcher. But instead of overseeing the trial site being hosted on his campus, Hildreth has a more modest goal in mind: He plans to participate as a patient, and urge others to join him. I think my role is more important in advocating for people to be involved in vaccine studies than to be one of the leaders of the study, he said. So at Meharry, Berthaud is the principal investigator. As lunch wraps up in the crowded conference room, he has managed to win over some holdouts. Where is the line? asked Robert Smith. Where do we sign? Smith, with his young grandson in tow, didnt raise his hand at first when asked if hed take the vaccine. But after listening to Berthaud, Smith agreed to participate in the clinical trial for no other reason than the trust he has in Berthaud, his longtime physician. Hes not only my doctor; hes proven that he cares about me, Smith said. Persuading hundreds or thousands of Black Americans to sign up will be difficult. But researchers hope their outreach efforts will at least result in more minorities agreeing to take an approved vaccine when available. The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka. Saturday, Sept. 12 10:59 p.m. Suspects stole a political sign out of a Lee Township yard. The suspect vehicle was described as a newer red Jeep. 10:17 p.m. A 64-year-old Jerome Township man said an unknown woman from a foreign country was trying to make him pay her money after a video chat session. The deputy provided the man with advice on how to handle the situation and how to prevent future issues while using social media. 9:21 p.m. Deputies were dispatched to a Mills Township residence in reference to a suicidal 18-year-old male. The deputy transported the teen to the MidMichigan Medical Center, where a petition was filed to request a mental health evaluation. His 41-year-old mother ended up responding to the hospital where the deputy assisted her with a petition. 9:11 p.m. Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Larkin Township. 8:46 p.m. A 23-year-old Sanford resident retrieved his vehicle from his ex-girlfriend's residence after leaving it there for five months. He suspected one of the flat tires was from a knife. The tire was not completely flat and appeared to have possibly cracked from sitting for a long period. He also suspected the fuel line was cut, but there was no evidence of that found. 4:33 p.m. A deputy was dispatched to a Lee Township residence in reference to a crash that occurred at the corner of West Gordonville Road and South 10 Mile Road where there was minor damage and one vehicle had left the scene. Upon investigation, it was learned the drivers made contact with each other and there was no damage. 4:19 p.m. A 14-year-old Midland Township juvenile called 9-1-1 after seeing her mom grab a kitchen knife and go into her bedroom. They were previously having a heated family discussion. When her 32-year-old husband asked what she was doing with the knife she did not respond. Upon arrival, the deputy discovered she used the knife to cut up a rag in her room and then went and started laundry she said she was not suicidal. 1:36 a.m. Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Mount Haley Township. 12:03 a.m. Deputies were dispatched to a women's shelter in Homer Township for a report of a 28-year-old Mount Pleasant woman who was endangering herself and others with a knife. Deputies located the woman and retrieved the knife. She was transported to the MidMichigan Medical Center for a mental heath petition. Friday, Sept. 11 10:30 p.m. Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Jerome Township. 10:07 p.m. A deputy was dispatched to a report of grass in the roadway in Larkin Township. The caller was concerned about motorcycle traffic. Most of the grass was not a hazard, but the deputy did remove grass from the roadway near a stop sign. 2:36 p.m. A deputy spoke with a 20-year-old Lee Township resident about finding a broken window on the trailer house she rents at Whispering Pines. It is not known if the window was damaged by a person or by other circumstances. She said park management asked her to call and make a report. The window is valued at about $100. There are no suspects. 2:22 p.m. A deputy was dispatched to the area of N. Sturgeon Road near E. Bombay Road for the report of a two-vehicle crash. 2:01 p.m. A 50-year-old Sanford woman replied to an online ad to buy a French Bulldog. The seller requested she send $450 though an online account and they would provide the location she could pick up the dog. After sending a Venmo online money transfer of $450, she realized she was scammed and this was a fraud. She is working with Venmo to try and recoup her money transfer. 1:57 p.m. Deputies responded to a Warren Township residence to assist Child Protective Services with a referral for domestic abuse. 9:35 a.m. A 57-year-old Larkin Township man reported someone egged his house and vehicles. The man does not believe any permanent damage occurred. The man plans on installing camera's today and requested extra patrol in the area at night. 3:11 a.m. Deputies were dispatched to a Greendale Township residence reference a heroin overdose. Narcan was administered. A 35-year-old Greendale Township man was arrested on outstanding warrants. Many qualified American Expat Voters abroad are asking if they can get their absentee ballots to vote. Usually, it is in November that many overseas voters inquire if they can get to vote. But now, as early as August, there are many more inquiries than usual, said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat who founded the nonpartisan Overseas Vote Foundation. One more common question for them is how can it be managed with no U.S. Postal Service. This can shows voters going hysterical from the events shaking up the mail-in vote. The overall quagmire is caused by the Democrats and the GOPS before the presidential elections, reported USA Today. The U.S. Postal service is in major upheavals. One of these instances is the Congressional Democrats stating that the delays and changes at the Postal Service will grossly affect how it will deal with more mail-in ballots, noted CNN. In August, General Louis DeJoy promised some operational changes relevant to the elections. Also, the election mail must be delivered on time, so those abroad can get the official ballot. As many as 6.5 eligible or official American voters are affected by it. According to Dzieduszycka-Suinat, if the U.S. Government is looking for a problem in overseas voting, then this would be just it. It does not help any for overseas American who is also in double bind, that is restrictions that is ever-changing today. Most living abroad will need an absentee ballot to vote. Another thing is what state will anyone vote in, with usually a different process for each state. Also read: China Spy Nabbed After Trying to Leave US With Bio-Inspired Computer Code For example, it will be uncomplicated registration and sending the vote only in one form or another. Herein lies the problem which is mailing voting materials that will take time, and its international mail not U.S. mail. The fact is that 21- states of the USA say that overseas voters should have the voting material via postal mail or diplomatic pouch. Some embassies stopped this due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Jennifer Earll, 49, and Seattle native whose current residence is in Panama City, starting from 5 years back, said that there is a lockdown where she stays and cannot travel to the U.S. embassy. Even going home is not viable because her spouse is getting chemotherapy in Latin America, since it is more expensive in the U.S. Earll can transmit her ballot electronically, like in other elections and she notices problems too. She added how hard it will be if the ballots need to be sent to the U.S.She is hoping other voters abroad will not have difficulty. In 63 countries, Panama is part of it as mail services and disrupted operations that are affected like the U.S. in the pandemic. Another is the bad news that comes with a disrupted mail service, which can be negated and rejected. This all depends on the Federal Voting Assistance Program. Hopefully, all American expats do get their absentee ballot and get their vote on time. Related article: Attorney General Barr Says That China Is a Dangerous Country and Wants America Out @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Generali Global Assistance ("GGA"), today announced that it has successfully launched its identity and cyber protection platform, Iris Identity Protection, across 99 countries. The platform has several unique features that meet specific market needs and proactively address particular identity theft and cybersecurity issues present in each country. In support of this expansion, Generali Global Assistance has also made the U.S. version of its Iris Identity Protection portal bilingual, in English and Spanish, to better serve the Spanish-speaking community. This provides users with the option to view all aspects of their identity theft protection and resolution services in either English or Spanish. According to a consumer survey GGA conducted earlier this year, consumers with Hispanic backgrounds are 13 percent more likely to have both paid and 5 percent more likely to have free identity theft protection products, as the Hispanic market is disproportionately affected by identity fraud. As a 2011 FTC study found, 13.4 percent of Hispanics are impacted by fraud compared to 9 percent of non-Hispanic whites, furthermore an estimated 41 million US residents, or 13.5 percent of the population, speak Spanish at home. Paige Schaffer, CEO, Global Identity and Cyber Protection Services, commented on today's news, "While the identity theft protection market has matured within the United States, it is still a nascent industry in other countries. As a global company with decades of experience of bringing customers from distress to relief, it is our mission to help bring peace of mind to the millions of global citizens that are faced with identity theft but have no form of recourse. " In 2019 alone, GGA launched its identity theft protection platform in 8 additional regions, expanding its footprint in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. In addition, Generali Global Assistance signed an agreement with one of its major white label partners to expand their current identity theft protection product offering. In a few short months, GGA has delivered customer-ready products for the client in the US, Vietnam, Greece, Mexico, Argentina and other countries, making their identity protection offering one of the most robust on the market compared to other complimentary protection offerings in the space both in the U.S. and outside of it. About Generali Global Assistance Generali Global Assistance has been a leading provider of identity and cyber protection solutions, travel insurance, and other assistance services for more than 35 years. The Company offers a full suite of innovative, vertically integrated travel insurance and emergency services, identity protection solutions, and beneficiary companion services. Generali Global Assistance is part of the multinational Generali Group, which for over 185 years has created a presence in 60 countries with over 74,000 employees. Our success has been built on the foundation of trust that clients have placed in our ability to provide assistance in the most difficult of circumstances. To learn more about Generali Global Assistance's identity protection offering, please visit https://www.irisidentityprotection.com/ GGA Media Contact Jay A. Morakis M Group Strategic Communications (for Generali Global Assistance North America) +1 646.859.5951 [email protected] SOURCE Generali Global Assistance Related Links http://us.generaliglobalassistance.com A Nigerian who allegedly engaged in robberies and rape with three other accomplices in Ghana and absconded has been put before an Accra Circuit Court. Asuquo Mbuotidem Edem, a.k.a Faith, a businessman, was arrested from his hideout in Nigeria with the assistance of International Police (INTERPOL) and escorted to Ghana to answer to his robberies and rape cases. Edem, together with Damascus Israel Nana Akyene, a driver while Daniel Akpan a.k.a Danny and Bassey Okon, both businessmen were alleged to have robbed an estate developer and his family at Westlands. Following the arrest of Edem, the Prosecution further amended the charge sheet and the accused persons were retaken before the Court presided over by Mrs. Afua Owusua Appiah. The accused persons have been charged with nine counts of conspiracy to commit crime to wit robbery, robbery, conspiracy to commit crime to wit unlawful entry and possession of firearms, possessing instruments intended for unlawful entry, unlawful entry and possession of firearms without authority. They pleaded not guilty. The Court remanded them into Police custody to reappear on October 1. Prosecuting Chief Inspector Simon Apiosormu narrated that the complainants (names withheld) were an estate developer, his wife and sister-in-law. They all reside in the same house. Chief Inspector Apiosornu said Akyene resided at Kakraba while the rest of the accused persons resided at Kwashieman in Accra. On February 22 last year, at about 1230am, accused persons proceeded to Westlands, Accra. They armed themselves with pistols and other implements including an industrial cutter, a metal bar, a cutlass and entered complainants' house by scaling the wall. The accused persons ordered the complainants to surrender their valuable items including money, jewellery, wrist watches, camera and other personal effects or else they would shoot them. Prosecution said for fear of their lives, the complainants obliged. Afterwards, they marched the estate developer at gun point and ransacked the various cars. In the process, they took away the estate developer's Heckler pistol, GH3,000.00 and USD 600 from the complainant's Mercedes Benz. The accused persons took turns to rape one of the victims in the house. Afterwards, the accused persons bolted and the complainants reported the issue to the Police at Westlands. Prosecution said on March 9 last year, the Criminal Investigations Department headquarters was conducting investigations into the arrest of Akyene, who was said to have been involved in another robbery and rape of six British Nationals at Kokrobite. After Akyene's arrest, he admitted the offence and led the Police to the house of Akpon and Okon and they were arrested. Akpon led the Police to Edem's house but he was not available. During Police interrogations, they confessed to the robberies and various rape incidents including that of the estate developer's case. Accused persons also led the Police to the various houses of their victims including that of the complainants. Prosecution said the complainants were therefore invited to the Anti Armed Robbery Unit of the CID Headquarters. During investigations, the accused persons revealed that they kept the various implements and weapons used in committing the robberies in a refuse dump in Haatso. The accused persons led the Police to the said refuse dump in a bush along the Agbogba-Haatso road where three pistols including that of the complainants and the implements they used in committing the various robberies were retrieved. Prosecution said on March 15 last year, an identification parade was conducted at the CID Headquarters and Akyene was identified. On August 21 this year, Prosecution said Edem who was at large was arrested from his hideout in Nigeria with the assistance of INTERPOL and escorted to Ghana. ---GNA Atty. Gen. William Barr said in a speech that politics a role to play in decisions about prosecutions. (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images) Atty. Gen. William Barr gave a perplexing speech this week about the relationship between politics and prosecutorial decisions at the Justice Department. Barr, remember, intervened to soften a sentencing recommendation by Justice Department prosecutors for Roger Stone, a confidant of President Trumps who was convicted of seven felony counts, including witness tampering and lying to Congress. (Trump later tweeted: "Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.") Barr also moved to have a judge dismiss a charge against former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. (Barr said he was acting on the recommendation of a prosecutor he asked to look into the case.) That may look like politics infecting the administration of justice. But in the Bizarro World portrayed by Barr, some politicization of prosecutorial decisions is actually good thing. Barr has denied doing Trump's bidding in either the Stone case or the Flynn case. But in his speech Wednesday at Hillsdale College in Michigan, he made this argument: The most basic check on prosecutorial power is politics. It is counterintuitive to say that, as we rightly strive to maintain an apolitical system of criminal justice. But political accountability politics is what ultimately ensures our system does its work fairly and with proper recognition of the many interests and values at stake. Government power completely divorced from politics is tyranny. Barr cited decisions in which the Supreme Court struck down overly creative interpretations of criminal statutes defended by the Justice Department. He suggested that politically appointed attorneys general and U.S. attorneys can legitimately rein in prosecutors who act as headhunters, consumed with taking down their target. He also contemptuously compared lower-ranking prosecutors to children: "Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency." Story continues The idea that political appointees might occasionally need to second-guess overzealous career prosecutors isnt ridiculous. But politically appointed U.S. attorneys can also overreach think of Rudolph W. Giuliani in his days in the Southern District of New York. It's worth remembering that a U.S. attorney position is often a steppingstone to elective office, as it was for Giuliani. Others in that club include former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Dick Thornburgh, the former governor of Pennsylvania who later served as U.S. attorney general. Who has more incentive to "headhunt" an obscure career prosecutor or a politically connected U.S. attorney with an eye on the governor's mansion? Sometimes it is defensible, even desirable, for a politically appointed attorney general or U.S. attorney to overrule lower-ranking prosecutors. But Barr, who has exercised that authority to the benefit of associates of Trump, is probably the worst person to make that argument. (CNN) The Justice Department ordered an Al Jazeera online news platform based in the US to register as a foreign agent on Monday, declaring that the outlet is "an agent of the Government of Qatar," according to a letter from the Justice Department obtained by CNN. The designation for that platform, AJ+, came on the same day that Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed agreements to normalize relations with Israel at the White House an event attended by Qatari officials who were in Washington for a series of bilateral meetings with the US just the previous day. An Al Jazeera spokesman said the news outlet had received the letter on the eve of the normalization agreement's signing known as the Abraham Accords and purported that the determination could have been a UAE precondition to signing the agreement. The UAE ambassador to the US, Yousef Al Otaiba, denied that there is any link. "At no point in our discussions was Al Jazeera or even Qatar raised," Al Otaiba said. "They're really not as important as they think they are." Al Jazeera also said that this has long been a goal of the UAE and its lobbyists in Washington. "Hobbling Al Jazeera was one of the top conditions of the UAE's blockade against Qatar and the Justice Department just gave the UAE what it wanted," the spokesman said. "We are reviewing the determination and considering our options." The Justice Department's letter indicated that the Al Jazeera review has been long underway, noting that the department has been in touch with AJ+ which is an affiliate based in San Francisco and Washington, DC, and part of the company backed by Qatar's royal family since 2018 about why it may be subject to these constraints. Since then it has collected information, including from Al Jazeera itself. CNN has reached out to the Qatar Embassy for comment. The letter said that AJ+ has about 80 employees in the US whose salaries "are paid by funds originating with the Government of Qatar" and whose work is carried out "at the direction and control" of Qatari leadership. AJ+ publishes current events on its own website and on various social media platforms. The letter also noted that the company's style guide "reveals AJ+'s intention to influence audience attitudes with its reporting" with policies such as calling the Israeli Defense Forces the Israeli army instead of the IDF and not using the words terrorist or terrorism. Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment. "Journalism designed to influence American perceptions of a domestic policy issue or a foreign nation's activities or its leadership qualifies as 'political activities' under the statutory definition... even if it views itself as "balanced" or aims to balance reporting by other journalists," said the letter from the chief of the Justice Department's counterintelligence division, Jay I. Bratt. The Department of Justice would not confirm the order when asked by CNN. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, was created decades ago to prevent foreign propaganda from swaying the American public. Companies or individuals considered to be working on behalf of a foreign government in the US are required to disclose their funding and relationship with a foreign government or actor with the DOJ, which then publishes the information online. Registering under FARA does not prohibit a news outlet from operating and publishing. In fact, other American-based companies that work with foreign media outlets, such as Japanese broadcaster NHK and Chinese newspaper The China Daily, are also registered under FARA, and those outlets continue their work. In 2017, the production company behind the American version of the Russian state-funded network RT filed as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice. This story was first published on CNN.com, "DOJ orders Al Jazeera platform to register as foreign agent." The National League playoffs will begin with a best-of-three wild-card series Sept. 30. For the Giants to play that day, they almost certainly must find a way to beat the Padres and at least split a doubleheader. That would require a major reversal of fortunes. The Giants announced that they will play a doubleheader against the Padres a week from Friday at Oracle Park to open the four-game series that concludes the 60-game regular season. The Giants will be the home team for the regularly scheduled opener at 4:10 p.m. and the road team for the nightcap, which makes up the second of two games they lost in San Diego last weekend after Alex Dickersons false-positive coronavirus test. Both games will be seven innings. The Giants are 1-5 against the Padres and were swept in a doubleheader Sunday that was played to make up the first postponed game. In two doubleheaders, against the Dodgers and Padres, San Francisco has been outscored 18-1. Naturally, manager Gabe Kapler insists that should not be viewed as a preview of coming attractions, namely the two critical games to be played at Oracle on Sept. 25. We played the Dodgers and they had Clayton Kershaw and a very difficult bullpen, Kapler said. Subsequently, we had Mike Clevinger and Garrett Richards, who pitched very well. We are capable of performing in single games, nine-inning games, and were capable of performing in a doubleheader. Kapler also could have mentioned that that each Giants doubleheader followed emotional events: discord in the clubhouse over whether to postpone a game against the Dodgers to make a Black Lives Matter statement, and Dickersons coronavirus test. Playing a doubleheader complicates the important matter of how Kapler will line up his pitching, which teams in the hunt like to do well in advance of a make-or-break final series. Kapler and his staff have jotted down several scenarios, but the decision will rest partly on whether Kevin Gausman can pitch in Oakland, how well he does, and how long he and the other starters throw in the week of games before the San Diego series. Kapler seems set on Drew Smyly and Tyler Anderson over the final two games, which seems surprising at first glance because Gausman and Johnny Cueto would not be pitching in potential elimination games. Its less surprising in view of the Padres splits. Their OPS against right-handed pitchers is .840, compared with .768 against lefties. Baked into those numbers was Sundays 6-0 win against the Giants and Cueto, who surrendered six runs (four earned) in 5 innings. One other note about the final weekend: The Cardinals, who lost two weeks because of positive coronavirus tests, are scheduled to play 58 games. Everyone else plays 60. If that has any bearing on the playoff races, the Cardinals will be expected to play one or two makeup games against the Tigers on Sept. 28, the day after the scheduled end to the regular season. That would ensure an even mathematical playoff field if paper tiebreakers are needed to complete the playoff bracket. Henry Schulman covers the Giants for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman Ivanka Trump rolled up her sleeves and tried her hand at making Cuban bread on Thursday while campaigning for her father in Tampa, Florida. For her latest trip, the 38-year-old White House senior adviser donned a light blue and white patterned dress with billowy sleeves and a matching Lele Sadoughi pinstriped face mask adorned with pearls. Ivanka's first stop in Tampa was La Segunda Bakery in Ybor City, where she met with the staff and helped roll out dough for the shop's famous Cuban bread. Into it: Ivanka Trump learned how to roll out dough for Cuban bread while visiting La Segunda Bakery in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday Outfit of the day: The 38-year-old donned a light blue and white patterned dress with billowy sleeves and a matching Lele Sadoughi pinstriped face mask adorned with pearls Master baker Anthony Ali adjusted the first daughter's hands as he taught her how to properly roll a 36-inch loaf in the kitchen, where they both wore masks. At one point, she leaned over and pushed her elbow into the dough. Ivanka has faithfully donned a protective face covering for the majority of her public outings, despite her father's wavering stance on masks. She has also taken great care to match them to her outfits, with Thursday's look being no exception. During her visit, the former businesswoman also spoke with Stephanie and Copeland More, the owners of La Segunda Central Bakery Animated conversation: The first daughter spoke with Stephanie and Copeland More, the owners of La Segunda Central Bakery, during the visit Next stop: Ivanka later joined former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at Columbia Restaurant for a 'fireside chat' about small businesses Jennifer Holton, a reporter for FOX13 News, tweeted that Ivanka had 'ordered three loaves of Cuban bread and guava pastries from La Segunda to bring back home to DC tonight.' Ivanka remained perfectly coiffed after her bread-making lesson, with not one blonde hair out of place when she headed to her next stop: Columbia Restaurant. President Donald Trump's eldest daughter joined former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at the establishment, which is the oldest restaurant in the state. They sat down with other local leaders for an intimate 'fireside chat.' Ivanka removed her mask for the conversation and sat slightly less than six feet apart from Bondi as they discussed the effect of COVID-19 on small businesses, among other things. All smiles: The White House senior adviser flashed the peace sign before sitting down Not quite safe: Ivanka removed her mask for the conversation and sat slightly less than six feet apart from Bondi While Ivanka was in Florida, her stepmother, First Lady Melania Trump, traveled to New Hampshire, but she didn't do any campaigning. The 50-year-old's trip, which was to visit a Concord hospital, involved neither the presidential campaign nor the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. She was there to visit a neonatal program for babies born addicted to drugs. Combating addiction is one of the three pillars of her Be Best campaign. Meanwhile, Ivanka has spent the past few days traveling to key swing states as part of President Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, making appearances at back-to-back events. Pumped: Ivanka tweeted her excitement about visiting Tampa on Thursday Priorities: While Ivanka was in Florida, First Lady Melania Trump traveled to New Hampshire to visit a Concord hospital to learn about its neonatal program for babies born addicted to drugs On Wednesday, she donned a $1,250 dress by Colombian fashion designer Johanna Ortiz to surprise volunteers at the Latinos for Trump headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Ivanka was strategic when picking her outfit, opting to support a Latina designer while visiting the campaign group's headquarters, where she was photographed wearing a mask while speaking with volunteers. Her long blonde hair was center-parted and styled in loose waves, a departure from her typically poker-straight locks. While the lower half of Ivanka's face was hidden behind her mask, she had a twinkle in her eye as she walked around the headquarters with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Pitstop: Ivanka surprised volunteers at the Latinos for Trump headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday Choices: Ivanka was strategic with her outfit, opting to wear a $1,250 dress by Colombian fashion designer Johanna Ortiz She was photographed waving and speaking to volunteers, and at one point, she gave the woman she was talking to a fist bump. Ivanka also volunteered to work a phone bank at the headquarters and was seen using a cellphone to call someone. After her visit, she sat down with Gov. Ducey and others to participate in a roundtable discussion about America's working families. The first daughter later shared photos from her trip on Instagram, writing: 'Joined Governor @dougducey and many new friends for phone banking and great discussions today in Phoenix. Next up: Later in the day, she sat down with Arizona Gov. Ducey and others to participate in a roundtable discussion about America's working families Busy bee: After she left Arizona, she flew to Austin, Texas, for another event All smiles: Ivanka took the stage for an intimate conversation at the fundraising event for her father's campaign 'Heard incredible success stories from hardworking Arizonans they credit @realdonaldtrump pro-growth economic policies. Arizonans know that POTUS will continue to fight hard for them for the next four years!!' Ivanka's trip to Arizona marks the first time the first daughter has visited the state since her father was elected, but that wasn't her only visit for the day. After she left Arizona, she flew to Austin, Texas, where she participated in a fundraising event for her father's campaign. She posted photos of herself sitting on stage at the gathering, writing: 'Great night in Austin shattering political fundraising records in the city - the excitement for @realDonaldTrump is yuge! 'Thank you to the Trump Victory team and @GOPChairwoman Ronna!' There is no evidence that anti-spit hoods prevent the transmission of Covid-19, the garda oversight authority has said as it expressed concerns" over their continued use. The hoods were used five times on children under 18 since April 12, the latest Policing Authority report shows. The Authority also expressed concern about their use on vulnerable groups like those with mental illness. Since April 12, anti-spit hoods have been used 104 times nationally, with the highest number of instances - 46 - reported in the Dublin Metropolitan Area. Spit attacks on gardai, which the hoods aim to prevent, remain a regular occurrence the report said, with 192 spit attacks on officers recorded between April and late August. While it condemned these attacks, the Authority also asked gardai to "consider the efficacy of anti-spit hoods as part of its ongoing evaluation of their use since the pandemic. The Authority said that the hoods - which are put over a suspects head to prevent them from spitting at an officer after their arrest - should only be used during the current public health emergency. While the welfare of Garda members is a priority for the Authority, there has been no evidence presented that these anti- spit hoods provide effective protection for members particularly in regard to preventing the transmission of COVID-19, the Authority said. Read More Gardai must seek approval from superiors to shut down pubs The policing Authority contacted the anti-spit hoods distributors, who said that the anti-spit hoods "have not been tested for their capacity to prevent airborne or respiratory droplets which spread Covid-19." It was also confirmed that these are the same model of anti-spit hood which is used by the PSNI, which Amnesty International reported as being not an effective means to prevent Covid-19. The Policing Authority also noted many human rights concerns regarding their use. Commenting on the report, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said: I note the concerns expressed by the Policing Authority about the use of anti-spit hoods by An Garda Siochana. The use of anti-spit hoods has decreased since the early stages of the pandemic. Members of An Garda Siochana must feel safe as they carry out their duty to protect people in this unprecedented public health crisis and anti-spit hoods should only be used in extreme circumstances. The report also noted a positive paradigm shift in how the gardai deal with domestic abuse since the coronavirus pandemic. Training and leadership at local level were attributed for bringing about this cultural change in the organisation that was noted by both victims, who reported increasing levels of trust in gardai, and by NGOs which support victims. Officers from across Gwinnett County, Georgia, showed up to pay their respects to a fallen hero after police SWAT K9 Blue was killed in the line of duty. The dog was caught in crossfire as his team apprehended an armed suspect. The first full-time SWAT K9 to join Gwinnett County Police Department (GCPD), Blue lost his life on Sept. 10, reports CBS46. After Blue tracked a suspected car thief into the woods, gunfire broke out between the suspect and the police on his trail. The 5-year-old German shepherd was shot and killed; the suspect, 18-year-old Robert Samuel Craig Rusk, was also shot and died from his injuries. When you have a K-9 partner, that is a special relationship, shared Lt. Jason Teague, assistant SWAT commander. These dogs are relied on as a work partner but its hard, its impossible to not get attached. He paid the ultimate price, Teague said. [H]e sacrificed himself to save those SWAT officers. Thats next level. The day after passing, Blues body was escorted by more than 100 police cars and motorcycles to a pet cemetery. A memorial service in Bethlehem, Barrow County, took place four days later. As is customary, an officer remained with the K9s body around the clock until his final farewell ceremony. I couldnt imagine losing him, and he is just my friend, local resident Shawn Crook told WSB-TV, gesturing to one of his own two German shepherd dogs while paying his respects during the Sept. 11 funeral procession. This is his work partner he worked with day in and day out, and he puts his life on the line for him The Gwinnett County Sheriffs Office K9 Unit later posted photos from Blues funeral procession on Twitter, along with three hashtags: #Hero, #K9Blue, and #BluePawsMatter. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing. The GCPD maintain that Rusk fired first; while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation claims not to have found evidence to support this yet, police did find a gun near the suspects body. A woman that ran from the same stolen car as Rusk has yet been identified. The highly trained K9 Blue was enlisted out of Houston, Texas, after a nationwide search. He had just surpassed his first anniversary with GCPDs SWAT team when he died. Blue was a dual-purpose K9, trained both to track and apprehend suspects and to detect explosives, according to a Gwinnett County news release posted after his death. Teague praised the sociable dog for his ability to work in a team environment, and for his willingness to respect the command of just about anybody on the team. While heartbroken to lose its loyal comrade, the team has collectively pledged to enlist other K-9s in the future. [I]n the end, Teague told CBS46, that dedication from the K-9 and the dedication from the handler it saved everyones lives yesterday, without a doubt. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc I am looking forward to joining this professional team and delivering the very best in dental care to my new patients, says Dr. Graham Kellams Pure Smiles Dentistry is excited to welcome Dr. Kellams to their well-respected dental practice. This modern, state-of-the-art clinic is led by Dr. Sanil Patel and is located at 2655 Dallas Hwy #510 in Marietta, GA. Pure Smiles Dentistry provides cutting-edge, quality care for patients of all ages in a comfortable, relaxing environment. This top Marietta dental practice can handle all of your preventive and routine dental care needs, as well as specialized treatments. They deliver advanced procedures within pediatric, cosmetic and restorative dentistry and are even equipped to offer the latest orthodontic solutions. Dr. Graham Kellams attended the University of Georgia and earned his DMD dental degree from The Dental College of Georgia. He is committed to continuing education and learning the latest advancements in the field of dentistry. Dr. Kellams is active in many organizations and is a member of the Georgia Dental Association and Academy of General Dentistry. He strives to help each patient achieve the smile they deserve while encouraging healthy habits that lead to the prevention of disease. Dr. Graham Kellams treats every patient with the utmost care and respect while listening to their concerns so a common goal for treatment can be identified and pursued together. The addition of Dr. Kellams helps the clinic to continue to provide every patient with a pathway toward achieving functional and aesthetic smiles. His dental knowledge and expertise are a great fit for this Atlanta area practice. I am looking forward to joining this professional team and delivering the very best in dental care to my new patients, says Dr. Graham Kellams More about Pure Smiles Dentistry: At Pure Smiles Dentistry, they understand what your smile needs to look and feel its best. The ability to serve patients in all facets of dentistry is one of the many valued benefits of choosing this practice. When you visit Pure Smiles Dentistry in Marietta, Georgia, you will always be greeted with a smile. Dr. Patel and his team go above and beyond to make each patient feel welcome. The clinic is designed to help patients feel relaxed with comfortable treatment rooms that are equipped with advanced dental tools and technology to maximize efficiency. This practice offers comprehensive dentistry, including general, restorative and cosmetic dental care for the entire family. For more information about Pure Smiles Dentistry, please visit http://www.puresmilesmarietta.com or call/text (770) 422-8776. Judge Allows Oregon GOP Statement in Voter Guide An Oregon judge ruled on Monday that a statement from the states Republican party should be allowed to appear in the voter guide. Oregon Secretary of State Bev Clarno previously blocked the statement from appearing in the guide, claiming that the Republicans submitted it 29 seconds too late. Marion County Judge Channing Bennett ruled that the Republican chairman Bill Currier completed his portion of the work before the 5 p.m. deadline, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). Clarno said she would allow the statement but appeal the ruling to get full legal clarity about the deadline. I still believe 5 p.m. is 5 p.m, she said in a statement to OPB, adding that there should be a bright line for filing requirements going forward. Republicans filed a lawsuit in Marion County shortly after Clarno blocked the statement from appearing in the guide. Oregon state GOP communications director Kevin Hoar insisted at the time that the Republicans filed the statement at 4:59 p.m. on Aug. 25, before the deadline. We cant quite explain the interpretation and decision here, Hoar said. State Republican Chairman Bill Currier said the move to bar the statement reeks of partisan discrimination. If a bureaucrat in some decision-making role simply didnt like what our statement said, this doesnt give them the right to silence us, Currier said. The statement submitted by the Republican Party was headlined Had enough? Vote Republican! It denounced Democratic leadership in Oregon on issues ranging from unrestrained rioting in Portland to mismanagement of the pandemic resulting in catastrophic small business losses. Hoar also said that Currier was locked out of the online filing system for several hours, delaying the partys ability to file its statement. Laura Fosmire, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bev Clarno, said in a statement there were no problems or glitches with the online reporting system. We simply received the statement after the filing deadline, she said. The Democratic Party of Oregon and six other political parties are included in the voters pamphlet for the Nov. 3 election. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Tottenham scored twice in the final 10 minutes to avoid a humiliating Europa League exit to Lokomotiv Plovdiv as Jose Mourinho's men came from behind to beat the nine-man Bulgarians 2-1 on Thursday. Harry Kane's penalty and Tanguy Ndombele's winner five minutes from time ensured the 2019 Champions League finalists did not fall at the first hurdle of their Europa League campaign to a side that have never progressed beyond the qualifying stages of European competition. "I think it was a helluva experience for the players. Sometimes in football miracles happen and when you play a knockout, one-leg it is the perfect scenario for a miracle to happen," said Mourinho. "Everyone on their side had the moment where they dream and we had the moment where we believed a nightmare could arrive." Mourinho named a strong side featuring Kane, Hugo Lloris and Son Heung-min with just four changes from Sunday's 1-0 defeat to Everton to start their Premier League campaign. But there was more evidence why Spurs are desperate to secure Gareth Bale's return on loan from Real Madrid as they struggled to break Plovdiv down and went behind to Georgi Minchev's header 19 minutes from time. The tie swung back in Spurs favour nine minutes later when Momchil Tsvetanov punched clear off his own line and the referee had no option but to point to the spot and send Tsvetanov off. Birsent Karagaren was then also shown a second yellow card before Kane dispatched the spot-kick into the top corner. Ndombele has struggled for game time under Mourinho despite being the club's record signing. But the Frenchman, who was introduced on the hour mark, proved the match winner by bundling home from close range. A trip to Macedonia next week to face KF Shkendija faces Mourinho's men in the third qualifying round, by which time they may have Bale to call on with the Welshman expected to complete his move back to the Premier League on Friday. Story continues "For me, at this moment, until I'm told Gareth Bale is a Tottenham player, I still think and feel and respect the fact that he's a Real Madrid player, so I'm not going to comment on a Real Madrid player," added Mourinho. Steven Gerrard's Rangers enjoyed a far more comfortable progression into round three of qualifying as they thrashed Gibraltar's Lincoln Red Imps 5-0 with Alfredo Morelos scoring twice. kca/iwd TRENTON Talk about law and order. A lawyer representing state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal argued Wednesday that the AG has the legal authority to require every law enforcement agency in New Jersey to annually publish the names of sworn officers who have faced major discipline. Grewal acted rationally in issuing directives three months ago mandating police agencies to annually disclose the names of sworn officers who have been suspended for more than five days or who have been demoted or terminated, along with a description of the circumstances that led to the discipline, said attorney Jeremy Feigenbaum of the New Jersey AGs Office. About one dozen attorneys, including Feigenbaum, provided oral arguments Wednesday before New Jersey Appellate Division Judges Mitchel E. Ostrer, Allison E. Accurso and Francis J. Vernoia. Several police unions, including the State Troopers Fraternal Association of New Jersey, have filed a lawsuit against Grewal arguing his directives to expose bad apple cops will cause immediate and irreparable harm to the impacted officers. The Appellate Division has temporarily halted Grewals directives from going into effect as it considers the legal arguments in this explosive case. In this case, the attorney general has gone too far, Paul L. Kleinbaum, an attorney for the state PBA, said Wednesday in oral arguments. He has usurped the role of the Legislature when implementing directives, which even he acknowledges represents a sea change in how the Attorney Generals Office has treated the confidentiality of personnel records. It is our position, your honor, that there is no right of access under OPRA or the common law, and these directives under any standard of review should not stand, Kleinbaum added, referring to the Open Public Records Act. One of the judges asked whether OPRA prevents the attorney general from providing information to the public that normally would be exempt from disclosure under OPRA. There is nothing in OPRA which gives the attorney general the right or anyone else the right to waive the prohibition, Kleinbaum said. If OPRA prohibits the records, the attorney general cant authorize their release and it wouldnt be binding on local government agencies. Members of the public may obtain certain government records under OPRA, but police IA or internal affairs disciplinary files are exempt. Frank M. Crivellii, an attorney for several PBA locals, argued in light of the death of Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody, any discussion regarding the release of disciplinary police records or information should be held with Congress and the state Legislature. For example, he cited State Sen. Loretta Weinbergs Senate Bill No. 2656 that would make law enforcement disciplinary records accessible to the public as government records. What we need is a surgical kind of approach that balances the publics need to know with efforts to make systemic changes with law enforcement officers privacy rights, said Kevin D. Jarvis, attorney for the New Jersey Superior Officers Law Enforcement Association, because the vast majority of the people affected by these directives are good, hardworking people who were as equally shocked as all of we were in what happened. Feigenbaum said the AGs directives did not violate OPRA or any other law. By seeking to publish disciplinary synopses on active, retired or deceased law enforcement officers, We are trying to really open up the books and let people see how the IA process works and how the IA process doesnt work, Feigenbaum said. One of the judges challenged Feigenbaum over that statement, however, saying, Im not sure that there is sufficient information provided to enable the public to really understand how the IA process is working and to have confidence in the results. The attorney general does not think that directives can trump statutes, and thats not our view, and thats now what were trying to do here, Feigenbaum said. We are not saying that the attorney general has lawmaking ability above the Legislature. He absolutely does not. He specifically has directive authority backed by Section 181 that law enforcement must comply with. The judges asked sharp questions during approximately four hours of oral arguments, forcing all sides to address these thorny issues of transparency versus employee privacy. With nationwide calls for transparency in police discipline, the attorney general took action, Feigenbaum said, carving out a limited exception to the previous policy of confidentiality for cases where the infraction had been substantiated and where the discipline that was warranted was major. Alexander Shalom of the ACLU of New Jersey argued that just because the police unions disagree with the AGs policy decisions doesnt mean his directives are arbitrary and capricious. CJ Griffin, an attorney for the National Coalition of Latino Officers and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, said her clients really want the court to know that not all police officers agree with the unions position. In this case, many of the officers are advocates of transparency. Griffin said her clients support transparency and believe transparency really benefits police officers. Whatever decision the Appellate Division makes in this case, the losing party will likely appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Male: China is accused of targeting all the countries of the world where the economy is the problem. First, China gives loans and then works to get the Chinese companies contracted by influencing the government policy. According to the information received, after Sri Lanka now another neighbouring Maldives is also being pressed under the debt of China. According to media reports, according to the reports the Maldives government are in debt of $ 3.1 billion. That too when the entire economics of the Maldives is worth about $ 5 billion. The entire economics of Maldives depends on tourism. The tourism sector of Maldives is closed due to COVID-19 virus. The Maldives earns about two billion dollars every year from tourism, but due to COVID-19, it is likely to decrease by one third. Mohammad Nasheed, the former PM of the Maldives and the speaker of the then country's parliament, says China's total debt to the country is about $ 3.1 billion. Nasheed raised questions on the feasibility of the infrastructure project in the country for which loans were taken from China. He said, "Will these projects give so much revenue that the debt can be repaid through them? The business plan of these projects does not indicate that the loan can be repaid, this includes loans taken between the government, loans to government companies and loans to private companies, which have been guaranteed by the Maldives Government. Even this trick of China will not work". North Korea to test missiles into the Sea Iran Sanctions: Trump might impose ban again AAP leader holds BJP responsible for Delhi riots (CNN) Since many Florida public schools opened their doors about a month ago, the number of children under 18 who have contracted COVID-19 statewide has jumped 26%, state data show. Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to push for in-person instruction across the Sunshine State. Even though his administration has released county-level data that indicates the 26% jump, it has not released school-level COVID-19 data for all K-12 public schools, which CNN began asking the state Department of Health for on August 31. On September 2 -- nearly two weeks ago -- state officials said by email the data would be released in the coming days and weeks. But still, the state hasn't provided this key information. To deal with this information gap, some school districts have created their own COVID-19 data dashboards or released coronavirus case numbers on social media pages or their websites. While useful in those jurisdictions, the overall result is a patchwork of data that varies in completeness and timeliness by district at a time when students, parents, teachers and administrators are making tough decisions about whether to opt for virtual or in-person learning. It's a problem that reverberates across the US as the White House and federal agencies come down hard in favor of reopening schools but often fail to give reliable information to those on the front lines. On campus, 'people were breaking the rules' Florida began reopening schools August 10. On that day, 42,761 children under 18 statewide were infected with the coronavirus, the state Department of Health reported. That week, nine of 12 school districts opening their doors were in counties with positivity rates above 5%, the uppermost threshold recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for schools to offer in-person learning. CNN confirmed the list of districts that planned to open as provided by an attorney for the Florida Education Association and confirmed positivity rates with the Florida Department of Health. One month later, 53,717 Florida children have tested positive for COVID-19, with a positivity rate of 14.3%, statewide data show. In Martin County, the positivity rate among children tested is 20.5%, according to the latest state data. Reese Richardson started seventh grade in person on August 11 at a Martin County public school. But after about a week and a half, she decided to switch to virtual learning. "Kids were taking off their masks," Reese said. "They were touching. They were close in the halls. People were breaking the rules." The Martin County School District is one of those districts that releases its own COVID-19 data via the news media. One day after reopening, an entire classroom was placed under quarantine. A month later, it has reported 23 positive or presumed positive cases and has quarantined 510 students. The district has 16,500 K-12 students. Lindsey Tarpley appreciates the transparency from the district, she said. She works for the Martin County School District, and her children, ages 10 and 5, attend Jensen Beach Elementary School in the county. "I use that information to make a decision for them to attend school," Tarpley said. But Jill Richardson, Reese's mom and a former teacher, wants more transparency from the district and the state. "I don't feel like I'm getting up-to-date or accurate numbers," Richardson said. District-level data varies in detail At least 1.1 million students were participating on August 31 in in-person instruction, the state Department of Education tweeted that day. But the data available to students and parents about the COVID-19 situation in their schools still varies from district to district. Hillsborough County Public Schools launched a dashboard that shows 255 positive cases in students and employees since July 31. The Osceola School District posts on its website the number of students and personnel who are either quarantined or have tested positive for a given week. Orange County Public Schools releases its Covid-19 data on Facebook on Tuesdays and Fridays. The latest post cites 18 new positive cases in 17 schools since the last report and lists 61 schools that "have had a positive case associated with an individual who has been on campus since the start of face-to-face classes on August 21." Depending on how data are tracked and displayed, this piecemeal approach can make it hard to keep tabs on new cases and may not specify the schools, grades or classrooms where infected students have been. Florida's largest teacher's union in a new TV commercial is pushing the state to release comprehensive data. "As the virus spreads, those at the top aren't giving us the information we need," the narrator says in the ad. "Instead, Gov. DeSantis plays politics with our kids' health." "When we deny what's going on in the schools, ... when we deny that information, it just causes the spread to grow much faster," said Andrew Spar, Florida Education Association president. On why his administration has not released school-specific Covid-19 data, DeSantis had this to say during a September 11 news conference. "It's not like if a test is reported to the state that the state necessarily knows which school that came from. That's not the way it's going," he said in response to a question from CNN. DeSantis has asked his commissioner of education and state surgeon general to produce the information, he said. But a date for the release of the data has not been provided. Students' mental health is also a factor The state does not require Martin County public schools to report the number of students and staff who are quarantined or have tested positive, Superintendent Laurie Gaylord told CNN. Students quarantined in Martin County stay home. In some cases, a teacher -- considered an essential worker -- with the same coronavirus exposure is required to report to work for in-person instruction the next day. Even with all these challenges, many parents and teachers in Florida are comfortable with brick-and-mortar schooling. In Martin County public schools, 64% of students are attending in-person classes, and 36% are learning remotely. At Jensen Beach Elementary School in Martin County, the halls are marked to facilitate social distancing. The dining hall is disinfected after every use. But desks in some classrooms are not 6 feet apart. Parents were warned social distancing would not be possible at all times, Gaylord said, so masks are required to be worn in schools. Tarpley, the Martin schools mom and employee, trusts the district is doing everything it can to keep her children safe, she said. And she believes there is no substitute for being in a classroom in terms of the mental health and well-being of her children. "With everything in life," she said, "there is a risk." This story was first published on CNN.com Covid-19 cases among Florida children jumped 26% in a month. It's still hard to know which schools are safe Government Ministers have confirmed that abandoned migrant boats will be donated to charities, after the proposal was made by Dover & Deal MP Natalie Elphicke. Mrs Elphicke, who has been calling for a crackdown on illegal people-smuggling across the English Channel, approached Ministers about the idea in July. It comes after MailOnline revealed they are being stored on an industrial estate in the Whitfield area of the Kent port town. Mrs Elphicke said she was keen to see if the vessels could be used locally by groups such as Walmer RNLI and the Sea Scouts. The boats are stacked three high and in multiple rows and vary from fibreglass rowing boats to high tech large ribs used by unscrupulous gangs who exploit migrants' desire to come to the UK. Long after having served their purpose in bringing people across the Channel, the boats, some of which cost thousands of pounds, lay discarded, deflated and damaged. Hundreds of the vessels once used by migrants are stacked up at the warehouse facility A number of engines from various vessels can be seen on wooden pallets near facility in Kent In a letter to her this week, Immigration Compliance Minister Chris Philp said the Home Office had 'taken steps to implement a system which will allow for the Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boats (RHIBS) to be donated to interested charity and voluntary sector groups, subject to completion of the necessary legal requirements.' He added: 'A number of charities have registered their interest in this scheme, and some representatives have already visited the site or are booked to visit. 'Upon visiting, they can view the potentially available boats and inform our Border Force teams which RHIBS they have an interest in obtaining.' MP Natalie Elphicke welcomed the news, while warning that the focus must remain on bringing the crossings to an end 'once and for all'. She said: 'Residents came to me with this sensible idea to put dinghies to good use after the Home Office have finished examining them - so I welcome Ministers listening and taking it forward. 'Yet I have also been clear that the real focus should be on making sure the dangerous crossings themselves end once and for all.' It comes as record numbers of migrants continue to cross the channel throughout 2020. September is already the busiest month for migrants crossing the Channel by small boat ever recorded. Dover MP Natalie Elphicke speaks about the migrant crossings crisis at Dover port, Kent The Home Office confirmed 26 people were detained in two separate incidents on Wednesday. It means at least 1,487 have made the treacherous journey across the world's busiest shipping route this month. The total now surpasses the 1,468 migrants who made it to the UK by small boat during the previous record month of August. Wednesday's arrivals take the total for the year to 6,512. There are not expected to be any migrant crossings today or for the next three to four days until Tuesday as tides have changed and water is very choppy. French authorities have warned people to be on guard due to weather. A spokesman for the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea said: 'This is why the maritime prefect calls for the utmost caution of all users of the sea, and in particular those who practice fishing on foot or who will walk on the coast subject to the tide. 'A few minutes can sometimes be enough to be isolated by the rising tide. 'The high tides have the consequence of increasing the tidal range (difference between the height of the open sea and that of the low tide) with a greater mixing of sea water; they therefore make sea currents stronger and the sea more dangerous.' But despite high northerly winds on Wednesday, French authorities rescued a further 24 migrants attempting to cross the Channel. Graph showing the number of migrants crossing the channel per month for the year 2020 Waleed (C), 29, a Kuwaiti migrant, sits in a dinghy with his brother's family and other migrants as they illegally cross the English Channel from France to Britain on September 11, 2020 A group of 17 were recovered at 2pm while another boat of seven were found at 6pm. All were returned to Boulogne-sur-mer. Mrs Elphicke said last Friday: 'I fully appreciate the strength of feeling about the continued small boats crossings. With around 6,000 illegal entrants this year alone, it is entirely unacceptable. 'I am working hard on this, and the Government has outlined a number of steps that it is taking to tackle this issue.' Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said: 'These crossings are facilitated by callous criminals who risk people's lives for money. 'We are working with our French counterparts to make this route completely unviable and continue to crack down on the criminal gangs responsible - making 50 arrests so far this year. 'These migrants are leaving France which is a safe country, where those seeking refuge can and should claim asylum, rather than attempting these perilous crossings to the UK. 'We continue to return those who do not have a legitimate asylum claim despite barriers to removals under the Dublin Regulations and legal challenges, and more flights are planned in the upcoming weeks.' Yesterday, pictures revealed French border guards escorting a boatload of 16 migrants into British waters and 'dumping' them there. The incident was witnessed on Tuesday morning from a fishing boat about 12 miles from Folkestone near the French-British sea border. French RIB speeds towards migrants as they sail through French waters in perilous conditions But French do nothing even though migrant boat is so low in choppy waters with high winds The images capture the moment a French rigid inflatable boat or RIB, carrying two border guards, was dispatched from a larger naval vessel to check on the migrants. But, rather than block them from entering British waters, they allowed the illegal crossing to continue. Most of the 16 on board the little inflatable were understood to be Afghan nationals, including two children and two women. A passenger on the fishing boat said they called UK Border Force just after 7.45am because it looked as if the overloaded vessel was about to sink. The migrants were using cut up plastic bottles to it bail out. Forget Knocking on Doors: Open a Facebook Accountthe New Way to Campaign in Myanmar Amid COVID-19 Nine months into the global pandemic, scientists are still piecing together the mystery of the first crossover event, in which the coronavirus moved from bats to an intermediary animal, and eventually, to humans. By comparing the patterns of mutations from the new coronavirus to other known viruses, researchers have been able to create an evolutionary history of the related viruses, and found a "single lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic." Surprisingly, they also found that the closest known ancestor of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has actually been living in bats for 40-70 years. "While the new virus looks like coronaviruses that circulate naturally, it's unique in ways we didn't know about before the pandemic," said Dr. David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at the University of Glasgow. Robertson and his team study how coronaviruses recombine in identifiable ways, which allows them to study the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Scientists still aren't sure what happened in between bats and humans, but they say it's likely the virus circulated for a while in a pangolin or another intermediary animal. PHOTO: A team of scientists and science students from Chulalongkorn University study a wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat on Sept. 12, 2020, in Ratchaburi, Thailand, in an effort to understand the origins of COVID-19. (Lauren Decicca/Getty Images) Despite some lingering questions about how and when the virus made its journey from bats to humans, Robertson said his research on the virus's genetic code proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virus came from nature, and that by studying the virus's origin, we can better prepare for the next pandemic. According to their recent study, which is awaiting peer review, humans are almost the perfect hosts for SARS-CoV-2, as the virus has "apparently required no significant adaptation to humans since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic." As a result, the virus naturally evolved in bats and was almost immediately ready to be spread through human contact. "As part of our understanding of how this virus emerged, where it emerged from and what took place, this study adds an important component to an evolving story," said Dr. John Brownstein, the chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor. Story continues MORE: The Latest: Scientists say virus may have come from bats "It shows it wasn't some big recombination of viruses that led to the pandemic -- it was actually a virus that had been circulating for a long while in bat populations that had properties that were conducive to human infection," he added. "If it had been made in a lab, it would have looked like viruses we already knew about, more closely related to the SARS virus," he said. Yet, conspiracy theories about the virus's origins persist. In the most recent example, an anti-Chinese government group linked to Steve Bannon published a swiftly rebuked paper alleging that "laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2." The paper makes a number of bold accusations, including that the virus was made in a lab controlled by the Chinese government. Virology experts widely agree, however, that none of the authors' claims can be supported. "There is nothing in this document that supports the idea that it is man-made," said Stanley Perlman, M.D., Ph. D., a professor at the department of microbiology and immunology, and the department of pediatrics at the University of Iowa. "In addition, no one would have known how to construct a pathogenic virus, and too little is known to predict pathogenicity," Perlman said. MORE: AP PHOTOS: Thai scientists catch bats to trace virus origins "There is a great deal of experimental support, from multiple groups, on the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2," said Vincent Racaniello, Ph. D., a Higgins professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Animal-to-human transmission of viruses has been responsible for many diseases, like the bubonic plague or the West Nile virus, and have caused other recent outbreaks, such as the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. PHOTO: In this photo taken on Sept. 4, 2020, a worker cleans a street along a market in Wuhan, China's central Hubei province. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images, File) "This is a story that you have over and over again, where you have these viruses circulating in animal populations, and there is some moment where these viruses were able to infect someone," said Brownstein. MORE: As COVID-19 continues, experts warn of next pandemic likely to come from animals To prevent a future pandemic, scientists say our best bet is to better understand the link between animal populations and human populations. "Landscape, fragmentation, climate change, transportation or illegal wildlife trade: All these factors are creating new interfaces for humans and animals. That probably was part of the reason for this pandemic," said Brownstein. Having those scientific conversations will likely be the key to stopping a future pandemic -- next time, before it starts. Dr. Leah Croll and Sony Salzman contributed to this report. How did coronavirus get transferred from animals to humans? Scientists may have an answer originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Bridget James couldnt put the tissue up her nose fast enough to stop the bleeding. Paper towels soaked through. She pulled them away and saw blood clots. After a week, she went to her doctor, who sent her to the ER. Had she had any nose trauma? he asked. The only thing she could think of was the coronavirus test shed taken in her neighborhood, Sunnyside, just before the bleeding started. The swab had gone so far up her nose that she leaned out of her car and puked. The doctor sent her home with a nasal spray of steroids. To continue reading this story, you will need to be a digital subscriber to LMTonline.com. SIGN IN Stay signed in Forgot Your Password? Forgot Your Password? Subscribers may have FREE access to all premium digital products. By logging in, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Biggest Domestic Threat Is Lone Attackers Self-Radicalized Online: FBI Director FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House panel on national security threats that no single organization or ideological affiliation represents the biggest risk, but instead, individuals who self-radicalize online and carry out attacks pose the most serious threat to the homeland. At the Sept. 17 hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray was asked by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) whether the greatest domestic threat to homeland security was posed by right-wing or left-wing extremism. We assess that the greatest threat to the homeland, to us here domestically, is not one organization, certainly not one ideology, but rather lone actors largely self-radicalized online who pursue soft targets using readily accessible weapons, Wray said. Those include both domestic violent extremists of a variety of sorts, as well as homegrown violent extremists who are motivated by foreign jihadist type sources. He said that unlike al-Qaeda-type sleeper cells, with respect to which investigators can more easily connect the dots and uncover them as they prepare and communicate, lone actors are much harder to identify before they strike. These peopleboth categories, the domestic violent extremists and the homegrown violent extremiststhey dont have a lot of people theyre working with, Wray said. They dont take a lot of planning and preparation, they can go from radicalization to mobilization in weeks if not days. The time, as experts say, from flash to bang, is that much more daunting with respect to lone actors, he said. Thompson then asked about claims that Antifa has been alleged to be the biggest domestic threat on the left, to which Wray replied by saying that the FBI doesnt look at threats in terms of political affiliation, but their potential to do harm. We dont really think of threats in terms of left and right at the FBI. Were focused on the violence, not the ideology, he said, adding that domestic violent extremists include everything from racially-motivated violent extremists to anti-government, anti-authority extremism, and that includes people ranging from anarchist violent extremistspeople who subscribe to Antifa or other ideologies, as well as militia types. In prepared remarks, Wray elaborated on the targets chosen by lone-wolf type attacks. Many of these violent extremists, both domestic and international, are motivated and inspired by a mix of ideological, sociopolitical, and personal grievances against their targets, which recently have more and more included large public gatherings, houses of worship, and retail locations. Lone actors, who by definition are not likely to conspire with others regarding their plans, are increasingly choosing these soft, familiar targets for their attacks, limiting law enforcement opportunities for detection and disruption ahead of their action, he said in the statement. Testifying before the committee, Wray said that in seeking to counter threats to national security, the FBI focuses on disruption, on making arrests before a criminal can act. Just this year alone, through the hard work and dedication of countless men and women both at the FBI and across our partner agencies, weve successfully thwarted potential terrorist attacks in Kansas City, Tampa, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Boston, Phoenix, and other locations, Wray said. He said, in the context of recent protests, the FBI has launched investigations against people involved in criminal activity. Although the majority of protesters have been peaceful, we have opened investigations on individuals involved in criminal activity at these protests, some of who adhere to violent, extremist agendas designed to sow discord and upheaval, he said, adding that the bureau doesnt investigate people based on their ideology or on the basis of what they express under the constitutionally protected right to free speech. But when the ideology leads someone to commit criminal acts and pursue violence, the FBI will not hesitate to take appropriate action, he said. Asked about Antifa as an organization, Wray said: We look at Antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization. To be clear, we do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self-identify with the Antifa movement, and thats part of this broader group of domestic violent extremists. He said investigations are also ongoing into racially-motivated violent extremists, the militia types, and others. Wrays testimony follows a report from a nonprofit that studies how hate-charged messages spread across social media, which found that far-left groups are increasingly using memes and other online propaganda to instigate violence against members of the general public and police. In a report, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) concluded that anarcho-socialist and violent anarchist online communities have grown in influence in recent years, and found evidence that violent anarcho-socialist networks played an active online role in preparing for and coordinating real world riots nation-wide and in real time. It comes at a politically sensitive time, when peaceful protests for police reform and other causes have been marred by outbreaks of looting and violence. Mughal-era historian and author of the book of Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of Indias Most Controversial King, Audrey Truschke had become the talking point of Indian Twitter, again. As the debate over renaming a Mughal-era museum in Uttar Pradesh rages in India, a video posted on Twitter by a user started doing the rounds- the video from pre-Covid times shows an Indian man arguing with Trsuchke. The clip is from January 2019, when Truschke spoke at the Hindu Lit for Life, during her segment The Myth and Reality of Emperor Aurangzeb - An Illustrated lecture. In the video, the man who was given the mask to ask a question goes off on a tirade - You people stand on the land of Native Americans, you are responsible for genocide," he said, attributing the collective crimes of colonizers single-handedly to Truschke. The man goes on to say that there needs to be more scientific evidence" and that Truschke had no right to poke her nose in Indian history." Truschke sums it up after the man stops his tirade by repeating his question back to him, What right do I have to comment on Indian history?" and then sums it up in four words: Im a historian." Dr @AudreyTruschke swatting away an entire Bhakt rant with 4 words. And turns it right aroundBeautiful. pic.twitter.com/tDMR3Zk81a John DelVento (@delventotime) September 14, 2020 I am a historian" John DelVento (@delventotime) September 14, 2020 Some netizens were happy that her words were met with applause from the audience. The very fact that there are auditorium full of people applauding her gives me lot of happiness and hope. That people around the globe will not succumb to a jingoistic brainwashing folks back home! well done Maam! Keep up the good work. InertMind (@NobleAbhiyanta) September 15, 2020 21 billion people?The total human population of today is just 7 billion. Our only increased in past centuries and population density also. There is no time in history where human population had reached 21 billion. The bhakt has no education I think. A Skeptic (@ASkeptic8) September 15, 2020 Loved the way Audrey handled the Joker. Arindam Sen (@arindamsen36) September 16, 2020 Not everyone agreed with her though, even if she clearly had the expertise. Have I read Aurangzebs Farmans people, why do you keep tossing me softballs? https://t.co/x5wG6SgP8T Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) September 16, 2020 Dude, you aint God, and I dont know about the Miguel era. But you might peruse my CV and see multiple Sanskrit texts Ive translated in part or full, plus a whole book on Sanskrit at the Mughal court.On being a historian Im a tenured professor in a history department. https://t.co/hhXm4l5ejr Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) September 16, 2020 Truschke is currently Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She is the author of two award-winning books: Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court and Aurangzeb. Also Read: An Internet Troll Tried to Mansplain Aurangzeb to Historian Who Wrote Book on the Emperor Earlier in February, a troll had asked her to read the book about Aurangzeb as she didnt seem to know much about. Truschke wrote the book on Aurangzeb. An Indian politician who filmed himself sitting in mud puddle and blowing a conch, claiming that it prevented coronavirus, has tested positive for the disease. Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria, an MP from the northern state of Rajasthan, was among 24 MPs who tested positive for the virus on September 14, local media reported. A month before the diagnosis, he had uploaded a bizarre video to his Facebook page in which he could be seen sitting shirtless in a muddle field, blowing a conch shell. Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria, an MP from the northern state of Rajasthan, claimed that sitting in a mud puddle and blowing a conch shell would provide immunity to coronavirus Jaunapuria, who also claimed that eating 'desi' - indigenous - foods would prevent the disease, has now tested positive for coronavirus 'Go out, get wet in the rain, sit in the dirt, work on the farm, blow a conch and eat "desi" things. One gains immunity from doing these things,' he says in Hindi. Desi is an Indian term which means local, indigenous, or pure. The news broke as India surged past 5million confirmed cases of coronavirus, adding 97,894 cases overnight Wednesday, the country's largest single-day rise yet. Jaunapuria is among 24 Indian MPs who have tested positive for coronavirus as the country's outbreak spirals out of control India has also suffered more than 83,000 deaths, with 1,132 people perishing from the disease between Wednesday and Thursday. It took India just 11 days to go from 4million cases to 5million, meaning it now has the fastest-rising coronvirus outbreak of any country in the world. Jaunapuria is far from the only prominent politician to propose an odd cure for coronavirus. Belarus president Alexsander Lukashenko said earlier this year that riding tractors, drinking vodka and taking saunas would prevent the disease, before testing positive. In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador revealed he was carrying amulets which he said protect him from disease, while Puebla Governor Luis Miguel Barbosa Huerta claimed poor people were immune to the disease. Suman Haripriya, another Indian lawmaker from the state of Assam, touted the theory that cow urine and dung could be used to sterilise infected areas, while Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, suggested yoga was also a cure. India has now surpassed 5million coronavirus cases and 83,000 deaths, and has the fastest-growing outbreak in the world (pictured, a woman, in white, examines her husband's body) India, which initially went into lockdown over coronavirus, is pushing ahead with reopening despite surging infections after its economy lost almost 24 per cent of its value And US president Donald Trump suggested that scientists should look into whether injecting disinfectant could be a cure for the virus. India is struggling to cope with its rapidly expanding outbreak, as supplies of oxygen run short across the country. In the big states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, that are also some of the worst-affected by the virus, demand for oxygen has more than tripled, doctors and government officials said, prompting urgent calls for help. 'Desperate patients have been calling me through the night but I don't know when I will get stock,' Rishikhesh Patil, an oxygen supplier in the city of Nashik, said. India's meagre health resources are poorly divided across the country. Nearly 600 million Indians live in rural areas, and with the virus spreading fast across India's vast hinterlands, health experts worry that hospitals could be overwhelmed. Nationwide, India is testing more than 1 million samples per day, exceeding the World Health Organisation's benchmark of 140 tests per 1 million people. India is now adding almost 100,000 new cases of coronavirus each day, and took just 11 days to add 1million new infections, the fastest of any country in the world India's daily death toll is also climbing as doctors warn that oxygen supplies, which are needed to ventilate infected patients, are in desperately short supply But many of these are antigen tests, which look for virus proteins and are faster but less accurate compared to RT-PCR, the gold standard for confirming the coronavirus by its genetic code. With the economy contracting by a record 23.9% in the April-June quarter leaving millions jobless, the Indian government is continuing with relaxing lockdown restrictions that were imposed in late March. The government in May announced a $266 billion stimulus package, but consumer demand and manufacturing are yet to recover. A large number of offices, shops, businesses, liquor shops, bars and restaurants have reopened. Restricted domestic and international evacuation flights are being operated every day along with train services. Schools will reopen for senior students from 9-12th standards for consultation with teachers next week. Pune, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global smart contact lenses market size is anticipated to reach USD 1,603.4 million by 2026 on account of the increasing incidences of eye disorders and the need for a contact lens with upgraded quality and performance. Smart contact lenses are the most recent and greatest developments of contact lenses. They can recognize health conditions such as diabetes, glaucoma, and others. As per a recent report published by Fortune Business Insights titled, Smart Contact Lenses Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Continuous Intraocular Pressure Monitoring Lenses, Photochromic Lenses, and Others), By End User (Ophthalmology Clinics, Home Care, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026, the market value was USD 115.0 million in 2018 and will exhibit 38.9% CAGR in between 2019 and 2026. Significant Industry Developments of the Smart Contact Lenses market include: January 2020 The development of a smart contact lens called Mojo Lens was declared by Mojo Vision Inc., with a built-in display that allows people to get access to useful and timely information without having to look down at a computerized screen. Highlights of the Report: Analysis of the impact of Covid-19 that the market would face in the near future. In-depth analysis of the growth drivers and obstacles. Profile of all the companies operating in the market. Elaborate data about the dominating region. Competitive landscape consisting of mergers & acquisitions, investments, partnerships, new product launches, opening of new facilities, and new contracts. Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/smart-contact-lenses-market-102717 What is the Objective of the Report? The report is based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of the market and focuses on major factors boosting, repelling, challenging, and creating opportunities for the market during the forecast period. The report also offers interesting insights into the market and major industry developments related to the market. List of key players operating in the market and their strategies are mentioned in the report. The report also discusses the table of segmentation in detail and lists the names of the leading segment with its attributed factors. It also throws light on the current smart contact lenses market trends. The emergence of COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill. We understand that this health crisis has brought an unprecedented impact on businesses across industries. However, this, too, shall pass. Rising support from governments and several companies can help in the fight against this highly contagious disease. Some industries are struggling, and some are thriving. Overall, almost every sector is anticipated to be impacted by the pandemic. We are making continuous efforts to help your business sustain and grow during COVID-19 pandemics. Based on our experience and expertise, we will offer you an impact analysis of coronavirus outbreak across industries to help you prepare for the future. Click here to get the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 on this Market. Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/smart-contact-lenses-market-102717 Rising Prevalence of Diabetes will Propel Market Growth The increasing prevalence of diabetes and glaucoma is a major factor in promoting the smart contact lenses market growth. Contact lenses are rapidly progressing in the field of optometry since the last decade and have gain momentum due to rapid advancements in this field. Smart contact lens is capable of detecting diseases such as diabetes and glaucoma and this is also boosting the overall market. Besides this, smart lenses offer other features such as automatic adjusting to light and dark environments, taking photographs, and are in high demand for patients with age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) and other health-related issues. However, the high cost of smart contact lenses may pose a major challenge to the growth of the market. This, coupled with the lack of awareness among people in developing nations may also hamper the overall market growth in the coming years. Market Dominated by North America followed by Europe on Account of Increasing Prevalence of Glaucoma Based on geographical segmentation, North America earned the largest smart contact lenses market share with revenue of USD 58.9 million earned in 2018. This is attributable to the increasing prevalence of diabetes and glaucoma in the region. According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, an estimate of 2 million Americans was diagnosed with glaucoma in the year 2017. Therefore, the increasing incidences of such cases and the rising awareness about smart contact lens will boost the regional market. This, coupled with adequate investments by players for the launch of new products will also help the region continue its dominance in the forecast period. Quick Buy - Smart Contact Lenses Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/102717 Heavy Investments in Innovative Products will Intensify Market Competition As per the report, the smart contact lens market is dominated by players such as Google, Samsung, and Sensimed AG. This is due to the rising investments in research and development of innovative products. The launch of constant innovative products has helped these companies compete for the top position in the market. Besides this, other players are engaging in various strategies such as merger and acquisition, investments in new product launches, joint ventures, agreements and contracts, and others to attract high smart contact lens market revenue in the forthcoming years. List of Significant Vendors Operating in Smart Contact Lenses Market include: Sony Innovega Inc. Alcon Vision LLC Samsung Mojo Vision Inc. Google Sensimed AG Other vendors Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/smart-contact-lenses-market-102717 Smart Contact Lenses Market Segmentations: By Type Continuous Intraocular Pressure Monitoring Photochromic Lenses Others By End User Ophthalmology Clinics Home Care Others By Geography North America (the U.S. and Canada) Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, and the Rest of Europe) Asia-Pacific (Japan, China, India, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Rest of Asia- Pacific) Rest of the World Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/smart-contact-lenses-market-102717 Have a Look at Related Reports: Contact Lenses Market Share & Industry Analysis, By Modality (Reusable and Disposable), By Design (Toric, Multi-focal, and Spherical), By Distribution Channel (Retail Stores, Online Stores, and Ophthalmlogists), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 Eyewear Market Share & Industry Analysis, By Product Type (Spectacles, Sunglasses, Contact Lens), By Distribution Channel (Retail Store, Online Store, Ophthalmic Clinics), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 Vision Care Market Share & Industry Analysis, By Product Type (Eyewear, Intraocular Lens, and Ocular Health), By Distribution Channel (Retail Store, Online Store, Hospital & Clinics), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 Spectacles Market Share & Industry Analysis, By Product Type (Spectacles Frames and Spectacle Lenses), By Modality (Prescription and Over-the-counter) By Distribution Channel (Retail Store, Online Store, Ophthalmic Clinics), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 Reading Glasses Market Share & Industry Analysis, By Age Group (Less than 18 years, 18-64 years, and 65 years and above), By Type (Prescription Reading Glasses and OTC Reading Glasses), By Distribution Channel (Retail Stores, Online Sales Channels, Ophthalmol-ogy Clinics), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them to address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Our reports contain a unique mix of tangible insights and qualitative analysis to help companies achieve sustainable growth. Our team of experienced analysts and consultants use industry-leading research tools and techniques to compile comprehensive market studies, interspersed with relevant data. At Fortune Business Insights we aim at highlighting the most lucrative growth opportunities for our clients. We, therefore, offer recommendations, making it easier for them to navigate through technological and market-related changes. Our consulting services are designed to help organizations identify hidden opportunities and understand prevailing competitive challenges. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. 308, Supreme Headquarters, Survey No. 36, Baner, Pune-Bangalore Highway, Pune - 411045, Maharashtra, India. Phone: US :+1 424 253 0390 UK : +44 2071 939123 APAC : +91 744 740 1245 Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com Fortune Business Insights LinkedIn | Twitter | Blogs If you want a dog to hunt something down, it helps to let them sniff an item to pick up the scent. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on September 17 have found that scent training honeybees in the hive might work in a similar way--and that this approach could make bees more efficient in pollinating a desired crop. The findings show that honeybees given food scented with odors that mimicked sunflowers supported a significant increase in sunflower crop production. "We show that it's possible to condition honeybees to a rewarded odor inside the colony, and this experience modifies the bees' odor-guided behaviors later," says Walter Farina of Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. "The most surprising and relevant result is that the foraging preferences for the target crop are so prolonged and intensive that it promoted significant increases in the crop yields." Farina's team had previously shown that honeybees could establish stable and long-term memory related to food scents inside the nest. They also knew that those in-hive memories could influence the bees' choices about which plants to visit later. To raise bees with a memory that would support later foraging on sunflowers, the researchers first developed a simple synthetic odorant mixture that the bees associated with the natural floral scent of sunflowers. Next, they fed the hives with scented food. They found that those early experiences and memories of the scent of sunflower influenced the bees' later foraging preferences, as inferred by decoding their waggle dances. The bees' training led them to visit sunflowers more. Those trained bees also brought more sunflower pollen back to the hive. This increased visitation and foraging on sunflowers also boosted the flowers' production of seeds by 29 to 57 percent. "Through this procedure, it is possible to bias honeybee foraging activity and increase yields significantly," Farina says. "In other words, pollination services might be improved in pollinator-dependent crops by using simple mimic odors as part of a precision pollination strategy." The researchers say they are now studying other pollinator-dependent crops, including almonds, pears, and apples. Ultimately, their goal is to develop an array of new odor mimics to improve pollination efficiency and productivity of many important agricultural crops. ### This work was supported by FONCYT-ANPCYT, FONARSEC-ANPCYT, the University of Buenos Aires, and CONICET. Current Biology, Farina et al.: "Learning of a Mimic Odor within Beehives Improves Pollination Service Efficiency in a Commercial Crop" https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31172-6 Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com. by Shafique Khokhar Card Coutts gives hope to the poor. As part of the EA-20/2020 emergency project, Caritas Pakistan Karachi handed out 10 shelter tents and plastic sheets to the families most affected by monsoon rain and flooding. Karachi (AsiaNews) Caritas Pakistan Karachi responded this week to the emergency situation created by heavy rains and flooding by handing out food and other parcels to the most vulnerable families in the parishes of St Jude's, St Philip's and St Thomas in the Archdiocese of Karachi. The food parcels were donated by the Nobel Foundation through the Robin Hood Army Pakistan network at the request of Caritas Karachi for the communities most affected by recent heavy rains and floods in Karachi, the sixth spell of monsoon rains this season. As part of the EA-20/2020 emergency project, Caritas Pakistan Karachi handed out 10 shelter tents and plastic sheets to the families most affected by monsoon rain and flooding in Shahbaz Goth and Ali Muhammad Goth, two areas in and near Malir district, Karachi. The homes of the affected families have been completely washed out, and residents are now forced to live in poor conditions with their children. With tears in his eyes, Sabir Masih, from one of the affected family, thanked Caritas for providing shelter, tents and plastic sheets and for arranging a safe and secure place for them. He explained that they have been living in really wretched conditions; however, help from Caritas has given us a hand and some hope. At present, we have been forced to live out in the open, hungry, but now we have enough help to survive. Archbishop Card Joseph Coutts of Karachi visited the affected areas and handed out food parcels to those displaced by the rains. During the visit to the Parish of St Judes, the prelate tried to lift people their spirit. Dont be afraid in this difficult moment, be brave, he told them. In his praise for the Caritas Pakistan Karachi team, the cardinal said that the work you are doing for the people is really good news and comforting". For his part, Fr Benjamin Shahzad, parish priest of St Philips, expressed gratitude to Card Joseph Coutts, for the support and guidance from Caritas Pakistan Karachi, the Churchs main charity, in helping the people in the affected parishes. Fr Anthony Abras, parish priest in St Thomas, thanked God for what was given to them. We received these food packages with joy and happiness. The food may run out, but the happiness and joy will remain with us. Fr Abras also called on the faithful to pray for the Church and Caritas for their good work and for the support to the affected populations in this period of heavy rains in Karachi. Caritas Pakistan Karachi executive secretary Mansha Noor said we appreciate and thank our benefactors very much. They have made it possible to reach out to people and hand out everything we had. Every year, flocks of thousands of hungry ducks are released into vast rice paddies to clean the fields of unwanted pests and rice stubble left over from last harvest. Humanity has witnessed unprecedented technological advancements over the last few decades, but in Thailand, the worlds second largest rice exporter, farmers still use a centuries old solution to keep their rice paddies in optimal condition. Every year, they rely on duck farmers to unleash thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of young, hungry ducks onto their fields, to clean them of pests like cherry snails and apple snails, as well as weeds and leftover rice stubble. Apart from acting as a natural pesticide, the ducks also fertilize the fields with their droppings. The benefit (for the breeder) is that we reduce costs to feed the ducks, a 34-year-old duck breeder, told Reuters. And in return, for the rice farmers the ducks help eat pests from the farm and the farmers can reduce the use of chemicals and pesticides. Ducks as young as 20 days roam rice fields for about five months every year.moving about from farm to farm before returning to a duck farm to lay eggs for about three more years. A flock of 10,000 ducks can thoroughly clean up a 70-hectare farm in about a week. Using ducks as natural pesticides for rice fields is part of an old tradition in Nakhon Pathom province known as ped lai thoong (literally field chasing ducks). EV ICE But if all this comes off as Polestar trying to throw shade at EVs, that's just a misfortunate by-product of the company's real intentions: pushing for a more transparent (and, preferably, homogenous) way in which manufacturers come up with a vehicle's Life Cycle Assessment. Fragmentation will only lead to confusion. Car manufacturers have to come together and be more transparent, says Fredrika Klaren, Head of Sustainability at Polestar. What were saying at Polestar is, as an industry, lets help consumers make the right choice. Keeping true to its own call for transparency, Polestar made the entire methodology it uses public hoping others will follow suit. Anyone interested can go over the document by clicking But if all this comes off as Polestar trying to throw shade at EVs, that's just a misfortunate by-product of the company's real intentions: pushing for a more transparent (and, preferably, homogenous) way in which manufacturers come up with a vehicle's Life Cycle Assessment.Fragmentation will only lead to confusion. Car manufacturers have to come together and be more transparent, says Fredrika Klaren, Head of Sustainability at Polestar. What were saying at Polestar is, as an industry, lets help consumers make the right choice.Keeping true to its own call for transparency, Polestar made the entire methodology it uses public hoping others will follow suit. Anyone interested can go over the document by clicking here But if all this comes off as Polestar trying to throw shade at EVs, that's just a misfortunate by-product of the company's real intentions: pushing for a more transparent (and, preferably, homogenous) way in which manufacturers come up with a vehicle's Life Cycle Assessment.Fragmentation will only lead to confusion. Car manufacturers have to come together and be more transparent, says Fredrika Klaren, Head of Sustainability at Polestar. What were saying at Polestar is, as an industry, lets help consumers make the right choice.Keeping true to its own call for transparency, Polestar made the entire methodology it uses public hoping others will follow suit. Anyone interested can go over the document available here.ndustry is currently advertising electric vehicles as the cleanest mobility option you can get, and rightly so. Of course, thepastures aren't as green as they might have us believe, but they're definitely closer to that Windows XP backdrop image than diesels, for example.You would expect companies that build electric vehicles exclusively to be the most ardent supporters of this technology, and if you look at Tesla, for example, you would be right. But that's because Tesla Motors isn't a brand spun off a traditional manufacturer that still makes gas-powered vehicles. Like Polestar, for example.The website of the Chinese-owned Swedish company has a tab called "Electric sustainability - it's time to come clean" where it spills the beans on just how much tidier a battery-powered vehicle is compared to one that burns gasoline. For the purpose of this comparison, Polestar chose its own Polestar 2 (electric sedan) and the Volvo XC40 (gas-powered crossover).To be fair, Polestar sets off from a commendable position. The company laments the fact most manufacturers don't release numbers for the CO2 emissions resulting from the EV manufacturing process, which is a fair point. Given the zero tailpipe emissions, some customers might be tempted to think an electric car is 100 percent clean, which would obviously be a fallacy.It turns out of the Polestar 2's lifetime CO2e (that's carbon dioxide equivalent, a figure that averages all greenhouse gas emissions under a single roof) footprint reaches a break-even point compared to a Volvo XC40 's only after driving a maximum of 112,000 km (69,500 miles), depending on the energy source.That number is calculated based on the global power mix. According to Polestar, it drops down to 78,000 km (48,400 miles) when using the 2018 European power mix, or even as low as 50,000 km (31,000 miles) in an ideal scenario where all power comes from renewable sources such as wind turbines.Well, Polestar never intended to make this information an anti-EV pamphlet, and it didn't. First of all, anyone who buys a car and doesn't drive a minimum of 112,000 km (69,500 miles) before they sell it is doing a very bad thing to the environment, regardless of the type of vehicle or its powertrain. That means buying electric, at least in Polestar's scenario, makes perfect sense.Second, this comparison only takes into account CO2 emissions, but we all know there is plenty of other nasty stuff coming out the tailpipes ofvehicles. You don't agree? Then why don't you go take a nap in the garage with every door and window closed and the engine running? (Seriously, don't do that, you'll die).Finally, you just can't underestimate the importance of having urban areas free of any vehicles with internal combustion engines - or at least having as few of them as possible - and you can only get that with zero tailpipe emissions vehicles. Not only would the air be a lot cleaner (see what happened during the peak of the pandemic), but our brains would have a better time too thanks to the lower noise levels. Yes, tire noise would still be a thing, but the low speed limits in the cities make it less of a problem. Sheriff Investigators Have Leads in Search for Suspect in Deputies Shooting Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said today investigators had promising leads in the search for the gunman who shot two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies as they sat in a patrol SUV at a Compton rail station. Were on the right path, Villanueva said Tuesday. He also expressed hope to have something to announce soon. Investigators were working day and night to identify and arrest these cowards, Villanueva said, referencing the gunman and a possible getaway driver. ADVERTISEMENT As of Tuesday, no suspects had been identified, despite some online social media chatter to the contrary. The sheriffs department issued a statement early Monday saying the information circulating online is ERRONEOUS information and there are no named or wanted suspects at this time. A GoFundMe page set up for the two deputies was poised to exceed its original goal of raising $400,000 as of Tuesday afternoon. As of 3 p.m., more than 5,735 people had donated $395,905 toward the pages new goal of $500,000. The page, which was started by sheriffs detective Keegan McInnis, can be found at http://ow.ly/N3q430r9VTq. The deputies remained hospitalized but made it through surgery for their wounds and were last reported in stable condition. Fortunately, they were spared any injury to a vital organ that would have jeopardized their life immediately, Villanueva told KNX-AM (1070) on Monday. ADVERTISEMENT But Villanueva said the deputies described only as a 24-year-old man and a 31-year-old mother of a 6-year-old boy have a long road to recovery. Villanueva said Saturday that both deputies were sworn in just 14 months ago. The Board of Supervisors formally ratified a $100,000 reward offer Tuesday. Villanueva, speaking at the outset of the board meeting, said the reward had now been matched and exceeded by private donors. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Monday afternoon it was adding $25,000 to the reward, noting that the deputies were working for Metros Transit Services Bureau at the time of the shooting. The League of United Latin American Citizens added another $25,000 to the reward money, and the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union that represents the departments deputies, announced Tuesday night that it was donating $75,000. Members of the county board said cities including Palmdale, Cerritos, Lakewood and Industry had also added to the reward, though the totals were not immediately available. Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Mark Ridley-Thomas authored the reward motion. Barger said she had visited St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and saw deputies in the waiting room who were deflated but not deterred. Then she went to the command post. I looked around. There were about 80 deputies who mirrored the communities that they are working in. These are people that, for the most part, are from these communities who want to protect their communities. So while this ambush truly was heinous, what it has shown me is that we have people that take an oath to protect our communities even under the threat of maybe not coming home to their families, Barger said, her voice shaking. And so I hope that we will remember that and hold them and their families and each and every single sheriffs deputy, each and every law enforcement (officer) in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. Ridley-Thomas urged those who know the gunman to contact the Sheriffs Departments Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500. Anonymous tips can be left for L.A. Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477), or at http://lacrimestoppers.org. We simply cannot tolerate this kind of lawlessness, he said. Supervisor Janice Hahn also pushed anyone with information to come forward. Somebody knows who this person is, they know their name and were hoping that this will bring that information forward so we can bring this perpetrator to justice, Hahn said. Villanueva challenged Lakers star LeBron James, who has been outspoken on social-justice issues and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, to match the reward offer. Villanueva said Tuesday that he singled out James because of the players previous comments after last months police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He symbolized some of the comments weve heard from politicians, elected leaders, civic leaders, where theyre making a broad-brush condemnation of an entire profession, Villanueva said. I just think we need to put down the broad brushes and re-focus on all the people accountable when they cross the line, as we are doing with law enforcement across the entire nation. James has not responded to Villanuevas comments. The attack occurred at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Metro A (Blue) Line station at Willowbrook Avenue and Palmer Street. Surveillance video shows the suspect approaching the patrol vehicle from behind, walking up to the passenger side of the vehicle, pulling out a handgun and firing through the passenger side window. The gunman is then seen running away. The shooter was described by the sheriffs department as a male Black, 28- to 30-years-old, wearing dark clothing, who was last seen heading northbound on Willowbrook Avenue in a black four-door sedan. Villanueva said his department had been contacted by President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and he said the Trump might reach out to the injured deputies families. Both candidates have done a very good job, been very supportive, Villanueva said. They set aside their political differences and they both stepped up to the plate and said theyre here to support the sheriffs department, and we support their efforts. Relatives of the injured deputies including the husband of the female deputy and the girlfriend and parents of the male deputy were at St. Francis Medical Center. Villanueva on Monday again lashed out at protesters who showed up at the hospital Saturday night and shouted anti-law-enforcement chants, expressing hope that the deputies die. One witness told ABC7 some protesters tried to force their way into the emergency room while shouting death to the police. They were chanting that they wish the deputies died, Villanueva told KNX Monday. And I dont even know how to be begin to describe that, other than repulsive, reprehensible. More video surfaced Monday showing some bystanders at the Metro station taking pictures or video of the wounded deputies after the shooting, and at least in one case, laughing while failing to offer any kind of aid. Barger didnt mince words Monday about her disgust with the hospital protests. She suggested the shooting was the culmination of anti-law- enforcement rhetoric expressed by many elected officials, community leaders and others, leading to the creation of a toxic environment amid a time of civil unrest. The shooting came on the heels of a series of combative protests outside the sheriffs South Los Angeles station, with demonstrators condemning the Aug. 31 fatal shooting by two sheriffs deputies of 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee in the Westmont area. Those demonstrations led to more than three dozen arrests, with the protesters accusing deputies of using excessive force and Villanueva saying demonstrators triggered the violence by hurling objects at sheriffs deputies. Following the Saturday night shooting, Hahn was among those pleading for calm in the community. Also in the aftermath of the shooting, Villanueva and the sheriffs department are taking criticism over the arrest of a KPCC/LAist reporter while deputies were working to quell the protest outside the hospital. Video from the scene showed deputies pinning reporter Jose Huang to the ground and arresting her. The sheriffs department claimed she didnt have proper media credentials and was interfering with a lawful arrest. Villanueva later doubled down on that contention, saying Huang got right up on the shoulder of a deputy trying to make an arrest, and saying her actions were more activism than journalism. Video from Huangs cell phone has since surfaced, showing Huang repeatedly identifying herself as a reporter, shouting KPCC, and saying, Youre hurting me and crying out in apparent pain. Inspector General Max Huntsman has opened an investigation into Huangs arrest. By Caroline Pailliez PARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of workers at COVID-19 laboratories in France went on strike on Thursday, a trade union said, angry over poor working conditions as the coronavirus testing system buckles under huge demand. The hard-left CGT union said the strike was disrupting testing in some towns and could drag on if laboratory owners failed to deal with staff shortages and increase pay. The walkout comes as the government demands more and faster testing to fight a surge in new coronavirus cases. "We're overwhelmed," laboratory nurse Aminata Diene, one of about 50 lab workers protesting outside a diagnostics centre on the edge of Paris said. The 31-year-old said her Bioclinic laboratory in Bezons, which is staffed by four nurses and would normally handle 40 COVID-19 tests a day, was closed as a result of the strike. "We can't be on the phone, physically greeting patients and carrying out tests all at once. We're exhausted, physically and mentally." France has ramped up testing six-fold since the peak of the first wave and carried out 1.2 million tests last week, Health Minister Olivier Veran told a news conference. But at some testing centres, people queue around the block and results can take days because of the bottleneck in laboratories. Le Figaro reported that in a meeting with senior ministers last week, President Emmanuel Macron said: "One million tests is all well and good, but it's pointless if the results arrive too late." On Wednesday, France authorised the use of antigen tests, which deliver results faster than RT-PCR testing, to help ease pressure on the testing system. Veran said 5 million antigen test kits were on order and would arrive by October. The antigen tests are expected to initially be used for hospital workers, care home staff and travellers at airports, a spokeswoman for the Paris regional health authority said. Pascal Boudeau, a technician for 35 years at a medical laboratory outside Paris, said management needed to start listening after ignoring the calls for help for weeks. Story continues "We're at our wits' end. We get verbally abused, sometimes physically. The pace is relentless," the CGT member said. "We've given up counting the overtime we do for free." The lab workers strike coincided with street protests organised by the CGT and several smaller unions in numerous cities across France. The CGT accuses Macron of destroying France's social security system, ruining public services and placing the interests of big business over those of workers even as the coronavirus wrecks the economy and forces job cuts. (Reporting by Caroline Pailliez; Additional reporting and writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Janet Lawrence) New Delhi: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asserted that no force in the world can stop Indian soldiers from patrolling the country's border in Ladakh region. Making a statement in Rajya Sabha on the situation in eastern Ladakh, he said China has amassed troops on the border and in response India has made appropriate counter deployment. China, he said, made "provocative military manoeuvres" on August 29/30 in an attempt to change the status quo in the south bank area of Pangong Lake in the Ladakh region at a time when the two sides were engaged in military and diplomatic talks to de-escalate tensions. The defence minister said there is a mismatch between what China says and does. "Unki kathani aur karni alag hai (their actions are at variance with their words)," he said The skirmishes and face-off in the last few months with China, that left 20 Indian soldiers dead and inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese sides as well, were primarily over the issue of patrolling the Ladakh border. "No force in the world can stop Indian soldiers from patrolling. Our soldiers have sacrificed their lives only for this," the minister said. He was responding to a clarification sought by former defence minister A K Antony on the issue of Indian forces not being allowed to patrol in certain parts of the Galwan valley. "I want to make it clear (that) skirmishes and face-off are because of this (issue of patrolling)," he said, adding the patrolling pattern is traditional and well defined. Singh made the statement in Rajya Sabha after the government and opposition agreed not to have a discussion on the sensitive issue. Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, however, allowed members to seek a few clarifications on the statement, which was almost identical to the one Singh had made in Lok Sabha on September 15. The minister said India and China are yet to resolve their boundary question. "China does not accept the customary and traditional alignment of the boundary between India and China," he said. "We believe that this alignment is based on well-established geographical principles confirmed by treaties and agreements, as well as historical usage and practice, well-known for centuries to both sides," he said. The Chinese position, however, is that the boundary between the two countries has not been formally delimited, that there exists a traditional customary line formed by the extent of jurisdiction that they claim was exercised historically by each side, and that the two sides have different interpretations of the position of the traditional customary line," he said. China, he said, continues to be in illegal occupation of about 38,000 square kilometers of Ladakh. Besides it also holds 5,180 sq km of Indian territory in Pakistan occupied Kashmir that Pakistan had illegally ceded in 1963. "I would like to mention here that as yet there is no commonly delineated Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the border areas between India and China and there is no common perception of the entire LAC," he said, adding more than two decade old agreements call for two sides to maintain minimal forces along the LAC. On the latest situation, the minister said India has noticed a buildup of troops and armaments by China in the border areas adjacent to Eastern Ladakh since April. "In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off," he said. Even as this situation was being addressed by the Ground Commanders, in mid-May the Chinese side made several attempts to transgress the LAC in other parts of the Western Sector. This included Kongka La, Gogra and North Bank of Pangong Lake. "These attempts were detected early and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces," he said. "We made it clear to the Chinese side both through diplomatic and military channels that China was, by such actions, attempting to unilaterally alter the status quo. It was categorically conveyed that this was unacceptable," Singh said. Given the growing friction along the LAC, the senior commanders of the two sides in a meeting on June 6, 2020 agreed on a process of disengagement that involved reciprocal actions. "Both sides also agreed to respect and abide by the LAC and not undertake any activity to alter the status quo," he said. "However in violation of this the Chinese side created a violent face off on June 15 at Galwan. Our brave soldiers laid down their lives and also inflicted costs including casualties on the Chinese side," he said. Indian armed forces have during these provocative actions maintained "sayyam" (restrain) and displayed "shaurya" (valour) to protect the territorial integrity of India, he said. Giving details of the talks held with China to de-esclate the tension, the minister said India pressed for three key principles -- strictly respecting the LAC, not attempting to alter the status quo unilaterally, and abiding by all agreements and understandings between the two sides. The Chinese side, on its part, took the position that the situation should be handled in a responsible manner and ensure peace and tranquillity as per bilateral agreements and protocol. China made provocative military manoeuvres late last month even when these discussions were on, he said. "As is clear from these events, the Chinese actions reflect a disregard of our various bilateral agreements. The amassing of the troops by China goes against the 1993 and 1996 agreements," the minister said. Respecting and strictly observing the LAC is the basis for peace and tranquillity in the border areas and explicitly recognized in both 1993 and 1996 agreements. "While our armed forces abide scrupulously by it, this has not been reciprocated by the Chinese side. Their actions have led to face-offs and frictions from time to time along the LAC," he said. The incidents and "the violent conduct of Chinese forces" has been in complete violation of all mutually agreed norms, he said. Singh said China has mobilised a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC as well as in the depth areas. "There are several friction areas in Eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake," he said. In response to China's actions, Indian armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that national security interests are fully protected. "I would like to emphasise, that India remains committed to resolving the current issues in our border areas through peaceful dialogue and consultations," he said, referring to his meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Moscow on September 4. "I conveyed in clear terms our concerns related to the actions of the Chinese side, including amassing of large number of troops, their aggressive behaviour and attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo that were in violation of bilateral agreements," he added. But wider political concerns and the resurgence of the virus could undo much of that progress. The British governments threats to abandon Europe without a deal governing future commercial relations would imperil its own economy, as well as those of its major European trading partners like the Netherlands, France and Spain. At the same time, the virus is regaining strength, yielding an alarming increase of cases in Spain, France and Britain. In turn, consumers have scrapped holidays, limited their exposure to shopping areas and opted to economize in the face of threats to businesses and jobs, further imperiling recovery. Quotable: Its hard to imagine a recovery thats going to be strong and sustained given the current situation, said one eurozone economist. Theres not a lot of engines of growth. Here are our live updates and maps of the pandemic. In other coronavirus developments: Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Union Minister for food processing, on Thursday quit the Modi government as her party, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), opposed the farm bills which intend to liberalise the agriculture sector. Harsimrat Kaur Badal was SAD's only minister in the Modi government. The Punjab-based party is one the oldest ally of the ruling BJP. The move came just before the bills were passed by the Lok Sabha. Badal, however, had attended the Cabinet meeting that cleared the bills. On Monday, the Narendra Modi government brought three farm bills - The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill - to replace three ordinances promulgated by the government in the past. While Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 was passed by Lok Sabha on Tuesday, the other two were passed by the Lower House on Thursday. The SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal made this announcement in the Lok Sabha that the minister will quit the Modi government in protest against the three farm bills tabled by the Centre in Parliament. "I announce that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from the government," he said in Lok Sabha. He, however, said that the SAD would continue to support the BJP-led central government, but will oppose the anti-farmer policies. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills - the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, Sukhbir Singh Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. He recalled Punjab's massive contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. Harsimrat Kaur Badal confirmed her resignation from Modi government via Twitter. "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter and sister," she tweeted. The government believes that these policies will free farmers from the existing government-controlled markets and prices, and that they can enter into agreements with private parties for a better price of their produce. However, farmers fear that these bills would pave the way for dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) system and leave the farming community at the "mercy" of big corporates. Over the last few weeks, farmers have organised protests in several parts of Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, Rajasthan, among others, against these bills. With PTI inputs Also Read: Parliament Monsoon Session: No force can stop Indian troops from patrolling LAC: Rajnath Singh Also Read: Coronavirus vaccine in India likely by January, 2021, says Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan A day after the decomposing body of a government school teacher was found at her Sector-23 house by the police and her 13-year-old son, police are now searching for a diary that victim Jyoti Rani had confided in her sister about. As per police, Jyoti had asked her sister in case of an unfortunate happening with her family to look for the diary in the locker. Police are scanning her bank lockers and wardrobes. Meanwhile, there is no trace of her husband, the prime suspect, and their 9-year-old son, even as three police teams were sent to Punjab. The statement of the 13-year-old boy was recorded before the magistrate, in which he reiterated that he was pushed into Neelon canal by his father. The teen, who is now with his paternal grandfather at Fatehgarh Sahib, told the police he was worried about the well-being of his brother. My nine-year-old brother was sleeping on the back seat of the car when I last saw him, he told the police and has been enquiring about his sibling time and again. PUSHED INTO CANAL, LEFT FOR DEAD It was his birthday on September 15 and his father Mandeep Singh, 42, had told him that they will be celebrating his birthday at the gurdwara when they left the city a day prior. Mandeep had driven the two brothers to Ludhiana after telling them their mother had contracted Covid-19 and had to be isolated. He had then drugged the boys and pushed his elder son into the Neelon canal late that night. I shouted for help but there was no one around. After flowing along the stream for some distance, I managed to catch hold of a tree branch, he told the police. The child was rescued on September 15 on his birthday by some people at Gurdwara Katana Sahib and police were informed. The murder of 40-year-old Jyoti Rani came to light on September 16 when the Ludhiana police came knocking at her Chandigarh house to drop her son. Ranis decomposed body was found wrapped in a blanket on a blood-stained bed at her government accommodation. WELL-BEING OF CHILD PRIORITY: POLICE The well-being of the nine-year-old is our priority. Police teams are raiding different places in Punjab and Chandigarh to trace Mandeep Singh and his younger son, said Ram Rattan, the station house officer (SHO) of Sector 17 police station, Chandigarh. PAID KITTY INSTALMENT TO COLLEAGUE BEFORE LEAVING As per police, on September 14 before leaving the city with the children, Mandeep paid 10,000 towards a monthly kitty (committee) to a colleague in Sector 35. His mobile phones last location was recorded in Sector 40 on September 15 and was since switched off. He had got fuel filled from a pump opposite ISBT-43 and then again from another petrol pump on September 15, before driving towards Kharar. He had used his debit card to make the payments. The police have secured the CCTV footage of the pumps. The registration number of the vehicle has been shared with Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh police departments. Mandeep is a teacher at Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 47, while Jyoti taught social science at the government school in Karsan, Ram Darbar. Mandeep is facing a case under Sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A serological survey conducted between August and September has on Wednesday found that nearly 33% of residents in Delhi have developed Covid-19 antibodies. The figure was released after the preliminary analysis of the third survey of 17,000 samples. The final figures are yet to be released officially. To put it into perspective, the survey implies that 66 lakh people out of the two crore residents in Delhi may have been exposed to the virus and are now carrying antibodies. The report has been submitted to the health department and it is currently being reviewed. The final report could have minor variations in the final seroprevalence since data from some wards are also being re-checked, a senior government official, told The Hindustan Times. This is also the highest seroprevalence since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The figure rose from 29.1% in the second survey conducted in the first week of August. The first serological study found 23.4% people carrying antibodies. While 15,000 samples were collected for the second survey, over 21,000 samples were gathered in the first one. The surveys third report said that the samples taken from containment zones in Delhi had a significantly higher sero-prevalence than those who had never lived in one. A sero survey is necessary to find out the true burden of the infection in the city or state. More importantly it helps identify the number of asymptomatic people who had the disease and recovered from it. Such people, in most cases, are not even aware that they are infected, Dr Lalit Kant, former head of epidemiology and infectious disease at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said. Meanwhile, scientists say that the presence of antibodies indicates previous exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus but may not always translate into protection against the disease, citing imponderables such as what kind of antibodies, how many and how long they last. There are neutralising antibodies (nAbs) and also simple antibodies. While nAbs produced against the novel coronavirus can block its entry into the host cell, other antibodies are also generated against many parts of the virus, added Vineeta Bal from Punes Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER). The simple antibodies are an indication of host response to viral presence but are not that useful to stop further spread of the virus, Bal said. Its going to be a cold, long winter for all of us in Chicago, Soble said. I dont know anybody whos going to want to be outside in December and January. When it rained a few days last week, we might as well have closed the doors. No one was coming in. At some point you need to stop the bleeding. COLUMBUS, Ohio Just five of Ohios 88 counties were placed on red alert for coronavirus in the update provided Thursday by Gov. Mike DeWine, with Summit County dropping two levels from red to yellow but Portage County going to red because of increases attributed to Kent State University off-campus activities. Cuyahoga County remained on orange alert, the second lowest level in the states four-level alert system. With reducing numbers of new cases, Cuyahoga is moving closer to a possible yellow alert designation in the coming weeks. This weeks five red counties are Butler, Mercer, Montgomery, Putnam and Portage. Portage County, home to Kent State University, was placed on red alert for meeting four the the states seven alert measures, including a high number of new cases over the last two weeks. The majority of cases are being driven by activities in off-campus housing, and to a lesser degree in Greek housing," DeWine said. So far in September, 51% of Portage Countys cases are to people younger than 29. Forty-eight counties are on orange alert. The remaining 35 are yellow. Seventy percent of Ohioans are now living in orange counties, DeWine noted. We have five red counties, the lowest number of red counties we have reported since starting the system. Last week, red alert was assigned to six Ohio counties - Butler, Montgomery, Mercer, Preble, Putnam and Summit. Forty-two others were on the lower level orange and the remaining 40 at the lowest level of yellow. DeWine introduced the alert system advisory system on July 2, placing Cuyahoga and six counties on red alert that day. Cuyahoga County stayed on red for the first seven weeks, until being downgraded to the less severe orange on Aug. 20. The system is based on seven factors the state tracks. Meeting none or one of the criteria places a county on Level 1 yellow; two or three on Level 2 orange; four or five on Level 3 red; and six or seven on Level 4 purple. No county has ever been placed on purple alert. Here is the criteria that was used to keep Cuyahoga County on orange alert this week for coronavirus, and drop Summit County to the lower level of yellow.Ohio Department of Health Here is the criteria: * 1. New cases - Alert triggered when there are 50 new cases per cases 100,000 residents over the last two weeks. * 2. Increase in new cases - Alert triggered by an increase in cases for five straight days at any point over the last three weeks. This is based on the date of onset of symptoms, not when the cases are reported. * 3. Non-congregate living cases - Alert triggered when at least 50% of the new cases in one of the last three weeks have occurred in outside congregate living spaces such as nursing homes and prisons. * 4. Emergency rooms - Alert triggered when there is an increase in visits for COVID-like symptoms or a diagnosis for five straight days at any point in the last three weeks. * 5. Doctor visits - Alert triggered when there is an increase in out-patient visits resulting in confirmed cases or suspected diagnosis for COVID-19 for five straight days at any point in the last three weeks. * 6. Hospitalizations - Alert triggered when there is an increase in new COVID-19 patients for five straight days at any point over the last three weeks. This is based on the county or residence, not the location of the hospital. * 7. Intensive Care Unit occupancy - Alert triggered when ICU occupancy in a region exceeds 80% of total ICU beds and at least 20% of the beds are being used for coronavirus patients for at least three days in the last week. The third category - non-congregate living cases - is flagged for 80 of the 88 counties in the state. Portage County was placed on red alert for meeting the first three criteria, plus No. 5, an increase in cases being identified through doctor visits. Portage has had 63.4 new cases per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks. Summit County, in dropping to yellow, now meets just one measure - No. 3 for the high share of cases outside of congregate living spaces. Cuyahoga is very close to dropping to yellow as well. It met just two measures for alert this week - the share of cases outside congregate living spaces and the number of cases per 100,000 over the last two weeks. However, Cuyahoga has been trending down several weeks toward eventually dropping below the new case criteria. The state reported Cuyahoga County at 59.75 cases per 100,000 over the last two weeks. The state reported this number at 70.36 for Cuyahoga County last week and 83.07 two weeks ago. The number stood at 139.43 on July 30. Read related coverage Cuyahoga County widens gap on the rest of Ohio with fewer new coronavirus cases 1,067 new coronavirus cases reported in Ohio: Thursday update I-X Center closure could cost Cleveland Hopkins International Airport more than $2M a year Energy experts are accusing Eskom of not providing South Africans with essential information about its power system performance and load-shedding. The power producer is also accused of deliberately deceiving the public on load-shedding and which stages it is implementing. Over the past few weeks, four main complaints arose regarding the information Eskom provided publicly: Eskom is hiding valuable power system performance information from South Africans. Eskoms load-shedding stages do not correspond with its load-shedding data. Eskom is not playing open cards regarding maintenance on its power stations. Eskom is providing over-optimistic and inaccurate information about the outlook for load-shedding. These complaints are not new but rose to prominence again after the country experienced three weeks of load-shedding this winter. It is of value to look at each of these accusations to see what Eskom is accused of and its feedback on the issue. Eskom hiding valuable power system performance information Over the past few months, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has been trying to get Eskom to make its power system performance information publicly available. OUTA said Eskom initially delayed responding to its correspondence and then refused its request. On 3 April, OUTA filed an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) with Eskom. They asked for a list of specified power system performance information to be made available to the public. Five months later, Eskom responded by publishing a new portal where South Africans can view the system status and related data. OUTAs energy advisor, Chris Yelland said while it is a good start, it is a watered-down version of the information which they requested. He added that it is far inferior to the publicly available information provided by Eskoms peers around the world. OUTA, for example, requested an hourly data feed from Eskom. Instead, the power producer presented its own dashboard which is updated daily. No zoom, pan, trend analysis, or data download facilities are provided, and no energy availability factor (EAF) information is available. There are also no correlation analysis facilities and the way data is presented is rudimentary, and not in line with current IT best practice. Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha told MyBroadband as with time, and as the dashboard is being built up, Eskom will eventually be able to populate the dashboard with live data for the publics consumption. Eskoms load-shedding data Energy advisor Ted Blom said Eskom is falling grossly short of supplying the South Africa economy with the electricity it needs. He further accused Eskom of deliberately deceiving the public on which load-shedding stages it is implementing. He said Eskom shed over 5,000MW on two successive days Wednesday 2 September and Thursday 3 September. This, Blom said, equates to implementing stage 6 load-shedding, which Eskom did not disclose. Eskom disputed Bloms claims, saying once it declares Stage 4 load-shedding, it can request any major industrial customer to curtail up to 20% of load. This amounts to 1,200MW of demand that must be curtailed by industrial customers as part of the licenced load curtailment in terms, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said. Load-shedding is what Eskom sheds from the public, and that is what Eskom announced at Stage 4. The table below shows the load-shedding information shared by Mantshantsha which Blom is referring to. Eskom Load-Shedding Stages Stage What it means Stage 1 Up to 1,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 2 Up to 2,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 3 Up to 3,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 4 Up to 4,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 5 Up to 5,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 6 Up to 6,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 7 Up to 7,000 MW of the national load to be shed Stage 8 Up to 8,000 MW of the national load to be shed Eskom Load-Shedding Statistics Date Load-Shedding Wednesday 5,359MW Thursday 5,642MW Eskom not playing open cards about maintenance Blom is also accusing Eskom of not playing open cards regarding maintenance at its power stations. In April, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said the power utility has been able to double down on short-term maintenance thanks to reduced demand during the lockdown. De Ruyter previously told Parliament that they would recondition all Eskom Gensets within 12 months. Blom said neither the planned maintenance nor the recondition of all Eskom Gensets happened as promised. He has now changed the recondition time-frame to 24-months, but there is still no firm agreement with any of the OEMs he was targeting in his reliability maintenance programme, Blom said. He said Eskom does not have the budget to recondition all Eskom Gensets as promised. Blom further said Eskom did not perform all the maintenance it has planned to do during the lockdown. In fact, the maintenance during lockdown was lower because Eskom workers refused to expose themselves to the environment, and suppliers and logistics were closed, he said. The Eskom CEO never corrected this expectation and misrepresentation that was caused by his promise. Eskom providing over-optimistic load-shedding information In May Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said South Africans can expect only three days of stage 1 load-shedding this winter, which should occur late in July. It was not long before De Ruyter was proved wrong, and four months later the country already had around three weeks of load-shedding, often reaching stage 4. Mantshantsha explained De Ruyters claims were based on information they had at the time. This points to inaccurate information provided to De Ruyter and substantiates claims that Eskom is underestimating problems at the company. This inaccurate claim, however, did not stop Mantshantsha from now claiming that we are seeing the end of load-shedding after 13 years of power failures. Mantshantshas claim echoes Deputy President David Mabuzas recent statement that the introduction of the Medupi and Kusile power plants to the grid will help ease load-shedding. He added that the introduction of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) will also help with the countrys power cuts. Experts, however, dispute the claims that load-shedding is set to end soon and warn that things may get worse. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) researchers said South Africa should brace itself for exponential increases to load-shedding until 2022 unless drastic action is taken. Not only will load-shedding continue over the next few years it will get significantly worse, they said. Energy analyst Chris Yelland echoed these views, saying the country urgently needs 6,000MW of new generation capacity in the next two to three years. He said unless South Africa launches courageous and bold decision policy initiatives, load-shedding is here to stay. The only way to stop load-shedding is to replace poor-performing coal-fired power stations with reliable and low-cost wind, solar PV, battery storage, and gas-to-power generation, Yelland said. He added that this new capacity procurement will not come from Eskom, which is why legislative and policy changes are needed. Load-shedding this year The table below gives an overview of load-shedding in 2020. To deliver innovative new digitally-driven shopping experiences that enhance the convenience and safety of travellers, Unifree Duty Free, the operator of the worlds largest duty free zone, has implemented state-of-the-art retail technologies at the New Istanbul Airport. These solutions which rely on a cutting-edge network infrastructure from Swiss structured cabling specialist R&M include three-dimensional holograms, enhanced digital signage systems, and touch-free digital shopping technologies. Offering an example of how its technology innovations strongly position Istanbul Grand Airport to ensure the safety and well-being of the 90 million travelers expected to visit the Duty Free zone annually, Osman Ayhan, Director of Information Technology at Unifree Duty Free, said: Enhanced digital signage systems give customers the opportunity to virtually try on luxury watches, jewellery and suits before they decide whether to buy or not. This touch-free experience will be especially important to travellers in the post-Covid world. Global events at the start of 2020, have resulted in a spike in digital payments with the total transaction value in the digital payments segment projected to reach $4.4. trillion this year. As retailers see a surge in digital and contact-less payments, the high-performance network from R&M will enable retailers are the Duty Free zone to offer these options in a reliable and highly secure manner. Other systems that are vital to smooth operations and traveler safety such as office workstations, Voice-over-IP telephones, and security systems are also connected to the R&M cabling network. Ayhan explained that the decision to partner with R&M was based on a highly-positive recommendation from the airports IT department which has itself utilised 5,400 km of copper cablings and 3,270 km of fiber-optic cabling from R&M for connectivity of critical airport IT systems. "R&M is characterised by its quality, innovation, fast delivery times, expertise, flexibility and modular products. We also see the team spirit at R&M, the back-office support and the special training of installers on-site as a distinct advantage, he said. We are extremely proud to expand R&Ms footprint at the worlds largest airport. Unifree has demonstrated a commitment to pioneering the new digital shopping experiences that will be essential to travelers in the coming months and years. The technologies we have provided serve as a reliable platform on which the company can continue to innovate with confidence in the performance, security and reliability of the underlying systems, said Nabil Khalil, Executive Vice-President of R&M Middle East, Turkey and Africa. Located at the heart of the terminal of Istanbul Grand Airport (IGA), the Duty Free zone offers state-of-the-art shopping. The sales area run by Unifree covers 56,000 sq m. Since the airport was opened in 2018, 54 brand, concept and flagship stores have moved in. A further 102 sub-operators, exclusive boutiques and a bazaar with local products round out the offer. - TradeArabia News Service Burdened by staffing shortages, building ventilation issues and last-minute changes to instructional plans, New York City's schools will delay bringing back students for in-person instruction again. Now, students attending school with a mix of in-person and at-home learning will return to their buildings in phases: Monday for special education and pre-kindergarten students, Sept. 29 for elementary students and Oct. 1 for middle and high school students, the United Federation of Teachers confirmed Thursday. About 42% of New York children have elected to learn from home full-time, a number that's increased from 37% in the two weeks since Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city's teachers union reached the original deal to push back the start of school, from Sept. 10 to Monday. The chaotic situation has demonstrated just how hard it is to reopen urban school systems during a pandemic. Among the 20 largest school systems in the U.S., only New York and Hawaii elected to start the year with in-person learning, and Hawaii is a statewide school system with buildings spread out across its islands. Among the 100 largest districts in the country, 73% launched the year with a return to fully remote learning, according to Education Week magazine. Mayor Bill de Blasio believed New York City could be different after recovering from more than 20,000 virus-related deaths in the spring to now posting infection rates that are well under the nationally recommended threshold to reopen school buildings. He said this week that New York City would set the gold standard for health and safety in schools. But school staff and the teachers union had issued steady complaints that buildings were not ready. Dan Gannon, a teacher at Bronx Leadership Academy II, said he returned to his building earlier this week to find it hadn't been cleaned. Vivett Dukes, a high school English teacher at School of the Future in Manhattan and a delegate of the National Parents Union, a grassroots group that represents many parents of color, said she wasn't surprised by the mayor calling for another delay. Story continues "All remote from the beginning was the way to go," she said. "This could have been avoided." Harbinger for other urban districts? Other districts that chose to start school remotely because of safety concerns have been watching to see how New York City, with more than 1.1 million public-school students, pulls off an in-person start. But as the deadline loomed to reopen schools Monday, the challenges multiplied. Some New York City teachers who returned to work set up their laptops outside their schools in recent days to protest what they believed were unsafe working conditions inside. As of late as Tuesday less than a week before the reopening the city announced significant changes to its instructional guidance for teaching students on the blended model, which includes coming to school one to three days a week and learning from home on the other days. De Blasio had wanted blended-model students to receive live, virtual lessons on the days they learn from home. Now, schools will no longer have to provide that. Remote learners will still receive live, daily lessons. Coronavirus and schools: With COVID-19 complicating enrollment counts, public schools brace for impact on funding Schools did not have enough teachers for in-person learning if all buildings were to open Monday, Mark Cannizzaro, president of the School Supervisors & Administrators Council, said in a statement this week. He said they estimated the city needed 10,000 more educators. On Monday, de Blasio announced he would deploy another 2,000 certified educators from the Department of Education to assist. Then, Thursday morning, de Blasio told the teachers union he would get them another 2,500 educators on top of that. "Theres still problems with some supplies, theres still problems with ventilation," Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a news conference before the additional delay to the start of school was announced. He added there's been a two- to three-day lag from when the union hears about a case of COVID-19 in schools or among educators and when the Department of Education confirms it. 'Not a sustainable model': A peek at how one high school handles its COVID-19 challenges "I want New York City schools to be open, but they can only be open if everything is in place," Mulgrew said. Since staff returned to work in their schools, 17,000 school-based employees have been tested, and 55 tested positive for the virus, a rate of 0.3%, de Blasio said this week. "Some students will test positive at some point in the year, and they'll go home for two weeks and then they'll come back and they'll complete the school year," he said. "We have to remember that for the very small percentage of people who test positive for the coronavirus, it is a very temporary reality." Members of the teachers union, parents and students participate in a march through Brooklyn to demand a safer teaching environment for themselves and for students during the Covid-19 pandemic on September 1, 2020 in New York City. As confusion about the start of the school year continues, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday that the start of the school year will be delayed amid the threat of a teacher strike. Urban districts' unique challenges Densely populated urban school districts face particular challenges when it comes to weighing the risk vs. reward of reopening buildings. Urban school buildings are often older and more cramped than those in suburban or rural districts, and class sizes in big cities tend to skew larger. That raises questions about providing adequate ventilation and physical distancing to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. Also, most urban districts serve large numbers of students who are low-income and/or racial minorities the very populations that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Just this week, new federal statistics showed that only 121 people under the age of 21 died of the virus in the U.S. between February and July, but that most of the children and young adults who died were either Latino or Black. COVID-19 and schools: As schools shift to online learning, what should they do about cyberattacks? De Blasio has positioned reopening schools as an urgent social justice issue, noting that children facing economic disadvantage are the most likely to have fallen behind during the abrupt shift to virtual learning this spring. Many lacked a personal computer or internet access to complete online lessons. Some lacked a quiet place to study, or adults who could aid their learning at home. While parents and educators agree with the need to reopen schools, many worry that a premature return to crowded indoor spaces could spark a new outbreak. Tanya St. Julien, a member of Community Education Council 16 in Bedford-Stuyvesant a Brooklyn neighborhood that had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infections said most families eventually want their children learning in school again with their peers. But, she said, families are concerned that coming into school buildings without proper ventilation, appropriate health-care staffing and clear protocols for health and safety will increase the risk of contracting the virus. COVID-19 and schools: Summer parties, teacher shortages push suburban schools to scrap reopening plans "We are concerned about being in buildings," she said. She said parents have also been contused because of constantly shifting information. As part of the agreement reached between the mayor and the teachers' union reached to delay the start of school the first time, the union was allowed to inspect each school building for safety. Union officials wouldn't tell USA TODAY this week what percentage of buildings it still considered unsafe. Teachers, parents and children march in the Brooklyn borough of New York earlier this month to protest the reopening of city public schools amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the threat of a teachers' strike. 'This could be death' Early this summer, leaders from many school districts around the country expected to return to in-person instruction in the fall. But as positive cases spiked, most metropolitan school systems pivoted to planning for a remote start. Chicago Public Schools held out longer than most large districts its leaders initially proposed a plan to start the year with in-person instruction. After the Chicago Teachers Union started murmuring about a strike for educators' safety, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the district would start with all children learning remotely, citing a growing number of infections and parents signaling they wanted their children to learn from home. Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said if the mayor and school system had focused on remote learning sooner, they could have spent more time during the summer making remote learning more robust, accessible and enriching. "There is no question that CTU members and families are safer learning at home," Sharkey said in a statement to USA TODAY. Back in New York, Brendis Gonzalez, a fourth-grade teacher at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School in Manhattan, said she didn't feel it was safe to welcome back students yet. The fact that at least 55 education staff have contracted the virus since returning to work after Labor Day concerns her, even though that infection rate represents less than 1% of the workers at the time. The personal protective equipment her school was promised arrived a week late, she said. "Think about how much PPE has cost a large city like New York to have this idea of blended learning," she said. She wished that money had been spent on improving remote learning and that school officials would have stuck to a timeline to launch the year. Dukes, the teacher at School of the Future, received a medical accommodation to teach from home. But she's not sure if parents are getting all the information they need from the Department of Education to make the right decisions for their families. "This could be like catching a cold or it could be death," she said. "You don't know how the virus is going to hit you. What are we willing to risk to find out? Our lives? Our children's lives?" Girls Prep Bronx Elementary School is part of the Public Prep charter-school network. The network, which operates separate from New York's Department of Education, started the school year with 100% remote learning at the end of August. If health conditions allow, it will start bringing children back in-person in October. Many charters going virtual Many of New York's charter schools, which are privately run public schools that operate independent of the Department of Education, have already started the year with a return to remote learning. Close to 136,000 students attend charter schools in New York, which is about 13% of the public-school student population. Public Prep, a network of five New York charter schools serving about 2,100 students, launched the school year on Aug. 25 with all children learning from home, first on a half-day schedule, then on a full-day schedule. CEO Janelle Bradshaw said they concentrated on making sure all students, about 85% of whom are low-income, had devices and internet before the year started. The network has contracts with internet providers to get Wi-Fi to families, she said. In early October, depending on health conditions, Public Prep plans to start offering in-person instruction as well. So far, 45% of families say they want that option; 55% have signaled they wish to stay remote, Bradshaw said. The phased-in approach has allowed the network to plan ahead, and teachers are mirroring school culture and maintaining high standards as best they can through screens, Bradshaw said. But everyone looks forward to children coming back to classrooms. "While we have made the best of remote learning, it is not the best way for all children to learn," Bradshaw said. Contact Erin Richards at (414) 207-3145 or erin.richards@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @emrichards. Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facing Monday deadline, NYC will again delay start of in-person classes Donavan La Bella returned to the hospital this week as doctors try to address a persistent cerebral fluid leak, his mother said Thursday. La Bella, 26, who was hit in the face with an impact munition while demonstrating outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland in July, has had multiple setbacks in his recovery. As the United States prepares to push for the reapplication of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations again, Iran sees another failed attempt to dismantle the nuclear deal. US State Department officials said Sept. 16 they will push to trigger the snapback sanctions against Iran despite having lost a vote to do so Aug. 14. As part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, the arms embargo on Iran is set to expire. The United States, however, is seeking to extend the arms embargo on Iran indefinitely, using the JCPOA snapback mechanism option against Iran. Since the United States announced its exit from the deal, the other members of the United Nations, particularly Europe, rejected the US move, saying it is no longer part of the deal and cannot initiate any part of its mechanisms. In response to the new US efforts, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said, No snapback has been started for it to even reach a conclusion. He said the United States does not have the qualifications to trigger a snapback and therefore is not even able to start the one-month process. Rouhani also warned that some media outlets outside of the country would repeat the news that the United States has achieved snapback sanctions, but he referred to this as fake news. Rouhani said the United States would fail in its attempt to claim the sanctions have been slapped on Iran, adding, This failure of America is one of the great victories of Iran. He compared this victory to the victory of the Iran-Iraq War. An article in hard-line newspaper Javan wrote that if Europe is not able to stop the United States from unilaterally pushing sanctions, then Iran should push ahead with 90% enrichment. The article, titled The Final Curtain of the JCPOA, argued that if Europe continues to claim it is still part of the JCPOA, then it has to abide by its commitments; otherwise, Iran should turn off the cameras and implement 90% enrichment. As part of the nuclear deal, Iran had agreed to limit its enrichment to 3.67%. But as the United States exited the deal and applied sanctions, Iran incrementally took steps away from the deal to 4.5% enrichment. Irans measured steps away from the deal were to force Europe to continue trade with the country, but it has been so far unsuccessful. Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the Iranian parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said the United States activating the trigger mechanism will have no real impact on the country. For three years they have applied maximum pressure on us, and now their hands are empty and they know themselves they cannot take any serious actions against us, Raisi said, adding that the United States acting as if the snapback sanctions will be applied has more to do with psychological warfare and is related to Donald Trump wanting a victory ahead of the US presidential elections. CAPE MAY Standing outside the Harriet Tubman Museum, Gov. Phil Murphy told a crowd Thursday that each must ask themselves if they will be part of the struggle for equality or remain on the sidelines of history. This is a place for us to reflect on the uncomfortable truth that as much as our nation has changed for the better across its history, we still have a long way to go in ensuring the founding ideals of this nation life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ring true not just for some but for every single American, Murphy said. Murphy cut the ribbon on the museum at 632 Lafayette St., housed in a historic building known as the Howell House. The building had served as the parsonage for the neighboring Macedonia Baptist Church but had fallen into disrepair and seemed likely to be demolished when the project began more than two years ago. After extensive work, the building looks close to new. As Cynthia Mullock, one of the organizers of the museum project, put it Thursday, the house went from one of the most endangered historic properties in the state to being listed by Smithsonian Magazine as one of the most anticipated new museums in the world. LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Gabriel Resources Ltd. ("Gabriel" or the "Company") announces that all of the matters submitted to shareholders for approval, as set out in the Company's Management Information Circular dated August 12, 2020 ("Circular"), were approved by the requisite majority of votes cast at its annual general and special meeting ("Meeting") held in Vancouver, British Columbia, earlier today, including resolutions: Re-electing Dag Cramer, Ali Erfan, Dan Kochav, David Peat, Walter Segsworth, Janice Stairs and Dragos Tanase as directors of the Company; Re-appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditors of the Company for the ensuing year; and Approving the continuation of the amended and restated incentive stock option plan of the Company ("Option Plan"). Certain minor house-keeping amendments to the Option Plan were adopted by the Board prior to the issuance of the Circular, none of which required shareholder approval. For further details, please refer to the heading titled "Options" in the Circular and Part C of the Appendix thereto, which includes the Option Plan in its entirety. Walter Segsworth, the newly appointed Chairman of the Board, commented: "I am pleased to see that all resolutions were passed at the Meeting but saddened that this heralds the departure from the Gabriel Board of the former Chairman, Keith Hulley, together with Wayne Kirk and Alfred Gusenbauer. All have been dedicated and effective servants to the Company over more than a decade and I would like to record on behalf of the Board and the Company our sincere appreciation of their efforts." For information on this press release, please contact: Dragos Tanase President & CEO Phone: +40 730 399 019 dt@gabrielresources.com Richard Brown Chief Financial Officer Mobile: +44 7748 760276 richard.brown@gabrielresources.com 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. About Gabriel Gabriel is a Canadian resource company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's principal focus has been the exploration and development of the Ro?ia Montana gold and silver project in Romania. The Rosia Montana Project, one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in Europe, is situated in the South Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania, Romania, an historic and prolific mining district that since pre-Roman times has been mined intermittently for over 2,000 years. The exploitation license for the Rosia Montana Project is held by Ro?ia Montana Gold Corporation S.A., a Romanian company in which Gabriel owns an 80.69% equity interest, with the 19.31% balance held by Minvest Ro?ia Montana S.A., a Romanian state-owned mining company. Upon obtaining the License in June 1999, the Group focused substantially all of their management and financial resources on the exploration, feasibility and subsequent development of the Rosia Montana Project. Despite the Company's fulfilment of its legal obligations and its development of the Rosia Montana Project as a high-quality, sustainable and environmentally-responsible mining project, using best available techniques, Romania has blocked and prevented implementation of the Rosia Montana Project without due process and without compensation. Accordingly, the Company's current core focus is the ICSID Arbitration. For more information please visit the Company's website at www.gabrielresources.com. Forward-looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking information" (also referred to as "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of the Company's operating environment. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. In this press release, forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies that may cause the Company's actual financial results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied herein. Some of the material factors or assumptions used to develop forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the uncertainties associated with: the ICSID Arbitration, actions by the Romanian Government, conditions or events impacting the Company's ability to fund its operations (including but not limited to the completion of further funding noted above) or service its debt, exploration, development and operation of mining properties and the overall impact of misjudgments made in good faith in the course of preparing forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors including those set out below, that may never materialize, prove incorrect or materialize other than as currently contemplated which could cause the Company's results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "expects", "is expected", "is of the view", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "projects", "estimates", "assumes", "intends", "strategy", "goals", "objectives", "potential", "possible" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events, conditions or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of fact and may be forward-looking statements. Numerous factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including without limitation: the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) may affect the Company's operations and/or the anticipated timeline for the ICSID Arbitration; the duration, required disclosure, costs, process and outcome of the ICSID Arbitration; the advancement of Romania's nomination of the "Rosia Montana Mining Landscape" as a UNESCO World Heritage site; changes in the liquidity and capital resources of Gabriel, and/or the group of companies of which it is directly or indirectly parent; access to funding to support the Group's continued ICSID Arbitration and/or operating activities in the future; equity dilution resulting from the conversion or exercise of new or existing securities in part or in whole to Common Shares; the ability of the Company to maintain a continued listing on the TSX Venture Exchange or any regulated public market for trading securities; the impact on business strategy and its implementation in Romania of: any allegations of historic acts of corruption, uncertain fiscal investigations; uncertain legal enforcement both for and against the Group and political and social instability; regulatory, political and economic risks associated with operating in a foreign jurisdiction including changes in laws, governments and legal regimes and interpretation of existing and future fiscal and other legislation; volatility of currency exchange rates; and the availability and continued participation in operational or other matters pertaining to the Group of certain key employees and consultants. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and investors should not infer that there has been no change in the Company's affairs since the date of this press release that would warrant any modification of any forward-looking statement made in this document, other documents periodically filed with or furnished to the relevant securities regulators or documents presented on the Company's website. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements or the foregoing list of assumptions or factors, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, subject to the Company's disclosure obligations under applicable Canadian securities regulations. Investors are urged to read the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulatory agencies which can be viewed online at www.sedar.com. ENDS SOURCE: Gabriel Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606639/Results-of-AGM It was decided to take everything that could be useful in some hypothetical way and pass it on to doctors in Germany, Navalnys Instagram post said. It was also obvious that the case would not be investigated in Russia. And this is exactly what happened. Almost a month has passed, and Russia has not recognized the fact of Alexeis poisoning. A 49-year-old traffic police officer was mowed down by a truck while he was halting another vehicle for checking on the Outer Ring Road in North Delhis Dheerpur on Wednesday evening, the police said. This is the third known case of a traffic police officer dying after being run over while on duty in Delhi. Late in July, an assistant commissioner of police (ACP) was killed in a hit-and-run incident on the Rajokri Flyover. That was followed up by an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) getting mowed down by a car whose driver was signalled to stop during a checking in West Delhis Raghubir Nagar in mid August. The officer killed in the latest incident was identified as ASI Radhe Shyam, who was posted in the Burari traffic circle. The fatal hit happened around 4 pm while Shyam and his colleagues were checking vehicles for traffic violations. Shyam had stopped a truck and was directing it to pull over to the side of the road when another truck from behind hit him, said a senior police officer. An injured Shyam was rushed to hospital even as other police officers stopped the truck from escaping. Its driver, Deepak Shukla, has been arrested. Shyam was declared brought dead at the hospital. The police said that he has left behind a wife and two children who live in Rohini. To the editor: At the current rate of coronavirus deaths (193,186) the U.S. will probably, by the end of 2020, lose more Americans in 10 months, than the U.S. lost in battle deaths of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen in the entire Second World War. (World Almanac, 2020, page 128, 291,577 deaths). When I was commissioned, at CMC years ago, I was told a leader is responsible for all his unit does, or fails to do. Our president has failed to listen to medical and scientific advisors and has failed to take corrective action to protect Americans. He has not told the truth, even though he was informed of the potential coronavirus danger to his unit (the United States of America). He has stated, "I am not responsible, at all." Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible. He took an oath to be responsible. We need a leader who tells the truth, will be responsible for his/her citizens, and take corrective action when needed to save American lives. Vote Biden. TED HUMMEL Colonel, U.S. Army Retired Sanford ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) is announcing its first IBM Quantum education and research initiative for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), aimed at driving a diverse and inclusive quantum workforce. Led by Howard University and 12 additional HBCUs, the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center will offer access to its quantum computers, as well as collaboration on academic, education, and community outreach programs. In addition, as part of the company's continued efforts around diversity and inclusion, IBM will make a $100M investment in technology, assets, resources and skills development through partnerships with additional HBCUs through the IBM Skills Academy Academic Initiative. "We believe that in order to expand opportunity for diverse populations, we need a diverse talent pipeline of the next generation of tech leaders from HBCUs. Diversity and inclusion is what fuels innovation and students from HBCUs will be positioned to play a significant part of what will drive innovations for the future like quantum computing, cloud and artificial intelligence," said Carla Grant Pickens, Chief Global Diversity & Inclusion Officer, IBM. Driving Diversity and Inclusion in Quantum Computing The IBM-HBCU Quantum Center is a multi-year investment designed to prepare and develop talent at HBCUs from all STEM disciplines for the quantum future. It will emphasize the power of community and focus on developing students through support and funding for research opportunities, curriculum development, workforce advocacy, and special projects. "Diversity is a source of competitive advantage, essential to create a thriving quantum industry," said Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research. "We could not be more excited about partnering with our HBCU colleagues to help educate and empower the first generation of quantum computing native students and researchers." The 13 HBCUs intending to participate in the Quantum Center were prioritized based on their research and education focus in physics, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and other STEM fields. They include: Albany State University, Clark Atlanta University, Coppin State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Southern University, Texas Southern University, University of the Virgin Islands, Virginia Union University, and Xavier University of Louisiana. "Howard University has prioritized our efforts to support our students' pathway to STEM fields for many years with exciting results as we witness more and more graduates becoming researchers, scientists and engineers with renown national companies. Our faculty and students look forward to collaborating with our peer institutions through the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center. We're excited to share best practices and work together to prepare students to participate in a quantum-ready workforce," said President Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA. For more about the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center, read HBCU Center Driving Diversity and Inclusion in Quantum Computing. Investing in Under-Represented Talent to Drive Innovation As part of the Skills Academy Academic Initiative in Global University Programs, a multi-year program, IBM is donating more than $100M in assets, including university guests lectures, curriculum content, digital badges, software and faculty training to select HBCUs by the end of 2020. The IBM Skills Academy is a comprehensive, integrated program designed to create a foundation of diverse and high demand skill sets that directly correlate to what students will need in the workplace. The learning tracks address topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, blockchain, design thinking and quantum computing. The HBCUs who are part of the Skills Academy Academic Initiative include: Clark Atlanta University, Fayetteville State University, Grambling State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Johnson C. Smith University, Norfolk State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, Southern University System, Stillman College, Virginia State and West Virginia State University. The response to combating systemic racism in the US must be timely, strategic and more than a statement of support. The response needs to be tangible action. IBM's investment in HBCUs is part of the company's efforts around social justice and racial equality by creating equitable, innovative experiences for HBCU students to acquire the necessary skills to unlock economic opportunity and prosperity. To learn more about IBM's 100 years of work on diversity, inclusion and equality in the workplace, visit https://www.ibm.com/employment/inclusion/ Brandi Boatner Digital Experience Manager IBM CHQ, Communications 1-914-765-2358 [email protected] Chris Nay External Communications IBM Research [email protected] SOURCE IBM Related Links www.ibm.com In mid-February, all eyes were on the West Coast just one month after patient WA1 became the first person to test positive for COVID-19 on American soil after landing in Seattle from Wuhan, China. Washington state is where the continents first COVID-19 outbreaks occurred and it was widely presumed it would spread eastward from there like wildfire. But a new study reveals that the first documented infected individuals who arrived from China into the western United States and Canada were not the source of widespread continental outbreaks. Instead, it is believed the virus was primarily brought by travellers flying through Europe and into the eastern United States, before spreading across the whole continent. The study, published last week and partly funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, paints a picture of how the West Coast handled the early stages of the pandemic compared to the East, with dramatically different results. It shows that while attention was initially focused on patient WA1, Washington and the West Coast, what was happening there was merely a flicker compared to the inferno igniting in the East. We kind of hoped for those next six weeks (from mid-January) until the end of February that maybe were catching all of the sparks that are landing and maybe were OK, said University of Arizona researcher Michael Worobey, who led an interdisciplinary team of scientists from multiple countries, including Canada, for the study. But it turned out that what was happening was sparks were catching fire throughout February, in various places, including the East Coast. The researchers used genome sequencing, which compares differences in viral variants, as well as computer simulations and travel records to determine if various samples of the virus are epidemiologically linked. Worobey said the United States was largely flying blind for that six-week period between mid-January and late February, when COVID-19 was silently but steadily spreading. In late February, cases starting popping up in Washington that looked genetically linked to WA1. People started thinking Holy crap, if this has been going since this guy arrived January 15, thousands of people are infected with this thing. Whats going to happen now? For the first quarter of 2020, it was believed that patient WA1 infected someone and established a cluster of cases in the Seattle area that silently spread for six weeks. But the new research showed genome samplings from other cases that emerged in Washington were different enough that it was very unlikely patient WA1 was the source of the outbreak. Instead, the researchers believe the source of the Washington outbreak most likely arrived from a direct flight from China on or around Feb. 1. Even though the U.S. was prohibiting Chinese citizens from entering the country, they were still allowing U.S. citizens and visa holders from China to return, which amounted to some 40,000 people, Worobey said. And while the first outbreak originated in Washington, the state was effective in issuing early warnings to the public, instating a community testing program, putting limits on gatherings and shutting down the University of Washington. Meanwhile, New York City continued to see flights arrive from Europe that researchers believe were carrying infected passengers. Even though the epidemic actually kind of got started with one of these dispersals from China to the West Coast, it was the East Coast that was that was really getting hammered and then finding fertile soil to spread, Worobey said. If only we could have copied the effort in Seattle its not impossible that this outbreak could have been prevented in North America, just like it largely has been in places like South Korea, he added. On Jan. 25, the first presumptive case was detected in Toronto. In February, several cases were detected in travellers returning from abroad, including Iran and Egypt. By mid-March, community transmission was prevalent, and Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency on March 17. Another major discovery in the study is that the virus did not spread from China, into B.C., then into Washington state, as was widely presumed, but rather the other way around. Multiple COVID-19 genomes published by the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control appeared to be ancestral to the viral samples tested in Washington state, which would point to a Canadian origin. However, further analysis proved that wasnt the case when the researchers detected errors in those genomes. Researchers believe the ancestry of the virus in Canada was the same as the one circulating in the United States. Its clear that this virus actually moved into Washington state and then up to up to B.C. and not vice versa, Worobey said. The researchers conclude that inadequate early testing, especially of those travellers coming from China into the U.S., as well as a lack of contact tracing and enforcement of physical distancing helped facilitate the spread of the virus. The long and short of it is, when we had a chance maybe to catch these embers when they were first landing on North American soil and detect these chains of transmission in the community, we didn't take that opportunity, Worobey said. The primary takeaway is that tools such as testing, contact tracing and physical isolation can make a huge difference in preventing large-scale outbreaks if implemented early enough. Furthermore, it shows that one individual, like patient WA1, can potentially change the course of history, Worobey said. In that case, WA1 did all the right things they reported their symptoms right away, got tested and self-isolated. Researchers now believe WA1 likely did not infect anyone else. I think there is something really nice here where we have this guy who could have gone down in history as the person who started a pandemic Our research clarifies thats probably not what happened. And in fact, his behaviour is actually a good model for all of us moving forward to take this seriously, do the responsible thing and prevent onward transmission. Read more about: Republican lawmakers are denouncing the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts ruling affecting the November election, calling it nothing short of an attempt to tilt the election toward the Democrats. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled that ballots cast by mail can be counted up until three days after Election Day, as long as those ballots are postmarked by Nov. 3. The court also approved the use of drop boxes by counties and satellite election offices. Gov. Tom Wolfs administration and the Democratic Party sought the measures, saying they were necessary in an election taking place during the coronavirus pandemic. Wolf has also pointed out the U.S. Postal Services warnings of potential delays in handling mail-in ballots. The governor hailed Thursdays ruling as a victory for voters. Republican lawmakers charged the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court with overreaching its authority and accused the justices of attempting to sway the outcome of the election in the Democrats favor. Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the court. The questions over the handling of the election carries importance beyond Pennsylvania, as the Keystone State is considered one of the key battlegrounds in deciding the presidential election. In a joint statement, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman accused the court of trampling the Constitution. This ruling is not about ensuring fair elections it is about allowing one party to steal this election, Scarnati and Corman said. Under the Constitution, the responsibility to determine the times, places and manner of elections lies solely within the legislative process. Blatantly political decision House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, and House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, issued a joint statement blasting the decision and said they are examining their legal and legislative options. Todays decision makes Pennsylvanias elections less secure and opens the door to serious questions about the integrity of the process in one of the most significant national and state elections in recent memory," the House leaders said. "Even more concerning is that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has once again normalized the Wolf administrations disrespect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the voice of the people. The Wolf administration and lawmakers have been at odds over measures relating to the management of the election and havent been able to bridge the divide, but there have been some areas where theyve agreed. For example, Republican lawmakers had expressed willingness to process mail-in ballots ahead of the election, allowing counties to remove them from envelopes and prepare them to be counted. But Wolf and the GOP differed on how much time should be allowed. Wolf wants counties to have 21 days to process the ballots, while GOP lawmakers proposed a three-day window before the election. While the Wolf administration and lawmakers offered competing proposals on other election issues, the governor moved to the state Supreme Court to take up issues such as counting mail-in ballots after the election and the allowance of drop boxes. U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., called the courts ruling a blatantly political decision. Once again, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided that laws have no meaning, Toomey said in a statement. "The current state election statute, which was signed by Governor Wolf less than a year ago, is clear that mail-in ballots must be received by 8:00 PM on Election Day in order to be counted. Todays blatantly political decision to violate the law irresponsibly heightens the risk that our state will experience a lengthy, disputed, and controversial outcome in what is expected to be an extremely close presidential race," Toomey said. A win for voters In a news conference Thursday afternoon, Wolf said he had just received word of the ruling an hour earlier. But he said, It really makes the access to voting better so I welcome the decision. Later, the governor and Attorney General Josh Shapiro issued a statement describing the court decision as an important ruling protecting voters' rights. This is a victory that will help ensure that every eligible voter will more easily be able to cast their ballot and have it counted fairly, Wolf and Shapiro said in the statement. Todays ruling confirms that counties will be able to provide convenient secure options such as additional county election offices and drop boxes to increase accessibility for those who are voting by mail," they said. "It also means that ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by the Friday after the election will be counted. Several advocacy organizations petitioned the state Supreme Court to allow drop boxes and more time to count mail-in ballots. They cheered the courts decision. Todays ruling is a win for voters," Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "This case has always been about promoting safe access to the ballot for all eligible voters in the commonwealth, and the court understood the importance of lowering barriers to voting. Tim Stevens, chairman and CEO with The Black Empowerment Project, said the courts ruling ensures more people can participate in the election. The fact that the state Supreme Court has ruled in our favor to allow counties to have drop boxes is important for extending the opportunity of people to utilize their right to vote," Stevens said in a statement. With so many stories of delays in the U.S. mail, we think it is also important that, under these unusual circumstances, people will have their ballots counted, as they long as they are in the mail by Election Day, Stevens said. "BPEPs mission is to encourage African-Americans to vote in each and every election, and we feel that the courts decision supports that objective. Prepare to wait This is the first year voting by mail is widely available in Pennsylvania. Last year, Wolf signed an election reform bill - with strong bipartisan support - expanding the ability of voters to cast ballots by mail. Previously, voters had to apply for absentee ballots and explain why they couldnt get to the polls. Now, registered voters can vote by mail simply as a matter of preference. Motivated by the coronavirus pandemic, voters cast ballots by mail in record numbers in the June primary. In June, nearly 1.5 million people voted via mail. Election officials expect far more to do so in November. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said about 1.9 million people had already applied for mail-in ballots for the November election. She projected as many as 3 million could end up casting ballots by mail in the fall. In a close race, the courts ruling increases the chance that voters wont know on Election Night whether President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania. With Pennsylvania being viewed by many analysts as the state that could decide the presidential race, its possible the entire nation will be waiting beyond Election Day to learn the winner. More from PennLive Gov. Wolf changes rule on alcohol sales in restaurants and bars, moving last call to 11 p.m. Could the return of Big Ten football help President Trump in Pa.? Maybe Donald Trump Jr. goes on the attack during Dauphin County stop Republican Voters Against Trump ramps up ads in Pa. with billboards, TV spots Be prepared for Election Week or Election Month; the vote count will take longer this year Elections in History A Poll, a Senior General and the Demise of His Promise of a New Democratic Era in Myanmar Senior General Saw Maung during a meeting in November 1990. / Government Press YANGONA general electionthe countrys first multi-party poll since 1960was held in 1990, organized by Senior General Saw Maung, who took over from one-party dictator Ne Win. Before the poll, Snr-Gen Saw Maung, who was serving as the commander-in-chief of defense services and chairman of its State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) government, promised repeatedly in his speeches that he would hand over power to the winning party and would have the army return to the barracks where, in his own words, they rightfully belonged. However, even before the election could be held, senior leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo were detained and placed under house arrest under the State Protection Act. A total of 93 parties contested the election held on May 27. The NLD won over 90 percent of the seats, securing victory in 392 of 447 constituencies as Myanmars people, who had suffered under a single-party dictatorship for decades, voted overwhelmingly for the party. The National Unity Party, the proxy of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, secured just 10 seats. The election was free and fair. And it was obvious that our Tatmadaw [Myanmars military] which has a fine tradition [of protecting the national interest] did not bias, help, support or disturb any side, Snr-Gen Saw Maung said proudly. The NLD sent letters twice, in June and July, to Snr-Gen Saw Maung to discuss the political process for summoning the parliament. But he did not reply. Two months after the election, on July 28-29, over 500 elected NLD candidates and party members held a conference at Gandhi Hall on Bo Aung Kyaw Street in Yangon. The event was attended by over 10,000 people. The conference issued a declaration famously known as the Gandhi Declaration, which asked the SLORC government to convene the Lower House for the transfer of power. It also called for talks with SLORC leaders and the release of political prisoners including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo. One day prior to the Gandhi Conference, Secretary-1 of the SLORC government Major General Khin Nyunt issued Announcement No. 1/1990 of the military regime, warning of harsh actions against any attempt to convene the parliament and take over power without the approval of the military regime. Shortly after, Maj-Gen Khin Nyunt sent a 13-page letter to NLD chair U Kyi Maung, saying that the military regime would neither summon the parliament nor release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The letter warned that the party would be crushed if it refused to agree to follow Announcement No. 1/1990. Due to the repression of the regime, elected candidates, who should have been in legislative assemblies, had to spend years behind bars. Many others were exiled, and their relatives had their livelihoods stolen by the junta. At the same time, 64-year-old Snr-Gen Saw Maung became paranoid and suffered from a nervous breakdown. Junta Secretary-1 Major General Khin Nyunt would later write in his autobiography that he reported the daily activities and health status of Snr-Gen Saw Maung to the latters deputy, SLORC vice chairman General Than Shwe, on a daily basis. The leadership role of Snr-Gen Saw Maung, who organized the 1990 poll, came to an end on April 23, 1992 with the announcement signed by his deputy, Gen. Than Shwe that he was retiring due to ill health. There was much speculation that other military leaders pre-empted this by purging Snr-Gen Saw Maung. It is not clear what disputes they had. After news of the senior generals retirement was aired on the state broadcaster in the evening, Daw Aye Aye Yi, the ailing chairmans wife, stormed into the War Office and angrily complained that her husband had been mistreated and that she would go and talk to retired General Ne Win, writes ex-general and former Mandalay Region Commander U Tun Kyi, who was at the War Office at the time, in his memoir 50 Years of Personal Experiences. Some nervous commanders wondered aloud what would happen if Snr-Gen Saw Maung came into the office brandishing his pistol. To their relief, the military spy chief, the now General Khin Nyunt, assured them that the bullets in the chairmans gun were blanks, U Tun Kyi wrote. Ex-Snr-Gen Saw Maung died at the age of 68 in 1996, four years after he was overthrown. Than Shwe, by now senior general, took over from Snr-Gen Saw Maung, and convened the National Convention, which took 14 years to design a new charter. The Constitution was ratified in a national referendum in 2008, and multi-party democratic elections, the first since 1990, were held in 2010. The Union Solidarity and Development Party, the proxy of the Myanmar military, won the election as it was boycotted by the NLD. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko SUV AWD And right they were. The Mustang is simply killing it globally , and has found a very solid fan base in Europe as well. With help coming from there, the pony managed to be at the top of the sales chart in its rather poor segment for years.And now comes the electric-Mustang--thingy. Its officially called Mach-E , as you know, and it too will be a global product. To be made not in the U.S., but in Mexico, the new member of the family is getting a special treatment for the European roads these days.Geert van Noyen, manager for vehicle dynamics at Fords Lommel testing facility Belgium, is the one explaining in a boring way how things are going on this front. You can see him in the video below as he turns what is otherwise an exciting vehicle into a reason to yawn.We do learn a few things, though. The first is that the electric Mustang for Europe will have a different suspension setup, called for by the more twisty roads there. Shock settings, springs, roll bars, and the steering system have all been tuned or calibrated to better handle the tasks at hand.We get a better glimpse of the interior just like the customers will experience it, including the way in which the selection of drive modes (Active, Whisper and Untamed) changes even the ambient lighting and sound in the vehicle.In the UK there are only two Mach-E variants available for pre-order, RWD and, each with two range capabilities, standard and extended. Prices start at 40,350. We must seize the opportunity provided by the COVID-19 crisis to kick-start indigenous research efforts, recommends Colonel Anil A Athale (retd). IMAGE: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh holds a light machine gun at the DRDO pavilion at the inauguration of Defence Expo 2020 in Lucknow, February 5, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo Next to oil, arms are the second biggest item in India's imports basket. Like oil, the defence equipment dependency is India's Achilles' heel and affects the pursuit of independent foreign policy and is a threat to our independence itself. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a welcome move, has banned imports of several defence items in order to move decidedly in the direction of self-reliance in defence. Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi has taken a personal interest in the matter and in a major decision India has jettisoned its old policy of a blanket ban on export of arms (only non-lethal materials like tents, clothing etc were kosher earlier). Major steps are also in the pipeline to re-organise the Defence Research and Development Organisation and make it more efficient. Move to corporatise ordnance factories is a move in the right direction. This is not the first attempt at the reform of defence sector, and the reasons for failure of past efforts need to be understood if we have to succeed this time around. IMAGE: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh along with Chief of the Ddefence Staff General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff General Manoj Mukund Naravane, Chief of the Air Staff Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Karambir Singh at the Defence Industry Outreach Webinar which was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi in New Delhi, August 27, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo. India has had a chequered history of past attempts at self-reliance in defence. Our Pune-based think-tank Inpad has been working towards this objective for over two decades. In 2000, one of our founder members (who is no more with us), Lieutenant General Eric Vas, had proposed precisely this. The idea was that the ban on imported weapons would act as a spur to indigenous research and development. This move to ban defence imports is a 'demand' side measure to promote self-reliance. The expectation was that like in case of space technology, this will spur indigenous products. In the same year, in January 2000, Inpad organised a talk by a programme director from DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency), a premier American organisation for defence research that is credited with inventions from the Internet (initially called Darpanet) to stealth technology and much more. We had invited the DRDO, armed forces and industry people for the same. The idea was to understand the DARPA model (an independent funding agency and open competition) and see its efficacy in India. In the same year, I was invited to attend a national seminar (as part of the golden jubilee of the Republic) on defence and science technology interface held at IIT-Delhi and the final session at IIM-Bangalore. On both occasions, I had put forward a simple suggestion -- to associate students from institutes of technology with defence research by encouraging them to undertake final year projects in the field of defence. The idea was that these young minds will generate new technological solutions to the problems faced by the defence forces. But such is the formidable inertia in the bureaucracies (both civil and military) that neither of these simple suggestions reached anywhere. If we had acted on the suggestion to link young students at institutes of technology with defence research then, in the last two decades we would have certainly not remained a slave to imported weaponry for defence. IMAGE: Prime Minister Modi, along with Karnataka Chief Minister Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa, inspects a model at the launch of the DRDO Young Scientists Laboratory in Bengaluru, January 2, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo The first and immediate step that needs to be taken in this matter is to involve graduate students (via their final year projects) with find 'solutions' to problems in defence. Emphasis is on finding solutions and not just 'products' as that will widen the scope and could give the Indian armed forces 'unique' and new weapons to deal with threats. The false bogey of secrecy needs to buried deep as information about most of the Indian weapons of imported origin is freely available to our adversaries. In the medium term, we must explore the possibility of starting departments of armament technology in selected institutes as a specialised discipline at the post-graduate level. It is time we end the DRDO monopoly in research in the field of armament. IMAGE: The anti-drone system developed by DRDO was deployed near the Red Fort for Prime Minister Modi's Independence Day address on August 15, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo The military users have been pitching their demands based on what the adversaries have, or what they are expected to have. The defence R&D organisations have been making promises that remain unfulfilled. The actual prototypes, when produced, have generally been behind time and much below expectations. It is this gap between expectation and fulfillment that has led to the demand for import of defence equipment by the military users. Ways need to be found to bridge this chasm. It seems that the research and development has to be made more broad-based to include the private sector and also the academic world. The banning of the import of certain items, in itself, is only a half-measure; their indigenous replacement is the real challenge. The only way this can be achieved is by addressing the 'supply side' constraints. IMAGE: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and dDirector General of the National Cadet Corps, Lieutenant General Rajeev Chopra, launch the DGNCC mobile training app for NCC cadets to train themselves during the lockdown in New Delhi, August 27, 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo We have a window of opportunity as due to COVID-19 as well as restrictive policies in the US, the usual annual exodus of bright young students to greener pastures to the West has been stalled, albeit temporarily. The education ministry and private trusts must exponentially increase funding for research, create more doctoral and post-doctoral positions, to give a jump start to all research including in the defence field. We must seize the opportunity provided by the COVID-19 crisis to kick-start indigenous research efforts. Essentially, all the solutions provided above and suggestions are managerial in nature and more like a band aid. To put defence research on a sound footing, we need to address certain fundamental issues. Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a former Chhatrapati Shivaji Chair Fellow at the United Services Institute of India. Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/ Rediff.com President Trump demanded protesters in Lafayette Square be cleared, prompting local law enforcement officials to seek out available tools - Patrick Semansky /AP Federal officials in America sought to acquire a heat ray and accumulated approximately 7,000 rounds of ammunition before clearing a peaceful protest in Lafayette Square in Washington DC, according to an Army National Guard Major who was there. Major Adam DeMarco penned his claims in a letter to the House of Representatives in August in response to follow-up questions he was asked after testifying before the House Committee on Natural Resources in June. The requests for a heat ray were made as local law enforcement sought to clear protesters gathered in Lafayette Square following the death of George Floyd. President Trump had ordered the crowds to be cleared so he could conduct a photo op holding a bible outside a nearby church. During the shoot, he declared himself the law and order President. The contents of the letter were first reported by NPR in America. In the letter, Major DeMarco says that the Defense Department's head military police officer for the National Capitol Region emailed him to ask if the DC National Guard was in possession of the Active Denial System (ADS). President Trump wanted protesters cleared so he could take a photo holding a bible outside St. John's Church - Patrick Semansky /AP An ADS, informally known as a "heat ray", is a weapon developed by the US military that fires out high-powered waves of energy designed to instantly heat water and fat molecules in the skin, causing a painful burning sensation. It works in a similar fashion to a microwave and is used primarily for crowd control. Most people targeted with the weapon are capable of enduring about three seconds of direct targeting before they reach their pain threshold. However, the radiation burns cause no long-term damage. Major DeMarco also says that the DC National Guard was the recipient of a weapons transfer of about 7,000 rounds of ammunition on the afternoon of the protest. A Defence Department official told the Washington Post that the request on weapons availability was routine, but Major DeMarcos lawyer David Laufman refuted this, saying "there is nothing 'routine' about inquiring about the availability of a heat ray to use against American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights". The EMPAIA project, which is led by Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin, has been crowned one of the winners of the AI Innovation Competition organized by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). The project, which will now enter its implementation stage, aims to build a platform for AI-assisted solutions within the field of diagnostic medical imaging. The consortium has been awarded a total of 11.4 million over three years, of which 4.6 million will go to Charite. In an effort to provide patients with more personalized treatments, physicians are relying on increasingly complex clinical diagnostics. This development is seen in a range of disorders but is particularly pronounced in the diagnosis of cancer. The processes involved in evaluating imaging data (such as MRIs) and tissue sections are particularly time-consuming and complex. By speeding up image analysis, artificial intelligence-based methods can help deliver relevant information faster - such as whether a cancer has metastasized. "Artificial intelligence holds enormous potential; it has the capacity to revolutionize all areas of diagnostic medical imaging over the coming years," says Prof. Dr. Peter Hufnagl of Charite's Institute of Pathology. The coordinator of the EMPAIA Consortium (Ecosystem for Pathology Diagnostics with AI Assistance) adds: "This potential is almost impossible to realize at the moment because we lack both infrastructure and standards, as well as clarity regarding the relevant legal framework." For this reason, Prof. Hufnagl is working alongside the Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) Laboratory at Technische Universitat Berlin, the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Vitasystems GmbH and Qualitatssicherungs-Initiative Pathologie QuIP GmbH to develop a platform which will make it easier for physicians to access approved and validated AI-based apps. The researchers want to enable users to compare how different programs solve a specific problem. At the same time, they want developers of AI-based algorithms to be able to access imaging data which they need in order to validate their software. In order to speed up the certification of diagnostic algorithms, the platform will also bring together developers, reference institutes and certification bodies. "The rules under which this marketplace operates will of course be guided by current data protection and medical devices legislation," emphasizes Prof. Hufnagl. He adds: "By creating this marketplace within a clearly defined legal framework, we want to enable physicians to routinely use approved AI-based solutions within diagnostic imaging." During the development process, the consortium plan to initially focus on the analysis of tissue sections before switching their focus to imaging data. The EMPAIA Consortium will hold a kickoff meeting on Friday, 25 September, 10 AM to 5 PM. Media representatives are invited to attend this digital event. To register, please contact empaia@charite.de. AI Innovation Competition The aim of the BMWi's innovation competition 'Artificial Intelligence as a Driver of Economically Relevant Ecosystems' is to promote outstanding approaches to new forms of AI-based platforms for important sectors within the German economy. The competition received more than 130 submissions from the areas of mobility, health care, industry, smart living, agriculture, trade and construction. Out of these, a total of 16 large-volume AI platform-based projects were selected for funding and implementation. The competition winners were announced in September 2019. ### The toxin from the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree , was found to be a new family of neurotoxin called gympietides, according to a study from researchers of University of Queensland. (Photo : Wikimedia Commons) According to a study from researchers of the University of Queensland, the toxin from the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree was found to be a new family of a neurotoxin called gympietides. The Gympie-Gympie Stinging Tree The trees, named Dendrocnide moroides is a member of the nettle tree. It means 'stinging tree.' The tree is a member of the nettle family and is found in Australia from the Northern Rivers region of NSW, Gympie QLD, to the Cape York Peninsula. These particular Australian stinging species are known for causing excruciatingly painful sting, causing symptoms that last for days or weeks. READ: South Australia's New Law: Ban on Single-Use Plastics Such as Straws, Utensils, and Stirrers Dr. Marina Hurley described the pain as "like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time." The leaves look like it is covered by soft, downy, fur, and is inviting to touch, while its fruit looks like a long-stemmed, bright, red-dark purple raspberry. Gympie-Gympie leaf's slightest touch causes intense stinging, burning pain that is felt immediately, and the pain peaks after 20-30 minutes. The problem is so fierce that after 20 minutes of being stung, lymph nodes under your arms swell. It hurts painfully as of slammed between 2 blocks of wood. The intense pain can last from 1-4 hours, depending on the species that one got in contact with, the surface area of the skin affected, and how hard one contacted the plant. The hairs are expected to remain in the skin for six months, Hurley explained, and the pain recurs if the skin is pressed or gets in contact with hot or cold water. According to Associate Professor Vetter, trichomes or needle-like appendages, which are around five millimeters in length, cover the giant-stinging tree. The trichomes look like fine hairs but act like hypodermic needles injecting toxins to skin or areas they contact. Small molecules such as histamine, acetylcholine, and formic acid in the trichomes have been tested, but they do not cause severe pain. This suggests that it also contains an unidentified neurotoxin. Associate Professor Vetter and her study team were interested in what kind of neurotoxins could explain the symptoms and why the particular plant causes long-lasting pain. READ ALSO: Ozone Pollution: Effects on Plant and Human Health Gympietides, The New Neurotoxins The team found a new neurotoxin from the venomous tree. The neurotoxin is an entirely new class of mini proteins called "Gympietides." Gympietides, like the spider and cone nail toxins, "fold into their 3-D molecular structures". It also targets the same pain receptors, permanently changing the sodium channels in sensory neurons, thus creating long-lasting pain. The recent finding will help shed light on how the toxin works to provide better treatment for those who have been stung by the plant, Vetter said. The gympietides also has the potential to be used as bases for new therapies for pain management. READ NEXT: There are Twice as Many Plant Species in Latin America Than Tropical Africa Check out more news and information on Plant Species on Nature World News. Clinton and Randal Ream with their son Saylor and daughter Nayvie and two neighbors Aubrey Miller and Harmony Morgan at their home in a small trailer park in West Pensacola. The area received a lot of damage after Hurricane Sally came through as a category 2 hurricane in Pensacola, La. on September 16th, 2020. Bryan Tarnowski | The Washington Post via Getty Images Hurricane Sally moved northeast on Thursday after causing massive flooding and destruction on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The storm made landfall in Alabama yesterday as a slow-moving Category 2 hurricane before tearing through the Florida Panhandle, where it pummeled the city of Pensacola with more than two feet of rain. The National Weather Service warned that river flooding will be a serious concern through the weekend. Even though Sally was downgraded to a tropical depression on Wednesday, the storm is still unleashing heavy rain and strong winds as it moves northeast and forecasters expect it will bring more than a foot of rain to some areas. When Sally first made landfall over the Gulf Shores on Wednesday, it was moving less than 5 miles an hour, an incredibly slow pace which creates more destruction and has connections to climate change. Sally's slow movement and stalling left entire neighborhoods severely damaged from strong storm surge and record rainfall that in some areas caused more than five foot floods. Relentless rain flooded roads, homes and cars, and a five foot storm surge sent adrift a construction barge in Florida. A section of a major bridge going through the Pensacola Bay broke off during the storm, and a ship was torn away from a dock in the Pensacola water. The speed of tropical storms making landfall has slowed during the last several decades and some research suggests that global warming, specifically in the Arctic, has slowed hurricane pace by slowing down the jet stream. More than 300 people were rescued from floods in Escambia County and at least one person died in Orange Beach, Alabama, according to the mayor. Hundreds of thousands of people in Alabama and Florida were also left without power from Sally, which caused weather officials to urge residents to use their generators with caution. When Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana and Texas in August, several people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from their generators. More from Environment: Why Hurricane Sallys slow movement makes it more dangerous over Gulf Coast Climate change is fueling wildfires in the West, ravaging local economies Heatwaves are becoming more deadly as nights warm faster than days Climate change has caused more frequent and destructive hurricanes and wildfires, which are currently burning through the U.S. West. Dry conditions fueled by climate change made this year's blazes the worst in history. Sally was the eighth tropical storm or hurricane to hit the United States this year, and there are currently two more storms developing in the Atlantic. This year is set to be one of the worst U.S. hurricane seasons on record in part because of rising ocean temperatures. The National Hurricane Center is running out of letters of the alphabet for upcoming storms. Photographs show how a part of Melbourne's ring of steel was left unattended by police because of heavy rain. The image shows the Little River checkpoint on the Princes Freeway near Geelong unmanned due to wet weather. It was captured about 8.30am on Thursday, while cars continued to travel past the dreary and unchecked barrier. 'Little River checkpoint unattended at the moment due to rain. Police and ADF personnel in their tents,' Mr Templeton's post read. The picture, shared by Channel 7's Sunrise reporter Nathan Templeton, shows the Little River checkpoint on the Princes Freeway near Geelong unmanned due to wet weather (pictured) The image, captured about 8.30am on Thursday, also shows cars continuing to pass the dreary and unchecked barrier at Little River (pictured) Twitter users reacting to the post labelled the premier's 'ring of steel' as 'rusty' and dissolving in the rain. Pictured: Little River checkpoint The picture follows state premier Daniel Andrews setting up a 'ring of steel' around Melbourne, in a bid to prevent residents from travelling to regional Victoria where COVID-19 restrictions have eased. Although there are no actual fences in place, police are using checkpoints at major highways, automatic number plate recognition and extra patrols at bus and train stations to catch city dwellers trying to escape strict lockdown. Melburnains caught trying to flee could be fined $4,957 for leaving the restricted area and breaching public health rules without 'an appropriate excuse'. There are seven permanent checkpoints across metropolitan Melbourne, which is currently under Stage 4 restrictions. Regional Victoria moved to Stage 2 on Wednesday night. The picture follows state premier Daniel Andrews setting up a 'ring of steel' around Melbourne, in a bid to prevent residents from travelling to regional Victoria where COVID-19 restrictions have eased. Pictured: Police and ADF checking work permits and identification at Little River Although there are no actual fences in place, police are using checkpoints at major highways, automatic number plate recognition and extra patrols at bus and train stations to catch city dwellers trying to escape strict lockdown. Pictured: Police and ADF at Litte River barrier Twitter users reacting to the post labelled the premier's 'ring of steel' as 'rusty' and dissolving in the rain. 'So let me get this right. When it rains the police and ADF all huddle together in a caravan and a tend. Anyone see a problem here,' one person commented. 'Looks more like a ring of fairly floss to me,' another said. '#DanOfSteel's rusty ring,' a third person commented. Police and ADF personnel were seen manning the checkpoint when the rain stopped and sun came out about 30 minutes later. Twitter users reacting to Mr Templeton's post (pictured) labelled the premier's 'ring of steel' as 'rusty' and dissolving in the rain The isolation of Australia's second biggest city is similar to the lockdown of Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis of nine million where coronavirus was identified late last year. Wuhan was shut down on 23 January as all flights, trains and buses in and out were cancelled, and steel fences were set up outside apartment buildings to keep residents at homes. The lockdown was lifted in April after 11 weeks - four weeks fewer than Melbourne's shutdown is due to last. The 'ring of steel' comes as Victoria recorded 28 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday. The figure is the state's lowest daily total since 24 June. Daniel Andrews has effectively set up a 'ring of steel' around Melbourne to stop residents heading to regional Victoria Although there are no actual fences, police will use checkpoints at major highways, automatic number plate recognition and extra patrols. Pictured: A checkpoint in Geelong Premier Andrews (pictured) is desperate to stop coronavirus spreading from Melbourne to the regions Poll Has Melbourne's lockdown gone on too long? Yes No Undecided Has Melbourne's lockdown gone on too long? Yes 751 votes No 164 votes Undecided 48 votes Now share your opinion As part of operation 'ring of steel', officers will check cars with caravans and fishing rods as well as increase patrols at camp sites and national parks to catch any city dweller escapees. There will also be increased checks at popular holiday destinations, such as the Mornington Peninsula where many well-heeled Melburnians have second homes. The major checkpoints were set up on the Princes Freeway at Little River on Wednesday, heading to Geelong and the Calder Freeway near Sunbury on the way to Bendigo. Premier Andrews is desperate to stop coronavirus spreading from Melbourne to the regions, which have suffered significantly fewer case numbers and were removed from lockdown on Wednesday night. He said: 'Whether you want to call it a ring of steel or a border or whatever the term, the key aim is very simple: only those who have to go to regional Victoria and have a lawful reason to go to regional Victoria can go to regional Victoria. 'We've got to be inflexible on this.' He added: 'The police are not mucking about. If you are from Melbourne and you are in regional Victoria and do not have an appropriate excuse, you will be fined. 'Victorians have given a lot but we need to guard the low numbers in regional Victoria. 'Anyone who thinks they might take a punt on heading to regional Victoria and not getting caught, I think your odds are very poor.' Melbourne's lockdown will last 15 weeks, a month longer than the lockdown of Wuhan (pictured), the Chinese city where the virus was first identified late last year The Chinese city of Wuhan was locked down on 23 January when nine million residents (pictured) were prevented from leaving the city A worker in a protective outfit checks the body temperature of an elderly woman at the entrance of a bank, in Wuhan, China in March Mr Andrews also asked pub landlords to check customers' identification to make sure they are not from Melbourne. 'If you're not from regional Victoria, then you should not be at the pub, and that compliance will be very, very important,' he said. Victoria was placed back into lockdown on 8 July after coronavirus escaped from hotel quarantine in late May and spread rapidly. Some 700 cases were recorded in one day on August 5 and more than 700 people have died, who have mostly been in aged care. Under Mr Andrews' road map out of restrictions, Melbourne will remain locked down until weekly average cases drop below five, which is not expected until October 26. This would mean Melbourne's lockdown would have lasted 15 weeks - a month longer than the shutdown of Wuhan. Police will try to catch city dwellers trying to escape strict coronavirus lockdown. Pictured: A checkpoint at Kalkallo Officers say they will check cars with caravans and fishing rods as well as increase patrols at camp sites and national parks. Pictured: A checkpoint at Albury The four reasons to leave home no longer apply to regional Victoria. Most workplaces are reopening and schools are returning with staggered starts. Gathering limits have increased to 10 people outdoors and up to five nominated visitors from another household bubble. Restaurants are operating with a cap of 10 seated patrons indoors and 50 outdoors. Gathering limits have also increase to 10 people at weddings, 20 mourners at funerals and 10 people - plus one faith leader - at outdoor religious gatherings. Children can return to community sport too, and adults will be able to take part in non-contact sport. Melburnians (pictured at Elwood beach) are expected to be stuck in lockdown until October 26 Everyone in Melbourne must wear a mask when leaving home. Pictured: Residents at South Melbourne Beach Mr Andrews announced the eased restrictions for regional Victorians on Tuesday. 'I am so, so pleased and proud of every single regional Victorian who has stayed the course, follow the rules and got tested,' he said. 'There is no greater evidence to the people of Melbourne that this strategy, getting numbers low, is essential.' Melbourne took its first tentative steps out of lockdown on Monday, with those living alone or single parents allowed to have one visitor, outdoor exercise extended to two hours and the curfew's start time pushed back an hour to 9pm. I have been in DC (Northern Virginia, actually) for the last two days, in connection with Hillsdale Colleges Constitution Day event. Last night, Attorney General William Barr spoke at dinner. The main subject of his speech was the rule of law, and how the rule of law is advanced by the fact that in federal agencies, final decisions are up to the senior, political appointees. In the Department of Justice, this means, ultimately, the Attorney General. (Paul wrote about the speech and the Washington Posts dishonest attack on it here.) Barr articulated several reasons why senior officials in DOJ get the last word on prosecutions, and should. First, they are politically accountable. An attorney general is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If someone has a problem with decisions he makes, he can be fired by the President or called before Congress to explain. In a democracy, this kind of political accountability is essential. Second, uniformity is an important aspect of the rule of law. We cannot have a U.S. Attorney in New York advancing a novel theory against a criminal defendant in that state, while the U.S. Attorney in Florida refuses to bring a similar prosecution on the same ground. Only if DOJs senior officials have ultimate responsibility for decisions on prosecutions can uniformity be assured. Third, the most senior officials generally have more experience than line attorneys, and they also have a broader perspective. A line attorney knows his own cases, but the political appointees know (and are responsible for) the Departments policies and priorities. Barrs comments had a context: he talked about the fact that the D.C. press corps has attacked him for doing his job; that is, exercising his powers and duties as Attorney General. Outlets like the Washington Post see something sinister in the fact that the Attorney General is actually running the Department of Justice. This is not a consistent concern, however; as Barr pointed out, such concerns disappear when the A.G. is a Democrat. Barrs speech was well-received. In fact, he got four standing ovations from the Hillsdale crowd. I didnt think he had said anything particularly controversial, so I was shocked later last night to see that the Washington Post had published a highly misleading account of the speech which I had heard only an hour or two before. The Posts story bears the snarky headline, Barr accuses Justice Department of headhunting and interfering with politics. The headline is flatly false. Barr did not accuse DOJ lawyers of interfering with politics. The Post just made that up. The Post story reads, as usual, like a DNC press release: Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics Someday I want to see a Post story about a public official speaking at Harvard, a school with deep ties to liberal politics. Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Trump. Translation: some DOJ lawyers are activist leftists, who dont like it when the AG doesnt approve their pursuing a partisan agenda. And they know they will find a sympathetic ear at the Washington Post. Barrs comments were remarkable in that the head of the Justice Department catalogued all of the ways in which he thought his agency had gone astray over the years, and in its current formulation harms the body politic. Barr has drawn considerable criticism for intervening in criminal cases in ways that help benefit the presidents friends. Actually, Barr praised DOJ, while also pointing out that its career lawyers are not perfect, and are subject to temptations like headhunting. Has Barr drawn considerable criticism for executing his duties as Attorney General? Yes, from the Washington Post. Basically, the Post took the opportunity to repeat its past smears of the Attorney General, without even trying to portray the content of his speech fairly, let alone rebut the powerful arguments he made. I believe the television networks have aped the Posts criticisms of Barrs speech. Tom Cotton took all of these left-wing outlets to task on Twitter: The AG has been accused of attacking career prosecutors in this speech. He wasnt. He was making the point that DOJ is a chain-of-command institution. It cannot function with thousands of politically unaccountable line prosecutors setting their own individual policies. Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) September 17, 2020 Career prosecutors represent the government, theyre not running their own activist law firms. And that means they answer to the AGand that he answers in turn to the President and the American people. The buck stops at the top. Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) September 17, 2020 Again, read the speech in full. Youll be better informed than the journalists hyperventilating about it on Twitter:https://t.co/jx9UQV8CHP Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) September 17, 2020 I join with Senator Cotton in encouraging you to read the AGs intelligent, thoughtful speech. As Tom notes, he repeatedly quoted former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. I wonder whether the Post intended to smear Jackson, an icon in the legal profession, too. I gave my Constitution Day speech today; so far no coverage in the Post. I had the opportunity to chat briefly with Attorney General Barr before the dinner last night, and learned that he does read Power Line from time to time. I hope we serve as an antidote to the nonsense he sees day after day in D.C.s dominant paper. Washington: One of the United States' top health officials has contradicted President Donald Trump's promise for a coronavirus vaccine by mid-October, telling Congress it may not be available until well into next year. Robert Redfield, the head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before Congress on Thursday (AEST) that a vaccine might be available by the end of the year for some medical workers but would not be widely available until "the second or third quarter" of next year. He said it would take six to nine months after authorities approved the vaccine before it could be distributed nationally, meaning it would only become widely available in the middle of 2021. After Redfield's testimony, Trump told reporters: "I think he made a mistake when he said that. Barr and Durham Versus the Swamp Commentary The ongoing Department of Justices investigation into the origins of the FBIs Russia probespearheaded by Attorney General William Barr, with assistance from U.S. attorneys of unimpeachable integrity, including John Durham of Connecticut and John Bash from the Western District of Texasis reaching a critical juncture. The processas allegations are converted to accusations and possibly substantive charges of criminal activityhas been delayed and hampered, primarily by the effects of the CCP virus pandemic on the convening of, and protocols that pertain to, the conduct of grand jury investigations. The presentation of evidence to a grand jury is followed by deliberations and votes on whether to bring specific criminal charges. Of particular significance, and indicative of the progress being made, was the guilty plea by former FBI headquarters official Kevin Clinesmith, to a federal charge of falsifying a document that was used to justify surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. Its noteworthy that The Washington Post, Politico, The Associated Press, CNN, and other mainstream media outlets repeatedly referred to Clinesmith as a former FBI lawyer rather than as an FBI senior counsel with access to highly sensitive top-secret materials, thereby apparently seeking to downplay his significance and his role within the agency. That occurred in much the same way that the media initially repeatedly referred to Peter Strzok as a run-of-the-mill FBI special agent, and not as a deputy assistant director of the FBI. Such plea agreements are typically the first step in a cooperation agreement, wherein the FBI first harvests the low-hanging fruit in contemplation of subsequently bringing in higher-value targets. In this case, the targets being former denizens of the seventh floor at the FBIs J. Edgar Hoover building, the upper management policymakers responsible for the Crossfire Hurricane operation, which was so named by headquarters senior-level desk jockeys responsible for its inception and execution (an overly dramatic case title ridiculed by real field agents). Remarkable for its absence is any notable involvement by FBI Director Christopher Wray in the ongoing investigations. Following a revolving-door career, Wray hasbetween stints at the Justice Department (DOJ)worked at the white-shoe law firm King and Spalding, where, according to Reuters, he earned $9.2 million in the year preceding his return to public service. In prior stints at the DOJ, he was part of the same clique as his FBI predecessor, James Comey, and appears ill-suited to participate in a fair and objective investigation of malfeasance in the office he now inhabits. In the course of a televised interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer on Aug. 2, Barr stated that consistent with existing policy, the DOJ wouldnt bring charges for political reasons. However, that doesnt mean charges wouldnt be filed for reasons consistent with criminal activity, regardless of whether there are political consequences. Barr also declined to rule out the filing of an indictment or the bringing of criminal charges prior to the election. Blitzers tone was unusually acrimonious, and may arguably reflect a hostility arising in the mainstream media and Democratic Party, out of fear of the effects of impending charges, concurrent with an effort to discredit the attorney general through a variety of assaults on his credibility. In this case, Blitzer shifted the focus to Barrs views on mail-in voting, advancing the mainstream medias canard that Republican concerns with potential voter fraud are, in actuality, an attempt at voter suppression. Astonishingly, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), when interviewed on CNN on Sept. 6, expressly accused the attorney generalseveral timesof lying to the American people. Barr had stated in the Blitzer interview that China, when compared with Russia, is a more significant threat to the successful execution of the presidential elections in November. As both countries have an extensive history of meddling in U.S. elections, the issue is one of degree. Schiffs exaggeration evidences the extent to which Barrs opponents must grasp at straws in their attempt to disparage a public servant whose integrity is unimpeachable. This is the same congressman who repeatedly stated publicly that he had conclusive evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, evidence that to date hasnt seen the light of day or been disclosed to the American public. Evidence thathad it existedSchiff would no doubt have felt compelled to disclose ahead of the publication and release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller, who, of course, failed to find any evidence of such a connection. Schiffs repeated, and unsubstantiated, attacks on Barr reflect the panic and hostility of the Democratic Party with regard to the expected criminal charges. Schiff and others apparently seek to undermine Barrs credibility in order to mitigate the impact that the investigations will have upon their conclusion. Barrs timing dilemma is significant. Even with a shift to a Democratic administration, charges could still be filed through the end of President Donald Trumps current term, at which time Barr would no doubt be returning to civilian life, along with Durham and Bash. However, the likelihood of these charges being prosecuted vigorously by a Democratic attorney general is minimal. While they wouldnt necessarily be dismissed outright, they would rather slowly be left to wither from inattention. Marc Ruskin, a 27-year veteran of the FBI, is a regular contributor and the author of The Pretender: My Life Undercover for the FBI. He served on the legislative staff of U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y. Follow Marc on Twitter @mhruskin. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 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: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04867442a8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0489870bb0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04867442a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0489870bb0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04867556f0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0489870bb0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0489870bb0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f04861ec298)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f048a594758)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f048a594758)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 Theres being asleep at the wheel, and then theres literally reclining your seat and taking a nap while your self-driving Tesla speeds down a major highway. A 20-year-old man from British Columbia is facing criminal charges after Alberta RCMP say he did just that. RCMP say that on July 9 they received a report of a car speeding south along Highway 2 the major provincial highway connecting Edmonton and Calgary that appeared to be self-driving while clipping along at more than 140 kilometres an hour. In a news release, police said both front seats appeared to be fully reclined, with both occupants seemingly asleep. When an officer caught up to the vehicle, a 2019 Tesla Model S, and turned on the police cars lights, the Tesla allegedly automatically accelerated, eventually reaching 150 km/h, police said. RCMP eventually pulled the vehicle over and charged the driver with speeding and gave him a 24-hour licence suspension. They have since also charged him with dangerous driving under the criminal code, with a summons to appear in court this December. Although manufacturers of new vehicles have built in safeguards to prevent drivers from taking advantage of the new safety systems in vehicles, those systems are just that supplemental safety systems, Supt. Gary Graham of Alberta RCMP Traffic Services said in the release. They are not self-driving systems, they still come with the responsibility of driving. Tesla is the high-end American electric car company owned by Elon Musk. According to the the companys website, cars can come equipped with autopilot or full self-driving capability to reduce your overall workload as a driver, using eight external cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a powerful on-board computer. The model S currently has a base price of almost $105,990, though self-driving capability will set you back $10,600 more. The site says this feature equips cars to drive automatically from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars, and autopark in both parallel and perpendicular spaces. Your parked car will even come find you in a parking lot. Really, the site emphasizes. Under a list of upcoming features, the site says cars will eventually be able to recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs, and drive automatically on city streets. However, the features are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment, the website says. Read more about: Hong Kong: $7.2b in wage subsidies granted The Employment Support Scheme (ESS) Secretariat on September 16 notified the first batch of 20,000 successful employer applicants of the results for the scheme's second tranche with subsidies totalling $7.2 billion to cover a committed headcount of nearly 290,000 paid employees. The successful applicants were notified through email and SMS. Applicants can log in to the ESS portal to check the results. In the first batch of employers who will receive wage subsidies for the second tranche, almost all of them had been granted subsidies in the first tranche. Among them, 77% have not breached the two undertakings of the first tranche. They are not required to pay penalties or return subsidies to the Government. For the 23% of employers who have not fully used the subsidy amount received on paying wages to employees in June or July, or the number of paid employees was less than that in March, the Government will claw back the unspent amount or request them to pay penalties, which will be deducted from the subsidies of the second tranche. Among the first batch of employers who will have their wage subsidies deducted, 97% of those employers' deducted amount accounted for less than 5% of the respective subsidy they received for June or July. Regarding the mandatory contribution for the last month of the first tranches subsidy period, employers had to remit mandatory contributions for employees by September 10. However, having considered the impact of COVID-19, the Government will accept Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) record certificates to be provided by MPF trustees if employers' MPF contributions for August have been settled on or before September 30 to examine whether any redundancies have been made. As for the mandatory contribution within the subsidy period of the second tranche, employers are required to remit mandatory contributions for employees by October 12, November 10 and December 10. For enquiries, email [email protected] or call 1836 122. This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's ruling nationalists warned their coalition partners on Friday that they could end up triggering a new election, after allies refused to support an animal rights bill that bans fur farming and the production of kosher and halal meat for export. The bill, which has become a major test of unity for a coalition in power since 2015, passed in a late night vote with support from opposition lawmakers. The governing PiS party said its ultra-conservative and moderate allies had put their coalition in jeopardy by failing to back it. "Yesterday's decisions led to the situation where we do not know if the coalition exists," the Prime Minister's top aide, Michal Dworczyk, told public radio. "A minority government could not stay in power until the end of its term; an early election would be needed." The animal rights bill is popular with young Poles, and PiS hopes it will help expand its appeal in urban areas. Opponents within the coalition worry that it will alienate farmers and hurt them in the rural heartlands. Poland produces millions of furs a year, and the sector employs about 50,000 people. The country is also one of Europe's biggest exporters of halal and kosher meat. The PiS-led coalition held onto power in a general election last year, but has since shown signs of fragmenting. PiS has sought to redistribute cabinet posts in a reshuffle, but coalition talks were halted by the animal rights vote. All lawmakers from the ultra-conservative United Poland party opposed the bill, and most lawmakers from Accord, the ruling camp's more moderate wing, abstained. Adam Bielan, a member of the European Parliament from Accord, told the state news agency PAP that it was too early to abandon the coalition. "One has to wait until emotions calm down and come back to the negotiation table. An early election would lead to the Left taking power." (Reporting by Marcin Goclowski, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alan Charlish, Anna Koper and Alicja Ptak; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Alexandra Hudson, William Mallard and Peter Graff) Students are set to return to universities from Monday just as COVID-19 is spreading rapidly once again. What is described as the UKs biggest annual migration involves hundreds of thousands travelling to campuses and shared accommodation, even as restrictions were reintroduced this week limiting private gatherings to just six people. There has been a 43 percent increase in infections this week alone, driven by a huge spike in cases amongst 17-29 year oldsthe same cohort that will be in and around campuses. The rate of infection among this age group is now more than double the national average and rising. While many universities considered the possibility of transitioning entirely to online learning for this first term, most have committed to at least some face-to-face contact, on the grounds that campus living is a key part of the university experience for many. But a key part of the university experience is surviving it and not passing an aggressive virus onto ones friends and loved ones. To add insult to injury, the generation that is expected to return to colleges and universities is being blamed by the government and media for spreading COVID-19. Health Secretary Matt Hancock accused young people of ignoring social distancing rules, risking a second wave of the pandemic. Dont kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on, he said, in particularly cynical and cruel remarks. Rather than establishing mass testing to ensure the campuses are COVID-safe, the government has announced that testing will be restricted to essential workers due to shortages. Six months on the testing system is highly inadequate, with those unwell unable to get tests or being told to travel hundreds of miles. That it is collapsing now is entirely due to the reopening of schools, with infections spreading among teachers and pupils. Campus reopenings will exacerbate this dire situation. Students from all over the country, who had previously been mixing in well-defined groups, are being thrown into close proximity with friends and strangers. This is particularly dangerous in COVID hotspots such as Manchester or Leicester, which will see 100,000 and 40,000 students arriving, respectively. These cities have already had some form of local lockdown, have come out of it or are about to go into one. Many other cities will inevitably follow. It is urgent that students and educators take matters into their own hands and place no trust in the government, fake opposition parties or the university institutions. Campus safety committees must be built to ensure appropriate safety procedures are put in place to protect the health of students and staff, and fight for increased testing on campuses. Blaming young people for the spread of the virus is a blatant attempt to conceal that the real policy of the Johnson government, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and all the media is to allow the virus to spreadso-called herd immunity. This eugenics-style aim, combined with systemic greed, corruption, incompetence and stupidity, has already led to tens of thousands of deaths, and will cause many more. The Conservatives and the Labour Party are united in their efforts to reopen the economy, driving workers back into unsafe workplaces, opening schools and now universities. For the last months, they have encouraged people to eat and drink out, go the gym and return to normal, even as the virus spreads. Young people constitute the majority of the workforce in the bars, pubs, retail, fitness and delivery services that have been pushed back into operation. If they are fortunate to still be working, they will be travelling from their accomodation and campuses to these workplaces The Lancet warned earlier this summer that without an effective track and trace testing system, the reopening of schools would likely lead to a second wave of COVID-19. Given the higher level of autonomy and higher degree of movement among university students, this warning applies even more strongly to the return to campuses across the country. The University and College Union (UCU) has said more than a million students moving around the country was a recipe for disaster. Yet it is not mobilising its members against this. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer lamented the incorrect A-level results given to potential university students, but there is no statement yet by him or the National Union of Students in response to the murderous drive of the Johnson to get students back to university and paying their fees. There is widespread opposition among students and teachers, who have raised concerns over the testing policies and alternate learning styles advanced by universities, with numerous petitions and protests demanding a return to online learning. This opposition is echoed internationally, with graduate students at the University of Michigan in the US taking strike action to demand the shutdown of in-person learning amid the coronavirus pandemic. On September 10, they voted by more than 700 to 400 to reject a proposal from the university administration, which did not meet their main demands, to continue their strike to ensure safe studying conditions for students. Students are struggling economically, in addition to the health dangers. Between March and July, unemployment rose by 62,000 to 1.2 milliona jobless rate of 4.1 percent. This is before the government jobs furlough ends in November. Young people are the hardest hit, with the number of unemployed 16-24 year olds rising by 76,000. As a result of economic uncertainty, the numbers enrolling for university have increased by 3.5 percent. Jo Grady, the leader of the UCU, has warned that higher numbers will make social distancing even harder. Regardless of the precise learning styles adopted by universities, students are still expected to pay the same inflated fees of 9,250 for online learning and limited access to resources. As most work in events or in the service industry, young people have seen their employment opportunities vanish over the last six months. More and more students are struggling to support themselves, with one in five unable to pay their rent. Swansea University, for example, reports an average increase of 190 percent in applications for its hardship fund while Cardiff Metropolitan said it had seen a 125 percent increase. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the student and youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), is committed to opposing these conditions. The fight to defend health and safety against the unsafe reopening of schools, workplaces and universities requires the mobilisation of the working class against the Tory government, its Labour allies, and the capitalist system as a whole. This Saturday, September 19, the SEP is hosting an online meeting for educators and students in support of those who stand against this murderous drive for a return to universities. We demand that the return of students to university is postponed until effective testing measures are put in place to reduce the risk of transmission among the student population and university staff. We demand an end to tuition fees, the full refund of fees already paid out for this years tuition, state funding of higher education for all, as a right, the cancelling of student debt, and the reintroduction of a living grant to cover accommodation and other essential expenses. We urge students, educators, parents and workers to attend this meeting, discuss these vital questions and join in establishing independent campus safety committees to prevent further senseless loss of life. To attend please register here. This years Nobel Peace Prize could go to green campaigner Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement to highlight the link between environmental damage and the threat to peace and security, experts say. The winner of the $1 million prize, arguably the worlds top accolade, will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 9 from a field of 318 candidates. The prize can be split up to three ways. The Swedish 17-year-old was nominated by three Norwegian lawmakers and two Swedish parliamentarians and if she wins, she would receive it at the same age as Pakistans Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel laureate thus far. Asle Sveen, a historian and author of several books about the prize, said Thunberg would be a strong candidate for this years award, her second nomination in as many years, with the U.S. West Coast wildfires and rising temperatures in the Arctic leaving people in no doubt about global warming. Not a single person has done more to get the world to focus on climate change than her, Sveen told Reuters. The committee has given the prize to environmentalists before, starting with Kenyas Wangari Maathai in 2004 for her campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa, and in 2007 to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the era of the coronavirus crisis, the committee could also choose to highlight the threat of pandemics to peace and security, said Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. There is a relationship between environmental damage and our increasing problem with pandemics and I wonder whether the Nobel Peace Prize Committee might want to highlight that, he told Reuters. If the committee wanted to highlight this trend, he said, there is obviously the temptation of Greta Thunberg. The Fridays for Future movement started in 2018 when Thunberg began a school strike in Sweden to push for action on climate. It has since become a global protest. Thunberg and her father Svante, who sometimes handles media queries for her, did not reply to requests for comment. Many were sceptical when Greta, as she is often referred to, became the bookmakers favourite to win last years Nobel Peace Prize, especially with regards to her age, but her second nomination could strengthen her chances. Greta is re-nominated, which was the case for Malala. I said Malala was young when she was nominated the first time and I said Greta was young the first time she was nominated, Sveen said. Yousafzai won in 2014. NOT TRUMP Other known candidates included the people of Hong Kong, NATO, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and jailed Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul. Other possible choices are Reporters Without Borders, Angela Merkel and the World Health Organization, experts said, though it is unclear whether they are nominated. Nominations are secret for 50 years but those who nominate can choose to publicise their choices. Thousands of people are eligible to nominate, including members of parliaments and governments, university professors and past laureates. It is not known whether Donald Trump is nominated for this years prize, though he is up for next years award after a Norwegian lawmaker named the US President for helping broker a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He is unlikely to win, Sveen and Smith agreed, not least for his dismantling of the international treaties to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a cause dear to Nobel committees. He is divisive and seems to not take a clear stance against the violence the right wing perpetrates in the U.S., said Smith. And that is just the first list. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 14:18 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4566200 4 National IDI,doctors,frontline-workers,medical-practitioners,medical-workers,pandemic,coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-death-toll,SARS-CoV-2,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus Free The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) has called on the government to form a health protection committee for medical personnel as more than 100 members of the association have died fighting COVID-19 in the frontline. One concrete effort we hope from the government is to form a committee to protect medical and health workers, IDI mitigation team leader Adib Khumaidi said on Tuesday as reported by Kompas TV. IDI reported that as of Sunday, 115 doctors across Indonesia had died in the last six months. The association said it was the highest number in Asia. Meanwhile, IDI said the number of doctors in Indonesia was the second-lowest in Southeast Asia, at 0.4 percent per 1,000 population, with a distribution that is concentrated in Java and big cities. With the number, IDI estimated that one doctor could only serve 2,500 patients at best, leaving nearly 300,000 Indonesians without proper medical care. Read also: IDI urges better protection for medical workers as five more doctors die of COVID-19 Adib suggested that the government involve relevant stakeholders in the health sector in forming the special committee. Health professional organizations certainly need more concrete tasks in the future in the efforts to protect medical and health workers, as well as to supervise protection efforts, he said. According to the Indonesian Nurses Association (PPNI), 78 nurses nationwide had died of COVID-19. The PPNI hosted an online gathering Tuesday to pay a tribute to the medical workers who lost their lives during the pandemic. The event was attended by several ministers who delivered their condolences and applauded the dedication of medical workers. During the event, COVID-19 task force chief Doni Monardo said the community-based Pentahelix circle a model comprising businesspeople, the government, community, academics and the media must be incorporated into the nations main strategy to curb the spread of the virus. Nurses, doctors and medical workers should be the last fortress in battling this pandemic, he said. As of Wednesday, the Health Ministry has confirmed a total of 228,993 cases across the country, including 164,101 recoveries and 9,100 deaths. (syk) IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Agendia, Inc., a world leader in precision oncology for breast cancer, today presented data at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020 showing that MammaPrint's Ultra-Low risk threshold can identify postmenopausal breast cancer patients who will have an excellent prognosis with limited or no tamoxifen treatment. The presentation, "Avoid systemic overtreatment of postmenopausal breast cancer patients with Ultralow MammaPrint result," can be found in the ESMO virtual exhibit. Adjuvant anti-estrogen therapy is a widely-used therapy for estrogen receptor positive breast cancers, but as with many cancer treatments, may cause serious side effects. In this analysis, researchers sought to validate whether the MammaPrint Ultra-Low risk category can accurately identify postmenopausal, node-negative breast cancer patients who would have an excellent survival rate after surgery with no chemotherapy and a limited duration of or even no endocrine therapy. This study confirms findings from the STO-3 Trial, previously published in 2017 in JAMA Oncology, and continues to show that the use of MammaPrint to stratify patient populations could help prevent the overtreatment of breast cancer patients. "These data are particularly exciting because they continue to demonstrate utility for MammaPrint in the clinically low risk patient population. The study suggests that we may be able to de-escalate endocrine treatment for these patients," said William Audeh, MD, MS, Chief Medical Officer at Agendia. "We are pleased to present results that illustrate not only the potential of MammaPrint to identify which patients may be spared chemotherapy, but also to indicate patients who may not require five years, and certainly not ten years, of endocrine therapy. These data could be used to spare some women with ultra-low risk breast cancer from being over-treated." Agendia is committed to providing immediate, actionable data points and furthering research that will allow for breast cancer patients and their care teams to confidently make the most personalized treatment decisions. About Agendia Agendia is a precision oncology company headquartered in Irvine, California, committed to bringing early stage breast cancer patients and their physicians the information they need to make the best decisions for the full treatment journey. The company currently offers two commercially-available genomic profiling tests, supported by the highest levels of clinical and real world evidence that provide comprehensive genomic information that can be used to identify the most effective breast cancer treatment possible for each patient. MammaPrint, the 70-gene breast cancer recurrence assay, is the only FDA-cleared risk of recurrence test backed by peer-reviewed, prospective outcome data and inclusion in both national and international treatment guidelines. BluePrint, the 80-gene molecular subtyping assay, is the only commercially-available test that evaluates the underlying biology of a tumor to determine what is driving its growth. Together, MammaPrint and BluePrint provide a comprehensive genomic profile to help physicians make more informed decisions in the pre- and post-operative treatment settings. By developing evidence-based novel genomic tests and conducting groundbreaking research while building an arsenal of data that will help treat breast cancer, Agendia aims to improve patient outcomes and support the evolving clinical needs of breast cancer patients and their physicians every step of the way, from initial diagnosis to cancer-free. Agendia's assays can be ordered on core biopsies or surgical specimens with results in as little as 5-7 days to inform pre- and post-operative treatment decisions. For more information on our assays and our ongoing trials, please visit www.agendia.com SOURCE Agendia Related Links http://www.agendia.com Memphis Garrett has come under fire again just a week after he was seen mocking fellow Big Brother All Stars contestant Ian Terry for being on the autism spectrum. This week fans pointed out that Garrett seemed to call co-star David Alexander the N-word when he was talking to Cody Calafiore during Wednesday's live feed of the CBS reality TV series. And Memphis seemed to show his guilt when he made a face after Cody told him to watch out. Memphis almost calling David the n word.... Memphis- Dude, David is a ni.. then stops himself. #BB22 pic.twitter.com/lG3NlHBWed Unfiltered Feedsters (@UnfilteredFeeds) September 17, 2020 More trouble: Memphis Garrett has been accused by fans of calling co-star David Alexander the N-word when he was talking to Cody Calafiore during Wednesday's live feed of the CBS reality TV series Not in an easy place: Memphis has also been hard on David calling him a 'boy' Fans noticed and shared clips from the live feed on Twitter. Now many viewers are demanding that Garrett be fired from the show. Fans have also accused Garrett of being hard on Alexander in the past, like by calling him a 'boy.' They also note it is unfair to treat David this way especially since he is the only remaining black person on the show after several others were evicted or threatened. There have been several petitions circulating asking for Memphis' removal. Change.org has a petition from fan Sophia that asks for Memphis be taken off the show because he has done 'racially charged things' to David and his behavior is 'disgusting.' Not a wise move: And Memphis seemed to show his guilt of using the N-word when he made a face after Cody told him to watch out Coming to David's defense: Now many viewers are demanding that Garrett be fired from the show. They also note it is unfair to treat David this way especially since he is the only remaining black person on the show after several others were evicted or threatened The 37-year-old Garrett, who is from Tennessee, has yet to comment on the alleged use of the N-word as he is sequestered on the set of Big Brother: All Stars and cannot be reached. DailyMail.com reached out to CBS for comment but did not get an immediate reply. In the past the network has claimed to not condone that comments made by the guests of the show, It was just a week ago that Big Brother: All-Stars contestants Memphis, Christmas Abbott, Dani Briones, and Nicole Franzel were seen on live feeds laughing and making fun of Terry. They criticized his self-soothing technique of rocking back and forth. Memphis compared Ian to the young boy from The Shining, mimicking the child's 'Red rum' line. 'It stresses me out': Garrett was among the contestants making fun of Ian Terry on Big Brother: All-Stars last week 'It stresses me out,' Memphis said, adding it 'scares me.' He even said he may have nightmares of Ian rocking at the end of his bed. In a conversation with Nicole, Dani said watching Ian rock back and forth stressed her out. 'I can't even look at him sometimes because his constant movement, it stresses me out. Do you feel like that?' Dani asked. Cruel: Terry was the subject of cruel jokes made by Big Brother contestants making fun of his autism self-soothing techniques So many mean girls in the group: The others could be seen laughing as the bullying continued 'Yeah I do sometimes,' Nicole replied. 'I feel mean saying that, but I'll literally have to move to a point where I can't see him out of my peripheral vision,' Dani continued. The comments were made behind Ian's back, but many Twitter users took offense to the remarks. Bullying: He even said he may have nightmares of Ian rocking at the end of his bed 'Disappointed': Big Brother viewers were offended by the comments contestants made 'Memphis, Dani, Nicole, and Christmas y'all need to GO!!!! Laughing at man for his autism is a BIG PROBLEM! As a father of a wonderful autistic boy, I do not stand for any type of bullying. This is complete garbage and needs to be addressed publicly. Do better!' tweeted @MannyLemus81. 'Not cool. I love Ian. He opened up about being on the spectrum and this is what he gets!?' tweeted @JodisBox. 'Disappointed = understatement. #BBAllStars contestants openly mock #IanTerry for his autism and self soothing behaviors due to autism. #danibriones #NicoleFranzel #christmasabbott You've been faves of mine for years Not sure I can watch anymore. I can't let my son w/autism watch,' tweeted @MonGrayRN. Big Brother alum Kaysar Ridha was among the many taking a stand on the issue. 'Inside the BB house reflects society's failures when it comes to our handling of diversity. We could use a lesson in empathy & awareness. Ppl who are neurodiverse & on the spectrum should be protected not trashed. I have zero tolerance on this issue #BB22,' he tweeted. Ian has previously opened up about his struggles living with autism inside the Big Brother house. In a recent episode, Ian called the competition 'autistic hell.' 'This is like autistic hell, and I mean, you know, you can tell right? I'm autistic... I gave up on trying to hide it,' he told Kaysar. In the diary room, Ian said he wasn't defined by his diagnosis. 'Being on the spectrum isn't my identity. I'm a smart guy, I have a great family, friends, girlfriend, and I won Big Brother.' This is not the first time Big Brother contestants have been slammed for making racist or offensive remarks. In a 2019 statement, CBS and show producers condoned some of the opinions expressed by their contestants. 'At times, the houseguests say things that we do not condone,' read the statement obtained by Us Weekly. 'We share some of the viewers' concerns about inappropriate behavior and offensive comments, and producers have addressed specific incidents with the houseguests involved. However, there is absolutely no truth that the casting of the show is racially motivated, that the houseguests' behavior is predetermined or that the outcome is controlled in any way.' Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 09:10:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- No new locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported Wednesday across the Chinese mainland, the National Health Commission said Thursday. Meanwhile, nine confirmed COVID-19 cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported -- four in Shanghai, two in Shaanxi and one each in Henan, Guangdong and Yunnan, the commission said in its daily report. One new suspected COVID-19 case was reported and no new deaths related to the disease were reported, the commission said. On Wednesday, 11 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery, the commission said. By the end of Wednesday, a total of 2,674 imported cases had been reported on the mainland. Of them, 2,533 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 141 remained hospitalized, with one in severe condition. No deaths from the imported cases had been reported. As of Wednesday, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland had reached 85,223, including the 141 patients still being treated. Altogether 80,448 people had been discharged after recovery, and 4,634 had died of the disease on the mainland, the commission said. There was one suspected COVID-19 case on the mainland, while 6,496 close contacts were still under medical observation after 728 were discharged Wednesday, according to the commission. Enditem The United States is offering to pay private companies to mine rocks and other resources on the moon. The U.S. space agency NASA published an official government listing for the mining proposal on September 10. NASA officials are asking interested companies to collect rocks, soil and other objects from the surface of the moon. The lunar materials would then be sold to the space agency. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine says the project was created for the purpose of demonstrating that mined resources can be collected. He spoke at a conference organized by the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organization. The proposals would not involve private companies sending workers to the moon. Instead, NASA wants the businesses to provide robots to be launched into space by the space agency or private companies. NASA has asked companies from around the world to present proposals to collect 50 to 500 grams of lunar material from anywhere on the moons surface. The companies will be required to provide images showing how the material is collected. In a statement published on a NASA website, Bridenstine said the agencys goal is to gain control of the collected materials before 2024. He added that officials would decide later how and when the materials could be transported from the moon. Proposals are not limited to American companies and NASA may make one or more awards, he said. Bridenstein repeated NASAs goal of landing the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024 as part of the space agencys Artemis program. NASA also has set a goal of setting up a long-term base on the moon by 2028. From there, it hopes to launch a series of space operations, including possible flights to Mars. Last May, NASA released the main ideas for what is being called the Artemis Accords. It hopes the ideas can lead to an international agreement on how people will live and work on the moon in the future. Such an agreement could give companies rights to own the moon resources they mine. For example, businesses doing work for NASA could use the moons water ice to produce rocket fuel or mine lunar minerals for other purposes. Bridenstine said the agencys plans are permitted under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which governs international space exploration. The treaty states that outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies shall be free for exploration and use by all states. The agreement bars any single nation from claiming ownership of such objects. NASAs plan to send robots to mine resources is meant to fuel a new era of exploration and discovery and help all of humanity, Bridenstine said. The space agency said it will consider the mined resources the property of the companies until they are sold to NASA. Then, the materials would become the sole property of NASA. They are paying the company to sell them a rock that the company owns. Thats the product, said Joanne Gabrynowicz, former chief editor of The Journal of Space Law. She spoke to Reuters news agency. She added that, A company has to decide for itself if its worth taking the financial and technological risk to do this to sell a rock. Im Bryan Lynn. Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and NASA. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. Quiz - NASA Seeks Companies to Mine Resources on the Moon Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story celestial body n. an object located outside of Earth's atmosphere, such as the moon, stars or other planets era n. a long time or period of history sole adj. only California and Oregon residents who suffered greatly from the dangerous wildfires are starting to get good news - some blazes are nearly contained. The Oregon State Fire Marshal's office reported that as of Wednesday afternoon, the fire just outside Medford, Oregon has been 100 percent contained. They have turned over comment to local authorities in Jackson County, the USA Today reported. On the other hand, Almeda Fire has now moved into "stabilization" phase. It burned through 3,200 acres and destroyed two small towns in the southern part of Oregon. In California, Pasadena reported Wednesday that they have prevented the Bobcat Fire from damaging the Mount Wilson Observatory. It came near the observatory but officials from Angeles National Forest said firefighters were able to protect the site. The observatory was the place where astronomers confirmed that there are galaxies outside the Milky Way and that the universe is expanding. According to a report from The Oregonian, the rest of Oregon is far out of the woods. Evacuation levels have been dropped in select areas while some remain under some level of evacuation alert. Fire crews have gained greater control over the large fires in Beachie Creek in Marion County. They used bulldozers to put down lines and reached 15 percent containment of the fire, said spokesman Scott Owen. Rescue teams continue to assess the damage and other potential hazards. Some foothill communities still remain at risk from the blaze but officials said the fire's behavior has toned down. With some areas seeing recoveries, there are still blazes left to fight. Thousands of acres are still burning from fire systems that have not seen containment. Weather Still Unsafe, Air Quality Still Hazardous Authorities still warn residents to be wary. "With no significant precipitation in sight, California remains dry and ripe for wildfires," the Cal Fire noted in a release. A warming trend is likely to happen again this weekend, bringing higher risks of fire danger. In northern California, the fires burning in the Klamath National Forest displaced residents of Happy Camp, California. From five percent containment, it moved up to 10 percent Monday. It was the fire that spread across the border into Oregon. Officials did warn that if the weather pattern did not grow worse than it currently is, it is possible to contain more fire this week. Despite the assurance, spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman declined to put a timetable on containing the fires. Air quality in the areas is still dangerous in both Oregon and California. In Medford, air quality is still at a 226 rating, which still considered a "very unhealthy" rating for air. But that's an improvement from what was regularly registered as above 300, which is "hazardous." Happy Camp's air quality clocked in a 346 rating. It is only 100 miles southwest of Medford. How Contained are the Fires? Several fire complexes in California have already reached 90 percent containment or more. The LNU Lightning Complex has been 98 percent contained after destroying at least 1,491 structures and taking five lives. The SCU Lightning Complex is also 98 percent contained, after some of its 20 fires merged and burned 222 structures. Multiple fires in CZU Lightning Complex also saw 93 percent containment, with one fatality. Check these out! Wildfire Smoke from Oregon, California Drifts to East Coast Newsom Thanks Trump for Response to Wildfires West Coast Winds Seen to Fuel the Spread of Wildfires THE INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS DEEMED BY IMC TO CONSTITUTE INSIDE INFORMATION AS STIPULATED UNDER THE MARKET ABUSE REGULATION (EU) NO. 596/2014, AS AMENDED ("MAR"). ON THE PUBLICATION OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT VIA A REGULATORY INFORMATION SERVICE ("RIS"), THIS INSIDE INFORMATION IS NOW CONSIDERED TO BE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. IMC EXPLORATION GROUP PLC ("IMC" or the "Company") Development on North Wexford Gold Project PL 1200 gives IMCimmediate capacity to accelerate its exploration programme IMC Exploration Group plc (IMC) is pleased to announce positive developments on its North Wexford gold project. An initial review of historical exploration on PL 1200 in Co. Wexford has commenced. PL 1200 is one of a group of three licences held by IMC that are underlain by the mineralised rhyolitic volcanic rocks of South East Leinster. Mineralisation in PL 1200 occurs within the Duncannon Group that is also host to the copper-gold deposits at Avoca, Co. Wicklow where IMC is investigating gold recovery from mineralised spoils derived from earlier mining of the Avoca deposits. One drill hole has been drilled in PL 1200 and has been examined by IMC. In 1986, RioFinEx drilled a gold-in-soil anomaly and proved gold mineralisation hosted by highly altered rocks at a depth of 30m. Groove sampling of the drill core at that time proved an intercepted grade of 0.5 g/t Au over 18.6m (weighted average over 3 to 3.6m intervals and included intervals of 3m grading 0.8 g/t Au and 3.6m grading 0.7 g/t Au). Half core sampling of part of the groove sampled interval assayed 15m at 0.2 g/t Au (weighted average of 1.5m intervals). Although all the pertinent data is available for examination, IMC has determined that the overall data set is not JORC compliant. IMC therefore intends to drill further in this area in order to confirm and expand on the data available to the Company in accordance with the JORC Code (2012). The geological setting, gold grades and alteration within the rhyolite host rocks in PL 1200 are comparable with other copper-gold deposits associated with the closure of the Iapetus Ocean. Specifically, there are geological similarities with the Avoca deposits to the North East and the Parys Mountain deposit on Anglesey. IMC continues to assess the historical records available for PL 1200 and has concluded from geochemical and geophysical data that other areas within PL 1200 remain to be drill tested. IMC recently acquired licenses PL 1200 and PL 1199, adjacent to PL 2551. Previously in PL 2551, IMC drilled a "bonanza grade" gold anomaly at Boley with a 1.5m interval grading 354 g/t Au and a 13.5m interval averaging 3.5 g/t Au (applying 20 g/t top cut). Further notable drill intercepts in PL 2551 include 0.72m grading 10 g/t Au; 1.3m grading 3.8 g/t Au; 1.2m grading 8.3 g/t Au and 5m grading 2.4 g/t Au. IMC believes that the two new licences will significantly enhance the Company's North Wexford gold project. Chairman Eamon O'Brien commented, 'IMC has a strategic interest in the volcanic rocks of South East Leinster and our assessment of historical information in PL 1200, which had only one shallow hole drilled in the past 34 years, proves that quality exploration targets remain to be tested. This is consistent with IMC's strategy to establish a significant gold resource. The additional licences in Ireland, along with the high gold grades already encountered on parts of the adjoining IMC licence PL 2551, give the Company the immediate capacity to accelerate its exploration programme in this area.' This release has been approved by EurGeol Professor Garth Earls PGeo, FSEG, who is an independent consulting geologist and a Competent Person as described in the JORC 2012 reporting code. Eamon P. O'Brien, Executive Chairman, Dublin, 17 th September 2020 The Directors of IMC, after due and careful enquiry, accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement. REGULATORY ANNOUNCEMENT ENDS. Contact Details : Keith, Bayley, Rogers & Co. Limited Graham Atthill-Beck: +44 20 7464 4091/ +44 7506 43 41 07 / Graham.Atthill-Beck@kbrl.co.uk ; Brinsley Holman: +44 20 7464 4098 / Brinsley.Holman@kbrl.co.uk IMC Exploration Group plc Kathryn Byrne: +353 85 233 6033 Union defence minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday spoke in the Rajya Sabha on Indias border standoff with China, saying the issue in unsolved. He reiterated that China is not accepting the traditional alignment of the border. The border issue is a complex one and needs to be resolved patiently. Both the countries believe that, said Singh. There is no commonly delineated Line of Actual Control (LAC), he added. Also read: China belts out Punjabi numbers for Indian soldiers at Ladakh. It is a 62 trick Talking about the current situation on the India-China border, Singh said that the Chinese army created obstacles in the Ladakh sector for operations of Indian soldiers who were stationed there as per the agreements between the two countries. He said that Indian troops gave befitting reply to the Chinese soldiers. No one should have doubts about our determination to protect the countrys borders, he said. Singh also listed the various agreements and common understanding which both India and China arrived at over the years. But after 2003, China did not show the will to honour these agreements, the defence minister said. He also paid tribute to the 20 soldiers killed in Galwan Valley clash with the Chinese soldiers on June 15. Singh also said that the Chinese army suffered casualties in the incident. The defence minister had made a statement in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, the second day of the monsoon session of Parliament, where he said that tension at the border was bound to negatively affect bilateral relations between India and China. The defence minister had said that India is ready to deal with any situation regarding the India-China border tension. Singh said that China does not recognise the traditional customary alignment of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the border issue between the two countries remains unresolved. The two countries have been engaged in a standoff position since April and the Chinese have refused to vacate areas in the Finger area and other friction points in the Eastern Ladakh area. Multiple rounds of talks have also failed to yield any significant result in defusing the tensions and now the Indian side has prepared itself for long term deployment in the high mountainous region. The Houston Ballet's annual Nutcracker Market will take place on a new stage this year: Online. The Nutcracker Market will go all virtual this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues. It usually takes place at NRG Center. Pant Nagar police on Wednesday arrested a 22-year-old man for allegedly attempting to kill his 48-year-old mother for failing to give him pocket money. The accused also pelted broken glass bottles at police officers when they arrived at the crime scene. According to police, the incident took place on Wednesday around 7am when the accused stabbed his mother with a scissor around six times in her stomach, waist, thigh, knee, and left foot. We received a call from the control room saying someone was screaming in one of the houses and constable Subhash Gurav, 34, was dispatched to Kailash Bhuvan, Ghatkopar (East). While Gurav was entering the premises, the accused pelted broken glass bottles at the constable, injuring his right hand, said an officer from Pant Nagar police station. Gurav managed to enter the accuseds house and caught the accused. The woman was rushed to Hiranandani Hospital for treatment. She is now stable, said Ashok Thube, inspector, Pant Nagar police station. Police discovered that the accused is mentally unstable and they are verifying the claim before taking any action against him. They have booked him under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Advertisement Heavily-armed protesters wearing Proud Boys and Black Guns Matter masks entered the Michigan Capitol Thursday to defend their Second Amendment rights, as lawmakers continue to debate whether to ban guns from the building. Around 1,000 demonstrators gathered on the state Capitol lawn in Lansing throughout the day as part of the annual Second Amendment March that celebrates their right to open carry firearms across the state. Many protesters were heavily armed with AR-15 rifles slung over their shoulders, while many sported paraphernalia in support of extreme right-wing groups and Donald Trump. Some entered the statehouse with their firearms and others brought their children along for the event while holding up banners reading: 'Gun control kills kids.' The annual rally comes as the Michigan Capitol Commission considers whether to ban firearms inside the building, in the wake of anti-lockdown protests back in April where demonstrators carrying guns stormed the statehouse while lawmakers were in session with several complaining they felt threatened. Demonstrators carrying rifles entered the statehouse in Michigan Thursday during a rally to protect the Second Amendment An armed member of the Proud Boys attends a Second Amendment rally outside the Michigan Supreme Court Building Heavily armed protesters wearing Proud Boys and Black Guns Matter masks entered the Michigan Capitol Thursday to defend their Second Amendment rights Around 1,000 demonstrators gathered on the state Capitol lawn in Lansing throughout the day as part of the annual Second Amendment March that celebrates their right to open carry firearms across the state Among those that did don masks, some opted for coverings that promoted extreme right-wing group Proud Boys or that featured the slogan 'Black Guns Matter' or 'All Lives Matter' Others were dressed head to toe in military gear and bulletproof vests and many were heavily armed with AR-15 rifles slung over their shoulders Firearms are permitted both inside the statehouse and at the rally as Michigan is an open carry state. Few people were seen wearing face masks to protect against the virus that has killed almost 200,000 Americans. Among those that did don masks, some opted for coverings that promoted extreme right-wing group Proud Boys or that featured the slogan 'Black Guns Matter' or 'All Lives Matter'. Others were dressed head to toe in military gear and bulletproof vests, while some sported MAGA hats and waved American flags with 'Trump' emblazoned across them. One couple were seen carrying rifles and had brought along their daughter for the day out - who was armed with a BB gun. Another couple in their 50s carried AR-15s as they walked through the rotunda inside the statehouse. Hundreds gathered on the lawn with many sporting paraphernalia in support of extreme right-wing groups and Trump Supporters of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution are seen inside the Senate Chambers as they take part in the annual march for the right to bear arms Maskless men carrying rifles are seen inside the statehouse as the state debates whether guns should be banned from the building Michigan Home Guard militia members march toward the State Capitol to show their support for gun rights Few people were seen wearing face masks to protect against the virus that has killed almost 200,000 Americans Others were dressed head to toe in military gear and bulletproof vests, while some sported MAGA hats and waved American flags with 'Trump' emblazoned across them The annual rally comes as the Michigan Capitol Commission considers whether to ban firearms inside the building Armed demonstrators pose for a group photo during the Second Amendment rally in Lansing Jeff and Sheila Humphrey told Detroit News they don't believe guns are killing people but the people using them. 'Everything is done by a person's intentions. So if you blame a person before they've done anything ... what's the point of having any rights?' said Jeff. 'It's not so much the guns that are killing people. It's the people who are killing people,' added Sheila. The rally draws crowds of gun-toting activists to the statehouse every year. However, this year's protest comes amid intense debate around the state's current rules allowing people to carry firearms inside the building. The gun activists are seen inside the Senate chambers during Thursday's rally in Michigan Guns are seen on display as supporters of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution gather in Michigan The debate over a ban comes in the wake of anti-lockdown protests back in April where demonstrators carrying guns stormed the statehouse while lawmakers were in session with several complaining they felt threatened Protesters dressed head to toe in military gear and carrying firearms wave Trump and MAGA flags at the rally One protester wears a 'Black Guns Matter' face covering while a rifle is slung over his shoulder outside the statehouse On Monday, the Michigan Capitol Commission rejected a proposal to ban guns and another proposal to limit the open carry of weapons inside the statehouse. The panel is, however, still considering a ban and a meeting will be held on the matter between the commission and the leaders of the Michigan House and Senate. Opponents of the ban say such a move takes away their constitutional right to carry guns. Phil Robinson, a member of Michigan Liberty Militia, told Detroit News at Thursday's rally that citizens have 'every right' to carry their weapons inside the building. 'This is my house,' Robinson said. 'I make the rules here, not them... We have every right to be in that building with our guns.' The annual Second Amendment March draws crowds of gun-toting activists to the statehouse every year Protesters pose with their guns and no face masks outside the statehouse Thursday celebrating the open carry law Young pro-gun activists carry their firearms at the event Thursday, while debate continues around the state's current rules allowing people to carry firearms inside the statehouse On Monday, the Michigan Capitol Commission rejected a proposal to ban guns and another proposal to limit the open carry of weapons inside the statehouse Books including 'Concealed carry for Christians' and 'The Covid chronicles' are on display at the event However those in favor of a ban said elected officials should feel safe in their place of work and warned that the current rules could enable 'something terrible' to happen. Joan Bauer, a former Democratic lawmaker from Lansing and commission members, said the commission has a 'moral and legal responsibility to act before something terrible happens.' The debate over whether guns should be allowed inside the statehouse has raged on for years in Michigan. It came to a head in April when armed anti-lockdown protesters entered the Capitol building and shouted at them while they were in session. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered with their weapons - and most of them without face masks - outside the statehouse on April 30 demanding an end to Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order. Whitmer had announced an extension to the stay-at-home order until at least May 28 as cases and deaths surged - a move protesters branded 'unconstitutional'. An anti-Trump banner is touted by some demonstrators near to a banner urging people to wear masks and social distance The commission is considering a ban on guns inside the statehouse and a meeting will be held on the matter between the commission and the leaders of the Michigan House and Senate Some parents brought their young children along to the day out where around a thousand gathered with their weapons A member of the extreme right-wing Proud Boys group views merchandise including badges that read: 'Kill bad guys like a champion today' Several protesters spilled inside the statehouse, with some heavily armed men venturing onto the visitor's balcony in the Senate chambers and shouting down on the lawmakers below. Some demanded to be let onto the House floor - something that is prohibited - and chanted 'let us in' when they were blocked by a line of police. Several lawmakers said they felt threatened during the protest and law enforcement issued a warning ahead of a protest in May that anyone brandishing a firearm with the intent to create fear would face arrest. Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said that despite a longstanding rule that Michiganders with permits can bring weapons into the capitol, 'anyone brandishing them in such a way as to intimidate or threaten anyone else should be properly handcuffed, properly taken in and fingerprinted.' On April 30 several protesters - some carrying guns - entered the capitol building (pictured). Firearms are permitted both inside the statehouse and at the rally as Michigan is an open carry state Protesters enter the statehouse on April 30. The debate over whether guns should be allowed inside the statehouse came to a head when armed anti-lockdown protesters entered the Capitol building and shouted at them while they were in session Views on a ban largely run along political party lines in the state. In May, the largely Republican legislature stopped short of issuing a blanket ban on bringing firearms inside the statehouse. Meanwhile Democrat Whitmer has spoken out in favor of issuing a ban. The Michigan Senate Democrats' official Twitter account this week said elected officials 'shouldn't have to fear guns in the Capitol'. 'It's been four months since armed gunmen stood above elected officials while they worked,' it tweeted this week. 'Legislators, staff, children & teachers shouldn't have to fear guns in the Capitol.' WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Although it may seem counterintuitive, researchers are turning to an animal without a brain to crack the neural code underlying behavior. Hydra vulgaris, a tiny, tentacled, freshwater organism, uses "nets" of neurons dispersed throughout its tube-like body to coordinate stretching, contracting, somersaulting, and feeding movements. This simple nervous system is one reason that Hydra is well suited for studying how electrical activity translates into motion. In a study published in eNeuro, a duo from Columbia University and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has begun to crack the neural code behind Hydra's simplest behavior, called contraction bursts (when the torso shrinks down and expands outward, over and over again). The scientists found that the concentration of dissolved particles in the surrounding water -- a property known as osmolarity -- affects the activity of a neural circuit in one of Hydra's nerve nets, which can trigger a specific set of muscle cells to contract the torso. "One by one, we want to decipher the neural and muscular activity behind each of Hydra's behaviors," says senior author and MBL Whitman Center Fellow, Rafael Yuste of Columbia University. "This paper is the beginning of our journey." Yuste and first author Wataru Yamamoto conducted their experiments in Woods Hole during the summers of 2017 and 2018, in consultation with their MBL Hydra Lab research consortium. They used whole-body calcium imaging to visualize Hydra's neurons and muscles, and tested whether tweaking various environmental conditions such as water temperature, body size, nutritional state, and osmolarity would affect contractions. They were surprised to find that just one of those parameters, osmolarity, had an impact. Boosting the concentration of sugar particles in the water triggered fewer contractions and decreased activity in the "contraction burst" (CB) neural circuit as well as in one set of muscles. Lowering particle concentration had the opposite effect, increasing cellular activity and contractions. Although additional experiments are needed to confirm their theory, the researchers propose that CB neurons respond to changes in osmolarity by altering muscle activity, which in turn influences contraction frequency. Reacting to changes in particle concentration could mean the difference between life and death for Hydra -- especially if salt is involved. As freshwater dwellers lacking advanced excretory systems, Hydra are not well-equipped to maintain the proper balance of salinity inside and outside their bodies. Water is constantly flowing in and out of their gastrovascular cavities, and too much internal salty solution causes them to balloon and literally explode. The researchers surmise that Hydra contract in response to high osmolarity to "wring" themselves out and expel excess water. In addition to affecting contractions, osmolarity also influenced how often Hydra detached and repositioned its tube foot, likely preparing to move to a new location. Yamamoto plans to continue to investigate how and why this happens. He hopes his line of inquiry will eventually help decode a more complex behavior: somersaulting, when Hydra flips tentacles-over-tube foot, like a circus acrobat. ### The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery - exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago. By Raleigh McElvery Filmmaker Pooja Bhatt has spoken up in support of actor Urmila Matondkar, who was verbally attacked by Kangana Ranaut in a Wednesday interview. Kangana had called Urmila a soft porn star who isnt known for her acting. On Twitter, Pooja wrote, @UrmilaMatondkar you are a legend. #Rangeela was a treat visually,emotionally and you raised the bar for all of us in so many ways. You left us all,co-actors and an entire generation of movie goers awestruck! Sensuality & dignity.. two qualities you combined & embodied. Respect! @UrmilaMatondkar you are a legend. #Rangeela was a treat visually,emotionally and you raised the bar for all of us in so many ways. You left us all,co-actors and an entire generation of movie goers awestruck! Sensuality & dignity.. two qualities you combined & embodied. Respect! Pooja Bhatt (@PoojaB1972) September 17, 2020 Poojas statement comes a day after Kangana, in an interview to Times Now, lashed out at Urmila, who had questioned her motives in the ongoing drugs controversy. Kangana had called Urmila a soft porn star who is not known for her acting, for sure. The comment was condemned by several Bollywood personalities. In an earlier interview to India Today, Urmila had said, The entire country is facing the menace of drugs. Does she (Kangana) know Himachal is the origin of drugs? She should start from her own state. Also read: Which girl from a cultured house would use such language: Urmila Matondkar slams Kangana Ranauts attack on Jaya Bachchan Pooja had also commented on the ongoing drugs controversy in Bollywood, which began during actor Rhea Chakrabortys investigation and subsequent arrest in connection to Sushant Singh Rajputs death. Rhea has been charged with procuring drugs for the late actor, and is currently lodged in Byculla Jail. Pooja had written on Twitter earlier, Does anyone care about people who live on the ultimate fringe of society,who use drugs to make the pain of living go away? The ones who are too battered & broken to chase dreams but chase substances amidst much poverty & squalor? Anyone interested in their rehabilitation? Kangana, who has alleged that 99% of the film industry has been exposed to drugs, was also involved in a recent war of words with Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Andrew Polovin, a former supervisor for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, pleaded not guilty to the felony charges in McHenry County court. He also faces a similar charge of causing circumstances endangering the health or life of a child causing death, and reckless conduct. Hundreds of people queue outside a Centrelink in Melbourne, on March 23, 2020 (William West/AFP via Getty Images) Virus Support Payments Must Be Wound Down: Prime Minister Prime Minister Scott Morrison insists COVID-19 welfare payments must be wound down, even as multiple reports warn that withdrawing the supports will wipe billions of dollars in spending from the economy. The prime minister says pandemic-boosted JobSeeker unemployment benefits and JobKeeper wage subsidies cannot continue indefinitely. These things cant go off into the never never and they have to be wound down, he said on Sept 17. We have to move on from them. A new report by the McKell Institute has found planned cuts to JobKeeper subsidies will wipe almost $10 billion from the economy before Christmas. The institute found 1.05 million part-time workers would have their $1500 fortnightly JobKeeper payments reduced to $750 from Sept. 29. Another 2.4 million full-time workers would have their payments cut to $1200. The institute found the Commonwealth would be spending $1.52 billion less on JobKeeper per fortnight than if the original rate remained, representing a $9.9 billion reduction in fiscal support by Christmas. The OECD released a separate report on Thursday warning against premature budgetary tightening when economies are still fragile. Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said it was too soon to wind back coronavirus supports. During the deepest recession in almost a century and an escalating jobs crisis, it makes no sense for the Morrison government to be withdrawing support from the economy without a comprehensive jobs plan to replace it, he told AAP. Scott Morrison should reconsider his cuts to JobKeeper which are coming at the worst possible time for many workers, businesses and communities who are relying on it. Australias unemployment rate is expected to rise to 7.7 percent on Sept. 17 when the latest jobless figures are released. But despite more than one million people looking for work, the Morrison government also plans to slash pandemic-boosted JobSeeker benefits by $300 at the end of next week. The payment is then due to go back to the original Newstart allowance of $40 a day in December, unless the government changes its policy. Deloitte Access Economics analysis commissioned by the Australian Council of Social Service has found cuts to JobSeeker top-up payments will cost the economy $31 billion. Deloitte also found 145,000 full-time jobs could be lost over the next two years if JobSeeker is cut, fuelled by a plunge in consumer spending. By Daniel McCulloch UPDATE: After FBI raids physical therapists N.J. home, docs reveal alleged healthcare scheme -- Agents from the FBI and the Office of Inspector General were investigating a healthcare fraud case Thursday morning at the Wayne home of a physical therapist who last year was harassed for putting up a sign in Arabic outside his home. Federal agents swarmed a Lake Drive West home in Wayne Thursday morning, going in and out of the house on Packanack Lake. Along with FBI agents, agents from the Office of Inspector General, which investigates fraud and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid and other Health and Human Services programs, were on scene. At around 6 a.m. Thursday, Rasha Altidok, a next door neighbor, heard investigators breach the house and heard a woman and children scream. At first, Altidoka was concerned and called Wayne Police to be sure it was a sanctioned search. Wayne Police confirmed it was, Altidoka said. I heard them break in, said Altidok. I heard the woman and the children screaming for their life because it was 6 in the morning." Calls to Wayne Police were not immediately returned. Spokespeople for the FBI New York office and the OIG both confirmed an investigation, but declined to comment further. The homeowner is listed as Dr. Mahmoud Elsanaa, a physical therapist based in Brooklyn, New York. Last year, Elsanaa was in the news after hanging up a sign with Arabic letters above the front entrance to his house that translated to God Bless. A letter was distributed to Packanack Lake residents calling for a meeting about the sign and deeming the house Unamerican. Agents were investigating a healthcare fraud cause at Elsanaas home, confirmed John Marzulli, spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York. An indictment and complaint had both been filed on the case, he said. One agent stood guard at the front entrance of the house while other agents disappeared into the house and on the property. The house, which sits along Packanack Lake, is in a neighborhood popular for outdoor activities. As people walked, jogged and drove past the house, they slowed to get a glimpse of what was going on at Elsanaas home. An open cardboard box and several gear bags lined the curb in front of the house. A woman who answered the door declined to speak to a reporter Thursday afternoon. The investigation was not related to anti-terrorism or immigration, said Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New Jersey. At around 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Maksut visited the home to determine what happened and spoke to a federal agent who told Maksut it was not related to either, he said. When Maksut visited, Elsanaa had left to work, while his wife and children stayed at the home, said Maksut. Elsanaas wife and children were all safe, he said. 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. Speaking at the congress, Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh asked Khanh Hoa Province to continue to effectively implement the Partys guidelines and States policies on emulation and commendation as well as enhance the communications of outstanding examples. She also noted that the provincial authorities should promote the emulation to successfully implement goals and missions in socio-economic development. It is crucial to focus on the commendation of small agencies, workers, officials and soldiers of the armed forces, added the Vice President. On the occasion, Vice President Thinh presented a portrait of President Ho Chi Minh to the Khanh Hoa Provincial Party committee, authorities and people as well as VND200 million to the Vietnam Childrens Fund. At the congress, the Presidents decision was announced on granting the third-class Labour Order to the Khanh Hoas Political School and the first-class Labour Order to Nha Trang College of Technology; while the second-class and third-class Labour Orders were presented to six other outstanding individuals in patriotic emulation movements. Meeting Space to Hire in Cape Town CBD Perfect for Meetings, hearings, workshops, discussions, training, workspace, events, presentations, demonstrations, brainstorming, strategic planning, Cape Town based space etc. SIZE Pre Covid-19 it comfortably seated 18 around 3 round tables of 6 each. For Covid-19 compliance, it can safely accommodate 10 Participants and 1 Facilitator with the required social distancing and hygiene measures in place. Room configuration is flexible. FEATURES Air-conditioning Flat screen monitor Data projector available to rent (extra) Wi-Fi Flipchart stands & rails Variable lighting Comfortable, modern, stylish seating Standard set-up: round tables; other options available, i.e. school room or board room CATERING STANDARD PACKAGE - R23 per person Arrival, Morning & Afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/biscuits TREAT PACKAGE - R40 to R50 per person Arrival, Morning & Afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/juice/biscuits/pastries/muffins/table sweets LUNCH PACKAGE - R25 per person Standard Package plus in-room lunch, including ordering take aways, cutlery, crockery & cleaning (actual take away food order cost not included) NOTE Conveniently Located on Myciti bus route - close to bus stops for a number of routes No parking available on premises Street parking available in area and Kloof Lifestyle Centre is 2 blocks away with undercover pay parking AVAILABILITY Monday to Friday from 07h00 till 17h00 (not open on weekends or evenings) COST Full Day: R 1 250.00 - 8 hours Half Day: R 895.00 - 4 hours ADDRESS 11-on-Buiten, Buitensingel Street, Cape Town (in i-fix building). Located near trendy Kloof & Long Street in the middle of Cape Town CBD Company name : Experience Worx Contact name : Monique Pillay Telephone number : +27 21 422 0335 Email address : monique@experienceworx.co.za Web address : www.meetingspace.co.za This Aug. 30, 2020, file photo provided by the Gyeonggi Northern Fire Department shows the scene of a crash between a sport utility vehicle and a U.S. military vehicle in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province. Yonhap The driver of a South Korean sport utility vehicle involved in a deadly crash into a U.S. armored vehicle in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, last month has been found to be intoxicated and speeding at the time of the accident, police said Thursday. On Aug. 30, the SUV rear-ended the U.S. armored vehicle at around 9:30 p.m. on a Hantan River bridge in Pocheon, about 50 kilometers northeast of Seoul, killing all four SUV occupants in their 50s and slightly injuring an American soldier in his 20s. The victims were two Korean couples residing in Pocheon, who were returning home after attending a gathering. The U.S. military vehicle was returning to its base after a firing drill. The Pocheon Police Station said it has been notified by the National Forensic Service that a blood alcohol level high enough to warrant license revocation was detected from the SUV driver's body in an autopsy. The police also said the SUV was driving at a speed of over 100 km per hour prior to the crash on the bridge where the speed limit is 60 kph. The speed was estimated based on the data recording device built into the airbag module and the dashboard cam image, they explained. The police said another male passenger on the SUV, who handed over the steering wheel to the driver minutes before the crash, also exhibited a blood alcohol concentration punishable with license revocation in the autopsy. Yonhap David Jones has announced plans to scale back its empire after suffering $33million in losses amid COVID-19. Ross Bagattini, CEO of Woolworths holdings, the South African parent company of David Jones and Country Road, on Thursday revealed the department store chain would close 20 per cent of its stores within the next two years. Mr Bagattini said Australia had too many stores and original plans to downsize by 2025 would be fast tracked to be completed within two years, with as many as ten set to shut. 'There's no doubt we have too many stores for what I think our business purpose is in Australia,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald. David Jones is set to shrink its Australian network by 20 per cent as the company suffers a $33million loss in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 'It is overstored... and I would expect to see a level of reduction coming through.' The retail boss said he has been in discussions with landlords to accelerate the process due to the financial impacts of the pandemic, which has seen sales plunge 6.9 per cent compared to last year. Total revenue for 2020 has suffered 6.4 per cent decline to $2.06billion. Rival department store Myers fared worse, with a 15.8 per cent drop in sales. However, while the coronavirus outbreak has hampered in-store sales, David Jones' online sales have doubled, accounting for 14.8 per cent of all profits. Mr Bagattini, who left his president role at Levi in January to join Woolworth Holdings, said the retail landscape remains challenging. He expressed plans to rejuvenate the department store chain to remind shoppers of the retail experience it offers. Mr Bagattini said he plans to draw shoppers back to David Jones by emphasising the retail experience the chain offers 'Our responsibility is to ensure that it is relevant in today's context, and that's through the whole brand environment, the store look and feel, the experiences, the services that all once made department stores a great place to shop,' he said. Despite the impending closures, David Jones has managed to claw its way back after having recorded a 35 per cent sales slump over March and April. The retail giant is not the only business that strategically shrunk its network amid the crunch of the pandemic in order to stay afloat. In May, Target announced 167 of its stores would close in a massive restructure, as Australian shops continue to struggle in the pandemic. The struggling Australian retailer will close 75 of its stores, and convert 92 others into Kmarts. Armed police are on the hunt for man wielding a machete as a nearby school has been locked down to keep children safe. Students at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy were kept inside while Sussex Police officers, assisted by a helicopter, searched the area. The force received a report of a man with a weapon in woodland in Lewes Road just before 3pm on Thursday. No one was threatened or harmed, police said. Armed police are on the hunt for man wielding a machete as a nearby school has been locked down to keep children safe Students at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy were kept inside while officers, assisted by a helicopter, searched the area, Sussex Police said The force received a report of a man with a weapon in woodland in Lewes Road just before 3pm on Thursday Children were escorted out of the school by officers and told to avoid the woodlands where the suspected was reported to be on their way home. Police are continuing to search the area and carry out inquiries. A 'vague' message had been sent to parents earlier this afternoon, sparking scenes of panic, according to the Argus. One told the paper: 'The school sent a vague text which panicked all parents who then all rushed down including myself.' The message read: 'All Year 9 Students have been asked to remain in the school building until at least 3.50 due to an incident in the local community. Updates to follow.' Chief Superintendent of Sussex Police and Divisional Commander for Brighton and Hove, Nick May said: 'This incident is now concluded safely. 'Thank you to the pupils, staff and parents at the school for their understanding. Our first priority is always public safety.' A man has been charged after allegedly sending death threats to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young. Police raided the 43-year-old's home in Narang on the Gold Coast on Wednesday night and arrested him. He was charged with one count of using a carriage service to make threats to kill and will appear before court on 7 October. 'Detectives executed a search warrant at a Nerang property last night as a result of investigations into alleged threats made against the Queensland Premier and the Chief Health Officer,' a police spokesman said. The Queensland premier and chief health officer have copped heavy criticism for their harsh border closures which have prevented families from visiting dying loved ones. A man has been charged after allegedly sending death threats to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) and Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young Dr Young (pictured) has been given a permanent police escort after suffering 'extreme trolling' online Last week, Ms Palaszczuk became emotional on television when she said the criticism has taken a toll on her. The Queensland premier choked back tears as she refuted allegations she was 'cold-hearted and nasty' for keeping grieving families apart while letting Hollywood stars and AFL players into the state. With her voice cracking, the premier said she understands people's pain because she has lost loved ones during the coronavirus crisis. 'I'm human just like everyone else. These issues hurt me deeply. They hurt me deeply because during this pandemic I have lost loved ones as well,' she said. 'I know exactly what people are going through, OK?' It came after nurse Sarah Caisip, who lives in coronavirus-free Canberra, was denied permission to attend her father's funeral. The 26-year-old applied for an exemption last month to visit her sick father Bernard Prendergast in Brisbane - but it took 20 days to get approved and he died of liver cancer two days before her flight. The young woman, who is in hotel quarantine in Brisbane, was banned from attending her father's funeral because officials believed she was a Covid-19 risk even though the ACT has had no cases for 60 days. Dr Young has been given a permanent police escort after suffering 'extreme trolling' online. Queensland's borders are closed to the ACT, New South Wales and Victoria. DUBAI : An Indian expat nurse has died of COVID-19 in Oman, making it the first death among health workers in the country's Ministry of Health, according to media reports. Blessy Thomas, 37, was admitted at the intensive care unit of the Royal Hospital after she contracted COVID-19 and she passed away on Tuesday, the Gulf News reported. Oman's Ministry of Health issued a condolence note on Tuesday for the first coronavirus-related death among its health workers in Oman. With great sadness and sorrow, the Ministry of Health of the Sultanate of Oman mourns the passing away of nurse Blessy Thomas at the Royal Hospital ICU due to COVID-19. This is the first death among health workers in MoH," the ministry said. It said that Thomas was a true hero and a role model of hard and sincere work. "The Minister of Health, as well as the MoH personnel and all health workers in Oman express their heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased," the note read. Thomas, who was from Adoor in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala, is survived by her husband and two children. There was a previous case of a death of a health worker due to COVID-19 who worked for a private clinic, the report said. Her husband Sam George said she was passionate about caring for the ailing, those who suffer from pain and had a special affection for children. She knew she was going to attend to the Coronavirus patients but was not hesitant to discharge her duties as a nurse," the Oman Observer quoted George as saying. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. How can you not love Giada de Laurentiis? The boisterous and personable celebrity chef who is the proverbial goddess of Italian food is impossible to hate. Shes a big personality with a lot of heart that seems to shine through the incredible food she makes. Every time you watch Giada at Home on the Food Network, it feels like youre right there in the kitchen with de Laurentiis except, of course, the part where you dont get to taste the food, which is honestly one of this worlds great tragedies because it always looks AMAZING. Italian-born De Laurentiis loves to share her passion for the cuisine of her heritage Chef Giada De Laurentiis | Ethan Miller/Getty Images She was born in Rome, then de Laurentiis moved with her family to the United States when she was 7 years old. De Laurentiis might not have started her career in Italy, but you wouldnt be able to tell it from her cooking. Her heritage gave her a deep passion for the cuisine that has always informed her culinary approach. While shes gone on the record as saying her favorite childhood meal was spaghetti with chocolate, her tastes are now a bit more refined, spanning a huge array of Italian regional approaches and flavor profiles. She actually has so many cookbooks that you could fill an entire shelf with just her books. She loves traveling to Italy and elsewhere for inspiration, and her approachable cooking style has made her a fixture on food television for nearly two decades now. Giada De Laurentiis got her first show way back in 2003 RELATED: Does Giada De Laurentiis Have a Husband? The Celebrity Chef Has a Fascinating Personal Life When de Laurentiis first got her show Everyday Italian back in 2003, it was a success almost right away. Her megawatt smile, charming demeanor, and approachable recipes made fans want to know more and more about her and her cuisine. On the heels of that success, she began releasing cookbooks, got a new show centered around food and travel called Giadas Weekend Getaways, and eventually became a staple of the Food Network lineup, appearing on other shows like Next Food Network Star and Giada at Home, which premiered in 2010. She even had a stint as a correspondent for the Today show during the Olympics in 2006. Interestingly, Giada was by no means the first in her family to enter show business. Her maternal grandfather Dino de Laurentiis had once been nominated for an Academy Award, her mother Veronica de Laurentiis was an actress and Alex de Benedetti, her father, was a producer and an actor, as well. Its no surprise that Giada took so naturally to being in the spotlight, then. Surprisingly, Giada De Laurentiis didnt originally study cooking Though its unexpected given what a true natural she is in the kitchen, de Laurentiis didnt actually start out wanting to be a chef. In fact, she wanted to be an anthropologist. According to Food Network, she got her degree in anthropology from the University of Los Angeles and only began pursuing her passion for Italian cooking later in life. Once she knew for sure that this was the dream she wanted to chase, de Laurentiis enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. There, she developed specialized skills in both pastry and cuisine, which is why she has such a diverse skill set to draw from on her shows. She spent a few years after that working at famous restaurants like Wolfgang Pucks Spago in order to develop her expertise. After a picture of her famous smile was discovered by a producer in Food & Wine Magazine, de Laurentiis got a call asking if she had ever considered hosting a cooking show. They got to work on conceiving Everyday Italian and the rest, as they say, is historyso its a good thing she made that career switch! Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 10:19:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xinjiang has been promoting innovation as a new engine for creating jobs, and encouraging people who are eager and eligible to start their own businesses, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday. The region has advanced reform to streamline administration, delegate power, improve regulation and upgrade services, says the white paper titled "Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang." The local government eases market access, improves policies in support of business startups, and sees to it that guaranteed loans, interest subsidies, allowances and tax breaks for startups are implemented. Xinjiang currently has five business incubation demonstration bases at national level and 27 at provincial and equivalent level, which have fostered 1,412 micro and small businesses and created more than 10,000 jobs. Enditem Donald Trumps rhetoric on coronavirus has been compared to gaslight[ing] by the Democratic former vice president Al Gore. In an interview with CNNs Chris Cuomo on Wednesday, the 72-year-old denounced both the Trump administration's response to coronavirus and the climate crisis, saying Mr Trump was gaslight[ing] both. Its just dead wrong, and almost 200,000 Americans are dead from this coronavirus and most of them died unnecessarily, said the Democrat, who argued that the impacts of the climate crisis are so much worse. "He's trying to gaslight the virus, gaslight the climate system, and they are impervious to his words, he continued. Really, our only hope is to get the best information available, and act to protect ourselves and our civilization in response," He added: "We need leadership. We have solutions available to us if we can get the politics and the misguided propagandistic messaging from the president out of it." Mr Cuomo had asked the Democrat whether or not the president could win November's election with silly claims about the climate getting cooler and coronavirus disappear[ing], which were made in the past week. [It] sounds silly, but its been effective with his base, argued the CNN host. It comes as the United States coronavirus death toll approaches 200,000, with Mr Trump on Wednesday disputing a coronavirus vaccine timeline suggested by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "I think he made a mistake when he said that," the president told reporters. "It's just incorrect information." Meanwhile on Monday, Mr Trump denied climate change had contributed to devastating wildfires on the West Coast, instead blaming Democratic governors and explosive trees, as he denied the existence of a climate crisis. Mr Gore has endorsed Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, in November's election. Jewish pilgrims, who plan to enter Ukraine from the territory of Belarus, gather in front of Ukrainian service members near Novi Yarylovychi crossing point in Chernihiv Region, Ukraine, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Breslev live/Handout via Reuters) Ukraine Urges Jewish Pilgrims Stuck at Border to Turn Back KYIV, UkraineUkraine on Thursday strongly warned thousands of Hasidic Jewish pilgrims who have been stuck on its border for days that it wont allow them into the country due to coronavirus restrictions. Ukrainian authorities said about 2,000 people have gathered at the border with Belarus, in hope of traveling to the Ukrainian city of Uman to visit the grave of an important Hasidic rabbi who died in 1810, Nachman of Breslov. Jewish pilgrims gather on the Belarus-Ukraine border, in Belarus, on Sept. 15, 2020. (TUT.by via AP) Thousands of the ultra-Orthodox Jews visit the city each September for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Its celebrated Sept. 18-20 this year, and some pilgrims had managed to get to Uman before Ukraine closed its borders in late August amid a surge in COVID-19 infections. Thousands of others traveled via Belarus, which hasnt barred foreign visitors from entering. On Thursday, Ukraines Interior Ministry official Mykhailo Apostol reaffirmed that the pilgrims will not be allowed to cross the border. Ukraine has shut its borders to foreigners, and no exclusions will be made for the Hasidic pilgrims, Apostol told reporters. Its getting colder and we suggest that they come back to Belarus, buy tickets and go home. Jewish pilgrims, who plan to enter Ukraine from the territory of Belarus, gather near a border crossing point in Gomel Region, Belarus, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Breslev live/Handout via Reuters) Israeli Higher Education Minister Zeev Elkin wrote on Twitter Thursday that efforts to help the pilgrims enter Ukraine have failed, and called on them to return to Israel. At one point, dozens of Hasidic pilgrims dressed in Ukrainian traditional cossack costumes sang Ukraines national anthem and shouted Glory to Ukraine! in an apparent attempt to soften authorities hearts. As thousands of pilgrims spent days in the no-mans land between Belarus and Ukraine, some sleeping in makeshift tents and others on the ground, Ukraine and Belarus bickered over the standoff. On Wednesday, Ukraines presidential office accused Belarusian authorities of issuing misleading signals to the pilgrims that they would eventually be allowed to cross the border. Belarusian officials shot back accusing Ukraine of inhumane treatment of the pilgrims, and offered to provide buses to drive the pilgrims to Uman and back to Belarus. Ukraines presidential office alleged Wednesday that Belarusian authorities actions could be rooted in the latest tensions between the two neighbors following Belarus controversial presidential election. Ukraine has joined the United States and the European Union in criticizing the Aug. 9 vote, in which President Alexander Lukashenko extended his 26-year authoritarian rule, as neither free nor fair and urged Belarusian authorities to end their crackdown on protesters. (Attaches additional alerts) TOKYO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged on Wednesday that he will do his best to protect employment while also countering the coronavirus. In his first news conference as prime minister, Suga said that the biggest challenge currently facing Japan was the spread of the novel coronavirus, but added that there was a need to balance the fight with the virus with economic revival. He also pledged that he would beef up coronavirus testing capacity and secure a vaccine for all residents when it was ready. Suga said that there could not be a political vacuum at a time of national crisis, acknowledging his predecessor Shinzo Abe and saying that he would continue Abe's policies. Abe announced that he would step down from his post as prime minister in late August. Suga, who has been a close aide to Abe and served as his chief cabinet secretary, was officially picked to succeed him on Wednesday. (Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by Alex Richardson) It's the sensitive email urging confidentiality about plans to monitor staff emails that was accidentally sent to hundreds of staff. Leaky ship. Credit:Illustration: John Shakespeare Where else but at the glorious madness that is AMP, where executives at the troubled wealth giant discussed presenting the new system as an IT upgrade, and warned about keeping discussions confidential due to the fear of leaks to the media. "We've changed the language to position it as a straightforward change from IT are you happy for this to come from you?" a communications manager at AMP wrote to colleagues. "We are keen to keep it short given the potential for a leak," another email reads, before referencing a "previous email that ended up in the media". Oh dear. Police are on the lookout for three men who allegedly stabbed a 19-year-old man to death due to old rivalry in Dadumajra Colony (DMC) on Wednesday night. The three accused have been identified as Gaurav, alias Goru, Harsh, alias Nati, and Raman Chadda, all residents of DMC. Gaurav is a relative of a former BJP mayor. Police said the deceased, Karan, and the accused belonged to rival groups that often picked fights to prove their supremacy. Karan, the victim. The accused were identified by the friends of the deceased, who used to do menial jobs on daily wages. Police said Karan was arrested in an assault case in 2018, and the two groups had been at loggerheads since then. The complainant, Sanju Kumar, 20, a resident of DMC, told the police he and his friend, Ravi, were sitting below a tree when Karan approached them on his scooter and asked them to come along for a stroll. Their two other friends, Vishal and Ashu, also joined them and the five left on Vishals motorcycle and Karans scooter to the park near the community centre in DMC. At the park, Karan saw someone approaching him, so he frantically jumped over the wall and went to other side. Soon after, we all heard his cries for help, Sanju said. When they rushed to his aid, they saw Gaurav, Harsh and Raman assaulting Karan. Gaurav was holding a sharp-edged weapon, while the other two restrained Karan by his arms. On spotting us, the trio fled and Karan collapsed on the ground, Sanju added. The friends rushed an injured Karan on their two-wheelers to Government Multi-Specialty Hospital, Sector 16, where he was declared brought dead. Karan sustained a deep slash on the neck, which caused his death, the police said. Sanju said the accused had slapped Karan around two weeks ago and also threatened to kill him. A case under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code was registered at the Maloya police station. Police have secured CCTV footage that has captured the accused running. Efforts are on to nab them. Seen above is LG Chem's headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul, Sept. 17. LG Chem said it will separate its battery business into a new company. Yonhap By Nam Hyun-woo LG Chem said Thursday it will spin off its rechargeable battery business Dec. 1, under the new name LG Energy Solution. The move comes after LG Chem's battery business reached its break-even point in the second quarter, as well as becoming the world No. 1 electric vehicle (EV) battery supplier for the January to July period. Following the spinoff, the new company is expected to go public to raise funds that will finance future investments including plant expansion and joint ventures. According to LG Chem, after getting approval at a shareholders meeting Oct. 30, LG Energy Solution will begin operations Dec. 1, although LG Chem will initially still own 100 percent of the spinoff. LG Energy Solution seeks to achieve 30 trillion won ($25.5 billion) or more in sales by 2024, up from 13 trillion won estimated for this year. The company will have 100 billion won as paid-in capital, but has not yet applied for an initial public offering (IPO), according to a regulatory filing by LG Chem. "The company believes this is the time to separate the business as the global battery industry is rapidly taking off, and structural benefits are being materialized in the EV battery business," LG Chem said in a statement. "After separating the businesses, each company will be able to fully focus on its expertise and improve efficiency, resulting in enhanced shareholder value." LG Chem is strengthening its presence in the global EV battery market. According to market tracker SNE Research, its market share stood at 25.1 percent from January to July, outpacing CATL with 12.7 percent and Panasonic with 10.1 percent. Based on solid demand, LG Chem's order backlog amounted to 150 trillion won at the end of last year, up from 42 trillion won in 2017. Though the company was non-committal on whether LG Energy Solution would pursue an IPO, the market expects the new company will debut on the bourse due to the need to finance its expansion. LG Chem said it decided to spin off the firm because it saw "the necessity to secure a large amount of funding for investments at a time when it spends approximately 3 trillion won on facilities each year." So far, the company has been financing its battery business with profits coming from its petrochemical operations. However, as batteries require greater investment, concerns have been raised that these profits were not enough to support the money-consuming business. LG Chem investors, however, have not welcomed the decision, as they fear the company may lose its growth driver. Some posted an online petition on the Cheong Wa Dae, saying, "LG Chem without its battery business is nothing more than a plastic bottle maker." LG Chem shares slumped by 6.11 percent to end at 42,000 won. With LG Chem officially announcing the battery division's spinoff, observers anticipate that LG Group and Hyundai Motor Group will team up to set up an EV battery joint venture in Indonesia. Sources said that Hyundai and LG have signed deals with the local authorities there on building manufacturing plants. "The Indonesian authorities have already offered support regarding taxes, electricity supply and the plant site to LG and Hyundai Motor," said a senior industry official. LG Group and Hyundai Motor Group have already partnered on EV batteries in Korea. In 2010, Hyundai Mobis and LG Chem set up a 51-49 joint venture, HL Green Power, which builds battery packs from LG Chem's components to supply to Hyundai Mobis. A man sits on a downed tree after Hurricane Sally made landfall, on Dauphin Island, Alabama, U.S., September 16, 2020. REUTERS/Kathleen Flynn (Photo : Reuters Connect ) An U.S. flag flies from a boat damaged by Hurricane Sally in Pensacola, Florida, U.S., September 16, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman (Photo : Reuters Connect ) At 5:45 a.m. ET, Hurricane Sally, with winds of 105 mph and classified as category two, crossed over land near the Alabama-Florida state line. The tropical storm Sally has now winds of 60 mph at 4 p.m. CT. Sally swept through Gulf Shore, Alabama, on Wednesday morning. READ: Hurricane Sally: Upgraded to Category 2, Storm Surge, Winds, Flood Expected Hurricane Sally inches slowly Water rescue from flooding neighborhood, no electricity in at least 500,000 homes in Florida and Alabama, felled trees, and massive flooding has so far been reported as the hurricane inched off at a slow pace. National Hurricane Center described Sally's landfall as "Historic and catastrophic flooding, including widespread moderate to major river flooding, is unfolding." Meanwhile, rescuers evacuated 377 people in Escambia County, Florida, from flooded neighborhoods as thousands more are expected to be evacuated soon, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan earlier warned. In Gulf Shores, Alabama, resident Doris Stiers told CNN that there are lots of destruction, roofs were gone, and they had no power or internet service. As of Wednesday afternoon, the storm is slowly inching at seven mph, causing devastating floods in Alabama and Florida. Twenty four (24) inches of rain were already reported in some areas, and weather experts predict that it could go to 35 inches by the end of the storm. The center of the storm may move to Georgia and South Carolina on Thursday, as Sally is expected to inch its way to move towards northeastward through Alabama. READ: NASA Satellite Shows Carbon Monoxide Released from California Wildfires 10 Times Normal Concentrations Damages of Hurricane Sally Santa Rosa County Emergency Management posted on its Twitter that a portion of the Three Mile Bridge collapsed. Brad Baker, the Santa Rosa County's public safety director, said that a barge had slammed a portion of the structure, thus causing the damage. Photo from the Three Mile Bridge showing the missing section. pic.twitter.com/Ym3VRBhml5 September 16, 2020 Authorities warn those using the bridge that it may take a while for the bridge to be used again. Meanwhile, Baker said they are doing everything to catch the barge before it poses damage to other structures. In Pensacola, Florida, streets turned into rivers. The National Weather Service said that eight rivers in southwest Alabama and the western area of Florida Panhandle are expected to flood heavily. In Alabama and Florida alone, more than 500,000 homes are experiencing power interruptions due to the impacts of Sally, the utility tracker PowerOutage.us reported. Flashflood emergency in coastal Alabama, Florida Panhandle, Gulf Shores, and Pensacola A flash flood emergency was declared by the weather services in most affected areas of Sally. It warns residents floods and storm surges are a "severe threat to human life." Sixteen years ago, Category 3 Hurricane Ivan also struck the same areas where Hurricane Sally have been. US WILDFIRES: Death Toll Reaches 15, West Coast Air Quality Ranks Worst in the World Check out for more news and information on Natural Disasters on Nature World News. English French MONTREAL, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HPQ Silicon Resources Inc. (HPQ or Company) TSX-V: HPQ ; FWB: UGE; Other OTC : URAGF ; is pleased to announce the extension, until December 31, 2020, of the Development Agreement signed with Apollon solar SAS ("Apollon") in 2017. This fifth renewal will be focused on extremely promising venues for both the renewable energy sector and the decarbonization of the economy, mainly: Energy Storage development of a new generation of Lithium-ion batteries made using Porous Silicon manufactured by the transformation of HPQ PUREVAPTM Quartz Reduction Reactor QRR Silicon (Si) with Apollon patented process; Clean Renewable Hydrogen Production using Apollon Solar Gennao H2TM 200W, a fuel cell - based system that can produce hydrogen by hydrolysis simply by combining water with an environmentally friendly1 chemical powder. Replacing the chemical powder presently used with nano silicon powders, such as those about to be produced by the HPQ NANO PUREVAPTM Nano Silicon Reactor (NSiR), could significantly increase the hydrogen generation capacity of the system. Since 2015, HPQ has been working on revolutionizing silicon manufacturing and its applications with the development of our PUREVAPTM technologies, scalable and extremely versatile processes that will allow the production of silicon materials perfectly suited to assist in the goals of decarbonization of the economy and the generation of green renewable energies said Bernard Tourillon, President & CEO of HPQ Silicon Resources Inc. "Since 2017, our collaboration with Apollon has enabled us to benefit from their world-renowned expertise with high value-added Silicon applications. The addition of manufacturing hydrogen by hydrolysis to our collaboration opens up a new and unique business opportunity that could represent a second multibillion-dollar addressable market for the PUREVAPTM Nano Silicon (Si) Reactor (NSiR) nanopowders. APOLLON PROCESS: MAKING POROUS SILICON MANUFACTURING ECONOMICALLY VIABLE Porous silicon is a Silicon (Si) structure in which Nanopores have been formed by electrochemical etching. Addressable markets for porous silicon are substantial, but existing electrochemical etching processes require very pure Silicon (Si) feed stock (9N to 11N), making porous Silicon cost prohibitive. To make affordable porous Silicon, Apollon developed and obtained a worldwide patent for an electrochemical etching process that can use (2N to 4N) Silicon (Si) to make porous Silicon wafers. AIMING TO SEND POROUS SILICON NANOPOWDER SAMPLES TO END USERS BY DECEMBER 2020 Mindful of HPQ's competitive advantage, the ability of PUREVAPTM QRR to produce 2N to 4N Silicon (Si) at the lowest cost in the industry, HPQ and Apollon are busy manufacturing samples of porous Si nanopowders of different sizes (2 nm to 1 m) with porous structure sizes of either Microporous (<5nm), Mesoporous (5nm 50nm) and Macroporous (>50nm). The aim being to send samples, to end users specifications, by December 2020. The extension of the agreement continues HPQs North American exclusivity over the use of Apollon's patented process to manufacture Porous Silicon until at least December 31, 2020. ________________ 1 Non-toxic and recyclable HYDROLYSIS HYDROGEN PRODUCTION: APOLLON SOLAR'S GENNAO H2TM SYSTEM Apollon Solar is also active in hydrogen based clean renewable energy. Over the years, they have developed an expertise in hydrogen production by hydrolysis, getting porous silicon nano powders to react with water "H 2 O" and therewith releasing significant quantities of hydrogen "H 2 ". Drawing on this unique expertise, Apollon was approached by the French government to develop a compact and portable hydrogen-based electricity generation system that must be reliable and efficient enough to charge military personnel batteries on missions. This work led to the creation of the Gennao H2TM a self-contained system that integrates a fuel cell. The system operation is simple; a chemical powder is introduced, and as the powder reacts with water, hydrogen is generated by hydrolysis and converted into electricity by the integrated fuel cell, thus allowing the system to charge several batteries at once. The operational capabilities of the system having reached the validation phase of the French military program, Apollon Solar is now ready to start the commercialization of a civilian version of its GennaoTM H2 system. COLLABORATION WITH HPQ SILICON TO CREATE MORE EFFICIENT AND ECONOMICAL HYDROGEN With Apollon Solar's Hydrogen business having entered the commercial phase, HPQ took advantage of the 5th renewal to include it in the scope of the agreement. Even though using porous silicon nanopowders would double the amount of hydrogen released by the system, the high costs of making porous silicon nanopowders required Apollon to use a less efficient, but more economical and environmentally friendly chemical powder to launch its GennaoTM H2 system. With a goal of increasing the efficiency of the system, HPQ and Apollon will explore the technical and commercial potential of creating a new generation of more efficient, economical and environmentally friendly powders for the GennaoTM system using either: Silicon nanopowders made by HPQ's PUREVAPTM Nano Silicon Reactor to increase the H 2 generation potential of the GennaoTM H2 system by 40% (based on the mass capacity production of H 2 of 14% of Silicon Nanopowders); a. By December 2020, HPQ-NANO plans to send Apollon the first samples of silicon nanopowders manufactured by PUREVAPTM NSiR for H 2 generation testing; Porous silicon nanopowders manufactured with the transformation of Silicon produced by HPQ's PUREVAPTM QRR process in Apollon's patented process, to increase the H 2 generation potential of the GennaoTM H2 system by 100% (based on the mass capacity production of H 2 of 20% of Silicon Nanopowders); Also included in the agreement is the right for HPQ to commercialize, exclusively in Canada, and non-exclusive in the U.S.A., the GennaoTM H2 system, as well as, also distribute and sell the powders required for the hydrolysis production of Hydrogen ("H2"). Apollon will support HPQ North American marketing of the GennaoTM H2 system and the powder bags. By November 2020, Apollon will make available to HPQ a GennaoTM H2 system and the bags of powder needed for demonstration to potential buyers. During the term of this fifth renewal, Apollon and HPQ will work to finalize a long-term commercial agreement that will grant HPQ (or one of its subsidiaries) a Canadian exclusivity for the sale of GennaoTM H2 system and associated powders bags, and the exclusivity for all customers located in the United States to whom HPQ is marketing GennaoTM H2 system. Finally, the parties have agreed that during the renewal period, or until the date of the signing of a long-term commercial agreement, that HPQ will have Canadian exclusivity on the distribution, sale, marketing and representation of GennaoTM H2 system and associated powders, and that it will be able to distribute, sell, market and represent GennaoTM H2 system and associated powders with customers in the United States. About Silicon Silicon (Si), also known as silicon metal, is one of todays strategic materials needed to fulfil the Renewable Energy Revolution (RER) and the decarbonization of the economy presently under way. Silicon does not exist in its pure state; it must be extracted from quartz (SiO 2 ), in what has historically been a capital and energy intensive process. About HPQ Silicon HPQ Silicon Resources Inc. ( TSX-V: HPQ) is a Canadian producer of Innovative Silicon Solutions, based in Montreal, building a portfolio of unique high value specialty silicon products needed for the coming RER. Working with PyroGenesis Canada Inc. (TSX-V: PYR) , a high-tech company that designs, develops, manufactures and commercializes plasma - based processes, HPQ is developing: The PUREVAP TM Quartz Reduction Reactors (QRR) , an innovative process (patent pending), which will permit the one step transformation of quartz (SiO 2 ) into high purity silicon (Si) at reduced costs, energy input, and carbon footprint that will propagate its considerable renewable energy potential ; -- HPQ believes it will become the lowest cost (Capex and Opex) producer of silicon (Si) and high purity silicon metal (3N 4N Si); , an innovative process (patent pending), which will permit the one step transformation of quartz (SiO ) into high purity silicon (Si) at reduced costs, energy input, and carbon footprint that will propagate its considerable renewable energy potential -- HPQ believes it will become the lowest cost (Capex and Opex) producer of silicon (Si) and high purity silicon metal (3N 4N Si); The PUREVAPTM Nano Silicon Reactor (NSiR), a new proprietary process that can use different purities of silicon (Si) as feedstock, to make spherical silicon nanopowders and nanowires; -- HPQ believes it can also become the lowest cost manufacturer of spherical Si nanopowders and silicon-based composites needed by manufacturers of next-generation lithium-ion batteries; -- During the coming months, spherical Si nanopowders and nanowires silicon-based composite samples requested by industry participants and research institutions will be produced using PUREVAPTM SiNR. HPQ is also working with industry leader Apollon Solar of France to: Use their patented process and develop a capability to produce commercially porous silicon (Si) wafers and porous silicon (Si) powders; -- The collaboration will allow HPQ to become the lowest cost producer of porous silicon wafers for all-solid -state batteries and porous silicon powders for Li-ion batteries; -- Develop the hydrogen generation potential of Silicon nanopowders for usage with the GennaoTM system; -- Commercialize, exclusively in Canada, and non-exclusive in the U.S.A., the GennaoTM H2 system and the chemical powders required for the hydrolysis production of Hydrogen ("H2"). This News Release is available on the company's CEO Verified Discussion Forum , a moderated social media platform that enables civilized discussion and Q&A between Management and Shareholders. Disclaimers: The Corporations interest in developing the PUREVAP QRR and any projected capital or operating cost savings associated with its development should not be construed as being related to the establishing the economic viability or technical feasibility of any of the Companys Quartz Projects. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "may", "plan", "will", "estimate", "continue", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "in the process" and other similar expressions which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements reflect the Company's current expectation and assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, our expectations regarding the acceptance of our products by the market, our strategy to develop new products and enhance the capabilities of existing products, our strategy with respect to research and development, the impact of competitive products and pricing, new product development, and uncertainties related to the regulatory approval process. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and other risks detailed from time-to-time in the Company's on-going filings with the securitys regulatory authorities, which filings can be found at www.sedar.com. Actual results, events, and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements either as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information contact Dear Amy: My husband and I have been together for 20 years (married for 12). He is from the UK (Wales). When we visit his relatives and friends in Wales, everyone is kind enough to speak English while I am in the room (Welsh is their native language). When we are in the States, my husband speaks to his family and friends frequently on the phone always in Welsh. I find this rude, and when I mentioned it, he said he was not talking about me and that therefore it shouldnt bother me. I often hear my name mentioned in his conversations and although I am sure it is not malicious, I am still uncomfortable as he babbles on in his native language. Is it too much to ask that he speak English while I am present and in my own house? What is the etiquette for these types of situations? Not from Wales Dear Not from Wales: If someone can speak multiple languages, it is most polite to speak the language of the more linguistically limited speaker in the room. But this is Welsh! If your husband was a Spanish speaker, he would have many opportunities to speak his native language in many different contexts, outside the home. Welsh, however dim cymaint (not so much)! Welsh is one of the oldest spoken languages in Europe, and, outside of Wales, it is extremely rare to hear it. (My research for your question revealed that there are only about 2,000 known Welsh speakers in the United States many of them, curiously, living in Florida.) Furthermore, the language was in danger of dying out altogether until concentrated national efforts in Wales have resulted in something of a revival. Your husband is not being deliberately rude. I think he is trying to communicate with his landsmen using expressions that are unique to a very small population. He is seeking a sort of verbal cwtch (a comforting hug). In doing so, he is also defying centuries of English cultural and language dominance (and often, outright oppression). There are many Welsh primers available to study the language. I have also checked a popular language-learning app; Welsh is one of the languages they offer for instruction. It would serve multiple purposes for you to become conversant, and I hope you will. (I just finished my first lesson so lechyd da!) Dear Amy: I have been in a long-distance relationship for a year. My boyfriend and I live in different countries. We used to meet once a month, but since the pandemic, we have not seen one another for seven months. We keep in constant communication through texting, video calls, and voice messages. This has helped to maintain our bond. Unfortunately, when we have a very simple misunderstanding, he withdraws and goes silent on me for days even for a week where he wont answer my calls or respond to text messages. This has happened more than 10 times over the course of the year, and it really drains me emotionally. Recently we had a pretty innocent disagreement, but he said that I have abused and disrespected him, and that he wont stand for it. He said our relationship is fatigued and needs a breather. He then said that we need a health break. He never defined how long this break should be. Since then, total radio silence. He wont respond to any of my efforts to reach him. Of course, I apologized for what I said through a voice message. Prior to this, we havent had any unresolved issues. Please tell me why he behaves this way. If a man says, we need a break, is he ever coming back to the relationship? Break, or Break-up? Dear Break: I dont know why your boyfriend behaves this way, but you dont need to understand or decode his motivations. You need only to accept his actions as an authentic reflection of how he operates when he is uncomfortable, and ultimately respect his wishes. When someone asks for a break, they should receive it. You should consider it permanent, move on, and if he contacts you weigh your options. Dear Amy: Thank you for your response to Worried Daughter, who was concerned because her stepmother was overwhelmed caring for Worrieds father (with dementia). My husband and I thought your suggestion that the two women switch houses for a week (to trade-off on care) was genius. Grateful Dear Grateful: The large response to Worried Daughter illustrates how compelling this topic is. You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. OTTAWAThe chair of the Parliamentary Black Caucus says justice and public safety reforms should be the next big step in the Liberal governments efforts to purge systemic racism from Canadian institutions. Greg Fergus, the Liberal MP from the Quebec riding of Hull-Aylmer, told the Star on Thursday that he hopes the governments coming speech from the throne is laced with promises to eliminate discrimination in all its forms. But as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to promise action to fight racism in Canada, Fergus said changes to the justice system spelled out in a June declaration from the Black caucus are top of mind ahead of the parliamentary reset on Sept. 23. More than 100 Liberal MPs signed that declaration, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and more than half of Trudeaus cabinet. Among its wide range of demands are calls for the elimination of mandatory minimum jail sentences, funding for gang diversion programs and drug treatment courts, more Black and Indigenous judges, the immediate release of prisoners who pose no risk to society, a federal ban on police carding and the reallocation of police budgets to social service and mental health providers. These are all the things that were pushing for, and Ive not had anything but constructive meetings, he said. I have every indication that theyre taking this seriously and that its a priority for this government. Trudeau said in July that Justice Minister David Lametti and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair have been tasked with drafting a plan around justice reforms and modernizing policing structures and updating standards on the use of force. In an emailed statement, Blair spokesperson Mary-Liz Power said the government is committed to dismantling systems that perpetuate racism and will table legislation that will strengthen oversight and increase public trust in our policing services a reference to a bill on RCMP and border services oversight that did not pass before Trudeau prorogued Parliament on Aug. 18. She also pointed to previous commitments to have more police body-cameras and make it easier for First Nations communities to police themselves. Lametti said in his own statement to the Star that the government has a responsibility to address the overrepresentation of racialized Canadians in the criminal justice system, and that he has been engaging with experts and stakeholders to identify areas of reform. NDP MP Matthew Green, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Black Caucus, agreed with Fergus that justice and public safety reforms should be addressed, including the resumption of a review of the RCMP that MPs were conducting before Trudeau prorogued Parliament on Aug. 18. Theres still some pretty serious reckoning within policing nationally that needs to happen around anti-Black racism (and) anti-Indigenous racism, Green said. Green said Ottawa also needs look at laws including those that require mandatory minimum sentences, which he said disproportionate impact racialized Canadians. Indigenous people represented about 30 per cent of adults jailed at provincial and federal prisons in 2017-18, despite representing just four per cent of the Canadian population, according to Statistics Canada. Black people made up about 3.5 per cent of the population but represented 7.3 per cent of federal offenders in 2017-18. The NDP also criticized Blair Thursday over findings by the Ontario Human Right Commission, which reported in August that Black people were much more likely to be arrested, charged and subjected to force by Toronto police officers between 2013 and 2017. Blair was Toronto police chief from 2005 to 2015. And while the throne speech could signal the governments intentions, Green echoed NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who said this week that New Democrats wont believe the Liberal government is serious about its promises until they are implemented in a budget or fiscal update. Theres a disconnect between the words that they say and the power that they have, he said. The Black community is done beyond finished with being managed, being delayed and being de-prioritized by government ... We dont another study, we dont need another report, we dont need another commission. We need action and we are demanding it, now. The federal government has moved to take on some of the demands from the Parliamentary Black Caucus declaration. In July, Statistics Canada started published data on visible minorities as part of its monthly labour force survey, and showed unemployment was higher for South Asian, Arab and Black Canadians. And on Sept. 9, the Liberal government unveiled a four-year, $160-million program through which Ottawa will partner with major banks to make loans to Black entrepreneurs and business owners. Earlier this week, the advocacy group Democracy Watch said funding for the program was too low, considering there were $13.4-billion worth of loans from Ottawa small business that were outstanding at the end of 2019. Fergus said he was happy with the programs funding, but that he would welcome more for what he called a good beginning of the governments push for racial equality. Theres been a real awakening across Canada, but especially within the senior government public service, he said. Three months is pretty fast to get a program that four months ago they didnt see the need for. Im hoping that well take this full opportunity to really get at the big public security issues that I think are in front of us. Read more about: September 17, 2020 - SEOUL, South Korea - A new study conducted by IVI in collaboration with SK bioscience shows that single-dose and two-dose regimens of Vi-DT typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) are safe and immunogenic in children 6-23 months of age, a group with high rates of typhoid fever in resource-limited settings. The findings from this study newly published online in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine describe the successful completion and analysis of a Phase II clinical trial of Vi-DT six months after vaccination. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends TCVs for use in endemic settings with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance providing the vaccines to eligible countries. However, with only one TCV pre-qualified by the WHO, demand currently exceeds supply. This study is a critical step toward gaining licensure and WHO-prequalification of an additional TCV to increase the global stockpile. "Our findings show that a single dose of conjugated Vi-DT vaccine is safe and provides anti-Vi seroconversion rates similar to the two-dose regimen in children between 6 months and 2 years of age," said Dr. Birkneh Tilahun Tadesse, a Research Scientist at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), which conducted the study at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Manila, the Philippines. "This is an important advance considering the significant burden of disease in infants and young children, and our goal remains developing a safe, single-dose vaccine with long-lasting immunogenicity to protect more children against typhoid fever," said Dr. Sushant Sahastrabuddhe, Director of the Typhoid Program at IVI. Increasing global supply of typhoid conjugate vaccines Vi-DT was developed at IVI and its technology was transferred in 2013 to SK bioscience in South Korea for manufacturing and commercialization. A Phase I safety trial of Vi-DT was first conducted in the Philippines with participants 2-45 years of age and showed that the vaccine was safe and immunogenic four weeks after first dose. Following the successful completion of a Phase II trial with infants under 2 years, large-scale Phase III studies with a single-dose of Vi-DT have started in the Philippines and Nepal in 2020. The WHO recommends programmatic use of typhoid vaccines to prevent and control typhoid fever with preference for TCVs for their longer-lasting protection, fewer doses, and suitability for children under 2. (1) For treatment, antibiotics are currently the frontline intervention for typhoid fever, but drug-resistant typhoid has emerged across Asia and Africa, highlighting the need for sufficient supply of TCV and sustainable vaccination programs. ### About typhoid Typhoid fever is an invasive water-borne bacterial infection caused by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi) presenting with mild to severe symptoms and even resulting in death. Typhoid is most often contracted through ingestion of food or drink contaminated by bacteria shed by infected people. It is usually characterized by fever, headache, constipation, and malaise, though diagnosis can be difficult due to symptoms common to other febrile illnesses. Figures for burden of disease vary due to this difficulty, however the World Health Organization estimates that 128,000-161,000 people die every year from typhoid fever with 11-21 million annual cases. (2) Typhoid surveillance studies report that a quarter to more than half of all invasive cases are found in children under 5. (3) About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a nonprofit inter-governmental organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, IVI was the first international organization hosted by Korea. IVI has 36 signatory countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) on its treaty, including Korea, Sweden, India, and Finland as state funders. Our mandate is to make vaccines available and accessible for the world's most vulnerable people. We focus on infectious diseases of global health importance such as cholera, typhoid, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, chikungunya, group A strep, Hepatitis A, HPV, TB, HIV, MERS, COVID-19, as well as antimicrobial resistance. For more information, please visit https://www.ivi.int CONTACT Aerie Em, Global Communications & Media Specialist +82 2 881 1386 | aerie.em@ivi.int ORONO, Minn., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ELEVATOR WORLD has announced the winners of The Ellies 2020, the third annual awards program honoring companies nominated by and voted on by the elevator industry. With more than 20,000 votes cast, Hill Hiker is thrilled to be selected as the first-place winner of the "Best Supplier: Special Application Lifts" category. Happy customers enjoy the ride on a Hill Hiker Hillside Lake Lift System "It's an honor to be recognized alongside all the other 2020 Ellie winners. We take pride in what we do. After 23 years in the business, we have built a reputation for excellence in quality, safety, and reliability of our inclined elevator equipment. This award is a huge accomplishment for us and we are appreciative of all the support," said Bill MacLachlan, Founder and President. Hill Hiker, Inc was founded in 1997 by Bill and Laurel MacLachlan with the vision to create a better outdoor lift system that would lead the industry in quality, safety, and reliability. They drew on 15 years of elevator industry experience, and the engineering expertise of Laurel's father, Noel Davis (MIT Engineering Graduate and Inventor), to develop an innovative and award-winning design known worldwide for its superior functionality and attractive appearance. About Hill Hiker: Hill Hiker, Inc. is a family company specializing in the design, manufacture, installation, and service of inclined elevator systems also known as hillside trams, outdoor lifts, and funiculars. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Hill Hiker, Inc. has been serving the World with our award-winning American made systems since 1997. Hill Hiker's Hillside Elevators are well designed, functional, and aesthetically pleasing while meeting or exceeding both national and international elevator safety code requirements. Find out more about Hill Hiker, Inc. by visiting their website at hillhiker.com. Media contact: Duncan MacLachlan Head of Marketing Hill Hiker, Inc. Phone: 952-476-2422 Email: [email protected] Related Files Ellies2020-Hill Hiker.jpg Related Images hill-hiker-inclined-tram-on-the.jpg Hill Hiker Inclined Tram on the Lake Happy customers enjoy the ride on a Hill Hiker Hillside Lake Lift System Related Links Ellie Award Winners Hill Hiker, Inc. SOURCE Hill Hiker, Inc. Leaked emails have revealed health authorities knew a man thought to have died from COVID-19 didn't in fact the virus - but didn't tell his family or the public for three days. Nathan Turner, 30, was initially declared Australia's youngest coronavirus fatality when he was found dead in his Blackwater home, in regional Queensland, on May 26. An initial swab had tested positive, plunging the tiny town into panic-mode and his fiancee into isolation, before further tests concluded he did not have the virus. Now, emails obtained by Nine News have revealed senior officials - including Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young and Deputy Chief Health Officer Sonya Bennett - received the negative results on May 29 but kept residents in the dark until June 1. Nathan Turner (pictured) , 30, was declared Australia's youngest coronavirus fatality following his death in May, but further testing revealed the initial test was a false positive That includes Mr Turner's grieving fiancee Simone Devon and other close contacts who were kept in quarantine until the final autopsy results were announced on the Monday evening. In correspondence on May 28, Dr Young and Dr Bennett learned a re-tested sample had failed to detect COVID-19, with a blood test, among other tests, proving negative the following day. Despite the growing body of evidence, the case was then referred on for an autopsy on Friday, May 29. But when the results came back three days later, the coroner cited the prior reports. 'Further extensive and more specialised testing before autopsy was conducted by a Forensic & Scientific Services pathologist and those tests have all returned a repeated negative result to COVID-19,' the email reads. Emails reveal health officials were aware the results were negative on May 29 before telling the public on June 1, leaving Mr Turner's fiance Simone Devon (pictured together) for an additional three days 'As a result of the extensive further specialised testing I advise that at present, despite significant and widespread reporting, cause of death is confirmed as not being related to the COVID-19 virus.' On the Monday morning, Dr Bennett sent an email asking the team if 'we were aware' the serology results they had received on May 29 had been negative. The public did not learn the news until later that evening. Health Minister Steven Miles has denied that his department mishandled the information, saying the public were alerted as soon as they knew of the new information. Lorraine Devon, Ms Devon's mother, said they have been left devastated by their experience, which saw them spend a week in isolation and be taunted by rumours surrounding Mr Turner's death. 'What we had to endure after they came out with the rumours and innuendo,' she said. Queensland Health told Nine News they had no further comment to add to Mr Miles statement. Mystery surrounded the suspected coronavirus case, after it was revealed Mr Turner had not left the small town in months and there were no other known local cases. The case rocked the tiny town of Blackwater, which immediately set up testing clinics Pictured: Locals queue to get coronavirus tests His death sparked fears of an outbreak in Blackwater and locals were tested en masse that week. Ms Devon tested negative to the virus three times and more than 500 Blackwater residents also returned negative results. It was reported a nurse from Rockhampton could have been the source of infection after she broke travel restrictions to drive 195km to Blackwater on May 10. The nurse, whose name wasn't revealed, told authorities she had taken a 400km round trip to 'watch the sunset' in the mining town. Officials then said it was 'unlikely' the nurse was the cause of Mr Turner's infection because of the timing of her bizarre trip. Her trip was 17 days before Mr Turner's death, and he was reportedly suffering symptoms 21 days before he passed away. The nurse insisted that she never left her car during the road trip, and had no contact with other people. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Queensland Health for comment. Ann Getty, a savvy former California farm girl who married into one of the worlds wealthiest families and transformed herself into a globe-trotting publisher, author, interior designer and philanthropist, died on Monday in San Francisco. She was 79. Her husband, Gordon Getty, said in a statement that she had a heart attack during a family dinner at home and died in a hospital. Already ensconced as a San Francisco cultural benefactor, Mrs. Getty in the mid-1980s leapfrogged the continent to New York, where she was wooed to the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and New York University and sped to the epicenter of the loftiest social circles. But despite extravagances like a private Boeing 727 (nicknamed Jetty) equipped with a bath and two bedrooms, she resisted being marginalized as a socialite. Funding to support advancement of powerful bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager programs for the treatment of a broad range of cancers New investors include Novo Holdings, Sanofi Ventures, Redmile, Ysios and BB Pureos LAVA Therapeutics, a biotech company pioneering the development of bispecific antibodies to engage gamma-delta T cells for cancer therapies, today announced the closing of an oversubscribed $83 million (71 million) Series C financing to fund the advancement of its pipeline and platform. The financing was co-led by new investors Novo Ventures, the venture arm of Novo Holdings, and Sanofi Ventures, and included additional new investors Redmile Group, LLC, Ysios Capital and BB Pureos Bioventures. In addition, current investors Versant, Gilde Healthcare and MRL Ventures Fund, LLC participated significantly in the round. As part of the transaction, Nanna Luneborg, partner at Novo Ventures, Laia Crespo, EU head of investments at Sanofi Ventures, and Joel Jean-Mairet, managing partner and co-founder of Ysios, joined LAVA as members of the board of directors. "We are grateful to have attracted a high-quality syndicate of new investors complementing strong continued support of our existing investors. This financing provides meaningful capital to advance our bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager portfolio into multiple proof-of-concept clinical trials expected to start in 2021 for the treatment of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies," said Stephen Hurly, chief executive officer of LAVA Therapeutics. "We believe our targeted approach, leveraging the unique features of gamma9-delta2 T cells with innovative bispecific antibodies, will deliver novel T cell-based therapies offering advantages over today's oncology treatments. In addition to the funding raised, the appointments of Nanna, Laia and Joel to our board further strengthen our team, and we look forward to benefiting from their insights and industry expertise." Gamma-delta T cells are the natural surveillance cells of the immune system, continuously patrolling the human body for the identification and targeting of tumor cells. These cells bridge the innate with the adaptive immune system and are a largely untapped opportunity in cancer treatment. LAVA's bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager platform is harnessing the unique properties of these T cells creating a revolutionary truly tumor-targeted immunotherapy to improve outcomes for cancer patients. "LAVA's bispecific antibody approach to targeting and engaging gamma-delta T cells has the potential to transform the treatment of a wide range of cancers," said Dr. Luneborg. "We are impressed by the preclinical data generated by LAVA to date, which validate the company's platform and support their transition into a clinical-stage organization. The team is highly experienced in drug development, and I look forward to working with them." "Gamma-delta T cells are an emerging field and an incredibly exciting area in oncology. Bispecific antibodies able to directly engage this type of cells offer the potential to significantly impact patients across the globe in these diseases with high morbidity and mortality," said Dr. Crespo. About LAVA Therapeutics LAVA Therapeutics is developing a proprietary bispecific antibody platform that engages gamma-delta T cells for the treatment of hematological and solid cancers. The company's first-in-class immuno-oncology approach activates V?9Vd2 T cells upon binding to membrane-expressed tumor targets. LAVA was founded in 2016 based on intellectual property originating from the Amsterdam University Medical Center. The company has established a highly experienced antibody research and development team located in Utrecht, the Netherlands (headquarters) and Philadelphia, USA. For more information, please visit www.lavatherapeutics.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005913/en/ Contacts: Alicia Davis THRUST Strategic Communications alicia@thrustsc.com PRESIDENT Mnangagwa yesterday described agriculture as life and called upon Zimbabweans to respect each other and work in unity towards achieving Vision 2030. Addressing Zion Christian Church (ZCC) Mbungo members at the launch of the Pfumvudza Presidential Input Scheme in Masvingo, President Mnangagwa said the country should wave bye-bye to food imports in two years-time. He said such achievements could only be attained through unity of purpose among Zimbabweans. The President was speaking after touring a thriving wheat farm owned by Bishop Nehemiah Mutendi, a Pfumvudza project at the church as well as a dam under construction. In the next two years Zimbabwe should not import food. Everything else follows when people are not hungry, lets unite and respect each other. I know that bad things are easy to do but let us strive to do good always. Usati wadongorera ndima yemumwe, tanga wasimudza yako. The solution lies in farming (and) this is what even the Lord expects from us. Let us use this land so that we dont go hungry. Slowly we are overcoming problems that beset us in the past, said President Mnangagwa. Since taking office, President Mnangagwa has introduced a raft of economic measures that will be underpinned by agricultural production and productivity, mining and tourism. His Vision 2030, to make Zimbabwe a middle income economy within a decade, is already bearing fruit as demonstrated in increased power supplies as well as his international reengagement thrust, with repeated and sponsored attempts by those in the opposition to peddle falsehoods through social media platforms having little effect. The President, who turned 78 on Tuesday, was welcomed with a Happy Birthday song from the ZCC brass band. He took part in the Jerusalema dance challenge as he and Bishop Mutendi, who was also born on September 15, were feted by the congregants. The Mbungo Agriculture Scheme that was launched by the President yesterday encompasses, production, value addition through processing of wheat and marketing with benefits accruing to local communities. The ZCC scheme, which is climate proofed, both in the form of irrigation and also the widely popular Pfumvudza farming initiative, has seen the semi-barren region of Bikita having green belts that dovetail with the countrys vision to become a US$8.2 billion agriculture economy by 2025. This is the first year we have seen wheat in this area. We want value chain, value addition. The wheat is processed here to flour and it is then marketed. This is production, value addition and then marketing, said the President. Most of the workers, including engineers, were spotting the famous ZCC green badge as the church leads in implementing President Mnangagwas vision in this community. This is our country. We have to use our God-given resources, the land, our talents. We were given this land, the animals and everything in it. We must feed ourselves because when people are well fed they can then pursue various professions. This is why Government is coming to you. The President, who as Vice President in 2016 introduced Command Agriculture, said his Government has now adopted the Pfumvudza farming initiative for smallholders, families that may not have draught power. He said while mechanised farmers, who once benefited under Command Agriculture, will access loans from CBZ and Agribank, farmers with draught power will benefit from the Presidential Inputs Scheme, just as would farmers under Pfumvudza. Over 1.8 million households are set to benefit from the Presidential Inputs Scheme, with inputs this year being distributed early and with a promising agricultural season predicted. But even with low rainfall, farmers will be climate proofed under both the Pfumvudza Scheme and also irrigation systems. Quoting from the Bible the President said black people of Zimbabwe should claim their spaces and birthright. You invited me here to show me the solution to life, which is production. Bishop Mutendi said a hungry man is an angry man, and I was thinking while I was sitting there that if a person is made to choose between wearing a suit and being hungry, or being without a suit but with a full stomach, one would choose the latter. However, one has to sweat for his food. I prefer to go where there is a solution instead of where they are question marks, said the President. On Covid-19, that has slowed economic recovery, the President said he took the decision to lockdown the nation so as to save precious lives of Zimbabweans. In line with the Covid-19 regulations, people at the majestic ZCC headquarters, a religious tourism attraction in its own right, observed social distancing, wore face masks and were sanitised upon entry. When Covid-19 came, we introduced a raft of measures so as to save lives. For the past seven or eight months we have been observing a lockdown. I believe that by now everyone knows about the measures that Government is taking so we have been relaxing the measures. A couple of days ago we announced that buses will start to travel intercity. We believe that people now know what to do, the President said. As the country sees far lower infection rates, the province of Masvingo has witnessed a 98 percent recovery rate, something that is almost similar to most parts of the country because of the swift response that was taken by the Second Republic to curb the spread of the infection at the start. The President was accompanied by Vice Presidents Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi, and several Cabinet ministers. Herald The editor-in-chief of the United Kingdombased medical journal The Lancet, Richard Horton, continues to mislead the world, this time about the Communist Party of China's and the World Health Organization's responsibility for the worldwide spread of the Wuhan virus, AKA the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). I have written about their responsibility for AT here, here, and here. Several months ago, Horton misled the world about a drug being used to treat the virus. On June 5, 2020 The Lancet retracted an article that falsely maligned the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the Wuhan virus. The article was used by the propaganda division of the Democratic Party, AKA the mainstream media, to attack President Donald Trump. It is time for another retraction, but this time for statements made during an interview. On September 4, 2020, at 17:57 into an interview on C-SPAN, Horton praised the performance of the Chinese government and the World Health Organization regarding their response to the virus. This exchange occurred: Q: You have, as you mentioned, been at this field for 30 years. You think back to the earlier pandemics, Ebola, SARS, that have come into being, and your own publication's response to it. You say it's been nine months. It feels like to all of us like it's been a lifetime, I think. But can you comment about the speed with which the scientific community is responding to this compared to even recent past? A: Yes, you know, it's interesting because there's been a lot of, so much criticism of China and the World Health Organization. And I understand why because this virus has turned all of our lives and our children's lives upside down. And it's understandable that we're angry about it. But, in fact, if you actually look at the timeline, this has been the fastest that international organizations and countries like China have ever responded. If I just take you back to the early 2000's when the very, very first SARS outbreak took place, a different virus, but related, it was a coronavirus, and that outbreak of SARS in two thousand and two took place also in China. The Chinese response then was to deny the outbreak, to cover it up and hope that it would go away. And it took months for the World Health Organization to force China to come clean about what was going on. What happened this time? The very first patient that we are aware of who was admitted to hospital was on the first of December 2019. And by December the 31st, just one month later, the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization that there was an outbreak of an unknown virus and this severe disease. And just one month after that, by the end of January, the World Health Organization had sounded the most important alarm signal that it can sound by declaring a public health emergency of international concern. It took eight months when there was the recent Ebola outbreak for W.H.O. to call a public health emergency of international concern. And Ebola's a much nastier virus than this coronavirus. It took them eight months. On this occasion it took them one month. So both China and W.H.O. outperformed themselves from any previous pandemic. So although I think we do have questions to ask of the Chinese government, we do have reasons to be concerned about some of W.H.O.'s response and certainly many other government responses, such as my government, and sad to say, the American government, I think we also need to recognize that parts of the response were really very quick. At 26:10 in the interview, Horton says: Now this is where I think some of the criticism of China has been very unfair because the Chinese have been accused of covering up the outbreak. Well, far from it. ... [Horton refers to five research papers published by The Lancet in January 2020 that came from authors in China.] So to accuse China of covering-up and not telling the world is extraordinarily unfair. Horton's description of what happened omits critical facts that contradict his conclusions. On June 15, 2020, House Foreign Affairs Committee lead Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas released an interim report detailing the investigation into the origins and initial handling of the virus. The interim report is detailed and well sourced. McCaul's press release summarized some of the key findings. Background: Early Stages of the Pandemic The CCP had sufficient information to warrant a full scale public health response as early as mid-December, 2019. (pg.5) The CCP repeatedly, and intentionally, violated the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) that were put in place after Beijing's failed response to SARS between 2002-2004. (pg.7) Reports from Taiwan, outside experts, and in the media were ignored by the WHO. (pg.8) The Chinese Communist Party's Cover-up The CCP actively engaged in a cover-up designed to limit the spread of information about the virus. (pg.14 and throughout this section) These efforts included punishing doctors, disappearing journalists, censoring the internet in the PRC, spreading disinformation on social media, and withholding information from the WHO and international community. (pg.16) To date, the CCP has refused to provide the international community with lab samples, accurate case data, and access to sites of interest around Wuhan, PRC. (pg.14) The CCP cover-up means it is unlikely that we will be able to identify the source of the outbreak. (pg.23) General-Secretary Xi and senior CCP leaders knew a pandemic was occurring weeks before they implemented a lockdown in Wuhan. (pg.10) Had the CCP instituted a full scale, public response in early February, up to 95% of cases in the PRC at the end of February could have been prevented. (pg.21) The Wuhan Institute of Virology State Department cables from 2018 suggest ongoing safety issues safety issues at a different lab in Beijing in 2004 resulted in the accidental release of the SARS virus, killing one and infecting 7 others. (pg.27) Developed with France, the construction was marked by deep distrust between the governments and concerns from the French military and intelligence services regarding possible dual-use technology. (pg.24) Senior leadership at the institute are local CCP leaders. (pg.25) The WIV has a long history of coronavirus research activities, including gain-of-function research. (pg. 26) The BSL-4 lab was taken over by a senior bioweapons expert in the PRC's People's Liberation Army earlier this year. (pg.26) WHO Missteps From the early days of the outbreak, Director-General Tedros and the WHO have overly relied on unverifiable CCP talking points. (pg.33) The WHO appears to have repeatedly violated their own IHR and their obligations to Member States. (pg.29) The WHO claimed for weeks that human-to-human transmission was not occurring, despite warnings from a WHO Collaborating Center at the University of Hong Kong and elsewhere. (pg.35) It is likely that DG Tedros delayed the announcement of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for political, not medical reasons. (pg.31) DG Tedros and the WHO continue to use misleading statements in public statements and written material that enables CCP propaganda, misinformation, and revisionist history regarding COVID-19. (pg.33) Everybody should read the interim report, especially Horton and people who subscribe to The Lancet. Allan J. Favish is an attorney in Los Angeles. His website is allanfavish.com. James Fernald and Mr. Favish have co-authored a book about what might happen if the government ran Disneyland, entitled Fireworks! If the Government Ran the Fairest Kingdom of Them All (A Very Unauthorized Fantasy). Image credit: Pixy.org, public domain. It was really hard at first, because the genealogy center was closed, and so we were all locked into our homes in place for a few months, Roginski said. Now, with our work at the cemetery, were kind of paying it forward, volunteering our genealogical skills without being at risk. Some weeks ago my good friend Noel Sharkey, Blackrock, sent me a touching tribute to his primary school teacher, Paddy McDonnell, Haggardstown,who died last month. Unfortunately, I did not have the space to include it in my notes at the time but feel that my readers are entitled to share in this fitting tribute to a great educator. Here now are Noel recollections of his old Master --- There was a great sadness in felt Haggardstown Parish with the passing of former St. Fursey's National School Principal, Paddy McDonnell, not just by all those who were fortunate enough to have been his pupils but by a whole myriad of people in the local community and in his native Darver, whose lives he touched and enriched in so many ways. When Paddy came as Principal to the Haggardstown School in 1960, St. Fursey's N.S., built in 1946, had no sanitation, running water nor electricity. When he retired in 1998, it was one of the finest schools in the Country; a measure of the dedication which Paddy, his teaching staff, local priests, the parents' committees and a host of fundraisers had put their energies into updating and extensions to the building over the intervening decades. During the refurbishments to St. Fursey's in 1961/62, most classes were relocated to Mullagharlin School on the Chapel Road. This former Mass-House, built circa 1744, had served as the local national school from 1840 to 1946. To say that the conditions in Mullagharlin School were Dickensian would be an understatement. The dry toilets at the rear were a health hazard. We gathered sticks in the hedges for lighting the fire. We had no running water, soap nor towels and washed our hands in cold tea. The Chapel Road was our playground. Mrs. Mary Kavanagh looked after and taught us, while Paddy poisoned generations of rats that infested nearby ditches. Yet we managed and relocated to St. Fursey's in 1962. Paddy always took a great pride in the achievements of his past pupils and many of them were to distinguish themselves in all walks of life. Taciturn, quietly spoken and highly conscientious, his incalculable contribution to education was marked with the award of a Bene Morente medal on the occasion of his retirement in 1998.' Primary School Teachers I am happy and pleased to include in my notes this tribute by Noel to Paddy McDonnell, who like so many primary school teachers in the district, have been dedicated to the education of our youth for centuries, without, perhaps, the rewards to which they were entitled but are enshrined the respect of the communities in which they laboured. Some, let's admit it, were 'not fit for purpose' and but the vast majority were dedicated men and women who achieved in their pupils more than even they were aware! Everything old is new again. In a conference call last week, Attorney General Bill Barr urged federal prosecutors to be aggressive in filing charges against violent anti-American radicals who are rioting in various cities, attacking government buildings, and targeting law-enforcement officers. The AG reportedly recommended a range of offenses, including seditious conspiracy. Instantly, according to the Wall Street Journal, legal experts warned that the rarely used statute could be difficult to prove in court and potentially run up against First Amendment protections. These are the same arguments that legal experts posited when I charged terrorists with seditious conspiracy for bombing the World Trade Center and plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks in 1993. The experts were wrong then, and they are wrong now. The seditious-conspiracy statute, which is codified by Section 2384 of the modern federal penal code, was actually enacted by Congress during the Civil War mainly to deal with Confederate sympathizers in free states who were violently sabotaging the Union war effort. As the Journals experts observe, it is rarely used. That is not because the crime is especially difficult to prove; it is much more straightforward than many federal crimes. Rather, it is because the conduct at issue dangerous conspiracies to levy war against the United States, to violently overthrow our government, or to violently oppose the governments legitimate authority is historically unusual. Notice the thread that runs through these variations of conspiratorial behavior: Force. Keep that in mind and you will easily grasp why apprehensions about sedition charges are specious. Unless prosecutors can prove that the alleged conspirators agreed to use force against the government, there is no such crime. The notion of prosecuting sedition is anathema to legal experts and some historians because it calls to mind the late 18th century Alien and Sedition Acts, which are justly reviled as an unconstitutional effort to punish political dissent. There is also understandable constitutional concern about the word sedition. Outside the criminal-law context, it can be broadly construed to cover speech that, though it urges people to revolt against a government, does not necessarily advocate violence. Story continues But here, we are talking about the criminal-law context, and the distinction matters. To begin with, the word sedition does not appear in the seditious conspiracy statute. The adjective seditious is in the title, but it does not appear in the statutes all-important charging language. What matters in any criminal statute is how Congress has defined the proscribed conduct. In this instance, Congress has taken aim at forcible action against the nation qua nation, or its government qua government. To be precise, Section 2384 makes it a crime, punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment, for two or more people to conspire . . . . . . to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof. [Emphasis added.] Consequently, if people urge the end of the United States or the dissolution of its government, but they do not contemplate accomplishing these objectives by force, then there is no crime. And even if people do contemplate using force against others, including others who happen to be government officials, there is still no seditious-conspiracy offense unless force is to be used to attack the United States, or to destroy or impede the functions of the U.S. government. Congress has proscribed a straightforward offense: Force must be used, or at least contemplated, with the specific intent to strike at the United States or its government. Therefore, the fact that the word sedition may be fraught with ambiguity and dark historical overtones is irrelevant. In my terrorism case, this offense was not difficult to prove, and the defendants were duly convicted. We had abundant evidence of jihadists proclaiming that they were at war with the United States; that they intended to strike at political and financial targets in order to extort changes in American policy; and that they would attack government buildings and current and former government officials as part of their war against the country. All those years ago, legal experts also cited the First Amendment as a supposedly fatal complication. The First Amendment protects freedom of conscience, the argument went, and jihadists were motivated by their interpretation of their religion. The First Amendment safeguards political speech to express dissent, and jihadists bitterly opposed American foreign policy and various aspects of American culture. Again, this was a smokescreen. No one was being charged with having fundamentalists beliefs or harboring hostility to our country and its policies. The defendants were charged with conspiring to use force in prosecuting a war against our country and striking against our government. Their reasons for doing these things formed no part of the crime. As in any criminal case, statements indicative of purpose and motive factor in because they tend to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants committed the charged acts with the requisite criminal intent. But Section 2384 targets violence, not beliefs. Freedom of speech means the government may not make your speech illegal in and of itself, unless it falls within exceptions that were well known at the time the First Amendment was adopted (e.g., obscenity or incitement to violence). But the First Amendment has never been understood to immunize speech from being used as evidence of crimes. Lets say a mafia boss replies, I hate that guy, whack him, when the underboss asks whats to be done about a rival mobster. The mobster is subsequently killed and the boss is charged with murder. At the trial, the boss has no viable First Amendment objection to the admission of his statement as evidence. He is being prosecuted for murder, not the statements; the latter are obviously proof of his motive and intention to commit murder they are not the murder itself. Similarly, if there is evidence that people are using force or plotting violent attacks against U.S. government installations, there is no viable objection to the introduction of evidence that they hated the United States and called for attacks against the government. The statements are not the crime; they are evidence of the crime, and the First Amendment does not prohibit their use as such. Judges, moreover, carefully instruct juries that people may not be convicted for holding unpopular beliefs; there must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in a seditious-conspiracy case, that they conspired to use force against the nation and its government. Thats the crime. People who join in rioting are engaged in a form of domestic terrorism. They are likely to commit several federal crimes. Rioting itself is a federal crime (Section 2101) if people cross state lines to incite it or carry it out. Ive recently addressed the Travel Act, which similarly involves crossing state lines to carry out crimes of violence. Arson and the use of explosives are also federal crimes. If these forcible, lethally destructive acts are committed by people who are working together to make war against our country or attack our government, then seditious conspiracy is a perfectly apt offense to charge. It not only fits the conduct; it also allows prosecutors to charge the case in a framework that explains what the violent radicals are trying to accomplish. So Barr is right, and his critics arguments are as wrong as they were almost 30 years ago. More from National Review A woman has been charged with murdering her six-year-old son after she was found swimming naked in a Florida lake and repeatedly saying, 'God forgive me.' Labreaunne Wilson, 26, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon for the death of her son, Avion Borner, who was found unresponsive by his maternal grandmother in a bathtub at an extended-stay hotel in Orlando. According to an arrest affidavit, at around 2.25pm, Wilson was seen on video dragging her son from Key Suites on Orange Blossom Trail across the street to Lake Tyler. Scroll down for video Labreaunne Wilson, 26 (left), has been charged with first-degree murder in death of her six-year-old son, Avion Borner (right) Wilson was found swimming naked in Lake Tyler in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon and repeatedly saying, 'God forgive me' After a few minutes, Wilson returned alone to the hotel, reported Orlando Sentinel. Some 30 minutes later, she headed back to the lake and returned carrying her limp and wet son across her shoulder. At around 4.30pm, Wilson went back to the lake for a third time, stripped off her clothes and went into the water. People who saw the woman swimming in the nude tried to convince her to get out, but she kept saying, 'God forgive me.' Rescue crews responded to the scene at around 4.45pm and pulled Wilson to safety. She was then transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where she reportedly told sheriff's deputies, 'I think I killed my child,' reported ClickOrlando. Avion's limp and wet body was found in a bathtub at the Key Suites extended-stay hotel on Orange Blossom Trail Avion's maternal grandmother was the one who found him in the tub and called for help The child was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. Two hours earlier, he was seen on video being dragged by his mother toward the lake across the street from the hotel She was said to have made similar statements, unprompted, to bystanders watching the water rescue and to a paramedic en route to the hospital. Meanwhile, investigators learned that Wilson's six-year-old was found unresponsive in the hotel room tub by his grandmother and taken to Arnold Palmer Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, reported Fox 35. Wilson was discharged from the hospital after she was found to be uninjured and booked into the county jail on a charge of first-degree murder. A witness told investigators that she had spoken to Wilson in the courtyard of the hotel complex just before the incident and said she seemed fine until about 2.30pm, when the woman suddenly grabbed Avion by the arm and said they had to leave. A Syracuse University student was robbed late Tuesday night after being threatened with a knife outside a residence hall, university police said. The student was approached by a suspect around 11:15 p.m. outside Brewster Hall at 401 Van Buren St., said the universitys Department of Public Safety. The suspect brandished a knife, university police said, and demanded the students belongings. After taking the students phone, debit card and backpack, the suspect fled eastbound on Van Buren Street and met with another suspect, police said. The two were last seen behind the Syracuse VA Medical Center. The first suspect, a man, is about 5 feet 10 inches, police said, with a medium build. He was wearing a dark jacket, sweatpants, a black winter hat and a surgical face mask. The other suspect, also a man, was wearing a gray jumpsuit and riding a bike, police said. No age range was given for the suspects. The Department of Public Safety sent an email to students at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday asking them to stay away from the area as Syracuse police and the DPS investigated the incident. Syracuse police and university police are asking that witnesses contact them or report anonymously using the silent witness tool. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. MONTREAL - Nine people, including two children, were injured after they were struck by a car in north-end Montreal Wednesday afternoon. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Police investigators examine the wreckage after a driver plowed into nine people Wednesday, September 16, 2020 in Montreal. Police said the injuries were none life threatening and does not appear to have been deliberate. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz MONTREAL - Nine people, including two children, were injured after they were struck by a car in north-end Montreal Wednesday afternoon. Montreal police said the driver hit a pedestrian at an intersection and fled the scene. He then struck eight more pedestrians on a sidewalk several blocks away. The driver, a 38-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and will be questioned by investigators. 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. "When we arrested him, he was confused," police spokesman Manuel Couture said. "We have no indication it was a planned act." The driver was taken to hospital for a mental health evaluation, he said. There is no indication that drugs or alcohol were involved, but investigators will likely look into it. The victims were transported to hospital with injuries ranging from minor to serious, and all of them are expected to survive, Couture said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2020. This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday said it would disburse 1 billion dollars to Angola to address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The IMF executive board made the decision after completing a third review of Angola's three-year economic programme under its Extended Fund Facility approved at the end of 2018, bringing the total disbursements under the arrangement to some 2.5 billion dollars. "Angola's economy has been hit hard by a triple, COVID-19-induced external shock. The shock led to economic and health crises, compounded by the decline in oil prices in view of Angola's dependence on oil exports," the IMF said in a statement. The fund went on to list some "decisive measures" adopted by authorities to tackle the impact of the crisis. The board's deputy managing director and acting chair, Antoinette Sayeh, said that "pursuing structural reforms is critical to diversify the economy and lay the foundations for private sector-led economic growth. "The Government will need to remain steadfast in enhancing the business environment, strengthening governance, and fighting corruption." In late June, the IMF said that economies in sub-Saharan Africa were projected to contract by 3.2 per cent due to the pandemic, with growth expected to recover to 3.4 per cent in 2021, assuming that the health crisis abates and lockdowns ease further in the second half of 2020. In the region's largest economies - Angola, Nigeria and South Africa - gross domestic product was projected to return to pre-crisis levels only by 2023 or 2024. 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 Opposition is mounting to Spains homicidal back-to-school campaign, amid a massive resurgence of COVID-19. On Tuesday, Spain passed 600,000 total cases (603,167), just over a week after reaching 500,000. The same day, Spain recorded 156 new deaths, bringing the highly manipulated official death toll to over 30,000 (30,004). Analyses by major newspapers show the real death toll is at least 45,000. Nevertheless, the Spanish government, headed by the social-democratic Socialist Party (PSOE) and left-populist Podemos, is proceeding with its politically-criminal school reopening plans, forcing teachers back to work and threatening to prosecute parents who do not send their children to school. Madrid education workers began a 20-day strike against the PSOE-Podemos governments back-to-school orders Friday. Called by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-AIT (National Confederation of Labour-International Workers Association), this strike comes atop a two-day strike called in Madrid by the CCOO (Workers Commissions), UGT (General Union of Labour), CGT (General Confedaration of Labour) and STEM (Madrid Union of Education Workers) unions, scheduled for September 22-23. Strike action has been threatened in the Balearic Islands, Andalucia, Aragon, Galicia, Murcia and the Basque Country, amid reports of coronavirus outbreaks in numerous schools across the country. More than 200 schools have registered coronavirus-related incidents in only the first week of term, before many of Spains regions had even reopened education centres. Andalucia is the worst affected so far, reporting that at least 34 schools had seen coronavirus incidents. Several education centres there have already been forced to close after multiple infections among teachers and students. At least one school in the Andalucian city of Sevilla has already closed; in Malaga, four classes in two schools have had to quarantine. In Granada, two schools have had to postpone opening after reporting cases among teachers. In Cordoba, seven classes in two schools, and a further two infant education centres have also had to quarantine. The Basque Country has been the next worst affected, reporting around 30 schools with COVID-19 incidents, four of these having to close and the rest to impose measures like partial quarantines. This is followed by Aragon, which has closed 24 classrooms in 21 schools; Castilla-La Mancha, with 20 schools in isolation; Madrid, with 26 classrooms isolated in 16 different schools; and La Rioja, with 14 education centres reporting positive cases and setting up quarantines. In Catalonia, the school term has started with 253 teachers and 210 pupils in quarantine. Navarra has also reported that 286 pupils are already having to isolate. The struggle of workers against this manifestly unsafe back-to-school campaign faces not only the hostility of the main bourgeois parties of state, but the collusion and spinelessness of the unions. In Madrid, the CNT-AIT only called the 20-day strike after industrial action planned by the CGT, UGT, CCOO and STEM was delayed from the start to the end of September, so as to give right-wing regional president, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, time to implement her inadequate safety measures. Four days of strike action on 4, 8, 9 and 10 September were replaced with a two-day work stoppage planned for the end of the month. Fearing that Madrid education workers opposition could erupt outside the unions control, the CNT-AIT announced work stoppages between 10 and 30 September. This announcement in itself only came after a recently-established Teachers Assembly for an Indefinite Strike criticised the planned two-day strike as insufficient, stating that it does not reflect the concerns of the education community. Unions have refused to call out teachers and other workers across Spain in a unified struggle against the reopening of schools. They have limited action to sporadic and isolated one-day or short-term mobilisations, all on different days and in only some of Spains 17 regions, allowing workers to let off steam while doing nothing to prevent the reckless reopening. In the Basque Country, education workers struck for one day, Tuesday, despite the regional governments attempts to prevent walkouts by imposing minimum service requirements. Officially, 41.9 percent of education workers took part in the strike, while the unions claimed 6570 percent participation. Around 40,000 education workers in the Basque Country stopped work on Tuesday, with a further 10,000 subcontractors also joining the strike. The unions reported thousands of workers also took part in demonstrations across the region: 8,000 in Bilbao, 5,000 in Vitoria and 4,000 in Donostia. On the same day, a mere 53 teachers took part in a strike in Andalucia, called by a new union, Teachers for Public [Education] (DxP), after the main unions delayed all action until 18 September, limiting it then to only a token one-day protest. The DxP strike is to last until 16 October. In a pre-emptive attempt to prevent industrial action, Andalucias regional government also imposed minimum service requirements. A one-day strike in the Balearic Islands, called by the Balearic Workers Union (UOB), has been delayed from 14 to 29 September, with the union calling for the regional government to come to the negotiation table. In Murcia, a one-day strike on 23 September has been called by the CCOO and STERM (Confederation of Teaching Trade Unions), while in Galicia, a one-day work stoppage was held on 10 September. A further strike is planned for 16 September in Galicia. Turn-out in Galicia was only around 12 percent, as the regional government effectively illegalised the strike, imposing stringent minimum service requirements. The Galician High Court ruled that 100 percent of cleaning staff, kitchen staff, medical staff and educators must be present. It cynically justifying this draconian edict, referring to the coronavirus pandemic: this may be excessive in a normal situation, the High Court stated, but it is reasonable and justified by the grave crisis that we are suffering through. The Union of Students has also called for pupils across Spain to stay away from classrooms on three days this week (16, 17 and 18 September). Thousands of parents and students across the country have also joined protests against the unsafe reopening of educational centres, with many refusing to send their children to school. In the southern city of Granada, in Andalucia, parents of around half the pupils enrolled at the Tierno Galvan primary school refused to send in their children. Roughly 200 of the schools 400 children were absent, as parents protested the lack of safety protocols and sufficient staffing. Multiple other protests took place in Andalucia, with the majority of students at a school in Jaen staying away, according to 20minutos. Speaking to El Periodico, Angeles B., mother of two primary school children from Sevilla, denounced the unsafe reopening of schools in Andalucia, stating: Children have to learn and socialise, but what do we put first, health or education? We are in a pandemic, people are dying. I dont understand why the Andalucian government hasnt hired the teachers we need to have classes with fewer kids. Im not going to let them [the government] tell me that I am irresponsible for not sending my children to school. Many children in A Coruna, in the northern region of Galicia, were also kept home from school by their parents. Parents, teachers and children protested outside schools, carrying placards reading My classroom isnt safe, They need to protect us! and More ventilation, more security, safe education!, among other slogans. Similar demonstrations took place across the country. Lower Paxton Police staked out the entrance to an elementary school Thursday looking for seat belt and car seat violations. Officers cited eight parents as part of the operation at South Side Elementary, near Union Deposit Road and Pleasant Drive. It was the third year that Lower Paxton police partnered with PennDOT for enforcement aimed at keeping children safe and the second year they had conducted an operation looking for violators at the elementary school. The number of violations was lower this year, officials said, because only half of the students are attending on any given day because of COVID-19. One citation handed out Thursday was for driving with a suspended license, said Fritzi Schreffler, PennDOT spokeswoman. The womans license had been suspended in 2017, officials said. Another woman was cited for a car seat that was out of compliance. She later thanked officers for pointing out her error, Schreffler said. Even though she got a ticket she thanked us for what we were doing to make sure the children were all safe, Schreffler said. She came back and thanked the officer again because she did not know her child was not riding safely. Not all parents were pleased with the operation. Eric Veronikis, a former PennLive reporter, said his wife got a ticket after their two children, in 3rd and 4th grade, unbuckled while waiting in the car in the school line to drop off kids. The kids were preparing to put on their masks and backpacks to exit the vehicle, he said. The officer, however, simply saw two kids unbuckled and wrote Emily Veronikis a ticket with $87 in fines and costs. We just feel blindsided, Eric Veronikis said. Its already hard enough dropping your kids off at school. Were sitting there not even moving. Lower Paxton Public Safety Director Adam Kosheba responded to the criticism by saying the event was part of PennDOTs Buckle Up PA program, ahead of National Child Passenger Safety Week next week. The officers assigned to this detail have the necessary training and were acting within the scope of the law, Kosheba said. He said civilians can plead not guilty to tickets in a summary traffic hearing and make their case before a magisterial district judge. The officer who cited Veronikis' wife had to go with what he observed, Schreffler said. He cant just take their word for it that the children had just taken their seat belts off, she said. How was he to know? Thats the sort of thing that can be argued in front of the magistrate. Veronikis said he is considering appealing the ticket. After spending the morning at the school, the public safety operation moved down the street and officers pulled over additional vehicles near a farmers market, Schreffler said. There, another driver with a suspended license was cited. In all, nine drivers got warning or equipment violations. The value of these operations is much like a DUI checkpoint, Shreffler said. You can find other violations such as expired and suspended licenses. We see people we might not otherwise see to be able to check their car seats." PennDOT finances the special enforcement through a grant that pays the Lower Paxton Police Department for the officers' time. Lower Paxton is the only department in Dauphin County that participates, Schreffler said. A team of certified car seat technicians participate by staging near the enforcement area to inspect and correct any car seat issues, Schreffler said. The day was a success, Schreffler said, because they were able to fix numerous issues that could have resulted in serious injuries to a child if those vehicles were involved in a crash. READ MORE: Mother, son packed and waited for call to flee Oregon wildfire. Their bodies were found days later Bail slashed for 9 charged with arson, rioting after Lancaster police shooting Despite Dillan the bears happy ending, PETA pushes for criminal charges against Pa. sportsmens club that held him A married soldier who tried to persuade a female army nurse into helping him provide sperm samples has been demoted from captain to lieutenant. William Howieson, 29, had been working as the Australian liaison officer at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea in 2018 when he gave an unsigned doctor's note to a PNG nurse asking her to help him collect sperm in a bottle. The nurse refused and in a court martial hearing in Canberra on Tuesday, the former captain was found guilty of prejudicial conduct. The 29-year-old's actions were found to be a premeditated breach of trust and violated values of the army and he was subsequently demoted to a lesser rank. William Howieson, 29, has been demoted from an army captain to a lieutenant after he tried to trick a nurse into helping him provide sperm samples His wife, Bronte Millman - a vet from from Townsville - cried in court as the guilty verdict was delivered on Tuesday. Chief Judge Advocate Brigadier Michael Cowan told the hearing Howieson's behaviour had been a clear breach of trust, the ABC reported. 'There has been breach of trust in this case,' he told the panel. 'It's for you to decide the quality of breach of trust.' Witnesses had given evidence via video link during the hearing and the former captain faced a maximum of three months behind bars. Lieutenant Howieson's sentence will be reviewed by a military panel. He was also cleared of two other charges of indecency against the nurse. The 29-year-old had an otherwise perfect record while in the army and had served in Afghanistan. The Australian Defence Force said it 'does not tolerate unacceptable behaviour'. 'Army expects all soldiers and officers to act appropriately, safely and lawfully, and to display army's values and live up to their contract with Australia,' an ADF statement said. 'Individuals who fail to adhere to our expectations will be held accountable.' Noel McPartland was honoured as the first ever visitor to cross the threshold of the new 3m The Shed Distillery Visitor Experience last Thursday in Drumshanbo. The Shed Distillery team formed a guard of honour for Noel and his wife Margaret, and owner Pat Rigney presented Noel with an exclusive ceramic commemorative bottle of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin as a tribute to his fundamental role in making the experience a reality. It was a landmark day not only for The Shed, but also for the town of Drumshanbo with the opening of what Noel described as a game changer for the town. The Distillery and Visitor Experience is located on the site of the former Lairds Jam Factory which closed in 1998 resulting in the loss of 100 jobs. The building lay idle for a number of years during which former Lairds employee Noel united the community to fight back. They formed a community council and after many years of lobbying secured a lease on the old building and transformed it into a community enterprise The Food Hub. Noel and Margaret McPartland are welcomed to The Shed Visitor Experience by Pat and Denise Rigney and staff. Pictures: Brian Farrell A clearly emotional Noel recalled the early days of The Food Hub in Drumshanbo in 2003, working with Sean Nolan and the late Jim McPadden, the growth of the various enterprises and then the arrival of Pat Rigney and his vision for the future. We never realised how big a project it was going to be. He came here, he liked the area, it fitted into his scheme of things and when you look around you here this morning, when you look at the detail they've gone into in every aspect of the place, it's amazing. It is a huge benefit for Drumshanbo. I would describe it as a game changer for the town, he said. The magnificent new visitor experience features a majestic botanical glass house, an extensive visitor journey into the epicentre of the authentic distillery, two separate tasting bars as well as a bright and spacious cafe and an exclusive distillery gift shop. While the visitor centre was due to open last June, it was put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic which has had a devastating impact on overseas tourism. However, owner Pat Rigney has now opened against the odds. He had planned to attract 30,000 visitors to the area by next year, with over 80% expected to come from overseas. He said regardless of the current tourism climate, there was no question of delaying the opening. On paper it may look like the worst time to open, but delivering on our commitment to create jobs, especially now, was essential to our partnership with the community which is a cornerstone of the business. Pat and Denise Rigney with their daughter Roisin. This morning (Thursday) we were shown just how right it was to go ahead with todays opening - local businesses and residents arrived to cheer us on, bringing cards, flowers, chocolates. It was very emotional for the whole team. Community partnerships like this are rare and we would not be where we are today without everything the community has done . Pat paid tribute to the huge effort by the team at The Shed, by the people of Drumshanbo, by the local craftsmen, and designer Enda McKiernan in Carrick-on- Shannon. I'm very excited and I certainly hope it will bring a lot of foot fall to The Shed Distillery but also to Drumshanbo and to Leitrim in general, he said. He also recognised the very professional team of people he has working with him. It's all about the people. I'm just one guy. I have a vision, obviously, but it's about the people coming together and making something really spectacular here, he said. We started off with one employee, now we're in and around 40 and will be adding more jobs hopefully. These are very resourceful and hard working good people who created something really world class in Drumshanbo, he remarked. Pat said the primary reason he came to Drumshanbo was the people, the rural location and the unspoilt 'off Main Street' nature of the area. It was the people who attracted me here, how resourceful they were, how welcoming they were and together we built this. It's been a collaborative effort, he added. Pat thanked Leitrim County Council and all the local various associations who have helped them on the journey. This is a huge effort to get something like this put together, particularly during Covid. Finally, Pat recalled the first day he came to Drumshanbo in December 2013. It was a rainy day. I met Noel, Fergal, Enda McGloin, Joseph Gilhooly and others. Within a space of a couple of hours of touring, I felt I could work with these guys, they could see my vision and, to be honest, they're the reason we're here, he said. Noel took time to pay tribute to what he described as a fabulous voluntary community group with Enda McGloin as chairman, Joseph McManus treasurer, Bea Cullen, Paschal Mooney, Fergal McPartland, manager, Geraldine Heeran, the hard working secretary, and Noel himself as a voluntary director. Part of the overall development is the beautifully appointed Jackalope Cafe which is run by Siobhan Smyth and David Fitzgibbon who previously managed St George's Terrace restaurant in Carrick-on- Shannon. Siobhan was full of praise at the official opening and said they were delighted to be a part of such an exciting project. It's a beautiful setting and everything's done to such a high standard. It's going to be great for the local area, she said. The cafe has an all day offering, starting at 9am 6pm from Tuesday to Sunday. We are hoping to see lots of locals, you can come in through the shop and have a browse around or come straight into the cafe, we're not taking bookings, just turn up, Siobhan said. The cafe has 12 people working in it in addition to what is in The Shed. They are a lovely local crew. We're delighted to be able to get such lovely friendly staff so locally. Dave and myself were delighted to meet with Denise and Pat and get involved in the whole thing. It's such a beautiful project and hopefully with our food offering we'll be able to add to that, Siobhan said. The Visitor Experience Project team has been headed up by Joe Dolan, Failte Ireland Director and owner of The Bush Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon and Eva Kelly, of Kellys Resort Hotel in Rosslare, Co Wexford. Joe Dolan has described the new Visitor Experience as a vital economic and employment boost for Leitrim. It is a powerful psychological boost for the entire region, especially in the current climate and a wonderful enhancement to the tourist offering on Irelands Hidden Heartlands route. The experience is a model example of sustainable tourism, having been developed and managed in a sustainable manner Eva Kelly says the project has been an incredible journey. I am delighted to have been part of this incredible journey from the very beginning. Thank you to all the people of Drumshanbo and County Leitrim for helping make the Visitor Experience a reality. John Dillon, Director of The Shed Distillery and Managing Director of The Sheds Distribution Partners, Dalcassian Wines and Spirits paid tribute to the people of Drumshanbo and Co Leitrim. The enormous support from the local community and all of our trade customers since the very beginning has been fundamental to the success of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin and The Shed Distillery Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey. Meanwhile, William Lavelle, Head of IrishWhiskey360, which is the collective promotional initiative for Irish whiskey distillery visitor experiences, congratulated Pat and Denise Rigney and their colleagues on the opening of their new visitor experience. Today is a great day for all the team at The Shed Distillery and its a great day for Drumshanbo. I have no doubt that this new visitor experience will draw many new tourists to the north west region and contribute greatly to the rural economy of Co Leitrim. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused transformative change across industries. In the US banking industry, this has translated into a need for efficient and customer-centric digital platforms. Additionally, US banking industry players need to accommodate for remote work, new hygiene requirements, and the economic impact on small businesses and customers. Infiniti's custom market intelligence solutions enable companies to efficiently adapt to the new normal, appropriately respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and prepare for the post-COVID era while maintaining customer satisfaction and employee safety. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005637/en/ Custom Market Intelligence Solution for a US Banking Industry Client (Graphic: Business Wire) To leverage Infiniti's expertise in offering custom market intelligence solutions to identify and adapt to the implications of COVID-19 on the US banking industry, request a free proposal "Social distancing has changed the way people interact with physical space and has subsequently created an unprecedented crisis for the US banking industry. The longer the crisis exists, the more likely we are to see transformative and lasting changes in the industry," says a banking industry expert at Infiniti Research. Business Challenge: The client is a banking company based out of North America. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global banking industry, the client encountered operational constraints and business risks. The client was also struggling to mitigate health risks for employees, and their traditional operating models were not ensuring business continuity. The US banking industry client sought to implement a dynamic and flexible operating model, take initiatives to protect employee health, establish an interim operational model for branches, and develop a support model for remote employees. Therefore, they chose to partner with Infiniti Research and leverage our expertise in offering custom market intelligence solutions. Within the eight-week engagement, the client also sought to boost digital engagement and sales, rethink their portfolio strategy, address technology gaps, and rebuild demand forecasting and capacity models. Our Approach: Infiniti's market intelligence experts developed a comprehensive approach to assist the US banking industry client. The approach included the following: Analyzing the extent of the impact caused by the pandemic and assessing customer needs as well as implementing a dynamic and flexible operating model to ensure business continuity Monitoring the situation on a day-to-day basis to help establish an interim operational model for the client's branches, and analyzing key competitors to recommend enabling technology setup and infrastructure for remote work Conducting customer intelligence analysis to understand the needs and requirements of customers, and recommending allowing mortgage customers and small business to delay payments by 100 days Embedding financial tools to create opportunities for human interaction, and devising a customer-centric multichannel operational model Experimenting with radical redesigns of their operating models and rethinking the portfolio strategy for small businesses Business Outcome: With Infiniti's custom market intelligence solution, the client implemented a dynamic and flexible operating model, established an interim operational model for different branches, and developed a support model for remote employees. Additionally, the client was able to protect employees' and customers' health with reinforced hygiene protocols, dynamically modify branch hours of operation and closures while maintaining critical services for customers. The experts helped the US banking industry client identify third-party service providers to enable technology setup and infrastructure for remote work. The client launched a digital platform to help local community managers monitor the impact of COVID-19 in their geographies. Further, with a sound marketing strategy, the client enhanced their digital offerings and encouraged digital channels for banking needs. Additionally, by leveraging Infiniti's custom market intelligence solution, the US banking industry client: Increased limits on online transaction and simplified password resets Stabilized critical infrastructure and addressed technology gaps to offer seamless digital customer experiences. To find out how read the complete article Revamped the portfolio strategy for small business and encouraged relationship-based banking Speak to industry experts to learn how custom market intelligence solutions can help US banking industry players to adapt to the new normal of the COVID-19 pandemic and assist their customers in these challenging times. About Infiniti Research Established in 2003, Infiniti Research is a leading market intelligence company providing smart solutions to address your business challenges. Infiniti Research studies markets in more than 100 countries to help analyze competitive activity, see beyond market disruptions, and develop intelligent business strategies. To know more, visit: https://www.infinitiresearch.com/about-us View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005637/en/ Contacts: Infiniti Research Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager US: +1 844 778 0600 UK: +44 203 893 3400 https://www.infinitiresearch.com/contact-us House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during a press conference before the vote on the 'Delivering for America Act' to protect the postal system on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 22, 2020. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) Pelosi Calls for Prosecution of Rioters, Looters House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for the prosecution of looters and rioters in the wake of months of violence across the United States. We support peaceful demonstrations. We participate in them. They are part of the essence of our democracy. That does not include looting, starting fires, or rioting. They should be prosecuted. That is lawlessness, Pelosi said on the House floor on Thursday. Pelosis comment comes as polls continue to show significant decline in support for Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the calls to defund the police after months of riots, arson incidents, violence, and looting following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. About a month after Floyds death, Pelosi called on House Democrats to push a far-reaching police overhaul bill. The measure sought to change police procedures, and President Donald Trump said he would veto the bill. Meanwhile, Trump has attempted to cast himself as the law and order candidate while decrying the unrest and rioting in some cities, while blaming Democratic mayors of cities for allowing the violence to continue. Democrats like Pelosi and presidential nominee Joe Biden have tried, in recent days, to distance themselves from the unrest by saying they dont support riots. In the midst of the unrest, several city councils in Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, and other municipalities passed resolutions to look into dismantling their police forces or redirecting funds. Police unions across the country have decried the measures, while some publicly endorsed Trump for reelection. Trump has specifically pointed to Portlands mayor, Ted Wheeler, who he says has not done enough to stop continuous nights of looting and unrest in the city. Trump has called Wheeler a wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor and has said the city will never recover with a fool for a Mayor. More than 100 people have been arrested in Portland on federal charges related to the unrest in the last few months. The FBI has said it was also shifting the agencys resources to focus more heavily on violence and federal crimes committed during nearly three months of unrest during nightly racial injustice protests in the city that often end in vandalism, clashes with police, and dozens of arrests. Earlier this month, an Epoch Times National Poll conducted by Big Data Poll found that American voters overwhelmingly reject the defund the police movement, with 61 percent opposing the call and 24 percent supporting it. Meanwhile, The Epoch Times/Big Data poll found that support for Black Lives Matter is waning as a whole. About 42 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the movement and organization, while the poll also found that 41 percent found it unfavorable. Another 15 percent said they have no opinion of Black Lives Matter whatsoever, and 2 percent said they never heard of it. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Rocky Hill Police Department ROCKY HILL A shot was fired at a resident early Thursday morning when the person tried to confront a car burglar in their driveway, police said. As the suspect fled in an SUV, a gunshot was fired from the vehicle, police said. Hamiltons school boards were forced to cancel 17 bus routes on Thursday due to a chronic shortage of bus drivers. Notification went to families in the morning that 17 routes both to and from school operated by Caledonia Transportation didnt have a driver. The school board had warned families on Wednesday that the shortage may cause cancellations. The cancelled bus routes were listed on the Hamilton-Wentworth Student Transportation Services (HWSTS) website. The boards have said that additional funding and driver incentives have failed to attract drivers. Loading Despite measures implemented to date, including the ongoing driver incentive programs and unprecedented recruitment, we do not see this matter improving in the near future, the Catholic board wrote on Tuesday. The boards have struggled significantly to attract drivers as fears of COVID-19 spreading within the vehicles have dissuaded potential workers from getting behind the wheel. While all students are required to wear masks on buses and drivers are tasked with cleaning the vehicles three times a day, many buses are expected to be packed with students unable to maintain physical distance from their peers. Hamiltons boards announced last week that they need between 59 and 67 more drivers to take students to school and reduce serious delays among several transportation routes across the city. The boards typically experience a shortage of 20 to 30 drivers, but the numbers have increased significantly this year. In a matter of weeks, Google v. Oracle the "copyright case of the century" will take a crucial step toward resolution. This decade-long dispute will determine whether Google's unauthorized replication of more than 11,000 lines of Oracle's Java was illegal. When Apple's iPhone hit stores in 2007, Google needed to develop a similar concept to remain competitive. Java, Google thought, would serve as the basis for its own operating system. But rather than license the software outright, the company instead chose to steal the code and ask for forgiveness later. As demonstrated through the ongoing court case, Google discussed licensing Java in 2005 in emails to Sun Microsystems but then walked away from the negotiations. Google's leadership allegedly wrote, "If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language, or 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way." This appears to be indubitable proof that Google was aware that the code was copyrightable. This shouldn't come as a surprise. A top lawyer for Google once admitted that "Google's leadership doesn't care terribly much about precedent or law." The company seems to think that its high-priced lawyers and endless monetary resources can always rewrite the rules of the road to meet the company's financial interests. Google's strategy of ostensibly stealing intellectual property appears to rely on the plaintiff's inability to withstand the years of costly litigation and legal delay tactics that it brings against its challengers. This practice has been coined in the I.P. space as "efficient infringement." Similar claims have been made over the years from companies such as the speaker company Sonos, the lyric website Genius, and the review site Yelp!, all of which allege that Google has stolen their content, software, or other technologies. Unfortunately for Google, efficient infringement in the Google v. Oracle case was a nonstarter. Oracle is a much bigger plaintiff challenger than the other companies it has faced in years past, and it had no problem holding firm over the last ten years of Google's legal delay tactics. Now, after a decade, the case finds itself in the high court's hands. Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stated that Google's decision to move the code directly to another platform without any alterations wasn't "fair use" since it wasn't transformative and was used just for one company's financial gain. When reviewing the facts and matters of law in this case, it becomes abundantly clear that it made the right call. In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court should confirm the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' findings. It should not try to "correct" the software industry for Google, one of the most predatory companies in modern times. Deep down, even Google itself likely knows that the coding it lifted is copyrightable. The company has endless cash and appears to want to use it to carve out I.P. loopholes for itself. That should not be tolerated not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Haley Kennington is a professional investigative journalist and freelance writer. Say her name: City to pay $12M to Breonna Taylors family Months after the police killing of Breonna Taylor thrust her name to the forefront of a national reckoning on race, the city of Louisville agreed to pay the Black womans family $12 million and reform police practices as part of a settlement announced Tuesday. But Taylors mother and others who have taken up her cause said much more must be done to right the wrongs of racial injustice in America. Please continue to say her name, Taylors mother, Tamika Palmer, declared at an emotional news conference, evoking the call that has become a national refrain for those outraged by the shooting and police violence. ADVERTISEMENT Taylors death sparked months of protests in Louisville and calls nationwide for the officers to be criminally charged. The states attorney general, Daniel Cameron, is investigating police actions in the March 13 fatal shooting. I cannot begin to imagine Ms. Palmers pain, and I am deeply, deeply sorry for Breonnas death, said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer in announcing the terms of the lawsuit settlement. Standing nearby as the mayor spoke, Palmer said the police reforms were not enough. We must not lose focus on what the real job is, and with that being said, its time to move forward with the criminal charges, because she deserves that and much more, Palmer said. As significant as today is, its only the beginning of getting full justice for Breonna. The lawsuit, filed by Palmer in April, accused police of using flawed information when they obtained a no-knock warrant to enter the 26-year-old womans apartment. Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were roused from bed by police, and Walker said he fired once at the officers, thinking they were intruders. Investigators say police were returning fire when they shot Taylor several times. No drugs were found at her home. Dissatisfaction with the settlement extended to Injustice Square in downtown Louisville, where demonstrators have gathered daily for 113 days, demanding justice for Taylor. Some who listened to the announcement over a loudspeaker near a memorial for Taylor said the price for a life seemed low, the promised reforms too little and too late. Its just not enough, said Holly McGlawn, who noted how much Taylor might have made had she lived. She was young, she could have worked for another 40 or 50 years, she said. ADVERTISEMENT You cant put a price on a Black woman being able to sleep at night and know shes not going to get murdered, McGlawn said. Justice delayed is justice denied. There was a better way to handle this, agreed Shameka Parrish-Wright who has been part of the daily demonstrations where the city often faced peaceful protesters with force. Im hearing apologies now that should have happened early on. Palmer left the news conference with one of her attorneys, Ben Crump, and met with protesters at the nearby park. She surveyed the original art of her daughter, prayed and wiped away tears. She had just two words to say: Pressure applied, a saying her daughter often used as an emergency medical tech. Crump said the $12 million payout is the largest such settlement given out for a Black woman killed by police. The settlement, sets a precedent for Black people, he said. When (police) kill us we expect full justice. We expect justice for the civil rights that you took from this human being. And then we expect full justice from the criminal justice system. In the time since Taylors shooting, her death along with George Floyd and others has become a rallying cry for protesters seeking a reckoning on racial justice and police reform. High-profile celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and LeBron James have called for the officers to be charged in Taylors death. Palmers lawsuit accuses three Louisville police officers of blindly firing into Taylors apartment the night of the raid, striking Taylor several times. One of the officers, Jonathan Mattingly, went into the home after the door was broken down and was struck in the leg by the gunshot from Walker. The warrant was one of five issued in a wide-ranging investigation of a drug trafficking suspect who was a former boyfriend of Taylors. That man, Jamarcus Glover, was arrested at a different location about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away from Taylors apartment on the same evening. The settlement includes reforms on how warrants are handled by police, Mayor Fischer said. Other reforms seek to build stronger community connections by establishing a housing credit program to encourage officers to live in certain low-income areas in the city. Officers will also be encouraged to perform two paid hours of volunteer work every two weeks in the communities where they serve. The city will also track police use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints. The city has already taken some other reform measures, including passing a law named for Taylor that bans the use of the no-knock warrants. Police typically use them in drug cases over concern that evidence could be destroyed if they announce their arrival. Fischer fired former police chief Steve Conrad in June and last week named Yvette Gentry, a former deputy chief, as the new interim police chief. Gentry would be the first Black woman to lead the force of about 1,200 sworn officers. The department has also fired Brett Hankison, one of the three officers who fired shots at Taylors apartment that night. Hankison is appealing the dismissal. The largest settlement previously paid in a Louisville police misconduct case was $8.5 million in 2012, to a man who spent nine years in prison for a crime he did not commit, according to news reports. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Supreme Court will pronounce its judgement on Monday on a plea challenging the validity of the separate NLAT 2020 entrance test, conducted by the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (NLSIU). A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R. Subhash Reddy and M.R. Shah said: "Heard counsel for the parties. Judgement reserved. Counsel for parties are permitted to file their written notes by tomorrow (Friday). List for judgement on September 21." Former NLSIU Vice Chancellor R. Venkata Rao and Rakesh Kumar Agarwalla, the parent of a varsity student, in their response, filed through advocate Vipin Nair, said: "It is also important to submit at the outset that both the Respondent No 1/NLS University and Respondent No 2/Vice Chancellor have never, at any point of time ever, intimated either the student community or the consortium that there was indeed a parallel move to have its independent separate examination, apart from CLAT." Senior advocates Arvind Datar and Sajan Povayya represented the university and the Vice Chancellor, respectively. Datar contended before the bench that joining CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) did not mean that the university surrendered its autonomy. He insisted that the NLSIU has not exited CLAT, and will go back to it next year. "This year, we decided to go separately to avoid a zero year," he argued. The bench queried why the length of the exam was reduced to 45 minutes from 2 hours, and students were told about this merely 10 days before the exam. In its counter-affidavit, the university had said: "The academic year for the incoming batch of first-year students for the academic year 2020-21 will fall short of 285 days if the NLSIU does not complete admissions by September 18. Postponement of CLAT 2020 from September 7 to September 28 rendered completion of admissions to the NLSIU and commencement of term by September 18, impossible." The university contended that the implementation of NLAT 2020 is also permitted and in accordance with applicable law, and as per the NLSI Act, the Executive Council is the Chief Executive Body, and authorised the university to conduct its own admission process. On September 11, the Supreme Court gave the NLSIU the green signal to conduct the NLAT 2020, but not to announce the results till the pendency of the plea. For a long time, geoscientists have assumed that the Alps were formed when the Adriatic plate from the south collided with the Eurasian plate in the north. According to the textbooks, the Adriatic plate behaved like a bulldozer, thrusting rock material up in front of it into piles that formed the mountains. Supposedly, their weight subsequently pushed the underlying continental plate downwards, resulting in the formation of a sedimentary basin in the north adjacent to the mountains - the Swiss Molasse Plateau. Over time, while the mountains grew higher the basin floor sank deeper and deeper with the rest of the plate. A few years ago, however, new geophysical and geological data led ETH geophysicist Edi Kissling and Fritz Schlunegger, a sediment specialist from the University of Bern, to express doubts about this theory. In light of the new information, the researchers postulated an alternative mechanism for the formation of the Alps. Altitude of the Alps has barely changed Kissling and Schlunegger pointed out that the topography and altitude of the Alps have barely changed over the past 30 million years, and yet the trench at the site of the Swiss Plateau has continued to sink and the basin extended further north. This leads the researchers to believe that the formation of the Central Alps and the sinking of the trench are not connected as previously assumed. They argue that if the Alps and the trench indeed had formed from the impact of two plates pressing together, there would be clear indications that the Alps were steadily growing. That's because, based on the earlier understanding of how the Alps formed, the collision of the plates, the formation of the trench and the height of the mountain range are all linked. Furthermore, seismicity observed during the past 40 years within the Swiss Alps and their northern foreland clearly documents extension across the mountain ranges rather than the compression expected for the bulldozing Adria model. The behaviour of the Eurasian plate provides a possible new explanation. Since about 60 Ma ago, the former oceanic part of the Eurasian plate sinks beneath the continental Adriatic microplate in the south. By about 30 Ma ago, this process of subduction is so far advanced that all oceanic lithosphere has been consumed and the continental part of the Eurasian plate enters the subduction zone. This denotes the begin of the so-called continent-continent collision with the Adriatic microplate and the European upper, lighter crust separates from the heavier, underlying lithospheric mantle. Because it weighs less, the Earth's crust surges upwards, literally creating the Alps for the first time around 30 Ma ago. While this is happening, the lithospheric mantle sinks further into the Earth's mantle, thus pulling the adjacent part of the plate downwards. This theory is plausible because the Alps are mainly made up of gneiss and granite and their sedimentary cover rocks like limestone. These crustal rocks are significantly lighter than the Earth's mantle - into which the lower layer of the plate, the lithospheric mantle, plunges after the detachment of the two layers that form the continental plate. "In turn, this creates strong upward forces that lift the Alps out of the ground," Kissling explains. "It was these upward forces that caused the Alps to form, not the bulldozer effect as a result of two continental plates colliding," he says. New model confirms lift hypothesis To investigate the lift hypothesis, Luca Dal Zilio, former doctoral student in ETH geophysics professor Taras Gerya's group, has now teamed up with Kissling and other ETH researchers to develop a new model. Dal Zilio simulated the subduction zone under the Alps: the plate tectonic processes, which took place over millions of years, and the associated earthquakes. "The big challenge with this model was bridging the time scales. It takes into account lightning-fast shifts that manifest themselves in the form of earthquakes, as well as deformations of the crust and lithospheric mantle over thousands of years," says Dal Zilio, lead author of the study recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. According to Kissling, the model is an excellent way to simulate the uplifting processes that he and his colleague are postulating. "Our model is dynamic, which gives it a huge advantage," he says, explaining that previous models took a rather rigid or mechanical approach that did not take into account changes in plate behaviour. "All of our previous observations agree with this model," he says. The model is based on physical laws. For instance, the Eurasian plate would appear to subduct southwards. In contrast to the normal model of subduction, however, it doesn't actually move in this direction because the position of the continent remains stable. This forces the subducting lithosphere to retreat northwards, causing the Eurasian plate to exert a suction effect on the relatively small Adriatic plate. Kissling likens the action to a sinking ship. The resulting suction effect is very strong, he explains. Strong enough to draw in the smaller Adriatic microplate so that it collides with the crust of the Eurasian plate. "So, the mechanism that sets the plates in motion is not in fact a pushing effect but a pulling one," he says, concluding that the driving force behind it is simply the pull of gravity on the subducting plate. Rethinking seismicity In addition, the model simulates the occurrence of earthquakes, or seismicity, in the Central Alps, the Swiss Plateau and below the Po Valley. "Our model is the first earthquake simulator for the Swiss Central Alps," says Dal Zilio. The advantage of this earthquake simulator is that it covers a very long period of time, meaning that it can also simulate very strong earthquakes that occur extremely rarely. "Current seismic models are based on statistics," Dal Zilio says, "whereas our model uses geophysical laws and therefore also takes into account earthquakes that occur only once every few hundreds of years." Current earthquake statistics tend to underestimate such earthquakes. The new simulations therefore improve the assessment of earthquake risk in Switzerland. ### A terrorism suspect said to be on the run sparked ten-hour delays at the Port of Dover while police launched an urgent manhunt. All UK ports were put on high alert on Wednesday morning after a request from counter-terror chiefs for enhanced security checks. The manhunt was prompted by a terror suspect removing his ankle tag and disappearing, sources told The Sun. The suspect - who cannot be named for legal reasons - eventually handed himself into police and the emergency was stood down. But while officers scoured the Kent transport hub for the man, all vehicles in the Dover port area were checked by police, causing nine-mile tailbacks. The queues reportedly stretched back for nine miles / PA Multiple police vehicles were seen flocking to the Port of Dover on blue lights during the incident, which began around 7am. Social media users stuck in the logjam reported traffic chaos, with one tweeting: WTF is going on with traffic around #Dover? It is totally screwed. If this is a Police op at the port...then why wasn't traffic controlled beforehand? A20/A2 completely screwed & blocked by double lorries. Just taken 90 mins to drive 15 miles. The Port of Dover confirmed the police operation, stood down around midday, involved checks of vehicles and passengers at Kent ports. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Policing told the Evening Standard there were no arrests. He added: "We can confirm that a request was made on 15 September by Counter Terrorism Policing nationally for enhanced security checks to be carried out at UK ports. This was in relation to ongoing operational activity and this requirement has since been stood down. There were huge tailbacks as lorries ground to a halt / PA We would like to reassure the public that there is no threat to public safety in relation to this activity and thank all those affected for their cooperation and understanding. Kent Police said on Wednesday: "The policing operation at Kent ports has now concluded and border controls are returning to normality. "We are working with our partners to manage the traffic congestion and Operation Stack remains in place while the backlog of freight is cleared. Thank you for your patience. Narendra Modi and Donald Trump at the Howdy modi event in Houston last year. (AP) New Delhi: The government on Thursday said it did not incur any expenses for the 'Howdy-Modi' event in the US city of Houston in September last year and that it was organised by a not-for-profit group. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a thunderous reception when he, accompanied by US President Donald Trump, addressed a crowd of over 50,000 Indian-Americans at the event in a stadium in Houston on September 22, 2019. "A US-based not-for-profit organisation namely the Texas India Forum Inc. organised an event titled, Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures' in Houston on September 22, 2019," Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said in the Rajya Sabha. He was replying to a written question on the event. Specifically asked whether the government incurred any financial expenses for the event or funded its organisers, Muraleedharan said "no". He said the chairperson of the Texas India Forum Inc. was Jugal Malani, an Indian community member based in Texas. "Prime Minister, as part of his visit to the US, participated in the event at the invitation of the organisers and addressed a gathering of members of the Indian-American community and many of their elected representatives," the minister said. SPRINGFIELD - Police have charged a 37-year-old Spring Street man with shooting a man to death inside at his apartment on Saturday. Christian Velez was arrested Wednesday night in Chicopee after being on the run since the shooting. Police had obtained a warrant for his arrest earlier in the week and were looking for him, said police spokesman Ryan Walsh. Police found him inside a home on Stonia Drive in Chicopee. A firearm was also recovered. He is charged with murder, possession of a firearm with out a license and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling. Velez is accused of shooting Isaunder Perez-Gonzalez to death on Saturday at Velezs apartment on Spring Street, a few hundred feet from police headquarters on Pearl Street. Perez-Gonzalez, 26, is a resident of Springfield, according to the office of Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni. According to Walsh, Perez-Gonzalez had gone to Velezs apartment to talk with him. The two argued, and Velez is said to have drawn a weapon and shot Perez-Gonzalez. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The shooting is the citys 15th homicide of the year. There were 20 homicides in Springfield in 2019. Press Release September 17, 2020 Drilon urges COA to push through with its special audit of gov't anti-insurgency funds Citing the lack of transparency on the use of billions of pesos in the government's anti-insurgency program, Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon backed the Commission on Audit's (COA) recent statement that it is considering a special audit on the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Drilon said "the COA's timely intervention is welcome" in light of serious concerns over the disbursement of funds allotted to the NTF-ELCAC. "I support a special audit of the funds allotted to the NTF-ELCAC. Given the various kinds of corruption that we've unearthed in the Senate, a COA special audit of all the funds that went to the government's anti-insurgency program administered by the NTF-ELCAC is a welcome development," Drilon said. Drilon said "the COA should keep an eagle eye on these funds especially with the birth of a new program called Barangay Development Program." The minority chief had earlier said that the huge funds could be used for 2022 elections. Under the proposed P4.5-trillion 2021 national budget, over P19 billion is allotted to the NTF-ELCAC and of which, P16.4 billion will go to its Barangay Development Program. Through the program, the government plans to distribute P20 million to various barangays that have been cleared of communist rebels, which they can use to build farm-to-market road, school building, water and sanitation system, health stations, ,electrification, as well as for agricultural, livelihood and technical vocational trainings/projects; and assistance to indigent individual or families. Drilon, however, questioned the manner of disbursements, saying the task force is given too much discretion. Besides, Drilon stressed that the programs cited can be funded through implementing agencies, which is the common practice. "Why is the fund given directly to local government units this time? Are they capable of implementing a P10-million road program?" he said during the budget hearing. Drilon doubted the barangays' capacity to implement the projects, adding that the setup by which the projects will be implemented is too complicated as it creates unnecessary bureaucratic layers. Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado said that for barangays that are not capable of implementing the projects, the municipal or city government can handle the implementation. Drilon said it complicates the process, adding the barangays will be forced to enter into numerous agreements with implementing agencies. He said this kind of setup makes it hard to audit the funds and guard against abuses and corruption. "The money going from one hand to another, we can expect what happens next. This is exactly the kind of setup that allows corruption to thrive. We must avoid this in the budget if we really want to enhance transparency and accountability on the use of funds. Let the agencies handle the projects and let them be accountable for the funds," Drilon said. The COA cited possible difficulties it may face considering that the funds would come from the budget of the different agencies involved in the program. Drilon said these difficulties cited by COA should be addressed in the 20201 national budget. He stressed the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) should provide the names of over 820 barangays that stand to benefit from the program. Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka Lindsay has predicted positive growth in this years Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in spite of the outbreak of the new coronavirus. He based his prediction on the fact that the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) has partnered with the Mastercard Foundation to support people in the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) with a loan package of Ghc90 million Cedis under Nkosuo program. Delivering the keynote address on behalf his boss, Mr. Alan Kyeremateng, Hon Ahomka Lindsay said that the country is enjoying Father Christmas in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as the 'Nkosuo' program will help people in the MSMEs who suffered due to the outbreak to recover and to build a resilient business to sustain the economy. He admitted that the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises undoubtedly have been the backbone of the countrys economy as they have employed 80 percent of Ghanaians and contribute 70 percent of the GDP growth of the economy. He added that the Akufo-Addo government enjoined to find a solution to the challenge brought to the MSMEs as a result of the pandemic as it has destabilized the businesses that strengthen the economy. It is clear that we must do everything we can to support this group because if we dont, it is clear what the impact will be on the economy . . . Ghana will still register a positive GDP growth this year . . . the 'Nkosuo' partnership with Mastercard Foundation is helping us to achieve that, he predicted. NBSSI in partnership with Mastercard Foundation is set to introduce the COVID-19 recovery and resilience program for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country; thus, the program seeks to support them at a time such as this outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic. The program is designed for all micro, small and medium enterprises in the formal and informal sectors, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to apply for help. Again, the program is for the micro, small and medium enterprises in the growth sector that require additional capital to expand their business to meet growing demands for goods and services that support the fight against COVID-19. The businesses that are not eligible to apply for the recovery and resilience program are alcohol, tobacco, and drug-related businesses, weapons manufacture and war-related activities, gambling/betting, and sex-related industries. The program is set to target sectors such as Agri and Agro-businesses, water and sanitation, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, garment and PPE, Creative Industry, Commerce and Trade, Manufacturing, tourism and hospitality, technology, education, services, food, and beverages. Hon. Ahomka Lindsay, however, encouraged Ghanaians especially the women in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to take advantage of the opportunity to maximize their businesses. He added that the Akufo-Addo government has MSMEs at heart and willing to support them to thrive. 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 Jigukumar Sorthi plunged a kitchen knife into Bhavini Pravin's chest, knee and back during a revenge attack in her home on March 2 A vengeful thug who stabbed his fiancee to death in front of her mother while she cried out 'Mummy' has been jailed for life after he was caught on CCTV fleeing the scene. Jigukumar Sorthi, 23, launched the revenge attack after his estranged partner Bhavini Pravin, 21, refused their arranged marriage. He visited her home on Moores Road in Leicester and plunged a kitchen knife into her chest, knee and back the day after she called off the ceremony on March 2. He will have to spend a minimum of 28 years in prison. In an emotional statement read out in court by Ms Pravin's father, Pravin Babu, he said: 'My sons will never forget the horror they faced that day. 'I will always regret not being there to prevent what happened and my wife will never forget our daughter's final word to her as she took her last breath, ''Mummy''.' Mr Babu had previously revealed that his daughter's first word as a child was also 'Mummy'. He went on to call his daughter his Lakshmi - the Hindu goddess who leads someone to their goals. Following the case, Bhavini's father Pravin Babu released a statement on behalf of their devastated family and told how their lives had been 'shattered beyond repair' Sorthi was then caught on CCTV running away from the scene on foot following the murder after dropping the knife on the street outside Hindus worship Lakshmi during the Diwali festival which spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil and hope over despair. A court heard Ms Pravin had been concerned by her partner's drinking and the type of people he had been mixing with when she got cold feet about the wedding. Once he was inside the home they talked for a few minutes before Sorthi viciously stabbed Ms Pravin four times as her mother begged him to kill her instead. She was stabbed once in the chest and once in the knee as she curled up into a ball to protect herself before being knifed twice in the back. She was pronounced dead on her living room floor despite desperate attempts by paramedics to save her. Sorthi was then caught on CCTV running away from the scene on foot following the murder after dropping the knife on the street outside. The factory worker later turned up at a police station where he confessed to the attack and admitted his 'life had been ruined.' Sorthi, who lived in Leicester after moving to the UK from India, denied murder and claimed diminished responsibility as a result of loss of control. A jury of seven women and five men found him guilty of murder following a two week trial at Leicester Crown Court. Sorthi was jailed for life to serve a minimum of 28 years at the same court on Wednesday. Following the case, Ms Pravin's father, Pravin Babu, released a statement on behalf of their devastated family and told how their lives had been 'shattered beyond repair'. He said: 'Our daughter was only 21 years old when she was murdered. 'She was a good daughter. She attended college and later worked alongside me supporting the family - keeping a roof over our heads and food on our table. 'When our Bhavini was born, we felt that all of our prayers had been answered. She was the 'Laxmi' (Goddess) of our family. CCTV footage of convicted murderer Sorthi running away from Bhavini's home after the killing 'Growing up she gave us so much joy and purpose. She was our inspiration to better ourselves and to build a future. 'Soon after, our two sons, Krutesh and Yagnesh, were born. Even from a young age, Bhavini doted on her little brothers. 'Yagnesh looked up to his older sister and lovingly called her 'Tahndi' (calm). 'We decided to move to England so that we could give our children a better future. 'Bhavini and I worked on the same production line for four years. We would come and go from work together. We would laugh and joke as she jogged along and I rode my bicycle. 'She would accompany my wife everywhere. People often commented that they looked like sisters. 'They would get ready together, share clothes and were each other's best friend. Her first word was 'Mummy'. 'Bhavini was a devout Hindu who took her faith very seriously. She led a peaceful, selfless life. She had a naturally loving, gentle and caring nature. 'She loved the many colourful Hindu festivals - she was always the life and soul of the party. Sorthi was then caught on CCTV running away from the scene on foot following the murder after dropping the knife on the street outside 'As parents our aspirations were that our daughter would get a good education, pursue her childhood career choice of nursing, marry the man of her dreams, have a family and live happily ever after. 'When Jigu became engaged to our daughter, we trusted him to cherish, love and look after her forever. She was so precious to us. 'We showed Jigu nothing but love and acceptance. We brought him to England to give him a better life. We supported him, housed him. 'And how did Jigu return our kindness - he repaid us by killing our beloved Bhavini. 'Our faith tells us that it is God's wish that we are only put on earth to serve a purpose. 'Bhavini must have served her purpose. She brought us so much joy for the short time that we were blessed with having her in our lives but at 21 she was still finding her feet and making her way in life. 'Our lives have been shattered beyond repair. Only our faith and belief is keeping us going. 'My sons will never forget the horror they faced that day. I will always regret not being there to prevent what happened and my wife will never forget our daughter's final word to her as she took her last breath, ''Mummy''. Ben Duncan, a Green councillor in Brighton, has apologised, two days after the event, for tweeting Armed Forces Day has certainly brought the hired killers onto the streets of Brighton today. Hard to explain to my son! His apology was directed at those who have lost loved ones serving in forces, who might think his comment insensitive. It was not apologising for the blanket insult to everyone who has ever worn military uniform. Councillor Duncan has form. Two years ago, he apologised unreservedly for a light-hearted, ironic tweet in which he declared that I only smoke weed when Im murdering, raping and looting". That was just after he had gone on record appearing to advocate that Brighton could boost its tourist trade by opening cannabis cafes. And a year ago, he went public on the rift in the Green Party in its Brighton stronghold by accusing Jason Kitcat, the nations first Green council leader, of bullying and lying to colleagues and betraying the electorate. Councillor Kitcat and his wife have since announced that they are quitting Brighton and Hove council at the next election, for family reasons. The Greens are supposed to be different from other political parties. In Brighton, they are indulging in vicious infighting, while he who has the biggest mouth claims the most attention. How is that different? Bercow exhausts his wit Compare and contrast May I just say to the Prime Ministers Parliamentary Private Secretary that his role is to nod his head in the appropriate places, and to fetch and carry notes? No noise is required. That was the Speaker, John Bercow, ticking off David Camerons PPS, Gavin Williamson, for barracking Ed Miliband during PMQs on 30 October last year. Gavin Williamson, barracking Ed Miliband again, was ticked off again: The role of the Prime Ministers PPS is to fetch and carry notes and nod and shake his head in the right places. The role of the Speaker, apparently, is to recycle old witticisms. Chocolate slip-up averted In one of Parliaments cafes, I found myself next to the Leader of the Commons, Andrew Lansley tipped to be the UKs next European Commissioner. I hear Brussels is the place to buy good chocolate, I said the idea being that he would let slip whether he is bound for Brussels or not. He did a double take, coloured up, remarked, I prefer Cadburys, and hurried off. Defence minister Rajnath Singh will read out a statement on the India-China border clash in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. At 12pm, Singh will make a statement on Developments on our borders in Ladakh. Even as a full-fledged discussion over the statement has been ruled out, Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, will decide the future course of action after listening to Singh. In a meeting between representatives of the government and Opposition parties on Wednesday, the Centre had agreed to a debate in Parliament on four key Opposition-sponsored topicsGST, economy and jobs, national education policy and the draft environment impact assessment. Also Read: Former PM Manmohan Singh, other MPs seek Rajya Sabha leave on health grounds On Tuesday, Singh told the Lok Sabha that India is committed to a peaceful resolution to the border stand-off with China, and India and China have not arrived at a mutually acceptable solution until now. He said Indian forces are determined to protect the countrys security and sovereignty and inflicted heavy casualties on Chinese forces when they clashed with them in Ladakhs Galwan Valley on June 15. The defence minister said the violent conduct by the Chinese along the LAC has violated all bilateral agreements, including those signed in 1993 and 1996. China is not honouring the customary alignment of the boundary with India. The alignment has not only been defined by treaties but has been maintained historically. Also Read: Covid-19: Govt faces House heat on lockdown, migrants, cases The government and the Opposition, however, remain at loggerheads over the three farm ordinances and the banking regulation bill. The differences might lead to major protests in the Lok Sabha where two of the three ordinances are slated to be replaced by bills on Thursday. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 are listed for passage on Thursday. While many experts have hailed the new laws, Opposition parties and farmer organisations have dubbed them as beneficial only to corporate houses. The Lok Sabha will also take up the appropriation bills for the first supplementary budget and The Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Bill, 2020 will be introduced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. In the Rajya Sabha, The Salaries and Allowances of Ministers (Amendment) Bill, 2020, The Homoeopathy Central Council (Amendment) Bill, 2020 and The Indian Medicine Central Council (Amendment) Bill, 2020 are slated for passage. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Consolidated Edison, Inc. ("Con Edison") (NYSE:ED) today announced that its Board of Directors has elected Tim Cawley as Con Edison's president and chief executive officer, effective January 1, 2021. Cawley will also serve as chief executive officer of Con Edison's principal subsidiary, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. After 40 years of service, John McAvoy has decided to retire as president and chief executive officer at the end of the year. He will remain the chairman of the board. McAvoy, who is 60, joined the company in 1980 and has served as president and chief executive officer since 2014. "John has been a remarkable leader during incredibly transformative times in the energy industry. John is a national leader in the clean energy and renewable space. He is one of the most effective CEOs I have ever had the pleasure of working with," said Mike Ranger, lead director of the Board. "The Board is truly grateful that John has decided to continue to serve as chairman. We are also excited that his focus in succession planning has allowed us to appoint new leadership from within the company." "Tim Cawley is an accomplished leader with extensive experience in the energy industry. I have had the pleasure of working with Tim for many years and know he is the right person to lead the company. He understands the needs of our customers, our employees and all of our stakeholders," McAvoy said. "Tim is an innovator in the clean energy and renewable space and will ably guide the company into the future." Cawley, 55, was appointed president of Consolidated Edison Company of New York in 2018. Prior to this position, he served as president and chief executive officer of Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. for 4 years. Since joining the company in 1987, Cawley served as senior vice president of Central Operations with responsibilities for steam and electric generation, transmission and substation operations and construction activities. He also held leadership positions in Electric Operations. Cawley holds an MBA from New York University and a BS in electrical engineering from Union College. Tim's accomplishments are substantial and his strategic thinking is visionary. He is respected by all who know him. Matt Ketschke, currently senior vice president of Customer Energy Solutions, will be promoted to president of Consolidated Edison of New York, effective January 1, 2021. He is a recognized industry leader in areas such as energy efficiency, smart meters, electric vehicles and battery storage. His work has positioned Con Edison in the forefront of the future energy industry. Ketschke, 48, joined the company in 1995 as a management intern. He has held officer positions in Electric Operations and Distributed Resource Integration as well as leadership positions in Electric Construction and System and in Human Resources. He was also the director of the Learning Center. Ketschke holds a BS in mechanical engineering and an MS in management from Stevens Institute of Technology, and completed an Executive MBA at Columbia University. He is a Rockefeller Fellow. Consolidated Edison, Inc. is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy-delivery companies, with approximately $13 billion in annual revenues and $59 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through the following subsidiaries: Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (CECONY), a regulated utility providing electric, gas and steam service in New York City and Westchester County, New York; Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R), a regulated utility serving customers in a 1,300-square-mile-area in southeastern New York State and northern New Jersey; Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, Inc., which through its subsidiaries develops, owns and operates renewable and energy infrastructure projects and provides energy-related products and services to wholesale and retail customers; and Con Edison Transmission, Inc., which through its subsidiaries invests in electric and natural gas transmission projects. SOURCE Consolidated Edison, Inc. Related Links https://www.coned.com/ President Trump questioned the plans of Chinese tech firm ByteDance to keep most of its stake in the TikTok deal on its U.S. operations. Trump said Wednesday that he was "not going to be happy" if the TikTok deal continued to let the social media app be majority-owned by ByteDance, said a CNN report. The TikTok deal between ByteDance and Oracle is under evaluation from the U.S. government. It is designed to resolve Trump's national security concerns about TikTok. "Conceptually, I can tell you that I don't like that," Trump said in a news conference. During the conference, he was asked about the reported minority share that Oracle will hold on TikTok, reported The Guardian. He said that he was not prepared to "sign off on anything" that is related to the deal. "They're going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning, and I'll let you know," he said. Trump to Have Briefing on TikTok Deal Trump said he has only seen media reports about the Oracle-ByteDance deal. He is still expecting a briefing about it on Thursday. It proposed for Oracle to become a "trusted technology provider" for TikTok's American operations. It also proposed creating a global headquarters in the U.S., with Oracle as its local partner, said a Politico report. The ownership structure between Oracle and TikTok is not yet clear. But some media outlets have reported that ByteDance holds a majority stake in the company. Trump did not like the idea of Chinese firm ByteDance to keep itself in control of most of TikTok's operations. Trump said ownership of a U.S. company has to be "100% as far as national security is concerned, saying he is yet to see the deal. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. reviewed the proposal on a Tuesday meeting. They are slated to make a recommendation to Trump this week. "They're giving me studies on the deal," Trump said. Heat Between Trump and TikTok The president issued an executive order last month that will ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. He argued that TikTok could funnel data from its 100 million American users to the Chinese government. The company has repeatedly denied doing so. But he issued a second executive order that let the company find a U.S. buyer. The negotiations involved a slew of companies interested in getting the said highly popular app. Its most influential and biggest bidder was Microsoft, whose offer was declined after is overwhelming lead. Getting Money from Deals Trump said before that he wants the Treasury Department to collect money on any deal. He argued that his executive orders made the sale possible, so the government had to be compensated. But on Thursday, he was shocked to find out that lawyers did not find such payments appropriate. "Amazingly, I find that you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to accept money," Trump said. Six Republican senators urged the administration to reject the TikTok deal. They said the president could block the proposal as long as ties are remaining to the Chinese owner ByteDance. Check these out! TikTok, Oracle Reach Initial Technical Partnership Deal TikTok to Sue US Government Over Trump's Ban on App TikTok CEO Quits as Company Faces Threat of Ban in US - Pretty was and is still loved by many people who were hit hard by the news of her sudden demise - A trip across the late actress' social media pages are proof she was a people's person who would mingle with others freely - Before her untimely demise, Pretty had played roles in various Kenyan productions such as Aziza, Maza, Moyo and Kijakazi among others PAY ATTENTION: Kenyans were on Tuesday, September 15, morning sent into a somber mood following reports that talented actress Pretty Mutave was no more. As earlier reported by TUKO.co.ke, the Aziza actress breathed her last on her way to the Coast General Hospital. READ ALSO: Jeff Koinange thrills Rwandans by anchoring news in country's national broadcaster Pretty Mutave featured in many Kenyan productions. Photo: UGC Source: UGC READ ALSO: Promoter Mtetezi begs Uhuru to reopen clubs, says gengetone artistes are languishing in poverty 1. News of her demise was first shared by Lulu Hassan through her official social media pages on Tuesday morning. 2. According to Pretty's family, the talented thespian has been ailing since March this year. 3. Before her untimely demise, Pretty had played roles in various Kenyan productions such as Aziza, Maza, Moyo, Kijakazi among others. Her death shook the entire country leaving most of her fans devastated and in darkness with many mourning her on end. 5. From celebrities, to common wananchi, social media was filled with people who expressed their grief following news the beautiful actress was dead. READ ALSO: Serge Aurier: Brother of Spurs star Christopher shot dead in France 6. Many people honoured her memory by remembering her roles in various TV programmes which include Moyo (Waridi), Aziza (Dee), Maza ( Zari), Arosto (Zelda) , Udhalimu ( Ashina) and Kijakazi (Lena). 7. The late actress was remembered for her skills while on screen. 8. TUKO.co.ke understands the actress was not only talented but also a sight to behold, thanks to her striking beauty. READ ALSO: Pretty Mutave, muigizaji maarufu wa kipindi cha Maza na Aziza aaga dunia 9. Pretty's light complexion made her quite exceptional and she stood out from the rest. 10. Going through her social media pages and it's evidence Pretty was a lively soul who was always happy. 11. Pretty's fashion sense was also out of this world judging by the outfits she rocked. 12. Photos of her on social media are perfect proof she was a people's person as she could be seen hanging out with different personalities. 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. My children are not a curse - Judy Kemuma | Tuko Talks | Tuko TV Source: TUKO.co.ke A group of nonprofit legal advocacy groups and a nurse alleged this week that a private prison in Georgia has been sending the detained migrants housed there by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to get coerced or unwanted hysterectomies or other gynecological procedures ending in sterilization. The complaints relied mostly on second-hand stories, but since its release Monday, lawyers representing at least 17 women have come forward with stories about forced hysterectomies or other unwanted medical procedures at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, according to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). One of them, Pauline Binam, was nearly deported on Wednesday. She and another woman who says she was sterilized without consent spoke with MSNBC's Chris Hayes for his Wednesday night broadcast. Binam, 30, was on the tarmac at Chicago O'Hare on a flight for Cameroon, a country she hasn't lived in since moving to the U.S. at age 2, when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) intervened. ICE confirmed to NPR that Binam is still in the U.S. but said a paperwork issue, not congressional action, kept her from being deported. Lee told Hayes she's relieved Binam is still available to testify before Congress but concerned that other potential witnesses have already been deported, hampering an investigation. "It felt like ICE was trying to rush through her deportation," Jayapal told NPR. "I can't say that for certain, but all of this is extremely troubling." More than 170 members of Congress have asked for an expedited investigation by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general. "This feels particularly egregious because it is obviously invasive, reproductive surgery," Jayapal said. "And so for every woman in particular across America, this sends chills up our spine." Dr. Mahendra Amin, the offsite gynecologist alleged to have performed the unwanted procedures, denied wrongdoing through a lawyer. ICE said "a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed" without informed consent on a detainee. Lawyers for migrants say they have been complaining about medical treatment at Irwin County Detention Center for years. "Detention itself takes so much away from a person's life," Binam's lawyer, Van Huynh, told NPR. "And then for her to have gone through this experience while she was in immigration detention just robs her of so much more than her time." More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment A Superior Court judge concluded Wednesday that Gov. Ned Lamonts executive orders did not violate the constitutional rights of the owners of a small neighborhood bar in Milford that was forced to close in March. Kristine Casey of Caseys Irish Pub sued the state in June claiming the decisions the governor was making were unconstitutional because they forced her to temporarily close the pub, which has three employees and a maximum capacity for 59 people. The pub is not a tourist attraction, but a neighborhood bar frequented by a small nucleus of regular customers, the original complaint states. An estimated 10 percent of the pubs business is food and 90 percent is beer and other alcohol. In the lawsuit, Casey argued that it was not possible to provide outdoor drinking and dining because of the physical location of the pub. The pub is at the end of a strip of stores, and right outside the door of the pub is a sidewalk abutting a parking lot where there are 3 or 4 striped parking spaces. Outdoor service is not a viable option physically because the tables would completely block the sidewalk and there would be no protection from cars approaching to park, and fiscally because not enough customers could be served, the complaint states. While it may be difficult to operate the business under current guidelines, the court didnt believe the state violated the rights of the pub owners. In her decision, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis concluded that the governor had the authority to issue executive orders to protect the public health. The state admitted the pub owners were suffering irreparable harm and that they lack an adequate remedy at law. But the attorney general argued that public health was more important. Our constitution is unambiguous Attorney General William Tong said. The governor has broad authority after the declaration of public health and civil preparedness emergencies to take affirmative steps to protect public health and to save lives. The governors orders have been lawful and justified, and they have saved lives. These measures have not been without sacrifice, but nothing can be more important right now than keeping people safe. Attorneys for Caseys Pub argued that the executive orders are unconstitutional because they give the governor power to legislate that he otherwise wouldnt have under the state constitution. But Bellis concluded that the General Assembly created a special committee with the ability to disapprove of the governors declarations and that committee of 10 voted not to overrule the extension of Lamonts emergency powers. In making this decision, the court feels great sympathy for the economic plight of the plaintiffs and other similarly situated individuals, Bellis wrote. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense disruptions not only to our public health system, but also to the states economy as a whole. Nevertheless, in our constitutional system of governance, it is up to the legislatures, not courts, to decide on the wisdom and utility of legislation ... Courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws. Contacted after business hours, the attorney for the pub was not immediately available for comment so it was unclear if the pub will appeal the decision. Clutter: How space junk has formed a cloud of dangerous debris around the Earth A Belfast-based specialist camera company is to receive part of a 1m grant from the Government to help track tiny pieces of space junk. An estimated 900,000 pieces of debris larger than 1cm are currently orbiting the Earth, including dead satellites and fragments left over from previous space missions. Space junk not only poses a risk to the International Space Station and spacecraft launches, it is also a potential problem for the satellites that provide everything from GPS to weather data on the ground. The aim is to develop new sensor technology and artificial intelligence to monitor these hazardous objects. Graham Turnock, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "People probably do not realise just how cluttered space is. "You would never let a car drive down a motorway full of broken glass and wreckages, and yet this is what satellites and the space station have to navigate every day in their orbital lanes. "In this new age of space megaconstellations the UK has an unmissable opportunity to lead the way in monitoring and tackling this space junk. "This funding will help us grasp this opportunity and in doing so create sought-after expertise and new high-skill jobs across the country." The projects announced by the UK Space Agency include Lift Me Off, which will develop and test machine learning algorithms to distinguish between functioning satellites and space junk; and Fujitsu, which is combining machine learning and quantum-inspired processing to improve mission planning for debris removal. Deimos and Northern Space and Security will develop new optical sensors to track space objects from the UK, while Belfast's Andor Technology will keep tabs on smaller sized debris. Meanwhile, D-Orbit UK will use a space-based sensor to capture images of the debris, and new satellite laser ranging technologies will be researched by Lumi Space to precisely track smaller objects. Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: "Millions of pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth present a significant threat to UK satellite systems which provide the vital services that we all take for granted - from mobile communications to weather forecasting. "By developing new AI and sensor technology, the seven pioneering space projects we are backing today will significantly strengthen the UK's capabilities to monitor these hazardous space objects, helping to create new jobs and protect the services we rely on in our everyday lives." Andor Technology is a global leader in the development and manufacturing of high-performance scientific cameras, spectographs, microscopy systems and image analysis software for academic, industrial and government applications. It is among the world's most innovative companies in the photonics industry and boasts over 70 unique product solutions, 10,000 customers in 55 countries, and 15 offices worldwide including in China, Japan and the USA. In the past year Andor's Balor sCMOS cameras were used to capture the highest resolution images ever captured of the sun. The company has supplied cameras and laser systems for coronavirus research, as well as Covid-19 diagnostic equipment and vaccine development. As cases drop, president announces easing of restrictions and calls on country to get to work rebuilding the economy. Johannesburg, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to roll up our sleeves to help rebuild the countrys faltering economy as he announced the rolling back of most COVID-19 restrictions. The easing, which will begin at midnight on Sunday, will see larger social gatherings permitted, extended hours for the sale of alcohol, a return from next month to international travel under strict conditions as well as the full reopening of key industries such as construction and manufacturing. Government directives to wear face masks in public and observe physical distancing remain in place along with a national curfew albeit only for four hours from midnight until 4am. In a televised address to the nation on Wednesday evening, Ramaphosa said the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been defeated and it is now time to revive economic activity. Our economy and our society have suffered great devastation. We have endured a fierce and destructive storm, he added, noting that the number of new infections had fallen from an average of 12,000 per day in July to fewer than 2,000. GDP shock The government in late March began enforcing one of the worlds strictest lockdowns aimed at stemming the spread of coronavirus. All sectors of the economy deemed inessential were shut down as part of a series of drastic measures under a five-level risk system. Already in a recession before the pandemic struck, official statistics last week showed the economy had shrunk at an annualised rate of 51 percent during the second quarter of 2020 the worst quarterly collapse on record. If the second-quarter results are not annualised, the countrys gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 16.4 percent. Among the financial sectors hit the hardest were construction, manufacturing and mining, with each shrinking by 76.6 percent, 74.9 percent and 73.1 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, personal services including hospitality dropped by 32.5 percent. Despite attempts in recent months to gradually reopen the economy while managing COVID-19 infection rates, the sharp deterioriation in South Africas fiscal position has fuelled long-standing concerns over high unemployment and poverty in the worlds most unequal society. I have an education a mechanics qualification. But here I am, trying to sell cigarettes illegally to survive, Brian Mgidi told Al Jazeera from a desolate street corner in Melville, a trendy Johannesburg suburb usually bustling with restaurants and cafes. With more than 650,000 coronavirus infections and 15,000 related deaths, South Africa is the worst-affected country on the continent. Just as we have acted together to defeat this virus, we must roll up our sleeves and get to work rebuilding our economy. We have a mammoth task ahead of us, Ramaphosa said in his speech. The president said comprehensive details of efforts to revive the economy will be unveiled in coming weeks after negotiations between the government and South Africas labour and business sectors. What we need is action In a statement last week, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the magnitude of the GDP contraction underscores the need for fiscal and economic reforms to raise confidence and boost growth. But critics say the promises of action come far too late and ring hollow as the governments initial $30bn coronavirus stimulus largely fell flat after the countrys banks were hesitant to grant government-guaranteed loans to businesses on the brink of collapse as a result of the pandemic. At the same time, funds designated for fighting the virus were reportedly swindled through corruption. Even before this crisis, the economy was in a mess and with the government simply talking they are only making things worse, Iraj Abedian, an economist at Pan-African Investment and Research Services, told Al Jazeera. Analysts believe fostering competitiveness and curbing runaway public debt expected to rise above 80 percent of GDP this year is key to turning around South Africas fortunes. Over the past decade, the countrys fiscal position has been analysed to death and what we need now is action nothing more and nothing less. Politicians and businesspeople linked to the governing African National Congress have been implicated in fraud over the supply of personal protective equipment to the government. Ramaphosa previously promised swift action against anyone accused of coronavirus-related corruption but to date, no arrests have been made. If we are to experience a turnaround, the private sector will need to provide massive capital investment. That is simply not going to happen with uncertainty and corruption, Abedian added. The results of years of government inaction have been hastened by the economic downturn brought by the coronavirus pandemic and experts warn of a potentially bleak outlook. The possibility of social unrest is now a real and present danger people are desperate, Isaah Mhlanga, Chief Economist at Alexander Forbes told Al Jazeera. South Africa does not want to even contemplate the economic devastation that awaits should drastic and rapid action not be taken soon. Much of the touted reforms hinge on changes to the countrys moribund energy sector. In spite of muted economic activity, state power utility Eskom has been forced to implement rolling blackouts to prevent a complete collapse of an overstretched and under-maintained national electricity grid. Eskom desperately need revenue from sales that they simply cant generate, energy analyst Ted Blom told Al Jazeera. COVID-19 could have presented an opportunity to undertake critical repair work to Eskoms ageing fleet. But both staff and suppliers refused to work or were forced to shut down during the lockdown. If this downturn persists, it will not only be catastrophic for South Africa but the entire southern African region which depends on the country for two-thirds of its GDP. Many expatriates working in the country have fallen on hard times, losing their jobs and being unable to send remittances to starving family members or even return home due to coronavirus-related travel curbs. I was laid off in March as a result of the pandemic. There is no money left now for my family in Harare and we are struggling here, Zimbabwean expat Mandipha Nleya, who lost her job as a kindergarten teacher, told Al Jazeera. I just had to make the most painful decision I dont wish on any parent: To decide which one of my children would continue their schooling as I can no longer afford both. Construction contractor Brian Simon said the economic malaise has created deep uncertainty but the reopening of the economy was a glimmer of hope. You cant give up, said Simon, who is now scrambling to complete work he began at the start of 2020. South Africans never have, so there is no use in starting to now. Kerala high education minister K T Jaleel is being questioned on Thursday in connection with the sensational Kerala gold smuggling case, a week after the enforcement directorate (ED) grilled him amid mounting pressure to sack him from the state cabinet. The minister reached the NIA office in Kochi at 6 am in a private car for questioning. Reports suggest that a high-level team of the ED and the directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI) are also camping in the port city. Many opposition activists were injured in police action in the last five days during protests to oppose Jaleels continuance in the Pinarayi Vijayan cabinet after revelations of his alleged ties with one of the prime suspects in the case. The issue also figured in parliament on Wednesday. Earlier the ED had questioned CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnans son Bineesh Kodiyeri in connection with the case. Trouble began for Jaleel after phone call records of Swapna Suresh-- one of the main accused in the gold smuggling case-- showed that Jaleel had called her several times. The minister defended the calls saying he contacted Suresh in connection with Ramadan kits offered by the UAE consulate since she was an employee at the consulate. This clarification has led to further trouble for the minister, who is not supposed to accept any funds or freebies from any foreign entity or country without the consent of the ministry of external affairs, say experts, calling it a clear violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). During gold smuggling probe, the customs also found that a heavy consignment weighing more than 4,000 kg had arrived in 31 bags on March 4 and was taken to Malappuram. The minister claimed that the packets contained only religious books that he took his constituency for distribution. But the opposition has alleged that some consignments also carried gold and Jaleel was using holy books as a smokescreen to cover his illegal activities. Also Read: Fun selfie taken with Kerala gold smuggling accused lands cops in serious trouble The gold smuggling case came to light after the customs seized 30 kg gold from a consignment that came in the name of an official of the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram on July 5. Later, the case was handed over to the NIA and at least four other central agencies are also involved in the multi-agency probe. The NIA has arrested 30 persons in connection with the case so far. Two senior officials, CMs principal secretary M Sivasankar and CMs IT fellow Arun Balachandran, have been removed from office after they were linked to the accused. Also Read: Postal ballot facility for Covid-hit in Kerala local body election The ED had submitted a statement in a court in Kochi two days ago saying the Bengaluru drug haul case and the gold smuggling case were closely linked. Key accused in the drug case, Anoop Mohammad, had taken the name of Bineesh Kodiyeri during grilling and claimed he was his business partner. But Kodiyeri said he helped him in setting up a hotel and was not aware of his drug dealings. There are also reports that the narcotics control bureau probing the Bengaluru haul may soon question Kodiyeri. The ED has reportedly found that the communist leaders son owned properties worth crores of rupees and also owned many benami firms. Kottayam : , Sep 18 (IANS) It was a day that all present-day politicians would dream for, but was a reality for one of Kerala's most popular leaders - Congress veteran Oommen Chandy as he was on Thursday honoured for completing 50 years as a legislator on the trot from the same constituency - Puthupally. In view of Covid restrictions, the event took place at a hall here where 50 leading lights from a varied cross-section of Kerala society, including top politicians, and religious leaders among others, were present. The two-time Kerala CM began his political career as a legislator after the 1970 Assembly polls. Then 26, Chandy won his very first electoral battle and has been repeating the poll results in successive Assembly polls ever since. Had it not been for Covid, this would have turned out to be a function that would have gone down as the most enviable one for any politician. To mark the event, a cake decorated in the Congress tricolour was cut by his grandson and he placed a piece of it into Chandy's mouth, to sustained applause. The 76-year-old was paid glowing tributes for his landmark achievement and among those who congratulated him include Congress President Sonia Gandhi, former President Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and former Defence Minister A.K. Antony. The message of Sonia Gandhi, presently in the US for treatment, was read out by senior legislator K.C. Joseph. "My warmest felicitation to Oommen Chandy for his extraordinary achievement of completing 50 years. He excelled in all the responsibilities that he took up. He is one of the most cherished persons in the Congress party and I wish him many more years of success," read her message. Rahul Gandhi termed Chandy as the true leader of Kerala. "He feels the pain of the people and his doors are always open and is the most accessible leader besides being the most committed person. While on a campaign in Andhra Pradesh, after finishing our election campaign as we entered the helicopter, I noticed his leg had a big cut and it was bleeding heavily. For him, it did not matter, as he was busy engaged in the work that he was assigned... such is his commitment," said Rahul Gandhi, whose televised felicitations was aired. Manmohan Singh recalled Chandy as a sincere, honest, and simple person. Leader of Opposition and Congress veteran Ramesh Chennithala said this is a function which all politicans can only dream and this event will never be there for any other politician. CPI-M state Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said Chandy is one who always takes an anti-CPI-M position, but on a personal level, he always helps their legislators. CPI state Secretary Kanam Rajendran described Chandy as a gentleman politician and his biggest contribution to politics in Kerala is bringing in a social commitment, which all present-day legislators follow. Cardinal George Alencherry said Chandy is one who would be in the hearts of many not just here, but across the country and abroad and this is because of his work that he has done all these five decades. Sukumaran Nair, who heads the powerful Nair Service Society, wished Chandy the best and expected that he will lead Kerala for a third time. Though Chandy has completed 50 years as a legislator, an unmatched record by any Congressman, he still has to surpass the late K.M. Mani's record. The supremo of Kerala Congress-Mani, who passed away last year, has a better record, representing Pala in Kottayam district since 1967 to remain a legislator for 52 years. Suga, the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was elected by the Diet as the 99th prime minister of Japan after his long-serving predecessor Shinzo Abe stepped down for health reasons. In a letter to Suga, Moon urged combined efforts to develop bilateral relations, according to Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kang Min-seok. Moon is "ready to sit down any time for dialogue with Japan, which shares basic values and strategic interests with Korea and is its closest friend geographically and culturally," the spokesman said. The president expressed hope that the two neighbors can "wisely overcome historic problems and strengthen substantive cooperation in economic, cultural and personnel exchange in a forward-looking and mutually beneficial way." Moon also wrote to Abe to thank him for his efforts to improve bilateral relations and wished him a quick recovery, the spokesman added. Abe and his wife separately wrote to Moon and his wife last week reminiscing about the times they spent together. Abe leaves a legacy of the worst relations with Korea in decades, peppered with tit-for-tat retaliation over historic grievances that his chauvinistic government became increasingly unwilling to resolve. Suga was previously Abe's attack dog as chief Cabinet secretary and the mouthpiece for some of Japan's most egregious denials of colonial and wartime atrocities. But Moon sounded a conciliatory note when Abe stepped down on Aug. 28, saying the "longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history" had "long played many roles in the development of relations between the two countries." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 18:53 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4578071 4 National Ciracas-Police,Ciracas-Police-Attack,Ciracas-Police-Station,TNI,TNI-AD,TNI-AL,TNI-AU,military,military-police,Military-police-politics,Polri Free The National Military Police Headquarters (Puspom TNI) has named nine more Indonesian Military (TNI) members as the suspects in an attack against the Ciracas Police Station in East Jakarta. Puspom commander Maj. Gen. Eddy Rate Muis said that, with the addition of the nine suspects, there were now 65 suspects from the TNI in total. According to Eddy, there are 57 suspects from the Army, seven suspects from the Navy and one suspect from the Air Force. Puspom TNI and the Navy and Air Force Military Police will continue to develop the case, Eddy said on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com. A mob reportedly comprising TNI personnel burned down two vehicles at the police station and vandalized nearby stores along Jl. Raya Bogor in the early hours of Aug. 29. Read also: 29 soldiers to be arrested over attack on Ciracas Police Station The incident occurred when Second Pvt. MI was allegedly driving under the influence early on Aug. 29 and was involved in a car accident at the Arundina fork in Ciracas, East Jakarta, resulting in minor injuries. MI allegedly told his fellow soldiers that his injuries were caused by an attack by a group of people. Encouraged by esprit de corps, they allegedly attacked the Ciracas Police station. Twenty-three people were reportedly physically assaulted in the attack, while 109 others have suffered material losses. Jakarta Military commander Maj. Gen. Dudung Abdurachman said the TNI had paid over Rp 778 billion (US$52 million) in damages to those affected by the attack. Hekmatullah has been flown to Qatar ahead of the peace talks. Twitter / AAP An Afghan soldier convicted of murdering three Australian soldiers is among six high-value prisoners who have been flown to Qatar ahead of the September peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government. Hekmatullah has spent seven years in jail after killing the three soldiers he worked with in 2012 Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Sapper James Martin and Private Robert Poate. For a long time, the Afghan government vowed not to free 600 prisoners it considered too dangerous, including murderers and foreign fighters. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called them a danger to the world. But last month, an assembly of Afghan elders, community leaders and politicians called a loya jirga approved the release of the last 400 Taliban captives and hundreds have been set free. Delegates at the loya jirga in Kabul last month. Rahmat Gul / AP Foreign governments objections to prisoner release The release of prisoners who killed Westerners has been among the most contentious parts of the deal. The Australian government, and the families of the three murdered Australian soldiers, have strenuously objected to the release of Hekmatullah. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has raised the issue with US President Donald Trump in recent weeks, and Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds reiterated this position in a statement: The Australian governments long-standing position is that Hekmatullah should serve a full custodial sentence for the crimes for which he was convicted by an Afghan court, and that he should not be released as part of a prisoner amnesty. France has similarly objected to the release of those prisoners who murdered its aid workers and soldiers. The US has not publicly objected to the release of three prisoners who murdered Americans in so-called insider attacks, although it is reportedly exploring the possibility of release under house arrest. US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, left, and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Talibans top political leader, signing the peace deal in February. Hussein Sayed / AP Conditions of amnesty in the rules of war So far, the issue of freeing prisoners in Afghanistan has been largely treated as a political and security issue. There has been less attention given to the equally important question of law, justice and human rights. It follows a regrettably common view that peace is necessary at any price, even if it means letting suspected or convicted war criminals go free, denying justice to their victims and violating international law by enabling killing with impunity. It is no surprise that such a deal has been spruiked by Trump, who has pardoned US soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes, despite protests by US military commanders. Trump also this week imposed sanctions on senior officials of the International Criminal Court for investigating alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The rules of war, or international humanitarian law (as it is otherwise known), take a much more balanced and reasonable approach. These rules are also binding on Afghanistan, the US and Taliban alike. Hekmatullahs killing of three Australian soldiers was not a fair fight in the heat of combat between opposing forces under the law of war. It was treacherous and illegal because Hekmatullah was wearing an Afghan army uniform when he killed the Australian soldiers while they were resting at a patrol base in August 2012. The families of the slain Australian soldiers firmly oppose Hekmatullahs release. Dave Hunt / AAP Hekmatullah says he was inspired to kill the soldiers after watching a Taliban video purporting to show US soldiers burning a Quran. He was later aided by the Taliban in his escape. Through these actions, Hekmatullah violated the basic rules set forth by the Statute of the International Criminal Court, specifically making improper use of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy resulting in death or serious personal injury The law of war also acknowledges the granting of amnesty to ordinary fighters is an appropriate means to promote peace and reconciliation to end a civil war. But it does not permit amnesty for those who violate its basic rules, including those suspected or convicted of war crimes. All countries have a legal duty to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law. Releasing prisoners, thus, is not purely a political question for the Afghan government to decide. It is also bound by international law and must respect it. Australia has a right to ensure respect for the law by both Afghanistan and the US. Releasing Hekmatullah would arguably be a violation of international law by Afghanistan, aided by the US. Peace without justice can cause long-term problems The US, Taliban and Afghan government all know this, but are choosing to sacrifice justice for the dream of peace. All sides are exhausted by the two-decade military stalemate and are understandably desperate for a way out. But numerous conflicts in recent decades from Latin American to Africa to the Balkans show that peace without justice is almost always a delusion. Any immediate gains are usually undermined by the mid- to long-term insecurity that results from giving impunity to killers. It contaminates the integrity and stability of political systems. It undermines the legal system and subordinates the rule of law and human rights to raw politics. It also allows victims grievances to fester, which is especially dangerous in places like Afghanistan where blood feuds stoke the desire for vengeance. In the case of Afghanistan, most seasoned observers also know that peace with the Taliban may well be a naive fantasy. Violence has increased, not decreased, since the peace deal. While it has made some tactical concessions for peace, the Talibans ideological commitment to extreme religious rule, and its disdain for democracy and human rights, is unswerving. The Taliban has played the Americans brilliantly, knowing the US no longer has the appetite for war. Releasing murderers could be all for nothing. Ben Saul is a Professor of International Law at the Sydney Centre for International Law, University of Sydney This article, slightly modified by Justice Info with the agreement of the author, is republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Don McCrea-Hendrick is a US Army veteran who served in the Secret War in Laos as a top secret operations specialist who has returned to his native Texas after a lengthy residency in California, where he founded, sold, and repurchased a successful medical accounting firm. He has published his new book An Owners Manual for Consciously Evolving Your Consciousness: a fascinating and uplifting exploration of the myriad paths to spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. The author writes, This Owners Manual provides you with detailed ways to Consciously Evolve Your Consciousness while addressing other important related issues: The Brain and How to Use It, The Law of Giving and Receiving, How to Meditate, How to Chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Wishing People a Happy Life, The Probability of Being Born, Spiritual Philosophy, Neuroscience and Neurogenesis (how to grow new stem cells), Evolution of the Subconscious Mind. By the time you read this Owners Manual, you will be on your way to evolving your own consciousness. Included with this Owners Manual is the novel Romancing the Absurd, a story of redemption for two of the characters who dabble in consciously evolving their consciousness. When financial investigator Tony T. Trueble is hired to interview key players in a major lawsuit against a venture capitalist group, his world is turned upside down as he is dragged through a seedy underworld of corruption, dishonesty, and murder. He must not only get the job done but do so without giving into his insatiable cravings for vodka, weed, and causal, meaningless sex. Sensational, satirical, and sometimes absurd, Romancing the Absurd is a literary murder mystery full of intrigue, suspense, philosophy, and absurdist cutthroat behavior. Nine people die under bizarre circumstances. A handful of people get screwed (in more ways than one). The story takes humorous and philosophical twists and turns, leaving you laughing at the murderous tactics some folks are willing to use to get ahead in this world. Throughout the story, there runs an undercurrent of reflection, hope, and redemption for Tony, who strives to right his wrongs, and Jim der Bacon, accused of murder yet able to focus on consciously evolving his own consciousness. For Tony, redemption comes through writing and his new awareness that one can consciously evolve their consciousness. Romancing the Absurd is the final result of Tonys studies, hard work, and shocking struggles with himself, others, and the universe at large. Based on real-life venture capitalists, businessmen, and lawyers, the story is structured using reinvented reality. Published by Page Publishing, Don McCrea-Hendricks engrossing book is an excellent choice for readers interested in a deeper contemplation of their spiritual life. Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase An Owners Manual for Consciously Evolving Your Consciousness at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708. About Page Publishing: Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues to focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com. New Delhi: Union Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday (September 17) evening resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills tabled in the two Houses of Parliament. About the lone Shiromani Akali Dal's minister in the Narendra Modi government, her party announced in Lok Sabha today that Harsimrat Kaur will resign from the government. Harsimrat Kaur Badal took to social media to inform that she has resigned from the Modi cabinet. In a tweet, she said, "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister." I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 During a discussion on two of the farm bills, the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced in Lok Sabha that she will quit the government. The Akali Dal had earlier protested against the first of three such bills, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha. In his speech on two of the farm bills, Sukhbir Singh Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work put in by successive Punjab governments and farmers to build the agriculture sector, and recalled Punjab's contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. Live TV "I want to make an announcement that our Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from Cabinet," he said in concluding remarks, refuting suggestions that his party initially supported three ordinances, which these bills seek to replace. He asserted that Harsimrat Kaur Badal had expressed her concerns in the Cabinet meeting and also wrote to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, highlighting "flaws" in the proposed legislations. Sukhbir Singh Badal accused the Congress party of "double speak" on the issue and said that the abolition of the APMC Act was part of its manifesto in both the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab. The three bills, including the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, which has been passed by Lok Sabha, are going to affect 20 lakh farmers and 15-20 lakh farm labourers in Punjab alone, said the SAD president. The state with 2.5 per cent of the country's landmass produces nearly 50 per cent of food grains for the country, he said, adding that Punjab's mandi system is the best in the world with a network of 1,900 setups across 12,000 villages. Notably, the Shiromani Akali Dal is the BJP's oldest ally and it has stood by the saffron party through thick and thin. Bracing for the double threat of flu season and a COVID-19 resurgence, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health boosted its orders of flu vaccine doses by 28%. State health officials ordered more than 1.1 million flu shot doses, said Health and Human Secretary Marylou Sudders, who heads the COVID-19 Command Center. The department has ordered around 900,000 doses in previous years. We strongly recommend that the people over 6 months (old) gets an annual flu vaccine, Sudders said Thursday at a CVS Pharmacy in Bostons Roslindale neighborhood. The vaccine saves lives, and this is more important than ever as we head into a flu season that overlaps with a potential COVID-19 resurgence. Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders speaks as Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has his daily press conference with the media after receiving a flu shot at a CVS in Roslindale on September 17, 2020 in Boston.Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald Gov. Charlie Baker, joining Sudders and other state officials, sat down at the CVS Pharmacy on Washington Street to get his flu shot. As he took the podium, Baker thanked the pharmacists for making the shot practically painless. The Republican governor sparked controversy last month when he mandated that all grade school children and college students get their flu vaccines before being allowed to return to in-person schooling. The state allows students to opt out if they provide a medical or religious exemption. The decision has sparked protests outside the Massachusetts State House and discussions of legal action against the Baker administration. Health care workers who met with state officials urged the public to get vaccinated for the flu to help reduce the chances that hospitals and community health centers get overrun with COVID-19 and flu patients should the state see a resurgence of coronavirus cases, Baker said. I know some people are troubled by the fact that given the authority we have under state law, we mandated that kids and college students get a vaccination this year, but I have to come back to the message that came from a community that really put themselves on the line for the people here in Massachusetts at the end of last winter and through the spring, Baker said, referring to the health care workers who met with his administration. Massachusetts health care workers reported 40,000 positive cases of influenza to the state during the last flu season. There were 5,500 emergency room visits and 6,600 deaths tied to the flu, Sudders said. The current positive vaccination rate for elementary school children in Massachusetts is 81%. We can do better and we should, said Baker, who was CEO of Harvard Pilgrim for 10 years, in between his tenures in state government. Especially with the return of so many kids to college, its incredibly important that they get vaccinated. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker speaks to the media after receiving a flu shot at a CVS in Roslindale on September 17, 2020 in Boston.Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald Massachusetts health officials reported 295 new COVID-19 cases and 20 more deaths linked to the coronavirus Wednesday. Since the pandemic began, 9,036 people have died from coronavirus-linked complications and close to 124,000 people have tested positive. Asked about people who do not want to take a flu vaccine or a COVID-19 vaccine, when that becomes available, Baker said he believes companies are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Infection, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other health officials to make sure the treatment is safe. Part of the reason why I think the companies were so aggressive about speaking out about how they were going to move forward or not with respect to a vaccine associated with COVID is because they get how important its going to be for that to be viewed as not just effective but safe, Baker said, alluding to when President Donald Trump suggested a vaccine would be available before the Nov. 3 election. Those who do not want to use a COVID-19 vaccine can continue to wear a mask or socially distance, Baker added. They can do all those things, he said, but for people who are in really close contact with people who are dealing with COVID or for people who are in communities that have been absolutely battered by this, I think its critically important that we make sure they have an opportunity to access a vaccine that has been deemed safe and effective and has been signed off on by the companies and the CDC. Related Content: NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- United Spinal Association was instrumental in championing a resolution that passed the U.S. Senate designating September 2020 as National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month. The resolution, introduced by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), recognizes the 294,000 individuals living with spinal cord injury (SCI) in the U.S. "Senators Rubio and Baldwin have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to ensure Americans living with SCI, including paralyzed veterans, can achieve greater quality of life and independence. We are grateful for their support," said James Weisman, president and CEO of United Spinal Association. "United Spinal looks forward to working with both senators and all of Congress to address the issues impacting our community," added Weisman. SCI is an injury to the spinal cord that may affect motor, sensory and autonomic function often resulting in paralysis, loss of sensation, and autonomic dysfunction (such as blood pressure instability and disruptions in temperature regulation. People who sustain a spinal cord injury often have permanent and profound neurologic deficits and accompanying disability. Depending on the level of injury, SCI can result in paralysis of the muscles, including those used for breathing; loss of sensation (feeling) below the level of injury; loss of voluntary bowel and bladder control; and numerous secondary conditions. Common secondary conditions include respiratory problems, pressure injuries (also known as pressure sores or bed sores) and autonomic dysfunction such as described above. For those living with SCI, one of the most important elements of their care often becomes preventing complications resulting from the injury, and preventing complications related to disability. According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, the annual incidence of SCI is approximately 54 cases per one million people in the U.S., or about 17,810 new SCI cases each year. The average age at injury has increased from 29 years during the 1970s to 43 years recently. About 78 percent of new SCI cases are male. Vehicle crashes are the most recent leading cause of injury, closely followed by falls. Acts of violence (primarily gunshot wounds) and sports/recreation activities are also relatively common causes. United Spinal is committed to advocating for greater civil rights and independence for wheelchair users and all Americans impacted by SCI. It advocates to expand education and employment, improve enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), ensure adequate access to public transportation and taxi services, and amend Medicare rules that restrict many individuals to their homes and nursing facilities. To learn more about SCI, visit https://unitedspinal.org/spinal-cord-injury-facts-and-figures/. To learn how you can help United Spinal raise awareness about SCI, visit https://unitedspinal.org/spinal-cord-injury-awareness-month. About United Spinal Association Formed in 1946 by paralyzed veterans, United Spinal is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Americans with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D). Membership is free and open to all individuals with SCI/D, with over 53,000 members across 50 chapters nationwide. Known for its revolutionary advocacy efforts, United Spinal played a significant role in writing the Americans with Disabilities Act, provided important contributions to the Fair Housing Amendments Act and the Air Carrier Access Act, and was instrumental in attaining sidewalk curb ramps and accessible public transportation in New York City, which created the standard accessibility model used in many United States cities. SOURCE United Spinal Association Related Links https://unitedspinal.org The University of Ghana (UG), Legon branch of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), has reiterated its stance against the Public Universities Bill (PUB) currently before Parliament, describing it as "an imminent danger to our institutions of higher education." It said the Bill, if passed, would have the potential to irreparably damage the country's global standing as a pillar of democratic governance in Africa. A member of the UG-UTAG Committee on the PUB set up by the university, Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, addressing a press conference yesterday at Legon said, "our objections are that the PUB is unconstitutional, unnecessary and will create more problems than it claims to solve." NEC of UTAG However, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of UTAG has dissociated itself from the press conference by the UG-UTAG branch. A statement jointly signed by the President and Secretary of the NEC of the UTAG, Prof Charles Marfo and Dr. Eric K. K. Abavare respectively, as well as the presidents of seven of the public universities said the NEC of UTAG, which was made up of all elected executives of the 10 branches, wished to inform the general public that the said intended event has not been sanctioned by the body. The statement recalled that at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Ho, on September 10, 2020, the NEC voted against the holding of any such press conference by any branch in the name of UTAG. We want to place on record that all four elected Branch Executives of UTAG-UG were present at the said meeting, the statement emphasised. Asked of her comment on the said statement, Prof Ampofo said she was unable to comment on it because the UG-UTAG was not privy to the said statement. Position of President Prof Ampofo recalled that in an interview on a local FM radio station in Accra, the President conceded that valid criticisms had been brought against the PUB, and said that those would be reviewed. However, the President ultimately concluded that the basic thrust of the Bill and the rationale for it was incontestable. With this press conference, UG-UTAG is, in fact, contesting the very basis of the Bill and calling for it to be completely withdrawn, Prof Ampofo said. Prof Ampofo recalled that though in that interview, the President conceded that the issue of the University Councils in the Bill required a second look, he did not indicate whether or not these clauses would be totally removed or merely tweaked. Solidarity message In a solidarity message, the Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement of the CDD, Dr. Kojo Asanti, recalled that when the bill was brought to Parliament, the Centre submitted a memo to the Education Committee of Parliament requesting it to take a serious look at the bill. He was surprised that even though there was a number of objections to the bill, however, to be frank, what surprises all of us is that the bill has not been withdrawn. For his part, a Senior Research Fellow at the IDEG, Mr. Kwesi Jonah, said the IDEG also submitted a memo to the committee, stating that the bill, if enacted, will have the effect of eroding the autonomy of public universities, which they have historically fought with courage and determination, adding that the autonomy of public universities was crucial to the effective discharge of the teaching and research functions of the universities. 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 Will Waldron/Times Union ALBANY Hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues have shed thousands of jobs in the Capital Region in the wake of a pandemic that has hobbled the local and national economy. Dave & Buster's, the sports bar, restaurant and gaming arcade, is the latest to feel the impact, warning on Thursday of 1,300 job cuts and a possible bankruptcy filing, according to media reports. Locally, 90 employees at the Dave & Buster's in Crossgates Mall are facing permanent job loss, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing with the state Labor Department. The Bexar County District Attorneys Office has sought to recuse itself from a case involving a local activist arrested last week after allegedly leaving her children home alone. Jourdyn Parks, 29, is out on bond after being arrested on a charge of abandoning a child with intent to return, Bexar County Sheriffs officials said. She is the founder of Reliable Revolutionaries, a local group of activists that formed in the wake of national protests over the death of George Floyd. On ExpressNews.com: Local activist arrested after allegedly leaving her children home alone Deputies performing a wellness check at a Northeast Side home a little after noon on Sept. 10 said they discovered two children, ages 8 and 2, peering at them from an upstairs window. According to reports, the elder child opened the window and told deputies that her mother was at a meeting and would be back soon. Authorities said they were able to enter the home through a back door that had been left partially open. Around 3 p.m., Parks returned home and was arrested. She told authorities she had gone to get her phone fixed. District Attorney Joe D. Gonzales said in a statement Wednesday that his office met with Parks on numerous occasions prior to her arrest to establish a dialog on how we handle officer-involved shootings, and discussed the status of three shootings that have been filed and resolved in the DAs Office. Top hits: Get San Antonio Express-News stories sent directly to your inbox Because of the prior community-based meetings conducted between Ms. Parks and our office and in order to avoid the appearance of any conflict, I am seeking to recuse the District Attorneys Office from any further involvement with these cases, Gonzales said in the statement. Additionally, because our office represents the Texas Department of Regulatory Service in Childrens Protective Service matters, I have likewise elected to seek a recusal of our office from any involvement regarding the care of her children, the statement said. Should the motion to recuse be granted, a prosecutor pro-tempore would be appointed to the case. Abandoning a child with the intent to return is a state jail felony punishable by up to two years confinement and a $10,000 fine. Parks is awaiting indictment and has a pre-hearing scheduled before Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl, presiding judge of the 175th state District Court, on Oct. 20, according to online court records. Elizabeth Zavala covers county and state courts in San Antonio. To read more from Elizabeth, become a subscriber. ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863 This handout photo published by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on his instagram account, shows himself and his wife Yulia, posing for a photo in a hospital in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Navalny Instagram/AP Photo) Navalny Team Says Novichok Was Found on Water Bottle in Hotel Room MOSCOWThe nerve agent used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detected on an empty water bottle from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, suggesting he was poisoned there and not at the airport as first thought, his team said on Thursday. Navalny fell violently ill on a domestic flight in Russia last month and was subsequently airlifted to Berlin for treatment. Laboratories in Germany, France, and Sweden have established he was poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent, though Russia denies this and says it has seen no evidence. Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny takes part in a rally to mark the 5th anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsovs murder and to protest against proposed amendments to the countrys constitution, in Moscow, on Feb. 29, 2020. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters) A video posted on Navalnys Instagram account showed members of his team searching the room he had just left in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on Aug. 20, an hour after they learned he had fallen sick in suspicious circumstances. It was decided to gather up everything that could even hypothetically be useful and hand it to the doctors in Germany. The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was quite obvious, the post said. It showed his team bagging several empty bottles of Holy Spring mineral water, among other items, while wearing protective gloves. This handout photo published by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on his instagram account, shows himself, centre, and his wife Yulia, right, daughter Daria, and son Zakhar, top left, posing for a photo in a hospital in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Navalny Instagram/AP Photo) Two weeks later, a German laboratory found traces of Novichok precisely on the bottle of water from the Tomsk hotel room, the post said. And then more laboratories that took analyses from Alexei confirmed that that was what poisoned Navalny. Now we understand: it was done before he left his hotel room to go to the airport. Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and an ally of Navalny, said his team had outplayed the FSB security police with their quick thinking: They took the evidence from under their noses and shipped it out of the country. Navalny is the most prominent political opponent of President Vladimir Putin, even though he has not been allowed to form his own party. His investigations of official corruption, published on YouTube and Instagram, have reached audiences of many millions across Russia. Germany, France, Britain and other nations have demanded explanations from Russia over the case, which has prompted calls for new sanctions against Moscow. The global chemical weapons agency, the OPCW, said on Thursday that Germany had asked for its assistance in investigating. Russia has carried out pre-investigation checks, but said it needs to see more medical analysis before it can open a formal criminal investigation. By Anton Zverev and Alexander Marrow The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who is probing Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death case, had approached All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for its opinion on the post-mortem of the late actor, who was found dead in his Bandra residence in Mumbai on June 14, 2020. The latest development with respect to this is that AIIMS will be giving its final opinion on medico-legal aspects, including whether there was any foul play in Sushant's death, to CBI next week. The agency sources told Mumbai Mirror that the AIIMS forensic report will be conclusive and clear, which will decide the next course of CBI's case investigation. Dr Sudhir Gupta, Head of Department of Forensic Medicine, AIIMS said in his statement, "We are in the process of perusal of case. After due medical board meeting and subsequent meeting with CBI a medical board opinion will be given to CBI and I hope it will total conclusive, without any confusion or doubt. The reports can't be shared next week since it is sub judice. CFSL findings and CBI investigation findings has to be understood before final medical opinion." It is to be noted that Dr Sudhir Gupta, who is leading the team to analyse Sushant's autopsy report, had presented his medico-legal opinion in several high-profile cases including Sunanda Pushkar death case, Bhanwari Devi case, Sheena Bora case and others. However, the AIIMS forensic head is no stranger to controversy. In 2014, Gupta hit the headlines when he claimed in the Sunanda Pushkar case, that he had been under pressure to doctor the report. Finally, Gupta had concluded that Sunanda Pushkar died of poisoning. A Hindustan Times report dated July 4, 2014 even had Gupta's colleagues alleging that the AIIMS forensic head has a dubious past. Coming back to Sushant Singh Rajput's death case, in August, the CBI approached AIIMS' forensic authorities, asking for the setting up of a competent Medical Board to examine Sushant's post-mortem report and crime scene clues to give an opinion in the case. Before the CBI joined the probe, Sushant's autopsy was carried by five doctors at a government-run post mortem centre in Mumbai. The autopsy report had stated that the "probable cause of death" was asphyxia due to hanging. However, sources stated that there was no mention of the time of death and the last meal based on the "state of the contents of the stomach" in the report. The viscera report had also ruled out any foul play. ALSO READ: Sushant's Sister Takes Break From Social Media; Says 'Really Need To Heal From This Pain' ALSO READ: Manoj Bajpayee Says People Forgot To Celebrate Sushant Singh Rajput For Their Vested Interests FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed oil pump jack is seen in front of displayed Opec logo in this illustration picture By Vladimir Soldatkin, Ahmad Ghaddar and Rania El Gamal MOSCOW/LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi Energy Minister warned traders on Thursday against betting heavily in the oil market saying he will try to make the market "jumpy" and promised those who gamble on the oil price would be hurt "like hell". The comments by Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, OPEC's most influential minister, came after a virtual meeting of a key panel of OPEC and allies, led by Russia, known as OPEC+. Prince Abdulaziz told the gathering OPEC+ could hold an extraordinary meeting in October if the oil market soured because of weak demand and rising coronavirus cases, according to an OPEC+ source. "Anyone who thinks they will get a word from me on what we will do next, is absolutely living in a La La Land... I'm going to make sure whoever gambles on this market will be ouching like hell," Prince Abdulaziz told a news conference when asked about OPEC+ next steps. He said OPEC+ would take a pro-active and pre-emptive stance in addressing oil market challenges. To those who want to short the oil market, Prince Abdulaziz had the following warning: "Make my day," he said in an apparent reference to Hollywood star Clint Eastwood's expression from the Dirty Harry neo-noir thriller. Brent oil prices extended their gains to trade up 3% on the news about a possible extraordinary meeting, above $43 per barrel . On Thursday, OPEC+'s key panel, known as the joint ministerial monitoring committee, pressed for better compliance with oil output cuts against the backdrop of falling crude prices as uncertainty reigns over the global economic outlook. The group warned that rising COVID-19 cases in some countries could curb energy demand despite initial indications of a decline in oil stocks. The panel did not recommend any changes to their current output reduction target of 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or around 8% of global demand. Story continues Graphic: OPEC deviation from production cuts in August - https://graphics.reuters.com/OIL-OPEC/jbyvrmlmjpe/chart.png Graphic: Non-OPEC deviation from production cuts in August - https://graphics.reuters.com/OIL-OPEC/qzjpqnjnavx/chart.png OPEC+ has been reducing production since January 2017 to help to support prices and reduce global oil stockpiles. They increased their cuts to a record 9.7 million bpd from May to July after demand plunged due to the coronavirus crisis. The panel pressed laggards such as Iraq, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates to cut more barrels to compensate for overproduction in May-July while extending the compensation period from September to the end of December. The panel said cumulative overproduction has reached 2.38 million bpd from May until August. (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Jason Neely/Tomasz Janowski/Pravin Char/Jane Merriman/Alexanda Hudson) German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday and noted that they have succeeded in consolidating further the traditionally good relations between Germany and India for the benefit of the peoples of the two countries. Please accept my warmest congratulations on the occasion of your 70th birthday. I am happy to take this opportunity to thank you for our trustful and constructive cooperation," Merkel said in her letter to Modi. Together over the past few years, we have succeeded in consolidating even further the traditionally good relations between India and Germany. I have fond memories, for example, of our meeting last November at the Indo-German intergovernmental consultations," she said. Merkel in her letter to Modi also vowed to work together to overcome the challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the cohesion of the international community. Only if we work together will we manage to overcome this huge challenge. With that in mind, I look forward to continuing our cooperation for the benefit of the countries and their people," she said in her letter, which was shared by the Prime Ministers Office on its Twitter handle. She wished Modi great health and success during the current unusual times. Four your political work, I wish you continued success. On a personal note, I wish you all the very best in the future particularly, in these unusual times, health, happiness and fulfilment," she said. NASSCOM CoE organized 'The Fourth Dimension - Deciphering Telehealth' NASSCOM Centre of Excellence for IoT/AI, under its Healthcare initiative LHIF (Lifesciences& Healthcare Innovation Forum) , organized a virtual conference themed 'The Fourth Dimension - Deciphering Telehealth', which also witnessed the launch of an exclusive research paper titled "Unraveling AI for Healthcare in India" by Lav Agarwal, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. The research paper was commissioned by NASSCOM Research team in collaboration with EY; it highlights how AI solutions can break the classic healthcare iron triangle providing quality care with improved accessibility and reduced cost. The report also showcases the AI enablement ecosystem in healthcare and lays down strategic bold plays for healthcare organizations to accelerate their AI adoption journey. Delivering his welcome Keynote, Saurabh Gaur, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, threw light on India Transformation through AI and said, All emerging technologies will be the engines of growth for the nation. If we want a $5 trillion economy by 2025, we see that these technologies will be great enablers as we forward. There is a huge opportunity for the Indian IT companies also as they now contribute 8 per cent to Indian GDP and they can move forward. We look at technology to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. There are opportunities to have creative outcome modelling; when you have huge data you should be able to collate it and work around it to save lives. We would like to have industry partners for each field and collaborate with academia and government. Through the National e-governance system, we have exposed 1300 APIs to access different data sets. We are looking at an exciting future as we move ahead on these technologies. Addressing the gathering, Chief Guest Lav Agarwal, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, stated, We have an ongoing programme National Medical Network and we have created a structure for them which has National centre and several regional centres that will become the hub for telemedicine services. Then we have e-sanjeevni application developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Mohali; we are strengthening the application by making all the centres to start using this application and right now 24 states are using this application. We are the biggest tele-medicine provider in the world today. To make this application more robust, our friends can come up with good ideas. Can we have a chatbox on top of this application which can provide information to the consumer and can it be integrated in such a manner so that application starts thinking of clinical support decisions. Saying that India was very prompt in coming up with tele-medicine guidelines when the lockdown was announced, Dr. Praveen Gedam, IAS, Additional CEO, Ayushman Bharat, National Health Authority, Govt of India, added, The advantage that India has for AI-based clinical support system is the sheer amount of data that we have as it will help in a better quality of additional support systems. E-sanjeevani has already crossed 3 lakh consultations and MHA is already making one more tele-medicine platform. We want more such platforms so that people can benefit from the competition. We already are medical tourism hub and we can now become tele-medicine hub for the world also. We can scale up very fast as is evident from the success of the Aarogya Setu app, which reached 130-140 million downloads in a couple of months. Sharing the advantages of tele-health services, Nick Passey, Vice President Digital & IT, International & Japan, AstraZeneca, UK, highlighted, As a patient-centric organization, our ambition is to improve patient outcomes by facilitating their journey from awareness & diagnosis to treatment & recovery. We thus believe telehealth plays an important role in enabling patients access to HCPs, especially with specialists in areas of non-communicable diseases. The focus on healthcare innovation has never been so important. CoE with its industry partners and support from MeitY and MoHFW, we are accelerating creation and Scaling of new technology solutions from startups and large companies, said Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, NASSCOM COE. One positive side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is the dominance of Telemedicine Platforms for patient/doctor consultations, especially when the social distancing is prevalent. With the advent of new technologies such as IoT& AI, Telehealth is going to emerge as a strong healthcare delivery channel. It is not only a new channel, but cuts across and enhances the way care is delivered through Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Healthcare Channels, says Raghuram Janapareddy, Director of Healthcare & Life sciences, NASSCOM CoE and moderator of this virtual event. Dr. Reema Aswani from NASSCOM Research Team explained the highlights of the research report to the audience. Meanwhile, other speakers discussed at length about Ethical & Legal Contours around TeleHealth and Leveraging Telehealth for Health Insurance. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:26:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Four paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed in two attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants in the provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala of Iraq, local police sources said on Thursday. In the northern province of Kirkuk, IS militants attacked in the morning a Hashd Shaabi base in al-Bashir area, south of the provincial capital city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, Maj. Taha al-Obaidi told Xinhua. Fierce clashes erupted between the two sides resulting in the killing of three Hashd Shaabi members, al-Obaidi said, adding that one of the attackers was also killed and two others were wounded. In the eastern province of Diyala, IS militants attacked late on Wednesday night Hashd Shaabi checkpoints in Udhaim area in the north of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, sparking clashes which resulted in the killing of a Hashd Shaabi member and the wounding of three others, Maj. Alaa al-Saadi from Diyala's provincial police told Xinhua. The attacks came as the IS militants have intensified their attacks on the security forces, including Hashd Shaabi forces, and civilians in the formerly IS-controlled Sunni provinces, resulting in the killing and wounding of dozens. The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017. However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians. Enditem DETROIT -- Police say they arrested a man Wednesday night after he jumped his vehicle across a drawbridge that was rising in Detroit. According to WDIV Detroit, the operator of the bridge witnessed the man drive his car across the bridge and says the driver blew out all four tires and crashed into a gate after completing the jump. The operator hit the emergency stop on the bridge as it was rising because he realized the driver of the vehicle wasnt stopping. WXYZ Detroit reports the driver is a 26-year-old Allen Park man who was driving a Dodge sedan on Fort Street around 7 p.m. when he made the jump. Shortly after crashing the vehicle, the driver was arrested. READ MORE Teen who stabbed classmate to death at Michigan school sentenced to 27 years in prison Barricaded gunman arrested after shot fired, 6-hour standoff, police say Standoff ends after alleged gunman who shot deputy is found dead Extra police officers were called to bolster security as the 10 men allegedly involved in the killing of 19-year-old Girum Mekonnen on Sunday at a Brisbane park had their cases heard in court. Police on bicycles maintained watch outside while armed officers guarded the entrance and the courtroom in the Brisbane Arrests Court on Roma Street on Thursday morning. Girum Mekonnen, 19, died in OCallaghan Park in Zillmere in Brisbane's north on Sunday evening. Credit:Facebook The men are each charged with murder, 12 counts each of acts intended to cause grievous bodily harm and affray and disobedience to a lawful order. The 10 accused are Anas Ayman Abdu Musa, Joseph Lokolong, Alex Edward Deng, Gabreal Wal, Santo Wal, Chan Kuchmol Kon, Kresto Wal Wal, Yohana Wal Wal, Majok Riel Majok and Juma Makuol Deng Makuol. They are all aged between 18 and 32. US attorney general William Barr reportedly asked officials at the Justice Department to consider bringing charges against Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan, over her handling of protests earlier this year during which an autonomous police-free zone was set up to keep demonstrators and law enforcement apart. Mr Barr in a phone call last week asked justice department prosecutors in the civil rights division if Democrat mayor Durkan, herself a former attorney, could be charged for allowing the demonstrations to continue without police oversight, the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing two sources familiar with the conversation. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Barr also encouraged federal prosecutors to charge the demonstrators, who had been protesting against racial inequality and police brutality, with sedition - an extremely serious offence, usually used to punish those who conspire against the state. Law enforcement representatives told the NYT that Mr Barr's alleged request was highly unusual. Officials at the Justice Department did not immediately respond the publication's request comment; the Independent has contacted the Justice Department for a statement. Responding to the claims, mayor Durkan, who was elected to office in 2017, said Mr Barr's alleged move was "chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration." In a statement released in Wednesday, she added: "The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the president to target those who have spoken out against this administration's actions. "That is an act of tyranny, not of democracy. Ultimately, this is not a story about me. It is about the how this president and his attorney general are willing to subvert the law and use the Department of Justice for political purposes. It is particularly egregious to try to use the civil rights laws to investigate, intimidate, or deter those that are fighting for civil rights in our country." The president repeatedly attacked mayor Durkan over her handling of the demonstrations, which saw protesters camp out and occupy the area outside Seattle police's East Precinct building in the Capitol Hill area. Demonstrators later dubbed the area as the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone". Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW, Mr Trump tweeted in June. If you dont do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST! Amid the protests, the president had threatened to send federal agents to Seattle to deal with unrest, as he attempted to ramp up his law and order message ahead of November's election and paint Democratic cities as out of control. After weeks of demonstrations, those occupying the Capitol Hill area were told by mayor Durkan on 22 June that "it's time for people to go home". All law enforcement had been removed from the area as tensions flared following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, who was killed in police custody. Demonstrations contined to sweep several cities across the US for months following the killing of Mr Floyd, with protests taking place on a daily basis in some areas. For the longest time in the Middle East, the UAE, Bahrain, and Israel have established ties. Through the brokering of the Trump administration, these parties have signed an agreement to reconnect and establish bridges again in turbulent times. Last Tuesday, the White House was the venue for these estranged countries as they pledged to make peace. With the help of President Trump, they hope to counter the actions of Iran as a single bloc. Iran of late has been unpredictable rancorous too, reported Reuters. President Trump said on the White House balcony that everyone present that afternoon are there to change the flow of history in the strife-ridden region. Adding the deals as a step forward for people of different faith and histories will start an era of peace and prosperity. Lastly, stating that these three countries will be partners and friends in the new era, noted See News. It is an important diplomatic success that was not easy to reach, as the situation gave it a longshot of success. But Trump nailed it last Tuesday, during the last four years, he has been seeking diplomatic agreements and deals. One of them is North Korea's nuclear program that was not complete as a success, according to Al Jazeera. These countries are shadowed by fears of Iran's saber-rattling in the region, as a big concern. Another is Iran's arsenal of ballistic missiles in development, and Iran had harsh opinions on the Washington deals too. Leaders of the three nations remarked positively on the agreements glowing success with Trump's part in reaching this landmark in history. Netanyahu of Israel said that hope was now with the people of Abraham. Accordingly, Jews and Moslems are close as brothers under the skin and religion, confirmed Japan Times. Also read: Trump Orders Navy to Destroy Iranian Vessels Which Threatens US, Iran Says They'll Crush Them Assuaging fears of Palestine, the UAE and Bahraini officials said they will not be forgotten. That included their desire to be recognized as a state by Israel. Before the signing, they were chanting betrayal of the Arab cause. Still, assurances were given despite their fears. Despite the accord's signing, the Palestine militants used rockets that killed people right at that moment. It is reported that Israeli army injured some civilians. One aspect of the peace accord is that it will help him get votes for a second term. This will be from Pro-Israel voters who have Jewish connections. It will be a crucial part of his political base too. The White House was hoping for Saudi and Oman's participation after Trump spoke to the Omani leader a week ago. However, Saudi Arabia had no representative but the Oman consul was present. President Trump met the UAE foreign minister before the event and gave thanks to being the first to step up restarting ties with Israel. But Iran belligerence was overshadowing why such a historic agreement is possible. Trump stated that due to sanctions, Iran will seek a deal with Washington in the form of an international nuclear accord. But Tehran still had a hard-liner stance and staying put. Israel's pact is more detailed, stating a declared peace with two countries who have not been at war. Tactful words like full diplomatic relations, not normalization is used. Related article: Iran Pursues Nuclear Production and Nuclear Submarines If the US Reset Sanctions @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Sadie Frost and her son Rafferty Law appeared to flout social-distancing as they attended a screening for their new lockdown-themed short film. The actress, 55, and her actor son, 23, arrived at the event to support their new film Contact at The Everyman Screen on the Green in north London on Wednesday. However while socialising backstage they appeared to ignore government guidelines stating to stay 'one metre plus' apart as they posed in close proximity to their pals, after the 'rule of six' was introduced earlier this week. New rules? Sadie Frost and her son Rafferty Law appeared to flout social-distancing as they attended a screening for their new lockdown-themed short film (pictured with friend Jess Morris) While at the screening Sadie posed for snaps with Chairman of Everyman Media Group Paul Wise and her pal Jess Morris, of cult fashion brand Rockins. Meanwhile, Rafferty stood beside Sonny Hall in one photograph taken outside the theatre, as well in another with his co-star Cora Corre. Other attendees who were pictured with Sadie and Rafferty included pals Connie Constance, Debbi Clark, and their co-star Simon Jones. Support: The actress, 55, and her actor son, 23, arrived at the event to support their new film Contact at The Everyman Screen on the Green in north London on Wednesday (pictured with Sonny Hall) Pose: While at the screening Sadie posed for snaps with Chairman of Everyman Media Group Paul Wise (pictured) and her pal Jess Morris, of cult fashion brand Rockins Close contact: However while socialising backstage they appeared to ignore government guidelines as they posed in close proximity to their pals, after they 'rule of six' was introduced earlier this week (pictured with Connie Constance) Cuddles: Elsewhere at the screening, Sadie was supported by her mother Mary Davidson, as the duo smiled for the cameras with their arms around each other Elsewhere at the screening, Sadie was supported by her mother Mary Davidson, as the duo smiled for the cameras with their arms around each other. Also showing his support was Sadie's boyfriend, Darren Strowger, who has been dating the actress for the past six years. Sadie and her businessman beau were seen wearing face masks at one point as they tried to stay protected while inside the cinema. Hanging out: Also showing his support was Sadie's boyfriend, Darren Strowger, who has been dating the actress for the past six years Covered-up! Sadie and her businessman beau were seen wearing face masks at one point as they tried to stay protected while inside the cinema While up on stage during a Q&A session, the group appeared observed the one metre distancing rule as they positioned their chairs away from each other. MailOnline have contacted representatives for comment. The stringent 'rule of six' ban came into force across England on Monday, in an attempt to tackle rising coronavirus infection rates by restricting meetings both indoors and outdoors, including homes, parks, pubs and restaurants. Police will fine people up to 3,200 if they disobey the rules. The events industry is currently 'starring into the abyss' due to the lack of clarity about the Government ban on gatherings of more than six people, according to the Telegraph. Group shot: Other attendees who were pictured with Sadie and Rafferty included pals Connie Constance, Debbi Clark, and their co-star Simon Jones The publication reported that events organisers are experiencing mass cancellations within the industry, which supports 700,000 employees. Jane Longhurst, chief executive of the Meetings Industry Association, said: 'It hasnt actually defined what government is trying to do, and theres no clarity, and it has completely shattered any confidence that anyone holding events had.' If arts events were deemed against the law, the police have the powers to enforce these legal limits, including to issue fines of 100, doubling for further breaches up to a maximum of 3,200. Safety first: While up on stage during a Q&A session, the group appeared observed the one metre distancing rule as they positioned their chairs away from each other Restrictions: The stringent 'rule of six' ban came into force across England on Monday, in an attempt to tackle rising coronavirus infection rates by restricting meetings both indoors and outdoors Sadie and Rafferty's film Contact was shot during lockdown in a bid to bring 'hope' to those feeling alone during the trying period of time. Sadie told Love magazine: ''We were so conscious of this being such a tough time for all the young people whose studies, early careers and passions were stopped in their flow. 'I wanted to make something that told their stories.' Conflicting: The events industry is currently 'starring into the abyss' due to the lack of clarity about the Government ban on gatherings of more than six people, according to the Telegraph A dentist has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for nearly 50 charges including reckless endangerment and unlawful dental acts, after he filmed himself extracting a patients tooth while on a hoverboard. Seth Lookhart, from Anchorage, Alaska, was found guilty by a jury in January on 46 charges including Medicaid fraud, embezzlement, reckless endangerment and unlawful dental acts. Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton said on Monday that Lookhart put multiple peoples lives at risk by sedating them for extended periods of time. Mr Wolverton said: In reviewing all this over and over again, I have a visceral response - you darn near killed some people. According to local newspaper, Anchorage Daily News, a former employee told investigators in 2017, when charges were filed against Lookhart, that the dentist was performing more intravenous sedation on his patients than necessary to boost his profits. The previous year, the dentist and his former office manager Shauna Cranford billed nearly US$2 million in unnecessary IV sedation expenses, said charging documents filed to the court. Investigators also uncovered text messages between Lookhart and Ms Cranford brainstorming how they could continue making a profit despite Medicaid reforms in 2016 that meant Medicaid patients did not have to pay for IV sedation. The clinic opted to perform more extractions and charged a higher rate for [IV sedation] provided to a Medicaid recipient than they charged others, said the documents. The video of Lookhart performing a tooth extraction on an unconscious female patient was also included in the charges documents. Lookhart sent the video to several people and joked that the procedure represented a new standard of care, said investigators. In the video, the dentist is seen riding into the hallway after the extraction with his hands over his head in triumph and spinning around on his hoverboard. Lookharts dental license had been previously suspended in 2017 after the charges were filed, but Mr Wolverton ruled this week that he will not be allowed to practice medicine for the duration of a 10-year probation, following release from prison. Prosecutors also asked Mr Wolverton to order the dentist to pay US$2.2 million in restitution for fraud and embezzlement. The amount will be determined at a hearing later this month, reported the newspaper. Between November and March, Finland's far north usually throngs with international holidaymakers who come to experience a snowy wonderland of reindeer rides, ice castles and the "real" Santa's grotto. But despite record visitor numbers in recent years, the coronavirus shutdown will leave many of Finnish Lapland's tourism businesses facing ruin this winter. Many fear that government moves to ease travel restrictions in the Nordic country will not go far enough to offset the damage. "We'll be bankrupt after December if we don't get any bookings," tour operator Sini Jin told AFP from Rovaniemi, an Arctic Circle town that markets itself as "the official hometown of Santa Claus". Jin has run Nordic Unique Travels for five years, offering Northern Lights safaris and expeditions into the Arctic wilderness to thousands of travellers from Europe and Asia every season. "Now we've had one or two bookings a week, and mostly we're just doing refunds," Jin said. Her firm will only employ "two or three" seasonal staff this year instead of the normal 80. Jin's company received emergency financial aid after the government put aside over a billion euros ($1.2 bn) to help businesses, but it has not been enough to compensate for the lack of tourists. "Everything we've worked for will be gone so quickly if we don't get help." Her predicament is shared by tourist companies across Finland's vast Lapland region, where the sector supports 10,000 jobs and generates one billion euros of annual revenue. A tourist board survey found that without international visitors this winter, around 60 percent of tourism companies expect to lose at least half their turnover and three-quarters would have to lay off staff. "We're not hopeful of getting any significant bookings," Kaj Erkkila, managing director of Husky Park, told AFP. The 10-person family firm has been a popular dog sledding destination for "many decades" and keeps 109 Siberian huskies. Story continues "If this winter's revenue stays low, we might not be able to operate in 2021-22 either, as maintaining the dogs is very expensive," Erkkila said. Tourist board head Nina Forsell said the situation is make-or-break for many firms. "If companies go down this winter it will take a long time for them to rise up again," she told AFP. - 'A big disappointment' - While many EU countries are tightening lockdown rules as infections rise, last week Finland's centre-left government loosened travel restrictions to boost the tourism industry. Yet the measures have been branded "a big disappointment" by industry bodies in Lapland, who say the rules are unworkable. Arrivals from countries such as the UK and France, which are among the largest visitor groups to Lapland, can avoid quarantine if they visit for less than three days, and travel with an organised group. But tourism bosses say many trips to Lapland are longer -- and these would require visitors to quarantine and undergo further testing. "Are these measures enough to meet demand and keep businesses going here in Lapland? I'm not convinced," Sanna Karkkainen, head of Visit Rovaniemi, told AFP. Tourist providers worked with health experts to draw up safety procedures, which they argue should allow for quarantine rules to be relaxed. Finland's corona infection rates remained among Europe's lowest over the summer, and of the 9,000 confirmed infections just 243 have been recorded in Lapland. "We're not giving up and we're trying to get the politicians to see there is a better way," tourist board head Nina Forsell said. - Still open for business - Some large companies, such as Rovaniemi's Santa Park attraction, have already decided not to open this winter. The park usually employs 400 staff and welcomes 120,000 visitors each season. But many smaller providers say they will do all they can to stay open for business, and hope the government will allow for more international visitors. "We are dealing with the highest possible demand for Lapland travel, that's the heartbreaking thing," Sanna Karkkainen said. "We really need this industry in order to build a future for Lapland, and letting it go is not an option." sgk/po/tgb/gle Now Open 17 September 2020 Quest Apartment Hotels will cut the ribbon and open the doors to Quest Perth Ascot on Wednesday 16 September, marking the company's fifteenth property in Western Australia. Located 3km from the Qantas domestic terminal on Great Eastern Hwy, the 112 room apartment hotel is comprised of studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments and has been developed and constructed by local company M/Group - the same team behind Quest Joondalup, which opened in 2019. According to STR data, the addition of Perth Ascot location to the company's portfolio makes Quest the largest single hotel brand in Western Australia, a feat Quest's General Manager of Growth and Capital Strategy, James Shields dubbed "a tremendous milestone for Quest". The opening of Quest Perth Ascot is the first of four to take place before December 2020, and will be followed by Quest Preston, Quest Wangaratta and Quest Ballarat Station all in quick succession. So far in 2020, parent company The Ascott Limited has also signed an additional 25 deals for new properties around the world. Monika Monalisa By Express News Service Well-heeled urban Indians working out in swank gyms on one end, and wrestlers building their muscles in rural akharas on the other. Between the two lies the middle class, which has experienced an evolution in the idea of masculinity too. Amsterdam-based author Michiel Baass latest book, Muscular India, gives a sneak peek into how a once-niche concept of body-building has reached the Indian middle class. Baas will be talking about his latest work during a live event being held on Champaca book stores Instagram page on Friday. The field of bodybuilding itself has become much more professional in recent years, and this offers an increasing number of men the opportunity to participate in competitions. Prize money is generally quite low, so the main goal is to showcase ones accomplishments, which helps them attract social media followers and hopefully also personal training clients, says Baas, who has spent a decade studying gyms, trainers and bodybuilders, and finds in them new way to know more about India. According to him, while the country has always been fascinated by movies, cinema has also played a key role in this evolution of masculinity in India. Its not just Bollywood but also Tollywood, Kollywood and Sandalwood that contribute to the popularity of new bodily ideals. Sandalwood hero Puneeth Rajkumar is equally admired for being a very fit actor, says Baas, pointing out that it is important not to equate muscular bodies with the toxic masculinity women meet on the streets. Being an anthropologist, Baas found it easy to spend a lot of time with his sources who later became good friends. He stresses that his sexual orientation didnt pose any undue challenges in the research. I found that trainers cared very little about this. However, it was something my gay friends in India would joke about. They assumed that I had mainly picked this research to meet good looking men, says Bass, who has been familiar with India, especially Bengaluru, since the family of his partner of 17 years belongs to the city. However, his first love for the country was developed through his interest in Hinduism, more specifically the Mahabharata, and was further boosted when he started reading Indian fiction in the mid-1990s, starting with books by R K Narayan and Salman Rushdie. Just like the topic for his latest book, many have found its cover quite intriguing too and Baas is well aware of that. The cover image is by Bengaluru-based photographer Cop Shiva. He is a friend and at some point I had mentioned the book to him and he suggested using this image, says Baas. He adds, What I like about this picture is that it seems as if the tiger is attacking the cover model, Abhishek. But Abhishek stands firm and looks like he has nothing to worry about. He is in control, his body radiates strength and confidence, the city is clearly his. Hyderabad, Sep 18 : A crocodile was spotted on the bed of Musi river on Thursday, sending panic in Puranapul and surrounding areas in the old city of Hyderabad. A local resident found the crocodile resting on the river bed and alerted the police. A large number of curious onlookers gathered on the banks of the river, causing traffic jam in the busy Puranapul area. The police alerted the forest department, which deputed a team. The operation to capture the crocodile will resume on Friday. It is suspected that the crocodile made its way into the river from Himayat Sagar or Osman Sagar, the two reservoirs upstream. The reptile was found in the river a day after the city received heavy rainfall. The river, which has almost dried up, receives some inflows during monsoon. Myanmar & COVID-19 Myanmar Military Offers More COVID-19 Quarantine Beds to Civilians Myanmar military spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun at a press conference on Sept.4, 2020 in Naypyitaw. / Thiha Lwin / The Irrawaddy Myanmars military or Tatmadaw predicts that more than 16,000 people and nearly 240 of its personnel will have been infected with coronavirus by the end of September if the outbreak cannot be controlled. Since March, the Tatmadaw has reported 46 COVID-19 confirmed cases, 18 of them are domestically transmitted and 28 others are imported. As of Thursday morning, Myanmar has reported 3,894 COVID-19 cases, 46 deaths and 908 recoveries. Major General Zaw Min Tun of the militarys Tatmadaw True News Information Team recently talked to The Irrawaddys Thiha Lwin about military actions to curb the spread. The Tatmadaw predicts that 16,151 people might have contracted coronavirus by the end of September. How is that prediction made? Military medics based their assessments on the number of cases in the past and at present and the percentage increase in Yangon and Rakhine State, where the second-highest number of cases are recorded. The prediction is based on calculating the national population in relation to the percentage of infected patients. The Tatmadaw plans for worst-case scenarios from a defense and security perspective. So we have imagined the possible scenarios so that we can make preparations. How many quarantine centers has the Tatmadaw prepared? How many people can the centers take? We have prepared our transit centers in Hlaing Township in Yangon and Naypyitaw for quarantine. And there are also regional transit centers that have been prepared for quarantine. People are only being quarantined at transit centers in Hlaing, Naypyitaw and Shwenyaung [in Shan State]. So far we have accepted over 2,000 people each at transit centers in Hlaing and Naypyitaw. The transit center in Shwenyaung has accepted hundreds of people. Around 300 people are in quarantine in the Naypyitaw transit center and around 120 people are in Hlaing. The Tatmadaw provides free meals and health care for them. We have 16 sites across the country where we can keep civilians in quarantine. We can accept over 9,000 people around 7,000 in Naypyitaw, around 1,000 in Hlaing as well as in Shwenyaung, Mawlamyine and Myeik. How many people at your quarantine centers have developed COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive? As far as I know, there was barely anyone who developed dangerous symptoms. Thats all I can say. I have no details. Some were taken to hospital but not because of COVID-19, but because of other health problems like gynecological issues. As far as I know, no one was taken to hospital for COVID-19. The government said it is short of quarantine sites and is looking for spaces. But there are vacant spaces in the Tatmadaws transit centers. Have the two sides coordinated to arrange quarantine? In Hlaing, we accept everyone the Yangon regional government sends us, as in Naypyitaw and Shwenyaung. Most of the people there are migrant workers who have returned. We accept those who are sent to us under the arrangements of regional governments and city development committees. How many COVID-19 patients can military hospitals handle? Do you have any civilian COVID-19 patients? We dispatched a 40-member medical team [in shifts] to the COVID-19 center at Central Institute of Civil Service in Hlegu Township. And we have arranged medical centers in other regions and states. In Yangon Region, we have arranged a clinic in the Defence Services Liver Hospital. No civilian patients are being treated there, as far as I know. The Tatmadaws COVID-19 response plans, however, include treatment of civilian patients. Mainly it is providing treatment for patients suffering from COVID-19-like symptoms. Did the government ask the Tatmadaw to help in treating COVID-19 patients? Will it help if the government asks? Commander-in-chief of the Defense Services [Senior General Min Aung Hlaing] has said publicly that COVID-19 prevention, control and treatment is a national issue, and Myanmars military will cooperate and coordinate on any requirements. What is the Tatmadaws view on the governments COVID-19 prevention and control policies? There is the Central Committee for Prevention, Control and Treatment of COVID-19 [led by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi]. There is also a working committee. We are cooperating with them. Our personnel are also taking part in those committees. The Tatmadaw is following government instructions on COVID-19. How many personnel have been infected with coronavirus? Forty-six. There were 17 patients during the first outbreak. They have already recovered and 29 so far in the second outbreak. Twenty-six of them are domestic transmissions. Relatives and veterans are also among those infected. What actions are being taken to prevent the leadership from the virus? Military personnel are working in shifts, going to work for 14 days and working from home for 14 days. You might have seen military lawmakers in Parliament wearing masks [during the first COVID-19 outbreak]. At the time there were different views. Even the WHO said wearing masks was unnecessary. The Tatmadaw has acted because it is the strongest organization in the states defense. Not only personnel but also families must be always ready for the states defense. The organization that must always be ready should not be sick. So we have to impose stricter regulations. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko You may also like these stories: Myanmars Military Donates Wages to COVID-19 Fight COVID-19: The Facts About Myanmars Second Wave and How Vaccines Work Myanmar Govt Suspends Advance Tax on Exports to Aid Virus-Hit Businesseshttps://burma.irrawaddy.com/opinion/interview/2020/09/17/230013.html New Delhi, Sep 17 : Zomato Feeding India, the India chapter of Zomato Feeding Foundation, has launched Food for Paws - an initiative to provide sustenance to strays across the country. As a part of its 'Food for Paws' initiative, it will create kits containing rice, water, dry food, eggs, and turmeric required for a stray for an entire month. These components have been designed in consultation with a veterinarian. Each kit costs Rs 150 and can support one animal with one meal each day for a month. Speaking about the campaign, Chaitanya Mathur, Head- Zomato Feeding India said:"Zomato Feeding India has always been at the forefront solving for hunger. Our purpose of 'food for all' allows us to widen our purview and find more avenues of bringing an incremental change in society. India alone has over 30-35 million stray animals that do not have the right sources to food. With Food for Paws, our aim is to prioritise their health and create a better structure for animal welfare across the country. Every contribution made for our cause would ensure care, sustenance and medical support towards these homeless strays." It will use 100 percent proceeds in procuring and distributing kits. It has partnered with several NGOs on ground who will ensure their safe distribution and brands like Pet Sutra, Just Dogs, Kennel Kitchen, FreshWoof - Urban Tails Pvt Ltd, and Poochles India among others to procure quality ingredients for the kit. "We have been taking care of homeless animals for seven years. We have limited resources, and often have to choose between feeding all of them or investing in their medical care. This partnership with Zomato Feeding India for 'Food for Paws' will solve this dilemma for us. We look forward to working with a partner that can help us maximise our impact," added Dr Aditi Badam, Founder-Posh foundation. Ashish Anthony, Founder and Director, Just Dogs shared: "Stray dogs being scavengers depend on leftover food found on the streets to survive which does not prove to be balanced enough for their nutritional requirements. Generally, most people end up feeding them biscuits or boiled rice and roti which can lead to health issues at times. So, we at Just Dogs Foundation have been feeding strays near our vicinity either a portion of balanced dog food or a mix that contains dog food which comparatively helps strays have a healthy life as they too have a right to lead a good and healthy life. Just Dogs supports the Food for Paws movement as we would also like to do our bit to contribute to giving strays a good and healthy life that they deserve." Food for Paws will begin with Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune in the first phase. (Puja Gupta can be contacted at puja.g@ians.in) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text In July, I made my first trip to our covid-closed office in months, traveling around the startlingly speedy Beltway and north up Interstate 270 to the same unimposing building I've been commuting to for years. I went through the darkened building to my desk, sorted some mail and waved to some familiar shadowy figures in the hallways. I believe they were longtime colleagues, but the building was mostly dark and they were wearing masks. I'm not even sure that I was myself, having felt somehow askew for months, as though the pandemic had sanded away some layer of self I hadn't realized was there. Partially to counteract the sheer weirdness that had settled over this once-mundane journey, I decided to try to normalize the evening by picking up one of my favorite cocktails to take home. Founding Farmers has a location off 270, and on its menu is one of my favorite drinks in the D.C. area, the Clementine. I've wanted to write an appreciation of the Clementine for a long time. It's a creation of Founding Farmers' former beverage director, Jon Arroyo (now consulting with Copper Fox Distillery). It's been on the restaurant's menu for more than a decade now, and it's one of the drinks that drew me to the craft cocktail revival back in the late aughts. While I didn't recognize it at the time, I now see in it a drink that pours many of the trends, rediscoveries and lily-gildings of the cocktail renaissance into a single glass. Specifically, the drink is complex (10 ingredients, if you count the garnishes and infusion) but perfectly balanced, tart and sweet and spicy and herbal. It employs fresh juices and calls for liqueurs (maraschino and Benedictine) that were fairly esoteric until the cocktail revival brought them back. It makes use of a house-made ingredient, an infusion of chile pepper and clementines (which Arroyo says no one seemed to be using in drinks at the time) into reposado tequila. That base also provided an elegant reintroduction to agave spirits for those who might have only had them in shots or margaritas before; Arroyo says he'd specifically wanted to highlight Siembra Azul's reposado iteration. Finally, it employs not one but two showy garnishings. Prior to pouring, the bartender moistens a wide band of the rim of the glass, then rolls it in sugar, creating a swath of sweet crust you taste and feel with each sip of the drink - an old-school technique that Arroyo picked up training with longtime cocktail king Dale DeGroff and passed along to his staff. Then, when the drink is presented, the bartender twists a strip of orange peel near an open flame above it, expressing the oils of the peel through the fire. This creates a burst of aroma in the space around you, and the squeezed and flamed oils settle on the surface of the drink. It also creates a tiny fireball. It's one hell of a way to herald the evening's tipple. I loved the drink from the moment it arrived in front of me. It was the first time I'd ever experienced the flamed-orange technique, one of those little pieces of bar theater about which I've never managed to grow blase. As an irredeemable dork who continues to love sleight-of-hand magic, I would've brought friends back for that drink for the fireball alone. The fact that the Clementine is also delicious? That's gravy. When I'd thought about writing about the Clementine in the past, I vaguely imagined writing about it with a little bit of cheek, along with other examples of the overly baroque tendencies of the early years of the cocktail renaissance, a pendulum that has of late begun to swing back toward simpler, classic drinks. Many have welcomed that swing, and the pandemic, I'd guess, may accelerate it; I know that I've mostly been leaning toward sips that aren't too complex. Few ingredients. Equal parts. Not so much pomp and circumstance. And yet. When I picked up my Clementine to go in July, it was handed to me by someone in a mask, and it had been unavoidably simplified to survive the road. I transported it home in its brown paper bag and poured it from a nondescript plastic jug. It tasted as good as ever then, and later when I made it for myself. But what I would've given, then and right now, to have someone make it for me with the sugar crust and the flamed twist! Or serve me any fussy, ridiculous, overly complicated concoction in a bar, with low lights and irritating music and conversations to eavesdrop on! Something with a strange new flavor and umpteen ingredients, something I would never make for myself at home, with a visual surprise to it. Hell, I could even go for a buxom plastic mermaid on a stick. Often simpler is better. But every now and then, you encounter a drink (or a long stretch of time isolated at home) that makes you remember: Sometimes more is more. And as Arroyo points out, while it's fun to try to replicate drinks at home, "there are certain drinks that invite guests to enjoy [them] at that bar, to be made for you. You can't replace that feeling, that emotion - it's part of the experience," he says. Sure, he notes, you can try to make it at home and have fun doing it, but "part of the intent is the hospitality behind it, because you're giving a little bit of yourself every time you put that stuff out there." Since the pandemic began, more than one friend who's been in the presence of our booze collection has teased that it probably doesn't matter to me that bars are closed. After all, I can make a great cocktail at home. But it's just not true. As I watch bars across the country struggle to survive as best they can, advocating for the laws and implementing the safety protocols and hoping for the vaccine that will let them keep operating, as I remember some of my best bar experiences, I know no home cocktail setup can ever fill the void. Good bars gather some ingredients - the most important being the right people - and use them for a magic trick better than any citrus fireball: creating a small, temporary, happy community out of strangers. Every time a bartender has made me a Clementine, I set aside my book, or pause the conversation I'm having, so I can watch that little burst of flame above the drink, announcing the arrival of a vanishing pleasure, enjoying the moment when someone presents you with a drink that's complex, beautiful and made before your eyes. And as I sat at home drinking my homemade, delicious - but somehow incomplete - Clementine, I thought of the thousands of people whose work goes into the creation and preparation of these drinks, and all the little moments of joy and celebration their concoctions embellish, and I crossed my fingers for all of us. - - - The Clementine 1 serving A longtime favorite at Founding Farmers, this complex and beautifully balanced tequila drink is sweet, tart and spicy, thanks to the use of a tequila infused with citrus and chile, which you'll need to make in advance. The flamed orange peel garnish adds both theater and aroma, but you can skip it if you prefer. Make Ahead: The infused tequila needs to be prepared at least 4 days in advance. Storage Notes: The infused tequila will keep, bottled at room temperature, for up to 1 month. INGREDIENTS Granulated sugar, for garnish 1 lime wedge Ice 2 ounces infused tequila (see NOTE) 1 ounce fresh lime juice 3/4 ounce pineapple juice (preferably fresh) 3/4 ounce Benedictine 1/2 ounce agave syrup 1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur Orange peel, for garnish (optional) DIRECTIONS Make a small mound of sugar, then use the lime to dampen the outside rim of a cocktail glass. Roll the exterior rim gently over the mounded sugar so the sugar adheres to the rim. Set the glass aside. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, then add the tequila, lime and pineapple juices, Benedictine, agave syrup and maraschino. Shake hard, about 15 seconds, then strain into the cocktail glass. If garnishing the drink, light a match near the sugar-rimmed glass, then twist the peel (orange side facing the surface of the drink) through the flame. The orange oils expressed from the peel will make a small burst of flame, then settle on the surface of the drink. Serve right away. NOTE: To make the infused tequila, thoroughly wash 6 clementines, then score their outer rinds, top to bottom, making 6 to 10 cuts around the fruit. Wash a serrano chile, and then halve it lengthwise. Place the clementines and chile in a large jar or bowl, then add 1 liter (about 1 quart) of reposado tequila and let the mixture infuse. Taste regularly (at least daily) to see how spicy the infusion is getting - and once it's to your liking, discard the chile pieces. Continue to steep the clementines for a full 4 days, then strain out the solids and bottle the infusion. It will keep for a month. Nutrition | Ingredients are too variable for a meaningful analysis. From John Arroyo, former Founding Farmers beverage director. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 08:23 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454773d 1 Editorial Yoshihide-Suga,Suga,Japan,japan-pm,Shinzo-Abe Free Japanese and international media have tended to be condescending toward the newly elected Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga because his rise to the top executive post did not follow a national election, but rather as a result of internal party compromises. But history shows figures like Suga can become effective and powerful leaders. The Japanese people are not the only ones who are pinning their hopes on Suga in the prolonged fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic stagnation it has caused. The whole world, including 10-member ASEAN, hopes to see Suga guide Japan out of the health and economic crises, as Japans recovery will help the ailing global economy to regain its feet. Read also: Yoshihide Suga set to become Japan's next prime minister The new prime minister is little known at the international level, because as the right-hand man of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, Suga devoted his time and energy to domestic affairs. However, Suga, as the lead government spokesperson, often talked about major diplomatic issues, especially China, South and North Korea, as well as Japans unpredictable ties with the United States under President Donald Trump. Suga has an unusual background compared with many of his predecessors, including his immediate predecessor Abe. The 71-year old Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politician is among only a few of Japans political elite to come from a rural family. Suga is also an independent member of the LDP, belonging to no party faction. Suga is a self-made man, and loyal to Abe. In securing the PM position, Suga won 314 votes in the 465-member House of Representatives and 142 of the 245-member House of Councilors. Known as a fixer and a troubleshooter, Suga is admired as a master of getting things done. But many say he lacks vision, compared with Abe, who Suga served for eight years as chief Cabinet secretary. As the worlds third-largest economy after the US and China, Japan plays a very strategic role especially as the engine of economic growth of countries in Southeast Asia, either as a major lender or source of foreign direct investment. Now Japan is needed to counterbalance the might of China, both in economic and diplomatic terms, a role that has traditionally belonged to the US. While the US under President Trump is championing an America first policy, at the expense of Asia among other regions, Japan is preoccupied by its dispute with neighboring China, South and North Korea. Read also: Japan's Suga pledges focus on coronavirus but details remain sketchy Suga is expected to continue the policies of Abe. So, what can Indonesia and President Joko Jokowi Widodo expect from the new Japanese leader? No major changes are likely to happen in Indonesia-Japan relations now that Suga has assumed power. In fact, whoever replaced Abe, Japan would still consider Indonesia a strategic partner especially in the economic field, given the more than 1,600 Japanese companies that are now operating in Indonesia. The Southeast Asian country is one of Japans largest markets and a major supplier of natural resources. Suga will at least continue the current policies, though no more than his predecessor did. Major changes will only happen if he wins the real battle in September next year. Dr Archibald Yao Letsa, the Volta Regional Minister, has called on politicians to maintain the peace before, during and after the December 7 polls in the Region. He asked the politicians to educate their supporters to desist from acts of violence as the election was only a platform for ideas to enhance the country's development. The Minister said it was important for political actors not to support people, who engaged in acts to destabilize the country. Instead, he said, they should ensure that such persons were punished to serve as a deterrent to others. Dr Letsa, who was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the Regional Security Council was working with the Municipal and District Security Councils to ensure peace prevailed before, during and after the December general elections. He said the Councils were sending messages of peace to areas identified as hotspots. The Councils are also educating the people to cherish peace at all times for accelerated socio-economic development. He said peace was important for development and urged political actors to preach it in their discourse. The Minister urged traditional authorities to take the message of peace to their subjects and avoid taking sides as such acts could jeopardise peace in their communities. Dr Letsa admonished the youth not to succumb to any political machination to cause mayhem as we are one people and the country could only thrive in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity. The Minister implored the various political parties to accept the results of the election to ensure the nation's quest for rapid growth is achieved. ---GNA The protesting farmers chanted 'Kaczynski, traitor of the countryside!' outside the ruling party's headquarters Polish fur farmers and kosher meat producers protested in Warsaw on Wednesday against new legislation going through parliament with the support of animal rights groups. Poland is the world's third biggest fur producer after China and Denmark, according to activists, and a major exporter of kosher meat to Israel and Jewish communities in Europe. The legislation would ban the breeding of animals for fur -- a major industry in Poland -- and stop exports of halal and kosher meat. "Poland's standards regarding animals should be no worse, or even better, than those in western countries," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, said when the legislation was first tabled last week. Kaczynski, who is known for his love of cats, over the weekend launched the online #stopfurchallenge for people on social media to express their support for the draft amendment. "In the 21st century, it's possible to look really good without putting on a fur garment," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said ahead of a parliamentary vote on Wednesday. Lawmakers later voted down a proposal to scrap the bill and sent it to a parliamentary committee for further consideration. "In the 21st century, it's possible to look really good without putting on a fur garment," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Twitter ahead of the vote. Polish Nobel literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk has also appealed for the law to be passed, along with US animal rights campaigners PETA. Otwarte Klatki (Open Cages), an animal rights group, said there were around 550 fur farms in Poland breeding some 5.2 million animals. But the proposals have drawn criticism in the countryside -- a key electoral base for the PiS -- and experts quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza said the economic impact would be around 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion). The protesting farmers on Wednesday walked to the PiS headquarters chanting: "Kaczynski, traitor of the countryside!" Story continues Speaking at the rally, Szczepan Wojcik, a prominent fur farmer, said: "You betrayed us, rural Poland - your voters!" The Polish Meat Association on Monday said the proposed restrictions on ritual slaughter would have dire consequences for the industry. "The draft amendment is economically harmful and undermines the social security of many thousands of workers in the meat-processing sector, rural residents and farmers," it said. amj-dt/jj "To Love the Soul of the Sea" is the name of the poem that Carlos Jose Perez Samano unveiled in a mural on the patio wall of Alma del Mar restaurant, owned by Alma Romero de Tlacopilco (right), Wednesday, September 16, 2020. Read more A message of hope for South Phillys Mexican community was formally unveiled Wednesday with a mural and poem, To Love the Soul of the Sea. The words and images acknowledge the challenges of the pandemic but also express faith that residents will overcome hard times. Local author Carlos Jose Perez Samanos poem is now permanently part of the new mural on the patio wall of Alma del Mar, a Mexican-owned seafood restaurant in the Italian Market. The work was dedicated Wednesday to celebrate Mexicos Independence Day. Perez Samano, 35, said he was inspired to write the poem while he was dining at the restaurant earlier this year. Alma del Mar, located on Ninth Street near Carpenter Street, opened three months ago, during the coronavirus pandemic. Acknowledging the good that the sea can bring, the words of the poem include this message: Each shadow has a storm of light. A glass of water feeds you with peace and salt. Perez Samano said the project became a collaborative effort when his friends artist Cesar Viveros and community journalist Edgar Ramirez told him it was an opportunity to remind everyone that life is full of cycles that work like the waves of the sea that, at times, wash away the good and wash away the bad. Perez Samano said the poem, painted in light blue on the patio wall, was the first time he had combined literature and visual art for a permanent installation. Previously, he had worked on the Philly Street Art Fill the Walls with Hope project, a volunteer effort to place inspirational posters throughout the city. You know, literature can be a path to understand reality, and here we want to subtly acknowledge that hope is not a sentiment we share but a responsibility we have with one another to provide hope, he said. Viveros, who created the To Love the Soul of the Sea mural, has been involved in the Philadelphia arts scene for 20 years. He was not present at Wednesdays ceremony. Jennifer and Tony Wolf, from Newtown, Bucks County, said they have visited Alma del Mar for lunch at least eight times in the past three months. On Wednesday, unaware of the project, the couple said they were thrilled to see both the artwork and the recognition of the restaurant. Its lovely and refreshing to see a mural that combines literature with a sense of community, said Jennifer Wolf. Alma Romero de Tlacopilco, 44, the co-owner of Alma del Mar, said she was honored that her experience starting the restaurant with her husband, Marcos, was used to represent the entire Mexican communitys constant hard work and dreams of a better future. London, Sep 17 : Using machine learning and AI-based algorithms to analyse almost 400 press releases issued by the Indian government, two Indian-origin researchers from University of Cambridge have revealed how the country effectively used the nudge theory in disseminating the Covid-19 related messaging across 14 key policy areas to over 1.3 billion people. The nudges from Prime Minister Narendra Modi were particularly important in creating herd effect on lockdown and social distancing norms across the nation, argued the researchers. "An even greater tragedy may have unfolded had India's government not used nudge theory to maintain one of the world's strictest and longest lockdowns in the first quarter of the year," said the study by Ramit Debnath and Ronita Bardhan from Cambridge's Behaviour and Building Performance Group, Department of Architecture. Nudging, a concept in behavioural economics, political theory and behavioural sciences, is a design-based public policy approach which uses positive and negative reinforcements to modify the behaviour of a population. India nudged across 14 key policy areas to influence the behaviour of 1.3 billion people, including government employees, scientists, health professionals, manufacturers, food suppliers and students to help fight Covid-19. The government of India's use of nudge theory in the first three months of the pandemic helped to tackle the virus on numerous fronts, said the study published in the journal PLoS ONE. "Nudge-based policy approaches are crucial in a democratic country like India which has a vast population and geo-spatial divide, high levels of illiteracy and an extremely vulnerable health system," said Debnath, a Gates Cambridge Scholar. India has reported nearly five million Covid-19 cases and well over 80,000 deaths (as of September 16), making the country one of the worst hit in the world. But the implementation of the nudge theory earlier is "still saving lives". In January and February, policy nudges were focused on evaluating the risk of incoming travellers from China and extending surveillance at international airports. However, the narrative soon shifted to addressing other pressing concerns. By March, nudges sought to impose new restrictions on travel, discouraging people from visiting crowded and public spaces, and strict social distancing. On March 24, Modi told the nation that "21 days is critical to breaking the infection cycle... or else the country and your family could be set back 21 years". The next day, the country entered phase 1 of lockdown. The government nudged to tackle fake news about the virus and to convince the population to strictly adhere to the rules, use masks and wash hands frequently. At the same time, it conducted surveillance in urban areas using smart technologies that included drones, spatial analysis, low-power Bluetooth mobile phone applications and humanoid robots. "The government urgently needed to buy time and it had to bring a deeply divided population together to fight a common struggle. Our findings show that the government needed much more than scientific data to convince people, they appealed to powerful values including patriotism, family, religion and community," Bardhan stressed. The study also highlighted the role played by the 'Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund' (PM CARES Fund) which was created to nudge the public to make micro-donations and encourage public participation to help tackle the crisis. The ministries nudged India's manufacturing firms to produce PPE, hand sanitiser and masks to meet the national demand, while also seeking to protect the country's food security and supply chains at a critical time -- India's farmers harvest their winter crops from February to April. Meanwhile, the government spurred on India's scientific community to fight the pandemic, releasing funding through the Department of Science and Technology. Research institutions were encouraged to submit proposals to focus on the development of affordable diagnostics, vaccines, antivirals, disease models, and other R&D to study Covid-19. The Ministry of Human Resource Development also nudged the start-up and innovation community in India to participate in the fight for Covid-19 by launching programmes like 'Fight Corona IDEAthon'. Emphasising that the study does not attempt to assess the success or failure of the government of India's policy interventions, the researchers said it rather aims to understand how context-specific latent nudges were created through policy interventions as the crisis unfolded. The researchers used topic modelling, a computational social science method that has its basis in text mining and natural language processing. It automatically analyses text data to determine cluster words for a set of documents. "Behaviour changes encouraged by nudges earlier in the year, including the wearing of masks and social distancing, are still widely maintained across India. These nudges are still helping to save lives," Bardhan said. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The COVID-19 pandemic threatens hard-won gains in health and education over the past decade, especially in the poorest countries, a new World Bank Group analysis finds. Investments in human capitalthe knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their livesare key to unlocking a childs potential and to improving economic growth in every country. The World Bank Groups 2020 Human Capital Index includes health and education data for 174 countries covering 98 percent of the worlds population up to March 2020, providing a pre-pandemic baseline on the health and education of children. The analysis shows that pre-pandemic, most countries had made steady progress in building human capital of children, with the biggest strides made in low-income countries. Despite this progress, and even before the effects of the pandemic, a child born in a typical country could expect to achieve just 56 percent of their potential human capital, relative to a benchmark of complete education and full health. "The pandemic puts at risk the decade's progress in building human capital, including the improvements in health, survival rates, school enrollment, and reduced stunting. The economic impact of the pandemic has been particularly deep for women and for the most disadvantaged families, leaving many vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty," said World Bank Group President David Malpass. Protecting and investing in people is vital as countries work to lay the foundation for sustainable, inclusive recoveries and future growth." Due to the pandemics impact, most children more than 1 billion have been out of school and could lose out, on average, half a year of schooling, adjusted for learning, translating into considerable monetary losses. Data also shows significant disruptions to essential health services for women and children, with many children missing out on crucial vaccinations. The 2020 Human Capital Index also presents a decade-long view of the evolution of human capital outcomes from 2010 through 2020, finding improvements across all regions, where data are available, and across all income levels. These were largely due to improvements in health, reflected in better child and adult survival rates and reduced stunting, as well as an increase in school enrollment. This progress is now at risk due to the global pandemic. The analysis finds that human capital outcomes for girls are on average higher than for boys. However, this has not translated into comparable opportunities to use human capital in the labor market: on average, employment rates are 20 percentage points lower for women than for men, with a wider gap in many countries and regions. Moreover, the pandemic is exacerbating risks of gender-based violence, child marriage and adolescent pregnancy, all of which further reduce opportunities for learning and empowerment for women and girls. Today, hard-won human capital gains in many countries are at risk. But countries can do more than just work to recover the lost progress. To protect and extend earlier human capital gains, countries need to expand health service coverage and quality among marginalized communities, boost learning outcomes together with school enrollments, and support vulnerable families with social protection measures adapted to the scale of the COVID-19 crisis. The World Bank Group is working closely with governments to develop long-term solutions to protect and invest in people during and after the pandemic: In Ethiopia, Haiti and Mongolia, the Bank has been supporting the acquisition of vital medical equipment. In Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, and Nepal, the Bank is supporting the development of school safety and hygiene protocols while working with Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene teams to provide basic sanitization and hygiene supplies. In Jordan and Turkey, through recently approved new operations, the Bank is supporting the development of TV and digital content for blended teaching and learning for the new academic year, as well as psycho-social counseling and remedial courses. In the Sahel region, the Bank is backing the Sahel Womens Economic Empowerment and the Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) project aimed at creating a favorable environment for women and girls empowerment through programs to keep girls in school, and to expand economic opportunities and access to quality reproductive health services. . The Bank is also helping India immediately scale-up cash transfers and food benefits, using a set of pre-existing national platforms and programs, to provide social protection for essential workers involved in COVID-19 relief efforts; and benefit vulnerable groups, particularly migrants and informal workers, who face high risks of exclusion. Ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can recover lost ground and pave the way for todays children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them. Fully realizing the creative promise embodied in each child has never been more important. The World Bank Group , one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, is taking broad, fast action to help developing countries strengthen their pandemic response. We are supporting public health interventions, working to ensure the flow of critical supplies and equipment, and helping the private sector continue to operate and sustain jobs. We will be deploying up to $160 billion in financial support over 15 months to help more than 100 countries protect the poor and vulnerable, support businesses, and bolster economic recovery. This includes $50 billion of new IDA resources through grants and highly concessional loans. Plaintiff Zachariah (Zach) Otto received his first Gardasil shot in Orange County, California when he was 16 years of age. Mr. Otto, now 24 and living in Colorado, alleges multiple Gardasil injections caused him to develop life-altering injuries that have left him unable to work or physically attend college. "Most people think Gardasil is for girls, but since 2009, Merck has made billions in profit by marketing the HPV vaccine to the parents of boys and to young men," says attorney Nicole K.H. Maldonado. "Through its advertising, Merck sold parents on the idea that Gardasil is a safe and effective tool to stop the spread of HPV and prevent cervical cancer. But Merck knew that Gardasil was neither safe nor effective at preventing cervical cancer, and worse, the company knew that Gardasil could cause a host of serious health issues." "Merck fast-tracked Gardasil by presenting misleading data to the FDA and fabricating a health crisis," says Mr. Otto's co-counsel Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "They claimed they were 'filling an unmet medical' need but in reality, the only thing Merck was interested in filling was the $6 billion financial hole created by the Vioxx scandal." Plaintiff Zach Otto Developed Several Vaccine Injuries After Receiving Gardasil Shots Zach Otto was a 16-year-old minor when he received his first shot of Gardasil in 2012. Before agreeing to allow Zach to receive the Gardasil vaccine, his mother, Jennifer Otto, relied upon Merck's ubiquitous representations concerning the vaccine's safety and efficacy. She had viewed various online, print, and television marketing materials stating that Gardasil is very safe, that Gardasil prevents cancer, and that "good mothers" must vaccinate their children with the Gardasil vaccine. In 2014, Zach received his second Gardasil injection. He shortly thereafter experienced body pains, headaches, cold-like symptoms, unexplained rashes, joint pains, ear pain, and enhanced lymph nodes in his neck. Over the next few months, Zach was in and out of doctors' offices to treat his symptoms. In 2015, Zach received his third Gardasil injection. Two days later, his knees gave out while he was at work. Unable to move, he called his mother to take him home. Mr. Otto's health continued to decline in the months that followed. He experienced numerous serious and disabling complications, including weakness, chronic pain in joints, abnormal gait, burning sensation on various parts of his body, hives, extreme weight loss, chronic fatigue, rashes, gastrointestinal issues, severe headaches, inability to sleep, dizziness upon standing, memory and cognitive issues, dysautonomia, and the inability to walk any significant distance without a cane, among many other issues. In 2016, Mr. Otto tested positive for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), an autoimmune disorder in which people often experience fainting, migraine headaches, anxiety, and a host of other life-changing health issues. As a result of his injuries, Mr. Otto is unable to engage in the normal activities that a teenager and young adult would enjoy; he had to drop out of college for a time and can no longer work. He is now legally disabled and must live with his mother who acts as his primary caregiver. Mr. Otto is visited by nurses at his home that administer his intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) therapy to help combat his autoimmune injuries. IVIg therapy is expensive and time-consuming with the recipient hooked up to an IV for hours on end. Even with treatment, Zach continues to experience many of the Gardasil-induced symptoms outlined above and is forced to be homebound, bedbound, and remains generally inactive. His serious and disabling physical injuries, pain, and mobility limitations have also had a devastating impact on his emotional wellbeing. According to the complaint, if Mr. Otto knew of the risks associated with the vaccine, he never would have consented to receive it. Likewise, if his mother had been informed about the known safety risks associated with the Gardasil vaccine, she never would have allowed her son to receive his first Gardasil injection. In filing today's complaint, Zach Otto seeks to hold Merck accountable for causing his life-changing physical and emotional injuries. The complaint accuses Merck of knowingly and recklessly placing Gardasil's profits ahead of patient safety. He is requesting that exemplary (punitive) damages be assessed to deter Merck and other would-be defendants from engaging in similar alleged reprehensible conduct. Gardasil Lawsuit Allegations Among other allegations, the complaint filed today accuses Merck of the following (these are allegations only, there has been no determination of liability in this matter): Merck misled regulators, legislators, and the medical community about the safety and efficacy of the Gardasil HPV vaccine. The vaccine manufacturer knowingly concealed the risks associated with Gardasil's ingredients, which include a potent neurotoxin and potentially hazardous DNA particles. In seeking fast-track approval for Gardasil, Merck presented misleading data to the FDA suggesting that HPV infections and some abnormal cervical tissue inexorably result in cancer. Gardasil's approval was based on Merck's theory that HPV alone causes cervical cancer, and that the Gardasil vaccine could eliminate cervical cancer and other HPV-associated cancers. None of these contentions are true; Merck has never proven that Gardasil prevents cervical cancer or any type of cancer. In the Gardasil clinical trials, Merck did not use a true placebo. Instead, Merck "spiked" the placebo with AAHS and the vaccine's other additives, which resulted in approximately equal numbers of subjects in the vaccine group and the placebo group suffering adverse reactions. According to the complaint, this gave the false impression that the Gardasil HPV vaccine was "as safe as a placebo" when, in fact, significant numbers of subjects in both treatment groups suffered many serious medical conditions, including symptoms of autoimmune disease. Contrary to Merck's assertions that Gardasil is a safe and effective tool for preventing cancer, studies have shown that systemic administration of Gardasil leads to increased rates of cervical cancer and other serious health issues, including the severe side effects Mr. Otto now suffers. Merck knew or had reason to know that its vaccine was defective and ineffective, but instead of warning the medical community and the public, the company wrongfully concealed information and further made false statements concerning the safety and efficacy of Gardasil. Gardasil has more reported injuries than any other vaccine on the market. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out millions of dollars in damages for Gardasil-induced injuries and deaths. Despite these injuries and deaths, Gardasil is the most expensive vaccine currently on the market. About Zach Otto "My life is a constant battle between attempting to improve my life and being held back by my own body's limitations," says Mr. Otto. "Gardasil has turned my body into a prison, an anchor that won't afford me the ability to live an independent life and one that significantly restricts my ability to grow as a person. Life with vaccine injuries has been a battle, not just to survive, but to live. It's the myriad of doctor appointments and tests, the IVIg I receive every three weeks just to get some level of relief from the chronic pain and weakness that I suffer every day." About Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman is one of the nation's leading law firms representing victims who have sustained injuries after receiving the Gardasil HPV vaccine. In August, the firm filed a similar Gardasil lawsuit on behalf of 19-year-old Julia Balasco, who alleges she sustained severe injuries after receiving her first Gardasil shot at the age of 13. Since 1973, Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman has won over $4 billion in settlements and verdicts on behalf of clients across all areas of practice. Statement from Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman on the Gardasil Litigation It is important to note that, while there is currently a great deal of controversy surrounding vaccines, the attorneys at Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman wish to stress that we and our clients are not against vaccines. Vaccines have the potential to eradicate disease and save millions of lives. However, our firm is against intentional efforts to mislead consumers about the safety and effectiveness of a drug or vaccine. We have always foughtand will continue to fightfor the rights of consumers to be fully and honestly informed about risks associated with any drug, vaccine, chemical, or medical device. We will work tirelessly to ensure those rights are defended and victims of injustice are compensated for their injuries. SOURCE Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman Related Links https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform are pressuring Twitter Inc. to disclose information about a 2015 data breach at the company involving former employees who allegedly worked as spies for the government of Saudi Arabia. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and the ranking member on the committee, wrote to Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey on Sept. 2, accusing the company of mismanagement and stating that he will consider all possible options, including legislation, to ensure Twitters security no longer puts peoples lives at risk. Comers letter was partly in response to an Aug. 19 Bloomberg report, which detailed allegations about two former Twitter employees who are said to have secretly worked for the Saudi government, gathering internal data on anonymous Saudi Twitter users in return for gifts and cash, or promises of future employment. The data gathered by the two employees was allegedly shared with Saudi officials, who used it to harass or arrest people critical of the government, including humanitarian aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who was detained by secret police in Riyadh on March 12, 2018, according to lawsuits, human rights groups and the sister of al-Sadhan. Twitters lack of transparency about any actions it has taken to provide more robust oversight and security gives the appearance the company believes it bears no responsibility for any of the crimes committed using its platform, Comer wrote. Twitter appears to place far too much trust in too many people, granting them extraordinary access to peoples data and personal information. Twitter has refused to address these concerns, he added. Now, it would seem from the reports involving Saudi Arabian spies, Twitters mismanagement may have led to the deaths of dissidents. In a Sept. 11 letter to Comer, Twitter declined to provide him with information about the case on the grounds that investigations are underway. We work closely with our peers and industry experts to promote cybersecurity best practices to prevent intrusions while also working with law enforcement to identify bad actors and help bring them to justice, wrote Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, a Twitter vice president for public policy and philanthropy. A copy of the letter was seen by Bloomberg News. Comer has repeatedly pressured Twitter in recent months. On July 15, hackers breached the social media platform and compromised 130 accounts, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. A 17-year-old Florida man was accused of being the mastermind, and two others were arrested for their role in the scheme, a cryptocurrency scam that allegedly netted more than $100,000 (U.S.). Comer wrote to Twitter the following day, requesting information about Twitters response to the incident. Later in July, Twitter organized a briefing for members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Twitter clearly does not take security and oversight of its practices seriously, a Republican spokesperson for the committee told Bloomberg. Absent concrete action from Twitter to address these concerns, the committee is reviewing its options. A Twitter spokesperson said the company has been in communication with and have briefed various congressional committees and individual representatives on the recent security incident many times. We have also consistently communicated proactively to the public on this issue, publishing live tweets, blog posts and proactive outreach to our customers on every specific detail that we can share around an ongoing legal investigation, the spokesperson said. Read more about: No power in the world can stop Indian forces from patrolling areas where they have traditionally done so, defence minister Rajnath Singh asserted in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, adding that China has amassed troops on the border for which the Army had made appropriate counter-deployments. In a detailed statement on the situation in the Upper House, Singh said the recent action of the Chinese forces of amassing a large number of troops reflects a disregard for bilateral pacts, adding that the Indian forces were capable of dealing with any challenge. He, however, underlined that the differences can best be dealt with peacefully. Also read: Spike in severe cyclones, extremely heavy rain over India, Earth sciences ministry tells RS Responding to concerns expressed by members on the Chinese side obstructing Indian patrols, Singh said no change in the patrolling pattern would be allowed.On patrolling pattern, I want to make clear that that is the reason behind the face-off. The patrolling pattern is traditional and well defined. No power in the world can stop our jawans from patrolling. If our soldiers have made sacrifices, this is the very reason for doing so. And there will be no changes in the patrolling pattern, Singh said. Earlier, several members, including former defence minister A K Antony, had expressed concerns about Indian patrol not being allowed up to traditional points. Many members also said there should be restoration of status quo ante. In a detailed statement in the House, Singh underlined that while India was committed to peace, it was also firm on protecting its boundaries. The defence minister said it had been conveyed to the Chinese side that the situation at the boundary will also have an implication on other areas. Singh told the Upper House that the India-China boundary issue is unresolved. China believes the boundary issue is still unsettled, he said adding that it also does not recognize the customary line. Both countries discussed this in the 50s and the 60s but there was no solution. China has occupied 38,000 sq km of Indian land, Singh said. He said during discussions, China has also accepted that a peaceful solution is needed. But till now, there is no commonly delineated Line of actual control on India-China border areas, he added. India believes bilateral relations and boundary question can be discussed. But the situation on LAC will definitely have an impact on the bilateral issues, Singh said, adding that there is often a perception overlap in many places. Singh said that this year, from April, China increased the number and weaponry on the border. Our army took necessary measuress. We have made clear that unilateral status quo is not accepted under any circumstances, Singh said. He added that China had initiated a very violent face-off in Galwan. Our soldiers responded and also inflicted losses on the transgressing side, Singh said. The defence minister said it was made to clear that LAC must be respected by both sides and there should be no unilateral attempt to alter the status quo. It is clear from Chinese actions that there is difference between what is being said and being done, Singh added. He said it was clear from the actions at the south bank of the Pangong lake but the Indian Army had dealt with the attempts effectively. Chinese actions reflect a disregard for bilateral pacts, he added. These pacts have detailed norms to deal with face-offs. The violent conduct of Chinese forces is a violation of all norms, Singh said. The Chinese side has accumulated a large number of troops and ammunition.Our forces have also done appropriate counter-deployments. The House should be assured that our forces are capable of dealing with this challenge. Amid Covid-19, there has been a fast deployment of our forces. That is also because the government has focused on development of border infrastructure, the defence minister said. In the interest of the country, whatever tough steps need to be taken, will be taken, the defence minister said. Singh said the aggressive demeanour and amassing of troops on the border are issues which he had raised with his Chinese counterpart in Moscow. It is true we are passing through a challenging phase in Ladakh. But also rest assured that our forces are capable of dealing with it, he said. Emphasising that India believed that it was best to deal with differences peacefully, Singh said that it is always possible for one to start a war but not easy to end it. Pointing to the nations resolve in defending itself, Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had himself gone to Ladakh to encourage the jawans. THE ADECCO GROUP ANNOUNCES EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP APPOINTMENTS Zurich, Switzerland, 17 September 2020: The Adecco Group, the world's leading HR solutions company, today announced two executive leadership appointments designed to enhance client and candidate experience, ensure greater global alignment in its go-to-market approach, accelerate digitalisation, and drive profitable growth. The Group is taking the final steps in its transition to a brand-driven organisational model, structured around solutions-based Business Groups, with the appointment of Christophe Catoir as President of the Adecco brand, effective 1 January 2021. In this role, he will assume responsibility for the Adecco business globally, overseeing the Group's workforce solutions operations (general staffing) with some EUR 17.5 billion in annual sales (full-year 2019). He will remain a member of the Group's Executive Committee, reporting to Adecco Group Chief Executive Officer Alain Dehaze. The organisational shift aligns with the structure of other global brands within the Adecco Group portfolio. The Group's portfolio of talent solutions and professional recruitment brands, including LHH, General Assembly, Spring and Badenoch + Clark, as well as local US professional brands, will continue to be led by Sergio Picarelli as President of Talent Solutions. Modis, the group's IT & Engineering Solutions business, will continue to be led globally by Jan Gupta as President of Modis. The unification of Adecco as a global business will deliver stronger operational alignment across markets, enable the acceleration of the brand's digital transformation, and facilitate a consistently superior client, associate and candidate experience in all geographies. Mr. Catoir joined the Adecco Group in France in 1995 and has progressed through management roles of increasing seniority, spanning general staffing, professional staffing and permanent recruitment. In 2015, he was appointed to the Adecco Group Executive Committee as Regional Head of France, leading a portfolio of eight brands across the Group's largest geographic market. Under his leadership, the business adopted several ambitious digital initiatives and has successfully diversified its activities with an increased focus on associate training and employability. In 2019, Mr. Catoir's responsibilities were expanded to include Northern Europe and in 2020 to cover UK & Ireland General Staffing. The Adecco Group's CEO Alain Dehaze said: "As we align our country-based Adecco brand operations under a single roof, Christophe is uniquely qualified to lead the global business into its next phase. He combines expert knowledge of the staffing market with a deep understanding of all facets of the Adecco solutions offering. Christophe has a proven track record of driving profitable growth, developing cross-brand solutions for clients, and building and scaling digital tools to drive both efficiency and differentiation. As we accelerate the transformation of Adecco globally, drive clarity of focus and a consistent global go-to-market approach, I am confident Christophe will lead the business to even greater heights." Additionally, the Adecco Group is further strengthening its sales and marketing function with the aim to drive profitable growth, further enhance client, associate and candidate experience, and accelerate digital transformation. As such, the Adecco Group announced the appointment of Valerie Beaulieu as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer and Member of the Group Executive Committee, effective 16 November 2020. Ms. Beaulieu currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft US, leading the marketing function across the region's B2B portfolio. Ms. Beaulieu is a seasoned international executive, having held leadership roles across North America, Asia and Europe during her 23-year Microsoft tenure, driving transformation across marketing and core business operations with proven success. Ms. Beaulieu will be based at the Adecco Group's global headquarters in Zurich and report to Adecco Group CEO Alain Dehaze. Mr. Dehaze commented: "Valerie brings a rare combination of marketing depth, transformation experience, and a proven track record of delivering global sales growth to this pivotal role. Her deep knowledge of technology, sales optimisation and digitalisation, combined with her passion for customer-centricity, will be key assets to the Adecco Group as we accelerate our own transformation with a focus on profitable growth across all regions." For further information please contact: The Adecco Group Investor Relations investor.relations@adeccogroup.com or +41 (0) 44 878 88 88 The Adecco Group Press Office media@adeccogroup.com or +41 (0) 44 878 87 87 adeccogroup.com Facebook: facebook.com/theadeccogroup Twitter: @AdeccoGroup About the Adecco Group The Adecco Group is the world's leading HR solutions company. We believe in making the future work for everyone, and every day enable more than 3.5 million careers. We skill, develop, and hire talent in 60 countries, enabling organisations to embrace the future of work. As a Fortune Global 500 company, we lead by example, creating shared value that fuels economies and builds better societies. Our culture of inclusivity, entrepreneurship and teamwork empowers our 35,000 employees. We are proud to have been consistently ranked one of the 'World's Best Workplaces' by Great Place to Work. The Adecco Group AG is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland (ISIN: CH0012138605) and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ADEN) and powered by nine global brands: Adecco, Adia, Badenoch & Clark, General Assembly, Lee Hecht Harrison, Modis, Pontoon, Spring Professional and Vettery. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - The World Bank Group has approved a US$80 million grant to support Ethiopia to bolster agricultural productivity and enhance market access for smallholder farmers Central America is an isthmus that lies between the continents of North and South America. The consensus is not definite, but is considered a part of North America. It separates the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean Sea and is roughly 1,140 miles long. Several of the regions countries share a similar history of the Spanish conquest. However, they have different political or economic systems. Some countries have experienced many civil wars, while others have remained relatively peaceful. Here are five things you should know about Central America. Map of Central America 1. The Countries That Make Up Central America There are seven countries in Central America: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Guatemala is the largest country by population, with almost 18 million inhabitants. El Salvador is the smallest country by landmass, but it is the most densely populated, with about 811 people per square mile. Costa Rica is one of the most politically stable countries in Central America. It also has no standing army. Belize was a British colony and is still part of the Commonwealth, and was the only place in Central America along with a former colony called the Mosquito Coast which is now part of Honduras and Nicaragua that was colonized by the British. Belize is the only country in the region where English is the official language, but its inhabitants are often multilingual and speak Creole, Spanish, or an Indigenous language such as Yucatec or Mopan, which are Mayan languages. Mayan ruins in the Riviera Maya. Image credit: DC_Aperture/Shutterstock 2. It Is On The Land Of The Mayan Empire The Mayan Empire was one of the most dominant Indigenous civilizations in Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. In modern-day Central America and Mexico, around 6 million people speak the over 25 Mayan languages still alive today. Descendants of the Maya live in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador. About 40% of Guatemalans are of Mayan descent. The earliest Mayan settlements date back to around 1800 BCE but peaked during the Classic Period, which began around 250 AD. During this period, the civilization grew to some 40 cities, with many flourishing and reaching between 5,000 and 50,000 inhabitants. At its peak, the Maya population increased to about 2 million people. It is not clear how it declined, but by the time the Spanish explorers arrived, the inhabitants of the land were mostly living in small agricultural villages, no longer in the great cities they once occupied. The flag of the Federal Republic of Central America. Image credit: yui/Shutterstock 3. Five Countries Once, Briefly, Formed One Large Country The Federal Republic of Central America was a short-lived nation formed in 1823 and made up of present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Before this union, the region (plus the Mexican state of Chiapas) was part of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Once the nation formed, there was constant infighting amongst the Liberals and Conservatives. This disagreement resulted in a civil war that caused the disintegration of the union in 1840. The republic broke off into the countries that form Central America today. Panama City was founded by Pedro Arias Davila. Image credit: Gualberto Becerra/Shutterstock 4. Pedro Arias Davila Was An Important Historical Figure Pedro Arias Davila, also known as Pedrarias, was a Spanish soldier who led the first Spanish mission to form permanent colonies in the American mainland. He sent some of his men on conquest expeditions to what is now Costa Rica and Nicaragua. His achievements include founding Panama City, establishing colonies in present-day Panama and Nicaragua, and acting as governor in both countries. The Darien Gap is a 100-mile-long gap of forest wilderness that is impossible to tame, stoping the Pan-American Highway from reaching completion. Image credit: Rafal Cichawa/Shutterstock 5. The Pan-American Highway Is Incomplete Due To A Gap The Pan-American Highway is a nearly 30,000-mile-long road that stretches from Alaska to the tip of Argentina. But from Panama to Colombia, there is a gap of wild tropical rainforest called the Darien Gap that the Pan-Am Highway cannot pass through. When travelers reach the gaps entrance in Panama, they have to load their vehicles onto a ferry to enter Colombia. The Darien Gap is known as one of the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere due to its harsh terrain, poisonous creatures, and armed guerrilla patrols. Attempts to build a route have been unsuccessful due to its geography and conflict with the Indigenous populations living in the area. In fact, remnants of the British attempt to build a railroad here are still rusting away in the forest, many years later Not quite North American, not quite South American, Central America is a whole world unto its own, with historical landmarks dating back further in time than Europe, and just as much cultural richness. It offers boundless opportunities for explorers, from backpacking to beaches, history to nightlife. Just bring your rain jacket; the rain season here is quite something! LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network (AIYN), a nonprofit collaborative that uses arts to heal youth and change the systems that serve them, announced today it is welcoming a new name and new leadership reflective of the organizations impact, growth, and future. Effective October 1, Associate Director Elida Ledesma will be promoted to Executive Director as the organization embraces the new name Arts for Healing and Justice Network. The new name was the result of a deeply thoughtful, collaborative, and inclusive process one that prioritized youth voices and their central relationship to the organization. The process also exemplified the organizations networked approach with its member agencies, advisory council, and other valued community partners. Our success and evolution over the last five years has outpaced our original name, said AIYN Board Chair Fabian Debora. Arts for Healing and Justice Network better represents the organizations significant growth and more accurately showcases who we are today, in this we continue to aspire and embrace the values that gave birth to this organization since day one. Founded in 2015 with the first-ever multidisciplinary arts program for incarcerated youth in LA County, AIYNs original name reflected what was then a radical proposition of integrating arts system-wide into youth detention settings. Even as the organization has demonstrated success with implementing this program and shifting perceptions, AIYN has continued to challenge assumptions, reimagine systems, and inspire new approaches to serving youth and strengthening communities. Over the last five years, AIYN has expanded its reach to include support for successful youth development and reentry, and new programs focused on youth leadership, advocacy, and collaboration. AIYN has also been working with emerging arts and justice collaboratives outside of California that are replicating AIYNs proven model of community-centered networks grounded in arts and cultural engagement. Collectively, this evolution and expansion has resulted in a deeper, more connected community presence here in LA County, greater access to public dollars for smaller community-based organizations, and an increasing national role as a leader in the movement for centering arts in youth and community wellbeing, and in juvenile justice reform. As the organization continues this trajectory of growth, the Board has unanimously voted to elevate rising leader Elida Ledesma to the role of Executive Director. Elida succeeds Kaile Shilling, who is moving into a new role as Founder and Senior Advisor supporting this transition. I am humbled and energized to step into the position of Executive Director and continue stewarding our mission under the new banner of Arts for Healing and Justice Network, said Elida Ledesma. The future is bright as we implement the next phase of our strategic vision and redouble our efforts to build resiliency and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile justice system. AIYN envisions a future where youth are empowered and the systems that serve them are transformed by using arts as a foundational strategy and catalyst for change. In the years ahead, the organization will continue to expand its reach and impact in each of its four focus areas: arts education, training, advocacy, and collaboration. Specific initiatives include bringing healing-informed arts practices not just as intervention, but as prevention to new partners like the County Departments of Youth Development & Diversion, Mental Health, Public Health, the Office of Child Protection, and school districts, among others. The organization will also be moving its headquarters to the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles at the end of the year, a new space that will serve as a hub for the work of building community power, equity, and access. Elida is the right leader at the right time for AIYN, said Kaile Shilling, the organizations founding Executive Director. Elidas history of achievement with the organization, her earned trust and respect of members, staff, and partners, as well as her clear vision for its future make her the ideal leader to ensure the organization and the work continue to grow, to thrive, and to live more deeply into its founding values and purpose. A Southern California native and longtime social justice leader, Elida Ledesma has been an integral member of AIYNs staff for the entirety of the organizations lifespan. Most recently, Elida has served as the Associate Director, overseeing the creation of a shared theory of practice, and ongoing trainings for members and county agencies, in addition to managing the organizations daily operations. During her tenure at AIYN, Elida received a County of Los Angeles Commendation from Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and a Certificate of Congressional Recognition from Congressman Ted W. Lieu for her participation in the Changemaker Challenge through the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Elida was selected as a 2016-17 Arts for LA Activate fellow and received a Certificate of Recognition from District 14 for her participation as an Arts Day LA Delegate. Additionally, Elida was awarded the Delta Omega Award for Innovative Curriculum for co-developing, We Gon Be Alright: Addressing Racism and Anti-Black Violence as a Public Health Crisis, a curriculum for graduate level studies. Elida also co-wrote and published the article, Health Implications of Housing Assignments for Incarcerated Transgender Women in the American Journal of Public Health and earlier this year was inaugurated into Delta Omegas Honor Society in Public Health. Elida holds a Masters in Public Health from UCLA with a concentration in Community Health Sciences. ### About Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network The Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network (AIYN) is an interdisciplinary collaborative that provides exceptional arts programming in order to build resiliency and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile justice system. Founded in 2015, AIYN is the only arts collaborative for incarcerated youth in the state of California, and provides structure, coordination, and support to arts organizations serving youth in the Los Angeles (LA) County juvenile justice system. Under AIYN, 13 member agencies serve youth in detention in LA County, providing high-quality arts education that includes creative writing, spoken word, visual arts, theater, digital media, dance, and music. This work now extends beyond the 22 Probation-run facilities AIYN serves throughout LA County, to include support for successful youth reentry and expanded community programs. For more information, visit https://www.aiynetwork.org/. AIYNs 13 member agencies are: Actors Gang, Armory Center for the Arts, artworxLA, Gay Mens Chorus of Los Angeles, InsideOUT Writers, Jail Guitar Doors, Rhythm Arts Alliance, Somos LA Arte, Street Poets Inc, Tia Chuchas Centro Cultural/Young Warriors, Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, Versa-Style Dance, and WriteGirl/Bold Ink Writers. According to the MP Rasul Kusherbaev, the official ban on wearing hijabs in public will be lifted soon in Uzbekistan, Trend reports citing Kabar. According to the Article 184-1 of the Code of Administrative Responsibility (introduced into legislation in May 1998), the appearance of citizens of Uzbekistan (with the exception of religious organization officials) in public places with religious dress code entails the imposition of a fine from 5 to 10 'basic calculation values' (108 USD to 216 USD) or administrative arrest up to 15 days. Recently, the Legislative Chamber of Oliy Majlis (the Supreme Assembly) adopted a draft bill in the first reading on amendments and additions to the Bill "On freedom of conscience and religious organizations", which will pave the way to lifting the ban on religious dress codes in public. The draft bill tackles the following amendments: - the right of every person to receive professional education in religious educational institutions, as well as the right of parents or guardians to teach their children the basics of religious practice and the rules of etiquette (home teaching); - Exemption from state duty payment when religious organizations apply to the court regarding the actions (inaction) of officials; - Exclusion of 'mahalla' in the registration process of a religious organization; - Reduction in the number of persons required to register a local religious organization from 100 to 50; - Lifting the ban on wearing religious dress code in public places. The bill will be proceeded through two more readings, after which it will be sent to the Senate for approval. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend: Azerbaijan's parliamentary delegation led by speaker Sahiba Gafarova will pay an official visit to Russia on September 21, the Azerbaijani parliament told Trend on Sept. 17. The delegation includes the MPs and officials of the Azerbaijani parliament. During the visit, Gafarova will meet with Chairperson of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia Valentina Matviyenko and Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russia Viacheslav Volodin. The views on the current and future spheres of the development of inter-parliamentary relations will be shared and discussed. During the visit, Gafarova is expected to deliver speech at the plenary session of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia. The ceremony of signing the Agreement on Cooperation between the Azerbaijani parliament and the State Duma of the Russian Federation will be held during the visit to the State Duma of Russia. A meeting between Gafarova and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is also envisaged. The views on making regular visits at the level of the parliaments, the exchange of experience and information in the legislative process, the participation of delegations in influential international organizations, the ways of resolving the regional conflicts, strengthening the ties in the economic, political, cultural, humanitarian spheres and others issues will be exchanged during the meetings within the visit. The visit will end on September 23. In this Dec. 21, 2016, file photo, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, accompanied by chief of staff Reince Priebus, right, and retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a senior adviser to Trump, stand together at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. AP A former chief of staff to U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that there will be a "deal of some sort" with North Korea that includes its "incremental concession" should Trump win reelection in November. Reince Priebus, who served in the White House post in 2017, made the remarks during a local forum, in response to an expert's view that Trump will seek to reach a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un should he get another term. "I don't know what it will be, but there will be a deal of some sort with North Korea and some incremental concession that means something positive to the region," Priebus said during a session of the World Knowledge Forum hosted by the Maekyung Media Group. "Now what that is and how you will analyze it, that is going to be a different story," he added. The former White House aide did not elaborate on what that deal will shape up to be, but his remarks raised expectations that a second-term Trump administration would continue to pay policy attention to addressing the North Korean nuclear quandary. The Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) announced a new partnership model that will enable more cities around the world to mobilise the global manufacturing community and encourage cross-border collaboration and partnerships to advance prosperity across the world. The city of Pittsburgh in the United States is the first to join the new partnership model and will organise the inaugural edition of GMIS America in 2021, a statement said. Cities that are keen to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development and advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can choose to partner with GMIS through this model, which will entitle the partner city to host an annual GMIS satellite event. Namir Hourani, Managing Director of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit, announced the partnership with the city of Pittsburgh during the closing ceremony of the #GMIS2020 Virtual Summit, which took place on September 4-5. He said: The story of Pittsburgh resonates very well with what GMIS is all about, and so to wrap this up, I am excited to announce that the City of Pittsburgh will be the first City to join the new partnership model and will organise the very first edition of GMIS America in 2021. And of course, bring a GMIS event back to the City of Pittsburgh every year. The announcement was followed by a panel discussion between William Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh, and Christopher Martin, Director of Engineering and Research and Development, Bosch, to highlight Pittsburghs successful story of transitioning into a city at the forefront of innovation and advanced technologies. Pittsburgh: Renaissance city Pittsburghs rejuvenation, from a traditional heavy manufacturing heartland that had fallen on hard times to become a modern, advanced technology, innovation and robotics hub in the space of just a few decades, is one of the success stories of the 21st century. The Steel City was the epicentre of a region that produced much of the steel in north-east America during one of the greatest periods of economic expansion in US history. But a period of stagnation during the latter part of the 20th century left the city facing an uncertain future. However, Pittsburghs traditional manufacturing legacy combined with its strong leadership, skilled labour, quality infrastructure, collaborative mindset, and proximity to two world-class, research-focused universities have allowed the city to reinvent itself as a major centre of technological innovation and advanced manufacturing in the United States. William Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh, said: During the 1980s and 1990s, de-industrialisation tore the economic heart out of our region. We went through a depression greater than the Great Depression. But at the same time, the seeds were planted for what we're seeing now as our new economy. They were planted in artificial intelligence, in robotics, and in life-sciences, and so many other areas where we have become a global leader, including advanced manufacturing. Today, Pittsburgh is once again on the world stage, but this time not for the production of steel, aluminium, or glass, but for the creation of innovation. Organising GMIS America in 2021 is testament to how we have overcome the struggles of the past 30 years and turned our fortunes around. Christopher Martin, the Director of Engineering and Research and Development at Bosch, which established a base in the city in the 1990s just as its economy was re-emerging from a long slump, said: We're in Pittsburgh quite simply because of the foundations that were laid at Carnegie Mellon University many years ago. The Bosch Center for AI represents one of our flagship efforts around the globe for our investment in the future of artificial intelligence and the partnership with Carnegie Mellon University is one of the pillars of our success. Through that we get to bring those benefits to the world. He added: We're really looking forward to being part of that conversation and to showcase all the great things happening in our region. Towards Society 5.0 Discussion at GMIS America in Pittsburgh will be centred around the concept of Society 5.0 balancing technological and economic advancement with the resolution of social issues. Mayor Peduto said these ideas had already started to resonate throughout the world, but have been given fresh impetus in light of the coronavirus pandemic. However, he said Pittsburgh had long since ingrained these principles in its DNA as a city. Pittsburgh was the second city in the United States to adopt the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, meaning that all the decisions that we make look at how we're lessening the negative impact as a global member, he said. However, years before that we adopted the principles of P4: People, Planet, Place, Performance, in creating indicators on how we are addressing all four of those critical areas when we're spending taxpayer money or creating policy. He added: I think that as we look at this in Society 5.0, what we realise is the very economic model that we have lived by since the early 19th century was based on a single bottom line - profit. The reality today is that there are many bottom lines that we need to address. Partnerships are critical Mayor Peduto said building partnerships between the public and private sector and academia had been the most critical element in Pittsburghs success in reviving its fortunes over the past two decades. Pittsburgh would never have survived if it weren't for the corporations who were partnering with the city in order to make sure that critical services were not diminished, he said. And it would never have happened if the city, the county, the state and our federal government didn't work together. The secret sauce of Pittsburgh, and what you'll see in 2021, is that we not only talk about partnerships, we create them. The citys start-up scene is also thriving, with Pittsburgh being home to many innovative companies focused on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity and additive manufacturing. Martin highlighted the creation of this start-up ecosystem as a key element in the citys revival. What's very important is this bottom-up innovation ecosystem that enables partnerships, he said. Something we're very proud of is Boschs Audio AI technology now installed on the International Space Station. And that was born out of a partnership that we have with a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University called Astrobotic. That connection between the University, the local start-up ecosystem, and us as a large corporate, allowed all of us to literally go places, the International Space Station, that we could not have gone alone. Badr Al-Olama, Head of the Organising Committee of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit, said: We are pleased to partner with Mayor Peduto and the great city of Pittsburgh on our new partnership model. The city serves as a great success story for its achievement in not just reviving its industrial heritage, but also developing it into a high-tech manufacturing cluster. For one of the United States most industrially developed city to be organising the first edition of GMIS America in 2021, and support in promoting inclusive and sustainable industrial development, reflects the importance of our partnership with the city of Pittsburgh, and is a testament to the vision and mission of GMIS which was first established in the United Arab Emirates. GMIS America will showcase Pittsburgh as a national and global hub for advanced manufacturing, serving as a perfect example for other cities around the world that are embarking on an advanced industrialisation drive for the first time. The Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit is a joint initiative by the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Under the theme Glocalisation: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Global Value Chains, the third edition of the Summit (#GMIS2020) has gathered a cross-section of close to 100 global leaders from the worlds public and private sector to participate across more than 20 virtual sessions to discuss pathways to accelerate the role of fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies to build more resilient global value chains and restore prosperity in a post-pandemic world. Namir Hourani, Managing Director of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit Tim Felling came from Iowa to attend law school at the University of Oregon about 22 years ago. He was shocked to discover that Oregon didnt Canadas 20 richest people saw their fortunes grow by $37 billion during pandemic, says a new study as low-wage workers were disproportionately hit by COVID-19s economic fallout. The most-wealthy list, which includes several grocery store magnates, shows the countrys top billionaires are collectively worth $178 billion while front-line grocery store workers at outlets like Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys and Save-On-Foods recently lost their $2 an hour hero pay. Overall, some 1.8 million Canadians have lost their jobs or seen their hours reduced as a result of COVID-19, according to labour force survey data. And even as the country sees glimmers of economic recovery, the gains are uneven. While the highest wage earners in the country have returned to pre-pandemic employment levels, those earning less than $16 an hour have yet to see employment rates fully recover, says the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Billionaire wealth has bounced back and expanded by billions of dollars while millions of Canadians struggle with the consequences of the pandemic, says the study. The economic and social arrangements that produce these outcomes are not laws of nature; they are the predictable results of policy choices. Topping the list of the top 20 billionaires is media magnate David Thomson and family, e-commerce businessman Joseph Tsai, and the Weston family which owns Loblaw and its subsidiaries. Jim Pattison, who owns a chain of grocery stores in Western Canada, ranks eighth on the list. A House of Commons committee has been studying the impact of COVID-19 on front-line grocery store workers, including the end of pandemic-related pay premiums at numerous grocery chains. While the pandemic has been the most economically catastrophic times in Canadian history for most families, it has also served as a reminder that inequality is really spinning out of control in this country, said Alex Hemingway, an economist with the CCPAs British Columbia office. Despite stock market turmoil, Canadas richest cohort has seen overall wealth gains since last year, says the CCPA report. The figures are based on data from Forbess annual billionaires list and its real-time billionaire wealth tracking platform, which assesses net worth based on stock market holdings. A report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer earlier this year found that the top 1 per cent of wealthy Canadians had more than a quarter of the countrys wealth. While the report says the federal governments temporary expansion of employment insurance and proposed Canada Recovery Benefit are a welcome lifeline, it notes that the new scheme will result in a 20 per cent drop in the amount of money available to jobless Canadians relative to the previous CERB. In past crises, Canada and other countries increased taxes on the income and wealth of the richest as a way of fairly spreading the burden of reconstruction and recovery, the report notes. Hemingway said policy tools to ensure that recovery include an annual wealth tax, corporate tax reform, and a crackdown on tax havens measures that are technically and economically feasible. They also happen to be extremely popular, Hemingway said. What seems to be missing is political will. While some European countries have like-minded measures already in place, Hemingway said an effective wealth tax should be focused on the ultra-rich. One of the key differences is that newer proposals are very much targeted at the extremely wealthy, whereas the older wealth taxes tended to have thresholds that would include some of the upper middle class, he said. The proceeds of a wealth tax could create ongoing revenue streams to fund important social policy initiatives, the CCPA report notes. We have a very large backlog of badly needed and actually highly productive public investments that we should be making in Canada, said Hemingway. That includes areas such as health care, building a universal child-care system, addressing the housing crisis that exists in so many parts of the country, and addressing the next looming crisis on the horizon in climate change. The Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has set a December deadline for the ongoing recarpeting and tarmacking of roads in the city centre and surrounding areas. To speed up the repairs, the NMS is banking on a new asphalt (bitumen) plant that is almost complete. NMS Transport, Roads and Public Works director Michael Ochieng said once complete, the plant on Kangundo Road would produce 2,400 tonnes of bitumen daily. He noted that the amount is enough to recarpet about three kilometres of road. Currently, the NMS has been relying on asphalt from a plant on Nanyuki Road in Industrial Area which produces 150 to 300 tonnes of asphalt a day. This, he said, has been slowing down the pace of the road improvement project. Mr Ochieng said completion of the Kangundo Road plant would boost the project and beat the December deadline. Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) plans to upgrade 408 kilometres of roads in the capitals informal settlements before the end of this month. The Sh5.8 billion project, which the NMS is part of, will be boosted by the new asphalt plant. THE MDC has directed its interim president Thokozani Khupe to stop being part of President Emmerson Mnangagwas Political Actors Dialogue (Polad) until she gets the mandate from the partys congress, the Daily News reports. This comes as Khupe joined Polad as the presidential candidate of the MDC-T that she formed ahead of the July 31, 2018 elections following her breakaway from the Nelson Chamisa-led faction. But with the Supreme Court stripping Chamisa of the leadership of the party left by the late Morgan Tsvangirai and conferring its presidency on Khupe in March, the partys reinstated national chairperson Morgen Komichi told the Daily News that the MDC had not seconded its president to Polad. For now, she cannot continue with Polad because we have agreed that the decision on who we engage with politically should be subjected to party structures, preferably congress. Remember that the party that seconded her to Parliament is not the same party that she is leading. The president takes instructions from the party that she leads and that party has not seconded her to Polad, Komichi said. Of late, Khupe has not been attending Polad meetings, including the latest indaba of the dialogue platforms principals hosted by Mnangagwa at State House last week. Reacting to Komichis assertion, Khupes spokesperson, Khaliphani Phugeni, who also doubles as the MDC information tsar, said the party leaders failure to present herself at recent meetings was because she was preoccupied with preparations for the extra-ordinary congress directed by the Supreme Court. The president is preoccupied with preparing for the extra-ordinary congress ., Phugeni said. Phugenis assertion comes notwithstanding the fact that the extra-ordinary congress that was initially pencilled for July 31 was indefinitely postponed after the government raised safety concerns over the issue of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. This comes as insiders told the Daily News that the decision to bar Khupe from Polad was the brainchild of some party leaders who are eyeing the MDC presidency whenever the extra-ordinary congress that will elect Tsvangirais successor is eventually held. Remember Komichi, (Douglas) Mwonzora and (Elias) Mudzuri all want to be president and they do not want to be labelled Zanu PF like what is happening to Khupe. They want to be seen as genuine opposition leaders who are not tied to Mnangagwas apron strings so they are the people who came up with the idea, an MDC national standing committee member said. Chamisa has refused to join Polad insisting Mnangagwa did not win the 2018 presidential election hence has no locus standi to call for dialogue when his legitimacy is being questioned despite the Constitutional Court throwing out the 43-year-old politicians challenge. On the other hand, Khupe has been on the forefront calling Chamisa to join the group and stop demonstrations to save his members from being beaten up by the police. In March while addressing the media on the sidelines of a Polad meeting, Khupe also pleaded with the Western countries that have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe to forgive Mnangagwa, who is accused of human rights abuses to give him a second chance and treat him the way the United States and European countries treated other governments. We were still going to engage, to go to the United States to meet those people who actually are involved, but we cant because of Covid-19, but we are appealing to the Americans to say as Zimbabweans, give us a second chance as a country. Zimbabwe requires assistance; we need a bail out to restart our economy, Khupe said. Zimbabwes human rights record has seen the country continue to suffer isolation, with Western countries demanding reforms from Mnangagwa before sanctions imposed on the country at the turn of the century can be lifted. Daily News ALTON YWCA of Alton is hosting a voter registration and census 3-5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, at its front entrance at 304 E. 3rd St., Alton. Registrars will be on hand to help people needing to register to vote. Two forms of identification are needed; one form of identification must include a current address. Netflix's "Ratched" isn't the Ryan-Murphiest thing Ryan Murphy has ever produced, but it sure wants to be. From a bloody opening scene in which a deranged man (Finn Wittrock) kills a rectory full of Catholic priests and their monsignor (which, frankly, feels like target practice at this stage in Murphy's career) to the depiction of unsettling experimental treatments at a psychiatric asylum, "Ratched" (premiering Friday) can at times feel like the fullest expression of the television impresario's high/low values, matched with a celebratory display of his prevailing art form: purposeful camp which flips the scripts on old references. "Ratched" is garish and gorgeous all at the same time; horrific and occasionally poetic; glamorous to an almost laughable degree; thrilling for a while and then puzzingly dull for stretches, only to become interesting all over again. The show is a fine and flawed example of who Murphy is and what he makes. You can't help but be lured in by it. Behind her steely-eyed menace, the story of Nurse Mildred Ratched (yes, the very one from Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and the classic film adaptation, played here with calm and collected determination by Sarah Paulson) is presented as a kind of feminist dawning. Nurse Ratched is someone trying to overcome her own damage and demons and, in her demented way, she wants to make the world kinder and more just, through the most painful and manipulative sort of caring. It can take a while for the series to find its way - and often it's the viewer who will feel as if they are missing something profound. As a prequel set in 1947, it's not required that the viewer know much about "Cuckoo's Nest" or even Louise Fletcher's Oscar-winning performance as a more powerful Ratched in the 1975 movie version, other than the fact that Murphy (working here with Ian Brennan and creator Evan Romansky) is among our shrewdest and most knowing samplers of popular culture. Of course a lot of us will come here wanting to know what made Ratched into the sublimely vindictive control freak of the mental ward. Audiences have been wondering that for decades. "That (expletive) nurse, man," Jack Nicholson's character said about Nurse Ratched. "She ain't honest." The answers provided in "Ratched" may or may not satisfy that curiosity, but fans of Murphy's previous and provocative works won't mind. "Ratched" combines the lushly lurid old-school glamour of his FX series "Feud: Bette and Joan" (in which powerful women discover that mutual respect is a byproduct of their bitter rivalry) with slightly less grisly aspects of "American Horror Story: Asylum" (itself a comment on mental-health-care conditions before landmark revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, featuring Catholic nuns with warped, Ratched-like control over their patients). Six months after the priest slayings, Paulson's Mildred, always dressed to the nines, arrives at a sprawling asylum on the Northern California seaside - Lucia State Hospital, where the alleged killer, Edmund Tolleson (Wittrock) is housed. Although the asylum's director, Dr. Richard Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), tells her he has no job openings for nurses, Ratched schemes her way onto the staff, to the dismay of Nurse Betsy Bucket, played by Judy Davis. This Nurse Bucket is pretty much your best reason to give "Ratched" a whirl, with a splendidly sour performance and much needed drop of comic tension from Davis - a template example of institutional cruelty and caprice that will help create the Nurse Ratched of lore. Later in the series, Murphy's diva worship shifts to Sharon Stone, who has a ball playing the deeply disgruntled and deep-pocketed mother of one of Dr. Hanover's former patients. The state's unctuous governor (Vincent D'Onofrio) is eager to see Tolleson executed so he can boost his tough-on-crime profile during a re-election campaign. Nurse Ratched has come to this place because she has an abiding interest in Tolleson's fate (I won't reveal it here); the governor's press secretary, Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon) takes an immediate interest in Mildred. The asylum setting is, of course, irresistible as a source of creepiness, as Dr. Hanover tries to improve on methods for lobotomizing intractable patients and prescribes other torturous treatments designed to "cure" such questionable diagnoses as homosexuality and teen angst. This bad medicine has a way of feeling like redundant territory in a Murphy drama, given how often he and his collaborators routinely demonize an array of authority-figure archetypes - doctors, nurses, nuns, preachers, elected leaders, Hollywood studio bosses, etc. It's playful, but it has a way of becoming a facile harangue against anyone in charge. That's why Nurse Ratched has such potential as a character study - how she gets off on simply taking charge. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" left her motivations vague, which had a way of making the viewer feel as helpless as the drugged patients. "Ratched," too, seems to let its sense of purpose get similarly fogged in, as if the narrative has been slipped a calming sedative and is wearing restraints. The show's obsessive attention to style and mood begins to seem hallucinatory and sluggish. As with Murphy's other projects on Netflix so far ("The Politician"; "Hollywood"), and with more than one season of his "American Horror Story" on FX, the dosage is strong, but the symptoms persist. As a viewer, you have no idea why you're here or how you got here. Nurse Murphy wants it that way. - - - "Ratched" (eight episodes) available for streaming Friday on Netflix. EDINBURGH, United Kingdom, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NuCana plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for patients with cancer, announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 15,555,556 American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") at a price to the public of $4.50 per ADS, for total gross proceeds of approximately $70.0 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses. Each ADS represents one ordinary share of NuCana. In addition, NuCana has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 2,333,333 additional ADSs at the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. All of the ADSs in the offering will be sold by NuCana. The offering is expected to close on or about September 21, 2020, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Jefferies, Cowen, William Blair, and Truist Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The securities are being offered pursuant to a shelf registration statement on Form F-3 which has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, Attention: Prospectus Department, email: PostSaleManualRequests@broadridge.com , telephone: 1-833-297-2926, or William Blair & Company, L.L.C., Attention: Prospectus Department, 150 North Riverside Plaza, Chicago, IL 60606, by telephone at, or Truist Securities, Inc., 3333 Peachtree Road NE, 9th Floor, Atlanta, GA 30326, Attention: Prospectus Department; email: TruistSecurities.prospectus@Truist.com . For the avoidance of doubt, such prospectus will not constitute a "prospectus" for the purposes of the Prospectus Regulation (as defined below) and will not have been reviewed by any competent authority in any EEA member state or the United Kingdom. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. For readers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom In any EEA Member State and the United Kingdom (a "Relevant State"), this communication is only addressed to and directed at "qualified investors" in that Relevant State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1129) (the "Prospectus Regulation"). Further notice for readers in the United Kingdom There will be no offer of ADSs to the public in the United Kingdom. This communication, in so far as it constitutes an invitation or inducement to enter into investment activity (within the meaning of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 as amended ("FSMA")) in connection with the securities which are the subject of the offering described in this press release or otherwise, is being directed only at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments who fall within Article 19(5) ("Investment professionals") of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order") or (iii) certain high value persons and entities who fall within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) ("High net worth companies, unincorporated associations etc.") of the Order; or (iv) any other person to whom it may lawfully be communicated (all such persons in (i) to (iv) together being referred to as "relevant persons"). The ADSs are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such ADSs will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this document or any of its contents. This communication does not contain an offer or constitute any part of an offer to the public within the meaning of ss. 85 and 102B of FSMA or otherwise. About NuCana plc NuCana is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for cancer patients by applying our ProTide technology to transform some of the most widely prescribed chemotherapy agents, nucleoside analogs, into more effective and safer medicines. While these conventional agents remain part of the standard of care for the treatment of many solid and hematological tumors, their efficacy is limited by cancer cell resistance mechanisms and they are often poorly tolerated. Utilizing our proprietary technology, we are developing new medicines, ProTides, designed to overcome key cancer resistance mechanisms and generate much higher concentrations of anti-cancer metabolites in cancer cells. NuCana's robust pipeline includes three ProTides in clinical development. Acelarin and NUC-3373, are new chemical entities derived from the nucleoside analogs gemcitabine and 5-fluorouracil, respectively, two widely used chemotherapy agents. Acelarin is currently being evaluated in four clinical studies, including a Phase III study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase Ib study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase II study for patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer and a Phase III study for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer for which enrollment has been suspended. NUC-3373 is currently in a Phase I study for the potential treatment of a wide range of advanced solid tumors and a Phase Ib study for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Our third ProTide, NUC-7738, is a transformation of a novel nucleoside analog (3'-deoxyadenosine) and is in a Phase I study for patients with advanced solid tumors. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management of NuCana plc (the "Company"). All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the completion and timing of the public offering and the anticipated total gross proceeds from the offering. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on March 10, 2020, subsequent reports that the Company files with the SEC and the final prospectus supplement related to this offering. Forward-looking statements represent the Company's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this press release to conform any of the forward-looking statements to actual results or to changes in its expectations. For more information, please contact: NuCana plc Hugh S. Griffith Chief Executive Officer T: +44 131 357 1111 E: info@nucana.com Westwicke, an ICR Company Chris Brinzey T: +1 339-970-2843 E: chris.brinzey@westwicke.com A legal case accusing the United States' biggest egg producer of price gouging during the coronavirus crisis has been dismissed by a judge. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton launched the case against Cal-Maine Foods, accusing the company of taking unfair advantage of pandemic by inflating egg prices. He said the egg company, based in Jackson, Mississippi, had increased the price of eggs threefold. But the company refuted the allegation, and a judge in the District Court of Harris County, Texas, has now dismissed the case. Cal-Maine issued a statement, saying: "The companys motion to dismiss was granted on August 13, 2020, in the District Court of Harris County, Texas, and therefore the original petition has been dismissed with prejudice. "We are grateful the court dismissed with prejudice all claims brought by the State of Texas against Cal-Maine Foods. "As we demonstrated to the court in our court filings and during oral argument, Cal-Maine Foods has never engaged in price gouging." "Since 1957, we have strived to operate with honesty and integrity and will continue to do so going forward. "We will also continue to do our part to help those affected by Covid-19 by having our employees follow applicable CDC guidelines and supporting the communities we serve through humanitarian efforts." Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit against Cal-Maine Foods in April, claiming that, as the dominant egg supplier in Texas, it was taking unfair advantage of the Governors Covid-19 disaster declaration. He accused the company of raising the price of eggs by around 300 percent without any supply issues or significant disruptions. "Price gouging laws apply to any person or entity selling necessities, such as food, at an exorbitant or excessive price after a disaster has been declared by the governor or the president. This prohibition includes those who supply retailers," he said. "Under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, any price-gougers may be required to reimburse consumers and may be held liable for civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, with an additional penalty of up to $250,000 if the affected consumers are elderly," he said. In his filing, he said the state was seeking "non-monetary injunctive relief" and also "monetary relief in excess of $100,000, including civil penalties, attorneys fees and costs." He claimed that Cal-Maine had violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Consumer Protection Act. The lawsuit was one of several accusing companies of illegally taking advantage of heightened demand for eggs at a time of crisis. Lawyers started a class action lawsuit in California naming retailers as well as egg producers, including superstore giant Wal-Mart, which owns Asda; Costco, which has stores in the UK as well as the US; Amazon; Trader Joe's and Kroger. Australia's ambassador to Cambodia has apologised for eating a dish containing softshell turtle, which are highly protected in parts of the world. Ambassador Pablo Kang shared an image earlier this month of a bowl containing cooked turtle his party consumed during a visit to rural Pailin, but deleted the tweet after drawing criticism online. "I have removed my tweet about softshell turtles and eels, and apologise to all those who took offence," Kang tweeted on Tuesday. The tweet, which has now been deleted, displayed dishes of softshell turtle and eel soup. Source: Twitter The ambassador's culinary faux pas stirred little interest inside Cambodia where one particular softshell turtle species can be legally farmed and sold for food. The meat is often made into a soup that is a popular delicacy in capital Phnom Penh. But many other species of softshell are considered critically endangered around the world, and the pictures drew the wrath of online critics. Ambassador Pablo Kang regularly shares his adventures on his Twitter page, including delicacies in other countries. The softshell turtle is considered critically endangered. Source: Twitter/Getty The Australian embassy told local outlet VOD, the dish had been offered as an official meal and the ambassador was assured the turtle had been farmed, and not from the wild. "My intent was not to promote these dishes, but to tell people about some of the foods I was offered during my recent provincial visit," Kang said. "I certainly do not condone the harvesting of any endangered species for food or other purposes, and will be more careful about my actions in future." Hello. I have removed my tweet about soft shell turtles & eels, and apologise to all those who took offence. My intent was not to promote these dishes, but to tell people about some of the foods I was offered during my recent provincial visit. 1/2 Pablo Kang (@AusEmbPP) September 15, 2020 I certainly do not condone the harvesting of any endangered species for food or other purposes, and will be more careful about my actions in future 2/2 Pablo Kang (@AusEmbPP) September 15, 2020 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. Surgeons have been forced to play God by selecting which patients they operate on during the pandemic, leading doctors warned yesterday. The toll among cancer patients who have missed out on treatment may surpass that of Covid itself, they admit. Ben Challacombe, a urological surgeon at Guys and St Thomas in London, said: We may eventually win the battle with Covid and lose the war with cancer. Ben Challacombe (pictured) has warned 'We may eventually win the battle with Covid and lose the war with cancer' He said many patients were arriving with severely advanced cancer because they had not sought treatment during lockdown. The second resurgence of cancer will come, unfortunately, he said. Calling for a national awareness campaign, he added: We need to just encourage everybody to go and get checked. Speaking at a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine, Mr Challacombe said surgeons have had to agree between them which patients got theatre time. They quickly realised they were effectively playing God, he said, and set up committees to decide which patients should take priority. Those with severe non-cancerous conditions such as enlarged prostates, gallstones and arthritic hips have had to wait while those with life-threatening tumours went to the front of the queue. But those patients with less severe conditions have suffered while waiting for treatment, experts said. Mr Challacombe who works at Guys and St Thomas in London was speaking at a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine and revealed surgeons have had to agree between them which patients got theatre time Professor Derek Alderson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, told the meeting: The harsh reality is that many patients will have worse outcomes than they should have had if we had not had this crisis and this delay. We have never had to deal with anything like this before. He cited official figures which reveal more than two million people have waited more than the 18-week maximum for a procedure. Professor Alderson said this will have a huge impact on patients. The scale of the problem is unprecedented, he said. Professor Derek Alderson (pictured) president of the Royal College of Surgeon said many patients will have worse outcomes than they should have had if we had not had this crisis and this delay It comes as figures reveal that more than 1,500 breast cancer patients have been denied reconstruction during the pandemic, and may have to wait years to get a procedure. The Breast Cancer Now charity said last night women were being forced to live with one breast, no breasts, or asymmetric breasts. Chief executive Baroness Delyth Morgan said: We are deeply concerned. Reconstructive surgery is an essential part of recovery after breast cancer for those who choose it. The Save Romania Union - Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity (USR PLUS) Alliance asks the President and the Government to intensify diplomatic demarches necessary to ensure polling stations abroad for the parliamentary elections. "The USR PLUS Alliance requests President Klaus Iohannis and the Government intensify the necessary diplomatic demarches, at the level of states where very many Romanian citizens live or work, in order to ensure that they will have access to sufficient polling stations, which would allow them to exercise their vote for the parliamentary elections of December 6, 2020. The appeal of the Alliance comes in the context of the reduced number of Romanian citizens that have domicile or residence abroad and which have already enrolled for vote by correspondence," according to a release of the USR. The Alliance appreciates that it is the duty of the authorities of the Romanian state to ensure that its citizens abroad can exercise the right to vote in the parliamentary elections, either by correspondence, either by going to the polls. "We appreciate the prolongation of the registration deadline for the www.votstrainatate.ro portal with the option for vote by correspondence, for Romanians abroad, but we consider this measure insufficient as long as, according to the statements of the head of state, we have no guarantees that polling stations abroad will be able to open due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chances for the number of Romanian citizens who expressed the option of voting by correspondence to increase are small, if we report to the situation of the previous elections and their evolution in time. Not to be neglected is also the fact that Romanians abroad were present, each time, in large numbers, at the polling stations," the release shows. USR PLUS Alliance shows that the existence of polling stations in the states where many Romanian citizens live is "absolutely necessary", and the "intensification of diplomatic demarches in this sense is a duty" of both the President as well as the Government. Representative image A 25-year old sub-inspector died when the AK-47 rifle he was carrying went off accidentally during a combing operation for Maoists in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district in Telangana early Wednesday, police said. The Reserve Sub-Inspector (RSI) slipped in the rough terrain in the hillocks, resulting in the tragedy during the combing of hillocks at Chennapuram in Cherla, days after two Maoists were killed in an exchange of fire with police in the same region in the district, bordering Chattisgarh. The RSI got injured near his eye and died on the spot, the police said. The incident occurred while he along with others were engaged in an anti-Maoists combing operation, undertaken following information about possible movement of the ultras, police said. On September 7, two Maoists were killed in an exchange of fire with the police in Cherla when special Police parties were combing the forest areabetween Vaddipeta and Pussuguppa. Earlier, a suspected Maoist was killed in an "encounter" with police in the district on September 3. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 00:34:53|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KHARTOUM, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's public prosecutor Taj Al-Sir Ali Al-Hebr on Wednesday announced Sudanese security forces have busted a terrorist cell with explosive materials that pose threat to Sudan and neighboring countries. Al-Hebr said at a press briefing in capital Khartoum that the terrorist cell consists of 41 members, pointing out that investigations are still underway to disclose the details. Meanwhile, Jamal Jumma Adam, spokesman of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), said at the press briefing that the RSF forces have also seized 3,594 blasting caps, 1,000 detonating cord, and four bags of aluminium nitrate. He noted that the terrorist cell was pursued from Aug. 19 to Sept. 13. Adam further warned that large quantities of explosives could possibly leak into countries neighboring Sudan. Enditem Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun / Yonhap The government warned Wednesday that it will take stern measures against any illegal rallies on the Oct. 3 National Foundation Day to prevent further spread of the new coronavirus. Conservative activist groups critical of the Moon Jae-in government have applied to hold 435 rallies in central Seoul on the occasion of National Foundation Day, according to the police. The move comes amid criticism that similar outdoor rallies by conservative activists in mid-August have so far resulted in 585 new cases of COVID-19 nationwide. "The government has banned 87 rallies, which were either reported to be held in no-assembly zones (in central Seoul) or with participation of over 10 people," Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said in a press briefing. "Should they press ahead with the rallies, the government will quickly take measures to disperse them and criminally investigate those who commit illegal acts." The mass demonstrations pose a high risk of virus transmissions because a large number of people gather from across the country and droplets are produced when they chant, he added. Health officials said both organizers and participants of the illegal rallies can be punished under the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act. Under the law, those who attend rallies knowing they are unlawful can face fines of up to 3 million won (US$2,556). Under the country's law on assembly and demonstration, those who participate in illegal rallies can face up to six months in prison or a maximum fine of 500,000 won, while the organizers can be sentenced up to two years in prison or fines of up to 2 million won. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun also pleaded with the groups to withdraw plans to stage the massive rallies and vowed stern measures against any unlawful demonstrations. "I request that the concerned groups roll back their rally plans," Chung said in a regular government COVID-19 response meeting. "If the (planned) rallies are pushed ahead, the government will respond sternly in accordance with law and regulations in order to protect the lives and safety of people," the prime minister said. Some of the groups held a press conference in Seoul to announce their plan to push ahead with the large rallies in the city center on Oct. 3 in defiance of the Seoul city's ban on such rallies due to the recent resurgence of COVID-19 cases. The rallies will draw about 1,000 participants, they said. "The government should guarantee the freedom of assembly and association mandated in the Constitution," they claimed during a news conference held in front of the Jongno Police Station in the afternoon. On Monday, the Seoul metropolitan government extended a ban on rallies of 10 or more people to midnight on Oct. 11, because early October, which includes five national holidays, is expected to be the biggest challenge to the nationwide efforts to curb COVID-19 cases. (Yonhap) Credit: CC0 Public Domain Russian metallurgists have proposed to dissolve the ash waste of thermal power stations with hydrochloric acid at high pressure. The resulting compounds can be used for water treatment at water utilities and thermal power stations themselves. The method has already shown effective deposition of impurities in water from Moskva river. The description of the technology is published by scientists from NUST MISIS and a number of other universities in Journal of Cleaner Production. The research is funded Russian science Foundation under the Presidential Program for Research Projects. Although the share of coal-fired generation in Russia has been gradually decreasing since the 90s, it still makes up a large part of the country's entire energy sector. In 2019, Russian thermal power stations generated more than 60% of all electricity produced in the country. In addition, the current volume of coal energy will not be reduced to prevent the Russian economy from depending on gas. However, this area is one of the least environmentally friendly. Coal-fired stations annually produce 20-25 million tons of ash and slag as waste. In Russia, more than 1.5 billion tons have already been buried already, and the sludge fields cover an area larger than the whole area of Israel. Scientists are looking for ways to utilize and recycle waste, focusing on the extraction of non-ferrous metals, such as aluminum, one of the main components of ash. This would help to increase the environmental friendliness of thermal power plants: one can get rid of already accumulated solid waste and prevent the formation of new ones. In their work, scientists have proposed a fundamentally new method for processing ash, which would allow obtaining reagents for water purification from waste. Scientists treated the ash with superheated hydrochloric acid, the temperature of which was significantly higher than its boiling point. This can be achieved using an autoclave. The reaction produces aluminum chloride. The researchers selected special conditions under which more than 95% of the metal transformed into solution. In this form, it coagulates, that is, it precipitates suspended particles. Using the example of water from Moskva river, scientists have shown the effectiveness of treatment with this reagent. The resulting samples met WHO standards for drinking water: they were free of heavy metal ions, and the turbidity and color values were at an acceptable level. "To increase the ash utilization rate from the current 8% to the planned 50% by 2035, it is necessary to learn how to effectively extract non-ferrous metals and their compounds from waste. We focused on the extraction of aluminum and the production of a reagent for water purification. This way we not only get rid of ash waste, but also reduce the cost of coagulant by 25% compared to industrial analogs," says Dmitry Valeev, head of the research project, researcher at NUST MISIS and senior researcher at Baikov Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science, Russian Academy of Sciences. Scientists plan to participate in the development of a pilot plant for the production of coagulant for the needs of one of the largest heat generating companies in Siberia, TGC-11, in Omsk. Earlier, the same research group proposed expanding the Russian alumina market with ash waste, as well as separating iron and carbon concentrate from the ash. Explore further Scientists use fruit peel to turn old batteries into new More information: Dmitry Valeev et al. High-pressure HCl leaching of coal ash to extract Al into a chloride solution with further use as a coagulant for water treatment, Journal of Cleaner Production (2020). Journal information: Journal of Cleaner Production Dmitry Valeev et al. High-pressure HCl leaching of coal ash to extract Al into a chloride solution with further use as a coagulant for water treatment,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123206 Argentine vice-president Cristina Kirchner, pictured at the Casa Rosada presidency building in Buenos Aires in August 2020 Argentina's senate has voted to remove three judges from corruption cases against Vice President Cristina Kirchner in a session boycotted by the opposition, the Congress said Thursday. The judges needed the ratification of the government-controlled senate to remain in their current positions, but the vote means they will now be transferred to other courts and thus removed from the Kirchner cases. The three judges said they intended to appeal to the Supreme Court. Opposition senator Martin Lousteau criticized the vote before leaving the session late Wednesday, held by teleconference because of coronavirus restrictions in Buenos Aires. "Today's agenda is to remove three judges who are hearing cases involving the vice president," said Lousteau. Leftist President Alberto Fernandez introduced a judicial reform package in July that will expand the number of federal courts in an effort to reduce the power and influence of federal judges who are widely accused of making politically motivated decisions. The reforms have been rejected by the opposition, who argue they are designed to weaken the judiciary and allow Kirchner to control corruption cases against her. Fernandez's Frente de Todos coalition enjoys a comfortable majority in the senate. Kirchner, facing trial in nine separate corruption cases stemming from her 2007-2015 terms as Argentina's president, is currently vice president to Fernandez. She has asserted that the cases against her amount to political persecution. nn/db/st U.K. lawmakers criticized the governments handling of the COVID-19 testing crisis for a second day Wednesday, as opposition leaders claimed Prime Minister Boris Johnson lacked a cohesive plan to tackle the virus at a time when the country faces a second wave in the pandemic. Johnson defended his efforts to increase testing capacity, telling the House of Commons that the government was responding to a colossal increase in demand and arguing that Britain is testing more people than other European countries. But Angela Rayner, who led the weekly questioning for the Labour Party, said he should get some skates on to ensure the country is ready for the colder winter months ahead when infection rates are expected to soar. Theyve had six months to get this right and yet the prime minister still cant deliver on his promises, Rayner said. The health secretary said yesterday it would take weeks to sort this situation out. We dont have weeks. The squeeze on tests comes amid a surge in COVID-19 cases across the U.K. that has pushed daily new infections to levels not seen since late May and has forced the Conservative government to impose limits on public gatherings. Figures released Wednesday showed 3,991 new confirmed infections during the previous 24 hours, up markedly from 3,105 a day earlier. Widespread testing is seen as crucial to controlling the spread of the virus because it allows those who are infected to self-isolate while helping health officials identify hotspots and trace those who are infected. Johnson said Wednesday the government would ration coronavirus testing, giving priority to health workers and care home staff after widespread reports that people around the country were unable to schedule tests. We have massively increased our capacity, he told lawmakers on a key oversight committee. I know many people have had infuriating experiences and I do sympathize, but 89% get their results within 24 hours. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told Sky News that the government was drawing up a new priority list for testing, suggesting that students and their families could be next in line after the National Health Service and social care. Over the past two days, lawmakers from all parties have bombarded the government with a litany of complaints from constituents desperate to get tests so they can return to school or work and visit elderly loved ones. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons on Tuesday that it may take weeks to sort out the problems. In the meantime, people have been turning up at emergency rooms due to the lack of availability of testing, with one hospital official in the northwestern city of Bolton saying that 100 people showed up seeking a test in recent days. The Association of School and College Leaders warned that schools could struggle to remain open unless testing capacity increases as more cases emerge. Teachers need to be counted as key workers in order that you can at least keep that maths teacher in front of 30 young people if their test is negative, Geoff Barton, the groups general-secretary, told the BBC. Prince Harry left his royal life behind to escape the constant negative attention he and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex endured for so long. Now that the Sussexes have struck out on their own, royal expert Omid Scobie believes that Prince Harry is in control in a way that he wasnt when he was in the royal family. Prince Harry | Samir Hussein/WireImage Prince Harry and Meghan exited the royal family In early 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan announced a plan to take a step back from their royal duties with the hope that they could split their time between the UK and North America. Queen Elizabeth wasnt able to honor their half-in/half-out plan, but did support the couple in their desire to avoid the spotlight. It was ultimately decided that the couple would officially exit the royal family on March 31 as well as give up their HRH titles and any public funding. In a speech following the decision, Prince Harry explained how they had hoped to split their time, and when that wasnt possible, they believed they had no other options but to leave their royal duties behind. Ive accepted this knowing it doesnt change who I am or how committed I am, but I hope it helps you understand what it had come to, that I would step my family back from all I have ever known to take a step forward into what I hope can be a more peaceful life, Prince Harry said. RELATED: Prince Harry Is Reportedly Becoming Anxious About Royal Exit With Meghan Markle Royal expert claims Prince Harry isnt missing his old life Following their official exit, Prince Harry and Meghan moved from Canada to California and eventually bought a home there. Many royal fans have been curious about how Prince Harry has adjusted to a life very different from the only thing he had ever known. Royal expert Ingrid Seward explained to Vanity Fair that she believes Prince Harry has moved on very quickly. Hes embracing his new life and everything is an adventure right now, Seward said. He has moved on very quickly, and I dont think he misses his old life at all. Seward also shared how she was surprised about Prince Harrys big move, but believes the decision is true to his nature. Im still surprised, though, that Harry has left Britain, she said. I know he has always hated the media and quite often hated being a prince, but I never thought he would leave his homeland. Hes always been such a lover of British life, polo, the countryside, the shooting, Scotland. Prince Harry appears to be in control now, expert says Further supporting Sewards thoughts on how Prince Harry is finding this new chapter in his life, expert Omid Scobie, who co-wrote the book Finding Freedom about Prince Harry and Meghan, believes that Harry has more independence and control now. As a royal who was not particularly high up the ladder within the institution, Harry wasnt always able to go at it full force, Scobie shared. Now hes in control. He gets to juggle multiple projects at the same time; the budget is there, the space is there. Scobie also shed some light on Prince Harry and Meghans partnership. In Meghan, Harry has met a woman who meets him on many levels, Scobie explained. They share the same ideals and wishes for the world. Meghan gets criticized for a lot, but one cant knock her authenticity when it comes to wanting change and giving back. This is more than a marriage. Its a couple on a philanthropic journey together, with the same goals. Atik Mohammed, former General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), has supported the Electoral Commission's call for Presidential and Parliamentary aspirants for this year's general elections to pay a filing fee of Ghc 100,000 and Ghc 10,000 respectively. The Electoral Commission (EC) announced this on Monday, September 14, 2020 and asked the candidates to pay the fee using a bankers draft. Speaking to the media, Electoral Commission Chairperson, Madam Jean Mensa said "the Presidential Candidate will be required to deposit an amount of Ghc 100,000 in a form of a Bankers draft to the Commission, Parliamentary Candidates will be required to deposit Ghc 10,000 in a form of a Bankers draft as well. We wish all candidates for both presidential and parliamentary elections well, we trust that the nomination process will be efficient, seemless and orderly . . ." But some political parties have objected to the amount. The parties argue that the fee for the Presidential aspirants is unreasonably expensive and so called on the EC to reduce it. Reacting to the issue on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', Atik Mohammed shared contrary views with the opponents. According to him, the filing fee is a way to root out persons or political parties who want to toy with the electoral process. He believed if an aspirant is indeed keen on getting into the race, he or she will find appropriate means to get the money. To Atik, the fee is to "show that the person willing to pay this money is serious about ruling Ghana or help to steer the affairs of Ghana. So, it helps to sift the serious ones from the non-serious ones . . . how many politicians fund their campaigns from their pocket? Not so many. The reason why it's easy for politicians to raise or mobilize resources for their campagns is that when the electorates see you to be serious and have confidence in your vision, they, themselves, will help you raise resources to execute your campaign''. He also dissented to the popular notion that the country's electoral system has been monetized, in that if one is super rich, the person can use undue influence to buy his or her way into the Presidential seat or Parliament. ''But no matter how much money you have, if the electorates feel you're not serious, it becomes difficult for you to have their support. So, elections are not about monetization but just to show that what you're doing is something that shows you're serious and that you have a good vision for Ghana," he asserted. He further argued that the political parties should not complain about the EC's filing fee because in their internal politics, they equally charge exorbitant amounts. In his analogy, if the party members can afford to pay and run for a party position, it shouldn't be a bother to foot the fee at the national level. "I don't think 100,000 is unreasonable . . . if within your party, you're paying 30,000, 100,000 and all of that, and at the Electoral Commission level, you say 100,000 is expensive; then it means either as a political entity, you're not keenly interested or you have other ideas either than wanting to become the President. Because if you are serious with becoming the President, 100,000 should not be a difficulty; not for you as a person but for the organization." 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 The Delhi high court (HC) on Thursday will hear a bunch of pleas seeking registration of first information reports (FIRs) against several leaders across party lines for allegedly making hate speeches during the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019 agitation that eventually led to communal riots in north-east Delhi in February. One of the pleas had sought registration of FIRs against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders such as Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma, who delivered hate speeches that had led to the violence, leaving 53 killed and over 400 injured. Mishra denied delivering hate speeches and distanced himself from the violence in north-east Delhi. Another plea had accused the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders of delivering hate speeches before the riots broke out. On February 26, the Human Rights Law Network had filed a plea on behalf of civil society activist Harsh Mander seeking FIRs against Mishra and Thakur to be booked for making speeches that purportedly triggered communal violence in north-east Delhi. An organisation named Lawyers Voice had filed an intervention in the plea on the following day, making similar allegations against several Congress and AAP leaders. A third plea by Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind had said that the Delhi Police should be directed to preserve closed circuit TV (CCTV) footage of the riot-affected areas between February 23 and March 1. The plea had alleged that FIRs have not been lodged against persons responsible for the riots. Delhi Police has drawn flak for the arrest of student activist Umar Khalid (33) on Sunday night while refusing to act on the hate speeches by the BJP leaders. Khalid was in the forefront during the anti-CAA protests before the riots broke out in February. Earlier this week, nine retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officers wrote to Delhi Police commissioner SN Shrivastava expressing their fears of law enforcing authorities cracking down on protesters while letting the real culprits go scott free. Police have maintained that the riots were orchestrated by a section of anti-CAA protesters, who had mobilised people at the protest sites, delivered inflammatory speeches and planned the communal violence. Earlier, police had told the court that investigation into the north-east Delhi riots have not revealed any evidence that pointed towards the role of the leaders, who allegedly made hate speeches. Police had also said that there was no actionable evidence against the leaders indicating their role in instigating or participating in the riots. Mishra had said on July 15: It is clear that the entire propaganda campaign against me was fake. People, who organised riots in Delhi, are filling fake complaints against me and some urban Naxals tried to promote that. The fake campaign against me stands exposed. I am sure not only rioters but also their support groups in media and politics will be punished by the law. A team effort rescued 24 huskies stranded in a Level 3 evacuation zone near Mulino, Oregon, when wildfire warnings swept the county. Two groups of animal welfare advocates banded together to save the dogs from a potentially brutal demise after realizing the animals had been left behind by their owner. The melted sign of the Oak Park Motel destroyed by the flames of the Beachie Creek Fire is seen in Gates, east of Salem, Ore., on Sept. 13, 2020. The wildfire caused the evacuation of 40,000 residents, killing four people, and five are still missing (ROB SCHUMACHER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) Nathan Clements, one of the rescuers, said that he couldnt imagine leaving any dogs behind, KPTV reported. I have had Huskies myself for years, and I dogsled, Clements said, and like most mushers I know, we would sooner crouch with our dogs and burn than leave them behind. On the fateful day of Sept. 10, troubled by rumors of dogs trapped on a property in a local evacuation zone, Clements drove over to investigate. Upon arriving, he ran into another group of concerned animal advocates with the same inclination. I went down and checked out the property and it probably seemed like the dogs needed some help and wouldnt be doing too good if they were left behind, Clements said. (Illustration Stepan Khadzhi/Shutterstock) Clements and the other volunteers managed to coax all 24 huskies, each disoriented by the bizarre circumstances, into 24 individual travel crates. [W]e got all in a line together and caravanned over to the state fairgrounds, Clements said. At the Oregon State Fairgrounds, additional volunteers from neighboring Marion County stepped in. Volunteers provided essential supplies, dog food, and comfortable kennels inside which the dogs could safely spend the night. Sixteen of the huskies were relocated to the Newberg Animal Shelter for their comfort and safety, the KPTV reported. Their owner, who was contacted in the midst of the rescue, helped arrange for the dogs to be transferred. Tragically, a number of pets and livestock are paying the price of panic-fueled evacuations by being left behind. Newberg Animal Shelter manager Sarah Williams said that the shelter exists to support in times of such crisis. Newberg Animal Shelter in Newberg, Ore. (Screenshot/Google Maps) [I]ts really been amazing to watch all of the animal welfare organizations come together to make all of this work and support each other, she told KPTV. As a chorus of joyful husky wails fills the corridors of the animal shelter, the groups that went above and beyond to save the abandoned dogs can rest easy knowing that they saved 24 innocent animals from near-certain death. It is definitely relieving to know that a bunch of animals arent going to be burned alive for no reason, Clements said. The states of Oregon, Washington, and California are experiencing a wildfire season of devastating scale. Over 40,000 Oregonians have already been evacuated; half a million more live in zones that may soon be evacuated. Oregon Governor Kate Brown said on her Twitter handle that the states air quality currently ranks the worst in the world. We must protect outdoor workers from exposure to harmful levels of wildfire smoke, Brown wrote. On Sept. 14, Brown sent a letter to the White House requesting a Presidential Disaster Declaration following the federal emergency declaration on Sept. 10, reported Reuters. The request from the Democratic governor includes a call for additional communications resources, damage-assessment teams, search-and-rescue, and debris management, as well as help with shelter and medical assistance. The fires have put harmful levels of smoke and soot into the regions air, painting skies with tones of orange and sepia even as local residents deal with another public health emergency in the coronavirus pandemic, the report stated. Reuters contributed to this report. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2020, which proposes to bring cooperative banks under the ambit of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The new law aims to improve governance at such banks and protect depositors' money, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. "We are trying to bring this amendment to protect the depositors. As in some unfortunate situation in banks, depositors are put to hardship," she said in the Lok Sabha. ALSO READ: Monsoon Session of Parliament: Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill introduced in Lok Sabha Moving the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2020 in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman said the government was compelled to come out with an ordinance during the lockdown period as the condition of the cooperative banks was "grave". She said the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of cooperative banks increased from 7.27 per cent in March 2019 to over 10 per cent by March 2020. As many as 277 urban cooperative banks have reported losses in 2018-19 fiscal, the FM said. She added that over 100 urban cooperative banks were unable to meet the minimum regulatory capital requirement and 47 had negative net worth at the end March 2019. ALSO READ: Essential Commodities Amendment Bill gets Lok Sabha nod The proposal to regulate cooperative banks was floated after PMC Bank scam rocked the sector in September last year. PMC Bank was later put under restrictions by the RBI, following the unearthing of a Rs 4,355-crore scam. The scam put the savings of over 9 lakh customers at stake. Even today, PMC Bank customers are struggling to get their hard-earned money back. How does the bill protect interests of customers of the cooperative banks? Here's what the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2020, says: The new bill gives the RBI power to allow restructuring or amalgamation of a cooperative bank. The RBI may also place a bank under moratorium and prepare a scheme for its restructuring to secure people's money. Banks do not face action for six months, and can't make payment or discharge liabilities, including disbursement of loans, during the moratorium. The RBI may also be able to initiate reconstruction scheme without placing a cooperative bank under moratorium. The Bill allows a co-operative bank to issue equity, preference, special shares, unsecured debentures or bonds on face value or at a certain premium after approval from the RBI. As per the bill, no person shall be entitled to demand payment towards surrender of shares issued to him by a co-operative bank. It says a co-operative bank can't withdraw or reduce its share capital, except to the extent and subject to such conditions as the Reserve Bank may specify in this behalf. No co-operative bank shall make any loans or advances on the security of its own shares; or grant unsecured loans or advances to any of its directors or private companies in which any of its directors is interested as partner. The board of directors must have at least 51 per cent members who should possess experience in accountancy, banking, economics or law. The RBI can also direct a cooperative bank to reconstitute its board or remove board members to appoint suitable individuals. The RBI also has the power to exempt any cooperative bank from provisions of the Act, including appointment of board members, via notifications. The RBI can supersede the Board of Directors of a multi-state co-operative bank for up to five years in the public interest. In case a co-operative bank is registered with the Registrar of Co-operative Societies of a State, the Reserve Bank may issue such order in consultation with the concerned State Government. Edited by Manoj Sharma with PTI inputs ALSO READ: 38 economic offenders fled India in last 5 years Douglas Carswell has spoken 51 words in the Commons as a Ukip MP, and already he seems to have sent David Cameron into retreat. At Prime Ministers Questions, he asked about a promise the Conservatives made in 2010 that they would legislate to give constituents the power to sack sleazy MPs. This became a live issue during the expenses scandal. The Government has drawn up legislation, but there is an argument about whether it actually delivers what the Tories promised. It would only apply to an MP who has been sent to prison who could be expected to resign anyway or who has been suspended from the Commons for at least 21 days. Carswell urged Cameron to back a counter-proposal coming from the Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, under which any MP would be vulnerable to the sack if 20 per cent of the local electorate signed a petition. Cameron seemed to agree. Frankly, in getting this Bill together we have come up with the minimum acceptable for recall, he replied, but I think there are a lot of very good arguments to be had about how we can go further. Generally, prime ministers do not get up in Parliament and rubbish government legislation. David Cameron must have been spooked by Ukip. A Conservative defect? Some people say that Ukip is as much a threat to Labour as to the Conservatives. It is indeed taking support from Labour, but among the active members there are thought to be many more ex-Tories than former members of any other party. That is borne out by research by the Local Government Chronicle into the political backgrounds of 323 out of the 357 current Ukip councillors. It discovered that 77 are defectors from other parties, of whom 56 came over from the Conservatives, but only five from Labour and three from the Liberal Democrats. All over for cruel farmer There is a vacancy for a Ukip candidate in the most marginal Tory seat in the country. Until today, a farmer named David Evans was flying the Ukip flag in Camborne and Redruth, which the Tory George Eustice won in 2010 by just 66 votes. But Evans has been deselected after pleading guilty to six charges of cruelty to animals. In February, animal health inspectors found 119 sheep on his farm had died from exposure, and another 141 had to be put down. Lords hit by laundering rules Members of the House of Lords and their relatives are having problems with bank accounts because of a general assumption that you cannot trust a politician. Lord Wright, a former head of the diplomatic service, has two sons who tried to open accounts in Singapore and New York. Each was asked who his father was. When they revealed that they were the sons of a lord, they were refused accounts. Lord Clement-Jones, a Liberal Democrat, was unable to draw money from a cash machine. His son had the same problem. Lord Levene of Portsoken, who has had a long career in business, government and banking, wanted to open an account in France, where he has a second home. One is treated like the Spanish Inquisition, he complained. They have fallen foul of rules designed to prevent dictators and corrupt politicians from using the banking system to launder money. Banks have to show special vigilance when dealing with politically exposed persons and that includes members of the backwater that is the House of Lords. The Government is trying to get the EUs Money Laundering Directive amended to allow their lordships to access their money and go back to sleep. BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday sent a congratulatory message to Yoshihide Suga on his election as Japanese prime minister. In his message, Xi pointed out that China and Japan are friendly neighbors to each other, and are both important countries in Asia and the world. Developing a China-Japan relationship that features long-term stability and friendly cooperation not only serves the fundamental interests of both nations, but also contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in Asia and the world, Xi said. He suggested that the two sides hold fast to the principles established in the four political documents between China and Japan as well as the four-point principled agreement, and actively promote the building of a bilateral relationship that meets the needs of the new era, so as to create benefits for both countries and their people and make positive contributions to safeguarding world peace and advancing common development. On the same day, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also congratulated Suga on his election as Japanese prime minister. Li said in his congratulatory message that China stands ready to work with Japan to strengthen friendly exchanges and practical cooperation in all fields, and jointly push for new and greater progress in bilateral relations. Unlike most, film archivists dont have the option of work from home. The process of restoring and repairing film is an often laborious and expensive job that entails physical access to fragile material. When the entire world is looking for ways to go online, there are some things that just cannot be experienced on the Internet. Films are not a singular experience. While creating cinema, humans established it as a form of group activity, with shared experiences. How can you negate that experience to something online? says Mumbai-based filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. In March, when Dungarpur had to shut down his organisation Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) overnight, he had little idea about how long the lockdown announced by the government would last. Running an archive is like taking care of your child. And when thats suddenly taken away from you, and you have no means of taking care of your baby, you dont know what to do, says Dungarpur. The main concern for the archive was the condition of all the film material in storage, which required preservation in temperature-controlled vaults and dehumidifiers with routine cleaning and checks to keep them from getting exposed. The archive currently has over 50,000 photographs, 500 films, and other film material including song booklets, lobby cards and posters. Unable to keep away from his child, Dungarpur decided to quietly walk down from his house in Breach Candy to the archive in Tardeo to open it up four weeks after the lockdown was announced. His paranoia wasnt unfounded since the humidifiers and air conditioner were turned off for a month, some of the film material had crumbled to dust, with a few nitrate reels decomposing, thanks to Mumbais humidity. But there wasnt any time to fret. Dungarpur took it upon himself to clean up the office, and made it a point to visit his workplace regularly to run the air conditioner and dehumidifiers in order to save the film material. Unlike most, film archivists dont have the option of work from home. The process of restoring and repairing film is an often laborious and expensive job that entails physical access to fragile material. With budget cuts, film conservators are now forced to either use existing material or localise their material, finding local vendors. Funding, which has always been an issue in this field, has taken a worse hit with donors disappearing as the pandemic struck. In Brazil, Cinemateca Brasileira, one of Latin Americas oldest film institutions, is staring at a collapse. According to the British Film Institute's publication Sight and Sound, the famous state-funded archive, which had rapidly eroded under Jair Bolsonaro, has taken a further hit due to the pandemic. An employee of the Brasileira told BFI that despite not being paid, some technicians dealing with the collection and building maintenance continued to monitor the holdings in a relay system during the lockdown. But Dungarpur is willing to do whatever it takes for his seven-year-old organisation to survive. One of the major changes that he hopes to see on the global front is that there will be more collaboration among archives, a thought echoed by Christophe Dupin, a senior administrator at the International Federation of Film Archivists (FIAF). FHF is already collaborating with other international archives and conducting workshops online. In my position as administrator of FIAF, I am the contact point for colleagues at 169 institutions around the world, Dupin said in an interview. I thought it would be great to offer a platform so my colleagues could feel a little less isolated so they could share their concerns and also their thoughts on how we can get out of this situation and what the new world will look like for our sector. Another issue that needs addressing is a new business model to survive in the future, by making archives more accessible. The Mumbai-based film conservator believes that if the audience can be charged for viewing films, the costs of repairing and digitising films can be recovered. Preservation is an expensive affair. The process is labour intensive and uses material that is usually imported. Preserving material is the main goal for a film archive but it is equally important that the material being archived is eventually accessible to the public in some form or the other, says Gautami Khanvilkar, a film conservator at FHF. The 28-year-old, who has previously worked with National Film Archive of India (NFAI), believes that the need of the hour is to make film material accessible to the public on online platforms. Echoing a similar thought as Dungarpur, Khanvilkar too thinks that by monetising the viewing of films, archives can sustain themselves. However, there is a silver lining here following the coronavirus-induced lockdown, people found free time to rummage through their collections, and new, invaluable material was found and donated to restore in film archives all over the world. Iconic filmmaker, Satyajit Rays son, Sandip, found a treasure trove of 100 negatives of photographs taken by his father and over 1,000 unseen negatives of unseen shoot stills during the lockdown, informs Dungarpur. Keeping a positive outlook towards the future, the optimistic founder of the FHF believes that there is an opportunity for things to be better. The only way to fight this pandemic is to work. Keep your mind occupied so that one doesnt have time to think about the virus and work: its the only way. Work! Opinion Article 17 September 2020 Since its creation, Airbnb has been used to shaking things up in the hotel market. But what happens when a pandemic disrupts the disrupter? This article analyzes how the Silicon Valley-based "startup" adapted its business model to the COVID-19 outbreak and why some of its actions can be of use to hotel managers. For most hoteliers, Airbnb represents more of a threat than a role model. In its twelve years of existence, the Californian company has reshaped the world of travel like no one ever before. Indeed, by introducing a new type of accommodation, namely short-term rentals from person to person, the co-founders of Airbnb have challenged some of the age-old principles of the hotel business. By reversing this paradigm, they have sent a shockwave through the hospitality sector that has forced even the sturdiest establishments to second guess their entire strategies. In that regard, Airbnb has historically been a driver of change and evolution in the hospitality industry. We could even take the comparison a step further by equating the arrival of the Airbnb model with the COVID-19 outbreak, insofar as these two events have completely reshaped the world of travel. However, the COVID-19 crisis hit Airbnb just as badly as the rest of the hospitality industry: a quarter of its workforce had to be let go and the company expects 2020's results to be less than half of those of 2019. But rather than wallowing in self-pity, Airbnb's leaders have stayed true to their forward-thinking mentality and decided to do what they do best: adapt and innovate. As specialists in change management in the hospitality world, they decided to enact concrete action to evolve and grow rather than simply lick their wounds. From a hotelier's standpoint, it is worth taking a closer look at Airbnb's reaction in order to learn from one of the most innovative hospitality companies around. In this article, we will closely analyze how Airbnb responded to the COVID-19 outbreak. Subsequently, we will draw parallels between some of these actions and the changes you can apply to your hotel to better adapt to the crisis. Finally, we will argue on why hoteliers should aim to adopt an agile mentality to succeed in an uncertain environment. React swiftly The coronavirus took everyone by storm. Even though most people were aware of the situation in China, almost none of the governments were able to stop the rapid spread of the virus. As Airbnb started facing lockdown measures and travel restrictions across many countries, they were the first in line to have to adapt their offer to the crisis. Almost immediately, the company started to highlight the risks of traveling during a pandemic through a banner on their website. When the situation became dire on a global level, it was obvious that short terms rentals would be compromised for the foreseeable future. In order to reflect this new trend, Airbnb completely revamped their website in a matter of a few days. Under normal circumstances, such change would take months to implement, but the situation called for a much swifter response. Airbnbs website March 2020 Source: airbnb.com In an environment as uncertain as the COVID crisis, it is essential to react as quickly as possible to current events. Airbnb's strength lies in its ability to adapt extremely fast without being entrenched in their ideas. This is made possible through a streamlined and efficient management chain. Similarly, it is essential for your hotel to be able to react in an agile manner and remain open to new opportunities. Keep up with the news and be decisive (avoid being penalized by rigid management). Time is money and the faster your hotel can adopt changes and adapt to the new normal, the more you increase your chances to bounce back. Airbnbs website April 2020 Source: airbnb.com Adapt and innovate Airbnb is no stranger to change and innovation. From offering free shelter during hurricanes, to launching acceptance campaigns to tackle segregation, the company knows how to rethink and adapt its offers to ongoing events. That being said, the COVID-19 outbreak is on a whole different scale. While previous initiatives can be seen as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, Airbnb's response to the pandemic is groundbreaking since it reinvents its business model. In order to keep its business afloat in a world without nearly as much traveling, Airbnb decided to take part of its services online. Through the new Online Experience feature, Airbnb's users can enjoy a wide array of activities, which would in normal times be suggested as part of a trip, from the comfort of their home. A simple yet efficient solution to some of the worldwide lockdown/quarantine measures. The company also decided to move away from short-term rentals towards longer-term stays, closer to the services of a real estate agency. Once again, this decision is a direct response to an emerging demand trend: people are looking to get away from crowded cities to remote locations. By rethinking its services to match customer expectations in the post-COVID world, Airbnb was able to turn a desperate situation into an opportunity to grow and generate new revenues. As a hotel manager, you could take a page out of their book and seek out your own opportunities to bolster your range of services. Since international travel has been close to shutting down and the threat still looms, refocusing towards a more local clientele is paramount. In order to appeal to this tranche of customers, who are less likely to want to spend the night in your establishment, you might want to put more emphasis on your other services. Rather than looking at it through the lens of the traditional overnight stay, think of your hotel as a one-stop-shop for multiple activities. To do so, you might want to capitalize on the ancillary services your hotel can offer. Indeed, if your hotel possesses amenities likely to attract local customers (for example a spa, fitness centre, hairdresser, ...), try branching out and proposing them as additional sources of revenue. Even if your hotel does not have this type of service, you can still optimize the profitability of your rooms by offering day-use stays. Today, many people are interested in renting hotel rooms as a temporary home office free of the distractions of daily life. Others may simply be looking for a little peace and quiet away from crowded city centers for a few hours during the day. And again, this is just the tip of the iceberg; there are a plethora of different ways to go about innovating in this new hotel market; pick a strategy that makes sense in your specific case and go for it. As we saw in the case of Airbnb, the COVID-19 outbreak might be one of the best opportunities to start pivoting your business and diversifying your offers. Communicate effectively Communication has been one of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 crisis. Around the world, governments and companies alike have struggled to find the right way to pass along information. Amidst this unprecedented chaos, Airbnb chose to convey a message of solidarity and empathy to echo the companies' long-standing progressive values. To that end, they doubled down on communication through multiple channels and involved top managers, such as CEO Brian Chesky, to speak up and show a more humane approach to the pandemic. Airbnb also set up news rooms for hosts and travelers, providing key information regarding their policy during COVID. Throughout the crisis, they made sure that every single stakeholder, hosts and guests alike, were adequately kept up to date with the situation and supported in navigating through the crisis. Brian Chesky has been interviewed multiple times to talk about his thoughts on the crisis Skift In doing so, Airbnb stood out from many OTAs, whose clumsy handling of the pandemic (especially regarding last-minute cancellations) bread distrust amongst their customer base. In part due to its effective communication, Airbnb is likely to emerge stronger out of the crisis and stands to gain even more market shares online in the long run. Even though you might not be able to go as far as Airbnb, the way you communicate in these uncertain times is one of the keys to recovery. On the one hand, an ostrich policy would put your hotel at risk as it might mean losing loyal clients to establishments that choose to stand out. On the other hand, broad communication campaigns with poorly chosen content might bring about negative consequences. Try focusing both on the message and the execution. Make sure that you keep your customer base up to date with your hotel's situation during the crisis: reopening, new safety standards and cleaning protocols are all important matters you should keep your guests informed on. Broadly speaking, the substance of the message you should be passing is one of togetherness and empathy. Do not hesitate to share your struggles in these complicated times to build long-lasting trust with your guests and prepare your hotel for recovery. Finally, aim to use a wide range of communication tools to execute your campaign: Emails, social networks, local medias, tourism/hotel associations are all channels you can use to spread your message. Remember that, even though it might not seem like a priority, such actions could be just what you need to stand out from your competition. Play the long game We saw that Airbnb chose to rethink its offers and provide new services in light of the new travel restrictions. But although these are a welcome source of extra revenue, the company also knows that their main business model still lies within the travel industry. Which is why Airbnb is already preparing its platform for a post-COVID-19 world. One of the ways Airbnb decided to prepare for the future is by implementing a global resource hub dedicated to helping hosts secure bookings in this new environment. In order to provide this key information, Airbnb needs to identify future trends to understand where the market is headed. Fortunately, one of the big strengths of the platform lies in their data collection; data which can be turned into valuable insights. Here are some of the main takeaways from their research: Propose longer stays longer stays Reassure your guests your guests Capitalize on last-minute bookings on last-minute bookings Provide flexibility flexibility Respect your guests' privacy your guests' privacy Focus on local travel While these recommendations are intended for hosts, most of them are still very relevant for hotels. Since the whole market underwent a major transformation during the pandemic, customer expectations have also shifted accordingly. You need to adapt your amenities to match these new needs. Keep that in mind when establishing your long-term strategy. Airbnb already applied some of these trends to their platform, here with the Go Near Initiative in September 2020 Source: airbnb.com The startup mindset and parting thoughts In this article, we saw that Airbnb has been hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak. To keep their head above water, they implemented new services and tried branching out into unexplored territories. Simultaneously, the company has been hard at work on a plan for recovery after the crisis, notably by identifying shifting customers' expectations through their data. By adapting well and fast to this new and uncertain environment, Airbnb has been able to outrun competitors in their march towards full recovery (see the graph below). Airbnb and other rental sites (in orange) are recovering faster than other online actors Similarweb Doing so, they stayed true to their original startup mindset. Indeed, all these changes were made possible thanks to efficient management and agile ways of working. By refusing to simply stand on its previous achievements, Airbnb managed to rethink how its platform operates to adapt to an extraordinary situation. In these unprecedented times for the hotel market, it is paramount to keep questioning the status quo and never to rest on your laurels. Make sure that changes are never a hindrance to your hotel, but rather, a chance to learn and grow. The post-COVID travel industry is unforgiving, yet also full of opportunities. If you can manage to understand your guests' new expectations and adapt in consequence, you will be part of the hotels that define the industry of tomorrow. Union home minister Amit Shah, who was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi late Monday night for a complete medical check up, was discharged from the hospital on Thursday, according to people familiar with the development. Amit Shah was earlier admitted to Medanta hospital after testing positive for Covid-19 on August 2. After the home minister made a full recovery, he was discharged from the hospital on August 14. However, the minister was rushed back to AIIMS on August 17 for post-Covid care and was released on August 30. Later, Shah was again admitted to AIIMS on September 12 for a complete medical check up as advised by the doctors and was discharged today. Union home minister Amit Shah was discharged from AIIMS after post-Covid care on August 30. As per advice given at discharge, he has now been admitted for a complete medical checkup before the parliament session for 1-2 days, the hospital had said in a statement. Daphne Pearl Hampstead (pictured) left her Sydney home in 1958 and lived a secret life in Queensland until her death in 2007 The 'granddaughter' of a mother who abandoned her Sydney family and forged a secret new life in Queensland for six decades was shot dead last year. Megan Kirley knew Daphne Jones as 'nanna' and inherited a share of her home at Maryborough on the Fraser Coast when she died in 2007, supposedly aged 83. What Megan did not know was that Daphne was a widow six years older than she claimed and had walked out on her husband and eight children in 1958. Megan kept a poem given to her by Daphne on her fridge which began: 'Don't count how many years you've spent, Just count the good you've done.' The mother-of-two posted the verse to Facebook five years ago with the caption: 'This was my beautiful nanna's poem - that's the essence xo.' The poem, titled What to Count, was attributed to 'Daphne Pearl Jones' but she did not write it and that was not her real name. Last year, before Megan learnt of Daphne's secret past and her other family, she was killed on a semi-rural property at Karawatha, south-east of Brisbane. The 40-year-old's body was found at the Wembley Road address just after 3am on Saturday, February 9. She had been shot once in the head. Megan Kirley (pictured) knew Daphne Hampstead as 'nanna' and inherited a share of her home at Maryborough on the Fraser Coast when she died in 2007, supposedly aged 83. The mother-of-two was shot dead at Karawatha south-east of Brisbane in February last year Megan Kirley kept a touching poem given to her by Daphne on her fridge which began: 'Don't count how many years you've spent, Just count the good you've done.' She posted the poem to Facebook five years ago with the caption 'This was my beautiful nanna's poem' Three men and a woman have been charged with murder and another man with attempted robbery with violence whilst armed in company. All will face a committal hearing at Brisbane Magistrates Court on November 18. The poem on Megan's fridge ends: 'Count your deeds of kindness, the smiles not the tears; count all the pleasures that you've had, but never count the years.' Megan Kirley's links to Daphne are the latest twist in the extraordinary tale of a woman who was widely loved but managed to officially stay missing for 62 years. Daphne was born Daphne Pearl Jones at Cootamundra in the New South Wales Riverina on July 13 or 15, 1918, and married local boy Sidney Hampstead in 1936. The couple eventually had eight children: Leslie, Patricia, Marcia, Daphne, twins Barry and Clifford, Helen, and Janet. They lived at Cootamundra, Tumut, Grafton, Taree, Oxley Island and Muswellbrook where they worked as share farmers before buying their own farm at Scone. Megan Kirley inherited a share of Daphne's home (pictured) at Maryborough on the Fraser Coast when she died in 2007, supposedly aged 83. Megan did not know Daphne's real surname was Hampstead and she had walked out on her husband and eight children 49 years earlier Two days after Daphne disappeared a letter in her handwriting arrived at his western Sydney home. 'My darling Sid,' the 39-year-old began the note. 'Oh darling what it is costing me to write this letter, you will never know.' The letter's words are reproduced in this image Financial difficulties forced the family to move to a dairy at Bossley Park in Sydney's western suburbs in 1956. Two years later Daphne disappeared. Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott outlined what was happening in the Hampstead home as she finally solved the riddle of Daphne's disappearance this week. 'Daphne was a loving mother who enjoyed cooking and was apparently social and engaging,' Ms Truscutt found. 'Daphne and Sidney are described to have had a loving relationship however Sidney was possessive and jealous and violent to Daphne. 'After leaving the farm in Scone and moving to Bossley Park the domestic violence became more frequent.' Shortly before dawn on May 10, 1958, Daphne caught a taxi from the farm carrying photographs and most of her clothes. Two days later her husband received a letter written in Daphne's hand inside an envelope with a postmark from nearby Fairfield. On Wednesday NSW Deputy State Coroner Elaine Ms Truscott (pictured right alongside former homicide detective Gary Jubilen) found Daphne Hampstead, Daphne Onslow, Daphne Shaw and Daphne Jones were the same person 'My darling Sid,' she began. 'Oh darling what it is costing me to write this letter, you will never know. 'I left work today, I just can't go on. I thought there was no love left at home for me at all. But I have realised how wrong I was over the last week. 'I think it has been a week I shall never forget. I am going away for a while (by myself) don't worry about me, I will be okay. 'I know now I can always come to you for understanding I do wish I had known that before dear.' Daphne also sent a letter to her daughter Daphne Lillian asking her to look after her father and her younger brothers and sisters. Five years later Daphne somehow learned one of her twin sons, 19-year-old Barry, was critically ill in hospital and wrote him a letter postmarked from Wyong on the NSW Central Coast. Four men and a woman have been charged with murdering Megan Kirley (pictured) and will face a committal hearing in November She expressed concern for her son but indicated she could not visit him, although she signed off 'from someone who loves you very much'. Sidney fell into heavy drinking and moved in with daughters Daphne Lillian then Marcia while Daphne reinvented herself. Daphne took the surname Onslow, took six years off her age and after possibly spending time in Papua New Guinea moved to Queensland. She lived with plantation farmer Roy Shaw from at least 1963 when the couple lived in Brisbane and she began using his surname. Roy Shaw died in 1972 and Daphne moved on with his close friend Raymond Jones whose wife Vona had died the same year. Following a 'celebration' of her relationship with Ray Jones in 1973 - the year her husband Sidney died - Daphne took his name and became stepmother to his daughter Diann. The couple lived at several locations across Queensland before moving to Maryborough on the Fraser Coast in 2003, a year before Ray died of a heart attack aged 74. Daphne Hampstead was 39 when she vanished from an old dairy farm on Cowpasture Road at Bossley Park in Sydney's western suburbs. Pictured: Cowpasture Road Daphne spent her last years living in Steindl Street, Granville, an eastern suburb of Maryborough, until she died of cancer at the local hospital on November 2, 2007. All the while her whereabouts remained a mystery to her original Hampstead family. A 2012 coronial inquiry into Daphne's disappearance found she was likely dead but it could not be determined how or when she died. One of Daphne's granddaughters, Donna Gough, hired private investigator Luke Athens (pictured), who solved the six-decades-long mystery in just '12 billable hours' Daphne Lillian's daughter Donna Gough then hired private investigator Luke Athens, who within hours had worked out she had changed her name and age after moving to Queensland. Daphne had never married Ray Jones but upon her death his daughter Diann and her husband Tyrone Green were listed as her next of kin. Diann was one of five family members who originally inherited the brick house at Granville which was sold for $137,500 in November 2009. Another of those relatives was her 'granddaughter' Megan Kirley, who has shot dead last year. Luke Athens put Donna Gough in touch with the Greens, who told her that Daphne disliked talking about her past but had a 'magnetic, charismatic personality'. The two families compared pictures of Daphne Hampstead and Daphne Jones and agreed they were of the same woman. The Greens had made statements to the coroner in which they said Daphne had talked of having twin sons but mentioned no other children. 'She was very guarded about her history,' Ms Truscott found. 'Diann reports that in 2006 she saw that Daphne was using a paper shredder and remarks that this was consistent with her experience that Daphne would destroy all things about her past.' Mr Jones's daughter Diann and her husband Tyrone Green were listed as Daphne's next of kin when she died of cancer at Maryborough Hospital on November 7, 2007 aged 89 The Greens' daughter told Daily Mail Australia her parents did not wish to discuss Daphne's separate lives publicly. 'Mum and dad aren't interested,' she said. 'They just want to leave it.' On Wednesday Ms Truscott found Daphne Hampstead, Daphne Onslow, Daphne Shaw and Daphne Jones were the same person. 'I note that the notice of Daphne's death exhibited in the newspaper indicated that she was the beloved wife of the late Roy Jones,' she said in her findings. 'Loved mother and mother-in-law of Diann and Tyrone, Ted, Esme (deceased) and Theresa (deceased). The loved Nana of 7 and Great nana of 10. 'Added to that she was the mother of eight and grandmother and great grandmother from her NSW family. 'I hope having the record adjusted to reflect that Daphne's death is properly recorded in some way brings a sense of completeness to both Daphne Pearl's NSW and Queensland families.' NEW DELHI: The department of telecommunications (DoT) has suggested companies undertake network audit on security concerns over spyware and malware vulnerabilities, minister of state for communications Sanjay Dhotre said in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The minister, in a written reply, said equipment and network used for providing telecom services are prone to backdoor and trapdoor vulnerabilities, and mobile operators are responsible for the security of their network. The proposal to undertake security audit assumes importance amid the India-China border standoff. Tensions between the two nations escalated in June, when 20 soldiers of the Indian Army were killed in a clash with Chinese forces along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. Since then, the government has taken several steps to bar trade with the neighbour, including the ban on more than 200 Chinese applications. Separately, the DoT in December had directed all telecom operators such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone Idea Ltd to undertake security audit of their network by an external agency. Under the Unified License, each licensee have to undertake an audit of their networks or get their networks audited from security point of view once in a financial year from a network audit and certification agency," the minister said. Dhotre clarified that the government does not maintain any data on percentage of equipment supplied by Chinese manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE. He said telecom service providers procure and deploy equipment from vendors based on their techno-commercial interests, provided all security provisions are met. According to information received by the government, Reliance Jio does not use any equipment sold by Huawei and ZTE, while Vodafone Idea follows a multi-vendor strategy and Bharti Airtel uses equipment of Indian, American, European and Chinese vendors. State-owned BSNL gets 44.4 % of its mobile network equipment from ZTE and 9% from Huawei, while 10% of MTNLs network equipment is procured from Chinese manufacturers. The minister also said the government has not banned purchasing equipment from Chinese vendors. However, he said an amendment in the General Financial Rules, 2017, allows the department of expenditure to impose restrictions on public buying from bidders of a country on defence grounds. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. The US provided strong and unambiguous support to India during its current border crisis with China, which is engaged in increasingly aggressive behaviour throughout the Indo-Pacific even during the coronavirus pandemic, a senior White House official said on Thursday. From a bilateral perspective Chinas recent actions on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India has further reinforced the importance of the US-India strategic partnership, Lisa Curtis, the deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, said in a virtual panel discussion organised by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank. Whether it was cutting off Vietnams access to its fishing waters, undermining Hong Kong self-rule, deploying military submarines to threaten Japan or contesting Indian territorial sovereignty along the LAC, Beijing has engaged in increasingly aggressive behaviour throughout the Indo-Pacific, even as the global community has grappled with coronavirus pandemic, Curtis said. The crisis has strengthened Americas resolve to work towards building its relationship with India as a bulwark against Chinese aggression, she said during the discussion on research scholar Darshana Baruahs recently released paper, India in the Indo-Pacific: New Delhis Theater of Opportunity. Throughout the crisis, the US has provided strong and unambiguous support for India, and our cooperation has certainly grown closer. We are encouraged by Indias strong yet responsible approach to the Chinese aggression, said Curtis, who is the Senior Director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House. While always seeking to de-escalate through diplomatic means India also demonstrated military and economic resolve, Curtis said as she asserted that the Indo-Pacific strategy, which was introduced in 2017 is designed to foster a stable free open and rules-based order. This order is not only for the benefit of the US. It is for the benefit of all countries that pride their sovereignty and independence. The Indo-Pacific strategy, of course prioritises building relations between the US and India, because we view India as an emerging global power that shares our goals of ensuring this region remains peaceful, stable, and with the prospect of growing prosperity, she said. Americas strategic partnership with India is really founded on shared commitments to freedom, democratic principles and the rule of law. It is based on a convergence of strategic interests, centred on promoting global security instability, she said. Noting that the Trump administration elevated the US relationship with India in ways not seen by any other administration, she said that the joint statement that was signed by President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi following the formers visit to India in February is testament to this administrations commitment to building the vital partnership. Curtis said that the US has strengthened the QUAD mechanism among the leadership of the US, Japan, India and Australia. At the outset of the Trump administration the Quad was really not even officially meeting. But starting in November 2017, we started regular dialogue of the QUAD at the Assistant Secretary Director General level. And by September 19, we had the quad meeting at the ministerial level for the first time ever. Additionally, President Trump has met twice in the trilateral format with Indian and Japan; first at the G-20 Buenos Aires in December, 2018, and then again in Osaka, at the G-20 in June 2019, she said. Both the QUAD and trilateral formats are really important for strengthening the institutional support and fostering that multinational cooperation that will contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific, Curtis said. Such mechanisms help check Chinese aggression, and which has increased since the onset of the global pandemic," she added. Tension in eastern Ladakh increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes on June 15 in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. The situation deteriorated again after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake on the intervening night of August 29 and 30. China is also engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade. China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the area. Fondul Proprietatea (FP) will be selling 1.7 billion existing shares in OMV Petrom through an accelerated bookbuild offering, expecting 561 million lei in gross proceeds, according to a report submitted to the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB). Franklin Templeton Investment Management Ltd. United Kingdom Bucharest Branch, in its capacity as Investment Manager of Fondul Proprietatea S.A. (the 'Fund'), further to the launch announcement on 15 September 2020, hereby announces the agreement to sell 1.7 billion existing shares in OMV Petrom S.A. ('Petrom') under the accelerated bookbuild offering (the "Transaction"), according to the report.FP mentions that, with the shares' selling price agreed at RON 0.33/share, the gross proceeds of the Transaction amount to RON 561 million. Petrom will not receive any proceeds from the transaction."Subject to successful settlement completion, the Fund's remaining participation in Petrom is of 6.9973 per cent of its share capital. Citigroup Global Markets Limited and WOOD & Company Financial Services, A.S. acted as Joint Bookrunners for the Transaction," reads the report.OMV Petrom is the largest energy company in South-Eastern Europe, with an annual Group hydrocarbon production of 55.4 million boe in 2019. The Group has a refining capacity of 4.5 million tons annually and operates an 860 MW high efficiency power plant. The Group is present on the oil products retail market in Romania and neighboring countries through 802 filling stations, at the end of June 2020, under two brands - OMV and Petrom.OMV Aktiengesellschaft, one of the largest listed industrial companies in Austria, holds a 51.011% stake in OMV Petrom. The Romanian State, through the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Business Environment, holds 20.639% of OMV Petrom shares, Fondul Proprietatea holds 9.998%, and 18.352% is the free float on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange.OMV Petrom is the largest contributor to Romania's national budget, with contributions of 30.4 billion euro in taxes and dividends paid between 2005 and 2019. Mumbai: In an apparent dig at Rajya Sabha MP and veteran actor Jaya Bachchans comments, actor Ranvir Shorey said outsiders like him have achieved success without anyone handing them work on a platter. In her Rajya Sabha speech on Tuesday, Bachchan had used a Hindi proverb to criticise those defaming the film industry. Though Bachchan did not take any names, her speech came a day after BJPs Lok Sabha MP and Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan said there was a problem of drug addiction in the film industry, which has been facing criticism in the aftermath of actor Sushant Singh Rajputs death in June. Jis thali mein khate hai usme chhed karte hai. Galat baat hai," she had said referring to a popular Hindi proverb that translates to biting the hand that feed you. Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, Shorey wrote in Hindi that there was a clear disparity between the plate" the privileged are handed over to what actors like him earn through hard work. They decorate the plates for their children. While pieces are thrown at people like us. We pack our own tiffin and go to work. No one has given us anything. Whatever we have, they couldnt take it away from us. If it were up to them, they would have given even this to their children," the Khosla Ka Ghosla" actor tweeted without naming anyone. Bachchans speech was praised by many in the industry, who applauded the actor for taking a stand against the negativity surrounding the film industry since Rajputs death. Film personalities like director Zoya Akhtar, Anubhav Sinha, actors Farhan Akhtar, Sonam Kapoor and Tapsee Pannu lauded the MP. Ranaut, who has been in the news for her provocative statement, had put out a caustic tweet. What thali (plate) are you referring to Jayaji? The one that was offered was to appear in a two-minute role, a romantic scene, item numbers and that too after sleeping with the hero? I taught the industry feminism, decorated the thali with patriotic films, this is my own plate Jaya ji, not yours. The standalone Oculus Quest headset just got a successor with improvements all around. It's more powerful, has better ergonomics, 50% more pixels on each display and supports 90Hz refresh rate. The device is built on Qualcomm's brand new Snapdragon XR2 platform paired with 6GB of RAM. The displays now offer 1832 x 1920px resolution per eye, which is around 50% more pixels than the original quest. Oculus doesn't say if the displays are OLED or LCD but we assume it's the latter. More importantly, 90Hz refresh rate is also supported within the menus and soon gaming titles supporting 90fps will appear too. And in case you are looking for a high-powered PC VR experience, the Quest 2 can do that as well with the additional Quest Link accessory, which is said to be compatible with a wide range of cables. With all that horsepower from your PC, games at 90fps should be a non-issue. Of course, the headset's main advantage is that it can be a standalone VR headset so Oculus has made some improvements in this regard as well, building on the Oculus Insight tracking system. No specifics have been given here though but the improved processing power from Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2 platform probably helps. Ergonomics are now even better with over 10% less weight and adjustable IPD (interpupillary distance). Support for additional accessories for added comfort is also at hand. Pre-orders are now open and start at $299, which is $100 less than the original Quest. The actual shipment of the product starts on October 13. Source While other states are becoming competitive, Gujarat, say experts is not paying enough attention to maintaining its own position in terms of business reforms. Gujarat, Haryana and Karnataka -- three states that are considered pro-business -- saw a steep fall in their rankings in a union government survey for 2019, on the ease of doing business environment in Indian domains. While Gujarat topped the chart in the 2015 survey, its ranking declined two places to third the following year. It again fell to fifth in 2017 and further to tenth in the 2019 survey, which was released on Saturday by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Haryana improved its ranking from 14th in 2015 to sixth in 2016 and third the next year, but slid to 16th in 2019. Karnataka saw its ranking taking a knock of four places to 13th in 2016 from ninth the previous year. However, it bettered its ranking to eighth in 2017, but tumbled to 17th position in 2019. 36 states and union territories are ranked in this survey. Officials and experts attributed the fall in the position of these three states to lack of response from industry to the survey as well as political instability in Karnataka. According to industry experts in Gujarat, several factors have led to the state's consistent fall in business reforms rankings including rising competitiveness of other states. "First, other states are becoming very competitive. There are now states in the top five which were not there in the first few editions of the ranking. "Secondly, Gujarat is not paying enough attention to maintaining its own position in terms of business reforms. "It is hard to imagine that at 10th position Gujarat is not only no longer in the top one-third states in the country but also ranks behind states like West Bengal," says Sunil Parekh, strategic industrial advisor to several large corporate. Quoting a CMIE report, Parekh also states that Gujarat has also been falling in terms of attracting investments with the CMIE list pegging the state at number four behind Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Tamil Nadu in 2019-20. "While the BRAP rankings look at ease of doing business, industries look at cost of operations while deciding investments. "In 2019 Gujarat did receive a lot of investments but even there it is falling. "Hence, Gujarat will have to look at all the aspects that affect both ease and cost of doing business," Parekh adds. Commenting on Gujarat's rankings, the state government's additional chief secretary Manoj Kumar Das told Business Standard, "DPIIT and Niti Aayog Govt of India has been ranking states on various parameters. "For economic and industrial activities there are four indicators including ease of doing business (EODB), logistics index, export preparedness index, and startup index. "Gujarat has secured first position in all second, third and fourth indices." According to Das, there were 187 reform parameters across 18 departments. "Our state government compiled all the reforms and submitted them to GoI. "The World Bank team along with the Union government team found all of these reforms proper and acknowledged them. "It is available on their website. But when they called the users from the database, it seems most users did not respond," Das said, adding those who responded mostly showed great satisfaction. However, he said the respondents were in the minority. "Marks are awarded for only positive responses. No response means no marks as if it is a negative response. "This has probably affected Gujarat and we have not got the ranking we deserve otherwise," Das said while adding that 51 per cent of industrial entrepreneurs memorandum (IEMs) in the country were filed in Gujarat and with 240 per cent increase in FDI compared to four percent increase in rest of India. Haryana BJP chief spokesperson Rajeev Jaitley said these rankings consider two dimensions: implementation of reforms and the feedback from users. "First thing to note is that according to the information released by the union government till now our score on implementation of Reforms is 100 per cent. "This is an improvement from 99.73% score on implementation of reforms in 2017 when Haryana ranked 3rd in the country," he said. The score on the basis of the feedback has yet not been released by DPIIT. In 2017 on this count, the state's score was 82.89 per cent. "Whether we have improved on this count also or not would be known only when this data is released," Jaitley said. However, he said a drop in the rank certainly indicates that some states have improved their feedback scores more than Haryana's. "Let us wait for the release of numbers to assess whether the relative drop also indicates an absolute drop on the feedback score or not," he added. He assured that either way all departments will ensure that no laxity occurs in implementation of reforms and good user experience in the ongoing reform drive of the state government so as to improve not only these rankings but also the Ease of Living Index ranking. Karnatakas steep fall in the ease of doing business ranking for 2019 is seen as a major breach of trust by the business on the reforms initiated by the state though most of this is attributed to the political instability that the state witnessed last year. The incumbent, BS Yedyurappa-led BJP government came back to power in July last year after a lot of political high drama that saw the eventual fall of HD Kumaraswamy led JDS-Congress coalition government in the state. State experts say that even though BJP came to power in July with the promise of giving a stable government, a lot of its focus went towards ensuring that the opposition party who supported it during the no confidence motion against the coalition government are adequately rewarded despite the judicial hurdle. However, in the last six years, the state government is seen to have undertaken a lot of reforms and new initiatives including the much needed Land Reforms Act and Karnataka Industrial (Facilitation) Act. Most of the reforms that we have implemented have been undertaken after March 2020 whereas this survey took place between April 2019 and April 2020. "A lot of the reforms we have initiated will be reflected in the survey for the ongoing financial and we are quite optimistic to improve the states ranking to the top-5 for FY'20 period, Jagadish Shettar, Industries Minister of Karnataka told Business Standard. He said, last year April onwards there was a lot of political instability in the state as many MLAs and ministers of the then ruling coalition government resigned, bringing the normal activities of the government to a near standstill. After NJP formed the government in July onwards, there were several natural disasters that the state had to battle with. From April 2020 onwards, even during the lockdown period, we have got the approval for Rs 31,000 crore investment and implemented so many reforms which will be reflected in the next years survey, added Shettar. According to RS Deshpande, a former director of Institute of Social Economic Change (ISEC), the state would certainly improve its ranking and attract more investments resulting in employment generation given that a stable government is in place and the state is also taking a number of initiatives to this effect. I think, the state has taken some of the works which are highly employment oriented while in the policy front they have eased some of the earlier restrictions that were considered as bottlenecks in terms of attracting new investments, Deshpande said. By Laman Ismayilova Famous for its "eternal flame", Yanardag has been on the must-see list for Icelandic tourists for many years. The Cabinet of Ministers has made changes in the "Charter on Yanardag State Historical, Cultural and Natural Reserve". The state reserve was removed from the subordination of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and transferred under the management of the State Travel Agency. The corresponding decision was signed by Prime Minister Ali Asadov. Yanardag is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku. The Italian trader and traveler Marco Polo even mentioned the flames during his travels to Baku. This magical place is associated with many legends. Since ancient times, fire worshipers from India and Iran have gathered in these places. Unlike mud volcanoes, the Yanardag flame burns fairly steadily, as it involves a steady seep of gas from the subsurface. The flames emanate from vents in sandstone formations and rise to a height of 10 meters. The Yanardag State Historical, Cultural and Natural Reserve re-opened last year after the overhaul. The reserve features a museum, a 500-seat amphitheatre for outdoor concerts, workshops, shops, and a parking lot. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Cheers is one of the most successful American sitcoms of all time. It rocket-launched numerous careers, like those of Ted Danson from The Good Place and Woody Harrelson from The Hunger Games series. The series also inspired an equally successful spinoff, the Kelsey Grammar show Frasier, which ran from the end of Cheers until 2004. (L-R) Marcia Cross as Susan Howe, Ted Danson as Sam Malone, Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe | NBC/Getty Images Cheers was a hit for more than a decade Running from 1982-1993, Cheers was on the air for 11 seasons and won multiple Emmys and Golden Globes. As the theme song famously goes, the show gave audiences a place to go where it seems like everybody knows your name. The stellar ensemble cast, which also included Rhea Perlman, Kirstie Alley, and Shelley Long, was a big reason that people fell in love with all the characters and wanted to keep tuning in. They felt like they knew the characters and wanted to see their stories grow and evolve over time. This same effect also explains the success of Frasier that followed after Cheers. The Most Dramatic TV Exits Ever: Shelley Long, Cheers https://t.co/lWQhOBqxEJ pic.twitter.com/6bqeeI4n1w TV Guide (@TVGuide) May 12, 2017 The show was an early model for good ensemble comedy The basic premise of Cheers was that Dansons character Sam owned a bar in Boston, where he used to be a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. The show follows the people who work at the bar and a cast of regulars. It centered on the drama, antics, and love triangles of the oddball characters who become friends while spending so much time together in a beloved place. For instance, a lot of the show followed Sams on-again-off-again vibes with Longs character Diane. A notorious womanizer, Sam also has a dalliance with Alleys character, Rebecca. Star Tribune letter writer still mad about Ted Danson's 'Cheers' character https://t.co/Kvo4FLxNUI pic.twitter.com/d4eJREqGAb City Pages (@citypages) November 23, 2016 RELEASED: Cheers: Eddie LeBecs Zamboni Death Started With Drama Behind-the-Scenes Later ensemble sitcoms like The Office and Parks and Recreation in many ways seem inspired by the Cheers model for what good ensemble comedy looks like. The show was super successful at weaving in all the different personalities and character arcs that develop when people spend a lot of time together. It was an early model for how successful a show can be when it centers on a particularly special place. Cheers had this one weird mini-episode However, in the 11 seasons that Cheers was on the air, there was one episode that stands out as being slightly different from the rest. It was a mini-episode that never actually ended up running on television. And if thats not peculiar enough, the entire thing was about savings bonds. The cast filmed the 12-minute episode during season one, but it was never intended to air at all. In fact, the producers agreed to make the 1983 episode titled Uncle Sam Malone on behalf of a special client who wanted it for their own purposes. So who would make such a request and how did they have the power to do so at all? Ted Danson was horrified to reference his Cheers character on his new hit sitcom: https://t.co/3ZVWHjNxOw pic.twitter.com/e2hWqkdsIm MeTV (@MeTV) July 23, 2018 The request came from a place you might not associate with Hollywood It was in fact the U.S. Government that requested the special mini-episode of Cheers. To be more specific, it was the U.S. Treasury and they did it because they wanted to use the mini-episode at savings bond drives, according to Ranker. They figured that if people saw some beloved television characters encouraging the practice and showed a story about something fun a person could do with their savings bonds, people might be more likely to want to buy some. The mini-episode was a single scene in which Cliff is discussing a trip to Tahiti with the whole gang. He tells them that he paid for the whole thing using his savings bonds. The others then start discussing wanting to get some, too. Who knows whether it worked, but considering how successful the show became after that first season, the U.S. Treasury might have been on to something. New weekly unemployment claims dipped 14% for the week ending Sept. 12, bringing the weekly claims filing to a new low for the first time in five weeks, the state Department of Labor said. About 19,600 new unemployment claims were filed last week the fewest applications since the 13,822 during the week ending Aug. 8, which saw the lowest number of new claims during the pandemic. It brings the total number of New Jersey workers who applied for unemployment benefits since the pandemic hit in mid-March to 1.58 million people, with 1.38 million of those being eligible. Of those, 96% have received at least one payment. The state has regained 409,400 jobs since April, about half of the jobs lost due to the pandemic. New Jerseys unemployment rate also fell to 10.9% in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Were grateful to see more New Jerseyans returning to work, but we are also keenly aware of how many employees and small business owners remain unemployed, often for the first time in their lives," said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo. "Its these workers who have depleted their savings, had to borrow money, or have fallen behind on their bills we are laser focused on getting the most money, as quickly as possible. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage Still, 30,000 to 40,000 claims remain backlogged, months after the department was met with an avalanche of claims when Gov. Phil Murphy shuttered businesses to stop the spread of coronavirus, Asaro-Angelo said while testifying before the state Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday. Since the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of claims, the unemployment system has been plagued with technological issues, leaving workers waiting weeks or months to receive benefits. The system, using 40-year-old mainframes and the outdated coding language COBOL, wasnt updated in time to deal with record-breaking filings. But Asaro-Angelo maintained during the hearing that the problems lie with the federal Department of Labors regulatory system. He noted the federal agency was opposed to temporarily suspending or amending the weekly certification, which alone caused a daily average of 5,000 claimants to be in pending status until a manual claim was input. The state plans to spend million of dollars on technological and design upgrades, to benefit both applicants and unemployment insurance agents. But he said this could cost more than $200 million over the next five or six years, hoping the federal government would cover the costs. Unemployment systems in other states that saw million-dollar upgrades didnt see many improvements, in part because programs cannot react to the infinite variables in unemployment claims, he said. The commissioner also noted that while New Jerseys Unemployment Trust Fund was plentiful when unemployment rates first spiked, the fund is nearly exhausted and has the state paying out benefits through a $1.7 billion federal line of credit. This could trigger a tax increase on businesses beginning July 1. Asaro-Angelo called on Congress to find a way to extend the $600 weekly supplement in order to simplify getting people their money, rather than create a new system. While lawmakers are still working out a coronavirus relief package to take place of the CARES Act, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a $300 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits for three weeks. New Jersey was accepted into the FEMA Lost Wages Supplemental Assisstance program, and should have the programming to distribute the $300-a-week check in place next month in a lump sum. The payments will retroactively supplement benefits from the week ending Aug. 1 through the week ending Sept. 5, as long as the state is approved for each weekly request. States were instructed to apply for three weeks of benefits at a time, beginning Aug. 1, and apply each week thereafter until the fund was depleted. New Jersey workers who are eligible for unemployment may receive 60 percent of their wages, up to $713. Although the $600 supplement expired, the Labor Department continues to issue those payments for eligible claims for weeks ending April 4 through July 25. Since the pandemic began, the Labor Department has distributed $15.4 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits, including $310 million for the week ending Sept. 12. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. NJ Advance Media Reporter Karin Price Mueller and Samantha Marcus contributed to this report. Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Cash and cash equivalents of 5.1 million at June 30, 2020 First patient enrolled in Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in IPF Regulatory News: Genkyotex (Paris:GKTX) (Brussels:GKTX)(Euronext Paris Brussels: FR0013399474 GKTX), a biopharmaceutical company and leader in NOX therapies, today provides business update and announces its consolidated financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2020, prepared in accordance with IFRS. Business update and outlook The Company announced on August 13, 2020 an agreement for Calliditas Therapeutics AB to acquire a controlling interest in Genkyotex SA. Calliditas has agreed to acquire from Genkyotex's largest shareholders and management team, through an off-market block trade, ordinary shares of Genkyotex representing 62.7% of the share capital and voting rights of Genkyotex. The off-market block trade is expected to take place in October 2020 and remains subject to customary conditions precedent, including clearance from the French Ministry of Economy and Finance regarding foreign investments in French companies. Calliditas is seeking to acquire all outstanding Genkyotex shares and, as soon as reasonably practicable after and subject to completion of the off-market block trade, Calliditas will file with the French Financial Market Authority (Autorite des Marches Financiers the "AMF") a mandatory simplified cash tender offer for the remaining Genkyotex shares on the same terms as the block trade (2.80 per share in cash and contingent rights to additional cash payments subject to confirmation of regulatory approvals or marketing authorization of setanaxib no later than within ten years of the closing of the tender offer). During the first half of 2020, Genkyotex's clinical activity focused mainly on the following key elements: Registration strategy for setanaxib in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC): Genkyotex is currently discussing the registration strategy for setanaxib in PBC with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The End Of Phase 2 (EOP2) meeting with the FDA was not delayed by the COVID-19 situation and took place at the end of April 2020, as planned. Genkyotex requested and obtained, at the end of June 2020, scientific advice from the EMA's Scientific Advice Working Party (SAWP) that provides a path for the late stage development and registration of setanaxib in PBC. Initial feedback was also received from the FDA following the End Of Phase 2 meeting held in April. Genkyotex will communicate on its late stage development plan once final approval of a common registration strategy has been obtained from the FDA and the EMA. Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: the company announced on September 14, 2020 the enrollment of the 1st patient in a Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in IPF. This study is conducted in accordance with the protocol approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and relevant Institutional review board (IRB). The study is being led by Professor Victor Thannickal of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and includes a consortium of five research centers of excellence in the United States. It is fully funded by an $8.9 million grant awarded to Professor Thannickal's teams by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The aim of the study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of setanaxib in 60 IPF patients receiving standard treatment (pirfenidone or nintedanib) over a period of 24 weeks. The dose of setanaxib utilized will be 800 mg/day (400 mg BID), which was shown to achieve superior efficacy and a similarly favorable safety profile compared to 400 mg OD during the Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). Efficacy endpoints include changes in plasma o,o'-dityrosine, a biomarker based on the mechanism of action of setanaxib, as well as standard clinical outcomes that include the 6-minute walk test and forced vital capacity (FVC). Plasma levels of collagen fragments, which could indicate anti-fibrotic activity, and the safety and tolerability of setanaxib will also be evaluated. Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in diabetic kidney disease (DKD): following the positive efficacy and safety results of the Company's Phase 2 trial of setanaxib in PBC, the DKD trial protocol was amended to increase the dose to 400 mg BID. To date, 28 patients have already completed the full 48-week treatment and no safety signals have been identified. The DKD trial is being conducted primarily in Australia, with work ongoing to activate centers in New Zealand, Denmark, and Germany. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigators have taken steps to minimize patient visits to investigation centers, in accordance with applicable rules and recommendations. Adequate drug supplies have been made available to the participating centers and patients. Despite the relatively low rate of SARS-Cov-2 infection in Australia, investigators cannot exclude a possible slowdown in new patient enrollment in the study. Phase 1 study with setanaxib at high doses: the Company has initiated an additional Phase 1 study to investigate the pharmacokinetics, safety profile, and potential for drug interactions of setanaxib at doses up to 1,600 mg. The study results are expected by the end of Q4 2020. First-half 2020 financial highlights The 2020 half-year financial report is available in the Investors section of Genkyotex's website (in French https://www.genkyotex.com/fr/). Genkyotex's cash and cash equivalents amounted to 5.1 million at June 30, 2020. In thousands of euros At June 30, 2020 At June 30, 2019 Other revenues 37 Research Development expenses (2,285) (3,830) Subsidies and Research Tax Credit 268 627 General Administrative expenses (868) (1,546) Recurring operating loss (2,850) (4,750) Other operating expenses Operating loss (2,850) (4,750) Net loss (2,675) (4,625) Net loss per share (in euros) (0.24) (0.58) Given its stage of development, Genkyotex has not generated any sales to date, as all of its product candidates are in the Research Development (R&D) phase. The net loss is 2,675 thousand vs 4,625 thousand a year before. This improvement is mainly driven by the reduction of R&D costs due to the end of the Phase 2 clinical trial of setanaxib in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and reduced G&A costs. Genkyotex's cash and cash equivalents amounted to 5.1 million at June 30, 2020, compared to 2.4 million at December 31, 2019. Genkyotex expects that this cash position will support currently planned operations until the end of February 2021. Half-year 2020 consolidated financial statements were subject to a limited review by the Company's statutory auditors. These financial statements were prepared on a going concern basis taking into account the facts and assumptions detailed in the note 2.1 "going concern" of the 2020 half-year condensed consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with IFRS. The auditor's review report includes an emphasis of matter paragraph for the material uncertainty related to going concern. Genkyotex's cash burn over the first half of 2020 was primarily driven by R&D expenses related to the preparation of the End Of Phase 2 meeting with the FDA and the Phase 1 to investigate higher dose with setanaxib. COVID-19 update In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company continues to closely monitor the evolution of the official guidelines and recommendations in order to protect its employees and contractors. The Company has also implemented strategies to mitigate the impact of the global shutdown on its business and operations. To date, the COVID-19 pandemic had a limited impact on the Company's operations. Genkyotex will continue to monitor the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on the conducting of clinical trials and discussions with health authorities and, depending on the evolution of the pandemics and of its potentially material impact on such trials and discussions, will keep the market informed. Next financial press release: Q3 2020 business update and cash position: October 22, 2020 (after market) About Genkyotex Genkyotex is the leading biopharmaceutical company in NOX therapies, listed on the Euronext Paris and Euronext Brussels markets. Its unique platform enables the identification of orally available small-molecules which selectively inhibit specific NOX enzymes that amplify multiple disease processes such as fibrosis, inflammation, pain processing, cancer development, and neurodegeneration. Genkyotex is developing a pipeline of first-in-class product candidates targeting one or multiple NOX enzymes. The lead product candidate, setanaxib (GKT831), a NOX1 and NOX4 inhibitor has shown evidence of anti-fibrotic activity in a Phase II clinical trial in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC, a fibrotic orphan disease). Based on its positive Phase II results, a phase 3 trial with setanaxib in PBC is being planned. Setanaxib is also being evaluated in an investigator-initiated Phase II clinical trial in Type 1 Diabetes and Kidney Disease (DKD). A grant from the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) of $8.9 million was awarded to Professor Victor Thannickal at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to fund a multi-year research program evaluating the role of NOX enzymes in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic lung disease that results in fibrosis of the lungs. The core component of this program is a Phase 2 trial with setanaxib in patients suffering from IPF for which the first patient has been enrolled in September 2020. This product candidate may also be active in other fibrotic indications. Genkyotex also has a versatile platform well-suited to the development of various immunotherapies (Vaxiclase). A partnership covering the use of Vaxiclase as an antigen per se (GTL003) has been established with Serum Institute of India Private Ltd (Serum Institute), the world's largest producer of vaccine doses, for the development by Serum Institute of cellular multivalent combination vaccines against a variety of infectious diseases. For further information, please go towww.genkyotex.com Disclaimer This press release may contain forward-looking statements by the company with respect to its objectives. Such statements are based upon the current beliefs, estimates and expectations of Genkyotex's management and are subject to risks and uncertainties such as the company's ability to implement its chosen strategy, customer market trends, changes in technologies and in the company's competitive environment, changes in regulations, clinical or industrial risks and all risks linked to the company's growth. These factors as well as other risks and uncertainties may prevent the company from achieving the objectives outlined in the press release and actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, due to various factors. Without being exhaustive, such factors include uncertainties involved in the development of Genkyotex's products, which may not succeed, or in the delivery of Genkyotex's products marketing authorizations by the relevant regulatory authorities and, in general, any factor that could affects Genkyotex's capacity to commercialize the products it develops. No guarantee is given on forward-looking statements which are subject to a number of risks, notably those described in the universal registration document filed with the AMF on April 30, 2020 under number D.20-0434, and those linked to changes in economic conditions, the financial markets, or the markets on which Genkyotex is present. Genkyotex products are currently used for clinical trials only and are not otherwise available for distribution or sale View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005814/en/ Contacts: GENKYOTEX Alexandre Grassin CFO Tel.: +33 (0)5 61 28 70 60 investors@genkyotex.com NewCap Dusan Oresansky Tel.: +33 1 44 71 94 92 genkyotex@newcap.eu Amy Dorris, a former model and actress, says President Trump assaulted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the U.S. Open in September 1997, The Guardian reported Thursday. The Guardian said it learned of Dorris' story more than a year ago from a model agent she had confided in, and Dorris confirmed her allegation 15 months ago but was unwilling to go public before now. Dorris, 48, was 24 at the time; Trump was 51 and married to Marla Maples. Several people confirmed she had told them about the assault right after it happened, including a friend and her mother, and in the years after it happened, including a therapist. She also provided several photos of herself and Trump from her trip to New York, including one in Trump's VIP box at the U.S. Open. Trump's lawyers strongly denied that the president had ever harassed, abused, or behaved improperly toward Dorris. Dorris told The Guardian she had gone to the bathroom in the VIP box, hidden from the rest of the seats by a partition, and when she emerged, Trump was waiting. "He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off," she said. "And then that's when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything." She said she couldn't get out of his grip, and Trump continued to hit on her over the next few days, even though she was with her boyfriend, Jason Binn, a friend of Trump's. Dorris told The Guardian she considered coming forward in 2016, when a rush of women accused Trump of very similar sexual assaults, but did not want to harm her family. "Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don't let anybody do anything to you that you don't want," she said. "I'm tired of being quiet. It's kind of cathartic. I just want to get this out. And I want people to know that this is the man, this is our president. This is the kind of thing he does and it's unacceptable." Story continues Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, recounts in his new book that Trump hit on his 15-year-old daughter in front of him, and the daughter, Samantha Cohen, told her version to CNN earlier this week. More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment Islamabad, Sep 17 : The Pakistan government has frozen a total of 964 assets of proscribed organisations Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) as it takes action against elements involved in terror financing and money laundering as part of efforts towards fulfilling requirements of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) 27-point action plan. As per the the Interior Ministry, 907 of the frozen assets belonged to the JuD and 57 to the JeM. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said that the provincial home departments had taken the action to freeze assets of the JuD and the JeM under the United Nations Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order 2019, issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "A total of 611 properties of the JuD were frozen in Punjab, 108 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 80 in Sindh, 61 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), 30 in Balochistan and 17 in the Islamabad Capital Territory," he told the Senate, the upper house of the Pakistani legislature, about the government's progress against proscribed outfits. "Eight properties of the JeM were frozen in Punjab, 29 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 12 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, four in the Islamabad Capital Territory, three in Sindh and one in Balochistan," he added. Giving details, Khan said: "The frozen properties of the JuD include 75 schools, four colleges, 330 mosques and seminaries, 186 dispensaries, 15 hospitals, 62 ambulances, a funeral bus (hearse), three disaster management offices, 10 boats, 17 buildings, a plot, agricultural land and two motorcycles." The frozen assets of JeM, Khan said, include "53 mosques and seminaries, two dispensaries and two ambulances". The steps come at a time when Pakistan is working hard to comply with all the 27 points of the Action Plan given by FATF to see itself out of the 'grey list'. Earlier this year, a Pakistan anti-terrorism court sentenced JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to five years and six months imprisonment in two cases, after finding him guilty of terror financing and association with other banned outfits. JuD's other top leaders, at least 13 in number, were also booked in about two dozen cases of terror financing and money laundering during July last year. The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) registered the cases under the Anti-Terror Act in Lahore, Gujranwala and Multan against JUD, Lashkar-e-Taiba and charity umbrella organisation Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF). It was revealed that the accused were raising funds under at least five trusts, namely the Dawatul Irshad Trust, the Moaz Bin Jabal Trust, the Al Anfaal Trust, the Al Madina Foundation Trust and the Alhamd Trust. BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Can more personalized cancer care lead to better outcomes and improved patient satisfaction among cancer patients? Cindi Slater, MD, FACR, senior vice president of Medical Affairs for national expert medical guidance company ConsumerMedical, will give a presentation addressing that topic at the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health (PBGH) Virtual Health Symposium September 22 at 10:05 a.m. To register for the session, visit the PBGH website at www.pbghsymposium.com The presentation, entitled, "The Value of Concierge-Level Care in Improving Health of Female Cancer Patients," looks specifically at the unique needs of female cancer patients and the benefits of employer-sponsored plans that incorporate a more personalized approach to supporting patients through their journey. Dr. Slater will highlight the latest data showing the impact of cancer on women; the toll disconnected cancer programs have on employers; explain the importance of directing workers to top providers and specialists in their network; and provide data outlining how improving the process with dedicated clinical allies can improve overall outcomes. Dr. Slater will also address the increasing awareness employers have of these issues, the impact they have on presenteeism and productivity and how large employers are looking to outside firms, like ConsumerMedical to help improve the care process and outcomes. "No single person's cancer journey is the same; each is unique," said Dr. Slater. "However, many women share universal experiences that can impact their treatment and recovery. Data is beginning to show that when we can offer more personalized care and support concierge-level care we can often improve outcomes and significantly impact satisfaction rates and even costs." Employer-sponsored solutions such as ConsumerMedical's Cancer Quality Program provide individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer with personalized decision support, ensure patients get information on top-performing specialists and Centers of Excellence in their area, as well as a dedicated medical ally, typically an experienced cancer MD or RN, to provide answers to frequently asked questions. Dedicated cancer programs are growing in popularity among large employers who want to ensure their employees with cancer get help when they need to understand the complex and often confusing healthcare system. Sally Parsons, a former employee with a large U.S. employer, who was diagnosed with cancer, will join Dr. Slater to share a first-person account of the issues she faced, and the value support her medical allies provided. "When you're told the 'C' word (cancer), you don't just call up your girlfriend and ask, 'Who's your oncologist?'" said Parsons. "I'm so glad my employer offered the ConsumerMedical program. "I had a lot of confidence in my Nurse Ally. I felt somebody is helping me through this. She cares kind of like a friend, but a friend who knows what she's talking about. It meant a lot." For more information on ConsumerMedical, visit www.consumermedical.com About ConsumerMedical ConsumerMedical is a leading clinical advocacy, decision support and expert medical opinion (EMO) company serving over four million individuals through some of the nation's largest employers, health plans and private exchanges. The company has been serving patients and payers for more than 24 years. As a Medical Ally, ConsumerMedical guides participants throughout their healthcare journey with compassionate, high-touch support and deep clinical expertise. With its recent acquisition of noted virtual EMO firm InfiniteMD, the company further expands its virtual second opinion capabilities as well as its network of high-quality physicians, specialists and Centers of Excellence. For more information, visit www.consumermedical.com SOURCE ConsumerMedical Related Links http://www.consumermedical.com President Trump attended a town hall with undecided voters in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show, "and these undecided voters decided not to go easy on Trump." The president certainly kept the fact-checkers busy, telling lies about "up-playing" the COVID-19 threat and also Winston Churchill, criticizing Joe Biden for not implementing a national mask mandate, going off on a bizarre tangent about waiters and masks, and claiming "herd mentality" will make the coronavirus disappear, Colbert recapped. He defined "herd immunity" but decided Trump wasn't entirely wrong. "It was a rough night for Trump," Jimmy Fallon said at The Tonight Show. "ABC is now calling the town hall Disaster-ish." There were a lot of flubs, "but the biggest moment of the night happened when Trump tried to start answering one woman's question before she was finished talking," he said. "At that point it slowly dawned on Trump that this might not be a MAGA rally." He gamely grimaced at Joe Biden's "Despacito" moment in Florida, too: "There he is, everyone, the Democrats' only hope." At a Hispanic outreach event in Florida, "Biden pulled out his phone and played a few seconds of the song 'Despacito,'" Trevor Noah sighed at The Daily Show. It makes sense in context, and "while Biden is looking to shore up Hispanic voters," Trump proved "he might be just a little rusty taking questions from a less-than-adoring audience." He laughed through Trump's various town hall hits, but said the real joke about the president's "herd mentality" slip "is that for America to reach herd immunity, a couple million people would have to die." So, Noah summarized, "one candidate, through willful ignorance, is going to be the reason hundreds of thousands of Americans die, and the other candidate played a song on his phone. So I don't know, guys. I can see why this is a tough call." Story continues "The one genuinely valuable service with a town hall like this is watching normal people interact with a nutjob like Trump," Seth Meyers said at Late Night. He shook his head at Fox News calling the town hall an "ambush" "Man, they just never, ever stop making excuses for him" and suggested that the woman who wouldn't let Trump interrupt her question "moderate all three debates." The Late Show made up its own audience questions and answers for Trump. Watch below. More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment Next week, the Worcester Public Schools will be offering free coronavirus testing and flu shots during two clinics for students and families. Testing and flu vaccines will be offered Monday, Sept. 21 from 2 to 6 p.m. at Mulcahy Field on Dorchester Street, which is across from Worcester East Middle School and on Wednesday, Sept. 23 from 2 to 6 p.m. at University Park, also known as Crystal Park, across from Clark University on Main Street. AIDS Project Worcester is providing the free COVID-19 tests. For students ages 4 to 18, flu shots will be provided at no cost, though insurance information is requested. For older students and adults, flu shots will be provided by Walgreens and proof of insurance is required. The school district asks those attending to wear a loose-fitting shirt for easy access to their arm for the flu shot. The event is a walk-in clinic and social distancing measures will be in effect. There will also be health benefits advisors to sign up for health insurance. A new mandate added by the state Department of Public Health this year requires nearly every student to get a flu shot by Dec. 31. On Wednesday, state health officials released data indicating Worcester is now a community considered at high risk for spreading coronavirus. Worcester has averaged 9.5 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks, which is a 0.87% increase in positivity rate over last week. The city reports 6,130 total cases, including 294 newly confirmed positive tests over the last 14 days. The City of Worcester has observed three consecutive weeks of an increase in confirmed positive COVID-19 cases. The states designation today of Worcester as being at high risk for transmission of the virus serves as a reminder to all residents and businesses to adhere to all COVID protocols and to be particularly cautious when it comes to large gatherings, Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said in a statement. City health officials will be communicating with the states COVID Command Center about the high risk status, and the steps to be taken to continue mitigating the spread of the virus. Worcester Public Schools Student & Family Flu Vaccine Clinics & Free COVID-19 Testing - Monday, September 21, 2020 & Wednesday, September 23, 2020. https://t.co/lYCyVk093u#WPSlearns #WPScares pic.twitter.com/h3h2fHZZSm Worcester Schools (@worcesterpublic) September 17, 2020 Related Content: Guy Verhofstadt had earlier tweeted his support for Joe Biden - AP The European Parliament will block a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and EU if Boris Johnson does not 'rectify' the Internal Market Bill further, Guy Verhofstadt has said. Mr Johnson's compromise with his backbenchers - whereby MPs will be granted a vote before a minister can use powers which override international law if the EU undermines the "fundamental purpose" of the Northern Ireland Protocol - has gone through on a new policy paper published today. But the Prime Minister's "climbdown" over the Internal Market Bill has no bearing on its breach of international law, the outspoken MEP and chair of the now-defunct Brexit Steering Group said. European Parliament would "not give its consent to any trade deal" if the bill is not further "rectified", he added. Earlier this morning Mr Verhofstadt this morning tweeted his support for presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying: "Biden is right. Boris Johnson might not care about international law or the Good Friday Agreement, but there are many who do! The world is watching with disbelief." See what else happened today in Westminster below 03:39 PM And that's it for another day... Dido Harding is continuing to give her evidence, and is being joined by health minister Lord Bethell. You can catch up on their responses with my colleagues' coronavirus blog here. Westminster is quieter as MPs return to their constituencies for surgeries and Covid-friendly community events, but it's been a busy day with people still picking through the finer points of the Internal Market Bill. While Boris Johnson might have made his backbenchers happier by giving them a vote before the law-breaking powers are used, there is still plenty of teeth being gnashed, both in the legal community here and more generally in Brussels. Story continues And with the UK agreeing to give the EU the details that mean it can be listed as a third country, the "blockading" problem seems to go away, begging the question what is the point in winding up our international partners. One of the answers might be to act as an insurance policy should they make good on their threat anyway. But it seems more likely to be a case of winning over the domestic audience - albeit with disregard for what future trading partners might think. Number 10 likes to ignore the outrage of the "Westminster bubble" - but the international community might have longer memories than the average voter. However the more pressing issue is testing and the second wave. Boris Johnson wants to protect Christmas - but does the rule of six go far enough? Today's question seems to have created the dreaded ratio: 52 per cent say yes, with the remaining 48 per cent split between calling for an immediate lockdown (18 per cent) and more general restrictions such as curfews (30 per cent). I'll be back tomorrow from 8am for all the rest of the week's news from Westminster and beyond. 03:24 PM Unknown contacts a 'big gap' in tracing, Dido Harding admits Dido Harding is then asked how many contacts are being reached in total, which she says is very hard to estimate because "one of the big gaps in our measurement is people who you have been in contact with who you don't know". That is why an app is so important, she says, saying app users will "significantly improve our effectiveness". Asked again to put a figure on it, Baroness Harding passes over to Susan Hopkins, CMA on Test and Trace, lists problems with tracing even known contacts, saying "all of this brings the app into sharp focus". It will tell another individual if they are at risk and what they should do next, she adds. 03:21 PM Testing turnaround times just one of many metrics, Dido Harding insists Greg Clark then asks more questions, noting that the PMs target was for 24-hour turnaround, but Dido Harding is quoting next day turnaround. What are the figures for 24-hour turnaround? Baroness Harding says they focus on next day turnaround. Otherwise they would be giving people results in the middle of the next, she says. Mr Clark says just a third of people are getting tests in 24 hours, which is an important time because Sage said test results had to be delivered quickly. The sooner they are delivered, the sooner those being tested, and their contacts, can be asked to self-isolate. Baroness Harding says she is judged by "quite a lot of metrics", not just turnaround time but how fast they reach contacts and the percentage of contacts reached. Baroness Harding - PA 03:15 PM Dido Harding defends need for 'local and national' Test and Trace system Asked what National Institute for Health Protection will do better than the agencies it is taking over from, including Public Health England. She says NHS Test and Trace, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and PHE have worked well together but "in the space of a few weeks, by knowing our long term future is together it is encouraging professionals... simply to work together more closely." Over the last few weeks, there has been more broad coverage of the country and more collaborative working, she says. She then defends Serco in the face of implied criticism over Test and Trace, saying they have done "a good job". Prompted, she agrees to go back and find out what she can share in terms of the commercial contracts. Challenged over excess "centralised" systems, she says they need both a local and national system. Increasingly the team is seeing "real collaboration between local leadership teams and national testing", she adds. 03:08 PM Dido Harding challenged over suitability to head up National Institute for Health Protection Dido Harding is then asked how she became the acting chair of the new body that is taking over from the Public Health England. She says she didn't apply to head up the National Institute for Health Protectionbut she wanted to "serve my country". Asked if it is right to take the role without open competition, she stresses it is interim and unpaid, but says speed was of the essence. She emphasises it is "an enormous consumer, citizens service with huge logistics and data - data analytics and data flow". "This is a team effort," she adds 03:04 PM Increase in test demand has caused delay in results, Dido Harding admits The increase in demand for tests has caused a delay in turnaround time for those who get one, Dido Harding has said. The Test and Trace chief told the Science and Tech Committee that there had been an increase in the time taken to get test results "in the last week or so". This is because "very consciously, where we have seen a significant increase in demand, we have made use of every single day of the seven days of lab capacity to maximise capacity," she said. "What that has meant is for some people turnaround times have gone out a bit." But when capacity increases again that will go initially "not to more people being tested to actually to seeing those turnaround times reduced," she said. "It is a balancing act." Greg Clark noted that the turnaround times were "very significantly" lower than the target. 02:58 PM Government committed to weekly tests for care home workers, says Dido Harding Challenged by Labour MP Dawn Butler about total tests not reaching capacity, Dido Harding suggests the labs have run at "more than 100 per cent" for the last couple of days, but she says she is concerned about this. Ms Butler then asks if taxpayers are charged for "voided tests". Baroness Harding says she can't confirm that because they are still "working through" the details with the company Randox. Asked what was wrong with the tests, Baroness Harding repeats that it is work that is still underway. Asked what Owen Paterson does for Randox, Baroness Harding says it is a question for him. Asked about the risk of asymptomatic transmission, she says that is "exactly why our second priority is care homes... because we have learned from the last nine months how this disease attacks the elderly." "Care home workers receive tests once a week today... the Government is very committed to maintaining that programme," she adds. 02:51 PM London tests being cut because of 'lower prevalence' in capital, says Dido Harding Dido Harding is then quizzed by Mark Logan, Conservative MP Bolton North East, about testing in regions like his that are suffering outbreaks. She says that while the average testing is being carried out at a level of 100 per 100,000 outbreak areas are two-to-three times that level. Capacity constraints aren't in the testing sites but in the lab which is tests have to be restricted in person. However she tells him Test and Trace is on track to have 500 different testing locations by end of October. Asked if redirecting resources to outbreak areas means a cut in London's capacity, she says the capital has had 10,000 tests a day, saying "over the last few weeks, London has seen the absolute number of tests come down precisely because London has a lower prevalence" than Bolton and other parts of the North. 02:43 PM Dido Harding: No one expected current spike in demand for tests Greg Clark asks if the second wave has come earlier than expected. Dido Harding says "I don't think anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase in demand we have seen over the last few weeks - none of the modelling was that expected. She says people should "think really hard" about whether they need a test, and refers back to the officially recognised symptoms. "We are all going to have to play a part," she adds. Mr Clark says soon people with symptoms won't be able to get a test, but Baroness Harding says Test and Trace is "very clear" on priorities list: firstly NHS patients, then care home residents who are being tested even without symptoms and NHS staff. Roughly half of the testing capacity goes to those three groups, she says. After that outbreak areas are given additional testing, and beyond that the "broad general public" where key workers, particularly teachers, will be prioritised. 02:38 PM Dido Harding challenged over winter capacity Dido Harding says more tests will be needed as we go past October, but says the new labs won't be on stream by that time. Greg Clark asks if the 500,000 target will be where demand is by that time, but she doesn't answer the question. Instead she says demand is already outstripping supply and says it must be "protected for those who most need it". Mr Clark then says the number of people who demonstrate Covid-like symptoms in a normal winter is 500,000 so the tests won't address the additional numbers. "We have plans to go beyond 500,000 a day, and announced new labs today that will address that," Baroness Harding says. This is based on "clinical and scientific modelling" of what is required in a winter season, she says. 02:35 PM Dido Harding blames Sage model for testing capacity shortfall Greg Clark tells Dido Harding it is "dispiriting" that capacity hasn't been built sufficiently during the summer. The Test and Trace boss says it "has not been a quiet summer", arguing capacity has doubled and is on track to double again by the end of October. Mr Clark argues back that they have not prepared for the increase in demand that was required and asks why it wasn't done in time for September. Baroness Harding says she understands people's frustrations, "We built our testing capacity plans based on Sage modelling," she adds. "Today we have more tests per 100,000 population than any other country in Europe." "We built our capacity plans based on Sage modelling, based on what we should be preparing for in the autumn," she adds. 02:32 PM It is 'entirely human' that people are seeking tests without symptoms, says Dido Harding Baronness Harding says that out of 24,000 people at 25 regional sites, 27 per cent were there "because they had been in contact with someone who had tested positive but didn't have symptoms". "I completely understand why people are scared and worried," the Test and Trace boss tells Greg Clark, the Science and Tech committee chair. Asked if people were lying, she says no, "people are worried... it is totally understandable". They "ought to have symptoms", she adds. But it is "an entirely human thing to be scared and worried, and think the answer is to get a test". But Mr Clark argues this could have happened at any time, why has there been an increase now? Baroness Harding says there has been a doubling in seeking tests for children under 17, and more than that in children between five and nine years old. They planned for demand to rise, but "plainly we don't have enough testing capacity today and we are doing everything we can to increase that capacity." 02:28 PM Demand for tests 'three to four times' higher than capacity, Dido Harding says Greg Clark kicks off his session with Dido Harding asking her about test capacity, which she confirms is 242,817 tests per day. The data is being published 4pm today, she says. Data is being validated before being published, she adds,which is why . This is total capacity, she adds and breaks it down by NHS capacity - pillar one - which is 82,817 across the UK, while pillar two is 160,000. Mr Clark is trying to understand why data hasn't been published daily throughout the summer, which she says is just down to them trying to ensure it is accurate. Asked about current demand, Baroness Harding says there is "significantly more" than capacity. Based on calls and visits to website it is "three to four times" capacity, she adds, but stresses there are duplicates with people calling multiple times. The number of symptomatic people "will be significantly lower than that", she adds. 02:12 PM Are coronavirus cases rising or falling in your area? Dido Harding will shortly be giving evidence to the Science and Technology committee, chaired by Greg Clark - one of many Conservative MPs to grill Boris Johnson yesterday. Baroness Harding heads up NHS Test and Trace, something Mr Clark, the former business secretary, has made a central pillar to his scrutiny of the response to the pandemic. She is likely to come under criticism for the failings in the system which has led to mass shortages in test capacity, while the tracing component of the system still has yet to take off. Ahead of the hearing, type in your postcode in the tool below to find out how many cases there have been in your local area. 02:00 PM Scotland will have 'fair access' to lab test capacity, Nicola Sturgeon says Nicola Sturgeon said she has been assured by the UK Government that access to testing will not be restricted and Scotland will have a "fair share" of laboratory capacity to process tests. The Scottish First Minister said a "capacity constraint" across the UK testing system was delaying test results because labs are struggling to keep up with demand. But Ms Sturgeon said she had spoken to UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock who insisted that testing in Scotland will not be rationed, as is happening in England. Speaking at First Minister's Questions, Ms Sturgeon said: "This is a laboratory processing issue in Scotland, but we have received assurances that Scotland's access to testing through mobile testing units or regional testing centres would not be constrained to try to deal with any of this. "And secondly, that Scotland's fair share of the laboratory processing capacity will also be secured." Nicola Sturgeon - WPA Pool 01:49 PM Planet Normal: Comedians are scared of being seen as 'facist adjacent', says Geoff Norcott Woke culture is ripe territory for comedy, but left-wing comedians are now worried that they'll be dubbed "fascist adjacent" if they're seen to critique it, one of the UK's few right wing comics has said. Speaking to Liam Halligan on the Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast, Geoff Norcott said: "If people in liberal ivory towers want to make decisions on behalf of people that they can't handle some light piss-taking, that is dangerous, because you're then excluding people from the conversation." Also on the podcast: Allison and Liam weigh up whether Victoria Wood would be a victim of so-called "cancel culture" and find a cunning loophole to make their Christmasses Covid-compliant. Listen below. 01:39 PM Andrew Lilico: A fishing compromise may be worthwhile if we get something even better in return Reports are circulating that the UK government may be willing to compromise on fishing rights. Perhaps there might be a special zone around the Channel Islands and maybe current quotas would be phased out rather than ending instantly next January. Agreements with other countries frequently involve compromises of various sorts. Last week the UK and Japan made a free trade agreement. That illustrates that, for all the allegations by EU politicians and their commentariat apologists, it simply isnt true that Brexit has induced unrealism amongst British politicians or an inability to make the compromises necessary and intrinsic to international deals. Not every compromise is desirable or necessary, argues Andrew Lilico. Of course some people will object. If no-one objected they wouldnt be compromises. But compromises are part of deal-making. 01:19 PM BBC hits back over Rees-Mogg's claim it's 'stealing Ovaltine from pensioners' The BBC has hit back after Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed the broadcaster was "stealing the Ovaltine from pensioners' night-time drink" by dropping free licence fees for the over-75s. Responding to a question about star salaries in light of the cut, the Leader of the House told the Commons: "I do think the BBC has been unfair on pensioners in requiring them to pay the licence fee. "The hope was that they would not do this and they are basically stealing the Ovaltine from pensioners' night-time drink by charging them for this licence fee and they are losing licence payers... when charging some of the least well-off in our society and giving the money to some of the most well-off in our society, there are people who will rightly question that." But a BBC spokesman said: "It was the Government who decided to stop funding free TV licences for the over-75s. "The BBC Board believes the fairest option is to help the poorest older pensioners. Around 1.5 million households could get free TV licences if someone is over 75 and receives Pension Credit. "Critically, it is not the BBC making that judgment about poverty, it is the Government who set and control who is eligible for Pension Credit and what level of payments are made." 01:08 PM Have your say on: Does the rule of six go far enough? This morning Edward Argar, the health minister, was insistent that the rule of six would be sufficient to keep rates of coronavirus at a manageable level. Boris Johnson also told The Sun it was important to deploy "tough" measures now to "protect" Christmas. But with further restrictions being imposed on around two million people in the North-East of England, a further quarter of a million people in Wales coming under a new local lockdown, and widespread lack of testing, is it really working? Or should they consider going further now in order to allow greater freedoms at a point in the year when seeing family and friends is a priority? Have your say in the poll below. 01:05 PM Further 18 people die with coronavirus in England A further 18 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 29,705. Patients were aged between 56 and 95 years old. All but two patients had known underlying health conditions. Date of death ranges from 12 September to 16 September 2020, with the majority on or after 15 September. Three regions - the East of England, London and the South West - reported no deaths, but six were reported in the North East & Yorkshire, where more restrictions have been imposed by Matt Hancock today. The North West registered five deaths, while there were four in the Midland and three in the South East. 12:48 PM Labour calls on Jacob Rees-Mogg to apologise over 'carping' comments Labour has ordered Jacob Rees-Mogg to apologise after he told members of the public to stop "carping" over a lack of coronavirus tests. Alex Norris, shadow minister for public health and patient safety, said: For weeks, people across the country have been struggling to get coronavirus tests. But rather than fixing problems, the government have instead resorted to a blizzard of blame shifting and excuses. Now, out-of-touch ministers have got a new message to those who cant get tests: stop complaining and praise us. Jacob Rees-Mogg should immediately apologise. Whining about the public not being grateful enough wont sort anything - only his government can fix the testing shambles they are presiding over. You can see the video below (1:19pm). 12:44 PM European Parliament will block trade deal if Internal Market Bill is not 'rectified', says Guy Verhofstadt Downing Street's "climbdown" over the Internal Market Bill has no bearing on its breach of international law, Guy Verhofstadt has said. The outspoken MEP and Brexit-critic this morning tweeted: "[Joe] Biden is right. Boris Johnson might not care about international law or the Good Friday Agreement, but there are many who do! The world is watching with disbelief." He followed that up, saying European Parliament would "not give its consent to any trade deal" if the bill is not further "rectified". The climbdown by @10DowningStreet on the IM Bill might be ending the Tory Rebellion, but it's still a clear breach of international law. The @Europarl_EN will not give its consent to any trade deal if this is not rectified & the Good Friday Agreement protected. Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) September 17, 2020 12:32 PM MPs will vote before law-breaking powers can be used, policy paper confirms Boris Johnson's concession to rebels - giving MPs a vote before a minister can use powers which override international law if the EU undermines the "fundamental purpose" of the Northern Ireland Protocol - has gone through on a new policy paper published today. Examples of such behaviour would include the EU refusing to grant third country listing to UK agricultural goods for "manifestly unreasonable or poorly justified reasons" - something which Brussels has already said it will grant (12:18pm). It also listed an "insistence that the EU's state aid provisions should apply in GB in circumstances when there is no link or only a trivial one to commercial operations taking place in" as a reason why Parliament would be asked to support the Bill's provisions. The other examples listed include an insistence that GB-NI tariffs and related provision should be "charged in ways that are not related to the real risk of goods entering the EU single market", as well as an insistence on export declarations for NI goods going to GB. But as David Anderson, Baron Anderson of Ipswich, pointed out this morning (9:55am), this fudge solves the Government's "political problems, at least in the Commons, but does not solve their legal one". 12:19 PM Lobby latest: Downing Street dodges question about Jacob Rees-Mogg's comments Downing Street did not back comments made by Jacob Rees-Mogg today, after the Leader of the House accused the public of "endless carping" that they cannot get a test. Asked about these comments, Number 10 spokesman said noted that Boris Johnson spoke yesterday about the need to increase capacity, adding: We will continue to increase capacity. You can watch Mr Rees-Mogg in action below. Heres the full clip of Jacob Rees-Mogg saying people speaking out about the difficulty of getting a Covid test should stop the endless carping. pic.twitter.com/vhUlimENa1 Ben Kentish LBC (@BenKentish) September 17, 2020 12:16 PM Lobby latest: Downing Street 'working with US partners' so they understand Brexit position The UK Government is "working with our US partners" so they understand the official position on Brexit and Northern Ireland, Downing Street has said. It comes after US presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: "We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit." Today a Number 10 spokesman said: "We continue to remain absolutely committed to no hard border and no border infrastructure between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and we will continue to engage with our US partners on a bipartisan basis to ensure that our positions are understood." Asked if Mr Biden was wrong, the spokesman said: "We will continue to work with our US partners to ensure our position is understood, but the whole point of this - as the PM has set out - is to make sure the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is upheld." We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020 12:12 PM Lobby latest: Downing Street plays down national curfew plans The UK's coronavirus testing system is facing "challenges" after the latest official figures showed a sharp fall in the levels of "in person" test results being returned within 24 hours, Downing Street has admitted. Yesterday the Prime Minister admitted there were "huge problems" with the regime, telling MPs of the Liaison Committee: "We do not have enough testing capacity now." Today a Number 10 spokesman added: "We accept there are challenges and we accept that we are seeing significant demand for tests at the moment. We are obviously working to address those challenges. We will continue to work to enhance testing capacity in the coming weeks." But the spokesman played down suggestions that a nationwide 10pm curfew could be imminent as cases continue to rise. "We will keep the restrictions under review. We don't want to bring in these kind of measures which is why we have introduced the rule of six and are urging people to abide by it," the spokesman said. 12:08 PM Third of English people feel 'very angry' about prospect of no deal Brexit, study claims A third of English people feel very angry at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU without a deal, despite increasing numbers of people being resigned to talks failing, a new survey claims. The poll of 5,000 people, carried out by University of Exeter and ORB International, found that 41 per cent of people thought coronavirus had made it more likely that the UK will leave without a deal, while 20 per cent thought a deal would be delayed. A fifth of people thought Brexit would disproportionately harm young people, and 28 per cent thought it would have a much more negative impact on poorer people. Professor Dan Stevens, from the University of Exeter, who led the survey, said: These results show that there is widespread pessimism and anger about Brexit in the public in the current context. There is also the feeling that some of the inequalities we have seen with Covid-19, for example the more negative impact on ethnic minorities and the poor, are also there with Brexit. 12:00 PM Watch: North East of England put into local lockdown, Matt Hancock confirms Matt Hancock has been batting off questions and complaints from MPs over the shortage of coronavirus tests for the last hour or so. But before that, he made a statement on something slightly different - sweeping new restrictions across much of the North East of England. You can watch his statement again below. 11:55 AM Meanwhile, in the House of Lords... Meanwhile, in the upper chamber, former chancellor and one-time Father of the House of Commons Sir Ken Clarke has been introduced to the Lords. The Europhile politician was one of 21 MPs to have the whip withdrawn by Boris Johnson during the Brexit wars of last autumn, but having been nominated by the Prime Minister, Baron Clarke of Nottingham will sit as a Tory. 11:42 AM MPs slam Matt Hancock over 'chaotic and dangerous' test shortages Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has been defending the Government on testing as MPs line up to report the troubles their constituents are having getting hold of one. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, pointed out that Mr Hancock did not cover testing in his statement. Four months ago the minister said testing for all was established. He promised test and trace. But instead we have ended up with trace a test, he says. Zinger from Labour's Jon Ashworth: "It's become not so much Test and Trace, more like trace a test" Emily Ashton (@elashton) September 17, 2020 Asking about two of her constituents, Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said: "This isn't just chaotic, this is dangerous. "The Government knew there would be a huge increase in demand for testing when the schools went back and when they were encouraging people to go back to work... why did he set his target for the end of October and not the beginning of September?" 11:20 AM Brussels still expects UK to withdraw law-breaking clauses from Internal Market Bill Despite the breakthrough on listing in the post below, The European Union is standing firm on its demand for the Government to drop provisions in the UK Internal Market Bill relating to the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Eric Mamer, chief spokesperson of the European Commission, was asked during a Brussels briefing whether the Government's compromise with Tory rebels - which would give MPs a vote before using powers which would break international law - had altered the EU's stance. Mr Mamer replied: "We have as you know set out a position extremely clearly, it is in our statement, and it relates to those clauses being withdrawn from the law. "That position has not changed and we have asked the UK to do this at the earliest possible convenience and by the end of September at the latest. That has not changed." 11:18 AM UK to give Brussels food regime details, enabling food exports to continue after Brexit The UK Government will give Brussels the information required to enable the EU give the UK third party listing, ensuring farmers can continue to export animal products to the bloc. The EU had previously asked for "full clarity" on the UK's future food regime, including on future food imports, so it can list Britain, but Boris Johnson claimed this amounted to a threat to "blockade" Northern Ireland. A government spokesman today said the UK would be "laying secondary legislation next month to clarify listing procedures in future". A European Commission spokesman said it was possible to list a country in a few days. "Michel Barnier clearly stated that the EU is not refusing to list the UK as a third country for food imports. To be listed, we need to know in full what a countrys rules are, including for imports," he said. "The UK has informed us that they will transpose the EU Official Control Regulation, as well as legislation on animal health and public health, with modifications. We are waiting for this legislation to be put forward." 11:03 AM Matt Hancock confirms new lockdowns for north-east of England Matt Hancock has confirmed local lockdown restrictions will be introduced in Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, Sunderland and County Durham following "concerning rates of infection". From these regions face a ban on residents socialising with other people outside their own households, table service only in bars and restaurants and the closure of leisure and entertainment venues between 10pm and 5am. Announcing further financial support for councils to help deal with this, the Health Secretary has told MPs the Government will "strain every sinew" to ensure local authorities are prepared for the winter ahead. He was speaking after official data revealed that just 1.9 per cent of people in England who used a home test kit for Covid-19 received their result within 24 hours in the week to September 9. This is the lowest percentage since Test and Trace was launched at the end of May. Matt Hancock - PA 10:53 AM EU is negotiating in 'perfectly good faith', says Brussels spokesman Brussels has insisted it carries out negotiations in "good faith" after Boris Johnson told MPs he did not believe they had acted as such in the Brexit talks. Yesterday morning Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, had said he thought the EU was acting in good faith, however in the afternoon the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee: "I don't believe they are." This morning Eric Mamer, chief spokesperson of the European Commission, said: "I can point to our hundreds - literally hundreds - of international agreements signed with very, very different third parties of all kinds. "And I think that they testify to - as I think you say in English - a rather splendid track record when it comes to carrying out negotiations in good faith, and indeed even concluding them. "So what I would simply do is ask you to go and talk to those third parties with whom we have signed these agreements and further they will testify to the quality of our negotiation. "And I think that Michel Barnier showed in the context of the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement that even on extremely complex and politically sensitive issues the Commission and indeed the EU negotiate in perfectly good faith." 10:46 AM Dominic Cummings was 'no end of trouble' for David Cameron Dominic Cummings was "no end of trouble" when David Cameron was prime minister, the former Conservative leader has said. Mr Cameron recalled how he had sacked the "very clever" official twice, telling Times Radio: "We didn't necessarily hit it off... perhaps if he's your right hand man and you're the prime minister that is the best place for him, but he wasn't mine, he was someone else's, and he was no end of trouble". The former prime minister once famously called Mr Cummings a "career psychopath". Asked if the man who is now chief of staff for Boris Johnson should have been fired for driving from London to Durham during lockdown, when his wife was displaying coronavirus symptoms, Mr Cameron said there was no "handbook for when people have to resign". He added: "If you asked me to write the handbook now... it's not that clear cut." Mr Cameron also suggested Gavin Williamson was right not to resign over the exams chaos, noting that "governments of totally different persuasions all came to what turned out to be very much the wrong decision". Dominic Cummings 'no end of trouble' - PA 10:37 AM Outstanding Brexit issues 'resolvable', says David Cameron The remaining issues in Brexit trade talks are "resolvable", David Cameron has said. The former prime minister stressed that he thought the law-breaking clause in the Internal Market Bill was a "tactic" but said "the signal is bad". He repeated his comments from earlier this week that it was "the very last thing you should do, the last resort", adding: "I am not happy about it but this Government is in a negotiation... a very important negotiation, and the EU are quite understandably negotiating very hard and the Government are trying to counter that." If fishing and state support are the only issues "that are left, they are resolvable issues, I would think," he added. 10:33 AM Government must 'correct' impression that Brexit means Tories are less inclusive The Government must "correct" the impression that Brexit means the Conservative party is "less inclusive", David Cameron has said. The former prime minister told Times Radio: "Brexit doesn't necessarily mean the Conservative party is less liberal, less progressive, less open to ideas like equal marriage... but it is seen by some as signal that we are going that way. "It doesn't mean we are not working harder for an inclusive Britain, for good harmonious society and race relations... but there are some people who see Brexit as a signal of a less inclusive [party] and the Government has to correct that." Boris Johnson was "very much a One Nation Conservative, he was supportive of equal marriage," his former boss added. Mr Cameron added that social cohesion was "going to become the biggest issue in politics" and Mr Johnson should "flip" policy approach so that everything flowed from this one issue. Boris Johnson and David Cameron - AFP 10:28 AM Government should wait to restore country's finances, David Cameron has said The Government should not seek to restore the country's finances until the economic situation improves, David Cameron has said. Asked about austerity, the former prime minister stressed it was a necessary reaction to the situation at the time. Mr Cameron said the Government should continue to give "generous help as we reopen", having shut down vast swathes of the country through lockdown. "As the economy starts moving again.... we are still going to have make difficult decisions," he added. "When we reach the sunlit uplands of growth again we will have to see about fixing the roof while the sun is shining but we are not there yet." 10:24 AM Prime ministers should not 'fear the tall poppies' in Cabinet, says David Cameron Prime ministers should not fear "tall poppies" in their Cabinet, David Cameron has said. The former leader told Times Radio he had many people in his Government who he disagreed with, pointing to outspoken members of the party such as Ken Clarke and Iain Duncan Smith. Asked if Jeremy Hunt would have done a better job than Boris Johnson, Mr Cameron said he was trying to stay neutral but described the former health secretary as "hugely capable". "He talks a lot of sense as chairman of the select committee and I hope his talent isn't lost to politics forever," Mr Cameron added. He dodged a question about whether Mr Hunt should be in the Cabinet, saying: "I didn't fear the tall poppies... you want to have the big players on the table." Jeremy Hunt is 'hugely capable', says David Cameron - PA 10:19 AM Boris Johnson's failure to attend early coronavirus Cobras may have delayed response, David Cameron says Boris Johnson's failure to attend Cobra meetings at the start of the pandemic may have delayed a Government response, David Cameron has said. The former prime minister told Times Radio that although he sometimes missed the first Cobra in an emergency, being there meant decisions could be taken more quickly. Mr Johnson has been criticised for missing five of the first Cobra meetings dedicated to Cobra. Mr Cameron said: "I didn't always attend the first Cobra of every emergency but I had to focus on it quite quickly, not just because PMs are superhuman and are the only person who can take decision... but to bang the table and ask obvious questions. "You have got to get in there quite quickly and drive progress," he added. Asked if he was criticising Mr Johnson directly, his former boss said: "I don't know exactly what the circumstances are, so I am not passing judgement. "[But] if you wanted to get stuff done, there is something about the prime minister turning up that helps to drive decision making." 10:11 AM David Cameron: 'The ex-prime minister club has a lot of sympathy' for Boris Johnson David Cameron "cooked all the meals" and did a bit of home schooling "but that wasn't my strong point" during lockdown, he has said. The former prime minister also volunteered as his local food bank, he told Times Radio. "I was much less busy than I was as prime minister," he added, admitting that he "missed" much of his former role, but not "some of the pressures". It has been "odd" watching the current Government deal with the pandemic which is "far greater" than anything faced by the members of the ex-prime ministers' club, he said, adding there was a lot of "sympathy" for Boris Johnson and his team. "What's been happening recently is just incredibly tough - it's easy to criticise with hindsight," but the "bigger picture" is getting the balance between listening to scientists and making the right political call. 10:00 AM Labour MPs demand 'urgent clarification' on north-east restrictions Labour MPs representing north-east England seats called for further information from Matt Hancock on the measures being taken. They requested "urgent clarification on a number of key issues" around interventions being planned in Sunderland, South Tyneside, Gateshead, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North Tyneside, Northumberland and County Durham. The letter, signed by 15 Labour MPs, asked whether household-level information and contact tracing data will be available to local authorities and what extra testing capacity would be put in to the region. Mr Hancock is due to set this out in the Commons from 11:30am. "We agree that restrictions must be put in place in order to protect public health, and prevent the further spread of Covid-19, and we support measures taken in order to save lives," the MPs said. "We do, however, believe that this must be done in close collaboration with local authorities, who must have access to all appropriate information, data and support in order to make the best decisions for their areas." The letter was sent by Sunderland Central MP Julie Elliott and signed by colleagues including shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Bridget Phillipson and shadow science minister Chi Onwurah. 09:53 AM Public approval of Government's pandemic response falls to lowest level yet Public approval of the Government's handling of the pandemic has fallen to the lowest level yet, amid a growing crisis over lack of coronavirus test capacity. The net approval score for Boris Johnson's team has dropped to -33, down from -18 last week, YouGov said. The previous lowest net approval was -21, recorded in mid-August. The highest ever score was +51, recorded at the end of March. Last week some 63 per cent of people said the Government had done a bad job, up eight per cent on the previous week, while just 30 said ministers have done a good job, down seven per cent. More than two-thirds of Britons - 70 per cent - say the national coronavirus situation is getting worse; just 14 per cent say it is getting better. 09:49 AM Have your say on: Does the rule of six go far enough? This morning Edward Argar, the health minister, was insistent that the rule of six would be sufficient to keep rates of coronavirus at a manageable level. Boris Johnson also told The Sun it was important to deploy "tough" measures now to "protect" Christmas. But with further restrictions being imposed on around two million people in nothern parts of the country, and a further quarter of a million people in Wales coming under a new local lockdown, is it really working? Or should they consider going further now in order to allow greater freedoms at a point in the year when seeing family and friends is a priority? Have your say in the poll below 09:41 AM Londoners unable to work because of testing 'chaos', Sadiq Khan claims Sadiq Khan has written to Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, calling for action on the coronavirus testing "chaos and confusion", amid claims Londoners are struggling to get tested. The Labour mayor told London Assembly Members: "This is a critical moment in the fight against Covid-19. Many Londoners are being told there are no testing sites available in London. "The delays are preventing frontline workers from being able to do their jobs, and children are being kept away from their classrooms unnecessarily. "This failure is putting lives and livelihoods in jeopardy. We've known for months now that come the autumn demand for testing would increase. This crunch point should have been foreseen, and then avoided. "And unless the Government massively ramps up testing capacity in London we'll be back to where we started: trying to halt the spread of the virus in the dark. "Nothing is more important than a fully functioning test, trace and isolate system if we are to prevent a devastating second wave, and time is fast running out. " 09:26 AM Number 10 releases exchange of letters between Prime Minister and Lord Keen Boris Johnson yesterday told MPs conversations were ongoing in a bid to keep Lord Keen, Scotland's advocate general, in post. But by the end of the day, he had accepted the peer's resignation. Number 10 has just released the letters between the two - here's what the Prime Minister had to say. It's official - yesterday the PM said he was trying to keep Lord Keen in post; here is his letter accepting that has got to to pic.twitter.com/xMbFteZ8Jo CatNeilan (@CatNeilan) September 17, 2020 09:08 AM Tory David Morris ordered to apologise over breach of parliamentary rules A Conservative MP has been ordered to apologise to the Commons after he breached parliamentary rules on paid advocacy. David Morris last year asked a question and sent a follow-up email to the Business Secretary relating to a firm which had given him a 10,000 donation the previous month. An inquiry by the Committee on Standards ruled that Mr Morris had inadvertently breached the Code of Conduct for MPs on two occasions. The report by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, also criticised the Morecambe and Lunesdale MP's conduct during the inquiry. She said: "I consider Mr Morris's conduct during my inquiry to be regrettable and disrespectful of the House's system of standards. Mr Morris has now acknowledged and apologised for his breach of the rules and for his conduct during my inquiry. I have also accepted that his breach of the rules was inadvertent." The committee recommended that Mr Morris apologise to the Commons by means of a personal statement. 09:01 AM Watch again: Prime Minister rolls eyes at arch Brexiter Sir Bill Cash Yesterday's Liaison Committee hearing saw Boris Johnson go up against several hostile MPs, including more than a handful from his own party. But Sir Bill Cash, despite endeavouring to support the Prime Minister on his Internal Market Bill, received schoolboy-style eye-rolling. The veteran Eurosceptic used most of his allotted time to go through precedents of law-breaking rather than ask questions - something you might thing the put-upon PM would be grateful for. However that is certainly not how it seemed. Watch again below. 08:55 AM Prime Minister's rebel concession 'solves political problems but does not the legal one' Boris Johnson's compromise with rebel MPs on the Internal Market Bill solves his "political problems, at least in the Commons, but does not solve their legal one", according to a British barrister and peer. David Anderson, Baron Anderson of Ipswich, said: "The Bill does not read like a defensive measure, but as a deliberate and much broader attack on the WA that the PM signed up for, on which he won the election, and that was designed to work whether we make a future relationship agreement or no. He added: "A heavily-whipped Commons, that is, with a huge government majority, which will be asked for its view at a moment of major national crisis. This makes no difference to the EU, and why should it? "This is not an arcane debate between lawyers about the status of international law: it goes to the absolute fundamentals of what it takes to be trusted." 08:32 AM ICYMI: Boris Johnson reaches deal with Brexit Bill rebels as law officer quits Boris Johnson reached a compromise with Tory rebels on Wednesday night by agreeing to give them a final say on overriding the Brexit divorce deal but it came too late to prevent one of his senior law officers from resigning. Officials had hoped to persuade senior legal adviser Lord Keen to change his mind after he tendered his resignation on Wednesday morning. However, his position was unchanged after Mr Johnson promised to impose "extra parliamentary scrutiny" on the controversial Internal Market Bill by accepting an amendment similar to one from senior backbencher Sir Bob Neill. Read the full story here. 08:25 AM Rishi Sunak tells children: My biggest fear is getting it wrong Rishi Sunak has told primary school children "my biggest fear is getting it wrong". During a visit to Pickhill Church of England Primary School near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, the Chancellor toasted marshmallows and told pupils his promotion was "a big surprise, I really wasn't expecting it, and it is a real privilege". He added: "This has been a very difficult time and I have had to make a lot of decisions that affect the whole country, which has been stressful. My biggest fear is getting it wrong." Mr Sunak, who told the pupils Boris Johnson was "my friend as well as my boss", also warned: "We don't have as much money as we would like at the moment and can't keeping borrowing." 08:15 AM Update: Former WHO director backtracks on lockdown claims Former WHO director Anthony Costello has backtracked on claims that Chris Whitty is seeking a two-week lockdown. The UCL Professor had put the cat among the pigeons after he said last night that a " well-connected person" had told him the Chief Medical Officer was pushing for a mini national lockdown over fears that coronavirus case rates were much higher than official figures showed. I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a 2 week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record. Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 17, 2020 08:10 AM Test shortage could require more 'blunt tools' to restrict spread of coronavirus, Sage scientist warns The shortage of coronavirus testing capacity is affecting the ability of authorities to track the spread of the disease, a scientist involved in advising the Government has warned. Dr Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the lack of tests could mean more severe restrictions have to be brought in to control it. "I think we are getting to the point where potentially we are losing our ability to accurately track the virus," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. "That means that we could have a situation where it is getting into risk groups, we start to see more cases appear and we don't have good warning of that. "It also affects our ability to have more targeted, nuanced measures. If we lose the ability to track the virus it ends up that more blunt tools will be deployed. That is what we saw earlier in the year." Last night, former WHO director Anthony Costello claimed that estimates put daily infection rates at 38,000, 10-times the official published figures. 07:58 AM Government must be 'tough now' to 'protect' Christmas Boris Johnson has said the Government must be "tough now" on coronavirus restrictions in order to "protect" Christmas. His words came as stricter new measures are expected to be announced for the North East of England, where cases are on the rise - including a reported curfew on pubs. The Prime Minister said people have to be "both confident and cautious" and that it is "crucial" the country does not re-enter "some great lockdown again that stops business from functioning". He told the Sun: "Christmas we want to protect, and we want everyone to have a fantastic Christmas. "But the only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas is to be tough now. "So if we can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump." Will it be lonely this Christmas? - Paul Grover for Telegraph 07:54 AM Boris Johnson contradicts Home Secretary on 'sneak culture' The Prime Minister has contradicted Home Secretary by saying members of the public should not report their neighbours for breaching the "rule of six" unless they are having large parties. On Tuesday, Priti Patel said she would report breaches she saw, later suggesting that families stopping to talk in the street could be breaking the new laws. However, Boris Johnson has since urged people to speak with rulebreakers before notifying the authorities. He told The Sun: "I have never much been in favour of sneak culture, myself. What people should do in the first instance obviously if they are concerned is raise it with their friends and neighbours. "But I think what is reasonable for anyone to do is if they think there is a serious threat to public health as a result of their neighbours' activities - if there is some huge kind of Animal House party taking place, as I am sure, hot tubs and so forth, and there is a serious threat to public health then it's reasonable for the authorities to know." Priti Patel - AFP 07:51 AM Non frontline workers will 'have to wait longer' for test, minister admits The Government is "ramping up" testing capacity as cases rise, but people who fall outside of the frontline worker priorities will have to "wait longer", a minister has said. "We will see this in the next few days, the official guidance coming out that will prioritise frontline NHS care workers, teachers and similar," Edward Argar, the health minister has told the Today programme. "It is possible that there are people with symptoms who apply for a test who have to wait longer because we are prioritising those key frontline workers we need to keep our NHS and care system working." He said the Government was hoping that "Mr and Mrs Smith" would still be able to get a test "in a timely fashion". 07:48 AM Government not 'in that place' of considering nationwide curfew The Government is "not in that place" of considering a nationwide curfew - as long as people follow the rules that are in place, a minister has said. It is thought that Matt Hancock will confirm a regional curfew, affecting around two million people, when gives a statement about new areas of coronavirus spikes at 11:30am. But Edward Argar told the BBC's Today programme that instead of a national curfew, local lockdowns such as the one imposed on Leicester "work - we've seen those rates come right down", "I don't think we are at a place where we would wish to see, or need to see, national level of restrictions. But that comes down to all of us following the rules be they local lockdown guidelines or indeed national law and guidance." 07:37 AM Health minister plays down national lockdown 'speculation' Edward Argar has again tried to play down claims that Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty is seeking a national two-week lockdown. Last night independent Sage scientist and former WHO director Anthony Costello claimed he had heard from "a well-connected person" that cases are far higher than official figures show, leading Prof Whitty to want to see a quick lockdown introduced to bring rates down. The health minister told the Today programme: "I have seen speculation, but I can only speak as I find and as I know. "That is not something I have heard from Chris or that I have seen in my capacity from Chris." Edward Argar - Geoff Pugh 07:28 AM Minister who gave ferry contract to firm with no ships to advise ports company The minister who once gave a no-deal Brexit ferry contract to a company with no ships will be handed a six-figure salary to advise a ports company. Former transport secretary Chris Grayling is being paid 100,000 per year for seven hours work each week to be a strategic adviser to Hutchison Ports Europe, according to official documents. The appointment was approved by the watchdog after the Tory MP gave a reassurance he would not advise the firm on Brexit opportunities or commercial maritime matters. The Epsom and Ewell MP resigned as transport secretary when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019. He sparked outrage, and no small amount of mirth, when it emerged he had awarded a 13.8 million contract to Seaborne Freight - a company with no ships - to mitigate the potential consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Chris Grayling - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph 07:15 AM Tory MPs school Joe Biden over Good Friday Agreement Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has been attacked by Conservative Tories after he intervened in the Brexit row last night. Mr Biden tweeted that he would not "allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit". Former trade minister and long-time ally of Boris Johnson Conor Burns tweeted: Hey Joe Biden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesnt offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and Im a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help. Jacob Young MP added: "We all believe in protecting the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), and a key element of the agreement is recognising Northern Irelands position as a full part of our United Kingdom." Recent intake Joy Morrissey replied: I guarantee he didnt know any of that. Many Americans know next to nothing about the troubles, the bombings & terrorist attacks on the U.K. Biden is shamelessly pandering to the American Irish vote while refusing to engage with the U.K. Government or U.K. Diplomatic channels. Nice. She then deleted that tweet, but added: Clearly its all about the Irish American vote. Clearly it's all about the Irish American vote pic.twitter.com/JfhFxfZ9NZ Joy Morrissey MP (@joymorrissey) September 17, 2020 07:08 AM ICYMI: Anthony Costello's claim about two-week lockdown Anthony Costello, former WHO director and independent Sage, last night claimed he had heard from a "well-connected person" that Chris Whitty is trying to persuade Boris Johnson to deploy a two-week national lockdown now. The UCL Professor claimed a lack of tests meant authorities fear cases are far higher than official figures suggest. Here's the tweet in case you missed it. Im hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown. Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 16, 2020 07:03 AM Minister hints at 'effective' curfew plans for parts of the country with Covid spikes The Government is poised to confirm new curfew plans for around two million people, a minister has hinted. Ed Argar, the health minister, said he didn't want to get into the "exact menu" of measures that Matt Hancock will be setting out this morning, but told BBC Breakfast that curfews were "effective". Mr Hancock will be setting out new restrictions across the north east of England - in Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead, County Durham and Sunderland - after it became the latest area to see a spike in coronavirus cases in the Commons from 11:30am today. 06:53 AM David Cameron denies claims he ran 'government of charms' David Cameron has denied presiding over a government of charms where his chums received favourable treatment in response to the tell-all diary from a Conservative MPs wife. The former Prime Minister broke his silence following the publication of extracts from Diary of an MPs Wife: Inside and Outside Power, the book written by Sasha Swire, the wife of Sir Hugo, over the couples 20 years in politics. In one extract of the book, Lady Swire recalls visiting Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha at their home the weekend after the EU referendum. She said Mr Cameron asked them to come with two fat Cohibas and plenty of booze. A Russian medical worker adminsters a shot of Russia's experimental Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Moscow, Russia. Russian health authorities have launched advanced trials of the vaccine among 40,000 volunteers, a randomized, placebo-controlled study. (AP) Moscow: Russias sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine to Indian drug company Dr Reddys Laboratories, the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad. The deal for its Sputnik-V vaccine candidate comes after the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to produce 300 million doses of the shot in India, also a major consumer of Russian oil and arms. The agreement brings the total number of doses Russia has so far announced that it will supply abroad to just over 200 million - half to Latin America and half to India. RDIF has said it has received requests totalling 1 billion doses. Deliveries to India, which has a population of more than 1.3 billion, could begin in late 2020, RDIF said, adding this was subject to the completion of trials and Sputnik-Vs registration by regulatory authorities in India. Phase III trials, involving at least 40,000 people, are ongoing in Russia. Initial results are expected in October or November, RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev has said. Dr Reddys, one of Indias top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said. Following the news, Dr Reddys shares rallied to close 4.18% higher in India on Wednesday. The Indian trials could start as early as next month, Dmitriev told Reuters, adding trial results could be followed soon after by domestic regulatory approval of Sputnik-V for mass use in India. India said last week it was considering granting an emergency authorisation for a coronavirus vaccine, particularly for the elderly and people in high-risk workplaces. EMERGENCY USE Russia was the first country to grant regulatory approval for a novel coronavirus vaccine, and did so before large-scale trials were complete, stirring concern among scientists and doctors about the safety and efficacy of the shot. Several countries are now considering adopting emergency use authorisation measures that would fast-track approval of a vaccine in a similar way, however. We expect emergency use authorisation for Sputnik-V vaccine in major markets, Dmitriev said. Results of early-stage clinical trials of the Russian shot, which were published in international medical journal The Lancet earlier this month, showed promise, G V Prasad, co-chairman of Dr Reddys, was cited in the RDIF statement as saying. Sputnik-V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID-19 in India, he said. There was no detail about the price of Sputnik-V, but RDIF has said previously it was not aiming to make a profit, just to cover costs. In a press briefing late on Tuesday, Balram Bhargava, who heads Indias clinical research agency, the Indian Council of Medical Research, said high-level talks between India and Russia around the vaccine had been ongoing. There is a high-level committee of the government of India for vaccines that are in dialogue with the Russians, he said, adding Russia had a good track record in vaccine development and the early-stage overseas trials of Sputnik-V had been promising. It was not immediately clear whether those talks had been instrumental in the deal between RDIF and Dr Reddys. The agreement comes as Indias coronavirus cases surged past five million on Wednesday, piling pressure on hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they need to treat tens of thousands of critically ill patients. This is Dr Reddys first foray into a coronavirus vaccine. It has struck a licensing deal with Gilead Sciences Inc to make and sell COVID-19 treatment remdesivir in 127 countries, including India; launched its generic version of remdesivir under the brand name Redyx, and has also tied up with Fujifilm Holdings Corp to launch Fujifilms anti-flu drug Avigan (favipiravir) in India as a COVID-19 treatment. Chandigarh, Sep 17 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday dubbed Harsimrat Kaur Badal's decision to quit the Union Cabinet as part of the "long chain of theatrics" being enacted by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) which has still not quit the ruling NDA despite the slap on their face by the central government over the farm Bills. Questioning SAD's decision to continue to remain a part of the BJP-led NDA coalition at the Centre, the Chief Minister said even Harsimrat's resignation was nothing more than a gimmick to befool the farmers of Punjab. "But they (the Akalis) will not succeed in misleading the farmers," he said, calling it a case of "too little, too late." Harsimrat's resignation from the Union Cabinet has come too late to be of any help to Punjab and its farmers, said the Chief Minister. Had the SAD taken a stand earlier and supported his government against the ordinances, the situation might not even have come to such a pass, and the Centre might have thought 10 times before introducing the ordinances and pushing the anti-farmer legislations in Parliament, he added. Even now, the only reason for the SAD's decision to pull their sole minister out of the Union Cabinet was motivated not by any concern for the farmers but to save their political fortunes, and the fizzling political careers of the Badals, who had lost all credibility in the eyes of Punjab's people, the Chief Minister said in a statement. It was the angst of the farmers and the pressure mounted by the state's farmer organisations, which were up in arms against the vicious ordinances since they were brought in by the government of India, that had compelled the Badals to change their stance on the ordinances, said Amarinder Singh. "Did Sukhbir and Harsimrat and their coterie not see the damage the legislations would do to Punjab's agriculture and economy all this time? Or were they so blinded by their greed for power that they deliberately chose to close their eyes to the danger posed by the ordinances?" asked the Chief Minister. Now that their game-plan had been completely exposed, the Akalis were left with no option but to take a public stand against the farm Bills to protect their electoral votebank in Punjab, Amarinder quipped, asserting that the people of the state had rejected them earlier and will reject them again. A Victorian man who sexually abused teenage girls and paid one $10 to keep quiet has been jailed for nearly a decade. Edmund Akkary began sending one of his victims explicit text messages and showed her pornography when she was just 13 years old. At one point, he bought her McDonald's and tried to grab her breast before paying her $10 so she wouldn't tell her mother. A Victorian man who sexually abused teenage girls and paid one $10 to keep quiet has been jailed for nearly a decade (stock image) Akkary later gave the girl $20 and said they would 'do things' together. The 33-year-old abused four girls, aged from 12 to 16, in regional Victoria between 2014 and 2017. He was jailed in the County Court on Thursday for nine-and-a-half years. He earlier pleaded guilty to seven charges, including four counts of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child under 16. Akkary also admitted sexually penetrating, sexually assaulting and grooming children under 16. He told one girl she had 'nice boobs' and squeezed her buttocks, but denied it when she complained. One of the Akkary's victims told the court she felt disgusted, depressed, angry and unable to trust other people. She said she was exhausted from trying to be strong and hide her hurt behind a smile. Another suffered nightmares and flashbacks. Judge Frances Hogan described Akkary's actions as creepy, salacious, abhorrent and offensive. She said he appeared to have no control over his compulsive, impulsive behaviour. Akkary has a mild intellectual disability, with an IQ of 73, and can only read to a year five level. He also has a severe spinal injury and needs a walker. The court was told he turned to children because he found them non-threatening. He'd lived a sad and socially isolated life, falling through the cracks of the system after being abandoned by his mother at the age of two. Despite pleading guilty, Akkary was reluctant to take full responsibility for his abuse and only said it was inappropriate. He cried as he was ordered to serve five-and-a-half years of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole. SINGAPORE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Equiteq is pleased to announce it has supported Alten, a global leader in technology and engineering consulting in the penetration of the Korean market, through the identification and acquisitions of AP Solutions. Founded in 1988, Alten has grown to become a pioneer in innovation, R&D and technological information systems. With more than 37,000 qualified engineers across 25 countries, Alten is listed in the Euronext Paris stock exchange. Strong in Europe and in the US, Alten has successfully developed its business in Asia through successful acquisitions in Japan, China and India. Korea appeared to be the next market given its maturity and leadership position in the automotive sector globally. AP Solutions was founded in Korea in 1999, and has grown to become a leader in automotive engineering & professional solutions with a team of 350 people split across its two main offices in Korea, with additional presence in China. Key expertise lies in the automotive, aviation and railway industry. Pascal Amore, Alten Executive Vice President in charge of Asia, commented "The acquisition of APS is aligned with Alten's long term strategy to substantially grow its R&D engineering capabilities in Asia, maintaining top positioning in Technology Consulting and Engineering. This acquisition marks Alten's entry into one of world's most advanced worldwide economy and will provide Alten an opportunity to leverage its technical expertise in segments such as Aerospace, Defense, Automotive and Digital for domestic Korea market, but also supporting key Korean players across the globe". Regarding Equiteq's role, Pascal added, "Equiteq was critical to the success of this transaction. From the initial market scanning and identification of targets, communication, and negotiations between APS and Alten throughout the process, up to the successful closing of the deal. Equiteq helped bridge the culture gap thanks to its combined M&A expertise and understanding of the local market." Sylvaine Masson, Director at Equiteq Asia-Pacific, commented: "It's been a real pleasure working with Alten throughout this journey. Having completed several acquisitions in the past, Alten managed to create a very professional and efficient team to support this deal, combining the right level of professionalism and M&A expertise, with strong business understanding and strategic drive. I am sure that this acquisition will boost their development and international expansion, and marks the beginning of a very successful journey in Korea." If your sad-faced technology mantra is "we were promised flying cars and all we got were these shitty internet trolls," never fear, Germany-based autonomous air mobility startup, Volocopter, wants to revive your sci-fi dreams. It has just kicked off pre-sales for trips in its forthcoming electric air taxi service, VoloCity -- albeit, there's no date on when exactly (or where) the commercial service will fire up. But if you shell out for one of the 1,000 available pre-launch reservations -- which it's branding 'VoloFirst'* -- you'll be able to look forward to a future flight of up to 15 minutes, within 12 months of the service's commercial launch, whenever and wherever that will be. "Services will start in 2-3 years," a Volocopter spokeswoman told us. "Cities are not defined yet, as it is not clear which of the many cities we are in contact with for commercial start will make the race." The price for the limited-edition joyride -- which will include a video of your trip and a "limited edition, personalized certificate" -- is 300 (~$355). Volocopter notes that tickets can be reserved with a 10% deposit. Based on our public test flights and regulatory achievement record, we have paved the way to make electric flight in cities common in just a few years. With the start of reservations, we now invite our supporters and innovators around the world to join us and be amongst the first to experience this new and exciting form of mobility, said Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter in a supporting statement. While the final certification for air taxis is still pending, we do have a detailed realistic timeline to launch commercial VoloCity flights in the next 2-3 years, added Volocopters chief commercial officer, Christian Bauer, further noting that VoloFirst ticket buyers will be able to get the latest updates on its progress and commercial launch plan. Reservations for the VoloFirst flights are available via the Volocopter Reservation Platform. Story continues The German startup undertook the first-ever manned flight of a purely electric multicopter back in 2011, and has gone on to demo numerous public flights with its full-scale aircraft -- including public test flights at Singapores Marina Bay in October 2019 and the worlds first autonomous eVTOL flight in Dubai in 2017. The company topped up its Series C funding round to $94 million earlier this year, bringing its total raised to circa $132 million. It's one of a number of flying taxi startups vying to get a commercial service off the ground. Others include EHang, Lilium and Airbus with its Vahana VTOL. *Volocopter doesn't guarantee 'VoloFirst' trip buyers will be the first public users of the air taxi service -- rather it says these early birds will have "among the first" bragging rights. This report was updated with a correction; Volocopter is based in Bruchsal, Germany, not Berlin as we originally stated Tripoli, Sep 17 : Fayez Serraj, the UN-backed Prime Minister of Libya, has announced his intention to step down in October. "I call on the Dialogue Committee, which is the body charged with forming the new executive authority, to assume its historic responsibility to expedite the formation of a authority, so that we can all ensure a peaceful and smooth transition of power," Serraj said in a televised speech on Wednesday. He welcomed the recent UN-sponsored consultations between key Libyan stakeholders and expressed hope for more consensus and agreement, reports Xinhua news agency. Serraj's UN-backed overnment of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli was formed in 2015 based on a political agreement that aimed to end the political division in the country. The GNA had been engaged in a deadly armed conflict against the eastern-based army for more than a year over control of Tripoli, before Serraj's government recently took over all of western Libya. Libya still remains politically divided amid insecurity and escalating violence. New Delhi: AN NGO, Save Them India Foundation, on Thursday (September 17) filed public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court seeking before the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to investigate China's alleged surveillance over the President of India and Prime minister, Judges (sitting and retired) of the apex court and High courts and other Influential personalities. The petition sought a direction to register the first information report (FIR) for Cyber terrorism and Cybercrime under sections 66F, 70, 72 and 72A of the Information and Technology Act 2000 and under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The PIL further sought that the Supreme Court should direct the respondent, the Central government, to ban the Chinese operated digital money lending apps in India and to take action against the Non-Banking Financial Companies and digital money lending Apps acting contrary to the fair practice code. Live TV It also sought that there should be a direction to the government to enact the Draft Bill The protection of personal Data, 2019. The plea said that China not only through one mode but by the other modes like money lending apps extracted data of Indian citizens and storing there in its country. This could have a disastrous effect in the future and is a threat and danger to our national security and integrity, it added. China`s espionage system and spying upon India have developed a new threat and fear of losing our secret valuable information, public policies, defence policies, data hijacking and theft, the plea further said. Commentators, neutral observers, journalists and academics were struck from the very outset by the fact that the anti-CAA protests were non-political in the sense that they were not organised or led by political parties On Wednesday, the Delhi Police filed a chargesheet in the Delhi riots case. It names 15 people. Six others arrested in connection with the riots have not been named in the document. They will, no doubt, be arraigned soon. Should the fact that most of the 15 named in the chargesheet, and the six yet to be named, are anti-government protesters mainly men and women peacefully demonstrating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, and the National Register of Citizens occasion even the shadow of surprise? The answer is yes and no. We shall come to both the responses by way of a detour. Let us examine the burden of the Delhi Polices song, as reported in the media, since the document isnt in the public domain. In brief, the chargesheet says: The accused systematically mobilised crowds to incite violence in the guise of protesting against the CAA; they planned for weeks to stockpile weapons, including stones, Molotov cocktails, and arms and ammunition (apparently of unspecified varieties); disseminated propaganda to the effect that government policies were anti-minority, in general, and anti-Muslim, specifically; and, that they were funded by several groups, including the Popular Front of India (PFI). First off, characterising a governments policies as being anti-minority, whether one calls such characterisation in speech or writing or some other form propaganda, is hardly a crime. In democracies, it is called criticism of the government, dissent, disagreement etc. It is a completely legitimate form of activity. Most people would say it is essential to the functioning of a political democracy and an open society. No one in his or her right mind would hold that a person should be arrested and prosecuted for saying, for instance, that West Bengal chief minister has an anti-Hindu mindset, as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda did on 10 September. Second, being funded by various organisations for undertaking any form of political or public activity, be it protest or something else, can hardly be construed as a crime. All political parties receive funding from organisations, groups and individuals. The only problem would be in the areas of unregistered foreign funding or funding from banned organisations. The PFI is not banned countrywide. Third, the charge that the accused systematically mobilised crowds to incite violence using the ant-CAA protests as a cover sounds a huge stretch. The anti-CAA protests started in December last year, not long after the amending Act was passed. They spread throughout the country, mainly in urban areas. They were almost always peaceful and those who participated did so freely. Commentators, neutral observers, journalists and academics were struck from the very outset by the fact that these protests were non-political in the sense that they were not organised or led by political parties. They were almost universally led by citizens, especially students, and the backbone of many of the individual protests, whether in Shaheen Bagh or Park Circus, was provided by people who had no history whatsoever of political protest. Often, homemakers who had barely ever ventured into the public arena literally left their hearths and homes to spend their days at protest sites. It is mind-boggling that the Delhi Police, of which more in just a bit, should claim that there was systematic mobilisation to incite violence. It will have to explain why and how sit-in protests that had proceeded peacefully for two months or so suddenly erupted into violence towards the end of February only after the BJP leader Kapil Mishra made an incendiary speech, in effect giving the administration and the police a deadline to remove protesters (in the presence of officers of the self-same police force, who did not act against the offender). As for the final charge, that it is completely trumped up seems a reasonable proposition. Every single protest site in Delhi, as also every protest of any substance throughout the country, was heavily policed. The Shaheen Bagh protest was terminated by the police force itself, after the announcement of the lockdown on 24 March. Is it the case that arms and ammunition were being stockpiled under the noses of the police who had been maintaining surveillance on the protests for weeks on end without their picking up even the merest of a whiff? If that is so, all the senior police officers involved in the operations should be sacked forthwith. In other words, the charges sound entirely fabricated and bogus. In a sense, the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police should not come as a surprise, because, in the first place, the conduct of the Delhi Police had been so brazenly partisan in its handling of the protests at Jamia Millia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University in December 2019 and early January 2020 that it was an augury. The Delhi Polices record and its actions have moved Julio Ribeiro, one of the most eminent living members of the Indian Police Service, to question its actions. In a letter to the Delhi Police commissioner mailed last week, he had said, "Kindly revisit the actions of the police under your command in Delhi to determine if they have been true to their oaths taken at the time of their induction into service." On Wednesday, he iterated his concerns. What Ribeiro has pointed out is what many, many others have been saying. The Delhi Police has taken no action against the actual instigators of the riots, most importantly Kapil Mishra. No action has been taken against Union Minister of State Anurag Singh Thakur and Outer Delhi MP Parvesh Varma for making incendiary and actionable speeches, in the formers case one including incitement to murder, creating a political climate in which riots could be engineered. Everybody knows that Mishra and the Hindu Right instigated the riots and were preponderantly responsible for the violence against people and property that occurred during the riots. Everyone knows that the preponderant burden by far in terms of grievous bodily harm, loss of life and property was borne by the minority community to wit, Muslims. Yet, till now practically none of the people who carried out or instigated these riots have been investigated, forget arrested or charged. Muslim youth and those protesting against the CAA, regardless of faith, have been disproportionately targeted for prosecution. We should actually say persecution. But, in a sense, it should come as a surprise. If a sense of complete outrage can be said to contain within it an element of surprise. Wide swathes of public opinion have expressed outrage that the rule of law can be so summarily perverted. We have been seeing it happen over the past few years. We have seen the disproportionate use of the law of sedition (Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code), the National Security Act (NSA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act threatening to turn India from a democracy into the simulacrum of a police state. For the record, the law on sedition has been invoked 233 times between 2014 and 2018, and Uttar Pradesh has used the NSA 139 times this year alone, including 76 invocations against cow slaughter. It was reported on 13 September that CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Swaraj Abhiyan member Yogendra Yadav, and academics Apoorvanand and Jayati Ghosh were named in a supplementary charge-sheet in the Delhi riots case. The Delhi Police tied itself into knots trying to explain this away, while it later emerged that the recorded testimony in the case of two people were cut-and-paste jobs in which names had been misspelled and the so-called witnesses had refused to sign the statements. Bogus taken to a different level. So, it is outrageous and, therefore, surprising that the rule of law should be perverted by a law-enforcement agency, the job of which is to police the countrys capital. And, as we all know, when the state itself subverts the rule of law, constitutional democracy cannot be said to properly exist. Are we watching Indias descent into arbitrary, authoritarian rule? The jurys coming in. Views expressed are personal By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the wake of the NIA grilling higher education minister KT Jaleel in Kochi on Thursday, the Opposition has demanded the LDF government's resignation. Congress state president Mullapally Ramachandran and Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala demanded that the government should be dissolved and face fresh elections. Mullapally also alleged that four ministers in the Pinarayi government have come under a cloud of smoke. Widespread protests by the UDF and BJP are being witnessed across the state piling up pressure on the Left government. The Left government is feeling the heat after Jaleel was summoned by the NIA, five days after the Enforcement Directorate had questioned him twice. Pressure is mounting on the LDF government as the state has been witnessing a plethora of protests for the sixth consecutive day clamouring for the resignation of Jaleel. ALSO READ: Kerala gold smuggling case: Minister KT Jaleel questioned by NIA Chennithala said a cabinet minister being quizzed by the NIA is an unusual incident. Talking to reporters on Thursday, he said until recently the Chief Minister had claimed that he is ready to face any probe. Jaleel continuing as minister is a challenge to democracy. Chennithala alleged that the Chief Minister is protecting Jaleel because he is afraid of something. "The LDF government has no right to continue in office. Pinarayi should step down and seek the peoples' mandate. NIA, an agency which probes terror related cases, is now interrogating Jaleel. Jaleel should step down at least as a saving grace. This is the first time in the history of the state such an incident happened. UDF will intensify its protest demanding the ouster of the government," said Chennithala. Mullapally also called for the LDF governments resignation, saying a Cabinet minister being questioned by the NIA after the ED had also summoned him twice was a serious issue. He alleged that Pinarayi is continuously protecting his ministers who have links in the gold smuggling case. If Jaleel has nothing to hide, why did he visit the investigating officials on the sly? Four LDF ministers are currently under suspicion including the Legislative Assembly Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan. Pinarayi is the focal point of all the corrupt activities. He has no right to be in office. He is trying to trivialise Jaleel being questioned by the ED and now by the NIA. He is the one who behaves like a mentally deranged person," said Mullapally. Muslim League MPs PK Kunhalikutty and ET Mohammed Basheer too demanded that Jaleel should resign, adding that the IUML will continue its protest until then. Basheer also alleged that the CPM is trying to divert attention from the Jaleel issue by raking up communalism. Insurance broker Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. has acquired West Monroe, Louisiana-based The Kirksey Agency Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The Kirksey Agency was founded in 1980 with crop insurance as its flagship product, servicing Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. The agency has expanded its offerings in recent years to provide a full range of commercial and personal products and services to clients across the South Central United States. Bill and Grace Kirksey and their team will continue to operate in their current location under the direction of Bumpy Triche, head of Gallaghers Mid-South region retail property/casualty brokerage operations. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Source: Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Topics Mergers Louisiana A.J. Gallagher Journalist Hopewell Chinono says he has no regrets about taking the Mnangagwa administration on corruption and urged Zimbabweans to keep piling on the pressure. Writing on Facebook today he said :8 weeks ago the regime came after me, broke into my home and threw me into prison for exposing corruption and the looting of COVID-19 funds. Thankfully the world stood with me as the truth was self evident! I would like to thank all Zimbabweans, South Africans, Africans and global citizens that stood with me and kept my persecution in the world mental and public consciousness. We have to keep on moving against corruption and the abuse of the constitution by the political crooks! Thank you all for your support and solidarity! As with everything that involves the theft of public funds, there are some useless citizens who are bought to divert our attention from the REAL issues! Ignore side shows and stay focused on exposing the looting of public funds, the plundering of national resources, and the denial of our constitutional rights! The biggest hospital in Zimbabwe is Harare Hospital also known as Sally Mugabe Hospital. It only has 2 Maternity theaters built in 1977 by the colonial government. Only one of those 2 maternity theatres is working today, but there are NO nurses, so it is not working too! 2500 women are dying yearly in Zimbabwe whilst giving birth! That is 15 jumbo jets crashing every year and killing 2500 Zimbabwean pregnant woman! That is the cost of ZANU-PF corruption on Zimbabwe! We exposed the wicked looting of US$60 million meant for COVID-19 through the criminal syndicate called Drax! Zimbabwes 6 central hospitals only needUS$50 million annually to run smoothly without any shortages! Yet a group of thieves led by Obadiah Moyo looted millions using shelf companies, and criminals like Delish Nguwaya! I was imprisoned for 45 days for exposing these crooks. That is my personal contribution for a better Zimbabwe, I have no regrets for exposing them, the exposures should continue if we want a better Zimbabwe! I take my hat off for Beatrice Mtetwa, Advocate Taona Nyamakura, Doug Coltart, Gift Mutisi and Rose Hanzi and her Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights! To the citizens, keep on moving against corruption or else your children would have no future! Do it for the women who are dying giving birth across the country, do it for you hire dying in their homes without healthcare! KALAMAZOO, MI A violent clash of far-right Proud Boys and counterprotesters likely led to Kalamazoo Public Safety Chief Karianne Thomass resignation, activists say. It was the last straw, activist Quinton Bryant, 34, told MLive/The Kalamazoo Gazette on Thursday, Sept. 17. I believe thats really the reason why shes retiring. Boosted Commerce, a Los Angeles, CA-based startup building a comprehensive portfolio of 100 e-commerce brands, raised $87M in funding. Investors include Torch Capital; Crosscut Ventures; Spencer Rascoff, entrepreneur and co-founder of Zillow and Hotwire; Elie Seidman, former CEO of Tinder; Tucker Kain, President of Los Angeles Dodgers; Ken Ramberg, founder of Goodpods; Scott Hendrickson, co-founder and partner, Permian Investment Partners; Thomas O. Staggs, former Chief Operating Officer of The Walt Disney Company; Marc Mezvinksy, managing director TPG; and David Farahi, Chief Operating Officer of Monarch Casino & Resort Inc. The company, which has acquired six Amazon fulfillment (FBA) companies as it scales quickly toward its goal of building a comprehensive ecommerce portfolio platform, plans to acquire and develop 100 e-commerce Consumer Package Brands over the next four years. Boosted Commerce is building a collection of third party companies and brands with customer loyalty and sales on the Amazon and Shopify platforms. The company offers these business sellers a 45-day closing process built on a commitment to fair, market value offers and ethical, transparent negotiations. The companys team includes: Charlie Chanaratsopon, who previously built a retail brand to 5,000 employees, 350 stores globally, and $500 million in revenue. Forbes named him Americas 40 Most Successful Young Entrepreneurs. Keith Richman, who co-founded Voi Technology, a leading European based mobility company and previously co-founded Break Media, OnePage, and Billpoint Inc. He currently serves on the board of directors of GrubHub, The Meet Group and Vostok New Ventures. Anton von Rueden, who previously COO of TechStyle Fashion Group and Managing Director of eBay Germany; Adam Epstein, formerly of consumer focused private equity firm Lion Capital; and Drew Lessard, previously a management consultant with Kearney, round out the leadership team. FinSMEs 17/09/2020 Haiti - FLASH : State exams, revised calendar, key dates The Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training reminds TO the attention of the general public and the educational community in particular that the official exams for the 2019-2020 academic year will be held as scheduled, according to the following revised school calendar : Calendar of official exams : - Examinations of the 9th Fundamental Year (AF): October 12 to 14, 2020 - Examinations of the Normal Schools of Teachers (ENI): October 12 to 15, 2020 - Examinations of Family Education Centers (CEF): October 12 to 15, 2020 - Traditional secondary school leaving exams (Philo) and (renovated, NS4): October 19 to 22, 2020 (for new and failed students) - Anticipated French tests for NS3: October 23, 2020 (morning). In addition, the Ministry informs that remedial courses will be organized for candidates for the official 9th AF and bac exams in the 10 departments. Students can also consult the online platform for resources and learning (PRATIC) of the Ministry on practic.menfp.gouv.ht which contains the main educational content on fundamental and secondary programs related to these levels of exams. HL/ HaitiLibre The Rocky Mountain ADA Center (RMADAC), a member of the National Network of ADA Centers, is pleased to announce it has promoted Emily Shuman to Director. Working for the organization since 2018, Shuman began as RMADACs media coordinator and was quickly promoted to deputy director in 2019. As deputy director, Shuman created and implemented the nations first accessible social media program, conducted several in-person training(s) on the ADA across RMADACs region, and produced the organizations podcast which featured many nationally recognized guests including Senator Tammy Duckworth. Emily also served (and will continue to) as spokesperson for RMADAC within local, regional, and national media. An accomplished writer, Shuman also will continue to write op ed pieces and informational articles for the organization. As director, Shuman will lead the RMADAC staff and the organizations daily operations including technical assistance calls, regional training coordination, information dissemination and more. In addition, Shuman will work closely with center directors from the additional nine regions to improve upon operational practices and program(s) expansion. I am humbled, grateful and energized by this appointment, said Emily Shuman. We have an incredible team that works tirelessly to ensure people living across the Rocky Mountain Region have the tools and information they need to best understand their rights and responsibilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is my true honor to lead our group of experts and collectively we look forward to expanding upon our current programs and offerings to best serve our region for years to come. A highly regarded Young Professional, Emily Shuman is one of the youngest directors in the 30-year history of the ADA National Network. The Colorado Springs native enjoys the outdoors, spending time with her son, and inspiring parents across the region as a contributor to the Colorado Springs Mom Collective. About the Rocky Mountain ADA Center: The Rocky Mountain ADA Center provides information on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to individuals and organizations throughout Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Rocky Mountain ADA Center is a member of the National Network of ADA Centers and is funded by National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90DP0094-01-00). Our center is powered by and is a project of Meeting the Challenge, Inc., a CP&Y company located in Colorado Springs, CO. The centers staff members represent a diverse and dynamic group of individuals who are dedicated to the driving spirit of the ADA as well as the complex standards behind the law. To connect with the Rocky Mountain ADA Center on social media, click here. The Rocky Mountain ADA Center is available to assist with any of the following areas: Material Dissemination, Technical Assistance on the ADA, Training, Referrals and Research. CHICAGO/LONDON: Martin Williams great-grandfather founded their Coca-Cola distribution business in Corinth, Mississippi, in 1907, just a handful of years after Coke was first sold in bottles across the United States. Hes part of the fourth generation to run it, and hes determined not to be the last. Williams business is one of nearly 70 U.S. Coca-Cola bottlers" - third-party, independent companies that put Coke and other beverages into cans and bottles and deliver the drinks to retailers and restaurants in every corner of the country. The future of such companies is not only critical for their owners and employees, but also key for their main supplier - Coca-Cola, the worlds No.1 soft drink maker - which needs them to flourish to help it recover from a slump in sales. But COVID-19 has upended their business models. It was chaos. You just had no idea what the world was going through and what we were up against," said Williams, the finance head of his familys firm. Its on our shoulders to try to take our business forward into the future and to maintain the work that our ancestors have done." Shoppers in lockdowns snapped up cases of Coke, Fanta and Sprite at grocery stores rather than at gas stations, restaurants and stadiums. That left bottlers scrambling to keep stores stocked with bigger, often less-profitable packages. Lucrative sales to restaurants and convenience stores are still only a fraction of what they were before the pandemic hit the United States. The bottlers - now saddled with too much product meant for restaurants - have also been hit by a shortage of aluminum cans due to a surge in demand for canned drinks as people stay home. Williams, whose business distributes rather than makes drinks, has adapted to this new order over the last six months, while grappling with higher costs for fuel, transportation, labor, safety gear and cleaning products. Pressures have eased since the lockdown, but his firm is still affected. COCA-COLA MASS LAYOFFS Coca-Cola sells syrups, powders and base ingredients - known as concentrates - to bottlers, who mix, package and sell drinks to retailers, giving a cut back to the soda giant. The company works with many large publicly listed bottlers around the world, including in Europe and Asia. But many U.S. players are small, family-owned businesses, with limited reserves to draw from as sales and profits shrink. About two-thirds of them received pandemic aid from the U.S. government to keep in hand or stay afloat, which is important for Coca-Cola to increase its own sales. All the while Coca-Cola, with whom they have a symbiotic relationship, has also been under intense pressure. The drinks giants volume sales in North America declined 16% in the latest quarter. Nearly 40% of its over 10,000 employees in the region will decide by Thursday whether to volunteer for severance as part of a sweeping restructuring. It was a very difficult time throughout April and May, in particular, and our bottlers have to deal with that on a regular basis," Chaly Moyen, Coca-Colas North America head of strategy, told Reuters. As lockdowns have eased, worldwide volume declines have moderated, from about 25% in April to about 10% in June. She declined to say whether Coca-Cola would bail out any bottlers close to going bankrupt. NEW BUSINESS REALITIES Coca-Cola is the U.S. leader in fizzy drinks - excluding tea, water and energy drinks - with about 38% of the $41.8 billion retail market, followed by PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper, according to Euromonitor. While the food-service sales that make up about half of Coca-Colas business have dived, Moyen said North American sales to large stores have risen. At the height of the pandemic, they were up by a double-digit percentage versus a year earlier, and remain up by double-digits for 2020 so far, she added. However she acknowledged bottlers and distributors had been hit hard by the shifting retail landscape. The impact that bottlers had from a mix shift was real," Moyen said, adding that Coca-Cola expected the new consumer habits to stick. Selling less product has also hurt; in the quarter ended June 26, Coca-Cola sold 22% less concentrates worldwide as demand fell. Some bottlers have been forced to lay off or reassign workers specializing in supplying restaurants to bottling and distributing retail-friendly products, tasks in which they are not experienced, driving down productivity. Reyes Holdings, Coca-Colas second-biggest U.S. bottler, told Reuters it laid off 30 people - or about 6% of staff - at its Alsip facility in Illinois in April. As things improved, it reinstated half of those workers. Coca-Cola Consolidated, the biggest U.S. Coke bottler - last month reported a 3.6% fall in quarterly net sales. But the company, whose No.1 shareholder is Coca-Cola, increased adjusted operating income by 5.4%, after furloughing about 700 people without pay. Duane Stanford, publisher of the Beverage Digest newsletter, said such moves simply reflected the new business realities. In this kind of environment its important to control costs that absolutely comes with cutting jobs." 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 State of Oregon has issued more than $23,000 in fines to two businesses that failed to follow state guidance meant to protect workers from COVID-19. Oregons Occupational Safety and Health division (Oregon OSHA) announced Wednesday that it was citing and fining Cafe 22 West in Salem and Howards Pharmacy in Lakeview for failing to require physical distancing and failing to ensure that customers and employees wear masks. The agency said it made contact with both businesses after receiving multiple complaints. After the employers failed to make changes following those conversations, Oregon OSHA conducted inspections at both workplaces and found the employers willfully failing to implement health hazard control measures. In addressing complaints involving COVID-19 and the workplace, we have started with efforts to engage and educate the employers involved about what they needed to do. In most cases, we have been able to resolve any issues without an actual enforcement visit, said Michael Wood, administrator for Oregon OSHA, in a statement. But as these two particular cases demonstrate, we will continue to bring our enforcement tools to bear when employers choose to disregard requirements. Oregon OSHA has issued 18 citations to employers since March for failing to implement safety standards to protect workers from COVID-19. Non-willful violators have been fined between $100 and $2,000, while Oregon OSHA has issued fines between $8,900 and $14,000 for willful violations. Workplace outbreaks have been responsible for large clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks in some small communities across the state. Workplaces outbreaks have been a major issue in Eastern Oregons Umatilla County, where there are 18 active workplace that have infected more than 1,000 people, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority. There are no active workplace outbreaks in Lake County, where Howards Pharmacy is located, or in Polk County, where Cafe 22 West is located. To help combat workplace outbreaks, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Wednesday that the state will allocate $10 million in federal CARES Act funds to provide masks and gloves to small businesses operating amid the coronavirus pandemic. Cafe 22 West was cited and issued a proposed fine of $13,900 on Aug. 18 after Oregon OSHA found that the business was failing to implement safety measures to protect 18 employees. The agency said that Cafe 22 West failed to comply with orders from Oregon OSHA, even after the agency posted a Red Warning Notice at the business, stating that the workplace was unsafe and should not continue operating until corrections were made. Howards Pharmacy was cited and issued a proposed fine of $9,400 on Sept. 1 after an Oregon OSHA inspection found that the business was failing to implement safety standards to protect nine employees, who work both inside and outside the store. After Oregon OSHA posted a Red Warning Notice at Howards Pharmacy, OSHA said the business owner made an attempt to comply with safety standards by implementing curbside pickup. But OSHA said the pharmacy continued to allow employees to stand within six feet of customers and other employees without face coverings. Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the county where Cafe 22 West is located. It is located in Polk County. -- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg Webinar WHTT are excited to announce a series of Episodes on D&I Talks over the coming months to share how to accelerate your workplace diversity and inclusion strategy. People are at the heart of any successful organisation. Diversity and inclusion is essential to achieve objectives and drive improvement, as well as maintaining legal and ethical standing in the eyes of shareholders, regulators and the wider community . Join us over each Episode to hear all things in D&I Talks with Devi Virdi and first-hand from those in the industry as to what truly matters and how to shift the dial. Let's get to the heart and mind! At WHTT we're connecting diversity and inclusion to our growth mindset culture. Growth mindset is the core of our cultural transformation over the past year and is based on the idea that we are continuously learning and curious. We are willing to lean in to uncertainty, take risks, move quickly when we make mistakes, and recognize that failure will happen along the way. In this context, it means giving everyone the permission to make mistakes on their journey to becoming more inclusive. Diversity makes for innovative teams. At WHTT we do not discriminate based on gender, race, colour, religion or belief, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or any other protected class. Free 30 minute live D&I Talks at WHTT and online panel discussion, with audience Q&A WHTT present's Diversity and Inclusion Talks: Episode 1: Valuing Different Women in the WorkplaceSeptember 17th 2020 Thursday 2pm BST Hosted by Devi Virdi - Head of Diversity & Inclusioin at WHTT Speakers: Join Devi, Carol, Leslie, Monalisa and Dinah as they explore: Valuing Different Women in the Workplace With the glaring gender pay gap revelations, impact of the Covid-19 crisis on gender equality, and Black Lives Matter, this interactive panel discussion will explore/ask: Where is the voice/representation of, to name a few, the Black African, Black Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Mixed-race, Indian, Chinese and Pakistani woman in the workplace? The need for organisations to understand and value the distinct leadership contribution Different Women make How a strategic focus on DW can be a driver for systemic change to address inequality and discrimination across race, gender and intersectionality How we can ensure the gender agenda is inclusive of Different Women in your workplace Follow WHTT on LinkedIn to get notified one we go live or add event to you calendar on link below. Webinar: Diversity & Insclusion Talks LinkedIn Live is organized by Gov. Kate Brown has pitched in $50,000 to the campaign of Democratic secretary of state candidate Sen. Shemia Fagan, which has topped $1 million in fundraising. The governors gift from one of her political action committees is the largest from any individual or political candidates committee in the secretary of states race. Oregon has no state-level limits on the size of campaign contributions, although the state Supreme Court ruled in April that caps on political money are legal under the state Constitution. Voters approved strict limits in 2006 but Republican Secretary of State Bev Clarno and Democratic Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum concluded in a secret decision that those limits did not take effect with the courts ruling. Fagan, who is from the Portland area, has relied mostly on public employee unions to fund her secretary of state bid. But since she won the May Democratic primary, high-level party members and their non-union allies are increasingly pitching in. Republican candidate Sen. Kim Thatcher, of Keizer, has raised $345,000 and spent roughly $212,000, according to state campaign finance records. Unlike Fagan who had to distinguish herself from two serious opponents in her 2 -month primary campaign, Thatcher effectively ran unopposed in the Republican primary. Oregons secretary of state oversees elections, along with county clerks around the state, and is responsible for redrawing the states legislative and congressional district lines if the Legislature fails to complete the once-a-decade task. The Oregon Legislature has only successfully completed redistricting once in the last century. Brown made the $50,000 donation on Sept. 11, according to state campaign finance records. Fagans total fundraising stands at roughly $1.2 million so far this year, with $962,000 in spending according to state campaign finance records. Thatchers top donors, none of which have so far given more than $10,000 total this year, include an assisted living company, timber companies that frequently support Republican candidates, her own company Highway Specialties and a group that calls itself Oregons only no-compromise gun rights organization. Thatcher also raised more than 12% of her campaign funds this year nearly $44,000 from small donations of $100 or less. Fagan raised approximately 1.4% of her campaign money this year nearly $17,000 from small donations of $100 or less. -- Hillary Borrud: hborrud@oregonian.com; @hborrud Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. ABBEVILLE, La. Omega Protein is partnering with the Cameron Lions Club to raise money for Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which was devastated by Hurricane Laura at the end of August. Omega Protein has set up and will contribute to a GoFundMe campaign, which will raise funds to be used in relief and recovery efforts for the community. The Gulf menhaden fishery was a mainstay in the Cameron Parish business community for over 65 years. Omega Protein operated a fishing facility there from the mid-1960s through the end of 2013. Cameron was a wonderful home for us for nearly half a century, said Ben Landry, Director of Public Affairs for Omega Protein. Even though we no longer operate in Cameron, the people there are still our friends and neighbors, and we will not turn our back on them during their time of need. All funds raised from the GoFundMe campaign will go directly to the Cameron Lions Club and their charitable organization, the Cameron Educational and Charitable Endeavors Inc., to help with cleanup and recovery from the hurricane. Omega Protein is working to share its GoFundMe campaign with employees across the Cooke, Inc. family of companies to help spur awareness of the damage to Cameron Parish, and raise money from across North America for relief efforts. Cameron Parish has sustained incredible damage from this storm, said State Representative Ryan Bourriaque, whose District 47 includes all of Cameron Parish. But with the help of good neighbors like Omega Protein and the generosity of people everywhere, well rebuild this community and get it back on its feet. The Cameron Lions Club was founded in 1944, and has served charitable causes in and around Cameron Parish for over 75 years. Its initiatives include promoting higher education through academic scholarships, the Louisiana Lions Camp for children with special needs, the Keep Louisiana Beautiful campaign, help with community hearing and vision needs, and an annual fishing festival. On August 27, the Category 4 Hurricane Laura made landfall on Cameron, Louisiana near peak intensity, with sustained winds of 150 mph. It was the strongest hurricane to strike Louisiana since 1856. The GoFundMe link is available here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hurricane-laura-assistance-cameron-la Milton Reed, economic development director for East Chicago, said small businesses are vital to the local economy especially during the pandemic. Some residents such as those who speak only Spanish or have no transportation to get to shopping outside of the city rely on the mom and pop businesses for essential supplies. The grants can provide badly needed funds to businesses still struggling. Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has directed all the district magistrates and superintendents of police to install public address systems at public places in their districts to create awareness about Covid-19 containment protocol to check the spread of the pandemic. The directive to DMs and SPs was issued after the chief minister spoke about the need to use public address systems to sensitize residents about Covid guidelines, including the use of masks, social distancing, frequent hand-washing and sanitization. District magistrates of all the 75 districts in the state were directed to submit a proposal for installing public address systems and the new locations chosen for the purpose by September 19, additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi said after a meeting of senior officials in Lucknow on Wednesday. Bus stations, hospitals, market areas, road crossings and government offices have been identified among the places where the system would be installed. Principal secretary (transport) Rajesh Kumar Singh said the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) was planning to install the public address systems in all the buses operating across the state along with audio-visual systems at bus stations. The project will be completed within a month. Also Read: UP businessman murder case: SIT focuses on big guns named for extortion The additional director general of police, (headquarters) was directed to submit a report to the government about the status of existing public address systems in all the 75 districts and the condition of the equipment installed. He was also told to submit a detailed proposal regarding the new places where the public address systems would be set up. Also Read: Doctor is only a click away in Varanasis digital village During their visit to various districts, nodal officers had stated in their report that lack of implementation of the Covid protocol was one of the main reasons for the spread of coronavirus infection in the state, senior officials said. The state government has directed the district administration to penalise people violating the Covid protocol, he said. Cleantech Group Names TRENDE Inc. a 2020 APAC 25 Company TOKYO, Sept 16, 2020 TRENDE Inc., an online renewable energy retailer in Japan, has just been included in the 2020 APAC 25 list produced by Cleantech Group, a global provider of research, consulting and events to catalyse opportunities in sustainable innovation. The APAC 25 is a list of independent companies from the Asia Pacific region engaged in sustainable innovation that are viewed by the market as likely to have significant impact in a five-to-ten-year time frame. Cleantech Group put together the third annual list of 25 companies through a combination of APAC-related inputs from the annual Global Cleantech 100 process and detailed contributions from an APAC 25 expert panel. The companies on the list had the strongest patterns of agreement across all the input points and were scored the highest. \Although only customers can truly validate what we are doing it is encouraging to be included in the APAC 25 list. The main problem we are trying to address is the climate crisis. Obviously, this is a massive and complex problem. No single solution or company will solve the climate crisis. But anything we can do to accelerate the widespread adoption of solar power in Japan will definitely help, and this is the mission that we are undertaking,\ said Jeffrey Char, Chairman and Co-founder at TRENDE. Members of the APAC 25 expert panel play an important role in creating the list. Each provides between three and nine nominations, no more than a third of which can be portfolio companies (in the case of investors). Expert panellists can weight their nominations, and all nominations are blind (no expert sees the other panellists\-\- nominations). These nominations are then combined with the outcomes from the Global Cleantech 100 process, which benefits from thousands of data points. The third annual APAC 25 list is made possible by the continuing support of ADB Ventures and Enterprise Singapore. \The Asia Pacific region will dominate some of the new industries and supply chains that will emerge from global mega-trends such as alternative proteins, electrification and new mobility, to name but three,\ said Richard Youngman, CEO of Cleantech Group. \It will also be a leader in digitalization, given its weight of population and the size of its industrial base. Both dynamics are borne out in our third annual APAC 25 list of rising star innovation companies from around the region.\ For more information on TRENDE\-\-s leadership in clean technology, visit i3connect.com, Cleantech Group\-\-s leading market intelligence platform, and search for TRENDE. The complete list of APAC 25 expert panel members is available at https://i3connect.com/apac25/panelist. The 2020 APAC 25 companies will be featured online on October 20, 2020 in Cleantech Interactive\-\-s October edition (https://interactive.cleantech.com/). About Cleantech Group Cleantech(R) Group provides research, consulting and events to catalyze opportunities for sustainable growth powered by innovation. At every stage from initial strategy to final deals, we bring corporate change makers, investors, governments and stakeholders from across the ecosystem the access and customized support they need to thrive in a more digitized, de-carbonized and resource-efficient future. MEDIA CONTACT: Laura Dolby Cleantech Group Tel: +44 (0) 203-743-8615 Email: laura.dolby@cleantech.com About TRENDE TRENDE Inc. is an innovative online renewable energy retailer selling electricity to residential customers in Japan via its Hot Denki (https://hotdenki.jp) and Ashita Denki (https://ashita-denki.jp/) service websites. TRENDE\-\-s mission is to accelerate the widespread adoption of renewable energy and redefine the energy ecosystem in Japan with a customer-centric business model and innovative P2P platform. The company\-\-s investors include Tokyo Electric Power, ITOCHU, Idemitsu and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. For more information, please visit http://trende.jp/. MEDIA CONTACT: TRENDE Inc. Email: pr@trende.jp New Delhi: Actress Kangana Ranaut has permanently occupied a spot on the trends list for her back-to-back controversial statements. It all started when Kangana made explosive revelations about the prevalence of drug abuse in Bollywood after actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Later, she had a bitter face-off with the ruling Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra, so much to the extent that her office was demolished by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and just a few days apart, she found herself in the midst of another controversy when she slammed veteran-actress Jaya Bachchan for her statement on drug abuse in Rajya Sabha. The internet is divided into two sections - one in favour of her and the other against. Mostly, it's the Bollywood which is against the actress and supporting Jaya Bachchan, but she did find the support of many of her colleagues when her office was demolished. As of now, the internet also appears to be furious with Kangana Ranaut regarding her statements and many hashtags and memes have taken over social media. Check out the reactions here: #shutupkangana We are not same bro.. You like her I Like him pic.twitter.com/0oTHL3hGO5 Madhav Jaiswal (@MadhavJaiswal20) September 17, 2020 Kangana when she sees some delicate topic that can be used for political gains :#shutupkangana pic.twitter.com/CEKeVoNFPR Milad Lone (@claytension) September 17, 2020 #shutupkangana I think you should use it pic.twitter.com/5cd6excpl8 Radhey Amrit (@AmritKu68459821) September 17, 2020 if you see this reply with #shutupkangana pic.twitter.com/HO7chjyXHb M0D1 Started the Fire (@shomikpandaa) September 16, 2020 Kangana is currently in Manali, her hometown. She visited Mumbai last week with her Y category security amid her war of words with Shiv Sena. She stayed in Mumbai for a few days, inspected her office, met Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari and left for Manali. On the work front, Kangana Ranaut will be next seen in J Jayalalitha's biopic 'Thalaivi' and 'Dhaakad' Harish Murali By Express News Service CHENNAI: The Southern Railway on Thursday informed the Madras High Court that the concession that was being provided to senior citizens stands cancelled to discourage unnecessary travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. The railways also said that it suffered a revenue loss of Rs 5,475 core from 2016-2019 due to concessions offered to various categories of passengers. A Sundar, the Deputy Chief Commercial Manager of Southern Railway, made the submission on a plea moved by A S Mohammed Khader Meeran of Tiruchy seeking directions to the railway to initiate steps in restarting ticket booking with concession through the online portal of IRCTC. In the reply submitted by PT Ramkumar, the counsel for railways also said, "The element of concession extended was varying from 10% to 100% depending upon the category. However, in view of COVID-19, a lot of train services were cancelled across the country and it was decided to grant concessions only for persons with disability (Divyangjan), 11 categories of patients and students. Prior to March 20, as a welfare measure to the public, concession in passenger fare was given to more than 50 categories of passengers including Divyangjan, 11 categories of patients, youths, kisans, artists, sportspersons, medical professional, senior citizens, awardees, war widows, students and press correspondents, said the reply filed by the railways. The railways submitted that concessional tickets are issued to 11 categories of patients across the reservation counter on the production of an original medical certificate. Such tickets can also be purchased by any other person on behalf of the patients on the production of an original certificate issued by a doctor of a recognised hospital. Since such verification is a pre-condition, online booking cannot be permitted, he added. Recording the submissions, a division bench of Justices M M Sundresh and R Hemalatha adjourned the hearing to September 17. A 62-year-old Paterson woman died Wednesday morning after firefighters pulled her from a burning home, authorities said. Police and fire officials responded at 8:28 a.m. to the 2-alarm fire at a home at 50 Doremus Ave., according to a statement from the Passaic County Prosecutors Office. Firefighters pulled the woman, identified as Nancy Salt, from the home and rushed her to Saint Josephs University Medical Center in Paterson where she was pronounced dead from injuries she suffered in the blaze, the office said. The cause of the fire remained under investigation Wednesday evening and no other details were released. Anyone with information about the deadly fire was asked to the contact the offices tips line at 1-877-370-PCPO or tips@passaiccountynj.org or call the Paterson Police Department at (973) 321-1111. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription. Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Alexei Navalny was brought out of a medically induced coma last week after his Aug 20 poisoning - Maxim Zmeyev/AFP Alexei Navalnys associates say that the nerve agent used to poison the Russian opposition leader was found on a water bottle in his hotel room shortly after he fell ill on the plane back to Moscow. Mr Navalny, President Vladimir Putins most prominent critic, was on a ventilator in a medically induced coma for weeks after falling suddenly ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow last month. Several European laboratories independently confirmed that the top Kremlin critic had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, previously used in the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Mr Navalnys team revealed in a social media post on Thursday that the poison was found on one of the free water bottles that his colleagues retrieved from his hotel in the Siberian city of Tomsk shortly after Mr Navalny became unwell on the plane. The 44-year-old opposition leader was in Tomsk with his team in mid-August filming a video for an anti-corruption investigation and headed back to Moscow while some of his colleagues stayed behind, according to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. Mr Navalnys colleagues went to his room as soon as they heard that he lost consciousness on the plane that later had to make an emergency landing. He was treated by Russian doctors in Siberia for two days before his medical evacuation to Germany. Alexei Navalny's associates packed up all they could find at his hotel room when they found out that he lost consciousness on the plane back to Moscow - Navalny/Social media via Reuters Mr Navalnys team released a video on Thursday, showing his colleagues going through things left at the hotel including empty water bottles and packing them up in plastic bags. They decided to take everything that could be useful and bring it to German doctors, the social media post said. It was obvious that Russia was not going to investigate it. Mr Navalnys associates confirmed earlier reports by German media outlet Der Spiegel saying that the poison was found on a water bottle, saying that now we know: it was done before he left his hotel room for the airport. The Kremlin denies any involvement in Mr Navalnys poisoning while Russian police have refused to launch an official inquiry. Ms Yarmysh said that police have seized CCTV tapes but never launched a formal investigation. Mr Navalny was brought out of a medically induced coma earlier this month and said in his first social media post since the poisoning on Tuesday that he was breathing unaided for the first time in weeks. Doctors have said that his condition was improving but did not rule out long-term damage to his health. Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine will be looking for volunteers to receive a two-round COVID-19 vaccination when the trial resumes in the United States. The trial comes to the school via a partnership between biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Oxford University. The vaccine, AZD1222, is one of only four vaccines currently in the third and final stage of clinical trials to prevent COVID-19. The trial has been temporarily halted in the United States due to one patient getting sick, although it is not yet known if the vaccine caused the illness. Throughout this pandemic, our doctors and researchers have been on the frontlines, working to treat those suffering from COVID-19 and investigating ways to stop its spread, said Dr. Jay L. Hess, dean of the IU School of Medicine. Never has that work been more important, and our leadership continues with this crucial study taking place right here in Indianapolis. The Hoosiers who participate will have the chance to be part of a study that, if successful, could help scientists turn a corner on combatting this disease. Dr. Cynthia Brown, the lead researcher for the trial, said volunteers will be closely monitored to test the effectiveness and the risks of the vaccine. Researchers are also looking to make sure the test group is representative of the community. However, Brown said she understands why Black and brown communities would be skeptical of a vaccine, especially one that was developed so quickly. I hear your concerns, Brown said. Historically, there has been mistreatment of minorities in trials, absolutely. But patient safety is first and foremost in any clinical trial. Brown said recipients of the vaccine will meet with a researcher 28 days between the first and second round of the vaccine, and again 90 days after the first dose. Patients will also be able to speak on the phone with doctors about any possible side effects from the vaccine. I think this definitely has been a faster process in drug discovery and development, Brown said. The government put a lot of money in development, and regulators are going to have to take a careful and close look. Much of the early work for this vaccine was done in the United Kingdom, where 500 people received the vaccine in July. Researchers in the UK found a second dose of the vaccine boosted response. Brown said some of the most common side effects were standard for most vaccines, swelling or pain at the injection site and fatigue. Thirty thousand Americans are expected to participate in this trial. To be included in the study, participants cannot have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past. Although there are still many unknowns surrounding the virus, its believed that if youve had it in the past, you likely have some degree of immunity. When enrollment resumes, researchers will use All In for Health to find registered volunteers. Brown said theyre looking to bring in volunteers as quickly as they can and to get a sizeable, diverse enrollment. Historically, minority populations have been underrepresented, Brown said. Looking at our sample of volunteers, were trying to oversample Black and Hispanic people to bring more minorities in. In the big picture, Black and Hispanic communities have had greater complications [from COVID-19]. And, our recruitment team has a good background, and were going to try to focus in on those communities early on. Contact staff writer Breanna Cooper at 317-762-7848. Follow her on Twitter @BreannaNCooper. Indiana has low number of vaccinated children Accountancy giant Deloitte has been handed a record 15million fine over failings in its audit of British software group Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard in a blockbuster deal. The Big Four accountant, along with former partners Richard Knights and Nigel Mercer, has been found guilty of 'serious and serial failures' that allowed Autonomy to make misleading claims in its balance sheet. A tribunal found that auditors at Deloitte failed to exercise 'adequate professional scepticism and to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence' for Autonomy in 2009 and 2010, the Financial Reporting Council said today. As such, they failed 'to act with integrity and objectivity', the tribunal said. Fined: Deloitte has been ordered to pay 15m fine and 5.6m for legal costs Knights and Mercer were also given fines of 500,000 and 250,000 respectively for their roles in the audits, which HP claimed had been falsified. The FRC added: 'Deloitte should not have issued unqualified audit opinions in these years based on the audit evidence obtained. 'Deloitte, Mr Knights and Mr Mercer fell seriously short of the standards to be expected of a reasonable auditor.' Knights has also been excluded from membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales for five years. The Tribunal also ordered Deloitte to pay the 5.6million bill for costs of the investigation and tribunal. Autonomy was sold to Hewlett Packard for 9billion in 2011 but HP wrote off most of the company's value and claimed the firm's revenues and profits had been artificially inflated. Autonomy was sold to Hewlett Packard for 9billion in 2011 but HP wrote off most of the company's value and claimed the firm's revenues and profits had been artificially inflated Former boss Mike Lynch, who is worth an estimated 469million, and other executives went on to make a fortune from the company's sale to HP. But that deal and the questions over its accounts became the centre of a High Court battle, which is thought to have been one of the UK's biggest ever fraud trial. Lynch, 55, faces separate criminal charges in the US and is fighting an extradition request. Former Anatomy boss Mike Lynch, who is worth an estimated 469million, and other executives went on to make a fortune from the company's sale to HP Elizabeth Barrett, FRC executive counsel, said: 'The significant sanctions imposed by the independent tribunal and announced today reflect the gravity and extent of the failings by Deloitte and two of its former partners in discharging their public interest duty concerning Autonomy's audits. 'The identified failures to act with integrity, objectivity, scepticism and professional competence go to the heart of audit. 'After lengthy, fully contested proceedings, the tribunal concluded that the audit work fell significantly short of the standards expected of an audit firm and its partners.' The previous record fine handed out by the FRC was against Deloitte's Big Four rival, PwC, for 10million over its audit of retailer BHS. A spokesperson from Deloitte said: 'We regret that the FRC tribunal has ruled that aspects of our audit work on Autonomy between 2009 and 2011 fell below professional standards required. 'Our audit practices and processes have evolved significantly since this work was performed over a decade ago and we continue to transform our audit by investing in firm-wide controls, technology and processes. 'We remain committed to playing our role in delivering change that embraces audit quality, improves choice and restores trust in the profession.' A U.S. judge in Philadelphia has dismissed a lawsuit filed over the 2017 fire at Londons Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people, concluding the case should be litigated there. The lawsuit claimed that faulty building materials, some made by U.S. manufacturers, turned the tower into a flaming coffin. The June 14, 2017, fire started in an apartment refrigerator and raced up the side of the 24-story residential building. Plaintiffs lawyer Robert Mongeluzzi, who filed the suit, said Thursday that his clients were considering their options, including an appeal of the ruling. U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson, in Wednesday's ruling, said it would be more efficient to try the case in the United Kingdom, given the ongoing government probe into the cause and the availability of witnesses and potential co-defendants. The suit was filed last year against refrigerator maker Whirlpool, based in Benton Harbor, Michigan; Pittsburgh-based cladding manufacturer Arconic Inc.; and insulation maker Celotex, whose corporate parent, French manufacturer Saint-Gobain, has its U.S. headquarters in the Philadelphia suburbs. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.17 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan amounted to $1.4 billion over the first seven months of 2020, compared to $1.8 billion during the same period of 2019, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Statistics Committee. The share of Uzbekistan in the total value of Kazakhstans trade turnover stood at 3 percent during the reporting period compared to 3.3 percent during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export to Uzbekistan amounted to $1.057 billion over the period from January through July 2020, compared to $1.058 billion during the same period of 2019 Uzbekistans share in the total volume of Kazakhstans export amounted to 3.7 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 3.5 percent during the same period of 2019. In turn, Kazakhstans imports from Uzbekistan amounted to nearly $425.8 million over the reporting period, compared to $659.1 million during the same period of 2019. Uzbekistans share in the total volume of Kazakhstans import amounted to 2.1 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 3.1 percent during the same period of 2019. The total volume of Kazakhstans trade turnover amounted to $48.7 billion over the period from Jan. through July 2020 which indicates a decrease from $54.5 billion during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export amounted to $28.6 billion during the reporting period of 2020 ($33.03 billion in the same period of 2019), whereas imports amounted to $20.1 billion ($21.5 billion in 2019). During the reporting period, main articles of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan trade turnover were food products, agricultural products, as well as products of the chemical industry. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:44:40|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga began work as the nation's leader Thursday vowing to "meet people's expectations." Speaking to reporters at the prime minister's office, Suga said his Cabinet would be results oriented. "I want to meet people's expectations by creating a Cabinet that works for people and achieves results," Suga said. Newly appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, meanwhile, reiterated the former administration's commitment to fighting the coronavirus pandemic and preventing an explosive rise in infections. "The important thing is to prevent infections and bring economic and social activities back to normal and revive them," Japan's new top government spokesman said. Kato added that under Suga's stewardship, the government will continue to tackle the nation's demographic crisis and forge deeper ties with Japan's closest neighbors. Suga, the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was chosen as Japan's new prime minister to succeed Shinzo Abe in an extraordinary parliamentary session on Wednesday. The parliament formally chose Suga as the nation's 99th prime minister in an extraordinary session convened at which he was elected by both chambers of Japan's bicameral parliament, winning 314 votes in the more powerful 465-member lower house and 142 votes in 245-member upper chamber. Late last month and just days after becoming the nation's longest-serving leader in terms of consecutive days in office, Abe abruptly announced that he planned to step down because of the same intestinal disease and ulcerative colitis that forced him to relinquish his role as prime minister during his first stint as leader beginning 2006. Suga has formed a Cabinet comprising of a number of ministers who served under Abe in a bid to maintain continuity. He has retained the services of LDP veteran heavyweights including Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi. Fifteen of Suga's picks for his 20-member Cabinet held ministerial portfolios in the previous administration. Suga, who at 71 is the oldest prime minister to take office since Kiichi Miyazawa in 1991, will serve as LDP president for the remainder of Abe's current three-year term through September 2021. There has been speculation, however, that he may call a general election as early as next month, although he has stated that for the time being tackling the coronavirus pandemic is his priority. Enditem In the early days of the pandemic, when schools suddenly shut down and millions of employees were sent to work from home, many parents looked forward to fall as the point when they believed life would return to normal. But back-to-school this fall is anything but routine, with schools across the country either going partially or fully remote. What many thought was going to be a short-term problem could drag into 2021 and beyond. As a result, working parents are panicking as they struggle to figure out how to juggle remote learning and full-time jobs. For many, the concern lies with their ability to keep everything running smoothly without neglecting their kids or their work responsibilities. Over half, 54%, of working parents say they feel guilty because they can't fully care for their children, while 43% report feeling guilty when they're caring for their families because they're not focusing on their work responsibilities, according to Catalyst's recent survey, "The Impact of Covid-19 on Working Parents." The online survey polled 1,000 U.S. working parents of school-aged children in August. "I'm constantly failing at one thing or the other," says Elizabeth Wiggs, 36. "The trade-off is I'm either doing a bad job at work or a bad job of parenting. "It's hard to maintain a sense of your personal value and self-worth when the two pillars of my identity my career and being a parent feel like they have just massive cracks running through their foundation. This is like an identity crisis." Seattle-based marketing manager Elizabeth Wiggs and her daughter. In order to care for her daughter and do her job, Wiggs is like the 61% of mothers Catalyst surveyed who are putting in long hours outside of the traditional work day. A Seattle-based marketing manager for Zillow, Wiggs typically wakes up around 4:30 a.m. to start work before her 6-year-old daughter gets up for the day. "That usually gives me at least two hours. Fingers crossed, she sleeps late and then I get a little more time," Wiggs says. But once her daughter is up, her day gets a bit more challenging, especially since her daughter's school is fully remote this fall. "I haven't used any child care," Wiggs says. "My job requires me to be in meetings a lot of the day and so [my daughter] is spending a lot of time in front of the TV. That's my child care." Wiggs shares custody with her daughter's father. "That helps take the pressure off a little bit," she says, but adds her daughter is with her the majority of her work week. "The days that she's with her dad just wow all I do is work. But it's kind of nice to just have only one thing to focus on, so I go into crazy hyperfocus mode." Finding a balance that works While Wiggs is managing to balance all her responsibilities without cutting back her hours, 48% of parents surveyed by Catalyst are planning to cut back on work this fall if their children do not go back to school full-time. And that includes those who are opting to reduce their work hours, go part-time and even quit their jobs, at least temporarily. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards "I don't think this is going away anytime soon," says Laura Nickel, a 35-year-old single mother living in the Chicago suburbs. With that in mind, Nickel says she's been thinking through how to mentally and physically prepare herself and her 7-year-old daughter to do this for the long haul. To make it work, Nickel has been starting her work day earlier, but she's also grouping all of her client calls in chunks throughout the day if she can. Generally, she tries to wrap up work in the early afternoon just as her daughter's school Zoom sessions end. "We're able to have lunch together each day and 'recess' bike rides or a trampoline jump," Nickel says, adding she wants to make the pandemic experience as positive as possible for her daughter. An account director for a small PR firm focused on technology companies and start-ups, Nickel says that while her employer has been supportive, she's the only parent at her company with a school-aged child. And she says it's on her to think through what support she needs and ask for it. Recently, her company has considered reducing the billable hours goals for all employees for the year, a step Nickel supports. To help her daughter with remote learning this fall, Laura Nickel set up a child's sized table and a bin system for all her school supplies. Source: Laura Nickel Some employers are stepping up, but is it enough? "It's hard to balance working and having a kid," Wiggs says even though she feels she has a lot of support from her employer. At the start of the pandemic, Zillow offered parents the ability to work more flexible schedules, as well as providing 15 days of back-up care through Bright Horizons and 10 days of paid "caregiver time" that can be taken intermittently and on top of the normal paid time off and sick leave policies. In fact, Zillow is one of several major employers that have rolled out increased child-care benefits through partners like Bright Horizon amid the pandemic. Last month, Citi announced it was increasing the number of discounted back-up child-care days from 20 to 40 for employees. Additionally, the financial company rolled out nanny placement services, as well as waived membership fees and offered discounts to Sittercity. And for those parents who are juggling remote learning, Citi is offering services that can help parents find educators to help supervise online learning. And if employees are interested in small group learning at home, they can request help finding educators and connecting with other families. "We wanted to be as flexible as possible to support our colleagues," says Sara Wechter, Citi's head of human resources. "There is so much uncertainty right now about how long this will last and we'll all be at home, so we decided not to offer a set number of additional paid days off." "We understand the importance of quality child care and how hard remote learning is for working parents," Wechter tells CNBC Make It, adding it's something she's personally dealing with each and every day as a mother of 10-year-old twins. "Since we are all spending most of our time at home, the lines are blurred between work and personal time." Given this situation, Wechter says employers have an opportunity to play a big role in helping employees navigate all the challenges they're facing, including managing family responsibilities, not just their workloads. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards Companies like Accenture, Bank of America and Microsoft also are offering employees the option to send their children to "learning centers" operated by Bright Horizons, which offer small-group school-day supervision for school-age children, according to a spokesperson for the child-care company. Through partnerships with five leading education providers including Sylvan Learning and Code Ninjas, the program has more than 1,800 learning center locations nationwide that provide children ages 6 through 12 with proctors who can help them with their schoolwork. IBM is also partnering with Bright Horizons to offer employees up to 25 days of subsidized back-up care per year for either center-based care or at-home child care, a spokesman tells CNBC Make It. Additionally, the company recently updated its paid time off policies to provide up to 4 weeks of flexible emergency leave for parents and caregivers. Employees can use this time any way they want, including in two-hour segments, half or full days, or four consecutive weeks. When it comes to providing supervision and back-up care for younger children, Bright Horizons has approximately 725 of their centers currently open with plans to reopen more into the fall. The company typically operates nearly 1,100 child-care centers globally. But these benefits are far from standard for most working parents who are juggling work and remote school this fall. The Catalyst survey found, overall 46% of parents say that either their employer has no plans in place to help with child care or they haven't been made aware of them. And women are more likely to report a lack of support, with 49% of mothers surveyed saying they're not aware of their employer rolling out any child-care support compared to just 39% of men polled. Simply giving everyone more time off is not enough, Nickel says. The work is still waiting for you when you sign back on. Instead, companies need to be asking employees what they can do to help. And it's going to look different for everyone, she says. Parents worry about the long-term effect on their careers SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- From August 20th to 22nd, under numerous obstacles, the 2020 IECIE Shenzhen eCig Expo was successfully held, and the audience's enthusiasm exceeded everyone's expectations. This also heralds the official restart of the electronic cigarette industry in 2020. The 2020 IECIE Shenzhen eCig Expo included 463 exhibitors from the upstream and downstream of the e-cigarette industry with 2,536 brands showcasing their products in the show. The exhibition site attracted 54,809 people to visit; in addition, 349 exhibitors participated in the IECIE Virtual Expo where 107 exhibitors have contributed live shows and broadcasting in the IECIE virtual expo, attracting 4588 overseas professional buyers from 98 countries and regions. As the first large-scale offline professional e-cigarette exhibition after the epidemic, IECIE not only brought the audience new products and new technologies of various brands, but also organized a number of industry professional forums and player welfare activities. Lively Scene The first day of IECIE opened on Thursday with a large number of professional visitors attending the show. It shows that the public's awareness of the e-cigarette industry is constantly improving and the professional visitors are enthusiastic about joining the industry after the long time economic downturn. Popular Engagement Many booths are crowed with numerous visitors and attracting with its excellent design. Many exhibitors claimed they have gained a lot of on-site orders as well as potential clients during the show, and the number of signed orders is considerable. The pods brand is still the protagonist of this year. In addition to the Pods system, the mods kits product is still a "good heart" for many professional vapers. In addition to looking at the vape machine, the e-liquid also plays an important role. The e-liquid, which is blended with various components, is also one of the main products of this exhibition. What's more, the low-temperature herbal products concentrated in Hall 2 have become the new trend of this year, which shows that the industry is diversifying and upgrading. Of course, there are other types of exhibits. Including intelligent vending machines, battery solutions, chips, and packaging materials. As a one-stop upstream and downstream industry chain platform Compared with the previous post-exhibition report in Shenzhen, a very important information disclosure was added this year: the ratio of new and old visitors. 56% of the visitors firstly visit the IECIE Shenzhen eCig Expo this time. It can be seen that the number of people entering the e-cigarette industry in 2019-2020 is very impressive. Compared with the data in 2019, the audience's expectation for pods systems has dropped by nearly 10%, while the call for mods kits has risen up by nearly 10%. It can be seen that although Pods systems are popular, more and more professional audiences are beginning to look for new trend like mods kits. In conclusion, the audience's satisfaction with IECIE is about 85%, and their enthusiasm for publicity and participation in the IECIE eCig Expo again is very high. There is almost no difference from 2019 data. The schedule of 2021 IECIE Shenzhen eCig Expo has also been released now. The next exhibition will be held in Halls 1, 7, 8, 9 of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in September from 3-5 2021. We look forwards to seeing the visitors next year. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276271/IECIE.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276269/IECIE_2.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276270/IECIE_3.jpg 18:40 | Lima, Sep. 14. According to the Head of State, Peru requires stability, certainty and order amid one of the worst health crises in history, with economic and social consequences. In this respect, he regretted that some people are trying to create chaos and instability to serve personal interests at a time when the country faces a difficult situation amid this pandemic by struggling for health, for an improved economy, and for better social indicators. People on the dole will have to apply for up to eight jobs a month and accept any work on offer to qualify for JobSeeker handouts, Scott Morrison says. The Morrison government has vowed to tighten JobSeeker eligibility from September 28 in a bid to encourage Australians to go back to work. People who don't play by the rules face having their payments suspended, while those who are on JobSeeker for a year will have to undertake work to receive dole payments, The Australian reported. Millions were forced to apply for welfare when lockdown shut down businesses across the nation in March. While payments were boosted and rules were relaxed as the number of unemployed Australians surged, tougher regulations are now gradually being reintroduced as virus cases continue to fall and the jobs market shows signs of a faint recovery. Scott Morrison said on Thursday that the government would like to see the rate of unemployment 'come down' New official figures on Thursday showed that the unemployment rate fell from 7.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent as 111,000 were created last month. In July 2019, 686,156 Australians were on the dole. By the end of July 2020, that figure had jumped to 1.45 million. Scott Morrison said on Thursday that the government would like to see the rate of unemployment 'come down' further. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said the mutual obligations are designed to ensure jobseekers get jobs in areas of high demand. 'The government is focused on getting Australians off welfare and into work and ensuring they remain connected with the labour market,' Senator Cash said. Dole recipients were under no obligation to apply for jobs during the height of the pandemic, when benefits payments of JobSeeker and the coronavirus supplement allowed the most hard-up Australians to claim up to $1,340.10 a fortnight from the government. Most claimants receive about $1,100 a fortnight. In July 2019, 686,156 Australians were on the dole. By the end of July 2020, that figure jumped to 1.45 million (pictured: people lining up for Centrelink in April) The payments will drop by $300 on September 25, and again by $200 after December 31. The supplement will be removed entirely by the end of the year, leaving people on JobSeeker on the old Newstart rate of $40 per day. More than 12 per cent of Queenslanders and South Australians rely on handouts. Nine per cent of people in New South Wales are dependent on government support, along with ten per cent of Western Australians, 13 per cent of Tasmanians and ten per cent of Victorians. TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomson Reuters (TSX/NYSE: TRI) today announced the appointments of Deanna Oppenheimer and Simon Paris to the company's Board of Directors, effective November 11, 2020. "Deanna and Simon are forward-thinking, customer-centric leaders who will assist Thomson Reuters to re-imagine how we deliver products, employ technology and execute upon our company's strategic growth initiatives," said David Thomson, chairman of Thomson Reuters. "They represent invaluable additions to our boardroom, and I am delighted to welcome them." Oppenheimer, 62, is the founder of CameoWorks, LLC, a global firm that advises leaders of early stage companies and consultancies, and a senior advisor to Bain & Company. From 2005 to 2011, she served in a number of roles at Barclays PLC, first as chief executive of UK Retail and Business Banking and then as vice chair of Global Retail Banking. From 1985 to 2005, Oppenheimer served in a number of positions at Washington Mutual, Inc., with her last role as president of Consumer Banking. She is also chair of the board of directors of Hargreaves Lansdown plc, the senior independent director of Tesco plc and a member of the board of directors of Whitbread plc. Paris, 50, is chief executive officer (CEO) of Finastra, a global financial technology (fintech) provider. Paris joined Finastra (previously Misys) as president in 2015 and also served as its chief sales officer, before being appointed deputy chief executive officer in 2017 and CEO in July 2018. He previously worked at SAP from 2007 to 2015, where he held a number of senior leadership positions, including president, Industry Cloud. Paris was also previously a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company. He currently chairs the World Trade Board, an organization initiated by Finastra that is made up of global leaders, innovative thinkers, industry influencers and subject matter experts from the different corners of trade, finance and commerce. He is also a member of the board of directors of Everbridge, Inc. Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business information services. Our products include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world's most global news service Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters, visit tr.com and for the latest world news, reuters.com. CONTACTS MEDIA Andrew Green Senior Director, Corporate Affairs +1 347 659 4857 [email protected] INVESTORS Frank J. Golden Head of Investor Relations +1 646 223 5288 [email protected] SOURCE Thomson Reuters Related Links https://www.reuters.com/ EDWARDSVILLE Madison County is opening up phone lines for one day next month to take applicants names for the Rental Housing Support Program (RHSP) waiting list. Community Development Administrator Trudy Bodenbach said that from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Oct. 10, phone lines will be open for applicants to call in for the RHSP waiting list. This event is the only way for applicants be placed on the list, Bodenbach said. She explained that due to a technical glitch, those who called on Sept. 5 were unable to leave a message. Because of the glitch, we will be reopening the line, she said. The phone number to call is (618) 296-5757. Applicants will be required to leave their name, address and phone number. The purpose of the RHSP is to help address the need for decent, affordable, permanent rental housing for low-income families. It is a unit-based rent subsidy program funded through the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and is targeted to low-income individuals and families at or below 30 percent of Area Median Income (AMI). Their maximum annual income limits vary based on the household size. The program subsidy is tied to the rental unit, not the tenant, throughout the duration of the program. Landlords will have an IHDA-approved Tenant Selection Plan that will guide leasing and occupancy practices. Madison County Community Development (MCCD) and all participating landlords are required to follow Fair Housing and other applicable local, state and federal laws. MCCD pays the subsidy directly to the landlord based on the difference between the approved contract rent and the tenant-paid contribution. The income of the prospective tenant determines the amount of rent they pay according to the IHDA Tenant Contribution Schedule. A COVID-19 vaccine is predicted to be available by November. But the most vulnerable would get it first. A COVID-19 vaccine candidate is shown at the recent China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it will be the late second quarter, third quarter 2021 before the American public returns to regular life. The CDC head made the statements at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee panel on the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield speaks at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee reviewing coronavirus response efforts Wednesday in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images) A coronavirus vaccine is predicted to be available as early as November. However, the supply will be prioritized for the most vulnerable in our population first. Americans who are at lower risk will be offered the shot more gradually. Redfield also noted that social distancing measures, hand washing and wearing masks will remain important even after the vaccine becomes available. He noted that there will be a time lag between the availability of a vaccine and it having a measurable effect on the pandemic. Read More: 2 HBCU presidents join COVID-19 vaccine trial, want students to follow I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, Redfield said, because the vaccine is unlikely to produce the desired immune response in everyone who gets it. Redfield predicted that it could be six to nine months after its approval before the vaccine has a measurable effect on American life. Read More: White House staffer tests positive for COVID-19: report At a news conference just hours after those statements, President Donald Trump contradicted Redfield, saying that he made a mistake when he said that were ready to distribute immediately to a vast section to the country. Trump said that he called the CDC director after his statement, and Redfield didnt tell me that. Read More: Trump indoor rally site fined $3K for virus violations He said that Redfield made an incorrect statement. The president, hoping that a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready in time for the 2020 election, has maintained that a vaccine could be ready by October, however, experts maintain that it will be November at the earliest. The CDC told public health officials in all 50 states that they should prepare to begin the distribution of a vaccine by Nov. 1. Have you subscribed to theGrios Dear Culture podcast? Download our newest episodes now! The post US should have enough virus vaccines to return to regular life by end of 2021: CDC appeared first on TheGrio. The information contained in this release was correct as at 31 August 2020. Information on the Company's up to date net asset values can be found on the London Stock Exchange Website at: https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-home.html. BLACKROCK GREATER EUROPE INVESTMENTS TRUST PLC (LEI - 5493003R8FJ6I76ZUW55) All information is at 31 August 2020 and unaudited. Performance at month end with net income reinvested One Month Three Months One Year Three Years Launch (20 Sep 04) Net asset value (undiluted) 4.5% 12.9% 17.2% 39.2% 512.4% Net asset value* (diluted) 4.7% 12.9% 17.1% 39.1% 512.7% Share price 2.3% 13.2% 18.0% 43.1% 500.1% FTSE World Europe ex UK 2.2% 5.7% 0.7% 7.1% 271.2% * Diluted for treasury shares and subscription shares. Sources: BlackRock and Datastream At month end Net asset value (capital only): 456.23p Net asset value (including income): 460.95p Net asset value (capital only)1: 456.23p Net asset value (including income)1: 460.95p Share price: 447.00p Discount to NAV (including income): 3.0% Discount to NAV (including income)1: 3.0% Net gearing: 5.7% Net yield2: 1.3% Total assets (including income): 388.7m Ordinary shares in issue3: 84,323,101 Ongoing charges4: 1.1% 1 Diluted for treasury shares. 2 Based on a final dividend of 4.10p per share for the year ended 31 August 2019 and an interim dividend of 1.75p per share for the year ending 31 August 2020. 3 Excluding 26,005,837 shares held in treasury. 4 Calculated as a percentage of average net assets and using expenses, excluding interest costs, after relief for taxation, for the year ended 31 August 2019. Sector Analysis Total Assets (%) Country Analysis Total Assets (%) Technology 26.0 Denmark 18.8 Industrials 18.3 Switzerland 14.5 Health Care 17.3 Netherlands 12.2 Consumer Goods 11.1 France 12.2 Consumer Services 9.2 Germany 10.0 Financials 8.5 Italy 5.9 Oil & Gas 3.8 Sweden 5.6 Basic Materials 3.5 United Kingdom 4.0 Telecommunications 1.9 Russia 3.4 Net Current Assets 0.4 Israel 2.7 ----- Spain 2.5 100.0 Belgium 2.3 ===== Finland 2.3 Ireland 2.2 Poland 0.8 Greece 0.2 Net Current Assets 0.4 ----- 100.0 ===== Top 10 Holdings Country Fund % ASML Netherlands 6.1 Sika Switzerland 6.0 SAP Germany 5.9 Lonza Group Switzerland 5.2 Kering France 5.2 Novo Nordisk Denmark 5.1 Royal Unibrew Denmark 5.1 DSV Denmark 4.5 RELX United Kingdom 4.1 Safran France 3.6 Commenting on the markets, Stefan Gries, representing the Investment Manager, noted: During the month, the Company's NAV rose 4.5% and the share price rose 2.3%. For reference, the FTSE World Europe Ex UK Index returned 2.2% during the period. Europe ex UK markets were up during August with cyclical assets leading the strong market. Defensive sectors including healthcare, utilities and telecommunications lagged the market rally. The rising market was driven by better economic figures as well as hopes for successful Covid-19 vaccine trials. Fundamental news were fairly limited during the month. The Company outperformed the reference index over the month, driven by strong stock selection while sector allocation was also positive. In sector terms, the Company benefitted from a higher allocation to industrials, technology and consumer services as well as a lower allocation to utilities. Our lower weighting to defensive areas of the market including utilities was also positive for relative returns while an overweight exposure to the healthcare sector detracted. A number of more cyclically exposed assets such as DSV, Kingspan and Sika were amongst the top contributors to returns. DSV continued to perform following strong Q2 results and enjoyed further tailwinds from the continued recovery in trade volumes in August. Building materials company Kingspan reported strong numbers during the month, which is testament to very strong management execution. The company over-delivered on costs and reported revenues ahead of consensus. Kingspan benefitted from its diverse end market exposure seeing good trading in North America, Germany and the Scandinavian countries while the UK was slightly weaker. Strong medium term growth drivers for Kingspan include the continued shift towards more energy efficient buildings as well as its involvement in building new facilities for electric vehicles. Sika also continued to contribute strongly to Company performance after announcing H1 results ahead of expectations back in July. There was little stock specific news in August, aside from qualitative comments that the business has seen an acceleration in growth in key markets like North America and Europe in July and August. The technology sector contributed equally strongly. Hexagon, an industrial and software conglomerate, drove returns as the company pre-announced Q2 earnings with sales c. 6% and EBIT 34% ahead of expectations. The business specializes in the provision of geo-mapping and monitoring software and sensors, as well as plant management and automation systems. Its products have applications in diverse end markets including smart phones, mining automation, construction surveying, and agriculture optimization. Also within technology, Danish IT service provider Netcompany was positive for performance as management continued to execute strongly, delivering a strong Q2 update and reiterating guidance of 18-20% organic sales growth for 2020 overall. Customer demand during the crisis was virtually unchanged as many customers prioritized digitalization projects and the company was quickly able to move to working remotely. They further benefitted from a diverse client base serving various customers for the financial, telecommunication and media, retail and trade, energy and supply, service and industrial sector, as well as governments and municipalities. We believe Netcompany's end markets offer attractive growth opportunities for many years to come. Another positive contributor was Neste Oil. Shares continued to perform well following solid results in July. Furthermore, the renewable diesel manufacturer signed three new contracts with US airlines to supply them with sustainable aviation fuel at San Francisco airport. The Company's holding in luxury group Kering contributed on hopes of travel retail coming back after having been slightly weaker in previous months. With the help from our data scientist, we continue to closely monitor consumer spending trends across all regions. Not owning large, defensive benchmark constituents including Nestle, Sanofi and Roche aided returns as these names generally lagged the market. Detractors included some of the Company's holdings in the healthcare sector. Lonza, DiaSorin, Grifols and Novo Nordisk were all amongst the bottom performers despite a lack of stock specific news flow. A number of these positions saw a degree of profit taking after having performed very strongly over the last few months. Elsewhere, not owning Deutsche Post, Siemens and Daimler was also negative for performance. Shares in the latter rose as the German car company confirmed strong trading in China during May and June. At the end of the period the Company had a higher allocation than the reference index towards technology, consumer services, industrials and health care. The Company had a neutral weighting towards oil & gas and underweight allocation to consumer goods, financials, utilities, basic materials and telecoms. Outlook Over recent years, many investors have avoided exposure to European equities owing to concerns around political risk, rising populism, a challenged financial system and the regions larger than average exposure to China. We have long been of the view that one needs to take an active approach to investing in European equities. With this in mind, we didn't need to be positive on Europe as a region to offer our shareholders exposure to some highly attractive companies that happened to be listed in the region. The response to the fallout from COVID 19 has the potential to change the more negative perception on the asset class as a whole. The proposed 750bn EU Recovery Fund is a great step of solidarity for the bloc and one that can potentially bring greater fiscal coordination. This fund, made up of 390bn of grants and 360bn of loans, could create net transfers ranging from 3% to 20% of GDP for countries such as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. To be funded from issuance of common EU bonds, this fund marks the first instance of debt mutualisation for the region - a step which will act to bring in yield spreads for those southern economies and potentially reduce the ever looming risk associated with a break-up of the bloc. We believe this can bring down the overall risk premium for European equities. In this context, both the economy and local stock markets appear well positioned to make up lost ground, potentially transforming European equities into a standout opportunity in the developed world while notably providing further subsidies for growth in Emerging Europe. 17 September 2020 ENDS Latest information is available by typing www.brgeplc.co.uk on the internet, "BLRKINDEX" on Reuters, "BLRK" on Bloomberg or "8800" on Topic 3 (ICV terminal). Neither the contents of the Manager's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Manager's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement. This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. A unique and exciting detail of Hubble's snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm traveling around the planet at 350 mph. Hubble shows that the Great Red Spot, rolling counterclockwise in the planet's southern hemisphere, is plowing into the clouds ahead of it, forming a cascade of white and beige ribbons. Jupiter's icy moon Europa, thought to hold potential ingredients for life, is visible to the left of the gas giant. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. Hubble's sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet's turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the famous Great Red Spot region gearing up to change coloragain. A unique and exciting detail of Hubble's snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm traveling around the planet at 350 miles per hour (560 kilometers per hour). This single plume erupted on Aug. 18, 2020and ground-based observers have discovered two more that appeared later at the same latitude. While it's common for storms to pop up in this region every six years or so, often with multiple storms at once, the timing of the Hubble observations is perfect for showing the structure in the wake of the disturbance, during the early stages of its evolution. Trailing behind the plume are small, rounded features with complex "red, white, and blue" colors in Hubble's ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light image. Such discrete features typically dissipate on Jupiter, leaving behind only changes in cloud colors and wind speeds, but a similar storm on Saturn led to a long-lasting vortex. The differences in the aftermaths of Jupiter and Saturn storms may be related to the contrasting water abundances in their atmospheres, since water vapor may govern the massive amount of stored-up energy that can be released by these storm eruptions. Hubble shows that the Great Red Spot, rolling counterclockwise in the planet's southern hemisphere, is plowing into the clouds ahead of it, forming a cascade of white and beige ribbons. The Great Red Spot is currently an exceptionally rich red color, with its core and outermost band appearing deeper red. An image of Jupiter taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light on Aug. 25, 2020, is giving researchers an entirely new view of the giant planet and offers insights into the altitude and distribution of the planet's haze and particles. This complements Hubble's visible-light pictures that show the ever-changing cloud patterns. In this photo, the parts of Jupiter's atmosphere that are at higher altitude, especially over the poles, look red from atmospheric particles absorbing ultraviolet light. Conversely, the blue-hued areas represent the ultraviolet light being reflected off the planet. A new storm at upper left, which erupted on Aug. 18, 2020, is grabbing the attention of scientists in this image. The "clumps" trailing the white plume appear to be absorbing ultraviolet light, similar to the center of the Great Red Spot, and Red Spot Jr. directly below it. This provides researchers with more evidence that this storm may last longer on Jupiter than most storms. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team Researchers say the Great Red Spot now measures about 9,800 miles across, big enough to swallow Earth. The super-storm is still shrinking as noted in telescopic observations dating back to 1930, but the reason for its dwindling size is a complete mystery. Another feature researchers are noticing has changed is Oval BA, nicknamed by astronomers as Red Spot Jr., which appears just below the Great Red Spot in this image. For the past few years, Red Spot Jr. has been fading in color to its original shade of white after appearing red in 2006. However, now the core of this storm appears to be darkening slightly. This could hint that Red Spot Jr. is on its way to turning to a color more similar to its cousin once again. Hubble's image shows that Jupiter is clearing out its higher altitude white clouds, especially along the planet's equator, where an orangish hydrocarbon smog wraps around it. The icy moon Europa, thought to hold potential ingredients for life, is visible to the left of the gas giant. This Hubble image is part of yearly maps of the entire planet taken as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL. The program provides annual Hubble global views of the outer planets to look for changes in their storms, winds, and clouds. Explore further Hubble showcases new portrait of Jupiter Yves here. A few months back, I described my Luddite biases about telemedicine. On the one hand, the idea of allowing established patients to consult with an MD outside an office visit is a big plus. Even before getting to Covid-19 concerns, it saves patient time and hopefully allows patients whose work or family demands makes it hard to free up time during normal office hours to get treated. On the other, the US being the world capital of rentierism, it isnt hard to anticipate that telemedicine will often provide lower service levels with no corresponding price reductions. Below, we feature a post by a clinician who confirms our concerns. He had advocated telemedicine in the pre-Covid era. He warns that telemedicine is creating cookie-cutter by design doc in a box practices, for instance restricting participating MDs in the tests they can run. It had not occurred to me that the telemedicine services provided to MDs would be anything more than established MDs consulting with patients by phone, as they routinely did in Australia in the early 2000s, and/or getting a secure videoconference line. Earlier this year, in Alabama, my mothers crusty MD reluctantly did her annual exam by phone. But my regular doctor in New York insisted on video (I needed an office visit for her to consider giving me a new scrip), claiming it was necessary to be HIPPA compliant. That made me wonder if she thought she was required to retain a recording. I didnt find that acceptable (I also generally hate videoconferencing with the passion of a thousand suns) and flew to New York instead (yes, I am insanely protective of my medical privacy).1 This discussion of the tech of telemedicine makes me think I am less nuts than I did before. This post doesnt acknowledge another pet peeve: in Australia, telemedicine in the form of phone consults for established patients was well established. It was also understood to be a supplement to office visits, not a substitute for them, and priced accordingly. Due to Covid-19, CMS mandated payment parity for telemedicine visits. This is unfortunate since for some, perhaps arguably many types of concerns, a telemedicine session simply cannot allow for as much diagnosis as a live visit. The doctor cannot listen to your lungs and heart, stick a light in your ear, see your skin color accurately, poke your belly if it needs poking, or examine body parts that are not behaving normally. And if the doctor provides a treatment, it would seem probable that at least for some patients, the placebo effect would be reduced. In other words, a practice that ought to be a boon looks set to become a vehicle for crapification. And the US medical system is pretty crappy to begin with. By Cetona. Originally published at Health Care Renewal 1. Introduction. This post might just as easily be entitled tales from the crypt, so far down the netherworld chute have American public health and medical workers been plunged. Nowadays whenever I speak to fellow physicians and tell them Ive moved on from my own front line patient care, we exchange these utterances: they say congratulations, Im envious and I say my condolences. But the topic for today is more focal: telemedicine in the Age of Coronavirus. Telemedicine, or telemed, doesnt quite fit neatly into my ongoing series on why my danders up. So for now lets set it aside and come back another time. It turns out that telemedremote diagnosis and treatment using telecomsis, like so many other innovations in health care, a two-edged sword. Lets look at it and see if we can come up with provisional answers to what, exactly, it means, beyond fear of face-to-face, to see its use soaring these days. Ive observed telemedicine now in a number of settingslots of testimonials from colleagues, family, friends, and in just one instance myself as patient. Most of this is quite recent, for reasons well get to. Ive never practiced it, never had time on my schedule to Zoom into some patients bedroom. Thats just an artifact of the timing. But I used to teach about it. And now its arrived like gangbusters after languishing for decades in the ever-hopeful hearts of long standing organizations (here, here) devoted in part or in full to digital medicine. The why for this onrush of telemedicine exposure is an easy one. In the Before Times, we had reimbursement problems that impeded it. All the other barriers, by, say 2010, were secondary. All our clocks now have a thick black line between BC and AD. Before Coronavirus versus After Donald. Back in the BC, we cant get it paid for. Now, in the almost-AD: HHS rushes out new emergency regs, enabling telemed. With the pandemic, the new regs arrived just when providers, deprived of adequate PPE and in some cases a big chunk of salary, really needed the option. Whether they actually approved of it or not, different story. Necessity is the mother. All the rest is dross. The above remarks set the stage. We just need to remind ourselves in passing: theres just not much scientific evidence for this technologys safety or efficacy. Rather, like so much else in digital medicine, telemed is probably here to stay because of one or another regulatory or epidemiologic crisis. Contrariwise, its not an evidence-based imperative, at least not with respect to clinical results. For providers, of course, it may well mean survival, a different story. So until we get more convincing science, here, for this blogs intrepid readers, are some narrative bits and bites to chew on: telemedicine, the good, the bad, and the ugly. 2. The Good. The single telemed session I undertook as a patient, reviewing some physiatric maneuvers, went rather well. So, too, did a family members. When teaching about telemedicine I used to fret to think about its lack of touch. A cardiologist recently related some of his difficulties hed hadthe need to evaluate heart and lung sounds, to feel the liverand how he recently almost lost a patient by relying on telemed. In that case, the common dreaded complaint of Im so tired proved to stem from complete heart block. But this cardiologist didnt diagnosis his patients CHB by telemed. He did it when he had the good sense to send that patient to the ER. Conversely, I watched a vertigo patient properly and fully worked up, including appropriate neurologic testing. Vertigo is so often of the benign positional variety that this all made sense, with discussion of all the diagnostic and therapeutic maneuvers, the extensive taking of a history that can nail some diagnoses, and discussion of follow-up. There are lots of instances where such outcomes are possible. Physical therapy is another area where a session may go quite well. Then, still in the good column, theres the public health benefit. An Associated Press release about telemedicine and coronavirus in Florida recentlythis was late Augustunderscores the benefit. The AP release, available widely, e.g. here, didnt seem to get a lot of traction beyond its own republication. Maybe it was just drowned out by late summer vacation blues, gladiatorial politics, and whatever other Daily Outrage were all lately subjected to. In a relatively underserved area of Jacksonville, the site (or one site) of the GOP Convention days earlier, an aging public health nurse, like so many health workers faced with COVID-19, had a telemed session with a family physician, Dr. Cain. Both belonged to a minority community especially hard hit by the virus. Which is to say, hard hit by recent Florida politicians methodical dismembering of the states public health infrastructure. Privatization is one causative element of the systematic down-rating of public health in places like Florida. Ideology is undoubtedly another. Poor peoples bodies are a favorite target of budget-cutters. They really dont matter, right? So those bodies get thrown under the bus. Always were. Telemedicine can be a boon to the underserved, a patch on our deficits in social justice and public health. That was the case for Ms. Wilson, Dr. Cains patient, who received assistance and did well. In the right handslargely, Id say, telemedicine offered by academic health centers (AHCs), but also in community hands such as Dr. Cainsit can make a difference in narrowing the gap. Further, lest we view this as somehow second class, many patients in all socioeconomic categories prefer itsee the next section belowto going in and sitting around in waiting-rooms at either AHCs or community clinics. 3. The Bad. Thats true even in the best of times. But as we know, right now were not in those times. On to the bad and the ugly. For the readers consideration I submit a recent report (personal communication) from a colleaguea highly educated and sophisticated tech CEOwhod enrolled as a patient in one of those with six you get egg roll deals with a telemedicine start-up. Right now a great number of telemedicine providers are based on free-standing start-ups: I know this because on a daily basis I receive at least one entreaty from such companies to throw my own hat in their ring. (Which was damned tempting by the way.) Ive lost count, and I wonder whether theres any way to count up the entities that provide which kind of care. If there is, please add a comment below and tell me where that studys to be found. Meantime, lets just put out there a typologythen let me how many of each you think there are. Academic centers operations, now rampant, and generally fairly good (or as good as Zoom), in the AD time of coronavirus Dr. Cains operation and other, similar, community-based ones (private/small group) Start-ups, which might or might not be conceived as extensions of physical docs-in-boxes You tell me. Meantime, having talked to a lot of providers and patients who earn, or save, cash by participating in the doc-in-a-box style telemed shops, Id like to tell my tech confreres tale. Actually, let me let him tell it in his own words, substituting StartUp for the particular telemed company name. I was overdue for my yearly physical, and since I had a subscription to StartUp, I decided to use the telehealth service for my physical. I didnt have any major complaints, but I wanted to get some routine labs taken to make sure all was well. I fired up the app and after giving a brief description of my concern and a few minute wait, I was virtually face to face with a doctor. Ive been on Propecia in the past, and have recently started it again during the COVID lockdown. I knew my family physician often ordered a PSA test while I was on Propecia, so I thought it would be prudent to ask for the lab to be included in my blood work. Things didnt go so well. Me: Im on Propecia, and I know my family doctor often ordered a PSA test in the past, can we include that? Doctor: Whats Propecia? Me: Its Finasteride. Doctor: Is that something your doctor prescribed? Me: Yes. Doctor [emphasis added here and below]: Well, they dont like us to order labs that require followup, so Me: OK (I figured at this point it wasnt worth arguing the finer details of [StartUp] policy and I was reasonably sure the PSA would have been normal) Doctor: Im ordering the labs, but sometimes they dont go through, so if theres a problem, just contact support and theyll sort things out. Also, dont forget to follow up once you get the results. OK, so other than not knowing what Propecia is, not being able to order the PSA test and the fact that none of the tests might actually have been ordered, the call went pretty well. I made an appointment with Quest Diagnostics through the app for early the next morning to have the blood drawn. After arriving at Quest and signing in, I was told there werent any lab tests that had been requested for me. I was prepared for this, and showed the receptionist the StartUp lab order PDF. She looked at it and quickly said that they couldnt accept this as the order didnt include the doctors name and she wouldnt know where to send the results. I left, went back to the car, launched StartUp and requested another virtual consult. After explaining to the doctor what Quest told me, he said it was strange but that he would re-request the labs. Armed with the new lab request, I went back to Quest, and spoke to the same receptionist. She noted that it looked like someone had done something but there still werent any lab tests to be found. She also noted that their systems werent connected to anyone else. At this point, I pushed back as I was fairly certain the lab tests were lurking in the Quest system and it was possible that the receptionist just didnt have experience or training with StartUp lab orders. After some back and forth I was able to get her to enter the number provided with my lab order and was cleared to get the test. As an added bonus, the Quest receptionist incorrectly told me that my insurance had been cancelled, only to later realize that she had entered my ID number incorrectly.- This was on a Friday, so I expected I would receive results early the following week. On Tuesday I received a notification that my labs were available in the Quest portal. I checked out the labs and then opened the StartUp app to initiate a follow up call to review the results. Only one problem, according to StartUp the labs were still pending. I sent a message to StartUp support and they said that normally results are available in the app as soon as the lab has them and that they would work with engineering to figure out what had happened. Twenty=four hours later, theres still no word from engineering and the labs are still listed as pending in the app. I am lucky enough to have a distinguished physician as a friend who was kind enough to look over the labs and give me the all clear. Without this connection, I would have been left wondering about the results and given that the StartUp doctor didnt seem familiar with Propecia (a common medication), Im not sure I would have fully trusted their evaluation of the results. Its no wonder that people who go to doc-in-a-box (or NP-in-a-box) sites typically do so for only the simplest and most straightforward complaints. And its no wonder that the venture and hedge funds that capitalize these outfits do so in many cases while advertising they focus only on high-yield, low-risk diagnoses such as erectile dysfunction and contraception. Maybe the odd UTI or URI. Oh, and colleagues who work for them tell me they exercise all sorts of mind-control, telling the providers what to say and what they cant say. Sadly, docs do this stuff (in category 3 above), often to moonlight and they just swallow their gall. Easy enough on the net to find out, however, exactly what they think about working for these outfits. But how many patients buy into it, as my colleague did, not knowing all this background? In so many cases, therefore, its all just another golden exercise in American ingenuity and lapping the cream. In no way is it, in its free-standing version, a response to the challenge of improving health care. Rather, its the usual and sad response to improving investors wallet contents. 4. Footnote: the Price of Admission. You cant do telemedicine without a good connection. But many who might most advantageously avail themselves of telemed consultation dont have that adequate connection. For those whod like to read more about this conundrum, Brookings has just published a Techtank blog, by Visiting Fellow Tom Wheeler. He offers useful solutions in a piece entitled broadband in red and blue, with some concrete and hopeful ways of redressing whats essentially yet another AD (After Drumpf) problem: the way the US has been closing the Digital Divide more assiduously for red than for blue states. The challenge, per Wheeler: [t]here are almost three times as many Americans without a broadband subscription in blue urban areas than in red state rural areas. People currently thinking about back-to-school issues, and kids telelearning, probably arent thinking quite as much about telemedicine, despite the striking parallel. But they should Beforethey get sick. The problems of telemedicine mirror those of the larger society, as does health equity mirroring societal equity. This will come as a surprise, no doubt, to precisely no one. Lets hope after November we get to putting the solutions, and the promises of telemedicine, into more socially just practice. Advertisement A Swedish design company has revealed its concept for a cargo vessel with 260-foot-tall retractable 'sails', which it says can reduce emissions by 90 per cent. The 650-foot-long aerodynamic Oceanbird vessel can transport 7,000 cars at an average speed of 10 knots, powered mostly by wind. A transatlantic crossing on the vessel will take around 12 days - only slightly longer than today's fossil-fuel powered cargo ships. Stockholm-based designers Wallenius Marine have successfully completed sea trials of a 20-foot-long model, in preparation for building the real thing. When completed, it will be the world's largest sailing vessel at 650 feet long and 130 feet wide. Wallenius Marine says the global shipping community needs to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, to help reverse climate change. Scroll down for video The usual aviation-inspired Swedish design will make it possible to power the largest ocean-going vessels by wind Oceanbird shows that the maritime industry can bring about major change and that zero-emission shipping is possible using wind, it claims. It could replace large vessels designed to transport heavy cargoes over large distances for long periods. 'We are proud to present our third iteration of our design, which we have worked with for several years,' said Per Tunell, COO of Wallenius Marine. 'Shipping is a central function in global trade and stands for around 90 per cent of all transported goods, but it also contributes to emissions it is critical that shipping becomes sustainable. 'Wind is the most interesting energy source for ocean transports and with the 80 metre high wing sails on Oceanbird, we are developing the ocean-going freighters of the future.' Today, shipping accounts for 90 per cent of global freight and is a cost-effective method of moving goods and raw materials around the world. Diesel engines have meant faster crossings but at a heavy cost to the environment, as they emit carbon dioxide, sulphur and other harmful gases. Wind will power the cargo ship across the Atlantic with 7,000 cars in its hull. It will be possible to retract the wing sails, reducing their height by approximately 200 feet As a greener alternative, Wallenius Marine is relying more on wind power with a distinctive design, which actually has more in common with aeroplane wings than the ropes and chains of traditional ship rigging. The sails are made of a mixture of metal and composite and are twice the height of those on the largest sailing vessels around today. The incredible height of the sails harnesses the maximum possible wind power while cutting emissions. The wind originally helped humanity to discover far-flung regions of our planet, the Swedish firm says, and now it can help preserve it. Oceanbird reduces emissions by 90 per cent. The eventual goal for the Swedish company to be able to eventually operate freighters with zero emissions 'Oceanbird is about revolutionising technology that will put an end to the era of fossil-driven cargo ships in maritime transport. 'The wind is back or, to be more precise, the wind has always been there, but no one has been able to use it to power a cargo ship crossing the Atlantic with 7,000 cars in its hull, until now. 'When the first ship makes its maiden voyage, it will be a historical occasion for maritime transport.' It will also be possible to retract the tall wing sails, reducing their height by around 200 feet, to stop them from hitting bridges and adjust how much wind is being exploited. 'Retracting can control speed and compensate when loads from wind fluctuates,' Wallenius Marine commercial vice president Richard Jeppsson told MailOnline. The wing sails are made of a mixture of metal and composite and are twice the height of those on the largest sailing vessels around today The overall height of the vessel from the water line up is 345 feet, but with the sails fully down it measures 146 feet. The vessel will also be fitted with engines to enable them to manoeuvre in and out of port and to bolster the wind power in emergencies. It's not decided what will power the engines, but the company is looking at liquid biogas, a renewable fuel produced from residues from the fishing industry, as an option. 'In parallel we are looking into other solutions, combination with batteries and others,' Jeppsson told MailOnline. Wallenius Marine is not yet certain whether or not the vessel will be manned. 'Regulations about safe manning puts it to 18 crew on the vessels of this size today,' said Jeppsson. 'We think it would be possible to operate with a smaller number of crew, but today the regulations in place do not allow that.' The firm said it can evaluate performance and safety using computer simulations and physical experiments before the first one is built. The ship will be ready for customers to order at the end of 2021 and the first vessel will be delivered at the end of 2024, although prices are undisclosed. If realised, the concept could drastically reduce carbon dioxide in the worlds transport chains. The vessels will also be fitted with fuel-burning engines to enable them to manoeuvre in and out of port, and for emergency situations The UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) has already set a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from international shipping by 40 per cent by 2030. At the start of this year, new rules from the IMO aiming to cut the amount of sulphur emitted by shipping vessels, aimed at improving human health by reducing air pollution. Since January 1, ships must use fuel with a sulphur content of 0.5 per cent, down from 3.5 per cent, or install devices that strip out the toxic pollutant, known as scrubbers. As a result, refiners and shipping companies are expected to spend billions of dollars in the years ahead on ensuring fuel and engines comply, although the coronavirus pandemic has reportedly hampered this. In case you missed it, Taco Bell launched its first wine, Jalapeno Noir, this week. Yes, wine. Not beer, not a canned margarita and definitely not a hard seltzer. Nor is it a wine cooler wrapped up in signature purple and/or pink Taco Bell colours. Instead, Jalapeno Noir is an elegantly-packaged red wine born to be paired with its new Toasted Cheesy Chalupa, a rich and crunchy snack made with six-month aged cheddar baked into the shell, that, quite honestly, begs for the acidity of a bright wine to cut the fat. Surprised? Not me. Its 2020. Be ready for anything, including a few minutes of amused appreciation for the clever little touches on the Cheesy Chalupa Estates label, including a minimalist rendering of a Chalupa and a classy black-and-white version of the bell logo. The best part is the back-label copy, though: This isnt just a bottle of wine youre holding, it reads. This is what happens when you paddle out to meet the ever-crashing wave of time and hang ten inside the barrel of creation. This is a pairing made by fate. Although the person who wrote this was arguably having way too much fun with this bit of creativity, the truth is that the Jalapeno Noir/Toasted Cheesy Chalupa combo is a good pairing. We had it on Wednesdaylaunch dayand served it up on proper plates for an al fresco dinner. Now, it could have been the wine, but I found myself quite charmed by what happened to be my first Taco Bell dining experience. Ever. Yes, really. Thing is, I like to cook my own food. I find it therapeutic and I like the challenge. And, unlike a lot of people, I actually prefer the taste of vegetables and whatnot to fast food. Still, like most people, I love to indulge once in a while in a super high-fat, salty, messy explosion of flavour from a fast-food meal, especially on a road trip. I enjoy the occasional binge so much, in fact, that I once ordered two Big Macs. True story. For the record, I didnt have another for a long time after that. It might be a while before I order another chalupa, also. To me, its the sort of thing that you want to give your arteries a little time to recover from. I could have the wine more often, though. Jalapeno Noir is way better than a fast-food wine has any business beingits a perfectly tasty 12.7 per cent, cool-climate 2018 Pinot Noir. Hardly surprising, once you discover that it was made at Queenston Mile Vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake. (Apologies to anyone who immediately put a visit to Cheesy Chalupa Estates on their bucket list. Theres no Taco Bell winery. If there were, though, I like to think the show-stopper wine pairing would be Border Sauce and bubbles.) You can, however, visit Queenston Mile, a new offshoot of Creekside Estate Winery in Jordan Stationon the other side of the Welland Canalto taste renowned winemaker Rob Powers exquisite premium sparkling wines, pet-nats, cool climate whites and, of course, Pinot Noir. Taco Bell made a great choice when it went with Queenston, both in terms of the quality of the wine and the fact that the company appears to have recognized that, in this current cultural and economic moment, a chalupa wine pairing promotion in Canada desperately needed a Canadian wine. The Toasted Cheesy Chalupa promotion is exclusive to Canada, and so we wanted to partner with a local Canadian winery too, says Kat Garcia, director of brand marketing. With Taco Bell unveiling its fanciest menu item yet, we wanted to celebrate with something equally fancy. Some will probably ask if its too fancy. I dont think so. Somms love doing cheeky pairings with popcorn (sparkling), chicken nuggets (rose) and fish filets (sauvignon blanc). Theres even a book coming out this fall called Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World by sommelier and wine writer Vanessa Price, who even goes so far as to find a pairing for Cheetos (Sancerre). The Taco Bell promo is decidedly on-trend. When we checked the day after launch, Queenston Mile was already sold out of Jalapeno Noir and Uber Eats was already sold out of the combo chalupa and wine pairing ($25) that was launched at the Yonge and Sheppard location in Toronto and the Upper James store in Hamilton. Dont worry, though, theyre restocking it as we speak at select locations in Hamilton and Toronto. And then you can enjoy the wine (and the copy on the label) yourself. As in: Patience gave the Toasted Cheesy Chalupa its sumptuous depth of flavour and crisp, alluring texture. Persistence suffused this wine with notes of wild strawberry, cherry and beetroot. It gave it spice. It made it smell vaguely of leather. It turned it awesome. Yes, its over the top. And Im not sure I get the leather. But all back-label wine descriptions are more fanciful fiction than reality. At least this one is hilarious. So, take your time, it continues. Enjoy them together. Fate has never tasted so good. Well, I dont know about fate. It was definitely a welcome moment of levity, thoughwhich most of us can use right now. The adverse events that led to a pause in trials evaluating AstraZeneca Plcs Covid-19 vaccine candidate may not have been associated with the vaccine itself, according to a document outlining participant information that was posted online by the Oxford University. Also read: Oxfords coronavirus vaccine AstraZeneca trial resumes after UK green light Enrollment in the British drugmakers global trials of the vaccine, which it is developing with researchers at Oxford University, was paused on Sept. 6, after a participant in its U.K. trial had a serious side effect thought to be a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis. Safety reviews were conducted when volunteers in the trials for testing the vaccine candidate, called AZD1222 or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, developed unexplained neurological symptoms including changed sensation or limb weakness, and the study was paused while a safety review took place, according to the document. Also read: Suspension of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trials showed fallacy of approach: RDIF CEO After independent review, these illnesses were either considered unlikely to be associated with the vaccine or there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine, the document said. The vaccine trials have resumed in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, but not yet in the United States. AstraZeneca and Oxford University did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. By Azernews By Akbar Mammadov Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov has said that Azerbaijani servicemen from soldier to general are ready to liberate the countrys Armenian-occupied territories. The minister made the remarks in the Training and Education Center of the Armed Forces on September 16. Addressing the meeting with deputy commanders of army corps, formations, and individual military units, Hasanov said that a high level of combat readiness and vigilance of military personnel must be maintained at the front. He also gave instructions to immediately and strongly suppress possible large-scale provocations of the Armenian armed forces in various directions in the frontline. The minister also spoke about activities for combat training in the Army, providing and equipping units, as well as increasing combat capabilities. In addition, the minister analyzed the activities on combat training and moral- psychological support over the past period of the current year. Azerbaijani authorities have recently voiced discontent over the failure of peace negotiations with Armenia. President Ilham Aliyev said in July that the work of the OSCE Minsk group mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has proven ineffective, reminding that the mediators have failed to respond to Armenias provocations. The president also described as meaningless the negotiations that have been dragging on for many years. It should be noted that Armenia has recently stepped up its military provocation in the line of contact and on the border. On July 12, Armenian forces shelled Azerbaijan's positions in Tovuz, the country's strategically-important district. The Armenian attack killed 12 Azerbaijani servicemen, including an army general, as well as a 76-year-old civilian. Armenian forces retreated after suffering losses in Azerbaijan's retaliation. Since 16 July, eight UAVs of the Armenian armed forces, attempting to carry out a reconnaissance flight over the positions of the Azerbaijani Army's units, have been destroyed by the Azerbaijani Air Defense units. On August 23 at around 6:00 am, Azerbaijan thwarted a provocation attempt by the sabotage-reconnaissance group of the Armenian armed forces in the direction of Goranboy region of Azerbaijan. As a result of measures taken by the Azerbaijani army, the commander of the sabotage-reconnaissance group of the Armenian Armed Forces, senior lieutenant Gurgen Alaverdyan was taken as prisoner. Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Boarding schools are pushing to establish an AFL-style quarantine hub to boost Australia's international secondary student market, which has been rattled by international and state border closures. Victorian boarding schools have been particularly hard hit because of their heavy reliance on international students and the state's second lockdown prompting interstate boarders to return home for remote learning. Chris Van Styn, director of boarding at Ballarat Grammar, would like the Victoria-NSW border to reopen. Ballarat is COVID-19 free. Credit:Joe Armao Victoria's 31 boarding schools have been unable to accept new international students since COVID-19 entered Australia, and many foreign students returned home rather than stay in Australia indefinitely. The Australian Boarding Schools Association is proposing international students be allowed to quarantine at Queensland schools or hotels in January, before heading off to boarding schools around the country. By Ayya Lmahamad Police have fined over 30 people for not wearing masks in public places during a raid conducted in Azerbaijans Absheron region. The country made face mask wearing mandatory in public places on May 31. Apart from fining violators of quarantine rules, police also fined 80 drivers who violated parking and stopping rules. The raids were conducted as part of the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country. Police officers fined drivers and passengers who did not use masks. Moreover, police officers held individual conversations with residents in Bakus Khirdalan district, explaining the importance of fighting the pandemic and following the requirements of the law. Azerbaijan first introduced special quarantine regime on March 24. As of September 17, Azerbaijan, the nation of ten million has registered 38,658 COVID-19 cases and 569 coronavirus-related deaths. Over 36,149 people have recovered from the disease. The capital Baku accounts for 56.2 percent of all coronavirus infection cases in Azerbaijan, following by Absheron with 15.6 percent. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz COLUMBUS, Ohio Ohio Chief Justice Maureen OConnor sharply criticized the Ohio Republican Party Wednesday for a statement it sent out the day before, calling a lower-court judge partisan. Shortly after Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Richard Fry, a Democrat, ruled Tuesday that Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRoses rule to limit the number of ballot drop boxes to one in each county was arbitrary, the Republican Party released a statement. It read, in part: After the corruption and deceit we have seen from Ohio Democrats, it comes as no surprise to discover they have colluded with a Democrat Common Pleas Court judge regarding a ruling on ballot drop boxes, it said. OConnor, a Republican who before serving on Ohios high court was lieutenant governor from 1999 to 2002, serving with former GOP Gov. Bob Taft, didnt mince words about the statement. Every one of Ohios 722 judges, 800 magistrates, and numerous active-retired judges should be greatly concerned and voice their dismay at the irresponsible Republican Party allegation that politics controlled the judges decision, she said in a statement. This is a blatant and unfounded attack on the independence of the Ohio judiciary. OConnor noted that the elections matter is complicated. Contrary to the statements in this, disgraceful, deceitful piece, judges dont decide cases based on partisanship, she said. That would be easy. It is also a mistake to say that there is not a legitimate case in controversy. The only thing clear about this matter is that the law is not clear, and it remains to be seen what the ultimate interpretation of the statute will be. She declined to go into the specifics of the case, saying that the matter may come before her court. Officials in the Ohio GOP were in Zanesville Wednesday, where Vice President Mike Pence is to address a crowd ahead of the Nov. 3 election. They didnt have an immediate comment. Edward M. Carter, an attorney for the state GOP, said in a Wednesday court filing the statement and associated tweets had been deleted from the Internet. The partys statement from Tuesday said that Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper colluded with Frye, since Pepper mentioned the ruling on Twitter before it had been released to the general public. But the Democrats were a party in the case. The role of a judge is to be impartial, yet the judge in question parroted his partys talking points in his ruling, the GOP statement said. The law was clear in stating the legality of having one ballot drop box per county. The judges interpretation of this law due to his partisan affiliation is a blatant obstruction of his judicial responsibility. OConnor characterized Tuesdays GOP statement as part of a larger trend of attacking judges. Attacking the judiciary can only serve to undermine the publics confidence in the courts, she said. The Republican Partys statement should be seen for what it is: part of a continuing string of attacks against any decision that doesnt favor a political end, regardless of party, even if that decision may be legally correct and indeed legally required, she said. In other events in the case before Frye, the judge gave LaRose until 3 p.m. Wednesday to explain why the secretary of states office had decided not to act following the judges Tuesday opinion. An attorney representing LaRose said the office was waiting for an actual order from Frye against the one-ballot-box-per-county order, so they could appeal it to a higher court. He said LaRose supports additional drop boxes if they were made legal, and also said changing election procedures on the eve of the election will harm voters. The Ohio Democratic Party filed a motion Wednesday asking Frye to hold the Ohio Republican Party in contempt of court for its abhorrent statements directed at the court and ODP. Reporter Andrew Tobias contributed to this story. Other coverage: Ohio judge says Secretary of State Frank LaRoses one ballot drop box per county rule is arbitrary and unreasonable Ohio coronavirus testing positivity rate dips to record low of 2.4%: Wednesday update With one health director gone and another rejecting the job, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine still confident hell find a good candidate TDP National President and former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday stressed the need for a comprehensive inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into all the attacks and property encroachments at all major Hindu temples all over Andhra Pradesh in the last 15 months of the discriminatory and oppressive Jaganmohan Reddy regime. AMARAVATI: TDP National President and former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday stressed the need for a comprehensive inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into all the attacks and property encroachments at all major Hindu temples all over Andhra Pradesh in the last 15 months of the discriminatory and oppressive Jaganmohan Reddy regime. Mr. Naidu demanded Chief Minister YSR Jaganmohan Reddy to break his silence on the unchecked vandalism and untoward incidents. Had the CM taken prompt and stringent action when the first attack took place, the ongoing atrocities and attacks would not have taken place. Addressing an online press conference here, the TDP chief deplored that over 80 condemnable incidents took place at Hindu temples in AP under the present regime till now. There was no immediate and suitable action in any of these incidents which has led to an increasing rate in occurrence of similar attacks over the weeks. Now, even Kanaka Durga Temple came under attack where 3 silver lions disappeared overnight. If the Chief Minister dismissed Endowments Minister and Executive Officer, the culprits responsible for the incident would have been caught by now. The EO did not make a police complaint and was hopelessly wanting to wait for three days to respond to the incident. Also Read: Centre forms panel to probe reports of snooping by Chinese firm, MEA raises matter with China Also Read: Chinas diversionary tactics at LAC: Loudspeakers playing Punjabi songs put up at forward posts Mr. Naidu deplored that the miscreants tried to pull the fourth lion also at Durga Temple but they could not do it and then left the spot taking away the remaining 3 lions. The Durga Temple incident took place in the vicinity of the Endowments Ministers residence. An idol was demolished at Shirdi Sai Mandir in Nidamanuru today. The attacks on temples were continuing unabated. Till now, there were 6 instances of encroachemnts on temple lands, 9 instances of attacks on temple properties, 11 cases of idol demolitions, attacks on two archakas, death of cows at 3 Gosalas, burning of chariots at two temples and so on. The TDP chief asked whether Andhra Pradesh has any Government or a Chief Minister to take care of the welfare of its people. The previous TDP regime and any Government in the past never interfered with the properties of Churches but now the Jagan Reddy regime was forcibly taking away the endowment properties in the name of house sites distribution for poor families. As per the endowments act and guidelines, the lands and properties given by devotees should not be taken over by the Government. But this Government was constantly making attacks on the sentiments of the Hindu devotees. CM Jagan himself would not care to honour the long standing temple traditions at Tirumala to give his declaration. Even Abdul Kalam and Sonia Gandhi had given their declarations for entry into the temple in the past. Mr. Naidu deplored that many transgressions and wrongdoings were happening at the TTD these days. Other religious propaganda was taken up on TTD bus tickets and its official website also. Lesser numbers of TTD diaries were printed this time with an ulterior motive. The Sri Vari Hundi used to have new clothes three times a day in the past but it is now having new clothes once in three days after the Jagan regime came. A pitiable situation has come that the SVBC Chairman has to resign following allegations of molestation attempts. Liquor sales were going on atop Seven Hills as per media reports. Vizag Sarada Peetham was illegally spending the funds belonging to the TTD which was unheard of in the long history of Sri Vari temple. The TDP chief advised CM Jagan to stop his partys meaningless counter attacks on the TDP and make proper efforts to prevent the ongoing attacks and atrocities on Hindu temples, weaker sections of people, Opposition leaders, social media activists and other sections who expressed dissent against the chaotic activities going on in the State. Irregularities were being reported in Kanaka Durga Temple sarees. There were allegations also on the misuse of hundi collections. Proper auditing of hundi collections at all Temples was badly required. Also Read: PM Modi turns 70: Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and others extend wishes The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its latest report published on Wednesday revised up its forecast for global economic output in 2020 to a contraction of 4.5 percent, which was less negative than what had been expected in June. According to the OECD Interim Economic Assessment, the drop in global gross domestic product (GDP) is "smaller than expected" primarily due to upward revisions in China, the United States and Europe. In the second quarter of 2020, China was the only country recording growth (11.5 percent) among the G20 economies compared to that in the first quarter, which reflected a national recovery after the onset of the pandemic, according to a previous report by OECD. The latest report showed weaker outcomes in India, Mexico and South Africa. It also said that in most economies, the level of economic output at the end of 2021 was projected to remain below that of 2009, and "considerably weaker" than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The OECD suggested in the report that improved confidence could boost the global economy in 2021, considering the uncertainties brought by the virus. Meanwhile, a possible resurgence of the virus has been estimated to cut 2-3 percent from global growth. Jason Fochtman, Staff photographer / Houston Chronicle We are saddened by the news of the death of Mayor Toby Powell. He was a humble man that cared deeply for the City of Conroe and was a lifetime resident. He advocated for the arts, the small business entrepreneurs and was very challenged personally by the restrictions he was forced to do closing many businesses to ensure the safety of all residents. We will miss him dearly. Mayor Powell would want us to enjoy ourselves when possible. Laughing is good for your emotional and physical wellbeing. With that in mind, Neil Simons The Sunshine Boys is coming to the Owen Theatre from the Players Theatre Company. The story is about a young theatrical agent re-uniting his elderly uncle, a former vaudevillian, with his long-time stage partner for a TV reunion. The men have not spoken in over twelve years and are not quite ready to perform on TV. WASHINGTON British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab personally collected the warning he expected at a meeting with US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi and powerful committee chair Congressman Richie Neale. The US leaders both told the visiting UK minister that Londons plans to unilaterally change the Norths special trade status threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and that means there is no hope of a UK-US free-trade deal. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden followed up with a blunt warning along the same lines. In the US, the president has no direct power over trade deals they are a matter for Congress. But the proud Irish-Americans warning signals other complications for the UK in a post-Brexit world if he wins the November election. Read More LONDON Boris Johnson has brokered a compromise with some Tory rebels in something of a climbdown. The British prime minister has agreed to put the changes to the Norths Brexit status on the backburner for use only in extremis and with special parliamentary approval. But his internal woes continue with the reluctant resignation of another senior government law officer, as Richard Keen, the advocate for Scotland, said he could not reconcile the planned legislation with his legal duties. Increasingly, attention will focus on the House of Lords, whose members are extremely annoyed by the draft law which breaks an international treaty already agreed with the EU. Read More BRUSSELS Boris Johnsons compromise with Conservative rebels, putting his change of the Norths status on the shelf for use only in extremis, left EU officials unimpressed. They want the plan withdrawn forthwith not put in an emergency-use-only box. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told the 27 member-state ambassadors that the threat of legal action on the issue still stands. He also brushed aside Mr Johnsons claims that the EU was trying to block food exports to the North from Britain. Mr Barnier insisted the struggling EU-UK trade talks will continue and Brussels refuses to be accused of collapsing negotiations. IRELAND The important bits of next months Budget plan for 2021 which are not about Covid-19 will be all about Brexit. Both Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Public Spending Minister Michael McGrath said ongoing preparations for Budget 2021 will be based on cushioning fallout from a no-deal UK crash-out from the EU on December 31. September's normal increase in coughs and colds caused by schools going back is causing 'utter chaos' in the UK because people are terrified of Covid-19, according to a top scientist. Professor Carl Heneghan, an evidence-based medicine expert at the University of Oxford, today vented his frustration about the 'panic' being stirred up over the coronavirus crisis. Meeting with MPs on Parliament's Science and Technology Committee, he insisted coughs and colds spike every September when children head back to class, and become even more common during the winter. But Government messaging about the deadly consequences of Covid-19 and forcing entire towns and regions into lockdown rules that now cover 9.2million people have left members of the public 'fearful' and 'terrorised'. He said there has been a 50 per cent increase in reports from family doctors seeing patients with chest infections that have the same symptoms as the coronavirus. Professor Heneghan's comments come as the Government is complaining of skyrocketing demand for coronavirus tests from people who are worried they have it. National test-processing laboratories are crumbling under the pressure of the more than 200,000 swabs per day they are being inundated with and people are even turning up at A&E departments or queuing outside test centres desperate to be seen. The Oxford scientist said coughs will continue to surge into the winter months and there will also be a spike in deaths and people in hospitals some will be caused by coronavirus, he said, but most won't. He argued the virus is not circulating at epidemic levels and, if it were cold or flu cases, current levels would not be out of the ordinary. In his meeting with MPs today, Professor Heneghan said: A coughing illness would not normally be considered an epidemic until doctors were seeing 400 symptomatic cases per 100,000 far higher than Covid-19 rates; The Eat Out to Help Out restaurant voucher scheme likely led to an increase in the spread of coronavirus; Increased testing is still only picking up a fraction of the true number of cases but it's detecting more of 'background' infections because it's more targeted, making it look like cases are soaring; Bolton may be experiencing high infections because the virus was not widespread there before lockdown lifted and people did not build up any immunity; Swab tests are still picking out too many people who aren't infectious, and studying individuals' viral loads could help officials to pick out those actually at risk of spreading it; The country cannot test its way out of the outbreak and there must be a coherent strategy for what to do with knowledge of case numbers and a level that is acceptable; Ambiguous phrases such as 'Moonshot' are not helpful for communicating the Government's plans and have no basis in science, which should be paramount. Professor Carl Heneghan today appeared in front of MPs on the Science and Technology Committee and said the Government's approach to tackling coronavirus and its messaging about the virus has left people 'terrified' 'Keeping our children in school is important but at the moment it is utter chaos because of the 50 per cent increase in other respiratory pathogens that mimic Covid in children,' Professor Heneghan said. He refers to illnesses that produce similar symptoms to Covid-19, which are usually viral infections referred to as respiratory tract infections, or chest infections. Cases of these spike every winter because people spend more time indoors close together, and coughs and sneezes spread them easily. And they are rising now, Professor Heneghan pointed out, because children are returning to school and mixing more with others every day. This would happen regardless of the Covid-19 outbreak. But because the symptoms are so similar coughs, breathing difficulties, feeling wheezy, or fever people think they or their children might have Covid-19. As a result, demand for tests is going up. As more people get tested in an area, more cases get discovered that otherwise might not have, making infections look higher. For example, parents have reportedly taken coronavirus tests because their children are sick, or because their classmates have had Covid scares. Professor Heneghan argues that increased testing is leading to more cases, which is stoking fears that a deadly resurgence of coronavirus is coming, akin to the one that sent the country into lockdown. 'I want to explain what happens in September,' he said. 'We've seen in the RCGP [Royal College of General Practitioners] surveillance data, a 50 per cent increase in consultations for acute respiratory infections. 'When you go back to school, when you open up business and when we come back off our holiday, there is a highly predictable increase in acute respiratory pathogens. 'That leads to a near three-fold increase in [emergency] admissions for children in September alone, so it's important to say you're acting against the backdrop of what happens in September for all acute respiratory pathogens. 'Out of the 200,0000 people who are coming forward [for Covid-19 tests] it looks like about 25 per cent are asymptomatic when they come forward, and about 150,000 have some discernible symptoms. 'Of them, 97 per cent have some other acute respiratory pathogen on board and about three to four thousand have Covid, so let's get the context in place.' Public Health England data shows a rise in appointments where doctors have seen people with illnesses that look like Covid-19, but they are nowhere near levels seen in March and April The numbers of people going to doctors with chest infections can be seen starting to rise sharply in September, and the annual average (dotted line) shows that it spikes every year, even before coronavirus The same is true of lower respiratory infections, which also cause coughs and breathing difficulties Doctors will also start to see increasing numbers of people with flu now that winter is approaching. Flu causes similar feverish symptoms to Covid-19, too DIDO HARDING CLAIMS DEMAND FOR TESTS IS 4 TIMES AS HIGH AS SUPPLY Demand for Covid tests is up to four times the system's capacity, Baroness Dido Harding admitted today. The Tory peer, who is chief of the Test & Trace system, revealed the staggering mismatch between the number of people wanting tests and the ability to carry them out as she claimed 27 per cent have no symptoms. Extraordinarily, she said no-one had 'expected' the 'sizeable' increase in demand - although it was widely predicted, blaming SAGE for getting their estimates wrong. Lady Harding has been hauled before MPs to explain the shambles that has left thousands struggling to get checked. She told the Science Committee that she did not have precise numbers for how many people wanted tests. But she said phone calls and website visits suggested it was 'three to four times the number of tests we have available'. Brazenly passing the buck for the chaos, Lady Harding said: 'We built our capacity plans based on SAGE modelling for what we should be preparing for in the Autumn.' Lady Harding confirmed the capacity now for diagnostic tests is just under 243,000 per day - a figure that the government has failed to publish for more than a week. Thousands of tests could be sent abroad to be processed to deal with a 'surge', she said. She said the government was 'on track' to increase capacity to 500,000 antigen tests a day by the end of October. And she conceded that will not be enough. 'I am certain we will need more as we go beyond the end of October,' she said. Advertisement Professor Heneghan argued that Covid-19 is not actually circulating at levels that would be considered an epidemic. Although Government and council officials have been racked with fear about infection rates rising to 70 or 100 or even 200 cases per 100,000, Professor Heneghan played down the numbers. He said: 'When you talk about infections and epidemic in terms of general practice and this is a long-established number we talk about 400 per 100,000 consulting constitutes an epidemic. And that's symptomatic people. 'So when you talk about 200, 250, you're still in the same ballpark of a seasonal pathogen. 'The question is within that 200 or 250 is how many of them are symptomatic versus asymptomatic. The other question is what impact is it having? 'For instance I looked at Bolton NHS Trust and saw that there were two patients with Covid in hospital there right now. So I think that's where you start to provide context as opposed to just throwing the number. 'And I think we do need to have now more data that allows people to put the information in context as opposed to just seeing a number, think it's rising and then panic.' The panic being stirred up by regularly-referenced infection rates was a sticking point for Professor Heneghan, who has repeatedly come out against strict lockdown measures. He has argued that a second wave will not arrive like the first one, and that people must be allowed to get on with life as normal as much as possible, while efforts are made to protect vulnerable people such as the elderly. Taking aim at the Government's attitude to the virus, he said people had been left too scared of the virus to get back to normal, particularly in schools. He referenced a case where a Year 13 student was thought to have Covid-19 and their entire year group went into isolation before they had even been tested. 'We've got restriction measures coming in now because nobody has a strategy,' he said, adding: 'What's happening at the moment is the language and the rhetoric is making people so fearful, and terrorised that they're going beyond the guidance because they're so fearful of what's coming next. 'So there needs to be a dialling back of the rhetoric, there needs to be a thoughtful discussion now about what exactly is the Government's strategy, because I don't understand it right now.' MADISON, Wis., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, CatholicVote, a national faith-based advocacy organization, announced it is launching a $9.7 million campaign targeting Catholic voters in key swing states to expose Joe Biden's anti-Catholic record and policy agenda. The organization also announced that it has full time staff in 6 states and over 2,000 community captains representing unique Catholic parishes across these states, and thousands of volunteers. CatholicVote plans to reach over 5 million active Catholics in battleground states during this election cycle. The campaign features digital advertising, parish-by-parish canvassing and GOTV efforts in 6 states, along with direct mail components. As part of the effort, CatholicVote is releasing a comprehensive report on Joe Biden's decades-long career in public service from a Catholic perspective. The Biden Report for Catholic Voters details where Biden stands today on issues of fundamental importance to Catholics including the sanctity of life, religious liberty, judges, education, the dignity of work, and other core issues. Five million Catholic voters will receive this report including a condensed voter-guide version. The $9.7 million campaign kicked off this week with a $350,000 digital ad buy in Pennsylvania and Michigan. CatholicVote President Brian Burch commented, "Joe Biden's record makes clear he will not protect our Catholic values or defend our way of life. For Catholics who cherish the Faith and their freedom to live it, a Biden presidency represents an existential threat." Recently Joe Biden has been quoting popes and invoking his faith in an effort to lure religious voters. "Catholics are less focused on Joe Biden's claims about his personal faith, and instead on what his policies would do to the culture, and their freedom to live out their own beliefs," said Burch. Twenty-three percent of the electorate in 2016 was Catholic. Trump won the Catholic vote 52-45 in 2016, and the winner of the Catholic vote has won every presidential election since 1976, except one. To view the ad, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVMIhY77VyU&feature=youtu.be CatholicVote.org is a national faith-based advocacy organization, organized by faithful Catholic laity in full communion with the teachings of the Church, yet does not claim to speak for any individual bishop or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. SOURCE CatholicVote Related Links https://catholicvote.org Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Valterra Resource Corporation (TSXV: VQA) (OTCQB: VRSCF) ("Valterra" or the "Company") reported today that it plans to issue up to a total of 30,000,000 units in a non-brokered private placement at a price of $0.10 per unit for gross proceeds of Cdn $3.0M. Each unit will consist of one common share and one-half warrant, with each full warrant exercisable to purchase one common share for a period of 3 years at $0.15. The Company will make provision for an over-allotment option (Greenshoe) to allow a purchase of up to 10% additional units beyond the number of units in this offering. The securities issued upon closing of this offering will be subject to a hold period of four months and one day from issuance. The private placement is subject to regulatory approval. Finders' fees and commissions may be paid by Valterra in relation to this issuance. Net proceeds of the financing will be used to advance Valterra's recently implemented Brazilian gold program and for working capital. Valterra's management has launched a new strategy for the Company with a near to mid-term goal to generate revenue through the acquisition and development of small under-capitalized laterite-type freehold gold deposits with processing mills, that have significant scope for growth in the Pocone Gold District, Brazil. The first step in Valterra's new strategy is the acquisition of private Brazilian company, Pocone Mining Mineracao Ltda ("PMM"), which owns the Lima property located in the Pocone - Cuiaba Gold Belt (see NR-03-20, 29 May, 2020). The transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. With the acquisition of PMM, Valterra will also hold an option to purchase a 100% interest in the Livramento Gold Project. PMM has completed an initial down-payment for the past-producing 250ha property and mill. Net proceeds of this financing will be used to complete the next stage of payments to acquire 100% of the Livramento Gold Project for (USD 3.77m), to be paid in instalments over 18 months, as well as for additional exploration and geological modelling which will lead to an updated NI-43-101 technical report, and for working capital. As part of this process, PMM will use the extensive existing infrastructure to undertake a 5,000-tonne bulk sample at Livramento along with various other trial mining activities on the property. Story continues As part of its due diligence, Valterra has engaged a Brazil based, independent consulting firm, GE21, to assist in the evaluation of the property assets of PMM. Technical reports are being prepared and will be filed on SEDAR when completed. About the Livramento Property, Pocone District, Brazil The Livramento property is situated 64km from PMM's existing 100% owned Lima property near the town of Pocone and is located 40km south of Cuiaba, the state capital of Mato Grosso. The Livramento property consists of a 250ha freehold property with 5 PLG mining and environmental licences of 50ha each and full infrastructure on site, including a 30 tph gravity recovery plant and a large earth moving fleet. Under previous ownership, the Livramento property has been in intermittent operation since 2017. Valterra plans to upgrade the processing plant to increase through-put and to restart trial mining operations over the next 6 months. Initial areas with prospective structures and veins for bulk sampling have already been identified. The Livramento property adjoins the well-known Tanque Belo project, which was explored in 2007 by ASX-listed Ashburton Minerals. Ashburton outlined a surface gold geochemical anomaly in excess of 2km long and up to 800m wide, with gold-in-soil values of up to 15 g/t. Gold mineralization in the Pocone Gold Belt is characterized by very deep and strongly weathered overburden of saprolite with the presence of epigenetic mineralized quartz veins. These kinds of deposits are exploited in dozens of small open-pit mines by direct free-digging operations without the need for blasting. Figure 1: Livramento 30 tonne per hour gravity mill To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://media.zenfs.com/en-us/newsfile_64/cbf3393bec7c6bd2d510dced00d61f02 Figure 2: Livramento fleet To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5345/64000_060f3f0e44ec8886_003full.jpg Figure 3: Livramento fleet To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5345/64000_060f3f0e44ec8886_004full.jpg Figure 4: Livramento workshop To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit: https://media.zenfs.com/en-us/newsfile_64/373b627deb3e0a3c60bfa2c1ac6b30db Figure 5: Livramento fleet To view an enhanced version of Figure 5, please visit: https://media.zenfs.com/en-us/newsfile_64/29cb546ffe57b7959e674d6fdcf4f425 The veins at the Livramento property consist of massive quartz with free gold and some boxwork of oxidized sulfide and carbonate minerals along fractures. On the west side of the mineralized zone is a major NE-SW break that may be related to important structural and lithologic features controlling the vein system. This zone represents a major target to be detailed by structural mapping, geophysics, and a future drilling program to assess the potential of a major mineralized structure including possibly higher-grade veins beneath the lateritic weathering. Valterra plans to initiate an exploration strategy to delineate and expand vein targets on both the Livramento and Lima properties toward the identification and development of NI43-101 mineral resources. The Pocone Mining Team Richard Crew - Mr. Crew, is a British mining and natural resources professional with over thirty years of corporate and operations experience in the mining and exploration industry, specializing in precious metals. Richard has a wealth of knowledge of Brazilian mining operations and regulations built up over 30 years in both open pit and underground mines. Most recently, he was COO for ASX-listed Orinoco Gold. Prior to this, he was General Manager Projects for Sao Bento Group, a private mining group operating two gold mines in the states of Mato Grosso and Para, producing a combined total of 100,000oz gold per annum. In this role, he successfully managed a Bankable Feasibility Study and construction of a 2Mtpa gravity/CIL processing plant and mining operations. He previously held a wide range of senior operational and executive positions internationally for AIM, TSX and ASX listed companies. Richard is co-founder of Pocone Mining Mineracao and speaks fluent Portuguese. Jeremy Gray - Mr. Gray has been involved in mining for 26 years. He started his career at Credit Suisse in 1994 as a Mining Research Associate before moving to London to run the Mining Equity research team at Morgan Stanley. In 2001, he joined Sthenos Capital as a founding partner of a Hedge Fund with focus on Mining and Basic Materials trading. In 2005, Mr Gray returned to Credit Suisse in London to run the Mining team. In January 2009 he joined the world's largest cobalt producer at the time in DRC before it was acquired by ENRC in September 2009. In 2010, Mr. Gray joined Standard Chartered in Hong Kong to run the Mining team, and in 2014 he became a founding partner of Chancery Asset Management in Singapore. For the last 3 years he has also worked as a Director of a Singapore based gold streaming & Royalty Company. Mr Gray sits on the boards of Axiom Mining and White Rock Minerals on the ASX. Thomas Puppendahl - Mr. Puppendahl has over 28 years' experience in global capital markets as a strategist, portfolio manager, investment banker and analyst. He is the founder and managing partner of Chancery Asset Management, an independent strategic advisory firm based in Singapore, specializing in precious metals and emerging markets. In 2015, Chancery became a founding partner of a gold streaming & royalty company focused on providing development capital to emerging gold producers such as K92 Mining. Prior to setting up Chancery, Mr. Puppendahl worked in mergers and acquisitions, private equity, emerging markets and management consulting with Merrill Lynch, Ermgassen & Co. and the Monitor Group in London and Mumbai. Mr. Puppendahl holds Master's degrees in both Physics and Business Administration from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Wallacy Goncalves - Mr. Goncalves is a highly respected Brazilian national who has worked in senior positions for several international mining companies. Both in Africa and Brazil, he is extremely well connected, has direct access to local and regional government agencies and politicians. Mr. Goncalves is a co-founder of Pocone Mining Mineracao. He is bilingual Portuguese / English. Marcelo Lima - Mr. Lima is a Brazilian national with more than 30 years of mining experience. He is renowned to be one of Brazil's leading mine operations specialists, and he is a qualified mining technician with CREA registration. Marcelo has held senior operational positions with Anglo Gold Ashanti, Rio Tinto, Votorantim Metals and Jaguar Mining. During his tenure with these companies he was responsible for the opening of 8 mines. Israel Oliveira - Mr Oliveira is a Brazilian national mining engineer. Israel has 27 years' experience in the mine planning and operations in Brazil with management roles at AngloGold Ashanti, Jaguar Mining, Vale, Orinoco Gold, Paul Abib Engenharia and NEXA. About Valterra Resource Corporation Valterra is a Manex Resource Group Company. The group provides expertise in exploration, administration, and corporate development services for Valterra's mineral properties located in Brazil, British Columbia and Mexico. Valterra's prime focus is on advancing its Brazilian properties, with a secondary focus on its early stage properties that have the potential to host large deposits in regions with excellent infrastructure. Upon acquisition of PMM, Valterra will indirectly hold a 100% interest in the Lima Gold Project and an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Livramento Gold Project, both located in Brazil. Valterra also owns a 100% interest in the Swift-Katie copper gold porphyry property in British Columbia and has an option to earn a 100% interest in the Los Reyes copper- gold property in Mexico. Robert Macdonald, MSc. P.Geo, is the General Manager of Exploration of Valterra Resource Corporation and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. He is responsible for directing exploration on the Lima and Livramento projects and for the preparation of the technical information in this disclosure. -30- On behalf of the Board of Directors, "Lawrence Page" Lawrence Page Q.C., President, Valterra Resource Corporation For further information, please visit Valterra's website at valterraresource.com or contact Valterra at 604.641.2759 or by email at ir@mnxltd.com. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. These statements are based on a number of assumptions, including, but not limited to, assumptions regarding general economic conditions, interest rates, commodity markets, regulatory and governmental approvals for Valterra Resource Corporation's projects, and the availability of financing for Valterra Resource Corporation's development projects on reasonable terms. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, the timing and receipt of government and regulatory approvals, and continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. Valterra Resource Corporation does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law. This news release is not intended for distribution to United States newswire services or dissemination in the United States. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64000 STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- About 48 hours after three men were gunned down in the streets of Staten Island, Assemblyman Charles Fall (D-North Shore) stood in front of another casket Wednesday afternoon to send a clear message: Gun violence must stop. As a resident that lives in this neighborhood, as a representative in the Assembly and as a dad of two, I am sick and tired of the gun violence that we have been seeing in the last few days and throughout this entire year, right here in our district and throughout the city, said Fall. The assemblyman spoke as he stood beside an empty casket at the site where Prince Edmonds, 21, was shot and killed Monday afternoon at the corner of Richmond Terrace and Lockman Avenue. In a timeframe of exactly 28 hours since Edmonds died, two other men lost their lives after being shot in the streets of the North Shore. Sean Dallas, 29, of Brooklyn, was shot in front of his two children on Tuesday morning in what is believed to be a road rage incident, sources told the Advance/SILive.com. Cedrick Black, 34, was attending Edmonds' memorial on Jersey Street when a gunman came up to the memorial and shot Black in the torso before fleeing the scene north on Jersey Street in a black sedan, sources said. No arrests have been made in connection with the three homicides. Staten Island has recorded a total of 13 homicides so far this year, already matching last years data. This is a problem of deep concern, and the safety and security of our entire community must be priority,'' said Fall. "We have mourned the loss of too many sons and daughters, childhood friends, husbands, wives and coworkers. Our families are tired of laying loved ones to rest before their time. As s symbol of the loss of young men the Stradford Home for Funerals and Cremation brought a casket to the Fellowship Baptist Church Staten Island, Mariners Harbor. (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel) A CALL FOR UNITY Multiple elected officials joined Fall and called for unity throughout the community, including representatives from the mayors office, Rep. Max Roses office and the district attorneys office. The only way that we could stop this is if we all band together and make sure that we are one in our message that we are here, we are all Staten Islanders, and this violence needs to stop, Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-Mid-Island) said. Assemblyman Michael Cusick addresses the group. (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel) Rev. Dr. Tony Baker, the pastor of St. Philips Baptist Church in Port Richmond, expressed, once again, his stand against gun violence in the borough after participating in seven days of good trouble -- a seven-day march event Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) organized in August through the seven neighborhoods highly affected by gun violence during the summer. Rev. Dr. Tony Baker says, "racism isn't killing, were doing it ourselves". (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel) For whatever reason, I guess we thought that that was it,'' Baker said. "We had overcome that moment. And now we are going to unite. I need our community to know that nobody is destroying us, but us. There are many problems we need to be challenged with, but were pulling the trigger. "We need resources in this community. And lets galvanize ourselves together and ask those who have the resources to pour back into this community. But stop killing one another. Racism isnt killing us. Were doing it ourselves. Shawn Stradford from the Stradford Home for Funerals and Cremation says, "I hate coming out here and seeing our young men laying in a casket," as he speaks in front of the Fellowship Baptist Church Staten Island, Mariners Harbor. (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel) WHEN 'SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS" IS NOT ENOUGH Shawn Stradford, the owner of Stradford Home for Funerals, urged Staten Islanders to say something and be out there for their community. I hate being here,'' Stradford said. I hate doing this. I hate coming out and seeing another young man laid in a casket. It is the most difficult thing. Some of you might never, ever know what is like to have to explain to a mother why her child is laying in a casket, to a father who is grieving and screaming in your ears . . . and you dont know what to say because sometimes saying sorry for your loss is just not enough. Imam Dr. Tahir Kukaj speaks out against the gun violence and wants to be part of the solution. (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel) Fall echoed Stradfords sentiments, urging those who have illegal firearms to turn them in at a cash for guns event that will take place at The Central Family Life Center, 59 Wright Street, on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you dont say something, the perpetrator is going to continue to be out there and more people will continue to get hurt, and we dont want that, said Fall. To those with illegal firearms, he urged: Please do the right thing. We dont want to see you in a casket or in these handcuffs. BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelpro, the inventor of The Original Rollaboard suitcase and a pioneer in innovative luggage design, today, announced the launch of a premium luggage and bag collection in collaboration with the world's leading travel media brand, Travel + Leisure. Curated with the Travel + Leisure editorial team and brought to life by Travelpro, the new collection is designed to be beautifully functional for the avid leisure traveler, incorporating eye-catching details such as genuine leather and zinc metal accents. The line features a bag for every journey with nine practical pieces, including four various-sized hardside suitcases and five companion accessories including totes, backpacks and duffle bags that can be mixed and matched for an effortlessly stylish and timeless look. Travelpro x Travel + Leisure Collection "For over 30 years, Travelpro has prided itself on providing travelers with durable, long-lasting and high-quality travel gear built for packing versatility and to look beautiful and stand the test of travel. Travel + Leisure is unmatched when it comes to their knowledge of the leisure traveler, and has been a trusted and valued partner throughout the design and curation process," said Blake Lipham, CEO at Travelpro. "We're confident this collection will inspire travelers as they plan for weekend road trips and more adventurous travel in the hopeful near-future." Travelpro x Travel + Leisure Hardside Luggage Designed for the frequent traveler, the collection's hardside luggage can be mixed and matched with any soft companion bag, allowing for endless packing possibilities, coupled with a cohesive look and feel. Made with an ultra-strong but light polycarbonate shell and Zinc metal corner guards, each suitcase flexes with impact to protect everything inside, while genuine leather accents provide an elegant distinction. The three available colors White Sand, Monaco Blue, and Whistler Grey are bold yet sophisticated, chosen to keep up with ever-changing fashion trends and were inspired by popular travel destinations. The Compact Carry-on Expandable Hardside Spinner and the Carry-on Expandable Hardside Spinner are perfect for any trip whether it be a close-to-home road trip or a cross-country getaway. For longer trips, the Medium Check-in Expandable Hardside Spinner and the Large Check-in Hardside Trunk Spinner, a new silhouette offered with the collection, keep contents safe and organized. Travelpro x Travel + Leisure Soft Companion Bags Fashioned with superior, classically patterned fabrics and genuine leather accents, the ultra-durable and fashionable soft companion bags allow for effortless, elegant travel. Each bag can be interchanged with any of the hardside luggage or used independently, giving users endless packing possibilities that will look stylish for years to come. In addition to White Sand, Monaco Blue, and Whistler Grey, each item also comes in one extra color, Black Diamond. Whether hitting the road or the treadmill, each of the soft companion bags come in handy. The Drop Bottom Weekender and the UnderSeat Tote are perfect travel accessories, fitting just enough to get you there and back. For the digital nomad looking for something more flexible and compact, the Slim Backpack, Women's Convertible Tote and the Convertible Backpack provide all the benefits of a backpack or tote in one bag. "We're thrilled to team up with Travelpro to debut this versatile collection that I'm sure our readers will love as much as I do," said Jacqui Gifford, Editor in Chief of Travel + Leisure. "From the modern design and carefully curated color palate to the standout craftsmanship, this new line is all about bringing style and ease to every trip, as travelers begin to get out there and explore the world once again." Backed by Travelpro's Built For A Lifetime Limited Warranty and its Trusted Companion promise, travelers will be protected from functional defects for the life of the bag, as well as carrier damage for the first five years of the warranty duration for the hardside spinner models and for one year of the warranty duration for the soft companion accessories. Travelers can register their Travelpro x Travel + Leisure items at Travelpro.com within 120 days of purchase. The full Travelpro x Travel + Leisure Collection is available on Travelpro.com/Travel-Leisure ranging in price from $245-$645 USD. For more information about the collection and collaboration, visit travelandleisure.com/travelpro. About Travelpro For over 30 years, Travelpro has prided itself on design innovation and durability in crafting the highest quality luggage for travelers worldwide. Since transforming the ease of modern day travel with The Original Rollaboard wheeled luggage, Travelpro has been the brand of choice for flight crews and frequent travelers. The company is dedicated to building a lifelong relationship with its customers by consistently meeting and exceeding their expectations. Among other honors received, The Wirecutter, a cutting-edge source known for promoting the 'best gadgets and gear for people in the know,' ranked the Travelpro Platinum Elite 21" Expandable Carry-On Spinner as the best carry-on bag on the market in 2020. Additionally, Good Housekeeping ranked Travelpro as one of the top luggage brands of 2020. In April 2020, Forbes named Travelpro's Maxlite 5 21" Expandable Carry-On Spinner as one of the best lightweight suitcases available. Please visit Travelpro at www.travelpro.com for a full list of the latest products and retail locations. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/travelproproducts; Twitter at https://twitter.com/travelprointl; our blogs at http://travelproluggageblog.com/; and Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/travelprointl/. About Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure is the preeminent voice for the sophisticated traveler, serving up expert intelligence and the most immersive, inspiring travel lifestyle content anywhere. Travel + Leisure captures the joy of discovering the pleasures the world has to offerfrom art and design to shopping and style to food and drinkand offers compelling reasons to get up and go. The Travel + Leisure portfolio includes the U.S. flagship and four international editions in China, India, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. The U.S. edition of T+L, which launched in 1971 and is the only monthly consumer travel magazine in print in the U.S., has an authoritative website, newsletters, and an extensive social media following. Travel + Leisure is part of Meredith Corp.'s (NYSE: MDP: Meredith.com) Luxury Group portfolio of best-in-class brands. SOURCE Travelpro Croatia-based Rimac is finalizing a deal to purchase Bugatti from the Volkswagen Group, according to an unverified report. If the rumor is accurate, the sale would propel Rimac to the top of the automotive industry, guarantee that Bugatti's future is electric, and mark the beginning of Volkswagen's efforts to divest its empire. Executives in Wolfsburg gave the deal the green light in September 2020, according to anonymous sources who spoke to British magazine Car, but the company's supervisory board hasn't approved it yet. Selling the French company isn't as simple as sending company founder Mate Rimac an email with an account number. Insiders explained Volkswagen would likely trade Bugatti and all of its assets for a significant stake in Rimac that would be transferred directly to Porsche, which already owns 15.5% of the brand. Officials hope to increase that figure to about 49%, meaning Bugatti is theoretically worth about 33.5% of Rimac, which was founded in 2009. Bugatti told Autoblog it can't comment on speculation. Mate Rimac gave us a similar answer. Rumors of a Bugatti sale have hovered around the automotive industry for several years, and they've never materialized. In theory, spinning off the brand would be relatively easy because it's not as deeply integrated into the Volkswagen Group as its sister companies. It doesn't share its W16 engine with another carmaker, for example. And yet, Car speculates Lamborghini, SEAT, ItalDesign, Bentley, and Ducati will also be sold in the coming years, leaving Volkswagen with its namesake division, Skoda, Audi, Porsche, Scania, and MAN. Volkswagen is having an estate sale to fund the development of electric, autonomous, and digital technologies. Its downsizing will send ripples through the auto industry. Porsche could move upmarket if it doesn't have to worry about stepping on Lamborghini's toes, for example. Spinoffs are always risky, so some companies may not survive if they're not bolstered by economies of scale. As of writing, there's no word on who will pick up the brands being divested under this scenario. And, keep in mind none of this is official. Volkswagen hasn't commented on the report. Story continues We'll update this developing story as more information becomes available. 180-degree shift Even if the report ends up falling wide of the mark, the very idea that Volkswagen would be open to selling some of its most prestigious divisions to the highest bidder is a startling reminder of the changes sweeping across the industry, and the cost burden they carry. Shrinking was unfathomable a decade ago, when electrification was little more than a loony buzzword for techies and executives regularly made nod-and-wink offers to buy Alfa Romeo from Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). They were flatly rejected by former CEO Sergio Marchionne. You Might Also Like Apartment prices have increased to a new level, particularly in center city areas. Dang Anh Tu and his wife, from Hai Phong, were seeking to buy an apartment in Hanoi after 10 years of living in a rental. Having VND1.5 billion, they wanted a 70-square meter apartment in the area not far from their offices and their childrens schools. However, Tu was disappointed after realizing that with that amount of money, he could only find an apartment in Hoai Duc and Dong Anh districts, which are far from the central area. The apartments in the suburbs are priced at VND25 million per square meter, while apartments in the central districts have higher prices, about VND35 million per square meter. Ads say buyers just need to have from VND1 billion to buy an apartment. But when we contacted the distributors, I realized that VND1 billion is the initial amount buyers have to pay, and the payment is made in many stages, he said. There are only two options for Tu, either buy an old apartment in the central districts, or buy a new apartment in the suburbs. You wont find any apartment priced at around VND1.5 billion in Hanoi, said Nguyen Van Thanh, a real estate broker. Thanh said the demand for houses and apartments priced at below VND2 billion is very high. However, the supply is low. With less than VND2 billion, one can only find houses in areas far from the center. The apartments priced at VND20-25 million per square meter are the targets of middle-income earners. However, such apartments have not been available in the market since 2015. According to Thanh, the apartments delivered 5-10 years ago can be bought at VND25-30 million per square meter. Some owners offer apartments at reasonable prices, but they are in the suburbs. Even in the Belt Road No 3 area, known as the area of low-cost housing projects, apartments are sold at VND30 million per square meter, though the price was just VND20 million some years ago. Meanwhile, at high-end housing projects, the prices are no less than VND40 million per square meter. Some years ago, the market turned hot with a series of low-cost housing projects developed by Le Thanh Than, a well known realtor. However, the low-cost market segment cooled quickly. A realtor once announced that he would join the low-cost market with VND700 million apartments, but he ultimately did not invest in the market segment, and changed his mind, investing in higher-end products. Because of the high demand and low supply, the prices of apartments are escalating. According to Savills Vietnam, the primary average selling price has seen an increase of 7 percent year on year. Thu Ky Hundreds of abandoned real estate projects in Hanoi to be inspected The Prime Minister has assigned the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Hanoi authorities to check reports in local newspapers about 300 pending or abandoned real estate projects in the city. A multinational logistics company in the United Arab Emirates said it is working on establishing trade ties between the Gulf state and Israel. DP World, based in Dubai, said it signed memorandums of understanding with the Israeli company DoverTower. The firms chairman and CEO said direct trade between Israel and the UAE will help economic activity in the Middle East. DP World's mission is to enable global trade our work to build trade routes between the UAE, Israel and beyond will help our customers to do business in the region more easily and efficiently, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said in a press release. On Tuesday, the UAE and Israel officially agreed to establish full relations during a White House ceremony. Bahrain also did the same. The move paved the way for the UAE and Israel, whose relations have been improving for years, to formally build economic ties. The memorandums signed by DP World and DoverTower specify that DP World will assess the possibility of a direct trading route between Eilat on Israels Red Sea coast and Jebel Ali in Dubai. Shlomi Fogel, the owner of DoverTower, is also co-owner of the Port of Eilat. Such memorandums are not legally binding but are a way of formally declaring intentions. DP World further said that it will set up a joint venture with the shipbuilding company Israel Shipyards Ltd. Together, the two will then make a bid for the soon-to-be privatized Port of Haifa in northern Israel, according to the press release. Haifa is an area of strategic international significance. In 2021, the Chinese company Shanghai International Port Group Co. will build a new port in the city. The Israeli government owns the older Port of Haifa and is now looking to privatize it, the finance news outlet Bloomberg reported. The United States, Israels biggest ally, is vocally opposed to the Jewish states economic ties with China. The US Navy has a presence in Haifa and has said it will reconsider the location once the Chinese port comes to fruition. Dubais customs authorities will also work to facilitate trade between Israeli and Emirati companies, among other initiatives to enhance Israel-UAE ties, according to DP World. Agras Mughal Museum project, which will now be renamed as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum, was initially to cost 141 crore when the foundation stone was laid in 2016. Now, due to various factors including GST, the cost has escalated to 173 crores of which 94 crores has already been released and utilized. The tourism department will now approach the ministry of finance for the release of funds for the remaining work to be undertaken. With release of funds, we hope the work to resume shortly, said NG Ravi Kumar, director-general, tourism, Lucknow. The museum was scheduled to be completed in 2017 but could not due to various reasons. The DG tourism did not elaborate much but informed that designing and construction work had been undertaken by R Com, a company engaged for the work. The components of the museum are yet to be finalized. It could be based on a different aspect of history and might include Braj culture besides the historical aspect of Agra and its monuments, he said. Also read: Upcoming Mughal museum renamed after Chhatrapati Shivaji in Agra will house artefacts from Braj region as well The upcoming museum is not being built by routine construction material including bricks, mortar, et cetera. It is based on a frame erected on pre-fabricated structures brought from Noida after being pre-cast, informed sources in the tourism department in Agra. With changing of name, there are expectations that a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj would also be installed apart from a dedicated gallery on the life of the Maratha ruler. Braj culture would be highlighted and details about art craft and architecture of Agra and its monuments would also find place. revealed sources. Also read: Row over Agras Mughal Museums link with Shivaji, project in need of funds Officials are not giving out much information about the museum after the name change but initially, when the museum was visualized by the then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in 2015, the idea was to inform visitors to Agra, once the capital of Mughal empire, about the chronology of Mughal rulers, their art, weaponry, lifestyle, et cetera. We are not concerned with the name but the upcoming museum should have features to attract foreign tourists so that they stay overnight after visiting monuments. The museum should be lively and digital so that it does not become another Taj Museum, rarely visited by tourists, said Rajeev Saxena, vice president of Tourism Guild of Agra. The COVID-19 pandemic may have stopped domestic and international travels but a huge chunk of human lives continued and shifted from the physical to the virtual world. Latest research by Kaspersky showed six-in-10 internet users from Southeast Asia (SEA) are aware of their increased time online than ever before. This, however, failed to make internet security a priority as 38% admitted that the busy life in lockdown pushes it to the bottom of their to-do list. Kasperskys study unmasked concerns over increased virtual activities amidst pandemic-related lockdowns Titled More connected than ever before: how we build our digital comfort zones, the survey conducted among 760 interviewees from SEA last May dug deeper on how users create a safe, internet-connected home during the pandemic-related lockdowns across the region. Our fresh study showed that most users in the region are now spending between five to 10 hours online per day, which does not come as a surprise. Southeast Asia has always been a home for countries with young and highly active users of the World Wide Web. The difference during this time is that our online activities are being done inside our houses, from work meetings, shopping, financial transactions, school sessions, social communications, and more. This time shows us how useful a tool technology can be but it should also make us rethink how we secure our home networks against malicious threats online, comments Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky. According to the latest Kaspersky report, the five most common activities respondents in SEA have shifted from the physical to the online world are shopping (64%), content streaming and online gaming (58%), socializing with family and friends (56%), conducting financial matters (47%), and attending online tutorials (39%). Doing these activities, while convenient at a time when movements are limited, however, trigger concerns from internet users in the region. Particularly, a huge majority of the respondents (81%) are concerned about conducting dates online instead of physical meet-ups, proving that single people from SEA still prefer to meet potential partners face-to-face. Another 69% are worried about conducting financial transactions online and 62% feel uneasy in terms of having virtual work meetings. Networking online is also concerning for six-in-10 respondents as well as socializing with friends and family (54%). When asked for their worries extent, 42% of the respondents admitted to being afraid about someone accessing their financial details through their devices. Some (37%) are worried about their private documents being accessible to third parties, while another 35% are concerned about someone taking control of their devices through their insecure internet connection. Spyware, a software that's installed without your informed consent, whether it be a traditional computer, an application in the web browser, or a mobile application residing on a device, triggers worry for three-in-10 online users from SEA while another 30% are looking out against organizations, websites, or someone who could track their locations. The concerns which weve unmasked in our research proved that there is a growing awareness towards the cruel aftermath of cyberattacks. However, this same study showed us that there are still 37% of internet users in the region who think they are not at risk because someone else is more interesting for cybercriminals. This thinking has to end now more than ever. It is high time to think really carefully about the defenses we are building around our digital lives and to place its security among our topmost priority, adds Yeo. To start building better security for your devices and your home, Kaspersky suggests: Improve your mindset about cybersecurity. Everyone with data and money can be a target for cybercriminals. Use strong passwords across all your accounts and devices, including your home router. Start using Privacy Checker that helps consider setting your social media profiles to private. It will make it harder for third parties to find highly personal information Install endpoint security solutions to keep your devices safe from malware and viruses. For those who are working from home, we suggest to: Take key data protection measures to safeguard corporate data and devices, including switching on password protection, encrypting work devices and ensuring data is backed up Ensure devices, software, applications and services are kept updated with the latest patches Install proven protection software, such as Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud, on all endpoints, including mobile devices. It also helps ensure that only approved online services are used for work purposes, reducing the risks of shadow IT. Employees from enterprises using Kaspersky solutions can also utilize the global cybersecurity companys Employee Purchase Program to further guard their devices. To find out more, please visit: For the Philippines, Enterprise Employee Discount Program is available through its local distributor iSecure Networks. Interested may get in touch with Shiela Borja, marketing communications officer at iSecure Networks at 09269593725 or through their Facebook page at iSecureNetworksInc. Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday sent a congratulatory message to Yoshihide Suga on his election as Japanese prime minister. In his message, Xi pointed out that China and Japan are friendly neighbors to each other, and are both important countries in Asia and the world. Developing a China-Japan relationship that features long-term stability and friendly cooperation not only serves the fundamental interests of both nations, but also contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in Asia and the world, Xi said. He suggested that the two sides hold fast to the principles established in the four political documents between China and Japan as well as the four-point principled agreement, and actively promote the building of a bilateral relationship that meets the needs of the new era, so as to create benefits for both countries and their people and make positive contributions to safeguarding world peace and advancing common development. On the same day, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also congratulated Suga on his election as Japanese prime minister. Li said in his congratulatory message that China stands ready to work with Japan to strengthen friendly exchanges and practical cooperation in all fields, and jointly push for new and greater progress in bilateral relations. Two-time Grammy winner Michael Bolton transformed his 1991 cover of Percy Sledge's 1966 song When a Man Loves a Woman into a slow-jam jingle for a new Panera Bread menu item - Broccoli Cheddar Mac & Cheese. 'When some mac loves broccoli cheddar!' the 67-year-old R&B belter crooned in the commercial. 'Yes, it's soup on tender pasta/ It can do no wrong/ 'Cause creamy cheese and broccoli loves macaroni.' 'I got just the thing!' Two-time Grammy winner Michael Bolton transformed his 1991 cover of Percy Sledge's 1966 song When a Man Loves a Woman into a slow-jam jingle for a new Panera Bread menu item - Broccoli Cheddar Mac & Cheese The funny spot concludes with Bolton (born Bolotin) singing on the steps of a massive mansion beside a swimming pool as fireworks explode in the background. Starting Thursday, Panera Bread customers can buy the $8.89 mash-up meal - featuring 53 grams of fat and 770 calories - which includes a French baguette. 'I actually got a sneak peek yesterday of the Broccoli Cheddar Mac & Cheese and it's delicious!' Michael told Thursday's episode of TODAY. The 67-year-old R&B belter crooned in the commercial: 'When some mac loves broccoli cheddar!' Bolton (born Bolotin) sang: 'Yes, it's soup on tender pasta/ It can do no wrong/ 'Cause creamy cheese and broccoli loves macaroni' Big finish! The funny spot concludes with Michael singing on the steps of a massive mansion beside a swimming pool as fireworks explode in the background Also in the commercial was Panera Bread's chief food innovation officer, Chef Claes Petersson, who admitted he was 'obsessed with the flavor combination.' 'It's an insanely craveable and irresistible creation that our customers nationwide are sure to love,' the Swedish foodie gushed. Expect more menu mash-ups and combinations in the future as Panera has reportedly 'pledged to make 50% of its menu vegan or vegetarian over the next several years.' Hungry? Starting Thursday, Panera Bread customers can buy the $8.89 mash-up meal - featuring 53 grams of fat and 770 calories - which includes a French baguette The grandfather-of-six told Thursday's episode of TODAY: 'I actually got a sneak peek yesterday of the Broccoli Cheddar Mac & Cheese and it's delicious!' YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. An Armenian lawyer attempted to challenge in court the coronavirus protocols in schools requiring children to wear face masks, maneuvering into technicalities of the lawful power of the protocols and whether or not the guidelines constitute a legal act. A Yerevan court indeed found that the school guidelines are not technically considered a normative legal act, but at the same time returned the lawyers application citing errors. After this, lawyer Gegham Simonyan issued a statement on his social media account claiming that the courts stipulation that the school guidelines are not normative legal acts is sufficient in order for children not to wear masks in schools. His statement was widely distributed and could potentially cause confusion. Shortly afterwards the Healthcare Ministry issued a statement stressing that even if the guidelines arent technically considered normative legal acts, there is an order from a higher authority in place regarding mandatory face masks the health ministers order on mandatory face masks in all enclosed facilities, which is in force. The author, as a lawyer and attorney, shouldve been aware that the mentioned guideline was never a normative legal act, and disputing it in terms of contradicting the Law on Normative Legal Acts is senseless, the health ministry said. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan Paul Alexander, the adviser to one of Trumps allies and a McMaster University professor due to appear before congress for alleged interference with public health reports, has left his post at the White House. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday that Alexander would permanently leave his senior policy adviser role with the department, effective immediately. Alexander a part-time professor of health research methods, evidence and impact at McMaster since 2015 moved from Hamilton to Washington, D.C., in late March to serve as a leading aide to top HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo on pandemic policy. Caputo, who told The Spectator in July that Alexander was his first hire as assistant secretary for public affairs, will also be taking a leave, the department said. HHS said Caputo will be on medical leave for the next 60 days to focus on his health and the well-being of his family. Caputo and Alexander could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The news of the departures comes after a week of controversy over alleged concerns that they meddled in federal public health reports and downplayed the dangers of coronavirus. Caputo urged President Donald Trump supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection and accused government scientists of sedition in a Facebook Live event this past Saturday. Alexander is alleged to have sought to revise, delay and prevent the release of reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on COVID-19. He is due to appear before a congressional subcommittee on Sept. 24. McMaster said in a statement Tuesday that Alexander does not currently teach at the school and is not on its payroll. They said he does not speak on behalf of the university as a consultant. Emails originally obtained by Politico show Alexander demanded the CDCs weekly scientific newsletter, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), be halted until he could personally make edits. In one August email to CDC director Robert Redfield, Alexander accused the federal health agencys scientists of trying to hurt the president with the reports. The MMWR has a publication process that dates back to the 1960s and is renowned for its objectivity and freedom from political influence. Joshua Sharfstein, an expert in public health communication at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, likened the reports to a journal of record for public health experts in an interview Wednesday. This is how the CDC speaks to the community about public health in America, Sharfstein told The Spectator, adding Alexanders attempts to edit the reports under a political lens is extremely concerning. The fact youre a professor doesnt give you licence to do political editing of a scientific publication. Thats not academic freedom. Its political interference. The unlikely relationship between Alexander and Caputo dates back at least to 2015. Caputo said Alexander a decorated academic with over 60 peer-reviewed published works would frequently appear as a guest on his Buffalo, N.Y., radio talk show to chime in on scientific topics. From there, a friendship blossomed. The two met five times a day while they were in the White House, Caputo said, often talking late into the night and through the weekend. He said he didnt know if I could do my job without Alexander. An HHS spokesperson told The Spectator in July that Alexander considered the opportunity to work in the U.S. government a significant privilege and honour. Read more about: A day after people across the nation and the world celebrated his 70th birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced what he wanted as a present for the special occasion. Prime Minister Modi, born on September 17 in 1950, turned 70 on September 17. Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, the PM said that many people have asked what he wants for his birthday. The PM thanked everyone for wishing him on his birthday and said that these greetings give him the strength to serve and work towards improving the lives of the citizens. "People from all over India, from all over the world have shared their kind wishes. I am grateful to each and every person who has greeted me. These greetings give me strength to serve and work towards improving the lives of my fellow citizens," he tweeted. Live TV For his birthday the PM asked a few simple things from the people saying "here is what I seek right now". The PM asked people to keep wearing a mask properly, follow social distancing Do Gaj Ki Doori, avoid crowded spaces, improve immunity and make the planet healthy. "Since many have asked, what is it that I want for my birthday, here is what I seek right now: Keep wearing a mask and wear it properly. Follow social distancing. Remember Do Gaj Ki Doori. Avoid crowded spaces. Improve your immunity. Let us make our planet healthy," the PM tweeted. Since many have asked, what is it that I want for my birthday, here is what I seek right now: Keep wearing a mask and wear it properly. Follow social distancing. Remember Do Gaj Ki Doori. Avoid crowded spaces. Improve your immunity. Let us make our planet healthy. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 17, 2020 Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the world leaders who extended greetings to PM Modi on his birthday and lauded his personal contribution to the strengthening of ties with their countries. In a letter to Modi, Putin praised him and said his activity as India's head of the government has earned him the well-deserved respect of compatriots and high international prestige. People from all over India, from all over the world have shared their kind wishes. I am grateful to each and every person who has greeted me. These greetings give me strength to serve and work towards improving the lives of my fellow citizens. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 17, 2020 "It is hard to overestimate your personal contribution to the strengthening of the special and privileged strategic partnership between our countries," Putin noted in the letter uploaded on the website of the Russian Embassy in New Delhi. "From the bottom of my heart, I wish you good health, happiness, well-being and every success," he added. British Prime Minister Johnson took to Twitter to wish 'friend' Modi on his birthday, expressing the hope that the two leaders would meet soon. "Very best wishes to my friend Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday. I hope to see you soon," he said. The two leaders last met on the sidelines of the multilateral G7 summit in Biarritz, France, in 2019. Merkel wrote a letter to Modi, greeting him on his birthday. "Please accept my warmest congratulations on the occasion of your 70th birthday. I am happy to take this opportunity to thank you for our trustful and constructive cooperation," Merkel said. Merkel vowed to work together to overcome the challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. "The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the cohesion of the international community. Only if we work together will we manage to overcome this huge challenge. With that in mind, I look forward to continuing our cooperation for the benefit of the countries and their people," she said in her letter, which was shared by the Prime Minister's Office on its Twitter handle. She wished Modi great health and success during the current unusual times. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also greeted his "good friend" Modi. "My warmest birthday wishes to my good friend Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi," he tweeted from his official handle. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa also extended birthday greetings to Prime Minister Modi. "Happy Birthday PM Shri Narendra Modi! I wish you a blessed future with good health on this special day...," Gotabaya tweeted. "Warm wishes to my good friend, PM Narendra Modi as you celebrate another year of your life. I wish you success and the best of health," Mahinda said in a tweet. Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli also greeted Prime Minister Modi and vowed to continue to work closely together towards strengthening bilateral relations. "Warm greetings to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji on the auspicious occasion of your birthday. I wish you good health and happiness. We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries," Oli wrote in an early morning tweet. PM Modi thanked Oli and said he looks forward to the further strengthening of India-Nepal ties, based on the two neighbour's shared culture and history. Extending greetings to Prime Minister Modi, his Bhutanese counterpart Lotay Tshering expressed confidence that India will achieve greater transformation under his leadership. "Under your leadership, we are confident that India will continue to achieve even greater transformation," he said. Responding to the birthday greetings, Modi thanked the Bhutanese prime minister for his warm good wishes and prayers. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison greeted PM Modi and hoped the relations between the two countries will reach new heights in the coming year. "My dear friend Narendra Modi, greetings on your birthday. I'm sure our Australia-India relations will reach new heights in the coming year. May you have a delightful birthday. See you soon!" he tweeted in Hindi and English. Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar, Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Costa and Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel also extended birthday greetings to Prime Minister Modi. Envoys of several countries based in New Delhi, including Israeli envoy Ron Malka and Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev, also wished Prime Minister Modi on his birthday. "Your profile as an extraordinary politician and statesman is widely recognized in India and the world. In Russia your leadership is seen through the prism of forward-looking contribution to the national journey of achieving sustainable development and stability," Kudashev said in his message on Prime Minister Modi's birthday. The Singaporean mission to India wished the prime minister and shared his photo with Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong in Little India in Singapore during his 2015 visit. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention misspoke when he testified that a coronavirus vaccine might not be widely available until next year and that face masks are a more effective way of fighting the disease. I believe he was confused, Trump told reporters at the White House. Dr. Robert Redfield told a Senate panel on Wednesday that a limited supply of coronavirus vaccine may be available between November and December, but that it was unlikely to be available to the general public until the summer or fall of next year. His remarks contradicted Trump, who has said a vaccine could be available by the end of the year, perhaps by the Nov. 3 election. Redfield also testified that wearing a face mask might offer more protection against the spread of coronavirus than a vaccine. Masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have to fight the pandemic, Redfield said. "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, Redfield said, adding that vaccines are not 100% percent effective. If I dont get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me, he said. This face mask will. Who's at fault?: Trump blames 'blue states' for increasing nation's coronavirus death rates, ignores high rates in red states President Donald Trump A few hours later, Trump said during a White House news briefing that Redfield was wrong on both counts. I called him I said, What did you mean by that? Trump told reporters. I think he just made a mistake. I think he misunderstood the question. I got the impression that he didn't realize he said what he might have said, Trump said. Trump insisted the U.S. is ready to distribute the vaccine to much of the country whenever it is available, and he repeated his assertion that could be as early as October. Trump also has consistently questioned the efficacy of masks and did so as recently at a Tuesday town hall in Philadelphia. Story continues A vaccine is much more effective than the mask, he insisted during the White House briefing. Trump said that when he called Redfield on Wednesday, I said to him, whats with the mask. He said I think I answered that question incorrectly. I think maybe he misunderstood it. Asked if he still had confidence in Redfield, Trump said: "I do. I do. I do." Shortly after Trumps briefing, Redfield responded to the presidents comments on Twitter by clearly promoting the use of masks. "I 100% believe in the importance of vaccines and the importance in particular of a #COVID19 vaccine. A COVID-19 vaccine is the thing that will get Americans back to normal everyday life," Redfield wrote. "The best defense we currently have against this virus are the important mitigation efforts of wearing a mask, washing your hands, social distancing and being careful about crowds." Face masks: Trump attacks Biden on coronavirus mask mandates, but Biden doesn't hold public office Democratic challenger Joe Biden and others have suggested that Trump is pressuring the medical community to deliver a vaccine ahead of schedule so that he can benefit politically. Biden also weighed in on the Trump-Redfield flap, tweeting: "When I said I trust vaccines, and I trust the scientists, but I don't trust Donald Trump this is what I meant." Trump opponents said he is deliberately undercutting his CDC director for political purposes. Tommy Vietor, a national security spokesman during the Barack Obama administration, questioned the political value of Trump's comments. "For all the Teflon Don talk, days like today remind you that Trump is, in fact, a moron," Vietor tweeted. "It's hard to imagine a dumber political move than picking a fight with your own CDC director and then s--- talking masks when a majority of REPUBLICANS support requiring them outside of home." Critics also expressed wonder at Trump's denigration of masks. "He is endangering his own supporters," tweeted Democratic strategist Paul Begala, author of YOURE FIRED! The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump. "Has there ever been a leader who had such contempt for his followers? The apparent Trump-Redfield dispute is embarrassing all around, analysts said. "The communication on a life-and-death issue is something youd expect from a third world country," said Brendan Buck, who was a spokesman for then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Were in a situation where no one has credibility and the publics views on public health advice varies based on what political party you belong. Its absurd." Contributing: John Fritze This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump: CDC director Robert Redfield 'confused' about vaccine, masks Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States Thu, September 17, 2020 11:30 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c455a33d 2 World US,hackers,cyber-security,ransomware Free The US Justice Department on Wednesday announced charges against five Chinese nationals and two Malaysians who ran global hacking operations for at least six years to steal identities and video game technology, plant ransomware, and spy on Hong Kong activists. Three of the Chinese suspects operated out of Chengdu 404, a Sichuan-based company that purported to offer network security services for other businesses. They hacked the computers of hundreds of companies and organizers around the world to collect identities, hijack systems for ransom, and remotely use thousands of computers to mine for cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Two other Chinese nationals who formerly worked for Chengdu 404, and the two Malaysians, were indicted for hacking into major gaming companies to steal their secrets and "gaming artifacts," likely tradable in-game chits and credits, and resell them. Together the seven were long recognized by cybersecurity experts as the "APT41" hacking organization, identified by their shared tools and techniques. While some had thought that the group could be run by the Chinese government, the indictments did not identify a strong official connection. But according to court filings, Jiang Lizhi, one of the Chengdu 404 hackers, boasted to a colleague in 2012 that he was protected by China's Ministry of State Security, and indicated they were protected if they did not hack domestically. "Some of these criminal actors believed their association with the PRC provided them free license to hack and steal across the globe," federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin said in a statement. The charges did not indicate any direct political motivations behind the hackers' activities, though they did gain access to government computer systems in India and Vietnam. But they said that in 2018, Chengdu 404 deployed a program to collect information on people involved in Hong Kong's democracy movement, on a US media group reporting on the treatment of minority Uighurs in China's Xinjiang region, and on a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The filings do not indicate how the information was used. The seven face a range of charges including computer and wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and racketeering. The five Chinese remain at large but the two Malaysians were arrested in Malaysia on Monday and the United States is seeking their extradition. Stacey Gala, the former owner of restaurants in Worcester, has been sentenced to time served for conspiring with a restaurant manager to use her husbands drug proceeds to renovate and operate one of her eateries. Gala, 29, was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Worcester. U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Hillman sentenced Gala to time served, which was one day in prison, and three years of supervised release that will include six months of home confinement. The government recommended a sentence of 32 months in prison, according to a news release from the office of Andrew Lelling, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. In November 2019, Gala pleaded guilty to an indictment charging her with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Gala, the estranged wife of former restauranteur Kevin Perry Jr., owned and operated The Usual restaurant on Shrewsbury Street with Perry starting in October 2016. The couple employed Joseph Herman as the manager of the restaurant. Perry was arrested by federal authorities in March 2017 on charges of money laundering and drug distribution. After the arrest, Gala learned that Perry had concealed drug proceeds in a self-storage locker in Northborough. Then in May 2017, Gala and Herman conspired to retrieve the money and use the funds to renovate the Usual, authorities said. The eatery on Worcesters restaurant row reopened under the name The Chameleon." The Chameleon closed three months after federal investigators first interviewed Herman about Perrys drug money. In or about May 2017, Perry told Gala that he had hidden approximately $260,000 in a self-storage locker in Northborough, Massachusetts. The money consisted of Perrys drug proceeds, federal records read. Gala told Herman about the money and, eventually, Herman and another individual, C.S., removed over $200,000 from the self-storage locker in which Perry had concealed the drug proceeds prior to his arrest. Records indicate Gala was caught on a recording talking with Perry about using the drug money to pay for other restaurants. Perry argued that Gala stole money from him. Perry pleaded guilty in October 2017 to the money laundering and drug distribution charges. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In January 2019, Herman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, making false statements to federal investigators and attempted witness tampering. He is currently scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29. Also charged in the scheme was Christopher Slavinskas, who admitted to hiding a black toolbox containing more than $300,000 of Perrys drug money in a church and using $20,000 of the funds to pay for a vacation to Atlantic City. Earlier this year, Perry was denied early release from prison after arguing that medical conditions put him at an increased risk for serious illness or death if he contracts coronavirus behind bars. Gala and Perry also used to own the Blackstone Tap on Water Street. The eateries have since been bought by other restaurateurs. Related Content: DUP MLA Robin Newton has raised concerns of residents of Housing Executive high-rise tower blocks after they were ear-marked for demolition or disposal. Mr Newton said that many residents were worried about where they would be rehomed in the future, with housing provision not meeting demand. In July Communities Minister Caral Ni Chuilin confirmed her department's plan was to demolish, sell-off or refurbish all 33 Northern Ireland Housing Executive high-rise tower blocks. The plans were first proposed in 2018 and agreed to by the Housing Executive in March 2019 and the Department for Communities in August 2019. In a response to a written Assembly question from Mr Newton the minister outlined the Housing Executive's 'Tower Blocks Action Plan'. Phase one of the plan will see the demolition or disposal of 14 "short" term blocks within a one to five year time period. Under phase two demolition will be carried out on seven "medium" term blocks in a six to 10 year period with remedial works carried out in the interim. In phase three demolition will be carried out at a point "beyond a 10 year period" of 12 "long" term blocks with improvement works carried out as required. Plans to demolish Monkscoole House in Newtownabbey and Latharna House in Larne have already been approved by the department. Other plans have been delayed due to the inability to carry out local consultations as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The department anticipates that work will begin on the first tower blocks "in 2022 at the earliest". Expand Close Robin Newton / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robin Newton East Belfast MLA Mr Newton described the plans as "ambitious" given the time elapsed since the initial announcement and the pressure on public finances. In 2019 the Housing Executive estimated decommissioning the tower blocks and rehousing tenants could cost 225 million over the next 30 years. Mr Newton said it was not just an issue of the tower blocks themselves, but of when the new-build homes will be ready for residents who are impacted. "In east Belfast there have only been 132 new homes constructed within the past three years, and there are many current residents of tower blocks who are concerned about the future," he said. "The minister will need to outline when new homes will be ready for residents who would be displaced by the plans for demolition of the towers. "Every week my office deals with single people, senior citizens and families who are in need of suitable housing. With demand already high, the Minister must announce how she intends to ensure those on the waiting list can be accommodated alongside those who would be displaced by plans for tower blocks." In response to Mr Newton's comments a Housing Executive spokesperson confirmed "a number of business cases for the disposal of tower blocks have been approved by the Department for Communities". "We will continue to communicate with our tenants as this process proceeds," the spokesperson said. Small business owners are some of the strongest, most resilient people you will ever meet. They know what its like to take risks, work hard, make tough decisions, and turn a profit to benefit their community. The last few months have been arduous for Wyomings rural small business owners and entrepreneurs. Yet once again, weve seen that in times of crisis, small businesses step up to provide for their employees and serve their hometowns. At the Small Business Administration, we have made it our frontline mission to support small businesses in Wyoming as they work to find new and un... Since I first heard about the arrival of bears in Burnfoot, the call to go and see them has been strong. I have always found them to be magnificent creatures that I could watch for hours when looking at them in zoos or wildlife parks. This has invariably been bittersweet as it is clear that they belong in vast, mountain forests with clear, clean rivers and little or no human interference. But having read about Wild Ireland and the story behind its rescued animals, I had a feeling that this would be different. I finally made it along last Saturday and Wild Ireland certainly did not disappoint. The animals are of course in enclosures, but given that many of the resident creatures were rescued from dire, cramped living conditions, a spacious, well thought out enclosure in the natural landscape of the Donegal hills is a vast improvement. Indeed, the landscape is used very well and it plays its own part in the Wild Ireland story. This is no safari park imposed on the land. Instead it uses and celebrates everything that the natural terrain has to offer, from heath and bog to scrub and natural woodland. Waterways are used or created in keeping with the natural environment, and their inhabitants are acknowledged too. The larger animals are spectacular, but there is something very heartwarming about watching a female mallard nestling down amidst the familiar purple heather. Wild Ireland is laid out so that everything can be seen in a relatively short space of time and although there is a one-way system, visitors can go around as many times as they like. I would definitely recommend a second or third trip around the sanctuary as each one offers a different view or experience of the animals. There are foxes and ferrets, birds and wildfowl of all shapes and sizes including a juvenile golden eagle called Odin, deer, old Irish goats (Seamus is a joy to behold!), boar, otters and more. Among the more exotic species are monkeys, lynx and of course the wolves and bears. It is an absolute joy to see these fantastic animals here in Donegal, and to imagine a time when they roamed freely in extensive forests that once covered the island. What Killian McLaughlin has achieved with Wild Ireland is really special. It touches something very deep that goes beyond mere human experience. At its most basic, Mr McLaughlin has rescued the animals and provided them with a safe place to heal and grow closer to their true nature. But he has also tapped into the innate memory of the land, creating a connection to a natural way of life that has nothing at all to do with humans except for the fact that it was humans who brought it to an end. Wild Ireland celebrates these animals and their part in this countrys story, and its very existence shows that humans can be a force for good when it comes to the natural world. This sanctuary helps us to understand our past and present relationships with wild animals and our shared environment, and is a guiding light when it comes to how we can all take responsibility for making our planet a better place for all its occupants. Our trip to Wild Ireland was worth every cent of the admission fee (and the small fortune we spent at the gift shop!). Pre-booking is essential at present due to the need to limit the number of visitors at any one time. More information and booking details can be found at www.wildireland.org In order to boost economic activity in the state, chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday directed the states industries department to prepare an action plan to attract more investment into Maharashtra. A senior official said the department would focus on online systems and perception building measures will be adopted to project Maharashtra as a suitable investment destination. Thackeray, who held a review meeting with officials at his official residence Varsha on Thursday, said that ease of doing business was key to attract investments. In the press release issued by the CMs office, the CM said, Maharashtra has been the preferred investment destination in the country and ease of doing business (EoDB) plays an important role in helping the state maintain this. Our state should remain a step ahead in EoDB. For this, the department should prepare an action plan. The statement went on to say that Maharashtra has been the first choice for foreign investment in the past and this should continue to be the case in the future. For the state to flourish, more and more investors should be attracted to come to Maharashtra. The state needs to work on making ease of doing business effective, said the CM in the statement. With a nationwide economic slowdown and the challenges posed by the lockdown imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19, large-scale investment is necessary to turn the wheels of Maharashtras economy, said officials from the industries department. An official said, on condition of anonymity, that the state needed to be ready for tough competition once the economy opened up. We have to strengthen the online systems and make it much more effective. Our aim is to make the physical touch points almost negligible. We have to work on the reforms for the current year. Another important aspect that we will work on is perception building, said the official from the industries department. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Veteran Chinese activist Yang Zhanqing said that the Wuhan Intermediate Court has rejected multiple suits on unspecified procedural grounds, sending rejections via phone calls instead of official written explanations, to 'avoid a paper trail' Wuhan: At least five lawsuits have been filed with the Wuhan Intermediate Court, said Zhang Hai, whose elderly father died of the virus and who has emerged as a vocal advocate and spokesman for families of virus victims. Plaintiffs are each seeking around two million yuan ($295,000) in damages and a public apology. But the court has rejected suits on unspecified procedural grounds, said Yang Zhanqing, a veteran Chinese activist now in the US. Yang, who is coordinating two dozen lawyers in China who are secretly advising families, said the rejections have come via curt phone calls not through official written explanations, as legally required apparently to avoid a paper trail. Staff at the Wuhan court refused AFP requests for comment. Stonewalling The virus emerged in Wuhan last December but city authorities initially dragged their feet, pressuring whistle-blowing doctors to keep quiet. The Communist Party continues to downplay responsibility, even questioning whether the pathogen originated in China while trumpeting its later success in suppressing domestic infections. It held a grand ceremony in Beijing last week, where President Xi Jinping declared the nation had passed an "extraordinary and historic test" through a swift and transparent response. But Zhong tells a different story. By late January, the contagion was spreading rapidly in Wuhan, but officials had still issued no citywide alarm. With the extended Lunar New Year festival approaching, Zhong and her son Peng Yi -- a 39-year-old primary schoolteacher -- happily shopped at jam-packed stores. Millions of others left Wuhan for the holiday, taking the infection globally. "We had no idea the buses were full of the virus... So we went out every day. We didn't even know about masks," Zhong told AFP. On 24 January, as Wuhan finally began locking down, she and Peng fell ill. She soon recovered, but he worsened. Fear gripped their household, which included Zhong's husband, Peng's wife, and his seven-year-old daughter. For the next two agonising weeks, they spent long hours in overwhelmed hospitals begging to get him admitted, but without a positive result and with testing kits scarce he has repeatedly turned away. Peng was finally hospitalised on 6 February. His family never saw him alive again. He died on a respirator two weeks later. "He must have been so scared, so unhappy, with no family around. I can't imagine how sad he was," said Zhong, breaking down repeatedly. "Did he call out 'Mother'? 'Father'? I don't know." 'Never give up' Zhang Hai believes his father was infected at a Wuhan hospital during treatment for an unrelated ailment. He says authorities are waging a campaign to discredit him, suspending his social media accounts and circulating disinformation that the legal efforts are a scam to bilk families. Others also have reported official intimidation, and next-of-kin chat groups have been infiltrated by police, Zhang alleged, blaming Wuhan's government. "They know if I succeed in filing a case, many other families will sue, too," he said. Wuhan's government did not respond to AFP's requests for comment. Zhang said dozens of bereaved relatives have coalesced in chat groups, but most are fearful of taking action. With his initial suit in Wuhan rejected, Zhang filed recently with a higher, provincial-level court. Zhong, the elderly pensioner, plans the same. Yang, the US-based activist, believes it "very likely" the government will quietly meet some families' demands eventually, though a public apology is inconceivable. Until then, Zhang intends to appeal all the way to China's highest court in Beijing, regardless of the personal risks. "My father is my motivation," he said. Alleged Isis chief Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla. The current Isis leader gave intelligence to US forces leading to strikes on al-Qaeda, newly released files show. Documents released on Thursday suggest Muhammad Sa'id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla gave information after his arrest in 2008 on dozens of fellow jihadists as well as the structure of al Qaeda in Mosul. He allegedly provided names for 68 al-Qaeda fighters including 19 from photographs. Three Tactical Interrogation Reports released by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) allege al-Mawla, who at the time was an al-Qaeda judge, identified leading figures behind assassinations, kidnappings and the production of improved explosive devices, used to kill coalition forces. One jihadist was a Moroccan national called Abu Jasim Abu Qaswarah. Thought to be the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time, he was killed by US forces eight months after al-Mawla named him as a member of the terrorist group. Islamic State fighters march through Raqqa, Syria, before they were ejected by Coalition forces. Jan 14, 2014. - Militant Website In the documents released by the West Point-based think tank al-Mawla supposedly admitted knowledge of executions and assassinations carried out by the group starting to call itself Islamic State in Iraq. The heavily redacted documents outline the organisational structure of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the emerging Islamic State based on al-Mawlas information. The reports say al-Mawla provided details on all key Amir positions and oversaw the groups media cell, for which he had to authorise all output to ensure it adhered to sharia principles. Tactical Interrogation Report B states: Detainee identified a number of photographs of HVI (high value individuals) from the Mosul area. In a webinar hosted by the CTC Craig Whiteside, Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, said al-Mawla doesnt seem to have much in the way of probity...he was ratting out so many of his colleagues. Gina Ligon, an organisational psychologist, said the documents showed a lot of punitive language suggesting al-Mawla held grudges easily. He likely viewed people as expendable resources that he could discard [and no more than] cogs in a greater machine. Story continues Over the course of three interrogation sessions, al-Mawla named 68 individuals, providing physical descriptions, mobile phone numbers and roles in the organisation. Some individuals were later arrested and some killed by Coalition forces. They were key to his release so he gave them up, Ms Ligon said. This is a distant leader who will callously give people up when they are no longer of use to him US soldiers carry shotguns as they walk along a corridor separating what they deem to be the most extreme and dangerous detainees held inside the Camp Bucca detention center located near the Kuwait-Iraq border. May 19, 2008. - DAVID FURST/AFP Arrested in 2008 by US forces al-Mawla was interrogated in Umm Qasr, southern Iraq, at Camp Bucca, named after Ronald Bucca, a New York City fire marshal who died in the 9/11 attacks. He was released in 2009 and only recently came to prominence when he took over the leadership of Isis following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October last year. Al-Mawla, known by Isis as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, is thought to be in the desert region of eastern Syria and westerm Iraq. He is still a target of the US-led coalition. Al-Mawla, 43, is an Islamic scholar, although some Isis members question his religious credentials to be leader. The documents say he previously wrote speeches for al-Baghdadi and was the Imam at the al-Furqan mosque in Mosul. Between 2000 and 2002 he served as a conscripted infantry soldier in Saddam Husseins army. He is believed to be married with one son. Haroro Ingram, Senior Research Fellow at George Washington University's Programme on Extremism, said the documents will really shake trust in al-Mawla's leadership of Isis. "They show he can't be trusted." Security experts believe Isis are still not a spent force and have inspired attacks in the West in recent years such as the Manchester Arena bombing. A security source told the Telegraph Isis has lost territory but their messages of hate live on. Because their bubble was squeezed [in Iraq and Syria] they are looking to expand in other areas, particularly Africa." Alpine butterflies like the Rocky Mountain apollo (pictured) have a rapid life cycle that makes it easier for scientists to see how successive generations are being affected by climate change in mountain ecosystems, according to a U of A scientist. Credit: Zac Robinson Mountains and butterflies are conceptualized as the ultimate juxtapositionenduring and resolute versus fleeting and delicatebut the surprising robustness of alpine butterflies could help scientists better understand the impact climate change is having on mountains. In an essay written for the third annual State of the Mountains report by the Alpine Club of Canada, University of Alberta renewable resources Ph.D. student Zac MacDonald, along with U of A biological sciences professor Felix Sperling and registered professional forester William Sperling, outlined the need for more research into the adaptability and life cycle of these alpine creatures that have adapted to endure in particularly harsh environmental conditions. The reason alpine butterflies are so interesting to climate change experts is that they have relatively rapid life cycles, most often completing one every year so their populations respond to changes quite rapidly. For example, female Rocky Mountain apollo butterflies will lay eggs singly on the undersides of rocks or vegetation near the plant the caterpillar will feed on in the springtime. The overwintering eggs depend on a deep snowpack to insulate them from the cold alpine temperatures in the winter. "I think the alpine is becoming much more variable and a lot more green, so it's difficult to predict when these butterflies are going to emerge, or even if they have a climate window to complete a life cycle," said MacDonald. "The ultimate sentinel" The trio explained human influences in combination with global climate change and fire suppression has resulted in visible encroachment of trees into alpine meadows across Alberta and British Columbia. Rising treelines don't just mean less habitat; they also diminish the number of butterflies flying between mountains. Such dispersal events are needed to inject genetic diversity into dwindling populations that see generations live solely in a single meadow already slowed by impenetrable mountain ranges. "Alpine butterflies are the ultimate sentinel because they're easy to find, the populations respond quickly to change and they can proxy environmental change at a very fine scale," said MacDonald. "However, there's a lot of evidence and reasoning to suggest that they're going to be in big trouble because mountain ecosystems are predicted to change a lot more drastically than other ecosystems with climate change." Unfortunately, save for a few studiesincluding one by U of A biological sciences professor emeritus Jens Roland that provides a long-term look at butterflies in a meadow network at Jumping Pound Ridgethere aren't a lot of alpine butterfly monitoring programs in place. "We wrote the article to encourage more monitoring," said MacDonald. "Because these ecosystems are so inaccessible, we're trying to get alpine enthusiasts and the outdoor community motivated to start submitting their sightings so we know what's going on." State of the Mountains Heading up the State of the Mountains report for the third straight year are U of A mountain historian Zac Robinson in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation; former U of A ecologist David Hik, who is now with Simon Fraser University; and Lael Parrott, professor of sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Robinson said while the pandemic pushed back the release of the report from May until now, it also provided a theme for the report. "The tumultuous 2020 has been a reminder to all of us just how fortunate we are to have these wilderness places to recreate and to explore," said Robinson. "As we were staying closer to home trying to seek activities that are safe to do in a pandemic, I think more and more people, in a twist of fate, rediscovered our parks and our trails and our mountain spaces." People didn't necessarily need to venture outdoors to enjoy the mountains, either. The report mentions that the U of A's massive open online course Mountains 101 saw a surge in registrations in April the likes of which administrators hadn't seen since the first month of its launch back in 2017. Other U of A contributions include an essay by U of A alumnus Scott Williamson, now a post-doc at the University of Northern British Columbia, about how rates of warming at the highest points in Canada's tallest mountains are almost five to six times faster than in other jurisdictions. As well, Stephen Johnston, a researcher in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, wrote about how the formation of the North American Cordillerathe great range of mountains that string along the western edge of the continentdefies the rules that govern mountain building in other places in the world. "The State of the Mountains report is a great opportunity to talk about some of the scientific issues and questions that we deal with," said Johnston. "I think the more you understand something, the more you appreciate it. The more people understand about the mountains, the more they want to go see them, play in them and look after them." Explore further Climate change could cause decline of some alpine butterfly species Katie Price has revealed her shock after she was illegally advised to give her puppy Rolo cannabis oil before suffocated to death in an armchair. The former glamour model, 42, could reportedly face a probe for giving the dog CBD oil after she was gifted the substance in a 'puppy hamper' from the dog's breeders. The late French bulldog, which was bought as a present for her daughter Princess' 13th birthday, fell asleep under an electric chair after having the non-psychoactive cannabis derivative and later suffocated after the family's nanny sat on the chair. Horror: Katie Price has revealed her shock after she was illegally advised to give her puppy Rolo cannabis oil before suffocated to death in an armchair Katie told the Mirror that she was unaware that it is illegal to give dogs the substance without a veterinary prescription, in accordance with the The Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013. The publication reported that offenders can face a fine or maximum jail term of two years. Katie has since revealed that a vet told her giving the puppy CBD oil may have encouraged him to seek out a cosy place to sleep, such as the chair. Sad: The late French bulldog, which was bought as a present for her daughter Princess' 13th birthday, fell asleep under an electric chair after having the cannabis oil and later suffocated after the family's nanny sat on the chair A spokeswoman for Katie said: 'Katie was told the oil was for dogs and safe. It was endorsed by the breeder. Katie will join forces with Peta and any other groups that need her to speak out.' A source close to her added: 'As awful as it sounds, this will bring some comfort to Katie in understanding why Rolo crawled into the space. 'She feels let down too by a system that allows CBD oil to be marketed for pets despite it being illegal. Katie had backlash, hate mail, death threats and trolling over Rolo's tragic passing. As a family, they continue to mourn.' Penalty: The former glamour model, 42, could reportedly face a probe for giving the dog CBD oil after she was gifted the substance in a 'puppy hamper' from the dog's breeders The dog breeders who sold Katie the pup told the news outlet that they had no idea it was breaking the law and claimed that dogs can't get sleepy from it due to the lack of THC. They added that they also advised she give the puppy a small amount and suggested they didn't know how much Katie had given Rolo. MailOnline have contacted Katie's representatives and the dog breeder for comment. Katie Price was criticised by animal rights activists in July after her daughter Princess' puppy Rolo tragically suffocated. The French bulldog died after getting stuck in an electric armchair while the reality star was packing some bags in another room, reported The Mirror. Rolo was given to Princess as a birthday present and is the third dog of the family's to die in tragic circumstances. Tragic: Katie was slammed by animal rights activists after her daughter Princess' puppy Rolo 'suffocated when he got caught in an electric armchair' Animal rights activists have slammed Katie online since news of her latest dogs tragic passing broke, with many even contacting the breeders. Elisa Allen, director of animal rights group PETA, told the Mirror: 'Katie must not be allowed to acquire any more animals. 'At least three dogs and one horse have died on her watch in the last few years alone... her attitude is costing wonderful animals their lives.' However the RSPCA said they couldn't comment on whether they had received complaints about the reality star's animals for legal reasons. Devastated: Rolo was given to Princess (pictured together) as a gift for her 13th birthday Dog breeders JRC Bullies took to their Instagram page after animal lovers started questioning them about why Princess was given a dog. They asked that people stopped sending 'vile hatred messages' and said they would post a video explaining why the pup had been gifted to the family on Friday. They wrote: 'The outcome of our decision has understandably upset a lot of animal lovers, and I apologise from the bottom of my heart that you have had to read of this tragedy, but we can 100 % assure you all we did everything we could for Rolo moving in with his new family. Heartbroken: JRC Bullies, who bred Rolo, wrote on their Instagram asking people to stop sending them 'hate comments' (left) and also shared Katie's message of support (right) Speaking out: The breeders also said they would be explaining why Princess was given a dog in a video planned for Friday as well as thanking their followers for support 'Yes you might say well I shouldnt have given the pup but once again I will explain the reason tomorrow for my decision, for now please lay of the text phone calls comments as there is no need. 'We are a massive family at @JRCbullies we love and devote our lives to our animals and we honestly have so much love for all the people who support us and follow us and have sent their messages in the hundreds today, thank you all so much.' JRC Bullies also told the Mirror that they were 'heartbroken' and had told Katie not to leave the puppy on its own. It is thought that she rang the company to tell them about Rolo's death, explaining that she was packing in another room at the time. It was also reported that her five-year-old daughter Bunny found the pup. SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Greenbits, the nation's largest cannabis retail platform, announced today that it has achieved $4 billion in annualized retail sales as customers continue to grow during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is the first cannabis technology provider to achieve this retail sales milestone as its customers have realized same-store sales growth of more than 25% year-to-date. The industry now affects more than a quarter billion people, yet the vast majority of financial transactions are conducted in cash. Greenbits customers accept the equivalent more than half a million $20 bills every day, while retailers across the country will accept the equivalent of more than one billion $20 bills this year. Advanced, software-backed retail support is critical to sustain cannabis operators. "We are thrilled to see the cannabis industry defying economic trends by standing strong in the pandemic," Greenbits CEO Barry Saik said. "Our growth reflects our customers' success and their critical reliance on a technology solution that combines software and financial services. We're excited to continue driving the future of fintech within the legal cannabis industry." Greenbits also released several new tools that went live today for retailers: Actionable insight reporting Retailers now have the ability to run robust reports on inventory movement, profitability, sales and other product data across one or more locations. These powerful enterprise-level insights enable Greenbits customers to optimize inventory, pricing and promotional programs and outperform the competition. Retailers now have the ability to run robust reports on inventory movement, profitability, sales and other product data across one or more locations. These powerful enterprise-level insights enable Greenbits customers to optimize inventory, pricing and promotional programs and outperform the competition. Next generation registers Customers will notice immediate improvements in connection speed and reliability with Greenbits's advanced sales system. The register has new features that enable retailers to increase revenue. This includes seamless and intelligent management of order ahead, delivery, and in-store sales all in one place, an improved "emergency mode" to help retailers complete sales even when the internet is unavailable, and faster processing of compliant returns. Additionally, retailers will have more information at their fingertips with customer data on receipts, and the ability to remove items and discounts from orders quickly and easily. Retailers can grow their business with customer profiles that include referral information right at the register. Customers will notice immediate improvements in connection speed and reliability with Greenbits's advanced sales system. The register has new features that enable retailers to increase revenue. This includes seamless and intelligent management of order ahead, delivery, and in-store sales all in one place, an improved "emergency mode" to help retailers complete sales even when the internet is unavailable, and faster processing of compliant returns. Additionally, retailers will have more information at their fingertips with customer data on receipts, and the ability to remove items and discounts from orders quickly and easily. Retailers can grow their business with customer profiles that include referral information right at the register. Debit card processing For the first time, vendors are able to process debit card transactions in store, curbside, and at drive-through locations, giving customers easier, more secure payment options. Since the onset of lockdowns in March, the number of retailers using Greenbits' debit card system has increased by more than 600 times, as early results show a 24 percent increase in purchase quantity on average, compared to cash transactions. "As the regulatory landscape evolves, the team continues to lead the industry with a retailer-focused point of sale platform." said Karan Wadhera, Managing Partner of Casa Verde, a lead investor in Greenbits. "The company is rapidly scaling and managing the sharp increase in sales with a robust and secure platform." About Greenbits Greenbits empowers more than 1,200 cannabis retail locations across 13 states with a safer, smarter, easier way to manage day-to-day operations and maximize store performance. The company's robust retail platform with automated state-by-state compliance, point of sale, inventory control, and personalized insights enables owners, managers, and budtenders to run, protect, and grow their businesses with ease. As the largest provider of retail technology, Greenbits processes $4 billion in regulated cannabis sales annually on its platform. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has an office in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at http://www.greenbits.com/. Media Contact: Emily Seeley (415) 517-7507 [email protected] SOURCE Greenbits Related Links https://www.greenbits.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:02:54|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's State Council Information Office will release a white paper on the participation of the country's armed forces in the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations on Friday morning. The white paper, titled "China's Armed Forces: 30 Years of UN Peacekeeping Operations," will be released at 10 a.m. Friday and a press conference will be held by the office. Enditem But DeMarcos account contradicts the administrations claims that protesters were violent, that tear gas was never used and that demonstrators were given ample warning to disperse a legal requirement before police move to clear a crowd. His testimony also offers a glimpse into the equipment and weaponry federal forces had and that they sought during the early days of protests that have continued for more than 100 days in the nations capital. Data is the lifeblood of artificial intelligence, and despite estimates that the world will generate more data over the next three years than it has in the previous 30, there still isnt enough of it to supply the booming A.I. industry. Amazon can predict your buying habits because its algorithms are trained on the data collected from its 112 million Prime subscribers in the U.S. and the tens of millions of other people around the world who visit the site and use its other products on a regular basis. Googles advertising business depends on predictive models fueled by the billions of internet searches it processes each day and data from the 2.5 billion devices running the Android operating system. The tech giants have carved out these massive data monopolies, and that gives them near-impenetrable advantages in the field of A.I. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So how is a small A.I. startup to train its models to compete? Data collection is a time-consuming and expensive process. What about a hospital chain that wants to harness A.I. to better diagnose diseases but cant use its own patient data due to federal privacy laws and cybersecurity concerns? Or a credit scoring agency seeking to model risky behavior that doesnt want to use sensitive consumer information? The answer, increasingly, is to use synthetic datacreated by A.I., for A.I. In many cases, its a cheaper and faster option, but it carries a risk: The techniques used to generate realistic-looking data can also exacerbate harmful biases in that data. Synthetic data comes in many forms, from images of fake faces that are indistinguishable from real ones to statistically realistic purchasing patterns for thousands of fictional customers. Executives at multiple synthetic data companiesincluding established firms like GenRocket and startups such as Mostly AI, Hazy, and AI Reveriesaid theyve seen a huge growth in demand for boutique data sets over just the past two years. Companies can also turn to open-source tools like Synthea, which researchers at institutions including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs use to create realistic medical histories for thousands of fake patients in order to study disease patterns and treatment paths. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Executives at multiple for-profit synthetic data companies, as well as at Mitre Corp., which created Synthea, have seen an explosion of interest in their services over the past several years. With that growth, though, comes potential peril for algorithms that are increasingly used to make life-changing decisionsand increasingly shown to amplify racism, sexism, and other harmful biases in high-impact areas like facial recognition, criminality prediction, and health care decision-making. Researchers say that in many cases, training an algorithm on algorithmically generated data increases the risk that an artificial intelligence system will perpetuate harmful discrimination. Advertisement Advertisement That process of creating a synthetic data set, depending on what youre extrapolating from and how youre doing that, can actually exacerbate the biases, says Deb Raji, a technology fellow at the AI Now Institute. Synthetic data can be useful for assessment and evaluation [of algorithms], but dangerous and ultimately misleading when it comes to training [them]. Advertisement One of the most common ways to create synthetic data is with a generative adversarial network, or GAN, a method developed in 2014 whereby two neural networks are pitted against each other. First, both are trained on similar sets of real data. Then the first network, or generative model, attempts to synthesize data realistic enough that it will fool the second network, the discriminatory model, into believing the synthesized data came from the same source as the real training data. The more the two networks compete in this positive feedback loop, the better they each get at their task, resulting in a synthetic data set that can be, statistically and to the naked eye, nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Its not accuracy versus fairness. The data should represent the world how it should be. Julia Stoyanovich, computer science professor at New York University The GAN method can be problematic, though, because algorithms are lazythey always try to find the easiest way to make a prediction, says Harry Keen, CEO of Hazy, a London-based company that creates synthetic data for financial services companies, telecoms, and governments. And when it comes to extrapolating from data sets about real people, GANs often achieve their goal by following the path of least resistance and ignoring outliers (women and people of color in a data set of Fortune 500 CEOs, for example). That kind of algorithmic discrimination can occur with real datatake, for example, the automated hiring system Amazon had to scrap after discovering it favored men over women due to the historical employment data it was trained onbut GAN-generated synthetic data can amplify the bias. Advertisement Advertisement In a study from January, researchers at Arizona State University demonstrated this phenomenon. (Disclosure: ASU is a partner with Slate and New America in Future Tense.) They started with a data set composed of 17,245 images of engineering professors from universities across the country, 80 percent of whom were male and 76 percent of whom were white. They then trained a GAN on that data set to create synthetic images. The result? A data set of highly realistic faces that were 93 percent male and 99 percent white. Advertisement In the language of the industry, the synthetic photos the GAN generated were accurate: They looked to the human eye and statistical models like adult human faces, rather than random assortments of pixels or some other object. But in a real-world sense, the data set as a whole was misleading because the existing bias was amplified. Had it been used for a purpose like hiring new engineering professors, it would have perpetuated real-world discrimination. Advertisement Julia Stoyanovich, a computer science professor at New York University, says the debate in the industry shouldnt be accuracy versus fairness. That is, companies dont have to choose. Instead, the data should represent the world how it should be. Very recently, some synthetic data companies have turned their attention toward generating data sets that are just that: both accurate and fair. Hazy and Mostly AI, a Vienna-based company, have experimented with methods for controlling the biases of data in ways that can actually reduce harmdistorting reality, as Keen calls it, to ensure that a particularly harmful pattern contained in the real-world data doesnt make its way into the synthetic data set. In May, Mostly AI published a discussion of two of its experiments. In the first, researchers started with income data from the 1994 U.S. census and sought to generate a synthetic data set in which the proportion of men and women who earned more than $50,000 a year was more equal that in the original data. In the second, they used data from a controversial recidivism prediction program to generate a synthetic data set in which criminality was less linked to gender and skin color. The resulting data sets arent strictly accuratewomen did earn less in 1994 (and now) and Black men are arrested at a higher rate than other groupsbut they are far more useful in contexts where the goal is not to perpetuate sexism and racism. A synthetic data set generated to equalize the income gap between men and women, for example, could help a company make fairer decisions about how much to compensate its employees. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement These experiments are in their early stages, and even if the methods are perfected, there remains a significant barrier to their widespread adoption: Companies dont seem to care as much about fairness as they do about accuracy to the original data. Theres always another priority, it seems, says Daniel Soukup, a data scientist leading Mostly AIs fairness research. Youre trading off revenue against making fair predictions, and I think thats a very hard sell for these institutions and these organizations. At the end of the day, this company [Mostly AI], in addition to being a small startup, is for-profit. The small group of academics who research bias in synthetic data hold out hope that new techniques will lead to A.I. models that reflect (and manifest) the world in which we want to live, rather than perpetuating centuries of systemic racism and sexism. Im really optimistic, says Bill Howe, a University of Washington professor who studies synthetic data. There doesnt seem to be any reason why we cant use these methods to do a better job than we do now. Except that, at the moment, synthetic data buyers arent asking for fairer data, and companies arent inclined to invest in developing the methods to create it without that financial incentive. Advertisement Months after the Arizona State University researchers released a study demonstrating how a GAN exacerbated the racial and gender biases in a facial image data set, a group of Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University proved they could do the opposite. In their paper, which they presented July 14 at the International Conference on Machine Learning, the Stanford group outlined a method that allowed them to weight certain featuresin this case gender and hair coloras more important than others in order to generate a more diverse set of facial images. Advertisement The Stanford group told Slate that more work needs to be done before the method is ready to generate data that could responsibly be used to train algorithms with real-world impacts. But their success is evidence that, should the commercial synthetic data industry and its customers decide to do so, its possible to use synthetic data as a tool that purposefully combats harmful bias rather than one that unintentionally feeds it. Its not a problem that can be solved by a single algorithm or technique. Doing it correctly will require continual attention from the end users of synthetic data, who are best positioned to know the biases likely to crop up in their field, and a willingness on their part to combat those biases. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Displaced Persons A group of Displaced Persons (DPs), in Barby, Germany on April 12, 1945. Credit - Tony VaccaroGetty Images While we are entitled to express our outrage at the brutality and breadth of the current administrations war on immigrants, our focus on the present must not blind us to Americas history of immigration restriction over the past century and a half. Wrapping ourselves in metaphors and allegories of melting pots and statues of liberty, we have paid too little attention to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled; the 1924 Immigration Act which entirely shut off immigration from Asia and severely limited it from eastern and southern Europe; and the 1965 Immigration Act which removed the restrictions on European and Asian immigration but placed new and severe numerical limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most egregious acts of exclusion, one that has been almost stricken from historical memory: the decision to prevent Jewish Holocaust survivors and non-Jewish victims of World War II from immigrating to the United States. At wars end in 1945 Europe, millions of ill-clothed, malnourished, diseased, and disoriented concentration, death, and labor camp survivors, forced laborers and slave laborers, POWs and political prisoners were left to wander the roadways and haunt the town squares and marketplaces in search of food and shelter. American military forces took the lead in rounding them up, transporting them to assembly centers, and then repatriating millions to their former homes in western Europe, Italy, and the Soviet Union. By summers end, however, there remained left behind in Germany a million displaced persons (DPs), who were unable or unwilling to return home or, like the Jewish survivors, had no homes to return to. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, largely funded by the United States, was organized to shelter, feed, and provide these last million victims of war with medical care in newly established DP camps. They would remain there for the next three to five years while the victors in war debated what to do with them. Story continues For the Jews who survived the concentration and death camps or in hiding throughout Europe or in the deep recesses of the Soviet Union, as for the eastern Europeans who had been violently ripped from their homes to serve as slave and forced laborers in European, the violence and brutality of war had not been magically erased with the cessation of hostilities. The Soviet Union and the eastern bloc nations demanded that the last million DPs in Germany, with the exception of Jews, be returned to their former homelands. Those who had committed war crimes or collaborated with the Nazis would be brought to justice; those who had been deported to Germany as forced laborers or POWs would assist in the rebuilding of their shattered nations. The United States disagreed. As Eleanor Roosevelt, an American delegate to the United Nations, declared unequivocally, displaced persons who had committed no crimes had every right to refuse repatriation to their Soviet-dominated homelands. Over Soviet objections, the United States and its allies organized and funded the International Refugee Organization to resettle those who refused to go home again. While American representatives encouraged the nations of the world to accept, resettle, and put the eastern European DPs to work, Congress refused to even consider allowing them to immigrate to the U.S. The only exception made was for several thousand Nazi collaborators and scientists who were handpicked by government and military officials and clandestinely transported to the United States to use their expertise and knowledge to help fight the Cold War. For the Jewish survivors, Americas refusal to open its gates was particularly cruel. Barred by the British from immigrating to Palestine and denied resettlement by IRO nations whose governments considered them too damaged, too clannish, too dangerous, and either incapable or unwilling to do the hard work required of them, America remained the Jewish survivors best and last hope of escaping quasi-captivity in German DP camps. For three full years, the U.S. Congress ignored the plight of the Last Million. Only in June of 1948 did Congress pass a bill authorizing the admission of 200,000 DPs, but barring the immigration of the 90% of Jewish survivors who, having spent the war years in the Soviet Union and/or the first months of the postwar period in Poland, were accused of being Communist sympathizers or operatives. No such security measures were written into the law to guard against the entry of the thousands of Nazi collaborators and war criminals who had lied their way into the displaced persons camps. The outcry against the discriminatory nature of the first Displaced Persons Act was such that it was amended, two years later, to remove the restrictions on Jewish immigration, but, by this time, after three to five years in camps in Germany, the vast majority of survivors, unwilling to spend a day more in Germany, had immigrated to Israel, illegally before May, 1948 and then legally after Israel declared, and President Truman recognized, its independence. Seventy-five years after the American government refused to admit the Jewish survivors and non-Jewish victims of World War II, the current administration is waging another battle against those in need of refuge and asylum. The president, whose grandfather, mother, and first and third wives were immigrants, advised by his son-in-law, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and Stephen Miller, the great grandson of immigrants, have proposed and exacted harsh, new restrictions for those seeking admission to the United States as asylum-seekers, immigrants, refugees, guest workers, students, visitors, or to reunite with family members already here. A new Denaturalization Section has been organized in the Justice Department to facilitate the deportation of former immigrants who have been naturalized and are now citizens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have deported thousands of asylum-seekers, including some sick with the coronavirus. The Department of Homeland Services and the Justice Department have proposed sweeping new rules to severely restrict the legal rights and protections afforded asylum-seekers. And all this, because the current administration claims, without evidence, that these men, women, and children pose distinct and present dangers to Americans and their way of life. Once again, falsehoods are being used to stoke fear of immigrants. The Jewish survivors who sought entrance to this nation after World War II, the grandparents of Jared Kushner included, were not anti-American, anti-democratic, or Communist sympathizers or operatives, though many were barred from entry on the false charges that they were. The Chinese laborers who were banned from entering the country from 1882 until 1943 posed no threat to American women, values, economic prosperity, or democracy. Those who seek to enter in 2020 are not gang members or criminals or terrorists; they will not take away the jobs of those already resident in this country; and there is no evidence that, once admitted, they will infect the American population with the coronavirus. What we needed, as a nation and a people, seventy-five years ago, at the end of the World War II, and what we require today is a comprehensive immigration policy based not on political expediency and falsehoods, but on humanitarian concerns and the recognition that this is, has been, and should forever remain a nation of immigrants. Moscow, Sep 18 : Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko stressed "the inadmissibility of any interference in the internal political processes" in Belarus during a phone talk with US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan. Rudenko also emphasized the inadmissibility of "attempts to destabilize" the situation in Belarus and "impose unilateral mediation services from outside," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported. He said that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's initiative to carry out a constitutional reform to liberalize the country's political system is promising. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin accused the United States of playing a key role in preparing the protests following Belarus' presidential elections. He alleged that the preparations began in 2019 and early 2020, when Washington channelled about US $20 million through various non-governmental organisations to help organise the protests. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Davit Tonoyan received today Head of the Delegation of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) to Armenia Claire Meytraud, the ministry told Armenpress. At the meeting minister Tonoyan touched upon the videos spread in the Azerbaijani media outlets relating to Armenian captive officer Gurgen Alaverdyan and expressed the concern of the Armenian defense ministry to the ICRC Yerevan Office head over the content of that videos. The minister said the Azerbaijani authorities obstruction to the permission of the visit of ICRC Baku Office representatives to the Armenian captive is a gross violation of international rights, in particular the commitments assumed by Azerbaijan on the sidelines of the international humanitarian law. At the same time, the Armenian defense minister thanked the ICRC Yerevan Office head for the delegations efforts aimed at protecting the rights of POWs and civilians who appeared in the Azerbaijani captivity. In turn the ICRC Yerevan Office head assured that the delegation is taking all necessary steps to ensure all the procedures deriving from the status of Gurgen Alaverdyan and other Armenians who are in the Azerbaijani captivity. The sides also discussed the activity aimed at assessing the integration level of international humanitarian law in the Armenian Armed Forces. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan The National Accreditation Board (NAB) in Ghana has reiterated its call to all educational institutions and employers to refer all academic and professional qualifications to it for determination of their respective statuses before accepting them for any form of admission, employment or job progression. The call follows the continuous use of academic qualifications and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) titles by some individuals, purportedly awarded to them by institutions the NAB has long ceased to recognize and therefore does not accept qualifications awarded by them. Besides that, the unaccredited institutions in Ghana have been dishing out honorary doctorate degrees to some prominent Ghanaians. The honorary doctorate recipients have in turn been using the honorary titles of Dr even though under normal circumstances it is not supposed to be so if even it was awarded by an accredited institution. NAB has on numerous occasions published public notices, reiterating and advising prospective students, parents and employers to be cautious of academic qualifications from those unaccredited institutions. In NAB's latest public notice, signed and issued by its Executive Secretary, Dr Kingsley Nyarko and published in the Daily Graphic on August 24, 2020, NAB specifically mentioned that it has ceased to recognise academic qualifications from the following: Swiss Management Centre (SMC) University Institute of Professional and Executive Development (IPED) Cambridge International College (CIC) CASS European Institute of Management Studies The NAB explained that it had ceased to recognise the qualifications awarded by the institutions because of their failure to comply with some directives by NAB. By this publication, the Board repeats its previous caution to prospective students and the general public to take note accordingly and desist from enrolling on programmes of the aforementioned institutions, it added. SMC University On SMC University in particular, the public notice said: NAB, however, wishes to state clearly that those who graduated from SMC programmes on or before 31st August, 2018, possess valid credentials which are recognized, unless incontrovertible evidence of fraud is established. It would be recalled that in 2015 the Swiss Management Centre (SMC), a private university in Switzerland, which runs courses in Ghana as a foreign university, was informed by the NAB that it can no longer enroll fresh students as NAB had withdrawn its registration. Related article: SMC University cant enrol fresh students, NAB withdraws registration NAB, however, explained that continuing students [who were scheduled to complete in 2016, 2017 and 2018] could still go ahead and complete their courses since the NAB had maintained the registration of the SMC for such students for the following three years. In addition, NAB said the credentials of graduates from the SMC who obtained their degrees during the period the NAB registered it were still valid. The reasoning was that, at that time, NAB had accredited SMC. NAB however, cautioned SMC not to admit fresh students from 2016, 2017, 2018 upwards until its accreditation was restored, that is if it was able to meet the requirements. And that accreditation has since not been restored as of now. This means that the qualifications being paraded by persons who graduated from SMC in 2019 and 2020, should not be recognised, according to the NAB. How SMC got its initial registration in Ghana NAB had told Graphic Online in 2016 that SMC was initially accredited because one of the accrediting agencies for business schools in the US [Accreditation Council for Business, Schools and Programs (ACBSP)] had accredited it. SMC also at that time of the initial accreditation had been accredited by the European Business School, so NAB also registered it. NAB explained that the registrations it offers are not for an indefinite period. So when SMC came back for re-registration in 2015, it checked whether the condition under which it was initially registered was still valid and NAB found out that SMC was still accredited by the Association of Business Schools in the US but it was no longer accredited by the European Business Schools. So NAB told SMC to obtain accreditation from its native country [Switzerland] before it will do any business with it. It said for the period when SMC was initially registered with NAB, the credentials of graduates that came out of that school are still valid and went ahead to give it three years [up to 2018] because it recognised that it had students who were still in the system, so the registration was extended for three years for only those who were already enrolled on their programmes. But they were not supposed to enroll fresh students until they had complied with what they were supposed to do. When Graphic Online asked why the NAB went ahead and registered the SMC when it was not accredited in Switzerland in the first place, NAB said its information then was that the Swiss accrediting body do not accredit institutions that wanted to offer programmes outside of Switzerland. CASS Europe In the case of CASS Europe, it must be noted that qualifications of all students who enrolled after 2015 would not be recognised, NAB stated. The NAB restated its earlier advise to all educational institutions and employers to refer ALL academic and professional qualifications to it for determination of their respective statuses before accepting them for any form of admission, employment or job progression. M-GIBES The NAB also explained the status of the M-GIBES College of Business and Management. It said M-GIBES College of Business and Management, which is located at Achimota Mile 7 in Accra has not been accredited by the National Accreditation Board as required by the National Accreditation Board Act, 2007 (Act 744) and the Tertiary Institutions (Establishment and Accreditation) Regulations, 2010 (L.I. 1984) to operate as tertiary and education institution. It said the general public, especially residents of Accra and its environs, are, therefore, cautioned to desist from responding to advertisements enticing them to enrol in this unaccredited institution or the programmes they purport to run. Any person that does business with this institution does so at his/her own risk, the public notice added. Below is a copy of the public notice by NAB 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 Michael Francis Kohls was sleeping in his bunk-room aboard the dive boat Conception last year when he was jolted awake by a noise the sound of a chair sliding across the deck. Kohls lay in bed for several minutes, not knowing what to make of the sound, when he suddenly heard a scream, he told investigators. After getting up, Kohls became the first crew member to discover that a fire had started aboard the ship as it was moored off the coast of Southern California, according to a trove of documents released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the disaster. He alerted four other crew members, and several of them tried in vain to warn the dozens of passengers who were sleeping below deck, he told investigators. But it was too late. The Sept. 2, 2019, fire would consume the dive boat, trapping and killing 33 passengers many from the Bay Area and Santa Cruz and one crew member who were asleep in the lower decks. It became the deadliest maritime disaster in California since the Civil War. John Antczak/Associated Press While the documents released Wednesday reveal new details about the disaster, the NTSB has not determined what caused the predawn blaze. The boat was run by Santa Barbara-based Truth Aquatics Inc., which led boat trips to destinations off the coast of Southern and Central California for decades. Families of 32 of the victims and a surviving crew member have filed claims against the boat owners, Glen and Dana Fritzler, and the boat company. In turn, the Fritzlers and the company have filed a legal claim to shield them from damages under a maritime law that limits liability for vessel owners. Court filings show they have offered to settle lawsuits with dozens of victims relatives. Nobody has been criminally charged in the disaster. The five-person NTSB will hold an Oct. 20 meeting to vote on the investigations findings, as well as the blazes probable cause and any potential recommendations. Some crew members, the documents reveal, said they had not been trained in the proper use of fire extinguishers. One crew member said he never heard a fire alarm, while another crew member said he heard an alarm, but it sounded like the quietest thing in the world. The documents also support a fact revealed by the NTSB shortly after the disaster: All six Conception crew members were asleep when the fire started a violation of maritime law. Kohls was the first to alert the other four crew members above deck, all of whom ended up surviving, about the blaze. If Mikey hadnt woken us up I dont think we would have made it, Cullen Molitor, the boats second captain, told investigators. At 3:14 a.m., Capt. Jerry Boylan radioed for help from the ships wheelhouse using a mayday distress message to the Coast Guard, which ended with him saying he couldnt breathe, before abandoning the ship. Molitor told investigators he saw smoke quickly overwhelm the wheelhouse and Boylan jump into the water, a stream of smoke following him. Thinking Boylan was on fire, Molitor jumped in after him. Boylan was OK, Molitor said, but looked back at the ship in disbelief as he treaded water. The only thing he was saying, as he was looking back toward the boat was, Its just all those people, Molitor said. And, you know, you could just see the whole galley was fully engulfed. And he wasnt sure if anyone had gotten out. None of us were at that point. The documents detail efforts by some crew members to save the 34 people below deck. Milton French, a deckhand, said he frantically tried reaching those in the lower decks. One face in particular kept popping into his mind: that of Allie Kurtz a deckhand whom French was dating, and the only crew member sleeping below deck with the passengers. French said he knew there was scuba gear at the back of the boat that he could use to breathe during a rescue attempt. I mean, I think theres f 34 people down there the whole time that we were trying to get to, but then like specifically Allie popped in my head, French said. I could keep breathing. For how long, I dont know, but it was like a furnace. So I just kind of stood and looked, and like tried to work up the nerve to f run into it. But Boylan, the captain, told French to get into a lifeboat. So I turned to him and asked him, like, How do I get into the bunk-room? Just tell me how. Im like pleading with him to tell me like the f magical solution here because I wasnt finding one, French said. And he just kept saying, We cant, we cant. Im like, no, thats not the answer, French said. Youve got to f tell me how. And he just, We got to get in the skiff; we got to get out of here. And I just looked around again, and was just like helpless. After being rescued, several crew members tried circling the boat in their skiff in an attempt to find survivors. Two crew members saw splashing in the water, which ended up being sea lions. No screams or banging were heard from those below deck, crew members told investigators. Molitor concluded the written statement he provided to investigators with the result of that search: No survivors were found. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Michael Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Michael.Williams@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@michaeldamianw The island nation of Barbados has pledged to put same-sex marriage to a public vote, but campaigners said on Wednesday they were wary about any hope of major reform in a nation that still has laws punishing sex between men on its books. LGBT people suffer discrimination, verbal abuse and harassment in Barbados, where the Catholic Church and evangelical groups are vocal in their opposition to giving legal rights to the gay and trans community, supporters say. Barbados Governor General Sandra Mason said in a speech to parliament this week that the Caribbean country would hold a public referendum on allowing same-sex marriage. The tourism-dependent Barbados must have a frank discussion and end discrimination in all forms so as not to be blacklisted for human rights issues, she said. My government will do the right thing, understanding that this too will attract controversy, Mason said, adding that the government would accept the result of the public vote. No date was set. She said the government was prepared to recognise a form of civil unions - a legal status that falls short of marriage - for same-sex couples. Alexa Hoffmann, an activist and transgender woman in Barbados, said the governors speech was filled with smoke and mirrors, tiptoeing around and the use of buzz words. The speech has left me unimpressed, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A nod is being given to civil unions but yet anything that relates to the LGBT community physically being able to practice that relationship is still criminalized and completely forbidden. Homosexuality is not explicitly illegal in Barbados, but colonial-era buggery and indecency laws, rarely enforced, prohibit and criminalize sex between two men or two women. In practice, a nosey neighbour can easily decide to call the police and create hell, said Hoffmann. Hoffmann and other campaigners said they thought any referendum on allowing marriage between same-sex couples was likely to fail. My bet would be that any public vote comes back as a no, Hoffmann said. Barbadian LGBT+ rights campaigner Michael Rapley said he was optimistic about recognition of civil unions but warned against a public vote on same-sex marriage. A marriage referendum would be better held after people get used to the idea of same-sex civil unions and equal rights regardless of sexual orientation, said Rapley, the head of Equals, a local LGBT+ rights group. I do not think a referendum on gay marriage is wise at this moment, he said. Rights campaigner Neish Mclean said he was encouraged by the governments willingness to recognize same-sex unions but that addressing discrimination and decriminalizing sexual relations laws would take a lot more work. There is a long way to go to achieve equality for LGBTIQ people, said Mclean, Caribbean program officer for OutRight Action International, a LGBT+ rights group. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Follow mores stories on Facebook and Twitter The legislation of Ukraine should be respected by everyone, regardless of citizenship, religion or belonging to a particular cultural trend, said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, commenting on the situation with Hasidic pilgrims who are trying to get into the country, despite the closure of borders in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. "Firstly, there is Ukrainian legislation, which everyone should respect, regardless of citizenship, religion or belonging to a particular cultural trend. Secondly, indeed, a crisis situation was created, but not on the entire Ukrainian-Belarusian border, I want to emphasize, but only at the checkpoint 'Novi Yarylovychi.' When we looked at the entire map of our checkpoints with Belarus, no other checkpoint had such a crisis. Moreover, some foreign citizens arrived at the border, saw that they could not enter Ukraine, turned around and drove back. Everything was calm and civilized," Kuleba said at a joint briefing with the Bulgarian Foreign Minister in Kyiv on Thursday, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine. He said that Ukraine keeps in touch on this issue with Belarus and Israel. "Yesterday we communicated with the Belarusian side on this matter and clearly conveyed to them the position that I have just voiced. We are also in touch with Israel, and I gave instructions to work through all diplomatic channels in order to minimize any misunderstandings on this issue," said the head of the Foreign Ministry. Kuleba also congratulated all Hasidim on the upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah. "You know that Rosh Hashanah is recognized in Ukraine as an official holiday, we highly honor it, and I, taking this opportunity, would like to congratulate the Hasidim all over the world that this big bright holiday will come sonn," he said. By Azernews By Ayya Lmahamad Azerbaijan increased by 11.1 percent the volume of gas transported through its main gas pipelines during the period of January-August 2020, local media reported with reference to the State Statistics Committee. The country transported 19.8 billion cubic meters of gas during the reporting period. Some 40.1 percent or 7.9 billion cubic meters from the total volume was transported through South Caucasus pipeline, which is by 21 percent more compared to the same period of 2019. Additionally, 23.9 million tons of oil was transported by the main oil pipelines during the reporting period. Likewise, 79.7 percent or 19 million tons of oil were transported through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which is by 10.5 percent less compared to the same period of 2019. Opened in 2006, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is a transport line for Azerbaijani oil from the Caspian Sea to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, and then to European markets via the Mediterranean Sea. The total length of the pipeline is 1,768 km, of which 443 km pass through the territory of Azerbaijan; 249 km to Georgia; 1076 km to Turkey. The projected capacity is 50 million tons of oil per year or one million barrels per day. Currently, oil from Azeri-Chirag-Guneshlu block of fields, condensate from Shah Deniz field, as well as SOCAR oil is transported via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The Baku- Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline shareholders are: BP (30.1 percent); AzBTC (25 percent); MOL (8.9 percent); Equinor (8.71 percent); TPAO (6.53 percent); Eni (5 per cent); Total (5 percent), ITOCHU (3.4 percent); INPEX (2.5 percent), ExxonMobil (2.5 percent) and ONGC (BTC) Limited (2.36 percent). The South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) was built to export Shah Deniz gas from Azerbaijan to Georgia and Turkey. The pipeline starts from the Sangachal terminal near Baku. It follows the route of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil pipeline through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, where it is linked to the Turkish gas distribution system. The pipeline has been operational since late 2006 transporting gas to Azerbaijan and Georgia, and starting from July 2007 to Turkey from Shah Deniz Stage 1. The 42-inch (1,070 mm) diameter gas pipeline runs through the same corridor as the BakuTbilisiCeyhan pipeline until Erzurum, where BTC turns south to the Mediterranean. The senior US commander for Africa met France's top general on Thursday to discuss the fight against militant groups in the region, as uncertainty persists over whether President Donald Trump will maintain American troop levels on the continent. General Stephen Townsend, head of the US Africa Command, met with France's armed forces chief of staff General Francois Lecointre for a working lunch on their "continued US-French cooperation in Africa," according to a US statement. The US has provided aerial refuelling, intelligence and other crucial support for France's anti-terrorism campaign in West Africa, where a disparate Islamist insurgency has taken root in recent years. The US statement noted that US intelligence collection had "helped facilitate" the French operation that resulted in the killing of the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdel, in June. But the Trump administration insists it must focus on containing Russia and China, with Africa seen as less of a direct threat -- and one that should be left to France and the European Union. US officials indicated early this year that a troop drawdown was under consideration, though no concrete moves have been announced since. "We share common threats, mutual concerns, and a commitment to fighting violent extremist organizations," Townsend said. He added, however, that "continued French leadership and increased support from their European neighbours is key to helping the Africans change the trajectory and prevent the spread of violence in West Africa." French President Emmanuel Macron has been pressing EU allies to step up their contributions to the fight. France has more than 5,000 soldiers as part of Operation Barkhane, its anti-jihadist force in the Sahel. ."The situation in the Sahel was discussed," the French defence ministry confirmed in a statement, as well as "the necessary mobilisation of European countries to fight the terrorist threat in the region." Regarding a potential US withdrawal, "nothing has been officialised one way or the other," a military source told AFP on Thursday. Search Keywords: Short link: There were a total of 150 indictments issued by a Henry County Grand Jury on Tuesday: 91 regular indictments an 59 direct indictments. An indictment is not an indication of guilt. It is the grand jury's determination that enough evidence exists to hold a trial. Editors Note: Read more on the Recovery Walk in Fridays edition. Midland ISD student membership (enrollment) declined by about 3.6 percent year over year, according to statistics from the school district and Reporter-Telegram archives. And nowhere was the decline felt more than at the elementary schools. The district provided data from Wednesday, showing a student membership of 25,417. The total from mid-September of 2019 was 26,383. MISDs student enrollment for 2018-19 was 26,183, according to the Texas Education Agency. In 2017-18, the enrollment reported to the TEA was 25,716. MISDs decline this school year is consistent with what is taking place in Odessa, where Ector County ISD reported Tuesday night that enrollment numbers are below the projection of about 34,000 and are closer to 32,000. The Dallas Morning News, in a story this week, reported that Dallas ISD is showing nearly 15,000 fewer students than its original projections for the 2020-21 school year. Midland ISD campus-by-campus enrollment numbers showed little change in student membership at the secondary level (junior high through high school). At the elementary schools, Midland ISD showed 10 campuses (around one-third) reporting a decline of 10 percent or more in student membership. Burnet Elementary showed 20.4 percent fewer students, DeZavala was second at 16.4 percent and Washington STEM was third at 15.5. Parker (14.3 percent), Henderson (13.4) and Santa Rita (13.1) rounded out the top six. Statistics also showed two elementary campuses with at least a 10 percent increase in student population -- IDEATravis at 14.6 percent and Franks Elementary at 11.7. Katie Atkins, Midland ISDs chief of staff, said Wednesday that addressing the declining student population will be part of the districts annual Recovery Walk, in which district officials attempt to see if there are students who need assistance and can return to the Midland ISD student population. Atkins also said that Midland ISDs partnerships didnt impact the student population count. Out-of-district operators involved in partnerships include IDEA Public Schools (IDEA Travis Academy), Young Womens Preparatory Network (Young Womens Leadership Academy) and Third Future Schools (Sam Houston Collegiate Preparatory Academy). Only Sam Houston had a smaller year-over-year student membership. As the Morning News reported this week, student membership matters because state funding is largely tied to average daily attendance. Fewer students who make up the average daily attendance means a decrease in state funding.Atkins said this years budget actually factored in fewer students year over year. However, that anticipated drop was not larger than 3 percent. The Morning News also reported that funding wont be affected immediately. The Texas Education Agency is allowing districts to receive funding based on projections from the previous three years for the first 12 weeks of the 2020-21 school year, a similar hold harmless strategy that the state employed to calculate attendance during Hurricane Harvey, according to the newspaper. High schools Sept. 2019 this week --Lee High 2,346 2,351 --Midland High 2,339 2,345 --Lee Freshman 856 826 --Midland Freshman 841 856 --Early College High School 352 387 --Coleman High 148 117 --Culver Juvenile Detention Center 2 4 --Midland Alternative Program 8 8 Junior high schools Sept. 2019 this week --Abell 1,104 1,106 --Goddard 1,007 1,029 --San Jacinto 898 862 --Alamo 816 791 Young Womens LA 151 288 Elementary schools Sept. 2019 this week --Fasken 864 785 --Greathouse 825 796 --Bunche 853 771 --Yarbrough 774 772 --Scharbauer 715 654 --DeZavala 691 577 --Travis 682 782 --Santa Rita 618 537 --Bonham 607 529 --Fannin 594 573 --Parker 584 500 --Burnet 568 470 --Long 553 508 --South 546 478 --Franks 529 591 --Carver 525 503 --Pease 512 485 --Bush 512 471 --Bowie 505 486 --Lamar 502 448 --Emerson 476 429 --Milam 454 483 --Washington STEM 443 374 --Henderson 410 355 --Houston 371 365 --Jones 390 344 --Rusk 345 320 Pre-K at MC 67 61 Total 26,383 25,417 While Russia is looking to secure a political settlement and economic recovery for Syria, Assad is reaching out to European and Gulf states for relations writes SY 24. Russian newspaper Izvestia revealed that attempts were made by the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, to approach Europe and the Arab Gulf, noting that so far, he has not succeeded. The newspaper stated that, the political settlement and the full economic recovery of Syria, which has been ravaged by a years-long war, is one of Moscows top priorities, and this is what Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said while in Damascus recently. The newspaper quoted the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, Andrey Kortunov, as saying that, the Syrians hope that Russia would take Syria under its wing. Ideally, there is a desire to build bridges with Syria, but Moscows positions and those of Damascus are divergent, and it would be difficult to reconcile them, because the expectations of the two countries are simply different. The Russian official added that, it would be premature to say that Russia will withdraw completely from Syria. Moscow and Damascus have signed a long-term lease agreement for military bases in Syria and the presence of Russian military infrastructure on Syrian territory has been agreed on. He pointed out that,history shows that Russia sometimes wins the war, but loses the peace in the process, which means that Russia realizes [military] wins, but makes way for other parties to step in when it comes to developing the economy of the country. Furthermore, the Russian official revealed that, Bashar al-Assad is trying to court both the European Union and the Gulf states, but so far this has not achieved much success. He added, It is very important for us to not only play our own game here, but rather engage in a collective plan, which is agreeing with European and Gulf states on joint projects in Syria to coordinate our re-entrance and the rebuilding of the Syrian economy. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Sergei Naryshkin has made accusations against the US (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Russias intelligence chief has accused the United States of instigating massive demonstrations against Belarus president that have entered their sixth week. Protesters in Belarus are seeking the resignation of Alexander Lukashenko, denouncing his landslide re-election in the August 9 vote as rigged and demanding an end to his 26-year rule. The US and the European Union have criticised the election as neither free nor fair, and urged Mr Lukashenko to start talks with the opposition a call he has rejected. Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russias Foreign Intelligence Service, claimed in a statement carried by Russian news agencies on Wednesday that the US has funded the Belarusian opposition and encouraged the protests. It effectively amounts to a thinly-veiled attempt to stage another colour revolution and an anti-constitutional coup, the objectives and tasks of which have nothing in common with interests of citizens of Belarus, Mr Naryshkin said, in a reference to the colour-coded uprisings that swept out unpopular leaders in Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations. Mr Naryshkin added that his agency has information that the US is playing a key role in the current developments in Belarus. He alleged that the US has earmarked tens of millions of dollars to finance Belarus opposition groups. In a long speech to top Belarus officials on Wednesday, Mr Lukashenko accused the US and its allies of spearheading the push to unseat him through carefully prepared protests. We had the vote and got the result, period, he said. Its time to stop stirring up society. Mr Lukashenko did not provide evidence to back his claim that the US had any involvement in the demonstrations. He charged that the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine all played a major role. All those countries have denied similar claims by Mr Lukashenko in the past. The Belarusian 2020 scenario is a combination of the most effective colour destabilisation technologies that have been tested in various countries, he said. They obviously count on the scale and duration of protests to wear us down and exhaust our resources. We arent relaxing and stand ready to respond to any challenge. His main challenger in the election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, dismissed his comments as an attempt to divert public attention from rigging the vote and the violent crackdown on protests. There is just one reason behind the protests in Belarus and its known to everyone: Lukashenko has lost the vote, but he doesnt want to step down, Ms Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press in a written comment. People have denied Lukashenko their trust and support and demand that he leave. On Mr Naryshkins comments, she added: Its an internal political crisis, and the protesters demands contain nothing regarding relations with other countries or a shift in Belarus foreign policy course. Mr Naryshkin should better understand that instead of airing dated propaganda cliches. The pressure has pushed Mr Lukashenko to further cement ties with Russia, his main sponsor and ally. The neighbouring countries have a union agreement and maintain strong political, economic and military ties. Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a new 1.15 billion loan to Belarus on Monday when he hosted Mr Lukashenko for four hours of talks in Sochi. The Belarusian opposition has condemned Moscow for offering a financial lifeline, warning that it would tarnish future ties between the countries. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reaffirmed Wednesday that Moscow sees Mr Lukashenko as Belarus legitimately elected leader. Mr Naryshkin charged that the US has taken Ms Tsikhanouskaya, who moved to Lithuania after the vote under the authorities pressure, and other Belarusian opposition activists under its close patronage to promote them as future leaders of the country. If anyone is looking for a successful cannabis story in 2020... look away now. Aurora Cannabis (ACB) continues its relentless search for the bottom as the long-awaited shift in sentiment has failed to materialize. Shares are once again under pressure and lost close to 70% year-to-date. The latest setback can probably be blamed on several pieces of underwhelming news. Last week, the Canadian cannabis producer provided investors with a business update and it is safe to say the news did not give long-term suffering ACB holders any cheer. In tandem with now expecting fourth-quarter net revenue to be down from the C$78.4 million reported in Q3 to between C$70 million and C$72 million (also below the Streets C$77 million estimate), the company also said it expects a record asset impairment charge of up to C$2.0 billion. Add into the mix the termination of a UFC partnership, which will include a one-off payment of US$30 million in 1Q21, and it all paints a familiar dispiriting picture. For Jefferies analyst Owen Bennett, the disappointing update is further exacerbated by the choice of new CEO. The position has finally been filled with the appointment of Miguel Martin. One, the analyst said, Mr Martin was only just promoted to Chief Commercial Officer in July. The fact that he was given the CEO role so soon after would suggest limited availability of suitable (or indeed interested) parties externally. To this, there were arguably more expectations with ACB given the role of Nelson Peltz as a strategic advisor. Two, while we don't assume Mr Martin is not capable, and he should be judged on results, it is easy to pick holes in his experience with regard to building international brands across a variety of distribution channels. To this end, Bennett rates ACB shares an Underperform (i.e. Sell). But Bennett might as well have said Buy because he thinks the stock, currently at C$9.29 (US$7.01), could zoom ahead to C$14.00 (US$10.62) within a year, delivering 51% profits to new investors. (To watch Bennetts track record, click here) Story continues Aurora might not have the Streets full confidence, but overall, Bennetts colleagues are more positive. ACB's Hold consensus rating is based on 2 Buys, 7 Holds and 1 Sell. At C$16.82 (US$12.76), the average price target suggest shares will appreciate by a strong 81% over the next 12 months. (See Aurora price targets and analyst ratings on TipRanks) To find good ideas for cannabis stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analyst. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment. President Donald Trump on Thursday fired off a tweet calling an absentee ballot misprint error by the Michigan Secretary of States Office intentional and egregious. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson office responded with a statement calling the presidents claims false. The Secretary of States Office on Tuesday, Sept. 15, uploaded a flawed ballot that included the name of Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Jeremy Spike Cohen in the slot where Vice President Mike Pences name should have appeared. Nearly 400 ballots were downloaded by local clerks for delivery to overseas military personnel, but its not clear how many were sent, Secretary of State spokeswoman Tracy Wimmer said. The Presidents tweet is false and misleading," Secretary of State spokesman Jake Rollow said in a prepared statement. As we have explained, the incident was a result of a programmer error and a computer glitch that was caught within 90 minutes. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson speaks to members of the press at her polling location, Pasteur Elementary School, during primary election day Tuesday Aug. 4, 2020 in Detroit. Nicole Hester/Mlive.com The ballots were available for download by local clerks, who could then issue them to eligible military personnel overseas. Any clerks who downloaded the errored ballot were immediately notified and told how to remedy the situation, Rollow said. "Any voters who may have received an incorrect ballot will receive a correct ballot and their vote will count. "In the case that a voter returns both the incorrect and the corrected ballot, only the corrected ballot will be counted. Trump, according to a Twitter message posted Thursday afternoon on his account, doesnt believe the misprint was a mistake. ...egregious behavior, which is just the way they want it. This was not a mistake, it was done illegally and on purpose. We want Mike! https://t.co/m1LLdk7Cc4 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2020 This isnt the first time Benson and the president have publicly clashed over Bensons efforts to promote absentee ballot voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. In May, Trump issued tweets threatening to withhold funding from Michigan after Benson first announced her office would mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. Im dumbfounded that this is controversial, Benson said at the time, especially because there are Democratic and Republican secretaries of state doing just what were doing here in Michigan. More on MLive Trump visits Freeland Michigan to register outgoing prisoners to vote Absentee ballots arriving soon All elections may be conducted by mail May election draws record number of ballots Benson dumbfounded by Trump statements Another Indigenous journalist has been charged in connection with the ongoing land dispute at the McKenzie Meadows housing development site, also known as 1492 Land Back Lane, in Caledonia. Starla Myers, 43, a reporter with Indigenous outlet Real Peoples Media (RPM), turned herself in Tuesday after receiving notice of a warrant for her arrest. This is just another example of colonial forces being shoved onto our people. This is just another example of how theyre controlling the narrative to ensure that our land is completely removed from us, she said in an RPM video, speaking outside Six Nations Police department, where she said Ontario Provincial Police were waiting to formally charge her. Theyre using their tools to allow us to disappear. In an email to The Spectator, Haldimand OPP Const. Rodney LeClair said Myers legal counsel requested she turn herself in to another police station. OPP say she co-operated with police, and was released later the same day. Myers, who is from Six Nations of the Grand River, was charged with two counts of mischief and one count of disobeying a court order, OPP say. She is expected to appear in court at a later date. Myers is the second Indigenous journalist to be arrested in relation to the land dispute. Karl Dockstader, who had been filing on-air reports for CKTB 610 in St. Catharines and covering the story online for One Dish, One Mic, his independent Indigenous outlet, was arrested on Sept. 3. We are effectively being silenced by the use of police force to ensure that nobodys saying anything, she said. The quiet Indian, the dead Indian is the only Indian they want here in Canada. Since Aug. 5, 22 people, including Ryerson University researcher Courtney Skye, have been charged in relation to the land claim. LeClair said he could not speak to the circumstances of the arrests, but that engaging in activities outside of their reporting purpose could subject media personnel to charges in relation to violation of a court order and other applicable offences. The OPP is committed to the freedom of the press and respects the important role the media has in the community, he said. We value and strive to have collaborative relationships with our media partners. LeClair said two court injunctions prohibiting anyone from being on the McKenzie Meadows property and establishing road blockades, are still in effect. Reporters Without Borders, a global organization that promotes freedom of information, criticized police action against journalists reporting on Indigenous land conflicts in a Sept. 16 statement, calling on the OPP to drop charges against Dockstader. It is deeply disappointing that the Ontario police have chosen to disregard Karl Dockstaders legally protected right to report on this matter, which is of clear public interest to Canada and Indigenous people in the region, said Daphne Pellegrino, advocacy manager of the organizations North America bureau. Reporters Without Borders said in the release that Dockstaders arrest is not an isolated incident, pointing to Canadian reporter Justin Brake and American filmmaker Melissa Cox, who faced charges which, in both cases, were ultimately dropped in relation to Indigenous-led land rights movements. If its not 1492 then its somewhere else, Myers said. Where next? Where do we stop? Where does this end? Want to manufacture BrahMos so that no country has audacity to cast evil eye on us: Rajnath Singh IAF chopper crash: Rajnath Singh likely to be apprised of probe team's findings in next couple of days Will hold our heads high says Rajnath amidst overwhelming support in RS on India-China issue India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: We will succeed and we have made counter deployments, Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh said in the Rajya Sabha on the India-China issue. He further said that both countries have agreed that talks should continue on the border issue. This is pertinent to maintain peace along the border, Singh also said. China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq. kms in the Union Territory of Ladakh. In addition, under the so-called Sino-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq. km. of Indian territory in PoK to China: Rajnath Singh said in the Rajya Sabha. Monsoon Session: Both sides should respect LAC, says Rajnath Singh China also claims approximately 90,000 sq. kms. of Indian territory in the Eastern Sector of the India-China boundary in Arunachal Pradesh, Rajnath Singh also said. He, however, added that no transgression will be tolerated. We have maintained that disengagement should take place. No sought transgression will be tolerated the defence minister also said. I appeal to the House to back our soldiers says Rajnath in Rajya Sabha. Let no one doubt our determination. We are in favour of peace, but no compromise will be made, Singh also said. Both sides should respect the LAC. No one should change the status quo. Both sides should respect all understandings and agreements, he also said. Conduct of our armed forces throughout these incidents shows that while they maintained 'Sayyam' in face of provocative actions, they also equally displayed 'Shaurya' when required to protect territorial integrity of India, says Rajnath Singh on India-China tensions. The violent conduct by the Chinese military is in violation of all agreements, Singh said. India has made counter deployments. We will succeed against China, he further added. We have increased our budget for border infrastructure. It has given better connectivity to the locals and also logistic support for our armed forces. Whatever the difficulty is, we will not step back says Rajnath Singh. We will hold our heads high, the defence minister said while adding that he lauds the bravery of the armed forces. We are facing a crisis in Eastern Ladakh. However I am sure that we will overcome this. Let everyone know that our soldiers are standing strong at the border, Singh also said. If conditions of war are created, China will face better prepared and psychologically hardened India PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News Former Defence Minister and Congress leader, A K Antony said that he stands fully in support of the armed forces. He, however, said that status quo ante as on April 2020 should be restored. He further added that the Chinese PLA is not allowing the Indian troops to patrol and this should be restored at any cost. Congress leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad and scores of other leaders citing across party lines extended their support to the government and the armed forces and hoped that the issue would be resolved without India having to compromise on it territorial integrity and sovereignty. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, September 18 2020 Indonesian agricultural exports could be potential winners in the pandemic as they recorded annual growth despite the downturn in global trade, according to the Trade Ministry. The agriculture exports reached US$2.06 billion in the JanuaryJuly period, marking an increase of 9.95 percent from the same period in 2019. Exports of peanuts, fruits and herbs/spices more than doubled, rising by 138.2 percent, 129.3 percent and 104.7 percent, respectively, on the year. Trade Ministry National Export Development Director General Kasan Muhri said Monday that the surge in agricultural exports was in line with various countries product needs in dealing with the coronavirus. 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 David Cameron has said he will rule nothing out meaning that he just might call for a No vote in a referendum on EU membership if his negotiations in Brussels come to nothing. But Ken Clarke doesnt believe a word of it. The pro-EU Tory, who has spent more years in government than any other living politician, is sure that Cameron is not so unprincipled as to sacrifice his lifelong support for the EU for the sake of clinging to office. He said at a lunch organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs today that Cameron had promised a referendum for the same reason that Harold Wilson did 40 years ago as a way of managing an unruly party. That has not stopped the right wing from putting him under constant pressure to go further, and make exit an inevitability. Mr Clarke added: The reason we have this anarchic situation with the public is most of the public dont believe that any of the political establishment have a principle in their body. If you wish to confirm that you dont have a principle in your body, then you only have to have some leading Conservatives campaigning for a No vote in a referendum, or forming a coalition with Ukip. Its utterly preposterous. They would be treated, quite rightly, with disillusion and derision by ordinary members of the public. You would have me going bananas if I thought David Cameron was contemplating campaigning for a No vote. It was never his intention. There are limits to how far you can go to stand on your head. Cameron will be flattered to know that Ken Clarke thinks there is a man of principle in there, somewhere. Murdochs new squeeze Congratulations to the New York-based website Gawker for their forensic investigation into whether Rupert Murdoch has been tweeting while under the influence of alcohol. I am told that the personal unhappiness that caused him to send mysterious messages such as Po to his 558,000 Twitter followers can be traced to the break-up of his marriage to Wendy Deng. That is very understandable. How many of us in our adolescence did not take refuge in drink when our girlfriends or boyfriends dumped us? But I am reliably told there is good news: new love has entered Rupert Murdochs life. And the Murdoch children do not mind because although she is almost 30 years younger than his 83 years, she is still past the age at which there would be any danger of more Murdoch children emerging from the relationship to claim their share of the inheritance. The unkindest cut of all There was a moment during the press screening of the forthcoming BBC 2 documentary Inside the Commons which produced a burst of cruel laughter from the audience of hacks. Talking about the vastness of the building, the Tory MP Nicholas Soames described coming upon a bar of whose existence he was previously unaware during 30 years as an MP. No sooner had he said the word bar than the camera cut away to a shot of Charles Kennedy, who led the Lib Dems to their greatest political success, but whose career was cut short by a drink problem. The first episode follows the progress of two newly elected women MPs, Labours Sarah Champion and the Tory, Charlotte Leslie, as they learn Parliaments arcane rules and practices. After a rowdy Prime Ministers Questions, Ms Champion exclaims: The behaviour in there is just disgusting, really embarrassing, juvenile! She added that the offenders were men in their fifties. Ms Leslie explains that she went into politics because I have always been angry. I feel like smashing brick walls down. Yesterdays headlines The Environment minister, George Eustice, when challenged on what the Government has done to alert dog owners to legislation that will oblige to fit their pets with microchips announced that Dennis the Menaces dog, Gnasher, has a new microchip. Actually, that news is two months old. It only shows that MPs do not read The Beano. Not that I am suggesting they should. A Hizbollah fighter stands at a watchtower at the site where clashes erupted between Hizbollah and al-Qaeda-linked fighters on the Lebanon-Syria border - AP Hizbollah has smuggled caches of ammonium nitrate to Europe to use in attacks, a top US counterterrorism official has said. The Iran-backed Lebanese Shia group had moved ammonium nitrate through Belgium to France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, Ambassador Nathan Sales, Coordinator for Counterterrorism within the US Department of State, told reporters in a briefing on Thursday. Ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound often used for explosives which is also sold commercially for use as a fertiliser, caused the August explosion at a Beirut port which killed 190 people and wounded over 6,500. Some 2,750 tonnes exploded when a warehouse caught on fire. Hizbollah, which has a political and a militant wing, is in control of parts of the eastern Mediterranean port. Today the US government is unveiling new information about Hezbollahs presence in Europe, Mr Sales said. Since 2012, Hezbollah has established caches of ammonium nitrate throughout Europe by transporting first aid kits that contain the substance. I can reveal that such caches have been moved through Belgium to France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. He said significant ammonium nitrate caches have been discovered and destroyed in France, Greece and Italy, and that the US government had reason to believe this activity is still under way. "Why would Hizbollah stockpile ammonium nitrate on European soil? The answer is clear," Mr Sales told reporters at an American Jewish Committee conference. It stores these weapons in place so it can conduct major terrorist attacks whenever its masters in Tehran deem necessary, he said, referring to Irans support and funding for the Shia group. The Telegraph reported in 2017 that nitrate stockpiles were discovered in warehouses in London two years earlier. This paper established from its reporting that the UK storage was not in isolation but part of an international plot by Hizbollah to lay the groundwork for future attacks. Story continues The Trump administration has taken a maximum pressure approach to Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, sanctioning individuals and businesses linked to Hizbollah in Lebanon. A number of operatives have been arrested in Kuwait, Cyprus and several other European countries, over the years after stockpiles of the chemical were discovered. Hizbollah, which is deemed a terrorist organisation by the US and UK, carries out fewer attacks on Western targets than it did during its acme in 1980s, when the group formed to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Businesses handling billions of pounds of exports risk having to grapple with bugs in the U.K.'s key border IT system for weeks after it launches at the end of this year. The government expects it will have to fix technical problems with the system, which will allow truckers to check if they have the correct papers to cross the border, until the end of January, according to an official document seen by Bloomberg News. It anticipates making essential updates to the system as late as March. There will be a "regular release of minor and essential updates based on live feedback and testing" until then, according to the briefing note. "We will continue to discuss with stakeholders whether further changes need to be made as a result of that feedback and make further tweaks if required." It's a sign of how the rush to prepare Britain's border for the return of full customs checks on Dec. 31 risks disruption and delays. Avoiding border chaos when the Brexit transition period ends is a top priority for Boris Johnson's government, which fears major traffic queues and widespread disruption to corporate supply chains. Earlier this week, Britain's largest logistics trade group, Logistics U.K., criticized the state of the government's preparations, saying it was a "crushing disappointment" the new IT system wouldn't be fully tested and stable until April. "To find out, with only 14 weeks to go, that there will not be a ready, workable solution for those moving goods to the EU is a massive blow to U.K. businesses and the economy," said Elizabeth de Jong, the group's director of policy. The U.K.'s "Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border" web service will be made available as a demo in October, and will then become fully operational in December, the document said. The government is also building special Brexit lorry parks to hold trucks that don't have the right documentation, and is planning to fine drivers up to 300 pounds ($388) if they attempt to drive to a channel port like Dover without the correct papers. Crucially, the measures will be needed regardless of the outcome of ongoing trade talks between the U.K. and EU. Even with a free-trade agreement, the U.K. will be outside the EU's customs union and therefore goods crossing the border will need customs declarations. Asked about the government's Brexit planning on Wednesday, Johnson said a "huge amount of work" is being done to keep trade flowing smoothly from January. "I believe we will get through it," the prime minister told a panel of lawmakers in Parliament. "Of course there may be difficulties, but we will get through it very well." On Thursday, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove met with representatives of the freight and logistics industry to discuss their concerns. The Road Haulage Association, one of the groups present, described the meeting as a "washout." "I was hopeful that today's meeting would result in a mutually effective co-operation," Richard Burnett, chief executive officer of the RHA, said in an e-mailed statement. "Sadly, this hasn't happened, and there is still no clarity regarding the questions that we have raised. Although I don't think we're quite back at square one, we're certainly not much further ahead." World War II films may seem like a dime a dozen these daysvirtually to the point of overkill. While many of them are mediocre or worse, there have been some modern-day World War II cinematic efforts that have paid off, such as the slickly produced modern classic Midway (2019), and the soulful and harrowing war drama Waiting for Anya (2020). But back in 1980, there was also a very well-constructed and peppily paced World War II epic produced, which many have likely since forgotten, titled The Big Red One. And its a real shame because one of the things that make this film so unique is that it was written and directed by a World War II veteran by the name of Samuel Fuller. In fact, its an autobiographical piece based on Fullers experiences during the war. The films character Zab is based on him. Robert Carradine appears as Zab, a stand-in for the autobiographical effort by films writer and producer, Sam Fuller. (United Artists) The film opens during World War I with an unnamed sergeant (Lee Marvin) somewhere in France (fittingly shot in black and white), attempting to return to his command post. As an immense wooden statue of Jesus Christ looks on, the sergeant spots a German soldier emerging through wispy swaths of battlefield smoke. The German is holding his hands up as if in surrender, but the sergeant ambushes him with his combat knife, killing him. Later, after making it to the command post, his superior (Charles Macaulay) tells him that the war has been over for some time, and then the sergeant reflects darkly on his earlier actions: killing the German soldier after Germany had officially surrendered. Black and white is used for a scene set in World War I. Lee Marvin (L) and Charles Macaulay in The Big Red One. (United Artists) We are then transported to the coast of North Africa in 1942, where the now grizzled sergeant is going up against Germany again during World War II. Were also introduced to the other main characters who form the core squad mates under his command. Theyre all inexperienced privates as the first act opens and become increasingly seasoned as the film progresses. Theres Griff (Mark Hamill), a thoughtful and sensitive artist; Zab (Robert Carradine), an aspiring writer; Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), a street kid with musical tastes; and Johnson (Kelly Ward), a farm boy. They are part of the 1st Infantry Divisionalso known as The Big Red One. The sergeant tells his squad that the Americans have dropped leaflets over the French forces who are dug in on the North African coast, far in advance of the U.S. amphibious landing. The leaflets warn the French not to attack them when they arrive. When the sergeant and his squad do touch down on the beaches, a Vichy French (French who are sympathetic to the Nazis) commander orders his soldiers to open fire on them. The French soldiers refuse to do so and instead kill their commander since they know the Americans are there to help. In his death throes, the commanders trigger finger squeezes down on a French machine gun he was holding and it fires at the American soldiers. A brief battle ensues, resulting in some unnecessary deaths on both sides of the Allied forces. The irony in this scene underpins an absurdist tone that permeates the entire film. As they fight their way inland, the sergeant gets shot and ends up in an Algerian hospitalseparated from his men. When the hospital is attacked by German forces, he escapes disguised as a Bedouin. Later, in a touching scene, the sergeant tracks down his mentheyre enjoying a little leisure time along an Algerian beach. Zab narrates: The old bastard just couldnt face being left behind he heard we were shipping out to invade Sicily. The sergeant walks up to them, and they gather around him in camaraderie and reunification; theyll never part again. During the next couple of pivotal years of the war, the sergeant and his squad are involved in the liberation of Sicily, the amphibious assault on Omaha Beach during D-Day, and the eventual emancipation of France. They attempt to do the same in Belgium but are rebuffed back into France. Each theater of war acts as a separate chapter in the mens lives and is punctuated by an epilogue of sorts narrated by Zab, which reveals more about the character of each squad member. The film culminates in the squads final action: They are tasked with liberating a concentration camp called Falkenau, located in Czechoslovakia. Some of the films final scenes are quite poignant (no spoilers) and cause one to reflect on them long after the ending credits roll. Pvt. Griff (Mark Hamill) in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, in The Big Red One. (United Artists) Although at times morose, The Big Red One doesnt simply wallow in the tragic consequences of war; it shows how surreal things can become when men are pushed to the fringes of insanity. However, the movie eventually ends on a relatively uplifting note, showing that amid all of the chaos and thunder of war, there is always hope for a better future. The Big Red One Director: Samuel Fuller Starring: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine Rated: R Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes Release Date: July 18, 1980 (USA) Rated: 4 stars out of 5 Ian Kane is a filmmaker and author based out of Los Angeles. To learn more, visit DreamFlightEnt.com or contact him at Twitter.com/ImIanKane The Monkees almost recorded the Archies most iconic hit but they rejected the song. Monkees member Mike Nesmith had a pivotal role in this development. Eventually, however, fans would get to hear one of the Monkees record a version of Sugar, Sugar many years after its initial release. The Monkees | James Jackson/Evening Standard/Getty Images Why a firing sealed the fate of Sugar, Sugar The Monkees and the Archies have plenty in common. Both are bubblegum pop groups that originated in kid-friendly 1960s sitcoms. In addition, they each produced enduringly popular hit songs even though they were only famous for a brief period of time. Interestingly, the Archies might not be the same if not for a decision the Monkees made. Specifically, Micky Dolenz told MusicRadar the Prefab Four made the decision not to record Sugar, Sugar. Some claim this is just a rumor, but Dolenz is setting the record straight. As you know, [the Monkees producer] Don Kirschner presented that as [our next] tune, Dolenz said. I was going to record it. Thats when Mike Nesmith led the palace revolt and we fought for the right to have at least some sort of control over the music. I didnt go to the session Id gone to England, and thats when I met the Beatles. Don Kirschner got fired, but then he recorded the song with the Archies. Kirschner joked the Archies wouldnt talk back to him after all, they were a cartoon band. Sugar, Sugar by the Archies RELATED: The Monkees Had 1 Hit in the 1980s and Davy Jones Wouldnt Sing It How the Archies Sugar, Sugar performed commercially compared to Monkees songs According to the book Long Title: Looking for the Good Times; Examining the Monkees Songs, One by One, Sugar, Sugar became a bigger hit than most of the Monkees other hits. If the Prefab Four really did lose out on the opportunity to record the track, it was a real waste, particularly since they struggled after their television show was canceled in 1968. NPR reports Sugar, Sugar became the most successful song on the Billboard charts in 1969. In addition, it was a No. 1 hit in Belgium, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Had the Prefab Four recorded it, it would have been precisely the sort of smash they needed to keep them commercially relevant. A member of the Monkees records Sugar, Sugar According to MusicRadar, the connection between the Monkees and Sugar, Sugar did not end in the 1960s. Eventually, Dolenz relayed the anecdote about his band rejecting the song to producer David Harris. Harris decided to help Dolenz record his own version of Sugar, Sugar for his 2012 album Remember. Dolenz liked this version of the song, deeming it similar to the music of Coldplay. Dolenzs cover is considerably more stripped-back than any of Coldplays hits or any of the Monkees hits, for that matter. Sugar, Sugar by Micky Dolenz RELATED: It Took 47 Years to Finalize This Monkees Song That Davy Jones Sang Sugar, Sugar remains a classic of bubblegum pop. Its been referenced in everything from Riverdale to The Simpsons to Nittys Nasty Girl, which samples part of the chorus. The song still resonates to this day Prefab Four or no Prefab Four. A vice minister in Prayuths office filed a police complaint accusing Arnon of defaming the monarchy, a charge that can be punished by as many as 15 years in prison. Arnon told the rally that he wasnt calling for toppling the institution, but that questions about its role needed to be raised. At least 61 people face charges ranging from violating the noise ordinance to sedition, which is punishable by as many as seven years in jail. Fourteen of them, including Arnon, have been arrested and released on bail since July, according to the support group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. Prayuth hasnt directly addressed the demands regarding the monarchy, but has said his administration was open to making some unspecified changes to the constitution. He said the police wont use force against peaceful protesters, but has questioned the movements funding and legitimacy and instructed relevant agencies to ensure safety and prevent incitement. Yves here. Given that many who are convinced they are long Covid victims are treated skeptically by doctors, just as chronic Lyme disease patients often are, the data on this syndrome is even more spotty than on Covid-19 overall. But one estimate that there are as many as 70,000 in New York City alone should focus some minds, even before getting to the fact that this population appears to skew younger than Covid hospitalizations. By Luca Powell, a J-Corps fellow from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, which is participating in MISSING THEM, THE CITYs ongoing collaborative project to remember every New Yorker killed by COVID-19. Originally published at THE CITY on September 15, 2020 Maria Diaz, 31, says she still suffers from recurring fevers and chronic fatigue from the coronavirus. Courtesy of Maria Diaz The illness was supposed to last for three weeks, doctors told her. But weeks four through six of COVID-19 were the worst for Holly MacDonald. Her low-grade fever morphed into an all-around fatigue. She began having trouble speaking. And when she stood up, her legs and feet turned purple. Id walk too far and then Id need to be in bed for three days, said MacDonald, who is 29 and lives in Crown Heights. She had to take administrative leave from her job at a nonprofit where she builds social-media campaigns. A month after getting sick in early March, MacDonald was back in the ER, frustrated as she tried to convince her doctors she was mired in her second month of what, shed been told, was a three-week respiratory virus. Shes still not fully recovered. MacDonald is one of upwards of 70,000 New Yorkers struggling with unexplained long-term symptoms of COVID-19, according to a range of estimates provided by several New York City-area doctors and hospitals contacted by THE CITY. The hidden number could be more, said Dr. Zijian Chen, who directs Mount Sinais Center for Post-COVID Care. Were looking at patients who are still testing positive day to day, so this is a population thats going to continue to grow. The growing numbers of so-called long-haulers underscore what patients and doctors describe as an increasing struggle on multiple fronts. Patients who experience symptoms long after three weeks sometimes are hit harder by the physical ravages of the virus than when they first contracted COVID-19. In some cases, patients say, their doctors dont believe them. That can add to the struggle for those seeking to get their medical expenses covered especially after losing work because of their illness or the pandemic-slammed economy. Long-Lasting Symptoms The stories of some New York COVID-19 survivors have challenged early conceptions of COVID-19 as a three-week illness. They are the stories of runners who now need wheelchairs and yoga teachers with debilitating fatigue. Discharged from the hospital, they now find support in a host of online support groups where they try to piece together what it means to live with the lingering disease. Chen came up with the 70,000 estimate, he said, based on data available by the New York City Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His center, which is designed around treating long-haulers, has already encountered 400 such patients. Elmhurst Hospital employees pass a mobile testing lab, July 17, 2020. A mobile testing lab in Queens Hiram Alejandro Duran/THE CITY These long-COVID cases, as the Mount Sinai center describes them, appear to occur randomly theres no demographic category that is more likely than another to be struck. Patients come in reporting fatigue, shortness of breath and difficulty thinking clearly. In some cases, the symptoms arrived months after the worst of COVID illnesses were over. This disease can be very devastating, Chen said. And a lot of the symptoms arent easily explained. Its not something we have established knowledge on. Viral infections like COVID-19 can cause post-viral syndromes a monthslong phenomena characterized by constant tiredness and trouble sleeping. One of the few road maps for navigating the aftereffects of COVID-19 is the SARS epidemic from 2002. Studies found that some patients developed Chronic post-SARS, a syndrome that lasted for up to 18 months. It feels almost like a concussion, MacDonald said. Any kind of activity mental or physical triggers me into headaches that last three days. MacDonald suspects her COVID has developed into Postural Orthostastic Tachycardia Syndrome, also known as POTS, which can sometimes stem from viral infections. These are less common, but they do explain more severe symptoms, like her purple feet. Hard to Return to Work Dr. Aluko Hope, a critical care doctor whos treating COVID-19 patients at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, likened life with lingering illness to accomodating to a new body. Its not like youre going to fix it with one little pill and its all going to go away and youll be hunky-dory, Hope said. Youll have to deal with multiple visits to different physicians. Its much more complicated. At Montefiore, many of Hopes COVID-19 patients say they feel like theyve been knocked out of their normal rhythms. A lot of them will talk about just not being who they are, Hope said. Its so completely inconsistent with how they lived their life before this. MacDonald said shes lucky because she works at a computer most of the day. If I was working a physical job, forget it, MacDonald said. In early March, Maria Diaz became one of the first New Yorkers known to have contracted COVID-19. Diaz, who teaches at Brooklyns Poly Prep Country Day School, left work on March 3 with a 105-degree fever. Well into the summer, she reported suffering fevers every few days, as well as chronic fatigue. What baffles her is that doctors initially diagnosed her case as mild. What I was told was that this was an upper respiratory infection, said Diaz, 31. But I was having all these other symptoms. In some cases, the enduring symptoms were worse than the initial ones. Sometimes its the people who have the milder versions of this infection that end up having chronic versions, said Lauren Stiles, an assistant professor of neurology at Stony Brook University who studies autonomic disorders. Cost Deadlines Loom The possibility of losing work and health insurance is doubly problematic for patients whove been in and out of hospitals since the pandemic began. In March, many private insurers committed to waiving patient shares of costs for COVID-19 treatment. Those protections mean no out-of-pocket expenses for people with insurance. To qualify, a hospital needs to code a patients bill as COVID-19-related, otherwise insurers wont take it. For some providers, like Aetna, those protections expire on Sept. 30. Aetna did not respond to requests for comment. Others, like Empire BlueCross BlueShield, recently extended that deadline to Dec. 31. A spokesperson said the insurer had identified nearly 2,000 patients with COVID-like symptoms through its Post Acute-Care Program. We are closely following the pandemic and monitoring the needs of our members, particularly those recovering from COVID-19, said Dr. Craig Hersh, chief medical officer of Empire BlueCross BlueShield. A man signs up for free coronavirus testing in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY Chen called the issue of insuring long-COVID patients a major concern. Patients tell us their insurance itself is expiring, either through their work because of loss of work, or because theyre on COBRA, Chen said. Depending on how this pandemic turns and patients ability to work, their ability to get care is really going to be affected. And long-term symptoms still arent widely viewed as part of the disease, in part because some patients, especially ones infected in the early days of the crisis and at its height, were never tested for the coronavirus. Many long haulers say theyve also test negative for antibodies long their initial illness, despite their symptoms. Whats really challenging is [the patients] look completely normal, said Stiles, who has an autonomic disorder herself. Its hard sometimes even for doctors to understand. And it doesnt lead to a lot of compassion for [patients]. Both Hope and Chen said they were concerned about the capacity of hospitals in New York to treat long-haulers as the number of patients they treat continues to grow. Mount Sinais center struggles to staff enough doctors to meet patient demand, Chen said. Thats going to be a very, very large burden, to the health system, to the economy, said Chen, And at some point, itll be unsustainable. This story was originally published by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:32:31|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Iran reported 2,815 new COVID-19 patients overnight on Thursday, raising the total number of the infections in the country to 413,149, said Iran's health ministry. During the past 24 hours, 1,628 Iranians were hospitalized for complications from the novel coronavirus, said Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, during her daily briefing. The pandemic has so far claimed 23,808 lives in Iran, up by 176 in the past 24 hours, she added. Besides, 353,848 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals while 3,848 remain in intensive care units. As of Thursday, 3,667,551 COVID-19 lab tests have been carried out in Iran, the spokeswoman noted. She said 28 Iranian provinces are still in high-risk or on alert condition. 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 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 OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Oklahoma's former state epidemiologist warned that President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa in June could lead to as many as nine deaths and 228 new cases of COVID-19, according to documents released Wednesday. The documents released by the Oklahoma State Department of Health in response to an open records request show that the state's former epidemiologist, Aaron Wendelboe, warned state and Tulsa health officials of the dire consequences if the rally were held, though his projection was based on it drawing an estimated 19,000 Trump supporters and only about 6,200 actually showed up. "I am advocating here for clear communication of the risk of holding a mass gathering," Wendelboe wrote in an email to Dr. Bruce Dart, the director of the Tulsa Health Department, five days before Trump's June 20 rally at a downtown Tulsa arena. "Im not sure of any instance where we would hold a public event and say `...and by the way, there is a chance that attending this could lead to a minimum of two deaths." In another email to two of his former colleagues at the University of Oklahoma, Wendelboe expressed reservations about how forcefully he should share his concerns. "As the state epidemiologist, I feel I have a responsibility to speak out and warn of the estimated risk," Wendelboe wrote in a different June 15 email. "However, that responsibility also lies with the health commissioner and the secretary of health; both with whom I have shared my concerns. I am acutely aware that Governor (Kevin) Stitt has invited President Trump to the state." The existence of the documents was first reported Wednesday by The Hill. FILE - In this June 20, 2020 file photo, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is recognized as President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. Oklahoma's former state epidemiologist warned as many as nine deaths and 228 new cases of coronavirus could result from President Donald Trump's June rally in Tulsa, according to documents released Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, by the Oklahoma State Department of Health show. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File) Wendelboes contract expired this summer and he no longer works for the state health department. He declined to comment Wednesday on his findings. The Tulsa Health Department does not publicly identify where potential virus transmissions occurred, so it's not clear how many people contracted COVID-19 at Trumps rally. But among those who attended was former Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain, who was photographed not wearing a mask and sitting close to other people who weren't wearing them either. According to a statement on his Twitter account, Cain tested positive for the disease on June 29, nine days after the rally, and died on July 30. Dart publicly urged the Trump campaign to cancel or postpone the rally, but neither he nor Mayor G.T. Bynum had that authority, spokeswomen for both men said Wednesday. Dart has said that Trump's rally and large protests held in Tulsa surrounding the event "likely contributed" to a surge in cases in the following weeks. A spokesman for the Republican governor, who also attended Trump's rally without wearing a mask, acknowledged that members of Stitt's cabinet were briefed on Wendelboe's projections ahead of the rally. "The governor has reviewed models from several epidemiologists throughout the pandemic. Each one has projected scenarios far more severe than reality, often multiple times more extreme," Stitt spokesman Charlie Hannema said. "The governor takes all modeling input seriously as he makes decisions and recommendations." Stitt was the first U.S. governor to publicly acknowledge testing positive for COVID-19, although he has said he did not contract it at the Trump rally. Wendelboe's estimates, which ranged from between two and nine deaths, were based on a projection that 19,000 Trump supporters would pack into Tulsa's BOK Center for the rally. The rally ultimately drew an unexpectedly low crowd of about 6,200 people after Trump's campaign bragged that more than a million people had requested tickets. Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was replaced less than a month later. The High Court of Andhra Pradesh on September 15th issued a GAG order barring the media from reporting on a case pertaining to a FIR lodged by ACB against a former Advocate General and kin of a sitting Supreme Court Judge in the Amaravati land case. The High Court of Andhra Pradesh on September 15th issued a GAG order barring the media from reporting on a case pertaining to a FIR lodged by ACB against a former Advocate General and kin of a sitting Supreme Court Judge in the Amaravati land case. Reacting on the same, YSRCP Lok Sabha floor leader Mithun Reddy raised this issue in the Parliament , expressing his dissent over stifling the media by the High Court. He further said , that the enforcement of law should be the same for the Prime Minister and a common man. Reacting on the same, Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, Advisor (Public Affairs) to the Chief Minister of AP said that the FIR was filed by an independent body upon having conclusive evidence against the accused and those involved in the scam, but the court didnt seem to consider them on the plea of the petitioner that the government was vindictive. We are not vindictive towards opposition party leaders and thus we requested for fair investigation by CBI, which is a Central Government institution. The High Court orders were surprising, he said adding that the will move the Supreme Court A known TDP activist turned Advocate General and kin of an influential person must have figured on merits of the investigation but stalling the probe in the initial stage is unprecedented, he said adding that national media has reacted by tweets on the issue. This is not just a gag on media, but it is a gag on institutions, and gag on the system, he added. He further questioned the timing and haste in issuing the gag order, raising doubts about the involvement of influential people. lso Read: Centre forms panel to probe reports of snooping by Chinese firm, MEA raises matter with China Also Read: Chinas diversionary tactics at LAC: Loudspeakers playing Punjabi songs put up at forward posts SC Advocate Prasanth Bhusan tweeted, Shocking that the HC has issued a wide ranging gag order restraining media&social media from reporting facts stated in an FIR of the AP govt against its former AG & other important persons, esp when the petition didnt ask for such gag! Against Art 19& RIT A senior journalist said, The story that caught my eye: when an aam aadmi is named in FIR, be prepared for worst.. when a khaas aadmi is named, get a gag order asap! Also Read: PM Modi turns 70: Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and others extend wishes A tropical depression or tropical storm could form Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said its morning update. It's too soon to tell if it could reach Louisiana. Update: Hurricane expected to form in Gulf this weekend As of 7 a.m. Thursday, a well-defined low pressure system, currently called Invest 90L, was over southwestern Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters said thunderstorm activity with this disturbance became better organized overnight and has continued to increase. Upper-level winds also are gradually becoming more conducive for development. The disturbance has a 90% chance (high) of developing into at least a tropical depression within 48 hours, forecasters said. An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters reconnaissance aircraft is scheduled to investigate the disturbance Thursday afternoon. Where is it going? The disturbance is expected to meander over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico for the next day or so before moving slowly north to northeast on Friday and Saturday. The shaded area on the graphic from the National Hurricane Center is where a storm could develop but does not represent a projected track. The National Hurricane Center releases a track when a system develops or is about to develop into a tropical depression. Get hurricane updates in your inbox Sign up for updates on storm forecasts, tracks and more. e-mail address * Sign Up Meanwhile, other forecast models have their predictions for where the storm could go if it develops. Most of them have the system doing a loop in the Gulf off the coast of Mexico and Texas. However, three of the models bring the system to Louisiana. Forecasters with the National Weather Service in Slidell reiterated Thursday morning that it is still too soon to tell if the system could have any impact on the Gulf Coast and encouraged residents not to rely on a single forecast model. Tropical Storm Wilfred? If this system strengthens into a tropical storm, it could be named Wilfred, depending on how quickly another disturbance in the Atlantic develops. Wilfred is the last available name of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Once Wilfred is used, forecasters will move to the Greek alphabet for naming storms this season. The first four Greek letters are Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. Hurricane forecasters were tracking six disturbances Thursday morning, including the Gulf system. The Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30. Don't miss a storm update this hurricane season. Sign up for breaking newsletters. Follow our Hurricane Center Facebook page. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:47:14|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close YANGON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar authorities seized a large haul of sulfuric acid in Mandalay region, according to a release from the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) on Thursday. Acting on a tip-off, the seizure was made by the joint anti-narcotic police in Pyin Oo Lwin township on Wednesday. A total of 11,988 liters of sulfuric acid worth over 8.3 million kyats (6,347 U.S. dollars) were confiscated from a truck and two suspects were arrested. The township police filed a case against the suspects and further investigation is underway under the country's Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law, the release said. According to a latest release issued by the President's Office, a total of 1,320 drug-related cases were registered across Myanmar while 2,022 people were charged in connection with the cases as of September 5 this year, since the formation of the Drug Activity Special Complaint Department on June 26, 2018. Enditem Frisch Klein noted the importance of keeping remote participants as engaged as possible in these long services and to keep the home and Zoom space holy as well. To that end, her synagogue members were given Gear for the New Year bags that contain items like a prayer book , special readings, apples, honey and apple cake treats, coloring activities and in keeping with the new year theme - kindness coins to be passed on to others displaying acts of charity and compassion. Keith Urban has collaborated with pop star Pink on his new single One Too Many. The song is now available on streaming platforms, and the official music video will premiere on Thursday afternoon at 2PM AEST. 'I couldnt have pictured anyone else's voice on the song,' country music star Keith, 52, said of Pink's collaboration on the track. Scroll down for video Coming very soon! Keith Urban has collaborated with pop star Pink on his new single One Too Many Pink, real name Alecia Beth Moore, lends her incredible voice in the funky mid-tempo ballad, which features on Keith's new album 'The Speed Of Now Part 1'. 'Ive always loved Pinks voice,' Keith said in a media statement, adding: 'her artistry and her multi-faceted ability to create, and her God-given talent, truly makes her one of the greatest voices of our time.' While the global coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns presented challenges for the musicians to collaborate, they are proud of the end result. 'She's truly one of the greatest voices of our time': Australian country star Keith, 52, said he was pleased Pink (pictured) agreed to collaborate on the track Out now! While the global coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns presented challenges for the musicians to collaborate, they are proud of the end result Keith and Pink were not only forced to piece together the recording separately, they found themselves at opposite sides of the globe Pink in Los Angeles and Keith in Sydney when filming the music video. The musician returned home to Australia in July with his family as actress wife Nicole Kidman began to film her new mini-series, Nine Perfect Strangers. In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Keith promoted the release of the track and its official music video. '[The video] will be coming to you from the middle of the ocean. Serious, literally, with Pink. It will be premiering exclusively on Facebook. I can't wait for you guys to see this video. I think it turned out amazing,' he said. 'I think it turned out amazing!' In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Keith promoted the release of the track and its official music video, which was filmed 'from the middle of the ocean' Tune in: The world television premiere of the song will occur at the 55th annual Academy of Country Music Awards (ACM), broadcast from Nashville on September 16 The world television premiere of the song will take place at the 55th annual Academy of Country Music Awards (ACM), broadcast from Nashville on September 16. The Fighter hit-maker will host the award ceremony, and also perform on stage with American rocker Pink. Keith Urban's eleventh studio album 'The Speed Of Now Part 1' is out September 18. File image Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Thursday said the much awaited expansion of his cabinet will be discussed during his visit to New Delhi, where he will also be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and central Ministers regarding the development of the state. The Chief Minister, who was in the city to take part in Kalyana Karnataka Utsav programme, left for Delhi. "I'm directly going to Delhi from here, I will be there tomorrow and the day after. Prime Minister has given time, seven to eight Ministers (Union Ministers) have also given time (for meeting)," Yediyurappa said. Speaking to reporters here, he said during the visit he will hold discussions regarding cabinet expansion and the development of the state. "I will meet concerned Ministers and the Prime minister... I will return to Bengaluru on September 19," he added. During the visit Yediyurappa is expected to meet top BJP leaders including party national President J P Nadda, during which the discussion on cabinet expansion is likely to come up, party sources said. Cabinet expansion or reshuffle is expected to be a tightrope walk for the 77-year-old leader, considering too many aspirants. While several of the old guard are waiting for a chance to be inducted into the Ministry, those who defected from the Congress and JD(S) like A H Vishwanath, R Shankar and MTB Nagaraj, who are now BJP MLCs, are also aspiring for slots. The cabinet currently has 28 members and six berths are still vacant. There are also strong speculations about the possible change in leadership in the future, considering Yediyurappa's age. However it has been rejected by senior party leaders like its state President Nalin Kumar Kateel, Minister R Ashoka among others. Flood relief, development projects related to states and GST compensation are the key issues that are likely to figure during the Chief Minister's meeting with the Prime Minister and central Ministers. Karnataka has estimated the loss due to the recent floods to be around Rs 8,071 crore, and is seeking for enhanced relief from the Centre. The BJP ruled Karnataka has opted for the first among the two options provided by the central government for borrowing, to meet the shortfall in GST revenues, under which the state will be eligible for total compensation of Rs 18,289 crore. Yediyurappa's travel to Delhi, comes ahead of the monsoon session of the state legislature from September 21 to 30, during which the opposition has decided to corner the government on flood and COVID management, financial condition of the state, among other things. Three local terrorists and a civilian woman were killed, while two Central Reserve Police Force personnel, including an officer, sustained injuries in a predawn gunbattle on Thursday in the Batamaloo area of Srinagar, officials said. Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com IMAGE: Security forces in action during an encounter in Batamaloo area of Srinagar on Thursday. This takes the number of terrorists killed this year to 177 in 72 operations. The number includes 22 foreign terrorists. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Firdousabad locality in Batamaloo area at around 2.30 am following information about the presence of terrorists there, the officials said. They said the search operation turned into an encounter after the terrorists opened fire on security forces. A civilian, identified as Kaunsar Riyaz, 45, was killed in the firing, while two Central Reserve Police Force personnel, including an officer, were injured, the officials said. The injured personnel were taken to hospital, they said. Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbagh Singh said all the three terrorists killed in the encounter were locals from South Kashmir. Addressing a press conference at the Police Control Room (PCR) Srinagar, the DGP said that in the early hours of the day, security forces, while acting on a lead, zeroed in on a house where the terrorists were hiding. "They were given a chance to surrender, but they refused and fired. One CRPF officer and another CRPF man sustained injuries in the initial exchange of firing. The officer is critical and we are praying for his recovery," Singh said. He added that the forces conducted the operation in a professional manner and killed all the three militants. "However, a woman was caught in crossfire. Her death is very unfortunate, and we express sympathy with the bereaved family," the DGP said. The officer was accompanied by IGP, Kashmir, Vijay Kumar and IG, CRPF, Srinagar sector, Charu Sinha. "Arms and ammunition were recovered," he said. Singh said terrorists from other districts of south and north Kashmir keep coming to Srinagar to carry out attacks on security forces. "On August 14, they targeted our party and killed two policemen at Nowgam. Before that, they had killed two BSF men at Pandach on the city's outskirts. And then, they made another attempt at Pantha Chowk, where we lost a brave SOG man," the DGP said. He said the police and CRPF teams are on alert, and whenever they get a lead about the presence of terrorists in the city, efforts are made to ensure zero collateral damage. "Today's operation was the seventh one in Srinagar in the recent past," Singh added. The Union Territory's police chief said 177 terrorists have been killed in 72 operations so far this year. "In terms of peace, 2020 has been better on every parameter than 2019. So far this year, we have done 72 operations, in which 177 militants were killed, including 12 in Jammu," the DGP said. He said 22 terrorists from Pakistan were among these 177, adding this 'shows Pakistan's direct involvement in terror activities'. "Most of the terrorists working in outfits like Lashkar and Jaish are from Pakistan. I hope the way the forces are conducting the operations, we will achieve more successes on the peace-building and operations front," Singh said. He said the endeavour of the security forces was to avoid collateral damage in every operation. "We also give opportunity to the militants to surrender, even when there is exchange of firing. Also, we try to bring back those youth who have taken up the wrong path and we have achieved success on that front also, especially in south Kashmir. "I think around 20 youth have been brought back and they have joined their families," the DGP said. He appealed to the young people not to take the wrong path, saying it puts the society in danger. "Where the gun or bullet or grenade reaches, there is loss of life, and we can avoid it only if we shun the path of terror and make way for peace. "I think Pakistan does not lose an opportunity to instigate our youth and is trying to renew (militant) outfits like Al-Badr and create new ones like PAFF (People's anti-Fascist Front) and TRF (The Resistance Front). "Pakistani agencies in Karachi are planning and executing these things and we condemn it. The youth here have a right to build their own lives and careers, but Pakistan's interference is there," Singh said. Asked about the alleged assaults on media persons near the encounter sites, the DGP said it was unfortunate. Such things should not take place, he added. "We do not support such acts and feel bad. But at times, during operations, our men have high temper which results in such incidents. There is overreaction sometimes, which I regret. However, there is no deliberate attempt. I reiterate that media and policemen are each other's good friends," he said. FCA virtually hosted its 21st annual supplier diversity MatchMaker program today, continuing the company's long-standing commitment to building a diverse supply base and growing wealth for diverse business owners throughout the value chain. During the event, the Company also announced plans to begin tracking spend with certified LGBTQ- and disable-owned enterprises. FCA is the only automaker to host a supplier diversity matchmaker program this year. Attended by more than 150 exhibitors, 600 attendees and 100 FCA decision makers, the 21st annual MatchMaker program also included an awards ceremony honoring FCA suppliers that demonstrate leadership, passion and commitment to building robust supplier diversity programs. Winners in three categories included: Indirect: Aristeo Construction ( Livonia, Mich. ) ) Direct Production: Irvin Automotive Products ( Pontiac, Mich. ) ) Mopar: Ryan Industries ( Wixom, Mich. ) "MatchMaker has been a flagship component for our award-winning supplier diversity program for more than 20 years," said Mark Stewart, Chief Operating Officer, FCA - North America. "It is a powerfully effective program that is based on a very simple idea that a company can optimize the economic impact of its business with diverse people and communities that represent its customers and employees. So, after 20-plus years it may not seem so breakthrough or unique, but the values MatchMaker represents are timeless and perhaps never more important than they are right now." During the event, diverse-owned companies hosted virtual exhibit spaces for networking, attended educational programming and held 1:1 matchmaking meetings. The opening ceremony kicked off with various FCA executive speakers and well-known supplier diversity champions Michelle Sourie Robinson, president and CEO of the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council, and Dr. Ken Harris, president and CEO of the National Business League. MatchMaker has generated more than $4 billion in new business opportunities for minority-owned, including women, veteran, LGBTQ and disabled, and small businesses since its inception in 1999. Since 1983, the Company has purchased more than $80 billion from minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned suppliers. In 2019, FCA in North America spent more than $8 billion with 300-plus diverse suppliers and received the following honors for its supplier diversity efforts: Benchmark Corporation of the Year from Rainbow Push Coalition Corporation of the Year from the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council Supplier Excellence Award from the Great Lakes Women Business Council Top Corporation Gold Award from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council President's Award from Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council The company's supplier diversity goals require that up to 12.5% a tier-one supplier spend be sourced to certified minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses and veteran-owned businesses. FCA is now also tracking spend among LGBTQ- and disable-owned enterprises. The virtual event was powered by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association's (OESA) meeting platform. For more information or to register your diverse business, visit supplierdiversityfca.com. FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is a global automaker that designs, engineers, manufactures and sells vehicles in a portfolio of exciting brands, including Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Fiat Professional, Jeep, Lancia, Ram and Maserati. It also sells parts and services under the Mopar name and operates in the components and production systems sectors under the Comau and Teksid brands. FCA employs nearly 200,000 people around the globe. For more details regarding FCA (NYSE: FCAU/ MTA: FCA), please visit www.fcagroup.com. SOURCE FCA Related Links http://www.fcanorthamerica.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:36:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko stressed "the inadmissibility of any interference in the internal political processes" in Belarus during a phone talk Thursday with U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan. Rudenko also emphasized the inadmissibility of "attempts to destabilize" the situation in Belarus and "impose unilateral mediation services from outside," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. He said that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's initiative to carry out a constitutional reform to liberalize the country's political system is promising. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin accused the United States of playing a key role in preparing the protests following Belarus' presidential elections. He alleged that the preparations began in 2019 and early 2020, when Washington channeled about 20 million U.S. dollars through various non-governmental organizations to help organize the protests. Enditem JACKSON, MI Journeymen at Miller Tool & Die Co. are on strike Thursday after contract negotiations stalled. The three-year contract for the 19 journeymen expired, and the company was unwilling to negotiate further with the union, Thurman Crider, business representative for the International Association of Machinists said. Around 15 people held signs saying, Employees on strike Sept. 17, outside of the company, 829 Belden Road. The company opened in 1930 and the unions only other strike was in the early 1970s. Miller Tool & Die Co.'s best and final offer included ending the pension, an increase to health insurance premiums and a wage freeze, Crider said. Everything is important, Local 435 President Jamie Miller said. But a pension, you dont mess with that. Miller said he has no affiliation with the company owners. Miller Tool & Die Co. did not respond to request for comment. Negotiations are usually tough, but an agreement is typically reached, Crider said. This round of negotiations lasted three days, instead of the typical five. Local 435 Financial Officer Eric Sabin was part of the negotiations, and while the company may have acted legally, it was not in a productive way, he said. I dont really feel that they negotiated in good faith, Sabin said. I dont feel like they negotiated. They didnt want to hear anything we wanted to say. Ending the pension is more than half the reason the union voted to strike, multiple members said. The pension is a big reason that people work at Miller Tool & Die Co., since many Jackson-area businesses dont offer one, former Local 435 President Randy Ramirez said. The company provides a 401k but does not match contributions, Ramirez said. He said many employees have kids, which makes the pension even more meaningful to them. We want our pension, he said. Its very important to us. During negotiations, the union asked for a raise of 50 cents an hour to help offset the increased cost of health insurance. The union also offered to split the increased cost for health insurance, if the company was unwilling to pay the whole increase, Sabin said. The union is willing to negotiate as soon as the company is, Miller said. A strike helps nobody, Miller said. It doesnt help this company and it doesnt help us. The union employees will be on strike until negotiations resume, Miller said. We cant afford to be on strike, but we cant afford to not be on strike, he said. Read more from the Jackson Citizen Patriot: Blackman-Leoni Public Safety officer accused of lying under oath, misconduct in office Klavons temporarily closed after employee tests positive for coronavirus Man shot by intruder during home invasion in Jackson Jackson County approves 2021 budgets for health department, Friend of the Court Electrical system to be replaced at Jacksons Cascade Falls The Tax Justice Coalition (TJC) Ghana, a Network of tax practitioners and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), has called on the public to join the campaign against injustices in the countrys tax system. It said the campaign would influence policy processes and contribute to public fiscal accountability, equity, poverty reduction and revenue mobilization at all levels for national development. Mr Mohammed Awal Sumani Bapio, the Northern Sector Convener of the TJC Ghana, made the call at a meeting organised by the TJC Ghana in Tamale. It was attended by representatives of some CSOs, officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and interest groups and sought to raise public awareness on some forms of tax injustices in the country. The meeting was also to empower participants to mobilize the citizenry to join the Coalition to tackle the issue. Mr Bapio, who is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Active Learning and Integrated Development (CALID), said: It is important for the people to be involved in the process of deciding what to tax, whom to tax and how to tax as well as in collecting and spending tax revenues. That, he said, would warrant accountability and transparency in governments dealings and guarantee value for money in the execution of development projects. Some of the participants highlighted issues of tax injustices, saying some big companies and institutions get tax waivers from the government while businesses that are struggling financially are exempted from such incentives. They appealed to government and stakeholders to ensure equity and transparency in the countrys tax system to the benefit of everyone. They also encouraged individuals and corporate bodies to honour their tax obligations to ensure enough revenues were generated for the government to undertake its development agenda. 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 White Dee, heroine of the Channel 4 documentary series Benefits Street, has been advised by her agent to shun politics. If the bookies are correct, she has a better chance than any other challenger of unseating the incumbent Labour MP Shabana Mahmood in Birmingham Ladywood where she lives, but her manager, Barry Tomes, thinks she should forget it. He has advised his client, whose real name is Deirdre Kelly, that she can make more money by being a media personality. She is thought to have been paid 100,000 for appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. Who would want to be an MP and earn 50,000 a year? he told the Birmingham Mail. She could earn a lot more than that just by being Dee Kelly. I am not sure about this advice. Firstly, MPs are better paid than Tomes thinks. Their basic pay is 67,060, the expenses are still pretty good, and so is the pension. And there is nothing to prevent an MP from picking up a fat fee for going on reality television, as George Galloway and Nadine Dorries have demonstrated. On the other hand, Shabana Mahmood is defending a majority of 10,105, which leads me to think that Tomes has a point after all. Fired up by Jay-Z You cant be the moaning man in the pub, Liz Kendall, Labours shadow care minister, advises her colleagues, via an interview in The House magazine. Actually, the moaning man in the pub often has a real point underneath it all. But mostly you end up not listening. In other words, smile as you talk about the cost of living crisis. Look happy, as you proclaim that a Conservative election victory will be the end of the NHS as we know it. Good advice. And on a happy note, she revealed that she mostly listens to rap music on her iPod, including loads of Jay-Z, but from the old days of The Black Album which she thinks is brilliant, particularly if Im about to speak in the Chamber. Imagine firing yourself for a debate on care for the elderly with lyrics like: I got 99 problems but you aint one.... Get your oats According to TripAdvisor, the best restaurant in Cardiff, out of 946, is The Clink, inside Cardiff prison, where food is prepared and served by prisoners. Do they I wonder serve porridge? Sorry. Fit for a Lord The man we used to know as Sir Robert Rogers, the Clerk of the House of Commons who fell out with the Speaker, John Bercow, was introduced to the House of Lords today so he is now Baron Lisvane of Blakemere in the County of Herefordshire and of Lisvane in the City and County of Cardiff. The two Labour deputy speakers, Lindsay Hoyle and Dawn Primarolo, and the former Tory deputy speaker, Nigel Evans, took the trouble to watch his introduction. Even if the Speaker did not rate Sir Robert, others did. Brittans inequality battle Leon Brittan was reckoned to be the cleverest of the so-called Cambridge Mafia, a group of six future Conservative Cabinet ministers who knew each other as students. The others are all alive. Four Michael Howard, Norman Fowler, John Gummer and Norman Lamont are in the Lords. Ken Clarke is in the Commons. They were big noises at the universitys students union in the early 1960s, when there was an argument over whether women should be allowed to take part in debates. Brittan was one of the young men who battled against this innovation. People would not listen to them as speakers, he proclaimed. They would look at them as women. The Government Covid-19 test booking website has been branded a shambles after an investigation by this newspaper uncovered a series of alarming errors. The site believes Portadown and Londonderry are just four miles apart, rather than almost 70. It also thinks 43 miles lie between Ballymena Showgrounds and one of the town's main hotels. And it calculated a distance of almost 40 miles between Coleraine and Enniskillen - it is double that. The erroneous calculations emerged during attempts by this newspaper to book tests from locations around Northern Ireland yesterday - no slots were available at most testing centres. Read More Growing complaints have been made about difficulties in accessing slots. Testing is one of the key tools in the Executive's strategy to deal with the virus. Dr Gabriel Scally branded the system "a shambles". The Belfast-born public health expert also voiced fears about the "potentially disastrous" ongoing situation in the Holyland student area of Belfast, and predicted a second national lockdown before Christmas if behaviour does not change. "Northern Ireland can't expect to get to grips with this virus if this is the test booking system we have to contend with; it's a complete shambles," he said. "Not only that - it's a shambles that has been a long time in the making. And it's a shambles that the authorities were well warned would happen. "You don't get many opportunities to get it right with a virus and they missed it. "They had the opportunity to get it right but they didn't take that opportunity." Read More Dr Scally, who is president of the epidemiology and public health section of the Royal Society of Medicine, described the current testing system as a massive fail and said the situation is out of control, citing the escalating Holyland street parties. "If someone tests positive in a house which nine people share in the Holyland, how can they self-isolate?" he asked, adding that for the last three weeks the situation "shows every sign of getting out of control" because "it's not possible to see the mechanisms in place that would bring it back under control. It's potentially disastrous". Dr Scally, a member of the Independent SAGE group of scientists, also claimed the Government had disregarded important advice. "The current system is failing the people of Northern Ireland," he said. "The Department of Health has to carry the can for that; Who else can be to blame? "Public Health England has been chosen to be the whipping boy. This is a blame game. "The only people responsible for the health of the population in Northern Ireland is the Department of Heath - the minister and the top officials. No-one else. "It is their job to look after the health of the population." During an Belfast Telegraph investigation into the availability of Covid tests across Northern Ireland, we discovered a lack of appointments across a huge swathe of the region, as well as a scarcity of home test kits, which Dr Scally described as "worrying". "We are up a creek without too many paddles," he said, pointing to a potential virus timebomb. "Hospitals admissions and deaths are starting to go up across the UK. "When that happened in the past, the only thing that brought it under control was lockdown. "So, all things remaining equal, unfortunately, another lockdown is entirely possible before Christmas." Booking a test is done through a centralised NHS system. There are four fixed testing sites in Northern Ireland and six mobile venues. A number of geographical anomalies also emerged when attempting to book Covid tests from postcodes in 10 different locations across Northern Ireland on two separate occasions yesterday. Of the postcodes used from Belfast, Londonderry, Dungannon, Ballymena, Omagh, Enniskillen, Newry, Coleraine, Portadown and Lurgan there were no same day tests offered from six locations. Despite trying shortly after 10am - when new slots become available - and once again in the afternoon, there were no appointments for postcodes in Dungannon, Derry, Omagh, Enniskillen, Newry and Lurgan. The message on the website said: "More tests should be available later. If you cannot book a test now, or the location or time are not convenient, try again in a few hours." On several occasions there was an additional warning: "Do not call the helplines - you will not be able to get a test this way." In the morning, only two postcodes, in Belfast and Portadown, offered testing slots. For Belfast, the website said there were 18 slots available at Lough Moss Leisure Centre which was deemed closest. It said: "Your nearest walk-through test site is Carryduff. There are currently no drive-through test sites or home test kits available." For the Portadown postcode, the website said: "Your nearest drive-through site is Derry Lycra Car Park (4.1 miles away). Seven slots available." In the afternoon, test slots were offered when postcodes from three locations were entered, including a BT42 postcode just outside Ballymena. Although the residence entered was close to Ross Park Hotel, the website estimated the Ballymena Showgrounds drive-though site was 43 miles away, rather than three. In another case, a Coleraine postcode was offered a slot in Enniskillen, which it said was almost 44 miles away rather than double that. Dr Scally said that, without an effective test and trace system, and with Northern Ireland experiencing a lack of both home test kits and available test slots, "it's inevitable that cases will continue to escalate". "It's not just the speed with which you can get the test that's important," he said. "It's also the speed with which it can be analysed and results returned. "All of that needs to be done rapidly and in an integrated fashion." SDLP health spokesman Colin McGrath said he has had lots of complaints from constituents about the test booking system. "There's definitely a huge problem with it," he said. "People are either having to spend all day waiting for an elusive appointment, or people in Co Down are being offered a slot in the Isle of Man or Scotland. "It doesn't instil a lot of faith in the system. There is a sufficient lack of confidence in it because of the basic errors that are being made." Mr McGrath said he worries that Northern Ireland won't be able to cope with an increased demand in testing. "If we can't deal with it now, how will we fare in a month's time?" he said. He added: "Mr Swann needs to recognise the magnitude of the problem before lockdown, which nobody wants, is the only option." When questioned about the booking test system the Department of Health referred the Belfast Telegraph to the Public Health Agency, which subsequently referred us to the UK Department of Health and Social Care. The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached by this newspaper for comment. SHOTLIST SIDI BEL ABBES, ALGERIASEPTEMBER 2, 2020SOURCE: AFPTV 1. Wide shot grape-picker harvesting grapes in Dahmane Hamamouche's vineyard2. Mid shot clusters of grapes on a vine3. Close-up cluster of grapes on a vine branch 4. SOUNDBITE 1 - Dahmane Hamamouche, Algerian vintner and owner of SAPVI (male, 43 years old, French, 24 sec): "We cannot bear this! We can't carry on for more than another month or two, we won't be able to hold out. Besides, we are already finding it difficult to pay salaries. The government must unblock distribution to revive the economy and our activity." "On ne peut pas tenir comme ca! On ne peut pas tenir, si on depasse les un mois, deux mois, on ne peut pas tenir. D'ailleurs maintenant a ce jour, on est en difficulte de paiement des salaires, donc il faut qu'ils debloquent pour relancer l'economie, pour relancer l'activite." 5. Cutaway: Wide shot entrance of the second cellar in Sidi Bel Abbes, two employees working in the cellar 6. Cutaway: Wide shot worker walking through one of the aisles of the cellar 7. Mid shot employee aerating the wine8. Mid shot aeration of the wine in the vat9. Close-up Ezzine, a 38 years old grape picker, cutting the damaged grapes from a cluster 10. SOUNDBITE 2 - Ezzine, grape picker (male, 38 years old, Algerian Arabic, 26 sec): "I don't understand why they don't work their land. Before, everybody used to work the land without any problem, now it's not the case anymore, is it because it requires a lot of effort? I don't know. Viniculture is disappearing little by little in recent years. " 11. Cutaway: Wide shot vineyard of Dahmane Hamamouche in Sidi Bel Abbes 12. Cutaway: Wide shot clusters of grapes on a vine ///-----------------------------------------------------------AFP TEXT STORY: FOCUSCovid-19 heaps misery on Algeria's wilting vineyards By Farah Abada =(Picture+Video)= ATTENTION - Video by Farah Abada. Pictures by Ryad Kramdi ///Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria, Sept 16, 2020 (AFP) - Algerian winemaker Dahmane Hamamouche used to rise early and rush to work each morning, but he no longer bothers, as his firm chokes on a cocktail of woes.Long accustomed to nasty surprises including unpredictable weather patterns and periodic mildew outbreaks, Algerian vintners are now facing their worst season in decades. Soaring temperatures have decimated grape yields and a five-month-long lockdown to combat the Covid-19 pandemic has paralysed the sector."We cannot bear this," lamented Hamamouche, who set up a Societe Agricole de Production de la Vigne et du Vin (SAPVI) in 2004.His wine-making enterprise sources grapes from vineyards in the Sidi Bel Abbes highlands, some 435 kilometres (270 miles) southwest of Algiers, and a clutch of other elevated areas.Wine-making in the area dates back to Roman antiquity and today Algeria ranks second only to South Africa in wine production on the continent. But if the unfolding disaster "carries on for more than another month or two, we won't be able to hold out," said Hamamouche, arms crossed over a blue T-shirt."We're already finding it difficult to pay salaries."Algeria's cafes and restaurants only reopened in mid-August, when the country emerged from its strict coronavirus lockdown.Adding to Hamamouche's frustrations, a ban on alcohol distribution -- part of the lockdown -- has yet to be lifted, and alcohol is only sold in specialised stores."The government must allow distribution to revive our economic activity," the vintner urged. "We are at a standstill!"No official reason has been given for the ban. The livelihoods of staff ranging from factory technicians, labourers, cleaners, guards, administrative staff and accountants are at stake. - 'Viniculture disappearing' - Attou, 20, is one of the few grape pickers still working in the vineyards of Sidi Bel Abbes."It's not like normal, we will harvest far less than usual due to the scorching summer," he told AFP. "Normally, there are a lot more grapes."Fellow grape-picker Ezzine, 38, was also downbeat. "Viniculture is disappearing," he said.But the industry has survived major setbacks in the past.Nine years after the 1962 independence from France, a political crisis between Algiers and its former colonial master prompted Paris to suspend imports of Algerian wine. In a bid to offload the surplus, the government turned to alternative markets, notably the former USSR, but without success.In 1971, president Houari Boumediene reluctantly decided to pare back land devoted to the nation's vineyards by some 40 percent.He knew it would dramatically downsize Algeria's second largest industry, after oil, but the country needed to ease political pressure from France.Vineyards were also hit hard by 1992-2002 civil war, which pitted the security forces against Islamists and killed an estimated 200,000 people.Agricultural labourers stopped growing or even deliberately uprooted vines, out of religious conviction or fear of reprisals by the jihadists. Today, the area covered by vineyards in the country is around 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres), compared to 350,000 under French rule.But the domestic appetite for wine remains healthy: the Algerian Drinks Producers Association says consumption averaged 1.4 litres per resident in 2017.Producers are now pinning their hopes on state intervention to buy up this year's surplus produce, help them replant vines and develop the sector."A national agricultural plan is needed to help small-scale growers repopulate vineyards," said Ghanem Bouha, who manages SAPVI's finances.fa-agr/sc/dwo/hc/gle ------------------------------------------------------------- (Newser) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield testified at a Senate hearing Wednesdayand his remarks clashed with some of what President Trump has been saying. Face masks are "the most important public health tool we have" in fighting the pandemic and could even be more effective than a vaccine, Redfield said, per the New York Times. "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%," he told lawmakers. "And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will." At a town hall event Tuesday, Trump said "a lot of people think masks are not good." story continues below Trump also said Tuesday that a vaccine could be ready in "three weeks, four weeks." Redfield told the Senate on Wednesday that a "very limited supply" of vaccine could be available by the end of the year, but he doesn't expect one to be available to the general public until the middle of 2021. Trump told reporters at a news conference later Wednesday that Redfield had made a "mistake' on the vaccine timeline, the Hill reports. "I think he made a mistake when he said that. Its just incorrect information, Trump said. "That is incorrect information." Trump said Redfield, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, was "confused" and had "misunderstood the question." (Read more coronavirus stories.) Open innovation platform aims to address new normal with faster delivery of new and updated digital services on Poste Italiane's journey to be the cloud-enabled distribution platform of choice in Italy Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Poste Italiane Group ("Poste Italiane" or the "Group") is building an innovation platform based on Red Hat's open hybrid cloud portfolio, including Red Hat OpenShift. The platform is intended to support more and deeper connections with ecosystem partners, provide a more seamless customer experience to the Group's 35 million customers along with access to an extensive, timely product and services portfolio, and support Italy's growing digital economy. In the midst of a five-year business transformation strategy, Poste Italiane aims to improve operations for its 125,000-strong workforce, delivering greater value to its users through enhanced offerings and serve as a hub for ecosystem innovation. The 158-year old organization serves citizen, business and public administration customers with services that span financial, insurance, payments, mobile telecommunications and logistics segments, forming an integral part of Italy's social and economic fabric. It is the largest service distribution network in Italy, delivering 150 million parcels per year, approximately 2.7 billion mail items and managing 548 billion of clients' financial assets. As part of its multi-year business transformation, the Group adopted a scalable microservices architecture and embraced agile working practices including DevOps. Poste Italiane chose Red Hat OpenShift, the industry's most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, as a common foundation across the business, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its hybrid cloud backbone. Poste Italiane collaborated with Red Hat Consulting on the design, implementation and management of its Red Hat OpenShift-based platform. To support accelerated cloud-native application development, Poste Italiane deployed Red Hat Runtimes, Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage. Poste Italiane is using Red Hat AMQ (part of Red Hat Integration) to connect heterogeneous applications, data and devices, and Red Hat Process Automation for faster workflows for financial services delivered over its digital channels. With its new platform, Poste Italiane can focus on innovation rather than infrastructure and has dramatically reduced delivery time of business applications. The Group can now bring to market new applications in 2-4 months compared to the 6-12 months it took previously. The success of its new approach has helped Poste Italiane grow its digital customer base from 1.3 million daily online users in 2017 to 2.6 million daily online users as of June 2020, with digital transactions increasing 64% following the COVID-19 emergency. Poste Italiane is now able to foster greater ecosystem collaboration in financial services and other industries to create new customer experiences. For example, taking advantage of the European Union revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), Poste Italiane can use open APIs and open banking standards to connect third party providers to its test environment on OpenShift to perform systems integration checks before going live. It is now working with a number of fintechs and startups in Italy and beyond to create joint propositions for customers and has been able to bring these to market faster than before. Newly launched offerings include: A QR code solution for simplifying digital payments; Bundled offers of payment and mobile phone services using convergence between the two; An expanded network of parcel delivery and collection points (more than 7,000); Personalized and scheduled premium delivery services; More effective management of full track long-haul road freight transportation; and Digital wealth management products. As the Group builds out the platform's capabilities and scope, its collaboration with Red Hat has continued, including through remotely delivered consulting services. Its plans include containerization at the edge to improve efficiency, performance and operational continuity of data and computing resources at distributed sites such as its mail sorting centres. Supporting Quotes Ashesh Badani, senior vice president, Cloud Platforms, Red Hat "The scope and scale of Poste Italiane's digital transformation is impressive: to ramp up a group-wide open hybrid cloud, move to collaborative working and DevOps, and go all-in on cloud-native for application development in a short period of time sets precedent for what a large organization can achieve. It has been exciting working closely with Poste Italiane, on both a business and engineering level, to bring its open innovation vision to life and see the advances in agility and time to market it has achieved with its Red Hat-powered hybrid cloud platform." Mirko Mischiatti, chief digital, technology and operating officer, Poste Italiane "Innovation is essential for a diversified business of our scale to remain competitive and cater to changing needs in the face of disruption. To move faster we needed containerization for efficient application development. With Red Hat's open hybrid cloud technologies we have been able to create a reliable, high performance platform that helps us be more adaptable to meet demands, however unexpected, and to deliver the best possible experiences and opportunities for customers." Additional Resources Read more Red Hat customer success stories Learn more about Red Hat Consulting Learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage Learn more about Red Hat Ceph Storage Learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux Learn more about Red Hat Runtimes Learn more about Red Hat AMQ Learn more about Red Hat Process Automation Learn more about Red Hat Integration Learn more about Red Hat's approach to edge Learn more about Red Hat's approach to hybrid cloud Learn more about DevOps Learn more about Kubernetes Connect with Red Hat Learn more about Red Hat Get more news in the Red Hat newsroom Read the Red Hat blog Follow Red Hat on Twitter Join Red Hat on Facebook Watch Red Hat videos on YouTube Follow Red Hat on LinkedIn About Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat is the world's leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company or its parent International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Red Hat logo, Ceph and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005509/en/ Contacts: Amy Elston Red Hat, Inc. aelston@redhat.com Phone: +447775701979 Speaking at a White House press briefing Wednesday evening, President Trump reiterated his threats to call out the military and suppress election night demonstrations that might be provoked by a claim on his part to have won reelection. A reporter cited Attorney General William Barrs statement that he wanted to charge anti-Trump demonstrators with sedition and Trumps own previous comments about invoking the Insurrection Act, then asked him, Why do you want to use that rhetoric? Trump replied, The question was asked to me if you have violent demonstrations. Yes, we will put it down quickly if there is. And I think the American public wants to see that. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) He continued, Look, if theres any kind of demonstration or violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this product, this vote. Theres going to be nothing. The question about Barr was based on a report by the Wall Street Journal that the attorney general had told federal prosecutors in a conference call last week that they should bring federal charges of insurrection against those who were arrested for violent actions during the wave of mass protests against police violence triggered by the May 25 police murder of George Floyd. According to this report, Barr went further, suggesting that some way be found to bring criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, because she did not immediately suppress a police-free protest zone in the citys downtown for several weeks in June. After effectively endorsing Barrs actions, Trump then launched into a lengthy diatribe against mail ballots, attempting, as he has on several other occasions, to distinguish between voting by absentee ballot, which he acknowledged doing regularly himself, and voting based on a mail-in system where state governments send ballots out widely to all registered voters. There is no difference in practice between absentee ballots and mail-in ballots, because in both cases state governments check the returned ballots against signatures on file. Trump falsely claimed that Democratic-controlled states were dropping the signature checking in order to manufacture large numbers of illegal votes against him. He has repeatedly claimed in recent days that the only way he can lose the election is due to vote-rigging. Wednesdays remarks on mail-in voting were his most detailed and inflammatory comments on this issue. He claimed, Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. He continued, presenting an apocalyptic picture of the conduct of the November 3 election, The ballots will be stolen. Who knows where theyre going? Who knows where theyre coming from? Its not just the counting of the ballots, which by the way, which will take forever. The most remarkable aspect of Trumps 30-minute appearance is how easily the media let him avoid discussing the brazen threats of violence made by his own supporters. Only an hour before Trump took the podium in the White House press room, the top communications official in the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, revealed he was taking a 60-day leave of absence, while his top assistant, Paul Alexander, would leave the agency permanently. Caputo had posted Sunday night a fascistic tirade on Facebook in which he accused scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of engaging in sedition against Trump. He also denounced supposed plans for a left-wing insurrection against Trumps reelection, urged right-wing Trump supporters to stockpile ammunition for inauguration day, and called on his supporters to contact and join the New York Watchmen. Alexander came under heavy criticism last week when it was revealed that he had played a major role in censoring or doctoring CDC statements about the coronavirus in order to put Trumps handling of the pandemic in a better political light. But aside from a passing reference by Trump to Caputos taking a leave of absencewhich would take him out of the political spotlight until after the electionthere was no discussion at the press briefing of the incitements to violence by various Trump aides and supporters. This includes the remarks by longtime political crony Roger Stone, who told the fascist broadcaster Alex Jones last week that Trump should declare martial law after the election and carry out a general roundup of his political enemies, including the Clintons, as well as the CEOs of major Silicon Valley companies. No reporter Wednesday even mentioned Stones name. While Trump and his political aides and advisers openly speak of civil war, martial law and armed attacks on their political opponents, the Democrats are largely ignoring and covering up the appeals for fascistic violence. Congressional Democrats have called for the ouster of Michael Caputo and his boss, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, but they have said nothing about the threats of postelection violence. Asked during a campaign swing Tuesday in Florida about the comments by Stone, Caputo and Trump himself, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in an interview with Telemundo, What is worrying is the way he talks about insurrection and people taking up arms. Have you ever heard a Democratic president of the United States speak like this? In subsequent comments, Biden bizarrely compared Trump to Fidel Castro as a would-be authoritarian ruler, in an effort to appeal to fascistic anti-Castro Cuban sentiment in south Florida, where Cuban Americans are the largest group of Hispanic voters. The Biden campaigns Spanish-language advertising in Florida has struck an openly anticommunist note, portraying Trump as soft on Russias Vladimir Putin, Chinas Xi Jinping and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, in an effort to peel off traditionally Republican voters among Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans. Bidens events in Florida also included an appearance before a group of veterans at Hillsborough County Community College in the Tampa area, where he attacked Trump for his reported slurs against soldiers killed or captured in US wars in the Middle East as suckers and losers. It was Bidens first visit to the crucial battleground state since 2019. Besides appealing to the military and Cuban American vote, the former vice president is banking on the support of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who last week pledged to spend $100 million just in the Florida media markets in an effort to deliver the state and its 29 electoral votes to the Democratic ticket. An American constitutional law expert said Thursday that the indicted founder under an extraordinarily broad spying law that has been used in the past for politically motivated prosecutions. Speaking during Assange's extradition hearing in London, human rights lawyer Carey Shenkman called the century-old Espionage Act one of the most contentious laws in the Shenkman, who co-wrote a book on the history of the act, testified as a witness for Assange, 49, who is fighting his extradition from the UK to the US. US prosecutors indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Assange's defense team argues that he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing leaked documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His lawyers say he is facing a politically motivated prosecution that will stifle press freedom and put journalists around the world at risk. Shenkman also said in a written witness statement that the administration of President Donald Trump has prosecuted disclosures of national security information more aggressively than any presidency in US history. He said there were eight Espionage Act prosecutions of media sources during former President Barack Obama's two terms more than any previous administration and eight in less than four years under Trump. Shenkman said there has never been a successful prosecution of a publisher under the act, although there have been attempts, including over the 1971 Pentagon Papers leak of documents about the Vietnam War. Leaker Daniel Ellsberg faced 12 Espionage Act charges and faced up to 115 years in prison, but the charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct against him. Ellsberg, one of the most famous whistleblowers in living memory, came to Assange's defense on Wednesday, telling London's Central Criminal Court that he and the founder had very comparable political opinions. The case, which is being held under coronavirus social distancing restrictions, has been plagued by technical glitches as witnesses give evidence by video link. Shenkman testified with a cellphone pressed to his ear after audio problems. Shenkman acknowledged during a testy cross-examination by Clair Dobbin, a lawyer for the U.S. government, that he was part of a team that represented Assange several years ago. He said it was not relevant to his analysis of the Espionage Act, and noted he was a very junior lawyer at the time. In the food chain of lawyers, I was plankton, he said. The US government says put the lives of US informants in conflict zones and at risk by publishing secret documents. Defense witness John Sloboda, co-founder of the organization Iraq Body Count, said WikiLeaks was careful to ensure names were removed before publication. He disagreed with a suggestion by a prosecution lawyer that Assange took a cavalier attitude to redaction. Sloboda, who was involved in the publication of the Iraq war papers in 2010, said they were over-redacted for caution. He said his group developed software to help speed the process by removing all words that were not in an English dictionary, though he acknowledged it was not perfect. Assange, who has been embroiled in legal battles for a decade, has been in a British prison since he was ejected from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. The extradition hearing at London's Old Bailey criminal court is due to last until early October. (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 Berkeley man was arrested Monday night after he allegedly set a person's hair on fire inside a local boba shop before customers attempted to detain him, police said. The man, identified by police as Brandon McGlone of Berkeley, initially harassed two customers outside of Artichoke Basilles Pizza on Durant Avenue, where he threw their food off the table and "announced that he was going to light them on fire" before spraying WD-40 onto them, police said in a statement. Those two customers escaped the man, who then apparently went inside the Feng Cha Teahouse a few doors down, again spraying two customers with WD-40 and then setting the flammable liquid on fire, setting their hair aflame, police stated. Once he ignited it, it just burst out into flames, Noel Nubla, a witness, told KPIX. A few customers helped put the fire out Nubla was also sprayed with WD-40, he told the news site, although he was not set on fire like the others while others chased the suspect. While trying to hold him down, the suspect was then found to have both a hatchet and a knife on him, witnesses said. He was holding the axe and he was like just staggering around, and he was getting closer and closer, and it was really scary, another witness, who preferred not to be named, said in an interview with KPIX. Officers arrived and said they were able to persuade the suspect to put down the hatchet, they said. Upon searching the suspect, they allegedly found "knives, a machete, matches, lighters and several Molotov cocktails." McGlone was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, arson, making criminal threats, throwing a flammable substance on another person and possession of destructive devices, among other charges. The customers who were set on fire are reportedly fine, but suffered some minor injuries from the scuffle as well as singed hair. KPIX has security footage of the incident from inside Feng Cha Teahouse here. Dianne de Guzman is the Food + Drink Editor at SFGATE. Email: dianne.deguzman@sfgate.com A new study finds that real-time monitoring of ground motion could have detected a sudden and catastrophic flood in Bhutan five hours before it destroyed a village. Vibrations in the ground may help to improve advanced warnings about sudden floods that result from glacial melting, according to a study published today in Science Advances. On October 7, 1994, a natural dam that had been holding back a glacial lake burst, sending floodwaters crashing downstream into the Bhutanese village of Punakha. The sudden flood killed 21 people, destroyed 816 acres of crops and 6 tons of stored food, and washed away homes and other infrastructure. The new study, led by researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, discovered that local seismic devices unknowingly recorded this glacial lake outburst flood five hours before it reached the village. Glacial lake outburst floods are becoming more frequent and more destructive in mountainous areas. As glaciers melt, the water pools into lakes trapped behind dams made of rocky glacial debris and ice jams. When the dam shifts or too much pressure builds behind it, the lake water rushes out in a catastrophic burst, posing a danger to downstream communities. As the planet warms, glacial lakes are becoming larger and more common, thus increasing the potential for glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). In the study, led by Lamont-Doherty graduate student Josh Maurer, researchers discovered that a seismometer array located about 100 kilometers from the glacial lake had recorded a clear high-frequency signal at approximately 1:45am, around the time that the dam would have burst. They hypothesize that as the dam ruptured, the powerful and sudden outflow of water and/or sediments struck the riverbed, causing the vibrations that were picked up by the seismometers. The team was able to use the seismic data to reconstruct the flood as it made its way 90 kilometers downstream, reaching the village of Punakha at around 7am. Currently, instruments monitor local water level in some glacial lakes and alert local communities if the lake level suddenly drops, indicating a GLOF. However, such systems are known to be somewhat unreliable and have issued false alarms in the past. The study authors suggest that with some refinement, real-time seismic monitoring could be combined with water level monitoring systems to minimize false alarms and maximize warning times. In addition, a few strategically placed seismic sensors could potentially monitor for GLOFs over a large area, whereas water level monitors must be installed lake by lake. The authors note that more research is needed before seismic GLOF monitors would be ready for deployment. The team hopes to find and explore other instances where seismometers have captured GLOF events, to better understand how to read and analyze the signals in real time. They also caution that the Punakha flood was very large, so the signal stood out clearly in the data; in the future, they hope to better understand whether the technique can reliably detect smaller glacial lake outburst floods, which can still cause severe damage. By reconstructing the Punakha flood, the researchers were also able to test various models of how flood waters would be expected to flow through the area, showing that seismic data could help to improve flood modeling. In addition, the paper used satellite imagery before and after the GLOF to assess its impacts on the area. Experts who were not involved in the study, including geographer Simon Allen and glaciologist Holger Frey (both from the University of Zurich), said the study represents a promising first step toward a seismology-based early warning system. Allen said that more research is needed, since the technique has only been tested on one lake so far, and cautioned that maintaining a real-time seismic monitoring network in the Himalayas or elsewhere would present financial and technical challenges. "The algorithms need to be extremely reliable," said Frey. "All events must be detected, but at the same time false alarms need to be avoided by all means." He also emphasized that including people from the affected communities in the design and implementation of such systems is critical in determining whether or not they are ultimately successful. "This study is a great demonstration of the potential for long-range seismic detection of large outburst floods," said Kristen Cook, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences who was not involved in the study. "This seismic detection could have important implications looking both back in time to validate flood models and better understand the processes of outburst floods, and potentially forwards in time if a seismic early warning system can be developed. Outburst floods are a big concern in the Himalaya, especially as development along river corridors increases and lakes are growing, so both more robust early warning and better modeling would have significant societal benefits." Other authors of the study include: Joerg Schaefer, Joshua Russell, and Nicolas Young from Columbia University; Summer Burton Rupper from the University of Utah; Norbu Wangdi from the Center for Water, Climate, and Environmental Policy in Bhutan; and Aaron Putnam from the University of Maine. Learn more about the study in a brief Q&A with study co-author Joerg Schaefer, below. How did the idea for this study first develop? This all started when we were working on the well-preserved and nearly complete moraine sequences in front of the GLOF lakes. They were in the pathway of the 1994 GLOF, and beryllium dating shows that they are old, like 4,000 years old. I was puzzled as to how such a devastating GLOF could pass these old glacial landforms without destroying them, washing them out. I asked graduate student Josh Maurer to check the spy satellite imagery and the subsequent remote sensing images for pictures of the lakes and moraines just before and just after the flood. He did that, and we documented the outburst and early phase of the 1994 GLOF. We learned that the flood was just not super dramatic right at the start, and only took out a small part of the terminal moraine section. This is a striking and scary reminder that GLOFs starting at these high altitudes pick up their devastating energy by gravity on their way downhill. Josh realized the potential, and we started to wonder if the GLOF signal should not be visible in the seismometer record. Josh got in touch with Josh Russell, a PhD student in seismology at Lamont, and together they went to work and applied a technique called 'cross-correlation based seismic analyses,' with which they could track the evolution of the GLOF with seismometers as far as 100 km away from the actual flood. They found the flood signal in stunning clarity and synthesized the seismic data with eyewitness reports and a downstream gauge station within a numerical flood model. We also used the remote imagery before and after the flood to estimate the sediment deposition in the valley downstream to assess the damage, and traced the speed of vegetation recovery. This is probably the most innovative earth science paper I have had the pleasure to be part of. My main role in it has been to support the work of these brilliant grad students. Did you encounter any obstacles in the development of this project? If so, what were they? How did you overcome them? Josh and Josh encountered a variety of problems during their cross-correlation analyses, but they worked brilliantly and effectively as a team. Once all the results were on the table, it took us a while to organize the pieces from many different disciplines to form a coherent earth science manuscript, and to realize and formulate the potential of this technique for a new generation of GLOF early warning systems. How do you think other glacial lakes could be prioritized for future research along these lines? One of the biggest strengths of this approach is the regional applicability. We can use this toolkit, for example, to ask the seismometer record whether or not there are similar 'GLOF- type signals' in the system. And, using Josh's satellite image processing techniques, we can search the region for the source of similar floods that might have occurred in the area over the last 40 years. Being able to track the formation, growth and in particular increase in lake level over time is the key to evaluate and identify the most hazardous lakes in the region. Topography and sediment availability are probably similar across different GLOF-prone valleys in the region, but we should absolutely produce a map highlighting human settlements and areas that are key to their livelihoods in relation to the GLOF hazard from higher up in the Himalayas. ### Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is Columbia University's home for Earth science research. Its scientists develop fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world, from the planet's deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean, providing a rational basis for the difficult choices facing humanity. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu | @LamontEarth The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.earth.columbia.edu. In 2004, a council digger driver sent to excavate a new water deposit in a field on the outskirts of Salar, Granada, noticed a quantity of small tiles appearing in the bucket of his machine. These pieces of Roman mosaic, part of a floor of an ostentatious villa, were the beginning of an amazing archaeological discovery that continues to unearth treasures from the Roman era. The Romans left their mark all over the Iberian peninsula but this find is one of the most important in Spain. The town of Salar is located close to the route that linked Illiberis (Granada) and Llurco (Pinos Puente, Granada) with Anticaria (Antequera, Malaga) during a time when Andalucia (known as Baetica) was an important exporter of wheat, wine and oil to the rest of the Roman Empire. However, the owner of this luxurious villa was unlikely to have been a farmer, as the intricate detail in the colourful mosaics, the quality of the marble statues (some carved by the finest sculptors in Imperial Rome and shipped over) and the wealth of decoration, have led archaeologists to believe that the dominus or owner of the property was a member of the Roman Senate or close to the Roman court. It is also possible that he had interests in, or owned, the marble quarries nearby. The villa itself is located in a slight dip which is bordered by a stream, although the stream was likely to be have been further away from the property around 2,019 years ago when the villa was built. Work on uncovering this invaluable part of Spanish history has been slow. Although discovered in 2004, funding wasnt available for the first phase until 2006 and work was only able to continue until 2011 when the project ran out of money. In this first phase, archaeologists uncovered the triclinium, or formal dining room, with an intricate mosaic which was damaged by the digger. This would have been at the back of the property. At the end of the open-air dining room is a stone grotto and fountain where two marble nymphs (revered by Romans as deities of nature and especially water) resided, but these are now in the Granada museum. The room has a shallow moat on three sides with a plug and pipework to drain it when the water needed changing. Part of the colourful hunting scene in the corridor. / Villa Romana Salar Subsequent digs revealed that the triclinium opens into the peristylium, a central patio off which would have been the bedrooms and other living spaces, however this is yet to be uncovered. In this part of the villa the archaeologists discovered tubi fittili - tapered, hollow terracotta pipes that fit one inside the other and were used to make vaulted ceilings. Around this patio is a corridor, unique in that it has some of the most amazing mosaics seen in Spain. It depicts not only aquatic creatures (fish, a lobster and a crab), but also a mermaid with a sea serpent and a tiger playing with a ball. The corridor on the other side of the patio is equally as stunning and possibly features the owner (dominus) himself, hunting a large boar with a podenco-type hound. His tunic is made of glass tesserae as opposed to the usual stone or pottery used. There are also realistic depictions of lions and leopards which suggests that the craftsmen had been to Africa or were from Africa. A major find It was in this part of the corridor that the statue of Venus Pudica Capitoline was discovered being used as a filler in a wall that was built sometime after the villa was abandoned. The Venus, discovered in 2018, was a major find, one that surpassed all the others (so far). The term pudica refers to the fact that she covers her pubic area with one hand, while the other hand covers her breast. Capitoline refers to the capital Rome, where the original statue, carved by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles in the third century BC, was displayed. Wealthy families and people of consequence had copies made to show off in their homes. Salars Venus is missing one arm and both legs are in pieces but incredibly her slender neck remained intact when she was embedded, face-down in the wall. She is on display in the visitor centre in Salars town hall which hopes that one day, when funding is sufficient, to move her to a museum on the site of the villa. This Venus Pudica is one of only one hundred in the world. The owner or 'dominus' of the villa fighting a wild boar. / Villa Romana Salar Lack of funding According to a spokesperson from the town hall, the local council is funding the whole project along with a small grant from the Diputacion provincial government, crowdfunding and donations. The workers on the site are all volunteers from the University of Granada. The current campaign will only run for a year due to lack of funds but it has already uncovered the corner of another room with intricate mosaic floor and, on the last day of the uncovering process earlier this week, one end of the long corridor with more of the colourful hunting scene mosaic depicting a lion and a man on horseback appeared from beneath the soil. The rest of the year will be spent cataloguing the finds and meticulously sifting and rinsing the earth in the spoil heap, looking for fragments not only from the Roman era, but from subsequent occupation of the villa. Guided visits The town hall gives guided tours of the site and the visitor centre has information and artefacts not just from the Roman era, but also from prehistory and the occupation of the area by the Moors. There is a detailed model of what the villa may have looked like over 2,000 years ago, although after the initial phase they have decided that it is most likely much bigger than what they originally thought. Visits are by appointment only (https://www.aytovillaromanadesalar.es/) while the Facebook page Villa Romana Salar is updated regularly with new findings and works in progress. Hyderabad-based Dr. Reddy's Laboratories on Thursday announced that it has settled patent litigation with Celgene, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Bristol Myers Squibb, for Revlimid (lenalidomide) capsules. As part of the settlement, Celgene has agreed to provide Dr Reddy's with a licence to sell volume-limited amounts of generic lenalidomide capsules in the US after March 2022 subject to regulatory approval. "The agreed-upon percentages are confidential," Dr Reddy's said in a regulatory filing. In addition, Celgene has agreed to provide Dr. Reddy's Lab with a license to its patents required to manufacture and sell an unlimited quantity of generic lenalidomide in the US beginning no earlier than January 31, 2026. "We are pleased with the settlement agreement, and look forward to bringing a generic version of lenalidomide to market soon subject to regulatory approval for the benefit of patients," said Marc Kikuchi, CEO, North America Generics, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories. Revlimid is a trademark of Celgene, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bristol Myers Squibb. In a separate development, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories said that it has launched over-the-counter (OTC) Olopatadine Hydrochloride Ophthalmic Solution USP, in the US market, as approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). Olopatadine Hydrochloride Ophthalmic Solution are indicated for the temporary relief of itchy eyes due to pollen, ragweed, grass, animal hair and dander. It is also indicated for the temporary relief of red eyes. Meanwhile, shares of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories closed Thursday's trade 4.21 per cent higher at Rs 4,826.60 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange after it signed a deal with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, to cooperate on clinical trials and distribution of Sputnik V vaccine in India. Following regulatory approval in India, RDIF will supply to Dr. Reddy's 100 million doses of the vaccine. By Chitranjan Kumar Also Read: COVID-19 vaccine from Russia! Dr Reddy's ties up with a Russian firm for 100 million doses Also Read: Dr Reddy's Labs share rises over 8% in two days after Russia agrees to supply Sputnik-V vaccine Advertisement He pivoted from his reality television career into a hosting a pop culture podcast. And Nick Viall appears to have found a love for the bright lights of Hollywood by purchasing his first home in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. The 39-year-old Bachelor star took to Instagram to share the happy news that he was a first time home owner with the purchase of a $1.72milllion three-bedroom home in North Hollywood. Here to stay! Nick Viall appears to have found a love for the bright lights of Hollywood by purchasing his first home in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles Listed through The Agency, Nick's new modern abode spans across 2,412-square-feet of living space which was completely remodeled in 2017 which can be seen in images provided by listing agent Arvin Haddad. Soaring 15 foot ceilings merge indoor and outdoor living with glass tile flooring, hardwood interior doors, and a Lutron control system. The primary bedroom features a stone entry with a walk-in closet, expansive shower and electric mirror. Viall will have no problem hosting outdoors with his own backyard oasis which features an illuminated infinity pool and spa near a large poolside cabana, built-in surround sound and an ambient fire feature. Digs: The 39-year-old Bachelor star took to Instagram to share the happy news that he was a first time home owner with the purchase of a $1.72milllion home in North Hollywood Wow factor: Listed through The Agency, Nick's new modern abode spans across 2,412-square-feet of living space which was completely remodeled in 2017 which can be seen in images provided by listing agent Arvin Haddad Impressive: Viall will have no problem hosting outdoors with his own backyard oasis which features an illuminated infinity pool and spa near a large poolside cabana, built-in surround sound and an ambient fire feature The Bachelorette vet took to Instagram to share his big real estate purchase with his 1.1million followers. '6 years ago I left a career I really liked for a chance to do something I love,' he wrote. 'I did it at a point in my life where the expectation was to settle in and live the life I had. 6 years later Im buying MY First HOUSE and doing what I love. Its never too late to change things up and take a few risks.' One day after his big purchase, he took to his Instagram Story and lamented the many needs of a homeowner. 'First time homeowner here, he said. 'I'm spending money on things I never ... I bought a leaf blower this morning. And now, I have to go back because I need a hose ... a hose. I have to buy a house. The list goes on.' Clean: The master bath definitely had a modern touch '6 years ago I left a career I really liked for a chance to do something I love,' he wrote on Instagram. 'I did it at a point in my life where the expectation was to settle in and live the life I had. 6 years later Im buying MY First HOUSE and doing what I love' Viall came back to update his followers: 'Turns out I need to buy a rake as well. First time i'll be buying a rake, so that should be fun.' Nick first starred on The Bachelorette in 2014 where he vied to win Andi Dorfman's heart, but ultimately came in second place. He followed up on season 11 with Kaitlyn Bristowe, but was again left behind at the final rose ceremony when she chose Shawn Booth. Viall tried to find love once again on Bachelor in Paradise and finally landed the lead for his own season of The Bachelor in 2016, with Vanessa Grimaldi accepting his final rose. The couple were engaged for a year before splitting in August 2017. Online food-tech startup SmartQ that provides services in the digital cafeteria segment is in talks to be acquired by UK-based Compass Group's India unit for $6-7 million, a source has told Moneycontrol. The talks were at an advanced stage and the deal could be announced shortly, the person in know of developments said, without sharing the details. Dev Amritesh, Managing Director for Compass Group in India, declined to comment. SmartQ did not respond to Moneycontrol's emailed queries on the deal and the status of the talks. Founded in 2014, by Krishna Wage and Abhishek Ashok, SmartQ provides services such as automated billing kiosks, centralised billing system, NFC prepaid cards, POS software to companies. It works towards enhancing cafeteria and food-court experience by eliminating queues and minimising wait time. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show The coronavirus outbreak and the lockdown have derailed the expansion plans of many companies, including startups offering digital cafeteria services to corporates. With most IT companies asking employees to work from home, startups in this space are feeling the pressure. These firms are now focusing on companies that are planning to bring back employees to offices though in a staggered manner. Compass Group, along with companies such as Goldman Sachs, Airtel and Razorpay, is also a client of SmartQ. SmartQ last announced a $1-million fundraise from a consortium of Dubai-based investors in 2018. Existing investor YourNest participated in the round as well. For a company that has raised around Rs 7 crore so far, the deal seems to be a good bet for the founders and investors who are likely to get some exists. It wasn't immediately clear if Compass will also take on SmartQ employees as part of the agreement. To cater to the now-limited segment, companies like SmartQ are also working on slot-based booking systems in the cafeterias to minimise the risk of infection. Compass Group is one of the world's leading providers of contract food and support services with a presence in 45 countries. It counts over 96 of the Fortune 100 companies as its clients. Compass Group India is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Compass Group PLC and has been in the country since 2008. SmartQ competes with the likes of HungerBox and Sodexo. HungerBox has investment from Paytm and investors such as Sabre Partners and Neoplux. It raised $12 million in December. Athens, GA (30605) Today Cloudy skies with a few snow showers this afternoon. High 38F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 30%.. Tonight Snow showers this evening. Becoming partly cloudy later. Low 27F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Swiss brokerage UBS Securities said it forecasts a GDP contraction of 8.6 per cent in FY21 as against its earlier prediction of 5.8 per cent, citing factors including the "modest" government response to the crisis for its estimate. It said the country's potential rate of growth has also come down to 5.75-6.25 per cent as per its estimate as against 7.1 per cent, driven by factors including the weak government response to arrest the growth slide. Some improvement is being observed in the high frequency data, but much of it is pent-up demand and economic recovery will be "gradual" after the September quarter, its chief economist Tanvee Gupta Jain told reporters. It can be noted that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk by nearly a fourth in the June quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic fuelled lockdowns chilled all economic activity. The infections continued to increase, making India the second most affected country. Also read: Economic recovery likely to be gradual, RBI stands battle-ready: Shaktikanta Das Jain said the modest recovery which we are seeing right now cannot be sustained because of the rising infections and also income uncertainty, which is holding back people from consumption in the economy that relies 60 percent on consumption. "We are a little bearish as against the consensus and feel that the GDP will contract by 8.6 per cent in FY21 before growing by 10 per cent in FY22," she said. She also revised down the potential rate of growth in the economy, citing the permanent damage done by the pandemic because of the problems on company balance sheets and the "modest policy response" to the crisis. She also warned that debt sustainability may become a challenge going ahead. Also read: Rebooting Economy XXVII: Fiscal mismanagement threatens India's economic recovery The fiscal stimulus is of only 1.8 per cent and there is an urgent need for a second round of the same, she said. "India needs a credible fiscal stimulus," she said, adding that the response has to be coupled with reforms. The government needs to spend on infrastructure development and construction activities, undertake more employment generation act works in both the rural and urban areas and broaden the incentives for manufacturers shifting base to India as part of the global supply chain realignment, she said. The country is among the few worldover where the brokerage has downwardly reviewed its growth estimate, she said, adding that in many other countries, it is an upward revision from the previous estimates given right after the pandemic began. There is a rise in savings in the country despite the absence of a corresponding rise in incomes, she said, pointing out that these are "precautionary spendings" undertaken by cutting expenditure and may be temporary. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research the global magnetic sensors market is anticipated to reach USD 4,680.3 million by 2026. The growing acceptance of e-compasses owing to their competence to improve the navigation experience of the users is anticipated to mount the application of magnetic sensors in automobiles during the coming years. Moreover, the implementation of these sensors is rising in consumer electronics application such as smart phones, and tablets, which is expected to propel the opportunities of magnetic sensors in the consumer electronics segments during the forecast period In the end-user segment, for consumer electronics market for magnetic sensors is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This growth is attributed to its wide usage for navigation purpose in smartphones as in the modern day, almost every smartphone is integrated with e-compass. In smartphones, e-compass acts as a digital compass providing positioning of the smartphone concerning Earths magnetic field thus, facilitating the smartphone to sense the precise direction. Get sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/magnetic-sensors-market/request-for-sample The market in Asia Pacific and Europe together contributed the highest share. The presence of large automotive sector in European countries and consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia Pacific is bolstering the market growth. The emerging economies of Asia Pacific region such as China, India and other Southeast countries are contributing to the market growth with the increasing spending capability of population resulting in increased demand for consumer electronics, cars, gaming devices and others. For instance, sale of cars in China surpassed the sales of US. Also, the semiconductor industry of Asia Pacific region is growing at a high pace thus, propelling the market growth for magnetic sensors. Major companies profiled in the report include Elmos Semiconductor AG, Baumer Ltd., Honeywell International, Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, NVE Corporation, Allegro Microsystems, Inc., Infineon Technologies AG, Melexis Corporation, austriamicrosystems AG (AMS), and NXP Semiconductors among others. However, the constant decrease in the average selling price of magnetic sensors components is restricting the entry of new players in the market. Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/magnetic-sensors-market Key Findings from the study suggest Asia Pacific and European region is expected to command the market over the forecast years. APAC is presumed to be the fastest growing market, developing at a CAGR of more than 38% over the forecast period. The magnetic sensors market is presumed to develop at a CAGR of over 8.2% from 2018 to 2026. The consumer electronics and automotive segment is presumed to display the speediest development. The increasing implantation of magnetic sensors in several consumer electronics including budget smartphones, as well as growing demand for smart watches and fitness bands is driving the growth in APAC region. Magnetic Sensors Market Size and Forecast by Type Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) Magnetometer Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) Magnetometer Tunnel Magneto Resistance (TMR) Magnetometer Hall Effect Magnetic Sensors Market Size and Forecast by Technology Low Field Sensor Earth Field Sensor Bias Magnetic Field Sensor Magnetic Sensors Market Size and Forecast by End-user Automotive Aerospace & Defense Consumer Electronics Healthcare Energy & Power Industrial Others Magnetic Sensors Market Size and Forecast by Regions North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany UK France Italy Asia Pacific China South Korea Japan India Latin America Brazil Mexico Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/magnetic-sensors-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Contact us- Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com Red Cross volunteer James Wood delivers meals to wildfire evacuees at a Motel 6 in Oroville, Calif. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) James Wood checks his clipboard and bangs on the door at a Motel 6. The air is thick with smoke. "Red Cross," he calls, loudly, through his heavy, protective mask. "Dinner!" His gloved-and-masked partner places four white foam boxes on the ground. They are filled with chicken tacos, compliments of the Salvation Army. The motel door swings wide. A head pops out. There are thank yous and the murmur of comforting conversation. Then the refugee from the North Complex fire picks up the food, shuts the door, and the volunteers move on to the next room. And the next one. And the next. This is how emergency services are provided in the fall of 2020 at the intersection of twin horrors natural disasters of record proportions and a global pandemic. There are no longer massive shelters in California where the coronavirus could spread among traumatized people running for their lives; the state prohibits large gatherings. That means no dining halls. No in-person counseling, no hugs, no tissues to dry tears. As wildfires rage in the West and hurricanes pummel the Gulf Coast, disaster aid has been forced to evolve, for better or for worse. When large-scale disasters strike in states with looser restrictions than California's, the Red Cross has instituted coronavirus precautions in group shelters: health screenings, mandatory face coverings, staggered meal times, extra space between cots and tables. At the Motel 6 in Oroville, evacuees from Berry Creek and other areas affected by the North Complex fires are staying with the assistance of the Red Cross. Kristal Buchholz of Berry Creek is living in her van at the motel, where her mother has a room. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) In Butte County where the North Complex fire rages and the per capita coronavirus rate is 33% higher than Los Angeles County's evacuees are being housed in motel rooms, not fairgrounds or school gymnasiums. Yes, this means there are beds and private bathrooms instead of cots and shared facilities. But Butte County is a rural area. There aren't a lot of options. And when the North Complex fire bore down on this thickly forested, mountainous region 70 miles north of Sacramento, many motel rooms had already been commandeered for people fleeing wildfires in neighboring counties. Story continues "We don't have 45 hotels to choose from, and we fill up quick," said Shelby Boston, who heads the Butte County Department of Employment and Social Services. "We've had to shelter survivors of this fire into Roseville and Sacramento. We've driven people there. The folks we've had to deliver to a hotel outside of the community, we'll bring them back." The novel coronavirus "has thrown a wrench into the well-oiled machines of congregate sheltering," she said, upending disaster systems honed here over years of worsening fire seasons and a major dam that threatened to burst in 2017, forcing more than 180,000 frightened people to evacuate. "We've had to make adjustments as we go. Adapt and overcome." A Red Cross volunteer delivers meals to Bill Rauckman, who had to leave his Concow home because of the North Complex fire, at the Motel 6 in Oroville. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) It's hard to find anyone in this part of Butte County who hasn't been touched by fire in recent years. Boston calls herself a survivor of the 2018 Camp fire, which razed the small city of Paradise and killed 85 people. Boston's house survived, she said, but "we lost everything around it. It's not easy to live in a community that's been completely destroyed by fire." The Camp fire provided a cautionary tale for emergency service providers. Eight of the nine group shelters operating between Butte and Glenn counties during that disaster had serious outbreaks of norovirus. The highly contagious intestinal malady causes diarrhea and vomiting. A quarter of all evacuees served came down with the bug, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; so did 12 staff members. Twenty-one patients had to be evaluated in a hospital or urgent care facility, but no one died. COVID-19 is a far more lethal disease. By Wednesday evening, the North Complex fire had burned 273,335 acres and was 36% contained. Red Cross spokesman Justin Kern said more than 1,000 evacuees are being provided with emergency shelter by his organization or the state because that group of conflagrations. "This pandemic has added layers of complexity to what we do," Kern said. "This is the health and safety of our workforce, as well as the people we serve. It's important we take the extra steps." Lea Bickford, right, is staying at the Motel 6 with her 11-year-old daughter, Madelynn, and her 12-year-old son, Jessie (not shown here), and their two chihuahuas, Sugar and Mary. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Lea Bickford is staying at the Motel 6 with her children Jessie, 12, and Madelynn, 11 and their two chihuahuas, Sugar and Mary. The small family is grateful for new coronavirus protections for reasons of both physical and mental health. After they were evacuated from their home in the tiny enclave of Rackerby, southeast of Oroville and a fraction of the size, they slept for two nights in their car. Emergency services had lost their paperwork. Madelynn is on the autism spectrum. All the little girl wanted to do was bolt from the vehicle. In a group shelter, with dozens of people arrayed on cots, "my son would have done OK," Bickford said, "my daughter not so much. She doesn't understand what's going on. She'd have just run. She's a runner." And Bickford fears the coronavirus because of her own health problems. She has congestive heart failure. Her heart works at about 30% capacity. If she contracted the virus, her doctor told her, "I'd probably not survive." She is grateful for the motel room and the four boxes of hot food that arrived in time for dinner. So grateful, she said, that she's been cleaning the room herself. "They'd do it for me," she said with a shy smile. "But I can take out my own trash. I'm a grown-up." Patricia Baker, 82, and her dog, Rascal, are staying at the Motel 6 in Oroville after having to evacuate their home in Berry Creek. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) On Tuesday evening, the low-slung stucco motel hard by Highway 70 was quiet. Wood had not yet arrived with dinner. Patricia Baker, 82, was out walking Rascal, her companion dog with fluffy Shih Tzu hair and stumpy dachshund legs. Baker was the rare motel guest wearing a mask. She hasn't had the flu in 50 years, she said. She takes blood pressure medication and has a bum hip, but said, "I'm very healthy." Except she left her medication behind when she fled her Berry Creek home as the fire approached. Her son was driving their Honda and had the keys to their Chevy Blazer in his pocket. Baker and Rascal hitched a ride down the mountain from a truck driver a complete stranger who happened to drive by in the nick of time. The mask is for the rest of us, not for her, she said, after listing her daily regimen of the vitamins that keep her her spry: B12, B3, C, fish oil. She's not worried about falling to COVID-19, she said, "but I don't want to be the person who gives it to you." The US Air Force secretly designed, built, and flown a prototype of a next generation fighter jet in the space of a year. While almost all details of the aircraft will go unrevealed due to security concerns, the Air Force said that it is part of its effort to develop air warfare systems including drones, fighter jets, and space and cyber warfare. Weve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it, Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, told Defense News in an interview. We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before. The Air Force developed a virtual version of the jet, before making a full-scale prototype and flying it. The new place was built under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, which aims to build a jet that would either supplement or replace existing planes. This is not just something that you can apply to things that are simple systems, Roper said. Were going after the most complicated systems that have ever been built, and checked all the boxes with this digital technology. In fact, [weve] not just checked the boxes, [weve] demonstrated something thats truly magical. If the Air Force decides to buy the plane built under the program, it could challenge the F-35 plane. The first F-35 fighter flew in 2006. As Popular Mechanics points out, this means the Air Force took only one year to reach a point in the program that it took 10 years for the F-35 to get to. Other aircrafts, such as Chinas Chengdu J-20 fighter took a decade of development; Russias Sukhoi Su-57 Felon fighter is also still waiting to be revealed since it was first seen in 2010. Moreover, because the manufacturing techniques were used by the commercial sector, Defense News suggests that it could open the door for other contractors such as SpaceX. I have to imagine there will be a lot of engineers maybe famous ones with well-known household names with billions of dollars to invest that will decide starting the worlds greatest aircraft company to build the worlds greatest aircraft with the Air Force is exactly the kind of inspiring thing they want to do as a hobby or even a main gig, Roper said. It is unclear which defence contractor designed the jet, but it is likely one of the larger aerospace giants such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or Boeing. This is because the United States industries have decreased over the past 50 years. President Trump promised to increasing spending on defence in 2017. The Air Force would also not disclose where the aircraft flew, where it is located, how many prototypes of the craft exists, or what its capabilities are. LOBAMBA - Lobamba Lomdzala MP Marwick Khumalo must be disqualified as a Member of Parliament. This is according to a Motion without Notice which Hosea MP Bacede Mabuza attempted to move in the House of Assembly yesterday. However, the MPs voted against the debating of the motion, with a vote of 36 - 7. The motion to oust the longest serving MP was the last business of the day during yesterdays sitting and was included in the second addendum Order Paper that was presented to the MPs. Procedurally, a Motion without Notice is voted for by the House before being debated. Disqualify According to the proposed Motion No 18/2020, MP Bacede wanted to move that the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Pholile Shakantu, through the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC), disqualify MP Khumalo on several grounds. The motion was expected to be seconded by Maseyisini MP Mduduzi Small Joe Dlamini, who is the former minister of Tinkhundla Administration and Development. One of the grounds for MP Khumalos disqualification, according to the motion, was that Section 96 and 97 of the Constitution Act of 2005 provided the mandatory qualification to stand for election of an MP and disqualification for such. It reads that among the qualification imposed under any law in force in Eswatini was that relating to general elections. The motion stated that this was the spirit of Section 97 (1) (e). It further stated that the Elections Act No 10 of 2013 was the law contemplated by Section 97 (1) (c) of the Constitution. Section 88 of the Elections Act applies to the honourable member in that he was charged with an offence mentioned under the Prevention of Corruption Act No 3 of 2006, reads the motion. The motion further stated that the mechanism specified under Section 88 was also counterproductive because the time limit specified under the section had long passed. It further stated that the 12-month period set out under Section 88 of the Elections Act No 10 of 2013 had long elapsed and this omission could not be remedied at the lapse of 12 months. It was submitted that the Act under Section 88 (3) made it mandatory that the MP be disqualified by operation of the national law. Minister Shakantu was further called to, through the EBC; implement the mandatory provisions of the Act without favour or partiality. The motion had further sought to direct the minister to carry out the aforementioned within 48 hours of adoption of the motion. However, when the MPs tossed out the motion, MP Mabuza asked that the Speaker count the numbers of those who had voted for and against the debating of the motion. It was then that only seven of the members stood for the debating of the motion while the 36 others voted against it. It remains unknown whether the motion will be included in the next Order Paper as a motion of privilege. MP Khumalo was arrested in 2013 on corruption-related charges allegedly regarding handling of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Swaziland (Eswatini) branch. The matter has not been heard by the High Court to date. Meanwhile, MP Mabuza and MP Khumalo have had run-ins during debates in the House of Assembly. This is not the first time that MP Mabuza has raised the issue of an MP who did not qualify to be a member of the House because of criminal charges levelled against him. However, he did not mention the name of the legislator then. The Uttarakhand government on Thursday prohibited any protests within 200 metre of Kedarnath shrine after yatris complained about agitation by priests making them uncomfortable. The priests have been protesting against the formation of Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board since June. A statement released by Rudraprayag district administration on Thursday stated, under section 15 (5) (6) of Devasthanam Management Act, orders have been passed to comply with the said order prohibiting any sit-in demonstration in the 200-meter radius of the shrine and the main access road from the Valley Bridge to the temple. Ravinath Raman, chief executive officer of Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board, said that the decision was taken after complaints by yatris that they were disturbed with the priests protesting outside the shrine. We got a few complaints from yatris that priests are sitting outside the shrine bare chested and protesting, making the yatris feel uncomfortable. We had also learnt that the priests tried to convince yatris to join their protest. Representatives from the Board have tried talking to the priests along with attempts from the district administration also, but they are not budging. Now, we have said that they are free to carry out their protests, but not in the temple premises, said Raman. He added that if the priests do not comply with the orders then it can also lead to imprisonment and will have criminal implications also. Vinod Shukla, president of Kedarnath Tirtha Purohit Mahasabha, said, We have been protesting since months now and the government has not paid heed to our demands. The government has released this order, which goes against our rights, we have been holding a peaceful protest. Now, our protest will continue and we will intensify it with support from people of the whole Kedarnath valley and we will not move till the chief minister comes to talk to us. When asked whether the district administration or members of the Board approached them for talks, Shukla denied any meeting from the Boards side. On June 21, The Uttarakhand high court (HC) dismissed the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) Rajya Sabha (RS) member Subramanian Swamy against the state governments takeover of the Char Dhams and 51 other shrines through the formation of the Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board. The court ruled that the ownership of the temple properties would vest in Char Dham shrines and power of the Board would be confined only to the administration and management of the properties. Abu Dhabis main sovereign wealth fund disclosed a 5.1 percent stake in Cheniere Energy., the largest U.S. exporter of liquefied natural gas. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority disclosed its holding in a filing dated Monday, giving it an interest in Cheniere valued at $615 million. Its Chenieres fourth-largest shareholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Trump administration has touted LNG exports as more than an economic boon for the U.S., viewing the shipments also as a foreign policy tool for spreading American influence abroad. Since the U.S. began shipping shale gas overseas in 2016, its vaulted into the ranks of the worlds top LNG suppliers. Houston-based Cheniere operates two export facilities: Corpus Christi in Texas and Sabine Pass in Louisiana. ADIA has almost $580 billion in assets and is the worlds third-biggest government wealth fund, according to the SWF Institute. Seychelles is going live with Travizory technology to facilitate the collection and analysis of traveller documentation to ensure re-opening of the borders in the safest manner. This is a mere three weeks after an agreement was signed, following Cabinet of Ministers approval for the installation and deployment of the technology. The new technology allows Seychelles health authorities to collect identity and health information directly from the traveller via easy-to-use web and mobile apps. The information is fed securely into a single system, providing advance information about all travellers wishing to travel to the Seychelles. The system gives authorities the capability to run rapid and efficient vetting procedures to minimise Covid-19 risks and other security risks. Alan Renaud, Principal Secretary for Civil Aviation, Ports & Marine, said: Streamlining the process this way makes it faster and more accurate for our authorities, and reduces paperwork. We wanted to move to a digital and paperless gathering of information, following the recommendations of ICAO, IATA, and the WTTC for touchless and paperless travel. The new system removes the guesswork for airlines at check-in and boarding. And, perhaps most importantly, it makes the passenger journey smoother and provides more peace of mind to travellers that they will not be stopped on their way. Dr Jude Gedeon, Seychelles Public Health Commissioner, said: Keeping our citizens safe from the pandemic is our number one responsibility. However, we need to enable international travel to let in key workers and specialists and to allow tourism to restart and for our citizens to work again. With our current email and multiple forms, doctors and airport staff were struggling to keep pace with the number of arrivals. We have now given them a tool to focus their attention where it is most needed. After the technology beds-in, we will roll out connected technologies at approved accommodations, to further enhance the passenger experience within our islands, by avoiding unnecessary forms to be filled by travellers at various touchpoints, while simultaneously boosting our contact-tracing capabilities, which benefits our visitors and our citizenry alike. The new Visitor Management Platform replaces the current email and form-based system, which was cumbersome for travellers and airlines, as well as labor intensive for travellers and authorities alike. Travizorys technology allows the straightforward management of all travellers, from pre-arrival to the point of exit, enabling the authorities to keep their borders open while minimising the risk of Covid-19 transmission. Airlines are also embracing the new system as they will know for sure that travellers have been authorised to travel. Airlines can now verify the validity of the traveler authorisation prior to boarding. In addition, airlines will submit Advance Passenger Information (API data) by electronic means to the Republic of Seychelles. Renaud said: By having all the passenger information submitted ahead of time, including passengers own health certification, we eliminate inefficiencies. Security clearance is streamlined, simplifying the process of entry. The end result is better performance and reduced risk, all of which comes together to improve the passenger experience, not only at airports, but in our archipelago as well. Travellers benefit from the new solution by providing a smoother journey and removing uncertainty. With the new technology, travellers can apply from their mobile phone via Android or iOS apps or on the web in about 5 minutes. Travellers will receive a clear response on their eligibility to travel in the form of a secure barcode, also available as a wallet pass, which they can present at check-in and boarding, offering peace of mind about both their security and health. Renaud Irminger, CEO of Travizory said: The Travizory technology goes beyond just providing the Seychelles with a platform to efficiently perform health screening and help with border control. It is about providing the traveler with a positive experience. By making the whole process as painless as possible, giving people the assurance that they will be allowed to travel to the country and that the flight they are on is safe, the experience of visiting the Seychelles will now be even better. Irminger continued: Our platform is future proof and is ready to ingest Covid-19 vaccination certificates. Moreover, as Covid-19 is replaced by the next threat, the technology can very easily be adapted to keep the Seychelles, its inhabitants and its visitors as safe as possible, from all threats regardless of where they come from. Didier Dogley, Minister for Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports & Marine, and Chair of the Re-opening of Seychelles Taskforce, concluded: The Travizory technology enables health and tourism authorities to ensure that travellers are only staying at licensed establishments and liveaboards that have been certified. The new technology will allow us to balance the need for tourism to grow and sustain our economy without compromising the health of our citizens. It will have a very positive impact on tourism and the wider economy in the Seychelles, as well as clearly demonstrating Seychelles ability to deploy digital solutions. -- Tradearabia News Service Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa left for New Delhi on Thursday. This is Yediyurappas first visit to the national capital since March before the coronavirus-induced lockdown was imposed nationally. His trip is taking place at a time when there are strong speculations that he may be replaced by a middle-aged man who has the approval of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Officially, Yediyurappa is in New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other Union ministers and party colleagues to discuss various issues concerning Karnataka. He is also likely to discuss expansion of the state Cabinet with the party leadership. However, insiders claim that the sword is still hanging on his head and the CM is in New Delhi to ensure that his hard-earned chair remains safe and strong. On Wednesday, while speaking to News18, Yediyurappa had, however, dismissed reports of any impending ouster. These are all media rumours. No one believes them. I will complete full term, he said, adding that he would discuss Cabinet expansion and development-related issues with the party high command and the Centre. Several ministerial aspirants have also rushed to New Delhi with the chief minister. Some are lobbying with the RSS point person for the BJP, BL Santhosh, who also hails from Karnataka. The CMs son, BY Vijayendra, who is under fire for meddling in the governance, has also left for the national capital. After Yediyurappa left for New Delhi, former CM and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah stepped up his attack on the BJP government in the state. The senior Congress leader told reporters that Vijayendra is acting like the de-facto chief minister of Karnataka. He described the present BJP government as a total failure. Yediyurappa, who has already celebrated his 78th birthday, wants to complete the remaining two-and-a-half years in office before he calls it a day. But, a larger section in the party with close ties with the RSS is advocating for a middle-aged person with complete loyalty to the Sangh to take reins of the state. This section feels that if Yediyurappa continues as the chief minister till the next election, the party may be routed as the BJP will be facing the election with no face. As Kanye West continues his journey towards securing the highest office in the White House, the rapper made sure that his commitment to decrease abortion rates in America starts from his own people. According to reports, the 43-year-old rapper made a bizarre request to his presidential campaign aides that have something to do with sexual intercourse, which is already a very personal matter for each individual. New York Times recently reported that Kim Kardashian's husband had requested his campaign staff to abstain from sex outside marriage, or in short, avoid committing premarital sex. While Kanye's request may sound a bit odd in the world of politics and election campaign, it sure does align with his Christian beliefs and one of his platforms to promote planned parenthood and reduce abortion procedures in the country. The "Yeezy" founder has been very vocal that he opposed the idea of abortion. However, Kanye said that he is not totally banning the practice. "You can't do that. I don't want to ban or stop or point fingers at anything," Kanye said. Instead, the rapper explained that he would try to push for his vision by promoting regular income for families who need support, opening high-level orphanages, and redesigning communities supporting families. It is not the first time that Kanye made a bizarre sexual request to the people working for him. Last year, he also requested the people collaborating for the studio recording of his album, "Jesus is King," to avoid fornicating outside marriage. "There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album," Kanye said in an interview with Apple Music Beats 1 in October 2019. Kanye's fornicating favors came after American courts supported a religious group that fired employees engaging in premarital sex. These groups also kicked out employees practicing activities not in line with the group's religious beliefs. These details came after the reporters covering his presidential campaign revealed some details about their encounter with Kanye West. According to Danny Hakim and Maggie Haberman, who had calls and text messages with the aspiring president in mid-August, there was also a point when Kanye asked some reporters about their religious beliefs. "Does anyone at your magazine believe in Jesus?" Kanye allegedly asked one of Times reporters. In a follow-up text, Kanye included an abortion statistics rate among black women. When the reporter asked him, "Do you see abortion as the main reason you're doing the presidential campaign?" Kanye replied with: "How do these facts make you feel? As a person," adding three question marks in the end. When the reporter tried to stick to the question by asking about his presidential campaign's purpose, the rapper once again replied with another counter query asking if the reporter has children. "One of them has many of your albums on vinyl and plays them very loud," the reporter replied, to which Kanye responded with: "Lovely." READ MORE: Goodbye, Britney Spears? Pop Star Ends Career Amid Messy Conservatorship Battle Fewer white and Hispanic Americans are supporting Black Lives Matter while African American backing for the movement remains virtually unchanged, according to a new poll. A majority of Americans - 55 per cent - express at least some support for the movement, which is down from 67 per cent in June, a new survey by Pew Research Center shows. The number of American adults who say they strongly support the movement has also dropped from 38 per cent in June to 29 per cent. The previous survey was taken in the days and weeks following the May 25 police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Scroll down for video Pews latest findings were taken in the aftermath of the police shooting of 29-year-old black man Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among African Americans, support for BLM remains strong. In June, 87 per cent of black people said they backed the movement. The latest survey puts the figure at 86 per cent. Notably, the poll found a drop of African American adults who say they strongly support BLM. In June, 71 per cent said they strongly supported it, though now 62 per cent say the same. Black Lives Matter supporters march to the George Washington Bridge in Globe Park, New York, on September 12. A new Pew Research Center poll finds that a drop in the number of Americans who back the movement Pew found that it is among whites and Hispanics that backing for BLM has wavered. Among white adults, 60 per cent said they supported BLM back in June. That number has now dropped to less than half - 45 per cent. In June, 77 per cent of Hispanic adults said they supported BLM. The latest findings show that number has slipped to 66 per cent today. Among Asian Americans, backing for BLM has dropped slightly from 75 per cent to 69 per cent. Support for BLM also brings down sharply along partisan lines. Just 19 per cent of Republicans said they somewhat supported the movement. Meanwhile, 88 per cent of Democrats said the same. Broken down into race, 88 per cent of white Democrats expressed at least some support for BLM while just 16 per cent of white Republicans say the same. A little more than half - 51 per cent - of white Democrats said they strongly support BLM, while just 2 per cent of white Republicans said the same. Hyundai Hope On Wheels Awards $11.2 Million To Pediatric Cancer Research And Celebrates September Childhood Cancer Awareness Month Hyundai Hope On Wheels (HHOW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, supported by Hyundai Motor America and its U.S. dealers, announces its 22nd consecutive year in the fight to end childhood cancer. September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness month and the organization announces new grant winners in efforts of finding more cures and improving care for children fighting pediatric cancer. When a child is diagnosed with pediatric cancer, s/he is immediately thrust into a scary world of cancer. For a child diagnosed, the journey back to health often includes constant trips to the hospital, medical tests, surgeries, and nights spent away from all things familiar. The non-profit organization has selected 26 grant winners for pediatric cancer research and 23 institutions to receive grants for COVID-19 testing. To date, this brings Hyundai Hope On Wheels donations to just over $172 million to support the fight against pediatric cancer. The annual September campaign theme is Every Handprint Tells A Story. Every 36 minutes a child is diagnosed with pediatric cancer. There are more than 15,000 new cases of pediatric cancer diagnosed in the United States each year. Although 80% of kids with cancer can be cured, pediatric cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children. With its Every Handprint Tells A Story campaign, Hyundai Hope On Wheels brings together the many stakeholders the child, families, doctors, hospitals, advocates, donors, and others who work to identify new ways to find a cure and improve care for children battling pediatric cancer. When a child is diagnosed, it not only changes their life, but his/her family and broader communal network. ADVERTISEMENT As the board chair for Hyundai Hope On Wheels, there is no greater joy for me than to meet the faces of brave pediatric cancer fighters at childrens hospitals across the nation, says Scott Fink, Board Chair and Hyundai owner, Hyundai of New Port Richey (New Port Richey, FL) and Hyundai of Wesley Chapel (Wesley Chapel, FL). These amazing kids embody the word hope. They exemplify all thats wonderful about childhood, and they show adults the courage of facing adversity. The reality is there is nothing fun about being a kid with cancer. With Hyundai Hope On Wheels, we will continue this fight the disease, and help these children thrive and return to a happy and normal life. Hyundai Hope On Wheels grants are awarded through a competitive peer-reviewed process. The Scholar Hope Grant and The Young Investigator grants are awarded during the month of September, exclusively to COG member institutions. This year, the organization awarded COVID-19 drive-thru testing grants to 23 sites throughout the nation. More than one-million COVID-19 tests have been completed at sites supported by the Hyundai grant. 2020 Every Handprint Tells A Story Campaign elements The Hyundai Hope On Wheels annual September campaign, Every Handprint Tells A Story, crisscrosses the nation to increase awareness and raise awareness of pediatric cancer. Highlights of this years campaign include: Nationwide Virtual Grant Ceremonies to 26 new grants winners Video stories of hope from child survivors and doctor researchers Annual 2020 Celebration of Hope Awards, to be broadcast online on September 19 th Interactive website experience at HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org Social media childhood cancer survivor and doctor-researcher videos National Media Day And more. ADVERTISEMENT 2020 Hyundai Hope On Wheels Campaign Assets for (Media Use) 2020 Campaign Video: https://youtu.be/R1U3X2UMb9k 2020 PSA Video: https://youtu.be/wRu-KkOQqK8 COVID-19 Response Video: https://youtu.be/1SFJgJgXito The gold ribbon is the symbol for childhood cancer. The public is invited to help spread awareness about Hyundai Hope On Wheels and its efforts to end childhood cancer. For more information about Hyundai Hope On Wheels and to view a list of 2020 Hope On Wheels grant winners, please visit www.hyundaihopeonwheels.org/research. By PTI CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday called the resignation of Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal over the farm bills introduced by the Centre in Parliament as "nothing more than a gimmick". The minister quit the Narendra Modi government after Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced that she would resign in protest against the three agri-marketing Bills. The Bills, meant to deregulate the sale of farm produce, have been opposed by several farmer organisations, fearing they will lead to the dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) regime. Had the SAD taken a stand earlier and supported his government against the farm ordinances, the Centre might have thought ten times before pushing the "anti-farmer" Bills in Parliament, the chief minister said. "Did Sukhbir and Harsimrat and their coterie not see the damage the legislation would do to Punjab's agriculture and economy all this time?" he said in a statement. "Or were they so blinded by their greed for power that they deliberately chose to close their eyes to the danger posed by the ordinances?" the CM added. Singh said the resignation announcement was another in a "long chain of theatrics" enacted by the Akali Dal, which has still not quit the ruling coalition despite the "slap on their face" by the central government over the farm bills. Questioning the SAD decision to remain with the BJP-led NDA coalition at the Centre, the CM said Harsimrat Kaur's resignation was nothing more than a gimmick to "befool" the farmers of Punjab. But they will not succeed in "misleading" the farmer organisations, he said, calling it a case of "too little, too late." The resignation from the Union Cabinet has come too late to be of any help to Punjab and its farmers, the CM's statement said. The SAD decision to pull out its sole minister in the Union Cabinet was motivated not by any concern for the farmers but to save its political fortunes and the "fizzling" political careers of the Badals, who had lost all credibility in the eyes of Punjab's people, he claimed. He said it was the farmers' anger and the pressure mounted by the state's farmer organisations that had compelled the Badals to change their stance. Now that their "game plan" was exposed, the Akalis were left with no option but to take a public stand against the Bills to protect their vote bank in Punjab, he claimed. The Centre had on Monday introduced in Parliament the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020 to replace the ordinances promulgated earlier. Temperature testing in workplaces as they reopen would only detect a fraction of hidden coronavirus cases, as new Victorian data reveals only one in five people infected with COVID-19 has a fever. As Melbourne braces to reopen the economy and workers emerge from isolation, public health and infectious disease experts say more creative solutions are needed to prevent widespread outbreaks before a vaccine becomes available. Blake Hedley, who runs Hedley Perrett Real Estate, has implemented a range of measures to stop coronavirus outbreaks at his workplace Credit:Eddie Jim Coughs, sore throats and runny noses are the most common symptoms being detected in Victorians who test positive to coronavirus, data compiled by the state's public health team shows. While fever is often thought to be a distinctive feature of the virus, only about 20 per cent of people found to have coronavirus in recent weeks had a high temperature. A 2,500 square (sq) metres (m), or 0.6-acre, of barren patch in Malad in Mumbai has transformed into a mini urban forest with seven to nine feet (ft) trees in less than nine months. Between January and September, the Indian Navy, along with environment group Green Yatra, developed Mumbais largest dense plantation to date by using the Miyawaki technique (see box) on a plot in front of the main campus of Indian Navy Station (INS) at Hamla in Marve-Malad. Forests grown under the Miyawaki method developed by Japanese botanist and plant ecology expert Dr. Akira Miyawaki have improved carbon-dioxide absorption, have reduced noise and dust , and added more green surface area, as compared to monoculture plantation. Plants grow 10 times faster and 30 times denser than traditional techniques, with any average plantation area supporting 45 saplings across 150 square ft. At INS Hamla, 10,500 saplings of 40 different native species were planted in phases between January 18 and February 27. The forest is flourishing under our care, and the plants have grown nine-ft tall with almost 100% survival rate. The location of the forest within the boundaries of the base provides protection to the plants, which are expected to become self-sustaining within a year, said Captain Sridhar Warrier, chief public relations officer (CPRO), Southern Naval Command. According to Green Yatra, the entire plantation process prior to January took 2,400 labour hours and 440 machines, including excavators and dumpers, and involved excavating the bed area for the three-ft-deep plantations. The process included laying 200 dumpers worth of soil such as 165 tonnes of black soil and biomass, manual stone removal, levelling the land, developing a one-ft-high bed mount, making pathways and channels to supply six litres of water per metre square, and planting 10,500 saplings in two phases with each at least two-years-old. The plantation method using this technique focuses on density, said Pradeep Tripathi, founder, Green Yatra. This is against the average plantation density of three to five plants per sq m depending on the site. Plantations at INS Hamla were four plants per sq m since the site is very close to the coast and there is high wind speed. Also, saplings support each others growth and prevent sunlight from reaching the ground halting the growth of unnecessary weeds, he said. Fixing support sticks to each plant, remulching, and sprinkling microbes and boosters for proper plant development are an integral part of post-plantation maintenance. Whenever there was any water shortage, the navy supported us with their own resources. We have had an overall survival rate of 98.5%, said Tripathi. Native trees included a combination of deciduous and evergreen fruiting tree species such as amla, neem, mahua, kokam, mango, silk cotton, banyan, and pride of India. Around 40 species were divided into four layers, including 18 tree species, 12 sub-trees, four canopy species, and six shrubs up to three ft in size. Captain Warrier said a similar plantation drive of 15,000 more saplings by next February -- was in the works known as the Miyawaki phase II, which would be located near the same site. The first phase was funded by DCB Bank. This method of indigenous forest by native trees produces rich, dense and efficient protective forest in 20 to 30 years, while natural succession will need 200 years, he said. Experts said such plantations were welcome for urban environments that are fast losing green cover but do not match the complex forest ecosystem. These techniques cannot be substituted for natural forest, which represent the non-artificial cycle of carbon, oxygen, minerals and biodiversity, and cannot be replicated by artificial means. For urban spaces, these small green zones may have limited benefits such as reduction of particulate matter, improved oxygen supply, and minimal micro-climatic changes. However, these urban greening concepts cannot be undermined as there is hardly any land available amid the concrete expanse in major cities in the country, said Dr. Subhash Ashutosh, director-general (D-G), Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun. STATUS OF MIYAWAKI PLANTATIONS IN MUMBAI Praveen Pardeshi, former commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), had last year proposed to plant 377,416 trees under the Miyawaki project at a cost of 35 crore across 100 locations spread over 31 acres in Mumbai. Our intention was to have half of the recreational areas of every layout should be a Miyawaki forest. Among the 100 locations, plots in Malad, Colaba, Worli and Priyadarshini Park have yielded good results. The idea is to transfer the cost of greening not just to the public exchequer but also the Mumbaikars gaining the most. The security of these plantations is also automatically protected, said Pardeshi. Besides BMCs efforts, five major plantations across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have been completed by Green Yatra. The following are the projects: Central Railside Warehouse Company Ltd, Jogeshwari, area 2,300 sq. m, ,7000 plants, 40 species completed in three phases Bhandup Complex, area: 1,200 sq. m, 3,500 plants with 46 species State Reserve Police Force Premises in Taloja, Navi Mumbai, area: 700 sq m, 2,000 plants with 40 species Ambernath, area: 100 sq. m, 320 plants with 40 species INS Hamla, area: 2,500 sq. m, 10,500 plants in phase I with 40 species and another 15,000 plants proposed in phase II in February, 2021. 100 YEAR OLD FORESTS IN 10 YEARS With over 3,000-odd urban mini-forests created using the Miyawaki plantation technique, which can accommodate 12,000 saplings in one-acre land, can increase the number of trees per person within Mumbai through native tree plantation within a brief span of time. The features of this technique include: - 10 times faster growth - 30 times denser than traditional plantations - More biodiverse - Better noise and dust reduction - 30 times better carbon dioxide absorption - Native and organic (Source: Green Yatra) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Wife of popular nightlife king, Lascatter, accuses him of sexually molesting their 5-month-old baby By putting his manhood in the babys mouth. just months after their society wedding Nigeria: Diana Faith, the 24-year-old wife of popular nightlife king, Temidayo Lucky Kafaru, aka Lascatter, has accused him of sexually molesting their 5-month-old daughter. The couple's wedding on August 31, 2019, was the talk of town and attracted numerous celebrities. Only one year after, Diana Faith has called on the Lagos State Government, Inspector General of Police (IGP), and other relevant authorities to investigate her husband for a number of offences, including sexual molestation of their infant. According to Guardian, Faith alleged that her estranged husband, raped their maid who is a minor and also molested their baby by putting his manhood in the babys mouth. She added: "Since then, there have been constant threats to my life and that of my mother. I am calling on the Inspector General of Police to intervene in my case and not allow my life and that of my family to be wasted. He has refused to make himself available for investigation on allegations against him." Reports indicate that the legal counsel to the wife, Bamidele Ogundele, reported the case to the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) at Alausa, Ikeja and Temidayo was invited, but he didnt honour the invitation. According to DSVRT Coordinator, Tolulope Rodes-Vivour Adeniyi, he promised to come on the appointed date, July 27, 2020, but didnt show up. Mrs Tolulope Rodes-Vivour Adeniyi, said: He initially promised to come on the appointed date, July 27, 2020. He didnt come. When a call was put through to him, he responded that he wanted his lawyer to be there with him, but he did not show up. The publication adds that when a call was put through to the estranged husband for his reaction on the allegations of assault and battery, Kafaru refused to pick his calls. A message was sent to him via Whatsapp on the same contact, he responded that the case was pending before the Inspector General of Polices table, adding that he would get justice on the matter. Temidayo, through his counsel, Ebinmi Beredugo, filed a fundamental rights suit dated July 3, 2020 before the Lagos High Court, asking that the court stops the police from arresting him. Source: Guardian/LIB Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Zinedine Zidane rejected the chance to bring Dele Alli in on loan as part of the deal to take Gareth Bale back to Tottenham because of comments the player made in 2017, according to reports in Spain. With Bale on the verge of completing his stunning return to White Hart Lane, it is reported that Alli was offered up to Real Madrid in a bid to supplement the Welshman's mammoth 500,000-a-week wages. However, according to AS, Zidane vetoed the move after he was left furious by Alli's comments in 2017 that he 'should've scored a hat-trick' in Spurs' 3-1 win over Real in the Champions League. Real Madrid rejected the chance to sign Dele Alli on loan as part of the Gareth Bale deal Zinedine Zidane reportedly vetoed the move as he would rather turn his attention elsewhere The 24-year-old bagged a brace in the impressive group-stage win for Mauricio Pochettino's side, which saw Tottenham conquer the reigning European champions at Wembley. After the match, Alli insisted that he should have had three goals to his name, saying: 'I'm disappointed I didn't get the hat-trick to be honest. I had an easy chance at the end from a great ball in by Kieran [Trippier].' The report claims Zidane resented Alli's comments, claiming his brace was not that impressive with one of the goals deemed offside and the other a deflection. Alli insists he should've scored a hat-trick in Spurs' emphatic 3-1 win over Real Madrid in 2017 with the forward's comments reportedly enraging Zidane Zidane also pointed out how his side was hit by several injuries on that cold Wednesday night in north London. Spanish news outlet AS go on to claim that Alli's 100,000-a-week wages also proved to go against him, with the Spanish champions looking to free up space on their wage bill when they eventually make a move for Kylian Mbappe. Zidane is a long-term admirer of his compatriot and is hoping to lure the PSG superstar to the Bernabeu next summer. However, along with a hefty price-tag, Real will need to stump up big wages to get Mbappe on their books. Zidane also didn't want to take on Alli's wages as they want to bring in Kylian Mbappe next year Alli looks set to stay at Tottenham this summer as Jose Mourinho looks to ship out other deadwood in order to fund their 27million move for Sergio Reguilon. Juan Foyth, Paulo Gazzaniga and Danny Rose are all expected to be offered up in order to balance the books. Serge Aurier, who has been linked with AC Milan this summer, will also be allowed to leave if the right offer comes in for the right-back. Mary L. (Brandt) Landis served more than 30 years on New Cumberland Borough Council. Landis, 90, died Sept. 11 at her home in New Cumberland. She was a 1948 graduate of Palmyra High School and attended Central Pennsylvania Business College. She worked as a medical secretary and in her fathers grocery store, Brandts Food Market in Palmyra. In addition to serving on borough council, Landis served more than 50 years with New Cumberland Public Library in various capacities including librarian, organizing childrens activities and helping to coordinate the Foundation House book sales and reviews. She also was a member of numerous civic, religious and charitable organizations including the New Cumberland Highland Womens Club, Junior Civic League, New Cumberland Apple Festival, Old Towne New Cumberland Association, Daughters of the American Revolution and Grace Lutheran Church in Camp Hill. Her family said she was a legendary cook and baker, both at home and for charitable and service events. She was a contributor and field editor for Taste of Home magazine. Landis also volunteered with WITF public TV and participated in cooking shows for them and was an election volunteer for more than 40 years. She enjoyed travel and had visited six continents, enjoyed attending Broadway shows, knitting, bridge, reading, symphony and band concerts and volunteering. She was the widow of John K. Landis Jr. Surviving are her children, John M. Landis (Susan) of Camp Hill, Judy M. (Landis) Zeiders (Richard) of Duncannon, and Robert C. Landis (Lois) of Seminole, Fla.; her sisters, Jean (Brandt) Stauffer of Hershey and Joan (Brandt) Souder of Lebanon; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. From her guest book: A wonderful person who lived a remarkable life. She will be greatly missed. -- Matt Stauffer Mary was always quick with a smile, very generous, and gracious. One of the most- if not the most productive, well regarded, and enjoyable people I had known since arriving in the area in 1980. -- Rob Kelly Mary Landis greatly touched me and my family with her boundless warmth and generosity of spirit. I will forever remember her as one of those exceedingly rare special persons who touched my and my familys life bringing much joy. -- Everett Hills To read more obituaries, click here. As the 2021-2022 school year starts to take shape, Katy Independent School District is searching for parent volunteers for a virtual committee to review and choose new instructional materials for several classroom courses, including: Pre-Kindergarten (English) Pre-Kindergarten (Spanish) Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History Anatomy & Physiology College Prep Math Computer science courses Related: Creech Elementary a second home for Katy family with six children Parents selected to be part of the committee will need to commit approximately two hours each day for three days throughout the month of October to review the materials and to provide their input, said Nakia Coy, director of federal programs and external funding. Parents will work alongside teachers and curriculum personnel to select instructional materials that will contribute to a high-quality curriculum that meets the educational goals and objectives of Katy ISD, added Christine Caskey, chief academic officer. The review process will take place virtually due to COVID-19. Parents who have interest in volunteering on the Instructional Material Review Committee should submit the form found at https://tinyurl.com/PROC2021 by Friday, Sept. 25. tracy.maness@hcnonline.com Bachelor intruder Kaitlyn Hoppe was sent home on Thursday after failing to receive a rose from Locky Gilbert. The 26-year-old personal assistant was left heartbroken after the suitor gave his final four roses to Irena Srbinovska, Bella Varelis, Bec Cvilikas and Izzy Sharman-Firth. Prior to the rose ceremony, Kaitlyn admitted that she 'wasn't ready to go home' and wanted Locky to meet her family during hometowns visits. Going home: Intruder Kaitlyn Hoppe (pictured) was sent home on The Bachelor after failing to receive a rose from Locky Gilbert on Thursday 'This rose ceremony is huge. This is the last rose ceremony before hometowns. It's one step closer to meeting the family with Locky,' she said. 'So the stakes are high tonight. I'm not ready to go home, especially not right now,' she continued. Kaitlyn entered The Bachelor mansion as an intruder and was awarded a one-on-one date with Locky on episode two of the show. Her time on the show wasn't always smooth sailing. Decision: The 26-year-old personal assistant was left heartbroken after Locky (pictured) gave his final four roses to Irena Srbinovska, Bella Varelis, Bec Cvilikas and Izzy Sharman-Firth Last month, she got into a heated argument with co-star Roxi Kenny, leaving viewers of The Bachelor stunned. A jealous Roxi, 29, became furious after discovering that Kaitlyn had kissed leading man Locky at the cocktail party. At one stage, she said within earshot of Kaitlyn: 'I'm sorry but I think that's really rude to everyone else. You kissed someone at a cocktail party.' 'That's classless. She's Gold Coast trash,' she added. Feud: Last month, a heated argument between Kaitlyn (right) and co-star Roxi Kenny (left) stunned viewers of The Bachelor 'This little silly b***h over here is saying she macked on with someone. It's disgusting. The b***h is a sl*t!' As things became heated, Roxi labelled Kaitlyn 'Malibu Barbie gone wrong', before screaming over and over again that she was 'trash'. Viewers had plenty to say about the dramatic confrontation, with many fans picking sides on Twitter. 'Both Roxi and Kaitlyn were out of line tonight but I'm team Malibu Barbie, what a crack up,' tweeted one viewer. 'Mmmm kind of on Roxi's side, Kaitlyn is being horrendous,' another added. The Bachelor continues Wednesday at 7.30pm on Channel Ten PITTSBURGH, Sept. 17, 2020 - A blood protein test could detect the severity of head trauma in under 15 minutes, according to research published recently in the Journal of Neurotrauma. By showing that glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) can accurately determine the severity of a brain injury through a blood test, the research team working on this study, led by author David Okonkwo, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Neurotrauma Clinical Trials Center at UPMC and professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, advanced the development of a point-of-care testing device designed to help clinicians assess traumatic brain injury (TBI) in minutes. For the rapid test, the vision included using a hand-held device with a cartridge that would measure GFAP in a patient's blood. Researchers at Abbott Laboratories, a global health care company, will need to finalize the test for the i-STAT device, which already is used by the military and health care providers around the world to perform several common blood tests within minutes. The blood test would reveal a patient's GFAP level. "This would eliminate guesswork in diagnosing TBIs and learn whether a person needs further treatment," said Okonkwo. "Whether you're testing a soldier injured in combat or testing a patient in a small rural hospital with limited resources, health care providers could have critical information they need--in minutes--to treat each patient's brain injury." For this study, which expanded upon previous GFAP findings, researchers enrolled 1,497 people who sought care at one of the 18 Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) level 1 trauma centers nationwide over four years. GFAP is a Food and Drug Administration-approved marker for ruling out whether a patient needs a head computed tomography (CT) scan within 12 hours after a mild TBI. For years, scientists have studied blood tests involving GFAP. They also have studied a similar protein called S100B. Both proteins are released in the bloodstream in response to specific injuries, including TBI. But this study showed that GFAP substantially outperformed S100B as a TBI diagnostic marker. "Knowing this protein can show the severity of a TBI through a simple blood test is promising when considering we can use a device that already is in widespread use in hospitals, doctors' offices and urgent care facilities. All we would need to do is add an extra cartridge to the device to analyze blood for the GFAP protein," said Okonkwo. He estimates this device could potentially decrease unnecessary CT scans by 20% or more, saving nearly $100 million in medical expenses annually. ### With support from the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Research and Development Command's U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity, Abbott Point-of-Care and TRACK-TBI have begun a pivotal, FDA-regulated trial to validate the i-STAT to evaluate the effectiveness of Abbott's point-of-care blood test technology, using whole blood sample type. This published study is a collaboration between the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Defense, the TRACK-TBI consortium and Abbott Laboratories. This work was supported with funding from the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and the U.S. Department of Defense. Additional authors on the study include Ross Puffer, M.D., of UPMC and Mayo Clinic; Ava Puccio, R.N., Ph.D., of UPMC; Esther Yuh, M.D., Ph.D., John Yue, M.D., Sabrina Taylor, Ph.D., Pratik Mukherjee, M.D., Ph.D., and Amy Markowitz, J.D., of UC San Francisco and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania; Frederick Korley, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan; Kevin Wang, Ph.D., of the University of Florida; Xiaoying Sun, M.S., Sonia Jain, Ph.D., of UC San Diego; and Geoffrey Manley, M.D., Ph.D., of UC San Francisco. To read this release online or share it, visit http://www.upmc.com/media/news/091720-TBI-Prototype-Blood-Test. About UPMC A $21 billion health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates more than 90,000 employees, 40 hospitals, 700 doctors' offices and outpatient sites, and a 3.9 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical insurer in western Pennsylvania. In the most recent fiscal year, UPMC contributed $1.4 billion in benefits to its communities, including more care to the region's most vulnerable citizens than any other health care institution, and paid more than $800 million in federal, state, and local taxes. Working in close collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC shares its clinical, managerial, and technological skills worldwide through its innovation and commercialization arm, UPMC Enterprises, and through UPMC International. U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside among the nation's best hospitals in many specialties and ranks UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh on its Honor Roll of America's Best Children's Hospitals. ?For more information, go to UPMC.com. About the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences The University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences include the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Graduate School of Public Health. The schools serve as the academic partner to the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Together, their combined mission is to train tomorrow's health care specialists and biomedical scientists, engage in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and participate in the delivery of outstanding patient care. Since 1998, Pitt and its affiliated university faculty have ranked among the top 10 educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health. For additional information about the Schools of the Health Sciences, please visit http://www.health.pitt.edu. http://www.upmc.com/media Contact: Sheila Davis Mobile: 412-313-6070 Email: DavisSN2@upmc.edu Contact: Wendy Zellner Office: 412-586-9777 Mobile: 412-973-7266 Email: ZellnerWL@upmc.edu It has been studied that excessive exposure to these chemicals can generate harmful effects on human health. Among the most affected segment of the population are children EFSA has established a new safety threshold for the main perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that accumulate in the body. Every human being should assume a maximum tolerable group threshold (TWI) of 4.4 nanograms per kilogram of body weight. The PFAS are a group of artificial chemicals manufactured and used by multiple industries all over the world. Among the companies that use it, there are those belonging to the textile sector, to that of household products, fire-fighting products, to the automotive, food, construction and electronics sectors. PFAS are mostly present in drinking water, fruit and egg products. It has been studied that excessive exposure to these chemicals can generate harmful effects on human health. Among the most affected section of the population are children. According to the scientists, exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding is the main contributor to PFAS levels in infants. In establishing DST, analysts identified the decreased response of the human immune system to vaccinations as the most critical effect on human health. A result that distances itself from EFSA's 2018 opinion on PFAS; the European Food Safety Authority had considered the increase in cholesterol to be the main critical effect. The EFSA study focused essentially on four substances: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS). The 2018 opinion established separate DSTs for PFOS and PFOAs, but EFSA reviewed these substances taking into account today's scientific knowledge and followed the "recent guidelines for the assessment of combined exposure to multiple chemicals". Foods can be contaminated with PFAS due to the soil or water used to grow them. Further contamination can result from the concentration of these substances in the food that animals eat, such as feed or water itself. Finally, PFAS can be transmitted through food packaging or processing equipment. A 17-year-old boy who had worked for a Republican congressional candidate running against Democratic Rep Ilhan Omar was shot and killed in an attack outside a gas station on Minneapolis north side. A second person who also had worked for Republican Lacy Johnson was wounded in the shooting on Monday. Earlier this morning, police in Minneapolis arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting following a high-speed pursuit. He is now in custody but has yet to be named. Scroll down for video Campaign worker Andre Conley, 17, was shot dead outside a store in Minneapolis on Monday Conley had worked for Lacey Johnson (left), a Republican businessman who is running to unseat Democratic Rep Ilhan Omar Both police and Johnson, a businessman who is seeking to unseat Omar in Minnesotas Fifth Congressional District in November, said the attack did not appear to have anything to do with politics or the campaign. The slain teen was identified as Andre Conley. The man who was wounded was hospitalized and was expected to survive. The Johnson campaign said both Conley and the other victim were members of an outreach team and were not performing campaign duties during the incident. According to police, the two were standing with a group of people outside the Super USA convenience store at the intersection of North Fremont and Dowling avenues just before 4.30pm when they were approached on foot by the assailant, who opened fire and fled, reported CBS Minneapolis. First responders rushed both victims to Hennepin Healthcare, where the surviving man is listed in serious but stable condition. Just before 7am on Thursday, police attempted to pull over a suspect wanted in Conley's killing, reported KARE11. A police spokesperson said that the man fled, leading officers on a high-speed chase down Interstate 394 westbound to northbound Highway 169. Conley and another Johnson campaign worker were standing outside this convenience store with a group of people when someone walked up to them and opened fire The suspect was eventually apprehended after crashing his car in Plymouth. 'It is shocking and unnecessary acts of violence like this that prove why change is needed now more than ever in our community,' Johnson said. 'The shooting did not occur during a campaign or outreach and we do not believe it has any connection to their work for the campaign.' Police spokesman John Elder said Wednesday there was nothing to suggest the attack was motivated by politics. Conley was a senior at Patrick Henry High School, where Principal Yusuf Abdullah mourned the student with a bright smile that could light up a room. A GoFundMe campaign was launched on Wednesday to help with Conley's funeral expenses. 'He was loved by his peers, teachers and principal. And loved more than anyone by his mother and father and every single one of his family members,' the description of the fundraiser stated. The organizer of the campaign later posted an update, saying that at the request of Conley's family, the funds will be given to the surviving victim instead because 'he needs the help more.' Conley was a senior at Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, where officials released a statement mourning his death An emotional vigil was held on Wednesday for Conley near the spot where he was gunned down, bringing together family and friends who wished to pay tribute to the teen, reported KARE11. 'My nephew Andre did not deserve this,' said Conley's aunt, Fatemah Green, through tears. The event was attended by Johnson, who told the crowd that Conley and the other victim had approached his campaign, seeking to do positive things with their lives. 'I'm not blaming anybody else but us,' the GOP candidate said. 'It's us. We got to take care of our own kids, we got to look after our own children.' TEL AVIV, Israel and DUBAI, UAE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the signing of the Abraham Accords by Israel and the UAE in Washington DC, UAE-based Mohammed Al Beloushi, CEO of Barker and Booth Commercial Agency LLC, announced a first of its kind strategic investment in Israeli startup Fintica AI Ltd. The move will see the launch of a partnership with the intention of developing Fintica's capabilities, resources, and market share in the region bringing with it, new technology for the financial sector. Fintica's disruptive autonomous AI technology gives real-time market analyses, providing asset managers with a unique understanding of vast amounts of data. This provides a qualitative edge for efficient and well-informed decision making. Commenting on the historic collaboration, Mohammed Al Beloushi, CEO of Barker and Booth Commercial Agency LLC noted, "It's our duty to support the visionary leadership of the United Arab Emirates whose underlying desire is to advance global peace with sincerity and persistence. In the words of our respected Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, "Peace requires courage and shaping the future requires knowledge." He added, "Acknowledging that this historic achievement will better the lives of our youth, and our youth are our future, we support initiatives which encourage and invest in the promotion and exchange of skills, knowledge and expertise, and this will have a positive impact in the region. We are ready to play our part in this new era." Philippe Metoudi, CEO of Fintica AI, noted the significant potential for growth in the sector. "Fintica is delighted and honored to embark on this historic partnership with our UAE counterparts, and together to work on expanding our impact in the investment market." He stressed, "Our two nations have begun a new era of cooperation, yet the world's markets remain volatile and turbulent. Our partnership will help Fintica offer investors around the UAE the ability to achieve a deeper understanding of changing market structures and conditions." SOURCE Fintica AI, Ltd. Radha Soami Satsang Chandigarh: The Punjab Cabinet led by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday approved waiver of fee for Change of Land Use (CLU) and several other charges for Satsang Bhawans established, or to be established in future, by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) across the state. Apart from CLU, the other charges to be waived include External Development Charges (EDC), Permission Fee (PF), Social Infrastructure Fund (SIF) and Building Scrutiny Fee. Advertisement Captain Amarinder Singh This decision has been taken in view of the immense contribution of Radha Soami Satsang, Beas, in disseminating the universal teachings of love, peace, harmony and brotherhood as propagated by the great Saints through its Satsangs and publications, besides motivating people to stay away from drugs and other bad habits. According to a spokesperson of Chief Ministers Office, the Cabinet acceded to the proposal put forth by Housing and Urban Development Department for exemption of the aforesaid charges, with a financial implication of Rs 12.18 crore as per the list submitted by the RSSB, of which Rs 6.96 crore belongs to state exchequer and Rs 5.22 crore to the respective Urban Development Authorities. Advertisement Punjab governmentIt may be recalled that the State Government has already exempted above charges for educational, health, religious and social institutions set up by SGPC, Durgiana Mandir, Amritsar and Devi Talab Mandir, Jalandhar, vide its notification dated May 10, 2012. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Polina Ivanova (Reuters) Moscow, Russia Thu, September 17, 2020 10:55 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4556069 2 World Russia,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,COVID-19-vaccine,SARS-CoV-2,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus Free Russia's sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine to Indian drug company Dr Reddy's Laboratories , the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad. The deal for its Sputnik-V vaccine candidate comes after the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to produce 300 million doses of the shot in India, also a major consumer of Russian oil and arms. The agreement brings the total number of doses Russia has so far announced that it will supply abroad to just over 200 million - half to Latin America and half to India. RDIF has said it has received requests totaling 1 billion doses. Deliveries to India, which has a population of more than 1.3 billion, could begin in late 2020, RDIF said, adding this was subject to the completion of trials and Sputnik-V's registration by regulatory authorities in India. Phase III trials, involving at least 40,000 people, are ongoing in Russia. Initial results are expected in October or November, RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev has said. Dr Reddy's, one of India's top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said. Following the news, Dr Reddy's shares rallied to close 4.18% higher in India on Wednesday. The Indian trials could start as early as next month, Dmitriev told Reuters, adding trial results could be followed soon after by domestic regulatory approval of Sputnik-V for mass use in India. India said last week it was considering granting an emergency authorization for a coronavirus vaccine, particularly for the elderly and people in high-risk workplaces. Emergency use Russia was the first country to grant regulatory approval for a novel coronavirus vaccine, and did so before large-scale trials were complete, stirring concern among scientists and doctors about the safety and efficacy of the shot. Several countries are now considering adopting "emergency use authorization" measures that would fast-track approval of a vaccine in a similar way, however. "We expect emergency use authorization for Sputnik-V vaccine in major markets," Dmitriev said. Results of early-stage clinical trials of the Russian shot, which were published in international medical journal The Lancet earlier this month, showed promise, G V Prasad, co-chairman of Dr Reddy's, was cited in the RDIF statement as saying. "Sputnik-V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID-19 in India," he said. There was no detail about the price of Sputnik-V, but RDIF has said previously it was not aiming to make a profit, just to cover costs. In a press briefing late on Tuesday, Balram Bhargava, who heads India's clinical research agency, the Indian Council of Medical Research, said high-level talks between India and Russia around the vaccine had been ongoing. "There is a high-level committee of the government of India for vaccines that is in dialogue with the Russians," he said, adding Russia had a good track record in vaccine development and the early-stage overseas trials of Sputnik-V had been promising. It was not immediately clear whether those talks had been instrumental in the deal between RDIF and Dr Reddy's. The agreement comes as India's coronavirus cases surged past five million on Wednesday, piling pressure on hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they need to treat tens of thousands of critically ill patients. This is Dr Reddy's first foray into a coronavirus vaccine. It has struck a licensing deal with Gilead Sciences Inc to make and sell COVID-19 treatment remdesivir in 127 countries, including India; launched its generic version of remdesivir under the brand name Redyx; and has also tied up with Fujifilm Holdings Corp to launch Fujifilm's anti-flu drug Avigan (favipiravir) in India as a COVID-19 treatment. ALBANY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration said Wednesday it will disperse September school aid payments, walking back a policy of withholding 20 percent of payments to localities and school districts that was meant to pressure the federal government to deliver a stimulus bill that would ease the state's fiscal crisis. The decision was announced after the New York State United Teachers filed a lawsuit over the state's aid reductions, and urban school districts including Albany and Schenectady had already slashed programs and moved to lay off hundreds of employees in anticipation of the cuts. But a significant portion of the $2.5 billion in education aid set to be disbursed on Sept. 30 will be diverted to the Teachers Retirement System, according to Brian Fessler, director of governmental relations at the New York State School Boards Association, noting that it is unknown whether public schools or the retirement fund would have absorbed the 20 percent cut. "It's not dollars that are automatically going to school districts, but if that withholding is applied to the TRS intercepts, that leads to a complicated situation," Fessler said. "It's unclear that if the withholdings would have applied to the TRS intercept (or) whether that obligation would fall on school districts or TRS. Both of those situations would be problematic by themselves." The bulk of aid payments made by the state in October and November are also intercepted by the teacher's retirement fund, Fessler said. NYSUT, which filed the suit in state Supreme Court in Albany on Wednesday, is seeking the release of money withheld from schools in July, August, and September and an injunction against future delayed or withheld school funding payments. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the unilateral executive budgetary powers provided for the state Division of Budget as part of this years state budget process. The state may have been responding to pressure from the teacher's union, as well as public pressure as community members have demonstrated outside the state Capitol in recent days highlighting the fact that flat, statewide aid reductions disproportionately hit low-income communities. Budget officials who argue that school cuts to staff and programs are "premature" have indicated that if a second federal stimulus package fails to materialize, the administration will work with the state Legislature to produce a more complex aid reduction plan that takes into account district need levels. Until we have clarity on the amount of federal assistance, it is premature to make any permanent spending reductions, at which point all options would be considered to limit the impacts of a federal failure to act and offset the states $62 billion, four-year revenue loss," Division of Budget spokesman Freeman Klopott said. The reductions made so far in the Capital Region include $789,000 of Albany's $116.9 million budget; $803,000 of Schenectadys $132.9 million, and $199,000 of Lansingburghs $32.3 million budget. State budget officials say that is less than 1 percent of any of the districts total budgets. School administrators acknowledge that number, but say the larger state aid payments typically come later in the school year. News that the September payment would be kept whole was welcome to school officials in Albany, which is due to receive a $13.6 million payment at the end of the month in addition to the TRS contributions. A 20 percent reduction would have reduced that payment by roughly $2.7 million. The district has already laid off more than 200 teachers, eliminated in-person learning for older grades and restructured programs for immigrant students and at-risk teens due to cuts in July and August payments. The state had indicated the aid cuts could continue throughout the year. We do not know how long this is going to last, Albany Schools Superintendent Kaweeda Adams said. In the event that we do get the funding and there are no reductions, we would look at how do we then rebuild, in a very systematic way, those programs back in and we would make adjustments to our schedules accordingly. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Albany schools spokesman Ron Lesko also noted that the only information the district has received is from media reports. According to the last official correspondence from the Division of Budget, dated Aug. 20, Albany schools could still potentially lose 20 percent of its aid for the 2020-2021 fiscal year even if the September payment remained whole, he said. Before the school aid reductions were announced, the district had anticipated it would receive $117 million in payments for the 2020-21 school year. In the lawsuit, NYSUT points to the states ability to draw upon approximately $7 billion in reserves and settlement funds to avoid cuts. The union also has advocated for other solutions to help fund public education, including taxes on the ultra wealthy and additional federal stimulus funding. The suit points to the fact that some school districts have no more local resources to tap and are dependent on state funding. In such districts, a 20 percent cut could be catastrophic, and certainly would lead to a gross and glaring inadequacy. Time is up, NYSUT President Andy Pallotta said in a statement. With the loss of state funding driving cuts at the local level in districts around the state, we cant just keep waiting for action at the federal level to fund our schools. At this point, a lawsuit unfortunately is the necessary next step to compel our leaders to do whats right: Fund our future and stop these cuts. New York's Budget Director Robert Mujica on Thursday shot down the idea of raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires as New Jersey announced that it would pass a similar wealth tax. Mujica cited the tax rate in New York City where most of the state's top earners live. "The combined state and city income tax rate is already 12.6 percent which is higher than New Jersey's new top rate or a proposed 12 percent 'billionaire/millionaire tax rate, he said. Just two months after voting to dismantle the police and slashing its budget, Minneapolis City Council members pressed the department's chief over a surge in crime, prompting a GOP candidate to slam the lawmakers as hypocrites. 'Residents are asking, "Where are the police?"' Council Member Jamal Osman said on Tuesday, adding that calls to the Minneapolis Police Department from constituents have gone unanswered. 'That is the only public safety option they have at the moment. MPD. They rely on MPD. And they are saying they are nowhere to be seen.' Osman and other council members questioned police Chief Medaria Arradondo on Tuesday about the increase in crime, including daylight car jackings, robberies, assaults, shootings and street racing. But others noted that the council just recently slashed the police budget by $1.1million and also voted to amend the city charter that would allow for the dismantling of the entire police department. Pictured: Minneapolis City Council's president Lisa Bender, pictured left centre along with vice president Andrea Jenkins (far left) and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey (far right). The council was alarmed on Tuesday at the spike in crime cases after it moved to reallocate $1.1 million of the Minneapolis Police Department's budget two months ago Lisa Bender, the president of the City Council, accused the police of knowingly not enforcing the law or making arrests Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, pictured last month, told the City Council that crime data from the MPD showed homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, auto theft, theft from motor vehicles and arson were all up in the city so far in 2020, when compared with 2019 up until September 15 'The hypocrisy and failure that were seeing from this City Council is astounding and deeply troubling,' Lacy Johnson, a GOP candidate who is running against Democratic incumbent House Rep. Ilhan Omar, told Fox News on Thursday. Johnson said the council had been calling for the 'dismantling or demilitarizing or the disarming of police' all summer. 'Now theyre turning around and blaming these brave officers for a situation that they have created,' Johnson said. President of the Council Lisa Bender accused the police of knowingly not enforcing the law or making arrests. 'This is not new,' Bender said. 'But it is very concerning in the current context.' Arradondo said it was 'troubling to hear' Bender's comments, and promised to raise the issue with departmental supervisors. 'We need to make sure that our communities know that we are going to be there, that we're going to be responsive,' he said. Lacy Johnson (right), a GOP candidate who is running against Democratic incumbent House Rep. Ilhan Omar, blasted the city council on Thursday for their 'hypocrisy' in blaming police on rising crime just after voting to dismantle the department 'We've taken an oath to do that.' Crime data from the Minneapolis Police Department shows homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, auto theft, theft from motor vehicles and arson were all up in the city so far in 2020, when compared with 2019 up until September 15. Violent crime, including domestic aggravated assault, was up almost 15 per cent in the first nine months of the year, while property crime was up almost eight per cent in the same time period. Of all the crimes that have increased, homicide saw the largest spike of 87 per cent, rising from 30 in 2019 to 56 in 2020, while incidents of arson have increased by 82 per cent over the total at this point in 2019. Robbery rose from 931 to 1,275 (37 percent) while incidents of aggravated assault increased from 1,750 in 2019 to 2,100 this year (20 percent). Meanwhile, rape fell by 22 percent, and domestic aggravated assault fell by 8.4 percent. In terms of property crimes, burglary rose from 2,223 to 2,785 (25 percent), thefts from motor vehicles rose from 3,127 to 3,937 (26 percent), and auto theft rose from 1,982 to 2,766 (40 percent), while larceny fell by almost 10 percent. Pictured: Violent crime rates in Minneapolis compared in 2019 and 2020, from start of year until September 15 Johnson said the uptick in crime can be attributed to the political leadership of the city which voted to amend the city charter so that it would allow the police department to be dismantled after the May 25 death of George Floyd. 'All of those things have gone up and it is something that should have been expected, but it just shows you how out of touch our City Council is and our liberal government leadership here in Minnesota is,' Johnson said. Arradondo said that about 100 officers have left the MPD or have taken leave of absence since the start of 2020 - more than double the number of officers who typically step down from the department or are inactive, according to Minnesota Public Radio. On social media, the city council was ridiculed by those who say its anti-police policies have come back to haunt them. 'Turns out seeking to abolish police has consequences,' tweeted Byron York. Zaid Jilani tweeted: 'Three months ago the Minneapolis city council wanted to abolish the police department and start over, now they're complaining that the police aren't arresting enough people.' Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, tweeted: 'Folks, this is why you don't elect Democrats.' Zaid Jilani tweeted: 'Three months ago the Minneapolis city council wanted to abolish the police department and start over, now they're complaining that the police aren't arresting enough people.' Another Twitter user commented: 'So they really didn't see this coming huh?' The Police Benevolent Association, a union representing New York City police officers, sarcastically tweeted: 'Who would have guessed?' Joe Soucheray tweeted: 'Four months ago the Minneapolis city council wanted to dismantle the police department. Today? They are hectoring the police for the increase in crime. They are just not grounded in reality.' Another Twitter user wrote: 'Nutty Democrats who defunded the Police are now complaining about spike in Crime. Please #VoteTrump2020!' 'Turns out seeking to abolish police has consequences,' tweeted Byron York Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, tweeted: 'Folks, this is why you don't elect Democrats.' Another Twitter user wrote: 'Nutty Democrats who defunded the Police are now complaining about spike in Crime. Please #VoteTrump2020!' The Police Benevolent Association, a union representing New York City police officers, sarcastically tweeted: 'Who would have guessed?' Joe Soucheray tweeted: 'Four months ago the Minneapolis city council wanted to dismantle the police department. 'Today? They are hectoring the police for the increase in crime. 'They are just not grounded in reality.' Another Twitter user commented: 'So they really didn't see this coming huh?' As part of its several steps towards dismantling the MPD, Minneapolis City Council approved an amendment to remove $1.1 million from the department's budget and reallocate it toward the health department in order to hire 'violence interrupters'. This came as part of the council's pledge earlier in the summer to dismantle the department and replace it with a community-based system of public safety. Johnson ridiculed the idea of replacing cops with 'violence interrupters.' 'Violence interrupters are not interrupting violence. What we need are trained career police officers. Anyone who suggested violent interrupters or suggested we demilitarize police or defund the police do not understand what it is like out here in our community in these streets,' Johnson said. Calls to defund police departments grew following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, who died after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes Council member Phillipe Cunningham was critical of his fellow members during the meeting, and accused them of contradicting their previous statements when they called for the department to be dismantled. 'What I am sort of flabbergasted by right now is colleagues, who a very short time ago were calling for abolition, are now suggesting we should be putting more resources and funding into MPD,' Cunningham said. Cunningham spoke in favor in July of treating violence as a public health problem, focusing resources at non-law-enforcement-based methods. Officer Derek Chauvin, pictured, has been charged with second-degree murder, while the three other officers who were present at Floyd's arrest and death have been charged with aiding and abetting The council moved to defund the police department following the death of George Floyd on May 25, a 46-year-old black man, who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer - Derek Chauvin - knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Floyd's death was captured in a video shared widely online sparking outrage across the U.S. and galvanizing the Black Lives Matter movement which saw protests in a number of cities - including Minneapolis - some of which turned violent. The now-infamous incident also led to calls to defund police departments, and redirect funds to more community-focused programs. Officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, while the three other officers who were present at Floyd's arrest and death have been charged with aiding and abetting. E-health startups that saw a spike in business during the covid-led lockdown have their eyes set on smaller cities and towns to attract new customers with offers of value-added services like chronic illness care. The founders of these startups believe the covid-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in consumer behaviour toward online health services due to their convenience and faster access, prompting a search for the next wave of growth. Before the pandemic there were 3.5 million households using e-pharmacy services. This grew nearly three times to 9 million in May, and is projected to increase further to 70 million households by 2025, according to a Ficci white paper on e-pharmacies published in August. Around 50% consumers reported a decline in face-to-face doctor consultations during the pandemic. There was also a shift in demand for home delivery of medicines, according to Ficcis findings. Online health platform Practo that saw a sharp increase in online consultations claims that teleconsultations on its platform have grown by 10x in the last six months; 80% of all telemedicine customers were first-time users and 50% consultations were for patients from non-metros. At Practo, now we want to capture the next 200 million customers by continued focus on expansion and growth in Tier 2 cities. We will build a multilingual interface that will expand access to quality healthcare and enable interactions in native languages, bringing quality care to remote locations" said Shashank ND, CEO and co-founder, Practo. Analysts agree the next wave of growth for online healthcare will come from non-metros. As the novelty wears off and the demand-driver moves from contactless to expertisethe ability for small town residents to pick any big city" expert anywhere," said Prasanto K. Roy, a tech policy consultant. For online health platform 1mg Technologies, the focus is on value-added health services like chronic care plans, expanding its diagnostic business to include vaccinations at home and building its healthcare advertising business. The firms business grew over 65% from April to August and is at peak levels, getting very close to profitability, said co-founder Prashant Tandon, co-founder, 1mg Technologies and chairperson, Digital Health Platform, an association of e-pharmacies of India. 1mg is also deepening its partnerships with hospitals, insurance and pharma companies to build strong digital health offerings to woo more users," Tandon said. Bengaluru-based Portea Medical has in the last six months served over 1.5 million patients in their home environment offering services for chronic diseases, besides teleconsultation for almost 50,000 patients, and a chatbot service that saw more than 2.3 millions chats. We see increased demand for our chronic disease management solutions, as those with uncontrolled chronic diseases are more impacted by diseases like covid-19," says Meena Ganesh, MD and CEO, Portea Medical. The e-health sector in India is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 68% to $16 billion by 2025, according to a report by RedSeer Consulting. The report also estimates that eHealth services will reach 57 million households over the next five years. Besides covid-19, startup founders believe that the governments efforts to digitize the interaction between consumers and providers like pharmacies, doctors and diagnostic centres have also given an impetus to online health platforms. In March, the government released guidelines for telemedicine and then, in August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the National Digital Health Mission. This has given a huge structural and regulatory boost to the digital health sector. Digital health is here to stay and India has a long way to go," 1mgs Tandon said. Shashank said the future of the healthcare industry is patient-centric, integrated and preventive and for that it requires a good blend of offline and online. The platforms will see more competition and patients and doctors, more choice. Many doctors have been unhappy with platform conditions, commissions, or limiting features, and will have more options to choose from," Roy said. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. State officials on Wednesday said more than 500 homes and other buildings have been destroyed by a wildfire that swept through rural communities along the McKenzie River east of Eugene and Springfield. Crews have so far assessed 770 structures in the burn area of the Holiday Farm fire, which grew to over 170,000 acres. Its 260-mile perimeter, roughly the length of Portland to Medford, stretches into Lane and Linn counties. Firefighters have contained about 8 percent of the blaze, which began Sept. 6 along Oregon 126 near the town Blue River, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade mountains, officials said. Thrashing winds rolling off the mountain range quickly spread the fire down the McKenzie River valley, a mecca for fishing, hiking and whitewater rafting. Thousands were forced to flee. Blue River, home to about 800 people, was reduced to piles of rubble, ash and twisted metal. The fire also killed at least one person, a resident of Vida, about 14 miles west, according to the Lane County Sheriffs Office. That person has yet to be identified. The Sheriffs Office said that another six people in the area remain unaccounted for. Search-and-rescue teams are now scouring the burn area for remains. Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Indian Railways will soon start levying a user fee as part of train fares, seeking to raise funds for redeveloping railway stations and modernizing infrastructure to attract investments, Railway Board CEO VK Yadav said on Thursday. The user fee to be levied by the national transporter for the first time is in line with the user development fee (UDF) paid by air passengers. UDF is charged at various airports and the rate varies from city to city. Railways plans to levy the user fee across nearly 700-1000 railway stations. We are going to keep a very small amount for the user charge, railway board CEO VK Yadav said at a press conference, adding that it would be levied at stations that are being redeveloped as well as those that are not. When the redevelopment of the stations gets completed, the money will go to the concessionaires; till then that money will go to the railways for improving facilities across stations. It will be an affordable amount, but it is important to levy if we want to provide world-class facilities similar to the airport developments. We want to upgrade all our major railway stations, Yadav. About 10-15% of Indias 7,000 railway stations where the state-run transporter exporter expects higher traffic over the next five years will be covered by the new levy, he added. The proposal comes in the backdrop of a government plan to attract private investment to the national carrier. Railways plans to redevelop 50 railway stations and monetize its land. The redeveloped hubs will be called Railopolis. Indian Railways will lease the land out for 60 years for commercial purposes. Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, who was also present in the press conference, said private investment in Indian Railways will introduce competition and lead to fare reductions in the future. We want railways to drive Indias growth story. In countries like Japan and South Korea the growth story was also driven by railway infrastructure. We are confident going forward that railways will contribute 1-2% towards Indias growth, Kant said. It is like when private banks were set up in India. So many private players came into the banking sector. But that didnt lead SBI {State Bank of India} to shut. Private investment will bring in newer technologies. It will create competition in the railway sector. Competition will increase efficiency and reduce fares in the long run, he said. Apex policy think-tank Niti Aayog had, in October, pulled up the ministry of railways for delayed implementation of the government plan. Niti Aayog recommended that an empowered group of top bureaucrats be constituted to redevelop 50 stations on a priority basis. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had in 2016 announced a plan to redevelop 400 railway stations during its first term. The cost of station redevelopment was to be met by leveraging commercial development of land and space in and around the stations. The railway ministry has also begun the process of allowing private companies to run trains on 109 routes, opening up one of one of the governments most prominent enterprises that has in recent decades been outpaced by the demands of a rapidly growing economy. The focus is Make in India, even the global companies that participate in this will have to follow the Make in India norms by DPIIT. This will bring in manufacturing capacity...When Alstom and Bombardier can manufacture metro trains in India, then why cant trains be manufactured?. Everything will be set up in India, Kant said. DPIIT is short for Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade. Researchers from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) in collaboration with colleagues from the Pavlov University, ITMO University, and the University of Hamburg compared their developed carriers for delivery of genome editing (GE) tools with other available analogs. The research of current studies were published in the in the journal Biomaterials. The international scientific group considers the delivery of genome editing tools to organs and tissues and compared their work with the existing analogs. Genome editing tools allow to edit or modify DNA (in particular, the CRISPR/Cas9 technology uses the principle of "molecular scissors": the complex binds to the required area of the genome, where the Cas9 protein cuts the DNA. The cell tries to close the gap. If we provide the required genetic material at that moment, the cell will turn it into your DNA). "These scissors should be properly delivered to the cells responsible for disease development. Our research team developed a polymeric carrier with a number of properties, which can be loaded with several types of genetic material. It is very important for genome editing. The carrier delivers the genetic material to organs where cell modifications is required for the treatment. The genetic material is a released into these cells", - says Alexander Timin, head of the Laboratory for microencapsulation and controlled delivery of biologically active compounds at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. He added, currently, the gene therapy is actively developing and, in this regard, it is required to apply genome editing tools, which use two RNA and DNA molecules. It should be delivered by single carrier. It is a very urgent task. In the course of the study, various methods of genetic material delivery were considered and compared with existing analogues (technologies developed by the leading universities in the United States and China). The research team analyzed various parameters: editing efficiency, delivery efficiency, and carrier toxicity. Scientists identified, that their own development has a number of advantages in some parameters compared to the corresponding counterparts. The developed carrier is highly efficient, low toxic and obtains surface modification with various targeting ligands. In addition, the technology is able to protect the genetic material in the body from the premature degradation due to various biological factors, thus preserving all the properties and genetic effects. Currently, the development is at the stage of pre-clinical studies and is being tested on laboratory animals. " Igor Radchenko, Director of the "RASA-Polytech" Center It should be noted that "RASA-Polytech" center was initially founded by Prof. Gleb B. Sukhorukov of QMUL. Now this center is rapidly growing together with new young researchers, who continue to intensively collaborate with Prof. Sukhorukov. As for the technological mechanism, in case of oncological diseases, researchers use microinjections to insert the carriers directly into the tumor, or to inject the carriers into the bloodstream. In order to reach the required organ, the "beacons" were attached to the carriers. These are antibodies, which are able to bind to receptors on the surface of the cells affected by pathogens. In the future, the researchers plan to conduct an experiment jointly with colleagues from Belgium, to test the developed technology in the case of HIV infection. Diamond exchanges in Israel and the United Arab Emirates will soon open offices in each others countries. The news is the latest example of strengthening economic ties between the two countries following their historic normalization deal this week. The Dubai Diamond Exchange signed a collaboration agreement with the Israel Diamond Exchange on Thursday. Per the agreement, the Dubai exchange will open a sales office in Ramat Gan a city outside of Tel Aviv that is the center of Israels diamond business. The Israeli exchange will open a representative office in Dubai, the Dubai Diamond Exchange said in a press release. The Dubai Diamond Exchanges chairman and CEO said he is eager to do business with his Israeli counterparts. The United Arab Emirates and Israel are home to two of the Middle Easts most dynamic and innovative economies, said Ahmed Bin Sulayem in a statement. We look forward to working alongside our partners in Israel. The UAE and Israel agreed to establish full relations on Tuesday during a White House ceremony. Israel and Bahrain also made such an agreement at the event. For years, Israel has grown closer to Arab Gulf states, in part due to shared concerns about Iran. US President Donald Trump's administration has also encouraged Arab countries to normalize ties with the Jewish state. Before these deals, Israel only had full relations with Jordan and Egypt. The UAE and Israel have made a series of business agreements since the two countries first said they would establish relations in August. Tourism authorities in Abu Dhabi instructed hotels to add kosher food options to their dining facilities earlier this month in preparation for Israeli tourists. Orthodox Jews follow strict dietary requirements that prohibit the consumption of pork and shellfish, among other stipulations. A prominent investor from Abu Dhabi is also considering buying stakes in Israeli soccer clubs, including the controversial Beitar Jerusalem, which is known for its far-right fan base. On Wednesday, the Dubai-based DP World logistics company and the Israeli firm DoverTower announced they were exploring direct trade routes between the UAE and Israel. The state-run Emirates News Agency also reported on Thursday that Emirati officials are speaking to Israel about including Palestinian areas in their economic plans. Israel agreed to halt its planned annexation of parts of the Palestinian West Bank in exchange for the normalization agreement with the UAE. Staying in India and giving competitive exams some are usually under the impression that giving exams for foreign universities might be tougher. But a boy who recently cleared JEE and got admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, thinks otherwise. Chirag Falor, a Pune-based boy, secured 12th rank in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main, and according to him this exam is tougher than entrance to MIT. ANI He is one of the five students from India, who secured admission in MIT this year. "I have prepared for the exam for the last four years and do not want to miss one of the toughest exams as this would be one of the greatest experiences, ANI quoted him as saying. "JEE is the toughest exam because there is a time constraint to it. First-year common exams at MIT are much easier than JEE. Hence it is the toughest exam in a short time period," he further said. Also Read: Boy Travelled 700 Km From Bihar To Kolkata Only To Miss The NEET Exam Because He Was 10 Minutes Late Maharashtra: Chirag Falor from Pune secured 12th position in the recently announced Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main results, also got a seat at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. He says, "Exams of MIT are much easier than JEE Advanced." pic.twitter.com/eLWjg5OOy6 ANI (@ANI) September 16, 2020 Because of the lockdown owing to coronavirus pandemic Chirag could not return to the US. He is currently attending online classes, which start at 5:30 pm and continue till 2 am. Despite this tight schedule, he is preparing for JEE Advance, which is scheduled to be held on September 27. He earlier represented India in International Olympiads and was awarded Bal Shakti Puraskar for it. A long time ago video of Australian professor reacting to questions in JEE exams went viral. That gives one the idea of difficulty level as well. You would think a boy who got admission in MIT and cleared JEE will know what he is talking about. May be competitive exams in India are tougher than other places around the world. Also Read: Father Takes His Son On A Bicycle For 105 Km So That He Could Attend His Class 10 Exam Chinas insects and other invertebrates are spoilt for choice with the countrys array of deserts, rainforests, mountains and tropical coastlines. The winning photographs of the Wild China Biodiversity Photography Contest hosted by Wild China Film present the countrys sweeping lands and rare plants from unexpected perspectives. Here is a pick of the crop Jan 21, 2022 06:20 PM Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:01:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Protesters clash with government forces after a gunfight in Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Sept. 17, 2020. (Xinhua/Javed Dar) Prime Minister Ludovic Orban on Thursday, on the occasion of his visit to the Capu Midia military base, where he participated in the receipt ceremony of the first Patriot missile system, stated that Romania is going to be safer with these missiles on its territory and the Romanian citizens better defended. "I am honoured to be here today, in a historic moment, as I see it, the moment when the first Patriot missile system arrives in Romania. This is a moment that I must tell you sincerely that I have waited for a long time and it's good that it has happened and I am very content that it happens during my term in office," said Orban.According to him, Romania is a partner that observed all its commitments under the strategic partnerships."Romania has chosen very clearly, Romania has chosen to be a member of NATO, Romania has chosen the strategic partnership with the United States of America, Romania has chosen to be a member of the European Union. We are a loyal partner who observed all its commitments under these alliances, these partnerships. Romania decided to carry out an army endowment programme for ten years, which was adopted and basically stipulates that we need to strengthen our capabilities, especially in the defence," the Prime Minister said.Ludovic Orban underscored that the Patriot missile system is one that proved to be exceptionally good in battle and that our country is safer with these surface-to-air systems on its territory."Romania decided to meet its commitment and earmark 2 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product to defence, to achieve this endowment programme. As part of the endowment programme, the Patriot missile system is extremely important, it's a surface-to-air missile system, of unprecedented complexity and technological level and with exceptional results proved in combat. Romania is safer with this Patriot missile system on its territory and the Romanian citizens better defended," said Orban.He congratulated all those involved in the acquisition procedures and he expressed his conviction that "all the seven systems bought by Romania will become operational according to the established calendar.""Moreover, I want to highlight that the strategic partnership between the United States of America and Romania sees a new concrete materialization, in an economic and military relation to Romania's advantage," he added.The receipt ceremony of the first Patriot surface-to-air missiles system took place on Thursday, at the Training Centre for Air Defense Artillery "General de Brigada Ion Bungescu," in Capu Midia.According to the Ministry of National Defence, the main equipment part of the first Patriot surface-to-air long-range missile system, belonging to the Romanian Army, started to arrive in Romania in August and were transported to the Training Centre for Air Defense Artillery "General de Brigada Ion Bungescu," where they are to be tested and then the receipt will be complete. EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 Finalist I founded Ephesoft because I knew there was a need for scalable solutions that help businesses increase time-to-value when it comes to capturing and utilizing their massive amounts of data and documents. Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) today announced that Ike Kavas, founder and CEO of Ephesoft, was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year 2020 Pacific Southwest-Orange County Award finalist. Now in its 34th year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors entrepreneurial business leaders whose ambitions deliver innovation, growth and prosperity as they build and sustain successful businesses that transform our world. I am honored to be selected as a finalist for Orange Countys top entrepreneur of 2020, said Kavas. I founded Ephesoft because I knew there was a need for scalable solutions that help businesses increase time-to-value when it comes to capturing and utilizing their massive amounts of data and documents. I am proud that together with Ephesofts many talented employees, we have grown the company to become a global leader in intelligent document processing solutions, providing acquisition and data enrichment solutions to enterprise customers in 53 countries, including many Fortune 1000 companies. Originally from Turkey, Kavas immigrated to the U.S. and founded Ephesoft in 2010. After two years, the company became profitable and was later recognized in Inc. 500 with 1132% growth. Using AI-powered machine learning, Ephesoft has enabled companies to acquire, enrich and amplify the power of their data. Ephesofts revolutionary productivity solutions add context and meaning to data in a way that no one else has tried, helping organizations fuel their journey towards the autonomous enterprise. Award winners will be announced through a special virtual event on October 6 and will join a lifelong community of esteemed Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni from around the world. This year, unstoppable entrepreneurs who have provided extraordinary support for their communities, employees and others during the COVID-19 crisis will also be recognized for their courage, resilience and ingenuity. Entrepreneur Of The Year is one of the preeminent competitive award programs for entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies. The nominees are evaluated based on six criteria, including overcoming adversity; financial performance; societal impact and commitment to building a values-based company; innovation; and talent management. Since its launch, the program has expanded to recognize business leaders in more than 145 cities in over 60 countries around the world. Sponsors Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored by SAP America and the Kauffman Foundation. In Orange County, sponsors also include Platinum sponsor: Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, Gold sponsor: Tangram and Silver Sponsor: Cresa. About Ephesoft Ephesoft provides intelligent document processing solutions with industry-leading technology to help enterprises maximize their productivity. Using AI and patented machine learning technology, Ephesofts platform captures data from documents, enriches it with context and amplifies the power of that data, adding intelligence to accelerate any business process and drive successful digital transformation. Thousands of customers worldwide use Ephesoft to save costs, improve accuracy and fuel their journey towards the autonomous enterprise. Ephesoft is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with regional offices throughout the US, EMEA and Asia Pacific. To learn more, visit ephesoft.com. About Entrepreneur of The Year Entrepreneur Of The Year is the worlds most prestigious business awards program for unstoppable entrepreneurs. These visionary leaders deliver innovation, growth and prosperity that transform our world. The program engages entrepreneurs with insights and experiences that foster growth. It connects them with their peers to strengthen entrepreneurship around the world. Entrepreneur Of The Year is the first and only truly global awards program of its kind. It celebrates entrepreneurs through regional and national awards programs in more than 145 cities in over 60 countries. Winners go on to compete for the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year title. ey.com/us/eoy About EY Private As Advisors to the ambitious, EY Private professionals possess the experience and passion to support private businesses and their owners in unlocking the full potential of their ambitions. EY Private teams offer distinct insights born from the long EY history of working with business owners and entrepreneurs. These teams support the full spectrum of private enterprises including private capital managers and investors and the portfolio businesses they fund, business owners, family businesses, family offices and entrepreneurs. Visit ey.com/private. About EY EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, strategy, transaction and consulting services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities. EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation are available via ey.com/privacy. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com. LONDON If there was any residual doubt about how Prime Minister Boris Johnsons latest Brexit maneuvers are playing in Democratic political circles in Washington, it was erased on Wednesday evening by a carefully timed, unmistakably pointed tweet from the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr. We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit, Mr. Biden wrote. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. Mr. Bidens blunt words came shortly after a meeting between the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and two of Irelands most influential advocates in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The lawmakers warned Mr. Raab that Congress would block a trans-Atlantic trade deal if the bill Mr. Johnson is pushing which would rewrite parts of Britains withdrawal agreement with the European Union that relate to Northern Ireland leads to the resurrection of a hard border on the island of Ireland. OAKVILLE, ON, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Liberty Utilities Co. ("Liberty Utilities"), a subsidiary of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. ("APUC") (TSX/NYSE: AQN), today announced that its financing affiliate, Liberty Utilities Finance GP1, has priced an offering of $600 million aggregate principal amount of 2.050% senior notes due 2030 (the "Notes"). The offering represents Liberty's inaugural offering into the U.S. 144A market. Liberty Utilities intends to use the proceeds from this offering to finance or refinance certain wind energy projects and other eligible green investments. The Notes are fully and unconditionally guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by Liberty Utilities and will rank equally with all of Liberty Utilities existing and future unsecured and unsubordinated indebtedness and senior in right of payment to all of Liberty Utilities future subordinated indebtedness. APUC is not a guarantor or obligor of the Notes. The Notes were priced at an issue price of 99.740% of their face value and will mature on September 15, 2030. The offering is expected to close on September 23, 2020, subject to customary closing conditions. The Notes were offered and will be sold in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and to non-U.S. persons in transactions outside the United States pursuant to Regulation S under the Securities Act. The Notes have not been registered under the Securities Act or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration under, or an applicable exemption from, the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the Notes or any other security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any state or jurisdiction in which, or to any persons to whom, such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. Any offers of the Notes will be made only by means of a private offering memorandum. About Liberty Utilities Co. Liberty Utilities Co. operates a diversified portfolio of primarily regulated utility systems throughout the United States serving approximately 795,000 connections as of June 30, 2020. Liberty seeks to provide safe, high quality and reliable services to its customers and to deliver stable and predictable earnings. About Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. APUC is a diversified international generation, transmission and distribution utility with approximately U.S.$11 billion of total assets. Through its two business groups, APUC is committed to providing safe, reliable and cost effective rate-regulated natural gas, water, and electricity generation, transmission and distribution utility services to approximately 807,000 connections in the United States and Canada, and is a global leader in renewable energy through its portfolio of long-term contracted wind, solar and hydroelectric generating facilities representing over 2 GW of installed capacity and more than 1.6 GW of incremental renewable energy capacity under construction. APUC strives to deliver continuing growth through an expanding global pipeline of renewable energy, electric transmission, and water infrastructure development projects, organic growth within its rate-regulated generation, distribution and transmission businesses, and the pursuit of accretive acquisitions. APUC's common shares, Series A preferred shares, and Series D preferred shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols AQN, AQN.PR.A, and AQN.PR.D, respectively. APUC's common shares, Series 2018-A subordinated notes and Series 2019-A subordinated notes are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols AQN, AQNA and AQNB, respectively. Forward-Looking Statements Certain written statements included herein constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws in each of the provinces of Canada and the respective policies, regulations and rules under such laws and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws in the United States, including Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). The words "will", "expects", "intends", "plans", "should" and similar expressions are often intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Specific forward-looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to statements regarding the closing of the offering and the use of proceeds therefrom. These statements are based on factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection, including assumptions based on historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. Since forward-looking statements relate to future events and conditions, by their nature they rely upon assumptions and involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Each of APUC and Liberty Utilities cautions that although it is believed that the assumptions are reasonable in the circumstances, actual results may differ materially from the expectations set out in the forward-looking statements. Material risk factors and assumptions include those set out in APUC's most recent annual and interim Management's Discussion and Analysis and most recent Annual Information Form, filed with securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the United States. Given these risks, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of their dates. Other than as specifically required by law, neither APUC nor Liberty Utilities undertakes any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise. SOURCE Liberty Utilities PUNE: A man was remanded to five days in police custody on Thursday for extorting money from a petrol pump owner in Pune. The arrested was identified as Ayanul Anwar Khan (26), a resident of Sattar Khan chawl in Nana peth area of Pune. The incident took place at 8:45pm on Tuesday at the petrol pump. Khan was arrested on Wednesday and produced in a local court on Thursday. The accused visited the fuel station and threatened a 28-year-old worker to ask the petrol pump owner to hand over Rs 12,000 as extortion money, according to the complainant. He allegedly threatened to kill the worker if he did not hand over the money. He claimed to be working for someone called Sattar Bhai and took Rs 4,000 that was collected that day by the worker, said assistant police inspector RE Alekar who is investigating the case. A case under Section 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt) was registered at Samarth police station against the man. Phone, keys, wallet, lipstick: All are items on the mental checklist many women run through before heading out the door. Its one of the reasons Army veteran Tanya Bryant started her business Just Lovely Lipstick. Her hand-crafted, all-natural lipstick line is based in Atlanta and was inspired by her mother. She always told me, Never leave home without your lipstick, Bryant told Military Families. Due to COVID-19, people are heading out the door less often in recent months. And when they do, that mental checklist might be a bit different: phone, keys, wallet, mask. Thanks to coronavirus, masks are the must-have accessory we cant leave home without. After all, as of August, more than 30 U.S. states have some form of mask mandate in place. Many women wearing masks during the past few months have learned the hard way that masks dont go well with lipstick. Mixing masks and a bold lip usually ends with color smeared all over your face and the back side of the mask. Yuck. A little-known consequence of mask mandates, social distancing at home and an uncertain economy has caused lipstick sales to take a serious hit. Market research firm Kline reports the U.S. cosmetics and toiletries market is on pace to experience the sharpest decline ever recorded in the 60-plus years theyve tracked this market sector all due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Kline findings are backed up by a consumer survey from McKinsey & Company, which estimates global beauty-industry revenues could fall 20 to 30% in 2020. If COVID-19 cases continue to surge in the United States, that decline could be as much as 35% by the end of the year. Bryant admits noticing a drop in sales, both online and at retail locations, which she attributes to a shaky economy. People are hesitant to spend money during this time, Bryant said. To combat falling sales, shes pivoted her business by creating a lip conditioner. Related: Online marketplace launches for military entrepreneurs. I understand you have to wear a mask, but you can still moisturize your lips underneath that mask and keep them healthy. Though she admittedly misses coming up with vibrant lip colors such as mysterious, rosebud and sunset breeze, to name a few of Bryants creations. After 21 years in the Army, Bryant traded in her combat boots for the beauty industry following her mothers passing in 2014. I started making lipsticks as a part of my grieving process because my mother loved lipstick so dearly, she said. She even named her business, Just Lovely Lipstick, with her mother in mind. Those are words my mother would say, Bryant recalls. I remember her always saying, Thats just lovely. Bryant confesses she was never much of a makeup wearer, especially during her time in the military. Still, she always appreciated how something as simple as adding a swipe of lipstick made her feel. Lipstick can brighten your day, she said. She urges women to turn to lipstick for that boost, even if they arent leaving the house. When you add that pop of color and look in the mirror, you feel put together and ready for your day, she said. So, whether it be for an at-home date night with your spouse, a Zoom call for work or a virtual happy hour with your girlfriends, she suggests you reach for your cosmetic bag. Even if its just once a week, put on that lipstick, put on that dress that makes you feel confident. Visit Just Lovely to support this veteran-owned business. Read the original article on MilitaryFamilies.com. Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, subscribe to Military.com and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox. United States President Donald Trump's administration has announced its plan to make a $7 billion arms deal with Taiwan. The decision aims to foster Taipei relationships as the U.S. increases its political and military pressure against Beijing. Massive arms deal According to the Wall Street Journal, two officials noted that the quantities of weaponry that America will sell to Taiwan include powerful cruise missiles, mines, and other hardware. The deal marks the largest arms agreement to the country. The sale also consists of $400 million worth of MQ-9B Reaper drones accompanied by related sensors, logistics, ground control stations, and several other necessary equipment and accessories. President Trump's administration has slowly been closing in on Taipei compared to previous administrations. The massive deal also comes after the nearly $15 billion weaponry the United States has sold to Taiwan under the Republican leader's rule. Over former U.S. President Barack Obama's eight years in service, the United States has sold about $14 billion worth of arms and weaponry to Taiwan. Previous sales to the island country were upon the request of Taiwan, and experts saw them as mostly symbolic as the nation was highly unlikely going to initiate a land war with mainland China. However, experts believe the recent sales that include drones and cruise missiles are ploys by the U.S. government to pressure Beijing as the Chinese government views Taiwan as a rebellious territory. Also Read: US Blocks Import Good from Xinjiang, Suspected of Being Made with Slave Labor Beijing has always kept the possibility of using military aggression to suppress and control the nation a plausible strategy. Officials of Trump's administration refused to comment on the matter. Support for the nation On the other hand, Taiwan's cabinet said a $7 billion budget is still waiting for parliamentary approval. However, officials have noted it would be used to boost areas of the country that have been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, focusing on the fishery, tourism, and aviation sectors, as reported by Reuters. Evian Ting, a cabinet spokesman for Taiwan, told reporters that they are hoping to assist the suffering sectors during this challenging crisis. Recently, the Taiwanese government has increased its efforts to support its citizens and plans to roll out a stimulus package. The bill is expected to include a net worth of $1.05 trillion and includes distribution of "stimulus coupons." An academy supported by the government, Academia Sinica, said this month, Taiwan's economy can slowly recover its losses during the second half. However, it noted that the heightening tension between the United States and China was a cause for major concern. With China continuously pushing its claims in the western Pacific and has consistently been undermining Hong Kong's autonomy, the Trump administration has moved to emphasize its relationship with Taiwan while being careful of its own policies regarding the island nation. For the past three months, Taiwan has only had eight active cases, resulting from its controlled response to the global health crisis. The government has implemented early and effective prevention protocols and has a robust public health system. Related Article: Biden, Trump Shares Similar Perspectives in Dealing With China on International Stage @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An arm's-length advocacy centre that often takes on government agencies in court should remain a part of the provincially funded legal aid program, Legal Aid Manitoba management decided this week. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An arm's-length advocacy centre that often takes on government agencies in court should remain a part of the provincially funded legal aid program, Legal Aid Manitoba management decided this week. The future of the Public Interest Law Centre was the focus of a Tuesday meeting of the Legal Aid Manitoba management council, which heard overwhelming support for PILC from dozens of community groups. Although its chairman wouldn't disclose the outcome of the meeting, multiple sources told the Free Press the council unanimously passed a motion that recommended keeping PILC within Legal Aid. The recommendation is contrary to the updated mandate letter given to Tory Justice Minister Cliff Cullen in March, directing him to find alternative funding arrangements for PILC "to secure its independence from government." The mandate letter followed a government-commissioned review of Legal Aid Manitoba that recommended PILC become a "free-standing organization" over time, suggesting the centre could gain more private endowments if it became a non-profit that didn't accept provincial funding. The recommendation is contrary to the updated mandate letter given to Tory Justice Minister Cliff Cullen in March, directing him to find alternative funding arrangements for PILC "to secure its independence from government." Tuesday's motion came after the management council heard from three local agencies that have benefitted from Public Interest Law Centre efforts, including those represented in human rights cases that led to legal change. The Consumers' Association of Canada, Cerebral Palsy Association of Manitoba, and Social Planning Council of Winnipeg gave virtual presentations, and more than 40 local organizations and individuals sent dozens of letters expressing support for maintaining PILC's public funding. Kate Kehler, executive director of the Social Planning Council, said the organization wants more government funding for PILC, not less, and to have provincial law require public support for the centre. "What exactly is this government trying to fix now by moving it out? Why was it of interest to them at this particular time?" Kehler said Wednesday. The Free Press asked the justice minister's office what the government's plans are for the Public Interest Law Centre, but didn't receive a response Wednesday. "We're not disclosing the outcome of the meeting at this point, because the council has got to review the minutes to confirm the accuracy of the decision." Allan Fineblit NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine, justice critic for the Opposition, voiced her support Wednesday for PILC's "critical" work, and said the NDP doesn't want it privatized. Tuesday's meeting was set to discuss the future of PILC, after the government asked the management council for its advice on recommendations stemming from Allan Fineblit's review of Legal Aid Manitoba. The Winnipeg-based lawyer is now chairman of the management council. Though he wouldn't discuss the outcome of the meeting, Fineblit said Wednesday he doesn't get a vote as chairman and his personal opinion on the matter has "evolved." "We're not disclosing the outcome of the meeting at this point, because the council has got to review the minutes to confirm the accuracy of the decision," Fineblit said. "Our goal in whatever we're going to do is to create the best possible chance for success of the Public Interest Law Centre." KEN GIGLIOTTI / FREE PRESS FILES Though he wouldn't discuss the outcome of the meeting, Allan Fineblit said Wednesday he doesn't get a vote as chairman and his personal opinion on the matter has "evolved." Fineblit said it's not unusual for governments to take an interest in PILC, no matter who is in power. Such tension has existed since PILC's inception in 1982, he said. "It's an obvious challenge for government when some of the things that are important to them are being challenged by an agency which they fund." PILC has taken on several high-profile constitutional challenges, including advocating for changes to Manitoba laws to stop the discrimination of marginalized groups, including same-sex parents and people with disabilities. It receives, on average, $250,000 to $350,000 a year in government funding. dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Dan Lett | Not for Attribution A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world that is sent every Tuesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Katie May Reporter Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press. Read full biography Fifi Box appeared downcast as she visited the shops with her daughter Daisy Belle on Thursday, following the death of her oldest child Trixie's half-sister Jaimi Kenny. The radio host, 43, wore a black mask as she carried her one-year-old daughter in her arms and entered the shopping complex. The mother-of-two was dressed in loose black trousers, a navy blue shirt and a warm pink jacket for the outing. Grieving: Radio host Fifi Box spent time with her baby girl Daisy Belle as she mourned the death of her daughter Trixie's older half-sister Jaimi Kenny on Thursday She completed her outfit with a pair of multi-print flats and appeared to be makeup-free. Fifi appeared in low spirits as she held a shopping bag in one hand and her daughter with the other. On Wednesday, Fifi shared a heartbreaking tribute to Jaimi, the eldest daughter of ex-partner Grant Kenny, who died on Monday at the age of 33 after secretly battling an eating disorder. Outing: The radio host wore a black mask as she carried her one-year-old daughter in her arms and entered the shopping complex Outfit: The mother-of-two was dressed in loose black trousers, a navy blue shirt and a warm pink jacket for the outing The radio host, who shared a close bond with Jaimi despite splitting from Grant eight years ago, posted a series of photos of her daughter Trixie with her older half-sister to Instagram. 'The loss of such a beautiful loving sister and friend is suffocating. We laughed, we cried, we shared so many wonderful memories that I will keep alive for Trixie who loved her big sister so much, her little heart is broken,' she wrote. 'You loved Trixie with all your heart and she felt every inch of your love. With every tight squeezy cuddle your love poured into her,' she added. Makeup-free: She completed her outfit with a pair of multi-print flats and appeared to be makeup-free Low spirits: Fifi appeared in low spirits as she held a shopping bag in one hand and her daughter with the other The 43-year-old media personality continued: 'We were so blessed to have you in our lives. You were such a true and loyal friend, we love you so much and can't bear the pain of you not being here.' Jaimi was the older half-sister of Fifi's daughter Trixie, who she welcomed in 2013 after a brief relationship with Grant. Despite splitting with Grant months before giving birth, Fifi remained close to his children Jaimi, Morgan and Jett from his first marriage to Australian swimming legend Lisa Curry. Devastating: On Wednesday, Fifi shared a heartbreaking tribute to Jaimi Kenny, the eldest daughter of ex-partner Grant Kenny, who died on Monday at the age of 33 after secretly battling an eating disorder Break: Fifi had also been absent from Fox FM's Fifi, Fev and Byron radio show on Tuesday and Wednesday morning Jaimi would even babysit Trixie on occasion while single mum Fifi was at work. Jaimi's mother, three-time Olympian Lisa Curry, separated from Grant in 2009 after 23 years of marriage, before finalising their divorce in 2017. Fifi and Grant dated for several months in 2012, but had broken up by the time she welcomed daughter Beatrix 'Trixie' Belle via IVF the following year. She did not acknowledge Grant was Trixie's father until 2016, when she shared a photo to Instagram of the retired athlete attending their child's third birthday party. In June 2019, Fifi welcomed another daughter, Daisy Belle, via IVF and an anonymous donor. The identity of Daisy's father is not public knowledge. Family: Jaimi was the older half-sister of Fifi's daughter Trixie, who she welcomed in 2013 after a brief relationship with Grant The Kenny-Curry family confirmed Jaimi's death in a statement on Monday afternoon. 'It is with a very heavy heart that Lisa and I confirm our beautiful daughter Jaimi has lost her battle with a long-term illness and passed away peacefully in hospital this morning in the company of loving family,' read the statement by Jaimi's father, Grant. 'Jaimi will forever be remembered as a caring, bright and loving soul who always put others before herself,' it continued. History: Fifi and Grant dated for several months in 2012, but had broken up by the time she welcomed daughter Beatrix 'Trixie' Belle via IVF the following year 'Our hearts are broken and the pain is immense but we must move forward cherishing every wonderful moment we got to share with our treasured first child. 'We thank the incredible team at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital for their tireless commitment to making her better and giving us the extra time we were able to spend with her. 'It goes without saying that this is a very difficult time for family and friends and we trust we will all be allowed to grieve in privacy.' New addition: In June 2019, Fifi welcomed another daughter, Daisy Belle, via IVF and an anonymous donor. The identity of Daisy's father is not public knowledge While the family's statement did not specify the exact nature of Jaimi's illness, it's understood she had long battled an eating disorder. Her family had supported her through years of treatment at the End ED private clinic on the Sunshine Coast. Jaimi is survived her her sister Morgan, brother Jett, mother Lisa, father Grant and half-sister Trixie. For free and confidential support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Butterfly Foundation for eating disorder concerns on 1800 ED HOPE On Tuesday, the day that the United States reached the threshold of 200,000 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump openly defended the US governments de facto policy of herd immunity, that is, allowing the virus to spread without restraint. Youll develop herd, Trump told a televised town hall event, before apparently catching himself and substituting the term herd mentality for herd immunity. He continued, Like a herd mentality. Its going to beits going to be herd-developed, and thats going to happen. As a result, he said, the pandemic will disappear. In openly defending herd immunity, Trump has let the cat out of the bag. In fact, herd immunity has been the guiding principle of his governments response to the pandemic, underlying his efforts to downplay the virus, handicap testing, and get workers back on the job as quickly as possible. As a strategy for responding to COVID-19, the advocates of herd immunity argue that the disease should be allowed to spread freely throughout the population, based on the claim that, at some point, enough people will become infected that the spread of the disease will slow down. Dr. Scott Atlas, whom Trump recently appointed as a COVID-19 advisor, argued for this approach in July, declaring, Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem. In fact, its a positive. Despite the strategys pseudoscientific trappings, it means nothing more nor less than allowing large numbers of the population, primarily the elderly and the sick, to die in a sort of mass eugenics program potentially costing millions of lives. Trump has spearheaded this policy and, as revealed in the tapes released by Bob Woodward, deliberately downplayed the threat and lied to the population. However, it has been supported and implemented by both the Democrats and Republicans. In late March, it was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who praised the herd immunity policy being pursued by the Swedish government, criticized lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus, and declared that the cure cant be worse than the disease. His column was followed by a Washington Post editorial praising Sweden for what it called an appealing model. Officially, every government in the world denies that it is carrying out a policy of herd immunity. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday, Herd immunity has never been a strategy here at the White House. She said that Scott Atlas never proposed herd immunity as a strategy, nor has the president. These are lies. Such denials have been issued by all the leading government advocates of this policy, including Sweden and the UK. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser to the Johnson government in the UK, told the media in March, Its not possible to stop everyone getting it, and its also not desirable because you want some immunity in the population. Subsequently, the government, baldly lying, declared herd immunity has never been our policy or goal. Sweden, which left schools open while other European countries closed them, has likewise denied it is pursuing a herd immunity policy. But last month, leaked emails revealed that chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell advocated leaving the countrys schools open precisely because it would lead to a wider spread of the virus. One point might speak for keeping schools open in order to reach herd immunity more quickly, wrote Tegnell secretly on March 14 to his Finnish counterpart. The fact is that herd immunity is the policy of governments throughout the world. They are all lying about it because their actions, allowing large sections of the population to become infected, are criminal, inhuman and indefensible. As they accelerate their back-to-work campaign, governments are dropping even the most threadbare efforts to claim they are actively combating the disease. To overcome the health crisis, we must learn to live with the virus, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted last month. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, for his part, said not enough politicians were thinking like health economists trained to pose uncomfortable questions about the level of deaths we might have to live with. He said the response to the disease should be more akin to electing to make elderly relatives as comfortable as possible while nature takes its course. On Wednesday, the regional premier of Madrid, Spain likewise embraced herd immunity, declaring, It is likely that practically all children, one way or another, will be infected with coronavirus. For years, the rising life expectancy of the working class in developed countries has been presented as a problem by US and European think tanks. A 2013 paper by Anthony H. Cordesman of the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) presented the increasing longevity of ordinary Americans as a crisis for US imperialism. The US does not face any foreign threat as serious as its failure to come to grips with the rise in the cost of federal entitlement spending, Cordesman wrote, saying the debt crisis was driven almost exclusively by the rise in federal spending on major health care programs, Social Security, and the cost of net interest on the debt. In other words, after workers are too old to serve as sources of surplus value and profit, their pensions and health care benefits become drains on money that could be better used to pay corporate bonuses and fund the military. From the standpoint of the ruling class, the pandemic has had very real benefits. It has created a pretext for the transfer of more than $4 trillion in bailouts to corporate balance sheets, sending stock values soaring. By creating mass unemployment, it has broken up a tight labor market, lowering wages. And most of all, with the median age of those who die being 78 years old, it means that money earmarked for pension funds, social security and health care for the elderly can now be handed over to the financial oligarchy. The United States is now in the midst of reopening schools and universities, creating a surge of new outbreaks all over the country. In light of the emails by Swedens state epidemiologist saying that leaving schools open will create more infections, it is clear that the White House is working with an estimate of the number of people who will become infected and die as a result, and is proceeding regardless. Two hundred thousand people have now lost their lives because of the criminal policies of the US ruling class. If the present policies continue, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, another 215,000 will lose their lives over the next three months. If this catastrophe is to be averted, the response to the pandemic must be taken out of the hands of the criminals responsible for the present disaster. No election, whether in the United States or anywhere else, will end the pandemic. As made clear by the complicity of the US media and the Democratic Party in covering up the pandemic in January and February, all factions of the political establishment are united in prioritizing the wealth of the financial oligarchy over human life. The prerequisite for containing and eradicating the pandemic all over the world is the mobilization of the working class on a politically independent basis in the struggle for socialism. As courtyard disputes go, the battle for control of a small stretch of wall on a children's playground in Minsk is a regime-changer. Just a short drive north of Mink's city center -- the usual gathering site for mass protests that have been held nightly in the capital since Belarus's disputed August 9 presidential election -- an apartment block courtyard has become a symbol of the resistance to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's continued rule. So much so that the courtyard of Building No. 3 has been renamed "Change Square" by locals who have stepped in to protect and maintain a mural dedicated to the opposition. The mural honors two disc jockeys -- Kiryl Halanav and Uladzislau Sakalouski -- who were punished for spinning a popular Soviet-era protest song during a pro-government rally on August 7. The two were arrested and got 10 days in jail for their role in hijacking the event by playing the Viktor Tsoi song We Want Changes, but the image of them holding up opposition victory signs as the authorities moved in was soon preserved in black and white spray paint. Ever since, the wall alongside a merry-go-round and a children's playhouse has become a battleground, with masked men under police guard coming to paint over the mural, and the locals quickly repainting it. "We are restoring what some unidentified persons, vandals, came and painted over," one local resident told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. "This is our yard, our rules. But some people constantly come and destroy what we create." The back and forth between residents and the authorities has placed the expansive courtyard in the spotlight. Belarusian musicians have shown up to entertain large nighttime crowds from a first-floor balcony, with the makeshift stage and the rest of the high-rise building lit up in red and white, the colors of the opposition. 'A Symbol Of Change' Each time the police come to paint over the mural -- at one point handing out a $2,500 fine to the homeowners' association -- local residents emerge with fresh paint and red and white ribbons and flags to redecorate the space. "For us, this is already a symbol of our yard, a symbol of change and our struggle," another resident of Building No. 3 told Current Time. "We just want to show that we want change and will not just give up." Stsyapan Latipav rose above the crowd in defending the mural just days after speaking to Current Time. "One morning we had this mural, and we really like it, we find artistic value in it, especially in the spirit of the time," Latipav said earlier this week. "It reminds us of the achievements of those who do not agree with the current system." When security forces returned to the courtyard on September 15, Latipav stood his ground, refusing to move as a worker ringed by masked officers again painted over the mural. For this he was subsequently detained, his apartment searched, and he was charged with participating in a riot. As Latipav was escorted by police from his building, the suddenly noticeably limping resident was met with a chorus of cheers by onlookers. The next evening, Minsk residents gave him the hero's treatment, with "We Are All Stsyapan Latipav" projected on a high-rise in the south of the capital. At Change Square, nothing really changed. Despite the additional scrutiny by security forces, residents had managed to decorate the playground fence with red and white ribbons. But on September 16 they awoke to find that the battle of the courtyard continued -- the fence was now green and red, the color of the official state flag and the symbol of Lukashenka's rule. Written by Michael Scollon based on reporting by Current Time correspondent Raman Vasiukovich Alpine tree frog. Credit: University of Melbourne Researchers from the University of Melbourne and University of Pittsburgh, U.S. have found that diseases that affect frogs can be detected in environmental samples like soil and water, helping conservationists in their efforts to address declining amphibian populations. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, refers to samples that can be found in the environment, that is the soil water, rather than taking direct samples from a given species. Using eDNA has strong advantages when it can be very difficult to capture and test animals, particularly ones that are critically endangered. Dr. Laura Brannelly from the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences said that it was important to determine the use and limitations when it comes to using eDNA to detect pathogens. "Australia has a problem with pathogens killing off many of our native frogs such as the Corroboree frog and Baw Baw frog. We really need to test different ways of anticipating pathogens in their habitats so that we can work on appropriate interventions to help protect these vulnerable populations," Dr. Brannelly said. "As you'd imagine, it's not easy catching frogs, particularly some of the very small and functionally extinct species that we are looking for. They can hide very well in their habitat. This is why it's so important to investigate alternative methods of assessing dangers in a given environments." The study investigated the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). This pathogen is a leading cause of frog declines around the world and causes chytridiomycosisan infectious and deadly diseasein frogs. Since the 1980s, it has become increasingly evident that it is not simply environmental distribution and habitat loss than is contributing to frog declines, but the introduction of pathogens that are having devastating effects on frog populations. The study found that when testing for a known pathogen like Bd, water samples were just as good as animal swabs when it came to detecting the presence of the pathogen. Soil samples were useful but not as accurate as water and skin swabs. The researchers also found that eDNA did not provide accurate estimates for pathogen load (the amount of pathogen present). So, while eDNA can be used to detect the presence of a pathogen, swabbing frog populations would still be required to determine the overall risk. "Using eDNA, we can help monitor pathogen movement across the landscape, and it has the potential to be used to predict die offs," Dr. Brannelly said. "We've learnt that pathogens like Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis thrive in cooler conditions. Knowing this could help for future environmental interventions to help protect frogs. But the first thing that is crucial is to be able to detect the presence of that pathogen. "In this sense using eDNA should not replace traditional swabbing, but we know that it can be a first step in monitoring sites, allowing for the identification of areas where more intensive monitoring should happen." The technique for testing eDNA can be used more broadly for other pathogens affecting humans and agriculture. One example is that eDNA is currently being for bovine tuberculous to detect the risk of spillover from wildlife to agricultural cows. Explore further Lost frogs rediscovered with environmental DNA More information: Laura A. Brannelly et al. Evaluating environmental DNA as a tool for detecting an amphibian pathogen using an optimized extraction method, Oecologia (2020). Journal information: Oecologia Laura A. Brannelly et al. Evaluating environmental DNA as a tool for detecting an amphibian pathogen using an optimized extraction method,(2020). DOI: 10.1007/s00442-020-04743-4 A man with 154 previous convictions appeared at Naas District Court on August 20. Trevor Mooney, whose address was given as 69 Moatview Avenue, Priorswood, Dublin 17, was prosecuted for a stealing offence in Newbridge on July 11. It was further alleged that he took 70 from a purse. It was claimed he took the purse from a car which had been parked at Eyre Street, Newbridge, on that date. The court was told 35 was recovered. Sgt Brian Jacob told Judge John Cheatle that the defendants convictions included one for theft last March and for burglary in 2019. Solicitor Sean McCormack said the defendant, who is aged 48, pleaded at the earliest opportunity and made full admissions. Referring to the theft from the car, he said it was opportunistic as the door was open. The defendant had also lost his wallet that day. He also said that the defendant was highly intoxicated that day. He said the 48 year old has an appalling record and has lived a life in and out of prison. He said he has tried to deal with his addiction issues and had lost a brother to suicide. He said the defendant had reverted to alcohol with the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak. Mr McCormack also said that a place at a treatment centre will become available for the defendant after Christmas. Commenting that the defendants record is unenviable, Judge Cheatle imposed a three months term and backdated this to July 13 last. Mickey Guyton cradled her baby bump as she hit the red carpet for the ACM Awards in Nashville this Wednesday. The 37-year-old singing sensation cut a glamorous figure in an off-the-shoulder white gown with a luxuriously massive train. She hit the red carpet at country music's iconic Grand Ole Opry ahead of her musical turn at the socially distant awards extravaganza. Mother to be: Mickey Guyton cradled her baby bump as she hit the red carpet for the ACM Awards in Nashville this Wednesday After the carpet portion she took the stage of the Grand Ole Opry to perform with Australian country star Keith Urban who hosted the show. She delivered a stirring rendition of What Are You Gonna Tell Her? which is about a parent trying to explain bigotry to a child. The song begins: 'She thinks life is fair and God hears every prayer, and everyone gets their ever after. She thinks love is love, and if you work hard that's enough - skin's just skin and it doesn't matter.' Her lyrics continue: 'And that her friend's older brother's gonna keep his hands to himself, and that somebody's gonna believe her when she tells.' Looking fab: The 37-year-old singing sensation cut a glamorous figure in an off-the-shoulder white gown with a luxuriously massive train Making it happen: She hit the red carpet at country music's iconic Grand Ole Opry ahead of her musical turn at the socially distant awards extravaganza Working their magic: After the carpet portion she took the stage of the Grand Ole Opry to perform with Australian country star Keith Urban who hosted the show Statement: She delivered a stirring rendition of What Are You Gonna Tell Her? which is about a parent trying to explain bigotry to a child Mickey arrived at the event in a dove white gown reminiscent of Old Hollywood, wearing her hair in a lightly wavy do. Accentuating her screen siren features with makeup, she flashed a bit of leg through the high slit up her frock's right side. Her cape was so long that it stretched into a train, which was neatly spread out behind her as she sang onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. Mickey balanced on a pair of silver ankle-strap stilettos as she sang up a storm into the microphone, which matched her dress. Looking fab: Mickey arrived at the event in a dove white gown reminiscent of Old Hollywood, wearing her hair in a lightly wavy do Details: Accentuating her screen siren features with makeup, she flashed a bit of leg through the high slit up her frock's right side Place to be: Her cape was so long that it stretched into a train, which was neatly spread out behind her as she sang onstage at the Grand Ole Opry She is currently expecting her firstborn child by her lawyer husband Grant Savoy whom she married on Kauai in 2017. The country songbird announced her first pregnancy last month and revealed that she was due sometime next year. She wrote alongside her Instagram reveal: 'God sent me an angel in these dark times and I am beyond grateful and terrified and all of the things.' To the tee: Mickey balanced on a pair of silver ankle-strap stilettos as she sang up a storm into the microphone, which matched her dress Family matters: She is currently expecting her firstborn child by her lawyer husband Grant Savoy whom she married on Kauai in 2017 Mickey's sensational performance at the ACM Awards comes just five days after the release of her latest EP Bridges which includes such songs as Black Like Me. The ACM Awards extravaganza blends live and pre-taped segments and be held across three Nashville landmarks, facilitating social distancing. One of the venues was the Grand Ole Opry where Mickey and Keith performed and the others were the Ryman Auditorium and Bluebird Cafe. The decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to set up a visitation panel, for the University of Lagos, made up of former university vice-chancellors was wrong, Wale Babalakin said in his resignation letter on Tuesday. PREMIUM TIMES reported Mr Babalakins resignation as the pro-chancellor of the troubled institution just after the panel set up by the president submitted its report. The panel was set up after an August 12 emergency meeting of the universitys governing council, led by Mr Babalakin, announced the removal of the institutions substantive vice-chancellor, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe. Mr Ogundipe rejected his removal as illegal, thus worsening the crisis in the federal university for whom the president is the Visitor. Consequent upon the controversy, Mr Buhari asked Mr Babalakin and Mr Ogundipe to step aside from the offices. The president also set up the seven-member visitation panel led by former vice-chancellor of Federal University of Technology (FUT), Minna, Niger State, Tukur Saad. The panel was to look into the crisis rocking the university and the allegations levelled against Mr Ogundipe by the governing council. The committee submitted its report to the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, Thursday without divulging the content. In his resignation letter, Mr Babalakin faulted the membership of the visitation panel. The membership of the Visitation Panel is simply inappropriate in the circumstance. How can a committee of Vice-Chancellors determine the culpability or otherwise of the actions of a Pro-Chancellor and a Governing Council? On the face of it, it is simply wrong!, he said. According to him, the vice-chancellors on the panel were drawn from relatively smaller universities who are not likely to have a comprehensive understanding of the procedure contained in the University of Lagos Act (as amended). Even Vice-Chancellors of state universities were included. As Chairman of the Federal Government Negotiation Team, I know the challenges faced with the administration of state universities, Mr Babalakin said while insisting that the removal of Mr Ogundipe followed due process. Read Mr Babalakins full resignation letter below. 15th September 2020 The Honourable Minister of Education Federal Ministry of Education Block 5A, Federal Secretariat Complex Shehu Shagari Way Abuja Attention: Mallam Adamu Adamu Dear Sir LETTER OF RESIGNATION 1. I would like to thank the President of the Federal of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari for giving me the opportunity to serve as the Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lagos (the University) from May 2017 till date. I am also grateful that I was considered fit to be the Chairman of the Federal Government Negotiation Team on the Agreement reached with university unions in 2009, from 6th January 2017 till date. I equally want to thank you, sir, for your role in recommending me to the President. Advertisements 2. Recent events have made my position in these two offices untenable. 3. I led the Governing Council of the University to remove the Vice-Chancellor of the University from office for amongst other reasons: a. Corruption and financial recklessness; b. Forgery; c. Complicity in the collapse of the University library and planned cover-up; d. Deliberate policy of wrongfully concealing information; e. Depriving the Faculties in the University of funds; f. Concealing and distorting finances of the Internally Generating Units of the University; g. Undermining the academic process and seeking to appoint a Professor by fiat; h. Siphoning of the Universitys funds through dubious contract awards; i. Undermining the office of the Registrar; j. Failure to follow due process in organizing the Universitys convocation ceremony; and k. Sponsoring or acquiescing in the unconstitutional actions of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Lagos chapter. 4. Sir, it is noteworthy that all the Federal Government Representatives who are the independent members on the Governing Council voted for the removal of the Vice-Chancellor. 5. After calm had been restored in the University, the Visitor acting within his powers, set up a Presidential Visitation Panel to review the actions taken by Governing Council. The Vice-Chancellor (who had been removed from office) and myself were told to recuse ourselves for the duration of the Visitation Panel. I find it difficult to understand how a non-executive Chairman of a Governing Council could be requested to recuse himself during the visitation 6. The Vice-Chancellor could only recuse himself if he were still in office. Implicit in this position is that the Vice-Chancellor was acknowledged as still being in office despite his removal. 7. The terms of reference of the Visitation Panel clearly indicated to any discerning person that the Visitation Panel was empanelled to exonerate the Vice-Chancellor and implicate the Pro-Chancellor. For easy reference, the terms of reference of the Visitation Panel are: a. To review the report of the Council sub-committee on review of expenditure of the University of Lagos since May 2017 and make appropriate recommendations after affording all those indicted an opportunity to defend themselves; b. To examine the steps taken by the Council leading to the removal of the Vice Chancellor, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, and ascertain whether due process was followed as stipulated in the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act, 2003, and the principle of fair hearing adhered to; c. To determine whether the process (if any) leading to the appointment of the acting Vice Chancellor for the University was consistent with the provisions of the enabling Act; d. To make appropriate recommendations including sanctions for all those found culpable by the special visitation team on the allegations contained in the report as well as other subsequent actions arising therefrom; and e. To make any other recommendations that will assist the government to take decisions that will ensure peaceful, stable and effective administration of the University. 8. As stated earlier, the Vice-Chancellor was removed for various reasons and not just as a result of the findings contained in the Dagari Report. Items (b) and (c) were directed at the Pro-Chancellor and Governing Council. Unfortunately, those items deal with the interpretation of the laws of the land. The appropriate forum to determine the laws of the land is a court of law or a judicial tribunal. It cannot be determined by academics of a different discipline no matter how distinguished. These terms of reference are ultra-vires the Visitation Panel as constituted. 9. The membership of the Visitation Panel is simply inappropriate in the circumstance. How can a committee of Vice-Chancellors determine the culpability or otherwise of the actions of a Pro-Chancellor and a Governing Council? On the face of it, it is simply wrong! Furthermore, the Vice-Chancellors on the Panel were drawn from relatively smaller universities who are not likely to have a comprehensive understanding of the procedure contained in the University of Lagos Act (as amended). Even Vice-Chancellors of state universities were included. As Chairman of the Federal Government Negotiation Team, I know the challenges faced with the administration of state universities. 10. I only appeared before the Panel out of my very great respect for you, Sir. My training as a lawyer revealed to me very clearly, that the Panel was inappropriate for the assignment. During my appearance, I made it very clear that I was appearing in protest and the Panel, as constituted, could not determine the issues before it. The active participation of the staff of the Ministry of Education in the Panel and their contributions throughout the sittings especially the hounding of witnesses who came to testify against the Vice-Chancellor was enough to show very clearly that the technocrats in the Ministry had a defined agenda. Their obvious agenda was to humiliate the Governing Council. Sir, fortunately there is a verbatim recording of the proceedings of the Visitation Panel, and you may wish to direct objective persons to listen to the recording. 11. I am particularly relieved by the comment of the Chancellor of the University, His Royal Highness, Alhaji (Dr) Abubakar Ibn Umar Garbai Al Amin El-Kanemi CFR on the situation in the University. In a letter dated 15th September 2020 and addressed to your good self (which I was copied), His Royal Highness stated thus: I have discovered that there are too many vested interests in this matter, who are not approaching the issues objectively. For this reason, I strongly advise that the Visitation Panel should not submit any formal report to the Minister that may hinder my ability to deal with the issues comprehensively 12. I have served the university system in Nigeria with my heart and intellect. Amongst other offices, I was: a. Pro-Chancellor, University of Maiduguri (2009 2013); b. Chairman, Council of Pro-Chancellors of all Federal Universities (2009 2013); c. Chairman, Federal Government Implementation Team of the 2009 Agreement (2009 2013); d. Chairman, Federal Government Negotiation Team of the 2009 Agreement (2017 till date); e. Pro-Chancellor, University of Lagos (2017 till date). 13. These were made possible by a system that provided resources and also ensured proper monitoring of the resources. The educational system in Nigeria requires more funding but most importantly, it requires prudent management of the limited resources. It was my determination to ensure that the limited resources of the University of Lagos were properly utilized that motivated me to lead the Governing Council to take the decisions which the Governing Council took. 14. In all these positions that I have held, I did not receive any remuneration. Specifically: a. I did not receive any sitting allowance. b. I did not receive any tickets or travel allowance. c. I did not receive or use any official car. d. In the University of Maiduguri and University of Lagos, I did not allow the institutions to provide me with food or drinks. I paid for every right or privilege that was conferred on me. e. Even when I travelled to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria, I paid for my ticket and my expenses. f. I did not obtain any contract from the education sector in my relative long sojourn in the sector. 15. My motivation for my actions is that I had the best education that an intellect could provide in Nigeria and abroad. It is my fervent desire that every Nigerian should have the sort of opportunities I had. 16. I remain very grateful to all the members of the Federal Government team on the Governing Council of the University of Lagos, namely: a. Alhaji Ali Hussein; b. Rev. Yomi Kasai; c. Dr. Bayo Adaralegbe; and d. Dr. Saminu Dagari. 17. It would be very difficult to find a group of more selfless persons than these individuals. It is acutely hurtful that I am leaving before achieving our goal of sanitizing the University of Lagos, and turning it to a reference point in Africa and the world, rather than the unenviable poor position it now occupies. Unfortunately, I must stand by principle. In a situation where my employers believe that the actions I took may not be right, the appropriate thing to do is bow out in honour. Sir, may the Almighty Allah continue to bless you. Yours faithfully Dr. B. O. Babalakin, Police Arrest Man Who Pointed Gun at Demonstrators Police officers in Milwaukee arrested a man on Tuesday who brandished a gun after some demonstrators appeared to go onto his property, calling out his name and shining lights into his windows. Officers monitoring the protest around 8:30 p.m. were told by a witness that the man was inside his house by a window and motioned a long gun he was holding as if he chambered a round and then pointed the gun at the crowd, the Milwaukee Police Department said in a statement sent to The Epoch Times. Video footage of what happened circulated online. Officers made contact with the suspect and found he appeared to be intoxicated. He was arrested on charges of endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon while under the influence of an intoxicant, disorderly conduct while armed, and bail jumping. The 56-year-old man, who was not identified, had been arrested the day before because he allegedly threatened to physically harm his neighbor while wielding a chainsaw, according to police. Criminal charges will be referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorneys Office in the upcoming days, police said, adding, The Milwaukee Police Department continues to support the rights of those who choose to peacefully protest. A police spokesperson said no other arrests were made. Video footage from the scene appeared to show several people walking around the house as others shined lights into the windows. A group of dozens had gathered and were blasting music and dancing on the street and sidewalk. At least one person was wielding an item that could have been used as a weapon. The house had an American flag on the front door and a sign indicating support for President Donald Trump. The group cheered when the man was arrested. The protest appeared to have been arranged after a woman in the neighborhood accused the man of calling some of the neighbors a racial slur. Vaun Mayes, who helped spread the word about the demonstration, said neighbors organized and requested it. A number of folks who typically dont even come out to everyday protests came due to the videos that have come out showing him harassing and berating neighbors, using the n word, etc., he said. No one went on his property, they stood on the next door neighbors property to see him being arrested and used the opposite neighbors yard to follow the arrest back into the alley. We made sure we let folks know not to trespass, he added. At some point he or someone else would likely have gotten hurt, and Im glad that was avoided. These pop up protests are not illegal. People have protested at peoples homes for forever, this is nothing new. No one is exempt from being protested. Politicians, business owners, nor everyday citizens. We have not harmed anyone nor anyones property during OUR protests. At some of our protests, the person or people have come out and talked to us, apologized for behaviors, even partied, and or danced with us. Its all up to the person and how they react. According to court records, Mayes is a convicted felon. The demonstration was part of a series of protest parties organized by a group called Justice Tour 2020Protest Parties MKE. In a post on Facebook Thursday, Mayes wrote that people are mad [expletive] at me lol, adding: Theyll start a gofundme for the drunken Milwaukee Chainsaw Massacrer next lol. Apparently you can do anything and be defended if you fly a Trump flag. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Hong Kong Thu, September 17, 2020 09:35 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4550040 2 World China,Hong-Kong,Made-in-Hong-Kong,made-in-China,export,label Free Hong Kong has filed a formal objection with the United States over its demand for "Made in China" labels on goods exported from the Chinese semi-autonomous city, the commerce secretary said on Wednesday. Washington's move last month followed China's imposition of a national security law on the former British colony and a US decision to end a special status that had allowed Hong Kong different treatment from the rest of China. Now Hong Kong authorities find themselves in a bind over having had to reject the "Made in China" label at a time when they are cracking down on activists opposing China and the city's pro-Beijing government. Commerce Secretary Edward Yau said he formally asked the US consulate to relay Hong Kong's request for withdrawal of the new regulations to US trade officials. "Such regulations go contrary to WTO (World Trade Organization) regulations and infringe upon our rights as a separate customs region," Yau told reporters. "We are a separate, and indeed, independent member of the WTO." Yau, who first complained about Washington's move in August, said Hong Kong reserved the right to seek dispute settlement at the WTO. The comments come a day after the WTO ruled that additional tariffs imposed by the United States against China in 2018 were inconsistent with global trading rules. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a one country, two systems agreement that promised it a high degree of autonomy for 50 years. Many credit its unbridled capitalism, guarantees of a wide range of rights and freedoms, and independent legal system with helping Hong Kong to prosper as a global financial hub and interface for China and the world. But critics say the new security law, targeting activities that Beijing considers to be subversion, secessionism, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces, effectively brings Hong Kong closer to China's authoritarian system. Supporters of the law say it will bring stability after a year of anti-government protests. The United States has extended until Nov. 9 its enforcement deadline on the "Made in China" label, from Sept. 25 previously. CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With the 'Windy City' quickly gaining a reputation as the 'Warring City,' people might think this show is going to be a flashy movie or series about an army of men, banding together to fight crime and take back the city streets. Instead, this is a REAL-life, REAL-time documentary that follows the REAL heroes of Chicago's violent South Side - the FEMALE medical staff at Roseland Community Hospital - the only helpline in the area. They're women at war and this is their story. The Michael Group When The Michael Group began filming at Roseland Community Hospital, located in the heart of Chi-town's notorious South Side, the COVID-19 pandemic hadn't hit the world yet. The Black Lives Matter movement hadn't yet peaked and life outside seemed somewhat "normal." Yet, for those within the walls of the 134-bed hospital, it's a constant battle. Life inside Roseland is a miraculously managed war zone, with four brave female nurses at the helm. It's these women that take center-stage in this fast-paced, in-your-face-documentary that will break hearts and move viewers beyond compassion into fighting action. Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the U.S. and the South Side of Chicago certainly sees its fair share of this violence, often being at the forefront of what is now the city's worst murder epidemic in years. At the heart of all this violence is the community of Roseland, with a crime rate that's 83% higher than the national average. Within this community lies a beacon of hope: Roseland Community Hospital. Its Emergency Room is the only one in the area it's the only place people can go to get help. The female-led film crew, guided by Executive Producer Michael Weber, was able to gain unprecedented access to capture not only the everyday chaos of the ER but the heart and soul of the female heroes that often are the difference between life and death. Viewers will see nurses Lynette Houston, Capri Reese, Niecy Bland, and medical assistant Tiffany Hillard brave countless hours saving lives and the emotions that go with being in one of the most chaotic ERs in the country as they work tirelessly to save their community. "These women deserve medals. It's not often that we see strong, powerful real-life female heroes on television. I'm so happy to have been part of the team to help bring these women to the forefront. This has been an absolute passion project," says female Executive Producer Michael Weber. "As someone who grew up in the area, I saw this project as a way to demonstrate to the world that there is more to the South Side of Chicago than gun violence and poverty. Roseland is a vibrant community that produces skilled medical professionals who are saving lives every day," said Craig J. Harris, co-Executive Producer. This documentary spotlights a largely African-American community torn apart by gun violence. It shows people battling to survive on their own city streets, and a fearless group of doctors and nurses risking their own safety and fighting against all odds to bring hope and healthcare to those who can barely afford it but desperately need it. Make sure to tune in to watch "Chicago ER" when it premieres on LIFETIME, Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. Where heroes are strong women who don't wear capes they wear scrubs. Media Contact: Michael Weber 312-649-0091 [email protected] www.michaelgroupltd.com Related Images chicago-er-premieres-on-lifetime.jpg 'Chicago ER' Premieres on LIFETIME, Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 9 PM ET/8 PM CT SOURCE The Michael Group FLINT, MI A Flint woman his hospitalized after police say a man crashed into her with his car. About 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 16, responded to Euston Street near Freeman Avenue for a personal injury accident. Multiple witnesses on scene told officers a burgundy vehicle traveling northbound on Euston Street drove off the roadway and struck a woman in the yard of a residence. The driver subsequently stopped the vehicle and placed the unconscious woman into the front passenger seat. The woman was taken to McLaren Hospital by the driver where she was listed in critical condition. The driver fled the hospital prior to police contact. There have not been any arrests made for this incident at this time. The investigation is on-going. Those with information related to this incident are urged to called Detective Trooper Dennis Hartman at 810-285-3649 or, to remain anonymous, to call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-422-5245, P3Tips mobile app, or CrimeStoppersofFlint.com. Read more: Saginaw County mother gets probation for role in toddler sons death Ex-Saginaw cop punched arrested woman four times in two incidents, attorney general says Police arrest suspect in August shooting on Bay Citys West Side We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form By PTI NEW DELHI: The leaders of eight opposition parties held a protest in the Parliament complex against the government on Thursday, demanding GST dues. Congress leaders were absent from the protest. Addressing a press briefing after the protest, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP and national spokesperson Derek O'Brien said the largest opposition party was not invited for the agitation. Leaders from the TMC, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Samajwadi Party (SP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena took part in the protest. "It is increasingly becoming clear to us that in Parliament, the regional parties are finding it easier to coordinate with each other to strategise. The Congress can no longer decide the subject and then the dosage of opposition strategy. They cannot do something in the states and seek support in Parliament," O'Brien said. The protest that lasted for around 15 minutes saw leaders like Akhilesh Yadav, Supriya Sule, Manoj Jha, Sanjay Singh among others holding banners and thalis to show what the states were paid by the Centre as GST dues. Its no accident that the frequently bloody events that occur in The Devil All the Time take place in and around a small Ohio town called Knockemstiff. Its a real place, but what goes down in this fictionalized version of it (and parts of nearby West Virginia) seem entirely too deadly to be believed. Based on the 2011 debut novel by Donald Roy Pollock, who actually comes from Knockemstiff, and who provides the films colorful narration in a gravelly drawl that sounds a little like Billy Bob Thorntons Devil features not one but two of the following things: suicide, serial killers and sinister preachers. More singular events include human crucifixion, animal sacrifice, death by cancer and, naturally, a corrupt sheriff. That last role is played by a pudgy-looking Sebastian Stan, who joins the top-notch cast, which includes Bill Skarsgard, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke, Riley Keough, Harry Melling and Robert Pattinson, playing various wicked, misguided and/or unfortunate souls. Tom Holland and Eliza Scanlen anchor the story, which is bookended by World War II and the Vietnam War: orphans at the moral center of a swirl of corruption to which the world seems indifferent. Directed by Antonio Campos (Christine), who co-wrote the adaptation with his brother Paul Campos, its a gripping, dark and deeply ambivalent narrative. Call it hillbilly noir: an Appalachian-set story of good and evil in which there seems to be an unhealthy preponderance of the latter. R. Available on Netflix. Contains violence, bloody and disturbing images, sexuality, graphic nudity and crude language throughout. 138 minutes. As wildfires continue to blaze through Oregon, California and Washington State, thousands of people have been displaced, millions of acres have been burned and state leaders are struggling to help survivors who have lost their homes and loved ones. At the same time, Hurricane Sally, which made landfall in Alabama on Wednesday morning, brought torrential rain and flooding to the Gulf Coast, less than a month after Hurricane Laura left a trail of devastation across the region. Here are resources for helping those affected by the fires and the storm, with an emphasis on local nonprofit charities. Before you donate After disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, there is often an increase in fraudulent activity. If you suspect an organization or person may be committing fraud, you can report it to the National Center for Disaster Fraud. When humans see their children about to eat something they oughtn't, we can simply tell them, "Don't eat that. It'll make you sick." Those who listen to this advice are spared the painful experience of learning that lesson for themselves. While other animals can't sit their offspring down for a good talking-to, that doesn't mean they are unable to instruct their descendants about potential harms. For instance, the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans feeds on bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. However, certain environmental conditions can cause P. aeruginosa to change in such a way that it becomes pathogenic -- that is, it sickens worms that eat it. In 2019, researchers in the Murphy lab showed that when worm mothers are made ill by P. aeruginosa, they learn to avoid the bacterium. Not only that, but their offspring, all the way down to their great-great grandchildren, somehow also know to avoid the bacterium. After four generations, though, the transgenerational avoidance behavior disappears, letting the worms return to feeding on the bacterium once more. C. elegans has been so intensively studied that we not only know the identity (e.g., neuron, muscle cell, intestinal cell, etc.) of every cell in its body, but also the order in which it appears during embryonic development. Nonetheless, the worm still manages to surprise us with complex behaviors such as transgenerational avoidance. What causes this behavior? Initial work by the Murphy lab showed that other types of pathogenic bacteria didn't cause avoidance behavior in offspring, indicating the behavior is specific to pathogenic P. aeruginosa. Furthermore, the researchers showed that avoidance of pathogenic P. aeruginosa is controlled by one particular worm neuron. But several questions about the phenomenon remained, so the team continued to investigate. "We wondered how the worms can know the identity of the bacteria they are eating," said Coleen Murphy, a professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics (LSI) and the senior author of a paper detailing the team's findings in the journal Nature. To investigate this question, two Murphy lab researchers -- associate research scholar Rachel Kaletsky and graduate student Rebecca Moore -- fed worms with a harmless bacterium that had been spiked with different materials isolated from pathogenic P. aeruginosa. These materials included substances involved in the bacterium's metabolic processes, as well as bacterial genetic material. The latter is composed of three classes of molecules: DNA, which can be thought of as a cookbook containing recipes for all the proteins the organism needs to make to survive; messenger RNAs, which are copies of individual recipes that are read out to build proteins; and small RNAs, which don't code for proteins but instead perform regulatory functions in cells, often by promoting the destruction of messenger RNAs. "Instead of a signal from the metabolites that the bacteria produce, as we had originally expected, we found that the worms 'read' the small RNAs that bacteria make, particularly small RNAs that correlate with the pathogenic state of the bacteria," said Murphy. In fact, the researchers discovered that inherited avoidance behavior requires one specific bacterial small RNA, called P11. "The bacterial work that Geoff Vrla in Zemer Gitai's lab did was critical for proving that the key small RNA was P11," said Murphy. "The P11 small RNA itself doesn't even make the worms sick -- just detecting the presence of P11 is enough to make the worms avoid the bacteria, and to pass it on to four generations of progeny," she adds. Kaletsky, Moore and their colleagues found that once a worm has eaten the bacterium, P11 is absorbed and processed by the worm intestine, then it finds its way into the worm's eggs and sperm. (C. elegans mothers are hermaphrodites, so they possess both types of reproductive cells and can self-fertilize.) From there, P11 is conveyed to the neuron that controls avoidant behavior in the mother, where it causes destruction of worm messenger RNAs that encode a protein called macoilin. Loss of the messenger RNAs prevents manufacture of this protein, and this in turn causes the worm to avoid the pathogenic bacterium. P11's presence in the worm's reproductive cells also ensures it is available to subsequent generations of worms. "As far as we know, this is the first example found of an animal host 'reading' the small RNA of a pathogen and evolving a response that helps it stay healthier, a kind of nascent adaptive immune system response," said Murphy. "There are only a few examples of such inter-species molecular communication via small RNAs, and even fewer examples of adaptive transgenerational behavioral changes in response to small RNAs," said Julie Claycomb, the Canada Research Chair in Small RNA Biology at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the work. "This study sets a high standard for understanding the molecular mechanisms governing such phenomena, and opens a novel area of investigation going forward," added Claycomb. ### "C. elegans interprets bacterial non-coding RNAs to learn pathogenic avoidance" was published in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2699-5). This work was supported by a Pioneer Award (NIGMS DP1GM119167), the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research (GMFR CNV1001899), and the HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholar Program (AWD1005048) to C.T.M.; R.S.M. and G.D.V. were supported by T32GM007388 (NIGMS), and Z.G. by a Pioneer Award (DP1A1124669). In 2018, working with Metropolitan Congregations United, I collected signatures to get Clean Missouri on the ballot. This initiative was passed by the majority of Missourians and reduced the power of special interests and lobbyists in Jefferson City. It ensured that redistricting be done in a fair, nonpartisan way. This amendment was approved by an almost 2-to-1 margin, winning a majority of the vote in every state Senate district in both rural towns and big cities. But in 2020, politicians have put on the ballot Amendment 3, which would overturn Clean Missouri by replacing voter-approved anti-gerrymandering reforms with a deceptive new scheme (Ballot language set for Clean Missouri do-over. Heres what youll see Nov. 3, Sept. 8). Amendment 3 is all about protecting incumbent politicians in super-safe districts where voters cannot hold them accountable. This will lead to more extreme politicians in both parties rather than candidates who will reach out to a wide spectrum of voters. Amendment 3 also pretends to be about ethics reform, but it only reduces the lobbyist gift limit by $5 and only reduces campaign contributions by $100. If Amendment 3 passes, special interests would continue to wield outsize power. With Amendment 3, better described as the Dirty Missouri plan, Missouri would get some of the most extreme and secretive map-rigging policies in the country. To protect fair maps and democracy in Missouri, we must defeat this in November. Vote no on Amendment 3, and tell our politicians they cannot overturn the will of the people. Deborah Cole Creve Coeur Police in Pennsylvania are asking for the publics help as they try to find a New Jersey woman whose car struck and killed a pedestrian early Thursday. The 34-year-old man was hit on northbound Route 1 near the Fairless Hills exit in Falls Township at about 1:10 a.m., police said. Falls Township police found the car a black 2006 BMW sedan unoccupied further down the road. Police used a K-9 team to search the area, but concluded the driver might have been picked up by another car. The car which has New Jersey license plate R54 EVK is registered to Tierra Barber, of Trenton. Barber was not home when police went to her residence, Chief Nelson Whitney said The victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene, has not been identified pending family notification. Anyone with information about the crash or Barbers whereabouts is asked to call Det. Dennis Oconnell at 215 949-9100 X416 or email him d.oconnell@fallstwp.com. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Gray Rock Resources Ltd. (TSXV:GRK) "Gray Rock" or the "Company") is pleased to announce changes to its board of directors and management team, effective today. At the company's board meeting today, the directors appointed David Wolfin as Chairman of the Board, and Peter Latta as President and a member of the Board of Directors. Mr. Wolfin will remain CEO of the Company while handing over the role of President to Mr. Peter Latta. Mr. Latta BASc, P.Eng (BC) has a wealth of experience and is a Professional engineer with a Metals and Materials engineering degree from University of British Columbia as well as a Master of Business Administration degree from Simon Frasers' Beedie School of Business. He has over 15 years of operational, engineering, and commercial experience in the mining industry having worked on a variety of precious and base metals projects across 6 continents. Mr. Latta has worked for Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. since 2018, and is currently the VP, Technical Services where his technical and commercial expertise have been a valuable addition to the management and operation teams in both Vancouver and Mexico. "I am honored to be appointed Chairman, and very pleased that Peter Latta will join as President and as a member of the board", said David Wolfin, Chairman and CEO. "I have worked with Peter over the last few years and I know that he will bring an energy and expertise that will be invaluable as we embark on this new era for the Company." For further information please contact Gray Rock Resources Ltd. at ph. (604) 682-3701, or visit our website at www.grayrockresources.com ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "David Wolfin" David Wolfin Chairman & CEO Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE: Gray Rock Resources Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606661/Gray-Rock-Announces-Appointment-Changes ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) Most of Alaskas wildland fire crews are helping fight fires in the continental U.S., including western blazes that have triggered evacuations of thousands of people, officials said. U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Beth Ipsen said 450 to 500 Alaska residents are currently helping fight fires outside the state, The Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday. Alaska fire crews have a history of assisting beyond the states borders. But this year is unique with the necessity of also trying to suppress the coronavirus that could strike personnel. Fire crews w... ANN ARBOR, MI Faculty senate at the University of Michigan were nearly split down the middle Sept. 16 as they took a vote of no confidence in UM President Mark Schlissel. The vote tallied 957 in favor, 953 against and 184 abstentions, but interim senate secretary David Potter said the motion did not carry because it did not receive a majority of all votes cast. However, according to the senates voting rules, unless otherwise specifically provided for in these rules or in the regental bylaws, all questions put to the university senate shall be decided by a majority vote of those voting. University of Michigans faculty senate divided on no confidence vote in President Mark Schlissel The issue is that senate rules do not say whether an abstention counts as a vote. Potter counted four groups of numbers at the meeting those in favor, those against, those who abstained and those who did not vote according to faculty senate director MaryJo Banasik. The senates rules on voting say that in all cases not covered by rules adopted by the senate, the procedure in Roberts Rules of Order shall be followed. According to the Roberts Rules, there can be no such thing as an abstention vote, and in situations where the rules require a majority or two-thirds vote, abstentions have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the vote since what is required is either a majority or two-thirds of the vote cast." If the vote follows Roberts Rules of Order, the vote of no confidence in Schlissel would pass. However, according to faculty senate chair Colleen Conway, the reading of the vote is currently under review and will take a few days to consider. If we decide, based on the review, that the 184 do not count towards those voting, then we will issue a statement changing the vote, Conway said in an email. It is a bit of a matter transferring rules to electronic meetings. The resolution faults Schlissel for not using scientific data predicting the risk levels for fall 2020 reopening plans and that he failed in his handling of the sexual misconduct allegations against former provost Martin Philbert, who was dismissed for sexual misconduct that was known to members of the university for decades." The resolution also says Schlissel has refused to accept any personal responsibility for the consequences of his administrations actions. The vote of no confidence in Schlissel is mostly symbolic, said UM Ph.D. student Yael Kenan, and while its main function is declarative, it can also apply pressure on the Board of Regents. UMs administration said Schlissel and his executive team are reviewing the vote and others that were taken at the meeting, including a vote of no confidence in the universitys reopening plan, which failed by a vote of 915 in favor, 991 against and 198 abstaining. President Schlissel already has committed to increasing his engagement with the faculty across all of our 19 schools and colleges. He and Provost Susan M. Collins also have committed to engaging the entire community on the topic of policing so that UM and our Division of Public Safety and Security can be a national leader on campus safety," according to a release from the university. The faculty senate meeting was held at the same time as members of UMs Graduate Employees' Organization were still on strike for a safe and just pandemic response. The strike has since ended as GEO accepted a deal from the university and will return to work. READ MORE: Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike University of Michigan graduate students, residential staff march in solidarity with dining workers Full complaint details University of Michigans battle with graduate employees on strike ST. LOUIS, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- TCARE Inc., the only evidence-based*, CMS 1115-approved, and federally accredited family caregiver support platform, announced that it has closed a $3 million financing round. The round was led by SixThirty Ventures and joined by Aflac Ventures, BlueCross BlueShield MN, Blu Ventures, Village Capital, Connetic Ventures and gener8tor fund. TCARE offers an enterprise SaaS-based platform using predictive analytics to prevent burnout of family caregivers, reducing Long Term Care (LTC) service usage and delaying nursing home placements. TCARE also partners with Health/Life/LTC insurance carriers. TCARE's clients include top-5 MCOs, Managed Long-Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) plans, Medicare health plans, Washington State Dept. of Social & Health Services, Alaska Dept. of Health, Hawaii Office of Aging and 90+ Area Agencies on Aging spanning 32 States. "Many families struggle with burnout and associated financial and health challenges while providing care and assistance for loved ones," said Bharat Rajaram, Managing Director of Aflac Global Ventures. "We have been impressed with TCARE's early success in addressing caregiver burnout as evidenced by multiple deployments with insurance carriers, MCOs and States. This further demonstrates that caregiver support is an essential aspect of at-home care and aging in place and has the potential to benefit payers, caregivers and care recipients." "This financing further validates our business strategy and momentum during what has been a very tumultuous year for the healthcare industry, with millions of family caregivers of all ages suffering from high levels of stress and depression. There has never been a greater need to improve caregiver lives by harnessing innovation, technology, and data analytics to improve access, guide care, and truly understand the effectiveness of family caregiver support," said Ali Ahmadi, CEO of TCARE. "From its inception, TCARE has been committed to making a positive impact on the lives of the caregivers and care recipients we serve. We are grateful for the trust placed in us by our investors as we enter our next phase of growth." TCARE's evidence-based platform, based on over 30 years of research, and two separate randomized controlled trials, quickly identifies the root-cause of a family caregiver's burnout, creates a plan for the Care of the Caregiver and then connects them to the right resources at the right time and right place. Since its inception, TCARE has impacted over 250,000 family caregivers. "Caregivers play a significant, often unacknowledged role in our healthcare system," said Atul Kamra, Managing Partner of SixThirty Ventures. "They are hidden in plain sight and come with a unique set of financial needs, time constraints and health issues. TCARE's evidence-based platform brings scale and personalization to address this large, growing and socially important segment of our society." "This funding round, as well as recent key customer wins, provide strong support for TCARE's business model," says TCARE board member Bikram Bakshi, former CEO of Optum Government and Optum International, and currently a Principal at Blu Ventures. "The TCARE platform is a win-win for all parties involved in the long-term care spectrum. It promotes aging in place for the care recipient, provides an evidence-based support system for the caregiver and reduces financial risk for the payer entity." For more information, visit https://www.tailoredcare.com/ *TCARE's Evidence-based system: click here for TCARE accreditation. MEDIA CONTACT: Elise Pelletier 989-670-5480 [email protected] SOURCE TCARE Inc. Related Links https://www.tailoredcare.com Seoul, Sep 17 : North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is unlikely to send a video address to the annual UN General Assembly later this month, an official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, adding that Pyongyang's top envoy to the world body will speak instead. With world leaders set to join the gathering via video links due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, speculation has lingered that Kim could deliver a rare video address to the top-level general debate session slated to begin on September 22, reports Yonhap News Agency. Kim Song, the North Korean Ambassador to the UN, is expected to partake as the 14th speaker on September 29, the last day of the general debate, the official said. "According to the provisional list of speakers, North Korean Ambassador Kim Song is supposed to speak," the official told reporters. "Rumours swirled last year as well that somebody else would make a surprise visit (to the Assembly), but Ambassador Kim Song delivered the speech as planned." In 2015, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong attended the General Assembly, while his successor, Ri Yong-ho, joined the gathering from 2016 to 2018, said the Yonhap News Agency report. Last year, Ambassador Kim Song attended it. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Kannywood actor, Yakubu Mohammed , has expressed regrets for featuring in a Nollywood film titled Fatal Arrogance and has asked the makers to remove the scenes he appeared in. Popular Nigerian Actor, Pete Edochie, plays the lead role in the film, which was shot in Enugu and produced by Anosike Kingsley Orji. The films behind-the-scenes and a 12-minute-clip from the set are already generating controversy, especially among members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), Shiites. In a statement published on their official Facebook page on Tuesday, the group said they were shocked by the film where the popular Islamic Movement in Nigeria and its leader Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky are being depicted and badly portrayed as terrorists. Mr Mohammed told BBC Hausa that he regretted appearing in the movie, even though he tried to persuade the filmmakers to correct some things in the movie he feels will not go down well by many people, especially in Northern Nigeria. I never knew some of the scenes in the film will be portrayed in that manner. I only acted (in) my scenes, which I appeared six times in different places. In the film I was shot, and later died. It was a film that showed the clash between Nigerian Army and members of the Shiite movement in Zaria, and many members of the group were killed. When I read the script, I saw nothing castigating Islam in it, but you know script can change at some point, that was what happened. Mr Mohammed also said he has asked the producer to remove him from the film, and that he is ready to pay the producers damages for doing that. I have told the producer to remove all my scenes in the movie, that I am ready to pay for damages, which is what the rule says. According to the actor, the producers told him that the film was sponsored by an NGO. Yes, nobody threatens me but I have seen how people on social media pages are abusing and calling (me) names for appearing in the film. Mr Mohammed had also said there is a place that every Muslim, if he sees it, must be concerned. There is a photo of Mr Pete Edochie walking around in a Muslim dress, with a bottle of beer in his hand and with a girl. I really regretted appearing in that movie. What people are saying People who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday said the film should not be released at all and insisted that Mr Mohammed get himself out from the film. This is Northern Nigeria, and you know how our people think about things like this. For a film coming from the Eastern part of the country, and wrongly putting Islam in a negative way, that will not be accepted here. So, for me, the best thing that will happen is for the film not (to) be released and Yakubu should make sure he is not in that film. People will not understand him, especially the Shiite movement, a social media commentator, (Abubakar) Hassan, said. Kabiru Rabiu, a resident of Hotoro in Kano, told PREMIUM TIMES that justice was not done to Islam and IMN. I dont share (the) same belief with the Shiite followers but it is beyond the group. They did not put Islam in a good limelight. The producers should have liaised with core Northern producers when writing the script and even during production. For me, that film should better be dropped Mr Rabiu said. Another resident of Zaria, Kaduna state, Kasim Bala said, I dont know what is in the film, but it is totally wrong for an Igbo man to make film base on a book that talks about Islam and Muslim, especial in Nigeria, without consulting Muslim filmmakers to help with some scene. They way (they) see things is not what it is here. Yakubu should save himself and make sure he is not in that film. Thank God it is not out, it would have been another thing now. Some commentators, who also spoke to our reporter, said it was an agenda by the Igbos to put Islam and the North in a bad spirit while some insisted that the film should not be released and advised Mr Mohammed to disassociate himself from the film. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he is not yet prepared to sign off on a deal between the social media giant TikTok and the computer software company Oracle until he further verifies what is in the proposal. He also stressed that he would not be happy if TikTok's parent company, the Chinese company ByteDance, was allowed to retain a majority stake in TikTok as part of the deal. "They are giving me studies on the deal. It has to be 100 per cent as far as national security is concerned. I am not prepared to sign off on anything. We have to see the deal," Trump told reporters. "They are going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning." Trump, citing security concerns, has issued an executive order that would ban the app in the US unless it is sold to a US company. A previous deal negotiated with Microsoft fell through after TikTok's parent company ByteDance rejected it. Reports have suggested that the proposed Oracle deal would be a joint venture rather than the full sale of the social media app, a move that Trump said he would not like. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) is expected to review the deal and make recommendations to the president. Part of the review will be focused on Washington's national security concerns around TikTok, primarily centred around user data and whether the Chinese government would have access to people's personal information. 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 A statue survived flames that destroyed a home in the Bear fire in Feather Falls, Calif. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) After multiple years of insurers dropping homeowners' policies in areas hard-hit by wildfires, the state insurance commissioner is pushing for regulations that would offset rising premiums with discounts for mitigating wildfire risks. On Oct. 19, the Department of Insurance will host an investigatory hearing where homeowners, industry experts and insurance providers, among others, can give their input into regulations Commissioner Ricardo Lara plans to initiate that would probably accelerate premium increases for some homeowners while giving them a chance to learn how their property's risk is calculated and opportunities to reduce it, Lara's office said. "The reality is climate change is going to continue to disrupt communities through extreme heat and weather and affect our insurance markets," Lara said. "Using my authority as a regulator to look at these key areas is really going to be critical." For several years now, the housing market in California's expanding wildland-urban interface, the area where suburbia blends with the wildlands, has been rocked by wind-driven fires that have wiped out housing stock and years of insurers' profits along with it. In response, insurers have been dropping policies in those at-risk areas by the thousands, pushing people into the secondary market, and dramatically raising the premiums for many others, arguing that the tandem moves are meant to limit their financial risks. But at the same time, consumer advocates say, insurers have been slow-rolling the rate increases across the rest of their portfolio, keeping the increases overall below 7% annually so it doesn't open them up for a public inspection, enabled under Proposition 103, approved in 1988. Lara's office said it would push for insurers to seek rate increases more reflective of the risks the companies' actuaries spell out, which means probably higher than 7%, but it would also require insurers provide more information to homeowners on what they can do to reduce those risks. Story continues "Time and time again we heard from consumers, 'How do I appeal my score? How do I know what I need to do to lower that score?' And right now there's nothing," Lara said. To soften the rate-increase impact, Lara said his office will require that insurers provide and explain the reasoning behind a homeowner's particular fire risk score. Thousands of homeowners in the last few years have received notices when their policies ended telling them they were suddenly uninsurable because of fire risks, or conversely, that it would cost prohibitively more to remain covered and there was nothing they could do to change it. "We're saying, 'Let's promote transparency and recognize that home-hardening, that's science-based, works," Lara said. To that end, insurers have been working with the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety to outline a standard approach to home hardening on an individual and communitywide scale, which wildfire experts say is key to limiting the loss of life and property. Lara said he'll work with those groups to determine what types of strategies homeowners can take to reduce their risks and get a discount. A failed Assembly bill that Lara endorsed earlier this year would have required insurers to cover homes whose owners reduced their risks. Historically, Californians have a spotty track record of mitigating their wildfire risks on a large scale, and with few exceptions, local governments have done a poor job of enforcing the standards that already exist. Both consumers and local governments will have a role in seeing the proposed regulations bear fruit after statewide mitigation standards are set. "We're incentivizing the consumer and incentivizing the local community to bring down the risk and keeping the insurance market vibrant where they're competing for people's businesses," Lara said. One insurance group, the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., which represents about 60% of the property casualty insurance market, welcomed the upcoming hearing as an opportunity to revisit the rate-making process overall. Insurers have complained that California's laws don't allow them to price in the increasing risks linked to climate change because they can set rates based only on past losses. "APCIA applauds the commissioners interest in improving the regulatory system to encourage more insurers to write insurance in high-risk wildfire areas and give consumer more choices," the group said in a statement. "Clearly, California is facing dramatically different conditions with five of the states largest fires occurring just this year. Climate change is altering conditions in California and we expect this to be the 'new normal.'" Next Tuesday (September 22) marks the official beginning of Fall. This year has been a whirlwind of panic, health scares, and losses for the global community as people have readjusted to the new normal in the midst of a pandemic, but some are finding the silver lining in it all. Jennifer Lopez and her soon-to-be-husband Alex Rodriguez have been wheeling and dealing in the real estate market, and it's reported that they just unloaded one of their Malibu mansions on the heels of the news that they recently purchased a $40 million Miami estate. Daniel Zuchnik / Stringer / Getty Images Additionally, JLo and A-Rod have been planning what is rumored to be a lavish wedding, but considering we're still facing off against COVID-19, things may be a tad delayed. Over on Instagram, Jennifer Lopez flexed her bikini body beach goals with a shoreline selfie. The 51-year-old was photographed donning a pink bikini as she laid out on the sand and watched the sunset. "Feeling golden. Holding on to the last few moments of summer ... #GlowCheck," she wrote in the caption. Lopez is always on-brand; "Glow" is also the name of her popular fragrance. Take a look at Jennifer Lopez's pot below and let us know how you're ending Summer 2020. [via] Unlike many other school districts in Connecticut, Cheshire was able to avoid any disruptions to their new school schedule due to COVID-19 upon returning to classes last week. That changed Thursday, Sept. 17. Late on Wednesday evening, Cheshire Superintendent of Schools Jeff Solan sent an email to parents and students informing them of possible COVID-19 exposure at one of the elementary schools, just four days after the District opened for in-person learning. ...We recently learned that the day porter who cleans the Highland School restrooms throughout the day has tested positive for COVID-19, the statement reads. Although the building has already been sanitized and disinfected as part of our regular protocol and is currently being treated with an approved disinfecting fogger, we must close the facility tomorrow (9/17) to in-person learning. The decision to move Thursday to a remote-learning day, Solan explained, is because school officials could not confirm as of Thursday that the individual who contracted the virus did not come in close contact with anyone at the school over the last three days. While we believe it is highly unlikely that (the porter) would be within six feet of another individual for 15 minutes or longer, we must be positive, the statement reads. Because of the lateness of the announced, Highland School remote classes began on a two hour delay Thursday. Parents and families who have any questions about the day were urged to contact Highland Elementary Schools principal Scott Jeffrey South Africa will open its borders from next month for international travel as the country moves to the lowest level of its five-step coronavirus lockdown from midnight of September 20. President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday announced a slew of reductions in restrictions - an attempt to revive the economy that has been severely hit by the six-month lockdown. Our economy and our society have suffered great devastation. We have endured a fierce and destructive storm. But, by standing together, by remaining resolute, we have withstood it, Ramaphosa said. Two months ago, at the height of the storm, we were recording around 12,000 new cases a day. Now, we are on average recording less than 2,000 cases a day. We now have a recovery rate of 89 per cent, the president said. However, he urged the citizens to continue to wear masks and maintain social-distancing to ensure the country did not move to a new wave of infections. Now is the time to return our country, its people and our economy to a situation that is more normal, that more resembles the lives that we were living six months ago. It is time to move to what will become our new normal for as long as the coronavirus is with us, Ramaphosa said. He said the reductions in restrictions were possible because infections were relatively low. We will be allowing travel into and out of South Africa for business, leisure and other travel with effect from October 1, 2020. This is subject to various containment and mitigation measures, Ramaphosa said. Travel may be restricted to and from certain countries that have high infection rates. A list of countries will be published based on the latest scientific data. Tourists are to be welcomed again, a major source of income for South Africans. The tourism sector is one of our greatest economic drivers. We are ready to open our doors again to the world, and invite travelers to enjoy our mountains, our beaches, our vibrant cities and our wildlife game parks in safety and confidence, he said. But they will only be allowed to fly in at three international airports in South Africa -- Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town or enter through the land border posts which were already operational during the lockdown. Travelers will need to present a negative COVID-19 test result not older than 72 hours from time of departure or face a mandatory quarantine at their own cost. Curfew hours have been amended to start at midnight and end at 4 am. The easing of restrictions will now allow for social, religious, political and other gatherings to 50 per cent of the venue capacity, up to a maximum of 250 people for indoor gatherings and 500 people for outdoor gatherings. Previously all gathering were restricted to a maximum of 50 people. Attendance at funerals will be increased from a maximum of 50 to people 100, due to the higher risk of viral transmission at funerals, while night vigils are still prohibited. Gyms, cinemas and similar public facilities may admit more than the previous maximum of 50 people, subject to a new maximum of 50 per cent of the venues capacity, but existing restrictions on sporting events remain in place. The sale of alcohol, which was prohibited from Thursday to Sunday, will now be allowed on all weekdays. All government employees will be asked to return to their posts without delay to ensure that all services are resumed. We have a mammoth task ahead of us. It will take the combined effort of each and every South African to restore our nation to prosperity and development. We cannot afford a resurgence of infections in our country, Ramaphosa said. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Follow mores stories on Facebook and Twitter Real Coffee with Scott Adams is worth listening to regularly because Adams, like Trump, is an out-of-the-box thinker. During one of his recent shows, Adams framed Trump uniquely and insightfully. According to Adams, while Trump may falter on smaller decisions (why, oh why, did he waste time talking to Woodward?), his gift is his ability to do the impossible. In other words, when everyone says something can't be done, Trump's response is a version of "here, hold my beer" (or, as he's a teetotaler, "hold my soda"). Tell Trump something's impossible, and he goes and makes it possible. I was not on Team Trump in the beginning. What changed my mind was having a New York friend tell me, "Trump gets things done that no one else can." The example she gave me, something about which I was ignorant since I'm not a New Yorker, was Trump and the Wollman Skating Rink. The rink was a city-owned property that had fallen into disrepair during the 1970s. By 1980, the city was planning to refurbish, a project it said would take two years. Six years and $13 million later, the work already done was wrong, and the city announced that it had to start over. In May 1986, Trump, then 39, told Mayor Ed Koch that if the mayor handed the project to him, Trump would have the rink ready by Christmas for less than $3 million, none of which would be a profit to Trump. As it happened, Trump did not do what he had promised. Instead, he did the impossible by hugely exceeding expectations. Trump finished the job in four months and came in 25% under budget. According to my friend, New Yorkers understood that if Trump undertook a task, he'd do it, and do it well. He would achieve the impossible. Remember how Barack Obama, during the campaign, talked down Trump's promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and improve the economy? Obama could not have been more snide or dismissive: "Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There's no answer to it," Obama said. "He just says, 'Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal.' Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn't have an answer." Trump said, "Hold my soda," and, until the Democrats took a hacksaw to the economy with their Wuhan virus overreach, Trump waved his magic wand all over the economy. By July 2019, Forbes was reporting: In the last 30 months of President Obama's term, manufacturing employment grew by 185,000 or 1.5%. In President Trump's first 30 months, manufacturers added 499,000 jobs, expanding by 4.0%. In the same 30-month time span during the mature, post-recovery phase of the business cycle, some 314,000 more manufacturing jobs were added under Trump than under Obama, a 170% advantage. We were told that the sluggish economic growth rate that Obama oversaw was the new normal. Trump said, "Hold my soda," and, by September 2019, before the lockdown tried to end the party, Trump had the economy chugging along at rates unseen in decades: incomes, especially in the lower brackets, increased at 3.4% annually; poverty declined to 11.8%; unemployment dropped to the lowest in decades, with the most significant benefits flowing to minorities and women; and the number of families in the lowest economic bracket dropped by 1%. Everyone predicted dire outcomes if Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Trump said, "Hold my soda," moved the embassy...and that proceeded so well that he also announced that Israel has sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And everyone said there could be no peace in the Middle East. After all, if Obama couldn't make that miracle happen (and, instead, oversaw ISIS's rise, an Egyptian fundamentalist revival, the Syrian civil war, and Libya's collapse), then Trump definitely couldn't bring about peace. Again, Trump said, "Hold my soda" and began getting the Sunni nations, one after another, to normalize relations with Israel. Trump did this with a new paradigm that cut the Palestinians out of the loop and sold the Sunnis on the wonders of peace and prosperity with Israel as an ally, not an enemy. The UAE and Bahrain are on board, and Trump promises and it's reasonable to believe that all the Sunni nations will follow. And so will end 72 years of alternately hot and cold, but always hostile, relations between Israel and her neighbors. The UAE is changing its schools' curricula to support Israel, and Saudi's imam of the Grand Mosque demands that Muslims treat Jews well. It's big; it's real; and for Trump, it wasn't impossible. I'll end with an optimistic poem that Edgar Albert Guest wrote early in the 20th century. It seems appropriate here: It Couldn't Be Done Somebody said that it couldn't be done But he with a chuckle replied That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried. So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin On his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it! Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that; At least no one ever has done it;" But he took off his coat and he took off his hat And the first thing we knew he'd begun it. With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin, Without any doubting or quiddit, He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it. There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done, There are thousands to prophesy failure, There are thousands to point out to you one by one, The dangers that wait to assail you. But just buckle in with a bit of a grin, Just take off your coat and go to it; Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing That "cannot be done," and you'll do it. Most Israelis had never seen the two elegant gents standing alongside their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the balcony overlooking the White House lawn on Sept. 15. The foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, signed their countries historic normalization agreements with Israels prime minister in the surprising mid-August breakthrough with the Gulf states. Even the senior members of Israels ministerial security cabinet were not in on the secret of the accelerated peace process and its outcome, and the players involved on the Arab side. The three Arab leaders with whom Israeli leaders signed peace agreements in the past Prime Minister Menachem Begin with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Jordans King Hussein were familiar figures in Israel. The public was also aware, to some extent, of the process that led to the agreements' signing. But this weeks signings with the Gulf states were different they were the culmination of lengthy, clandestine processes that had finally matured and were suddenly unveiled with all the skill of a magician. Israel is now making peace with countries with which it was never at war, with which it does not have borders nor disputes over land or national aspirations. Israelis are therefore having a hard time understanding and digesting the tremendous long-term geostrategic and economic significance of these events. They are far more focused on the raging coronavirus epidemic dragging them into a three-week lockdown and the chronic political crisis plaguing their country. One must also admit that the hatred Netanyahu generates among a large swath of the public, even as many others adore and admire him, blurs the picture of the momentous developments he has engineered. For decades, Israelis understood the term diplomatic process to mean negotiations with the Palestinians. When Israelis imagined or argued about peace, what came to mind was the price Israel would have to pay in terms of territorial concessions, evacuating settlements and dividing Jerusalem. They had also taken as axiomatic the claim that Arab states would never make peace until Israel makes peace with the Palestinians. That was the clear understanding of all Israelis and their leaders, including Netanyahu throughout his terms in power, since the early 1990s, when Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with Arafat. When Netanyahu was first elected in 1996, he inherited the agreements with the Palestinians and was committed to implementing them despite vigorously opposing them as head of the parliamentary opposition. He cannot delete from the history books the photo of his handshake with Arafat nor his signatures, under duress and heavy pressure by US President Bill Clinton, on the Hebron Protocol and the Wye River Memorandum with the PLO. When Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, he knew that his predecessor Ehud Olmert had promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a far-reaching proposal that included ceding sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews. Netanyahu therefore changed direction toward blocking Irans nuclear ambitions. The resident of the White House, however, had other plans. A decade on, it transpires that the battle against Irans nuclear program and President Barack Obamas conciliatory attitude toward Tehran sowed the seeds for todays new Middle East. The pragmatic Arab states, fearing the Iranians on their doorstep and feeling abandoned by the United States, saw Israel as an ally an opportunity Netanyahu identified and seized. Relations with these states developed slowly, until US President Donald Trump came to power and turned the situation on its head. His decision to pull the United States out of the nuclear agreement with Iran and beef up sanctions on Tehran, along with his strong communality of interests with Netanyahu nourished by their personal chemistry, created a perfect storm. The dam that has now been broken is significant for domestic Israeli politics as well. The political left and center have been caught at a disadvantage. After holding a decades-long monopoly on peace, a despised right-wing leader under criminal indictment has broken through to much of the Arab world. The confusion and embarrassment on the Israeli left will supply fodder for historians. Left-wing politicians and voters are pulling long faces and displaying contempt for the agreements, calling them a peace of the rich and pointing out that Israel had previously enjoyed ties with the Gulf states, albeit quietly. The former leader of the Meretz Party, Zehava Gal-On, expressed this attitude succinctly when she called the agreements fake peace, arguing that Israel did not have any dispute with the Emirates to begin with, that it was not an enemy state and shared no border with Israel. This sad state of affairs expresses the short-sightedness of an important political camp in failing to understand the evolution in the Middle East and the shifting interests since the Arab Spring. The delinking of peace with the Palestinians from peace with the Arab world will be the legacy of Israels longest serving prime minister. The Middle East is undergoing accelerated change and a new alliance among Israel, pragmatic Arab states and the United States. The coronavirus crisis and domestic political fighting in Israel are masking the drama that will shape the region for years to come. Israel was the one that signed these peace agreements, not Netanyahu, as senior Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari explained in castigating many of his colleagues, including at Channel 12 where he works, who belittle the achievement. I am sick and tired of the people who complain about Netanyahu, often rightly so, failing to see things for what they are. The taboo that an Arab state that does not border Israel cannot make peace with Israel without permission from Abbas has been broken, Yaari said. Zvi Barel, Haaretz' Arab affairs analyst, made a similar point. The political left seems to be treating the White House signing ceremony as its Pearl Harbor, he wrote. Barel, too, views the shattering of the paradigm as a positive development that improves prospects of agreement with the Palestinians, slim though they may be. In the post-Abbas era, once the Palestinians realize the extent of the change, they too will have to do some serious soul-searching and recalibrate their course. Massachusetts health officials reported 499 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Massachusetts college campuses over the past month, according to a new batch of testing data released Wednesday night. As the return of students to college campuses bring COVID-19 outbreaks, state officials announced they will publish statewide data on positive cases in higher education institutions every week, starting with Wednesdays figures. The nearly 500 confirmed cases were reported over the past month, starting Aug. 15. In the past week alone, 168 positive COVID-19 cases were reported to the state Department of Public Health. The vast majority of those cases, 147, were reported last week following Labor Day weekend. Altogether, public and private colleges and universities in Massachusetts have conducted more than 518,000 tests since Aug. 15, including 153,675 in the past week. The announcement comes after more than 100 Boston College students tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the Baker administration to step in. Gov. Charlie Baker said on Tuesday the college and the communities it operates in agreed to let the Contact Tracing Collaborative oversee testing and contact tracing. Its really important the contact tracing piece work the way it needs to work and in this particular case, Boston College campuses in three different communities, the Republican governor said. State officials are coordinating with the more than 100 colleges in Massachusetts and reviewing all their testing, contact tracing and isolation protocols, Baker said. Both Boston University and Emerson College reported positive COVID-19 cases in August. Some Massachusetts colleges have come under the spotlight as students host parties without masks, social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols in place. Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students after they were found together in a room at the Westin Copley Place Hotel. More than 20 students tested positive for COVID-19 at the College of the Holy Cross after authorities broke up a large off-campus party. The party violated the states executive order limiting gatherings to 25 people. Overall, the Massachusetts positive molecular test rate remains at 0.8%. State health officials reported 295 new cases and 20 more coronavirus-linked deaths statewide on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 9,036. Related Content: LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AVON-a 130-year-old brand-renowned globally for its niche beauty, household, and personal care products, joins hands with Insider to deliver highly-individualized multichannel experiences to online beauty shoppers worldwide. Insider's Growth Management Platform helps 800+ top brands including UNIQLO, New Balance, Toyota, Mediamarkt , Estee Lauder, Virgin , Marks & Spencer , Yves Rocher , AVIS, Dominos, Nissan , BBVA, IKEA and CNN connect customer data across channels, predict the future behavior with AI and individualize experiences across channels with precision to drive their growth. Insider helps global brands eliminate marketing waste by improving ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), optimizing CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) as well as increasing Conversion Rates, AOV (Average Order Value), and LTV (Lifetime Value). "While the top 20 cosmetics brands dominate the brick-and-mortar business, taking in 90% of sales in the offline space, these companies only claim 14% of online business. This shows the untapped potential beauty brands have in the online space. Cosmetics brands offer a myriad of choices to beauty shoppers who are all very unique and authentic. Personalizing experiences in the beauty and cosmetics space requires a higher level of precision to meet the specific needs of individuals based on their age, skin type, choice of color, and more. We'll continue delivering hyper-personalized experiences to AVON lovers worldwide with our AI-backed segmentation capabilities and evolving platform that encompasses new and exciting channels," said Hande Cilingir, CEO & Co-founder at Insider. Watch AVON success story: How AVON improved the Average Order Value (AOV) by 11% using Insider . Read Insider reviews from users on G2Crowd. Check out more Insider success stories here . About Insider Insider is a B2B SaaS company with a unique approach to multichannel experience orchestration that recently announced its $32 Million Series C funding round , led by Riverwood Capital and joined by Sequoia, Wamda, and Endeavor Catalyst. Insider has been recently featured in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs 2020 and became the #1 leader on G2Crowd's Mobile Marketing Software Grid with a 4.7/5 rating based on 100% user reviews, 14 quarters in a row. CrunchBase recently ranked Insider's co-founder and CEO Hande Cilingir as one of the top women CEOs outside of the US. Some of the most prestigious Fortune 500 companies and top brands in retail, automotive, and travel across the globe use Insider to deliver AI-backed personalized experiences. Helping the world's leading brands grow beyond the speed of customer expectations, Insider is trusted by over 800 businesses across various industries including UNIQLO, Samsung , Estee Lauder, Singapore Airlines, Virgin , Toyota , New Balance , IKEA , Marks & Spencer , Yves Rocher , Newsweek , MediaMarkt , Nissan , AVIS, Allianz, BBVA, Dominos, and CNN . Insider has 24 offices in London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Sydney, Helsinki, Barcelona, Dubai, Moscow, Warsaw, Taipei, Jakarta, Manila, Wellington, Istanbul, Kiev, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxemburg, Ankara, and Kuala Lumpur. Less than two weeks into the start of the school year, COVID-19 cases among educators and students have already forced the closure of several New Jersey schools. At least eight districts in the state have switched their entire district or individual schools from either full or partial in-person classes to fully remote instruction after faculty or students tested positive for the virus. The school districts with identified outbreaks are spread throughout 5 of New Jerseys 21 counties. Chatham High School in Middlesex County sent a letter to parents on September 11 announcing the switch to all-remote learning until September 29 due to an unspecified number of cases. In Washington Township in Gloucester County, three schools had outbreaks, forcing the district to cancel hybrid instruction plans for the next two weeks. Cases were also reported in Howell, Little Silver, Pompton Lakes, Frankford Township, East Brunswick, and Woodcliff Lake, with each district temporarily switching all schools to remote instruction or simply those schools where outbreaks occurred. Most of the school districts intend to resume in-person instruction following a 14-day waiting period. The reckless policy is fully backed by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who commented to WCBS Newsradio on Tuesday, It looks like, so far, so good, in terms of how theyre reacting to the modest numbers that were seeing so far. Murphy played the leading role in pushing hundreds of school districts in New Jersey to re-open for in-person classes, despite grave dangers to students and educators. Educators and staff face shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), difficulty maintaining social distancing, and outmoded heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. As of last week, 388 school districts received state approval to proceed with the hybrid instructional model, which combines in-person and remote learning, while 69 districts were approved for fully in-person re-openings. State education authorities had not approved plans to limit COVID-19 exposure for an additional 87 districts, which were nonetheless allowed to re-open. At some of New Jerseys largest school districts that opted for fully online instruction, the resumption of remote classes has been plagued by a shortage of laptops and a lack of access to high-speed Internet. In Newark, where lessons will be online until mid-November, thousands of student laptops ordered in March have yet to arrive. As is the case across the country, in many districts that are providing only remote instruction, teachers and other staff are still required to report to the school each day to give online lessons. At Thomas Edison Academy in Elizabeth, a custodian tested positive for coronavirus, prompting officials to close the school campus for just one day. The chaotic and dangerous start comes after the New Jersey state government spent the summer cultivating uncertainty and anxiety among parents, teachers, and students by first delaying, then repeatedly revising, guidance for reopening schools during the pandemic. Districts were given no more than general recommendations and were advised to work out detailed plans for re-opening on their own. Governor Murphy, a multimillionaire and former Goldman Sachs executive, initially sought to force all schools to provide in-person classes in the fall. Teachers opposition grew rapidly, raising the prospects of mass action, with the governor responding last month by allowing districts to opt for all-remote instruction. But this maneuver was only a partial retreat. Murphys stated goal remains the rapid re-opening of as many districts as possible with in-person instruction, in order to force parents back to work producing profits for Wall Street. In addition, the governor made it difficult for districts to switch to remote instruction. At a recent press briefing, Murphy said, Any resubmitted plans to begin the school year with all-remote learning must cite specific health and safety reasons for thechange, which district leaders must certify to, as well as a timeline to get to in-person instruction. Moreover, county superintendents and the state Departments of Education and Health must review districts plans. But the state did not release guidance about how school districts can submit their plans until August 29less than two weeks before the official first day of school on September 8. Furthermore, the state required districts to respond within seven days of the first day of school or as soon as practicable. More than 190 districts announced that they would provide all-remote instruction. Among these districts are New Jerseys largest cities, including Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, and Edison. In a report issued after New Jersey published its guidance, the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA) estimated that the PPE, cleaning supplies, and custodial and nursing staff that districts need to re-open will cost approximately $700 million. As with every state in the US, New Jersey faces a looming budget crisis as a result of the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, while support from the federal government has been totally insufficient. While school districts are being starved for resources, the claim that there is no money to protect school workers and children is absurd. New Jersey is the second-wealthiest state in the country by median income, with one in 12 residents being millionaires and nine billionaires residing in the state. The NJSBA warns that school districts have moved forward with reopening plans designed to meet the needs of their students, but these efforts have come at a financial cost that could have negative consequences in other areas. These negative consequences were revealed in Toms River, where the school district voted unanimously to lay off 240 employees, including 90 bus drivers, 70 cafeteria and playground aides, 50 cafeteria workers, 25 bus attendants, and five mechanics. The financial effects of the pandemic are only one reason for the cuts, Superintendent David M. Healy told NJ.com, as Toms River has lost $5.2 million in state aid and endured several annual cuts in state funding. Weve lost millions and millions of dollars each year, said Healy. These attacks on education have been carried out by a Democratic governor and a legislature controlled by the Democratic Party. At least 20 teachers in Hammonton, located in southern New Jersey, requested to teach remotely because of concerns over their families health. But in late August, the district abruptly denied all of these requests and declared that teachers would have to report to school buildings every day, including on days when all instruction would be given online. On the same day the district issued its denial, it increased the daily wage for substitute teachers from $100 to $225 in an attempt to prevent a teacher shortage. Because the district does not have enough custodians, it is paying bus drivers to clean the school buildings, likely without proper supplies or adequate training. Miranda, a special education teacher in West Milford who previously taught in Paterson for 11 years, shared her experiences with the World Socialist Web Site. During the summer, the West Milford school board approved a plan that entailed half-day schedules on each day but Wednesday, which would be a day of virtual instruction and deep cleaning of the schools. Miranda recently learned that not only would teachers be required to report to school on Wednesdays, but also that the deep cleaning had been dropped in favor of traditional cleaning. I dont understand why we were told that there was going to be this deep cleaning of these buildings, she said, adding that she was mad about the change. Is it going to be done after hours? Theres a lot of open questions here. The West Milford Education Association, a union that is part of the New Jersey Education Association, has not provided Miranda with any guidance. Instead, she received two questionnaires about her feelings about returning to school. That was it. There was no, Hey, nontenured teachers, this is what you should be doing. This is what you shouldnt say, said Miranda. My older cousin and my sister-in-law also work in the district, and they told me, since Im nontenured, to say absolutely nothing because of the volatile way that the district treats nontenured teachers. Mirandas students have behavioral disabilities and can be defiant or aggressive. They sometimes spit and they may have problems maintaining social distancing and wearing masks. Although Miranda was told that she would receive masks, face shields, goggles, and other PPE, she has not gotten this promise in writing. I dont know whats going to happen if one of my students tests positive, she said. Do I have to quarantine? Am I using sick days? Theres no answers for that, and its infuriating. Earlier this year, the principal with whom Miranda worked in Paterson died of COVID-19. He was a healthy ox, she said, adding that she does not feel safe returning to school. As long as the pandemic is uncontrolled, re-opening schools for any amount of in-person instruction will be unsafe in New Jersey and anywhere else. School superintendents, union leaders, and Democratic and Republican politicians alike are conspiring to force educators and students back into deadly conditions. To ensure their safety and health, and to prevent a new wave of the pandemic among students and their communities, educators must organize independently of the unions and both political parties. The fight against the pandemic must become a fight against its root cause, capitalism, which subordinates workers health and all other concerns to the interests of private profit. We urge all educators, parents and students to join the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee and to begin organizing in your districts and neighborhoods for the immediate transition to fully funded online instruction. Attorney General Barr spoke last night at Hillsdale College. The Washington Post labels Barrs address remarkable, and I agree. Its remarkable that a public official spoke in public as plainly and as truthfully as Barr did. Here are some of the comments that made the Posts Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky unhappy: In response to criticism that Barr is interfering by overruling the decisions of career prosecutors, the Attorney General asked: What exactly am I interfering with? Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general. Of course it is. Barr went on to deride the notion that junior bureaucrats should be left to handle their cases without interference from political appointees. In essence, he said, this argument means that the will of the most junior member of the organization will determine decisions. Barr added: Letting the most junior member set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but its no way to run a federal agency. A counterargument might be that the junior members in this case are career professionals and that the senior members may be motivated by politics. But this argument isnt a serious one. In my experience, including my experience in government, career professionals throughout the federal government are as politically motivated as presidential appointees. The difference is that the political appointees are in positions of influence as a result of the peoples will. The career people are not. Barr added another consideration. He said that some career prosecutors seek to amass glory by prosecuting prominent people. Anyone who understands human nature will see the truth in that. Anyone who has litigated at a fairly high level will see it even more clearly. Barr sees it regularly. He stated: Id like to be able to say that we dont see headhunting in the Department of Justice. That would not be truthful. I see it every day. Barr denounced the criminalization of politics and criticized television pundits for speculating about whether public officials deeds constitute[] some esoteric crime. These days, he said, you have to call your adversary a criminal, and instead of beating them politically you try to put them in jail. In my view, this is true of commentary on both sides of the political spectrum. It is also true of President Trumps commentary, which is particularly unfortunate given his position and his platform. During the question and answer session, Barr criticized state shutdowns in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. He also attacked the Black Lives Matter movement: Theyre not interested in Black lives. Theyre interested in props, a small number of Blacks who are killed by police during conflicts with police usually less than a dozen a year who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda. Absolutely. And that broader political agenda is radical and Marxist-Leninist in nature. During my time so far on the United States election campaign trail, I've heard American voters use the same phrase over and over again: "the lesser of two evils". When I've asked them why they were supporting one candidate over another, this has been the way they've described their choice. They are opting for the candidate they see as the "least-worst" rather than someone they feel truly passionate about. When I heard African American men in Milwaukee using the phrase I wondered if this feeling was particularly prevalent among the voters there. Then I started interviewing suburban white women in Detroit and heard exactly the same thing. At a Starbucks in Birmingham, a wealthy suburb outside Detroit, I got talking to Cathy and Vicki - traditional Republican voters who described themselves as "not fans of Trump". They found the President "arrogant" and hated his tweeting habits. But they said they would still vote for him because they were more afraid of Joe Biden. "He's obviously being manipulated behind the scenes by people we don't support," one of the women said. Trump Biden 2020 Our weekly newsletter will deliver expert analysis of the race to the White House from our US correspondent Matthew Knott. Sign up for The Sydney Morning Herald's newsletter here, The Age's here, Brisbane Times' here and WAtoday's here. More often though, people have described Biden as the "lesser of two evils". They don't find the 77-year old especially inspiring but they are going to vote for him because they are determined not to re-elect Trump. In the Detroit suburbs, I spoke to Cyndee Rivera, who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 because she couldn't stomach either Trump or Hillary Clinton. This time she's voting for Biden because of how unhappy she has been with Trump's presidency. In one way, this lack of enthusiasm is a worrying sign for Biden, raising doubts some voters won't be bothered to participate in the election. The upside is that he is a more palatable option to many voters than Clinton was in 2016. At the last election, Trump won a strong majority of votes from so-called "double haters": the voters who disliked both candidates. This time around, polls suggest the "double haters" are strongly supporting Biden. If that holds true on November 3 it's bad news for Trump. Find all of the most important pandemic education news on Educating N.J., a special resource guide created for parents, students and educators. A Gloucester County town held a virtual public meeting Wednesday to address concerns about spiking numbers of COVID-19 cases, which have nearly doubled since a university here started classes on Sept. 1. Glassboro ranked 10th in the county with 216 coronavirus cases before classes began at Rowan University and now ranks 4th with 425, a township official said during the meeting. Rowan has 4,088 students on campus living in dormitories, most of whom have a roommate. The university is at 63% occupancy. It has more students on campus than any other college in the state. By comparison, Rutgers University, has had 101 cases since May 30. Thats in more than three months versus the two-week span during which Rowan cases have spiked. But Rutgers has 1,875 students living on campus. It typically houses 19,000. Rowan has had 154 active cases of COVID-19 since Aug. 25, a school officials said Wednesday during the virtual meeting. Before the meeting, a school website listed 145 active case, including 100 involving students who live off campus. Most of the questions during the meeting were submitted ahead of time and read by Edward Malandro, the township administrator, to a panel of university and municipal officials. Questions mostly centered on who gave permission for the students to return and how are they now being supervised. We all understand the frustrations you have and on their face the solutions may be simple, said Jack Manning, the local emergency management coordinator and a township police detective. But...theyre not very simple. Manning said Rowan appears to be operating within state guidelines for reopening colleges. The state did not set an occupancy guideline for college dormitories. It just said they cant be at 100%. University and municipal officials presented a united front. Both said communications between them have never been better and both sides are working to maintain a safe environment. Rowan is part of Glassboro and Glassboro is our home, said Tony Lowman, the university provost. We want to be a good neighbor. University officials said they monitor the health and safety of students and the community daily. They said students who have caught the virus are isolated in a specific dorm on campus until they recover and most have had mild symptoms. Keep up with the latest in N.J. schools coverage. Sign up your email here: But residents pressed for more answers. With large outbreaks at nearby schools like Temple, why did you feel like bringing kids back to school was the right decision? Malandro asked the panel, reading a submitted question. Were comfortable in our plan, Lowman said. We rely on the data available to us and we work very closely with the state and public health officials to develop this plan. Lowman said 80% of class instruction is remote and only about 20% is in person. He and other officials said they are actively engaged with students on and off campus to behave responsibly and university officials and local police have disbanded crowded gatherings. Rowan is one of about a dozen colleges in New Jersey voluntarily sharing COVID-19 figures publicly. The action is not required by the Office of the Secretary of Higher Educations 27-page document of standards for colleges to resume, called The Road Back. No other reporting college has nearly the number of cases Rowan has had in such a short time period, though reporting standards and intervals vary widely. University and township officials said they plan to continue having virtual meetings to update the public about the spread of virus and what is being done to combat it. Glassboro officials said they have closed parks and municipal facilities and modified employee schedules to minimize exposure. While this wasnt unexpected, it is still unnerving, Manning said. Staff writer Allison Pries contributed to this report. Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust. Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Have a news tip or a story idea about New Jersey schools? Send it here. Bamako, Mali (PANA) - Mali will from midnight on Thursday observe three days of national mourning for former President Moussa Traore who passed away last Tuesday, the president of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNPS) junta, Colonel Assimi Goita has directed Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova has declared that Moscow doesnt have any information about the flow of Lebanese refugees into Nagorno-Karabakh and the territory surrounding it. We have heard about the intention of the de facto authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh to populate the Armenians having left Lebanon in the territories under control. We have read the reports stating that two Lebanese families have expressed the desire to settle in Karabakh. We dont have verified information about the flow of Lebanese refugees into Nagorno-Karabakh and the territory surrounding it, she stated. According to her, Moscow takes as a basis the need to focus on restoration of the process of negotiations for a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, including the problems with refugees and displaced persons. She recalled that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on September 14 held telephone consultations with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, shared their proposals to continue the actions and to hold separate meetings with each of the ministers. Zakharova also said Moscow looks forward to receiving positive responses from the sides. Philadelphias rental assistance program will now pay up to $1,500 per month for tenants who lost income because of the pandemic, the city and the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp. announced this week. Landlords had argued that the previous $750-per-month funding cap was too low, and many of them chose not to participate in the program because their full rent would not be covered, but they would still be expected to waive late fees and participate in other renter protections. Tenants who have applied for the second phase of rental assistance and those who apply by the Sept. 30 deadline will be eligible for the funding. The states rental assistance program required the $750-per-month cap, but cities can use local funding to increase the funding limit. Philadelphia is getting $11.3 million in new federal funding to help residents pay their rent and mortgages, Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) announced this week. 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. A divisional police headquarters at Gidan Madi in Tangaza Local Government Area of Sokoto State was attacked by gunmen with two officers killed on Thursday, the police said. Tangaza is a border community along Nigerias border with Niger Republic. The police spokesperson for Sokoto State, Muhammed Sadiq, in a statement, said the armed men numbering about 100, in military uniform, attacked the divisional headquarters around 1:30 a.m. During the attack and an overwhelmingly heavy exchange of fire, the DPO, DSP Aliyu Bello and one Inspector Muhammad Abdullahi were shot dead, while one ASP Sani Abdullahi sustained injury on his leg, the police said. Mr Sadiq said the state commissioner of police, Ibrahim Kaoje, immediately led a team of officers to the scene of the incident. The commissioner, assessed the situation, convened an emergency meeting with the sole administrator, district head, heads of sister security agencies, including the Forward Operation Base Commander of the Nigerian Army, and other stakeholders with a view to strengthening the security architecture of the area in order to forestall further attacks and bring the perpetrators of the dastardly act to book. Meanwhile, the DCP in charge of the state criminal investigation department has commenced investigation in earnest, while intelligence reports are also being gathered for aerial support. Sokoto, in Northwest Nigeria, has suffered much fewer attacks from armed bandits compared to neighbouring states like Zamfara and Katsina. The armed bandits attack communities at will and kill as well as kidnap residents for ransom. A recent report by Nigeria Mourns, a nongovernmental organisation, said at least 1,165 people were killed in violent attacks in the Northwestern region of Nigeria between January and August this year. No fewer than 113 people were also kidnapped in the region in the eight months. The attacks have continued despite the heavy deployment of soldiers, police and other security agencies to the area. Watch: Mum cheers up her kids by putting Christmas lights up early A mum who has been shielding with her children sine March has decided to bring a little festive cheer to her kids and neighbours by putting up her Christmas decorations three months early. Caroline Gabe, 46, from Caewern, Port Talbot, has been under strict lockdown for six months because her son, Theo, five, has severe asthma after a battle with pneumonia last year. Since March me and the children have been shielding, she says. We havent been as far as the park, and Ive got to admit it has been a gloomy year. Read more: M&S brings back Christmas snow globe gin and now it comes in magical light-up bottles Theo Gabe with the Christmas decorations. (SWNS) So to help cheer the family up and give her neighbours a much-needed lift, the mum-of-three decided to get the Christmas decorations up super early. Having spent the year buying outdoor lights and installations, some from as far away as the US, Gabe decided to put them all up last week, on a whim. The neighbours say the lights have brought some cheer to the street. (SWNS) The impressive collection includes 3,000 fairy lights, sparkling snow, an 8ft inflatable snowman and a light-up Santa with his reindeer. It took around eight hours to put up. Gabe also has a festive T-Rex on order from the US, which will arrive later in the month. And in the living room, children Jack, 23, Harry, 12 and Theo, five, now have a full size artificial tree with fake snow to enjoy for the rest of the year. The former care worker, who had to give up her job to shield, estimates shes spent just under 1,000 on the decorations, which she has been collecting for months. Read more: Selection boxes hit supermarket shelves: Has Christmas come early this year? The mum estimates she has over 30,000 lights on display outside her home. (SWNS) Gabe says some people driving past the house have shaken their heads in disapproval at the decorations going up in September, but many of her neighbours have thanked her for bringing Christmas cheer to the street. Ive had so many people talk to me about them. It has blown me away, she says. Its just been something nice in a horrible and surreal year. I just thought it would brighten the community up. Story continues The kids were smiling. People were coming up to the house and smiling. It has been lovely. Every year I am always early with the Christmas decorations. But this is even early for me. Read more: Lindt is launching its first ever chocolate tin for Christmas Caroline Gabe has been collecting the Christmas decorations all year. (SWNS) Gabe believes the decorating has helped to give her family the cheer they need during a difficult year. It's ridiculous what we are all going through. It can get you down. Ive been so anxious, but as soon as I put the decorations up, it just lifted my spirits. It's just a bit of normality; crazy normality mind, putting your decorations up in September. Christmas is a fantastic time of year - even in September. Additional reporting SWNS. Watch: 5 top tips for new parents Kamala Harris has been slammed for copying Melania Trump's style by wearing Timberland boots to visit the devastation of the California wildfires this week. The Democratic Vice President candidate and Governor Gavin Newsom walked through the wreckage of the Creek Fire and toured a Red Cross evacuation center on Tuesday. As Harris talked about the impact of climate change on the wildfires, she caught the attention of social media users for her $140 footwear. She sported Timberland boots with a white shirt, green jacket and jeans. The First Lady wore Timberland boots in 2018 during a trip to the Al Asad Air Base to visit American troops in Iraq. Kamala Harris turned heads when she wore Timberland boots to visit the devastation of the California wildfires this week. Some Twitter users slammed the Democratic Vice President candidate for copying Melania Trump's style Harris sported camel colored Timberland boots with a white shirt, green jacket and jean as her power outfit on Tuesday Twitter users slammed Harris for wearing camel colored Timberland boots which Melania Trump wore in 2018 The First Lady wore similar Timberland boots in 2018 during a trip to the Al Asad Air Base to visit American troops in Iraq 'Melania wore them first,' one Twitter user said. Another added: 'Soooo... Kamala Harris is doing her best to rip off Melania's style now... and failing.' Some Twitter users noted that Harris' boots looked new but she had sported the same Timberlands while touring a farm in Iowa in August 2019. Twitter users slammed Harris for copying Melania's style as she was spotted wearing a green jacket, white shirt, jeans and Timberland boots in Iraq in 2018, an outfit not so different from what Harris wore Tuesday Harris sported the same Timberland boots in August 2019 in Iowa Melania Trump has faced intense scrutiny for her fashion choices. She was eviscerated for wearing 'storm stiletto' high heels during a visit to tour the damage in Houston, Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. She also sparked outrage in June 2018 for wearing a Zara jacket with the phrase, 'I really dont care, do u?' while visiting detention centers holding migrant children at the border in Texas. She wore that after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to separate migrant children from their families at the border. Harris along with California Gov. Gavin Newsom brought food to firefighters in Fresno on Tuesday Harris pictured walking through the wreckage left behind in the Creek Fire in Aubery, California on Tuesday wearing the iconic Timberland boots Melania has been heavily criticized for some of her fashion choices. In June 2018 she sparked outrage for wearing a Zara jacket with the phrase, 'I really dont care, do u?' while visiting detention centers holding migrant children at the border in Texas However many also praised Harris for her look and the footwear which gained popularity in the 90s with the New York rap scene worn by the likes of Tupac, Aaliyah, Wu-Tang Clan and rapped about by the Notorious B.I.G. Meena Harris, Kamakas niece shared a video of Harris dismounting the plane Tuesday in California with the caption: 'THE TIMBS THO'. 'The @KamalaHarris de-planing videos & her completely appropriate self-confidence every time are quickly becoming one of my favorite things about this campaign,' one Twitter user added. 'Kamala Harris in California being Vice Presidential with her Timberlands,' another added. Social media users speculated that Harris brought out the Timberlands in an satorial campaign to appear more casual and approachable with voters. She's also been seen out and about wearing converse as recently as September 7 during a visit to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen championed plans to relaunch Europe's coronavirus-devastated economy through a green new deal Wednesday, in her maiden State of the European Union address. The EU Commission chief painted a sober picture of the bloc grappling with a pandemic and the deepest recession in its history, but laid out ambitious goals to make the 27 nations more resilient for future crises. With wildfires, drought and collapsing glaciers wreaking havoc around the world, von der Leyen said decisive action to tackle climate change could create millions of extra jobs, aiding Europe's economic recovery. She said the EU should set a target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, up from a current target of 40%. The upgrade would put EU "firmly on track" for its plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050, she added. However, she acknowledged the proposal would divide the European Parliament and member states, who must approve the legally binding target but who disagree on how ambitious it should be. "I recognise that this increase from 40 to 55 is too much for some, and not enough for others," von der Leyen told European lawmakers in Brussels. The goal will require huge investments in transport, heavy industry and energy where businesses will also face higher carbon costs under EU plans to revamp its carbon market. Von der Leyen said 30% of the bloc's 750 billion euro coronavirus recovery package of grants and loans, which the EU as a whole will borrow, should be raised through green bonds. 'We turned fear and division into confidence in our union' The EU has been buffeted for years by crises, from the financial meltdown of 2008 to feuds over migration and the protracted saga of Britain's exit from the bloc. Solidarity among the 27 member states frayed badly at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and leaders jousted for months over a joint plan to rescue their coronavirus-throttled economies. Story continues But in July they agreed on a stimulus plan that paved the way for the European Commission to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of them all, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration. >> Its a deal as EU leaders end marathon summit with historic rescue package On Wednesday, MEPs will hold a purely consultative vote that should allow the Commission to borrow 750 billion euros on the markets for von der Leyen's "Next Generation EU" plan. This, for the first time, creates a pool of common debt shared between EU members, to lower borrowing costs for weaker members a move that was long opposed by "frugal" northern states. "In the last months we have rediscovered the value of what we hold in common," von der Leyen said in her address. "We turned fear and division between member states into confidence in our union." She added: "This is the moment for Europe to lead the way from this fragility towards a new vitality." Chances of Brexit deal fading Turning to the troubled talks with the United Kingdom, von der Leyen said every passing day reduces chances for sealing a new trade deal. She stressed that both the EU and Britain negotiated and ratified their Brexit divorce deal and warned the UK that it "cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or dis-applied". "This is a matter of law, trust and good faith... Trust is the foundation of any strong partnership," she said, referring to the UK government's stated intention to breach elements of the pact. Von der Leyen said EU states must be quicker in their foreign policy to support pro-democracy protests in Belarus or to stand up to Russia and Turkey. "Why are even simple statements on EU values delayed, watered down or held hostage for other motives?" she asked. "When member states say Europe is too slow, I say to them be courageous and finally move to qualified majority voting," she said, referring to the frequent blockages caused by the need for unanimity among the EU's 27 states. In a broadside aimed at Poland's populist government, which has expressed openly homophobic views, von der Leyen also declared that so-called LGBT-free zones have "no place in our union." "I will not rest when it comes to building a union of equality... a union where you can be who you are and love who you want without fear of recrimination or discrimination," she said. A number of Polish towns have declared themselves "LGBT ideology free zones", and Poland's President Andrzej Duda has compared the struggle for equality to communism in terms of the alleged threat it poses to national values. Brussels has denounced this stance before, but von der Leyen's speech went further as she vowed to push EU member states to recognise adoptions by same-sex couples across the bloc. "If you are parent in one country, you are a parent in every country," she said. (FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS) The K-12 Bridge to Broadband initiative will enable more students to participate in remote or hybrid learning for the 2020-21 school year by identifying student needs, standardizing eligibility, and facilitating enrollment for sponsored services. NCTA, USTelecom, NTCA and their member companies are committed to common principles to work with public school districts or states to identify and connect students. While some schools are moving ahead with classroom learning this fall, many remain closed and rely on remote or hybrid learning as the sole model of instruction. ESH estimates that 9.7 million students a startling half of whom are students of color dont have a reliable high-speed connection necessary to complete their coursework at home. Since the pivot to remote learning began, many school districts have struggled to determine which families lack access at home. The K-12 Bridge to Broadband initiative is modeled off the innovative Chicago Connected program which brought together philanthropists, city leaders, the school district and local broadband providers to efficiently identify and connect students without service at home. The K-12 Bridge to Broadband program will now take this model to national scale in partnership with broadband providers across the country so that every school district can quickly identify and connect their students to remote learning. For months, our local school district partners have told us that theyve struggled to increase home access because they dont know which families are without it, said CEO and Founder of EducationSuperHighway Evan Marwell. This isnt something we can wait on, because every day, more students are falling behind. By giving schools the data that shows which students need access, we can speed up the process of getting kids back to learning as quickly as possible. The K-12 Bridge to Broadband initiative promotes five core principles for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) working with school districts or states to identify students without broadband at home and advance quick and effective solutions. 1) Create a sponsored service offering for school districts to purchase Internet services for students at home; 2) Provide the data that school districts need to identify students that lack at-home broadband; 3) Agree to a baseline set of eligibility standards; 4) Minimize the amount of information required to sign up to facilitate enrollment for families in need; and, 5) Commit to protect the privacy of participating families, by not using the supplied information for targeting marketing. These key principles will help bring districts across the country closer to the goal of 100% home connectivity access for their students. We are thrilled that Chicago Connected isas hopedbeing used by other cities and school districts as a sustainable, public-private model to bring critically-needed digital access to students across the country, said Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. Built on thoughtful, community-focused collaborations and developed in concert with our philanthropic partners, this effort is exactly the kind of innovative solution we need throughout the nation to address a challenge of this size and urgency. While a number of successful partnerships between school districts and broadband service providers have been forged in recent months, this announcement seeks to energize and scale this model by releasing common baseline principles and commitments that will be applicable to all K-12 schools throughout a broadband providers coverage area. State and district leaders can visit digitalbridgek12.org to find out if there is a service provider who is supporting programming of this kind in their community. Like so many things, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to ensuring every student is connected, said NTCA Chief Executive Officer Shirley Bloomfield. But we believe solutions start by having schools and broadband providers simply talk with each other at a local level. As hometown providers who live and raise families in the areas they serve, our members have a unique opportunity to lead rural communities in solving this issue. Americas broadband networks are continuing to play a critical role in helping the nation adapt to changes in daily life required by the COVID pandemic, said Michael Powell, President & CEO, NCTA The Internet & Television Association. As the school year begins, these changes are front and center in many parts of the country, with family rooms temporarily replacing classrooms and more schools using online instruction to continue their educational mission. In rising to these challenges, the cable industry is continuing to provide robust and reliable service and is redoubling our efforts to work collaboratively with schools, communities and other partners to get families connected through innovative new service models that will foster and sustain the educational progress of our children. Every student in every zip code in every corner of this country needs connectivity to learn and fulfill their potential, said USTelecom president and CEO Jonathan Spalter. From the earliest days of the pandemic, USTelecom members stepped up to provide broadband for distance learning, getting creative to bring bandwidth and service to students in their communities. What is so exciting about the K-12 Bridge to Broadband program is it provides another solution for broadband companies and school districts to team up to deliver the power and promise of broadband to more students this school year. About EducationSuperHighway EducationSuperHighway was founded in 2012 with the mission of upgrading the Internet access in every public school classroom in America. The organization took on this mission because it believes that digital learning has the potential to provide all students with equal access to educational opportunity and that every school requires high-speed broadband to make that opportunity a reality. EducationSuperHighway is funded by national philanthropic organizations, and our mission is supported by governors in all 50 states. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, ESH started the Digital Bridge K-12 (digitalbridgek12.org) program to help school districts and states identify and connect students who lack home digital access. About Chicago Connected Chicago Connected is a groundbreaking program that will provide free high-speed internet service to approximately 100,000 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students. This first-of-its-kind program will be one of the largest and longest-term efforts by any city to provide free, high-speed internet over the course of four years to increase internet access for students. China will need to approve ByteDance's proposed deal with Oracle Corp for its TikTok app, the Chinese company said on Thursday, indicating how its bid to stave off a ban in the United States could be further complicated. Oracle has submitted a proposal to the Trump administration that will allow it to become a technology partner in the TikTok app, as ByteDance hopes to head off a Trump order that it divest TikTok's U.S. operations. The proposal envisages making TikTok Global a U.S.-headquartered company. But U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised questions ... A man was stamped on the head and robbed during a "sudden and violent attack" on a bus in Wembley, police say. Scotland Yard have released a CCTV image of a man they want to trace in connection with the incident. The attack took place on a route 483 bus in Ealing Road in Wembley, at around 8.15pm on July 19. The victim, a 33-year-old man, had just boarding the bus when a man attacked him and stole his wallet. He fought back and during the pair ended up at the back of the bus where the suspect forced him down into a seat. The suspect then knocked the victim to the floor and stamped on his head before fleeing the scene. The victim was left "severely shaken" after sustaining cuts and bruising to his head but did not require hospital treatment. PC Nick Kortright, from the Roads and Transport Policing Command, said: "Although the injuries sustained were not serious ones, this was a sudden and violent attack that left the victim severely shaken. "We need the public's help to identify the man in the image - please contact us as soon as possible if you have any information." Anyone who has information should call 101 or tweet @MetCC quoting reference CAD 7931/19July. Alternatively, you can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. There have been no arrests; enquiries continue. SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Environmental Tectonics Corporation (OTC Pink: ETCC) ("ETC") announces the final acceptance by the U.S. Air Force of a suite of four Research Altitude Chambers delivered to the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH, USA. Valued at over $38 million, the suite of research altitude chambers allows maximum flexibility in the configuration of unique test scenarios under a wide range of environmental conditions. Three of the four chambers are "man-rated" allowing human occupancy for future initiatives. The fourth chamber can be utilized for equipment and various research testing scenarios. ETC's suite of chambers will support activities for the U.S. Government's aeromedical research mission, which include: Human performance assessment in moderate and high altitude conditions; Aircrew equipment development, qualification and Man Rating; Operationally focused aeromedical research; Non-medical engineering test work for aircraft/weapons programs. Among other things, the final contract resolution incorporated into the contract the technical provisions of an engineering change proposal that made minor modifications to the device specification to conform it to the as-delivered suite of Research Altitude Chambers, provided for the U.S. Air Force's final acceptance, resulted in an addition to the contract base price of approximately two percent (2%), and resolved all potential claims regarding contract changes and program delay. States Robert L. Laurent, Jr., President and CEO, "We are pleased to complete this program and in the years to come look forward to working to support the research altitude chambers and the Government's important mission for our military personnel." About ETC: ETC designs, manufactures, and sells software driven products and services used to recreate and monitor the physiological effects of motion on humans, and equipment to control, modify, simulate and measure environmental conditions. Our products include aircrew training systems. Forward-looking Statements: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which are based on management's expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in circumstances. Words and expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, and these statements may include terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "future", "predict", "potential", "intend", or "continue", and similar expressions. We base our forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events or future financial performance. Our forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about ETC and its subsidiaries that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results implied by these forward-looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Contact: Mark Prudenti, CFO Phone: 215-355-9100 x1531 E-mail: mprudenti@etcusa.com 45th Session of the Human Rights Council Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the right to development 16 September 2020 Statement by Sri Lanka Madam President, Sri Lanka thanks the Special Rapporteur (SR) on the Right to Development for his thematic report (A/HRC/45/15) on financing for development. We appreciate the activities undertaken by him during the past year in furtherance of the mandate. The current report of the SR is being presented to this Council at a time when the world continues to grapple with an unprecedented global crisis in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in addition to challenging the health and safety of millions, has threatened to stymie if not reverse many hard-earned gains of developing countries in delivering on the 2030 sustainable development agenda. In this regard, we welcome the SRs call to governments and international financial institutions, in April 2020, to remain true to their commitment under the 2030 agenda and to the promise to leave no one behind in their response to the COVID crisis. We echo the SRs grave concerns regarding the profound impact that the pandemic will have on financing for development, and look forward to his report to the General Assembly which would examine the effects of the pandemic from the perspective the right to development. Madam President, We agree that, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, States faced significant challenges in mobilizing resources to finance development and implementing the right to development. While there have been several UN led processes resulting in a broad international framework, comprising inter alia the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement as well as the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the realization of the goals set out in these policy frameworks needs comprehensive national efforts backed by genuine international cooperation. As mentioned in the report, official development assistance (ODA) remains critical in financing for development, and it is rather unfortunate that despite many commitments made to supporting developing nations, contributions in this regard have declined over the past few years, and are likely to further dwindle in the aftermath of COVID-19. Madam President, Sri Lanka remains committed to ensuring the Right to Development through its national development policies and programs. With its long history of consistent investments in health, education and poverty alleviation, Sri Lanka has been successful in achieving high socio-economic standards through free and universal health care, free education, access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, near universal electrification, and an increased share of population living in permanent houses. Sri Lanka continues to achieve commendable progress with regard to human development and the country is ranked the highest in South Asia according to the UN Human Development Report 2019. Our life expectancy and education indices have risen in the past year, and in a remarkable achievement, Sri Lanka was declared free of measles and rubella by the World Health Organisation recently, even as measles continues to be on the rise globally. Sri Lanka is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. Towards this end, a people-centric national policy and a programme of action to achieve Sustainable Development have been prepared with the intention of making Sri Lanka one of the worlds leading nations in achieving the SDGs. As stated by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his policy statement at the opening session of the new Parliament on 20 August the vision of the Government will be based on achieving the four-fold outcome of a productive citizenry; a contented family, a disciplined, a just society and a prosperous nation. Within a short period of 9 months, a number of measures have been initiated in this direction, even as the country was battling COVID-19 to emerge as one of the few success stories in tackling the pandemic. These measures initiated by the Government include: building a production economy by supporting the agricultural sector and the farmers, incentivising local industries and entrepreneurs, providing lands to the landless, further improving access to safe drinking water, enhancing access to quality education by creating more opportunities as well as improving physical and human resources at schools, enhancing facilities and staff in rural hospitals and access to medicine by manufacturing medicines locally, short and long term solutions to youth unemployment, development of urban and rural infrastructure facilities finding solutions to the issue of housing for the people, and promoting renewable energy sources. Madam President, We appreciate and call for further strengthening of efforts to this effect within this Council, particularly in the context of the right to development being an all-encompassing corner stone of all key human rights instruments. We also take this opportunity to welcome the ongoing work of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development and the SRs continuing engagement with the Working Group. In conclusion, Madam President, we wish the SR success in his work and look forward to continuing our constructive engagement with him in the future. Thank you. View PDF Machinery giant John Deere has announced that it will not attend any international trade shows in Europe next year, due to Covid-19. It announced today that the decision is to ensure the safety of customers and employees during the 2021 fiscal year (end of October 2021). It said attendance to European and Commonwealth of Independent States (inc Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia) would would require extensive international travel. Instead, it said, the company will use a new marketing mix of traditional and digital tools to deliver information to customers. Farmers have done an excellent job in the emergency phase of COVID-19 to ensure food supplies. For that we wish to express our appreciation to all our customers, said Denny Docherty, John Deere Vice President Sales & Marketing, Region 2. The pandemic has changed the world and our industry is undergoing a period of great change too. This also applies to our marketing activities. He said the need for a new approach to communications with customers has therefore prompted John Deere to reduce its participation in trade fairs for the time being. We are also expecting a major change in the exhibition landscape, driven by COVID-19 and digitalisation, said Andreas Jess, John Deere Director Marketing. In the medium term, our company would welcome a new timetable to be implemented by the international trade fair organisations, to free up the show cycle across Europe. However, we will continue to support our John Deere dealers if they decide to participate in their local agricultural and turf shows, always based on the fact that the health and safety of both customers and dealers can be ensured." John Deeres key focus in 2021 will be the change in its operating model, to become a smart industrial company. The company is moving towards being a production system-based organisation, in order to build a more customer driven and streamlined business, a move that is one of the biggest organisational restructurings in the companys 183-year history. The festive season started in West Bengal from Thursday with the Vishwakarma Puja and the Mahalaya. Durga Puja, however, is still a month away. Thousands of people performed tarpana ritual offering prayers to departed ancestors on Mahalayaat the ghats along River Hooghly. The police and civic officials had made arrangements and maintained strict vigil since the early hours to ensure that people wore masks and maintain social distance while performing the tarpan. But as the gathering was huge, it was difficult to ensure that everyone wore masks and maintained social distance, said a senior police officer who was present at one of the ghats. Also Read: Bengal govt moves green court NGT to allow Chhath puja at Kolkata lake Meanwhile puja organisers in Kolkata have come up with a set of guidelines on how the week-long festival that starts around October 22 could be held amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The challenge will be huge, specially after what we saw in videos of tarpan that were circulating on social media on Thursday . Most people didnt wear masks and there was hardly any social distancing, said a puja organsier. The state government will hold a meeting with prominent puja organisers on September 25 to finalise crowd management plans and other aspects of the festival this year. We have already come up with an informal list of dos and donts for the members to follow. That needs to be finalised, said Saswata Bau, general secretary of the Forum for Durgotsab. Here is what you can expect this time 1. As the economy has been hit, organisers are slashing their budgets drastically. So expect a simple puja sans the grandeur and elaborate festivities 2. The height of pandal and idol will be smaller. This will ease sanitisation of the pandal and idol at least once a day. There will be special sanitisation facilities for visitors on Saptami, Astami and Nabami when the crowds peak. 3. Interior decorations will be kept at a minimum to avoid people gathering inside pandals. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has urged pandals should be airy and open. Not more than 25 people will be allowed at one time inside a pandal. 4. Long barricades will be placed at the entry gates so that queues can be formed which in turn would help maintain social distancing. Visitors will have to wear masks and sanitise their hands. 5. There will be minimum lighting so that people dont gather only at night to see the elaborate lighting. 6. Food stalls will be erected with a gap of at least 3-4 feet between them. No one will be allowed to sit. Only takeaways will be allowed. 7. Rules of social distancing during rituals like sandhi puja, pushpanjali and sindur khela will have to be followed. Sliced fruits will not be allowed as bhog, whole fruits may be offered. Banksy has been stripped of a trademark for his most famous artwork - because he refused to reveal his real identity to judges. The ruling on 'Flower Thrower' may set a precedent for his other creations around the world. The street artist, who has previously declared that 'copyright is for losers', lost his two-year legal battle with card firm Full Colour Black. Judges pointed to the fact that 'he cannot be identified as the unquestionable owner of such works as his identity is hidden'. Banksy had applied for an EU trademark of the piece, which was painted in Jerusalem, six years ago - but this was challenged by a card company because the artist did not want to merchandise it, but created it as artwork instead. The ruling on 'Flower Thrower' may set a precedent for his other creations around the world Judges pointed to the fact that 'he cannot be identified as the unquestionable owner of such works as his identity is hidden' (pictured: Banksy in his film Exit Through the Gift Shop) Full Colour Black specialises in 'the commercialisation of street art' and uses Banksy's creations. It boasts on its website: 'We have Banksy images that you probably have never seen before.' Three judges ruled that Banksy had made graffiti which he put on other people's property freely available for use. In his 2006 book, Wall and Piece, the Bristolian invited readers to download his works for 'amusement and activism' rather than profit, pledging never to commercialise his works. But Banksy opened a shop last October where he sold his works, including 'Flower Thrower' - and said the shop was created 'for the sole purpose of fulfilling trademark categories'. The judges said his intentions, 'to circumnavigate the law' rather than commercialise his goods, were dishonest. Devolved Parliament, which is four metres wide, was first unveiled as part of the Bristol artist's exhibition Banksy vs Bristol Museum in 2009. It went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London where it sold for 9,879,500 The Girl With Balloon is one of Banksy's most famous works and the original was first spotted spray painted on a shop wall in London Banksy's Submerged Phone Booth shows an old red telephone box which appears to have nearly completely sunken into the ground, surrounded by pavement stone The panel, part of the European Union Intellectual Property Office, said: 'Banksy has chosen to remain anonymous and for the most part to paint graffiti on other people's property without their permission rather than to paint it on canvases or his own property. 'He has also chosen to be very vocal regarding his disdain for intellectual property rights. 'It must be pointed out that another factor worthy of consideration is that he cannot be identified as the unquestionable owner of such works as his identity is hidden; it further cannot be established without question that the artist holds any copyrights to graffiti.' Banksy was named by The Mail on Sunday as former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham, although his identity has not been confirmed. Syracuse, N.Y. Thomas Greene put his backpack on every morning this spring and waited. Hed stand at the front door for hours. Hed bang on the glass to get out. Bus! Bus! hed cry every day for a month. Finally, the kindergartners mother hid his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack in the closet. He stopped going to the front door. Thomas is one of thousands of special education students for whom school is not just math and reading. It is fundamental life skills taught by teachers, therapists and aides. It is potty training, how to hold a pencil, how to recognize emotion, how to have a conversation, how to manage the frustration of being different. You cant do that on Zoom. When the schools shut down, kids like Thomas and their families were set adrift. There are 4,500 special education students in the Syracuse school district, alone. Districts across the region realized these kids needed face-to-face help; most prioritized sending special education students back for as much in-person education as possible. But in Syracuse, special education students remain home, along with all other students, until at least Oct. 5. For Thomas' family and many others, every day is time lost in a widening gap they fear will never be made up. They worry about what will happen if the district does not reopen to students in October. Thomas loves school. Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the 6-year-olds kindergarten class at Frazer Elementary School, hed been going to school year-round since he was 2. Thomas has severe autism. He doesnt have conversations. He is not potty-trained. He has near-perfect recall of the dialogue in his favorite television show, Steven Universe. He has deep brown eyes, a fast smile and climbs like a monkey. He loves his 2-year-old sister, Rebecca, so fiercely that he cries when she gets in trouble. Things that are second-nature for other kids his age are hard-fought victories for Thomas: Saying hi, holding a pencil, playing a game. He learned these in kindergarten with the help of a small, specially trained army that includes a special education teacher, an aide constantly at his side, a speech therapist and an occupational therapist, said his mother, Brianna Greene. But for more than six months, that army has been gone. All spring, Greene held out hope there would be in-person summer school for special education students. When there wasnt, she pinned her hope on the fall. Then the district announced it was delayed in-person school. That was a huge blow, Greene says. And its disappointing because I know that some of the other schools are going to be in person and I kind of feel that thats unfair... I feel like theres a solution out there, but theyre really not finding it. Thomas Greene, 6, was making progress, then the pandemic shutdown hit. Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com If the Greene familys house was just up the street, Thomas would be one of those kids going back to school in person. The Solvay School District has brought high-needs students, like Thomas, back to school four days a week; other students are going two days a week. The decisions about who goes back to school and who stays home have been district by district in New York. Most urban school districts across the state have decided not to bring back students for in-person education, but smaller districts are having students come back, especially younger and special education students. In Syracuse, the district acknowledged the need to have special education students come to class in-person. They were one of the few groups of students that were to get four days of in-person instruction in the districts initial hybrid learning plan. That is still the plan, according to the district. Greene sits in her backyard. Thomas and Rebecca go down their slide and bounce on a small trampoline. Then they climb on their father, Ruben. He tosses them in the air. Its hard to hear anything over their laughter. This late summer day, Ruben is home on vacation from his job as a long-haul truck driver. Most weeks, hes gone. Its just Greene and the two kids. At first, she tried to do school with Thomas. But the worksheets the school sent home for him were too hard. When it was time for Thomas' speech therapy session, he couldnt understand why his teacher was talking to him through the computer. He couldnt understand why he had to do school when he was at home. As the days passed in quarantine, his hard-won skills fell away: no more hi, no more tiny conversations. He cannot hold his pencil. He never mentions when he goes to the bathroom in his pullup. Thomas became frustrated and angry. Locked in his mind with no way to communicate, no extra help to pull out the words, the happy boy is surly and explosive, his mother says. Hes started hitting her. Hes learned to punch. Until some of his teeth got loose, he had begun biting his mother, too. And at some point in this pandemic, in their small house on Syracuses far West Side, he found his all-powerful weapon against his frustration. Thomas screams. Not for a minute, or 15 minutes, or even an hour. He can scream for four or five hours, straight. Before school shut down, he never did this. He would cry like any other kid. When he was comforted, that was that. Greene tries not to cry as she talks about the screaming. You can go to a different room. You can walk away, she says. But Thomas follows her. "I have locked myself in my room to give myself a break from it. He bangs on the door and tries to break the door down. Thats how intense it gets. " They mostly gave up on trying to learn. How can that happen when he is so frustrated? Instead, the days revolve around keeping the peace. Brianna Greene wants the city schools to come up with a more creative answer for special needs childen, like her son: "I feel like theres a solution out there, but theyre really not finding it. Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com Maria Morse, a lawyer who advocates for special needs families in Central New York, said students are losing services they are required by law to receive from their school districts. Providing certain types of services is impossible virtually, Morse said. This is the type of therapy that Thomas was getting to help him learn to hold a pencil and scissors. In that, the therapist holds the childs hand and makes the movements with him. She said everyone is trying to be understanding of the difficult spot schools are in. But she said it seems like special education services have taken a back seat in some places. I think unfortunately in a lot of school districts the resources have gone to trying to develop a plan for general education students. And in some cases that has left them scrambling to develop a plan for special education students, Morse said. KarAn Holtham's son, Jake, has been out of school since March. The boy who has autism is losing hard-earned skills as his school in Syracuse continues with remote learning.Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com Jake Holtham started eighth grade in the Syracuse City School District Monday. Like Thomas Greene, the 13-year-old is severely autistic. He, too, has been in school year-round since he was small. Last year, he seemed to blossom. His parents lived in Camillus and he attended a special program at Camillus Middle School that was run by the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES. For the first time, he went to birthday parties. He went on field trips and talked about them when he came home. He made art projects his parents put on the refrigerator and walls. He was making connections with people. Theres was a girl at school he had a crush on. The teacher told us about it. And we started teasing him. And hed blush, KarAn Holtham said. They were typical things youd expect from a typical kid. But Jake is not typical so those moments were all huge milestones that were years in the making. He doesnt have sports. He doesnt have band. He doesnt have any of those things, Holtham said. We rely so much on our schools. I dont think people realize that. In addition to his autism, Holtham also has severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and physical problems that make it hard for him to go to the bathroom. At school, the teachers, aides and therapists worked with him to develop routines and expectations. If he completed his work, he could do a fun activity as a reward. He could be in the bathroom for five minutes, no longer. Greg Holtham drives for Instacart so he can be home with Jake while KarAn works as a medical secretary. Theyd try the work the school sent home. And theyd try speech therapy. But like Thomas, Jake struggled getting his therapies virtually. Hes regressed. On a recent day, he could be heard singing from the bathroom. Hed been there for a half hour already. He is stuck in his old frustrating routine, his parents say. Jake never sees or plays with kids his own age. He cant concentrate on the schoolwork on a tablet or computer. Because Holthams family had moved just prior to the pandemic shutdown, he has been switched to the city school district. Many of his old friends in the BOCES program have gone back to school. But he is still at home. The first day of school didnt go very well, his mother said. They only received a video link to watch but couldnt get it to work. On the first day of school at Thomas' house, Brianna Greene was careful not to tell Thomas that school was starting so he wouldnt look for his backpack and wait for the bus. Instead, they got dressed early and she sat the computer she has set up on a small table in her bedroom, trying to figure out how to log in to the school site. Thomas bounced around the room, checking over his moms shoulder to see what there would be. There was nothing but a video introduction from his new art teacher. Thomas watched for a few seconds. Then he slapped the screen and left the room. Marnie Eisenstadt writes about the Syracuse City School District, people and public affairs. Contact her anytime: email | Twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246 MORE STORIES ON EDUCATING CNY Parents, heres what to expect: How Onondaga County handled its first coronavirus case in school Syracuse schools start today, ready or not; the word of the week: frustration Review class: A primer on where high school sports now stand in NY Will CNY schools shut down if a student gets the coronavirus? A look at the rules Complete education coverage on syracuse.com Two of the bureaucrats tasked with leading Victoria's response to the COVID-19 pandemic claim they were not involved in placing private security guards at quarantine hotels. Victoria's bungled hotel quarantining of returned travellers led to the state's horrific second wave, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of elderly Victorians. On Thursday, two former state controllers in the COVID-19 pandemic, Jason Helps and Andrea Spiteri, both claimed they had no role in deciding on the employment of the private security firms. The inquiry has been running for near on a month, with no-one yet to claim responsibility for the disastrous decision. Quarantine breaches involving private security guards seeded 99 per cent of Victorias deadly second wave of COVID infections, which in turn has led to more than 700 deaths of the elderly. On Thursday, the inquiry heard there was initially confusion over exactly who was in charge of the hotel initiative. Top bureaucrats tasked with leading Victoria's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrea Spiteri and Jason Helps (above), claim they were not involved in placing private security guards at quarantine hotels. The inquiry heard there was confusion over who was in charge of the hotel quarantine Victoria's bungled hotel quarantining of returned travellers led to the state's horrific second wave, which affected hundreds of elderly Victorians On March 29, a Department of Jobs executive made an urgent request for Victoria Police to be stationed in hotels on the first night of hotel quarantine. Claire Febey emailed Mr Helps, who was then state controller, and asked police be stationed at hotels 24-hours a day. 'We request that Victoria Police is present 24/7 at each hotel, starting from this evening,' she wrote. 'We ask that DHHS [Department of Health and Human Services] urgently make that request as the control agency.' The inquiry heard that request resulted in a series of meetings that went on for days, none of which resulted in police being placed inside the hotels. Instead, police were tasked with patrolling the surrounding areas of the hotels where they could be called in by security guards if contacted. Documents provided to the inquiry revealed private guards were under the initial impression that police would be on site at the hotels. In a document titled 'Core duties at the hotel', private security were advised their role would be to support DHHS staff and Victoria Police. They were further advised 'Victoria Police officers will be present at the hotel to meet quarantined guests on their arrival' at the hotels. Ms Spiteri, who would later replace Mr Helps in the top job, told the inquiry she had asked that police be present at the hotels. 'My personal view is that it would have been preferable to have a small Victoria Police presence at every hotel 24/7 in addition to private security, but not to replace private security entirely,' she stated. 'Ring of steel' imposed around Melbourne after lockdown restrictions eased in regional Victoria Drivers are pulled over at checkpoints as restrictions eased in regional Victoria 'I believe the Departments staff would have felt safer in the hotels if this had been in place, and in turn, returned travellers would not feel intimidated or alarmed by a full Victoria Police presence on every floor.' Ms Spiteri added that she thought a 24/7 police presence at quarantine hotels may have been helpful in setting an example for security staff as to appropriate behaviour, 'or potentially acting as a deterrent for inappropriate behaviour'. Reports of private security guards behaving badly have circulated for months, with allegations ranging from them sleeping on the job to sleeping with quarantined hotel guests. Ms Spiteri said she had expressed her view verbally on several occasions to other departmental executive staff, but could not remember exactly when she had done so. Document outlining rules and responsibilities for hotel quarantine in Victoria She further told the inquiry that the use of Australian Defence Force personnel could not be requested while the state had access to adequate resources of its own to deal with the hotels. 'In other words, Victoria, along with all other States and Territories must exhaust local resources before ADF assistance can be formally requested,' she stated. 'Decisions on the role of the ADF in the Hotel Quarantine Program had been made by others early in the initial planning of the Program, and I did not consider it was within my authority as State Controller - Health to change those decisions.' Ms Spiteri said while she considered using ADF in late June, she did not think they were an appropriate solution long term. She told the inquiry while returned travellers were 'overwhelmingly cooperative and compliant', she had been alerted to non-compliance from security guards, through unwillingness or simple lack of understanding. Chief Police Commissioner Shane Patton and his predecessor, Graham Ashton, will appear before the inquiry later today. West London suburbs such as Southall, Hounslow, Slough and Hillingdon with large population of Indian origin people face the prospect of becoming ghost towns due to the coronavirus pandemic severely impacting the Heathrow airport and the aviation industry, MPs and industry leaders say. Senior Labour MP Virendra Sharma (Ealing Southall) agreed on Thursday with Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye that areas around the airport risk the fate of mining towns in north England that saw much poverty and deprivation when the coal industry was largely shut down by the Margaret Thatcher government amidst strikes in the 1980s. He said: Areas around Heathrow will become ghost towns if no urgent measures are taken. Tens of thousands of people, many of Indian and Asian origin who have worked in Heathrow-linked roles directly or indirectly for at least three generations, have lost jobs. This is not scare-mongering. This government does not have a seriously thought-out plan to deal with the crisis not only in Heathrow but also other airports such as Gatwick. I and over 25 MPs wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak about this in July, he added. Sharma said he was already seeing the impact of Heathrow-linked job losses in his constituency. In Hounslow alone, the council estimates that at least 11,000 residents are employed at Heathrow, while up to 27,000 jobs in the borough are said to be linked to the airport. According to Holland-Kaye, the collapse of air traffic has put at risk tens of thousands of jobs. He wants the Boris Johnson government to allow testing at airports so that traffic could begin to return to 2019 levels and enable the crippled aviation industry to slowly recover. Heathrow estimates that it has suffered a loss of 1.1 billion in the first half of 2020 due to the pandemic. The Hounslow council said: Independent research carried out by Oxford Economics forecasts the borough will be the second hardest hit in London, with a possible 40 per cent decline in output and thousands of jobs likely to be lost. A major factor is its proximity to Heathrow Airport and strong links to the aviation industry, it added. Tens of thousands of people living in neighbouring boroughs are employed in four types of economic activity supported by Heathrow Direct on-airport: Located at Heathrow and includes roles such as management of airport, pilots, air traffic control, retail, catering, cleaning, security Direct off-airport: Located mainly in close proximity to Heathrow, these jobs are reliant on the airport and include hotels, distribution and logistics activities Indirect and induced: Activity generated through supply chain spending and consumer spending. Catalytic: Companies are located in Heathrow because of the presence of the airport, typically to access international markets that the hub airport services. Economic forecasting and analysis organisation Oxford Economics said in a recent report titled The economic impact of reduced activity at Heathrow that the airport is a key source of employment for people in neighbouring boroughs. It said: The airport supports employment through four main channels of activity. However, the dramatic fall in passenger numbers and cargo at the airport threatens the security of many of the direct jobs located at Heathrow and surrounding it, as well as those in supply chains and subsequently those supported through the spending of wages. It could also impact on businesses that have located around the airport because of the international destinations it serves. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign unveiled two new television ads on Thursday, including one that features a testimonial from a farmer from western Pennsylvania who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but now calls that choice a "mistake" he won't make again. "I voted for Trump in '16, and I'll be the first to tell you I made a mistake," Rick, a voter and third-generation farmer from Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, said in one of the new ads entitled "Totally Negligent," that the Biden campaign is rolling out. The ad will run in the battleground states of Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and, of course, the Keystone State, according to the Biden campaign. Echoing Biden's language on the COVID-19 crisis, Rick does not pin the existence of the virus on Trump, but says the outsized toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the United States is due to the President's mismanagement of the situation. "The pandemic, it's been tough on everybody," Rick continues. "President Trump, he's not responsible for this virus, nobody was going to be able to stop that. But he was totally negligent on how he informed the people ...The guy gets the blame for what's happening." Areas like western Pennsylvania, where Democrats were able to flip a congressional seat in a 2018 special election, are key to Biden's hopes of winning the White House, and include many of the voters that strayed from the party in 2016 and helped deliver Trump the presidency. Both Biden and Trump have visited the area earlier this month, the former vice president giving a speech at a research facility in Pittsburgh while the president opted for a rally at an airplane hangar in Latrobe, roughly 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden departs after voting early in Delaware's state primary election at the New Castle County Board of Elections office in Wilmington, Del., Sept. 14, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP) The second new ad, "Engine," features footage from Biden's July speech in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, just outside of the former vice president's hometown of Scranton, where he announced the first plank of his "Build Back Better," economic agenda that emphasized revitalizing American manufacturing by incentivizing companies to make and purchase goods in the United States. Story continues "I do not buy for one second, that the vitality of American manufacturing is a thing of the past. It has to be part of the engine of new prosperity in America now. And it starts with a pretty basic idea: when we spend taxpayers' money, we should use it to buy American products and support American jobs," Biden said in the clip included in the ad, which will air in the swing states of Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. MORE: Biden says he believes president has 'legal authority' to implement mask mandate Biden's team has consistently outspent Trump's reelection campaign on the airwaves in recent weeks, and is pouring $65 million into broadcast and digital ads this week alone across 10 battleground states: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Nebraska and Minnesota. The new ads from Biden also come as the fall campaign has begun in earnest, with both campaigns aggressively targeting voters in swing states and the former vice president resuming in-person campaigning after running an almost entirely virtual campaign while the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country. Since the beginning of September, both Biden and Trump have crisscrossed a series of states that will decide November's election, a back and forth that will continue through the latter part of this week. Biden has continued to hold socially distanced events with limited participation, while Trump's campaign has largely flouted local guidelines that limited large gatherings, holding indoor events akin to rallies in Nevada and Arizona in recent days. MORE: Biden: 'I trust vaccines. I trust scientists. But I don't trust Donald Trump' Biden is participating in a town hall hosted by CNN Thursday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, while Trump is holding a campaign event in Mosinee, Wisconsin. Biden is traveling Friday to Minnesota, where a new poll conducted this week by ABC News and the Washington Post has him leading Trump by a healthy 16-point margin among likely voters. The Democratic nominee is visiting the northern town of Duluth to tour a union training center and deliver a speech, according to his campaign. Trump will also be in Minnesota on Friday, hosting a campaign event in Bemidji, Minnesota. Biden campaign continues TV blitz with 2 new ads, including testimonial from former Trump voter originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Centre tells SC not to lay down further guidelines for mainstream media India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: The Centre has urged the Supreme Court not to lay down any guidelines for the rest of the mainstream media. The submission was made after the SC had on Tuesday raised questions over a Sudarshan TV programme in which it was claimed that there was a conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims into the civil services. Centre to SC on guidelines for TV media: Look at digital media first | Oneindia News "In view of the issue having already received attention of Parliament, as well as of this Hon'ble Court, the present petition be confined to only one channel namely Sudarshan TV, and this Hon'ble Court may not undertake the exercise of laying down any further guidelines with or without appointment of an Amicus or a Committee of persons as Amicus," the Centre said in its affidavit. TV programme vilifying minorities halted by Supreme Court "The fact situation in each case shall have to be decided on a case to case basis and a broader exercise which is too general in nature is neither warranted nor permissible," the Centre also said. There should be some kind of self-regulation in the media, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while raising questions over a Sudarshan TV programme, claimed by the channel as a 'big expose on conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims in government service' in the promos. "Ff the court decides to undertake the exercise, it should first be undertaken with regard to digital media as there already exists sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements with regard to electronic media and print media," the affidavit filed by the Centre also said. The court, while hearing a plea which has raised grievance over the programme, said that the manner in which some media houses are conducting debate is a matter of concern as all kind of defamatory things are said. Look at this programme, how rabid is this programme that one community is entering into civil services, observed a bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud. See how insinuating is the subject of this programme that Muslims have infiltrated the services and this puts the examinations of UPSC under scanner without any factual basis, said the bench, also comprising Justices Indu Malhotra and K M Joseph. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the top court that freedom of journalist is supreme and it would be disastrous for any democracy to control the press. Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for Sudarshan TV, told the bench that the channel considered it as an investigative story on national security. Your client is doing a disservice to the nation and is not accepting India is a melting point of diverse culture. Your client needs to exercise his freedom with caution, the bench told Divan. The hearing in the matter would continue in the post-lunch session. Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC), one of the world's largest catering operations serving more than 100 airlines, has signed an MoU with CCL Holdings, founded by Ross Kriel, entering into a partnership to set up a dedicated production facility for kosher food at EKFC's premises in the UAE. The new partnership will be called Kosher Arabia, and production is expected to begin by January 2021. Kosher Arabia is certified by the Kashrut Division of the Orthodox Union (OU) which will work in partnership with the South African Union of Orthodox Synagogues (UOS) to provide the highest level of excellence in kosher certification to Kosher Arabia. The experienced culinary team at EKFC will handle all food production, while CCL Holdings will provide certification and production supervision including support for menu development and foodstuff procurement, said a statement. Saeed Mohammed, CEO of Emirates Flight Catering, said: "We are delighted to enter into an agreement with CCL to provide Kosher food. For many years, EKFC has been offering kosher meals primarily to our airline customers, via an outsourced supplier overseas. We've been watching the global trends for kosher food, and with recent developments we expect that demand for kosher food in the UAE and region will grow quickly. Our partnership will cover all food channels and we will also explore opening restaurants across Dubai and the GCC. "By setting up our own capability at EKFC to produce kosher food, we are confident that we can better serve our customers not only in the aviation sector, but also in the hospitality, F&B, and events sector including the upcoming Expo 2020. Making freshly prepared meals here in the UAE gives us better control over meal design and quality assurance." Ross Kriel, founder of CCL Holdings, and President of the Jewish Council of the Emirates (JCE), said: "Kosher Arabia was set up to supply kosher food to meet the growing demand in the UAE, not only from the Jewish community here but also from other consumers looking for healthy and halal-compliant options. "We're honoured to have received so much support from the UAE and broader global community, including from Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the OU's Kosher Division, Rabbi Yissachar Krawowski, Rabbinic Coordinator for OU Kosher in Israel, South Africa's Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and Rabbi Dovi Goldstein, Head of Kashrut in South Africa, and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, Chief Rabbi of the UAE. With their guidance and endorsement, Kosher Arabia was launched and today is signing an MOU with Emirates Flight Catering to set up the UAE's first kosher food production facility." The UAE is home to people from nearly 200 nations and all walks of life, including a thriving Jewish community. In September 2019, the UAE announced the construction of an interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi, which will house a Jewish synagogue, Christian church and Islamic mosque. Emirates Flight Catering is one of the world's largest catering operations. Offering airline, events and VIP catering as well as ancillary services including laundry, food production and airport lounge food & beverage, Emirates Flight Catering is a trusted partner of over 100 airline customers, hospitality groups and UAE government entities. In 2019, the company's 6,000 dedicated employees prepared over 80 million meals and handled 77,000 tonnes of laundry. -TradeArabia News Service Resumption of Europe, U.S. flights into Cancun International announced Cancun, Riviera Maya, Q.R, The government of Quintana Roo has confirmed the resumption of numerous flights into the Cancun International Airport. In a press release, the governor reports that according to the Comite de Aerolineas de Cancun, flights from Europe and the United States will begin starting October. Domestically, we have the reactivation of the Guadalajara-Cancun-Guadalajara route of Aeromexico with a weekly frequency of seven flights since last week. Viva Aerobus also will resume its two Guadalajara and Mexico City routes to the Chetumal International Airport as of November 12, reported the government. Regarding flights from Europe, the Comite de Aerolineas de Cancun says that according to their most recent data, numerous airline have confirmed reactivation into the Cancun International Airport, however, they also say that the information is subject to change without prior notice since there are some governments like France and Great Britain who continue to make changes regarding the reactivation of flights. For now, however, the Comite de Aerolineas de Cancun says Lufthansa will resume flights from Frankfurt to Cancun as of October 1, operating Thursdays and Saturdays. Edelweiss Air will resume its direct flight from Zurich to Cancun starting October 3, with one weekly frequency. Airfrance estimates that it will reactivate its Paris to Cancun route in October with three weekly flights, in November, with five flights and in December, with a daily flight. Turkish Airlines is hoping to reinstate their Istanbulto Cancun route with two weekly flights starting in October, no exact date provided. British Airlines is also anticipating an October restart of flights from London (LGW) to Cancun, however, they too, have not provided an exact date. As for flights from Madrid (MAD), airlines estimate a reactivation for the month of December with Wamos Air, Evelop and Air Europa. As for the United States, Jet Blue announced the reactivation of four routes starting on November 19, with two daily flights for Newark International Airport to Cancun and LAX to Cancun and with a daily flight from RaleighDurham International Airport to Cancun and Tampa International Airport to Cancun International. Alaska Airlines will also begin its operations on October 8, with a daily frequency to Seattle, and from November 20, begin with flights from San Diego and Portland into Cancun. Currently, the Cancun International Airport continues to maintain approximately 200 air operations per day. The Archbishop of Canterbury has called on Boris Johnsons government to stop curtailing peoples freedoms by imposing so many coronavirus restrictions from Westminster. The Rev Justin Welby said UK ministers had determined the daily details of our lives over recent months in a way few of us have experienced as he argued instead for more flexibility and localism. The Church of England chief said to be worried about the impact of the rule of six on the elderly and vulnerable in the run-up to Christmas argued that the government must challenge its own addiction to centralisation. We are not immune to the temptation to pull more decisions into the centre, to feel that something is being done, the archbishop wrote in The Daily Telegraph. But it is a temptation that should be resisted. Often that something might not be as effective as what could be done locally. Scotland and Wales have shown that local public health is the best qualified to deal with local outbreaks. He added: Local government, schools and voluntary agencies including churches can communicate well, act swiftly and measure risk and consequences on the ground. The new normal of living with Covid-19 will only be sustainable or even endurable if we challenge our addiction to centralisation and go back to an age-old principle: only do centrally what must be done centrally. The Telegraph quoted a source close to Rev Welby as saying he was deeply concerned about Christmas and the impact of the rule of six on the vulnerable, the needy, the poor and the elderly. He is concerned about families being kept apart and the knock-on effect that has, particularly on people who are on their own, the church source said. People mount small protest outside Downing Street as rule of six comes into effect (PA) The rule of six banning gatherings of more than six people indoors and outdoors came into force on Monday. It is intended to simplify and strengthen the rules on social gatherings amid rising coronavirus cases. John Apter, the Police Federation chairman, said officers were still trying to interpret the rules and understand exactly when penalties might be imposed. He said: Maybe we should have guidance, because we havent had any yet. Matt Hancock said on Tuesday he was keeping an open mind about the possibility of relaxing the rule of six to exclude children, which would bring England into line with Wales and Scotland. On September 17, 2000, a well-known Ukrainian journalist and founder of popular Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, Georgiy Gongadze, was murdered. His decapitated body was found on November 2, 2000, about 100 km from Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Georgiy's murder is considered by many to be the most important crime against a journalist in the history of independent Ukraine because the state's highest leaders were involved in it. Concretely, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The perpetrator, Oleksiy Pukach, a former general and high-ranking official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, is currently serving a jail sentence for his part in the killing. However, the masterminds of this crime are still free. For many years, the International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ and EFJ) have monitored this case and called on the Ukrainian authorities to thoroughly investigate this terrible crime and bring to court those behind it. The former IFJ President and current Honorary Treasurer, Jim Boumelha, made several statements on this case. IFJ affiliates have lobbied embassies and protested consistently over 20 years about the lack of action. The anniversary of the murder of Georgiy Gongadze is marked every year in Ukraine. Georgiy's death became a symbol of journalists' sacrifice in the performance of their profession. Every year, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) and its regional offices hold events to honour his' memory. This year, NUJU placed a memorial plaque on the outside of its central office in Kyiv. Journalists from all other regions hold commemorative events, lay flowers on killed colleagues' graves, and organize memorials in their cities that are broadcast in special programmes on TV and radio. President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Sergiy Tomilenko said: "The majority of journalists who are currently working in the media have grown up professionally and worked under the shadow of Georgy Gongadze. His fate is an indicator of how dangerous the journalistic profession is in Ukraine". IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger noted: "It is shameful that we still have to struggle for basic rights such as journalists' safety and justice for crimes against them. The journalistic community around the world needs to unite and fight together for their safety. To stop violence against journalists, we need to guarantee that no crime against journalists goes unpunished. We never forget the sacrifice of our colleagues like Georgiy.". A Fianna Fail MEP has hit back at a senior Polish politician that attacked Ireland for improving LGBT rights. Billy Kelleher's intervention comes after former Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski claimed Ireland has become a "Catholic wilderness with rampant LGBT ideology". Read More Mr Kelleher responded saying: "Mr Kaczynski, Ireland is a modern, progressive country where people can be who they are or who they want to be." Mr Kelleher told Independent.ie that Mr Kaczynski "may view Ireland becoming more open, tolerant and respectful as a problem, but I see it as a victory for decency and pluralism. "Our republic is stronger, not weaker, because it is inclusive and progressive. Poland's Government has been heavily criticised for its approach to LGBT rights Right wing politicians in Poland have claimed that increasing rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is a dangerous "ideology" that poses a risk to the country's Catholic tradition. Some Polish towns have claimed to be 'LGBT free' and there are concerns over growing numbers of crimes against the community. In contrast, LGBT rights have improved in Ireland, particularly after the introduction of marriage equality following the 2015 referendum. Mr Kaczynski - the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party - made his remarks about Ireland in an interview with weekly magazine Sieci and they were reported by the Notes from Poland website. Mr Kelleher took to Twitter to criticise his comments. He said: "Mr Kaczynski, Ireland is a modern, progressive country where people can be who they are or who they want to be. "You can be LGBT and Catholic, Catholic and not LGBT, LGBT and not Catholic, or none of the above." He added: "Thankfully we are a pluralistic Republic and I think that's great." Mr Kacynski, #Ireland is a modern progressive country where people can be who they are or who they want to be. You can be #LGBT & catholic, catholic & not LGBT, LGBT & not catholic, or none of the above. Thankfully we are a pluralistic Republic and I think its great! https://t.co/MMSe2Qstld Billy Kelleher MEP (@BillyKelleherEU) September 16, 2020 In his interview Mr Kaczynski warned of the threat he claimed is posed by what he describes as "LGBT ideology" to Polish culture and religion. Those who do not fight and there are many examples in Europe have lost, Mr Kaczynski said. He claimed Ireland was an example of this and is now a Catholic wilderness with rampant LGBT ideology. He added: I will not let us be defeated bythis threat to the very foundations of our civilisation. The European Parliament today voted to adopt a new report on fundamental rights in Poland prepared by the chairman of its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Spanish MEP Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar. Poland's Government has been criticised by MEPs for stigmatising the LGBT community as well as its record on the rule of law. Mr Aguilar has argued that Poland is moving away from European values in relation to and said it's "extremely concerning". Mr Kelleher said: Whats happening in Poland is fundamentally a breach of EU values. "The European Parliament adopted today, by a large margin, a report highly critical of the Polish governments actions." Mr Kelleher added: The real test is what will the EU Council and EU Commission do about it. To date, they have been incredibly slow to sanction Member States for Rule of Law breaches." Mr Kelleher said: "Member States flouting their EU Treaty obligations should be punished where it hurts the most - in their pockets. He added: "The EU isnt an ATM. There are responsibilities that come with membership of our Union. If you will not adhere to the rules, you cannot enjoy the benefits of membership." A former Nigerian minister of foreign affairs, Aminu Wali, has given reasons why some foreign countries are reluctant to help Nigeria in its fight against Boko Haram insurgency. Mr Wali, who was once Nigerias Permanent Representative at the United Nations, also headed the foreign ministry between 2014 and 2015 when Nigeria grappled with a lot of foreign relations issues relating to security. Responding to questions in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the former minister said the government often loses the support of the international community due to opposition at home. He lamented that criticism of opposition elements often shape the opinion of the world, leading to blockade and absence of support similar to what happened during his time as Nigerias chief diplomat. When it comes to fighting insecurity, the opposition (parties) always blast the sitting government by not giving them the right support and advice. He said Western countries at the time fell for these kinds of propaganda, and we entered lots of problems with them. For example, we (wanted) cobra helicopters from the U.S. They refused to sell it to us during my time. We headed elsewhere to get these helicopters. I visited Turkey. They said they are willing to sell to us, but, unfortunately, they cannot go ahead and sell to us because the engines are American and therefore, they have to have a license from America. But the U.S. was not prepared to help, the former minister recalled. Reliving a particular meeting with United States diplomats after the Goodluck Jonathan government had postponed the 2015 election citing the excuse of military operations in the Northeast, Mr Wali said the diplomats were more interested in regime change instead of helping Nigeria tackle the security challenge. He said though there was a lethargic response from the western power in supporting Nigeria to overcome the challenges, a number of other countries actually supported the decade-old war. As a member of the national security council, I know that we had a lot of support from a lot of countries that are sympathetic to our cause. That is why we were able to stop Boko Haram in their tracks. Mr Wali denied allegations that the Nigerian government at the time declined support from some countries to help it locate abducted Chibok schoolgirls in 2014. There is no way a government would say we do not want help from any quarters, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 11:26:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xinjiang's registered urban unemployment rate has remained below 3.5 percent in recent years, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday. Enditem Passage Through Border Will Change Unless There is a Deal The Government has today published its first updated Technical Notice which aims to guide citizens and businesses in the event that it is not possible to conclude an agreement which covers the future relationship of Gibraltar with the European Union. The decision to proceed with the issue of these notices was finalised yesterday at a meeting of the Brexit Strategic Group which was chaired by the Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia. The meeting included the Attorney General Michael Llamas, Chief Secretary Darren Grech, Police Commissioner Richard Ullger, the Collector of Customs John Rodriguez, the Captain of the Port Manuel Tirado, Chief Scientist Liesl Mesilio, Parliamentary Counsel Paul Peralta, the Civil Contingencies Coordinator Ivor Lopez, Toni Sanderson from the GHA and Ernest Francis who heads the Office of the DCM. The Director of Gibraltar House in Brussels Daniel DAmato joined remotely. The first Technical Notice on readiness advice covers one of the most important issues under discussion which is the movement of persons across the border once the transition period comes to an end on 31 December 2020. The paper sets out that the legal regime which will continue to apply at the border is the Schengen Border Code. The main difference will be that UK citizens, including Gibraltarians, will become Third Country Nationals for the EU and therefore subject to a different regime of controls. The Government has said it will continue to work towards an agreement using its best efforts and all the political good will in the world. However, if an agreement is not possible then there will be consequences to the mobility of persons across the border. Those potential consequences for Gibraltarians as Third Country Nationals for the EU, subject to agreements to mitigate them, include: (a) the wet stamping of passports when entering or exiting the Schengen Area; (b) the scanning of documents against the Schengen Information System (SIS); (c) a limit to stays in the Schengen Area of 90 days in any 180 day period; (d) Third Country nationals can be questioned as to the reason for entering Schengen; (e) enquiries can be made of Third Country Nationals as to the conditions of their intended stay in Schengen; (f) checks can be made to ensure that Third Country Nationals have means of subsistence while in Schengen; (g) the application as from 2022 of the ETIAS travel pre-authorisation system (similar to US ESTA). The status quo (what we have today) is not an option and the Government considers it is important for the public and individual citizens to understand these potential consequences and changes and start to plan accordingly in respect of their own personal matters if they include a requirement for cross frontier movement. The options are either an agreement on mobility across the border or no agreement with the consequences to follow, as described above. It is precisely in order to avoid the consequences of no agreement, that the Government continues to explore different types of association between Gibraltar and the Schengen Area which would permit greater fluidity of persons as from next year. The objective is to find and agree upon solutions which do not impinge on sovereignty, jurisdiction or control and which assure maximum fluidity. The Chief Minister has led the Gibraltar delegation to the talks which include the Deputy Chief Minister, the Attorney General, the Financial Secretary and the Director of Gibraltar House in Brussels. The full picture on preparedness is set out in the Technical Notice entitled The movement of people across the land border between Gibraltar and Spain. The Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia said: We left the European Union, together with the United Kingdom, on 31 January this year. Gibraltar and the UK are now both in a period of transition to a new relationship with the European Union. That relationship could either be governed by a Future Relationship agreement or it could be subject to no deal at all. Discussions with the EU and with our nearest EU neighbour Spain on what that future relationship could look like are ongoing. It should be noted that the fluid movement of persons across the border is important to both Gibraltar and to Spain. Indeed, all are agreed that there should be as little disruption as possible to the lives of ordinary citizens. However, we also need to prepare for the possibility that there is no agreement, obviously in those areas that are within our control. The Governments readiness structures, which were set up to handle a no-deal Brexit in the context of the Withdrawal Agreement, have continued in place as we navigate towards a future relationship. Needless to say, Gibraltar continues to work closely and in partnership with the United Kingdom on readiness planning whilst we also continue, alongside the UK, to seek an agreement with the EU. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 06:49:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street to attend Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons, in London, Britain, on Sept. 16, 2020. Johnson told a parliamentary committee Wednesday he did not believe the European Union (EU) was negotiating a Brexit deal with Britain in good faith. Johnson spent more than an hour being grilled by the House of Commons Liaison Committee, made up of the chairs of the major parliamentary select committees. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua) LONDON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a parliamentary committee Wednesday he did not believe the European Union (EU) was negotiating a Brexit deal with Britain in good faith. Johnson spent more than an hour being grilled by the House of Commons Liaison Committee, made up of the chairs of the major parliamentary select committees. Questions were fired at Johnson over the controversial Internal Market Bill he introduced this week in the British parliament. MPs who are opposed to the bill had claimed it would breach international law by overriding some parts of the Brexit deal signed by Britain and the EU. Veteran Labour politician Hilary Benn asked Johnson if he thought the EU was negotiating in good faith, to which he replied: "I don't believe they are." Pressed further, Johnson said that perhaps Brussels will prove his suspicions wrong, adding if that was the case, all will be well. He said he preferred to have the safety net of the Internal Market Bill, which survived a challenge earlier this week from the main opposition Labour Party. Johnson said it was the duty of the prime minister to protect the integrity of the UK, despite being reminded that some former prime ministers had urged him not to go ahead with the bill. The government has insisted that the bill is intended as a safety net to ensure trade between Britain's mainland and Northern Ireland is not affected by the Brexit deal. Johnson was challenged over the need for law-breaking clauses, saying the bill would provide belt-and-braces protection against extreme interpretations of the Brexit protocol. He said the law-breaking powers will only be used in extreme circumstances. Brussels has complained that the clauses of the bill, if invoked, would breach international law. Johnson's government has agreed to table an amendment to the bill, giving MPs a vote before its powers are used. During the questioning, Johnson told MPs Britain will impose reciprocal tariffs on EU goods in the event of Britain having no post-Brexit trade deal with Brussels. Johnson said that a no-deal scenario was not what Britain wanted and was not what the EU wanted from Britain. "Therefore, I have every hope and expectation that that won't be the outcome," he said. Britain and the EU have both said a new trade deal needs to be agreed by mid-October to enable it to come into force on Jan. 1, the day after a year-long Brexit transition period comes to an end. Enditem Jacinda Ardern may have broken her silence on whether she supports the legalisation of cannabis by tasting hemp ice cream at a high-tech food lab. New Zealanders will decide whether recreational marijuana should be legalised and taxed in a referendum held alongside the nation's election on October 17. Ms Ardern has kept quiet about which way she will vote in the so called 'reefer-endum', with a surprisingly blank history on the topic. But on Thursday, the prime minister made the trip to Palmerston North, north of Wellington, to sample the hemp dessert. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visits FoodHQ Science Park on the campaign trail in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on September 17 Ms Ardern also tried soy-based meats and inspected a new UV light device that helps strawberries, soy, and cannabis generate up to 14 per cent more produce 'Creamy,' she said, after taking a spoonful, Stuff reported. Ms Ardern also tried soy-based meats and inspected a new UV light device that helps strawberries, soy, and cannabis generate up to 14 per cent more produce. Poll Should marijuana be legal? Yes No I don't know Should marijuana be legal? Yes 76 votes No 23 votes I don't know 1 votes Now share your opinion Supporters gathered outside Massey University food laboratories to take selfies with the prime minister before she left the precinct. She was also inundated with professions of support and love as she swanned through the streets of the small town. Her main rival Nationals leader Judith 'The Crusher' Collins is opposed to the legalisation of marijuana and visited the same university a week prior. Ms Collins opted to skip the hemp dessert in favour of robotics developments, but did not receive the same warm reception. As the opposition leader walked through the town square, a cafe owner said: 'I was hoping it would be Jacinda'. The prime minister's refusal to to be drawn on the topic has sparked the ire of campaigners, hoping the popular politician might break her silence and tip the ballot their way. Supporters gathered outside Massey University food laboratories to take selfies with the prime minister before she left the precinct (pictured) She was also inundated with professions of support and love as she swanned through the streets of the small town Labour has offered its MPs a conscience vote while opposition National MPs are all voting against it. A poll by Stuff reported that support for Yes and No was split 49.5 per cent each way, with one per cent clicking 'I don't know' in early September, Each survey conducted by pollsters aligned with major TV network polling has put the prohibitionist campaign ahead, while most online polls show the opposite. The cannabis vote is being held alongside a similar referendum on euthanasia. Voting and being on the electoral roll is optional in New Zealand. Major oil producers today pressured other countries to abide by agreed-upon supply cuts as part of continuing efforts to cope with the global energy market downturn. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) met with Russia and other allied oil producers in an online forum today in their combined capacity as OPEC+. OPEC+ agreed to maintain its current target to reduce the group's overall production by 7.7 million barrels per day. OPEC+ members pressured Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria to further cut output during the meeting due to these countries overproduction in May, June and July, Reuters reported. COVID-19 created a drop in oil demand this year, and this along with a price war between Saudi Arabia the largest producer in OPEC and Russia led to a supply glut and a massive drop in oil prices. In May, the price of Brent crude oil dropped below $20 per barrel after starting the year at over $65 a barrel. Prices began to recover later in May. The price today was $43.30 a barrel, up 2% from the day before, according to data from Trading Economics. Brent crude serves as a benchmark of global oil prices for producers and analysts. The May recovery followed an OPEC+ agreement on supply cuts in April. Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud expressed pessimism during the virtual conference today, and warned OPEC+ that it may need to hold an extra meeting next month if the market continues to be weak, Reuters reported. OPEC+ previously met in July. Many OPEC members in the Middle East are highly dependent on oil revenue. Iraq's government, for example, relies on oil to fund 90% of its budget. This distinguished event will highlight two themes: "Service to our Nation" and the values invoked from Bill Withers' iconic song "Lean on Me." U.S. Money Reserve's support of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation began with the launch of its exclusive 75th Anniversary Pearl Harbor coin series in 2016. A portion of the proceeds from the series was donated to the Foundation, which largely helped to fund a Lone Sailor statue that was dedicated at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center in Honolulu, HI, on October 13, 2017, coinciding with the Navy's 242nd birthday. "U.S. Money Reserve has long supported the nation's veterans and is proud to salute these two great heroes through the Lone Sailor Awards Program," U.S. Money Reserve CEO Angela Roberts said. "We look forward to highlighting the noble values and achievements of these two individuals' respective careers." The program will begin with the Sea Service leaders' tribute of "In Their Own Words," featuring Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Lescher, Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Charles Ray, and Lt. Gen. Eric Smith, who is commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. Each speaker will share what he believes it means to serve and be dedicated to a mission, bringing home the messages of what it means to truly lean on each other. William "Bill" Harrison Withers, Jr., enlisted in the United States Navy at the age of 17 and served for nine years. Withers did not begin singing publicly until he was in the service. Withers learned about receiving this award prior to his passing in March of this year, stating that it was a "personal highlight" for him. In recognition of Withers, long-time friends will provide powerful testimonials to honor him posthumously. Marcia Johnson, wife to Bill for 44 years, will accept the award on behalf of her late husband. Johnson has said that the many characteristics that she loved about Bill developed during his Naval service, including his discipline, strong work ethic, dependability, and sense of pride. Honoree Gen. James Mattis, USMC (Ret.), will also speak of his gratitude for the Naval service as well as paying respects to his fellow shipmate Bill Withers. During his 44 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Mattis commanded forces in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. The retired Marine Corps general also served as U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2019. "As an organization, U.S. Money Reserve is proud to employ many veterans. We are moved by the inspiration, humility, and patriotism of this year's Lone Sailor Award recipients and all men and women of the Sea Services. I know that other viewers will be equally touched by the program's speeches and dedications," Roberts said. The ceremony will conclude with a Bill Withers music video tribute. Multiple artists will come together to sing a rendition of "Lean on Me," supported by the U.S. Navy band. For more information or to speak with company leadership, please contact Christol Farris at 512-568-9991 or [email protected] or Arianne Smola at [email protected] or visit www.usmoneyreserve.com. About U.S. Money Reserve, America's Gold Authority U.S. Money Reserve is one of the nation's largest private distributors of government-issued gold, silver, platinum, and palladium products. Founded in 2001, U.S. Money Reserve has grown into one of the world's largest private distributors of U.S. and foreign governmentissued gold, silver, platinum, and palladium legal-tender products. Hundreds of thousands of clients across the country rely on U.S. Money Reserve to diversify their assets with physical precious metals, primarily in the form of legal-tender gold and silver coins. U.S. Money Reserve's uniquely trained team includes coin research and numismatic professionals equipped with market knowledge to find products for precious metals buyers at every level. U.S. Money Reserve goes above the industry standard to provide superior customer service, with the goal of establishing a long-term relationship with each and every one of its customers. U.S. Money Reserve is based in Austin, Texas. Like them on Facebook, connect on LinkedIn, and follow on Twitter. SOURCE U.S. Money Reserve Related Links http://www.usmoneyreserve.com North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to further develop his regime's relationship with China and continue the two nations' joint efforts to defend socialism. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Kim made the pledge in a reply to Chinese President Xi Jinping's letter to mark the 72nd anniversary of the foundation of North Korea. Kim also praised Xi and the Chinese Communist Party for successfully combating coronavirus. CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE As the deadline to respond to the 2020 Census fast approaches, Cape May County residents and second homeowners are urged to go online, to call, or to complete the form sent to them by the U.S. Census Bureau. The deadline for this opportunity to participate, self-response, is Sept. 30. Census forms and invitations to complete the 2020 Census were mailed to every household in March; follow-up forms were sent in August. The Census data is important for New Jersey and Cape May County, and will be used for the next 10 years. It determines the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding for schools, hospitals, clinics, roads, bridges and other services that benefit communities. This includes support for over 100 programs that affect Cape May County, residents such as Medicaid, Head Start, mental health services and SNAP. Further, it determines the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives. Plus, local businesses, schools and governments use the demographic information to develop programs and services. Six universities have banned sex between lecturers and students and two authors have claimed that more should be doing the same. The measures came into place after a survey found that only one in 20 institutions in England and Wales expressly forbids it. Some 51 universities said they discouraged the relationships while 45 didn't give any guidance. Lancaster, Leeds, Nottingham Trent, the University of Greenwich, the University of Roehampton and UCL are the only universities which explicitly prohibit lecturer-student sex. The measures came into place after a survey found that only one in 20 institutions in England and Wales expressly forbids it. Pictured is UCL Some 51 universities said they discouraged the relationships while 45 didn't give any guidance. Pictured is Leeds University The authors of Unsafe Spaces: Ending Sexual Abuse in Universities disagree with the position that it's wrong for universities to get involved in the private lives of consenting adults. Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds argue that universities have a responsibility to protect their students and that 'almost every' relationship between a lecturer and a student 'ends by hurting the student', according to Times Higher Education. They add: 'It feeds a suspicion of favouritism which weakens faith in the assessment process and leaves a residue of disharmony and cynicism which persists well beyond the end of the affair.' Lancaster, Leeds, Nottingham Trent, the University of Greenwich, the University of Roehampton and UCL are the only universities which explicitly prohibits lecturer-student sex Ms Tutchell is an education consultant and Mr Edmonds is a visiting academic at King's College London and Durham University. The pair are unsure whether a sexual relationship between a lecturer and a student could ever be fully consensual because there is the possibility that the former will abuse their power. They even suggest that the lecturers involved in such relationships are often 'serial predators'. The authors of Unsafe Spaces: Ending Sexual Abuse in Universities disagree with the position that it's wrong for universities to get involved in the private lives of consenting adults. Pictured is Nottingham Trent University Their book, which is set to be published on September 24, also estimates that a minimum of 15 per cent of female students have been abused and three per cent of male students have been abused. Meaning that at least 50,000 students across England and Wales are sexually abused every year. They found that 61 universities had recently introduced new complaint procedures in cases of alleged misconduct but only nine had noticeably made changes towards becoming more professional and evidence-based. Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds argue that universities have a responsibility to protect their students and that 'almost every' relationship between a lecturer and a student 'ends by hurting the student'. Pictured is the University of Greenwich They add: 'It feeds a suspicion of favouritism which weakens faith in the assessment process and leaves a residue of disharmony and cynicism which persists well beyond the end of the affair.' Pictured is the University of Roehampton The universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Sussex; Keele, Durham and Lancaster universities; Goldsmiths, University of London, Imperial College London and the London School of Economics. However, Ms Tutchell and Mr Edmonds suggested that a few of those had a 'wake-up call' as they were recently been the centre of sexual scandals. The pair are fighting for a 'major programme of reform' for universities to be able to tackle sexual harassment and they are calling for institutions to carry out detailed surveys to find out the full scope of the issue. Mr Edmonds told THE: 'For those not named for their good practice in the book, if they dont make vast improvements, and quickly, a scandal is on the horizon.' 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. ABC will screen Lockdown Stories, a one-hour special that tells seven intimate and moving stories made by emerging filmmakers from around the country, during Australias first lockdown. When Australia started talking about isolation, ABC Religion & Ethics put out a call to emerging film makers. Seven participants were chosen to document their lives for Lockdown Stories. The result is a range of very different stories; intimate, moving, funny and heart-warming as they share their personal experience in lockdown. Bernie, from North Fitzroy, tells the story of his favourite Melbourne restaurant cooking meals for frontline medical workers. International student Anna lives in a one room apartment in Brisbane. Her family are in the COVID-19 epicentre in Northern Italy, and her beloved Nonna and mother have tested positive. Yolngu woman Siena from North Eastern Arnhem Land tells how her community of Yirrkala protected their precious elders during the first lockdown. Neve returns to Launceston, where her mother has called the family home to isolate together. Every family member is a frontline health worker except for Neve, and she wants to find a way to thank them. Tyla experiences a very different Passover this year, as her colourful Jewish family try to embrace domestic isolation in Melbourne. Lou lives alone in tropical Cairns as the world goes into lockdown. Her work as a carbon farmer continues throughout the pandemic but every day, she must confront the mental and emotional fear of isolating alone in paradise. Erics family flew to Perth from Brazil for his wedding, then got stuck there. The only thing his family can do to keep themselves sane is to sing and dance. Production details: Producer: Tracey Spring; Associate Producer/Mentor: Olivia Rousset; Editor: Danielle Akayan; Researcher: Wendy Boynton; Executive Producer: Jessica Douglas- Henry. Tuesday 29 September 9.30pm on ABC. At the meeting, the leader stressed the Vietnamese Government always facilitates the investment of foreign firms, especially those from the EU that have potential and high technological capacity. He also highlighted all-round developments of the relations between Vietnam and Belgium and the Netherlands, saying the two countries are Vietnams important trade partners. However, PM Phuc said cooperation outcomes have yet to match potential and strength of the sides. The Dutch Ambassador expressed her impression on Vietnams efforts in the COVID-19 combat and economic development. The Dutch Government backs Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre project in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau which the EU investors are interested in, she said, adding that the Dutch Development Bank has committed 10 percent of the project investment. For his part, Ambassador Paul Jansen said that the Belgian Corporation for International Investment will also play a role in the investment. Once operational, the Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre can accommodate large container ships, helping to deliver Vietnamese goods abroad, investors said, expressing their hope that the project will soon be approved. They also committed to ensuring the progress and quality of the project, and using green transportation methods for sustainable development once it is given the green light. Ba Ria-Vung Tau has approved the 1/2000 project planning scheme and located the project, and now stands ready for site clearance. PM Phuc spoke highly of the effective cooperation between Vietnam and the two countries at multilateral and international forums such as the UN, ASEM and ASEAN-EU. He called on the two countries, together with the EU, to raise a stronger voice in protection of the respect for law at seas and oceans, as well as the East Sea stance of Vietnam and ASEAN. The leader said he believes that the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) will bring about great opportunities to Vietnamese and EU businesses in operation and market expansion. He suggested the Netherlands and Belgium help Vietnam improve its capacity for the enforcement of the deal. By Akbar Mammadov Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region has said that the Armenian authorities recent provocative statements and actions indicate that the military-political leadership of this country is preparing for another act of aggression against Azerbaijan. In a statement published on September 16, the community said that Armenia continues to make provocative statements against Azerbaijan via the separatist regime set up in Azerbaijans occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia continues to make provocative statements against our country, both on itself behalf and on behalf of the so-called regime created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. The community noted that recently, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan put forward seven groundless and provocative principles for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The same principles have been put forward by the head of the illegal regime in the Nagorno-Karbakh, the community said. It emphasized that these seven principles, which originates from impunity and arrogance, are completely unacceptable. It is stated in the statement that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev recently demanded one principle against Pashinyans seven principles the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijans occupied territories. Furthermore, the community said that Armenia seeks to change the format of negotiations by distorting facts. The parties to the conflict are Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the interested parties are the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The negotiation format cannot be changed." It is said in the statement that Yerevan has been rejecting the communitys proposal for negotiations. Armenia not only rejects our offer of dialogue with the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh but even denies the mere existence of our community. This is a vivid example of the Azerbaijanophobia policy pursued at the state level in Armenia, the community added. As a community, we declare that Armenia will never be able to deceive the world community. The truth is that Armenia occupied 20 per cent of the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan, carried out ethnic cleansing, expelled up to 1 million Azerbaijanis from their native lands, and created a criminal regime in our occupied lands to conceal their aggression." The community stated that Azerbaijans biggest concession in the conflict resolution is its participation in peace negotiations for many years. The settlement of the conflict is possible only with the complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and with the return of all internally displaced persons to their homeland, the statement reads. It should be noted that Armenia has stepped up its military provocation recently, staging sabotage both on the border and on the line of contact. On July 12, Armenian forces shelled Azerbaijan's positions in Tovuz, Azerbaijan's strategically-important district. The attack killed 12 Azerbaijani servicemen, including an army general, as well as a 76-year-old civilian. Armenian forces retreated after suffering losses in Azerbaijan's retaliation. Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Attorney General William Barr speaks on Operation Legend, the federal law enforcement operation, during a press conference in Chicago, Ill., on Sept. 9, 2020. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images) US Attorney Denies Report that Barr Considered Criminal Charges Against Seattle Mayor U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran on Sept. 17 denied a New York Times report claiming, citing anonymous sources, that Attorney General William Barr asked federal prosecutors to consider criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) police-free zone. In a statement issued early Thursday, Moran, an attorney for the Western District of Washington, strongly denied the allegations, saying that he has had multiple conversations with Department of Justice (DOJ) officials. Throughout this lengthy period of civil unrest, I have had multiple conversations with Department of Justice leadership. They have asked for information about protest activity devolving into violence, about federal interests implicated by the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, and about the cases filed in this district regarding federal crimes, the federal prosecutor said. At no time has anyone at the Department communicated to me that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is, was, or should be the subject of a criminal investigation or should be charged with any federal crime related to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). His comments followed a Wednesday report from The New York Times that said Barr asked prosecutors in the DOJs civil rights division to explore criminal charges against the Seattle mayor. The report cited two people who said they were briefed on those discussions. The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ for comment. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan speaks at a news conference about the COVID-19 outbreak in Seattle, Washington, on March 16, 2020. (Elaine Thompson, Pool/Getty Images) Durkan responded to the report in a statement Wednesday, saying it is chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration. The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the president to target those who have spoken out against this administrations actions, Durkan said. That is an act of tyranny, not of democracy. Ultimately, this is not a story about me. It is about the how this president and his attorney general are willing to subvert the law and use the Department of Justice for political purposes, the mayor added. It is particularly egregious to try to use the civil rights laws to investigate, intimidate, or deter those that are fighting for civil rights in our country. It comes just weeks after Durkan filed a petition asking Washingtons Supreme Court to halt a recall effort against her over her handling of Junes widespread protests. Petitioners say Durkan endangered the city by repeatedly violating her duties under state law, including when she wrongfully disallowed property rights by permitting occupiers to take over a section of Seattle in June before finally ordering the occupation cleared after several deadly shootings. Petitioners have also taken issue with the mayors handling of law enforcement, accusing her of allowing police to leak false information, failing to implement new policies when officers used crowd control measures during a public health emergency, and failing to enforce compliance with municipal codes when officers deliberately attacked members of the press. A spokesperson for Durkan told The Epoch Times in a July email that the mayor has consistently acted to protect the public health and safety of residents during the pandemic, economic devastation, and demonstrations for justice. Moran added: My office continues to work collaboratively with state and local law enforcement, including the Seattle Police Department, to prosecute federal crimes such as arson, weapons violations and the use of destructive devices. Those cases are traditionally an area of focus for federal law enforcement. The goal of my office is to strongly deter criminal acts that have no place alongside, and only endanger, those who choose to engage in constitutionally protected speech. (Getty Images) Nearly two-thirds of young American adults are not aware that six million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust, according to a new survey. The survey, carried out on adults between the ages of 18 and 39 across all 50 states in the US, showed a worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge in its respondents. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), who commissioned the survey, revealed that 11 per cent of US Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jewish people caused the Holocaust. Examining Holocaust denial, results showed that 10 per cent of people said that the tragedy did not happen or were not sure. In total, 23 per cent either said the Holocaust was a myth, was "greatly exaggerated" or were not sure. Almost half (48 per cent) of national survey respondents could not name one of the more than 40,000 camps and ghettos that were established in Europe during the Holocaust, with 56 per cent unable to identify Auschwitz-Birkenau. The results are both shocking and saddening and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories, said Gideon Taylor, President of the Claims Conference. We need to understand why we arent doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past. This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act. The survey showed that 63 per cent of respondents did not know that six million Jewish people were murdered and that 36 per cent thought that two million or fewer Jewish people were killed. The Claims Conference, who seek to provide a measure of justice for Jewish Holocaust victims, expressed fear over the results as fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors eyewitnesses to a state-sponsored genocide are alive to share the lessons of the Holocaust. The survey seemingly exposed the role of social media in perpetuating ideas of Holocaust denial with just shy of half of the respondents (49 per cent) saying they had seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online. Story continues Thirty per cent said they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms and, or, in their communities. Worryingly, 59 per cent of respondents indicate that they believe something like the Holocaust could happen again. The survey calculated a Holocaust knowledge score by using the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z adults who had: definitively heard about the Holocaust, could name at least one concentration camp, death camp, or ghetto, and know that six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. Arkansas has the lowest Holocaust knowledge score with only 17 per cent of respondents fulfilling the criteria, followed by Mississippi (18 per cent) and Florida (20 per cent). Wisconsin (42 per cent), Minnesota (37 per cent) and Massachusetts (35 per cent) ranked the three highest out of the 50 states. A taskforce comprised of Holocaust survivors as well as historians and subject matter experts from museums, educational institutions and leading nonprofits in the field of Holocaust education was set up by the Claims Conference to oversee the survey. The Claims Conference urged that increased education on the Holocaust is needed to combat the findings and said that social media platforms need to take responsibility for removing Holocaust denial content from their websites. The survey noted that 80 per cent of all respondents believe that it is important to continue teaching about the Holocaust, in part, so that it does not happen again. Interviews were carried out with 1,000 respondents nationwide and 200 interviews in each state with adults ages 18 to 39 via landline, cell phone, and online interviews. Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference told NBC News that the most important lesson is that we can't lose any more time." "If we let these trends continue for another generation, the crucial lessons from this terrible part of history could be lost." Read more Holocaust TikTok trend is harmful and offensive, says Auschwitz Memorial Holocaust denial graffiti daubed on Nazi massacre site in France Facebook algorithm recommending Holocaust denial and fascist content, report finds 'Blood on my hands': Fired Facebook worker says company failing to stop political meddling in damning memo What I've learnt from my grandfather the Holocaust survivor Manama Travellers entering Bahrain via King Fahd Causeway have to undergo coronavirus (COVID-19) tests and pay BD60 each. They are also required to download and register on the BeAware app, in compliance with the mandatory precautionary measures for combatting the pandemic. These measures do not apply to incoming travellers who show evidence, via the BeAware app, that they have tested negative after undergoing a PCR test before leaving for Bahrain. PCR results are valid for 72 hours after undergoing the test. Incoming travellers are urged to comply with mandatory precautionary measures and must adhere to all health protocols enforced by authorities. They are required to self-isolate until their test result comes out negative. In case the test is positive, they will be contacted by health authorities, must observe quarantine protocols, and abide by the instructions given to them. Bahrains authorities have made it mandatory to adhere to social distancing, wearing face masks, and avoiding gatherings. Those who show suspected COVID-19 symptoms (headache, coughing, loss of sense of smell or taste, and separate pains in the body with high temperatures) are required to isolate immediately, call 444 and follow the instructions given. Daniel Meadows was down to a quarter tank of gasoline, and so he had to load up his truck with his two dogs and headed to a Chevron gas station on Alabama State Route 181 for fuel. His mother, Angie, also accompanied him and the two had to wait in a long line. Only one fuel pump was operating at the gas station that is adjacent to the entrance into the Historic Malbis neighborhood near Interstate 10. The Chevron station was also visibly damaged by the hurricane an awning that stood above the fuel pumps sat mangled outside the front entrance to the convenience store. Weve been through tropical depressions and storms and we didnt think it would be too serious, said Daniel Meadows, reflecting on the day while his mother, Angie, who was along for the drive. I think it was a lot worse than they anticipated, Angie Meadows said. To me, it was like a Category 3 or 4. If I knew yesterday what I know today, I wouldnt have stayed here. Residents trying to recover from the storm along the eastern shores cities of Daphne, Spanish Fort and Fairhope on Wednesday had to search for a business that was open. Restaurants and grocery stores were closed amid widespread power outage that affected all three cities. Waffle House restaurants, which are known for their disaster preparedness and ability to stay open during extreme weather, were all closed. A few convenience stores were open running on generators as was a Lowes home improvement store in Daphne where a long line formed outside the business as residents searched for building supplies and fuel. A search was also on for ice as most of the neighborhoods within the Eastern Shore remained without power. We are about out of gas, said Phil Folmar, a Daphne resident who also waited outside the Chevron for fuel. We were hopeful in wanting to get some ice, too. But there is no ice here. David Vegas, a Daphne resident, stopped into the Chevron for some supplies after traveling around the region searching for a store that was open. He said another Shell station on U.S. 98 had a line going out the door and so he opted to continue his search elsewhere. So we came this way, he said, happy to have made a quick trip in and out of the Chevron. I saw this one open. Also open along Alabama 181 was Malbis Shell, owned and operated by Kevin Spriggs. The longtime Eastern Shore businessman said customers waited in long lines for fuel because the regions Internet infrastructure is toast. He said that credit card purchases often had to go through cell phones, which were overloaded during the afternoon. This is where all this Internet technology has crept up into everything (in our lives) and has work well over the last 10 years, but now all of a sudden, the ATM in the stores wont work, said Spriggs. People put their cars in the gas pump and if something doesnt work on the cell phone side, it might reject peoples cards. It leads to frustrations at the gas pump. Its a mess. Spriggs said part of the problems on Wednesday was getting employees into work He said that most of his employees were dealing with downed trees blocking city roads or they could not traverse over the Interstate 10 Bayway, which was closed for most of the day. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Amber Wang and Shaun Tandon (Agence France-Presse) Taipei, Taiwan/Washington, United States Thu, September 17, 2020 16:30 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4572ab5 2 World US,US-China,US-China-tension,Taiwan,US-Taiwan Free A top US diplomat will arrive in Taiwan on Thursday, the highest-ranking State Department official to visit in 40 years, in a further sign of Washington's willingness to defy China and its campaign to isolate the self-ruled island. Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, was heading to Taipei to attend a memorial service for late president Lee Teng-hui on Saturday, the US State Department said. The trip, the second high-ranking US visit in as many months, sparked an immediate rebuke from China, which baulks at any recognition of Taiwan and has mounted a decades-long policy of marginalizing the democratic island. "China strongly opposes this," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Thursday, saying the trip "encourages the arrogant attitude of Taiwan independence separatist forces". Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory, to be absorbed into the mainland -- by force if necessary. Relations between the United States and China are at their lowest point in decades, with the two sides clashing over a range of trade, military and security issues, as well as the coronavirus pandemic. Washington's increased outreach to Taiwan under US President Donald Trump has become yet another flashpoint between the two powers. "The United States honors President Lee's legacy by continuing our strong bonds with Taiwan and its vibrant democracy through shared political and economic values," spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement announcing Krach's trip. Taiwan's foreign ministry said Krach, accompanied by assistant secretary Robert Destro, would also discuss "how to strengthen bilateral economic cooperation" during his three-day visit. It described him as the highest-ranking State Department official to visit Taiwan since 1979, when Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will host a dinner for the US delegation on Friday. "We look forward to more exchanges and discussions between Taiwan and the US to solidify the foundation for further collaborations, including economic cooperation, through undersecretary Krach's visit," her office said in a statement. Ambassador meeting in New York Beijing discourages any official exchanges with Taiwan but in recent months Washington has dramatically increased its outreach. Last month, US cabinet member and health chief Alex Azar visited to highlight Taiwan's widely praised efforts to stop COVID-19. On Thursday Taiwan's foreign ministry also confirmed a rare meeting took place the day before between James Lee, its top official in New York, and Washington's ambassador to the UN Kelly Clark. Beijing has ramped up diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan since the 2016 election of Tsai, who rejects its view that the island is part of "one China". In recent weeks, Taiwan has reported a sharp increase in incursions by Chinese jets into its air defense identification zone. On Thursday, Taiwan's defense ministry said two Chinese anti-submarine planes crossed the boundary a day earlier and were warned to leave. Washington remains the leading arms supplier to the island but has historically been cautious in holding official contact with it. Trump has embraced Taiwan more closely as a way to hit back at authoritarian Beijing, especially as he seeks re-election in November. He has also approved some major arms sales, something his recent predecessors were more reluctant to do. But the United States has so far not strayed from the unwritten red line on Taiwan, as it has not sent senior officials whose primary responsibilities are foreign affairs or defense. Lee, who died in July at the age of 97, was a towering figure in Taiwan's history, helping the once authoritarian island transition to a vibrant democracy and later angering China by pushing for it to be recognized as a sovereign country. When news of his death broke, Chinese state media called him "the godfather of Taiwan secessionism". Krach, with his economic focus, will be visiting as Taiwan seeks a trade deal with the United States.Taiwan removed a major hurdle last month by easing safety restrictions on US beef and pork -- welcome news for farmers, a key constituency for Trump, as the election approaches. Gifty Ohene-Konadu (middle) with CEOs of the three award receiving companies 16.09.2020 LISTEN PRESIDENT AKUFO-Addo yesterday presented awards to some three companies which are operating under his administration's 'One District, One Factory' (1D1F) initiative in recognition of their efforts towards complementing government's vision of creating a 'Ghana Beyond Aid'. The awards, which were presented to the owners of the three companiesEkumfi Fruits and Juices Limited, Casa De Ropa and Petersfield and Rey Group Limitedthrough the National Coordinator of the 1D1F Secretariat, Mrs Gifty Ohene-Konadu, took place at a short ceremony in Accra. Certificates were presented to the owners by Mrs. Ohene-Konadu on behalf of President Akufo-Addo. The National Coordinator of the 1D1F Secretariat said the President was particularly impressed by the 'can do' spirit of the owners of these companies who defied the odds to bring their vision to fruition. Noting that this was just the beginning, she said the President would similarly recognize other 1D1F projects that were at various stages of completion across the numerous districts of the country soon. Frederick Kobbyna-Acquah, CEO of Ekumfi Fruits and Juices Limited; Anthony Dawson, Executive Director of Casa De Ropa; and Jonathan Dennis Abraham, CEO of Petersfield and Rey Group Limited, received the certificates on behalf of their companies. They took turns to express their profound gratitude to President Akufo-Addo and the 1D1F National Coordinator for the immense support they accorded them to bring their companies this far. Ekumfi Fruits and Juices Limited, the first 1D1F projects, is a US$15 million project financed with a US$10 million Ghana Exim Bank and other shareholders' contributions. It commenced operations in mid-December 2019 and officially commissioned by the President on August 21, 2020. It currently employs 75 persons on the factory floor and a further 420 on the farms. Casa De Ropa is a wholly-owned Ghanaian company located in Gomoa Bewadze in the Central Region. It produces and processes sweet potato into bread, chips, pizza and biscuits. It has plans to expand to Takoradi, Kumasi and other cities before the end of the year. Currently with a presence in Cape Coast, Winneba and Accra, it employs 150 people and hopes to engage over 1000 people at full capacity. Petersfield and Rey Group Limited is a local agro-processing company that specializes in the production of quality and standardized fruit drinks, bottled and sachet water in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo Abrem Municipality of the Central Region. Daily Guide Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:40:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ACCRA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Ghana's deputy minister for health Bernard Okoe Boye has applauded the role played by China in bolstering the country's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking with Xinhua, Okoe Boye said that the drastic reduction in Ghana's COVID-19 active cases could be partly attributed to the medical support and research information-sharing from China. He stressed the importance of the medical supplies from the Chinese government as well as lessons drawn from China's experience and success in curbing the spread of the virus that has provided Ghana with valuable lessons on how to fight and win against the pandemic. "Our Chinese friends have been supportive. They've supported us when it comes to PPEs, they've even supported us when it comes to information sharing," said he. The minister expressed optimism that the West African country could eliminate the virus entirely if it stayed the present course. The number of Ghana's confirmed COVID-19 cases stood at 45,655 on Thursday morning, with 564 active cases and 294 deaths. Enditem On September 7, Stanislava Stasya Gusakova heard a knock on the door of her flat in Belaruss capital Minsk. When she opened it, four men one in civilian clothing and three dressed in army fatigues and balaclavas stormed in. They dragged Stasya out of her flat and forced her into a minivan which had been waiting outside. She was then taken to a nearby police station. At no point did the men introduce themselves or show any documents. Stasya, who was a board member of the Belarusian National Youth Council (RADA), a union of 27 democratic youth organisations, has since gone through several hearings in Belauss Kafkaesque court system where even basic standards of fairness are roundly ignored. She is currently serving a sentence of 11 days of administrative detention. Her only crime was taking part in the peaceful protests that have gripped Belarus since August 9, when the presidential elections were rigged. Stasyas arrest is not an anomaly. Since last month, all of the oppositions key leaders have been kidnapped or arrested, have fled or been forced to leave the country. Thousands of people have been taken to police stations on bogus charges, and dozens continue to be arrested every day. Protesters have been tortured, humiliated, forcefully disappeared and even killed. As the international media spotlight is slowly starting to fade, President Alexander Lukashenko shows no signs of backing down. He continues to remain in power despite the demand of his people for a new election. It is no exaggeration to say that I have spent most of my time over the past month between protests and court hearings. Stasya is a colleague of mine at RADA, where I am now international secretary. We have been at the forefront of the protests and I have seen how many other friends and fellow activists have been arrested. People often ask me if we are getting tired of protesting and if the fear of detention and abuse will eventually deter people from taking to the streets. My answer is always the same: we will not give up. These protests are a long game, and it is one we must win to ensure a better future for our country. It is heartening that people continue to protest in their thousands across the country, despite the brutal response by Lukashenko and his security forces. Police have used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up protests. During the first few days of demonstrations in early August, more than 7,000 people were arrested, and hundreds later told human rights organisations they were subjected to vicious beatings, sexual violence and other forms of torture in detention. The UN has already recorded 450 cases of torture in Belarus. While the worst of the physical abuse has apparently stopped, the reign of terror has not. People continue to be arrested for voicing their opinions peacefully. While most have been released, many have also been charged under laws that violate international standards and face the prospect of long jail sentences. As Stasyas case shows, it is no longer just in the streets that people are at risk, but also in their homes. It is terrifying to know that at any point security forces could pay you a visit and arrest you. Many of the people I work with have already moved out of their homes for security reasons, and so have I. The Belarusian court system is set up to protect the interests of the authorities. My friends who have been arrested have all been denied access to lawyers and family members, and have been sentenced after ridiculously short trials without any substantive evidence. They are charged with participation in an illegal mass event, contrary to international law. Amazingly, the authorities have used the COVID-19 pandemic to try to justify some of these restrictions, even though Lukashenko himself has downplayed the threat of the virus and even claimed it could be cured with vodka. It is also important to note that the protests are not simply a youth movement, but rather have the support of Belarusians of all ages and from all walks of life. Some Belarusians are frustrated with a lack of political freedoms, others with the tanking economy, and others still with the governments incompetent handling of the pandemic. Workers at several state-owned enterprises have gone on strike to demand fresh elections and an end to police brutality. The widespread support is linked to how the dictatorship has affected every facet of our lives in Belarus. My own case is just one example of this. I used to be a lecturer in human rights and international law at the International University in Minsk (MITSO), but I lost my job in 2016 after I spoke to my students about Belaruss continued use of the death penalty, LGBTQ rights and other taboo issues. Officers from the KGB the national intelligence agency even came to visit me and my family in order to intimidate me. The administration of the university issued warnings to me about fictional violations. What we ultimately want for our country is simple: it is freedom from this kind of fear. We want the government to release jailed protesters, provide justice for police abuse and to respect peoples right to voice their opinions peacefully. We want a new election that is free and fair, that can ultimately pave the way for a more open and democratic society, where everyones human rights are valued. We ask the international community, and in particular, the European Union, to support us in this. Speak out loudly against the abuses in Belarus and in favour of the people demonstrating. Most importantly, use what leverage you have financial or political to pressure the Lukashenko government into holding a new election. Until this happens, I will continue to take to the streets, demanding change. There is every chance that I like Stasya will soon be paid a menacing visit by police, but it is a risk I am willing to take. Toppling a dictator is a long game, but one I am convinced we will win. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. New Delhi : India and China are expected to continue military and diplomatic talks to implement the agreement reached between their foreign ministers last week to restore peace and tranquillity in the border areas, the government said on Wednesday on the standoff in eastern Ladakh. In a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan gave a brief account of the four-month-long standoff and said the Chinese side attempted to transgress the Line of Actual in several areas of the western sector since mid-May. "These attempts were invariably met with an appropriate response from us," he said. Muraleedharan said senior commanders of the two sides on June 6 had agreed on a process for disengagement, and subsequently, ground commanders held a series of meetings to implement the consensus reached. "However, the Chinese side departed from this consensus to respect the LAC and tried to unilaterally change the status quo, as a result of which a violent face-off happened in the late evening and night June 15," he said referring to the Galwan Valley clashes. "Both sides suffered casualties that could have been avoided had the agreement at the Senior Commanders level been scrupulously followed by the Chinese side," the minister said. Tension in eastern Ladakh increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. Muraleedharan mentioned subsequent military and diplomatic talks between the two sides. He also referred to the talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe in Moscow on September 4 on the sidelines of a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. He also talked about the agreement reached between two countries following talks between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on September 10 in Moscow. "Accordingly, it is expected that the two sides will continue to have meetings of military and diplomatic officials to implement the agreements reached between the two foreign ministers and ensure full restoration of peace and tranquillity in the border areas," Muraleedharan said. The agreement included measures like quick disengagement of troops, avoiding action that could escalate tensions, adherence to all agreements and protocols on border management and steps to restore peace along the LAC. In an address in Lok Sabha, Singh on Tuesday said the Chinese side has mobilised a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC as well as in the depth areas. The situation eastern Ladakh deteriorated after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong lake on the intervening night of August 29 and 30. India occupied a number of strategic heights on the southern bank of Pangong lake and strengthened its presence in Finger 2 and Finger 3 areas in the region to thwart any Chinese actions. India has also rushed in additional troops and weapons to the sensitive region following China's transgression attempts. Following China's fresh attempts to change the status quo in the southern bank of Pangong lake, India has further bolstered its military presence in the region. Replying to a separate question that whether MEA was aware of recent Chinese media reports that China supports Sikkim as an independent country. Muraleedharan said: "We are not aware of any such recent reports of China. It is a well known fact that Sikkim is a state of India and is an integral and inalienable part of India." WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 09: The Justice Department building on a foggy morning on December 9, 2019 in Washington, DC. Image Credits: Samuel Corum/Getty Images The Justice Department has announced charges against five alleged Chinese citizens, accused of hacking over 100 companies in the United States, including tech companies, game makers, universities and think tanks. Zhang Haoran and Tan Dailin were charged in August 2019 with over two dozen counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, identity theft and charges related to computer hacking. Prosecutors also added nine additional charges against Jiang Lizhi, Qian Chuan, and Fu Qiang last month. Prosecutors also charged two businessmen, who were arrested in Malaysia, for their role in trying to profit from the group's intrusions into game companies to steal and sell digital goods and virtual currency. "Todays charges, the related arrests, seizures of malware and other infrastructure used to conduct intrusions, and coordinated private sector protective actions reveal yet again the departments determination to use all of the tools at its disposal and to collaborate with the private sector and nations who support the rule of law in cyberspace," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers. "This is the only way to neutralize malicious nation-state cyber activity," he said. The hackers are accused of being members of the China-backed APT41 hacking group, also known as "Barium," to steal source code, customer data and other valuable business information from businesses in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, South Korea and other countries. The indictments said that the hackers worked for a front company, Chengdu 404, which purports to be a network security company but prosecutors say was a cover for the hackers. The alleged hackers used a number of known security vulnerabilities to break into companies and launch attacks against a company's supply chains, allowing the hackers to break into other companies. The indictments confirm earlier research from security firm FireEye that said APT41 hackers used vulnerabilities against networking gear to break into their victims networks. Story continues The hackers also allegedly stole code-signing certificates, which can be used to trick computers into thinking malware is from a legitimate source and safe to run. Last year, APT41 was blamed for a supply chain attack at computer maker Asus, which saw the attackers push a backdoor to at least hundreds of thousands of computers using the company's own servers. Prosecutors said the hackers tried to make money by launching ransomware attacks and cryptojacking schemes, which hijack computers with malware to mine cryptocurrency. John Hultquist, senior director of analysis at Mandiant, said APT41 has been the "most prolific" Chinese threat group it's tracked over the last year. "This is a unique actor, who carries out global cyber espionage while simultaneously pursuing a criminal venture. Their activity traces back to 2012 when individual members of APT41 conducted primarily financially motivated operations focused on the video game industry before expanding into traditional espionage, most likely directed by the state. APT41s ability to successfully blend their criminal and espionage operations is remarkable," said Hultquist. After the indictments were filed, prosecutors said they obtained warrants to seize websites, domains and servers associated with the groups operations, effectively shutting them down and hindering their operations. The alleged hackers are still believed to be in China, but the allegations serve as a name and shame" effort employed by the Justice Department in recent years against state-backed cyber attackers. Waters: Trump the Biggest Threat to Our Democracy Since Civil War Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43), Chair of the House Financial Services Committee (FSC), issued the following statement regarding recent revelations that Trump disparaged the military and downplayed the threat of the coronavirus. The shocking revelations from the last few days that Trump disparaged the military and intentionally downplayed the threat of the coronavirus have confirmed what I have believed since this President assumed office. Donald Trump is a deplorable, morally repugnant, morally bankrupt, con man devoid of any character who has proven himself to be the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. Never before has this country been led by a Commander in Chief, or any elected official, who has exhibited such disdain for public service, disparaged our military, undermined our freedoms, incited violence against his political opponents, and is so rotten to the core that he would demean war heroes who sacrificed their lives in defense of our country. This President tear gassed peaceful protestors. This President deployed unidentified federal troops to cities run by Democratic leaders to squash free speech. This President called our fallen heroes losers and suckers a smear he continued to levy against Senator John McCain long after his death. This President isolated the United States from our Western allies while cozying up to dictators such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. And just like the dictators and autocrats he admires around the world, he welcomes foreign interference in U.S. elections, held hostage military aid to Ukraine in exchange for damaging information on his political opponent, and is now trying to dismantle and gut the United States Postal Service so that he can sabotage vote by mail. Donald Trumps lies and hateful rhetoric are not only destructive to our democracy, they have cost the United States over 6 million coronavirus infections and nearly 200,000 coronavirus deaths. No one should be in the least surprised that Donald Trump would boast to the Washington Posts Bob Woodward that he downplayed the threat of the coronavirus when he knew that it was a very deadly pandemic. Despite how hazardous his experts told him the coronavirus would be to our public health, Donald Trump mocked people who wore facial coverings, bullied local governments and businesses into reopening early, recommended untested drugs and disinfectants as treatments, and he continues to hold public events in blatant disregard of the guidance advanced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ADVERTISEMENT The United States of America stands on the brink of collapse. I kept up the drumbeat for many years on why this President should have been impeached and was maligned by many who thought that someone like Donald Trump would suddenly become presidential. Impeachment was too late and the Senate failed to remove this disastrous president from office. One has to wonder, in their isolation and in the confines of their homes, do the Senators who voted against removing Donald Trump from office ever consider how many lives could have been saved if they had done what was right instead of what was politically convenient. While the American people, the last guardrail standing in the way of our countrys complete descent into dictatorship, will ultimately have the final say, the Senators and Members of the House who voted against impeachment will carry that mark in history for the rest of their lives. If the United States pulls past this latest test to our democracy, the American people must never let them forget. WASHINGTON, D. C. - The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday agreed to send President Donald Trumps nominations of three Ohio judicial nominees to the U.S. Senate floor despite some members expressing concern about the qualifications of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge J. Philip Calabrese to serve as a U.S. Federal District Court Judge for the Northern District of Ohio. The committees top Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, announced she would support the other two Ohio nominees before the committee, James Ray Knepp II, who is also a Northern District nominee, and Michael Jay Newman, a Southern District nominee, who both currently serve as magistrate judges. But she said she could not back Calabrese because she was concerned about his past work on behalf of Robert Murray, the CEO of the Ohio coal company Murray Energy, as well as another company that operated and owned the only U.S. facility that slaughtered horses for human consumption. Feinstein criticized Calabrese for representing Murray in a lawsuit against the Chagrin Valley Times newspaper, which he sued for defamation after it criticized Murray for firing 156 employees. The legal system sided with the newspaper, ruling its reporting and commentary were substantially true or protected opinion. A state appellate court found that Murrays lawsuit against the newspaper was undertaken with the purpose to harass and deter his critics, Feinstein said at the hearing. A Republican senator on the committee, Missouris Josh Hawley, said he was not particularly impressed with Calabreses response to questions he raised during his confirmation hearing, particularly regarding his knowledge of the important doctrine around First Amendment religious liberty case law. But he said hed vote for Calabrese after reading through a letter he received Wednesday from the judge, in which Calabrese demonstrated sufficient familiarity with case law and also addressed questions that were raised during the hearing about some of his writings in college. On that basis, and with his assurances, I will be supporting his nomination, Hawley said. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Calabrese to Cuyahoga Countys bench in June 2019. Before that, he was a partner at Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur in Cleveland. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and clerked for the Honorable Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Both of Ohios U.S. Senators - Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown - supported Calabreses February nomination to fill the seat vacated by federal Judge Christopher Boyko, who took senior status in January. After the votes, both released statements to applaud the Senate Judiciary Committee for advancing the nominations. Browns statement called their advancement welcome news. These are seasoned lawyers and public servants who were recommended by our bipartisan judicial selection commission in Ohio, Browns statement said. Theyve earned widespread support from our states legal community, and I am confident that they will serve with honor and impartiality. Read more: FirstEnergy now under SEC scrutiny: What does that mean? House adopts bill by Rep. Marcia Fudge to fight school segregation Bipartisan Congress members including Rep. Anthony Gonzalez propose coronavirus relief plan with $450 weekly unemployment payment House agrees to rename Grand River Post Office for police officer Andy Nowacki, who died in Iraq war President Trump honors September 11 rescuer from Ohio at commemorative event CMHA gets $8.2 million federal grant to help homeless during coronavirus pandemic Greater Cleveland RTA gets $15 million federal grant to buy new railcars Ohio Senators Portman and Brown divided over new coronavirus bill that would pay unemployed $300 a week Global warming and development contribute to more frequent Northeast Ohio floods, experts say Sherrod Brown faults the CFPB and banks for not letting borrowers know about mortgage relief during coronavirus pandemic Rep. Jim Jordan probes DC drive to rebrand public facilities named for officials criticized as racist Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks Treasury Department sanctions against Russia for trying to undermine Joe Biden in 2020 election Cuyahoga and Summit county airports get federal grants to improve runways Sen. Sherrod Brown questions whether HUD Secretary Ben Carson violated the Hatch Act Rep. Jim Jordan questions DC mayors response to crowd that swarmed Sen. Rand Paul outside the White House MIAMI'S CRAMPED COURTS THE DEFENSE OBJECTS COVID COMPLICATIONS (TNS) As South Florida coronavirus numbers plummet and local governments ease restrictions , Miami-Dades criminal court is planning how to resume jury trials, slowly and safely, to ease what figures to be a significant backlog of cases.Even so, virtual proceedings arent going anywhere anytime soon and new flash points are emerging over how to maintain public safety while keeping the justice system limping along.Defense lawyers are challenging Miami-Dade judges who are expanding the use of Zoom, including one who ordered a probation-violation hearing that could send a man to prison for life. And prosecutors are challenging a judge who suggested a homeless woman undergo a Zoom deposition from the outdoor vacant lot where she stays.These new legal fights underscore how, seven months into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to radically upend the criminal-justice system in Miami-Dade, the largest court circuit in Florida.The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which is helping appeal a judges decision to hold a probation violation hearing via Zoom, said attorneys wont be able to properly communicate with their clients during such high-stakes hearings.What we are dealing with is the old Jurassic Park argument. The courts seem so consumed with whether they can hold these hearings, they havent really stopped to think if they should, said Jude Faccidomo, of Miami, the groups president-elect. These are difficult times, but if history has taught us anything, the most important time to guard constitutional rights is when it is challenging to do so.As with other public spaces, Miami-Dades Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building largely shut down in mid-March as the highly contagious virus swept across the globe. The Florida Supreme Court on March 13 suspended jury trials and speedy trials, while the system contracted with Zoom, the now-ubiquitous video-conferencing service, to start holding virtual hearings.For the entire summer, the system inched along, with only emergency hearings held in person, and Zoom being used for hearings. Among those hearings: ones regarding scheduling, to get defendants out of jails while awaiting trial, plea deals, and even hearings to determine if someone is immune from prosecution under Floridas Stand Your Ground self-defense law.Across Florida, jury trials have largely remained suspended, although Miami-Dade did conduct a pilot remote civil trial , one of five conducted around the state. A report on the success of the pilot programs from the courts is due in October.Late last month, a court in Flagler County held the first in-person criminal jury trial in Florida since the pandemic began. A jury convicted a man of stealing a car and leading cops on a high-speed chase.Judges and lawyers wore masks during the proceedings, while a court clerk and a deputy donned plastic face shields. No more than 25 people were allowed in the courtroom although the trial was live streamed on YouTube , which allowed for the public and medias access to proceedings.Officials chose Flagler County for the first case because, at the time, it boasted a low count of COVID-19 cases, with just 1,275 cases and 15 deaths. Flaglers criminal courthouse is also new and spacious.Miami-Dade, of course, is a different beast. The courthouse is ancient and cramped and clerks and other employees have continued to test positive for the virus . In the county overall, more than 165,00 people have been diagnosed with the virus, and nearly 3,000 have died from complications of the disease it causes.For months, a task force of court and county officials, prosecutors, defense lawyers and health experts have been meeting every two weeks to game plan how jury trials might unfold safely in Miami-Dade.For now, the Miami-Dade court system remains in what is called Phase I, the most restrictive setting that effectively closes courthouses to the public and makes in-person hearings rare.In June, Miami-Dade briefly went to Phase II, which sets 30 days for the resumption of some jury trials, but had to backtrack after coronavirus numbers surged in Florida and across the country. Court officials could move to Phase II in the coming weeks, if coronavirus cases remain low in the weeks following Labor Day.But dont expect a glut of criminal cases to suddenly go to trial all at once.Were going to try one case, then try another case, said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Nushin Sayfie, who oversees the criminal division. Were going to do it very slowly and very methodically.The task force is hoping to pick a case that is simple, with few witnesses and a defendant who is not in jail to cut down on the number of jail officers it will take to provide security. Officials are mulling if, and how, to live stream trials to protect the right of the public, the media and victims to attend them.The clerks office is hoping to implement a new system that will pre-select certain jury candidates, to cut down on scores of people sitting around for hours in a courthouse waiting room, like before the pandemic.Since the courthouse remains relatively empty, bailiffs will use one of three elevators to escort small groups of possible jurors to courtrooms. If youre on the jury, the good news is there will be plenty of parking, Sayfie said.Still, Sayfie cautioned that remote hearings will remain in place, even when trials ramp back up.That hasnt gone over well with many defense lawyers, who believe Zoom hearings for increasingly complicated matters are just unfair.Most pressing, defense lawyers say, is that the courts are now forcing defendants to face probation violation hearings via Zoom.In one case, a Miami man named Curtis Johnson was on probation for a series of felonies stemming from 2013 and 2014. Last year, he was arrested on an allegation he sold drugs near a school. He faces up to 30 years in prison if hes found to have violated probation.His lawyer, Richard Cooper, is asking a judge to postpone the hearing, saying he cant effectively defend Johnson unless hes at his side at a real table in court. The judge has yet to rule.A probation violation is just like a trial and can carry the same kinds of consequences, Cooper said. Any defense attorney knows the importance of those mid-trial whispers or notes. Ive had cases saved because my client is right next to me and can whisper something in my ear or write something down on a pad in front of me.But another judge has already ruled. The case: Jermaine Clarington, 45, who was on probation for a 1989 robbery and murder in Miami-Dade. Hed been on probation since 2018, thanks to reforms in juvenile sentencing mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court.But in February, Clarington was arrested and accused of helping smuggle phones into a state prison. Earlier this month, lawyers Aubrey Webb and Dan Tibbitt asked the judge to postpone any hearing.The client is potentially facing life in prison over a video screen, Tibbitt said during the Zoom hearing.The Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office is not objecting to a delay. We do have concerns about being able to protect against claims of inadequate counsel, Assistant State Attorney Sonali Desai told the judge.Circuit Judge Miguel de la O said Zoom which allows for private break-out sessions for participants will work.In a perfect world, there would be no [COVID-19] and Clarington would be transported to court for his probation hearing, de la O wrote in his order. But this is not a perfect world, and it is more than good enough for Clarington to appear on Zoom from the jail, where he can see and hear the witnesses, and communicate with his Counsel.Claringtons lawyers will appeal.The State Attorneys Office, however, is appealing another COVID-19 related complication involving virtual appearances.At issue: the case of Devrick Boykins, who was charged in 2018 of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.In Florida, defense lawyers are allowed to conduct depositions of witnesses. In this case, the key eyewitness is a woman who is now homeless, has no phone and lives in her car in a vacant lot in North Miami-Dade.Because she does not have a fixed address, Boykins defense attorneys have been unable to serve her a subpoena, although a prosecutor told the court he found her at the lot and called the defense lawyer to show her where she was staying.Normally, prosecutors could bring a witness to the State Attorneys Office for a deposition in the beginning of the pandemic, the office set up a kiosk in the lobby for witness depositions.We had them at one point, but when the COVID numbers started going up we had to do away with that, and we havent reinstated it for safety reasons, Chief Assistant State Attorney Scott Dunn told the judge. If they dont have a computer or a phone that they can connect, we dont have the ability to bring them in right now.Im willing to take the deposition anywhere. Thats kind of the beauty of having the ability to do this via Zoom, which can be telephone or computer, defense lawyer Daniel Grande said.Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jose Fernandez, during the Sept. 8 hearing, pressed for the street deposition and even mocked one of the prosecutors.Under these circumstances, everybody can be six feet apart. Everybody can wear a mask, Fernandez said. Youre youre Mr. Case Law. Give me the case cite that says you cant do a deposition on a street corner.The judge ordered prosecutors to produce the witness within 30 days. Prosecutors are appealing. The safety of the witness could be an issue because doing a video deposition on the street could expose her to possible retaliation if shes seen as cooperating with authorities.The State Attorney has always held that the personal safety of crime victims and witnesses must be a prime concern of our criminal justice system, the office said in a statement. They depend on us and we can never fail them. A 31-year-old man whose Sunday disappearance prompted an eight-hour search of multiple central Pennsylvania counties has been found, police said Wednesday. Timothy E. Gunnells, of Quentin, Lebanon County, was found Wednesday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, according to Cornwall Borough police. A number of police and search and rescue teams searched for Gunnells for hours Monday in parts of Lebanon and Lancaster counties. Police feared for his well-being because of mental health issues Gunnells was dealing with when he disappeared. He was last seen around 7:15 p.m. Sunday at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire grounds, off Route 72 in Manheim. READ MORE: Pennsylvania asks judge to retain limits on crowd size York City appeals not-guilty finding for cop accused of reenacting George Floyds death Pa. governor signs pardon for McKeesport man who lost out on council seat in 2015 due to decades-old drug charges Local residents and voters in The Woodlands will be able to meet and greet six candidate for four seats on the township Board of Directors at a voter awareness booth Saturday at The Woodlands Farmers Market. Three confirmed attendees are vying for the Positon 1 seat on the board with a single candidate from the other three seat races confirmed to attend. Amy Lecocq, the communications officer for the Township Future PAC, worked together with the organizers of the market the Grogans Mill Village Association to have a voter awareness both with information on early voting, deadlines, locations and as many candidates for the township board on hand as possible. Called the Bike Meet-up for Voters, the event flier touts it as a way to keep the gears of democracy moving, and be prepared for the Nov. 3 election. Related: Woodlands election candidate kicked off ballot; second candidate quits Township board race The six candidates who have confirmed their attendance, Leocq said on Wednesday, are: for the Position 4 seat, Dan Hannon; the lone candidate for the Position 3 seat, John Anthony Brown; Position 2 seat candidate Jimmie Dotson; and then all three candidates for the Position 1 seat: incumbent Gordy Bunch and challengers Dr. Jerry Smith and Ron Keichline. We look forward to a Woodlands-style, community-based event to encourage voting and to meet candidates running for a director position on The Woodlands Township Board, Lecocq said in an email. And maybe browse the food and goods at the Gorgan's Mill Farner's Market as well. This years township board features four races with 10 total candidates. In Position 1, Bunch is seeking his fifth term in office and being challenged by Smith, a former prison psychologist who is now in private practice in Huntsville and Magnolia, and local Huntsman Corp. executive and co-founder of Bike The Woodlands, Ron Keichline. Four candidates are hoping to be elected to the Position 2 seat formerly held by Brian Boniface. The seat is currently held by appointee Jason J. Nelson, who was tabbed on April 16 to replace Boniface after the former director resigned to go on a humanitarian mission with the U.S. Army Reserves. Related: Election 2020 News & Notes: Woodlands board candidates get endorsements Nelson is being challenged for the seat by the first Black candidate in the townships history, Jimmie Dotson; Luis Louis Granados, who is seeking offices for the third time in three years in The Woodlands; and Thomas Chumbley, who also ran before, losing in 2019 to Ann Snyder. Brown is the only candidate in the Position 3 seat race, his second bid for re-election with no challenger. In 2018, Brown was set to be contested by Granados who is seeking the Position 2 seat this year but ended up being the only candidate on the ballot after Granados was kicked off due to a candidate application error. The Position 4 seat race is between two-term incumbent Bruce Rieser and challenger, The Rev. Daniel Hannon. Rieser cruised to victory 2018 over challenger Frank Dargavage, and is seeking a third term to complete, unfinished business. Hannon is the founding pastor of Chist Church United Methodist in The Woodlands and a long-time local religious figure. The 10 candidates for the four seats will be involved in forums hosted by The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce on both Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. The Positions 2 and 4 seat forums are slated for 4 p.m. online at the chambers Facebook page on Sept. 30. The Position 1 seat candidate forum will be at 4 p.m., Oct. 1, also on the chambers Facebook page. The township board election is Nov. 3, with early voting beginning on Oct. 13 and continuing for three sessions with varying times and days of operation through Oct. 30. jeff.forward@chron.com Deputy Minister of Energy In-Charge of Power who doubles as the Member of Parliament for Afigya Kwabre South in the Ashanti Region Hon. William Owuraku Aidoo in collaboration with the Savannah Regional Coordinating Council has launched the National Electrification Scheme (NES) project at the Savannah Regional capital of Damongo. Speaking during the launch of the project at the Savannah Regional Coordinating council attended by district chief executives across the Savannah Region, the deputy energy minister said the Government of Ghana under the leadership of his Excellency the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, seeks to provide a reliable supply of energy in all forms to all Ghanaian homes and businesses. He said the development agenda of Ghana is focused on widening the access of energy to all households, productive sectors, and social infrastructure in order to facilitate the implementation of the growth and poverty reduction strategy which is a millennium developmental goal (MDG) - based poverty reduction strategy for Ghana, adding that the Ministry of Energy has since 1992 been implementing the National Electrification Scheme (NES) aimed at extending the reach of electricity to all parts of the country by the year 2020 as part of the energy interventions for poverty reduction in the rural areas". He disclosed again that since the inception of the programme, only 478 communities were connected to the National Grid but was quick to say that much progress has been made since over 11,000 communities have been connected to the National Grid with 85.17% of the population now having access to electricity making Ghana one of the best in Africa interms of electricity coverage. He further stated that, with the vigorous programme underway, it is expected that Ghana shall achieve the universal target by the year 2025 should the required funding be available. The Ministry of Energy is making effort to bring the access rate of 54.51% in the Savannah Region to be at par with the National Average of 85.17% . In view of this, a number of electrification projects have awarded under contract to connect some communities to the National Grid. The above electrification project seeks to connect 22 communities within the Savannah Region to the National Grid and it's estimated to cost the Government of Ghana an amount of US$50 million which is covering North East, Northern and the Savannah Region. The electrification project, commencing after the launch is to span a period of 24 months. Hon. OWureko Aido said Government in it's effort to providing support to local companies has signed a contract agreement with M/S Tropical Cable & Conductor Limited ( TCCL) for the execution of this very electrification project and upon completion, about 16,000 households are expected to be connected to the National Grid. The project he said is fully funded by the Government of Ghana ( GoG ) and all statutory processes including Cabinet, parliamentary approvals and Contract agreements have been secured. The Savannah Regional Minister, Hon. Braimah Adams Salifu also in an address said electricity is an essential thing that has come to stay. He told the large gathering present that, the days where politicians erect poles just to woo votes of constituents during electioneering campaigns are over so the participants should clear every little doubt they have because "it's not a political ploy to woo voters. He further stated that the NPP Government is committed to the cause of ensuring that every community is connected to the National Grid. Political parties, religious leaders etc took part in the in inaugural ceremony with many of them including DCEs getting the opportunity to ask the Hon minister questions relating to the energy and power issues which he readily answered. OTTAWAThe federal ethics commissioner has ruled that Canadas former ambassador to the U.S. broke federal conflict of interest law by taking improper advantage of his position to lobby senior Liberal staff and cabinet ministers after he left his post as a public servant. David MacNaughton, a longtime Liberal operative Trudeau appointed as Canadas top diplomat to Washington in 2016, has acknowledged he broke the law by communicating with nine ministers and political staff this spring, according to an order published online Wednesday by Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion. The decision comes after a season of ethical controversy over the Liberal governments decision to outsource a $544-million grant program to WE Charity, despite its ties with Trudeaus family and former finance minister Bill Morneau. Wednesdays order from Dion details how MacNaughton was named president of Palantir Technologies Canada on Sept. 4, 2019, two weeks after his last day as ambassador. Then, between March 2 and April 9 this year, MacNaughton had meetings and discussions with government officials including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains to offer Palantirs pro bono assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dion determined this broke section 33 of the Conflict of Interest Act, which bars former public office holders from acting in such a manner as to take improper advantage of their previous position. While the offers of pro bono assistance did not result in any contract being awarded to Palantir, MacNaughton acknowledged that the communications and meetings, to the extent they could have furthered the interests of Palantir, were contrary to the act, the ruling stated. Dion also ordered the nine officials who interacted with MacNaughton not to have official dealings with him for one year. Along with Freeland and Bains, the list includes: Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Jonathan Vance; Rick Theis, director of policy and cabinet affairs in the Prime Ministers Office; Jody Thomas, deputy minister of national defence; Leslie Church, chief of staff to Procurement Minister Anita Anand; Bainss chief of staff Ryan Dunn; Simon Kennedy, deputy minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; and Bill Matthews, deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada. MacNaughton and Palantir did not respond to requests for comment from the Star on Wednesday. The Prime Ministers Office said in a written statement to the Star that this was a matter between Mr. MacNaughton and the (ethics) commissioner that has been resolved. We once again thank Mr. MacNaughton for his immense contribution to public life and Canada-U.S. relations. In a written statement, Bainss press secretary John Power said the minister thanks MacNaughton for his leadership during trade talks with the U.S., and that Dions order is based on MacNaughtons conduct alone. It does not suggest any wrongdoing whatsoever by any current public office holder, Power said. Freelands spokesperson Alex Lawrence added that the deputy prime minister takes her responsibilities as a public office holder very seriously. The Commissioners order is about the conduct of a former public office holder and does not suggest any wrongdoing whatsoever by any current public office holder. NDP MP Charlie Angus, who wrote to Dion in May and asked him to investigate MacNaughtons dealings with Trudeau Liberals as Palantir president, applauded the commissioners ruling. Angus said he was pleased Dion named names and ordered high-ranking officials like Freeland, Bains, and Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance to refrain from dealing with MacNaughton. Deputy Prime Minister Freeland cannot open up her office to do business with people just because theyre friends of the prime minister and theyre powerful people. They have to follow the rule of law, Angus told the Star by phone on Wednesday. This is what gets this government in trouble time and time again. So I think Mr. Dion is firing a shot directly at the ethical lapses of the Trudeau government with this ruling, Angus said. Trudeau has broken Canadas conflict of interest law twice as prime minister. Last year, Dion ruled Trudeau breached the Conflict of Interest Act during the SNC-Lavalin scandal, finding the prime minister tried to advance the Montreal-based companys interests by pressing then-attorney general Jody-Wilson Raybould to settle a criminal case against it. Trudeau was also found to have broken the law when he accepted a family vacation to the private island of the Aga Khan whose foundations have dealings with the federal government in December 2016. Dion is now investigating him again along with Morneau over the WE Charity controversy. Morneau also agreed to pay a $300 fine last week for breaking federal elections law in 2019, when he promoted two Liberal candidates for last years election at government events. Duff Conacher, co-founder of the ethics advocacy group Democracy Watch, said Canadas conflict of interest regime is too soft to prevent ethical lapses because the commissioner conduct audits and inspections, and the law doesnt include penalties for major violations. It adds up to a sad joke, he said Wednesday, pointing out that MacNaughton faces zero penalty for breaching the law. The system really is the scandal and the law really is the scandal, and its not surprising to see that it encourages scandalous behaviour year after year, he said. Correction Sept. 17, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Canadas Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner does not have the power to conduct audits and inspections. Read more about: Coronavirus infections topped 30 million around the globe on Thursday as the World Health Organization warned of "alarming rates of transmission" across Europe and cautioned against shortening quarantine periods. The WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said a September surge "should serve as a wake-up call for all of us" after Europe set a new record last week, with some 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours. "Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region," he told an online news conference from Copenhagen. More than 30 million infections have been recorded and more than 943,000 people have died since the novel coronavirus emerged in China late last year, according to the latest AFP tally based on official sources. Europe accounts for 4.7 million of the total. Across Europe, governments are battling to contain the fresh spike in cases, while wanting to avoiding inflicting fresh damage on their economies and imposing broad new restrictions on their virus-weary populations. French authorities are preparing tighter restrictions in several cities to curtail a surge in Covid-19 cases that has seen nearly 10,000 new cases per day reported over the past week. Health Minister Olivier Veran said new measures would be announced for Lyon and Nice by Saturday, after curbs on public gatherings were imposed this week in Bordeaux and Marseille. - 'Second hump' - In Britain, new measures will take effect Friday, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that pubs may have to close earlier to help avoid a "second hump" of coronavirus cases. Residents of northeast England, including the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland, will no longer be allowed to meet people outside their own homes. The government, which is facing criticism over a lack of testing capacity, imposed rules across England on Monday limiting socialising to groups of six or fewer, as daily cases reached levels not seen since early May. Story continues Britain has been Europe's worst-hit country with nearly 42,000 deaths. The city of Madrid meanwhile backtracked on a plan for targeted lockdowns and said it would instead move to "reduce mobility and contacts" in areas with high infection rates. Austria announced that private indoor gatherings would be limited to 10 people, including all parties, private events and meetings indoors. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had warned earlier this week that the Alpine nation was entering a second wave of infections. - Israel shutdown - Outside Europe, Israel is set to be the first developed country to enforce a second nationwide shutdown, to begin on Friday afternoon. Its government called for hundreds of its citizens who are blocked on the Ukraine-Belarus border to return home. Around 2,000 Hasidic Jew pilgrims, mainly from the US, Israel and France, are massed at the border which has been closed by Ukraine for most of this month to prevent the spread of the virus. The pilgrims were hoping to reach the city of Uman for the Jewish New Year this weekend. Israel has the world's second-highest virus infection rate after Bahrain, according to an AFP tally. In further comments on Thursday, the WHO Europe said it would not change its guidance for a 14-day quarantine period for those exposed to the virus. The recommendation is "based on our understanding of the incubation period and transmission of the disease. We would only revise that on the basis of a change of our understanding of the science," WHO Europe's senior emergency officer Catherine Smallwood said. France has reduced the recommended time period for self-isolation to seven days, while it is 10 days in the UK and Ireland. Several more European countries, such as Portugal and Croatia, are also considering shorter quarantines. - Vaccine race - Elsewhere, a study released by Oxfam found that rich nations have already bought up over half the promised Covid-19 vaccine stocks. "Access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn't depend on where you live or how much money you have," said Robert Silverman of Oxfam America. Drugs companies are racing to produce an effective jab to counter a virus that has now killed more than 940,000 people around the world and infected almost 30 million. The five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials will be able to supply 5.9 billion doses, enough to inoculate about three billion people, Oxfam said. Some 51 percent of those jabs have been snapped up by wealthy nations and blocs including the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. The remaining 2.6 billion have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. As tragedies multiply, governments face legal action from citizens for alleged response failures. A French association of Covid-19 victims plans to file a legal complaint against Prime Minister Jean Castex over France's handling of the pandemic, its lawyer said. The economic effects of the pandemic continue to grow. On Thursday New Zealand plunged into recession for the first time in a decade, the 12.2 percent contraction in April-June "by far the largest" since records began, national data agency Stats NZ said. burs-gd/lc/har LONDON (AP) An American constitutional law expert said Thursday that the United States indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under an extraordinarily broad spying law that has been used in the past for politically motivated prosecutions. Speaking during Assange's extradition hearing in London, human rights lawyer Carey Shenkman called the century-old Espionage Act one of the most contentious laws in the United States. Shenkman, who co-wrote a book on the history of the act, testified as a witness for Assange, 49, who is fighting his extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. U.S. prosecutors indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Assanges defense team argues that he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing leaked documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His lawyers say he is facing a politically motivated prosecution that will stifle press freedom and put journalists around the world at risk. Shenkman also said in a written witness statement that the administration of President Donald Trump has prosecuted disclosures of national security information more aggressively than any presidency in U.S. history. He said there were eight Espionage Act prosecutions of media sources during former President Barack Obamas two terms more than any previous administration and eight in less than four years under Trump. Shenkman said there has never been a successful prosecution of a publisher under the act, although there have been attempts, including over the 1971 Pentagon Papers leak of documents about the Vietnam War. Leaker Daniel Ellsberg faced 12 Espionage Act charges and faced up to 115 years in prison, but the charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct against him. Story continues Ellsberg, one of the most famous whistleblowers in living memory, came to Assange's defense on Wednesday, telling Londons Central Criminal Court that he and the WikiLeaks founder had very comparable political opinions. The case, which is being held under coronavirus social distancing restrictions, has been plagued by technical glitches as witnesses give evidence by video link. Shenkman testified with a cellphone pressed to his ear after audio problems. Shenkman acknowledged during a testy cross-examination by Clair Dobbin, a lawyer for the U.S. government, that he was part of a team that represented Assange several years ago. He said it was not relevant to his analysis of the Espionage Act, and noted he was a very junior lawyer at the time. In the food chain of lawyers, I was plankton, he said. The U.S. government says WikiLeaks put the lives of U.S. informants in conflict zones and others at risk by publishing secret documents. Defense witness John Sloboda, co-founder of the organization Iraq Body Count, said WikiLeaks was careful to ensure names were removed before publication. He disagreed with a suggestion by a prosecution lawyer that Assange took a cavalier attitude to redaction. Sloboda, who was involved in the publication of the Iraq war papers in 2010, said they were over-redacted for caution. He said his group developed software to help speed the process by removing all words that were not in an English dictionary, though he acknowledged it was not perfect. Assange, who has been embroiled in legal battles for a decade, has been in a British prison since he was ejected from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. The extradition hearing at Londons Old Bailey criminal court is due to last until early October. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 16:26:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan authorities arrested in the Mediterranean five people, including three Spanish and two Moroccans, over drug smuggling, while seizing one ton of cannabis, Moroccan national radio said on Thursday quoting a military source. It was part of many interventions by the Moroccan coast guard on Tuesday and Wednesday that also resulted on the interception of 186 illegal migrants onboard several makeshift boats, in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it added. The coast guard seized two jet-skis and a Go-Fast boat used by the arrested suspect of drug trafficking. The illegal migrants, mostly Sub-Saharans Africans, were safely transported to various Moroccan ports, after receiving first aid onboard the Moroccan Navy units, it said. The suspects, the vessels and the cargo were handed over to the Moroccan Gendarmerie for investigation. Enditem Of course, that may be a harsh assessment U.S. software engineers remain the best in the world and would probably do a good job of developing the product. But either way, ByteDance can afford not to care too much as long as it still controls the company and can determine key decisions, such as whether to go for an initial public offering or make an acquisition. It would also remain in the drivers seat should a future U.S. administration reverse course. Its a small ask in the context of the $150 million the city of Albuquerque has received in federal CARES Act money. Its even smaller in the context of Mayor Tim Kellers proposed $1.15 billion city budget for the current fiscal year. But the $10 million Councilors Brook Bassan and Trudy Jones want to earmark from CARES money for small-business grants would be a lifeline for many that have been decimated by COVID-19 and government-ordered restrictions imposed to combat the virus. Under the Bassan/Jones proposal, businesses with 50 or fewer full-time employees (or part-time equivalents) that have experienced financial hardship due to COVID-19 would be eligible to apply. They wont be hard to find. While the pandemic has been a moneymaking machine for many big companies business is booming at Amazon the mom-and-pop sector of the economy is on life support. At least for those who havent already thrown in the towel. The latest unemployment numbers in Bernalillo County put the jobless rate at 12.7%. Money for small businesses would hopefully cut into that number or at least keep it from going higher as we face nothing but uncertainty. Jones is right when she says I believe we could do much more (as a city), and thats what we are looking to do. Bassan said the administration initially was resistant to the proposal, but discussions apparently are under way. Council President Pat Davis appears supportive. He said it is clear the city needs to help small businesses including salons and others that havent been able to move operations outside and believes the city can afford what Bassan and Jones are pitching. Thats a big chunk of our limited federal dollars; we just have to be sure it doesnt put our city budget in jeopardy but it appears we have room for it, Davis says. The Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce weighed in with a letter to the mayor and councilors that says small business grants are a reasonable, responsible and intended use of federal relief funding designed to help keep workers employed, businesses operating and our economy recovering. Its good news that the city already has used some of its CARES money for targeted business support. And Keller proposes using another $3.375 million of CARES money for business assistance in the new budget. His proposal would dictate how some would be spent for instance buying PPE. But small entrepreneurs know best how to use these resources. They are the ones who pay the bills and sign payroll checks. And upping the number to $10 million does not seem too big an ask. Meanwhile, given revenue projections, the administrations overall budget proposal is a reasonable one. It keeps nearly 600 vacant jobs open, and there would be no annual cost-of-living pay raises. Police funding would tick up with the administration wisely finding resources for its community safety department elsewhere and not from APD. And the use of general fund money for bond payments that would have been covered by lodgers tax makes sense. Hotels struggling under the governors 14-day quarantine requirement for most out-of-state visitors and ban on large gatherings like banquets dont generate a lot of lodgers tax money. Keller reiterated earlier this month that the citys municipal government is better off than most when it comes to finances, citing research that estimated the citys revenue shortfall to be the second-lowest among 40 large cities, behind Boston. Part of that is thanks to the city tapping and wisely using CARES money, which has helped avoid layoffs. But the fact city government is getting by financially without layoffs doesnt mean the same is true for mom-and-pop businesses. Its time to do more for them. Its difficult to recall a candidate who didnt extol the importance of small business as the backbone of the economy. This modest proposal is an opportunity to back up that rhetoric. The council should approve this proposal. And the mayor should throw his weight behind it. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Ina pair of tweets that recently made rounds on social media, a young progressive woman issued her doctrinal creed: I am a Christian and I believe proselytizing is violenceI am a Christian and I believe LGBTQ+ ppl are divine and should lead usI am a Christian and I dont go to church. I am a Christian and I dont believe the Bible is the word of God. While one wonders why someone who already rejects church, evangelism, Christian morality, and Scripture would still want to keep the title Christian, this tweeter is merely a more extreme example of a very common approach to faith, including Christianity. To be clear, this kind of self-constructed, Build-A-Bear, buffet-style belief acquisition works fine for some worldviews, especially the Westernized, New-Agey offsprings of Eastern pantheisms (pan=all and theos=god, so literally those religions that believe everything is god and god is everything). Christianity, however, as a revealed worldview, has an objective definition. Christianity centers ultimate reality and, therefore, ultimate authority, outside (not within) the created order, locates it in a Divine Personal Being who has made Himself known through what He has made, through Holy Scripture, and ultimately made known Himself through Christ Jesus. One might doubt that there is a God who has revealed Himself or that God has revealed Himself in these ways, and therefore reject Christianity. But because Christianity is a worldview that comes already carefully defined, its not open to mass-scale revisions. Last month, Arizona Christian University released a study called The American Worldview Inventory, its a project led by George Barna. According to the report, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe having some kind of faith is more important than the specific faith a person chooses. And, almost 70 percent of those who gave that response identified as Christians. The same survey found that a slight majority of self-identified Christians think a person can attain salvation by being or doing good, a belief contrary to the New Testaments claim that salvation comes by gracethrough faith, and not by works The results of another survey, jointly sponsored by LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries found that over half of Americans and nearly a third of evangelicals agree with the statement that Jesus was a good teacher, but he was not God. And yet another recent survey, conducted by the Barna Group with World Vision, found that nearly half of young adults globally say that the church cant answer their questions or spiritual doubts. The sample size of the Barna study, over 15 thousand respondents from 25 countries and nine languages, suggests that theological literacy and worldview clarity are not just American deficiencies. Christian identity is at risk on a global scale, including what the word Christian even means, and whether Christian truth claims are distinct, knowable, and reliable. Confronting this widespread confusion requires at least two things. First, following Ryan Andersons example of bringing clarity to the debate over same-sex marriage (Sorry, marriage is a thing, and same-sex relationships just arent marriage), we must be willing to definitively say when necessary, Sorry, Christianity is defined, and thats just not Christianity. Second, and more importantly, we need to abandon the self-constructed, Build-A-Bear, buffet approach to religion that is so pervasive in our own hearts and our own churches. A great place to start in clarifying the faith that was delivered once for all to the saints, as Jude says is, of course Holy Scripture. For a trusted guide, check out what may be Chuck Colsons most important book, The Faith: Given Once for All. Also, our outreach and church growth strategies must conform to what Scripture reveals. Too often, perhaps to make Jesus more palatable to nonbelievers, we elevate personal preference and give the impression that much of the faith is negotiable. That strategy inevitably ends with the Church, the Bible, morality, and even Jesus Himself becoming negotiable. And to close, let me say this: We shouldnt worry whether what the author of Hebrews calls the first principles of Gods Word, can survive the scrutiny, doubt, and disdain of the modern world. Christian truth will most certainly survive. Its survived until now, and it will survive, because, after all, its True. Originally posted at breakpoint.org English French - Study Met Primary Endpoint of Reduction of Time to Recovery - Additional Analyses Ongoing to Understand Other Clinical Outcome Data - Lillys Phase 3 Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of Baricitinib Continues TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Monday, September 14th, Eli Lilly and Company and Incyte announced initial data emerging from the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-2) sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). ACTT-2 included more than 1,000 patients and began on May 8 to assess the efficacy and safety of a 4-mg dose of baricitinib plus remdesivir versus remdesivir in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Baricitinib in combination with remdesivir met the primary endpoint of reduction of time to recovery in comparison with remdesivir. Study investigators noted an approximately one-day reduction in median recovery time for the overall patient population treated with baricitinib in combination with remdesivir versus those treated with remdesivir. This finding was statistically significant. Recovery was defined as the participant being well enough for hospital discharge, meaning the participant either no longer required supplemental oxygen or ongoing medical care in the hospital, or was no longer hospitalized at Day 29. The study also met a key secondary endpoint comparing patient outcomes at Day 15 using an ordinal 8-point scale ranging from fully recovered to death. An independent data and safety monitoring board overseeing the double-blind, randomized controlled trial met regularly throughout the trial to review safety data. Additional analyses are ongoing to understand other clinical outcome data, including mortality and safety data. NIAID is expected to publish full details of the study in a peer-reviewed journal. As a tightly knit organization, we are truly working as one team to help discover a number of treatment options for COVID-19, including the potential role of baricitinib. We are pleased by the topline ACTT-2 results and look forward to the full data to completely understand baricitinibs impact on COVID-19, says Dr. Doron Sagman, Vice President, R&D and Medical Affairs, Eli Lilly Canada. Based on the ACTT-2 data, Lilly plans to discuss the potential for emergency use authorization (EUA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and to explore similar measures with other regulatory agencies, including Health Canada, for baricitinib as a treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. If authorized for use in Canada, Lilly will propose that baricitinib be available through commercial channels and will work with hospitals and governments to ensure patient access. Lilly will continue to create adequate supply for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and ensure baricitinib remains available in Canada and around the world where it is approved. In Canada, baricitinib is approved for RA patients at a 2-mg daily dose. Lilly will review the ACTT-2 data with NIAID and assess any impact on COV-BARRIER, the Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study it initiated in June to evaluate the efficacy and safety of baricitinib versus background therapy in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. Lilly is also currently supporting ongoing multisite and single-site investigator-initiated trials in Europe and North America, including the SAIL-004 study in Nova Scotia, Canada, in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infections. About Lillys COVID-19 Efforts Lilly is bringing the full force of its scientific and medical expertise to attack the coronavirus pandemic around the world. Existing Lilly medicines are now being studied to understand their potential in treating complications of COVID-19, and the company is collaborating with two partner companies to discover novel antibody treatments for COVID-19. Lilly intends to test both single antibody therapy as well as combinations of antibodies (sometimes known as antibody cocktails) as potential therapeutics for COVID-19. About OLUMIANT In Canada, OLUMIANT (baricitinib), in combination with methotrexate (MTX), is indicated for reducing the signs and symptoms of moderate- to severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in adult patients who have responded inadequately to one or more disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). OLUMIANT can be used as a monotherapy in cases of intolerance to MTX.1 OLUMIANT is believed to interfere with the activity of an enzyme called Janus Kinase (JAK). Normally JAK enzymes help turn on your immune system when you need it. The immune system then causes swelling and tenderness. This is called inflammation. There are four known JAK enzymes: JAK1, JAK2, JAK3 and TYK2. JAK-dependent cytokines have been implicated in the pathogenesis of a number of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.2 OLUMIANT has greater inhibitory potency at JAK1, JAK2 and TYK2 relative to JAK3; however, the relevance of inhibition of specific JAK enzymes to therapeutic effectiveness is not currently known. About Lilly Canada Eli Lilly and Company is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by Colonel Eli Lilly, who was committed to creating high quality medicines that meet peoples needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to people who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and contribute to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. Eli Lilly Canada was established in 1938, the result of a research collaboration with scientists at the University of Toronto, which eventually produced the worlds first commercially available insulin. Our work focuses on oncology, diabetes, autoimmunity, neurodegeneration, and pain. To learn more about Lilly Canada, please visit us at www.lilly.ca . About Incyte Incyte is a Wilmington, Delaware-based, global biopharmaceutical company focused on finding solutions for serious unmet medical needs through the discovery, development and commercialization of proprietary therapeutics. For additional information on Incyte, please visit Incyte.com and follow @Incyte. For our perspective on issues in healthcare and innovation, follow us on twitter @LillyPadCA and @LillyMedicalCA Media Contact: Samira Rehman Rehman_Samira@lilly.com 647-617-1994 References 1 OLUMIANT Product Monograph 2 Walker JG and Smith MD. J Rheumatol. 2005;32;1650-1653. United States Senator Lamar Alexander released the following statement after the Trump administration rescinded tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada: The Trump Administrations decision is good news for the 136,000 auto workers in Tennessee who are hurt by aluminum tariffs," said Senator Alexander. "Tariffs are taxes, pure and simple. They make what we buy and sell more expensive. The laws of economics usually mean that when you make what you buy and sell more expensive, you buy and sell less of it. With more than 900 plants in 87 of our 95 counties, and one-third of our states manufacturing jobs being auto jobs, Tennessee is likely to be hurt more than any other state by these tariffs, which is why I opposed them when they were announced in August. I commend the presidents decision, which will help continue to drive higher family incomes in Tennessee. A county in North Carolina incorrectly told nearly 7,000 residents they had tested positive for the coronavirus due what officials say was a technical glitch. The messages were sent by text messages to more than 6,700 residents in Mecklenburg Countyincorre on Friday, The Charlotte Observer reported. More than 500 people also received a county email with the notice. The county told residents that morning the messages were a scam, and that their health department does not notify people of their COVID-19 test results through text message. A few hours later, the county said on Twitter the messages had actually gone out due to a glitch in the software system that has been addressed by the software provider. County Manager Dena Diorio told county commissioners in an email Monday that the messages were sent through HealthSpace Data System, a company based in Canada, the newspaper reported. The county has been using the companys software since May to help with contact tracing efforts amid the pandemic. No personal information was shared or compromised, the county said Friday on Twitter. HealthSpace CEO Silas Garrison also apologized for any alarm this caused citizens who were not supposed to be sent an alert or survey. Diorio said the messages were sent to people who were in HealthSpaces system. It is not clear if those who received the messages had tested positive for the virus or were in close contact with someone that had. A corrected text or email was sent to those who received the incorrect messages, Diorio said in the email to commissioners. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics COVID-19 North Carolina The family of a worker killed in 2018 when a nearly 2,000-foot tall TV tower in southwest Missouri collapsed is suing Missouri State University for wrongful death. The April 19, 2018, tower collapse happened in Fordland, killing 56-year-old Steve Lemay, who ran a tower repair company in Blaine, Washington. Missouri State University owned the tower and used it for its Ozarks Public Television station. The lawsuit says the university maintained a dangerous condition on its property that led to Lemays death, the Springfield News-Leader reported. Lemays family is asking for an unspecified amount in damages that include Lemays pain and suffering as well as medical, funeral and burial expenses. The lawsuit also names a South Carolina tower repair company that hired Lemays company to complete the work. A federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration report on the fatal incident said the removal of key bolts during a bracing procedure caused a TV tower to collapse. The lawsuit says the supports provided to Lemay to complete the bracing work were incorrect, forcing Lemays crew to drill new bolt holes. Lemay and five other workers were about 100 feet high when the structure collapsed. The other workers suffered non-life-threatening injuries. A spokesperson for MSU told the News-Leader that the university does not comment on pending litigation. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Education Missouri Universities Comedian Chris Rock hit out at Democrats for being so focused on impeaching President Trump earlier this year that they allowed the coronavirus pandemic to hit the United States. In a lengthy interview with the New York Times published Wednesday, Rock compared Trump to a 'five-year-old' as he discussed the country's summer of unrest. The 55-year-old actor blasted Pelosi as he claimed 'its all the Democrats fault' and accused both political parties of 'fake news'. Comedian Chris Rock, 55, claimed Democrats were so focused on impeaching President Trump earlier this year that they allowed the coronavirus pandemic to hit the United States He bashed Nancy Pelosi, pictured, for not being ready when the pandemic hit While speaking about a discussion with fellow comedian Dave Chapelle at live shows he held in July, Rock claimed that he had a problem with Trump as the country had elected a 'landlord'. 'Part of the reason were in the predicament were in is, the presidents a landlord. No one has less compassion for humans than a landlord,' he joked. Rock continued to compare the current White House administration to the 1987 movie 'The Last Emperor' in which a child was the ruler of China, adding that the US was now like that with a childlike ruler. 'So Im like, its all the Democrats fault. Because you knew that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperors 5 years old, they only lead in theory,' Rock said. 'Theres usually an adult whos like, OK, this is what were really going to do.' He continued with his blame of the Democrats for not catching the start of the pandemic. The impeachment trial had engulfed much of the news in the early weeks of this year as the first coronavirus cases hit the US. 'And it was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats. Their thing was, Were going to get him impeached, which was never going to happen,' he said. 'You let the pandemic come in. Yes, we can blame Trump, but hes really the 5-year-old. 'Put it this way: Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument. In a sense, its all fake news,' he added. Rock compared Trump, pictured, to a 'five-year-old' as he discussed the country's summer of unrest but claimed it was the Democrats who should have been there to stop the pandemic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, with committee chairs and House impeachment managers. The impeachment trial engulfed much of the news in the early weeks of this year Rock later spoke about his previous comments on police brutality against black people and about how he feels he is raising children in a 'racist country'. 'I remember when Tamborine dropped, I got a lot of flak over that cop thing,' he said of his 2018 Netflix special. 'There was a lot of people trying to start a fire that never really picked up. Its so weird that, two years later, its right on. I remember watching the news and Trump said bad apples. It was like, you did it! You did it!' He continued to describe this year's turmoil following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as the 'second civil rights movement'. Rock, pictured, also described the recent unrest as the 'second civil rights movement' 'And Dr. King and those guys were amazing. But they knew nothing about money. They didnt ask for anything. At the end of the day, the things we got it was just, hey, can you guys be humane? All we got was, like, humanity,' he continued. 'If they had it to do all over again, in hindsight, there would be some attention paid to the financial disparity of all the years of lets not even count slavery, lets just count Jim Crow.' Later in the interview, Rock said that he didn't think Jimmy Fallon was trying to be hurtful when he impersonated the comedian while in blackface back in 2000 on Saturday Night Live. He defended Fallon, 45, calling the late night host a good friend and 'great guy' who would never aim to offend. 'Hey, man, I'm friends with Jimmy. Jimmy's a great guy. And he didn't mean anything,' Rock told the paper. 'A lot of people want to say intention doesn't matter, but it does. And I don't think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didn't.' Earlier in summer a 2000 SNL sketch where Jimmy imitated Rock in blackface resurfaced online, prompting #JimmyFallonIsOver to trend of Twitter and earn massive attention from the media. Other celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Robert Downey Jr., and Ted Danson were called out over using blackface around the same time. Fallon apologized on social media at the end of May, tweeting: 'In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this.' Fallon apologized at the end of May, tweeting 'In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this' Other celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel (above), Sarah Silverman, Robert Downey Jr., and Ted Danson were called out over using blackface around the same time While he deemed Jimmy's actions harmless, Rock was not condoning blackface in the slightest. Asked if he thought the idea of removing past instances of blackface in media was being taken 'too far,' Rock dismissed the idea of even having to condemn something so obviously wrong. 'If I say they are [taking it too far,] then I'm the worst guy in the world,' he replied. 'There's literally one answer that ends my whole career.' 'Blackface ain't cool, OK? That's my quote. Blackface is bad. Who needs it? It's so sad, we live in a world now where you have to say, I am so against cancer. '"I just assumed you liked cancer." No, no, no, I am so against it. You have to state so many obvious things you're against.' At another point in the interview he said that racism in America 'is real. It's not going away.' 'I said this before, but Obama becoming the president, its progress for white people. Its not progress for Black people.' Regulatory News: Gecina (Paris:GFC) is further strengthening its Residential Division with the appointment of Thomas Degos, former Prefect and Director-General of Services for the Greater Paris Metropolitan Authority (Metropole du Grand Paris), as Executive Director Residential. Franck Lirzin has been appointed Deputy Executive Director alongside Thomas Degos, further strengthening the Division's organization. This organization will ensure the continuity of the process and the momentum generated by the creation of a dedicated subsidiary. It will make it possible to embark on a new phase of development for the residential subsidiary by further enhancing the robust operational and financial performance levels achieved for over three years with the company's residential portfolio. The creation of a dedicated subsidiary for the residential business, approved at the General Meeting in April 2020, will make it possible to develop Gecina's residential portfolio in leading French cities by bringing investors on board. Thomas Degos will have a roadmap to continue rolling out the client-centric brands YouFirst Residence and YouFirst Campus, thanks in particular to digitalization and the deployment of new services. Thomas Degos, 48, graduated from IEP d'Aix-en-Provence, EHESS and ENA ("Cyrano de Bergerac" class of 1999), and has over 20 years' experience in senior public service positions. After starting out in his career with the prefect section in the Pyrenees-Orientales region and Guadeloupe, he held several high-level roles with the Ministry of the Interior's General Secretariat. In 2007, he joined the cabinet of Bernard Accoyer, National Assembly President, before serving with the ministerial offices of Jean-Louis Borloo, Minister of Ecology, as Deputy Chief of Staff (2008-2010), and Maurice Leroy, Minister for Urban Areas, in charge of the "Grand Paris" project as Chief of Staff (2010-2011). After serving as the Prefect for Mayotte (2011-2013), Director-General for Overseas France (2013-2015), and the Prefect for Morbihan (2015-2016), he was appointed Director-General for Services for Metropole du Grand Paris in 2016. He left Grand Paris in 2018 to become Chief of Staff for Annick Girardin, Minister for Overseas France (April 2018-November 2019), before being appointed Interministerial Delegate for the Coronavirus Taskforce in March 2020. Meka Brunel, Chief Executive Officer: "The creation of a dedicated subsidiary to house our residential business marked the culmination of three years of work, led by Franck Lirzin, to build the foundations for a residential platform that is aligned with the best standards for innovative operational technologies, client relations and environmental requirements. Thomas Degos' arrival will further strengthen our ambition to capitalize on opportunities for growth and value creation on the residential market". About Gecina As a specialist for centrality and uses, Gecina operates innovative and sustainable living spaces. The Group owns, manages and develops Europe's leading office portfolio, with nearly 97% located in the Paris Region, and a portfolio of residential assets and student residences, with over 9,000 apartments. These portfolios are valued at 20 billion euros at end-June 2020. Gecina has firmly established its focus on innovation and its human approach at the heart of its strategy to create value and deliver on its purpose: "Empowering shared human experiences at the heart of our sustainable spaces". For our 100,000 clients, this ambition is supported by our client-centric brand YouFirst. It is also positioned at the heart of UtilesEnsemble, our label setting out our commitment to the environment, to people and to the quality of life in cities. Gecina is a French real estate investment trust (SIIC) listed on Euronext Paris, and is part of the SBF 120, CAC Next 20, CAC Large 60, Euronext 100, FTSE4Good, DJSI Europe and World, Stoxx Global ESG Leaders and Vigeo indices. In 2020, Gecina was awarded the maximum A rating in the CDP climate change rankings. www.gecina.fr View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005811/en/ Contacts: GECINA Financial communications Samuel Henry-Diesbach Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 52 22 samuelhenry-diesbach@gecina.fr Virginie Sterling Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 62 48 virginiesterling@gecina.fr Press relations Julien Landfried Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 65 74 julienlandfried@gecina.fr Armelle Miclo Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 51 98 armellemiclo@gecina.fr Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 23:33:21|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GUANGZHOU, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Since the establishment of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in 1980, Zhuhai has developed from a border town dominated by agriculture and fisheries to a central city in the Pearl River Delta, driven by comprehensive economic and social development. After 40 years of glorious development, Zhuhai has become a pioneer of reform and innovation, cooperation with Macao, ecological civilization, and quality living. "Zhuhai has explored a growth path featuring harmony between humans and nature, as well as coordinated economic and social development," said Guo Yonghang, Party chief of Zhuhai. "It will make a further contribution to China's overall development and reform and opening-up." TALENT, INNOVATION HIGHLAND In 2019, Zhuhai saw a gross domestic output of 343.59 billion yuan (about 50.4 billion U.S. dollars), up from 209 million yuan in 1979. The great leap in economic growth could not have been achieved without skills. In 1992, Zhuhai, for the first time in the country, gave a 1-million-yuan reward to scientific and technological personnel for outstanding contributions. Attracted by the policy, many skilled people with higher education backgrounds from all over the country came to Zhuhai and became the pioneers of building the border town into a modern metropolis with a focus on innovation. He Liangmei, president of the printing supplies company Print-Rite, was among the first entrepreneurs to start a business in Zhuhai. Starting with a 300-square-meter manufacturing plant, the company has grown to be one of the country's leading companies in the 3D printing industry, with several patents in ribbons, inkjets, lasers, and 3D printing. "The market is changing rapidly, and so companies need to maintain innovation to follow the shift and survive the fierce market competition," said He. He's opinion was echoed by Shen Xiandong, general manager of Zhuhai Gree Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Gree Electric Appliances, China's home appliance giant. "Gree used to depend on imports of numerical control tools, which often imposed multiple access limitations. The company had to wait for foreign experts if there were technical problems," said Shen. "We decided to develop our manufacturing tools, regardless of the cost and time," said Shen. In 2015, Gree's intelligent equipment company was established, which has so far acquired more than 770 patents. As more talent and companies settled down in Zhuhai, the city's permanent resident population increased from 360,000 in 1979 to 2.02 million in 2019, and the per capita GDP also skyrocketed from 579 yuan to 175,500 yuan. DEEPER ZHUHAI-MACAO COOPERATION Instead of around 20 minutes, it now only takes Wang Peilong, a university student in Macao, a couple of minutes to cross Hengqin Port since this new port, between Macao and Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, was officially put into use in August to facilitate travel. With a designed daily capacity of 222,000 passengers, Hengqin Port, known as a "super passage," was designed to ease the pressure on Gongbei Port and increase the daily capacity for passenger flow between Guangdong and Macao. Zhuhai enjoys a unique geographical position, facing Hong Kong across the sea in the east while connecting Macao in the south. In December 1999, the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) was established, and Zhuhai took on the important mission to connect the Chinese mainland and Macao. The great connectivity between Macao and Zhuhai can be illustrated by the passenger flow. Gongbei Port, the main passenger channel between the two, saw a total of 145 million passengers in 2019, ranking first in China for eight consecutive years. With the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge opening to traffic in 2018, Zhuhai also joined the vast development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Fabiola Apango Partida, a Mexican art designer who lives in Zhuhai with her husband, has traveled to Hong Kong via the bridge nine times since 2018. "It is much easier for us to travel to the Hong Kong airport for a flight to Mexico. The bridge also increases the international exposure of Zhuhai," she said. In 2019, China issued a development plan for the Greater Bay Area. Zhuhai will further develop its advanced equipment manufacturing and financial services industries to integrate itself into the overall development of the Greater Bay Area as well as the country, said Guo Yonghang, Party chief of Zhuhai. Enditem As we face one of the hottest years ever, the worst California fire season in decades, and perhaps the worst hurricane season ever, the threat of climate change will resonate with the American people. This is why the Democratic response to climate change is robust and includes a national investment to help people install solar panels on their roofs to reduce their use of electricity made from dirty fossil fuels. Over the last few years, I have written about rooftop solar companies, and my concerns that the industry has at times taken advantage of their customers, with misleading tactics designed to promise savings that never materialize. For doing so, some people in the industry tried to intimidate me. After making this effort public, I received an apology from the industry. I accepted the apology. But the broader problem with rooftop solar companies, is that their policies and decisions that adversely impact the most vulnerable populations remain in place. In fact, the New Mexico Attorney General sued Vivint one of the nations largest providers of rooftop solar accusing them of: engaging in unfair and unconscionable business practices Now, Vivint is being bought by Sunrun, Americas largest rooftop solar company. But sadly, it doesnt seem that Sunrun is much better. In fact, the Better Business Bureau recently found Sunrun was using deceptive advertising and that investing in solar panels only offersa potential, rather than a guarantee, for savings. Because some of the unethical rooftop solar companies that pursue profit over people often target customers from our nations most vulnerable communities, their victims are often black and brown consumers. Isnt it a cruel irony that minorities and other underserved communities suffer the greatest from climate change and are also the victims of companies trying to prevent global warming? As Democrats seek environmental justice, we must also be aware of the lobbying and public relations efforts of the rooftop solar industry. Especially those that might not be on the level. Consider a group called the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) which purports to be a Watchdog exposing the attacks on renewable energy and countering misinformation by fossil fuel interests. However, an in-depth investigation by the left-leaning Campaign for Accountability, found that EPI is actually a dark money group: it does not appear to have nonprofit status, it is not registered with any relevant secretary of state, and no one admits to funding it. And, EPI may be simply the creation of a public relations firm. Not surprisingly, Campaign for Accountability found that the public relations firm that is linked to EPI, is also tied to the Solar Energy Industry Association; the same group that tried to compel me to provide a different narrative about the industry during my previous efforts to hold the industry leaders accountable. When you Google the EPI, the second and third search result are efforts from the Campaign for Accountability to expose EPI. What is so shocking to me, is that the media still describe them as environmental watchdogs, or fail to mention their connections to the rooftop solar industry. In fact, an article from Reuters just this month, categorized EPI as: a group that advocates for a transition to clean energy. Lets be clear, this is not giving the reader a full understanding of EPI. At the end of the day and regardless of EPI it is my hope that the rooftop solar industry focuses on being better corporate citizens and stop with the high-pressure sales tactics. Keep in mind, solar panels often cost around $20,000; so you have to save $20,000 on your electric bills, before you even break even on your investment. I would implore industry salespeople to do a better job of explaining this reality to their potential customers. Finally, Democrats and a future Biden administration, must make sure that any environmental policies they advocate for and implement which promote rooftop solar are done with strong consumer protections in mind. Groups, like EPI, that are tied to some of the bad actors that often create more inequities for underserved and minority communities, must be held accountable. If Democrats fail to protect those vulnerable consumers, our environmental efforts cannot be considered a success. Gross violations of Covid-19 social distancing norms were seen at several ghats of river Ganga in Kolkata and its adjoining Howrah district as people came in hordes to offer tarpan" on Thursday morning. Thousands of people were seen violating safety guidelines as most of them did not ever bother to wear masks and use the sanitising channels while entering the ghats on the occasion of Mahalaya. The auspicious day marks the last day of Shradh and the beginning of the Durga Puja festivities, the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended on Earth. People in West Bengal traditionally wake up early morning on Mahalaya in a bid to make offerings to divine entities as per Vedic practice remembering their forefathers and their departed souls. Amid announcements of maintaining physical distancing guidelines made by the Kolkata Police and disaster management teams, the rituals were performed, at a time when the daily figures of Corona cases reached an all-time high in India. Social media was soon flooded with visuals of natives offering their prayers to their ancestors as social distancing went for a toss. Netizens expressed their concern over having these gatherings when India is second in the list of coronavirus cases. I understand emotions and all. But we should have really skipped Tarpan this year. Ghats are full of people with no social distancing, no mask. Really Sad. #Mahalaya2020 Sneha Saha (@sahas1301) September 17, 2020 Yesterday tarpan wasnt allowed stating Covid situation. Today it was allowed. Im guessing Covid doesnt exist today! Just saying pic.twitter.com/2U2mMZ9Hjp Pooja Mehta (@pooja_news) September 17, 2020 people need to be more sensible and learn the alternatives. My father did Ganga Abahan and performed Tarpan at home following social distancing and fulfilling all religious requirements. Gourav Bose (@GouravBose7) September 17, 2020 Where the hell in Bengal Social distancing is maintained? Are you blind to see the Sunday Veg and non veg market, in Diamond harbour route busses even in Metro station.You people are very much aggressive to put your political strength to Stop Tarpan on Mahalaya? ust (@ust89210484) September 16, 2020 The state ruling Trinamool Congress volunteers also distributed free masks at several ghats, including Ahiritola Ghat, and joined hands with the police to do the crowd management activities. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also extended warm regards to all the residents of the state. On the auspicious occasion of Mahalaya, I extend my warm regards to one & all. Although Covid-19 has restricted how we celebrate festivals, we shall not allow it to dampen the spirit of this Durga Puja," she said. She urged everyone to come forward, extend a helping hand to those in need and spread joy everywhere. As a part of this pledge, I vow to ensure that this Durga Pujo, no one is devoid of the festivities," Banerjee tweeted, greeting everyone on Shubho Mahalaya. On the other hand, state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists had performed the ritual of Tarpan on the eve of Mahalaya for its slain activists, despite the city polices efforts to prevent the programme to be held at a Kolkata ghat. Initially, the venue was decided at Baghbazar ghat in north Kolkata, then changed to Golabari ghat in Howrah - exactly on the other side of the mighty river. The Kolkata Police officials cited the prevailing Covid-19 situation for its action and had dismantled a temporary podium on Wednesday erected for the Shahid Tarpan, in memory of slain BJP activists in Bengal in order to avert a political face-off. ( with inputs from IANS ) 2020 has seen a huge boost in cyber activity with security firm Crowdstrike finding the number of potential intrusions detected in just the first half of this year eclipsed the total for all of 2019. Quick transitions to remote working have caused organisations around the world to add on new infrastructure, creating an ever-increasing attack surface for motivated adversaries Additionally, the pandemic created opportunities for adversaries to exploit public fear through the use of COVID-19-themed social engineering strategies, the company said in a report released by its Overwatch analysis team. Bad actors have used coronavirus as bait for phishing campaigns since at least March this year and the number of COVID-related scams has only risen with the Australian Cyber Security Centre finding, on average, two Australians were losing money or credentials to COVID scammers every day. Recently, there has also been a lot of attention on state-sponsored bad actors looking to disrupt critical infrastructure or gather information for a database on prominent citizens, but the Crowdstrike data suggests that run-of-the-mill criminals tend to be the most common cyber threats. For each state-sponsored campaign uncovered by an OverWatch analyst, the team sees approximately four eCrime intrusions, the report says. A likely explanation is that eCrime actors continue to achieve enormous success with big game hunting campaigns, and the availability of commodity malware through ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) models has contributed to a proliferation of activity from a wider array of eCrime actors. That RaaS business model means malware developers dont have to do the attacking to benefit instead they can sell their code or hire affiliates whose job it is to infect businesses with ransomware. And theres no doubt that ransomware is lucrative. Fitness watch company Garmin reportedly used a third-party ransomware payment service to pay its attackers being locked out by the WastedLocker ransomware. 2020 has been a bumper year for cyber attacks. Source: Crowdstrike Technology firms like Garmin have been the most targeted by cyber crooks this year, followed by companies in the manufacturing, telecommunications, and finance industries. Naturally, travel industries have seen fewer attempted attacks. VP of Crowdstrikes OverWatch, Jennifer Ayers, said the shifting targets shows how bad actors are ready to pivot to meet changing objectives or emerging opportunities. Just like everything this year, the threat landscape has proven unpredictable and precarious as eCrime and state-sponsored actors have opportunistically taken aim at industries unable to escape the chaos of COVID-19, demonstrating clearly how cyber threat activity is intrinsically linked to global economic and geo-political forces, Ayers said. Organisations must implement a layered defense system that incorporates basic security hygiene, endpoint detection and response, expert threat hunting, strong passwords and employee education to properly defend their environments. Yet as valuable as endpoint detection and threat hunting services may be, the Crowdstrike data once again shows that bad actors leverage valid credentials more than any other technique to gain access to a system, persist within it, and escalate privileges. Unfortunately, Australians have been historically terrible at spotting credential-stealing phishing attacks with data from Proofpoint last year finding we were much more likely to fall for phishing attempts than our international counterparts. And it can be an expensive mistake as Melbourne cosmetics company Heat found out last year when a ransomware attack cost it more than $2 million. New Delhi, Sep 17 : : The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday told the Delhi High Court that it has no objection if former ICICI Bank CMD Chanda Kochhar's husband Deepak Kochhar, who is currently suffering from Covid-19 and, is shifted to a private hospital of his choice. Kochhar is currently in AIIMS Jhajjhar and had sought his transfer from here to a private hospital. Central government standing Counsel Amit Mahajan appearing for the Enforcement Directorate apprised a single judge bench of the high court presided by Justice Anup J Bhambani that the agency has no objection in shifting Kochhar to private hospital of his choice provided that he would bear his expenses himself. Kochhar, who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week, knocked the doors of the high court seeking court's directions to ED for shifting him to Medanta Hospital- Gurugram, Max Hospital-New Delhi or Sir Gangaram Hospital-New Delhi or any other private hospital in a private ward as he is 59 years of age and is suffering from various medical ailments including enlarged prostate. However, after the court noted that Kochhar is under judicial custody of the Special Judge, Mumbai and is not in police custody, he refused to entertain the said petition. "We are holding constitutional post of judges we are not Jahangir," said Justice Bhambani while refuting to entertain the matter on the grounds of jurisdictional issue. Following these submissions, Kochhar's counsel advocate Vijay Aggarwal withdrew the petition after court showed restraint in entertaining the petition, however, the court granted him the liberty to approach the Mumbai Court, which had the judicial custody of Kochhar. Kochhar in his plea while citing his medical conditions said that there are strong chances that his health conditions will get worse in absence of proper care and attention. "Petitioner undertakes to bear all the expenses for his treatment at Medanta Hospital- Gurugram, Max Hospital-New Delhi or Sir Gangaram Hospital-New Delhi or any other private hospital in custody," said the plea. "Petitioner (Deepak Kochhar) is kept in the lock up at Police Station Chanakyapuri, New Delhi with other inmates wherein no norms for social distancing were followed nor any other Covid-19 related care was taken due to which the Petitioner was made to suffer from danger of a life-threatening disease which might prove to be fatal for the Petitioner," the plea said. During the course of arguments, advocate Vijay Aggarwal contended that Deepak Kochhar tested Covid-19 positive while he was in the custody of ED. "When I was with my family nothing happened, When I was in their custody, I became Corona positive," said Aggarwal while adding that since he too met Kochhar, he also had to get tested, however, he is fine. Earlier this week, Deepak Kochchar who was recently arrested in a money laundering case by the ED, tested positive for Covid-19. "Kochhar has tested positive for Covid-19 and has been admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the national capital," Kochhar's legal team confirmed to IANS over the phone. Soon after he was tested positive of Covid-19, the ED had requested a Mumbai court to transfer Kochhar to judicial custody and the said application was allowed the court. Kochhar, the husband of the high-profile former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar, is facing charges of money-laundering in the ICICI Bank-Videocon Group case. The probe revealed that bank loans were refinanced and new loans aggregating to Rs 1,730 crore were sanctioned to Videocon and its group companies, and these loans later became non-performing assets (NPA) for ICICI Bank on June 30, 2017. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Michael Jr. reimagines comedy with virtual comedy tour Laugh Your Mask Off Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Comedian Michael Jr. announced that he'll be hosting an interactive virtual comedy tour called Laugh Your Mask Off featuring families from across the United States that he'll be talking to live on Zoom. "I am Michael Jr. and I get to bring laughter to people. But I don't just bring laughter for the sake of comedy, I actually use laughter to inspire people, the comic said in an Instagram video shared with The Christian Post. The Selfie Dad actor said the world has extremely uninspiring things going on and he wants to counter all of it in a positive way. We need to take a break from just focusing on all the pain and give ourselves permission to laugh, he said. As a result, Laugh Your Mask Off was created to be an interactive comedy tour that travels right into audiences' homes. A video promotion shows Michael Jr.'s live interactions with viewers. We took my new comedy special, chopped it up into bite-sized pieces so now I can interact with you right from your living room in between the jokes, the Texas resident explained. Michael Jr. added: This is stand-up comedy reimagined. Now that we know that this works, we're taking it on tour from city to city so you can laugh with the people in your community. We're not just gonna laugh. The comedian mixes ministry in with his clean jokes and for years now his approach to comedy has inspired audiences across the country to enjoy life and live out their God-given purpose. I got some inspiring stories and some insight I plan to share as well because when a person laughs their heart is open. If I can make a deposit that can cause a positive change, that's exactly what I want to do, Michael Jr. concludes in the video. Go ahead and get your family, your friends, and your Zoom connection ready, because we 'bout to laugh our mask off and be inspired while doing so. Tickets for Laugh Your Mask Off are now on sale. Tickets include household viewing and live interaction with Michael Jr. Were using laughter to be inspired; because the truth is, people were wearing masks long before this pandemic began, Michael Jr. said in the statement. He is hoping that during a time of social distancing and unrest that laughter will bring people together. VICTORIA - The British Columbia government announcing $660 million in new tax incentives Thursday and outlined how it will spend another $1.5 billion on economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Premier John Horgan is joined by Finance Minister Carole James during a press conference at Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Wednesday, May 15, 2019. The British Columbia government is expected to reveal how it plans to stimulate an economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic today. Horgan and James are scheduled to release details of the $1.5-billion economic recovery plan this afternoon. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito VICTORIA - The British Columbia government announcing $660 million in new tax incentives Thursday and outlined how it will spend another $1.5 billion on economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new details build on a suite of previously announced provincial and federal commitments aimed at recharging the economy as an uncertain winter looms. "This recovery plan is just the start, the first step on a long road of recovery that we will take together," Premier John Horgan said at a news conference with Finance Minister Carole James. "We'll continue to invest wherever and whenever we need to, to keep our economy growing and keep people safe." Members of the legislature across party lines unanimously approved funding for plan in March. Details about how the money will be spent come amid speculation that Horgan is considering a snap election. He did little to dispel the talk of an election on Thursday, saying only that he had not yet made a decision. The economic recovery plan includes targeted funding for the tourism industry, food security, climate action, and technology and innovation. Premier John Horgan and Minister of Finance Carole James announce B.C.'s Economic Recovery Plan during a press conference at Phillips Brewery in Victoria, B.C., on Thursday September 17, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito It earmarks $417 million to support jobs and training, including $300 million to hire 5,800 new health-care workers in positions such as contact tracers and screening staff for COVID-19. About $100 million in infrastructure grants will be available for projects that are ready to begin and there is $300 million in grants for small- and medium-size businesses to help protect more than 200,000 jobs in hard-hit industries. It also dedicates about $100 million for the tourism sector, a significant shortfall from the $680 million the industry had asked for. The tax incentives include a temporary 100 per cent PST rebate on select machinery and equipment for eligible businesses and a 15 per cent tax credit on eligible new payroll to encourage businesses to hire more workers. The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade said it was pleased to see some of its recommendations in the plan, including the PST rebate. It said it looked forward to details about which companies would be eligible to access the payroll tax credit and small business recovery grant. "These decisions will be vital to ensure that funds flow quickly to businesses that need immediate support to survive," board president Bridgitte Anderson said in a news release. "Since February, more than 8,000 businesses have closed in Metro Vancouver as a result of COVID-19 and many more are worried about a second wave." As of August, almost 250,000 jobs have been restored, equal to 62 per cent of the total jobs lost due to the pandemic, the government said. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson accused Horgan of using the plan as campaign material for an "unnecessary" election. Other provinces unveiled their plans months ago, he said, giving time for sectors like the tourism industry to respond during the summer months. "This NDP plan is a huge disappointment simply because it is too little, too late," he said Thursday. "They're trying to stoke election fever with an economic plan." Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Green leader Sonia Furstenau said her caucus was consulted on the plan and called it a good start, but added that it lacks imagination. "We can dream bigger. We can strive to put every young person who needs a job to work restoring and healing our natural environment, begin a mass building retrofit campaign to create jobs in every community, and create a just transition for workers in dying industries," Furstenau said in a statement. The $1.5 billion builds on the $1.86 billion Safe Restart plan that was supported with federal funding. The B.C. government says it has spent more than $8.25 billion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By Amy Smart in Vancouver. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. Kiwi conservationists all over Aotearoa are celebrating after the Minister of Conservation announced a multi-million-dollar cash injection into kiwi conservation efforts today. Jobs for Nature funding, as part of the Governments COVID-19 response and recovery package, will see $19.7 million spread across kiwi conservation activities like increased predator control and Operation Nest Egg. Charitable trust Kiwis for kiwi will manage the distribution of funds, which will create up to 100 new jobs. Kiwis for kiwi executive director Michelle Impey says the organisation is proud to be entrusted with the funding which will enable kiwi conservation efforts all over the country to do more work, faster. This funding really validates the work that community- and hapu/iwi-led kiwi conservation groups on the ground are doing, day in and day out. The people and organisations that we work with are incredibly passionate about their mahi, but lack of funding limits how much they can do and how fast they can do it. More funding proves that their work is valuable and necessary, and empowers them to reach their goals faster. Today, NZ has around 70,000 kiwi. Where predators are being managed, kiwi populations are growing. But the gains do not yet offset the losses, and despite efforts, kiwi numbers are still declining at two per cent annually which means the country is losing around 27 a week. Impey says this funding injection will help kiwi conservation groups to get ahead of that decline. The kiwi is genuinely running out of time theres no beating around the bush here. This funding enables our teams to get ahead of the decline by restoring more native habitat, making more of that habitat safe from predators, working with dog owners to keep kiwi safe from their canine family members, and breeding more kiwi to release back into predator-managed habitats. Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage says the time is right to accelerate and scale up community and hapu/iwi kiwi restoration projects and create more predator-free land for kiwi. Only when large tracts of land are predator free will we see kiwi numbers for each species of kiwi go from two per cent decline per year to the Kiwi Recovery Plans goal of a two per cent increase per year. We also know that for long-term kiwi restoration and to reach New Zealands Predator Free 2050 goal, we need to work in partnership with private landowners. The Forest Bridge Trusts habitat restoration project is one of many community groups that will benefit from this investment. Building on the work of local communities and private landowners such as iwi and farmers, The Forest Bridge Trust will use new funding of $8.5 million to create a 54,000 hectare predator-controlled bridge between the Kaipara Harbour and the Pacific, where kiwi can live without fear of predators, says Sage. Funding from Jobs for Nature will help to speed up the work that The Forest Bridge Trust is doing and create at least 40 new jobs at the peak of the project to support it. The Forest Bridge Trust executive director Tracy Tristram says the funding will enable their team to accelerate their conservation efforts significantly. The Forest Bridge Trust team is incredibly passionate about working with local landowners to protect our local habitats and create safe, healthy habitats for some of our most vulnerable species, says Tristram. We are proud to work alongside Kiwis for kiwi and local landowners who are as passionate about the cause as we are, and do our bit to reverse the decline in kiwi numbers. The new kiwi conservation funding covers five years and at its peak is likely to create up to 100 new jobs for community and iwi conservation projects including field operation, project management and administrative roles. Funding focuses on large-scale predator control projects across Aotearoa that increase habitat available for kiwi and involve iwi, hapu and private landowners. Kiwi conservation projects all over New Zealand have been invited to apply for funding, and Kiwis for kiwi along with other specialist kiwi practitioners are assessing applications. New jobs associated with the funding will be advertised by the groups that receive funding. Visit www.kiwisforkiwi.org for regular updates about which projects have received funding. Lady Northampton at The Falcon, Castle Ashby, England Retreat settings as inspirational as the messages of health, strength, happiness, and peace that are inherent in the Loving Kindness mantra. After a tumultuous 2020 thats left many people feeling exhausted both mentally and physically, Silver Linings Retreats is illuminating the way to wellness in 2021 with a message of Loving Kindness. The lauded wellness program created by Chrissy Sundt focuses on whole-body restoration and rejuvenation and will now add even greater emphasis on meditation and mindfulness. With a focus on the universal language of love, its especially fitting that a range of fantastic global setting heralds the new season of Silver Linings Retreats, with unique holistic programs in an array of spectacular international settings. The wellness journeys will be held in three magical locations in Spain, England, and the Bahamas, with settings as inspirational as the messages of health, strength, happiness, and peace that are inherent in the Loving Kindness mantra. This guiding sentiment of the new retreats is intended to help promote good wishes and a sense of benevolence for oneself and others: -May I be well, healthy and strong -May I be happy -May I abide in peace Destinations: Cugo Gran, Menorca, Spain: A majestic private villa on a secluded island is the setting of Cugo Gran, a blissful sanctuary set in lavender fields with sweeping views to the vitrine waters of the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to the Silver Linings immersive programs of meditation, movement, and specially crafted meals, theres ample time for rest and relaxation in the warmth of the Spanish sun. Retreat dates are May 17 to 21. The 4-day retreat starts at $2,865 (room extra). Kamalame Cay, Andros, Bahamas: The setting for Silver Linings previous heavenly getaways is a serene piece of paradise in the Bahamas, an award-winning private island where you can find inner calm and restore physical and mental balance while enjoying the sugar-white sand and turquoise waters. Retreat dates Feb 26 to March 12, with 3, 5, and 7-day retreats starting from $3,699 (room extra). The Falcon, Castle Ashby, England: A country hotel set in the heart of the 10,500-acre Castle Ashby estate in rural Northamptonshire. The Falcon, which has been lovingly transformed and completely re-imagined by Lord and Lady Northampton, offers a magical haven for those in need of calm, rest and renewal. Retreat dates Jan 29 to 31, 3-day weekend retreat starting from $1,140 (room extra). Note: Retreat participants can be assured that all Health & Safety protocols will be followed according to each country's most stringent requirements. About the Retreats: Silver Linings Retreat highlights include movement programs lead by experts in their fields, including Pilates, Yoga, Barre, HIIT, Cardio, stretch, and meditation; gourmet meals overseen by a nutritionist utilizing local organics designed to restore and recharge the whole body; rejuvenating massage therapy; and a spectacular setting chosen to foster peace and serenity. London-based Silver Linings Retreats are developed by founder Chrissy Sundt, who specializes in a holistic approach to total mind and body health with personalized programs that are custom tailored to participants needs. With a maximum of 10 students per retreat, Chrissy is able to personally help students to focus on achieving their wellness goals, communicating with them before and after the retreat and creating special itineraries to help them achieve their health aspirations. A classically trained ballet dancer, Chrissy studied at the Royal Ballet School and danced with both the Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet. An ankle injury led her to discover the extraordinary rehabilitative effects of Pilates. Today she combines her experiences as a Pilates, Yoga and Barre instructor and deep passion for movement and holistic forms of exercise to craft customized wellness programs and develop Silver Linings Technique which combines the Five Ss of movement---Strength, Stamina, Stability, Stretch and Soul---for a total body fitness regime. Retreat participants will also be able to take classes with movement expert Vanessa Michielon. Vanessa is a Yoga, Pilates and Barre teacher and dance artist and researcher trained in Vinyasa and Hatha who specializes in fostering a deeper mind and body connection. Specially curated whole foods retreat menus and meals are designed by Silver Linings nutritionist Clarissa Lenherr. Retreat participants enjoy three gorgeously plated, healthy and enticing meals a day including highlights such as spicy Thai coconut soup with poached chicken served in a green coconut; freshly caught, pan-seared Mahi-Mahi with a citrus, arugula, and shaved asparagus salad; and a creamy cacao and avocado mousse for dessert. Silver Linings retreats also feature flavorful, refreshing and nutrient-rich fresh-pressed juices from The Radiance Juice Co. The former editor-in-chief of Marie Claire UK, Catherine Turner refocused her inner eye to center on meditation and yoga as the path to mental, physical, and emotional well-being. She has lived in a remote Himalayan ashram, studied Reiki, completed over 500 hours of yoga teacher training, and found deep stillness in silent retreats. Shell guide classes through meditation at selected retreats. Raquel Scheid is a body therapist and wellness expert providing massage therapies at select retreats. With more than two decades of experience she is able to offer a wide range of modalities to work with individual guests needs, including Swedish and deep tissue massage, Reiki, reflexology, shiatsu, and mindfulness and guided meditations. Tallulah Rendall, Qi Gong teacher and sound meditation therapist, has been studying sound and its healing qualities for over 20 years. Ten years ago, she began her exploration into Qi Gong and Chinese Medicine. She now weaves these two traditions together to offer a space of powerful transformation. Silver Linings Retreats include the following wellness elements: Specially prepared meals and juices, group movement classes, massage therapies, and pre-and post-retreat support. All participants also receive a special welcome gift. To book a Silver Linings retreat, transfers, and accommodations, contact: bookings@silverliningswellbeing.com *Note: additional fees apply for some activities. Link to Images Link to Expert Profiles About Silver Linings Retreats: Silver Linings Retreats (SLR) was founded by Christine (Chrissy) Sundt, a former dancer with the British Royal Ballet. Blending her expertise in barre and ballet with Pilates, yoga, and H.I.I.T., (high intensity interval training), Sundts multi-faceted, results-oriented regimens, which incorporate instruction from some of the worlds most highly-regarded experts in nutrition, mediation, sleep and other movement and holistic healing practices, are tailored to each guest in personalized wellness programs at stunning resorts around the globe. In 2020, Silver Linings Retreats introduced SLR@Home, an online version of the popular retreats. SLR has been featured in The Financial Times, W, Food & Wine and Vogue. For media inquiries, please contact: Jessica Bradford 2BPR Inc. Email: jessica@2bprinc.com Tel: (626) 379-2381 Reading, PA (19601) Today Partly cloudy and very cold. Near or below zero wind chills again late at night towards sunrise. . Tonight Partly cloudy and very cold. Near or below zero wind chills again late at night towards sunrise. New Delhi: With cyber security becoming critical in digital transformation of India, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad Thursday said government will soon set up a 'security operations centre' to monitor cyber incidents with regard to IT infrastructure and applications hosted by NIC. "A government security operations centre will start soon. The issue of cyber security is extremely important," the Minister said addressing the National Meet on Grassroot Informatics organised by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) here. The minister further said that a data centre for cloud would also be established in Bhopal. This would be in addition to four data centres located in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhubaneshwar and Pune. Inaugurating the three-day event, Prasad asked NIC's District Information Officers (DIOs) to take an "innovative and proactive" approach. "NIC must adopt a transformative approach to make a difference at the grassroots level. I appeal to NIC to connect with the Common Service Centres, which have successfully provided training on digital payment systems to over 1.96 crore of rural citizens and 6.15 lakh merchants," he said. The government plans to enhance the infrastructure of district NIC offices to international standards, he added. As a pilot project, 150 District NIC offices would be upgraded during 2017-18, while rest will follow soon. He further instructed his Ministry to develop a training module for NIC officials to keep pace with the evolving technologies. Prasad also announced the introduction of annual awards for the DIOs of the NIC for taking up exemplary innovative approach in their respective districts. The top three best innovators will get a reward of Rs 2,00,000, Rs 1,00,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively, he added. Later in the day, while speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, the minister said that programs like Digital India, Make in India, Skill India, Start up India, Stand up India and Smart Cities were designed to fulfil a larger vision of making India a "technologically empowered society". For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, called fellow billionaire Bill Gates "clueless" in reply to a question posted on Twitter over the weekend. Someone with the handle Richard Reina asked Elon Musk his opinion on Gates' declaration referring to electric trucks. And Musk replied that "he has no clue," thus continuing the bickering between the two billionaire geniuses. Gates, Microsoft co-founder, had cast doubts on the viability of electric trucks, according to a report on CNN. In his blog post in August, Gates had explained that he was doubtful about the potential of electric vehicles as long-haul vehicles because they would need big and heavy batteries. Gates, who is also a philanthropist, wrote that even with the big breakthrough in battery technology, electric vehicles might not be a practical solution for vehicles like 18-wheelers, passenger jets, and cargo ships. He added that electricity works in covering short distances, but electricity will not be a solution for heavy and long-haul vehicles. Gates said the problem with using electricity as a viable option is that batteries are big and heavy, and more batteries will be needed to power a vehicle that is carrying more weight. He noted that batteries would add to the weight, according to an article on GeekWire. Elon Musk's Tesla had revealed the Cybertruck, its new electric pickup, last year, as well as the Tri Motor All-Wheel-Drive, the more expensive version of the truck. Tesla said the production for the Cybertruck would start in 2021 and 2022 for the Tri Motor AWD. Gates added in his blog post that biofuels would be more of a viable solution for commercial vehicles. The philanthropist then credited legacy automakers GM and Ford, and new car makers Rivian and Bolinger for producing all-electric pickup trucks. Tesla, however, was not included. This was not the first time that the two billionaires have butted heads. Earlier this year, Elon Musk said that a conversation with Gates is underwhelming. This after Gates had said that he bought an electric Porsche Taycan instead of a Tesla. Gates also did not appreciate the comments of Musk regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The Microsoft CEO had called them outrageous, according to a report on Business Insider. Gates made the comments when he guested on CNBC's Squawk Box. He had said that Musk should stick to his area of expertise instead of spreading falsehood regarding the COVID-19. Aside from spreading falsehood about the pandemic, Musk had also expressed doubt on the severity of COVID-19 in the U.S., even while cases were starting to rise. He said on social media that the figures are messed up by a lot of COVID-19 false positives. He added that tests with only five percent false positive rate would add up to the million fake COVID-19 cases, even when there is actually none. Gates then said that Musk is great at making electric cars and rockets, but he is not involved in making vaccines. Check these out: TikTok, Oracle Reach Initial Technical Partnership Deal Trump Says He Does Not Approve of ByteDance Control in TikTok Deal New iOS 14: What Can It Do to Your iPhones? Virgin Australia CEO & Managing Director, Paul Scurrah. (Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images) As a leader, Virgin Australia CEO Paul Scurrah sees his role as communicating a strong vision for the company. But when the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on airlines, Virgin was brought to its knees, and Scurrah knew the story had to change. I certainly think one of the key leadership traits is painting a picture or a vision for the company, or a picture of what success looks like, he told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Sarah OCarroll at the All Markets Summit on Thursday. You still need to do that. But our horizon is much shorter now, I think. And I think the definition of success has changed dramatically, he said. The typical vision of a beacon on a hill had to be scrapped. We had to redefine what success looked like, said Scurrah. Success really became about survival. So we needed to make sure we remained calm and steady, that we had a vision. And importantly, what was our plan to get to that vision which was just survival? Referencing Maslows hierarchy of needs, he said the airline had fallen all the way back down to the bottom. (Source: Simply Psychology) Since March, Virgin Australia has cut 3,000 staff, cut the Tigarair brand and sold the company to US investment firm Bain Capital. During the pandemic, Scurrah said his enduring challenge was softening the blow for his people, revealing he would have handled the redundancies differently if he could go back in time. Cutting staff was not something [he] wanted to do, he said. I would've gotten to them quicker. Uncertainty is a major cause of stress and anxiety, he said. I think we felt we were trying to preserve some hope for [staff] ... But hindsight is a wonderful thing. I think we took too long to get to the point of execution. If I could do something differently I would give that certainty. Flight prices will be competitive: Scurrah Story continues The CEO also revealed that the cost of flights were set to go up, as new restrictions put pressure on airlines. That really cap[s] the amount of people that you can take on the plane and so it changes the economics completely of having to operate that plane, he said. Some of them are underwritten by the government but there's still some pretty big airfares. However, he indicated there could be some good news when travel is allowed again, with healthy competition likely to keep prices low. But when the skies do open up again, there's going to be a need to stimulate demand and you will see some competitive airfares when it is safe to travel, he said. Flying to Ireland, for instance, might cost something from $1500, $2000 return in economy. In terms of when flights would resume, Scurrah said it was really hard to know exactly when its going to be. Its really a market-by-market assessment, its not a blanket approach. For instance, travel to New Zealand will likely happen sooner than travel to the US, he added. Make your money work with Yahoo Finances daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, economy, property and work news. Follow Yahoo Finance Australia on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Karl Stefanovic has slammed Queensland's strict border ban for preventing Scott Morrison from attending the AFL Grand Final. The current restrictions will make Mr Morrison the first Australian Prime Minister to miss the legendary sporting event, scheduled on October 24, in decades. Stefanovic voiced his opinion about Queensland's harsh coronavirus restrictions to Mr Morrison on Thursday morning. 'I can't believe the Prime Minister of this country can't go to the AFL Grand Final. It's a travesty,' he told the Today Show. Karl Stefanovic (pictured) has slammed Queensland's harsh border restrictions that will make Scott Morrison the first Australian Prime Minister to miss an AFL grand final in decades Mr Morrison said he was 'not about to hold my breath' about attending the first AFL Grand Final hosted by Queensland at The Gabba stadium in Brisbane. 'Well, its interesting times, isnt it? You never know, maybe they will change their mind,' he said. The state's border restrictions demand residents from NSW, the ACT and Victoria complete a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine when entering Queensland. But Mr Morrison said he was happy to adhere to the same rules imposed on everyday Australians. 'The same rules should apply to me as anyone else. Those rules should be fair, they should be sensible and they should be compassionate,' he explained. Coronavirus hotspot residents will be unable to enter the state, unless they pay $2800 for a 14 day quarantine, in the lead up to Queensland's October 31 election. This means all politicians, including the prime minister and opposition leader, will have to comply with the measures if they decide to campaign in Queensland. Mr Morrison (pictured) said he was happy to adhere to the same coronavirus rules imposed on everyday Australians but was unlikely to complete a mandatory 14-day quarantine The AFL Grand Final will be held outside of Victoria for the first time on October 24 at Brisbane's Gabba stadium (an AFL match at The Gabba on Monday pictured) The Queensland government indicated on Wednesday that border restrictions with the ACT and NSW could be eased at the end of this month. Mr Morrison has called on the Queensland government to implement a fairer quarantine exemption system. 'We have to deal with the virus, not let the virus destroy the way we live,' he said. Compassionate quarantine exemptions have become a potent issue in the run-up to the state election and the LNP have branded Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk as 'heartless'. Sarah Caisip (in yellow), from Canberra, was granted an exemption to have a private viewing of her father's body in Queensland. She was not allowed to greet her family Last week Mr Morrison asked Ms Palaszczuk to let a 26-year-old nurse attend her father's funeral but the premier refused and accused him of 'bullying and intimidating' her. Sarah Caisip, who lives in coronavirus-free Canberra, applied for an exemption last month to visit her sick father Bernard Prendergast in Brisbane - but it took 20 days to get approved and he died of liver cancer two days before her flight. The young woman was banned from attending her father's funeral and was instead only granted a private viewing of his body. Queensland Health Department guidelines say the border will remain shut to NSW, ACT and Victoria unless the states go 28 days without community transmission. Figure 1 South Zone Planned Exploration Program South Zone Planned Exploration Program NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES (All dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars ($) unless otherwise specified) TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ascendant Resources Inc. (TSX: ASND) ("Ascendant" or the "Company) is pleased to announce the start of its updated 2020 exploration program, which consists of 2,700m of drilling and downhole IP surveys which will be completed in several phases. The main objective of the proposed program is to significantly increase and upgrade tonnage at the copper-rich South Zone. This is designed to build upon the existing 2.47Mt of Measured and Indicated resource and 6.09Mt of Inferred resource delineated in the South Zone as highlighted in the Companys technical report titled, "Technical Report and PEA for the Lagoa Salgada Project Setubal District, Portugal" dated February 27, 2020 with an effective date of December 19, 2019 (the "Preliminary Economic Assessment"). The South Zone remains open in all directions according to geological data collected during the Companys previous exploration activities. The most southern drill hole in the South Zone (LS_ST_11) was one of the best holes encountered, with assays reporting 67.6m true width at a 1.57% Copper Equivalent ("CuEq") grade. Indications are that the mineralization is open and expanding southward where the Companys first drill targets in this program are situated. Figure 1 highlights the initial and follow-up planned drill holes. Chris Buncic, President & CEO of Ascendant, stated, We are excited to continue our exploration activities in the South Zone where we hope to greatly improve CuEq tonnage and grade. Information collected to date suggests that the South Zone has the potential to be significantly larger than the North Zone, and it is largely comprised of a copper-rich stockwork mineralization that may be amenable to bulk mining methods at sufficient size." Story continues He continued, We have achieved tremendous success with our previous drill programs, as highlighted by an exceptional drilling-to-tonnage ratio. This is characteristic of a project in the early stages of discovery, and we are confident that we have only scratched the surface of what is possible at Lagoa Salgada. We have yet to find the feeder system, but substantial showings of chalcopyrite within the copper stockwork mineralization discovered to date, leads us to believe we are on the right track, and this exploration program is designed to further the Company on this path. Figure 1: South Zone planned exploration program https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e2d60f72-0418-44ee-bde4-3932446251ef Non-Brokered Private Placement of Units The Company has also initiated a non-brokered private placement of up to approximately 12.6 million units of the Company (each, a "Unit") at a price of C$0.10 per Unit for gross proceeds of up to approximately C$1.26 million (the "Offering"). Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (each, a "Common Share") and one-half of one Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at a price of C$0.15 per share for a 24-month period following the closing date of the Offering. The net proceeds from the Offering will be used for the Companys proposed 2020 exploration program, as described above, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes. The Offering is expected to close on or about September 30, 2020 or such other date as the Company may determine. Closing of the Offering is conditional upon receipt of all required approvals, including the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange. The securities to be issued under the Offering will be subject to a statutory hold period of four months from the closing date of the Offering in accordance with applicable securities laws. Certain insiders of the Company (within the meaning of applicable securities laws) may participate in the Offering. Accordingly, any such participation would be considered a "related party transaction" under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). In connection with any such participation, the Company intends to rely on exemptions from the formal valuation and majority of the minority shareholder approval set out in MI 61-101 since, at the time the transaction was agreed to: (i) neither the fair market value of the securities to be distributed in the Offering nor the consideration to be received for those securities, insofar as the transactions involves interested parties, would exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization; (ii) neither the fair market value of the securities to be distributed in the Offering nor the consideration to be received for those securities, insofar as the transactions involves interested parties, would exceed $2,500,000; and (iii) the Company has one or more independent directors and, at least two thirds of said independent directors approved the transaction, as required pursuant to sections 5.5 and 5.7 of MI 61-101. This news 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, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. Technical Disclosure/Qualified Person All technical information contained herein has been reviewed and approved by Robert A. Campbell, M.Sc, P.Geo, an officer and director of the Company. Mr. Campbell is a "qualified person" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101). About Ascendant Resources Inc. Ascendant is a Toronto-based mining company focused on the exploration and development of the highly prospective Lagoa Salgada VMS project located on the prolific Iberian Pyrite Belt in Portugal. Through focused exploration and aggressive development plans, the Company aims to unlock the inherent potential of the project, maximizing value creation for shareholders. Lagoa Salgada contains over 12.8 million tonnes of M&I Resources and 10.3 million tonnes in Inferred Resources and demonstrates typical mineralization characteristics of Iberian Pyrite Belt VMS deposits containing zinc, copper, lead, tin, silver and gold. Extensive exploration upside potential lies both near deposit and at prospective step-out targets across the large 10,700ha property concession. The project also demonstrates compelling economics with scalability for future resource growth in the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment. Located just 80km from Lisbon, Lagoa Salgada is easily accessible by road and surrounded by exceptional Infrastructure. Ascendant holds a 21.25% interest in the Lagoa Salgada project through its 25% position in Redcorp - Empreendimentos Mineiros, Lda, (Redcorp) and has an earn-in opportunity to increase its interest in the project to 80%. Mineral & Financial Investments Limited owns the additional 75% of Redcorp. The remaining 15% of the project is held by Empresa de Desenvolvimento Mineiro, S.A., a Portuguese Government owned company supporting the strategic development of the countrys mining sector. The Companys interest in the Lagoa Salgada project offers a low-cost entry to a potentially significant exploration and development opportunity, already demonstrating its mineable scale. Ascendant is also engaged in the ongoing evaluation of producing and development stage mineral resource opportunities. The Company's common shares are principally listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "ASND". For more information on Ascendant, please visit our website at www.ascendantresources.com. Additional information relating to the Company, including the Preliminary Economic Assessment referenced in this news release, is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information please contact: Katherine Pryde Communications & Investor Relations Tel: 888-723-7413 info@ascendantresources.com Forward Looking Information This news release contains "forward-looking statements" and "forward-looking information" (collectively, "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All information contained in this news release, other than statements of current and historical fact, is forward-looking information. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "guidance", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "strategy", "target", "intends", "objective", "goal", "understands", "anticipates" and "believes" (and variations of these or similar words) and statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" "occur" or "be achieved" or "will be taken" (and variations of these or similar expressions). Forward-looking information is also identifiable in statements of currently occurring matters which may continue in the future, such as "providing the Company with", "is currently", "allows/allowing for", "will advance" or "continues to" or other statements that may be stated in the present tense with future implications. All of the forward-looking information in this news release is qualified by this cautionary note. Forward-looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding the exploration activities and the results of such activities at the Lagoa Salgada Project, the ability of the Company to advance the Lagoa Salgada Project, and the ability of the Company to fund the exploration with funds from operations. Forward-looking information is based on, among other things, opinions, assumptions, estimates and analyses that, while considered reasonable by Ascendant at the date the forward-looking information is provided, inherently are subject to significant risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other factors that may cause actual results and events to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. The material factors or assumptions that Ascendant identified and were applied by Ascendant in drawing conclusions or making forecasts or projections set out in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, the success of the exploration activities at Lagoa Salgada Project, the Company advancing the project, the ability of the Company to fund the exploration program at Lagoa Salgada with funds from operations , and other events that may affect Ascendant's ability to develop its project; and no significant and continuing adverse changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets. The risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information may include, but are not limited to, risks generally associated with the mining industry, such as economic factors (including future commodity prices, currency fluctuations, energy prices and general cost escalation), uncertainties related to the development and operation of Ascendant's projects, dependence on key personnel and employee and union relations, risks related to political or social unrest or change, rights and title claims, operational risks and hazards, including unanticipated environmental, industrial and geological events and developments and the inability to insure against all risks, failure of plant, equipment, processes, transportation and other infrastructure to operate as anticipated, compliance with government and environmental regulations, including permitting requirements and anti-bribery legislation, volatile financial markets that may affect Ascendant's ability to obtain additional financing on acceptable terms, the failure to obtain required approvals or clearances from government authorities on a timely basis, uncertainties related to the geology, continuity, grade and estimates of mineral reserves and resources, and the potential for variations in grade and recovery rates, uncertain costs of reclamation activities, tax refunds, hedging transactions, as well as the risks discussed in Ascendant's most recent Annual Information Form on file with the Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com . Should one or more risk, uncertainty, contingency, or other factor materialize, or should any factor or assumption prove incorrect, actual results could vary materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Accordingly, the reader should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Ascendant does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this news release or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and any forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law. Excellent Drill Results High Grade Ext to Frasers Open Pit Perth, Sep 17, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Hastings Technology Metals Limited, Australia's next Rare Earths producer ( ASX:HAS ) ( FRA:5AM ), is pleased to announce the first set of results from the 2020 Exploration Drilling Program, concentrated in the Fraser's area.Drilling results have confirmed the Company's conceptual modelling for a large coherent zone extending from Fraser's in the south to Bald Hill in the north (Figure 1*), a distance of 7-8 kilometres, with efforts to rapidly expand and define mineralisation in the newly interpreted and discovered mineralised zones.The very shallow depths of the mineralised intercepts and proximity to the existing Fraser's Open Pit demonstrate the high probability for mine life extension at Fraser's with excellent grades and thickness encountered in every hole of assays received. (See table 1*). Fraser's currently has the highest NdPr (Nd2O3+Pr6O11) grades at 0.56% of any of the Yangibana defined deposits.The high NdPr grades and corresponding Nd2O3+Pr6O11:TREO ratios are a unique feature not found in any other rare earth project, except for Yangibana.The Fraser's Mineral Resource has a calculated Nd2O3+Pr6O11:TREO ratio of 41% (see announcement 18% Increase in Ore Reserve Mine Life Extended by 2 years to 13 years November 2019), however assays received forming this announcement had Nd2O3+Pr6O11:TREO ratios ranging from 44 - 50%. (see Table 1*), representing a substantial increase over existing results from Frasers.COO, Andrew Reid commented: "These results have exceeded our expectations, which are an excellent first step in defining what appears to be a significant new zone of mineralisation. With this initial shallow program, we have confirmed the presence of broad mineralised widths and extended known extents of Mineral Resources. All the deepest holes confirm mineralisation continues at depth."2020 Exploration ProgramHasting's commenced the 2020 drilling program with a Reverse-Circulation (RC) drilling rig mobilised to site in mid-June. The program will continue until 4Q2020 and has been designed to achieve three goals:- Validate the existing Bald Hill Mineral Resource Estimates with close spaced grade control drilling;- Increase the Yangibana Project's Measured and Indicated Mineral Resource; and- Obtain core samples for additional metallurgical test work and ore characterization studies.The Company's geological interpretation suggests that there is substantial opportunity to add additional Mineral Resource tonnages in the area Bald Hill - Simon's Find - Fraser's trend. This trend presents the highest opportunity to add Mineral Resources within close proximity to the Processing Plant.Existing results support and warrant additional drilling, where near-surface extensions to known mineralisation can be traced and identified. Observations from field mapping continue to provide new insights into the local geology and its structural settings, which conceptually offer the greatest opportunity to host additional resources.*To view tables and figures, please visit:About Hastings Technology Metals Ltd Hastings Technology Metals Ltd (ASX:HAS) (FRA:5AM) is advancing its Yangibana Rare Earths Project in the Upper Gascoyne Region of Western Australia towards production. The proposed beneficiation and hydro metallurgy processing plant will treat rare earths deposits, predominantly monazite, hosting high neodymium and praseodymium contents to produce a mixed rare earths carbonate that will be further refined into individual rare earth oxides at processing plants overseas. Neodymium and praseodymium are vital components in the manufacture of permanent magnets which is used in a wide and expanding range of advanced and high-tech products including electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, medical applications and others. Hastings aims to become the next significant producer of neodymium and praseodymium outside of China. Hastings holds 100% interest in the most significant deposits within the overall project, and 70% interest in additional deposits that will be developed at a later date, all held under Mining Leases. Numerous prospects have been identified warranting detailed exploration to further extend the life of the project. Brockman Project The Brockman deposit, near Halls Creek in Western Australia, contains JORC Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources, estimated using the guidelines of JORC Code (2012 Edition). The Company is also progressing a Mining Lease application over the Brockman Rare Earths and Rare Metals Project. Hastings aims to capitalise on the strong demand for critical rare earths created by the expanding demand for new technology products. Geneva, Sept, 17 2020 (SPS) -The participants in a videoconference, held Tuesday in Geneva by the Support Group to Western Sahara, urged the United Nations (UN) to accelerate the holding of a self-determination referendum on occupied Western Sahara. On the sidelines of the Geneva Conference themed 60th anniversary of UN Resolution 1514: Its implementation in Western Sahara, a high-level panel brought together the President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) Brahim Gali, Namibias Deputy Minister Nandi-Ndaitwah, the Foreign Minister of Timor-Leste Xavier Reis Magno and the Representative of South Africa to Geneva Mxakato-Diseko. The former UN SG special Representative and former head of MINURSO, MEP Barrena Arza and the chairman of the Sahrawi human rights committee also attended the panel. The conference was an opportunity for the participants to reaffirm their full and inalienable support to the Sahrawi people for the enjoyment of their right to self-determination, said the Support Group in a communique. They also denounced "the multiple and recurrent maneuvers to postpone indefinitely the referendum on self-determination," noting that the UN General Assembly had asked Spain to hold this popular consultation in 1966. Speaking at the meeting, Namibia's Deputy Prime Minister Nandi-Ndaitwah said the UN could hold the referendum. The General Assembly could not "maintain its expectant attitude, since inaction or indecisiveness perpetuates the illegal status quo and encourages the occupying forces to continue its human rights violations in the territory. The FM of Timor-Leste Xavier Reis Magno reaffirmed the constant support of his country to the Saharawi people in their struggle for freedom, recalling that his country led a struggle similar to that of the Sahrawis to achieve independence. While expressing regret at the failure of the UN to organize this referendum, the minister encouraged the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to "give due attention to the territory of Western Sahara.SPS 125/090/700 KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Mayor Quinton Lucas says intervention matters. He and others are actively working on programs to save lives, but one more teenager was lost overnight. Police said the fatal shooting happened on Freemont Avenue between E. 15th Street and Truman Road. Detectives spent the majority of Wednesday searching a house around the [...] Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 01:03:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Photo taken on Sept. 5, 2020 shows the Lebu station of Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. Ethiopia's Transport Minister, Dagmawit Moges, on Thursday commended the successful construction and operation of the 756-km Africa's first fully electrified trans-boundary Ethiopia-Djibouti standard gauge railway. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia's Transport Minister, Dagmawit Moges, on Thursday commended the successful construction and operation of the 756-kms Africa's first fully electrified trans-boundary Ethiopia-Djibouti standard gauge railway. Moges made the remarks during the opening ceremony of the Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway Development Strategy and Freight Service Introduction Conference held on Thursday on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The high-level conference was co-hosted by the Ethiopia-Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway Share Company and the China Rail Engineering Corporation (CREC) - China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) Joint Venture under the theme of "Ethio-Djibouti Railway - The way to Prosperity." "The Ethiopia-Djibouti railway is a flagship of mega projects of three brotherly countries: Ethiopia, Djibouti and China," the Ethiopian transport minister told the conference. "Together we accomplished a very significant task of construction of about 756-kms of rail line with major relevant infrastructure, rolling stocks and facilities with the system made open to operation since January 2018," said Moges. The Ethiopia-Djibouti electrified railway is the first trans-boundary railway on the African continent. Contracted by two Chinese companies, the first 320 km of the rail project from Sebeta to Mieso was carried out by CREC, while the remaining 436 km from Mieso to Djibouti port section was built by CCECC. The CREC-CCECC Joint Venture is a management contractor of Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, which presently provides both passenger and freight services between Ethiopia and Djibouti. Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia Tan Jian, who started his ambassadorial tenure in the east African country in December 2017, also stressed that the Ethiopia-Djibouti rail line is "a lifeline to landlocked Ethiopia." Tan Jian, on his part, also said the fully-electrified railway is serving as a major economic lifeline for landlocked Ethiopia since it's commissioning nearly three years ago. "There are 13 countries in the world with a population size larger than 100 million. You might have noticed that Ethiopia is the only one with no coastline and sea port. This is the major bottleneck for Ethiopian development, and 95 percent of its trade goes through Djibouti," the Chinese ambassador affirmed. "This is why this rail, will help turn the landlocked into land-linked. It's not just a rail, but a lifeline also, an artery also," Tan added. The Chinese ambassador also said in addition to serving the foreign trade needs of Ethiopia, the 756-kms Ethiopia-Djibouti electrified railway has also incentivized the construction of industrial parks along the route. "Ethiopia has been striving to become the manufacturing hub of Africa. It has built 15 industrial parks, out of which nine are located along the rail. This is called industrialization," Tan said. The railway has cut the transportation time for freight goods from up to seven days to less than 20 hours and reduced the cost by at least one third. Ethiopia, taking advantage of the railway's efficient and speedy service, has built or is building nearly a dozen industrial parks along the rail line to facilitate speedy transportation of industrial exports. Enditem Hatch, Kenneth Oppel, HarperCollins Toronto author Oppels been grabbing imaginations for years most recently with his Bloom trilogy, an alien-invasion thriller aimed at the 10-14 age group. In Hatch, the second book in the trilogy, eggs begin hatching into bird-sized mosquitoes. This book genre surfs: part sci-fi, part thriller, part adventure, part horror. Can kids Anaya, Petra and Seth save the day? I wouldnt doubt it for a second. Reaching Mithymmna, Steven Heighton, Biblioasis We watched the Syrian refugee crisis play out on the pages of newspapers and on TV screens; Kingston writer Steven Heighton decided to see the crisis firsthand, travelling to Greece to volunteer, ending up on Lesbos at an ad hoc transit camp. Heighton is a powerful writer in both poetry and prose (hes won the Governor General award for poetry), so this promises to be an insightful and compelling read. Hes also written a childrens book about the same experience, The Stray and the Strangers from Groundwood Books. The Baddest Bitch In The Room, Sophia Chang, Catapult Chang grew up in suburban white Vancouver, but went on to manage some of the biggest hip-hop artists in the music industry. She moved to New York in 1988, worked with Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as other rap icons, and produced shows for Vivienne Tam and Project Runway All Stars. Her memoir has made most anticipated lists across North America, and why not shes got a lot of stories to tell. Agent Sonya, Ben MacIntyre, Signal There is still something romantic about women spies in the Second World War the clash of danger in a patriarchal society probably having something to do with it. Agent Sonya: Moscows Most Daring Wartime Spy follows the true story of Ursula Burton, a woman living in Englands Cotswolds region with her husband and kids. Her code name, though, was Sonya, and she gathered secrets that let the Soviet Union build the bomb. MacIntyres an old hand at telling compelling, fascinating spy stories. The telecom ministry has proposed network security audits by external agencies for all telecom operators, and informed the Rajya Sabha about the state of telecom network infrastructure deployment in India. According to the ministrys information, BSNL, the state-backed telecom operator, has significant network equipment that is sourced from Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE, while fellow state-backed operator MTNL also has Chinese involvement in its network equipment. Specifically, the telecom ministry has revealed that 44.4 percent of BSNLs mobile network infrastructure is based on ZTE equipment, while 9 percent is sourced from Huawei. For MTNL, 10 percent of its equipment is based on Chinese equipment. Based on this report, the telecom ministry has informed Rajya Sabha that it has proposed network audits for all telecom companies, and said that under unified licensing norms in the Indian telecom sector, each telecom licensee is expected to undertake audit of their networks. However, this will not be an internal audit. As per recommendations of the Department of Telecommunications, it is slated to be a special security audit of all telecom networks by external audit agencies. The key objective is to identify Chinese equipment players in the Indian telecom space. The move comes in light of increasing security concerns arising out of Chinas cyber espionage activities on India. After USA raised security concerns linked to major Chinese network infrastructure players such as Huawei and ZTE, India has made moves on similar lines. Over the past two and a half months, India has banned over 200 mobile apps that have data and connectivity servers based in China, on basis of reports about data harvesting by China. Following this, reports about private Chinese companies offering surveillance of foreign nations to the Chinese government came to light. Earlier this week, officials with knowledge of the matter stated that the Indian government is looking to revise the lowest bidder layout of tenders issued by technology companies giving preference to Indian players and reducing the influence of Chinese companies in official projects undertaken by the Indian government. The move is believed to impact Indias rollout of 5G services, since a sizeable portion of Indias telecom infrastructure is sourced from Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE. By Zhang Jing The US military recently announced to reduce its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to about 3,000 and 4,500 by the end of September and November respectively. European and American mainstream media related the troop withdrawal with the upcoming US presidential election, saying that the move was mainly to help Trumps reelection. Winning reelection and staying in office is the top priority of the incumbent US President Donald Trump and his team. But no matter who comes in power after the election - the Republic or the Democrats, American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, strategic military deployments in the Middle East and Central Asia and Americas global geo-strategy is the reality it has to face. By withdrawing only part of the troops and leaving a trail behind in case of any future changes, American decision makers are making long plans for their political purposes and strategic intentions. Right from the beginning till the present, the Afghan War and Iraqi War have witnessed the entire financial crisis, the alternate rule of the Democratic and Republic parties, the change of anti-terror policies, the Arab Spring movement, the emergence of the extremist group Islamic State, refugee crises, and many other bumpy occurrences. The wars have had a persistent and potent sway over political headwinds in the US, and Trump is well-aware of the gains and losses. The US has experienced a boom-to-bust cycle in both wars that have triggered large-scale turmoil in the regions. In Afghanistan, the US-backed regime has failed to secure a firm footing over the years and Taliban still hasnt been exterminated. In Iraq, the US-led democratic reform hasnt proceeded well either after the original regime collapsed. The two extremely costly wars have increased the financial burden on Washington and left a deep wound that has kept sucking up Americas national strength. When Obama took office, he decided to pull troops from Iraq and send more to Afghanistan for geo-strategic considerations. At the end of 2011, he officially rolled out the Asia-Pacific Rebalance Strategy to pay more attention to traditional major powers. However, as the Middle East situation worsened, the US-backed regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan had a crisis, extremist organization IS began to rise and Russia also stepped in aggressively, the Obama administration had to send troops to Iraq again while paying more attention to Afghanistan as well. This reflected a notable strategic hesitation among American decision makers then. Trump didnt start the two wars, but he had to face the consequences and chaos caused by them. His team from the very beginning has been confronted with the fact that domestic problems have come to the fore after long years of wars, which set the framework of their thinking and actions. During US global strategic contraction and the adjustment of troops, Trump, for Americas national interests and considering its important allies, has paid some attention to the Iraqi and Afghan battlefields in the Middle East and Central Asia. Iraq is of great importance for Arabian countries, the Islamic world, Europe, especially Washingtons strategic ally Israel. In the eyes of countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iraq is an important forefront against Irans expansion. These countries are worried that Tehran will have more influence over Iraq after American troops are pulled out and Iran, Iraq and Syria will have closer cooperation, which will affect the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Afghanistan is important because around it is China in the east, the five Central Asian countries in the north, Iran in the west and Pakistan in the south, all of which are on Americas watch list. There is no way that the US decision makers would easily pull troops out of these two strategic pivots. The move to withdraw part of the troops from there actually serves multiple purposes at the same time. It appeases the public anti-war sentiments at home and mitigates the conflicts with Pentagon, thus securing more votes from the service members and their families. It honors Trumps commitment to cutting overseas troops while maintaining Americas military presence in the Middle East and Central Asia. It soothes the allies security concerns but retains the possibility of going back when necessary. The high-profile announcement of withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan fully displayed Trumps balancing of interests and the strategic considerations for Washingtons global military deployments. Whats certain is that this decision by the US side will definitely trigger concerns among Americas Middle East allies and bring new changes to anti-terror situation, security and stability in the region. (The author is with the College of National Security, National Defence University of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.) The change could see those guilty of conspiracy to murder jailed for life (PA) Criminals who conspire to murder will face the maximum sentence of life in prison under new legislation brought forward by the Government. The most severe punishment for the crime has been 10 years since 1861, but that sentencing restriction has been described as lenient by victims. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said she wants to send a clear message to gangland criminals who conspire to murder that they are not exempt from the maximum penalty. Expand Close Minister for Justice Helen McEntee outlined the planned changes (PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Minister for Justice Helen McEntee outlined the planned changes (PA) She told RTE Morning Ireland: If you look at the sentence for attempted murder or murder, they are life in prison and what I believe, and I think that the gardai and also the judiciary has outlined, is that while conspiracy to murder the act doesnt happen, because the gardai intercepted, the crime in itself is no less severe. I want to send a very clear message to those, in particular those at the top, who conspire and who essentially put the wheels in motion for an attempted murder, that they are not exempt from this kind of penalty and that it is the most severe as prime and it should be treated in the same way. Ms McEntee said she hopes to have the new legislation written and brought to the Oireachtas early next year. She added: The point here is that we have seen, more so in recent years and the gardai themselves have said in recent years, they (gardai) have foiled at least 75 different attempts where the outcome, they believed, would have been death. Maximum sentence for conspiracy to murder to increase to life imprisonment under plans from Minister for Justice @HMcEntee. More information is available here https://t.co/nYhtYYHhpq Department of Justice (@DeptJusticeIRL) September 17, 2020 They want to ensure that if somebody is charged with conspiracy to murder, which is an offence that is now increasing, that there is a parallel and that there is a severe penalty at the end of it, and unfortunately at the moment 10 years is the max that any judge can impose. Ms McEntee said she has also received Cabinet backing to begin drafting legislation of three new terrorist offences. The Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Bill 2020 includes offences for receiving training for terrorism, travelling for the purpose of terrorism and organising or facilitating travelling for the purpose of terrorism. Narayanan awarded grant to study cause of aggressive prostate cancer Memphis, Tenn. (September 16, 2020) - Ramesh Narayanan, PhD, professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has received a $455,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute for a two-year study of the underlying cause of the development of aggressive prostate cancer in African American men. Approximately 174,000 men in the United States were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 31,000 died of the disease in 2019. The number of men with prostate cancer is expected to increase from 3.3 million men currently to 4.5 million by 2026. Current therapeutic strategies target androgen (hormone) activity for aggressive, or advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer. Although these drugs on average extend progression-free survival, approximately 30 percent of tumors do not respond to these therapies, and patients who initially respond to these therapies develop resistance shortly after treatment initiation. One of the primary reasons for treatment failure and relapse is the expression of a shortened form of the receptor protein for androgens (AR). These different versions are called AR splice variants (AR-SVs). Prostate cancers that express this shortened form are aggressive and fail to respond to current treatments. Compared to Caucasian men, African American men have a 63 percent higher overall prostate cancer incidence. These individuals are more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive and potentially lethal cancers, are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer, and have shorter disease-free survival. Inadequate health care that limits early cancer detection or results in incomplete treatment could factor into the diagnosis of advanced cancer and a worse prognosis in African American men compared to Caucasian men. However, a prior analysis of men undergoing prostate biopsy that adjusted for clinical and demographic differences found that African American men were 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 84 percent more likely to have high-grade cancer than Caucasian men. Considering that approximately 65 percent of the population in the Memphis area is African American, it is appropriate and locally relevant to evaluate the underlying mechanisms for the aggressive prostate cancer development in African American men. This grant will ask the question whether prostate cancers in African American men have higher expression of the shortened form of the AR (AR-SVs) and whether these AR-SVs are the primary mediator of the aggressive cancer. If the data proves the hypothesis that the higher expression of AR-SVs in prostate cancer of African American results in aggressive disease, Dr. Narayanan's laboratory has developed novel drugs that have the potential to target the AR-SVs and inhibit the aggressive prostate cancer. The multi-disciplinary UTHSC team that will work on this project includes Jay Fowke, PhD, MPH, MS, chief of Division of Epidemiology and professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine; Mahul Amin, MD, chair of the Department of Pathology; Robert Wake, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Urology; and Maurizio Buscarini, MD, PhD, MBA, professor of the Department of Urology. "I have been working for the last seven years at UTHSC to discover next-generation drugs to treat advanced aggressive prostate cancer," Dr Narayanan said. "This work in collaboration with Dr. Duane Miller (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UTHSC) has resulted in novel molecules that are advancing toward clinical trials. If our results show that African American men express the shortened AR protein AR-SV at higher levels, our drugs will provide hope to these patients, who currently do not have alternate treatment options. It will be gratifying to see our research benefit the Memphis community and the prostate cancer patient population across the world." ### As Tennessee's only public, statewide, academic health system, the mission of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is to bring the benefits of the health sciences to the achievement and maintenance of human health through education, research, clinical care, and public service, with a focus on the citizens of Tennessee and the region. The main campus in Memphis includes six colleges: Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy. UTHSC also educates and trains medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and health professions students, as well as medical residents and fellows, at major sites in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville. For more information, visit http://www. uthsc. edu . Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/uthsc, Twitter: twitter.com/uthsc, LinkedIn: linkedin.com/uthsc, and Instagram: instagram.com/uthsc. This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Scientists discovered an antibody that could help treat coronavirus disease. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine claimed that they managed to isolate "the smallest biological molecule" that specifically and completely neutralizes the virus that causes COVID-19. According to Metro, the team made a drug with an antibody component called "Ab8," which is 10 times smaller than a regular antibody. The trials for medicine had shown to treat and prevent COVID-19 in infected hamsters and mice successfully. The mice were found to be 10 times less infectious than rodents that had not been treated with the Ab8. The drug was evaluated in conjunction with scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, University of British Columbia, and University of Saskatchewan. Scientists have all noted how the Ab8 appeared to stop the virus from entering cells. It was also found that the Ab8 does not bind to human cells, which means that the drug will not have any negative side-effects in people, as per the the Daily Mail report. Researchers said it is an encouraging sign that it does not cause any adverse side-effects in people. They said this would make the drug an excellent preventative treatment against COVID-19. "Ab8 not only has potential as a therapy for coronavirus, but it also could be used to prevent people from contracting SARS-CoV-2 infections," said professor John Mellors, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Pitt and UPMC." Antibodies of larger size have worked against other infectious diseases. They have been well-tolerated; the drug gives us hope that it could be an effective treatment for patients with coronavirus disease and protect those who have never been infected and are not immune," he added. The next step is finding people who will try the drug through inhalation or by injection. Researchers now need to find volunteers who will take the medicine. Scientists noted that Ab8's tiny size not only increases its potential for diffusion in tissues to neutralize the virus better but also makes it possible to be given as an inhaled drug, unlike most monoclonal antibodies currently in development that is provided intravenously through an IV drip. Researchers are now "thinking outside the box" when it comes to how Ab8 could be administered. Abound Bio, a newly formed UPMC-backed company, has licensed Ab8 for worldwide development. Galveston National Laboratory and University of Texas Medical Branch Center for Biodefense and Emerging Diseases also tested the drug and concluded that it blocks the coronavirus from entering cells. Meanwhille, co-lead authors of this research are Alexandra Schafer, Ph.D., and David R. Martinez, Ph.D., both of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Xianglei Liu, M.D., Ph.D., of Pitt; and Swarali S. Kulkarni, M.Sc., of the University of Saskatchewan. Other authors are Zehua Sun, Ph.D., Chuan Chen, Ph.D., Liyoung Zhang, Ph.D., all of Pitt; Aleksandra Drelich, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch; Eric Peterson, M.S., and Marcin L. Ura, Ph.D., both of Abound Bio; Sarah R. Leist, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Sagar Chittori, Ph.D., Karoline Leopold, Ph.D., Alison Berezuk, Ph.D., Dhiraj Mannar, B.Sc., Xing Zhu, Ph.D., Shanti S. Srivastava, Ph.D., and all of the University of British Columbia. Check these out: Post COVID-19 Syndrome: A New Mysterious Disease That May Affect Children Even Worse Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to COVID-19 Risk, New Study Finds Virgin Coconut Oil: Cold-Pressed vs Cold-Processed U S House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for an investigation into claims that detainees at a immigration detention facility were given improper hysterectomies and other gynaecological procedures. The allegations were made by Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), in a complaint filed to the watchdog, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General, on Monday. The claim was filed by advocacy groups Project South and the Government Accountability Project. The allegations caused an outcry among Democratic lawmakers, including Ms Pelosi. If true, the appalling conditions described in the whistleblower complaint including allegations of mass hysterectomies being performed on vulnerable immigrant women are a staggering abuse of human rights, Ms Pelosi said in a statement. Border Patrol facility in Texas 1 /14 Border Patrol facility in Texas People sit in a cage at a facility after they tried to enter the US illegally AP A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border on June 12 Getty Images People taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the US sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas AP A Honduran mother holds her two-year-old as US Border Patrol as agents review their papers Getty Images A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border on June 12 Getty Images A two-year-old Honduran stands with her mother after being detained. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande Getty Images A Honduran mother holds her two-year-old daughter in McAllen, Texas Getty Images People taken into custody sit in a cage at a facility in McAllen, Texas AP A US Border Patrol agent watches those taken into custody AP Those taken into custody stand in line at the facility. The 'zero-tolerance' policy was introduced on June 12 AP Protesters stand outside of the Rio Grande Valley Sector's Centralised Processing Centre AP The DHS [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general must immediately investigate the allegations detailed in this complaint. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied the allegations. Dr. Ada Rivera, the medical director of the ICE Health Service Corps, said that, since 2018, only two individuals at the Irwin centre in Georgia were referred for hysterectomies based on recommendations by specialists that "were reviewed by the facility clinical authority and approved." LaSalle Corrections, the private contractor that runs the facility, said in a statement that it "strongly refutes these allegations and any implications of misconduct" at the Irwin centre. Ms Pelosi said the allegations, if true, were a 'staggering' abuse of human rights / AP Ms Wooten said that women who complained of heavy periods or asked for birth control would be sent to outside gynaecologists and sometimes receive hysterectomies but that many did not fully understand what medical procedures were being ordered. "A lot of them said that they didn't understand what was being done to them. Nobody explained it to them," she said. Lawyers representing detainees at Irwin said several women had complained about gynaecological treatment by an outside provider to the facility. Sarah Owings, a Georgia-based immigration attorney, told Reuters she and other lawyers were collecting information about hysterectomies performed on detainees. She had no evidence to suggest these surgeries were widespread, she said. "I do think there's a situation in which healthcare is not up to par in these places and that there is absolutely room to have lack of oversight," she said. Elizabeth Matherne, another immigration attorney in Georgia, recalled complaining to detention centre officials about treatment her clients said they were receiving from an outside gynaecologist. ICE said in its statement "a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed against a detainee's will." With additional reporting by Reuters. PALO ALTO, California, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ThroughPut Inc., the Industrial AI Supply Chain pioneer, today announced the appointment of Luke Helms to its Advisory Board. Mr. Helms is the former Vice-Chairman at Bank of America, Vice-Chairman of KeyBank, Chairman and CEO of Seafirst Bank, and a Board Member of LifeLock, ABM Industries, and Manulife. Mr. Helms brings with him five decades of deep domain expertise in the Banking, Insurance, Industrial Finance and Facilities Management sectors. He has also served as an Investor and Chairperson of several fast-scaling entrepreneurial private powerhouses, such as LifeLock, a pioneer in identity theft protection, with venture capital funding from Bessemer Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Symantec Corporation and River Street Management, before its IPO on the NYSE in 2012 and acquisition by Norton and Broadcom in 2017. Throughout his illustrious business career, Mr. Helms has also served on educational, nonprofit and philanthropic Boards, including the University of San Francisco, the Washington State University Foundation, the University of Washington Foundation, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Children's Hospital, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the University of Arizona School of Business. As ThroughPut continues to grow its strength with seasoned executive leadership, a stellar team of proven entrepreneurs, an Advisory Board of global domain experts, and a premier cap-table of global angel investors and family offices, new investors and venture capitalists have also discovered its massive market potential and product lead. ThroughPut's team is backed by some of the best domain experts from Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Artificial Intelligence and Finance, who have put that knowledge to work in over a dozen successful startups. Mr. Helms joining the Advisory Board further reinforces ThroughPut's mission to create the leading AI software platform connecting disparate data sets for Supply Chain, Operational and Financial Excellence. "So much of what we do at ThroughPut ultimately helps businesses improve their Free Cash Flow, EBITDA and Earnings Per Share Performance," said Ali Raza, founding CEO of ThroughPut. "Where contemporary data systems fail to predict, we have always advocated for strong risk management, insurance fundamentals and a holistic view of operations across the end-to-end supply chain using all data sources. Perhaps no one in our network understands this approach better than Mr. Helms, with decades of leadership at some of the world's most reputable financial institutions helping other organizations to financially succeed. This is an area we have much to learn from Mr. Helms, and it is an honor to have him on the Advisory Board to help guide ThroughPut on maximizing its positive impact on the finances and operations of global industrial organizations." "I am excited to join the ThroughPut team as a Senior Advisor," added Mr. Helms. "What appeals most to me is their approach of tying operational frontline data to financial bottom line impact, and thus ultimately profitability and a company's Earnings Per Share. This is the holy grail of the finance world where quality-of-earnings meets quality-of-operations. I am impressed by how ThroughPut's AI can analyze all the existing disparate data systems of any company to accelerate both cash flow improvements and profitability. The ability to have a dynamic dashboard at the C-Suite level to view supply chain performance and P&L performance in the same software provides a multi-dimensional view to operations management that is unprecedented and an aggregated single source of truth. The fact the operations management recommendations are built on leading operational excellence philosophies also brings digitized standardization to management at a facility level. I am eager to further contribute and remain actively involved where Industrial AI intersects with pioneering FinTech." Seth Page, the COO and Head of Corporate Development & Partnerships at ThroughPut Inc., continued, "With the recent wave of accelerated enterprise transformation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, Silicon Valley VCs have finally tuned-in to the fact that the largest operational gains actually lie across the end-to-end Supply Chain. Hence they are now looking towards B2B start-ups with unique domain expertise and proven Industrial AI solutions, versus the high-profile, growth-at-all-costs, negative-return B2C deals of yesteryear. Luke's addition to ThroughPut's distinguished Advisory Board is testimony to the fact that the greatest financial gains of AI on global industry output come from the Manufacturing, Logistics, and Wholesale sectors, where they contribute more than half of the $56 Trillion in output gains from AI by 2035. We look forward to a successful collaboration with Luke and the ThroughPut team in scaling the company to another startup juggernaut, providing a positive measurable impact on organizations worldwide, while delivering far superior investor returns long-term." About ThroughPut Inc. : ThroughPut Inc. is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Operations pioneer that enables companies to leverage their existing data systems to increase output, quality, and profitability across their end-to-end Supply Chains. ThroughPut's Operations AI Product, ELI, includes the only Bottleneck Management System (BMS) that utilizes existing enterprise data systems, such as ERP, MES, IMS, TMS, WMS, PLC, EAM, POS, CRM, SCADA, Historian, and other data systems, to solve for the $25 Trillion of annual Waste across global supply chains already today. Such constraints to the $90 Trillion global GDP could otherwise be dedicated to more productive and useful purposes to the benefit of all stakeholders. ThroughPut.AI's software is designed by Fortune 500 Supply Chain & Logistics leaders, Silicon Valley analytics and AI experts, and top global Operations & Experts in the areas of Lean Manufacturing, the Theory of Constraints, Supply Chain Automation, Total Quality Management, and over 4 dozen leading best practices now digitized in the ELI product, with hundreds of years of combined experience in the space. ELI thinks like an operations manager and automatically provides domain expertise, executable insights, quantitative cost-benefit analysis, and recommendations in real-time, which current static Business Intelligence and Analytics tools do not effectively capture nor act upon. ThroughPut.AI's dynamic insights include real-time resource allocation recommendations, granular root cause identification, and operational process stability analysis. ELI enables Process Improvement Experts and Operations Managers to reduce cycle times and operational unpredictability across some of the most advanced process industries, including manufacturing, logistics, automotive & transportation, aerospace & aviation, chemical processing, energy & utilities, oil & gas, and others. More information about ThroughPut.AI is available at: www.throughput.ai Contact: Tina Jacobs Tina.jacobs@throughput.ai Marketing Manager In their efforts to boost passenger confidence, airlines are introducing schemes to attract a higher footfall. IndiGo recently announced two free round-trip tickets to every millionth passenger. The countrys largest airline is the only one to come up with such a scheme. The airline said that it is flying one million passengers every fortnight across over 50 destinations. It also claimed that it receives 70,000 passenger bookings across 500 locations daily. William Boulter, chief commercial officer, IndiGo, said, We are consistently working towards strengthening consumer confidence in air travel and, as a fruit of our labour, close to 3 million passengers have already chosen IndiGo for their journey post the lockdown. Also Read: Airlines in India seek $1.5 billion in interest-free credit line Former defence pilot and aviation expert Vipul Saxena said, This scheme will only be able attract passengers up to a certain extent. Passenger load will actually increase only once airfares come down. This is not the first time that an airline has come up with a scheme to attract passengers. GoAir, IndiGo and Vistara, in July, had allowed passengers to book seats adjacent to theirs at a discounted price so as to feel safe, which came after aviation consultancies pointed out the need to build confidence among passengers to opt for air travel. GoAir has also tied up with an application (available on mobile phones) to connect passengers to doctors who could guide them about travel during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and on health precautions to be taken during their travel. In August, SpiceJet announced a five-day sale on its one-way ticket and offered tickets at Rs 899. The airline, however, was asked to stop the sale by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). According to sources, airlines have been struggling to fly more than 60% of their total seat capacity after domestic flight operations resumed on May 25. Also Read: Parliament monsoon session: Aircraft (Amendment) Bill passed by Rajya Sabha According to a survey in June by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association of the worlds airlines, there is a major problem in gaining passenger confidence now. Findings of the survey revealed that 60% of respondents in March had said that they would return to air travel in a couple of months. Focusing on the need to regain passengers confidence, IATA said that more than 50% of air travellers said that they would resume air travel only after at least six months. Whereas, 95% of the respondents said that they would return to air travel in a year. Industry experts unanimously said that beside a fear of the pandemic, mandatory quarantine is another factor that is keeping travellers away. Industry expert Mohan Ranganathans opinion, however, differed. He said, When airlines are struggling to fly more than half of their total seat occupancy, how does an airline think that passengers will be ready to travel only for a couple of free tickets? Also, it is only applicable to every millionth passenger, which clearly means that its going to be like a lottery system. No educated person will fall for such a scheme. A former DGCA official said, Airlines need to increase their efforts for providing smooth and safe travel rather than coming up with such schemes. Not more than a handful of people will opt to fly for free tickets during this phase. During the early 1950s War on Korea the U.S. used biological weapons against North Korea and China. Bombs designed to spread leaflets were filled with plague infested rats and dropped on Korean towns. Various infecting insects were released. Leaflets were contaminated with small pox and then distributed. Several local epidemics were caused by these attacks. The program was a continuation of one which a special unit of the Imperial Japanese Army had developed during the second world war. Unit 731 and its leaders were not indicted for the war crimes they had committed during the war but integrated into the U.S. biological warfare program. The Soviet Union and China made political noise about the use of biological weapons but the U.S. stoically denied that it ever used such weapons. U.S. pilots, shot down and imprisoned by the North Korean forces, admitted that they had dropped such bombs. The U.S. then falsely alleged that the pilots had been tortured and must have lied. This led to demands to train all pilots to resist torture measures: Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses interrogations were staged to provide realistic training. After the Korea War anti-torture training was added. Torture of "prisoners" was "simulated" with the trainees. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists from the SERE training staff as "behavioral science consultants" to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE "experts" devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places. Now back to the War on Korea. The Chinese and Soviets sponsored the International Scientific Commission (ISC) headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham, to investigate the use of biological weapons during the war. Three years ago we wrote about its report: For a long time the commissions report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here: Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign. Needhams investigations have since been confirmed by other scholars investigating the general case. Now Jeffrey Kaye has dug up additional documents which confirm the other reports of U.S. germ attacks on North Korea and China. Interestingly these documents are from the CIA. Restaurants, retail stores and gyms in most of Texas can expand their reopening to 75 percent capacity on Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday. Bars will remain closed statewide because they are "nationally recognized as COVID-spreading locations," Abbott said. In regions with COVID-19 patients representing less than 15 percent of all hospitalizations for seven consecutive days, elective surgeries can resume immediately. Nursing homes can allow visitors on Sept. 24. Along with restaurants and retailers, offices, libraries, and museums can also expand from 50 to 75 percent capacity in those regions Monday. Eric Gay /Associated Press The reopenings apply to every region except Victoria, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, where the spread of the virus is too extensive to allow expanded reopenings. "There are some Texans who want to fully open Texas 100 percent as though COVID is no longer a threat. The fact is COVID does still exist and most Texans remain susceptible," Abbott said. "If we fully reopen Texas without limits, without safe practices, it could lead to an unsustainable increase in COVID that would require the possibility of being forced to rachet back down." The governor spoke at a news conference in Austin alongside Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dennis Bonnen. READ ALSO: Mayor Ron Nirenberg calls for release of body camera video from police shooting On Tuesday, Patrick told ABC13 the governor could expand the reopening process this week, pointing to the current 50 percent capacity limit on restaurants. "If the governor announces this week they're going to 75 percent, I'm in total support," Patrick said. "I think there's no reason they can't be." The seven-day average positivity rate in Texas, based on the date of specimen collection, was 6.98 percent on Tuesday. The state has reported a total of 706,034 COVID-19 cases and 14,803 deaths. Watch Abbott's news conference above. Niagara Health, in partnership with Infrastructure Ontario, will host an online session next month to update residents and businesses about the status of the new south Niagara hospital in Niagara Falls. The Zoom webinar is scheduled for Oct. 1 between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Cliff Harvey, chief planning officer for Niagara Health, said participants will learn more about a request for qualifications expected to go out next spring, followed by a request for proposals next September. Another topic will be public-private partnership models and benefits. Construction of the hospital, at Montrose and Biggar roads, could begin in late 2022, with possible completion in 2026. Harvey said the hospital will be about 108,000 square metres, which would be larger than St. Catharines hospital and about the same size as recently built hospitals. He wouldnt release the project cost, adding it will be part of the RFP process and citing confidentiality. Infrastructure Ontario will release their market update (and provide) a range they usually use numbers over $1 billion, under $1 billion, over $500 million. Harvey said the Niagara Falls hospital will feature several centres of excellence, including a regional stroke program, complex care, focusing on seniors health with wellness and aging, as well as specialization in geriatrics and psychogeriatrics. He said the project team is now entering Stage 3 of planning, and while the COVID-19 pandemic didnt impact the future construction timeline, it did alter other processes. We retooled the process because our engagement with our community, with our staff and physicians and patients and families was going to start in June, but we now moved it to September, so were doing that right now, said Harvey. Were just starting and were doing it both online and in person (with physical-distancing measures in place). He said next months online information session is open to anyone who has an interest in the project. People can submit their questions through the question-and-answer form, so that it will allow us to receive the questions as they come online. We really encourage people to attend because I think there will be additional information about the project, as well as probably answering some of the more detailed questions. Harvey said interested participants can send questions in advance of the session, at southniagaraproject@niagarahealth.on.ca. People interested in participating in the session can register at https://bit.ly/33EvpyY. In addition to donating blood, Nebraskans have contributed over $150,000 to a GoFundMe that will help provide for Carrie and their four children while they continue to mourn their father and husband. Liberty First Credit Unions Lincoln branches have also rallied to assist the Herreras during this incredibly difficult time. And after his passing on September 7, Lincoln PD set up a memorial to Investigator Herrera at 575 S 10th St, where members of the community can go to pay their respects to this remarkable Nebraskan. Investigator Herrera had a servants heart not just in his professional life, but in his family and community life as well. His family and friends have said they will miss his smile, his light-hearted jokes, and his commitment to his faith and to his church. His funeral service was held on Saturday, September 12 at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln. I was honored to be in attendance and to pay tribute to Inspector Herreras legacy, along with more than 1,000 other Nebraskans whose lives he touched. Investigator Herreras family has asked that we remember him as a man of self-sacrifice, humility, and kindness. His beautiful service painted a portrait of a man who always put others before himself. Representative image The impact of COVID-19 continues to unfold across business segments. Like any other industry, the commercial office market space has also been affected. Despite the current crisis exposing the fragility and vulnerabilities of some businesses, many are stepping up their game, though the strategies differ, corporates and developers share a common goalthriving despite the pandemic. Corporates rethink office space needs In the initial days of the lockdown, corporates scrambled for ways to adapt to the new norms and maintain business continuity. Overnight, work-from-home became a widely accepted concept for companies to operate in the short to medium term given the situation. As companies gear up to adapt to the ongoing pandemic, office space design and layouts are being relooked to ensure social distancing. Hygiene and employee wellbeing are taking top priority for occupiers so much so that the pandemic could not only potentially influence future office designs, but also the allocation of collaborative and social spaces within the office as well as overall density of the office space post-COVID-19. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show We are also witnessing the re-emergence of flexible co-working spaces as companies try to reduce the cost pressure and avoid long-term commitment. As occupiers relook at their real estate strategy, some companies are exploring co-working spaces where they would not require heavy capital investment. Most occupiers are on a wait and watch mode and have refrained from taking up any long-term calls amid the ongoing pandemic. Plans to lease additional space have also been on hold for many companies as there are uncertainties over how long the pandemic will last or if there will be large scale impact of work from home or agile workspace in the coming months. Having said that, it is interesting to see few multinationals with long-term commitments to the Indian market signing up large scale office leases notwithstanding the current slowdown. Despite agile-working gaining more relevance under the current circumstances, such deals continue to reinforce the importance and need of office spaces for various reasons including collaboration purposes, brainstorming of ideas and bonding between colleagues. But most importantly such transactions indicate that the growth fundamentals of this country remain intact despite the temporary blip due to the pandemic. Hub-and-spoke model may gain ground New trends are foreseeable in the near future as companies brace up to adapt to the new normal and re-strategize their real estate needs. With the pandemic yet to see its end, it is important to watch out if occupiers are willing to hold on to their big campuses or opt for a hub and spoke model. In this model, a company could have a headquarter (HQ) or the main city office as its hub, like in a prime locality, say BKC in Mumbai, apart from setting up smaller offices or spokes spread across the city, say one each in Lower Parel, Andheri East, Goregaon or Malad, Powai, Thane and Navi Mumbai; and probably one in Nariman Point too! Of course, the number of spokes and the size of these offices would depend on the overall size of the company, employee strength and locations where employees reside. We expect adoption of this model to gain more ground in the medium to long term given the talent war amongst companies and growing emphasis for organizations to be employee friendly. Landlords and tenants opt for renewal of agreements From the developer or landlords perspective, the first initiative that they had to take was to immediately adopt strict hygiene protocols in office buildings. In a normal circumstance, any landlords top priority is to maintain a high occupancy rate of their office buildings. But in the current scenario, retaining tenants and occupiers has become the new priority. Even during the early days of the pandemic, office buildings were kept open while few others were operational for critical work. While many office occupiers requested for concessions and waivers, most developers and landlords have not heeded much to those requests. On the other hand, tenants whose lease agreements were expiring began to evaluate their portfolio to assess their need for space from a medium-term perspective. Those corporates who were planning to expand or move to a better or cheaper office premise pre-COVID-19 realized that relocating to a new place will require a large capital investment as well as a long-term commitment. Usually, the lock-in periods for such office deals range between 3 and 5 years and these agreements are signed from a long-term perspective. To avoid the above two large-scale and long-term financial outflows in these uncertain times, many tenants whose lock-in periods are ending, are renewing their agreements to maintain the status-quo. However, there are others who also opted to give up part of their office spaces to save real estate costs. New emerging growth drivers The overall vacancy rates of Mumbai have marginally increased from 13 percent recorded at the end of 2019. While we may continue to see a slight increase in the vacancy rate in the next couple of quarters, we do not anticipate this to last in the long run since new businesses and business models will emerge in the post-pandemic era. Some obvious sectors such as pharma and life-sciences will surely get a booster while there will be other sectors that will boom. These could potentially be health and wellness, e-learning and ed-tech sector, industrial and logistics sectors, digital collaboration, cybersecurity, gaming, remote medical services, e-retail with delivery integration among others. Over the medium-term, these sectors might make up for some of the existing office occupiers that are giving up space at the moment. Economist Mike Schussler has published a graph of South Africas gross domestic product (GDP) per capita which paints a pitiful picture of the countrys financial situation. In 1990, South Africas GDP per capita was 107% that of the world average. Fast-forward thirty years and this figure has dropped to 74%. In simple terms, it means that South Africans are getting poorer when compared to their global counterparts. To turn the situation around will require drastic action from the government, Schussler said. To get back to the world average South Africa would have to improve its GDP with 35.1%. To do so over a decade the country would have to grow its economy by 55.5% taking population growth into account, he said. This level of growth was last seen in 1974, which means it is unlikely to happen. Schussler said unless the government stops fighting with business and cuts public spending, we may not get back to the 1990 level in our lifetime. If South Africa does not fix things like electricity, water, roads, and railways, the downward trend will continue, he said. The chart below shows South Africas gross domestic product (GDP) per capita compared to the world average. Big GDP decline because of COVID-19 lockdown Schusslers data only tracks GDP per capita until 2019, and South Africas relative position is likely to deteriorate further because of the big economic decline this year. South Africas gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 51% in the second quarter of the year, reflecting the immense damage done to the economy by the COVID-19 lockdown. This pushes South Africa deeper into recession after GDP growth for 1Q20 was recorded at -2%, following drops of 0.6% in 3Q19, and 1.4% in 4Q19. It was the fourth consecutive decline in quarterly GDP since the second quarter of 2019, Stats SA said. Finance minister Tito Mboweni said South Africas second-quarter contraction in GDP was larger than expected by both the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank. This, he said, raised the risk that the GDP outcome for 2020 could be worse than previously thought. Mboweni said the coronavirus pandemic has left government finances dangerously overstretched while heightened debt threatens the countrys future economic prospects. The minister said the economy is likely to contract by more than the 7% previously forecast by the Treasury. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, expects South Africas economy to shrink 11.5% in 2020. Tax revenue is also expected to fall by a greater proportion than the contraction in GDP although this is by design. Businesses pay tax only on profits, and as wages fall, effective tax rates on income reduce. The tax system is inherently countercyclical, he said. The expected tax shortfall of more than R300 billion, around 6.2% of GDP, means the country will have to borrow more money. Failure to contain our ballooning debt and debt service costs, and narrow the budget deficit, will damage the long-term economic prospects, he said. Surat: To mark the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 70th birthday on Thursday, Breadliner, a bakery in Gujarat's Surat made a 71-feet-long cake weighing 771 kilograms, with the theme of 'corona warriors' and is set to distribute it amongst children. As part of the celebration, the bakery will also host a digital event wherein parts of the cake will be sold at several outlets of bakery and the cake cutting ceremony will be held digitally. For the past three years, Narendra Modi's birthday was celebrated by the Breadliner bakery along with a social awareness program, said Nitin Patel, the organiser of the event. This year, the cake has been labelled 'Cake for corona warriors' in view of the coronavirus pandemic. "The cake cutting ceremony on PM's birthday was held while maintaining social distancing and all necessary precautions. At the event, seven corona warriors were also present. The cake has images of corona warriors, be it media, police, plasma donors and doctors. To ensure social distancing, we will be organising a digital event as well," said Patel. "First, we will distribute this cake among children after which the remaining cake will be divided into units of 500 grams each and be made available at all bakery outlets from Vapi to Vadodara so that people cut it from home while being connected to us digitally," he added. At the event, seven corona warriors including doctors and policemen were present who cut the cake to celebrate PM Modi's birthday. "Digital Namo cake weighing 711 kilograms was cut by corona warriors to send the message that we will win from corona and we will pass all challenges that come our way," said Ashmita Shiroya, ex-Mayor of Surat. Those present at the occasion had maintained social distancing and other necessary health protocols amid COVID-19. 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. More than 150 leaders of New York Citys corporate and financial elite sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio last Thursday insisting on ruthless measures to defend the interests of big business, amidst Depression-like conditions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter, issued by the Partnership for New York, was signed by a whos who of the ruling elite, including, among others, the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, the CEOs of Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, the managing partners of some of the citys biggest law firms, and the bosses of real estate giants like Tishman Speyer. Media reports suggested the letter to de Blasio reflects ongoing tensions between big business and the mayor. This is vastly exaggerated. When it comes to fundamental policies and actions, there is virtually no difference. De Blasio first won office more than six years ago claiming that he would vanquish inequality. Far from fighting inequality, he has presided (as the WSWS explained in advance) over ever-widening gaps between the rich and poor, symbolized by such projects as Hudson Yards, on Manhattans Far West Side, alongside new records for homelessness that have been set every month. The economic collapse in the course of the pandemic has the corporate and financial establishment worried, however. They are demanding an intensified back-to-work drive, and are concerned about whether the progressive mayor, whose second term in office concludes next year and who is limited to two terms by law, will be able to keep the lid on growing social discontent. The business executives letter devotes about six words to unemployment and homelessness. Then it moves on to its main concern: There is widespread anxiety over public safety, cleanliness and other quality of life issues that are contributing to deteriorating conditions. We need to send a strong, consistent message that our employees, customers, clients and visitors will be coming back to a safe and healthy work environment. People will be slow to return unless their concerns about security and the livability of our communities are addressed quickly and with respect and fairness for our citys diverse populations. Kathryn Wylde, the president of the group, who is regularly quoted in the big business media, told the New York Times, Until the people come back, the streets arent safe. If the streets arent safe, the people dont come back. The talk of safe streets is a million miles away from the concerns of the millions of workers who cannot pay their rent and are having difficulty buying food and meeting other expenses. The massive business district in midtown Manhattan is largely empty, with only about 10 percent of office workers returning to their offices. In fact, despite spikes in shootings in some areas, crime remains at its lowest level in decades. It is not public safety that concerns most workers, but safety from the continuing threat of COVID-19, as well as the need for measures to alleviate poverty. Despite the relatively low current level of coronavirus infections, there are still about 500 positive test results reported daily in New York. Workers are not only concerned about conditions in their work locations, but also about commuting daily on crowded trains and buses. The widespread anxiety of the ruling elite is totally different from the anxiety besetting the working class. Just days ago, National Public Radio reported on a survey it had conducted along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, on the social and financial impact of the pandemic in the four largest cities of the USNew York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Forty-six percent of households in these urban centers report serious financial pain in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis. This figure rises to 54 percent of households with annual incomes of less than $100,000, and the numbers are higher among immigrants, Hispanic families and African Americans. The survey was taken during the period when $600 in additional weekly jobless benefits were still being received, so today it is even worse. New York City faces a budget deficit of at least $9 billion, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking at a $16 billion shortfall, the consequence of the fact that ridership on the buses and subways remains only about 25 percent of its pre-pandemic level. In the face of these huge gaps, the de Blasio administration is asking for permission from the State Financial Control Board, the agency set up during New Yorks near-bankruptcy in 1975, to obtain long-term borrowing to plug the current deficit. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has not been receptive to the request, and the Partnership for New York has made its opposition to further borrowing clear. They think the problem is money, said Ms. Wylde, referring to de Blasio and his advisers. The problem is not money. The problem is uniting the city around a practical plan for recovery. This language is vague, but the message from big business can be summed up in the following terms: an accelerated back-to-work drive, despite the fact that it will guarantee a rising rate of COVID-19 infection and death; no new outlays to meet the needs of the unemployed and the homeless; and a law-and-order campaign in preparation for mass repression of working class resistance. De Blasios record since he took office on New Years Day 2014 has demonstrated that, when it comes to fundamental class interests, there is not the slightest difference between him and Cuomo, or the signers of the latest letter from the Partnership for New York. In fact, his response to the letter from the business leaders was to offer his cooperation. We need these leaders to join the fight to move the city forward, he said. The business leaders are also laying down the law for de Blasios successor. For 20 years before the current Democratic mayors first term began in 2014, the city was run quite openly by Wall Street, through Republican Rudy Giuliani, followed by multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg, who began his mayoralty as a Republican and ended it as a Democrat, though the party label made absolutely no difference. The reference to quality of life issues in the letter to de Blasio is particularly significant, since it harks backs to the vicious law-and-order campaign under Giuliani, continued in slightly more polite form by Bloomberg. Stop-and-frisk, later ruled unconstitutional, was used to arrest hundreds of thousands, primarily minority youth, under Bloomberg. William Bratton, head of the police force under Giuliani and then for the first two years of the de Blasio administration, was closely associated with these policies. Now working in California, Bratton immediately spoke up in support of the business leaders warning about quality of life issues. Over the past six months of the pandemic, the signers of the letter to de Blasio have all vastly increased their wealth, alongside the soaring stock market. They have no hesitation, however, in demanding further sacrifices from the working class. But they want to make sure that appearances are kept up. The Times reports that Ms. Wylde said she waited to publish [the letter] until after Labor Day, in part because of concern among some members, who had spent months outside the city, that they would be criticized for weighing in on New Yorks future from afar. They felt it was unseemly to be writing from the Hamptons. What delicacy! There is no essential difference between de Blasio and the business leaders. The massive borrowing called for by the mayor will run up the debt even more to the banks and bondholders, while doing little to prevent mass layoffs and service cutbacks. The only answer to the current crisis is the fight for a socialist program, including the expropriation of the financial parasites, to provide the resources to end the pandemic and to meet the urgent needs of the working class. By PTI NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Thursday took cognisance of a charge sheet filed by Delhi police under the stringent law UAPA and other legal provisions against 15 persons for larger conspiracy in northeast Delhi riots in February. Addittional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat directed Delhi Police to supply copies of the charge sheet filed on Wednesday to the accused persons. The court will now take up the matter on September 21. Those named in the charge sheet are ex-AAP councillor Taahir Hussain, ex-Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan, Saifi Khalid (activist of United against Hate campaign), Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar and Meeran Haider. Pinjra Tod members and JNU students Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal are also named in the charge sheet along with Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) student Asif Iqbal Tanha. Others charge sheeted are Mohd Parvez Ahmed, Mohd Illyas, Shahdab Ahmed, Tasleem Ahmed, Saleem Malik, Mohd Saleem Khan and Athar Khan. Special cell of Delhi Police told the court that while collecting evidences it has relied upon CD-R and WhatsApp chats. In its charge sheet, the police has listed 747 witnesses and of them 51 have recorded their statements before the magistrate under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). ALSO READ | Opposition leaders meet president over Delhi riots case; seek probe into police's role in violence The charge sheet has been filed under stringent Unalawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and various sections of Indian Penal Codes and Arms Act. The police said it has given chronology of conspiracy and relevant events in its charge sheet which is likely to be taken up for consideration soon. "The evidence include WhatsApp chats of February 24, the time when riots were happening. At that point, key conspirators were guiding their foot shoulders about violence in the area. The key conspirators were directly in touch with their foot shoulders," police said. It said that "WhatsApp group were used by conspirators for'violence in Seelampur Jafarabad area. There were 25 protest sites. 25 WhatsApp groups were especially created for each. The impression was given that they were anti-CAA protest group but through these sites conspirators were being guided." Special cell said that Tahir Hussain, Khalid Saifi and Umar Khalid had allegedly planned to carry out massive violence in the capital during US President Donald Trump visit in Delhi. In the chargesheet, which discuses the conspiracy behind the Delhi riots, the police has claimed that "on January 8 Tahir had met Umar Khalid and Khalid Saifi at Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest. Meetings subsequently also took place in the PFI office in Jamia Khalid Saifi instigated Tahir." "Umar reportedly assured that through his contacts (in PFI) logistical support etc will be provided," police said. It said the probe is still underway and police will file a supplementary charge sheet in the matter. Investigators have reportedly alleged that the Popular Front of India (PFI) is an extremist and militant Islamic fundamentalist organisation formed as a successor to National Development Front (NDF) in 2006, and often have been involved in anti-national and anti-social activities. The communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi on February 24 after violence between citizenship law supporters and protesters spiralled out of control leaving at least 53 people dead and around 200 injured. Michelle Matthews-Alexander of General Motors Earns NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award Michelle Matthews-Alexander, the head of multicultural marketing at General Motors, has dedicated her career to enhancing major corporations relationships with diverse communities. Since joining the famous automaker in 2015, Matthews-Alexander has advocated for and helped spearhead Chevrolets Discover the Unexpected Journalism Fellowship. ADVERTISEMENT In partnership with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), Matthews-Alexander and Chevrolet have invested heavily in the future of Black journalism while simultaneously supporting students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. On Thursday, September 17, 2020, Matthews-Alexander will receive the NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award. I am truly excited and humbled on being selected to receive the 2020 NNPA National Leadership Award, Matthews-Alexander exclaimed. Over the past five years, I have continued to value our partnership as well as the important role that the NNPA plays in the African American community. In her current role at General Motors, Matthews-Alexander leads a team of professionals that provides strategic marketing leadership and insights to drive focus and integration to support growth for GM brands, targeting crucial multicultural segments. Shes also responsible for driving the strategic direction and providing guidance to identify marketing opportunities and develop solutions to improve diversity plans across all GM brands, including Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC. ADVERTISEMENT Company officials have noted that Matthews-Alexander brings a wealth of multicultural automotive experience. Shes spent more than seven years leading Ford and Lincolns multicultural public relations efforts specific to the African American market for UWG before joining GM. Before that, Matthews-Alexander spent more than four years heading up the internal communications efforts at Nissans North American Engineering facility in Farmington Hills, Michigan. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Michigan State University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. Matthews-Alexander was named one of the Michigan Chronicles 2017 Women of Excellence Award recipients, and she earned recognition as one of the Michigan Chronicles 40 under 40 awards recipients. She received the 2016 Marketing to African Americans with Excellence (MAAX) Award. Matthews-Alexander is a member of the ANA Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, an organization comprised of senior-level, client-side marketers, media/publishers, research and data companies, advertising agencies, and trade associations. The ANA Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing focuses on evolving and enhancing the effectiveness of how multicultural and inclusive marketing currently gets done. Matthews-Alexander also has earned selection to Northwestern Universitys Kellogg Chief Marketing Officer Program as part of its 2020 class. Matthews-Alexander said shes thrilled about the NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award and the relationship between the trade organization and GM. This partnership has allowed us to create opportunities that have brought forth impact within the community, and for that, I am forever thankful, she exclaimed. Yoshihide Suga officially becomes Japan's next prime minister Wednesday. The country's ruling Liberal Democratic Party formally votef to install Suga as the country's leader during a parliamentary session. Wednesday's vote came a day after the LDP overwhelmingly chose Suga as the party's president. Under Japan's parliamentary system, the ruling party elects the person who will become prime minister, usually the party leader. The 71-year-old Suga will succeed Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, who abruptly resigned last month after eight years in office, citing the recurrence of ulcerative colitis, which has plagued him for much of his life. Suga served in Abe's government as chief cabinet secretary, and has been a key ally of Abe since the latter's first tenure as prime minister, which was cut short in 2007 after just one year due to his chronic illness. Nick Otto/Special to The Chronicle 2020 California has no shortage of dramatic evidence of its metropolitan housing shortage, from the Bay Areas sprawling homeless encampments to the exurban developments being incinerated by worsening wildfires. A Census Bureau report released this week is a dry affair by comparison, but it also speaks to the human suffering rooted in the crisis. The report details the supplemental poverty measure, an attempt to capture a more accurate picture of the nations impoverished than the rudimentary official measure by taking into account living costs, government benefits and other factors. By the official measure, based mainly on income and family size, Californias 11.4% poverty rate is close to the national average over the past three years, ranking it 21st among the states. But when housing and other costs are taken into account, 17.2% of Californians are considered poor, the highest rate nationwide. 17.09.2020 LISTEN The National Teaching Council (NTC) has noted that there is no political pressure on it to suspend the teacher licensure examinations. The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the National Teaching Council, Dennis Osei-Owusu, in a Citi News interview on the matter, said the exam was postponed to 1st and 2nd October due to changes in the timetable of continuing students of the Colleges of Education. He adds that the NTC, as an entity, is fully committed to delivering on its mandate to the fullest and that there is no political pressure on them from the government to cancel the exams. It is just a week change from the date of writing the licensure exams and the issue out there that we are suspending it is totally false. We have not suspended licensure exams and I dont think we have any plans of suspending licensure exams now. There is no pressure on us to suspend it. NTC as an entity is in charge we are fully geared towards implementing our mandate as part of our mandate of professionalizing teaching in Ghana. There was a lot stakeholder consultation where we agreed that teachers yet to join the teaching service will write exams, so they join the mainstream teachers when they are recruited, and so we dont have any idea in suspending the exams and there is no pressure on us to suspend it. In our books, we dont have anything on our books. Now teachers are now going to enjoy professional allowance as a result of NTC professionalizing teaching in Ghana and, apart from that, the main thing we are looking at is that global recognition in Ghana. Now we liaise with international teacher organizations, So the only thing you do is just key in the PIN of the teacher on that platform and all the details of the teacher, who is already licensed, and all the details will pop up and that person will be given the opportunity to work anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, a National Democratic Congress spokesperson on education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, also speaking on Eyewitness News, debunked the response by NTC. He added that the NDCs sources within NTC indicate that the licensure exams will be suspended. We also have our sources and our stakeholders within the NTC, but we cant put out vivid names of our sources. So we still stand by our claims that it will be postponed. It is clear that the government has been unpopular and uncomfortable with this. Background John Mahama, at a town hall meeting in Kumasi on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, suggested that the Akufo-Addo government is implementing policies in the NDC's 2020 manifesto, including the cancellation of the teacher licensure exam. The NPP seems to be implementing some policies captured in our manifesto. Recently, they revealed that consultations have begun to review the law banning the activities of okada riders. Similarly, the teacher licensure exam has been suspended after we promised to cancel it in our manifesto. In the same vein, owners of private schools are being engaged after we promised to extend the coverage of the free SHS policy to such schools in deprived areas without government's free SHS. Even though they accused us of not thinking through our promises, the NPP is implementing them. ---citinewsroom Its still unknown whether buses from First Student Canada will have enough drivers to run routes on Monday. The company was forced to cancel bus routes all this week due to a lack of drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted some students from Peterborough County, mostly in Norwood and Havelock, as well as students in Hastings and Campbellford. Joel Sloggett, chief administrative officer of Student Transportation Services of Central Ontario, the agency which co-ordinates school busing for public and Catholic schools in the Peterborough area, said the agency is trying to bring in additional drivers from other regions to get the routes covered. At this point were waiting for the company to give us a firm indication that theyre able to cover all the routes, or some of the routes, Sloggett said. While Sloggett said he hopes to have some clear information by Friday, it could extend into the weekend in finalizing which drivers are coming to take over the routes. But their plan if it unfolds the way they hope is to have these people assigned, get them familiar with the routing, and then start bringing them in to run the routes on Monday and Tuesday, he said. Sloggett said the first priority is to see if First Student Canada can find additional drivers to cover the routes and if the company is unable to do so the agency is considering some other last-resort solutions. If they dont solve everything then we have to look beyond them to see what we can do, either with the help of other companies, or through changes to student arrival times at school, Sloggett said. The buses that are operating may have to cover more schools, for instance. But thats our last resort because that would impact families in terms of whether the kids get to school on time, Sloggett said. It would also have a significant impact on schools, he said. And obviously theres a lot of pressure on school staff now with COVID and trying to deal with the number of kids that are coming, versus the ones that are learning from home, so we really want to try and work through this in a way that gets things back to normal, Sloggett said. Sloggett said he wants to assure the public that both STSCO and First Student Canada are working diligently on finding a solution. Were committed to this and were all in this together; the families, ourselves, and the schools. Everybody knows what the goal is that we get kids to school safely and home again, and make it consistent, he said. After a staggered start to the school year to allow staff and students to get used to adjustments for the pandemic, full-time enrolment began Wednesday in local Catholic schools and begins Friday in local public schools. The Texas State Teachers Association is again suing the San Antonio Independent School District and Mike Morath, the state education commissioner, over the decision two years ago that handed operations of Stewart Elementary to Democracy Prep Public Schools, a charter network based in New York. SAISDs teachers union, an affiliate of TSTA and the Texas chapter of the the American Federation of Teachers, filed a similar complaint in 2018 in Bexar County, which the Texas Supreme Court eventually dismissed. In June, a district judge in Travis County ruled in favor of both statewide unions in a different case, nullifying a provision in the Texas Education Code that allowed Morath to approve the agreement between SAISD and Democracy Prep. The Texas Education Agency has appealed that ruling, but the TSTA doesnt want to wait out the appeals process, said Clay Robison, spokesman for the union. We believe that that ruling applies to this case, Robison said. We think we have more ammunition now. The TSTA filed the new complaint Tuesday in district court in Travis County. Alejandra Lopez, president of SAISDs union and a teacher at Stewart until the takeover, is also named as a plaintiff, along with Karen Truelove and Becky Wilson, who taught at the Southeast Side school with Lopez. The lawsuit claims SAISD did not consult Stewart employees in early 2018 on the proposed management agreement with Democracy Prep, as state law requires for certain partnerships with outside entities to operate campuses. The TSTA and the SAISD union also filed an administrative grievance two years ago that was eventually appealed to Morath, who said the consultation rule did not apply because Democracy Prep did not have a state charter and partnered with SAISD as a nonprofit. But in the June ruling, state District Judge Jan Soifer threw out the rule that said school districts only needed to consult campus employees beforehand about management deals with external partners, and honor the employees contracts, if the TEA had granted the proposed partner a charter. Robison said Wednesday that Morath violated the law when he approved the school districts deal with Democracy Prep. The TSTAs new complaint also alleges open meetings violations during the process of approving the agreement, claiming the public was not given sufficient notice of the meeting at which SAISD trustees directed Superintendent Pedro Martinez to negotiate with Democracy Prep. The union says employees were denied the right to an open grievance hearing before the SAISD board and trustees did not vote in open session on the grievance. Under the management agreement, starting in the 2018-19 school year, Stewart teachers became at-will employees of Democracy Prep rather than SAISD employees with district contracts. Only two teachers returned in fall 2018 to Stewart. Others transferred to different SAISD schools or left the district entirely. The lawsuit seeks to void the approval of Democracy Preps charter to operate Stewart Elementary and to reinstate the contracts, with back pay and benefits, of all Stewart employees who were members of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, the SAISD union for nonadministrative employees. Alia Malik covers several school districts and the University of Texas at San Antonio. To read more from Alia, become a subscriber. amalik@express-news.net | Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN Culturally too, we are usually treated as a separate race, hence our almost universal portrayal as villains or victims in popular media. In books and newspapers, Arabs and Muslims are typically seen through the lens of current events foreign wars, global migration and especially terrorism. The association is so pervasive that references to it crop up even in situations that have nothing to do with terrorism. At my literary events, for example, Ive been asked many times about Al Qaeda and ISIS, as though my being Muslim grants me special insight into transnational terrorist groups that combine Islamist ideology with guerrilla tactics. Muslim Americans who appear in a public forum will, sooner or later, face that question, whether the forum is a literary event or a fashion show or the halls of power in Washington. It may take the form of an accusation, from someone who has been fed a diet of propaganda, or it may take the form of a sincere remark; it may even take the form of a joke, intended to lighten the mood of the audience. But it will come. And when it does, the Muslim faces an impossible choice: Ignore the comment and perpetuate the association with terrorism, or address the comment and perpetuate the association anyway. There is no right answer. There is only the hope, by speaking about oneself, to create room for individuality. My own life has taken turns I could not have imagined when I stepped off a plane at Los Angeles International Airport on a late-summer afternoon in 1992. Back then, my intention had been to complete a Ph.D. in linguistics, then return home to Morocco, where I planned to work as a college professor. A couple of years into my degree, however, I met an American, we fell in love and eventually married. In choosing to be with him, I chose to embrace his country as well. That made of me an immigrant, the kind of person that America has long mythologized, in art if not in life from the ruthless gangsters in The Godfather to the hardworking women in The Joy Luck Club to the eponymous founding father in Hamilton. But even under the best of circumstances, immigration is a traumatic experience that cuts a persons life in two: There is the life before and the life after. For a long time after I moved to the United States, I wore two watches: one that told the time in Los Angeles, and the other the time in Rabat. In the morning, while I was getting ready for class, I would often think about my family, 6,000 miles away, sitting down to afternoon tea. In my memory, everyone back home remained exactly as I had last seen them, as if caught in a photograph. It never occurred to me that, day after day, they were getting older, making new friends, switching jobs or moving houses. They were changing, just as I was changing. Whenever I stepped out of my apartment, I felt keenly aware that I was speaking a foreign language, whose sentences I had to compose with deliberation before I could speak them. In graduate seminars, my classmates would chuckle or even laugh when they heard me mispronounce some words, especially those I had only known in print epitome and fortuitous and onomatopoeia. At times, the phonetic rules of English didnt make much sense to me: Why did rough rhyme with tough but not with dough? Eventually I adapted to the local dialect and my foreign accent became less noticeable. One morning, a few years after arriving in this country, I woke up with the startling realization that I had dreamed in English. The language was the easy part, however. There were so many cultural differences that hardly a day went by when I didnt notice a new one. It was not considered impolite, for example, to eat ones breakfast in front of others in the dorms common room without offering to share it with them. It was not considered rude to invite someone to lunch at a restaurant and then expect them to pay for their meal. If I sound singularly focused on food, perhaps its because food is so intimately tied to culture. It seemed to me that Americans were always rushing around, never taking the time to sit down for a cup of coffee or a proper dinner. I was shocked the first time I saw a woman eating a hamburger as she drove down the 10 freeway. My story of immigration has been enriched by the love of my husband and family, the joy of enduring friendships, the fulfillment I find in my work. But nothing could have prepared me for what I lost. I missed my grandmothers funeral, four of my cousins weddings and countless birthdays and celebrations with my family. If there was a crisis, I could never be sure that I would be there to help. Once, I remember, I was on vacation in Wyoming when I received a text in the middle of the night telling me that my father was in the hospital and that he might not make it. For several minutes my mind couldnt comprehend the text I was reading. All I wanted then was a chance to say goodbye. I scrambled to book a flight and traveled back to my hometown. To my relief, the treatment my father received worked and, while he recovered, we had a chance to spend some time together. After rebuking a senior Czech lawmaker for visiting Taiwan this month, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, received an obscenity-laced public letter that punctuated just how far Chinas standing in Europe has fallen. You should be ashamed, another lawmaker, Pavel Novotny, an outspoken district mayor in Prague, wrote, calling the Chinese impudent, thoughtless, uncouth clowns and demanding an apology. The outburst was not an isolated one. In country after country, China is facing rising anger over its policies and its behavior from trade to human rights a major setback on a continent that Beijing has viewed as a more pragmatic, and thus more willing, partner to provide ballast against sharply deteriorating relations with the United States. For Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, a lasting shift in European views poses an enormous challenge. In the short term, it threatens to undermine the countrys post-pandemic economic recovery by stifling new investments as the United States restricts them, especially in high tech. In the longer term, it could blunt his ambitions for China to offer an alternative to the United States as the global leader dictating the rules for governance and trade. WEST NEW YORK The fully-remote start to the school year was flush with organizational challenges as parents struggled with unfamiliar technology and substitutes filled in for teachers on leave, parents and teachers said at a Board of Education meeting Wednesday night. Speaker after speaker at Wednesdays virtual BOE meeting questioned why the district hadnt done more to prepare its community for remote learning and why it is still requiring all teachers to report to school buildings to teach virtual classes. That requirement has caused at least a dozen teachers to opt to go on leave, since they would be unable to tend to new needs at home if they had to physically report to work, West New York Education Association President Anita Kober has said. Parents shared stories Wednesday ranging from a second grade substitute teacher working without a curriculum to a parent jumping in to help other parents navigate their young childs computer in the middle of a lesson. Were very, very disappointed, one parent said. These teachers that are trying to do their best, their hands are tied trying to do everything at once. One teacher said she has had to devote personal time to educating parents on how to use the technology because the office hours the school gave her arent sufficient. Another said she would love to be in the classsroom, but she had to take leave since she was unable to report to the school building. I really wish I was there helping the other staff and students, the staff member, Yarina Abreu, said. I feel like Im being wasted. Superintendent Clara Brito Herrera said the district is offering some parent technology training outdoors at the schools. We can definitely host as many as we have a need for, she said during the meeting. Ill make sure of that. She added that there were some teacher trainings offered, which at least 100 people attended, while other teacher trainings continue to be held. She also assured parents at Public School 2 who complained about unqualified substitutes that they are being replaced this week. You will have certified teachers tomorrow morning, Brito Herrera said. West New York is not the only local school district with parents concerned about how the school year has kicked off. In North Bergen, parents and students are complaining that their school day, which is currently about 7 hours, is too long for virtual learning. Many other school districts in the county now have shorter days. Shorter, and more targetable lessons are much more efficient when learning at home, says a North Bergen petition with close to 800 signatures. Students and staff members are becoming more stressed and tired due to staring at their screens for 7 hours a day. Meanwhile, in Jersey City, there were hiccups in the distribution of laptops. About 800 students had not signed into their virtual classrooms as of Tuesday, said Deputy Superintendent Norma Fernandez. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House Tuesday a deal that normalizes Israels relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Experts say the accords signify a shift away from the decades-long regional strategy. Opposition parties, including TMC, Congress, DMK and BSP, on Thursday opposed two agriculture sector reform bills in Lok Sabha, saying they are against the interests of small and marginal farmers. Participating in a discussion on 'The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill' and 'The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill', Kalyan Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress said his party strongly opposes them and if the "draconian" bills are passed, they will adversely affect 60 per cent people of the country who are poor and marginal farmers. Banerjee said the new laws will lead to hoarding of produce and their black-marketing and the Centre has sought to take away powers of states to act against them by amending another law. The common man will suffer and there will be price rise, he alleged. K Shanmugasundaram (DMK) opposed the bills and stated that the government should have done away with the export restriction on agricultural commodities. Congress member Ravneet Singh demanded that the bills should be withdrawn and wondered why the Centre was interfering when agriculture is in the concurrent list. Opposing the bills, Samajwadi Party member S T Hasan criticised the NDA government's policies towards the farmers and said that if the government has been taking welfare schemes for the farmers, why "so many farmers are committing suicide". He claimed that the "rise of prices of the fertilisers and the diesel have enhanced the burden on the farmers". Hasan also said the legislations have no mention about the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and sought control over the MSP so that farmers could be benefitted. "Don't bring corporates, otherwise farmers and common people will suffer," he added. BSP's Ritesh Pandey opposed the bills and said small and marginal farmers have been left to the mercy of corporate groups. BJD's Anubhav Mohanty urged the Centre to send the bills to a Parliamentary committee, saying they have been brought very hastily. Trinamool Congress member Mahua Moitra said the bills are in direct violation of the federal structure of the constitution, adding that "agriculture is a state subject. Then, surely trade and transaction cannot be taken out by the central government". Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant welcomed the bills but sought more clarification from the government over certain aspects. He asked the Centre to ensure that any agreement between farmers and private parties makes it clear that farm produce will be sold at a price higher than the MSP. T Rangaiah of the YSR Cogress supported the proposed laws, saying they will enable farmers to have barriers-free trade in their produce. Supporting the two bills, JD-U member Santosh Kumar said the proposed legislations are "historic" and that farmers can easily access different markets for better price for their products. Virendra Singh Mast (BJP) called the bills "historic", saying they will liberate farmers and bring in prosperity for them while helping the country become self-reliant. The proposed laws are revolutionary, he said. Jagdambika Pal (BJP) said that if the two bills are approved by Lok Sabha, then the day will be celebrated as farmers empowerment day. With the legislations, the government is trying to give due prices of agriculture products of the farmers, he said. Referring to agitations launched in different parts of the country against the bills, Pal said these were not farmers' agitation but agitations sponsored by the opposition Congress. After these bills become Acts, farmers will be free to sell their products at their place of choice and buyers and there will be no levy, no cess, he added. Pal also noted that migration of youths from villages will be stopped as they will be attracted towards the farming now. TDP member Ram Mohan Naidu said there are some genuine concerns regarding these two bills and that the central government should look into those concerns. He also pointed out that contract farming can lead to loss in crop diversity. M Srinivas Reddy (TRS) said farmers' interests should be protected at any cost, especially of small and marginal farmers. (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 Minneapolis Police officer rolls up caution tape at a crime scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 16, 2020. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Minneapolis City Council Complains About Crime Spike Months After Voting To Abolish Police Three months after voting to dismantle the Minneapolis police department, city council members there spent much of a business meeting on Tuesday complaining about an uptick in violent crime across the city. Several city council members told police chief Medaria Arradondo at the meeting that their constituents were concerned about increased criminal activity. City council members Lisa Bender, Steve Fletcher and Andrew Johnson led off the two-hour meeting with questions about the crime wave. All three of the council members voted on June 12 to abolish the police department in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly 8 minutes. The trio also took part in a protest on June 7 in which they took a pledge to dismantle the police department. We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating [a] new transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis, the joint statement in June said, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Fletcher told Arradondo during the city council meeting Tuesday that constituents told him that rank-and-file police officers were not doing anything to prevent robberies in a neighborhood called Marcy Holmes. He also decried a significant increase in extremely dangerous and reckless driving. Id love to know a little more about what the robbery suppression work is and what are we doing whats been sort of a pattern in Marcy over the past six weeks? Fletcher asked Arradondo. Fletcher wrote in an essay for TIME on June 5 that he was publicly supporting the call to disband our police department and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity. Bender, the president of the city council, also told Arradondo Tuesday that constituents have said that police officers are not enforcing crime. This is not new, but it is very concerning in the current context, she said, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Bender speculated that officers may be refusing to respond to criminal complaints because they dont support council member, or in some cases, the mayor, or perhaps they think that theyre making the case for more resources for the department. How do we get this under control? she asked. Bender was a leading proponent for dismantling the police department. She drew national attention in June when she said in an interview on CNN that calling the police during an emergency comes from a place of privilege. Andrew Johnson asked Arradondo about an uptick in carjackings in his ward. I would appreciate some more information on how were addressing the carjackings. There have been a number of them in the community, and theyve really terrorized residents, said Johnson. How do we stop it? he asked. Because it seems like a huge problem and its something we absolutely want to stop and it also seems very difficult to stop. He lamented that the police department has a no chase policy. How we actually hold these individuals accountable, get them off the streets so they arent terrorizing the community? Though Johnson endorsed the pledge to abolish the police department in June, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday that he supports an armed law enforcement agency that would continue to go after carjackers and violent criminals. He said that the controversial aspect of the debate in Minneapolis is whether to remake or replace the police department. One city councilman, Phillipe Cunningham, noted the inconsistency between members complaints about police inaction and their earlier calls to abolish the department. What I am sort of flabbergasted by, said Cunningham, is colleagues who a very short time ago who were calling for abolition are now suggesting that we should be putting more funding and resources into MPD. By Chuck Ross From The Daily Caller News Foundation Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Election 2020 Peoples Pioneer Party Stands by Nationalist Candidate in Myanmars Election PPP candidate U Naing Thu Latt. PPP / Facebook YangonThe Peoples Pioneer Party (PPP) chairwoman, Dr. Thet Thet Khaing, says the party leadership will not remove its Insein Township candidate for the Yangon regional parliament, who has drawn criticism on social media for his history of involvement in pro-military vigilante groups and Buddhist nationalism. Our party will not recklessly punish anyone for their past when we dont know exactly what happened. As a party member and a candidate, he has not violated the partys policy and rules. That his attitude leans toward nationalism and national interests is not a crime, said Dr. Thet Thet Khaing. U Naing Thu Latt, the PPPs Insein Township candidate for Yangon regional parliament, has been criticized as a stooge of Swan Ar Shin, a vigilante group backed by Myanmars military to suppress political dissidents during the military regime. He is also labeled as a nationalist and alleged to have close ties with the now-banned Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, better known by the Burmese acronym Ma Ba Tha, formed by hardline monks. Video clips on social media show U Naing Thu Latt abetting the police and vigilantes in a crackdown on anti-war protesters in Tamwe Township. Ko Thet Swe Win, who led the anti-war protest, said: This is their choice. This is about what the PPP will choose. We no longer want to see nationalist politics. If parties seek the peoples vote by manipulating nationalism, we will oppose them. Ko Myat Kyaw, who participated in the protest, said: You cant hide a dead elephant with goatskin. What he did cant be hidden. Sadly, such a person is among the candidates. We have no trust in the PPP at all due to its candidate. Dr. Thet Thet Khaing, in response to the criticism, said it was just a fight between nationalists and liberals. This is happening because of disputes between nationalists and liberals. Nationalists attack liberals and liberals think nationalists are doing something wrong. It is the wrong attitude to determine which side is right and which is wrong, said Dr. Thet Thet Khaing. The party said it selected its candidates based on diversity and inclusivity, educational qualifications, management skills, compliance with the partys rules and their capacity to perform legislative duties. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko You may also like these stories: Ethnic Political Parties Merge to Seek Stronger Representation in 2020 Election Myanmar Opposition Parties Spend Big on Facebook Ads Ahead of Election NLD Renegade Joins New Myanmar Political Party Dublin is facing three weeks of new Covid-19 restrictions, which would cut off the capital from the rest of the country. The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is expected to recommend enforcing Level 3 restrictions across the entire county, which will cause further economic damage to the national economy. Under Level 3, people will be banned from leaving the county for non-essential journeys. People living in other counties will be prohibited from entering Dublin unless it is for work, education or another essential purpose. People living in Dublin will be asked to work from home. Places of worship will be asked to move their services online, while funerals and weddings will be limited to 25 people. Museums, galleries and other cultural attractions will be closed. In a clear indication that the Government plans to act quickly, an emergency meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Covid-19 has been scheduled for tomorrow morning to consider Nphet's recommendations before the weekend. It can also be revealed that Higher Education Minister Simon Harris sought assurances at the last Cabinet meeting that the Government will act sooner on public health advice than it did on Nphet recommendations on Dublin. Inexcusable "Harris asked for an assurance that if Nphet made a recommendation, it would be made quickly so we don't have a situation like the last week," a source said. "We have lost five days in the fight against the virus because they didn't move and he's really not happy about it." The source said it is "inexcusable to not act" on public health advice and insisted "speed trumps perfection" when fighting the virus. Details of Nphet's recommendations emerged yesterday after the Department of Health published the letter that Health Minister Stephen Donnelly received last Thursday. The group urged the minister to encourage people living in Dublin not to leave the county unless it was necessary and, if they do, to only meet one other household. They also said home visits should be limited to one other household of no more than six people. They sought limits on the number of people who can attend sporting events and said people should be asked to work from home if they could. In a stark warning, Nphet said there is "no guarantee that further measures may not be necessary in the coming days or weeks". The letter signed by acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn also warned "there is a limited time period in which to act" as international evidence shows increases in new cases are followed by a rise in deaths. "While the recommended enhanced measures have the potential to arrest the trajectory of the disease, there is also a very real potential that the situation could deteriorate further," Dr Glynn said. While the recommendations were received by the Government last week, they were only announced on Tuesday and came into force yesterday. A senior Cabinet member defended the delay in reacting to the advice by noting that the rise in cases has yet to lead to a significant increase in hospitalisations or deaths. "Yes, there is an increase, but bear in mind during an average flu season there are hundreds of deaths and we don't got into lockdown," the source said. Nphet is due to meet at 10am this morning to discuss the increasing number of new coronavirus cases in Dublin and elsewhere in the country. The expert health group's recommendations will then be reviewed by the Covid-19 Oversight Group chaired by Department of the Taoiseach secretary general Martin Fraser. Mr Fraser and Nphet's recommendations will then be forwarded to the Cabinet Committee on Covid-19, which will meet tomorrow morning. Difficult A incorporeal Cabinet meeting may be organised later that afternoon if a decision is taken to introduce new rules for the capital before the weekend. The prospect of restrictions being introduced in Dublin on a regional basis rather than county-wide was not ruled out yesterday by senior figures in the Government. However, it is unlikely to be the approach on this occasion. There is also a belief it will be difficult to impose restrictions in individual areas of Dublin because the public would not be clear on where boundaries lie. The worlds most scenic airport landings in 2020 have been revealed by a new poll. Donegal Airport in Ireland has been crowned the most beautiful for the third year in a row, followed by Msembe Airstrip in Tanzania. Skiathos (Alexandros Papadiamantis) Airport in Greece bagged third place, while Orlando (Melbourne) International Airport in the US and the island of Barra in Scotlands Outer Hebrides came fourth and fifth respectively. The Scenic Airports poll was conducted by private jet booking service PrivateFly between February and March 2020, and garnered more than 6,000 votes. Voters praised Donegals stunning varied scenery, its beautiful beaches in the vicinity of the airport and the sweeping views of Mount Errigal and The Rosses on the approach. We're delighted to receive this recognition for the third year, said Steve OCulain, Chairman of Donegal Airport. And when they can, we hope more travellers will come and share this beautiful part of the world with us, located in the Gaelic speaking Donegal Gaeltacht on the Wild Atlantic Way. Beidh mile failte romhaibh! Adam Twidell, PrivateFly CEO, said: Many of us have flown less frequently this year, but these ultimate destination landings are a welcome reminder of the uplifting power of travel and aviation - and a jaw dropping inspiration for some memorable future flights. Msembe airstrip has views over a National Park (Ulf Rydin) Flying offers the ultimate ringside seat to some of the most incredible views to be seen anywhere around the world. He added that the top 10 list for 2020 had been compiled following submissions from aviation enthusiasts around the world, eager to celebrate the most beautiful aerial views from window seats and flight decks, with Donegal deemed unbeatable for the third year in a row. Skiathos Airport has views over the water (Skiathos Airport) For the first time in its annual poll, PrivateFly also revealed the highest-ranking airports by region. Donegal was the top European airport landing; Orlando (Melbourne) was number one in North America; St Maarten (Princess Juliana) International Airport nabbed first place in the South America, Central America and Caribbean category; and Male (Velana) International Airport was best in Asia. Barra offers white-sand beaches (Ewen Weatherspoon) In Africa and the Middle East, Tanzanias Msembe Airstrip outshone the competition with its views over East African Ruaha National Park, while Australasias winner was Bora Bora (Motu Mute) Airport in French Polynesia. The top 10 most scenic airport landings 1. Donegal Airport, Ireland 2. Msembe Airstrip, Tanzania 3. Skiathos (Alexandros Papadiamantis) Airport, Greece 4. Orlando (Melbourne) International Airport, USA 5. Barra Airport, Scotland 6. Bora Bora (Motu Mute) Airport, French Polynesia 7. St Maarten (Princess Juliana) International Airport, St Maarten 8. Praslin Island Airport, Seychelles 9. Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates 10. Nadi International Airport, Fiji The servicemen of the "Carpathian Pumas" Detachment, operating in Mali, were visited on Wednesday by the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) Force Commander, Lieutenant-General Dennis Gyllensporre, informed Ministry of National Defence (MApN). "Force Commander of MINUSMA discussed with the members of the Romanian contingent about the missions they carried out and appreciated the contribution made by the helicopter detachment to the MINUSMA operations during the year, through the approximately 280 flight missions executed (of which 17 MEDEVAC)," states the Ministry of National Defense in a press release sent to AGERPRES. Also, according to the quoted source, General Gyllensporre saw "in action" the soldiers who were ensuring, at the time of the visit, the MEDEVAC and Rapid Reaction (QRF) tours. "Commander Ciprian Marin, the detachment commander, and Lieutenant General Dennis Gyllensporre also discussed about the conclusions and lessons learned by the Romanian military in almost one year of mission - the challenges and pace of the missions, cooperation with other structures within MINUSMA, operational details which can help improve UN procedures in the field of air operations," reads the release. Commander Marin thanked MINUSMA Commander Gyllensporre for the support given to the Romanian military throughout the mission in Mali, both for the first rotation and for the one that will end soon. Lieutenant General Dennis Gyllensporre appreciated that the Romanian military really made a difference in this mission, because helicopters are its essential capability, and that they have successfully replaced the Canadian military. Thank you for all that you have accomplished this year, for focusing on the mission and the large number of flight hours. You have truly demonstrated Romania's professionalism and commitment, Commander MINUSMA concluded, as quoted in the statement. According to the Ministry of National Defence, this was the second time that Commander MINUSMA met with the command team of the Romanian contingent, after participating from October last year in the ceremony that marked the taking over of responsibilities and duties within the UN mission from the Canadian contingent. People will be able to fly to Germany, Poland, Cyprus and other European destinations for holidays and other business from next Monday under changes to Government travel advice. Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has said the Green List is to become "a real green list", freeing up people to travel to several European destinations without having to restrict their movements for 14 days when they return. The Government's previous advice for people to avoid all non-essential overseas travel, including to Green List countries, has now been amended. "It has changed," a coalition spokesperson confirmed to the Herald yesterday. "Some countries will be added and removed from the Green List today - but it will only come into force on Monday." A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said while Irish rules would not apply to passengers flying to and from countries on the revised list, they would still be subject to the Covid rules in those countries. "There is a factor that we don't control, which is what other countries may require you to do," he said. The travel Green List will have a number of countries added and removed based on the latest data from the European Centre for Disease Control. Ireland is adopting the EU-wide 'traffic light' system for safe travel, but pending its formal approval next month, the existing Green List will be updated using the same criteria. This will happen every Thursday, with the changes coming into force the following Monday, the spokesperson said. Exempt This means countries with an incidence rate of fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 over the past 14 days will be green listed. Based on the latest data, countries on the list will likely include Germany (22.7), Poland (19), Finland (10.6), Lithuania (18.4), Estonia (24.7), Iceland (16.2), Cyprus (5.7), Latvia (4.1), and Liechtenstein (7.8) Under the changes, people will no longer be advised against all non-essential overseas travel as had been the case when the Green List was originally published in July. Instead, they will be exempt from Covid rules when they travel to countries on the Green List. There was widespread confusion when the original list was published in July as the Coalition insisted people should still avoid all non-essential travel, even to those places on the Green List. The list's only purpose was to inform people travelling back from places on it that they did not have to restrict their movements for 14 days. But the Department of Foreign Affairs' travel advice now states that 'Green List' places are exempt from the advice against non-essential travel overseas and that 'normal precautions' are applied. "The request to restrict their movements does not apply to individuals arriving into Ireland from these locations," the advice further adds. At present the Green List includes Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway - all of which have their own quarantine or other restrictions for arrivals. Four countries on the present list Greece, Greenland, Italy, and Slovakia have no such restrictions. However, their increase in incidence rate of the virus will likely see them removed from the list when it is updated today. All passengers arriving into Ireland will still be required to fill out a passenger locator form. Connected Speaking on RTE's Prime Time on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar confirmed the changes in Government travel advice. "The travel policy has changed and with that the travel advice has changed. "We are an island nation, we do need to be connected to the rest of the world, not just for business and tourism but also so people can see friends and family and relatives," he said. "By green it means we're saying you can travel to those countries without any restrictions and of course there is no such thing as no risk but these are all countries that have a lower incidence of the virus than Ireland." Mr Varadkar said people "can if they choose to" holiday in these countries. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in August, during his 2021 budget address at SHI Stadium at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. Read more New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and other top lawmakers said Thursday that they would raise taxes on those who earn more than $1 million a year and send tax rebates of up to $500 to hundreds of thousands of families, hailing the announcement as a victory for the middle class. The deal is a major political win for Murphy, who campaigned on a progressive platform and has proposed the millionaires tax for years, but was stymied by lawmakers in his own party. We do not hold any grudge at all against those who have been successful in life, Murphy said at a Thursday morning news conference in Trenton, flanked by Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, and Senate President Stephen Sweeney. But in this unprecedented time, when so many middle-class families and others have sacrificed so much, now is the time to ensure that the wealthiest among us are also called to sacrifice. Sweeney, who had resisted the tax in recent years, acknowledged that his turnaround was a surprise to some. I bet a lot of you didnt expect to find me here today," he said during Thursdays announcement. And you know, Im surprised I am.... But the pandemic hit, and things have changed. And we have to face the reality that a lot of families are hurting. Murphy and Sweeney credited Coughlin with moving the plan forward this week. Murphy said the proposal will undo years of tax inequities that have resulted in some middle-class and poor families paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than wealthier taxpayers. In an interview after the news conference, Murphy said he believed he would have gotten the tax approved at some point, regardless of the economic climate. But he acknowledged the financial devastation caused by the coronavirus made it more politically palatable. Asking the wealthy to pay a few more pennies is a formula that makes sense and works, whatever your environment is," he said. But did it make the case for it even more compelling? I think the answer has to be yes. The middle class has been hurt so badly. Under the plan, the tax rate will increase from 8.97% to 10.75% on annual income of more than $1 million the same rate that currently applies only to income above $5 million. The deal will also give tax rebates of up to $500 to families that have at least one child and earn less than $150,000, or less than $75,000 for single parents. The proposal is likely to be approved by the Democratic-controlled legislature by months end as part of the state budget plan. The tax would go into effect after the budget is adopted, while rebates would be based on next years tax filings. The plan is expected to raise an estimated $390 million, with the rebates costing more than $300 million. Murphy said that the revenue will represent an investment in the middle class, and that any leftover money would be put into school funding, health care, housing, and more. Lawmakers will revisit whether to continue the rebates next year, but Murphy said he would like them to be issued annually. Officials said 700,000 to 800,000 families are eligible. The four Republican members of the Senate Budget and Appropriations committee issued statements denouncing the deal as bad economic policy. Sen. Michael Testa called the deal an election-year stunt. Hundreds of millions of dollars in higher taxes will be collected over the next fiscal year, but none of the benefits the governor is promising will be paid out until hes in campaign mode next summer, said Testa, who represents Cape May County and parts of Atlantic and Cumberland Counties, referring to Murphys expected run for a second term next year. Hes looking to buy his reelection with your money. State lawmakers have been deadlocked for years over the millionaires tax, which was approved several times by a Democratic-controlled legislature under Republican Gov. Chris Christie. Christie vetoed the tax each year. Raising taxes for the wealthy was one of Murphys campaign pledges, and he has proposed the tax three times, most recently in his budget address this year. But the legislature has twice rejected the tax since Murphy took office, saying President Donald Trumps federal tax overhaul had already slammed the states residents through the loss of property tax deductions. The New Jersey Business and Industry Association criticized Thursdays announcement, saying in a statement that the proposal is undermined by toll and gas hikes, and other taxes included in Murphys proposed budget. Our taxpayers need real tax reform that includes property tax relief, while this does not really improve our overall affordability crisis or remove us from the edge of our fiscal cliff, the group said in a statement. The hike would offset part of what Murphy has said is a projected $5 billion shortfall in revenue compared with the budget he scrapped earlier this year in the wake of the pandemic. In his August budget address, Murphy also proposed hiking cigarette and business taxes, among other increases. Murphy has been authorized to borrow up to about $10 billion to balance the budget. Murphy and lawmakers previously agreed to extend the current fiscal year from June 30 to Sept. 30, and said Thursday that the budget would be finalized before that deadline. Syria's oil minister claimed the severe fuel crisis that has hit his country is the result of Western sanctions, and also allegedly because oil fields in eastern regions have fallen under control of American troops and US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters. The minister, Bassam Tomeh told state TV in an interview aired late Wednesday that oil supplies have been delayed because of the situation. We have stocks that we are trying to manage in a rational way, he said, without elaborating. on Iran have compounded the fuel crisis faced by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Tehran is a key Damascus ally that has supplied it with crude oil throughout Syria's nine-year civil war. Separately, oil smuggling into from neighboring Lebanon has dropped recently amid tight measures by Beirut authorities as Lebanon has been gripped by its worst economic and financial crisis in decades. The on were tightened in June targeting anyone doing business with Assad's government regardless of where in the world they are. The US says those doing business with Damascus will be exposed to travel restrictions and financial sanctions. American sanctions are depriving us of importing (enough for) our oil needs, Tomeh said. In government-controlled regions of Syria, people spend hours waiting in line to fill up their tanks. The cost of 20 liters (5.2 gallons) of gasoline is now 25,000 Syrian pounds (USD 11) on the black market while the subsidized price at gas stations is 5,000 Syrian pounds (USD 2.3). Most Syrians make less than $100 a month, which leaves them unable to afford black market prices. The government is also struggling to fight fraud and corruption in fuel distribution, according to Tomeh. Assad's government controls Syria's two oil refineries but one of them is currently undergoing renovation work. Tomeh said the Banias Refinery needs 10 more days to become more operational, which would raise fuel supplies about 25%. Everyone knows that our oil fields that used to supply our fuel needs are under American occupation, Tomeh said. Tomeh promised the crisis is about to end and urged Syrians to be patient. The war is not over and the economic war is at its most intense now, 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.) WASHINGTON Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call. The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named describing Barrs comments because they feared retribution. The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Departments civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the citys downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions. The directives are in keeping with Barrs approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Durkan, a Democrat, Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked. A Justice Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported Barrs remarks about sedition. The disclosures came as Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if the president was not reelected. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself irrevocably committed to the socialist path if Trump lost and that the country faced a clear fork in the road. Barrs actions have thrust the Justice Department into the political fray at a time when Democrats and former law enforcement officials have expressed fears that he is politicizing the department, particularly by intervening in legal matters in ways that benefit Trump or his circle of friends and advisers. The protest zone in Seattle became a flash point in the national debate over issues of race and policing this summer. Officers had abandoned the police station there for weeks before retaking it in late July amid escalating violence, including deadly shootings. Durkan said at the time that she had been forced to act because of the lawlessness. Days later, federal Homeland Security officials sent tactical agents to the city. Durkan protested that their arrival would potentially exacerbate tensions between residents and local officials. Trump has called the people who lived in the zone domestic terrorists and warned that Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington needed to regain control of the area. If you dont do it, I will, the president wrote on Twitter. This is not a game. The attorney generals question about whether Durkan, the former U.S. attorney in Seattle, had violated any federal statutes by allowing the protest zone was highly unusual, former law enforcement officials said. The attorney general seems personally, deeply offended by the autonomous zone and wants someone to pay for it, said Chuck Rosenberg, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. If the people of Seattle are personally offended, they have political recourse. There is no reason to try to stretch a criminal statute to cover the conduct. His supporters say Barrs approach is necessary to preserve order at a moment that threatens to spiral into violence and to tamp down unrest in cities where the local authorities will not. More than 93% of the protests in the United States this summer were peaceful, according to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which monitors political upheaval worldwide. The report looked at 7,750 protests from May 26 through Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. But far-right and far-left groups, as well as looters and rioters, have seized on the protests to commit acts of violence, including deadly shootings serious crimes that some federal prosecutors said could not be dismissed out of hand as anomalous, particularly as the threat from extremist groups grows. Two men associated with Boogaloo, a far-right movement that supports the coming of a second civil war, were arrested on terrorism-related charges last week. Prosecutors said they used the protests as cover to try to sell weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which the United States and other countries consider a terrorist group, and to use the money to support the Boogaloo movement. Barr told federal prosecutors on the call that they needed to crack down on rioting, looting, assaults on law enforcement officers and other violence committed during the protests that have continued across the country since George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, was killed in May by the police. The attorney general mentioned sedition as part of a list of possible federal statutes that prosecutors could use to bring charges, including assaulting a federal officer, rioting, use of explosives and racketeering, according to the people familiar with the call. Justice Department officials included sedition on a list of such charges in a follow-up email. After Barr spoke, Richard Donoghue, a top aide to the deputy attorney general, interjected to note that some of the U.S. attorneys on the call worked in districts where violence during protests was less common, and that the federal prosecutors may not need to use tools as aggressive as sedition charges. If Barr was saying that if you have a sedition case, then bring it, that is fine, Rosenberg said. But if he is urging people to stretch to bring one, that is deeply dangerous. The most extreme form of the federal sedition law, which is rarely invoked, criminalizes conspiracies to overthrow the government of the United States an extraordinary situation that does not seem to fit the circumstances of the riots and unrest in places like Portland and elsewhere in response to police killings of Black men. Mentioning that he had visited Portland, Donoghue also assured the prosecutors that the Justice Department would support all efforts to crack down on violence. The wording of the federal sedition statute is more broad than actual revolutions. It says the crime can also occur anytime two or more people have conspired to use force to oppose federal authority, hinder the governments ability to enforce any federal law or unlawfully seize any federal property elements that might conceivably fit a plot to, say, break into and set fire to a federal courthouse. Congress has treated seditious conspiracy as an unusually serious crime: While ordinary federal offenses carry a maximum sentence of five years, a conviction on a charge of seditious conspiracy can carry up to 20 years in prison. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. US President Donald Trump has identified India along with 20 other nations as major drug transit or illicit drug-producing countries and asserted that his administration is taking the fight to criminal organisations engaged in narcotics substances and their enablers on an unprecedented scale. In his presidential determination, Trump also designated Bolivia and the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela as having failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counter-narcotics agreements. A country''s presence on the foregoing list is not necessarily a reflection of its government''s counter-narcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the United States, Trump said. He said countries such as Afghanistan, India, The Bahamas, Belize, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic among others are a major drug transit or illicit drug producing nations. 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 Trump alleged that the most complicit kingpin in this Hemisphere is the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro. In Colombia, President Ivan Duque and his government remain strong partners of the United States, and Colombian police and military forces have shown great bravery and commitment by targeting high-level drug traffickers, interdicting drug shipments, and manually eradicating coca, he said. Nevertheless, coca cultivation and cocaine production remain at unacceptably high levels, Trump added. Trump expressed concern that coca cultivation and cocaine production remain near historical highs in Peru, another longstanding US ally. Peru is a valued law enforcement partner of the US and has demonstrated continuous commitment to fighting all aspects of the drug trade," he said. He said Mexico must also clearly demonstrate its commitment to dismantling the cartels and their criminal enterprises and do more to protect the lives of Mexican and American citizens threatened by these groups. The Mexican government should acknowledge the alarming trend of fentanyl production inside its territory, he said. DUBLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Leukemia Drug Market, Drug Price, Patent, Dosage & Clinical Trials Insight 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The market is expected to witness almost 60% absolute growth in next 6 years (2020-2025) and is estimated to surpass US$ 22 Billion by 2025. "Global Leukemia Drug Market, Drug Price, Patent, Dosage & Clinical Trials Insight 2025" offers comprehensive insights on the various clinical and non-clinical parameters responsible for growth of global leukemia drug market. The emergence of new technological innovations in clinical research and drug development methodologies has led to the desired thrust to the market in recent years. This in-depth study enables its readers to identify and let them aware about the ongoing clinical trials, marketed drug dosage and price analysis, market advancements and associated commercial opportunities offered in the form of detailed analysis and graphical information presented in the report. The market is currently anticipated to be growth driven by many potential therapies as well as hundreds of ongoing clinical trials. There are more than 600 drugs in clinical trials and more than 70 drugs are commercially available in the market. The various advantages that are further adjoined by the market: private and public funding, innovative technologies and advancement such as artificial intelligence are classified as fundamentals for transforming the market status in a small period of time. The market has been more concentrated towards promoting the entry of small pharmaceutical companies into it such that it will seamlessly reduce the efforts given by single or few pharmaceutical companies involved in it. The ongoing clinical trials driven by revolutionized research based work have started offering dynamic opportunities towards patient centric approach in the market. It is estimated that the adoption of some changes in the regulatory system will expand the market in the next decade. The same is also accompanied by the emergence of technological innovations which has apparently resulted in the development of novel immunotherapy for the patients. All the advantages that are associated with the market have made it more efficient as well as effective. Currently, a wide range of anticancer drugs are used for the management of leukemia including Kinase inhibitors, BTK Inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, antimetabolites, T-cell therapy, Interferons etc. while many new therapeutics are under investigation. Further, orphan drug designation and fast track approvals are also granted to many drugs by FDA, which is indicating a huge market potential of this segment in upcoming years. Many leading pharmaceutical companies are adopting key strategies including acquisitions and new product launches, which generates new opportunities in leukemia drug market. In addition to this, the investments related to research and development of novel cancer therapeutics is increasing rapidly and many new drugs targeting leukemia are in late stage of clinical trial. Approval of these new drugs is expected in upcoming 1 to 2 years, which take this market to the next level. As per report findings, all the crucial trends that are associated with the leukemia market are making a huge impact on the overall development of the leukemia drugs. It is speeding the way of launch of novel and much needed medicines for the patients who are suffering from leukemia. Steps from incorporation of smart technologies in research to development of novel therapies for leukemia are pointing towards a more efficient as well as cost-effective solutions for millions of patients at global level. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction to Leukemia 1.1 Overview 1.2 History: Initial Description & Origin of Leukemia 2. Relevance of Leukemia Therapeutics in Pharmaceutical Market 3. Commercially Available Treatments & its Impact on the Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market 4. Leukemia Therapeutics Market Growth with Chemotherapy Drugs 4.1 Overview 4.2 Mechanism of Action of Chemotherapy Drugs towards Leukemia Cancer Cells 5. Immunotherapy Candidates Promising Attribute towards Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market 5.1 Overview 5.2 Mechanism of Action of Immunotherapy against Leukemia Cells 6. Small Molecule Cancer Drugs Evolving Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market 6.1 Overview 6.2 Mechanism of Action of Small Molecule Cancer Drugs towards Leukemia Treatment 7. Global Impact of Bone Marrow Transplantation on Leukemia Therapeutics Market 7.1 Overview 7.2 Mechanism of Action of Bone Marrow Transplantation in Leukemia Patients 8. Radiation Therapy Impact on the Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Growth 8.1 Overview 8.2 Mechanism of Action of Radiation Therapy for Leukemia Treatment 9. Ongoing Clinical Research Development for Leukemia Therapeutics 9.1 UCLA to Combine Two Therapies to Leukemia Treatment Platform Available 9.2 CAR-T Cell Trials for Common Leukemia & Lymphoma Types led by UCLA 9.3 LILRB4, A New Potential Target for Leukemia Focused by UT Southwestern Researchers 9.4 Phase Ib/II Trial Result for IDH1-Mutated Acute Myeloid Leukemia by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center 9.5 CAR-NK Cell Therapy for Clinical Trials Results for chronic lymphocytic leukemia by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center 9.6 Takeda's Phase II Trial of Pevonedistat & Azacitidine in Patients with Leukemia 10. Global Partnerships & Collaboration Insights for Development of Leukemia Therapeutics 10.1 Piramal Pharma Solutions & BerGenBio to Undergo FDA Fast Track Leukemia Treatment Development 10.2 Pascal Biosciences and Y-Biologics to Develop Bispecific Antibody for Leukemia Treatment 10.3 Daiichi Sankyo & MD Anderson Collaboration for Accelerated Development of Acute Myeloid Leukemia Therapies 10.4 Merck & Harvard to Undergo Collaboration for Developing Small Molecule Drugs for Acute Myeloid Leukemia 10.5 JZP-458 Pivotal Phase 2/3 for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Study Initiation Announcement by Jazz Pharmaceuticals 11. Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Market Overview 12. Regional Leukemia Therapeutics Market Analysis 12.1 US 12.2 European Union 12.3 Asia 12.4 Middle East & Africa 13. Global Leukemia Drug clinical Trials Overview 13.1 By Phase 13.2 By Country 13.3 By Drug Class 13.4 By Company/Clinic 13.5 By Patient Segment 14. Antineoplastic Drugs for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 14.1 Azacitidine (Vidaza) 14.2 Venetoclax (Venclexta) 14.3 Enasidenib (Idhifa) 14.4 Tretinoin (Vesanoid) 14.5 Histamine Dihydrochloride Injection (Ceplene) 14.6 Ubenimix (Bestatin) 14.7 Arsenic Trioxide (Trisenox) 14.8 Tamibarotene (Amnolake) 14.9 Amsacrine (Amsa PD/Amekrin) 14.10 Immune Globulin (Gammagard Liquid, Gammagard S/D, Cuvitru & HyQvia) 14.11 Crisantaspase (Erwinase) 14.12 Pegaspargase (Oncaspar) 14.13 Calaspargase Pegol (Asparlas) 14.14 Asparaginase (Elspar/Kidrolase/Leunase) 14.15 Sobuzoxane (Perazolin) 15. MultiKinase Inhibitor Drugs for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage, & Price Analysis 15.1 Gilteritinib (Xospata) 16. Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage, & Price Analysis 16.1 Bosutinib (Bosulif) 16.2 Dasatinib (Sprycel) 16.3 Ponatinib (Iclusig) 16.4 Nilotinib (Tasigna) 16.5 Quizartinib (Vanflyta) 16.6 Radotinib (Supect) 16.7 Imatinib (Gleevec) 17. Combinational Antineoplastic Drugs for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 17.1 Cytarabine/Daunorubicin (Vyxeos) 17.2 Ivosidenib (Tibsovo) 17.3 Rituxan Hycela (hyaluronidase/rituximab) 18. Antimetabolites for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 18.1 Cladribine (Mavenclad/Leustatin) 18.2 Clofarabine (Clolar) 18.3 Mercaptopurine Oral Suspension (Purixan) 18.4 Methotrexate Oral Solution (Xatmep) 18.5 Decitabine (Decogen) 18.6 Nelarabine (Arranon) 18.7 Fludarabin (Fludara/Oforta) 18.8 Methotrexate 19. Anticancer Antibiotics for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 19.1 Pentostatin (Nipent) 19.2 Mitoxantrone (Novantrone) 19.3 Idarubicin (Idamycin) 20. Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase Inhibitors - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 20.1 Duvelisib (Copiktra) 20.2 Idelalisib (Zydelig) 21. Alkylating Agents for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 21.1 Bendamustine (Treanda/Belrapzo/Bendeka) 21.2 Cyclophosphamide 21.3 Dianhydrogalactitol (DAG for Injection) 22. Bruton Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) Inhibitors for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage, & Price Analysis 22.1 Ibrutinib (Imbruvica) 23. Monoclonal Antibodies for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage, & Price Analysis 23.1 Inotuzumab ozogamicin (Besponsa) 23.2 Gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg) 23.3 Ofatumumab (Arzerra) 23.4 Gazyva (Obinutuzumab) 23.5 MabThera/Rituxan (Rituximab) 23.6 Blinatumomab (Blincyto) 23.7 Lumoxiti (Moxetumomab pasudotox) 23.8 Poteligeo (Mogamulizumab) 23.9 Rituximab Biosimilar (Truxima) 23.10 Rituximab Biosimilar (Ruxience) 23.11 Rituximab Biosimilar (Rixathon) 23.12 Rituximab Biosimilar - Acellbia 23.13 Rituximab Biosimilar - Maball 23.14 Rituximab Biosimilar - Mabtus 23.15 Rituximab Biosimilar - Zytux 23.16 Alemtuzumab (Campath) 24. T-Cell Therapy for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage, & Price Analysis 24.1 Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) 24.2 Nalotimagene Carmaleucel (Zalmoxis) 25. Mitotic Inhibitors for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 25.1 Vincristine Liposomal (Marqibo) 26. Antineoplastic Interferons for Leukemia - Availability, Dosage & Price Analysis 26.1 Interferon Alpha-2b (Intron A) 26.2 Interferon Alfa-2a (Roferon-A/Veldona) 26.3 Interferon Alpha (Multiferon) 27. Global Leukaemia Drug Clinical Pipeline By Company, Indication & Phase 27.1 Unknown 27.2 Research 27.3 Preclinical 27.4 Clinical 27.5 Phase-0 27.6 Phase-I 27.7 Phase-I/II 27.8 Phase-II 27.9 Phase-II/III 27.10 Phase-III 27.11 Preregistration 27.12 Registered 28. Global Marketed Leukaemia Drug Clinical Insight 29. Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Dynamics 29.1 Global Leukemia Therapeutics Growth Attributors 29.2 Challenges Concerning the Growth of Leukemia Therapeutics Market at Global Level 30. Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Future Insights 31. Competitive Landscape 31.1 AbbVie Inc 31.2 Bristol-Myers Squibb 31.3 Amgen 31.4 Genzyme Corporation 31.5 Pfizer 31.6 GlaxoSmithKline Plc 31.7 Novartis International AG 31.8 Teva Pharmaceuticals 31.9 Takeda Pharmaceuticals 31.10 Piramal Pharma Solutions For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/pxxh1h Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com "Keurig is excited to partner with Jonathan Adler, a long-time Keurig fan and coffee lover, for our first-ever limited-edition Brew the Love Collaboration," said Andrew Loucks, President of Keurig Appliances for Keurig Dr Pepper. "We launched this new platform as a way to celebrate our biggest fans and the inspiration they provide us, which is why we are so thrilled to feature Jonathan Adler as our first partner. Jonathan brought his stylish, iconic look to our popular K-Mini brewer and matching coffee accessories. We're proud of the collaboration and look forward to the future of this unique fan-based platform." Inspired by Adler's signature patterns, iconic designs and his favorite colors, the Jonathan Adler Keurig Collection offers a chic new look with a touch of modern American glamour as the first installment of the partnership. Consumers will be able to enjoy these limited-edition pieces personally designed by Adler for his own home, and now for adoring Keurig and Adler fans alike, adding a fresh look to coffee stations everywhere. "Working with Keurig has been a delight," said Adler. "It was a thrill to be able to put my favorite colors and patterns on my favorite brewer. I'm so excited and so caffeinated." The Jonathan Adler Keurig collection offers a design-forward, polished and modern option for consumers that brings style and great taste to any space. Pricing for this collection, sold separately, includes: Jonathan Adler Keurig K-Mini Brewer: $99.99 MSRP Jonathan Adler Keurig Mug: $9.99 MSRP Jonathan Adler Keurig K-Cup Pod Canister: $14.99 MSRP To learn more about Keurig and Brew the Love Collaborations, visit www.keurig.com and follow @keurig on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. About Jonathan Adler Potter, designer, and author Jonathan Adler launched his namesake brand after leaving his day job to pursue his first love: pottery. In 1993, Barneys bought his collection of pots, and five years later, he opened his first store in Soho. Jonathan's desire to design all the bits one needs to create a flawlessly chic home lead to more and more. Today, Jonathan Adler is a design company with stores worldwide, a thriving e-commerce site, a full slate of residential and commercial projects, and a wholesale business with over 1000 points of distribution globally. It is dedicated to bringing Modern American Glamour to your life. About Keurig Dr Pepper Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) is a leading beverage company in North America, with annual revenue in excess of $11 billion and nearly 26,000 employees. KDP holds leadership positions in soft drinks, specialty coffee and tea, water, juice and juice drinks and mixers, and markets the #1 single serve coffee brewing system in the U.S. and Canada. The Company's portfolio of more than 125 owned, licensed and partner brands is designed to satisfy virtually any consumer need, any time, and includes Keurig, Dr Pepper, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Canada Dry, Snapple, Bai, Mott's, CORE and The Original Donut Shop. Through its powerful sales and distribution network, KDP can deliver its portfolio of hot and cold beverages to nearly every point of purchase for consumers. The Company is committed to sourcing, producing and distributing its beverages responsibly through its Drink Well. Do Good. corporate responsibility platform, including efforts around circular packaging, efficient natural resource use and supply chain sustainability. For more information, visit, www.keurigdrpepper.com. CONTACT: [email protected] SOURCE Keurig Dr Pepper Related Links http://www.keurigdrpepper.com The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. Some Republicans raise concerns that ByteDance would maintain access to information on the 100 million TikTok users in the US. The Financial Times had earlier reported that ByteDance was to place TikToks global business in a new US-headquartered company with Oracle investing as a minority shareholder along with other US investors. Trump says he wont allow that. (Photo | AFP) Washington: President Donald Trump said he expects to get a report Thursday about Oracles bid for the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok and admitted there is no legal path to letting the US Treasury get a cut of the deal a proposition experts had criticised as unprecedented and possibly illegal. Im not prepared to sign off on anything. I have to see the deal, Trump told White House reporters Wednesday evening about Oracles interest in TikTok. Some in the US have raised concerns about the deal, fearing that ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese company that owns TikTok, would maintain access to information on the 100 million TikTok users in the United States. It has to be 100% as far as national security is concerned, Trump said. He also said he opposed an arrangement reported by media outlets in which ByteDance would keep a majority stake in the company and Oracle a minority stake. We dont like that. Conceptually, I can tell you I dont like that, Trump said. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg reported earlier in the day that Oracles proposal fell short of addressing the Trump administrations concerns over national security, though the deal remains under discussion. The Financial Times had earlier reported that ByteDance was to place TikToks global business in a new US-headquartered company with Oracle investing as a minority shareholder along with other US investors. The TikTok saga has seen several twists, with Microsoft seen initially as the suitor before its bid was rejected. Chinese authorities have said they would not allow ByteDance to sell the algorithms used by TikTok which are believed to hold much of the value for the popular social platform. TikTok said in a statement that weve submitted a proposal to the Treasury Department which we believe would resolve the Administrations security concerns and allow the app to continue to be used by 100 million people in the US. President Trump previously said that he would ban TikTok if it wasnt sold to an American company. In an August 6 order, Trump said TikTok reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive, is potentially a source for disinformation campaigns and threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans personal and proprietary information. TikTok maintains that it has not shared US user data with the Chinese government and would not do so, says it does not censor videos at the request of Chinese authorities and notes that moderators for US operations are led by a US team. Trump said he was stunned to learn that the Treasury could not receive any payment in exchange for the US signing off on the deal. Amazingly, I find that youre not allowed to do that, Trump said. If theyre willing to make big payments to the government theyre not allowed because ... theres no legal path to doing that. ... How foolish can we (the United States) be? The Oracle arrangement, according to a person familiar with the matter who isnt authorised to speak publicly, entrusts TikToks US user data to Oracle, which would oversee technical operations for TikTok in the US Oracle wont develop code for the app, but will review it and updates to it. Not all Republicans are on board with the Oracle deal. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a frequent critic of both China and the tech sector, called for the government to reject the Oracle partnership and instead pursue a full sale of TikTok in the US or ban the app. An ongoing partnership that allows for anything other than the full emancipation of the TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control is completely unacceptable, and flatly inconsistent with the Presidents Executive Order of Aug. 6, he wrote on Tuesday. A group of six other Republican senators led by Marco Rubio of Florida on Wednesday sent a letter to the president expressing reservations about the partnership agreement with Oracle, saying that it appears to have significant unresolved national security issues and that a deal must ensure that TikToks US operations, data and algorithms are entirely outside the control of ByteDance or any Chinese-state directed actors. Texas and Houston depend mightily on a thriving oil and gas industry, and thats why its so important that the Railroad Commission of Texas be led by experienced, capable commissioners. Fortunately, as an engineer and a lawyer, Democrat Chrysta Castaneda has the combination of knowledge and experience to help the RRC shepherd the crucial industry through one of the most challenging economies in decades. As the founding law partner of the Castaneda Firm, which focuses on oil and gas litigation, she also understands the importance of crafting and enforcing regulations to protect the states environment. That is why we recommend Castaneda, 57, in the statewide Railroad Commission race in the Nov. 3 election. If elected, she would join two Republican commissioners who, like her opponent, can be counted on to give the industrys needs top billing over environmental concerns. Whats really needed is a balance between helping the industry thrive and minimizing its harmful impacts. Republican Jim Wright, a South Texas rancher and oil field service company owner who knocked off Commissioner Ryan Sitton in the GOP primary, is also on the ballot, as is Libertarian candidate Matt Sterett, who runs a small software company based in Austin. While Wright also would bring experience to the job, it would be solely from the industry side. Texas needs at least one member of the Railroad Commission who takes to heart both the mandate that the commission promote the oil and gas industry and its charge to safeguard the water and air Texans drink or breathe. Castaneda will do just that. Launching her campaign with a focus on the wasteful and damaging practice of flaring the burning of surplus gas from oil wells she is better positioned to steer a course for the 21st century. There is incredible ingenuity and creativity in this industry and we just need to tap it, because these problems can be solved, she told the editorial board. Castaneda is our choice because we believe that is the best approach for the future of Texas. Barack Obamas first presidential memoir, A Promised Land, will be released on Nov. 17. On social media this morning, Obama said, Theres no feeling like finishing a book, and Im proud of this one. "Ive spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in A Promised Land Ive tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office: the key events and people who shaped it, my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront thenand that as a nation we are grappling with still. "In the book, Ive also tried to give readers a sense of the personal journey that Michelle and I went through during those years, with all the incredible highs and lows. "And finally, at a time when America is going through such enormous upheaval, the book offers some of my broader thoughts on how we can heal the divisions in our country going forward and make our democracy work for everybodya task that wont depend on any single president, but on all of us as engaged citizens. Along with being a fun and informative read, I hope more than anything that the book inspires young people across the countryand around the globeto take up the baton, lift up their voices, and play their part in remaking the world for the better. According to the New York Times, publisher Penguin Random House has ordered a first printing of 3 million copies. "The 768-page book, A Promised Land, will be the first of two volumes, this one encompassing parts of his early political life, his presidential campaign in 2008 and ending with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. It will be released around the world on Nov. 17 in 25 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, Finnish and Vietnamese. Demand for the book is expected to be extraordinary, and Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, has ordered a first printing for the U.S. edition of 3 million copies. To accommodate such an enormous order, Crown plans to print about 1 million of those books in Germany and has arranged for three ships, outfitted with 112 shipping containers, to bring those copies to the United States." Former President Barack Obamas new memoir, "A Promised Land," will be published in November, shortly after the election. https://t.co/oDkk9hQRG8 The New York Times (@nytimes) September 17, 2020 The book is described to be a riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making - from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In this stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. The book is available for pre-order from numerous retailers including Amazon ($45), Target ($45), Barnes and Noble ($34.99) and Books-A-Million ($36). READ MORE Barack Obama speech: Former President steps out as nation confronts confluence of crises. Untitled black and white image 35mm silver gelatin print, 810, by Elaina Heikes CONWAY, Ark. (September 17, 2020) Volume 62 of the Aonian, Hendrix Colleges student literary and visual arts magazine, made its debut Friday, Sept. 4, arriving later than its typical spring release, and for the first time, as an all-online publication. But then, nothing was typical about the Spring 2020 semester. Along with their classmates, Sierra Tribbett-Collins and Jacie Andrews found themselves finishing their senior year away from the Hendrix campus because of the coronavirus pandemic. And as the Aonians editor-in-chief and graphic designer, respectively, they had more than a little extra work in front of them to close their chapter in a Hendrix tradition that dates back to the middle of the 20th century. Tribbett-Collins and Andrews spoke recently with Amy Forbus 96, director of communications for the College, about this unique experience in the history of the Hendrix literary and arts community. How much did the original plan for the Aonian change with the move to remote learning? Sierra Tribbett-Collins: Id say it was a pretty intense change. Our circumstances were a little different at the beginning because we didnt form our staff until late February due to a shift in leadership, so we were kind of scrambling to meet the deadlines. With the remote switch, we were able to slow down a little and didnt need nearly as much funding since we werent using our usual publishing company. But the remote switch naturally made communication much more difficult, so it had its own set of pros and cons. Jacie Andrews: Every year the Aonian is in print and the staff meets in person to discuss pieces and plans. This year was different in that we began our meetings, and they were soon cut short. We were able to meet virtually and talk about the magazine, of course, but we did end up having to do a lot of the work throughout the summer as well. Having the Aonian online was definitely a switch, and that was something we had to figure out as we went. How do you both feel about the end product? ST: Im really happy with it. Jacie did a great job as graphic designer, and I think we both learned a lot more about an online format than we wouldve expected. I love the tried and true format of the previous editions of the Aonian, but it was exciting to be able to produce something that felt so different. JA: Yes, Sierra, I think we learned a lot! Im extremely joyful about the Aonian this year. I think its full of talent, and Im happy to see artists in the Hendrix community recognized. The online version turned out well, and we had tons of great feedback. I think its also a way for us to come together in a time when we sometimes feel so far apart. You both graduated this spring. How much time did you put into the project post-Commencement, and what was that like? JA: Sierra and I corresponded throughout the entire summer and worked together on the project. It was actually something I looked forward to after work every day. I think working on the Aonian was a learning experience, most definitely, but it was also a thing that I really wanted to do. It meant a lot to me to be a part of the process, and I wanted to make it feel good to others as well. ST: Surreal is probably how Id describe it. On top of a virtual graduation, we were still finishing judging the pieces, gathering up the materials to send off to the judges, and communicating regularly with our faculty advisor, Ty [Jaeger, professor of English]. It almost felt like we were still plowing along as if it were any other day at Hendrix, despite the circumstances being so abnormal. It was a good strangeness, though. I think it was really important to have that slice of our old life still intact. It sounds like the team was driven enough that there probably wasnt any point at which you thought it might not come together. JA: Once we were settled, things felt pretty solid to me. Sierra did a fantastic job communicating with all of us, and that was something I really appreciated. ST: Thanks Jacie! I agree, I never doubted that wed drop the project. You mentioned Tys support; what other resources helped you make the Aonian a reality this year? JA: The Aonian staff and the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation staff were awesome. For me, being able to go through the archives and see previous volumes of the Aonian was a huge help in designing. It was most certainly a different format, but being able to see all sorts of organization techniques was very important. ST: In terms of the online aspect, the existing Aonian website on Wordpress was a huge help. It was a resource that had been maintained by previous editors for a while, in order to provide archives of old editions. Since we were given the login information from last years editor, we were able to explore more of what the website had to offer. The Hendrix-Murphy Foundation was also extremely supportive, and they were happy to fund the annual Aonian contest despite it being later in the year. Other than spending all your free time on the Aonian, what have you been doing since graduating from Hendrix? JA: Ive been working at Rabbit Ridge Farms and reading as much as I can. Ive also been spending lots of time cooking, which has been nice! I try to run sometimes, too, but Id much rather cook or read, if Im being honest. ST: Since I live with a family member who is high-risk, Ive been fortunate to find a job that allows for me to be remote. Ive done a bit of Zoom tutoring for online students and recently started a job as a transcriber through Arkansas State University. And writing and reading, of course! In times of chaos and unpredictability, its been really special for me to have all of these other worlds to dive into. Is there anything else youd like to add? JA: Being able to put the Aonian together was special, and Im so honored to have had the opportunity. This journal is something Ive always admired (since being at Hendrix) and being able to be a part of it was such a nice way to end my college career. Im so thankful we were able to offer it this year, despite the circumstances. ST: I know Jacie already touched on this, but Id just like to add that I'm really happy the Hendrix community still wanted to make the Aonian happen. Just as it would have been easy for us to walk away from it, it would have been easy for students not to show interest in the final product. Despite the submission deadline being shortly before campus shut down, I still received a few late submissions after wed gone remote, as well as an almost-immediate text from a staff member asking if we were still going to have a magazine. It was really touching to see how many people cared about the fate of the Aonian. JA: Yeah, Sierra! Its so nice to see how much people care about the Aonian. Thanks for saying that. View the Aonian, Volume 62 About Hendrix College A private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently earns recognition as one of the countrys leading liberal arts institutions, and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and rigor, innovation, and value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu. RIDGEFIELD After three years, two superintendent searches and one pandemic, Carina Borgia-Drake is leaving the Board of Education. It has been my honor to serve the community of Ridgefield, Borgia-Drake said. The pandemic has impacted us all in ways we could not have anticipated. My familys increasing needs necessitated that I submit my resignation from the Board effective Sept. 30, 2020. In an email exchange Wednesday, she looked back on her tenure highlighted by the boards hiring of School Superintendent Susie Da Silva. In my three years serving the public, we provided governance while filling numerous leadership positions. I was part of two superintendent searches and I served with numerous interim leaders, said Borgia-Drake, who was elected in 2017. We hired a compassionate professional in Dr. Da Silva. I am confident she will continue providing excellent work leading the district through this incredible moment. In my three years on the board, we were entrusted to advocate for students without a full-time superintendent. We promoted budgets that served the educational needs of children. On a personal note, I cherished listening to family stories concerning our students who were thriving and those stories of children who were merely surviving their academic experience, Borgia-Drake said. I researched and learned about each issue because education is a quality of life issue for our children. The trust of the public is a sacred gift, she said. At the point that I knew I could not give the students the dedication they deserve, I resigned from the Board of Education. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to serve our community. Borgia-Drake made her resignation official in a letter to Town Clerk Wendy Lionetti. By town charter, the vacancy left by Borgia-Drakes resignation is required to be filled by a majority vote of the remaining members of the school board. If they dont act within a month, the duty falls to the Board of Selectmen. If the member who left the board was elected as a member of a political party, the charter also requires the vacancy be filled by a member of the same political party. Borgia-Drake was elected as a Democrat. The Democratic Town Committee, which may make an advisory recommendation to the school board on filling the position, began seeking potential candidates for the vacancy in a Sept. 11 news release. The Democratic Town Committee requested that interested candidates send a statement of interest and resume or biography to recruitment@ridgefielddems.org by Sept. 26. Interested persons are advised that BOE will conduct its own official selection process for filling the vacancy, the DTC statement said. The BOEs process is separate from the DTCs process. The DTCs endorsement is advisory to the BOE. The DTC also praised Borgia-Drake for her service on the board. Ms. Borgia-Drake was elected to BOE in November 2017, and has served our town and our children with sensitivity and dedication, the committee said. Ridgefield Democrats thank Ms. Borgia-Drake for her valuable service and wish her well. As wildfires spread across Oregon and thousands in the state were forced to evacuate their homes, few individuals have returned to witness what they described as the "unimaginable" destruction in the town of Talent firsthand. The Almeda fire was sparked in Ashland, Oregon, on Sept. 8 and quickly became out of control, overtaking the towns of Talent and Phoenix. "The combination of an early-season windstorm and hot weather led to a dangerous fire setup across Oregon," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist and western U.S. blogger Brian Thompson said. "Fires that started toward the Cascades were blown west toward more urban areas. In addition, fires that started in or near towns quickly spread, burning through towns like Phoenix and Talent." Bow DeBey, a resident of Talent, Oregon, returned to his home after an evacuation and documented the destruction he saw on Facebook Live. Talent Avenue in Talent, oregon. I rode my bike around from midnight to around 2:30am so people and friends could have some understanding what was burned and what was safe.Please consider helping the people who have lost homes and businesses through this gofundme I have set up.http://email.gofundme.com/ls/click?upn=McCelgEyxf19hZNOeSlreO6HA-2BSfGiGcMLzCiS-2ByOIk9sqDOjTa5GgSQm7kn8UtfnfyruK2sbsmHDpNdC1m2V6Xe-2FSsEEzqs-2F-2BoVIjWh2OepAMyp6b6GpF1PkItPO7WHBgFeGgPVEqzn3WPIgzz0mQWxjOhQKz4jSOZ5cOKZf6Q4-2FdUzQOkVMXNjLljE6UUos6yU_HVp1vXHE3-2FUsYOaI2WHf8tRLA-2FuzzyBY9Cwjw6nuXoxCkwnE5iz9eCPMtaYAm1mW-2FYDL6Tb7LxfDmbVjNcJJgWZBRQSSI-2FaW3mZeEVIA4VeYHDMbGRegLgGhvIjtBY3L5fbV5asRG7aa1L8yAbs2LEPZ9Pt-2F6EUhmAr8Sv-2BdKD5oFzqFNvlbkPy1h7qxnXMTD35Gc1oOt-2B3dhPIMT8QpxJncYwl7bga-2Bd0g-2B1P3wfCczFPWdQq07zeki4vc7cU7RPoR4sHUb5Jz7G8yv8zkgtw-3D-3D Posted by Bow Shaban DeBey on Wednesday, September 9, 2020 DeBey, 44, was at work in Ashland when the evacuation was announced, so he didn't have the opportunity to grab any belongings earlier. When he arrived around midnight on Sept. 9, his house was still okay, so he decided to grab his bike and travel around the still-burning town to document the damage. Story continues "I wanted to know what was going on so badly... and I realized there is so many people that must be feeling that way that want to know what's going on," DeBey said. "So I decided to do a Facebook Live video and just show people what was going on." He said people were overall "really thankful" that he was able to document so much of the destruction, and said he began receiving comments from people asking if he could go to their addresses as well to show them if there had been any damage to their properties. "There was a lot of bad news I had to give that night which was actually pretty tough," DeBey said. As he rode through, he narrated everything he witnessed on Facebook Live, which he later said he felt was the only thing keeping him from breaking down from the devastating scene. Drew Cutler from Ashland, Oregon, lives about 3/4 of a mile from where the fire originated. His home was safe, as the wind blew the fires away from it. However, he had friends in Talent and was concerned about their properties. Unable to sleep, he also decided to drive down to Talent and see the damage himself. Buildings are engulfed in flames as a wildfire ravages the central Oregon town of Talent near Medford late Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020. (Kevin Jantzer via AP) In a video he made as he surveyed the town, an entire neighborhood can be seen demolished, aside from one home. "I was just shocked," Cutler, 41, said. "I was shocked it had grown to such a big inferno with firefighters battling it almost from the beginning. But those winds were just horrible for trying to contain it." The home of the friend he originally went to check on turned out to be OK, but a home of another friend was completely gone. CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP While DeBey rode his bike, he tried his best to avoid the thickest areas of smoke. He said every once in a while he would hear a "really loud, ground-shaking" explosion, which he believes may have been propane tanks or gas tanks in cars. The next day, he had a cough and a headache, which he said could have been from the smoke. "The only real concern I had for myself was the air quality," DeBey said, explaining that he did not have on any protective equipment that would filter the air for him. At one point, he drove down a street with a crosswind, so there was fire on both sides of him and embers shooting out into the street as he rode. Despite that, he continued. "I was never in too much fear, there was a lot of adrenaline and I felt like I was really needing to document what was going on." "The heat coming off these buildings was so intense," he said. "It was hot, it was unbelievably hot... I've been in a sauna at like 130 degrees and it was hotter than that." Pink fire retardant covers a car at an area destroyed by the Almeda Fire, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Talent, Ore. (AP Photo/John Locher) DeBey, who has lived in Oregon for a large portion of his life, has never experienced a wildfire tearing through town like the one in Talent. He has experienced what he called "smoky summers" where ash would cover parked cars in the morning, but he has never seen the wildfires hit so close to home. "It was unimaginable to see what I saw that night," he said. "It was about two or three blocks wide and about 10 blocks long of complete destruction." Cutler has lived in Ashland for five years and shared the same shock. He said the town has witnessed fires in the mountains that required them to wear masks even before the pandemic due to a high smoke content in the air, but the fires were never close by. "The scary part is there was nothing anyone could do," DeBey said. "It was the fire's desire and it was up to the wind." While DeBey's neighborhood was still safe when he checked on it that night, he said if the winds had just shifted the entire neighborhood would be up in flames too. Desiree Pierce, right, hugs her step daughter Leah Johnson as they visit their home destroyed by the Almeda Fire, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Talent, Ore. (AP Photo/John Locher) "Wind helps spread fires rapidly as the winds blow the flames around, helping to spread flames in areas of dense brush and forest quickly," Thompson said. "Wind can also blow hot embers a long distance, sometimes miles, which can allow new flareups away from a fire." Cutler said the fires had altered life in the town. A section of Walmart was roped off for collecting donations. Farther down in the toiletries aisle, he witnessed a teenage girl helping two younger girls pick out shampoos and other essentials that they had to leave behind. All throughout the store, people could be seen buying all new clothes. Once he got to checkout, he learned that his cashier's home was burnt down in the fire, and when her shift ended, she would have no home to return to. "She's crying there while she's ringing me up, and I had to go outside and sit in my car and cry myself," Cutler said. "You don't expect stuff like this to happen, and I'm feeling so grateful it didn't happen to me, but it happened to so many people close to me." He saw multiple mobile home parks entirely destroyed in the town, which struck a nerve with him, as he explained that many of them were rented, and the ones that were owned do not have the same type of homeowners insurance a standard home would. "There's a lot of people who are lower income and really need help right now," DeBey said. This photo taken by Talent, Ore., resident Kevin Jantzer shows the destruction of his hometown as wildfires ravaged the central Oregon town near Medford late Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020. (Kevin Jantzer via AP) Cutler said he was contacted by a neighbor who asked him to help her find a family in need of a home the day after the fire ignited. She was planning to move in with her sister temporarily and allow a family in need to stay in her home rent-free until December. "I was floored by that amount of generosity," Cutler said. "It wasn't just letting people sleep in her guest room, but allowing a family to have a furnished house rent free for several months." DeBey said Talent is now in full recovery mode. To help with the efforts, he created a GoFundMe for those who lost property to the wildfires; 100% of the earnings from the GoFundMe will go toward individuals in the community who need to replace things that were destroyed, such as clothes. So far the GoFundMe has raised more than $7,000. "Everything just feels a little on pause right now and probably will for another several days," DeBey said. "It's just hard to describe quite honestly." Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 20:53:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have agreed to jointly build an anti-pandemic fortress, a Health Silk Road and a community of health for all, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday. The decision was made after he exchanged views with foreign ministers of Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia on deepening anti-pandemic cooperation to defeat the COVID-19, Wang, who attended the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries in Moscow and visited the four countries on Sept. 10-16, told Xinhua in an interview. China and the four countries have supported each other through thick and thin and conducted effective anti-pandemic cooperation since the epidemic broke out, Wang said. Recalling Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga's China visit in February, the telephone talks held between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his counterparts in Russia, Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, namely Vladimir Putin, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Sooronbai Jeenbekov, Wang said China and the four countries have offered support and aid to each other to fight against the pandemic. In a bid to deepen the anti-pandemic cooperation, the ministers have agreed to take measures in four areas, Wang said. First, China and the four countries will strengthen anti-pandemic cooperation, firmly support the World Health Organization in playing a coordinative role and oppose any attempt to politicize the pandemic and attach a geographical label to the virus. Second, they will consolidate and expand anti-pandemic achievements. Third, they will actively promote the cooperation in the development, production and purchase of vaccine. Fourth, they will make a concerted effort on Chinese traditional medicine cooperation, Wang said. In the interview, Wang also said the SCO foreign ministers' meeting has pushed forward international cooperation against the COVID-19 pandemic and pledged support for multilateralism. The key mission of this foreign ministers' meeting was to make political preparations for the SCO virtual summit scheduled in November, he said. The ministers look forward to taking the summit as a chance to more effectively deal with global challenges, defuse security risks, share development opportunities, while setting the SCO as a model for multilateralism and new-type international relations as it approaches the third decade of establishment, Wang added. The foreign ministers have reached important consensus and agreements in this respect, according to Wang. On China-Russia relations, Wang said the two countries will strengthen cooperation in supporting international anti-pandemic cooperation, setting an exemplar of major-country peaceful coexistence, enhancing cutting-edge technological innovations and safeguarding international justice and equity. He and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, following face-to-face talks, have reached a series of important consensus on strengthening bilateral ties and dealing with international and regional challenges, Wang told Xinhua. As the world is entering a period of turbulence and change, strong China-Russia relations are of more prominent significance in sustaining regional and world peace and security, according to Wang. China and Russia will unwaveringly develop future-oriented relations, and work with the international community to construct a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, equity, justice and win-win cooperation and build a community with a shared future for mankind, so as to make greater contributions to the cause of human peace and development, Wang said. In the post-pandemic era, Wang said China will continue to promote foreign exchanges and cooperation and better synergize the Belt and Road Initiative and other countries' development strategies. Wang said that during his trip, China and relevant countries summarized the new features and good experiences of cooperation in various fields amid the pandemic and agreed to continue to synergize the the Belt and Road Initiative and each other's development strategies, so as to speed up the resumption of work and production and bring more benefits to countries and peoples in the region. China and relevant countries have also agreed to make joint efforts to accelerate the development of bilateral relations and further deepen bilateral cooperation. On regional security, Wang said China and its regional counterparts will continue to strengthen cooperation to maintain regional security and fight against renewed threats and challenges facing the region. During his trip, countries in the region agreed that strategic cooperation on security shows a high level of mutual trust and is a crucial part of their all-round cooperation, Wang said, proposing China and other Asian nations enhance security cooperation in the face of the new threats and challenges. On Afghan peace process, Wang said China sincerely hopes that all parties to Afghanistan's peace talks will prioritize the interests of its people as well as the nation. He stressed that the fundamental direction of political settlement, the basic principle of the Afghan-led approach, and the framework goal of broad inclusiveness should be adhered to. At the same time, it is hoped that the new Afghan government will unswervingly combat terrorism, pursue a peaceful and friendly foreign policy, and earnestly push Afghanistan onto a path of peace, stability and development, he added. Enditem - The Kotoka International Airport has since its reopening recorded 16 cases so far - Four out of the 16 people have been hospitalised - The rest of the infected people are being managed from home Our manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in The Kotoka International Airport (KIA) was opened to international flights by government on September 1, 2020 with a lot of conviction. The Government stated that they had put a lot of logistics in place to ensure no passenger with coronavirus gets into the country. The airport has, however, since its reopening recorded 16 cases so far. According to a report filed by theghanareport, Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said over 6,000 tests have so far been conducted on arriving travelers. Reopening of airport: 16 COVID-19 cases recorded so far at Kotoka Source: Myjoyonline.com Source: Original READ ALSO: Akufo-Addo confirms opening of Kotoka International Airport Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, September 16, 2020, on updates on the surveillance report, he revealed that four out of the 16 people have been hospitalised. He however, added that those four do not have severe symptoms and the rest are being managed from their homes. COVID-19 statistics from the Ghana Health Service as of September 16, revealed that Ghanas active case count stands at 564 with 45,655 confirmed cases. The death toll stands at 294 while recovery rate has risen to 44, 797. Ghana recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 12, 2020 after two persons entered the country without knowledge of infection from the virus. One was a Norwegian and the other a Ghanaian national. READ ALSO: Rawlings meets with Malian military leaders; advises them on the way forward President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo confirmed that, the Kotoka International Airport would begin operation on Tuesday, September 1, 2020, in an earlier report by YEN.com.gh. According to him all passengers who would be reporting to the airport are to have a negative COVID-19 test result. The result he said should not be more than 72 hours old when presented at the airport. Aside possessing a negative COVID-19 test result, the president announced that all passengers who disembark at the airport would be required to undergo a mandatory COVID-19 test. READ ALSO: Travellers to Ghana to pay over GHC800 as COVID-19 testing fee Ghana re-opens Kotoka International Airport to passengers |#Yencomgh Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: YEN.com.gh President Moon Jae-in and his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev, shake hands before holding a summit in the Oval Office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 19 (local time). Korea Times file Following a two-month recovery on sales, a local vehicle importers group experienced a slight drawback back in August, a known lean month every year. Sales for the Association of Vehicle Importers and Distributors, Inc. (AVID) only reached 4,753 units, which reflected a seven-percent slide as compared to the 5,100 units delivered the previous month. Last June, the groups deliveries went up by almost 200 percent in comparison to the major slowdown experienced in May 2020. The momentum carried on to July, with another 40 percent climb in vehicle roll-outs. AVID group attributed the downward movement in August due to the modified enhanced community quarantine for two weeks in Metro Manila and nearby provinces. Edsa traffic However, AVID President Ma. Fe Perez-Agudo said that they are expecting that their 21-member strong organization will sustain positive growth starting this month up to December. There are encouraging indicators of a sustained recovery for auto with the gradual reopening of businesses. Still, we remain vigilant since a key aspect of the industrys revival is the restoration of consumer confidence through strict health and safety guidelines and rapid digital transformation. These ensure the well-being of our stakeholders, continuity of operations, and preservation of livelihood, Agudo explained. Agudo In August 2020, the Passenger Cars (PC) segment continued to gain traction as sales went up by 6 percent to 1,865 vehicles delivered in July. Hyundai Asia Resources Inc. (HARI) is at the forefront of the sales volume for the PC segment, followed by Suzuki Philippines and Ford Philippines. Commercial Vehicle (CV) segment enjoyed a 95-percent jump in sales month-on-month. The group said that the CV sales are expected to rebound sooner rather than later with the continuation of the BUILD BUILD BUILD program and Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP). It was the Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) segment that pulled the groups sales into the red, dropping 14 percent in sales to 2,851 units sold in August. The top three contributors to this sector are Ford, Hyundai, and Suzuki. Story continues AVID has yet to bounce back from its 48.7 percent loss in sales this year, which covers the full eight months of the yearselling only 29,360 versus the 57,202 that was attained for the same period in 2019. Agudo AVID is urging the government to throw in its full support for the automotive industry. AVID is one with the auto industry in calling for government support so we can recover from the impact of this pandemic. We welcome government initiatives that further open opportunities for investment, create jobs for our workers, provide reliable and affordable mobility for Filipinos, Agudo claimed. However, we are particularly concerned about the proposal to impose 'safeguard' taxes on imported vehicles. Prior to the lockdowns, we have conveyed our position that penalizing imports will not trigger investments nor address pressing issues faced by the local manufacturing sector. Rather, it is a disruptive measure which will further inhibit the growth of the automotive industry and reduce our competitiveness in the region," she added. Photo/s from Association of Vehicle Importers and Distributors, Ruben D. Manahan IV Also read: Vehicle Importers Ready for Dealership Ops in GCQ AVID Vehicle Sales on Downtrend in January 2020 Vehicle Importers Group Sales Drop by 34 Percent Ayuk Tabe au tribunal Facebook The Court of Appeal of Cameroons Centre Region has upheld the conviction and life sentences of jailed frontline activists of the putative state of Ambazonia, defence lawyers said on Thursday. The presiding judge of the Court of Appeal of the Centre Region, Mindjimba Mindjimba, flanked by Mr. Njola Crispin and Colonel Mekouabouth, this 17th day of September 2020, upheld the judgement slammed on appellants by the Trail Military Tribunal, Yaounde, said Amungwa Tanyi Nico, Chairman of the Communication and Media Committee for the Defence Team of Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 9 others. The defense lawyers, in a press release, said: The judge, without formally opening the session in English (the language of the Appellants), began by announcing that all the matters on the Cause List were to be adjourned, given the fact that the entire panel had been transferred, and that in any case, they will be moving to their new stations by the close of next week. This was the same reason he gave during the last session which held on August 20, 2020. Faithful to his declaration, he adjourned every other matter on the Cause List. Curiously, on the indication of Counsel for Appellants that their matter has not been called, the judge gave instructions to the Registrar to read the names of the Appellants, and the Registrar did same without more. The judge then requested for the file and himself proceeded to re-read the names of the Appellants, without summoning them to dock. In a surprise move, Justice Mindjimba Mindjimba turned to the Legal Department (Respondents) and asked whether they had any observations. As soon as he requested for the observations of the Legal Department, Counsel for the Appellants raised an objection which he ignored completely. The Commissaire du Gouvernement (state prosecutor), representing the Respondents, surprisingly prayed the court to uphold the proceedings of the trial military tribunal and dismiss the appeal. Justice Mindjimba Mindjimba then ruled that he was suspending the session for fifteen (15) minutes. He resumed in ten (10) minutes and in less than one minute, delivered what he referred to as judgment, dismissing the appeal and upholding the judgment of the trial Military Tribunal Yaounde that slammed the Appellants with life sentences. It should be noted that from the time the appeal was listed for hearing, Appellants, who are held in the Kondengui Principal Prison (Yaounde) have never been granted access to their Counsel. The crux Arrested at the Nera Hotel in Abuja on January 5, 2018, the ten activists were tried before the Yaounde Military Tribunal in Suit No. OMJD.No. 669/29/11/2018. They were sentenced to life imprisonment on August 20, 2019. Julius Ayuk Tabe, Cornelius Kwanga, Dr Egbe Orock, Barrister Eyambe Ebai, Dr. Fidelis Nde Che, Dr. Kimeng Henry, Dr. Nfor Ngala Nfor, Prof. Augustine Awasum, Barrister Shufai Blaise and Tassang Wilfred stood trial against the People of Cameroon on charges of secession, terrorism, hostility against the state of Cameroon, revolution and the non-possession of their identity cards among other charges. In fact, Barrister Ayukotang Ndep Nkongho who is familiar with the case was reported as saying that the ten accused persons were guilty of all the charges levied against them. According to the verdict that was pronounced by the presiding military judge, Lieutenant Colonel Misse Njone Jacques, defence lawyers said their clients were each sentenced to life jail and were ordered to jointly pay FCFA 250 billion to the civil party and the state as well as jointly pay FCFA 12 billion as cost of the trial or serve an additional five years each. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe Julius is said to be the President of the Interim Government of Ambazonia, a self-proclaimed country (a geographical allusion to Cameroons North West and South West Regions) whose independence separatists have since taken up arms to seek. Corporate demands by Common Law Lawyers and Anglophone Teachers led to protests in November 2016. The street demonstrations later morphed into running gun battles between security and defence forces and armed separatist fighters in the predominantly English-speaking regions. Government is said to be exploring a wide range of options to resolve the crisis, including holding talks with stakeholders. A covert tunnel, constructed during the cold war era in Albania has now turned into a major tourist hub. The 1,500-meter long tunnel was built in the year 1960s by the then communist states dictator Enver Hoxha. Back in the day, Hoxha had convinced Albanians that foreign powers were conspiring to overthrow their communist state. Bunkerisation project He then commissioned a massive bunker station project, secretly constructing over 17,0000 military bunkers which aimed at fortifying the hermit state. The giant tunnel, which was relentlessly constructed under utmost secrecy, was built as a part of it. The tunnel has 80 rooms and is dubbed as the 'Cold War tunnel'. Although it remained hidden from the locals for a long time, it was rediscovered after the fall of communism in 1992 . It has become a tourist draw since then. Not only the site in Gjirokastra is a UNESCO world heritage site but also one of the major tourist attractions of the 'city of stone'. Read: Harry Maguires Sister Daisy Returns To UK After Being Stabbed In Arm By Albanian Gangster Read: Rita Ora Accused Of 'blackfishing' By Netizens As They Find Out About Her Albanian Roots In the 60s, Albania's bunkers were mostly abandoned, while some larger sites fell victim to looters. However, this tunnel was preserved by the authorities and today is site that the country boasts off. In recent years some of the shelters have been converted into funky cafes, warehouses, while some have been housing for the homeless. At the entrance of the Tunnel Bunker during the Cold War! It still has 80 rooms and is completely empty. #gjirokaster #albania #UNESCO #Communism credits: https://t.co/qAGi725xXY IG pic.twitter.com/CQQxgVrfcp Visit Gjirokastra (@visitgjirokastr) July 6, 2018 Tourism affected While the Balkan nations tourism has largely been affected by COVID-19, the tunnel still atracts a handful of tourists. According to the countrys tourism ministry, there has been a 64 per cent decrease in visitors from January to July, with 1,690,000 fewer foreign visitors compared to 2019. Gjirokstra city saw 22,000 arrivals to the end of August compared with 120,000 last year. Cold war tunnel in #Gjirokastra, un underground bunker that served aa an emergency shelter during comunism period 1944-1990@visitgjirokastr pic.twitter.com/IGIW0BkKcG Visit Gjirokastra (@visitgjirokastr) July 9, 2020 Read: Albanians Want Children Returned From Refugee Camps In Syria Read: Albania Arrests Woman Wanted In Italy For Terror Conviction (Story image credits: visit-gjirokastra.com/Promo image: visitgjirokastr/Twitter) How much will polar ice sheets add to sea level rise? Over 99% of terrestrial ice is bound up in the ice sheets covering Antarctic and Greenland. Even partial melting of this ice due to climate change will significantly contribute to sea level rise. But how much exactly? For the first time ever, glaciologists, oceanographers, and climatologists from 13 countries have teamed up to make new projections. Their modelling efforts, involving CNRS and CEA researchers (1), show that the Antarctic Ice Sheet may account for up to 30 cm of sea level rise between 2015 and 2100. However, some scenarios alternatively suggest that the volume added to the ice sheet by snowfall will surpass what is lost through melting, partially offsetting the rise--by 7.8 cm at best. This wide range in estimates (2) mainly reflects incomplete knowledge of melting that occurs on the bottom of ice shelves. But these floating glacial fringes, which can cover an area half the size of France, pen in the rest of the ice sheet. Were they to be lost, the new projections indicate that the ocean would rise several metres over 500 years. Over the same 2015-2100 period, the Greenland Ice Sheet would contribute an additional 1.5 to 14 cm, depending on the level of our greenhouse gas emissions. These findings have been discussed in a spate of scientific articles, including five published in The Cryosphere on 17 September 2020. To refine their predictions, scientists are turning to a new generation of climate models that directly integrate data on the cryosphere, in addition to atmospheric, oceanic, and biogeochemical inputs. ### Notes: (1) Working at the Institute of Environmental Geosciences (CNRS/Universite Grenoble Alpes/IRD/Grenoble INP) and Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment (CNRS/CEA/UVSQ). These labs are members of the Observatoire des sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble and Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, respectively. (2) These estimates are higher than previous ones: the 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate posited that melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet would account for 3 to 28 cm of sea level rise between 2000 and 2100. However, not only have an insufficient number of studies been conducted, but those available based their findings on simpler models of the interactions between ice, the ocean, and the atmosphere. This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. A training program for entry-level cooks on P.E.I. is resuming this month after being on pause since March. The free training program is offered by the Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island and the Culinary Institute of Canada and is funded by Skills P.E.I. The goal is to train cooks to work in Island kitchens and help restaurants fill their labour gaps. "This program was started because industry was crying for more help," said Kim Smith with the tourism association. "They needed a lot more help in the kitchen, whether it was prep cooks, line cooks, assistance within the kitchen, there was a massive shortage." Hitting pause A cohort of 20 participants started in February and were about three weeks into their program when the pandemic struck P.E.I. and the program was halted. Smith said they now have permission to resume the training, though only 11 of the participants will be returning. The cohort can have up to 15 within their COVID requirements. "Most of them weren't able to return because they were able to seek full-time employment, which is a great reason to not return to training. So we do have 11 from the original group that will be returning, and then we are looking for four more bodies to make it 15," she said. "The Culinary Institute of Canada, unfortunately, wasn't able to open to their students right away because of the amount of international students that they had, so because of that the facility is vacant, so we're able to use their kitchen." Program participants typically complete their internship in an Island restaurant during the Burger Love rush, but will instead be interning during the lead-up to the holiday season. The good thing is a lot of people on P.E.I. are very resilient Kim Smith, TIAPEI "There's always a Christmas rush, both in restaurants as well as catered events in hotels," Smith said. "Those aren't going to be probably as highly attended as they have in the past, but there still will be a need." Story continues Restaurants which take on students are eligible for a subsidy and only have to cover 25 per cent of the individual's wages. Smith said that despite COVID-19, Islanders have always found a way to be resourceful. "Restaurants are looking at different methods. You take your Nimrods for Burger Love, where they have opened up a drive-thru facility," she said. "The good thing is a lot of people on P.E.I. are very resilient. We can come up with different methods, different strategies to still function and still be able to operate." She said the ultimate goal of the program is to see all 15 students get jobs once they graduate. The program resumes Sept. 28 and runs until Dec. 9. More from CBC P.E.I. "I thought about all the things we have in the city, from the three bridges to the Millennium Carillon, the Riverwalk and so much more that make this a special town. I started drawing some sketches and making some drafts and finally came up with something I was happy with. Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra on Thursday ordered a CID probe into the death of a tribal man from Chhattisagrh during a recent crossfire between MP Police and Maoists. Chhattisgarh Forest minister Md Akbar had written twice to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan seeking punishment for those involved in the killing of the tribal man, identified as Jham Singh Dhurve. On Wednesday, Chhattisgarh Governor Anusuiya Uike wrote to Chouhan seeking a fair probe into the death of Dhurve, a resident of Balsamund village in Kawardha district of the state. She also demanded compensation for the tribal mans family. The deceaseds friend, Nem Singh Dhurve, who had accompanied him to MP, had survived the firing that reportedly took place along the border of the two states. He said they had ventured into the core area of Kanha Tiger Reserve for fishing on September 6. Earlier, Kawardha collector had inquired into the incident and submitted a report to the Chhattisgarh government. After News18 reported the matter on Wednesday, the MP Human Rights Commission sought a report from the state police. On Thursday, Mishra told reporters that after a magisterial probe, a CID enquiry has been ordered into the death of the tribal man. It is not clear whether the man was killed by Maoists or in police firing. But the man has died and those guilty would be punished, he said, adding every death is painful despite the reason behind it. Expressing his happiness at the CID probe order by the MP administration, Akbar said his government will offer compensation to the victims family. He also reiterated his demand for an investigation into the police-Maoist encounter, Akbar said, I had written to the CM and home minister of Madhya Pradesh, but after receiving no satisfactory response, I briefed the Chhattisagrh governor on the matter and later, a CID probe was ordered, said Akbar said in Kawardha on Thursday. Several tribal community MLAs, led by Sanjay Uike (Baihar), had gathered in Balaghat on Wednesday and protested against Dhurves death claiming the tribal community is persistently trampled in MP and Chhattisgarh. We are not satisfied with the magisterial probe and want judicial investigation to ensure justice for the victim, Uike said. EQT IX to acquire Casa.it, one of Italy's leading online real estate classifieds platforms leading online real estate classifieds platforms The underlying market of Casa.it is supported by favorable secular megatrends, such as the increasing shift from offline to online marketing and significant network effects driven by the platform's long-standing history in the Italian market EQT will support Casa.it's continued growth and further penetration of existing markets, by leveraging EQT's strong digital and sector expertise, "local with locals" approach, and extensive advisory network STOCKHOLM, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The EQT IX fund ("EQT IX") has agreed to acquire Casa.it ("Casa" or "the Company") from funds advised by Oakley Capital ("Oakley"). Casa's management team will continue to lead the Company, building on its strong track record of growth and innovation. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Milan, Italy, Casa is the longest running online real estate classifieds platform in Italy. Under Oakley's ownership, since 2017, Casa has significantly expanded its customer base, now servicing over 14,000 real estate agents with over one million property listings on its website, making it a key destination for prospective homeowners and sellers in Italy. EQT will support Casa's growth and continued pursuit of commercial excellence by investing in the Company's online platform and further developing its portfolio of value-add services for real estate agents. Moreover, the Company is expected to leverage EQT's inhouse digital and tech expertise, global presence, and network of advisors. Together with management, EQT will support Casa's plans to further penetrate the Italian market and strengthen its position as one of the leading online real estate classifieds platforms in the region. Bert Janssens, Partner and Global Co-Head TMT at EQT Partners and Investment Advisor to EQT IX, said: "We are impressed with Casa's growth journey over the past few years. Luca Rossetto and his management team, together with Oakley, have done a great job developing the Company and positioning it as one of the leading online real estate classifieds platforms in Italy. EQT is looking forward to joining forces and continuing on this journey together with Casa." Luca Rossetto, CEO at Casa.it, said: "This step comes after a three-year period of radical change at Casa.it. Our technology platform, brand equity, skills and organization are now positioning Casa.it to be a much stronger player in the Italian market. We are very much looking forward to working with EQT on the next phase of Casa's development. Their experience in Italy and in the online digital sector will be valuable to us as we look to continue to expand both our real estate agent customer base and service offering to property seekers in the Italian market." The transaction is expected to close subject to customary approvals in December 2020. With this transaction, EQT IX is expected to be 10-15 percent invested, based on its target fund size. Contact: EQT Press Office, press@eqtpartners.com, +46 8 506 55 334 About EQT EQT is a differentiated global investment organization with more than EUR 62 billion in raised capital and around EUR 40 billion in assets under management across 19 active funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America with total sales of more than EUR 27 billion and approximately 159,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership. More info: www.eqtgroup.com Follow EQT on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram About Casa.it Casa.it supports approximately 14,000 real estate agents with over 1 million property listings on its website, making it a key destination for prospective homeowners and sellers in Italy. More info: www.casa.it This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/eqt/r/eqt-acquires-casa-it---one-of-italy-s-leading-online-real-estate-classifieds-platforms,c3195403 The following files are available for download: Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 20:09:09|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CAIRO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Under the coordination between Egypt with the Libyan forces, several Egyptian nationals who were kidnapped early in September in Libya were set free, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported on Thursday. "The kidnapped Egyptians were sent back home," MENA said without mentioning the number of kidnapped Egyptians or the details about the conditions of the kidnapping. It added that this came as part of coordination efforts between the Egyptian Intelligence Service and Libyan authorities. Libya has been locked in a civil war since 2011. The situation escalated in 2014, splitting power between two rivals with warring forces, namely the UN-backed Government of National Accord based in the capital Tripoli and the eastern-based Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar. Enditem The Proud Boys have announced they will move a Sept. 26 rally from downtown Portland to the north sides Delta Park, a site linked to a World War II city that was washed away by a flood and was known for its large minority population. The right-wing group, which has gained national attention for its heated rhetoric and marches that often devolve into violence, originally planned to hold the rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza. The change in venue is being made, the group said in a statement, in order to accommodate a battalion of patriots who are ready to exercise their constitutionally protected right to assemble. The statement said the rally is being held in Delta Park to showcase our love for America and Western Values. The Proud Boys have billed themselves as a pro-Western fraternal organization and have fought accusations by critics that theyre associated with white nationalism. Members describe themselves as Western chauvinists and often express disdain for Islam, feminism and liberal politics. Most are also outspoken supporters of President Donald Trump. Enrique Tarrio, national head of the Proud Boys, is organizing the Delta Park rally. Portland Parks & Recreation says it has not received a permit request from the group. During the early days of World War II, industrialist Henry Kaiser built Vanport City in and adjacent to what is now Delta Park to house the thousands of people who were coming to Portland to work in the shipyards. Vanport residents flee the 1948 flood along North Denver Avenue. The unincorporated city was never rebuilt. (The Oregonian archive) Vanport rose from nothing so quickly that it was known at first as The Miracle City. The massive housing project, the second-largest city in Oregon at its peak with some 42,000 residents, included schools, a library and a movie theater. The unincorporated city was meant to be temporary -- the buildings were flimsy and drafty. But in part because racist real-estate practices kept African Americans out of many Portland neighborhoods, a large section of Vanport lived on after V-J Day. (A)s long as over 20,000 people can find no other place to go, Vanport will continue to operate whether Portland likes it or not, The Oregon Journal wrote in 1947. The following year, on May 30, 1948, the rising Columbia River inundated Vanport, with 10-foot-high waves crashing down on the floodplain after the areas makeshift dikes gave way. At the time of the flood, about a third of the developments residents were Black. The Portland areas overall African American population was around 6%. Vanport was never rebuilt. Part of the area was transformed into Delta Park in the 1950s. The Proud Boys, which was started in 2016 by conservative writer Gavin McInnes, plan to hold a barbecue in the park after their rally. The 1948 flood destroyed Vanport. The area was later transformed into Delta Park. (The Oreognian) The group has decried the Portland protests that have taken place almost every day since the May 25 death of George Floyd while Floyd was in police custody in Minneapolis. The Proud Boys have blamed anti-fascists and other left-wing activists for vandalism that has left blocks of downtown Portland boarded up and for provoking confrontations with police. But the group targeted Portland long before this summers social-justice protests. The Proud Boys have organized or taken part in a number of free speech marches in the Rose City since 2017. Some of the Proud Boys' members have frequently engaged in violent behavior, but its leaders maintain the group is peaceful. If you intend on showing up to engage in acts of violence, their latest statement says, dont waste your time or money, please stay home. -- Douglas Perry dperry@oregonian.com @douglasmperry I dont think its a secret that Bob Woodward can neither write nor think. Hes no journalistic hero, hes a jerk; each new tome confirms it. Hes not remotely Seymour Hersh, the other iconic U.S. name of his era, whos still dangerous enough that the New Yorker stopped running him in 2013. For decades it has been more fun to read despairing, exasperated reviews of Woodward than his books. (I admit I skim them, theyre just impossible to focus on.) More instructive too. Joan Didion set the bar in 1996, on his two Clinton books and others. She nailed Woodwards scrupulous passivity as he takes notes on how the powerful like to see themselves. The writings trite, shallow and brimful of cliches (Military sources? Ramrod-straight). At the end of this one, what squiggles out is, Trumps the wrong man for the job. The lesson may be: dont have a beautiful actor like Robert Redford play you when youre young. Since then, hes been replaced by a stock character called Bob Woodward who, at a party, might introduce himself: Hi, Im the guy who writes Woodwards books. It was too much to resist, I guess: Being one of the powerful people who get to decide who the powerful people are. This year, even the New York Times couldnt stomach his effort, and hes been one of their faves forever. Non-fiction editor Jennifer Szalai did well to manage not puking. She reviewed Didions review as much as Woodwards book. She concluded that his conclusion (the wrong man) was anti-climactic and could surprise no one other than maybe Bob Woodward. His pro-status quo bluster is part of what Trump means by fake news and its worth recalling that, despite Trump vouching for it, it actually exists with Woodward a prime example. Trumps constituency, beyond sheer racists and ignoramuses, includes perfectly normal humans, who find themselves thinking, Yah, I always felt that stuff in the news was off like projecting U.S. power abroad, as Obama said, or destroying jobs and communities in the holy name of free trade but I didnt really trust myself till I heard him say it. Noam Chomsky used to play this role for people on the left, as did Jon Stewart and his successors: Confirm doubts and intuitions you had but were reluctant to voice in the face of the authoritative voices of the mainstream. Now Trump fills it for those on the right. Woodward is the establishment figure who confirms what people often suspected about the establishment: its basically about frowning, wrinkling your brow and deepening your voice. Defunding the police wont be easy. Thats partly because it runs into profound human needs for a stabilizing force against chaos, which cops have been slotted as. Just think about pop cop culture. The TV police procedural dominates this field. It poses no riddles, unlike mysteries, and, unlike private eye tales, has no sociology critiquing power, including the cops(!). The champ is Law and Order (also Trumps new slogan, replacing MAGA) in many versions and over 1,800 episodes since 1990. Most episodes start with a crime, often cloaked in night. Then cut to daytime: the cops are there, theyve set up their perimeters with yellow tape, the detectives arrive and assess things, nursing a coffee. Order is restored. This is the archetypal scene and viewers tend to sigh with relief. Its not that theyre good guys, though they are. Its that sense of order restored versus underlying, menacing, violent chaos. It addresses our baseline anxiety. Classic films had it too. At the end of Bad Day at Black Rock, the aged, disabled Spencer Tracy has barely survived violent, white, male racists. How do we know order is restored? The cop cars are there, glittering in the sun. I used to think it quaint, even cute, that Shakespeares tragedies end when an outsider king or noble arrives to survey the scattered corpses and summarize the scene, with a hopeful nod to the future. Surely wed moved past the need for such primitive assurance. But not in our era, or perhaps, ever. Itll be a slog defunding Marc Antony, Fortinbras and the crew at SVU. B Babu Sivan, best known as the director of Thalapathy Vijay's Vettaikaaran passed away yesterday (September 16, 2020). He was 54. Reportedly, the director was found unconscious at his residence by the family members, who rushed him to a private hospital in Tambaram, Chennai. He was later admitted to Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital, where doctors revealed that Babu had a problem with his lungs, liver and kidney. The doctors had also suggested dialysis, but it could not help him recover from the ailment, after which the director breathed his last in the hospital in an unconscious state. Babu Sivan is survived by his wife and two daughters. Meanwhile, several celebrities and fans have shared their condolence messages on social media. Talking about his films, Babu Sivan had directed the 2009 film Vettaikaaran, which turned one of the highest-grossing Tamil films of the year. However, the director was evidently inactive due to unknown reasons but later made a re-entry in 2017 as a scriptwriter for Vijay's Bairavaa. He made it to the mini-screen as he took over daily soap Rasaathi after its director walked out of the project. Notably, Babu had also served as a scriptwriter (dialogues) for Thalapathy's 2008 action-comedy Kuruvi, which also starred Trisha Krishnan. Actor Florent Pereira Of Vellai Illa Pattathari 2 Dies At 67 Famous Comedian Vadivel Balaji Passes Away At 45 BERLIN A longtime invasive weeds issue at a local pond was believed to be responsible for killing the ponds fish population, officials announced this week. We are taking this very seriously, town officials said in a statement Wednesday. Officials are conducting tests to determine the cause of death. Officials did not indicate an estimate of how many fish were killed. Officials said the town has been trying to address invasive weeds water chestnut, watermeal, duckweed, phragmites and algae that started to take over Paper Goods Pond, Railroad Pond and Veterans Park for about a year. If these weeds, some of the most invasive to be found in a body of water, are left untreated, they can continue to grow at alarming rates, officials said. With ponds, especially where the water is less than 10 feet deep, these invasive weeds can completely take over and cause stagnant water that could start to smell, officials said. They deprive the water of oxygen, killing off species that need it to survive like fish, officials said. The town said it weighed many options after conversations with state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and experts in the field over the last year. Among the choices was the option to mechanically remove the plants but it turns out the water is too shallow on one side of the pond to get the needed equipment in place. Another suggestion was to remove the plants by hand, but the infestation is too severe. The only option left was herbicide, town officials said. The town hired a company in May to apply for all the needed permits to apply herbicide to Paper Goods Pond. Officials said that paperwork was obtained by late August. The vendor applied the herbicide by boat at less than half the recommended rate the permit was approved for, officials said. The town was notified by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection about the fish kill on Monday. During the conversation with the DEEP officer we informed him that we had hired a company to apply herbicides to the pond, officials said. The officer then contacted the vendor regarding rate of application, temperature of the water and proper posting of signage. Officials said DEEP investigated and determined the fish were killed by the decomposing plants sucking up all the oxygen, but will still do an autopsy to determine the exact cause. Supporters of qualified immunity for law enforcement officers and city agencies have long argued that the funds for such settlements come out of strained municipal budgets and are needed elsewhere. What theyre really saying is that the funds would have been useful elsewhere, if not for the pesky families suing when their loved ones are killed by the city. Given the cause in which the money is sought, the government should be as liable as everyone else. When your employees do terrible things, you pay a high price, and if you dont want to keep spending money compensating victims, figure out a way to cut back on those terrible things. Amaravati, Sep 17 : Andhra Pradesh's Covid tally breached 6 lakh mark with 8,702 new cases on Thursday, health officials said. The new additions have raised the state's tally to 6,01,462. East Godavari reported 1,383 cases and West Godavari 1,064 cases. Chittoor accounted for 905 infections, followed by Prakasam (705), Kadapa (637) and Nellore (610) among others. Meanwhile, total active cases declined to 88,197 from 90,279 on Wednesday. Prakasam continues to battle the highest number of active cases with 12,411 infections, followed by East Godavari, 12,036. In the past 24 hours, 72 more patients succumbed to the virus, raising the southern state's toll to 5,177, officials said. Continuing the positive trend of more recoveries than infections, 10,712 more patients have recovered from the virus, increasing the total number of recoveries to 5.08 lakh. Until Thursday, AP has tested 48.84 lakh Covid samples. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Danny Fitzpatrick died by suicide in 2016 after being bullied, but on Wednesday, federal legislation helping keep his memory alive came one step closer to becoming law. Nicknamed Dannys Law, the legislation would take steps to address bullying in schools, and was introduced by Rep. Max Rose last July. In times like this, when our country is growing ever more divided, we need to be teaching our children not the art of division, but how to one another, respect each other, work with each other, Rose said in a House floor speech prior to the bills passage. Danny Fitzpatrick was one of those people. He was a boy who loved to love. He accepted each person as they are, and always found in them a shared humanity. Society, our society allowed a beautiful, young boy like Danny to be bullied so horribly that he took his own life at 13 years old, Rose continued. A version of the legislation, which garnered bipartisan support in the lower chamber of Congress, was introduced by former Rep. Dan Donovan during his time in office. It remained unclear whether the bill would pass the Senate. If signed into law, the legislation would require the president to create a 13-member anti-bullying roundtable, which would be tasked with studying bullying in elementary and secondary schools. Once complete, their research would be used to produce two reports for Congress -- a final report with conclusions that would provide recommendations on legislative and other actions, and a best practices report concerning bullying. Dannys mother, Maureen Fitzpatrick, founded the D.A.N.N.Y. Inc. anti-bullying foundation in her sons name, and applauded the passage of the legislation on Wednesday thanking Rose, Donovan, District Attorney Michael McMahon and the community of Staten Island. Dannys Law is the stake in the ground that sends a message across our country about justice and positive change to end the abusive cycle of bullying, she said. Dannys Law is a foundation that positive advocacy can be built on to change lives and save lives with the education of emotional literacy." Opinion | Covid-19: Dark clouds and silver linings Doctors have got a handle on the disease but the government needs to get a handle on the economy In a column published on 16 May, I wrote that India had lost the battle to contain the novel coronavirus. At the time, the daily count of infections was a little over 4,000. It is now 25 times higher, closing in on 100,000, and likely to cross that figure by the time this article is printed. In another column the same month, I questioned the efficacy of the governments contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu. It appears my doubts were well founded, for the greatly hyped app has proven next to worthless. On 2 July, when detected cases in India had just topped 500,000, I wrote that low per capita figures meant little because the virus had an unimpeded path to five million cases and beyond. We have passed the five million watershed, and the current pace suggests we will soon overtake the US as the nation with the most cases. advertisement advertisement Although I was correct in these pessimistic predictions, I drew the wrong conclusion from them. I assumed that Indias healthcare system would break down if we had the kind of daily case load we are now seeing. Instead, though dreadfully overburdened, general hospitals continue to function, and there are empty beds in covid-19 wards in many cities. Who could have imagined six months ago, when European fatalities were skyrocketing despite a low level of total cases, that a nation might cope with a hundred thousand new covid-19 infections each day, that too with only a minimal augmentation of existing treatment facilities? advertisement advertisement What changed in these six months was the ability of doctors to treat the disease thanks to an improved understanding of how covid-19 works. There is no silver bullet, and there may never be one, but the tamping down of the death rate is an incredible achievement for modern medicine, and one deserving of greater acknowledgement. Doctors now understand who needs hospitalization and who is better treated at home, and prescribe cocktails of easily available anti-inflammatory corticosteroids and antivirals that pre-empt a trip to the ICU for most patients. There are other reasons for the drop in death rates that are unconnected with better treatment. Testing capacity has grown tremendously, detecting cases that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Since these are mild infections, they lower the total case fatality rate. Conversely, in a number of nations deaths are being underreported. In India, for instance, many covid-19 deaths are being attributed to co-morbidities, and some patients who die of covid-19 symptoms are never tested. As the disease moves into rural areas with poor facilities, more citizens will die undiagnosed. advertisement advertisement However, the gap between the enormous increase in cases and the much lower growth rate in deaths cannot be explained by these factors alone. The figures are startling. France is in the grip of a second wave of infections, with daily cases of over 10,000. Though that is twice the previous peak in April, fatalities are down by over 90% from the earlier period. Other European nations are also experiencing surges, and Israel just announced a second lockdown, but the story regarding fatalities is encouraging everywhere. On the negative side, the disease constantly reveals new facets of perniciousness. We know that many severe infections lead to long periods of debilitation. Union home minister Amit Shahs hospital visits after recovering from covid-19 are the most visible sign in India of this phenomenon. Covid-19 can cause neurological complications, it can damage a variety of organs, and a recent study in the US found significant cardiovascular problems in young athletes recovering from the virus. It is untrue that whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. advertisement advertisement The best news in the past months has come from two seroprevalence surveys, one conducted in Mumbai by the citys municipal corporation in association with a group of public and private organizations, and the other across 70 districts in 21 states by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). These surveys tested for the presence of antibodies indicating an individual had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Both sero-surveys found that the number of infections in India was massively understated. Extrapolating from its data, the ICMR suggested India had over six million cases in early May, a figure only now being approached in the official count. advertisement advertisement The Mumbai survey found that in slums that were part of the study, 57% of those tested were positive for antibodies. That is a mind-bogglingly high number and if it accurately estimates covid-19 infections, it means the virus has torn through the citys shanty towns largely undetected, causing incredibly few serious illnesses and deaths. If the fatality rate is actually so low in India, it would suggest we ought to remove almost all aspects of the lockdown and start up train services in cities like Mumbai to allow office-goers and labourers to get to their places of work. We need to shift entirely from closures to behavioural modification as our primary response to the virus. advertisement advertisement Mumbais municipal corporation has just launched a My family, my responsibility campaign, having concluded it is now necessary to adopt some changes in our personal, familial and public lives beyond physical distancing and the use of masks and sanitizers, but I wonder what took it so long. Given the gravity of the pandemic, the public outreach and education effort by the Central government and states thus far has been shockingly lax. Mask mandates, where they exist at all, have not been stringently enforced. The Delhi Metro appears to be doing a reasonable job since reopening but that is often the case with a newly implemented system. It remains to be seen whether commuters will adhere to the rules a few weeks down the line. advertisement advertisement In the early days of the global outbreak, thousands of deaths were precipitated by a condition called silent hypoxia. A number of covid-19 patients suffering from pneumonia could breathe without effort, and were therefore not diagnosed in time. The lack of protests in India over the past months, the acceptance of hardship by the population, has created a feeling that things are under control, though we might be perilously short of oxygen. If the economy is, indeed, suffering from silent hypoxia, I hope it will be recognized before we require the ICU. advertisement advertisement Girish Shahane writes on politics, history and art. New report says security forces and governing party youth wing commit rape, murder and other abuses with impunity. Human rights abuses including rape, murder and targeting of the countrys youth persist in Burundi despite a change of government, a new United Nations report has revealed. The report, released on Thursday, looks at the period preceding and following the May election of retired general Evariste Ndayishimiye, a member of the governing party who came to power after the 15-year rule of Pierre Nkurunziza. Nkurunziza, who became president in 1995 after the countrys 12-year civil war, was elected for a third term in 2015 in a poll largely boycotted by the opposition. At least 1,200 people were killed and more than 400,000 displaced during the ensuing unrest between April 2015 and May 2017, according to the UN. While Ndayishimiyes inauguration speech hinted that he hoped to make a break from the abuses committed under his predecessor, the UN report said those changes have not come to pass. So far we see little positive changes since President Ndayishimiye assumed office, Doudou Diene, the chief of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi, said in a statement. The democratic space remains very narrow, impunity persists, and there is no indication that the level of human rights violations has abated under the new government. The report added that Ndayishimiye promoted high-ranking military officers involved in human rights abuses, and appointed some military officers to governorships previously held by civilians. He has also appointed two men, currently under sanctions for rights violations, to his cabinet. Security forces and the youth wing of the governing party, the Imbonerakure, continue to have almost total impunity for beatings, kidnappings and sexual violence, the report said. Comparable gravity In Thursdays report, which covers the period since May 2019, the UN commission said it still has reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Burundi. These crimes include murder, imprisonment or other severe forms of deprivation of physical liberty, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity and political persecution, it said. The investigators, who have been denied access to Burundi itself, particularly highlighted a wide range of serious abuses by local authorities and the Imbonerakure in the context of the 2020 elections. The perpetrators were seeking to deprive the main opposition party of any chance of winning the election, the report said, pointing out that only members and supporters of the main opposition CNL party were the main targets. Authorities had also worked to muzzle independent observers, including journalists, and imposed tight controls on common people, it said, decrying systematic attacks deliberately targeting civilians. Ed Tech Miami-Dade Debacle Leaves Teachers Scrambling In a lengthy message, Miami-Dade County School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho attempted to calm his district community after a chaotic start-of-school week that included distance learning outages and an about-face on usage of a new learning platform. As the Miami Herald reported last week, a midweek school board meeting with some 400 public speakers and lasting 13 hours resulted in a decision to stop using My School Online, a virtual learning system produced by K12. K12 sells online classes and curriculum. The district had signed a $15.3 million no-bid contract with the company during the summer to provide a distance learning option for students in K-12 after numerous staff and parents pleaded for adoption of a single learning system to simplify access. That deal excluded input from the school board. The platform would deliver course content selected by individual educators and maintained in the program and facilitate real-time interaction between teachers and students with its own form of web conferencing. The morning after the school board vote, the district notified teachers to shift to Microsoft Teams or Zoom to teach their classes. And K12 immediately shut off access, leaving many educators scrambling to come up with replacements for lessons now stuck in the My School Online system. According to the Miami-Herald, Carvalho denied that he ever personally signed the contract with K12, adding that the company had never received a single payment in spite of three weeks of training sessions provided to teachers, a week of practice access for families and a donation of $1.57 million to Carvalho's "Foundation for New Education Initiatives." In his statement to the community, the superintendent noted that K12 "had acknowledged the shortcomings of the product." Those included technical challenges and connectivity issues unrelated to software functionality. As one person tweeted, "I say this with no sarcasm, I swear. The @K12Learn system for @MDCPS was much better today. Only took 15 minutes of refreshing, logging off and ultimately restarting the computer but it worked. So it is getting better." Said a parent, "After a couple of attempts finally able get in. Now teacher's audio not working. This is not sustainable." Another parent complained, "My child has had the same error message (Error 401) since SATURDAY and has not been able to access her K-12 platform for school classes. I have spoken to K-12 eight times since Monday and we have exhausted all possible issues." Adding to the struggles experienced by users, the district was hit with a number of distributed denial-of-service attacks. A 16-year-old student attending a South Miami high school admitted to setting off at least eight of those. Along with announcing the suspension of K12 software, Carvalho also said he would be hiring a temporary "senior executive chief information officer" to focus on "security procedures and practices." The contractor would also do "an assessment of existing technology, critical processes, and current infrastructure." He said he would back up any recommendations with a $5 million emergency appropriation "to support ITS infrastructure enhancements." "We are doing all we can to protect this district, our data security, and give teachers and students a good experience," Carvalho wrote. "We must also recognize that distance learning will always have some limited connectivity issues, regardless of platform. This is true in our own daily lives and experiences in our homes, and we must recognize that personal Internet connectivity, individual device functionality, and other unknown variables may affect a certain percentage of users on any given day. But the overall experience must be much better than what has been experienced, and we will deliver that. Our community deserves no less." The passage from Japan (Shimoda) to Canada victoria took 51 days, and it was the hardest thing we've ever done. We decided to keep a logbook, to better remember it and so it can help others who wish to make this trip. EDIT: The North Pacific Logbook was published in August 2020. In February 2021, we released Busy Doing Nothing, a revised and improved e-book version of this text (EPUB, mobi and PDF). Week 1 June 9th 0600 We woke up early today, as we had little time to prepare before leaving Japan. Why so last minute? Because we only decided to leave yesterday morning. The reason we decided so late, was because we were waiting for a SIM card for our Iridium GO satellite phone, and we received it yesterday morning. As soon as we got it, we grabbed our passports and boat papers and hurried to the Immigration Office in Shizuoka to check out (a 4-5 hour train ride away). We were eager to leave on the 9th, as there was a good weather window, with moderate winds coming from a favourable direction. Because we weren't planning to leave until late yesterday morning, there were many tasks we had no yet done, or had not had time to do. We're usually more organized than this, with only a few menial tasks to do, but not this time. Last minute departures is not our style, but we also wanted to take this window. We had to find a post box to send the pocket wifi we rented and to fill our water tanks this may not seem like much, but it was, as it piled up on top of other things we'd forgotten, like finding and installing the pot holders to the stovetop, installing the jack lines, taking out the tethers, putting key items back in the ditch bag plus a number of other last minute things that had escaped us at the time. 0700 We meet Shuhei, Thomas and Anja on the sailing vessel Robusta for coffee, turning down a cup as coffee, as it never sits right on the first day at sea. We use this opportunity to chat, meanwhile butterflies gather in my gut. I am nervous. I always am before a big trip and this time is no different, although this is our biggest passage yet, and will also likely be the most challenging. My gut has every right to twist itself into knots. We ask Shuhei to drop off our pocket wifi in a post box, he agrees ah, what a kind person. He came by this with his truck to help Robusta with some last minute tasks, like getting produce, gas etc. We had done most of that ahead of time. 0800 We push off our spot and head over to the Shimoda Boat Services pontoon to fill our water tanks. We tied up to it and began to ferry bins back and forth to empty them in our tank. We filled as many recipients as we could carry, as we don't know how long the trip will take. Once the tanks and jerry cans were full, we left the pontoon and headed outside of the breakwater. The Shimoda coastguard ship was lifting anchor at the time, it went past us, disappearing quickly as it was going much faster. Outside of the breakwater, we saw the lighthouse on our starboard side, the one we had difficulty rounding when we arrived here a week and a half ago due to 30-knot winds off our bow. Today, the seas were tame and the skies clear and blue. We saw the Kurofune, a replica of Commodore Perry's black ship, taking tourists about the harbor. It was the first time we'd seen it on the water, as there weren't many tourists before due to concerns with the coronavirus. Now that the state of emergency's been lifted, people started traveling more around the country. 1200 The current is pushing us along, fast. We passed Oshima island at a ridiculous speed of 9.5 knots! The kuroshio, or black current, is very strong in this area, and even stronger between the islands as the water is forced through a narrow opening. We had no problem with ships, even with many heading to Tokyo. Our speed made it easy to work our way out of the main shipping channel. We are flying! Pino is happy to be moving again, and as are we. 1430 We saw porpoises in the water! It's been too long! They came for a bow-riding session. We missed them. Winds are coming out of the SW, at a good speed of 12-15 knots. We're going at 8 knots. For lunch, we had inari pouches, a meal we'd purchased at MaxValue the night before. It's nice not having to cook on the first day. Neither of us are sea sick, but going below is still difficult and can easily trigger it. We stay outside instead, enjoying the good wind, weather and sun. Devine is reading "The mushrooom at the end of the world", while I steer us east. We tried calling Robusta on the VHF, but got no answer, either they're too far or their radio isn't on. 1700 Wind rises to 20 knots, we put on our foul weather gear as we don't want to wet our clothes. We won't be doing laundry in this trip, so keeping clothes dry is crucial. June 10th 0800 We download the weather, it is the same as yesterday, but it looks like the wind will increase this evening. Both of us are feeling sick and grumpy. We're experiencing the early symptoms of sea sickness, which usually means a headache, reduced appetite, morose view on things etc. This happens on every trip. Neither of us have ever vomited, thankfully. Yesterday we sent Robusta an email and got a reply, they are ok and are southwest of us. 1200 We napped hard, then awoke and decided that we should try and cook something. Neither of us feel like eating rice balls, we regret getting so many as we aren't sure we can eat them. We have no appetite, but try to eat anyway. We ate raw snap peas as a snack, the texture was weird in our mouths. Devine made spicy ramen, which were very, very spicy. I couldn't finish my bowl. We had a grapefruit for desert, and made a mess on deck trying to pry it apart. The deck had red on it for a while afterwards. 1700 We check the weather again. We don't normally check it twice a day as it eats up data, but the weather was changing so fast...! We wanted to know what was going on. We're glad we looked, as the wind was set to increase by a lot. If we hadn't checked, we might not have set the second reef point in our main. The last thing we want in this ocean is to have too much canvas up. 1800 We eat chips as a snack, as we are not hungry for a full dinner. Everything tastes weird? It's like our taste buds are going crazy. The only thing that goes down easy is salty foods. June 11th 0200 Saw a tanker ahead, but it wasn't moving? We passed its stern, wondering why it was idling out here. 0900 We've reduced the jib, as the wind is a strong and steady 27 knots. We are sailing east, although the current has pushed us higher than we wanted. We are at 36 degrees, and it is worrisome as we knew it was safer to stay under 35. The wind above that line tends to be stronger. Robusta was at 33 degrees, upon exiting Shimoda they took a more southerly route, I wish we'd done the same. We underestimated the strength of this current. We have peanut butter toast with slices of banana on top for breakfast. Devine sent a happy birthday message to their sister. 1100 The waves are getting bigger. We are worried about our fresh produce as we can't eat any of it. This has never happened to us before. The sun is warm and is hastening the rotting of some of the more sensitive vegetables, like broccoli. We had to throw away half a head overboard today. I hope we'll find our appetites again, I'd rather the food end up in our stomachs than in the ocean. 1200 Devine made a salad for lunch to try and use up some of our uglier produce. The wind is blowing food off of my fork as I eat, maybe not the best meal to have on a windy day. The wind is blowing 25-30 knots, generating big waves, but at least it is sunny. 1300 We watched seabirds pirouetting in the distance, they've no problem in this wind. Their movements are sharp and fast. We don't know what kind of bird they are, they're brown with a white stomach. We've noticed the automatic bilge pump keeps going off, we think there's a leak below the waterline, if so, that is worrisome. We tried to find where it was, but found nothing. None of the thru-hulls are leaking. I also checked the hose connections, nada! I suspect it may be the rudder post that is leaking, but for now it is impossible to look as I'd have to get into the cockpit locker, which is full of water bins and other heavy gear. For now, we try and check the bilge often, pumping the water out by hand every 2h or so. We have two manual bilge pumps, one in the cockpit and another in the cabin under the sink. The automatic bilge pump doesn't empty the bilge entirely, as it sits on a little stand above the lowest point, but the manual pump tube touches the bottom and does a better job of sucking up the majority of the water. If anything, the automatic pump serves as an alarm. 1700 Made spaghetti with eggplant and green peppers for dinner. It is still hard to finish food, so we started making smaller portions as to avoid waste. Both of us are still plagued with weird tastebuds. Sweet is too sweet, veggies are bland... June 12th 0800 Rain. All day. It won't stop. We've asked it to, but it won't listen. 1900 The conditions out here are horrible. We are running with the waves and wind, we wished we'd put in the 3rd reef earlier. It is too late to do it now, as it is dark and stormy. Neither of us eat dinner, we're in sparta mode. June 13th 0800 It is still raining a lot, with winds gusting in the high 30's. This weather is demoralizing, but at least we are making good easting and getting further and further away from Japan. I never thought I'd be happy about getting away from Japan, it's my favorite place in the world...! The ocean around the country is mean, and another entity entirely, lingering here is dangerous. Oh how much I wish the rain would stop, everything would be more pleasant if the rain stopped. 1200 Devine made pasta with a mustard sauce for lunch, I ate half and left the bowl on the stove. It was delicious but I couldn't finish, I'll keep it as a snack for later. We had our usual peanut butter and banana toast this morning, we still have no problem eating this. Will our appetite ever return I wonder? We had to to throw away half a daikon today. Sad. 1700 Devine was steering outside and gybed accidentally, as that happened the block for the boom preventer broke and the line caught one of the stanchions and bent it at a 45 degree angle. We thought it'd been ripped off the deck at its base, glad that wasn't the case. We'll probably be able to straighten it back out, but the weather right now doesn't permit casual walks on deck. No damage to boom or main. 2100 Another rough and rainy night. This horrible system seems to cover the whole area! What a nightmare world this is. June 14th 0800 We both did shorter night shifts because of the weather. Everything inside is wet, the floors are slippery with water and our foul-weather gear just isn't drying between shifts. We hang them over the sink so they drip into it, which makes doing the dishes a very complex and unpleasant affair. All synthetic clothing won't dry, and does a poor job of keeping us warm. We switch to wool as it stays warm even when damp. We still eat two small meals per day, but at least we aren't low on energy. The terrible weather has a way of keeping us focused, when there is danger we become superhuman, we need less sleep, less food...less everything. Don't know how long we can sustain this though... 1200 The wind has calmed a bit, but the rain has not. Wish they'd left together to give us some time to dry off. The weather doesn't care about our damp clothing and water-logged bones. 1500 Devine makes gnocchi. I managed to finish off my entire bowl this is a good sign! The wind is supposed to change tonight, and we hope that the waves die down with them. June 15th 0800 The wind changed a few times, then died and left us with nothing? Fantastic! Thank you weather! We hand-steered toward a blue patch on the horizon, toward the sun. Blue patches in the sky, laying between clouds, always gives us hope. In this case, we wanted the sun to dry up Pino's insides and our outside shells. 0900 THE SUN! THE SUN! We put clothes out to dry in the cockpit well, ALL of the clothes! As the wind and waves were down, we spend time dealing with minor breakages aboard, like fixing leaks. The anchor fell off the bow this morning, after too much time spent bashing in the waves. This is bad. We could hear banging outside of the front of the boat, not because it was banging on the hull, but it was the sound of it hitting the water and reverberating up the chain. I went ahead to pull it back up, the bow diving deep. I was drenched with salt water. I managed to get it up, and secured it as well as I could. If the winds calm down enough, we'll take it off the bow entirely. If it comes off it could cause real damage to the hull. 1500 Pino is drifting toward the SE in very light winds. We still have items out to dry. Our morale is good, and so we make coffee for the first time since we left Japan! We also make a proper lunch of rice and miscellaneous vegetables, a meal both of us were able to finish. 1530 Devine is asleep. The sun is still with us, and as I sit outside I notice something shiny in the water. It's a sea turtle...! I start screaming: "SEA TURTLE! SEA TURTLE!" It drifts past us, its head out of the water. I can also see its shell. Far off in the distance, I see the spray of a whale. Calm days are wonderful, we see and hear so much more. 1600 We added our main's 3rd reef in preparation for coming bad weather, it is easier to set it up in calm conditions. A main with a 3rd reef also flaps a lot less in light winds. We're lucky that none of our slides have broken off so far. In the last two trips we had many problems with this. While in Japan, I replaced our flimsy nylon slides with some of that same material, but with stainless steel inlaid. They are stronger, better quality overall. I know it is better for the slides to break rather than the main, but in our case, the main is very strong and won't split easily, also, replacing slides at sea is really, really hard and dangerous. I'd rather they not break. We both wish we had an outside track on the mast, the main would go up and down easily, and replacing slides would be easy. Ah, we can dream! 1700 Steering toward the NE. The weather is still beautiful, but there is little wind. We make pasta with fresh tomatoes for dinner. 2000 Clear night, we can see the stars. I am bored tonight, my usual tricks to pass the time just aren't working, and so I do shadow puppetry using the light from the compass. We replaced the original light with an LED, but it shines so bright that it lights up the entire cockpit, acting as a stern light. We're going to have to replace this, as it is difficult to see the light of ships with it. I have to obscure it with my hand to see afar, not a big deal, but also not ideal. The 'usual tricks' I have to pass the time include brainstorming, as I have many ongoing projects to plan, I use night shifts to plan it all out in my head and take notes if the weather is good. Another, is recalling as best I can my favorite films, then wording them out. I've watched The Lion King too many times in my youth and can narrate it well enough, this can keep me busy for some time. I do the same for my favorite music, singing aloud when I feel tired to keep awake, and when I run out of ideas I try and do the same thing but translate the song into french, which usually makes me laugh and does a good job of keeping me alert. Listening to podcasts, music, or the audio ripped from films is something we used to do, but on this trip, we don't take devices outside as it is too cold, or too damp and will damage them. Week 2 June 16th 0600 Devine woke up and went to stand in the companionway to tell me about this weird, elaborate dream they'd had. I looked at them, standing there, half-awake as they re-counted it. They spoke slowly, talking about the architecture and mood of the place in the dream. Devine's eyes are small, barely open, and I begin to wonder if they're truly awake... 0800 The wind is back, we sail close-hauled in light rain. 1000 The wind is turning gradually to the SW, it is easy to self-steer with this point of sail. We lock the tiller with a bungee, trim the sails and let Pino do as it pleases. The sea is choppy though, our bow is jumping a little. 1100 I go below to prepare lunch. As I am cutting carrots, a big wave lifts us up and I fall from the starboard to the port side, my back striking the edge of the navigation table. My vision blanked out entirely. The pain was like a knife in my back and ribs. Devine asks me if I'm okay, after they heard me falling and yelling. "I'm fine." I say, but I always say that... even when I'm hurt. I try and get back to cutting things, but I feel faint, and have to go lie down before I fall again and really hurt myself. Devine asks me if I'm okay again, this time I say I'm not. Lying down did not help me, as the movement of the boat made it difficult to lay still. I wince with every passing wave. My ribs on my left-side are bruised, and I begin to worry... wondering if it would be hard to steer the boat in this condition. I couldn't let Devine do all the work, I just couldn't. For now though, I lie here, focusing on getting better. 1200 I feel better when sitting. I can't lie down. I go outside to try and drive, because I am hard-headed. I can't stand the thought of Devine having to drive for too long. I find that it isn't too painful to steer, especially if I use my right arm. It is hard to get in and out of the boat though, certain movements are too painful. The wind is increasing now, and we make rice and veg for lunch. This is what I'd started preparing before I had my little accident. I went back down below to finish, tying a rope behind me this time to make sure I wouldn't be knocked over again. I should have done this before, why didn't I do this before?! 1400 I can stand to drive for 2H periods, that is good. We will do shorter shifts tonight. 1700 The wind is blowing in the high 30's, with big waves building at our stern. We are running under a triple-reefed main. We dread having to make dinner in such conditions. Fog is rolling in too, for the first time in this trip. 1800 Devine is doing a longer shift to give me time to rest. I took an advil for the pain. The rain begins then too... June 17th 0600 Disaster. I was sitting outside, steering the boat as we ran in heavy weather. The waves were still monstrous, but showed signs of slowing. I noticed a large wave pushing up at our rear, the strength of it caused the entire hull to vibrate. Then, before I had time to look back, another wave came... I did not see it, but it overwhelmed me. A giant wave broke over us and knocked Pino over. I didn't see it happen, all I saw was a wall of water washing over me. I saw nothing but water. I was falling, the water dragged me off my feet... I remember thinking then: "Well, this is the end. This is how it happens." I wasn't afraid, or panicked, just disappointed? This is not how I wanted it to end. Then, the world became clear again, Pino righted itself and I found myself clinging onto the lower lifelines, hanging outside of the boat. I was tethered to the boat thank goodness. My lifejacket had popped open too. I was dragging halfway into the water, coughing up salt water. I realized what had just happened then and screamed for Devine. I saw them work their way out of the companionway, completely shook up. Our dodger was ripped off deck, in shreds, and the flexi panel on it was broken in half. They ran for me and tried to heave me up, but couldn't. "Is something dragging you under???" They yelled, panicked. "NO!" I replied, "It's the weight of the water in my clothes! MY boots are full of water! Winch me up!" The winches and lines were covered in broken dodger pieces, it was hard to reach them. "TAKE MY LEG!" I yelled as I managed to lift my right leg up so he could help me get it above the lower life line. It worked. Once that leg was up, it gave me enough lift so they could grab my other leg and then it was easy to climb to safety. The boat was in a heave-to, because it had rounded a full 180 degrees. Devine secured it into a proper heave-to so we could assess the damage. We left the outside as it was and went inside. The cabin was a complete mess. "We're dead," Devine said. In truth, the inside of the boat looked worse than it was. During the knockdown, Devine was thrown from one bunk to another, the produce jumped out of the baskets, some of the floor boards were flipped over, a bottle of cooking oil lept out of the fridge and emptied its contents over a cushion and onto the floor, a giant jar of umeshuu leapt out of the same space and hit the ceiling on the opposite side, exploding onto the navigation table and instruments... all our charts were wet, our passports too. I usually stash them in dry bags, but I didn't do it this time and I'm not sure why? There was umeshuu EVERYWHERE. The stink of it covered everything. We sat on the sticky, wet floor, wide-eyed and shook up, thinking: "Did that just happen?" I downed a can of ginger ale. "You almost lost me," I said to Devine, pained at the thought. They came over and we stayed in each other's arms, for what felt like...forever. They smiled and looked at me afterward. "You want to get married?" I laughed out loud when they said this, grinning. "Yea. Fuck it. Let's do it." I said. We made a promise then, that if we made it back home to Canada, alive, that we'd get married and that we'd try and be content with less. We don't need to cross an ocean to be happy, surely? 1100 Got the boat back in order. We saw the extent of the damage: no more dodger, wind meter is dead, no 100W solar panel, no back solar panel support, rig is ok, sails are ok and the engine is ok. We spent the day heaving to, trying to relax. We made a plan not to panic, and to go forward. It's a long way to anywhere from here, and we've got to keep going, even if it is scary. We've got to keep going. 1700 We slept in each other's arms, alarms on to warn us off coming ships. June 18th 0400 Seas are calmer, we broke our heave-to and started sailing again. The winds are light, we're pointing SE because that is all that this wind permits us to do at the moment. We shake out the 3rd reef, make coffee and have peanut butter toast. The sun came and stayed with us for an hour, not long enough to dry anything but we're happy it came at all. 1200 We tacked back to the NE to dodge some weather. It is raining again now, we drive from the cabin using a set of long ropes since we no longer have a dodger to hide under. We make pate chinois for lunch. 1400 We napped hard, then beat to weather with a good easterly heading. We are now 1066 NM from Japan, we're nearing the 165 degree mark that indicates our turn northward. When you sail east to Alaska or the Pacific Northwest, you've got to aim east until you hit that mark, otherwise you run the risk of staying in the path of Typhoons. We keep getting strong winds. Every 2 days there's a big system running us over. Considering what happened yesterday, we decided that we would heave-to as often as we needed to. This trip is a long one, and we need to keep our energy up. We've got plenty of time to get to Canada. We are so glad that the rig suffered no damage, we were lucky. 1700 Put boat into heave-to to eat a dinner of hummus, carrots and vegetables. We don't normally do this, but we stopped for an hour just to relax a bit, and to spend some time together. 1800 Started night shifts earlier, as it is getting darker earlier. We had good wind pushing us SE. We received a message from Robusta, they are doing well, and are 300 NM away from us. They cannot send messages often as they have issues with their radio. 2000 I couldn't sit on either the high or low side during my night shifts. I was scared. Scared of being swept up again. I sat on the cockpit floor, moving the tiller with ropes from there. I did not think that yesterday's events had affected me adversely, but it has... everytime I hear a wave rushing up to us my heart would leap into my throat, and my legs would turn to jelly. Big waves have the same effect, but worse, I would get panicky, with cold sweat at my back. This is going to be a long, long trip, as we are not done seeing big waves... June 19th 0400 Wind has lessened to near nothing. The sails are flogging noisily. We reefed the main to the 3rd point in preparation for tonight, and to lessen flogging. 0700 We checked the weather, and it looks like we'll be heaving-to for some time. The coming low will sweep right over us. After it passes, there's a patch of green? With green meaning fair weather. Is that even possible in this land of infinite tempest? 1000 We found some wind. We are heading SE and away from the patch of no wind. Our goal is to do more southing to get better conditions when we reach 165 or 170. We awoke Calcifer to charge our batteries, but noticed there was no water coming out of the outtake? We shut Calcifer down, and I go below into his chambers to investigate. Sigh. Recently, in Shimoda, I changed the water pump impeller as I noticed it was damaged, but it looks like I put it back in the wrong way... that is bad. Calcifer is good now, at least, and if I messed up that impeller I've got another spare I can use. I can't keep making mistakes like this though, as I heard impellers are hard to come by on the ocean. 1300 We ate sweet and sour lentils for lunch outside, it started to rain but we stayed there anyway, hiding under an umbrella to eat. We've got little protection from the weather in the cockpit, so we do what we can with what we've got. 2100 We put the boat into heave-to as the wind starts screaming into the rigging. We had trouble heaving-to with both main and jib for some reason? We don't have problems doing this usually. We decide to use the main alone, but also... the jib was hard to furl. What the hell is going on? We'll investigate tomorrow, when the sun comes up and that we can see what we're doing. 0000 Can't sleep. I am stressed about the weather, plus the bit of jib we couldn't furl is making a hell of a racket. I slept in the quarter berth, well away from the noise. June 20th 0100 Finally went to sleep, as we slid into a calmer area of the passing low. It's hard to relax when the weather is intense outside, it always sounds worse from inside the cabin, with halyards slapping on the mast, waves smashing against the hull, the walls creaking etc... 0400 Woke up and went on deck to fix whatever was happening with our jib and furler. The seas were still big, though. Devine added a line to the furler to keep it from spinning, and made a few more turns in the barrel so we could furl the jib in tighter. It worked. By adding more turns to the barrel we were able to roll it up all the way. This only happens in heavy weather, because we have to winch it in to furl it, and that because it furls extra tight and requires more turns. 0600 Made coffee from beans! It's a special day, as coffee from beans tastes better and takes more effort to do, as we have to grind the beans first. Devine ground them up and prepared it, but then a wave came and knocked our stovetop coffee maker over, spilling all of our delicious coffee. Sad. Devine is swearing aloud, frustrated. The boat smells good though, but there is coffee all over the floor, in the back of the stove and under it. All our rags are wet with salt or rain water, we can't use any of them to wipe it up. We need to wash a set but haven't found the time. We make instant coffee instead, as it is better than nothing. Devine is still bitter about the whole thing, but downs their cup of instant anyway. 0700 Devine is reading Les Glenants, a French book about sailing. We always dive back into this book, as it is a wealth of information. I am sitting in the quarter berth, still afraid to be rolled over. The quarter berth is the safest place to be in such an event as it is a very restrictive space. We got a message from our friends on Tumbleweed today! Feels good to get news from the outside world, as we spend way too much time in our own heads. Currently, we are more north than we want to be. The weather keeps pushing us that way. We get low after low after low, it feels like being in hell, with the possibility of good weather a distant dream. We'll likely keep heaving-to 'til sunday, depending on how the weather develops. This is not what we want, but depending on the weather it may be safer to do this. 1200 We had tomato pasta with green peppers for lunch, served with chocolate and clementines for dessert. Clementines were a gift from our good friends Ami and Ayato who came to visit us in Shimoda, before we left. Food gifts are the best gifts. We are parked in the dead center of a mean system, waiting things out. Looking at the GRIB files, it's funny to see ourselves positioned in the 'eye' of this storm. The world around us is chaos, yet here it is much quieter... in our little parking lot on the ocean. 1400 The seas have settled and the wind has died. The forecast changed. We motor east to get out of the patch of no wind. We also use this time to charge our batteries. Even this far out, at 1011 NM, we still see some of that pesky Japanese seaweed, the type that wraps around your prop and fouls it up. We are careful, whenever we see a patch we work our way around it. Would not want to dive under the boat to clear it, not out here. After our sail from Minamiise to Shimoda, we arrived in port to find some wrapped around our prop. It did not cause problems, but we had to dive under to clear it just to be on the safe side. 1600 Stopped motoring and sailed with a reefed jib and main, we don't trust the weather here, better to be cautious with the amount of sail we keep up. The wind is coming out of the west, even if the GRIB files called for no wind. The seas are moderate. We don't know the exact wind strength as our wind meter died after the knockdown. We installed tell tales at various points around the boat. One of them is hung around a toothbrush, and is the best one we've made? The tell tale spins right around, loosely, it is sensitive and is perfect to indicate wind direction. Also, it makes me laugh. Pino is steering itself, and we are navigating from inside, checking our heading on the side of the compass. There are zero targets on AIS, different than our 100 target average on Japan's east coast! June 21th 0300 Woke up after heaving-to again for the night. The wind rose and it was too hard to steer. We broke our heave-to and motored east, in calm conditions. Today promises favourable winds, finally. We have finished all of our Japanese sliced bread. We bought many bags before leaving, so we'd have something easy to eat in the begginning. Now, we eat cereal and oatmeal for breakfast. It was nice to have a breakfast that doesn't dirty dishes. 0600 The wind turned and rose to a pleasant strength. Sailing is nice now, the waves coming from a new direction flattens the monster waves from the previous day. 0800 Had early ramen, as both of us were very, very hungry, may be because we only have 1-2 small meals a day. It was so good. Both of us craved this salty, spicy dish. 1100 Devine cleaned mold from the walls. The umeshuu has left stains all over everything. We cleaned up most of it on the day of the accident, but we keep finding patches... behind the radar, in the cracks of the navigation table, on the ceiling etc. We've no way of warming or airing the cabin currently, as all of the hatches have to stay shut because of salt water spray. My ribs hurt a lot today, took an Ibuprofen. The pain comes and goes. I sleep in a seated position most times, and I try not to lift anything heavy. 1900 Wind rose from the south, with big seas. We reefed the jib and sailed in with a 3rd reef in our main. We are wondering if we should heave-to, as the waves are once again, monstrous. The GRIB files were totally wrong for this area and we're afraid it'll get much worse. We decided to push on, even if steering is challenging. We are at 163 degrees and want to get past 165 degrees as soon as possible. June 22nd 0300 We hove-to as the light shone onto the sea, I stared into the depths and felt dizzy. Heaving to is a good time to figure out if what you're doing is a shit idea, or a shitty shit shit idea. 0500 We download the weather. The wind in this area is indeed, very strong. There is promise of lighter winds to the east. Devine gets their foul-weather gear on and goes outside to steer. Onward to 165 degrees! Robusta is south of us still, but making some northing. They are mending a sail and going slow. 0600 The sky is blue? I seemed to have forgotten that it could ever be that color. It suits it better than white, or grey. The waves are still mean but the sky reflected into them dulls out their teeth. When we catch some sun we usually take everything wet out to dry, but today is not a good day for this as the cockpit is getting a lot of spray. I have a pair of leggings outside that is properly pickled and that just won't dry, we don't want to add to that sorry collection. 1000 The seas and winds have lessened somewhat, and the sky is still blue?! We're reminded then of what sailing is normally like. It is usually pleasant, and done in fair weather. Yes, this is what it's supposed to be like. We cooked some Japanese curry for lunch. The wind is coming out of the SW, with us drifting eastward. 1400 We did it, we reached 165 degrees! A milestone in our trip! We hope the weather will improve in the coming weeks, as I don't think we can stomach weathering low after low after low like this. The wind is still the same. I removed my tuque and enjoyed the sun. Devine looks bright and happy today, as am I. 1400 Cooked dinner of pasta salad with mustard dressing and ate the last 2 pieces of fresh fruit, 2 ruby red grapefruits. When we eat more, it means the weather is good and what we too, are feeling good. Forecast is promising, but GRIB files in this area are not always accurate. This morning showed winds in the 15-20 knot range but we had 30 knots. There is better weather ahead, at least well, we hope. We are happy to leave this forsaken area behind. We're running with a a full jib and double-reefed main. Our paranoia with the weather is still strong, full main just isn't going to happen in this trip. 2100 Quiet night at sea, saw some stars! It's been a while. We're sailing SE with light rain on the horizon, just in time for Devine's shift HE HE HE HE. Week 3 June 23rd 0300 Blue skies for today, what a gift! Devine overslept because the phone died, and there was no alarm to wake them. I drove for 4 hours straight, and it felt undending. We feel that way often, even for short 2-hour shifts. We're steering and it feels as though it's been hours and hours, then we see the time and it's only been 30 minutes? There ought to be a ring in Dante's hell like this, where time is warped, where the clock says it is 2h33 but it never, ever changes. Or sometimes it does change, to 2h34, but then somehow it rolls back to 2h33?! Our brains must have hallucinated the change, surely! . 0800 We have instant coffee with oatmeal. The wind is still out of the west, offering good smooth sailing and gentle seas. 0800 Took sleeping bags out to dry, also found more mold covering a variety of objects. The pans under the sink had coffee from the recent spillage that we forgot to clean up, and that developed into mold. The papers inside the navigation table also harbor an advanced civilization of rotted matter. We want to keep our charts anyway though, as we might need them as back up. They are moist and full of spots and stains, handling them without tearing them up is tough! We hung them over the lee cloths, to try and get them to dry but we both know that won't happen. We had soba for lunch, the smell was enough to cover up the one emanating from the rotten charts. To be truly rid of it, we'd have to exorcize the rot demons out of them. 1600 We have our first happy hour of the trip! We've completed 1/3 of the trip, and celebrated with a glass of red wine. We left Japan with many cartons of Japanese wine, of varying sweetness. Carton wine tends to be sweeter, but we found one brand that wasn't! Robusta made it to half the distance to Dutch Harbor, and they too celebrated this grand event. They are close, but we still don't see them on AIS. They are north of us, maybe we'll catch up? We turned northeastward at 166 degrees, we'll be skirting not so great weather to escape another, such is life out here! We do out best to position ourselves well to the weather, but that is not always possible. 2100 Clear skies, with plenty of stars but no time to enjoy them as the sea demands our attention. The wind is rising and will steady at a good strength 'til dinner time tomorrow. June 24th 0400 The seas are big, very big! My stomach is in knots from worry. I practice box breathing to calm myself. Every wave that comes lapping up the hull scares me now. I never did trust the sea, but now I am terrified of its strength and unpredictability. 0700 We tried to have coffee outside but 2 large waves came crashing into the cockpit, spoiling both our cups. SIGH. So much for that. I can't believe we'll have to fight these monster waves all day. I worry when I'm out here, but also am concerned for Devine when they are out there. Wind is coming out of the W, strong and steady. The next days should be calmer, although the GRIB files have been known to lie. I went to hide back inside but I wish I was out there with them. Sometimes I wish we hadn't done this and that we were somewhere quiet, chatting about projects and sipping something warm, not sitting here, mind racing and fearful that the sea will try and take one of us again. We are crazy fools to be out here, but what other option was there really? How else could we bring Pino home? It's funny. When the weather is bad, we are fools, but when it's good, we're lucky? 1000 Total freak out. I went to steer Pino through these monstrous waves and was overtaken, again. A wave spun us right around. I was holding onto something, so I didn't hurt myself I know better this time. We weren't knocked down, just tossed around violently. I freaked out after, refusing to drive in these waves. I parked the boat into a heave-to, went inside and just started bawling. The accumulated stress of this trip, and the lack of sleep just got to me. This was a ridiculous dream wasn't it? 1300 We are going NE, but mostly east. Devine is driving right now. I feel terrible but the stress of driving in these waves is just too much for me right now. They plan to heave-to again when tired. Meanwhile, I am doing a lot of thinking, and am making sure he gets what he needs. I made spaghetti for lunch with eggplants, and served them a miso soup alongside. 1500 About 20 porpoises came leaping in and out of waves around Pino. It's nice to know it can still be beautiful out here. We downloaded a bigger range for the GRIB files, and noticed a big system heading our way what else is new? It's going to be a strong one. The forecast may change, it often does, but we're not sure how to go about avoiding it. Devine thinks we should go south, I think north... either that or we slow down and let it pass. This part of the ocean loves beating us down. The only wind we get to go forward is those from passing lows, which are usually too strong, and then leave calms in passing. This is discouraging. Devine is a glass half-full kind of person, I'm glad they're around to balance me out. A crew of Rekkas would be curled up on the floor, trembling and blaming each other. Fear is a terrible thing. 1700 Devine parked the boat into a heave-to after Pino got knocked around by two waves. They'd had enough. We'll heave-to until this weather gets past us. 1730 I noticed our heave-to was behaving strangely... the main was flapping and causing its halyard to slap the mast. That isn't supposed to happen in a heave-to, the main is supposed to be full of air, unmoving. I quizzed Devine about it, asking about how they'd placed the main, the tiller, as I could not understand why this was happening. Annoyed, I went out to see. I noticed that the tiller was lashed to the wrong side. Devine must have been tired to do this, they usually don't get this wrong. I went outside and lashed it to the other side. No more sounds, and the main is positioned as it should be. I stay outside for a bit to make sure everything is okay, and when I go back in, I see that Devine is sound asleep. They need their rest, I'll keep watch for a while. June 25th 0230 I got up at first light. The waves had diminished enough, so I got dressed and went outside to steer us out of this hell. I unfurled the jib and steered NE. 0300 Devine awakens, and checks the weather. After analyzing the data, we tighten the sheets and inch towards the N. The low should pass underneath us. We need to steer as directly N as we can before the wind dies tonight. Devine is still tired, and goes back to bed. 0500 Pino's sails are perfectly balanced, and is steering itself N. We let it do its thing and keep watch. We noticed the tiller bolts got loose after our evening of heaving-to, went to get tools and tightened them up. We ought to put a lock nut there but we can't find one that is the right size. We need to keep an eye on this, wouldn't want it to get completely loose. The tiller handle is also rotting, with large gaps forming on the sides, and the end splitting in two. We added layers of tape to keep the slabs together. Our back up tiller is in the aft locker, if this one breaks we've got other options. Good things we planned for this, as our wooden tiller is not looking so good. 0600 Coffee time. Devine woke up and served up a cup. The coffee helped revive me. We chatted about the future, me sitting outside and them from the companionway stairs. There's no need for the two of us to be out here in the cold. We talked about being content with less again, a common theme in this trip. Pino is steering itself still, what a champ. 0800 We make instant ramen. I crave ramen a lot these days, but everytime I eat some I get a stomach ache. I made a point of avoiding packet ramen for many years, but at sea I try not to deny my body what it craves. We didn't buy too many at least, and when we run out it'll be ramen detox time. We'll work that MSG out of our systems, somehow. We have some crystallized ginger for dessert. Our produce is looking past its best. We've got a 3/4 cabbage that is okay, 9 carrots, with a few starting to look tired, a daikon that is getting spotty and 1/2 an eggplant. Our potatoes and onions are looking good. We've also got some preserved lotus roots, and many other dried vegetables, but we're keeping those for later. 1000 The wind is lessening, but isn't gone yet. Devine is reading Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed", while steering with a line from the companionway stairs. I just woke up from a 1 hour nap, feeling refreshed. We got a message from Robusta, complaining about the waves. Yep, the waves yesterday were shit. Our positions on the live tracker are updating again, thanks to Devine's dad. Morgan and Douglas, from Tumbleweed, messaged us to report an issue with our track, saying it was not updating (since the 17th). We were concerned that people would think we'd died, or had serious issues. It is fixed now! We're glad. We're lucky to have such good land support, people to tell us if our path is broken, to help us with weather or to give us moral support from afar. 1030 My ribs still hurt, as I never have enough time to rest to allow them to heal. The motion of the boat makes that extra difficult. When I sleep, I sit still, with cushions wedged under my back. I'm glad I can steer the boat but worry about making it worse, as I am very accident prone. We've got our share of bumps and bruises! Devine has got splinters under their nails, I'm not sure how that happened? They've got a bruised knee, from the knockdown, and we both have random aches, callusses on our hands etc. 1400 Time to refuel. Since the seas are calm, it is a good time to do it. The wind isn't down entirely, but the boat isn't rocking too much. What was supposed to be a 5 minute task turned into an hour long endeavour. The deck plate cover for the diesel intake was stuck! Neither of us could get it open. We tried a variety of tools, and eventually freed it up. This is my fault, I think, as I recently changed the o-ring to a *slightly* thicker one (it's all i could find). Also, the tool we use to open it fits loosely in the cap, this due to many years of hard use. We emptied one 20L jerry can of diesel into the tank. 1530 We had kiri mochi (rice cake) with diced cabbage and julienned carrots for dinner. I pan-fry the rice cakes with sesame oil and season them with black pepper until puffy, and that both sides are golden and crunchy. Because it is calm out, and that Pino is steering itself, we had dinner inside together. I want to spend as much time as possible with this human. We've experienced much together haven't we? 1900 It is cold outside, we steer from inside, pulling ropes between the washboards. We're going NE, in light winds. June 26th 0200 Red sky at sunrise. I don't feel tired from my shift, seems like I got enough sleep... for once. I am steering N, the wind doesn't permit much else. We're steering clear of a system passing below us. I'd like to make more easting but that won't be possible today. 0500 Devine brings me a bowl of warm oatmeal! So comforting. We try to save on propane as much as possible as our tanks are smaller, it's why I've been eating cold oats for the past 10 days. I wanted to keep gas for higher, colder latitudes. 0800 Devine awakens, serves up coffee and checks the weather, as is our usual morning routine! After today, we should get some good wind to go E. We got a message from Robusta, saying the Pacific High is appearing on Monday. That is very good news, as we need it to get further E. They are close, but still too far to see them on AIS. Devine started reading "Canticle for Lebowitz", having finished "The Dispossessed". 0900 Devine slips on a fresh pair of socks!! We've been wearing the same pair for a while as we don't have an infinite supply, nor do we want to use up our water to wash them. I alternate between two pairs of wool socks. My 3rd favourite pair I was wearing when I was swept overboard, they are dry but full of salt. They need to spend time outside, for the wind to shake the salt out of them for a few hours. We might start using water more frugally once we reach our second milestone, at 45N 159W. 1430 Wind is coming straight out of the NE. We can't make any headway AT ALL and I am frustrated. I'm afraid it'll be the same deal tomorrow. That passsing low sure is an asshole. Pino can only go NW or SE... both options are shit. For now, we steer NW. Might be better to heave-to than to tack back and forth between two points. I drink a ginger ale, while angry. Devine wakes up, they are hungry, very hungry, but also tired? Conflicting needs. If the wind had a face I'd punch it. 1530 Devine is making cornpone for dinner! We thought we had cornmeal left in a jar, but turns out we didn't. We opened a bag we had leftover from our time in New Zealand. I can't believe it's still good after all this time! June 27th 0230 Finally seeing the wind turn, a little more towards the N. This permits us to do more easting. We need to keep heading that way to catch some of that sweet Pacific High breeze. The wind we've got is from a passing low, as usual, and won't last, but at this point we'll take what we can get. We're steering from inside, as it is getting colder. Devine found a sweet spot with ropes that permits us to do little do no steering tonight. 5h30 Pino is bashing to weather. The waves aren't too crazy, but I worry about them still. Pino's bow slams into the sea every now and then, and I can hear the anchor rattling. I hope I tied it down well this time, as retrieving it now would be dangerous. We are pointing E right now. I never thought we'd have to chase storms to get wind. Walking inside is difficult, we have to move carefully. Going to the bathroom is an interesting experience when bashing, since ours is at the bow. It's hard to focus on our business when we struggle to keep our butts down and bodies straight. 6h00 We saw a cargo ship named Scorpion on AIS. It is 4 NM south of us. A rare occurence. We've got an alarm set for ships that come near, it only rang twice so far while on the open sea. Last time it rang, there was a trawler passing south, near enough that we could make out its faint outline in distance, and we could hear its engine too. Otherwise, there is no one within 48 NM of us. Land is much further than this. We'll be passing the western tip of the Aleutians soon, the more miles we put between the opening to the Bering sea and us the better. We were pointing to it for the better part of yesterday, and it was scaring the shit out of me. 1230 We are pointing NE, bashing still. The wind hasn't lessened much, but it is supposed to as the day goes on. I am nervous, and I don't know what to do with myself today. I read a little, slept a little. We're doing good speed but bashing is a very stressful experience. Buckets of salt water splash up on deck and the bow keeps slamming into the waves. I noticed some wear on the foot of the headsail, but I've no clue when I'll be able to go up there to patch it up. The weather is still too rough. I hope the jib will hold up, it has so far but it's old, very old. I've no doubt it'll enjoy a quiet life in BC inland waters, once if we reach Canada. I can't talk in 'whens' or 'ifs' still, it's hard to imagine arriving anywhere when there's this much distance between us and land. BC is a haven on a rough ocean. We had kiri mochi, carrot and the last of the cabbage for lunch. Our veggie supply is looking sadder, and sadder. 1500 We are still bashing. The sound is very unpleasant from inside the cabin. We got a message from Robusta saying the same. We are definitely going to stow our anchor away when it gets (if it gets) calm enough out there. 1700 Maybe I got my wish? A calm is in our future. We were supposed to have a good breeze for the next two days, but the area looks like its going to be sucked out of all wind. I had oatmeal today for dinner, while Devine had ramen. Not in a ramen mood today. June 28th 0900 Seas are tame today. We are heading ENE. The wind is supposed to die gradually today. We are running with a full jib and are trying to catch all the puffs of air. A low is coming from the W and we want to make as much headway as possible to avoid it. We are doing good speed, we reached 175 degrees and are 2 days away from reaching 180. The sky is grey, but the solar panel is doing a good job still! We're thankful for that, as it means we don't need to turn on the engine as often. Both of us slept soundly last night, we steered from the companionway stairs again and kept our heading to the E. We don't have weather yet, as we're having trouble getting a good signal. We will try again soon. We are 19 days out of Japan. 1300 We were able to download weather. It looks like the low will pass N of us that is good news! The wind also died, we are bobbing in the waves, which are thankfully not too large. It seems like we'll be in a no wind zone for a while. Devine is outside emptying old soybean oil out of a plastic bag. During the knockdown a bottle of cooking oil shot out of the fridge and landed in the port side settee cushion, filling it with oil. Lacking time and patience, we stuffed the cushion in a large plastic bag and the oil has been draining out of it since that time. It is hard to clean these cushions, getting oil out will be no easy task and neither of us are willing to spend time on this. It's a shitty, shitty job. Quiet times at sea are the best time to take care of such tasks, things we normally ignore, though I think that cushion will be quarantined until we reach land. 1500 The wind is very light. We take time to do tasks on deck. We removed the anchor, finally, and stowed it below in the v-berth, buried in blankets and other soft things. The anchor locker overtop will keep it from moving around. Bashing into waves with a heavy anchor makes a racket inside, and we were afraid of further damaging the headsail furler. This happened once already while we were in Nanaimo in 2016. Our anchor banged on the dock and dented the barrel of the furler, it also bent the anchor pin. We flipped the jib sheets around as noticed some chafe, we also added tape to places they commonly lay up against. Devine tightened some halyard so they'd stop banging on the mast, and we cleaned solar connections from salt and added lanolin to protect them from corrosion. There is blue ahead, how nice, but this also means we're heading into a calm not so nice. 1700 Storm petrels are flying around Pino island, cackling in the dark, there's at least 30 of them. We are becalmed over a buffet it seems. Tonight will be quiet, and tomorrow will be more of the same. We might have to motor east to catch a breeze, as currently the forecast has us stuck here a while. We hope it's one of those times when it's wrong, otherwise this trip will surely take us 2 months now I'm glad we left early! We made quick pate chinois, with corn, sweet potatoes and tofu. When I make the quick version, I don't bake it in the oven, I prepare the ingredients separarely and combine them in a bowl. Both of us had a big appetite today, I guess we were both tired from wrestling the anchor off the bow. We have 1 daikon left, tightly wrapped in cling wrap. It has some dark spots but feels firm. We'll cut it up tomorrow and see if it tastes as bad as it looks. Cruel that the wind is gone but that waves persist. I bet there's a circle of hell that is exactly this this is a common theme in my writing isn't it? I blame the fact that I started to read Dante's Purgatorio. June 29th 0000 Clouds bring false hope of wind in passing. Once past us, all air is lifted out from the sea. I went back inside, no sense in bobbing in the water in the cold and dark. 0200 Devine is sleeping hard, and I am outside, steering still. The wind has settled into the N, it's easier to steer but I must be there to keep Pino on an easterly course. The sea is settled, the sky, cloudy, but I can see a clearing in the N that will likely catch up, bringing sun and a cloudless sky this afternoon. We had early oatmeal, as we were very hungry this morning. Cold night, had many layers on but was still cold! 0600 Woke up to find Devine asleep on watch, kindle in hand. They let me sleep longer but couldn't stay awake themself. Not a big deal, as Pino is not going very fast... although, we were going SE. I corrected the course and made coffee. We sat outside, talking about our readings. Devine disliked "The incredible tide" and its religious undertones, the Miyazaki series is so much better. I started reading "Solaris", and I really like it so far. 1000 We woke up Calcifer, as it is time to charge the batteries! Since we are becalmed, it'll also provide some forwardness. We each had a short nap, we're both very tired today. Whenever we go nap we fall asleep almost instantly, and waking up is very, very difficult. It may be because in hectic times, we are more alert and don't allow our bodies and minds to fully relax. We've had many times like this recently. After waking, I read "The Long Way" by Bernard Moitessier aloud to Devine. It's comforting to have our thoughts echoed in his, somehow we feel less alone. The sea scares everyone. 1400 We put Calcifer to sleep, goodnight Cal! Then, we make savory pancakes to be eaten as a sidedish to soybean hummus, carrots and daikon. The daikon had some nasty bits but I cut them off, and the rest was eatable, mild, but good enough by our standards. We had a glass of wine afterwards, as two albatrosses circled our boat, landing closer and closer everytime. They kept their distance at first, but now they come right near, checking us out, and allowing us to see their striking features more clearly. We named the more daring of the two "Bowie", because of the dark colouring around its eyes, which is very glamorous indeed. Everytime we look outside we see Bowie there, paddling next to the boat, having no trouble keeping up. Love ya Bowie, you're keeping us well entertained. 1530 We have 2 carrots left, a length of daikon, 2 lotus roots, about 10 sweet potatoes and as many regular potatoes. We have 8 onions and 1/2 bulb of garlic. We should have bought more garlic. In the end while stocking up, this staple escaped our minds. We departed Japan so suddenly that we forgot a few key things. Ah well, we'll manage without, we have garlic powder that we can use as a backup. We dumped a 10L bin of freshwater into the main tank. 2230 The wind is rising from the E, we're self-steering toward the N. The wind should turn gradually to the S, which will permit us to resume our easterly course. We have a full jib and double-reefed main. Week 4 June 30th 0430 Wind is still coming out of the E, making going in that direction assuredly impossible. We are going N, making little headway to 180 degrees, that place on the map feels close, but far away with such winds. The breeze isn't pushing us at incredible speeds either. Marked our position on the chart and was disappointed with our lack of progress, we were becalmed yesterday and that has largely contributed to it, but it's hard to stomach with so much sea between Pino and Canada. I should be more patient, I know this. I can't control the weather and the forces that govern the winds aren't malicious. We've got to wait for wind, we've got to be patient, stoic. 0640 Bowie is stalking us. He startled me as he landed next to Pino with a loud splash. I noticed that whenever we got too far, he'd fly over, land just ahead and drift past us before repeating the motion again. Our Bowie is not shy anymore! 0800 Why am I always hungry?! After coffee comes lunch, I guess both of us eat breakfast too early these days. Devine is making garlic, chilies and nori pasta my favorite. They sautee the garlic and chilies in olive oil, then adds the cooked pasta and swirls it in until well-coated with the mixture, then they transfer it to bowls and top it off with shredded nori. My stomach is whining as the smell wafts around the cabin. I am steering N, the wind doesn't permit much else, at least there's a relatively constant breeze. Today, we'll be making an inventory of all the food we've got left, just to see the state of things. Our snack locker is bare, but we expected that, Devine really loves eating snacks. We'll have to be creative down the line to keep this one fed and happy. 1130 We did the food inventory, Pino's stores are looking good! We have enough variety to ensure nutritive and fun meals. This is reassuring. There is food everywhere aboard, it's hard to know the state of things until we start counting though. All of the slow days we've had worried me, wondering if we'd have enough if our sail really did take 2 months. I'm happy to say that we're okay on that front. It's been 20 days and we're going through our stores at a good pace. Wind is invariably weak, coming out of the E. 1730 Wandered into yet, another patch of calm. This is better than beating or running into high winds though. It's too bad that our options are too much wind or none at all. A quiet ocean isn't the worse thing, as there is much to enjoy. Our neighbours the Pacific white-sided dolphins came to see us 3 times today. Because the sea was flat, we could hear them coming from far away. They are a most welcome sight. No matter how bad I'm feeling, their visit always perks me right up! Bowie left to look for food, we're left with the cackling storm petrels for company. We moved closer to 180 degrees, we are at 178, here's hoping for wind returning later today so we can finally cross that invisible line! We noticed today that one of our spreader lights was broken, our espar heater too has issues... Pino is going to need a lot of love and attention after this trip is over. 2230 Sometimes sailing feels like witchcraft. There was hardly any wind before, Pino was bobbing stupidly in the water as I sat inside waiting. I got tired of the motion and of the sails beating about, so I went outside to steer. Devine reduces the jib in periods of calm to reduce chafe, but keeps a tiny 'scarf' to ease the back and forth 'pendulum' motion from waves. I felt tiny, irregular puffs of wind so I unfurled the jib and pointed us E. Perfect. Wind filled the sails and we started to go forward? It was like presenting the full jib created movement, the wind awaking with it. I was amazed, and started dancing in the cockpit, happy to be moving forward in a favourable direction! Hope the wind stays with us, if so... we'll cross 180! Maybe the school of dolphins from before pitied us and returned to pull us on ah, what good friends! July 1st 0600 Devine got up earlier today, they did not feel the need to nap in their last 3-hour shift. They stayed up with me, had a 2nd breakfast like a proper hobbit and made REAL coffee. We've been having instant as it is easier to manage in rough seas, but now we're running out of the easy stuff so we don't have a choice. Devine pre-ground beans yesterday for this morning, they may continue to grind more ahead of time to make sure it's never too bothersome to prepare. The wind is light, but good, we are making headway and will likely reach 180 degrees this afternoon. JOY. Then, we'll be moving toward our big halfway milestone of 2200 NM. With how things are currently, this trip will take longer than 45 days, but no matter, we're in the good season and left Japan early enough that we can have many more slow days. The seas are flat today, making it easy to move on light airs. We have to go NE to keep with the wind, there is another no wind area SE of us that we have to be careful to avoid. Robusta is behind us, it is not easy for them to go N, as the weather there is awful right now. 0800 Devine makes soba with wasabi, accompanied by a dipping sauce fancy! The weather is calm enough for us to handle both a bowl of noodles and a dipping bowl. They also added konyakku, a block we found yesterday while doing inventory. We didn't know if it would be good to eat, as it was past its best before date, but it was perfect! I will miss konyakku, it is delicious as sashimi. 1030 I made pitas, not for a meal but to snack on. I'm glad the weather allows for this kind of messy cooking. The wind is good, we are pushing NE. The sea is calm, the sun is bright and the sky is clear. We're gliding at 5-6 knots. 1200 The dolphins are back! They swam with Pino for a good hour. We love watching their dorsal fins cut through the water, the shine of their backs gleaming in the sun. Once in a while, a row of them all jump out together, prefectly synchronized and in a neat line. It looks like a glitch in the Matrix almost too perfect. It's hard to be sad when dolphins are near. Now, if only Bowie would swing by to say hello. 1400 We are so close to 180, to one of our big milestones! Crazy how much progress we make with good wind. Marking our position on the chart is more exciting when there is enough distance between points. We have an early glass of red wine to celebrate our near victory. We sip it as I continue to read "The Long Way" by Moitessier to Devine. The sun is warm and being outside is so damn pleasant! 1500 I make Japanese kare, a staple on Pino. It's a dish that I can always finish, even when not hungry. We both have a kare stomach. I used up the last carrot to make it. Now, our fresh vegetable bin is near empty, occupied by a quarter daikon and two preserved lotus roots. 1730 WOOHOO! We made it past 180! We are officially in the Western Pacific! Exciting! This also means that we get to experience July 1st twice, as we are going back a day funny how that works. It's nice to see degrees going down. We have a long way to go still to reach our destination which lies at 123 degrees, but it's a start, and we've got to appreciate little victories. Tomorrow morning, we'll celebrate this passing with pancakes and maple syrup, we'll open our last can of delicious liquid gold. 2100 Devine makes miso soup, and eats a pita, I can smell the food as I am sleeping and its making me hungry. My dreams are interweaved with this scent. Giant pita people with dresses of cascading miso. 2200 Awoke for my watch, Devine is at the navigation table, reading and wrapped up in blankets. It is very cold tonight. I slip on my foul weather gear even though I've no plans to go outside. The set keeps me warm. I've got my warmest clothes on underneath too. I make myself a bowl of cereal to quiet my stomach, although in truth, I'd prefer something salty. My body craves salt at sea, it seems it isn't enough to be pickled from the outside, my insides demand the same treatment. I wash my face every few days to remove the accumulation of salt, my face feels smooth, and as do the tips of my fingers? Our bodies don't get rinsed often, as we are conserving water. We wash whenever we change clothes, which on this trip isn't terribly often. Sea life puts us on a different beat, I like it, but I do miss hot showers and our little room heater. It's a shame our Espar diesel heater is broken, but again, even if it wasn't I doubt we'd have enough power to sustain its use, as it is coldest when the power it at its lowest. Tomorrow is our scheduled time to wake Calcifer so we can charge our batteries. Our neighbour under the stairs is doing well, and did not think the knockdown bothersome good. 2230 Calm, calm. We've drifted into another no wind desert, a rift between two systems that is 100 NM wide. We thought we could keep Pino under light wind, following the southern ridge of a system, but it is difficult to know for sure where the wind ends. No forecast is that accurate. Because of this, planning is difficult. Our main is flapping, waiting for wind to fill its belly, to give it purpose. Not tonight. Maybe things will be different in the morning, in the meantime we'll have to endure the flapping. The night is quiet otherwise, with stars in full view. The moon has set, making it easier to see the tapestry in detail. I see 3 ships on AIS, all far away. Busy, busy seas no? May they stay far away, may we never hear the sound of their rumbling engines cutting through the quiet in our vicinity. July 1st 0130 The wind is gone, all of it. The water is still, mirror-like. I go outside and reef the main in the dark to stop it from flapping. The sun is rising, I can see the outline of Shearwaters resting on the waves. 0600 We make pancakes and maple syrup to celebrate our passing of 180 degrees! Calm, calm, calm. Flat calm. Silvery, rippleless seas. We drifted last night until 4h this morning, then turned on the iron wind to charge the batteries and to give ourselves a false sense of progress. Our dolphin family came to say hi today, we saw their outlines perfectly in calm waters. We felt guilty to be motoring with them around, I imagine the sound must be deafening underwater. Devine charged the Nikon yesterday and was able to take footage of our sea family. As we drifted in quiet waters this morning, I saw a strange creature pulsing in the water, it looked like a creature that had been turned inside out, translucent and pinkish. It had multiple bulbous protrusions. The ocean feels alien with such things living in it. We dubbed these strangelings "mimoids", like the manifestations in Solaris. Devine went up the mast to the first spreader to fix a light that had broken off, it was hanging by its wires. Devine feared that one day it would fall and smack us in the head. They secured it with tape, a good temporary fix. They were happy to come back down, even after only being up there for 5 minutes, as the bosun's chair was giving them a hell of a wedgie. "Ahh! My balls!" Dev whined as I helped them down. 0700 I've been doodling a lot at night, drawing silly cartoons. My peanut people doodles keep me busy, it is therapeutic. Humor is a good way to deal with stress. It's something I did too when working at an animation studio in Japan. My computer was garbage and crashed constantly, between reboots I'd draw cartoons, featuring my derpy computer. It helped diffuse my anger, and made working there bearable. 0800 Devine made a glass noodle stir-fry for lunch, using spices, our preserved lotus root and half a daikon. They also added bits of dried tofu. We love adding this type of tofu to meals as they soak up all the flavor. After lunch, Devine and I napped hard in succession. The sea is calm, with a swell coming out of the E. No wind, well... if one can call the occasional puff of air wind. We are pointing Pino's bow E, into the swell. I sing as I steer, something I do when my brain is too tired to brainstorm projects, or when it doesn't want to dwell on memories past, or on a future when land is near. 1000 Pino clumsily wanders into a patch of resting shearwaters. They are such skittish things. Even if we steer clear they still run, feet and wings flapping as they try and get away. Sometimes they dive underwater. I saw one do this today, but it must have been confused because it resurfaced even closer to us, and in a panic it took to the air, feet splashing and wings lifting water as it took off. These birds don't like us at all. 1300 Time to continue to read "The Long Way". I read aloud, snacking on peanuts with a glass of red wine. We are still on Japan time, deciding that we both liked a 2h sunrise and a 17h sunset. 13h is 16h, the time before we make dinner. These days we start our evening shifts at 17h, as to make the most out of daylight hours. We're glad for long summer days, short nights are more pleasant as it doesn't get too cold. Robusta sent us a message, they are aiming for Dutch Harbor now and report the air being much cooler. Anja wonders how we'll cope with the cold without heating. We don't really know, but we'll figure something out. At the worse, we'll wear our sleeping bags. 1430 Devine makes dinner today too, consisting of tomato pasta, with soft tofu and nori. They added some red miso to the sauce, I really like it! It adds a lot of depth. There is a tiny breeze, it helps us keep a heading E. We're cruising at a low 2-2.5 knots better than zero no? It will likely die today, with the forecast calling for an even calmer calm, if there can ever be such a thing. Perhaps it is a place where even sea life is still, slumbering peacefully before the next low comes rolling in. We should get some weather on friday, maybe enough to propel us to our halfway mark. Devine prepared some epoxy, and filled up some holes left on deck by our former dodger after it was ripped off. 1500 We are still finding patches of mold in weird places, courtesy of the exploded jar of umeshu. That jar of plum wine exploding onto the ceiling is still giving us trouble, weeks later. I don't think I'll be able to drink umeshu again without a ghostly smell of rot wafting under my nose, a reminder of a disastrous event. If we drink some, it will be in the company of others, and we'll share the story. Perhaps making it part of a tale will make drinking it bearable. The breeze is still with us, the sky is overcast now though, it is much cooler outside without the warmth of the sun. 2330 Light winds, Pino is self-steering to the SE, sometimes we can nudge it back to E with ropes. It started to drizzle, so I went inside. We're moving at a low 2.5-3 knots. It is difficult to find motivation to adjust sails in the rain and in the dark. I'm doing what I can from inside, hoping the breeze won't leave, it just might as the current forecast calls for zero winds in this area and yet? The sun cannot rise fast enough. I am tired today, and hoping the brightness of the day will kick that out of me. I feel bad because I dropped a glass jar onto Devine's bony side while reaching for a snack in the dark. They were not pleased with me. July 2nd 0400 July brings grey days and rain, a drizzle, annoying and ever-present. Weak winds are with us, still, we try and keep with it. Today, I am a slave to the compass, sacrificing comfort for forwardness. I prepared warm oatmeal, but the pan is dirty Devine had the same idea. Warm meals on cold mornings feels good. I wonder if the solar panel will work today, given the grey conditions and low visibility. I miss the sun already. I'm glued to the stairs, hands on ropes, guiding Pino along as it doesn't care to guide itself today, like this amount of wind isn't worth fussing over with 2 knots of speed I am inclined to agree, but still, there's a will in me to steer so I will steer. 0530 Slave to the compass no longer, I've left my post, annoyed. The forecast I checked inspired this decision, as the coming calm is complete. We will not be sailing today, maybe not even tomorrow... this part of the ocean is not what I thought it'd be. It's like the doldrums of the north, but only around Pino. I've lashed the tiller, and rolled in the jib, now Pino can go wherever it wants at a snail's pace. There are waves that carry us onward, I wonder if this is what was propelling us on too last night. Today will be a quiet day, spent in a monochrome, wet world. The rain is too light to catch, I'm hoping for a good downpour so we can replenish our tanks. We are using as little water as possible, but catching a few liters would reassure me, and maybe permit us to wash a few neglected items. Noticed we were getting a few amps from the solar panel after all, that is good. 0900 I made mapo tofu, with the last bit of daikon. We ate it, while Pino was engulfed in a thick fog bank. Been a while since we've been in weather like this, our world has become much smaller suddenly. The waves are down, as is the wind. The ocean is quiet. 1000 I transcribe emails into a notebook reserved for this purpose. I had many Japanese boat cards to add, many more than I thought. I like having addresses all in one place. Devine spotted a whale, far, far away, and wonders if it'll come closer to say hi. We have been on Japan time since the start, but I checked local time today, Adak time, and I feel less bad about our early afternoon wine. 1100 The fog has lifted, Devine decides to try and raise our Frankensail, a sail we made out of old material our friends Kako and Hiro gave us. They raised it using our spare jib halyard, the tack set on the baby stay fastening. "Hey! We're a cutter now!" Devine exclaims, all smiles. Ahead lies what we've come to call a "bobbing bird bank", a gathering of birds at rest. As per usual, they're in our way and they scatter as we come near. When the birds are bobbing on the seas, you know wind isn't coming. They save their energy, waiting for a time when a breeze can carry them on again. Energy is precious out here. These birds are light and frail, but very hardy. It's amazing they can thrive out here. 1200 Napped for 1 hour, but had 3 bad dreams, 2 of which consisted of me falling in the water. In the first dream, I fell from the cockpit seat into the gap on the floor, which wasn't a floor at all but a window into the ocean. I could not climb back up. In the 2nd dream, the front of the boat was a sheet of ice? I crawled on my belly to the edge to catch a glimpse of some seals that were there, poking their snouts through some holes. As I got closer, a shift in our 'ice boat' rolled me off into the icy water. In the 3rd dream, we were sailing on Pino, very much like now, and Devine decides to take a break from sailing so we appear on land, elsewhere. They assure me that we can go back to Pino in 2 days when the wind returns. I quiz them about it, how they planned to take us back. "We'll book a flight," they tell me. "The pilot isn't going to land on the ocean! The plane won't parachute us down either!" I say. Devine starts thinking it over, then realizes what we've done. We cannot return to Pino. My sister appears then: "I didn't think you could do that with a boat! Taking breaks and all!" I am tear-eyed, "YOU CAN'T!" I scream, upset at the thought of Pino being alone, without us on it to guide it back home. In this dream, of course, I've no clue how we got off mid-ocean in the first place. Strange dreams. This wasn't the restful, peaceful sleep I was hoping for. 1730 We are relying on very fragile systems. We depend on Devine's ancient iphone 5 for navigation and for weather, and today it developed this weird bug, which scared me. My phone died early on in this trip, I'm not sure why. As I was charging it off a rechargeable battery one night, it began vibrating and would not stop! Then, I couldn't charge it anymore and the battery went flat. We've got an older phone with Navionics and Iridium mail as backup, but I worry, as I hate depending on these flimsy, buggy devices. I am angry that we didn't plan this better. We talk a lot about over-reliance on tech, yet we keep making mistakes. Though in truth, we had 3 working phones and we did not think it possible that all 3 would fail at the same time. Our safety is tied to the working of these devices and it is scary. It is dumb and I am angry. 2200 Ok. Little freak out just then, but the phone is fine. Still, I hate relying on such things. We are becalmed, again. Pino had a good run today though! Now, there is fog and it is wet out. I await the sun, the wind... I can hear storm petrels cackling outside. Seems like they only ever come around the boat at night, to laugh, as if they know how eerie it is for us to hear. Robusta is more N, but also suffers from lack of progress. Sailboats are creatures of movement, ours has not had many opportunities for it lately. As we bob around, I hear voices in the rigging, a sort of squeaky "Hellooo." Other times, while sitting outside at night, we'd hear "Hey's!" and "Check it!" When extremely tired, the brain not only finds words in sounds, we have conversations with ghosts, asking questions, receiving answers... sometimes my own answers were so absurd it would startle me into wakefulness. I'd start combining words to make new ones, or invent new ones entirely while being sure of their meaning. Questions like: "Where is the turtle there?" i'd answer with "the meeting last time", then say "in the mihtime" or something. Lack of sleep does weird things to one's brain. Don't get me started on the things I saw moving in the compass! A head, nodding, agreeing to all of my nonsense, always. It would swallow me right up, my head swimming with numbers in a clear liquid, enveloped in yellow light. Thankfully, we hallucinate less these days, being becalmed allows for more sleep. 2330 Found wind for 1 hour, but lost it again. The wind is rude during calms, it leaves abruptly and without warning. Light drizzle, fishing boats to the south. I continued to read Solaris, then painted my nails yellow due to boredom. I cared more about the act of painting my nails than the look of it. Though, now that I have it on me I regret it, as the mustard yellow color makes my nails look rotten. I also suspect that my midnight application gave Devine a headache bad idea overall. I can never wait for them to dry. Impatient, I slipped on a pair of gloves to unfurl the jib outside after hearing some wind, and now, my nails are yellow with little bits of black fuzz mixed in. Now I've got hairy, yellow nails. Fantastic. A victim of my own impatience and eagerness to catch wind. July 3rd 0500 What is this strange sensation on my skin? Like it is being caressed... it is also moving the water?! WIND. Lots of it! We are heading NE at a pleasantly refreshing 5 knots! Pino is zoooooming! It looks like this patch of wind will stay with us for today. I am really looking forward to hitting our unnofficial halfway mark. We've been looking at it for too long now, it laying ahead, teasing us with its unnattainableness. We will reach you yet! We set up food goals for each milestone. Halfway means opening a bag of gobou (burdock root) and renkon (lotus root), a mix we bought at Aoki in Shimoda. It was pricy, but its shelf-stable and looks delicious! Looking forward to it. 0730 Devine woke up with a headache. I make coffee, they decide not to have one, as it could worsen the pain. Moments later, they taste mine and brew a cup, drink half, decide they can't finish and so this means I get another mug of hot coffee to finish! JOY. Pino is doing good. The sky is grey, but bright. Our solar backpack is outside, charging up our two little battery banks. Devine went back to sleep, I'm okay to watch as it isn't much effort, Pino is steering itself. 1200 A dark, blocky shape appears at our stern. It's a ship, a cargo ship. It doesn't broadcast on AIS?!, I take out my binoculars and try to figure out its course, as it is still far and difficult to make it out. For now, it looks as though it is barelling toward us. We keep our course and watch. Phew, we can see its stern at an angle, it's going to pass us well to starboard. It went by us, I could make out much of its deck, although it carried no cargo. It's waterline was high because of this. This is the closest encounter we've had with a big ship so far. We make penne with a red lentil sauce for lunch. The food helps to diffuse Devine's headache, a little, but they hope to nap again right after the ship has passed us. The wind has lessened, but is still with us. Pino won't self-steer now, I pull ropes while standing on the companionway stairs. Afternoons are lonely when Devine doesn't feel good. We are 150 NM away from the halfway mark. 1730 The wind is much weaker now, I still need to guide Pino along. It is cold, so I continue to steer from inside. It is not fun, as I am glued to this spot. Pino keeps trying to go N, and I want to go E. Not Pino, nor the wind care what I want. It is going to be a long night. Plus Devine has an indigestion and I am not sure what is causing it. I made them some fizzy water to help settle their stomach. They also ate a bit of crystallized ginger, claiming it helped. If we had fresh ginger, I'd brew them a cup of ginger tea. We skipped dinner today, as Devine wasn't hungry and I had no desire to cook something complicated for myself. I made a small bowl of cereal, and a peanut butter pita. Breakfast for dinner hell yes. It is quiet and cold on the Pino universe today. The days blend with one another, and Vancouver Island is a distant, fictitious land of plenty. We won't accept it as a reality, not now, all land is fantasy. Our world is ocean, skies, sun, stars, porpoises, dolphins and seabirds. This is our 24th day at sea. I realize I should not be counting, counting only makes me anxious, and eager to arrive. We've started to wash our dishes using water from our pressure sprayer. We filled it up at the pontoon in Shimoda before leaving. We put the container in the left sink, it works well. Our main tank is reserved for drinking and cooking. Conserving water early is the safest thing to do, as our current speed doesn't inspire much confidence. We've fallen into a trap, the tricky web of the guardian of the Aleutian Island monster. It grabs winged creatures like us in passing, and is determined to keep us. 2215 I keep having boat-related dreams. Some of these dreams mirror the current moment perfectly, down to the last detail. In sleep, I remember where the wind is, if it's gone, I know when it's coming back too. The nonsensical bits are enough to set it apart from real life though, but in some of the dreams, there isn't an overabundance of nonsense. My mind recreates our voyages, exactly as they happened, or are happening. The wind is with us, but has switched direction and is blowing from the S. Pino seems content with the change, gliding on without assistance. The night is not as dark as it usually is, the moon and stars are hidden but their light shines through the grey veil. I think it is a full moon tonight, this may account for the marked brightness. Devine makes late night ramen on their last shift. I am happy they are eating and that their stomach appears to be more settled. I am wearing my scarf tonight, it helps keep the breeze from entering my collar. It keeps me comfortable and warm. July 4th 0500 The wind was good for most of the night, light, but good. Now, it has abandoned us once again. I wake up Calcifer. "Wake up Cal! Time to go to work!" Calcifer rumbles to life, spitting water and smoke, and does this without complaining, unlike us. If our electronics cold be powered by whining we'd be set. We'll get our wind back eventually. Meanwhile, a system is forming ahead, one that I'm not certain we can avoid. We'll keep an eye on it, see how it develops in the coming days. We reached 175 degrees today, with only 96 NM left to our halfway mark. I am as sick of not crossing it as I am of writing about not crossing it. There's fog, but thick enough to obscure all. Coffee time cannot come fast enough, my veins demand it. 0600 I am charging electronics, managing them to see which need it the most. We don't have an infinity of USB ports or outlets, so I've got to swap items out when they're done so I can charge other devices. The solar backpack is outside again, charging up the big battery bank still. It charges slowly, but it's get there! This backpack is a good backup to have, should our other panel fail. 0800 Devine makes cornpone for lunch, served with canned soybeans, onions and spices. A simple, hearty dish. Everytime I look at the bowl served to me I've doubts whether I can finish it, but I always finish. My stomach is not easily filled at sea, it is a vast ocean. Very different than at the start of the trip when we could barely finish our food. A good appetite is a good sign. The wind is good, the seas are flat and we are flying! We put Calcifer back to sleep, job well done friend, our batteries are healthy again. Pino island is drifting happily, its residents too, are happy. Captain Ninj is giving us tasks to do from his spot on the starboard side settee. Our armchair captain enjoys the comfort of the sleeping bags. 1100 While napping, I dreamt of Lin Pardey. She was very old, dressed in a woolen outfit, bleached by the sun. I could tell it was bleached because the underside had colour, it was bright blue, or at least it used to be. The woolen hood covered her eyes, but not her mouth and nose. She was in a place where no one knew who she was, what she'd done and accomplished in life. She kept most of her skin hidden as she had an illness of sorts, it wasn't easy to recognize her. Devine & I found out she was there and went to see her to keep her company, as we did not want this amazing woman to be alone. She spoke to us softly, but with much emotion, I don't remember what she was saying, but she was sad, so, so sad. Devine wiped rust that had formed over some of our sailing needles, and was in the process of sewing a patch to our laundry bag when I awoke to tell them about my dream. They'd also set up a Rasperry Pi to work on their off-time. They found a way to back up work using a USB key on Linux. We have to alter course to avoid a fishing fleet that lies ahead. We see many targets on AIS but they all bear similar names, ending with numbers. The last time this happened, the 'other ships' turned out to be buoyed beacons, marking the position of their nets. We hoped this wasn't the same deal, as avoiding them all is hard. I really despise this industry. They shouldn't be here doing this. All of the trash we see on the ocean is from fishing, foam fenders, floats, nets... they are filling it with garbage while emptying it of life. I really, really hate them. 1530 It's worse than we thought. We've stumbled into a minefield of fishing vessels, a fleet of over 40, all huddled in together around us. They're covering 40 NM of ocean, going around them was just not possible. There is room to go inbetween them, but it is scary. AIS has been beeping non-stop for the past 4 hours. We thought we'd reached the end but now, we saw many more appearing on AIS. What a nightmare. I thought we'd be clear of these monsters tonight but no. How is this possible? Why are they all here? I feel like a mouse in a pit of snakes. The sight of all these targets is too crazy, I almost don't believe it. They're all Chinese-flagged vessels, all huddled up together here a hellish sight. I really hope fog won't set in, otherwise this could get dangerous. This is worse than sailing in Japanese coastal waters. We went through thinking that we'd reach the end of the fleet soon, but the thing is that AIS doesn't load all targets, especially those beyond 12 NM. There are many, many more ahead. There are no birds here. I understand. If we could leave this place skyward we'd do it. 2300 We've passed it, but boy did it ever shake my trust of this ocean. I enjoyed its vast emptiness, and now we run into mid-ocean traffic of the worst sort. There is another cluster south of us, glad that it's there and not here. We spent the day weaving our way through them. The upside in all this is that we passed them quickly, as the wind was with us. Pino ran at 6 knots, eager too it seemed to leave this accursed patch of ships. When darkness fell, each ship turned on their lights, each one illuminating everything around them. It was easier to see where they were, but it also exposed just how many were around us, their light burning into the clouds above. Absolutely surreal, and horrible! Each time we approached an island of light we could hear their powerful engines whirring, and could smell their exhaust fumes. My legs were jelly, afraid they'd all start moving at once. It was like tiptoeing through a cave of sleeping bears. "SHHH! Must not wake them or they'll swallow us up!" The wind is light now, and we cannot download the weather. We'll try again tomorrow morning. I am tired from this day, these ships sucked out all my energy. I can't relax either, afraid to see another cluster ahead. Tomorrow will be better, it's got to be better. I want to be with the birds and porpoises again. July 5th 0100 We got a message from Iridium saying our account was about to be suspended. We think we may have used up all our data. We can't check the weather, but SMS still work and we're trying to get in contact with them to append more minutes. Devine's dad is also helping us with it. What a shit show. We should have purchased more, but also, I don't know how it is possible that we went through it all. We did have some issues with the device, with it stalling during some internet calls... maybe this ate up extra minutes. Either way, this situation is shit, as we don't know what's going on out there and we can't broadcast our position. There is some good news though, as we've reached our halfway mark and ate the gobou and konyakku mix over a bed of soba! As per usual, reaching a milestone also means drifting into a calm. This calm came with rain, that we promptly collected with an upside down umbrella, the water pooling in the middle and emptying into a bucket we set underneath it. We collected enough to fill up our pressure sprayer for washing dishes. I did not sleep much last night, but I feel okay, food and coffee does wonders for the body and mind. Devine is napping now, while I'm dressed in my oil skins, awaiting wind. While outside, I noticed something bobbing on the water's surface today, something in two smooth, shiny, rounded parts. I thought it was a gum boot. I looked away for a second, and it disappeared? Either I'm crazy, or the thing decided to sink as I looked away. I spotted it again aft of us, with only half of the mound appearing on the surface this time. I grabbed the binoculars to try and make out what it was...a SEAL! I saw its whiskers, its snout and ears. It was checking us out. It made my day. 0730 I am sitting outside this morning, trying to catch every puff of air, but it is too light and and the the air is too cold, plus a fog bank approaches. I furl the jib again, going inside and waiting in the companionway for signs announcing the wind's return: ripples in the water, a low wooshing sound. The sea bears no folds, and is quiet, not a woosh to be heard. I am tired. I may need a second cup of coffee to help me through today. Being animated by artificial means is necessary sometimes at sea, it makes me focused, determined. If I had giant oars I'd go and row Pino along, moist air be damned. 1200 The sea is like melted silver, flat and barely undulating. The fog drifts in and out, moistening all in its path. We can hear everything on a quiet ocean, the sound of a whale breaching, its breath resounding over long distances. I saw pillars of water far away, marking its position. I followed its track for some time before I saw it dive, its tail fanning over the surface of the water as it did. Its tail looked like a massive plant, growing out of liquid metal. Our friend the seal is still with us, we can see its fins peeking out, hardly ever its head. Maybe it is sleeping? We also saw what looked like a brown, spotted albatross, paddling quietly in the water. I never tire of seeing birds. Right now, we are adrift next to a group of sleeping shearwaters, resting before the wind comes back. We are lying alongside, pretending that we too, are birds. We close our eyes. Rest. Rest plenty before the wind comes back. Sometimes though, I grow tired of resting. I am restless to sail, to move forward. I continue to watch the sea for ripples, but it is as still as ever. It is hard to distinguish the water from the sky, it is dizzying. It is almost as if there is air underneath us. If I were to take a step out, I'd fall, not sink. Devine is sitting at the bow, playing the harmonica, providing a fitting soundtrack. We try and make the best out of difficult situations, conserving food, water, resting our bodies and minds, and being careful not to succumb to the gloom bug. We must never despair. Week 5 July 6th 0500 The wind has been erratic, coming and going, always from the N, or the NE. At times, it was so weak we could go neither E or N. Other times, the same strength permitted us to sail into it? Both of us are confused. The seas are also messy. Pino is sailing, but we're getting slapped by wavelets from the S, W and E? The westerly swell is notably bigger. The fog is here again, and it is thick. I can see the sun still, a diffused ring of light perched up above. We're happy to be moving forward but being outside is uncomfortable, the fog leaves droplets of moisture all over Pino, and us if we happen to venture into the cockpit. 10 minutes out there and my eyelashes have wet beads in them, and my foul weather gear becomes thoroughly damp and heavy. This morning at 1h, when I went to sleep, I noticed that I could see my own breath. Yep, it is cold in here! I was lying in bed, in a pile of sleeping bags, buried within to try and shield myself from it. Devine made a lantern our of a can of Yebisu yesterday, they hung it up and placed a candle in it. It helped us save power at night, while giving the room a nice ambiance. If we near our hands to it it gives off a bit of warmth too, it feels good after a cold shift. Our next milestone lies ahead, 90 NM away. We'll hit the 2000 NM to Vancouver Island. It's a lot of ground to cover, but we've already done so much. If the wind stays we'll meet our goal soon enough, but it is difficult in these waters, where the wind is far from constant. We still don't have weather, as the Iridium office is closed on weekends, and that the next working day is a holiday. Sigh. We'd like to know what's going on out there, we can't read the waves and wind like Moitessier at least not yet. Maybe it's time to unbox the sextant, although I imagine it wouldn't be easy to take noonsights in fog. 0700 Devines makes penne, using our last bag of fun-shaped pasta. They serve it with indian spices and tofu. "Experiment!" he says, handing me the bowl. I like Devine's experiments, they've got a gift for cooking with limited ingredients. They somehow always manage to prepare something delicious, something that feels fresh despite having no fresh ingredients. At this point in our trip it is an important skill, as we have nothing but potatoes, 1 preserved lotus root, dried radish and canned vegetables. 0900 We sail in and out of fog banks. Sailing in fog is hard on the eyes, its brings everything out of focus. I've got a massive headache right now, because my eyes strain too much, but also from constantly turning my head to look at the compass from the companionway door. I steer outside when the fog clears, and retreat indoors when it settles around us. Fog makes my clothes damp in a second. As Devine drives, I read "Golden Apples Of The Sun". Really fun stories in which I can practice voices, something I really enjoy doing and that distracts us both. We're sailing E into the wind, it is hard, as the waves make us yaw, and that self-steering is not possible. Can't complain though, as we are going forward, it's what I wanted, although I do wish that wind came at us from a better quarter. What I wish doesn't matter though, because we've got to live in the moment, what is is, and we've got to push on. 1730 We give up well, for today anyway. The wind died, gradually. We stayed with it for as long as we could, hand-steering into the waves, tacking N to find more wind. Devine started up the engine for 1 hour, motoring N to try and find wind. Nada! The gloom bug is back, we're doing our best to fight it off. I took a angry nap, but it did little to freshen my mood. Everytime we get wind I think: "This is the wind that will take us home!" It is silly to think such things, for a reliable breeze in an area outside of the trade wind belt. Our GRIB files are more than 60 hours old, not a good reference anymore for what's happening out there. We thought we could use it to approximate the conditions, but in an area of supposed 'fresh winds', we've got nothing. Pino is still, as if it's forgotten what sailing is, it just might, with all of the calms we've been having. I'm beginning to forget what progress feels like. In better news, my ribs are better. I can sleep in almost any position, but I must be careful not to strain. Lifting heavy objects is still hard, and on some rare occasions I get a dull pain. All in all, it's better than it was and I am glad. Now, we await wind, if it would be so kind as to return to instill a bit of hope in us, some faith in the possibility of making it to land... someday. I often joke that Pino is a log, when we're not going forward. In such times, I feel the log would get to its destination faster. Maybe Pino is just tired? Steering us from calm to calm to rest its rigging and wings. We pushed you hard these past 4 1/2 years, haven't we? July 7th 0100 Calm, calm, calm, always and forever. Not much to say. This constant quiet has robbed me of all words, but thankfully, I'm still able to laugh at this situation through cartoons. This logbook is filled with them, and they ge Advertisement Britain might not boast the longest, the widest or the deepest lakes in the world. But as these stunning pictures show, it can stake a claim to having some of the most beautiful. The incredible images are MailOnline Travel's pick of 12 of the loveliest lakes from across the United Kingdom. Some are instantly recognisable, such as Windermere, the Lake District's 'most famous and popular' lake, and Loch Shiel, a mighty body of water that appears in the Harry Potter movies. In Wales, where lakes are known as llyns, there's Llyn y Fan Fach, which stands in the shadow of the Black Mountain in the Brecon Beacons, while Northern Ireland has Lough Erne, which has more than 150 islands 'floating in its inky blue waters'. Scroll down and dive into some of the nation's most beautiful bodies of water... Measuring 5.69 square miles, Windermere is the largest natural lake in England. The body of water has 18 islands, with the largest, called Belle Isle, being home to an 18th-century Italianate mansion. According to the Lake District National Park website, Windermere and its surrounding area is 'arguably the most famous and popular area in the whole of the Lake District'. The busiest place along the shoreline of the lake is the village of Bowness-on-Windermere, where tourists can hop on boat rides and enjoy sailing and watersports. This view of the northern end of Windermere was taken from Loughrigg Fell Harry Potter fans should recognise Loch Shiel, a narrow lake west of Fort William in the Scottish Highlands. That's partly because the Glenfinnan Viaduct, on the West Highland Railway Line, sits at one end. Yes, it's the Hogwarts Express viaduct - and the loch appears as a backdrop to Hogwarts itself. One visitor to the loch wrote on Tripadvisor: 'With beautiful places to stop, gorgeous views and stunning scenery, Loch Shiel is a destination all should visit at some point when in Scotland' Behold Ullswater, the second largest lake in England's Lake District, with a surface area of just over three square miles. Its thin, long and deep dimensions mean it's known as a ribbon lake. Its beauty inspired William Wordsworth, who is said to have written his poem Daffodil after gazing upon flowers around the shore. During the Second World War, mini-submarines, naval craft and flying boats were tested on the lake. And in 1955, Donald Campbell set a world water speed record on the lake when he reached a top speed of 202.32 mph in his jet-powered vessel Derwentwater, to the south of Keswick in Cumbria, has four main islands - Lords Island, Derwent Island, St Herberts Island and Rampsholme Island - that are all owned by the National Trust. According to Visit Cumbria, the lake 'is very much a landscape of moods, varying from the dramatic waves splashing against Friars Crag when driven by southerly gales, to the absolute mirror-calm of early mornings' Epic, eh? This is salty Loch Leven on Scotland's west coast (not to be confused with the freshwater Loch Leven, located to the east of the town of Kinross), which stretches for almost nine miles and connects at its widest end with Loch Linnhe (pictured in the distance here). Leven narrows at one point to just 650ft in width Llangorse in the Brecon Beacons National Park is 'surrounded by a patchwork of green hills, fields, meadows and hedgerows' and is 'a truly beautiful spot and a lovely place to sail or paddle', according to the park's website. Llangorse harbours a small artificial island called a crannog - around 130ft from the shore - made of oak, willow and hazelwood. It is believed to date back around 1,000 years and was probably the site of a royal palace Loch Lomond is the largest lake by surface area on mainland Britain, covering 27.5 square miles, and is often considered to be the boundary between the lowlands of Central Scotland and the Highlands. The loch has 22 islands and 27 islets, with most of the named islands having the prefix 'inch', which means 'island' in Gaelic. Visit Scotland says: 'If you agree that there is nothing more pleasant than an afternoon on the water in a boat then Loch Lomond is the place for you. Every kind of watercraft and water lover can be seen cruising about on the waters.' This picture is courtesy of Darren Tolmie The Welsh lake of Llyn y Fan Fach can be found in the shadow of the Black Mountain of Carmarthenshire in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Llyn y Fan Fach translates into English as 'lake of the small hill'. It is a popular spot for wild swimming Grasmere is small, but intensely beautiful. No motorboats are allowed on this Lake District gem, but the Lake District National Park website says it is 'great for swimming, kayaking and rowing'. One visitor to the lake wrote on Tripadvisor: 'Grasmere might not be the largest area of water in the Lake District, but there's something about the area that is impossible to resist whatever the weather and whatever the time of year' Lough Erne, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, consists of two parts - the shallow and smaller Upper Lough Erne, pictured, and the larger Lower Lough Erne. The two are connected by the River Ern. The lough has more than 150 islands and the Tourism Ireland website says: 'You wouldnt be the first to fall in love with these pockets of land floating in the inky blue waters of both Upper and Lower Lough Erne. Ancient Celts, Christian monks and marauding Vikings have all left their mark on the islands here, with medleys of pagan rocks and crumbling churches charting their journeys over the centuries' Popular with visitors since tourism began in the Lake District, four-mile-long Buttermere pulls in the crowds thanks to its 'classic combination of lakes and mountains', says Visit Cumbria. One visitor who had a stroll around its circumference wrote on Tripadvisor: 'Buttermere is one of the most beautiful places in the UK if not the world' The Lok Sabha has passed a Bill to address the potential disruptions in the financial system and to ensure that cooperative banks are conducted in a manner that protects the interests of the depositors by increasing professionalism, enabling access to capital, improving governance and ensuring sound banking through the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The Bill, passed on Wednesday, gives powers to the RBI to prepare a scheme for reconstruction or amalgamation of the banking company without the necessity of first making an order of moratorium. The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2020 which amends the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, does not apply to certain cooperative societies such as primary agricultural credit societies and cooperative land mortgage banks. It also does not apply to the primary agricultural credit societies and cooperative societies whose principal business is long term financing for agricultural development. Further, the Bill mentions that these societies must not use the words 'bank', 'banker' or 'banking' in their name or in connection with their business, or act as an entity that clears cheques. In her concluding speech in favour of the Bill, which seeks to replace the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said as the economic situation arising from the Covid-19 pandemic had increased the stress in both cooperative banks and banking companies, there was an immediate need for legislation in this regard. She said the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2020 was introduced in Lok Sabha on March 3 this year but it could not be passed. As Parliament was not in session, she informed the lower House, the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 was promulgated by the President Ram Nath Kovind on June 26 this year. The Bill was moved in the House with amendments in its Section 3, Section 45 and Section 56. Amendment in Section 3 provides that the Act shall not apply to a primary agricultural credit society or a cooperative society whose primary object and principal business is providing long term finance for agricultural development. Amendment of Section 45 to address the potential disruptions in the financial system by providing for the RBI to prepare a scheme for the reconstruction or amalgamation of the banking company without the necessity of first making an order of moratorium. The amendment in Section 56 provides that notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, the provisions of the Act shall apply to co-operative societies, subject to the modifications specified therein. (Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Thursday and not separately reported by Alliance News: Hutchison China Meditech Ltd - China-based biopharmaceutical company - New drug application for surufatinib as a treatment for advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours accepted for review by China National Medical Products Administration. Application supported by data from its Sanet-p phase 3 study in China. Securities Trust of Scotland PLC - Edinburgh-based investor - Appoints Troy Asset Management Ltd as investment manager with no change to investment objective. Portfolio to be managed by Tomasz Boniek and wider Troy team. Troy to waive management fee for 12 month and make ongoing contribution to cost of secretarial and administration services. Discount control mechanism to be introduced in order to protect shareholders from company trading at discount to net asset value. FIH Group PLC - Falkland Islands-based conglomerate - Maintains focus on cash management, with cash as at August end GBP14.1 million. Trading has been hurt by Co As lockdown eases, revenue in both businesses steadily recovers but is still well below prior year levels with "significant loss of revenue in both UK businesses" from Covid-19. Not proposing interim dividend after cancelling financial 2020 dividend. "We still expect to record a loss for the financial year, though, before the costs of redundancies, at a lower underlying level than when we reported to shareholders in June." At its AGM, resolution 8 - which relates to "the disapplication of pre-emption rights, to allot equity securities or sell treasury shares for cash without first offering them to existing shareholders, in circumstances other than for a specific acquisition or capital investment" - fails to pass as does not get required 75% of votes. Board to consult with shareholders to understand and seek to address concerns. Eden Research PLC - biopesticides and plastic-free formulation technology company - Collaborator Eastman Chemical Co gets authorisation to tell Cedroz in France. Cedroz is Eden's bionematicide, targeting free living parasitic worms called nematodes. French regulator also approves its Mevalone biofungicide for use in organic agriculture in France. Mevalone also gets authorisation for use on tale and wine grapes in Serbia through regional distributor K&N Efthymiadis. Mevalone is a foliar biofungicide which initially targets a key disease affecting grapes and other high-value fruit and vegetable crops. ADM Energy PLC - natural resources investor with assets in Nigeria - Formerly submits bid with Nigerian Department of Petroleum Resources for marginal field in 2020 marginal field bid round. 57 marginal fields available to participating companies and ADM is participating in the bid round as strategic partner of OilBank International Ltd. "The company expects the bid round to be concluded by the end of Q4 2020 and will update the market in due course." Dev Clever Holdings PLC - software and technology group based in Tamworth - Signs three-year commercial partnership with mobile pool betting applications provider Low6. Partnership allow for full integration of Low6's 'PubWars' mobile quiz based pool betting app to be integrated with Dev Clever's Engage gamification platform and 'PubPal' service.Partnership to be funded by fee of GBP115,000 paid to Dev Celevr by Low6 plus ongoing revenue share. Beowulf Mining PLC - miner with projects in Finland, Sweden, and Kosovo - Notes findings of market assessment of Kallak North by Bo Arvidson. Highlights of assessment include that Kallak ore testwork "has produced an exceptionally high-grade magnetite concentrate" at 71.5% iron content plus only "minimal detrimental components". This makes Kallak the market leading high-grade product within all known and planned future producers. CEO Kurt Budge: "Benchmark iron ore prices climbed to around USD130 a dry metric tonne in late August, the highest level since 2014, and with prices set to remain strong for the remainder of the year, now is the time for the Swedish government to give Kallak the 'green light'." Prairie Mining Ltd - Poland-focused coal development firm - Receives valid application for small oversubscription of 16.1 million shares at AUD0.25 issued price, raising AUD4.0 million or around GBP2.3 million. Prairie to accept all valid application with no scale back. Cadence Minerals PLC - London-based mineral resources investment company - Notes first set of results from Hastings Technology Metals, its joint venture partner in the Yangibana rare earth project in Western Australia. First nine holes all hit economic mineralisation. Hastings COO Andrew Reid: "These results have exceeded our expectations, which are an excellent first step in defining what appears to be a significant new zone of mineralisation. With this initial shallow program, we have confirmed the presence of broad mineralised widths and extended known extents of Mineral Resources. All the deepest holes confirm mineralisation continues at depth." Cadence owns 30% of Yangibana, while Hastings owns the other 70%. Galileo Resources PLC - miner with projects in Botswana, Zambia and South Africa - Begins helicopter-borne electromagnetic survey over two of its tenures within its Kalahari Copper Belt project, Botswana. Preliminary results expected by end of October. CEO Colin Bird: "Our initial activities will be two-fold in that we will investigate an area to the northeast which shows good geophysical potential and an area in the midst of a recent discovery. I have no doubt that time will see the Kalahari Copper Belt region emerging as a significant copper producer, since it already hosts two new world class deposits." Pan African Resources PLC - African-focused gold producer - Remuneration committee recommends restructuring some its long-term incentive schemes in order to simplify and consolidate, improving retention capability. CEO, financial director, and other executives and prescribed officers agree to relinquish share options under current scheme. In lieu of the relinquishment, restricted B class shares in capital of OAR Gold Prop Ltd will be issues in terms of newly established B-share scheme. Pan African owns 49% share capital of PAR Gold. Highland Gold Mining Ltd - Russian gold miner - Fortiana Holdings Ltd gets regulatory clearance from Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service in connection with its mandatory cash offer for Highland Gold. Fortiana is to acquire 145.8 million shares in Highland Gold from eight shareholders at GBP3.00 each for a total of GBP437.4 million, giving Fortiana a 40% stake in Highland and valuing the whole company at GBP1.09 billion. It has also put forward an offer to acquire all Highland shares at the same price. By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. (Natural News) As the world inches closer to developing a COVID-19 vaccine, we are also on the brink of facing the very disturbing prospect of a push for mandatory vaccination. President Trump told the military to prepare for the delivery of as many as 200 million doses of the vaccine, which they hope will be ready by the end of the year for everybody that wants to get it. But what about those who dont want it? Roughly $10 billion of taxpayer money has been poured into the development of a vaccine and other therapeutics. Right now, 45 different clinical trials using public funds are underway. There is a lot of doubt about the efficacy and safety of a vaccine that is being developed so quickly that the project working on it is known as Operation Warp Speed. Scientist have been trying and failing for two decades to come up with a safe coronavirus vaccine, and it seems unlikely that they would have managed to suddenly find something acceptable in mere months. In fact, it isnt even clear whether such a vaccine could create the kind of immune response it needs to in order to offer full protection. Some people who have recovered from the virus are being infected again, which means the antibodies may not offer a long-term protection. The leader of the World Health Organizations response to the epidemic, Dr. David Heymann, said: We dont even know if a vaccine can produce an immune response which would protect against future infection. And when you consider the safety record of vaccines that have been around for many years, its only logical to worry that a rushed vaccine will be even worse. AstraZeneca recently paused the third phase of its clinical trials of the vaccine theyve been working on after a trial participant developed a potentially unexplained illness. Will you be forced to get the vaccine? With so many ways for this to go wrong, you may be planning to skip the vaccine. Unfortunately, there are some very real worries that we may not have a choice in the matter. Even without an official mandate, punitive measures could be implemented that make it hard for people to avoid getting one. For example, some individuals could face losing their jobs if they dont get vaccinated. In Massachusetts, the flu vaccine has already been made mandatory for children age 6 months and older who go to school across all age ranges from childcare to universities. Students who fail to get the vaccine before December 31 will not be allowed to continue with the school year. Indeed, every state already has a mandatory vaccination schedule in place that children must adhere to before attending school. Therefore, it stands to reason that the coronavirus vaccine could be added to this mandate. However, all states allow for medical exemptions and some also allow religious and philosophical exemptions. It may just be a matter of time before the vaccine is required not only for those attending school but also taking public transportation, getting health insurance, going shopping or even leaving the house. The New York State Bar Association recently issued a report demanding that all Americans get the coronavirus vaccine when its ready. The report, which was published by more than 24,000 lawyers, called for legislation that requires everybody to get the jab unless their doctor deems it clinically inappropriate. Public support for a coronavirus vaccine has been dropping in recent months. In a May poll, 50 percent of Americans said theyd be willing to get a coronavirus vaccine. However, a September poll revealed that just 21 percent would be willing to get a vaccine as soon as possible, while another 50 percent would consider it but would wait to see how it works for others first. Meanwhile, 21 percent said they would not get the vaccine. There is no question that COVID-19 is a very dangerous disease, but those in power who are using the threat of the virus to push forward Big Pharmas profit-fueled vaccine drives could do a lot more harm to human health than this disease if the vaccine turns out to be unsafe and is administered on a wide scale. Sources for this article include: TheEpochTimes.com NaturalNews.com Donna Panno (left) and Stuart Brian talk inside St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Olde Kensington. Promised restorations to the church that was altered during its coronavirus shutdown without the consent of its parishioners will have to wait until the sale of another church to pay for them, an Archdiocese representative told church members Sunday. Read more Promised restorations to an Olde Kensington church, which was altered during its coronavirus shutdown without the consent of its parishioners, will have to wait until the sale of another church to pay for them, an Archdiocese representative told church members Sunday. The Rev. Dennis Gill, director of the Office for Divine Worship for the Archdiocese, told parishioners of St. Michael Roman Catholic Church that its original plan to move artifacts from Immaculate Conception, which closed last year, to replace what their parochial administrator, the Rev. Arturo Chagala, removed, was cost prohibitive. Instead, Gill said, the parish would first have to sell Immaculate Conception in Northern Liberties, and then move religious artifacts to St. Michael. Donna Panno, whose family has been at St. Michael for four generations, said Gill made the five-minute announcement and left the church before the 9:30 Mass began. I walked out the door behind him and told him I have a 91-year-old mother who was baptized in the baptismal font in there, said Panno, who told him the changes were an abomination. "He said to me, Were working on getting it fixed. " After the public outcry by St. Michael members over the unauthorized renovations -- they included removing pews and altar rails, and covering over the center-aisle marble floor with bright red carpeting -- the Archdiocese had Chagala read a letter of apology in June and promised to restore the sanctuary by Sept. 11. But Sept. 11 came and went, and nothing had been changed. Kenneth A. Gavin, a spokesman for the archdiocese, confirmed Gill visited St. Michael to give an update on plans to return the St. Michael church building to its previous appearance. READ MORE: At Philly Catholic churches, secret renovations expose rift between traditional and Neo-Catechumenal members Since the changes, described by a building historian as architectural vandalism, Panno and Stuart Brian, the churchs retired organist, discovered more alterations at the church Sunday. In the church hall, once called the Lower Church, which served as an alternate site for Mass, there is now a concrete grotto. Chagala did not return calls seeking comment. An ongoing dispute The outcry over physical changes at St. Michael was one of two instances this summer where traditional Catholic parishioners disagreed with the Neo-Catechumenal Way parochial leaders installed there. Rev. Chagala, at St. Michael, is trained as a Neo-Catechumenal leader, as is Rev. Esteban Granyak, the parochial administrator at St. Charles Borromeo in South Philadelphia. The St. Charles parishioners took to public protests in July and August alleging racial discrimination after Granyak made renovations without consulting the predominantly Black traditional parishioners. Congregants at both churches say the parochial administrators are more focused on growing their Neo-Cat movements, rather than on the spiritual needs of traditional parish members. READ MORE: Black members of St. Charles Borromeo Church in South Philly allege racism and will protest to declare their parish lives matter Also known as The Way, or the NCW," the evangelical ministry was founded in Spain in 1964, but only approved by the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. There are Neo-Catechumenal communities in about 15 parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, with 20 to 25 lay leaders each. Some parishes have more than one community. Gavin said last month that the Archdiocese embraces and celebrates diversity. Who should pay? Gavin wrote in an email Wednesday that it is not possible for the parish to restore St. Michael "without jeopardizing its financial solvency. The Archdiocese does not have available funds to offset the costs. Because Immaculate Conception belongs to St. Michaels parish, Gavin added: Any decision regarding the future disposition of the Immaculate Conception church building would be at the discretion of Saint Michael Parish leadership. To Panno and others, that would mean putting control of the proceeds from the sale of Immaculate Conception back into the hands of the very administrator whose unauthorized changes now require money to reverse. Thats not making any sense, Panno said. The wall is broken outside, and the main door needs painting. Some of the plaster on the ceilingwas coming down," Panno said. "But instead of fixing what needed to be fixed and doing repairs, hes putting in red carpet and building a cement cave. READ MORE: An evangelical Catholic movement inspires commitment, stirs controversy If Immaculate is sold, that money shouldnt go to the restoration," Brian said. "It should support the future of St. Michael, Brian said. Donald Trumps decision to cancel tariffs on Canadian aluminum imports is a short-term win for Ottawa. In the long run, however, it is anything but. The surprise announcement was made Tuesday by the office of U.S Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer. It reverses a decision announced by Trump last month to impose a 10 per cent tariff on imports of Canadian aluminum. At the time, Trump claimed Canada was flooding the market with cheap aluminum and that this threatened both U.S. jobs and national security. The Canadian government argued that neither was true. It also announced it would prepare a list of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports into Canada. That list was about to be released Tuesday but was held back after Trumps reversal made it moot. In responding to the U.S. decision, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland sounded gleeful. No wonder. Canada had challenged Trump and, in the short run, won. In the longer run, however, Tuesdays announcement only underscores Canadas weakness when it comes to trade with the U.S. In spite of signing trade deals like the revised NAFTA, the U.S. reserves the right to do as it pleases. In the case of aluminum, it has announced that it will unilaterally impose quotas on Canadian imports. If Canada exceeds these quotas, the U.S. warned Tuesday, tariffs on aluminum will be reimposed. Freeland argues that Canada has not agreed to quotas. But in the practical world of politics, that matters little. If the U.S. wants import quotas on aluminum, then quotas there will be regardless of formal free trade deals. The exemplar here is softwood lumber. Canada signed its first free trade deal with the U.S. more than 30 years ago in large part to end a perennial dispute over softwood lumber. But the dispute never ended. In an effort to protect its own industry, the U.S. continues to limit Canadian softwood lumber imports. Canada complains. But other than engage in the tit-for-tat game of retaliatory tariffs, there is little it can do. So it is with aluminum. Indeed, the metal has the potential to become this generations version of softwood lumber. What then is to be done? There are no easy answers. The U.S. market will always be important to Canada. Geography makes this so. It is naive to think America can be easily replaced as a customer for Canadian products. But more effort can be put into encouraging manufacturing here at home. Why export aluminum to the U.S. to be made into washing machines? Why not make washing machines here? The right gets it. Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford talks of encouraging the domestic manufacture of protective medical gear in order to reduce Canadas reliance on the U.S. and other foreign countries. Federal Conservative leader Erin OToole, in language usually associated with the left, has been surprisingly critical of global free trade. In a video released on Labour Day, he attacked unnamed trade deals as bad and accused big business of pushing globalization in order to drive down wages. He has also called for a Trump-like Canada First policy that encourages self-sufficiency in food and energy. We have to put working families first, he told the CBC. Oddly enough, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh does not talk much about free trade. Up to this point, neither have the Liberals. Indeed, Freeland is eloquent in her defence of it. This week, she seemed genuinely pleased by Canadas victory in the aluminum wars. But she is smart enough to know this victory will be short-lived. The Americans have never felt they should be bound by international rules. In that sense, Trump is not an outlier. He is very traditional. In her recent interview with Times Now, Kangana Ranaut claimed that she was forced to vote for Shiv Sena although she was a BJP supporter. Recalling an experience when she had to cast her vote, Kangana stated that she couldn't find the button to vote for BJP and was told to vote for Shiv Sena because of an alliance that the two parties had formed. She further admitted that she is naive when it comes to politics and that she does not understand why alliances are formed. However, senior journalist and author Kamlesh Satur pointed out the factual error in Kangana's statements, and revealed that she did in fact have an option to vote for her preferred party, the BJP. In a tweet, Satur wrote, "I see some factual error here. @KanganaTeam says she ws forcd to vote for Shivsena. As per @CEO_Maharashtra data, @KanganaTeam is a voter of Bandra west seat. Ashish Shelar of BJP was Sena-BJP candidate here in 2019. In Loksabha agn Poonam Mahajan of the BJP fought n won." He continued in another tweet, "If she says she is talking about 2014, then again BJP-Sena fought together in Loksabha with BJP contesting the seat. in Assembly elections She had an option of voting for BJP as both the parties fought separately. And Yes they fought 2017 BMC elections separately as well!" I see some factual error here. @KanganaTeam says she ws forcd to vote for Shivsena. As per @CEO_Maharashtra data, @KanganaTeam is a voter of Bandra west seat. Ashish Shelar of BJP was Sena-BJP candidate here in 2019. In Loksabha agn Poonam Mahajan of the BJP fought n won. https://t.co/to48IJgUtD pic.twitter.com/56OrytAWyd Kamlesh Sutar (@kamleshsutar) September 16, 2020 Kangana entered into a battle with the Maharashtra government after her constant comments deriding and defaming the Mumbai Police. The matter escalated when abusive language was used against Kangana and her office in Mumbai was demolished due to what many believed to be vendetta by the Maharashtra government. ALSO READ: Kangana Ranaut Reads Sanjay Raut's 'Request Her To Not Come Back To Mumbai' As An 'Open Threat' ALSO READ: Rahul Pandita Slams Kangana Ranaut For Comparing Herself To Kashmiri Pandits: We Are Not Your Pawns EU, U.S. announce that further support for Ukraine to depend on transparency of election of SAPO head The EU and the U.S. jointly stated that further support for Ukraine will depend on the transparency of the election of the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). "EU, U.S. take note of Ukrainian parliament's decision to appoint members to the commission to choose the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor. The commission needs to embark on a transparent process with candidates' integrity and merits at its core. Our further support will depend upon it," a statement posted by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the EU Delegation to Ukraine on Twitter on Thursday says. A Pulwama-style terror strike was averted by the Indian Army with the recovery of 52 kg of explosives on Thursday in Kashmir's Karewa area which is not very far from the site of last year's dastardly attack, army officials said. They said the location where the explosives were recovered was near the Jammu and Kashmir highway and around 9 km from the spot of the Pulwama attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed. "We have averted another Pulwama-type attack," said an army official. The officials said the explosives were found in a Syntex water tank at Karewa area of Gadikal during a search operation around 8 am. "There were 416 packets of explosives with each one of them weighing 125gm," said an official, adding another 50 detonators were recovered in another Syntex tank in the area in subsequent searches. The explosives are called "Super-90" or S-90 in short, the official said. On February 14 last year, a suicide bomber had rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama killing 40 soldiers. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Kashmir in recent years. Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad had taken responsibility for the attack. Twelve days after the strike, India's warplanes pounded a JeM terrorist training camp deep inside Pakistan that had triggered massive escalation in tension between the two countries. Last month, the National Investigation Agency filed a chargesheet in the case, detailing how the attack was planned and executed by JeM. The NIA named Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar and several others in the chargesheet. A LIMERICK councillor who lives across the Shannon Estuary from Shannon Airport says one radical way of securing the airports future is to consider leasing it to the US Air Force. Since the introduction of restrictions in March due to Covid-19, passenger numbers at Shannon have fallen by more than 90% and a number of carriers have publicly stated they are to review their operations at the airport. A number of airlines have already announced they are to reduce their services over the winter. At a meeting of the Adare Municipal District, Cllr OBrien, who lives at Pallaskenry, said something radical needs to be done to save the airports future. With respect to Shannon Airport, I agree completely that something radical needs to be done, he said after Cllr Kevin Sheahan has commented that he feared the airport could become a white elephant at the side of County Clare across the river from County Limerick. Supporting calls for greater cooperation between Limerick City and County Council, Clare County Council and Tipperary County Council, Cllr OBrien said people need to think outside the box. There are American troops standing, and I welcome them, every other day in Shannon Airport. I live across from the airport and we might even have to start thinking about leasing out Shannon Airport to the US Air Force its as simple as that lease out Shannon Airport to the US Air Force because something radical needs to be done, he said. Earlier, Cllr Sheahan proposed a motion calling on the mayor of the city and county of Limerick to meet with his counterparts in Clare and Tipperary. We need to to mount a serious campaign in Limerick City and County to ensure that Shannon Airport is not downgraded any further, he said. Its our airport, its the Munster airport and its totally wrong if we ignore this and if we let this happen without comment we need to make comment and we need to lighten up a bit and get involved and start a campaign with Clare County Council and Tipperary County Council we need to put our heads together and campaign serious for the survival of Shannon Airport. Cllrs agreed that there should be further discussion at a full meeting of the local authority as soon as possible. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Galih Gumelar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 09:09 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454c4c1 1 National #visa,Visa,immigration,#Immigration,mixed-marriage,#mixed-marriage,#COVID19,COVID-19 Free After months of being prevented from returning to Indonesia because of entry restrictions, foreign members of mixed-nationality families abroad can now reunite with their families in Indonesia thanks to a recent change in visa policy. The Law and Human Rights Ministrys immigration office announced on Monday that it would allow foreign spouses and children of mixed-nationality marriages living abroad to apply for a limited stay visa for family reunification (VITAS 317) to enter Indonesia. The policy comes after immigration authorities suspended almost all visa application processes, including for family reunification, and generally restricted foreigners from entering Indonesia since April 2 due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The new policy allows foreign members of mixed-nationality families to apply for the visa online and offshore and submit documents, such as an application form and a copy of their passport, via the immigration offices website visa-online.imigrasi.go.id. The immigration office will send its approval, known as telex visa, to applicants via email once officials verify their documents. Applicants can obtain the visa at Indonesian embassies by providing the telex visa from the immigration office. The policy on family reunification visas not only applies to foreign members of mixed-nationality families, but also to spouses or children of foreigners living in Indonesia, who hold temporary stay permits (ITAS) and permanent stay permits (ITAP). Read also: Children of mixed marriages struggle to return home during pandemic The immigration office said the policy was made for humanitarian reasons. Some people might not be able to deal with the current situation without having their families by their side, Immigration Directorate General spokesperson Arvin Gumilang told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. But, they should also comply with health protocols such as going into quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in Indonesia. He said, however, that the immigration office had, so far, no intentions of completely lifting the entry ban for all foreigners a restriction laid out in a regulation from the Law and Human Rights Ministry. The regulation generally bars foreigners from entering the country unless they have an ITAP or ITAS with a valid entry permit. Indonesian Mixed-Marriage Society (PerCa) chairwoman Juliani Luthan welcomed the new policy, saying the government had finally listened to the concerns of many mixed-nationality families in the past six months. She said that PerCa had actively urged the government to allow members of mixed-nationality families overseas to enter Indonesia during the health crisis because they, especially the children, needed to be around their support system to cope with the pandemic. Before the pandemic hit Indonesia, most of the children residing overseas, often to study, had generally relied on visitor visas to enter the country. However, they were no longer able to do so after the ban was imposed in April. Read also: Mixed families, couples have mixed response to nixed emergency permit Mixed-nationality married couples have faced similar struggles. Juliani said her organization had observed numerous cases in which a husband who holds foreign citizenship and had gone abroad on a work-related trip had been prevented from returning to their families in Indonesia during the pandemic because they did not have an ITAP or ITAS. Some had become stranded overseas while their wives in Indonesia were about to give birth to their children, Juliani said. PerCa has sent letters to the immigration office voicing their concerns, encouraging authorities to reinstate the VITAS 317 application process as a quick solution. Long story short, the policy is exactly what we wanted. Finally, the government is paying attention to our demands and we appreciate that, Juliani said. Now we only hope that the immigration office will not complicate the process with bureaucracy so that children and spouses abroad can return home as soon as possible. Lawyers for Mr. Correia and the two other defendants declined to comment. Mr. Parnas was a regular presence in Trump donor circles before the first indictment last year, which heightened scrutiny of his dealings with Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Parnas and Mr. Giuliani played a central role in a dirt-digging campaign aimed at Mr. Trumps political rivals that led to the presidents impeachment last year. In early 2019, Mr. Parnas, his associate, Igor Fruman, and Mr. Giuliani tried to persuade Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president who is now the Democratic nominee for president. Working for Mr. Giuliani, they also tried to dig up damaging information on Marie L. Yovanovitch, then the American ambassador to Ukraine. Mr. Trump eventually removed Ms. Yovanovitch from her post last year, a decision that was at the heart of his impeachment trial. The investigation into Mr. Giuliani focused in part on whether he had worked to oust Ms. Yovanovitch at the behest of a Ukrainian official, which might violate laws governing lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. Mr. Giuliani has maintained that he was working for Mr. Trump, not the Ukrainian government. Mr. Giuliani was still facing scrutiny over the summer, though the current status of the investigation was unclear on Thursday. To be honest, I dont know that there ever was a Rudy Giuliani investigation, said Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for the former New York mayor. The fact that your name comes up doesnt mean that youre a target. The prosecutors, he said, have not subpoenaed Mr. Giuliani or sought to speak with him. On Thursday, prosecutors disclosed in a footnote in a letter to the judge presiding over the case that he had agreed to keep some information secret because their investigation is ongoing. They did not elaborate. The Centre has extended the enforcement of compulsory Bureau of Indian Standards ( BIS ) certification for toys by four months to 1 January, offering a major relief to the toy industry. The Toys (Quality Control) Order requires all toys and material for children below 14 years to be certified by the BISIndias national standards body. Absence of the certification can result in criminal liability, including imprisonment and huge fines. The move is crucial, given the industry was in a bind as the government had refused to entertain requests for more time from toy manufacturers, importers and retailers to comply with the order, which came into effect on 1 September. An order issued on Tuesday by the commerce and industry ministry said: It shall come into force with effect from 1 January, 2021." In an emailed response to queries, a spokesperson for the commerce ministry said: Yes. the quality control order implementation date has been extended to 1 January 21." The size of Indias toy market in 2020 is estimated at $38.1 billion by Statista, a German markets data portal. This is a welcome move. Though it should have been ideally extended by six months, the four-month extension is a huge relief to the industry, which was staring at criminal prosecution for being non-compliant or partly compliant. The aim should be to help and not hassle the industry and government has taken the right call," said Abhixit Singh, partner at ASP Advocates, a New Delhi-based law firm. During his monthly radio programme, Mann ki Baat, on 30 August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted Indias ability to become a toy hub" of the world. India currently has a small share of the global toy industry worth over 7 trillion. India has been tightening its economic partnership with China, following border clashes between armies of the two nations since June, which led to the killing of 20 Indian soldiers. Imports of Chinese tyres and auto parts have been restricted, while hundreds of Chinese apps, including PUBG, TikTok, and UC Browser, have been barred by the Indian government, citing national security concerns. BIS, which works under the consumer affairs, food and public distribution ministry, has been turning the screws on the certification of Chinese products. A case in point being delays in certification and testing approvals for imported solar equipment from China, Mint had reported earlier. The All India Toys Federation (AITF) said in addition to the deadline extension, the industry body that represents scores of small and large toy manufacturers is also seeking that manufacturers be given the option to get their products screened for quality standards under the earlier processes wherein they can use BIS-accredited laboratories to test product samples. utpal.b@livemint.com 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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technologys business school is expected to temporarily move its classes online after reports of student gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. Graduate students from the Cambridge Universitys Sloan School of Management reportedly gathered in public parks, an MIT spokesperson told MassLive. There are no known COVID-19 cases linked to the gatherings, and MIT has reported no positive cases out of the thousands of students and staff tested since Monday, the spokesperson said. David Schmittlein, the dean of Sloan, opted to hold classes remotely through Tuesday, though, as a precautionary measure because of the gatherings, according to the spokesperson. While these events took place outdoors and are not known to have resulted in any cases of COVID, Dean Schmittlein nevertheless has made clear to students that this behavior is unacceptable, the spokesperson said. The transition to fully remote classes is expected to allow students to undergo two rounds of testing for the viral respiratory infection, according to the university. Senior faculty deans at Sloan have also organized virtual conversations with their students to reinforce expected behaviors during the ongoing public health crisis and how to move forward, the university spokesperson noted. Our internal discipline processes have been engaged, and we continue to gather facts, the spokesperson said. MIT pointed out that its approach to fall academic planning has been conservative. Most instruction is being held online, and access to campus is limited. The majority of staff members continue to work from home as well. Our testing results to date continue to indicate extremely low prevalence of COVID-19 on campus, and, most encouragingly, we have not seen any indications of spread even as we carefully ramped up our on-campus research operations and brought back some undergraduate and graduate students, the university said. Still, there is work to do. In July, the university announced that only senior undergraduate students would be invited back for the fall semester. The school intends to open campus for all students in the spring. Since August, more than 50,000 coronavirus tests have been administered to members of the MIT campus community. Out of those tens of thousands of tests, only 24 have come back positive, according to the schools online COVID-19 dashboard. Related Content: An elderly billionaire says hes delighted to be broke after giving away his entire $8billion fortune to charity. Charles Chuck Feeney, 89, the co-founder of Duty-Free shopping, spread his money out through donations to different charities, universities and foundations of his choosing. Feeney said he is happier than ever after setting aside $2million for him and his wife to live on, and donating the rest of his massive fortune. We learned a lot, he said. We would do some things differently, but I am very satisfied. I feel very good about completing this on my watch. Feeney and his wife Helga celebrated with a Zoom call that included a video message from Bill Gates. US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi sent Feeney a letter from Congress thanking him for his lifes work. Feeney was known for making a promise to give away all of his money to charitable causes and is known as the James Bond of Philanthropy due to his previous desire to make his donations anonymously. The former billionaire was known for creating the idea called Giving While Living, which is to spend money on charities during ones lifetime instead of after death. And to those wondering bout Giving While Living, Feeney said. Try it, youll like it. He gave $3.7billion to education including nearly $1billion to his alma mater Cornell. Feeney also donated more than $870million to human rights and social change causes including $62million in grants to abolish the death penalty in the US and $76million for grassroots campaigns supporting the passage of Obamacare medical insurance, according to Forbes. CoronaLife Web Series Feeneys generosity has even inspired well-known billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who raved about the mans giving ideologies. Hes a model for us all, Buffet said. Its going to take me 12 years after my death to get done what hes doing within his lifetime. Gates said that Feeney encouraged him to give back more to the world and inspired him and other philanthropies to donate as much as possible during their lifetime. Chuck created a path for other philanthropists to follow, Gates said. No one is a better example of that than Chuck. Many people talk to me about how he inspired them. It is truly amazing. Feeney and his wife now live in a modest San Francisco apartment with a plaque that says Congratulations to Chuck Feeney for $8billion of philanthropic giving. I see little reason to delay giving when so much good can be achieved through supporting worthwhile causes, he said. Besides, its a lot more fun to give while you live than give while youre dead. Source: metro.co.uk Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video New Delhi: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday (September 17) said that the buildup of Chinese troops and armaments on the Eastern Ladakh border areas had been noticed since April, and in the following month they tried to stop the traditional patrolling route of our troops in the Galwan Valley, while addressing Rajya Sabha. In mid-May, Rajnath Singh said, the Chinese troops had made several attempts to transgress the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in other parts of the Western Sector, which includes Kongka La, Gogra, and North Bank of Pangong Lake, which were detected and befittingly responded to by the Armed Forces. The Defence Minister said, "Since April, we had noticed a buildup of troops and armaments by the Chinese side in the border areas adjacent to Eastern Ladakh. In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off." He further said, "Even as this situation was being addressed by the ground commanders as per the provisions of our bilateral agreements and protocol, in mid-May the Chinese side made several attempts to transgress the LAC in other parts of the Western Sector. These attempts were detected early and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces." Rajnath Singh reiterated that the Galwan Valley clash had taken place as a result of the Chinese violating the process of disengagement decided at a meeting of senior commanders of the two sides on June 6. Speaking about the present-day situation, the Defence Minister said that diplomatic and military engagements with the Chinese side have been maintained with three key principles in mind. The key points of his Rajya Sabha speech are: 1. "Both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC, neither side should attempt to alter the status quo unilaterally, and all agreements and understandings between the two sides must be fully abided by in their entirety." 2. "Stating that the ongoing situation involves "sensitive operational issues", he said that the details could not be divulged in public as of yet, adding "the situation this year is very different both in terms of the scale of troops involved and the number of friction points. We do remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the current situation. At the same time, we remain prepared to deal with all contingencies." 3. "I would like to take some time first to briefly provide some details of our boundary issue with China. As the House is aware, India and China are yet to resolve their boundary question. China does not accept the customary and traditional alignment of the boundary between India and China. We believe that this alignment is based on well-established geographical principles confirmed by treaties and agreements, as well as historical usage and practice, well-known for centuries to both sides." 4. "The Chinese position, however, is that the boundary between the two countries has not been formally delimited, that there exists a traditional customary line formed by the extent of jurisdiction that they claim was exercised historically by each side, and that the two sides have different interpretations of the position of the traditional customary line. The two countries had engaged in discussions during 1950s-60s but these efforts could not yield a mutually acceptable solution." Live TV 5- "China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq kms in the Union Territory of Ladakh. In addition, under the so-called Sino-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq kms of Indian territory in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to China. China also claims approximately 90,000 sq kms of Indian territory in the Eastern Sector of the India-China boundary in Arunachal Pradesh." 6. "A key element of both the 1993 and the 1996 Agreements is that the two sides will keep their military forces in the areas along the Line of Actual Control to a minimum level. These agreements also mandate that pending an ultimate solution to the boundary question, the two sides shall strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control." 7. "In these agreements, India and China also committed to clarification and confirmation of the Line of Actual Control to reach a common understanding of the alignment. Thus, in late 1990s and upto 2003, the two sides engaged in an exercise to clarify and confirm the LAC. But, thereafter the Chinese side did not show a willingness to pursue the LAC clarification exercise. As a result, there are some areas where the Chinese and Indian perceptions of LAC overlap. In these areas, as also with other sections of the border areas, the various agreements govern the manner in which troops of both sides should operate and deal with situations of face-offs to maintain peace and tranquility." 8. "In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off. Even as this situation was being addressed by the Ground Commanders as per the provisions of our bilateral agreements and protocol, in mid-May the Chinese side made several attempts to transgress the LAC in other parts of the Western Sector. This included Kongka La, Gogra and North Bank of Pangong Lake. These attempts were detected early and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces." 9. "The conduct of our armed forces throughout these incidents shows that while they maintained Sayyam in the face of provocative actions, they also equally displayed Shaurya when required to protect the territorial integrity of India. I would like the House to appreciate the courage and valour of our soldiers, who undergo immense hardship in the most difficult conditions to keep us all safe and secure." 10. "As we want to resolve the current situation through dialogue, we have maintained diplomatic and military engagement with the Chinese side. In these discussions, we have maintained the three key principles that, determine our approach: (i) both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC; (ii) neither side should attempt to alter the status quo unilaterally; and (iii) all agreements and understandings between the two sides much be fully abided by in their entirety." 11. "The Chinese side, on its part, took the position that the situation should be handled in a responsible manner and ensure peace and tranquility as per bilateral agreements and protocol. However, it is apparent from Chinese activities that their words dont match their actions. A case in point is that even when the discussions were going on, the Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of 29th and 30th August in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake. But yet again, timely and firm actions by our armed forces along the LAC prevented such attempts from succeeding." 12. "It is true that we are facing a challenge in Ladakh, but I am confident that our country and our brave soldiers will be able to surmount every challenge. I urge this House to unanimously honour the courage and valour of our Armed Forces. A message of unity and complete confidence of our brave soldiers will resonate not only across the country but also across the world and shall infuse a new confidence, new energy, and unlimited enthusiasm in our forces." Acquisition of the four-time Advertising Age Small Agency of the Year will fuel independent creativity into the North America network and expand current integrated relationships Havas Group announced today it has acquired a majority stake in Camp King, an award-winning independent creative agency that combines brand storytelling with expertise in digital, social and content development. With a simple philosophy to make brands Conversationworthy, Camp King brings additional creative firepower to Havas through its highly specialized capabilities, agility and brave thinking. The agency complements Havas' bespoke North America network of larger Havas Villages and boutique shops, including Arnold and Battery, all dedicated to making a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005551/en/ (Jamie King, left; Roger Camp, right). (Photo: Business Wire) Camp King's acquisition is part of Havas' global strategic ambition to build a first-class creative network that delivers content through modern platforms. The relationship between Havas and Camp King goes back to 2008, when Jamie King was President of EURO RSCG Chicago (now Havas Chicago) until 2010. King and Roger Camp then launched Camp King in 2011, with a minority investment from Havas, reflecting the Group's entrepreneurial spirit. Using Havas' resources, the agency developed its first campaign for Old Navy. Camp King has grown significantly in nearly a decade, with over 50% of its revenue coming from its digital and social work. The agency also has an in-house content lab with capabilities in animation and digital design, as well as video production and editorial. Camp King works with a variety of renowned global brands including Energizer, RE/MAX, Papa John's, Jackson Hewitt and prAna, among others. Numerous agency campaigns have received coveted industry awards from Cannes Lions, The One Show, The Andy Awards, The Webby Awards and The Clio Awards, and have been featured in Fast Company, Advertising Age's Creativity, The Drum, Graphis and Lurzer's Archive. Camp King is also a four-time Advertising Age Small Agency of the Year and was selected as one of Outside magazine's Best Places to Work in America (2018), an accolade supported by its inclusive culture-25% of the agency is comprised of minorities and 50% is comprised of women. King will remain CEO and Camp CCO of Camp King, leading a team of 60 across the offices in Chicago and San Francisco. The agency plans to expand its Chicago offering and adapt the Havas Village model in San Francisco, eventually bringing creative and media capabilities under one roof and one P&L. Stephanie Nerlich, Executive Managing Partner, North America commented: "At Havas, we believe competitive advantage is multiplied by gaining an unfair share of talent. That's exactly what we get from Camp King, which brings the agility of a boutique shop with the output of a big agency. And with leaders like Jamie and Roger, we're continuing to build out our constellation of stars. We couldn't be more excited to grow our partnership with them and, in parallel, help fuel their ambitions for the future." Camp King CEO and co-founder Jamie King said: "Havas has been a part of Camp King since the beginning. We turn 10 in 2021; and on the eve of that milestone, Roger and I sat down with Havas to discuss our next phase of growth. Their interest in fueling independent creativity and including us as an asset to expand, differentiate and power their portfolio is what excited us. We are looking forward to the evolution of our partnership and doing even greater things together." Yannick Bollore, Chairman CEO Havas Group, added: "We have worked in partnership with Camp King for nearly a decade, watching this agency produce bold work and win big clients. Now, I'm thrilled to officially welcome them to the Havas family." About Camp King Camp King (C+K) is a Havas-aligned creative agency launched by Roger Camp and Jamie King in February 2011. They are a 4x AdAge Small Agency of the Year, most recently the West Coast Gold winner and the Overall Small Agency of the Year, Silver winner in 2020 Based in San Francisco, and with an office in Chicago, the agency is dedicated to making brands more Conversationworthy. C+K boasts an impressive client list, which includes Energizer, RE/MAX and Papa John's, among others. For more details, visit camp-king.com. About Havas Group Havas is one of the world's largest global communications groups. Founded in 1835 in Paris, the Group employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries and operates through its three business units covering all communication activities. Havas Group's mission is to make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and people. To better anticipate client needs, Havas has adopted a fully integrated model through its 60+ Havas Villages around the world. In these Villages, creative, media and healthcare wellness teams work together, ensuring agility and a seamless experience for clients. We are committed to building a diverse culture where everybody feels they belong, can be themselves, thrive and grow. Havas Group integrated Vivendi in December 2017. Further information about Havas Group is available on the company's website: havasgroup.com MeaningfulDifference View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005551/en/ Contacts: Lorella Gessa Chief Communications Officer, Havas Group +33 (0)1 58 47 90 36 lorella.gessa@havas.com @Lorella_Gessa Tara Reid Sr. Vice President, Havas Formula on behalf of Havas North America (619) 346-0805 tara.reid@havasformula.com Seoul: A South Korean court on Thursday refused to authorise the arrest of the heir to the Samsung business empire, in a setback to prosecutors probing a corruption scandal engulfing President Park Geun-Hye. Officials on Monday sought the arrest of Lee Jae-Yong on charges of bribery, embezzlement and perjury, sending shock waves through the group, which is a major part of the South Korean economy and includes the world's largest smartphone maker. It is already reeling from the debacle over the recall of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 device and reports have suggested it could face sanctions from overseas authorities if Lee is punished. Lee, who became Samsung's de facto head after his father suffered a heart attack in 2014, is accused of bribing Choi Soon-Sil, Park's secret confidante at the centre of the scandal, and receiving policy favours from Park in return. But the court rejected the request on grounds of insufficient evidence, which could mar investigators' plan to question Park -- impeached by parliament last month on charges of bribery. A spokesman for the prosecution team described the decision as "very regrettable" but said they will "carry on with our probe without wavering". Analysts questioned the decision. Kim Nam-Geun, a Seoul lawyer and a political commentator, accused the court of being soft on Samsung because of media pressure and the potential wider economic impact of Lee's arrest. "A court usually approves arrest warrants over bribery cases involving such an enormous amount of money and circumstantial evidence," Kim said. Samsung is South Korea's largest business group and its revenue is equivalent to about a fifth of the country's GDP. As well as the investigation of Park, the decision could weaken prosecutors' probes into the heads of other conglomerates implicated in the scandal, said Choi Chang-Ryol, a professor of politics at Yongin University. "It would be far easier for prosecutors to quiz Lee if they have him under detention, and eventually build a bribery case against Park as well," he said. Lee, 48, was seen leaving a detention centre where he had awaited the decision for the previous 18 hours, following a hearing by the court. With a slight smile, wearing a long coat and tie and carrying a shopping bag, he was led out by a security guard to a barrage of camera flashes, and was driven away without responding to questions from a horde of journalists. Investigators said Lee gave or promised some 43 billion won (USD 36.3 million) worth of bribes to Choi, allegedly in return for the state pension fund's backing of a merger of two Samsung affiliates deemed crucial for Lee's hereditary succession at Samsung. Lee and his lawyers have claimed Park pressured it into making donations, but that it did not expect special favours in return for the funds. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chinas Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) has asked for approval from the US to continue supplying semiconductor chips to Huawei. The company is barred from supplying chips to Huawei, effective last Tuesday, September 15. Thats when the latest amendments to the US-imposed trade restrictions on the Chinese electronics giant go into effect. The new rules ban companies around the world from supplying intellectual property, products, or components that make use of American software, technology, or anything remotely American in the manufacture, to Huawei. Any such company wanting to continue doing business with the Chinese behemoth would require to obtain a special license fro the US government. Several major chipmakers including Samsung, HK Hynix, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and SMIC have been affected by these restrictions. While all of these companies have applied for the license, the US Department of Commerce is yet to issue one to any of them. Advertisement Theres little chance any of them will get either. After all, Huawei has been the Trump administrations tactical stick to defeat China in an ever-growing trade war between the worlds two most powerful economies. The fact that one Chinese company requires US permission to do business with another Chinese company speaks volumes about the importance of this tactical stick for the US. SMIC is committed to compliance with all applicable US export regulations and the intentions of the relevant governmental agencies. To that end, we have submitted to BIS export license applications covering several Huawei products, an SMIC spokesperson told CGTN. SMIC asks US permission to continue supplying chips to Huawei Huaweis troubles began back in May 2019 when the US Department of Commerce put the company in its Entity List. The string of restrictions imposed since now threatens the very survival of the companys smartphone business. It is struggling to acquire components to produce chipsets for its upcoming smartphones. Advertisement TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), one of Huaweis major chip suppliers, said in July that it would cease business with the company after the September 15 deadline. Its unclear if the company has applied for the license or not. SMIC, meanwhile, has applied for the licence but its unlikely to get the approval. Even if it does, SMICs most advanced smartphone chips are based on 14nm process. On the other hand, Samsung, Qualcomm, and TSMC are all now ready to mass produce 5nm chips. So Huawei still wont be able to acquire cutting-edge chips from SMIC for its upcoming crop ofsmartphones. On top of that, the US government has threatened to put SMIC in the Entity List as well. The largest Chinese semiconductor foundry company earlier this year secured a $2.25 billion investement from the nations state-backed investors. A federal judge this week struck down as unconstitutional the statewide shutdown policies ordered by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, D, to curb the coronavirus. On its own, that is significant - a judge second-guessing a governor during a public-health emergency - but equally notable is how the court arrived at its conclusion. U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV put forth an array of objections to the orders, including that they violated residents' First Amendment rights of association and were not tailored to take account of differences in viral spread in different parts of the state. He also argued the governor was not owed any special deference from the court because he was dealing with an emergency. But what was most striking - what reveals the radical nature of the opinion - is that Stickman leaned on a discredited 1905 Supreme Court decision, Lochner v. New York, in arguing that Pennsylvanians had the due process right to choose how to earn a living, even during a pandemic. Until this week's case, Lochner had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Lochner specifically held that states could not impose maximum hour restrictions on bakers, because that would infringe the bakers' freedom to work long hours if they chose. But more broadly, Lochner read a theory of "economic liberty" into the Constitution, thereby blocking all sorts of government regulation of working conditions and wages until the mid- to late 1930s, when judges effectively wrote off the decision and departed from its reasoning. Today, of course, states and the federal government regulate working conditions and wages extensively - although libertarians occasionally express the desire to revive the Lochner perspective. That a district court judge would cite the decision shows how consequential President Donald Trump's stacking of the courts has been. The committed ideologues he has appointed - Stickman joined the district court in 2019 - stand in the way of effective public-health policy and will promote the Republican Party's political agenda for decades to come. This case shows they will do so even if they have to turn back the constitutional clock. The Pennsylvania case involved challenges to two measures - one that restricted the size of gatherings and one that closed "non-life-sustaining" businesses. The specific orders have expired, but the court reviewed their constitutionality because the orders could "be reimposed" at any time. The court acknowledged the policies were "well-intended effort[s] to protect Pennsylvanians from the virus" but nonetheless held they violate numerous provisions of the Constitution. That includes, in the judge's view, the Due Process Clause. When Lochner was decided, "due process" protected workers' rights to enter into any sort of agreement with employers, no matter how unfair (and regardless of what legislators wished). The judge seemed to be aware that this is no longer the case, writing "the emphasis given to economic substantive due process reached its apex in the Lochner era" before it was "considerably recalibrated and de-emphasized by the New Deal Supreme Court and later jurisprudence." But still, the judge concluded, "The Supreme Court has never repudiated the recognition that a citizen has the right to work for a living and pursue his or her chosen occupation." Really? Not only are maximum-hours and minimum-wage laws now standard (if often flouted), the court has also upheld laws that strictly limit certain occupations and trades: States can prohibit opticians from fashioning new eyeglasses based on an old prescription, for instance, and (in a case that explicitly rejected Lochner) forbid non-lawyers to work as debt adjusters. It's true the court never explicitly overruled Lochner. But in a 1933 case, the court said states are "free to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed to promote public welfare." Whereas Lochner meticulously scrutinized whether New York's maximum hour laws was carefully tailored to the state's goals and concluded New York did not have enough evidence to single out bakers, the court later held a state need only show a regulation is "reasonable" and "adopted in the interests of the community." "The doctrine that prevailed in Lochner . . . has long since been discarded," the Supreme Court wrote in 1963. That may not be an explicit overruling, but it's close. The modern court has made clear states are entitled to particular deference "in areas of social and economic policy" and need only show "there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could" justify its policy. Applied to the Pennsylvania situation, this due process analysis could not be more straightforward: Large gatherings and nonessential businesses risk becoming super spreader events, and so the state can reasonably restrict them. That a judge would attempt to revive Lochner is genuinely shocking. In a 2011 article, law professor Jamal Greene identified Lochner as part of the "anticanon" - among the handful of the very worst decisions by the court, one of a set of cases that "all legitimate constitutional decisions must be prepared to refute." Law professor Richard Primus has summarized its status in this way: "Lochner v. New York is never cited for its legal authority . . . [I]t is well understood among constitutional lawyers that relying on Lochner would be a pointless, if not a self-destructive, endeavor." Apparently Judge William Stickman IV thinks he knows something everyone else does not. His decision is an act of judicial insurgency that we can expect other Trump nominees to the federal bench, of which there are many, to repeat. Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate have confirmed more than 200 federal judges in just four years. By comparison, over eight years, President Barack Obama confirmed 329 judges. Trump has also confirmed almost twice as many jurists as Obama to the influential courts of appeals. The judges Trump has nominated are also young; The average age of a Trump nominee is mid- to late 40s, whereas the average age of an Obama nominee was mid-50s. Stickman is in his early 40s and could serve on the bench for another four decades. In one famous case, the court said decisions over the course of the 20th century "signaled the demise of Lochner." The observation came in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when the Supreme Court declined to overrule Roe. The mention of Roe prompts a question: If Trump's nominees feel free to reinvigorate Supreme Court decisions that the Supreme Court has said are no longer good law, will they also ignore Supreme Court decisions that the Supreme Court has said are still sound law? If Stickman's reckless disregard for precedent this week is any guide, the answer may very well be yes. - - - Litman is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and host of the podcast "Strict Scrutiny," about the Supreme Court. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Mardika Parama (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17 2020 National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia is not planning to buy any new aircraft this year as the COVID-19 crisis has strained the companys finances, the airlines top executive has said. Garuda president director Irfan Setiaputra told The Jakarta Post in an exclusive interview on Thursday that much of the companys fleet was still grounded because of falling passenger numbers during the ongoing health crisis. What is the world going to say if we have a new aircraft while there are many aircraft parked on the ground? It doesnt make any sense, he said during the interview, adding that the airlines fleet was still relatively new. 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 Tenancy advocates say the Queensland government's decision to end an eviction moratorium this month could create a "perfect storm", as JobKeeper rates are also reduced. On Wednesday, Housing Minister Mick de Brenni confirmed the residential tenancy eviction moratorium for people whose incomes were affected by COVID-19 would end on September 29, but commercial tenants would have their moratorium extended until December 31. Tenants Queensland's Penny Carr (left) and QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh say Queensland's decision to end a rental eviction moratorium is short-sighted. Credit:Lucy Stone The eviction freeze was designed to protect residential tenants who could not pay rent because of the pandemic, but Mr de Brenni said the state had decided to end the freeze after data showed the economy stabilising. Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh said the move was "incomprehensible and disgraceful" when most other states had extended their freeze. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have traded words over an allegation of wasteful spending against the state government under Governor Simon Lalong. Major stakeholders in the state had in 2018 criticised Mr Lalong for seeking a N1bn loan to complete a stadium in the state capital, Jos. Although the Plateau State House of Assembly eventually approved the request to take the N1 billion loan from Fidelity Bank Plc, the minority leader, Daniel Dem, had expressed concern over the increasing debt profile of the state, noting that N200 million was appropriated for the completion of the stadium in the 2018 budget. If the government is sincere about this, it should have included the loan in the budget. I am not against the completion of the stadium, but collecting a loan for this purpose is not a wise decision, especially that it wasnt budgeted for, he said. Meanwhile, in a statement issued by its spokesperson in the state, John Akans, on Wednesday, the opposition party demanded an explanation on the expenditure of N660million from the loan approved and released for the roofing of the stadium. The party also alleged the misappropriation of over N45billion approved by the states lawmakers. You would recall that on Monday, 29th August 2016, the leadership of our great party (PDP) during its maiden briefing raised alarm over the corrupt deals of Governor Lalong and the APC in the state. Within three months in office, Lalong took loans worth N18billion from some commercial banks and at the same time covering up with what he claimed to be crippling loans inherited from previous administrations. We have reliably gathered that the loans taken by the Lalong administration within his four years in office as approved by the House of Assembly is over 45 billion naira which remains unaccounted for without any beneficial project commissioned, Mr Akans stated. He added that Mr Lalong failed to use the loans effectively amongst infrastructure deficit and other challenges confronting the state. We call on Governor Lalong to be ashamed of himself, reflect on his conscience and be prepared to account for all these flagrant abuse of governance entrusted in him by the suffering and frustrated people of Plateau. Responding to the allegations, the spokesperson of the ruling party in the state, Bashir Sati, berated the PDP, saying they are still hurting from their rejection by the people of the State in 2015 and 2019. In the statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Sati said it was depressing and laughable for the PDP to accuse the Lalong administration of taking huge loans without constructing roads in the state after it looted the monies they claimed to have spent on projects during their years in power. Have they forgotten that the EFCC is still battling to trace billions allegedly carted away by some officials in the last PDP administration? The Rantya, Low-cost, Rafiki, Dong roads were initiated and completed by the present administration, yet the PDP sees no single road. Mr Sati said that Plateau people have continued to applaud the governor for giving all local governments and political zones their entitlements. The Centre has set up an expert committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study reports about a China-based company engaged in mining data and snooping of hundreds of Indian politicians and leaders, including the President of India, Prime Minister and Chief Justice of India. The committee will submit its report to the Government in one month after studying the report after evaluating its implications. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar communicated to Congress leader K C Venugopal about the government decision to set up a panel to study the issue. "The matter was taken up by the Ministry of External Affairs with the Chinese Ambassador today. Our Embassy in Beijing also raised it with the Foreign Ministry of China. The Chinese side conveyed that Shenzen Zhenhua is a private company and had stated its position publicly," the minister told Venugopal. "In their part, the Chinese Foreign ministry maintained that there was no connection between the company concerned and the Chinese government," he also said. Jaishankar's remarks came after Venugopal, during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, raised the issue that some Indian leaders were being spied on by Chinese companies and asked the government what it was doing in this regard. Jaishankar in his letter said that in their statement, a representative of Shenzen Zhenhua has stated that the data collected was from open sources and is no different from its peer organisations in western countries. The the minster said they have denied accessing private information from confidential sources. "The Government of India takes very seriously the protection of the privacy and personal data of Indian citizens. It is deeply concerned at any report that suggests that foreign sources are accessing or seeking to access the personal data of our citizens without their consent," the External Affairs Minister told the Congress leader. Jaishankar said the government has constituted an expert committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study these reports and evaluate their implications. The panel will assess any violations of law and submit its recommendations within 30 days, he said. (With inputs from PTI) In a bizarre case in Canada, a burglar broke in, pooped in the dishwasher and left, as per a TNN report. The police have launched an investigation. The trespasser entered near the intersection of Starwood Drive and Eastview Road between 1 am and 8:15 am on September 13 while the residents were sleeping. "Nothing was taken, however, the culprit defecated on the open dishwasher door before leaving the residence," the Guelph Police said in a release on September 14. The cops requested anyone with any information about the incident to get in touch with them. Amazon The police also encouraged "the public to properly secure your residence by always locking all your doors and windows." Not the first time This is not the first time that an unusual break-in has been reported. In February, a man who broke into a house in Karnataka was caught sleeping on the sofa by the homeowner. The homeowner found the thief after spotting the tiles of the roof removed. He alerted the police and woke the thief using a stick. The police had said that the man appeared too inebriated leading him to fall asleep. iStock In another incident, a man broke into the house of a businessman in Marine Drive, Mumbai was caught sleeping at work. He was tempted to enjoy a drink of champagne before robbing the house. However, before he could steal, he passed out. When the homeowner found that the house was locked from inside, he broke open the door and found a man sleeping on the couch. The man had finished nearly two bottles of champagne. KALAMAZOO, MI Kalamazoo Public Safety Chief Karianne Thomas, who spent 27 years with the department, has announced she will step down effective Sept. 30. Assistant Chief Vernon Coakley will take over as the new chief of the department, effective Oct. 1, according to a news release issued by the city. Coakley will be the departments first Black chief. Thomas was eligible for full retirement as of 2017 and will receive a one-year severance package, per her contract, according to the release. The outgoing chief said she has been truly honored to have served the Kalamazoo community for as long as she has. I am proud to have served as Kalamazoos first female chief and I am excited to pass the baton to Assistant Chief Coakley, who has the leadership skills and vision to take this incredible department to the next level," she said in a statement. "I will truly miss the men and women who put it all on the line every day to keep our community safe. Calls for Thomas' resignation have been heard throughout the community over recent months following her departments handling of Black Lives Matter protests in late May and early June, as well as a recent Proud Boys rally on Aug. 15 that led to violent clashes between Proud Boys and counter protesters. Related: Critics continue calls for resignations over Kalamazoos response to Proud Boys event In the wake of the rally, a subcommittee was formed by the city commission to create standards for how police should respond to events, such as protests and other large gatherings in the city. A preliminary report from the subcommittee released on Aug. 28 showed several areas for improvement by the department as it plans for the possibility of future public protests, demonstrations and rallies. Officers need standards on how to respond to the events, City Manager Jim Ritsema said at an August commission meeting, while stating that things could have been done better. Ritsema said he stood behind Thomas and her officers; however, stating that they were trying to do their jobs. Chief Thomas has truly been an outstanding public safety chief and community leader and we wish her and her family all the best in her retirement, Ritsema said in a statement Wednesday night. Chief Thomas helped build an outstanding department that has become a model for public safety services across the nation and we look forward to working with Chief Coakley to build on KDPS' many successes and continue its track record of service and safety. Thomas' career with KDPS has included roles as a Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team investigator, crime lab technician and specialist, detective bureau sergeant, Drug Enforcement Administration task force agent, inspector, assistant chief and deputy chief. She also is a United States Army veteran having attained the rank of captain. Chief Thomas leaves behind huge shoes to fill and I am truly thankful for the opportunity to learn from her, build upon our departments many successes and help take the countrys largest combined public safety organization to the next level, Coakley said. The Kalamazoo community needs to come together and I look forward to strengthening our relationships and partnerships with businesses, faith leaders and our entire Kalamazoo community to move us forward. Related: We as a community have to come together, Kalamazoo assistant police chief says Coakley, according to the release, was promoted from captain to assistant chief in 2017. He has nearly 30 years of law enforcement experience and has served the Kalamazoo community since 1998. Prior to serving in Kalamazoo, Coakley served in the Detroit Police Department for five years starting in 1993. He has a bachelors degree from Western Michigan University and a masters degree from Ferris State University. He completed the Senior Management Institute for Police Program in 2010 and attended the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy in 2018. Kalamazoo Public Safety Assistant Chief of Operations, Vernon Coakley will become the department's first Black chief when he assumes the position Oct. 1, 2020. (Joel Bissell | MLive file photo)Joel Bissell Also on MLive: First woman Kalamazoo Public Safety chief was managers first choice My heart was wrenched with pain, assistant chief says of ordering tear gas on protesters City review of police response to Kalamazoo Proud Boys rally finds areas for improvement Citizens call for new leadership in Kalamazoo after failure during Proud Boys rally Police chief says Proud Boys completed their mission by causing chaos in downtown Kalamazoo Kalamazoo activists call for unity, accountability during protest outside county courthouse - Dr Obengfo has dropped a photo of his wife, Grace Obeng-Andoh - The photos show Grace as a very curvaceous and beautiful lady - According to Obengfo, he shaped the wife for his enjoyment - The photo got many of his followers to react and hint of doing same Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Install our latest app for Android and read the best news about Dr Dominic Kwame Obeng-Andoh, the CEO of Advanced Bodysculpt Centre, has popped up on social media with a rare photo of his wife, Grace. The photo as sighted by YEN.com.gh is a collage of Dr Obeng, who is popularly known as Obengfo, and Grace. In the photo, Obengfo is seated to the left wearing a doctor's gown while seated in a chair. The wife is found to the right in the photo wearing a long flair dress made from white lace material. Photo source: Instagram/Dr Obengfo Source: Instagram With her back to the camera, Grace Obeng-Andoh shows off a very well-endowed backside and shapely body. Looking at the chair Obengfo is sitting in and the one in the background of Mrs Obengfo's shot, the photos seem to have been taken in their house. Sharing the photo, Obengfo disclosed that the beautiful body of his wife as seen in the photo was not as it is but the result of his sculpting work. According to him, he intentionally worked on her wife's body to get her into this shape in order to enjoy it. See how I intentionally shaped Obengfo First Lady and wife for myself to enjoy. IMrs. Grace Obeng-Andoh Hahahaha The photo from Obengfo has got many of his followers reacting to the curviness of his wife. shymabazzi was full of praise for Obengfo's skill: "I trust what u can do dear doctor, you are the best ever." ritaakwaah described the work as dope: "Beautiful doc this is a great work curviness is dope God bless you with such great brains." olowua was interested in undergoing the procedure: "Best doctor ever; can't wait to get mine done." akosua_nilly virtually begged for a reduction to undergo the procedure: "Doctor please I wish to come but don't have much money how can we do it?" For those who do not know, Dr Obengfo is a cosmetic surgeon who specialises in using liposuction and body sculpting procedures to get people to look shapely and more attractive. His practice has often divided opinions and he has often come in the news for negative reasons including licensing issues with the Ghana Medical and Dental Council and some clients suffering complications. The last time Obengfo got embroiled in such a big controversy was in 2018 when Stacy Offei Darko, the then Deputy CEO of the National Entrepreneurship Innovation Program (NEIP), passed away at his hospital. It had been reported that Stacy Offei, an ex-lover of Kennedy Agyapong, had gone to the hospital for a liposuction procedure but passed away from complications. Obengfo got apprehended and was arraigned in court before being acquitted and discharged months later. From his wife's photo, Obengfo seems to be telling prospective clients that hi methods are safe. Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page Source: YEN.com.gh Many politicians have fallen silent and disappeared from public life after India stripped the regions autonomy. Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir Sakina Itoo used to motivate Kashmiris to believe that India would be better for their future. But the 48-year-old pro-India politician says New Delhis decision to strip the Muslim-majority regions autonomy last August has made her lose face and vulnerable. We dont know how to go to people again. We have no answers ourselves, what will we tell them, Itoo, a former minister in the regional government, told Al Jazeera. Prime Minister Narendra Modis government also suspended the regional assembly and downgraded Indias only Muslim-majority region to a federally-administered territory in a move that critics say has snatched away the democratic rights of the people. The government justified the move, saying it will bring development to the region, which has witnessed an armed rebellion against Indian rule since the late 1980s. In our own homes, we were told we can't go out. While we were the people who advocated for democracy. Waheed Para, PDP leader Local politicians who contested elections and remained affiliated with parties loyal to New Delhi have faced numerous attacks and threats from rebels. Itoo joined politics after her father, a pro-India politician, was killed by rebels in 1996. Since becoming a member of the Kashmir assembly in 1996, Itoo has survived several attacks on her life. Last April, a grenade was tossed into her home in Kulgam, a district in southern Kashmir region a stronghold of rebels who have been fighting for either independence or a merger with neighbouring Pakistan. Loyal to New Delhi Itoos party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, was the most dominant political party in the region which had remained loyal to New Delhi, but its top leadership including members of its powerhouse Abdullah dynasty were detained last year. The region was placed under an unprecedented security and communications lockdown last August. The internet was revived earlier this year but with slow speed. National Conference party president Farooq Abdullah, right and his son and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah were in detention for months [File: Mukhtar Khan/AP Photo] The scars on the National Conference and other political parties are now deep-rooted as they struggle to fit into the new territorial and political reality of Kashmir. We would always talk and motivate people that India is best for us and it is our country, Itoo said. The youth is not ready to listen now, she said. Feeling abandoned and vulnerable, many of their members have fallen silent and disappeared from public life as they face threats from rebels. I have painful memories, Itoo said, referring to the attempts on her rallies and workers. Earlier militants would attack but we had support from the government but now we are stuck in between, she said. For the last 30 years, as armed rebellion waxed and waned in Kashmir, pro-India politicians were accorded state security and perks in exchange for loyalty to New Delhi. There is no space and every political process has been blocked. There is no road ahead. Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami, former legislator Waheed Para from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which produced the regions last two chief ministers, believes that the militaristic steps New Delhi took on August 5, 2019 and in its aftermath are not a solution for Kashmir. PDP leader and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has been imprisoned for more than a year now. Kashmir conflict goes back to 1947 when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Pakistan a homeland for Muslims. But things got complicated as the then Muslim-majority regions Hindu king chose to accede the region with India but with certain conditions, which were enshrined in the Indian constitutions Article 370. Kashmir was a problem before August 5 and it continues to be so, Para, 30, told Al Jazeera. Our disappointment and regret is that we promised things to people which [have been] taken away. We promised constitutional spaces to the youth of Kashmir, we promised a solution within the (Indian) constitution and these were not only challenged by people or militants but by the government itself. Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has been jailed since last year [File: Mukhtar Khan/AP Photo] Para said pro-India parties paid a huge cost as thousands of cadres were killed by rebels. Suddenly, we are being told that this space doesnt exist, he said. The young leader was among hundreds of other politicians thrown in jail following the governments decision to scrap Article 370 that gave a measure of autonomy to the region. In our own homes, we were told we cant go out while we were the people who advocated for democracy, Para said. Political structure changed Several pro-India politicians Al Jazeera spoke to have expressed shock and accused New Delhi of betrayal. We would always talk and motivate people that India is best for us and it is our country. Sakina Itoo, former minister Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami is an old hand in Kashmirs politics. A member of a communist party, he has been elected a politician from south Kashmirs Kulgam constituency in every election since 1996. Tarigami said New Delhi removed the line that separated pro-Indian politicians in Kashmir from the resistance leaders who advocated freedom for the disputed region. We are all in the same line now. There is no division. Now, all people are in the same jail, be it terrorists, separatists, mainstream, he said. Waheed Para, PDP politician, said pro-India parties paid a huge cost as thousands of cadres were killed by rebels [Rifat Fareed/Al Jazeera] Tarigami describes the situation as unprecedented and says that Kashmir has been turned into a prison in which all shades of opinion are detained. There is no space and every political process has been blocked. There is no road ahead, he said. Aijaz Ashraf Wani, a political analyst based in Kashmir, told Al Jazeera that the politics in Kashmir has always remained very guided and controlled and followed a broader framework set up by New Delhi. It was under this framework in which the Kashmir political parties were supposed to operate. After 1947 the main concern was to bring Kashmir closer to India and that was guided by the concern of national security and national integration, he said. After August 5, it was not only the status of Kashmir that was changed but it also in a way tried to change the whole political structure, he said. What have they done for people? They only worked to uplift themselves. Ashok Koul, the spokesperson of the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir We witnessed that they [New Delhi] were neither concerned nor bothered about the local political parties. They showed that they can do it without them and they even wanted to do away with them, he said. Wanis assessment of a controlled political structure existing in Kashmir has resonated with the larger populace, which has shown little faith in the democratic process. And that has reflected in low voter turnout in elections. Last October, just over four percent of people came out to vote in the elections for local councils. Most pro-India parties had boycotted the elections. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, Kashmirs Anantnag constituency witnessed a turnout of just 8.75 percent; 14.8 percent and 35 percent came out to vote in Srinagar and Baramulla respectively. By comparison, the two constituencies in the Hindu-majority Jammu region witnessed a more than 70 percent turnout. On Tuesday, India said it revived grassroots democracy in the region after UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet criticised New Delhi for severely restricting the space for political debate and public participation. Injustice Many Kashmiris Al Jazeera spoke to showed little sympathy over the marginalisation of pro-India politicians. Whatever happened after August 5, it is only politicians who are crying but for common Kashmiris it is always the same, always the change in the intensity of oppression, said Danish Ahmad. These are the same politicians who did injustice to us for all these years. I have never had any hope from them, said the 25-year-old student from Srinagar, the main city in the region. Sitara Nazir, a 55-year-old supporter of the National Conference from central Ganderbal district, says she feels hopeless in the new political order. These are the same politicians who did injustice to us for all these years. I have never had any hope from them. Danish Ahmad, a Kashmiri civilian Siding with them made us vulnerable in our own homes, we were even ready to take that risk thinking our kids might get jobs and we might see some kind of hope. Today we are totally hopeless and will never support them again, she said. Kashmir experts fear the hardline policies adopted by the government may prove to be counterproductive. At the moment, the situation is pretty bleak, said Radha Kumar, a retired professor and one of the three interlocutors appointed by the Indian government for dialogue with Kashmiri citizens and groups in 2010-2011. If you dont have a legitimate political activity then how does a democracy function? In effect, that means no democracy. It is a very alarming situation, she told Al Jazeera by phone. It is a very dangerous act, choking political spaces only leads to radicalisation, she said. We may see more radical expressions and more militancy. All the measures that the government has taken are guaranteed to be counterproductive. The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has defended the government move to suspend the state assembly, saying it shut the shops of Kashmiri politicians. What have they done for people? They only worked to uplift themselves, said Ashok Koul, the general secretary and the spokesperson of the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhis crackdown last year, however, has now placed a large crowd of its loyalist politicians in a conundrum. The rebels continue to hunt them while the state which had promised them security and space has shunned them. In many ways, they seem to be caught in an impossible dilemma. What they (New Delhi) did, I dont see any future in politics. What will we tell people if we go to them? They have eroded and ended everything here, Itoo said. Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday announced he is loosening COVID-19 restrictions for most of Texas but not for Laredo, Webb, Jim Hogg or Zapata counties. Laredo belongs to one of three hospital regions in the state, along with the Rio Grande Valley and Victoria, where patients with COVID-19 make up more than 15% of total hospitalizations. Abbott called these regions danger zones. According to the states calculus, in Laredo 26.4% of current hospitalized patients have the novel coronavirus. This is the highest of Texas 22 hospital regions. Doctors and hospitals suggest that it can be a warning if more than 15% of hospitalizations are people with covid, Abbott said at a press conference. Hospitalizations above that level suggests a serious spread and begins to compromise a hospitals ability to respond to covid. The rest of the state where less than 15% of people in hospitals have COVID-19 will be able to expand capacity at local businesses such as restaurants, offices and retail stores from 50% to 75%. And their hospitals will be able to conduct elective procedures again. Bars will remain closed across the state for the time being, Abbott said. Despite the high percentage of COVID-19 patients in its hospitals, Laredos hospitalizations have decreased dramatically in the last month. During the worst week of the pandemic, in early August, over 200 people were hospitalized in Laredo, well above the local capacity, and patients had to be transferred for treatment in San Antonio. According to data presented by Abbott on Thursday, at its peak, 68.7% of hospitalized patients in Laredo were sick with the novel coronavirus. Laredos hospital census has been on a downward trend for weeks, and by Tuesday, 100 people in Laredo were hospitalized with the virus. This, along with a large drop in the citys positivity rate, indicated to local officials that the city has overcome the first wave of the virus. So Laredo City Council this week lifted the citys curfew and allowed restaurants to expand their patio space to facilitate customers. Following Abbotts announcement, Saenz said he does not feel that council should renege on these new measures. They felt comfortable with restaurants operating at 50% capacity, and that hasnt changed, he said. Saenz also will be asking council on Monday to petition the federal government to end the travel restrictions at U.S.-Mexico land ports in October. The Texas Border Coalition, of which Saenz is a member, on Thursday also resolved to advocate for this reopening, the mayor said. Saenz said he respects the governors authority and understands why Abbott is being more cautious. The mayor hopes the Laredo will continue to progress in its fight against the coronavirus so that it may also reopen further like the rest of Texas will on Monday. Laredo Health Authority Dr. Victor Trevino noted that there are several factors that have led to Laredo having the highest percentage of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Laredo is a medically underserved area to begin with, and has a limited intensive care unit capacity. The virus impact was and is very severe here. And Laredo is the No.1 point of trade with Mexico, and even with travel restrictions, many people still cross between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, Trevino noted. He did not agree with council on their decision to end the citywide curfew or open up restaurants any further. There are still over 200 nurses, respiratory technicians and other health care professionals stationed in Laredo who were sent by the state to help with the inundation of hospitalizations. And although the local hospital census has decreased significantly, there are still only 17 ICU beds open, Trevino said. If there is another surge, they could be filled in a day, he said. He believed the governors 15% threshold for reopening is a good place to start. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com Activist Sarah McBride is poised to become the first person who openly identifies as transgender to be elected as a state senator in the US, after winning a Democratic primary in Delaware. The 30-year-old, who previously served as national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, defeated Joseph McCole in a state senator primary on Tuesday after Democrat incumbent Harris McDowell endorsed her for the position. Mr McDowell is retiring at the end of the year, and the 80-year-old will leave the position as the longest-serving legislator in the states history, according to The Associated Press. The district that Ms McBride will be the candidate for in November includes parts of northern Wilmington and areas close to the Pennsylvania border. Ms McBride, who interned at the White House during Barack Obamas presidency, will also become the first transgender person in Delaware to be elected to the states General Assembly if she wins in November. Democratic officials outnumber Republicans by three-to-one in the state, and Ms McBride is the overwhelming favourite to defeat GOP candidate Steve Washington, according to the AP. Although the Democratic candidate would become the first openly transgender state senator if elected in November, she would join a small group of other transgender legislators in the US. In June, Rosemary Ketchum became West Virginias first transgender elected official when she became a city council representative, and in July Peyton Rose Michelle became the first transgender woman elected in Louisiana, after joining the Democratic State Central Committee. Ms McBride became the first transgender person to speak at a major party convention when she delivered an address at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Her campaign has generated interest across the US and has so far raised at least $250,000 (192,723) in donations, which is more than several candidates running for statewide office in Delaware. If she is elected in November, Ms McBrides focus will be on strengthening her areas public schools, paid medical and family leave for all workers, and increasing competition and reducing costs in the healthcare industry. In an interview with The Associated Press before Tuesdays primary, Ms McBride said: Im bringing my whole self to this race. My identity is one part of who I am, but its just one part. The 30-year-old added: I would be legislating based not on my identity. I would be legislating based on my values and on the needs of my constituents. The University Grants Commission has allowed North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) to hold its final semester examinations and declare results in October, instead of September, following a request in this regard by the Meghalaya government, a state minister said on Thursday. The UGC has agreed to the proposal of the state government for completing final semester exam in Meghalaya by October 16, Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui said on Thursday. NEHU will conduct exam as proposed on 7, 9, 12, 14 & 16 October 2020. Results will be declared by the end of October 2020. University will issue routine accordingly, he tweeted. Most of the colleges in Meghalaya are affiliated to NEHU. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the UGC issued a revised guideline on examinations and academic calendar asking universities in the country to complete the final semester examinations by the end of September. Upholding the decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states and universities cannot promote students of the terminal semester or final year disregarding the UGCs revised guidelines. The Meghalaya government, in the first week of this month, had written to the UGC seeking postponement of exams in the Central university saying that it would not be possible to hold the examination by September. Keeping in view the health and safety of the students and also in the larger interest of their academic progression. The UGC has decided to accede to your request. Accordingly, the final year/terminal semester examinations in colleges & universities in the State of Meghalaya be completed by 16.10.2020, the UGC said in a letter. The minister attached the UGCs letter written to the states principal secretary of the education department to his tweet. Latest Acquisition Further Expands GPCs Broadband Services and Network Reach in the Midwest Blair, Nebraska, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Great Plains Communications (GPC), a growing Midwestern telecommunications provider with an expanding, privately-owned 13,000-mile fiber network reaching 11 states, has completed its acquisition of Enhanced Telecommunications Corporation (ETC), a progressive Southeastern Indiana-based provider. Serving communities in Southeastern Indiana for more than 85 years, ETC offers an innovative suite of products and services to over 14,000 business, wholesale and residential customers that includes high-speed Internet, Ethernet, voice, video and transport. Great Plains Communications continues to stay true to our vision to grow strategically by identifying promising opportunities like the ETC acquisition. Now that the acquisition process is complete, we can begin working as one company to not only provide exceptional services and enhanced products to our current customer base, but to identify strategic opportunities to serve new markets and expand our network. We appreciate the legacy of the Miles family at ETC and welcome our new employees and customers, said Todd Foje, CEO of Great Plains Communications. With the backing of partner Grain Management, LLC (Grain), ETC is the second acquisition completed by GPC, within the last year. The company acquired InterCarrier Networks in August 2019. Chad Crank, Managing Director at Grain had this to say: We believe the trend of increasing bandwidth demand will only continue. The robust Great Plains Communications network is designed to meet these capacity needs and to support the advances in technology that are driving the trend. Expanding this impressive network strategically into areas of opportunity like Indiana positions the company for further growth. About Great Plains Communications Great Plains Communications is the largest privately-owned telecommunications provider in Nebraska. They have over a century of experience providing business, wholesale and residential customers with forward-thinking, fiber-based technology services including Ethernet, Internet, video, hosted and voice solutions across an 11-state footprint. The company also takes pride in its progressive approach to accommodating the unique needs of all regional and national telecommunications carriers, LECs, ISPs, wireless carriers and other service providers, utilizing superior engineering and custom-build strategies. At the core of its service offering is an extensive 13,000-mile regional fiber network, including long-haul and metro networks that span the state of Nebraska, extending into Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota and Wyoming. The network offers community access rings, last-mile and middle-mile solutions, all fully supported by the Companys 24x7x365 Network Operations Center. For more information, visit https://www.gpcom.com/. Story continues About Enhanced Telecommunications Corporation For over 85 years ETC has served the communications needs for customers in Southeastern Indiana. The company has five storefronts and provides voice, video, high-speed Internet and other communications services to more than 14,000 residential and business customers. The family-owned company serves ten surrounding counties and beyond through its security and cellular offerings. To learn more visit etczone.com. About Grain Management Grain Management, LLC is a leading private investment firm that focuses on communications infrastructure and technology companies that connect the world to the information economy. Founded in 2007, the Firm invests exclusively in the telecommunications sector, employing a rigorous, data-based process buoyed by deep industry expertise to identify investment opportunities in key areas of communications infrastructure, including fiber networks, wireless spectrum and cell towers. For more information visit graingp.com. CONTACT: Laura Kocher Great Plains Communications 4024566429 lkocher@gpcom.com In the fall of 1969, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, after viewing the horror of the Santa Barbara oil spill, was having a martini with a friend, high in a San Francisco skyscraper. Looking out at the unparalleled beauty of a sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge, he conceived the idea of a bipartisan Earth Day, a day to be thankful for our blessings. He thought that it should be led by young people who might work, rather than in impassioned demonstrations against the Vietnam War, to educate and force an apathetic Congress to act to protect the environment. Nelson thought Earth Day should be bipartisan and bicameral. If Nelson were alive today, he wouldnt have been able to see, and be inspired by, the sunset or even the bridge. They would be obscured, as they have been for weeks, by the smoke from millions of acres of burning forests. Those fires can be traced, in part, to global warming from emissions of CO2 and other gases from the burning of fossil fuels. So 50 years ago, on April 22, 1970, over a million people joined in the streets of New York City to honor the Earth and its environment. Some 20 million joined in a day of reverence for the Earth on campuses and grassy parks and hilltops across the country led by Stanford student body President Denis Hayes and student activists. More importantly, thousands of voters turned out that fall to vote and defeat seven members of the Congress they termed The Dirty Dozen. The voting turnout was led and organized by the same young people of college age who had caused 20 million people to demand that Congress and president act to protect the clean water, clean air, clean ocean, and incredible native wildlife habitats with which most of the nation was still blessed. The result was immediate and almost incredible. A majority of the House and Senate in both parties declared themselves conservationists. Within four years bipartisan landmark legislation was enacted: the Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species Acts, as well as laws to protect marine mammals and our oceans and coastlines. President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, naming Bill Ruckelshaus as its first director. As late as 2005, leaders in both the House and Senate, leaders like Republican Sens. John McCain and John Chafee served as co-chairs of Earth Day events around the nation. But President Trump, in a series of executive orders, has overridden these decades of progress, weakening or eliminating key provisions of these laws, and now seeks to eviscerate the National Environmental Protection Act and Endangered Species Acts. He has refused to accept the advice of scientists, and calls global warming a hoax, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Treaty, which needed American leadership to succeed. Trumps comments in Sacramento this week that we should rake our forests is the height of arrogance and ignorance. More than half of our Northern California forests are holdings of the federal government: national parks, national forests, or Bureaus of Land Management and Reclamation lands. He has cut the budget for each of these agencies. April 22, 2020, has come and gone, canceled by the COVID-19 virus. Hopefully the children and grandchildren of the 20 million environmental activists of 50 years ago will treat Nov. 3 as Earth Day 2020 and turn out to vote out of office all those incumbents who have backed the president in dismissing climate change as a hoax. Pete McCloskey is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from San Mateo County. He was Republican co-chair of Earth Day in 1970 and 2020. Troopers from the Mt. Pleasant State Police Post apprehended a 48-year-old man from Blanchard with multiple warrants after observing him run from a crashed vehicle. According to a press release from the Michigan State Police, Troopers observed the Blanchard man running from a vehicle that had just crashed while patrolling near Waters Edge Dr. and 85th Ave. in Evart Township, Osceola County. This occurred at approximately 3:46 p.m. on Sept. 16. The troopers immediately began a foot pursuit and quickly apprehended the man. The man had a suspended Michigan Drivers License and threw a plastic baggie containing suspected methamphetamine while fleeing from the troopers. Additionally, he was wanted on warrants out of Osceola and Mecosta Counties. The vehicle he was driving did not have insurance and had an unlawful plate. He was lodged at the Osceola County Jail and has not yet been arraigned. Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the CENTRESTAGE virtual runway shows premiere today (17 Sept) and run through to Saturday (19 Sept). Combining traditional fashion shows with computer-generated imagery, six unique runway shows feature the latest collections from more than 40 Hong Kong and Asian designers. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005409/en/ (Photo: Business Wire) Entering its fifth year, CENTRESTAGE presents A World of PHYGITAL as its central theme in 2020. In view of the uncertainties brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, CENTRESTAGE has set out to redefine the way fashion shows are presented by combining physical and digital elements. It has created a fashion extravaganza that enables brands to overcome geographical and time limitations to showcase their latest designs to buyers and fashionistas. In addition to the virtual runway shows, the HKTDC has collaborated with Vogue Hong Kong to build a brand-new digital platform that introduces designers and their brands and collections. The CENTRESTAGE website has aggregated 240 brands from 23 countries and regions, including 130 new joiners. Benjamin Chau, HKTDC Deputy Executive Director, said: This year presents a very challenging time for economies and businesses around the world. Despite the disruptions brought by the pandemic, the fashion industry is still forging ahead. In response to the current situation, CENTRESTAGE has successfully transformed into a digital fashion platform with a series of virtual runway shows, showcasing the latest collections from Hong Kong and Asian brands to fashion lovers and media from around the world. I am pleased to see designers overcoming challenges by coming up with creative responses to the new normal, launching their collections on the HKTDCs online platform to gain exposure and expand their networks. Click HERE to watch Introduction of the CENTRESTAGE 2020 A New Age of Fashion Fashion Shows Premiere Schedule (The Shows can be reviewed via the website after premiere) Fashion Hong Kong / 17 Sept / 3pm (GMT +8) Next in Cheongsam / 17 Sept / 3:15pm (GMT +8) FASHIONALLY Collection #15 / 18 Sept / 3pm (GMT +8) Taipei in Style / 18 Sept / 3:15pm (GMT +8) Hong Kong en Vogue / 19 Sept / 3pm (GMT +8) Hong Kong Young Fashion Designers Contest 2020 / 19 Sept / 8:45pm (GMT +8) Website: www.centrestage.com.hk View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005409/en/ Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 08:44:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (C, front) poses for a group photo with his cabinet members following the first cabinet meeting in Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 16, 2020. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/Pool via Xinhua) Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga took over the premiership Wednesday. While his championing of "continuity" on the one hand connotes no drastic changes and a "business as usual" stance, as reflected in his picks for the ruling party's executive posts as well as those of his Cabinet, some observers suggested that some fresh ideas could be needed. by Jon Day TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who took over the premiership earlier Wednesday having being selected at an extraordinary parliament session to be the nation's 99th prime minister will need to hit the ground running, political observers have said. Suga, who succeeds former prime minister Shinzo Abe who late last month and just days after becoming the nation's longest-serving leader in terms of consecutive days in office abruptly announced that he planned to step down owing a recurrent health issue, has been vociferous about carrying on many of Abe's policies as the nation faces a myriad of challenges. In fact, in the run-up to his recent sweeping win in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's leadership race, Suga was dubbed the "continuity candidate" for ardently pledging to continue his predecessor's policies, a stance that secured the favor of the majority of intraparty factions within the LDP, helping propel him to the top spot. "I think across the range of issues it will be business as usual," Hugo Dobson, Professor of Japan's International Relations and Head of Department at the National Institute of Japanese Studies and School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, Britain, told Xinhua. "Suga was always the continuity candidate," Dobson added. Suga, 71, the oldest prime minister to take office since Kiichi Miyazawa in 1991, has said his first priority is to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic wreckage it has and continues to create. The new leader is expected to utilize the 230 trillion yen (2.2 trillion U.S. dollars) package allocated for tackling the COVID-19 outbreak here and has vowed to push forward with his predecessor's economic policies, including the "Abenomics" economic brand of aggressive monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms. But while his championing of "continuity" on the one hand connotes no drastic changes and a "business as usual" stance, as reflected in his picks for the ruling party's executive posts, as well as those of his Cabinet, some observers have suggested that some fresh ideas could be needed. Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (C, front) leads his cabinet ministers as they prepare for a photo session at prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 16, 2020. (Issei Kato/Pool via Xinhua) According to Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan, the Cabinet lineup of predominantly old, male, "familiar faces doesn't really inspire or offer prospects for fresh thinking regarding the pandemic and necessary economic countermeasures." On the other hand, however, as the old adage goes, other pundits have suggested at a time of national crisis, perhaps the case may be: "Better the devil you know." And while history will be the judge here, the fact is that Suga's Cabinet picks, as a testament to the future direction of his administration's policy, is full of familiar faces, with fifteen of Suga's picks for his 20-member Cabinet having held ministerial portfolios in the previous administration. Some of these include LDP veteran heavyweights such as Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi. Former health minister Katsunobu Kato was tapped as Chief Cabinet Secretary, a key post that functions as both a policy coordinator and the government's top spokesman. Kato is no stranger to the role having previously served as deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary under Suga between 2012 and 2015. "I want to create a government that people can trust. I will push ahead with deregulation and put an end to ministry sectionalism, endemic vested interests and the practice of blindly following past precedents. I will create a working cabinet," Suga stated in his run-up to becoming prime minister. All of these, political analysts have said, are absolute positives, although some have pointed out that details are still lacking and Suga, as Kingston explained, emphasizing "Jiko Sekinin" (individual responsibility), an ideological throwback to the era of Junichiro Koizumi, who was prime minister from 2001 to 2006, could be problematic. "At a time when Japan is in an unprecedented economic slump, it is a stance that lacks empathy and also promises little headway on boosting consumption," which accounts for 60 percent of Japan's economy, Kingston told Xinhua. As for the immediacy in tackling the virus, Suga said Wednesday that he, as was the case with Abe, will do all he can to prevent an explosive increase in cases. He said he will expand the testing system and secure sufficient medical capacity, as well as trying to obtain enough vaccines, by the end of the first half of next year, to cover everyone, which some political observers here have suggested seems to be a "reasonable approach, at least for the time being." People wearing face masks walk on the street at Shibuya in Tokyo, Japan, on Aug. 20, 2020. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi) Apart from dealing with the short-term economic damage the COVID-19 epidemic has caused by forcing people to stay home and sharply reducing tourism, Suga will also be charged with tackling the nation's demographic crisis. This is comprised of a rapidly aging and simultaneously shrinking population, that has led to social welfare costs ballooning and weighing heavily on the government's balance sheet, and the labor force being hollowed out. Suga's term as LDP president will be limited to the remainder of Abe's current three-year term through September 2021, however, speculation has been swirling that he may call a general election as early as next month to improve his chances of winning a full three-year term as LDP leader and capitalize on the party's popularity, which tends to improve after a leadership change. Two of Suga's powerful supporters, Aso and Kono, have both hinted at a snap election being held soon with Aso saying that the next administration would likely face criticism for being formed without a public mandate. Kono has made similar remarks, saying that he expects a general election in October. Political experts have also not ruled out the possibility of a snap election being held, as it could be to Suga's benefit to call one sooner rather than later, Dobson told Xinhua. "As regards a snap election, there has to be one by October 2021 so Suga might well call one," the expert said. "He strikes me as being a bit of an unknown quantity, so it might benefit him to call an election sooner rather than later in order to benefit from a perceived desire for continuity and business as usual in an uncertain time," Dobson explained. While highlighting the potential "aesthetic" of calling a snap election so soon, Kingston also said it could strengthen Suga's hand. "The downside is that it may look like he is playing politics instead of devoting his attention to the pandemic, but he will never be more popular than during the honeymoon bounce...," said Kingston, adding, "It might strengthen his hand politically and improve chances he remains party president when Abe's term ends next September." The Olympic Rings are seen at Odaiba Marine Park, Tokyo, Japan, on July 17, 2020. (Xinhua/Du Xiaoyi) In terms of the international political calendar and Suga, as yet, largely being an unknown face on the global circuit, some observers said it may take a while for him to become as recognizable as some former prime ministers, among a host of forgettable ones during the LDP's protracted "revolving door" era of leaders rapidly entering and exiting the top post. "Internationally, I think Suga might struggle. He doesn't seem to have the personality of Koizumi or the profile of Abe internationally. There will be virtual/physical Group of Seven (G7) and G20 summits coming up by the end of the year," Dobson said. But having been Abe's right-hand man for almost eight years, he may have his predecessor's "playbook" and if not, there's always the autocue, as Kingston explained, with Suga also having to content with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, as well as the already postponed Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. "He doesn't have much presence, but meetings with leaders are carefully scripted so he can do okay," said Kingston. He went on to say, however, that at the moment a lack of vision might be a stumbling block, and Kingston drew comparisons with the "colorless" leaders that the world was used to before Koizumi and Abe. That said, it is still early days, and Suga's popularity with the public here has grown since the beginning of the LDP leadership race. On the domestic front, at least, in addition to being the poster boy for the "Reiwa Era" and known affectionately here as "Uncle Reiwa" among the Japanese youth, alongside the fact that his daily press briefings in his former role as top government spokesperson beamed his face into most households in Japan, he's a familiar face at home. Congratulatory messages swiftly sent to Suga Wednesday on becoming prime minister from some of Japan's closest and most important neighbors are a testament to regional ties potentially deepening, a route Suga himself has said he is keen to take. As for other potential complications in terms of foreign policy and potential shifts and changes that may lie ahead, again, as an old adage goes, Suga, the leader of the world's third largest economy will have to "go hard or go home," political commentators have said. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Chile Sebastian Pinera Echenique. Dear Mr. President, it is on the occasion of the 210th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Chile that on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan I wish to cordially congratulate you and through you, your people, the Azerbaijani president said. On this pleasant day, I wish strong health and success to you, and peace and prosperity to the friendly people of Chile, President Aliyev said. In 2019, Norman Lear set the record for the oldest Emmy winner at 97 years old. But on Tuesday, the television creator broke his own record by winning again, this time during the virtual 2020 Creative Arts Emmys ceremony. The veteran producer took home the award for outstanding variety special (live) for Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lears All in the Family And The Jeffersons. Over the course of his career, Lear has been nominated for a total of 16 Emmy Awards, winning six. Also celebrating the win were Jamie Foxx and his daughter Corinne, who could barely contain their excitement after the show in which she acted was recognized. The 52-year-old actor shared a video to Instagram of the two celebrating the award with wine on Tuesday night. The movie star previously played the role of George Jefferson in another episode of Live In Front Of A Studio Audience, an update of classic Norman Lear sitcoms, which was also honored with an Emmy. Proud papa: Jamie Foxx, 52, was over the moon as he celebrated with his daughter Corinne Foxx, 26, after her special Live In Front Of A Studio Audience won a Creative Arts Emmy Award 'Celebrations, celebrations!' Jamie shouted as he lifted his stemless wine glass aloft. 'Somebody just won an Emmy!' he said as he clinked glasses with Corinne, 26. 'My beautiful daughter Corinne Marie Fox, she is all grown up and she is an Emmy winner for Live In Front Of A Studio Audience for Good Times!' 'Daddydaughter time, this is what love is all about,' he said before taking another sip. The Oscar winner then shouted, 'You won an Emmy! You won an Emmy!' before ending the video. 'I would like to introduce to you my daughter Emmy award winning @corinnefoxx !!!! Congratulations on your Emmy award performance!!! in good times on live in front of a studio audience!!! You are my heart and I am so proud of you Keep elevating I love you!' the actor wrote in his caption. Excited: 'Somebody just won an Emmy!' he said as he clinked glasses with Corinne, 26. 'My beautiful daughter Corinne Marie Fox, she is all grown up and she is an Emmy winner for Live In Front Of A Studio Audience for Good Times!' Good Times: 'Daddydaughter time, this is what love is all about,' he said before taking another sip Corinne did plenty of celebrating over on her own Instagram page with a selfie from the set of Live In Front Of A Studio Audience with her costar Tiffany Haddish. 'WE WON AN EMMY! Outstanding Variety Special (LIVE) congrats to all our amazing producers for putting this show together! Such a dream! @thenormanlear @jimmykimmel @kerrywashington @simpsonstreet @abcnetwork @thebrent_miller,' she wrote. Though she was celebrating the show's win, Corinne technically didn't win herself, as only the show's producers are honored when a show wins. The Emmy Rules and Procedures booklet states that three commemorative Emmys can be ordered by the studio, but they can't be for individuals. The Beat Shazam DJ followed her post up with another video of her dancing and letting loose with her wine. 'What Emmy win celebrations look like in 2020,' she wrote, adding the hashtag, '#StillCelebratingTho.' Over the moon: Corinne did plenty of celebrating over on her own Instagram page with a selfie from the set of Live In Front Of A Studio Audience with her costar Tiffany Haddish Close enough: Though she was celebrating the show's win, Corinne technically didn't win herself, as only the show's producers are honored when a show wins Live In Front Of A Studio Audience was originally broadcast in May 2019 and recreated two classic sitcom episodes from shows created by Norman Lear. Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei starred as Archie and Edith Bunker in the episode Henry's Farewell, which originally introduced the character of George Jefferson (played here by Jamie). The second half of the broadcast featured A Friend In Need, a restaged version of the first episode of The Jeffersons, with a cast featuring Wanda Sykes, Kerry Washington and Will Ferrell. The idea to reboot the episodes came from Jimmy Kimmel, who also hosted the broadcast. Star power: Live In Front Of A Studio Audience was originally broadcast in May 2019 and re-created episodes of All In The Family and The Jeffersons, all with celebrity guest stars; Jamie pictured with Fran Bennett Back for more: A second broadcast in December 2019 redid episodes of All In The Family and Good Times. Corinne starred in the latter as Thelma with Tiffany Haddish, Andre Braugher and Viola Davis The show's success, which was bolstered by many of its stars being unannounced, led to a follow-up that paired another All In The Family episode with another Lear sitcom, Good Times. Corrine was featured as Thelma, one of the children of Florida and James Evans. The new version featured Andre Braugher and Viola Davis as her parents, with Tiffany Haddish and Jay Pharoah rounding out the cast. In addition to winning Outstanding Variety Special, the second special also picked up the award for Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Special. Jamie's celebrations come amid news that his ex-girlfriend Katie Holmes has moved on with chef Emilio Vitolo Jr., whom she's been showing off plenty of PDA with recently in New York City. Foxx and Holmes dated secretively starting in 2013, shortly after her divorce from Tom Cruise. The couple finally took their relationship public in the summer of 2019, only to break up shortly afterward amid rumors of his infidelities. Australians wanting to consult their doctor via phone or video call will continue to get access to subsidised telehealth until March in a $2 billion extension of coronavirus measures. Other health initiatives including free coronavirus tests, backing for 148 GP-led respiratory clinics and home medicine deliveries are also being extended, as is a deal with state governments and private hospitals to free up beds when required. The 24-hour National Coronavirus Helpline will continue to operate too. The federal government is extending Medicare subsidies for telehealth consultations for another six months, until March 2021. Credit: Nearly 10.6 million Australians have sought more than 30.5 million medical consultations with GPs, nurses, midwives and allied health and mental health services since telehealth was added to Medicare subsidies at the end of March. The Medicare-backed funding had been scheduled to dry up on September 30. News of the extension came as state and territory leaders braced for a frank assessment of their hotel quarantine arrangements at Friday's national cabinet meeting and after Prime Minister Scott Morrison boosted the number of stranded Australians allowed home each week from 4000 to nearly 6000. Tourist and consumer confidence has begun to tail off again after a recovery in the summer months, representatives of the hospitality industry have warned. Jean-Philippe Monod, vice chair of UK Short Term Accommodation Association, told the House of Lords economic affairs committee that figures were again showing "a significant decline in searches and the bookings". "We're seeing the demand go down significantly. We see that the peak, that little boost that we've had is now over," he said. Peers heard that traditional beach and rural destinations had done well during the summer while city locations and had done poorly as tourists adapted to social distancing changes. Kate Nicholls, CEO UK Hospitality, said there had been "a move to the rural, the coastal, the fresh air, and less so the towns and city centres:". She added that London was in particular "catastrophically low for this time of year" because of the lack of commuters, international tourists, and cultural or sporting event. Mr Monod described the situation in London as "catastrophic", adding: "Urban areas have suffered significantly and we're now seeing the demand go down significantly." "There were some good parts, but they were pockets of good, and they were spread in the non-urban areas." He said repeated changes to government advice with little transparency and forewarning had contributed to an undermining of confidence. "That is a point I'd like to stress; the traveller confidence that we're seeing, that has gone down. The evidence in our system is that bookings are pretty much all made in the zero to 21 day timeframe ... which means that consumers don't have that confidence," he said. "We are faced with a situation where the government advice is changing so frequently that people are just saying look, I'm not going to take the risk. That's why we would advocate for more clarity on the process of having testing and lanes in to the United Kingdom rather than a blanket quarantine requirement with all the consequences." Mr Monod said the government should end blanket quarantines from other countries, which would allow the market to pick up. The UK, as with other countries, has seen a significant rise in Covid-19 infections in recent weeks after a sustained fall going into the summer. Ms Nicholls of UK Hospitality said the government's Eat Out to Help Out scheme was a good example of a measure that have improved confidence. Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Show all 26 1 /26 Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town An empty street in Manhattan borough following the outbreak of coronavirus disease in New York City Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town A cab drives down at Seventh Avenue in Times Square Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Syracuse University campus is seen almost empty as number of universities are moving all classes to e-learning, due to the coronavirus outbreak Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty street is seen near Lincoln tunnel Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan An empty restaurant Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty chairs are seen near Hudson yards Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan An empty restaurant Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town A mobile souvenir shop sits in an empty parking lot at Allianz Field as a match between the New York Red Bulls at Minnesota United FC is postponed USA Today Sports/Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan An empty Jacob K Javits Convention Center Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Syracuse University A person sits in an empty eating hall Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty parking lots Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Jacob K Javits Convention Center Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Seventh Avenue Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty retail stores Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty street is seen outside the New York Times building Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Empty parking lots Reuters Coronavirus turns New York into a ghost town Manhattan Reuters "The single biggest impact was the boost to consumer confidence and giving explicit permission from the central government that it was OK to come back out, it was OK to start resuming some of those activities within the social distancing constraints," she told peers. "After a period of time where people had been told what not to do there was a counterbalancing message of what you could safely do. I think some of that momentum has been subsequently lost ... there has been a dampening down of consumer confidence." A gynecologist is giving detained immigrant women hysterectomies without the immigrants' full consent. This was the claim of a nonprofit group Project South who filed a complaint concerning this allegation. Gynecologist Dr. Mahendra Amin allegedly conducts the procedure on immigrant women under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), without fully explaining the operation. Dawn Wooten, a whistleblower and former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, also said that the doctor does not speak to them in their native language. Wooten said the doctor did a hysterectomy to a young woman who was supposed to have a cyst removed from her left ovary. One detained immigrant told Project South that she had the surgery despite telling the nurse that "the procedures is not for me." The immigrant said the medical professional responded by yelling at her. Based on the complaint, the immigrant said she felt like they were trying to mess with her body after talking to a doctor, an ICE officer, and a nurse. Another ICDC immigrant said she spoke to five detained immigrant women who had been given hysterectomies without proper explanation. The said immigrant called the situation an "experimental concentration camp." The complaint does not include the number of women who have undergone a hysterectomy. However, a press release from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that Amin forced at least 17 immigrants to have gynecological procedures. "Sterilizing immigrant women is yet another horror to add to the laundry list of mistreatment and abuse documented at ICE's private prisons. This is an unacceptable track record," Paola Luisi, the director of Families Belong Together, said in a statement. ICE did not respond to The Cut's request to comment before publication. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called an investigation into the allegations. Immigrant detention centers are notorious for subpar medical care. Reports said that the situation has become even worse during the pandemic. Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director for Project South, said the women held at ICDC told her that they were not given clean underwear, leading to infections and rashes. Shahshahani commented on the performed hysterectomies, saying that it is a very exploitative situation. An immigrant woman, who has accused guards of sexually assaulting her at a detention center in El Paso, Texas, was deported. The woman said that the guards at El Paso Processing Center forcibly kissed her and targeted her in places where security cameras could not see them. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general started an investigation into her case and allegations from at least two other people. Meanwhile, the Mexican government has requested on Wednesday to see the United States' information about claims that immigrant women were subjected to hysterectomies, citing the detention center in Georgia and an immigrant who allegedly suffered from sexual abuse in Texas detention center. "A formal request has been made to the appropriate authorities for a report on the supposed negligent actions or rights abuses at immigration detention centers," Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said in a report. Check these out: New ICE Rules on Foreign Students Receive Backlash from Politician, Academics The cheesemaker, which only offers its products through farmers markets, has worked to adapt to the new selling environment. Initially cheese mongers brought prepackaged chunks of cheese. After some brainstorming, staff created a cellophane wrap wall between the cheese monger and shoppers. Now cheese can be cut on site and passed through a small hole in the plastic wrap to the customer. For K Kalavathi, a teacher at a government-run tribal school, teaching students is not the only part of her job. She is being lauded for going beyond the call of duty to assist and motivate students. While her job profile is to teach Tamil language and oversee the administration of the school she heads, she has taken her responsibility a step further by offering continued support to students who need help. The New Indian Express According to The New Indian Express, Kalavathi, in the last four years, has helped students from tribal areas with average performance and those on the brink of dropping out pursue higher studies or become employable. Also Read: Chhattisgarh's 'Cinema Wale Babu', Teacher Who Takes Classes With TV, Speakers Tied To His Bike The 56-year-old woman working at Government Tribal Residential High School at Kargudi in Gudalur has helped 35 of her students to get enrolled in Government Industrial Training Institute (Scheduled Tribes) at Uppatti in Gudalur, the nearest institute. 20-year-old M Karthiyaeeni from Kargudi in Mudumalai thanks Kalavathi for introducing her plumbing course at the institute. Before this, she wasted a year by staying home after completing class XII. Image For Represenation/PTI The report quoted her as saying, First, we have to become close to people belonging to tribes and that is not an easy task. We must mingle with the community and frequent their habitat to become familiar. I had been doing this for the past four years." Also Read: 8-YO Bangladeshi Boy Thanks His Teachers For Their Dedication & Support During Online Classes Image For Representation/PTI There is a need to carry out such groundwork as the parents of the students are daily wage labourers who lack the knowledge to guide their wards, Kalavathi added. Also Read: This School Teacher From WB Got Married In A Function That Had Blood Donation, Books As Gifts Kalavathi also accompanies officials in the government ITI and employment office to reach out to students to ensure they pursue higher studies and register their names for government jobs. Despite calls from activists to spend less on San Antonio police, City Council members unanimously passed a $2.9 billion budget Thursday that includes a boost in funding for the San Antonio Police Department. In drawing up the budget, San Antonio leaders were confronted with the nations two major crises this year the coronavirus pandemic and outrage over police brutality, particularly toward people of color. Officials grappled with the blow to the citys coffers dealt by the pandemics economic fallout as well as calls from protesters to re-evaluate how much the city spends on policing. City budget writers made more than $120 million in cuts as revenue from retail and restaurant sales as well as hotel room bookings, conventions and flights in and out of San Antonio International Airport dried up. This has not been a normal nor an easy fiscal year, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. Its been a year thats been fraught with anger, division, tension, anxiety, disease. Organizers and residents had pushed city leaders to spend less on SAPD and more on social services during protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Those calls intensified this week after police shot and killed Darrell Zemault Sr., a Black man, while arresting him on two family violence warrants Tuesday. Police say Zemault fought with them and grabbed an officers gun. On ExpressNews.com: In wake of yet another police shooting, activists again demand San Antonio City Council defund police To activists chagrin, City Council members went forward with an $8 million boost in police spending, bringing SAPDs total budget to $487 million for the 2020-21 fiscal year. The jump is smaller than in recent years, but its still an increase. One after another, more than a dozen residents called in to the councils virtual meeting Thursday morning to decry the increase and to blast council members for what they saw as inaction. Were here because we literally cant take it anymore, activist Moureen Kaki told council members. Were here talking to you because theres another way. Were here because we love our communities and because we have the imagination and the hope that our communities can be more than arenas for police to live out their combat fantasies. Only one person spoke in defense of the police department. City leaders including Nirenberg and City Manager Erik Walsh have been hesitant to quickly make sweeping cuts in police department funding. For one, they have pointed out that the citys contract with the San Antonio Police Officers Association, the union that represents the citys officers, ties their hands when it comes to determining the citys police budget. More than three-quarters of the citys police spending about $387 million is mandated by the contract, which determines wages and benefits as well as spending on costs like uniforms, vehicles and ammunition. The contract is set to expire in October 2021 with negotiations between the city and union on a new contract slated to begin in January. In the meantime, activists have pointed to the remaining $100 million in spending that doesnt fall under the contract, which covers costs like the citys 911 communications center, fuel and police records. But Nirenberg shot down cutting those funds, saying its not as easy as it might seem. Also looming in the background is a threat from Gov. Greg Abbott and the states top Republicans to punish cities who cut police spending in any way. Abbott vowed last week to push proposals during the Texas Legislatures upcoming session to freeze cities property tax revenue and annexation powers if they make cuts to police budgets. The governor also threatened Austin officials that the state would take control of the Austin Police Department after City Council members there cut and reallocated $150 million from their police budget. But Abbott seemed satisfied with the San Antonio councils move Thursday. I applaud San Antonio for passing a budget that boosts police spending rather than cutting law enforcement spending like some other cities, Abbott tweeted Thursday evening. Having well-trained law enforcement is essential to safe communities. On ExpressNews.com: Abbott vows to further cut off cities that defund police Activists found some sympathy on the council. District 9 Councilman John Courage, who worked as a military police officer when he was in the Air Force, said he understands the challenges police officers face when out on patrol but that certainly doesnt justify any deaths of people. There have got to be other ways of doing our job as a city and for the police to do their job to protect the people in this community other than having people die at the hands of police officers, Courage said. Two council members Manny Pelaez and Shirley Gonzales noted that the city has for years boosted the number of officers on the force because thats what constituents have demanded. I cant ignore those voices, Pelaez said. And just because they dont show up to City Council and holler at us and because theyre not marching in the street doesnt mean that I dont listen to them. But Gonzales admitted that hasnt necessarily led to a drop in crime. We have enough information to show that we need to continue to redirect those resources, Gonzales said. Nirenberg acknowledged that activists didnt get everything they sought, but said the budget does make investments in housing and health, as well as other areas where they wanted more funding. Activists have found those amounts dissatisfying. The mayor sees the budget passed Thursday as the beginning of a much longer conversation about the role of police in San Antonio and the size of the citys financial commitment to the department. In order to live up to the recognition that Black lives matter, San Antonio must not be an exception, Nirenberg said. The budget passed Thursday does make some changes to the police budget. The city will put all of its violence prevention programs under one roof at the Metropolitan Health District and move 20 civilian employees who work with domestic violence victims from SAPD to Metro Health. It also will assign 25 officers to focus on domestic violence prevention and intervention. San Antonio plans to apply for the Justice Departments Community-Oriented Policing grant to hire more officers tasked with building relationships within the community and to help come up with innovative ways to fight crime. The city is cutting police overtime by $3.4 million which it can do because of an incoming cadet class. The plan also will pump $1 million in new spending on homelessness and mental health outreach, often handled by police. City leaders havent taken police reform off the table. For the next several months, Walsh plans to embark on a process to evaluate what San Antonio residents expect from the police department as well as to examine issues of police accountability and discipline. Walsh plans to bring a reform package to council members in April. We understand the importance of it, and we will be diligent and work hard to continue to review and make sure we are putting ourselves and the community and the police department in the best possible position, Walsh said. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio City Council sidesteps budget discussion, focuses on police reform instead The pandemic has wrought havoc on San Antonios budget as it deals with an expected $127 million loss in revenue, mostly from depleting sales and hotel occupancy taxes. The citys budget will be $4.4 million lower than last year. Layoffs for the citys civilian employees are off the table, but its possible that they will have to take unpaid furlough days next year. Civilians wont get pay raises under the proposed budget, though they will be paying lower health insurance premiums to make up for that. The citys uniform employees still are slated to get pay increases because of their union contracts 5 percent for police officers and 2 percent for firefighters plus a 1 percent bonus. The city is cutting $8 million from its annual street maintenance budget, which will sit at $102 million. Metro Health is getting about $3 million more than it did last year, bringing that budget to $45.8 million. Of that, the city is kicking in $20.3 million, roughly 30 percent more than it did last year. State and federal grants pay for the rest. That amount doesnt include another $19 million in city money and federal grants council members approved to keep the citys pandemic response funded until early summer. The council also pumped $24.1 million into the citys primary housing assistance program, which helps residents with rent and mortgage payments and household costs such as utilities and groceries. But they also placed stricter limits on who could receive assistance from the program and how much, changes intended to extend the life of the program into December given that additional federal stimulus is unlikely. Joshua Fechter is a staff writer covering San Antonio government and politics. To read more from Joshua, become a subscriber. jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFReports As the 14-day incidence rate of cases per 100,000 in the capital has now risen to 109.6, additional restrictions are being considered to slow the spread of the virus. On Tuesday, Dublin was placed on Level Two alongside every other county in the country, with additional restrictions being placed on household visits and the instruction that wet pubs will not be permitted to reopen on September 21st. However, as Dublin continues to account for the majority of cases being reported each day, recording 136 of the 254 cases confirmed on Wednesday, Level Three restrictions are expected to be implemented by the weekend. As thousands of students from around the country are due to return to third-level institutes in Dublin, University College Dublin (UCD) Student's Union president, Conor Anderson is calling for clarity regarding what impact increased restrictions would have on students. Advertisement "There is no clarity from the Government as to what will happen to third-level institutions should Dublin move into Level Three. This is causing significant confusion for students who are meant to be starting class on Monday. "Students have been getting mixed communications all summer from their Universities and now with the final guidance in place, the Government have provided ambiguous information which could contradict everything students have been preparing for, just days before the start of term. "We are calling on [Minister for Higher Education] Simon Harris to immediately state if University classes will be moved online if Dublin moves into Level Three," he said. Online classes Student's in Dublin's third-level institutes had already been informed that this semester would involve both online and on-campus classes due to public health guidelines, but now colleges are being told to offer classes online as much as possible. According to the new Living with Covid-19 plan, Level Three restrictions allow for schools and childcare facilities to remain open with restrictive measures in place, however, the plan adds: "Further, higher and adult education to escalate all appropriate protective measures and limit congregation as far as possible". Institutes have been left unsure as to whether this means any on-campus classes should be permitted to go ahead. Advertisement "Students have already registered for their classes and are expecting to move into new houses from different counties over the weekend. "They need to know if the face-to-face classes they have registered for are going ahead and what the change in level will mean for them. Should they remain in their home county? Will their face-to-face classes be moved online?" Mr Anderson said. An additional issue being faced by colleges is the arrival of students from outside of Dublin, some of whom would normally return home at weekends. In Level Two, domestic travel is unrestricted, however people in Dublin are already being told not to leave the county, or to limit their interactions to one household if they must leave. In Level Three, the guidelines for domestic travel is: "Stay in your county (or other defined geographical area) apart from work, education and other essential purposes, if appropriate". The chair of the Central Applications Office (CAO) previously urged third-level students to consider not returning home at weekends to stop the spread of Covid-19. Prof Pol O Dochartaigh said it was important to to think about the movement patterns of people across the country in advance of the return of university and college classes. Heidi Schreck in "What the Constitution Means to Me." The Broadway hit is coming to Amazon Prime next month. (Joan Marcus) "Hamilton" isn't the only Broadway hit to join the streaming wars. Heidi Shreck's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, "What the Constitution Means to Me," will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 16, the company said Thursday. The (almost) one-woman show starring Schreck opened to raves at the Hayes Theater in March last year. The run was extended twice, and director Marielle Heller ("A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," "Can You Ever Forgive Me?") captured a performance in the final week for the Amazon Prime release. Amazon Studios also announced that it had signed a deal for Schreck to create original content exclusive to Amazon. "What the Constitution Means to Me" is an autobiographical story stemming from an experience Shreck had when she was 15, earning money for college by giving speeches on the Constitution in events organized by the American Legion. From there, the show swings outward into an arc examining the myriad ways the Constitution does and doesn't protect and represent all Americans, particularly women. Times Theater critic Charles McNulty called it a "singularly charming, politically urgent and cathartically necessary play." The show eventually landed at the Mark Taper Forum in January with Maria Dizzia in the role of Schreck. BRANFORD - Someone just bought themselves one heck of a getaway - for the bargain price of just $4.2 million. Potato Island, one of the Thimble Islands off the coast of Branford's Stony Creek section, had been on and off the market for several years before selling Sept. 8 for $4.2 million to a buyer who prefers to remain anonymous, said listing agent John Campbell of the Page Taft-Christie International Real Estate's Madison office. Originally listed in 2014 for $7.35 million, it had been listed for the past two years for $4.9 million, Campbell said Wednesday. - Click here to take a video tour of Potato Island - Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Thursday met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi and requested for an independent laboratory of the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) in Shivamogga. The Ministry of Defence has considered the Karnataka government's proposal for establishing a Research Cell of the DRDO at Kuvempu University, but the state is expecting a full-fledged independent DRDO Laboratory in Shivamogga with an ample number of scientists and technocrats, the Chief Minister was quoted as saying in an official release. The CM further said the laboratory can explore natural remedial measures for military use from the Western Ghats region. The land required for the construction of the laboratory as well as the official quarters for the personnel will be provided by the state government, it added. Live TV Shivamogga is the home turf of Yediyurappa, as he represents Shikaripura assembly constituency in the district, while his son B Y Raghavendra is the MP from Shivamogga Lok Sabha constituency. Earlier in the evening, the Chief Minister called on the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and asked her to accept the recommendation of the 14th Finance Commission for a special grant of Rs 5,495 crore for Karnataka on account of reduced devolution. According to the release, in a memorandum submitted to the Finance Minister, Yediyurappa said against the recommendation of Rs 2,100.25 crore performance grant to Urban Local Bodies and Rural Local Bodies an amount of only Rs 869.40 crore has been received. He requested to release a balance amount of Rs 1,230.85 crore, it said. While extending gratitude for the timely release of funds under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNGREGA) scheme, Yediyurappa sought early release of outstanding material dues of nearly Rs 665.09 crore and unskilled wage dues of Rs 54.65 crore. He also appealed to the Centre to notify an additional 50 days under section 3(4) of the MNGREGA, as Karnataka has faced an unprecedented pandemic, it added. Yediyurappa, who reached Delhi this afternoon will be there for next two days, during which he is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several central Ministers regarding the development of the state. He is also expected to meet top BJP leadership including party national President J P Nadda and discuss the much awaited expansion of his cabinet. Phoenix Man Charged After Officer Shot Near Federal Courthouse Ex-wife says he's mentally ill A man has been arrested and charged in relation to the drive-by shooting of a federal court security officer near a federal court house in Phoenix, Arizona, the FBI announced on Wednesday. James Lee Carr, 68, was charged in a criminal complaint for assault on a federal officer, for allegedly shooting a court security officer outside of the U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix on [Sept. 15], the FBI announced. James Lee Carr, 68, was charged in a criminal complaint for assault on a federal officer, for allegedly shooting a court security officer outside of the U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix on 9/15/20. Thank you @PhoenixPolice,@USMarshalsHQ, @USAO_AZ, public & media for your assistance. pic.twitter.com/9NKoYSQdZm FBI Phoenix (@FBIPhoenix) September 16, 2020 Carr was charged with two federal counts of assaulting a federal officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. According to the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court, Carr drove by the Sandra Day OConnor federal courthouse around 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 15 and yelled, Hey, at the officer who was inspecting a UPS truck heading into the courthouse. The complaint then alleges Carr shot at the officer three times, hitting the officers protective vest at least once on the right side of the chest area. The officer returned fire, shooting eight times at the silver Cadillac sedan that Carr was allegedly driving, a photo of which was released promptly after the incident by the Phoenix Police Department. The suspect shooter, described as a black male wearing a full-brimmed hat, subsequently fled the scene in the car. Police cars close off a street outside the Sandra Day OConnor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona, on Sept. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) James Carr then told his brother, Lonnie Carr, that he had shot at a security guard, according to an account provided by Lonnie. Lonnie then informed James Carrs ex-wife, Donna Gonzalez, and son, Buford Carr, of what Carr had said, including that he wanted to die because he had shot the security guard, the criminal complaint said. According to Buford, James told Buford he snapped and shot a security guard at 7th Avenue and Washington because the security guard was harassing him. Buford indicated that James had mental health issues, the complaint read. Carrs son and Gonzales said they found him in Verde park, dressed in a suit and fedora, with a revolver and rifle nearby. They took the weapons away from him and called 911. After James was taken into custody, a law enforcement officer was testing James left hand for potential gunshot residue when James stated, Thats not the hand I shot with,' the criminal complaint stated. Donna Gonzalez said that Carr has a long history of mental illness. Theres no explanation for it. Hes sick, she told The Associated Press. Hopefully, hes getting the help he needs. She added that her ex-husband will most likely need a court-appointed attorney. The criminal complaint noted that a neighbor who lives in the apartment above Carr told law enforcement that Carr is an alcoholic, smokes marijuana, and has mental health issues. Colleen Grayman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Phoenix, said the security officer was released from the hospital Tuesday and was at home recovering. The officers name hasnt been released but Grayman said the officer is a retired Michigan state trooper who served for more than 25 years. Carr was not injured. Following the courthouse shooting and the ambush of the two Los Angeles County deputies, Phoenix police said it will have officers conduct their patrols in pairs for greater safety. The deputies in Compton, a city in south Los Angeles County, California, were sitting in their parked vehicle when a man walked up and opened fired. The incident occurred on Sept. 12. They were shot in the head and had multiple critical gunshot wounds. The deputies, a 24-year-old male deputy and a 31-year-old female, are expected to recover. The suspect shooter, who was caught on camera, has yet to be arrested and no motive has been established. The Associated Press contributed to this report. GovContractPros (GCP) is pleased to congratulate Managing Director John Shoraka for receiving the Advocate of the Year Award from the U.S. Department of Commerces Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). According to MBDA, this award is presented to an individual or organization that has demonstrated significant accomplishment in advocating minority business enterprise as an economic force in the global economy. The MBDA National Minority Enterprise Development Week Awards are the highest level of national recognition that a U.S. minority-owned firm can receive from the U.S. Department of Commerce. This year, MBDA is honoring award winners in a virtual How I Did It interview series that will showcase their innovative solutions to overcoming obstacles and how to thrive under challenging circumstances. As Managing Director of GCP, Shoraka assists small business government contractors in all phases of their business lifecycle, including navigation of the federal marketplace, business development, certification for and compliance with small business set-aside programs, teaming and mentor-protege arrangements, and financing and acquisition. Advocating for the federal small business programs and advocating for small businesses in particular is in our DNA. My partner Aditi Dussault, our staff, our consultants and I work tirelessly day in and day out to ensure that the benefits of the small business programs flow to the intended recipients, said Shoraka. Prior to GCP, Shoraka served as Associate Administrator of Government Contracting and Business Development at the U.S. Small Business Administration. His knowledge of the government contracting marketplace is derived from decades of both infield private sector and public sector practice. As Associate Administrator of SBA, Shoraka was responsible for overseeing the federal governments small business set-aside programs. His responsibilities included the Business Development/8(a) program, HUBZone, WOSB and SDVOSB programs. He was responsible for the Office of Size Standards, the federal governments small business goaling program as well as the federal governments small business prime and subcontracting programs. Shoraka worked closely with the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy and Senior Administration officials in crafting best practices for accomplishing small business procurement goals. Shoraka has a deep understanding of the federal government contracting legislative and regulatory landscape. He was responsible for implementing procurement provisions of the Small Business Jobs Act (including the All Small Mentor-Protege Program) as well as the National Defense Authorization Acts of FY13-16 (including sole source authority for the WOSB program). He represented the SBA and the Obama administration in hearings before Congress, including hearings with the House Small Business Committee, House Armed Services Committee, House Committee on Veterans Affairs, and the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. National Minority Enterprise Development Week is celebrated September 14-19, 2020. For more information visit https://medweek.mbda.gov. GovContractPros helps small, medium, and disadvantaged businesses leverage set-aside programs for growth and development. From inception to graduation and beyond, we are your trusted advisor in navigating complex rules, regulations, certification requirements, and an ever-changing landscape. We have in-depth knowledge of all the various set-aside programs, including the Mentor-Protege and small business Joint Venture programs, and work with our clients to leverage opportunities for success. Our team is composed of both industry and government officials with unparalleled expertise in the federal marketplace. Our services are offered through traditional consulting engagements or as part of our membership platform. Learn more at https://www.govcontractpros.com. Censured Irish priest Fr Tony Flannery has said he will not give in to the Vatican's recent demand that he recant his views on women priests. The popular 73-year-old Redemptorist was forced out of ministry in 2012 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF), the Vatican department which was known in the past as the Inquisition. He revealed that the Secretary of the CDF, Archbishop Giancomo Morandi, wrote to the head of Fr Flannery's Redemptorist congregation during the coronavirus lockdown warning that there could be no return to public ministry for the Irish priest unless he submitted a signed statement upholding the Catholic Church's positions on "homosexuality, civil unions between persons of the same sex, and the admission of women to the priesthood", as well as gender theory. The June letter also warns Fr Flannery that he must remain silent on these issues. It says that only after Fr Flannery signs and gives his assent to the Church's strict teaching will "a gradual readmission" to the exercise of public ministry be considered by the Congregation. Speaking to the Irish Independent, Fr Flannery said he had no intention of signing the document. "Absolutely not. I just could not live with myself if I signed that document. "For me to sign a document that I submit that women can never be ordained priests in the Catholic Church would be a total lie." He noted that "at a time when Pope Francis is telling us to speak our truth without fear, this document from the Vatican is redolent of the 9th century Church, where freedom of speech was anathema. "German and Australian bishops have spoken publicly about full equality for women in the Church, without any repercussions. The issue is now widely discussed around the world. "How can they justify demanding that I be silent on the topic, and submit to their totally outdated and abusive attitudes to women?" Responding to the news, the head of the Redemptorist congregation in Ireland, Fr Dan Baragry, told the Irish Independent: "I am disappointed that it has not been possible for us to find a solution to Fr Tony Flannery's ongoing situation. Regretfully I don't see any way out of this long-running impasse." Expressing himself as "disappointed and saddened", Fr Flannery appeared to recognise that there is little hope of finding a resolution to his row with the Vatican. "I see this as the end of the road for me and ministry. "For whatever is left of my life, there is no possibility of any form of official priestly ministry and I've just got to live with that," he said. Criticising the CDF's handling of his case, he commented: "One would wish that they would have the decency to treat me as a human being and correspond directly with me and give me a chance to state my situation, but they don't do that sort of thing." He also regretted that the head of the Redemptorists worldwide, Fr Michael Brehl, had approached the CDF about his case, instead of "having the courage to take the authority on themselves" and put him back in ministry. Highlighting how under Pope Francis, the CDF was increasingly being bypassed, he said: "I would be amazed if Francis objected to an action taken by the Redemptorists about one of their own members." Over 11,600 Indians abroad have been infected with coronavirus as per details available with the countrys missions, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. In a written reply to a question in the Upper House, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said Indian Missions arranged for the welfare of Indian nationals, where required, including through the Indian community associations. In some cases, arrangements were also made for screening and testing of stranded Indian nationals to enable them to return to India, as also for movement of patients via air ambulances for their treatment in India, he said. As on September 10, 2020, as per the details available with Indian missions, the total number of Indian citizens abroad infected with coronavirus stood at 11,616, he said. Out of the 11,616 Indians infected with COVID-19 abroad, 4,618 were in Singapore, 2,639 in Bahrain, 1,769 in Kuwait, 907 in Oman, 420 in Qatar, 308 in Iran, 238 in the UAE and 192 in Italy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, India has supported 150 countries with medicines and medical equipment, including around 80 countries under grants-in-aid, he said. In response to another question on the Vande Bharat Mission, Muraleedharan said the mission was launched on May 7, 2020 and more than 14,12,835 Indian nationals have returned to India via air, land and sea. To another question on the number of Indians abroad at present who have registered with the Vande Bharat Mission to return to India but have still not returned, Muraleedharan said according to the information available with the ministry, 4,80,738 Indians who have registered on MEAs online REPAT portal have not yet returned. The actual number of people wishing to return may differ. As per information provided by the missions, many people who have registered may no longer wish to return. Moreover, as per latest guidelines of Government of India, passengers are no longer required to register for Air Bubble flights, he said. Most people with compelling reasons have safely returned to their homes by air, land and sea. The exercise to bring back stranded Indians is ongoing under the Vande Bharat Mission, he said. Our Missions have assisted more than 62,000 Indian nationals in distress involving an expenditure of nearly Rs 22.5 crores from the Indian Community Welfare Fund, he said. Responding to a separate question on the number of students and workers brought back under the Vande Bharat Mission, Muraleedharan said 56,630 students and 3,08,099 workers had been brought back. Asked about the details of the facilities being given to the workers brought back to the country, the minister said, With the aim of making the best of our skilled workforce returning to the country due to the ongoing pandemic, the Government of India launched an initiative SWADES (Skilled Workers Arrival Database for Employment Support) to conduct a skill mapping exercise of the returning citizens under the Vande Bharat Mission. SWADES, a joint initiative of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Ministry of External Affairs, is aimed to create a database of qualified citizens based on their skill sets and experience to tap into and fulfil demand of Indian and foreign companies. This was done to facilitate reintegration of migrant workers into the labour market and promote effective employment opportunities, he said. For facilitating employment opportunities, details of SWADES registrations have been integrated with Skill Indias ASEEM (Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping) portal which was launched on July 10, 2020, he said. All data regarding Indians returning under Vande Bharat Mission was also shared with relevant state governments, on a real time basis, he said. Muraleedharan also asserted that there was no delay in bringing back workers who were stuck in various countries in the Gulf region. He said priority has been given to countries in the Gulf region for scheduling flights to bring back the stranded workers under the Vande Bharat Mission. China has over 110 million 5G users and is expected to have more than 600,000 5G base stations by the end of this year, covering all cities at prefecture level and above, according to the 5G Innovation and Development Forum held on Sept. 15 during the Smart China Expo Online in southwest Chinas Chongqing Municipality. Smart China Expo Online (SCE OL) 2020 kicks off at the Lijia Intelligent Park in southwest Chinas Chongqing Municipality. (Photo/Chinanews.com) Since 5G licenses for commercial use for more than one year were issued, the country has made steady progress in the construction of its 5G network infrastructure, said Han Xia, director of the telecom department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, adding that Chinese telecommunications companies have already built over 500,000 5G base stations with over 100 million 5G internet terminals. So far, 5G has been deployed in sectors and fields including ports, machinery, automobiles, steel, mining and energy, while 5G application has been accelerated in key areas such as industrial internet, Internet of Vehicles, medical care, and education, Han noted. The value of the countrys industrial internet hit 2.13 trillion yuan last year, Yin Hao, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said at the forum, adding that the figure is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan in 2025. The integrated development of 5G plus industrial internet can create new products, generate new models and new forms of business, reduce enterprises operating costs, improve their production efficiency, and optimize their resource allocation, Yin noted. According to Chen Shanzhi, vice president of the China Information and Communication Technologies Group Corporation (CICT), the combination of 5G and other emerging information technologies, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data, will help accelerate the integrated development and innovation of other sectors and bring about explosive growth in the digital economy. Sidharth Malhotra surely has Greek God looks and that perfect body which he often loves to flaunt on his social media. With those looks and the talent, hes the perfect example of boy-next-door, but very few know that he trains really hard to achieve that body and maintain it. Last year we got talking to Sidharth Malhotra when he was shooting for a song for Jabriya Jodi. While the song took up most of his time and even energy, the actor decided to get into some aqua training to help him with his muscles. He says that aqua training helped him in muscle recovery. Sidharth spoke to us and said, Since I danced on a song for all day on Tuesday, aqua-training came in handy for me to recover at the end of the shift. It includes resisting water instead of the weights and I really love the activity. I try to do it whenever I find the time." He further added, I make sure to incorporate it in my schedule whenever I am on a particularly hectic shoot for action or dancing sequences. Thanks to my father, I have felt a connection with the sea since childhood. I became a certified scuba diver earlier this year. Sidharth, whose father Sunil Malhotra is a former Merchant Navy Captain, said that he has always been a water baby. I love swimming.Thanks to my father, I have felt a connection with the sea since childhood. I became a certified scuba diver earlier this year. Wherever I find a pool, and spare time, I just dive in, do laps and flexibility, stretching exercises. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Dr K.K Sarpong has said the government has shown immense commitment to the development of the Technical Universities. He said since the current government took office, it has made significant investments in infrastructure, human resource and other critical areas of the Technical Universities to enable them effectively discharge their mandate. Dr Sarpong said this when he delivered the keynote address at the joint ceremony of induction into office of Professor David Kofi Essumang as the first Vice Chancellor of the Koforidua Technical University and the 16th Congregation of the institution. He said the Technical Universities have a crucial role to play in national development and it was therefore important that they conduct applied research that would yield practical benefits as they prepare their students for the world of work. Dr Sarpong reminded the Technical Universities that industry is looking for graduates with skills training. In that context, no effort should be spared in ensuring that the students were well prepared to meet the demands of the time. He emphasised that, since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the world has seen young men and women with technical and vocational education, come up with many safety gadgets, including mechanised hand-washing machines produced in Ghana. While admitting that technical education at the tertiary level is quite expensive, Dr Sarpong nevertheless maintained that there is no easy way to achieving the objectives of Competency Based Training. Therefore, if technical education at the tertiary level must be relevant, basic tools and equipment must be provided. To this end, he encouraged stakeholders of technical education to ensure that Technical Universities are well resourced to meet the policy objectives of Competency Based Training. While congratulating Professor Essumang on his appointment, the GNPC CEO urged him to be innovative and technologically-minded to be able to lead the University into a prosperous future. He further admonished him to collaborate with industry for mutual benefits, and also take bold steps to encourage industry to see the worth of Technical University education. Dr Sarpong said it is common knowledge that the worlds economy is in crisis because of the COVID-19 pandemic which has compelled many corporate organisations and businesses to fold up. What this means is that, support and sponsorship from corporate social responsibility models will dwindle. But this situation should not deter the University from courting and collaborating with industry. 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 Huang Cailiang, an officially recognized inheritor of making gold-painted lacquerware, has practiced the craft for more than four decades. He now spends more time on training students to cultivate young inheritors. [China Daily] The traditional craft is regaining popularity, especially as wedding gifts, thanks largely to the work of a small group of inheritors, Ma Zhenhuan reports in Hangzhou. In ancient China, and especially in Jiangnan-the region south of the Yangtze Rivera woman's dowry, including wooden furniture, jewelry and ornaments, were often considered a reflection of her parents' love. Parents prepared the most exquisite and precious objects for their betrothed daughters to show their love and to support them in husbands' families. A woman's dowry, which typically featured gold and red color schemes, usually required skilled and arduous work. In the past, rich families in Ninghai, a coastal county in East China's Zhejiang Province's Ningbo, would prepare a large number of red dowries for their daughters. There's an old saying-using exaggeration for the purpose of illustration-that the team carrying these and accompanying the bride on her way to the groom's family would stretch for about 5 kilometers. Pieces of gold-painted lacquerware and undecorated woodcarvings are showcased at Huang Cailiang's art museum in Ninghai, in Zhejiang Province's Ningbo. [China Daily] These somewhat extravagant wedding customs have bred a time-honored handicraft in Ninghai-gold-painted lacquerware, which was widely used in weddings and was recognized as a form of national-level intangible cultural heritage in 2011. Such lacquerware originated in Hemudu Culture 7,000 years ago and became popular in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties for its magnificent appearance and auspicious colors, stereoscopic patterns with rich themes and resistance to erosion. Its creation requires over 20 steps, including pasting such patterns as landscapes, flowers and figures on wooden roughcasts, and decorating them with gold foil. Due to the complicated production and decreasing market demand, the handicraft gradually lost its following in modern times. But the skills used to create it have survived, thanks to the persistence of a small group of craftspeople in Ninghai. It has even returned to public attention in recent years. Although modern weddings don't require such lacquer furnishings, they're still popular gifts for newlyweds. Huang Cailiang is an officially recognized inheritor of the time-honored craft he has practiced for more than four decades. He promotes the craft among the public. Pieces of gold-painted lacquerware and undecorated woodcarvings are showcased at Huang Cailiang's art museum in Ninghai, in Zhejiang Province's Ningbo. [China Daily] The 63-year-old began to learn about gold-painted lacquerware production at age 18, when he made it his living. He spent the next few years practicing woodcarving. In 1986, Huang furthered his studies of modern sculpture at East China Normal University in Shanghai. Afterward, he returned to Ninghai and set up a factory to produce lacquerware and undecorated woodcarvings, a form of provincial-level intangible cultural heritage. The factory helped popularize both crafts and generated significant profits. In 2002, the artisan cooperated with a local vocational school in Ninghai and trained hundreds of students on how to produce gold-painted lacquerware to cultivate more young inheritors. Nine trainees were selected as new-generation inheritors. In 2005, Huang realized lacquerware's market potential and started to further explore its market value. He innovated on the recipe for the paste used to depict decorative patterns and made the red color less shiny to cater to modern tastes. Huang spent the following years building an art museum to display the history, production process and exquisite pieces of gold-painted lacquerware and undecorated woodcarvings. The 23,000-square-meter museum he designed and invested in opened to the public in December 2016. Pieces of gold-painted lacquerware and undecorated woodcarvings are showcased at Huang Cailiang's art museum in Ninghai, in Zhejiang Province's Ningbo. [China Daily] It also enables visitors to closely observe the manufacturing process and even try making an item. Today, the art form has become a cultural icon of Ninghai and a laureate of over 30 awards from home and abroad. Products at Huang's museum are priced from 2,000 to 6,000 yuan ($290-$870). People often buy them as wedding gifts. "Organizing exhibitions of intangible cultural heritage is far from enough for inheritance and promotion," Huang says. "It's better to take them out of the exhibition halls and workshops, and let people touch them and closely observe them." (Source: China Daily) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to agree to table an amendment to the UK Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before the government can use powers which would breach the deal brokered with the EU last year. His controversial plan to break international law angered scores of his backbenchers, and prompted the European Commission to demand the provisions in the Bill relating to the Withdrawal Agreement be dropped by the end of the month. But despite the British governments compromise, Brussels said on Thursday that its position had not changed and it still wanted the clauses to be withdrawn from the legislation. Eric Mamer, chief spokesman for the European Commission, told a press briefing: We have as you know set out a position extremely clearly, it is in our statement, and it relates to those clauses being withdrawn from the law. Advertisement That position has not changed and we have asked the UK to do this at the earliest possible convenience, and by the end of September at the latest. That has not changed. The spokesman also insisted the EU carries out negotiations in good faith, after the Prime Minister told MPs on Wednesday he did not believe they had acted as such in the Brexit talks. Mr Mamer said: I think that Michel Barnier showed, in the context of the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, that even on extremely complex and politically sensitive issues the Commission and indeed the EU negotiate in perfectly good faith. It came as US presidential election frontrunner Joe Biden insisted the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland cannot become a casualty of Brexit. The Democratic Party nominee for the White House said a future trade deal between the US and UK could only happen if the peace agreement was respected. Mr Biden tweeted: We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, on a visit to Washington, accused Brussels of the politicisation of Northern Ireland issues in the context of Brexit trade talks. He said the EU stance threatened the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Raab said he had made clear the UK has an absolute commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. The UK action here is defensive in relation to what the EU is doing, it is precautionary, we havent done any of this yet, and it is proportionate, he said. What we cannot have is the EU seeking to erect a regulatory border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain. US officials have warned they will dramatically step up global pressure on Iran in the coming days by imposing sanctions to block weapons and energy shipments to Tehran. Such a move raises the possibility of American warships halting Iranian cargo ships in international waters, which would be a further escalation of tensions between the two countries, in the run-up to the most contentious US presidential election in recent history. The hawkish US envoy to Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams said that Washington would spell out measures in the coming days it would take to enforce sanctions against the Islamic Republic as well as similar measures against Caracas, where the US supports the opposition against the regime of Nicolas Maduro an ally of Tehran. The added pressure would be in contravention of a United Nations Security Councils decision to reject the US attempt to reimpose brutal sanctions on Iran that were removed as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear accord. The administration of Donald Trump has only a few months left in its first and possibly last term. But the US may see any move against long-standing foe Iran as a potentially popular move with some voters. Mr Abrams, who recently took over Iran policy from the departing Brian Hook, is known for his foreign policy adventurism. He was once convicted for his part in a scheme to use proceeds of illegal arms sales to Iran to finance Central American militias accused of war crimes. He was later pardoned. Some fear enforcement of the sanctions could entail US warships halting Iranian or Iranian-bound cargo ships in international waters. Will they try to stop ships in the open waters that are trying to bring non-military goods? Thats a very good question, said one senior European diplomat. If the US tried to stop a shipment to Iran, I dont know what ensues. It will create another element of uncertainty in an already uncertain situation. The US already seized several Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela with cargoes of fuel but in open waters far from the Iranian military. If the Trump administration starts targeting Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf or near the Strait of Hormuz, the risk of a confrontation with Iranian naval forces will significantly increase, Trita Parsi, of the left-leaning think tank Responsible Statecraft, wrote on Wednesday. Iranian tanker Fortune' docks in Puerto Cabello in Venezuela (Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power) Many officials have questioned the Trump administrations legal reasoning for tightening sanctions. Under its interpretation, all the harsh UN sanctions in place on Iran before the 2015 nuclear deal are to come back into force because Washington demands an immediate snapback. Virtually all UN sanctions on Iran will come back into place this weekend at 8.00pm Eastern Time on Saturday the 19th, Mr Abrams told reporters late Wednesday. The arms embargo will now be re-imposed indefinitely and other restrictions will return. Mr Abrams was speaking hours after US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, speaking alongside British foreign secretary Dominic Raab, said the US would do all the things we need to do to reimpose or snapback sanctions as part of a provision in the nuclear deal. Those restrictions include limits on Irans missile development and enrichment of uranium, which remain under international safeguards, despite Washington withdrawing from an international agreement to monitor Irans nuclear programme in 2018. So far, Tehran has only enriched uranium to power reactor levels. Iran has warned that any reimposition of the pre-2015 sanctions would have dire consequences. Other countries involved in the nuclear deal, the UK, France, China, Germany and Russia, contend that the US cannot trigger the snapback because it has withdrawn from the deal. On Thursday the hardline Iranian daily newspaper Javan warned: "If Europe does not officially and practically cancel the snapback mechanism on Saturday, it will see the end of the nuclear deal. Iran should turn off the cameras and start 90 per cent enrichment, the newspaper said. If the Trump administration starts targeting Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf or near the Strait of Hormuz, the risk of a confrontation with Iranian naval forces will significantly increase Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft Uranium enriched to 90 per cent purity is considered weapons grade. As a possible response to Iran, Mr Abrams mentioned increased sanctions on Iran or any entity that does business with the country. But at this point, it remains unclear if any more sanctions will have any effect. There will always be more sanctions and companies to target, said Sanam Vakil, an Iran and Middle East expert at Chatham House. But the impact is negligible at this point. The US approach has puzzled and alarmed Nato partners that are struggling to maintain limits on Irans nuclear programme without resorting to armed conflict, a stated goal of the Trump administration. Some observers have wondered if the Trump administration is merely trying to appear tough on Iran in order to sate the appetite of Republican Party financiers and think-tank cheerleaders increasingly frustrated with their inability to topple the regimes in Tehran as well as Caracas. Other observers and diplomats worry that the Trump administration hopes to provoke a crisis before the 3 November elections, in which Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden has an advantage in the polls. Theyve been mentioning snapback for months; it would have been a surprise if they hadnt tried to pursue it, said the senior European diplomat. Whats unclear is if it's for domestic political calculations or how they're going to pursue it. Are they going to make a speech and go home or are they going to stake to stop ships? While Mr Trump has often described himself as the president who would end Americas wars abroad, his calculations may change if he decides a military clash with a longtime adversary would help rally voters behind him. There is awareness among the [Security Council] and the policymaking community that in the run-up to the elections it could be useful to continue to demonstrate toughness with Iran to potentially achieve the aim of killing the [nuclear deal], said Ms Vakil. But I don't see the wider international community as enablers. Theyre quite clear-eyed that they are not going to be goaded. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Photo: The Canadian Press A man is detained by police in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. Police say the latest statistics suggesting an increase in crime for the first half of the year in Vancouver are concerning. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck Police say the latest statistics suggesting an increase in crime for the first half of the year in Vancouver are concerning. Vancouver police say violent crime increased by more than five per cent and was largely driven by a rise in serious assaults. However, police say there was a significant decrease in break-ins to cars because of fewer vehicles being parked downtown as people work from home during the pandemic. But they say the pandemic also exposed closed businesses to thieves, with a 47.9 per cent increase in break-ins to commercial and business premises. Police say they recorded increases in crime in all parts of the city, but areas including Strathcona, downtown and Yaletown recorded particularly high numbers. They say officers are paying special attention to Strathcona, the site of a growing homeless encampment, where calls for service about weapons went up by 50 per cent and break-ins went up by 68 per cent. MBABANE - Local artists need your votes. The above statement holds true for local artists who were nominated for LOGMA. The Association of Christian Artists in Eswatini (ACAESWA), a few weeks ago, announced that it would be hosting online gospel awards dubbed Lockdown Gospel Music Awards (LOGMA). The awards, which will take place in November, were officially launched on July 11, 2020 at The George Hotel in Manzini. ACAESWA Public Relations Officer Nhlanhla Mathunjwa yesterday officially shared the voting score board. The nominations had public and technical categories. category The public category was decided by the public and nominations were open to anyone who qualified, while the technical category was to be decided by the adjudicating panel, except for The Most Downloaded Gospel Song category, which will be based on online statistics. We have been getting positive responses from the public as we had requested them to nominate their favourite gospel artists and they have been responding well. The current COVID-19 pandemic has pushed us to wear our creative caps and we will be having a great online show, Mathunjwa said. He went on to encourage people to continue supporting local artists by voting. Fakazi Samuel, who is leading in the Lockdown Best New Gospel Artist category, expressed his excitement and thanked people for their support. Im very thankful to God for this opportunity and also grateful for the continued support from emaSwati and people from outside the country. May God do more for them. I also urge the public to continue voting, Samuel said. Fezile Matsebula, who is also leading in the Lockdown Best Female Gospel Artist category, thanked the organisers of the awards for coming up with a fruitful idea. expressed She also expressed her excitement and urged people to continue voting. I dont know what to say but I am honoured by the love and support I am getting from people. My mission is to spread the gospel, and as I am still new in the industry, I am glad to receive such love. I would also like to urge people to continue voting, Matsebula said. The voting lines are still open and people can send an SMS as follows; VOTE ARTISTS CODE TO 6677. The voting will be according to the category code abbreviations followed by the artists number, which are two digits. It is worth noting that the awards will be held in partnership with the Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture, Destiny Group, Old Mutual Eswatini, Premier Bakeries, Dem Dem Recording Studios as well as Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority. The nerve agent used to poison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was detected on an empty water bottle from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, suggesting he was poisoned there and not at the airport as previously thought, his team said on Thursday. Navalny fell violently ill on a domestic flight in Russia last month and was subsequently airlifted to Berlin for treatment. Germany says he was poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent. Russia says it has seen no evidence he was poisoned. A video posted on Navalnys Instagram account showed members of his team searching the room he had just left in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on Aug. 20, an hour after they learned he had fallen sick in suspicious circumstances. It was decided to gather up everything that could even hypothetically be useful and hand it to the doctors in Germany. The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was quite obvious," the post said. It showed his team bagging several empty bottles of Holy Spring" mineral water, among other items, while wearing protective gloves. Two weeks later, a German laboratory found traces of Novichok precisely on the bottle of water from the Tomsk hotel room," the post said. And then more laboratories that took analyses from Alexei confirmed that that was what poisoned Navalny. Now we understand: it was done before he left his hotel room to go to the airport." Russia has carried out pre-investigation checks, but said it needs to see more medical analysis before it can open a formal criminal investigation into the case. Britain on Wednesday said it was almost certain that Russian intelligence services carried out the attack on Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putins staunchest critics, and said Russia has a case to answer as the use of a chemical weapon was unacceptable. Washington: The Donald Trump Administration is likely to offer a bilateral trade deal to India that could be a win-win situation for the two countries, sources said. Arguing that the President-elect does not believe in multilateral trade deals and is against them, the sources said his administration is interested in a bilateral trade deal with India that could be a win-win situation for the two countries, the two sources said. However, the offer of first such trade deal could go to the United Kingdom, a close ally of America. Once that is finalized, the Trump Administration is expected to engage India on a similar bilateral trade deal offer, they said. The development comes hours before Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Read | Donald Trump's Presidential Inauguration: Know all about time, place and events schedule I think the Presidents message on trade has been fairly clear. He is going to fight for American workers and American manufacturing. And thats going to be the number one thing that guides him going forward, incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. He (Trump) has talked about bilateral deals, but hes going to make sure that every deal he cuts, just like he did in business puts American workers and American manufacturing, American services, America first, he said in response to a question on China. India did not figure on his remarks on trade-related question. So whether its China or any other country, thats going to be the priority. But with respect to China alone, its a huge market place for American workers and small businesses. You look at the commitment that Ali Baba made the other day when they met with him, talking about increasing access to small businesses, Spicer said. Trump is going to continue to fight whether its the Chinese market or other places around the globe for market access, he added. But again the guiding principle is always going to be the American worker and American manufacturing, Spicer said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Abraham C Mathews By Just imagine, if at the beginning of the ongoing pandemic, India had the entire health history of its citizens digitisedevery visit to a doctor, along with every prescription, every vaccination, every allergy. Now just imagine if all this data could be fed into an artificial intelligence software, which would then narrow down on the health factors common to those people who contracted the virus or to those who succumbed to it. Did they all have certain common health conditions in the past? What about the prevalence, as well as severity, among people who were vaccinated against other illnesses, the BCG vaccine, for instance? This data analytics, then, in turn could be used by policymakers to proactively protect citizensgive advance care to those in vulnerable categories, for instance. Or just as likely (assuming stone-hearted economists were in charge of policy), deny the limited medical resources to those from categories with low rates of recovery. Much can be said in favour of centralised digitisation of all health records and bringing all citizens on to a common digital platform. Yet, the Central governments most recent plan to create a Health ID for each citizen has raised several concerns: Are we ready as a country for such a system? Is it secure enough? Will it end up widening inequalities? To dismiss these as Luddite objections to progress through technology is foolhardy. The scheme in a nutshell: The Health Data Management Policy (HDMP) proposes to create Health IDs for patients as well as for health practitioners and facilities, a repository to store health data digitally, in addition to a mechanism to access and use such data by different participants. To be sure, the policy also proposes salutary privacy measuresthe Health ID can be cancelled by the patient at any time, and the data attached to their ID removed. The policy is explicit that the system cannot be exclusionaryyou cannot be denied healthcare, or the ability to practice, for want of a Health ID. Data intermediaries must obtain consent, which must be informed, and records of the consent must be maintained. The policy also provides additional protection for the processing of sensitive personal informationsuch as religion and sexual orientation. (An early controversy was that the policy made it mandatory for patients to share such data. It certainly does not!). So what are the objections? Privacy concerns: One of the prime criticisms is that this widespread data collection and processing is happening without a privacy law in place. Let us for the purpose of this article assume that the government will pass the required legislation. But even then, health information can be such that many data principals will be embarrassed, were it to become knownthrough a leak or even through routine processing. An abortion, a failed suicide attempt, treatment for sexual assault or mental illnessall of these might be captured in the repository. Even if the data were protected as it is intended, it could still result in harm. Imagine a data intermediary who employs analytics to predict consumer behaviour and offers its services to banks. So a borrower with a history of mental illness could find bank loans denied on that very count, or their insurance premiums very high. The governments answer to this is to assure us that one can choose not to be a part of the ecosystem and that the policy clearly spells out its non-exclusionary ethos. This argument is illusory on two counts. Firstly, the experience of Aadhaar is cautionary. Even as Aadhaar continues to be branded as voluntary, several examples have emerged over the last year showing it to be mandatory for availing services (for instance, the Delhi HC recently mandated Aadhaar to be furnished to avail Covid testing in the capital). Another disincentive against opting out could come in the form of private pressures. Suppose your insurance provider charges you a higher premium for not having a Health ID (the insurers risks are lesser if it knows your health history better), resistance will wear thin. The risk of exclusion can have unintended effects. There are those who might choose to not avail treatment if it means becoming a permanent record, as has already been seen among patients suffering from stigmatised diseases such as HIV or even tuberculosis. And these are still middle-class concerns. The risk of exclusion it poses to the poorest Indians, who need healthcare coverage the most, is a topic of its own.So who stands to gain? Any analysis of policy must focus on who the actual beneficiaries would be. What the HDMP does is create a framework for the collection, sharing and processing of datamostly by private players. Any benefit that might accrue to the patient is derivative. Imagine Facebooks business model: A free service, where your data which you willingly share with/on the website is spliced and diced and sold to advertisers so that they can target you specifically. The real benefits from the HDMP would be to enable private players, including tech-powered start-ups, to provide services around healthcare. But just like in the case of Facebook, you, the user, are the product. The product (information about your ability to repay, your risk profile, etc.) is sold to companies that you deal with (banks, etc). In all likelihood, this will only contribute to greater exclusion of those who fall outside the ideal customer profile for these companies. Tech evangelists would like us all to believe that technology will make life better for all of us. And it does, undoubtedly. But any benefit to the Indian consumer will be if the government uses technology to proactively provide services and infrastructure support. The proposed policy does nothing of that sort. Abraham C Mathews A Delhi-based advocate (Tweets @ebbruz) This is the shocking moment a 183ft crane plummeted on to the docks with the operator still inside the cabin after it was hit by one of the world's largest container ships. The CCTV footage was recorded in the Port of Valencia, Spain, as the crane's support legs started to buckle following the unexpected impact. One docker, identified as Roberto Manez Blanco, 48, was operating the crane at the time it fell. He was able to sound an alarm to warn his colleagues of the impending incident as they scarpered rapidly out of its path but he could not escape the cabin before it collapsed. Mr Blanco suffered several broken ribs and haemorrhaging as a result of the 183-foot (56-metre) fall to the ground but is reported to be out of danger. In the clip, which was recorded just after 9am on September 13, the large green structure dominates the left-hand side of the screen. The impact of the MSC Mia container ship, a 400-metre long vessel, is not picked up on camera but the crane can be seen starting to tilt following the collision. Its metal legs then begin to buckle under the weight as the structure comes crashing to the ground with workers desperately running to get out of its path. The CCTV footage was recorded in the Port of Valencia, Spain, just after 9am on September 13 as the crane's support legs started to buckle following the unexpected impact The 183-foot crane collapsed across the dock (pictured) as workers scarpered rapidly out of its path Mr Blanco, who is being kept in the La Fe Polytechnical University Hospital in Valencia, is thought to have been the only person seriously injured during the incident. A second video shows the aftermath of the accident with part of the crane structure seen lying across the dock and another part resting in the water. The camera pans to show the vast Mediterranean Shipping Company vessel that became tangled in the crane's lines after it passed too close. The Panama-flagged MSC Mia (pictured) is considered to be one of the largest container vessels in the world with the capacity to transport more than with 23,000 20-foot containers The Panama-flagged ship is considered to be one of the largest container vessels in the world with the capacity to transport more than with 23,000 20-foot containers. The local police have been working alongside firefighters to clean up the debris. It is currently unclear if authorities are investigating the accident. Television actor Karan Patel has denied reports of him participating in Bigg Boss 14. The speculation gained momentum after a social media exchange between him and his Yeh Hai Mohabbatein co-star Aly Goni, who is also said to be doing the show. Karan recently came on board the Kasautii Zindagii Kay reboot as the new Mr Bajaj but the show is set to go off air next month. It was reported that he has finally given his nod to Bigg Boss 14, after turning down earlier editions of the show. When India Forums reached out to Karan to confirm if he was a part of Bigg Boss 14, he said, Its not true. Last year, too, it was reported that he will be a part of Bigg Boss 13. However, the news turned out to be false. Last week, Karan commented on a photo of Aly with his friends, Kahan chale sab (Where are you all headed)? Aly replied, @karan9198 bas agle maheene se sirf aapke pass honga (from next month, I will only be with you). This exchange was interpreted by fans as a confirmation that the two actors will be in Bigg Boss 14. Bigg Boss 14 will premiere on October 3, with Salman Khan returning as the host. Reports suggest that the new season will be unlike earlier seasons, in that contestants will be allowed to do what they couldnt in the outside world due to the coronavirus pandemic, such as shopping, eating out or watching films in theatres. Contestants who win the luxury tasks would get a chance to enjoy these privileges. Also read | Shilpa Shetty addresses cheating allegations against her, husband Raj Kundra: Truth will be out soon Karan was seen in two reality shows earlier this year - Khatron Ke Khiladi 10, which he was the runner-up of, and a spin-off titled Khatron Ke Khiladi: Made in India. This special edition of the show featured contestants from previous seasons fighting it out for the trophy and was won by television actor Nia Sharma. In July, Karan talked about shooting during the Covid-19 pandemic in an interview with Hindustan Times. We all have our daily expenses to meet, so working is imperative. Its sad we are going through such times and its important we all be safe. Having stayed indoors for as long as we have, we have to earn and do the needful. Yes, scary to shoot which is why its important to take precautions.It is stressful and also mentally tiring but one needs to do what has to be done, he said. Follow @htshowbiz for more WAKEFIELD, Mass., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA /OTCQX: CURLF), a leading vertically integrated multi-state cannabis operator in the United States, today announced Talley Wettlaufer has been appointed to the role of Senior Vice President, Retail for Curaleaf effective immediately, succeeding Chris Melillo, who has left the company. "As Curaleaf continues on its growth trajectory, we are extremely pleased to appoint Talley to lead our retail customer experience and position our brands for future success. With an impressive track record for building high performing retail operations at Grassroots Cannabis, Talley brings seasoned industry leadership as well a deep expertise driving growth and perfecting the customer experience at some of the most well-known consumer retail brands. On behalf of the entire Curaleaf team I'd like to congratulate Talley on her new role," said Joe Bayern, President of Curaleaf. "I'd also like to take a moment to thank Chris for his contributions to expanding the Curaleaf retail team over the years and most recently helping adapt our retail customer experience to rise to the challenges presented by COVID-19." Talley Wettlaufer brings over two decades of expertise in global merchandising, retail expansion, and profit and loss management. She has a proven track record of driving growth and elevating the retail customer experience for leading brands including Grassroots Cannabis, J. Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Petco. Most recently, as Head of Retail at Grassroots Cannabis, Wettlaufer tripled the retail footprint and number of operating markets while building a high performing team to support and manage over 800 employees, driving consistent month over month revenue growth and implementing systems and structure positioning the business for long-term success. Talley holds a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University. "I am honored to be selected to lead the Curaleaf retail team and consumer facing operations, which includes the nation's largest network of medical and adult-use dispensaries," said Talley Wettlaufer, SVP, Retail. "It is a truly a pivotal moment for the industry and an exciting time for our company, and I'm thrilled to be joining such a talented management team. I look forward to creating exceptional experiences for all our patients and customers, increasing the visibility and preference for our brands, and enhancing the community connections of our local Curaleaf retail dispensaries." On July 23, 2020, Curaleaf successfully closed its milestone acquisition of GR Companies, Inc. ("Grassroots Cannabis", "Grassroots"), the largest private vertically-integrated multi-state operator in the United States. With completion of the acquisition of Grassroots, Curaleaf became the world's largest cannabis company by revenue and the most diversified vertically integrated cannabis company in the United States, the world's largest cannabis market. The transaction expanded Curaleaf's presence from 18 to 23 states. Since the close of the transaction, Curaleaf has opened an additional 5 retail dispensary locations, increasing its U.S retail dispensary network to 93 retail locations offering access to medical or adult use Cannabis to more than 192 million people, or roughly two-thirds of the United States population. About Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) ("Curaleaf") is the leading vertically integrated U.S. multi-state cannabis operator with a mission to improve lives by providing clarity around cannabis and confidence around consumption. As a high-growth cannabis company known for quality, expertise and reliability, the company and its brands, including Curaleaf and Select, provide industry-leading service, product selection and accessibility across the medical and adult-use markets. Curaleaf currently operates in 23 states with 93 dispensaries, 22 cultivation sites and over 30 processing sites, and employs over 3,000 team members across the United States. Curaleaf is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol CURA and trades on the OTCQX market under the symbol CURLF. For more information please visit www.curaleaf.com. INVESTOR CONTACT Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. Dan Foley, VP, Finance and Investor Relations [email protected] MEDIA CONTACT Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. Tracy Brady, VP Corporate Communications [email protected] FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This media advisory contains forwardlooking statements and forwardlooking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forwardlooking statements or information. Generally, forward-looking statements and information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", " expects" or, "proposed", "is expected", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forwardlooking statements and information concerning the hiring of Talley Wettlaufer as SVP, Retail. Such forward-looking statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the company with respect to the matter described in this new release. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are based on current expectations as of the date of this release and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Additional information about these assumptions and risks and uncertainties is contained under "Risk Factors and Uncertainties" in the Company's latest annual information form filed September 23, 2019, which is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, and in other filings that the Company has made and may make with applicable securities authorities in the future. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made only as to the date of this press release and we undertake no 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. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release. SOURCE Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. Related Links https://www.curaleaf.com A robbery in Cambridge led to a police chase that ended in Mississauga Wednesday evening, the Ontario Provincial Police said. Four suspects are in custody, Peel police confirmed. One OPP officer has a minor leg injury after a collision, according to OPP Sgt. Daniel Hunter. OPP had responded to a call from Waterloo Region police about a robbery suspect heading toward Hwy. 401, Hunter said. OPP located and followed the car, leading to a minor collision and injury, for which an officer was taken to the hospital. While the officer did not continue the pursuit, the suspects exited Hwy. 401 into Mississauga, said Hunter, which was when Peel police collaborated with the OPP. The suspects eventually abandoned their car near a school and continued moving on foot into a residential area, said Hunter. OPP and Peel officers stationed themselves around the area to confine the suspects and eventually Peel police made the arrests, he said. Peel police announced that they arrested two people at 7 p.m. and about half an hour later, said they arrested two more people. Peel, OPP and Waterloo police are collaborating on the investigation. Hunter said he does not know the age of the suspects, which charges were laid or which jurisdiction will handle them. Manuela Vega is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: mvega@thestar.ca Read more about: SIOUX CITY -- The Iowa Supreme Court on Wednesday denied an appeal by the Woodbury County Auditor's Office, affirming a district court ruling that previously received mail ballot requests for the November election were invalidated, so people who wanted such ballots will have to begin the process over. Auditior Pat Gill in a Thursday release said he would comply with the court decision, which in essence affirmed the ruling in late August by District Court Judge Patrick H. Tott granting a temporary injunction against the auditor's office and invalidating thousands of absentee ballot requests. Tott ruled Gill's office will have to send letters to registered Woodbury County voters informing them the absentee ballot request forms sent by his office are invalid, and that they will have to fill in another, blank absentee ballot request if they wish to vote by mail. Of the 57,000 ballot request forms that were sent out, more than 15,000 had returned to date, Gill said Thursday in updating the number. The legal battle began in August when President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party of Iowa, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, took Gill's office to court over the absentee ballot request forms that were sent to registered voters. At issue was the fact that the absentee ballot request forms had been sent with key voter information -- such as names, dates of birth and voter pin numbers, which few voters have memorized -- filled in. The voter had only to verify that the information was correct, sign the request for a ballot and mail it back to Gill's office. The Trump campaign, which filed identical lawsuits in Linn County and Johnson County, argued that the county auditors had violated a directive from Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, who told local officials last month that the forms must be mailed blank to voters in order to ensure uniformity across Iowa's 99 counties. Judge Tott ruled that Gill's office must obey Pate's directives and orders. "While there are certainly very good reasons for why people will want to vote by absentee ballot in light of the ongoing COVID situation in addition to all the traditional reasons why persons want to vote absentee, if certain voters do not understand or request a new absentee ballot, their ability to vote has not been prevented. They still have the opportunity to vote in person on election-day or anytime during the early voting period," Tott wrote in his ruling. In upcoming days, Gill said Thursday, voters who submitted the now invalidated forms will receive a notification with a blank absentee form, along with a postage-paid envelope, encouraging the voter to resubmit the absentee request form, so a ballot can be sent. That mailing will go out on Oct. 5, which is also the first day for early in-person voting, which will be available starting that day at the Long Lines Family Rec Center in downtown Sioux City. Gill said he is working with the city of Sioux City and Sioux City School District to finalize polling places for all 44 county precincts. Gill said no county money was used to fund the appeal. He said the costs were paid by the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, a group that was an intervening appellant in the case. In early September, Gill expressed concern that his office budget may be strained by dealing with improperly filled-out absentee ballot requests. He estimated the process could cost his office more than $30,000, more than half of all the money he had budgeted for election staffing. Love 3 Funny 2 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tiffany Fumiko Tay (The Straits Times/Asia News Network) Singapore Thu, September 17, 2020 15:27 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c456e669 2 News Singapore,travel,tourism Free Singaporeans aged 18 and above this year will each receive SG$100 (US$73.54) in digital vouchers to spend on staycations, tickets to leisure attractions and local tours. The SingapoRediscovers Vouchers will be accessible via SingPass from December and can be used to offset ticket purchases and hotel stays until the end of June next year. Permanent residents will not be eligible for the vouchers. Adult Singaporeans will also be able to purchase up to six subsidized tickets for attractions and tours - each at $10 off - for those under 18 from December to the end of next June. Announcing the details on Wednesday, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing said the duration of the voucher program is timed to coincide with the March, June and December holidays and to spread out demand in between. The initiative is not a social assistance scheme, he added. "This is an economic scheme to help our tourist attractions preserve their capabilities that have been built up over their years while they consolidate the capacity in the interim," Chan told reporters during a visit to the Jurong Bird Park. The $320 million SingapoRediscovers Vouchers scheme was first announced last month and forms part of the governments efforts to prop up the tourism sector, which has been decimated by travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The vouchers, which will come in denominations of $10, can be used at all licensed hotels, leisure attractions and for local tours by operators that have received approval from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) to reopen or resume. There are currently 214 hotels, 40 attractions and 438 tour itineraries that have been given the green light to resume operations with safe management measures in place. They include Singapore's four wildlife parks, a number of activities and hotels on Sentosa and guided tours of Pulau Ubin. The vouchers complement the $45 million SingapoRediscovers marketing campaign, launched in July to encourage locals to holiday at home and support local businesses. More than 200 deals and packages have been launched so far, and the vouchers will give Singaporeans more incentive to rediscover their backyard, STB said on Wednesday. On the expected impact of the total $365 million budgeted for the campaign and vouchers, Chan said businesses outside the tourism sector are expected to see a boost as well, as spending spills over into food and beverage (F&B), for example. As to the exact extent of the catalytic effect, it will be a bit hard to predict at this point in time, but we hope that it is at least a few times what we have provided for in the budget, he said. STB chief executive Keith Tan said that while F&B and retail businesses are part of the marketing campaign, the core beneficiaries of the vouchers will be hotels, attractions and tours, which depend on tourists for at least 70 to 80 percent of revenues. The tourism board said specific details on how the vouchers can be redeemed will be announced in November. While STB expects that the redemption process for the vouchers "will adopt a digital mode by default", it will provide support for those who have difficulties using such methods. Details are being worked out, and the STB will be calling a tender on Wednesday to appoint platforms for the redemption of vouchers. There are no plans to limit the number of vouchers that can be used in a single transaction, or to set out how they should be used, Tan said. The $10 vouchers can be spread out across separate visits, or used up at once on a staycation package, for example. Asked about the possibility of tourism operators increasing prices to maximize takings, Tan noted that in other countries where such government vouchers have been issued, there have been instances of this. STB will work with other government agencies including the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore to ensure that this does not happen here, he said. Ultimately we will retain the ability to include a merchant or to pull the merchant off this scheme if they demonstrate behavior that is not desirable. Industry players have said that the vouchers will act as a form of indirect discounting for businesses, as lowering prices is a challenge with capacity limits on their operations in place. Read also: Singapore entices Indonesian tourists with new travel, culinary shows Higher capacity limits for attractions However, tourist attractions - which are currently restricted to 25 percent of their operating capacity at any one time - can apply to increase this to 50 percent from Friday. They can also seek STB's permission to scale up the capacity at their outdoor shows to 250 people, up from 50 currently. But shows must be split into five zones with a maximum of 50 people in each, with safe distancing between groups as well as zones. This means the limit for outdoor shows at attractions will be in line with the maximum number of participants soon to be allowed at approved Mice (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) events. STB said on Wednesday that the easing of rules for attractions comes as operators have been effective at preventing and dispersing crowds, as well as maintaining high standards of cleanliness and hygiene. All attractions have also introduced online booking systems for timed entry or pre-booking of activities to monitor and control visitor numbers, it said. Topics : Singapore travel tourism Topics : This article appeared on The Straits Times newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post On a brighter note, however, deal velocity in first-half 2020 remained comparable to previous years and actually marked the fourth highest number of completed deals on record, Avison Young said in its study. Only the first halves of 2019 (85), 2018 (102) and 2017 (109) recorded a greater number of transactions than 2020. By asset class, the largest dollar volume went to industrial investment ($644 million), followed by office ($629 million), multi-family ($620 million), and retail deals ($223 million). The report said that this marked the first time that industrial sales led all asset classes in terms of total dollar volume in a half since Avison Young started tracking the market in 1998. Industrial properties also represented the bulk of transactions completed (44 deals), amounting to 52% of total deal volume during the first half of 2020. Meanwhile, retail assets had their lowest first-half level (25 deals) since 2011. Investors and owner-occupiers remained focused on acquiring properties in what many consider as the most appealing and sought after commercial real estate asset class in 2020, Avison Young said. Industrial assets, particularly those related to logistics/distribution and last-mile warehousing, were already in high demand due to shoppers ongoing embrace of e-commerce, but the arrival of COVID-19 triggered an even more rapid shift in consumer shopping patterns in a matter of months (if not weeks), further driving demand for industrial assets. The state forest department, Pune region in association with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has started a joint leopard monitoring project in the wake of rising number of leopard spotting in the district. The initiative has received permission from the state government to study hotspots in the district and place collar tags on leopards. The department has maintained that leopard tagging would lead to professional research and academic study on the leopards and their ecosystems. According to the forest department, collar tagging will help them in finding movement patterns, population demographics and its behaviour for future conservation of the endangered species. The four-year leopard study is divided into four phases. In the first phase, the leopard hotspots will be located in Pune district. The hotspots are at forty villages which come under the jurisdiction of Junnar, Ambegaon, Khed and Shirur tehsils of the district. The second phase of study will comprise study of leopard habitat, lifestyle, its path trajectory and leopard population census in the district. Junnar forest division incharge and deputy conservator Jairam Gauda, said, In order to study the leopard ecosystem and other details, it was essential that they be collar tagged.The state government has given us the permission for tagging and academic research work will begin soon. As part of the next phase which includes leopard census, we will study the area where leopard visits or spotting are the maximum. We will conduct an area survey which includes setting up of camera traps.The camera traps will be set up at every two kms which will help us keep a close tab on leopard movement and at the same time ensure safe surveillance of the wild animal. Based on the inputs of leopard surveillance, the forest department will be able to prevent man-animal conflict and accordingly devise a policy for the safety and security of animals, Gauda said. Over the past few years, the talukas of Junnar, Khed, Ambegaon and Shirur have witnessed maximum leopard spotting. According to the forest department, new areas comprising north Daund, Baramati, Indapur and road which goes to South Satara have also seen leopard visits. The said areas will see more number of leopard spotting in the near future, forest officials said. Wildlife experts maintained that paddy farming had gone up thrice in the district. Paddy fields provide ideal cover for leopards to hide and increase in paddy cultivation has led to an increase in leopard population and area of influence. Recently, a two-year-old leopard was found dead after being mowed down at the Katraj tunnel on August 15. Seven leopard attacks- one in Hinjewadi and the second in Keshavnagar -were reported in the district in 2019 wherein two persons were killed and seven were reported to be injured. Memphis, Tenn. (September 16, 2020) - Ramesh Narayanan, PhD, professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has received a $455,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute for a two-year study of the underlying cause of the development of aggressive prostate cancer in African American men. Approximately 174,000 men in the United States were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 31,000 died of the disease in 2019. The number of men with prostate cancer is expected to increase from 3.3 million men currently to 4.5 million by 2026. Current therapeutic strategies target androgen (hormone) activity for aggressive, or advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer. Although these drugs on average extend progression-free survival, approximately 30 percent of tumors do not respond to these therapies, and patients who initially respond to these therapies develop resistance shortly after treatment initiation. One of the primary reasons for treatment failure and relapse is the expression of a shortened form of the receptor protein for androgens (AR). These different versions are called AR splice variants (AR-SVs). Prostate cancers that express this shortened form are aggressive and fail to respond to current treatments. Compared to Caucasian men, African American men have a 63 percent higher overall prostate cancer incidence. These individuals are more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive and potentially lethal cancers, are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer, and have shorter disease-free survival. Inadequate health care that limits early cancer detection or results in incomplete treatment could factor into the diagnosis of advanced cancer and a worse prognosis in African American men compared to Caucasian men. However, a prior analysis of men undergoing prostate biopsy that adjusted for clinical and demographic differences found that African American men were 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 84 percent more likely to have high-grade cancer than Caucasian men. Considering that approximately 65 percent of the population in the Memphis area is African American, it is appropriate and locally relevant to evaluate the underlying mechanisms for the aggressive prostate cancer development in African American men. This grant will ask the question whether prostate cancers in African American men have higher expression of the shortened form of the AR (AR-SVs) and whether these AR-SVs are the primary mediator of the aggressive cancer. If the data proves the hypothesis that the higher expression of AR-SVs in prostate cancer of African American results in aggressive disease, Dr. Narayanan's laboratory has developed novel drugs that have the potential to target the AR-SVs and inhibit the aggressive prostate cancer. The multi-disciplinary UTHSC team that will work on this project includes Jay Fowke, PhD, MPH, MS, chief of Division of Epidemiology and professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine; Mahul Amin, MD, chair of the Department of Pathology; Robert Wake, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Urology; and Maurizio Buscarini, MD, PhD, MBA, professor of the Department of Urology. "I have been working for the last seven years at UTHSC to discover next-generation drugs to treat advanced aggressive prostate cancer," Dr Narayanan said. "This work in collaboration with Dr. Duane Miller (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UTHSC) has resulted in novel molecules that are advancing toward clinical trials. If our results show that African American men express the shortened AR protein AR-SV at higher levels, our drugs will provide hope to these patients, who currently do not have alternate treatment options. It will be gratifying to see our research benefit the Memphis community and the prostate cancer patient population across the world." ### As Tennessee's only public, statewide, academic health system, the mission of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is to bring the benefits of the health sciences to the achievement and maintenance of human health through education, research, clinical care, and public service, with a focus on the citizens of Tennessee and the region. The main campus in Memphis includes six colleges: Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy. UTHSC also educates and trains medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and health professions students, as well as medical residents and fellows, at major sites in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville. For more information, visit http://www.uthsc.edu. Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/uthsc, Twitter: twitter.com/uthsc, LinkedIn: linkedin.com/uthsc, and Instagram: instagram.com/uthsc. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A new brief published today by Workcred, in partnership with the National Governors Association (NGA), sheds light on the value of non-degree credentials as tools to empower workers and strengthen state economies amid the significant disruption caused by COVID-19. The brief, "Understanding Quality: The Role of States in Supporting Quality Non-Degree Credentials," provides several recommendations for state policymakers to consider as they recognize and support quality credentials for people re-entering or upskilling in the workforce. Non-Degree Credentials Support a Reinvented Workforce The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted state economies and put millions of career paths on hold. With more than 52 million people filing for initial unemployment between mid-March and mid-July, both displaced and incumbent workers are looking to upgrade their expertise and improve their long-term employment prospects. High-quality, non-degree credentials will play a critical role in supporting economic recovery efforts by providing a pathway for workers to pivot to new positions. To that end, governors and states have a key role to play in helping individuals identify which non-degree credentials can best help them make career transitions and improve their livelihood. Furthermore, policymakers should standardize the ways in which credentials are defined and modernize the processes by which they are deemed as valuable an improvement that would benefit both workers and employers. In an effort to expand credentialing education to policymakers, Workcred has partnered with the NGA to develop guidance for how states can identify which credentials meet quality thresholds and are likely to empower workers. The brief also highlights states that are leading on this issue and offers several recommendations for state policymakers, described in detail in the brief: 1. Develop standardized definitions of the different types of non-degree credentials 2. Understand and assess the quality of credentials 3. Ensure that non-degree credentials are accepted as college credit and embedded into degree programs 4. Seek out examples of state leadership in supporting worker upskilling and reskilling leading to quality credentials "Workcred appreciates NGA's partnership as we continue to drive educational efforts about the value of credentials that support the U.S. economy," said Dr. Roy Swift, executive director of Workcred. "This brief is an important step to support state leadership at a time when the workforce landscape is shifting at a rapid pace," he said. "We're thankful that Workcred is always so willing to put quality at the center of the dialogue when discussing non-degree credentials," said Amanda Winters, program director for postsecondary education at the National Governors Association. "These programs will play an important role in our nation's economic recovery, and we hope that this publication offers our audience an opportunity to think critically about how to empower consumers during this pivotal time," she said. Access to "Understanding Quality: The Role of States in Supporting Quality Non-Degree Credentials," is available on Workcred's website and via NGA. Additionally, Workcred and NGA will present the publication to NGA's Workforce Development Technical Assistance Program participants on September 22, 2020. About Workcred Formed in 2014, Workcred is an affiliate of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) whose mission is to strengthen workforce quality by improving the credentialing system, ensuring its ongoing relevance, and preparing employers, workers, educators, and governments to use it effectively. Workcred's vision is a labor market that relies on the relevance, quality, and value of workforce credentials for opportunities, growth, and development. Learn more at www.workcred.org. About NGA Founded in 1908, the National Governors Association (NGA) is the bipartisan organization of the nation's 55 governors. Through NGA, governors share best practices, address issues of national and state interest and share innovative solutions that improve state government and support the principles of federalism. SOURCE Workcred Related Links https://www.workcred.org Actor Urmila Matondkar has responded to Kangana Ranauts comments against her. Kangana on Wednesday had said that Urmila is a soft porn actor who is not known for her acting. Urmila said that she is willing to change her name if anybody can prove that she spoke about Kanganas intentions of wanting a BJP ticket in any interview. The actors spat began when Urmila in an interview asked Kangana to introspect about the drug culture in her home state of Himachal Pradesh before levelling allegations against Maharashtra and Mumbais film industry. Kangana had previously said that 99% of the film industry has been exposed to drugs. In an interview to journalist Barkha Dutt, Urmila noted that while Kangana was making the slanderous remarks against her, the news anchor interviewing her smiled with a glee in her eyes. She said, In all my interviews, I have complimented her on the actor she has been, a wonderful actor, a woman who has come from a small town. I have only complimented her and acknowledged all her achievements. She continued, It just goes to show where we stand, and that is precisely what I have been trying to say, that if you have a viewpoint, by all means you have a right to express it. But it just that the way you express it and how you express it does matter. Urmila made a reference to the slur that was used against Kangana by a Shiv Sena leader in the recent past, and how appalled she was when that happened. Today, as I am spoken about like this by another woman, which level should that be going to? It really fails me, she said, asking if those who opposed the slurs used for Kangana also condemn the actors comment. Previously, Urmila had also criticised Kanganas comments on veteran actor and Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan. She had written in a tweet, Which girl from a civilised cultured house would use this kind of language? Like kya ukhaad loge, kiska baap ka kya hai, speaking about Jaya ji the way she did. Also read: Kangana Ranaut launches personal attack on Urmila Matondkar, calls her a soft porn star who is not known for her acting Kangana had launched a personal attack on Urmila on Wednesday, in an interview to Times Now. She had called her a soft porn actor, a comment which was massively criticised by several prominent Bollywood personalities. Urmila said that she was deeply touched by the kind of response that the people of this country gave her. They are aghast and completely in shock as to what has happened, Urmila said about the response she received, adding that she is waiting for the National Commission for Women to take a stand. It is very disheartening to see someone talking not only about little old me, but also Jaya ji, who has been an MP for so many years, and has raised her voice or so many issues. Someone like her being spoken to like that, her career, her children... she said, adding that she would like to bring peoples attention to the fact that India has crossed the five million Covid-19 cases mark. Thats what I was I was talking about, I had no interest in making comments about Kangana, she said. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A great divide is forming between emerging markets and companies backed by foreign governments. While the EEM emerging markets ETF has lagged the S&P 500 so far this year, companies backed by state-owned enterprises on average have performed even worse. Brazilian miner Vale and Chinese telecom China Mobile are down 12% and 19% this year, respectively, while Russian energy company Gazprom and Brazil's Petrobras have fallen by at least 40%. Companies influenced by government decisions often don't put profits first, Siddharth Kapoor, CEO of Silver Mount Capital, told CNBC. With China, India and other emerging market nations playing a more active role in corporate affairs, the risk could be that there will be a misalignment in interests with shareholders over time. Funds that strip out these types of companies such as the XSOE WisdomTree Emerging Markets ETF have performed far better. The XSOE ETF has added 10% so far this year compared with the 1% gain on the EEM ETF. A focus on technology could help emerging market stocks become leaner and offer better opportunity to investors, according to Michael Bapis, managing director at Vios Advisors at Rockefeller Capital. "They've been depressed for so long," Bapis told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Wednesday. "Now we're seeing some serious global expansion which is driven by technology, and technology is changing everything, everywhere." Bapis anticipates tech-focused companies heading into less-developed markets and expanding at a rapid pace. This, he says, is where opportunities lie. "We probably look at this as an opportunity in the last 10 or 15 years in emerging markets," said Bapis. "It's going to be short-term volatile depending on if the pandemic comes back, elections, but once we get past all that, there's a massive opportunity here." Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, is also bullish on the group. He sees a downtrend reversal in the making. "We think global equities, EM included, are now reversing higher and you're going to see global participation expand and lead to additional upside for markets overall not only through the bounds of the year but into 2021 as well," Wald said during the same "Trading Nation" segment. Like Bapis, he sees the shift toward technology and away from commodities as holding potential in the emerging markets space. Technology makes up 26% of the EEM ETF's weighting, compared with 5.5% for industrials and 5% for energy. "I really kind of key on this China technology ETF," said Wald, pointing to a breakout in July out of multiyear resistance. "Since then, we've been in this about two-month consolidation but holding the breakout point. Very often prior resistance becomes support." The CQQQ China tech ETF, which holds stocks such as Baidu and Tencent, is up 33% so far this year. It has outperformed the broader FXI large-cap China ETF, which is down 1% in 2020. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:55:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Clashes erupted between the Houthi rebels and units of the joint pro-government Yemeni forces in the country's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah on Thursday, a military official told Xinhua. The local military source said on condition of anonymity that "the Houthis carried out two simultaneous armed attacks and targeted sites of the pro-government forces in the northeastern part of Hodeidah." He said that the pro-government forces engaged in intense armed confrontations with the Houthi attackers and succeeded in aborting the rebels' attacks. The source confirmed that the armed confrontations that continued for hours killed and injured an unknown number of fighters among the two sides. Meanwhile, media outlets linked to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group accused the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen's government forces of committing 93 recent breaches of Hodeidah's cease-fire declared by the United Nations in 2018. The group's media reports indicated that "the cease-fire breaches included 13 artillery shelling attacks and 80 violations through firing rockets and other shells" against the Houthi-held areas in Hodeidah during the past days. Hodeidah has seen a shaky cease-fire between the government forces of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Houthi rebels since both sides reached a UN-sponsored truce in Stockholm in December 2018. Part of the strategic port city is under control of the Houthi rebels, while the government forces have advanced to the southern and eastern outskirts. Yemen has been mired in civil war since late 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi group seized control of much of the country's north and forced the Saudi-backed government of Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. Enditem LVMH and Tiffany & Co. are escalating their fight over fast-tracking a lawsuit aimed at preventing the owner of bag-maker Louis Vuitton from pulling out of a $16 billion buyout of the luxury jewelry brand.Earlier this week, a judge set a Sept. 21 hearing on Tiffanys request to get an expedited ruling on whether LVMH had proper legal grounds for torpedoing the deal -- purportedly at the request of the French government. Tiffany said Wednesday that LVMHs filing in Delaware Chancery Court that opposes fast-tracking -- which wasnt publicly available after business hours -- was another attempt by the would-be buyer to run out the clock" on the deal. The transaction has a Nov. 24 deadline.If LVMH were confident in its legal position, it would have no reason to oppose an expedited trial schedule," Tiffany Chairman Roger Farah said in a statement. LVMH representatives werent immediately available to comment on the filing. Friction between LVMH and Tiffany emerged in March as the depth of the economic fallout from the pandemic became apparent. Tensions have only risen since then, culminating in LVMHs move earlier this month to cancel the purchase, citing a letter from the French government. LVMH has lambasted the jewelry companys response to Covid-19 and had pledged to file a lawsuit against it. Tiffany counters in its court filings that LVMH sought to leverage police-brutality protests in the U.S. and a declining luxury market during the pandemic to negotiate a lower deal price. Results released in late August showed that Tiffany returned to profitability in the second quarter after posting a loss in the previous period. Global net sales fell 29% in the quarter ended July 31, an improvement from the 45% drop in the first quarter, as China sales recovered and Tiffanys e-commerce business helped offset a sharp decline in demand. As the deal unravels, LVMH has criticized Tiffanys performance, saying its prospects were very disappointing." The conglomerate, which owns the Moet & Chandon and Christian Dior brands, in particular criticized dividends paid at a time when the company was loss making." High-end goods from handbags to diamonds have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has halted tourism and tightened wallets worldwide. Luxury sellers could see as much as $100 billion in sales evaporate in 2020 and the industry may not fully recover for at least two more years, according to a report earlier this year from Bain & Co. The case is Tiffany & Co. v. LVMH Moet-Hennessy-Louis Vuitton SE, 2020-0768, Delaware Chancery Court (Dover). 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 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Norman Harsono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 18:12 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4576efc 1 Business CPO,crude-palm-oil,Gapki,exports,biodiesel,FAME,China,European-Union,Malaysia,India Free Growth in demand for Indonesian palm oil this year will be driven by domestic consumption as exports drop amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki). Indonesia, the worlds top palm oil producer, is expected to raise domestic consumption by a slight 1.2 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 15.8 million tons in 2020, Gapki data unveiled on Sept. 1 show. The growth will be entirely driven by the governments 30 percent palm oil-mixed biodiesel (B30) program, which is expected to offset lower domestic demand for palm-oil based groceries, similar data reveal. We absolutely cannot export biodiesel this year, said Gapki secretary-general Togar Sitanggang at a discussion hosted by MarkPlus on Sept 1. Palm oil, which is Indonesias second biggest export behind coal, is regularly touted as a solution to the countrys gaping trade deficit, yet Gapkis data show the palm oil industry is bracing for an about turn in terms of export volume this year. The commoditys exports will drop 18 percent yoy to 24.92 million tons this year, mainly as the European Union, China and India shudder from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to Gapki data. The three key markets account for half of the countrys total exports. Togar explained that, apart from the B30 program, low crude oil prices worldwide had made biodiesel uncompetitive with its fossil fuel counterpart. Even though Indonesias own consumption of subsidized FAME, a key biodiesel ingredient, is expected to fall 13.6 percent below the annual allocation of 9.6 million kiloliters, the government plans to maintain the allocation in case things change. In hopes of making biodiesel cheaper, the government has been injecting more money into its biodiesel subsidy fund (BPDP) since June, when the Finance Ministry raised crude palm oil (CPO) export levies by $5 to $55 per ton. However, sustained low crude oil prices are a major risk to sustainability of the fund, and in turn to biodiesel and CPO demand in Indonesia, noted credit rating agency Fitch Ratings in a report on Sept 14. Global palm oil prices reached their lowest point this year at 2,000 ringgit (US$484.2) per ton on May 6 but have since rallied to 2,995 ringgit on Thursday, according to the global benchmark Bursa Malaysia Derivatives. Despite the lower export volume, Togar expected export values to be the same as last year, around $20 billion, as high palm oil prices compensate for lower sales volume. With the economic slowdown, peoples purchasing power will, of course, go down and so will consumption, said Togar. Gapki sees China as the bright spot for palm exports this year as the worlds second largest economy is among the countries expected to book positive economic growth this year at 1.2 percent based on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate. Chinas palm oil consumption is also expected to rise as consumption of soybean a key substitute for palm oil falls due to bad weather in the soybean-producing Americas and slow soybean processing activities in China. China is likely to buy more palm oil, even though palm oil does not form the national reserve, to fill possible gaps, read a Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) report in July. Combined with the low soybean production, low palm oil output from Malaysia, the worlds second biggest palm oil producer, has kept palm oil prices much better than expected, Fitch wrote. Malaysia, whose plantations mainly run on labor from Indonesia and Bangladesh, is facing a lockdown-induced labor shortage. Nonetheless, we expect prices to decline in the next few months as yields and output increase, due to gradual realization from better weather conditions and seasonality, Fitch said. NEW YORK Yes, Aaron Judge is back. No, hes not all the way back. Introducing Yankees Insider: Get exclusive news, behind-the-scenes observations and the ability to text message directly with beat writers While Judges first time back following a long injured list stint was successful in that he stayed on the field in the Yankees' 13-2 beatdown of the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, he went hitless in all four of his at-bats, striking out three times. Still, that will have no bearing on how manager Aaron Boone fills out his lineup card on Thursday in their series finale. Judge wont be in it, but its just a precaution. Boone said that hell slowly build up Judge, returning from a right calf strain, and Giancarlo Stanton, getting over a left hamstring strain. Buy Aaron Judge Yankees gear: Fanatics.com, MLBShop.com, Lids That means to expect Stanton in the lineup Thursday after he sat Wednesday and returned to the field Tuesday. That also means though Judge wont play Thursday, he should play Friday and Saturday in Boston. Then theyll go back-to-back days next time and then into three and four in a row and just kind of build it that way, Boone said of Judge and Stanton. Of Judge, Boone said, Writing him back in the lineup is big. Judge spent more than a month on the IL but had a league-high nine home runs and 20 RBI when he was healthy. Get Yankees text messages: Cut through the clutter of social media and text during games with beat writers and columnists. Plus, exclusive news and analysis every day. Sign up now. Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust. Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Senator Marsha Blackburn cosponsored two bills this week to support law enforcement officials. The bills follow an uptick in violence against police which coincides with protests and riots across the country. Tennesseans hold our law enforcement officials in the highest regard, and expect us to provide support for them when needed, Senator Blackburn said. Its unfortunate that the state of our public discourse has led us to this point. According to the FBIs Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted Program, there have been 37 law enforcement officers killed in the U.S. in 2020. This is an increase of more than 20 percent since this time last year. Of those, eight were ambushed in premeditated attacks, two were victims of an unprovoked attack, and the other 27 officers killed in the line of duty. Less than a week ago, a gunman shot two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies in their patrol vehicle. Those officers were taken to the hospital for medical treatment, where protestors blocked the emergency entrance to the hospital. Thursday morning, Senator Blackburn joined Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in introducing the Protect and Serve Act to create federal penalties for individuals who deliberately target local, state or federal law enforcement officers with violence. The Protect and Serve Act would support law enforcement officers by: Making it a federal crime to knowingly cause, or attempt to cause, serious bodily injury to a law enforcement officer. Offenders are subject to imprisonment for up to 10 years. An offender could receive a life sentence if a death results from the offense, or the offense includes kidnapping, attempted kidnapping or attempted murder. This year, there have been over 20 percent more law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty than this time in 2019. This devastating fact can be directly accredited to the chaos that has been emboldened by elected officials who have refused to maintain law and order in their cities, said Senator Blackburn. Wednesday, Senator Blackburn joined Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) in introducing the Stop Blocking Hospitals Act to make it a federal offense to obstruct any ambulance, fire department vehicle, law enforcement vehicle or emergency personnel from responding to an emergency. The fact that anarchists and rioters blocked first responders racing to save the lives of two Los Angeles police officers is un-American, and must be met with appropriate penalties, said Senator Blackburn. Penalties for such obstruction would include imprisonment of one to five years, a fine or both. The Protect and Serve Act has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Sergeants Benevolent Association and Major County Sheriffs of America. Both the Protect and Serve Act and the Stop Blocking Hospitals Act are endorsed by the National Association of Police Organizations. The total number of home-isolating coronavirus patients in Egypt has so far reached 10,168 cases since the health ministry launched its programme for non-hospitalised cases in July, Health Minister Hala Zayed said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday. The minister said the home-isolation programme is being implemented in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO). She added that patients who are in home isolation have been contacted by a group of 23 physicians, receiving up to three phone calls a day each. The ministry's follow-up programme ensures the safety of the patients self-isolation, and the patient's receipt of the necessary treatment, as well as checking up on their condition, Zayed added. As of Wednesday, Egypt has registered a total of 101,500 coronavirus cases, including 5,696 deaths and 86,549 recoveries. Under the countrys coronavirus treatment protocol, mild and moderate COVID-19 patients are treated at home or at university hostels, to free up beds for critical cases at state-run isolation hospitals. During Thursdays meeting, which was headed by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Zayed reviewed the efforts exerted by the health ministry in preparation for a potential second wave of the disease. A training programme was organised in cooperation with WHO for medical staffers at fever hospitals nationwide, to train them on modern scientific protocols for communicable diseases, and on how to limit the spread of infection, she added. The managers of chest hospitals were also briefed on the modern scientific protocols to confront the deadly disease, according to Zayed. The ministry provided awareness content over the past five months, including up to 2,100 informative items and 481 videos. While the number of new coronavirus cases in Egypt has been hovering around 150 a day nationwide since August, officials are urging caution to avoid a second wave of the pandemic. Egypt began the move towards a gradual reopening of the economy this summer, lifting a curfew and reopening restaurants and mosques in June, and resuming regular international flights in July. Search Keywords: Short link: MILFORD Police and the state medical examiners office are investigating after human remains were found Tuesday in the burned wreckage of a boarded-up commercial building. The fire has been extinguished and upon inspecting the building, a male was located deceased inside, Milford police spokeswoman Marilisa Anania said Tuesday. Police have established a perimeter around the scene at 51 Roses Mill Road. Milford police detectives and the city fire marshal are on the scene and investigating, Anania said. The address sits just off the Boston Post Road in eastern Milford adjacent to the lot that holds the Homegoods and Marshalls department stores. Photos of the building on Google Streetview show a three-story wood-framed structure with boarded up doors. State medical examiner James Gill said one decedent was reported to his office. An investigation is underway, he said. Authorities have not publicly identified the body. The Milford fire department was called to the scene around 10 p.m. Monday, according to initial dispatch reports. A working fire was confirmed minutes later, and multiple units were called to the scene. A video posted to the departments Facebook page showed flames and smoke engulfing the structure while multiple fire units and a ladder truck worked to extinguish the blaze. Crews reported the first floor of the building was missing and the fire extended into the basement, forcing them to tackle the fire from the exterior of the structure. The wood frame commercial building was built in 1990, according to Milford property records. It was sold in April last year to Milford Crossing LLC, a company with a mailing address in Las Vegas. Staff writer Dan Tepfer contributed to this story. Despite oil production curtailments earlier this year that are not fully back online, the United States maintained its global status as the leading supplier of crude oil in July, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. According to data from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) database, which collects self-reported figures from 114 countries, U.S. crude oil production rose in July back up to above 11 million barrels per day (bpd). At 11.035 million bpd, American crude oil output was 5.7 percent higher than the June production of 10.436 million bpd. Production in June had also increased month over month after the May figure of 10 million bpdthe lowest U.S. monthly production since late 2017. U.S. exports of crude oil also rose in July compared to June. The United States exported 2.867 million bpd in July, up from 2.753 million bpd in June, according to the JODI database. The U.S. became the worlds biggest crude oil producer, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia, in 2018, and has kept that status since then, while Saudi Arabia and Russia bound by their OPEC+ production cut pact to prop up prices and rebalance demand and supply have been withholding production from the market. The most recent OPEC+ agreement, which started in May after a brief price war between the two rivals-partners in March and April, currently has Russia and Saudi Arabia cut their production and keep it at 9 million bpd each until the end of this year. In June, Russia produced more crude oil than Saudi Arabia, beating it to the second place of the largest oil producers in the world, behind the number-one producer, the United States. June was the month in which Saudi Arabia voluntarily slashed its oil production by an additional 1 million bpd for just one month, on top of the 2.5 million bpd it was supposed to cut as per the OPEC+ deal. In July, Russia kept its place as the worlds second-largest oil producer ahead of Saudi Arabia, JODI data showed. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on July 30, 2020. (Sean Davey/Getty Images) No Need to Charter Evacuation Flights: PM Scott Morrison Scott Morrison has rejected calls to bring thousands of Australians stranded overseas home on air force planes. More than 27,000 Australians are waiting to return but with a weekly cap of 4000 incoming passengers, it could take well into next year. The prime minister wants to increase the number of people who can come back into Australia by about 2000 a week. His deputy has written to the states and territories to seek their support, as they will need to take the extra passengers into hotel quarantine. Several premiers have signalled their support for lifting the weekly cap, albeit with caveats. NSW, Western Australia and Queensland are each expected to take an extra 500 people each week. Labor has urged the prime minister to use government jets to bring people back. Our advice is there is no need for that, Morrison told the Seven Network on Sept. 17. There are plenty of commercial planes its the caps that were stopping the planes. The prime minister wants to lift the incoming passenger cap at the end of next week. The Commonwealth cap was introduced in July when Victoria suffered a second wave of coronavirus and NSW struggled to cope with the extra demand. Now is the time weve got to start taking those caps off again, Morrison said. Qantas boss Alan Joyce says he wont be rethinking his decision to scrap all international flights, even to rescue Australians stuck overseas. The economics dont work, he told ABC radio. Joyce is pleading with the states to reopen domestic borders and the airline has taken out full-page newspaper ads on Sept. 17 to push its case. Europeans have been fighting themselves for thousands of years but they have somehow managed to agree to keep borders open, he said. Australias national panel of medical experts has proposed new definitions for coronavirus zones and hotspots in a bid to reopen state borders. Morrison is expected to discuss the proposals with premiers and chief ministers at a national cabinet meeting on Sept. 18. The Commonwealth has its hotspot definitionI think thats a sensible definition, he said If other states want to have more extreme definitions then thats ultimately up to them. That obviously has implications for how they run their show and what it means for peoples jobs and all of those sorts of things. Im sure they will keep working on that. By Daniel McCulloch I was intrigued to read Rower sets record with 86-day S.F.-to-Hawaii trip (Sept. 16). Ive done that trip twice in a sailboat, and experienced the sudden storms and high winds along the way. I can hardly imagine rowing it for 86 days in a 21-foot boat. Congratulations to Lia Ditton, and I wish her good food and peaceful sleep as a reward. Randy Broman, San Francisco Trumps career options Concerning Calling out Trumps lies (Letters, Sept. 16): How obliging, for a reader who wrote that our prevaricator-in-chief need not worry about finding post-White House employment. Her suggestions for this self-described stable genius who offered such compelling solace Itll start getting cooler for our fire-ravaged state: Jobs as fortune teller or weather forecaster. Apt as these prospects seem, I think President Trump might want to pursue a more eminent career at some prestigious college. Dont forget that he has vital experience from the years he ran Trump University (lets not fret over how he paid $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits filed against TU). What colleges political science department wouldnt want Trump to join its faculty? It would be all but impossible to find any other instructor so impressively qualified to teach a singularly captivating upper-division course: Banana Republic Governance 101. Edward Alston, Santa Maria Protections for workers Regarding Dont stifle the gig economy (Sept. 13): The Chronicle is right to point out that if Proposition 22 passes, it will create a nearly impossible threshold to make changes to the law. That alone should give anyone pause because it means drivers like me will be permanently paid less. We should not give up our democratic process to corporations that think theyre above the law. If passed, Prop. 22 will permanently exclude drivers from basic rights that all other California workers have, including the right to paid sick leave, a living wage, overtime pay and safety net pay. It will also eliminate and prevent local governments from passing ordinances like the one the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed earlier this year to make sure drivers delivering food or giving rides get paid sick leave. The pandemic crisis has shown the consequences of having a workforce without the basic protections of health care or unemployment benefits. Taxpayers foot the bill for the support these companies fail to provide. With no end in sight for the pandemic, do we really want to force drivers to choose between working sick or not working at all? No, we should not. There is right and wrong and Prop. 22 is just wrong. Alan Franklin, Oakland Persistent falsehoods The current occupant of the White House recently said to Bob Woodward that he believes Woodward drank the Kool-Aid as it pertains to race relations in this country. Actually, the members of the Republican Senate have and continue to drink the Kool-Aid that President Trump has been serving for his entire term in office. The persistent falsehoods coming from this president affect all of us and future generations. The Republican Senate has failed to even question this presidents words and actions and must be voted out this November! Charlie Meusel, Corralitos Reason for cool weather An added benefit for the representatives from CalFire, the U.S. Forest Service, Gov. Gavin Newsom and others in wearing masks while meeting with President Trump; it was less obvious when their jaws dropped realizing the president remains mired in climate change denial. He probably made a safe bet though, in forecasting cooler weather, since that meeting was held just a week before the autumnal equinox. The cooler temperatures might not be of much help in the fight against the fires devastating the West Coast. The cooler temperatures of fall are often accompanied by strong winds. Gene Nielsen, Crescent Mills Ethically challenged I could only shake my head in disgust while reading Israel, two Arab states sign pacts (Sept. 16). Despite President Trumps claim that agreements between Israel and two Gulf Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, represent the dawn of a new Middle East, there can be no lasting peace in this region without the proper establishment and recognition of a Palestinian state. Both Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are ethically challenged leaders. And both U.S. and Israeli citizens who understand this fact also know that this signing ceremony at the White House will not make either of them into statesmen or boost their stature in the global community. Imani Odebayu, Oakland Gov. Newsom is savvy Kudos to Gov. Gavin Newsom for being politic instead of political in discussing climate change with President Trump. Instead of futilely arguing with Trump, Newsom asked him to respect the difference of opinion out here as it relates to this fundamental issue on climate change. The governor is savvy enough to know it would do no good and could possibly harm federal aid to California to argue with Trump. Marjorie Blackwell, Piedmont Listen to the experts Lets say California was 100% fueled by green energy or, better yet, if all the U.S. was presently being fueled by 100% green energy, does Gov. Gavin Newsom really think California would not be experiencing these devastating wildfires? It may be time to listen to the science of forestry management. More than 16 months after a mentally ill Black woman was shot to death in a struggle with a police officer in the parking lot of her suburban Houston apartment complex, her family said Thursday that their prayers were partially answered when the officer was indicted on a felony charge stemming from the fatal confrontation. Relatives of Pamela Turner, 44, say she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but posed no threat to Baytown police Officer Juan Delacruz when he attempted to arrest her on low-level misdemeanor warrants just hours after he helped serve her with an eviction notice. A Harris County grand jury indicted Delacruz on Monday on one first-degree felony count of aggravated assault by a public servant. "The news that my family received on Monday is the exact reason why we have not stopped calling my mothers name for the past 16 months," Turner's daughter, Chelsea Rubin, said during a Zoom news conference on Thursday. "I prayed for this moment numerous times, and I prayed that my mothers death would not be in vain and that she gets the justice that she deserves." PHOTO: Antoinette Dorsey-James holds a picture of her sister Pamela Turner during a news conference outside the Harris County Civil Court in Houston, May 16, 2019. (Houston Chronicle via AP, File) Rubin thanked the grand jury for seeing that Delacruz "deserves to be punished for the crime that he committed." "He took my mothers life. She will never come back. I will never hear her voice again," said Rubin, wearing a T-shirt bearing Turner's name and likeness. "This is one step closer to getting the justice that my mom deserves and allowing her to be able to rest respectfully as she should because she didnt deserve to die, not like that." Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced the indictment at a news conference on Monday, saying, "Pam Turner's killing was a tragedy." "It is important to acknowledge that her family and the community are in pain," Ogg said at a news conference announcing the indictment. Criticized by some members of the community for taking 16 months and a day to bring charges against Delacruz, Ogg responded that "every aspect of the case was independently investigated by the Texas Rangers and our Civil Rights Division prosecutors." Story continues PHOTO:Chelsie Rubin, center, surrounded by supporters gather in prayer in front of the memorial in Baytown, Texas, May 15, 2019, for her mother, Pamela Turner, who was killed May 11 during a confrontation with a Baytown Police officer. (Godofredo A Vasquez/AP) "Ultimately, we presented all of the evidence to a grand jury that determined the Baytown Police officer should be charged with a crime for his actions when he shot Ms. Turner. We respect their decision and we will be moving forward with prosecution," Ogg said. Delacruz surrendered to authorities on Tuesday and was released upon posting $25,000 bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 28. My family and I are in prayer that October 28th will be the start of justice for Pamela Turner, "said Antoinette Dorsey-James, Turner's sister. Delacruz took a beautiful soul, a loving person away from us and every day is harder and harder. So, I hope that hes convicted and sentenced to the maximum." If convicted, Delacruz faces 5 years to life in prison. MORE: $12 million settlement reached in fatal Kentucky police shooting of Breonna Taylor The shooting unfolded on May 13 at the Brixton apartment complex in Baytown, 25 miles southeast of Houston, after Delacruz attempted to arrest Turner on outstanding misdemeanor warrants, including one for criminal mischief and assault, officials said. A witness cellphone video of the encounter that was posted on social media showed Delacruz, who was on duty and in uniform, approach Turner and attempt to handcuff her as she shouted, "I'm walking. I'm actually walking to my house." Before the officer could handcuff Turner, she broke free but only took several steps before Delacruz caught up to her. "You're actually harassing me. Why? Why?" she said just before the officer deployed a stun gun on Turner. During a struggle that ensued, Turner yelled out, "I'm pregnant." As Delacruz attempted to handcuff her again, Turner allegedly appeared to reach for his stun gun and the officer moved back and out of the frame of the camera. The footage captured the sound of five shots ringing out. An autopsy by the Harris County Medical Examiner's office found Turner was shot multiple times and ruled her death a homicide. The post-mortem examination found she was not pregnant. Delacruz was immediately placed on paid administrative leave. But within a week of the shooting, he was back at work on desk duty. Delacruz's attorney, Craig Cagle, told The Associated Press that Delacruz shot Turner in self-defense when she allegedly grabbed his stun gun and used it on the officer. "There's no facts that would justify a criminal charge against the officer," Cagle said to the AP. "When someone takes a police officer's Taser and then uses it against them, the officer is left with no options other than deadly force. That's how the officers are trained." In a statement released following the announcement of Delacruz's indictment, Baytown police officials said they turned over the investigation to the Texas Rangers, who submitted their findings to Ogg's office. "We have faith and trust in our judicial system, and as we wait for this case to proceed through the legal process, we ask that our community continue to be patient and have trust and faith in those processes," the statement reads. "We also ask that our community continue to have faith and trust in the Baytown Police Department and the dedicated, professional men and women who are committed to serving all members of our community with integrity, compassion and professionalism." MORE: Breonna Taylor's mom hopes settlement with Louisville serves as national model for police reform Civil rights attorney Devon Jacob, a former police officer who is representing the Turner family, expressed outrage that Delacruz has been allowed to keep his badge and remain on the police force. "That to me, as a former police officer, is scary. Its frightening. It means that the people of that city are in danger from the police department leadership," Jacob said. Jacob said he and his co-counsel, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, will be filing a civil suit in the case within 30 days. He said they did not want to take the legal action sooner and risk interfering with the criminal investigation. Jacob said his investigation of the shooting shows that Delacruz moonlighted as a security guard at the Brixton apartment complex and knew Turner suffered from mental illness. He said that hours before the fatal confrontation, Jacob was involved in helping to serve Turner with an eviction notice. He also said that Delacruz's Taser gun was in "drive stun" mode, meaning it would have had to be placed against an individual's body to cause harm. He noted the video shows that Delacruz was well beyond an arms-length of Turner when he drew his firearm and shot her. Pamela Turner should not have been shot," Jacob said. "The force used by Juan Delacruz is objectively unreasonable. That means that any other properly trained police officer under the same circumstances would not have used the force that he used." The indictment against Delacruz came a day before a $12 million settlement was reached in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was shot to death in March in her own apartment when Louisville, Kentucky, officers attempted to serve a "no-knock" warrant and opened fire after breaking down her door with a battering ram. The settlement, which lawyers for the Taylor family say is the largest ever paid out for a Black woman killed in an alleged police misconduct case, also includes an agreement to implement major reforms in the Louisville Metro Police Department in hopes they will prevent anything similar from occurring again. MORE: After Breonna Taylor's death, a look at other black women killed during police encounters Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said the reforms are intended to build stronger connections between the city's police department and the communities officers serve. They include establishing a housing credit program to incentivize officers to live in certain low-income neighborhoods in the city and encouraging officers to volunteer two hours every two-week pay period in the communities they serve. MORE: From Eric Garner to George Floyd, 12 black lives lost in police encounters that stoked mass protests A program will be established to include social workers in the police department to assist officers on certain calls, particularly those involving people suffering from mental illness. The reforms will also require the police department to overhaul how search warrants are obtained, and to create an Office of Inspector General to oversee an "early-warning system" that tracks use-of-force incidents and citizens' complaints in an attempt to weed out bad officers, Fischer said. The three officers involved in the shooting of Taylor have not been charged. Two of them remain on administrative leave, while another has been fired for violating police department procedure when he fired 10 rounds into Taylor's apartment while executing the warrant. Jacob said that if a settlement is reached in the pending civil case stemming from Turner's death it will also include demands for police reform. Crump, who represents the families of Taylor and Turner, said there are parallels between the two shootings. "Like Breonna Taylor, Pamela Turner was unjustly targeted and killed by police, and had her name sullied by law enforcement in an attempted cover-up," Crump said. "The indictment of the officer in the Pamela Turner case and the settlement in the Breonna Taylor case are both crucial steps in bringing much-needed and past-due attention on the treatment of Black women in this country." Family of Pamela Turner see indictment of Texas officer who fatally shot her as 'step closer' to justice originally appeared on abcnews.go.com By PTI MUMBAI: Many actors and filmmakers from the industry, including Ram Gopal Varma, Swara Bhasker and Pooja Bhatt on Thursday praised Urmila Matondkar's vast body of work after Kangana Ranaut controversially slammed the "Satya" star as a "soft porn star". Matondkar had called out Ranaut's claims about nepotism in the industry and Bollywood being riddled with a drug problem. In an interview with Times Now on Wednesday night, Ranaut called her a "soft porn star" who is not known for her acting. Ranaut's comments were met with criticism from the industry, with many hailing Matondkar's consistent "grace and dignity" throughout her career of over 25 years. Varma, who has worked with Matondkar in many acclaimed films like "Rangeela", "Satya" and "Bhoot", said the 46-year-old actor has proved her talent time and again. "Not wanting to get into slinging matches with anyone, I believe that @UrmilaMatondkar has more than proved her versatile talent in enacting such diversely complex roles as in 'Rangeela', 'Satya', 'Kaun', 'Bhoot', 'Ek Haseena Thi'." Bhasker tweeted a list of "outstanding performances" of Matondkar, right from her debut as a child actor in "Masoom", to Sriram Raghavan's "Ek Hasina Thi" in 2004 and said she has always marvelled the actor. ALSO READ | 'One for all': Gulshan Devaiah takes poetic jibe at 'My BollyMafia' and Kangana Ranaut "Dear @UrmilaMatondkar ji, remembering ur outstanding performances in 'Masoom', 'Chamatkaar', 'Rangeela', 'Judaai', 'Daud', 'Satya', 'Bhoot', 'Kaun', 'Jungle', 'Pyaar Tuney Kya Kiya', 'Tehzeeb', 'Pinjar', 'Ek Hasina Thi' among others and have marvelled at your acting chops and brilliant dancing! Love you." Anubhav Sinha said Matondkar was one of the most "beautiful, elegant, evocative, expressive" actors ever. "Sending you love @UrmilaMatondkar," the "Thappad" director tweeted. Ranaut, who has been in the headlines for her provocative statements, claimed that the "liberal brigade" was falsely equating being a porn star to "something derogatory." The actor said she fails to understand the outrage since the former porn star was "accepted" by the country at large. "Liberal brigade once virtually lynched a renowned writer in to silence for saying people like Sunny Leone should not be our role models, Sunny is accepted by the industry and entire India as an artist, suddenly fake feminists equating being a porn star to something derogatory," Ranaut said. Others in the fraternity also came out in support of Matondkar, including actors Pooja Bhatt, Sayani Gupta and screenwriter Kanika Dhillon. Calling Matondkar a "legend", Bhatt said with her performance in "Rangeela", the actor had "raised the bar" for all her contemporaries. "You left us all, co-actors and an entire generation of movie goers, awestruck! Sensuality and dignity. Two qualities you combined and embodied. Respect," Bhatt tweeted. Ranaut's comments about Matondkar come a day after she criticised veteran actor and Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan for raising her voice in the House against those defaming the Hindi film industry. Writer Kanika Dhillon said both, Bachchan and Matondkar, should be lauded for their graceful conduct. "Amidst all the madness -appreciation tweet for #JayaBachchan Ji and @UrmilaMatondkar for speaking out and shining through with grace and dignity and showing how women in the industry can lead, protest and conduct themselves gracefully without vilifying others all at the same time! #WomenOfCourage," she added. European Union diplomacy to resolve a dispute with Turkey in the Mediterranean has become bogged down in competing initiatives a week before a summit meant to show Ankara a united front, according to EU member state envoys. The impasse, which EU envoys were unable to break at a meeting on Wednesday, is holding up unrelated sanctions against Belarus and underscores the paralysis in foreign policy that the EU's chief executive berated publicly in a speech on Wednesday. "It's an extremely difficult issue," one senior member state diplomat said. "It is probably the single most worrying issue for the EU in the coming days." Turkey, an EU candidate country and NATO member, has alarmed the bloc by stepping up its gas exploration off Cyprus and claiming rights to waters also claimed by Greece and Cyprus. The dispute has brought to a head a host of other tensions, from Turkey's involvement in Syria and Libya to what the EU says is growing authoritarianism under President Tayyip Erdogan. Gestures by Ankara this week to return an exploration ship to port have only served to complicate a unified EU response from all 27 governments. "Turkey is trying to divide the member states," a second EU diplomat said, noting that Turkey had extended the operations of an energy drilling ship off Cyprus until mid-October. Turkey does not recognise Cyprus, an EU and euro zone member, which was split after a Turkish invasion in 1974 spurred by a coup engineered by the generals then ruling Greece. A Turkish Cypriot state in north Cyprus is recognised only by Ankara. Belarus Delay The issue, fast becoming the bloc's most intractable conflict, also highlights what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen complained of on Wednesday, namely that all foreign policy decisions must be agreed by all governments. Von der Leyen called for majority voting. For the moment, Germany wants more time for talks with Turkey while France, Cyprus and Greece are demanding a punitive response to Turkish gas exploration in what the EU says are its territorial waters. Hungary worries about antagonising Turkey and jeopardising a 2016 migration agreement in which Ankara gives shelter to Syrian refugees in return for EU funds. Others favour using "carrots" as well as "sticks", by offering Turkey deeper trade and visa links with the world's largest trading bloc to calm the situation. Meanwhile, Cyprus has asked for more time to consider separate sanctions on Belarus in support of a mass pro-democracy movement there, which other EU governments interpret as a way of pressing for similar punitive measures against Turkey. "It's fundamentally wrong to be linking Turkey and Belarus sanctions," said a third EU diplomat. "Cyprus seems to be saying it will only approve Belarus the moment Turkey is done simultaneously. But that kills the idea of a swift EU reaction to the Belarus repressions." Cyprus denies linking the two issues. EU foreign ministers will try to find a way through at their regular meeting on Monday. But diplomats say a solution will need the summit, looking to the bloc's most powerful leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, to find a way forward next Thursday or Friday. Search Keywords: Short link: CAIRO The Egyptian government is expected to sign an agreement with its Chinese counterpart later this month for the distribution within four months of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine that is now in its final development stages. Egypt has ignored Russian calls for a partnership to produce another coronavirus vaccine. On Aug. 11, Russia became the first country in the world to announce the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine. The Egyptian Ministry of Health announced in an official statement Sept. 12 that it would start participating in clinical trials for the third development phase of two vaccines produced by a Chinese company that provides basic vaccinations for polio and is one of the leading companies in the field, with trials conducted on about 15,000 people. The trials of the final phase aim to ensure the efficacy of the vaccines, the ministry said. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Ministry of Health did not respond to an official Russian offer to establish a partnership with Egypt for producing the newly developed Russian coronavirus vaccine, dubbed Sputnik-V. In a press statement Aug. 19, Russian Ambassador to Cairo Georgy Borisenko had expressed his countrys readiness to cooperate with Egypt to produce the Russian vaccine. This vaccine could be the basis for further development of relations between Egypt and Russia, he said. Hossam Hosni, head of the scientific committee set up in March by the Egyptian authorities to combat the coronavirus, told Al-Monitor via phone that Egypt is participating with China in studies on the vaccines that the latter is working on. Egypt has verified the safety and prevention measures of the two vaccines it announced clinical trials for. This is one of the reasons why Egypt prefers the Chinese vaccine, not to mention the fact that its production stages are subject to supervision and evaluation by the World Health Organization [WHO]. The Russian vaccine is not included by the WHO on the list of vaccines whose safety and efficacy data that were collected during the clinical trial phase were subjected to review and assessment. Hosni believes Egypt will become a hub for the production of coronavirus vaccines in Africa, since Egypt has the capacity to conduct its own safety and efficacy assessments on it. This is the case for the Chinese vaccine throughout the stages of its manufacture, as Egypt was able to peruse all reports related to each stage of clinical trials, he explained. Hosni noted that Egypt has reserved 30 million doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in Britain, in case the vaccines efficacy and safety were proven. He added that if the third clinical trials on the Chinese vaccine are successful, it will be ready within six months from now. An official source from the Ministry of Health told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The two coronavirus vaccines whose trials the Ministry of Health announced it is participating in are being developed by the Chinese company Sinopharm, the sixth-largest vaccine manufacturer in the world. The Chinese government has already approved the emergency use of one of those two vaccines, and this is the one Egypt will begin to test [on participants in Egypt]. Meanwhile, no statement has been issued regarding the second vaccine. The source explained that the two coronavirus vaccines are administered in two doses by intramuscular injections, 14 or 21 days apart. Egypt probably prefers the Chinese vaccine since Beijing has provided the necessary technology for Egypt to produce the vaccine, which is a major advantage for Egypt in light of the difficulty of the supply and distribution of vaccines, the source added. Moreover, the source stressed that conducting the third clinical trials on Egyptian volunteers will be done by giving the vaccine to one group and giving a placebo vaccine to another group. Then, the two groups will be monitored until the participants in the second group become infected with the virus. Subsequently, the second group of volunteers will be compared with those in the first group. Ahmed Azab, researcher in the right to health program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told Al-Monitor that Egypt is participating in many initiatives launched by the WHO. These mainly aim to ensure a fair distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, and to ensure access to it for developing countries such as Egypt that cannot afford the vaccines cost. However, Azab noted that participation in WHO initiatives is not sufficient to ensure the vaccination of the largest proportion of the population in light of the major obstacles, most notably the lack of funding. This could be why the Egyptian Ministry of Health is signing agreements in particular with countries whose vaccine trials have reached an advanced stage, such as China, he added. He explained that the Egyptian preference for the Chinese vaccine may be linked to a political consensus between the two countries. There are a number of questions that the Egyptian Ministry of Health should answer about the details of designing clinical trials, and whether or not the WHO will supervise them, he said. Azab added that the Russian vaccine has yet to pass the third stage of clinical trials. No reports have been issued about the results of the trials so far in the first and second stages, he added. Russia had rushed to produce the Ebola vaccine [in June of this year], which passed only two stages. This vaccine was sent to African countries, but problems were later discovered in the percentage of antibodies generated by it. WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- "The global family of religion must unite our hearts to overcome the hard times of COVID-19." "Let us first repent of our sins, forgive our neighbors, and pray in one heart for COVID-19 to end." Worldwide Day of Prayer Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (Chairman Lee, Man-hee, henceforth, Shincheonji Church of Jesus) is suggesting to hold an online prayer service for all people of religion worldwide to end of COVID-19. Shincheonji Church of Jesus announced that there will be an online prayer service on the afternoon of the 16th for all domestic and international congregation members of the 12 tribes to come together virtually in their respective homes to pray to God for the end of COVID-19. Also, they asked all people of religion who share the same purpose to participate. During this time of pandemic when the entire world is in a state of danger, Chairman Lee, Man-hee suggested to hold a prayer service to have a time to pray for the virus to end all over the world and to repent of our sins that we individually may have committed without realizing it. The prayer service will show that the people of religion are taking the initiative and setting an example especially during the time of crisis. Also, it will show the importance of surpassing religion to overcome the time of danger together. A representative of Shincheonji Church of Jesus stated, "During this time when the whole world is suffering from COVID-19, we, the people of faith of different denomination and religion, will break the walls that separate us and come together as one to pray so that we can overcome this time of crisis," and "If we pray with one heart in our respective places, then it will move the heavens." Note: Please take note that Shincheonji Church of Jesus has been holding services online beginning from February 18th. Contact: Nick Soto 7577712927 [email protected] SOURCE SCJAmerica New Delhi, Sep 17 : Nine stolen laptops, three Apple Tabs, Nine mobile phones, dozens of laptop bags and other electronic articles was the recovery made by the Delhi Police from four members of 'Gulel gang' arrested while tracking a case of car theft. The case had connections in Haryana too. The Delhi Police found that sales of the stolen goods were made in Haryana's Hisar town and the receiver was nabbed too. The gang was arrested after the police started an investigation in a car theft case reported on September 2. Some unknown persons had broken the glass of a sedan car parked in front of the Gargi College on the Siri Fort road and stole a bag that contained Apple Laptop and Apple IPad. The car belonged to a doctor of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here. The police team collected the CCTV footage near the spot and it was revealed that the accused persons came in an auto rickshaw without number plate and committed the crime. With the help of human intelligence and technical surveillance, the police team succeeded in identifying the auto and one accused involved in the crime. He was arrested soon after. The other two accused were also arrested and further receiver of the stolen articles was held from Hisar on the basis of technical surveillance. The accused have been identified as Ankit, Zakir and Ajay. Mukesh was the receiver of the stolen property in Hisar. Both Ankit and Zakir were involved in at least 10 cases of breaking car glass with a catapult to steal valuables kept inside. The gang usually works in groups where each member is assigned a particular task. The gang targets unattended cars with valuables inside in parking spaces, shopping complexes and busy markets. They break the car glass with a ball bearing using a catapult and then the other member of the gang sneaks in to steal the valuables, the police said. "Accused persons are being interrogated and recovered articles are being connected to cases. Further interrogation of accused persons is going on. Multiple cases all over Delhi have been worked out," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Atul Thakur. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed MILWAUKEE For schools across Wisconsin, Friday could turn out to be the single most important day on the calendar this year. The third Friday in September is significant every year for Wisconsin public schools and private schools that accept children on taxpayer-funded vouchers. By law, students counted as enrolled on that date dictate in large part state and local funding for the current school year and in many cases beyond. The date is different for schools in other states, but the consequences are largely the same, and the coronavirus pandemic is complicating this year's counts all over as schools struggle to connect with students online, and families move their children to different schools or pull them out altogether to be home-schooled. "We're anticipating the counts will be down," said John Bales, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators. "Accessing kids will be problematic this fall. ... We have plenty of instances where families are simply not engaging their children, in-person and virtually. I understand parents' concerns. But this will impede children's learning, and it hurts from the financial perspective." Teacher Marielle Rivera teaches 8th grade Spanish class via the internet from her desk at Milwaukee School of Languages August 17, 2020. Milwaukee Public Schools held a press conference there to highlight its virtual start. Students at more than 40 schools will start the year virtually due to COVID-19. This school is on the early start calendar. It teaches five languages, plus standard classes and 13 Advanced Placement subject classes. Hosting grades 6-12 it would normally have 1,150 students in the school. Some staff are using the building to teach and others are teaching their classes from home. All virtual. Any financial hit would come as schools have invested millions in new technology and protective equipment and supplies to prepare for in-person and virtual learning. And public schools already are bracing for possible funding cuts in the 2021-23 biennium because of a projected decline in state tax revenue as a result of the pandemic. The coronavirus has complicated the enrollment counts, particularly in districts that are starting the school year virtually. At Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin's largest district with about 75,000 students, staff members began their outreach to families even before the school year started, Superintendent Keith Posley said. Through last week, he said, there were about 3,000 students still unaccounted for, compared with 1,147 the week before the third Friday count last year. Story continues 'Not a sustainable model': A peek at how one high school handles its COVID-19 challenges "Our social workers, school liaisons, our paras, our safeties, everyone is reaching out, making calls on a daily basis ... knocking on doors and leaving letters trying to track down students," Posley said. Smaller districts had the same problem, just on a different scale. As of late August, the Brown Deer School District was struggling to locate about 600 students, but that has since been narrowed to fewer than 100. The School District Administrators Association has asked the Legislature to hold public schools harmless for enrollment shifts created by the coronavirus, by, for example, using enrollment data from last year or the average of the past three years. Lawmakers are not expected to return to the Capitol until January. Students at Lake Country School are split between the school's cafeteria and gym for lunch depending on grade level. Some flexibility because of pandemic The third-Friday count is in some ways a misnomer. The fall school enrollment counts have traditionally been centered on that date. But schools may also include any students who attend at least one day before and one day after, as long as they weren't enrolled in another school in the interim. Schools had requested more flexibility this year because of the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The state Department of Public Instruction said it could not alter that procedure, but is allowing some flexibility, for example around documentation. "We've assured districts they can count every child they're educating, whether or not a given mode of instruction exactly fits into how their data systems record attendance," said Daniel Bush, DPI's director of finance. "We do not want technical issues to keep districts from counting students." The enrollment counts will be made public in mid-October, along with general school aids. Second grade students at Lake Country School in Hartland place their arms out to maintain proper social distancing while heading outside for recess on Sept. 4, 2020. The school put in place measures designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. For traditional public schools, the September 2020 pupil count will affect tax levies as well as state and federal school funding over the next three years because funding is tied to a three-year average, Bush said. The count also will affect the annual per-pupil payments for private voucher and independent public charter schools. The transfer of students between schools complicates the enrollment-funding picture. Students who move between public and private schools after the third-Friday count generally don't bring that state aid with them. That is likely to be exacerbated this year as parents move their children to other districts and private schools to find instructional models that work for them. Now, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill that would make it much easier for families to move their students throughout the 2020-21 school year a measure critics say would push more taxpayer funding to private schools and further destabilize public school budgets. COVID-19 and schools: As schools shift to online learning, what should they do about cyberattacks? The measure, introduced by Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, would explicitly list the instructional model as an allowable reason for a transfer under alternative open enrollment, and it would eliminate a home district's ability to veto a transfer. It would also remove the cap on the number of students a district can lose to private voucher schools under one of the state's parental choice programs. Kapenga said he is not sure how the bill would impact school funding. "We'll have to take a look at that," he said. Bales said it would be detrimental to districts financially, adding, "it will be disruptive to the continuity of learning for kids, as well." Lake Country School music teacher James Bakken (near keyboard) and his eighth grade choir class get some singing practice in outside. They have their masks off due to being outside and having six feet of separation between them. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: COVID-stressed schools brace for enrollment count, funding impacts Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Thursday that the problem of unemployment was not a political issue, but a humanitarian one and promised to extend all possible help in the matter. Holding a video conference with around 50 youths, who hailed from different districts of Uttar Pradesh and had cleared the test for teaching posts but have not got their appointment, Priyanka Gandhi said it was her belief that the government would have to listen to the voice of the youth. "We will have to fight from the roads to the legislature. The Congress is not going to back out on this," a party release quoted Priyanka Gandhi as saying. "This is not a political issue for us, but a humanitarian matter. This is a question of justice." The Congress general secretary assured the youth that her party would extend all possible help in this matter. The video conference, which lasted for over one-and-a-half hour, was attended by over 50 youths, state Congress media convenor Lalan Kumar said, adding that event was a part of the dialogue over unemployment. Speaking to Priyanka Gandhi, a woman candidate said she had given the exam in 2016 and was happy on her selection, but has still to get appointment. The woman said she had faced depression for two years and her family was facing immense hardships because of this. One of the youths said he was somehow earning his livelihood by giving tuition, but that has also stopped because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, while another said his marriage was called off as he did not get the job. The youths said they worked hard and performed well in the exam, but the government is "continuously changing rules", according to the statement. During the interaction, Priyanka Gandhi also sought their views over reports that the state government was mulling a five-year contractual service for employees of Group B and C. Sony recently unveiled the prices of the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. With the recent information, we now know the pricing of both Sonys and Microsofts next-gen consoles. While Sony is yet to announce the cost of the PS5 and PS5 DE in India, going by international pricing, it should be higher than the Xbox Series S, surpassing the 40K mark. Today, the focus of our comparison if the two budget consoles, the Sony PS Digital Edition and Xbox Series S. If you want to check out our comparisons on the Sony Play Station 5 and Xbox Series X, head on over to the link. Sony PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Xbox Series S Custom AMD Zen 2, 8-core 3.5 GHz Custom AMD Zen 2, 8-core 3.6 Custom RDNA 2 GPU, 10.28 TFLOPS, 36 CUs at 2.23 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU, 4 TFLOPS, 20 CUs at 1.565 GHz 16GB GDDR6 10GB GDDR6 448GB/s 224 GB/s 825GB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD 512 GB PCIe Gen 4 NVME SSD No Physical Disc Drive No Physical Disc Drive 4K at 60 FPS, up to 120 FPS 1440p at 60 FPS, up to 120 FPS TBD / USD 399 Rs 34,990 / USD 299 First and foremost, the biggest difference between the two consoles is visible with their spec sheet. Straight off the bat, the PlayStation 5 DE is noticeably more powerful than the Xbox Series S. And, while spec sheets dont tell entire stories, in this case, it does. We already know that the Xbox Series S can deliver the same in-game performance as the Xbox Series X, but at 1440p resolution, as opposed to 4K gaming on the main console. However, the cheaper PlayStation 5 Digital Edition has no limitation like the Xbox Series S. It is virtually the same console as the standard PS5 without the optical drive. When it comes to games, Microsoft may have the upper hand when you consider backward compatibility with all previous generation titles, dating back to the original Xbox. The PlayStation 5 DE, on the other hand, will support most of the 4,000+ PS4 titles. Additionally, Xbox Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate will provide more access to games. When you consider games for the new PS and Xbox consoles wont come cheap, games are an important part of the equation. On balance, the Xbox Series S is not as powerful as the Sony PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. Although we believe the Xbox will have more titles for users to enjoy, Sony has a few aces up its sleeve as well, so we arent too concerned there. Beyond power, the PS5 Digital Edition will also have more storage space to house games, which is a very important factor when dealing with digital-only consoles. However, it is worth noting that Sony still has to reveal PlayStation 5 pricing in India. Going by international pricing, the PS5 DE will be higher than the Xbox Series S. So, we cannot yet factor in the price for Indian customers, at least. But for now, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition does have a bit of an advantage over the Xbox Series S. With record-breaking wildfires in the US and Brazil, and Greenlands ice shelf breaking up, where do we find hope? Some say when reporting on environmental stories you should always find a reason for hope, otherwise the graveness of the situation will make people want to give up. So keep reading, because here comes hope from a legendary 94-year-old British naturalist. But first: In all my years covering the environment, never has there been such a convergence of devastating climate-related news, from forest infernos to ferocious weather systems. As I write, Hurricane Sally is battering communities in the southern United States. At one point this week there were at least seven tropical systems whirling across the Atlantic. It has been a record year there have been 20 named storms so far, surpassing the typical seasonal average of 11. Crumbling glaciers In Antarctica, we have learned that ocean warming is threatening the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, which already account for 5 percent of the global sea level rise. These glaciers connect the West Antarctic ice sheet to the ocean. As they disintegrate, more ice will tumble off the land into the sea with potentially catastrophic consequences. At the opposite pole, scientists have just announced a colossal island of ice about twice the size of Manhattan has broken free from the Arctics largest-remaining ice shelf in northeast Greenland. The integrity of Earths glaciers is crucial to the stability of the climate system. And projections show sea levels could rise more than a metre in just 80 years as polar ice melts, which would drown coastlines around the world. Blazing fires Meanwhile, record-breaking fires are raging in California and Oregon, and surging again in the Brazilian Amazon. A blaze has also been burning since mid-July in the remote Pantanal wetlands of Brazil, leaving in its wake a vast charred area of desolation bigger than New York City. These fires are now threatening one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Biodiversity loss Speaking of the loss of biodiversity, back in 2010 in Nagoya, Japan, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity set 20 targets to stem the tide of loss. Guess what? We just found out that we failed. None of the 20 targets, which concern safeguarding ecosystems and promoting sustainability, have been fully met. Just last week, the World Wildlife Funds 2020 Living Planet report estimated that species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish plummeted by an average of 68 percent between 1970 and 2016. Politicians vs science And then we hear from the US president. As the skies glow orange from blazing forests, as warming oceans spawn more destructive hurricanes and melt the poles, as temperatures in the Arctic soar and floods deluge Senegal and Sudan, Donald Trump sneers at accepted science. Itll start getting cooler, you just watch, the president said in response to a plea from Wade Crowfoot, Californias natural resources secretary, to recognise the changing climate and its effects on the states forests. I wish science agreed with you, Crowfoot replied, to which Trump said: I dont think science knows actually. Reason for hope There is no question that the US presidents view is at odds with the scientific reality and with growing public acceptance of the dangers posed by the degradation of the environment. So let us move to a message of hope from a British naturalist who has helped shape our view of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough is an elderly man now, but this week he returned to TV screens in the UK to issue a stark warning. We are facing a crisis, he said in the film, and one that has consequences for us all. He told viewers the rate of extinction of species is happening at 100 times the evolutionary rate and accelerating. And he pointed to the current COVID-19 pandemic as perhaps the most immediate example of the risks of our ever-increasing encroachment on the natural world. But he also took us back to the 1970s, to one of the most famous moments in his long career, when he was filmed sitting with a band of gorillas, one of them Poppy trying to take his shoes off as he spoke to the camera. It was an experience that stayed with me, Attenborough says. But it was tinged with sadness, as I thought I might be seeing some of the last of their kind. But we learn that, in fact, the gorillas are now thriving. From about 250 when Attenborough visited to more than 1,000 in the wild today, it is an example of what is possible. In a photo taken in 1980, British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough shows Charlie the Llama to a schoolboy at the London Zoo [File: Wesley/Keystone/Getty Images] I may not be here to see it, Attenborough concludes. But if we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planets ecosystems, its extraordinary biodiversity, and all its inhabitants. What happens next is up to every one of us. It seems we have little choice in the path we must take. From drastically reducing emissions to protecting our oceans this, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has noted, is a make-or-break moment for the health of our planet. Your environment round-up 1. Floods wreak havoc across Africa: Unprecedented torrential rains across several African countries have displaced more than a million people, while rising water levels in the Nile River are threatening Sudans ancient royal pyramids. 2. Heating planet: How much hotter could the Earth get?: Last month, Californias Death Valley saw the third-hottest day ever recorded on Earth: 54 degrees Celcius (130 degrees Fahrenheit). Some weather researchers predict that heat waves at the end of this century will be at least (6C) 10F higher than that. 3. Laundry-day plastic pollution: Scientists calculate that since the 1950s, 5.6 million tonnes of tiny synthetic microfibres have seeped into the wider environment as we wash our polyester and nylon clothes. Just more than half has ended up in our rivers and seas. 4. Young activists plan Mock COP26: After the COP26 climate talks meant to be hosted by the UK this November were delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, young climate activists with the Fridays for Future movement decided to host their own replacement online event. The final word "When I volunteered the information that I am a gay man, the facial expression of the person I was talking to completely changed. And without any hesitation, the response back to me was, 'well, you will not be donating today,'" declared Lukus Estok about his experience at New York Blood Center. Ryan Koerber was also denied from donating blood. He lamented on Instagram, "A kind employee's eyes filled up and confessed that this is happening to many people that walk through their doors. I left the building feeling confused, defeated, unworthy. I am just a human being who wants to help other human beings." The "Blood Vessels" illustrations were created by Malaysian artist Vince Low, who is known for his hyper-realistic portraits comprised of scribbles. For this campaign, the FCB Health New York team challenged him to illustrate Lukus and Ryan not only with simple scribbles, but in a unique blood vessel scribble style. For more information, follow @Blood_Equality on Instagram and visit Blood-Equality.com . About FCB Health Network FCB Health Network is one of the world's most awarded communications networks, focused on creating game-changing marketing solutions for consumers, patients, and healthcare professionals. With specialized units covering a wide range of wellness practices, FCB Health Network employs more than 2,500 people across an extensive global network, delivering multichannel capabilities that include DTC and HCP communications, professional education, branding, scientific services, strategic planning, and media services. Its integrated agency offering includes AREA 23, AREA 23 ON HUDSON, BX Brand Experience Design Group, FCB Health Amsterdam, FCB Health Brasil, FCB Health Canada, FCB Health Energy Milan, FCB Health Frankfurt, FCB Health Hampshire, FCB Health LL Conseil Paris, FCB Health London, FCB Health Madrid, FCB Health New York, FCB Health Reaktor, FCB Health Zurich, FCBCURE, Mosaic Group, Neon, ProHealth, Solve(d), Studio Rx, Trio, and YuzuYello. The FCB Health Network was named "Agency of the Year" by Med Ad News in 2006, 2009, 2015, and 2017, and by Medical Marketing & Media in 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2017. In eight of the past nine years, an FCB Health Network company has received "Most Creative Agency" honors. Cannes Lions, the world's preeminent annual creative awards festival, named its AREA 23 unit "Healthcare Agency of the Year" in 2017, and named FCB Health Network "Healthcare Network of the Year" in 2018. In 2019, Med Ad News named FCB Health Network "Network of the Year." The FCB Health Network also received "Network of the Year" honors at the 2019 Clio Health Awards. SOURCE FCB Health Network A record number of terrorists are being held in British prisons, new figures show amid warnings over radicalisation inside chaotic jails. Statistics released by the Home Office on Thursday indicate there were 243 people in custody for terror-related offences, up 24 on the previous year. It comes as the government pushes for a raft of changes aiming to jail terror offenders for longer and make serious criminals serve more of their sentences in prison. Four alleged terror attacks have been launched by serving or released prisoners in the past year, in Fishmongers Hall, HMP Whitemoor, Streatham and Reading. A prison officer working in the high-security estate told The Independent the current situation was a nightmare. I dont see any end to the attacks whatsoever, those ones that come in with an extremist view leave with a stronger one, he added. Youre releasing people onto the streets and you dread to think whats going to happen. No matter what ministers say everything is not great in UK prisons, its appalling. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no control over radicalised inmates and raised concern over longer jail terms. They cannot cope with the extremist population they have at the minute so how do they think theyll cope with adding to that with more extremists on longer jail terms? he asked. The officer said radicalised inmates had attacked and threatened staff and that newly-recruited prison officers were seen as easy prey. Ive seen people do one shift and leave, he added. Most of the prisons are being run on chaos, a lot of things pass that shouldnt pass because they havent got the time to deal with incidents. Usman Khan: What we know about the London Bridge attacker The Ministry of Justice said it has improved monitoring and intelligence-sharing inside prisons and trained officers on how to spot the signs of extremism. But the officer said the training was awful and that staff were run ragged and powerless to monitor conversations in other languages. Recent research warned that some extremists see their time in prison as an opportunity to become more extreme and prepare for attacks. A separate report published by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said terror offenders were not being prosecuted for further crimes committed in prison, including making weapons and glorifying terrorism. Jonathan Hall QC told The Independent: People can move from being ordinary prisoners to terrorist prisoners at any stage in their journey. I saw examples of people equally dangerous [as terrorists] who are not convicted of terror offences. Research released by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) found that at least five terror attacks have been plotted or carried out by serving and released prisoners in Britain since 2016. They include the stabbings at Fishmongers Hall and Streatham, as well as a plot by a cell who met inside prison. Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Show all 22 1 /22 Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Armed police officers on Streatham High Road. The Metropolitan Police warned people to stay away from the Streatham area boguta37/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings The man was shot dead by police after two stabbed in 'Islamist-related' terror attack in London boguta37/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Sudesh Amman, the attacker, has been named as a convicted terror offender who was released from prison days ago Metropolitan Police/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Items left on the pavement at the scene in Streatham High Road Isis supporter Amman was just 18 when he was jailed in December 2018 after police found a stash of bomb-making manuals and other propaganda. Now 20, he had declared his own wish to carry out a terror attack and stockpiled a combat knife, air gun and black flag at his family home in London PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings He was being monitored by undercover police and being followed as part of a proactive counterterrorism operation when he started the rampage in Streatham AP Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Amman was able to stab two people before being shot dead by armed officers outside a busy row of shops Gabriel Video/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A woman reacts as police officers interview people near to the scene Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings An armed police officer on Streatham High Road Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lucy DOrsi said Amman was wearing a fake suicide ves Gully/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers work outside of a Boots store AFP via Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police officers at the scene Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A police forensic officer works at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Items left on the pavement at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A police officer on the scene Dave Chawner/SWNS Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers are seen near the site Reuters Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police officers on the scene outside an Iceland supermarket Andy Bullemor/SWNS Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police are seen near a site where a man was shot Reuters Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A policeman secures the site of the incident EPA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A view of the scene Megan Tobeck Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Armed police at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A view of the scene Michael Owens Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers at the scene PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A Police officer is seen near a site where a man was shot Reuters The report, which covered 10 European countries including the UK, warned there is an emerging view among extremists that prison is an opportunity, not necessarily just to recruit or network, but to also work on themselves. Around three quarters of terrorist prisoners in Britain are categorised as Islamist extremists, 19 per cent as far right and 6 per cent other. The vast majority have been convicted but 11 per cent are being held on remand as court hearings are delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. In the year to June, 54 terrorist prisoners were released, including two people serving life sentences. Of those freed, 16 had been sentenced to less than four years imprisonment. Sudesh Amman, who was released days before being shot dead after launching the Streatham terror attack in February, was among the cohort. A further 26 freed prisoners had been given sentences of four years or more. Shortly after the Streatham attack, the government enacted new laws to end the automatic early release of terror offenders and ensure they are risk-assessed by the Parole Board. The Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, which is currently being considered by parliament, would increase the maximum penalties for several terror offences and force terrorists given extended determinate sentences to serve the entire term in prison. Usman Khan, who was previously jailed over a terror plot, murdered two people at a rehabilitation event in November Several MPs called for improved deradicalisation efforts in prisons and raised concern about the potential impact of the proposals. During a debate in July, David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, said: It is simply not good enough to lock terrorists away for longer, put them out of our minds and hope for the best. As weve seen from the devastating attacks at Streatham and Fishmongers Hall, this approach does not work. The governments new sentencing white paper contains powers to halt the automatic release of offenders who have become a terror threat while in prison. A Ministry of Justice impact assessment said the change could increase the risk that other prisoners could become radicalised or more dangerous due to the greater time in custody for the affected individual, affording more time for further proselytising in the prison population. New Delhi, Sep 17 : PC and printer major HP on Thursday announced a new range of laptops, desktops, printers and services for enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMBs) globally. "With organisations prioritising their investments in technology to enable their employees with flexible, hybrid working environments, HP aims to offer them best experiences on the devices, performance and essential support." said Ketan Patel, Managing Director, HP India Market. Touted as the world's lightest AMD-based business notebook, the HP ProBook 635 Aero G7 would be available in November. The company introduced new print products, services and solutions optimised for new ways of working, including the new HP LaserJet Enterprise 400 Series which is HP's smallest enterprise printer, providing seamless remote management. The company also launched 'HP Business Boost' to give SMBs easy access to technology, security and support services for managing remote work at an affordable monthly cost. "A key focus for us will be small and medium businesses that contribute nearly a third of our GDP and generate employment for millions," Patel said. The HP LaserJet Enterprise 400 Series is HP's smallest enterprise printer providing seamless remote management and the world's most secure printing experience: The company also announced a new version of HP FutureSmart firmware - enabling a consistent, secure operational system across HP's entire enterprise printer series. Launching with the LaserJet Enterprise 400 series, FutureSmart 5 provides customers investment protection, additional security protections, and readiness for advanced cloud-based workflows, the company said. According to the recent 'HP Asia SMB Outlook report 2020', one in four Indian SMBs aim to migrate more processes to digital and one in three will use online meetings and digital tools as strategies to rebound from the pandemic. "Through HP Business Boost, HP is providing the practical support SMBs need to thrive post-pandemic," the company said. The daughter of a St Basils Home for the Aged resident who died in hospital without having acquired coronavirus says sheer neglect by the federal governments emergency nursing contractor Aspen Medical was key to her death. Further angering Filia Xynidakis family was that the hospital where she died last month, Bellbird Private, initially recorded her death as a consequence of coronavirus. Her death certificate was later altered to reflect the reality: that she died of a dementia-related illness. Klery Loutas, whose mother Filia Xynidakis was a resident at St Basil's, and who died - but not of coronavirus. Credit:Justin McManus Mum died not from COVID, but from sheer neglect, said Ms Xynidakis' daughter Klery Loutas. She said her mother had lived happily at St Basils for more than two years and received good care until the coronavirus swept through the Fawkner home in July, killing 44 of the home's 120 residents. EDGEFIELD, S.C. - A Florida woman who killed her 6-month-old son in South Carolina because she was angry when the childs father wouldnt answer her texts or phone calls was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday. Vernita Lashon Jones told police she suffocated her son, Anthony Frost, and then dumped the babys body in a trash bin behind an apartment in Johnston. The childs remains were found in a Greenville County landfill in November 2018, prosecutors said. Jones, 27, pleaded guilty to homicide by child abuse in Edgefield County, The Aiken Standard reported. She faced 30 years to life in prison, but her attorney asked for leniency, saying Jones suffered from mental illness and was considering killing her son and herself but did not take enough pills combined with alcohol. She was essentially born a crack baby, was raped, abandoned and had a string of bad boyfriends. We ask the court for whatever mercy the court seems fit to give, public defender Bennett Casto said. Jones lived in Clewiston, Florida, but left her sons father and moved to South Carolina with the baby. Prosecutors said she then began leaving angry messages on the fathers phone and disturbing text messages like answer the phone before I kill him and call us now before I beat him. Friends in Johnston called police after seeing her around her apartment complex without the baby. Your selfishness robbed this child the opportunity to crawl, take his first steps or even utter his first words., Johnston Police Chief Lamaz Robinson said, saying the crime shocked and hurt his town of 2,350 known for being in the middle of South Carolinas peach country. The fathers family didnt come to court because of COVID-19, but wrote a statement to the judge asking for a life sentence. Everyone remember Anthony as the baby who was loved by his family in Florida and not just a baby who was placed in a dumpster, the statement said. Jones, wearing a mask, cried during the hearing and said she wished she could do anything to bring back her son. I know I decided to do a horrible, horrible thing and I know that I cant take it back, Jones said. I know Ive offended a lot of people, not just my family but people statewide. I just want to say I wish that day never happened. ALTON Each year, the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine (SIU SDM) provides approximately $50,000 worth of free dental care for children in need during Give Kids a Smile Day. The SIU SDM is excited to offer its 15th annual Give Kids a Smile Day on Monday, Oct. 12. Free comprehensive dental care will be provided to qualifying children (those eligible for free and reduced-priced meal programs) ages 3-13. Appointments are required. Parents or guardians are invited to make an appointment by calling Holly at 618-474-7200. The world is still at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which can be expected to get nastier as the second wave develops in Europe, a medical expert has told MPs. David Nabarro, who is one of the World Health Organisations (WHO) special envoys on Covid-19, told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that Covid had got so out of control it now threatened a global economic contraction in a situation much worse than anything from a science fiction film. And he scornfully dismissed reported claims from US secretary of state Mike Pompeo that the WHOs approach to the outbreak was biased because its director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had been secretly "bought" by China. Giving evidence by video link, the co-director of Imperial College Londons Institute of Global Health Innovation was asked what response he would give to people who played down the significance of Covid-19 or blamed it on a conspiracy designed to make them take vaccines. Dr Nabarro told MPs: None of us find the present situation anything other than horrible grotesque, really embarrassing. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA Its a terrible situation, a health issue that has got so out of control its knocking the world into, not just a recession, but a huge economic contraction which will probably double the number of poor people, double the number of malnourished, lead to hundreds of millions of small businesses going bankrupt and generally wreck the destination for a lot of young people who are not going to get educational opportunity. Dr Nabarro said: Its awful. And we really, really are, all of us, deeply saddened and troubled by it. That applies to most people in our world who are all having to make sense of something that they couldnt imagine. Its much worse than any of the science fiction about pandemics. This is really serious were not even at the middle of it yet. Were still at the beginning of it. And were beginning to see what damage its going to cause the world. And its getting nastier as we go into this particular phase in Europe of watching the thing come back again. Dr Nabarro said that he understood why people grasped at conspiracy theories, as everyone would love to find a convenient explanation for the virus. He added: I think weve got to entertain the fact that everybody everywhere is looking for an explanation, and we need to level with them and say we quite understand it. We know how absolutely awful this is for so many hundreds of millions of people. Based on my understanding, this virus was visited on us at the very end of last year, and weve been learning to live with it for this year, and we will make sense of it, and we will be able to work out how to do it, but its going to take us quite a bit longer. Asked about the attacks on the WHO by members of Donald Trumps administration including Mr Pompeo, Dr Nabarro said: I want to really, really stress that this is an organisation whose values are global, are for equity and for justice and the people working there are all in that vein. I have seen absolutely no evidence of anybody - particularly in emergencies programme because they're just such such amazingly committed people - showing any of the kind of bias claimed. I do not recognise what the secretary of state said when he made those comments. Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - 1 hour ago In my opinion, factors formed the past couple of weeks, and still forming, have created an outcrop on the wall of worry. Friday Fading for Front Month Cotton Barchart - Fri Jan 21, 4:27PM CST Cotton prices closed the last trading session of the week 143 to 212 points in the red. Earlier in the session, prices had rallied by more than a penny to close their overnight gap. For the week, March... CTH22 : 120.75s (-1.73%) CTK22 : 117.98s (-1.41%) CTZ21 : 111.55s (+0.25%) Beans Fade into Weekend Barchart - Fri Jan 21, 4:27PM CST After rallying sharply on Wednesday and Thursday, soybeans eased back 10 3/4 to 11 1/2 cents on the weeks final trading day. For the March contract, that capped the weeks gain @ 3.25%. Soymeal futures... ZSH22 : 1414-2s (-0.81%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.7007 (-0.87%) ZSK22 : 1423-0s (-0.80%) ZSX21 : 1234-0s (+1.79%) ZSPX21US.CM : 12.3270 (+1.90%) Corn Gains into Weekend Barchart - Fri Jan 21, 4:27PM CST Fridays corn market ended with futures 2 to 5 1/4 cents in the black. The March contract completed the week with a 3.35% gain. USDA reported the weeks average cash corn oil price ranged from 62.5... ZCH22 : 616-2s (+0.86%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.0240 (+0.81%) ZCK22 : 614-0s (+0.53%) ZCZ21 : 588-6s (+0.77%) ZCPZ21US.CM : 5.7930 (-0.49%) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 16:08 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4571fcf 1 City murder,murder-case,mutilation-case,Kalibata-City-apartment Free The mutilated body of a 32-year-old male was found at Kalibata City Apartment in South Jakarta on Wednesday night. Parts of the body had been wrapped in a plastic bag and then put in a suitcase. Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Yusri Yunus said the family of the victim had reported him missing to the Jakarta Police on Sept. 12. His family reported on Sept. 12 that he had been missing since Sept. 9, Yusri said on Wednesday, as quoted by tribunnews.com. Yusri said the body had been taken to Kramat Jati Police Hospital for an autopsy. The initial autopsy result confirmed that the mutilated body belonged to the person reported missing by his family. Read also: Crime surges as restrictions eased The head of the Pancoran District Police's Criminal Investigation Unit, First Insp. Supardi, added that the alleged murderers had initially kept the body in another place. The victim was mutilated in Central Jakarta, and then the body was kept in another place before being taken to Kalibata City, he said. The alleged perpetrators were arrested on the same day by the Jakarta Police at a house they had rented on Monday in Depok City, West Java. There are two suspects, allegedly husband and wife. They have been arrested by the police in Depok, Pancoran District Police chief Comr. Johanies Soeprijanto Sinateroe said. (aly) NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she expects John Barilaro to stick to his word and honour their signed agreement to not jeopardise the Coalition despite his ongoing threats. Ms Berejiklian said she took Mr Barilaro on his word, despite the Deputy Premier refusing to rule out in Parliament on Wednesday that he would again threaten to split the Coalition. Premier Gladys Berejiklian has laid out her expectations of Deputy Premier John Barilaro. Credit:Rhett Wyman "I know what he wrote in that statement that he signed and I take his word on that," she said. "I'm someone that gives people the benefit of the doubt and certainly that's what I'm doing." On Thursday morning, senior Liberal minister Andrew Constance warned the Coalition partnership has never been so unstable as it has been with Mr Barilaro as Nationals leader. The incubation period of a pathogen/disease describes the duration between initial exposure and the onset of disease symptoms. In the case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or COVID-19, the incubation period is between 2 - 14 days according to the CDC in December 2020. Image Credit: creativeneko/Shutterstock.com What is coronavirus? Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause infection in animals and humans. In humans, coronaviruses cause a variety of respiratory infections, ranging from a mild common cold to more severe Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and recently evolved coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 is named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). What is an incubation period? An incubation period measures the time from pathogen exposure to disease onset. This provides valuable information about disease transmission dynamics, as well as facilitating the implementation of appropriate non-pharmaceutical control measures, such as contact tracing and estimating the duration of home quarantine for people who are infected by the pathogen or came in contact with an infected person. Moreover, the incubation period can help health professionals effectively diagnose a disease based on observed symptoms and the patients clinical history. There are several determining factors for the incubation period, including the route of pathogen transmission, pathogen load (amount of pathogen entered the body), and functionality of the host immune system. The most reliable way of estimating the incubation period is to methodically study case reports that involve patients with single pathogen exposure. In the case of patients who are exposed to the pathogen multiple times, it is impossible to determine which exposure triggered the disease onset. What is the incubation period of SARS-CoV-2? Since its emergence in December 2019 in China, the rapid spread of deadly SARS-CoV-2 has warned the need to search epidemiological characteristics of the virus, including the incubation period. According to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the estimated range of incubation periods of SARS-CoV-2 was 1 14 days. The average incubation period was estimated to be 5 6 days. In the early stages of the pandemic, a study analyzing confirmed cases of COVID-19 (January 2020 February 2020) obtained from 50 provinces, regions, and countries outside Wuhan, China (a total of 181 cases), estimated that the average incubation period of SARS-CoV-2 was 5.1 days. About 97.5% of COVID-19 patients are estimated to develop symptoms within 11.5 days of infection, and about 2.5% of patients are estimated to develop symptoms within 2.2 days. Regarding specific symptoms, the study findings reveal that the average incubation period to fever onset is 5.7 days. The study has also assumed that out of 10,000 confirmed cases, 101 will develop symptoms after 14 days of isolation. One important thing to be remembered is that the incubation period may vary from person to person. One study analyzing 1099 confirmed COVID-19 patients has shown that the average incubation period is estimated to be 3 days, with an incubation period range of 0 to 24 days. There is also evidence claiming that the incubation period can be extended up to 27 days. There is one piece of evidence regarding asymptomatic cases claiming that the incubation period for an asymptomatic patient is 19 days. However, regarding an incubation period as long as 24 days, the World Health Organization mentioned in a press release that such a long incubation period is more likely due to a second infection rather than a continuation of the first infection. Do new variants affect the incubation period? It is important to note that as of 2021, many variants of SARS-CoV-2 have developed, some of them which have been a cause for concern due to problematic mutations causing changes such as an increased transmissibility. Research on the incubation period has not been widely carried out with regard to individual variants. More information is needed to make any conclusions on whether the incubation period could have changed. For now health authorities such as the CDC and WHO still recommend a quarantine period of 14 days. What are the incubation periods of other respiratory viruses? According to scientific evidence, the estimated incubation period of SARS CoV is 5 to 7 days, extending up to 10 days. In the case of MERS CoV, the average incubation period is 5 days; however, the incubation period may vary from 2 to 14 days. In seasonal influenza, the average incubation period is 2 days, with a range of 1 to 4 days. In the case of swine flu (H1N1 influenza virus), the incubation period varies between 1 and 4 days, which can be extended up to 7 days. Image Credit: fizkes/Shutterstock.com References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2020. Symptoms of coronavirus. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html World Health Organization. 2003. SARS case fatality ration, incubation period. https://www.who.int/csr/sars/archive/2003_05_07a/en/ Worldometer. 2020. Coronavirus Incubation Period. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incubation-period/ Lauer SA. 2020. The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7081172/ Further Reading A Vietnam Airlines plane parks at the Da Nang Airport in Da Nang City in August 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Gia Chinh. Storm Noul has forced the cancellation of several dozen flights as three central Vietnam airports suspend their Friday operations. The Chu Lai Airport in Quang Nam Province will suspend operations from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, the Da Nang Airport from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. and the Phu Bai Airport in Thua Thien-Hue Province from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam announced Thursday afternoon. National carrier Vietnam Airlines said it has canceled 10 flights between Hanoi/HCMC and Da Nang, while delaying four flights until after 8 p.m. Friday. It has also canceled 14 Friday flights between Hanoi/HCMC and Hue and eight to and from Quang Nam. Three other flights between Hanoi/HCMC and Quang Binh Province, also in central Vietnam, would delay their arrival until after 7 p.m. Friday. Flights from and to Buon Ma Thuot, Quy Nhon, Da Lat, Vinh and Thanh Hoa airports might also be rescheduled due to the storm, Vietnam Airlines said. The national carrier would operate 22 flights to and from Da Nang, Hue and Quang Nam on Saturday to help evacuate passengers. Budget carrier Vietjet Air said it has canceled six Friday flights between HCMC and Quang Nam, eight between Hanoi/HCMC and Da Nang, and eight between Hanoi/HCMC and Hue. Another budget carrier, Bamboo Airways, has canceled four flights between Hanoi/HCMC and Da Nang, and two each between Hanoi and the Central Highlands' Da Lat and Buon Ma Thuot. Other domestic flights on Friday might also be delayed due to the storms impacts, the carriers said. Passengers of canceled flights will be transferred to other flights after the weather improves. Storm Noul, the fifth storm to form in the South China Sea (known in Vietnam as the East Sea) this year, is expected to make landfall around Friday afternoon in central Vietnam. As of 4 p.m. Thursday, the storms eye was on the southern sea regions of Vietnams Paracel Islands with a maximum wind speed of 100 kph. In the next 24 hours, the storm is expected to move west-northwest at 20-25 kph. It is expected to maintain its maximum wind speed upon making landfall in localities from Quang Binh to Quang Nam, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting. The storm is expected to trigger rainfall of up to 400 mm in provinces from Ha Tinh to Quang Ngai on Thursday and Friday. New Delhi: A 46-year-old Indian has been abducted in Malaysia and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has directed the Indian Mission in that country to send her a report about the case so that he can be rescued. "We are taking this abduction very seriously. I have asked Indian high commissioner in Malaysia to keep me informed on daily basis," she tweeted. Her response came after the family of Keshpal Singh, who is missing in Malaysia for over 20 days, sought her intervention. "@SushmaSwaraj ji Pls help he has been kidnapped by someone. he asked for money yesterday#sos malay police isn't helping @MEAIndia #Malaysia," tweeted Keshpal's son Yogendra. Keshpal has been working in Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur for last five years. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Online Learning How HyFlex Engineering Lab Instruction Works at Missouri S&T Now that students are returning to campus at Missouri S&T, with a mix of online and in-person classes, an instructor in electrical engineering is perfecting his approach to lab activities. Kelvin Erickson, a professor of electrical engineering, teaches a course with multiple sections on programmable manufacturing automation. When the switch to all-remote instruction began in the spring, Erickson began meeting with his students on Zoom to continue helping them learn how to design manufacturing automation using robotics, assembly and warehouse storage and retrieval systems. Because all of the equipment was accessible online, that class used cameras and large displays that already existed in the lab. The gear enabled students to "pan around" and see if their machines were operating the way they wanted them to, according to student Timothy Cochran, a senior in electrical engineering. "To me, the transition was very smooth." Erickson is no stranger to online teaching. As a participant in a decade-old virtual instruction arrangement through a cooperative engineering degree program with his own university and Missouri State University in Springfield, he has worked with remote students in courses taught by S&T faculty. Typically, Erickson and one teaching assistant could oversee students at six separate lab stations when they were all in class. The move to online learning cut that in half. As Erickson recounted in a university article about the program, "We figured out that one person can handle three teams of [three] students online." To compensate, he added another teaching assistant to each lab section. Those teaching assistants could also be remote. Now, the course will be offered in a HyFlex model. Each week, one student will be at each of the six stations in the lab while another is online. The following week, they'll switch places. And if the need arises, Erickson said he could take the lab back entirely online again. When something goes wrong, Erickson goes into the lab and resets the equipment. "I try to get as close as possible to being physically present in the lab," he told writer Nancy Bowles. "We don't teach the distance students by themselves because we came to see that learning is better in teams." Erickson sounds pleased by the results. The students "are putting in two weeks of work during the first week," from what he's noticed. "Obviously, they prefer to be in the lab, but we try to make it as easy as possible to do it remotely." A video showing the setup is available on YouTube. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday and lauded his personal contribution to the strengthening of strategic partnership between India and Russia. Prime Minister Modi, born on September 17 in 1950, turned 70 on Thursday. In a letter to Modi, Putin said, "Kindly accept my heartfelt congratulations on your 70th birth anniversary." Praising Modi, Putin said his activity as India's head of the government has earned him the well-deserved respect of compatriots and high international prestige. "Under your leadership India is successfully moving along the path of socio-economic, scientific and technical development," he said. "It is hard to overestimate your personal contribution to the strengthening of the special and privileged strategic partnership between our countries," Putin noted in the letter uploaded on the website of the Russian Embassy in New Delhi. The president said he values the kind, friendly relations that have developed between him and Modi. "I look forward to continue constructive dialogue with you and work closely together on topical issues of the bilateral and international agenda. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you good health, happiness, well-being and every success," he said. Also read: PM Modi turns 70 today; Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, JP Nadda, others extend wishes A military whistleblower says federal officials sought some unusual crowd control devices including one thats been called a heat ray to deal with protesters outside the White House on the June day that law enforcement forcibly cleared Lafayette Square. In written responses to questions from a House committee, National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco said the Defense Departments lead military police officer for the National Capital Region sent an email asking if the D.C. National Guard possessed a long-range acoustic device used to transmit loud noises or an Active Denial System, the so-called heat ray. DeMarco said he responded that the Guard was not in possession of either device. National Public Radio and The Washington Post first reported DeMarcos testimony. Use of either the acoustic device or the Active Denial System would have been a significant escalation of crowd control for the Guard members, particularly since the Defense officials ordered that the Guard troops not be armed when they went into D.C. Law enforcement personnel were armed. And although active-duty military troops were sent to the region, they remained at bases outside the District in case they were needed but never actually entered the District. The Active Denial System was developed by the military nearly two decades ago, and was unveiled to the public around 2007. Its not clear that its ever actually been used in combat, although there are reports it has deployed. The system, which emits a directed beam of energy that causes a burning heat sensation, was considered a non-lethal way to control crowds, particularly when it may be difficult to tell the enemy from innocent civilians in war zones. Use of the device appeared to stall amid questions about whether it actually caused more serious injuries or burns than initially thought. The Long Range Acoustic Device, also called a sound cannon, sends out loud messages or sounds and has been used by law enforcement to disperse crowds. The U.S. military has, in recent years, ordered the LRAD for the Navys Military Sealift Command to be used by ships to hail or warn other vessels. DeMarco testified in late July before the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating the use of force against crowds in Lafayette Square that night. His remarks on the crowd control devices came in response to follow-up questions from the committee. DeMarcos lawyer sent his answers to the committee on Aug. 28; NPR posted the document online Wednesday. The Trump administration has said that vicious attacks by protesters led federal forces to turn on what appeared to be a largely peaceful crowd June 1 in the square in front of the White House. Law enforcement and security officers that night clubbed and punched protesters and unleashed mounted officers and chemical agents against them in one of the most controversial confrontations at the height of this years nationwide protests over the killing of Black people at the hands of police. The forceful clearing of Lafayette Square, long one of the nations most prominent venues for demonstrations, came minutes before President Donald Trump appeared in the area, on his way to stage a photo event in front of a historic church nearby. International Pakistan freezes over 900 assets of JuD, JeM Islamabad, Sep 17 (IANS) | Publish Date: 9/17/2020 12:58:04 PM IST The Pakistan government has frozen a total of 964 assets of proscribed organisations Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) as it takes action against elements involved in terror financing and money laundering as part of efforts towards fulfilling requirements of the Financial Action Task Forces (FATF) 27-point action plan. As per the the Interior Ministry, 907 of the frozen assets belonged to the JuD and 57 to the JeM. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said that the provincial home departments had taken the action to freeze assets of the JuD and the JeM under the United Nations Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order 2019, issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. A total of 611 properties of the JuD were frozen in Punjab, 108 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 80 in Sindh, 61 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), 30 in Balochistan and 17 in the Islamabad Capital Territory, he told the Senate, the upper house of the Pakistani legislature, about the governments progress against proscribed outfits. Eight properties of the JeM were frozen in Punjab, 29 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 12 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, four in the Islamabad Capital Territory, three in Sindh and one in Balochistan, he added. Giving details, Khan said: The frozen properties of the JuD include 75 schools, four colleges, 330 mosques and seminaries, 186 dispensaries, 15 hospitals, 62 ambulances, a funeral bus (hearse), three disaster management offices, 10 boats, 17 buildings, a plot, agricultural land and two motorcycles. The frozen assets of JeM, Khan said, include 53 mosques and seminaries, two dispensaries and two ambulances. The steps come at a time when Pakistan is working hard to comply with all the 27 points of the Action Plan given by FATF to see itself out of the grey list. Earlier this year, a Pakistan anti-terrorism court sentenced JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to five years and six months imprisonment in two cases, after finding him guilty of terror financing and association with other banned outfits. JuDs other top leaders, at least 13 in number, were also booked in about two dozen cases of terror financing and money laundering during July last year. The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) registered the cases under the Anti-Terror Act in Lahore, Gujranwala and Multan against JUD, Lashkar-e-Taiba and charity umbrella organisation Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF). It was revealed that the accused were raising funds under at least five trusts, namely the Dawatul Irshad Trust, the Moaz Bin Jabal Trust, the Al Anfaal Trust, the Al Madina Foundation Trust and the Alhamd Trust. A local Vicar at an Anglican church has attracted online admirers who compared him to the 'good looking' character in the TV series Fleabag. Reverend Dr Matt Davis from St Luke's Church in Formby, Merseyside has become an instant hit among admirers after news of his new position became known yesterday. A photograph of Rev. Davis, shared on a local community Facebook group, attracted hundreds of comments from admirers across the UK. Reverend Dr Matt Davis from St Luke's Church in Formby, Merseyside has become an instant hit among admirers after news of his new position became known yesterday Dozens of followers compared him to the Priest in Fleabag where Andrew Scott's character attracts the attention of the main character due to his good looks. The real-life vicar, originally from Northern Ireland, has been branded 'gorgeous' and compared to the 'Hot Priest' in popular comedy TV series. Local community page, Formby Bubble shared his photo on their Facebook page, writing: 'New Vicar at St Luke's Church Formby.' The post has attracted hundreds of likes and love heart emojis, as well as over 500 comments - mostly referring to Rev. Davis' appearance. Lorna Yarwood Hillon wrote: 'Gorgeous.' Gill Hurst responded: 'Lorna Yarwood Hillon you beat me to that. 'Well god gave us eyes to see so.' Dozens of followers compared him to the Priest in Fleabag where Andrew Scott's character (pictured alongside Phoebe Waller-Bridge) attracts the attention of the main character due to his good looks Julie Walker said: 'I'm sure your congregation will have a sharp rise in numbers now you've joined the Parish. Wishing you every success in your new role.' Amy Lizzy wrote: 'Just had the sudden urge to go to confession.' Suz Ast'b wrote: 'Fleabag has a lot to answer for.' Alice Arnell said: 'Could be a Fleabag type situation.' And Matheus Cristian said: 'Handsome father like Fleabag.' Rev. Davis' induction into St. Luke's Church is due to be held on September 22 with limited numbers being allowed to attend due to Covid guidelines. Admirers will get to watch the service via a live YouTube link found on the church's website. However, they might be disappointed to learn that Rev Davis has been married to his wife Liz for 13 years and has two young sons. The Rev Dr Matt Davis told St Luke's Church September magazine: 'It's our prayer that as we get to know you all and minister alongside you that we would be a great encouragement and help as the Lord continues to grow his kingdom.' GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- LaFleur, a local digital marketing agency, recently launched a new website for Grand Rapids-based nonprofit the Alano Club of Kent County as part of the agency's annual nonprofit website initiative. Each year, LaFleur selects one local nonprofit and builds them a website at no charge. "As a team, we chose the Alano Club because they fulfill an important community need by supporting individuals and families affected by addiction," said Sarah LaFleur, the agency's community relations manager. The Alano Club of Kent County: Addiction Support in Grand Rapids Founded in 1952, the Alano Club of Kent County is a nonprofit that supports the West Michigan community in addiction recovery. The organization hosts 17 different recovery support groups and directly helps thousands of people each year. Alano Club Executive Director Grant Young says the population the Alano Club serves has been disproportionately affected during the COVID-19 crisis, and the nonprofit hasn't been able to gather and perform community outreach like they normally would. Nevertheless, the Club has reopened its doors since the shutdown in efforts to serve the newcomer, while practicing safety in compliance with C.D.C. guidelines. "This new website comes at a critical time where awareness of our services and financial support are essential to ensure our Club's mission continues to reach individuals and their families who are affected by addiction," Young says. New Website Focuses on Clear Calls to Action The Alano Club wanted their new website to have more visibility in search engines and a better user experience for site visitors. "Our new website needed to serve two functions really well," says Grant Young. "The first is that we needed [to make sure] individuals looking to join our fellowship could easily find our meetings schedule. The second is that we needed an easy and straightforward way for users to make a donation, because we depend on the generous support of donors." The LaFleur team optimized the club's website content, incorporating essential keywords to improve the Alano Club's visibility in search engine results. "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for individuals looking for the community at the Alano Club to find and access the organization's services," says Sarah LaFleur. "COVID-19 has presented so many challenges, and we hope their new site helps more people find and support them." As the Alano Club navigates challenges presented by the pandemic, they continue to provide year-round essential support to their community. "Our mission is to serve those who are affected by or recovering from addiction by providing a welcoming place for support, meetings, and fellowship, and we wanted our website to reflect that," says Grant Young. "Now, when you visit our website, it's bright and clean and conveys that we are glad they found us. I am very grateful for LaFleur's talents to help shape our website, in efforts to serve the newcomer at our best, and their kindness and hard work will echo." To learn more about the Alano Club of Kent County and their mission, visit their new website at gralanoclub.org. LaFleur Is Committed to Community Outreach This project is part of LaFleur's broader community engagement program, which allows LaFleur employees to volunteer time and skills to local organizations. Next year's nonprofit initiative will be announced in early spring. Throughout the rest of the year, the LaFleur team volunteers at least once a month at local nonprofits in the Greater Grand Rapids Area. Recent volunteer activities have included work at the Humane Society of West Michigan, H.U.G.S. Ranch, the Children's Healing Center, and Slow Food West Michigan. To learn more about LaFleur's recent volunteer work and commitment to community outreach, visit the agency's website at lafleur.marketing/community-outreach. About LaFleur LaFleur is a forward-thinking digital marketing partner for growing businesses across the country. We create innovative, data-driven marketing strategies and assets for a wide range of clients that include law firms, healthcare organizations, and more. To learn about LaFleur, visit our website at lafleur.marketing . SOURCE LaFleur Related Links https://lafleur.marketing Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people at a youth camp on the island of Utoya, shortly after killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo in 2011 Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway's worses peace-time killing in 2011, has applied for parole, his lawyer said Wednesday. Breivik also plans to file a new lawsuit against the Norwegian state regarding his conditions in prison, where he is kept apart from other inmates, lawyer Oystein Storrvik said. In July 2011, disguised as a police officer, Breivik tracked and gunned down 69 people, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya, shortly after killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo. He was jailed in 2012 to Norway's then-harshest sentence, 21 years in prison which can be extended indefinitely. "In his name I have sent in a request for parole," Storrvik told daily newspaper Verdens Gang. "He has the right to a legal review for parole at the end of the minimum period, which is 10 years in his case. It's a right all convicts ... have and that he wants to exercise," he said. The lawyer also said Breivik plans to file another lawsuit against Norway to protest against "such a long period of isolation" in prison. Breivik has previously filed a lawsuit against the state over his prison conditions, which he said were in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights barring "inhumane" and "degrading" treatment. After winning a partial legal victory in 2016, he has since been rebuffed by Norway's higher courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In Skien prison, Breivik has three cells each measuring 10 square meters (107 square feet), with outdoor views outdoors, and he can exercise, play video games and watch television. A support group for families of the victims contacted by AFP had no comment on his parole request. phy/po/bp Great Health News May Ease One Driver of Super-Hot Residential Real Estate Demand Commentary Californias COVID-19 Statewide Update indicates that the 14-day moving average of the rate of positive COVID-19 diagnostic tests is now at a record-low level, at 3.6 percent. The state target is 8 percent. Many public health officials believe that the percentage of positive test results is a leading indicator of whether the number of cases is likely to increase or decrease in ensuing weeks. The percentage of positive test results for COVID-19 in California is at an all time low, at 3.6 percent, as of Sept. 16, 2020. (Tableau Public for the State of California) If the incidence of COVID-19 in the community is actually going down, there will be many ramifications, one of which is that school districts will be allowed to reopen their facilities to in-person instruction. If many school districts choose to reopen their schools to in-person instruction, that may allow the strange, bizarre, upside-down homebuying season of 2020 to finally wind down. Currently, families are still seeking larger homes, to facilitate at-home instruction in the same place while older family members are seeking to work from home. This situation perfectly coincides with families exodus from higher-density places where there may have been some anxiety about being able to implement social distancing. These phenomena among home buyers, along with home sellers not putting their houses on the market, has led to a very tight market, marked by quickly rising home prices in Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. The home-buying season, even this year, was likely to slow as Thanksgiving approaches; families generally dont want to move during the fall and winter holiday season. But changing schools may have seemed less traumatic with students not engaging in a live setting along with their friends at school. The great news regarding public health might change some of those dynamics. Of course, among homeowners who might otherwise be motivated to sell properties, if tenants deferring rent cant be evicted or if the owner is in mortgage forbearance because of the pandemic, then those owners still wont be able to sell. And many people may still seek larger homes available in less-densely populated suburbs, especially if their workplaces continue to allow for working from home. Tim Shaler is a professional investor and economist based in Southern California. He is a regular columnist for The Epoch Times, where he exclusively provides some of his original economic analysis. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Islamabad : Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday raked up the Kashmir issue in his first meeting with the new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres but got no positive response to his request for the world bodys intervention in the issue. Sharif, who met Guterres on the sidelines of World Economic Forum at Davos, said Kashmir needed attention of the UN, the Prime Ministers Office said here in a statement. A sustained dialogue process on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir is essential to make progress. It was in this spirit that we invited India for discussions on the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, Sharif said to the UN chief. The Pakistan Prime Minister claimed that India did not respond positively to his countrys invitation for dialogue and adopted a no-talks posture, vitiating the atmosphere through incendiary statements.... According to the statement, Sharif also raised the issue of Indus Water Treaty with the UN Secretary General. We look forward to your leadership and good offices.. the United Nations has long standing responsibility to play a role in the resolution of these issues, Sharif said. Guterres gave no positive response to Sharifs demand. He told Sharif that he was fully cognizant of the sensitivity of the issues between India and Pakistan which has security consequences for the region, the statement said. He praised Pakistans contribution for the United Nations and Peace-keeping operations as well as hosting millions of Afghan refugees, the PMO said. Sharif said his governments foremost priority was to build a peaceful neighbourhood. We are committed to lasting peace and security in our region and an environment conducive to economic cooperation; which is in the interest of all the people of South Asia, he said. Sharif also praised the current Secretary General as the ideal candidate to take the UN forward into the 21st century and invited him to visit Pakistan at the earliest. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. AMHERST Several large marble plaques honoring more than 300 residents who fought and died in the Civil War have remained out of public view for more than 20 years, though town officials are nearing a solution. The tablets donated to the town by E.M. Stanton Post 147 of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans organization comprised of former Union soldiers in 1893 have been crated and stored in the public works garage since 1997. The more than century-old plaques each measure 56-by-75 inches and weigh between 600 and 800 pounds. They bear the names of more than 300 Amherst soldiers and sailors, including 21 local Black residents. Seven of these men served with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Division the first Black regiment in the Union Army. In the immediate future, the town will relocate the Civil War tablets to a climate-controlled location, Town Manager Paul Bockelman told The Republican on Thursday. Moving these large, heavy but fragile objects without doing harm to them is most important. Once there and secured, the town will bring in the original conservator to assess their condition, recommend treatment if necessary, and identify options for short-term storage and/or display. He added, The town continues to seek a permanent home for these historic artifacts of Amhersts history. They deserve a place of prominence where they can be displayed securely, seen widely, and enjoyed by all. During a meeting Wednesday of the towns Historical Commission, the board discussed how to safely take the artifacts out of storage, clean them without doing damage, and locate a public space to show this dimension of the towns history. In a Sept. 11 letter to Bockelman, Amherst Historical Commission Jane Wald wrote, We ask that you move the tablets to a climate-controlled room large enough for them to be uncrated, inspected, and conserved if need be. This is a very important first step in advance of any efforts to permanently display the tablets which has been an ongoing goal of the Town and public for over 20 years since the tablets were removed from Town Hall. The commissions letter to Bockelman includes a timeline indicating when and where the tablets had been publicly displayed, and efforts made since 1997 to find a place to show them. Amherst Town Hall, which was built in 1889, was the first home of the tablets, when they were gifted by Grand Army of the Republic in 1893. For 69 years they were displayed at the buildings entrance foyer and stair tower landings. Renovations to the building in 1962 resulted in relocating the tablets into the basement area, where at the time, the Police Department headquarters was. In 1989, with construction of new police building, and the departments moving out of town hall the Civil War tablets were removed from Town Hall basement wall displays and stacked together on the floor, left leaning against basement walls, the historical commission letter states. The marble plaques were then moved to the DPW garage at Ruxton in 1997 for storage. The letter also describes efforts over past 23 years to find a suitable way to display the tablets. Since the tablets are the property of the town, any decision regarding the storage or display location is in the purview of the town manager," Wald wrote. "The Historical Commission is here to serve as an advisory role and would be happy to assist throughout this process however we can. Indian soldiers remain undeterred as China resorts to Hindi warnings, Punjabi music India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: The Chinese have been resorting to its old tactics to demoralise the Indian troops amidst the tense stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh. Several loudspeakers have been set up by the Chinese PLA on which they play punjabi songs and also deliver messages in Hindi. The latest in the offing are the loudspeakers put up by the Chinese PLA along the border areas. On the loudspeakers there are constant announcements made in broken Hindi about the futility about being deployed at these heights. Constant attempts are also being made to tell the Indian soldiers that they are deployed here in the winter only because of the fancies of their leaders in New Delhi. Indian Army ready to fight full-fledged war with China even in winters The Chinese had used similar tactics in 1962 in the western and eastern sectors as well as in 1967 during the Nathu La skirmish. The messages in Hindi are clearly an attempt to dishearten the soldiers and also cause disaffection among the troops. It may be recalled that the Indian Army thwarted a PLA attempt on Rezang La and Rechin La Ridgeline. India had on August 29 repositioned its troops and dominated the heights of Finger 4 on the north bank of Pangong Tso. This move by India had taken the Chinese aback and today the PLA is resorting to psy-ops to demoralise the Indian troops. An official familiar with the developments said that the Chinese are known to resort to such things. Let them play music and send any message, but we are ready and our soldiers are battle hardened, the officer said. India has sought for the restoration of status quo ante on the Line of Actual Control. With China showing no signs of disengagement, India is rushing supplies with the Border Road Organisation to ensure that the Chang La pass and Khardung La on route to contested Pangong Tso is kept snow free through this year. The BRO is also expected to strengthen all bridges and culverts to Class 70 by October 15. Class 70 would mean that the bridge can bear a load of 70 tonnes. This would mean that the road could be used to deploy T-90 tanks, surface to air missiles and infantry combat vehicle along the Eastern Ladakh Line of Actual Control. On Tuesday Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh made a statement in Parliament on the Indo-China issue. There was a face-off in Galwan Valley on June 15, in which the Indian forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese forces, Rajnath Singh also said. The indian forces will forcefully counter all Chinese aggressive actions along the border. Since April we have seen an increase in troops and weapon deployment along the LAC in Ladakh, Singh said. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News Let no one have any doubt about our capabilities. We want peace and will continue to talk to China. Both sides should respect the Line of Actual Control Singh also said. All mutual agreements must be respected, he also said. Class 70 bridges: India preps for long haul with China China does not accept customary and peripheral alignment of Sino-India border, Singh also said. There has been a massive build up by the Chinese along the LAC and this has led to several friction points, the Defence Minister also said. Our Armed Forces will successfully thwart all threats and protect the borders. We should be proud of our forces, he further said. 17.09.2020 LISTEN As days turn to weeks and months clamping down the famous elections 2020, political parties, as well as independent candidates, are putting up some finishing binds, leaving no stone unturned in making sure victory doesnt slip. In the Garu constituency of the Upper East Region, former National Democratic Congress Member of Parliament-Dominic Azumah Azimbe is said to be contesting the elections as an independent parliamentary candidate. His move has however sent the former Greater Accra Regional hospitals Director begging for a reverse. Dr Thomas Anaba in an interview with this reporter profusely called on the former legislator to rescind his independent candidature decision for the betterment of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as well as the good people of Garu whom he represented in the law-making house for well over 20 years. Dominic Azumh who is said to have fallen out with the NDC after his defeat in the partys 2019 parliamentary primaries is gearing up for the 2020 elections as an independent candidate. But Dr. Anaba who expressed worry over the former lawmakers decision is thus calling on him to rescind his move. I am humbly calling on my elder brother not to contest as an independent candidate. I will be happy seeing him leading us in the constituency as an elder in the 2020 polls. Respectfully, I am begging him to rescind his decision Dr. Anaba said as he called for unity ahead of the December polls. Mr Dominic Azumah is said to have disclosed in a media interview that all is set for his independent candidature. His decision has received mixed reactions. But for Dr Anaba, the best that can happen is for his elder brother to rescind his decision and play an elderly role in the NDC ahead of the December polls. The NDC has safeguarded the seat in Garu for the fifth time. The party only lost the seat to a parliamentary candidate in the 2000 elections. The National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party have suffered internal wrangling- leading to breakaways. PENSACOLA, Fla. - Rescuers on the Gulf Coast used boats and high-water vehicles Thursday to reach people cut off by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally, even as a second round of flooding took shape along rivers and creeks swollen by the storms heavy rains. Across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, homeowners and businesses began cleaning up, and officials inspected bridges and highways for safety, a day after Sally rolled through with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 metres) of rain in many places before it began to break up. Sally sped up late Thursday, moving at 15 mph compared to its previous crawl of 3 and 5 mph (5 and 8 kph), but was still dumping heavy rains in southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, where forecasters also said there was a chance of tornadoes. The storm was expected to dump as much as 8 inches (20 centimetres) in parts of the Carolinas and southern Virginia, prompting warnings of flash flooding and moderate river flooding. As much as 8 inches of rain fell in central Georgia on Thursday. In hard-hit Pensacola and surrounding Escambia County, where Sallys floodwaters had coursed through downtown streets and lapped at car door handles on Wednesday before receding, authorities went door-to-door to check on residents and warn them they were not out of danger. Please, please, were not out of the woods even if weve got beautiful skies today, said Escambia County emergency manager Eric Gilmore. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged Panhandle residents not to let their guard down. Youre going to see the rivers continue to rise, DeSantis said after an aerial tour of the Panhandle. Most rivers fed by the storm were cresting in Alabama and the Panhandle on Thursday, although the Shoal, in Florida was still rising, said Steve Miller of the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama. Near Crestview, Florida, portions of Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 90 the two main roadways running east to west through the Panhandle were closed because of flooding from the Shoal, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Crews carried out at least 400 rescues in Escambia County, Florida, by such means as high-water vehicles, boats and water scooters, authorities said. Rescuers focused their efforts Thursday on Innerarity Point, a narrow strip of land close to Pensacola that is home to waterfront homes and businesses. Floodwaters covered the only road out. Richard Wittig and his family were among scores of people hemmed in by floodwaters on an island at the tip of the point. Two generators powered his house. If I didnt have a working generator, wed be dead. Nobody can get to us, said Wittig, 77. He said he and his son rely on oxygen machines to stay alive. The Florida National Guard said it had deployed about 500 soldiers and airmen to help local authorities evacuate 113 people, though it did not say when and where the rescues took place. In Alabama, on both sides of Mobile Bay, National Guard soldiers from high-water evacuation teams used big trucks Thursday to rescue at least 35 people, authorities said. A volunteer rescue group based on Marcos Island, Florida, known as the Marcos Patriots, received three calls for help, including from an 80-year-old woman in Gulf Shores, Alabama, whose roof had blown off. When a rescue team arrived, she was safe and sound with a neighbour but her house was destroyed, said group co-founder ErinMia Milchman. About 35 miles (56 kilometres) inland, a swollen Murder Creek cut off access between the Alabama towns of Brewton and East Brewton, inundating a grocery store, a tobacco shop, a park and more. Residents behind a police roadblock gazed at the neighbouring city across fast-moving water covering a bridge. East Brewton resident Brenda Davenport said it took only four hours for the water to rise. It could take two days for it to go down, she said. In Orange Beach, Alabama, Janice Sullivan swore she would never ride out a hurricane again. She and her daughter huddled in a second-floor bathroom as Sally blew ashore. You could hear everything hitting the house, she said. You could hear the house moving back and forth. It was literally moaning and cracking. A few people cleaned up in Bristol Park, a creekside neighbourhood where as much as 4 feet (1.2 metres) of water filled brick homes north of Pensacola. Susan Cutts parents fled rising water inside their home into the garage, where they desperately called for help on a dying cellphone until aid arrived. They were on top of their car when they got to them, Cutts said. At least one death, in Alabama, was blamed on the hurricane. Nearly 400,000 homes and businesses were still without power Thursday night, mostly in Alabama and Florida. A section of the main bridge between Pensacola and Pensacola Beach collapsed after it was hit by a barge that broke loose during the storm. At a downtown marina, at least 30 sailboats, fishing boats and other vessels were clumped together in a mass of fiberglass hulls and broken docks. Some boats rested atop sunken ones. Also on Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said a new tropical depression formed in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters said the depression could become a tropical storm as it moves slowly over the western Gulf during the next few days. Meanwhile, Hurricane Teddy strengthened to a powerful Category 4 storm in the Atlantic. The storm currently poses no threat to land. ___ An earlier version of this story was corrected to show that the top rainfall amount was about 2 1/2 feet, not 3 1/2 feet. ___ Calvan reported from Tallahassee, Florida; Wang from Mobile, Alabama. Associated Press reporters Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia; Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Florida; Curt Anderson in Miami and Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans also contributed. Rakul Preet Singh had approached Delhi High Court alleging media trial over reports that she had been named by Rhea Chakraborty as among those within Bollywood who consume drugs. Delhi High Court has sought the centre's stand on actor Rakul Preet Singh's plea to stop the broadcast of programmes connecting her with Rhea Chakraborty drug case. The High Court issued a notice in a petition by the actor against "unsubstantiated" media reports against her. She argued that media reports are being run in contravention with guidelines of the I&B Ministry. Delhi High Court issues notice in petiton by actor #RakulPreet against "unsubstantiated" media reports against her in connection with Rhea Chakraborty drug case. She argues that media reports are being run in contravention with I&B Ministry Guidelines. @Rakulpreet pic.twitter.com/FympNB4MGi Bar & Bench (@barandbench) September 17, 2020 The hearing on Singh's petition seeking a direction to be issued to Ministry of I&B to stop the media barrage against her commenced before the Single Bench of Justice Navin Chawla, tweeted Live Law. Hearing on @Rakulpreet petition seeking a direction to be issued to Ministry of I&B to stop the media barrage against her begins before the Single Bench of Justice Navin Chawla at Delhi HC@MIB_India #SSR #RakulPreetSingh pic.twitter.com/9maByYVyL7 Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) September 17, 2020 The actor cited Programme Code and MIB India guidelines to argue that media cannot run hate campaigns against her. The actor stated, "I got to know during a shoot that Rhea Chakraborty has named me and Sara Ali Khan for taking drugs, and the media started running a campaign against me." The actor, represented by advocate Aman Hingorani, has claimed in her plea that Rhea Chakraborty had already retracted the statement in which she was allegedly named and yet the media reports were connecting her to the case. RPS: You can de-register the channel, they're slandering me without even knowing that Rhea has retracted her statement Court: You file a complaint with the govt@MIB_India #SSR #RakulPreetSingh Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) September 17, 2020 She further added that the media is harassing her and stated that she is seeking a direction to MIB India to ensure media channels are complying with its rules, failing which action is taken against erring channels. The high court directed Prasar Bharati and News Broadcasters Association, apart from the Centre, to consider Singh's petition, " as a representation and decide it expeditiously, including any interim direction that ought to be made," tweeted Bar & Bench. The Centre on its part submitted that an order of pre-censorship against ought not to be passed and that there has been no complaint from her under the Cable TV Act. According to Bar & Bench, the Delhi High Court has also stated that it is hoped media houses and TV channels would show restraint and abide by the Program Code and other guidelines while making any report in connection with the actor. The court also asked the authorities to treat Singh's plea as a representation and take a decision on it before the next date of hearing on 15 October. The entire incident came into being after Rhea Chakraborty reportedly named Sara Ali Khan, Singh and designer Simone Khambatta as those who have consumed narcotics substance when being questioned by the Narcotics Drugs Bureau for alleged link to drug peddlers. (With inputs from Press Trust of India) Nepal crisis will not come in the way of bi-lateral ties with India: Sources With Oli stunning CCP team, China would look to target his credibility K P Oli wishes PM Modi on his birthday India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: Prime Minister of Nepal, K P Sharma Oli conveyed his greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the latter's 70th birthday. PM Modi birthday: Friendships India has cultivated globally | Oneindia News Oli said that the two leaders will continue to work closely together towards strengthening relations between India and Nepal. "Warm greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji on the auspicious occasion of your birthday. I wish you good health and happiness. We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries," Oli said in a tweet. PM Modi was born on September 17, 1950. On PM Modis 70th birthday, wishes pour in from all corners The BJP has launched Seva Saptah to mark the PM's birthday. During this programme various activities such as planting of saplings, distribution of fruits in COVID-19 hospitals, donation of artificial limbs and other equipment would be undertaken. An Oregon man was arrested after he admitted to setting a brush fire along a highway, police said, as brush fires burn through large swaths of the West Coast. Then, they said, he set six more. Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was booked Sunday afternoon after witnesses said he set a section of grass along the I-205 freeway on fire with what appears to be a Molotov cocktail, according to a report by the Portland Police Bureau. Lopez admitted to lighting the fire, and he was booked on charges of reckless burning and disorderly conduct in the second degree, according to the report. He was then released from jail. The device used by Lopez to set the fire on Sunday. Lopez is set to receive a mental health examination after burning six more on Monday. (Courtesy of Portland Police Bureau) Barely 12 hours later, on Monday morning around 3 a.m., Lopez was allegedly back at it. He was arrested once again accused of setting six more fires, all along the same freeway. Portland Fire and Rescue extinguished three of them while passing community members put out the other three. All were caught early. No one was injured and no structures were burnt. Officers located Domingo Lopez, Junior walking along the shoulder and arrested him. They seized a lighter as evidence, the report reads. The news comes as brush fires continue wreaking havoc on the West Coast of the United States, consuming more than 1 million acres of land in Oregon alone, Gov. Kate Brown said last week. After weeks of the blazes, dozens of people have gone missing and at least 36 have died across California, Washington, and Oregon. Domingo Lopez Jr. (Courtesy of Multnomah County Sheriffs Office) Law enforcement agencies have been flooded with calls since at least Thursday about online mentions of members of Antifa, a far-left-wing movement, being arrested for setting fires across the state. Many have lost their homes as well, and two cities in Oregon, Phoenix, and Talent have been nearly wiped out. All of this has been coupled with worsening air quality levels across the coast. Lopez is set to receive a mental health evaluation, according to the report, and was given citations for six additional counts of reckless burning. CNN Wire contributed to this report. South Africa: SA urged to preserve its rich historic heritage South Africa needs to do better at preserving the history of the late kings, queens and other traditional leaders, the Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Obed Bapela, said on Thursday. Bapela was speaking during a virtual Heritage Month celebration webinar hosted by the National House of Traditional Leaders (NHTL), in collaboration with the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. He expressed his displeasure at the state of the King Shaka Memorial in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal, which he visited on Saturday. The manager at the centre took me through some important historical information about the memorial site and the stone that King Shaka was sitting on when he was killed. The centre manager shared with me a number of concerns, ranging from the lack of funding and support from government and its agencies, crime in the area that drives tourists away and lack of parking for visitors, said Bapela. He said his heart broke to see the dilapidated statue of a person of King Shakas calibre. He is someone who was a strong, influential leader, a military strategist and military innovator, who fought and conquered many battles. I have to say, as a country, we can do better to honour our sleeping kings and queens to maintain and preserve our rich, and diverse cultural and heritage history. The country is celebrating Heritage Month under the theme, 'Celebrating South Africas living human treasures'. The question of living human treasures is very relevant, since it is acknowledged that most of what still needs to be excavated, coded and stored is available from the many living archives, said Bapela. CoGTA Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has also tasked Bapela to look at the process of documenting the role played by women traditional leaders, their contribution towards the struggle against apartheid and the injustices they endured. That will be the proper documentation of the [Queen of Bolebedu], which should be traced 400 years back, Bapela said, adding that he will announce the members of the task team in due course. Government has also committed to supporting the process to digitise information about traditional leaders and ensure connectivity in the Traditional Councils. The Deputy Minister said this years celebration will be hosted virtually due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. That shows we have evolved as a people and we should use the advent of technology as an integral part of our culture... Culture and cultural practises are not static. Technology will play a significant part in the restoration of our heritage. He has also encouraged the Provincial Houses to make it their responsibility to work towards the preservation of the cultural sites, as they play an important part in the provinces' heritage. ... We can take lessons from [other] countries on how they preserve their heritage sites... as an integral part of their heritage that contributes to economic stimulation, Bapela said. He also paid tribute to Queen Manthatisi of the Batlokwa nation and applauded her for her bravery, intelligence, and the way she led her people to remain together, despite the frequent raids by other nations. I plead with the National House and Traditional Leaders to ensure that during our lifetime, we achieve [things such as] the return of the head of Bhambatha, which is in England and the return of the head of Hintsa, which is also in England. Bapela hopes that there the statues of Makhado, Moshoeshoe, Sekhukhune, Galeshewe and the many other great kings and queens will be developed. He has also called for the production of archives, films and books, which will safeguard the cultural perspective. If you dont write your own story, someone else will, and they will do so from their own perception. As custodians of the cultural institution and structures, we ought to ensure that we write these stories, narrate them with inspiration and convey such enthusiasm to our future generation. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Australian senior school students tend to have a strong belief in their abilities and feel supported by their teachers, which will help them persevere through adverse events such as disrupted schooling and the coronavirus pandemic. Data gathered from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) suggests the Class of 2020 had strong foundations to deal with the year's setbacks, which have included cancelled co-curricular activities and end-of-year milestones, as well as prolonged periods of remote learning. Senior school students feel supported by their teachers, new data shows. Credit:Craig Abraham But it reveals that high levels of self-efficacy defined as a belief in one's own ability skewed more towards male students, those in private school systems and either overseas-born or first-generation students. PISA national project manager and the report's co-author, Sue Thomson, said the 15-year-old students who sat PISA tests in 2018 would be in their final years of high school now. Ghanaian Counselor, Rev. Charlotte Oduro has disclosed that one of the many activities that interest Pastors is sexual intercourse. According to her, Pastors love having sex a lot and it is almost like they can't do away with it after closing from church. In an interview with Abeiku Santana on Okay FM's 'Drive Time,' programme, Rev. Charlotte Oduro asserted that whenever Pastors finish giving sermons and descend from the pulpit, sex is what they use to relax themselves. Watch full interview below: View this post on Instagram - @therealwomaninme #ekwansodwoodwoo #peacefm #despitemedia A post shared by Peace 104.3 FM (@peace104.3fm) on Sep 16, 2020 at 11:33am 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 Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:52:19|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BANGKOK, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's Center for Economic Situation Administration (CESA) Thursday unveiled details of a new stimulus package estimated at 51 billion baht (1.63 million U.S. dollars) to assist low-income earners impacted by the COVID-19 fallout. The three-month consumption stimulus package will cover 24 million mainly low-income people via two schemes, said the newly established CESA aimed at rebooting the pandemic-hit Thai economy. In the first scheme, 14 million welfare cardholders will receive an extra monthly discount of 500 baht from October to December on their shopping, under the 21-billion-baht scheme. The second scheme covers the "Let's Go Halves" project, where 10 million people will get daily discounts of up to 50 baht on food, beverages and household essentials, which do not cover alcohol, tobacco or lottery tickets. The subsidy is capped at 3,000 baht per person. Thai citizens aged 18 or over can register online. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who chairs the CESA, said the aim of the scheme is to boost domestic consumption and increase purchasing power for low-income groups and the general public. The budget will be allocated from the government's 400-billion-baht recovery loan and proposed to the Cabinet on Sept. 22. Enditem The Rev. Al Sharpton and Ben Crump, an attorney for other victims of police violence including George Floyd's family, led mourners in chants of "Justice for Valentina!" and "Valentina was innocent!" The National Bank of Romania (BNR) has sent 70% of its employees working remotely less than two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, Mugur Tolici, BNR Human Resources Officer, said Thursday. "All the measures that were taken inside the national bank were to ensure continuity of operations and that was done in all the ways already well known applied in all organisations, with staggered hours at the main headquarters and reserve headquarters, by avoiding unnecessary overcrowding in the bank with important but non-critical staff, who can carry out their activity from a distance, so that the challenge was from 0 to 100%, including zero possibility to work remotely, meaning lack of internal regulations, until sending the largest share of staff working remotely. That happened in less than two weeks, from 0 to 70%, a challenge I think to any institution, even more so to a settled, stable institution with a long tradition of 140 years, as the National Bank of Romania is," Tolici told a human resources conference on benefits and challenges of remote working.He mentioned that BNR joined the ranks e of other central banks, currently in September, in the European system of central banks, with an in-person presence at the headquarters of between 15 and 75%, and a large part of the employees continuing to work remotely.Tolici explained that there were also changes in the document trail."From an almost total paper trail of the documents, we switched in an extremely short time to their electronic trail, which I think during the state of emergency probably reached 90-95%. Everything that comes in from outside the bank through the BNR registry, all the documents that used to be dispatched between the directions were somehow digitised, submitted electronically; the use of the business e-mail became relevant, almost the only means of communication. We switched from quite a few in-person meetings to virtual meeting on existing platforms available to us, Webex and Teams, and we found that things can be done differently," said Tolici.The BNR employees not eligible for remote working were given the possibility to take paid days off, provided that they make up for the days in the next 12 months. New Delhi: There have been at least three incidents of firing at the line of actual control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh where Indian and Chinese troops are engaged in a four month long military stand-off. Sources also said that despite an in-principle agreement for the military dialogue, the Chinese army has still not confirmed a date for Corps Commander-level talks. Out of these firing incidents, two happened at the Southern banks of Pangong Tso and one in the finger area on its northern banks. Indian Army has officially acknowledged only one firing incident which took place on September 7 at Mukhpari in the Chushul sector. However, sources said that the first firing incident actually took place earlier, between August 29-31, when Indian Army in a pre-emptive move occupied strategic heights on the Kailash range which overlook entry points of the Spanggur gap in the Chushul sector. The third and bigger firing incident happened on September 8-9 when Indian army occupied higher positions overlooking Chinese posts on the ridgelines of finger 4. Chinese troops were also trying to come near Indian positions and both sides fired more than 100 rounds. All these incidents involved warning shots being fired in the air and not directly at each other. But it remains a fact that for the first time in 45 years firing took place at the LAC by both sides. Indian Army changed the rule of engagement at LAC after the Galwan Valley clash on June 15 where Chinese had used improvised weapons, including iron rods studded with nails, to attack Indian soldiers breaching the agreements between the two countries. Now, Indian Armys local commanders are free to use any weapon under their command when threatened by Chinese troops. Sources said the situation in the Eastern Ladakh remains tense with Indian Army and Air Force at a high alert. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday that it is imperative for India to immediately correct its wrong practices, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tension along the China-India border. He said that China has not been responsible for the recent border situation, and it was India that first violated bilateral agreements, illegally crossing the border line for provocation, unilaterally changing the status quo of the border area, and firing gunshots to threaten the safety of the Chinese border troops, according to Chinese state run media Global Times. Wang hoped that India would abide by the important consensus reached by leaders of the two countries, put the differences at the proper position in bilateral relations, prevent the differences from escalating into conflict and avoid actions that might escalate the situation. "China would like to maintain communication with India through diplomatic and military channels to jointly safeguard peace in the border area," Wang said. According to a report published in South China Morning Post, Chinese troops had raised their combat readiness to the second-highest possible last week after an exchange of gunfire with India, but the alert was lowered after a meeting of the nations foreign ministers. The increase, to second level, meant more weapons and troops were deployed to the front line, and training exercises were ramped up for commanders, officers and soldiers, a military source told the South China Morning Post. The newspaper said that while the combat readiness level had been lowered, it could be reinstated if circumstances changed. Joan Collins has claimed that her late sister Jackie sent her a message from beyond the grave five years after her death. Author Jackie Collins died at the age of 77 in September 2015, following a six-year battle with breast cancer, and her sister Joan today appeared on Loose Women from her London home to discuss the fifth anniversary of her death this week. She explained that after hearing of her sister's death, Joan, 87, and her husband Percy noticed a power cut in her village, which caused all the lights in the room to turn off. After the same thing happened at her home last night, Joan felt her sister was sending a message to her, saying, 'I'm here'. Joan Collins has claimed her late sister Jackie sent her a message from beyond the grave five years after her death. Pictured, the sisters attending the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2015 Joan, 84, appeared on Loose Women from her London home to discuss the fifth anniversary of her sister's death this week 'I know it's really terribly sad seeing those clips of Jackie,' she said. 'She had such a wild sense of humour. By the time she was a little girl she always had a quip or a joke. 'She was a perfect sister and this is very sad week for us. 'And something very strange happened last night. When I first heard about Jackie's death, which was exactly five years ago, [my husband] Percy and I were watching television and all of the lights went off in the village where we are complete black out. 'Last night, the same thing happened. All of the lights went out. It was really scary and exactly five years before. I do believe that maybe there was some kind of force that was saying, "I'm here". I don't know.' While Joan lives in the UK and her sister was based in Los Angeles, Joan explained that they would often send each other letters and call each other. Pictured, the sisters in London in the 1970s The novelist passed away after her fight with stage 4 breast cancer, but kept her illness almost entirely to herself. Pictured, the sisters attending an awards show together While Joan lives in the UK and her sister was based in Los Angeles, Joan explained that they would often send each other letters and call each other. Dame Joan continued: 'I miss Jackie because, first of all, even though we were not necessarily close physically a lot of the time she was in LA when I was in London we would call each other all the time and before that we'd send letters. 'Today, I think, "Oh my god, that I must tell Jackie". And of course, I can't tell Jackie.' The novelist passed away after being diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, but kept her illness almost entirely to herself. Speaking of not knowing Jackie was ill, Dame Joan said: 'A couple of years previously I had gone from London to LA and I had seen Jackie. The Dynasty legend went on to say that on advice of her doctor she now gets checked once every three to four years 'We'd gone out, she was just as much fun and making jokes as ever, but she'd lost a lot of weight. She seemed a tiny bit frail. 'I asked her daughter Tiffany, "Is your mother OK?". Tiffany had a momentary glimpse, something I saw, just a half a second. As an actress I saw something she didn't want to reveal. 'In a way I know she wouldn't have wanted me to worry. In fact, she didn't want anybody to know. That was the whole thing.' Dame Joan added: 'Had I been in LA all this time, I definitely would have known.' The Dynasty legend went on to say that on advice of her doctor she now gets checked once every three to four years. She added: 'I was always very upset afterwards that she didn't go and have a mammogram. We have breast cancer in our family. It's one of those things, if you catch it early enough.' We wanted to put the cafe in the hands of a company with expertise in running board game cafes, expertise we did not have, Cards Against Humanity said in a statement. Given the pandemic, we believe this is the best way to give this magical place and its hard-working staff the best chance to succeed. FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is seen outside its headquarters in Shenzhen, Guangdong province By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is signaling it might not compensate major telecommunications providers if the federal government bans equipment made by China's Huawei from 5G networks, setting up a potential fight over a bill that could hit C$1 billion ($758 million). Canada, under pressure from the United States to ban Huawei Technologies Co Ltd gear on security grounds, is studying whether to allow the firm into the country's next-generation 5G networks. If Ottawa does announce a formal ban, the affected companies have made clear they want compensation for tearing out their existing Huawei gear, said two sources close to the matter. But the Liberal government, already pressing wireless providers to cut what it says are excessively high bills, seems less convinced. "I'm not sure there is a solid legal case that we would have to compensate for making a proper national security decision," said a government source who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. Federal politicians, said the source, also had to worry about "the public perception of handing over a billion dollars or more to very large companies." Ottawa has spent almost two years studying whether to allow Huawei into 5G networks and in June, with no sign of a decision coming any time soon, impatient Canadian providers took matters into their own hands. Bell Canada and Telus Corp said they would partner with Ericsson and Nokia Oyj, even though they use Huawei in their 4G networks. Technical experts say it is hard to marry one company's 5G equipment with 4G gear from another provider. This effectively means the decision to go with Ericsson would eventually force Telus and Bell to remove the Chinese firm's 4G equipment. Bell and Telus do not have to act immediately, since a crucial auction of spectrum needed for 5G networks will not happen until June 2021. In a February 2019 filing, Telus said a ban without compensation could increase the cost of its 5G network deployment and make services more expensive for consumers. Story continues Telus did not respond to a query as to whether it still felt the same way about compensation. Bell did not respond to a request for comment. Scotiabank analysts said on June 2 it would cost Bell a total of between C$300 million and $350 million over three to five years to strip out Huawei gear. At the same time, BMO estimated Telus had roughly double the exposure than that of Bell. In March, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill to provide $1 billion to help small providers replace equipment made by Huawei and Chinese firm ZTE. Canada's government is on track to run up the highest budget deficit since World War Two as it tackles the coronavirus outbreak and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will on Sept 23 outline major measures to revive the economy. "We obviously want to spend money on things we feel are going to grow the economy rather than on something like that (compensation)," said the government source. One person directly familiar with the file took a more jaundiced view, noting that while Britain had told firms to remove their Huawei equipment, it had given them until 2027. The person said this also happened to be the time when the gear would become obsolete and require replacement. "I don't think the thinking in the Canadian government is dissimilar with respect to that question," said the person. The office of Canada Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains - which will announce the decision on Huawei and 5G - said it would be premature to discuss future actions. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Denny Thomas and Nick Zieminski) How should a society allow for the legitimate use of force by police? Egon Bittner, the esteemed sociologist who specialized in policing, wrote in his book Aspects of Police Work: Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion How should a society allow for the legitimate use of force by police? Egon Bittner, the esteemed sociologist who specialized in policing, wrote in his book Aspects of Police Work: "As long as there will be fools who can insist that their comfort and pleasure take precedence over the needs of firemen for space in fighting a fire, and who will not move to make room, so long will there be a need for policemen." Bittner argued that police "were created as a mechanism for coping with the so-called dangerous classes." But the "dangerous classes" are simply people deprived of the privileges and societal benefits enjoyed mostly by rich white men. Lets consider five scenarios in which force is not required and where, therefore, police are not required. Situations in which force is unnecessary First and foremost, it must be acknowledged that most of everyday life needs no police intervention at all including protests and demonstrations. Thats because people overwhelmingly police themselves, as individuals, families, road users, workplaces, associations, communities and protesters. When it comes to people experiencing mental-health crises, whats required is talk, experience and patience. If, in extreme cases, force is required to restrain a person for their own or others good, crisis clinic mental-health workers, skilled in its minimal use, should be called upon. The use of uniformed, armed officers whose modus operandi is to demand obedience to barked orders or to resort to violence is clearly a criminally abusive method of dealing with such situations. When it comes to traffic enforcement and accident resolution, police should not be involved. Speeding and other driving violations can now be monitored by technology or via public complaints. Leave accident resolution to insurance agents or other specialized officials. Where criminal driving is involved, unarmed driving violation investigators can be used. The immediate decriminalization of the possession of narcotics and other drugs (beyond marijuana), as Canadian chiefs of police are recommending, is necessary. Addiction must be regarded as a public health issue to be dealt with by the appropriate specialists. Decriminalizing the entire illicit drug industry and regulating it like any other business would, obviously, remove the need for force by police in what is otherwise a huge area of criminal law enforcement. Instead, we should create new organizations to handle much of what police do today. Force doesnt prevent or solve crimes The use of force by police neither prevents nor solves crime for the vast majority of criminal offences. In fact, as Bittner wrote in his book: "When one looks at what policemen actually do, one finds that criminal law enforcement is something that most of them do with the frequency located somewhere between virtually never and very rarely." Detective work certainly doesnt require the use of force. It can continue to be conducted by unarmed, plainclothes specialists trained in talking to witnesses, conducting interrogations, assessing crime scenes and collecting evidence. Were therefore left with a problem. In Canada, spending on police in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta is rising at a faster rate than other municipal spending as the national crime rate decreases. And in the largest 150 U.S. cities, police budgets have risen steadily for decades, even as crime decreased and during economic downturns, according to data compiled by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from U.S. census records. This suggests, correctly, that policing has little or nothing to do with criminal law enforcement. As crime has gone down, police budgets have gone up. So whats policing for? As Bittner argued, its about protecting the wealthy from the "dangerous classes." Threats to order, property 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 "dangerous classes" are those who are seen as a threat to public order and property rights. The job of police has long been to effect control colonial, racial, class, gender and/or sexual over citizens. Clearly, its time for this to stop. The solution lies not with enforcing economic and social inequality, but in removing it. Putting our tax money towards this for example, by building affordable housing makes far more sense than shoring up a police institution that is too often brutal, colonial, racist, sexist and homophobic. While there will always be occasions when legitimate force by police is necessary, theyre relatively few and police shouldnt be militarized in weaponry, rank or uniform. Get rid of all three, except for some small arms held in reserve for use only in exceptionally dangerous situations. Other agencies or officials can do much of what police do now. So lets defund the police and put the savings into social services. But lets go further, and disband police forces as theyre currently configured and replace them with local community organizations, some highly trained members of which are empowered to use force as required by fellow citizens and according to circumstance. Peter Anthony Eglin is a professor emeritus of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University. This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca. The Dearborn Heights Police Department is looking for help identifying a man who pointed a gun at two residents who were walking near Beech Daly and Annapolis recently. The date and time of the incident wasnt immediately released. According to police the man, described as black, wearing a black t-shirt, black pants and white Nike shoes, cut in front of the two residents while in the checkout line at the BP gas station at that corner. After they told him he had cut in front of them, he pointed the gun at them and threatened them before getting into a 2008 or 2009 silver Ford Fusion. Anyone who can help identify the man is asked to call 313-277-7707. Converse is celebrating Latin Heritage Month with its latest line of kicks that draw inspiration from Puerto Rican, Dominican and Mexican cultures. The "Mi Gente" capsule collection includes festive versions of the brand's classic Chuck 70 and Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers . "Created for and by the community, a series of Chuck Taylor All Star styles aim to honor the stories that represent the diversity, duality and vibrancy of LatinX Heritage, in their home countries, the United States and beyond," the footwear company wrote in a statement further speaking to the launch. PHOTO: Converse has released a 'Mi Gente!' collection to celebrate Latinx heritage. (Converse) Out of the four sneakers featured, the black and white Chuck 70's have the words "Mi Gente!," which translates to "my people" in English, printed all over. The All Star sneakers featured share stories of rich heritage through vibrant designs. One hi-top pick has white ruffles stitched throughout which is inspired by stories of the traditional style of skirts commonly worn by Puerto Rican Bomba dancers. There's also accompanying apparel with similar style sleeves available in white or orange. Another shoe dedicated to the Dominican Republic is a nod to the Mirabel Sisters who were also known as the "Mariposas." Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabal were revolutionaries who became symbols of democratic and feminist resistance due to their opposition to dictatorship under Rafael Trujillo (El Jefe). The idea of the "Mi Gente" capsule collection was the result of passionate designers with the aim of shedding light on their heritage through the canvas of Converse sneakers, the company said. PHOTO: Converse has released a 'Mi Gente!' collection to celebrate Latinx heritage. (Converse) Los Angeles-based Ruth Mora's work on the collection was inspired by the graffiti and murals that serve as a paramount part of LA street culture. "Mi Gente for me starts first at home," said Mora in a statement. "That's the first thing that comes to my mind, I feel at home with not just my family, but I feel like Mi Gente, is people that make you feel warm and at home regardless of whether you know them or not. So, I really like that sense of togetherness that our culture has." Story continues MORE: Paging all '80s kids! American Girl has a cool new doll for you In addition to the latest capsule, Converse is also partnering with organizations supporting Latino communities throughout 2020 in Boston and Los Angeles. There efforts will be specifically focused on creativity and civic leadership for young women and girls. Also starting this month, the brand has commissioned a grassroots community of creatives to contribute murals in Mexico, Peru, Chile and Brazil to bring the idea of Mi Gente! to life on the streets. New Converse 'Mi Gente' capsule collection celebrates Latino heritage originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AsiaInfo Technologies Limited, China's leading telecom software provider (Ticker Symbol: 1675.HK), has been added to the Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme. The Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges launched the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect schemes on November 17, 2014 and December 5, 2016 respectively, as a means to allow Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese investors to trade securities in each other's markets through the trading and clearing facilities of their home exchange. With the inclusion of AsiaInfo Technologies, mainland institutional investors and eligible individual investors will be able to buy and sell stocks of the company through the scheme. On September 7, changes in the number as well as the specific equities included in the Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme due to the periodic adjustment of the constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Composite Index took effect, where 10 new stocks under Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect were added to the scheme and 11 were dropped; at the same time 24 under Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect were added and 15 were dropped. As a leading telecom software provider in China, AsiaInfo Technologies has constantly enhanced its operation support system (OSS), cloud business and digital operations by consolidating its telecom business support system (BSS). These actions allowed the company to be at the forefront of the latest transformation of the IT sector. Collaboration between leaders promotes synergies as new businesses grow rapidly For the first half of 2020, AsiaInfo Technologies booked revenue of roughly 2.5 billion yuan (approx. US$36.87 million), up 1.0% year on year. Net profit for the reporting period amounted to 232.6 million yuan (approx. US$34.3 million), up 228.8% year on year. New businesses posted revenue of 229.7 million yuan (approx. US$33.8 million), rising 77.7% year on year and bringing new business-generated revenue from 5.25% of the total in the first half of 2019 to 9.2% in the first half of 2020. "AsiaInfo Technologies experienced challenges due to the epidemic in the first half of the year, yet by proactively responding to the impact, we have turned the crisis into an opportunity, with our performance steadily improving and new businesses growing rapidly," said AsiaInfo Technologies chairman Tian Suning, expressing confidence in the latest additions to the company's portfolio. AsiaInfo Technologies' revenue structure is undergoing a qualitative change. As a result of a transformative strategy consisting of a company-wide consolidation and a focus on the development of the three new businesses, each of which has delivered excellent performance, AsiaInfo Technologies is witnessing a second round of growth. The strategy called for the consolidation of the telecom business support software (BSS) business, alongside the development of the 5G OSS (network support system) business, the cloud business for vertical companies and the digital operation (DSaaS) business. As one of China's leading telecommunication software providers, AsiaInfo is deeply integrated into the Chinese telecommunications sector's industrial chain in tandem with a well-established presence in related verticals for more than 20 years, during which the firm offered a series of products and services, including CRM, scenario billing and big data, to the country's three major telecommunications operators. The company has taken a 50% share of the country's BSS market. Backed by years of experience, the company launched the OSS business with a focus on network intelligent management, enterprise on-cloud and digital operation businesses, successfully creating new growth points. At the same time, AsiaInfo has been a pioneer in seizing development opportunities in the world of 5G and digital operations. With the arrival of 5G networks, operators will have more complex needs in terms of billing and CRM, creating a solid growth foundation for the BSS business. The unbundling of OSS software and hardware in the 5G era has also created optimum conditions for the company's entry into the OSS sector, with expectations that the business will achieve high-speed growth. In addition, in terms of digital operations, the company has been making efforts to grow the customer base in several of the verticals in which it has a presence, including finance, automotive and insurance, while focusing on larger, more mature customers who are better financed. As for the company's presence in China's fast-growing cloud computing sector, AsiaInfo is expected to experience rapid growth through a focus on customized applications for vertical sectors, value-added services in cloud operations and R&D capabilities. China Mobile became AsiaInfo's second largest shareholder with the acquisition of 182 million new shares (roughly a 20% ownership) in the firm, as a result of completing a new share issuance and equity closing on September 2. Following China Mobile's strategic investment, the two parties are expected to achieve enhanced synergy, helping AsiaInfo accelerate growth of the new OSS and cloud businesses as well as opening a greater space for the company's future development. SOURCE AsiaInfo Technologies Limited Jaunpur : , Sep 17 (IANS) A truck owner in Uttar Pradesh has been set ablaze for apparently not paying his dues to a financier in Jaunpur district. Two of his attackers are in custody. Satya Prakash Rai, 51, was set on fire on Wednesday in Ghanshyampur area. Eyewitnesses managed to catch two of the accused, while others managed to escape. Station Officer (SO) Badlapur Srijesh Yadav said two persons were in police custody while Rai has been admitted to a district hospital. Rai's son Shyamanand who was accompanying him on the truck told reporters that they were returning to Azamgarh after loading concrete from Reeva in Madhya Pradesh. He alleged that when their truck was passing through Badlapur, some car-borne men intercepted them and after posing as agents of a financier, they demanded to know the reason for not paying the monthly instalment of a loan taken by Rai to buy the truck for the past five months. When they mentioned the provision of relaxations given by the government in repaying the instalments during the Covid-19 pandemic period, the agents first allowed them to go, Shyamanand said. However, he alleged that the agents again intercepted their truck when it was passing through Ghanshyampur area. Shyamanand said he was sitting in the cabin and his father got down to talk to the agents when he suddenly heard his father's cries. "I saw my father engulfed in flames and took a blanket from the truck's cabin to save my father while locals started chasing those agents. Two of them were caught and handed over to police by local natives while the other two managed to escape in their car," Shyamanand added. Rai was initially rushed to a nearby hospital but in view of his deteriorating condition, doctors referred him to the district hospital. Station Officer (SO) Badlapur Srijesh Yadav said the two accused were in police custody and further investigation in the case has been initiated on the basis of their interrogation. By Trend Armenias provocations in the direction of Azerbaijans Tovuz district again showed that Armenia is the main obstacle to the stability in the region, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran said, Trend reports on Sept. 16. Armenia resorts to the provocations to divert attention from its internal problems, Kiran added. "These provocations are the external demonstration of internal problems, deputy foreign minister said. Since its establishment, Armenia has given the region nothing but pain and lawlessness. We are always close to Azerbaijan in terms of resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within Azerbaijans territorial integrity and international law," Kiran said. Led by impact investing firm LGT Lightstone, the $170 million first close of a Series C funding round expected to reach over $200 million proves growing appetite for Infarm's approach to farming in the wake of COVID-19, ecological uncertainty and supply chain fragility. The investment raise brings Infarm's funding total to more than $300 million to-date, following rapid pace of new partnerships signed with world's largest retailers in the past year including Albert Heijn (Netherlands), Aldi Sud (Germany), COOP/Irma (Denmark), Empire Company Ltd (Sobeys, Safeway, Thrifty Foods - Canada), Kaufland (Germany), Kinokuniya (Japan), Kroger (United States), Marks & Spencer (United Kingdom) and Selfridges (United Kingdom). With Infarm's cloud-connected farming facilities expected to jump from 500,000 sq ft by the end of 2020 to over 5,000,000 sq ft by 2025, this fresh capital infusion will power investment in infrastructure, research and development and hiring to drive global growth. BERLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Infarm, the world's fastest growing urban farming network, today announced $170 million investment raised in the first close of a Series C funding round expected to reach $200 million. Led by LGT Lightstone, the first round included participation by investors Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, and was supported by existing Infarm investors Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures. With a mix of equity and debt financing, the fresh capital infusion brings Infarm's total funding to date to more than $300 million, underscoring consumer and retailer appetite for Infarm's innovative approach to fresh, sustainable and local food production in the wake of this year's pandemic. By 2025, Infarm's farming network is expected to reach more than 5,000,000 square feet to become the largest distributed farming network in the world as it builds towards helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production. The investment will be used to deepen the regional and local penetration of Infarm's global farming network and complete development of Infarm's new generation of vertical cloud-connected farms, capable of generating the crop-equivalent of acres of farmland and amplifying the diversity of produce currently available through vertical farming. An integration of advanced engineering, software and farming technology, these farms will save labour, land, water, energy, and food-miles, while contributing to a more sustainable food system. Erez Galonska, Co-founder and CEO of Infarm, said: "The coronavirus pandemic has put a global spotlight on the urgent agricultural and ecological challenges of our time. At Infarm, we believe there's a better, healthier way to feed our cities: increasing access to fresh, pure, sustainable produce, grown as close as possible to people. As we scale to 5,000,000 sq ft in farming facilities across Europe, North American and Asia by 2025, this investment will help us make a truly global impact through our network, preserving the thousands of acres of land, millions of liters of water and ultimately change the way people grow, eat and think about food." In the past 12 months alone, Infarm has formed new partnerships with the world's largest retailers, including Albert Heijn (Netherlands), Aldi Sud (Germany), COOP/Irma (Denmark), Empire Company Ltd (Sobeys, Safeway, Thrifty Foods - Canada), Kinokuniya (Japan), Kroger (United States), Marks & Spencer (United Kingdom) and Selfridges (United Kingdom), driving market expansion beyond Germany, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan. With operations across 10 countries and 30 cities worldwide, Infarm harvests 500,000+ plants monthly and growing while using 99.5% less space than soil-based agriculture, 95% less water, 90% less transport and zero chemical pesticides. Today, 90% of electricity use throughout the Infarm network is from renewable energy and the company has set a target to reach zero emission food production next year. Dharmash Mistry, Partner of LGT Lightstone, said: "We are excited to partner with the Infarm team to accelerate their urban vertical farm vision, ultimately creating a more sustainable food system for a growing population. Fresher, tastier and healthier food using 95% less land and water, no pesticides and 90% less transport. With over $1bn of customer demand, partnerships with 17 of the top 50 global grocers, Infarm is set to revolutionise the market behind a unique 'demand led' modular business model. We look forward to working with Erez, Guy and Osnat to create a better, healthier, and tastier future." Pasha Romanovski, Co-founding Partner of Hanaco Ventures, said: "We are big believers in vertical farming as we see the traditional industry going through (much needed) rapid disruption these days. We were deeply impressed by Infarm's founders and management, with their ability to move fast and execute. What is extremely appealing about Infarm is their innovative and modular approach, using cutting edge technology that unlocks added value throughout the supply chain, benefiting both the retailers and end-customers. We see a massive demand in the market for sustainable, environment-friendly, and healthy food - and Infarm has just the right team in place to make this happen." Founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm is dedicated to creating a future where local super fresh produce is available for everyone. The farms are placed in various locations in the city, like supermarkets, restaurants and distribution centers, so that vegetables grow and are harvested close to the moment of purchase or consumption. These controlled growing environments are connected to a central cloud-based farm-brain, which gathers more than 50,000 data points through a plant's lifetime, allowing the platform to learn, adapt and improve itself constantly, so that every plant grows better than the one before. This modular, data-driven, and distributed approach - a combination of big data, IoT, and cloud analytics, in addition to rapid growth at a global scale - sets Infarm apart from any other urban farming solution. About Infarm Infarm was founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Erez and Guy Galonska. Passionate to become self-sufficient and eat better, they were growing their own food, enjoying all the flavor and nutrients, without the chemical pesticides and transport kilometers. With the aim to share the goodness of own-grown produce with everyone, they developed a smart modular farming system, that allows distribution of farms throughout the urban environment, growing fresh produce in any available space and fulfilling any market demand. Today, with cutting edge R&D, patented technologies, and a leading multi-disciplinary team, Infarm is growing a worldwide farming network helping cities become self-sufficient in their food production while significantly improving the safety, quality, and environmental footprint of our food. With a multinational team of 600 people globally, Infarm has partnered with more than 30 major food retailers including Albert Heijn, Aldi Sud, Amazon Fresh, Auchan, Casino, E.Leclerc, Edeka, Empire Company Ltd (Safeway, Sobeys, ThriftyFoods), Farmdrop, Intermarche, Irma, Kinokuniya, Kroger, Marks & Spencer, Metro, Migros, Selfridges and Selgros in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland, deployed more than 1000 farms in stores and distribution centres, saved more than 7,000,000 gallons of water and 400,000 square feet of land, while harvesting 500,000+ plants monthly and growing. Seychelles President Danny Faure will face two challengers in next month's election, the electoral commission said Wednesday, including a veteran opposition leader who lost the last poll in the Indian Ocean archipelago by just 193 votes. The election comes at a pivotal time for the nation that counts 115 islands off East Africa, with its vital high-end tourism industry on its knees after the borders were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. It also comes as the ruling Parti Lepep, which is known locally as the People's Party and has been in power since 1977, faces an unprecedented challenge. The opposition Linyon Demokratik Seselwa party (Creole for the Seychelles Democratic Union) won a parliamentary majority in 2016 legislative elections, the first time an opposition party had done so since the country's return to multiparty politics in 1993. The fallout from the crushing defeat led to then president James Michel -- narrowly re-elected the year before -- to hand over the presidency to Faure, who will contest his first election in the October 22-24 vote. The former British colony's electoral commission confirmed three candidates on Wednesday, including Faure and Linyon Demokratik Seselwa's Wavel Ramkalawan, making his sixth run at the presidency. Ramkalawan is expected to be the main challenger after losing to Michel in 2015 by a mere 193 votes. However the country's opposition did not rally behind a single candidate. The third person approved to stand is former tourism minister Alain Saint-Ange of the new One Seychelles party, which has vowed to liberalise cannabis use and install a government of technocrats. President Faure told the media that if he wins, he will set up a national unity government to overcome the economic crisis sparked by the pandemic. "These are the most important elections in our country's history, because they take place at a time when the country is facing economic and social difficulties caused by Covid-19," he said. The Seychelles closed its borders in March to prevent the spread of the virus. The islands are a haven of luxury tourism, welcoming more than 360,000 visitors in 2018, twice as many as a decade before and nearly four times the population of 95,000. Hundreds working in tourism lost their jobs, and the Seychellois rupee shed more than 40 percent of its value against the major foreign currencies. Normally the country holds separate legislative and presidential elections, but they were brought together this year to save public money. Democrats' most senior black lawmaker, Jim Clyburn, called attorney general Bill Barr 'God awful' and 'tone deaf' Thursday after the top law enforcement officer compared lockdown orders to slavery. The House Democratic leader told CNN's New Day that Barr's comparison was 'tone deaf'. Barr spoke out at the Constitution Day celebration at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Wednesday, suggesting the measures put in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 were on par with an alternative to being put in prison and just one step down from the restrictions slaves endured. 'You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. 'Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,' Barr told a crowd which applauded in response, CNN reported. Barr likened the pandemic to life for Black people before slavery was abolished after he was asked to explain 'constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19.' On Thursday morning Clyburn, a key Joe Biden ally, said: 'That statement by Mr. Barr was the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things I've ever heard. 'It is incredible that the top law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives. 'Slavery was not about saving lives. It was about devaluing lives. This pandemic is a threat to human life.' He called Barr and Donald Trump 'a God-awful duo' and said they had failed the American people on the virus. Attack: Jim Clyburn, the House Democratic leader, said he was appalled at 'human bondage' being compared to lockdown orders which were designed to 'save lives' and called AG Barr 'God-awful' Democratic figures including Bill Clinton's former press secretary Joe Lockhart and former California senator Barbara Boxer attacked Bill Barr, while liberal law professor Laurence Tribe called him 'an evil fool' Barr was attacked by other Democratic figures and by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, a leading liberal thinker, for the comparison. Other critics said he was ignoring attacks on civil liberties including the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II and the Trail of Tears. In his speech, Barr blasted state governors, claiming they were using their executive powers to prevent businesses from reopening and people from returning to work. 'Most of the governors do what bureaucrats always do, which is they ... defy common sense,' Barr said. 'They treat free citizens as babies that can't take responsibility for themselves and others. 'We have to give business people an opportunity, tell them what the rules are you know the masks, which rule of masks, you had this month... and then let them try to adapt their business to that and you'll have ingenuity and people will at least have the freedom to try to earn a living.' Barr, 70, also called it 'nonsense' for officials to say they were 'following science' and said doctors are not some kind of 'grand seer.' More than 6 million American have been infected with the virus and 196,000 have died from COVID-19. Barr's speech came on the same day it was revealed he told federal prosecutors that protesters demonstrating for reforms of a justice system that has been compared to modern-day slavery, could be charged with sedition. The Wall Street Journal said Barr told federal district attorneys in a conference call last week that a law against plotting to overthrow the US government was among charges they could use against participants when protests turn violent. The WSJ reported that he divulged details of two statutes that could help bring about the charges. In order to prove sedition, they would have to prove imminent danger to government officials or agents as part of a conspiracy. However without the plot it can fall under expressing violent anti-government sentiment under the First Amendment. Another statute could bring federal charges on someone who obstructs law enforcement responding to unrest. CNN and the New York Times confirmed the recommendation by Barr. Two people on the call said Barr has asked whether charges could be brought on Seattle's Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing people to create a police-free zone. Barr said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court has determined the executive branch has 'virtually unchecked discretion' on whether to go ahead with a prosecution. 'The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,' Barr said at an event in Washington celebrating the Constitution. 'That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.' University of Alabama law professor, Jenny Carroll, told the WSJ: 'If you start charging those people, even if you don't get a conviction, it may make people think twice before going out to exercise their right to free speech.' 'Slavery': Bill Barr called lockdowns like the one in April which left New York's Times Square empty one step down from the conditions enslaved African-Americans endured As he compared national lockdown to house arrest, it was reported that Barr wants sedition charges for violent protesters. Pictured, the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct is set on fire during a third night of protests following the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, on May 28 President Donald Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish the protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. While protest-related crimes usually bring only local charges, under Barr's guidance district attorneys, federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 demonstrators with crimes that bring heftier penalties. Barr used the Hillsdale speech and questions after it to defend his position. Asked about the report on Barr, Trump said his government will treat demonstrators toughly. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said, adding: 'And I think the American public wants to see that.' According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, about 93 percent of protests this summer were peaceful. Such a sedition charge has been used with extreme rarity and the most recent example, a case brought against a Michigan armed militia group, failed in 2012 due to weak and 'circumstantial evidence'. Barr also used the speech to blast his own staff, claiming they 'headhunt' high-profile targets and assert that he is the the sole authority on federal prosecutions. Barr's comments on Wednesday amounted to a striking, and unusual, rebuke of the thousands of prosecutors who do the daily work of assembling criminal cases across the country. Rejecting the idea that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring, Barr described them instead part of the 'permanent bureaucracy' and said they were in need of supervision from 'detached,' politically appointed leaders who are accountable to the president and Congress. 'Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target,' Barr said. 'Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.' Barr's comments appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the fracas that arose ahead of the February sentencing of Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump. In that case, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of the trial team in favor of a lighter punishment. The move prompted the entire trial team to quit before Stone's sentencing hearing. Barr was accused of undue intervention on behalf of an associate of the president, but in his speech Wednesday night, he bristled at the idea that it was even possible for an attorney general to be accused of meddling in the affairs of a department that he leads. 'Name one successful organization where the lowest level employees decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There aren't any,' Barr said. He added: 'Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but its no way to run a federal agency. Good leaders at the Justice Department - as at any organization - need to trust and support their subordinates. But that does not mean blindly deferring to whatever those subordinates want to do.' He also took a veiled swipe at one of the senior members of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation team, suggesting that one of the reasons why the Trump administration was more successful than the Obama administration before the Supreme Court was because the latter had a member of the Mueller team writing briefs. That appeared to be a reference to Michael Dreeben, a highly respected lawyer who argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court for Democratic and Republican administrations before his retirement from the solicitor general's office. Investors shrugged off a surprisingly strong August jobs print to hand the Australian sharemarket its worst day in just over a week in a poor session for the iron ore giants, Commonwealth Bank, and biotech CSL. The ASX 200 fell by 72.9 points, or 1.2 per cent, to close at a session low of 5883.2 on Thursday, wiping out Wednesdays progress in a $21 billion slide. The ASX 200 closed 1.2 per cent lower on Thursday. Credit:AFR Weaker iron ore and gold prices hobbled BHP and Rio Tinto, while Fortescue Metals sagged to a near two-month low with a 6.4 per cent dive to $16.23. The market fell early on a mixed Wall Street lead, where sentiment was dulled by a more dovish-than-expected stance from the US Fed. US futures declined throughout the day. Local losses accelerated after a complicated set of August jobs figures that showed a surprising drop in the unemployment rate from 7.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent and 111,000 jobs added. However, UBS economists George Tharenou and Carlos Cacho noted the number of people who 'worked less than their usual hours for economic reasons' was broadly unchanged at about one million people. ThinkMarkets market analyst Carl Capolingua also suggested the improved employment figure could have signalled to markets that less stimulus may be needed to help the nation out of its pandemic-driven decline. Obviously, markets want to see good news on the jobs front longer-term and considering the lockdowns in Victoria through August and the resurgence in COVID-related negativity more broadly, it was a decent set of numbers. But I think investors took this as a sign that the RBA and the Federal Government may do less than previously expected to boost monetary and fiscal stimulus. So, in a perverse sort of way, the market sold off." There was little joy at the pointy end of the ASX 200 on Thursday with just a handful of blue-chips adding to their tallies. These included banks Westpac, NAB and ANZ, as well as investment group Macquarie, and supermarket Coles. Commonwealth Bank fell 1.1 per cent to $65 and CSL weighed with a 1.9 per cent drop to $285.72. Wesfarmers dropped 1.3 per cent to $44.78, Woolworths 0.7 per cent to $36.48, and toll giant Transurban shed 1.4 per cent to $14.31. Afterpay led a 3 per cent tech sector decline with a 5.4 per cent drop to $73.84, with Wisetech Global down 4 per cent at $26.76. Fortescue was the hardest hit of the big miners while Rio Tinto fell by 3.4 per cent to $99.31 for its worst day in more than four months. Chief investment officer at Australian Eagle Asset Management, Sean Sequeira, said the decline in Fortescue especially appeared to be profit taking. We saw iron ore go to a high of $US130 (a tonne) this month and Fortescue didnt really follow that to new highs, it had done a lot of its rising to new highs a bit earlier, Mr Sequeira said. That tells me that people taking profit because theyre cautious about a further fall in iron ore. National Night Out is usually held the first Tuesday in August with Texas pushing back its yearly celebration until October to beat the summer heat. This year, due to COVID-19, National Night Out organizers have recommended the nation push back the event more in line with Texas Tuesday, Oct. 6, date. Business: Molina's Cantina now open in Fulshear For its part, the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office is getting ready for Texas National Night Out 2020. According to a news release, the office is organizing first responder parades from 6 to 8 p.m. across Fort Bend County. We are excited to see you in three weeks on Tuesday, Oct. 6, Sheriff Troy Nehls said. Now open: Norris Centers opens its newest facility in Katy area The Sheriffs Office is asking neighborhood coordinators or HOAs in unincorporated ares of Fort Bend County to email Deputy Gerard Argao at SOCP@fortbendcountytx.gov to register for a visit from the first responders parade. We understand that this is a difficult time to coordinate safe events however we feel that now, more than ever, morale needs to be boosted for both law enforcement and the community, the Sheriffs Office reported. The goals of NNO are to establish and maintain positive relationships with neighbors and local law enforcement agencies, heighten crime prevention awareness, and send a message to criminals that the community is organized and fighting back. Those wishing a visit should register early as they are being on a first-come, first-serve basis since there will be a limited number of parades. The Sheriffs Office is asking residents to wear masks and maintain social distance. This year, due to the ongoing pandemic caused by COVID-19, National Night Out is expected to bring out more neighbors from their homes who wish to get out of their homes. Most major cities in Fort Bend County have at least one registered National Night Out event scheduled this year. To register a celebration with the National Night Out organization, go to https://natw.org. rkent@hcnonline.com Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung Thu, September 17, 2020 09:15 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454e3dc 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,Hasan-Sadikin-Hospital,West-Java,medical-workers,specialist-doctors,health-ministry,Terawan-Agus-Putranto,financial-incentive Free The Health Ministry is distributing financial incentives to resident physicians who have been contributing to COVID-19 care at Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung, West Java. The resident doctors, who are of the University of Padjadjarans medical school in Bandung, are each to receive Rp 12.5 million (US$839.98) per month. This is our token of gratitude. I suggest they spend the money on shopping to help the economy, Health Minister Terawan said in a statement received by The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. Read also: Resident doctors take on COVID-19 as training hangs in balance Hasan Sadikin Hospital director R. Nina Susana Dewi said she appreciated the governments help. She also hopes the incentive motivates the trainees to be more careful and enthusiastic in treating COVID-19 patients. Hasan Sadikin Hospital has treated at least 1,081 suspected COVID-19 patients, of which 159 tested positive for the disease. The hospital has so far reported 105 deaths, which include 26 positive cases of COVID-19, 33 negative cases of COVID-19, and 46 unconfirmed cases. (dpk) Typhoid: Study confirms Vi-DT conjugate vaccine is safe and immunogenic in children 6-23 months September 17, 2020 - SEOUL, South Korea - A new study conducted by IVI in collaboration with SK bioscience shows that single-dose and two-dose regimens of Vi-DT typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) are safe and immunogenic in children 6-23 months of age, a group with high rates of typhoid fever in resource-limited settings. The findings from this study newly published online in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine describe the successful completion and analysis of a Phase II clinical trial of Vi-DT six months after vaccination. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends TCVs for use in endemic settings with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance providing the vaccines to eligible countries. However, with only one TCV pre-qualified by the WHO, demand currently exceeds supply. This study is a critical step toward gaining licensure and WHO-prequalification of an additional TCV to increase the global stockpile. "Our findings show that a single dose of conjugated Vi-DT vaccine is safe and provides anti-Vi seroconversion rates similar to the two-dose regimen in children between 6 months and 2 years of age," said Dr. Birkneh Tilahun Tadesse, a Research Scientist at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), which conducted the study at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Manila, the Philippines. "This is an important advance considering the significant burden of disease in infants and young children, and our goal remains developing a safe, single-dose vaccine with long-lasting immunogenicity to protect more children against typhoid fever," said Dr. Sushant Sahastrabuddhe, Director of the Typhoid Program at IVI. Increasing global supply of typhoid conjugate vaccines Vi-DT was developed at IVI and its technology was transferred in 2013 to SK bioscience in South Korea for manufacturing and commercialization. A Phase I safety trial of Vi-DT was first conducted in the Philippines with participants 2-45 years of age and showed that the vaccine was safe and immunogenic four weeks after first dose. Following the successful completion of a Phase II trial with infants under 2 years, large-scale Phase III studies with a single-dose of Vi-DT have started in the Philippines and Nepal in 2020. The WHO recommends programmatic use of typhoid vaccines to prevent and control typhoid fever with preference for TCVs for their longer-lasting protection, fewer doses, and suitability for children under 2. (1) For treatment, antibiotics are currently the frontline intervention for typhoid fever, but drug-resistant typhoid has emerged across Asia and Africa, highlighting the need for sufficient supply of TCV and sustainable vaccination programs. ### About typhoid Typhoid fever is an invasive water-borne bacterial infection caused by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi) presenting with mild to severe symptoms and even resulting in death. Typhoid is most often contracted through ingestion of food or drink contaminated by bacteria shed by infected people. It is usually characterized by fever, headache, constipation, and malaise, though diagnosis can be difficult due to symptoms common to other febrile illnesses. Figures for burden of disease vary due to this difficulty, however the World Health Organization estimates that 128,000-161,000 people die every year from typhoid fever with 11-21 million annual cases. (2) Typhoid surveillance studies report that a quarter to more than half of all invasive cases are found in children under 5. (3) About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a nonprofit inter-governmental organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, IVI was the first international organization hosted by Korea. IVI has 36 signatory countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) on its treaty, including Korea, Sweden, India, and Finland as state funders. Our mandate is to make vaccines available and accessible for the world's most vulnerable people. We focus on infectious diseases of global health importance such as cholera, typhoid, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, chikungunya, group A strep, Hepatitis A, HPV, TB, HIV, MERS, COVID-19, as well as antimicrobial resistance. For more information, please visit https:/ / www. ivi. int CONTACT Aerie Em, Global Communications & Media Specialist +82 2 881 1386 | aerie.em@ivi.int This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. OTTAWA, ON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is reminding all travellers who are celebrating the upcoming holidays of Rosh Hashanah (September 18 to 20, 2020) and Yom Kippur (September 27 and 28, 2020), that travel restrictions are still in place at all Canadian international border crossings including land, marine, air and rail ports of entry. The Government of Canada remains committed to protecting the health and safety of Canadians and minimizing the risk of spreading of COVID-19 in Canada. Before you travel, consult federal and provincial/territorial entry, quarantine and public health requirements. Importing goods In anticipation of the holidays, residents living in Canada may want to import traditional items by mail from abroad such as Ram's horn, Challah (bread), Kreplach (dumplings) or other items. The travel restrictions do not impact the cross-border movement of goods. However, before placing your order, ensure that you know the rules as the importation of certain goods, including food, plant or animal products, may be restricted or prohibited in Canada, while other items may require permits. To facilitate and expedite processing when receiving international mail items including online purchases, the CBSA asks you to keep in mind the following tips, which can be shared with friends and family sending you items from abroad: If you are expecting a gift from abroad, the person must send it to you personally and include a card or other notice indicating that it is a gift. Any gift to someone living in Canada is duty and tax free, provided its value is CDN$60 or less. For a gift of over CDN$60 , applicable duties and/or taxes will be collected on the difference between the value of the gift and CDN$60 . is duty and tax free, provided its value is or less. For a gift of over , applicable duties and/or taxes will be collected on the difference between the value of the gift and . Some items are restricted and prohibited goods If prohibited goods are discovered, the CBSA will take appropriate enforcement action. If restricted goods are discovered, the CBSA will hold the items and inform you by mail that you need the proper import documents before they can be released. Quick Facts The temporary restrictions on all optional/discretionary travel to Canada continue and may be prolonged for public health reasons. continue and may be prolonged for public health reasons. Canadian citizens, permanent residents and Registered Indians under the Indian Act continue to enter Canada by right, and are subject to COVID-19 entry screening measures. continue to enter by right, and are subject to COVID-19 entry screening measures. All persons entering Canada , unless exempted no matter their country of origin or mode of entry must quarantine themselves for 14 days if they do not have symptoms of COVID-19 or isolate themselves for 14 days if they have symptoms of or are confirmed as having COVID-19. Foreign nationals who are displaying symptoms of COVID-19 will not be permitted to enter Canada , regardless of their reason for travel. , unless exempted no matter their country of origin or mode of entry themselves for 14 days if they do not have symptoms of COVID-19 or themselves for 14 days if they have symptoms of or are confirmed as having COVID-19. Foreign nationals who are displaying symptoms of COVID-19 will be permitted to enter , regardless of their reason for travel. The CBSA has temporarily suspended or reduced service at certain small vessel reporting sites, small airports of entry, ferry terminals and to the Remote Area Border Crossing program. Travellers should review the list of CBSA locations that remain open during this temporary service suspension. during this temporary service suspension. Travellers should consult the respective provincial/territorial websites to ensure that they are aware of the provincial/territorial entry, quarantine and public health requirements and can abide by those requirements. to ensure that they are aware of the provincial/territorial entry, quarantine and public health requirements and can abide by those requirements. Anyone arriving in Canada in any mode (air, land or marine) must provide their contact information to a border services officer (either by paper, online, via the ArriveCAN App or verbally to the officer) when seeking entry. This information is collected on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada to support their compliance and enforcement of the 14-day quarantine or isolation requirement outlined in Order in Council 2020-0589. Travellers are encouraged to download the mobile ArriveCAN App prior to arrival to reduce wait times and limit contact at the border. in any mode (air, land or marine) must provide their contact information to a border services officer (either by paper, online, via the ArriveCAN App or verbally to the officer) when seeking entry. This information is collected on behalf of the Public Health Agency of to support their compliance and enforcement of the 14-day quarantine or isolation requirement outlined in Order in Council 2020-0589. Travellers are encouraged to download the mobile ArriveCAN App prior to arrival to reduce wait times and limit contact at the border. Asymptomatic immediate family members, spouses or common-law partners of Canadian citizens and permanent residents who meet the immediate family member definition and are coming to Canada for a minimum of 15 days will be exempt from the prohibition from entering Canada for a discretionary/optional purpose. and are coming to for a minimum of 15 days will be exempt from the prohibition from entering for a discretionary/optional purpose. Failure to comply with the current border restrictions is an offence under the Quarantine Act and could lead to up to $750,000 in fines, and/or imprisonment of up to 6 months. If a traveller causes a risk of imminent death or serious bodily harm to another person while willfully or recklessly contravening this act or the regulations, they could be liable for up to $1,000,000 in fines, and/or imprisonment of up to 3 years. Associated Links Website: www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca Twitter: @CanBorder Facebook: CanBorder Instagram: CanBorder YouTube: CanBorder SOURCE Canada Border Services Agency Related Links http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/ Follow David McClurry on his journey in The New Deal by Edward Kardashian NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Edward Kardashians newest political sci-fi story titled The New Deal: A Novel (published by Archway Publishing) presents a day that American capitalism dies and begins yielding to a computer-controlled authoritarian regime. David McClurry presents his latest invention, a type of radio-frequency identification (RFID) device before the department of commerce in June of 2035. Though interested by the potential applications of this new hardware in an effort to improve the American economy, the department decides to pass on Davids project. Their decision prompts him to try his luck in politics and launch his own political party three years later. Notwithstanding the lack of campaign and advertisement funds, McClurry runs for President in the fall of 2038. His political party in limbo after an unexpected arrest and beaten by John Morey of the Democratic Party, David is sentenced to ten years in federal prison for having avenged the murder of a friend. As Morey comes across Davids project the following summer, he sets him free from prison temporarily and asks him to run The Chip, hopefully improving the economy. Aware of Moreys scheme and unable to fully carry out the Democrats plan, McClurry becomes the new dictator of the United States and the new leader of an unprecedented post-capitalist world. I want the readers to experience what it would be like to live in a computer-controlled, post-capitalist era and what it would be like to go from nothing to becoming the dictator, controlling everything through an up and coming technology, Kardashian says. The New Deal is available for purchase online at: https://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Novel-Edward-Kardashian-ebook/dp/B08GS5Y2XM. The New Deal By Edward Kardashian Hardcover | 6 x 9 in | 394 pages | ISBN 9781480891845 Softcover | 6 x 9 in | 394 pages | ISBN 9781480891838 Story continues E-Book | 394 pages | ISBN 9781480891852 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the Author Following the success of The Confabulators, Edward Kardashian comes back with his second novel, a political sci-fi story, which couldnt be any closer to the current state of affairs in politics as well as emerging technologies in computer hardware. Having obtained a doctorate in the field of mathematics with a thesis on the Riemann Hypothesis, he works as a hedge fund manager for one of the top firms in Manhattan while writing techno thrillers in his spare time. He currently lives in New York City. Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit www.archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957. Attachment CONTACT: Marketing Services Archway Publishing 844-669-3957 pressreleases@archwaypublishing.com Britain and other countries providing arms to Saudi Arabia are potentially "aiding and assisting" war crimes by the country's forces in Yemen, a UN report has warned. It comes months after the UK government lifted a court-ordered ban on arms exports to the country, claiming that while it was "possible" that war crimes were taking places, they appeared to be "isolated incidents". But the UN Human Rights Council this week said countries fuelling the conflict with arms were showing a "blatant disregard" for "documented patters of serious violence". Campaigners said the UN investigation clearly contradicted Trade Secretary Liz Truss's claim from early July that the breaches of international law did not constitute a pattern because they had happened in different times and in different ways. The report warns of "concern about third states transferring arms to parties to the conflict in Yemen in blatant disregard of the documented patterns of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in the conflict to date". It adds: "The Group believes that they are failing in their responsibilities to ensure respect for IHL, and that some States may be violating their obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty. "Furthermore, such support may amount to 'aiding and assisting' internationally wrongful acts in contravention of international law." Responding to the report, the government said it "takes its export responsibilities seriously", though it continues to sell arms. Ministers have licensed at least 5.3 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the conflict began in 2015, including licences covering weapons like bombs and missiles. Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said: "This is an extremely damning report and underlines the complicity of arms-dealing governments such as the UK. "The government has dismissed the long list of possible war crimes as merely 'isolated incidents', but this report makes clear that they are part of a deadly pattern. "Saudi forces have shown a total contempt for international law and the rights and lives of people in Yemen. After five terrible years, this war has killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed vital infrastructure across Yemen. It is a man-made crisis that has been fuelled, enabled and exacerbated by Downing Street." 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 Asked about the latest report, a Department for International Trade spokesperson said: The UK is deeply concerned by the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen. "We fully support the peace process led by the UN Special Envoy, Martin Griffiths, and urge the parties to engage constructively with this process. The government takes its export responsibilities seriously and assesses all export licences in accordance with strict licensing criteria. "We will not issue any export licences where to do so would be inconsistent with these criteria. Key industry media to host a programme of web events 26-30 October 2020. Following the cancellation of the Posidonia Exhibition this October, the organisers are bringing together leading maritime media and organisations during what would have been Posidonia exhibition week for a series of web conferences and forums under the banner "Its time to talk". At this critical time, it is an initiative that creates an opportunity for the maritime community to debate the crucial issues and the many challenges it is facing. The global disruption of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the shipping industry, compounded by the cancellation of conferences and events that would normally be offering a platform for meetings and debate. Now, more than ever, is the time for the shipping industry to talk again and re-open the channels for exchanging ideas and exploring solutions. We are delighted that Posidonia Web Forums Week will be taking place in October with a programme of exciting web events hosted by our partner organisations TradeWinds, Lloyds List, Seatrade Maritime, YES Forum and MariMatch says Theodore Vokos, Managing Director, Posidonia Exhibitions S.A. Once again, Posidonia is bringing the maritime communities together. Thats what Posidonia is all about. Further web events will be announced. Audience participants will see and hear top shipowners and operators debate key topics including the post-pandemic business environment for shipping. The events listing will be posted on www.posidonia-events.com Gavin Williamson has urged families whose children are sent home due to a positive case detected in the classroom not to seek coronavirus tests unless they have symptoms. The education secretarys remarks came as Boris Johnson was accused of blaming the public for chaos in the UKs testing system after he said a colossal spike in demand was driving delays just weeks after classrooms returned. As the government faces mounting criticism over a shortage in Covid-19 tests across the country, Mr Williamson said only those with symptoms should attempt to get a test. He told the Commons Education Select Committee: If a child and their contacts have been sent home, its not that all those children are sent home should be getting tested. It is only the child that is displaying symptoms as against the whole cohort. Earlier, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said keeping schools open could become unsustainable if issues with testing were not fixed by ministers. He told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: This will feel I think like lockdown by default - it will be more frustrating for parents because you cant predict whether it is going to happen. And similarly from the headteachers point of view, if my Year 4 teacher today shows symptoms, will he or she be in school tomorrow, will they be here for the next 14 days? As soon as you start to get that with six, seven, eight teachers, it becomes unsustainable to be able to run things. Addressing MPs on Wednesday, Mr Williamson also said he had discussed problems facing schools access to testing with Baroness Dido Harding, the director of the NHS Test and Trace programme. She highlighted some concerns schools had had in terms of the turnaround and to ensure that teachers are able to get tested as swiftly as possible and are able to be in a position to be back to teaching at the earliest possible stage, he said. Pressed by Robert Halfon, the senior Conservative who chairs the committee, whether he could guarantee that pupils and teachers who need local Covid-19 tests would be able to get them within 48 hours, Mr Williamson declined to do so. He said: Schools are, I think, are the only organisation that actually has a set of testing kits that have been sent to them directly in order to be able to ensure that if they are in a situation where someone isnt in a position to be able to get a test then they actually have testing kits on site. That is something that is quite unique and very important. Mr Williamson added that each school and college in England was given 10 home-testing kits at the start of the term and schools can order more kits online directly from the NHS from today. London: Julian Assange was "insistent" on redacting the names of Iraqi informants and even deployed software to remove Iraqi words from WikiLeaks cables which he later published in full, a prominent NGO told the Australian's extradition hearing. John Sloboda who founded Iraq Body Count, a London-based non-government organisation that tallies civilian casualties gave evidence at London's Old Bailey, on behalf of the defence. Julian Assange is driven from the Ecuadorian embassy in London after his arrest in April 2019. Credit:PA The US Department of Justice wants Assange extradited to the United States so he can face 18 charges of computer hacking and for publishing the names of informants. Sloboda, who worked with Assange and the WikiLeaks team on the Iraq war logs in 2010, said the Australian was determined to scrub sources' names from the documents before publishing. But is that enough? Rent payments and consumer spending depend on the direction of travel of Covid-19, and the ability of governments to keep supporting the economy. The earnings outlook is exceptionally cloudy: If the second half of this year is as bad as the first, annual profits could fall 25%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sue Munden. Mall valuations could also plunge more than the firm expects: Analysts at Barclays Plc see Unibails loan-to-value ratio hitting as much as 57% in 2022. Iraq has called on the European Commission to exclude the state from the list of third countries that launder money and finance terrorism, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. The foreign ministry said this in the wake of a meeting between Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel. The meeting between the two high-ranking officials took place on Wednesday in the Brussels-based European Commission headquarters. Both countries discussed cooperation between Baghdad and the EU countries, as well as issues of mutual concern and the parliamentary elections that are scheduled to be held in Iraq in June 2021. The two sides discussed the issue of removing Iraq from the European Commissions list of high-risk countries in the field of money laundering and terrorist financing. And also renewed inviting the relevant authorities in the commission to accelerate dialogue with the concerned technical authorities in Iraq in order to complete the evaluation of Iraqs performance in this field, and remove it from this list, the ministry said in an official statement. Mr Fuad, in turn, extended an invitation to Mr Borrel to pay a visit to Iraq at the earliest possible opportunity to talk about strengthening bilateral ties, the statement read. The Iraqi minister has praised the EU efforts to provide political and economic assistance to the country, especially to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. And it also reiterated Baghdads commitment to the principle of respecting the sovereignty of other states and not interfering in their internal affairs. Iraq was included in the list of the countries that have significant deficiencies in their fight against money laundering and terrorism financing back in October 2016. The legislation requires the EU to identify third states with such a strategy, as it poses a major threat to the EU financial system. (Sputnik/NAN) -- Center to pioneer, together with major partners, new demands for safety and sustainability in connected spaces -- Built on the Company's new suite of connected solutions, known as OpenBlue, designed to make shared spaces safer, more agile and sustainable -- Complements Johnson Controls existing network of global innovation centers, further accelerating digital transformation CORK, Ireland, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), the global leader for smart and sustainable buildings, today announces the official opening of its S$50 million OpenBlue Innovation Center to create a future-ready built environment for Singapore and the region. The new facility, located within the School of Design and Environment (SDE), at the National University of Singapore (NUS), will be a living laboratory for a new breed of customizable, contact-free applications built on Johnson Controls unifying digital technology suite, OpenBlue. Together with its ecosystem of partners - which includes NUS and Microsoft - the center is pioneering the use of a common configuration language that bridges core building technology, as well as behavioral, wellness and spatial data to develop solutions that meet new demands for safety and sustainability in connected spaces. The announcement is a testament to Johnson Controls commitment to develop advanced digital solutions that can improve performance, reliability, safety and energy usage of buildings and its occupants. It will allow the company to further build on unique technologies and innovations from similar state-of-the-art sites it currently operates in: Cork ( Ireland ) ( ) Milwaukee and Birmingham ( USA ) and Birmingham ( ) Wuxi ( China ) ) Pune ( India ) ( ) San Jose ( Costa Rica ) These centers are all designed to accelerate the reinvention of urban living, with significant investments targeted at digital innovation. "Artificial Intelligence and machine learning will play a pre-eminent role in reshaping how we create comfort for people and energy efficiency in a building", said Mike Ellis, executive vice president and chief customer & digital officer for Johnson Controls. Our unprecedented focus of co-innovating cutting-edge technologies through collaborations such as with NUS will spark greater innovation and true differentiation for our customers." The 240 square-meter center, housed in SDE4, Singapore's first new-build net-zero energy building, will have sensors fitted throughout the indoor space - including overhead ventilation to measure air flow. The lab staff and collaborating researchers will collect and analyze data using Johnson Controls unifying technology suite and analytics to obtain qualitative and quantitative understanding of the interactions among technology, well-being, and indoor environments. The ecosystem of partners will tap on the intelligence generated from the center to create evidence-backed solutions for healthier, safer connected indoor spaces. NUS will serve as a testbed for OpenBlue Innovation Center's pioneering solutions, which will help the university in its ongoing efforts to develop a smart, sustainable and safe campus for its staff and students. The collaboration also includes joint research and innovation in the areas of built and urban environments, particularly in data analytics, sustainability and operations, as well as people and wellness. There will also be opportunities for collaborations on teaching and internship programs. The underlying Johnson Controls unifying technology suite, OpenBlue, is a complete suite of connected solutions and services that combine the Company's 135 years of building expertise with cutting-edge digital technology. This open digital platform, when integrated with Johnson Controls core building systems and enhanced by ecosystem partners, connects traditionally separate systems to create new capabilities for safer, more agile and sustainable space usages. With support from the Singapore Economic Development Board, the facility is expected to have more than 100 employees within four years. Johnson Controls currently employs around 800 employees throughout Singapore, and has its products installed in many of the commercial buildings in Singapore. The investment marks the company's commitment to spearhead the creation and adoption of disruptive solutions for the built environment industry in the region. About Johnson Controls: At Johnson Controls, we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. From optimizing building performance to improving safety and enhancing comfort, we drive the outcomes that matter most. We deliver our promise in industries such as healthcare, education, data centers and manufacturing. With a global team of 105,000 experts in more than 150 countries and over 130 years of innovation, we are the power behind our customers' mission. Our leading portfolio of building technology and solutions includes some of the most trusted names in the industry, such as Tyco, YORK, Metasys, Ruskin, Titus, Frick, Penn, Sabroe, Simplex, Ansul and Grinnell. For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow us @johnsoncontrols on Twitter. INVESTOR CONTACTS: MEDIA CONTACTS: Antonella Franzen Phil Clement Direct: 609.720.4665 Direct: 414.208.5161 Email: antonella.franzen@jci.com Email: phil.b.clement@jci.com Ryan Edelman Fraser Engerman Direct: 609.720.4545 Direct: 414.308.8321 Email: ryan.edelman@jci.com Email: fraser.engerman@jci.com Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4oNVaSkQeg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276324/Johnson_Controls_OpenBlue_Innovation_Center__2___1.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276325/Johnson_Controls_OpenBlue_Innovation_Center__4___1.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/73855/johnson_controls_logo.jpg The Punjab and Haryana high court has asked the Chandigarh administration to probe allegations against the management of a Sector 48 housing society. The bench of justice HS Madaan was hearing a plea from Surinder Singh and other residents of Silverton Co-operative House Building Society-I, Sector 48-B, against the management of the society. It was alleged before court that the management committee has indulged in misappropriation of funds and undertaken unnecessary civil works to favour suppliers and contractors. The court was told that on June 30 a complaint was filed with the registrar of UT cooperative societies but no action had been taken so far. The administration told court that complaint had been received by the registrars office and was listed to be taken up on October 7 as due to Covid-19 outbreak the functioning of the office has been hampered. The administration will look into the matter and if it finds that some action is required to be taken, then it will be at the earliest, it was informed. The court, while disposing of the matter, asked the registrar to look into the complaint and take a decision within two months. The bench said that, if aggrieved, the petitioner can approach the court again. The Government bus is now going downhill at 100mph and is coming to a 90-degree bend, the Dail has heard. Limerick Independent TD Richard ODonoghue made the charge, telling Tanaiste Leo Varadkar directly: The Tanaiste should stop being populist and do the job that he signed up to do. He said: I have come into the House today because a view is being expressed outside this chamber that needs to be said publicly. The public sees the Government running at less than 50pc. All we are seeing on television at the moment is negativity. The public view at the moment is that we are going downhill at 100mph while the Taoiseach is driving the bus. The public sees the Tanaiste as trying to make the bus skid - and Minister Eamon Ryan asleep in the back. That is what the public is looking at. The previous government had driven the bus to the top of the hill and stopped it on an incline, he said. The Government formed and went to the top of the hill but it is now going down that hill at 100mph and is coming to a 90-degree bend. The job of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party is to talk with one voice and not to take the Government apart by having pot-shots at each other on the television to be popular. Mr Varadkar said: I have no idea what the deputy means when he says that members of the Government parties have been taking each other apart on television. I have not witnessed that and I would be interested to hear the deputy give an example. Mr ODonoghue said: The Tanaiste's party did not even know when he said that he thought that the pubs should open, and that was tweeted. Fine Gael must work with Fianna Fail and the Green Party to lead this country. Sinn Fein will highlight all the negative things because that is what it does. He added: I respect Fine Gael when it does good. This country needs leadership. It does not need populism or a Government whose members take each other apart on television. We need the Government to lead and give people hope that we can straighten things out. I am asking Fine Gael and the other Government parties to come together and lead this country with one voice. The Tanaiste said the Government was working as one, adding that it had been since it formed. I appreciate that there are people who are opposed to this Government and do not want it to last. That does not include the deputy, but it does include others, Mr Varadkar said. Those people will do their best to stoke up, invent and exaggerate any differences that may occur between different politicians and parties. At the height of the Brexit struggle, when he was Taoiseach, people would go out of their way to ask him a question and then ask Simon Coveney a slightly different question, he said. When we gave slightly different answers, [they would] suggest that he and I were at war over Brexit, he said. That was always rubbish. I see a certain element of that narrative now being promoted by our opponents and other people. "Fox News used the word "hoax" more than 900 times during the first half of 2020, chipping away more truth from America's foundation, precisely at a time when the country was beset by multiple crises and needed honesty and accuracy, compassion and sound science," writes Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent for CNN in his new book, "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth." Stelter writes that America hasn't had a functioning CEO since Trump took office. Instead, Fox News "wingmen fed his worst impulses and helped him deceive the people who voted for him. They encouraged him to perform like a cable news bomb-thrower: to pick fights instead of finding common ground." Trump performs for TV ratings rather than tangible results and supplies endless content for Fox's talk shows, writes Stelter. The president who famously said in 2018 "what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening," has suggested that everything could be a hoax." It's right out of George Orwell's 1984: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears." Stelter believes the Trump age is really the hoax age. "Fox viewers came away with the impression that nothing was really knowable. Everything was relative. There were distortions and deceptions in every direction. Up could be down and left could be right and real news could be fake. 'Many people, exhausted by the uncertainty, gave up knowing for sure whether Russia had helped Trump win the 2016 election, or if his administration was doing all it could to end the pandemic." Having no truth to tell the American people, Trump has pitted people against each other to stir up strife. He has lied over and over again because he gets away with it on Fox, which is his only reality. Egypt's Public Prosecution ordered on Thursday to remand two youtubers and parents of a baby girl in custody for four days pending investigation over endangering and misusing their baby to gain money. The prosecution also ordered to hand the baby girl to her grandmother after taking a pledge from her to take care of the baby girl, according to a statement by the Public Prosecution. Earlier, the prosecution monitored several posts of social media demanding to investigate with the youtubers, Ahmed and Zeinab, who posted a video on their pages showing how they are terrifying their baby girl to gain more views and money. Public Prosecution Hamada El-Sawy ordered to arrest them and investigate into the incident after receiving a complaint from the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood concerning the incident. The prosecution also called on Egyptians to give priority to care for their children and to avoid the misuse of their children and stick to the principles of the Egyptian society, noting that it will take all measures required against such crimes. Search Keywords: Short link: Last year, I wrote a piece on the vinous equivalent of the ugly Christmas sweater. You know, bottles that look budget in their tacky labels, but are actually quite lovely. Christmas is 14 weeks away, so probably too soon to get in the festive spirit. But its never a bad time to enjoy a great wine that costs less than it should, which can be the case when the liquid trumps the label. Such is the case with the 2018 High Heaven Vintners Majestic Pines Cabernet Sauvignon from Columbia Valley in Washington (Vintages 15671 $19.95). This label may not charm you with its design or even catch your eye as you scan the shelves, but the wine itself is rather divine. The nose calls to mind cherries jubileedark sweet cherries simmered and flambeed with brandy and served over vanilla ice cream. Then, the wines entry is smooth yet elegant with flavours of black cherries and cream as well as a touch of orange zest and a light dusting of cocoa powder that lingers on the finish. Appreciate the lifted elegance, generous mid-palate and quiet complexity of this undervalued Washington red. Serve it with burgers topped with mushrooms and onion for a real showstopper. Score: 93 Another wine that may not win any beautiful label awards anytime soon but delivers outrageously good value for just shy of $9 per bottle is the 2018 Tavernello Sangiovese Cabernet from Italy (LCBO 13602 $8.95). Its aromas of blackberry lead to a hit of crushed black and red berries laced with smoked meat and a good crank of black and green peppercorn. This unassuming bottle offers oodles of Old World charm and an honest price. Pour it in tumblers alongside salami sandwiches for easy satisfaction. No condiments necessary. The wine seasons every bite. Score: 92 Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry from Jerez, Spain (LCBO 215483 $16.55/750mL, LCBO 215897 $21.25/1000mL) is a wine that has been around for eonssince 1882 in fact. And it definitely tastes better than it looks. The latest label, which is bright blue with two men in top hats and tails clinking glasses, is busy and seriously old fashioned. But this fortified is a brilliant buy. The heady aromas and kaleidoscopic flavours of crushed pralines, citrus oil, dates, fruit cake, and toffeeall shot through with lively acidity and laced with a touch of cool salinityis immediately compelling. Its luscious, amber-toned and just lovely sipped after dinner with a nibble of blue cheese or a handful of nuts. Score: 90 In case youre wondering, theres no dairy in cream sherry. The cream alludes to its style, which is sweet and rich. Harveys Bristol Cream is a full-bodied blend of four different styles of sherryfino, Amontillado, Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez. And its a wine thats especially good served chilled, which amps up the refreshment factor. While the label is not handsome, it is practical; to help drinkers understand that cream sherry tastes best chilled, the current packaging contains thermochromic ink so the word Harveys on the label turns blue when the bottle reaches a perfect drinking temperature of 10 to 13 degrees Celsius. Though some wines tastes better than it looks, some bottles are just the opposite. The label looks decentnot particularly naff or offensive in any way. But the minute it hits the palate, the moment of truth arrives. Its just not that fun to drink. Then out comes the Triple Sec, the brandy, the lemon-lime soda, and voilaa jug of sangria it becomes. In my house anyway. Such was the case recently with 2017 Mouton Cadet Red from Bordeaux, France (LCBO 943 $17.45). This wine tastes harsha bit thin and angular with the acidity sticking out and a bit of unpleasant astringency on the finish. So, no. I wouldnt recommend that wine. And 2018 Mouton Cadet White from Bordeaux (LCBO 2527 $16.95) isnt much better. Each sip is balanced and smooth, but theres none of that marvellous complexity and lingering finish one looks for in a white wineespecially at $16.45 per bottle. This wine is single note, non-descript and short. Jha Washington: The FBI has announced a reward of USD 15,000 to anyone giving information leading to those responsible for the abduction and murder of Indian national Pareshkumar Patel in the US in 2012. Patel was abducted from Raceway Gas Station he operated in Chesterfield, Virginia on September 16, 2012 and four days later his body with gunshots was found at the Ancarrow Boat Landing in the City of Richmond, Virginia. This case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations Richmonds Central Virginia Violent Crimes Task Force, as part of a cold case initiative to assist the City of Richmond Police Department with unsolved homicide investigations. According to the FBI, on September 16, a witness reported to the Chesterfield County Police Department observing Patel arrived at his store at approximately 6 am, exited his vehicle and was immediately approached by two individuals. These two persons of interest, dressed in hoodies, shoved Patel into a van and sped off. Patel was located days later, deceased. FBI Richmond is offering a reward of up to USD 15,000 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the persons responsible for his death. 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 Greece says it has resumed high-level political contacts with neighboring Turkey to try and de-escalate a dispute over offshore energy rights in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Stelios Petsas, the Greek government spokesman, said Thursday that direct contacts had restarted after Turkey pulled back a warship-escorted survey vessel at the weekend from an area where Greece claims exclusive rights to potential undersea gas or oil deposits. The discussions, Petsas said, were taking place between aides to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Allies of the two NATO members have warned that the standoff and rival military build-ups in the area _ between Greek islands, Turkey's southern coast, and Cyprus _ had increased the risk of a military confrontation. The European Union is due to consider a list of potential sanctions against Turkey next week. EU officials say the dispute can only be resolved through negotiations. Petsas said that direct communication between Mitsotakis and Erdogan was possible ahead of the Sept. 24-25 EU meetings. Search Keywords: Short link: A charred tree stands out against a burnt landscape on Cameron Lake Road outside Okanogan on Sept. 10. An illustration of Monica Lee's soondubu at Beverly Soon Tofu. (Pearl Shen / For The Times ) Monica Lee opened Beverly Soon Tofu in 1986, and over three decades it became one of Koreatowns bedrocks for nourishment. But earlier this month, the tofu house announced on Instagram that it was closing permanently as of Sept. 20 yet another loss in the restaurant community stemming from the COVID-19 catastrophe. The last time I ate there was shortly after moving to Los Angeles, late in the fall of 2018. Id enjoyed meals there previously when I was Eaters national critic and traveled frequently to Southern California. The restaurant came to mind as I was settling in as a new resident; it was a drizzly December night and I felt a cold coming on. Beverly Soon Tofus 40-seat dining room wasnt quite full that evening. A server waved me toward a table next to a jagged redwood sculpture that ran across one wall. Its patterns, especially when viewed from a bit of distance, looked like leaping flames. A mounted TV flashed pictures of dishes: galbi, bulgogi, tofu steak. I wanted what most everyone ordered: soondubu jjigae, the stew of soft tofu, its broth crimson from ground chiles, served boiling in individual ceramic pots. Lees menu listed options of different seafoods and meats to include in the soondubu, as well as mix-and-match combinations of the soup with grilled meats or bibimbap. Her format inspired similar tofu houses across the United States. Mixed tofu stew from Beverly Soon Tofu in Koreatown. (Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee / For The Times) I didnt wait long for my soondubu. The server splayed out white bowls filled with banchan: two kinds of kimchi (the inner leaves of cabbage and another dish of cubed daikon), sprouts with squiggly crunch and a vinegary cucumber salad. Then the stew arrived, erupting and spitting. I did the predictable food writer thing: I took video of the soup as it simmered frantically, even as the lens of my phone camera fogged over. The server rolled her eyes and cracked an egg into the soup for me. I stirred it in quickly and then began fishing out oysters and clams (Id asked for the seafood combination; mussels and shrimp also lurked) before they turned to rubber in the intense heat. Story continues In my memory, Lees soondubu stewed the chills right out of me; I woke up feeling better the next day. If only there were such a soothing curative for the countrys more insidious maladies. Writing restaurant elegies could be full-time work these days. Six months into coronavirus-related shutdowns, every publication that covers Los Angeles dining culture maintains a running list of ongoing restaurant closures. No genre has been spared not tasting menu restaurants from famous chefs, not tiny neighborhood institutions, not steakhouse chains. It can take a force of will not to glaze over with numbness, to instead stay present for the vanishing of jobs and creativity and community sustenance. Ive read varying estimates saying that, by the time the coronavirus threat has passed, somewhere between 20% and 75% of restaurants will have permanently closed. No oracle can accurately forecast a number. The suffering has been horrific, full stop. The story of the 2020 restaurant crisis, though, is as much about a call to action from its inner ranks as it is about the effects of the pandemic. Out of the misery, the immobility and the social reckoning sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, big questions long simmering in the American restaurant culture have surfaced, and they are impossible to skim away. Many of the questions stem from the inherent brokenness of the restaurant model in America. Our government provides no safety nets for the low-wage, often undocumented workers upon whose labor the industry runs. A bio-network of businesses farmers, meat and fish suppliers, wine and spirits makers and distributors, architects, linen services begins to collapse when restaurants cant feed customers to capacity, or when restaurants close altogether. Much of the conversation in food media these days centers on the soldierly brigade system on which restaurant hierarchies have long been established and perpetuated; its a system that enables abuse from high-up-the-command-chain chefs who yell and belittle and harass their way through the nightly pressure cooker of kitchen life. Servers rely on tipping, a wage system rooted in racism that also encourages sexism and mistreatment. Where can changes begin? With true universal healthcare, and with more effective government legislation that supports independent restaurants and small-scale agriculture? How do restaurant owners create more sustainable models of success? Would customers be willing to shell out more for meals if they understood they also were paying for more equitable incomes for those who prepare and serve their food? How do restaurants support their employees while also remaining affordable for their communities? And in a society rife with wealth inequality, how much of the public even cares about these larger issues? I drive the streets of Los Angeles and marvel at the crowds I see dining along the sidewalk. Its a complicated sight. Part of me cheers for restaurants acclimating to survive. The safety of restaurant workers has to be a priority. But without government aid, they also need livelihoods. Customers dine on the outdoor patio at La Boheme in West Hollywood in July, 2020. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times) People want to eat out for many reasons. Dining, even during a pandemic, retains its cultural currency. Preorders for exquisite bentos from temples like n/naka and Hayato sell out the moment theyre posted online. Evan Funke, whose Felix in Venice was perpetually booked pre-pandemic, opened a six-month pop-up in Hollywood last month called Fingers Crossed; its popularity is so instant that no reservations are available until early October. Some of us want to gather at a restaurant any kind of restaurant to grasp at rituals that might restore a sense of normalcy. Isolation will never really come to feel natural. Meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, one in five residents of Los Angeles County faces food insecurity their access to food is uncertain enough that they dont know the source of their next meal. How do we effectively hold all this? The demand for luxury and the desire to support restaurants we love, while recognizing that many Angelenos live with hunger? Questions outnumber the answers. Since the March shutdown, the Food section has run stories on the struggles of undocumented workers, the strategies that restaurants have adopted (selling groceries, pivoting entirely to takeout, turning parking lots into dining rooms) to meet the ever-changing moment, and the ways that organizations are feeding unemployed restaurant workers. Weve spotlighted chefs who turned to Instagram to build an audience for the uplifting, often personal cooking theyre creating outside the traditional restaurant paradigm. Its part of a recalculation happening in food journalism examining the habitual mythologizing of media-crowned chefs whose worth overshadows the contributions of their team. White male chefs who already fit neatly into the stereotype of the auteur are overrepresented, praised for a highly specific approach to fine dining, then rewarded with more investment and opportunities to replicate that same approach, Tejal Rao wrote in the New York Times, addressing the notion of the chef-auteur. My colleague Lucas Kwan Peterson recently published a series of columns examining the illusions of auteurship and the intricacies of who gets credit for conceiving menu dishes. We may not ever do away with celebrity culture, or get to a place where restaurants and chefs are reviewed and rewarded based on how happy their employees are and the positive change they effect in their communities, wrote Peterson. But maybe, the rot that seems to have infected the food world of late is just on the surface. Maybe it can be scraped off, and well find theres something delicious underneath. Its all a lot. In the thick of so much upheaval, Ive also been thinking about standout Los Angeles chefs who have stayed quiet those whove yet to reopen but havent announced permanent closures. Mei Lin is one of them: Her Nightshade in the Arts District, with sensations like the mapo tofu lasagna and mind-bending desserts from opening pastry chef Max Boonthanakit, was one of 2019s most exciting new restaurants. Mei Lin, center, with her team at Nightshade in April, 2019. (Silvia Razgova / For The Times) This fall shes opening a fried chicken sandwich shop called Daybird; the food will be conceived with takeout in mind. As for reopening Nightshade, which was designed as a more formal, sit-down experience? At the end of the day the staff is very much like family, Lin said. And so I ask myself, would I feel comfortable about one of my family members working out there right now, coming in direct contact with that many customers and putting themselves at risk for any amount of money? I know everyones situation is different, but I guess Im a bit protective when it comes to that. I asked her about the big questions at hand for the restaurant industry, about what she sees that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. I dont have as much a problem with the brigade system itself as I do with the militant leadership tactics and attitude that seem to come with it, she said. I think during this period its become clearer to everyone that the old ways that chefs in my generation were taught are just not effective anymore. Ive learned firsthand that the cycle of negative feedback, rule by fear and authority-for-authoritys-sake leadership just isnt sustainable and doesnt get the best out of team members. On the other hand, Lin said, we have the experience, the data and the grit to adapt and no generation of chefs is better equipped to break this cycle than ours. As is richly apparent in the United States, there are rarely quick fixes to systemic failings. Transformation takes fortitude; the revolution, in the restaurant industry and the media that covers it, will require leadership and resources, particularly as we all continue to process the ongoing calamity. If one can find any positivity in 2020, its this: The inherent flaws in the American restaurant industry model (and how the media covers it) have been decried so widely and loudly this year that it seems all but impossible for its players to go back to business as normal. The form and delineations of change may not have yet crystallized, but its essence is animate. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Photo credit: Kia From Autoweek Kia plans to roll out seven new electric vehicles and launch them by 2027. The company calls its upcoming EV lineup diverse and says its going to include models across several vehicle segments beginning with the first model, codenamed CV, out next year. Kia has sold more than 100,000 BEVs worldwide since the introduction of our first mass-produced BEV in 2011, the Kia Ray EV, said Kia president and CEO Ho Sung Song. By refocusing our business on electrification, were aiming for BEVs to account for 25 percent of our total worldwide sales by 2029. The company said it is aiming for EVs to account for 20 percent of the brands total vehicle sales in advanced markets, including Korea, North America and Europe. This news comes soon after parent company Hyundai's announcement of its Ioniq sub brand and three confirmed EV models. Cross over between the two brands is likely. That said, Kia didnt say what the several vehicle segments are but to us it looks like crossovers and SUVs are a focus based on the sketch Kia released. The company said it will respond to market demands by offering diversified product types, with a range of models suitable for urban centers, long-range journeys and performance driving. One of the EVs could be based on the Imagine concept from the 2019 Geneva show. The company also said many of its new EVs will use its new Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), claiming best-in-class interior spaciousness. Kia says it is also looking into creating subscription services for its EVs as well as EV battery leasing and rental programs, and other second-life battery-related businesses. The Korean company is establishing more than 2,400 EV chargers in Europe and around 500 in North America, partnering with its dealer networks. Kia is also seeking charging infrastructure partners for the U.S. and China. Harsimrat Kaur Badal submits resignation to PMO over farm bills India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: Harsimrat Kaur Badal has submitted her resignation as Union minister to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), principal advisor to Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal said on Thursday. Harsimrat Kaur Badal quits PM's cabinet over farm bills, why is SAD upset with BJP | Oneindia News Harcharan Bains, the principal advisor, said Kaur submitted her resignation soon after the party chief announced in Lok Sabha that she would quit the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills, tabled in Parliament by the Centre for passage. Kaur, the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries, is the only SAD representative in the Modi government. "I want to make an announcement that our Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from Cabinet," Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal said in Lok Sabha during his concluding remarks. He also refuted suggestions that his party initially supported three ordinances, which these bills seek to replace, and asserted that Harsimrat Kaur Badal had expressed her concerns in the Cabinet meeting and also wrote to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, highlighting "flaws" in the proposed legislations. Newly elected BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Gasti remains in critical condition Hitting out at the Congress, which has sought to corner the SAD over these bills, he accused the party of "double speak" on the issue and noted that the abolition of the APMC Act was part of its manifesto in both the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab. The Shiromani Akali Dal is the BJP's oldest ally and has stood by the saffron party through thick and thin. The SAD president said the three bills, including the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, which has been passed by Lok Sabha, are going to affect 20 lakh farmers and 15-20 lakh farm labourers in Punjab alone. The state with 2.5 per cent of the country's landmass produces nearly 50 per cent of food grains for the country, he added. Punjab's mandi system is the best in the world with a network of 1,900 setups across 12,000 villages, he said. Earlier during the discussion, Ravneet Singh 'Bittu' of the Congress, who is from Punjab, took a a swipe at the SAD, demanding proof that Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the Cabinet Minister of Food Processing Industries, had opposed the three farm sector ordinances. He said if she does not resign to protest the bills, Badals would find it difficult to return to Punjab. She is wife of Sukhbir Singh Badal. Moderna should have enough data from its late-stage trial to know whether its coronavirus vaccine works in November, CEO Stephane Bancel said Thursday. The company could have enough data by October, but that's unlikely, Bancel said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "If the infection rate in the country were to slow down in the next weeks, it could potentially be pushed out in a worst-case scenario in December," he added. Moderna is one of three drugmakers backed by the U.S. in late-stage testing for a potential vaccine. The other two are companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca. Moderna's experimental vaccine contains genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, which scientists hope provokes the immune system to fight the virus. In July, the company released early-stage data that showed its potential vaccine generated a promising immune response in a small group of patients. Bancel's comment came four days after the CEO of Pfizer said its vaccine could be distributed to Americans before the end of the year. CEO Albert Bourla told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the company should have key data from its late-stage trial for the Food and Drug Administration by the end of October. If the FDA approves the vaccine, the company is prepared to distribute "hundreds of thousands of doses," he said. It also comes as infectious disease experts and scientists in recent weeks have said they have concerns that the White House may be pressuring the FDA to approve a vaccine before it's been adequately tested. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. government could start distributing a coronavirus vaccine as early as October, a much more optimistic estimate than his own health officials have publicly advised. He said the U.S. has manufactured all of the necessary supplies and health officials will be able to distribute at least 100 million vaccine doses by the end of the year. The vaccine could be distributed starting in October or November, but he said "I don't think it's going to be too much later than that." "We're very close to that vaccine as you know and I think much closer than I think most people want to say," Trump said during a White House press briefing. "We think we can start some time in October. So as soon as it's announced we'll be able to start. That will be from mid-October on. It may be a little bit later than that." On Sept. 8, nine drug companies, including Moderna, released a letter pledging that they would prioritize safety and uphold " the integrity of the scientific process" in their efforts to develop coronavirus vaccines. And on Thursday, Moderna released details on how its study will be evaluated. "We believe this is unprecedented times. There's a lot of suffering from a public health standpoint," Bancel said Thursday. "If Moderna's vaccine were to get a good safety readout and a good efficacy readout and be approved by the agency, we care deeply that this vaccine is trusted." Earlier this month, Moderna announced it was slowing enrollment slightly in its clinical trial to ensure it has sufficient representation of minorities most at risk for the disease. The company so far has enrolled 25,296 people in the trial and expects to enroll up to 30,000 participants. A man is accused of killing his father and putting the body in a toolbox behind an Oklahoma home, officials said Thursday. Police responded to the Oklahoma City home Wednesday after a woman called 911 worried that something had happened to her dad, police said in a news release. When they arrived, police found Esteban Tapia, 71, dead. His body was discovered in a metal toolbox behind the home, police said, and Tapias wounds were consistent with homicide. The body of a 71-year-old man was discovered in a toolbox behind a home in Oklahoma City, police say. Its the kind of metal toolbox you often see in the back of a pickup truck, Master Sgt. Gary Knight, with the police department, told KOCO. Francisco Tapia, the victims son, was also at the home, police said. Investigators learned that the 31-year-old had become angry with his father, killed him and put his body in the toolbox, police said. Francisco Tapia was taken to the Oklahoma County Detention Center on a complaint of murder in the first degree, police said. NSW taxpayers could be forced to pay millions of dollars in compensation to James Packer's Crown Resorts if the casino group is ordered to implement tighter controls to keep criminals out of its $2.2 billion Barangaroo facility set to open in December. A state government probity inquiry has heard over the past two months how Crown's lax due diligence and legal compliance controls led it into business with high-roller "junket" tour operators tied to powerful criminal syndicates and let itself be used to launder dirty cash. Crown plans to open its new casino at Barangaroo in December. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer But The Sydney Morning Herald can reveal that under the terms of the deal Crown signed with Mike Baird's government in 2014 to open Sydney's second casino, the gambling giant is entitled to claim compensation worth 10 and a half times the estimated negative financial impact from "any action" the NSW government takes which changes, or has the effect of changing, its licence. Crown can claim the same tenfold compensation for any government action which has a material negative impact on its "assets, liabilities, properties ... operating results, operations, reputation or prospects", the deed says. A French doctor holds a test tube after administering a nasal swab - Reuters Staff at many of Frances overstretched coronavirus testing centres went on strike on Thursday in protest against low pay and working conditions that some compared to a war zone. The one-day stoppage risked further disrupting a Covid-19 testing system already under severe stress. Queues outside private laboratories, which carry out most of the 1.2 million tests currently being done weekly in France, stretched for several blocks from early morning. The French health service covers the cost of tests and anyone is eligible to be tested, even without symptoms. In south-western France, staff at 21 private testing centres have been on strike since Tuesday. Francine, a nurse who administers PCR tests, said: The work load is just too much to cope with, and our wages are far too low. She earns less than 1,500 (1,370) a month. Eric Sellini of the CGT union said: Were not sure how many facilities have had to close, but this is a large-scale movement across all the laboratories in France. Pascal Bourdeau, a technician at a laboratory in a Paris suburb, said: Our working conditions are like Stalingrad, referring to a bloody Second World War battle between the Soviet Red Army and Hitlers forces. Patients are aggressive, on edge. They want their results right away, but theres only limited capacity. Weve seen fights break out in the queue. Many people have complained of long waits for tests and results. Olivier Veran, the much-criticised health minister, has come under fire from fellow members of government for what one said was the lack of a sense of urgency in large parts of the health ministry. Mr Veran has promised to speed up testing. It emerged on Thursday that Covid tests are costing France more than other EU countries, according to an investigation by Le Parisien newspaper. The French health service is paying private contractors 75 (68.60) per test. By comparison, private laboratories in Germany are banned from charging the health service more than 59 (54). Italian health authorities are also reportedly paying an average of 59. In Spain, tests at public centres or hospitals cost 30 to 45 (27.50 to 41) and are free for those with symptoms. People can also get tested at private centres, where the price varies from 80 to 150 (73 to 137). French media have often praised Germanys handling of the pandemic, contrasting it with Frances less effective approach. Police are searching for the driver of the Charger, believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s. The Charger had two Mexican flags displayed in the rear window and an Illinois license plate. The group may have been heading into Chicago from Waukegan, Copeland said. The car was last seen driving west on Route 60, possibly with a damaged rear window from gunshots. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Christophe Vogt (Agence France-Presse) Geneva, Switzerland Thu, September 17, 2020 07:56 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c454596c 2 World WTO,leaders,candidate,Trade Free The World Trade Organization has ground to a halt and needs a pragmatic new director-general to drive through reforms, the Saudi candidate for the job said Wednesday. Mohammad al-Tuwaijri, 53, said the WTO, which was founded in 1995, was due a shake-up. "Twenty-five years; in my mind, every organization in the world -- regardless of the external environment, which is severe in our case -- must have the fresh restart," he told the Geneva Press Club. Tuwaijri is one of eight candidates in the running to replace Roberto Azevedo. The Brazilian career diplomat quit the WTO helm at the end of August, a year before his second term was due to expire. Three candidates will get the chop on Friday as WTO member states narrow down the field. A former air force pilot who flew more than 30 Gulf War missions, Tuwaijri was a banker who ran JPMorgan's fledgling Saudi Arabia operations before joining HSBC. The former Saudi economy minister currently advises the kingdom's royal court on economic strategy. The WTO is in paralysis due to the trade war between the United States and China, US President Donald Trump's mistrust of the global trade body and, according to Tuwaijri, a lack of re-evaluation within the organization itself. "Hence my approach is around practical leadership," he said. "We need to really listen to members, but be very impartial, give ideas... gradual progress: we cannot have a switch on, switch off." Game-changer He said the WTO had to be reformed to show its members that it could still get things done, particularly by driving through trade negotiations have been blocked up for years. "It's a crossroads, any way you look at it," Tuwaijri said. He said the COVID-19 crisis would change world trade and the global economy, making it "a window of opportunity to bring back the multilateral trading system" and therefore make the WTO relevant again. However, he said the moment would be short-lived and if it is missed, "we will have to deal with a much worse scenario in the years to come". Tuwaijri said he hoped the next WTO chief would be chosen on practicality, the ability to open doors, agility, dynamics and delivery. "My ultimate wish is for the organization to really have the right person for the next four years, because it's going to be a game-changer," he said. Rather than elections, the WTO selects its director-general through consensus-building. Nominations closed on July 8 and the five male and three female candidates have been busy making their pitch to member states. The eight are set to be reduced to five on Friday, with a further cull to three set to take place in October and a final decision likely in November. Tuwaijri is up against Liam Fox (Britain); Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh (Egypt); Amina Mohamed (Kenya); Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Nigeria); Jesus Seade (Mexico); Tudor Ulianovschi (Moldova) and Yoo Myung-hee (South Korea). Topics : WTO leaders candidate Trade Councils are engaging lawyers to fight the Andrews government's West Gate Tunnel soil dump, as the state's environmental watchdog approves landfill expansions that would never be allowed under the current permit system. The troubled project's 2022 completion date cannot feasibly be achieved, as landfill operators say their sites will not be ready to accept the soil until early 2021, and tunnelling is set to take about two years from then. Transurban has covered the initial costs for landfill operators applying to receive the soil, but the question of who will pay the construction and operating costs of a massive containment system to accept 3 million tonnes of dirt is yet to be decided. John McKenzie and sister Heather Dodd in front of the protest signs against the dumping of toxic soil from the West Gate Tunnel in Bulla. Credit:Justin McManus Councils in Melbourne's north and west are stepping up their fight against landfill creep. The EPA has been approving tip expansions of up to 100 hectares under regulations that critics say were written to weaken environmental controls and wave the project through. Kangana Ranaut is getting a lesson on feminism today after she called Urmila Matondkar a soft porn actress on national television. Samajwadi Party member and actress Jaya Bachchan on Tuesday raised her voice in the Parliament regarding the ongoing slander and drug allegations levelled by a few against the Hindi film industry. Bachchan demanded the government to provide protection and put a ban on the unending bashing being faced by members of Bollywood. Her comments have unleashed a tweetstorm of sexism and all-too-familiar misogyny directed against the MP with many calling her a shameless lady" and appealing to actor and her husband Amitabh Bachchan to reign in his wife. Bachchan, meanwhile, found support from her fraternity members. One of them being Rangeela actress-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar. Matondkar who had joined Indian National Congress in 2019 and resigned the grand old party later, blaming petty in-house politics" also countered Kangana Ranaut, who had earlier said that 99% of film industry stars are drug consumers. The entire country is facing the menace of drugs. Does she (Kangana) know Himachal is the origin of drugs? She should start from her own state," Matondkar said in an interview. Also Read: Sexist Trolls Are Asking Big B to Tame Jaya Bachchan Because She Defended Bollywood in Parliament But things took an ugly turn on Wednesday when Ranaut showed up on national television. In her interview, she took digs at Matdonkars remarks. Even Urmila, she is a soft porn star. I know its very blatant. But she isnt known for her acting for sure. What is she known for? For doing soft porn right? If she can get a ticket, why wont I get a ticket? Kangana hits out at @UrmilaMatondkar over her remark on BJP ticket.Ranauts remarks did not sit well with netizens who slammed her for her derogatory and sexist comments against the fellow actress. Many others called Queen actress a hypocrite" for being a self-proclaimed" feminist on one hand while taking the liberty to deride a woman on the other. Calling @UrmilaMatondkar a soft-porn star" is the kind of misogynistic behaviour we have been accusing politicians of for all these years. @KanganaTeam had no right to use that language against a colleague. In any other field of work, this would amount to harassment," journalist Faye Dsouza wrote in a tweet. Kangana On odd days- I introduced feminism in film industry. Kangana On even days- Urmila Matondkar is known for soft porn Dr Nazma (@nazmaaman) September 16, 2020 Some famous soft porn movies by Urmila pic.twitter.com/oXUTO6pczF Ojasism (@Ojasism) September 17, 2020 Shes the Queen,Of eloquence & class.The rest are just,Chote mote B grade soft Porn stars. Gulshan Devaiah (@gulshandevaiah) September 17, 2020 Calling Urmila a soft porn star and then calling yourself a feminist! Wow!! This woman, her ever changing views and So much about her lately has been despicable! Akanksha sharma (@sharma_akanksha) September 16, 2020 Kangana: I am the voice of women. I am the Real Jhansi ki Rani.Also kangana: Urmila matondkar is a soft porn star. Shame on people comapring her to Bhagat Singh! RebeLLiouS (@flawsome_guy) September 16, 2020 She is not a soft porn star, but what if she was also. Whats so wrong in that. Id rather be a soft porn star than a foul mouthed disrespectul narcissist. harish (@hiyer) September 17, 2020 Kangana Ranaut called Urmila Matondkar a Soft Porn Star" on national television. Few days back she created a ruckus when she was called h@ramkhor"Hey hypocrite queen @KanganaTeam, respect maangne se nahi milti, you have to earn it. Devil (@beingthedevil_) September 16, 2020 Also Read: Dia Mirza Condemns Sanjay Rauts Abusive Comments About Kangana Ranaut Pseudofeminists are such a hypocrites. If calling soft porn star feels so derogatory then why you except Sunny. Why she is given work, why she is role model of many, why she is made a star? why a film is made on her?? Hypocrites. https://t.co/SVQDtEvMrV Pratibha Rawat (@Pratibh06136822) September 17, 2020 Responding to the online criticism, Ranaut took to Twitter on Thursday and wrote: Liberal brigade once virtually lynched a renowned writer in to silence for saying people like Sunny Leone should not be our role models, Sunny is accepted by the industry and entire India as an artist, suddenly fake feminists equating being a porn star to something derogatory." (Newser) An 85-year-old man was fatally stabbed at a Meijer in Michigan on Wednesday before a bystander with a concealed weapon intervened. Police had received a report about a man with a knife in the automotive section of the Meijer in Adrian around 12:30pm, per the Daily Telegram. Police Chief Vincent Emrick said officers were en route when they learned of the stabbing. A woman with a concealed pistol license had watched as a man stabbed the elderly victim multiple times in the head and neck, Emrick said, adding that the woman ordered the suspect to the ground and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The 29-year-old suspect was arrested without incident while the victim was pronounced dead, police said. story continues below From the scene, Emrick said multiple people had witnessed the killing and were being interviewed. He also said surveillance footage showed the suspect and victim arriving separately: "That's pretty much all we know at this point." WTOL identifies the victim as a 85-year-old man from Lenawee County. Police described the suspect as a resident of Adrian, the county seat. A witness told WTOL that the suspect had been wearing a long trenchcoat as he entered the store around 12:20pm. "I'm actually glad that there was somebody there with their license to stop the guy," another customer told the outlet, referring to the bystander who intervened. "Because if he did that to this person, who knows who else he'd do it to." (Read more stabbing stories.) Cuba releases journalist imprisoned at labor camp for covering arrest of Christian homeschool parents Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A Cuban journalist who was imprisoned for nearly a year for reporting on the arrest, jailing and trial of Christian pastors and homeschool parents has been released and reunited with his family. Roberto Quinones Haces, a journalist for CubaNet, confirmed his Sept. 4 release in Guantanamo by phone to the news outlet. The 63 year old had been imprisoned since Sept. 11, 2019. He was convicted of crimes related to disobedience and resistance as he covered the trial of Ramon Rigal and his wife, Adya Exposito, members of the Church of God. They were arrested in April 2019 for homeschooling their children due to concerns about the Cuban public school systems promotion of socialism and atheism. Quinones was sentenced to one year in a labor camp, according to the U.S. State Department. Throughout their imprisonment, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as other international human rights watchdogs, called for the release of the couple and Quinones. The married couple were released at separate times earlier this year. In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Quinones release overdue, adding that the charges against the journalist were dubious. Throughout Quinones' imprisonment, human rights groups including Amnesty International, PEN International and Christian Solidarity Worldwide demanded his release. His detention and trial were marked by the flagrant disregard for legal norms, which is typical of the Cuban regime, Pompeo said. Cuban authorities did not inform Quinones of the charges against him until minutes before the trial and did not permit him legal representation in the courtroom. As Cuba was added to the State Departments special watch list of countries that engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom last December, Pompeo said its disgraceful that the Cuban regime incarcerated a journalist whose only crime is working for a more transparent society. It is also unsurprising, the top U.S. diplomat asserted. The regime uses any excuse to silence its critics and to violate human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and to fair trial guarantees. According to the USCIRF, Cubas new Constitution adopted last April changed religious freedom protections. It was followed by the regime's aggressive targeting of religious leaders who opposed the changes. Tactics used to pressure religious leaders included repeated police summons, interrogations, threats of detention, and labeling religious leaders as counterrevolutionaries. While gathering information on religious freedom conditions in Cuba remains a challenge, a nongovernmental organization documented 260 cases of violations of freedom of religion or belief in Cuba in 2019, including harassments, arrests, and travel bans, up from 151 in 2018, the USCIRF annual report reads. Religious leaders who raised concern that the new constitution weakened religious freedom protections faced severe hostility and pressure leading up to the constitutional referendum in February. Cuban authorities have also in the past been accused of preventing religious leaders and activists from traveling to the U.S. to testify about the repression of religious freedom in Cuba. Last year, it was reported that regime officials banned at least four evangelical leaders who spoke out about the constitutional changes from traveling to the U.S. to participate in the State Department's second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Police stand in front of their headquarters in Philadelphia during protests in June. Read more Philadelphia City Council approved two police reform measures Thursday that will require public hearings on police contract proposals and prohibit the use of choke holds or kneeling on a persons neck. Both bills were introduced in June amid protests against brutality after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and reflect some of the demands made by protesters. City officials have often cited the contract process with Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, the police union, as a roadblock to substantial change. One of the bills approved Thursday, sponsored by Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, doesnt allow for public input on final approval of a contract, but does ensure residents can comment on the citys initial contract proposal before it is submitted to the FOP. Gilmore Richardson said the negotiation process has been used as a sword and shield by the union and must involve public input. This legislation seeks to mandate public transparency and accountability in a process that has been shrouded in secrecy for too long, she said. We can no longer afford to have these important discussions happen behind closed doors. FOP president John McNesby said Thursday that the bill singles out the police union compared with other municipal unions. But he said it would not impact outcomes because the public hearing would precede negotiations. I think its just a group of people on Council who just wanted to show some kind of reform, he said. In all reality, that bill does absolutely nothing to our bargaining process. The bill was approved by 15-2 , with Bobby Henon and Brian J. ONeill voting no. Henon is a Democrat who has been a supporter of unions, and ONeill is one of Councils two Republican members. Mayor Jim Kenneys administration voiced support for the bill at a hearing in June, and noted that it could lead to changes in contract proposals based on public input. The administration faced scrutiny this year for approving a one-year extension of the police contract that offered raises for officers, and for proposing a $19 million increase in the police budget. The budget increase was later canceled amid protests and budget negotiations in June. Council also voted unanimously Thursday to ban officers from choke holds and kneeling on a subjects neck or back. Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson, who sponsored that bill, said it was important to formally ban the tactic that resulted in Floyds death in Minneapolis. An officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The bill was introduced in the spirit of George Floyd, who lost his life," Johnson said. The police union and the administration supported Johnsons bill. Police Department policy already banned the use of choke holds and kneeling on subjects' backs. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a Council hearing in June that department policy did not explicitly ban kneeling on a persons neck, and said she supported the bill. The 'Lady of Justice,' a 12-foot-high, gold leaf statue is pictured on top of the dome of the Central Criminal Court, commonly referred to as The Old Bailey, in central London on Aug. 21, 2016. (Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images) UKs Worst Criminals Would Serve More Jail Time in Radical Sentencing Overhaul Violent and sexual offenders in England and Wales would serve more time in jail as part of sweeping sentencing changes proposed by the Ministry of Justice on Sept. 16. Aimed at cutting crime and restoring public faith in sentencing, the radical justice plan would allow child-killers in England and Wales to get whole life orders (WLOs), meaning theyd never be released from prison. This would also extend to 18- to 20-year-olds if their crimes are judged serious enough. Since 2003, the law has forbidden giving WLOs to 18- to 20-year-olds, no matter what their crime. Under the proposals, which will be put forward for legislation next year, many types of offenders would stay in prison for at least two-thirds of their sentences and no longer be considered for release halfway through. Second and Third Strikes The new sentencing measures, set out in a white paper (pdf) from Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, would also toughen the criteria that allow judges to hand down less than the minimum statutory terms for second strike knife possession and third strike burglary offenses. With serious offenses, the public wants to know that the corresponding sentences will keep them safe and better reflect the gravity of the crimes committed, Buckland said, addressing the House of Commons. Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland arrives at Downing Street in London on Sept. 8, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images) Buckland highlighted recent terror attacks perpetrated by offenders serving fixed-term sentences who had been released automatically, only to commit horrifying acts of violence after leaving prison. The new measures would give judges the power to refer such offenders considered dangerous or posing a terror threat to the parole board for assessment before being set free. The tougher sentencing measures would keep offenders who pose a risk to the public off our streets for longer, Buckland said. He also said the reforms would make sentencing simpler, more transparent, and stop judges and lawyers from having to be overly focused on technicalities. Duty to the Public Over the past 30 years, sentencing had become hugely complex but nowhere near as effective, with judges sometimes having to impose sentences that seem to make little sense, Buckland said in a speech on Sept. 16 to introduce the white paper. The first duty of any government is to keep the public safe from harm, he said. It is a responsibility this government takes extremely seriously, and my department has been working on a range of measures to make the sentencing system work better to protect people and to reduce crime. Protecting the public also involves improving rehabilitation and reducing re-offending, Buckland said. Finding new ways to break cycles of crimeto prevent a revolving door of short custodial sentences that we know offer little rehabilitative value, is important, Buckland told Parliament. Smart Interventions Buckland highlighted the need for smart interventions that minimize repeat petty offenders going back and forth to prison. Offenders in this category often live chaotic lifestyles, sometimes driven by drug and alcohol misuse, or poor mental health, Buckland said in his speech. Their backgrounds are often characterized by entrenched poverty, absent role models, and a lack of any decent education. To address repeated low-level offending, the new measures propose a test of five problem-solving courts, which will take a new approach. In a bid to address the sliding scale of increasing inevitability that we cannot ignore, the program wont seek to imprison high-needs or frequent low-level offenders. Instead, it will try innovative solutions such as graduated sanction incentives, Buckland said. To boost rehabilitation, the new measures include changes to the disclosures of custodial sentences ex-offenders must make to prospective employers. With exclusions for serious violence and sexual or terrorist attacks, many sentences under the proposals will become spent earlier, and not have to be disclosed. Mental Health and Housing Concerns There also will be more support for mental health and treatment for addictions as part of sentencing, and more tagging, curfews, and deferred sentencing as alternatives to prison. There will also be additional support for offenders with autism and dyslexia, and more empowerment for probation services. Speaking in the House of Commons on Sept. 16, Labour Member of Parliament David Lammy welcomed much of the White Paper, but said the changes wouldnt be enough on their own, citing the homelessness and uncertainty facing ex-offenders as obstacles to rehabilitation. Ministry of Justice data show that between 9 June and 31 July this year, nearly a third of prisoners2,400 peoplewere released homeless or to an unknown circumstance, Lammy said. How will longer sentences protect the public if people continue to be released homeless and without the chance to turn their lives around? Housing concerns for offenders leaving prison were noted earlier this month by national social justice charity Nacro in a joint letter (pdf) signed by the Prison Reform Trust, the Bounce Back Foundation, and 19 other voluntary organizations. The letter, addressed to Buckland and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, called for the provision of somewhere to live for everyone leaving prison. This should be safe and secure accommodation which provides a foundation for them to make positive changes and move away from a life of crime, the letter states. For people leaving prison, being released homeless is simply setting them up to fail. The letter also said that nearly 1,000 people are released from prison monthly with no home to go to, and that significantly increases the risk of re-offending. A safe, secure home on release for those leaving prison seemed an impossible dream for too long, the letter states. Recent Cases The new sentencing proposals follow the sentencing to 55 years in prison of Hashem Abedi in August. Abedi, the judge said, would have gotten a WLO if he hadnt been under the age of 21 at the time he committed the Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people and injured hundreds, almost half of whom were children or teenagers. The tougher sentencing proposals also coincide with the ongoing Harpers Law campaign that was launched by Lissie Harper in August to seek tougher sentences for the killers of emergency service workers. Lissie launched her campaign following the on-duty death of her husband, Police Constable Andrew Harper, who was dragged behind a getaway car. His three killers, a 19-year-old and two 18-year-olds, were each sentenced to between 13 and 16 years in prison. Hundreds of the University of Melbournes most senior academics have urged it to pull back from its plan to slash hundreds of jobs as part of a pandemic reset program they warn will damage the universitys global standing. As the university prepares to shed 450 jobs in response to lost revenue, more than 200 professors who sit on its academic board say the plan could damage our capacity to deliver on our public purposes in the short and long term. Hundreds of members of the University of Melbourne's academic board say planned cuts will damage the university's global standing. Credit:Daniel Pockett They say the planned restructure details of which have not yet been fully revealed to staff will engender distrust and damage morale, and harm our reputation as a preeminent university, both nationally and globally. The academic board is responsible for maintaining high standards of teaching and research. By PTI NEW DELHI: COVID-19 cases in the city will show a rise in the next 10 days as testing capacity has been quadrupled, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said, while asserting that the plan is to contain the spread of the infection in the long-run through effective isolation. Interacting with reporters, he also said, reports of the sero-prevalance survey conducted in the first week of September will be first put before the high court. Delhi recorded 4,473 fresh COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day spike here till date, as the tally in the city mounted to over 2.3 lakh, authorities said. The previous highest single-day spike of 4,321 cases was recorded on September 12. "Cases of COVID-19 and active cases will rise in the next 10-15 days as testing has been ramped up four times. But we will then be able to contain the spread of the infection in the long-run through effective isolation, as planned," Jain told reporters when asked about rise in daily cases and active cases. The active cases tally on Wednesday rose to 30,914 from 29,787 on the previous day, as per the bulletin. According to the Wednesday bulletin, the positivity rate stood at 7.15 per cent and the death rate stood at 0.7 per cent based on data of the last 10 days, the minister said. "The situation as of now is fine," Jain said. The Delhi government has significantly ramped up testing in the past few days. The number of tests conducted and corresponding fresh COVID-19 cases reported ranged from 24,198 (2,312) on September 1 to 62,669 (4,263) on September 15. On Wednesday again, over 4,000 cases were recorded for the 62,593 tests conducted the previous day. On the availability of beds, he reiterated there are 14,521 beds as of now. As per the bulletin, 7,738 beds are vacant. Also, last week order was issued that 80 per cent ICU beds in 33 private hospitals here are to be reserved for COVID-19 patients, Jain said. On results of the latest sero-prevalance survey, and asked to respond to a media report that claims 33 per cent of people surveyed had antibodies to the novel coronavirus, he said, "The result is not yet out, so on what basis, this figure is being claimed." "Also, it is to be put before the high court first," he added. The government has injected GH6.5 million into Ayum Forest Product Limited, a timber processing factory at Mim in the Asunafo North District, to revive the company. The company, which has been adopted under the One District One Factory (1D1F) programme, was shut down in 2016 due to financial and operational challenges. Following its adoption under the programme, it has become one of the 68 ailing companies that have received government support to revamp operations. Inaugurating the companys newly-constituted Board here at Mim on Monday, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, said the support was in line with the governments commitment to decentralise industrialisation through assisting old and new companies in rural areas. Chaired by Naja David, the five-member board includes Tony Elradi, Andrews Adjei-Yeboah, Henry Kwabena Kokofu, Estelle Afari Djan and Frederick Ebeneku-Anim. He said the financial support would enable the company to pay staff salary arrears, retool the factory plants and machinery, pay part of debts owed to essential utility suppliers and have a working capital to finance critical operations. He said it was the view of the government for companies that had their infrastructure in place but were facing financial challenges to receive the necessary support to create jobs and expand. The company, the minister said, was strategically positioned to add value to the countrys resources and provide opportunities to the skilled labour force in the area. Mr Kyerematen further said the company would help in the governments effort to diversify the countrys economy to be export-led and thereby serve as a source of foreign exchange. He noted that government would continue to provide managerial support and create the enabling environment for the company to operate effectively and generate revenue. The board chair, Mr David, said the challenges affected more than 2,000 employees and that since the resumption of production in April this year, 690 of the workers had been re-engaged. He, therefore, expressed gratitude to the government for the support, adding that the company had requested additional support from the Ghana EXIM Bank to complete the revitalisation programme, which would lead to the re-engagement of about 1,500 workers. 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 - Authorities in Indonesia made mask-wearing compulsory in July 2020 as one of the measures to help control the spread of COVID-19 - The country has, however, been recording increasing numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths and authorities have resorted to using odd methods to enforce compliance - In some regions, citizens found without facemasks are forced to dig graves for COVID-19 victims while others are forced to lie in mock coffins PAY ATTENTION: Click 'See First' under 'Follow' Tab to see Tuko.co.ke news on your FB Feed If you are Indonesian and today you dared venture outside without wearing a facemask like many of us (Kenyans) do, then you will be signing up for a grave-digging internship in a public cemetery. Authorities in the Southeast Asia country have introduced odd punishments that are aimed at forcing locals to comply with mask-wearing which was made mandatory in July. READ ALSO: Schools reopening: Gov't bans games, assemblies and varies breaktime in new regulations Health officials bury a COVID-19 victim in Indonesia. Photo: CCTV Asia Pacific. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Exclusive: Kenyan woman confesses to knowingly infecting multiple men with HIV Those caught without face coverings are rounded up and assigned to dig graves for people who have succumbed to COVID-19 even as the death toll to the disease topped 9,222 as of Thursday, September 17. At least 232,628 people in the country with a population of about 237 million had contracted the disease out of which 166,686 had recovered. READ ALSO: Honest Kenyan finds bundle of notes in Kenya Mpya bus, returns it to owner According to a district leader who CNN identified as Suyono, apart from grave digging, those caught without wearing masks are fined KSh 1,000 instantly. Others are forced to lie in mock coffins as the public and the media click away pictures of their shaming moment. A cemetery with fresh graves in Indonesia. Photo: CCTV Asia Pacific. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Katibu Kibicho awakera Wakenya na tangazo la usajili wa Huduma Namba upya Situation in Kenya In Kenya, the Ministry of Health announced in April that it was mandatory for all citizens to wear masks while venturing out in public. Kenya Gazette Supplement No 41 prescribed a fine of KSh 20,000 for contravening the order or imprisonment of up to six months. A person who commits an offence under these rules shall, on conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding KSh 20,000 or imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or both, read the Gazette Notice. READ ALSO: Edwin Sifuna, David Ndii clash over petition challenging legality of BBI Health Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) Mercy Mwangangi (pictured) announced 92 more COVID-19 cases in Kenya on Wednesday, September 16. Photo: MoH. Source: Facebook As of Wednesday, September 16, Kenya had recorded 36,393 cases of the virus which included 637 deaths and 23,529 recoveries. Globally, 30,070,372 cases had been recorded out of which 945,781 were deaths and 21,824,260 recoveries. 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. I have infected multiple men with HIV, my entire family hates me -Kiki wa Nge'ndo | Tuko TV. Source: TUKO.co.ke Despite the loss of revenue this year brought on by the pandemic, we couldnt fathom a Chicago winter without the joy of ZooLights, zoo Director Megan Ross said in a statement. The pandemic has left us financially vulnerable... Unfortunately we are not in a position to staff and operate the extended hours with the limited capacity of visitors required based on state guidelines without some public investment. We are charging a nominal admission in order to help us break even and still bring this beloved holiday tradition to the zoo. HONOLULU: Hawaii Gov. David Ige said Wednesday that starting Oct. 15, travelers arriving from out of state may bypass a 14-day quarantine requirement if they test negative for COVID-19. Travelers will have to take the test within 72 hours before their flight arrives in the islands. Ige said drug store operator CVS and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente will conduct the tests as part of an agreement with the state. Earlier this year Ige planned to start a pre-travel testing program on Aug. 1 only to have to postpone it as COVID-19 cases spiked on the U.S. mainland and in Hawaii. A shortage of testing supplies also forced delays. Another start date for Sept. 1 was also canceled. Airlines are expected to help inform travelers of the requirement. Hawaii leaders are hopeful that pre-travel testing will encourage people to return to a Hawaii in a way that keeps residents safe. Tourism traffic to the state has plunged more than 90% since the pandemic began, forcing hundreds of hotels to close and pushing many people out of work. I want to emphasize that this pre-travel testing will allow us to add a greater element of safety for travel into our state, Ige said at a news conference. Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who joined the news conference via Zoom because he tested positive for the disease and is isolating at home, said the program will provide economic opportunity at a time when so many people are suffering. Upheaval from the pandemic pushed nearly one-quarter of Hawaiis workforce into joblessness. In April, Hawaii had the third-worst unemployment rate in the nation after Nevada and Michigan. I worry about the long term impacts of economic distress and that impact this has on our people, when they cant afford their homes as easily or groceries or health care, Green said. On Wednesday, the state Department of Health reported Hawaii had an average of 118 cases per day for the past seven days. Thats down from a seven-day daily average of 255 on Aug. 28. 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 By Vassilis Triandafyllou and Lefteris Papadimas LESBOS (Reuters) - Greek police moved hundreds of migrants stranded on the island of Lesbos into a new temporary tent camp on Thursday, more than a week after a fire razed the country's biggest migrant camp, where they had been staying. The police operation, launched early on Thursday and including 70 female officers, was intended to provide migrants with shelter, food and to protect public health, government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters. "The operation began with many officers in white body suits. Things are calm and migrants are slowly streaming into the new camp," a Reuters witness said. The fire that gutted the Moria facility a week ago left over 12,000 people, most of them refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and various African countries, without shelter, proper sanitation or access to food and water. No one was hurt. The new temporary tent camp at Kara Tepe, near the island's port of Mytilene, is ready to take in at least 8,000 people, but officials have said that some of the migrants were reluctant to move there as they hoped to leave the island. For days, thousands of people have camped on the roadsides outside the temporary settlement at Kara Tepe. On Wednesday morning, a total 1,200 people were in the camp. Later, groups of migrants carrying their luggage started walking into the tent camp, Reuters images showed. After the police operation on Thursday, about 5,000 migrants had moved into the facility and had been tested for COVID-19. At least 135 migrants were in quarantine after positive tests, Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said. "We are smoothly moving into completing the resettlement of all (asylum-seekers) into this temporary facility," Mitarachi said. Petsas said "it was a matter of a few days" for migrants to be completely resettled. [L8N2GD3PD] Authorities believe the fire was started by migrants. Six people were arrested this week and are expected to soon respond to charges including arson, police officials have said. Story continues Greece, which received more than 1 million asylum seekers at the peak of the migration crisis in 2015-2016, tens of thousands of whom are still waiting for their requests to be processed, repeated its call for more "tangible" European Union support. "Our country, the Aegean islands, bore a huge burden during these five years into the migration crisis. The European Union must finally be more specific about European solidarity," Mitarachi said. "Five islands cannot be carrying the whole burden of migrant flows into the European Union." (Writing by George Georgiopoulos and Renee Maltezou; Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Catherine Evans) New Jerseys highest-ranking Catholic leader denied he is advising people to vote for Joe Biden over President Donald Trump in the upcoming election after making a comment about which candidate a person in good conscience should support. Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Diocese of Newark, was asked about the presidential election Tuesday in an online panel discussion sponsored by several colleges following controversial statements by other church leaders questioning whether faithful Catholics can vote for Democrats. Tobin seemed to imply he would find it morally difficult to vote for Trump. I think that a person in good conscience could vote for Mr. Biden, Tobin said, according to a report in the National Catholic Reporter. I, frankly, in my own way of thinking have a more difficult time with the other option. Tobin also said voting is a sacred act and neither political party fully represents Catholic teaching. In a statement released Wednesday, the Archdiocese of Newark said Tobin was not telling Catholics how to vote. Cardinal Tobin has neither endorsed nor opposed any candidate running for public office. He has simply reminded Catholics of our responsibility to take part in the elective process, the statement said. In reference to a dialogue on "The Church and Catholic Voters in the 2020 Election" webinar, @CardinalJWTobin neither endorsed nor opposed any political candidate. Instead, he reminded Catholics of our responsibility to participate in the election: https://t.co/BwroYGXQE7. @USCCB pic.twitter.com/ApVRlSw6jO Newark Archdiocese (@NwkArchdiocese) September 16, 2020 Tobin was echoing earlier guidance from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the difficulty Catholics face when voting for candidates who do not fully support their religious beliefs, the statement said. Some Catholic leaders have spoken out against the Trump administrations support of the death penalty, detention of migrants trying to cross the U.S. border and the separation of undocumented immigrants from their children by federal officials. The church also remains opposed to abortion, a reason some Catholics have cited for not voting for Biden and other Democrats who support abortion rights. Tobin appeared on Tuesdays panel, called The Church and Catholic Voters in the 2020 Election, with a theologian and a columnist from the National Catholic Reporter. The hour-long, online event was sponsored by Boston College, Trinity College and St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. The panel followed controversial statements from other Catholic leaders about who their followers should vote for in the presidential election. Earlier this month, Catholic Bishop Joseph Strickland in Texas retweeted an anti-immigrant and anti-gay video in which a Wisconsin priest said, You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. The bishop urged his followers to heed this message. Other Catholic bishops in Rhode Island and Tennessee have also used Twitter in recent weeks to question whether Biden is a good Catholic if he supports abortion rights. But some Catholic leaders have also made statements saying church officials should not be siding with one candidate or the other. Many have urged me to endorse one candidate or political party over another, Bishop Christopher Coyne, of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, said Wednesday in a statement. Please know that the Diocese of Burlington does not endorse any individual or political party but teaches that Catholics are encouraged to fulfill their civic duty and vote drawing on both faith and reason to safeguard and ensure the dignity of every human person and promote the common good of all citizens. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. The United States provided $250 million worth of military equipment to the Kurdistan Regional Governments peshmerga forces Tuesday. The shipment included more than 100 radios and vehicles including Humvees as well as uniforms and ammunition, according to statements by the Peshmerga Ministry and Washingtons ambassador to Iraq, Matthew Tueller. Tueller and Peshmerga Minister Shorsh Ismail announced the aid provision at a press conference in Erbil. This is a tangible symbol of our commitment to the people of Iraq and to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Tueller said, according to Rudaw news. Just as important as the equipment is the training that comes with it and it was wonderful to observe the soldiers in action before the official handover, he said. Forces of the US-led multinational coalition to defeat the Islamic State (IS) have continued to train both Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan peshmerga forces in northern Iraqs Kurdistan region since the coalition intervened in Iraq in 2014. The United State is paying more than $15 million per month toward peshmerga salaries, despite recent progress in Baghdads relations with the KRG. Peshmerga units are considered essential in keeping the lid on extremist groups such as IS, but continue to suffer from political factionalism and nepotism, coalition military officers told Al-Monitor at a training facility in Sulaimaniyah last year. The coalition has urged the peshmerga and Baghdads security forces to coordinate more closely and patrol the disputed territories between federally controlled Iraq and the Kurdistan region. The US-led coalition says IS remnants often take refuge in the territories. During last month's strategic dialogue with Iraqi leaders, Washington officials said progress has been made on joint security cooperation. IS lost its last pocket of territory in a battle at Baghouz in Syria, near the Iraqi border, in March 2019. The Trump administration is reducing its presence in Iraq by roughly a third this month, to 3,000 personnel, the head of US Central Command Gen. Kenneth Frank McKenzie, said last week. Earlier this year, the coalition departed several smaller Iraqi military bases around the country to consolidate at larger facilities such as Union III in Baghdads Green Zone and Erbil air base. US Army Maj. Gen. Paul Calvert assumed command of the coalition last week as it continues to shift to focus on advising and mentoring Iraqi military commanders. Meanwhile, Iraqs security forces continue operations with coalition support to hunt down suspected IS operatives. In Wednesday's (Sept. 16) "Stronger Together" session, Woodbine CEO Jim Lawson indicated that he is "confident that racing is in a good place in Ontario," and that its footprint in the global wagering marketplace can only improve despite some significant challenges in the past six months. With no road map or user manual available to aid in the navigation of the worst pandemic to hit North America in decades, Lawson employed a patient and pragmatic approach to reviving racing at both Woodbine Racetrack and Woodbine Mohawk Park after action was abruptly halted in March. But thanks to a massive team effort, he feels that the horse racing industry at Woodbine and across the entirety of Ontario is on stronger footing as a whole given how it has overcome the challenges of the novel coronavirus and adapted to the present-day marketplace. "We all had a lot more questions than answers, and even today, there's so much uncertainty in the world, so we took it slow," Lawson said in a roundtable discussion that was moderated by Jason Portuondo and also included Thoroughbred trainers Mark Casse and Kevin Attard. "To this day, I think we have taken the patient, prudent course. We've kept everyone safe. It did take a lot of patience from the horse community to even if they didn't agree at least be patient enough to understand that we were trying and we were doing our best under difficult circumstances." Part of that patient, prudent course was adjusting the stakes schedule at both properties to enable horses to be fully prepared to compete at a high level. And this past weekend, two weeks after Woodbine Mohawk Park hosted a successful Pepsi North America Cup, Woodbine Racetrack hosted the 161st renewal of the Queen's Plate. Lawson believes that getting there was a complete team effort, and he deflects credit for its success to all parties involved. "We did the right thing, and we did the right thing largely with the help of the front line workers, the Woodbine staff, and the entire horse community who went into that backstretch every day, kept the horses healthy and everyone working back there healthy," Lawson said of the cooperation of the entire horse racing industry through navigating the pandemic and following rigorous protocols in order to return to action. "And that's how we got there. We were thrilled to get to the Queen's Plate last weekend." While the North America Cup and Queen's Plate are in the books and a number of high-profile stakes remain for both breeds this season Lawson is quick to recognise that the current climate remains far from ordinary. "We're still living under a difficult regime," he continued. "I was asked yesterday on a U.S. radio show why we haven't brought fans back the way that other racetracks have and what are our plans. To this day, we're allowed 100 people or 50 people in our building. And I expect even today Premier Ford may come forward and tighten those restrictions. It's been a different environment that we've been operating in at Woodbine, and thankfully, we've been able to run live racing, which was our goal all the way along. "We've made some sacrifices and people have had to make sacrifices but people have understood the regime and the restrictions and the protocols that we've had to live under that we've worked very hard with government to develop. I think that's important for people to appreciate." Given that on-track attendance and thus on-track wagering turnover is essentially a non-entity for the foreseeable future, Woodbine has adapted as well as anyone could expect, using technology and embracing innovation to cater to and expand their reach among a global customer base. "I think we have a strong foundation," Lawson said. "What we've seen during this period, in addition to being able to maintain our purses which I know the horsemen are completely appreciative of we have been able to maintain our wagering, and that is some foresight on Woodbine in the sense that we have built a strong wagering technology group that has come forward. We have what I think is one of the leading products in the world with our HPI service. It's intuitive, it's practical, it's robust, and it works well. Dark Horse has come along. And it's just an indication as we look forward that we are on very strong grounds in terms of our relationship under the funding agreement, our strengths that we have built in terms of management and operating in this type of environment. I think we look very good for the future." Lawson indicated further that the Woodbine brand hasn't just taken hold as a leader in North America, but in an untapped market throughout the Eastern Hemisphere as well: "This period of COVID has shown, particularly with our strength in technology and innovation, how we can survive and how we have a bright future," he continued. "As the world potentially shrinks in horse racing in North America and we've seen that we're growing by leaps and bounds in different countries. We had large pools in Turkey and Sweden this weekend on the Queen's Plate. I was on the phone this morning with people from Hong Kong talking further about commingling pools and making them more direct. We have a great relationship in Australia with Tabcorp, and that's the future of this sport. We are expanding our footprint and growing our brand internationally, and I'm very comfortable with where we're headed." All things considered, Lawson is optimistic about the trajectory of the Woodbine product not just in terms of the gallops, but particularly as Canada's premier Standardbred product is concerned as well. "I think we look very good for the future," he remarked. "Our brand has grown significantly; our harness racing brand in particular in the last couple of years has taken off to a point where we can be quite proud of saying that we're the No. 1 destination in North America for harness racing. Others will argue with that, but that's where we're headed, and we say that because we believe it." The entire "Stronger Together" roundtable appears below. Fifteen years changes a lot when it comes to backpacking, probably most significantly the person doing the backpacking. Thats how long it had been since I last visited Hellroaring Lakes, a high-mountain basin in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness south of Red Lodge. That August 2005 trip emphasized why the area was named Hellroaring, with high winds and constant rainstorms hampering our outing. The adventure ended with a snapped tent pole, torn rainfly, and my two children, two dogs and me sleeping under a makeshift lean-to erected against a large boulder. Not exactly what I was envisioning when we set out for the trip. Now So when my pickup rolled to a stop atop the 9,800-foot Hellroaring Plateau during the recent Labor Day weekend, my thoughts naturally reverted to that first experience. This time, however, the forecast was calling for two blue-sky days. Monday promised heavy rain and possibly snow. Being prudent not my usual tendency my hiking buddy and I planned only a one-night stay. Hiking into the lakes to the north of the plateau requires a steep 400-foot descent in less than a quarter mile without a beaten path. Yet the lakes are so close, visible from the top of the plateau, it seems an easy feat. Then your ankles and knees remind you of the mountainsides steepness and the aging of your major joints. One young family from Belgrade discovered the sharp decline for themselves. We heard them yelling to each other, along with the occasional shrill screech, as they descended through the trees toward our campsite on Saturday night. Although they sounded close, we could only occasionally catch a glimpse of them through the thick pine trees. The next day we ran into them at their campsite. They looked chipper considering the family of six the youngest appeared to be about age 3 and the oldest maybe 10 had experienced a rough downhill hike. That may be due to the bacon they had for breakfast, always a good way to start the day, or because the fishing for greedy brook and cutthroat trout was so good at adjacent Hellroaring Lake. Location The three-mile long Hellroaring Basin is tucked under the ominous mound of 12,204-foot Mount Rearguard. In those three miles the basin reportedly has 14 lakes, although calling some of them lakes may be generous. The largest of the bunch is Sliderock Lake, which sits at 10,394 feet and is spread across 81 acres. Sliderock is deep, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Mountain Lakes guide 107 to 245 feet deep. One of the smallest lakes in the basin is Smethurst, at 3.79 acres and only about 3 to 4 feet deep. Despite being so shallow, Smethurst manages to keep a collection of 8-inch cutthroat trout alive through the winter cold and ice because it has three inlets. None of the fish grow very large in the short summer season at such a high elevation. A 12-inch fish is a trophy. But the brookies at Hellroaring Lake offered a different kind of satisfaction. The fish were in full fall spawning colors with almost fluorescent orange bellies and bright white-edged anal and pelvic fins. Brilliant yellow spots along the sides of the brook trout added to their festive appearance, as if they had dressed up to wish the summer farewell. By trekking cross country, backpackers and anglers can hit several lakes in a day. Theres rarely a path or direct line from one lake to the other, requiring some backcountry navigation and map reading. This can be hampered by the low-growing bushes intertwined along the waterways. Navigating through the thickets is difficult because you cant see whether its solid footing underneath or the branches are stretched across a space between boulders. Avoid them if possible, which is not always possible. Trekking poles are a big help in the bushes, as well as when rock hopping across the many streams and boulder fields, or to lean on for support when ascending and descending the lung-busting mountainside into the basin. Reflection Fifteen years have seen a lot of changes in my life. My once young children are now adults on their own. My two Labradors have long since died. My body has luckily not rebelled against me yet, although it has taken several beatings in nearly six decades and tends to complain a lot when stressed. Ibuprofen is my friend. Perhaps what has changed the most is that I savor such treks even more now, knowing they may soon be unrealistic. When my mind travels to that gloomy place, my hiking buddy is a source of encouragement. Eight years my elder and hiking on a new knee and a bum ankle, he trekked the whole two days in Keen sandals, never complaining once. Hell wasnt roaring on this trip. The weather was as mild as Ive ever experienced at such a high elevation in the fall. But Im not fooled. We just got lucky. The day after we departed 15 inches of heavy, wet snow fell at Red Lodge Mountain ski area. Love 11 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 3 Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. A Thai MP was left red-faced after being caught in parliament looking at porn on his phone. Ronnathep Anuwat was supposed to be paying attention to a budget reading in Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday. However, the cheeky politician opened a series of explicit images on his smartphone - viewing them for more than ten minutes. Shocked reporters in the press gallery snapped Ronnathep - who had even removed his face mask to look closely at the photos. A Thai MP was caught looking at porn while in parliament in Bangkok on Thursday. Photographers in the press gallery couldn't believe what was happening and quickly snapped Ronnathep Anuwat's cheeky scrolling Some of the images Thai MP Ronnathep was looking at while at work included a topless woman and a close up of a woman's genitals. It is not clear whether it is the same woman in all of the photos. One showed a young woman with her top off, while another was lying naked on a bed. A third snap showed a close up of a woman's genitals. The embarrassed MP, who represents Chonburi province for ruling military party Palang Pracharath, was confronted over the images and admitted looking at them. However, he made a bizarre excuse, claiming to have received the unsolicited messages on the app Line from a girl who was 'asking for help' and 'wanted money'. Ronnathep told local media that he viewed the images in detail as he was checking the background to decide if the girl was in danger. He said he wanted to 'observe the environment surrounding the girl in the picture'. Ronnathep, who represents Chonburi province in Thailand, was supposed to be paying attention to a budget reading in parliament in the capital, Bangkok. Instead, photographers noticed the MP appeared to be distracted for by explicit images on his phone for more than ten minutes The naughty MP claimed he was looking at the explicit images out of concern for the woman's welfare, claiming he wanted to 'observe the environment surrounding the girl' to ensure she wasn't being forced by gangsters to take the pictures The observation was necessary as he feared she was 'being harassed by gangsters who had forced her to take the pictures'. Ronnathep (above) will not face any action over looking at porn while in parliament as House speaker Chuan Leekpai said the matter was 'personal'. Ronnathep is the second Thai MP to have been caught surfing smut at work Ronnathep said he eventually realised the girl was 'asking for money' so he deleted all of the content. Government officials summoned Ronnathep for an explanation. However, they ruled that no further action would be taken against him. House speaker Chuan Leekpai called the images were a 'personal matter'. He said there were currently no rules about what MPs could look at on their phones in the meeting room. Chuan added that no MPs had complained about the matter so no action would be taken. He warned the public to separate personal matters from MPs' duties. This is not the first time a Thai MP has let their attention wander during work hours. In June 2012, Bangkok MP Nat Bantadtan was also caught flicking through porn on his phone during a constitutional amendment. These are trying times for all Americans. How this country proceeds on local, state and national levels will be determined by only one group of people: the voters who cast their ballots this fall. Starting Oct. 13, when early voting begins statewide, Texans who take the time to fulfill their civic duty will face tough decisions this time, without the straight-ticket option. We on the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board are here to help busy voters make informed choices in races up and down the ballot. For weeks, our team of experienced opinion journalists has been doing our homework on the candidates, researching their records, conducting background checks and asking them the hard questions that test challengers and hold incumbents accountable. From Sept. 17-Oct. 13, well be publishing recommendations in dozens of races. Our picks, and our process, always prompt questions. A few words about our philosophy and our approach this election season: If newspapers are objective, why do you recommend candidates? Newspapers dont endorse candidates. Editorial boards do. The editorial board is separate from the newsroom. It is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and recommendations represent the voice of the institution defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. We do it as a service to our readers and to our democracy, which cannot flourish without an informed citizenry. For many busy people, researching each candidate isnt possible. Rather than turn to partisan slates, some with pay-to-play motivations, we offer an alternative: informed candidate recommendations from nonpartisan journalists informed by facts, borne of careful analysis. Which races are included in our recommendations? Every contested statewide race, from chief justice and other top benches to railroad commissioner. Every state House and Senate race that will appear on a ballot in Harris County. On the federal level, president and U.S. senate, and in every congressional district that includes part of Harris County. Locally, well cover Harris County sheriff, district attorney, county commissioner, tax-assessor collector, county attorney and our local seat on the state board of education. In addition to nearly 20 state district judge races, well also recommend candidates for Harris County Community College district. Any races were skipping? Yes. To protect quality, weve had to reduce quantity but only a little. We wont recommend candidates for county courts of law or justices of the peace. As a rule, we dont endorse in uncontested races or those without viable challengers. Whats our process? General elections always involve hundreds of hours of screening, writing and editing to ensure trustworthy recommendations that readers can access readily and even take to the polls. The pandemic has forced a few changes. For congressional and local top races, were conducting Zoom interviews with all who accept our invitations. For many other races, weve conducted one-on-one interviews. In most races, lead writers for each research, conduct outside interviews and background candidates before making recommendations to the full board, which reaches a consensus. Consensus isnt always easy, especially when parties have failed to draw qualified candidates. Still, voters must vote, so we feel we must decide. When recommending someone we have reservations about, well explain why to readers, same as we do when there are multiple excellent candidates. Sometimes, an extra level of focus and expertise is needed to make the right call. As in past years, weve enlisted the help of retired longtime journalists in the 20 local judicial races. Mary Flood and Jeff Franks research and background candidates and then make recommendations for the board to consider. Do we only endorse candidates who agree with us? No. While we look favorably upon candidates whose values mirror our basic commitments to responsible spending, economic growth, strong public schools, improving health and protecting the environment, we often endorse candidates who dont share our opinions on more contentious issues. To better serve voters in a diverse array of districts, we prioritize broader expectations of elected leaders: experience, willingness to work across the aisle, knowledge of issues, strong sense of ethics, fit with the district and general viability of the candidacy. For judges, fairness, competence and temperament are also strong considerations and, at times, the ideological diversity of the court as a whole. We give weight to incumbency, especially if it means seniority benefiting constituents, but we also scrutinize incumbents records on effectiveness, leadership, constituent services and ability to keep promises to voters. Whether readers agree with our ultimate choices or not, we hope the facts, observations and analysis in each written editorial recommendation serves as a helpful tool in voters own research and decision-making. We hope youll follow along this campaign season. As always, feel free to tell us when you think we get it right and wrong! with a letter to the editor: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/submit/ Falkenberg is the Chronicles opinion editor. Lindenberger is deputy opinion editor. They lead the editorial board. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for global cooperation on defeating the coronavirus pandemic and on vaccine development. "We need a vaccine to be affordable and available to all a people's vaccine," the UN chief told a press conference. "Starting now, a vaccine must be seen as a global public good, because Covid-19 respects no borders." Guterres called for a "quantum leap in funding" for the World Health Organization's initiative to speed up the development of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. More than 170 nations are in talks to join the vaccine initiative, known as COVAX, though the United States has rejected joining the global effort. Guterres noted that inoculation alone cannot solve this crisis, especially in the near term, saying existing tools should be expanded and treatments provided. He also warned that mistrust in vaccines is on the rise around the world and called for efforts to "halt deadly misinformation." The UN secretary general on Wednesday also issued a report documenting what the world body has done to support states since the start of the coronavirus crisis, and what the world must still do. Guterres was speaking ahead of the UN General Assembly's meeting of world leaders, which begins on September 22. The annual gathering usually sees thousands of dignitaries descend on the UN headquarters in New York for more than a week of speeches and meetings. This year, the UN has invited heads of state to submit video speeches due to the coronavirus pandemic and related travel restrictions. 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 number of weekly coronavirus cases in Europe topped 300,000 last week higher than during the first peak in March triggering grave warnings from health experts. Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, the World Health Organisation's European director Dr Hans Kluge warned that Europe was facing a very serious situation and advised against "even a slight reduction in the length of the quarantine". Dr Kluge said more than half of European countries had registered a rise in infections greater than 10 per cent in the past two weeks. It is the first time the number of weekly recorded cases in the region has topped 300,000. Dr Kluge said: "We have a very serious situation unfolding before us. "Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March. "Last week, the regions weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients. "More than half of European countries have reported a greater than 10 per cent increase in cases in the past two weeks. "Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period." Dr Kluge stressed the effectiveness of the stringent lockdowns that were imposed across the region at the beginning of the pandemic. In the spring and early summer we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off, he said. In June cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers, however, should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Dr Kluge added that although the rising numbers reflected more comprehensive testing, they also showed "alarming rates of transmission across the region". The WHO also said it would not alter its two-week recommendation for quarantine for anyone exposed to the virus, as several European countries look to shorten their period of self-isolation. Our quarantine recommendation of 14 days has been based on our understanding of the incubation period and transmission of the disease. We would only revise that on the basis of a change of our understanding of the science, WHO Europes senior emergency officer Catherine Smallwood said. In the UK and Ireland, anyone exposed to the coronavirus must quarantine for 10 days, while France has reduced its period to 7 days. "Knowing the immense individual and societal impact even a slight reduction in the length of quarantine can have ... I encourage countries of the region to make scientific due process with their experts and explore safe reduction options," Dr Kluge urged. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned on Wednesday that the number of newly reported cases over a 14-day period for the EU, European Economic Area and the UK has been increasing for more than 50 days, with over half of all EU countries currently experiencing an increase in cases. The ECDC added that while the rising number of reported cases will partly be due to increased testing, it is also due to the relaxation of social distancing and other preventive measures. WHO Europe has recorded nearly five million confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 227,000 related deaths. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 15:23 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c456de22 1 National COVID-19-protocol,health-protocol,sanctions,punishment,penalty,lhokseumawe,South-Tangerang,East-Jakarta,Gresik,Probolinggo,COVID-19,pandemic,face-masks Free As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim more lives across the country, many provinces have issued stringent health regulations and imposed hefty penalties on violators to ensure public compliance with existing coronavirus protocols. However, a number of regions have gone the extra mile and devised all-new sanctions for those who fail to abide by health protocols, such as various forms of community service and other unusual tasks. The Jakarta Post has compiled a list of rather unorthodox penalties imposed by several regional administrations across the archipelago to ensure public compliance with COVID-19 protocols as of the time of writing. Keeping the park tidy Local residents in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, who violate COVID-19 health protocols are ordered to clean a city park by pulling the weeds by local authorities on Sept. 14. (Kompas.com/Masriadi) Residents of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, who do not wear a face mask in public could find themselves cleaning up a local park by pulling weeds as a form of administrative sanction. A joint team of the Lhokseumawe Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), National Police and Indonesian Military (TNI) carry out inspections around Taman Hidayah near Simpang Empat on Monday to ensure compliance with the administrations mask-wearing rule. Lhokseumawe Police head Adj. Sr. Comr. Eko Hartanto said about 100 locals had been instructed to pull weeds around the public park after they were caught without a mask. After they pulled weeds, we gave them free masks. We keep a record of their identities to prevent them from repeating the offense, Eko said on Monday as quoted by kompas.com. The sanction, he said, was stipulated in Lhokseumawe Mayoral Regulation No. 24/2020. As per the regulation, residents who are repeatedly found without a mask will be denied administrative services. As of Wednesday, Aceh has recorded 3,127 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 115 deaths. Under the scorching sun The South Tangerang administration in Banten has taken a no-nonsense approach against health protocol violators. According to its latest policy, residents found not wearing a mask are subject to sanctions that test their physical endurance, exposing them to the scorching hot sun and doing an 800-meter sprint. Around 30 residents were caught without masks during a local Satpol PP inspection in Nusa Loka, Serpong, on Wednesday. South Tangerang Satpol PP investigation and enforcement head Muksin Al Fachry said some people who had masks did not wear them properly. Some sunbathed for 30 minutes, while others were told to sprint 200 meters four times and do 10 push-ups, Muksin said, adding that he expected such sanctions to bring a deterrent effect against violators. South Tangerang Deputy Mayor Benyamin Davnie previously said the administration had recorded a decrease in public adherence to health protocols in recent weeks. As of Wednesday, Banten has recorded 3,774 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 119 deaths. Clean up, clean up Several motorists in Duren Sawit, East Jakarta found themselves caring more for the surrounding environment than they may usually do as they were told to sweep the ground after they were found to have violated the mask-wearing protocol by local authorities. Dimas Adikumara, a 29-year-old resident of Bekasi, West Java, was among those who were penalized during a traffic inspection in Duren Sawit on Wednesday. He chose to sweep the grounds along the Kalimalang riverbank for an hour rather than pay a Rp 250,000 (US$16.69) fine for improperly wearing a mask. Jakarta Police traffic division deputy director Adj. Sr. Comr. Hari Purnomo said some mask-wearing motorists had failed to comply with Article 4 of Gubernatorial Regulation No. 79/2020, which stipulates that a mask must cover ones nose, mouth and chin. As of Wednesday, Jakarta has recorded 57,469 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,481 deaths. Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers handle COVID-19 protocols violators by telling them to clean a river during a raid in Banjarsari, Surakarta, Central Java on Sept. 16. (Antara/Mohammad Ayudha) Sitting in a hearse alongside casket The Probolinggo COVID-19 task force in East Java has ordered dozens of people at Maron Market to get into a hearse containing a casket used for transporting COVID-19 patients' bodies after they were caught not wearing a mask. Some 50 sellers and customers took turns to stay in the ambulance for several minutes on Sept. 8 as a social punishment. "We punished 50 sellers and customers at Maron Market by making them stay in a hearse, said the task force's security and law enforcement coordinator, Ugas Irwanto. Prior to entering the hearse, the task force gave the violators face masks. Inside the hearse, Ugas added, violators were asked to reflect on their actions. The task force also reminded them how the COVID-19 pandemic had taken a lot of lives. As of Wednesday, East Java has recorded 39,181 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,867 deaths. Grave-digging Eight people in Gresik regency, East Java, were ordered by local authorities to dig graves for those who have died of COVID-19 as punishment for not wearing face masks in public on Sept. 10. Cerme district head Suyono said residents who did not wear face masks were punished with the task of digging graves at a public cemetery in Ngabetan village. There are only three available gravediggers at the moment, so I thought I might as well put these people to work with them, Suyono told tribunnews.com. To assist the gravediggers, Suyono assigned two people to each grave. One was tasked with digging the grave, while the other laid wooden boards inside the hole to support the corpse. Hopefully this can create a deterrent effect against violations, Suyono said. Based on the Regent Law No. 22/2020, residents who violate the protocols are subject to fines or community service as punishment. (rfa) With just a few weeks remaining to file the 2020 U.S. Census form, the city of Alvin plans to hit social media hard in a push to get all of its residents counted. I have several social media posts scheduled for the remainder of the month, City Secretary Dixie Roberts said. With 58.9 percent of the citys households completing the Census as of Sept. 15, Alvin trailed the states participation rate of 61.5 percent but was ahead of Houstons 57.3 percent. The state and city participation rates refer to individuals who completed the form on their own and not to those reached by door-to-door Census workers. Roberts said her citys rate is about par for the course. The percentage is close to what our participation rate was at the last Census, she said. In northern Brazoria County as of Sept. 15, Pearland had a self-response participation rate of 72.9 percent, Manvels rate was 68.1 percent and Iowa Colonys was 65.8 percent. Pearlands neighbor to the east, Friendswood, had a participation rate of 78.2 percent after a concerted effort on several digital platforms urging the importance of filing the census form. The last day to submit the 2020 census form is Sept. 30. Local cities Census participation rates so far Residents' self-response rate as of Sept. 15 Friendswood 78.2% Pearland 72.9% Manvel 68.1% Iowa Colony 65.8% Texas 61.5% Alvin 58.9% Houston 57.3% See More Collapse The Census is taken every 10 years and is used in a variety of ways. It is used to draw district boundaries for government representation at the state and national level. It also is used when determining how much federal funding cities will receive for infrastructure and drainage projects. School districts also count on the Census when it comes to receiving federal education money. The last day to submit the 2020 Census form Is Sept. 30. For months, Mayor Mike Foreman and various city council members have been sharing with residents the message of how important it is to get an accurate count, Friendswood Public Information Officer Jeff Newpher said. The city has, is, and will continue to use social media channels, email, and the citys TV channel to reiterate the message. To file online, visit 2020census.gov. To complete the Census by phone, call toll-free 844-330-2020 for English and 844-468-2020 for Spanish. John DeLapp is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at texdelapp@gmail.com. Jacob Rees-Mogg sparked anger today after telling people to stop their 'endless carping' about a lack of coronavirus tests. The Commons Leader dismissed the growing pressure on the Government over its testing shambles as he claimed the system had been a 'phenomenal success' which should be celebrated. Labour immediately slammed Mr Rees-Mogg as 'out of touch' and demanded he apologise. There have been widespread reports in recent days of people across the country struggling to access a coronavirus check. Meanwhile, official NHS Test and Trace statistics showed that just 33.3 per cent of people who were tested for Covid-19 in England in the week ending September 9 and had a so-called 'in-person' test received their result within 24 hours. That represents a massive decrease on the 66.5 per cent recorded in the previous week. Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg sparked anger today after he said people needed to stop their 'endless carping' about a lack of coronavirus tests Speaking in the Commons today, Labour frontbencher Valerie Vaz questioned why the head of the Government's coronavirus Test and Trace programme, Dido Harding, had not spoken in public since August. The shadow Commons leader added: 'The number of tests returned within 24 hours has fallen from 68 per cent to 8 per cent it seems to be all talk, talk and no test, test.' But Mr Rees-Mogg, who had to self-isolate last week while awaiting Covid-19 test results for one of his six children, hit back and said: 'We all have an obligation to try and stop the dangerous disease spreading, but the issue of testing is one where we have gone from a disease that nobody knew about a few months ago to one where nearly a quarter of a million people a day can be tested. 'And the Prime Minister is expecting that to go up to half a million people a day by the end of October. 'And instead of this endless carping, saying it is difficult to get them, we should actually celebrate the phenomenal success of the British nation in getting up to a quarter of a million tests of a disease that nobody knew about until earlier in the year.' Shadow health minister Alex Norris said Mr Rees-Mogg should 'immediately apologise' for his comments. He said: 'For weeks, people across the country have been struggling to get coronavirus tests. But rather than fixing problems, the Government has instead resorted to a blizzard of blame shifting and excuses. 'Now, out-of-touch ministers have got a new message to those who can't get tests: "stop complaining and praise us". 'Jacob Rees-Mogg should immediately apologise. Whining about the public not being grateful enough won't sort anything only his Government can fix the testing shambles they are presiding over.' Downing Street today admitted the coronavirus testing system is facing 'challenges'. A Number 10 spokesman said: 'We accept there are challenges and we accept that we are seeing significant demand for tests at the moment. 'We are obviously working to address those challenges. We will continue to work to enhance testing capacity in the coming weeks.' For Aine Finnegan the Leaving Certificate results were devastating. Several members of her family work in the medical profession. She dreamed of following in their footsteps and wanted to study medicine at Trinity College. She had put in the hard yards, doing work experience in hospitals, studying hard and consistently achieving high marks in her exams. Aware how difficult it would be to get the necessary points, she persuaded her parents to allow her to transfer from her school in Drumcondra, Dublin, to the fee-paying Institute of Education. She says they made huge sacrifices to send her there. A high proportion of students from the Institute go on to study medicine. But from Ms Finnegan's perspective, she was robbed of that opportunity by the calculated grades system introduced after the holding of exams was made impossible by the Covid-19 pandemic. Agonisingly, she fell two points short. Yesterday, she became the first Leaving Certificate student in the country to legally challenge the calculated grades system. "This is devastating for me as I have been working towards this goal for a number of years," she said in an affidavit. Her case could have far-reaching implications. In judicial review proceedings, she is seeking an order quashing the decision to downgrade her teacher-estimated grades and a declaration the model used was unfair and contrary to law. Her teachers had estimated she would get six H1s and one H2, enough to comfortably qualify for the course. But for reasons unknown to her, three of those H1 grades were reduced to H2s under the calculated model. She had consistently attained H1 scores in Spanish, Maths and English, the three subjects where her results were downgraded. Other students are also considering legal challenges. According to legal sources, a second case involving a student at another Dublin fee-paying school and a similar set of circumstances could be initiated in the coming days. Some students from non fee-paying schools are also said to be considering cases, but lawyers expect the challenges will be spearheaded by students from private schools. Whatever system was introduced to award grades, it was always likely there would be legal challenges, particularly when students could see disparities between what their teachers would have awarded them and what they ultimately got. A record 12,292 students have sought rechecks of their results. But the particular issue which seems to be coming to the fore is the late decision not to take past historic performances of schools into account when calculating a student's final grades. Most of those considering legal challenges are said to be students who believe they lost out on college places because the system did not take into account clusters of high achievers in the school they went to. The limitations of the appeal mechanism is also said to be pushing students to consider the legal route. In Ms Finnegan's case, her counsel Micheal P O'Higgins SC said the State, having made the decision not to consider past school performance, did not appear to make corrections to the calculated grades process to take into account "clusters" where the majority of students in a class would achieve the highest grades. He said his client was unsure what criteria was actually used by the State to estimate her grades. In her affidavit, Ms Finnegan outlined the injustice she felt had been done to her. "My calculated grades came as a huge surprise and disappointment to me," she said. "I cannot understand why I would have been downgraded based upon my academic attainment." She had been studying at the Dominican College, where she enjoyed a very good relationship with her teachers and received A grades in her 10 Junior Certificate subjects. Ms Finnegan said she "decided early on" she wanted to be a doctor and during transition year she did work experience at the Coombe, the Rotunda and Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin and was also selected for a placement at the Royal College of Surgeons. She realised it would be necessary to achieve H1 grades in virtually all of her subjects in the Leaving Cert and persuaded her parents to let her transfer schools. "The fees for the Institute are high and my parents made huge sacrifices for me to attend the school," she said. The case returns to the High Court next week. He knew his criminal record would be a hindrance to finding lucrative work. A person like me, who would love to work a decent job, will never have the chance because of my criminal history, Mr. McCollum said. I cant blame anybody but myself. But a career helping others seemed fitting after his experiences in prison, as well as achievable, so in March, he signed up to begin training to become a substance abuse counselor. At the same time, he was living with his mother in Corona, Queens; making plans to marry his fiancee, who had waited for him for 18 years; and waiting for the training program to begin. Then the Covid-19 lockdown struck New York. The abrupt halt in his progress was a nasty sting. New York Citys economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, with the unemployment rate around 20 percent. Mr. McCollum, who receives $165 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, had done odd jobs to get by. With his dream of becoming a counselor paused, Mr. McCollum turned to his parole officer for help finding work, which brought him to the Hope Program, an affiliate of Community Service Society. The society is a beneficiary agency of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The Hope Program offers job training to adults in marginalized and underserved communities, including those with criminal backgrounds. When the lockdown began, the program switched to a remote curriculum and lent laptops to participants so they could continue courses and connect to online job boards, said Linda Nguyen, director of digital literacy. As Mr. McCollums job search continued, the society used $358 in Neediest Cases funds to buy a laptop for him, freeing up a loaner for another Hope Program client. At the opening ceremony, ASEAN labour and education ministers launched the Roadmap of ASEAN Declaration on Human Resources Development for the Changing World of Work, along with the ASEAN Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council. At the event (Photo: asean.org) Human resources development is one of Vietnams priorities and the high-level conference viewed it as a highlight in its ASEAN Chairmanship Year 2020. It was also the first conference seeing the participation of ASEAN labour and education ministers. Addressing the event, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said the world has witnessed major changes such as digital transformation, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, non-traditional security issues and the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic. Human resource development in the revolution has been discussed at various global and regional forums, he noted. The Deputy PM underlined that new mechanisms are needed to help all labourers grab opportunities and come to know their responsibilities to acquire new knowledge and skills, stressing that human resources development is among the three key priorities of the ASEAN Community stated in the ASEAN Charter. Efforts in the field must be further promoted to ensure the successful implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on Human Resources Development for the Changing World of Work, he reiterated. In his remarks, ASEAN Secretary-General Dato Lim Jock Hoi affirmed that to raise the regional educational quality, attention must be paid to both general education and vocational training, along with fostering digital skills to maximise workers capacity in the current technological era./. MIDDLE TOWNSHIP The Cape May County Division of Veterans' Services will host a Veterans Drive-Thru Resource Event 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 17, Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton and Freeholder Jeffrey Pierson announce. The event will take place in the front parking lot of the Cape May County Department of Human Services (the Social Services Building) at 4005 Route 9 South, in the Rio Grande section of the township. Pierson encourages all veterans and their families to participate in the drive-thru event. "With COVID-19 eliminating in-person events, we have been forced to change our annual Veterans Day Memorial Ceremony at Naval Air Station Wildwood. Instead, we will mark the occasion with a virtual video honoring our veterans that will be available on the county website, www.capemaycountynj.gov. The Resource Drive-thru event will give our veterans and their families the opportunity to talk to representatives and gather important information," Pierson said. In the latest political victory for Taipei and a new slight for Beijing, the United States announced Wednesday that it would send a senior State Department official to attend the funeral of former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui, known as the islands father of democracy. The visit by undersecretary of state Keith Krach is sure to rankle China, which considers the self-governed island a renegade province to be reunified by force if necessary. President Donald Trump began his administration in January 2017 with a call to his Taiwanese counterpart, Tsai Ing-wen. Since then, Taipei has hosted its most senior US cabinet member since 1979, signed seven major arms deals worth US$13.3 billion, granted Tsai a 12-day stopover in the US and benefited from several new US laws and partnership agreements. Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. The United States honours President Lees legacy by continuing our strong bonds with Taiwan and its vibrant democracy through shared political and economic values, the State Department said on Wednesday when announcing Krachs trip. The memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, and Taiwans Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Krach would arrive in Taipei on Thursday. The choice of Krach, responsible for economic affairs at the State Department, is hardly an accident or a surprise. Last month, David Stilwell, the agencys point person on East Asia, announced a new US-Taiwan economic dialogue, later noting that Krach would lead the US team. And reports of an imminent Krach visit have seeped into the media. This has drawn the expected response from Beijing, increasingly concerned that its cross-Strait policy of keeping Taiwan in its lane is weakening. The US should stop all forms of official exchanges with Taiwan so as to avoid serious damage to China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday in Beijing. Story continues Taiwans ultimate goal is to see the dialogue morph into a free-trade agreement with the US, more closely binding the two economies. It remains to be seen if anything can be started on that front, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Of course this new dialogue is important, but what Taiwan wants is an actual agreement. But analysts note that much of the momentum for closer trade relations and for calls on Taiwan to shift its technology supply chains out of China have come from the State Department and other administration officials, not the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which would need to lead any serious negotiations. Lees memorial service is incredibly symbolic Sean King, former US Commerce Department official Robert Lighthizer, that agencys leader, has spent much of his tenure hammering out a phase one trade deal with China, and its dissolution by Beijing should economic ties with Taiwan take off could undercut his legacy, analysts said. Beijing, which considers Taiwan an existential issue, has sought for decades to deny the island military weaponry, allies or international recognition. We still have USTR tiptoeing around Beijings objections to a free-trade agreement, said Walter Lohman, Asian studies director at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But its a very quick start to something only announced two weeks ago. So far, few details have been released on the visit, but Lohman said the two sides are likely to talk about closer economic cooperation, supply chain security and other issues in broad terms, with details likely to be hammered out later by technocrats. If talks move forward on a free-trade agreement, the momentum would likely remain even if Democrat nominee Joe Biden wins the presidency, he added. I think a Biden administration would continue them, said Lohman, a former Senate staffer. There will be some pushing and pulling early in the administration like there always is. Congress will weigh in. But ultimately the friends of Taiwan will win. That said, a number of thorny issues could frustrate any bigger agreement, analysts add. Taiwan has a large and growing trade surplus with the United States. It has often protected its markets from US exports, which has caused irritation on Capitol Hill. That was eased somewhat by an agreement last month to allow US beef and pork into Taiwan, imports that had been blocked since 2006. And some critics fault the island for not doing enough to bolster its own defence even as it calls for more American arms and assistance. The primary impediments have been the lack of political will and bandwidth, said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute. There will likely be pressure on the administration to aim for a partial trade deal or economic partnership agreement with Taiwan as an interim step. Nearly as irksome to China as the visit of a senior US official is the occasion for the visit, say analysts. Lee, who died in late July at 97, was the islands first Taiwan-born president, credited with ensuring the end of autocratic rule in favour of vibrant pluralism. And he relished defying China and Beijings efforts to contain the islands efforts at greater global recognition, seen in a provocative commencement speech he gave at Cornell University in 2001. Lees memorial service is incredibly symbolic, said Sean King, senior vice-president with the Park Strategies consultancy and a former US Commerce Department official. He helped Taiwan realise that its more or less just Taiwan. And as Lee was the islands first democratically elected leader, he was a true hero for his own people. More from South China Morning Post: This article US sending State Department official Keith Krach to Taiwan for Lee Teng-hui memorial service first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. An Air Canada worker waits for travellers at a nearly-empty O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Ill,. on April 2, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Air Canada Offering Free COVID-19 Insurance for International Travellers Air Canada announced Thursday that its offering complimentary COVID-19 emergency medical and quarantine insurance to eligible customers who book seats on round-trip international flights. The coverage is available for new bookings made in Canada from Sept. 17 to Oct. 31 as long as the travel is completed by April 12, 2021. According to Air Canada, the coverage is the most extensive offered by a Canadian airline because it covers every destination that the company serves. In addition, the airline hopes that the insurance, underwritten by Manulife, can give people greater confidence as they travel. On July 31, Air Canada reported seeing drastic declines in total revenue and passengers in a quarter over quarter comparison in its second quarters financial results. As with many other major airlines worldwide, Air Canadas second quarter results confirm the devastating and unprecedented effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and government-imposed travel and border restrictions and quarantine requirements, the airline said in a press release. Revenue fell from nearly $5 billion in the second quarter of 2019 to about $500 million in the second quarter this year, a drop of 89 percent. Total number of passengers nosedived by over 96 percent. Operating loss amounted to about $1.5 billion compared to income of approximately $420 million in 2019. An Air Canada flight departing for Toronto takes off at Vancouver International Airport, in Richmond, Canada on March 20, 2020. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press) In response to the situation, Air Canada has launched several initiatives since last month to encourage air travel. For instance, the airline enhanced its loyalty program with more benefits, started a new flight pass program that offers unlimited domestic travel, and included the new insurance plan for its customers. With the insurance, a passenger can receive up to $200,000 for medical expenses related to COVID-19 treatment. Up to $150 per passenger per day for quarantine costs such as meals and accommodations will be provided. For families its up to $300 per day, capped at a maximum of 14 days. The coverage also includes up to $500 travel expenses if the passenger has to return to Canada should the government raise the travel advisory to Level 4avoid all travelwhile he or she is in another country. As well as the travel dates, eligibility requirements include being a Canadian resident with a valid provincial or territory government health insurance plan during the trip, and trip duration of not more than 21 days, the airline said. Air Canadas competitor, WestJet, is offering its own version of a COVID-19 insurance package. It includes but is not limited to emergency medical and hospital costs of up to $100,000 per passenger if infected with the virus outside Canada (excluding the United States), and quarantine accommodation costs of up to $150 per person per day to a maximum of 14 days for passengers who test positive for the virus while on a trip. The National Airline Council of Canada (NACC), the trade association that represents Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat, and Jazz Aviation LP, wrote to finance minister Chrystia Freeland on Aug. 20 to urging her to urgently look at sectoral support for airlines. If aviation is to remain at Stage Zero for an indeterminate time period due to government policy, we need to begin work now on measures to sustain the industry, NACC president and CEO Mike McNaney said in the letter. In a statement on Monday, the NACC said more than 312,000 Canadians have responded to its request to write to their local MPs urging the federal government to come up with a safety plan to quickly restart the travel and tourism sectors. We can safely restart our industry and take steps to ensure its financial viability through sectoral support, but the federal government must act now, McNaney said. Actor Allu Arjun's recent visit to Kunatala Waterfalls in Adilabad has become a hot topic of debate on the internet. Activist named Raju has reportedly filed a RTI (Right To Information) petition over Allu Arjun's visit to the tourist place, which is notably closed. District Forest Officer Dr B Prabhakar had already stated that all tourist places are officially closed with proper signboards of the announcement. However, Pushpa star's visit to the closed tourist place raised questions in the RTI activist's mind, as he recently filed a petition at Neradigonda police station. The district forest officer told Hyderabad Times, "We have no information about his visit to Kuntala Falls. Signboards are in place informing that it is closed for tourists due to the pandemic. While he's not the first one to flout norms and do so, he should have been little responsible when visiting tourist places at this time." While speaking about the petition, Neradigonda SI, Bharat Suman told the tabloid, "Forest officials have already taken up the issue and even we are conducting an inquiry. As the government has granted permissions for shooting, they are allowed to shoot if that's what they were doing. But we were not informed about any shoot taking place in the area either. It was also said that he was on a recce for scouting locations for the film, but that also needs to be verified." For the unversed, when Allu Arjun visited Kuntala waterfalls, his fans gathered there on a large scale. Because of this, the actor got criticised on social media as fans didn't follow any norms of social distancing amid the Coronavirus pandemic. Now, after the petition, fans are waiting for Allu Arjun's response to the same. Also Read : Allu Arjun's ICON Is Happening! Director Venu Sriram Refutes Rumours Of Movie Being Shelved On the professional front, Allu Arjun is currently busy filming for his next Pushpa, which is being helmed by Sukumar. The film also stars Rashmika Mandanna as the female lead. Also Read : Allu Arjun's DJ & Sarrainodu's Hindi Version Removed From YouTube; Bellamkonda Srinivas' Film On Top September 17, 2020 - For Black women in the southern United States, mistrust of the health care system that is grounded in structural and systemic racism is a key factor affecting participation in HIV prevention and treatment services, reports a study in the September/October issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC). The official journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, JANAC is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "[Our] results indicate that there are barriers to the utilization of health services that are grounded in personal experiences, historical mistrust for the health care system and systemic racism," according to the qualitative study by Schenita D. Randolph, PhD, MPH, of Duke University School of Nursing and colleagues. "HIV programs serving Black women should include conversations around structural racism and trust for both providers and patients." "Dr. Randolph's findings are critical because they demonstrate women's own views of the critical and sometimes subtle ways in which systemic racism can have dramatic effects on African-American women's health through multiple pathways," said Dr. Carol Golin, Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This suggests that working to dismantle racism is a fundamental step that is needed to fully address health disparities." Dr. Golin was Principal Investigator of the community-based parent study in which the data were collected. New Insights on Obstacles to Black Women's Participation in HIV Care Disparities in HIV risk are an important public health issue for Black women, particularly in the South. "Black women have nearly 20 times the risk of white women in being infected with HIV, and lifetime HIV risk is greatest for people living in the southern United States," according to the authors. In a previous study, authors identified Black women's perceptions of structural racism and discrimination, and medical mistrust, as critical factors in the development of HIV prevention programs and interventions. The new study further explored those perspectives through a series of focus groups with African-American women living in low-income housing communities in one small city in the South. Although they did not use those exact terms, the participants consistently communicated that the concepts of structural racism and discrimination, and medical mistrust, had a significant impact on their health care decisions and participation. From the focus group discussions, four subthemes emerged: Decreased trust in health care advice and instructions. Based on their experiences, some of the women perceived that health care professionals give incomplete or even false medical information to Black patients. They also viewed some medical facilities as being more trustworthy or more receptive to Black patients than others. Based on their experiences, some of the women perceived that health care professionals give incomplete or even false medical information to Black patients. They also viewed some medical facilities as being more trustworthy or more receptive to Black patients than others. Systems and structures placing Black women at a disadvantage. "Institutional and systematic regulations" - especially policies related to living in low-income housing - contributed to mistrust of the health care system. Participants perceived that that the combination of being Black and being a woman added "a layer of challenges" to accessing health care. The women felt there were "little to no resources in the community to access affordable health care." "Institutional and systematic regulations" - especially policies related to living in low-income housing - contributed to mistrust of the health care system. Participants perceived that that the combination of being Black and being a woman added "a layer of challenges" to accessing health care. The women felt there were "little to no resources in the community to access affordable health care." Lack of effective communication. The women reported experiences with lack of communication in the health care system, including misinformation and not receiving details of the care being given. Some women did report effective communication with providers - showing that taking time to build good communication and relationships can lead to improved health behaviors. The women reported experiences with lack of communication in the health care system, including misinformation and not receiving details of the care being given. Some women did report effective communication with providers - showing that taking time to build good communication and relationships can lead to improved health behaviors. Need for empowerment in clinical encounters. Perceived racial bias in dealings with health care providers motivated the women to be more assertive in advocating for their rights. They felt they should be able to question health care recommendations and demand more information from providers. "These findings support the importance for health care providers, as well as researchers, to be aware of systematic racism and structural discrimination that may be overt or covert in our health care systems," Dr. Randolph and coauthors write. They note that the focus group participants voiced a strong preference for HIV-related messaging and programming to be delivered by "trusted individuals or gatekeepers" in the community, whom they viewed are more relatable than health care providers. The findings also highlight the need for "careful attention to interpersonal relationships and communication in the clinical encounter with Black women." "Findings on the understanding of Black women's skepticism of medical providers and systems reinforced and expanded our view of the importance of addressing these trust issues in future HIV prevention efforts with this population," the researchers write. "More importantly," Dr. Randolph comments, "findings expanded our view of the importance of addressing how our systems that are grounded in historical racism, contribute intentionally or unintentionally to the inequities of care among Black women." Dr. Randolph and coauthors conclude: "This long history will require that critical conversations about structural and systemic racism and health take place to begin breaking deeply ingrained cycles of discrimination." ### Click here to read "How Perceived Structural Racism and Discrimination and Medical Mistrust in the Health System Influences Participation in HIV Health Services for Black Women Living in the United States South: A Qualitative, Descriptive Study." DOI: 10.1097/JNC.0000000000000189 ### The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC) is a peer-reviewed, international nursing journal that covers the full spectrum of the global HIV epidemic, focusing on prevention, evidence-based care management, interprofessional clinical care, research, advocacy, policy, education, social determinants of health, epidemiology, and program development. JANAC functions according to the highest standards of ethical publishing practices and offers innovative publication options, including Open Access and prepublication article posting, where the journal can post articles before they are published with an issue. About the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care Since 1987, the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC) has been the leading nursing organization responding to HIV/AIDS. The mission of ANAC is to foster the professional development of nurses and others involved in the delivery of health care for persons at risk for, living with, and/or affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its co-morbidities. ANAC promotes the health, welfare and rights of people living with HIV around the world. About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2019 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students with advanced clinical decision support, learning and research and clinical intelligence. For more information about our solutions, visit https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth. For more information, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. HAMILTON, Bermuda, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. (NYSE: TPRE) ("Third Point Re" or the "Company") today announced an investment in Arcadian Risk Capital Ltd. ("Arcadian" or "Arcadian Risk"), a start-up led by John Boylan, a well-known industry executive with a 30-year track record in the global insurance market. Third Point Re will own a minority stake in the newly-formed company. Arcadian has been established as a Managing General Agent (MGA) and incorporated in Bermuda where the company will initially operate. The new company has plans to open additional offices outside of Bermuda as its operations grow. Arcadian will begin writing business as of October 1, 2020, having already received approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. The MGA will initially write Excess Casualty and Professional Lines. Dan Malloy, Chief Executive Officer of Third Point Re, said: "We are not only investing in Arcadian, but will also provide insurance paper and capacity for the new venture. Our entrance into the Bermuda insurance market continues the Company's transformation into a specialty re/insurer. This partnership with a market-leading group of underwriters, who can build a profitable book of business using Third Point Re Bermuda's balance sheet, occurs at a time when the market needs strong new participants." Mr Boylan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arcadian, said: "I am delighted to announce the establishment of Arcadian in Bermuda and pleased to have Third Point Re as a partner. This is an exciting time as market conditions in casualty lines started to improve in 2019, bringing significantly increased rates and resulting in a hardening market in the first quarter of 2020. The capacity from some of the main providers in the market has contracted and there is a gap for a well-capitalised company with no legacy business and an experienced team of underwriters at its helm. I think now is the perfect time to set up an insurance underwriter in Bermuda, a centre of innovation for the insurance industry, to deploy capital in an environment well poised for profitability." Mr Boylan started his underwriting career at AIG in Dublin in 1981, before moving to Bermuda to work for XL Insurance. He then spent a further 15 years as Chief Casualty Underwriter and Senior Vice President at XL, in Dublin, London and Switzerland. Mr Boylan joined Max Capital in 2003 and returned to Bermuda when the company was acquired by Markel in 2013. He remained with Markel as Global Casualty Chief Underwriting Officer until his departure in 2018. Mr Boylan will be joined by a team of experienced excess casualty and professional liability underwriters and technicians. Advisors International law firm McDermott Will & Emery and Bermuda-based Conyers Dill & Pearman Limited acted as legal advisors to Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. Safe Harbor Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond the Company's control. The Company cautions you that the forward-looking information presented in this press release is not a guarantee of future events, and that actual events may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking information contained in this press release. In addition, forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "plan," "seek," "comfortable with," "will," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe" or "continue" or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology. Actual events, results and outcomes may differ materially from the Company's expectations due to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Although it is not possible to identify all of these risks and factors, they include, among others, the following: results of operations fluctuate and may not be indicative of our prospects; a pandemic or other catastrophic event, such as the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, may adversely impact our financial condition or results of operations; more established competitors; losses exceeding reserves; highly cyclical property and casualty reinsurance industry; losses from catastrophe exposure; downgrade, withdrawal of ratings or change in rating outlook by rating agencies; significant decrease in our capital or surplus; dependence on key executives; inability to service our indebtedness; limited cash flow and liquidity due to our indebtedness; inability to raise necessary funds to pay principal or interest on debt; potential lack of availability of capital in the future; credit risk associated with the use of reinsurance brokers; future strategic transactions such as acquisitions, dispositions, mergers or joint ventures; technology breaches or failures, including cyber-attacks; lack of control over Third Point Enhanced LP ("TP Fund"); lack of control over the allocation and performance of TP Fund's investment portfolio; dependence on Third Point LLC to implement TP Fund's investment strategy; limited ability to withdraw our capital accounts from TP Fund; decline in revenue due to poor performance of TP Fund's investment portfolio; TP Fund's investment strategy involves risks that are greater than those faced by competitors; termination by Third Point LLC of our or TP Fund's investment management agreements; potential conflicts of interest with Third Point LLC; losses resulting from significant investment positions; credit risk associated with the default on obligations of counterparties; ineffective investment risk management systems; fluctuations in the market value of TP Fund's investment portfolio; trading restrictions being placed on TP Fund's investments; limited termination provisions in our investment management agreements; limited liquidity and lack of valuation data on certain TP Fund's investments; fluctuations in market value of our fixed-income securities; U.S. and global economic downturns; specific characteristics of investments in mortgage-backed securities and other asset-backed securities, in securities of issues based outside the U.S., and in special situation or distressed companies; loss of key employees at Third Point LLC; Third Point LLC's compensation arrangements may incentivize investments that are risky or speculative; increased regulation or scrutiny of alternative investment advisers affecting our reputation; suspension or revocation of our reinsurance licenses; potentially being deemed an investment company under U.S. federal securities law; failure of reinsurance subsidiaries to meet minimum capital and surplus requirements; changes in Bermuda or other law and regulation that may have an adverse impact on our operations; Third Point Re and/or Third Point Reinsurance Company Ltd. ("Third Point Re BDA") potentially becoming subject to U.S. federal income taxation; potential characterization of Third Point Re and/or Third Point Re BDA as a passive foreign investment company; subjection of our affiliates to the base erosion and anti-abuse tax; potentially becoming subject to U.S. withholding and information reporting requirements under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; risks associated with the failure to complete, or the failure to realize the expected benefits of the transaction with Sirius; and other risks and factors listed under "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated by our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2020, and other periodic and current disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About the Company The Company is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange which, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Third Point Reinsurance Company Ltd. and Third Point Reinsurance (USA) Ltd., writes property and casualty reinsurance business. Third Point Reinsurance Company Ltd. and Third Point Reinsurance (USA) Ltd. each have an "A-" (Excellent) financial strength rating from A.M. Best Company, Inc. www.thirdpointre.com About Arcadian Risk Bermuda-based Arcadian Risk is a Managing General Agent (MGA) that writes Excess and Surplus Casualty insurance. The company is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Contacts: Investors Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. Christopher S. Coleman Chief Financial Officer [email protected] +1 441-542-3333 Media Rein4ce Mairi Mallon [email protected] +44 7843076533 SOURCE Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. Related Links http://www.thirdpointre.bm Its a perfect Indian summer morning in the Phoenix Park. Squint into the sunlight and cast a gaze over the lush parkland and all seems well with the world. But appearances, as we all know, can be deceiving. Before long, you notice people scurrying by wearing face-coverings, eyes down on the ground; dog-walkers jumping out of the way to avoid joggers; the two-metre social distancing markings on the pathways. Suddenly you remember were in the new normal. The new abnormal, more like. With more restrictions looming for Dublin ahead of a Cabinet meeting tomorrow to discuss moving the capital to Level 3, members of the public were enjoying the last of the dazzling sunshine as we face into a winter of uncertainty. Highs levels of fear and frustration were palpable among those grappling to live their lives as the coronavirus continues to gain a grim foothold in the capital city - despite all our sacrifices and best efforts. Yet, flying in the face of the online mutterings of revolution and social disobedience, on the ground, support for the Government remains strong. Some blame the soaring case numbers on house parties and relaxed social gatherings, some on younger people congregating at night-time, while others think complacency has just set in as the death rate drops. Read More For some not living in Dublin, today was probably the last chance to see loved ones for a while, such as grandparents Mary and Willie Clancy from Waterford. Up for a day trip to the zoo, they had snuck in a visit with their Dublin-based daughter Jane and grandson Jack Allen (22 months). Im pretty concerned. Jack just started creche so were concerned about what he might catch in there but you just have to get on with things as well - you cant think about it too much, said Jane. As much as I do think its the right thing to do, its obviously not easy. If youre from Dublin and your family are here, its maybe not as difficult for some. But I definitely find that when were told we cant leave the county, thats whenyou feel a bit trapped and you really miss your family. She added: I think it is for the best, I dont want to see the hospitals overwhelmed. The flu season is coming so winter is going to be tough so whatever they have to do, they have to do. I think the cases were always going to go up after the schools and creches opened and people went back to work. It is going to go up, its about how do we manage it. I dont think its necessarily complacency but it's about finding a balance between some small cases and things staying open. Her mother Mary Clancy said that while the increase in cases was partly down to house parties, she didn't think that was 100pc true. I think weve just become a bit complacent and, when you see all the cases going back up, it kick-starts you into taking all the precautions again, she said. But we see it in Waterford where people have become very complacent and I think thats whats caused the rise. Waterford was very good and we had 12 cases the other day. "This will probably be our last visit to Dublin for a while but of course youd be concerned. Lets face it, the restrictions are for our health so lets just get our heads down and get on with it and hopefully it will pass soon enough. Dublin 15 locals Caoimhe Heagney (20) and Conor Duffy (20) reckoned that people had become too relaxed when it came to adhering to guidelines. Where we live in the west side of Dublin, theres a lot of cases and theres more every day so its worrying. You see a lot of people are getting tested. The restrictions were lifted very fast and even with the travel, most people are going abroad again, having their normal holidays like theres no virus, said Caoimhe. Id say we have to go into Level 3 because Dublins the worst part of Ireland now. Expand Close Conor Duffy and Caoimhe Heagney, both 20 years old, who live in west Dublin (Picture by Johnny Brew) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Conor Duffy and Caoimhe Heagney, both 20 years old, who live in west Dublin (Picture by Johnny Brew) Conor said people were "very relaxed about their approach" and it feels like were creeping back into a lockdown situation. It seems like everyones back to normal, even with the social distancing, you can see that. Steven Byrne, from Ballyfermot, out for the day with Rosie (3) and Oscar (1), said it was all "a bit worrying". "The main concern at the minute is people dont know where they are with the restrictions. Were between Level 2 and Level 3. You can travel to Berlin but you cant travel to Cork. Hopefully well get more of an answer soon," he said. I think were going to see a lot of Dubliners anger, especially with the pubs not being open. But if the cases are rising, its an answer to slowing things down like they did in April. But how long is this going to go on for? I'm trying to stick to certain guidelines but not a lot of young people seem to care so thats a bit worrying. But you can only do so much." Read More Fran and Marie OGorman, from Clonsilla, were out for the day with their grandchildren Seami (4) and Liam (2) Moynihan, and had a more laid-back approach. "Im not really concerned, said Fran. Theres plenty of places to come and you just have to keep away from people and just keep among ourselves. We look after ourselves and if everybody else did that, I think wed have a much easier time. I think they will have to bring in more restrictions as things are getting worse. Just back from a staycation in Kerry after cancelling two holidays abroad, they said they were just catching up with the situation in Dublin. Were coming into our 60s now so were keeping to ourselves and doing the best we can. Thats all we can do. The younger people are probably out and about, doing a little bit more than they should be, going in gangs together, he said. "Most people are doing what theyre meant to but theres a lot that arent. It would be terrible not to be able to see the grandkids." Navan Road residents Maureen and Brendan Sweeney said it was "more frustrating" than anything else. Expand Close Brendan and Maureen Sweeney (Picture by Johnny Brew) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Brendan and Maureen Sweeney (Picture by Johnny Brew) It is pretty concerning, the fact that we were locked down before and that didnt seem to flatten the curve. Its hard to believe that its been going on since early March and were not into September," said Brendan. His wife Maureen said it "looks like were running backwards instead of maintaining the situation or moving forwards". "The biggest worry is for older people. Its very difficult to know how to flatten the curve this time. The virus seems to have just come back even more this time around," she said. "My heart goes out to younger people between the university admissions and the Leaving Cert results, its so worrying and so frustrating for them. But from a health perspective, it's so worrying. We just want to get a vaccine and move on so hopefully the Oxford thing will work out." Subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts for the full episode. Joe Biden isnt doing great with Latino voters. Hes trending worse than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did in their elections, and a recent poll has him trailing Donald Trump by 4 points among Latinos in Florida. With just a few weeks to go before Nov. 3, the Biden campaign is ramping up its appeals to Latino votersbut will it be enough? On Thursdays episode of What Next, I talked to Chuck Rocha, head of Nuestro PAC and a former Bernie Sanders campaign adviser, about what Democrats need to do to reach this key demographic. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Advertisement Mary Harris: You helped Bernie Sanders craft a strategy that would explicitly connect with Latino voters. So what did that look like? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Chuck Rocha: I was a senior adviser for the entire campaign. Because of that position, I got to sit in rooms where the decisions actually were made to make sure that Latino programs were fully funded. And I say that now because its probably the biggest mistake all campaigns make with their Latino outreach. Ive sat in that meeting for 20 years, where they come back around Labor Day and go: The budget is tight. We really got to double down on these white, persuadable voters, so were going to cut the Latino budget. Most campaigns wait till the last three or four weeks and then they start talking to Latinos and Black voters. Advertisement Advertisement Establishment white consultants dont understand the theory of trying to get a new brown voter to show up versus the money spent to go persuade another old white woman. Chuck Rocha What I wanted to prove is that if you treat a Latino voter like a white, persuadable voter, giving them information early and often and with culturally competent consultants, you can get a dramatic amount of them to show up for you. People are always shocked when I say we did not have a Latino outreach department at the Bernie Sanders headquarters. Theyre like, Well, then how did you do all of this work? Because we integrated it into everything we were doing. We had 200 Latinos on staff. Every department head, every office, every state had a Latino in a leadership position to run the overall campaign. They were making sure that Latinos werent left out there. You couple that with us starting six months early talking to Latinos in every state, spending millions of dollars, and then having a candidate who was rock-solid on an economic issue that most Latinos could relate withthats nirvana. Thats the perfect storm. Thats how we got 73 percent of the Latino vote in the Nevada caucuses. Advertisement Advertisement Youve written that, by some estimates, 60 percent of eligible Latino voters in battleground states are going to sit out the 2020 election. And youve done some focus groups where youve talked to voters like this. What are they telling you about why they would make that decision? Advertisement Advertisement What NALEOthe National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officialsfound in its national poll of Latinos in battleground states is that 60 percent of Latinos they talked to had not heard from either campaign. So if youre not hearing from either campaign, guess what you have a high likelihood of not doing? Voting. Ive tried to explain this to people, and its almost too simple for them to understand. They were like, Chuck, what was your secret weapon to get all of these new Latinos to show up in the primary for Bernie Sanders? And I was like, You got your pen and paper? You go ask them. No, no, no. What was the message strategy? Im like: Nope! Again, too complicated. Just go ask them. Advertisement Advertisement They literally couldnt get it through their head that by asking them a few months out and then starting a conversation that can lead to a policy discussion, then you can engage them and give a person, a Latino, a reason to go vote. But if you show up in the last two days, thats not reason enoughto say, Donald Trump is bad. Youve got to go vote. Advertisement Advertisement During the focus groups, it was two things that came up all the time. Latinos said: Look, we get that Donald Trump is not with us and that he is crazy. We get it. You dont have to tell us no more. But you need to tell me, because I dont know Joe Biden, what hes gonna do to make my life better. Advertisement In Florida, how could the turnout of Latino voters really shift the margins? Its about a new demographic of Latinos. Floridas changing at a dramatic pace when it comes to Latinos. Folks in New York City or sitting in Nebraska, when they think about Latinos, they just think about Cubans down in Miami. But thats less than 20 percent of the total Latino populationand half of them are conservative Republicans who would never vote for any Democrat. So people always lump us together. Theres just such a big difference between Cubans and the other demographics that are there. You layer in, over the last four to six years, this dramatic increase of the Puerto Rican population because of these hurricanes and the downturn and the collapse of their economy, where you have all these multigenerational families having to live together in the I-4 corridor. Then you have all of these other Latinos from South America, whove escaped Venezuela, who were very rich, very conservative, who have a different ideological thinking when you say democratic socialist to them. And then on top of all of that, you have, like, Mexicans in Tampa that are part of a farming community. But on a voter file, it all says Latino. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So to win this thing, youve got to win it on the margins. You go to Little Havana. You go talk to Cubans. But you really concentrate on Cubans under the age of 60. Cubans that were born in America, and not on the island, act much differently. So you try to cut your losses there, and thats where youd put up a good fight, but you dont double down. Where you double down is in the I-4 corridor, because thats where the Mexicans and the Puerto Ricans live, and thats the base of your support. Currently, Donald Trump is winning like 60 percent of Cubans. But Joe Biden is winning 70 percent of Puerto Ricans. So thats where you double and triple down, where your base is, to get more people to come out and vote. But establishment white consultants dont understand the theory of trying to get a new brown voter to show up versus the money spent to go persuade another old white woman to vote for Biden who may have voted for Trump the first time. Advertisement I wonder, too, if the voters that the president is trying to talk tofolks from Venezuela, older people in Cuban familiesare more likely to vote, historically. And so its an easier time than someone like Joe Biden would have convincing folks whove just come here from Puerto Rico, and are climate refugees essentially, to vote. Advertisement Advertisement These people that came from Cuba who automatically become citizens the moment their foot touched the U.S. soil, and then they got a check from the government thats like, Welcome to America. Lets get to work, or these Venezuelans who become U.S. citizensthey are highly, highly motivated to vote, and they vote at higher rates than even white people. But then you have Puerto Ricans whove just gotten here, Mexicans who have moved here from Texas or other places, who are just not talked to as much. They are also not as wealthy as many of these Cubans, so they just have more life getting in the way of them having to votemaybe two jobs, lower income, all of the things that stand in the way of most working-class people trying to figure out how to stand in line for three hours. You couple all of that with the coronavirus that has everybody laid off, everybody losing their health care, Latinos dying at three times the rate, our children eight times as likely to catch it, based off the CDC reportthen youve got the perfect storm of how this has come to be. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement You have a lot of experience campaigning in Nevada. I want to talk about why you look at this state and you say Democrats had better be keeping their eye on it. Its mainly around the coronavirus effect, because theyre almost entirely a service sector and tourism economy. All of these brown and Black folks and immigrants and children of immigrants who work out there are all tied to this industry that is faltering. So you want to go out there and talk to them about showing up to vote and talk to them about the issues when theyre literally trying to figure out how theyre going to feed their families. And because this huge powerhouse out there, the Culinary Union, is like 80 percent still laid off from all the casinos, theyre not ready to do all the work that they may have done before because they have been doing so much services to their union, as they should be. I just feel like theres going to be an effect there. Advertisement You can see the machinery cranking upJoe Biden this week releasing ads that are almost entirely in Spanish, scored by Bad Bunny, making the case that you want to break up with Donald Trump. But is it enough? I think he should double everything hes doing, just to make sure. And then there needs to be an outside validator game like you do with white voters. I am not antiwhite folks. Im antiyou spending 10 times the money on white voters than you do on brown voters. These rich people arent throwing their money away to persuade white people to go vote. That is smart political strategy. My point is that we could do the same thing with Latinos if we use the same strategy. Subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts Get more news from Mary Harris every weekday. Advertisement Hurricane Sally lumbered ashore near the Florida-Alabama line Wednesday with 105 mph winds and rain measured in feet, not inches, swamping homes and forcing the rescue of hundreds of people as it pushed inland for what could be a slow and disastrous drenching across the Deep South. The storm toppled trees, flooded streets and left 570,000 homes and businesses without electricity. Hurricane Sally blasted ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 2 storm, shoving a surge of ocean water onto the coast and hurling torrential rain that forecasters said would cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and well inland in the days ahead. Moving at an agonizingly slow three miles per hour, the center of the hurricane made landfall at 4.45am local time with top winds of 105mph, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. The hurricane center says 'historic and catastrophic flooding is unfolding,' with up to 35 inches of rain expected. At 4 p.m. CDT, Sally had weakened to a tropical storm and was 55 miles north of Pensacola, Florida, spreading heavy rainfall into Alabama and Georgia. Winds had fallen to 60 mph, the NHC said. Sally was crawling towards the north-northeast at five miles per hour as of Wednesday evening. Scroll down for video A flipped over trailer is pictured on I-10 East during Hurricane Sally in Mobile, Alabama, on Wednesday Flooded parking lot is seen during Hurricane Sally in downtown Pensacola, Florida, on Wednesday Tropic Isles condominiums are seen after Hurricane Sally moved through the area in Alabama Vehicles maneuver on a flooded road near a boat washed up near the road after Hurricane Sally moved through Alabama A man walks through a street by rains from Hurricane Sally in downtown Pensacola, Florida, on Wednesday Sally's northern eyewall had raked the Gulf Coast with hurricane-force winds and rain from Pensacola Beach, Florida, westward to Dauphin Island, Alabama, for hours before its center finally hit land. A replica of Christopher Columbus ship the Nina that had been docked at the Pensacola waterfront was missing, police said. Sally tore loose a barge-mounted construction crane, which then smashed into the new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay, causing a section of the year-old span to collapse, authorities said. T The storm also ripped away a large section of a fishing pier at Alabamas Gulf State Park on the very day a ribbon-cutting had been scheduled following a $2.4million renovation. More than 550,000 homes and businesses in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi have lost power, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. More than a quarter of U.S. Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas production remained shut as the storm cut fuel demand in the U.S. Southeast. Some 508,000 barrels per day of oil production and 805 million cubic feet per day of natural gas output were shut in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, according to the U.S. Interior Department. That is roughly a third of the shut-ins caused by Hurricane Laura, which landed further west in August. Some of the worst reported flooding was in the city of Pensacola, Florida, which has a population of around 52,000. According to a preliminary report from the National Weather Service (NWS), Pensacola has already gotten more than two feet of rain. Hurricane Sally blasted ashore Wednesday near Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 2 storm, causing floods in parts of Florida, including Pensacola In downtown Pensacola, Florida (pictured), floodwaters submerged cars parked on the street Flood waters move on the street, Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida, after Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 2 storm People watched from their homes as floodwaters submerged their cars in downtown Pensacola, Florida, on Wednesday A man is seen watching the floodwaters rise from the steps of a building in downtown Pensacola, Florida According to a preliminary report from the National Weather Service (NWS), Pensacola has already gotten more than two feet of rain Rescue crews help save Ernestine Law when a tree fell on her house. Ernestine and her daughter and grandchild were in her Mobile, Alabama, home at the time. The daughter and grandchild were able to get out, but Ernestine was trapped inside 'Praise the Lord,' Law shouted as she was rescued by first responders on Wednesday morning after Hurricane Sally destroyed her home Trent Airhart wades through flood waters after picking up items from his vehicle in downtown Pensacola, Florida, on Wednesday Hurricane Sally caused damaged to several buildings along Beach Boulevard in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Wednesday Downtown streets resembled lakes with cars submerged to the tops of their wheels and wind gusts whipping up whitecaps on the water. David Triana, 57, a resident of Navarre, a town near Pensacola, said he and his neighbors did not board up their homes because they did not expect the trajectory of the storm to shift so much to the east or for it to be so strong. 'Nobody was prepared for a Cat 2,' said Triana, whose home fortunately escaped without any damage. 'The forecasts for the cone and the strength of the storm did not indicate that it would hit us so hard.' In downtown Pensacola, car alarms were triggered, setting off honking horns and flashing lights that illuminated floodwaters up to the bumpers of parked cars. Street lights were snuffed out in downtown Mobile, Alabama, where a stoplight snapped, swinging wildly on its cable. Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said Wednesday morning that Hurricane Sally has knocked out a section of the new Three Mile Bridge in Pensacola, Florida, as the storm pounds the Gulf Coast with wind and rain. At a news conference, Morgan confirmed that part of the new bridge had come off amid the storm. Morgan says thousands of people in the communities he serves around Pensacola will need to be evacuated from rising water in the coming days. The sheriff said there are entire communities that will have to evacuate. He says deputies have already rescued more than 40 people, including a family of four that was in a tree and was brought to safety with a high-water vehicle. Brian Buckley walks through a flooded street after Hurricane Sally passed through the area on Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida The business of Joe and Teresa Mirable is seen after Hurricane Sally moved through the area, Wednesday, in Perdido Key, Florida John Terrezza looks out at a flooded street in front of his home as Hurricane Sally passes through the area Pensacola, Florida Hurst Butts looks out at a flooded street in front of his business as Hurricane Sally passes through Pensacola, Florida A passenger in a car takes pictures with his phone as the vehicle drives through a flooded section of US Highway 98 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida Joel Sterling of Silverhill, Alabama, cuts branches from a tree that fell in his yard as Hurricane Sally passed through Joe Mirable surveys the damage to his business after Hurricane Sally moved through the area, in Perdido Key, Florida In Baldwin County, Alabama, the hurricane has knocked out the power of nearly 100 per cent of customers. In a tweet, the county's emergency management agency said: 'As the sun comes up this morning, Hurricane Sally is throwing down a big challenge. At this point, around 95% of the meters on our system have no power.' Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said Wednesday morning that the area has suffered 'a lot of damage here'. Collier said crews have done some initial surveys in the Alabama town and 'what we're seeing is quite a bit of devastation'. 'We've got trees down all over the place, power lines,' Collier told CNN. 'We've got a lot of work to get done.' The mayor said there were about 300 people who didn't evacuate, but so far there has only been one water rescue. This RAMMB/NOAA satellite image shows Hurricane Sally on Wednesday as it barreled into the US with forecasts of drenching rains that could provoke 'historic' and potentially deadly flash floods People use flashlights as they walk on flooded streets in search of their vehicle on Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida A police officer escorts a resident as they inspect damages from the fallen tree during Hurricane Sally in Pascagoula, Mississippi on Wednesday A tree lies on the street after it fell during Hurricane Sally in Pascagoula, Mississippi on Wednesday morning Residents look at the destruction caused by Hurricane Sally in Pascagoula, Mississippi on Wednesday In Orange Beach, city officials say they received 120 calls after midnight from people whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Sally. Mayor Tony Kennon says between 50 and 60 people were rescued and are staying in makeshift shelters as of Wednesday morning. Kennon also said there are people they haven't been able to get to because of high water. But he said they're safe in their homes and will be rescued as soon as the water recedes. Meanwhile, US Coast Guard crews based in New Orleans are prepared to make rescues if needed, as soon as the storm passes. A curfew had been called in Gulf Shores due to life-threatening conditions hours before landfall. In the Panhandle's Escambia County, Chief Sheriff's Deputy Chip Simmons vowed to keep deputies out helping residents as long as physically possible. The county includes Pensacola, one of the largest cities on the Gulf Coast. 'The sheriff's office will be there until we can no longer safely be out there, and then and only then will we pull our deputies in,' Simmons said at a storm briefing late Tuesday. This for a storm that, during the weekend, appeared to be headed for New Orleans. 'Obviously this shows what we've known for a long time with storms - they are unpredictable,' Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson IV said. In Orange Beach (destruction pictured), city officials say they received 120 calls after midnight from people whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Sally Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon says between 50 and 60 people were rescued and are staying in makeshift shelters as of Wednesday morning. Debris is seen littering an area in Orange Beach early Wednesday morning The storm's top sustained winds had dropped to 81mph just over an hour after it struck land, making it a Category 1 hurricane. A section of Florida's Highway 98, which runs parallel to the Gulf of Mexico, has been blocked by debris and downed power lines as the hurricane continued to move inland. In a tweet, the Walton County Sheriffs Office says residents should stay home because roads in the area 'are dangerous right now.' The agency says numerous roads in the area are closed due to the storm. Forecasters warned that heavy rainfall would continue into Thursday as the storm moved inland over Alabama and into central Georgia, likely causing serious flash flooding and minor to moderate river flooding far from the coast. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey warned residents that it may take time to restore power and water services and clear debris-littered roadways. 'Hurricane Sally has been a slow-moving storm, which only adds to some natural delays in restoring power, water and other essential services,' Ivey said. Ivey declared a state of emergency in Alabama on Monday ahead of Sally's arrival. Tate Reeves, the governor of neighboring Mississippi, had also declared an emergency ahead of the storm but it eventually made landfall further to the east. Sally was a rare storm that could make history, said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the hurricane center. A police vehicle drives through a street strewn with tree branches as the winds and rain from Hurricane Sally pass through Mobile, Alabama, on Wednesday A car drives down Government Street during Hurricane Sally in Mobile, Alabama, on Wednesday With flood water running through the streets people move outside a hotel for a view on Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida A fallen tree is seen in Mobile, Alabama, after it fell when Hurricane Sally made landfall as a Category 2 'Sally has a characteristic that isn't often seen and that's a slow forward speed and thats going to exacerbate the flooding,' Rappaport said. He likened the storm's slow progression to that of Hurricane Harvey, which swamped Houston in 2017. Up to 30 inches of rain could fall in some spots, and 'that would be record-setting in some locations,' Rappaport said in an interview Tuesday night. Sally's impact was felt all along the northern Gulf Coast. Low lying properties in southeast Louisiana were swamped by the surge. Water covered Mississippi beaches and parts of the highway that runs parallel to them. Two large casino boats broke loose from a dock where they were undergoing construction work in Alabama. In Orange Beach, Alabama, Chris Parks, a tourist from Nashua, New Hampshire, spent the night monitoring the storm and taking care of his infant child as strong winds battered his family's hotel room. Hurricane Sally has a trajectory that is expected to reach the Carolinas by Friday (depicted above) Hurricane Sally has prompted tropical storm warnings along the Florida Panhandle and parts of Alabama The slow-moving storm could bring 'historic flooding' to inland areas, including Birmingham, Montgomery, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi Between 3 and 5 feet of storm surge is expected in Pensacola, Florida (depicted above) Strong, tropical storm-force winds are predicted through Thursday, forecasters said Up to 35 inches of rain is possible along the Gulf Coast while areas as far north as Charlotte and Atlanta are likely to see several inches as well Their return flight home was canceled, so they were stuck in Alabama until Friday. 'I'm just glad we are together,' Parks said. 'The wind is crazy. You can hear solid heavy objects blowing through the air and hitting the building.' Mississippi Gov Tate Reeves urged people in the southern part of his state to prepare for flash flooding. As Sally's outer bands reached the Gulf Coast, the manager of an alligator ranch in Moss Point, Mississippi, was hoping he wouldn't see a repeat of what happened at the gator farm in 2005, when about 250 alligators escaped their enclosures during Hurricane Katrina's storm surge. Gulf Coast Gator Ranch & Tours Manager Tim Parker says Sally has been a stressful storm because forecasters were predicting a storm surge of as much as 9 feet in his area. He felt some relief after surge predictions shifted. Sally was forecast to bring heavy downpours to parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas later in the week. Some inland residents weren't waiting, driving to the coast to experience Sally's power before it hit land. With heavy rains pelting Navarre Beach, Florida, and the wind-whipped surf pounding, a steady stream of people walked down the wooden boardwalk at a park for a look at the scene Tuesday afternoon. Rebecca Studstill, who lives inland, was wary of staying too long, noting that police close bridges once the wind and water get too high. With Hurricane Sally expected to dump rain for days, the problem could be worse than normal, she said. 'Just hunkering down would probably be the best thing for folks out here,' she said. A pavilion was flooded in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Tuesday just hours before the hurricane made landfall People play in a flooded parking lot at Navarre Beach, Tuesday in Pensacola Beach, Florida President Donald Trump issued emergency declarations for parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the White House is 'fully engaged' with the status of Hurricane Sally. Speaking Wednesday morning on Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends, McEnany said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is also fully engaged and cited Trump's issuance of emergency declarations for the affected states. McEnany didn't have details on which officials the president had spoken with as of Wednesday morning but said 'it's safe to say the White House has been in active contact with all of these governors'. Sally hit just shy of three weeks after Hurricane Laura pummeled southwestern Louisiana on August 27. Lingering damage from that storm accounted for many of the 60,000 power outages in that state. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Teddy has now become a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100mph, the NHC said early Wednesday. Teddy is located about 820 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 25 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles. Some strengthening is forecast during the next few days, and Teddy is likely to become a major hurricane later Wednesday and could reach Category 4 strength on Thursday. There have been so many tropical storms in the Atlantic this year that the UN's World Meteorological Organization, which names the tempests, is about to run out of names for only the second time in history. The last time was in 2005, the year Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. New York, Sep 17 : In a 107 page research report headlined on the final bend of the US election, a cross disciplinary team of 11 Citigroup economists are urging investors to fasten seatbelts for a wild ride that could include what they call an 'October Surprise' that potentially upends the race like it did in 2016 and are warning of a complicated terrain for at least 60 days post-election. The US presidential election takes place Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - that's exactly 47 days away. The context to the 60-day sunset clause in the Citi report on "complications" comes from the checks and balances of Constitutional and federal law in the US. Even if the election is messy and contested, the US will have a president by Inauguration Day which falls on January 20, 2021. Among six permutations with varying degrees of likelihood, a Biden Presidency, Republican Senate and Democrat-controlled House is "most likely" according to Citi Research calculations. A "very slim path" exists for a Democratic takeover of the entire political superstructure: A Biden Presidency, Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. "Highly unlikely" is how Citi describes the potential for a complete Republican takeover of White House, Senate and House. In Citi's "most likely" scenario that Biden becomes President, Democrats take the House and Republicans retain control of the Senate, the bank's research team thinks Biden will lean towards executive orders and regulation to bring on big policy changes. The 'Global Multi Asset View: Road to the White House 2020' report by Citi Research describes Donald Trump's America First strategy as a much bigger risk for the US and the global economy than Joe Biden's aAmerica in Alliance' strategy. "The gap between Trump and Biden in the polls and on prediction websites has narrowed recently, and there is the risk that polls, although greatly improved since 2016, could be failing to capture the true sentiments of would-be voters", says the report, steering clear of predicting winners and instead laying out a broad range of risks for markets and economies leading up to and following the elections. Complications on or after voting day are baked into the Citi economists' scenario planning for investors. "Indeed, a clear winner for the Presidential election or for select Congressional elections may not be determined on November 4, with challenges and proceedings extending by as many as two months beyond the November 3 Election Day. This leads to several potential tail risks." Fleshing out the rationale behind the granular detailing, Citi explains: "The US accounts for about 25 per cent of per cent of the global aggregate indicator for GDP growth. Therefore, US growth prospects matter for global growth simply by arithmetic." A second term for Trump, according to Citi analysts, would look very much like the last four years and likely double down on policies that aworked'. The warning for markets is clear. "Expect continued policy unpredictability, potential expansion of trade wars abroad, and continued social fragmentation and political polarization domestically." A Biden presidency is labeled "Back to the Future". Citi's view is that Biden would return America to traditional governance and heavy infrastructure spending. "An olive branch would be extended to foreign allies, but China would be kept at arm's-length. Manufacturing, infrastructure-related, green energy, and tech sectors might flourish, while financial and fossil fuel sectors might come under pressure. Social unrest may not be resolved quickly, but there would be a focus on greater equity." (Nikhila Natarajan is on Twitter @byniknat) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Stark Group, one of the largest retailers and distributors of building materials for the professional segment in Northern Europe, has selected Planon Universe for Financial Professionals to comply with IFRS 16 standards. Planon is the leading global provider of software that supports corporate real estate and facility managers in optimising their business and workplace performance. Founded in 1896 with headquarters in Denmark, Stark Group has been continuously developing and strengthening its position in the market and is highly respected in the construction industry. In addition to supplying products, the organization also provides valuable advice and services to builders across the entire Nordic region. With over 10,000 employees and 412 stores in six countries, Stark Group handles 4,200 lease contracts across all countries in which it operates. "We selected Planon software for Lease Management and IFRS 16 compliance because of the maturity of the solution and the structured implementation process," said Michael Peter Jakobsen, Group Finance Manager at Stark Group. After an in-depth selection of vendors with a focus on business and technical requirements, demonstration, implementation, Nordic references & financial proposal, Planon was selected as the preferred vendor. "The opportunity to speak with several Planon customers before making our decision gave us the confidence that Planon would be the best partner to choose. This eased our search for an integrated lease management and IFRS 16 lease accounting solution." said Karsten Wingsted, Finance Specialist at Stark Group. "With an expanding local presence in the Nordic region and growing customer base, we are seeing an increased demand for these types of solutions," said Pierre Guelen, CEO at Planon. "Due to COVID-19, the implementation will be done remotely over a period of six weeks. This is where one of Planon's core strengths really comes into play - an established combination of strong local presence and an international team used to remote working." Consultancy firm Deloitte is advising Stark Group as a skilled partner, while implementation is handled by Planon, ensuring a smooth, compliant and timely operation. About Planon With over 35 years of experience, Planon is the leading global provider of innovative software, proven best practices and professional services that help building owners and occupiers, commercial service providers, and financial controllers to streamline business processes for buildings, assets, workplaces and people. SOURCE Planon Related Links https://planonsoftware.com NEW HAVEN The COVID-19 pandemic will bring the Yale New Haven Health System its first operating loss, one that could reach $100 million, CEO Marna Borgstrom said Thursday. Borgstrom said the network of five hospitals and the Northeast Medical Group would see an unprecedented operating loss probably in excess of $450 million. That has been offset, however, with about $320 million in CARES Act money, a federal COVID assistance program administered by the state. She said the loss estimates are a work in progress with the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and she estimated the net loss as probably between $70 [million] and $100 million. She said the loss has to be measured against the hospitals annual budgeting for an operating gain, so that we can be creditworthy in order to finance large projects such as the Neuroscience Center at the St. Raphael campus of Yale New Haven Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital Care Center in Greenwich. Borgstrom made her comments during an online news conference. In a follow-up email, YNHH spokesman Vincent Petrini said revenues are the most fluid and losses are based upon current volume assumptions. If volume comes back stronger, our gap becomes smaller, but the deficit will still be very significant, he said. Final numbers wont be available until mid-November, he said. Yale New Haven Health was created in 1996 with an affiliation between Yale New Haven Hospital and Bridgeport Hospital, Petrini said. Greenwich Hospital was added in 1998, Lawrence + Memorial in New London and Westerly (R.I.) Hospital in 2016, he said. The trends that have led us to where we are right now are ones we continue to see, Borgstrom said. Our inpatient volumes in general across the system have come back. Bridgeport, Yale New Haven, Greenwich are all very busy inpatient areas, she said. The emergency rooms are back to being overwhelmed at certain times of the week and certain times of the day with patients. She said outpatient volume has been softer, partly because of more use of telehealth visits. But I think some of it reflects peoples lack of comfort with coming in for care that they dont feel is absolutely necessary, she said. She said people should not delay coming to the hospital if needed. We as organizations have been working inpatient and outpatient to create as safe an environment as possible. What weve got to do is continue to do our best to protect our patients and our staff and make sure we are providing a safe environment for everybody, Borgstrom said, adding that other health systems are in the same position. We are going into our next fiscal year with great optimism but also prepared that we may have another wave of COVID, she said. We dont know what the flu season is going to bring to us, so there are a lot of unknowns, but thats the nature of the work that we do and we will be prepared. On a positive note, Borgstrom said the number of COVID-positive patients in the health system stood at 18 Thursday, 13 of them in Yale New Haven Hospital, three in Bridgeport Hospital and two in Greenwich Hospital. She compared that with the 800 patients on April 21, which was a very uncertain and difficult time for all of us. Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief clinical officer for the health system, said even with the opening of colleges and schools, We still are seeing the same age population admitted to our institutions, but it may be a skewed number. While older people are being hospitalized, younger people may still test positive for the disease. He said the health system had give almost 200,000 tests for the coronavirus, and 95 percent of them get results in less than 24 hours. People can sign up for testing at covidtesting2.ynhhs.org, he said. edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382 Emmy nominees Ramy Youssef, from left, Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Braun. (From left: Getty Images / REX/Shutterstock / Getty Images) With no traditional red-carpet walk and nominees beaming in from around the globe in the middle of the pandemic, Sunday's 2020 Emmy Awards telecast will look and feel markedly different than it has in previous years, especially on the fashion front. This point was underscored by the dress-code guidance offered in a July letter sent to nominees by the virtual shows producers that read in part, Our informal theme for the night is Come as you are, but make an effort! The letter went on to float the ideas of both traditional formalwear (Wed love that, read the letter) as well as loungewear (If youre in the UK and its 3 a.m., perhaps you want to be in designer pajamas). According to stylists working with some of this years nominees, its the second half of that suggestion that seems to have captured the collective awards-show-from-home imagination. The pajama game The stylists behind Rachel Brosnahan's Emmys look are going for something that's "loungewear-inspired" for Sunday. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Lincoln and fellow stylist Jordan Johnson are working with comedy lead actress nominee Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) for a more laid-back and casual Emmy-night look they describe as loungewear-inspired something that combines the actress love of casualwear, bold colors and patterns. We know everyone's going to be wearing loungewear. We knew that coming out of the gates, Johnson said. So its not like people are going to see [Rachel] and say, Whoa! Who thought of that?' But this is a different year, so we can be a little more creative and do something different than we normally would have. While Lincoln and Johnson don't want to tip their hand too much, they said their clients 2020 Emmy look will skew closer to the jade green jacket and trousers combination Brosnahan wore to the AFI Awards in 2019 than to the sequined Elie Saab Haute Couture gown she wore to last years Emmys. Stylist Cristina Ehrlich, who is working with Uzo Aduba (limited series supporting actress nominee for "Mrs. America") for her Emmys-night look, didnt cite loungewear as a trend specifically but said in an email that she expects the overall vibe of the night to be more subdued than in past years. Story continues The story the day after the Emmys this year is going to be all about pajamas. Jill Lincoln If nominees are seen, they will be dressed up, but I don't necessarily think it will be to the full capacity of red-carpet moments we have seen in the past, she said. I dont see ballgowns or elaborate jewelry coming into play, but then again, we never know! I am thinking we will get a mix of high/low. Andrew Gelwicks, the stylist working with Catherine OHara (comedy lead actress nominee for "Schitt's Creek") for the big night, also weighed in via email, saying hed also be surprised to see a lot of gowns in play on Sunday. As for his clients night-of look, he said it wouldnt be as casual as loungewear. We are not going as formal as we would with a traditional red carpet, he said, but we are still dressing up and continuing to have fun with the fashion. Catherine O'Hara in a 2019 photo taken in Toronto. (Ryan Enn Hughes / For The Times) That mix of high and low referenced by Ehrlich likely will be seen in the disparate sartorial choices of the two 2020 Emmy nominees dressed by stylist Michael Fisher: Ramy Youssef (comedy lead actor and director nominee for "Ramy") and Nicholas Braun (supporting actor nominee for "Succession"). Youssef, whom Fisher said plans to beam in from his backyard in Los Angeles, is taking the more casual route. The idea in mind is pretty much the quarantine outfit that he's been in for the last six months but with the fashion side of it turned up just a little bit, Fisher said. It wont just be his typical [look]. His other nominee client is taking a different approach. [Nicholas] wants to wear a tuxedo because its his first big nomination and he wants to celebrate it and make the effort, Fisher said, adding that Braun was planning to have some fun with his accessories. He wants to do something kind of lighthearted to bring a laugh to people. Mindful of the moment Brosnahans stylists also acknowledged that tension. The [loungewear approach] feels right for us and for the time, Johnson said. But other people will want to go big and pull out all the stops which wed love to see because this is a little bit of escapism but at the same time, you dont want to be tone-deaf. Thats why we wanted to make sure there was some positive messaging. That positive messaging guided the creation of Brosnahans outfit (the stylist duo wont divulge specifics, saying only that its a collaborative effort involving lots of people who, as Lincoln put it, dont usually get credit for their work) as well as what happens to the star's look afterward. Brosnahans Emmy-night outfit as well as those worn by Aduba, Tracee Ellis Ross and Regina King will be headed to the auction block to raise funds and awareness for former First Lady Michelle Obamas voter-registration organization, When We All Vote. Organized in conjunction with philanthropic organization RAD (Red Carpet Advocacy), the auction at Chic-Relief.com will be open for bidding Sept. 23 through Oct. 2, with 100% of proceeds from the auction and sale of other items going to WWAVs nonpartisan get-out-the-vote effort. We won't speak politics, Lincoln said, but obviously this is a very important year on a lot of fronts, and people need to use this time to kind of make a positive impact with their platform. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Bosses fear that office staff will soon be back working from home within weeks due to the current testing fiasco - as supermarkets make contingency plans if workers can't get swabbed. The Government has come under fire after widespread reports of people having to travel hundreds of miles to get checked and being unable to book a test at all. This is despite Ministers pledging that testing capacity will hit 500,000 a day by the end of October. The test and trace system has buckled under the pressure since children returned to school and the Government made a concerted effort to encourage people back into the office in order to try and kickstart the flagging UK economy. Business leaders have displayed concerns about the current testing system and emphasised that it working effectively will be vital for getting employees back to work and boosting the UK economy. Matt Fell CBI, UK Chief Policy Director, said if the Government wants to encourage people into their workplace safely then the test and trace system will be a 'key component.' Visitors show a member of staff a mobile phone screen at a drive through test centre in south London today 'Reports of people being unable to access tests in their area or waiting too long to get the results will be deeply frustrating for individual and businesses alike,' he added. 'No one doubts how much effort is going in to get it right. The prize is having a faster turnaround in getting results which will let people know where they stand and whether they need to self-isolate or can return to work quickly.' Adam Marshall, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, told the Financial Times, the Government needed to improve the testing facility 'immediately'. 'A truly comprehensive test and trace programme is essential if the UK is to manage the virus without further lockdowns which will cripple businesses.' 'Continuing delays and a shortage of tests saps business, staff and consumer confidence at a fragile moment for the economy.' Business leaders are becoming increasingly anxious that members of staff will be left self-isolating at home with family members waiting for test results to come back, rather than being back in the office during a pivotal moment for the UK economy. There have been long queues at some Covid testing sites, such as this one in Southend-on-Sea, but others have been deserted despite people struggling to get screened Some supermarkets and food retailers have already put contingency plans in place if the testing system buckles. Brakes, a food wholesaler, who have been operating throughout the pandemic, said: 'We've got very strong contingency plans in place which include temperature checks before being allowed on site. 'Only essential people on site and stringent policies once people are there, which has meant that so far we have had very few people showing COVID-like symptoms.' The Co-op group said that funeral care staff are on the key worker list so can get priority testing, but their food workers are not. A spokesman said: 'We've built a model where we know that we have access to variable colleague resources at fairly short notice, so we have some resilience on that. 'Clearly we all hope that the testing capability will continue to strengthen and improve but we've got some protection in place, because the Co-op has had to deal with this throughout. 'It's clearly a real challenge and anything that can be done to help the [testing] situation [is welcome].' By ANI NEW DELHI: In a significant development, Indian Navy warships constantly tracked a Chinese research vessel which entered the Indian Ocean Region last month at a time when tensions rose on the land borders in Ladakh between the two nations. The Yuan Wang class research vessel had entered the Indian Ocean Region from Malacca straits last month. It was constantly tracked by Indian Navy warships deployed there in the region, Government Sources said. The Chinese research vessel returned to China a few days ago after being under constant watch of Indian Navy vessels, the sources said. Such research vessels have been coming regularly from China and they try to gain sensitive information about Indian maritime territory. In December last year, the Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 1 was carrying out research activities in the Indian waters near Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and was detected by maritime surveillance aircraft operating there. Chinese Yuan Wang-class research vessel had entered Indian Ocean Region from Strait of Malacca last month. It was constantly tracked by Indian Navy warships deployed in the region. The vessel returned to China few days ago after being under constant watch of Indian Navy vessels. pic.twitter.com/z7AoRna5N1 ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2020 Such vessels could have also been used by the Chinese to spy on the Indian activities in the Island territory from where India can keep a close eye on the maritime movements in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and South-East Asian region. Since laws do not allow foreign countries to carry out any research or exploration activities in the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the Indian Navy warship at that time had asked the Chinese research vessel to move out of Indian waters. Recalls Become More Partisan More Traction at the Local Level Tony Evers has run into opposition ever since winning election as governor of Wisconsin. Shortly after his victory in 2018, the GOP-controlled Legislature met in lame-duck session to strip him and other new Democratic executive branch officials of some of their powers. This year, legislators successfully argued before the state supreme court that Evers lacked the power to postpone the April primary election or shut down businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic.Although the governors ability to act unilaterally to address public health emergencies has been severely curtailed, that isnt enough to satisfy all his critics. Last week, a Wisconsin woman named Misty R. Polewczysnki filed paperwork seeking to recall Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, calling the governor unfit for office and accusing him of tolerating violence during the recent unrest in Kenosha.The unconstitutional mandates and lockdowns have cost citizens their businesses, homes, jobs and livelihood, Polewsczynski wrote in her official complaint.If Evers opponents have routinely sought to undermine him, hes not alone in facing the prospect of a recall. No fewer than 10 other governors have faced recall efforts since the 2018 elections. Several now face fresh challenges, primarily aimed at Democrats, although Republicans Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brad Little of Idaho have also found themselves targeted. All told, about three-dozen pandemic-related recalls have been launched at the state and local levels.On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to pay legal bills for Kshama Sawant , one of its own members facing a potential recall. In Washington state, officials can only be recalled for violating their oaths of office or malfeasance. A superior court held a hearing on Wednesday to determine whether the allegations against Sawant have merit.A superior court judge has already allowed a recall against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to proceed. The mayor is appealing that ruling to the state supreme court, arguing that the complaint against her regarding policing and protests was rooted in policy differences, not any criminal action on her part. You have to have violated a statutory requirement, says Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner College. A judge has said the recall against the Seattle mayor can proceed. That itself is a very big hurdle to have gotten over.The hurdles have been too high, thus far, for those aiming at governors. Governors habitually seek to dismiss most recall attempts as distractions. For Michigan Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, recall efforts are almost a habit. Twenty have been launched against her this year (so far).The governor is focused on the job he was elected to do, says Meghin Delaney, communications director for Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who faces as many as four separate recall campaigns . Right now, that includes leading the state through an unprecedented global pandemic."Governors might be right not to worry too much about the current wave of recalls. The efforts against Little and Oregon Democrat Kate Brown have already failed. It will be difficult for organizers to obtain the numbers of signatures needed, with the pandemic limiting in-person contact. In Wisconsin, the recall effort against Madison Mayor Satya-Rhodes Conway failed last week, with her opponents collecting only 53 signatures out of the more than 36,000 required.Still, governors, mayors and other elected officials are left facing the fact that some voters are no longer content to wait until the next regularly scheduled election to try to remove them from office, especially during a time of widespread fear, anger and discontent.They feel, How can we go after the people we dont like? says Spivak, who edits the Recall Elections Blog . The pandemic makes it sort of a perfect moment.Only two governors have been successfully recalled in American history: Republican Lynn Frazier of North Dakota in 1921 and Democrat Gray Davis of California in 2003. The defeat of Davis led to the election of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. It also had what political scientists like to call a demonstration effect, increasing the number of recall attempts against lower-level officials.Recalls sometimes backfire. The man Evers defeated two years ago, Republican Scott Walker, survived a recall election in 2012. The effort backfired. Not only did Walker go on to win re-election two years later, but the expensive recall raised Walkers national profile, making him a darling of conservative donors and a plausible though wholly unsuccessful candidate for president. 1983 recall against Democrat Dianne Feinstein when she was mayor of San Francisco similarly increased her stature, leading to her nearly 30-year career in the U.S. Senate. Even Frazier was elected to the Senate the year after his recall as governor.Although most recalls are run by citizen-activists, parties have become more willing to engage. When two Democratic state senators were recalled in 2013 , the Colorado Republican Party lent tacit support but did not lead the effort. That changed last year, when state party officials themselves ran mostly abortive efforts to remove Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and a number of legislators.The unsuccessful effort to remove Kate Brown was spearheaded by the Oregon Republican Party, which initially decried her environmental policy but found that the governors handling of the coronavirus situation energized the campaign, in the words of party spokesman Kevin Hoar The effort the third set of recall petitions circulated against Brown this year fell short of the number of required signatures last month. The fear that another member of the same party will inherit the office, such as the lieutenant governor, is one reason why statewide recalls are less successful than local ones, Spivak says.Aside from partisan gamesmanship, contemporary recalls are also driven by policy disputes, not just malfeasance. Last year, Alaska GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy faced a serious recall attempt due to widespread unhappiness with his proposals for deep cuts to higher education, K-12 schools and the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system. (Technically, Dunleavy is still under threat, as Alaska law does not impose the same time limits on signature gathering as other states, which often set a 60-day or 180-day deadline.)The recall effort had the effect of jolting the Dunleavy administration, says Gerald McBeath, a retired political scientist at the University of Alaskas Fairbanks campus. It was the recall attempt that curbed the governors plans relatively early.A petition is circulating to remove Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards from office, citing his handling of the pandemic, the economy and Hurricane Laura. At a news conference last week, Edwards dismissed the effort . There are a lot of things that keep me up at night, he said. Thats not one of them.Petitioners need more than 600,000 signatures to put a recall election on the ballot, which looks like a long shot. Still, the effort has already inspired one columnist to make the case for recalling New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell . Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas also faces a nascent recall attempt.Durkan, the Seattle mayor, may be in the most trouble. The recall effort there will have to collect 56,202 signatures. As of Wednesday, more than 43,500 people had pledged to sign the recall petition.Actual signature collection cant take place until after the state supreme court issues its ruling about whether the recall can proceed. That is already causing some confusion, with Tim Eyman , a veteran sponsor of ballot initiatives in Washington and an unsuccessful GOP candidate for governor this year, circulating petitions. Because it is against the law to sign the same petition twice, were going to have a lot of work (educating voters), says Grace Harvey, who chairs the Durkan recall committee.The recall complaint charges Durkan with engaging in chemical warfare against residents, in reference to police use of tear gas during protests this summer. Harvey says the situation made her recall the 1999 riots in Seattle during a World Trade Organization meeting, after which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a lengthy report about the police department called Out of Control .Personally, I thought of recall because I knew there were a whole lot of lawsuits and judgments against the city in 1999, Harvey says. I saw the similarities legally, in that civil rights were violated.Harvey notes that her committee is nonpartisan but very definitely left-leaning. She says shes been surprised, however, to find that the recall is garnering support from conservatives as well, who think Durkan has let anarchists take over Seattle.I went onlive and expected a lot of conservative backlash, Harvey says. That wasnt the case at all. People were falling over themselves in excitement.reported that U.S. Attorney General William Barr has asked prosecutors to explore the question of prosecuting Durkan for allowing protesters to occupy the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood this spring. A Justice Department spokesman denied that Barr had made such a request.For all its economic success as a city, Seattle politics have been volatile . Four different people have won the citys last four elections for mayor.The odds are that Durkan will survive the current challenge, even if the supreme court allows the recall to move forward. Opposition from both the left and right, however, does make her uniquely vulnerable. Spivak says: That may be the one that gets somewhere. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The Justice Department-led task force investigating controversies hounding the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation failed to find sufficient basis for the filing of charges against Health Secretary Francisco Duque III. Speaking to CNN Philippines Thursday, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said there was insufficient evidence linking Duque to supposed anomalies in the three areas covered by the initial investigation of the task force. These were PhilHealth's interim reimbursement mechanism, procurement of information technology equipment, and the legal sector. Id like to clarify. The findings of the task force were preliminary in nature because we have only covered three major areas where fraud is heavily suspected, Guevarra said in an interview with The Source. Insofar as Secretary Duque is concerned, we have not seen enough evidence that would make us recommend that he be charged administratively or criminally." Several lawmakers earlier raised questions on the exclusion of the Health Secretary from the list of recommended PhilHealth executives to be charged. Officials have argued that Duque, as ex-officio chairperson of the state health insurer, should also be held accountable. Guevarra, however, reiterated that investigations on the matter will continue, adding that Duque and other members of the PhilHealth board are not totally off the hook yet. It doesnt mean to say that when we conduct further investigations, when we go more deeply into the evidence or other transactions or other areas of fraud, (that) we are absolutely and totally exonerating the secretary or other members of the board. It all depends on what we may see further in the future, the Justice chief stressed. Guevarra also acknowledged the possibility of varying evidence presented before the task force and the Senate, which recommended the filing of charges against Duque. In its 177-page report to President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday, Task Force PhilHealth said it found negligence on the part of key officials of the state health insurer. The group also recommended the filing of complaints against some executives, including former CEO Ricardo Morales. READ: Task Force: PhilHealth execs negligent on IRM implementation, concealed info and documents Guevarra reiterated that their findings that such negligence may also have been mitigated by the fact that some subordinates concealed information and documents in getting board approval for certain projects. PhilHealth, for its part, said it would wait for the official copy of the task force report and submit to whatever instructions are made based on the recommendations. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie and Sausan Atika (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 16:46 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c45743b2 1 City Jakarta-COVID-19,City-Hall,balai-kota,gedung-blok-G-balai-kota-jakarta,employees,COVID-19-patient,Jakarta-governor,anies-baswedan Free The Jakarta administration has confirmed that 11 City Hall employees have tested positive for COVID-19. All of them were stationed at City Halls Block G building, which is temporarily closed. Jakarta Employment Agency head Chaidir said eight of the employees worked in the agency and three worked in the city administrations legal bureau. They took COVID-19 rapid tests on Monday and I received reports [of the results] on Wednesday, Chaidir told reporters Thursday. He added that two high-ranking officials who work in Block G also tested positive for COVID-19, whom he requested not be identified by their names. Previously, Governor Anies Baswedan said Block G would be temporarily closed for three days to be cleaned and disinfected following the infections. Read also: Jakarta closes Block G building at City Hall after employee tests positive for COVID-19 On Wednesday, the city administration lost its secretary, Saefullah, who died at age 56 from several complications due to COVID-19. He served the administration for 36 years. Anies, however, denied that the temporary closing of Block G was due to Saefullahs death. The South Jakarta administration issued on Wednesday a circular ordering all of its staffers to work from home until Monday after seven of them tested positive for the virus. South Jakarta Mayor Marullah Matali said the administration building would be disinfected for three days before being reopened, tempo.co reported. The capital, which has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases since late August, announced on Wednesday 1,294 new daily cases, bringing the total tally to 57,469 with 1,481 deaths. The spike prompted the provincial administration to reinstate the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) policy starting Monday after easing them back in June. Aontu leader Peadar Toibin has defended his deputy leaders right to have a personal view on wearing face masks during Covid-19 pandemic. Retired Dr Anne McCloskey has been criticised for her opposition to the use of face coverings during the coronavirus crisis. The Derry-based doctor, who has run as an Aontu candidate, compared using masks to stop the spread of the virus to "using a sheep fence to keep out mosquitos". She was contacted by the UKs General Medical Council (GMC) over the speech she made at an event in Derry. Read More In a statement given to Independent.ie, Mr Toibin said Dr McCloskey expressed a personal view and not a party view. We are not a dictatorship, the former Sinn Fein TD said, before adding: I came from a party where people were not given the scope to think for themselves. Dissent and differing opinions are not the enemy. Debate and questioning is healthy in society. We have learned at our cost in this country that herd mentality and groupthink are very damaging, he said. He said Dr McCloskeys concerns about masks were shared by other doctors and professors, too. The CMO (chief medical officer) Tony Holohan has said himself, a number of weeks ago, that the science is equivocal some people will say it is a good idea and some will say it is a bad idea, he said. We in Aontu believe that we need to be careful and cautious in relation to the disease. We should take the necessary precautions to reduce its spread. We support the wearing of masks on public transport and in shops, he said. The Irish News reported that Dr McCloskey also criticised how Covid-19-related deaths were being recorded in Northern Ireland. "I became very concerned as a medical practitioner when I heard for the first time in my professional career that they had changed the rules on death certification," she said. "The rules were that anyone who had a temperature or a cough prior to their death, no matter what else was wrong with them, was to be counted as a Covid death. To me, that was fundamentally dishonest. I am strangely confused that my profession, by and large, went along with that. Mr Toibin said the doctors speech focused on how the health service in the North was operating at way below capacity. Dr McCloskey has recently returned to work to be at the front line of the Covid crisis. She has been shocked that so many non-Covid patients are simply not getting critical health care. She has been consistently raising this issue for the last three months, he added. Firefighters were making progress against several significant wildfires on Thursday, the authorities in Oregon and California said, and residents of the Bay Area were able to enjoy smoke-free skies for the first time in weeks. A storm arriving Thursday night will help to improve air quality in western Oregon and bring moisture exactly where I would ask for it, Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said in a news briefing. But the storm may also bring additional challenges, including winds that could accelerate the growth of existing fires, and lightning that could ignite new ones. The rain could cause landslides, and flash flooding was a worry in the scorched foothills of the Cascades. Temperatures should remain low with more humidity after the storm, Mr. Grafe said, aiding the significant progress crews have already made. Oregons 10 remaining large blazes, including the Beachie Creek Fire, which has burned nearly 200,000 acres east of Salem and forced tens of thousands to evacuate, are mostly between 10 to 20 percent contained. Firefighters had managed to slow, stall or diminish some of the major fires in California, Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the state fire agency, Cal Fire, said. The August Complex, which has burned almost 800,000 acres north of Sacramento, was 30 percent contained, and the North Complex Fire, stretching 228,000 acres, was 36 percent contained. Emergency teams continued to search for victims and survivors of the fires, which have killed more than 30 people, destroyed thousands of structures and burned across more than five million acres in three states. More than 3,000 Oregonians are still being sheltered outside their homes. When Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon visited some of the communities devastated by the Beachie Creek Fire, she said the devastation it wrought was all-encompassing and shocking. The four local travel agents in Dundalk have joined forces to highlight the challenges they are facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic and have been meeting with local TDs to urge them to help them with their campaign to be heard by the Government. The travel agencies in Dundalk, Centre Travel, KT Travel, O Callaghan Travel and McGuill Travel, who have been in business for almost 150 years between them and employ 30 staff, said the Covid-19 pandemic has been the biggest challenge they have ever faced. They told how they all weathered the SARS virus, 9/11, and the Icelandic ash cloud but have never experienced anything like Covid-19. The four local travel agents have come together to join forces, like agents all over the country, to lobby local politicians to call on support from the Government. They have had meetings with Peter Fitzpatrick, Jed Nash, Fergus O Dowd, Ruairi O Murchu and Erin Grenham. Olivia McGeown of Centre Travel on Dublin Street said: We are grateful for the meetings and have been reassured that our concerns will be highlighted to the Government. They said the strong message they want to project to their loyal customers, is that they are fully bonded and licensed by the Commission of Aviation and customers are guaranteed to get their monies refunded. Karen Thornton, the owner of KT Travel on Clanbrassil Street, speaking to the Democrat, said: All travel agents are licenced and bonded, this means that regardless of the outcome, our clients money is always safe. If you book online or with a non-licenced travel agency, your money is not safe. The staff from all the four travel agencies have been working day in day out trying to facilitate our clients. Unlike other sectors we could not and would not close our doors because we have excellent customer service and we want to maintain this reputation and help our clients as much as we can. We have had the extremely difficult task of obtaining refunds and changing holidays for clients and this has been very hard as we are the agent and can only give options that the operators or airlines provide to us as we dont make the rules. It has been extremely challenging for both our staff and customers as its very uncertain times, but we will not stop. Any refunds we receive from airlines or operators will be refunded to our clients within 48 hours. We would like to thank our customers for their patience, we are getting through the refunds but its a very slow process. We all know that we will either get a vaccine or we will have to live with Covid-19, we all know that travel will resume. We have to look forward to 2021, we are confident that travel will resume, and we are so looking forward to booking our clients again on their dream trips. The four local travel agents said the travel trade is in a more unique position than any other sector. They have worked through the lockdown, facilitating the repatriation of clients and processing refunds. They told how they have been in receipt of very little income and have refunded 130% of their commissions for advance bookings made in 2019 and bookings for 2020. The ITAA, which represents travel agents in Ireland, have been working tirelessly since March 20, and have made a submission to the Government looking for financial support for the travel trade. The local travel agents said the ITAA have supplied constant support and advice to its members which has been very beneficial. A representative group for travel agents across the country also delivered a petition to Leinster House last Wednesday seeking Government support for the sector. John McGuill, the owner of McGuill Travel on Market Square, whose family have been in business in the town for a hundred years, said that the Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge the sector has had to face. Travel agents weathered 9/11, the Icelandic ash cloud and SARS but the Covid-19 crisis is the biggest challenge that the industry has had to face, Mr McGuill said. We are working tirelessly to weather this storm ensuring refunds are accommodated and giving our customers travel advice. Maria Neary, co-owner of OCallaghan Travel in the Clanbrassil Centre, added: We would all like to thank our professional and hardworking staff, for all the support and effort especially during this pandemic. We are all looking forward to arranging our customers travel arrangements in the near future. India has recorded about 83,000 deaths to date, a number health experts say is misleading. When Narayan Mitra died on July 16, a day after being admitted to the hospital for fever and breathing difficulties, his name never appeared on any of the official lists put out daily of those killed by the coronavirus. Test results later revealed that Mitra had indeed been infected with COVID-19, as had his son, Abhijit, and four other family members in Silchar, in northeastern Assam state, on Indias border with Bangladesh. But Narayan Mitra still is not counted as a coronavirus victim. The virus was deemed an incidental factor, and a panel of doctors decided his death was due to a previously diagnosed neurological disorder that causes muscle weakness. He died because of the virus and there is no point lying about it, Abhijit Mitra said of the finding, which came despite national guidelines that ask states to not attribute deaths to underlying conditions in cases where COVID-19 has been confirmed by tests. Such exclusions could explain why India, which has recorded more than 5.1 million infections second only to the United States has a death toll of about 83,000 in a country of 1.3 billion people. Undercounting deaths Indias health ministry has cited this as evidence of its success in fighting the pandemic and a basis for relaxing restrictions and reopening the economy after Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a strict lockdown of the entire population earlier this year. But experts say the numbers are misleading and that India is not counting many deaths. We are undercounting deaths by an unknown factor, said Dr T Jacob John, a retired virologist. The health ministry has bristled at past allegations of an undercount in fatalities, but it refused to comment this week on whether states were reporting all suspected and confirmed virus deaths. Determining exact numbers during the pandemic is difficult. Countries count cases and deaths differently, and testing for the virus is uneven, making direct comparisons misleading. In India, recording mortality data was poor even before the pandemic struck. Of the 10 million estimated deaths each year, fewer than a quarter are fully documented, and only one-fifth of these are medically certified, according to national figures. Most Indians die at home, not in a hospital, and doctors usually are not present to record the cause of death. This is more prevalent in rural areas where the virus is now spreading. Dr Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto who has studied deaths in India, said countries should err on the side of overestimating deaths if they want to make progress in fighting the virus. It is better to have no estimate than an underestimate, Jha said. The health ministry guidelines echo this concern, asking states to record all suspected virus deaths, including presumptive deaths those who likely died of COVID-19 but were not tested for it. But those guidelines are advisory, and many states do not comply. In Maharashtra, Indias worst-affected state with more than one million cases, suspected deaths are not recorded in the tally, said Dr Archana Patil, the states health director. Workers put on personal protective suits before carrying the body of a COVID-19 victim for cremation in New Delhi, India [Manish Swarup/AP] Other states, like Assam, have created panels of doctors who differentiate between real virus deaths and those from underlying illnesses. In some cities like New Delhi or Mumbai, these panels occasionally have added missed deaths to the tally. But Dr Anup Kumar Barman, who heads the panel in Assam, said the state is not including many fatalities where the virus was incidental and not the cause of death. In Narayan Mitras case, he had more symptoms of his underlying neurological disorder, Barman said. Assam state was following the federal guidelines and was citing the virus only in those deaths due to respiratory failure, pneumonia or blood clots, Barman added. But the guidelines list these factors as instances of how the virus can kill and are not a restrictive checklist. Barman refused to answer any follow-up questions from The Associated Press. Assam state has recorded at least 147,000 infections but fewer than 500 deaths as of Wednesday. In West Bengal state, a similar panel was shelved in May and the state said it would subsequently follow federal guidelines. Of the 105 deaths of those testing positive for COVID-19 in April, the panel found that 72, or nearly 70 percent, were not caused by the virus. PV Ramesh, who until July 8 headed COVID-19 management for Andhra Pradesh state in southern India, said coronavirus deaths at home, in transit or while arriving at hospitals dont get counted. Trouble identifying spikes The gaps in data also mean that Indias ability to identify spikes in deaths from natural causes from previous years is spotty. Problems in death counts have raised concerns in countries like South Africa. Meanwhile, the courts have criticised some states, like Telangana, over transparency in sharing data about fatalities. Also, federal health ministry guidelines in May advised hospitals against conducting autopsies in suspected COVID-19 cases to prevent exposure to the virus. Although the guidelines say the certification can be done by doctors, experts said this also was leading to undercounting deaths. The governments emphasis on the low death toll despite the rising number of reported infections has resulted in people thinking the virus was not necessarily fatal, leading to a false sense of protection, said Dr Anant Bhan, who researches public health and ethics in the city of Bhopal. That has led to people letting their guard down by not taking precautions such as wearing masks or maintaining social distance, Bhan said. Regional officials also felt pressure to play down deaths to show the health crisis was under control, said Dr SP Kalantri, director of a hospital in Maharashtras rural Wardha district. A man wearing personal protective equipment places the body of his three-month-old son who died of COVID-19 for burial in New Delhi [File: Manish Swarup/AP] Initially, there were subtle hints from district officials to play down the numbers by listing some deaths as being caused by underlying diseases, he said. Maharashtras state health director Patil said this had been a problem in some districts at first, but officials since have been advised to report all deaths. Workers at crematoriums, meanwhile, have reported an increase in receiving bodies whether from the virus or not. At a crematorium in Lucknow, the capital of Indias most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, worker Bhupesh Soni said 30 people were being cremated every day, compared with five or six before the pandemic. A cremation normally takes about 45 minutes, but Soni said there have been days when he has worked for more than 20 hours. It is an endless flow of bodies, he said. Geneva: UN investigators have implicated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking officials in systematic human rights abuses amounting to crimes against humanity including killings, torture and sexual violence and called for criminal investigations to determine the extent of their involvement. A three-member panel appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said it "had reasonable grounds to believe" that Maduro, his interior ministers and defence ministers, and the directors of the country's security and intelligence services "ordered or contributed to" the arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture of critics and extrajudicial killings. The panel said they also failed to prevent abuses although they had the powers to do so. Implicated: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Credit:AP The 411-page report listed about 3000 cases and focused on events since 2014, when opposition to Maduro's government gathered force and authorities resorted to increasingly brutal tactics to stay in power. Government critics and their relatives and friends were targeted to silence opposition to Maduro, the panel said. Security services also arbitrarily killed people as part of a crackdown on crime aimed at winning popularity before National Assembly elections. Warren Buffett famously said, 'Volatility is far from synonymous with risk.' When we think about how risky a company is, we always like to look at its use of debt, since debt overload can lead to ruin. As with many other companies IDP Education Limited (ASX:IEL) makes use of debt. But the more important question is: how much risk is that debt creating? When Is Debt Dangerous? Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. However, a more frequent (but still costly) occurrence is where a company must issue shares at bargain-basement prices, permanently diluting shareholders, just to shore up its balance sheet. Having said that, the most common situation is where a company manages its debt reasonably well - and to its own advantage. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together. See our latest analysis for IDP Education How Much Debt Does IDP Education Carry? The chart below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that IDP Education had AU$59.8m in debt in June 2020; about the same as the year before. But it also has AU$307.1m in cash to offset that, meaning it has AU$247.3m net cash. A Look At IDP Education's Liabilities The latest balance sheet data shows that IDP Education had liabilities of AU$170.3m due within a year, and liabilities of AU$138.7m falling due after that. On the other hand, it had cash of AU$307.1m and AU$108.3m worth of receivables due within a year. So it actually has AU$106.4m more liquid assets than total liabilities. Having regard to IDP Education's size, it seems that its liquid assets are well balanced with its total liabilities. So while it's hard to imagine that the AU$5.48b company is struggling for cash, we still think it's worth monitoring its balance sheet. Simply put, the fact that IDP Education has more cash than debt is arguably a good indication that it can manage its debt safely. Story continues Fortunately, IDP Education grew its EBIT by 7.9% in the last year, making that debt load look even more manageable. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine IDP Education's ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting. Finally, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. While IDP Education has net cash on its balance sheet, it's still worth taking a look at its ability to convert earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, to help us understand how quickly it is building (or eroding) that cash balance. Over the most recent three years, IDP Education recorded free cash flow worth 57% of its EBIT, which is around normal, given free cash flow excludes interest and tax. This cold hard cash means it can reduce its debt when it wants to. Summing up While we empathize with investors who find debt concerning, you should keep in mind that IDP Education has net cash of AU$247.3m, as well as more liquid assets than liabilities. So is IDP Education's debt a risk? It doesn't seem so to us. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for IDP Education that you should be aware of. If, after all that, you're more interested in a fast growing company with a rock-solid balance sheet, then check out our list of net cash growth stocks without delay. 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. California businesses must disclose infections or exposures to the coronavirus in the workplace after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law Thursday outlining company reporting standards to workers and the state. Supporters of the bill, AB685, say it is a crucial step in protecting many essential workers still on the job. Opponents say it is not clear when employers have to sound the alarm to workers and what exactly needs to be disclosed. Newsom also signed SB1159, which establishes a presumption around workers compensation eligibility applicable to most California employers with virus outbreaks into 2022, expanding on a previous executive order from the governor. He also signed SB1383 into law, which allows Californians who work for an employer with five or more employees to use paid family leave benefits without fear of losing their jobs. Weve asked our workers to keep food on the table, food on the shelves, and ensure that other essential services were also provided during the pandemic, the bills author Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, D-San Bernardino, said during a virtual signing ceremony Thursday. Reyes said state law did not previously require companies to tell workers about confirmed or potential infections at work, something that had largely been left up to the discretion of companies during the pandemic. We feel like theres been a lot of information thats been hidden from us, said Sharon Hechler during the signing, a union grocery store worker of nearly five decades in Southern California. AB685 goes into effect Jan. 1 and requires employers to tell workers in writing they may have been exposed to the virus and tell them about their options for taking time away from work and other safety steps. Whats a little confusing about AB685 is the notices to employees, said Ben Ebbink, a Fisher & Phillips attorney in Sacramento. The law requires companies to tell their employees about any potential exposure to the virus, particularly those employees at a worksite who may have been exposed to an infected person, along with anyone else who might have been infected. Notification has to include all the COVID-related benefits the employee might be entitled to under federal, state and local law, Ebbink said, noting companies also have to inform employees of their disinfection and safety plan. That might be a particular challenge for small businesses, with localities enacting different rules around safety and sick leave during the pandemic. Not every employer has an HR department or legal counsel they can turn to, Ebbink said. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Companies already must disclose some cases of the coronavirus to local health departments, but that information is not made public. Companies have to report workplace-related injuries to state safety regulator Cal/OSHA, but there has been disagreement on if that applies to cases of the coronavirus. The states Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is also considering holding employers to stricter rules similar to the states aerosolized transmissible disease standard intended to protect health care workers from diseases in the air. AB685 also requires that businesses notify health authorities if infections become widespread, information that the California Department of Public Health can then make public, potentially with a company name published alongside a notice of infection. Opponents have criticized that section of the bill as a name and shame strategy that will not increase workers safety. The bill also creates anti-retaliation protections for employees who report infections, to encourage them to come forward. Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice "Monte Nido prides itself on offering unique treatment plans that provide each individual with holistic, person-centric care, and for years, we've been asked by clients, families, and clinicians to expand to the Northern California area," said Candy Henderson, MS, Chief Executive Officer of Monte Nido & Affiliates. "Finally, that time has come. We were honored to find such a welcoming community in Lafayette, and are immensely proud to be able to offer services to more and more communities in need across Monte Nido's originating state." Monte Nido East Bay will offer programming for adults of all genders with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and/or exercise dependency, as well as co-occurring substance use, trauma and psychiatric presentations. The program's approach focuses on the restoration of physiological and nutritional balance, the implementation of mindful eating and exercise routines, the elimination of destructive behaviors and the development of motivation for recovery. The residential setting in a home is designed to ensure the highest level of care outside of a hospital, offering 24-hour nursing and personalized treatment models. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S. will have an eating disorder at some point in their lives. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental health illness, and early intervention can be a key factor in recovery. Monte Nido & Affiliates believes recovery is possible at any age, and that help can be provided to everyone irrespective of the duration of their eating disorder. For more information, or to inquire about treatment at Monte Nido East Bay, please contact: 888-228-1253, or visit www.montenido.com About Monte Nido & Affiliates Monte Nido & Affiliates is the country's leading eating disorder treatment provider, offering residential and day treatment programs for eating disorders. Founded in 1996, Monte Nido & Affiliates operates twenty-five facilities in ten states, with residential programs being Joint Commission accredited. Monte Nido & Affiliates includes three distinct eating disorder program brands: Monte Nido, Oliver-Pyatt Centers and Clementine. Media Contact: Jack Kay Makovsky (212) 508-9629 [email protected] SOURCE Monte Nido Related Links http://www.montenido.com 'If you want Aatma Nirbhar, your policies should favour self-reliance, but your policies do not help the idea.' 'How are we going to be self-reliant if you make things difficult for us?' "The prime minister wants big results from entrepreneurs, but how can they give results when they are tied down?" K Ilango, former chairman, CII, Coimbatore region, and former president of the Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, asks Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com in the concluding segment of a must-read interview. More than lack of demand, are bureaucratic hurdles hurting industry badly? Both. From the last slowdown itself, we have been telling the government they were making it more bureaucratic. But they are continuing to make it even more difficult for businesses by introducing more and more hurdles. An entrepreneur should be free from all shackles. You can't be holding them tight, and then hoping them to deliver. It will not happen. You can't tie their legs and ask them to compete in a sprint. The prime minister wants big results from entrepreneurs, but how can they give results when they are tied down? You talk about Make in India, Made in India, Aatma Nirbhar Bharat, etc. How will all these happen if you tie the hands and legs of entrepreneurs? If you put hurdles in the middle of the race, it will not be a sprint. If you want entrepreneurs to sprint, remove all the hurdles. The growth you are talking about post-pandemic -- whether it is in the automotive sector or any other sector -- will not cross 5% if this is the way you are going to treat businesses. When it becomes normal, growth will always come back because we are a huge country, and there will be demand for goods if not in the last quarter of this year, demand will come in the first quarter of next year. Is that enough? It is definitely not enough. For a country of our size, we need to grow at 8% like China did for many years. If we cannot show any growth in the quarter starting January, we need to do serious introspection. Should the government go in for reforms aggressively? The whole world knows that we have to reform. Unfortunately, we are in the reverse reform process. The tax collection at source, I told you about, is the reverse of the reform process. They take two steps forward and two steps backward. They are more into slogans, and slogans and actions do not match. Slogans alone will not get you results; what you need are right policies. If you want Aatma Nirbhar, your policies should favour self-reliance, but your policies do not help the idea. How are we going to be self-reliant if you make things difficult for us? Every entrepreneur says that even today he has to fill thousands of forms to start a business, and that ease of doing business is an illusion in India. Is that the biggest hurdle to achieving Aatma Nirbhar Bharat? That's exactly what I have been saying all these years. The only mantra you need for growth is ease of doing business. But instead of loosening up, you are going on tightening things. It is not only the finance department, but in all the other departments too like environment, electricity, commerce, they are coming out with new procedures and policies which are making things extremely difficult for entrepreneurs. I can come out with half a dozen examples of new laws that have badly affected businesses which this government has come out in the last 3-4 years. Those laws have no reason, no real material value except harassing entrepreneurs. What is happening is the opposite of ease of doing business. Both bureaucracy and red-tapism are increasing day by day, and not reducing. This is one of the reasons why industry is finding it difficult to function and new entrepreneurs coming up. I have been in business for 35 years and I find that the entry barriers for new entrepreneurs are very high today. But the government is wooing companies that want to move away from China. Will they opt to come to India? Some people may still come as India is a huge market. But not everybody. For example, when we need 100 companies to invest in India, some 25 to 30 may come. It is because there is no ease of doing business here. Many of them may prefer to go to Vietnam or Turkey. The question is, whether we will be able to capitalise on the current sentiment against China. The U.S. military vacation lodge employee with COVID-19 kissed multiple co-workers on her German bar crawl - despite still waiting on her test results, according to one former colleague. Yasmin Adli, 26, from Florida, is said to have partied with a sore throat for several nights at the beginning of September in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Now a former co-worker has also claimed Adli 'kissed multiple Edelweiss Lodge and Resort employees' during one night out at Peaches Bar 'despite not feeling well enough to return to work'. The worker told DailyMail.com: 'On the night that Yasmin visited Peaches, a huge population of hotel staff and locals packed the bar to bid farewell to departing employees. Despite not feeling well enough to return to work, and still waiting on the results for her test, she kissed multiple employees.' Adli is facing ten years in jail for going on the night out. In a screenshot of a text message allegedly sent by Adli to other co-workers who partied with her on several nights in the lead-up to her positive test, she thanked them all for coming to her 'rona party' and claimed 'I didn't know I had the rona when we went out'. Adli, pictured, is said to have kissed several other employees on one of the nights out in the German town before she tested positive for coronavirus. It is not known if those people were infected with coronavirus. Now a former co-worker has also claimed Adli 'kissed multiple Edelweiss Lodge and Resort employees' during one night out at Peaches Bar 'despite not feeling well enough to return to work Edelweiss Lodge and Resort serves members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families The former employee claimed, however, that the blame was not entirely on the resort worker but on the defense department owned Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, which is reserved for members of the American military, their families and veterans. Management are said to have encouraged a 'culture of concealment' that overlooked flaunting of the quarantining rules, the source told DailyMail.com. Attempts made to contact Adli for comment were unsuccessful. She has since deleted her social media profiles, a source confirmed. DailyMail.com has contacted the resort for comment. Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Michael Weisman told DailyMail.com: 'There have been no formal claims against, or to, Edelweiss Lodge and Resort management to that subject. On the contrary, management there is confident theyve taken necessary precautions to protect both staff and guests. 'Its unclear at this moment both from the German and U.S. side how COVID first entered the community and was spread. Identifying this to gain lessons for the future, and to determine if and which violations of Bavarian and military orders occurred, is the purpose of our investigation.' Adli could face jail time after she was accused of exposing people to the virus through her partying after the Greece trip in early September. The latest cases recorded Tuesday take the total number of recent infections in the town to 59, including 25 staff at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, which is reserved for members of the American military, their families and veterans. Adli is said to have visited the Peaches bar on September 3 and 8 and the Irish Pub in Garmisch on September 4. The resort is an Armed Forces Recreation Centers (AFRC) Resorts that serve members of the U.S. Armed Forces, their families and other authorized users. A source told DailyMail.com that a strong drinking culture is fostered at the resort with employees having one last blow-out with friends once their contracts come to an end. She had also worked in the hotel upon her return, serving guests and staff in the hotel's Cafe and setting up conference rooms until the day she went for a coronavirus test, they said. Among them was a conference with the United States European Command about preventing the spread of Covid in the US Army. The resort has now shut down for two weeks A former employee claimed she remained working at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, setting up a conference for US military top brass about preventing the spread of coronavirus before she tested positive The Munich public prosecutor has opened an investigation after the woman, named as 26-year-old Yasmin Adli, went out partying in Garmisch-Partenkirchen while awaiting test results after returning from a vacation in Greece in early September Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Michael Weisman said: 'All employees that were involved in facilitating the conference last week were screened and tested as part of the contact tracing, and out of precaution all of the leaders who attended have been tested and confirmed negative. 'Per the press statement issued by US Army Garrison Bavaria on Friday, the decision to close the hotel effective Monday was made that day. The hotel contacted inbound guests to advise them of the closure. 'By Sunday, every guest had departed. Any delays of guests departing over the weekend was to allow individual guests to arrange departure travel. Potential exposure to guests was determined by contact tracing through medical professionals to be extremely low. 'As stated by USAG-Bavaria, the hotel is going through additional cleaning to ensure it is ready to resume operations.' Discussing the punishment a superspreader could face, lawyer Arndt Kempgens said: 'From the point of view of conditional intent, this can even lead to criminal liability for wilful and dangerous bodily harm according to Section 224 of the Criminal Code. The sentence ranges from 6 months to 10 years in prison.' District Office spokesman Wolfgang Rotzsche added: 'If the woman has actually consciously accepted this risk, then she should also be legally prosecuted.' The woman is said to have visited the Peaches bar, pictured, and the Irish Pub in Garmisch On Tuesday it was reported authorities recorded three more COVID-19 infections in people who frequented bars Adli visited US Army spokesman Donald Wrenn previously told Bild: 'For US civilian employees, the Bavarian regulations for the prevention of infectious diseases apply, just like for every German citizen. 'The US Army in Bavaria keeps its soldiers and civilians as well as the Bavarian ordinances with regard to limiting the spread of the virus to a high standard. Any violation of these regulations would be inconsistent with our behavior and our efforts to keep our communities safe. 'Our main focus is currently on the thorough and precise identification of contact persons as well as additional tests to limit the possible spread of COVID-19.' Bavaria's governor, Markus Soeder, called the outbreak in Garmisch-Partenkirchen 'a model case of stupidity' because the American had gone partying despite having COVID-19 symptoms and awaiting a test result. Soeder had said 'such recklessness must have consequences' and suggested the woman could receive a stiff fine. An alleged message thread with employees including Yasmin Adli in which she states: 'I didn't know I had the rona when we went out' and thanks them for going to her 'rona party' after discovering she was infected Breaching quarantine rules can result in fines of up to 2,000 euros ($2,375), but further penalties and liability for damages are possible if others become infected or businesses suffer economic harm as a result. Andrea Mayer, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Munich, confirmed Tuesday that her office had opened a preliminary investigation into the woman on suspicion of causing bodily harm. 'The investigation is ongoing,' she told The Associated Press. The outbreak has led to a 10pm curfew on bars and restaurants and a rule that no more than five people can gather in public. John Tomassi, spokesman for the U.S. Army Europe, said the military is conducting its own investigation into the incident and is recommending any service members or others who had contact with the Edelweiss employee be tested for coronavirus. The Edelweiss resort has vacation cabins and 258 rooms and suites, but Tomassi said he did not have details on how many people had been staying there over the past two weeks. He said contact tracing was part of the investigation. Germany has been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic. An investment in the Offered Shares involves substantial risks and uncertainties. Prospective investors should read the entire prospectus, and, in particular, should see "Risk Factors" for a discussion of certain factors that should be considered in connection with an investment in the Offered Shares, including the risks that (i) even though the Company has obtained regulatory approval (CE-mark) in Europe for the Genio system based on first positive clinical trial results, this does not imply that clinical efficacy has been demonstrated and there is no guarantee that ongoing and future clinical trials intended to support further marketing authorizations (such as in the US) will be successful and that the Genio system will perform as intended, (ii) the Company's future financial performance will depend on the results of ongoing and future clinical studies and the commercial acceptance (including reimbursement) of the Genio system (the Company's only commercial-stage product at the date hereof), (iii) the Company has incurred operating losses, negative operating cash flows and an accumulated deficit since inception and may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability, (iv) the Company will likely require additional funds in the future in order to meet its capital and expenditure needs and further financing may not be available when required or could significantly limit the Company's access to additional capital. Not taking into account any proceeds of the Offering, the Company does not have sufficient working capital to meet its working capital needs for a period of at least 12 months from the date of the prospectus. All of these factors should be considered before investing in the Offered Shares. Prospective investors must be able to bear the economic risk of an investment in shares in the Company and should be able to sustain a partial or total loss of their investment. PRESS RELEASE Nyxoah Raises up to 85 million (US$100m) in Successful Initial Public Offering Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium - 17 September 2020 - Nyxoah ("Nyxoah" or the "Company") a health-technology company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative solutions and services to treat sleep disordered breathing conditions, today announces the results of its initial public offering of new shares, launched on 9 September 2020 (the "Offering"), with the admission of all of its shares to trading on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels under the symbol "NYXH". The final offering price for the Offering has been set at 17.00 per share, giving the Company an initial market capitalization of approximately 364.21 million, or approximately 375.26 million assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option (as defined below). Gross proceeds for the Company from the Offering will amount to approximately 73.70 million, or approximately 84.75 million (US$100m), assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. Olivier Taelman, Chief Executive Officer of Nyxoah, commented: "The successful IPO of Nyxoah validates the unique and disruptive character of the Nyxoah solution for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and confirms the existing unmet need in this large and growing global OSA market. The concrete strong interest from leading global investors in combination with the continued support of the existing investors will enable the Company to further execute on its strategy. We warmly welcome the new investors and thank the existing ones for their trust." Robert Taub, Founder and Chairman of Nyxoah, added: "When founding the Company in 2009, the ambition was to develop a unique patient-centered solution to help OSA patients enjoy their lives to the fullest. The overwhelming enthusiasm of new and existing investors in this Offering will help us further to fulfill this vision. We are looking forward to this new phase in Nyxoah's development under the leadership of our CEO." Results of the Offering The final offering price for the Offering is set at 17 per share (the "Offering Price"). The Offering ended on 16 September at 16:00 (CEST). The Company has decided to increase the number of Offered Shares from 3,871,000 to 4,335,000 (i.e., 464,000 additional Offered Shares, excluding the new shares in the Company that may be issued upon exercise of the Over-allotment Option). In order to facilitate stabilization by the Stabilization Manager (see below), the Stabilization Manager over-allotted 650,250 Shares in the Offering. In order to cover the aforementioned over-allotments or short positions, if any, resulting from the over-allotment, an over-allotment option to subscribe for 650,250 additional new Shares at the Offer Price has been granted to Belfius Bank, as stabilization manager (the "Stabilization Manager"), acting on behalf of Belfius Bank and Bank Degroof Petercam (the "Over-allotment Option"). The Over-allotment Option will be exercisable for a period of 30 calendar days following the Listing Date (as defined below) (the "Stabilization Period"). The Company will announce if and when the Over-allotment Option is exercised. The Stabilization Manager may engage in stabilization transactions aimed at supporting the market price of the Shares during the Stabilization Period. These transactions may stabilize, maintain or otherwise affect the price of the Shares or any options, warrants or rights with respect to, or other interest in, the Shares or other securities of the Company during the Stabilization Period. These activities may support the market price of the Shares at a level higher than that which might otherwise prevail. Stabilization will not be executed above the Offering Price. Such transactions may be effected, on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels, in the over-the-counter markets or otherwise. The Stabilization Manager and its agents are not required to engage in any of these activities and, as such, there is no assurance that these activities will be undertaken. If undertaken, the Stabilization Manager or its agents may discontinue any of these activities at any time and they must terminate at the end of the Stabilization Period. The gross proceeds of the Offering for the Company amount to approximately 73.70 million, or approximately 84.75 million, assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. The implied market capitalization of Nyxoah is approximately 364.21 million, or approximately 375.26 million, assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. Trading of Nyxoah's Shares on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels under the symbol "NYXH" is expected to commence, on an "if-and-when-issued-and/or-delivered" basis, on or about 18 September 2020 (the "Listing Date"). Payment and delivery of the Offered Shares will occur on 21 September 2020 (the "Closing Date"), subject to the successful closing of the Offering. The existing shareholders and new investors (the "Participating Investors") that committed to, irrevocably and conditional only on completion of the Offering, subscribe for Offered Shares in the Offering for a total aggregate amount of 23,064,000 (the "Subscription Commitments"), have been allocated in aggregate 999,447 Offered Shares in the Offering on the basis of their Subscription Commitments, of which 861,213 Offered Shares have been allocated to Participating Investors that are existing shareholders. 472,631 Shares, representing approximately 10% of the Offered Shares in the Offering, have been placed with retail investors in Belgium, representing strong local support from retail investors. To retail investors, 100% of the shares for which they have subscribed will be allocated. Degroof Petercam NV/SA and Belfius Bank NV/SA acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners in connection with the Offering. The Company has agreed to a standstill of 360 days, subject to customary exceptions and conditions. - ENDS - For further information, please contact: Nyxoah Remi Renard, VP Therapy Development and Education remi.renard@nyxoah.com +32 472 12 64 40 For media enquiries, please contact: Consilium Strategic Communications Amber Fennell, Ashley Tapp, Lindsey Neville, Taiana De Ruyck Soares Nyxoah@consilium-comms.com +44 (0)20 3709 5700 About Nyxoah Nyxoah is a healthtech company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative solutions and services for sleep disordered breathing conditions. Nyxoah's lead solution is the Genio system, a CE-validated, user-centered, next generation hypoglossal neurostimulation therapy for OSA, the world's most common sleep disordered breathing condition that is associated with increased mortality risk1 and comorbidities including cardiovascular diseases, depression and stroke. Following successful completion of the BLAST OSA study in patients with moderate to severe OSA, the Genio system received its European CE Mark in March 2019. The Company is currently conducting the BETTER SLEEP study in Australia and New Zealand for therapy indication expansion, and a post-marketing EliSA study in Europe to confirm the long-term safety and efficacy of the Genio system. For more information, please visit www.nyxoah.com . Caution - CE marked since 2019. Investigational device in the United States. Limited by U.S. federal law to investigational use in the United States. Important Notice Any purchase of, subscription for or application for, shares to be issued by Nyxoah (the "Company") in connection with the intended offering should only be made on the basis of information contained in the prospectus in connection with the intended offering and any supplements thereto, as the case may be (the "Prospectus"). This announcement is not a prospectus. The information contained in this announcement is for informational purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. Investors should not subscribe for any securities referred to in this document except on the basis of information contained in the Prospectus. The Prospectus contains detailed information about the Company and its business, management, risks associated with investing in the Company, as well as financial statements and other financial data. This announcement cannot be used as basis for any investment agreement or decision. The date of completion of listing on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels may be influenced by things such as market conditions. There is no guarantee that such listing will occur and investors should not base their financial decisions on the Company's intentions in relation to such listing at this stage. This communication is directed only at persons (i) who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) who have professional experience in matters relating to investments and who fall within article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (as amended) (the "Order") or (iii) who are high net worth entities or other persons who fall within article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only to Relevant Persons and will be engaged in only with Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person must not act or rely on this communication or any of its contents. This announcement is not for publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States of America. This announcement is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States, except pursuant to an applicable exemption from registration. No public offering of securities is being made in the United States. These materials do not constitute, nor form part of, an offer to purchase or sell or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for securities, and there shall not be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to its registration or qualification under the laws of such jurisdiction. A prospectus for purposes of Regulation 2017/1129, as amended) and of the Joint Global Coordinatorsand www.degroofpetercam.be/en/news/nyxoah_2020 ). The Prospectus shall also be made available free of charge to investors, www.degroofpetercam.be/en/news/nyxoah_2020 and www.belfius.be/Nyxoah2020 . Access on the aforementioned websites is each time subject to the usual limitations. Investors are invited to consult section 2 of the Prospectus which contains specific information about risk factors. The distribution of this press release may be restricted by law or regulation in certain countries. Accordingly, persons who come into possession of this press release should inform themselves of and observe such restrictions. The securities referred to in this press release will not be publicly offered, and will not be registered, in any jurisdiction other than Belgium. In any Relevant State other than Belgium that has implemented the Prospectus Regulation, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors in that Relevant State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation. This announcement and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell nor a solicitation to buy securities of the Company, and are not for publication, distribution or release in, or into the United States of America, Australia, South Africa, Israel, Canada, Japan or any other jurisdiction where to do so would be prohibited by applicable law. Acquiring investments to which this announcement relates may expose an investor to a significant risk of losing the entire amount invested. Persons considering such investments should consult an authorized person specializing in advising on such investments. This announcement does not constitute a recommendation concerning the intended offering. The value of the shares can decrease as well as increase. Potential investors should consult a professional advisor as to the suitability of the intended offering for the person concerned. No action has been taken by the Company that would permit an offer of Company's shares or the possession or distribution of these materials or any other offering or publicity material relating to such shares in any jurisdiction outside of Belgium where action for that purpose is required. The release, publication or distribution of these materials in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and therefore persons in such jurisdictions into which they are released, published or distributed, should inform themselves about, and observe, such restrictions. The issue, the subscription for or purchase of shares of the Company can be subject to special legal or statutory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. The Company is not liable if the aforementioned restrictions are not complied with by any person. The contents of this announcement include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements". In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the words "believes", "estimates," "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", "plans", "continue", "ongoing", "potential", "predict", "project", "target", "seek" or "should" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology or by discussions of strategies, plans, objectives, targets, goals, future events or intentions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the Company's intentions, beliefs or current expectations concerning, among other things, its results of operations, prospects, growth, strategies and dividend policy and the industry in which the Company operates. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. New risks can emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company to predict all such risks, nor can the Company assess the impact of all such risks on its business or the extent to which any risks, or combination of risks and other factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Given these risks and uncertainties, the reader should not rely on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Without prejudice to the Company's obligations under applicable law in relation to disclosure and ongoing information, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update forward-looking statements. Bank Degroof Petercam NV/SA and Belfius Bank NV/SA (the "Underwriters") are acting for the Company and no one else in relation to the intended offering, and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections offered to their respective clients nor for providing advice in relation to the intended offering. The Company assumes responsibility for the information contained in this announcement. None of the Underwriters or any of their respective affiliates or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, advisers or agents accepts any responsibility or liability whatsoever for or makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the information in this announcement (or whether any information has been omitted from the announcement) or any other information relating to the Company, whether written, oral or in a visual or electronic form, and howsoever transmitted or made avail-able or for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this announcement or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. Each of the Underwriters and each of their respective affiliates accordingly disclaim, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, all and any liability whether arising in tort, contract or otherwise which they might otherwise be found to have in respect of this announcement or any such statement or information. No representation or warranty express or implied, is made by any of the Underwriters or any of their respective affiliates as to the accuracy, completeness, verification or sufficiency of the information set out in this announcement, and nothing in this announcement will be relied upon as a promise or representation in this respect, whether or not to the past or future. 1 Young T. et al: Sleep Disordered Breathing and Mortality: Eighteen-Year Follow-up of the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, Sleep. 2008 Aug 1; 31(8): 1071-1078. President Donald Trump departs after speaking with reporters as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. Donald Trump is scrambling his defenses in states like Ohio and Iowa, where he was once expected to win easily. Yet hes also competing hard in others, such as Minnesota and Nevada, that were once viewed as far out of his reach. Its an unconventional strategic approach to the electoral map this late in the campaign, but its a reflection of his unique predicament. Trumps stubborn floor of support is keeping him within range of Joe Biden in a number of states where past Republicans have failed, yet his ceiling is so low that it threatens his hold in a number of other places that he should have locked down by now. The result is a campaign thats fighting across a crazy quilt landscape in the home stretch, rather than a well-defined core of swing states. There are still quite a few combinations here, said Greg McNeilly, a Republican strategist in Michigan and longtime adviser to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. This guy has an unshakable base, but he has a pretty low ceiling. So that combination has just created this substrata that he has across all states that allows him to be within reach of winning, but suppressed, below it. Its a really weird dynamic. Four years ago, Trumps prospective map appeared much narrower at this point in the campaign. Exactly half of his general election campaign events were held in just four states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We looked at basically six states in 2016 that were in play, and we didnt know about three of them, said Whit Ayres, the longtime Republican pollster. You have double that this year. You have at least a dozen states that could legitimately go either way. Much of the maps fluidity is a function of Trumps weak standing nationally forcing Republicans to adopt a defensive posture in states that Trump won easily in 2016. He dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to Ohio on Wednesday, while Preserve America, the pro-Trump PAC, has been airing ads in Iowa this month. Republicans have spent nearly $6 million on TV ads since June in Georgia, a state no Republican has lost since 1992. Story continues But because of Trumps relatively unshakable level of support with his base, he remains in the hunt in several blue states that were not widely thought to be within his grasp this year, including New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nevada. Uncertainty about the pandemics effect on voting and ongoing legal challenges surrounding mail voting have muddied turnout models across the country. Whats more, Republicans and many Democrats believe that if Trump can stay within striking distance of Biden by making small investments in many states, rather than big investments in a small number of states, he could benefit in any number of places from a shift in the national arc of the race. Take Nevada. In 2016, Trump lost by just over 2 percentage points there and he was not widely expected to compete seriously this year. But theres a lot of X factors at play in Nevada at the moment, said Andres Ramirez, a Nevada-based Democratic strategist and former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committees Hispanic Caucus. Coronavirus has upended everything, Ramirez said. Im not sure what turnout is going to be and how its going to break. Republicans view their imperative as holding as many of those states open for as long as possible, creating as many paths to 270 Electoral College votes as they can in the event Trump loses any states he won in 2016. Rory McShane, a Nevada-based Republican strategist, said Trump still puts a lot of states on the map that previous presidents havent, including New Mexico, which Trump lost by 8 percentage points four years ago. Quite frankly, they have the resources to compete everywhere. McShane said. When youve got Democrats having to defend Minnesota, you have the opportunity to expand the map. Trump may have difficulty financing such an expansion. Though Trump and the Republican National Committee still raised $210 million in August an enormous sum, by any reckoning Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised more than $150 million more than that. Trump also may be running out of time. In North Carolina, elections officials began sending ballots to voters earlier this month, and early voting will start in Minnesota on Sept. 18. Democrats have built a massive lead in absentee ballot requests across the battlegrounds. And Trumps outlook hinges on an assumption that he will hold Florida, a state he won four years ago, but where he and Biden are now close to tied. Complicating Trump's efforts in Florida, billionaire Mike Bloomberg said Sunday he will spend as much as $100 million in that state to defeat Trump. According to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics, Trump canceled ad reservations this week in Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa. If you look at the pathways to victory of where we stand right now as long as we hold on to Florida and do well in the states that we believe that we are states like Arizona and North Carolina Joe Biden has to shut us out and go four for four in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said on a call with reporters recently. Think about that for a moment. As long as we hold onto Florida, they have to go four for four in those states, something that we just dont think is going to happen. Bill Stepien, Trumps campaign manager, said it was very notable that Trump went to New Hampshire after the convention. And the campaign is spending millions of dollars in Minnesota, forcing Biden to begin running advertisements there, while Biden will visit the state on Friday. Thats a campaign on offense, Stepien said. Yet its also a tacit acknowledgment that Trump appears unlikely to repeat the path he took to the presidency four years ago and that his battleground map remains unsettled. Trump is running behind Biden by more than 4 percentage points in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages, all states he won in 2016. In Ohio, where Trump beat Clinton by 8 percentage points in 2016, polls have narrowed. Before Pence arrived for a Workers for Trump event at a fairgrounds in Zanesville, David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said, We think were in the dogfight through the end, unless Biden just doesnt compete here. For Trump, losing Ohios 18 electoral votes would be devastating. No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying the state. On Tuesday, Bidens campaign manager, Jen OMalley Dillon, said the former vice president will have "multiple pathways" to 270 electoral votes, including a potential expansion in Arizona, where Biden has led in recent polls. I would say based on the stability of the race [and] the strong support the vice president has, that we maintain the same pathways and have seen an expanded footprint on states that are in play than we have seen in recent memory, she said in a POLITICO Playbook interview. In more far-flung, Democratic-leaning places, Trumps optimism in part reflects his public confidence that he is winning or should be winning even when hes not. In a nod to one of those states heavily Democratic California, a state no Republican could win this year Trump drew cheers when he chuckled at a rally in North Carolina recently, I dont know, maybe well make a play for that one, too. Republican strategists who hear Trump talk like that or who see him in Nevada instead of Wisconsin or Pennsylvania sometimes grumble about his lack of focus. One prominent Republican strategist said that with less than two months before the election, False hope is creating wasted time. One Republican working in the upper Midwest described uncertainty even within the campaign about how competitive any one state there might be. Trump is lagging Biden by 4 percentage points in Nevada and 3 percentage points in New Hampshire, according to New York Times/Siena College surveys released Saturday, and he is down 9 percentage points in Minnesota. Hes got to have the perfect thing, the strategist said. Its a super fine needle to thread. Democrats share that skeptical outlook of Trumps prospects. On one level, said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns, The easy way to win reelection, which is just to win the states he won last time, is really hard. So, they have to find some Democratic states they lost in 2016 to flip four years later. However, he said, Youre approaching this from the point of view of what a rational and disciplined campaign would do, which I think is a really f----- up thing to do. Theyre undisciplined The [Trump] campaign is a snapshot of how theyve governed for 3 years, which is to ignore the problems and hope they go away, just do whatever you want on any given day and dont play by any of the rules. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. New Delhi, Sep 17 : In a shocking revelation, 22 Indian soldiers have lost their lives without any battle in the last three years because of their duty in highly treacherous terrain along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir high altitudes. The causes of the deaths in the Siachen Glacier and other super high altitude areas range from those directly related to high altitude like High Altitude Pulmonary Oedama (HAPO) and Pulmonary ThromboEmbolism (PTE) to other general causes. Eight of the Indian Army soldiers lost their lives while serving at these high altitudes in 2019 and the similar number of troops of the force in 2018. However, a total of six soldiers died in 2017. The Ministry of Defence has revealed the details in Parliament on Wednesday in a written reply to the query of Bharatiya Janata Party MP Gowdar Mallikarjunappa Siddeshwara. Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik on Wednesday informed the Lok Sabha when asked: "Whether it is a fact that there have been some casualties of soldiers serving at high altitudes". Asked about the government action taken to prevent such casualties and provide a congenial atmosphere to the soldiers working at high altitudes like Siachen, the Minister said: "Indian Army is deployed in highly treacherous terrain along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir, where there is constant threat of crevasses, avalanches and other weather related calamities to the troops. "The government undertakes several steps to prevent casualties like pre-induction medical examination, requisite medical cover at all medical echelons which are well equipped to deal with any high altitude illness, stringent acclimatisation schedule, provision of specialised training, special living shelters, including provision of kerosene oil, provision of specialised clothing and high quality rations," Naik informed the lower House in the written reply to an Unstarred Question. Steps are also undertaken to utilise modern technological equipment for the rescue missions, prevention of accidents and ensuring rapid and timely evacuation of the casualty, apart from issuing of regular advisories, he said. The Indian Army's mountain warfare experience and strategies make its troops the 'most skilled in the area'. From the northern borders in Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, the easternmost part of the country, a large number of Indian soldiers are deployed in the mountains and have mastered the art of fighting in the snowy landscape as well as the harsh barren vastness of Ladakh, the region where they are currently in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation with the soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army. At present, the world's largest and experienced country with plateau and mountain troops is neither the US, Russia, nor any European powerhouse, but India, read an article by Huang Guozhi, a senior editor of the Modern Weaponry magazine and a Chinese expert. Huang stated that since the 1970s, the Indian military has established and expanded in size and has personnel trained for fighting in the mountains on a large-scale. India also plans to create a mountain strike force of more than 50,000 troops.The Indian Army is the best practitioner of mountain warfare with maximum experience because its officers and personnel spend a major part of their service in the mountains. The Indian Armed Forces in Jammu and Kashmir encompass the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, tri-service units such as the Armed Forces Special Operations Division (AFSOD), and paramilitary organisations of the Central Armed Police Forces such as the Border Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. All the three wings of India's military have their special forces deployed in the region, including the Indian Army special forces and Rashtriya Rifles, the Indian Navy MARCOS and the Indian Air Force's Garud Commando Force. Apart from this, there is the elite police anti-insurgency force in the region, the Special Operations Group, of the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The Indian Army was first deployed in Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistan War in 1947-1948. Following this, the Army has been a part of every conflict, standoff and border skirmish with Pakistan and China in the region. Internal security deployments in the region include anti-terror operations and counterinsurgency operations. Most anti-terror operations in the region are led by the Army, with the CRPF and SOG providing perimeter and crowd control support. (Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text I believe Mr. Trumps character, lack of integrity and record on racism and Covid-19, among other matters, constitute morally grave reasons to oppose his reelection and that Mr. Biden has the character and integrity to lead our nation and is more likely to pursue other authentic human goods, he wrote. I will vote for Mr. Biden for what he can do to help us recover and heal, lift up those left behind, ensure healthcare for all and treat immigrants and refugees with respect. Russia said on Thursday it would be a "mistake" to think lasting peace in the Middle East could be secured without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The foreign ministry statement came after Israel normalised relations with long-time foes Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the White House on Tuesday. Russia said it noted "progress" in the normalisation of ties between Israel and several Arab countries but said that "the Palestinian problem remains acute." "It would be a mistake to think that without finding a solution to it that it will be possible to secure lasting stabilisation in the Middle East." Moscow urged regional and global players to "ramp up coordinated efforts" to solve the issue. Also read: Israel, UAE, Bahrain sign historic Donald Trump-brokered accords "Russia is ready for such joint work," including in the framework of the diplomatic Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators and in close coordination with the Arab League, the foreign ministry said. US President Donald Trump has said similar US-brokered deals are close between the Jewish state and several other nations, including Saudi Arabia. Bahrain and the UAE are the first Arab nations to establish relations with Israel since Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said Tuesday that only an Israeli withdrawal from its occupied territories could bring peace to the Middle East. File photo Joe Bidens campaign for president took on a degree of formal structure in Connecticut with the appointment Wednesday of a state director: Marc Bradley, of Norwalk, the manager of Gov. Ned Lamonts successful run for governor in 2018. The job puts Bradley in a position that will keep him in close contact with Democratic constituencies, a useful political exercise for Lamont and Bradley as the governor approaches the mid-point of his first term and nears the soft start of a re-election cycle. The number of passengers at Charleston International improved slightly in August as the airport continues to claw its way from the spring abyss when 96 percent of its usual travel load decided to stay home amid the coronavirus lockdown. Last month, just under 150,000 ticket holders flew in and out of the state's busiest airport, slightly above the count in July when passenger levels were 35 percent higher than in June. Still, passenger traffic is down more than 66 percent from August 2019. Through the first eight months of 2020, 1.285 million air travelers passed through the terminal, down about 61 percent from last year, when nearly 3.3 million had flown through Charleston by August. In August 2019, slightly more than 447,000 people passed through the airport and helped lead Charleston International to a record 4.87 million arrivals and departures. This year won't come close to that as the pandemic continues to dampen air travel, but the airport does expect numbers to increase in the months ahead. United Airlines is bringing back a daily nonstop flight to Denver in October along with JetBlue Airways resuming flights to Fort Lauderdale next month. And later this year in December, JetBlue is adding the Palmetto State's first coast-to-coast flight between South Carolina and California with nonstop service between Charleston and Los Angeles. Airport CEO Elliott Summey said the new flights will help but he doesn't expect a return to full service until sometime after a successful vaccine for COVID-19 has been introduced. To offset the lost revenue from fewer air travelers, the airport suspended future terminal expansion projects and froze hiring and spending. It also slashed $25 million from the current spending plan through next June. In March, finance director Doug Boston said the airport had $65 million in reserves and could cover its basic expenses for two years at 30 percent of its departing passenger volume. It is currently operating with about 34 percent of travelers from pre-pandemic levels. More than a decade after direct flights between Kolkata and London were decommissioned, a plane carrying 14 passengers from London under the Vande Bharat Mission touched down at the NSCBI airport in Kolkata early on Thursday. The return flight, which was supposed to depart around 6:20 am was more than three hours late and took off around 10 am with 65 passengers, a senior airport official said. These Kolkata-London flights are part of the Vande Bharat Mission and would continue till October 24, an airport official said. Air India had started a direct flight between Kolkata and London in 2005. The services were, however, discontinued in September 2008 because of poor load factor. British airways, too, moved out of the sector in March 2009. The first Vande Bharat flight between London and Kolkata took off from Heathrow airport on September 16 afternoon and landed at the NSCBI airport in Kolkata in the early hours of Thursday. The flight was scheduled to land around 2:20 am. But it landed almost an hour early around 1:20 am. It was a nice experience. It would be great if direct flights resume between Kolkata and London. It would help a lot of businessmen, students and even tourists, said Vedanta Gupta, a passenger who arrived in Kolkata. Also Read: Dont let Covid-19 dampen festive spirit: Mamata Banerjee on Mahalaya The return flight, via Delhi, scheduled to leave NSCBI airport around 6:20 am, departed around 10 am with 64 passengers. We had come to the airport much before 6 am for the security check and Covid-19 protocols. Now, that the flight is late we have to wait longer. We had booked earlier flights to London but they were cancelled at least five times, said Amit Singha Roy, one of the passengers. Also Read: Families can perform last rites of Covid-19 victims: Calcutta high court Authorities said the Vande Bharat flights would leave London for Kolkata every Wednesday and Saturday and the return flights would leave Kolkata for Heathrow every Thursday and Sunday till October 24. MACOMB A Western Illinois University freshman accused in the shooting of his roommate during a dispute in their dorm room is in custody. Kavion Poplous 18, of Chicago was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Chicago by FBI agents and Chicago police. Poplous was being sought on charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery and aggravated discharge of a firearm in the shooting. An unidentified student was shot during a dispute in a Thompson Hall dorm room about 10:40 p.m. Tuesday and taken to McDonough District Hospital and then transferred to another facility, where he underwent surgery. His condition was unknown Wednesday morning. Poplous is a law enforcement and justice administration major. Classes have been canceled for the day at the college, about 60 miles northwest of Jacksonville and attended by a number of west-central Illinois residents. Our thoughts are with our student who remains hospitalized, and we pray for a speedy recovery, WIU interim President Martin Abraham said in a statement. In addition to the Macomb campus, all buildings including residence halls will be locked today at the Quad City campus, according to the Western Illinois University Office of University Relations. Counseling and support services are being made available to students, faculty and staff, according to the university. MeazureUp MeazureUp gives us the ability to see by a click of a button how operations perform in specific regions and enable us to pinpoint our actions more accurately. Franchisees can also compare how they are performing against other Spur restaurants. MeazureUp is proud to announce popular South Africa based restaurant group Spur Corporation as their latest customer partner. Spur Group, which consists of over 630 locations across 5 countries, is partnering with MeazureUp to add organization wide operational consistency by rolling out the AuditApp application and DailyChex. Spur has recognized the importance of making data driven decisions to improve the customer experience for their hundreds of locations across 8 brands. Spur Corporation is the largest sit-down restaurant group in South Africa with several popular and iconic brands, like family dining restaurant Spur Steakhouse Restaurant, Panarottis, John Dorys, Hussar Grill, Rocomamas, Casa Bella and Nikos. Maintaining a welcoming environment has been key for Spur in creating customer loyalty. In partnering with MeazureUp, Spur looks to continue their success by ensuring consistency amongst restaurants and health and safety for both customers and employees during and after COVID-19. Spur had actually finalized the deal to bring on MeazureUp prior to the pandemic beginning and as such, positioned Spur to be even better prepared as lockdowns and restrictions end. Amanda Van Wyk, Divisional Manager of Spur recognizes the importance of a tool like this: A massive advantage for us is the fact that the program is very user friendly and we can make quick changes to our reports and adapt with the environment around us. MeazureUp has decreased the administrative burden as a lot of our reports are digitized. No more late-night confirmations. MeazureUp gives us the ability to see by a click of a button how operations perform in specific regions and enable us to pinpoint our actions more accurately. Franchisees can also compare how they are performing against other Spur restaurants. Kevin Robertson, Chief Operating Officer of Spur has said, when I first heard about the MeazureUp program, I was a bit skeptical of the need but after seeing it firsthand, it became quite obvious that this is a must have for any enterprising brand. The MeazureUp software platform will really help us to continue investing in our stores with the technology our staff require to continue exceeding customer expectations. Its easy to use and the MeazureUp team has been a pleasure to work with. From the MeazureUp side, COO Ray Abramson was quoted, It is always exciting when working with a first class and globally recognized brand like Spur Corporation. Their commitment to their franchisees, staff and customers is evident by their continuous improvement goals. We are looking forward to growing our partnership with the Spur team and their brands across Africa and the rest of the world. MeazureUp is a mobile device audit checklist that helps ensure operational consistency for multi-unit brands on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. With live pictures, temperature readings, comments, and action plans, the Spur management team will have greater visibility into their stores while empowering franchisees to no longer have to worry over digging through old paper checklists. About Spur Corporation Food is our passion and welcoming you our pleasure. When you meet at your home away from home you are treated as family. Our greatest reward is presenting our delicious meals to our families and friends. We never hold back on our generosity, our deliciously prepared food, our laughter, or our welcome. We go big on quantity, aroma and especially on taste. Nothing satisfies us more than pleasing you, our customer. This is our simple philosophy bringing our customers together over great food to create outstanding memories. About MeazureUp MeazureUp is a cloud-based software company assisting over 130 brands and thousands of locations manage their operational consistency. Using the MeazureUp inspection app, organizations can gather internal information with detailed analytics and operational intelligence using a digital platform. With users across the world currently on board, MeazureUp can help management, district managers and franchisees/owners focus on their core concern, growing their business. For more information, visit https://www.meazureup.com or contact 1-855-MEAZURE with any questions. Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (21) Gabriel Natale-Hjorth (R) and Finnegan Lee Elder, from California, arrive in court for a hearing in their trial where they are accused of slaying a plainclothes Carabinieri officer while on vacation in Italy last summer, in Rome, on Sept. 16, 2020. (Remo Casilli/Pool Photo via AP) American Apologizes in Italy Court for Taking Officers Life ROMEA 20-year-old California man charged with murdering an Italian police officer apologized in court Wednesday, saying he was filled with remorse and hoped one day the slain mans family would forgive him. Finnegan Lee Elder, who has been on trial in Rome since February along with a fellow American, asked the court for permission to make a spontaneous statement that, he said, he finally had summoned the courage to give. Elder said the night of July 26, 2019, when Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello was fatally stabbed on a Rome street, was the worst of his life because I took a mans life, I took a husband away from his wife, I broke a bond between brothers and I took a son away from his mother. Police officer Mario Cerciello Rega (R), 35, who was stabbed to death in Rome, Italy. (Screenshot via Reuters) Ill never be able to forgive myself for this, and I dont expect Mr. Mario Cerciellos family to ever forgive me, although I truly hope one day they will, he said. Elder and his friend, Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 19, were visiting Italy as tourists when Cerciello and another plainclothes carabinieri officer approached them on the street after the young men were involved in a botched drug deal. Prosecutors alleged that in the ensuing scuffle, Elder stabbed Cerciello 11 times and that Natale-Hjorth hid the murder weapon, a military-style attack knife that Elder allegedly brought in a suitcase from the United States. Posters portraying the Italian police officer Mario Cerciello Rega are displayed in the square where he was stabbed to death last year in Rome on July 14, 2020. (Domenico Stinellis/AP Photo) The defense has insisted the Americans didnt realize the two Italians were police officers, didnt see any badges and thought the men who approached them were criminal thugs. Elder, who wore a mask as he entered the courtroom, said he had been struggling ever since that night, but was able to reflect on what happened while in prison. He recalled his mother wrote to Cerciellos family months ago, expressing his anguish and desire to apologize. But I didnt have the courage to write or speak out until Wednesday, Elder said. I understand that maybe its impossible to gain forgiveness from someone who lost a loved one, but I wanted to be honest that my desire is sincere, he said. All I can say is that Im filled with remorse and it pains me to think of the suffering Ive caused. Cerciello, who was killed soon after returning from his honeymoon, was hailed as a national hero at his funeral. Health care workers register Myanmar residents during a medical screening and contact-tracing campaign to control the spread of COVID-19, in Yangon, Sept. 9, 2020. A resurgence of coronavirus infections in Myanmar has been lethal for younger people in the Southeast Asian country, with 40 percent of those under the age of 60 who have tested positive dying from the highly contagious respiratory illness, a government health official said Thursday. On Thursday, Myanmar registered 4,043 COVID-19 cases, with 222 new infections, and 60 deaths, including 20 new fatalities. The country of 54 million people has had 944 recoveries so far. Myanmar, which shares a long land border with China, initially had a low number of confirmed infections and single-digit deaths from March until mid-August, when the number of COVID-19 cases began to skyrocket. In the first wave of infections, there were only six deaths, and 80 percent of them were people over 60 years old, said Dr. Khin Khin Gyi, director of the Central Contagious Disease Prevention and Eradication Department at the Ministry of Health and Sports. In the second wave, 60 percent of deaths have been people above the age of 60, she said. The proportion of people under 60 who have died of the respiratory illness has increased. Infection rates have accelerated again since Sept. 2, despite stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, and mandatory quarantines for those traveling to other states and regions within the country as well as for those returning to Myanmar from abroad. The number of people who have tested positive for the virus has risen in multiples of tens in less than a month amid the second wave, Khin Khin Gyi said. Higher infection rate All states and regions in Myanmar, except Kayah state in the eastern part of the country, have coronavirus-positive patients, with the majority of them and the highest number of deaths in Yangon region and Rakhine state in the west. This is the new strain of the virus, Khin Khin Gyi said. The infection rate is much higher. Most of those who are dying of COVID-19 are people with preexisting health conditions, as well as senior citizens, she added. Many people who did not adhere to rules for preventing the spread of COVID-19, such as wearing facial masks and practicing social distancing in public places during the first wave, have contributed to the recent steep infection rate, said Dr. Okka Kyi Win, a general practitioner and resident of Yangon. People were speculating that the virus had weakened after the first wave, but there is no proof of that, he said. Journalist Nay Min Kha, who tested positive for the coronavirus and is staying temporarily in a quarantine center in Yangon, said to the best of his knowledge he never came into direct contact with others who tested positive when he was reporting on the spread of the virus and visiting streets and quarters under lockdown. I dont know for sure where I got it, he told RFA. There are many people I had interacted with who might have been carrying the virus without showing any symptoms, because I had never interacted with any confirmed patients. Phyo Min Thein, chief minister of Yangon region, said Tuesday that he is confident that the infection rate will be under control within 20 days. Trucks line up at a border crossing between southwest China's Yunnan province and Myanmar's northern Shan state, April 10, 2020. RFA video screenshot COVID restrictions along border Myanmar traders who work in a trading hub along the China-Myanmar border in northern Shan state, meanwhile, expressed concern on Thursday that their business would take a hit due to tighter restrictions on cross-border cargo traffic after two Myanmar citizens tested positive for COVID-19. Chinese authorities locked down the border town of Ruili in southwestern Yunnan province, across the Shweli River from the Myanmar town of Muse, after city administrators announced that the pair of coronavirus-positive migrants, both women, had used unofficial routes to illegally cross between Myanmar and China. Trucks from Myanmar cannot enter Ruili, while trucks from Ruili cannot cross the border into Myanmar, said Win Aung Khant, chairman of the Shan State Cargo Logistic Entrepreneurs Association. Only some cargo trucks already loaded in Jiegao on the China side of the border have been allowed to travel to Myanmar, he said. At least 90 percent of regular cargo traffic has been stopped, he added. Tin Ye Win, an officer at the 105-mile border trade zone in Muse township, said that the current lockdown only affects the area between Ruili and Jiegao. Border traffic has not been completely closed off, he said, adding that cargo traffic is still going into Jiegao, and trucks already in Jiegao are still entering Myanmar. [But] it could be problem that cargo is in short supply in Jiegao and the lockdown in Ruili remains in effect, he said. It depends on how long the lockdown lasts. Border trade between China and Myanmar via Muse usually accounts for up to U.S. $15 million a day, but now it only amounts to U.S.$7-8 million because of COVID-19 restrictions, according to Myanmar authorities. Health screenings Earlier this year, Yunnan province officials decided to close the border with Myanmar, forbidding all vehicles except trucks to cross, and to only allow in Myanmar nationals whose identity cards specified that they were from the border town of Muse. Chinese authorities also had restricted their drivers from entering Myanmar and required Myanmar traders in northern Shan state to pay Chinese drivers to transport truckloads of rice and fruit from border crossings to local cargo facilities. The resumption of normal border trade now depends on the results of health screenings in Ruili, where local authorities screened up to a 100,000 people for COVID-19 on Wednesday alone, traders said. Chinese authorities are screening for the virus everywhere, said a Myanmar citizen who lives on the China side of the border, but did not want to be identified by name. They requested that all restaurants and grocery stores close and that people stay home, he said. They requested that all crowded places be closed. The main road is open, but most streets are deserted. Reported by Nay Myo Htun and Kan Thar for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. After Jaya Bachchan raised her voice in Parliament against people who are out to malign the film industry, it's now Urmila Matondkar who has jumped into the fray. She questioned Kangana Ranaut's motive. And wondered why the actress was feeling unsafe in the city after Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Why didn't she feel unsafe in the city earlier? The fact that Kangana compared Mumbai to Pakistan occupied Kashmir also didn't go down well with the former actress. Speaking to a news channel yesterday, Urmila took offence to Kangana's statemnet that 99 percent of the film industry was into drugs. Urmila said that Kanganas hometown Himachal is one of the biggest origins of drugs. Her worries about drugs should start from her own state. She further added that if the Queen actress knew about the drug trail in the industry, why didn't she inform the police earlier? Kangana of course, didn't take kindly to Urmila's statements. She retaliatd by calling Urmila a soft-porn actress. Looks like the war of words have just begun. We'll keep you posted on this. Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski had written an essay accusing photographer Jonathan Leder of sexually assaulting her during a nude photoshoot in 2012. The essay was published on The New York Magazine's "The Cut," wherein Emily Ratajkowski described how Leder's fingers were inside her. She wrote that it hurt, so she had pulled his fingers out forcefully. The shoot had happened at Leder's home, according to a report on USA Today. According to her, she did not say anything after, and Leder got up and left to go upstairs. Leder denied the model's accusation via a statement sent by the editorial director of his Imperial Publishing firm, Heather Tynan, to USA Today. Tynan further said that the assault allegation was outrageous and libelous and deeply disturbed by reading the essay. Tynan also said that they were disheartened that Emily Ratajkowski's essay, which they described as tawdry and baseless, was published by the NY Magazine. Although they also claimed that they were not surprised by the magazine's move. The model claimed that she did not even know that she would be modeling lingerie in the photoshoot as her agent had not told her about it. She did not complain, though, as she had done lingerie shoot countless of times. After the lingerie shoot, Leder had allegedly told her that they would try the nude shoot. Ratajkowski alleged that Leder had plied her with red wine all throughout the shoot. At first, they were accompanied by the makeup artist, but after the shoot, she left as they were looking over the photos. And, that was when the assault happened, according to a report on The Guardian. Emily Ratajkowski said she went to bed and left the next day. She added that she never told anyone about what happened and that she also had tried hard not to think about it. However, years later, the photos on that night were published by Leder in not just one but three books. The first had the title "Emily Ratajkowski" while the other had the title of "Two Nights With Emily." Ratajkowski said that she had not consented to have her photos published in a book. She said they were only supposed to be for the magazine that she was shooting for that night. She, however, lost this battle as they claimed they had a signed model release from her. Several years later, with the scenes of that night tucked deep in her memory, they were brought to the surface when she got a call from a popular magazine who asked if they could help promote her new book of photographs. By then, Ratajkowski already had several achievements to her belt, so it was not surprising that the book clicked. Imperial Publishing claimed that Ratajkowski's essay was her way of getting back at Leder as she could not stop publishing his book. Leder was even quoted as having said that Emily Ratajkowski's allegations were tawdry and childish and did not merit a response. Check these out: Jay Park, H1GHR Music Artists Rap in Spanish in 'TELEFONO Remix' Music Video Kanye West Forges Ahead With US Presidential Bid in Kentucky, Mississippi 'Captain America' Star Chris Evans Receives Mixed Reactions Over Leaked Photo FORT WORTH, Texas, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ferris Mfg. Corp., the maker of PolyMem wound dressings, is pleased to announce the publication of "A Basic Review of the Preliminary Evidence that Covid-19 Risk and Severity is Increased in Vitamin D Deficiency" by longtime Ferris employee Linda Benskin, Ph.D. The extensive review article examines the relationship between low vitamin D levels and an individual's vulnerabilities to Covid-19. It has been published in the Medline indexed journal, Frontiers in Public Health. Dr. Benskin is the Clinical Research, Education, and Charity Liaison for Ferris. She also pursues independent research such as this most recent endeavor. "We recognize the value of evaluating and sharing research that may help minimize the impact of Covid-19," said John Newton, the VP/Clinical at Ferris. "We appreciate Dr. Benskin's effort to compile, analyze, and share this information about the existing research on this important topic." Dr. Benskin's review found 188 reports addressing the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency is related to the incidence and severity of Covid-19. Dr. Benskin concluded that a clear common thread among the top risk groups vitamin D deficiency may be being overlooked because of previous overstated claims of vitamin D benefits. The consensus of researchers cited in the review agreed that all teens and adults who are unable to spend time in the noonday sun should be encouraged to supplement with 2000 IU (50 mcg) of vitamin D daily throughout the pandemic. More may be needed for people in high-risk groups, who should consult their doctors for specific recommendations. The article can be read in its entirety at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00513/full About PolyMem and Ferris Mfg. Corp. PolyMem (www.polymem.com), a pioneering product in the category known as polymeric membrane wound dressings, or PMDs, is manufactured by Ferris Mfg. Corp. at its headquarters in North Texas. PolyMem's inventor, Robert W. Sessions, started the U.S.-based, family-owned company more than 30 years ago. Ferris Mfg. Corp. has received numerous awards and recognitions for excellence in medical product design and contributions to the medical profession. SOURCE Ferris Mfg. Corp. Related Links www.polymem.com Positive VHMS Metallurgical Testing Results Sydney, Sep 17, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Cobre Limited ( ASX:CBE ) is pleased to provide an update on its metallurgical test work being undertaken for the mineralisation from the Schwabe Prospect within the Perrinvale Volcanic-Hosted Massive Sulphide (VHMS) Project located in Western Australia.Schwabe Metallurgical TestingWestern Australian group, Independent Metallurgical Operations Pty Ltd (IMO), have been engaged by the Company to co-ordinate and complete the ongoing metallurgical test program for Cobre.Core from three holes, within the Schwabe Prospect, was selected to create a bulk composite sample of ~90kg to be utilised for a series of sighter tests aimed at understanding processing options, as a first step in understanding potential commercialisation routes. The core came from holes, 20PVDD007, 20PVDD008, and 20PVDD014 as shown on Figure 1*, with core photos included as Figures 3a - 3c*.To date, the sample has been composited at the laboratory, sub-sampled, assayed and analysed via X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) to determine mineralogy. Optical mineralogy assessments have also been completed. These first results indicate high grade gold bearing copper and zinc sulphide dominant ore as shown in Table 1.The XRD results, summarised in Table 2*, and Optical Mineralogy report confirm these relatively shallow samples are sulphides with copper in chalcopyrite and covellite, and zinc in sphalerite.Optical mineralogy found the sulphide mineralisation is composed predominantly of pyrite, chalcopyrite, marcasite with subordinate sphalerite, and traces of galena. Chalcopyrite and sphalerite is dominantly relatively coarse and accessible to liberation, with only minor very fine amounts within amphibole and pyrite.The gangue can be summarized as: quartz siderite +/- amphibole +/- magnetite and altered dolerite (amphibole plagioclase > carbonate). The quartz siderite is the main gangue associated with the copper zinc ores.Based on these results the metallurgist has set floatation tests at two grind sizes and is proceeding with oxidative leach test work. A sub sample is being utilised to assess potential for ore sorting technology to be incorporated in a process flow.DrillingThe deep DC hole (20PVDD015) at Schwabe intersected some vein halo and disseminated mineralisation 200 metres down dip from the high grade massive sulphides drilled near surface, as shown on Figure 2*. Assays confirm base metal sulphides associated with this zone, however concentrations are low (as shown in Table 4). Unfortunately, while cased with 40mm PVC, the casing is damaged at ~130m and the Downhole Electromagnetic (DHEM) probe could not get past this point.A second deep DC hole has now been drilled (20PVDD018) approximately 30m south of 20PVDD015; intersecting deformed interflow sediments with associated sulphides (visually up to 5%) including pyrite, chalcopyrite and sphalerite. This hole, shown on Figure 1*, is cased and awaiting the DHEM survey crew.The current programme also includes: drill testing of DHEM conductors between, and down dip of, existing holes at Zinco Lago; a DC tail extending 20PVRC005 to intersect the main mineralised horizon at Schwabe; and diamond core drilling at Piega del West following up the Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling with a Diamond Core (DC) tail to be added to one hole, and a new hole to test an off hole DHEM conductor.Next stepsWith robust massive sulphide mineralisation confirmed at Schwabe and early metallurgical work positive, Cobre will internally assess the resource potential and looks forward to progressively receiving results of ore sorting and floatation testing over the coming weeks. Further, positive results will support the economic potential of this prospect area.DC drilling continues, as outlined above, while awaiting the arrival of the DHEM survey crew and the technical team have begun with exploration activities expanding across the 381km2 package of prospective tenure on the Perrinvale Project.Cobre's Executive Chairman and Managing Director, Martin Holland, said in relation to these latest results and current activities at the Perrinvale Project:These early results associated with our metallurgical testing are very positive, beginning to lay the foundation to assess the options for Schwabe to deliver economic returns. While we await more detailed results from IMO, expected over the next eight weeks, we will internally assess the resource potential within our existing drilling at Schwabe.The team on site, while awaiting the arrival of the DHEM crew, are beginning to assess broader areas of the project for VHMS potential. We look forward to applying the knowledge gained across the board by successful drilling of VHMS on the project to date."*To view tables and figures, please visit:About Cobre Limited Cobre Limited (ASX:CBE) is a copper and base-metals explorer with projects in Western Australia and Botswana. The Company recently discovered a new high-grade VMS deposit enriched in Copper, Gold, Zinc and Silver in Western Australia, and is currently exploring approximately 8,100 km2 of tenements within the Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB) in Botswana. When Felix Tshisekedi became president of Congo in early 2019, his supporters began talking about a new security relationship with the U.S. As long as Joseph Kabila was president, the U.S. made it clear it would keep its distance from the Kabila government, its corruption and its oppressive use of security forces. A new security relationship with the U.S., however, has been slow in coming. That changed a bit in August 2020 when the U.S. agreed to train a small number of army officers in the continental U.S. However, the issue of Congolese officers (many of them generals) with records for committing atrocities and war crimes remains a huge hurdle. Nevertheless, U.S. and European military sources say that many younger Congolese want a closer security relationship with the U.S. It makes sense for many reasons. Communist China has an enormous financial and operational corporate presence in Congo. Chinese construction and mining companies often provide their own security teams that often operate like private armies. The armed Chinese are one more private army in Congo, but one that requires a major ally, like the United States, to expel. (Austin Bay) September 15, 2020: In Northwestern Congo (Equateur province) the Mbandaka region reported 118 Ebola virus cases with 112 confirmed, six are probable with 48 people dead from the disease. Since June 2020 over 25,000 people in Equateur province have been vaccinated against Ebola. Though the outbreak is small, it refuses to disappear. Mbandaka, is a major port on the Congo River. On the other side of the river is the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). Medical authorities on both sides of the river fear the disease will spread to the much smaller Congo Republic. Foreign health organizations are leading an effort to screen people traveling in the region. So far around one million travelers have been screened for Ebola virus at 46 strategic control points in the region. September 13, 2020: In northeastern Congo (Ituri province) UN peacekeepers found evidence of two recent massacres. At least 23 people were killed in the Irumu region on September 8th. Two days later another 35 were killed in the same area. It is unclear who did the killing. The government blamed the Ugandan ADF Islamic rebel group. That has not been confirmed and it is also possible the murders resulted from more tribal fighting between local Hema and Lendu. September 12, 2020: In eastern Congo (South Kivu province) over 50 people have died in a gold mine collapse triggered by mud slides from heavy rains. September 11, 2020: In northwest Burundi (Kayanza province) the army claimed unidentified attackers killed six people, wounded two and kidnapped one. The attackers came from the Kibira forest then fled back into the jungle after the raid. Several rebel groups hide out in the Kibira forest. The current ruling party (National Council for the Defense of Democracy, Forces for the Defense of Democracy or CNDDFDD) used the Kibira as a base area when it launched its successful rebelliom. September 10, 2020: Rwandan political opposition groups are accusing the government of kidnapping opposition political leader Paul Rusesabagina then bringing him to Rwanda for trial. Rusesabagina is now a Belgian citizen. In late August he disappeared while on a trip to the Persian Gulf city of Dubai. On August 31 the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) announced Rusesabagina was in custody in Rwandas capital, Kigali. September 9, 2020: In Congo medical authorities reported a monkeypox outbreak in the has so far infected 141 people and killed ten. All 141 cases are confirmed cases. Monkeypox has symptoms similar to the small pox virus, though far less severe. September 4, 2020: In northeastern Congo (Ituri province) 0ver 100 heavily-armed CODECO militiamen entered the city of Bunia to protest what they describe as mistreatment while engaging in peace talks. The militia force reportedly had a police escort provided by officers from Congos National Police force. CODECO is a predominantly Lendu tribesmen. In Congo's capital, Kinshasa, police used tear gas to disperse some 100 demonstrators demanding the expulsion of Rwandas ambassador. They claim the ambassador denied Rwandan responsibility for the 1998 massacre of around 1,000 people that occurred in the early stages of the Great Congo War. September 1, 2020: In Ugandan the government and the UN have locked down the Kyangwali refugee camp in order to stop a coronavirus outbreak. With over 120,000 refugees Kyangwali is one of the largest refugee camps in Africa. August 31, 2020: In Rwanda local political opposition leader Paul Rusesabagina has been jailed in Kigali, the capital. Rusesabagina is credited with saving over 1,000 people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide by turning the hotel he managed into a sanctuary. His actions were the basis for the Hollywood film, Hotel Rwanda. The Rwandan government accuses Rusesabagina of committing an array of crimes, including terrorism, murder and arson. Police claim Rusesabagina is the founder and leader of being the founder and leader of MRCD (Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change) which the government describes as a terrorist organization. August 26, 2020: In eastern Congo (North Kivu province) ADF Islamic terrorists killed 20 civilians during attacks on three villages in outside the city of Beni. August 22, 2020: In eastern Congo (North Kivu province) ADF Islamic terrorists attacked two villages and murdered 13 people. In both villages the attackers tied up the civilians before they murdered them. August 19, 2020: In eastern Congo (North Kivu province) ADF Islamic terrorists killed five civilians and two soldiers in an attack along the Mbau-Kamango road near Beni. In southeastern Congo (Lualaba province) Police are investigating the murder of a Chinese worker involved in building a cement and lime plant near the provincial capital Kolwezi. The Tenke Fungurume copper and cobalt mining concession is owned by China Molybdenum Co Ltd. The Chinese mines have caused problems. Provincial officials blame illegal mining efforts that put the illegal miners and concession employees at risk. Occasionally the illegal miners fight with mine company employees and security personnel. The Chinese are not popular in the province. August 18, 2020: In eastern Congo (North Kivu province) 500 members of the NDC-R (Nduma Defense of CongoRenovated) rebel group surrendered north of the city of Goma. The NDC-R has two major factions. Both had been involved in illegal gold mining and gold smuggling. In Rwanda investigators found two more mass graves containing the remains of victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The grave sites are near the capital Kigali. At one site over 100 bodies have been exhumed. August 17, 2020: In Northwestern Congo (Equateur province) local health workers combating the Ebola outbreak in the city Mbandaka went on strike over unpaid salaries. August 15, 2020: In eastern Congo (North Kivu province) ADF Islamic terrorists are suspected of killing 12 people in three recent attacks near Beni. One of the attacks was on an army base near the village of Mwenda. August 14, 2020: Burundi is demanding that Belgium and Germany pay Burundi $43 billion in reparations for harm and damage done during colonial rule. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, learns about poverty relief industries and progress in consolidating poverty eradication at a modern agricultural tourism demonstration base in the village of Shazhou, Rucheng County, central China's Hunan Province, Sept. 16, 2020. Xi on Wednesday inspected Hunan Province. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) CHANGSHA, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Wednesday inspected central China's Hunan Province. In the village of Shazhou, Rucheng County, Xi visited places including a revolution-themed exhibition hall, a village service center, a clinic, a modern agricultural tourism demonstration base, a primary school, and the homes of villagers. Xi learned about education on the history of revolution, poverty relief industries, and progress in consolidating poverty eradication. A total of 79 percent of UK drivers would consider buying an electric vehicle (EV) or have already purchased one, but 70 percent would prefer to lease an EV for 2-3 years to try out the technology and decide if it is right for them, a new survey by Auto Trader showed. According to the survey of 2,025 UK drivers, while nearly 80 percent would consider buying an EV, misconceptions and uncertainty about the technology still exist. Even among those who would think about buying an electric car, a good 40 percent admitted that they had reservations about the capabilities and technology of electric vehicles, Auto Traders survey found. Half of UK drivers are apprehensive about the EV range and feel nervous about how far they could travel on a single charge. Range anxiety is top of the list of worries for UK drivers, with 51 percent feeling nervous how far they can drive on one charge, followed closely by the lack of public charging points across the UK, with 49 percent of drivers expressing this worry. Only 7 percent of drivers admitted they would miss the purr of a traditionally fuelled engine, Auto Traders survey showed. The UK is currently considering whether to bring forward the deadline for phasing out the new sales of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles to 2035 or even sooner from the current deadline 2040. The biggest oil companies in the UKShell and BPhave recently expressed support to the idea of bringing the timeframe forward. Shell believes that the UK government could bring forward its timeline to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles as early as in 2030, with the the right policy and incentives, Sinead Lynch, UK Country Chair at Shell, said in July. BP, for its part, backs the phase-out, even if it is a challenge to our legacy business, chief executive Bernard Looney wrote on LinkedIn this week. As well as backing this phase-out, we believe it can - and should - be brought in sooner than 2040. Whether that is 2035, 2032 or 2030 we are up for it, Looney said. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Belarusian president had a meeting with Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on September 16. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to provide "some types of weapons." This was announced on the Belarusian president's website after a meeting with Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on September 16. Read alsoPutin, Lukashenko meet in Sochi, talks last over four hours "I asked the Russian President for some types of weapons. I told him that when you come we will see what we need to do to strengthen the Union State. There is nothing to be afraid of; we are ready to go for it. The recent events suggest that we should step up efforts to protect the interests of Belarusians and Russians. It happened that we are left alone with it, but we are not the weakest," Lukashenko was quoted as saying. He also stresses Belarus is capable of defending the borders of the Union State. "If someone thinks that Belarus has become weaker, that we will not survive and that Russia will step aside, these speculations can only deceive fools. We are capable of maintaining control over the situation not only in Belarus, but also along our border. Do not doubt our capability to defend our common Fatherland from Brest to Vladivostok. The recent developments give us more grounds to stick together and to frustrate plans to drive a wedge between us in the future," he said. Lukashenko's meeting with Putin in Sochi On September 14, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Sochi. During the meeting, Putin promised to lend US$1.5 billion to Belarus. After the meeting, the Kremlin announced that they would recognize Lukashenko as the only legitimate president of Belarus. Recent developments in Belarus in brief President Trump listens to Gov. Gavin Newsom during a wildfire briefing in Sacramento on Monday. (Associated Press) Message to Democrats: Just because President Trump says it, that doesnt necessarily mean its wrong. Yes, our president habitually fantasizes, distorts and lies. But to borrow an old cliche, even a broken clock is right twice a day. One important example: Trumps widely ridiculed comment that California needs to rake the floor of its forests better. When trees fall down they become dry really like a matchstick and they can explode, he said Monday as he met with Gov. Gavin Newsom and California officials for a briefing on our devastating wildfires. Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, its just fuel for the fires. He couldnt be more correct, of course. Dried-out dead trees can explode. And forest floors do need to be cleaned. Fires start there and climb into the smaller trees, then ladder up to the big timber and soon theres a roaring blaze. What Trump never acknowledges, however, is that its his duty to be the raker-in-chief. As Newsom gently pointed out to the president, the federal government owns 57% of Californias 33 million acres of forests including practically the entire Sierra. The state and local governments own only 3%. The remaining 40% is privately owned. The state sometimes helps private owners clean up their dead trees and brush, but that hasnt worked out that well over the decades. Sacramento has only gotten serious about it in the last four years. Trump didnt really respond to Newsoms geography lesson about forest ownership. The Trump and Newsom administrations, however, did sign a pact last month to each clean up 500,000 acres of forestland annually for the next five years. The state has been cleaning around 400,000 acres each year, and the U.S. Forest Service about 200,000. The president has been talking a lot about forest management, Wade Crowfoot, state secretary of natural resources, told me. He talks about raking forests, exploding trees. Hes talking the talk, but he has to walk the walk on investment. They havent been doing enough forest management on their federal forests. Story continues Newsom asked Crowfoot to be respectful toward the president when they met, and he was but with an edge. We want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests, Crowfoot told the president, whos the nations leading climate change denier. Because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think its all about vegetation management, were not going to succeed together protecting Californians. That provoked a classic Trumpism. OK, itll start getting cooler, the president replied. You just watch. Crowfoot: I wish science agreed with you. Trump: Well, I dont think science knows, actually. On getting cooler, one would hope that the president was merely referring to the changing seasons its practically fall and pretty soon itll be winter. But unfortunately, thats not likely. It was surreal, Crowfoot says of the presidents remarks. I was pretty stunned. It was another example of Trump fantasy. Newsom pointed out to reporters Wednesday that the average summer temperature in California has increased from 71 degrees to 74 degrees over the last 40 years. There are no Democratic thermometers and no Republican thermometers, the governor said. If ever there was any doubt about climate change, just look at current burning in coastal redwoods, which previously have been fire-resistant. Theres less moisture among the ancient big trees. Newsom told Trump deferentially: We obviously feel very strongly that the hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier, When were having heat the likes weve never seen in our history the ferocity of these fires, the drought, five-plus years losing 163 million trees to that drought something has happened to the plumbing of the world. And we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this. I think theres an area of, at least, commonality on vegetation and forest management. But please respect and I know you do the difference of opinion out here as it relates to the fundamental issue of climate change. Trumps one-word answer: Absolutely. It wasnt exactly kissing the presidents ring. Call it schmoozing while making a point. Actually, I think its time for the governor to start blaming mismanagement of the forests as much as climate change for these horrendous wildfires. Most of us understand that global warming is real and people around the globe need to slow it. California can be a role model, but we cant lower the planets thermometer ourselves its beyond the states reach. We do have the ability, however, to better cope with climate change in our forests by managing them better. I called Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley fire science professor and asked how much climate change was to blame for our wildfires. Less than 50%, he said. Maybe a third. We have to start thinking about adaptation and not just prevention of climate change, says Ann Veneman, who grew up on a Stanislaus County peach farm and became U.S. secretary of Agriculture, the first and only woman to hold that post. She was appointed by President George W. Bush. Because climate change is here. It used to be people didnt want to talk about adaptation. Another message to California Democrats: Invest billions more in adapting our forests to climate change and keeping dead trees from exploding. She's usually known for being a regular on the catwalk. But Jodie Kidd swapped her high heeled pumps for pints and punters on Thursday as she got behind the bar of the Three Colts Pub In Buckhurst Hill, Essex to raise money for charity. The model, 41, who owns her own pub in West Sussex, opted for 70s-inspired flared jeans as she chatted to the pub's owner before heading behind the bar to pose for more snaps. Barmaid in the making: Jodie Kidd, 41, got behind the bar of the Three Colts Pub In Buckhurst Hill, Essex to raise money for charity on Thursday Jodie displayed her famous physique in a simple but stylish ensemble as she donned a casual white t-shirt and blue flared jeans. The star teamed her look with a boho-inspired jacket and necklaces as she spoke to the owner behind the bar. Jodie proved she was a natural barmaid by demonstrating her pint-pulling skills before posing for more snaps outside the pub. The star took part in the shoot on behalf of Tyrrells handcooked English crisps which is raising funds for the Licensed Trade Charity, which supports those who work in the licensed drink trade, including pubs and bars, many of which have struggled in recent months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Casual: The model who owns her own pub in West Sussex, opted for 70s-inspired flared jeans as she headed behind the bar Gorgeous: Jodie showed off her modelling skills as she donned for a casual white t-shirt with blue flared jeans and trainers to pose for the shoot Exciting: Outside the pub Jodie chatted to the owner before posing for snaps as she helped support the Licensed Trade Charity Happy: Jodie kept her blonde tresses styled into relaxed waves, and completed her look with boho-inspired necklaces Fancy a sip? Inside the bar Jodie showed off her pint-pulling skills as she posed with the pub's owner Good cause: The star took part in the shoot to raise funds for the Licensed Trade Charity, which supports those who work in the licensed drink trade, including pubs and bars She has been in a relationship with Joseph Bates for several years. Jodie previously told the Mail On Sunday her beau Joseph was 'wonderful and creative.' She revealed Joseph is a vast improvement on Jodie's ex husband of four months David Blakeley who she divorced in 2015. Dating: Jodie has also been in a relationship with Joseph Bates for several years Sweet: She previously told the Mail On Sunday her beau Joseph was 'wonderful and creative' An upgrade? She also revealed Joseph is a vast improvement on Jodie's ex husband of four months David Blakeley who she divorced in 2015 Getting married? In March 2018, Jodie sparked speculation that she and Joseph were engaged, after she was spotted brandishing a sparkling new ring at the Cheltenham Festival In March 2018, Jodie sparked speculation that she and Joseph were engaged, after she was spotted brandishing a sparkling new ring at the Cheltenham Festival. However her representative later told MailOnline that it was the only finger the ring could fit on. The settled life is doing wonders for Jodie, who has become something of a homebird since buying a village pub in West Sussex. Not the case: However her representative later told MailOnline that it was the only finger the ring could fit on Beaming: The settled life is doing wonders for Jodie, who has become something of a homebird since buying a village pub in West Sussex Here she is! Jodie was pictured arriving for the shoot with her team, and covered up her casual look in a funky printed jacket Former flame: She first married internet entrepreneur Aidan Butler in 2005 after a year of romance, but the pair split after 18 months Exes: She then embarked on a relationship with Argentinian polo player Andrea and the pair welcomed son Indio together in 2011, before parting ways two years later Jodie and Joseph were seen holidaying in Barbados in October 2017, after she accompanied him on a disaster relief mission to Dominica after Hurricane Irma. According to the Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare, the duo had previously rowed in kayaks 120 miles down the Gironde, to recreate a World War 2 commando raid. The fashion star first married internet entrepreneur Aidan Butler in 2005 after a year of romance, but the pair split after 18 months. She then embarked on a relationship with Argentinian polo player Andrea and the pair welcomed son Indio together in 2011, before parting ways two years later. The blonde went on to tie the knot with author David Blakeley in 2014, but the marriage ended four months later. Short-lived: The blonde went on to tie the knot with author David Blakeley in 2014, but the marriage ended four months later SCHENECTADY Three days into the new school year, board members signed off on slashing dozens of additional staff and administrators as the district struggles to make up for a projected $28.7 million loss in state aid tied to the coronavirus crisis. The cuts were made over the objection of one school board member, Nohelani Etienne, and as the state's budget director, Robert Mujica, asserted school districts were acting prematurely in making mass layoffs and that the state has only withheld a fraction of the funds educators fear they'll lose. But on Wednesday, Acting Superintendent of Schools Aaron Bochniak and other school leaders warned that the district, which welcomed students back online and in person Monday, would be in even more financial trouble if it waited on cuts in hopes of getting more state funds with no guarantee the money will materialize. If we waited until January, the amount of cuts that were making would have to be double because we would already have spent that money, said Bochniak. This was really to slow the bleed as much as possible. Before the 6-to-1 vote to layoff about 60 employees, board member Andy Chestnut decried that mostly Black and brown employees and city residents would be out of a job in the district which serves 9,450 students. He also called on New York to be more equitable in how it distributes funds to schools and suggested the state eliminate funding formulas that cause money problems in financially struggling school districts. Put the money, he said, where it is most needed. Bochniak agreed with Chestnut and others who asserted that whats happening in the Schenectady school system amounts to systemic racism. This is absolutely an example and exemplifies structural and systemic racism and the law and practices that we have to abide by could also be categorized as the same, he said. I think that we as an organization are committed to combating this and I know if we put our heads together we can have ways to address this. Schenectady is looking at total layoffs of about 450 employees in nearly every area, including teachers, teaching assistants, assistant principals, janitors, and members of the administrative office staff. Bochniak explained that in some cases positions were in the interim being taken off-line with seniority factoring into decisions about who stays and who goes. He compared the situation to some school buildings that have been temporarily shuttered because of all the families who opted for all-virtual learning and the districts decision to mandate no in-person instruction for nearly all students in grades 7-12. Nohelani Etienne, a new board member cast the lone dissenting vote Wednesday. She tried unsuccessfully to convince her colleagues to wait to see if the state aid cut - expected by the district to be about $28.7 million loss - might be restored. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Im wondering if were doing it a little to quick, she said appearing to get emotional. She has children in the district. Board President John Foley countered that he didnt have much faith federal lawmakers would come through with stimulus money the state hopes will infuse its coffers and allow it to eventually distribute more aid to schools. Delivering another round of federal stimulus money is stalled in debates between Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republicans' Senate majority. Before Wednesday, Schenectady already laid off 107 teachers, 231 teaching assistants, 14 social workers, 30 operations and maintenance staffers, 16 each for clerical and administrators as well as 50 lunch monitors and delaying the start of pre-kindergarten classes until January. To date, the belt-tightening has resulted in $21. 8 million in staff layoffs and reductions, $4 million in transportation savings, $1.5 million in substitutes, over time and extra duty, $400,000 in contractual obligations, and $250,000 in utilities and miscellaneous expenses. Juliet Benaquisto, president of the Schenectady Federation of Teachers, called into the virtual meeting to clarify some issues about her union members. "We are having to cut people that are very close to students," she said. "It's going to be challenging to give students the attention they deserve." Bochniak reiterated Wednesday that the district may be forced into more layoffs if state aid payments, now 20 percent off from the last school year, go down. The signal to us would be if these payments come in at an even greater withholding, he told the board, adding later in response to a question from a board member that the district would be tapping into its reserves for years to come because of depleted revenues. New Delhi: Amid reports of snooping on some Indian leaders by China-based companies, the government on Wednesday took up the issue with the Chinese envoy here, according to a letter by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Congress leader K C Venugopal. The letter stated that the matter has also been taken up with the Chinese Foreign Ministry. "The matter was taken up by the Ministry of External Affairs with the Chinese Ambassador today. Our Embassy in Beijing also raised it with the Foreign Ministry of China. The Chinese side conveyed that Shenzen Zhenhua is a private company and had stated its position publicly," the minster told Venugopal. "In their part, the Chinese Foreign ministry maintained that there was no connection between the company concerned and the Chinese government," he also said. Jaishankar's remarks came after Venugopal, during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, raised the issue that some Indian leaders were being spied on by Chinese companies and asked the government what it was doing in this regard. Jaishankar in his letter said that in their statement, a representative of Shenzen Zhenhua has stated that the data collected was from open sources and is no different from its peer organisations in western countries. The minster said they have denied accessing private information from confidential sources. "The Government of India takes very seriously the protection of the privacy and personal data of Indian citizens. It is deeply concerned at any report that suggests that foreign sources are accessing or seeking to access the personal data of our citizens without their consent," the External Affairs Minister told the Congress leader. Jaishankar said the government has constituted an expert committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study these reports and evaluate their implications. The panel will assess any violations of law and submit its recommendations within 30 days, he said. 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. Billionaire Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings says the American streaming giant's plans to voluntarily produce high quality Australian programming that resonates with global audiences proves government-imposed local content quotas are unnecessary. In an interview with Good Weekend, Mr Hastings reveals Netflix is planning to produce more Australian content for both local and international audiences."Having Australian content is super important for Australian culture, but also for Netflix," Mr Hastings says. "So then the question becomes, is it good to use incentive funds? Is it good to use quotas? Is it good right now just to monitor and write reports and see whats happening?" Reed Hastings: You may not know what the threat is, but theres always threats out there. Credit:Kwaku Alston, courtesy of Netflix When COVID-19 halted Australian screen production in April, the Morrison government suspended local content obligations for free-to-air networks until the end of the year. Those networks now are pushing to make the arrangement permanent. Communications Minister Paul Fletcher is also expected to announce a "roadmap" for changes to existing local content obligations by the end of the year. Screen production groups want quotas imposed on streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Stan - which is owned by Nine Entertainment Co, the publisher of this masthead. But the streaming platforms are instead pushing for "voluntary" targets. What we want to do as we grow is develop content in many countries, and have all of that content be shared, which is possible on the internet and a lot harder on linear television. Nobody wants homogenous storytelling," Mr Hastings says. Whether its our Spanish consumers or Australian consumers or Polish consumers - they want to see some of their stories." Legendary local television producer John Edwards says the local industry is "carrying a sense of dread" about the potential quota removal. Almost none of his hit shows from Offspring to The Secret Life of Us and Love My Way would have been made without the current quota, he said, which compels free-to-air broadcasters to screen at least 55 per cent Australian programming each day. "Most shows fail. A quota forces a fair lot to be made despite that risk," he says. "If you dont have that if its unregulated and controlled by a couple of oligarchs youre not going to get the breadth of programming we need, and what we see on screen wont reflect our country." Que Minh Luu, a former ABC executive producer appointed Netflix 'director of local originals' in Australia, argues the company is already investing voluntarily. Netflix has spent more than $110 million on kids programming in Australia over the past four years, and also extensive 'invisible' investment in co-productions like The Letdown and Pine Gap. Under Luu, Netflix will ramp up local production even further. Loading "We find that when a show really leans into that locality and that authenticity - its sense of place - that those things tend to travel quite well," she says. "One of my favourite shows of the past six months was Unorthodox, and I know nothing about orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. So when it comes to what stories people want to tell, we expect them to tell us." Chopsticks are used to carry the buds as card-carrying medical marijuana patients watch a weighing at Los Angeles' first-ever cannabis farmer's market at the West Coast Collective medical marijuana dispensary, on the fourth of July, or Independence Day, in Los Angeles, California on July 4, 2014 where organizer's of the 3-day event plan to showcase high quality cannabis from growers and vendors throughout the state. Chuck Schumer on Tuesday highlighted what many following the cannabis trade already knew: Cannabis is a bipartisan issue that will be a pivotal election issue with votes attached to all political supporters. Cannabis investors also know there are two reasons why leading cannabis companies in the U.S. are outperforming even the manic market moves of Apple and Amazon over the last six months: opportunity and execution. So, who should be more excited about embracing this generational movement, investors or politicians? And with so much hope around the November election, will the politicians seize the cannabis moment or kill the buzz? After years of playing second fiddle to Canadian cannabis companies who were able to list on U.S. stock exchanges and raise money from U.S. investors while they could only do this in Canada (or anywhere not in the USA), U.S. cannabis companies have recently stepped to the front of the pack. And after more than two years of promise with no delivery, the cannabis industry is finally delivering profitability. Second-quarter earnings from the largest U.S. focused companies showed not only robust sequential and year-over-year growth, but free-cash-flow generation and yes, wait for it, EBITDA. Many cannabis companies are bringing earnings dynamics to the party that was previously all about the extraordinary opportunity in legal medical and adult cannabis markets. As for cannabis politics, the legislative future of the industry will not be won or lost this November in the White House, but rather Congress. The cannabis industry is not particularly thrilled by the prospect of a second Donald Trump term or a Joe Biden presidency. The current president appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general, who removed Obama-era protections given to the industry. Biden, meanwhile, has opposed marijuana reform for his entire political career, as both a senator and vice president. Biden's eventual position on cannabis may be coming from his VP running mate, Kamala Harris, who has championed important cannabis legislation (despite a rather harsh stance on the subject as a prosecutor). Cannabis legislation needs the Senate and the current majority leader is not publicly onboard despite his state having made significant commitments to hemp/CBD and cannabis. Before the coronavirus pandemic and election season amplified political turmoil in Washington, it almost seemed like U.S. elected officials were working together on bi-partisan cannabis legislation. Republicans and Democrats both came together to pass the historic First Step Act, which reduced the amount of time prisoners serve for minor drug related offenses. Lawmakers in the House voted to move the SAFE Banking Act into the Senate (with 91 House Republican votes in favor), where it was expected to pass and finally provide the cannabis industry access to the federal banking system. Decriminalization and expungement are the core issues Senator Schumer focused on when discussing the future of cannabis legislation and where there is extreme opposition in the Senate. Despite the industry's classification as an essential business during Covid-19, and it's role supporting the U.S. economy during a time of mass layoffs and furloughs, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. Because of the federal restrictions, U.S. cannabis companies cannot bank legally, raise money in traditional capital markets, and endure punitive and financially devastating tax laws. The SAFE Banking act is a great first step towards solving the complex banking issues that will lead to much needed reform in the cannabis marketplace, and investors know that banking and tax reform for the sector will equal another massive round of rerating for the sector. Yet investors must recognize despite the optimism for change in November, D.C. is a slow-moving machine and meaningful and long overdue criminal justice reform is going to take time absent major political change in the Senate. If there is real change, the prospects of the MORE Act and it's long overdue criminal justice reform and expungements could very well become reality. By PTI SHIMLA: The Congress walked out from the Himachal Pradesh Assembly on the ninth day of the monsoon session on Thursday as it had not been allowed to move adjournment motion to discuss Dalit issues. Speaker Vipin Singh Parmar said Jagat Singh Negi and some other Congress legislators submitted him a notice in the morning to move an adjournment motion under Rule 67 to discuss two Dalit-related issues. Parmar said the walkout by the opposition party was premeditated as its legislators started raising slogans without waiting for the ruling of the Chair on the notice for adjournment. The Speaker said the notice was given to discuss two different topics, adding that the Congress legislators tried to create a scene instead of presenting the context for adjournment motion. Chief Minister Jairam Thakur and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Suresh Bhardwaj also criticised the Congress for staging the walkout. A woman who murdered her de-facto husband with poison for his $300,000 estate claims an engagement ring and Viagra prescription are key to proving her innocence. Wendie-Sue Dent, 61, has launched an appeal against her conviction for the murder of her partner Lawrence in December 2015. She had denied the charge at her trial but was found guilty. Defence counsel Marie Shaw QC told the Court of Criminal Appeal on Thursday that Dent's conviction flew in the face of a considerable body of evidence of the loving relationship the couple had shared before Mr Lawrence's death. Wendie-Sue Dent (left), 61, has launched an appeal against her conviction for the murder of her de facto husband David Lawrence (right) in December 2015 She said there was evidence the pair were 'besotted' with each other, had become engaged and planned to marry and that he had made arrangements for her to be taken care of after his death. 'Immediately proximate to his death they had, as a couple, gone to a doctor to seek assistance (and) Viagra was prescribed... he purchased an engagement ring for her,' Ms Shaw said, according to The Advertiser. 'They're living together, they're travelling together and they plan, essentially, to be happy together for the rest of their lives. 'That was the common thread throughout the evidence, that the deceased was happy with her and that they were living and behaving as if their lives would be together.' The court was also told suggestions that a 'powder keg' had been created by the fact Mr Lawrence had twigged to Dent being a fraud, based on lies she had told about her past, and that he was planning to end the relationship was just speculation. Ms Shaw also said the Crown had also not properly discounted the possibility that Mr Lawrence's death was an accident. Dent's defence counsel argued that she and the victim were in love, citing an engagement ring and Viagra prescription as proof At her trial, the prosecution said Dent, who lived at Dapto in NSW's Illawarra region before her arrest, administered Mr Lawrence a mixture of dangerous medications that had all been prescribed to her. A post-mortem examination revealed the toxic levels of morphine alone were enough to kill the 62-year-old. In sentencing submissions last month, the dead man's family said he was helpful and kind to everyone but paid for that with his life. 'It takes no effort for us to hate you. We will never forgive you, never. You do not deserve that,' they told Dent in a victim impact statement read to the court. In those same submissions, defence counsel Martin Anders asked the court to consider Dent's medical history when setting a non-parole period, describing her as someone with a profound opioid addiction who had operated in a "drug-induced fog'. But prosecutor Emily Telfer said there was no evidence of Dent being in a fog or removed from reality. The appeal court hearing was continuing. Dent is due to be sentenced next week. The Supreme Courts 2018 ruling that barred public employee unions from collecting fees from nonmembers did not give union members a right to resign and recover dues they have already paid, a federal appeals court said Wednesday. Neither the union nor the state of Washington, the workers employer, violated their First Amendment rights by continuing to collect dues they had voluntarily agreed to pay, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The ruling applies to several similar cases in California, including one from this January in which a federal judge in Oakland denied refunds to schoolteachers who had left their union. The First Amendment does not support employees right to renege on their promise to join and support the union, Judge M. Margaret McKeown said in the Ninth Circuits 3-0 ruling, the first by any federal appellate court on the issue. The case is one of a series of efforts by foes of government employee unions to enlarge on the victory they scored in June 2018. In the case of Janus vs. AFSCME, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states violated the free-speech rights of workers who chose not to join the unions by requiring them to pay fees to unions for the costs of representing them at the bargaining table. The ruling applied to about two dozen states, including California, that required public employee unions to represent all employees. Groups of nonunion members are seeking refunds for the fees they paid before the Supreme Court ruling, but the Ninth Circuit and other courts have ruled against them, saying the unions had reasonably relied on 40 years of high court precedents allowing the deductions. The nonmembers have appealed to the Supreme Court. Wednesdays case involved seven Washington state employees who dropped out of their branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees after the Supreme Court decision and sought refunds. They and other AFSCME members had promised in April 2018, under a new union membership agreement, to pay dues for the next year. But the seven plaintiffs argued, in a proposed class-action suit, that they signed the agreement without being properly advised of their constitutional rights. Upholding a federal judges dismissal of the suit, the appeals court said the former members had not been coerced into remaining in the union or signing the agreement. The court said they could have dropped out in 2018 and paid the lesser fees then charged to non-members, but chose to remain and keep such benefits as discounts on some goods and services, access to scholarship programs and the right to vote on union contracts. The Supreme Courts ruling does not extend a First Amendment right to avoid paying union dues, McKeown said. She said the state has merely allowed the private choice of the parties and did not coerce them to remain in the union. And she found no evidence that the union, a private organization not bound by the First Amendment, had conspired with the state to force members to remain and pay dues. AFSCMEs general counsel, Judith Rivlin, said federal courts around the nation continue to reject these attempts by corporate interests to manipulate the judiciary against working people and trample on their rights and freedom to join together in a union. Attorney James Abernathy of the Freedom Foundation, representing the seven employees, said they would appeal the ruling, either to the entire appeals court or to the Supreme Court. The appeals court has ruled, in effect, that the First Amendment does not apply to employees who choose to pay union dues, Abernathy said. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko ASI welcomes new factories in eastern Indonesia only ICR Newsroom By 17 September 2020 With two new cement plants starting operations in Grobogan, Central Java, and Jember, East Java, Indonesia, domestic producers are expected to see a drop in capacity utilisation rates as the excess production capacity is set to rise to 41Mta, according to the Indonesian Cement Association. "Two new factories in Grobogan, Central Java and Jember, East Java are currently working on commissioning. Hopefully there will be no more issuance of new cement plant permits because plant utilisation nationally is very low," said ASI Chairman, Widodo Santoso. PT Semen Imasco Asiatic Raya will open a plant in Puger Wetan village, Jember while PT Semen Grobogan anticipates the opening of its plant in Tanggungharjo, Grobogan. PT Semen Imasco Asiatic Raya, a joint venture between Hongshi Holding Group and PT Semen Imasco Asiatic Indonesia, is investing IDR5trn (US$336.9m) in a 8000tpd dry-process production facility. The factory will be supplied by a 100Mt limestone deposit. The project includes a 12MW waste heat recovery system. PT Semen Grobogan is completing a 5Mta plant, representing an investment of US$300m. The current utilisation of cement manufacturers for the local market is only around 54 per cent. The total utilisation of the cement industry (local market plus exports) if added to the global market is at the level of 60 per cent. Previously, based on the ASI cement production target, the utilisation rate of cement manufacturers in 2021 would be around 66.25 per cent, Mr Widodo stated. The new manufacturers will be fully operational in 2021 and have the potential to drastically drag the utilisation of the national cement industry He suggested issuing permits to build a new cement factory should only be granted for projects in locations such as Irian Jaya. Published under An international team of researchers has found evidence that hot springs existed in Olduvai Gorge a paleoanthropological site in the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania that has yielded some of the most significant fossils of hominins, such as Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis and Homo erectus around 1.7 million years ago. These hydrothermal features may have provided a convenient way to cook food, for instance to boil fresh kills or certain tough tubers and roots, that would have required minimal effort. MITs Professor Roger Summons and his colleagues from the United States, Spain and Talzania collected and analyzed sediments from a 3-km-long layer of exposed rock that was deposited in Olduvai Gorge around 1.7 million years ago. The researchers looked for signs of certain lipids that can contain residue of leaf waxes, offering clues to the kind of vegetation present at the time. Something was changing in the environment, so we wanted to understand what happened and how that impacted humans, they said. Its thought that around 1.7 million years ago, East Africa underwent a gradual aridification, moving from a wetter, tree-populated climate to dryer, grassier terrain. Within the sediments they brought back, they came across lipids that looked completely different from plant-derived lipids. They realized that the lipids were a close match with lipids produced not by plants, but by modern bacteria they previously studied in the United States, in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. One specific species of bacterium, Thermocrinis ruber, is a hyperthermophilic organism that will only thrive in very hot waters, such as those found in the outflow channels of boiling hot springs. They wont even grow unless the temperature is above 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit), Professor Summons said. Some of the samples from this sandy layer in Olduvai Gorge had these same assemblages of bacterial lipids that we think are unambiguously indicative of high-temperature water. That is, it appears that heat-loving bacteria may also have lived in Olduvai Gorge 1.7 million years ago. By extension, the team proposes, high-temperature features such as hot springs and hydrothermal waters could also have been present. Its not a crazy idea that, with all this tectonic activity in the middle of the rift system, there could have been extrusion of hydrothermal fluids, said Dr. Ainara Sistiaga, a researcher at MIT and the University of Copenhagen. Olduvai Gorge is a geologically active tectonic region that has upheaved volcanoes over millions of years activity that could also have boiled up groundwater to form hot springs at the surface. While there is currently no sure-fire way to establish whether early humans indeed used hot springs to cook, the scientists plan to look for similar lipids, and signs of hydrothermal reservoirs, in other layers and locations throughout Olduvai Gorge, as well as near other sites in the world where human settlements have been found. We can prove in other sites that maybe hot springs were present, but we would still lack evidence of how humans interacted with them, Dr. Sistiaga said. Thats a question of behavior, and understanding the behavior of extinct species almost 2 million years ago is very difficult. I hope we can find other evidence that supports at least the presence of this resource in other important sites for human evolution. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. _____ Ainara Sistiaga et al. Microbial biomarkers reveal a hydrothermally active landscape at Olduvai Gorge at the dawn of the Acheulean, 1.7 Ma. PNAS, published online September 15, 2020; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004532117 SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott joined Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Ahsha Safai on Wednesday to discuss new measures being taken by the city prevent sideshows, gatherings in which people illegally perform stunts with their vehicles. Just last week, during the morning hours of Labor Day, a shooting that occurred near a sideshow in the city's Excelsior District that involved 300 spectators and 50 vehicles resulted in the death of a man, later identified as 21-year-old Sacramento resident Cesar Corza Avalos. Speaking at the corner of Mission Street and Persia Avenue, near where the triple shooting and sideshow occurred, Breed, Safai and Scott sent their condolences to Corza Avalos' family. "I want to be clear, this is still under investigation, it's not yet certain if it (the shooting) was associated with the activities that night, but it certainly underscores that these are dangerous events," Safai said. "These are events that cannot be tolerated in San Francisco." At Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting Safai introduced legislation that would amend the city's current transportation laws, and allow the San Francisco Police Department to impound vehicles found to be associated with sideshows in the city. The legislation would also allow officers to arrest anyone found to be involved in organizing the illegal events. If passed, cars found to be involved can be impounded for 14 days for the first offense, 15 days for the second offense, and possibly more than 30 days any time thereafter. "I want to be very clear, if you do involve yourself in these activities, and we're able to videotape and document your car and your activity, you have the penalty of being arrested, put in prison for up to six months, we have the ability to impound your vehicle," he said. Breed, a San Francisco native, acknowledged the excitement that attracts people to sideshows, but said, "Sadly we're putting lives at risk for participating in these events. Sadly, they could result in someone's death and that's why we're here today. We don't always want to use a heavy hand with law enforcement but in this particular case, because of its danger, you have left us with no choice." Safai, whose supervisorial district included the Excelsior, said he's been working on the legislation with Scott for the last two months. Scott said SFPD has also assembled a unit of officers trained to handle such events, as officers who respond to sideshows are often outnumbered. Additionally, police will deploy extra foot patrols in the area. The city is also planning to install 15 cameras in the area of Persia Avenue and Mission Street to help gather evidence as officers investigate sideshows. "When two officers respond, they can't just rush in because what other experiences have told us is that oftentimes that leads to worse consequences. We've had officers surrounded, we've seen police cars vandalized, we've seen officers assaulted, we've seen, not in this city, but unfortunately, we've seen officers run over. So there has to be a thoughtful plan and we have to have the appropriate resources," Scott said. Scott said SFPD is also working with the California Highway Patrol and other jurisdictions as part of a wider, regional crackdown on sideshows. In addition to his legislation, Safai on Tuesday also held an online community meeting Police Chief Bill Scott and Captain Chris Woon of the Ingleside Police Station to address community members' concern about the sideshows. Police are continuing to investigate the shooting that killed Corza Avalos and injured two other men. According to Corza Avalos' family, he was an aspiring boxer and was an expecting father. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact police at (415) 575-4444 or text at tip to TIP411 and start the message with SFPD. 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. Work commitments took a back seat on Wednesday as Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing With The Stars judge Bruno Tonioli stepped out for a shopping trip in Los Angeles. The Italian choreographer, 64, showed off his muscular physique in a black vest top during an appearance at the city's Pavilions Market, where he picked up some groceries. He added to his relaxed look with a pair of grey sweat pants, while a pair of battered high-top trainers rounded things off. Here he comes: Work commitments took a back seat on Wednesday as Dancing With The Stars judge Bruno Tonioli stepped out for a shopping trip in Los Angeles In accordance with current safety guidelines Bruno wore a protective face mask as he made his way out of the supermarket with a full shopping trolley. The outspoken judge is currently in Los Angeles to fulfill his role on Dancing With The Stars, but is expected to be back in the United Kingdom later this year for the eighteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing. Bruno surprised fans after returning to American TV screens with a silver-grey hairstyle, the result of dying his hair during lockdown in southern California. Make way: The Italian choreographer, 64, showed off his physique in a black vest top during an appearance at the city's Pavilions Market, where he picked up some groceries Speaking to The Sun shortly afterwards, he insisted the look had prompted numerous compliments, and joked that he is now the spitting image of Hollywood star George Clooney. He said: 'Covid-19 has given me the opportunity to reinvent myself. I've been meaning to do this for years as I'm completely silver and dying it is so much hassle. 'I couldn't go to the hairdressers so I grew out the roots and I looked demented so then I shaved it off, grade one all over, which made me look even worse, like a murderer or a nasty guy off EastEnders. Distanced: Due to travel restrictions the judge will make remote appearances from his Los Angeles home for the first Strictly Come Dancing results shows at the beginning of this series 'But now it's a little bit longer it looks nice and I'm keeping the grey. I feel liberated and I've had a lot of compliments. Myself and George Clooney are now practically twins.' Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Bruno was initially worried he would not be able to take part in this year's series of Strictly, which he has filmed simultaneously with the US version Dancing With The Stars for the last 14 years. BBC bosses have confirmed that the judge will make remote appearances from his home for the Sunday night results shows at the beginning of this series. But fans need not fear as bosses vowed they hope to have Bruno back in the Hertfordshire studio towards the end of the series, alongside judges Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Shirley Ballas. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 06:46:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close LISBON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- The University of Lisbon announced on Wednesday that seven students from the university's Confucius Institute have been awarded Chinese scholarship for the 2020/2021 academic year. With the scholarship, the Portuguese students will go to China's top universities for further studies, Wang Jincheng, Chinese dean of the Confucius Institute at the university, told Xinhua. Nuno Magalhaes, who won the 2020 "Chinese Bridge Proficiency Contest" in Portugal, expressed his happiness with his admission into Shanghai Jiao Tong University, according to an article published by the University of Lisbon's Confucius Institute. "I want to thank the Confucius Institute for providing me with the opportunity to learn Chinese... I have realized my dream of studying in China and I am looking forward to my life in Shanghai," he was quoted as saying in the article. Tiago Antunes, who was admitted to Tsinghua University, said that he was honored as "Tsinghua is one of the top universities in China." "It's a rare opportunity. I will study hard there," he said. Noting that these students have gained a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of China through their study at the Confucius Institute, Wang said he believes they will play an important role in promoting Sino-Portuguese friendly cooperation in the future. Enditem Two men have been arrested in Romania in connection with the July slaying of a former pastor in Berlin, German police said Wednesday. Romanian authorities took the two men, aged 20 and 24, into custody on a German warrant on Aug. 21, police said in a statement. It was not clear where the men were arrested, nor whether they have already been extradited, and Berlin police did not answer calls for further information. The two are wanted over the killing of Reinhold Zuber, who was found dead in his downtown apartment on July 4. Neighbors called police to report that they had not seen Zuber for several days and when authorities opened his apartment, they found the 77-year-old dead inside. An autopsy showed he was likely killed on June 30 or July 1. Police issued a photo of the victim, asking for anyone with any information to come forward. The suspects, whose names weren't given, had a connection to the pastor but police did not elaborate nor say how they had been located. The Berliner Stadtmission, a Protestant mission, said in a statement that Zuber had worked for a now-closed community mission in the city's Schoeneberg district from 1973 to 1983. It said Zuber's employment was terminated thereafter he was convicted of drug possession and trafficking, and over official differences. (Image Credit Pixabay) ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Chillhop Music has raised the bar with its largest Essentials release to date with the 2020 Fall Essentials , featuring 25 curated tracks from a wealth of talented artists around the globe, focusing on providing a "new normal toolkit" for the fans to help them through these turbulent times. "As this year's developments (both socially and with the pandemic) have swept the globe this year and continue to do so, it's left a lot of people feeling anxious about returning to work, school or the outside world in general with some people still being stuck indoors. Chillhop's motivation has always come from the need to feel more at ease and help others to do so as well through creative means, and we felt that in this time people could use something extra in addition to our Fall 2020 Essentials to get more in tune with themselves and the world around us. This is why we teamed up with other organizations that share this passion, and composed a toolkit to help people be able to thrive in this new world a bit better." - Bas van Leeuwen, CEO & Founder of Chillhop Music Chillhop Music have stepped things up for their Essentials releases, creating an immersive and meaningful toolkit for everyone braving the new normal. Working with the most positively reviewed app of all time, Relax Melodies, as well as rapidly growing student lifestyle and music platform Quadio, the three companies have combined to create a unique and truly beneficial offering for everyone. The triad will be running a high profile social media competition in which anyone can enter to win a "new normal toolkit" designed from the ground up by Chillhop, Relax Melodies, and Quadio. The public are invited to "Create Their Chill" by submitting art of any medium that evokes a sense of relaxation and tranquility. The record itself features a selection of the best lofi hip hop & Chillhop Music artists, creating over an hour of indulgent soundscapes and nostalgic vibes which can be streamed on all platforms or bought on vinyl from the Chillhop webshop, sit back, relax, and sink into the best Essentials yet. For more information about the Chillhop 2020 Fall Essentials, artists info, and a private listening link for review click here, the youtube launch animator is here.Readers are invited to join the competition starting Monday September 21st as well as visit their preferred streaming platform to hear the 2020 Fall Essentials. Daniel Bright, a 29-year-old British YouTuber, poses during an interview with The Korea Times near his office in Mapo-gu, Seoul, Sept. 11. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul By Park Ji-won Sharing a meal with others is a key part of social outings in Korea. Meals are considered to be so important that Koreans often use "Have you eaten?" as a greeting and substitute "Goodbye," with "Let's get something to eat sometime!" This type of greeting is something Daniel Bright, a 29-year-old British YouTuber who has been running the channel "Dan and Joel" since 2017, has adopted. He says asking "Have you eaten?" is an expression of affection. "It is more of a greeting. They don't think I am going to buy them a meal. It is like me saying I am interested in you and I care about you. There are different ways of expressing it. It doesn't matter the country or the language," Bright said during an interview with The Korea Times near his office in Mapo-gu, Seoul, on Sept. 11. His understanding of Korea and Korean culture is reflected in the roughly 150 videos uploaded to his YouTube channel. Teaming up with his business partner Joel Bennet, they explore Korea to shoot mukbang, have casual discussions about Korea-related topics and create short documentary-style videos. Those videos aim to show the real Korea, starring Bright's neighbors and other ordinary people he meets. As of Thursday, "Dan and Joel" has some 272,000 subscribers. The channel is not Bright's first YouTube experience. He and Bennet appeared in videos on the popular YouTube channel "Korean Englishman," run by their friends Josh Carrott and Ollie Kendal, and became known to some internet users. "Korean Englishman" has 3.94 million subscribers. Daniel Bright, a 29-year-old British YouTuber, poses during an interview with The Korea Times near his office in Mapo-gu, Seoul, Sept. 11. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul Bright has been interested in Korea for years. He majored in Korean studies at SOAS, part of the University of London, and first visited the country in 2011. For two years he worked at the Korea Trade Center in London before moving to Seoul to start "Dan and Joel" in 2017. When he was thinking about how to differentiate the channel from others, especially from "Korean Englishman," he said the moment came to him when he met with a Korean man drinking soju alone in a local market. "I'd come from Korean Englishman when we started doing that. But we realized that we don't have the differentiation from the channel After a while, our channel was going quite well and we basically filmed in Gwangjang Market. We were doing that fun and the market exploration but it doesn't really have a specific theme But we saw an old guy eating some seafood and drinking soju on his own. This makes you melancholy and sad and beautiful. That moment in some ways has kind of become definitive of our channel because I talked to him. We didn't have a deep conversation, but there was something beautiful at that moment." The chance meeting left him hungry for more content that allowed him to hear people's stories. One of these videos featured an elderly woman in his neighborhood who makes a living collecting cardboard off the street. After more than a year greeting her with "Have you eaten?" they had developed a friendly relationship and he decided to make a video featuring her. He said he was initially curious about why elderly people work so hard to collect cardboard because it is something that is not seen in the U.K. The video titled "a meal with an elderly lady who collects cardboard," released last Dec. 10, received a positive reaction from internet users, attracting more than 590,000 views. It was simply a video of the two having a meal together, but people left comments saying that they felt some warmth and were inspired to do more to help others. Another video, "a meal with a homeless man," also attracted more than 410,000 views. Bright asserts that his intention to film the conversation with those people is not to lecture anyone or make any particular statements about social issues. Rather, he thinks it is more important to document people's lives as they are, because the stories of individuals are precious. "Especially when you come from the Western world, they come in and say 'They don't have a good social system.' My mind doesn't go to those things. It doesn't necessarily show I am going to solve these problems. It's just this is what's going on here Ultimately we value people as individualsWe believe everyone has a precious story," he said. "Why do I think people feel more hope through our videos? Because we're trying to show that hope." His upbringing may have had some effect on his video content. "It wasn't a new thing for me to go and talk," he said. His parents shared their home with refugees for several years and they volunteered to give food to homeless people. Bright, who is now married to a Korean and has a two-year-old son, stressed that sharing food is one of the most beautiful things people can do. "I love it when my son is eating something and then he goes and brings you some and he's sharing with you. It is a beautiful trait in any human being in my opinion." He also added that it is something important for Korean people as well. "If you go to the countryside of Korea, then you know if you walk 30 meters, you will see a little local restaurant selling Korean food at quite low prices, which is nice. It shows what people value even subconsciously about their lifestyle. In the U.K., you just don't have that." A lady who attends church and collects cardboard by the Forest Path in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul Photo by Daniel Bright New Delhi, Sep 17 : At least 80 companies are in the process to tap the primary market to raise approximately Rs 51,515 crore equity capital in FY 2020-21 with benchmark indices up by 50 per cent since March and IPO listings getting strong demand from the public. India Inc is rushing for the primary market by way of initial public offerings (IPOs). Interestingly, the rush for IPOs comes at a time when the GDP growth is badly hit, economic activity is muted but on the flip side capital markets are going strong. According to data made available by Geojit Financial Services, as many as 80 firms have approached the regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to get the necessary approvals for tapping the primary market through the rest of the current fiscal. Together, these firms are planning to raise equity capital aggregating to Rs 51,515 crore from the primary market, the brokerage said. "The year 2019 has been the worst year from a primary market perspective as IPO offerings tumbled to a four year low - Rs 12,600 crore raised by16 companies - due to economic slowdown and elevated global trade tensions. However, a trend reversal is happening with the benchmark indices witnessing a sharp run up in recent months led by improved market sentiments on the back of gradual opening up of the economy since June. Around Rs 40,000 crore to Rs 55,000 crore is expected to be raised through the IPO route in the near future. IPOs are expected to be on track from H2FY20 onwards led by a robust pipeline going by DRHPs filed with Sebi," said Vinod Nair, Head - Research, Geojit Financial Services. "Market sentiments have certainly improved in recent months as reflected in the performance of benchmark index Sensex which gained over 50 per cent from its March lows. Besides, investors' interest in primary market has increased in recent times after strong listings of recent IPOs. Further, two more IPOs launched recently received a good amount of subscription from retail investors. Moreover, the upcoming IPOs are well known names in their respective verticals and have healthy ongoing business and decent future growth prospects, Thus we do believe that primary market would continue to gain attention from investors of all class in the future," said Ajit Mishra, Vice President - Research, Religare Broking. Out of the 13 new listings on the stock exchanges so far this year, 10 made stellar debut and are now trading well above their issue and listing prices implying a positive market environment for IPOs from well managed companies. Also the rush to make equity capital is considered as a healthy sign since leverage is considered as a bad business proposition for non-financial corporate. According to the data by Geojit Financial Services, some of the companies coming up with IPOs include UTI Asset Management, ESAF Small Finance, Burger King, Kalyan Jewellers, CAMS, Angel Broking, MilkBasket, Grofers, Studds Accessories, Lodha Developers, Aakash Education, Mrs Bector's Food Specialities, Senco Gold, Flair Writing, Anand Rathi Wealth Management, Penna Cements, Barbeque Nation, NSE, Lite Bite Foods, National Insurance Company, Indian Railways Finance Corporation, Indian Renewables Energy Development Agency, Mazagaon Dock, Bajaj Energy, JSW Cements, Emami Cements, PNB MetlIfe, HDB Financial Services, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, Gland Pharma, NCDEX, TCIL, Hinduja Leyland Finance among others. (Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at sanjeev.s@ians.in) She's one of the world's most recognised stars who has dominated leading fashion campaigns for decades. And Kate Moss proved she's just as stunning when opting for casual appearances as she stepped out for a low-key stroll in north London on Thursday. The supermodel, 46, looked chic as she was dressed in an all-black ensemble while soaking up the sun during the Indian summer. Effortless: Kate Moss proved she's just as stunning when opting for casual appearances as she stepped out for a low-key stroll in north London on Thursday Commanding attention, the mother-of-one stunned in a knitted jumper, which she paired with matching leggings. The businesswoman took style inspiration from the 70s as she strutted her stuff in western-inspired boots. A designer chain-strap bag, gold bangles and black shades served as the Croydon native's accessories. Style savvy: The supermodel, 46, looked chic as she was dressed in an all-black ensemble while soaking up the sun during the Indian summer Commanding attention: The mother-of-one stunned in a knitted jumper, which she paired with matching leggings The fashion star recently returned to London after she had been isolating in her Cotswolds mansion with her daughter Lila, 17, alongside Kate's long-term partner Count Nikolai von Bismarck, 33, and her half-sister Lottie, 22. The group were also joined by Kate's hairdresser friend James Brown. A source told MailOnline: 'Kate and James have been friends their entire careers, they're like family. They're very comfortable living together. All in the details: A designer chain-strap bag, gold bangles and black shades served as the Croydon native's accessories Radiant: Kate let her youthful-looking skin breathe in minimal make-up and wore her locks loose 'It's an added perk that James is a hairdresser and has been able to lend his hand when it comes to overgrown roots and out of control hair. 'Lottie, who's dyed her hair pink in lockdown, has also formed a close bond with James and regularly shops with him when getting food for the house.' The blonde has been sober for two years as she maintains a healthy lifestyle following decades of partying. The catwalk queen was once known for her wild ways, but her longtime friend, DJ Fat Tony, has revealed she is now clean, with the pair having more fun now than ever before. Her producer pal, 54 - who himself has been sober for 13 years - said in a new interview: 'Kate's been clean for over two years. Me and my sober mates now have a better time than we ever did when we used to drink and take drugs.' Kate recently admitted she's tried to cut down on caffeine and nicotine, and enjoys having more quiet nights in. Speaking to NBC's Megyn Kelly, the style icon revealed: 'I go to bed, I drink lots of water, not too much coffee, and I'm trying to cut down on cigarettes.' Barr was responding to a request to explain the constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during COVID-19. William Barr, the attorney general of the United States, declared stay-at-home orders related to the coronavirus pandemic the greatest intrusion on civil liberties since slavery. Barr was speaking following remarks at Hillsdale College, a conservative university in Michigan, where he also equated the lockdown governors ordered, shuttering businesses to curb coronavirus spread, to house arrest. U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in July. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history, he said, which was followed by a round of applause. Barr was responding to a question that asked the attorney general to explain the constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 197,000 Americans to date. Read More: Barr instructed federal prosecutors to charge protesters with sedition: report Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading voice in the pandemic, has stated that statewide lockdowns saved millions of lives. If you look at the data, now that papers have come out literally two days ago, the fact that we shut down when we did and the rest of the world did has saved hundreds of millions of infections and millions of lives, he said on a Department of Health and Human Services podcast. South Carolinas longtime Rep. James Clyburn, the third-ranked House Democratic leader, told CNN that Barrs remarks were the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things Ive ever heard because they wrongly equated human bondage with a measure aimed at preventing death. Read More: 2 HBCU presidents join COVID-19 vaccine trial, want students to follow It is incredible that (the) chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives, Clyburn said. Slavery was not about saving lives; it was about devaluing lives. Story continues Barr said Wednesday that governors treated their citizens like babies who could not take responsibility for themselves and others. Pulitzer-prize winning historian Jon Meacham refuted Barrs statement, saying, If you think (national lockdown) is akin to slavery, you never suffered under the burden of slavery in real-time or in its longtime system of segregation and the denial of the suffrage and voting rights that grew out of it. Have you subscribed to theGrios Dear Culture podcast? Download our newest episodes now! The post Barr: Virus lockdowns greatest intrusion on civil liberties since slavery appeared first on TheGrio. (Tarrant County Sheriff's Office) A rookie police officer who shot and killed a sleeping Texas woman while aiming for her dog as it charged towards him has been indicted and faces trial. Former Arlington Police Department officer Ravi Singh faces up to two years in jail if convicted of the killing of homeless woman Margarita Maggie Brooks. The shooting happened when Mr Singh was called out to complete a welfare check on Ms Jones, 30, after she was spotted passed out on a grassy area in the city. Body cam footage shows he approached Ms Jones on 1 August, 2019, and asked if she was okay. He then asked if the unrestrained dog belonged to her at which point it ran towards him. Mr Singh, 27, can be heard saying Get back before he fired three shots. Ms Brooks can immediately be heard in the background saying What the f***. Oh my God the police shot me. She was taken to Medical City Arlington Hospital but later died form her injuries, while the 40-pound lab mix was grazed by the bullet but not seriously hurt. Ms Brooks was survived by three children, aged nine, 11 and 13. Rule number one, dont kill the citizens, her father, Troy Brooks, told Fox4. Its a puppy. This is a grown man afraid of a puppy. Who is the paid professional in this encounter? Every child, every mailman, every runner, jogger, bicyclist has dealt with a dog running at them and no one ends up dead. Why do you go to deadly force immediately? Mr Singh resigned from the department shortly after the incident and has now been indicted by a grand jury and charged with criminally negligent homicide. Officers responding to welfare checks should not be so quick to use their deadly weapons in situations that do not call for use of force, the Brooks family said in a statement. Our hope is not only that this officer is held responsible for Maggies death, but that the Arlington Police Department is also held accountable for its lack of training and procedures in responding to welfare checks. Mr Singh reportedly joined the department in 2012 as a detention officer. Story continues He then graduated from the departments police academy in February 2019 and completed his field training on 1 July 2019, a month before the shooting. In addition to jail time Mr Singh, who surrendered himself to police and was booked in Tarrant County Jail, could face a fine of up to $10,000. When you deal with a dog thats ready to attack then the person in any one of those careers would have to do what they have to do to protect themselves, said his lawyer, Kathy Lowthorp, after his arrest. The dog shouldve been on a leash. Under Texas law criminally negligent homicide is the least serious of the states four criminal homicide offences, below manslaughter, murder and capital murder. Arlington Police Department made no comment after the arrest but at the time of the shooting former Police Chief Will Johnson said that Ms Brooks was never the intended target of Mr Singhs use of force. Read more Texas police officer trying to recruit cops to alleged anti-government group preparing for full blown civil war, says report Texas police officer shoots son after mistaking him for intruder Texas police officer shoots and kills man after mistaking his home for her own Texas police lead black man down street on end of rope BEIJING, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (the "Company" or "New Oriental") (NYSE: EDU), the largest provider of private educational services in China, today announced that it filed its annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2020 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 16, 2020. The annual report can be accessed on New Oriental's investor relations website at http://investor.neworiental.org. New Oriental will provide a hard copy of the annual report containing its audited consolidated financial statements, free of charge, to its shareholders and ADS holders upon request. About New Oriental New Oriental is the largest provider of private educational services in China offering a wide range of educational programs, services and products to a varied student population throughout China. New Oriental's program, service and product offerings consist of K-12 after-school tutoring, test preparation, language training for adults, pre-school education, primary and secondary school education, education materials and distribution, online education, and other services. New Oriental's ADSs, each of which represents one common share, currently trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "EDU." For more information about New Oriental, please visit http://www.neworiental.org/english/. Contacts For investor and media inquiries, please contact: Ms. Rita Fong FTI Consulting Tel: +852 3768 4548 Email: [email protected] Ms. Sisi Zhao New Oriental Education and Technology Group Inc. Tel: +86-10-6260-5568 Email: [email protected] SOURCE New Oriental Education and Technology Group Inc. Related Links http://english.neworiental.org Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Mike Stone and Patricia Zengerle (Reuters) Washington, United States Thu, September 17, 2020 11:05 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4557f52 2 World US,arms-deal,Taiwan,US-China,US-China-tension Free The United States plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions said, as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on China. Pursuing seven sales at once is a rare departure from years of precedent in which US military sales to the island were spaced out and carefully calibrated to minimize tensions with Beijing. But the Trump administration has become more aggressive with China in 2020 and the sales would land as relations between Beijing and Washington are at their lowest point in decades over accusations of spying, a lingering trade war and disputes about the spread of the novel coronavirus. At the same time Taiwan's desire to buy weapons increased after President Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in January and has made strengthening Taiwan's defenses a top priority. Taiwan is China's most sensitive territorial issue. Beijing says it is a Chinese province, and has denounced the Trump administration's support for the island. Washington has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as "Fortress Taiwan", as Beijing's military makes increasingly aggressive moves in the region. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said the reported package was a "media assumption," and that it handled weapons purchase talks and assessments in a low-key, confidential way, so could not offer public comment until there was a formal US notification of any sales to Congress. Taiwan's military is well-trained and well-equipped with mostly US-made hardware, but China has a huge numerical superiority and is adding advanced equipment of its own. The weapons packages from Lockheed Martin Co, Boeing and General Atomics are moving their way through the export process, three people familiar with the status of the deals on Capitol Hill said, and a notification to Congress is expected within weeks. One industry source said President Donald Trump was slated to be briefed on the packages this week by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Some of the deals had been requested by Taiwan more than a year ago, but are only now being moved through the approval process. A State Department spokesman declined comment. A senior US official, citing Chinese assertiveness in the Taiwan Strait, said: "There is no equilibrium today. It is out of balance. And I think that is dangerous." Trump's White House has made an effort to export weapons to US allies trying to bolster their defenses, decrease dependence on US troops while boosting US companies and jobs. As he fights for re-election on Nov. 3, Trump and Republican supporters have ramped up their rhetoric against Beijing and sought to portray Democratic opponent Joe Biden as soft on China. Other factors include Taiwan's bigger defense budget, and the fear in Taiwan that if Trump loses, Biden would be less willing to sell the US's most advanced weapons to them. Taiwan's interest in US weapons and equipment is not new. The island is bolstering its defenses in the face of what it sees as increasingly threatening moves by Beijing, such as regular Chinese air force and naval exercises near Taiwan. The senior US official said Taiwan's increased defense spending was a good step, but it had to do more. "Taiwan, frankly, needs to do more in order to ensure that they indigenously have an ability to deter Chinese aggression," the official said. Deals Drones that can see over the horizon for surveillance and targeting, coupled with advanced missiles and coastal defenses that include smart mines and anti-submarine capabilities to impede a sea invasion, have been discussed at the highest levels to make Taiwan more difficult to attack, like a "porcupine", according to industry and congressional sources. A Lockheed Martin-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), essentially a truck-based rocket launcher, is among the weapons Taiwan wants, people familiar with the negotiations said. Taiwan also seeks to buy sophisticated anti-tank missiles. In early August, Reuters reported that Washington is negotiating the sale of at least four of its large sophisticated aerial drones to Taiwan for what could be about $600 million. Also under discussion are land-based Boeing-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles to serve as a coastal defense against cruise missiles. Other systems include "underwater sea mines and other capabilities to deter amphibious landing, or immediate attack," Taiwan's de facto ambassador to United States said in July. Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and Karnataka Chief Minister on Thursday joined millions in greeting Prime Minister on his birthday. In his message, Gowda extended fullest support to Modi in his efforts to manage the peace and prosperity of the nation. The 87-year old leader said the Prime Minister was leading the nation amidst a global pandemic, economic crisis and an adventurous China at the border. "You lead our nation in difficult times -- amidst a global pandemic, a looming economic crisis, and adventurous China at the border," Gowda said in his message. Praying God to bless Modi with great health and happiness, the JD(S) supremo said, "On the occasion, as a citizen and a colleague, I reiterate my fullest support to all your efforts to manage the peace and prosperity of this great nation." Greeting Modi on his birthday, Yediyurappa tweeted, "Happy birthday to Prime Minister Shri May God bless you to keep you healthy to serve the country for many more years."Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Coals and Mines, Pralhad Joshi too greeted Modi. "I join crores of greetings, pouring in from every corner of the world to wish PM Shri @NarendraModi ji on his birthday," he tweeted. He said that it is an absolute honour to be led by a statesman like Modi, on the path to realise hopes and aspirations of over a billion Indians. Several ministers, MPs and MLAs in Karnataka greeted the Prime Minister including deputy chief ministers C N Ashwath Narayan, Govind Karjol and Lakshman Savadi, Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai. (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.) Canada could lose its ability to manage the pandemic due to a spike in new COVID-19 cases, the countrys top medical officer has said. One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the WHO is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, according to the organisation. President Donald Trump continues to claim there will be a coronavirus vaccine in weeks, contradicting the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Banks chief economist Carmen Reinhart says t he global economic recovery from the crisis originated by the pandemic may take as much as five years. Nearly 30 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and 942,758 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. Some 20.3 million people have recovered. Here are the latest updates: Thursday, September 17 23:20 GMT US public health experts call on FDA to ensure future coronavirus vaccine safe and effective Dozens of organisations representing physicians, public health officials and patients in the United States are urging the countrys Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure any future novel coronavirus vaccine meets the agencys existing high standards of safety and efficacy. While we are encouraged by the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine, the process must be fully transparent and not circumvent regulatory standards, the groups wrote in a letter to the FDA commissioner and director on Thursday. The letter comes after US President Donald Trump contradicted the countrys top public health expert on Wednesday by insisting that a viable COVID-19 vaccine would be ready by October and in mass distribution soon after. Democrats, including vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and some public health experts have criticised Trumps push to get a vaccine out before the upcoming US presidential elections on November 4 as imprudent. 22:22 GMT Ex-Pence aide says Trump bungled coronavirus response A former White House aide who helped coordinate the Trump administrations response to the coronavirus pandemic criticised President Donald Trump in a video and said she planned to vote for Democrat Joe Biden in the November 3 presidential eleciton. Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, served as a top organizer for the White House Coronavirus Task Force that Pence leads. A lifelong Republican, Troye, who has since left the White House, said in a video released by the group Republican Voters Against Trump that the administration knew around mid-February that COVID-19 would become a big pandemic in the United States. But the president didnt want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success, she said. The truth is he doesnt actually care about anyone else but himself. 22:10 GMT Brazil registers 829 new deaths Brazil recorded 829 new deaths due to coronavirus, bringing the total to 134,106. New cases rose by 36,303 to 4,455,386. 20:10 GMT Texas eases restrictions as cases drop, but bars still closed Texas is ready to relax coronavius restrictions for the first time in months, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has announced, but bars remain closed indefinitely and a mask mandate is still in place. In allowing restaurants and gyms to let more people inside, as well as lifting a ban on elective surgeries and nursing home visits under certain criteria, Abbott said a dramatic drop in hospitalised COVID-19 patients has made it possible to ease restrictions. 18:49 GMT Latin Americans seek more time to join COVAX vaccine facility Several Latin American countries have informed the WHO they intend to request more time to sign up for its global COVID-19 vaccine facility known as COVAX, an official at the WHOs regional branch said. Countries have until midnight on Friday to formalise legally-binding commitments to COVAX, a mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of eventual vaccines. 17:29 GMT France reports new daily record of more than 10,000 cases France has registered 10,593 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, setting a new daily record and pushing the total number to 415,481, the health ministry says. The previous record was 10,561 new cases in a day, recorded on September 12. The increase is a result of a higher infection rate but also of a massive increase in testing. The government has made COVID-19 testing free, resulting in long queues at testing centres in cities across France. 17:25 GMT Canada could lose ability to manage pandemic: Chief medical officer Canada could lose its ability to manage the pandemic due to a spike in new COVID-19 cases, the countrys top medical officer has said. The ongoing increase in new cases being reported daily continues to give cause for concern, Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said in a statement. With continued circulation of the virus, the situation could change quickly and we could lose the ability to keep COVID-19 cases at manageable levels. An average of 779 new cases had been reported daily during the most recent week, more than double the level in July, Tam said. Officials in major provinces blame social gatherings for the spike. People enjoy drinks and food at a patio in Toronto, Ontario, Canada [File: Carlos Osorio/Reuters] 17:10 GMT Namibia to allow international travel, lift state of emergency Namibia has said it will allow international travel from September 18 as it ends a six-month-long state of emergency with the average number of daily cases decreasing. President Hage Geingob, during a media briefing, said the government had considered the economic implications of continuing the restrictions and the state of preparedness of its hospitals. Contact sports will be allowed to resume, gambling houses and casinos can reopen and gatherings will be allowed up to either 50 percent of a venues capacity or a maximum of 50 people, according to attorney general Festus Mbandeka during the media briefing. 16:27 GMT England adds Slovenia to quarantine list, Singapore and Thailand removed Slovenia and Guadaloupe have been added to the list of countries from which travellers must quarantine when entering the UK, British transport minister Grant Shapps said. Anybody arriving in the UK from the two countries after 4am local time on Saturday will need to self-isolate for 14 days, he said on Twitter. However, travellers from Singapore and Thailand have been added to the UKs Travel Corridor list meaning they will no longer have to quarantine on arrival. 16:24 GMT Mexico requests month-long extension on US-Mexico border restrictions Mexicos foreign ministry has requested another month-long extension on land-crossing restrictions at the US-Mexico border. The restrictions, first implemented last March, would be in place until October 21, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Twitter. 15:44 GMT Family and friends are major sources of infections: French minister Gatherings of family are a major source of COVID-19 infections, French Health Minister Olivier Veran has said. Five people out of 100 tested for COVID-19 are today positive, versus one in a 100 at the start of summer, Veran added. 15:35 GMT Airline CEOs plead with White House to avert looming US job cuts White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has met with major airline chief executives as the industry braces for thousands of job cuts in two weeks, and has urged legislators to embrace a $1.5 trillion coronavirus aid package proposed by a bipartisan congressional group and endorsed by Trump. Meadows told reporters if (House) Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi was willing to move a bill to keep people from being laid off in the airline industry thats stand-alone, that the president would certainly support it. 15:27 GMT UKs 500,000 daily test target will have to grow after October: Official The UK will need more than the current target of 500,000 daily COVID-19 tests after October, the head of the test and trace system has said. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his government was working hard to increase testing capacity, saying he aimed to be able to do 500,000 tests a day by the end of October. 15:05 GMT NYC again delays in-person learning for most students New York City has again delayed the planned start of in-person learning for most of the more than one million students in its public school system. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that most elementary school students would do remote-only learning until September 29. Middle and high schools would stay remote through October 1. Pre-kindergarten students and some other special education students will be the only ones who resume in-person instruction on Monday, as originally planned. 14:36 GMT Jakarta plans to double virus testing as cases soar Indonesias capital plans to double its COVID-19 testing capacity in the near future, its governor told Reuters. Jakarta alone has seen more than 1,000 new daily cases on average this month, more than double the average in the first half of August. Governor Anies Baswedan said in an interview the city of 10 million was conducting about 50,000 weekly tests and hopes to at least reach double from where we are today. According to the WHO Jakartas weekly testing rate of 5.5-6 people per 1,000 population in the past three weeks was five times the WHOs minimum benchmark. 14:21 GMT Cases in Netherlands hit record daily high: health authorities The number of cases in the Netherlands has hit a record high for the third consecutive day at 1,753, data released by national health authorities have shown. On Wednesday 1,542 new infections were reported. The total number of cases has increased to 88,073. 14:15 GMT Ireland to quarantine people travelling from Greece, Italy Ireland has added Greece and Italy to the list of countries from which travellers are required to quarantine for 14 days on arrival. A new Green List which goes into effect on Monday allows travellers arriving from just seven countries to avoid quarantine: Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. _ Hello, this is Mersiha Gadzo in Toronto, Canada taking over the live updates from my colleague Umut Uras in Doha, Qatar. _ 12:20 GMT One in seven reported virus cases is among health workers: WHO One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the WHO is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, the agency said on Thursday. The WHO called for front-line medical workers to be provided with protective equipment to prevent them from being infected with the novel coronavirus, and potentially spreading it to their patients and families. A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment takes swabs from a farmer in Gujarat, India [File: Reuters] 11:40 GMT WHOs Ryan: Do not turn COVID-19 into political football The WHOs top emergency expert, asked about contradictory remarks by Trump and US health officials on COVID-19, said it was important for all countries to have consistent messaging for their public. Trump took exception on Wednesday to comments from the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, who said a vaccine could be broadly rolled out in mid-2021 and masks might be more effective. Trump, at a news conference, said he believed a vaccine will be rolled out much sooner. He said he called Redfield after his testimony to question him about it, and that Redfield appeared to have been confused by the question. 11:00 GMT International arrivals to Abu Dhabi must wear tracking device International passengers arriving at Abu Dhabi airport will now have to wear a tracking device while they complete a mandatory 14-day home quarantine due to COVID-19, according to state-owned Etihad Airways. Daily infections in the United Arab Emirates rose this month to their highest since the outbreak started, which officials have largely blamed on people not practising social distancing. Those arriving at Abu Dhabi airport would be fitted with a medically-approved wristband, which is removed after the 14-days of home quarantine, according to Etihads latest travel update. 10:30 GMT Philippines considers relaxing travel ban for nurses The Philippines is considering allowing more nurses and other medical professionals to leave for jobs abroad after banning them from travel so they can fight coronavirus at home, President Rodrigo Dutertes spokesman said. Healthcare workers from the Philippines are on the front lines of the pandemic at hospitals in the US, Europe and the Middle East as well as back home. The labour minister has proposed to expand exemptions to those who had contracts abroad as of August 31. So far, it is only those with contracts as of March 8 who have been allowed to travel. 10:05 GMT Belarus planning 100-person clinical trial of Russias vaccine Belarus is considering conducting a 100-person trial of Russias COVID-19 vaccine, the health ministry said, adding that potential participants can now apply online at eight local clinics that have been selected to conduct the trial. The trial, one of several that Russia hopes to conduct abroad, is still pending regulatory approval, the ministry said, adding it had received paperwork from Russia and was inspecting it. Large-scale trials of the Sputnik-V vaccine, known as Phase III trials, are ongoing in Russia and involve at least 40,000 people. Initial results are expected in October or November, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), has said. 09:20 GMT Philippines sees 3,375 new coronavirus cases The Philippines health ministry has reported 3,375 new coronavirus infections and 53 additional deaths. In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed cases in the Philippines have reached 276,289, the most in Southeast Asia, while deaths have increased to 4,785. A security officer in a protective suit walks past commuters at a metro station in Manila [File: EPA] 08:45 GMT World financial recovery may take five years: World Bank chief economist The global economic recovery from the crisis originated by the coronavirus pandemic may take as much as five years, the World Banks chief economist Carmen Reinhart said. There will probably be a quick rebound as all the restriction measures linked to lockdowns are lifted, but a full recovery will take as much as five years, Reinhart said in a remote intervention during a conference held in Madrid. Reinhart said the pandemic-caused recession will last longer in some countries than in others and will exacerbate inequalities as the poorest will be hit harder by the crisis in rich countries and the poorest countries will be harder hit than richer countries. For the first time in twenty years, global poverty rates will rise following the crisis, she added. 8:10 GMT Red Cross warns virus is driving discrimination in Asia The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned the novel coronavirus is driving discrimination towards vulnerable communities in Asia, including migrants and foreigners. The humanitarian agency surveyed 5,000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Pakistan and found about half blamed a specific group for spreading the coronavirus, with many mentioning Chinese people, immigrants and foreigners. It is particularly concerning that both national migrant and foreign workers are blamed for the spread of COVID-19 as they are quite vulnerable already, Dr Viviane Fluck, one of the lead researchers and the agencys Asia Pacific community engagement and accountability coordinator, told the Reuters news agency. She said there should be more focus on combating rumours that are linked to underlying power dynamics and structural issues of inequality. 07:40 GMT Russias coronavirus death toll passes 19,000 Russias death toll from the novel coronavirus passed 19,000, as the country reported 144 new deaths in the previous 24 hours. The countrys coronavirus crisis response centre registered 5,762 new cases, bringing its nationwide tally of infections to 1,085,281, the worlds fourth-highest caseload. Russias tally of coronavirus infections stands at 1,085,281, the worlds fourth-highest [File: Anadolu] 07:00 GMT Hurtigruten cancels remaining 2020 cruises Norways Hurtigruten has called off its remaining cruises this year due to the rise in COVID-19 cases in Europe and the Americas, the company said. The decision affects Hurtigrutens so-called expedition cruises, which often take passengers into Arctic or Antarctic waters, though its business of shipping goods and people between ports along the Norwegian coast will continue. The company was the first cruise operator worldwide to return an oceangoing cruise ship to service in mid-June, touting reduced passenger capacity, social distancing and strict rules on hygiene. 06:40 GMT UK faces bottleneck on testing due to lab capacity: minister Britain faces difficulties in carrying out COVID-19 tests due to shortages of lab capacity, said junior health minister Edward Argar. Lab capacity is one of the bottlenecks, or one of the challenges in significantly increasing that capacity, Argar told Sky News. Britain can avoid further local restrictions and another national lockdown by sticking to the rules such as not meeting in groups of more than six people, the minister added. 06:15 GMT Czech Republics daily jump in COVID-19 cases exceeds 2,000 The Czech Republic reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day for the first time as it battles a surge in infections that is among the fastest in Europe. The health ministry recorded 2,139 cases of the new coronavirus on Wednesday, up from a previous record 1,675 reported for the previous day. People wearing masks as a precaution against coronavirus walk on street in Prague [File: Anadolu] 05:45 GMT Ukraine sets daily record with 3,584 new virus cases Ukraine set a daily record with 3,584 new coronavirus infections, the national security council said, up from a figure of 3,144 on Sept. 11. Ukraine has a total of 166,244 cases, with 3,400 deaths and 73,913 recoveries, the council added. Hello, this is Umut Uras in Doha taking over from my colleague Kate Mayberry. 05:15 GMT Survey finds people in Asia blame certain groups for COVID-19 Nearly half of people in four Asian countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Pakistan blame certain groups for spreading COVID-19 including foreigners, people attending religious ceremonies and those who do not follow the rules on matters such as mask-wearing or physical distancing. Viviane Fluck, the community engagement and accountability coordinator at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Asia Pacific, which carried out the survey, described the findings as alarming. We are very concerned that vulnerable groups such as migrants and those who cannot afford protective equipment may be discriminated against due to stigma and fear, she said in a statement. The survey also found nearly four out of five people distrusted social media, despite it being one of the leading sources of information about the virus. 05:00 GMT The journey not the destination, airlines offer flights to nowhere More of the Asia Pacifics embattled airlines are offering flights to nowhere as the pandemic grounds international travel, according to Reuters news agency. Qantas is the latest to join the trend, offering a seven-hour flight over Australias Outback and Great Barrier Reef, which apparently sold out in 10 minutes despite a starting price of 787 Australian dollars ($575). Taiwans EVA Airways and Japans ANA have also offered special sightseeing flights. Tough border restrictions to keep the coronavirus under control have led to a 97.5 percent plunge in international travel in the region, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. 04:40 GMT Syria cases may be much higher than figures suggest: UN The United Nations top humanitarian official says coronavirus could be much more widespread in Syria than official figures suggest. Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council in New York on Wednesday that it would only be possible to get a clearer picture of the situation when testing was stepped up. He noted that the source of nearly 90 percent of confirmed cases could not be traced to a known source, suggesting widespread community transmission. Syria has confirmed 3,618 cases of the virus. #COVID19, food insecurity, economic deterioration & insecurity continue to take a terrible human toll in #Syria. Despite risks, humanitarians deliver life-saving aid to over 4 million people every month. My remarks to the Security Council: https://t.co/He8XTpg6Lj pic.twitter.com/hTofn80Cs8 Mark Lowcock (@UNReliefChief) September 16, 2020 04:30 GMT India breaks daily record for coronavirus cases again India has reported another record jump in daily coronavirus cases confirming 97,894 cases in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry. Deaths, which have been relatively low so far, are also climbing. The country has recorded more than 1,000 deaths every day for the last two weeks. 04:10 GMT Burberry to kick off first virtual London Fashion Week London Fashion Week is due to get underway later on Thursday with a livestreamed show from the luxury British brand Burberry. The show will be broadcast online at 12:00 GMT with Riccardo Tisci, its Italian designer, promising an uninhabited wilderness show in a collaboration with German artist Anne Imhof that has been described as a radical meeting of fashion and art. Around 80 designers will present their latest collections during the six-day event, but only a handful will stage the kind of physical shows that in pre-COVID times drew hordes of industry insiders, celebrities and journalists from around the world. Exploring the work of Anne Imhof, the internationally acclaimed artist invited by Riccardo Tisci to partner on the upcoming #BurberrySpringSummer21 show experience .#BurberryShow #Burberry pic.twitter.com/1yTo1bRNLV Burberry (@Burberry) September 15, 2020 03:50 GMT Worlds biggest glovemaker to report record profit Malaysias Top Glove is due to report record profits later on Thursday, thanks to a surge in sales as a result of the coronavirus. Analysts are expecting the company the worlds biggest manufacturer of rubber and nitrile gloves to announce a profit of at least one billion Malaysian ringgit ($241m) for the three months ended August 31, its fiscal fourth quarter. Top Glove is benefitting from higher prices and a surge in demand as a result of the coronavirus, but it has also been criticised over its treatment of migrant workers. US customs imposed an import ban on its products in July over forced labour concerns. A worker inspects disposable gloves at the Top Glove factory in Shah Alam near the Malaysian capital. The companys expected to report record profits on Thursday thanks to COVID-19 demand [Mohd Rasfan/AFP] 03:40 GMT Relief for Australian sport as NSW relaxes restrictions Crowds of as many as 40,000 people will soon be able to attend major sporting events in Sydney after the New South Wales government announced a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions. The new rules allowing stadiums to be filled to 50 percent capacity come into effect on October 1 as the National Rugby League and Rugby Championship approach the end of their seasons. Stadium Australia, the arena built for the 2000 Olympics, will be able to welcome 40,000 fans, the new Western Sydney Stadium in Parramatta 15,000 and the Sydney Cricket Ground 23,000. Fans will have to wear facemasks going into the stadiums, but will be able to take them off inside, where they will be seated in chequerboard arrangements to allow physical distancing, the NSW government said. 02:45 GMT P unched, hit, kicked, shoved, deliberately spat at New research shows holders of temporary visas in Australia suffered increasing racist abuse after they were left out of the governments economic support schemes and Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was time to go home. In a survey of more than 6,000 temporary visa holders, a quarter said they had experienced racist abuse, and a quarter reported people avoiding them because of their appearance. More than one million people live in Australia on temporary visas including international students, backpackers, and refugees. The survey found 70 percent of respondents lost all or most of their work as a result of the pandemic, with one in three international students expecting their funds to run out by next month. The governments failure to support these vulnerable people has the potential to profoundly impact Australias global reputation Latest research from UTS Law's Laurie Berg and @UNSWLaw's Bassina Farbenblum on COVID's impact on international students: https://t.co/el0EZqPC4F pic.twitter.com/2SKtwF86Ho UTS Faculty of Law (@UTSLaw) September 16, 2020 02:15 GMT Brazils Bolsonaro appoints general as new health minister Brazils President Jair Bolsonaro has appointed a general with no experience in health as the countrys new health minister. General Eduardo Pazuello was given the job on a temporary basis four months ago, but will now be made permanent. He has been more willing to go along with Bolsonaros approach to the pandemic than his predecessors, including recommending doctors prescribe hydroxycholoroquine to treat COVID-19 despite there being no evidence of it being effective. Bolsonaro, who has dismissed the virus as a little flu, brandished a box of the drug as Pazuello was sworn into office in Brasilia. Brazilian Army General Eduardo Pazuello, who has no background in health. has been more willing to go along with President Bolsonaros pandemic response than his predecessors [Sergio Lima/AFP] 01:35 GMT Australia tensions rise over citizens stuck overseas Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the number of people allowed into Australia will rise by 2,000 from next Friday, according to public broadcaster ABC. The states, who will have to house the arrivals in hotel quarantine have yet to give their approval. About 4,000 people are currently allowed into Australia each week, but at least 25,000 are stranded overseas because of the cap on arrivals. Many Australians also say they have been bumped from flights home repeatedly. The govt should leave no stone unturned; on top of increasing the cap they can charter additional flights, employ RAF resources, use airports other than Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, or use federal quarantine facilities to increase capacity for people to isolate themselves. Joel Clark (@JoelM_Clark) September 17, 2020 00:30 GMT New Zealand reports record fall in GDP New Zealand has just released economic data for the second quarter when the country was in lockdown, and its not pretty. The figures show gross domestic product shrank by 12.2 percent compared with the previous quarter, the biggest drop on record. The country is now in its worst recession since 2010. 00:00 GMT Trump contradicts CDC chief over vaccine US President Donald Trump has directly contradicted Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over the timing of any coronavirus vaccine. While Redfield told a US Senate committee a vaccine was unlikely to be ready until mid to late 2021, Trump said it would be much sooner and accused the CDC chief of making a mistake and being confused. He told the news conference a vaccine could be announced as soon as October. Trump has been pushing for a vaccine ahead of the November election, raising concerns about safety. Vaccine development usually takes years, and there is no guarantee of success. The process has been accelerated for the coronavirus and there are a number of candidates currently in large-scale phase three human trials, which are designed to test efficacy and safety. - Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur. Read all the updates from yesterday (September 16) here. Subscriber content preview [enlarge] Iron Mountain, the records and data management company, acquired the property in 2001 for $11 million. A warehouse facility at 19826 Russell Road in Kent has sold for a little over $44.5 million, according to King County records. The seller was an LLC related to Iron Mountain, the records and data management company, which acquired the property in 2001 for $11 million. The buyer was CenterPoint Russell LLC. CenterPoint Properties of Chicago is the private logistics investment vehicle for CalPERS (the California Public Employees' Retirement System). . . . The Manhattan district attorneys office has suggested in court filings that it is investigating possible financial crimes and insurance fraud by the president and the Trump Organization, and is fighting in federal court to obtain his tax returns. The president is also being sued for defamation by the writer E. Jean Carroll in a case that the Justice Department, in an unusual step, recently moved to take over from his private lawyers. Ms. Jamess inquiry began last year after the presidents former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, told Congress that Mr. Trump had overstated the value of his assets in financial statements when seeking loans from banks and had understated them to reduce real estate taxes. The investigation is focused on a number of Trump properties, including several that came up during Mr. Cohens congressional testimony. The Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and the Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles, were the subject of the subpoenas. Court documents released last month suggested there were concerns within the Trump Organization that Ms. Jamess inquiry could develop from a civil matter into a criminal one. Two days before Eric Trump was to answer questions under oath, the papers said, the company canceled the session, with its lawyers expressing concern that the investigation was going beyond the scope of a civil inquiry. The attorney generals office subsequently assured the company that it had not referred the case to another criminal law enforcement agency. After launching its latest standalone VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2, on Wednesday, Facebook quietly dropped a bombshell: Oculus is moving away from PC-only VR headsets. The company that introduced the original Oculus Rift in 2016, which relied on the PCs native CPU for the rendering, said in a blog post that it wont pursue PC-only hardware any more. Were going to focus on standalone VR headsets moving forward, the company said. Well no longer pursue PC-only hardware, with sales of Rift S ending in 2021. That said, the Rift Platform isnt going anywhere. In fact, weve seen significant growth in PC VR via Oculus Link, and the Rift Platform will continue to grow while offering high-end PC VR experiences like Lone Echo II and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond well into the future. Oculus said that it will phase out the original Oculus Quest, the standalone headset that Facebook began selling in 2019. Our goal with the original Quest was to bring standalone VR to as many people as possible, Oculus said. Were doubling down on that goal with Quest 2. Its unclear what Facebook and Oculus plan with the Rift platform, though it appears that the company sees the Oculus Link Cable as the bridge between PC-powered VR and the standalone world The companys webpage says the cable offers the opportunity to play the best of both worlds, and that the cable unlocks the power of your PC to add stunning graphics and heart-pounding gameplay to your VR experiences. In any event, we called the Oculus Rift S an incremental update in our Oculus Rift S review, noting that of the Quest and the Rift S, the Quest was the more interesting device. The Rift S also shipped to PCWorld in a rather buggy state, though a replacement solved those issues, Its unclear, though, what this announcement will mean for developers who had designed games that were optimized for the Oculus Rift platform, powered by the PC. Oculus announced several games that were coming to the Quest 2 platform, including multiplayer versions of Beat Saber; Population One, a VR battle-royale game, and Jurassic World: Aftermath, plus VR-specific versions of Assassins Creed and Splinter Cell. The Special Presidential Visitation Panel set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to look at the removal of the suspended Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, has submitted its report. The report was submitted to the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, by Chairman of the panel, Tukur Saad, on Thursday in Abuja. The panel was given two weeks to complete its assignment upon inauguration on August 26. Mr Adamu said the visitor of the university, President Muhammadu Buhari, will take a decision in order to restore peace in the university. The visitor of the university, after due consideration of the report will take a decision on the matter as appropriate in order to restore peace and conducive learning atmosphere in the university of Lagos and the university system as a whole, he said. Mr Adamu said justice would be served to all parties in line with the recommendations of the report. READ ALSO: Also speaking, the chairman of the panel, Mr Saad, said the committee will not divulge any information contained in the report. Mr Saad said the implementation of the recommendations of the report would restore peace in the University of Lagos and other tertiary institutions. We cannot divulge any content of the report but it will be significant to note that the chancellor of the University, the Shehu of Borno, interacted with the panel. We are happy we have completed this work and we hope this special visitation panel would have made some contributions towards resolving the problem with the University of Lagos and towards preventing similar problems in other universities all over the country, he said. How it started PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Minister of Education inaugurated the seven-member presidential panel to look into the crisis in the school and submit recommendations that would help resolve the issue. The governing council of the University of Lagos had removed Mr Ogundipe as the vice-chancellor over allegations of abuse of office, which he denied. Mr Ogundipe was accused of financial impropriety and gross misconduct. The crisis between the governing council and the management reached its peak in March when the universitys week-long 2020 Convocation was cancelled just before it started. The cancellation was ordered by the National Universities Commission (NUC) Similar issue In a separate but related meeting at the ministry of education, Mr Adamu also received another report from a panel that looked into administrative issues at the African University of Science and Technology (AUST). After the chairman of the panel, Nimi Briggs, submitted the report, the minister said the federal government would commence immediate action on it. The Administrative Audit Panel was set up on July 19, 2019, to review and submit a report to address the ownership, financial management and administrative management of the institution. According to the institutions website, the African University of Science and Technology (AUST) is a Pan-African institution, established in 2007 in response to a request from several African Heads of State, to give life to a request made by then President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, that the World Bank and the African Union work together to create strong Pan-African centres of excellence to improve sub-Saharan Africas capacity in Science and Technology. AUST in Abuja was the first of these centres of excellence to be established. PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN Mario Minissale has run his Park Slope pizzeria since 1988 and has, with the exception of major holidays, always found a way to keep his doors open. But in the six months since the coronavirus pandemic hit, Minissale like other New York restaurant owners has struggled to maintain any sense of normalcy. So when Minissale spent $5,000 to build an outdoor dining space in front of his Fifth Ave. Pizzatown a month ago, he did so as a way to help support his four employees, who have been hit hard financially due to the ongoing pandemic, which forced the pizzeria to close for two months earlier this year. But now, Minissale has been threatened with fines up to $10,000 from the New York Department of Transportation due to violations the city said he is guilty of because his outdoor space occupies too much real estate. Minissale said he has received two notices of violation from the city and is now left to contemplate whether he will be forced to tear down the outdoor space that includes four tables, spaced six feet apart, and that has provided only a 5 percent uptick in business. While the increase has been minimal, the space for which he applied for and received two permits to operate within, has made a difference for a businessman who has always relied on indoor dining for the majority of his income. Now, eight months since he says he last gave himself a pay check, Minissale worries about what could come next as he questions whether his investment in outdoor dining space was worth the trouble. In a different time, I would have been bankrupt, Minissale told Patch on Thursday. I would have been done. As his indoor space sits empty until restaurants are permitted to open up to 25 percent capacity later this month, Minissale who has been in the restaurant business for 43 years is making do as best he can. There are days when the father of four's business makes only a couple hundred dollars. But after being closed for two months due to the pandemic, Minissale says he remains loyal to his staff, even if it means paying them out of his own pocket. Story continues Mario Minissale has received two notices of violation from the city department of transportation. (Photo courtesy of Mario Minissale) So his issues with the city, which issued him the permits to build the outdoor space in the first place, have created high levels of frustration. Like many other small business owners, Minissale hoped that the pandemic would only impact his business temporarily. But when weeks turned into months, including the eight weeks when the iron gate at the entrance to Pizzatown stayed locked, Minissale grew more anxious as uncertainty continued to mount and his business continued to suffer. Pizzatown has never offered delivery service, which has limited the restaurants business to pick-up until Minissale was convinced to open up the outdoor space despite his concerns it wasnt worth the hassle. As he also owns the storefront next to his restaurant, a building which houses an optician, Minissale believed he was entitled to use the sidewalk space in front of both properties. He says he has permits to use both, but the city says his existing liquor license only covers the restaurant property meaning that's the only premise he can serve on. Minissale received a cease and desist order from the Department of Transportation, which threatened him with fines if he didnt stop serving customers in the space directly next to Pizzatown. The city is insisting that Minissale limit his service to just the two tables that sit directly in front of Pizzatown. Pizzatown closed for two months due to the coronavirus pandemic (photo courtesy of Mario Minissale) Pizzatown in busier days. (Photo courtesy of Mario Minissale) Despite attempts to help from the Park Slope Business Improvement District that have seemingly gone nowhere, Minissale is running out of patience, which is testing his loyalty to the neighborhood. It makes me feel like I shouldnt be there anymore, he said. The city doesnt care. Its heart-breaking . He added: All I know is that I need help. Someone needs to help the businessperson because it doesnt look like the city cares. Pizzatown is one of the original businesses to call Park Slope's Fifth Ave. home, so much so that The Wall Street Journal called the pizzeria a staple of the neighborhood in a story earlier this year. Now Minissale says that even after a portion of his indoor business is allowed to resume at a quarter of capacity and perhaps at 50 percent in November if the coronavirus positivity rate levels off, he questions how much longer he can survive. With tensions already running high, Mark Caserta, the executive director of the Park Slope Fifth Ave. Business Improvement District, says added pressure from the city isnt helping at a time when he believes city officials should be doing all they can to encourage business owners like Minissale. While he acknowledges that certain rules and restrictions apply to business owners and their outdoor dining spaces, Caserta said they should not cripple businesses. The point of these programs (allowing for outdoor dining) is to help save businesses not put them out of business, Caserta told Patch. I think (business owners) are all appreciative of the opportunity to have outdoor dining, but the struggle is so real and difficult between rent and mortgages and the cost of doing business that every day is a new challenge and this another example. Lets just let people survive and get through this and keep as many businesses in business and let them find their way through this. This article originally appeared on the Park Slope Patch There wasnt much accomplished in this meeting of Missouri legislators demanded by Guv Parson. Kansas City Mayor Q requested stricter regs against guns to no avail. Other than Republicans flexing on the STL AG WITHOUT passing legislation to make any real changes . . . Nothing really "special" was achieved. Read more: TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OPC Energy Ltd. (TASE: OPCE) ("OPC"), Kenon Holdings Ltd.'s (NYSE: KEN) (TASE: KEN) ("Kenon") subsidiary today reports a strategic step, which puts it in significant activity in the US energy market. The company has signed a letter of intent to acquire control of an American company CPV, with an estimated investment of $ 700-800 million, part of which is also intended for investment in future projects of CPV. The deal is still subject to a number of approvals, and to the completion of the negotiation process between the parties. Giora Almogi, CEO of OPC Energy said: "We have long recognized the potential inherent in the US electricity market, with an emphasis on expanding operations into the field of renewable energies. We see the US market as one of OPC's strategic target markets. There is growing momentum for increased development of renewable energy and a focus on a lower carbon approach to electricity supply. In parallel, the trends continue with a modernization of the grid with coal and uneconomic nuclear assets being retired and the construction of efficient, highly flexible natural gas power plants for economic and environmental reasons. "We have been working for the past year to find a suitable platform to enter the American market, with one of the important criteria being that the American company has strong management with proven experience, and has accumulated significant projects for continued growth. "After completing an in-depth search process, as mentioned, we are pleased to report today a letter of intent for the acquisition of CPV. It is a pioneering company in its field, dynamic and growing, operating throughout the United States in the largest and most significant electricity markets. The company has proven entrepreneurship and development capabilities, and since its inception it has initiated and built power plants with a total installed capacity of approximately 14,800 MW, of which approximately 9,950 MW of conventional stations in several markets, and wind-based power plants with a total capacity of approximately 4,850 MW. The company currently has a qualitative accumulation of an additional 2,245 MW for the construction of stations in the fields of renewable energy. The company currently owns interests in 5 natural gas-based power plants that have been established in recent years with the most advanced technology. The Company's operations include the management of 14 properties in a number of markets for its own accord as well as for third parties, with the ability to operate in any major market in the United States. "The acquisition, when completed, CPV will become OPC's investment and expansion platform in the United States, and will help the company grow and expand its operations while diversifying the company's revenue sources into a number of areas, regulations and states. The U.S. electricity market includes about 1,100 GW of installed power. The U.S. market as a whole is undergoing a process of changing the energy mix which includes a significant replacement of coal by natural gas, as well as the entry of renewable energies. These trends are based on environmental regulation that limits pollution of power plants, regulation that favors renewable energy, low gas prices that push coal stations, and are derived from the older age of coal plants in the US (average about 40 years). This trend is gaining momentum in ISO-NE states in the northeastern United States (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, etc.) on the basis of local regulation with renewable energy targets and substantial restrictions imposed on greenhouse gas emissions. Due to these trends, the Energy Information Agency expects that about 130,000 MW of coal-fired power plants and power stations based on fuel oil and diesel will close by 2030. On the other hand, the agency expects the construction of over 230,000 MW (wind and solar). "The deal also puts OPC directly into the areas of green energy, and especially into the areas of solar energy and wind energy, which are marked as part of its and CPV's significant growth engines, in parallel with its natural gas stations." The Company's activities include: (1) development and construction of conventional power plants and renewable energy; (2) ownership and maintenance of a portfolio of active power plants; (3) Power plant management for the company and third-party customers CPV's development activity includes the successful execution of 44 projects with a total capacity of approximately 14,800 MW over the last two decades. In addition, the company has accumulated new projects with about 6,200 MW of capacity, of which about 2,245 MW in the field of renewable energy, with over 1,100 MW of which are in advanced stages of development. In the field of conventional energy, the company has 4 projects based on natural gas in various technologies at various stages of development with a total capacity of 3,955 MW. The company's portfolio includes holdings, together with partners, in 6 active power plants based on natural gas and wind energy, located mostly in the northeastern United States in key markets (PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE). All conventional projects are new, based on the most advanced technology, with the highest efficiency in the market, giving the company a long-term competitive advantage as the US moves toward a lower carbon future. Under asset management activities, CPV manages 14 power plants for its own accord as well as for third parties with a total installed capacity of approximately 10,600 MW in various technologies and markets, including the California and Texas. OPC notes that its holding in the acquired company may be about 70%, and that it intends to bring in a number of institutional investors from the Israeli capital market as partners in the transaction, and at the time of the report is negotiating with Migdal, Clal and Poalim Capital Markets in this regard. For the purpose of financing the transaction, it is expected to be based on raising capital and / or raising debt (public, private or banking) and / or cash balances, or a combination of them. Kenon Holdings, which controls OPC, informed the company that if it was offered to participate in such capital raising, it would seriously consider participating in it. About CPV CPV (Competitive Power Ventures) is one of the leading companies in the American electricity market with significant activity of initiating, developing, constructing and maintaining power plants in the Northeastern United States in the attractive markets PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE which supply electricity to about 100 million inhabitants. These markets cover the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland, among others. In addition, the company also operates in the attractive markets of Texas and California. The company has been operating since 1999 with proven experience in initiating, developing, financing, establishing and managing conventional and renewable power plants. The company is headquartered in Boston and Washington. The company is run by Gary Lambert, who is also one of its founders, and it employs about 90 people. In recent years, the company has regretted the values of sustainability, green investments and ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), which guide all the projects in which it is involved. The company's initiation and development activities include the successful implementation of 44 power plants in various technologies (wind, mazam, open cycle) with a total installed capacity of approximately 14,803 MW in a variety of markets in the United States. The company has successful experience in the development of stations based on natural gas with a total installed capacity of approximately 9,953 MW in several markets, including: PJM, ISO-NE, NYISO, CAISO. These projects are based on the most advanced technology. The company is currently promoting 4 conventional projects that are in various stages of development with a total installed capacity of approximately 3,995 MW. The renewable energy development and development activities include the successful implementation of 31 wind farms with a total installed capacity of about 4,850 MW in various countries in the US. A large part of this activity has been sold over the years to the world's leading energy companies including Iberdrola, Dominion, PG&E, Duke Energy Invenergy and other companies. Today, the company has accumulated renewable energy projects in various stages of development with a total installed capacity of about 2,245 MW. Most of the project accumulation is based on solar energy (about 2,000 MW) and the rest in wind energy. The dynamics in the Northeastern United States, and in additional markets for which a significant increase in the installed capacity of renewable energies is expected in the next decade. The company currently owns, together with partners, 5 active power plants, powered by natural gas, with a total capacity of approximately 4,045 MW (the company's share - approximately 1,290 MW). These stations are the newest on the market, with the oldest station in the station fleet starting in 2016, and the newest station starting in December 2019. The stations are based on the most advanced integrated cycle technology, with high efficiency, and meeting the highest environmental standards. These stations are in the markets PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE. In addition, the company owns, together with partners, a similar power plant whose construction began in August 2020. This station will operate in the Chicago area with a total installed capacity of approximately 1,258 MW. The station is expected to begin operations in 2023. The company's share in the project is expected to stand at 10%. In addition, the company owns an active power plant, based on wind energy, with a total capacity of approximately 152 MW (part of the company - approximately 106 MW). The asset management area includes the management of 14 power plants with a total installed capacity of approximately 10,600 MW. The company manages the 7 projects that the company owns (including the management of the construction process of the station currently under construction) with a total installed capacity of approximately 5,455 MW. In addition, the company manages 7 properties for third parties (holding companies and investment funds) with a total installed capacity of approximately 5,140 MW. The company operates in a number of significant power markets, in addition to major operating markets, which include the CAISO (California Power Market) and the Texas Power Market. WWW.CPV.COM About OPC OPC Energy Ltd. is the first and leading private electricity company in Israel engaged in the initiation, development, construction and operation of power plants, as well as electricity generation and supply to private customers and the IEC. The company owns 80% of the Mishor Rotem power plant project, in 100% in the Hadera power plant project, and 100% in the Tzomet power plant project, which is under construction. OPC Energy published its financial results for the first half of 2020 last month. The company ended the half with revenues of NIS 577.5 million, and with EBITDA of NIS 133.7 million. The company's shareholders' equity, as of the end of the first half of the year, amounted to NIS 810.6 million (NIS 751.8 million attributed to shareholders), and the company's cash, according to the consolidated balance sheet, has cash and deposits totaling NIS 902.5 million. At the beginning of last July, the commercial period of operation of the power plant set up by OPC in Hadera began, with a total volume of approximately 144 MW. WWW.OPC-ENERGY.COM Contact: Tzahi Goshen, CFO, OPC Energy [email protected] +972732505645 SOURCE OPC Energy Ltd The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) gave permission to Pune Serum Institute of India (SII) to resume its phase two and three clinical trials of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the country. DCGI VG Somani, in a letter to SII, has said that the institute's reply has been "carefully examined" as also the recommendations of the DSMB in India and in UK. "You (SII) may recommence the clinical trial dated August 2, 2020, as recommended by the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), India as per already approved protocol and the provisions laid down under New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 subject to the conditions mentioned which are to be scrupulously followed such as extra care during screening, additional information in the informed consent and close monitoring for similar events during the study follow-up," the letter said as reported by news agency ANI. The DCGI has also asked SII to submit the details of the medication used as per protocol for the management of the adverse events. The Pune-based firm has also submitted a summary of safety follow up of seven days post first vaccination, stating that no serious adverse events were experienced by any of the subjects till the date of the reporting, and the reported adverse events were stated to be mild, resolved on their own and did not have any sequale. The DCGI had on September 11 directed Serum Institute of India to suspend any new recruitment in the phase two and three clinical trial of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate till further orders in the backdrop of pharma giant AstraZeneca pausing the clinical trials in other countries because of ''an unexplained illness'' in a participant in the study. AstraZeneca has already resumed trials in the UK for the vaccine. SII, which has partnered with AstraZeneca for manufacturing the vaccine candidate for COVID-19, was granted permission by India's top drugs regulator in August to conduct a phase 2/3 clinical trial of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine (recombinant) at various clinical trial sites in the country to determine its safety and immunogenicity. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. A former World Health Organisation expert has backtracked on claims that the UK's Chief Medical officer was encouraging Boris Johnson to introduce a two-week national lockdown. Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London, said on Wednesday that Chris Whitty now supported blanket coronavirus restrictions. He tweeted: "Im hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown." His comments prompted widespread media reports about another national lockdown being on the cards despite Mr Johnson insisting he is doing "everything in my power" to prevent one. But on Thursday morning, Mr Costello rescinded his claim, saying another insider had told him that Mr Whitty did not support such plans. He said: "I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a 2 week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record." Earlier this morning, health minister Edward Argar had been asked about the reports and dismissed the suggestion , telling Sky News: It is not something I have seen within the department. The Prime Minister has been very clear on this. He doesnt want to see another national lockdown. Former WHO director Anthony Costello / PA "He wants to see people abiding by the regulations and making the local lockdowns work. Mr Argar said the Government believes the rise in coronavirus cases can be controlled through local measures as long as people adhere to the measures in place. Health minister Edward Argar dismisses claims of a two week national lockdown Asked about whether he could rule out another national lockdown, he told BBC Breakfast: "The key to making sure that doesn't happen is people adhering to the rule of the six, adhering to the regulations. "I know it's tough. This has been an incredibly tough year for everyone with huge sacrifices made by individuals, by businesses, by families. 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 "And the message is very clear. If we stick to that, if we stick to the hands, space and face guidance, we can avoid further national restrictions." It comes as cases have been rising over the last month with the UK recording nearly 4,000 new Covid-19 infections for the first time since the start of May. Further lockdowns are now expected to be announced in North East England. Mr Argar said the region was seeing a spike in cases similar to that in the North West. In the North East we are seeing a spike in infections. It is exactly what we have seen in the North West. We monitor that rate. Where we need to, we step in and take action, he said. Loading.... Mr Argar said that in the North West, the rise had been driven in part by people not adhering to the social distancing requirements. India is engaged with the US administration and its Congress on issues related to the movement of Indian professionals including those pertaining to the H1B visa programme, said Minister of State for External Affairs, V Muraleedharan here on Thursday. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Muraleedharaan also said, "These issues were raised during the India-US foreign office consultation on July 7, 2020. We have emphasised that this is a mutually-beneficial partnership, which should be nurtured by easing mobility of skilled professionals." Regarding the effect on the movement of Indian professionals after changes in the US visa, he said, "This may temporarily affect the movement of Indian skilled professional who avails of the non-immigrant visa programme." On the question of exemptions made by the US administration, he replied, "Yes, on 12 August 2020, the US State Department of State issued a list of exceptions to the temporary suspension of non-immigrant visas including H1B and L1 categories based on interest. The exception has been expanded to include IT workers as essential workers, which were a key demand of the Indian IT industry." The US government in June had suspended the entry of several non-immigrant visa categories till December due to COVID-19 pandemic. However, this decision was soon rescinded in the month of August. Earlier this month, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said that a United States visa policy that supports Indian talent is mutually beneficial and a "win-win" for both the countries. Speaking at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum's annual leadership summit, Jaishankar had said, "India offers trusted talent to the world and immigration is a win-win for both the countries. People recognise the role Indian talent has played in US, global and Indian economy. This is an area where the US should recognise what is in American interest and that will be in the interest of India also. (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.) Queensland will still be able to make decisions about opening its borders when the government goes into caretaker mode on October 6 ahead of next month's state election. That is because it is the state's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young who writes border directions, after emergency laws were introduced into Queensland Parliament in March, granting her extra powers. Queensland will review its border policy at the end of the month. Credit:Photo: Matt Dennien, Elise Derwin, Brook Mitchell Emergency amendments to the Public Health Act gave Dr Young the power to restrict contact between people, declare hotspots, force people into isolation, ban public gatherings and any other matter she "considers necessary to protect public health". The expert medical panel advising the national cabinet has suggested it should have the power to declare hotspots, rather than individual states and territories. Delhi Metro's Aerocity-Tughlakabad corridor being built as part of the Phase-4 project has been christened as 'Silver Line' by the DMRC, officials said on Wednesday. This will be the 10th corridor of the network so it will also be called Line 10. "Silver has been selected as the colour code for the Tughlakabad-Aerocity Metro corridor of Phase 4," the DMRC said in a statement. There is no specific rule to decide the colour code of a line. However, easily distinguishable colours which can be remembered by the commuters are generally selected, it said. "This section is the 10th line to get a colour code. The Majlis Park-Maujpur corridor or Line 7 is an extension of the Pink Line and will have the same colour code while the Janakpuri West-R K Ashram Marg corridor will be an extension of the Magenta Line or Line 8 with the same colour code," it said. The Union Cabinet, in a meeting chaired by the prime minister, in March last year had approved three out of the six corridors of the Delhi Metro's proposed phase-4 which will further improve connectivity in the national capital. Under approved segment of phase-4, 61.679-km of new metro lines shall be constructed across three different corridors comprising 45 metro stations. These new sections shall provide inter-connectivity among the already operational lines of the Delhi Metro. According to the government, the Mukundpur-Maujpur, R K Ashram-Janakpuri West and Aerocity-Tughlakabad corridors were approved by the Cabinet. The other three proposed corridors of phase-4 which have not yet been approved by the Union Cabinet are Rithala-Bawana-Narela, Inderlok-Indraprastha and Lajpat Nagar-Saket G Block. Also read: You'll be fined if you don't do these 8 things in Delhi metro LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Los Angeles lawyer Tre Lovell of The Lovell Firm, P.C., along with co-counsel Brandon Reif of The Reif Law Group, P.C., are seeking in excess of $50 million against Wells Fargo Advisors based on allegations of financial mismanagement, fraud and related claims pertaining to the handling of their client, the Dougher Trust's, financial affairs. The lawsuit addresses a number of instances of alleged legal and regulatory failures that even in light of Wells Fargo's problematic history appear surprising. According to Lovell, "As the detailed facts demonstrate in the complaint, we believe the actions of Wells Fargo amount to a brazen and egregious dereliction of financial duties and mismanagement to a level that is truly appalling and shocking. Legal and regulatory malfeasance are unacceptable under any circumstances, and we intend to prove our client's claims and seek complete and comprehensive redress." Co-counsel Brandon S. Reif added: "Had the defendants presented a financial plan with tax mitigation strategies, our client's wealth would have been preserved and grown." Reif added, "An investment advisor's duty to provide skilled advice applies with equal force for the wealthy client." The lawsuit was filed in the San Diego Superior Court, Case No. 37-2020-00025859-CU-FR-CTL. Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer The Rotary Club of San Antonio will not bring back the Travis Park ice rink due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization said in en email sent to mySA.com Thursday. Last year, the organization launched its first ice rink the weekend after Thanksgiving. More than 20,000 people used the rink during its three-month run. KOCHVILLE TWP, MI Some Saginaw Valley State University students are planning a march seeking accountability from the campus' administration. The march is set for noon Thursday, Sept. 17, from the campus recreation parking lot to the presidents courtyard to demonstrate the need for accountability throughout the SVSU campus community, according to a statement from What About Us?, the organizing group. According to the group, a person appeared on campus on Sept. 10 spewing hate speech without regard to the universitys COVID-19 protocols which in turn threatened the health and safety of students. The group said such conduct is unacceptable and requires and explanation. The group alleges the actions of faculty, staff, administration, and SVSU police on Sept. 10 contradict the universitys stance of not tolerating racism and discrimination. This Thursday, the students of Saginaw Valley State University are marching to hold faculty, staff, administration, and University Police accountable to protect and support the claimed values of the campus community, the group stated in a press release. What About Us? is also asserting the following list of demands: mandatory microaggression & unconscious bias training for students Public, auditory statement from the president declaring that Black Lives Matter A statement from University Police explaining their lack of intervention. An online petition on change.org calling for mandatory microaggression and unconscious bias training for students has 61 signatures as of 10 a.m. Thursday. In a Sept. 10 email sent to SVSU community members, SVSU President Donald Bachand wrote that a person came onto the campus and engaged in an unplanned, unauthorized spontaneous demonstration. The person was not affiliated with the university, Bachand wrote. As a public institution, we must permit individuals to exercise their right to free speech, even speech that we find offensive, Bachand wrote. There are limits to free speech rights, however, and we are investigating to determine this individual violated our anti-harassment/discrimination policy. If so, he will not be allowed back on campus. If you believe that you were harassed by todays speaker, please e-mail us at presidentsoffice@svsu.edu. Bachand went on to write that he has heard from students questioning the universitys values. Let me be unequivocal: Black Lives Matter! This is a personal belief and an institutional value, Bachand wrote. This statement recognizes that Black people have been subjected to injustices that must end, and the same holds true for other persons of color. Additionally, we want to ensure members of our LGBTQ+ community feel supported. We at SVSU must do our part to improve equity and justice for all those who have suffered from unfair treatment. We are actively engaging with individuals and organizations on campus and in the community to achieve this, and that important work will continue. Bachand went on to express appreciation for students responding to the person who appeared on campus on Sept. 10. Many of you exercised your rights to free speech respectfully and safely, Bachand wrote. I understand your passion to stand up for your beliefs, but we must remain vigilant to protect each others health and safety. COVID-19 remains a threat that we must confront by taking the necessary precautions, such as wearing our masks and maintaining safe social distancing. A Facebook event page for the march can be found here. Read more: SVSU students may attend fall classes in shifts as university plans for COVID-19 changes SVSU plans modified facilities, gradual returns to campus and tighter budgets in the fall SVSU and CMU students ask administrators to respond to racism and discrimination on campus It's startling to remember Anandavalli has been working in Indian classical dance for 50 years but you have to remember she was a child prodigy who started training at seven, made her formal debut within two years and left Sri Lanka aged just 12 to tour in Germany, London and Paris. Anandavalli will dance again in a short film responding to the COVID crisis. Credit:Louise kennerley Travelling with her mother, lugging bags of costumes and a heavy tape recorder, it was an exacting and adventurous journey that shaped her future. It included a meeting engineered by her mother in the Stuttgart Ballet cafeteria with the companys great choreographer, John Cranko, who saw her dance and offered to present her in a solo performance. My mother was an exceptionally strong woman, she says. She was not a dancer or a choreographer but she had a great love of dance. She had the vision, she knew the next step and she wanted the best. In 1984 Anandavalli settled in Sydney and started her dance school, Lingalayam, which became the name of her small independent company in 1986. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 05:49:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COPENHAGEN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Danish Minister of Defense Trine Bramsen said Thursday the government initiated works on a new national strategy to increase digital security and tackle the cyber threat. "We want to increase the costs for those who attack Denmark and our allies in cyberspace," the minister said. According to the statement, the new strategy is an extension of the current national strategy for cyber and information security in Denmark. In the new strategy, cyber and information security must be a management issue in both companies and authorities while Denmark must participate actively in international cooperation and contribute to creating an open, secure, and credible Internet, and protecting the socially important digital infrastructures. "The cyber threat against Denmark is very high... With the new strategy, we will ensure a continued robust Danish cyber defense, while at the same time strengthening international cooperation in e.g. EU and NATO," said Bramsen. The emphasis on digital security comes in the aftermath of widely reported "secret collaborations" between the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). According to DR, Denmark's public-service radio and television broadcasting company, the FE had for years given the NSA access to raw data from Danish cables. Danish Intelligence Oversight Board last month highlighted in a report to the Defense Ministry a series of offenses in the FE, which have led to the investigation into the intelligent service. Five current and former FE employees have been relieved of duty since then, including the chief Lars Findsen and the former chief Thomas Ahrenkiel. Enditem While much attention has been devoted to Australias problems dealing with the rise of China, too little is paid to the equally important dilemma raised by the strain in our relationship with the United States. The US is still our most important military ally and Australians feel a close affinity with much American culture. Yet the US, under President Donald Trump, has suffered an unprecedented loss in prestige recently. The Pew Research Centre, which has polled attitudes to the US in 15 countries since 2003, found that just 33 per cent of Australians have a favourable view of America, the lowest level on record and down from 50 per cent a year ago. Australians now have about the same opinion as the French about the US. Chinas prestige suffered because of its cover-ups and mistakes at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the poll suggests the USs failure to contain the virus has hurt it almost as much. Just 14 per cent of Australians think the US has handled the pandemic well, while 60 per cent think it has handled it very badly and 25 per cent badly. Australians had expected the US, a rich country with advanced scientific and medical resources, to lead the way in fighting the disease, but instead it has flip-flopped incompetently over its response at the cost of 195,000 lives and counting. Mr Trump provoked laughter this week when he said he favoured an approach to COVID-19 based on "herd mentality" (rather than immunity), but this is just one sign of his inability to listen to expert advice. Many will blanch at the toughness of their methods, but the Chinese have done a better job controlling the disease. SAGE Publishing and Corwin today announce the release of The Distance Learning Playbook for College and University Instruction . Co-authored by, the evidence-based guide addresses faculty-student relationships at a distance, professor self-care, creating engaging digital tasks, feedback and assessment, and more. The title includesand, featuring the guidance of over 20 educators from a diverse range of disciplines. Drawing upon the expertise of its authors, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, John Hattie, and John Almarode, The Playbook written and published in just six weeks includes: The integration of Hatties Visible Learning research, which synthesizes more than 50,000 social science studies to identify predictors of successful learning outcomes An interactive "playbook style (conceptualized by Fisher and Frey) that provides methods and templates to guide self-assessment and reflection on implemented strategies Nine issues-focused modules that begin with learning intentions and success criteria before diving into critical, yet familiar elements of education, such as student-faculty relationships, all framed through the lens of distance learning We suspect a post-pandemic future will include increased amounts of distance learning, so its important that we seize on what we have learned to improve post-secondary education in any format, whether face-to-face or from a distance, commented the authors. The unexpected transition to remote learning doesnt mean we no longer know how to teach we can still impact the lives of our students and know that we made a difference. The Distance Learning Playbook for College and University Instruction was designed to show instructors how. Both Fisher and Frey are professors at San Diego State University, while Hattie instructs at The University of Australia, Melbourne and Almarode at James Madison University. Fisher, Frey, Hattie, and Almarodes work demonstrates the pivotal role that social and behavioral science can play to implement and improve educational strategies, particularly during critical times, commented Mike Soules, President of Corwin. We knew that the authors varied backgrounds and expertise would allow them to create a guide that could support educators as they care for and provide guidance for their students and themselves in what would likely be a challenging virtual school year. What we didnt expect was how quickly they and the team at SAGE/Corwin would be able to work to create such a robust resource a testament to the passion behind all who worked on the title. The new guide follows the success of Corwins The Distance Learning Playbook, Grades K-12, which sold more than 325,000 copies in less than two months and rose to #1 on a Publishers Weekly bestseller list. The demand for the K-12 guide has led Corwin to publish a suite of titles under The Distance Learning Playbook name at a rapid pace. More on Corwin and SAGEs latest initiatives to support distance learning can be found on their online teaching & learning hub. To learn more about The Distance Learning Playbook, visit the SAGE Publishing website. To request a press copy, please email pr@sagepub.co.uk. # # # About SAGE Publishing SAGE is a global academic publisher of books, journals, and a growing suite of library products and services. Driven by the belief that social and behavioral science has the power to improve society, we focus on publishing impactful research and enabling robust research methodology. We produce high quality educational resources that support instructors to prepare the citizens, policymakers, educators, and researchers of the future. We publish more than 1,000 journals and 900 new books globally each year, as well as library products and services that include archives, data, case studies, and video. SAGE is majority owned by our founder, Sara Miller McCune, and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the companys continued independence. www.sagepublishing.com About Corwin Corwin, a SAGE Publishing company, is the premier provider of professional learning products and services that equip educators with the resources needed to improve teaching and learning. Corwin offers print books and eBooks, digital products, and onsite consulting services for all types of educators at all stages of their careers. Corwin resources are authored by experts on the topics most relevant to education; formatted for hands-on, practical guidance; research-based and peer-reviewed for quality; and designed for professional learning. For more information, visit www.corwin.com To unsubscribe from SAGE press releases, please contact PR@sagepub.co.uk New Delhi, Sep 17 : Global PC brand Acer on Thursday announced the latest generation of its Predator laptop Triton 300 and Helios 300 equipped with 10th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors. The Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop is priced at Rs 84,999 and the Predator Triton 300 gaming laptop will cost Rs 89,999. Both the products are available on Acer E-store and will available across other channels like Acer Exclusive Stores, Flipkart, Amazon, Croma, Reliance as well as Vijay Sales starting next week. "As one of the leading PC makers in the gaming industry in India, we consistently strive to offer cutting edge technologies to equip gamers who prioritize competitive esports gaming as well as other gamers who want to push the limits of performance, comfort of use, and reassurance," Sudhir Goel, Chief Business Officer, Acer India said in a statement. Acer's Predator Helios 300 features 5.6-inch FHD IPS display with 3 ms overdrive with upto NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU with Max-Q Design. The laptop is fully connected with Killer's E26001 Ethernet Controller, Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i and Control Center 2.0. It also supports up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz DDR4 memory, 2PCIe NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 configuration along with up to 2TB Hard Disk Drive. Meanwhile, Predator Triton 300 gaming laptop features 15.6-inch FHD IPS display and up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU with Max-Q Design and a 240 Hz display refresh rat It supports HDMI 2.0, mini-DP 1.4, USB3.2 Type-C, and upgradeable to 32 GB using two soDIMM modules, up to 3TB SSD. The Predator Triton 300 is also qualified under Microsoft's definition of a "Modern Device" Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called the passing of two bills related to the agriculture sector in the Lok Sabha as an important moment for farmers" and termed protests as misleading" farmers. The passing of the historic agriculture reform bills in Lok Sabha is important moment for the farmers and agricultural sector of the country. The bills will liberate the farmers from middlemen and other obstacles," Modi said in a tweet in Hindi. On the issue of growing protests among farmers over the Bills, Modi said the legislatures will empower them by giving them more options. I assure my farmer brothers and sisters that the system of MSP and government procurement will remain. These bills are really going to empower the farmers by giving them many more options," he said. This agrarian reform will provide new opportunities for farmers to sell their produce, which will increase their profits. With this, our agriculture sector will get the benefit of modern technology, whereas the farmers will be empowered," he further added using the hashtag #JaiKisan. The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill were passed by voice vote as the Congress, DMK and Revolutionary Socialist Party members staged a walkout. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) member Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against three farm sectors bills. Her resignation came soon after her husband and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal strongly opposed the bills in Lok Sabha, claiming that they will destroy" the agriculture sector in Punjab, and announced that the Union minister will quit the government in protest. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar slammed Congress for protesting against the Bills. Congress has always mentioned such reforms in its election manifesto but never had the courage to pursue them. Modi ji has liberated the farmers, I congratulate everyone for this," he was quoted as saying. Earlier in the day, Congress MPs from Punjab had staged protests and burnt copies of the farm bills in front of Mahatma Gandhis statue inside the Parliament premises. Congress MPs Jasbir Singh Gill, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Gurjit Singh Aujla and Amar Singh had said they will oppose the proposed legislations tooth and nail. (With inputs from PTI) Don't miss this week's Hendersonville Lightning Don't miss this week's Lightning. We've got full coverage of the tragic death on Thursday, Sept. 10, of Ryan Phillip Hendrix, the Henderson County sheriff's deputy who was killed in the line of duty. We've got a follow-up to the story last week of the decision by the county Board of Commissioners to block a Hendersonville city waterline extension for a Horse Shoe development, including the city's response and a City Council member's statement that Commissioner Michael Edney owes the city an apology for his comments about city water policy. Only the Hendersonville Lightning has coverage of a proposal in Flat Rock to impose term limits for appointed boards and the charges that the idea is a politically motivated effort to pack the advisory boards with like-minded supporters. Here's where you can get a copy: Lightning Office, 1111 Asheville Highway Pop's Diner, Five Points Pat's Dance -- North Main Alykat -- Asheville Hwy Ingles -- U.S. 25 North Mountain Home Post Office Fletcher Post Office Ingles, Mills River Triangle Stop, Mills River Joey's Bagels, Haywood Road Economy Drugs, Fifth Avenue West Fifth Avenue Shell Energy Mart -- Brevard Road Dixie Diner -- Brevard Road Joseph Laughter -- Laurel Park Village Rite Aid -- Laurel Park Village YMCA, U.S. 64 at Oak Street First Citizens Bank, Main Street Mikes on Main, Main Street Citgo, South Washington Street Norm's Minit Mart Shell - Kanuga Road Whitley Drug -- Greeville Highway Hairstyles by Charlene -- Joel Wright Dr Ingles -- Spartanburg Hwy McDonalds -- Spartanburg Hwy Norm's Minit Mart Shell - Spartanburg Highway Hendersonville Co-op -- Spartanburg Highway Burger King/BP -- Spartanburg Highway Ingles -- Spartanburg Hwy at Highland Lake Rd East Flat Rock Post Office, West Blue Ridge Road Flat Rock Post Office -- Greenville Highway Zirconia Post Office -- Greenville Highway Rosco's Grocery -- Green River Road Saluda Post Office Triangle Stop, Upward Road Energy Mart, Upward Road at I 26 Dana Post Office Norm's Minit Mart Shell -- Dana Road Henderson Crossing Shopping Center Energy Mart -- Four Seasons Triangle Stop Chimney Rock Road Mr Pete's Citgo -- Chimney Rock Road Ingles -- Howard Gap Road Edneyville Post Office Griffin's Store -- Chimney Rock Road Highland Square Shopping Center, near Great Clips McDonalds -- Four Seasons Boulevard GO Grocery -- Four Seasons Boulevard Triangle Stop -- Main Street Mr. Pete's Citgo -- Etowah Etowah Shopping Center Blue Ridge Pizza -- Etowah Horse Shoe Post Office Triangle Stop --Asheville Hwy One-Stop Exxon -- Haywood Road Mr. Pete's Citgo -- Kanuga Hot Dog World -- inside stand Hot Dog World -- outside box Publix, Greenville Highway Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-16 21:49:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A member of a mainland nucleic acid test support team thumbs up to Hong Kong residents on a bus in Hong Kong, south China, Sept. 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Shen) HONG KONG, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- With 1.78 million specimens tested and 32 new patients identified, mainland medical experts, who worked in relays to carry out round-the-clock COVID-19 testing over the past two weeks, have accomplished their mission in Hong Kong. The rapid community spread of coronavirus was finally contained as no local infection was reported on Tuesday, the first time since early July. "Hong Kong people will be able to gradually return to their normal lives," Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam said. "Students can return to schools starting next week and business activities can gradually resume." Mainland support teams came to Hong Kong successively from the beginning of August to assist the HKSAR government with its 14-day Universal Community Testing Program (UCTP) which ended on Monday. The coming of altogether more than 570 mainland testing professionals from Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian, some of whom used to fight COVID-19 in Wuhan and overseas, greatly improved Hong Kong testing capacity. The "Fire Eye Laboratory," responsible for testing the specimens of the UCTP, can cope with as many as 500,000 nucleic acid tests a day if using mixed-together methods. "Without the strong support of the central government, including temporary air-inflated laboratories and support teams for nucleic acid testing, Hong Kong would not be in a position to implement the UCTP," Patrick Nip, secretary for the civil service of the HKSAR government, said. The result of the mass testing program is satisfactory. The program not only helped find asymptomatic virus carriers and broke transmission chains but will facilitate the analysis of Hong Kong's epidemic situation and be conducive to anti-epidemic work in the next step, Secretary for Food and Health of the HKSAR government Sophia Chan said. During the 14-day testing, members of the support teams raced against time to push forward with the virus testing work. As they worked long hours every day, diapers became a necessity. "To save time, we try not to go to the toilet," Xiao Fangzhen, a member of the support teams, said and explained that wearing diapers allowed them to work in the laboratory for 12 hours non-stop. Due to the long shifts, many team members suffered sharp pains in their arms and shoulders, frequently had leg cramps at night, and even could not straighten their fingers. "Our Guangdong team alone has used up more than 500 pain relievers," Yu Dewen, head of the Guangdong team, said. "They knew the task in Hong Kong would be very hard but they still came here without hesitation," Pang Jun, head of the Guangxi team, said. "A team member postponed the wedding and some members gave up significant professional exams." With their mission completed, the mainland support teams left Hong Kong on Wednesday. Qiu Hong, deputy head of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR, has said that the central government and the mainland are the strongest backing of Hong Kong. Since the epidemic outbreak, the central government has provided enormous support for Hong Kong's anti-COVID-19 effort. Apart from assistance in the mass testing program, the central government is also helping Hong Kong build a two-storied temporary hospital with more than 800 beds and add another 1,000 beds in the community treatment facility at the AsiaWorld-Expo. Enditem Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador spent his first two years in office promising to maintain reforms that opened Mexicos energy markets to competition and foreign investment even as his administration took steps to undermine those changes. Now, as Lopez Obrador and his Morena party prepare for congressional and legislative elections next year, the left-leaning populist is openly talking about repealing the market reforms approved as constitutional amendments in 2013 and restore the monopolies of the government-owned oil and power companies. Congressional elections, scheduled for July 2021, could test whether Lopez Obrador has the popular support to amend Mexicos Constitution for the second time in less than a decade. It is all about the election and democracy and a big fight for the energy sector, said Lourdes Melgar, an undersecretary in the Energy Ministry under Lopez Obradors predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto. If the president wins enough states and enough legislatures, they will have the constitutional majority to change the Constitution. If Lopez Obrador succeeds, the impact would be felt on both sides of the border, analysts said. The reforms were hailed as a great opportunity for energy companies in Houston and Texas by opening one of the worlds biggest energy markets. Texas petroleum exports to Mexico, for example, have jumped nearly 50 percent since 2013 to nearly $25 billion, according to the Commerce Department. Texas companies from Exxon Mobil to the oil-field services firm Halliburton to pipeline company Kinder Morgan have contributed to the more than $150 billion of investment by foreign companies in pipelines, storage and other infrastructure since the opening of Mexicos energy sector. The Houston company Talos made a major discovery in Mexicos portion the Gulf of Mexico in 2017. The cost of undoing the reforms could also have a profound effect in Mexico, analysts said, slowing a much-needed modernization of an energy sector beset by falling production, high debt and chronic shortages. Mexico is missing incredible opportunities to attract investment and make its energy industry much more efficient, to supply its own markets and become a major exporter of all kinds of energy, said Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at the James Baker Institute at Rice University. It is not going to happen. Lopez Obrador wants the government to do it be the operator, investor, exporter importer, producer that is, the bottleneck through which all energy sector activity flows. CORONAVIRUS POLITICS: Pandemic provides cover as AMLO erodes energy reforms The 2013 legislation that created the energy reforms ended the 75-year monopoly of the national oil company and Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and power company, Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE. The idea was to modernize both companies by attracting international investment, creating competition, expanding renewable power, and introducing new technologies, with the hope that Pemex and CFE could tap into the know-how of international companies. Action vs. words Lopez Obrador, despite his opposition to the reforms, pledged to keep them in place when he ran for president. He reiterated that pledge after his election in 2018 to assure financial markets. But his administration, while paying lip service to the constitutional reforms, has made several moves to reassert the dominance of Pemex and CFE, including canceling auctions to develop new oil fields and power plants. The administration also has committed billions of dollars to build a new Pemex refinery and pushed through new rules that gut competitive wholesale power markets. In July, Lopez Obrador dropped any pretense of wanting to maintain the market reforms, speaking openly for the first time about the possibility of repealing the energy laws by amending the Constitution again. If a change to the law is required to restore Pemex and the CFE to their role as strategic companies for Mexico's development and its ability to control its natural resources, he said a press conference in Mexico City, then well see if a constitutional reform initiative can be presented. Most recently, an eight-page memo summarizing a speech Lopez Obrador gave to energy regulators in July has surfaced. In the speech, the president discussed his belief that the 2013 energy reform laws had been terrible for Mexico, and desperately needed changing. The previous government tried to give full legal coverage to its policy of pillaging with the so-called energy reform, said Lopez Obrador, according to the memo. The upcoming corruption trial of former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya, who ran Pemex from 2012 to 2016, is providing Lopez Obrador with more ammunition to return energy markets to the control of the state. Lozoya, extradited from Spain in July, is accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Brazilian construction company, Odebrecht, which was involved in corruption cases throughout Latin America. GIVE AND TAKE: As AMLO focuses on oil, natural gas imports soar In turn, Lozoya has implicated Pena Nieto in the bribery scheme as well as dozens of members of Congress in the two other main parties: Pena Nietos party Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the National Action Party, or PAN, the party of Pena Nietos predecessor, Felipe Calderon. Lopez Obrador has charged that the energy reforms enabled massive corruption by permitting foreign companies to conduct business without any meaningful oversight. The Lozoya case, the way they are framing it, it helps them to delegitimize the reform itself, said Maria Fernanda Ballesteros, an analyst with Mexico Evalua, a think tank in Mexico City. Massive debt Analysts say that Pemexs problems which include a staggering $107 billion in debt are driven by its bloated size and inefficiency. Those problems have only been made worse by continuing to operate in areas, such as refining, where its technology is outdated. The result: huge losses and more debt. Pemex and its finances would do better over the long term to focus on areas, such as onshore and shallow water offshore plays, where it can compete, rather than eliminating the competition, according to Ana Lilia Moreno, a Pemex analyst with Mexico Evalua. To change the constitution, Lopez Obrador faces a difficult task. He needs the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and 17 of 32 states. That would require a big win in next years elections against the backdrop of a struggling economy and one of the worlds highest coronavirus infection rates. But such a sweep is not inconceivable. Morena and its allied parties hold majorities in both the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Mexicos Congress, and the Senate, although they are short of the required two-thirds. They also hold majorities in 17 of the 32 legislatures and six governorships, with another 15 up for grabs in the 2021 election. SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: AMLO seeks to restore Pemex to dominant role In addition, Lopez Obradors approval rating, despite falling over his handling of the coronavirus, remains at 60 percent, according to recent polls. Analysts say that Lopez Obrador has used the energy reforms to deflect attention from his handling of the economy, which is forecast to shrink by about 10 percent in 2020, compared to a 4.6 percent contraction in the United States. National control of energy resources is a point of pride in Mexico, which celebrates the 1938 government takeover of the oil industry from foreign companies as a holiday. Four more years Whether the 2021 elections give Lopez Obrador the majorities and momentum he would need to amend the Constitution is anyones guess, analysts said. But ultimately, it may not matter. Lopez Obrador, whose six-year term runs for another four years, continues to use the power of the presidency to chip away at the market reforms and reassert the preeminence of state-owned energy companies. His administration, said Melgar, the former energy official, has severely undermined the energy reform to the point where it is almost not operating any longer. American GirlBy JACQUELINE LAUREAN YATES, ABC News (NEW YORK) -- American Girl is giving everyone a chance to channel the spirit of '80s style with the brand's latest doll launch. For the first time in the past three years, the toy company unveiled a new historical doll, "Courtney Moore," on Tuesday. The brand's latest doll grew up in 1986 and her personality and look are inspired by the era's pop culture, hairstyles, bright-colored fashion, music and more. "The '80s are back, and we're thrilled to celebrate this pop culture-defining decade with girls and their parents through Courtney," said Jamie Cygielman, general manager of American Girl, in a statement. "For nearly 35 years, American Girl's historical characters have helped to bridge the past and present, while providing inspiring role models through immersive storytelling and imaginative play ... Likewise, Courtneys story illustrates how to create positive change by standing up to fear, finding strength in every challenge, and developing empathy for others qualities that are timeless and more important than ever," the statement read. The Courtney doll, which retails for $110, is available as an 18-inch doll with curly sandy-blonde hair that's styled in a high side ponytail with lots of accessories. She's also wearing a high-waisted denim skirt, a blue crop top and slouchy faux-leather boots. There are 13 additional pieces included with the collection to allow girls to style her with a variety of unique looks. A two-book series written by Kellen Hertz brings Courtney's background to life. Readers learn that Courtney is an avid gamer who grew up in a blended family in Orange Valley, California. She loves to go to the arcade to play games such as PAC-MAN, and has a desire to create her own video game that attracts more girls to gaming. When given the chance to do so, she is inspired by women in leadership such as her mother to invent a bold, brave super hero. To continue the brand's mission to help build girls of strong character and confidence, American Girl is also partnering with Girls Who Code with efforts to influence female leadership within computer science and technology fields. From now through Dec. 31, the brand is matching customer donations, dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $50,000, to support the organizations programming and outreach to girls, including those from historically underrepresented groups. American Girl is also providing a $5,000 scholarship to four Girls Who Code members to help further their education in computer science or a related field. "Girls are constantly online, using apps, playing games and more, that's why it's so important that they also see themselves on the other side of those products, actually building them," said Reshma Saujani, CEO of Girls Who Code, in a statement. "It's our goal to show girls the power of learning this skill set so that they can code the future they want to live in and, ultimately, change the world." Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. SHANGHAI, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Shanghai ChemPartner announced today the appointment of Steven Yu, Ph.D. as Vice President of Regulated Bioanalysis at the company headquarters in Shanghai, China. Dr. Yu has more than 15 years of experience in drug development and extensive expertise in assay development and validation, biomarker development, immunogenicity assessment, biotransformation assessment, and clinical dose selection and trial design. Prior to joining ChemPartner, Dr. Yu spent most of his career in the US with global pharmaceutical companies including Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Shire, and Takeda. "DMPK and toxicology are critical components in drug discovery and development for meeting unmet medical needs. To better serve our clients, including biologics clients, we needed an experienced industry leader to expand our service offering within regulated bioanalysis. Dr. Yu's expertise, knowledge, and dedication make him a great fit to lead the team," said Dr. Lilly Xu, Senior Vice President of the DMPK and Toxicology department. Since the DMPK and Toxicology department's inception in 2007, it has been one of the most rapidly growing business units in the company. This growth is a testament to the high-quality performance and experienced leadership of the scientific team. "With the ample funding from global pharmaceutical companies and venture capital companies, there is an accelerated pace for drug testing and approval. The CRO industry is under transformation to play an even more important role in drug discovery and development. I am excited to join ChemPartner because of its reputation of reliability and the broad spectrum of service offerings. There is so much potential for growth and expansion to meet the needs of the industry. My experience with big pharma, combined with ChemPartner's focus on quality and innovation, will further the company's mission to serve our biopharmaceutical clients' needs as an extension of their own team," said Dr. Yu. ChemPartner's DMPK and Toxicology department consists of bioanalytical (small and large molecules, discovery, and regulated bioanalysis), in vitro ADME, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology groups. Working closely with ChemPartner's chemistry, biology and pharmacology, and biologics departments, the DMPK and toxicology team supports translational medicine with experience in formulation development, PK extrapolation, PK/PD correlation, and biomarker analysis including metabolomics. About ChemPartner Shanghai ChemPartner, which includes ChemPartner, ChemPartner Biologics, and China Gateway Pharmaceutical Development, offers a broad range of drug discovery, development, and manufacturing services including chemistry and biologics discovery, biology and pharmacology, DMPK and toxicology, and small molecule and biologics CMC development and manufacturing. Shanghai ChemPartner serves a diverse global client base and has laboratories, business offices, and representatives in the US, Europe, China, and Japan FOR MORE INFORMATION Livia Legg, MS, Chief Commercial Officer [email protected] SOURCE ChemPartner It was about a week before the chest X-ray. We were on rounds when the nurses called us to his room, yelling through the closed door. From outside the room I took in the bright red blood in the vent tubing and suction canister, oxygen saturation wavering. We moved quickly to stabilize him while one of the resident doctors called his family to come in. It would be the first time they had seen him in person in a month, as the rules at the time said that family members could only enter if a loved one might be dying. We met the son and his mother in the hallway to help them put on personal protective equipment. I spun the boy around like a surgeon in the operating room, tying the yellow gown tight behind his back. He had brought flowers to say thank you. His mother was quiet, holding a small prayer book that we helped her slip into a biohazard bag. The boy put his arm around her, a tender protective gesture. Together we all entered the room. I remember how I explained to them that the ulcers on my patients face were from lying on his chest, the tubes in his neck and groin were to remove his blood and run it through a lung bypass machine. The son nodded, as if this information made things better. His mother prayed, and I told them that we would do everything we could. After more than three months, my patient is finally home. He remembers nothing from the intensive care unit. When he first made it out of the hospital and to rehab, shocked to learn that April had turned to June and believing that he must have been in a catastrophic car accident, he had asked his wife about what happened. She told him it was better not to know too much, and he took those words to heart. Now, his scars are fading, but he struggles to sleep at night, awakened by vivid nightmares of his childhood. His son notes that he is more forgetful now. He takes inventory of the ways his body has changed. A patch of skin on his left thigh where he has lost sensation, an ache in his shoulders and chest, the tip of a finger blackened by lack of blood flow. At rehab the doctors told him it might have to be amputated, but with time it looks like it might be saved. There in the clinic room, as I listen to the air moving in and out of my patients remarkably clear lungs, I remember how the nurses turned his head toward Mecca and bathed his body in holy water that his family dropped off in the hospital lobby when they thought he might die. I remember how even from outside in the hallway we could hear the religious music playing from an iPad inside the room. No matter how many times I return to these moments, I still dont know what to make of it all. His is a tremendous outcome, one of our very best successes, a survival we did not expect and still cannot fully explain. A father is back with his family. He will feel the pride of seeing his son start college, even if remotely. But there is something bittersweet. His eyes are haunted, and he cant sleep, and I have no idea how or when he can return to his work. His son hears sirens passing by their home on the way to a nearby hospital, and it is as if it is all starting again. As much as I want to reassure them that things will be OK, I cant make that kind of promise. At the start of the pandemic, it was easy to see mortality as the only outcome that mattered. It is surely the simplest to measure. Nearly six months in, we still focus on coronavirus-related mortality as an indicator that things in this country are finally getting better. But it is increasingly clear that mortality is not the full story not for any of us. People want to be able to get back to their lives and to know what might be ahead. Yet there are still more questions than answers. We continue to learn about the long-term impacts of this virus. We dont know the strength and duration of immunity, or even which therapies actually work to improve outcomes. We dont know how many of those who survive severe Covid-19 return to work, to what extent lungs heal, how often patients are readmitted, the burden of psychiatric disease and the long-term consequence of isolation. We dont know why my patient was the only one in his family to grow so sick and why he got better. Chattra Abhibhavak Manch, a student-parent forum, on Thursday staged a protest outside the state legislative assembly here demanding a law to regulate fees, syllabus and content in private schools during the ongoing monsoon session. Forum convenor Vijendra Mehra said the state government is not taking any action against the private schools despite their arbitrariness and heavy loot. The education department had submitted a proposal for legislation to put curbs on private schools, but the state government is deliberately not taking up the matter in the assembly, Mehra alleged. The forum has also sought the formation of a state advisory council to stop the loot by private schools. Private schools are committing arbitrary loot in the name of selling books, uniforms and collecting funds, Mehra added. The forum has warned the state government of intensifying the movement if the school fee is not completely waived. Fugitive former Zanu PF members, Saviour Kasukuwere and his brothers Dickson Mafios and Tongai Kasukuwere are desperately seeking readmission into the ruling party, which will review their applications on a case-by-case basis. Zanu PF acting secretary for Information and Publicity Cde Patrick Chinamasa confirmed the development yesterday saying the expelled former party members sent a message seeking readmission, through the African National Congress party delegation which met senior Zanu PF members last week for bilateral engagement. Speaking after a Politburo meeting in Harare, Cde Chinamasa said the party was wary of expelled members who were still unrepentant. The procedure is that the application for readmission must be submitted to the province who will then make recommendations on whether the behaviour of the comrade warrants his or her readmission. It was agreed that the party will look at each application on a case-by-case basis.The procedure is that the application for readmission must be submitted to the province who will then make recommendations on whether the behaviour of the comrade warrants his or her readmission. We have been receiving applications for readmission from people whom we think are still unrepentant. There are some G-40 members who come and say they want to be readmitted, but go and work against the party. Ex-Cabinet ministers Kasukuwere and Walter Mzembi fled the country while on bail for various criminal offences, including abuse of office and corruption. They have been using social media to peddle falsehoods while painting a fictitious image of the country. Kasukuwere in particular, is reportedly conniving with the countrys adversaries who are also infiltrating Zimbabwe through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have strayed from their mandate to pursue political agendas. party. We do not allow such hypocrisy, said Cde Chinamasa who was flanked by the secretary for Legal Affairs Cde Paul Mangwana and secretary for Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Dr Mike Bimha. One such comrade is Saviour Kasukuwere and his brothers who in the dead of the night, are planning to undermine the Zanu PF Government and during day light they say they want to be readmitted to theparty. We do not allow such hypocrisy, said Cde Chinamasa who was flanked by the secretary for Legal Affairs Cde Paul Mangwana and secretary for Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Dr Mike Bimha. Turning to the Central Committee meeting scheduled tomorrow, Cde Chinamasa said only five members per province will be required to attend in line with Covid-19 regulations. He said the Politburo endorsed the Presidents call for the party membership to take an active role in participating in Government programmes of empowerment towards vision 2030. The Politburo also deliberated and endorsed the decision to adopt an electronic party card for the membership which must be easily accessible to cater for the Partys rapidly increasing membership, particularly among young people. The Secretary for External Affairs Dr Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, briefed the Politburo on the visit by the ANC delegation. It was noted that there was a common understanding following the unveiling of evidence that there was no crisis in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. Politburo agreed that the oppositions habit of creating drama and faking abductions as well as engaging in acts of provocation whenever there was an international event, should be ignored, he said. The Politburo hailed the frank discussions which were held between the sister revolutionary parties and encouraged them to continue strengthening relations. Cde Chinamasa also said the Zanu PF would have an e-gala featuring 30 artistes, at Harare International Conference Centre (HICC) tomorrow evening to commemorate the Independence, Heroes and Defence Forces days. The commemorations were affected by Covid-19 pandemic. The Politburo met amid jubilation and song as members joined congratulated the President and First Secretary of the party, Cde Mnangagwa who turned 78 on Tuesday. It was a strong statement of love, unity, and gratitude to the wise and visionary leadership of President Mnangagwa. COMMENT | Guan Eng had no power but still feared by the Malays "So, how come he is said to be the one with the power? He had no power." - Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad COMMENT | Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamads interview with Malaysiakini was a train wreck for Pakatan Harapan. At this point, I have no idea which base the old maverick is attempting to appeal to. Are the Malays supposed to be happy at the expense of Chinese dissatisfaction? The former prime ministers description of how he castrated the finance ministers role to ensure that the Malay base would not be spooked, is the kind of lesson in Malay uber alles politics that Harapan, or whatever is left of it, should pay attention to the next time it decides to hook up with a race-based party. One the one hand, we had a castrated finance minister who had to run everything through Mahathir and on the other, we are supposed to believe that the old maverick encouraged discourse, and I suppose, dissenting viewpoints in cabinet meetings. In other words, all these discussions meant bupkis and ultimately like the finance minister's portfolio, everyone was bending the knee to the old maverick. The former prime minister said: "We still have to give them, but what we gave to them was very small (compared to what the Malays got). But we could not say it then because then the Chinese would be angry. "That's why we didn't talk about that. But now we have to because I have to explain this thing." So, the Chinese community was getting scraps from the table and everyone knew it, but nobody could talk about it. Now because the old maverick has a new Malay-based party, he can let the cat out of the bag. So, Malays are supposed to take comfort in the fact that the DAP was basically eunuchs in the Mahathir-led administration. Who cares what the Chinese think now because conventional wisdom dictates that eventually, they will come around to the realisation that it will always be this way in mainstream Malay politics. Story continues All this is hilarious of course, because in 2012 while debating Chua Soi Lek, DAP secretary-general Lim claimed: We should not bow to fate and have the right to equality. We should not kneel and beg. We should be brave enough to stand and ask for it. Now, consider what Lim said in 2012. Does the behaviour of the DAP, in any way, shape or form, conform to the spirit or intent of that statement? Of course, it does not. Why? Because the DAP is learning fast that dealing with Malay power structures on a federal level, and a bureaucracy that is, in essence, an extension of a political party (Umno) is complex and requires stratagems and rhetoric that are in total opposition to the egalitarian ideas that the DAP tells its base is the foundation of a new Malaysia. If we are to believe the old maverick, and I see no reason not to, his description of how he controlled everything is exactly the way how he ran BN when he was in cahoots with the MCA. The way how Lim chose to give one-off payments to Malay-majority states even though everyone knew in the cabinet that the Chinese - and Indian - communities were getting scraps, should tell us everything we need to know of the kind of racial pandering that went on in the Harapan government. This is how the Malay establishment wants it. Read, Aminuddin Yahayas piece in Malaysiakini - MCA boleh jatuhkan kerajaan Melayu-Islam? What the author describes in his piece is what the Malay establishment wants from its non-Malay partners. What they want is subservience. Aminuddin is gleeful of the fact that the MCA only survived because Umno breathed life into it and bemoans the fact that even though the MCA relies on Malay-dominated polities, they continue insulting the Malay uber alles government with the interests of the community they represent. He even makes the point that the MCA, in order to get back Chinese support, mimics the DAP Pada PRU 14, MCA sebenarnya sudah mati tetapi diberi nafas kembali oleh Umno. Ini kerana lebih 90 peratus daripada masyarakat Cina sudah menyokong DAP melalui PH dan menolak MCA. MCA yang memang sudah sekian lama terdesak mahu memenangi kembali hati pengundi Cina, mereka sanggup berbuat apa sahaja termasuklah berperangai seperti DAP. That is the mainstream Malay political dilemma. You want your non-Malay allies to get the support of their communities, but you get spooked when they speak up on the issues that the community votes them in for. Aminuddin's piece is informative because it is devoid of the Bangsa Malaysia propaganda that Harapan peddled to its base before the election. Under the Harapan regime, we have seen the rise of Zakir Naik, the machinations of the Perlis mufti, the abandonment of secular and egalitarian policies of the manifesto, the LTTE fiasco where Harapan political operatives were arrested, the "Chinese" communist scare, and various other pro-Islamic initiatives carried out by the ever compassionate Mujahid Yusof Rawa on the Muslim polity. And yet, the DAP was on the receiving end of its partners, especially from Bersatu. All this happened while the base was told that it takes time to reverse all the wrong Umno had done over the decades. Of course, now we know that wrong is a malleable concept in politics. Mahathir says that the DAP accepted a policy drafted by Malay intellectuals which were slanted towards the Malays. Of course, this in itself is not such a bad idea. The majority of Malays, after decades of political, social, and religious manipulations, need help in ways that would make them competitive in this ever-changing geopolitical landscape. The problem here is that there is no evidence that the Harapan government, which included the best and brightest of multiracial DAP, were doing anything but playing the same game that non-Malay power brokers have been doing during the long Umno watch. The big question is if Harapan comes into power again, will it continue the tradition of castrating important portfolios if it is led by a non-Malay or will the non-Malay leading the portfolio internalise his or her servitude? S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he hopes young people will assume the mantle of leadership if there is to be any hope for this country. The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini. LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the third anniversary of Hurricane Maria striking the Commonwealth of Dominica. Overnight, with 160-mile-per-hour winds, Maria damaged and destroyed the roofs of an estimated 90 per cent of buildings, toppled power lines and some of the thickest, strongest, oldest trees in the country's lush forests. On the newest broadcast episode of Anou Palay, the leader recalled the devastation caused by the category five hurricane in 2017 and projected the rebuilding of Dominica as resilient. The Prime Minister stated that the government reacted promptly to manage the situation post-Maria, which caused significant damages to the farming and housing sector. He reiterated the government's commitment to constructing over five thousand climate-resilient homes along with repairing several others impacted by the hurricane. The funds for many of the build back better initiatives were provided by the World Bank and the island's Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme. "No country in this world, big or small, rich or poor, middle income, low-income, high income, no country in the world can deal with a national disaster at this stage," he said. "I believe everybody in the country, maybe except myself, felt that we would never be able to bounce back [] The rest of the world is in miracle of what we have been able to do by ourselves, for ourselves." The CBI Programme, which allows evaluated investors to gain Dominican citizenship in exchange for their contribution to the government fund or tourism real estate sector, has helped the Commonwealth rebuild roads, bridges, health centres and school. CBI's latest project is the construction of Marigot Hospital that will have world-class equipment to treat severe illnesses on the island instead of abroad. CBI is also supporting Dominica's climate resilience ethos by ensuring all construction, for public use or tourism, can withstand harsh weather. Alongside knowing their funds are used to better the lives of Dominica's citizens, the prestige of Dominican citizenship, in return, permits investors to access global mobility with visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to approximately 140 destinations across the planet. Economic citizens also gain enhanced business opportunities and the chance to pass Dominican citizenship down, establishing a future legacy. For the last four years, Dominica's CBI Programme has been recognised internationally as the world's best by the Financial Times' Professional Wealth Management magazine. [email protected] www.csglobalpartners.com SOURCE CS Global Partners Related Links https://csglobalpartners.com Ghanaian musician Nicholas Mensah popularly known as K2, who sang 'Juliana' which featured Buk Bak, has been reported dead. According to an Adomonline report, he died on Monday, August 24, 2020. A cousin of the deceased, who identified herself as Mariam, revealed that K2 was found lying unconscious in his room on the day of the incident after he asked to take a nap. He asked for us to buy porridge for him but went to his room to sleep and because we were used to him staying in his room for long hours, we didn't bother to wake him up. So around 12:00pm, we went to check but he was still asleep and again at 2:00pm, an aunty went back but found him lying on the floor of his room, she narrated. Mariam added K2 was rushed to a nearby clinic but was referred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), where he passed on around 12:00 midnight. She said the family was not aware K2 was battling any health condition. The doctor's autopsy later disclosed he died of ulcer. Though K2 never got married, he was survived by two kidsa boy aged 11 and a girl of five years. Meanwhile, he is set to be laid to rest on Saturday, September 19, 2020 at Breman, House No. 13 Blk E Nkontwima, near transformer in the Ashanti Region. New details emerged Wednesday night about the fatal shooting by police of a West Side man as Mayor Ron Nirenberg called for a re-examination of policies regarding the release of video from police officers body-worn cameras. He asked the City Council for the review as part of our efforts to improve transparency, accountability and public accessibility. Nirenberg said he would not push for the immediate release of video from the officers cameras in the shooting of Darrell Zemault Sr. because state law does not allow it. An active investigation that will be referred to the district attorney and ultimately to a grand jury is being conducted of the officer-involved shooting on Tuesday, he said. State law prevents the public release of the body camera footage during the investigation, but I am requesting that the footage be released as soon as the investigation is complete. It is in the public interest for San Antonians to be able to view the video themselves. Courtesy of the Zemault family. An investigation of an officer-involved shooting can takes months, if not years, meaning it could be some time before the police video is released. Still, the release of the footage would be unusual, as the police department does not routinely provide body camera video to the public without a specific open records request, even after an investigation is completed. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio police fatally shot a man wanted on two family violence warrants Nirenbergs announcement comes one day after police shot and killed Zemault, a 55-year-old Black man, while arresting him on two family violence warrants violation of a bond and assault causing bodily injury. According to police, Zemault was in the front yard of his bungalow on Willee Drive when three plainclothes detectives and two uniformed officers arrived about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. Police said the incident escalated as two officers tried to handcuff Zemault and he resisted. One officer used a baton to hit Zemault in the legs and thighs. Michael Fisher This is an excerpt from the police account, released Wednesday night: During the struggle, the holster containing the duty weapon belonging to one of the detectives fell onto the ground. As the officers struggled to take him into custody, the actor (Zemault) grabbed the officers holstered gun and drew the gun from the holster. One of the detectives saw this and an immediate struggle for the gun began. The actor (Zemault) had his finger on the trigger and was manipulating the gun in an attempt to point it at the officers. As the detective struggled to keep the gun from being pointed at him and the other officers, he called out to the other officers notifying them that the actor had a gun. One of the other detectives saw what was happening and fearing that the actor was going to fire the weapon at the other detective, fired one round into the actors back. Police officials have not released the names of the officers. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio mayor calls for release of body camera video as questions mount in arrest of Black jogger During a vigil Wednesday night, Zemaults family questioned key aspects of what police said happened. Zemaults daughter, Susie, told the crowd that her father was walking inside to call his lawyer when police shot him in the back, according to a neighbor who saw the interaction. Celeste Brown, an organizer with Defund Police SA and a friend of Zemaults family, said Zemaults security cameras were unplugged when the family was allowed to enter the home, hours after the shooting. She called for Nirenberg to release body-camera footage from the incident to clear up any confusion. Nirenbergs approach in waiting for the release of the body camera footage stands in contrast to his decision last month to push for the immediate release of video showing a Black jogger being wrestled into a police car by two officers. At the time, prosecutors were still investigating the incident. Charges against Mathias Ometu, 33, werent dropped until four days later, on Sept. 1. Bruce Davidson, a spokesman for the mayor, said Nirenbergs approach differed because Ometus arrest did not involve the use of deadly force by an officer. Moreover, there was no pending Internal Affairs or criminal investigation into the officers actions in the Ometu case. There is in Zemaults case, as is standard after an officer-involved shooting. During the daily briefing about the coronavirus pandemic when Nirenberg was asked about his call for a policy review about police videos, he said, I err on the side of disclosure. I think sunlight helps us to get through these issues with better clarity, but we have to navigate statute and we also have to be respectful of the investigation process. Brown, who called Zemault a second father, told the City Council earlier Wednesday that Zemault didnt have to die. She also spoke at the candlelight vigil for Zemault, where more than 100 people gathered outside his home. Zemault was a good man, whom everyone called Dad, she said. Showing solidarity with the Zemault, Antronie Scott Jr., whose father was shot by a police officer, led the group in chants of No justice, no peace; no racist police; whose streets, our streets; show me what community looks like; this is what community looks like. Susie Zemault told the crowd that her father was not perfect but was turning his life around. He made mistakes, he had a record, but he overcame it, she said through tears. He told me it was going to be better. Family violence accusations One of the warrants officers were serving Tuesday stem from an incident on July 3, after Zemaults ex-girlfriend told police that he drove to her home and accused her of cheating on him. Billy Calzada /Staff photographer The woman told police that Zemault pulled her out of her car and said he was going to kill her. She said he began to drag her to his car, took her purse and left. She said they had split up nearly nine months earlier, in October 2019. Since then, she told officers, she had called police on him multiple times, accusing him of a terroristic threat in February, burglary of a vehicle and harassment in April and theft in late June. No criminal charges were filed in those four cases, court records show. On July 4, a judge signed two warrants for Zemaults arrest: for stalking, a felony, and assault bodily injury, a misdemeanor. Police were executing the warrants about 5:20 p.m. that day when Zemault allegedly attacked two San Antonio police officers. Police officials did not respond Wednesday to a request for information about that incident. Zemault was transferred downtown that evening and police booked him on the two warrants. They also filed a criminal complaint alleging that he assaulted the two officers. All four cases were under review by the Bexar County District Attorneys Office at the time of Zemaults death. He had not yet been indicted or criminally charged. Zemault spent a month in jail while awaiting trial before he was released on bail in early August. As a condition of his bond, Zemault was placed under partial house arrest and was required to wear a GPS tracker, court records show. He was not allowed to contact his ex-girlfriend, and he couldnt possess any firearms. However, it appears as if Zemault contacted the woman on Facebook at least three times since he was released in August. If he did so, it would have been a violation of the judges order not to contact the woman. My girlfriend, he wrote two weeks ago, on a post that was nearly a year old. Yo you better pick up your phone, he wrote on another post. So beautiful, he wrote, moments later. Asked if the family had spoken to the woman who filed domestic violence complaints against Zemault, Brown said: Absolutely not. We have nothing to say to her. Community gathers On Wednesday morning, several members of Defund Police SA used a weed whacker and sponges to tidy Zemaults lawn and porch before his family returned to the house on Willee, near Loma Park Elementary School. The activists and others washed blood from the sidewalk and moved some cabinets Zemault had been refinishing before police arrived Tuesday. Neighbors left candles on the steps of Zemaults walkway and the family placed a portrait of him and his late wife, Susie, on the front porch. Camille Wright, one of the activists, said the group turned out in solidarity for Zemaults family. Zemault had three daughters, one son and several grandchildren, friends said. Something as simple as flowers and a candle, its super powerful, Wright said. I think were seeing what community care looks like, Brown said. The last thing the family needs to be worried about right now is cleaning up their fathers spilled blood. Staff writer Marina Starleaf Riker contributed to this story. Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Emilie, become a subscriber. eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton The last two weeks have been quite eventful for US President Donald Trump. For one, he was nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes (Peak 2020, right?). On the other hand, this week Trump has found himself on the receiving end of criticism and disdain following a series of unscientific and false claims - on wildfires, on elections, on coronavirus and on climate change. Again and again, Trump has proved that he has no idea how science works. Remember when he recommended drinking disinfectant to keep the novel coronavirus at bay? Now heres the thing - when the president of the United States makes such false claims on a public platform, with over a billion people listening to him, the repercussions can be serious. For instance, in the initial phases of the pandemic, Trump had seriously downplayed the importance of masks. Following his footsteps, millions of Trump supporters stormed the streets in anti-mask rallies - with no social distancing or coronavirus measures in place. Let us remind you that out of 29 million cases worldwide, over 6 million have been reported in the US. But this week, the POTUS seems to have outdone himself. Herd mentality On Tuesday, Trump said during the ABC town hall held recently that coronavirus could be defeated through a herd mentality." He meant herd immunity. For those unaware, this is what herd immunity means. When the pandemic first struck, no one in the world was immune to it, which is what further escalated the rate of transmission of the virus. But herd immunity, or a collective immunity or herd protection, can be achieved when a majority of the population has been exposed to the disease. This can also help protect those who havent been infected. According to the John Hopkins website, when 80% of the population has been infected, four out of five people will not get infected even if they are exposed to the virus. This also means they wont be transmitting it which can in turn help keep the rate of contagion under control. Herd immunity, however, has nothing to do with herd mentality. Coronavirus will go away without a vaccine At the same event, Trump also said that the coronavirus will just go away" without a vaccine. He also said that it will go away a lot faster because the US is just three or four weeks away from developing a vaccine. Were very close to having a vaccine. Were within weeks of getting it you know could be three weeks, four weeks," he said. Experts including top US government infectious diseases doctor Anthony Fauci say vaccine approval is more likely toward the end of the year. In fact, Dr. Fauci also reportedly said that a return to normalcy, that of a pre-pandemic era, could not be expected before the end of 2021 or even 2022. Trumps statements, on how an infectious disease can just disappear, is unscientific and untrue. It is also in direct contradiction with what the World Health Organisation had said - that the coronavirus might not ever go away, with or without a vaccine. In fact, WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan had warned against trying to predict when the pandemic will end. It will get cooler" Trump also seems to think that climate change can just reverse itself. Human activity, over generations, have resulted in irreparable damage to the environment and global warming. But the POTUS apparently believes that it will get cooler." He suggested global warming will reverse itself and dismissed climate change as a cause of ferocious fires engulfing swaths of the US West during a briefing with local officials in California. Trump, who flew into Sacramento in central California on the third day of a reelection campaign swing, pushed back against state leaders who said that climate change underlies the ever-stronger blazes. It will start getting cooler. You just watch," he insisted. When an official countered him and said, I wish science agreed with you," Trump retorted, "I dont think science knows, actually." Yet, reputable scientists around the world are almost unanimous in their belief that the world is getting warmer because of human activity. But science, as Trump has shown over and over again, is not his strong suit. Trees just explode" In a new, false and unscientific claim, he said that trees just explode, on why the US wildfires which are raging on unabated, actually started. Trump repeated his argument that wildfires are caused by poor maintenance of forest areas, making them more combustible. There has to be strong forest management," he said. With regard to the forests, when trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry. They become really like a match stick," he added. They just explode." READ: Donald Trump Thinks the US Wildfires Started Because Trees Just Explode READ: Trump Believes Virus Could Go Away Itself But Assures Vaccine in a Month for Faster Results No, trees do not just explode. According to scientists, climate change plays a huge role in triggering forest fires. Even California Governor Gavin Newsom had stated that the real battle is with climate change and the forest fires just point at a harsher reality - of global warming. Infernos across California, Oregon and Washington state have burned more than five million acres (two million hectares) this year, killed dozens of people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Whole towns have been ruined by the blazes, which have pumped out tonnes of noxious fumes that have hung in the air for days, blocking out the sun and making breathing difficult. This man-made climate change amplifies droughts, which dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to spread out-of-control and inflict unprecedented damage. When the President speaks, people tend to listen. And when they listen, they tend to get influenced. Therefore, when Trump goes up on stage and asserts that climate change isnt real or worrying or that it can be reversed, it could undo years of work by climate change activists to get the world to come around to what is happening around us. When Trump downplays the importance of masks, or says that the virus could go away without a mask, it fuels pandemic deniers who have vehemently been protesting against Covid-19 safety measures. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) There is a need to increase industry competition to enhance internet availability nationwide, according to an information and communications technology (ICT) policy researcher. However, the prerequisite of obtaining a congressional franchise in order to operate a broadband network hinders the entry of more players in the market, said Mary Grace Mirandilla-Santos, who is also a member of the Better Broadband Alliance (BBA), in an interview with CNN Philippines on Thursday. Santos explained that the long and complicated process of securing such a franchise discourages investors and smaller industry players from offering possibly better internet services, especially in areas that are hardly reached by major telecommunications companies. "Halimbawa, sa isang probinsya niya lang gusto mag-offer ng internet, napakalaking barrier nito sa kanyang decision para makapasok sa broadband market," Santos explained. [Translation: For instance, if a company wants to offer internet in only one province, the congressional franchise requirement becomes a huge barrier to its decision to enter the broadband market.] Santos said the BBA believes that a simple registration and qualification process will be enough, as she noted that the Philippines is the only nation worldwide that requires a broadband network to acquire Congress' approval for a license. "Hindi naman natin pwedeng asahan na 'yung mga malalaking network operators na, for example, 110 million na population kaya nilang punan ang pangangailangan," Santos stressed. [Translation: We cannot expect the major network operators, for example, to address the needs of 110 million people.] She further explained that other potential service providers utilize alternative technologies that would better suit different areas, including island-municipalities, and mountain and coastal villages. Earlier, Secretary Gringo Honasan of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) remarked that the country's internet speed is "not that bad." However, Santos said that while the DICT has been actively trying to reform ICT policies to pave way for better internet service, there is still "a lot of room for improvement." Anyone got some spare change? The headpiece Biggie wore in his iconic final photoshoot from 1997 -- that's been duplicated in prints thousands of times over -- just got sold off in a Sotheby's auction ... ultimately going to a bidder who was willing to spend $889,490NZD for the thing. Pretty badass, right?!? Well, maybe ... keep in mind, the crown is actually made of plastic -- and ended up costing a mere $6 off the street. This crown is a novelty item; I bought it at a place on Broadway called Gordons, Claiborne told the New York Post. Without Biggie, the crown would not be worth [six figures]. I only paid six bucks for it. Sothebys noted of the item, the famed image of B.I.G. almost didnt happen, as Bad Boy Records head Sean Puff Daddy Combs complained that the cheap crown would make Biggie look like the Burger King. Biggie was open to the idea, resulting in one of the most recognizable images in hip-hop culture and one of the most famous hip-hop portraits ever taken, Sothebys said. Also sold at the auction were handwritten love letters by tupac to a fellow student which sold for $75,000usd! American Draft, 34 Choo Choo Ave., previously a pour-it-yourself bar, closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Brandon Anthony and his wife Laura, who also own the Chattanooga Jewelry Company at the Choo Choo, decided to take on the venture. The application for a new beer license for the business came before the Chattanooga Beer Board Thursday morning. In light of the pandemic, Mr. Anthony told the board that the business will be changed to a very traditional style bar, however, the pour-it-yourself system will be kept in case things change in the future. The Anthonys hope to open the bar by the end of October and plan on having a soft opening for the remainder of the year. Plans are to start with it being open three days a week. Before the permit to sell beer was approved, a warning was given that because the location is in a high tourist area, a lot of out of state IDs will be seen, and that diligence will be needed to make sure customers are the legal age to drink alcohol. Board and Brush, at 6011 Chesterton Way, Suite 111 at Cambridge Square in Ooltewah, is a Do-it-Yourself workshop where people can join friends to craft custom wood signs that can be used in home decor. It has been open for two years and before now has been a BYOB business. The capacity is 24 and there are four employees who will be trained in beer sales. Chairman of the Board Dan Mayfield commented that alcohol and power tools might not be a good mix. The good thing," said the applicant, James Odum, is that "we pre-build everything. When a 19-year-old former McDonald's worker fronted up to by her own home, real estate agents and bank managers thought she was 'crazy'. But Madison Pickering has proven them all wrong and is now the proud owner of a new home under construction in Logan's Pebble Creek Estate, 50km south of Brisbane. Despite her impressive achievement, she says many people still don't believe her. Scroll down for video Madison Pickering (pictured), a 19-year-old former McDonald's worker, has scrapped together a deposit to build her own home She is now the proud owner of a new home under construction in Logan's Pebble Creek Estate, 50km south of Brisbane 'Everyone I've spoken to is like, "how did you do that? Oh, your parents must have given you this money", she told Channel Nine's A Current Affair program. 'No, my parents haven't given me a cent. This is everything I've worked for myself. I've done all of this hard work on my own.' Miss Pickering's dream of becoming a homeowner began when she was just 11 years old. She saved what little pocket money she could, and as soon as she turned 14 and was legally able to work, the youngster started a job at McDonald's. She was so committed to buying a home that even after finishing high school a year early and being accepted into university, she decided to take a full-time job as an online media manager instead to bring in extra cash. Her proud mother Raelene said when Madison turned 18 she became very serious about trying to get a home loan. But her first attempt to get finance approval was refused. So the determined youngster kept saving and tried again. On the second try, she was offered a loan for a $300,000 house and land package. Madison managed to save up a $30,000 but was able to take advantage of some generous government schemes designed to entice first-home buyers. She was eligible for Queensland's $15,000 first homeowners grant, as well as the federal government's $25,000 building incentive brought in to boost the construction sector during the COVID-19 crisis. 'I had enough for a deposit, and that's all that matters. And I think younger people who are watching and wanting to do what I've done need to understand, you don't need to have the final price. You just need to have really good deposit,' Madison said. Every week Madison and her mother go to the construction site every week to take progress photos that she plans to make into a time-lapse display when the house is finally finished. Pebble Creek Estate Sales Manager Matthew Spencer said Madison's achievement is pretty 'crazy' when you consider her young age. But he added that his team is very excited about her amazing and inspiring story. Madison hopes the property will be the first of many. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal Albuquerque first responders will soon see some changes to their radio equipment. Albuquerque Fire Rescue, Albuquerque Police Department, New Mexico State Police and other emergency departments will receive a $38 million upgrade to their communication equipment, allowing responders from multiple agencies to communicate with each other more easily. The last upgrade to first responders radios happened more than 15 years ago, and radio dead spots across the city and other issues have plagued the system. We are on older, antiquated radio systems and were unable to talk to the rest of the state, which have already been updating their radio systems, Mayor Tim Keller told a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Keller said many of the radios are in such poor condition that they must be taped to keep the batteries from falling out. Keller referenced the 2018 shooting at the Ben E. Keith warehouse where three people were shot and a chase for Waid Anthony Melton spanned multiple police jurisdictions in Bernalillo County and Sandoval County before Melton killed himself. Our departments were all communicating and a credit to them for communicating across jurisdictions with Sandoval County officials, but it was incredibly burdensome, Keller said. In 2019, state lawmakers came up with appropriations to upgrade the current communication system. The new system is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Thousands of radios will have to be purchased and installed with the departments software. Thats how you get up to such an expensive system. For us, I think it will save lives across central New Mexico, Keller said. The new communication systems will be a step up from their old counterparts, often refurbished with replacement parts from eBay, said AFR spokesman Lt. Tom Ruiz. A new radio system will take advantage of all the technologies that have come about in the past 20 years, Ruiz said. The new Motorola radio systems will use location services to show the position of every unit. The radios will also have Wi-Fi capabilities and will be able to connect to other Wi-Fi networks such as those used at the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque Public Schools campuses. The radio system will also have a texting feature. If there is an incident where we need to be private or not have radio transmissions, the dispatch center can then text the officer, Ruiz said. The amped-up efforts by Facebook and Twitter to tone down blatant misinformation on the campaign trail merits public support. Personally, I find myself trying with limited success to tune out the political noise while sensing that the problem goes beyond that. The rhetoric of politics overall sounds tired and anachronistic, but then, to my ear, so does much of the dialogue on the popular streamers we binge on. Further, check out the virtual learning classes that now pass for education and you run into even lazier forms of communication. We all decided the earth was flat even before the new Netflix documentary, titled Social Dilemma, pointed up the random anti-truths directed our way. So while misinformation is being challenged by the social media monoliths, my techno-nerd friends remind me that the demise of honest communication demands a more drastic approach. Their solution? Get ready to groan remember, theyre nerds. Their solution is to alert us to the expanding tools of neuro-symbiotic AI artificial intelligence. For most of us, AI conjures an old Steven Spielberg movie in which a robotic Haley Joel Osment keeps flunking the tests of his cybertronics instructors. Little wonder the poor kid kept saying I see dead people (oops, different movie). But a San Francisco-based software company called Open AI last month unveiled a system that could write coherent essays, design software applications and even propose recipes for breakfast burritos that is, if fed the appropriate maze of symbols. Its called deep learning but it could even lead to deep communicating. Mike Davies, director of Intel Corps neuromorphic computing lab, contends that neuro-symbolic AI can potentially deliver our own voice assistants adjusted to user needs, analyzing problems or even, some day, writing film scripts or political speeches. These systems are still nascent but you could imagine that as the technology progresses, entirely new fields could emerge in terms of advertising or media, Francesco Marconi, founder of Applied XI, told the Wall Street Journal. His company generates briefs on health and environmental data. They will become effective at assisting people because theyll be able to understand and communicate. Story continues The ultimate aim is to build support for a sort of Manhattan Project, akin to the body that fostered the atom bomb. Spending on this technology could grow to $3.2 billion by 2023, according to IDC, a research firm, that looks for future support coming from health care, banking and retail. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Facebook, insists we are in sight of creating a machine that can learn how the world works by watching video, listening to audio and reading text. Given the critical results of its own self-audits, Facebook is under growing pressure to police hate speech, with AI-based censors potentially mobilized to crack down on targeted content. Thus extremists who argue that conservationists triggered the fires in Oregon could no longer aim their social media propaganda directly at any user who happens to check on fires or conservation. But advances must come from sources even more esoteric then AI, some scientists insist. In a new book titled Livewired, David Eagleman, a practicing futurist, argues that the increasingly important field of brain science itself will nurture development of artificial neural networks. As these networks proliferate, they will be embellished by machines that themselves can learn, and adjust to new surroundings, such as self-driving cars or power grids distributing electricity. Argues Eagleman, The capacity to grow new neural circuits isnt just a response to trauma its with all of us every day and it forms the basis of all learning. So heres the epiphany: Given the heightened sophistication of our neuro circuitry, political candidates may actually have to talk honestly to us. And there is nothing more intimidating to a political candidate than an intelligent audience even if its artificially intelligent. More from Deadline Best of Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa insists the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) intends to make Okada safer by legalising and regulating its operations if it is voted into power in December 7. It is important that we legalise it to make it safer and regulate it. There is a huge business out there, and if we do it well, which we are committed to, it will thrive. The NDC has an entire blueprint on it, he said on Eyewitness News. Mr Ablakwa said this in response to a comment made by Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia who insisted that the okada business is risky and that the Akufo-Addo government has no plans of legalising it. You don't want to finish graduate school and then make a life from okada riding. You can have a better option, and we will give you a better option. So yes, we will not legalize the okada business in Ghana. It may be a tough decision but it is in the interest of Ghanaians. We are having discussions, but we will stick to our decision to provide a better alternative for the okada riders. Lets give them an opportunity to buy safer vehicles through lease and pay over time. It is a better option than what the alternative is, Dr. Bawumia said. The North Tongu MP insisted that the Akufo-Addo government is out of touch with reality and has failed to realise the potential of the okada business. Clearly the government has lost touch with the people. There are many parts of this country where the year of roads has been such a hoax that only okada can take you to places. We are saying that in every society and country, there are different means of transportation. For instance, if you are in a traffic jam, okada will get you to your destination faster. There is the other reality about the essential services that okada provides, from the courier services which is legal. Section 128 (1) of the Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 (Legislative Instrument 2180), states: The licencing authority shall not register a motorcycle to carry a fare-paying passenger. But flagbearer for the NDC, John Mahama, has promised to legalise okada should he be re-elected. The promise has invoked an unending debate in Ghana. Mr. Ablakwa on Eyewitness News further accused the Akufo-Addo government of not being consistent in its stance on the okada issue. Confused government with different positions, depending on who is called upon. I have heard top government officials such as Yofi Grant recently say that the government had plans to legalise the okada business even before we read our manifesto. So why the U-turn? ---citinewsroom Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment This week, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain became only the third and fourth Arab countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. President Trump called the agreement the dawn of a new Middle East. I watched with great gratitude the signing ceremony televised from the White House. Its significance led me to shift the subject I intended to address today to tomorrows article so I could address this historic event. After traveling to the Middle East more than thirty times over recent decades, I can attest personally to the long-term desire of many in the region to establish peace with their neighbors. The leaders who signed this agreement are to be commended for acting with vision and courage on behalf of their people. The pact is appropriately titled the Abraham Accords, since all three Abrahamic faiths were represented: President Trump as a Christian, Benjamin Netanyahu as a Jew, and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed of the UAE and Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani of Bahrain as Muslims. One television commentator called the event a watershed moment and a vaccine against war in the Middle East. Lets ask two pertinent questions. Why now? As I noted in a previous Daily Article, Arab nations are predominantly composed of Sunni Muslims. Iran (the ancient Persian Empire) is primarily Shiite Muslim. Sunnis and Shiites have often been in conflict over the generations. Iran is seeking to reestablish its global empire and is supporting the Syrian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This aspiration directly endangers Arab nations who see Israel as a military and political partner in response to the Persian threat. These nations also recognize that closer relations with Israel will strengthen their relations with the US. They need military technology such as Israels Iron Dome missile defense system and Americas F-35 stealth fighters. Unsurprisingly, the agreements prompted protest rallies in the Palestinian territories. Militants in Gaza fired rockets overnight, wounding at least two people in the southern port city of Ashdod; Israeli fighter jets responded with air strikes on military targets belonging to Hamas. The Abraham Accords mark a significant departure from the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API). Its conditions for peace require the Jewish state to withdraw completely from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, to develop a just settlement with Palestinian refugees, and to establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Yesterdays accord between Israel and the UAE requires Israel to suspend annexation of parts of the West Bank but does not require the other conditions stipulated by the API. It is noteworthy that the Arab League failed to pass a resolution backed by the Palestinians that would have condemned the Israel-UAE pact. The agreement also marks a generational shift as younger leaders seek a better future for themselves and their region. And there are economic factors at work as well. Both nations look forward to trading openly with Israel, which has one of the worlds most advanced high-tech sectors. Israelis are also likely to frequent resorts in their countries when the pandemic ends. What comes next? The Abraham Accords open the door for other Arab countries in the region to sign accords normalizing relations with Israel. The country of Oman has commended the agreement, signaling that they may be next in line to normalize relations with Israel. President Trump stated that five or six other countries are in negotiations to join the peace process. While a similar relationship with Saudi Arabia would be monumental, it does not appear imminent. However, it seems likely that the UAE and Bahrain would not have taken yesterdays step without the Saudis implicit support. Saudi Arabia has also opened its airspace to Israeli flights to the UAE. The agreement pressures Iran and could encourage Lebanon to marginalize Hezbollah, which is pledged to Israels destruction. The entire region changes with this signing, hopefully opening the door for increased trade, normalized relations, and peace across the entire region. Hurricane Sally and the sovereignty of God As the world focused on the Abraham Accords, Hurricane Sally was bringing floods to the Gulf Coast. The storm strengthened to a Category Two hurricane before making landfall this morning. It is expected to produce prolonged impacts from flooding rainfall, storm surge, and strong winds. The hurricane reminds us that humans can make history, but we do not control it. A year ago, no one imagined that a COVID-19 pandemic would encircle the globe. All our scientific technology could not stop Hurricane Sally from flooding the Gulf region. Those who signed the Abraham Accords cannot control how other nations respond to it or guarantee the peace it promises. Our Father is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15, my emphasis). His word states, Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand (Proverbs 19:21). The accords call us to redouble our commitment to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6) and to strive for peace with everyone (Hebrews 12:14). Hurricane Sally calls us to redouble our intercession for those in the path of disaster, disease, and suffering where we live and around the world (cf. James 5:1316). The challenges you face today call you to say with the psalmist, The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts (Psalm 28:7). David Nicholas observed, Gods promises are like the stars; the darker the night, the brighter they shine. Which star will you claim today? Originally posted at denisonforum.org Michal Kwiatkowski won stage 18 of the Tour de France on Thursday as his win gave Britain's Team Ineos something to smile about after a series of misfortunes scuppered their attemps for a sixth straight overall victory. Here AFP Sport looks at five facts on the Polish all-rounder who has often operated in the shadow of the men he has helped to their title. World champion Kwiatkowski first shot to attention winning 2014's world road race title in Spain by distancing Australia's Simon Gerrans and local talent Alejandro Valverde. Junior time trial champion He had previously also won junior world titles in the time-trial category with wins in both 2007 and 2008 before developing into the Grand Tour stalwart he is today. One-day success Before his time at Sky and then Ineos Kwiatkowski was based in Belgium with one-day specialists Quick-Step. He has six one-day classic wins to his name including three in 2017 when he won the Amstel Gold, the Strade Bianchi and the Milan-San Remo, where he edged Peter Sagan and Julian Alaphilippe in a three-way cat-and-mouse finale. Tour de France veteran Having turned 30 in June the recently married Kwiatkowski has raced the Tour on six occasions, and has been an ever present on the Grande Boucle since joining Dave Brailsford's outfit in 2016. Recovery A key mountain 'domestique' in Egan Bernal's 2019 Tour de France triumph Kwiatkowski told AFP he was on his knees afterwards, cancelling much of his late season programme. On Thursday he said at the finish line he had "the best legs ever" as he claimed his first Tour stage win. dmc A socialite jailed for fraud in tearful scenes was brought undone by the most simple of checks after repeatedly emailing police excuses why she couldn't see them. Annabel Walker, 32, was locked up for 12 months without parole by a Sydney court last week, after pleading guilty to dishonesty and fraud charges worth $26,000. Walker was already facing serious allegations when she tried her luck to avoid reporting to the police station for bail, court documents released this week said. The former student at the elite Frensham boarding school flicked officers an email from her Hotmail account on June 22, a police fact sheet said. Walker attached a document purportedly from the South Coast Private Hospital which claimed she had been admitted as a patient and therefore couldn't come in. It was the beginning of a spate of medical lies from Walker, court documents said. Annabel Walker, 32, has been jailed for at least 12 months over what a magistrate called a 'shocking' spree of fraud related crimes. Court documents released this week shed light on how police caught her lying about being in hospital Locked up: Walker, left and right, won't be eligible for parole until next September. She grew up in the Southern Highlands before moving to Sydney's glitzy eastern suburbs Just seven days later, Walker sent police another email, with more hospital paperwork, claiming once again she couldn't report for bail due to medical reasons. The paperwork said she had been admitted to hospital as part of the 'Managing Distress' program run by psychiatrist Dr Puru Sagar. It meant she couldn't meet officers for the entire final week of June or the second week of July. Her claims raised police suspicions - given officers were well acquainted with her history of fraud - and it didn't take much for them to unpick her web of lies. Court facts said police spoke to a hospital employee on July 14, who confirmed Walker actually hadn't been an inpatient there since 2018. And while the doctor Walker had name-checked had indeed once been employed at the hospital, he actually hadn't been on staff there for a couple of years. To make matters worse, that same evening Walker made the foolish decision to try her luck with the hospital excuse for a third time, court documents said. Very skeptical police received a document claiming she had once again been re-admitted to hospital and couldn't attend the Southern Highlands police station. Walker claimed she was repeatedly being admitted to the South Coast Private Hospital... But police claimed the documents she was using were faked and she should have been here - at the Southern Highlands Police Station - reporting for bail Socialite Annabel Walker's email lies to the NSW Police Force A statement of police facts detailed the Southern Highlands socialite's emails to police about why she could not report for bail at the police station. The court document said Walker sent NSW Police sent messages from her Hotmail account on the following dates: 'On 22 June 2020, the accused sent police an email from email address belle*******@hotmail.com with an attached document allegedly created by Cassie M from South Coast Private Hospital. 'The document related to the admission of the accused to South Coast Private Hospital for a number of dates from May 2020 to June 2020. The accused had spoken to police stating this is why she was unable to report for bail for the above conditions.' On 29 June 2020, Walker is also accused of sending police a document from the same email address, which was also allegedly created by Cassie M. 'The document related to the admission of the accused into South Coast Private Hospital for the Managing Distress program under Dr Puru Sagar from 23 June 2020 to 30 June 2020 and a further scheduled admission from July 7 to 14 July,' court facts said. Police spoke to an employee of the hospital on July 14 who said Walker had not been an inpatient at the hospital since 2018. Dr Sagar had likewise not worked there since that year, the paperwork said. At 9.33pm on 14 July police received a final email from Walker. 'The accused stated she was readmitted to South Coast Private Hospital and would be unable to report to Southern Highlands Police Station.' She forwarded an email from the hospital penned by an administration clerk named 'Dani' who provided information regarding an extended stay. Police later confirmed the people named as creating the documents had not done so and charged her with fraud. Advertisement Police swooped, charging Walker with using false documents to influence the exercise of a public duty. In a police interview, the socialite admitted sending the documents but insisted she had, in fact, been a patient at the hospital in 2020. Officers hammered her 'blatant disregard for bail conditions' in a fact sheet handed to a magistrate last week. Walker - whose lawyer recused himself - admitted the hospital documents were fake before she was sentenced to a slew of charges last week. 'These document offences under the Crimes Act are at the highest end of offending as it strikes at the heart of the administration of bail, which is a flagrant disregard for your obligations of honesty,' Magistrate Susan McIntyre said on sentencing. She admitted to taking $26,000 in hotel stays (pictured is the lavish Rae's on Wategos resort at Byron Bay where she stayed), products or services without every paying for them The court heard the fraud charges Walker admitted involved her wrongfully obtaining a total of $17,981 from her former employer, the Australian Leisure Group, plus about $9,000 owing to others. Walker stayed at the lavish Rae's on Wategos resort in Byron Bay and buy products from a Harvey Norman store, but paid for neither, and had sent fake rental paymeny receipts to her Southern Highlands landlord for several weeks. Relatives cried as she told them 'I love you' and 'I deserve this' last Wednesday and was placed in handcuffs. Walker was handed a total sentence of 12 months' imprisonment and will be eligible for parole on September 8, 2021. The stimulus stalemate has turned into a high-stakes political battle in an election year. But if Democrats and Republicans are able to come to a compromise, Americans could receive more money as soon as October. The crux of the disagreement comes down to how much and what kind of aid to provide. However, the November election could ultimately lead politicians on both sides of the aisle to decide whether or not to budge. "We're in a place where a lot of it is going to depend on the polls right now," said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. More from Personal Finance: At least 20 states start paying extra $300 weekly unemployment benefit The CDC banned evictions, but some renters are still vulnerable Still haven't filed your 2019 tax return? Penalties are about to get steeper President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that Democrats do not want to give Americans more stimulus payments. While both sides of the aisle back a second round of stimulus checks, the Democrats' proposal has been more generous. The HEROES Act, which was passed by the House in May, called for payments that would increase the amount dependents receive to $1,200, for a family maximum of $6,000. "Maybe what you heard a little bit from Trump yesterday was a little bit of a primal scream," Gleckman said, as the president works to convince the American public that he is successfully handling Covid-19 pandemic and economic response. "The question is will he be willing to do something he has rarely done, perhaps never done, in his administration, which is really take the lead on something and stand up and say, 'This is my legislative priority,'" Gleckman said. The shortage of coronavirus test slots hitting outbreak hotspots across the UK is expected to last for weeks, the health secretary has admitted. Matt Hancock was responding to an urgent question in parliament on Tuesday, amid reports people are being told to travel to the other side of the country to get checked, or that no test is available at all. When Jeremy Hunt, the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, asked whether the secretary of state was still confident that the problem could be solved next week, Mr Hancock replied: I think we will be able to solve this problem in a matter of weeks we are managing to deliver record capacity, but as he well knows demand is also high. Mr Hancock suggested that rationing might need to be reintroduced, telling MPs that the testing programme was having to prioritise once again. His admission of a problem came as health leaders warned the test shortages were affecting the NHS with frontline staff forced to stay away from work because they couldnt get tested. There were also reports of patients facing delays because they could not get access to the testing needed before treatment. The Independent has received a number of examples from nurses and doctors who have been told to self-isolate at home. In one case a doctor was told the nearest slot available for a test was more than 200 miles away. Layla McCay, a director at the NHS Confederation (which represents 500 healthcare organisations), said: We are significantly concerned that some people with symptoms of Covid-19, including healthcare workers and their families, are having difficulty in accessing tests due to insufficient laboratory capacity. We need to see concrete evidence that the promised further increases in testing capacity and faster testing are achievable, and we also need immediate action to prioritise testing for key workers. In the Commons, MP after MP complained that people in their local area had been unable to get tested. Sarah Owen, MP for Luton North, said: "We've heard case after case of failure when it comes to testing. "I've heard from parents, teachers, a vicar in Luton North all saying there are no walk-in tests, no drive-through tests, and no home kits available when they need it. The secretary of state talks about capacity but what we need to see is access to testing. Capacity is nothing without access to testing." Mr Hancock claimed that the vast majority of people do get tested. The backlog is thought to have been caused by a shortage of laboratory processing capacity for tests, which authorities say has created a critical pinch-point in the system. The failure has seen tests sent abroad to be processed, despite claims from the government that its system would be world-beating". In mid-August, Mr Hancock promised mass testing, population-wide testing would come to the UK, but offered no timeframe. Despite previously encouraging more people to get tested and blaming the public for not coming forward, the government has now switched to warning people not to get a test unless they have a good reason. Mr Hancock said last week the recent increase in demand was driven by people who arent eligible. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's shadow health secretary, told MPs: "There are no tests available in Covid hotspots including Rochdale, Pendle, and Bradford. Over the weekend in Bolton, where infections are highest in the country, a mobile testing centre failed to turn up. Meanwhile in Bury hundreds queued for five hours for a test. In Walsall, a father with his sick child travelled 76 miles to an appointment in Wales only to find on arrival that tests have run out. "Increasing numbers of teachers and pupils are not in school; in hospitals, operations are cancelled while NHS staff are stuck in limbo waiting for tests, and he blames increased demand. But when tracing fails to reach 80 per cent of contacts, when less than 20 per cent of those with symptoms self-isolate properly and there is a lack of financial security, infections rise. When schools reopen and people return to workplaces and social distancing becomes harder, infections rise. Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Show all 29 1 /29 Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Saudi Arabia An eerie emptiness enveloped the sacred Kaaba in Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, where attendance at Friday prayers was hit by measures to protect against coronavirus AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world China An empty street in Wuhan. Hubei will relax travel restrictions to allow healthy people to move within the hard-hit province AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Thailand The Legend Siam theme park, usually attracts up to 20,000, mainly Chinese customers, a day in the high season, is temporarily closed due to the lack of visitors during the coronavirus outbreak AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy An empty Piazza Duomo in Milan Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world US Aerial photo shows the Covid-19 isolation and monitoring site, where the first patient Joey Camp is being isolated at Hard Labor Creek State Park, about 50 miles east of Atlanta Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Spain Aerial view taken of the Ipurua stadium in Eibar while the Spanish league football match SD Eibar against Real Sociedad is played behind closed doors in light of the coronavirus outbreak AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Albania An aerial view of empty Tirana's outer ring. Albania has stepped up measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 caused by the novel coronavirus and banned circulation of all cars (except ambulances and supplies) for 3 days and urged people to stay home as the number of infected people increased to 33 AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Iraq An empty cafe during a curfew imposed by Iraqi Kurdish authorities, following the outbreak of coronavirus, near the castle in the old city of Erbil Reuters Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world South Korea An aerial view shows hygiene officials riding a vehicle disinfecting public buses at a depot in Gwangju EPA Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Belgium A woman runs though the nearly empty historic center of Antwerp AP Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world China Jingyue bridge, spanning the Yangtze river, leading to Hubei province AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Vietnam Formula One Vietnam Grand Prix race track in Hanoi AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Spain Restaurant terraces remain closed at the usually overcrowded Plaza Mayor in central Madrid AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Thailand Tourist buses parked on a lot near Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Poland An aerial view of Jagiellonian University's new campus during the 2 weeks closure of universities, schools, museums and other public facilities in Krakow Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy A canal and the roads next to it are seen completely empty in Venice Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Greece An aerial view taken with a drone showing the yard of an empty school at Nafplio, Peloponnese EPA Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Saudi Arabia An aerial view shows an empty white-tiled area surrounding the Kaaba in Mecca's Grand Mosque AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy Rome's office district EUR, at what would have otherwise been rush hour, virtually empty after a government decree has limited circulation AP Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Thailand Legend Siam theme park in Pattaya AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Belgium Empty shelves in a supermarket in Brussels AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Iran A satellite view shows Tehran airport Maxar Technologies via Reuters Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy The deserted Via Manzoni street in Milan Reuters Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Saudi Arabia AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Italy An empty street and canal in Venice Reuters Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Thailand An aerial photo shows unused tourist buses parked on a lot near Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world China An almost empty street in Wuhan AFP via Getty Coronavirus: Empty streets across the world Poland A view of the deserted Krakowskie Przedmiescie and tahe Old Town Square in Warsaw EPA "Extra demand on the system was inevitable, so why didn't he use the summer to significantly expand NHS lab capacity and fix contract tracing?" Mr Hancock replied that the good news was that capacity for testing is at a record high. He said 9,278 tests were processed on Monday in the top 10 local authority areas for infections. Record numbers of people are able to get tests. I dont deny that it is an enormous challenge and when you have a free service, its inevitable that demand rises. The challenge is to make sure that we prioritise the tests we have as a nation the backlog is actually falling and is less than one days test processing capacity," he said. The problem with testing capacity came as the UK reported another 3,105 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Tuesday with a further 27 deaths. Sydney University expects to lose more than $550 million in overall student revenue over the next four years, and forecasts the COVID-19 crisis will keep hurting its bottom line until 2025. Next year would be hardest hit, with a $217 million reduction in total student revenue compared with its pre-pandemic prediction, vice-chancellor Michael Spence told staff in an email about voluntary redundancies on Thursday. Sydney University expects to lose $550 million in student revenue due to COVID-19. Credit:Rob Homer The university is expecting its international enrolments to fall by 35 per cent in semester one next year, and by 20 per cent in semester two, but that shortfall would be felt for several years afterwards as the commencing class of 2021 progresses through its degrees. Fewer dropouts than expected this year meant the university lost almost $300 million less in 2020 than it forecast in the early days of the pandemic. It has also saved money through freezes on hiring, infrastructure and consultants. September 16 marked the 20th anniversary of the assassination of the Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper's co-founder. The Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine has called on the Ukrainian authorities to bring those who ordered journalist Georgiy Gongadze's murder to justice. This was announced in a statement by the Delegation on Twitter on September 16. Read alsoGongadze murder: 20th anniversary of high-profile case "Remembering Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze abducted on this day 20 years ago. EU supports freedom of media as a key element of democracy all over the world. All those responsible for crimes against journalists must be brought to justice," it said. Gongadze case: Key facts A Northern Irish farmer has been airlifted to hospital following a bull attack, just one month after a man was killed in similar circumstances. The man was attacked by a bull on a farm in Broughshane, Co. Antrim, on Tuesday afternoon (15 September). A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) said: The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service received a 999 call at 1:04pm on Tuesday, September 15 following reports of an incident at Knockan Road, Broughshane. Following assessment and initial treatment at the scene, one patient was airlifted to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. It comes after a farmer recently died of his injuries following an incident involving a bull in Aberdeenshire last month. The tragedy happened on farmland in Memsie, near Fraserburgh, on 19 August. Emergency services arrived on the scene around 10.30am, where the farmer was pronounced dead by paramedics. Livestock handling is one of the biggest causes of death and injury on farms, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The safety watchdog advises all farms with cattle to have proper handling facilities, kept in good working order. Last year, 21 people in Britain were killed in agriculture last year, consisting of 20 workers and 1 member of the public - a four year old child. Workers over the age of 55 were disproportionately at risk of death following an incident, HSE's report says. How can I increase livestock safety measures? To reduce the risk of injury when handling cattle, the HSE urges farmers to have: Proper handling facilities, which you keep in good working order; A race and a crush suitable for the animals you handle; Trained and competent workers; and A rigorous culling policy for temperamental animals Boris Johnsons Brexit plans have suffered another blow after the governments law officer for Scotland quit in protest despite an eleventh hour climbdown by the prime minister. No 10 announced that MPs would be given a new lock before controversial powers contained in the Internal Markets Bill can be used. But the concession was not enough to convince Lord Keen, the advocate general for Scotland and a member of the House of Lords, to stay in his post. Mr Johnson is facing a rebellion on his own benches after a cabinet minister said that the bill, which is currently going through the Commons, does break international law in a limited and specific way. Lord Keen of Elies position was cast into doubt after he contradicted Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, by telling peers that the controversial bill did not "constitute a breach of international law or of the rule of law". He claimed that Mr Lewis had answered the wrong question in his comments to MPs. But within hours Mr Lewis had reiterated his position, telling MPs that he had given a very straight answer" last week. In his resignation letter, Lord Keen told the prime minister he had found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his obligations as a law officer with the prime ministers policy intentions. His decision to step down came despite Mr Johnson bowing to demands by backbenchers to give MPs another vote before the powers can be used. Many Tory MPs had been expected to vote for a similar amendment, tabled by the Tory MP Sir Bob Neill, next week. The deal was brokered between Mr Johnson, Sir Bob and Damian Green, the chair of the One Nation caucus of Tory MPs. But it will not satisfy all those with concerns around the bill, who fear the message it may send about Britain as a global power. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, has already warned that Congress will never pass a free trade agreement with the UK if legislation to override the Brexit divorce settlement were to "imperil" the Northern Ireland peace process. However, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, told a press conference that the US trusted Britain. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, has suggested that he might resign if the law were broken in a way he found unacceptable, while Tobias Ellwood, the Tory MP and chair of the Commons Defence Committee has compared No 10s strategy to Nixonian madman theory. The legislation has also come under fire from all five living former prime ministers, including Mr Johnsons immediate predecessors Theresa May and David Cameron, as well as Brexit-backing Tory grandees such as former party leader Michael Howard and ex-chancellor Norman Lamont. Earlier this week, the government suffered a blow when Tory MP Rehman Chishti resigned as the prime minister's special envoy on freedom of religion or belief in opposition to the disputed clauses in the bill. In an attempt to quell the growing rebellion, Mr Johnson has accused the EU of underhand tactics and said the clauses are necessary to protect the status of Northern Ireland within the UK. He told MPs this week that the bill should be welcomed by everyone who cares about the sovereignty and integrity of our United Kingdom. Mr Johnson said he understood the concerns of those who felt unease over the measures, which he had no desire to use. They were an insurance policy that will not be invoked if there is a future trade deal with the EU, he said. Maison Martell opens first L'Atelier boutique in Shenzhen, China Maison Martell has announced the opening of L'Atelier Martell Shenzhen in China - the first in a global collection of boutiques dedicated to cognac tasting and exploration. The site, which was officially launched with an online opening event, is a fresh retail concept for the cognac producer and is set to be rolled out globally, allowing customers around the world to immerse themselves in the world of cognac. Marketed as a "must-see destination" as much as a store, the boutique takes its name from the French word for a craftsman's workshop and is designed to show off the best of Maison Martell - from the display of more than 200 montres (glass sampling bottles) to the wall of oak barrels from the Martell cooperage. Maison Martell says it chose Shenzhen as the location for its first L'Atelier Martell store based on the city's reputation for "dynamism, modernity and cutting-edge technology". Cesar Giron, chairman and CEO of Maison Martell, said: "We are proud to celebrate a new landmark in the 300-year history of our house. L'Atelier Martell is an innovative concept which reflects our vision of elevating cognac into an experience that puts the clients front and centre. With L'Atelier Martell, we are offering our clients new ways to explore, immerse and engage. We are bringing them audacious experiences through which they can discover our heritage, our savoir-faire and our cognacs as never before." To establish firmer ties between Maison Martell and Shenzhen, there will be a collector's edition of Martell Noblige highlighting the city's skyline available at L'Atelier Martell Shenzhen. The boutique also plans to host a varied programme of events including food and fashion collaborations. 17 September 2020 - Bethany Whymark Idaho National Guard Private Ashlynn Amoruso is only 17 years old, but shes already chasing her dream of becoming an Army medic like her father. Young Amoruso signed up for basic combat training over what could have been a sedentary summer and has since celebrated completing the course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I asked my friends, What did you do this summer? and they said they didnt do much because of COVID-19, Amoruso told the National Guard. I did a lot of things I never expected Id do. My dads in the National Guard and has done a lot of things, and I thought that was really cool. The teen started her senior year at Mountain View High School on Aug. 31, but that wont stop her from continuing her training with the Guard, with which she enlisted in December 2019. Amoruso plans to earn her EMT certificate during the school year as part of the Guards Split Training Option. She will attend Advanced Individual Training at Boise State University after graduation, and will train for her medics license at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Idaho Army National Guard Pvt. Ashlynn Amoruso poses with her father, 1st Sgt. Dan Amoruso, at the Boise Airport upon returning from Basic Combat Training on Aug. 20, 2020 (Idaho Army National Guard/DVIDSHUB) Amorusos father, 1st Sgt. Dan Amoruso, is a 68W combat medic. His teen daughter, who aims to follow in her fathers footsteps, admitted a longtime fascination with medicine, having immersed herself in books and television shows on the subject since childhood. Basic training tested the scope of Amorusos skills to the limit. During summer at Fort Jackson, she rappelled from a 40-foot wall, learned how to handle an M4 rifle, and was trained as a soldier in the essential skills of marching, obtaining peak physical fitness, and adopting core U.S. Army values. The teen cited throwing a grenade as her favorite element of training. It was super loud and you could feel it, she recalled, adding, You could never pull the pin out with your teeth like they do in the movies. To celebrate Private Amorusos completion of basic combat training, Idaho National Guard shared a photo of the teen and her father on Facebook. U.S. Army Basic Combat Training will help set her up for success on her way to become a doctor, they captioned. First Sgt. Amoruso is extremely proud of his daughter. I think she saw the positive things the National Guard has done for our family as she grew up, he reflected, speaking to the National Guard, and that influenced her decision to enlist. Basic training was Amorusos first time visiting the East Coast; the experience, she said, taught her a lot about dealing with other people. I met people from all over the U.S. and interacting with them was different than interacting with people here in Idaho, she explained. As a member of the Idaho National Guard, Amorusos extensive future studies are eligible for financial aid from Federal Tuition Assistance and the State Assistance Tuition Program. Each program will contribute up to $4,000 a year toward her tuition fees. The GI Bill, a program originally established to provide benefits for returning World War II veterans, plus Amorusos monthly drill paycheck, will help cover her living expenses through college. The ambitious 17-year-old, with basic training already under her belt, remains excited for the future. Being in the National Guard is really cool, she said. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc A fire gutted two floors of a four-story community center owned by the neighboring St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Apostolic Church in San Francisco early Thursday, and church leaders suspect arson. "They set three different fires, two on the bottom floor, and one on the middle floor," said Rostom Aintablian, chairman pastor of the Board of the Trustees. "We do think its arson." The fire ignited at 51 Commonwealth Ave. around 4 a.m., and the S.F. Fire Department responded immediately, according to a message posted by the church on Facebook. The church said the incident is under investigation; the fire department wasn't immediately available for comment on this story. The 1940s building housed Vasbouragan Hall where community gathers were held, as well as offices for St. Gregory Armenian Church and other organizations. The bottom and middle floor are almost completely burned out and the church offices gone, while the overall structure remains intact, according to Aintablian. Aintablian believes the fire is a hate crime and stems from years of tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia. "We know our history, we know who our enemies are," he said. "We think it has something to do with the war in our country. We dont know for sure, but deep inside me tells me it has something to do with this. Or else it doesnt make sense to me for someone to come in the middle of the night and set fires in the building." San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin condemned the act with a message on Twitter. "This is an outrage," Boudin wrote. "The Armenian community of San Francisco woke up today to an arson at their church. There is no room for this cowardly, hateful, criminal conduct in San Francisco. We stand with the Armenian community against hate!" Alex Bastian, deputy chief of staff for the San Francisco District Attorneys Office, also called the fire a cowardly act and posted images of the damaged building on Twitter. For some context, in our history and around the globe, every time Armenians have been targeted, they come for our churches and our schools, tweeted Bastian, who was baptized in the church. But you know what? Its very hard to terrorize my community, no matter how hard people try. We are hardened by the millennia of hardship and the centuries of injustice. Most of us in the community, are refugees, or the children of refugees, from war zones around the world. Bastian said he believes the fire is related to the vandalism of San Francisco's Armenian School Krouzian-Zekarian-Vasbouragan in July. The school provided surveillance video to the San Francisco Police showing men covering walls with hateful and racist graffiti. "Attacks against our community are escalating, from vandalism - to arson - to unfortunately whatever is next," Bastian wrote. Amy Graff is the News Editor for SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com. The state Supreme Court ruled after District Attorney Larry Krasner made an unusual, and often unsuccessful, direct appeal, contending that easy public access to the trials increased the risk of intimidation to witnesses, victims and even defendants. Read more The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a halt to the live broadcasts of Philadelphia criminal trials on YouTube, after District Attorney Larry Krasner argued that the airing of such proceedings had opened a new window for harassment of witnesses, victims, and defendants. In a brief order, the high court imposed an immediate stay on those broadcasts, which had become standard since the pandemic led to courtrooms across the city, state, and country being shut down. Courts in Philadelphia are still closed to attendance by the public. The justices' decision directed the First Judicial District, which manages the citys court system, to coordinate with state officials and find an alternate method for livestreaming trials. Krasners petition said the practice of using dedicated, public YouTube broadcasts expanded the risks of intimidation of witnesses, defendants and victims alike. READ MORE: Krasner is fighting to end online broadcasts of trials, a COVID workaround. Defenders and advocates are supporting his effort. The [First Judicial District] has gone too far in attempting to meet public access requirements in the COVID-19 era, the district attorney and his staff wrote in the petition. The policy of streaming criminal jury trials over YouTube violates the privacy of all parties and endangers witnesses in a jurisdiction known for intimidation and retaliation achieved through social media. There is no need to take these risks where ample alternatives exist that meet or exceed constitutional requirements. The filing was a direct appeal to the high court called a Kings Bench motion. They are rarely successful, but this one drew near-unanimous support from public defenders, legal advocates, and private attorneys. It was not immediately clear what the impact of the order would be. In the petition, Krasner and his staff suggested a variety of alternatives, including using private Zoom calls and closed-circuit television feeds within the Stout Center for Criminal Justice. A spokesperson for the court system deferred comment on the Supreme Courts order to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, and representatives from that office declined to comment late Thursday. READ MORE: As jury trials resume in Philadelphia, courts lay out plans for juror safety Krasner said Thursday night that he was very encouraged that the Supreme Court recognized the urgency of the Kings Bench petition." It is essential in protecting the judicial process that we protect the people that participate in the process," he said. And its of the utmost importance to protect witnesses and defendants from having their testimonies used against them for the rest of their lives. The Serum Institute of India, which had paused phase 2 and phase 3 trials of the Oxford University's vaccine, received the go-ahead from the DCGI to resume the trials in India India's coronavirus case count crossed 50 lakh on Wednesday with 90,123 new cases being reported in the 24 hours since 8 am on Tuesday. According to the COVID-19 database maintained by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), India is the second country in the world after the US to have reported over 50 lakh cases. The US has recorded 66,06,674 COVID-19 cases as of 16 September. Meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India (SII), which had paused recruitment of volunteers for the phase 2 and phase 3 trials of the Oxford University's vaccine candidate following reports of adverse reactions to the vaccine in the UK, received the go-ahead from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to resume the trials. India records 10 lakh cases in 11 days The total number of coronavirus cases in the country mounted to 50,20,359 on Wednesday, while the toll climbed to 82,066 with a record 1,290 fatalities registered in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry's latest update. This comes just 11 days after India's caseload surged past 40 lakh. According to news agency PTI, it took 110 days for the COVID-19 cases in the country to reach one lakh and another 59 days to surpass 10 lakh. The total coronavirus cases jumped from 10 lakh to 20 lakh in 21 days and raced past 30 lakh in another 16 days. It took 13 days more to cross 40 lakh and 11 days to go past 50 lakh. However, recoveries have also been on a rise and a total of 39,42,360 persons have so far recuperated from the virus. According to the Hindustan Times, India reported its highest daily recoveries on Wednesday with 82,961 having recuperated from the disease. The recovery rate now stands at 78.53 percent, up from 77.77 percent a week ago (9 September), showed the health ministry's data updated at 8 am. The fatality rate is now at 1.63 percent, the ministry said. The country now has 9,95,933 active cases of COVID-19, comprising 19.84 percent of the total caseload. As per the ministry's data, Maharashtra has the highest number of active cases (2,92,174) followed by Karnataka (98, 555), Andhra Pradesh (92,353), Uttar Pradesh (67335) and Tamil Nadu (46,806). Chhattisgarh follows at the sixth position with 35,909 active cases. According to the Indian Express, Chhattisgarh is currently showing the fastest growth in new cases in the country. The state's case count has doubled since the start of September, the report stated. Chhattisgarh on Tuesday recorded its highest single-day spike of 3,450 coronavirus cases, taking the state's total cases to 70,777, Of the 1,290 new deaths reported on Wednesday, 515 were from Maharashtra, 216 from Karnataka, 113 from Uttar Pradesh, 90 from Punjab, 69 from Andhra Pradesh, 68 from Tamil Nadu, 59 from West Bengal and 36 from Delhi. Of the total 82,066 fatalities due to COVID-19, Maharashtra accounts for the highest with 30,049 fatalities followed by Tamil Nadu with 8,502, Karnataka with 7,481, Andhra Pradesh with 5,041, Delhi with 4,806 and Uttar Pradesh with 4,604. According to the ICMR, a total of 5,94,29,115 samples have been tested till 15 September, of which 11,16,842 samples were tested on Tuesday. SII gets DCGI nod to resume vaccine trials Even as the country's coronavirus count continued an upward trend, the Centre on Wednesday said that three potential vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus infection are in the advanced stage of trials while four are in advanced pre-clinical development stage. Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai informed the Rajya Sabha that 13 clinical trials of repurposed drugs have been also undertaken to build a portfolio of therapeutic options for COVID-19 patients. Meanwhile, the DCGI allowed SII to resume the phase 2 and 3 trials of the vaccine jointly developed by Oxford University and Swedish firm AstraZeneca but instructed Serum to scrupulously follow additional conditions, including exercising care while screening potential volunteers and providing additional information to them. The regulator also instructed the Pune-based firm to closely monitor volunteers who receive the shot for any adverse reactions. The DCGI had on 10 September issued a show-cause notice to the Serum Institute of India, which had chosen no to halt the clinical trials in India even though trials had reportedly been paused in various countries like US, Brazil and South Africa. The countries had halted the trials after the Swedish firm had reported an unexplained illness in one of the volunteers in the UK. Russia strikes deal with Dr Reddy's Laboratoeis to distribute 100 million doses of Sputnik V In another development on the vaccine front, Russia has entered into an agreement with drug company Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd to to distribute 100 million doses of the Russias experimental Sputnik V vaccine in India. #RDIF and Dr. Reddys to cooperate on clinical trials and supply of 10 Crore doses of Sputnik V #RussianVaccine to Indiahttps://t.co/tlCW7GBIeh@drreddys @rdif_press pic.twitter.com/yJ0oKv9nK6 Russia in India (@RusEmbIndia) September 16, 2020 Press secretary Arseniy Palagin told news agency The Asociated Press that the 100 million doses of the experimental vaccine were meant for population-wide use as long as they met regulatory requirements and clinical trials were successful. According to the Indian Express, the Hyderabad-based company will also help conduct the final-stage human trials of the vaccine in India. The Phase 1 and 2 results have shown promise, and we will be conducting Phase-3 trials in India to meet the requirements of the Indian regulators. Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID-19 in India, DRL Co-Chairman and Managing Director GV Prasad told the Indian Express. Palagin also said that the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) was in talks with several other Indian companies for manufacturing the vaccine. Last week, Dr VK Paul, NITI Aayog member who also heads the national task force on COVID-19 vaccines, had said that India was considering Russia's requests for conducting the phase three trials in India and that an agreement will be "good for both the countries." The coronavirus pandemic, which began in China's Wuhan last year, has claimed 9,35,898 lives and affected 2,96,10,479 people across the globe, according to the JHU's coronavirus tracker. With inputs from agencies Syracuse, N.Y. A company representing foreign investors has filed a lawsuit claiming the partners of Cor Development Co. cheated them out of $4 million loaned by the investors for the construction of the Aloft hotel in Syracuses Inner Harbor. The Aloft Syracuse Inner Harbor, which opened in July 2016, was the first project in Cors planned $350 million development of formerly state-owned land around the harbor. In a lawsuit filed Aug. 19 in state Supreme Court, a limited partnership representing foreign investors claims that a Cor company and its owners failed to repay the loan, which came due a year ago. The lawsuit also accuses Cor principals and their Syracuse attorneys of shielding the companys assets namely, the hotel under a different limited liability company to avoid paying. The company that borrowed the money, Cor Inner Harbor Co. LLC, has no assets and no ability to pay, according to the lawsuit. The $11 million Aloft hotel property is owned by Cor West Kirkpatrick Street Co. LLC., city property records show. Syracuse attorney David Temes, who represents the investment partnership, did not respond to a request for comment. Albany attorney Christopher Buckey, who represents all the defendants, declined to comment on details of the case but said the lawsuit was unfounded. "This lawsuit is patently meritless and we are looking forward to vigorously defending it in court,'' Buckey said. If Cor defaulted on the Aloft loan, it has company in the hotel industry. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, nearly one hotel in four is behind on its debts. Some 23.4% of hotels were at least 30 days delinquent as of July, according to a report by data firm Trepp. The lawsuit is unrelated to criminal cases involving Cor executives Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi, who were convicted in 2018 of fraud and conspiracy in connection with the companys business dealings with New York state. Both men have appealed the convictions and are free while their appeals are under review. In addition to Cor Inner Harbor Co., the investor group is suing Aiello, Gerardi and other Cor principals and family members including Paul Joynt, Jeffrey Aiello, the Lori A. Aiello Family Trust and the Laurie R. Gerardi Family Trust. The plaintiff also is suing Cors longtime attorneys, accusing the Mannion Copani law firm of helping Cor officials shift assets between companies to avoid paying the debt. The lawsuit was brought by Inner Harbor Phase 1 L.P., a limited partnership established by a Rochester company that pools money from foreign investors trying to obtain green cards to reside in the United States by investing in projects that create jobs. The Rochester company, Empire State EB-5 Regional Center LLC, arranges investments on behalf of foreign citizens participating in the so-called EB-5 visa program. The $4 million was loaned to Cor Inner Harbor in installments between September 2014 and February 2015, according to the lawsuit. Construction of the 132-room hotel began in July 2014 and finished up two years later. At the time, the minimum investment for individuals in the EB-5 program was $500,000. Its not clear from the lawsuit how many investors pooled money for the Cor project, or what countries they were from. The lawsuit also does not state whether they were successful in gaining U.S. residency. According to the complaint, the Mannion Copani firm established an escrow account in which to hold the $4 million loan, which was to be disbursed to Cor Inner Harbor. Instead, the lawyers allegedly released the money to a different Cor entity, Cor West Kirkpatrick Street, which owns the land and the hotel that was built on it. When the loan came due in September 2019, Cor officials indicated they could not repay it and asked for an extension of the due date, according to the lawsuit. Thats when the lender discovered that Cor Inner Harbor had no assets and that Cor West Kirkpatrick Street is the hotel owner, according to the lawsuit. Mannion Copani allegedly informed the lender that nothing in writing obligated Cor West Kirkpatrick Street to pay the debt, the lawsuit says. Inner Harbor Phase 1 is asking the court to order repayment of the $4 million plus punitive damages, according to the complaint. The Aloft Hotel is worth $10.72 million, according to city assessment records. Its parking lot across the street is worth $760,000, the records show. News tips? Contact reporter Tim Knauss of syracuse.com/The Post-Standard: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023 An investment in the Offered Shares involves substantial risks and uncertainties. Prospective investors should read the entire prospectus, and, in particular, should see "Risk Factors" for a discussion of certain factors that should be considered in connection with an investment in the Offered Shares, including the risks that (i) even though the Company has obtained regulatory approval (CE-mark) in Europe for the Genio system based on first positive clinical trial results, this does not imply that clinical efficacy has been demonstrated and there is no guarantee that ongoing and future clinical trials intended to support further marketing authorizations (such as in the US) will be successful and that the Genio system will perform as intended, (ii) the Company's future financial performance will depend on the results of ongoing and future clinical studies and the commercial acceptance (including reimbursement) of the Genio system (the Company's only commercial-stage product at the date hereof), (iii) the Company has incurred operating losses, negative operating cash flows and an accumulated deficit since inception and may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability, (iv) the Company will likely require additional funds in the future in order to meet its capital and expenditure needs and further financing may not be available when required or could significantly limit the Company's access to additional capital. Not taking into account any proceeds of the Offering, the Company does not have sufficient working capital to meet its working capital needs for a period of at least 12 months from the date of the prospectus. All of these factors should be considered before investing in the Offered Shares. Prospective investors must be able to bear the economic risk of an investment in shares in the Company and should be able to sustain a partial or total loss of their investment. PRESS RELEASE Nyxoah Raises up to 85 million (US$100m) in Successful Initial Public Offering Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium 17 September 2020 Nyxoah (Nyxoah or the Company) a health-technology company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative solutions and services to treat sleep disordered breathing conditions, today announces the results of its initial public offering of new shares, launched on 9 September 2020 (the Offering), with the admission of all of its shares to trading on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels under the symbol NYXH. The final offering price for the Offering has been set at 17.00 per share, giving the Company an initial market capitalization of approximately 364.21 million, or approximately 375.26 million assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option (as defined below). Gross proceeds for the Company from the Offering will amount to approximately 73.70 million, or approximately 84.75 million (US$100m), assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. Olivier Taelman, Chief Executive Officer of Nyxoah, commented: The successful IPO of Nyxoah validates the unique and disruptive character of the Nyxoah solution for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and confirms the existing unmet need in this large and growing global OSA market. The concrete strong interest from leading global investors in combination with the continued support of the existing investors will enable the Company to further execute on its strategy. We warmly welcome the new investors and thank the existing ones for their trust. Robert Taub, Founder and Chairman of Nyxoah, added: When founding the Company in 2009, the ambition was to develop a unique patient-centered solution to help OSA patients enjoy their lives to the fullest. The overwhelming enthusiasm of new and existing investors in this Offering will help us further to fulfill this vision. We are looking forward to this new phase in Nyxoahs development under the leadership of our CEO. Results of the Offering The final offering price for the Offering is set at 17 per share (the "Offering Price"). The Offering ended on 16 September at 16:00 (CEST). The Company has decided to increase the number of Offered Shares from 3,871,000 to 4,335,000 (i.e., 464,000 additional Offered Shares, excluding the new shares in the Company that may be issued upon exercise of the Over-allotment Option). In order to facilitate stabilization by the Stabilization Manager (see below), the Stabilization Manager over-allotted 650,250 Shares in the Offering. In order to cover the aforementioned over-allotments or short positions, if any, resulting from the over-allotment, an over-allotment option to subscribe for 650,250 additional new Shares at the Offer Price has been granted to Belfius Bank, as stabilization manager (the "Stabilization Manager"), acting on behalf of Belfius Bank and Bank Degroof Petercam (the "Over-allotment Option"). The Over-allotment Option will be exercisable for a period of 30 calendar days following the Listing Date (as defined below) (the Stabilization Period). The Company will announce if and when the Over-allotment Option is exercised. The Stabilization Manager may engage in stabilization transactions aimed at supporting the market price of the Shares during the Stabilization Period. These transactions may stabilize, maintain or otherwise affect the price of the Shares or any options, warrants or rights with respect to, or other interest in, the Shares or other securities of the Company during the Stabilization Period. These activities may support the market price of the Shares at a level higher than that which might otherwise prevail. Stabilization will not be executed above the Offering Price. Such transactions may be effected, on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels, in the over-the-counter markets or otherwise. The Stabilization Manager and its agents are not required to engage in any of these activities and, as such, there is no assurance that these activities will be undertaken. If undertaken, the Stabilization Manager or its agents may discontinue any of these activities at any time and they must terminate at the end of the Stabilization Period. The gross proceeds of the Offering for the Company amount to approximately 73.70 million, or approximately 84.75 million, assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. The implied market capitalization of Nyxoah is approximately 364.21 million, or approximately 375.26 million, assuming the exercise in full of the Over-allotment Option. Trading of Nyxoahs Shares on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels under the symbol NYXH is expected to commence, on an "if-and-when-issued-and/or-delivered" basis, on or about 18 September 2020 (the "Listing Date"). Payment and delivery of the Offered Shares will occur on 21 September 2020 (the Closing Date), subject to the successful closing of the Offering. The existing shareholders and new investors (the Participating Investors) that committed to, irrevocably and conditional only on completion of the Offering, subscribe for Offered Shares in the Offering for a total aggregate amount of 23,064,000 (the Subscription Commitments), have been allocated in aggregate 999,447 Offered Shares in the Offering on the basis of their Subscription Commitments, of which 861,213 Offered Shares have been allocated to Participating Investors that are existing shareholders. 472,631 Shares, representing approximately 10% of the Offered Shares in the Offering, have been placed with retail investors in Belgium, representing strong local support from retail investors. To retail investors, 100% of the shares for which they have subscribed will be allocated. Degroof Petercam NV/SA and Belfius Bank NV/SA acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners in connection with the Offering. The Company has agreed to a standstill of 360 days, subject to customary exceptions and conditions. - ENDS - For further information, please contact: Nyxoah Remi Renard, VP Therapy Development and Education remi.renard@nyxoah.com +32 472 12 64 40 For media enquiries, please contact: Consilium Strategic Communications Amber Fennell, Ashley Tapp, Lindsey Neville, Taiana De Ruyck Soares Nyxoah@consilium-comms.com +44 (0)20 3709 5700 About Nyxoah Nyxoah is a healthtech company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative solutions and services for sleep disordered breathing conditions. Nyxoahs lead solution is the Genio system, a CE-validated, user-centered, next generation hypoglossal neurostimulation therapy for OSA, the worlds most common sleep disordered breathing condition that is associated with increased mortality risk1 and comorbidities including cardiovascular diseases, depression and stroke. Following successful completion of the BLAST OSA study in patients with moderate to severe OSA, the Genio system received its European CE Mark in March 2019. The Company is currently conducting the BETTER SLEEP study in Australia and New Zealand for therapy indication expansion, and a post-marketing EliSA study in Europe to confirm the long-term safety and efficacy of the Genio system. For more information, please visit www.nyxoah.com . Caution CE marked since 2019. Investigational device in the United States. Limited by U.S. federal law to investigational use in the United States. Important Notice Any purchase of, subscription for or application for, shares to be issued by Nyxoah (the "Company") in connection with the intended offering should only be made on the basis of information contained in the prospectus in connection with the intended offering and any supplements thereto, as the case may be (the "Prospectus"). This announcement is not a prospectus. The information contained in this announcement is for informational purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. Investors should not subscribe for any securities referred to in this document except on the basis of information contained in the Prospectus. The Prospectus contains detailed information about the Company and its business, management, risks associated with investing in the Company, as well as financial statements and other financial data. This announcement cannot be used as basis for any investment agreement or decision. The date of completion of listing on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels may be influenced by things such as market conditions. There is no guarantee that such listing will occur and investors should not base their financial decisions on the Company's intentions in relation to such listing at this stage. This communication is directed only at persons (i) who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) who have professional experience in matters relating to investments and who fall within article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (as amended) (the Order) or (iii) who are high net worth entities or other persons who fall within article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as Relevant Persons). Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only to Relevant Persons and will be engaged in only with Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person must not act or rely on this communication or any of its contents. This announcement is not for publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States of America. This announcement is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States, except pursuant to an applicable exemption from registration. No public offering of securities is being made in the United States. These materials do not constitute, nor form part of, an offer to purchase or sell or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for securities, and there shall not be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to its registration or qualification under the laws of such jurisdiction. A prospectus for purposes of Regulation 2017/1129, as amended (together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom (each a "Relevant State"), the Prospectus Regulation) and a supplement to the prospectus have been approved by the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority. The Prospectus and its supplement are made available to investors free of charge at the registered office of the Company (Nyxoah SA, Rue Edouard Belin 12, 1435, Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium) and on the websites of Nyxoah ( www.nyxoah.com ) and of the Joint Global Coordinators ( www.belfius.be and www.degroofpetercam.be/en/news/nyxoah_2020 ). The Prospectus shall also be made available free of charge to investors (i) upon request by phone: +32 2 287 95 52 (Bank Degroof Petercam NV/SA) and +32 222 12 01 and +32 222 12 02 (Dutch) (Belfius Bank NV/SA), and (ii) on the following websites: www.nyxoah.com , www.degroofpetercam.be/en/news/nyxoah_2020 and www.belfius.be/Nyxoah2020 . Access on the aforementioned websites is each time subject to the usual limitations. Investors are invited to consult section 2 of the Prospectus which contains specific information about risk factors. The distribution of this press release may be restricted by law or regulation in certain countries. Accordingly, persons who come into possession of this press release should inform themselves of and observe such restrictions. The securities referred to in this press release will not be publicly offered, and will not be registered, in any jurisdiction other than Belgium. In any Relevant State other than Belgium that has implemented the Prospectus Regulation, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors in that Relevant State within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation. This announcement and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell nor a solicitation to buy securities of the Company, and are not for publication, distribution or release in, or into the United States of America, Australia, South Africa, Israel, Canada, Japan or any other jurisdiction where to do so would be prohibited by applicable law. Acquiring investments to which this announcement relates may expose an investor to a significant risk of losing the entire amount invested. Persons considering such investments should consult an authorized person specializing in advising on such investments. This announcement does not constitute a recommendation concerning the intended offering. The value of the shares can decrease as well as increase. Potential investors should consult a professional advisor as to the suitability of the intended offering for the person concerned. No action has been taken by the Company that would permit an offer of Company's shares or the possession or distribution of these materials or any other offering or publicity material relating to such shares in any jurisdiction outside of Belgium where action for that purpose is required. The release, publication or distribution of these materials in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and therefore persons in such jurisdictions into which they are released, published or distributed, should inform themselves about, and observe, such restrictions. The issue, the subscription for or purchase of shares of the Company can be subject to special legal or statutory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. The Company is not liable if the aforementioned restrictions are not complied with by any person. The contents of this announcement include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements". In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the words "believes", "estimates," "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", "plans", "continue", "ongoing", "potential", "predict", "project", "target", "seek" or "should" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology or by discussions of strategies, plans, objectives, targets, goals, future events or intentions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the Company's intentions, beliefs or current expectations concerning, among other things, its results of operations, prospects, growth, strategies and dividend policy and the industry in which the Company operates. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. New risks can emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company to predict all such risks, nor can the Company assess the impact of all such risks on its business or the extent to which any risks, or combination of risks and other factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Given these risks and uncertainties, the reader should not rely on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Without prejudice to the Company's obligations under applicable law in relation to disclosure and ongoing information, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update forward-looking statements. Bank Degroof Petercam NV/SA and Belfius Bank NV/SA (the "Underwriters") are acting for the Company and no one else in relation to the intended offering, and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections offered to their respective clients nor for providing advice in relation to the intended offering. The Company assumes responsibility for the information contained in this announcement. None of the Underwriters or any of their respective affiliates or any of their respective directors, officers, employees, advisers or agents accepts any responsibility or liability whatsoever for or makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the information in this announcement (or whether any information has been omitted from the announcement) or any other information relating to the Company, whether written, oral or in a visual or electronic form, and howsoever transmitted or made avail-able or for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this announcement or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. Each of the Underwriters and each of their respective affiliates accordingly disclaim, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, all and any liability whether arising in tort, contract or otherwise which they might otherwise be found to have in respect of this announcement or any such statement or information. No representation or warranty express or implied, is made by any of the Underwriters or any of their respective affiliates as to the accuracy, completeness, verification or sufficiency of the information set out in this announcement, and nothing in this announcement will be relied upon as a promise or representation in this respect, whether or not to the past or future. 1 Young T. et al: Sleep Disordered Breathing and Mortality: Eighteen-Year Follow-up of the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, Sleep. 2008 Aug 1; 31(8): 10711078. LONDON A dramatic rise in new coronavirus cases in Europe has been characterized as a "wake up call" by the World Health Organisation's top official in Europe. "We have a very serious situation unfolding before us," WHO's regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said Thursday in a press briefing on the epidemiological situation in the region. "Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March." He said that, last week, the region's weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients. "More than half of European countries have reported a greater-than-10% increase in cases in the past two weeks. Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period," he added. While lockdown measures imposed in the spring and early summer pushed the number of new cases in June to an all-time low, the number of cases in September "should serve as a wake-up call for all of us," he warned. There have been growing concerns in Europe for a number of weeks at what is being seen as an alarming rise in coronavirus cases, with the number of new daily infections reaching record highs in some countries. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned Wednesday that the 14-day case notification rate (the number of newly reported cases) for the EU, European Economic Area and the U.K. "has been increasing for more than 50 days, with over half of all EU countries currently experiencing an increase in cases." Spain, which has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Europe at 614,360, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University (JHU), is reportedly set to announce targeted lockdowns in places where the virus is spreading rapidly, and renewed restrictions of movement on Friday. Meanwhile in France, the number of new daily cases reported Wednesday (9,784) was among the highest ever reported in the country. It was just below an all-time record of 10,561 new cases recorded on Saturday. The number of people being treated in intensive care units for Covid-19 also rose for the 20th straight day Wednesday, Reuters reported, to a three-month high of 803. The total number of cases in France stands at 404,888, according to the French Health Ministry. Remarking on the rise in cases, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that the virus was circulating "quicker and quicker in certain parts of the country," Reuters reported. RICHMOND One month into a special session, the Virginia General Assembly is getting closer to passing police and criminal justice reform as lawmakers begin to narrow their focus on legislation. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday advanced a batch of police reform bills that, taken together, make up a massive Senate omnibus bill. Proposals include prohibiting law enforcement officers from having sex with people in their custody, banning no-knock warrants and neck restraints, and improving law enforcement training standards. The House and Senate differ on some of their proposals, such as what information is made available to law enforcement leaders hiring officers and wanting to avoid someone with a problematic background. The two chambers are coalescing behind prohibiting law enforcement from serving search warrants without first announcing their presence. The Senate had passed a bill that would allow no-knock search warrants if a judge signed off on them, but a House bill outright banned them. But unlike the Senate bill, the House version didnt establish limits on the time of day police could serve search warrants. Under the Senate bill, search warrants have to be served during the day, unless a judge approves a nighttime warrant. Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, wondered what the value was to prohibiting no-knock warrants if police could, within a few seconds, announce their presence and break a door down. He said that would still shock a person who was the wrongful subject of a search warrant. Steve Benjamin, special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the more effective part of the legislation is the requirement that warrants be served during the day. He pointed out most people are sleeping at night, and they wont hear police initially announcing themselves, but they would wake up to a loud police presence. Both chambers still need to come to an agreement on creating civilian review boards for law enforcement agencies. One difference is the House wants sheriffs offices to have to establish civilian review boards, while the Senate bill applies only to police departments. Sheriffs have argued that since they are elected, that provides a level of civilian oversight over their offices. If they are mismanaging the office, voters can replace them. While the Senate panel moved forward an ambitious proposal from House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, to automatically seal criminal records for more than 150 offenses, it doesnt look like she will have enough support in the Senate. Herring has described the measure as a second chances bill. It would automatically seal criminal records eight years after completion of a sentence. Are we ready to adopt it right now? Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, said in an interview Wednesday. I dont know. Deeds said there were a lot of good ideas in Herrings bill and that Virginia needs to address being one of the most challenging states in which to seal criminal records. Lawmakers have voiced concerns about sealing certain offenses they felt were serious. There is also a large price tag of $12 million for an upgrade to computer systems. The Senate passed SB 5043 from Deeds that allows a person to petition for the expungement of the police and court records of a conviction for misdemeanors and certain felonies if they have been granted a simple pardon for the crime. It also allows a person to petition after five years for an expungement of the records relating to convictions for marijuana possession, underage alcohol or tobacco possession, using a false ID to obtain alcohol and in cases where such charges have been dismissed by the court under a deferred disposition. We were trying to get the lowest-hanging fruit in our bill, Deeds said. We didnt set our ambitions as high, but we also had to take the budget into consideration with our bill. Adopting a new biennium budget is a must-do for the General Assembly, but lawmakers are still trying to come to a consensus on legislation so it can figure out spending priorities. The full Senate wont return to Richmond in person for a week. As of Wednesday, the House hasnt scheduled meetings to hear Senate bills. The Senate passed a proposal from Sen. John Bell, D-Loudoun, that would allow a terminally ill prisoner who is not serving time for a first- or second-degree murder to be eligible for parole. Republicans said the bill was too broad, saying people convicted of numerous DUIs or child sex crimes could be released. I have no compassion for a pedophile, Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City, said. Zero. Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, was the only Republican to break from his caucus to vote with Democrats. He said hes been a proponent of using geriatric release more. Weve had people remaining in prison on the taxpayers that have been there a long time, are no longer a threat to society, and theyre not a danger to society, but were mad at them still, Hanger said. 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. In May 2018, Swashplate arranged to transport a recently purchased helicopter from Picayune, Mississippi, to the Sunshine Coast Airport in Queensland with Austbrokers responsible for arranging insurance. The subsequent placement slip indicated that the period of coverage was from May 19 to the date of arrival at the airport. However, the helicopter received significant damage during transit on May 18 due to insufficient packing in the shipping container. Swashplate made a claim but was rejected by Liberty as the cover took effect on May 19 Mississippi time, which is after the damage occurred. The trial judge sided with Liberty Mutual as the helicopter was packed before the commencement of the cover on May 19, but Swashplate appealed against the decision. Now, the Federal Court of Australia has decided to allow the appeal, stating: The decision of the primary judge should be set aside and in lieu thereof the separate question should be answered in the affirmative. It was agreed that the costs of the appeal should follow the event, but Liberty sought to make submissions as to costs of the proceedings before the primary judge once the outcome was known. There should be orders that Liberty pays the costs of the appeal and any issue as to costs of the primary hearing that the parties are unable to resolve should be remitted to the primary judge. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 02:08:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh (1st R) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd L) in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, Sept. 16, 2020. (Photo by Huo Wen/Xinhua) ULAN BATOR, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh met with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday and the two sides discussed cooperation between the two countries. Khurelsukh asked Wang to convey his sincere greetings to Chinese leaders. Saying that Wang is the first foreign minister to visit Mongolia since the establishment of the new Mongolian government and the novel coronavirus outbreak, Khurelsukh noted that Mongolia attaches great importance to the visit, which reflects the traditional friendship and strategic mutual trust between the two countries. During the epidemic, Mongolia and China are in the same boat and help each other, Khurelsukh said, expressing Mongolia's gratitude to China for its selfless assistance and epidemic prevention information. Khurelsukh said that Mongolia and China are permanent neighbors, and developing good-neighborly and friendly cooperation with China is a foreign-policy priority for Mongolia. Mongolia firmly adheres to the one-China policy, and it did not and will not interfere in China's internal affairs in the past and in the future, Khurelsukh said, noting that Mongolia understands and supports China's various domestic and foreign policies. Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Mongolian People's Party (MPP) and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Khurelsukh said, expressing his hope that the two sides will strengthen inter-party exchanges and organize activities to celebrate the anniversaries. The prime minister said that his country is willing to deepen all-round cooperation with China and continue to inject new connotations into the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership. Conveying Chinese leaders' best wishes to Khurelsukh, Wang said that Mongolia successfully held elections in June, and has maintained political stability and social harmony. He expressed the belief that under the leadership of the new government, Mongolian people will be able to continue to move toward modernization. "My visit here is to strengthen all-round cooperation between China and Mongolia in the post-epidemic era. The two sides have reached a series of important consensus," said Wang. China highly appreciates that developing relations with China has been Mongolia's long-standing foreign policy priority, which is fully in line with Mongolia's long-term national interests, Wang said, adding that China will also continue to make strengthening the friendship with Mongolia a priority of China's neighborhood diplomacy, and this policy is unswerving. China and Mongolia are permanent neighbors and should be friends forever, Wang said, noting that this is not only the consensus of the leaders of the two countries, but also should be the consensus of all walks of life and people in the two countries. Noting China-Mongolia cooperation has huge potential and room for development, Wang said that the two countries must step up plans for cooperation in various fields during the post-epidemic era to promote each other's development and revitalization. "We are willing to strengthen the exchange of experience in governance and administration with the MPP and plan for next year's celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the two parties," Wang said. He noted that the current international situation is complex and changeable, but as long as China and Mongolia firmly understand each other, trust each other, abide by consensuses, especially respect each other's national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs, and continue to enhance political mutual trust, China-Mongolia friendship will be unbreakable. Enditem HAMDEN Kim Talmadge is trying to save 15 acres of forest across the street from her home from being cut down. Its there, in the northern corner of Hamden, that a renewable energy company is looking to build a solar panel field. But Talmadge and many other residents are fighting the project. They pretty much want to decimate the entire mountainside, Talmadge said. The kicker is that the power isnt even for Hamden. The energy generated from the solar field would be sold to the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities System and used for power at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, according to plans filed with the Connecticut Siting Council. The panels are expected to generate more than 3,000 megawatt hours in the first year, enough to power nearly 260 homes. Verticle Bridge LLC owns a 33-acre property on which a communications tower already sits. The energy company plans to lease 15 acres in that area for the solar panels. The company also considered an area in Stonington, two sites in Plainfield and two other sites in Hamden, but said those sites were unsuitable due to land restrictions, impact on environmental resources and/or unwillingness of property owners. Talmadge and her husband run KayCee Farm, where they maintain animals and do sugaring; they have lived there for about 10 years. She said those opposing the solar field arent against developing solar energy shes interested in putting solar panels on her house but rather the clear-cutting of such a large woodland. Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media More than 800 people have signed a petition Talmadge created in an effort to stop the project that would sit at 360 Gaylord Mountain Road. There are so many people riled up about this, Talmadge said.Theyre also rushing this project so fast. Distributed Solar Development, a renewable energy venture of GE, was the original company proposing the project, which was then filed with the Siting Council under Gaylord Mountain Solar Project 2019 LLC. Requests for comment have been made to the companys project manager and attorney. The Siting Council has sole jurisdiction over the project because it involves an energy utilitys project, so Hamdens local zoning and wetlands regulations are bypassed. Nevertheless, Hamdens Planning and Zoning Commission and Inland and Wetlands Commission have written to oppose the project. Talmadge said in part what would make the proposed project so devastating is how trees in the area already have been decimated by tornadoes in the past two years. This area has been hurt and it needs time to regrow, she said. Since then, Talmadge said she and her neighbors have experienced an enormous amount of flooding with each rain and worry that, with a loss of more trees, flooding in the area will only get worse. By taking all those trees out, theyre taking out the topography that takes care of the rain water, she said. The PZC voiced the same concern as the site is steeply sloped. Residents also are worried about wildlife in the area that theyve observed box turtles, deer, wild turkey inhabiting the woods. The project also is within the public water supply watershed of Lake Whitney Reservoir, an active source of public drinking water for the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority, which the company didnt mention in its environmental assessment, according to the Department of Public Health. DPHs assessment notes the potential impact of the loss of forested land and disturbance of wetlands on source quality and quantity should be assessed. The proposed site is near several wetlands, with some areas of the site directly abutting or intruding into a wetland, according to the Inland and Wetlands Commission. Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media The energy company, however, said the project will not have an undue adverse effect on the existing environment and ecology based on its assessment. The company also said the project will help the state reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The town and residents, however, are insisting the Siting Council take a look for itself. The Siting Council recently approved Mayor Curt B. Lengs request to extend the public comment period on the project, to hold a public hearing and perform a site visit. The Siting Council plans to schedule the hearing at its next meeting Sept. 24. Were not against solar, but when youre taking things out, I think its detrimental, Talmadge said. There are so many other possibilities that theyre not willing to entertain. The more people that know about it, I think they would be upset. Until the public hearing and site visit, Talmadge said shes going to continue to rally support and post more information in her neighborhood, but feels somewhat helpless to do anything to stop the project. mdignan@hearstmediact.com The Pakistan government has frozen a total of 964 assets of proscribed organisations Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) as it takes action against elements involved in terror financing and money laundering as part of efforts towards fulfilling requirements of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) 27-point action plan. As per the the Interior Ministry, 907 of the frozen assets belonged to the JuD and 57 to the JeM. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said that the provincial home departments had taken the action to freeze assets of the JuD and the JeM under the United Nations Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order 2019, issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "A total of 611 properties of the JuD were frozen in Punjab, 108 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 80 in Sindh, 61 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), 30 in Balochistan and 17 in the Islamabad Capital Territory," he told the Senate, the upper house of the Pakistani legislature, about the government's progress against proscribed outfits. "Eight properties of the JeM were frozen in Punjab, 29 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 12 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, four in the Islamabad Capital Territory, three in Sindh and one in Balochistan," he added. Giving details, Khan said: "The frozen properties of the JuD include 75 schools, four colleges, 330 mosques and seminaries, 186 dispensaries, 15 hospitals, 62 ambulances, a funeral bus (hearse), three disaster management offices, 10 boats, 17 buildings, a plot, agricultural land and two motorcycles." The frozen assets of JeM, Khan said, include "53 mosques and seminaries, two dispensaries and two ambulances". The steps come at a time when Pakistan is working hard to comply with all the 27 points of the Action Plan given by FATF to see itself out of the 'grey list'. Earlier this year, a Pakistan anti-terrorism court sentenced JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to five years and six months imprisonment in two cases, after finding him guilty of terror financing and association with other banned outfits. JuD's other top leaders, at least 13 in number, were also booked in about two dozen cases of terror financing and money laundering during July last year. The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) registered the cases under the Anti-Terror Act in Lahore, Gujranwala and Multan against JUD, Lashkar-e-Taiba and charity umbrella organisation Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF). It was revealed that the accused were raising funds under at least five trusts, namely the Dawatul Irshad Trust, the Moaz Bin Jabal Trust, the Al Anfaal Trust, the Al Madina Foundation Trust and the Alhamd Trust. Wishes poured in from all corners of the world for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who turned 70 on Thursday. World leaders including Nepal Prime Minister KP Oli, Russian President Vladimir Putin among others also extended their good wishes to the Indian prime minister and several other leading personalities from across the nation too sent him wishes on his birthday. The workers of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadus Coimbatore have offered 70kgs of laddu to at Sivan Kamatchi Amman temple ahead of Prime Minister Modis birthday. Several netizens on social media also ran the Plank You Modi challenge to express their gratitude towards the leader for his selfless work. However, amid all of Modis well-wishers, one person has stood out and seems to be his biggest fan. Meet Anmol Bakaya, who decided to chant Modiji for 24 hours straight on his YouTube live. ALSO READ: Modis 70th Birthday: Here are Four Poems Penned by PM on Kargil, Love, Calamity and Being Hindu Taking to his YouTube channel, Anmol Bakaya Vlogs, the man said, In the past year Ive heard a lot of things both positive and negative about our Honorable Prime Minister, but personally I just have immense respect for him and for all that he has done for our nation, my support for him is never-ending and this is just a little gesture of appreciation and nothing more." Sitting against a background strewn with spiritual quotes and mythological imagery, Anmol said, If youre watching this video for the first time, please stay for minimum a minute as your watch time helps to promote this video and reach Shri Narendra Modi ji". The blogger has over 3.50K subscribers and also takes a minutes break in-between. ALSO READ: Why Narendra Modi Shared a Complicated Relationship With His Father Damodardas PM Modi usually starts celebrating his birthday by meeting his mother and seeking her blessings. He also spends some time among common public. Since taking over as the prime minister in 2014, he has observed his birthday by inaugurating a dam, spending time with school children, inspecting projects and offering prayers to Narmada or at Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. A Hamilton mother says shes frustrated she cant get a refund after her seven-year-old son made hundreds of dollars in smartphone app purchases without her knowing, despite her pleading with Google for assistance. Natasha Bostick said her son had been using her old Android phone to play games that featured in-app purchases. Bostick said she thought she had removed the credit card information from the phone, until she went to move money at the bank earlier this month. I called the bank expecting to change money over (and) when I went on there I was short $1,200, she said. I spoke to the teller and they told me it was all Google Play. It turns out, her son had gone click happy, on the phone, said Bostick, racking up hundreds of dollars in charges. As of Sept. 13, he had accumulated more than $1,300 in charges this month, said Bostick. Bostick, a single mother, is visually impaired leaving her nearly blind. Monitoring what her son does on her phone is difficult, she admits. My son is only seven, hes not of legal age of consent to even agree to these, she said. Theyve all been unauthorized payments. According to Google Play Help, users can report unauthorized charges within 120 days for the chance of a refund. They must be purchases the user didnt make and that wasnt made by anyone they know. Bostick argues that her son isnt old enough to authorize the purchases, is unaware of what making the purchases with a click of a button means, and that they should be refundable, as they were reported within the 120-day limit. I didnt authorize this, she said. I have a right. Bostick said she reached out to Google for assistance but had been told as of Tuesday she would be unable to get a refund. Bostick said she has also asked her bank to launch an investigation into the purchases. The Hamilton Spectator reached out to Google for comment on the situation Tuesday but has not received a response. Since contacting Google Play and her bank, Bostick said she had a friend delete the apps and once again try to remove her payment method from the phone. She also blocked her card from online shopping. According to their site, users can also turn on password authentication for purchases. MIAMI - The Miami Herald is investigating how it published a paid insert with what it called racist and anti-Semitic commentary and distributed to readers of its Spanish-language sister paper. The Florida dailys publisher Aminda Marques Gonzalez earlier this week said it will no longer publish or distribute the content of the weekly supplement LIBRE. Marques Gonzalez and the managing editor of El Nuevo Herald Nancy San Martin apologized to readers in a letter saying they had not previously read the advertising insert until a column was widely shared on social media with commentary berating Jews for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement while comparing violent demonstrators to Nazis. The fact that no one in leadership, beginning with us, had previously read this advertising insert until this issue was surfaced by a reader is distressing, Marques Gonzalez said, adding that the paper did not have a process in place to review the content for that and other similar supplements. LIBRE accused the newspaper of censorship in an online statement posted on its website Wednesday while saying it provided advance copies and right to revoke content. The column that was flagged was written by Cuban exile Roberto Luque Escalona, who arrived in the U.S. in 1992. While still in Havana, he was once profiled in The New York Times and said to be Cubas only declared leader of an opposition party active in the country. In his column, Luque Escalona was reacting to a full-page ad published by The New York Times in late August signed by hundreds of Jewish groups backing the Black Lives Matter movement. What kind of people are these Jews? Theyre always talking about the Holocaust, but have they already forgotten about Kristallnacht, when Nazi thugs destroyed Jewish businesses across Germany? So do the BLM and Antifa, only the Nazis didnt steal; they only destroyed, he wrote in the column published last Friday. An Associated Press account of the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 said Jewish stores were looted. The Miami Herald has not said how long it has been publishing and distributing LIBRE to subscribers of El Nuevo Herald. Marques said the company was investigating the business relationship with LIBRE. After reviewing past issues of LIBRE, Marques Gonzalez wrote the company was appalled to discover multiple instances of anti-Semitic and racist commentary since January, the letter to readers said. Luque Escalona wrote in June about speculations that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was President Donald Trumps first U.N. ambassador, could replace Mike Pence as Vice-President. Daughter of immigrants from India, a country that has nothing to do with ours, her original name is Nimrata Randawa. Just hearing it puts me off, he wrote in Spanish. LIBRE was founded in 1966. The owner is Demetrio Perez Jr., a Cuban-born owner of a private school chain who has served as city commissioner and school board member. In 2001, he pleaded guilty to fraud for overbilling tenants while pocketing rent-subsidy money. In response to the Miami Herald pulling the weekly supplement, LIBRE said it disagreed with the columnist but defended his right to express his views. It also said Luque Escalona was a columnist for El Nuevo Herald for more than a decade. At a moment in our nations history when every journalist should be demanding a free and unfettered exchange of ideas and full expression of them, El Nuevo Heralds leadership has chosen to try to silence a vital community newspaper, said the statement posted on its website. The vast majority of the men and women who spend their working lives putting the Gary police uniform on and badge are truly protecting and serving the citizens of Gary, Prince said. Right here, right now, I say thank you to each of you who have the heart and willingness to serve with honor on the Gary Police Department. On a sunny day in late August, the scene in Ogunquit, Maine, a small coastal town about 45 minutes south of Portland, was typical for its busy season. Tourists milled about in front of souvenir shops rifling through stacks of T-shirts with Maine" emblazoned on them, and the line at local ice cream shop Sweet Peas was 10-deep. But the scene still wasnt typical: Everyone had masks on, and that line at Sweet Peas? It stretched halfway down the block in accordance with social distancing. Maines coast is a popular summer destination any year, but New York, New Jersey and Connecticut residents in particular flocked there in even greater numbers this warm season to take advantage of the fact that coming from neighboring states with low infection rates they werent required to quarantine for 14 days or present a negative Covid-19 test upon arrival (residents of New Hampshire and Vermont are also exempt). But talking to an Ogunquit resident during my visit, he pointed out that though the streets seemed busy to an outsider, it was practically empty relative to previous summers, forcing business owners there as with everywhere around the world to think creatively and pivot where necessary. Now that summers over, whats next for towns like Ogunquit? Read on to see four ways seasonal businesses can adapt and stay afloat through the cold months ahead. Related: 5 Ways to Help Your Business Win in Times of Crisis Take advantage of abnormal school schedules September is the new August, jokes Nancy White, managing director of Cliff House, a 226-room resort about 10 minutes from Ogunquit. After closing for several months, the hotel reopened in June to eager, but smaller, crowds than normal. For the first few weeks it was only open to Maine residents, but the hotel has gradually started welcoming visitors from more states as Maines quarantine rules have changed. Image Credit: Cliff House Maine Cliff Houses two outdoor pools, miles of walking trails and fire pit with nightly smores are made for enjoying the outdoors, which is why its busiest months of the year are typically June, July and August, when the weather in Maine is predictably pleasant. September usually means families head back home for school and conference business picks up, but thats obviously not happening this year. Instead, Cliff House has seen more families booking multi-week stays to take advantage of the fact that children are either starting school late, going online or being homeschooled. And with the dearth of big events or conferences happening, White says theyve turned conference space into Zoom rooms guests can book for calls, and Cliff Houses massive ballrooms can be used for children doing virtual school (with breaks for recess in the kids club or indoor pool). Now that that summer is winding down, Whites team is focusing on planning activities like mazes and biking trails for fall and igloos and snowshoe trails for winter. White explains that guests will say, I dont want to fly; Im not going to the Caribbean right now. Winter is coming, so lets take a five-day weekend and go up the coast. Related: Required Masks, 'Peace of Mind Commitments' and Temperature Checks: What to Expect When Traveling Follow the trends Thirty minutes up the road from Cliff House near Kennebunkport, Hana Pevny is keeping the doors of her six-room boutique property, Waldo Emerson Inn, open by rethinking her business model. When restrictions in Maine started easing, I quickly realized I had an advantage due to my propertys smaller size, so I advertised it as a short-term rental, she says. Within 48 hours of posting it online I received a reservation for the month of June from a group of millennials from New York who could work remotely. In Maine we werent allowed to accept guests in lodging facilities until June 26, but being a long-term rental for 31 days allowed me to generate revenue when others couldnt. Image Credit: Christian Giannelli Then, she noticed a pattern among her guests and quickly pivoted to meet their new needs. Ive always had two dog-friendly rooms, but I noticed a trend in Covid dog adoptions, so I made my entire inn dog-friendly to cater to this growing niche market, she says. Now, Pevny is balancing running her normal business and occasionally renting out the entire property to people looking for a coastal escape, which also gives her some much-needed rest. Related: The Pivot That Helped This Founder Get Into 10,000 Stores Go where your customers are A few hours east in Waterbury, Vermont, the portability of Katya dAngelos summer side hustle made the biggest difference in her sales this summer. She runs The Udder Guys, an ice cream trike that she pedals around town from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Fewer tourists meant dAngelo opened four nights a week instead of six and closed 30 minutes earlier than usual, but she was able to easily move around to find business where local customers were instead of tourists. Image Credit: The Udder Guys Changing locations was the biggest adaptation for this year, which ultimately proved so successful that I will likely continue that next season, she says. Other than a few small weddings this month, shes now put the trike into hibernation for the winter, but the summer proved more fruitful than she expected. Business was better than expected considering everything, although my processing fees were much higher as more people used credit cards, she says. Still, The ability to set up where there were actually people was hugely beneficial, dAngelo adds. I also have Vermonts residents to thank for being responsible the states, and my towns, caseload has been one of the lowest in the country, so locals felt comfortable heading out for an ice cream treat. Related: 'There's Nothing Like a Crisis to Make You Think With Speed and Creativity' Look for the positive On the other side of the country in a remote corner of Alaska near Bristol Bay, Nanci Morris Lyons sport fishing lodge has dealt with setback after setback as she attempts to keep the business afloat. A fishing guide with more than 35 years of experience, Lyon runs Bear Trail Lodge for just three-and-a-half months out of the year, June through mid-October, which brings in 90 percent of her annual income. Though the state of Alaska never required her to shut down, business was down about 40 percent, and at one point early in the year the regional air carrier went bankrupt, which meant no one could fly in and out of Anchorage for two weeks. Image Credit: Bear Trail Lodge This season has looked nothing like anything I can even compare it to, Lyon says. Ive run my operation through multi-day volcanic shutdowns when flights couldnt make it to our remote location safely. Ive run it through the devastation of 9/11 and through President Obamas visit when all airports were closed to ensure safety. Out of all of those hurdles, this season has been by far the most challenging and stressful. Lyon has taken those changes in stride, though, renting out vacant employee rooms to construction workers and Alaska Airlines employees to cover her mortgage, helping guests navigate the changing quarantine and testing requirements and re-booking guests who had to cancel this years trips. Lyon and her now-smaller team, however, are hoping for weather that allows them to stay open through late October and banking on a viable vaccine that will help them fill rooms in the next several seasons. If were forced to endure another season like this one, Ill dwell on the positive all of the lessons Ive learned, Lyon says. I know how to space my tables to maintain six-foot distances. I already have air purifiers and hand sanitizer locations installed. My guides know how to maintain distance. I am cautiously optimistic that people will want to travel and see the beauty of the Bristol Bay region. My goal is to fulfill those dreams. Related: Nearly Half of Business Owners Think the Changes They've Made During the Crisis Will Be Permanent (Infographic) Related: New Google Search Feature Makes Pandemic Shopping Easier Why This Serial Entrepreneur Opened a Painting With a Twist - In the Middle of the Pandemic Summer's Officially Over - What's Next for Businesses That Rely on Seasonal Tourism? Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved An NGO, Save Them India Foundation filed public interest litigation in the SC seeking directions to the Central government to investigate China's alleged surveillance over President of India, Prime Minister, judges (sitting and retired) of the apex court and High Court and other influential personalities. Save Them India Foundation, an NGO, on Thursday filed public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Central government to investigate Chinas alleged surveillance over President of India, Prime Minister, judges (sitting and retired) of the apex court and High Court and other influential personalities. The NGO, in its PIL through advocate Vishal Tiwari, sought directions to register an FIR for cyber terrorism and cybercrime under several relevant sections of the Information and Technology Act 2000 and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The plea sought directions to ban Chinese-operated digital money lending apps in India and to take actions against the Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) and digital money lending apps acting contrary to the fair practice code. Tiwari further sought that there should be a direction to the Union of India to enact the Draft Bill The protection of personal Data, 2019.The plea said that China not only through one mode but by the other modes like money lending apps extracted data of Indian citizens and storing there in its country. This could have a disastrous effect in the future and is a threat and danger to our national security and integrity, it added. ALSO READ: Massive outrage over Andhra HCs media gag, govt to move SC It alleged that the privacy of citizens, the secrecy of judges, the President of India, the Prime Minister, and other thousands of authorities has become a play for China. Chinas espionage system and spying upon India has developed a new threat and fear of losing our secret valuable information, public policies, defence policies, data hijacking and theft, the plea said. ALSO READ: Hopeful coronavirus vaccine will be available in India next year: Harsh Vardhan She recently enjoyed a romantic getaway to Spain with her boyfriend Biggs Chris. And Rebecca Gormley opted for another relaxing outing as she read Paul Arden's self-help book It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be on Bournemouth beach on Thursday. The Love Island star, 22, nailed sporty chic in lilac co-ords as she made the most out of the Indian summer in the UK. Me-time: Rebecca Gormley opted for a relaxing outing as she read Paul Arden's self-help book It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be on Bournemouth beach on Thursday Flashing a hint of her toned abs, the beauty pageant queen's two-piece featured a low-cut bralet and matching running tights. The influencer ditched her signature heels in favour of going barefoot, and carried her belongings in a black designer handbag. Her glossy tresses were worn in two braids placed on her crown, while she highlighted her features in minimal make-up. The media personality looked focused as she caught up on some reading during a rare appearance without her partner. Radiant: The Love Island star, 22, nailed sporty chic in lilac co-ords as she made the most out of the Indian summer in the UK Toned: Flashing a hint of her toned abs, the beauty pageant queen's two-piece featured a low-cut bralet and matching running tights Less is more: The influencer ditched her signature heels in favour of going barefoot, and carried her belongings in a black designer handbag Ready to unwind: The former Miss Newcastle laid out a blue and white striped mat on the sandy shores All in the details: The TV star positioned her white trainers by her bag as she prepared to sit down The brunette recently landed herself in hot water after she and boyfriend Biggs, 27, ignored quarantine rules. They jetted straight from a holiday in Spain to Scotland last month and brazenly posted about it on Instagram. The couple had been holidaying in Ibiza, and should have quarantined for 14 days when they returned to the UK after the government pulled its air bridge with Spain following a spike in COVID-19 cases. Glowing: Her glossy tresses were worn in two braids placed on her crown, while she highlighted her features in minimal make-up Pop of colour: By not donning shoes, Rebecca flaunted her glossy pink pedicure Minimalist: The bombshell accessorised with just a pair of dainty stud earrings and a gold necklace Break: The media personality looked focused as she caught up on some reading during a rare appearance without her partner Earlier this year, their relationship seemed to be on the rocks last month when Biggs was accused of messaging another woman just days after he and Rebecca reunited following 10 weeks apart in lockdown. The Glaswegian car repair specialist is said to have exchanged a series of messages with healthcare assistant Caitlin Fulton, who claims she learned of his blossoming romance with Rebecca when she saw pictures of them kissing. 'We'd been messaging back and forth after he followed me on Instagram and we'd talked about going away when lockdown ended, to a holiday cottage or a lodge somewhere in the UK,' she told The Sun. 'He even left me a voice note saying that coming down to see me "sounded good". We were making plans as recently as Saturday.' Caitlin told the publication that she learned of Biggs' relationship with Rebecca when she saw photographs of them kissing in Newcastle. 'I was a bit shocked that he had a girlfriend,' she said. 'And obviously I would be shocked if that was my boyfriend messaging someone.' The couple split up briefly before lockdown after she had a drunken sleepover with Love Island 2019 contestant Michael Griffiths. A lance corporal will be allowed to return to the Army less than two years after destroying a Coldstream Guard's career with a single punch to the head, MailOnline can reveal. Saula Balenaka, 37, of the second battalion Yorkshire Regiment, hit fellow lance corporal Shaun Warren after a night out in Catterick, Yorkshire, last December. After admitting grievous bodily harm at a court martial last week, Balenaka was sentenced to 22 months in military correctional centre and can then return to duty. By contrast, Mr Warren saw his military career destroyed by his injuries which caused three bleeds on the brain and left him with permanent hearing loss. He was medically discharged from the Army last month, and the 31-year-old father-of-three, from Killingworth, North Tyneside is now working as a joiner. In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Mr Warren said: 'I've had to try to build a new life for myself, whereas he can serve his sentence and go back to his regiment in well under two years. 'It has been a devastating way to see my career in the army brought to an end; I loved it and I thought I'd be in the Army for many years to come. Lance corporal Saula Balenaka (above) will be allowed to return to the Army less than two years after destroying a Coldstream Guard's career with a single punch to the head, MailOnline can reveal Balenaka, 37, of the second battalion Yorkshire Regiment, hit fellow lance corporal Shaun Warren after a night out in Catterick, Yorkshire, last December. Mr Warren (in Afghanistan) suffered three bleeds on the brain and was left with permanent hearing loss After being medically discharged from the Army last month, the 31-year-old father-of-three, from Killingworth, North Tyneside is now working as a joiner in his home town (above) In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, he said: 'It has been a devastating way to see my career in the army brought to an end; I loved it and I thought I'd be in the Army for many years to come' 'I served in Afghanistan and have seen dangerous situations which soldiers expect to have to deal with but I never saw my service ending like this.' Mr Warren was attacked as he walked back to his barracks from a Christmas night out and had done nothing to provoke Balenaka. The court martial heard he had his hands in his pockets when he was punched and fell unconscious to the ground where he almost choked on his own vomit and fractured his skull. Today, Mr Warren said he didn't understand why the motiveless assault was dealt with in a military court. Balenaka could have faced up to five years in prison if he had been tried in a criminal court. 'It doesn't feel like justice,' said Mr Warren. 'It was dealt with by the military because it was 'soldier on soldier' but it happened in Catterick as I was walking back to the barracks. 'It could have been dealt with by the civilian police and put in front of a criminal court where the sentence would have been much longer. 'I don't know how these things are decided but the Army wanted to deal with it themselves and this has been the result. It's very disappointing. 'He was given credit for his guilty plea, his service record and the fact he has a dependent family. With credit for good behaviour he will only serve two thirds of his sentence.' Mr Warren was attacked as he walked back to his barracks from a Christmas night out and had done nothing to provoke Balenaka. A court martial heard he had his hands in his pockets when he was punched and fell unconscious to the ground, having fractured his skull Today, Mr Warren (pictured in Downing Street before the attack) said he didn't understand why the motiveless assault was dealt with in a military court. Balenaka could have faced up to five years in prison if he had been tried in a criminal court Mr Warren, 31, (pictured after the attack) said: 'I was officially medically discharged on August 11 and I've had to try to build a new life for myself, whereas he can serve his sentence and go back to his regiment in well under two years' Mr Warren had been with regimental comrades at Club Louis in the the North Yorks garrison town when two groups of squaddies began arguing and fighting broke out. He said: 'It didn't involve me or my group of mates, the only role we played was to try to defuse the situation and calm people down. 'We then left and the last thing I remember was walking home, I can't remember him approaching me or punching me without warning. 'I woke up in hospital where I was told I would probably have died if my friends hadn't cleared my airways. 'I discovered I'd been walking along with my hands in my pockets when he hit me and I fell and struck my head. I will always be grateful to my friends as much as I will always wonder why he attacked me. 'It was apparently a case of mistaken identity but to me that doesn't excuse it one bit. It was unprovoked and could have killed me.' Mr Warren stayed in Darlington Memorial Hospital for four days before being allowed out. He spent three months convalescing at home, where he was suffering dizziness, confusion and loss of hearing in his left hear which has never returned. He was then taken into a military hospital where doctors began the process of rehabilitating him to the point where he could return to active duty. Mr Warren had been with regimental comrades at Club Louis (above) in the the North Yorks garrison town when two groups of squaddies began arguing and fighting broke out Balenaka, who got married just before the court martial, was sentenced to 22 months in military prison after he admitted the assault at a hearing in Catterick on September 7. He will serve his time in the Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC) in Colchester, Essex, for what the hearing was told was an 'unprovoked attack' which left a '10 year career over in 10 minutes' In summer he was able to return to light duties, but the catastrophic injury proved impossible to overcome. Mr Warren said: 'It was too much for me, I couldn't focus on tasks, my fatigue levels were always high and I've become permanently deaf in one ear. I was assessed and I knew what the outcome would be. 'I was officially discharged last month and it was devastating, this isn't the life I wanted to be living. 'I've found work as a joiner, which I trained in before the Army, and I'm glad and grateful to be given a job with a construction firm, but I miss my life in the Army. 'The judge made the point that I had played no part in any trouble and was simply walking home. It was so senseless and it's had the most devastating effect on me and my family.' Balenaka, who got married just before the court martial, will serve his time in the Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC) in Colchester, Essex, for what the hearing was told was an 'unprovoked attack' which left a '10 year career over in 10 minutes'. An Army spokesman said: 'We can confirm Lance Corporal Balenaka, of 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment, was found guilty of grievous bodily harm at the Military Courts Centre Catterick and sentenced to 22 months' detention.' 18 Shares Share Single payer is the solution. And the time for it is now. A single-payer system would guarantee health care coverage immediately to every American. So whether a loved one gets sick from COVID, has a heart attack, or gets in a car accident, she will receive the care she needs without it causing financial hardship. A single-payer system will eliminate employer health insurance contributions. This will provide huge relief to hundreds of thousands of struggling small businesses across the country. The money saved can go towards paying their employees a living wage or hiring new workers, which will help get our economy back on track. A single-payer system will relieve the burden of finding health insurance from individuals. Freelancers and gig, self-employed, and per diem workers can pursue employment without having to worry about providing health coverage for their families. And with families relieved of the insecurities created by surprise medical bills and massive out-of-pocket costs, they will be more likely to contribute to our consumer-driven economy. COVID has absolutely quelled consumerism; single payer can help to bring it back. Toby Terwilliger is an internal medicine-pediatric resident. He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, Is now the time for single payer? Did you enjoy todays episode? Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out! Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration. Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. Srinagar, Sep 17 : An encounter has started between terrorists and security forces at Batamaloo in Srinagar on Thursday, officials said. The firefight between terrorists and security forces took place after security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of a specific information about presence of terrorists. As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter. "Encounter has started at Batamaloo area of Srinagar. Police and CRPF are on the job," police said. Banksys effort to deter merchandisers from cashing in on his graffiti paintings was dealt a blow Monday when the European Unions intellectual property office declared the pseudonymous artists application to use his famous Flower Thrower as a trademark was invalid. In 2014, Pest Control, Banksys authentication bureau, applied to the office to register the Bethlehem mural of a rioter hurling a floral bouquet as an official trademark without text. Artists traditionally use copyright law to protect their works from knockoffs, but copyright action would have required the British graffiti artist to reveal his long-concealed identity. (One of Banksys stenciled murals declares copyright is for losers.) Last year, Full Colour Black, a British-based greeting card company, applied to the E.U. to have Pest Controls attempt to trademark Flower Thrower declared invalid. Banksy responded by creating Gross Domestic Product, a pop-up store in Croydon, south London, in an effort to show he was actively using his trademark to make and sell his own merchandise. It included a three-panel Flower Thrower print. Midland County recorded six new confirmed coronavirus cases Thursday, bringing the pandemic total to 442 cases, 94 probable cases and 11 deaths. There were no deaths recorded Thursday in the five-county region, which includes Midland, Bay, Gladwin, Isabella and Saginaw counties, that the Daily News has been chronicling since the start of the pandemic. Midland County recorded 43 cases, confirmed and probable, during the week of Sept. 11-17, according to the Midland County health department, which releases statistics every Thursday. Of the 43 cases, 16 were in the 20-29 age group and 11 in the 0-19 age group. Many of the new cases are associated with a Northwood University outbreak. The Midland-based university on Thursday morning reported 17 current coronavirus cases, with 12 pending tests and 40 recoveries since Aug. 24, the start of its fall semester. Another outbreak has been reported at Saginaw County's Saginaw Valley State University, which lists 12 active cases at this time, and a total of 36 positive cases since Aug. 17. Regarding school-related outbreaks, a coalition of Michigan newspaper editors, including Daily News Editor Kate Hessling, is urging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to release information on school-related outbreaks in a more timely manner. The state on Monday began releasing school outbreak data, including the names of individual schools and number of cases, on a weekly basis. "As a public health and transparency tool, this weekly MDHHS reporting is woefully inadequate," states the letter dated Sept. 16 from the Michigan School-Related COVID Outbreak Transparency Coalition. "By the time MDHHS releases its weekly report each Monday afternoon, individual school outbreaks in the report are 4-10 days old, as numerous statewide media outlets have documented." The coalition asks the state for three things: Require K-12 schools and school districts to immediately and publicly notify their entire communities via public statements prominently posted on their websites and in releases to all local media within 24 hours of confirming a COVID outbreak. Increase MDHHS school COVID outbreak reporting data, by named school, to at least two or three times per week to make the report at least somewhat useful to students, families, educators and local communities in making their personal choices in COVID monitoring, testing, and other personal protection behaviors. Require universities and colleges to consistently report four metrics: daily positive tests, cumulative positive tests, test positivity rates, and total number of tests on daily and cumulative basis. Thursday, Sept. 17 daily numbers Bay County: 13 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 855 cases, 91 probable, 46 deaths. Gladwin County: Two cases were added; pandemic total stands at 80 cases, nine probable, two deaths. Isabella County: Six cases were added; pandemic total stands at 571 cases, 67 probable, 11 deaths. Saginaw County: 26 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 2,653 cases, 193 probable, 134 deaths and four probable deaths. The state on Thursday added 829 new cases and nine deaths; five of them from vital records reviews. Overall, Michigan is at 114,692 cases and 6,632 deaths. Testing The state report shows as of Sept. 17, Midland County has performed 12,623 diagnostic tests and 1,365 serology (antibodies) tests, totaling 13,988 tests. Gladwin County is listed as having administered 4,817 diagnostic tests and 202 serology (antibodies) tests, totaling 5,019 tests. Midland Countys seven-day rolling positivity rate on Sept. 14 was listed at 4.8%, and medium risk of spread. Gladwin County was listed at 1.4% and low risk. The Saginaw region, which includes 12-counties, including Midland, Gladwin, Bay and Saginaw, was listed at 3% and low risk and Michigan at 3.4%, a medium risk. A positivity rate of less than 3% indicates a lack of community spread, according to Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Department of Health and Human Services chief medical executive. Nursing Homes Brittany Manor in Midland is listed in the state report as having four cumulative cases and one death among residents as of Sept. 16, and five cumulative cases and no deaths among staff. Midland Kings Daughters is reporting one cumulative case among staff and Medilodge of Midland is reporting three cumulative cases among staff. The other reporting facility, Stratford Pines, is reporting no cases. Gladwin Pines Nursing Home is listed as having two cumulative confirmed cases and no deaths among residents as of Sept. 16, and one confirmed case and no deaths among staff. Gladwin Nursing & Rehabilitation Community, the other long-term health facility reporting to the state, is reporting one cumulative confirmed case among residents and three cumulative cases among staff. Recovered The Midland County health department in its weekly numbers show a pandemic total of 407 recoveries 65 in the last week and 37 hospitalizations two in the last week. The state lists the total recovered at 85,513 cases, as of Sept. 11, which represents COVID-19 confirmed individuals with an onset date on or prior to Aug. 12, according to the state website, mich.gov. Midland County Health Department data People younger than 40 make up 58.2% of total Midland County cases, confirmed and probable, as of Sept. 17. Of Midland Countys 539 confirmed and probable cases, 21% cases are in 0-19 age range; 24% in 20-29 age range; 13.2% in 30-39 age range; 11.7% in 40-49 age range; 13.4% in 50-59 age range; 8.2% in 60-69 age range; 5.4% in 70-79 age range, and 3% in 80+ age range, as of Sept. 17. Of Midlands 11 deaths, five have been female and six male. One was between the ages of 50-59; four were between ages of 70-79, and six were 80 years and older. As of Sept. 17, 82.2% of cases have fallen within the 48640 and 48642 (mostly Midland) zip codes. Next highest were 48657 (Sanford) with 6.9% of cases and 48618 (Coleman) with 6.1% of cases. Cases by race, as of Sept. 17: 86.9% were listed as caucasian; 3.1% as Black; 2.7% as Asian; 1.0% listed as two or more races; and 5.6% were unknown. MidMichigan Health statistics Patient census: MidMichigan Health system is listed as having 13 COVID-19 patients, including one COVID-19 patient in ICU, and 56.9% bed occupancy, as of Sept. 14. PPE days on hand as of Sept. 14: The health system reported 0-6 days for N95 masks; 0-6 days for surgical masks; 7-14 days for surgical gowns; 21+ days for shields and 7-14 days for gloves. Recommendations for public Socially distance at least 6 feet from non-household members. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom, before eating and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol based sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty. Wear face coverings in public. Stay home when sick. Covering coughs and sneezes. Throw used tissues in the trash right after use. Routinely clean frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning wipe or spray. Where to get help If you think you've been exposed to COVID-19 and develop a fever and symptoms such as cough or difficulty breathing, call your health care provider for medical advice. If he/she isn't available, call MidMichigan Urgent Care in Midland at 989-633-1350 or MidMichigan Medical Center's Emergency Department in Midland at 989-839-3100. MidMichigan Health has a COVID-19 informational hotline with a reminder of CDC guidelines and recommendations. The hotline can be reached toll-free at 800-445-7356 or 989-794-7600. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also has a hotline number for Michigan residents for questions about COVID-19. The number is 1-888-535-6136 and is available seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Residents can also e-mail COVID19@michigan.gov. E-mails will be answered seven days a week between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. If you are feeling anxious, stressed, depressed and feel you need to talk to someone, reach out to Community Mental Health for Central Michigan by calling 800-317-0708. Press Release September 17, 2020 Imee: Free cellphones, laptops from Customs now Senator Imee Marcos has called on the government to "turn the bane of smuggling into a boon for poor students" by donating cellphones, tablets, and laptops confiscated by the Bureau of Customs (BoC) before online learning picks up in October. "The BoC generously donated almost 800 smuggled vehicles to the police, military and other government agencies last July. Why can't it solve the worries of thousands of poor students by donating confiscated electronic gadgets?" Marcos said. Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, said that attempts to illegally import electronic devices are likely to increase as social distancing due to the Covid-19 pandemic keeps product demand high. Instead of their disposal or auction, smuggled items can be donated by the government 15 days after they still remain unclaimed by their importers, following a notice of pending forfeiture, Marcos added. In August, the BoC reported confiscating some 29.5 tons of cellphones, storage devices, and electrical items that lacked clearances from the Bureau of Product Standards, National Telecommunications Commission and the Optical Media Board. The past year, Php100 million worth of cellphones, cellphone batteries and tablets from Hong Kong were intercepted in July alone at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga, with another Php15 million worth of second-hand cellphones, lithium batteries and phone accessories from South Korea confiscated the following month at Manila's international airport. "A single cellphone or laptop would be a huge boon to a mother struggling to buy food, pay electric bills, and now access online," Marcos said. A brand-new laptop with a 14-inch screen costs about Php15,000 to Php20,000, while a second-hand one can be bought online for Php4,000 and a brand-new mini version with a 10-inch screen for Php6,000 to Php10,000. Prices do not include accessories including a mouse, headset, charger, or laptop cover that cost about Php500 each. An internet connection costs Php1,000 to Php2,000 monthly besides an installation fee of Php1,500 upward, leaving poor students no choice but to avail of data load promos from internet service providers, the cheapest being Php50 usable within three days. "A family with three children would need upwards of Php25,000 to buy two laptops, install an upgraded internet connection, and require one parent to dedicate a minimim of four hours a day to overseeing their childrens' education," Marcos said. "Doing this can cost a parent his or her job or make him unable to find one. Now, how many Filipinos have a spare Php25,000 to buy cellphones, laptops and these now vital educational tools?" Marcos added. Practice question papers will be made available for all final-year students fresh and repeater candidates, said state minister for higher and technical education Uday Samant on Thursday. In a meeting held at the Fort campus of University of Mumbai (MU), Samant assured government assistance to all state universities. Every university is taking efforts to ensure no student is left out of the examination system, and MU itself will be catering to over 2.47 lakh students, so dates for exam registration have been extended till September 20, said Samant in a statement released on Thursday evening. He explained that of the 2.47 lakh final-year students, 1.7 lakh are fresh candidates and the rest are repeater candidates. The exam will be conducted online in multiple-choice question (MCQs) format and the university will conduct offline exams in case of differently-abled students and those who cannot appear for online exams, added Samant. W ho would you choose as your most inspirational leader? Barack Obama? Michelle Obama? Jacinda Ardern? At Peckhams Harris Academy, where I was lucky enough to sit in on the year sevens returning last week, form tutor Miss Enderby had a suggestion from closer to home. Just dont say Trump, she joked with the class, changing the slide to a picture of her chosen leader: Star Wars actor and SE15 native John Boyega. At 28, Boyega might not be a match for Obama and Ardern in the world-power stakes. But judging by the cheers from a group of fidgety 11-year-olds, hes certainly matching them by influencer standards. This week, he stepped down from his role as ambassador for fragrance brand Jo Malone after the company cut him out of the Chinese edition of an advert hed directed . Their decision to replace my campaign in China by using my concepts and substituting a local brand ambassador for me, without either my consent or prior notice, was wrong, he wrote on Twitter on Monday night. The original film had been a celebration of his upbringing in Peckham: doing wheelies in the park, passing signs to the market and Peckham Levels, laughing with his parents and sisters in traditional Nigerian dress. The Chinese edition dismissively trad[ed] out my culture, explained Boyega. I dont have the time for nonsense. Getty Images Indeed he doesnt. In June, Boyega became a hero for racial injustice when he gave the speech of a lifetime at a Black Lives Matter rally in Hyde Park . I need you guys to understand how painful this shit is, he told the crowd of raised fists, a symbol of the movement, after being handed a megaphone at a moments notice. I dont know if Im going to have a career after this, but f*** that, he added. This is so vital. Katie Strick / Matt Writtle Boyega didnt lose his career, nor did he two months later when he bravely spoke out against Disney , the film studio which made Star Wars. In a cover interview with GQ magazine, he insisted non-white actors were pushed to the side and given less nuance than other characters in the most recent Star Wars film, and he recently told the Radio Times hed met Americans who didnt know black people lived in London. His solution? To make more films celebrating his culture, which makes this weeks Malone furore all the more raw. For little boys and girls in classes like Miss Enderbys, Boyegas voice is vital. Like many of them, he grew up on a council estate just down the road, and before lockdown, he visited nearby schools in Southwark to motivate students to set their goals high. His Instagram biography links to a clip talking about vulnerability among young black men, admitting the BLM events of this summer have made him cry. (Danny Kasirye/GQ Magazine) / Danny Kasirye Hes also talked about attending therapy and a need for greater focus on male mental health when four in 10 men feel theyve been negatively affected by the isolation of the pandemic. You dont know what the person sitting next to you has gone through, Miss Enderby told her class, showing a picture of Boyegas friend and fellow actor Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer last month aged 43. John Boyega - In pictures 1 /39 John Boyega - In pictures BBC/McQueen Limited/Will Robson-Scott John Boyega attends the World Premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the Dolby, El Capitan, and TCL Theatres on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood Getty Images Attack The Block (2011) Daisy Ridley and British John Boyega pose on the red carpet upon arrival for the European film premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in London AFP via Getty Images John Boyega and Scott Eastwood in Pacific Rim Uprising World Premiere Of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Getty Images Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Lucasfilm Daisy Ridley and John Boyega arrive for the World Premiere Of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Getty Images Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Lucasfilm John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran attend the Premiere of Disney's "Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker" Getty Images World Premiere Of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Getty Images John Boyega attends Universal's "Pacific Rim Uprising" premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX on March 21, 2018 in Hollywood, California Getty Images Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Naomi Ackie, Kelly Marie Tran, Anthony Daniels and Oscar Isaac arrive for the World Premiere of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Getty Images Letitia Wright and John Boyega attend the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7, 2018 in New York Getty Images John Boyega as Finn in a scene from "Star Wars: Episode IX AP Star Wars: The Last Jedi Stormzy,John Boyega and Daniel Sturridge pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Black Panther' in London Invision/AP John Boyega as Finn and Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico IN Star Wars: The Last Jedi Lucasfilm Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, Graham Norton, John Boyega and Gwendoline Christie during filming of the Graham Norton Show PA John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill pose at the 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' photocall at Corinthia Hotel London on December 13, 2017 in London Dave Benett Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby and John Boyega on This Morning ITV Star Wars: The Last Jedi Star Wars: The Last Jedi LucasFilm Star Wars - The Force Awakens EE BAFTA British Academy Film Awards Detroit John Tiffany with the award for best director alongside presenter John Boyega at the Olivier Awards 2017 PA John Boyega and Daisy Ridley with their awards for Best Male and Best Female Newcomers in the winners room at the Jameson Empire Awards 2016 at The Grosvenor House Hotel Getty Images Mitzi, 7 (right) a patient at The Royal London Hospital and her brother, Teddy, 5 (second right) both from London, visited by Star Wars actor John Boyega PA Daisy Ridley and John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Daisy Ridley and Kylie Minogue laugh as David Beckham and John Boyega play with light sabers during the filming of the Graham Norton Show So TV/PA Star Wars - The Force Awakens Lucasfilm Star Wars - The Force Awakens Lucasfilm Star Wars - The Force Awakens Lucasfilm Star Wars - The Force Awakens Star Wars - The Force Awakens Star Wars - The Force Awakens Lucasfilm Star Wars - The Force Awakens Lucasfilm Star Wars: The Force Awakens stars Daisy Ridley and John Boyega with their respective action figures at London's flagship Disney Store on Oxford Street Lucy Young After the news, Boyega shared a clip of himself with Boseman, arms around one another while they chant about love and unity. We will continue to do just that, he captioned the tribute with a heart emoji. What could be a better message for the class of 2020 than that? "Properly trained, governed, supervised private security work very well with police on many occasions," he said. Offer of ADF help did not filter down to incident control An incident controller helping coordinate the ill-fated hotel quarantine system in Victoria was resistant to having police or military as a visible part of hotel quarantine, citing the mental health of the guests. Two Health Department employees, Andrea Spiteri and Jason Helps, shared the incident control duties and both said in evidence to the hotel inquiry that they were unaware of the offers being made by the federal government to help the program with Australian Defence Force boots on the ground. Andrea Spiteri giving evidence at the hotel quarantine inquiry Mr Helps, who oversaw logistics, planning and communication, said he was not offered help from the ADF. He told the inquiry there were offers of assistance coming from different agencies at the end of March, but said: "During the operation of the Hotel Quarantine Program, I was not aware of any specific ADF offer for ADF personnel to work directly in the program." In evidence, he cited a recording of a March 28 phone hook-up, at which various agencies decided how to implement hotel quarantine, when Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp was speaking to a representative of the ADF. Mr Crisp said: ADF, anything further that you might wish to raise? and the ADF representative responds: No Andrew, just noting that the news tonight mentioned that ADF would be patrolling the corridors of hotels, Ah not in Victoria!" Mr Helps said said this statement had reinforced his view that the ADF was "not available for operational roles". He said in a statement to the inquiry that uniformed ADF and Victoria police officers in hotel quarantine "may have had a more detrimental effect on the mental health of those quarantined and their acceptance of the program," and "stymied some of the good work that our welfare people did with people that were experiencing mental illness". Health Department employee Jason Helps, who shared the incident control duties, said he was unaware of offers of military help. But his co-controller, Andrea Spiteri, told the inquiry she had later developed a personal view that "a small uniformed presence of Victoria Police within the hotel environment could have potentially quelled some of the [bad] behaviour in the hotels. It was a personal view. I just felt there could have been benefits in having police a bit more visible. The problem with security guards The pair also reinforced earlier evidence about the difficulty of using relatively untrained security guards. Jaye Alderson, the lawyer for one of the three main security companies, said security firms were not provided with PPE guidance until May 12, six weeks after the program began on March 29, but Ms Spiteri said she believed there was a "range of instructions and guidance that was provided regularly into the hotel program" before then. "There were signs up, there were documents available to guide the use of PPE and there were briefings that were undertaken," Ms Spiteri said. Ms Spiteri emphasised that it was up to the security companies to do their own training. "All organisations providing staff to work in hotel quarantine needed to take responsibility to ensure their staff understood and complied with all infection prevention and control measures," she said in her statement to the inquiry. However, with all the instructions in English, "It became apparent that many staff, particularly security staff, had language barriers that needed to be addressed by the security companies to ensure safe work practices. "It also became apparent that all organisations needed business continuity plans in place to enable quick stand up of alternative staff should staff become unwell and not be able to work, or become COVID-19 positive or close contacts and need to self-isolate." Sutton has 'absolute control' Mr Helps made it clear how complex the "a multilayered decision-making structure" of hotel quarantine was. "At times because of this structure it was difficult to track the origin of a decision, the role or position responsible and information, data or plans," he said. Mr Helps said even though the theoretical role of the state controller was to lead the response, the Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, along with Public Health Commander had "absolute control". This contradicts what Mr Sutton said on Thursday, which was he was not in charge, after a decision by a deputy secretary of the Health Department. Homeless man's application drives move to 'hot hotel' A homeless man from Melbourne was the spur for the Victorian government to set up the Rydges on Swanston as a "hot hotel" to take all COVID-19-positive returning travellers. Former state controller of hotel quarantine, Andrea Spiteri, said in a statement to the hotel quarantine inquiry that, until April 1, all COVID-19 patients were accommodated on "red floors" within hotels. That changed when a homeless man with coronavirus requested accommodation in one of the hotels, but it was judged to be "outside the scope of the contract and the hotel refused the request". That prompted moves by Ms Spiteri, through senior Jobs Department executive Claire Febey, to establish another hotel the Rydges on Swanston, as the place where people diagnosed with COVID-19 would be sent. As is now well know, the Rydges became the source of the vast bulk of Victoria's second wave of infections. On April 7, the state's Public Health Commander said the use of a single hotel "reduces the low (but material) risk that as a result of detaining well individuals in a hotel they could acquire COVID-19 from the hotel environment", Ms Spiteri's statement to the inquiry said. "I understand the first use of Rydges Carlton was from 12 April 2020 to accommodate passengers returning from Uruguay who had been on the Greg Mortimer ship, the majority of whom were or had been COVID-19 positive." After they left the hotel, Rydges on Swanston received any other quarantine detainee found positive in any of the other hotels. Vietnam resumes six international flights People with visa and specific residence address will be allowed to enter Vietnam as Vietnam resumes six international flights to China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Laos and Cambodia. illustrative image This means international students and foreign family members of Vietnamese citizens will be able to go to Vietnam. The airlines must submit the estimated passenger list to the port authorities 12 hours before the estimated departure and the detailed passenger list 30 minutes before departure. The passengers must follow all preventive procedures. Passengers that are not from China, Japan, South Korea, Laos and Cambodia will be in a different cabin. Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam asked the northern, central and southern airports authorities to collaborate with related agencies to complete passenger receiving and classifying procedures before sending them to respective quarantine centres. The Health Department of Transport was asked to issue and monitor medical procedures for the passengers. They are also responsible for proposing adjustments if necessary. After many discussions, on September 15, the government has agreed to reopen international flights from and to China, Japan, and South Korea from September 15 and from and to Laos and Cambodia from September 22. (Newser) Chuck Feeney made billions after co-founding airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers in 1960. He's been "living a life of monklike frugality" ever since, according to Forbes, which reports the world is better for it. The "James Bond of philanthropy" has anonymously donated more than $8 billion to charities, foundations, and colleges through his own foundation, leaving him "broke," the magazine reports. "I am very satisfied," says the 89-year-old, who pioneered the idea of "Giving While Living"donating your fortune while you're still alive to see the good it can do. Warren Buffett cites Feeney as inspiring the Giving Pledge, a call for billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. "He's a model for us all," he tells Forbes. "It's going to take me 12 years after my death to get done what he's doing within his lifetime." story continues below Feeney officially closed his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, which once included 10 global offices, on Monday, per Forbes. The Observer notes he has completed his mission, started in 1984, to donate all of his wealthexcept for a reported $2 million in retirement savings he'd put aside for himself years ago, per People. The Zoom ceremony for his foundation's closure included a message from Giving Pledge co-founder Bill Gates. Feeney also received an official letter of thanks from Congress. "I feel very good about completing this on my watch," he tells Forbes. The outlet reports he donated $3.7 billion to education, with $1 billion going to Cornell; more than $870 million to human rights and social change, including $76 million to campaigns supporting passage of the Affordable Care Act; and more than $700 million to health, including $270 million to boost public health care in Vietnam. (Read more billionaires stories.) State officials in Oregon expressed cautious optimism about the state of massive wildfires burning throughout the state Thursday as a storm system was expected to bring up to an inch of rain to some of the areas that have seen the worst devastation. But there were reasons to be wary as well, said Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry, as the storm will likely be accompanied by lightning and strong winds and could cause landslides in areas that have burned. A good portion of moisture will fall on the west slope of the Cascades. Thats exactly where I would ask for it, Grafe said. But he added that, if the wind arrives before the rain does, it could present challenges in some areas where crews have created containment lines around existing fires. Still, some of the fires that posed the biggest threats immediately after the Labor Day wind event that kicked off most of the states biggest blazes are now off the map, Grafe said, meaning crews established containment lines that held for 72 hours or more. Among those fires were the Echo Mountain Complex in Tillamook County, the Almeda fire near Ashland and the Powerline fire in Washington County. While their containment percentages were still low, hand crews and bulldozers had worked to establish hundreds of miles of containment lines on the states biggest blazes: the Beachie Creek, Riverside and Holiday Farm fires, which have scorched more than half a million acres combined. Grafe and Gov. Kate Brown both extolled the efforts of local firefighters, many of them volunteers, who worked long shifts, sometimes days on end, even as some of them lost their own homes in the blazes. At no point did their spirits falter, Brown said. Fires on the east side of the state were still of high concern, according to Grafe, including the Two Four Two fire in Klamath County and the Brattain fire in Lake County. Even with the short-term outlook looking good for firefighting efforts, the road to recovery for the thousands who lost homes was likely to be long and arduous, said Andrew Phelps, director of the Office of Emergency Management. Roughly 800 people were still using shelters and more than 2,000 were being housed in nearly 70 hotels around the state, Phelps said. He said people should file claims with insurance companies as soon as possible as well as register immediately with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The declaration of a federal major disaster brought more resources for evacuees and people who lost homes, Phelps said. He encouraged people to visit disasterassistance.gov to register for distribution of relief funds. At least 1,300 people had registered as of Thursday afternoon, Phelps said, but he expected many more in the coming days. This is going to be a long haul operation, Phelps said. -- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale In a massive data leak, cybersecurity experts have discovered that a Chinese company named Zhenhua Data, located in Shenzhen, has an enormous list of the personal details of millions of people worldwide. Chinese Tech Company Data Leak In a report by The Guardian, the Chinese company reportedly links to the country's intelligence and military networks, and experts are worried about the big data's possible intent. Based on the report, the tech company has the personal data of around 2.4 million people worldwide, including names of famous and prominent people such as the United Kingdom's prime minister Boris Johnson, Scott Morison, and the members of their families. Speaking of families, it also appears that the Royal family's details were included in the big data, along with details of other people from the military and celebrities. The data was leaked to American academic Christopher Balding, who used to reside in Shenzhen in the past but has since returned to the US for security reasons. After acquiring the data from an insider that "had put themselves at risk," Balding sent the data to Internet 2.0, a Canberra-based cybersecurity consultancy that worked with both the American and Australian governments for recovery and analysis. Read Also: Pentagon's 'Gamer-Changer' Plan for a Deadlier Navy Fleet Include Autonomous Drones Capable of Running for 2 Months at a Time Big Data Including Personal Details Experts from the cybersecurity company have claimed that they have uncovered the records of approximately 250,000 people, including around 800 New Zealanders, 10,000 Britons, 35,000 Australians, and 52,000 Americans. "From politics to organized crime or technology and academia, just to name a few, the database flows from sectors the Chinese state and linked enterprises are known to target," Balding said. According to analysts, they believe the people's details on the Zhenhua Data list came from public open-source data, such as social media accounts. However, the data itself was "technically complex" and used various "very advanced language, targeting, and classification tools." Comment From Zhenhua Data A representative of the Zhenhua Data surnamed Sun and identified herself as head of business in the tech company has reached out to the news outlet after they have asked for any comments and said that "the report is seriously untrue" and that their data are public and can be accessed by anyone on the internet. Furthermore, the representative insisted that they do not collect data. "This is just data integration. Our business model and partners are our trade secrets. There is no database of 2 million people," Sun said. Moreover, Sun confirmed the existence of such a database known as the Overseas Key Information Database (OKID), but it apparently merely connects people to the type of social media platform they use, and it is for research. Sun said such a database is common. The company representative has also denied the company's alleged link to China's government and military, saying they are a private company and that they work with business groups as well as research organizations. Nevertheless, Internet 2.0 co-founder Robert Potter said in an interview that although the details are from open-source data, it doesn't mean people want it to be public. As of writing, experts are still uncertain what the data is used for. Read Also: Improve Your Company's Cybersecurity With These 10 Tips! #4 is Critically Important During the New Normal This article is owned by Tech Times Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Signature Orthodontics We are pleased to give patients the ability to easily navigate a website with comfort and ease. Our website contains any necessary information for our current patients and is also for anyone who would like to learn more about our products and services. Signature Orthodontics of St. Paul and White Bear Lake, MN is excited to announce the launch of their new Hybrid-Responsive website: https://www.signaturesmilesmn.com. Dr. Wendy Sydlewski takes an innovative approach to orthodontics at her practice, which is why she wanted a modern website that embraces the latest in responsive design. With its advanced features, informative content, and clean aesthetic, Signature Orthodontics' new website is a perfect match for this forward-thinking team of dental professionals. "We are pleased to give patients the ability to easily navigate a website with comfort and ease. Our website contains any necessary information for our current patients and is also for anyone who would like to learn more about our products and services," says Dr. Wendy Sydlewski. Patient experience is at the forefront of the new Signature Orthodontics website. Hybrid-Responsive design embraces the latest in usability research to build websites that take into account how people interact with brands and businesses online. The updated website is equally responsive on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, offering a seamless online experience. Now, whether their patients are at home, at work, or on-the-go, theyll be able to get the information they need and connect with the team at Signature Orthodontics. The new Signature Orthodontics website is simple to navigate, with clear menu options and categories. With a few clicks or taps on the screen, patients can fill out new patient forms, make an appointment request, contact the practice with questions, or learn more about their orthodontic treatment options. Another way Signature Orthodontics is embracing new technology is through its implementation of teledentistry services. Their virtual care appointments allow patients to check in with Dr. Sydlewski from the comfort of their own homes. The practice has rolled out a comprehensive COVID-19 safety plan and the use of teledentistry is one of the many protocols being used to keep both patients and staff safe during the pandemic. About Dr. Wendy Sydlewski Dr. Wendy Sydlewski, MD, DDS isnt only an orthodontist shes also a medical doctor. In addition to her dental school degree, she received years of additional training to become an orthodontist, then four more years of education to become a medical doctor. This gives her unique insight into both the dental and medical implications of teeth alignment, jaw and palate position, and facial growth patterns. A recipient of the Minnesota Association of Orthodontics Achievement Award, Dr. Sydlewski is a member of the American Dental Association, the American Association of Orthodontics, and a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota orthodontic residency program. About Signature Orthodontics Signature Orthodontics is a premier provider of orthodontic services in St. Paul and White Bear Lake, MN. In addition to early and two-phase orthodontic treatment, Signature Orthodontics specializes in airway orthodontics, surgical orthodontics, Invisalign treatment, and AcceleDent. To learn more or request an appointment, visit the new website at https://www.signaturesmilesmn.com or contact the practice at one of its two locations: 2126 5th Street White Bear Lake, MN 55110 Phone: 651-426-9986 1575 7th St. West, Suite 102 St. Paul, MN 55102 Phone: 651-291-9011 Authorities in Arizona have arrested a 17-year-old boy suspected of opening fire on two troopers this morning, marking the third time that law enforcement officers have been attacked in the span of one week. According to an official statement, two Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers were sitting in an unmarked vehicle near 37th Avenue and Portland Street in Phoenix at around 9am on Thursday when a silver-colored sedan pulled up and sounded the horn. A passenger exited the vehicle brandishing an assault rifle and fired shots at the troopers, who returned fire, according to DPS. Law enforcement officials on Thursday arrested a 17-year-old boy accused of shooting at two Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers in Phoenix The troopers were sitting in their unmarked vehicle Thursday morning when the teen armed with an assault rifle stepped out of a silver sedan and opened fire A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a vehicle following the shooting; both troops escaped unharmed The troopers were not injured in the attack, reported Azfamily.com. Officers were able to apprehended the suspected gunman, who was described as a 17-year-old Hispanic male. The assault rifle used in the shooting was recovered at the scene. DPS is searching for the getaway driver, who fled during the shooting. He was last seen operating a silver four-door Infiniti with custom wheels and a temporary license plate. Anyone with information on the vehicle or the suspect is being asked to call 911 immediately. DPS is looking for the driver of this silver Infiniti. The vehicle sped off from the scene after the 17-year-old exited the vehicle from the passenger's side Thursday's attack on troopers in Arizona took place less than 48 hours after an unknown suspect fired three rounds at a moving patrol car in Suffolk, Virginia. The officer escaped unharmed. As of this evening, no arrests have been made in that incident. Three days prior, two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies were sitting in their vehicle outside the Compton Metro station when an armed suspect ran up to the cruiser and opened fire. Both deputies were struck in the head and torso by gunshots but are expected to survive. Less than 48 hours prior, a Suffolk, Virginia, police officer was shot at three times by a passing motorist On Saturday, a man approached a Los Angeles County sheriff's patrol vehicle and shot two deputies sitting inside (pictured) One of the officers, 31-year-old former librarian Claudia Apolinar, was able to render aid to her injured 24-year-old partner and radio in for help despite bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the jaw. A massive manhunt is under way for the gunman in that shooting. A $200,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest. The Compton shooting sparked outrage as bystanders were filmed mocking the bloodied officers at the scene. Videos of ill-wishers railing against the wounded deputies enraged critics who said the shooting was the result of a groundswell of anti-police sentiment fueled by a turbulent summer of demonstrations against police brutality sparked by a series of shootings targeting Black men and women. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: In response to the restrictions imposed by the Rajasthan government on the extraction of pink stone from Bansi Paharpur range in Bharatpur district, seers and VHP leaders have cautioned the Congress party against repercussions. They have asked the grand old party to resolve the issue at the earliest so that smooth supply of the stone needed for construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya could be restored. Ashok Gehlot government had stopped mining of pink stone in Bansi Paharpur range over royalty issue. Ayodhya seers and the VHP leaders have threatened to launch a nationwide stir against the restrictions by the Gehlot government. In fact, pink stone of Bansi Paharpur is considered to be the most durable and capable of withstanding the vagaries of nature for over 5,000 years. As per the key sources, while the trust was about to place an order for 4.5 lakh cubic feet stone worth Rs 36 crore, Bharatpur district administration has allegedly put restrictions on the extraction of the stone from the quarry till further orders. The stone costs around Rs 800 per cubic feet. Given its strength, pink stone remains in high demand for construction of monuments and heritage buildings. Many such pieces of architecture like Red Fort, Parliament House, Buland Darwaza, Akshardham temple, Somnath temple, and ISKCON temple stand to give testimony of the pink stone, a blend of beauty and strength. Last year, the government got the stone mining royalty to the tune of Rs 28 crore. As per the norms, until anyone comes forward promising a higher royalty amount than the previous season, the restrictions over mining could not be lifted, said the source. Seeking the Rajasthan government to resolve the issue at the earliest, Mahant Kamal Nayan Das, the heir apparent of Mahant Nirtya Gopal Das, the temple trust chairman, said that the stone would be required as the construction would commence immediately after test piling was over in October. After the stones reach Ayodhya, carving and cutting would be started. It is a time taking process. So, the Rajasthan government must resolve all issues related with mining. If there is undue delay in supply of stones, it will be taken as another ploy by Congress party to stop construction of Ram Mandir, said the Mahant. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah was discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Thursday evening at 5 p.m., four days after being admitted for a complete medical check-up, hospital sources said. On September 13, Shah was admitted to the apex hospital for a complete check-up ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament. This was the third time he was admitted to hospital after contracting coronavirus infection. Shah was suffering from post-COVID ailments for a month. On August 2, he had tested positive for COVID-19 and received treatment at Medanta Hospital in Gurugram. The Home Minister was discharged on August 14 after testing negative. On August 18, Shah was admitted to AIIMS for post-COVID treatment after he complained of fatigue and body aches. On August 29, he recovered and was discharged. A doctor is just a click away for residents of Varanasis Gaura, the districts first digital village with around 2,500 residents, thanks to the tele-consultation facility at its digital centre, allowing people to seek relief from non-emergency ailments without having to leave the confines of their hamlet. Take the case of Mala Devi Maurya, a Gaura homemaker in her early 50s, who battled anxiety from January to June. Relief came in July when she took expert advice via tele-consultation at the digital centre in the village after being prompted to do so by Sanjay Maurya, the digital village centre head. Helping Mala overcome her initial hesitation, Sanjay Maurya logged on to the digital village website https://www.digital-village.in/digital-health-services and selected an online physician for consultation. Mala told the doctor, I suffered from anxiety and nervousness in January. I visited a doctor at a town nearby. The doctor prescribed medicines and advised me to rest. I took medicines for five days and got relief. But the anxiety and nervousness returned a few days later. On the doctors instructions, Maurya measured Malas blood pressure and pulse rate. Thereafter, the doctor prescribed some medicines and she has felt much better ever since she started taking them regularly. I was relieved. For the last two months, I have been fine. I got advice near my doorstep, said Mala, confirming the gain. Tele-consultation is a boon for the locals because they get advice from experts at their village itself. The prescription slip reaches the digital account of the centre and a printout is given to the patient. Tele-consultation is a form of primary care, where the patient seeks the doctors advice at a digital village centre about non-emergency medical problems, which dont require the doctors immediate visit to the location. It doesnt replace face-to-face consultation when it is needed, but complements it. In the last two months, around 40 people took advice from doctors through tele-consultation under the digital health service, which is part of the digital village programme, Sanjay Maurya said. He added that the tele-consultation facility also provisioned for advice from experts in Ayurveda and homeopathy apart from allopathy. The centre also provides free medicines to patients and if a prescribed medicine is not available, then the patient is asked to purchase from a medical store. Also Read: UP to organise one district one product international exhibition Sunita Maurya, another homemaker, had back aches for the last two years. She consulted a doctor through a digital centre around a month ago. At present, she is under-treatment. Sanjay Maurya said he told all 593 families in the village about tele-consultation and other facilities available at the digital centre, also known as CSC (common service centre). If any patient cannot come to the digital centre, I, along with a multi-test portable machine, reach his/her house and connect them to a physician online. I note down the prescription given by the doctor and hand over the slip to the patient, he explained. Also Read: Uttar Pradesh may fund religious travel of 1.5 crore labourers from state Locals and people from adjoining villages also visit the centre to get Aadhaar cards made. Now, they dont have to go to Varanasi or other towns for these works. Sanjay Maurya said the digital centre was a one-stop service solution for residents of the digital village and adjoining villages. It provides them with telemedicine, internet connectivity and other services. The centre also acts as a platform for imparting skill development training to the local youths. FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 5, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) FBI Director: Antifa Is a Real Thing, Confirms Investigations Into Violent Anarchist Extremists FBI Director Christopher Wray made clear that the far-left group Antifa is a real thing and not a fiction, adding the FBI is investigating Antifa-linked individuals connected to violent acts. Wray, in remarks in front of the House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, said that Antifa is more of an ideological movement, adding that there are suspects under investigation who have claimed to be part of it. Antifa is a real thing. Its not a group or an organization. Its a movement, or an ideology may be one way of thinking of it, Wray said in front of the panel. And we have quite a numberand Ive said this quite consistently since my first time appearing before this committeewe have any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists and some of those individuals self-identify with Antifa. However, Antifa does have small groups, or nodes, Wray said. The FBI is currently actively investigating the potential for violence from these regional nodes, he said. Some Democratic officials over the summer, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), have said that Antifa has not carried out violent attacks in Portland, Oregon. The claim to the contrary is myth thats being spread only in Washington DC, Nadler said in late July when asked. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) settles in for a House Judiciary Committee hearing to receive counsel presentations of evidence on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Dec. 9, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images) Wray on Thursday was responding to an inquiry from Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), who alleged that Democrats called Antifa a fantasy. Later in the hearing, Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.) asked him again about the far-left group. Antifa is a real thing. Its not a fiction, Wray again said. But its not an organization or a structure. They say I am Antifa,' Wray said of certain suspects. An individual whose feet caught fire after a molotov cocktail exploded runs toward a medic in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 5, 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee called on Nadler for launching an investigation into President Donald Trump while ignoring far-left political violence that erupted in various metropolitan areas in the wake of George Floyds death. Portland has been hit the hardest, with riots and unrest on a nightly basis and hundreds of arrests. Trump, in the midst of the unrest and protests, has touted himself as the law and order candidate while saying Democratic rival Joe Biden would capitulate to mob rule and lawlessness. Biden in recent days has denied those claims. Ive condemned it across the board, Biden told WGAL on Monday, referring to the overall violence. Earlier this week, Biden was asked about whether he condemns Antifa. Yes, I do, violence no matter who it is, he replied. Attorney General William Barr last month described Antifa as a revolutionary group like the Bolsheviks who toppled Tsarist Russia 100 years ago, and it seeks to establish socialism or communism in the United States. After being called a 'soft porn star who is not known for acting', Urmila Matondkar continued to respond to Kangana Ranaut's insulting remarks with dignity. She pointed at how a national television anchor, who also happens to be a woman, had a 'smile of glee' when Kangana was going about trashing another woman. Urmila also hopes that the Women's Commission looks into the remark that was hurled at her by Kangana. Speaking to Barkha Dutt in an interview, Urmila said about Kangana's 'soft porn star' remark, "I don't think I have anything more to say. It's shocking that while Kangana was saying all these things on national television the anchor, who also happens to be a woman, had a mad glee and crazy smile on her face. I think we should bow out and give way to this new feminism that has come up in the country." She continued, "I have always maintained that everyone has a right to express one's views. But how you express your opinions does matter. I would also like to say that I was really happy to see the uproar after a person (Sanjay Raut) allegedly used an abusive remark for Kangana. Today, as I am being referred to in the same manner, where will that lead to?" ALSO READ: Kangana Ranaut Receives Backlash After Calling Urmila Matondkar A 'Soft P*rn' Actress Urmila further said, "In all my interviews, I have complimented her on the actor she has been, a wonderful actor, a woman who has come from a small town. I have only complimented her and acknowledged all her achievements." ALSO READ: Urmila Matondkar Showered With Love By Celebs After Kangana Ranaut's 'Soft P*rn Star' Attack Hoping that action is taken against the incident, Urmila said, "I am deeply touched by the kind of response and support that I have been receiving from the people of this country. As I speak now, I don't have any political leader backing me. That said, I am also wondering whether those who had condemned Shiv Sena's alleged slurs against Kangana will do the same thing in my case too. The Women's Commission should really take note of the remark hurled at me. I cannot understand this selective reaction." ALSO READ: Urmila Matondkar Challenges Kangana Ranaut To Reveal Names Of Drug Addicts In Bollywood It is the question the fashion industry and consumers have pondered for six months: what will we wear when this is all over? Will we ever again get truly, capital-D dressed, or, to borrow from a recent New York Times piece, are "sweatpants forever"? This week, some answers began to emerge as some of the world's leading designers, including several Australian brands, previewed their spring-summer 2021 collections at New York Fashion Week (NYFW). And overwhelmingly, the answer was a floral dress (or, in the case of Rodarte, a floral matched set, a kind of "anti-tracksuit"). Nicky Zimmermann, who showed independently (and virtually) from Sydney this season, had the idea to incorporate botanical drawings into the collection before Christmas but the bushfires over summer and then the pandemic gave the idea added poignancy. Legislation aimed at cracking down on gangland crime is to be brought forward. It will see the maximum sentence for conspiracy to murder increase from 10 years, to life in prison. Minister Helen McEntee says it should be treated as seriously as committing murder. "We have two Acts, an older Act and a newer one, which prevent a judge from recommending or implementing a sentence of over 10 years when somebody has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder. "I think everyone would agree conspiracy to murder is no less a heinous crime then attempted murder or murder, both of which carry a sentence of up to life in prison." According to a release from the Department of Justice, the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020 will update the law to provide judges with the option of imposing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Advertisement The message must go out to the thugs who perpetrate gangland violence: We will take all necessary action to stop you, bring you to justice and prevent you from leading our young into a life of crime and violence," said Ms McEntee. Gangland crime must not take hold in our communities, but we must also provide An Garda Siochana and our Courts with the tools they need to take firm and decisive action to deal with our most serious criminals." Asked about the inspiration for his first Big Easy chair, constructed in 1988, London-based artist and designer Ron Arad says, I was thinking about an overstuffed club chair. He had just learned to weld and found that steel was quite forgiving. I could bend it, cut it, weld it, fold it, torture the piece of metal until it made a comfortable chair. He calls the first ones super primitivehollow, cartoonish volumes that riffed on the living-room staple. It looked like his sketch: a quick, rough shape patinated with acid. Undeniably punk. And, believe it or not, comfortable. Theyre crudely made, the bottom isnt flush on the floor, but they actually sit pretty well, explains dealer Lawrence Converso, who bought two of the originals, from Miami Beachs Century Hotel, at a 2001 Wright auction. Converso, who originally sold the pair to a Chicago collector, has put them back on the market. Courtesy of Ron Arad Studio Arad endlessly reinterpreted the form, from hewing it in mirror-polished steel to adding a layer of foam and red leather upholstery. For a Sothebys exhibition at Chatsworth House, he created a pair made from gleaming stainless-steel spheres. And in 1991, at the request of furnishings doyenne Patrizia Moroso, he consented to mass-producible versions, initially upholstered in leather and later rotationally molded using colorful polyethylene, from $1,240 Stateside via DDC. By the late 1990s Arad released molded-polyester versions called New Orleans, for which he daubs color inside a mold before pouring in the polyester, imprinting the piece with a sort of painting. (One sold for nearly $200,000 at Leclere in 2008.) Francois Halard Arad is still reinterpreting the formhe made his latest Big Easy during quarantine this springand the old ones continue to find new audiences. His stainless-steel Big Easy, Volume 2 for 2 will star in a show at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, England, this fall. It just survived, Arad says. Like some songs survive whether you like them or not. If I have to choose a thing to play with, no contest, its always the Big Easy. ddcnyc.com Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest Dublin, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Saudi Arabia Steel Industry Outlook 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on its oil income but is vulnerable to the volatility of oil price. The Kingdom possesses 18% of the world's proven petroleum reserves and ranks as the largest exporter of petroleum. The government is diversifying the country's economy along with its dependence on oil. So, the non-oil sector as a whole is set to keep benefiting from government spending, corporate lending and domestic consumption. In particular, the Saudi Arabian government is increasing investment for the Kingdom's socio-economic development. This latest report provides an in-depth analysis of the steel industry in the Kingdom. The report analyzes the Saudi Arabian steel industry's performance from 2015 to 2024 by highlighting its major growth drivers. During the research, the analysts studied Saudi Arabia' crude steel production along with finished steel production and consumption in the country. To provide a clear picture of the steel industry, the analysts segmented finished steel into long products classified as rebar and structural sections; and flat products classified as coils (strips & sheets), plates and tubular products. The report provides the current scenario and forecast for each of these product segments until 2024. It further provides a comprehensive analysis of steel export and import to the country, which includes the steel trade scenario by product, covering long products, flat products and tubular products Besides, the study of the steel scrap market and information about the current regulatory environment has been discussed extensively in the report. In particular, to provide a balanced outlook of the country's steel industry to clients, the current report includes profiles of the major industry players covering their business overview, recent developments and information about their key management personnel. In a nutshell, the research provides all the prerequisites for intending clients looking out to venture into this industry, and facilitates them to devise strategies while going for an investment/partnership in the Saudi steel industry. Story continues Key Topics Covered: 1. Analyst View 2. Research Methodology 3. Saudi Arabia Steel Industry in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Context 4. Growth Drivers 4.1 Economic Growth Buoyancy to Steel Industry 4.2 Increasing Capital Investment towards Infrastructure Projects 4.3 Increasing Government Spending for New Projects in Various Sectors 5. Saudi Arabia Steel Industry Outlook to 2020 5.1 Production 5.1.1 Crude Steel 5.1.2 Finished Steel 5.1.2.1 Long Products 5.1.2.1.1 Concrete Reinforcing Bar (Rebar) 5.1.2.1.2 Structural Sections 5.1.2.2 Flat Products 5.1.2.2.1 Coils, Strips & Sheets 5.1.2.2.2 Plates 5.1.2.3 Tubular Products 5.2 Consumption 5.2.1 Finished Steel 5.2.1.1 Long Products 5.2.1.1.1 Concrete Reinforcing Bar (Rebar) 5.2.1.1.2 Structural Sections 5.2.1.2 Flat Products 5.2.1.2.1 Coils, Strips & Sheets 5.2.1.2.2 Plates 5.2.1.3 Tubular Products 5.3 Trade Scenario 5.3.1 Import 5.3.1.1 By Product 5.3.1.1.1 Long Products 5.3.1.1.2 Flat Products 5.3.1.1.3 Tubular Products 5.3.2 Export 5.3.2.1 By Product 5.3.2.1.1 Long Products 5.3.2.1.2 Flat Products 5.3.2.1.3 Tubular Products 6. Steel Scrap Market Analysis 7. Regulatory Environment 8. Competitive Landscape 8.1 Business Overview 8.2 Management Profile Al-Tuwairqi Holding Attieh Steel Ltd. Pan Gulf Steel Rajhi Steel Saudi Iron and Steel Company (Hadeed) Shaaban Steel Co. United Sulb Company (Saudi Sulb) Zamil Steel Holding Company Ltd For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/1junlz Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of Begbies Traynor Group plc (LON:BEG) by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model is the tool we will apply to do this. 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. If you still have some burning questions about this type of valuation, take a look at the Simply Wall St analysis model. View our latest analysis for Begbies Traynor Group 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 begin with, we have to get estimates of 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. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate: 10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 Levered FCF (, Millions) UK8.06m UK8.98m UK9.64m UK10.2m UK10.6m UK10.9m UK11.2m UK11.5m UK11.7m UK11.9m Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x1 Analyst x1 Est @ 7.33% Est @ 5.5% Est @ 4.22% Est @ 3.32% Est @ 2.69% Est @ 2.25% Est @ 1.94% Est @ 1.72% Present Value (, Millions) Discounted @ 7.8% UK7.5 UK7.7 UK7.7 UK7.5 UK7.3 UK7.0 UK6.6 UK6.3 UK5.9 UK5.6 ("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = UK69m Story continues We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield of 1.2%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 7.8%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2030 (1 + g) (r g) = UK12m (1 + 1.2%) (7.8% 1.2%) = UK182m Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= UK182m ( 1 + 7.8%)10= UK86m The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is UK155m. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of UK0.9, the company appears a touch undervalued at a 22% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. dcf Important assumptions The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the 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 Begbies Traynor Group 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 7.8%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.956. 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: Although the valuation of a company is important, it is only one of many factors that you need to assess for a company. DCF models are not the be-all and end-all of investment valuation. 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. What is the reason for the share price sitting below the intrinsic value? For Begbies Traynor Group, there are three essential aspects you should look at: Risks: We feel that you should assess the 2 warning signs for Begbies Traynor Group we've flagged before making an investment in the company. Management:Have insiders been ramping up their shares to take advantage of the market's sentiment for BEG's future outlook? Check out our management and board analysis with insights on CEO compensation and governance factors. 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. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the AIM every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks 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. Of the three states that President Trump captured to the surprise of overconfident Democrats in 2016, Michigan has long seemed to Republicans the most at risk of slipping away this year. Mr. Trump suspended his television advertising in the state over the summer, and several polls suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had established a decent lead there over the president. But it looks as if Michigan is back on the Trump battleground map. Mr. Biden is heading to Warren, Mich., a Detroit suburb, today to talk about the economy. The president is planning a campaign trip to the state on Thursday. More revealingly, Mr. Trump resumed his television advertising in Michigan this week, this time with an ad trumpeting the Great American Comeback. The ad claims that the finish line is approaching in the race for a coronavirus vaccine (certainly that is Mr. Trumps election season hope; whether it actually happens is an entirely different matter) and that the economy is on the rebound despite the ongoing pandemic. The federal government will extend free telehealth services so patients can consult their doctors online without meeting face to face. In March the government decided to subsidise telehealth for six months to reduce the movement of people during the coronavirus pandemic. The services, including FaceTime GP appointments, will remain bulk-billed until 31 March next year at a total cost of $2billion. The measure takes federal coronavirus health spending to $16.5billion. The federal government will extend the provision of free telehealth services so patients can consult their doctors online without meeting face to face Telehealth services can help slow coronavirus by reducing movement. Pictured: People wait in their cars at a dedicated COVID-19 drive through testing clinic at Victoria Park in Adelaide Aussies will also be able to access free coronavirus tests, GP-led respiratory clinics, and home medicines delivery. The telehealth scheme includes services provided by GPs, nursing, midwifery, allied health and allied mental health. Since March more 10.5million patients have used telehealth for a total of 30million appointments at a cost of $1.5billion. Three out of every ten GP services are currently provided by telehealth which reduces the unnecessary risk of exposure to coronavirus and allows vulnerable medical providers to continue providing services remotely. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: 'By providing telehealth and home delivery medicine services we are reducing the risk of exposure of Covid-19 in the community while also supporting people in isolation to get the care they need. 'Importantly this also includes mental health services, delivered over the phone, by trained specialists and GPs. 'As we continue to supress COVID-19 while continuing to open our economy up, Australians can be reassured that we have the world's best medical support in place to protect their health.' Labor has been calling for the extension of telehealth for weeks. The daughter of a wealthy surgeon has claimed she was abused in her youth to prevent his widow from taking a chunk of her inheritance. Tiffany Hribar alleges her father Dr David Hribar committed acts of emotional, verbal and physical abuse to her brother, mother and herself in her childhood in Adelaide. Dr Hribar died in June, 2019, leaving Tiffany $750,000 in inheritance, while his wife Sally Hribar received an annual annuity of $50,000, the right to live in the family home in Norwood and $20,000 to pay mortgage on a home in Encounter Bay. Sally is contesting Dr Hribar's will in the Supreme Court, with The Advertiser reporting she wants 'further provision' of the inheritance 'for her maintenance, education, and advancement in life'. She claims Tiffany 'was estranged from the deceased for approximately the last 20 years of the deceased's life', which is disputed by the defence. Tiffany Hribar has claimed she was abused by her surgeon father Dr David Hribar (pictured) in her childhood Tiffany said the pair remained close and that 'any distance in the relationship between the deceased and (his daughter) was as a result of the inappropriate conduct of the deceased during his lifetime towards (his daughter)'. Court documents state Tiffany left the family home for her own safety at age 14 in response to physical abuse from Dr Hribar, before moving in with friends. She was not supported by her family at this time and could not afford to attend school, leading her to take up work as a cleaner. When Tiffany qualified for Centrelink payments, the service noted she was not living in the family home in response to domestic violence. Tiffany said despite their history she had remained close with her father and aided him on several matters including finalising his second divorce. She believes she is entitled to keep her part of Dr Hribar's estate and that Sally's inheritance is fair. Dr Hribar had lived with Sally since 2000 and the pair were married in 2017. Dr Hribar's wife Sally is disputing his will in Adelaide Supreme Court (pictured), claiming Tiffany was estranged for the last 20 years of his life In her partner's death notice, Sally wrote Dr Hribar would be 'forever in my heart'. 'You were everything and everything was you,' the notice reads. 'Loving father and stepfather of Casey, Tracey, Simon and Tiffany. 'Loved and respected by so many people. Words cannot express how much I will miss you. You were my everything, my partner in life and my very best friend.' Dr Hribar also left $200,000 to several other beneficiaries. Highlights Redmi 9 Pro has finally gone on open sale in India. The Redmi 9 Pro brings a 48MP lens-based quad camera set-up. The Redmi 9 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 720G chipset. After months of being sold via flash sales, Redmi Note 9 Pro has finally gone on open sale in India. The popular smartphone from the company will be available to buyers via Amazon and Xiaomi India website across the clock now. One of the most popular budget segment devices in the country, the phone will be available in three storage options, with the entry one getting 4GB RAM + 64GB storage priced at Rs 13,999, while the top-end 6GB+128GB variant getting a price tag of Rs 16,999. The variants will be available in three different colour options -- Aurora Blue, Glacier White and Interstellar Black. In terms of the design, the phone offers a refined look which has been a hit with buyers in the segment. The Redmi Note 9 Pro brings the company's Aura Balance design philosophy, with the phone housing a 6.67-inch display with support for up to Full HD+ resolutions (2400x1080). The panel is IPS in technology and boasts of 20:9 aspect ratio which is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Under the hood, the Redmi Note 9 Pro gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G chipset. The chipset gets 8 Kyro 465 cores for handling both performance heavy and general tasks. This 8nm fabricated chipset also houses an Adreno 618 GPU for improved performance in games. The chipset has been paired to up to 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage on the Redmi Note 9 Pro. For cameras, the Redmi Note 9 Pro promises strong performance for the price it commands. It gets a 48-megapixel lens-based quad camera. The primary lens is a Samsung ISOCELL GM2 with support for technologies such as PDAF and Super Stablisation. Sat next to it is an 8-Megapixel ultra-wide lens with a 120-degree field of view. The camera set-up also brings a 5-megapixel lens for clicking macros and another 2-megapixel one for depth sensing. For selfies, there's a 16-megapixel AI camera. Keeping the lights on the device is a 5020mAh battery, however, unlike the Redmi Note 9 Pro Max, the Note 9 Pro only gets support for 18W fast charging. Most established auto industry players are used to the regulatory and taxation environment in India and have flourished in this regime, say finance ministry officials on the issue of high taxation in auto sector causing a demand slump and difficulty in scaling up for auto players. The officials were commenting on Toyota Motor Corp's decision to not expand further in India due to the country's high tax regime. The finance ministry sources said that the fact these auto companies have made huge payouts in the form of royalty to their parent companies located abroad is evidence enough that they have flourished in the same tax regime. They also cited examples of how the government has handed out tax concessions on occasions like concessions extended to electric vehicles and to hybrid vehicles. A Finance Ministry source on the condition of anonymity said: "GST rates on automobiles are less than what VAT and Excise duty rates used to be in pre-GST times. India's tax policy on automobile has been quite consistent for the last three decades now in the form of allowing foreign investment and incentivising the domestic manufacturing by providing reasonable protection from imports. Industry has on its part delivered. It has contributed by way of large investments and employment. All of a sudden, dissent in some quarter on tax rates on automobile is surprising. In fact these companies should cut down their costs of manufacturing by cutting down the royalty payments to their parent companies abroad instead of asking the government to reduce GST. " Also read: Toyota to not expand further in India; blames high taxes A top government source also refused to accept that India levies highest taxes on the automobiles. "The GST on automobiles is in the highest bracket across the globe without much exception. In fact, world over, automobiles are subject to taxation on the higher side." He explains that Japan currently has three types of taxes on automobiles - once on purchase, then an annual automobile tax based on engine size and finally a weight tax at inspections required once every two years. Over and above this, there is GST at the highest of the applicable rates, he says. He also cites the example of EU, where the base rate for VAT/GST on automobiles ranges from 20% to 25% with plotters of other taxes varying with jurisdiction. "UK charges vehicle excise duties which varies with car emission norms and has 14 rate slabs varying from GBP 0 a year to GBP 2,175 a year with surcharge of GBP 325 in the first year and GBP 150 for expensive vehicles. Besides, there are road usage charges. Further, high parking charges are common across the globe. Most of the countries provide certain concessions to electric vehicles. Given this, it would be unfair to claim that the GST rates in India are astounding or a demand dampener," he says. Also read: GST Council meet postponed; to be held on October 5 now; here's why Another finance ministry official said that with the introduction of GST, multitude of taxes in the form of excise duty, special excise duties, cesses, VAT, CST etc., gave way to uniform GST. Vehicles, based on their high pre-GST incidence were placed in 28% slab. Passenger vehicles also attract compensation cess ranging from 1% to 22%. However, with compensation cess the taxes have not gone beyond pre-GST incidences except may be in few that were enjoying certain duty concessions. Facebook and Instagram have placed a False Information label on a post from the Fox News show "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in which Carlson interviews Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist, who has previously claimed the coronavirus "is not from nature," on Wednesday. Why it matters: Facebook has made headlines in recent months for taking increasing action on posts from politicians and political groups containing misinformation. It's added fewer labels to high-profile media companies, which is what makes this label noteworthy. Intelligence agencies have been hesitant to link COVID-19 to a single lab, and many scientists agree it originated as a bat virus before spreading to humans, The New York Times writes. The big picture: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back against the notion that the platform is a right-wing echo chamber, but concedes that partisan content does lead to higher levels on engagement. Misinformation often plays into partisan narratives for this reason. Facebook has taken increased action against posts containing misinformation about COVID-19, under pressure to address the misinformation on its platform. The social media giant has provided fact-checking resources to add warning labels to posts it thinks may contain coronavirus misinformation to provide users with more context about the virus. Facebook said in August that between April and June, it removed 7 million posts cited for misinformation about the pandemic and added labels to 98 million posts that were deemed false by fact-checkers, but not as harmful to warrant bans. What they're saying: Facebook is working hard to make sure youre unable to see our latest post regarding a coronavirus whistleblower," Carlson posted. "They dont want you sharing the video, and they are limiting the number of people who can view it. This is censorship, and we will be addressing it on our show tonight at 8 pm ET on Fox News." Worth noting: Twitter has suspended Yan's account, but did not find that a similar post from Fox News of the clip violated its misinformation policies, per the Times. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Ukraine and Belarus traded angry accusations Wednesday over thousands of Hasidic Jewish pilgrims who have remained stuck on their border after Ukraine denied them entry because of coronavirus restrictions. Ukraine's presidential office urged Belarusian authorities to stop issuing misleading signals to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish pilgrims that they could eventually cross the border. We are asking Belarusian authorities to stop fueling the tensions on the border and refrain from spreading false encouraging statements that could leave the pilgrims with a feeling that the Ukrainian border might be opened, it said. Belarusian authorities have deliberately or unintentionally helped spread those rumors. Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz shot back at Ukraine, accusing it of inhumane treatment of the Jewish pilgrims. Ukrainian authorities said about 2,000 Hasidic Jewish pilgrims converged on the border in hopes of crossing over and reaching the Ukrainian city of Uman. The grave of an important Hasidic rabbi who died in 1810, Nachman of Breslov, is located in Uman. Thousands of the ultra-Orthodox Jews visit the city each September for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. This time, however, Ukraine closed its borders in late August amid a surge in COVID-19 infections. Belarus, which shares a long border with Ukraine, hasn't barred foreign visitors from entering. As the Jewish pilgrims have gathered on the border, Ukraine has deployed additional forces to protect the frontier and sent aircraft and drones to patrol it. Glaz, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman, accused Ukrainian authorities of being reluctant to find a solution and trying to shift blame. We persistently urge Ukrainian authorities to respect fundamental human rights, religious rights and internationally recognized norms and follow humanitarian principles, he said. Late Tuesday, the Belarusian government said it was offering to help Ukraine set up a green corridor for the pilgrims to get to Uman and back to Belarus. Story continues Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenkos spokeswoman, Natalia Eismont, said Belarus was ready to provide buses to drive the pilgrims to Uman and back and make all the necessary precautions to prevent a spike in new infections. Ukraine's presidential office hinted that Belarusian authorities' actions could be rooted in the latest tensions between the two neighbors following Belarus' presidential election. Ukraine has joined the United States and the European Union in criticizing the Aug. 9 vote in which Lukashenko extended his 26-year authoritarian rule as neither free nor fair and urged Belarusian authorities to end their crackdown on protesters. In Wednesday's speech, Lukashenko accused Ukraine of working in cahoots with the U.S. and its allies to foment the protests demanding his resignation. ___ Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report. ___ Follow APs pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak Disregarding Indias strong protests, Pakistan is moving ahead with plans to make Gilgit Baltistan (GB) its fifth province, with a federal minister saying that elections in the region that New Delhi opposes will be held in November. Prime Minister Imran Khan will soon visit the region and make the formal announcement, Ali Amin Gandapur, Pakistans minister for Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan Affairs, told a delegation of journalists from the region in Islamabad on Wednesday. New Delhi had conveyed to Pakistan several times that the entire union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including the areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, are an integral part of India by virtue of its fully legal and irrevocable accession. In May, the external affairs ministry said Pakistan or its judiciary had no locus standi on territories illegally and forcibly occupied by it and rejected attempts to bring material changes in Pakistan-occupied areas of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation, the ministry had said. Gandapur said the status of a full-fledged province with all constitutional rights is being planned for Gilgit-Baltistan and this will include representation in both houses of parliament. Gandapur said that elections in the region would be held in mid-November and distribution of party tickets to candidates would begin soon. New Delhi had protested Pakistans move to conduct elections in the region, which it considers an integral part of the country that had been illegally and forcibly occupied. After consultation with all stakeholders, the federal government has decided in principle to give constitutional rights to Gilgit-Baltistan, the minister said, adding, Our government has decided to deliver on the promise it made to the people there. After the grant of constitutional rights, the subsidy and tax exemption on wheat given to the region would not be withdrawn, he said. Until the people there stand on their feet, they will continue to enjoy this facility. The minister said deprivation of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan of 73 years would come to an end. Besides the constitutional rights and the provincial setup, the minister added, important steps were also being taken for the development of the region. Work on the Moqpondass Special Economic Zone would begin under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), while the government take steps to improve health, tourism, transport and education facilities, he said. The CPEC is the flagship project of Beijings ambitious multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). India has protested to China over the project as it is being laid through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. In 1999, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan were citizens of Pakistan and directed the government to initiate appropriate administrative and legislative measures. In 2009, Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance Order (GBESGO) was introduced according to which, the Northern Areas were renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan. The order gave it a province like status with no representation in parliament. In 2015, the government constituted a committee headed by Sartaj Aziz which proposed giving Gilgit-Baltistan the status of a province and in 2018 a new Gilgit-Baltistan order was introduced and all the powers of the Gilgit Baltistan Council were transferred to its assembly. The GBESGO of 2009 and the Gilgit Baltistan Order of 2018 were challenged in the Supreme Court of Pakistan which reconfirmed its earlier judgement that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are citizens of Pakistan. The court also suggested that certain changes should be made to the presidential order issued by the present government and instructed the federal government to promulgate the modified Gilgit-Baltistan Reforms of 2019. (With inputs from Agencies) Satellite image of Woody Island, part of Vietnam's Paracel Islands, January 2018. Photo courtesy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Vietnam on Thursday reaffirmed its sovereignty after the U.S. Embassy removed from its Facebook page an accurate Vietnamese map including its East Sea archipelagos. "Vietnam has consistently maintained the Hoang Sa (Paracel Islands) and Truong Sa (Spratly Islands) as inseparable parts of the Vietnamese territory. This consistent stance has been taken multiple times in multiple forms, including at the United Nations, and is supported and respected by many countries," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a press meet Thursday afternoon. She was asked about Vietnams reaction to the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi uploading on Facebook a map of Vietnam including the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos on September 9, but later replacing it with an image without them. The map had been uploaded as part of a post commemorating the opening of the 53rd ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM 53) and other relevant meetings. Hang reiterated that Vietnam has full legal basis and historical evidence to assert its sovereignty over both archipelagos under international law. Rachael Chen, spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy, said in a statement that the United States does not take a position on the territorial sovereignty claims over land features in the South China Sea. "The United States welcomes recent signs of progress in discussions among Southeast Asian claimant states in their effort to peacefully resolve their disputes in accordance with international law and welcomes ASEAN Leaders insistence that South China Sea disputes be resolved in line with international law, including UNCLOS," Chen said. The East Sea is internationally known as the South China Sea. In July, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink said the U.S. would increase diplomatic activities with partners in the region, including ASEAN, help countries improve their maritime capabilities and develop the U.S.s military capabilities, including activities to protect freedom of navigation at sea, in order to maintain stability in the South China Sea. When clouds hang low over Lake Tahoe and erase the horizon, I sometimes feel vertigo. Staring into that void, I get disoriented, slightly claustrophobic, as if Ive lost my balance. I don't realize how the opposite shoreline anchors me until I cant see it. Thats how this last month has felt, except thats not a cloud pattern washing the sky gray. Its smoke. Tahoe residents and visitors have been breathing bad air for nearly a month as historically large wildfires have blanketed California. The National Weather Service continues to extend a dense smoke advisory. Day after day, the Air Quality Index ranges in the hundreds or two hundreds. The smoke saturates rich hues of green and emerald blue in the color of the water. I watched all the smoke settle between the trees, up valleys, and on the lake from behind car windows last weekend as I drove down the West Shore. The Forest Services decision to shut down entire forests in Tahoe added yet another ominous layer. Pink tape slung between trees marked trails closed. Parking areas packed all summer, pandemic aside were abandoned. The gates to Blackwood Canyon were shut. Tables outside a popular breakfast spot were full, and so was a roadside beach. But the lake was more or less silent, with exception of a few boats motoring toward the abyss. Were breathing unhealthy air, and so is Tahoes environment. Air quality is one of the thresholds that scientists and government agencies monitor around the lake as a means to regulate the health of the environment. Car exhaust, particulate matter from pollution, smoke from wood chimneys come winter these things impact visibility, the health of the people who live and visit here, the wildlife, and also the lake itself. Weve already grown accustomed to smoke from controlled burns. Yet, we still have to factor in the impacts of a prolonged wildfire season. What is all this smoke from wildfires doing to Lake Tahoe itself? I called Dr. Geoffrey Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, to find out. Schladow is part of a group of scientists that measure and track Tahoes clarity. He is also on Tahoes Science Advisory Council, which informs decision-making government agencies of the best available science in Tahoe. To answer my question, Schladow gave a standard scientists response: Its complicated. Thats a very simple question and it doesnt have a simple answer, unfortunately, he said. Tom Hellauer During the Angora Fire, which was the largest wildfire event in the Tahoe Basin in recent history, Schladow was on a research boat to collect samples and measure nutrients in the lake while ash was falling into the water. The nutrient concentrations in the lake were higher for a week or two, he said. However, smoke from the Angora Fire left no lasting detectable impact on lake clarity, which is measured on average at about 60 or 70 feet below the surface. In 2019, the average clarity in Lake Tahoe was measured at 62.7 feet. But dive down another 100 feet and studies have shown that long periods of smoke from wildfires have an impact on the lakes ecology. Microscopic algae and zooplankton usually drift around 200 feet below the lakes surface, but when smoke or clouds cover UV radiation, they float toward the surface and have been found about 50 feet higher. This has a ripple effect on Tahoes underwater food chain. Im talking about the life, the algae, which is microscopic plants, and the zooplankton, which are these microscopic animals that live there. And although weve never monitored it, its probably affecting the fish, at least the smaller fish, he said. Even though previous wildfires and smoke events havent had a lasting impact on Tahoes clarity, Schladow said this year is different. There has been no smoke period like were experiencing now, he said. Tom Hellauer The Tahoe Environmental Research Center has monitored the impacts of smoke on Lake Tahoe during past nearby wildfires, including the Rim Fire in Yosemite, the King Fire in Desolation Wilderness. Those fires brought smoke into the basin for a couple of weeks. But this year, were approaching a month of smoke, with fires continuing to burn. I think there are going to be larger effects this year, Schladow said. The data is still coming in, though. Lake clarity measurements are taken on average every 10 days, and they vary. The Tahoe Environmental Research Center will be able to see if all this smoke has impacted the lake when they can compare this years data with previous years, comparing their measurements with numbers from the Air Quality Index. Even then, smoke has an interesting effect on the way scientists measure Tahoes clarity. When a scientist lowers the disc into the water, light reflects off the disc back to their eye. They lower it until they can no longer see it; thats how clarity is measured. But if its a cloudy or smoky day with less light, then Schladow says you cant see the disc as deep. I mean, its hard to see a shadow some days because theres so much smoke in the air, Schladow said. So thats affecting the measurement, but its not necessarily saying theres anything bad in the water. Wildfire season is hardly halfway through itll probably last until snowfall and winters arrival. With no end to the smoke in sight, Schladow said he cant answer definitively whether or how it will impact Tahoes clarity or ecology. Scientists from the Tahoe Environmental Research Team are out on the research boat every day, taking measurements and checking in on monitoring instruments placed around the lake. After the sky clears, they will be able to compile their data and compare it with previous years. Then they will know more. Like the wildfires creating all the smoke in the air, climate change is a driving factor behind Tahoes declining clarity. Schladow said the things impacting lake clarity hydrology, the physics of the lake, algae are all signs of climate change. The reality is that summers in Tahoe may be capped more often than not with a prolonged and extended wildfire season. Its all intertwined. COVID has also added another complication, making it more difficult for scientists to get outside. Every time they head out on the lake, they have to wipe down the boat. Everyone wears personal protective equipment. Standing on a boat in the middle of the lake when smoke has disguised the shore from every aspect, Schladow feels the same way I do. Its really eerie in Tahoe when you cant see the other side of the lake, he said. When youre in the middle of the lake and you cant see the basin, its even more eerie. Julie Brown is a contributing editor at SFGATE covering Lake Tahoe. Email: julie.brown@sfgate.com | Twitter: @imjuliebrown Walmart has reportedly joined Oracle's bid to do a deal with TikTok, but the proposal to allow Chinese parent ByteDance to retain a majority stake in the popular video-sharing app faces stiff hurdles for approval. Under the terms of the proposal, Oracle would have a 20 percent stake in TikTok's new U.S. entity, as well as access to all source code, sources told CNBC host David Faber. According to NBC News correspondent Jo Ling Kent, sources say the deal would involve TikTok becoming a global company headquartered in America, with Oracle taking responsibility for U.S. operations and user data and ByteDance retaining majority ownership. The new entity would have a separate board, on which Walmart would control one seat, the sources said. Officially, Oracle has only said it is part of a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the U.S. Treasury Department to serve as 'trusted technology provider' to the Chinese company, providing no further details on the terms of the deal. Walmart has reportedly joined Oracle's bid to do a deal with TikTok, in a deal that would create a new US-based entity with Oracle as a 20% shareholder and ByteDance in a majority stake The new entity would have a separate board, on which Walmart would control one seat, according to the new reports on Thursday A decision on Oracle and ByteDance's proposal will likely come in the next 24 to 36 hours, sources told CNBC on Thursday morning. Walmart on Sunday issued a statement, saying: 'Walmart continues to have an interest in a TikTok investment and continues discussions with ByteDance leadership and other interested parties. We know that any approved deal must satisfy all regulatory and national security concerns.' A Walmart spokesman on Thursday declined to comment further, and Oracle did not immediately respond to inquiries from DailyMail.com on Thursday morning. An outright sale of TikTok's operations or technologies was not included in ByteDance's proposal to the United States, Chinese state media reported on Thursday, citing a separate statement from the company. President Donald Trump has already signaled that he is strongly opposed to a deal that allows ByteDance to retain majority control, citing national security concerns over user data. 'Conceptually I can tell you I don't like that (ByteDance keeping a majority ownership of TikTok). That has been reported, but it has not been told to me yet. If that is the case, I'm not going to be happy with that,' Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. He added that would be briefed on the deal and consider it on Thursday. If a deal is not finalized by Sunday, Trump has already signed an executive order that would shut down TikTok in the U.S. -- likely enraging the app's 100 million American users just weeks before the presidential election. Trump has said he is a fan of Oracle's co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison (right), one of few tech executives to openly support the Republican President White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Thursday that if TikTok remains predominantly Chinese-run under the Oracle deal, that would not meet Trump's national security objectives. Meadows said the administration is still looking at details of the deal and whether it meets national security thresholds, referring to plans by China's ByteDance to keep a majority stake in the U.S. operations of the popular social media platform. The proposal calls for Oracle Corp to become a 'trusted technology provider' for TikTok's U.S. operations. Former national security officials and regulatory lawyers say that ByteDance faces an uphill struggle to convince the White House to allow it to keep majority ownership of TikTok. 'After [The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] made a recommendation to the President and the President issued an executive order requiring divestment, it would be unprecedented for the parties to negotiate a solution short of a divestment,' said Aimen Mir, who oversaw CFIUS reviews between 2014 and 2018 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Investment Security at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and is now a partner at law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. However, Mir noted that 'it would clearly be within the authority of the President to modify his order' to allow an alternative to divestment, if he so chose. ByteDance has also explored divesting a majority stake in the U.S. business of TikTok, and in July it signed a letter of intent with Microsoft Corp that contemplated the sale of that business to the Redmond, Washington-based company. However, Microsoft said on Sunday that ByteDance had turned down its offer, and it remains unclear whether the Chinese firm would shed most of its ownership of TikTok to clinch a deal with the White House. Further complicating matters, ByteDance said on Thursday that China will need to approve its proposed deal with Oracle for TikTok. Last month, China updated its export control rules to give it a say over the transfer of technology, such as TikTok's recommendation algorithm, to a foreign buyer, making a full sale even more difficult. Chinese officials have said ByteDance should not be coerced by the United States into a deal. New York Many Americans have vivid memories of Jan. 28, 1986. That was the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded just seconds after liftoff on a chilly morning in Florida. Schoolchildren across the country had tuned in to see Christa McAuliffe become the first teacher in space. One person watching was Steven Leckart, a space-obsessed elementary school kid. Like everyone else, he was shocked by the blast and felt the slow, sickening realization that all seven aboard were gone. "I remember wanting to be an astronaut and I remember wanting to go to space. And then I remember Challenger completely shattering my dream for that," he recalled. Leckart has returned to that dark day as co-director of the four-part Netflix documentary series "Challenger: The Final Flight," executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Glen Zipper. It premieres Wednesday. The series approaches the disaster less like a postmortem and more like a drama. It explores NASA history and the lives of the seven lost astronauts, why the accident occurred and the inquest that followed. Zipper and Leckart conceived of it in 2015 while looking to make something personal. Both had seen the disaster as boys but could only remember the name of one astronaut aboard Challenger: McAuliffe. Who were the other six? The more they dug, the more they found extraordinary people: Ellison Onizuka was the first Asian-American in space and Ronald McNair was the second African-American. Judith Resnik was the second American woman in space and the first Jewish woman. "We wanted to humanize these astronauts and wanted you to know these characters and understand the human side of this whole story," co-director Daniel Junge said. Watching the series was a "rollercoaster ride of emotion" for June Scobee Rodgers, the widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee and who helped establish the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. "There is sadness and as a reminder of that tremendous private grief that was made so public," Scobee Rodgers said. But there is also home movies of her late husband having fun with family and friends. "There are wonderful snippets of joy." She credited the filmmakers for telling a story "no one else has ever been able to do. There's been many, many stories, but they give it the serious respect that it deserves by telling the whole story." Months after the disaster, the cause was revealed: O-ring seals failed, causing leaks in the right booster rocket. An investigation found some workers had warned NASA about the danger of launching Challenger because the O-rings grew brittle in cold weather. But NASA was under pressure to keep to its ambitious flight schedule and the risk was deemed acceptable. "When we started this series, I did kind of expect to find that mustache-twirling villain, that one person that everything could be laid at their feet. And I don't think we did find that person," Zipper said. "There is no one who said 'This thing is definitely going to disintegrate. But let's launch it anyway.' They all were loyal to their missions to a fault." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Scobee Rodgers said the series shows how people can rationalize away problems, but despite her immense loss, she has no anger toward the Challenger decision-makers. "I have such empathy for the gentlemen that made the difficult decisions because they were under pressure for that schedule, placed on NASA unfairly, I do believe," she said. Leckart likened the way the Challenger disaster unfolded to another man-made disaster in 1986 the Chernobyl meltdown. "These are not necessarily nefarious people with anything but the best of intentions. But that can quickly go awry." The series airs just as space exploration has returned to America's consciousness. In May, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic also plan trips to space. "We are going to be going further in space and we're going to be taking more risk. So the time is right to remind people of what can go wrong," Zipper said. The series has lessons for any complex organization, especially how red flags are handled, the necessity to slow the process down when necessary and the need to have transparency and clear decision-making. "There's always going to be risk. There's always going to be loss. If we want to launch ourselves into the next frontier, the final frontier, we're going to lose more people. It's inevitable," Zipper said. "But the question becomes, 'What level of risk is acceptable?' Because if we said no risk is acceptable, then I don't think we can continue our mission into space." Making "Challenger" made watching the SpaceX launch earlier this year a dicey proposition for Leckart. "I remember having a moment of thinking, like, 'Do I want my children to be watching this live?' And I'm not sure I would have thought about that quite the same had I not made 'Challenger,'" he said. MIDDLETOWN The passage of a $55 million referendum question on the November ballot could solve the problem of Middletowns cramped and aging municipal offices, allowing a move to a much larger facility nearby on Main Street. Voters will be asked to consider a bonding package for several structural projects on Election Day. If approved, a portion of the monies could fund a new parking garage to replace the Arcade, which was knocked down in March 2018, and roadwork, as well as property acquisitions at the riverfront. These projects would set up the city for long-term growth downtown and throughout the city, Mayor Ben Florsheim said Wednesday. The citys municipal building, erected in 1958 at 245 deKoven Drive, has undergone additions and renovations over the decades, but, Florsheim said, storage and space have become big issues lately. Modern times mean a lot more computer equipment, and larger staff numbers than in decades past. Flexible spaces for community use are hard to come by, and, although some city meetings, such as Common Council, are held in chambers, other boards meet in smaller rooms or rotate among buildings. Structurally its in fine shape, Florsheim said. This is a building that is reaching the end of its useful life, a topic thats been bandied about for some time. The city hired an architect to draw up a proposal for municipal offices to move into the former Citizens Bank corporate offices at 225-243 Main St., on the corner of College Street. The historic structure once was home to The Farmers and Mechanics Bank, which operated from 1858 to 1996. The buildings footprint is 18,474 square feet. The referendum is part of a master plan to reinvigorate and revitalize the Connecticut Riverfront near Harbor Park, the mayor said. Every time a developer is in town, looking at another site, they say, what about City Hall? That really is the perfect location for any number of things whether its housing or a grocery complex or retail, or something along those lines, Florsheim said. Plus, he said, its about twice the size of the current town offices. There would be no need to build an entirely new facility, and some of the features such as large vaults already are in place. A lot of those huge, fixed costs are already taken care of, the mayor said. Moves such as these carry a high price tag, said Florsheim, pointing across the river to East Hampton, where the towns new $18.9 million, 34,000-square-foot town offices center opened in early May at 1 Community Drive in the Edgewater Hills development. Much of the Citizens Bank structure is vacant, except for Middlesex Health, which is renting space for its administrative offices for the next couple years. We see it as a really functional site for a municipal building, Florsheim said. That could free up the current property on deKoven Drive, in full view of the Connecticut River, for potential riverfront redevelopment a prime area of real estate. Middletown is in the midst of work being done near the Connecticut River at Harbor Park, which is undergoing improvements, along with brownfield assessment and remediation. The mayor stopped by the boathouse there Tuesday to watch the projects progression. A small but important step towards realizing the full potential of our revitalized riverfront! he wrote on Facebook. In 2016, Middletown won a $2.6 million Urban Act Grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development to fund the activity. Already, the former Jackson Corrugated site on nearby River Road has been approved for residential use. Its a key site, in a lot of ways, because there arent a lot of sites down there that would make a lot of sense [for housing], because theyre either in the floodplain or wetlands, and would be better for recreational use, Florsheim said. He is eager to get more property on the tax rolls in the near future. We know the road work needs to happen, and we know all these other projects weve been talking about for years and years decades, in some cases and, right now, we have an opportunity to capitalize on that. Its a unique opportunity to open up a lot of downtown, to break through the ceiling, and get to the next level of economic development, he said. By Donald Kirk Acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward offers inside stories that escaped all of us while covering the three Trump-Kim meetings in 2018 and 2019. In the course of 18 interviews, and in 27 messages that he obtained between Trump and Kim, he provides details that make his latest book, "Rage," enthralling reading for anyone, whether a scholar, journalist, government official or a total newcomer to the scene, and outlines the issues that have made it impossible to bring about permanent peace and tranquility on the Korean Peninsula. Since the first reports of the book came out last week, we've seen plenty of stories quoting Trump telling Woodward that Kim is "beyond smart" and Kim saying the bond between them was like a "fantasy film." We knew that Trump was flattered by correspondence from Kim addressing him as "Excellency," and we have long been aware that Trump professed that he and Kim fell "in love" when they met for the first time in Singapore in June 2018 for what may have been the most over-hyped exercise in summitry and diplomacy ever staged. Woodward embellishes on what is already out there with quotes and color, interlaced with comments from a range of principals, including Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, Trump's first appointees as defense secretary and secretary of state, both of whom were shocked by Trump's displays of ignorance, arrogance and ineptitude. There's much more to the book than Korea, notably Trump's confession to Woodward that he was well aware of the dangers of COVID-19 as early as last February when he was saying publicly that the pandemic was not all that bad, would disappear by spring, etc. Trump's dishonesty to the American public, and Woodward's decision not to tell anyone what Trump had told him before the book came out, has captured the biggest headlines, but this account of dealings with both North and South Korea is just as captivating. While Trump was currying favor with North Korea, he was showing his disdain for South Korea. The book exposes Trump's eagerness to walk out on the South, to forget about defending our ally from Korean War days while holding up the South Koreans for virtually all the costs of keeping American troops in the country. (Small nit: the book says America has 30,000 troops in South Korea, not 28,500, the correct figure.) Not the least compelling aspect of this book is that it is written in a fast-moving style that grips the reader without appearing overly journalistic. Woodward covers complex issues in terse, short sentences, replete with quotes as well as background material from newspaper stories and other sources. He is also realistic. Trump and Kim's 391-word joint statement at Singapore "did not end the nuclear threat from North Korea," Woodward writes, "it simply reaffirmed a loosely worded declaration that Kim had signed with South Korea in April 2018," that is about six weeks before Trump and Kim met. Mattis, already dubious about Trump, lost confidence completely when Trump right after the Singapore summit said that he was canceling joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. Woodward tells us nothing new when he writes that "Mattis was taken completely by surprise," but readers may not have known how hard Mattis and Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, tried to get around the stricture by arranging small-unit war games and avoiding publicity. Still, Mattis' disgust is evident when he remarked later, "What we're doing is we're actually showing how to destroy America How to isolate us from all of our allies." Woodward's criticism of Trump goes far beyond the tell-all books that reveal lurid details of Trump's personal life, his fundamental corruption and incompetence. It is much more important to know how Trump mishandled the coronavirus than to read about his sexual antics, his cheating, his hyperbole and outright falsehoods. Woodward does, however, make one crucial mistake not in fact but in judgment. He writes, "Trump says repeatedly we had no war," and "That was an achievement." Not really. We weren't about to have a war before Trump began his courtship of Kim Jong-un. What was happening was that Trump was denouncing Kim as "Rocket Man" while North Korea conducted missile and nuclear tests the last, three years ago, many times the force of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. North Korea may not have tested its nukes since then, but it's still got them and can return to testing any time. What's really stopping Kim from ordering more such tests is North Korea's economic distress and COVID-19, which now dominate his concerns. Still, Woodward is correct when he writes, "Diplomacy should always be worth a try." Less certain is his conclusion, "It may have been worth it." The Trump-Kim summits were worth watching but may have done more to obscure and paper over problems, raising false hopes, than to settle issues that are still very much with us today. ) writes from Seoul as well as Washington. Donald Kirk ( www.donaldkirk.com A logo of the European Space Agency (ESA) is pictured at their headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, on Sept. 30, 2016. (Ralph Orlowski/Reuters) Europe to Build Spacecraft for Planetary Defense Test to Deflect Asteroid Humanity will for the first time have the chance to find out if we can deflect an asteroid, the European Space Agency (ESA) saidknowledge that could be useful in the future should an asteroid be on a collision course with Earth. ESA on Tuesday awarded a 129-million-euro ($154 million) contract to design, build, and test a spacecraft, named after Hera, the Greek goddess of marriage, that will be used to observe the results of an experiment to deflect a small asteroid that will pass within about 6 million miles of Earth. The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) projecta joint planetary defense collaboration with NASAwill try to hit a pyramid-sized asteroid called Dimorphos, which is orbiting around another mountain-sized asteroid called Didymos, and observe the impact of the collision. NASAs spacecraft DART, which will collide with Dimorphos, is set to launched in June 2021. The impact, set to happen in September 2022, is expected to alter its orbit around Didymos as well as create a substantial crater, ESA said. Dimorphos will be the first celestial body to have its orbital and physical characteristics intentionally altered by human intervention. ESA will then launch Hera in October 2024 to map the resulting impact crater and measure the asteroids mass, reaching the area in late 2026 for a six-month survey. The mission is reminiscent of the 1998 film Armageddon, in which actor Bruce Willis plays a member of a team sent to destroy an asteroid to save Earth. We want to try for the first time to steer an asteroid on its potential collision course with Earth, ESA director Rolf Densing told Reuters television. Hera will work like a self-driving car, ESA said. The desk-sized spacecraft will gather data so scientists can better understand asteroid compositions and structures. It will also carry miniature satellites called CubeSats, which will be able to carry out close-up surveying or even land on the binary asteroids for the first time. Germany will lead the design and integration, with 17 other European countries contributing to the mission. Marco Fuchs, chief executive of German space and technology group OHB that will develop the Hera craft, said trying to divert an asteroid was like playing billiards and noted the challenge of steering towards such a small celestial body. You have to steer very precisely, you have to find it first and then approach it in such a way that you can really observe what has happened as a result of the impact of the American probe, he said. Reuters contributed to this report More than three million unmarked cigarettes were seized by Brandon police in a joint investigation with the Ontario and Manitoba governments last week one of the largest busts in Manitoba history. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us More than three million unmarked cigarettes were seized by Brandon police in a joint investigation with the Ontario and Manitoba governments last week one of the largest busts in Manitoba history. Police arrested four Brandon men on Sept. 9 in relation to the bust and charged them with possessing unmarked tobacco and possessing more than 25 units of unmarked tobacco. The four men were smuggling illegal tobacco into Manitoba from Six Nations First Nation, near Hamilton, Ont., said Brandon police inspector of operations Mike Pelechaty during a Wednesday press conference at Brandon police headquarters. On Sept. 9, he said, officers pulled over a vehicle towing a large trailer in Brandon. Police executed a search warrant on the trailer and found 173 cases of unmarked cigarettes in the trailer. A second search warrant the next day found 183 cases of unmarked cigarettes in a storage locker for a total of 356 cases. Approximately 3,570,400 individual cigarettes were seized in total, Pelechaty said, along with a vehicle, cash and transport trailer. Some of the cigarettes are menthols, which are also illegal in Canada. See Seized Page A2 Brandon police Const. Myran Hamm walks past dozens of boxes of contraband cigarettes seized as part of an investigation conducted in partnership with the Manitoba and Ontario governments. The boxes, seen here in a secure bay at the Brandon police station, represent approximately half of the 3.57 million cigarettes seized by police. (Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun) The men who are charged are between the ages of 46 and 60 and none are involved in gangs, Pelechaty said. The investigation spanned approximately nine months, he said, and started with the provincial government and Ontario Ministry of Financial Investigations. The men could face six months to five years in prison if convicted for the charges under the Criminal Code and the Tax Administration and Miscellaneous Taxes Act. The men are also facing fines under the Provincial Tax Acts. The seizure saved the province more than $1 million in tax revenue losses, said Ron Bell, supervisor of the Manitoba Finance taxation special investigations unit. "Contraband illegal tobacco represents a significant tax loss to the citizens of Manitoba. If this would have entered the marketplace this would have been just over $1 million in tax revenue that would have been lost," he said. "This was a well-organized group that stood to profit immensely from this illegal tobacco." Cigarette busts are so far larger in 2020 than in past years, Bell said. Previously, 60 cases were considered a large bust, but the amounts are getting higher and higher. In early May, RCMP seized approximately 3.5 million unmarked cigarettes, also in Brandon. Mike Pelechaty The potential profit from selling unmarked cigarettes is 300 per cent, Bell said larger than selling either illegal cannabis or cocaine. The potential financial gain is what is driving people to attempt to sell larger amounts of the product. "The financial reward if youre able to make it work is mind-boggling," he said. "People dont think of it as a major crime, people dont call up Crime Stoppers and say There is a fellow thats got a truckload of tobacco and hes selling it at the corner of the back lane for $80 a carton." While Bell wouldnt say where specifically the cigarettes seized on Sept. 9 were headed, he said they could have been headed anywhere in the world. There are no illegal cigarette manufacturing facilities in western Canada, Bell said, so most come from Ontario and Quebec. The seized cigarettes are set to be destroyed, Bell said. They will be escorted to a landfill in Winnipeg, where they will be buried in layers under a pile of garbage. The four men charged in the bust are set to appear in court on Nov. 12. dmay@brandonsun.com Twitter: @DrewMay_ "This was a mistake, and contributed to my stress level, along with the increasing number of violent threats leveled at me and my family back in Buffalo," he said in a statement. "But every American battling Covid in every city in every state across the nation has been under enormous pressure." Caputo told ABC News that he will continue to receive his salary and benefits while he is on leave. Some of the circumstances regarding Caputo's leave remain unclear. For example, shortly after Health and Human Services issued its statement about Caputo's departure, Politico reporter Jake Sherman tweeted part of it, adding that "Caputo denied this to us about 15 minutes ago." Asked about Caputo's leave, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said: I'm not going to weigh in on any personnel decision. The federal agency issued the statement about Caputo's leave of absence shortly after the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield, rebuked Caputo without naming him at a Senate hearing. UPDATE: Police identify alleged shooter found dead in home after standoff SUPERIOR TWP., MI A tense police standoff in a Superior Township neighborhood where a man shot a deputy ended with the man dying of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound late Wednesday night, police say. After more than nine hours, the police stand off at Lakeview Drive ended just before midnight Wednesday, Sept. 16, when police discovered the barricaded gunman dead inside the residence, according to the Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office. Early indications are he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Police in standoff with alleged gunman after officer shot The deputy who was shot in the incident has since been released from the hospital and is recovering, police said. Though police are still investigating the scene, the area is being reopened and residents living in the area are free to leave their homes once again. Police were initially called to the complex at 2:11 p.m. to respond to a felonious assault where a person shot at a neighbor during a dispute, police said. Deputies arrived at the scene and began taking fire from the man almost immediately. One deputy was shot, police said. The deputy, who was not identified, was described by the sheriffs office as being part of the sheriffs office for quite some time. A Crisis Negotiation Team attempted to make contact with the barricaded man throughout the standoff, but was unsuccessful. Police units from throughout Washtenaw County and beyond responded to the scene to assist in securing the perimeter and control traffic in the area. These units included the Michigan State Police, Ypsilanti Police Department, Ann Arbor Police Department, Pittsfield Township Police Department, ATF, Homeland Security and campus police from both Eastern Michigan University and Washtenaw Community College. There have been no recent interactions between police and the man prior to the shooting, Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office Spokesman Derrick Jackson said. The shooting remains under investigation. Anyone experiencing thoughts of suicide can seek help from: The 24-hour National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Military veterans press #1. The Ozone House, a 24-hour hotline for youth, at 734-662-2222. The 24-hour hotline at University of Michigan Psychiatric Emergency Services at 734-936-5900. The Washtenaw County Community Mental Health crisis team at 734-544-3050. More from The Ann Arbor News: Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike From policing to cannabis: former Detroit officer says cannabis saved my life Misdemeanor convictions added to nondiscrimination ordinance in Ypsilanti A Wisconsin university teaching assistant resigned from their job after admitting lying for years about being black. CV Vitolo-Haddad confessed that she was actually of southern Italian and Sicilian origin not black or Latino as colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had assumed. Vitolo-Haddad, who uses the non-binary pronouns they and their, confessed the deception in a series of Medium posts. When asked if I identify as black, my answer should always have been No, the teaching assistant admitted in a September 8 post. There were three separate instances I said otherwise. I have let guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldnt prove, Vitolo-Haddad wrote earlier in a 6 September post. I have let people make assumptions when I should have corrected them. I take full responsibility for spreading these lies and am deeply sorry. The post added: I want to apologise for ever taking lies about Cuban roots at face value, and for subsequently attaching myself to peoples perceptions of me as though it would provide answers where there are none. Recommended Vitolo-Haddad is a PHD candidate at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and had a teaching assistant position, from which she has now stepped down, also resigning as co-president of the universitys chapter of the Teaching Assistants Association, which is a graduate student union. Vitolo-Haddad later admitted to insidehighered.com' having benefited socially from the situation, but had never applied for scholarships, fellowships or awards for people of colour or identified as Black on any paperwork. The confirmation comes just weeks after George Washington University professor Jessica Krug, an African historian who is white, was revealed to be a black imposter. Krug later blamed her actions on past trauma and mental health issues. In 2015 Rachel Dolezal, a former NAACP chairperson in Spokane, Washington, was outed as being white despite claiming she self-identified as black. UW-Madison spokeswoman Meredith McGlone that Vitolo-Haddad was no longer a teaching assistant at the university. UW-Madison expects that people represent themselves authentically and accurately in all aspects of their academic work, McGlone told the universitys Daily Cardinal. ALLENDALE, MI -- John Maday, a Grand Valley State University sophomore, admits hes not looking forward to spending the next two weeks mostly cooped up in his off-campus apartment. I like being here on campus quite a bit and now Im hearing that Im going to have to stay in my apartment at all times unless I really need to come out. So, unless Im going to class I have to stay at home, so thats a little discouraging, he said. Maday, of Jenison, was among many students walking through the Allendale campus Wednesday, Sept. 16 who gave their opinion to MLive about new restrictions intended to stop coronavirus spread in Ottawa County. Related: Emergency stay-home order issued for Grand Valley State University students All GVSU students who live in Allendale Township are required to stay in their on- or off-campus residence beginning at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, and ending at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, according to the Ottawa County Department of Public Health order. There have been more than 600 coronavirus cases tied to Grand Valley since Aug. 23, when many students returned to campus, according to the health department. The school of about 25,000, which began the fall semester Aug. 31, is offering a mix of in-person and virtual classes this fall. Maday isnt sure the stay-home order will make much difference. I dont think its going to help too much, honestly, because college kids are college kids and they kind of do what they want to do at this age, he said. I know Im going to do my part, so hopefully everyone will be on the same wavelength as that, he said. Ashley Brown, a junior pre-med student who lives off campus, also isnt confident students will take the order seriously. She said she also sees some issues for those residing in dorms. "I dont think thats reasonable to ask them to not travel home,'' she said. "You get cramped in the dorms, you get stir-crazy.'' Health officials noted some exceptions for going out, including attending in-person classes, picking up food or basic needs, attending medical appointments or getting medicine and working at an essential job that cannot be done at home. Philip Lam, a junior exercise science major, commutes to campus one day a week, taking most of his classes online. He says he is at low risk for contracting COVID-19 but points to parties both on and off campus related to the rise in cases triggering the order. Based on what I have seen and heard about, I dont think theyre taking it seriously because a lot of parties are still going on,'' he said. "Thats probably why (the amount of cases) is getting worse. Leeann Wilson, a junior from Warren, echoed the skepticism of others. She lives in on-campus housing. She thinks the order is intended, at least in part, to stop parties that might spread the virus. I think it is, but no ones going to listen. I mean people havent listened since (school started) so whats this going to really stop, she said. Alex Nastasa, a sophomore nursing student, said he was aware that GVSU had a high number of students testing positive for COVID-19. He thinks the stay-home order could be beneficial and suspects that on-campus students will be more likely to obey it. People are still going to hang out. Its all individual at this point. Its really hard to keep people inside, especially off-campus. Youre asking college students to stay inside, thats going to be very difficult, he said. During a virtual press conference Wednesday, GVSU administrators warned that students could face repercussions if they repeatedly violate the order. University leaders said they will focus primarily on educating students about the importance of following the stay-home order, but repercussions will follow if they see students continuously not following the order. We have to keep reminding students that the stakes are high, that its about protecting each other, President Philomena Mantella said in the virtual conference. Oscar Saura, a senior from Spain, said from what hes seen, GVSU and local police already are working to stop any large parties. They are already taking measure to stop people from partying, he said. They are being pretty strict about it. Saura said he wasnt surprised by the stay-home order. I heard there were a lot of COVID cases lately. I think its a good measure, but honestly I hope it doesnt last for too long, he said. Hes not worried about being cooped up in his apartment. As long as I have food Im fine, he said. Riley Klumb, a freshman film and video production major, was planning on going to visit family this weekend but now intends to stay in dorm. Klumb said it is hard to predict if students will take the order seriously but said they arent very happy, describing the discourse as generally negative. COVID-19 PREVENTION TIPS: In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued executive orders requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nosewhile in public indoor and crowded outdoor spaces. See an explanation of what that means here. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus. For more data on COVID-19 in Michigan, visit https://www.mlive.com/coronavirus/data/ Related stories Grand Valley students who break stay-home order could be subject to sanctions University of Michigan is no longer able to hide inadequacy of pandemic response, grad students say Michigan State University students asked to self-quarantine as coronavirus cases surge Kangana Ranaut has responded to a Twitter user who called her out for using a rape analogy to explain what she went through during the demolition of her property in Mumbai. The user also questioned her choice of words for actor Urmila Matondkar, calling them disgusting. In an interview on Tuesday, Kangana had called Urmila a soft porn actor who was not known for her acting performances. Calling another artist as a soft porn star!!! You are disgusting n morally bankrupt. Shameful how constantly character assassinate them...Do you know how being raped feels??? How do you draw a comparison with building Demolition... Rape= forceful sexual intercourse, the user wrote. Where was your feminism you dumb ass when Urmila called me Rudali and a prostitute? You fake feminist shame on entire woman kind, do you know a human dont just have physical body we have emotional body, mental body and psychological body as well, rape isnt just intercourse!! Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 17, 2020 Liberal brigade once virtually lynched a renowned writer in to silence for saying people like Sunny Leone should not be our role models, Sunny is accepted by the industry and entire India as an artist, suddenly fake feminists equating being a porn star to something derogatory Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 17, 2020 Where was your feminism you dumb a** when Urmila called me Rudali and a prostitute? Kangana retorted, adding, You fake feminist shame on entire woman kind, do you know a human dont just have physical body we have emotional body, mental body and psychological body as well, rape isnt just intercourse!! She again brought up adult star-turned-actor Sunny Leone in her tweets. Liberal brigade once virtually lynched a renowned writer in to silence for saying people like Sunny Leone should not be our role models, Sunny is accepted by the industry and entire India as an artist, suddenly fake feminists equating being a porn star to something derogatory Slightly smiling face, Kangana added. Kangana, who flew into Mumbai earlier this month amid a face-off with the ruling Shiv Sena, had opened up on demolition of her property for alleged irregularities. I felt like Im raped, she told Times Now in an interview, If there is a robbery, even if the thief hasnt taken anything, you feel violated, Mentally, psychologically, emotionally. She also took on the Maharashtra government and said, Agar koi ek insaan, government hoti hai, its in a position of a guardian, jab rakshak bakshak ban jata hai na, aapko koi idea nahi hain kya hota hai. Kisse ladu main ab? (Who do I fight when those who are supposed to protect, the government, turn against me? ) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Just before Israel was to enter its second nationwide lockdown, President Reuven Rivlin apologized to Israelis over the country's failure to better handle the coronavirus and asked for forgiveness over his breaking the confinement rules during the first pandemic closure in April when he celebrated the Passover dinner with his daughter and her family, contrary to government restrictions. "I understand the feelings of confusion and uncertainty, the anxiety that many people are feeling. On a personal level, I ask your forgiveness for my behavior here at the presidents house during the lockdown during Passover. My loneliness is no more painful than the loneliness that many of you who were so careful to follow the word and the spirit of the instructions experience, said the president. Rivlin said the government had failed in handling the coronavirus crisis and pleaded with Israelis to follow the new restrictions that go into effect at 2 p.m. Sept. 18, just before the beginning of the Jewish New Year. I want to say to the government of Israel its leaders, ministers and advisers: The trust of the people is beyond value. We must do everything to restore personal, medical and economic confidence to our fellow citizens. This is a second chance and we must take it because we will not, I fear, get a third one. The final version of the lockdown approved by the Cabinet generally prohibits people from traveling more than 500 meters (a third of a mile) from their home except for essential shopping, going to work and walking for exercise. The country also will close schools for three weeks. Synagogues would open only partially for the High Holidays season. Many Israelis expressed anger over limits imposed on synagogues, while political demonstrations are allowed. It was also unclear whether some preschools would be authorized to open. Israel could go to work, though most businesses and the public sector would function at a reduced capacity. Business and restaurant owners are warning that a second lockdown would ruin them, after a first, very difficult closure in April. Several restaurant and shop owners said they will open despite the restrictions. The Health Ministry announced Sept. 17 that the countrys pandemic death toll had risen to 1,169, with 4,791 new cases diagnosed, a new record, since the previous day. With numbers still climbing by the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the coronavirus czar, Dr. Ronni Gamzu, to an urgent meeting the same day to discuss further tightening the lockdown. According to some reports, Netanyahu called the meeting because he is concerned about the publics response to the lockdown. About 6,000 police officers and 1,000 Israel Defense Forces soldiers are to reinforce the lockdown this weekend, patrolling main transportation axes. The government fears that many Israelis will try to join family members for the traditional New Year's festive dinner and lunch in violation of the lockdown restrictions. Anti-Netanyahu protesters called for demonstrations to be held on the eve of the lockdown in various locales across the country. They are calling for Netanyahu's resignation because of his trial on bribery charges and because of what they say is his failure to manage the coronavirus pandemic, which has plunged Israel into an unprecedented economic crisis. WARRENSBURG A million-dollar wetlands restoration project along the Schroon River nearly a decade in the making was unveiled on Thursday at the Lake George Escape campground. The project dates back to 2012, when the campgrounds owners, Equity Lifestyle Properties of Chicago, began looking into restoring the neglected wetlands that line the 175-acre property and feed into the Schroon River, said Patrick Welton, the campgrounds general manager. When Equity Lifestyle acquired the park, apparently the previous owner did not do proper code enforcement regulations with the DEC, so we knew it was the right thing to do, Welton said. Equity Lifestyle, which owns more than 400 campgrounds and RV parks throughout North America, funded the $1 million project. The company has owned the property, which accommodates more than 25,000 guests annually, since 2005, but the campground dates back to 1968. As part of the project, 14 acres of land will be turned over to the state, Welton said. The propertys original owner developed portions of the property that were not zoned for development, he said. Elsewhere, years of neglect left the propertys wetlands in bad shape, said Michael Martin, an environmental scientist with Cedarwood Engineering Services, who oversaw the projects completion. Portions of the Schroon Rivers banks were severely eroded from years of campers walking down to the river from the campground, and a series of bridges that connected various campsites allowed for only small culverts, making it difficult for aquatic species to pass through. The wetlands are a spawning area for trout and other fish, Martin said. Before they just had little culverts that didnt allow for aquatic organism passage, he said. Martin said plans to restore the wetlands were developed alongside the Army Corps of Engineers and approved by the Adirondack Park Agency in 2019. Work on the project began in March, but was paused for just over a month due to the coronavirus pandemic. The team had to complete the project by Oct. 1, when the various species of trout that inhabit the Schroon River begin their spawning season. To allow greater passage for aquatic species, a foot bridge was removed entirely and two more bridges where elevated to allow for three wider culverts to be installed. Aquatic plants were also planted throughout the wetlands and are expected to fully take root by next year. Yards of fill were removed in order to restore 5 acres of wetlands and several campsites were demolished to create new habitats, Martin said. Martin said the fill likely dates back decades when there was less concern about preserving wetlands. Back then, people just did what they wanted and wetlands werent even considered an environmental habitat, he said. There were a lot of areas where the wetlands were just filled in to make roads. Around 350 feet of shoreline across 20 sites along the Schroon River were also restored. New access points were installed at various parts of the river so campers can still access the river without damaging the shores. We created access sites so people can still get down to the river without causing more erosion in the future, Martin said. For Jonathon Goldberg, a regional manager for Equity Lifestyle Properties, the restoration was not only the right thing to do, but was a great way to give back to the community. This is our property, he said. Were not here for the short-term, were here for a long time and we want to give back as we need to. Chad Arnold is a reporter for The Post-Star covering the city of Glens Falls and the town and village of Lake George. Follow him on Twitter @ChadGArnold. Love 6 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. "First and foremost, I would like to extend an apology on behalf of the District and the Board of School Directors to the student who was involved and to his family. They did not ask for this incident to occur, nor do they deserve the negative attention that it has brought." - school board President Tina Stoll PIEDMONT, Okla. - A natural gas line explosion in a rural area northwest of Oklahoma City left a massive crater in a roadway, but caused no injuries, officials said Thursday. The line, owned by Denver-based DCP Midstream, exploded about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in Piedmont under a road marking the Kingfisher-Canadian County lines and left a crater about 35 feet (11 metres) wide by 20 feet (6 metres) long, according to Kingfisher County Emergency Management Director Steve Loftis. Its totally impassable, Loftis said of the two-lane road. It blew chunks everywhere ... asphalt, dirt. The cause of the blast was not immediately known, DCP Midstream spokesperson Jeannette Alberg said in a statement. She said smoke was expected to linger Thursday from nearby hay bales that were caught on fire. We are continuing to work with local emergency response to address the event and are in the process of assessing the impacts of the event and conducting an investigation, the statement said. Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Receives NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), an influential and forceful voice in Washington, D.C., and serving her thirteenth term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, will receive the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) 2020 National Leadership Award. Each year, the NNPA Board recognizes courageous Americans who have impacted the nation and world positively. This years recipients include elected officials, a business maverick, and an educator. NNPA Board members said, while the recipients career paths may be varied, the impact of their shared commitment to creating meaningful and beneficial change in the lives of African Americans cannot be underestimated. ADVERTISEMENT Congresswoman Jackson Lee has remained a strong voice in Congress, dedicated to social justice and equal rights. She was among the first to call for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. At the beginning of the 116th Congress, she authored, introduced, and saw the Violence Against Women Acts reauthorization. She also introduced several bills, including the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Reauthorization and Bullying Prevention and Intervention Act, H.R. 71, the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2015, and H.R. 4660, an Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015 affirming the authority of the Attorney General to reduce prison overcrowding by developing and implementing lawful policies relating to requests for executive clemency from deserving petitioners. Additionally, Congresswoman Jackson Lee has led the call for reparations for the descendants of African slaves. During a 40-minute discussion with BlackPressUSA, Jackson Lee said, 40 acres and a mule was not a joke; it was supposed to be real. The congresswoman authored and pushed H.R. 40, a bill that would fund a commission to study government reparations. She said the commission would enjoy a level of specificity and actionability not previously discussed or realized. NNPA President and CEO, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., a pupil of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a noted civil rights leader, applauded the congresswomans efforts. ADVERTISEMENT He pledged that the NNPA through the Black Press of America pages would issue a call to action to mobilize all Americans to support H.R. 40. The bill has the support of most Democrats and American citizens, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, whose executive committee unanimously passed a resolution supporting H.R. 40. In a recent letter to Jackson Lee and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the mayors reiterated their support for the bill and noted the need to break down systemic barriers to justice and equality. We recognize and support your legislation as a concrete first step in our larger reckoning as a nation, and a next step to guide the actions of both federal and local leaders who have promised to do better by our Black residents, U.S. Conference of Mayors and Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Greg Fischer wrote. Lee encouraged Dr. Chavis to keep the issue at the forefront of Black-owned newspapers, to which he gave resounding approval. From this day forward, we will put out the call. Just as we are putting out the call for 2020 Census participation and the call for all Black people to cast their vote in November, Chavis stated. Jackson Lee added that casting votes at the ballot box is equivalent to casting a vote in favor of reparations, something she believes should happen. We now have an opportunity, through H.R. 40, to have the highest level of discussion about systemic racism and race, Jackson Lee explained. And we can do it in a manner that is bringing people together; that acknowledges that Black lives matter; and acknowledges that there has to be a response, she added. There is no better time for H.R. 40 to be part of the national dialogue and part of the national legislative response. The acquittal of Ernes Ametov, a defendant in the second Bakhchisarai group 'Hizb ut-Tahrir,' became the first in the history of persecution under a terrorist article for participating in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization, which is banned in Russia and occupied by it in Crimea, representatives of the Memorial human rights center told Krym.Realii. "This is the first acquittal since the Supreme Court of Russia in 2003 declared Hizb ut-Tahrir a terrorist organization. You know, I can even assume that this is the first acquittal under the terrorist Article 205 in fact. All of our reports on the practice of prosecution under Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and in the cases of Hizb ut-Tahrir, in particular, in the column 'acquittals' were zeros," Daria Kostromina, an employee of the political prisoners support program at the Memorial human rights center, said. The information was confirmed by Vitaly Ponomarev, head of the program for countering Islamic terrorism at the Memorial human rights center, and Sergei Davidis, a member of the center's board. "Yes, this is the first acquittal in such cases since 2003, when the Supreme Court recognized the organization as terrorist," Davidis commented on the decision of the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. Experts declined to comment on the possible reasons for such a decision by the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don before reading the full text of the verdict. Crimean Solidarity activist Ernes Ametov was arrested on October 11, 2017. He was charged under Part 2 of Article 205.5 (participation in the activities of a terrorist organization) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The rest of the defendants received the maximum sentences in a strict regime colony: Marlen Asanov got 19 years, Mamet Belyalov got18 years, Server Mustavaeva got 14 years, Edem Smailov got 13 years, Sairan Saliev got 16 years, Timur Ibragimov got 17 years, Server Zekiryaev got 13 years. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expressed a strong protest over the illegal court decision and demanded the release of the Crimean prisoners. The ministry also called on the international community to respond to "such a shameful decision of the occupying state, to categorically condemn the use of the Russian illegal practice of prosecuting dissent, to demand that Russia stop violating international law." In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks to continue active work to protect the rights and freedoms of residents of the Crimean Peninsula and to increase pressure on the Russian Federation, including sanctions. The department said that all these citizens of Ukraine were illegally detained on the territory of the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, accused under Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "organization and participation in terrorist activities" and in violation of international law, illegally transferred to the territory of Russia in the city of Rostov-on-Don. The pretrial investigation and trial took place with numerous procedural violations. That release could not be found. Banjul, Gambia (PANA)- Over the past three years, my government has systematically addressed the unfavourable state of affairs we found in the country when we came into office A majority of IT administrators polled this summer said that the twice-a-year Windows 10 feature upgrades are not useful or rarely so a stunning stance considering how much effort Microsoft puts into building the updates. About 58% of nearly 500 business professionals who are responsible for servicing Windows at their workplaces said that Windows 10 feature upgrades two annually, one each in the spring and fall were either not useful (24%) or rarely useful (34%). Only 20% contended that the upgrades were useful in some fashion, while a slightly larger chunk 22% choose a noncommittal neutral as a response, claiming that the operating system's updates were neither useful nor not useful. (It might be best to consider this answer as undecided since in this binary world if something is not not useful, that must mean it is useful.) The results came from a questionnaire circulated last month by Susan Bradley, a computer network and security consultant who moderates the PatchMangement.org mailing list, where IT administrators discuss updates and exchange information. Bradley also writes for AskWoody.com, the Windows tip site run by Woody Leonard, a Computerworld columnist. Bradley also polled IT personnel in 2018, when she posed many of the same questions as this year. The results then were even more dismissive of the usefulness of Windows 10's upgrades. Two years ago, nearly 70% of the respondents said the feature upgrades were not useful (35%) or rarely useful (34.5%). About 12% called the upgrades useful to some degree, while around 18% were unable to decide one way or the other. Thus, in two years, the not-much-use-for-upgrades group shrunk by 12 percentage points while the upgrades-are-somehow-useful pool grew by 8 points. Even with these improvements, in 2020 a majority of IT was unconvinced that the feature upgrades had significant value. (Only 4% of those surveyed agreed that the upgrades were extremely useful.) That was in striking contrast to the pride of place that Microsoft put the feature upgrades, which continued as the cornerstone of the company's Windows-as-a-service (WaaS) philosophy. If an upgrade is released and no one cares, does it make a noise? "Clearly, Microsoft needs to reconsider its upgrading process ... and make the goals more transparent," Bradley wrote on Askwoody.com (membership required) when she first reported on the poll. There is a disconnect between Microsoft's efforts and expectations months of development time and testing to produce features and functionality that customers will clamor for and the reaction by, in electioneering terms, a landslide-sized majority of those customers. In many cases, IT admins simply shrug at what Microsoft trumpets. "I understand the concept of WaaS, and the ability to upgrade the OS without a wipe/re-install is a good concept," one of those polled said. "((But)) let's concentrate more on useful features, like an upgraded File Explorer, a Start menu that always works, and context-sensitive (and useful) help, and less on, 'It's time to release a new feature update, whether it has any useful new features or not.'" Some were considerably harsher in taking feature upgrades to task. "Don't have a clue why they think some of the new features might be worth our time, or even theirs," said another of those polled. And others decried what they saw as wasted opportunities. "It's mostly bells, whistles and window-dressing," one IT admin said. "It seems like no fundamental problems are tackled. Although updates DO every now and then cause new problems in fundamental functionality. Looks like there's at least some scratching done on the fundamental surface ((but)) without explanation." Or maybe more of a waste of time than wasted chances. "Microsoft spends the greatest amount of development in releasing these twice-a-year feature releases and ... enterprises are not rolling them out fast enough to take advantage of them," noted Bradley in an email reply to questions. Indeed. Because organizations running Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education receive 30 months of support for each fall upgrade (but only the fall upgrade; the spring refresh comes with only 18 months of support), it's possible for the most agile IT departments to skip multiple updates, and refresh their PCs only once every two years. (Upgrading once annually is a given with 30 months of support.) What this means is that enterprises and their employees eventually are exposed to all Windows 10 new features. But not a Microsoft's pace. Again, are these upgrades worth the work Microsoft puts into them? Bradley's poll, as unscientific as it was, says, No, no they're not. SINGAPORE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Equiteq is pleased to announce it has supported VISEO, a global technology company specializing in digital transformation services, in its acquisition of Cludo, a leading Australian Salesforce Platinum Partner. Joining forces enhances the ability of both companies to deploy larger-scale digital projects across Australia and the APAC region, as the addition of Cludo's digital transformation expertise will complement VISEO's comprehensive range of digital services offerings. "This is a natural union. Like VISEO, we are committed to our customers and our people, and culturally and operationally we are strongly aligned. This merger is great news for our people and will benefit our customers and the Salesforce ecosystem by allowing us to combine with a global leader, accelerate innovation and drive even greater customer success," explains Ian Goodwin, Co-Founder and CEO of Cludo. "VISEO Australia is delighted to welcome the Cludo team into our organisation. We share a similar company culture and vision, and our potential synergies are aligned with our strategy to become a top-3 Salesforce player in ANZ in the next 3 years," says Pierre-Francois VIEAU, Managing Director of VISEO Australia. "We are very pleased and honoured to welcome Cludo as part of the VISEO family. This move reflects our ambition for Australia. It will consolidate our partnership with Salesforce and accelerate our Cloud First Strategy," adds Olivier Dhonte, VP APAC and Chairman of the VISEO Group. Charles Woodall, SVP Alliances & Channels, Salesforce APAC said "Cludo is a fast-growing member of Salesforce's ecosystem, driving substantial digital transformation projects for our joint customers. We welcome its acquisition by VISEO, which will support Salesforce's digital transformation capabilities in Australia and across the region." Regarding Equiteq's role in the transaction, Olivier also remarked, "Their comprehensive support ranges from initial market assessment and research, initial contacts and negotiations, down to the completion of the deal. Their deep understanding of the Salesforce market, together with the right combination of local and regional support, have been instrumental in the success of this project. " Jean-Louis Michelet, MD Equiteq Asia-Pacific, and Alex Monck, MD ANZ, commented: "We are proud that our Australian team has made it possible for Equiteq to contribute once again to VISEO's growth journey." SOURCE Equiteq Related Links https://www.equiteq.com/home/ The San Antonio hotel industry is experiencing its worst recession ever. Worse than the period following the 9/11 attacks. Worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Business travel has slowed to a trickle, and conventions are almost nonexistent. Tourism is at a historic low point. Occupancy rates, less than 50 percent nationally, are well under what most hotels consider survivable. Hotel owners have no idea when business and tourist travel will recover. In a series of recent interviews, three experienced hotel owners and managers shared, in their own words, what has been on their mind since the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Sherry Chaudry loves the hotel business, calling it an amazing and invigorating global industry. But she found business conditions very challenging in 2019, even before COVID-19 hit. She and her husband sold their business last year. Henry Feldman has 50 years of experience as a hotel manager and hotel owner, and he has never seen conditions this bad. Avinash Bhakta describes himself as a second-generation hotelier with management and ownership stakes in eight hotels in the San Antonio area. Their comments have been condensed and edited for clarity. Sherry Chaudhry and her husband owned and operated Comfort Suites at 505 Live Oak St., east of downtown, until they sold it in December. Why they sold: We have been in the business for 42 years. My husband was approaching knee replacement surgery. Many of the national brands were expecting big gut renovations in their properties. We were against many of the brands mandating big spending, especially as property taxes were through the ceiling and competition was very high. Online agencies, squeezed profits: Wed been open at our location for 12 years, and traditionally only 10 percent of sales went through online travel agencies like Expedia.com. But in 2015, all (hotel) brands were pushed to sign up for online bookers. We were told to give all of our room inventory at all times or they would not list our hotels. But owners like us already pay 10 percent to brands. Now we would have to pay 20 percent for online travel agents. Soon, 60 percent of reservations came through Expedia.com or Booking.com, on which we paid commissions of 20 to 22 percent. Hotels have become commodity products. And so small-business property owners were borrowing money just to survive. 2019 was terrible, 2020 is worse: When the February and March COVID hit it was the worst thing. The industry is getting devoured completely. And hotels with under 100 rooms generally have personal guarantees with local banks. If I still owned my hotel in March, I would have had to put keys on the desk, file bankruptcy and lose my home. Unfortunately for the community, property taxes are based on 2019 revenues. How are they going to pay the property taxes? I dont know how anyone paid income taxes. Everyone who had any money in the bank, they would use it just to pay taxes. Hotel owners are just digging deeper and deeper. Its like quicksand. Small-hotel owners are standing on quicksand. I had $500,000 payroll at my hotel last year, $100,000 for utilities, $64,000 for my mortgage, $2.5 million in total expenses. Property taxes were $200,000. This year, with the kind of economy it is right now, hotels are not going to be able to survive. I dont know if theyll be able to get out of the sinking sandpit. Youre going to have so many hotel foreclosures by the end of the year. How COVID-19 compares to previous crises: Ive been through the downturn of 2008, and we survived. I built my hotel in 2006. We opened in October 2008. We managed to survive and break even. And we didnt have as big a loss in 2009 as other places did. But now, theres nobody traveling this time. Theres no solution coming. Employment at her previous hotel: At the hotel that we sold, they are down to three employees, and the new owner was pulling double shifts. We had 25 employees, but now they are running with just four people. Former employees are making more on unemployment than they did when they were working. And the management team still employed? Everybody is doing three peoples jobs. Henry Feldman is an owner of La Quinta Inn and Conference Center at the South Texas Medical Center at 4431 Horizon Hill Blvd. He formerly was an executive at La Mansion del Rio on the River Walk and has 50 years of experience in the hotel industry. History in the industry: Ive been involved in luxury hotels all my life. My claim to fame is I ran the Playboy hotels company for many years. But when I decided to go into business for myself, I wanted to work in a limited-service hotel with a conference center. The financial situation during the pandemic: What were going through is unprecedented. Weve never been through a crisis anywhere close to this. Not 9/11. Not 2008. This is not even close to being comparable to those things. Youve had a shutdown in the business world for whats going to be close to a year by the time we get a vaccine. Youve got hotels that need to run in the 60 percent occupancy range to break even. They are now running in the 25-30 percent range, and the economic hurt is enormous. Most hotel owners cannot afford to pay their mortgages. Dealing with his lender: Many mortgage companies, particularly providers of commercial mortgage-backed securities and their servicers, are not cooperating and providing forbearance. So youre looking at huge amounts of foreclosures of hotels in the next 12-18 months. Ive had regular loans with banks. Today, unfortunately, Im dealing with a CMBS loan. I went to them and said, Id like to refinance. The only way to do that would be to pay a huge fee. That fee was running close to 20 percent of the loan itself. With a regular bank loan, whats happening today and in the past is the bank agrees to take interest and principal on the end of the loan a form of forbearance. Which is a reasonable solution to the problem. But CMBS will not allow that. They offer forbearance just to the end of the year. But that doesnt help us, because we need forbearance until well into next year, or until a vaccine is available. The CMBS servicers have put us in a no-win situation. Thats a decision that the CMBS people will have to take. Clearly, the government needs to intervene, with some sort of program. Concerns for the future: Were forecasting that our RevPAR (a hotel industry measurement that multiplies average occupancy by the average price per room) wont go back to 2019 levels until 2023. If the government doesnt help out with these mortgages, specifically with CMBS loans, youre going to see a tremendous amount of foreclosures. Im 75 years old. This is my last hotel. They have refused to allow me to refinance the hotel. If I wanted to do that, Id have to take a substantial hit. They are not agreeing to forbearance. Were in a holding position right now. The pandemics impact: Im not 100 percent sure, but I think nationally were looking at 35 percent of people unemployed are in tourism-related businesses. Which is a huge number. Think of all the people out of work and furloughed, and whats happening to their families. Most of these people are living paycheck to paycheck. Im on the board of the San Antonio Food Bank, and theyre serving double the meals they are used to, and doing a fabulous job. But its just terrible the situation. The opposition that Ive heard (to a hotel bailout) is because they didnt want to help a lot of wealthy developers. The reality is these are mostly single-hotel operators. The hospitality industry is really an important factor in the community. They give a tremendous amount back to the community in charitable donations and time. In a place like San Antonio, because you have a tourism and hospitality industry, it is more attractive for businesses to come here. And as a place that people want to come and visit. San Antonio has a tremendous amount to offer, and the hospitality industry definitely benefits the economy and the quality of life of its citizens. And I think thats not always understood. Avinash Bhakta is president and co-partner of ABH Hospitality, an investor in and service provider to eight hotels in the area, including full- and limited-service and extended-stay properties. Biggest worries: The landscape for the hospitality industry is very tough due to travel concerns. I believe theres a perception for most travelers that hotels are not safe. There are certain standards that we have had to step up to. For checking in guests, theres now a barrier. Employees are all wearing masks and gloves. There is a lot more thats gone into this than folks realize. The economic impact: We are seeing a 40 to 60 percent decline in revenues across the board. There are multiple factors. Occupancy. How much can you charge? Folks are dropping their rates right now, trying to make ends meet. Based on what Ive read, were not going to hit 2019 numbers until 2021. Thats pretty scary, from an investor standpoint. And from a global economic perspective standpoint. Everybody is unprofitable right now. As an industry, we are seeing zero profit. But we still have to pay our mortgages. We as an industry are trying to maintain that everybody that works in the industry is taken care of. This is a hard time. Its not by choice. At the same time, you realize how many jobs are at stake in the hospitality industry. Its something we need to figure out a way to turn around as soon as possible. Theres a lot lost in the global economy, for people who have lost their jobs. The hotel industry brings a lot of revenue to the global economy, whether its payroll or spending. Thats definitely going to put a big ding in the way were going to see our market. And unemployment rates. People dont realize how much impact it has. Its an industry thats always taken for granted. On dealing with banks and CMBS lenders: CMBS notes, we are 50-50 on (getting mortgage relief). One lender has said, Well give you a three-month deferral. But we still have to pay for property taxes and insurance. That three months is done. Were back looking for another six-month deferral. We have another situation in which the debt is one-half the appraised value of the hotel property. They are not budging. They put us in default. They want us to pay $20,000 for processing and extra interest. And they want to make it a recourse note. (Note: Recourse would make the owners personally liable, which they currently are not. Also, Bhakta later explained that he believes the lenders aggressive stance is because the debt is only half the value of the hotel, so the lender is willing to foreclose.) Smaller banks are more willing to work with us. They asked us to just pay interest for three months initially, and then that turned into a year. They were very friendly about it. Some of our banks are deferring for three months, and then we have to ask for another deferral. Other banks are refusing to work with us and saying, Nope, make your payments. Partially I think it is an ethical choice, to the extent you can see the situation that the whole country is in. If it was a one-off, I would definitely take the banks side. In this, though, they can see the numbers, with travel as a whole and the hospitality industry. That cant be made up. These are facts. On government assistance: Government intervention would definitely help. If you look at other countries, they are providing aid to different businesses and industries. There is a loss of efficiency in the way its handled. For example, (Paycheck Protection Program) funding if you already have an existing account with a bank, they should be able to see your payroll, and its government-backed. But the government and banks werent ready. I do appreciate the help, but the rollout was rushed and little unorganized. The first pot of PPP money ran out quickly. But the PPP funding did help a lot of folks. Owners had the mindset of lets keep folks employed, even though the rules and regulations changed multiple times throughout. On the future: Theres going to be a new norm in travel. Theres a big change coming. The way people travel is going to change. Whats at stake for folks invested in these operations, with the revenue trends if it lasts as long as we think theres going to be need for aid, whether its working with your lender or the government. Or more PPP funding just to keep the lights on. Its a matter of how fast we recover from COVID, and how fast we return to a normal travel pattern or the 2019 travel trends. 2019 was pretty horrific. 2018 was better, especially for San Antonio. I believe part of it was the convention rotation in 2019 was low. There was less leisure travel. Michael Taylor is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and author of The Financial Rules for New College Graduates. michael@michaelthesmart money.com Carbon tax will increase by 6 to 36 per tonne in this year's Budget. The move will drive up the cost of petrol, diesel and home heating. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said he planned to "repeat the changes" he made to carbon tax in the last budget, which saw it rise by 6 per tonne. However, the minister said he will use funding raised from the tax to invest in climate action policies which will ensure the increase does not impact on those who can least afford it. The plan to increase carbon tax again this year is likely to lead to an angry backlash from Opposition TDs, especially those from rural constituencies. Increasing carbon taxes is a commitment in the programme for government agreed by Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party -although some Green Party members insisted during government negotiations that an increase in the tax should be complemented by a scheme that would financially reward people for reducing their carbon costs. Separately, Mr Donohoe said the forthcoming Budget is being prepared on the "assumption" that there will be a no-deal Brexit. He said events in the UK have left him with no option but to draft the Budget on the basis of Britain leaving the European Union without securing a trade agreement. During an online press conference, the minister said the "central planning assumptions" for his Budget will be a no-deal Brexit and the continued presence of Covid-19 in the country next year. "Both of these of course highlight to all of us the very high level of uncertainty that the economy is facing at the moment, but it also reaffirms for Minister McGrath and myself and for the Budget and for the country, the importance of putting together a budget that can respond back to the uncertainty that is there, and to help our economy and our society and make its way through a very volatile and changing environment," Mr Donohoe said. "My view in relation to the likelihood of this has changed in recent weeks and indeed days. Particularly given and since the internal market legislation was published in the House of Commons. Of course that's been a very significant event," he added. The minister also confirmed he will not be increasing or decreasing any income taxes in the Budget. Mr Donohoe said he wanted to ensure income tax revenues remained "very steady" to allow him to respond to the challenges posed by Brexit and Covid. He said keeping income taxes as they are will also create economic confidence, which will lead to international investment in Ireland. He said in previous years the government would have had economic forecasts at this stage of the year that would have informed its budget decision-making. However, he said the uncertainty surrounding Covid meant they had yet to receive official forecasts. Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath announced that 9bn would be set aside in the Budget for capital expenditure projects next year. He said the National Development Plan for the next decade is still being reviewed and will not be completed in time for the Budget. When asked if there was financial leeway for pension or disability payment increases, Mr McGrath said no decision on social welfare rates had been made ahead of the Budget. He said there would be no changes to the pandemic unemployment payment, which is due to be reduced again tomorrow. Mr McGrath said he also hopes to introduce new supports for businesses facing loss of revenue or facing further challenges stemming from the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, should a deal not be agreed before the end of he year. U.S. President Donald Trump raised questions on Wednesday about plans by China's ByteDance to keep a majority stake in the U.S. operations of popular social media platform TikTok after six Republican lawmakers urged him to reject the proposal. Trump said he would be briefed on Thursday about a proposal that calls for Oracle Corp to become a "trusted technology provider" for TikTok's U.S. operations, but he did not favor the idea of having the Chinese firm retain control. Senator Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators on Wednesday urged the administration to reject the deal as long as ties remained to Chinese owner ByteDance, and suggested the president could block the proposal. Trump had previously threatened to ban the app unless its U.S. operations were sold to a U.S. company and the U.S. government received a share of the proceeds. "Conceptually, I can tell you that I don't like that," Trump told a news conference when asked about a reported proposal to give Oracle only a minority share. "I'm not prepared to sign off on anything. They're going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and I'll let you know." Rubio, the first senator to call on the administration to investigate TikTok over censorship concerns, cited "serious questions" remained about Oracle's role, the technology it would provide to ByteDance, and the future of the application's algorithm in a letter to Trump dated Wednesday. "We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any U.S.-based version of TikTok," he wrote. "We are heartened that this deal still requires government approval, and if reports indicating this proposed deal will retain links to ByteDance or other Chinese-controlled entities, we strongly urge the administration to reject such a proposal on national security grounds," he added. Late on Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz sent a separate letter to Trump arguing that the Oracle ByteDance deal "failed to meet the intent of the president's executive orders" and "raises serious national security concerns." White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier told reporters a decision would be made "in short order." White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said security and the ownership question were of paramount concern. The Rubio letter, also signed by Senators Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker and Dan Sullivan, is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers raising questions about the deal. On Monday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who heads a national security panel reviewing the proposal, calling for the deal to be scuttled, if it does not allow for the "full emancipation of TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control." U.S. national security officials fear that ByteDance could provide American user data to the Chinese government. But Trump may not want to alienate 100 million-odd American TikTok users so close to the Nov. 3 elections. Trump has also said he is a fan of Oracle's co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison, one of few tech executives to openly support him. Meanwhile, China has updated its export control rules to give it a say over the transfer of technology, such as TikTok's recommendation algorithm, to a foreign buyer. Chinese officials have said ByteDance should not be coerced by the United States into a deal. Oracle announced on Monday it was part of a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the U.S. Treasury Department to serve as "trusted technology provider," to ByteDance, providing no further details on the terms of the deal. Also read: Will Tiktok's deal with Oracle avert India ban? Also read: Donald Trump reviews ByteDance's plans to keep majority stake in TikTok Former minister Chris Grayling is being paid 100,000 to "advise" a port operator part-time on top of his MPs' salary, it has been revealed. The Conservative MP, who famously cost the taxpayers tens of millions of pounds by bungling a Brexit ferry contract, is working for Hutchison Ports, which runs the Harwich and Felixtowe terminals. The new role, which he will be paid on top of his MPs' salary of 82,000, was revealed in the latest MPs' register of financial interests. Mr Grayling will be paid the 100,000 for just seven hours' work a week; the new job was approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), a watchdog that is supposed to police public appointments. The committee said Mr Grayling, who in office was dubbed failing Grayling by his critics because of his track record, had reassured them he would not advise the company in areas that could give them an unfair commercial advantage. More generally, the appointment of former ministers to commercial roles has raised eyebrows about the "revolving door" between government and the private sector. Some suspect former ministers are not brought on by companies for the quality of their advice as much as their access to government. Acoba said as a precaution the former transport secretary would be banned from lobbying ministers or giving the company advice on UK government tenders until July next year, after which he can do so without restriction. Mr Grayling left his role as transport secretary with Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, so the 2021 date would represent two years since he left the cabinet, after which former ministers are largely unrestricted in what work they can do. MPs are allowed to take second jobs, but former members of the government must seek advice from the watchdog if they want to take a job two years after leaving their government roles. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA As transport secretary Mr Grayling cost the taxpayer 85 million after signing a rushed and risky contract with a ferry operator as part of no-deal Brexit contingency planning. Detectives have now turned to overseas and interstate experts for assistance Six months have passed and there is no sign of them despite a massive search Local authorities who found their campsite and car burned out two days later They were in a secret relationship and didn't tell anyone where they were going Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, went missing during a camping trip in March The search for two secret lovers who vanished without a trace on a remote camping trip six months ago has gone international, as detectives turn to overseas and interstate experts for assistance. Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, went missing on March 19 in the Wonnangatta Valley in Victoria's East Gippsland region. Their disappearance has baffled authorities, who found their campsite burned to the ground and Mr Hill's car slightly damaged by fire two days later. Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper from Victora Police's Missing Persons Squad told the Herald Sun he couldn't divulge any details about the nature of the global assistance - but said cops were getting closer to solving the mystery. 'We've learnt a lot along the way. We know a lot more than we did six months ago,' Insp Stamper said. Russell Hill, 74, and his friend Carol Clay, 73, went missing during a camping trip on March 19 in the Wonnangatta Valley in Victoria's East Gippsland region Mr Hill's white Toyota Landcruiser was found with minor fire damage at their burnt campsite near Dry River Creek Track in the valley on March 21 Last month police revealed they were exploring a theory that the couple were attacked in their sleep. Detectives believe the potential attackers may have torched their campsite to destroy forensic evidence of a crime. The pair were in a secret relationship and didn't tell anyone where they were going. Ms Clay just told friends she would be gone for a few days. In June, investigators said three theories about Mr Hill and Ms Clay's disappearance were being probed. Foul play is strongly suspected on the balance of probabilities, but there is no evidence and no suspects. Another possibility is that the couple were flying Mr Hill's $2,000 drone and died of exposure after getting lost off the path looking for it. The third is that they died lost in the bush for any reason, but have not been found because wild dogs ate their remains. Police are confident the pair did not fake their own deaths and do not believe it's case of murder-suicide. The search for Mr Hill and Ms Clay has gone international, as detectives turn to overseas and interstate experts for assistance The pair went missing in the Wonnangatta Valley, more than 200km north east of Melbourne The key to unlocking the case may have gone up in flames in a fire that destroyed their campsite. Mr Hill's Toyota four-wheel-drive had been found by local police next to his burnt-out tent, but the pair were gone without a trace. The vehicle itself had also sustained damage in the fire, but was still able to be driven away from the scene. At the time, police had believed the fire was probably started by a dodgy phone charger or campfire spark and the couple had simply been lost in the forest. But the fire could also have been lit by a thief rummaging around in the tent - or by a murderer trying to cover their tracks. A spare set of keys was found hidden on the car, but it is believed Mr Hill took the main set with him. That the car was locked likely indicated the pair left the campsite voluntarily, probably to go for a walk or fly the drone. The drone remains missing despite an extensive search that ended on April 6 without anyone finding a trace of them. Russell Hill hangs onto a drone that he had with him when he went missing. The drone has not been found despite an extensive search of the area A drone similar to the one that remains missing If wild dogs had found the pair before police, their remains could have been eaten and scattered to the point they would be missed by searchers. Dogs would have had plenty time to scavenge on the bodies because the pair were not reported missing for some days after their likely deaths. Mr Hill had left his Drouin home on March 19 for a camping trip along the Dargo River in Victoria's northeast and planned to leave the region on March 26. Ms Clay, meanwhile, had told friends she was going away for a few days and expected to be home by March 28 or 29. Mr Hill had been a keen amateur radio enthusiast and made his last broadcast from the bush on March 20. 'This place is in the middle of nowhere,' the source said. 'It's just problematic in the extreme.' Police are now certain the couple died within 18 hours after Mr Hill's last message, as a passing hiker saw the burned-out campsite about 2pm the next day. Because the pair weren't due back until up to a week later, the alarm wasn't raised for days and precious time was lost. The police source said despite the delay in the missing person squad being brought into investigate the case, the fire ravaged camp site was thoroughly investigated at the time. Personal belongings (circled) were left in Russell Hill's vehicle, which sustained fire damage when his tent went up in flames Carol Clay, 73, who was once the President of the Country Women's Association of Victoria, had been in a relationship with Russell Hill for many years in the lead up to their disappearance In May, bizarre details emerged of an 'oddball loner' living in the Victorian Alps, who has been questioned over a number of mysterious disappearances. Known as 'Buttons' or 'the Button Man', the expert bushman became a person of interest after concerns about his odd behaviour was raised by locals. He is understood to have earned his nickname due to his hobby of using deer antlers to make buttons - which he then uses as large ear piercings. 'Being creepy is not illegal,' a police source told Daily Mail Australia at the time. The source confirmed there was nothing to indicate the mysterious loner had killed the couple. 'We don't think they're in Queensland living (a secret) life. They're too old really to drop off the grid and why would they?' the source said. Police believe it is more likely than not that the pair met with foul play while out in the remote wilderness. The area itself is considered an ideal spot to commit murder. A new image of Mr Hill's white Toyota Landcruiser. It was found with minor fire damage at their burnt campsite near Dry River Creek Track in the valley on March 21 Victoria Police Missing Persons Squad Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper is leading the investigation into the mystery Phone reception is practically nil and unlike some other areas popular with hikers, the remote Wonnangatta Valley does not see a lot of foot or road traffic. While cold-blooded murder was an avenue of investigation, detectives remain open to all kinds of scenarios. 'There are a lot of people who go up there and do illegal stuff. Like people who go hunting in the national park and ride motorcycles. Has he had a dispute with one of them that turned bad?' the source said. The pair had been carrying out a secret affair for years behind the back of Mr Hill's wife Robyn, who has described Ms Clay as a 'long time family friend'. While the relationship was largely hidden from Mr Hill's devastated wife, it has been well known to police since the pair were reported missing by Mrs Hill days after her husband last made contact via radio. When questioned about the couple's relationship in April, Victoria Police Missing Persons Squad Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper skirted around the question. 'It is delicate and we are being very respectful of both families wishes and concerns here,' he said at the time. Russell Hill and Carol Clay were last heard from on March 20, with Mr Hill's wife unaware he was travelling with another woman 'Both of these people have large and loving families who are grieving at the moment, and they want answers about where their loved ones are.' While detectives probed the couple's relationship, it was quickly ruled out as a likely reason for their mysterious disappearance. Police are desperate for people who may have been in the area at the time to let them know so that they can be ruled out of the investigation. Detectives are also keen to learn if anyone may be hanging onto dash cam footage that could help identify other leads. It is understood the case remained 'very wide open'. 'It's a genuine mystery,' the source said. Anyone with information is urged to contact CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 00 Daniel Taylor posed for a portrait at the Center for the Urban Child at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia in October 2019. Taylor is director of community pediatrics and child advocacy at St. Christophers. Read more Its been 30 years since my grandmothers death, but her insistence on those around her coughing into your elbow, covering your sneeze, washing hands before meals, and caring for each other resonates with me still. Her wisdom reflects her pre-antibiotic, pre-immunization generation, which survived the 1918 flu pandemic, polio, rheumatic fever, and Typhoid Mary, just to name a few. Nothing I learned in medical school ever suggested she was wrong. To this day, especially when the weather starts to change and sniffles emerge, I catch myself reflexively following her sage advice. Each fall, in pediatrics, we can usually predict how many patients we will see with respiratory ailments at our outpatient clinic, and how many will land in the hospital. Temperatures drop, viruses emigrate from the Southern Hemisphere, and children share their germs with classmates, with pretty predictable results. The three most common diagnoses for pediatric hospitalizations over the years were mostly respiratory. Coming in close behind were bronchiolitis a common lung infection caused by a virus asthma, and pneumonia, along with dehydration, usually due to a gastrointestinal bug. Cellulitis, an infection of the deeper skin, is also common, as kids scrape their knees on playgrounds or irritate a neighbors pet, resulting in puncture wounds that become infected. We prepare for this increased volume by up-staffing our clinic, our emergency room staff, and opening areas of the hospital that were dormant over the summer. Heads in beds is a century-old business model for hospital administrators, who need to generate income. Over the last few years, many hospitals have been trying to prevent some of these hospitalizations, but in pediatric centers during the cold months, heads were usually in many beds. Then COVID-19 hit. Social distancing and mandatory masking have joined the usual disease prevention advice, and also have made the predictable in pediatrics less so. We have already started to see the benefits in terms of fewer sick kids coming into our hospital. Those who do are coming in for different reasons. READ MORE: How a group text helped this Philly doctor survive the battlefield of COVID cases | Expert Opinion Reports from New Zealand and Australia, where winter is just ending, have shown that only 0.4% of their populations have been suffering flu-like symptoms in recent weeks. The World Health Organization processed nearly 200,000 influenza tests in those countries and found just 46 positives. In a typical year, the number would be closer to 3,500. In a year of horrific stories, statistics, and inequities due to COVID-19, this decrease in the flu, along with its many respiratory cousins, could change who is coming into our pediatric exam rooms and inpatient beds. This is, of course, a forecast. The reality in Philadelphia could take a dramatically different turn depending on social distancing and vaccination rates. In our hospital, we are seeing more newborns with higher bilirubin levels, better known as jaundice, because often babies and moms are leaving the hospital early due to concerns over COVID-19. Usually, the babies are fine, but it is concerning to new parents. Of much greater concern: We are seeing more babies experiencing withdrawal from maternal opioid use disorder, as drug use has risen during the pandemic. Diseases of despair, such as substance use and even suicide, are increasing as stress and social isolation triggers addictive behaviors. And, sadly, there are more severe cases of child abuse. We are seeing more mental health hospitalizations and desperate calls from families, and this is not unusual these days. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 75% of adults ages 18 to 24 have reported behavioral or mental health symptoms during the pandemic. Rare, but most serious of all, we are seeing a new entity, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), related to COVID-19. As a pediatrician, I have to focus on what I know I can do to help my young patients and their families. I know making sure my patients get the flu shot is a priority as always, for their own health, and this year, to help distinguish flu from COVID-19, which have similar symptoms. Making sure I check in more frequently and more in depth with my teen patients about their mental health, and referring them to the Philly Hopeline at 1-833-745-4673, is of vital importance. READ MORE: Youre probably not an expert at assessing COVID-19 risks. Your doctor can help. | Expert Opinion Given the economic toll of this virus, Im sharing social service resources from Cap4Kids with all of my patients and their families routinely, knowing that not everyone will tell me if they can afford the basics all families need. Finally, Im planning to spend more time on preventive medicine via well visits and vaccinations, if it does turn out that we have fewer sick children coming to the clinic. Above all, we need to be flexible, to be compassionate, to be prepared, to care for each other. Daniel R. Taylor is an associate professor at Drexel University College of Medicine and director of community pediatrics and child advocacy at St. Christophers Hospital for Children. Following are the latest Corporate Social Responsibility news releases and story ideas available from Business Wire. These recaps, curated by Business Wire, provide reporters and bloggers around the globe instant access to the latest news releases, providing relevant and trending content to share with their audiences. Discover more news via Business Wires Hot Topic recaps or create a custom news feed specific to your needs here. This service is provided at no charge to members of the media and financial communities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005135/en/ PITTSBURGH & CHICAGO -- Kraft Heinz Renews Global Commitments in 2020 Environmental Social Governance Report Source: The Kraft Heinz Company LONDON -- Mary Kay Inc. Partners With the Arbor Day Foundation to Plant 5,000 Trees in Ireland Source: Mary Kay Inc. PARIS -- Teleperformance Earns 11th Consecutive Great Place to Work Certification in Brazil Source: Teleperformance ST. LOUIS -- NUSO Announces New Charitable Partnerships to Strengthen St. Louis Communities and Local Families Source: NUSO NEW YORK -- Moodys Named to 2020 Working Mother Best Companies Lists Source: Moody's Corporation Investor Relations NEW YORK -- HSBC Launches Thought Leadership Webinar Series During Climate Week NYC Source: HSBC LONDON -- Anita McBain to Join Citi Research as Head of EMEA ESG Research Source: Citi LONDON -- Quinbrook Invests in Flexible Generation, Grid Support and Demand Response Source: Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners OAKVILLE, Ontario -- FCT Announces Multi-City Effort to Support Homeless and At-Risk Youth Source: FCT DENVER -- The Western Union Foundation Supports International Students Impacted by COVID-19 Source: The Western Union Company TORONTO -- TraceSCAN Starts Shipping Wearable Devices Source: Facedrive Inc. LONDON -- The Vertex Foundation Announces 1 Million Donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities at the New Childrens Hospital in Ireland Source: Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated PEMBROKE, Bermuda -- Athene Deepens Commitment to Community Education Initiatives Source: Athene Holding Ltd. BOSTON -- The RepTrak Company Links Reputation and ESG to Business Performance for New York Stock Exchange-Listed Companies Source: The RepTrak Company HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Sintavia and Siemens Agree to Collaborate on Accelerating Digital Automation for Industrial Additive Manufacturing Source: Sintavia, LLC TORONTO -- Facedrive Acquires Steer and Accepts Strategic Investment From Exelon Subsidiary Exelorate Source: Facedrive Inc. GENEVA, Switzerland -- The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities Hosted A Roundtable Event - Covid-19: Faith as a Moral Framework for our Communities Source: The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities GUATEMALA CITY -- AgroAmerica Contributes Once Again to the Development of the Central American Region Source: AgroAmerica STUTTGART, Germany & THE HAGUE, Netherlands & PARIS -- Daimler AG Joins Forces With Terre des Hommes and the Responsible Mica Initiative to Improve Mica Supply Chains and Eliminate Child Labour Source: Responsible Mica Initiative SPRINGFIELD, Va. -- Interstate Partners with The Salvation Army in the Fight Against Hunger and Food Insecurity in Our Community Source: Interstate Moving | Relocation | Logistics TORONTO -- Facedrive Healths Custom TraceSCAN Wearable Solutions for Businesses are Market Ready Source: Facedrive Inc. PARIS -- Green Finance, Bruno Boggiani, CEO of Green Finance Strateggyz Castex Post-Crisis Recovery Plan Source: Green Finance About Business Wire Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in news release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Investor relations, public relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire for secure and accurate distribution of market-moving news and multimedia. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals, and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX Network. Business Wire has 18 newsrooms worldwide to meet the needs of communications professionals and news media. Learn more at www.businesswire.com. Follow us on Twitter @businesswire. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005135/en/ September 17, 2020 - Assessing the potential for violent behavior by patients with psychiatric disorders is an essential but challenging responsibility for mental health professionals. A five-part series currently being published in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice summarizes an expert approach to screening, assessment, and management of the risk of "other-directed violence." The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. Hal S. Wortzel, MD, of the University of Colorado and colleagues outline their experience-informed approach to therapeutic risk management of the potentially violent patient. While violence risk assessment is a legal and ethical requirement, it can also be "a crucial element of the comprehensive treatment plan to achieve therapeutic goals and optimize mental health," Dr. Wortzel and coauthors write. Model for Therapeutic Risk Assessment of Other-Directed Violence In several situations, mental health professionals are responsible for assessing the risk for violent behaviors in patients with psychiatric disorders. In many jurisdictions, they also have a duty to warn and protect others who may be at risk of violence. Many clinicians feel they lack the training and experience needed to conduct meaningful violence risk assessments. In a previous series of "Law and Psychiatry" columns in Journal of Psychiatric Practice, Dr. Wortzel and colleagues shared their approach to assessing the risk of self-directed violence (SDV) in potentially suicidal patients. They emphasized the benefits of therapeutic risk assessment: a patient-centered model that supports the patient's overall treatment and the therapeutic alliance with mental health professionals. The new series shifts the focus to therapeutic risk assessment for other-directed violence (ODV) - borrowing from the SDV risk assessment skills that many clinicians already have. The series focuses on five essential elements of the therapeutic risk assessment for ODV: Clinical Risk Assessment - Assessment starts with a clinical interview, including questions about past violent thoughts or behaviors. The authors discuss the need to explore the patient's intent and plan to harm someone, the critical distinction between "risk factors" and "warning signs" for ODV, and approach to collecting collateral data from other sources, preferably with the patient's consent. - Assessment starts with a clinical interview, including questions about past violent thoughts or behaviors. The authors discuss the need to explore the patient's intent and plan to harm someone, the critical distinction between "risk factors" and "warning signs" for ODV, and approach to collecting collateral data from other sources, preferably with the patient's consent. Structured Screening or Assessment Tools - Structured tools can provide and document additional information for the clinical risk assessment. While no questionnaire or rating scale can replace the clinical interview, adding various types of tools can provide "a more nuanced, multifaceted approach" to ODV risk assessment. - Structured tools can provide and document additional information for the clinical risk assessment. While no questionnaire or rating scale can replace the clinical interview, adding various types of tools can provide "a more nuanced, multifaceted approach" to ODV risk assessment. Risk stratification - Using all available sources of data, the clinician stratifies the individual's risk of ODV, focusing on the severity and temporality (acute versus chronic) of the risk. - Using all available sources of data, the clinician stratifies the individual's risk of ODV, focusing on the severity and temporality (acute versus chronic) of the risk. Chain analysis - Assessment of pathways related to violent thoughts and behaviors allows the clinician to design effective therapeutic strategies targeting those pathways. - Assessment of pathways related to violent thoughts and behaviors allows the clinician to design effective therapeutic strategies targeting those pathways. Safety planning - Mental health professionals work with patients toward developing a safety plan to recognize violent thoughts and other warning signs, engage in coping strategies to prevent violent behaviors, and get help when needed. The first and second parts of the series appear in the July-August and September-October issues of Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The remaining columns are scheduled for upcoming issues. Dr. Wortzel and colleagues hope their series will provide a "cogent process" for conducting violence risk assessments - in a way that fulfills legal and ethical responsibilities, protects the safety of patients and potential victims, and supports the patient's overall mental health care. The authors conclude: "Providers can collaborate with their patients to gain a better understanding of their risk for both SDV and ODV and develop plans to manage this risk." ### Click here to read "Therapeutic Risk Management for Violence: Augmenting Clinical Risk Assessment With Structured Instruments." DOI: 10.1097/PRA.0000000000000495 ### About Journal of Psychiatric Practice Journal of Psychiatric Practice, a peer reviewed journal, publishes reports on new research, clinically applicable reviews, articles on treatment advances, and case studies, with the goal of providing practical and informative guidance for clinicians. Mental health professionals will want access to this journal--for sharpening their clinical skills, discovering the best in treatment, and navigating this rapidly changing field. John M. Oldham, MD, is the editor in chief and past president of the American Psychiatric Association. About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2019 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students with advanced clinical decision support, learning and research and clinical intelligence. For more information about our solutions, visit https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth. For more information, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Whatfix | Headcount: 350 | Headquarters: Bengaluru | Year founded: 2014 | As remote work becomes the norm and more businesses go online, Whatfix sees strong tailwinds going ahead, LinkedIn said. (Representative image) While coders and techies develop applications, it is designers who add the aesthetic element to make the user interface beautiful. Increasingly, Indian startups are relying on this breed of product designers to make their applications stand out. This is part of a growing trend in the startup ecosystem, where entrepreneurs not only want their apps to solve customer demands, but also make the user experience great. Engineers interested in design or graduates from reputed design colleges are joining startups to help turn the entrepreneurs dreams into reality. As the founder of a Bengaluru-based startup pointed out, they have disrupted a highly regulated market thanks to an outstanding user interface, which helped them scale up quickly. Design is becoming mainstream Product design is not something new. Even traditional companies have been employing designers to manage their brands, shape their external communication and even design their products. Fashion designers have been employed in large corporations historically. But what the software world has done is made these designers move from paper to software codes. Product designers, UI or UX designers are in massive demand in the Indian startup world. As it is popularly said, design adds more value than cost, said Anuj Kapur, head of design at insurance unicorn Policybazaar. Design teams typically comprise between two to ten people or even more, depending on the scale of the startup. These teams have a mix of engineers passionate about design and professional designers from reputed colleges such as the National Institute of Design. Many multimedia and virtual effects professionals also form part of these teams. They usually work in tandem with the product teams to help them make the final product aesthetically soothing. There are communication designers and product designers. In early-stage startups there is a general designer but as companies mature and grow, the requirement for specialists goes up, said Harish Simha, head of design at Bengaluru-based payment startup Razorpay. Razorpay has a 30-member design team and the Y Combinator-backed company is known for designing a great digital payment flow for consumers. Humble beginnings Designers pointed out that employing highly empowered design teams is a common thing in the United States, where the startup ecosystem has matured more than in India. Designers became mainstream with the success of AirBnB, which was founded by professional designers. In fact, in multiple interviews, AirBnB cofounder Brian Chesky has recounted how many investors did not believe in the company since it was not founded by engineers but by designers. But that was then. Now, design is getting more mainstream and startup founders are ready to invest in setting up a design team as a core part of the product team. Many of the top designers currently working with Indian startups have spent considerable time in Silicon Valley. I was exposed to design back in 2013-14 when I was working in San Francisco. I came back to India in 2015 to join MakeMyTrip and help them make hotel booking exciting, said Simha. Those were early days, when consumer-focussed startups were trying to change the user experience of these services through attractive designs. Over the last four to five years this area of expertise has evolved rapidly. So much so, that today it is a priority for any consumer-focussed startup. For instance, Rahul Sharma, who heads design at Slice, another startup in the credit space, said that his company is offering financial services for millennials. To get this category of users hooked to an app, the experience needs to be like that of an Instagram or a Snapchat. Having joined Slice recently, Sharma is now leading a team of around eight people and driving the companys aggressive targets in this space. Before this he had spent six years at messaging application Hike. Standing out in a crowd The Indian startup ecosystem is extremely cluttered and competition is fierce. Design is therefore a critical element that can help players stand out. An interesting example will be comparing the payment gateway page of a traditional billing platform and that of the new-age startups. The difference and the customers ease of use are stark. Take the case of mobile banking applications of most of the large banks; when you compare them with the payment apps and neo-banking apps in the market, the key difference is the design element, said a top executive at a startup. Razorpays Simha pointed at a similar issue consumer-focussed applications grapple with. With a limited attention span and multiple options around consumers, businesses face a challenge in holding their attention and retaining them. The app is the point where the startup is interacting with its customers. Hence user experience is the key to retain customers. Designers help choreograph the experience for the user, said Simha. How design can make a difference To put all this into context, Kapur explained the work to simplify the claims process at Policybazaar. The Gurugram-based startup is known as an insurance marketplace, and customers had to be convinced that it could help with claims as well. The claims process is a major distress point for the customer; there is always a sense of urgency, said Kapur. While Policybazaar might not be able to settle claims directly, what it can do is help the customer claim the money. Kapur and his colleagues helped redesign the entire claims process, reducing the number of hops, making questions intuitive, and helping customers with the coordinates of the right people. The design should be such that there is no explanation required at all the idea is to simplify the entire process, said Kapur. Again, sharing his experience at Hike, Sharma said the startup employed an entire team of designers to create stickers for the instant messaging platform, something it was known for. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Likewise, perhaps, it takes people from all walks of life to raise a startup, going beyond engineers and product managers to imaginative designers, who help create great products. The Gujarat government has announced its decision against reopening the schools in the state, which were earlier said to start from September 21. Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said that the decision is taken in the interest of the students to let the school remain shut, owing to the COVID situation in the state. During the announcement of Unlock 4.0, the Central Government had issued guidelines to all the states that they can allow students to attend schools for study guidance from September 21 on a voluntary basis. However, the states were given the right to take the final call to reopen schools from September 21 for Classes 9 to 12. Talking about the same, Education Minister Chudasama is quoted by Hindustan Times as saying, The Centre had clarified that its not compulsory for states to implement these SOPs from September 21. He said that the gathering of students at one place may lead to the risk of transmission of the COVID 19 among the students. Keeping in view the health of students, it is not advisable for students to visit schools in the present situation. He further mentioned that the appropriate decision regarding the same will be taken after the situation of COVID-19 improves in the state. The minister also stated that the home learning and online education provided by the state government will continue to prevent the students from getting infected to the deadly virus. Meanwhile, Gujarat has reported 1,19,073 COVID 19, cases while the death toll rose to 3269 in the state. India has marked over 5 million confirmed cases of novel coronavirus on Tuesday, with the addition of more than 90,000 new cases in a day. One million cases have been recorded in just last 11 days. As the data from the Union Health Ministry states, the number of total recoveries is 39,42,360. Rotary Club of Peterborough members and volunteer sewers gathered Wednesday to celebrate the donation of more than 3,000 handmade masks to the Peterborough Regional Health Centre. The masks have been distributed free to visitors, staff and patients at the hospital throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to help curb the spread of the virus. This is the bizarre moment a rat fought back against a cleaner who was trying to rescue it from a skate park with his broom. Zay Shaeffer, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, filmed the unexpected encounter between his friend Joseph and the squeaking rodent. The footage shows the rodent charging towards Joseph with remarkable success, sending him tumbling to the ground in a panic. Zay Shaeffer, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, filmed the unexpected encounter between his friend Joseph and the rodent In the clip, Joseph can be seen wearing a green T-shirt, brown shorts and a bandana as he frantically waves a broom around. The rat is hopping around energetically near his feet before it scuttles off toward the other side of the bowl. Joseph chases after the rodent as it squeals, while Zay urging his friend to take it easy. But just a few seconds later the rat makes an unexpected turn and runs directly toward Joseph before getting caught up under his feet. The cleaner is sent flying to the ground in a panic but quickly gets back up. He kicks the animal aside before it launches a second attack which causes him to lose his balance and stumble once again. The critter charges toward the fully-grown male, who is attempting to clean the area, with remarkable success as the man is sent tumbling to the ground Joseph chases after the rodent as it squeals with Zay urging him to take it easy but just seconds later the rat makes an unexpected turn and runs directly toward him Zay, from behind the camera, says: 'I told you, you don't want to get in there with that thing Joseph.' The video then cuts off but Zay and Joseph said afterwards that they eventually cleared the rat from the bowl by using an abandoned BMX as a makeshift ladder for it to climb. Zay added: 'We were just working together one morning and picking up trash at the skatepark. 'When we ran across that rat stuck in the skate bowl. 'It chased me out first and then Joseph got in there for whatever reason.' Instagram screenshot Social media videos posted Wednesday night show U.S. 90 on the West Side at a standstill because people were congregating between the lanes of traffic in celebration of Mexican Independence Day. Participants said they were honoring the Mexican holiday, but others were stuck in a headache of traffic while trying to get where they were headed. The Sokoto State Police Command has confirmed the death of the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) and an Inspector attached to the Gidan Madi Division in Tangaza Local Government Area of the state. The commands Spokesman, DSP Sadiq Abubakar, told newsmen on Thursday in Sokoto that about 100 unknown gunmen invaded the town and engaged the police in a gun battle. Abubakar said the incident occurred at about 1:30 a.m. and two officers, including Mr. Aliyu Bello, the DPO, and Muhammad Abdullahi, an Inspector, were shot dead by the armed men dressed in army camouflage. He said another ASP Sani Abdullahi sustained injuries and was hospitalized, while the police have drafted senior officers to undertake an assessment of the situation. According to him, emergency meetings were conducted by the police along with sister security agencies, district heads, and council administrators. He reiterated the police commitment to safeguarding peoples lives and property and urged citizens to assist the authorities with useful information. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates About 140,000 school-age voters will jump the gun on their adult counterparts when they start mock elections next week. A record-breaking 1034 schools are preparing to take part in the Electoral Commissions Kids Voting civics education programme, beginning on Monday. The previous highest number of schools taking part in the programme was 832 at the 2017 election. To help ensure an authentic voting experience, the Commission will send schools mock voting papers for their local electorates. This will allow students to vote for the same real-life candidates as over-18 voters and compare their schools results with the outcome of the real election. Students at nearly half of participating schools will also vote in mock cannabis and end of life choice referendums. About two-thirds of students taking part in Kids Voting Te Poti a Nga Tamariki are in years 1 to 9, and the other third in years 10 to 13. Kids Voting will run from September 21 to 25 (the last week of term three) and October 12 and 13 (the first two days of term four). The Commission has already sent schools a selection of curriculum-linked teaching resources, a ballot box, a guide to running an election, digital inquiry cards to prompt classroom conversations about voting, a professional development module on teaching civics and citizenship, and a video explaining MMP. The ambassadors of the G7 countries to Ukraine welcomed an update from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative in Ukraine, according to a statement on the ambassadors' official Twitter page. "The ambassadors underscored Ukraine must demonstrate political will to protect independence of NBU and integrity of institutions like NABU [National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine], SAPO [Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office] and HACC [High Anti-Corruption Court] to ensure corruption does not erode reform progress made so far," G7Ambassadors said. Interfax-Ukraine has not yet been able to get a comment from the IMF office in Ukraine. As reported, last week the IMF representative found it difficult to name the possible date of the mission for the first revision of the stand-by program and the allocation of its second tranche. Refusing to directly comment on the decision of the Constitutional Court, which called into question a number of aspects of the work of NABU, the IMF representative said that maintaining the independence and integrity of NABU, SAPO and HACC is a precondition for this IMF support program. According to him, discussions about the current stand-by program continue. Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that among the issues the IMF is interested in, the highest priority is "the situation around PrivatBank and the Surkis brothers" [a $350 million dispute regarding bail-in during the nationalization of PrivatBank]. According to the head of the Finance Ministry, next in order is the situation with the limitation of salaries for members of supervisory boards and the board; bills registered in the Verkhovna Rada that discredit the corporate governance system; SAPO and NABU. "The situation with anti-corruption agencies must be urgently resolved," Marchenko said. During this years Facebook Connect, the social media giants annual AR/VR conference, Facebook announced that it will release a pair of Ray-Ban branded smart glasses in 2021. The Ray-Ban smart glasses will be the first product out of a multi-year partnership with EssilorLuxottica - the parent company of eyewear brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley. Facebook has not mentioned any features of the Ray-Ban branded smart glasses, nor what they will be called, but confirmed in a report that the glasses will not be classified as an AR device. This indicates towards a device similar to Snaps Spectacles. Facebook, however, says that the smart glasses will be a step among its overall work in AR. Were passionate about exploring devices that can give people better ways to connect with those closest to them. Wearables have the potential to do that. With EssilorLuxottica we have an equally ambitious partner wholl lend their expertise and world-class brand catalogue to the first truly fashionable smart glasses, Vice President of Facebooks Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth said in the release. We are especially proud of our collaboration with Facebook, which projects an iconic brand like Ray-Ban into an increasingly digital and social future," he said. Hugo Barra, VP for Facebook Reality Labs, Partnerships, said on his Twitter that he spent hours talking to Rocco Basilico, GM of Ray-Ban, about how fashion and technology join hands over the next decade to define the evolution of mobile computing. He said that a small group from Facebook Reality Labs got spent a few days at Luxotticas factory and R&D center in Northern Italy, to learn about their product development process. " It was the beginning of an incredible journey that would become my main focus at Facebook," he said. Beyond thrilled to finally share a sneak peek of our Facebook partnership with Ray-Ban! Our first smart glasses will launch next year, and thats just the beginning The future will be a classic and its coming in 2021 pic.twitter.com/l9992ZQGoy Hugo Barra (@hbarra) September 16, 2020 Facebooks official announcement comes almost a year after initial reports of the company partnering with Ray-Ban to make smart glasses. Apart from announcing its partnership with EssilorLuxottica, Facebook also launched a new set of Oculus VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2, and stressed on Facebook Reality Labs plans to build the next computing platform, along with talking about its Spark AR programme. MEMPHIS, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Coldwell Banker Real Estate affiliated agents know the value of home, as they have been guiding people home since 1906. Home is the place we long for at the end of the day, the place that holds all we love and everything we cherish. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital treats more than 8,500 kids a year from across the United States and around the globe, providing many patient families a home-away-from-home when they need it most. Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS, announced today their participation in the CB Supports St. Jude partnership, benefiting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a place kids from all over the country and the world call home while being treated for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. As part of the program that begins today and runs through September 16, 2021, Coldwell Banker affiliated agents or companies can choose to make an automatic donation, a minimum donation of $25 for participating affiliated agents, or $10 minimum donation per participating brokerage office, for every home sale or purchase they complete. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. More than 75% of St. Jude budgeting costs come from generous donors. Continued support through campaigns like this will continue the St. Jude mission: Finding cures. Saving children. Donations that are part of the CB Supports St. Jude program mean St. Jude patients can receive treatment in comfort, form lifelong friendships and just be kids. What makes St. Jude possible are the generous donors all over the world, supporters like Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS. Affiliated agents or companies participating in CB Supports St. Jude can opt in or out of the program at any time. Actively participating agents or companies will have access to a suite of powerful marketing materials designed to attract clients, make listings pop, and inspire people about the lifesaving research and treatment conducted every day at St. Jude. Homebuyers and sellers can also donate to CB Supports St. Jude here. QUOTES "Our agents have been serving the greater Memphis and Northwest Mississippi markets for over 34 years. Character, selflessness and giving back to the community is what defines Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS, our agents, and the new CB Supports St. Jude program. We are firm believers that every agent can make a big impact on the world, and now our agents can directly contribute to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital." - Sean Blankenship, President Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury I REALTORS "It's the Coldwell Banker brand's noble cause to help people find their way home. And St. Jude provides comfort to children and families, a home-away-from-home, when they need it most. So, we are not only supporting a good cause, but we are aligning our missions with this partnership. With CB Supports St. Jude, we can help one of the world's leading children's cancer hospitals develop even more powerful treatments and help the world's bravest kids get back home even faster." - David Marine, CMO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate "The groundbreaking research, treatment and care at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital rely on generous support from donors across the country and around the world. The power to provide others with a place to call home is something at the core of both organizations. Coldwell Banker partners with its clients to find them a special home and St. Jude provides a comfortable home-away-from-home for families during the most difficult times of their lives. This partnership with Coldwell Banker and its real estate agents around the country will help to ensure that families will never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food because we believe all a family should worry about is helping their child live." - Richard C. Shadyac Jr., President and CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital The "CB Supports St. Jude" charitable promotion begins on September 16, 2020 through September 16, 2021. $25 minimum donation per qualifying real estate transaction for participating affiliated agents, and $10 minimum donation per participating brokerage office, per qualifying real estate transaction. Maximum goal amount $250,000. All donations made are provided to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. About Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS company headquarters is located at 968 Civic Center Dr. Suite 103 Collierville, TN 38017, can be reached at 901.259.8500. We also have two additional offices to serve you located in East Memphis, TN and Southaven, MS. Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS has been an affiliate of the Coldwell Banker Franchise System for 5 years. Each office is independently owned and operated. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and collins-maury.com. About St. Jude Children's Research Hospital St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Its purpose is clear: Finding cures. Saving children. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since the hospital opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer. St. Jude freely shares the discoveries it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. Join the St. Jude mission by visiting stjude.org, liking St. Jude on Facebook, following St. Jude on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, and subscribing to its YouTube channel. Media Inquiries: Sean Blankenship, President Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury | REALTORS 901.259.8500 [email protected] SOURCE Coldwell Banker Collins-Maury Related Links https://www.coldwellbanker.com (Photo : (Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)) WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 07: In this photo illustration, the WeChat app is displayed in the App Store on an Apple iPhone on August 7, 2020 in Washington, DC. On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that bans any transactions between the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens due to national security reasons. The president signed a separate executive order banning transactions with China-based tech company Tencent, which owns the app WeChat. Both orders are set to take effect in 45 days. (Photo : Pixabay) (Photo : (Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)) WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 07: In this photo illustration, the WeChat privacy policy is displayed on an Apple iPhone on August 7, 2020 in Washington, DC. On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that bans any transactions between the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens due to national security reasons. The president signed a separate executive order banning transactions with China-based tech company Tencent, which owns the app WeChat. Both orders are set to take effect in 45 days. The Chinese multinational technology conglomerate and holdings company, Tencent, faces a massive problem in its operations in the United States. Its application, WeChat, is subjected under a US Executive Order that disrupts app usage. Tencent faces a more serious problem, compared to fellow Chinese, ByteDance, under the executive order issued over a month ago. President Donald J. Trump previously threatened to remove two Chinese applications that present a massive nationwide concern on data security and privacy that risks millions of American information. Among the two applications were TikTok and WeChat from ByteDance and Tencent, respectively. The executive order filed one month ago on August 6; both have a 45-day deadline for both applications to find US counterparts and stop the Chinese management on American data. The 45-day deadline would be happening less than 72 hours or three days from now, on September 20. The deal is kinder to TikTok and ByteDance as the company is allowed to resume its operation provided that a local corporation or company would manage its American stakes and operation rights in the US, Canada, and New Zealand. TikTok's impending shutdown and doom took quite a turn with Oracle's plan to purchase the rights, becoming ByteDance's technology partner. Tencent's WeChat, on the other hand, is facing the harsher end of the stick as the application does not plan on selling operation rights. The company and application, along with an alliance of users, try to battle and protest against the application's unlawful banning. ALSO READ: Uber is Down, and The Future is Uncertain Justice Department: WeChat Users, You get a 'Free Pass' The US Justice Department, who holds the case and closely monitors its progress with the social messaging application, WeChat, announces today that the application's users would not receive or face any penalties under the executive order. According to Tech Crunch's report, the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, did not clarify what transactions are prohibited under the US Executive Order that restricts the entirety of WeChat. The US Government also clarifies that there would be no penalties or harm to occur WeChat users who downloaded the application for personal and legitimate business transactions. The application's users will not be reprimanded or threatened by the executive order, despite its rejection and bad image in the American courts and government. WeChat's 45 Days Are Up-What will happen now? Tencent's WeChat is the only communication mode that connects people from mainland China to the outside world. Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp are both banned in the Asian country, and Tencent's application is the only bridge for families and businesses to connect China to the world. The 45 day-deadline of the US Executive Order for the social messaging application, WeChat, is nearing its end. The fate of Tencent's application still has no certainty regarding its future operations in the country. A non-profit organization that calls themselves 'WeChat Alliance' is now fighting for the application's survival and continued operations in the country. However, the government recently filed a preliminary injunction that prohibits the organization from doing anything. The US government is indeed tightening its grip on WeChat's future and operations in the country. Tencent and the application assure that no data is taken from the United States, but this does not stop the country's continued fight against the app. WeChat's future is uncertain, and its reign may come to an end once September 20 reaches. USWeChatUsersAllianceVSTrum... by TechCrunch ALSO READ: Oracle Prevails as TikTok's US Tech Partner Days Before Deadline Ban-Not an Outright Sale According to ByteDance; Microsoft Bids Farewell This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Isaiah Alonzo 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Jeet Banerjee Jeet Banerjee Jeet Banerjee Irvine, California, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Entrepreneur Jeet Banerjee who is the founder of renowned academy The Income Incubator learned how to build massive online brands with little to no investment with his innovative e-commerce model. Starting with no experience or money, Jeet has harnessed the power of dropshipping and online retail to generate over $30 million in revenue in just two years. The Story of Jeet Banerjee: Growing up in a very traditional household, Jeet took a very untraditional method to get to where he is at today. From an early age, he says he knew that working for someone wasnt an option in his life. I took a couple of jobs after school in high school and hated everything about it. I knew I had to take control of my own future so I wouldnt have to work for anyone else and I did just that by working hard every day to turn business ideas into realities. Jeets resume is filled with accomplishments such as selling two companies, speaking at events around the world such as TEDx, and even publishing a best-selling book. He made sure to emphasize to me that he has had his fair share of failures along the way which is something he never hides from because he believes its an important part of his journey. After honing his entrepreneurial skills with many business ventures, Jeet began to teach others how they can achieve the same successes hes had in the e-commerce space. Hes been able to help thousands of students around the world get their e-commerce businesses off of the ground. Seeing how much success he has been able to achieve throughout his entrepreneurial career, it was important to dive into understanding the mindset that brought him here today. The Mindset of Jeet Banerjee: Jeets story is exceptional because he has been able to achieve so much in such a short span of time. I asked Jeet what made him so successful in entrepreneurship and e-commerce in general and it became clear to me that he has a mindset very different from most. Story continues He said, If I do anything, I do it to win and compete against the best. I dont look for easy and I believe in myself so much that most people would find it insane. If you tell me Im playing Michael Jordan in his prime 1 on 1, Id tell you Im winning. If you think anything less, youve already lost. Everything seems impossible until its done so Ive always told myself, why not me? When I jumped into e-commerce, everyone wanted to make a little bit of money or they were competing with another 6 or 7 figure store. I looked at the competition and saw online retailers like Amazon, Nike, and others who I immediately set my sights on. I wanted to learn from their success and start competing with them since they were the biggest, which is what I did immediately. I focused on building real brands that had the same logistics, supply chain, and marketing setups that they did. As you can see, Jeet isnt shy about dreaming big. In fact, it seems to me that one of the biggest reasons for his success to this day is because of his ambitious mentality. What Jeet Is Doing Now? For someone who has had so much success in just a few years, youd think they would be on an island getting a tan but not Jeet. He told me he still continues to work 16 hours a day and began to tell me that this is just the beginning of his plans. Jeet currently runs multiple 7 and 8 figure online brands with a lofty goal of growing his revenues to over $1 billion in the next few years. When I asked him how he plans to do this, heres what he had to say. Jeet said, I am currently in the process of growing my team. Talent is the key to really reaching that next level so we are currently growing our infrastructure at an insane pace and are hoping to have over 150+ employees by the end of this year. In addition to his e-commerce pursuits, Jeet is also highly committed to providing step-by-step training to others who want to build their own successful online businesses. His Ecom Legacy Brand program and The Income Incubator have had thousands of success stories to date. If you want to learn more about Jeet and his businesses, you can check him out on his Instagram profile @thejeetbanerjee or @theincomeincubator. Media Details Company Name - The Income Incubator Email - Hello@TheIncomeIncubator.com Website URL - https://www.theincomeincubator.com/ Attachment Slate launched Coronavirus Diaries back in February, when a writer in Milan offered to contribute a letter from Italy explaining what lockdown felt like. That writer, Greta Privitera, filed a lovely dispatch that captured the strange, soon-to-be-familiar feeling of staying homethe small bursts of terror mixed in with an eerie snow day mood. We wanted more stories that showed how this confusing new virus was affecting the texture of peoples lives, even if they werent getting sick (and if they were). Looking back at the roster we published in March now, it feels like a slow-motion scan of life being put on pause, one part at a time; people stopped traveling before they stopped eating out, for example. By the time we ran the one about the restaurant firing its entire staff one morning (they drank all the wine), the diaries aim had changed: It could no longer be about spotlighting how the virus was affecting peoples lives, because the virus was affecting everyones lives. Instead, we tried to find stories that might tell us something about what our world was now. It felt like we went back to the most basic elements: What happens when youre born right now? What happens if you die? How do we find food? What about money, or sex, or drugs? As part of our series Six Months In, we wanted to hear from some of the most memorable diarists about whats happened so far, and whats happening now. Below, their dispatches. Susan Matthews I Thought It Was Bad When I Had the Coronavirus. It Was Far Worse Afterward. Original diary: I Had the Coronavirus. This Was the Worst Part., March 2 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement If they had told me what was coming after February, I wouldnt have believed it. It already seemed that I was unlucky enough to be among the first Italians with COVID, but what happened over the following months was worse. Yes, thats right: worse. I am one of those people with post-COVID syndromein short, after overcoming the virus, exactly the moment when the results of my CT scans improved and I dreamed of returning to a normal life, the other symptoms began. Muscle aches, joint pain, headache, tachycardia, breathlessness, failing thyroid. The more the days passed, the more things that Id never experienced kept coming. My doctor said I had to be patient, and that it would take time to heal completely. He said that it was happening to me because after the pneumonia, I had a weak immune system. The truth is that I immediately understood he was shooting in the dark, and I with him. Nobody knew and still knows anything about whats happening to me, but it has been over six months and still Im fighting this unknown battle. Advertisement Advertisement I did not have and do not have the strength to go back to my daily life. Working is impossible. Im out of breath; sometimes the headaches are so bad they are disabling. So, one morning, I opened a Facebook group to see if there were other people like me. A world opened up: There are hundreds of people in my condition. And then I found out there are many groups like mine all around the world. Thousands and thousands of humans out there formally healed but full of symptoms. There are some with heart problems, others who have strange spots on their skin, others who lose their hair. The symptoms are infinite and are not related to how strong the disease was. Mine, for example, was like a terrible flu. I did not end up in intensive care, but here I am. Today, there are almost 3,800 members in the Italian Facebook group. We give one another comfort and strength; we feel abandoned by medicine. Together, we try to find the best way to face this battle, of which we still cant see the end. Morena Colombi, as told to Greta Privitera Im Back at My Restaurant Job. The Customer Entitlement Is Creeping Back. Original diary: Scenes From a Restaurant That Just Fired Its Entire Staff, March 16 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In March, we were fired. In April, the food we had brought home from the restaurant kitchen started to turn. The unemployment site faltered under the strain of multiple industries being brought to their knees, including our own. Me and my colleagues complained constantly in a house email thread. I filled a notepad with every idea that could be turned into an article and sold, and my partner tried bike couriering. In May, I got called back to do takeout. No other front-of-house staff wanted to return, risking their health for less money. For the first time, many people in the industry (who qualified for enhanced unemployment) were able to pay off debt and start saving. A manager, the owner, and I batched cocktails and poured wine into plastic cups with gloves, masks, and barely any idea of what the new laws actually were. Advertisement Advertisement In June, we dragged the tables outside and set up the planter boxes for outdoor dinning. In July, it rained. One of the wedding tent awnings collapsed on three men with cheeseburgers who were determined to sit through a torrential downpour. Most people tipped, some didnt (including a restaurateur!), and folks were mostly patient with the bird shit and bees, and said things like, How has it been for you? Advertisement Advertisement In August, customers started to rearrange the furniture and order espresso martinis (to this day, were without any of our bartenders or baristas). They tried to order a bowl of fries for a table of six after being told we had to serve meals with drinks, and they just had a couple more friends coming to a full table. Most did not do this. Most were patient with the single server for a full outdoor restaurant and their water taking a little (lot) longer to be refilled. But the entitlement wriggled its way back. Advertisement Advertisement In September, were moving back inside, still with hardly any staff, still uncertain about pretty much everything, still just trying to stay in business. Anna Bradley-Smith Zoom Sex Parties? Meh. I Switched Back to IRL Hookups. Original diary: The Guys Are Wild on Grindr Right Now, March 19, and I Went to a Sex Party on Zoom, March 24 After the Zoom sex party article came out, I received a fusillade of cheerful inquiries from people of all ages, nationalities, genders, and sexualities looking to get in on the action. I realize that in the cataclysmic phase of human history that has unfolded over the past six months, there have been far greater miseries, but many of us clearly, desperately missed casual sex. I have the emails to prove it. Advertisement It began for me in March. I wrote first about my adventures on Grindr during the week New York City officially shut down, when the surf had drawn back from the shore but the tsunami of loss hadnt yet made land. Many of the guys using the app, including me, were ambivalent, looking for some way to connect in a climate of fear and uncertaintythe monomyth of modern gay life. My way of connecting was to argue and scold (compassionately), which kept me busy for the small span in which it was possible to debate the seriousness of COVID. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I still havent found a way of relating to my sexuality that comes anywhere close to my pre-pandemic escapades. I went to the sex party on Zoom, one of the more exuberant new uses of technology at the beginning of the pandemic, and described it here, graphically, to the chagrin of the sportswriter who shares my name. I didnt go again. But a hundred virtual sex parties bloomed, attended by a wave of coverage throughout April, and Zoom ostensibly banned the practice that month. When I broke my vow of celibacy, around May, and logged back onto Grindr, I found that flakiness levels were at an all-time high. I did manage to hook up with a few guys. With the exception of one 18-year-old who enthusiastically sexts me still, they were not worth the effort. I watched a lot of porn, and then I got bored, and then I became very lonely and depressed for reasons that transcend time, space, and sex. It sucked, but I have a great therapist, and the cessation of New Yorks gay nightlife has ultimately forced me, in a terribly painful way that I hate, to work, as they say, on myself. Advertisement Advertisement In the meantime, when I got all those notes about how to bone on Zoom, a few readers also followed my piddly little Instagram. One of them struck up a conversation that has loped along through the summer. Today he said yes to a date. Andrew Kahn Im a Luxury Travel Agent. Were Very, Very Screwed. Original diary: Im a Luxury Travel Agent. Were Screwed., March 6 Rich people still arent traveling. The ones who are traveling, they mostly rent out beach houses or cabins through services like Airbnb, Vrbo, or Inspirato, which arent things that most travel agents book, because our professional liability insurance doesnt cover that if things go sideways. There are a couple of my luxury clients who have traveled for work or who have done weekend getaways to isolated hotels that were within driving distance, but I would estimate that my luxury business is down by about 95 percent from what I booked last year. Advertisement Advertisement I am also a travel agent for one of the largest universities in the country. It is very different now. As with my work with my luxury travelers, the university business travel is also down by around 95 percent, and has been since March. We have a few recruits or other unavoidable travelers, but for the most part, it is at a standstill. My team has been on reduced hours and pay since the end of March, and last month, three-quarters was furloughed or laid off. Those of us remaining spend our days monitoring airline cancellations and working to get refunds for our clients as flights change. Advertisement Advertisement Both of my jobs are ghost towns. My 2020 income is roughly 35 percent of what my 2019 income was. Unemployment rejected my filing, and I wasnt able to get through to a human to appeal the decision. Advertisement When I wrote my diary in March, I was scaredfor my job, for my family, for all of usbut I seriously thought, Oh, its going to be very bad for a few months, but the U.S. will get on top of this, and then even though people will be spooked to travel like they were after 9/11, things will still get back on track for the most part. I didnt foresee our governments incoherent, inconsistent, confusing, fractured response. Canada had no COVID deaths last Friday. My friends in Europe are basically living and working like normal again. And Im going to lose my whole career, and who knows what else, because a disease has been turned into a political football by a government that seems to want us to die. Erica Wilkinson, as told to Jeffrey Bloomer My Bookstore Has Survived in Crazy Ways. Im Terrified for the Holidays. Original diary: I Own a Bookstore. I Dont Know How Much Longer We Can Survive., March 12 Advertisement Advertisement It is crazy to think its been six months. Its gone by so fast, and yet its also surreal and slow. There was a lot of love that happened here in our little community of Mercer Island. We had people who were nervous for us, and they would drop off cookies and bagels and call and see if we were OK. I worked from behind the doors trying to fulfill as many orders as we could every single day. Advertisement We are in the business of people. We like giving recommendations and putting books in peoples hands. For us to have toand I hate this wordpivot and do things over the phone or over FaceTime calls, or go back and forth with people who want to buy these things for their grandkids at home with their parents going bananas, its hard. We try to shop for these people so then we can deliver. We delivered so much on Mercer Island; it was crazy and fun all at the same time. We would drop things off at someones house, and theyd have a plate of cookies there for you, or theyd have some flowers there for you, because everyones working hard, and everyones trying to survive and make each day better than the last. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It seems like such a long time ago, because were now almost to the middle of September, and then it will be October and November and December. Theres fear in that, because who knows if the doors will shut again? Most small retail businesses make all their money in this time of year. Its exhausting. I just turned 55, and I feel like Im 60. Were all working harder than weve ever worked before. Its exhausting to wear a mask, and anybody who has to do that all day and work with people will tell you that. Its hard for people to communicate sometimes. Everything seems like its a little bit more work. But when you have some really big wins every daylike theres this huge box of books and toys that youre delivering to someones grandkidit makes you pretty happy. Advertisement I really only can look at one day at a time. You have an OK day and you think, Oh, well, it almost feels like normal. Then, the next day, nothing. You sit there and go, Oh my gosh, where are all the people? Every day is different. Thats hard, especially for business. We dont know whats going to happen. Were deeply appreciative of all the support that we got from this community. But were very concerned for the future. I think all small businesses probably feel that way right now. I know a lot of the businesses in our community feel that way right now. Laurie Swift Raisys, as told to Rachelle Hampton Jeffrey Rosen, the US Deputy Attorney-General accused Beijing of turning a blind eye to cyber-espionage - GETTY IMAGES The United States justice department on Wednesday announced charges against Chinese citizens, believed to be tied to state intelligence, who hacked more than 100 companies in America and overseas, including social-media providers and universities. Federal prosecutors said the five had been charged with hacking into software development companies, video game companies, government agencies, think tanks, and universities in the US and Hong Kong. The suspects also allegedly targeted telecommunications providers in Australia, Tibet, Chile, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. According to the charging documents, the alleged hackers stole source code, customer account data, and valuable business information. These intrusions also facilitated the defendants' other criminal schemes, including ransomware and "crypto-jacking" schemes, the latter of which refers to the group's unauthorised use of victim computers to "mine" cryptocurrency. The FBI says that the hackers, part of a group known as APT 41, were allowed to operate by the Chinese government, which has made no effort to curb the hacking activities of their own citizens. The US Government said five people had hacked groups including software development companies, video game companies and government agencies - BLOOMBERG The announcement reflects what American officials say is China's unmatched campaign of digital espionage against the US for counter-intelligence purposes. Jeffrey Rosen, Deputy Attorney General, expressed exasperation with Chinese authorities, saying they were at the very least turning a blind eye to cyber-espionage. "We know the Chinese authorities to be at least as able as the law enforcement authorities here and in like-minded states to enforce laws against computer intrusions," Mr Rosen said. "But they choose not to." He further alleged that one of the Chinese defendants had boasted to a colleague that he was "very close" to China's ministry of state security and would be protected "unless something very big happens." Story continues The charges, laid out across three separate indictments unsealed on Wednesday, build on several other cases brought against Chinese actors during the Donald Trump administration. Along with the alleged hackers, two Malaysian businessmen were arrested on Monday and charged with conspiring to profit from the computer intrusions. The defendants were in custody in Malaysia but were likely to fight extradition to the US. The US justice department says authorities are working with Microsoft, Facebook, and others to try to thwart the hacking efforts. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Beijing has repeatedly denied responsibility for hacking in the face of a mounting pile of indictments from US authorities. Protesters gather at the Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., on Sept. 11, 2020, to decry a donation Patricia Quillin, wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, made to support Proposition 16. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times) Protesters Decry Netflix Founders Donation to Affirmative Action Bill LOS GATOS, Calif.About 20 protesters gathered at Netflixs headquarters in Los Gatos, California, on Sept. 11 to oppose an affirmative action bill that a Netflix head supported. Patricia Quillin, wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, donated $1 million to promote Proposition 16. The protesters stood outside on a smoggy day with signs reading No on Prop 16, and #CancelNetflix. In 1996, Proposition 209 was created to prohibit discrimination against people based on race, gender, or ethnicity for employment or education. Prop 16, also known as the Repeal Proposition 209 Affirmative Action Amendment, would revoke Prop 209. The intention is to allow race and gender to be considered in employment or education, so that some positions can be guaranteed to minorities, women, and certain others. Proponents say it levels the playing field for disadvantaged groups. It will appear on the November ballot. Proposition 16 basically legalizes discrimination, Tony Guan, founder of StopProp16.org, told The Epoch Times. We are here working hard, and our kids are studying hard. If you want to put all your energy or your time on one thing, eventually you will achieve your goal, Guan said. But this Proposition 16 will remove all this promise. Protesters gather at the Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., on Sept. 11, 2020, to decry a donation Patricia Quillin, wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, made to support Proposition 16. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times) He used college admissions as an example. Now you are telling the kid, Hey, sorry about that. Because your race and your skin color is not preferred, then you are rejected from being admitted into the school. Prop 16 also went by the name Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5 (ACA 5) earlier this year. When author Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) introduced it, she said, The ban on race-conscious and gender-conscious remedies do not allow for us to deal with root causes of systemic failures. The removal of 209 would not burden you, because it is permissive and not prescriptive and does not mandate anything, she said. But for leaders who want to help remedy gender bias and disparity, Proposition 209 has only served as an impediment to act on best practices aligned with the United States Constitution. Its opponents argue that it will cause further discrimination against people based on their backgrounds. How can you judge us by our skin color? protester Ava L. told The Epoch Times. This is nothing we can do. All we can do is we can try to work hard, study hard to achieve anything we want to achieve in society. But not because of our skin color, not because of where we came from. I feel like this is a huge loophole for corruption. Cars pass protesters in front of Netflixs headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., on Sept. 11, 2020. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times). A company should follow the federal equal employment opportunity, which is also federal law, protester Youwen Yi told The Epoch Times. And by promoting Prop. 16, the company [is] publicly against the equal opportunity. They are encouraging discrimination. Thats not good. They sent a wrong signal to society. Netflix declined to comment on the protest or Quillins support of Prop. 16. Guan said theyve been holding car rallies almost every week for the last two months in both Northern and Southern California. They will continue to hold them until the general election. With reporting by Nancy Han. University of Waikato School of Engineering Professor Michael Walmsley will lead a seven-year research programme to reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to $12.5m in funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The researchers will build a new technology platform called Ahuora to help reengineer the way we use, convert, supply and store renewable energy for industrial process heating. Process heat includes the fuel that industries burn for steam, hot water and hot gases to convert raw materials to useful products, such as food and dairy products, cement, and wood products. Process heat accounts for 28% of energy-related emissions in New Zealand. The Ahuora platform will be underpinned by new adaptive digital twin technology, providing a virtual model of a physical environment, with real-time data shared between the physical and virtual domains. Being adaptive, the digital twin can respond to changing circumstances and learn from previous experience, in order to support better real-time decision making and longer-term strategic planning. The new platforms name, Ahuora, combines two Maori words: ahu meaning to fashion and ora meaning healthy, to represent sustainable industry; it was gifted by Associate Professor Te Taka Keegan of the University of Waikato. The Ahuora platform will be accessible to researchers, service providers, industrial manufacturers and other large-scale energy users. It will help decision makers transition to using more renewable energy options, instead of burning coal or natural gas. Professor Walmsley was delighted with the funding announcement, which will allow the complexity of our energy systems to be modelled more accurately than ever before. Finding effective ways to reduce our emissions involves knowing when, where and how to apply numerous technologies while minimising any adverse effects on production, and managing volatilities in energy supply and demand, he says. Our proposal brings together a new collaboration of high-level expertise in advanced chemical, process, mechanical, electrical, and software engineering from three New Zealand universities, with an additional seven international universities. The programme is an important step towards zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, a goal set under the Governments Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Act 2019. A net-zero-carbon process heat sector by 2050 will require highly integrated, productive and efficient systems that encompass both industrial sites and their surroundings, including neighbouring industries, local renewable resources, and the community, says Professor Walmsley. The programme will incorporate a Maori worldview through research projects which analyse the inherent connections between Maori, resources, energy and kaitiakitanga (stewardship). This will be important as many iwi own energy resources and infrastructure, as well as businesses that use process heat, says Professor Walmsley. The Ahuora programme will get underway in October 2020. Just over a month ago, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was thanking everyone and congratulating Delhiites while announcing that the COVID-19 situation in the national capital is under control. I am happy that with the help of everyone, the COVID-19 situation in the national capital is under control now. The way Delhi has been dealing with COVID-19 situation is being discussed in the country as well as across the world, Kejriwal had said, projecting a picture of optimism. afp Delhi, which was once among the worst affected cities in the country had seen the number of active cases drop to less than 10,000 and the number of new infections was constantly below 1000. Short-lived optimism But the optimism did not last long as Delhiites started showing disregard to COVID-19 guidelines thinking that the pandemic is over. BCCL The refusal to maintain social distancing and wearing a mask in public meant that COVID-19 cases began spiking in the national capital once again. Continuous rise in COVID cases And for the past few days, the city has been reporting a new record number of infections. Delhi's COVID-19 tally has risen to more than 2.30 lakh after 4,473 fresh cases were reported on Wednesday, which was the highest single-day spike in the national capital recorded so far. reuters The previous highest single-day spike was 4,321 cases, which was recorded on Saturday last week. Thirty-three fatalities pushed the deaths in the national capital to 4,839, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department. Four of these 33 deaths are from the previous days. The COVID-19 deaths in Delhi stood at 4,806 on Tuesday. The active cases tally on Wednesday rose to 30,914 from 29,787 on the previous day, as per the bulletin. afp The Wednesday bulletin said that the number of deaths from the coronavirus infection has risen to 4,839 and the total number of cases have climbed to 2,30,269. The number of containment zones in Delhi jumped to 1,637 on Wednesday from 1,560 on Tuesday. CM Kejriwal however said the matter of concern should be the number of deaths and not cases as he claimed that the coronavirus death rate in the national capital is perhaps the lowest in the world. afp He said that currently around 60,000 tests for detection of COVID-19 are being conducted in Delhi daily, which means that 3,000 tests are conducted per day per million population in the city. "In Delhi, 3,057 COVID-19 tests are conducted per day per million population. In the UK, around 3,000 tests are conducted per million population, 1,388 in the USA, 2,311 in Russia, and 8,58 in Peru. In India, the figure is 819 tests per day per million. So, Delhi is conducting the highest number of tests in the whole world," the chief minister said. The three complaints against Di Caro were filed between 2014, shortly after Yores arrival at the station, and 2016, according to multiple insiders who detailed them for The Post. The first, from a staffer for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority who said he made several inappropriate comments to her, resulted in a Level III warning from the university essentially putting him on notice that he could be fired after another infraction and a requirement he take an online sexual-harassment education course. A second, in January 2016, from a female reporter for a local newspaper who declined to participate in a follow-up investigation, was resolved when Deadre Johnson, the universitys senior employee relations director, gave Di Caro an informal warning. So when another female journalist complained about Di Caro in May 2016, WAMU managers were stunned when university officials issued another Level III warning, again sparing him from termination. ALTON One man was injured by gunfire around noon Wednesday in Alton. At 12:11 p.m Wednesday, Alton Police responded to a report of gunfire at 2605 College Ave. where a man in a Toyota Corolla received non-life threatening injuries. The injured man was taken to a local hospital for treatment of his wounds. Alton Police Deputy Chief Marcos Pulido said the department does not believe this was a random act of violence. A short time later, an Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network broadcast stated authorities were looking for a gray Ford Mustang containing two black male occupants. One of the occupants was described as being 58, 160 pounds and with dreadlocks. No further information was available Wednesday afternoon. And even those who can pay face a Catch-22: Because there is no central database of court fines and fees, it is difficult or impossible to establish how much anyone owes. As of May, the state had failed to process any of the more than 85,000 voting registration applications submitted by former felons since Amendment 4 passed in late 2018. It has been a very long slog to change public opinion on the re-enfranchisement of felons, and it took millions of dollars and a lot of effort to get that initiative passed, said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University law professor. The idea that felons would then have to pay money in order to vote after being enfranchised is depressing. In the past year, the governors of Kentucky and Iowa the only remaining states that disenfranchised all former felons signed executive orders restoring voting rights to those who have completed their sentences, including parole and probation. Unlike Florida, neither required payment of fines, court fees or restitution. The fines and fees in Florida fund the routine operations of the criminal justice system and are not restitution payments to crime victims. Florida is hardly the only state where legislators have taken aim at a measure that voters had approved. Missouris Republican-controlled Legislature has placed a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that bills itself as a package of clean-government reforms but actually undoes a 2018 amendment that took redistricting out of the Legislatures control and gave it to a nonpartisan state demographer. Utahans narrowly voted in 2018 to make political map-drawing a nonpartisan affair, only to see that states Republican Legislature water down the measure to allow politicians to retain effective control of the process. And a host of legislatures nettled by voter-approved initiatives in 2018 have passed laws making it substantially harder for citizens to get initiatives on the ballot. Floridas Amendment 4 said voting rights would be automatically restored for former felons after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation. Once the measure took effect in January 2019, felons started registering. One of Googles community moderators confirmed on the companys support page that Google has started rolling out Android 11 update onto Pixel smartphones in India. Pixel users in India have a thing to rejoice now. Google has finally rolled out the stable version of the Android 11 update on to the Pixel smartphone in India. Googles Pixel smartphones are usually the first ones to get the Android update whenever it is rolled out. However, unlike always, Pixel users in India didnt get the stable version of Android 11 when it was rolled out to Pixel users across the globe earlier this month. At the time the company had said that it was making Android 11 compatible with the Indian ecosystem, which had led to a slight delay in rollout in India. Now, the company has finally started rolling out the Android 11 update onto Pixel smartphones in India. One of Googles community moderators confirmed the update on the companys support page. We are happy to announce that Android 11 has started to roll out to supported Pixel devices in India, the moderator wrote in a post on the platform. Apart from this, Google has also updated its Google APIs for Android Page. The company has removed all countries except IN from the software update notes for various Pixel smartphone models, thereby confirming that the Android 11 update is indeed available on Pixel smartphones in India. Meanwhile, if you own a Pixel smartphone, follow these steps to download Android 11 update on your smartphone: open Settings app > tap on System option > go to Advanced option > now go to System Update > tap on Check for Update option > tap on Download Android 11 option and you are good to go! Running a small business anytime is hard. Running it during a pandemic is even harder. Running it when the pandemic shuts you down has to be darn close to impossible. That last one is why two area breweries shifted to Plan B. They became restaurants. Well, not really, but for now it was the only way to get their doors opened again. As our business writer Jacob Dick reported, the Neches Brewing Company in Port Neches and Pour Brothers Brewing in Beaumont are now what are called majority food establishments. Instead of getting at least 51% of their revenue from alcohol sales, they will get the bigger share from food sales. That makes them a restaurant that also serves alcohol, so they were open for business again, just like in the good ol days before corona had a different meaning in drinking circles. You have to admire their spunk and creativity, which are assets for any small business owner. They started out with one business model making and selling craft beer and shifted to another being a restaurant that also offers Plan A. And it wasnt cheap either, requiring a $1,000 license fee, kitchen purchases and the accompanying paperwork. The new regulations for the food and alcohol license require the business to have at least two entrees during its hours of food service. Neches Brewing partnered with Taco Rey to help make that happen, while Pour Brothers is using palate-pleasers like boudain from DJs Boudain and links from Zummo Meat. It will be interesting to see how these experiments play out in Southeast Texas and the entire state. For now, bars are closed by the governor because they tend to spread the virus much more than other businesses. Bar owners dont like that, but the evidence shows its true. They also dont like the fact that restaurants can serve almost as much liquor as them as long as they are defined as an eatery. But restaurants are starting to come under the COVID microscope too, with one study by the Centers for Disease Control and Vanderbilt University showing that people who dine at restaurants have a higher chance of catching the virus. Thats not hard to believe, since masks cant be worn while eating or drinking, and customers are coming into contact with servers who have been coming into contact with countless customers. All of that is a recipe for passing along an unwanted hitchhiker. Even now, restaurants in Texas can operate at only 50% capacity, though Gov. Greg Abbott is considering loosening those restrictions this month. He might even let bars reopen. That would leave a sour taste with the owners of places like Neches Brewing and Pour Brothers, which just jumped through a bunch of hoops to operate again. But one advantage of being a majority food establishment is that the doors can stay open again if virus cases jump. Bars could be allowed to open soon and then be shut down again if cases spike. And lets face it, bars are nice places to go when you want a cold one or companionship, but theyre not essential businesses. States with most beer consumption per person 1) North Dakota - 45.8 gallons per person 2) New Hampshire - 43.9 gallons 3) Montana - 41.0 gallons 4) South Dakota - 38.9 gallons 5) Wisconsin - 36.2 gallons 6) Nevada - 35.8 gallons 7) Vermont - 35.3 gallons 8) Nebraska - 35.2 gallons 9) Texas - 34.4 gallons 10) Maine - 34 gallons U.S. average - 28.2 gallons per person States with least beer consumption per-person 40) Tennessee - 26.2 gallons per person 41) Indiana - 25.9 gallons 42) Georgia - 25.7 gallons 43) California - 25.5 gallons 44) Washington - 24.8 gallons 45) Kentucky - 24.4 gallons 46) Maryland - 24.2 gallons 47) New York - 22.4 gallons 48) New Jersey - 22.4 gallons 49) Connecticut - 22.1 gallons 50) Utah - 20.2 gallons Source: BeerInfo's Fun Facts See More Collapse So for now, the food sales are an insurance policy for breweries and wineries that decided to rebrand themselves. But what happens when the virus is finally gone, presumably sometime next year? The answer will differ from one brewpub to another. Some will clearly keep selling food as long as its profitable. You go through the time and trouble of opening a business to make money, not to make the world a better place. If the burgers or tacos bring cabbage, you keep offering them. But most craft breweries are run by entrepreneurs who have a passion for the art and science of making beer. They may have had some food items on hand, usually simple things like sandwiches or chips, but those exist only to supplement the drinking experience. My guess is that most will drift back to their roots, focusing on the liquid product and getting away from the hassle and expense of serving hot meals. Whatever happens, you have to admire the tenacity of brewery and winery owners who keep trying to find a way around the roadblocks put up by the virus and their local and state governments. The men and women who can still manage to make a profit and make payroll with obstacles like that have just as much business savvy as an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Theyre doing it on a smaller scale, but they are the lifeblood of capitalism and innovation. If any business deserves to succeed, it is theirs. TTaschinger@BeaumontEnterprise.com A campaign for a Malaysian streaming service has gone viral after eagle-eyed viewers misread their logo. iQIYI revealed their campaign poster for Malaysia Day on September 9 to promote local content on their portal. The tagline for the campaign is 'Anak Malaysia' which means 'Child of Malaysia', but the unique design used on the poster lead many online users to read it as something very different. Hundreds of people shared the campaign poster on social media following its release, with many reading the tagline as 'Anal Malaysia'. Streaming service iQIYI revealed their Malaysia Day campaign on September 9, which was shared widely on social media after many misread their tagline 'OMG who approved this?' another reads. 'Must be a pain in the ass to fix this now,' another comment says. iQIYI released a statement on Sunday morning to explain their campaign to fans. 'Hey you alls, we saw your reactions on our campaign logo and we wanted to confirm that its "Anak Malaysia" and nothing else!' the company said. 'Were sorry if our logo design created any confusion. Next time we check at least 50 times a day. We did not intend to offend any parties.' The campaign poster features Malaysian actors Luqman Hafidz and Tosh Chan along with badminton star Lee Chong Wei. The Anak Malaysia campaign gives viewers free access to a range of Malaysian films on the platform to celebrate the founding of the Malaysian federation. Film fans have gone wild over a poster for upcoming release Cordelia which shows a woman physically dominating a man in a sexually-charged position. The image shows Northern Irish actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes pinning co-star Johnny Flynn against the wall from behind while holding his arms down and kissing his neck in a suggestive manner. The poster was shared on Twitter by artist Harriet Mould, who noted: 'I legit don't think I've ever seen this pose this way round before.' The post has had 14,000 retweets and received more than 93,000 likes in just 24 hours. Film fans have gone wild over a poster for upcoming release Cordelia which shows a woman physically dominating a man in a sexually-charged position The poster was shared on Twitter by artist and theatre-maker Harriet Mould. The post has had 14,000 retweets and received more than 93,000 likes in just 24 hours Twitter users were left feeling hot under the collar, with one posting: 'Good Lord. I can't stop staring.' Another tweeted: 'Now this might be my typa coffee, a movie with a dominant woman and a not-so-dominant man [sic].' A third added: 'I haven't the slightest clue what it's about but i want premiere tickets.' However others were left disappointed when they watched the trailer and discovered the UK film is a modern day psychological thriller and not the romp the poster suggests. Others noted there seemed to be a 'period movie' feel to the image, although the film is set in present day England. Another shot from the film shows Northern Irish actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes (who plays Cordelia and her twin) with co-star Johnny Flynn (who plays Frank) The film poster left fans feeling hot under the collar and they joked they wanted tickets without needing to see a preview. Dozens have taken to Twitter to share their excitement (pictured) One tweeted: 'I straight up thought Cordelia was a period piece about a sexually dominate woman based on its poster, and apparently I wasn't alone. But we're all wrong. It's a modern day horror movie? Huh.' A second user agreed: 'The poster made me think it was gonna be some Victorian era love story or sumn [sic]. But the teaser looks like that of a modern age horror/thriller movie. I'm confused.' Directed by Adrian Shergold, the film stars Antonia Campbell-Hughes as both title character Cordelia and her twin sister Caroline. The sisters live in their central London basement flat left to them by their late father. Directed by Adrian Shergold, the film stars Antonia Campbell-Hughes as both title character Cordelia and her twin sister Caroline. Pictured, Campbell-Hughes in the film The sisters live in their central London basement flat left to them by their late father. The drama centres around Cordelia's relationship with her neighbour Frank (Flynn), pictured The trailer reveals Cordelia is a psychological thriller, not the romp suggested by the poster Cordelia, who has been left traumatised from an event from the past, sees her recovery thrown into turmoil when her sister leaves for a weekend away, according to film site Flickering Myth. It is then that Cordelia meets neighbour Frank, played by Flynn, who appeared in Emma and is set to star as David Bowie in biopic Stardust. 'As their relationship develops, Cordelia becomes convinced she is being stalked. Increasingly anxious and unsure of Franks motives, Cordelia begins to unravel,' Flickering Myth continues. However Frank is also wary of Cordelia. At one point in the trailer, he asks: 'Am I safe with you, Cordelia?' However others were left disappointed when they watched the trailer and discovered the film is a modern day psychological thriller and not the romp the poster suggests. Others noted there seemed to be a 'period movie' feel to the image, although the film is set today Cordelia is due to be released in the UK on October 23. China has warned that it is not afraid to face the U.S. in a conflict as massive drills that involve troops are underway. They are currently being held in Guam as they train for a future scenario. These recent military exercises have caught China's attention, after the recent back to back naval drills in the South China Sea. Part of the drills is the coordination of troops and 100 planes that will coordinate a simulated attack on the Island. Military strategists expect that the Guam installation will be in the crosshairs of the Chinese ICBMs. Learning to defend against a Chinese attack is crucial to keep the base operational in full-blown war, reported the Sun. The military exercise held is called Valiant Shield, which will drill all land, sea, and air units in a series of coordinated operations that will be going on for 10 days. Valiant will simulate a threat against Guam, for all units. At the time the drills were announced, the Global Times of China said in an editorial that the U.S. and China will face war sometime. The Global Times explains that all the troubles stirred up in countries opposed to China is the handiwork of the U.S. which is opposed to China. Citing the expansion of China in the Himalayas, East, and South China Seas where America is opposed to China. Getting ready for conflict and to protect interests, with acceptance to bear the cost of China's endeavors. Tensions in the Indo-Pacific is are great as the U.S. Navy and Air Force which are active in multiple operations from FONOPs to ADIZ penetration into purloin Chinese holding. Guam will be the heart of the American response that will send a strong message to China as the greatest aggressor. Also read: US Navy Destroyer Sent to South China Sea After China Tests Aircraft-Carrier Killer Missiles Current war games have the supercarrier USS Reagan and the assault ship USS America joined by amphibious warfare ships the USS New Orleans and USS German Town in the current exercise. According to Rear Admiral Michael Boyle, the U.S. Pacific Fleet with the Valiant Shield exercise gives all forces to improved interoperability for a greater counter punch to enemy forces like the PLAN. General Charles Q. Brown Jr, commander of the Pacific Air Forces, stresses the consequence of keeping watch of the Indo-Pacific region that will be of great impact. The U.S. Department of Defense would prioritize all aspects of this location as it is where China is challenging to become a world naval power. Beijing has been relentless in flexing its military power in Taiwan and the South China Sea that has become a threat. Even Guam in the Pacific is not immune to PLAN aggression, and Xi is dead set on improving the PLAN war machine. Uneasily about six weeks ago, the Prime Minister of Australia said the posturing of the U.S and China is getting more serious. The Royal Australian Navy joined the Americans and Japanese in a naval exercise but were tailed by the PLAN before getting to the Philippine Sea. According to Scott Morrison, he hinted that headlong conflict may happen, and stressed that both were on the side of international law and keep the peace. The promise of resources in the South China Sea is enough for China to warn the U.S. that it isn't afraid of the troops and assets that are in the Guam drills. Related article: Analysts Say That China Is Exceeding Naval Growth Than Expected @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Devil All the Time Cast: Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Robert Pattinson, Sebastian Stan, Eliza Scanlen, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke Director: Antonio Campos The charm of films like The Devil All the Time lies in its capacity to make you feel terrible after you have finished the film. For two hours you watch the characters go through hell, and when you snap back to reality, you realise the world around you is not very different either. The Devil All the Time is the cinematic adaptation of the 2011 novel by American writer Donald Ray Pollock, who, thanks to a stroke of brilliance by the makers, narrates the film. The film, directed by Antonio Campos and produced by Jake Gyllenhaal, tells the story of two quaint towns, Coal Creek, West Virginia and Knockemstiff, Ohio, tied together by tragedy, misfortune and death. People in these towns are not your lively country folk as war, desolation, poverty and violence effect every life here. All they have is their faith to cling to. However, when faith and religion become the centre of their lives, their lives become hell. Needless to stay, this is not a story about hope. It is really hard to describe this film without giving away major spoilers. Also because the film doesnt tell one story, but several, woven intricately with one another. You have to sit through it all to understand. A war veteran falls in love with a waitress, but his blissful family life is marred with his PTSD. He makes up for his paranoia by beating bullies into a pulp and praying like a maniac. His dependence on God takes a turn for the darker when his wife gets diagnosed with cancer. A preacher in the nearby town is on the run after he murdered his wife, because the voice of The Lord" told him he would resuscitate her. He meets a travelling couple, serial killers who force hitchhikers to have sex with them, killing them in the act and then collect polaroids of their conquests. There is also a corrupt Sheriff, the epitome of evil, who will go to any lengths to make sure nobody takes away his power. At the centre of it all, is Arvin Russell (Michael Banks Repeto, Tom Holland). After a tragic childhood, he grows up with his grandmother, uncle and another orphan Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) who he loves as his own sister. He does not pray because of his childhood experiences, and is fiercely protective of what is left oh his family. He is especially paranoid about Lenora, who gets bullied in school a lot. Even when he beats those bullies into a pulp like his father once did, Lenora falls into a more dangerous trap. All this happens in the first act itself, but when you are watching the film, you dont think too much is happening too fast. The story jumps timelines too, and there are a lot of details that might get missed, but the narrator acts as the hucksters crutch whenever necessary. While the storytelling helps the film, it benefits the most from the performances. Obviously the reason people are even watching the film is to see Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, share the screen. And they deliver, Holland carries a film on his back which is unlike anything he has ever done before. Robert Pattinson has proved himself time and again, and this film is no different. Bill Skarsgard, is another actor that drew people to the film, and he too proves that great acting is in his genes. However, we need to talk about the other actors. Riley Keough and Jason Clarke play of off each other so well, that you actually believe that they are sick, perverted people who only feel closest to god when they kill." Riley is probably the most important female character in the film, and she swings from someone stuck in an abusive relationship to a psycho who enjoys killing out of habit really well. Eliza Scanlen doesnt shy away from being vulnerable on screen. Harry Melling is so creepy as the preacher who will go to any extend to make people hear the power of his faith, even put a jar full of spiders on his face or plunge a screwdriver in the neck of the woman he loved. However, someone who exceeds expectations is Sebastian Stan, who is even scarier and more despicable than he was in I Tonya. The effort he put in this film is evident and as an actor who always gets sidelined, we hope he gets the appreciation he deserves with this film. The Devil All the Time is too broad of a film to be packed in a nutshell. However, one key takeaway is how terrifyingly relevant it still is, despite being set in 1957. One look at 2020 and we know not much has changed. Also, if this film were to be released in India, many organisations would burn effigies and put a bounty on Tom Hollands head by now. It is a film that should be watched, but only by those who can stomach the gore. There is a lot of death in the film, in its most horrifying, disgusting forms. Audience discretion is advised. But there is a lot of truth too, which might be scarier. Rating: 3.5/5 Trump told voters in Pennsylvania that a vaccine was close - REUTERS US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a vaccine against the deadly coronavirus could be three or four weeks away, despite cautionary notes sounded by some US public health officials about that accelerated timeline. Trump, speaking at a town hall hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia, defended his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and said a vaccine could be ready for distribution before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. "We're very close to having a vaccine," he said. "If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals. And we're within weeks of getting it... Could be three weeks, four weeks." Earlier this month, top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci told CNN that most experts believe a vaccine will be ready by November or December. "It is conceivable that you can have it by October, though I don't think that that's likely," he said. Other experts say a scientifically credible vaccine will not be available until early 2021. "It would go away without the vaccine?" "Sure, over a period of time. Sure, with time..." "And many deaths." "You'll develop a herd mentality." pic.twitter.com/oZg1eTGdTu Andrew Bates (@AndrewBatesNC) September 16, 2020 Trump bristled at tough questions from uncommitted voters and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos during the town hall meeting, arguing that his decision to impose travel bans on China and Europe had saved thousands, if not millions, of lives. He also defended Americans who have shunned face masks and social distancing guidelines, and said even experts like Fauci had changed their views about those practices during the crisis. Story continues Trump has faced criticism for holding large-scale campaign events in Nevada and other states - events that his adviser Fauci has described as "absolutely" risky. His Democratic challenger, former vice president Joe Biden, last week accused Trump of "dereliction" of duty in dealing with the pandemic, which has cost millions of jobs. The United States has reported nearly 6.6 million cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, the highest number worldwide, and nearly 195,000 deaths. That accounts for 20 per cent of the cases worldwide, although the United States has just four per cent of the world's population. To be clear: I am not currently president. But if you chip in now, we can change that in November: https://t.co/eFS4tDfHEx https://t.co/ciqFcIGLHB Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020 Trump said the United States had a number of cases because it did more testing that other countries. He also repeated his claim from early in the pandemic that the virus would disappear on its own, and denied understating the threat of the disease when asked by an audience member why he would "downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities." "Yeah, well, I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action. My action was very strong," the Republican president, who is seeking reelection on November 3, said. Trump also provoked mockery on Twitter when he spoke about "herd mentality" instead of "herd immunity," a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when enough people have become immune through vaccination or previous infections. "It would go away without the vaccine ... but it's going to go away a lot faster with it," he said. "You'll develop ... a herd mentality." Read more: How close is a vaccine for Covid-19? While the sunrises and sunsets in the Jacksonville area the past few days have been strikingly beautiful to see, the reason for them is less than joyous. Weather patterns are carrying remnants of forest fires in the west into the west-central Illinois skies. Basically, youre seeing the suns rays through 5,000 to 10,000 feet of smoke particulates in the atmosphere, Dave Bowers of AccuWeather said Thursday. Theyre very small particulates." Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee are experiencing much the same views as Illinois because of fires in Oregon and California that have consumed more than 1 million acres of land in Oregon and 3 million in California. More Information See some of the photos readers have taken of west-central Illinois sunrises and sunsets online at myjournalcourier.com. See More Collapse The smoke, which rises 20,000 to 30,000 feet into the atmosphere, is being forced east because of regular weather patterns. The jet stream has carried it across the nation, Bowers said. With cooler winds from Canada combining with warmer winds from the west, its a perfect formula to cover the nation in smoke. With the smoke high and perfect conditions, its conducive to weather patterns, said Chuck Schaffer of the National Weather Service. As autumn approaches, wind patterns tend to change. Its starting to bend and we could start seeing some cooler, cleaner air over the Great Lakes, forcing it south, he said. Air mass should be a little clearer into the weekend. That could be short-lived as cooler winds quickly shift north again. Well see some improvements over the next few days, but it could become a little dim next week, Bowers said. There are also a lot of fires this year to contribute to the weather situation, Schaffer said. Bowers is hopeful the West Coast will see some rain during the next few days, which could be beneficial to firefighters. The rain will bring higher humidity and that will help them get ahead of the fires, he said. ALBANY The hazy skies overhead this week that were a result of smoke from the West Coast wildfires lowered the amount of solar radiation in New York about 25 percent, a level that scientists say at least briefly impacted the state's solar power production. Scientists and researchers at the University at Albany's New York State Mesonet, a network of 126 weather stations that the university built with the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES), have been monitoring the situation closely and said that most of the smoke high overhead was blurring the skies on Tuesday and Wednesday. There was still a lot of smoke in the atmosphere on Thursday, but it was also mixed with some clouds from an incoming cold front that is expected to help push the smoke out of the region on Friday. Jerry Brotzge, the program manager at NYS Mesonet, said their organization measures solar radiation and other atmospheric conditions at the 126 stations that were built with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Sandy. There is at least one station in every New York county. "Normally, "you get a lot of clear skies this time of year," he said. "We're seeing a reduction of about 25 percent in the solar radiation coming in. ... The fires are thousands of miles away, but just the way the jet stream carries the smoke ... it's one of those events you don;t expect. I'm sure it's enough of a reduction; it's something (energy providers) had to readjust for." Weather models don't typically include smoke or predict weather based on its presence in the atmosphere, which is why forecasted temperatures were a few degrees lower than expected this week. Brotzge said Mesonet also has 17 "profiler" network stations across the state that enable them to see the smoke that's more than a mile high in the atmosphere. "The last two days have been clear but all of the haze was smoke," Brotzge said Thursday afternoon. "Today, we have a cold front moving in and we have a lot of clouds. It's helping at least ... but the nice sunrises and sunsets the last couple days have been due to the smoke." Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. "We should see improving sky conditions (Friday)," said Jennifer Vogt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany. "I don't recall the wildfire season being that bad last year but it does occur." The smoke that has been limiting sunlight for a few days over the northeast and other parts of the country has also reached Europe. Officials have described the wildfires raging in California and other western states as the worst in nearly two decades. Some workers said in the complaints, obtained by the Tribune, they are being paid between $10 and $13 an hour. Others did not list their pay, but said they were being paid below minimum wage. (@ChaudhryMAli88) HELSINKI/UN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th September, 2020) An extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council on Belarus will be convened on Friday on Estonia's initiative, Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said at a meeting with former Belarusian presidential contender Valery Tsepkalo and his wife Veronika, Estonian broadcasting portal ERR reported. "He [Tsepkalo] presented a number of specific proposals - what needs to be done to support civil society in Belarus. In particular, to support young people, so that peaceful protesters have an alternative if they come under pressure from the police," Reinsalu told ERR. "I also informed him that on the initiative of Estonia and with the support of states sympathetic to it, an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council will be convened on Friday, and at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, Estonia will, of course, also raise the issue of the political crisis in Belarus," he said. Meanwhile, the Permanent Mission of Niger, presiding over the UN Security Council, told Sputnik that they had not received requests to hold a meeting on Belarus on Friday. The Estonian Permanent Mission to the UN also indicated that they did not plan such an event for Friday. At the same time, an urgent debate on the situation in Belarus is expected in the UN Human Rights Council on Friday. The Latest on wildfires in the U.S. West (all times local): 8 p.m. WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. A stubborn, growing wildfire in mountains northeast of Los Angeles is moving toward homes. Evacuation warnings were issued Thursday evening for the small forest town of Wrightwood on the fires northeast side. Earlier in the day residents were ordered to leave the community of Juniper Hills in foothills on the north flank of the San Gabriel Mountains. The blaze started Sept. 6 on the south flank of the San Gabriels and has slowly churned across much of the range, through timber and brush that hadnt burned in decades. Officials say the fire has flared up in other areas and is again threatening Mount Wilson, site of a historic observatory and an array of broadcast antennas. ___ 3:20 p.m. SALEM, Ore. Oregon officials are temporarily suspending recovery work in the area of one of the states biggest fires east of Eugene due to expected heavy rain and possible thunderstorms Thursday night into Friday. The Oregon Department of Forestry says the forecast calls for possible lightning strikes and hail as well as rain and fire-damaged trees and rocks could fall into the road. Officials are urging residents who have not already evacuated to do so now or remain inside their homes during the storm. The National Weather Service already issued a flash flood warning for large parts of Oregon for the next 24 hours. ___ 3 p.m. YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. Yosemite National Park is closing to all visitors due to significant smoke impacts from Californias wildfires. The park issued a notice that all entrances and roads will close at 5 p.m. Thursday and will reopen when conditions are safe. The park says there is hazardous air quality throughout Yosemite. Sequoia National Park closed earlier this week due to a growing wildfire in the adjacent Sequoia National Forest. Kings Canyon National Park remains open but air quality is also described as poor. ___ 2:55 p.m. JUNIPER HILLS, Calif. New evacuations have been ordered on one side of a wildfire in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Angeles National Forest officials say the Bobcat Fire is 1 mile (1.61 kilometres) from the community of Juniper Hills in foothills on the north flank of the mountain range. Nearby Devils Punchbowl county park has also been ordered evacuated. The fire started Sept. 6 on the south flank of the San Gabriel Mountains and has burned across much of the range. Officials say the fire is active in other areas including around Mount Wilson, site of a historic observatory and numerous broadcast antennas. ___ 2:50 p.m. PORTLAND, Ore. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch Thursday for areas in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, including parts of counties that were just devastated by major wildfires. Clackamas County, south of Portland, and Jackson County in the southern part of the state, were among those listed as at-risk for floods from heavy rain and thunderstorms headed to the state. Both counties have significant burned areas from the fires. Areas that have recently burned are at a higher-than-usual risk for flash flooding and mudslides because the trees and vegetation that normally absorb the water and hold the soil in place are gone. Heavy rain can trigger landslides, rock fall, and debris flows in steep terrain. ___ 2:45 p.m. SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. Californias Sequoia National Park has been fully closed due to a nearby wildfire in the Sierra Nevada wilderness. A statement on the park website says the action implemented earlier this week came after the park headquarters and the community of Three Rivers at the parks southern entrance were put on evacuation notice. Sequoia National Park is threatened by the Castle Fire, part of the SQF Complex of fires ignited by lightning in the Sierra National Forest. Burning since Aug. 19, the complex has scorched nearly 192 square miles and is just 12% contained Thursday. Kings Canyon National Park, immediately to the north of Sequoia, remains open. Marking what would have been his 86th birthday, family, friends, and colleagues honored the late author-illustrator Tomie dePaola during a digital memorial service on September 15. DePaola died on March 30 of complications from surgery following a fall. The virtual celebration of dePaolas life and career kicked off with a photo montage assembled by Laurent LinndePaolas art director at S&S, which featured an array of images from the author-illustrators private collection provided by dePaolas assistant and close friend Bob Hechtel. Jon Anderson, president of the childrens publishing division of Simon & Schuster, who worked with dePaola for nearly 25 years, introduced the event, noting, Tomies talent could never be contained by just one publisher so I make this introduction on behalf of the other three houses that provided a home to TomieHoliday House, Penguin, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Andersons recollection of first meeting dePaola in the mid 1990s was: I was amazed to find he was just like his books: bounding with joy, full of life, colorful as all get-out, sometimes delightfully off-color, and exuberant to the point of exhaustion. As we all know, authors dont always match their work. But not Tomie. Everything you saw on the page you saw in the person. Linn spoke next, telling viewers that a tribute websiterememberingtomie.comhad been created as a place where anyone can share their memories of Tomie and his books. A video recording of the memorial service is located there, as well as various obituaries and other remembrances. Linn recalled his friend as a storyteller in every aspect of his life. He would take events and make them his owngood, bad, everything that happened. He really was able to own his life on his terms, and that is such an inspiration to me, personally. Linn went on to add, He celebrated everything. He was all about theater and color and glitz, so Im wearing my sequin jacket for you, Tomie, because we know you would want a show today. Those attending the virtual memorial learned more about some of the earliest sparks of dePaolas creativity via memories shared by his sister, Judie Bobbi, the youngest of the four dePaola siblings. As a boy, she noted, Tomie was always creative, whether it was making papier-mache puppets of the cast of the Disney movie Cinderella, in all their costumes and then putting on a puppet show in the attic, making fudge, having a taffy pull, and popcorn on Friday nights when [friends] would come to watch prize fights or Gorgeous George wrestling. She described how dePaola and his father designed and constructed life-size Christmas decorations of the Nativity or three wise men or angels for the front lawn at the holidays and compared his yard sales in more recent times to the old-fashioned Macys basement sales. The entire family, Bobbi said, was extremely proud of Tomies talent, hard work, success and recognition. Author-illustrator Anita Lobel became friends with dePaola when she was 19 and they were both art students at Pratt Institute in New York City. She shared fond memories of their days participating in the Pratt drama club productions and eloquently described how dePaolas childrens book art was really informed by theater. Lobel recounted how she and dePaola had reconnected and become close again in recent years, noting, I dont think anyone ever enjoyed his success as much as he did. He not only took, but he gave of himself. He created scholarships, he was devoted to his nuns and made stained glass windows, and he talked very affectionately. There were some enemies and he and I had a great time chewing up this one or that one when we got together. But most of the time it was really about joy. Fine artist Susan Whiteman, whose husband Doug is dePaolas literary agent and was previously his publisher at Putnam, characterized the longtime friendship her family had with Tomie. Its fair to say we all miss his laugh, his impish grin, and his retelling of stories. So many stories, she said. Whiteman shared highlights and some of the very impressive stats of dePaolas career. He published more than 270 books in his lifetime, with at least three more in the pipeline. You can count on two hands those he did not illustrate himself, she pointed out. For those of you in attendance who are childrens book creators, that will have special resonance for you. Imagine illustrating over 260 books in your career, none of which were created using computer technology. Put another way, Tomie averaged over four new books per year for 55 years. In total, more than 25 million Tomie dePaola books have been sold worldwide, Whiteman added. And she also cited one of the achievements that most pleased him. He was proud to be the first childrens book author-illustrator to be signed to a multiplatform global agreement, something previously only extended to movie stars, a few of Max Perkinss legendary authors, and people like Tom Clancy. You can imagine Tomies delight. Cecilia Yung, executive art director for G.P. Putnams Sons and Nancy Paulsen Books at Penguin Random House, said she has been art director of Tomies books at Putnam since she joined the company in 1994. All of you who know Tomie will chuckle at the idea that he can be directed on anything, let alone his art. She reminisced about the rhythm of their work together. As part of my job as his art director, we talked about picture books and illustration by passionately dissecting everything else in life, she said. Theater, ballet, dogs, frescoes the use of color in Gees bend quilts and of course food. Our appetite for the topic was insatiablefood and cooking, food and travel, food and restaurants. We just never had enough time to eat all the food we talked about, nor time to talk about the food we wanted to eat. Yung went on to say, Picture book people talk about finding their inner child. And its really no secret that Tomie had an inner and an outer child available at all times and he brought him everywhere. His spontaneous groans, gasps, chortles and belly laughs remind me of what childhood sounded like. She also circled back to current events and paralleled todays state of affairs with a favorite plot point from dePaolas beloved Strega Nona, in which blowing three kisses is the key to stopping magical pasta production. Here we are in the sixth month of our pandemic, Yung said, and this is what I am hearing from Tomie upstairs: Love will ultimately stop our overboiling pasta pot. Love is our secret ingredient. We want to make magic with our lives and our words. Author illustrator Pat Cummings said she was overwhelmed and fangirling when she first met dePaola years ago at the Boston Public Library and he took her under his wing, making her feel welcome and giving her the lowdown on the childrens book business. He showed that generosity toward everyone, she said. Once when Cummings asked dePaola if he ever talked to kids about the book business he told her, I tell them Strega Nona built my swimming pool and they sit there trying to imagine a little old lady digging a hole in his backyard. In 2004, dePaola donated money to Pratt to renovate a studio space in honor of his twin cousins Franny and Fluffy, who had graduated from the school in 1941 and had inspired him to study there. The space was named The Three Cousins: Tomie dePaola, Kathryn Fluffy McLaughlin, Abbe and Frances Franny McLaughlin-Gill, and Cummings expressed her joy at being able to teach classes in that studio. Cummings invited dePaola to a big event at Pratt in 2013 to discuss his art and career. He wanted me to interview him like Inside the Actors Studio, Cummings recalled. He wanted me to play James Lipton and ask him a series of questions. We went through them and when I got to What is your favorite curse word? he had a very wicked grin on his face, and he said RISD [the Rhode Island School of Design] and the whole audience exploded with laughter. Later, said Cummings, He wrote me that the presentation will go down in the annals of history never to be forgotten, never to be duplicated. And thats how I think of Tomienever to be forgotten, never to be duplicated. Charles Massey, former executive director of Newport Opera House in Newport, N.H., offered several anecdotes about his and his longtime friend dePaolas shared love of theater and their special connection to the show Billy Elliot. He also praised dePaolas exuberant hospitality. I will never forget the Halloween parties he had in Wilmot Flat, he said. Every party had a theme, and you had to dress in accordance with the theme. Insanity. Insanity everywhere. But most of all, Massey wanted to impart the advice dePaola had given him over the years: When you find something you like, dont buy just one or two, buy more. When youre decorating and you are not sure what color to use, always use white. There are never, never too many candles. And if youve been to Tomies house you probably saw the candle room. Listen to storytellers. Stay close to your friends no matter how far away they may be. Continue to love and nurture folk art and outsider art. They tell the truth. Treat books like friends. Love them, treasure them, share them. And when you have a good story, tell it. He then shared a fun story that dePaola had loved, featuring Ethel Merman. Alan Chong, who serves as director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H., related his admiration for dePaola and his work before announcing that the museum has established the Tomie dePaola Art Education Fund, which will provide scholarships and opportunities for young people to discover themselves through creativity and the arts. Then-rookie childrens book authors Lin Oliver and Stephen Mooser founded the Society of Childrens Book Writers back in 1971. Tomie dePaola spoke at the banquet for the organizations second conference to an audience of roughly 50 people, Oliver recalled. I met him and loved him instantly. He soon became an early member of the groups board of directors. By 1978, dePaola was invited to return as a keynote speaker for an SCBW conference, speaking to about 300 people. Shortly after that, Oliver said, dePaola made a request. About 10 years into our friendship he asked that we change the name to SCBWI, she said. He believed that illustrators are a key part of the equation and its not fair to exclude them. I said, Tomie, the name is already unwieldy, I can hardly say SCBW, let alone SCBWI. OK, he said, Thats fine, and in that case I resign. It was simple, it was clear, it was drawing a line in the sand. He was right, we listened to him. We all took elocution lessons and learned to say SCBWI and 50 years later, we have a worldwide organization with more than 27,000 members. Oliver shared stories from their long friendship, and their passion for theater, food, art, and travel. On an emotional note, Oliver showed images from her book Little Poems for Tiny Ears, which dePaola illustrated, and which she called a career highlight. Of side by side illustrations of a girl and a boy, Oliver told dePaola, That looks like us when we were kids. And he had responded, It is us. I drew us together as kids, and I drew us across from each other on these pages so that we can be together through all eternity. I hope thats so. Additionally, Oliver announced that SCBWI has created the Tomie dePaola Professional Development Award, which she described as a generous financial award [$2,500] given on his birthdaySeptember 15each year to two newly published picture book illustrators who can use this fund to perfect and hone their art and their craft. The inaugural winners of the prize, selected from more than 100 entries, were revealed on September 15. They are Lynnor Bontigao (Jack & Agyu) and Daniel Gray-Barnett (Grandma Z). A retrospective of dePaolas book covers, prepared by Linn of S&S, closed the memorial service. There has been a sharp rise in the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the Derry City and Strabane District Council area in the past week. Figures released by the Department of Health yesterday revealed that there have been 61 positive cases of the disease identified in the local council area from September 9 to September 15. This is in comparison with 16 positive cases in the week beforehand from September 2 to September 8. The majority of the cases identified locally in the last seven days involve people under the age of 40. There have been 15 cases identified in the Derry and Strabane council area among young people aged 19 or younger. A total of 37 cases have been identified in people aged between 20 and 39. There have been eight cases in people aged between 40 and 59. In the past week, there has only been one positive COVID-19 case identified among people aged between 60 and 79 in the local council area. There have been no positive cases reported in people over the age of 80. There have been a total of 2,466 tests carried out in the Derry and Strabane area over the period from September 9 to September 15. The increase in positive cases in the local area mirrors the increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 across Ireland. It had been expected that the number of positive cases would rise when schools returned at the start of the month. Several local schools have contacted parents to say that positive cases have been identified within their 'school community' in recent days. Schools are then following guidance from the Public Health Agency in relation to how to deal with the situation. Several moderate Democrats have recently been urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to move forward with a new coronavirus relief package. Officials have argued that blaming and criticizing Senate Republicans and the White House is not helping Americans amid the pandemic. New coronavirus stimulus relief bill According to Fox News, Tuesday marked the boldest revolt when the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus proposed a $1.5 trillion coronavirus relief bill. The announcement included the support of 25 Democrats, along with 25 Republicans agreeing on a compromise. One of the new proposal's supporters includes Representative Max Rose, who expressed his disappointment towards the leadership that disagreed on a new bill. Rose noted that it had been four months since the HEROES Act, which included a $3 trillion fund, was passed, and no legislation was approved. The politician added that he and other Democrats have been calling out to House leaders to place another proposal on the floor, which could be passed into law. During an interview, Rose said that the pressure comes from both sides of the government because Americans are tired of waiting for a bill that is not coming amid their suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Democratic official told the leadership to stop with their charades and politics and told them to end the stupidity because they have to put the country's best interests first. The efforts of the Problem Solvers aimed to break the stalled discussions about a new coronavirus stimulus relief bill. The talks between Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and the White House have been delayed due to varying interests on how much funding would be given out. Also Read: Game Changing Antibody That Eradicates Virus Responsible For COVID-19 Discovered Varying perspectives On Tuesday, all eight major Democratic committee chairs released a joint statement that rejected the bipartisan plan. It argued that the amount it proposed was insufficient in helping the lives of Americans or boosting the country's economy. However, Speaker Pelosi denied the calls of the Democrats who are pushing for a new stimulus relief bill and emphasizing the country's need for the White House to agree on a $2.2 trillion package, as reported by Bloomberg. On Wednesday, Pelosi said that they wanted to push a proposal that would eventually become law. She added that several officials urged for a vote to move the HEROES Act forward, which she also refused to accept. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany also said that United States President Donald Trump had plans to release a new stimulus bill and called Pelosi as being unproductive in her efforts. Speaker Pelosi noted that the White House is only interested in giving out $1,200 stimulus checks that would be given out under Trump's name before the November elections. She said the move undermined the other needs of the American people, including food and shelter. The House speaker added the issue was not about the back-and-forth blaming, but rather, it was about meeting the needs of the American citizens. Pelosi said the situation called for something more than just simple proposals and small packages. Related Article: Coronavirus Hijacks Human Brains, Uses Cells to Multiply and Take Over @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. (Natural News) With mere weeks remaining before the Trump administrations first Operation Warp Speed Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines hit the market, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a private corporation, is now advising Americans to just keep masking up instead of getting jabbed. According to CDC Director Robert Redfield, wearing a cloth face covering is much more effective at preventing Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) infection than getting injected with vaccine chemicals. This is a deviation from the CDCs longtime position that vaccines are the best thing since sliced bread so incredible, we were told, that mothers should stop breastfeeding their babies in order to boost the efficacy of childhood vaccination. Redfield made these comments in opposition to vaccination during a recent Senate Appropriations Committee hearing about the federal governments Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) response, part of which includes a potential new stimulus bill. Were going to continue to give Congress and the nation the best public health advice, Redfield further stated. Were not going to let political influence try to modulate that. As to when a Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine will realistically become available, Redfield reiterated President Trumps claim that one will hit the market by November, but in very limited supply. If youre asking me when itll be available to the general American public, probably Q2 or Q3 2021, he added, suggesting that full-scale mass vaccination for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is still a ways off. Cloth face coverings most powerful public health tool we have, Redfield insists Though the president has demonstrated reluctance in covering his nose and mouth with fabric, Redfield insists that wearing a face mask is the most powerful public health tool we have, even superseding immune-boosting nutrients like green tea, zinc and quercetin. I appeal to all Americans to embrace these face coverings, Redfield implored. We have clear scientific evidence they work. This face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID-19 than when I take a COVID vaccine. Keep in mind that the CDC said the exact opposite earlier this year, emphasizing that face masks are not effective enough to warrant telling everyone in the general public to wear one while shopping or exercising at the gym. Redfield went on to further suggest that face masks are guaranteed to protect people against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), while no such guarantee exists for Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, which are still undergoing human clinical trials. While one of the warp speed vaccines, AstraZenecas, was originally slated to be released as early as September, a serious adverse reaction that occurred during a late-stage trial brought it to a halt and pushed the timeline back a bit. If all goes as planned, at least some Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines from Operation Warp Speed will become available before the November election. The first people to receive it will be those in the vulnerable category, meaning the elderly and immunocompromised. According to the CDC, only about 121 people under the age of 21 living in America tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) between February and August. Of these, about 75 percent were either Hispanic, black or Native American/Alaskan, suggesting that the risk of infection among otherwise healthy young people is next to nil. Reporting covid cases is like talking about how many birds migrated this year, joked one Zero Hedge commenter, adding that it is beyond useless. If people are afraid, they can stay home, wrote another. They dont get to impose masks on others so they can feel safe. Their rights end where my body begins. If you liked reading this story, you can find more like it at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: ZeroHedge.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com A mother-of-two with postnatal depression took her own life weeks after the birth of her son, her family has revealed. Shaciara McDowell, 18, of Ballymena, in Co Antrim, died on September 7, just four weeks after the birth of her son Cahir. Her sister Vanessa McDowell, 27, shared the news of her death as she urged mothers suffering with mental health issues to speak out and not feel 'ashamed'. Shaciara McDowell, 18, of Ballymena, in Co Antrim, died on September 7, just four weeks after the birth of her son Cahir. Pictured, in hospital with Cahir and partner Corey-Lee Shaciara had struggled with postnatal depression shortly after the birth of her daughter Eire, now one, Vanessa explained, but was not offered sufficient support. 'Her [Shaciara's] post-natal depression kind of kicked in around three weeks, so it was quite quick,' Vanessa said in an interview with Belfast Live. 'She also suffered with post-natal depression with her first child and it too set in quick, and I think that is what's most upsetting, the system knew she suffered the first time and they should have just been there a lot more of her second time round.' In May Shaciara shared a post asking for donations National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to be made to in honour of her birthday. She wrote: 'For my birthday this year, I'm asking for donations to National Suicide Prevention Lifeline '1-800-273-TALK (8255)'. 'I've chosen this charity because their mission means a lot to me, and I hope that you'll consider contributing as a way of celebrating with me. Every little bit will help me reach my goal.' Shaciara struggled with postnatal depression after the birth of her daughter Eire, now one. Pictured, Shaciara with Cahir (left). Right, Cahir in a t-shirt printed with his mum's face Vanessa, 27, the eldest of nine siblings, said Shaciara did not like to 'burden' others with her problems and did not confide in her family about the extent of her struggles. Vanessa continued: 'Even if she did bring it up she would be like, "it's alright though, I'm fine". She didn't want to talk about it but that's just the place she was in, in her head.' Vanessa called on women to speak out about their mental health issues and to seek help when neeeded. She added: 'Don't buy into the stigma of medication makes you weak, if you have cancer you would treat yourself for that cancer, the brain is just as important, look after your brain.' Her sister Vanessa McDowell, 27, shared the news of her death as she urged mothers suffering with mental health issues to speak out and not feel 'ashamed'. Pictured, the sisters together A photo taken in the hours after Cahir's birth shows Shaciara with her partner Corey-Lee and their newborn son in hospital. Other photos show her cradling one-year-old Eire, who was affectionately called 'princess' by her grandmother. Vanessa described her sister as 'sassy' and 'an absolutely brilliant mummy' with so much to give her children. The family has set up a GoFundMe page in a bid to help support Shaciara's son and daughter. The description reads: 'Shaciara suffered from severe post natal depression and didnt get the help from the system that she needed along with so many other young girls and women. 'Shaciara McDowell the daughter of Muriel McDowell and Sister to seven siblings leaves behind 2 beautiful children Eire and Cahir. 'This is to help the family with the unexpected costs and to support them through this devastating tragedy. Any support would be greatly appreciated.' Bihar's COVID-19 recovery rate on Thursday touched a new high of 91.17 per cent while the caseload rose to 1.64 lakh as 1,592 people tested positive for the infection, a health bulletin said. With seven fatalities in past 24 hours, the COVID-19 death toll in the state increased to 855, the bulletin said. The novel caseload stands at 1,64,223, including 13,646 active cases and 1,49,722 recoveries, the bulletin said. A total of 1,465 people have been cured of the disease in past 24 hours improving the state's recovery rate to 91.17 per cent from 91.16 per cent on Wednesday. At present, the state's COVID-19 recovery rate is 13 per cent more than the national average, it said. It has been exactly a month since the states recovery rate has been on the rise, except for September 3 and 4. The state has conducted 1,05,128 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours, while a total of 53.07 lakh samples have been examined so far, it said. Of the 1,592 new cases, Patna district accounted for the highest number of 290 cases, followed by 96 in Purnea, 95 in Araria, 88 in Saharsa and 75 in Bhagalpur. Of the seven fatalities, two deaths were reported from Rohtas and one each from Patna, Bhagalpur, Buxar, Khagaria and Nalanda districts, the bulletin 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.) Stratovolcano 5230 m (17,159 ft)Ecuador, -2S / -78.34W(4 sur 5)1934-ongoing (as of 2020), 1728-1916, 1628 (first observation) - ?Explosive. In historic time: frequent, intermittent strombolian activity If you havn't done it yet,to get one of the fastest volcano news online: IG reported a high level of activity at Sangay during 15-22 September. Seismicity was characterized by high levels of explosions, harmonic tremor, long-period earthquakes, and signals indicating emissions. Weather clouds sometimes prevented visual observations of the volcano, but the Washington VAAC and IG webcams recorded daily ash plumes that rose as high as 2 km above the summit and drifted in multiple directions. ... Explosive eruption of the volcano continues at moderately high levels. ... : Places libres / : Depart garanti / : Quelques places disponibles / : Groupe ferme Depuis 2005, VolcanoDiscovery propose des voyages en petits groupes, des randonnees et du trekking, ainsi que des expeditions pour voir des volcans actuellement en activite, des voyages photographiques dans de nombreuses regions d'activite volcanique a travers le monde. Volcanoes in the land of fire and ice. Iceland is one of the volcanically most active places on earth. Bromo is one of Indonesia's most visited volcanoes. It is the most active vent inside the huge Tengger caldera and erupts every few years. Complete list and interactive map of current earthquakes in California. We're proud to present our 2020 volcano calendar: 13 different and attractive images of volcanoes, volcanic landscapes and phenomena taken during volcano tours over the past two years. Mayon on Luzon Island, towering above Legazpi city is famous for being one of the most perfectly symmetrical stratovolcanoes in the world. It is also one of the most active and most dangerous volcanoes (not only) in the Philippines. Support us - Help us upgrade our services! Maintaining our website and our free apps does require, however, considerable time and resources. We're aiming to achieve uninterrupted service wherever an earthquake or volcano eruption unfolds, and your donations can make it happen! Every donation will be highly appreciated. Improved multilanguage support Tsunami alerts Faster responsiveness Earthquake archive from 1900 onwards Detailed quake stats Additional seismic data sources Download and Upgrade the Volcanoes & Earthquakes app to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online: Android | IOS to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online: We truly love working to bring you the latest volcano and earthquake data from around the world.We need financing to increase hard- and software capacity as well as support our editor team.If you find the information useful and would like to support our team in integrating further features, write great content, and in upgrading our soft- and hardware, please PayPal or Online credit card payment )., these features have been added recently: As private companies move into the spaceship business, NASA is gearing up to film its first private-sector ad campaign on the International Space Station. Up to ten bottles of a new Estee Lauder skincare serum will arrive at the space station later this month. NASA astronauts will film them in the station's microgravity environment with the makeup company using footage in a social media campaign, NASA told the DailyMail.com. The product is a new version of Estee Lauder's Advanced Night Repair skin serum, CNN reports, expected to launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft along with 8,000 more pounds of cargo. Agency policy prohibits astronauts from actually appearing in any ads or endorsing any products. Scroll down for video Up to ten bottles of a new Estee Lauder skincare serum will arrive at the ISS later this month to be filmed by NASA astronauts in the station's microgravity environment. The footage will then be used in ad campaigns and other promo materials Estee Lauder president Stephane de la Faverie all but confirmed the plan last month during an online panel at the the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics's virtual Ascend Summit. 'I'm a risk taker, and that tends to basically come with ideas that are a little bit, you know, outside of the normal, traditional ways of doing marketing,' Faverie said. 'We're constantly pushing the boundaries of how to showcase our products.' Space Commerce Matters will pay NASA $128,000, according to New Scientist, which includes astronaut time at roughly $17,500 an hour. The Trump administration has made it clear it wants the private sector to start picking up the check for space exploration. The product is a new version of Estee Lauder's Advanced Night Repair skin serum, expected to launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft along with 8,000 more pounds of cargo this month. 'We're constantly pushing the boundaries of how to showcase our products,' said Estee Lauder president Stephane de la Faverie NASA announced it was open for business in a June 2019 directive that said it would be using commercial enterprises to 'lay the foundation for America to maintain a constant human presence in low-Earth orbit (LEO).' 'NASA will partner with industry to achieve this commercial economy as the agency moves full speed ahead toward its goal of landing the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024.' The Estee Lauder campaign is just one of numerous enterprises slipping the surly bonds of Earth. NASA is now allocating 5 percent of its annual ISS payload to commercial activities. This week, a television company announced plans to send the winner of a reality TV competition to the station in 2023. And NASA has also signed an agreement with Adidas to collaborate on gear that could include astronauts testing clothes and sneakers on the ISS. In May NASA confirmed it was working with Tom Cruise on shooting a movie on the station. But will all this business to conduct will astronauts still have time for, you know, space exploration? Todd Humphreys, an aerospace engineer whose experiments have been conducted on the ISS, says makeup, sneakers and Hollywood action heroes 'gets in the way of real science.' 'But if the circus is necessary to maintain the station' he told New Scientist, 'and serious lab work can still be done when the cameras aren't rolling, it's probably a good trade-off.' Susan Burton is the founder and president of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, which helps women rebuild their lives after prison. (A New Way of Life) In Susan Burton's living room in Compton, there hangs a piece of art: a picture of a little Black girl with watery eyes in a tattered white dress. She holds a Bible, and verses from it rain down around her. "I think art has the ability to depict information and imagination, to show beauty, and to show the history of the nation and the world," Burton says. "It's an expression." The activist and author relates to art differently now that she has seen "Aggie," one of the five films featured at this month's Justice on Trial Film Festival. The annual event is run by A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a Watts-based nonprofit that helps women rebuild their lives after prison. Burton oversees the organization as its founder and president. "Aggie" tells the story of Agnes Aggie Gund, who sold Roy Lichtensteins Pop Art painting "Masterpiece" for $100 million to found the Art for Justice Fund, which addresses mass incarceration in the U.S. Gund, Burton says, expanded her own interpretation of art and who gets to enjoy it. "Aggie," which screens Sept. 20 in the Justice on Trial Film Festival, explores the life of art collector and philanthropist Agnes "Aggie" Gund, right. (A New Way of Life) The virtual Justice on Trial Film Festival will take place Thursday through Sept. 21, with one film screened online per night. Tickets are free and can be found on the festival's website, along with showtimes. The festival, now in its eighth year, uses films and panel discussions to highlight people impacted by the justice system. This year's lineup will feature the documentaries "Pushout," "Belly of the Beast," "The Third Strike" and "The Gathering." Animated shorts created by incarcerated artists from the Hidden Lives Illuminated Project will be shown before each film. Burton herself went to prison six times for drug-related offenses before seeking help at a Santa Monica treatment facility. In 1998, she founded A New Way of Life, and three years ago she chronicled her journey in a book, "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom granted Burton a pardon. Story continues Burton, 69, recently talked to The Times about why this year's Justice on Trial offerings are as timely and relevant as ever. Susan Burton attends her organization's fundraising gala on Dec. 9, 2012, in Los Angeles. (Todd Williamson / Invision/Associated Press) How do movies and Hollywood at large portray the justice system and those incarcerated in it? Historically, there hasn't been an accurate portrayal of the justice system. More recently the truth of the atrocities of our justice system have been shown. So the Justice on Trial Film Festival gives us a real picture, through the documentaries that our filmmakers have made. But it seems as though the big-budget films have a way of [portraying] the justice system as being true and accurate. And it depicts the most horrific of crimes and people feel as though this is the real reality of people and of the justice system. Detectives just [go for] the most convenient suspect and label them, and it's not true. And we see that with many of the people who have been freed after spending decades and decades and decades incarcerated. We can look at the [Central Park] Five and see that. We can look at the work of Bryan Stevenson [portrayed by Michael B. Jordan in "Just Mercy"]. And that's one of the recent films that's been made about [this], that was a big-budget film. But the Justice on Trial Film Festival saw all of these different films being made by struggling filmmakers who really wanted to tell the truth and really wanted to show viewers what really happens in our justice system. So, through a conversation with Michelle Alexander, the author of "The New Jim Crow," we had a conversation about her book and about documentaries. And we came up with the Justice on Trial Film Festival. Have you seen any fictional Hollywood films that you think do a decent, fair job of portraying the justice system? I have not seen and that doesn't mean it's not out there but I have not seen any fictional Hollywood films that give an accurate portrayal of the justice system. The other thing I want to make clear is that I'm not saying that there are not atrocities on one side, but there are not as many atrocities as there are portrayed to be. It sounds like you think Hollywood is dramatizing these issues too much. Yeah. Dramatizing and painting a picture of Black folks in a way that's not accurate. I can think of one film that comes to mind right now, that I just felt like did not give [an] accurate portrayal there's scenes that keep with the tone of how ruthless and how hard Black men are. And that was a scene in the movie "Harriet" [about Harriet Tubman]. And in the movie, there was a scene where this Black man stomped this Black woman to death. And it just kept with the mantra of how "deadly" and "vicious" Black men are. And I wonder where that scene came from. And it was a real turnoff for me. Before each film, you're showing short films made by incarcerated artists from the Hidden Lives Illuminated project. I've been back to that prison in Pennsylvania. And I talked with those men. And many of those men claim innocence. And Hidden Lives portrays the talent that's locked away. The promise of individuals that have been locked away in cages. And these are innocent people; they claim to be innocent. I care to believe that some of them are innocent. But even beyond their innocence, the amount of years that they've been inside is ridiculous. "The Gathering," which will be shown Sept. 21, centers on 16 exonerees released off of Death Row. (A New Way of Life) Those short films reminded me of a magazine article by Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury," which made me wonder: Is art a luxury for incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people? Art has been something that I have viewed as a luxury. And I view it as a luxury because I was so busy to survive, so focused on trying to survive life, that I didn't have the ability to step back and to absorb art. So now that I'm able to absorb art, I see it as a necessity. Is it possible to bring art to incarcerated folks? It is possible. And I think it's a necessity to help people to develop a lens of healing. And a lens of expression. And a lens of hope. Are those the criteria that you used to pick films for the festival? Every film that goes into the film festival must have a social justice lens and needs to expose either a solution to mass incarceration or an issue connected to mass incarceration. So our theme is exposing injustice. And showing solutions. You appear in the first film, Pushout, as an expert on educational discipline against Black girls. What was that experience like? I had an experience that I write about in my book, "Becoming Ms. Burton," of being a 12-year-old going on 13-year-old girl in my first year of junior high. And I got pushed out of school because my dress, the principal said, was two inches too short. And so it was kind of full circle for me to be able to tell that story that happened 50 years ago. And has escalated. And I just thank [screenplay writer] Monique Morris for exposing it, and calling it what it is. Friday night features "Belly of the Beast," a documentary about reproductive injustice. Have you experienced failures of reproductive justice in your own work? Yes, I have. I've seen women who have came to A New Way of Life, and one woman, I remember distinctly, had been given a hysterectomy while incarcerated. And during the hysterectomy, the surgeon accidentally sliced her liver, and she was on medication for the rest of her life. Not only did she have a hysterectomy, she got a bad surgery. And she was on medication, and it just stunned me: This woman, how horrible her medical procedure was. "Belly of the Beast" will screen Sept. 18 as part of the Justice on Trial Film Festival. (A New Way of Life) This has been an ongoing problem, but right now there's discussion about forced sterilization happening in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. It's barbaric how people are treated inside, and [Tuesday] night at my inspection [of the county jail system, working with the Sybil Brand Commission], I had to see that stuff. It's horrible to see. And I can bring it to the light, but what type of resources will be put to work into that? What kind of justice? So there's the injustice. But there's injustice on top of injustice. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 20:16:32|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Natural Resources has donated its updated 30-meter resolution global land cover data to the United Nations (UN), China Science Daily reported Thursday. The 2020 data was launched on Tuesday. Collected in 966 datasets, the data illustrates 10 types of land cover including arable land, forest, grassland, shrubland, wetland, water, tundra, artificial land surface, bare land, glacier and firn. The complete 30-meter resolution land cover of the Antarctic was generated for the first time, helping the 2020 data achieve full coverage of the 149 million square km of global land surface. Meanwhile, 67 percent of image data was captured by China's independently developed satellites. In 2014, China first launched the 2000 version and 2010 version of 30-meter resolution global land cover data products and made a donation to the UN. All three versions document the changes in global land use and landscape patterns within the past 20 years, while providing support for studying global change, boosting sustainable development and improving the global governance system. Global land cover distribution and changes can show the interaction between human activities and nature. The data has been used by specialized organs of the UN and more than 130 countries. Enditem Customers have their nails done near the Baragwanath taxi rank in Soweto, South Africa, Wednesday Sept. 16, 2020. South African president Cyril Ramaphosa is scheduled to address the nation later in the day, as case numbers and death from Covid-19 hit the lowest in months. (AP) Cape Town: About 12 million people in South Africa have probably been infected with the coronavirus, but that startlingly high number has not caused a similarly high death rate and might indicate a widespread level of immunity, the country's health minister says. More than 20 per cent of South Africa's population of 58 million have had the virus at some point, Dr. Zweli Mkhize estimated this week. He cited studies that found the presence of coronavirus antibodies in blood samples taken from parts of the population. The findings have prompted the government to launch a national study, he said. "South Africa has seen the surge receding, and thus raises the question of the level of immunity that may already be existing in society," he said. Other studies have indicated that up to 40% of the population might be immune to the virus, Mkhize said. Some South African experts suggest that Africa's most developed economy may be approaching herd immunity, but scientists believe at least 70-80 per cent of a population needs to be immune before there's any effect. And with COVID-19 it's unclear how long that immunity might last. With confirmed virus cases dropping significantly, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday evening announced that South Africa's borders will reopen as of October 1, with visitors required to show negative coronavirus test results no older than 72 hours before departure. Visitors will not be permitted from countries deemed at high risk, Ramaphosa said, not naming names. Ramaphosa also announced further relaxed restrictions on public gatherings, to a maximum of 250 people indoors and 500 outdoors. The president warned that the second wave of the pandemic in some countries has been worse than the first. "A second wave would be devastating to our country," he said. South Africa's number of confirmed virus cases have dropped in recent weeks after a peak in late July that saw the country recording up to 15,000 cases daily, and raised fears that health services in some major cities might collapse. Official figures showed just 772 new cases on Tuesday. South Africa is also seeing declines in hospital admissions, people in intensive care units and deaths attributed to COVID-19, health minister Mkhize said. "Consistency across these indicators reassures us that, indeed, we are in the midst of a trough in the pandemic," he said. South Africa has just over 650,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the government's latest official count, the eighth-highest caseload in the world. At its peak, South Africa was the fifth most affected country, behind the United States, India, Brazil and Russia, which all have much larger populations. Experts have tried for months to figure out why South Africa's official death rate from COVID-19 is low 15,641 people have died, according to government figures. There were fears at the start of the pandemic that poverty, crowded living conditions, restricted access to clean water and the high prevalence of tuberculosis and HIV would put South Africa, and Africa at large, in danger of millions of deaths. So far, that hasn't happened. South Africa is by far the worst affected country in Africa with nearly half of the continent's 1.3 million confirmed cases. There have been 33,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the 54 countries in Africa, which has a population of 1.3 billion people. That death count is less than the number of people who have died in either the U.K. or Italy, and far less than the United States' 195,000 confirmed deaths. But Africa's figures, tallied by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rely on figures from the individual countries and many have extremely limited testing. The number of South Africa's actual deaths from COVID-19 is expected to be considerably higher. From early May until mid-September, the country has recorded 44,000 more deaths than the historic average. Many of those deaths are believed to be from COVID-19, but the people weren't tested. Other deaths could be people with other diseases who avoided care because of COVID-19 infection fears or couldn't access it because resources were diverted to the pandemic, experts have said. "We think roughly 30,000 rather than 15,000 people have died from COVID-19," Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at Johannesburg's University of the Witswatersrand, said in a webinar this week. "We must appreciate that there had been many deaths outside of hospitals." Even with that higher level of deaths, South Africa's mortality rate from COVID-19 appears relatively low. Some health experts think that millions in South Africa's poor, densely populated townships "which many thought would be terribly affected by the virus" may have generated an immunity to the virus because of the previous and frequent spread of other coronaviruses, including those for the common cold and flu. "They have been exposed, they developed this key cell immunity which helps them to fight the severe effects of COVID-19," said Madhi, the lead researcher on a clinical trial in South Africa of the coronavirus vaccine that Oxford University is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. "They may have achieved an underpinning immunity." Half of the respondents in the latest Focus survey, 50.1 percent, believe foreigners in Slovakia cannot be trusted. Most people who do not know any foreigner living in Slovakia personally reside in the Banska Bystrica Region, 54.6 percent, a new Focus survey for Milan Simecka Foundation has found. (Source: Comenius University/Facebook) Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled In summer 2016, Francisco Mejia was supposed to fully enjoy his wedding day. But this New Yorker did not get to do that as he had to watch his new Slovak mother-in-law, upset about her daughter getting together with a brown-skin man right after the knot was tied, make unkind comments about him to the guests instead. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement With prejudices held against him by his sister-in-law as well, Mejia said: She told me shed thought Id be trouble like those Roma in eastern Slovakia. Mejia is not alone with such experience in Slovakia. A recent Focus polling agency poll, surveying 1,009 respondents for the Milan Simecka Foundation (NMS), shows that an overwhelming portion of Slovaks would not accept foreigners as part of their families. The first part of the poll published in June found that the degree of social distance towards foreigners varies both in terms of country of origin, as well as other characteristics. And in terms of proximity, meaning the acceptance of foreigners as neighbours. A case in point: while 32.7 percent of the respondents would not accept an American as their neighbour, the figure is slightly higher, 40.3 percent, when asked about an American as a potential family member. Figures are much higher in the case of potential Muslim, Vietnamese, and Black family members. Experience of Americans, refusal of the Vietnamese The result is not surprising or specific to Slovakia in itself, Ivana Rapos Bozic, sociologist of Masaryk University in Brno said, noting that a family is the most intimate space for most people. Social distancing from others is thus common in this case. Yet Slovaks have long been less accepting of foreigners in Slovakia according to previous Focus surveys for NMS. Reasons are unknown. In the case of Mejia, who is of Dominican heritage, the reason appears to be related to race. ABINGDON, Va. Betsy White praised her staff, construction officials and a long list of donors at Tuesdays ribbon-cutting for the Art Lab at the William King Museum of Art. This is the museums new education center. And it really is a bright, bright beacon for the future, said White, executive director of the museum. The Art Lab is also part of a master plan for expanding the Abingdon art institution. This is just a second step on the way to finishing our campus, White said. We intend to redo our entire campus over the next 18 months. Partially open since earlier this summer, the Art Lab features classrooms for children and adults plus artist studios in a brick building constructed as an addition to the old William King High School what is now the William King Museum of Art. This is a place where creativity connects all of us, said Laken Bridges, the museums director of higher education and adult learning. And we look forward to supporting the community and our region through classes and workshops. For years, the Art Lab building was used as a meeting space for the Washington County Board of Supervisors. This year, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, construction continued on the project. Its a wonderful building that started its life as an education space, White said. So, now, its another education space one that is really very futuristic as well as something for the present. State Del. Israel OQuinn, R-Bristol, praised the staff of the art center and the project for repurposing of a good but slightly run-down building that now has a new life. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Former FBI director James Comey has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30 regarding Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation into whether President Trumps campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) announced Wednesday. The day of reckoning is upon us when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, said Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate panel, in an appearance on Fox News. I appreciate Mr. Comey coming before the committee and he will be respectfully treated but asked hard questions. We are negotiating with [former Deputy FBI Director Andrew] McCabe; we are hoping to get him without a subpoena time will tell. Graham added that former special counsel Robert Mueller had declined a request to testify about his own investigation, saying he doesnt have enough time. Ahead of Comeys testimony, the committee will likely interview two FBI employees who interviewed Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, the primary source for Christopher Steeles Trump dossier. Graham has been following up on an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general that found under Comeys leadership, the FBI had misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get surveillance orders against former Trump aide Carter Page. The report said the FBI used the Steele dossier as justification to surveil Page, but did not disclose that during interviews with the FBI and Justice Department in January 2017 Danchenko had warned that Steele embellished parts of the dossier. Graham said he aims to uncover which FBI officials were told about Danchenkos statements during the interviews in which an FBI counterintelligence agent and a supervisory intelligence analyst took part. Now who did the intel analyst and the case agent tell? Graham said. Were going to talk to them in the next week to 10 days. The case agent has been identified as Steven Somma, a veteran counterintelligence investigator in the FBIs New York Field Office, the Daily Caller reported. Somma, who was involved in several aspects of Crossfire Hurricane, was the first FBI investigator to suggest applying for a FISA warrant against Page. Story continues In May, Graham requested documents related to FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten, though the FBI has declined to say whether he is the analyst mentioned in the IG report. More from National Review 401 homes to be built on either side of A339 Detailed plans to build 401 homes near Vodafones headquarters in Newbury have been recommended for approval. The 52-acre site in Shaw-cum-Donnington, which is currently used for farming, has been split into two. David Wilson Homes wants to build 222 homes on the western side, while Taylor Wimpey is looking to construct 179 homes on the eastern side. Outline planning permission for 401 homes on the site, which is split by the A339, was refused in November 2015, but that decision was overturned in March 2017 following an appeal. The two developers have drawn up more detailed plans and West Berkshire Councils Western Area Planning Committee is expected to approve their reserved matters applications at a meeting on Wednesday, September 23. According to the plans, the main access to the site will be from the A339 Vodafone roundabout and car parking will be provided on streets, shared plots and private driveways within the site. There are also plans for a primary school, a local centre and a large area of public space, but a report prepared by planning officers states they are not for consideration as part of these reserved matters applications. At Wednesdays meeting, the planning committee is expected to approve David Wilson Homes reserved matters application for 222 homes. The developer wants to build a mix of homes, ranging from one-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom detached homes, on the western section of the site. The developer has promised to provide 89 affordable homes and plant a woodland and tree buffer around the site. Planning officers have recommended this application for approval, saying the good quality appearance for this modern residential development would harmonise with the character of the area. On the eastern section of the site, Taylor Wimpey wants to build 179 homes, ranging from one-bedroom apartments to five-bedroom detached houses. According to the plans, there will be 71 affordable homes. Planning officers say the reserved matters should be approved if the developer can make several alterations to address technical highways requirements within three months. The officers want the developer to install traffic calming measures, make minor changes to car parking areas for the flats and alter sight lines at various junctions. South Asia one of the Hardest-hit regions with Climate Change India oi-Oneindia Staff By Anuj Cariappa New Delhi, Sep 17: In a re-set world with Covid-19 and prolong lockdown, accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is much more important now for the United Nation Member States like India and Nepal. Notwithstanding the challenges, the SDGs (Global Goals) should be redefined to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. With reimagining South Asian Cooperation at large, under aegis of its India-Nepal Centre and in association with the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) and Sterlite Technologies Ltd, PHDCCI organised the webinar: "Redefining SDG Enablers for India and Nepal". In his keynote address, Abhas Jha, Practice Manager (Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management), South Asia Region, World Bank said that climate change is one of the most focused SDG out of 17 SDGs. He reflected on the fundamental similarities between COVID-19 and Climate Change that included potential simultaneous exogenous shocks to supply and demand; renewed focus on the long-term resilience of the system for short and long term performance and, the need for global and regional coordination and collaborations. Talking about climate vulnerabilities in South Asia, he shared that South Asia is one of the hardest-hit regions with climate change. He also cited about the effects of climate change on sectors like poverty; melting snow and glaciers, decrease in water levels, rise in sea level, flood-related damages, the decline in living standards, and many more. Jha emphasized the need to strengthen energy cooperation in South Asia and complement each other with resources and, there are a lot of positive developments for the same. The World Bank has estimated these corporations can help in the short run as it can address electricity shortages and, medium run, it can maximise climate mitigation benefits and strengthen resilience. He concluded on a note that the changing geo-strategic fundamentals in the region will have impact on the South Asian countries' bid to achieve SDGs. The pandemic has made us realise to look at technology-driven solutions for minimising the obstacles in meeting the SDGs goals. Mitigating actions are important and, India has been in the lead, said Amb Manjeev Singh Puri, India's former Ambassador to Nepal. Amb Puri mentioned that India lives in harmony with nature and, SDGs are a fundamental inter-governmental process. India has been a great leader in the solar power sector and climate disaster resilient infrastructure. Amb Puri highlighted that Nepal is a stable nation with the availability of resources and services. It has great institutions and, it now needs to emphasize on increasing wealth creation and growth. Nepal needs to collaborate with India in its projects and be more competitive for the world. COVID-19 is a wakeup call and, India-Nepal needs to grow with the support of each other. Yugal Joshi, Director, Ministry of Jal Shakti, GoI mentioned that all SDG goals are interconnected and, public participation especially of women and children, are the keys to achieve these goals. He mentioned that the Swatch Bharat Mission was successfully implemented with the integration of 4Ps that was the political leadership of the Hon'ble Prime Minister; public finance; strong partnership and, public participation. During the pandemic, under Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, we build community toilets that gave employment to laborers. In Jal Jeevan Mission, we have been able to give water connection facilities to a greater share of the population. Our mission has been to integrate rural population, educate them, and create awareness within them, said Joshi. Omair Ahmad, South Asia Editor, The Third Pole pointed on the need for inclusive developmental framework and how the global pandemic has made the economies, fragile and uncertain. He called for a more resilient economic structure. The transition that needs to happen between India-Nepal has been an energy transition and including local action across the ground for stable prosperity. We need to find partnerships between developing and developed countries to make energy transitions. While talking about the role of the private sector towards SDGs, Akanksha Sharma, Head-Social Impact & Sustainability, Sterlite Technologies Ltd shared that we cannot deny the role of technology, which has gone hand in hand with economic development. We need to integrate technology solutions for mitigating the SDGs. She emphasized on the need for creating social impact with the deeper government and industry interface, with this, the SDGs goals can be attained in India. Similar actions would be imperative in Nepal as well. Akhilesh Upadhyay, Senior Fellow, IIDS, Kathmandu mentioned that SDG's are the natural evolution of MDG's, so the priority is MDG's. Growth and jobs are the focus for us along with clean and green energy are other focus sectors for us. Nepal will need continuous investment and, it has to rely on foreign investment. SDG goals need to be embedded in the policy-making from the grass-root level and, there needs to faster implementation. He added that contraction in the Indian economy and other major global economies will have adverse impact on Nepal, primarily so, as Nepal's economy is remittance-drive and has exposure to the ongoing economic meltdown across the world. Sanjay Aggarwal, Senior Vice President, PHDCCI stressed on the need to look upon SDGs along with the pandemic for the betterment of the world. While COVID-19 and lockdown have massively disrupted the economy and society, looking at solutions for SDG is a pivotal concern, he added. The SDGs goals should be redefined to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. We have to keep on stressing the issues of environment and, as part of the world, we need to work together to mitigate the challenges of climate change, said Aggarwal. Amb K V Rajan, Chairman, India-Nepal Centre, PHDCCI and India's Former Ambassador to Nepal chaired the Session and ruminated on the deep-rooted relationship shared by India and Nepal, growing itself in diverse verticals, encouraging business and trade between industries. Talking about SDGs, there is need to intensify actions across the society and strengthen the inclusive framework. He also said that the growth should have a humane face and the industry has to play a vital role for attaining it. In his concluding remarks, Saurabh Sanyal, Secretary-General, PHDCCI recounted about India-Nepal Centre's unwavering commitment for strengthening India-Nepal relations and working for the crucial matters including SDGs. He said that along with PHDCCI's Strategic Partner CNI, it aims to work for deepening the regional and sub-regional economic cooperation. Also, both the institutions are working under aegis of India-Nepal Centre, for promoting the integration among Asian Chambers. The other panelists were Bishal Thapa, Economist & MD, Saral Urja; Atul K Thakur, Nodal Coordinator, India-Nepal Centre, PHDCCI; Kedar Nuepane, Board Member, Nepal Policy Institute and Jayandra Shrestha, Development Management Expert. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, September 17, 2020, 10:05 [IST] BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, who attended the Parliaments ongoing Monsoon Session, today said he has tested positive for the coronavirus infection. Last Friday I had got examined and was tested negative, hence attended the Parliament. But last night I had headache and mild fever, got examined and have tested positive for Covid-19," he said in a tweet. Operating under strict protocols and medication as advised by doctors. Those who interacted with me may please consult doctors." On Wednesday, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said he has tested positive for Covid-19 and has isolated himself. He also requested those who had come in contact with him to get tested. Yesterday, I was feeling weak and consulted my doctor. During the course of my check-up, I have been tested COVID-19 positive. I am at present doing well with the blessings and good wishes of all. I have isolated myself," said the Union Minister of of Road Transport and Highways in a tweet, urging those who have come in contact with him to undergo tests. Mediapersons authorised to cover the ongoing Monsoon Session must tale Rapid Antigen Tests for Covid-19 mandatorily and on a daily basis at the reception of the Parliament House. Testing at the reception will take place from 9am to 2pm. Officials of Parliament will also have to undergo mandatory testing. BJP Rajya Sabha member Ashok Gasti, who was undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at a private hospital in Bengaluru, passed on late Thursday night. He had tested positive for coronavirus on September 2. The hospital authorities where the first-time MP was being treated said Gasti was critically ill with multi-organ failure on life support system. Several members of Parliament including Home Minister Amit Shah and RLP MP Hanuman Beniwal had tested positive for Covid-19. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) announced a $4,000 fine against the Dearborn Heights Home Depot, 25451 Michigan Ave., for violations against the COVID-19 safety guidelines. The MIOSHA investigations determined that these employers were not taking precautions to protect employees and their communities from the spread of COVID-19, MIOSHA Director Bart Pickelman said. Failure to follow guidelines puts everyone at risk and these citations are meant to reiterate the employers responsibility to protect their employees. Home Depot was one of 19 businesses that had fines announced Sept. 17. The fine is for several allegations that the business violated workplace safety requirements, including failing to designate a COVID-19 workplace supervisor, failing to conduct a daily health screening, failing to require face coverings when social distance could not be maintained and failure to maintain and/or retain documentation for daily health screening. MIOSHA investigated after an anonymous complaint was filed. The fine could have been up to $7,000. The cited companies have 15 working days from receipt of the MIOSHA citations to contest the violations and penalties. The citations include suggestions to fix the hazards to protect employees. Employers must provide proof to MIOSHA that they have made the necessary adjustments. Calls to Home Depots corporate offices for comment were not returned. Kathmandu, September 17 As many as 41 companies have expressed their interest to supply 55 models of electric buses to Nepal. In late June, the government had issued a public notice calling proposals to supply electric buses, and in response, it received 41 proposals, informs Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport. In December 2018, the government had decided to purchase 300 electric buses for public transportation purpose within four months. However, it was not implemented due to different reasons. Now, the ministry claims the Covid-19 outbreak delayed the process. Most of the interested suppliers sending proposals to the government now are Chinese. There are some proposals from Australia and India also. Now, the ministry will develop a specification, and move forward a procurement process by calling for tenders to supply the buses. An official in the ministry says the specification will be finalised considering the status of Nepali roads. The government has not decided how many buses will be procured in the first phase. A still from Mike Tyus' recent performance at the Broad, part of a series called "L.A. Intersections." (Jeremy Glaholt / The Broad) A few months ago at the Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, curators invited more than a dozen area dancers, musicians and poets to explore the galleries and create or adapt works inspired by what they saw. There, across four days, musicians Georgia Anne Muldrow, San Cha and Mx. Matias, serpentwithfeet and Sudan Archives performed songs; writers Amy Uyematsu, Shonda Buchanan and Luis J. Rodriguez presented their work; and Mike Tyus, Jermaine Spivey and Spenser Theberge, d. Sabela grimes and Rosanna Tavarez performed site-specific new dance works. The Broad museum filmed the performances for a new series called "L.A. Intersections: Music, Language, Movement." The project aims to adapt its annual indoor and outdoor on-site events for the post-COVID-19 world. The first episode, which The Times is premiering below, delivers four riveting performances across its 20 minutes. Experimental pop artist serpentwithfeet, who has worked with artists including Bjork, the Haxan Cloak, Skrillex and Ty Dolla Sign, sings inside the Broad's Dr. Seuss-ian concrete stairwell. San Cha delivers beauty in a gallery alongside guitarist Mx. Matias. Dancer and Cirque du Soleil performer Mike Tyus moves in unison with a new composition by multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Harrington, one half of the electronic music duo Darkside. Writer and literary editor Shonda Buchanan presents a memorable reading of one of her pieces. The series was born out of necessity. When the pandemic shut down the performance scene, the Broad was in the process of planning its summer and fall outdoor programming. As the virus endured, the Broad's Ed Patuto says, the museum "made the decision to move from in-person events to virtual events and to adjust them thematically to address the current times." The original programs were to be organized around the museums fifth anniversary, which is Sunday. Patuto adds that another series is in the works. Focused on the musical influences of Jean-Michel Basquiat, for that series, says Patuto, "Terrace Martin and Quincy Jones Productions are talking about jazz artists such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, James Spooner, co-founder of Afro-Punk, is speaking about punk and no wave and Dr. Todd Boyd is drawing a line between bebop, Basquiat and hip-hop." Parts two and three of "L.A. Intersections: Music, Language, Movement" will arrive across the final two Thursdays of September. has officially conveyed its deep concern over India's banning the export of without due notice. The Indian government on Monday banned the export of all varieties of with immediate effect to increase availability and curb prices of the commodity in the domestic market. The latest abrupt announcement of the Government of on September 14, 2020 undermines the discussions that took place in 2019 and 2020 between the two friendly countries on the matter and the understanding shared, read the foreign ministry letter sent to through its High Commission in Dhaka. The letter, dated September 15, was made available to the media in the late hours of Wednesday. It requests the Indian High Commission to convey the message to authorities in New Delhi and take necessary measures to resume onion taking into consideration the excellent ties between the neighbours. In the letter, expressed its "deep concern" as the sudden announcement by directly affects the supply of essential food items in Bangladesh market. It pointed out that a secretary-level meeting between the commerce ministries of the two countries held on January 15-16, 2020 in Dhaka requested India not to impose export restriction on essential food items required by Bangladesh. The letter said the Bangladesh side also requested India to inform Dhaka ahead of time in case of any event necessitating such a restriction. The matter was also raised by Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina during her visit to India in October 2019. Earlier in the day, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said Dhaka has requested New Delhi to revoke its ban on onion export in line with an unwritten understanding. Even if, he said, India was required to take such a decision, New Delhi would inform Dhaka beforehand. "We are expecting a positive result soon in this regard, he said, while talking to reporters at his office. New Delhi in September last year had imposed a similar onion export ban, which, however, was lifted later on. Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has said the government was considering withdrawing import duty on the essential item. (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.) Not far from the Rezang La-Rechin La ridgeline that has emerged as a key friction point between Indian and Chinese troops, the Chushul brigade headquarters mess still houses artefacts including a gold statue of the Laughing Buddha seized by the Sikh regiments more than a century ago. The soldiers were part of an eight-nation mission to neutralise Chinas Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the last century, an uprising led by young farmers and workers against foreign influence. The British Army had brought in Sikh and Punjab regiments among others. The alliance troops moved into Beijing after the Boxer fighters threatened foreigners and kept 400 foreigners holed up in Beijings Foreign Legation Quarter. The siege lasted 55 days before 20,000 alliance troops reached Beijing and fought their way in. Nearly 8,000 of them belonged to the British Army from India, many of them Sikh and Punjab regiments. After the victory, according to an account by one Indian sepoy, the British army indulged in looting: French and Russian troops killed civilians and raped women. Regiments decorated for lifting Boxer Rebellion siege 91 Punjab Regiment 24 Punjab Regiment 20 Brownlows Punjabis 51 Sikh Regiment 14 Sikh Regiment 7 Rajput Regiment 122 Rajputana Infantry Regiment 4 Gorkha Regiment 88 Carnatic Infantry Regiment 6 Jat Light Infantry Regiment 15 Cavalry Regiment 2 Lancers Regiment 130 Baluch Regiment and 126 Baluch Regiment The statue of the Laughing Buddha at the army mess in Chushul was one of the items brought back by the soldiers. A gilded bronze bell dating back to the 1368-1644 Ming dynasty - one of the missing 16 - looted by a British general, was eventually returned by the Indian Army to Beijings Temple of Heaven in 1995. In his seminal book, Indias China War, Australian journalist Neville Maxwell said the Chinese leadership used the humiliation suffered after the revolution to build a movement to restore the country. Maxwell also believed there was a link between this mindset and the 1962 war. An Indian army commander said this historical context could be a reason why the Chinas Peoples Liberation Army psy-ops focuses so much on the Punjabi, or Sikh soldiers. Chinas PLA has installed loudspeakers at the friction points that spew its propaganda on the standoff, accuse New Delhi of escalating tensions to divert from domestic issues and even belt out Punjabi pop numbers aimed at the Indian soldiers deployed to counter PLA. India and China have held several rounds of talks at the military and diplomatic level. The last one was at the level of external affairs minister S Jaishankar who had a two-hour-long meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow that helped ease tensions between the two countries. But there is no evidence yet that a resolution is round the corner. New Delhi is not impressed by the Chinese political rhetoric that India needs to disengage first, that the genesis of the present stand-off lies in August 5, 2019 nullification of article 370 and the redrawn Indian map or that, as the Chinese envoy Sun Weidong puts it, both sides need to meet halfway to restore peace at the border. India believes that China should restore status quo ante as prevailing on April 20 this year when the PLA parked itself closer to the Line of Actual Control, setting off a series of face-offs with Indian army patrol parties at several locations along the LAC in Ladakh and elsewhere. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Graphic photos that surfaced online this week appear to show deep bruises on the face of a Black man who died following a police chase in Louisiana last year, raising new questions about whether his injuries were caused by the crash that ended the chase or an ensuing struggle with state troopers. The family of 49-year-old Ronald Greene also released images of the SUV involved in the May 2019 crash showing that the vehicle appeared to have sustained only minor damage to its drivers side. The juxtaposition fueled calls for State Police to release body-camera footage of the chase and what the agency recently acknowledged was a struggle to take Greene into custody after he drove off the road in rural northern Louisiana near Monroe. State Police have declined to release the video or comment on the photos due to ongoing investigations of Greenes death. These photos are atrocious, said Eugene W. Collins, president of the Baton Rouge branch of the NAACP, who posted images of Greenes body on his Facebook page. We have to believe that, from Day One, the Louisiana State Police were not honest with the public. The two graphic photos which appear to have been taken in a medical setting and show apparent bruises and cuts to Greenes face and scalp were provided by his family and had previously been shared on their social media. Attorneys for Greenes family said the images were consistent with the injuries identified in an independent autopsy they commissioned. Portions of it provided to The Associated Press describe blunt force injuries to the head/face; facial lacerations, abrasions, contusions and multiple scalp lacerations. Greenes death, which the AP reported this week is now under federal investigation, has drawn new attention in recent months amid a national reckoning about racial inequality and police misconduct. Greenes family filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit in May alleging troopers brutalized Greene, used a stun gun on him three times and left him beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest before covering up his actual cause of death. While more than a year has passed since the crash, the State Police have offered no public accounting of what caused Greenes death. A single-page police report released by the agency says the May 10, 2019, police pursuit ended when Greene crashed his vehicle. Greene was taken into custody after resisting arrest and a struggle with Troopers, the report says, adding Greene became unresponsive and died on the way to a local hospital. A crash report obtained by the AP says Greene failed to stop for an unspecified traffic violation and later drove off the road and into a ditch, striking a mailbox and a culvert. The vehicle later struck a shrub/tree next to a private drive, the report says. The crash report which State Police say is now itself part of a criminal investigation says Greene was not wearing a seat belt and does not mention any use of force by troopers. Greenes family has said the authorities initially told them Greene died in the crash, but they began questioning that narrative after examining his body and the relatively minor damage to the vehicle. We were told that he died in a high-speed chase of head injuries after crashing into a tree, Greenes mother, Mona Hardin, told the AP. There was no major damage to the car. The familys lawsuit says that Greene was taken to a nearby hospital and quotes an emergency room doctor who says law enforcement told him that Greene had been involved in a fight after the chase. Greenes death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest, said Renee Smith, the Union Parish coroner who was not in office when that determination was made. Smith said her offices file on Greene attributed his death to a car crash and makes no mention of a struggle with State Police. Local prosecutors in Union Parish decided not to bring any charges against the responding troopers but referred the case to the U.S. Justice Department. The U.S. Attorneys Office in Shreveport confirmed the ongoing federal investigation but hasnt commented on its status. Late Thursday, the FBIs New Orleans field office issued a statement confirming it has opened a civil rights probe into Greenes death and will ensure that the investigation is conducted in a fair, thorough and impartial manner. The State Police, in an unusual move, opened an internal investigation into Greenes death on Aug. 25 474 days after the crash. The agency also recently placed on paid leave Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, one of six troopers who responded to the crash site. That action was taken Sept. 9 the same day the AP submitted a public records request for State Police documents related to the case. It was not clear whether Hollingsworth had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- During AMCP Legislative Day 2020, 40 AMCP members met with lawmakers in targeted congressional offices on AMCP's key issues to explain the value of managed care pharmacy in the broader health care system. Discussions centered on pharmaceutical information exchange (PIE) legislation, prior authorization, and advocating to authorize pharmacists to receive reimbursement under Medicare Part B for COVID-19 and flu testing and vaccinations. "AMCP and our members are committed to ensuring patients across the country can access the lifesaving medicine they need, at costs they can afford," said AMCP CEO Susan A. Cantrell, RPh, CAE. "As our health care system shifts from a fee-for-service payment system to a value-based system rewarding quality, improved patient outcomes, and cost efficiency, it's imperative that the U.S. Congress and statehouses around the country act on the need for better care. We were thrilled to meet with members of Congress to educate them on the best ways to make sure patients get the best care." More than 8,000 AMCP members leverage their expertise in clinical evidence and economics to optimize the benefit of medicines, population health management, and patient access to cost-effective, safe medications. This week, with more than 80 virtual meetings taking place with elected officials in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, AMCP member representatives conferred on three main tenets: Congress needs to act now to protect Medicare beneficiaries and reduce the strain on our health care system by including language authorizing pharmacists to receive reimbursement under Medicare Part B for COVID-19 and flu testing and vaccinations in the next round of COVID-19 relief legislation. Congress must pass a legislative safe harbor that allows pharmaceutical manufacturers to proactively share clinical and economic information on medications in the FDA pipeline with population health decision-makers, with the ultimate goal of getting patients the medications they need at costs they can afford. Congress should continue supporting health plan flexibility in the use of prior authorization and other managed care tools. Doing so has the potential to reduce medication costs, errors, and patient harm, while increasing quality of care. The AMCP Legislative Days program also recognized Congressman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky's Second Congressional District, for introducing the Pharmaceutical Information Exchange (PIE) Act of 2017, legislation codifying current regulatory safe harbors that allow for PIE between manufacturers and population health decision-makers. Guthrie serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Committee on Education and Labor, and was also appointed to serve as a Deputy Whip within the House Republican Conference for the 116th Congress. About AMCP AMCP is the professional association leading the way to help patients get the medications they need at a cost they can afford. AMCP's diverse membership of pharmacists, physicians, nurses, biopharmaceutical professionals, and other stakeholders leverage their specialized expertise in clinical evidence and economics to optimize medication benefit design and population health management and help patients access cost-effective and safe medications and other drug therapies. AMCP members improve the lives of nearly 300 million Americans served by private and public health plans, pharmacy benefit management firms, and emerging care models. Visit www.amcp.org . SOURCE AMCP Related Links http://www.amcp.org Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday (September 17) said that COVID-19 cases in the capital will show a rise in the next 10 days as testing capacity has been quadrupled while asserting that the plan is to contain the spread of the infection in the long-run through effective isolation. The national capital, however, witnessed 4,432 fresh coronavirus cases, while the death toll reached 4,877 with 38 fresh fatalities on Thursday. On Wednesday, the city had registered a record single-day spike of 4,473 COVID-19 cases, taking the infection tally to over 2.30 lakh, while 33 more deaths were reported. The previous highest single-day spike of 4,321 cases was recorded on September 12. The city's COVID-19 tally has reached 2,34,701 and the death toll has risen to 4,877, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department. On Wednesday, Delhi's death toll from COVID-19 stood at 4,839. Live TV The active cases on Thursday rose to 31,721 from 30,914 on Wednesday, the bulletin said. The number of containment zones in Delhi jumped to 1,670 on Thursday from 1,637 on Wednesday. The Delhi government has also significantly ramped up testing in the last few days. The number of tests conducted and corresponding fresh cases reported from September 1-16 in that order are: 24,198 (2,312); 28,835 (2,509); 32,834 (2,737); 36,219 (2,914) 38,895 (2,973); 36,046 (3,256); 22,954 (2,077); 45,797 (3,609); 54,517 (4,039); 58,340 (4,308); 60,580 (4,266); 60,076 (4,321); 56,656 (4,235); 44,884 (3,229); 62,669 (4,263) and 62,593 (4,473). Amid a spike in the COVID-19 cases, Satyendar Jain asserted that the plan is to contain the spread of the infection in the long-run through effective isolation. Interacting with reporters, Jain said, reports of the sero-prevalence survey conducted in the first week of September will be first put before the high court. Jain took a meeting with medical directors/medical superintendents of all Delhi government hospitals to review the status of testing. Chief Secretary Vijay Dev, along with the district magistrates, reviewed COVID-19 management in a meeting, according to the bulletin. On Thursday, over 4,000 cases were recorded for 60,014 tests conducted on Wednesday. The number of rapid-antigen tests conducted on Thursday stood at 50,450, while the RT-PCR, CBNAAT, and True NAAT tests figures were 9,564, in all adding to 60.014, according to the bulletin. As on Thursday, the number of tests done per million was over 1,24,715 while the total number of tests stood at 23,69,592. The positivity rate is 7.38 per cent, minor increase from Wednesday's 7.15 per cent, while the recovery rate is 84.40 per cent, the bulletin said, adding that the case fatality rate stands at 2.08 per cent. Since August 18, cases in the city have been coming in the four-figure count. According to the bulletin, out of the total number of 14,521 beds in COVID hospitals, 6,783 are vacant. It said 2,700 beds in COVID care centres are occupied by people under quarantine, including travellers who have returned under the Vande Bharat Mission and by bubble flights. The bulletin said 1,98,103 patients have recovered, been discharged or migrated so far. The number of people in home isolation stands at 18,038 up from 17,324 the previous day. (With Agency Inputs) WASHINGTON Connecticut lawmakers on Tuesday joined a Democratic chorus of calls demanding the resignation of Health And Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and of Michael Caputo, an HHS official who accused government scientists of plotting against Donald Trump and urged the presidents followers to buy ammunition. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy agreed with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer that Azar has failed to stand up to Trump in the response to the pandemic. Sec. Azar is suppressing science & spreading chaos, Blumenthal tweeted. He is literally silencing lifesaving facts. He must goalong with flack Assistant Sec. Caputo. Murphy said Michael Caputo has to go. You cannot encourage the armed insurrection of Americans against the government and have a job in this administration, he said. Caputo, HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, accused government scientists of sedition on a Facebook Live event, an incident that was first reported by the New York Times. Caputo also urged Trumps supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection after a contested election. Also on that taxpayer-funded podcast, earlier this summer, Caputo accused Democrats and the media of not wanting a coronavirus vaccine until after the elections in order to defeat Trump. There are people in the United States government on the Democrats side (who) do not want a vaccine, he said. Meanwhile, Politico has reported that Caputo and his communications team have sought to edit important scientific reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, late Monday demanded Azar fire Caputo. The head of the House Appropriations panel with authority over the HHS budget, DeLauro had earlier this month demanded details from Azar about HHSs solicitation of bids for a $250 million advertising campaign to defeat despair and inspire hope about the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Caputo is not fit to spend one dime of taxpayers dollars, and I am still awaiting answers from Secretary Azar about how Mr. Caputo may have further misused taxpayer funding, DeLauro said in a statement. This country needs real leadership and governance by truth, not a propaganda campaign led by a conspiracy theorist. Michael Caputo must resign immediately. If he does not, Secretary Azar must fire him. The Trump administration is standing by Caputo so far. Caputo apologized to his staff Tuesday for his rant on Facebook, but he has become a a significant new problem for a White House that has struggled with its coronavirus response. It has become abundantly clear that the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services has allowed perhaps the most important federal agency right now to become subservient to the presidents daily whims, Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. So today, I am calling on Secretary Azar to resign immediately. We need a Secretary of Health and Human Services who will look out for the American people, not President Trumps political interests. Caputo joined HHS in April, a move that was considered an effort by the White House to exert greater control over the agencys messaging. A disciple of dirty trickster Roger Stone, Caputo worked for Oliver North and Russian energy giant Gazprom before joining the Trump presidential campaign. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic which that has changed value chains, this is an opportunity for us to rethink and rise. The chance to catch up with the world is huge if the economy is restructured. Dr. Tran Dinh Thien speaks with VietNamNet about the country's aspirations to rise to stand shoulder to shoulder with civilized, advanced and modern countries. Vietnamese leaders have always talked about a burning desire to bring the country forward. Vietnam has made many economic achievements, especially poverty reduction, which has been highly praised by the world. How do you see that aspiration in the present time? Not only leaders but also Vietnamese people always have a desire to rise. It is the mettle, the pride of the Vietnamese people as we do not want to fall behind. When founding the country, President Ho Chi Minh mentioned the aspiration of the Vietnamese people to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great powers of the five continents. At that time, Vietnam both gained independence and positioned itself on the world map. Setting the ambition to stand shoulder to shoulder with great powers, Uncle Ho also set another foundation for the countrys development, that is, to go with a civilized society, shoulder to shoulder in economy, society, and state organization, alongside the aspiration of freedom and independence. Today's generation still nurtures that aspiration. Many leaders have talked about this, and official documents also set out clear goals to strive for. The Vietnam 2035 report also compares Vietnam with other countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, which are more developed economies, to see that the development gap is widening. Working out what to do to bridge the gap, to see the pressure of lagging further behind, rather than making comparison with the economies, that we can overcome. To put it bluntly, we talk about the desire to rise, but this sense of the race to prosperity is not really enough. I think we should rethink clearly about the need to keep pace with the world's economy. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic that has changed value chains, this is an opportunity for us to rethink and rise. The chance to catch up with the world is huge if the economy is restructured. Dr. Tran Dinh Thien (centre) during a field trip. What opportunities do you see that we can take advantage of? In terms of the industrial revolution 4.0, the chances of catching up with the world are huge if we really restructure the economy. We cannot just grow by exploiting natural resources, developing the processing industry, attracting investment through labor intensive industries. Resource allocation must go through the market instead of administrative imperatives to ensure efficiency. Right now, we are still talking about a mechanism of a complete and modern market economy, allowing businesses and people to develop properly. More than 35 years ago, Vietnam accepted to switch to a market mechanism in the context of cultures and thoughts accumulated from several thousand years of feudalism, in the situation that the country had just stepped out of constant wars, when changes were not easy to make. Thanks to that, another development space was formed, transforming from self-sufficient society to the market economy, though the market was incomplete and the ask give mechanism still existed. That change created a formidable excitement in society. So this is now the opportunity to complete the market. We have opened the door to the world to invite friends and partners, who can help Vietnam move faster. The digital economy offers unlimited opportunities for Vietnam to stand shoulder to shoulder with great powers. The problem that must be solved in Vietnam at the moment is the ability to enter the trajectory of high technology, digitalization ... The Covid-19 pandemic gives us a new approach; that is, it is impossible to return to the old normal period. That thinking is taking shape. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all plans and shut down many programs. Why do you think that the economy will continue to transform? The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing people to stay at home, hesitant to implement trade plans, open up borders, but thanks to that, the State, businesses and people have a very good opportunity to switch to digital economy, high-tech applications. E-government is acting aggressively with a mountain of agendas. Enterprises and people are excited about new technology, electronic communication, capacity to monitor capacity, improved quality. The information society develops with a large space for individuals to develop their capacity. This is the time when we start to implement commitments in the CPTPP, EVFTA - the free trade agreements of a new generation. This is the foundation for almost absolute liberalization, fierce competition, which means that the institutions, legal system, and governance will drastically change according to the highest standards of the world. On the other hand, changes to standards and production processes have forced businesses to invest in technology, change their way of doing business, and have no room for smallholder thinking ... The changes towards high standards will give Vietnam a good position to attract foreign investment. If in the past 30 years, we welcomed FDI in general, and now, we can choose projects and investors who can bring into play Vietnam's advantages, to suit our development requirements. However, unfortunately, there are many things we have the opportunity to speed up, but we have not completed yet. For example, our education and training sector still keeps the old mindset that should be changed by the new mindset that promotes creativity and academic freedom. Science - technology in many places is still not considered the pillar or driving force of the economic development at this time. There is a bright spot as more and more innovative start-up businesses have been appearing. How do private enterprises appear in the picture of Doi Moi (renovation)? The community of private enterprises is a completely new force, a product of the market mechanism. Before 1986, we had only farmers, state-owned enterprises, and small businesses. It is the business force together with the market mechanism that has changed the structure of the economy. But after nearly 35 years of renovation, we still do not have a strong Vietnamese business force capable of taking advantage of the opportunities that innovation and opening up brings about. Up to 96% of businesses are small and super small, which make it is difficult to compete with the world. I think if Vietnam has many billionaires, many large corporations, then we can talk more about the country's achievements, about the opportunity to catch up with the world. Photo: Le Anh Dung What do you think when many Vietnamese businesspeople have been named in the billionaire ranking published by Forbes? I asked a few entrepreneurs, but they did not want to talk about it. Perhaps due to the distorted market mechanism, so we have a distorted business structure. In the global value chain that FDI enterprises bring to Vietnam, the majority of Vietnamese businesses still stand outside. Businesses realize their weakness, but our own system does not create favorable conditions for business development in the sense of developing into a force, still letting businesses to develop without planning and grow by exploiting natural resources and friendly relations. The Party has clearly identified the role of private enterprises, identified them as an important force of the market economy. The Party's approach to the FDI sector has also changed in the sense of having to choose quality FDI, not attractive FDI at all costs. Early identification and orientation of science and technology in the 4.0 era is also an option for success. Institutions and the business investment environment must be good for Vietnamese enterprises to be strong and have the ability to associate with large FDI enterprises. Vietnam is trying to establish a good space to encourage start-ups and creativity. Do you agree? The Vietnamese creative capacity is strong. Vietnam's victory in the Robocon competitions; the ideas, innovations during the Covid-19 epidemic ... are proof. But to stimulate entrepreneurship, we need a competitive and equal business environment, creative acceptance instead of empirical thinking; labor, science - technology, wages and labor markets need to be developed at a higher level. Property rights and intellectual property rights must be guaranteed. Of course, it takes a strong corporate force to lead this game. Understandably, if there is a support mechanism for the development of cement, steel, etc., there will be no room for a creative start-up, because the driving mechanism of iron, steel and cement is land and energy; and that of innovation and creativity is accepting the singularity of ideas, the madness or the soaring of thinking. Without big businesses we cannot have start-ups or creativity, because they are venture capitalists, they have money, and they are willing to invest in the seeds of start-ups and unusual ideas. We have to attract overseas Vietnamese because they are a very important resource that have creative capacity and the ability to network. They are the ones who will pull intellectuals, drag the world to Vietnam. Lan Anh National brand: common vision for I am Vietnamese pride The national brand will help build a new flag to turn all Vietnamese people around the world to look forward a common vision. Watch: Government dismisses claims of fresh two-week national lockdown Claims that Boris Johnson was told the UK should go into a full lockdown for two weeks have been rejected by health minister Edward Argar. The report first emerged on Wednesday night, after former World Health Organization (WHO) director Anthony Costello tweeted that chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty advised the prime minister to implement the measure. Costello, who is a member of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, also known as Independent Sage, has been a prominent critic of the governments response to coronavirus. He later backtracked on his original tweet, saying that he had been told by another insider that Chris Whitty does not support a two week lockdown. I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a 2 week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record. Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 17, 2020 Argar played down the reports, telling Sky News it is not something I have seen within the department. He said: The prime minister has been very clear on this. He doesnt want to see another national lockdown. He wants to see people abiding by the regulations and making the local lockdowns work. Im hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown. Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) September 16, 2020 It comes after nearly 4,000 COVID-19 cases were recorded in one day for the first time since the start of May. Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, Matt Hancock confirmed another local lockdown would be implemented in north-east England following a spike in infections. Story continues The measures include a ban on residents socialising with other people outside their own households, table service only in bars and restaurants and the closure of leisure and entertainment venues between 10pm and 5am. Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty has reportedly argued for another national lockdown. (PA) On Wednesday, Johnson said a second national coronavirus lockdown would be completely wrong. The prime minister, appearing before the House of Commons liaison committee, said reimposing lockdown restrictions would be disastrous for the country. Johnson, asked by Conservative MP Julian Knight if the UK can afford another lockdown, responded: I dont want a second national lockdown, I think it would be completely wrong for this country. Boris Johnson gives evidence to the Commons liaison committee in the Boothroyd Room in the House of Commons. (PA) We are going to do everything in our power to prevent it. Can we afford it? I very much doubt the financial consequences would be anything but disastrous. The prime ministers comments come after reports emerged suggesting the government has given itself two weeks for its rule of six coronavirus law which bans most social gatherings of more than six people in England to work. Chief medical officer Chris Whitty arrives in Downing Street for a coronavirus briefing. (Getty) Commenting on the controversial rule, Johnson added: We have to make sure we defeat the disease by the means we have set out. So when I see people arguing against the rule of six or saying the government is coming in too hard on individual liberties, I sympathise with that. But we must, must beat this disease. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter During his 2016 bid, Donald Trump would sometimes pause from bashing elites and the media to speak with awe about a phone call he had with a Very Important Journalist. Trump puffed up with pride as he told the story to bemused rallygoers, who only moments before had been jeering at the press. It was a mixed message from the phony populist. During an interview in June 2016 at Trump Tower, Trump bragged to me about the call with the journalist, who turned out to be Tom Friedman. Lately, Trump has been boasting about Toms praise for the White Houses Israel-United Arab Emirates peace plan. Like Stella Dallas standing in the rain outside the gates of the mansion where her daughter is getting married, Trump has always had his nose pressed up against the window of the elites. For a man who has risen to the highest office on the planet, President Trump radiates insecurity, former Ambassador Kim Darroch wrote to his colleagues in London, in a leaked cable. Steve Bannon once told me Trump was much more concerned about CNNs coverage than Foxs. Unserious though he may be, Trump covets praise from serious people. And serious Sean Hannity is not. Fresh off his win in 2016, he was eager to come talk to the New York Times. Ive never seen Trump happier than in that hour with the failing New York Times. As we wrapped up, he told the assembled editors, reporters and Times brass: Its a great honor. I will say, the Times is, its a great, great American jewel. A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along. That same eager tone was echoed in the audio of Bob Woodwards tapes with Trump, as the president warmly spoke the name Bob again and again, yearning for acceptance from the very establishment he had denounced to win the Oval Office. Even though Woodward keeps writing books about Trump with titles that sound like horror flicks first Fear and now Rage Trump somehow thought he could win over the pillar of the Washington establishment. I brought something that Ive never shown to anybody, the president told the writer in December. Im going to show it to you. Ill get you something thats sort of cool. He had an aide bring photos of him with Kim Jong Un, including some capturing the moment when the two leaders stepped over the line between North and South Korea. Pretty cool, Trump gushed. You know? Pretty cool. Right? He added, I mean, theyre cool pictures when you you know, when you talk about iconic pictures, how about that? In a later interview, he gave Woodward a poster-size picture of himself and Kim, saying: I dont even know why Im giving it to you. Thats my only one. He trumpeted about Kim: He never smiled before. Im the only one he smiles with. Trump also bragged to the man who helped break the Watergate story, which sparked an impeachment inquiry, that he handled impeachment with more aplomb than his predecessors. Nixon was in a corner with his thumb in his mouth, Trump said. Bill Clinton took it very, very hard. I dont. Woodward once told me that every president gets the psychoanalyst he deserves. But at least with Nixon, Woodward had to follow the money to expose the venality. With Trump, he simply had to turn on a recorder. Trump is his own whistleblower. Trump fiends for legitimacy even as he undercuts any chance of being seen as legitimate. He is fact-based and cogent on the Woodward tape, talking in early February about how the coronavirus is airborne and deadly and dangerous for young people. But he vitiated that by publicly downplaying the vital information for his own political advantage. For more than a week, instead of focusing on his peace deals and his nomination for the Noble Prize, as a Trump campaign ad spelled it, everyone has been focused on a story that contends he called Americans who died in war suckers and losers. Trump desperately wants approval even as he seems relentlessly driven to prove hes not worthy of it. He may be ludicrously un-self-aware, but even he sensed his tango with Woodward would end badly. It was fun for a while, bro-ing out in the Oval with his fellow septuagenarian big shot, batting around the finer points of white privilege. But it could not last. Youre probably going to screw me, the president told the writer. You know, because thats the way it goes. Even so, the unreflective Narcissus will never drag himself away from his reflecting pool. You know, because thats the way it goes. By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza into Israel, wounding two people, on Tuesday at the same time as Israel and two Gulf Arab states signed normalisation agreements at the White House in Washington. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack from the Hamas Islamist-run territory. Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza view the U.S.-brokered deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as betrayal of their cause. Warning sirens sounded in the coastal cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump and the UAE and Bahraini foreign ministers held the signing ceremony on the White House lawn. Automated rocket alerts on TV screens in Israel during live broadcasts from Washington were a graphic reminder of on-going conflict along the restive Gaza border, even as Tel Aviv's city hall was lit up with the word "peace" in Arabic, Hebrew and English. Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service said paramedics treated two men for light injuries from flying glass in Ashdod, where a rocket exploded outside a shopping centre, blowing out storefront windows. An Israeli military spokesman said two rockets were fired from Gaza and the Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted one of them In Gaza, which Israel blockades, citing security concerns, dozens of Palestinians rallied outside a U.N. office to condemn the normalisation deals shortly before the signing ceremony began. "Palestine isn't for sale," protesters chanted. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said the Bahrain and UAE agreements would not bring Israel peace in the region. "Peoples of the region will continue to deal with this occupation as their true enemy," he told Reuters, speaking from Turkey. Hamas did not claim responsibility for the rockets. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, there was a small, muted protest at which 200 people gathered in a central square. Story continues Some carried a banner reading: "The UAE-Israeli normalization agreement is a reward for the state of occupation and for settlements, and is a stab in the back of Jerusalem and of Palestine." The normalisation agreements are the first signed between Israel and Arab states since the peace accords with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. "This is not peace, this is surrender in return for the continuation of the aggression," read a tweet posted on the Twitter account of the Palestine Liberation Organization. "There will no peace before Palestine is free." (Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell, Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Marguerita Choy) MINSK -- A district court in Minsk sentenced RFE/RL photojournalist Uladz Hrydzin and freelance photographer Alyaksandr Vasyukovich to 11 days in jail on September 16 for "participating in an unauthorized rally." Hrydzin, an award-winning photographer who had recently been stripped of foreign-media accreditation while working as an RFE/RL correspondent in Minsk, and Vasyukovich were found guilty of violating Belarus's law on mass gatherings on September 16. The two photographers and another journalist were detained in a Minsk bar by a group of people wearing balaclavas on September 13, the day when tens of thousands rallied in the Belarusian capital to protest against official results from an August 9 presidential election that handed a landslide victory to the incumbent, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Who is Lauren Witzke? As of Tuesday night, she is the Republican Senate nominee for Delaware, running against Democratic incumbent Chris Coons. The conservative activist, a former field organizer for the Trump campaign in Iowa, won her primary by more than 13 percentage points over former Marine James DeMartino. What do we know about her? Not much outside of what shes shared publicly, but what shes shared publicly is pretty intense. During a bout of depression while she was working for a pharmaceutical company, Witzke said she became addicted to painkillers and, eventually, heroin. Advertisement I ended up in a situation that I never thought Id find myself in: I was running drugs, actually, for the Mexican cartels, she told WDEL radio in May. These people came here 100 percent legally, chain migration brought people here who will sell drugs to Americans and not think twice if it will kill them. They will sell these drugs to American children; they will sell them to your families, and they dont care. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement She has also claimed that she sold birth certificates for the cartels. Subscribe to the Slatest newsletter A daily email update of the stories you need to read right now. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. What does her policy platform look like? Well, its directly related to her alleged experiences as a drug-runner for the cartels while battling her own addiction. Her official platform was one that amplified Trump-style politics, under the American First slogan, and called for a 10-year moratorium on immigrationwhich she says would give the country a chance to heal. She also wants to limit welfare benefits for married couples with kids and is calling for federal funding for faith-based programs that promote substance abuse recovery. Witzke has said that she achieved sobriety after working with Teen Challenge, a ministry that offers recovery services; she once served as program director for the group. Advertisement Advertisement Official? Is there another part of her platform? Maybe! Prior to launching her Senate bid, Witzke appeared to be a supporter of QAnon, the conspiracy alleging that a government official known only as Q holds a well of damning information about deep state enemies of Donald Trump within the Democratic Party and Hollywood as well as their alleged connections to the sex trafficking of children. She has tweeted the QAnon slogan WWG1WGA (Where We Go One, We Go All), used some of the conspiracys hashtags on social media, and been seen wearing a shirt promoting the QAnon theory. Advertisement Whats her position on QAnon now? In January, she told the Associated Press that she was no longer promoting the conspiracy. But she has maintained ties to others who do, including a QAnon promoter named Dylan Wheeler. As Will Sommer wrote for the Daily Beast: Advertisement In June, Witzkes campaign posted a Facebook video of Wheeler urging his followers to donate to Witzkes campaign and calling her one of my best friends. When Wheelers account was banned from Instagram, Witzke posted that she suspected it was because Wheeler got a little too close to the truth about vaccines again. Advertisement Advertisement Witzke per Sommer, even allowed a speaker at one of her rallies to suggest that the Democrats are funded by human trafficking. How is she on race and racism? For a far-right anti-immigration candidate in 2020, her public remarks steer clear of expressions of racial animus. During her interview with WDEL, she did lament the breakdown of the nuclear family structure in a way that gave me pause: So in 1965 they implemented policies that literally pushed dads out of their homes. Advertisement Advertisement The only policy I can think of relating to 1965 and familial structure in America is related to the Moynihan report. Instead of focusing on systemic racism, thenAssistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed to divorce rates in the Black community, illegitimate births, and, you guessed it, fatherlessness. This gave conservatives the fuel required to tout bootstrap ideology as the way upward for Black families. It also set the foundation for the idea that Black people are hopeless because of perceived familial structure. Advertisement Advertisement In her Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey, Witzke pretty much solidified that reading: I believe in restoring the nuclear family and incentivizing tradition, as opposed to current welfare programs that encourage fatherless homes. I will redivert welfare programs into an incentive program for marriage and children. Advertisement Then she took it a step further: Candace Owens is a huge role model for me. I admire her boldness and the passion she has for Black America. Many of my platforms were developed after hearing her concerns about Black Americans, the three biggest issues being: Fatherless homes, immigration, and abortion. Sommer reports that she also called Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar third world and tards. Considering that the West Coast is on fire, what does Witzke think about climate change? Ill just leave this here. It speaks for itself. Advertisement How about net zero immigration instead? https://t.co/93KPSraopf Lauren Witzke for U.S. Senate (@LaurenWitzkeDE) February 12, 2020 Advertisement Does she have any other questionable connections? Per the Associated Press: Her former campaign manager, Michael Sisco, was fired last year from his job as a field director for a Republican congressional candidate in Iowa after inviting far-right activist Nicholas Fuentes to speak at an immigration forum. Fuentes has been accused of being a white nationalist and anti-Semite. On Tuesday, Fuentes congratulated Witzke on her win via Twitter. She publicly thanked him. Thank you, Nick! Lauren Witzke for U.S. Senate (@LaurenWitzkeDE) September 16, 2020 Advertisement She has also, according to Sommers reporting at the Daily Beast, dabbled in flat earth conspiracies, supported the idea of Trump becoming Americas king, and credited Loose Change, a series of films asserting that the U.S. knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance, as her great awakening. Is she going bring this perspective to the United States Senate? Probably not. Unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon enthusiast who is now running unopposed for Congress in a strongly Republican seat in Georgia, Witzke is unlikely to make it past November. Last time he ran, in 2014, Coons won 55.8 percent of the vote, or 138,655 ballots, in the 2014 election. In his own primary on Tuesday, Coons defeated challenger Jessica Scarane by 54,789 votesa margin of victory greater than the total number of ballots cast in the Republican primary. Jeffery Ryans was in his backyard early one morning in April when a Salt Lake City police officer, with a dog in tow, rounded the corner and shined a light on him. "Get on the ground or you're gonna get bit," officer Nickolas Pearce yelled at Ryans, a 36-year-old Black man. Pearce, who is White, was there on a domestic violence call. As Ryans began kneeling, Pearce kicked down his left leg and ordered the dog to sink his teeth into his flesh, according to body-camera footage published by the Salt Lake Tribune in August. Now, Pearce, 39, faces criminal charges for using excessive force, police said on Wednesday. Salt Lake City's Democratic District Attorney Sim Gill told the Tribune that the charges were necessary because Ryans wasn't resisting arrest. "He certainly wasn't posing an imminent threat of violence or harm to anyone and he certainly wasn't concealed," Gill said. "He was fenced in an area and was being compliant." Ryans's arrest is the latest fallout for police officers accused of using excessive force against Black men. On Sunday, a Georgia sheriff's deputy was fired after body-camera footage showed him punching Roderick Walker, a Black man who was in a car pulled over for a broken taillight. In Rochester, N.Y., seven officers were suspended earlier this month after a video showed them placing a hood on Daniel T. Prude's head and placing pressure on his neck. Prude, 41, died days later from asphyxiation. Ryans's daughter called 911 in the early morning hours of April 24 to report that her father had been yelling and screaming and hit her mother, the Tribune reported. Ryans's wife had a protective order against him and he was not supposed to be in the house. But according to an investigation by the city's Civilian Review Board, Ryans thought the order had been lifted and his wife had let him into the home. Ryans was getting ready to leave for his job as a train engineer when at least three police officers arrived at around 3:30 a.m., according to Dan Garner, Ryans's lawyer. Ryans was smoking a cigarette in the backyard when he was spotted by the officers standing at the front of the house. According to additional body-camera footage reviewed by The Washington Post, one officer ordered Ryans to stand at the fence while Pearce and another officer went around the house to meet him. As Pearce and the K-9 named Tuco neared Ryans, Pearce ordered the man to get on the ground. Ryans raised his hands and began to kneel. Seconds later, Pearce can be heard instructing the dog to "hit," which means bite. The pain forced Ryans to fall from his knees onto his belly. Body-camera footage captured a confused Ryans yelling in pain. "I'm on the ground. Why are you biting me? I'm on the ground. Stop!" Ryans said. A second officer can be seen handcuffing Ryans, but the dog remains latched onto the man's leg. "Good boy, good boy," Pearce said. "Why are you guys doing this?" Ryans cried out. Tuco held his bite into Ryans's leg for about a minute before Pearce ordered him to stop. Upon seeing the leg, the officers called paramedics to examine Ryans's injury. Ryans has undergone several surgeries and his doctors informed him that his leg risks amputation, according to Ryans's lawyer. According to the report from the Civilian Review Board, senior police officials only learned of the incident when Ryans filed a lawsuit against the department in August. The report says that Pearce's sergeant reviewed the footage after the April arrest and sent it to his lieutenant. But despite the department's policy for reporting such incidents, the lieutenant neglected to notify his supervisors or contact the internal affairs department. The lieutenant has since retired, which the report says is unrelated to this case. "The failure of the lieutenant to report this incident up the chain is disturbing and unacceptable," the Civilian Review Board report said. The Civilian Review Board also admonished Pearce and his fellow officer for ordering the dog to attack Ryans. "It seems that many lesser use of force options were available to the two officers," the report said. After the Tribune published the body-camera footage on Aug. 11, the police department suspended Pearce and opened an internal affairs investigation, and the city suspended the use of police dogs. On Wednesday, the Salt Lake City Police Department confirmed that the district attorney's office is pursuing criminal charges against Pearce. In a statement, the department said it "takes the district attorney's decision and the Civilian Review Board's findings very seriously," and would consider their findings as they finalize an internal affairs investigation. Pearce is charged with second-degree felony aggravated assault, which carries up to 15 years in prison, the Tribune reported. Garner called the charges "an important step in Jeffery's pursuit of justice." Getty Images The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has unveiled the latest in a series of grants for small businesses that have suffered losses because of the pandemic. About $220 million in grants are available. Businesses such as movie theaters or arts venues that have been heavily impacted will be allotted $60 million. Businesses with heavily economically distressed ZIP codes have $70 million available. Half of the remaining funds are reserved for downstate businesses and those in rural communities. An anti-BBC campaign group which aims to drastically reform the corporations governance has raised nearly 60,000 in donations in less than three months. Defund the BBC, founded by Brexiteers, began crowdfunding in June and aims to decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence fee. The group is using the money to create campaign material including billboards, merchandise and advertisements across social media. The campaign says it has three main goals: to raise awareness of the legal implications of cancelling a TV licence, to urge the government to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee and to lobby for the compulsory annual levy to be reduced to the lowest possible level in the BBCs mid-charter review in 2022. Defund the BBC, founded by James Yucel (left), has received more than 57,000 in donations amid fury over corporation's 'rich list' published this week. The campaign is backed by prominent Brexiteer personalities including Darren Grimes (right) and Calvin Robinson The flood of donations comes as the BBC came under fire after published accounts showed staff pay had soared 3.5 per cent up to 1.5billion this year. Meanwhile the corporation is pushing ahead with plans to strip a million over-75s of their free TV licences. Accounts published earlier this week showed that Zoe Ball is now the BBCs highest earner after pocketing a 1million pay rise - knocking Gary Lineker off the top spot. The Match of the Day star, 59, is understood to have signed a new five-year contract - and a nearly 25 per cent pay cut from 1.75million down to 1.35million. While the Corporation said it was working towards closing the gender pay gap, Defund the BBC campaigners say pay rises were given to those who were performing poorly. They highlighted pay rises given to Zoe Ball, who has lost nearly a million listeners, and Lauren Laverne who hosts Desert Island Discs. Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball will now overtake Gary Lineker as the BBC's highest paid stars Defund the BBCs Head of Press Liam Deacon told talkRADIO: You might say this is because of a good instinct to correct this gender pay gap but really I think this is actually symptomatic of a structural fundamental problem with the BBC that pay and money is not tied to performance in the same way that it would be in a business. 'The BBC is using our money in a really grotesque way.' The BBCs top 10 highest-paid stars includes four women for the first time, with Vanessa Feltz and Fiona Bruce also featuring. Critics have blasted its decision to reward its staff with a total 3.5 per cent salary increase even after it announced plans to slim down its operations following the pandemic. BBC director-general Tim Davie defended Ball's huge pay rise after she shed nearly a million listeners in the first year in her new role, saying it was a 'punchy' market. 'Zoe is absolutely a broadcaster at the top of her game. She's delivering over eight million listeners,' he boasted. 'I think we're getting incredible value.' Asked about the likes of Lineker still earning more than 1million, Mr Davie said he would expect 'people to come to the BBC at a significant discount to what they'd get in the open market'. But he added: 'We will invest in very limited situations in particular markets to ensure we have got the best talent.' Defund the BBCs website lists its founder as James Yucel - the 18-year-old treasurer of the University of Glasgow Conservative Association. The campaign is backed by prominent Brexit personalities Calvin Robinson, a former Brexit Party parliamentary candidate, and Darren Grimes, the pro-Brexit campaigner recently cleared of committing electoral offences during the EU referendum. But the campaign director is Rebecca Ryan, the founder of the #StandUp4Brexit campaign which put pressure on MPs to oppose Theresa Mays Chequers deal. For the last four years, the Brexiteers have been portrayed by the BBC as being thick, racist and old, she told the Times this week. It is difficult to explain to people who didnt support Brexit how it actually feels to be forced to pay for something on fear of imprisonment only to be repeatedly portrayed in that way. Its a deep, deep injustice. Fewer families are buying TV licences, according to BBC's annual report published this week The campaigns Twitter account attracted 25,000 followers on the first day and its following now sits at 96,000. The crowdfunding campaign, which has a target of 100,000, has received more than 57,000 from 2,700 donors since June. Figures from the BBCs annual report show fewer households are buying TV licences and that audiences for its major channels have also fallen, suggesting many families are relying on streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The Corporation said 25.9million licences were in force in 2019/20 - down 237,000 in a year. With a licence costing 157.50, the fall cost the BBC just under 40million. The BBC lost millions more because the Government has started to reduce the amount of money it gives the Corporation to pay for free licences for the over-75s. BBC Rich List top ten 1. BBC Radio 2 breakfast show DJ Zoe Ball is on 1.36 million. 2. Match of the Day host Gary Lineker is on 1.35 million. 3. Graham Norton takes about 725,000 for his Radio 2 show and some TV work, but not his chat show. 4. Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright is on about 475,000. 5. Newsreader and election night presenter Huw Edwards is on more than 465,000. 6. Fiona Bruce takes home over 450,000 for her work on Question Time. 7. BBC Radio London's Vanessa Feltz is on about 405,000. 8. Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne is on more than 395,000. 9. Broadcaster Stephen Nolan is on more than 390,000 for his radio work, including 5 Live. 10. Match Of The Day's Alan Shearer is on the same figure of 390,000 a year. Advertisement The BBC has insisted it cannot afford the concession for all pensioners and says only around 900,000 who receive Pension Credit would continue to get it. Meanwhile, Netflix bosses have thrown their weight behind the long-term future of the BBC and voiced support for continuing the licence fee. They say the streaming service, which has been hoovering up viewers from traditional TV stations, benefits from a creative landscape crowded with thriving public service broadcasters. According to this week's report, younger people aged 16 to 34 watched or listened to just seven and a half hours of BBC content a week only a slightly higher share than YouTube. Across all ages, the audience reach of BBC1 the numbers that see the channel each week fell from 68 per cent to 65.4 per cent in a year. BBC2 also saw a decline, from 42.9 per cent to 41.9 per cent. CBBC, CBeebies and BBC Four also saw falls while the only increases were on the BBC News channel and BBC Parliament. Even among its most loyal viewers the over-55s audience reach across all BBC TV channels fell from 93 per cent to 92 per cent. Among those aged 16 to 34, the proportion fell from 58 per cent to 55 per cent. Radio 1 saw its audience reach fall from 17 to 16.6 per cent and Radio 2 dropped from 27.2 per cent to 26 per cent. The audience for Radio 4 was stable at 19.3 per cent and there were small rises at Radio 3 and 5 Live. The report said: 'Young adults watched 11 hours a week on all TV channels on average decreasing around 75 minutes year on year. 'In contrast, the time they spent using the TV set for subscription video on demand, gaming, YouTube and other purposes increased up to around 40 minutes per week to just over nine hours weekly on average.' The annual report revealed a rise in the number of executives. The BBC now employs 253 senior managers up from 250 the year before. Of these, no fewer than 106 earn more than the Prime Minister's 150,000. Together with 76 on-air talent staff, it means almost 200 staff at the BBC earn more than Boris Johnson. The current crisis in the media sector and the corona-related decline in advertising have taken their toll on the media company. Saint-Paul, the parent-company of Luxemburger Wort, Luxembourg Times, and Contacto will initiate a redundancy programme for 80 of their existing jobs. Saint-Paul Luxembourg S.A. and regie.lu S.A. will both be affected by the programme. According to RTL sources, the personnel was informed about the decision via a Skype conference call by CEO Paul Peckels on Thursday morning. An internal memo by the board of administrations further conveys that the measures were taken to assure that the company could remain profitable after the crisis. The two affected groups of Saint-Paul both lost several million euro in profits between March and May of 2020, which could not be compensated in the following months. Saint-Paul thus wants to prioritise the digital sphere in the future. Negotiations on the redundancy programme are set to begin on Monday. It was 2007 and Navy doctor Lt. Bryan Alvarez was treating five Iraqi soldiers injured when an IED blew up the vehicle they were driving. Deep in the desert of western Anbar province of Iraq, Lieutenant Alvarez had set up a Marine Corps battalion aid station in an old abandoned train station. He was assisted by three Navy corpsmen. They had simple combat medical kits consisting of intravenous fluid bags, morphine, tourniquets, and emergency blood clotting packs. He and his team proceeded to treat one man with burns to his face, one with a collapsed lung, one with a broken femur, and two others with extremity injuries. At one point, he looked around at the hot, dusty, dirty, and desolate environment, wiped his brow and thought to himself, "Wow. This is a little like what those doctors at Antietam must have faced." The Battle of Antietam, fought on this day, Sept. 17, in 1862, was the bloodiest battle in military history, with a one-day total of more than 22,000 dead, wounded, or missing. Fought near Sharpsburg in western Maryland, it pitted Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia against Union General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. McClellan halted Lee's invasion of Maryland, giving the Union a strategic victory. But the human cost was colossal. Tasked that day with saving as many lives as possible was a man doctor named Maj. Jonathan Letterman. He was already a veteran of combat care who had treated wounded soldiers during the Seven Days Battle in June 1862 in Richmond, Virginia, where more than 35,000 men had died, were wounded or missing. He collected some valuable lessons during that multi-day battle that he put to work three months later at Antietam. In so doing, he fundamentally changed the way the military treated field casualties and he established the foundation for modern military medicine. Military doctors, nurses, and hospital corpsmen find themselves in a dual role: beholden to both the Hippocratic Oath and the oath to serve their nation as uniformed military professionals. And nowhere is that dual obligation more honed than at the armed service's medical school, called the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. During their first year of medical school, USU students are taken on a field trip to the Antietam National Battlefield. There they can see firsthand where this bloodiest of battles took place. Now a Navy commander, Alvarez vividly remembers walking the fields and seeing the infamous "Bloody Lane," a sunken road where Confederate soldiers were caught in a deadly trap by Union soldiers perched on a grassy knoll above them. By 1:00 p.m. that day, 5,600 casualties lay in that ditch. The challenge to collect and treat these wounded was unprecedented. Army doctor Maj. Brit Geisler participated in the USU Antietam March more than fifteen years ago, but it left an indelible impression. "I remember walking through the fields and noticing the tactical issues with the battlefield. I remember having a person that had a horse-drawn cart that was considered the 'ambulance' and then showing the tools for the trade of military medicine. The saws that did battlefield amputations. It was how we started. The history of military medicine. It made an impact on knowing how far we have come but how we are still challenged with the same problems. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw a lot of extremity injuries because of the advancement of body armor that included a lot of amputations. That was always a theme during our time in USU." In addition to the Antietam March, USU students also undergo extensive field and operational training, including a mock deployment to a combat zone. They receive hands-on experience on how to do "good medicine in bad places." Learning early in their careers the challenges they will face gives them a distinct advantage. "Having both the knowledge of the history during Antietam and knowing the current conflict, I was well prepared for the injuries that presented during deployment," Major Geisler asserts. In Afghanistan, "I was able to plan how I was going to use my training as a gynecologic surgeon to address the battlefield injuries." George Wunderlich, the former executive director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, says that the biggest takeaway for the USU students who participate in the annual Antietam March is that "you are going to face the same human circumstances on every battlefield and every natural disaster in every age, whether it is a thousand years ago, or 150 years ago or ten minutes from now and to understand you are solving the same problems and you are facing the same circumstances gives you a basis upon which to do better than your predecessors." When the military deploys to those "bad places" around the world in defense of our nation and its strategic objectives, these warfighters need to be confident in the combat medicine skills that the doctors, nurses, and medics behind them have. The care the USU-trained medical professionals provide is on the forefront of medicine, especially trauma medicine. As Major Geisler points out: "Mass casualties were second nature to me since we trained on it so much." The chaff surrounding the most recent proposed budget cuts to military medicine and USU seems to overlook that important differentiator. Taylor Baldwin Kiland is the coauthor of Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton: Six Characteristics of High-Performance Teams. -- The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Supreme Court has asked the Chief Justices of all High Courts to immediately list all pending criminal cases involving sitting/former legislators (MPs/MLAs), particularly those where a stay has been granted, and all the matters should be heard by a bench comprising the Chief Justices. A bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hrishikesh Roy said: "Upon being listed, the court must first decide whether the stay granted, if any, should continue, keeping in view the principles regarding the grant of stay enshrined in the judgment of this court." The bench, which had reserved its order on the matter on Wednesday, observed that in the event that a stay is considered necessary, the court should hear the matter on a day-to-day basis and dispose of the same expeditiously, preferably within a period of two months, without any unnecessary adjournment. "It goes without saying that the Covid-19 condition should not be an impediment to the compliance of this direction, as these matters could be conveniently heard through video conferencing," said the top court in its order, which has been uploaded on its website on Thursday. After revealing that 4,442 cases are pending against sitting and former MPs and MLAs in different courts, amicus curiae informed the Supreme Court that there is no uniformity in setting up of special courts for cases concerning MPs/MLAs across the country. The High Courts may be directed to prepare a blueprint for expeditious disposal of the cases within a year, suggested the amicus. The top court also charted out a nine-point action plan for the Chief Justice of each High Court to formulate and submit an action plan for rationalisation of the number of Special Courts necessary, with respect to the following aspects: "a. Total number of pending cases in each district; b. Required number of proportionate Special Courts; c. Number of courts that are currently available; d. Number of Judges and the subject categories of the cases; e. Tenure of the Judges to be designated ;f. Number of cases to be assigned to each Judge; g. Expected time for disposal of the cases h. Distance of the Courts to be designated; i. Adequacy of infrastructure." The bench emphasised in order to fast-track these pending cases, the Chief Justices of the High Courts should also designate a special bench, comprising themselves, in order to monitor the progress of these trials. The order has come on the PIL by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, who urged the court to give directions for speedy trial of criminal cases against sitting and former lawmakers. The top court has listed the case for further hearing after two weeks. Im a lifelong resident of Wyoming and the older I get; the more certain inconsistencies seem to become evident. For example, local and state leaders often talk about the need to diversify the economy, but continue to double down on the minerals industry that has historically provided the state and many of its communities with what can only be described as giant piles of cash. Its a state with leaders who often shun federal assistance, but is extremely dependent on federal spending. Its a state that has invested heavily in education, especially through the Hathaway Scholarship progr... South Africa: SA commits to global socio-economic development Despite the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa remains committed to promoting the well-being, socio-economic development and upliftment of the countrys people. South Africa, said International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor, is also committed to protecting the planet for future generations to ensure the prosperity of the country, region and continent. The Minister made the remarks during a virtual lecture themed 'South Africas place in the changing global order' delivered at the Wits School of Governance on Wednesday. The pandemic, she said, has added a significant new dimension to international relations for countries, resulting in major economic contraction that has altered every aspect of life and livelihoods. Pandor said in the face of the challenging global order, South Africa is guided by its national interest, which has in turn shaped its foreign policy. In broad brushstrokes, South Africas national interest revolves on promoting the well-being, socio-economic development and upliftment of the countrys people, protecting the planet for future generations and ensuring the prosperity of the country, region and continent. This framework of South Africas national interest underpins its foreign policy, which is driven by the pursuit of human rights, development, conflict resolution, nuclear disarmament, climate change and championing the agenda of the countries of the South. In pursuit of these strategic goals, South Africa seeks to reposition itself as a consistent moral compass and a principled voice of reason in a changing world that is increasingly characterised by selfish and narrow interests, Pandor said. The Minister said South Africas position is affected by its normative approach, which can largely be considered as driven by the founding values and provisions enshrined in its Constitution, and based on its history of overcoming apartheid and, importantly, its relatively peaceful transition to democracy and efforts at reconciliation. It is these values that have resulted in South Africa being a consistent voice in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Saharawi, and commitment to peace in Africa and the Middle East. Fluid geopolitics Pandor said the outbreak is compounding an already fluid global geopolitics, where some of the dominant Western States are seen to be opting for foreign policies, which undermine the stability of the inter-State system, as they face draining counter-claims to global influence from emerging powers. This, Pandor said, throws up massive repercussions for the existing balance of forces. Africa should be concerned that as we discuss shifting global forces, the continent remains on the margins, observing rather than reshaping, she said, adding that the continent needs to use the current crisis to define a new relationship with the world, based on African terms. There are other objective developments shaping the international scenario, including the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the impact of Brexit on the global economy, the rise of anti-immigrant nationalism in the European Union (EU) zone and US, and increased terrorism and extremism activities worldwide. Case for multilateralism In terms of the broader global approach, South Africa continues to defend multilateralism, the rules based multilateral system and the reform of global institutions of governance, which underpin the global power asymmetry. South Africa also deploys efforts to strengthen the G77 and the Non-Alignment Movement, as well as other multilateral agencies. This is done within the context of Pan-Africanism, where South Africa is building strategic alliances with other countries on the continent in pursuance of common objectives. These alliances start with Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries and then include other countries in the rest of the continent. The integration of SADC is critical for the regions economic development and for South Africas global competitiveness. Beyond the SADC region, South Africa was able to advance the African Renaissance agenda when there were close relations and exchanges with Nigeria, Algeria, Ethiopia and Senegal, which led to the drafting and then adoption of the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD), Pandor said. South Africa, she said, is aware that the world is not monolithic and the normative aspects of the countrys positioning could run counter to certain geographical, developmental or economic partners, such as with regard to respect for human rights and democratic values. These nuances need to be taken into consideration when finally deciding South Africas approach to specific issues, notwithstanding the need to be guided by South Africas identity and values in the international system. Ultimately, pragmatism and idealism need to be balanced on a case by case basis, said the Minister. In this regard, South Africa aims to continue to advocate for the strengthening of the key pillars of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. In a sensational twist to the mysterious suicide of Disha Salian, former manager of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, BJP MLA from Maharashtra Nitish Rane has shot off a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday, requesting him to immediately provide security to Dishas live-in partner Rohan Rai, a budding Bollywood actor. In his letter, Nitish Rane has revealed that Rohan Rai has inside information about the mysterious death of Disha as he was present in the house when Sushants former manager allegedly fell from the Mumbai high-rise. Talking to IANS, Nitish Rane confirmed that he has urged the Union Home Minister to provide security to Rohan as he holds crucial information relating to the mysterious death of his live-in partner. Rohan is very scared of some powerful people. I spoke to him and discovered that due to some pressure, he is not able to disclose information about the mysterious circumstances which led to Dishas death. Rohan needs assurance and security so that he can shed light on the mystery which is also linked with the death of Sushant Singh Rajput," said Rane, a member of the Maharashtra legislative Assembly and son of former Chief Minister Narayan Rane. The letter said that after the alleged suicide of Disha, Rohan Rai had fled Mumbai or may have have been pressurised to leave Mumbai to avoid any scrutiny. I assume he is scared to return to Mumbai where the case is being investigated. This may be due to some pressure from influential people," Rane adds in his letter. According to Rane, Rohan is the most crucial witness in the Disha Salian death case, though Mumbai Police did not question him. The BJP MLA said that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing Sushant Singh Rajputs death case can record Rohans statement once he is given adequate security. Both the mysterious deaths (of Disha and Sushant) are linked. Being a crucial witness, Rohan can now give an insight into the sequence of events which led to both the deaths. I am also ready to give my statement to the CBI relating to the alleged suicides," Rane said. Disha (28), who used to work for a talent management company and handled Sushant Singh Rajputs account, died on June 9 after she allegedly jumped from the 14th floor residence of her fiancee in Malad. Five days after Dishas death, Sushant allegedly died by suicide. The government of Ghana through the One District One Factory Secretariat has presented certificates of recognition to three companies under the Akufo-Addo-led governments flagship industrialization programme. Speaking at the presentation held at the 1D1F Secretariat in Accra on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, the National Coordinator of 1D1F, Gifty Ohene Konadu, whiles appreciating the three companies assured that all companies under the 1D1F project within the course of time will also receive a certificate of recognition from the president of the republic. The purpose of this gathering is to present certificates from his Excellency the President to 1D1F projects. We are starting with three companies namely: Casa De Ropa Ghana, Petersfield and Ray Group Limited, and Ekumfi Fruits and Juices. These are the three that we are starting with. But all the others will receive certificates of recognition from his excellency the president, she stated. Madam Ohene Konadu commended factories and promoters under the 1D1F project for believing in the presidents dream of pursuing a national industrialisation venture. On behalf of his excellency the president, I want to commend these three companies and all 1D1F projects and promoters for believing in His Excellency's dream and defying all odds to make this dream a success. On behalf of his excellency the president, I say 'ayekoo' to these three companies and other 1D1F projects and promoters who will receive their certificates very soon, She also assured 1D1F companies and promoters of the continues support of the government, stating I want to assure you as a secretariat and as stakeholders will continue to support you in all your endeavours, to be sure that you achieve greater heights. So that together we all can achieve a Ghana beyond aid. She said. The One District One Factory Secretariat on the assumption of the Akufo-Addo government was instituted to facilitate the setting up of factories across the various districts in the country in order to put Ghana on the path of industrialization and self-reliance. So far, the secretariat has overseen the establishment and operationalization of several factories across the nation with others also under construction. 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 Police have arrested a Toronto man as part of an investigation into the distribution of child pornography. . On Wednesday, members of the Toronto Police Services Child Exploitation Section executed a search warrant at an address in the Ossington Avenue and Dupont Street area, said police. Police allege they found a number of images and videos of children who it appears were being sexually abused. Najjah Robertson, 33, is charged with two counts of possession of child pornography, two counts of access to child pornography and one count of making available child pornography. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-8500, Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477) or Canadas National Tipline for Reporting the Online Sexual Exploitation of Children at www.cybertip.ca. Manuela Vega is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: mvega@thestar.ca by Vladimir Rozanskij Secretary of State Card. Parolin confirms the Pope is considering a visit. The Belarusian foreign minister, Vladimir Makeev, also invited the pontiff a few days ago. The ordination of the new nuncio Ante Jozic and his dispatch to Minsk, read as a Vatican recognition of the legitimacy of Lukashenko's presidential election. Kolesnikova accused of threatening national security. Moscow (AsiaNews) - According to the official website of the Catholic Church in Belarus, the Vatican Secretary of State, Card. Pietro Parolin claims that Pope Francis is considering the possibility of visiting Belarus. "I think this is one of the visits the pope is considering," the cardinal said. And he stressed that "Belarus has always shown a great deal of interest in a visit from the pope", but "these plans have not materialized", and today the coronavirus pandemic has blocked everything for an indefinite period. Even the Belarusian foreign minister, Vladimir Makeev, meeting Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, confirmed the invitation to the Pope to visit the Republic of Belarus. The minister even said that "we are satisfied with the dynamic development of relations at the highest level and at other levels between Belarus and the Vatican in recent times". He did not mention the question of refusing entry to the Archbishop of Minsk, Msgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz. According to some commentators, Gallagher would have discussed the possibility of appointing a new archbishop, more pleasing to the authorities. Makeev also recognized the historical role of the Catholic Church in the constitution of the Belarusian state. Together with the other Belarusian bishops, Metropolitan Kondrusiewicz himself had repeatedly invited the pope to visit the country. The pope's trips are also suspended until 2022, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, on September 16, Card. Parolin consecrated the new nuncio to Belarus, Msgr. Ante Jozic (see photo). The ceremony took place in the Croatian city of Trilj, in the diocese of Split, the birthplace of the new nuncio. The appointment was published in May 2019, but the consecration had been postponed due to a car accident suffered by the new nuncio. Now recovered, he is ready to go to Minsk, precisely at the moment of maximum tension in the country. His arrival in the Belarusian capital can somehow be considered a Vatican recognition of the legitimacy of Lukashenko's presidential election. Msgr. Jozic has a long experience in relations with the communist authorities, having been in the study mission in Hong Kong for several years. The study mission acts in some way as a pseudo-nunciature to China. Inside the country, shaken by weeks of demonstrations, arrests and forced exiles, one of the opposition organizers, Maria Kolesnikova, was accused of inciting to undermine national security. Kolesnikova was kidnapped by security forces in an attempt to expel her from the country, but she tore her passport to shreds so as not to be extradited. Attorney General William Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staff, whom he said too often injected themselves into politics and went "headhunting" for high profile targets. Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics, Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Donald Trump. "What exactly am I interfering with?" he asked. "Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general." Barr's comments were remarkable, in that the head of the Justice Department catalogued all of the ways in which he thought his agency had gone astray over the years, and in its current formulation harms the body politic. Barr has drawn considerable criticism for intervening in criminal cases in ways that help benefit the president's friends. Barr said it was he, not career officials, who have the ultimate authority to decide how cases should be handled, and derided less-experienced, less-senior bureaucrats who current and former prosecutors have long insisted should be left to handle their cases free from interference from political appointees. Barr said that argument, in essence, means "the will of the most junior member of the organization" would make decisions, but he insisted he would not "blindly" defer to "whatever those subordinates want to do." "Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency," Barr said. The attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement official, spent much of the speech eviscerating the idea of the Justice Department as a place where nonpolitical career prosecutors should be left to decide how sensitive cases are resolved. Barr said, throughout history, prosecutors have sought to "amass glory" by prosecuting prominent people, and he regularly witnessed that phenomenon during his supervision of the Justice Department. "I'd like to be able to say that we don't see head hunting in the Department of Justice," Barr said. "That would not be truthful. I see it every day." Though Barr did not cite any particular cases, his remarks seemed to defend his recent intervention in two prosecutions of Trump's allies. In the case against the president's longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to lawmakers as they probed Russian interference in the 2016 election, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation offered by career prosecutors shortly after Trump tweeted his dismay about the matter. All four quit the case, with two later claiming they felt the move was politically driven and inappropriate. In the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with a Russian diplomat before Trump was sworn into office, Barr's Justice Department moved to drop the charges altogether and again drew criticism for inappropriate, political intervention. A judge is now weighing the department's request. Barr has previously defended both moves. Barr also criticized what he termed the "criminalization of politics," railing against television pundits for speculating on whether an official's actions "constitutes some esoteric crime." "Now you have to call your adversary a criminal, and instead of beating them politically, you try to put them in jail," Barr said, asserting that America was becoming akin to an Eastern European country. "If you're not in power, you're in jail - or you're a member of the press," he quipped. In the course of his denunciation of officials who would seek to criminalize politics, Barr never mentioned how often his boss, the president, calls for people he dislikes to be charged with crimes. As a candidate in 2016, Trump rallies frequently featured chants of "lock her up," in reference to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Since becoming president, the list of officials Trump has called to go to jail has expanded to include former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and others at the FBI involved with investigating his campaign. In a question-and-answer session after the remarks, Barr was notably critical of state coronavirus shutdown measures and of health care professionals who advocate for them over all else. Asked about suicides amid the pandemic, Barr said a doctor was not a "grand seer" who could set societal policy, and noted that shutdowns came with other consequences - including a rise in opioid overdoses. "All this nonsense about how something is dictated by science is nonsense," he said. Barr also attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that while he agreed Black lives matter, "They're not interested in black lives. They're interested in props, a small number of blacks who are killed by police during conflicts with police - usually less than a dozen a year - who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda." Ahead of the start of the Open Enrollment period (Nov. 1 Dec. 15) for 2021, the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance (TDCI) advises consumers to be on the lookout for rebate checks from two insurance carriers that will be hitting consumers mailboxes throughout the month of September. 143,000 consumers who purchased individual health insurance coverage from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee or Cigna health insurance companies through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) in 2019, either directly or through healthcare.gov. The checks are being sent to approximately143,000consumers who purchased individual health insurance coverage from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee or Cigna health insurance companies through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) in 2019, either directly or through Consumers should note that these payments are only for Tennesseans who purchased their policies through the FFM and not for those consumers who receive their BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee or Cigna insurance coverage through other means such as their employer. Consumers should note that these payments are only for Tennesseans who purchased their policies through the FFM and not for those consumers who receive their BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee or Cigna insurance coverage through other means such as their employer. I am pleased to report that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and Cigna are returning money to consumers because their health insurance costs were lower than originally anticipated, said TDCI Commissioner Hodgen Mainda. This is good news for Tennessee as these rebates will give money back to hard-working Tennessee families that can be used during these unprecedented economic times. Consumers who have questions about their rebate checks should contact their carriers directly at the following contact numbers: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee: 1-888-747-8957 (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET Monday through Friday) Cigna: 1-800-244-6224 (24 hours a day) Additionally, TDCI reminds consumers to be wary of scam artists who may want to perpetrate a scam at the expense of consumers who may be receiving a rebate check. To help protect consumers, TDCI reminds consumers of these tips: The rebate checks are valid and should be deposited by the policyholder. Do not believe anyone who might say otherwise. Do not give your check or any of your personal or financial information to someone who contacts you and whom you do not know. If someone tries to steal your rebate check or claim it as their own, report it to your local police or law enforcement agency immediately. Tennesseans should be cautious if they are approached about their rebate check by someone they do not know. If you have questions about your rebate check, please contact your health insurance carrier directly, said TDCI Assistant Commissioner of Insurance Rachel Jrade-Rice. If you have questions about your insurance policy or if you believe you need to file a complaint about an insurance company or an agent, contact our Consumer Insurance Services team at 615-741-2218 or 1-800-342-4029. here. TDCI recently announced the approval of rates for six health insurance carriers offering coverage on the individual market in Tennessee on the FFM for 2021. More information about the Open Enrollment period for 2021 can be found To further assist consumers, TDCI created the following FAQs (frequently asked questions): Q: Who will receive these health insurance rebate checks? A: Approximately 143,000 health insurance consumers who had purchased insurance coverage from either BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee or Cigna on the FFM in 2019. Q: How and when will the checks be mailed? A: Checks will be mailed via the United States Postal Service separately from BlueCross BlueShield Tennessee and Cigna throughout the month of September and should arrive by the end of September or very early October 2020. Q: Who should I contact with my questions about my rebate check? This is the moment a trainee chef was confronted by paedophile hunters after sending explicit messages to an investigator posing as a 13-year-old girl. Joe Davitt was detained in Salford, Greater Manchester in 2018 after an undercover sting operation by the Catching Online Predators group that was streamed live on its social media page. The confrontation came after a sting operation involving Davitt and an investigator posing as 13-year-old 'Lucy'. Davitt, 22 at the time, sent pictures and a video of his private parts to the investigator, asked her to engage in sexual acts and told her: 'We can continue talking if you do not tell your parents about it. 'Don't tell them as I will get in trouble. I am drunk - you can send me things that are dirty.' At Manchester Crown Court, Davitt, now 24, of the city's Burnage district admitted attempting to cause a child to look at images of sexual activity and trying to get a child to engage in sexual acts and was jailed for 30 months. Davitt was also ordered to abide by a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for ten years and must sign the Sex Offenders Register for life. Joe Davitt was snared by paedophile hunters two years after he was offered a home and a job as a cook in a restaurant having previously spent most of his life in foster care before sleeping rough During the confrontation he claimed his Facebook account had been repeatedly hacked and declared: 'I've not spoken to some 13 year old girl. I have to buy a new phone very month because it gets hacked that often. I've got bipolar and ADHD - my mental health is going through the roof.' He was caught two years after he was offered a home and a job as a cook in a restaurant having previously spent most of his life in foster care before sleeping rough. He had gone public in 2016 about his job offer and troubled life during which he was in foster care from the age of eight to 16 before becoming homeless when he moved out of his foster home. Bosses at a restaurant in MediaCityUK in Salford Quays offered him work as a trainee chef after social services suggested he help prepare meals for the homeless at a shelter. He was also offered a council flat and even a reconditioned bike to help travel to and from work. At the time Davitt said: 'Ever since I was eleven and doing food technology at school I had this dream of being a chef. But I ended up homeless for nine months. Social services found me somewhere then when that broke down I ended up in an abandoned house. 'This is the first job I have ever had and it has opened so many doors. My ambition is to one day own my own restaurant. An opportunity like this will change my life forever.' The sting operation took place in November 2018 after the paedophile hunters created a fake profile on Facebook and received a friend request from Davitt. Prosecutor Jonathan Savage said: 'His profile showed his age and they started talking and she made it clear she was 13. 'He said 'I need to delete you I am 22 unless you want to talk but it is up to you.' 'The defendant then suggested they could continue taking if she did not tell her parents about it. He said 'don't tell them I will get in trouble.' Bosses at a restaurant in MediaCityUK in Salford Quays offered him work as a trainee chef after social services suggested he help prepare meals for the homeless at a shelter 'He then said 'I am drunk you can send me things that are dirty.' His comments, questions and requests became sexual. He told her not to tell anyone even friends otherwise he would get in trouble. 'He asked her if she had had sex and she said 'obviously not I am 13.' He asked if she wanted to 'show him' stuff including her breasts and knickers. She said her father could see pictures on her phone and that her camera was faulty.' The court heard Davitt asked the investigator if wanted to see his private parts before sending pictures of himself in an aroused state. He then asked her to perform sex acts upon herself adding: 'Just do it before I get mad..' Mr Savage said: 'The communication took place over about 48 hours. The group then decided to confront the defendant. They created a fake profile for someone closer to the defendants age and they agreed to meet in Salford and police were called. 'The defendant initially claimed his phone was hacked and then said he stopped contact when he found out she was 13. 'He largely replied no comment when interviewed by police but he claimed he lived with 29 others in a hostel so could not have possibly posted a video of himself. He also denied being a chef. He has no previous convictions apart from a reprimand from 2007 when he was 11.' In mitigation for Davitt defence lawyer Patrick Harris said: 'He is not a mature man and has had a challenging upbringing. He had been in care since he was eight and there are gaps in his education. 'He has ADHD and suffers from depression and anxiety. These exchanges took place from 11.30-12.45 and then briefly the next day. He says he soon came to his senses and realised what he did was wrong.' Sentencing the judge Miss Recorder Mary Loram QC told Davitt: 'You contacted Lucy and quickly the exchange became sexual. She repeated her age to you but you believed she was sexually experienced. If this had been a real child it would have been an extremely distressing experience for her. 'You tried to excuse your behaviour saying you were drunk. I accept you are still in your 20s and have difficulties but those factors do not come close to explaining your clear sexual interest in children.' Two Boeing 737 MAX crashes that killed all 346 passengers and crew aboard were the "horrific culmination" of failures by the planemaker and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a US House panel concluded after an 18-month investigation. The crashes "were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event," the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Democratic majority said in its highly critical report released on Wednesday (US time). The 737 Max has been grounded since March 2019 after a pair of fatal crashes. Credit:AP "They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeings engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeings management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA." The 737 MAX was grounded in March 2019 after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 near Addis Ababa which killed all 157 aboard. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora (GKPD) on Thursday hailed Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy for demanding a Judicial Commission to probe the genocide perpetrated against the community in Kashmir. The GKPD also endorsed Swamy's call for the capital punishment to the perpetrators of the brutal murders, rapes and forced conversion along with providing full compensation to the Kashmiri Pandits. Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday tweeted: "The Government must set up a Genocide Commission on the Kashmiri Pandit's brutal murders, rapes, and forced conversion to Islam since 1989 and this Commission must be able to recommend capital punishment to the perpetrators. It also should assign full compensation to KPs". Thanking Swamy for taking up the cause, the GKPD also said this was the long standing demand of the community. And personalities such as Kangana Ranaut, Vivek Agnihotri and others were also taking up the cause for bringing justice to the persecuted community, it said. The Administrator of the Ghana Education Trust fund (GETFund), Mr Richard Ampofo has said the Fund has been able to clear 96% of liabilities it inherited from the previous Mahama administration after receiving US$1.5 billion to support the development of educational infrastructure. Speaking at the Ministry of Informations press briefing, the Administrator noted that the Fund has also paid contractors who sued it. We have the E-blocks and as a result of the loan coming in, weve been able to pay 96% of the liabilities that we took over and weve even been able to pay more than that. The 4% was as a result of contractors who took GETFund to court but standing here today, I can boldly say that of the number that sent GETFund to court, 13 have pulled out, and were settling the matter out of court because they have seen that the others have been paid, he said. The Administrator also insisted that a lot of educational projects have been undertaken by the Akufo-Addo administration contrary to claims made by opposition political parties. Out of the securitization, GETFund has been able to build 1666 new projects. We also did 39 renovations of dilapidated structures, so if we hear that the Nana Akufo-Addo government has not even built one single school, tell them that its a lie. Giving a breakdown of some projects that had been completed, he named 1122 classroom blocks, 325 dormitories, 295 toilets, and others; including assemblies halls, teachers' quarters, and so on are 21. Mr Richard also debunked assertions that GETFund has abandoned projects initiated under the erstwhile Mahama administration. Richard Ampofo Boadu explained that as of August 2020, 409 projects started under the NDC regime had been completed. He added that they settled all arrears that they came to inherit and did not abandon any projects. He reiterated that there was a need to carry out a value for money audit due to the multiplicity of projects. ---citinewsroom Montana Public Service Commission documents showing a pattern of bullying, harassment, and spying at the agency have been released by a district court judge, months after commissioners sued the news media rather than release data. The hundreds of emails and official documents reveal a pattern of spying, embarrassing email leaks, and trumped-up claims that led to police investigations that went nowhere. Bullying at the Republican-controlled agency was grade-school level. Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Mike Menahan signed the order Sept. 11. The PSC is a five-person elected commission that, among other things, determines how much monopoly utilities are allowed to charge Montanans for electricity and natural gas service. Its a job with a base salary of $109,000 a year. The dysfunction on display in the documents released by the court have damaged the PSCs ability to work together, said Commissioner Roger Koopman, who was among those harassed. No, it doesnt function properly, Koopman said. I would define 'function properly' as having mutual respect, disagreeing when you disagree, but being willing to listen to and learn from one another and work with one another in good faith. We havent had that in at least a year. In 2019 PSC staff and fellow commissioner Randy Pinocci began reading through Koopmans emails without Koopmans knowledge. Several of the emails were then leaked to a right-wing website, NorthWest Liberty News, where they were read aloud and posted for public reading. The headline on the website read Roger Koopmans work email laid bare, and included private conversations between Koopman and family members. An investigation into the matter identified PCS Communications Director Drew Zinecker as the likely leaker, based on conversations with a third party that said Zinecker had offered him several of the same emails. In a later NorthWest Liberty News feature titled Terror in Helena! 'Im afraid that Roger Koopman will bring a gun to work and shoot me, Zinecker and Pinocci paint Koopman as a threat to the office.' " Pinocci and Zinecker shopped their tale to several news outlets. Pinocci contacted The Billings Gazette with the narrative, but the newspaper considered Pinoccis story malicious and did nothing with it. Pinocci also shopped to the news media a Zinecker claim that Commissioner Tony ODonnell, a Billings Republican, had asked Zinecker to work on ODonnells 2020 reelection campaign on company time, which is illegal. Although ODonnell in a separate case has been found in violation of using government resources for his campaign, hes adamant that Zineckers claims are false. Similar to the claims that Koopman is a threat, Zineckers claim against ODonnell is backed by Zinecker's emails to other PSC employees in which the communications director lays out his narratives without the backing of other employees. The documents released by the court show that the Montana Highway Patrol was called to the PSC office after Zinecker said he was fearful. But the Highway Patrol noted that Zinecker seemed giddy to have officers involved. MHP found Zineckers claim meritless. Investigators into the PSC shenanigans reported that the MHP discussed the Feb. 19, 2020, meeting and noted that Mr. Zinecker seemed giddy and thrilled at the prospect of elevating the issue to the point of requiring additional MHP resources at the PSC. They noted that this behavior seemed strange for an individual alleging he felt Commissioner Koopman had created a threatening behavior towards Mr. Zinecker to the point of gun violence. Principally aligned with Zineckers allegations was Mandi Hinman, PSC administrator. Hinman and Zinecker are also identified in the court-released documents as involving Helena Police in a PSC investigation in which the two alleged another employee had acquired a gaming computer at office expense and was using the computer for non-business activities. Investigators found no evidence of wrongdoing. Both Koopman and ODonnell told Lee Montana Newspapers the claims by Hinman and Zinecker against the employee were baseless. Emails indicate that Zinecker thought the presence of the police would cause the employee to st himself, which excited Zinecker, who had no real supervisory authority over other PSC staff, despite the investigation. The employee took weeks of family medical leave to avoid the harassment. In other documents, PSC staff describe how Zinecker instructed one employee to wear a chicken suit when making a presentation on the commission website. Other employees present said Zineckers suggestion was inappropriate and harassing. In another incident, a PSC worker who noticed a roll of yellow caution tape on Zineckers desk asked the communications director what it was for. The worker said Zinecker replied to "f--- with Roger" Koopman. The commissioners put Zinecker on a paid leave in the spring, meaning he continues to receive his $66,040 a year salary. Hinman has continued to work throughout the ordeal. Hinman is paid $100,963. The released documents also indicate that in 2019, the Montana Legislative Auditors office investigated Hinmans pay after learning she had received pay raises of more than $21,000 since 2016. The conclusion of the investigation wasnt in the documents. Koopman, who has been at the PSC since 2013 and terms out this year, said he knew nothing about the pay increases to Hinman. ODonnell said he was unaware of the pay raises. The Billings Republican, who has been on the commission since 2017, said he thought staff had received pay raises of 5%, which Hinmans raises far exceeded. O'Donnell said he didn't think the bullying and harassment affected the commission's ability to do its work. "Here's the point. And this is contrary to some of the articles you put in the paper that the commission is in disarray, or dysfunctional," O'Donnell said. "The thing between Pinocci and Koopman has not affected one single decision that the commission has made. Not one. Not even a little bit. There is no dysfunction in the actual working of the Public Service Commission." Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1 Grocery workers associated with UFCW Local 770 demonstrate on Aug. 5 outside a Food 4 Less store in Los Angeles after reports of 28 workers being infected with COVID-19. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) California will relax the burden of proof to receive workers' compensation benefits for some employees who contract COVID-19 on the job under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday. Senate Bill 1159 by Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) makes it easier for police, firefighters and other essential employees who contract COVID-19 while working to be covered under the states workers compensation program. In other workplaces both public and private the new law presumes employees caught the novel coronavirus on the job if there is an outbreak at their worksite, ensuring those employees are eligible to have their medical bills and lost wages covered. Because lawmakers passed the law as an urgency bill, it will go into effect immediately, bypassing the typical Jan. 1 start date for most laws. Newsom said during a bill signing ceremony streamed online that the new law makes clear the need to "prioritize our workforce, our workers, our frontline essential workforce that we pay a lot of lip service to but, often, we don't back up." Newsom's signature Thursday didn't come as a surprise. The governor said earlier this year that he planned to work hand in glove with the Legislature to expand COVID-19 workplace protections, including loosening workers compensation claim requirements. Newsom signed an executive order in May easing workers comp restrictions for all employees required to work outside the home, but those changes expired on July 5. SB 1159 is retroactive to July 6 and expires in 2023. "This helps employees who are struggling after becoming a victim of COVID-19," Hill said. California's workers' compensation system pays employees who have suffered an injury or illness on the job, regardless of who is at fault. For most workers, the onus is on them to prove the injury or illness was work related. However, certain occupational injuries and maladies experienced by law enforcement officers, firefighters and correctional officers, such as heart disease, hernias, pneumonia, cancer and meningitis, are presumed to have occurred during the course of their employment, requiring the workers' compensation system to pay for treatment and, in fatal cases, death benefits. Story continues The state's 100-year-old workers' compensation insurance system relies on nearly 700,000 businesses covered by 200 insurance companies to pay for medical care and wage replacement when employees are injured while working. Some 800,000 workers receive benefits from the program each year, according to a 2020 report from the Workers Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. There have been more than 40,436 claims filed so far this year by workers who said they contracted COVID-19 on the job, according to statistics from the Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the workers' compensation system. Of those, 11,186 have been rejected, with most denials attributed to a negative COVID-19 test. The number of workers' compensation claims for the coronavirus jumped from 4,790 in May to 11,271 in June and to 12,889 in July, according to the Department of Industrial Relations. The workers' comp rating bureau estimated that COVID-19 claims will cost employers and insurers around $2 billion. The bureau estimated in May that the average claim paid would be $29,000. Under the law Newsom signed, employees will be presumed to have contracted COVID-19 on the job if there was an outbreak where they worked. The law defines an outbreak as when five or more employees contract the virus within a 14-day period at a workplace with five to 100 employees or when 5% of employees contracti the virus in that period at a worksite with more than 100 employees. In those cases, an employer could still challenge a claim on the grounds that the employee had been exposed elsewhere, but opponents of the bill argued that is a difficult burden to prove. "I think the threshold is critical," Hill said. "Really, it's common sense. You shouldn't be able to have an outbreak of the extent we've seen in some workplaces and conclude those workers didn't get it from the workplace." During the final weeks of the legislative session that concluded Aug. 31, the bill underwent six amendments in an attempt to reach consensus among labor and business groups. The Workers' Compensation Action Network, a statewide coalition representing employers and insurers, said those late changes made the law more palatable, even if the group remained opposed to the legislation. Under the new law, the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation will be required to conduct a study on the impact of COVID-19 on the workers' compensation system by April 30, 2022. In the end, employers are satisfied that lawmakers rejected more extreme proposals, which would have imposed broad new liability on struggling California employers to pay for COVID-19 cases that are unrelated to work," the group said in a statement. "Such proposals risked turning the workers compensation system into a broad social safety net for the pandemic, a responsibility that should be reserved for government, not California employers grappling with an economic crisis." Newsom also signed Assembly Bill 685 by Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes (D-Grand Terrace), which will require employers to provide written notice to workers who may have been exposed to the virus and to inform local public health officials. The legislation also gives state regulators new authority over the next two years to penalize business owners if workplace violations are discovered. Julie Su, the secretary of California's Labor and Workforce Development Agency, said the notification law extends beyond those who are directly employed by a business owner to include subcontractors, "so that workers can choose to stay home, to get tested, to protect themselves and their families and to follow other health guidelines about quarantining." Times staff writer John Myers contributed to this report Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson Honored with NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award With the U.S. Postal Service under assault from the Trump Administration, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) was among the first to cast a vote in favor of H.R. 8015, Delivering for America Act. The legislation requires the Postal Service to return to the operations and levels of service in place on January 1, 2020, and throughout the coronavirus public health emergency. It mandates that all election mail be treated as First-Class mail, and it provides $25 billion in critical funding for the Postal Service the same level of funding recommended by the USPS Board of Governors, composed of 100 percent President Trump appointees. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. Thompson, who began his grassroots political activism being a civil rights champion through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while a student at Tougaloo College, will receive the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) 2020 National Leadership Award. Each year, the NNPA recognizes courageous Americans that have impacted the nation and world in positive ways. This years recipients include: elected officials, a business maverick, and an educator. NNPA Board members said while the recipients career paths may be varied, the impact of their shared commitment to creating meaningful and beneficial change in the lives of African Americans cannot be underestimated. Thank you for the NNPA 2020 National Leadership Award, Rep. Thompson said. The NNPA has been the voice of the Black community consistently over the years. The Black Press is the premier and trusted voice of Black Communities unmatched by any other media organization, he continued. Now more than ever, America needs to hear and be exposed to the black perspective. We are dealing with two pandemics: COVID-19 and racism. While dealing and fighting a global pandemic that disproportionately affects African Americans, we face racism, discrimination, and police brutality. Born in a state with a unique history of racial inequality, Rep. Thompson said he draws inspiration from the legacies of Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, and Henry Kirksey. ADVERTISEMENT According to his biography, the Bolton, Mississippi native considers it an honor to walk the path that Mississippi civil rights icons paved decades earlier. Serving his 13th term in the United States House of Representatives, Rep. Thompson represents Mississippis Second Congressional District, where he has spent his entire life fighting to improve peoples lives. The longest-serving African American elected official in the State of Mississippi and the lone Democrat in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation, Rep. Thompsons activism began early. While in college, he organized voter registration drives for African Americans throughout the Mississippi Delta on behalf of the SNCC before graduating and following in his mothers footsteps by becoming a schoolteacher. During his tenure educating Mississippis youth, a fire inside of Rep. Thompson was ignited, pushing him to be a voice to the voiceless. From 1969 to 1972, Thompson served as alderman of his hometown, Bolton, before serving as the citys mayor from 1973 to 1980 During his time as mayor, Rep. Thompson was credited with improving the citys infrastructure by paving roads, fixing the water and sewer systems, repairing and renovating dilapidated houses, and spearheading the construction of city hall and re-evaluating the towns real estate. A founding member of the Mississippi Association of Black Mayors, where he instituted policies and provided services that benefited Boltons underserved, Rep. Thompsons services to his hometown increased when he earned election as a Hinds Country supervisor, a position he held from 1980 until 1993. Constituents embraced the then-supervisors record of being a pragmatic local servant in Mississippis most populous county. His effective problem solving, and coalition building record served as the bedrock for his election to the Congress in 1993, representing Mississippis largest Congressional District composed of the states capital city, Jackson, and the Mississippi Delta. He continues his activism and the fight for racial and social justice today. In the African American community, police brutality has become predictable and expected in most cases, Rep. Thompson stated. We rely on the Black Press to adequately report these stories by not engaging in victim-blaming. Our stories deserve and should be told. I encourage you to continue to tell our stories. The Virtual 2020 NNPA National Leadership Awards will be broadcast on September 17th at 7pm ET on blackpressusa.com and youtube.com/c/blackpressusatv. To register for the 2020 NNPA Leadership Awards, visit vitualnnpa2020.com. 'The Chinese navy is large and expanding both in numbers and capability by the day.' 'India too must take measures to safeguard its own interests, now and in the future.' IMAGE: The INS Ranvijay, INS Shakti and Russian naval ships Admiral Vinogradov, Admiral Tributs and Boris Butoma conduct exercises at sea during exercise INDRA NAVY between the Indian and Russian navies, September 5 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta was commissioned into the Indian Navy in December 1984 and is a product of the National Defence Academy. He is a specialist in navigation and direction and has commanded frontline ships of the Indian Navy: The Missile Corvettes INS Nishank and the INS Karmuk, the Stealth Frigate INS Tabar and the Aircraft Carrier INS Viraat. Besides serving as the Naval Assistant to the then Chief of Naval Staff, the admiral has held many operational and training assignments in his 35 year career at sea. A graduate of the Command and Staff College Bangladesh, the Army War College at MHOW and the National Defence College, Admiral Dasgupta was awarded the coveted Yudh Seva Medal for his role in coordinating the evacuation operations from Yemen in 2015 under Operation Raahat. Admiral Dasgupta is currently posted as the Chief of Staff of the Eastern Naval Command based at Vishakapatnam. "Every country needs to operate within the ambit of internationally recognised and accepted laws, conventions and treaties. When nations do not do that, then it may lead to situations whose outcomes are difficult to predict," Admiral Dasgupta tells Senior Rediff.com Contributor Air Commodore Nitin Sathe (retd) in the first of an exclusive two-part interview. Congratulations on taking over as Chief of Staff of the Eastern Naval Command. You have assumed the responsibility when a lot is happening in the Ladakh sector. We will start by first understanding the basic role of the Eastern Fleet in the Arabian Sea. Thank you, both for your kind congratulations as also providing me this platform to share some thoughts with you and your readers about the Indian Navy. As you are aware, India is blessed with a peninsular geography and to cater for operational requirements on both seaboards. The Indian Navy has an operational command under a Commander-in-Chief on both the East and West Coasts. We also have a Commander-in-Chief at Kochi, heading the Southern Naval Command, which is a dedicated Training Command. Being operational commands, both the Eastern and Western Naval Commands have the Eastern and Western Fleets under them. The Fleets comprise the main combat platforms, ships that will be tasked to execute operations at sea across the spectrum of conflict. The three Commanders-in-Chief are also designated as Commanders-in-Chief Coastal Defence of their respective Areas of Responsibility to ensure coastal security of India and her island territories. China has deep rooted interests in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Could you spell out the same for our readers please? Also, I would like you to highlight the importance of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from the security perspective. The Indian Ocean is unique. As the great maritime scholar K M Panikkar rightly highlighted, unlike the other two main oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, which are bound on two sides by land mass, the Indian Ocean has land mass on three sides. And the Indian peninsula juts out into the ocean for a thousand miles. It is home to the main energy and economic highways of the global economy. India sits astride these highways. Most global economic powers, China included, have their national destinies intertwined with unfettered flow of their commerce through this region and, therefore, have interests in the region. China has also made substantial economic and possibly, dual use investments in Africa and other IOR littoral States. Their substantial investments at Djibouti, Gwadar and Hambantota are well-known. They are also weapon and military hardware suppliers to several small IOR nations. As you have noted, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have unique geographical location. They sit astride the crucial waterways of the Malacca Strait, through which most of the world's energy and commerce flow. Therefore, these islands have strategic and security significance not only for India, but the nations whose trade flows through the region. The strategic importance of these islands for India can be lost on only the most 'sea-blind people'. Control of the South China Sea assumes great significance for the Chinese especially while dealing with the nations surrounding the nine-dash line. What are the Chinese doing for the same? Does the Indian Navy venture into the South China Sea? If so, what is its role in that area? Nations, big and small, look after their national interests. They take measures and act in ways that they feel are warranted to safeguard the same. However, every country needs to operate within the ambit of internationally recognised and accepted laws, conventions and treaties. When nations do not do that, then it may lead to situations whose outcomes are difficult to predict. One of the mandates of the Indian Navy is to protect India's trade and economic interests. Towards this, the Indian Navy's doctrine and force planning are fully aligned. The Indian Navy undertakes operations and deployments, as required, across areas of interest to India to uphold this mandate. IMAGE: INAS 300, the Indian Navy's premier fighter squadron, celebrates its diamond jubilee in New Delhi, July 8 2020. The White Tigers, as the squadron is called, has the rare distinction of operating all three fighter aircraft of the Indian Navy from all three aircraft carrriers: The INS Vikrant, INS Viraat, INS Vikramaditya. Photograph: ANI Photo What about about the collaboration between the Indian Navy and the Japanese, Australian and other navies to thwart the Chinese threat? Will it be a joint force and how effective will it be? How have we been training for the same to achieve our objectives? India and the Indian Navy have always operated with like-minded navies, in the region and beyond, for many decades. What we see now is just a continuation of this policy. Further, India has not been part of any military alliance so far. We have either operated, independently or under the UN flag. Even as we speak, the Indian Navy continues to deploy ships in the Gulf of Aden to ensure safety of merchant marine transiting through piracy-affected areas in that geographical region, independently, rather than as part of any alliance. The Indian Navy, however, as I have mentioned, regularly operates with other like-minded navies to enhance understanding of best operating practices and enhance inter-operability. The Eastern Naval Command regularly undertakes exercises with more than 11 navies in the region and beyond towards the same. Since the future cannot be predicted with accuracy, we feel that operating with friendly navies routinely will give us the confidence and inter-operability necessary to address common challenges. The interaction with the USA, Japan and Australia may be viewed in this light. The Chinese have a strong navy in terms of numbers. What is your assessment of the PLA navy's strengths and weaknesses? With its naval force looking after different interests, how does our naval strength compare to what China can deploy against us in our area of interest? All nations, China included, undertake force accretions based on their national interests and strategy. Operating large navies comes with its own set of challenges. Naval platforms are extremely complex due to the medium they operate in as also the systems and sub-systems onboard. When nations have adequate industrial base and economic heft, they can undertake accelerated force accretions, as have been seen over the decades. World War II is a perfect example for understanding how national will and industrial capacities ensure naval force build-up. However, whilst constructing and commissioning ships is one aspect of naval operations, the devil is in the details. In my view, it is all about the personnel onboard. For a nation to ensure bang for the buck, the personnel manning cutting edge platforms must have the necessary skill sets to exploit the sensors and weapons onboard. And personnel cannot become adept SONAR or RADAR operators overnight. It takes years and years of practice. So, finally it is the man behind the machine. The Indian Navy's force structure and basing hinges on a continuous assessment of the envisaged challenges to India's National Interests. We position and deploy accordingly. You are right that the Chinese navy is large and expanding both in numbers and capability by the day. India too must take measures to safeguard its own interests, now and in the future. More importantly, we need to shape an international environment that supports our national interests in the maritime theatre. IMAGE: Indian naval ships hold a passage exercise with the US Navy's aircraft carrier, gthe USS Nimitz in the Indian Ocean, July 21 2020. Photograph: ANI Photo A lot has been said about acquiring a third aircraft carrier for the navy. With your experience of working on an aircraft carrier, what are your views on the same? How will it bolster our strength/capabilities in the times ahead? The Indian Navy feels that India should have three aircraft carriers to serve its maritime interests. It is particularly important to understand that acquiring the professional competence to operate aircraft carriers effectively and safely takes several years. And we, as a nation and navy, have had more than five decades of such experience. We need to retain and further perfect this potent capability. Aircraft carriers provide operational flexibility and manoeuvrability that is unmatched. Therefore, frivolous debates about our aircraft carrier projects should not be encouraged. There are vested interests that do not want us to have such a capability. Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/ Rediff.com Defence Minister on Thursday asserted that no force in the world can stop Indian troops from patrolling the country's border in region. Replying to clarifications sought by MPs in Rajya Sabha on his statement on the border row, the minister said skirmishes and face-off with China in the last few months have been primarily over the issue of patrolling the border. "I want to make it clear, skirmishes and face-off are because of this (issue of patrolling)," he said, adding the patrolling pattern is traditional and well defined. "No force in the world can stop Indian soldiers from patrolling. Our soldiers have sacrificed their lives only for this," the minister said. In his statement, Singh said China attempted to change the status quo along the LAC with its provocative military manoeuvres late last month and that there is a mismatch between what Beijing says and does. The minister said India wants a peaceful solution to the boundary issue, but will not shy away from any action required to defend the sovereignty of the country. While the two sides were engaged in diplomatic and military dialogues, Singh said the "Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of 29th and 30th August in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake". "But yet again, timely and firm actions by our armed forces along the LAC prevented such attempts from succeeding," he said, adding that, "Unki kathani aur karni alag hai (their actions are at variance with their words". (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.) By Express News Service The actor has a clutch of fun and interesting scripts and is looking forward to start work again, a source reveals Actor Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, whos presently stationed with her husband Anand Ahuja in London, has kept busy during the lockdown. A source reveals that Sonam has been occupied with seven scripts in her hand, which shes presently reading. Sonam has got some really fun and interesting scripts and shes spending a lot of her time reading them. Shes really looking forward to start work again once the current scenario gets better, the source says. Sonam had last appeared in Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga and The Zoya Factor, both released in 2019. In a previous interview, Sonam revealed shed like to explore the horror and action genres next. David Cameron has admitted he is embarrassed by the lewd revelations made about him in Sasha Swire's political memoir. The former Prime Minister said he did not want details of his private life 'splashed all over the place' in an interview with Times Radio this morning. In Lady Swire's unabashed book, she details how the then-Tory PM told her not to walk ahead of him on a coastal stroll because her scent was 'affecting my pheromones'. Asked about the revelations, Mr Cameron said he 'didn't recall that conversation' but added: 'Look if someone wrote down all your banter in private over the years there are probably going to be a few bits and pieces..' He tells Times Radio: 'Of course its kind of embarrassing when you have things you say and do in private splashed all over the place and of course youd rather that didnt happen. 'But I suppose the truth is if you want respect for your privacy and people not questioning you character and private life and all the rest of it, then politics probably isnt the career for you so youve got to take the rough with the smooth.' The former Prime Minister (pictured on Monday), said he did not want details of his private life 'splashed all over the place' in an interview with Times Radio to be aired this morning. Extracts from Sasha Swire's amazing tell-all diary reveal how David Cameron asked her not to walk ahead of him on a walk in Polzeath because her scent was 'affecting my pheromones' Sasha Swire, the wife of former Tory MP Sir Hugo Swire (pictured together in 2011), will reveal her experiences inside the world of politics in her new book . Killer political quips George Osborne, former Chancellor: Looked like a 'caddish extra on Downton Abbey'. Pasty tax showed he was 'too clever to be sensible'. Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary: Arrived at a meeting 'looking like he usually looks, sweaty, just out of the gym and wanting to kill people'. Matt Hancock, Health Secretary: 'Particularly disingenuous. Quite an actor that one.' Esther McVey, former Work and Pensions Minister: 'More ladette than lady.' Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister in Cameron government: 'Fagin-like, villainous-looking with tight little weasel eyes.' William Hague former Foreign Secretary: He was 'foolish' to issue a statement about the 'gynaecological secrets' of wife Ffion in response to unsubstantiated 'gay rumours' about him. Hague is 'only ever interested in himself, his ministers are gnat bites on his ankles, or so he makes them feel'. Oliver Dowden, Culture Secretary: Tells Sir Hugo he was fed up with his wife's vegan cooking, so was thrilled to find a ham and chicken bake in the oven. He 'gobbled it down lustily, and when his wife came home she asked where the dog's food was'. John Bercow, former House of Commons Speaker: He is 'a little weasel, creepy, revolting, little goblin, gripped by his own smug sanctity, dislikes Hugo'. Donald Trump: 'A filthy, racist misogynist'. John Bercow is 'a little weasel, creepy' Advertisement In the book, Lady Swire says her husband Sir Hugo Swire and Cameron were 'laughing uproariously' about the size of the private parts of certain Tories, including Gove, at a birthday party for George Osborne in the Chancellor's No11 flat. Gove's manhood was 'like a slinky that comes down the stairs before the rest of the body,' said Sir Hugo. Cameron thought this 'hilarious'. She claims Cameron liked her, 'because I am not remotely nervous around him. I'm cheeky, occasionally lewd and sometimes a little too challenging'. Extracts from the tell-all diary reveal how the Conservative Prime Minister asked Mr Swire's wife not to walk ahead of him on a coastal path in Polzeath because her scent was 'affecting my pheromones'. Writing about the alleged incident, which Mrs Swire claims occurred in August 2011 on a three-day break to Cornwall, she claims: 'At one point, on the coastal path, he (David Cameron) asks me not to walk ahead of him. 'Why?' I ask, and he says: 'Because that scent you are wearing is affecting my pheromones. It makes me want to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one!' 'This is not flirting by the prime minister. This is probably lewdness. But hell, I'm so starved of masculine interest at my age it made me smile.' Mrs Swire's book Diary of an MP's Wife: Inside and Outside Power, which is being serialised in The Times, also recounts a dinner in Dorneywood, the Chancellor's country house, where Mr Cameron shares anecdotes about foreign leaders including 'the Sarkozys' fake marital displays' and Italian premier Berlusconi's two-way mirror. 'I sit next to Dave at dinner. He gives us wonderful vignettes of the Sarkozys' fake marital displays and of being given a tour around Rome's equivalent of No 10 by Berlusconi,' she writes. 'When they come to his bedroom he points at a Renaissance two-way mirror above the bed and with his characteristic grin says, 'Well, they didn't have porn channels in those days, did they?'' Mrs Swire, who worked as a journalist before taking on the role of political researcher for her husband's office from 2001 to 2009, offers a candid account of life as an MP's wife and lifts the lid on the inner Tory circles thanks to the secret diary she kept for 20 years. Mrs Swire, the daughter of former Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, also reveals how only 'ten per cent' of politics was 'above the surface' and there were many others, including the wives of MPs and civil servants, who were all a part of the equation. Writing about the alleged incident in Cornwall in August 2011, Mrs Swire: 'At one point, on the coastal path, he (David Cameron) asks me not to walk ahead of him. 'Why?' I ask, and he says: 'Because that scent you are wearing is affecting my pheromones. It makes me want to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one!'' Pictured, the PM in Cornwall in 2014 David and Samantha drinking coffee at the Surfside Cafe in Polzeath, Cornwall, in 2014 - on what was the family's fifteenth holiday since moving into Downing Street In her book, Mrs Swire goes on to question the condemnation former Prime Minister David Cameron received for his resignation honours list, asking why the politician was called out for listing his cronies if he wanted to. Her comments come years after Mr Cameron came under fire from senior Conservatives for his resignation honours list of gongs for his friends and allies in 2016. The list of of 48 recommendations included a gong for Isabel Spearman, a personal aide to Samantha Cameron. Mrs Swire first decided to email the extracts of her diary to a literary agent after her husband stood down in 2019. Within three weeks she found herself signing a non-fiction book deal and becoming a debut author. She states in a preface to her book that she had never intended to publish her diaries because it would have been a 'betrayal' of her family and friends, adding that some of her entries 'might offend without meaning to'. She changed her mind because 'it is always men who write history'. Old Etonion Sir Hugo was MP for East Devon from 2001-2009 and also served as minister for the foreign office. He left the Commons on November 6, 2019. Diary Of An MP's Wife, by Sasha Swire, is published by Little, Brown 20. Sasha Swire 2020. Trump Blasts WTO for Taking Advantage of United States President Donald Trump had harsh words for the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a press briefing Sept. 16, accusing the transnational body of taking advantage of America to suck money and jobs out of the United States to the benefit of China and other countries. Trump was asked about whether the United States should remain part of the WTO after its recent ruling against the United States over $200 billion in tariffs on China. The WTOs three-member panel ruled that the U.S. duties broke trading rules because they applied only to China and were above maximum rates agreed to by the United States, and that, when the tariffs were imposed, Washington didnt adequately explain why its measures were a justified exception. The president replied that the WTO has never been good to us. The WTO, as far as Im concerned, was created to suck money and jobs out of the United States to the benefit of China and other countriesthats what my opinion iswhether it was created [for that] or it just turned out to be that way, Trump said. It was a method, in my opinion, of taking advantage of the United States, Trump said, adding that the administration was evaluating the WTO ruling and considering its next steps. Washington has said that tariffs imposed by the Trump administration two years ago on more than $200 billion in Chinese goods were justified because China was forcing companies to transfer technology and intellectual property. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement following the ruling that this panel report confirms what the Trump administration has been saying for four years: the WTO is completely inadequate to stop Chinas harmful technology practices. The WTO, which Trump earlier branded a broken institution, was formed to resolve international trade disputes through multilateral rules and institutions. Lighthizer and others have argued that the WTO is biased against the United States and that some of its members, notably China, have exploited membership to unfair advantage by pursuing trade dispute cases against other members while themselves flouting its rules. Critics of Chinas conduct after it joined the WTO in 2001 say that while China benefited from unfettered access to American consumers, it kept its market selectively closed to foreign competition, forced U.S. companies to enter into joint ventures with Chinese state-controlled enterprises, gaining access to key American technologies, while continuing its past pattern of suppressing dissent and violating human rights. The promised freedom in China didnt develop, wrote Epoch Times contributor Ronald J. Rychlak, the Jamie L. Whitten chair in law and government at the University of Mississippi, in an op-ed. Many Western intellectuals and their Chinese counterparts have noted that China today is less free than it was a decade ago. Free speech, dissent, and religion have all been suppressed by the regime. Trump has said that Chinas unfair trade practices have ripped off the United States. Chinas pattern of misconduct is well known, Trump said in remarks on May 29. For decades, they have ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year were lost dealing with China, especially over the years during the prior administration. China raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Organization. To make matters worse, they are considered a developing nation, getting all sorts of benefits that others, including the United States, are not entitled to, Trump said, referring to the developing nation status China received when it entered the WTO, which gives the worlds second-largest economy special privileges, such as longer implementation periods for tariff cuts. In 2018, Trump led an effort to rebalance the U.S.China trade relationship, which led to the administration imposing about $400 billion in tariffs when negotiations stalled. The government does not know? We will tell them. We will give a list to them," said Dr Amarinder Singh Malhi, resident doctor of Delhis AIIMS, when News18 spoke with him, asking him about the government informing Parliament about the death of a total of 155 healthcare workers and their kin seeking compensation under the Prime Ministers Garib Kalyan package. A list of over 382 doctors has now been shared by the Indian Medical Association that says the government has abandoned national heroes. This comes in the wake of Ashwini Kumar Choubey, minister of state for health, informing Parliament that data about dead healthcare workers is not maintained at the central level. Health is a state subject is what Choubey told the House on Wednesday. The IMA has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging that healthcare workers be declared martyrs and their families be given job security. This is abdication of duty and abandonment of the national heroes who have stood up for our people" said the medical association in a release. The countrys largest body of doctors said, If the government doesnt maintain the statistics of total number of doctors and healthcare workers infected by Covid-19 and the statistics of how many of them sacrificed their life due to the pandemic, it loses the moral authority to administer the Epidemic Act 1897 and the Disaster Management Act. The IMA has also published the list of 382 Indian doctors who died due to Covid-19. Noting that the data has raised concerns all across the country, the IMA said no nation has lost as many doctors and healthcare workers as India.Doctors suffer 4 times the mortality of ordinary citizens and private practitioners suffer 8 times the mortality on the same scale. To feign that this information doesnt merit the attention of the nation is abominable," the statement read. The information on the death of 155 healthcare workers comes at a time when the medical fraternity is mourning the loss of lives of 3 young doctors in the last three days alone. Thirty-three-year-old Ketaki Paranjpe, an anaesthesiologist at GMC Nagpur, passed away due to Covid-19. She was a patient of asthma and was serving in spite of being comorbid herself. Late Doctor Ketaki Paranjpe. Dr Sachin Kashnia, a PG third-year resident anaesthesiologist at Mahatma Gandhi University, Jaipur, passed away due to heart failure. He was treating novel coronavirus patients for the past 6 months and was on duty in the Covid ward the night before his death. Dr Ravi Gabhane, 35, another doctor at RPAMS college, passed away on Wednesday. Late Doctor Sachin Kashnia.Late Doctor Ravi Gabhane. AIIMS, Delhi, on Monday lost a 25-year-old doctor, Dr Vikas Solanki, to Covid-19. He was on ventilator support for the past one and a half months. His colleagues sharing fond memories of Dr Solanki say he was a giver, even as he was cremated at his native village in Bhiwani. In a government school in Leh, Ladakh, he sponsored the education of children for two years. He also arranged for their uniform and stationery. He used to say that investing in education can change the face of the country," said Dr Malhi, recalling his contribution in a life cut short because of Covid-19. Ukraine plans to ban potato imports from Russia 11:55, 17.09.20 2449 Ukraine in 2019 increased potato imports, mainly from Russia, by 43 times, to a record high 250,000 tonnes. During the Sept. 1 and Sept. 8 budget meetings, Frey said that the Gift of Hope officials told her that it will no longer use the Lake County morgue, which means less funding for part-time employees. Thats why she requested $20,000 from the general fund for part-time employees, Frey said. At least two aspects of these proposed changes are concerning. The measures, which would be implemented until April 2021, would broaden the types of people who can be appointed as authorised officers to enforce public health interventions to include protective services officers and WorkSafe inspectors. The COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 was announced on Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos website and is now before Parliament. New powers proposed by the Victorian government could see people considered a high risk being detained by a broader category of authorised officers. The explanatory memorandum to the bill provides for an authorised officer, who reasonably believes that a high risk person (someone either diagnosed with COVID-19 or a close contact) who is required to comply with a self-isolation direction and is likely to refuse or fail to comply with the direction, to detain that person. So the first concern is the speculative or predictive nature of the assessment that the authorised officer is to make before depriving a person of their liberty. And this leads to the second concerning aspect by whom this is to be considered and determined. Under a web of legislative provisions emanating from the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 (Vic), the Chief Health Officer has issued the self-isolation direction. Police are empowered to enforce that direction in a number of ways, including to direct a person to return to their home or to another location. The proposed additional measures appear to contemplate a person being apprehended and detained. The Age has reported a government spokesman as indicating that the new measures could be applied to conspiracy theorists who refuse to self-isolate or to severely drug-affected or mentally impaired people who do not have the capacity to quarantine. It is apparent enough that police, who have relevant training, sometimes struggle to deal with vulnerable members of the community, particularly those with complex mental health issues. Recent events in Epping and Lilydale exemplify this, even where trained incident response officers are involved. SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of - The remake of Mulan struck all the right chords to be a hit in the key Chinese market. Disney cast beloved actor Liu Yifei as Mulan and removed a dragon sidekick popular in the animated original to cater to Chinese tastes. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. People walk past a huge TV screen showing movie "Mulan" at a downtown street in Hong Kong Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. The remake of Mulan struck all the right chords to be a hit in the key Chinese market. Disney cast beloved actresses Liu Yifei as Mulan and removed a popular dragon sidekick in the original to cater to Chinese tastes. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of - The remake of "Mulan" struck all the right chords to be a hit in the key Chinese market. Disney cast beloved actor Liu Yifei as Mulan and removed a dragon sidekick popular in the animated original to cater to Chinese tastes. Still, the movie drew decidedly mixed reviews after its coronavirus-delayed release in China last week, with thousands panning it online. The movie was rated 4.9 out of 10 by more than 165,000 people on Douban, a leading website for film, book and music ratings. Negative comments and jokes about the film outnumbered positive reactions on social media. "Mulan" has earned an estimated 198 million yuan ($28.8 million) since its opening last week, and was the second most watched movie in China as of Thursday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan. It scored a higher 7.5 out of 10 on Maoyan, but also with mixed reviews. "Poor artistic level, misunderstanding of Chinese culture lead to the films failure in China," the state-run Global Times newspaper tweeted. Chinese critics, both at home and abroad, said they were disappointed with the films inaccurate and stereotypical portrayals of Chinese history and the main character, infused with nationalist tropes. Others were not as bothered. "Its fine that different screenwriters make up different stories," Zhang Qin, a military veteran, said after watching the film in Beijing last week. "They can play with imagination and its a good thing." IT engineer Zhang Fan also had positive things to say about the film. "What touched me is the humanity," he said. The remake of Disneys popular 1998 animation is based on the ancient tale of Hua Mulan, a young woman who takes her fathers place in the army by dressing as a man. The animated version was a global hit but earned just $30 million in China, where viewers found the movie too Americanized, according to reports at the time. The original tale, "The Ballad of Mulan," has gone through multiple renditions. Themes such as filial piety and being loyal to the central government have remained as core tenets, which some find outdated and problematic. "Its a very touchy subject in modern China because a lot of people find (filial piety) very constraining, including me," said Xiran Jay Zhao, the Chinese Canadian author of an upcoming book about the only female emperor in China. "Its like a moral shackle for people." Critics also pointed out inaccurate details such as the use of a southern-style house when Mulan is likely from the north and a depiction of "qi" as a power that only boys should wield when in fact there is no such gender restriction. Some called the makeup and costumes ugly and inauthentic. Zhao said the film comes off more like European fantasy than a Chinese story, and noted that the film's crew was mostly white, including the director, four screenwriters and costume designer. "They didnt really get any Chinese people on the writing staff, and it really showed," she said. Jeannette Ng, a Chinese fantasy writer based in the United Kingdom, said the film perpetuates a narrative of China's majority Han people that assimilates and excludes minorities including ethnic Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs. "The mainland Chinese people arent the mainland Chinese viewers from 20 years ago," she said of the lukewarm response. "The culture has moved on." Her comments mirror the latest in a series of controversies that have hit the film outside mainland China. The movie's final credits thank propaganda departments and a public security bureau in Xinjiang, where part of it was filmed. China has come under widespread criticism for detaining Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang as part of a campaign to snuff out sometimes-violent struggle against Chinese rule. Earlier, a boycott movement was sparked after Liu, the actor who portrays Mulan, publicly supported Hong Kong police as they battled pro-democracy protesters last 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. Hong Kong resident Sarah Chan said she does not plan to see the film, which opened in her city on Thursday. "The main actress ... supports Hong Kong police, so I dont want to watch it," Chan said. "Furthermore, I think they changed the historical background of the story. Its not the same story anymore." Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian defended Liu last week, calling her a "Mulan of the modern times." Disney did not reply to a request for comment. ___ Associated Press journalists Alice Fung in Hong Kong and Jaimie Ding in Seoul contributed to this report. Arson attack at residential premises in the Mount area of east Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes/Presseye Two men have been arrested after an arson attack on a flat in east Belfast on Wednesday night. The men, aged 24 and 37, were arrested following the incident in the Mount area shortly after 10.40pm. They were arrested a short time later on suspicion of arson endangering life with intent. They are currently in police custody. Police said it was reported that windows of a first floor flat in the area were damaged. It is believed that a quantity of wood was placed in the flat and set alight, which caused damage to the property. Nobody was inside the property at the time of the incident. Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service attended the scene and extinguished the fire. Expand Close Arson attack at residential premises in the Mount area of east Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes/Presseye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Arson attack at residential premises in the Mount area of east Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes/Presseye PSNI Detective Sergeant Eric Fairfield said enquiries into the incident were continuing. "Anyone with any information in relation to this incident is asked to contact detectives on 101, quoting reference number 2197 16/09/20. "A report can be made using the online reporting form via www.psni.police.uk/makeareport. Information can also be provided to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org" ZAMBOANGA CITY Eight villages in the southern Philippine province of Sulu are now free from the influence of the pro-ISIS group Abu Sayyaf... Things we would currently be better off without: People who ride bikes on the sidewalk Robocalls Third parties I know, I raised the bar a little at the end. Just trying to sneak us into a discussion of a critical part of our presidential elections that almost no one can stand to talk about. Therell be quite a few third-party candidates floating around on our ballots this year. Some are doing fine things on the state and local levels, but avoid the ones who want to run the country. Most of them are feeding off a neither-candidate-is-good-enough syndrome that makes people vote for mystery men and women who come attached to a nice-sounding party label. It makes you feel superior youre a voter who wont just settle. Real-world elections require you to look over a list of deeply imperfect candidates and pick the ones whose priorities are closest to yours. Its not like getting married. Theres really no option for hanging onto your ballot until a better person comes along. Throwing your support to a third-party candidate with no hope whatsoever of getting elected is, however, a good way to dodge responsibility. Imagine youre a well-known Republican like Mitt Romney or John Bolton. You want to get off the Trump bandwagon without looking like a friend to Democrats. So you announce youll be writing in the name of your mother-in-law or pet hamster. WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to condemn all forms of anti-Asian sentiment related to the coronavirus over objections from Champaign County Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who dismissed the measure as another effort by Democrats to attack President Donald Trump. Everyone knows racism is wrong, but thats not what this legislation is about, said Jordan, who serves as top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said on the House floor. Democrats who unanimously supported the measure argued its needed to fight racially motivated harassment and violence against Asians that stems from their being associated with the virus because of its origins in China. They cited prominent figures, including Trump, resorting to anti-Asian rhetoric in speaking about the challenge of COVID-19, as House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland described it. In addition to condemning anti-Asian sentiment, the resolution calls on federal law enforcement to investigate and document all credible reports of hate crimes against Asian-Americans, to collect data on the rise of hate crimes incidents due to COVID-19, and to hold perpetrators accountable. The measure passed the House of Representatives in a 243-164 vote. All of Ohios Democrats backed the measure, as did Republicans Anthony Gonzalez of Rocky River and Steve Stivers of Columbus. Rep. @Jim_Jordan: "In the new woke world, you can't state the truth." pic.twitter.com/e9J2Jrniau The Hill (@thehill) September 17, 2020 In a speech on the House of Representatives floor to support the resolution, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York cited a report from the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council that said there have been almost 2,600 cases of anti-Asian discrimination related to the coronavirus since March 19, including the stabbings of an Asian-American father and his two young children, ages 2 and 6, in Texas. Public health entities including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recognized that labeling a virus by geographic or ethnic terms unfairly stigmatizes certain communities and ultimately harms public health, Nadler continued, noting that Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar condemned the use of the phrase Chinese virus in testimony before the Ways and Means Committee, stating that ethnicity is not what causes the novel coronavirus." Jordan accused the resolutions proponents of participating in a cancel culture mob, noting that media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS have referred to the coronavirus as the Chinese coronavirus, Chinas coronavirus and the Wuhan virus. In the new woke world, you cant state the truth, said Jordan, noting that the virus started in China, which lied to the world about the virus and its severity. He said those who are politically correct are stifling truthful statements about Chinas role. He called the resolution and where the left wants to take the country dangerous for free speech rights. Thats how the mob operates today, he said. Theyll attack you if you dont say it the way they want you to say it and this is dangerous. You cant say China virus today. Tomorrow who knows what it will be? Read more: Senate Committee approves three Ohio federal judge candidates after members voice concerns about Cuyahoga Countys J. Philip Calabrese FirstEnergy now under SEC scrutiny: What does that mean? House adopts bill by Rep. Marcia Fudge to fight school segregation Bipartisan Congress members including Rep. Anthony Gonzalez propose coronavirus relief plan with $450 weekly unemployment payment House agrees to rename Grand River Post Office for police officer Andy Nowacki, who died in Iraq war President Trump honors September 11 rescuer from Ohio at commemorative event CMHA gets $8.2 million federal grant to help homeless during coronavirus pandemic Greater Cleveland RTA gets $15 million federal grant to buy new railcars Ohio Senators Portman and Brown divided over new coronavirus bill that would pay unemployed $300 a week Global warming and development contribute to more frequent Northeast Ohio floods, experts say Sherrod Brown faults the CFPB and banks for not letting borrowers know about mortgage relief during coronavirus pandemic Rep. Jim Jordan probes DC drive to rebrand public facilities named for officials criticized as racist Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks Treasury Department sanctions against Russia for trying to undermine Joe Biden in 2020 election Cuyahoga and Summit county airports get federal grants to improve runways Sen. Sherrod Brown questions whether HUD Secretary Ben Carson violated the Hatch Act Rep. Jim Jordan questions DC mayors response to crowd that swarmed Sen. Rand Paul outside the White House Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 16) President Rodrigo Duterte is looking into the possibility of abolishing embattled Philippine Health Insurance Corporation if the newly-appointed chief fails to rid the state insurance agency of alleged fraud and widespread corruption by the end of the year, the head of the Senate said Thursday. Duterte met with Congress leaders on Wednesday to craft plans to eliminate excessive bureaucracy and corruption in government agencies during the remainder of his term. Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III and Senator Christopher "Bong" Go relayed that they discussed the issue on PhilHealth during the meeting. Sotto said Duterte is considering the abolition or privatization of the state insurance firm, but that he advised the President against it, saying they should give a chance to Dante Gierran, who took over as PhilHealth President and CEO when Ricardo Morales stepped down in August due to health woes. "He said he wanted Philhealth abolished or privatized but I said it might be better to wait a few months and see how the new admin performs," he said in a message to reporters Thursday. Go on Wednesday said that they have agreed to give a "chance" to Gierran until yearend to revamp the embattled agency. "If wala pa rin, study possibility of disbanding PhilHealth," he said in a message. [Translation: If there is no improvement, he is studying the possibility of disbanding PhilHealth.] Malacanang earlier rejected the proposed privatization of the state-run insurer following the House bill filed by Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo in August. Kaya po iyan nasa ilalim ng gobyerno dahil ang pagbigay po ng kalusugan ay isang karapatan ng taumbayan at obligasyon ng estado," Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on August 20. [Translation: PhilHealth is under the government because the state is obligated to provide health services to the public.] The two lawmakers also said Duterte is in favor of the Senate resolution to transfer the ex-officio chairmanship of PhilHealth from the health secretary to the finance chief since one of the state firm's critical mandates is to have a sustainable fund management to ensure the continous delivery of healthcare services. PhilHealth was recently subjected to a rigorous investigation for corruption, prompting lawmakers to recommend the filing of graft charges against its top officials, including Health Secretary Francisco Duque and former chief Morales. However, the Justice Department-led task force probing PhilHealth did not include Duque in its initial list of officials recommended to face complaints; Duque's exclusion in the list was heavily criticized by several senators, including Sotto. The Senate President said Duque was not mentioned by Duterte during their meeting. Duterte has repeatedly insisted that Duque should neither resign nor be fired despite widespread criticisms against his leadership in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. district reported 4,656 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking its count to 2,35,852 on Wednesday, a health official said. He said the death toll reached 5,366 with 74 more patients succumbing to the infection in the western district during the same period. Also, 1,883 patients were discharged from hospitals following their recovery from the disease, the official said. "Of the 4656 cases, 2,120 were reported from areas under Municipal Corporation limits, where the count increased to 1,24,568. "With 1,104 cases, Pimpri-Chinchwad's tally rose to 66,483," he said. The number of positive cases in rural and Cantonment Board areas increased to 44,801, 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.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:11:10|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has encouraged rural primary school students to strive to grow from "saplings" into "towering trees" of the Chinese nation. Walking into a classroom of fourth-graders at a primary school in the county of Rucheng during his inspection tour in central China's Hunan Province on Wednesday, Xi was delighted to hear the students sharing stories of the legendary Long March undertaken by the Red Army in the 1930s. He told the students that the revolutionary cause must be passed down from one generation to the next, and that the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be realized with the participation of today's young generation. Xi expected the students to study hard, make progress every day, and be well-prepared to join the socialist cause. Enditem Immediately after revealing criminal charges against 5 Chinese and 2 Malaysian hackers, the United States government yesterday also made two separate announcements charging two Iranian and two Russian hackers and added them to the FBI's most-wanted list. The two Russian nationalsDanil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidiare accused of stealing $16.8 million worth of cryptocurrencies in a series of phishing attacks throughout 2017 and 2018. "This tactic used a combination of phishing and spoofing to exploit Internet users' trust in known companies and organizations to fraudulently obtain their login credentials, including email addresses, password information, and other personal information," the DoJ said. In addition to the criminal charges, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has also sanctioned both Russian hackers, freezing all their assets under U.S. jurisdiction and banning them from doing business with Americans. "Karasavidi laundered the proceeds of the attacks into an account in his name. He attempted to conceal the nature and source of the funds by transferring them in a layered and sophisticated manner through multiple accounts and multiple virtual currency blockchains. Ultimately, the stolen virtual currency was traced to Karasavidi's account, and millions of dollars in virtual currency and U.S. dollars was seized in a forfeiture action by the United States Secret Service," the U.S. Department of the Treasury explained. Whereas, both two Iranian nationalsMehdi Farhadi and Hooman Heidarianare allegedly involved in government-linked hacking operations and have stolen hundreds of terabytes of sensitive data from several targeted organizations. According to an indictment unsealed by the Justice Department, since 2013, Iranian hackers have targeted several American and foreign universities, think tanks, defense contractors, aerospace companies, foreign policy organizations, NGOs, and foreign governments. "In some instances, the defendants' [Iranian] hacks were politically motivated or at the behest of Iran, including instances where they obtained information regarding dissidents, human rights activists, and opposition leaders," the indictment says. "In other instances, the defendants sold the hacked data and information on the black market for private financial gain." After selecting their victims using online reconnaissance and publicly available data, the hackers run vulnerability scanning tools and other means to assess computer networks remotely. "The defendants gained and maintained unauthorized access to victim networks using various tools, including session hijacking, SQL injection, and malicious programs." "The defendants then used key-loggers and "remote access Trojans" to maintain access and monitor the actions of users of the victim networks." All four hackers remain at large, likely in their respective countries, and have been charged with several counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, unauthorized access, wire fraud, identity theft, and related activity in connection with computers By Pamela Barbaglia, Valentina Za and Tom Sims LONDON/MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Deutsche Boerse and Swiss stock exchange operator Six have launched a charm offensive to win the backing of Italian officials before submitting final bids for the Milan bourse, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Executives at both exchanges are trying to thwart Rome's alliance with France's Euronext and have held meetings in recent weeks to persuade the Italian Treasury - which controls state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) - of the merits of their respective proposals, the sources said. Dubbed "Project Botticelli", the sale has put Borsa Italiana at the centre of a new shake-up in the European exchange sector. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) , which took control of Borsa in 2007 for 1.6 billion euros, is now trying to sell it as part of the regulatory remedies to clear its $27 billion acquisition of data provider Refinitiv. Refinitiv is 45% owned by Thomson Reuters, which is the parent company of Reuters News. LSE declined to comment. Deutsche Boerse has offered to buy Borsa Italiana in tandem with Italian investors and would give Rome a seat on its supervisory board, the sources said. The German exchange is prepared to enter a joint venture vehicle with Italian investors that could hold up to 49% of Borsa while Deutsche Boerse will have a controlling stake of about 51%, the sources said. If successful, Deutsche Boerse would grant full operational independence to Borsa Italiana, allowing it to be headed by an Italian chief executive and chairman, two of the sources said. Six is instead putting a lot of emphasis on its investment plan and has committed to plough cash into the digital upgrade of Borsa as part of its bid, another source said. Earlier this week Six met with CDP officials in Rome to pitch its proposed takeover of Borsa whose structure would largely reflect the one of Spanish rival BME, this source said. Story continues The Italian Treasury is playing kingmaker and will use its "golden power" legislation to block any unwanted takeover of Borsa, deemed a key asset by Italian lawmakers. Six is currently leading the race for the Italian exchange after submitting the highest non-binding offer, followed by Deutsche Boerse. Euronext, which has teamed up with Italy's CDP and Intesa Sanpaolo , is lagging behind and would need to raise cash to boost its firepower for the deal, analysts have said. The LSE is reviewing the bids and has yet to decide whether to ditch a separate sale process for bond trading platform MTS - a key unit of Borsa Italiana - to fully focus on finding a new owner for the entire Milan bourse. Deutsche Boerse has pledged to grant Italian investors majority control of MTS should the LSE decide to go ahead with that sale, the sources said. (Reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London, Valentina Za in Milan and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; additional reporting by Arno Schuetze and Elvira Pollina; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) The financial uncertainty disproportionately hitting Britains youngest adults has prompted almost 60 per cent of UK students to consider dropping out of their university degrees. With some students set to begin returning or going to university for the first time this week, pressure and financial support group SavetheStudent has warned that increasing numbers are deeply concerned their finances wont stand the pressure of such uncertain times. That the majority of students have considered dropping out of university is an incredibly sobering revelation, even more so that the driving force is a lack of financial support, says SavetheStudents money specialist Jake Butler. This has to be a real wake-up call to the government and British universities who can simply not afford to witness students dropping out in their droves as they attempt to navigate a hugely uncertain future themselves. Students are heavily reliant on income from part-time jobs and their parents to get by, because maintenance loans do not reflect the true costs of student living. The groups figures suggest average living costs amount to 795 per month per student and that the average maintenance loan leaves a 223 gap each month. Three-quarters of students have previously relied on part-time work to make up the difference often in a now decimated hospitality industry. The latest survey on student finances from MoneySuperMarket suggests a fifth of students have turned to high cost payday loans during their time at university to bridge the gap. The average graduate leaves university with 3,770 of debt, on top of their student loan up from 3,561 in 2019. Two-thirds of the UKs most recent graduates are worried about their financial security, the comparison site found. Ive been skipping lunch every single day at uni just to save money and to be able to buy other things that I would need, one Queen Mary student revealed. And others have taken dramatic action elsewhere. As many as 4 per cent of students say they have turned to sex work to make ends meet, with up to 10 per cent of the UKs student population willing to consider it. With vital top-up sources at increasing risk due to the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of students this year may have little choice but to drop out of university or turn to alternative ways of earning money such as sex work, adds Butler. Addressing student funding has to be the highest priority for universities minister Michelle Donelan. Meanwhile, its more important than ever for students and parents to be aware of the financial pressures from the outset, so they can plan and budget effectively. For those without a traditional support network, the situation is markedly worse. The Unite Foundation, which provides financial, practical and emotional support for those entering university from the care system or with estranged families, warned this group was at particular risk of dropping out during the current crisis and asked what studying from home is supposed to mean for those without one. But if students do feel their financial circumstances make studying impossible, their job prospects are equally fragile, particularly against the backdrop of the furlough scheme winddown next month. New research by think tank the Resolution Foundation found those in their early twenties the generation usually making up the bulk of workers in hospitality and retail are most likely to have been furloughed, with a fifth of all employees on the job retention scheme (JRS) under the age of 25. But because younger workers earn the least on average, JRS spending has been more evenly distributed across different age groups. The average 47-year-old on furlough received the most, at 1,400, in JRS. Of the 71.5bn worth of crisis income support this year, delivered via the JRS, self-employment income support scheme and boost to universal credit, those in their early thirties and late forties have received the most support overall at 10.2bn for each age cohort. The circumstance surrounding this years academic cohort, amid significant financial bailouts for some but not others, has reinvigorated calls for government to review the broader financial support made available to students, including calls to return to the fully funded education system that benefitted older workers and retirees. Education is a right that students should access freely from cradle to grave, especially considering that without an education one cannot find suitable employment, and the cycle of poverty perpetuates itself, argues Sara Khan of the National Union of Students. More than one in nine pupils were absent from school last week, government figures show, as teachers and unions warned a lack of available coronavirus tests meant more schools would be forced to close, leading to lockdown by default. After schools reopened in England following six months of closure during the pandemic, education secretary Gavin Williamson touted the fact that 99.9 per cent of schools were open to at least some pupils. But absence rates were more than double that of pre-Covid times, with Department for Education (DfE) statistics suggesting 12 per cent of pupils were not in attendance on 10 September. Some 92 per cent of state schools were fully open, the DfE estimates, providing face-to-face teaching for pupils all day with no groups self-isolating. In these schools, 90 per cent of pupils were in attendance. The best place for children and young people to learn is in the classroom, and its encouraging to see that last week more than seven million pupils were back with their classmates and teachers at schools around the country, Mr Williamson said, adding: The fact that the vast majority of our schools are fully open is testament to the hard work of staff throughout the summer holidays in preparing for a safe return. But reports emerged of individual schools being forced to send hundreds of pupils home after identifying cases of coronavirus, in lieu of the affected pupils and teachers being able to access tests. As chaos in the testing system described by one MP as a bloody mess dominated the Commons on Tuesday, with Twickenhams MP saying constituents had found the only way to access a test in west London was to pretend to live in Aberdeen, health secretary Matt Hancock announced tests were being rationed. Acknowledging "operational challenges" in the system, Mr Hancock said there would be "prioritisation" of tests for people with acute clinical need and those in social care settings. With a prioritisation list not due for several days, this was widely interpreted to mean schools would be even less likely to be able to access tests. One union warned of widespread school closures and a return to lockdown by default. We are getting reports of bubbles of 250 children being sent home. People on the ground are telling me this is not sustainable and they cannot keep their schools open, said the Association of School and College Leaders general secretary, Geoff Barton. In outrage over the lack of tests, teachers were set to hold a staggered protest outside the DfE on Wednesday afternoon in a demonstration organised by the Education Solidarity Network. Im a teaching assistant in Bristol and have been off with cold-like symptoms. I now feel well enough to go back but I cant. Ive been trying to get a test all day but with no luck, one supporter told the i newspaper. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A killer whale (orca in the fjord of Skjervoy, northern Norway AFP/Getty And Mr Williamson was warned the government could face legal action for exposing teachers to the virus, with an snapshot online survey finding less than a quarter believed that sufficient measures had been put in place to make schools safe. In a letter to the education secretary, teaching union NASUWTs general secretary demanded better resourcing and monitoring of Covid-secure measures, after a straw poll of almost 1,000 school teachers found that 55 per cent did not regard the protections in place at their schools as sufficient and effective. Patrick Roach told the education secretary that the union was expressly reserving our members legal rights in the case of a claim for breach of duty of care or personal injury due to foreseeable risks resulting from the governments decision to tell schools to reopen to all pupils. With rising numbers of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the wider community, our members are deeply concerned that, in the absence of effective control measures, there is increased risk of Covid-19 transmission within schools," he wrote. At least 339 schools across England and Wales have so far been forced to close partially or completely, The Mirror reported on Tuesday. The health secretary admitted the testing problem would most likely last for a matter of weeks. Responding to a question from his predecessor Jeremy Hunt as to whether he still believed the issue would be solved in a week, Mr Hancock said: I think we will be able to solve this problem in a matter of weeks we are managing to deliver record capacity, but as he well knows demand is also high. The backlog is thought to have been caused by a shortage of laboratory processing capacity for tests, which authorities say has created a critical pinch-point in the system. The failure has seen tests sent abroad to be processed, despite claims from the government that its system would be world-beating". In addition to current abatement measures, Boris Johnson most recently pinned his hopes for a way out of the resurgent crisis to a 100bn mass testing regime, which in theory would see 10 million people tested every day come early next year using technology that is currently still in development. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on September 16 hosted a reception for Dutch and Belgian Ambassadors, Elsbeth Akkerman and Paul Jansen, along with EU investors. (Photo: VNA) Hanoi Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on September 16 hosted a reception for Dutch and Belgian Ambassadors, Elsbeth Akkerman and Paul Jansen, along with EU investors who want to pour capital into a seaport logistics project worth nearly 1 billion USD in Vietnam. At the meeting, the leader stressed the Vietnamese Government always facilitates the investment of foreign firms, especially those from the EU that have potential and high technological capacity. He also highlighted all-round developments of the relations between Vietnam and Belgium and the Netherlands, saying the two countries are Vietnams important trade partners. However, PM Phuc said cooperation outcomes have yet to match potential and strength of the sides. The Dutch Ambassador expressed her impression on Vietnams efforts in the COVID-19 combat and economic development. The Dutch Government backs Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre project in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau which the EU investors are interested in, she said, adding that the Dutch Development Bank has committed 10 percent of the project investment. For his part, Ambassador Paul Jansen said that the Belgian Corporation for International Investment will also play a role in the investment. Once operational, the Cai Mep Ha Logistics Centre can accommodate large container ships, helping to deliver Vietnamese goods abroad, investors said, expressing their hope that the project will soon be approved. They also committed to ensuring the progress and quality of the project, and using green transportation methods for sustainable development once it is given the green light. Ba Ria-Vung Tau has approved the 1/2000 project planning scheme and located the project, and now stands ready for site clearance. PM Phuc spoke highly of the effective cooperation between Vietnam and the two countries at multilateral and international forums such as the UN, ASEM and ASEAN-EU. He called on the two countries, together with the EU, to raise a stronger voice in protection of the respect for law at seas and oceans, as well as the East Sea stance of Vietnam and ASEAN. The leader said he believes that the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) will bring about great opportunities to Vietnamese and EU businesses in operation and market expansion. He suggested the Netherlands and Belgium help Vietnam improve its capacity for the enforcement of the deal. By Karen Lema MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines is considering allowing more nurses and other medical professionals to leave for jobs abroad after banning them from travel so they can fight coronavirus at home, President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman said on Thursday. Thousands of the nurses, who call themselves "priso-nurses" have appealed to the government to be allowed to travel, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The nurses say they feel underpaid, underappreciated and unprotected at home. Health care workers from the Philippines are on the front lines of the pandemic at hospitals in the United States, Europe and the Middle East as well as back home. The labour minister has proposed to expand exemptions to those who had contracts abroad as of Aug. 31. So far it is only those with contracts as of March 8 who have been allowed to travel. Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque told a media briefing that a proposal for a relaxation would be made on Monday to President Duterte, who will have the final say. Foreign Affairs Minister Teodoro Locsin, who has called for the lifting of the ban, said in a tweet the Philippines has 400,000 nursing graduates without jobs so "they're rightly pissed." In Germany there are 430 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people. In the Philippines, there are 65. The Philippines has the highest number of recorded coronavirus infections in Southeast Asia with 276,289. Its 4,785 deaths are second only to Indonesia. Labour Minister Silvestre Bello told nurses on Sept. 11 he was confident the president would support his proposal to relax the travel ban. He said the total lifting of the ban was "under serious study". "While we don't want our nurses to leave, they are at a disadvantage. They don't have jobs here and even if they did, the salary is low," Bello said as he urged nurses to fight for their rights. (Editing by Matthew Tostevin) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has questioned Kerala higher education minister K.T Jaleel at its office here on Thursday in connection with the agencys probe into the gold smuggling case, through diplomatic baggage addressed to the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. The minister was earlier interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the allegations of his links with gold smuggling case accused Swapna Suresh. According to TV channel reports, Jaleel reached the NIA office in a private vehicle by 6 AM to evade media reporters. Police have arranged high security near the NIA office to prevent protests as the Opposition parties have been organising protests across the state demanding resignation of Jaleel. During the NIA probe into the gold smuggling case, it was found that Swapna Suresh had contacted the minister over the phone several times. But the minister had denied having links with Swapna. According to reports, the minister claimed to have received foreign consignment containing 300 Qurans from the UAE consulate to be distributed across the state. There are allegations that the minister received the religious texts by violating the protocol and in violation of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The first draft of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the controversial anti-terrorism law has been crafted and will now be reviewed by Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra. Guevarra confirmed the development in an interview with CNN Philippines on Thursday, and assured that necessary changes will be made in the draft guidelines. Yesterday, I already got the first draft of the IRR. Im going to review and examine the first draft, and make the necessary changes or edits if necessary, Guevarra told The Source. Then we are going to submit this initial draft of the IRR to the anti-terrorism council immediately for their consideration. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, the anti-terrorism council and the DOJ have until October 16 to come up with an IRR, or 90 days after the law took effect on July 18. Guevarra expressed optimism that the IRR will be completed and released before the prescribed 90-day deadline. The anti-terrorism law which repealed the Human Security Act of 2007 will give more surveillance powers to government forces. Among its contentious features is a provision allowing suspected terrorists to be arrested without warrant and detained without charges for up to 24 days. Critics have previously voiced out concerns over the measure, saying it may be open to abuse and lead to possible human rights violations. Government officials and lawmakers have repeatedly dismissed these claims, saying citizens have their rights and several safeguards under the Constitution. After months of closure, the Damascus International Airport is to reopen, with the required measures to confront the coronavirus reports Al-Masdar. The Syrian government has decided to restart air traffic through Damascus International Airport for travelers on the first of next month. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers said at yesterdays weekly session that this will be in accordance with the conditions and standards that guarantee public safety. The Syrian Ministry of Transport announced about a month ago that Damascus International Airport would partially return to work, and that flights there would be limited to evacuating Syrian nationals from abroad. Previously, the former Minister of Health, Nizar Yaziji, announced the existence of talks to open Damascus International Airport, and indicated that the airport will provide the requirements needed to control the coronavirus outbreak. The Syrian government began travel restrictions last March as part of the measures to confront the coronavirus, when it decided to suspend travel and trips with neighboring countries, especially the countries that were hit hard by the virus. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. ShareBar Comments must be on-topic and civil in tone (with no name calling or personal attacks). Any promotional language or urls will be removed immediately. Your comment may be edited for clarity and length. Flash China on Thursday urged the United States to abide by the one-China principle and immediately stop carrying out official exchanges and promoting a substantive relationship with Taiwan. "China will make necessary response in light of the developing situation," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily press briefing. Wang's remarks came after the U.S. side announced that U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach will visit Taiwan to attend an upcoming memorial service for former Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui. "China firmly opposes any form of official exchanges between the United States and Taiwan. This position is clear and consistent," he said. Krach's visit to Taiwan severely violates the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiques, encourages the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, and undermines China-U.S. ties as well as cross-Strait peace and stability, Wang said, adding that China has expressed firm opposition and lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. PM Shmyhal says 2021 budget draft optimal, realistic 09:00, 17.09.20 1214 The document "takes into account the needs of the people as much as possible." Overnight reports from Jacksonville police: A Bronx, New York, resident was booked into the Morgan County jail at 7:29 p.m. Wednesday on warrants for several charges, including second-degree murder. Other warrants against Jose J. Aviles, 29, of New York accused him of voluntary manslaughter and carrying or possessing a concealed weapon. Brian K. Morris, 54, of 749 N. Main St. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 7:46 p.m. Wednesday on a forgery charge. Multiple items were stolen from a residence in the 1000 block of Sheridan Street, according to a report filed at 11:14 a.m. Wednesday. Tre H. Tollefson, 18, of 616 Myrtle St. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 6:11 p.m. Wednesday on a theft charge. Through its Dubai Diamond Exchange (DDE), DMCC the worlds flagship free zone and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise has signed a collaboration agreement with the Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE). The agreement was signed during a virtual conference, following the landmark announcement in August 2020 on the UAE establishing formal diplomatic relations with Israel through the UAE-Israel Peace Accord. The agreement seeks to promote cooperation and dialogue between the two world-leading diamond exchanges, and will see the IDE set up a representative office in Almas Tower, Dubai, UAE with DMCC opening a sales office in IDEs headquarters in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel. Dubai is fast becoming one of the worlds leading diamond trading hubs. In 2003, the total value of rough and polished diamonds traded in the emirate was AED13.2 billion ($3.6 billion), a figure that rose significantly in 2019 to AED84 billion ($23 billion). The strategic agreement signed between the Dubai Diamond Exchange and the Israel Diamond Exchange is an important one that unlocks huge potential for both parties. DMCC is tasked by the Government of Dubai to drive global commodities trade through Dubai, and this agreement will attract businesses to the emirate as well as boost the regional and international trade of this precious stone, said Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DMCC and Chairman of the Dubai Diamond Exchange. The United Arab Emirates and Israel are home to two of the Middle Easts most dynamic and innovative economies. This agreement paves the way for further collaboration across a range of commodities in what is a very exciting time for development in the region. We look forward to working alongside our partners in Israel, he added. The two bourses have committed to sharing knowledge, expertise and experience, promoting bilateral trade opportunities, and partnering on exhibitions, visits, and conferences to boost regional trade and support the growth of the global diamond industry. We are very excited to sign this strategic agreement with DMCC. Dubai, with its Free Zone and convenient business conditions, has become one of the most important diamond centres in the world. This agreement between our two world-class centres will be of enormous value to both sides, said Yoram Dvash, President of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), and President of the Israel Diamond Exchange. Through the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) we have come to know and value the leaders of the Dubai diamond industry. The agreement will enable us to build on these relationships to the benefit of the members of our respective bourses, he added. - TradeArabia News Service Today, Edify Labs (https://www.edify.cx), the software company thats redefining the way businesses manage customer engagement and cross-team collaboration, announced that PlanetOne, the IT channels preferred business partner for identifying and delivering cloud-based and connectivity solutions to small and midsize businesses and enterprises, has joined the Edify Channel Partner Program as a National Master Agent. We are proud to team with leading providers, like Edify, and look forward to leveraging Edify Huddle to help our partners drive revenue growth and profitability around cloud, connectivity, mobility, collaboration and security, said Chris Werpy, COO, PlanetOne. Becoming part of the Edify Channel Partner Program enables us to deliver to our partners a best-of-breed, single pane of glass connectivity solution, which we are confident will help them to deliver a next-level experience and improved internal communications to their customers. Expanding our Channel Partner Program with the best technology advisors is key to our growth strategy, and we are excited to be establishing a relationship with PlanetOne, said J.P. Dundas, Edify Vice President, Channel Sales & Alliances. PlanetOne has a phenomenal reputation throughout the IT channel for its business and technology expertise, and we look forward to working alongside to bring our one-of-a-kind solution to their partners. Edify Huddle is the only platform that unites contact center (CC), unified communications (UC), and real-time communications (CPaaS/API) functionality in a single, cloud-native software solution that lets users move seamlessly among channels within one conversation. This frictionless transfer capability gives agents the ultimate flexibility to serve customers faster and more completely from a single pane of glass. Huddle Office delivers unified business communications for $10 per user/month. Huddle ML delivers comprehensive cloud-native omnichannel business communications with machine learning for $7 per user/day. About PlanetOne PlanetOne is the IT channel and telecom industrys preferred business partner for identifying and delivering cloud-based and connectivity solutions to small and midsize businesses and enterprises. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., the industry pioneer is celebrated by Inc. Magazine as one of Americas Fastest-Growing Private Companies and regarded as a top-performing partner for hundreds of telecom agents and channel partners nationwide. In 2018, PlanetOne was named one of the Best Places to Work by The Business Intelligence Group. Since 2017, the company has been honored as one of the Nations 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For by the National Association for Business Resources. In 2015 and 2017, PlanetOne ranked No. 1 in the Phoenix Business Journals annual Best Places to Work survey, and has been recognized as one of Arizonas largest privately-held companies as part of the Arizona Corporate Excellence (ACE) Awards program, since 2016. The award-winning PlanetOne Partner Program has also been included in CRNs Connectivity Solutions Partner Program Guide and Cloud Partner Program Guides. To learn more, visit http://www.planetone.net. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. About Edify Labs, Inc. Edify connects businesses with customers and employees with each other. The companys Business Communications as a Service (BCaaS) platform, Huddle, is the only one uniting contact center (CC), unified communications (UC), and real-time communications platform (API) functionality in a single, cloud-native software solution that lets users move seamlessly among channels within one conversation. Edify removes all the risk of using its cloud-based platform with five free users forever, global availability, real-time redundancy, usage-based pricing, and a 100% SLA uptime guarantee. Learn more at https://www.edify.cx. Kathy Hilton is reportedly in talks to join the Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. The socialite, 61, is said to have been approached by producers who want her to make regular appearances as a 'friend of the show'. Kathy, mother of Paris Hilton, 39, and Nicky Hilton Rothschild, 36, already has links to the popular series due to her sisters being Kyle Richards and former RHOBH star Kim. Exciting: Kathy Hilton is reportedly in talks to join the Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills (pictured in November 2019) According to TMZ, the mother-of-four 'hasn't made a decision' but is 'definitely interested' about the offer. Kathy's sister Kyle, 51, is a series regular and has appeared on the show since series one, while her other sibling, Kim, 55, was a full-time member until series six but now makes brief appearances. The socialite, married to Richard Hilton, 65, has made guest cameos on the show in the past. MailOnline has contacted Kathy's representative for comment. Series 11? The socialite, 61, is said to have been approached by producers who want her to make regular appearances as a 'friend of the show' (the series 10 cast pictured) Famous family: Kathy, mother of Paris Hilton, 39, and Nicky Rothschild, 36, (pictured together in 2019) already has links to the popular series due to her sisters being Kyle Richards and former RHOBH star Kim This isn't the first time Kathy has been rumoured to join the show and in 2019 her sister Kyle addressed reports she could be a series regular. Kyle said on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen after a fan asked if she would like Kathy to join: 'I would be happy; I've had one sister on, why not have another sister on? 'My sister Kathy is actually people don't know this she is one of the funniest people there is. She's a practical joker and she's very, very funny. So I think she'd be an amazing housewife, actually.' Earlier this month, Paris' heartbreaking film This Is Paris debuted on YouTube; the movie offered many new details about Paris' childhood. Future plans? According to TMZ, the mother-of-four 'hasn't made a decision' but is 'definitely interested' about the offer (pictured with husband Richard Hilton) On Monday Kathy's hotel heiress daughter Paris' documentary-style film This Is Paris debuted on YouTube; the movie offered many new details about her childhood. In the footage, Paris reveals she was sent off to a camp for troubled youth when she was 16-years-old. She ran away from several camps before landing at Provo Canyon School in Utah where she claims she was beaten, drugged and sent to solitary confinement. She was there for 11 months, only leaving when she turned 18-years-old. When Paris talks this over with sister at the designer's New York home, Nicky reminds her that she did a lot of 'naughty' things in NYC at 16 to cause such serious action. Nicky did not say what the naughty things were but she asks her sister if she ever apologised to their parents for her actions. Paris does admit during the documentary that she constantly partied at nightclubs using her fake ID and she also cut school. Meanwhile, her mother Kathy was hoping to make Paris into a debutante. Paris is seen reliving the nightmare that was Provo and often cries in the documentary as her painful experiences have given her PTSD resulting in regular nightmares which has led to crippling insomnia. India on Thursday pushed back against Chinas efforts to deflect responsibility for delays in the disengagement process in Ladakh sector, saying Beijing should sincerely work for de-escalation and not make further attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The Indian side also insisted on implementing the consensus reached by the Indian foreign and defence ministers and their Chinese counterparts at meetings in Moscow earlier this month for quick and complete disengagement of troops from all friction areas along the LAC. The move came soon after Chinas foreign ministry called on India for the second consecutive day to immediately correct its wrong practices, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease tensions on the border. The Chinese side should sincerely work with the Indian side for complete disengagement at the earliest from all friction areas, including Pangong Lake, as well as de-escalation in border areas in accordance with the bilateral agreements and protocols on maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas, external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a weekly news briefing. We hope the Chinese side will strictly respect and observe the LAC and not make further attempts to unilaterally change the status quo, he added. Also read| It may be a long winter: Singapore envoy amid India-China tension at LAC Srivastavas remarks suggested the two sides hadnt been able to move forward with the five-point roadmap hammered out by external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in their talks on the margins of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Moscow on September 10. The roadmap envisages that both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions. Both sides should, therefore, focus on easing tensions in the friction areas by refraining from any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation. This requires strict adherence to the bilateral agreements and protocols and not making unilateral attempts to change the status quo, Srivastava said. Tensions have spiked on the north and south banks of Pangong Lake, where troops from the two sides are within close range of each other and where there have been several instances of firing since late August the first time guns have been used along the LAC since 1975. Experts say India is keen to tamp down tensions in this area, and at other friction points such as Gogra and Kongka La. Srivastava also noted that defence minister Rajnath Singh stated categorically in Lok Sabha on Tuesday and in Rajya Sabha on Thursday that India is committed to a peaceful dialogue through diplomatic and military channels. In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin again put the onus for disengagement and de-escalation on the Indian side, saying New Delhi should immediately correct its wrong practices, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tensions. He also sought to blame India for the tensions in eastern Ladakh. Troops of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) have always strictly abided by agreements between the two sides on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the disputed boundary, and are committed to safeguarding Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said. On Wednesday, Wang had said China was not to blame for the crisis at the border, which has taken bilateral ties to its worst level in decades. It is the Indian side that has breached the agreements, trespassed the territory first and fired shots to threaten the safety of Chinese border troops first, he had said on Wednesday. The Indian government has already dismissed such allegations from the Chinese side, saying PLA troops had engaged in provocative military manoeuvres and were not ready to disengage. Also read: Chinas envoy cheers Jaishankar-Wang roadmap, then blames India for tension On Thursday, the nationalistic Global Times tabloid also accused India of not being sincere about honouring the consensus to disengage. An article in the tabloid a meeting of national security advisers of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (Brics) grouping was a good opportunity to ease border tensions but everything depended on Indias sincerity. NSA Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, a member of the political bureau of the central committee of the Communist Party of China joined the virtual meeting hosted by Russia. Hu Zhiyong of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences told Global Times that China should be prepared to face the fact that consensus with India is possible but it should remain vigilant over whether India can keep its promises. Zhao Gancheng, from the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, said since Yang and Doval know each other for a long time, the Brics meeting brings hopes of peace. Sameer Patil, fellow for international security studies at Gateway House, said both sides were clearly in a stalemate and would hold on to territory while continuing their efforts to gain an advantage wherever possible. At the same time, they will be careful not to escalate too much and allow the diplomatic processes to proceed and see what they yield. In any case, we are entering winter and I dont see the possibility of a major escalation of hostility since it will be difficult to mount an offensive campaign in the harsh weather conditions of winter, he said. Want to know how to contact the Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development? On this page you will find phone numbers, email addresses, snail mail addresses, and online contact forms for everything we do here at MDARD. We even have a complaint form for those of you with complaints. The country has so far recorded a total of 101,500 cases including 5,696 deaths and 86,549 recoveries Egypt reported 160 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, bringing the total infection tally to 101,500 since the outbreak hit the country in mid-February. The ministry also reported 17 new deaths, bringing the total fatalities from the virus to 5,696, the health ministry announced. The ministry said that 804 patients were discharged from hospitals over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 86,549. While the number of new coronavirus cases has been hovering around 150 a day nationwide since August, experts warn the figures could increase dramatically come autumn. Egypt began the move towards a gradual reopening of the economy in June, lifting the night-time curfew, reopening restaurants and places of worship, and resuming regular international flights as part of its plans to coexist with the virus. The cabinet has warned, however, that restrictions will be reimposed should infection rates rise. On Monday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced a further easing of restrictions. From 21 September open-air funerals, wedding ceremonies, film festivals and conferences will be allowed. Search Keywords: Short link: A young man was fatally stabbed Thursday morning in the Providence Place mall in Rhode Island, news outlets reported. Providence police told WPRI they are investigating a homicide at the shopping center. The stabbing was reported on the third floor of the mall, according WPRIs report. Multiple stores were blocked off with police tape, WPRI reported. The Boston Globe reported that no one was arrested as of Thursday afternoon for the stabbing of the young man. The fatal stabbing marked the citys 11th homicide this year, according to the Globe. This story will be updated as more information becomes available. So, first night we did 500 short rib beef Wellingtons. By the following week we were doing 1,250 per night. If you do the math its the same, about 2,000 dishes per night, but much easier. Every dish is the same, a lot less coordination with the guests, a lot more like an assembly line. It wasnt fun and it wasnt really what Alinea was built to do, but such is the state of the world that thats what we had to do. There wasnt a choice. The good news was that in March through May we served about 30,000 meals per month (and donated a lot as well) and were able to rehire almost all of our staff at some level. Reopening patios actually made things worse for us as a restaurant group solely because demand for Alinea To Go decreased as the weather improved, but we expected that and planned for it with AIR, expansion of our Roister, Next and Aviary patios, and streamlined staffing schedules. Romania's Defence Minister Nicolae Ciuca said Thursday that Patriot missile system received the same day is one of the most efficient and best air defence systems in existence and that it will be followed by three more to join the Romanian Air Force by the end of 2022. "The Black Sea region has a special strategic importance, not only to Romania, but to the entire Euro-Atlantic area. Security in this area, marked by complex and constantly evolving challenges, is vital in ensuring the security of all of us. Getting the first Patriot system operational is just the first step in achieving a formidable air defence capability for Romania, which will make a significant contribution to strengthening NATO's deterrence and defence posthure on the eastern flank. The Patriot system received today will be followed by three more that will join the Romanian Air Force by the end of 2022. Starting today, the Romanian Army has one of the most efficient and best long-range air defence systems, capable of fulfilling the full range of missions in the area of responsibility, regardless of weather," Ciuca said at the Capul Midia National Air Defence Training Centre.He pointed out that the Romanian Army is becoming the 17th country to have such a capability and the seventh among NATO member countries, being about "an essential piece equipment, in the most modern form found in manufacturing, a defensive system tested in battle, improved over time."At the same time, Ciuca said this is the first important piece of equipment purchased and delivered after the signing in 2015 of the national political agreement on increasing Romania's defence spending."Romania has acquired the most modern hardware and software configuration of missile systems. The same as the one currently used by the United States armed forces, which allows counteracting all types of current air threats. The reception of these systems will increase the level of co-operation between Romania and the United States, and the transfer of sensitive know-how and intelligence will increase the level of trust between the two allies. This consolidation of the strategic partnership between our countries still offers an essential guarantee for national security, with enhanced values in the current regional and international security environment that is both difficult and complex," he said.At the same time, Ciuca said that the Defence Ministry, together with the Ministry of Economy, will take steps to identify "the most suitable business operator, to entrust its maintenance" and to make the technology transfer.Also attending the, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said that Romania is safer with these missiles on its soil, and Romanian citizens are better defended. By Laman Ismayilova National Music Day in Azerbaijan is celebrated on September each year. The music feast marks the birthday of the outstanding composer, founder of Azerbaijani professional musical art and opera, Uzeyir Hajibeyli. The tradition of celebrating the birthday of the great composer as a holiday was laid by eminent conductor Niyazi Hajibeyov, who used to celebrate this day each year after Uzeyir Hajibeylis death.This tradition continues till nowadays. Numerous cultural events, including gala concerts and festivals are being held across the country as part of the celebration. In 2009, it was decided to hold the International Music Festival in honor of prominent composer. Traditionally, national and foreign musicians, outstanding performers, orchestras from around the world gather in Baku to demonstrate their incredible talents. Musicians and collectives from Germany, Russia,Turkey, Georgia, France, Bulgaria and other countries take part in the festival. Uzeyir Hajibeyli laid the foundation of a national musical style. He was the first composer of an opera in the Islamic world. The opera "Leyli and Majnun" (1908) is based on traditional folk music and dance, musical genres that relied on oral traditions. Furthermore, the composer wrote his second opera "Sheikh Sanan", "Rustam and Sohrab", Asli and Karam, Shah Abbas and Khurshudbanu and Harun and Leyli entirely based on national folk music elements, primarily mugham. He also composed three comedies including, "Husband and Wife" (1910), "If not this one, that one" (1911) and "Arshin Mal Alan" (1913). "Arshin Mal Alan" or The Cloth Peddler was the latest and one of the most popular operettas of the eminent composer. The operetta has been successfully performed in a plethora of languages in over 60 countries of the world, including in U.S, Austria, France, China, Greece, India, Russia, and Turkey. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers are free to pursue their own investigation into House Speaker Michael Madigans role in a bribery scheme involving utility giant Commonwealth Edison, as long as they dont specifically ask witnesses what information theyve shared with federal investigators or a federal grand jury. That was the word late Thursday from John Lausch Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. We recognize the (Special Investigating Committees) separate and independent responsibilities, and therefore, we do not object generally to the SICs pursuit of testimony and production of documents, even if the party previously shared the same underlying factual information with federal prosecutors or law enforcement agents, Lausch wrote in a letter to the top Democratic and Republican members of the committee, adding, except as noted below. Lausch went on to describe a narrow set of circumstances that could prompt an objection from his office if lawmakers seek to find out what information witnesses have told federal investigators or a grand jury. For example, if a witness explained certain facts to federal prosecutors or a grand jury, we do not object generally to a witness explaining those same facts to the SIC, Lausch wrote. We object, however, to questions about whether the witness shared those (or any other) facts with prosecutors or federal law enforcement agents, as such questions could reveal confidential information about the course of our investigation and could deter cooperation with our investigation by that witness and others. In addition, Lausch said he would object to the committee requesting documents directly from his office or from other federal agencies, or any documents related to a proposed federal grant of immunity. Lauschs letter, however, appeared to do nothing to break the partisan tension that has separated the Special Investigating Committees chairman, Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, D-Hillside, and the panels ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Demmer, of Dixon. Those two had spoken by phone with Lausch on Monday to discuss how they could proceed with the legislative investigation without interfering with the ongoing federal criminal probe. But the two walked away from that conversations with vastly different interpretations of what Lausch had said. In statements since that phone conversation, Welch has said it was his understanding that the committee was free to call witnesses, but could not ask them any questions related to the federal probe. The Special Investigating Committee was formed after House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, of Western Springs, and two other Republican House members filed a petition Aug. 31 to commence disciplinary proceedings against Madigan, a Chicago Democrat and the longest-serving state legislative speaker in U.S. history. Madigan was implicated in a bribery scheme when ComEd officials entered a deferred prosecution agreement with Lauschs office in which they admitted that, from 2011 through 2019, they awarded no-work jobs and lobbying contracts to close associates of Madigan in an effort to win his favor for legislation that benefitted the company. Madigan so far has not been charged with any crime and has staunchly denied any wrongdoing. The legislative probe, however, is not focused on whether he committed a crime, but whether he engaged in conduct which is unbecoming to a legislator or which constitutes a breach of public trust. If his fellow lawmakers find that he did, disciplinary action could range from a reprimand or censure to expulsion from the House. Following the release of Lauschs letter, Demmer and Welch remained deeply at odds over what they believe it meant. The U.S. Attorneys Office has given the Special Investigating Committee the green light to pursue all avenues of the investigation, including testimony and documents, that were articulated in the petition, Demmer said in a statement. We are grateful that US Attorney John Lausch told the Committee that his office recognizes the SICs separate and independent obligation to conduct its inquiry. We look forward to the Committee convening promptly to do this important work. But Welch issued a separate statement saying Lauschs letter confirmed what Democrats had stated before, that any information beyond what has already been made public in the deferred prosecution agreement is explicitly off limits. Once again, I will not allow this committee to inappropriately interfere with the work of the U.S. attorney, and I will not allow it to be used as a stage for political theater, Welch said. Gallery: The 4 Illinois governors who have been convicted Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Following President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement that the country's borders would open to international travellers under the strictest conditions, the South African tourism sector has promised to keep these incoming travellers safe. Pexels Tourism can be South Africas economic lifeline, says Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO Tourism Business Council of South Africa. Every day we have been closed to international travel, we have lost R336m of spend and the government has lost vital tax revenue. Opening up our tourism sector will have a direct and immediate positive impact on the government's coffers at a time when it most needs it. Health and safety priority Phasing reopening not a good idea We asked you to close your doors so we could open up and host again...Well, that day has finally come! As tourism reopens you too must play your part: 1. Wear your masks 2. Sanitize 3. Wash your hands 4. Social distance Lets Travel Again. #ShareSouthAfrica #SAisTravelReady pic.twitter.com/pqOKXMX0TM SATravelTrade (@SATravelTrade) September 16, 2020 Pexels Getting back to (new) normal Now more than ever comes the opportunity for the public and private sector to collaborate in word and deed and to leverage South Africas competitive advantage as a global tourism player. This is the industry that has been earmarked as a catalyst for inclusive economic growth. As such, tourism should be prioritised if it is going to make the contribution it has to potential to pull the South African economy out of these stormy waters, says Frost. The countrys tourism sector has been severely affected by the Covid-19 lockdown, which saw the borders close early on in the government's efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.Importantly, the health and safety of travellers must remain the primary concern for tourism and hospitality stakeholders. The same measures that have been instituted successfully to domestic travellers have been extended to international tourists, which eliminates the need for requirements such as quarantines, explains Professor van den Heever.It is imperative that safe alternatives to quarantine approaches also be considered. Workable options can be developed in conjunction with infectious disease specialists and institutionalised into health protocols, he says.Under the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA), the entire value chain of tourism has devised and rolled out stringent health and hygiene safety programme and protocols under the banner, Travel Safe Eat Safe, says Lee Zama, CEO FEDHASA, the national trade association for the hospitality industry that includes accommodation and catering sectors.These protocols have been based on international best practice and endorsed by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Our industry is ready to receive guests. We have protocols in place to mitigate any risk associated with Covid-19 and have developed a Travel Safe Eat Safe mobile app to ensure that the information of guests and participating establishments are logged electronically. South Africa is travel-ready, says Zama.The Covid-19 risk and mitigation measures are the same and the approach to people travelling to South Africa from any country should be identical. The new Covid management situation with different behaviours and following protocols applies equally no matter where you hail from.As such, reopening in phases is not logical, reiterates Professor Alex van den Heever, chair in the field of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies at the Wits School of Governance.All borders should be reopened as there are no additional risks posed by an industry that is well organised, has stringent health and hygiene safety protocols in place and operates in low-density settings, adds Professor van den Heever.Inbound travel will still be about 30% of 2019 levels. But if uncertainty is created now, this will be far lower. There is, therefore, no need to phase in open borders as travel will in any case phase itself, he says.If public health is the overriding criteria for reopening to certain source markets before others, South Africa will need to reopen to those with a similar pandemic profile, not countries where the rolling average of new cases per million of the population is much higher than ours, explains Gillian Saunders, tourism consultant and specialist.However, regardless of which source markets you decide to open up to in this phased approach, the reality is that we would still have 58 million South Africans circulating freely within the country compared with a small number of international tourists who will be subject to just the same health protocols as us. The risk is the same.Governments decision to reopen international travel and tourism allows the industry to get back on its feet, says David Frost, CEO Satsa, the voice of inbound international tourism.The sector cannot grow to its full potential and contribute more meaningfully to South Africas economy unless several interventions are introduced swiftly to improve its competitiveness as a tourism destination and drive demand, among these the removal of quarantine requirements for visitors and improved visa access.Covid-19 has grounded our world, but tourism will return. And we need to support its full recovery at the earliest opportunity since it is the single sector with the greatest potential to drive the type of economic growth that South Africa most needs, concludes Frost. A Bexar County Sheriff's deputy was fired Thursday after he was arrested for a 2018 warrant, the department said in a news release Thursday. Officials discovered that 25-year-old Andre Phillip Winston was wanted on the charge of interference with an emergency telephone call during an audit of employees suspected of criminal misconduct. The alleged incident is considered a misdemeanor and occurred Sept. 25, 2018, BCSO said. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox Sheriff Javier Salazar took "immediate action" and presented Winston with termination papers, a spokesperson with BCSO said. The deputy, who has been with BCSO since 2017, resigned in lieu of termination and received a dishonorable discharge. After the administrative process was completed, Winston was arrested for the warrant. Prior to the incident, Winston was a detention deputy, but was placed on administrative leave on Sept. 25, 2018 following the incident. On Oct. 9, 2018, he was assigned to administrative duty and worked in fleet maintenance until his termination. It is unclear why he was taken off of administrative leave. READ ALSO: 'Should lynch mob' him: Bexar County sheriffs deputy fired for Facebook comment This former employee has to face his legal issues on his own, and wont be doing that as a member of this agency," Salazar said. "This agency will continue to take a strong stance on domestic violence issues whether in the community or within our own ranks." Under BCSO's civil service rules, adopted in 2018, Winston is not eligible for rehire. The arrest comes just days after another BCSO deputy was fired for posting "an offensive Facebook comment that incited violence," the department said. Officials fired former deputy Jackie Farmer on Tuesday after he allegedly made comments on a social media post as saying people should lynch mob someone accused of stealing mail, BCSO said. Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway Rewari, Sep 17 : A civilian defence employee was arrested for passing on classified information to a Pakistani Military Intelligence (MI) unit after he had been honey-trapped on Facebook. Official sources told IANS that based on a specific input of Lucknow based Indian Military Intelligence (MI), the Haryana Police's Special Task Force (STF) on Wednesday arrested Mahesh Kumar, the civilian employee of Military Engineering Services (MES), from Rewari for sharing the information to a young woman associated with the Pakistani MI in return for money. Kumar, according to police, was reportedly in touch with operatives of the Pakistani MI unit for the last two and a half years and has received money from them on multiple occasions. Sources said that in June, Lucknow MI received the input that a mobile number used by Kumar, a who was posted in Jaipur, was passing on defence related information to a woman working for Pakistani military. Kumar addressed the Pakistani operative as "Madamji". An operation code-named "Op Madamji" was launched by the MI unit to identify the suspect and ascertain the veracity of the input. After investigation, Kumar worked as a civilian cleaning staff in MES Jaipur and was friends with at least three known and established Pakistani Intelligence Operative (PIO)-run Facebook accounts. Sources said that Kumar had received at least two payments of Rs 5,000, each from his Pakistani handlers via Kerala. The payment module was very similar to what had surfaced in the Rajasthan based espionage case, 'Op Desert Chase', wherein Vikas Kumar and Chiman Lal were arrested. In the first week of September, Kumar was found staying in and around Rewari. The MI shared the case details with the STF Haryana and a joint team of both the agencies investigated it further. A swift operation to apprehend and interrogate the suspect was planned for September 13-14. However before the Lucknow MI could obtain desired sanctions and place a team near Rewari, the suspect suddenly moved out of Haryana, the sources said. The STF Haryana recently indicated that Kumar was likely to visit Rewari again on Wednesday. As a result, STF Haryana and Lucknow and Jaipur units of MI formulated a new plan to arrest him. After his arrest on Wednesday afternoon, Kumar's mobile phone was seized and he was taken for initial examination and question. The accused was subjected to joint questioning by the teams of MI Lucknow, STF Haryana and MI Jaipur. Official sources said during, questioning. Kumar admitted to have sent a friend request to a Facebook account with the name 'Harleen Gill' in July 2018. They became friends on Facebook and used to communicate through text and audio/video chats via Messenger. The account was run by a PIO, a young woman, likely in her 30s who claimed to be working with the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PCDA) office in Jalandhar. However, the PIO's Facebook account 'Harleen Gill' deactivated after several months. Later, he got a friend-request from the same PIO in 2019, this time from a Facebook account with the name of 'Harman Kour'. They started communicating on Facebook messenger and later graduated to WhatsApp. Kumar was found to have been in touch with at least two WhatsApp numbers of the PIO. They used to exchange text and audio messages between them over WhatsApp and also used to video chat. Sources said he admitted before the police that he had shared the ORBAT of a Jaipur based Army Brigade, details of some senior officers in Jaipur, location of PCDA Jaipur, details of MES complaint records, Covid-19 state of the Jaipur cantonment and a posting order of civilian MES employees. He used to gather movement related information by striking conversations with service personnel coming to Jaipur MES office for various purposes. He also admitted to having activated a WhatsApp number for the PIO by sharing OTP in 2019. However he claims that he took it back within a couple of days. The PIO used to ask him to send contacts of other serving personnel in Jaipur and Bikaner, details of units moving in or out of Jaipur, posting details of other MES employees. To lure him more, the PIO once promised him that she will get him posted to Delhi. Kumar admitted to have passed on his Punjab National Bank account details to the PIO and to have received Rs 5,000 twice in his account as a gift from her in September 2019 and January 2020. However it is suspected that he had received money from the PIO on several occasions, sources said. Though the accused is a cleaning staff in MES Jaipur whose primary task is to clean offices there, he was found to have photos of several letters and notices in his mobile device including some with security classification and some giving out the details of all units and sub-units in Jaipur Cantonment. He also had photos of COVID-19 related circulars and a list of MES employees with their mobile numbers in his handset. The accused was found to have deleted all his chats with PIOs. It seems during the two and half years of communication with the PIO the accused has passed more than what he is confessing, sources said. His mobile phone was sent for forensic extraction and it is learnt that STF has found many documents in it that he was not supposed to keep. Apart from that traces of his communication and passage of information to the PIO were also learnt to have been found. The accused was produced before the Duty Magistrate on Wednesday night. He has been booked under violation of Official Secret Act and an FIR has been lodged on Thursday. He is expected to be produced before a court in Rewar after undergoing a Covid-19 test. The Haryana STF may ask for police remand for a few more days for further investigation into the case and to complete the formalities. Fruit flies have the uncanny ability to wake up from a months-long hibernation right when their food of choicesay, the fruit from apple or Hawthorn treesis at its peak. Theyre active for a couple of weeks, eating and mating, before going dormant for the rest of the year. How this synchronization and remarkable timing happens has long been a mystery. In a world where global climate change is shifting the growing seasons, somehow the fruit flies keep up. In a new study, scientists have found many genes responsible for setting the flies internal alarm clock and found that an imperceptibly slow development during dormancy is key to their rapid genetic adaption. The study is published in the journal PNAS. Internal Seasonal Timers Like bears or ground squirrels, fruit flies time their slumber to coincide with seasonal food availability. They even evolve quickly enough to, say, shorten their dormancy to exploit longer growing seasons. Though some species rely on the predictable shortening and lengthening of days to cue their hibernation (called photoperiodism), others appear to have an internal mechanism. In addition to the 24-hour circadian clock that we all have, many fruit flies have an internal seasonal timer, says study co-author Gregory Ragland, PhD, assistant professor of integrative biology at University of Colorado Denver. They pop up, exploit their host, and disappear for nine or 10 months. Theres a useful marriage between what we know about the ecology and genetics of this process, which is why we approached this as a collaborative effort. Unlike photoperiodism, much of this particular type of dormancy, or diapause, remains unknown. To investigate, a team of researchers led by Edwina Dowle, PhD, and Ragland at CU Denver, and Tom Powell, PhD, and Daniel Hahn, PhD, at University of Florida, joined forces with Jeff Feder, PhD, from University of Notre Dame and Stewart Berlocher, PhD, from University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Tracking the Rate of Development The group explored the hypothesis that differences in the rate of development during diapause drive the differences in the timing of seasonal activity. To test it, they collected two populations of the Rhagoletis pomonella flies that have one generation per year and overwinter as diapausing pupae. One population eats hawthorn berries, which are native to North America, while the other evolved the ability to eat apples introduced by colonists in North America about 400 years ago. Though its actually a fly larva, this is the proverbial worm in the apple that has evolved into a major crop pest by adjusting its timing to coincide with the early fruiting time of apple, says Ragland. The researchers monitored the apple and haw flies in a lab, simulating overwintering for designated time intervals. During each interval, they tested the flies transcriptome, the bundle of RNA transcripts that determines traits. Sampling from the fly brains, researchers can compare snapshots of the RNA composition to measure developmental differences in the nervous system over long time periods. Watching their morphology over time, they appear to be in suspended animation says Ragland. But the brain transcriptome revealed subtle, yet steady developmental changes that accumulated over six months, eventually completing the process that cued them to pop out of dormancy. Polygenic Traits Key to a Speedy Evolution This provides a possible mechanism that flies use to set their seasonal timer. The process also appears to be key for the rapid evolution of seasonalityapple flies have a slightly faster rate of development during dormancy, causing them to emerge earlier in the year. By comparing genetic variants differing in the two fly populations, researchers found that polygenic traits led to the quickness of adaptation; many genes, each with very small effects, worked together to determine the rate of development. The research illustrates that crop pests and insect disease vectors with similar biology may rapidly respond to changing climates by a similar genetic mechanism. Understanding the mechanics of diapause could also have a big impact on biomedical research, which depends on massive genetic stocks of the Drosophila fly curated in labs all over the world. People are interested in how to best preserve these flies because we cant cryogenically preserve them yet, says Ragland. But if we could modify these lines to go into diapause, it would be a huge breathrough. A Longford man before the courts on a series of theft charges has been given a final chance to pay back the money he owes. Robbie Delaney, 3 Cuirt An Oir, Killashee Street, Longford, was arrested last Tuesday morning ahead of a sitting of Longford District Court and charged with a number of thefts. Prosecuting Sergeant Paddy McGirl explained to the court that Mr Delaney had last appeared on July 13, when he entered a guilty plea to a number of theft charges. He was due to pay 351.48 today. The offence he was arrested for today occurred on August 23, while he was on bail for these charges, said Sgt McGirl. Defending solicitor, Brid Mimnagh explained that her client led a chaotic lifestyle. He went to the UK for treatment for addiction and he tried to get the money together, she said. Hes extremely anxious to pay back the money. If he was given time, he would have the money on the next occasion. He has a 14-year-old child and he pays 40 maintenance per week. Judge Marie Keane recalled seeing the accused before when she sat in Longford. He came before me in December and he was to pay 50 on the next date and he was to try and get rehab. A probation report was directed, said Judge Keane. Ms Mimnagh agreed and explained that her clien went to England to get treatment. He is a persistent offender. He appears to be continually coming before the courts for section fours, said Judge Keane. Im sure there are many retailers in Longford living in dread of seeing Mr Delaney in their premises. Hes at the coal face now, Ms Mimnagh said in her clients defence. He was the last time as well but it didnt seem to have any effect, Judge Keane shot back. Ms Mimnagh said that, while she accepts her client was wrong, no matter how much he had stolen, his charges were all for small thefts. Here we are nearly a year later and nothing has been paid, Judge Keane insisted. He just keeps offending and this is going to continue until sombody applies the brakes. What has he been doing since last Christmas? Speaking up to the judge, Mr Delaney explained that he has a 14-year-old child for whom he pays maintenance. Im trying to keep out of trouble. I promise I wont appear before you again, he said to Judge Keane. But you promised that the last time, she replied. This isnt good at all. Youre not taking it seriously. I was in a bad place, Mr Delaney insisted. You were stealing goods from shops, Mr Delaney. Call a spade a spade. And all of these retailers are at the loss of items and of money. When is the money going to be paid? she demanded. After a brief conversation with her client about when the money would be paid, Ms Mimnagh told Mr Delaney, well, you might want to do a bit better than Christmas. Absolutely not, said Judge Keane, who had an earlier date in mind. Would you consider November 3? Ms Mimnagh asked. Settling on November 3, Judge Keane remanded Mr Delaney on bail on an own bond of 100 , under the strict conditions that he sign on daily at Longford Garda Station and obey a curfew of 10pm to 7am. He is also to commit no further offences and, at the request of Sgt McGirl, he was ordered to provide a phone number to gardai and to be contactable. Remand on bail to November 3 for sentencing and no further excuses, Judge Keane stressed. (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The end of the summer holidays and the reopening of schools have sparked a lively debate over the future of remote working. From the U.S. to the U.K., politicians and employers are nudging workers to return to the office even though the pandemic is not over. But these requests put employees in a very awkward place caught between fearing for their health and fearing for their job. Following two key principles may resolve some of the tension. First, the government should have no say in this decision, so long as states can avoid new lockdowns and with the obvious exception of managing the civil service. Second, it is up to employers, in conjunction with employees, to make the call on returning to the office, and there is no point in forcing it if remote working hasnt hurt productivity and profitability. The first wave of the pandemic spurred a radical transformation of the work environment, as companies rushed to enable working from home. In recent months, however, officials and managers have started itching to go back to the old routines. The U.K. government considered launching a campaign to encourage the nation to go back to the office, and then shelved it. In the U.S., some executives most notably Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co. have also expressed doubts that workers can stay at home for much longer. There are manifold reasons for such concern. Politicians are worried about the economic repercussions for town centers, especially in mega-cities such as London and New York, and for those employed in their restaurants and cafes. They may also fear for the losses accumulating in the public transport network, as the number of passengers remains relatively low. Meanwhile, employers are skeptical about whether productivity can be sustained over protracted periods of remote working. They may also be frustrated at the thought of leasing empty offices, particularly in locations with very high rents. Story continues Still, only some of these fears are justified. Politicians should be wary of wading into what is above all a private relationship between employers and employees. If a company believes it can operate effectively while keeping employees at home, does it make sense for the government to get in the way? Of course, local and national governments can make work decisions with regard to the public administration. If they believe strongly that remote working is ineffective, they can bring civil servants back into the office. Its harder to make a case for telling employees in the private sector what to do. Theres also reason for politicians to be careful: The economic pain for city centers may be an economic gain for residential neighborhoods and suburbs. We hear a lot about the restaurants that are closing around empty office blocks, but less about supermarkets that are hiring new staff elsewhere. Employers face a different calculation. They must assess whether their organizations have managed to operate successfully without face-to-face contact. For some businesses that rely on human interactions, such as shops or restaurants, most that survived will really have no choice but to reopen the workplace. For others, including many companies with a prevalence of white-collar workers, it is a tougher call. Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, and colleagues recently found that the transition to remote work for U.S. businesses has been uneven, with many becoming less productive. But employees dont appear to be working less: Raffaella Sadun, an economist at Harvard Business School, and other researchers presented evidence of an increase in the length of the average workday, by nearly an hour, and a short-term increase in workers email activity. Companies will need to be mindful about their specific circumstances. If they do plan to recall employees back to the office, theyd be wise to consider the potential problems the worst being that a worker tests positive for the virus, falls ill and potentially spreads it to coworkers. Even if a company takes all the right precautions, people will need to be quarantined and there will be many questions around contact tracing. JPMorgan is having to face this very problem, after there was a recent positive case reported in its New York City offices. These risks present not only health issues, but can be a serious drag on productivity too. Taking a hit on the renting costs of office space might just be worth it. Deutsche Bank AG has planned to tell its employees in New York City they can work from home until mid-2021. Since we dont know how long the pandemic will last, we also dont know how long companies and workers will face this workplace dilemma. For now, its best if politicians stay out of the way and employers stay open-minded. The new world of work presents many challenges, but some opportunities too. (Updates chart to reflect weekday data only) This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Ferdinando Giugliano writes columns on European economics for Bloomberg Opinion. He is also an economics columnist for La Repubblica and was a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times. 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. (Newser) An Alaska dentist who extracted a tooth while standing on a hoverboard has been stripped of his licenseand his freedom. Seth Lockhart has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges including Medicaid fraud, embezzlement, reckless endangerment, and unlawful dental acts, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Investigators said Lockhart, who was reported by a former employee, increased profits by sedating patients for longer than necessary. "In reviewing all this over and over again, I have this visceral responseyou darn near killed some people," Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton told Lockhart on Monday. story continues below A jury found Lockhart guilty of 46 charges in January. In the hoverboard incident, he was filmed standing on the board while extracting a tooth from an unconscious patient and then riding away with his arms raised in triumph, reports the New York Post. Prosecutors said the 34-year-old sent the video to at least eight people, boasting that it was a "new standard of care." During his trial in December, the patient told him: "What you did was outrageous, narcissistic, and crazy." Another patient testified that Lockhart had removed four of his teeth without his permission. (Read more dentist stories.) RENO, Nev. - Public defenders say the states rush to convict an immigrant of four capital killings in northern Nevada violates his constitutional rights as they press for an indefinite trial delay due to COVID-19 travel restrictions keeping them from gathering evidence in El Salvador about his intellectual ability. Prosecutors argue in their latest filings in Washoe County District Court that lawyers for 21-year-old Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman have failed to establish the necessary legal grounds to justify a never-ending continuance of his case. Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks said the court recognized in June that in-person contact with El Salvador could be years away. Judge Connie Steinheimer postponed a status hearing late Wednesday where both sides were scheduled to make their arguments in Reno. She cited failure on the part of the defence to meet a filing deadline and said she would reset the hearing date. Martinez-Guzman, 21, faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of the killing of an elderly Reno couple and two Gardnerville women in their homes during what authorities say was a 10-day crime rampage in two counties in January 2019. Martinez-Guzmans lawyers have said they need to go to El Salvador to gather information about his background. They believe he may have an intellectual disability that would make it illegal to execute him if convicted. Travel to the country currently is prohibited due to the coronavirus. Federal officials have said Martinez-Guzman is in the U.S. illegally, but they dont know how or when he crossed the Mexico border. The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who used it to bolster his push for a border wall. Prosecutors say Martinez-Guzman stole a revolver from Gerald and Sharon David in southwest Reno Jan. 4, 2019. They say he fatally shot Constance Koontz on Jan. 9, killed Sophia Renken on Jan. 12 and robbed and killed the Davids on Jan. 15. Defence lawyers have rejected prosecutors insistence that interviews with Martinez-Guzmans family members and others in El Salvador can be done remotely. It can be acknowledged that the pandemic is an inconvenience to the state in its rush to have (him) sentenced to death, however, the pandemic is not a reason to abandon well-established and reliable methods for collection of data that must be relied on by the court in determining if (he) is categorically ineligible for the death penalty, they wrote in new filings Monday. They said a remote investigation has limitations that weaken its strength and open it up for attack by the state. Limitations include reliable telephone and internet connections, as well as ability to monitor body language and interview family members individually while they talk about some of the most sensitive subjects in their life. The state is attempting to simplify what is complicated, by comparing the treatment of depression and other common mental health diagnosis via telehealth with an evaluation that will determine whether the ultimate punishment death can be legally imposed, the public defenders said. They said theyre not asking for an indefinite continuance for years. Rather, they want the judge to continue with the current schedule of status hearings every 30-45 days to monitor the progress of the case. The desire to bring this case to a resolution cannot be stronger than the desire to maintain fairness, justice and due process, they wrote. Hicks said medical experts could conduct their investigation using online platforms to communicate with people in El Salvador, noting that Martinez-Guzman has used Zoom to talk to relatives in El Salvador. It is clear that alternative methods exist ... and are pragmatic, he said. Fires are continuing to rage across the US West Coast. So far, at least 35 people have perished and large tracts of land have been destroyed. In an awkward exchange with Californias governor Gavin Newsom, President Donald Trump dismissed a link between global warming and the worsening fires. This prompted Democratic nominee Joe Biden to label Trump a climate arsonist. According to a new study by the Pew Research Centre, Australians perceptions of the US have plummeted over the past year with three in four Australians saying they have no confidence President Trump will do the right thing for the world. In this episode, national editor Tory Maguire is joined by North American correspondent, Matthew Knott to discuss the Californian fires and the debate theyve kicked off about climate change. PENSACOLA, Fla. Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sallys rains threatened more misery for parts of the Florida Panhandle and south Alabama on Thursday, even as the storms remnants were forecast to dump up to a foot of rain and spread the threat of flooding to Georgia and the Carolinas. Coastal residents, meanwhile, looked to begin the recovery from a storm that turned streets into rivers, ripped roofs off buildings, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and killed at least one person. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors in flooded areas that they would need to remain vigilant as water from the hurricane subsides, because heavy rains to the north were expected to cause flooding in Panhandle rivers in coming days. So this is kind of the initial salvo, but there is going to be more that youre going to have to contend with, DeSantis said. At least one death was blamed on the hurricane. Orange Beach, Alabama, Mayor Tony Kennon told The Associated Press one person in the popular vacation spot died and another was missing as a result of the storm. He said he couldnt immediately release details. Sally blew ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Wednesday morning as a major hurricane with 105 mph (165 kph) winds. It moved slowly, exacerbating the heavy rains' effects. More than 2 feet (61 centimeters) fell near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet (1 meter) of water covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service reported. Some Pensacola streets looked like rivers with whitecaps at times. The waters swamped parked cars before receding. A replica of Christopher Columbus' ship the Nina was missing from where it was docked at the Pensacola waterfront, police said. The ship was later seen run aground in downtown Pensacola, Pensacola News Journal reported. The storm was a nerve-racking experience for University of West Florida student Brooke Shelter. She was wide awake Wednesday morning as strong winds and rainfall battered her home, marking her first experience with a hurricane. The damage around my home is pretty minor, for which I am thankful for, Shelter said. However, it is so sad seeing how flooded downtown is. Sally weakened to a tropical depression late Wednesday and picked up speed. By early Thursday, it was producing torrential rains over eastern Alabama and western and central Georgia. Forecasters say tornadoes are possible Thursday across southern Georgia and northern Florida. More than 22,000 homes and businesses in Georgia were without power by early Thursday morning, according to the poweroutages.us website. News outlets reported some trees were toppled in Georgia. In Clayton County, fire officials warned residents to avoid areas where power lines had fallen. The National Hurricane Center said the system was moving through southeast Alabama, would cross over central Georgia and reach South Carolina on Thursday night. Flash flooding and river flooding was possible in each state. Forecasts say up to 1 foot (30 centimeters) of rain is possible in some spots. In Orange Beach, Kennon said the damage was worse than that from Hurricane Ivan, which hit 16 years to the day earlier. In a Facebook briefing, Kennon said distribution points would be established Thursday for water, ice and tarps. It was an unbelievably freaky right turn of a storm that none of us ever expected, Kennon said of Sally, which once appeared to have New Orleans in its sights. Well over a half-million homes and businesses were without electricity in Alabama and Florida, according to poweroutages.us. Many faced extended time without power. We dont want to sugar coat this; were in it for the long haul, one utility posted on social media. At least eight waterways in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle were expected to hit major flood stage by Thursday. Some of the crests could break records, submerge bridges and flood some homes, the National Weather Service warned. Included in the warnings were the Styx and Fish rivers, Murder Creek and Big Escambia Creek. In Florida, major crests were expected on the Perdido, Blackwater, Shoal and Yellow rivers, forecasters said. Brewton, Alabama, a city of about 5,200, can expect moderate to major flooding, said meteorologist Steve Miller of the National Weather Service office in Mobile. Silverhill, a town of about 1,200, was threatened by the Fish River, which had crested, and Seminole, an Alabama village on the Florida state line, by the still rising Styx River, Miller said. As a hurricane, Sally tore loose a barge-mounted construction crane, which then smashed into the new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay, causing a section of the year-old span to collapse, authorities said. The storm also ripped away a large section of a fishing pier at Alabamas Gulf State Park on the very day a ribbon-cutting had been scheduled following a $2.4 million renovation. The hurricane center was tracking two other Atlantic storms. Hurricane Teddy that strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane early Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. The storm was located early Thursday about 625 miles (1,006 kilometers) east-northeast of The Lesser Antilles. Teddy was moving toward the northwest at about 12 mph (19 kph), the general motion it is expected to continue through the weekend. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days; Teddy could become a major hurricane Thursday night or Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. Tropical Storm Vicky is expected to dissipate in the Atlantic in the coming days. Moderna Inc, a biotechnology company based in Cambridge, could know if its coronavirus vaccine is effective in combating the virus as early as November, the companys CEO said on Thursday. The infection rate has slowed down the last two weeks, which is great for the country, but the readout in October becomes less and less probable, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said, the Boston Globe reports, adding that November or December is the likelier target. Moderna is one of three companies working on a potential vaccine, the others being Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The Cambridge-based company embarked on Phase 3 of its study, dubbed COVE (Coronavirus Efficacy), in effort to test its prototype vaccine, and began administering doses to 30,000 Americans over the summer. Bancel said he hoped preliminary results of the large-scale clinical trial would be available by October, but that a decline in the number of COVID-19 cases across the U.S. has slowed the timeline, the Globe reports. In an earlier phase of the company study, researchers said the vaccine triggered an immune system response in a handful of participants. The vaccine was given 28 days apart across three dose levels in 45 healthy adult participants ages 18 to 55 years old. Results were reported through day 57, with no serious side effects. Data indicates the vaccine induced rapid and strong immune responses against the virus. The study was led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. As part of a $1.525 billion deal struck with the Trump administration, the Cambridge-based biotechnology company announced last month that it will provide millions of doses of its vaccine to the federal government. Related Content: Sen. Ed Markey and a coalition of more than three dozen Democratic senators urged the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday to boost internet connectivity for students whose homes have turned into classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democratic senators, in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, urged the FCC to immediately utilize the E-Rate program to provide internet access for students at home during remote or hybrid learning, with 16 million children across the U.S. lacking internet access. These students are disproportionally from communities of color, low-income households and rural areas, the senators wrote. Without urgent action by the FCC, we are deeply concerned that they will fall further behind in their studies. The current emergency demands that you take immediate action to help our nations most vulnerable children. We specifically call on you to utilize the E-Rate program to close this homework gap without further delay. Markey authored the original E-Rate program as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The program has provided $52 billion to help students get online in schools and libraries nationwide, including $740 million in Massachusetts, according to Markeys office. The senators argue the FCC has clear authority and available funding under the E-Rate program to provide connections at students' homes which, because schools have had to close their doors, have become de facto classrooms. The group said FCC must reconsider how it defines a classroom, arguing the commission has narrowly construed its ability to act during the current emergency, needlessly leaving millions of children at risk of falling behind in their studies. The letter was led by Markey, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen, Michael Bennet, Maggie Hassan and Brian Schatz. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also signed the letter. An FCC spokesperson told MassLive on Thursday evening that the commission was reviewing the letter. The E-Rate program only applies to classrooms, not student homes, according to current law, FCC said. Thats precisely why since March Chairman Pai has repeatedly called on Congress to establish and fund a Remote Learning Initiative so that more students can get connected and stay online, the spokesperson said. Congress has provided $16 billion in CARES Act funding to the Department of Education to help schools equip their students with the broadband connectivity, laptops and tablets they need to learn at home, and governors from Delaware to Oklahoma are now using that funding to support remote learning. Efforts to connect our nations students shouldnt be a partisan issue, which is why Chairman Pai is committed to working closely with the Department of Education to implement this program. The chairman remains hopeful that Congress will heed his call to further help students now that the new school year is well under way. On Wednesday, FCC announced a second funding window to let schools seek additional E-Rate funding to address urgent on-campus bandwidth needs resulting from the heightened reliance on remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democratic senators also co-sponsored the Emergency Educational Connections Act, which would provide at least $4 billion through the E-Rate program to equip students with online access and devices for the duration of the pandemic. The lawmakers are pushing for this bill to become part of the next COVID-19 stimulus package. Related Content: Most of us remember the popular childrens song, The Wheels on the Bus. When we were kids, we sang it with our friends as we rode a yellow bus to school; as parents, we taught it to our own children. But in every school district across the state, the future of the yellow bus is at risk. Pennsylvania is in danger of losing its school bus drivers and the businesses that employ them. We must make certain that school buses and drivers are available to transport students when they return to the classroom. To ensure this happens, pupil transportation must be funded and supported as an essential service to Pennsylvanias students and their families. This is true not only for charter and non-public pupil transportation but for all public schools as well. As Pennsylvanias school bus industry, our job is to keep the wheels on the bus going round and round. And we love what we do. Our mission is to safely transport more than 1.5 million Pennsylvania students to and from school each day, including an overwhelming majority of our states 300,000 special needs learners. That adds up to a remarkable 88% of Pennsylvanias school-age children who rely on the yellow-bus industry every day. Many families have no other way to transport their children to school than to trust that a school bus will be there, in all kinds of weather, from dawn until dusk, during a pandemic and after it ends. The Pennsylvania School Bus Association (PSBA), and the school bus contractors we represent, recognize the complexity of todays back-to-school challenge as we tackle the implications of COVID-19 on the school bus industry. It doesnt matter where a student goes to school public, private, or charter nearly nine out of 10 begin and end their day on a school bus. A successful return to school requires that school buses are rolling when we are back to full-time instruction, field trips, sporting events and all of the activities families expect for a well-rounded student experience. Since the pandemic began, school bus contractors have been on the job doing what is needed to keep children and drivers safe. Locally owned school bus contractors have been leveraging their expertise to assist school districts as they prepare for an ever-changing variety of back-to-school scenarios. School bus contractors have purchased equipment and supplies for cleaning and disinfecting buses and vans. Health screenings, increased sanitation protocols, masks and social distancing requirements have been implemented. Drivers have been trained on new guidelines to better protect their health and the health of their precious cargo. The industry will continue to be full partners in a safe return to school for Pennsylvanias families. At the same time as the pandemic, Pennsylvania and the rest of the country are facing a shortage of school bus drivers. While the school bus industry has been reaching out to attract more drivers, its important that we not lose the highly trained workforce currently in place. The selection, screening and training process for prospective drivers is rigorous, and takes eight to 10 weeks to complete. Before any driver can get behind the wheel, they undergo careful evaluation that includes federal and state background checks. In addition, comprehensive training in the classroom and behind the wheel must be completed before a driver successfully passes their test and earns a Commercial Drivers License (CDL). School bus drivers represent a skilled workforce that cannot be replaced quickly or irresponsibly. School bus driver shortages will worsen if the industry is not supported as an essential service during school closures or as schools adopt schedules with reduced in-person instruction. With districts either offering a hybrid schedule or moving to complete remote learning, any loss of funding will make it difficult for school bus contractors to maintain the current driver workforce and remain in business. School bus transportation is recognized as the safest way to get students to and from school. Our goal is to maintain a ready workforce of drivers so we can respond immediately when schools return to normal schedules. Lets make sure we keep the wheels on the bus going round and round. Michael Berk is the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Bus Association. Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0 PHOENIX, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Advisor Group, the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, and Securities America today welcomed USE Credit Union (USECU) to the Securities America Financial Institutions platform. With more than $1 billion in assets, USECU serves more than 62,000 California university employees, students and other California residents. It has affiliated with Securities America through Priority Financial Group, a registered investment adviser and OSJ based in Phoenix that specializes in delivering customized programs for financial institutions to enhance their wealth management capabilities and improve operating efficiency. Securities America is part of Advisor Group, which also includes FSC Securities Corporation, KMS Financial Services, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial, Securities Service Network, Triad Advisors and Woodbury Financial Services. Headquartered in San Diego and founded in 1936, USECU offers accessibility to members through eight locations across California, nearly 30,000 surcharge-free ATMs across the nation, and 24/7 online and mobile banking. In addition to California university employees and students, USE serves employees of California state agencies including the California Department of Motor Vehicles, California Highway Patrol, CalPERS and CalTrans, and others who live, work or worship in Alameda County, Sacramento County, San Diego County, Santa Clara County and Yolo County. Through its new relationship with Securities America, the Credit Union recently enhanced and relaunched its investment services program, which currently oversees approximately $30 million in client assets. Jim Norwood, President of Securities America's Financial Institutions Division, said, "USECU has a decades-long track record of investing in infrastructure and capabilities that enable it to provide members with top-notch member services. We are excited to be partnering with them as they relaunch and expand their investment services offering to assist thousands of families across California in planning and saving for the future. Along with our partners at Priority Financial Group, we stand ready to help the team at USECU expand and reach new levels of success." Priority Financial Group specializes in helping financial institutions strengthen their client service capabilities in wealth management. For more than two decades, PFG has helped financial institutions accelerate growth by providing expertise in compliance, operations, and sales management. Priority Financial Group CEO Mike Prior said, "It has been great working with the team at USE Credit Union. Our first priority was working with the Credit Union to help ensure their members have access to expert financial advice. Now we're helping USECU maximize our multi-custodial, innovative tech platform to increase member loyalty and develop new sources of income." USECU was particularly impressed by Priority Financial Group and Securities America's superior technology offerings, said CFO Todd Tharp. Mr. Tharp said, "At USECU, being able to offer our members exceptional financial planning and investment services fits seamlessly within our broader mission of helping them map a path to their dreams. We're thrilled that our partnership with Priority Financial Group and Securities America will better enable us to empower our members with industry-leading technology, support and services that can help them work toward the future of their dreams." Jamie Price, Advisor Group's President and CEO, concluded, "On behalf of the entire Advisor Group network, we congratulate Securities America and Priority Financial Group for their successful recruitment of USECU to the Securities America Financial Institutions platform. Our wealth management firms and their partners collaborate tirelessly to help the institutions and financial professionals that affiliate with them develop their capabilities, increase their efficiency and expand their businesses. We pride ourselves on being in the corner of our financial professionals and institutions, and we will continue to invest in their ability to serve their clients." About Securities America Securities America is part of Advisor Group, the nation's largest networks of independent wealth management firms. Headquartered in Omaha and founded in 1984, Securities America supports approximately 2,800 independent financial professionals with innovative technology and wealth management platforms, practice management and business growth tools and a personalized service culture. The firm's flexible, multi-custodial approach supports a range of business models including Super OSJs, independent RIAs, RIA-only advisors, hybrid advisors and financial institutions. For more information visit https://www.securitiesamerica.com/. Securities offered through Securities America, Inc., member FINRA / SIPC. Advisory Services offered through Securities America Advisors, Inc. and Arbor Point Advisors, LLC. About Advisor Group Advisor Group, Inc. is the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, serving approximately 11,100 financial professionals and overseeing over $450 billion in client assets. The firm is mission-driven to support the strategic role that advisors can play in the lives of their clients. Cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship and independence, Advisor Group champions the enduring value of financial professionals and is committed to being in their corner every step of the way. For more information visit https://www.advisorgroup.com. Securities and investment advisory services are offered through Advisor Group, Inc. subsidiaries, FSC Securities Corporation, KMS Financial Services, Inc., Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., Triad Advisors, LLC, and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and members of FINRA and SIPC. Securities services are offered through Investacorp, Inc., Securities America, Inc., and Securities Service Network, broker-dealers and members of FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Arbor Point Advisors, LLC, Investacorp Advisory Services, Inc., Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, Inc., Securities America Advisors, Inc., SSN Advisory, Inc., and Triad Hybrid Solutions, LLC, registered investment advisers. Advisor Group, Inc. is a holding company. Advisor Group, Inc. is separately owned and other entities and / or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Advisor Group, Inc. 20 E. Thomas Rd., Ste. 2000, Phoenix, AZ, 85012. 866.481.0379 Media Inquiries Joseph Kuo / Chris Clemens Haven Tower Group 424 317 4851 or 424 317 4854 [email protected] or [email protected] SOURCE Advisor Group; Securities America Related Links https://www.advisorgroup.com As President Trump makes increasingly impassioned promises that a vaccine will become available within weeks, scientists and experts have been left to throw cold water on his claims. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in testimony before a Senate committee yesterday that a vaccine would not be widely available until the middle of next year and that masks would remain essential to fighting the disease. Ultimately, he said, wearing masks might be more important than a vaccine. The president quickly lashed out, rejecting the scientific findings of his own government in particularly stark terms, even for him. I think he made a mistake when he said that, Trump said in comments to reporters hours later. Its just incorrect information. Trump went on to say that a vaccine would be available immediately and that under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said. Joe Biden has been saying almost daily that Trump is treating the vaccine as a political tool and cannot be trusted with information about it. I trust vaccines, Biden said yesterday during a speech in Delaware, shortly before Trump made his comments about Redfield. I trust the scientists, but I dont trust Donald Trump. And at this moment, the American people cant either. You mightve received a card yesterday from the Postal Service, advising, If you plan to vote by mail, plan ahead. The postcards, sent out to households across the country, promised that were committed to providing you a secure, effective way to deliver your ballot but some Democrats saw them as an attempt to sow confusion and doubt about voting by mail. The mailings instructed voters to start today, even though most states havent begun accepting applications for mail-in ballots. Secretaries of state across the country expressed frustration with the mailings, saying that they had not been consulted on the language until it was already completed. Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington State, called the postcards inaccurate and said she wished her office had been consulted on them in advance. Some secretaries of state said that they planned to raise concerns over the mailings in a conference call with Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, scheduled for today. Colorados Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has obtained a temporary restraining order preventing the delivery of the postcards, which instruct voters to request their ballots at least 15 days before Election Day and send them in at least a week before. Colorado is encouraging voters to allow slightly more time eight days when mailing in a ballot. DeJoy, who is also a major Trump donor, has said that states should allow at least 15 days between when ballot requests are due and when filled-out ballots must be received by the elections office. Secretaries of state said they also planned to express concerns on todays call about a series of cost-cutting measures DeJoy carried out earlier this year, raising accusations that the Trump administration was seeking to undermine the post office ahead of an election that will rely heavily on voting by mail. Its been a long time since things have looked this challenging for Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina and a fierce Trump loyalist. A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday showed him tied at 48 percent with Jamie Harrison, his Democratic opponent, among likely voters. You dont have to believe in miracles to believe we can win this race, Harrison wrote on Twitter as he shared the poll results. Graham was running considerably behind Trump, who had the support of 51 percent of likely voters in South Carolina, according to the survey. Millions of Widows in 'Crisis of Survival' Says Gospel for Asia GFA World's new global report examines 'ostracizing and shaming' of widows fighting for their lives 'SHUNNED AND SHAMED:' Treatment of widows is often startlingly unfair and cruel, catapulting them into a crisis of survival, says a new global report by Texas-based mission agency Gospel for Asia (GFA World, www.gfa.org). Titled Widows Often Face Uphill Battle (https://www.gfa.org/special-report/widows-worldwide-face-tragedy-discrimination/), the report examines the different struggles faced by widows in the U.S., Africa, and Asia. NEWS PROVIDED BY Gospel for Asia Sept. 17, 2020 WILLS POINT, Texas, Sept. 17, 2020 /Standard Newswire/ -- One of the world's biggest poverty-alleviating organizations spotlights the huge "uphill battle" facing many of the world's 258 million widows in a just-released report. Treatment of widows is often startlingly unfair and cruel, catapulting them into a crisis of survival, says the new global report by Texas-based Gospel for Asia (GFA World, www.gfa.org). Titled Widows Often Face Uphill Battle (https://www.gfa.org/special-report/widows-worldwide-face-tragedy-discrimination/), it examines the different struggles faced by widows in the U.S., Africa, and Asia. Those struggles include battles over widows' benefits in America, being stripped of homes and possessions in Africa, and the practice of shunning and shaming in Asia. "In some Asian cultures, when a woman's husband dies, she's often stripped of her dignity, her worth, and her human rights," said Dr. K.P. Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia (GFA World, www.gfa.org). "Many widows are deprived of their home, their property, and their possessions, leaving them destitute." In parts of Asia, many young widows face sexual harassment and abuse, often turning to begging or prostitution to survive. Widows in some cultures are viewed with suspicion and disgust -- sometimes even branded as witches or blamed for their husband's death and shut out of community life. 'Excluded and Invisible' "Cultural shame and prejudice often render widows excluded and invisible," said Yohannan, whose faith-based organization supports 40 local Sisters of Compassion teams helping widows across Asia. GFA World's support includes vocational training for widows and giving them opportunity to take part in income-generating activities, such as sewing. These GFA World teams of visiting women provide emotional and spiritual support, praying with widows in their homes and showing them they're not alone. Asia, the world's biggest continent, has an estimated 57 million widows -- roughly equivalent to the populations of California and Florida combined. "On the surface, this seems like an overwhelming uphill battle," said Yohannan, "but every time a widow receives help and encouragement, we rejoice." Supporting the grassroots efforts of local churches in cities and rural villages, GFA World aims to "show the love of God" to outcast widows who've known only rejection. "The Apostle James told us in his epistle that true religion is to care for orphans and widows in their distress," Yohannan said. "The challenge facing the church around the world today is to not just read the Bible, but to do what is written in it." Gospel for Asia (GFA World, www.gfa.org) is a leading faith-based mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across Asia, especially to those who have yet to hear about the love of God. In GFAs latest yearly report, this included more than 70,000 sponsored children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and spiritual teaching available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://press.gfa.org/news. SOURCE Gospel for Asia CONTACT: Gregg Wooding, 972-567-7660, gwooding@inchristcommunications.com Related Links www.gfa.org https://press.gfa.org/news The leaders handed over a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind Opposition leaders, including Congress's Ahmed Patel, CPI's D Raja, CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury, DMK's Kanimozhi and RJD's Manoj Jha, met President Ram Nath Kovind to share their concerns over the police ongoing investigation into the Delhi riots. The leaders handed over a memorandum to the President, requesting him to order a probe into the investigation by a panel headed by sitting or retired judge (s) as the ongoing investigation by the Delhi Police doesnt inspire confidence. The leaders said in the memorandum that they wanted to express a deep concern about the manner in which the Delhi Police was investigating the communal violence that took place in north-east Delhi earlier this year. They said a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Delhi Police and the Special Cell were investigating the aspect of conspiracy behind the riots. There are, however, serious questions about the role played by the Delhi Police itself during the violence and also the manner in which the police is harassing and attempting to falsely implicate activists and young people who took part in the anti-CAA-NCR-NPR movements as the perpetrators of violence, the memorandum said. Such a manufactured conspiracy theory has now begun to falsely implicate political leaders, the leaders said. In a recent supplementary charge sheet, the Delhi Police, citing statements of those arrested, had named Sitaram Yechury along with other activists in the case. The name of CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, a parliamentarian of long-standing repute and also names of well-known intellectuals, academicians and activists have now surfaced in material put out in the public domain. This is a disturbing trend that raises serious questions over the manner of such investigations, the memorandum said, blaming the Delhi Police for turning blind eye towards the alleged role of its own personnel and BJP leaders in the violence. We therefore urge you to call upon the Government of India to institute an inquiry into this investigation under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, headed by sitting/retired judge(s), the memorandum read. Loose Women star Nadia Sawalha played Kim Kardashian for laughs once again on Wednesday after stripping down to her underwear in a body positive video. The TV panelist, 55, mimicked a voice-over of American entrepreneur Kim discussing her hugely popular range of SKIMS undergarments while posing in a mismatched bra and knickers. With Kim's disembodied voice heard talking about the benefits of body contouring shape-wear, Nadia mimed along in a video parody shared with her 312,000 Instagram followers. Here we go: Loose Women star Nadia Sawalha played Kim Kardashian for laughs on Wednesday after stripping down to her underwear in a body positive video It is the second time Nadia has mimicked Kim after previously miming to one of her underwear commercials in August. Adding a tongue-in-cheek caption, she wrote: 'My new SKIDS briefs are giving me life ! I feel so snatched so DoMESSStic Goddess so perfect . How are YOU feeling girls ???' [sic] The short clip - posted to help those struggling with their body image - was met with a positive response from fans, with many praising Nadia for her candid approach to female empowerment. Commenting on the video, one wrote: 'Us normal woman really really appreciate this way of showing your normal body which is a real woman.' Funny: The TV panelist, 55, mimicked a voice-over of American entrepreneur Kim discussing her hugely popular range of SKIMS undergarments while posing in a mismatched bra and knickers Don't mind me: With Kim's disembodied voice heard talking about the benefits of body contouring shape-wear, Nadia mimed along in a video shared with her 312,000 Instagram followers While a second added: 'Thank you for your honesty and making me feel like my body and the weight I have doesn't make me awful. it makes me, me! I now hope one day I can be comfortable in my own skin!' Thanking Nadia, a third commented: 'At last a woman talking sense you have no idea how many women you have reached out too. 'We need someone like you to share & tell it like it is. These videos make women feel better about themselves thank you I think your amazing.' Look at me: The video was posted to help those struggling with their body image Open and honest: Nadia has previously admitted to feeling 'sad' for wasting time hating her body and 'feeling ugly' during her youth Nadia has previously admitted to feeling 'sad' for wasting time hating her body and 'feeling ugly' during her youth. The TV personality made the admission after Loose Women colleague Carol McGiffin shared a 20-year old image in which she is pictured attempting to cover her body while relaxing on the beach. In a lengthy caption, Nadia said: '@the_mcgiff just sent this pic she took twenty years ago to me and @kayeadamsofficial. It is the second time Nadia has mimicked Kim after previously miming to one of her underwear commercials in August Well done: Wednesday's clip - posted to help those struggling with their body image - was met with a positive response from fans, with many praising Nadia for her candid approach to female empowerment 'Saying ... Just had to send this to you two because it so perfectly sums up the old Nadia......look at the horror on your face because I was taking a photo of you!!! 'And my god she's right.' She continued: 'I can actually remember the moment Carol took the photo . I almost wanted to cry because I thought I was so 'hideous ' a word I used all the time to describe myself back then ... look at me trying to cover my body ?? 'It leaves me feeling so sad when I look back and think about how much of that holiday I wasted with 'stinking thinking ' feeling 'ugly ' comparing my figure constantly to Kaye Adams and Carol's gorgeous bodies. 'What a b****y waste of time. What a sacrilege.' Candid: Nadia recently admitted she felt 'sad' for hating her body in her youth after Loose Women colleague Carol McGiffin shared a 20-year old image of her on the beach A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk would not make comment as the issue was before the courts. Detectives raided the man's property in Nerang on Wednesday night as part of their investigation into the alleged threats. The 43-year-old man has been charged with one count of using a carriage service to make a threat to kill and will appear in Southport Magistrates Court on October 7. Dr Young has police officers outside her home and with her everywhere she goes after receiving death threats over her handling of interstate border exemption cases. She faced an onslaught of criticism after denying 26-year-old Canberra nurse Sarah Caisip's plea to leave hotel quarantine to attend her father's funeral with her mother and sister. Dr Young said on Monday she was grateful for police protection, not because of the physical protection they provided but because it showed the government was supporting her in her decisions. "It has taken an enormous toll on me, but then this has taken an enormous toll on nearly every single person in our community. Every single person in our community in Queensland has had to give up an awful lot. And we can't see a clear end to this," she said. This is a tough time for everyone, and I hope everyone has got a way of managing their mental health, of being able to talk to someone that they love, that they can work through issues with. At the beginning of September, Google Cloud announced that it had won a project from the Pentagons relatively new Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to prototype an AI-enabled digital pathology solution at select DoD [Department of Defense] facilities. This prototype, per a Google Cloud press release, combines augmented reality telescopes with AI-enabled cancer detection tools that will allegedly improve the accuracy of predictive cancer diagnoses. It is the second DIU contract Google has won this year, with the first being related to combatting cyber threats. The initial implementation of this Pentagon-funded, Google-created digital pathology solution will take place at select Defense Health Agency (DHA) treatment facilities and Veterans Affairs hospitals in the United States, and the program includes future plans to expand across the broader U.S. Military Health System, according to Google. The initiative is part of a larger DIU-led program called Predictive Health that is also partnered with the joint AI effort of the US military and US intelligence community, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and JAICs Warfighter Health initiative. The JAIC, which is currently led by a former Silicon Valley executive, is providing much of the funding for Predictive Health, while its related Warfighter Health initiative more broadly seeks to field AI solutions that are aimed at transforming military health care. In addition to its stated goal of improving the accuracy of cancer diagnoses, the implementation of this Google-DIU AI-driven medical diagnosis tool aims to show frontline health practitioners that such tools can improve the lives of US troops, according to Google executives. As Mike Daniels, vice president of Global Public Sector at Google Cloud, noted in a statement, Google is partnering with DIU to provide our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to help frontline healthcare practitioners learn about capabilities that can improve the lives of our military men and women and their families. Google also stated that the use of their tool at military health facilities would also lower overall healthcare costs. The Google-DIU effort to outsource human doctor decision-making to a tailor-made artificial intelligence algorithm is, for now, only focused on the diagnosis of cancers. However, last Thursday, less than two weeks after winning the DIU contract, Google announced that it was donating $8.5 million to several organizations to advance the development and use of AI for monitoring and forecasting Covid-19. That money is part of a larger $100 million donation from Google for financing solutions to Covid-19 that was announced in May. Further evidence that Google soon plans to offer AI-driven predictive diagnoses for Covid-19 came in August, when Google Cloud partnered with Harvards Global Health Institute to provide Covid-19 Public Forecasts, which provide a projection of Covid-19 cases, deaths, and other metrics over the next 14 days for US counties and states. The announcement of the Google-Harvard collaboration coincided with an announcement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would begin harness[ing] AI for COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. Notably, other tech companies that have produced predictive diagnosis AI models for Covid-19 also began first by offering AI-created forecasts of likely Covid-19 outbreaks. For instance, the Israeli intelligencelinked Diagnostic Robotics initially offered AI-driven predictive forecasts of cities and districts to guide lockdown policy in Israel and the US state of Rhode Island before then teaming up with the US-based company Salesforce to develop a platform that uses AI to predict which individuals are likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 and then uses AI to monitor and even treat those individuals. Furthermore, in partnership with researchers at Mount Sinai healthcare centers in New York, tech giant Microsoft has already aided the development of an AI algorithm that rapidly diagnoses Covid-19. Mount Sinais AI model, supported by a recent grant from Microsofts AI for Health initiative, was as accurate as an experienced radiologist in diagnosing the disease, according to one of the lead researchers behind the models development. While its development was aided by Microsoft, the core of the Mount Sinai AI model is TensorFlow, which was developed by Google and is Google AIs second-generation system for machine learning. In addition, both Google and Microsoft are part of a Europe-based effort aimed at automating diagnoses for Covid-19 via an AI algorithm that analyzes CT scans, which is similar in several ways to the Mount Sinai AI model. Thus, it seems highly likely that Googles efforts to offer AI-powered predictive diagnoses will soon expand to include tools that use algorithms to diagnose Covid-19, not just cancer. The Merging of the Pentagon, the CIA, and Silicon Valley Established in 2015, the Defense Innovation Unit of the Department of Defense officially exists to transfer leading-edge commercial capabilities to the military faster and more cost-effectively than traditional defense acquisition methods and to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology throughout the military and [grow] the national security innovation base. As the DIU makes clear on its website, the national security innovation base it seeks to grow consists of private tech companies, namely those based in Silicon Valley, that provide advanced commercial solutions to national security challenges. This, of course, includes the tech companies that already double as contractors for the national security state, such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, among numerous others. The DIU boasts offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, and at the Pentagon itself and is largely led, not by career military men, but by former Silicon Valley executives. For instance, its current directorMichael Brownis the former CEO of cybersecurity giant Symantec and, prior to that, led the Quantum corporation. In another example, the leader of the DIUs artificial intelligence portfolio is Jeff Klugman, a former top executive at TiVo, the Quantum corporation, and Hewlett-Packard. A year after the DIU was created, it was followed by the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), which is composed of leaders from across the national security innovation base and provides recommendations that have been used to inform DoD leadership strategy and action, as well as congressional legislation. Like the DIU, Silicon Valley is well represented on the DIB, as its members include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman as well as top executives from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. Notably, just months before the DIU-led Predictive Health program was launched, the DIB noted in March 2020 that the Pentagon owns the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world, asserting further that if the entire repository were leveraged to its fullest potential, it would advance diagnosis and treatment for thousands of illnesses, saving lives across DoD and the global population. The DIB then specifically suggested that artificial intelligence and machine learning models may help pathologists sort through this massive dataset more quickly and effectively to provide better care for patients in and out of the military, adding that these troves of medical data should be used to support DoD reform and modernization efforts in the field of AI/ML [Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning]. In other words, the Silicon Valleydominated DIB called for what is now the Predictive Health program just months before the Silicon Valleydominated DIU formally announced it. Also noteworthy is that Googlewhose former CEO, current vice president, and several other Google-tied researchers and businessmen serve on the DIBis the very company that won the DIU contract to have its AI models serve as the foundation for the Predictive Health program. This, of course, means that Googles AI models will benefit immensely from the Pentagons unique and massive medical datasets, which the DIB previously stated was something that the Pentagon must treat . . . as a strategic asset. It is also important to point out the considerable overlap between the Pentagons Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The NSCAI is chaired by Eric Schmidt (also on the DIB) and includes representatives from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon as well as the current and former leaders of the CIAs In-Q-Tel. The official purpose of the NSCAI is to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States. As I previously reported for The Last American Vagabond, the vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Workformer Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS)described the commissions purpose as determining how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with Chinas civil-military fusion concept [my emphasis]. For this reason, the NSCAI unites the US intelligence community and the military, which is already collaborating on AI initiatives via the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and Silicon Valley companies. Notably, many of those Silicon Valley companieslike Google, for instanceare not only contractors to US intelligence, the military, or both but were initially created with funding from the CIAs In-Q-Tel, which also has a considerable presence on the NSCAI. Thus, while the line between Silicon Valley and the US national-security state has always been murky, now that line is essentially nonexistent as entities like the NSCAI, DIB, and DIU, among several others, clearly show. Whereas China, as Robert Work noted, has the civil-military fusion model at its disposal, the NSCAI and the US government respond to that model by further fusing the US technology industry with the national-security state. It is also certainly interesting that, just like the DIB, the NSCAI called for what would become the DIUs Predictive Health program a few months before it was formally announced. In a NSCAI paper from June 2020 titled The Role of AI Technology in Pandemic Response and Preparedness: Recommended Investments and Initiatives, the commission recommends investments and initiatives aimed at using AI for diagnosing illnesses, including Covid-19. This seems to suggest that the Silicon Valleyled but Pentagon-housed DIU is the body that actually creates the government-industry partnerships and initiatives that are first planned out by the DIB and the NSCAI. Its All About the Data While Google has stated that one of their main goals in participating in the Predictive Health program is showing health-care practitioners how AI can improve lives, the DIU was decidedly more direct regarding their intent in implementing this predictive diagnosis program. For instance, an article on the Google-DIU pilot program at DefenseOne, citing military officials, notes that the enormous amount of healthcare data, unique to the Department of Defense, also presents a rare opportunity for the Department to train new machine learning tools. It then adds that there are 9.6 million beneficiaries in the Defense Health System, which means a lot of data to improve the accuracy of [AI] models. DIUs chief medical officer, Niels Olsen, who created the Predictive Health program, recently stated that massive quantities of data planned to be obtained by the program and used for developing improved AI algorithms was a critical component of the project. In a Pentagon press release, Olsen stated that the more data a tool has available to it, the more effective it is. Thats kind of what makes DOD unique. We have a larger pool of information [i. e., medical data] to draw from, so that you can select more diverse cases. Thus, the implementation of the Predictive Health program is expected to amass troves upon troves of medical data that offer both the DIU and its partners in Silicon Valley the rare opportunity for training new, improved AI models that can then be marketed commercially. This may explain part of the interest in partnering this initiative with the Defense Health Agency (DHA), which owns the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world through its management of the Joint Pathology Center, which was noted by the DIB in its March 2020 publication. In addition, as previously mentioned, Google will now be able to access that trove of sensitive data to refine its AI health-focused algorithms, thanks to it having won the DIU contract earlier this month. Notably, the relatively new Predictive Health program builds on past DIU initiatives, such as an AI algorithm that predicts illnesses 48 hours before symptoms show. That algorithm was developed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the DIU, and the health IT company Royal Phillips. The Phillips team that developed that algorithm is now refin[ing] the model at military hospitals and clinics managed by the Veterans Affairs Department. According to the DTRAs Edward Argenta, the focus of the program is to eventually use the AI algorithm to analyze data from devices that remotely monitor individual health, specifically a wearable device that might sit on your bodylike a watch-based one or a chest strap one. While various innovation-focused agencies at the Pentagon have been busy developing their own algorithms after harvesting mass amounts of medical data from military members and their families, a web of intelligence-linked tech companies, including those represented on the DIB and NSCAI, have gained access to the jackpot of medical data through partnering with the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition. According to its website, the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition was established as a coordinated public-interest, private-sector response to the Covid-19 pandemic, convening healthcare organizations, technology firms, nonprofits, academia, and startups. The coalition, which was launched by the intelligence and defense contractor MITRE, also includes tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce, and Amazon and allows its member organizations to collaborate, collect, analyze, visualize, and share data and insights. With access to the data from partnered health-care institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic and the Cedars-Sinai Health System, these tech companies are helping the coalition unlock large-scale analytics for Covid-19. Institutions tied to the US government, and the NSCAI in particular, such as the CIAs In-Q-Tel, are also members of the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition. Notably, the recent advances in US-based efforts to predict or automate Covid-19 diagnoses are all tied to this very coalition. Indeed, all of the companies and institutions mentioned thus far in this report have engaged in developing these tools, as Diagnostic Robotics, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Mount Sinai Medical Center are all coalition members. Google, in the press release regarding its recent partnership with the DIU, noted that the prototype of the AI model set to make predictive cancer diagnoses had been developed from [unspecified] public and private datasets, making it possibleif not likelythat the private datasets were obtained through Googles membership in this massive, yet relatively unknown, coalition of health-care institutions, tech companies, and US intelligencelinked entities like MITRE and In-Q-Tel. This apparent obsession with medical data may explain the dramatic uptick in hacks of hospitals in the United States, which have been considerable in recent months and have largely targeted patient data. It is worth pointing out that the increase in these attacks seeking patient data coincides with the DIB-NSCAI policy recommendations regarding training AI algorithms on troves of medical data for automated and predictive diagnoses, among other applications. Notably, the solutions offered to many of the health-care institutions that have been hacked have come from government-promoted yet opaque groups that are deeply tied to US and allied intelligence agencies as well as Silicon Valley. These volunteer groups, such as the CTI League and the Cyber Alliance to Defend Our Healthcare, offer their services for free but, notably, gain access to the patient data they are tasked with guarding. Are such groups, given their deep ties to Silicon Valley and intelligence agencies, helping acquire even more data to satisfy the Silicon Valley and national-security states endless hunger for more and more data? Wells Fargo gives $1 million in scholarships to bridge financial gaps faced by students amidst COVID-19 Students dedicated to making a positive difference in the world offer the greatest hope for the future, but for many their plans are threatened due to the unexpected financial gap posed by COVID-19 sometimes prohibiting them from continuing and completing college. Wells Fargo wants to help close that gap by launching the WellsFargo Student Impact Scholarship. This new initiative will provide 200 students with $5,000 each funds thatcould help them cover various costs for their instruction and potentially make the difference in being able to continue their education. Wells Fargos commitment will go beyond financial assistance to include an optionalmentorship opportunity to provide ongoing guidance for these students. The program, which began accepting applications on Sept. 14, will be administered with long-standing partner APIA Scholars to students entering college and current college undergraduates for the Spring 2021 semester.The financial aid will be able to help cover costs of education like books, computers, materials to support distance learning, tuition, and housing. A survey recent survey of leaders at various colleges and universities in July showed that 85 percent of collegesintended to maintain their tuition levels, with another twelve percent saying they would increase them, whileanother recent study showed that more than half (56%) of college students say they can no longer afford their tuition costs. These factors combined with the impacts of the pandemic to jobs overall creates a significant andunexpected financial gap for some students in continuing their educational journey. ADVERTISEMENT Despite the incredible disruptions the COVID-19 pandemic has created in their personal and academic lives,students remain some of the key drivers of change. Many are rising to the challenges we are all facing today, and theyare working hard to make a difference in their communities, said John Rasmussen, leader of the Student Lendingat Wells Fargo. These students are making a positive impact, but are faced with a negative impact from COVIDthat could limit their options. We want to help them remain on their academic paths and continue cultivating theirpotential to benefit those around them. Expanding Support Through a collaboration with Wells Fargos scholarship partners, awardees will also have the opportunity to bematched with mentors from Wells Fargo that will offer practical expertise and guidance as they navigate academiclife and their post-graduation journey. These mentors will provide guidance to better position these students fortheir futures and continue the positive impact they make in their communities and beyond. It has been our long-held belief that a post-secondary education can be a valuable tool in building long-termfinancial health, not just for individuals, but for their communities, said Mike Weinbach, head of ConsumerLending at Wells Fargo. The value of this program stems not just from the funds being allocated, but from pairingstudents with Wells Fargo team members and information that will help them long after they have utilized thedirect financial support. Scholarship applications will be accepted from Sept. 14 to Oct. 2. Those interested in learning more abouteligibility can visit wellsfargo.com/impactscholarship. Learn more about how Wells Fargo is responding toCOIVD-19. There were protests, on Wednesday, in Osun, Oyo and Lagos by the Joint Action Front (JAF) over the recent increment in fuel and electricity prices. For the Osun State rally, the group gathered at Osogbo at the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park to call on the Federal Government to reverse the hike. Speaking with journalists, a co-convener of the protest, Alfred Adegoke, who is a lawyer and former governorship candidate of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN), said President Muhammadu Buhari should resign if reducing fuel and electricity price is difficult for him. Another protester, Waheed Saka, disclosed that Nigerians have never had it so bad like we are under the current administration. We are here to protest against the hike in price which is not affecting businesses. The protest also held at Ibadan in Oyo State. A labour leader in the state, Kayode Martins, told journalists that the federal government must bring pump price down to the previous amount and also reverse electricity tariff. The coordinator of the protest, Ademola Aremu, a professor, noted that failure of the government to quickly yield to the cry of Nigerians will lead to nationwide protest. PREMIUM TIMES reported how police disrupted the protest in Lagos. The vice-chairperson of JAF, Achike Chude, told journalists that except the federal government stops inflicting suffering on the people as a result of its gross failure, the protest will continue to hold. The federal government has defended the price increase, saying the government removed the subsidy on both items as it was no longer sustainable. The wisdom of then Senate majority leader Harry Reids decision to change centuries-old Senate rules to allow a simple majority vote for appeals and district court justices was clearly warned against. Many Republicans plainly stated to Democrats: do not do this. Reids 2013 move reset the threshold for circuit and appeals judicial confirmation from 60 senate votes to 51 (It also set in motion a change in Supreme Court confirmations to the same 51 vote threshold stewarded by current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell). One of the most intriguing fallouts from Reids fateful decision is the battle within the confirmation battle that is raging in the Senate Judicial Committees mission to confirm judicial nominees. This smaller engagement appears to be very apparent, not only the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but to three of the four district courts in California. Arguably, California is the leading liberal state in the U.S. Sacramento absolutely comports itself as such with supermajorities in both legislative houses and the governorship and most (if not all) statewide elected offices. Then came the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. He was very clear early on in his campaign that the Federalist Society was going to provide the resource pool for his judicial nominees. Well, that impact was definitely felt in the push to confirm judges for the Appellate Courts in the U.S. The effect in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was immense. No other President has had more of his nominees confirmed than President Trump. He has had ten nominees confirmed to that appellate court, meaning over 30% of that court are Trump nominees. Given that quite a few current justices sitting in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals were born in the early to mid-1940s, there may well be more confirmed if President Trump wins reelection in November. This brings us to the four federal court districts in the state of California (Northern District, Central District, Eastern District, and Southern District) and the incredible number of vacancies and the avalanche of Trump nominees awaiting confirmation for those vacancies. The Northern Districts (where San Francisco is located) configuration is currently dominated by Democrat-nominated justices. Obama-nominated justices currently hold 11 out of the 14 seats in this federal district. Well, the rest of the district courts are an entirely different matter. The current configuration of the Central District (where Los Angeles is located) is 50/50 Republican to Democrat nominated justices. If you examine the vacancies listed in this district, it is substantial. The Senate is, right now, undertaking a confirmation process that is moving to place several more Trump appointees in these vacancies and that will remake of the body of this district court to be dominated by Republican appointees. The exact same dynamic is true of Californias Southern District Court (San Diego is located here). The current 50/50 configuration of this courts appointees with a large amount of vacancies poised to be filled by President Trump will solidify the Southern District with Republican Appointees. The Eastern District court is currently three justices to two in favor of Democrat nominated appointees. There are currently two vacancies poised to be filled by Trump nominees. Clearly, President Trump will shift the federal judicial balance of power in three of the four California federal court districts to Republican-appointed judges. Without beating a dead horse, these confirmations can substantially alter the judicial outcomes and precedents in, arguably, the center of American liberalism for decades to come. Given the leadership of the Senate Judicial Committee, I have to wonder if this is playing out in Democrat efforts to stall Trumps march of judicial appointees. Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been steadfast in his push of getting these nominees appointed. Those have slowed in recent months for a few obvious reasons. Part and parcel among these reasons is the identity of the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Diane Feinstein. In essence, Senator Feinstein has had a front-row seat and was rather helpless to stop a substantial remake of Californias federal court districts and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judicial composition. It is hard to ignore the fact that millions of dollars from California have been expended in South Carolinas Senate contest in favor of Grahams Democrat opponent, Jaime Harrison. Eliminating the guy who is orchestrating the judicial shift in your home state seems like a solid strategy. Finally, when Harry Reid announced his retirement from the Senate, Senator Feinstein released a statement that is a coup de grace of ironic comments regarding the judicial shift in California. She stated, The nation is better off because of Harry Reid." Probably not for what she was thinking but here we are. Image: Tim Evanson Nancy Pelosi is a busy lady. When she isnt out and about on the streets of San Francisco, ducking into a salon to get her hair done, she is I can only presume reading up on the ins and outs of European international law. If you, like countless others, are having difficulty following the notorious complexity of the Brexit-induced Irish border debacle worry not! Nancy, top Democrat and a master of EU talking points, can be relied upon to illuminate. If the U.K. violates that international treaty and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a U.S.U.K. trade agreement passing the Congress, Pelosi said in a statement last week. Funny that for someone so confident (absolutely no chance), her fears (violates and undermines) are so vague. Daniel Hannan, a former member of the European Parliament, argues convincingly in the Telegraph that the fearmongering over the Good Friday agreement is merely a continuation of the same cynical politicking that Brussels has been up to since Britains former prime minister, Theresa May, lost her parliamentary majority three years ago. Only in late 2017 did Eurocrats come up with the outre notion that they might somehow keep Northern Ireland within their grip, Hannan writes. While Boris Johnson acquired a strong majority (in last Decembers general election), Hannan notes that he initially inherited [Mays] minority and her draft Withdrawal Agreement, and with it her dilemma. Johnson has insisted that the fault for the mess lies with the EU, which, during negotiations, increasingly failed to uphold its side of the bargain. With Brexit already enacted, free trade, as well as regulatory consistency between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom (and the Republic of Ireland), were achievable goals in 2020. Its a convenient message for Johnson to sell to the public: Brussels has forced his governments hand by continuing to negotiate in bad faith. The only way out of this, he claims, is to make minor infractions of the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, ensuring that Britain will have protections that guarantee the integrity of the UK. The trouble is, hes changed his tune several times, previously calling the EUs deal fantastic, when it was politically convenient for him to do so. Story continues Still, on the northsouth Irish border issue, Brussels is clearly overdoing it: The situation relates mostly to the transfer of agricultural produce and, in other words, has little to do with political stability in the region. Hannan nails it when he writes: Some EU politicians, perhaps with an eye on Irish America, pretend that this is about the peace process; but, even in the topsy-turvy world of Brussels, you cant seriously argue that trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the Republic would violate the Good Friday Agreement but that trade barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain would not. In any case, the British government does have the numbers in Parliament to push through its agenda. Yesterday, MPs voted 340 to 263 to move ahead to override aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement that would permit the government to override the EUs legally binding Northern Ireland Protocol should it become unreasonable or excessive. As expected, the extent to which politicians think this will destabilize Irelands northsouth relations tends to correlate with what one thinks about Brexit. Boris Johnson has said that his legislation is supposed to protect the Northern Irish peace process and the Good Friday Agreement (because of course he would say that), while Sinn Fein complains that this would critically undermine the Good Friday Agreement political framework and peace process (ditto). Arlene Foster, leading of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, complains that the EU needs to stop using Northern Ireland to get their own way since the integrity of the UK market has to be protected as much as northsouth trade. With that, I suspect most Britons would agree. Legally and domestically, its a giant mess, and there are no easy solutions. But this is precisely why, diplomatically speaking, Britains allies ought to tread lightly. In 2016, President Obama warned the U.K. that if Britain left Europe, theyd be back of the queue for a trade deal with the U.S. His intervention was counterproductive, and he was rightly lambasted for interfering in so patronizing a way. Unfortunately, Pelosi has not learned the lesson. More from National Review MOSCOW, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Russia's sovereign wealth fund said Wednesday it had struck a deal with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. to supply the Indian pharmaceutical company with 100 million doses of the "Sputnik V" COVID-19 vaccine. "Deliveries could potentially begin in late 2020 subject to completion of successful trials and registration of the vaccine by regulatory authorities in India," a Russian Direct Investment Fund statement said. On Aug. 11, Russia's health ministry registered the "Sputnik V" vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, making it the world's first registered vaccine against COVID-19. OPINION: A criminal tax investigation could reveal that Smiths $40 million gift to Morehouse may have been a strategy to achieve leniency. Robert F. Smith, the businessman, philanthropist and the wealthiest Black man in America, gained a great deal of attention and accolades when he pledged to pay off the entire student loan debt of the Morehouse College class of 2019. Tweets went out in praise. Memes of Black folk changing their degrees to Morehouse 19 went up. And a collective sense of pride filled many chests as they saw the gift as the perfect example of taking care of our own. Smith vowed to pay off the college loans incurred by the parents of these 400 young men up to $50,000 per family for a total of $34 million. No one needs to tell you that is a lot of money, particularly for Black folks who pursue education only through great sacrifice and financial hardship that others in this country cannot begin to conceive. When Smith gave his Morehouse commencement address, what many didnt know is that he was being investigated by the Justice Department and the IRS for possible tax offenses, including allegations that he neglected to pay taxes on $200 million in assets, proceeds from his first private equity fund that moved through offshore structures in the Caribbean. Read More: Billionaire Robert Smith investigated by feds for possible criminal charges Smith is reportedly attempting to reach a civil settlement with the government, and previously tried to gain entrance to an IRS amnesty program to avoid prosecution in 2014 when the IRS first investigated him. He was turned down. Under the programwhich provides amnesty to taxpayers who failed to report offshore accountsthe IRS reportedly turns down applicants it already knows did not report those assets, according to Bloomberg. Smith was one of them. The investigation against Smith is of a criminal nature. The feds have focused on the movement of funds from two offshore accounts into Smiths charitable foundation in 2014. Investigators have also zeroed in on the winding down of Smiths first private equity fund that year, which also coincided with his divorce. Story continues One of the many questions Smiths philanthropy raises is whether he contributed these millions with the knowledge that news of the tax allegations would come out. Was there any aspect of these initiatives that were an effort to fortify his image in the Black community, and the community at-large? How much did Robert Smith donate to Black America before he had a severe tax problem in 2014? How should we view his generous contribution to Morehouse in light of the tax probe? While these questions may seem uncomfortable for some of us to ask, they challenge us to think about how the wealthy influence many aspects of our society and the true reasons for their charitable gifts. As Jelani Cobb suggested, philanthropy is a penance mechanism for those who know theyve done wrong, or serves to hide their foibles by causing people to focus on their charity. Given that Smith faces a criminal investigation, a question that remains is whether he should be criminally charged. Offshore tax havens for corporations and the rich are a real problem, with $36 trillion and 10% or more of global GDP in untaxed money stashed away each year. By comparison, the U.S. government takes in $3 trillion in annual revenue. At a time when millions are suffering financially under the coronavirus pandemic and governments face economic turmoil, there must be accountability for those who are hiding vast sums of money that could help people in need. Ultimately, the truth reigns supreme and through time, it comes to light. But perhaps the most interesting revelation from this story, is that Smith followed the lead of another billionaire who was convicted of tax evasion- Ty Warner of Beanie Babies. After being convicted of tax evasion and holding offshore accounts worth 104 million dollars, the judge praised Ty Warner for his charitable gifts and Warners legal team was able to get him a plea deal of only 5 years probation, and no jail time. Robert F. Smith has hired one of Warners former lawyers and is campaigning for a legal settlement and no criminal charges. The donations. The same lawyer. Is this a coincidence? Or is this a strategy that reveals the manipulation of Black America to achieve a legal outcome? For the Black community to continue to advance, we must be willing to celebrate good deeds and gifts, without fear of considering the context of the giving whether they be from organizations, corporations, or individuals who look like us. The investigation of Robert F. Smiths taxes may reveal hes a Black man with something to hide or a target in this nations taking down of another Black man in America. Our willingness to look at whatever truth may come from it, reveals the price we put on integrity. Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove. The post Did Robert F. Smith use Black America? appeared first on TheGrio. The first-of-its-kind ICU Shield is specifically designed to allow Americans to more safely return to schools and workplaces. The ICU Shield offers a unique combination of features that will be critical as schools reopen their doors. It will not only serve as a tool for teachers to closely monitor the health of their students, but will also allow students to operate with minimal disruption," said Rafael A. Correa (Jr.). A father-son team in Ocean City, Md. has introduced ICU Shield, a first-of-its-kind face covering designed to allow Americans to more safely return to schools and workplaces and the countrys factories to return to full operational capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created by Rafael S. Correa (Sr.) and Rafael A. Correa (Jr.), co-founders of Reciprotect LLC, the ICU Shield is a clear, full-face shield that sets itself apart from competitors thanks to a built-in thermometer. This feature provides continuous monitoring through color-coded squares that light up according to sequential temperature ranges. If the device signals that a fever of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher is suspected, the wearer should have his or her temperature verified using a clinical thermometer. When used as advised, the ICU Shield creates an unmatched peer-to-peer monitoring network appropriate for group settings. Featuring an easy lift-away shield, its lightweight design is ideal for prolonged use in any application or industry. ICU Shield is not intended to replace the face mask, but to be worn in conjunction with one in order to provide the most comprehensive protection possible for both the wearer and others. For while face masks are designed to protect others from the wearer, the ICU Shield protects the wearer, particularly against touching his or her face and risking ocular transmission. ICU Shield solves several issues common with traditional shields, such as comfort and fogging. Key features include: FDA Approved Class II Liquid Crystal Thermometer provides constant body temp monitoring Soft, flexible, and easily-adjustable elastic head strap Stay-in-place pivot system for easy access to eat, drink, and adjust eyewear Durable, anti-fog, high optical clarity shield (.015mm thick) Can be cleaned with household disinfectants The ICU Shield offers a unique combination of features that will be critical as schools reopen their doors, said Correa Sr. It will not only serve as a tool for teachers to closely monitor and, if necessary, address the health of their students throughout the day, but will just as importantly allow students to operate with minimal disruption thanks to its ergonomic design. Correa Sr.s personal experience with inaccurate fever screenings inspired the development of the ICU Shield. I had a business meeting with a former client that was following COVID response protocol by requiring a temperature check before entry to the building, said Correa Sr. It was a cold morning, and I kept getting an inaccurate reading because the touchless device they were using was registering my surface temperature as opposed to my actual body temperature. Correa Sr. is no stranger to innovation. As the co-founder of MaTech, a military weapons manufacturer in Salisbury, Md., he has worked on many complex DOD projects and holds twenty-eight patents under his name. His son, Rafael A. Correa Jr, worked alongside him at MaTech and is managing director for ICU Shield. Correa Jr. currently serves as the chief financial officer for Blue Water Development, a Maryland-based commercial and hospitality real estate developer. The ICU Shield is an innovative way for me to protect my employees and guests at our hotel properties, said Correa Jr. The Correas are working with a United States-based supplier on all components of the shield in order to create a truly American-made product. They will start shipping units in September 2020 and are currently accepting pre-orders, with an individual shield priced at $19.99 (pre-production) and bulk pricing available. This is a passion project as much as it is a business project, said Correa Jr. The ICU Shield helps set the stage for a great comeback story from COVID-19. For more information and to purchase ICU Shields visit http://www.icushield.com. About Reciprotect LLC Reciprotect LLC was founded in 2020 by father-son duo Rafael S. Correa (Sr.) and Rafael A. Correa (Jr.). Headquartered in Salisbury, Md., the firm innovated the ICU Shield, the first fully functional face shield with continuous body temperature monitoring. Learn more about ICU Shield at http://www.icushield.com. ### Lili Reinhart has been putting herself first during COVID-19 lockdown. The 24-year-old star explained why she's had to be 'necessarily selfish' for a piece in Self Magazine where she opened up about her self-care and sleep habits. 'Ive been kinda selfishnecessarily selfishthroughout this pandemic,' Reinhart said. Priorities: Lili Reinhart got candid in a piece for Self magazine, admitting she's had to be 'selfish' in small ways to make sure she's taking care of herself Reinhart wasn't talking about being unkind, but rather making herself her biggest priority. She went on: 'Maybe that sounds worse than it is, but what I mean by that is just putting myself as a priority when it comes to my mental health and taking care of myself, whatever that means, whatever that looks like.' Lili, who split with Riverdale co-star Cole Sprouse at the beginning of 2020, also explained how grief has been a big part of her quarantine experience - for more reason than one. Putting things in perspective, the Ohio native said: 'I think grief is the hardest emotion a human can feel, and theres a lot of it going on right now, especially with the Black Lives Matter movement and the massive loss of human lives that were dealing with when it comes to COVID.' Still a smile: The Riverdale actress wasn't talking about being unkind but rather making sure you are being good to yourself and not putting other people ahead of yourself. 'What I mean by that is just putting myself as a priority when it comes to my mental health and taking care of myself, whatever that means, whatever that looks like' 'Grief seems to be an appropriate word for how a lot of us are feeling, and I think thats why Ive tried to not let this time go to waste,' Lili continued. 'Ive definitely realized how valuable this time is. 'Its rare that I get this time to just kind of be, and think, and write, and feel, and Im trying not to take advantage of that, but to really heal myself from past trauma, from current trauma' She didn't directly refer to the breakup, but did say: 'A lot of stuff has been going on for me over the past couple months on a personal note. But its all necessary. Its necessary work that I have to do on myself in order to grow as a human being.' Self-care is even more important for Lili after heading back to Vancouver, Canada to resume shooting on Riverdale, which stopped production in March after a team member was exposed to the novel coronavirus. Grieving: Lili, who split with Riverdale co-star Cole Sprouse in January, said grief has been a big part of her quarantine experience - for more reason than one. 'Grief seems to be an appropriate word for how a lot of us are feeling, and I think thats why Ive tried to not let this time go to waste' Though admittedly 'lucky' to be on the show, she expressed misgivings about returning north of the border to film her popular series in a Nylon profile published earlier this month. Lili has said shes less than thrilled about the idea, as it means she 'cannot leave Canada' and wont be able to visit her family for Thanksgiving in November. 'I genuinely feel like a prisoner, going back to work, because I cannot leave Canada. That doesnt feel good. You cant go home for Thanksgiving, cant visit your family. No one can come visit you unless they quarantine for two weeks. It just feels f*****.' Lili and her costars are now finishing filming the final three episodes of season four, before beginning immediately on season five, which while take place seven years in the future as they leave their high school days behind them. Prior to the shoot they had to quarantine separately for two weeks. They'll be filming through Christmas. TOKYO - Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has wasted no time in stamping his own imprint on his new administration, and two key appointments suggest major reforms could be on the way. Suga, who launched his Cabinet on Wednesday after being named prime minister, wants to demolish bureaucratic sectionalism, with the establishment of a new "digital agency" being the centerpiece of this plan. On Wednesday afternoon, Suga called Takuya Hirai into the Prime Minister's Office and handed him a document outlining his job as the minister for digital reform. "Don't hold back in this task," Suga encouraged Hirai. Establishing a digital agency is a key policy of the new administration. Hirai, who joined Dentsu Inc. and served as president of Nishinippon Broadcasting Co. before becoming a member of the House of Representatives, is known as one of the foremost experts on information technology within the Liberal Democratic Party. Hirai also has extensive personal connections with start-up business operators. His advocacy of the necessity for a so-called digital transformation agency, which would promote the wider adoption of digital technologies, apparently caught Suga's eye. In his previous post as chief cabinet secretary, Suga decided on a one-time payment of 100,000 yen ($960 U.S.) for every resident in Japan to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. However, a spate of problems occurred with applications made using My Number social security and taxation identification cards, which gave Suga a stinging reminder that central government ministries and agencies had been tardy in adopting digital technology. A proposal is being floated within the government that a digital agency might be set up as an external agency of the Cabinet Office. This agency would combine and centralize the Cabinet Secretariat's Information and Communications Technologies Comprehensive Strategy Office and relevant departments in the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry. "This is a mission with no blueprint, so the prime minister told me just to give it everything I've got," Hirai said to reporters after his meeting with Suga. - - - This agency plan is expected to face strong resistance because the affected ministries will have their budgets and authority cut. Suga has expectations Hirai will smash through any opposition - and he has similar expectations for Taro Kono, who was named minister for administrative and regulatory reform in the new Cabinet. Kono's career has been dedicated to eradicating wasteful government spending and operations. After being appointed minister in charge of administrative reform by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2015, Kono pushed ahead with a review of administrative works and projects. He slashed about 100 billion yen ($9.6 million U.S.) from nuclear power-related budgets, as well as expenses in other areas. "He was scarier than the opposition parties," one bureaucrat admitted. Suga has been impressed by Kono's ability to shake things up. However, Kono also created major ripples within the administration while he was defense minister. Kono led the decision to scrap deployment of the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense system this year, but a perceived lack of prior consultation on this issue ruffled many feathers. Even so, Kono appeared undeterred. After his latest appointment, Kono told his close aides he will "eliminate all waste from everything." Some observers are concerned Kono could stir up further friction with his approach. New Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, who is responsible for calibrating the policies of government ministries and agencies, is regarded as a coordinator who leans towards the ministries' side. Despite this, Suga boasted to a close aide, "In the end, I should make those calls myself." This reflects Suga's pride in having the most experience in knocking holes in bureaucratic sectionalism and promoting regulatory reform. Suga, who previously was internal affairs and communications minister, also has a deep attachment to the public administration of telecommunications and local autonomy. Newly appointed Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Ryota Takeda has had little to do with policy fields related to this ministry. When Suga telephoned Takeda on Tuesday evening to tap him for the position, Takeda's response was reportedly to blurt out, "What?" Some in the LDP have expressed concern about Suga's approach. "The prime minister might intend to take the initiative also on internal affairs ministry matters himself, but if he takes on too many jobs, it could cause confusion in the running of the administration," a former cabinet member said. JEFFERSON CITY A Scott County woman pleaded not guilty Thursday to misdemeanor charges that she illegally shot and abandoned an elk in southern Missouri last year. Deborah Flanigan, 50, was charged Sept. 10 following an investigation by the Missouri Department of Conservation that included ballistic tests on bullets found in the animal and evidence at the scene in Carter County. According to the department, agents were notified in November 2019 of a cow elk carcass in a rural field. No meat or other parts were taken in the incident. The case is among six involving the illegal killing of protected elk that the state has been investigating in recent years. Each of the five remaining investigations is ongoing. After being hunted to extinction in the state in the late 19th century, officials reintroduced about 100 elk to the region beginning in 2011. The number of elk has grown to more than 200 and their range has expanded to cover Carter, Reynolds and Shannon counties. We are grateful to have made an arrest in this poaching incident, said MDC Protection Chief Randy Doman. Thanks to the diligence of our conservation agents, along with the assistance of our state and federal law enforcement partners, we were able to identify a suspect and close the case. We look forward to working with the Carter County Prosecuting Attorney to see this case through to completion. In October, the Department of Conservation is holding its first-ever elk hunt with five permits granted through a lottery. The restoration of elk in Missouri is appreciated by many people, businesses, and organizations in the area, Doman said. A healthy, growing elk population brings significant economic, recreational, and cultural benefits to these communities. The senseless waste of peoples resources should not be tolerated. Court records say Flanigan is scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Oct. 27. Shake off your afternoon slump with the oft-shared and offbeat news of the day, hand-brewed by our online news editors. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Anchin's Food and Beverage Group and Siddhi Ops are excited to present the "State of the Food and Beverage Industry Event" virtually On October 1st, 2020. The event will highlight unique perspectives of key industry players through a panel discussion focusing on the future of the industry. It will also present opportunities for virtual networking with industry colleagues, and give brands visibility through a digital showcase and discount incentive program that will be made available to attendees. "Due to the pandemic, many companies have had to adapt to a lack of networking, branding exposure, and other benefits that are associated with the many large trade shows that are a key part of our industry development," said Greg Wank, Anchin's Food and Beverage Leader. "The goal of this event is to create an opportunity for education, collaboration and visibility for our clients and friends in the industry." The accomplished panelists featured at the event will be Ben McKean, Founder and CEO of Hungryroot; Daina Trout, CEO & Co-Founder of Health-Ade Kombucha; Mark Rampolla, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of PowerPlant Ventures; and Sadrah Schadel, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at No Evil Foods. The program will be moderated by Melissa Facchina, General Partner of Siddhi Capital and Founder & CEO of Siddhi Ops, a premier outsourced operations firm to the 'emerging brands' community, and will feature welcome remarks from Greg Wank, Partner and Leader of Anchin's Food and Beverage Industry Practice. Anchin, a Top 100 accounting and advisory firm based in New York City, has produced its in-person "State of the Food and Beverage Industry Event" for more than a decade. It is traditionally a program that benefits City Harvest's "Skip Lunch, Fight Hunger" campaign. The firm would also like to encourage participants who are able to help to visit City Harvest's website, and to thank Anchin's generous employees and friends of the firm for helping to exceed Anchin's historic record for the amount of money raised with a $12,000 donation to City Harvest in 2020. Contact [email protected] for inquiries. View the full event details at: https://www.anchin.com/events/anchins-virtual-state-of-the-food-and-beverage-industry-event About Anchin: Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP is consistently recognized as one of the top accounting firms in the country, a Best Place to Work in New York City and New York State, and a Best Accounting Firm to Work For nationwide. The full-service firm, with a staff of approximately 400, including 56 partners, provides a wide range of assurance, tax and advisory services, including accounting and auditing; tax planning and compliance; tax credits and incentives; management and succession advisory; growth, transition and exit strategies consulting; transaction advisory; client accounting advisory services; cybersecurity and digital risk solutions; and litigation support, forensic accounting and valuation services. Additional information is available at www.anchin.com. For further information: Lisa Tomlinson 212.863.1433 [email protected] SOURCE Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP Related Links http://www.anchin.com By PTI BENGALURU: Newly elected Rajya Sabha member Ashok Gasti, who was admitted to a private hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, died on Thursday night, the hospital said. Fifty-five-year-old Gasti, who was admitted to Manipal Hospital on Old Airport Road on September 2 and diagnosed with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, passed away at 10.31 pm, hospital director Manish Rai said in a statement. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah condoled the demise of Gasti. "Rajya Sabha MP Shri Ashok Gasti was a dedicated Karyakarta who worked hard to strengthen the Party in Karnataka. He was passionate about empowering the poor and marginalised sections of society. Anguished by his passing away. Condolences to his family and friends. Om Shanti," Modi tweeted. According to Rai, Gasti was critically ill with multi-organ failure and was on life support system under constant observation of an expert panel of doctors. "We deeply regret the loss and express our condolences to his family and friends," Rai said. Gasti is survived by his wife and two daughters, BJP sources said. A grassroots level worker hailing from Raichur, Gasti was elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha in June this year on a BJP ticket. He was elected to Rajya Sabha on June 12, along with former Prime Minister and JD(S) candidate H D Deve Gowda, Congress candidate Mallikarjun Kharge and another BJP candidate Eranna Kadadi. Coming from the backward community of Savita Samaj (barber community), Gasti had been an RSS worker and was an active member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Speaking to PTI after getting elected to Rajya Sabha, Gasti had said very few people from Savita Samaj rose to such political heights in Karnataka. "It is heartening to see the works of ordinary party functionaries like me are getting recognised. This is the sign of New India envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Gasti had told PTI. Condoling the demise of Gasti, Vice President Naidu said, "Deeply saddened to learn about the demise of Shri Ashok Gasti, Rajya Sabha Member. He was known for his simplicity and commitment for the upliftment of the downtrodden. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members. Om Shanti!" Union Home Minister Shah tweeted," Shocked and pained by the untimely demise of Rajya Sabha MP and senior BJP leader from Karnataka, Shri Ashok Gasti ji." Expressing his condolences, Shah said over the years, Gasti had served the organisation and nation in multiple roles. State Congress president D K Shivakumar tweeted, "Deeply saddened to hear the news of the passing away of Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka Shri. Ashok Gasti. My condolences to his family and friends." K arnataka Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai too condoled the demise of Gasti. Bommai tweeted, "Deeply saddened by the demise of Ashok Gasti due to coronavirus, who rose from an ordinary BJP worker to recently get elected to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. May God give strength to the family to bear the loss and peace to his soul." Over 200 of the 3,000 detainees at Roumieh prison have tested positive in recent days, Sharaf Abu Sharaf, president of Lebanese Order of Physicians, told The Associated Press Lebanon's largest prison on Thursday was grappling with an alarming coronavirus outbreak, as many inmates refused to take preventative measures or get tested under the impression that catching the virus could speed up their release as part of a rumored general amnesty, the head of the country's doctors union warned. Over 200 of the 3,000 detainees at Roumieh prison have tested positive in recent days, Sharaf Abu Sharaf, president of Lebanese Order of Physicians, told The Associated Press. The outbreak in the prison east of Beirut, which is notorious for overcrowding, comes as Lebanon is witnessing a sharp increase in coronavirus cases and deaths. Some detainees' families have urged the state to issue amnesty to certain detainees to reduce the possibility of the virus sweeping through the country's prison population. ``Overcrowding is the prison's main problem,'' Abu Sharaf said, adding that the 223 detainees who tested positive were being quarantined in a separate building inside the prison compound. He said the vast majority of detainees had minor or no symptoms, and small number had been taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Some observers say the spread of the virus in Lebanon is being used to pressure the government to implement a general amnesty for prisoners. Hundreds have been jailed for years without trial, while others who've served their prison terms but don't have enough money to pay fines are still being held. Prisoners locked up for serious cases like killing members of Lebanon's security forces or drug dealing are not likely to be included in any amnesty. A video apparently leaked from inside Roumieh prison and posted on social media showed dozens of detainees packed in a hall, none of them wearing masks, with one saying: ``We are dying inside the prison. There is no food or medicine. There is no protection here.'' Another video showed four men sleeping on mattresses, some of them coughing, with the video's narrator claiming that they were infected with COVID-19. The videos could not be independently verified, but claimed to be from inside Roumieh. Abu Sharaf said that since the virus spread to Lebanon earlier this year, prisoners have been supplied with masks and sanitizers to protect themselves. Outgoing Health Minister Hamad Hassan told reporters that the ministry and prison officials are coordinating to guarantee the safety and medical care of all prisoners. In April, prisoners rioted in a jail in northern Lebanon demanding that they be released amid fears of the virus. Outgoing Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm said 2,717 detainees have been released from March 1 through Sept. 1 from prisons and detention centers around Lebanon as a result of expediting their cases. She added that detainees who are serving prison sentences can fill out applications asking for a special amnesty. ``For the first time in Lebanon's history, we are doing electronic questioning,'' Najm told the local LBC TV, adding that this has led to the release of detainees who were held without trial. Lebanon, a nation of 5 million, has recorded a sharp increase in registered cases in recent weeks, with 634 new cases on Wednesday alone. The latest figures pushed the total number of cases to 26,083 since the first reported infection in late February, while deaths have reached 259. The rise began after a lockdown was eased and the country's only international airport was reopened in early July. Cases shot up dramatically days after the Aug. 4 explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of Beirut. The blast killed 192 people, wounded some 6,500 and left a quarter of a million with homes unfit to live in. The blast overwhelmed the city's hospitals and also badly damaged two hospitals that had a key role in handling virus cases. Dr. Firas Abiad, a doctor leading the fight against coronavirus, said 8% of all tests are coming back positive. Search Keywords: Short link: Police have been investigating suspected extensive corruption for five years, now they have brought charges against judges and others. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled What happened? The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) intervened in Zilina (north of Slovakia) on September 14 against judges and people who were bribing them in order to buy a desired verdict. The media reported that NAKA detained five people including the chair of the Regional Court in Zilina, Eva Kyselova, judge of the Zilina District Court; the currently out of service Daniel Beres; and retired Judge Pavol Polka; Beress childhood friend Juraj Filipovic; and attorney Lubos Mahdon. NAKA raided three houses and charged 11 people. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Kyselova was released without charges on September 15, based on the decision of the plenum of the Constitutional Court. The Tennessee Department of Education released district and school graduation rates this week for 2019-2020, showing Hamilton County Schools moving closer to the district graduation goal in the Future Ready 2023 action plan. "Hamilton County Schools Overall Graduation Rate improved even while dealing with a historically challenging worldwide pandemic," officials said. "The increase was especially of note as the state graduation rate declined slightly after nearly a decade of improvements." Also, Hamilton County Schools was the only large district in the state to show an increase. The district graduation rate for 2019-2020 is 87 percent, which is up from 86.9 last year and the highest for the district since 2012-2013. In the district action plan, the target for 2023 is a 90 percent graduation rate. HCS saw increases across several subgroups of students, while the state as a whole saw overall declines with students in historically underperforming subgroups. Students in the following subgroups saw increases in overall graduation rates - Black or African American Increase of 1.4 percent - performing above the state average for Black or African American students with the state at 83.0 percent, and HCS at 85.5 percent; - Black/Hispanic/Native American Increase of 2.1 percent - performing above the state average for this subgroup with the state at 82.9 percent, and HCS at 84.2 percent; - English Learners - Performed above the state average for this subgroup with HCS at 73.3 percent and the state at 68.6 percent; and - Hispanic an increase of 4.4 percent where the state saw a decrease of 1.7 percent. "Everything we do from the point a child enters Hamilton County Schools is designed to help each child be successful," said Dr. Bryan Johnson, superintendent, Hamilton County Schools. "A high school diploma is the first step toward economic self-sufficiency, and that is especially true when the diploma represents a high-value set of skills that will prepare a graduate for success after high school." Five high schools in Hamilton County Schools recorded a perfect graduation rate of 100 percent, up from three last year. Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts, Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, Collegiate High, Hamilton County Virtual School and STEM School Chattanooga were the schools with a 100 percent graduation rate for 2019-2020. Ten high schools were ahead of the district target for 2023, with a graduation rate higher than 90 percent. The schools above the target included High Schools 2019-2020 Graduation Rate: Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts - 100%; Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences - 100%; Hamilton County Collegiate High - 100%; Hamilton County Virtual School - 100%; STEM School Chattanooga - 100%; Signal Mountain High - 98%; Lookout Valley High - 94.6%; Tyner Academy - 92.7%; Sale Creek High - 92.4%; and Soddy Daisy High - 90% Officials said, "East Hamilton High just missed the 90 percent mark with a graduation rate of 89.5. Ooltewah High School (87.8) and East Ridge High School (87.6) are also at a healthy pace to keep the district moving toward the graduation rate goal for 2023. "The Promise of graduation from Hamilton County Schools is about fundamentally rethinking the school experience to expose all students to high expectations to develop and pursue their passions for learning and life goals. Whether a graduate's dream is to move into a high-paying, skill-based career just out of high school, a technical credential, a two or four-year college degree, or a professional degree, each will have the opportunity to prepare themselves to succeed. The key to rethinking the school experience is that students have a clearer picture of their life after high school and be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and resources to make their dreams a reality." "Success is much more than numbers as a graduate's success means opening doors to their future," Dr. Johnson said. "Seniors leaving high school prepared for the opportunities available in college or career means a brighter tomorrow for their families, and our community." Officials said, "The addition of college and career advisors at the high school level and Future Ready Institutes assisted teens in reaching graduation. Providing early post-secondary options for high school students is also a key component to improve the high school experience in Hamilton County Schools. The district has increased early college options such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) taken by students, and more students are earning an industry certification. Industry certifications allow graduates to leave high school prepared for success with job skills in their chosen career field. "The focus on 'Future Ready Students' increases the number of graduates earning early post-secondary credits and keeps the district's graduation rate on the rise." (CNN) Blond-haired, Scandinavian warriors who pillaged their way through Europe. We thought we knew everything about the Vikings. But some new research suggests we've been getting it wrong. In the biggest study of its kind, published in the journal Nature Wednesday, researchers found that many Vikings actually had brown hair. And they weren't just from Scandinavia. In a six-year study, archaeologists and academics used DNA technology to analyze more than 400 Viking skeletons from sites in Scandinavia, Greenland and the UK. They discovered that Vikings didn't just hail from Scandinavia -- they also had genes from both Asia and Southern Europe in their bloodline. The study, by academics at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, found that Viking burial sites in Scotland contained local people who may have taken on "Viking identities." Researchers say their findings shatter a lot of the preconceptions surrounding Vikings. "The results change the perception of who a Viking actually was. The history books will need to be updated," said Eske Willerslev, a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. "We didn't know genetically what they actually looked like until now," Willerslev added. He said the new research "debunks" the traditional image of blond Vikings, as "many had brown hair and were influenced by genetic influx from the outside of Scandinavia." The study also revealed genetic differences between the various Viking populations within Scandinavia, which suggests different groups were more isolated than previously thought. And the research also indicated that Viking identity wasn't something exclusive to Vikings themselves. Two skeletons found on Orkney, off the northeast coast of Scotland, which had DNA similar to modern-day Irish and Scottish people, were buried in Viking-style graves. This suggests they may have taken on Viking identities, researchers say. The word "Viking" comes from the Scandinavian term "vikingr," meaning "pirate," and the Viking Age refers to the period of the Middle Ages between 800 and the 1050s, the researchers explained. Vikings are known to have traveled across Europe and beyond by sea. Many of these expeditions involved raiding monasteries, but Vikings also traded goods such as fur, tusks and seal fat. Researchers found that these all-male raiding parties were made up of friends, family members and neighbors. The data collected will also be useful in the study of natural selection in the past, according to lead author Fernando Racimo, assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen. He said the data "allow us to disentangle how selection unfolded before, during and after the Viking movements across Europe," with the potential to "begin to infer the physical appearance of ancient Vikings and compare them to Scandinavians today." The genetic legacy of the Vikings is still present today, the researchers said, with an estimated 6% of people in the UK and 10% of people in Sweden carrying Viking DNA in their genes. This story was first published on CNN.com Vikings weren't necessarily blond. Or Scandinavian. Why everything you thought you knew about the Norsemen may be wrong Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill October 23, 2019 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg testified about Facebook's proposed cryptocurrency Libra, how his company will handle false and misleading information by political leaders during the 2020 campaign and how it handles its users data and privacy. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday outlined to employees a new set of principles to guide debates and conversations within Workplace, the company's internal social network. Zuckerberg outlined the changes to address "a lot of very tense conversations happening out in the world," according to company spokesman Joe Osborne. The new principles follow a set of similar changes at Google, which is increasing the moderation of its internal message boards, CNBC reported earlier this week. "We deeply value expression and open discussion. What we've heard from our employees is that they want the option to join debates on social and political issues rather than see them unexpectedly in their work feed," Osborne said in a statement. "We're updating our employee policies and work tools to ensure our culture remains respectful and inclusive." The changes follow a set of recent leaks from Workplace and the company's weekly Q&As showing that employees have increased their criticism of the company's policies. Under the new set of principles, Zuckerberg said, Facebook will ensure all employees feel supported at work, especially the company's Black community, by strengthening the company's harassment policy with more protections for underrepresented employees. The company will also be more specific about which parts of Workplace can be used to discuss social and political issues. This change will be so that employees do not have to confront social issues during their day-to-day work. Facebook's new principles also ask that employees communicate with professionalism and continue to debate about the company's work but do so in a respectful manner. BuzzFeed last month reported employees criticized Zuckerberg's explanation of why the company failed to remove a militia group in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that used Facebook to plan an event where two protesters were shot and killed. This week, BuzzFeed reported a post by a fired Facebook data scientist who posted to Workplace a memo outlining how the company failed to act on election interference happening around the world through the social network. The new principles will guide changes to the company's internal communication policy and the tools used to moderate those conversations. Those specific changes will be announced by the company next week, Osborne said. Meridian Honda customers can learn more about two strong crossover SUVs produced by the automaker and what they have to offer in compared to the competition. The entire Meridian Honda staff is eagerly waiting for the automakers next model year of vehicles to arrive at the showroom. However, there is still some business to attend to with the class of 2020 models. Before everyone moves on, the dealerships staff wanted to help educate current and future Meridian Honda customers about how the 2020 Honda CR-V Hybrid and 2020 Honda HR-V still stand up to corresponding vehicles from competing manufacturers. Both Honda crossover SUVs demonstrate pretty clear advantages over these specific rivals including in the areas of performance specs and available cargo volume. People looking to buy or lease a new Honda crossover SUV would do well to learn more about both models and their competitors before making a final decision. When Honda introduced the hybrid version of the CR-V crossover SUV, it opened up a new market of potential owners. The 2020 CR-V Hybrid is available in four trim grades, Hybrid LX, Hybrid EX, Hybrid EX-L and Hybrid Touring. All of them use the same naturally aspirated 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine that will make 212 horsepower and offers all-wheel-drive as standard equipment. A common rival for the CR-V Hybrid will produce just 139 horsepower and is not available with all-wheel-drive. Additionally, the 2020 Honda CR-V Hybrid is able to offer up to 68.7 cubic-feet of cargo volume, compared to only 54.5 cubic-feet found with the previously mentioned competitor. Currently, the 2020 Honda HR-V is the smallest crossover the automaker has available. However, it still ranks among the most capable models in its emerging segment of the automotive industry. It is available in five trim grades, LX, Sport, EX, EX-L and Touring. Owners of the 2020 HR-V will have a 1.8-liter, four-cylinder engine that will make 141 horsepower and 127 pound-feet of torque. A vehicle that shares the segment with the 2020 Honda HR-V, that is likely to come up during the research process, will make a maximum of 121 horsepower and offers nearly half the amount of maximum cargo volume. The 2020 HR-V can make up to 58.8 cubic-feet of cargo volume available compared to 31.9 cubic-feet in the rival. Anyone can view the entire Meridian Honda inventory today by visiting the dealerships website, http://www.meridianhonda.com. The showroom is located at 503 Front Street Ext. Meridian, MS 39301. Customers can schedule a test drive with the 2020 Honda CR-V Hybrid or the 2020 Honda HR-V today by calling, 601-693-4651. Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf had been scheduled to appear at the House hearing on worldwide threats but did not testify because of his nomination to be secretary, according to the agency. The agency said in a statement ahead of the hearing that it would be contrary to standard practice to have him testify while his nomination was pending before the Senate. A 46-year-old college professor in Argentina, who had been experiencing coronavirus symptoms, reportedly died while conducting an online lecture. Paola de Simone, who was a professor of government and international relations at the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa in Buenos Aires, died on September 2, according to the universitys Twitter statement. Simone was teaching on Zoom when her students sensed that she was struggling to breathe. According to Argentinas local media outlet, the students even asked the professor for the address so they could call an ambulance, however, she said I cant before passing out. READ: Argentina's Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 10,000 As per reports, the 46-year-old had been experiencing COVID-19 symptoms for at least four weeks. Last month, she reportedly even took to Twitter to inform that she had been battling with the deadly disease for over a month and that her symptoms had not reduced over the period of time. Simone had a cough that would not go away, but she continued to teach despite her symptoms. Simone hailed as an inspirational teacher The moment the college professor collapsed and later died was captured on camera and quickly took the internet by storm. The University, in the Twitter statement, asked students and those who knew her to treat her with respect and respect the privacy of her husband and daughter. The University even hailed the professor, who reportedly had been teaching for 15 years, as a great person and an inspirational teacher. READ: Six Argentina Rugby Players Test Positive For COVID-19 Following the tragic incident, Simones friends and students even shared memories of her on social media. They wrote that her students and colleagues would always remember the professor for her encouragement and compassion. READ: Argentina's ICU Workers Warn Of Fatigued Personnel READ: Argentina Says It Reaches Deal To Avoid Debt Default The opposition National Democratic Congress campaign Spokesperson on Finance, Isaac Adongo, has asked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to` as it is draining the nations coffers. The Member of Parliament of Bolgatanga Central, who spoke to mynewsgh.com after the partys Town Hall meeting in Kumasi, explained that aside the governments bloated Ministers and excessive borrowing, the move by the President to carry his chair around in one dedicated field van is also draining the nations coffers. He stated that: President Akufo-Addo when he was campaigning for our votes in 2016 sat on our benches to eat kenkey with us. He sat in our shops to talk to us without bringing his own chair but today, even when he goes to a private wedding or funeral, he carries his chair around. Have you asked yourself who bears that cost? Aside he having nothing to show for with his excessive borrowing, he has taken it upon himself to leave huge financial debt before he leaves office. This is what we are against. He must put a stop to piling up our national debt. It is needless for him to be carrying his chair around in a dedicated van. If you could come to our shops and eat kenkey with us on our benches, what is the rationale behind you fueling a van and moving your chair around? Source: adomonline.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 Defense Secretary Mark Espe during a ceremony in Washington on Sept. 11, 2020. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) China, Russia Have Weaponized Space: Defense Secretary China and Russia have introduced weapons to space, including killer satellites, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Wednesday. In space, Moscow and Beijing have turned a once peaceful arena into a warfighting domain, Esper said. They have weaponized space through killer satellites, directed energy weapons, and more in an effort to exploit our systems and chip away at our military advantage. Directed energy weapons use converted chemical or electrical energy and focus it on a target, resulting in physical damage. Weapons used by the U.S. military include systems that use high energy lasers. Directed energy weapons can be very effective against swarm attacks, a Pentagon official said in 2018. We often think about directed energy as large lasers, and Ive certainly been involved with some of that for decades, but we also have high power microwaves which can be very effective as what we call an electronics kill, Dr. Michael D. Griffin, under secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said at the time. That sort of thingits really hard to envision handling swarming attacks by purely kinetic meansso thats one of the future threats that I think we face. Killer satellites are satellites with the capability to kill and destroy. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson inspects new technologies being developed and tested at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility and USS Desert Ship, a land-based launch facility designed to simulate a ship at sea, at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on Jan. 25, 2017. (Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer Elliott Fabrizio) Esper said Americas competitors and adversaries exploit cyberspace to undermine our security without confronting our conventional strengths. They do this all in an increasingly gray zone of engagement that keeps us in a perpetual state of competition. The national defense strategy guides us as we adapt the force to this challenging complex security environment by status quo and continue outpacing the competition, he added. But strong investment is enabling the military to move forward with developing hypersonic weapons and other modern tools. Thanks to our largest research and development budget in the departments history, we are advancing critical technologies to maintain our military edge in areas such as hypersonic weapons, directed energy and autonomous systems, Esper said. Esper was speaking during the Air Force Associations Virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Following an increase of $3.6 billion, the Department of Defenses budget for research and development was $95.3 billion in fiscal year 2019, according to its financial report (pdf). President Donald Trumps administration officially launched Space Force late last year, establishing it as a sixth branch of the military. Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital, Trump said when signing legislation that included funding for the branch. The Defense Space Strategy, released earlier this year, outlines what the United States needs to do to achieve a comprehensive military advantage in space within 10 years. (R) Gen. Jay Raymond, chief of Space Operations, and (L) Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman, with Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, present President Donald Trump with the official flag of the United States Space Force in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on May 15, 2020. (Samuel Corum-Pool/Getty Images) Three key objectives are identified for the Space Force: to maintain Americas space superiority; to provide space support to all joint military operations; and to ensure space stabilityor to deter aggression and uphold international agreements in space with a persistent presence, similar to how the Navy polices international waters. Esper said hes proud of the progress made in implementing the strategy, which will ensure our dominance across all domains. Esper spoke a day after Gen. John Raymond, who heads Space Force. Raymond revealed that the forces Space Based Infrared System satellites were used to detect Iranian missiles aimed at American war planes in January. Raymond praised the 2nd Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado. They operated the worlds best missile warning capabilities and they did outstanding work, and Im very very proud of them, he said at the conference. Trump had said an early warning system that worked very well helped avoid U.S. casualties, but didnt disclose the nature of the system. Simon Veazey contributed to this report. The Maharashtra cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval to fill up 12,528 posts of police constables in the state. The Chief Minister Office (CMO) said this in a statement. In view of the Supreme Courts recent interim order staying implementation of 2018 law that granted reservation to the Maratha community in education and jobs, the state cabinet directed the home department to take steps regarding the recruitment process in consultation with the law and judiciary department, it said. In 2019, a total of 5,297 posts for police constable were created, while in 2020, 6726 posts were created. Similarly, for the newly-created Mira Bhayandar and Vasai- Virar police commissionerates, 505 of the 975 posts are to be filled in the first phase, the statement said. All the 12,528 posts will be filled, it said. The cabinet also gave its go-ahead to the extension of the Balasaheb Thackeray Road Accident Insurance Scheme in the state. For this, funds would be provided to the State Health Guarantee Society. Insurance companies will be selected through due procedure. Beneficiaries would be victims of road accidents irrespective of the region, the statement said. An accident victim will be provided medical aid and financial assistance during the golden hour. Golden hour refers to the first hour after a traumatic injury when emergency treatment is very crucial. On the state highways and rural areas, 13,000 people are killed every year in road accidents, while 40,000 people are injured, the statement said. If these people got medical aid quickly, their lives could have been saved, it added. Under this insurance scheme, the victim will be treated at a nearest hospital for the first 72 hours. Medical expenses of Rs 30,000 will be free of cost for 74 kinds of medical treatment. Accidents taking place in industrial units, day-to-day work or at residence are not liable for benefit under this scheme, the statement clarified. The UN Security Council is urging the parties to Libyas conflict to abide by a United Nations arms embargo and pull their proxy fighters from the war-torn country. In a resolution adopted Tuesday, the 15-member body extended the UNs mission in Libya by another 12 months. China and Russia abstained. The mission, known as the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, monitors human rights violations in Libya and aims to secure a cease-fire between the warring factions. Libya descended into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 and for the past six years has been embroiled in a civil war pitting two rival administrations against each other. The Turkey-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) is based in the capital, Tripoli, and Khalifa Hifters self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) controls much of the eastern part of the country with the support of Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The foreign backers for both sides have flooded the country with mercenaries and arms in violation of a UN embargo in place since 2011. The UN's acting Libya envoy, Stephanie Williams, told the Security Council on Sept. 2 that countries are stockpiling arms in a clear breach of Libyas sovereignty. The arms buildup comes ahead of a looming battle for the oil-rich city of Sirte, which Hifters LNA has occupied since January. Last week, the Pentagon said two Russian jets had crashed since deploying to Libya in May to bolster Hifters forces. The US Africa Command believes more than a dozen Russian fighter aircraft are being flown by pilots from Kremlin-linked private security contractor Wagner Group. Also on Tuesday, the Security Council asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint a new special envoy to Libya. Ghassan Salame, a former culture minister in Lebanon, cited stress when he quit the post in March after nearly three years as special envoy. The new UN resolution calls on countries to commit without delay to a lasting cease-fire and political dialogue under the leadership of the new envoy. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has tested negative for COVID-19 after her office denied she was being tested in the first place. Questions about the Premier's health were raised after she complained of a croaky voice during an online debate on Monday night. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk sanitises her hands at Parliament House. Credit:Jono Searle/Getty Images Ms Palaszczuk then travelled to Mackay to attend a funeral on Tuesday before visiting Bundaberg on Wednesday. Her voice was hoarse on Wednesday and she did not front the media on Thursday morning. A crash involving an ambulance and an FDNY fire truck killed a Brooklyn convenience store owner being rushed to a hospital for an apparent heart attack and critically injured his sister who was accompanying him. The deadly accident took place at around 12.45am on Thursday, when the fire truck, Ladder 102, smashed into the side of the ambulance at the intersection of Myrtle and Throop avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The patient inside, identified as 59-year-old Jamil 'Mike' Almansouri, was pronounced dead. Watch the moment of the accident happened involving a @FDNY EMS and FDNY Ladder 102 Fire Truck. pic.twitter.com/w4OYoX5Qqh WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) September 17, 2020 Surveillance video shows an ambulance carrying a heart attack patient to Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn early Thursday morning As the ambulance reaches the intersection of Myrtle and Throop avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, it is T-boned by a fire truck The ladder truck pushes the ambulance into another vehicle that was stopped at a traffic light Ladder 102 was en route to a massive fire when it smashed into the ambulance Almansouri's sister, 35-year-old Ganna Ahmad, a married mom-of-four, the youngest aged one, was riding along with her brother to Woodhull Medical Center when the accident happened, reported CBS New York. According to family members, she suffered a broken back, multiple fractures and is now in a coma at Kings County Hospital Center. Her husband arrived at the scene of the collision after failing to reach her by phone or text, and using a GPS to track her phone. Deli owner and father-of-seven Jamil 'Mike' Almansouri, 59, was pronounced dead following the crash Eight first responders were also hurt in the crash, including two EMTs who were riding in the ambulance and six firefighters from the ladder truck. All were listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital. One of the paramedics was being treated for a leg injury and was expected to recover. The ambulance careened into another car, a 2004 Honda CRV, that was stopped at a traffic light, leaving its two occupants with minor injuries. They were taken to Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. As surveillance video obtained by Williamsburg News shows, both the ambulance and the fire truck had their lights on at the time of the crash. The FDNY vehicle was responding to a massive fire on Willoughby Avenue, Almansouri was an immigrant from Yemen who owned a deli located a mile from the scene of the crash. He is survived by his wife, who still lives in Yemen, and their seven children, of whom three reside in Brooklyn, reported New York Post. He was also a grandfather. 'He was the greatest,' the victim's brother, Abdullah Ahmad, told ABC 7 New York. 'Everybody loved him. He was a good-hearted person. He didn't bother nobody.' Almansouri's sister, who was riding in the back of the ambulance with him, suffered a broken back and is now in a coma Six firefighters sustained minor injuries and are expected to recover Almansouri's 13-year-old nephew, Muhanand Hassan, recounted how it all started after midnight when his uncle, who suffered from a heart condition, began complaining of chest pains and his sister, Hassan's mother, offered to go with him to the hospital. It was not until Ganna Ahmad stopped answering her phone that her family found about the crash. Her husband jumped in a cab and showed up at the intersection where the collision happened. His son said first responders had to push him away as he kept saying, 'My wife, my wife.' The family later went to Woodhull Medical Center and got to see Almansouri one last time. Hassan said his uncle, who had lived in Brooklyn for 20 years, was beloved by everyone in the community, including his customers whom he would invite into his apartment above the bodega for traditional meals. The accident is under investigation. New York Times reported that officials are looking to determine whether construction scaffolding at the intersection blocked the views of the drivers of the two vehicles. STAMFORD A former car porter looking for a job recommendation at the Stamford car dealership where he used to work was charged with stealing a new car off the lot in July. Nathan McBride, 55, of Merritt Place in Norwalk, has been charged with first-degree larceny and possession of narcotics and was released after posting a $25,000 court appearance bond. During a phone call last week with federal prosecutors, Attorney General William Barr said they should consider charging anyone who committed a violent crime during recent protests with sedition, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times on Wednesday. This was a very unusual suggestion, as the federal sedition law is rarely invoked, and his proposal startled some people on the call, the Times reports. Federal prosecutors have so far charged more than 200 people with violent crimes related to the protests, with most accused of arson or assaulting federal officers. Research by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project shows that more than 93 percent of the anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests over the summer were peaceful, the Times reports. FBI officials have said most people who committed violent acts during the demonstrations took advantage of the situation, using the protests as an opportunity to get aggressive, and police departments reported far-right and far-left fringe groups were involved. Barr, meanwhile, has insisted most of the violence was caused by left-wing agitators. Two people briefed on the matter told the Times Barr has also asked members of the Justice Department's civil rights division to look into whether any criminal charges can be filed against Jenny Durkan, the Democratic mayor of Seattle, for allowing citizens to set up a police-free protest zone near downtown. Durkan and President Trump repeatedly clashed on the best way to handle the situation. More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment 'I loved vulnerable people, because I was that person. I always felt if I got into the Garda Siochana, I wanted to be that person who could touch them, and bring them to their truth. I suppose I wanted someone to do that for me as well. For me, the Garda Siochana was an organisation that had the ability to reach out to the vulnerable." Majella Moynihan, whose memoir A Guarded Life, written with Aoife Kelleher, was published last week, had always wanted to be in the guards. She wanted, she writes, to protect the forgotten little children. Now, sitting in the peaceful kitchen of the house she is renting, deep in the midlands countryside, she reflects that she was one of those forgotten little children. She was trying to save herself. The youngest of five daughters, Majella was only 18 months old when her mother died. Their father, unable to cope, placed all five children into St Joseph's Industrial School for Girls in Mallow in 1963. He went on to remarry, but his daughters were not taken back into his home until they finished their Leaving Certs. "I knew my father loved me," Majella reflects. "But what I craved was for him to sit down, put his arm around me, and tell me that. Because as a child in an institution, you don't have that individual attention. You're one of a number and you have to fight for your place, and to be heard and to be seen." Expand Close Majella working as a garda in Store Street station / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Majella working as a garda in Store Street station As a teenager, Majella was repeatedly viciously beaten by one of the sisters running the institution. In one scene in her memoir, after receiving yet another beating, she runs down the corridor after the sister and attacks her. It is a display of the spirit in the young Majella, a girl who sneaks out at night to meet her boyfriend at the local chipper, who collects friends easily. Read More "That's when I got my voice," she says of the incident in which she finally pushed back. "I said either I fall or I stand. At that stage I said, I'm not taking this any more. Majella of those years was lonely, yet I had a wonderful spirit. There was a rebel in me, but I loved life." When she left the industrial school, she moved into her father's house in Dublin and began working in various jobs. For a time, she had a boyfriend, Fintan, who also became a trainee guard. The pair broke up, but when Majella entered Templemore garda training college, they reunited. "I should never have gone back. But it was a sense of loneliness." Within months, what she describes as the brutality of the organisation she had entered began to fracture the dream she had held since she was a child. "It was a male-dominated job. To me as a woman in the organisation, I felt we were second-class citizens. Even the fact of wearing the skirts and the Cuban heels we had to fight for trousers." At the time, the highest-ranking female was an inspector. "You had to be one of the lads. You fought against your own sexuality. You had to be really tough on the exterior - where I wasn't tough." Video of the Day The fact that she was in a relationship with Fintan was viewed askance by her superiors, who called her in for questioning over the matter. "Had they anything better to be doing than questioning me about going with somebody down in Templemore?" she says indignantly. It is only one incidence of a recurring theme in Majella's story, one universal to many women of that time: the sense of ownership that official Ireland seemed to extend over women's lives, and bodies. "It was prying into your personal life, that they had no right to. For the whole of my career, they pried into my personal life. Like they owned me." In August 1983, Majella became pregnant. Having at first dismissed several attempts on her part to inform him, Fintan asked her father for her hand in marriage. "I just couldn't believe it," she laughs. "There was nothing discussed. All I wanted was him to support me with my unborn child. I didn't want marriage." A short while later, Fintan changed his mind, and walked away in January 1984. "He said that whatever he does with his life is his business, and whatever I do with my life is mine. How did I feel? Gutted. Not for me, but for my unborn child. That he or she wouldn't have the support of a father," she says. She was living in her father's home, and while her stepmother knew, it was deemed imperative that her father not find out. Majella's employers were told. "It went up through the channels," she says. Her superiors began to look into disciplinary proceedings against the young trainee, something she only became aware of when she returned to work after giving birth. She reached out to Cura, the Catholic Church agency aimed at helping women with what were deemed "crisis" pregnancies (the agency closed in 2018). The support they provided was, Majella says, deceptive: "What I was seeing was somebody very welcoming and very kind. I wasn't able to see beyond that it was my child she wanted, not anything else." The message coming from everyone was to carry the baby to term, as discreetly as possible, and then have the child adopted. "I was in no fit state of mind to make any decision in relation to my child. And I still will say it to this day, that it was forced adoption. I know I signed the paper, but I was not in a mental state to sign the life of my child away." Majella was sent to Galway, to a family who looked after women in her situation. They were warm and loving - she is still in contact with them - but it was an incredibly difficult time. "Often I look back at the girl of 21, and that total isolation and pain. It was an extremely dark and lonely, lonely place to be." No one spoke to Majella about what labour would be like - in hospital she was denied pain medication and callously told to walk up and down - further punishment, she observes. The hospital felt like a factory, she writes, describing a bleak scene in which she sits utterly bereft, unable to hold her baby son, David, who was immediately taken away from her. Before David was formally adopted, she did get to meet him on several occasions. "I was totally numb," she says of the months after he was born. "It literally ripped me apart. Because I didn't know what was going on in my head. Nobody had ever related to me what happens after you give birth. The post-natal depression that you get, about your breasts, I knew nothing." Returning to Store Street, she planned to begin rebuilding her life. "And then they pounced with the charges that I had given birth outside of wedlock, and that I had sexual intercourse with a member of An Garda Siochana. Even now as I say it, who did they think they were?" Majella was eventually cautioned, rather than dismissed, after the most unusual of interventions - Cura appealed to the church, and the Archibishop of Dublin Kevin McNamara intervened, meeting with the Garda Commissioner to argue that if Majella was fired, it would "open the gates to England", by which he meant abortion. Her trials at the hands of her employer were not over. A year after giving birth, Majella was sent to Letterkenny, to an inquiry into Fintan, about his part in the matter. Fintan was supported by a representative of the Garda Representative Association when the two appeared before the three-man tribunal; Majella was not. It was, she says, this incident that really broke her. She was grilled about her relationship with Fintan, and about past relationships. "They literally broke me in that room," she recalls, beginning to cry. "I felt that small; they just degraded me. And not being able to really say what I wanted to. And that was 'leave me alone, ye've put me through enough'. To question me about past men they made me feel such shame, as if I had done something wrong. I did nothing wrong." Giving birth and losing her child were hard enough, she explains. But for the matter then to be carried on, with the threat of disciplinary action hanging over her, compounded by this public lacerating, resulted in years of torment. "I'm ashamed to say I was a member of the gardai. How they could do that to one of their own?" She was told she would never progress within the ranks. "For years I believed I was promiscuous, I was easy, I was a slut. Today, it's extremely empowering to bring that back in and say 'Majella, I'm sorry for what I've done to you'. And I wish that I had been stronger, to tell them to jump in the river, and leave me alone. I lost my child, I lost my job, I lost everything," she says, her voice quivering with tears. Majella began drinking heavily and self-harming. On several occasions, she felt suicidal. "I went out on the beat and gave the impression that I was this wonderful, carefree person, and inside I was dying. All they did during that period was load shame on me. I think only mothers will understand this: giving birth and then your child is taken, there's nothing as deep as that loss. I didn't cry for many, many years. Then one day the switch came on, and I said 'no longer am I doing this'." It was 1989, and she took part in rebirthing therapy, a deep breathing process that brings you back into the traumas of your life, in order to expunge them. "I could see the horrific life that I had gone through, and the loneliness and the isolation. And that I always had to have my own back. I felt like I was a caged animal, and when I opened up that cage, I started to see the light. I thought 'Majella, you're going to come out of this, you'll work through this'." She entered St John of God Hospital, a place she credits with saving her. She has been back on several occasions, including earlier this year for a nine-week stay. "The light that shone inside of John of God's, it's like as if I was reborn." For the first time, she feels in charge of her own life: "If I want to stay at home and read all day, I do that; if I want to walk, I do that. There are no conditions on me anymore to do anything. Whereas all my life, it was regimented. From the industrial school to the Garda Siochana: dictated, dictated, dictated. Now it's extremely empowering that the person who can tell me what to do is me. That is beautiful." Her relationship with David, who she first met again when he was in his late 20s, is not, for now, what she would like it to be. It's publication day when we meet, and Majella has received a beautiful text from him that morning, she says. "I hope that some day, myself and himself can sit down, as a mother and son, and embrace each other for what both of us have come through. I'm with him every step of the way. I'm not expecting anything. If I do have a relationship, it's a bonus. If it's to stay like this, with contact three or four times a year, that's OK too." She has another son, Stephen, 23, from her marriage (to another guard), which ended some years ago. "We have always had a fantastic relationship. I know I was a great mother. I was always there, because I knew the importance of a child being loved. I loved every second of it. I would have loved to have been a mother of 10," she laughs. "It is a beautiful reward for the sadness I endured on my first child. At times, it saddens me, but it's not overtaking me. I'll never fill that hole in my heart because he has a part of my heart with him. And the stretch marks!" Finally, she says, she is free of the shame that was forced upon her. "For me the message is: through all of our darkness comes light. The light does shine. At times there's only a snippet. But embrace that light, because that light gets bigger." A Guarded Life: My Story of the Dark Side of An Garda Siochana, by Majella Moynihan with Aoife Kelleher, Hachette Ireland, 14.99 The stories of their lives: Five remarkable memoirs by Irish women Overcoming: A Memoir, by Vicky Phelan Expand Close Campaigner Vicky Phelan. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Campaigner Vicky Phelan. Overcoming outlines the activist's journey with cancer, and the CervicalCheck crisis, and tells her fascinating life story, from a first love that ended in tragedy to her experiences with post-natal depression. Constellations, by Sinead Gleeson Expand Close Irish author Sinead Gleeson / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Irish author Sinead Gleeson A life told in a collection of essays about the body, and the pain and the illness Gleeson has experienced since her teenage years. Like all the best memoirs, this captures the universal experience by way of telling the personal. Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood by Anne Enright Expand Close Anne Enright / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Anne Enright If you only read one book on becoming a mother, make it this one. Funny, raw and brutally honest in a way that is hugely comforting; important in those early baby days. I Found My Tribe, by Ruth Fitzmaurice Expand Close Ruth Fitzmaurice / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ruth Fitzmaurice We're all sea swimmers now, but Fitzmaurice's memoir is the original love letter to the sea. A deeply moving account of her husband Simon's struggle with motor neurone disease and the effects it had on their family life. Jump, by Daniella Moyles Expand Close Daniella Moyles. Photo: David Conachy / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Daniella Moyles. Photo: David Conachy The fascinating story of coming to the brink of breakdown and recovering from burnout, is told with complete honesty by the model, broadcaster and yoga teacher. This is both self-help and gripping narrative. Evangelicals for Social Action drops evangelical, calls term too 'political Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Lamenting that the term evangelical is now too largely political and hasn't been helpful in conveying the character of their organization, Evangelicals for Social Action, a Christian scholar-activist group started in 1973, announced Monday that they have changed their name to Christians for Social Action. Today the word evangelical in the popular mind has largely political connotations. For significant numbers of people, it signifies a right-wing political movement irrevocably committed to Donald Trump. Many young people raised in evangelical churches are turning away in disgustabandoning evangelical churches and even sometimes the Christian faith itself. And the larger society thinks of evangelicals not as people committed to Jesus Christ and the biblical gospel but as pro-Trump political activists, Ron Sider, the organizations founder and president emeritus, said in a statement. After careful thought and prayer, we have decided to change our namea little! Our new name is Christians for Social Action (CSA). We believe it will help us win a listening ear with more people. And it certainly will avoid people refusing to even take a minute to see who we are because they see a word that for many people immediately signals political folks, he noted. Sider contends that while the word evangelical is a rich theological term that refers to historic Christian orthodoxy and a commitment to Jesus Gospel, the political activism of popular evangelical figures such as Jerry Falwell Sr., who formed the Moral Majority in the 1970s, and Pat Robertson, who mobilized charismatics and Pentecostals in his 1987-1988 presidential run, distorted that narrative. He explained that while ESA believed biblical faith called Christians to a completely pro-life agenda, Falwell, Robertson others in their camp preferred to focus on a much narrower range of issues, particularly abortion and marriage. They identified more and more with the politically conservative part of the Republican Party. Increasingly, the media equated evangelicals with the Religious Right. And in 2016, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. And they have continued to support this twice divorced sexist, who had boasted of sexual affairs, stoked racism, promoted policies that largely benefit the richest 20%, ignored the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, and lied constantly, undermining democracy by dismissing anything he disliked as fake news, Sider said. A new book titled, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity, edited by Sider and published earlier this summer, raises similar concerns. It calls on white evangelicals to rethink their support for the president and warns that Trump is damaging the witness of evangelical Christianity in American culture. Our plea is to white evangelicals to please take another look and ask, Does this person measure up to biblical norms? Sider told The Christian Post in an earlier interview. We are not telling you what to include. But please prayerfully think about that. Even if you think the book will make you mad, given the title, I challenge you to read it and decide for yourself if there are any valid points that we are making there. In his statement Monday, Sider explained that as the reputation of the term evangelical evolved over time, holding on to the term in their name simply caused more confusion about his organizations commitment to working for justice for everyone. The result is that ESA increasingly found that our name failed to communicate who we really are. And it also led people to click off any message with that name before we had any opportunity to explain that (the word comes from the Greek word, evangel, for gospel.) Because of a shameful history of white evangelical racism, the black church has long refused to use the term evangelical for itself even though its theology and piety are very close to what the word evangelical used to mean, he said. Every year, 5,000 Europeans die from diseases contracted from food. Researchers visited people's homes and discovered both good and bad kitchen habits in different European countries. Most of us know that we have to be careful about hygiene when preparing raw chicken. We should wash the utensils and our hands after handling chicken, and we should wash or use a different chopping board before chopping the vegetables for the salad. There is a lot happening at the same time in the kitchen, and it is not always easy to remember to follow good hygiene advice. 'We have to remember that cooking is a complex social practice that is based more on routinised habits than on food safety advice', says Researcher Silje Skuland at Consumption Research Norway (SIFO), OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University. Together with researchers in Norway, the UK, France, Portugal and Romania, she has mapped the shopping, hygiene and cooking habits of 75 European households. This is part of the big European research project SafeConsume, which is concerned with reducing the risk of foodborne diseases in private kitchens. Everything you want to know The work has resulted in an 800-page-long report on 'everything you want to know about how food safety is addressed in everyday lives', down to the smallest details. Some of the questions the report answers are: How do we wash lettuce? How and how often do we wash our hands? How do we wash our knives, chopping boards and other utensils? How do we transport, store and prepare our food? How do culture, habits and access to goods determine what we buy and how we prepare our food? Comparisons between the five countries give the researchers knowledge about what food habits lead to the spread of bacteria and parasites. Not just up to the consumers WHO has determined that 23 million Europeans become ill and 5,000 die each year as a result of bacteria, parasites, allergens or toxins in food. Food's journey from retail to fork has not been the subject of much research. Skuland emphasises that consumers are not the only ones responsible for this. 'It's not the consumers' fault that the food they buy in the shop contains Campylobacter bacteria or listeria. There is a tendency these days for consumers to be given the responsibility for fixing both environmental problems and public health challenges,' says Skuland. Skuland believes the food should already be safe when it ends up in our shopping bags. However, after the point of purchase consumers can minimise the risk by avoiding contamination and cooking meat well. 40% of cases of foodborne illness are caused by in the domestic setting. Multitasking and cooking The researchers went along when people did their shopping and followed them home to their kitchen where they prepared a meal of chicken and fresh vegetables. The goal was to find out how food was handled on its way from the shop to the table, which has been an under-researched area up until now. According to experts on food safety, it is safer to finish preparing the vegetables before preparing the chicken. Most people do it the other way around, says Skuland. No wonder, perhaps, since the chicken usually takes longer to prepare. 'People often do many things at once since they have so many things they have to take care of. Small children need your attention, and things just boil over.' Backyard chickens and chicken fillet Chickens and eggs can contain the Salmonella bacteria, which is common in some European countries. For example, many Southern Europeans buy eggs that come from backyard chickens from markets that are usually not subject to official control. The biggest difference between the northern countries, i.e. Norway and the UK, and the southern countries, i.e. France, Portugal and Romania, is the types of chicken products we buy and the types of dishes we cook. People in Southern Europe use more parts of the chicken and often roast it whole. In Northern Europe, we use chicken fillets that we cut into pieces and put in a sauce. 'It's difficult to cook a chicken fillet all the way through. It is cut and handled much more than a whole chicken or chicken thigh, and we are more likely to get it on our hands. People in northern countries therefore wash their hands more thoroughly after handling the chicken', she says. There are also big differences in where people in Northern and Southern Europe get their vegetables. In the South, people buy vegetables at the market or grow their own. In the Northern countries, we buy vegetables in grocery shops, most often wrapped in plastic. Mix tea towels and chopping boards It is not easy to turn good intentions into good actions. According to the food safety experts, even the most conscientious among us make mistakes, such as forgetting to use a new chopping board after cutting up chicken. Although some people have separate chopping boards and tea towels for different purposes, interruptions and stress can make it difficult for them to follow their own rules, and they end up mixing the towels and boards." Silje Skuland, Researcher, Consumption Research Norway Furthermore, it cannot be expected that all European households have kitchen facilities that make it easy to handle food safely. 'For example, several households in rural Romania do not have indoor plumbing and cannot afford to keep the fridge on in winter', says Skuland. Food is more than just sustenance One would think that cooking is only a matter of following a recipe step by step, but it is not that simple. 'Cooking should rather be regarded as a social practice that is carried out slightly differently each time', says Skuland. Food and meals are important to most of us and are much more important than just mere sustenance, according to the researcher. 'The food we eat must be good, healthy and home-made. We should preferably share it with someone we love. The importance of safe food is therefore in strong competition with all other food-related needs and considerations.' Services or prayers may bring peace of mind, but they cannot protect people from the virus, Moon said, according to a readout of the meeting provided by his office. I believe all religions should accept the fact that epidemic prevention and control does not belong in the realm of faith but that of science and medicine. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has organised several events as part of the sewa saptah programme to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modis 70th birthday on Thursday. From blood donation camps to distribution of oximetres, food items etc, the party has organised a series of events to celebrate the PMs birthday. BJP president JP Nadda will address a public gathering at Chandni Chowk on Thursday evening as part of the sewa saptah, where he will distribute pulse oximetres, tricycles and wheelchairs to people with disabilities and hearing aids etc. He will also participate in a tree plantation drive on GT Karnal Road. Also Read: Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal wish PM Modi on his 70th birthday The BJPs Delhi unit leaders cut a cake, weighing 70 kilograms (kg), made of ladoos at India Gate at midnight to kickstart the PMs 70th birthday celebrations. BJP leaders said that the PM has taken numerous measures to make India atmanirbhar, or self-reliant. The event at India Gate was attended by Shyam Jaju, the partys Delhi in-charge. At a time when the government is advising the public to maintain social distancing to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) viral outbreak, no such measures were observed at the event, according to the videos put out by the party leaders on social media. Also Read: Nepal PM Oli, Russian President Putin greet PM Modi on his 70th birthday Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta, who is in home quarantine after he tested Covid-19 positive on Wednesday, wished the PM on his 70th birthday via a Twitter message. He tweeted a video highlighting the PMs achievements. On Thursday, BJP lawmaker Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, who is also leader of the opposition in the Delhi assembly, will distribute sport equipment to 70 children living in a slum cluster in Chilla khadar village in east Delhi. Union ministers and senior party leaders will attend events in various parts of the city as part of the celebrations. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will distribute ration kits to poor people in Defence Colony. Union ministers Jitender Singh, Faggan Singh Kulaste, Santosh Gangwar, G Kishan Reddy are among the other ministers, who will participate in the event. The state units youth wing has organised 70 blood donation camps. Delhi BJP general secretary Rajesh Bhatia said, Besides, blood donation camps, we will distribute fruits to poor people in slums and 70 hospitals in the city. Some BJP workers will pay school fees of 70 children. About 31,000 saplings will be planted in various parts of the national capital. He added: We have also planned to hold a 70-slide exhibition on the PM to tell the public about the work done by the BJP under his leadership. We will put up projectors at 10 locations in Delhi to show the exhibition. This will be done on the final day of the Seva Saptah on September 20. A surfer has shared a chilling photo of her board following a close encounter with a shark just days after a longboarder was mauled to death at a nearby beach. Linda Marchant Sinclair has shared images on Facebook of what appeared to be a shark tooth lodged in her foil board. She said the attack happened while she was surfing at Cabarita, in northern NSW, on Wednesday. Her close encounter has sparked a desperate warning to other surfers in the area. 'Don't go surfing at Caba Headland Big shark attacked foil,' Ms Sinclair wrote. Linda Marchant Sinclair has shared images on Facebook of what appeared to be a shark tooth lodged in her foil board She said the attack happened while she was surfing at Cabarita, in northern NSW, on Wednesday The photos come just days after a longboarder was mauled to death at nearby Greenmount Beach (pictured) Cabarita is 21.6km from Coolangatta, where real estate agent Nick Slater, 46, was killed on Tuesday last week. His attack happened where swimmers are protected by shark netting. Mr Slater was among at least 40 surfers in the water when he was attacked and later succumbed to his injuries on the beach. His death is only the second fatal shark attack at one of Queensland's 85 beaches that have been protected by nets and drum lines since 1962, the state government said. Three-time world surfing champion Mick Fanning surfed at nearby Snapper Rocks on the morning Mr Slater was fatally attacked. The 39-year-old, who survived a shark attack in the final of the J Bay Open in South Africa in 2015, called for an update to Queensland's shark management strategies in the wake of Mr Slater's death. Greenmount Beach has shark nets on the outside of the lineup, but Fanning said the incident proves the system needs to be upgraded. 'It's just a little bit outdated. We haven't revisited them for a long time. We see south of the border they have the smart buoys and tagged sharks get pinged and we can see where those sharks are via an app and I don't see why we shouldn't have that on the Gold Coast,' he told Courier Mail. Nick Slater (pictured) was attacked by a shark at Greenmount Beach on the Gold Coast The tooth left embedded in Mr Slater's surfboard has been taken away for analysis to find out what kind of shark attacked him Fanning said Mr Slater's death had shocked the Gold Coast surfing community. 'We didn't think that it would happen so close and just the footage of it, it's horrific. Everyone is shaken up and our hearts go out to the Slater family and all his friends, it's just shocking,' he said. Fanning suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and recurrent nightmares in the years after his shark incident. Through his recovery, he started working with National Geographic on a two-part documentary called Save this Shark, which premiers on Tuesday. In the film, Fanning speaks with world-leading shark scientists and conservationists to share a broader understanding of shark habits. Fanning disagrees with culling sharks, which he believes is a knee-jerk response many take after an attack. He said we need to do more study on shark patterns to learn to live in harmony with the ocean predators. 'We have to learn why it's happening. Why are we seeing so much more activity along here? That's what we need to find out rather than just going and slaughtering the ocean,' Fanning said. Credit: CC0 Public Domain In a new climate modeling study, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have revealed major implications for global drought and aridity when limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Drought has serious negative impacts on both human society and the natural world and is generally projected to increase under global climate change. As a result, assessment of the risk of drought under climate change is a critical area of climate research. In the 2015 Paris Agreements, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposed that the increase in global average temperature should be limited to between 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels to limit the effects of severe climate change. However, there have been few studies focusing on the relative importance of this 0.5C of global average temperature rise and what effect it might have on drought and aridity around the world. "We wanted to contribute to the understanding of how important that 0.5C could be, but it such a study is not easy to conduct based on previous modeling approaches," explains corresponding author Hyungjun Kim. "This is mainly because most models look at the extreme high levels and you cannot simply take a slice out of the data while the model spins up to this maximum. Therefore, we used data from the specially designed Half a degree Additional warming Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project to assess the impacts on aridity based on estimations of the balance between water and energy at the Earth's surface." The study revealed that 2C of warming led to more frequent dry years and more severe aridification in most areas of the world compared with 1.5C, which emphasizes that efforts should be made to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. "There is a really strong message that some parts of the world could have more frequent drought at 2C than at 1.5C. This situation could be especially severe in the Mediterranean, western Europe, northern South America, the Sahel region, and southern Africa," says lead author Akira Takeshima. "However, this situation is highly regional. In some parts of the world, like Australia and some of Asia, the opposite situation was simulated, with a wetter climate at 2C than at 1.5C." These findings show the importance of considering the regional impacts of the additional 0.5C of warming, especially with respect to any future relaxation of the 1.5C target. Explore further Latest climate models show more intense droughts to come More information: Akira Takeshima et al, Global aridity changes due to differences in surface energy and water balance between 1.5 C and 2 C warming, Environmental Research Letters (2020). Journal information: Environmental Research Letters Akira Takeshima et al, Global aridity changes due to differences in surface energy and water balance between 1.5 C and 2 C warming,(2020). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab9db3 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Prague, Czech Republic Thu, September 17, 2020 15:00 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c456956b 2 World Czech-Republic,coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-infection,pandemic,SARS-CoV-2,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus Free The Czech Republic on Thursday reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day for the first time as it battles a surge in infections that is among the fastest in Europe. The health ministry recorded 2,139 cases of the new coronavirus on Wednesday, up from a previous record of 1,675 reported the previous day. The country of 10.7 million has seen a spike in cases this month that has easily surpassed peaks seen during the first wave of the outbreak in March. Due to the rise, the government has tightened mask wearing rules and restricted bars' opening hours. On Wednesday, the Health Ministry said it would ban stand-up indoor events from Friday evening, also affecting bars and restaurants where customers cannot exceed seating capacity. The state is aiming to avoid nationwide shutdowns implemented at the start of the outbreak, which hammered the economy and helped lead to an 11% year-on-year contraction in the second quarter. Since the start of the outbreak, the central European country has reported 41,032 cases. Of those, 22,931 patients have recovered and 482 have died, a lower death toll than in western European states. Hospitalizations, though, are approaching peaks seen in April, when 422 people were in hospital. As of Sept. 15, 388 patients were reported in hospital, up from 172 on Sept. 1. Deaths in that time have also climbed by 13%. According to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data, the number of deaths over the last 14 days in the Czech Republic was among the eight highest in the Europe Union when adjusted for population. YEREVAN, 17 SEPTEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 17 September, USD exchange rate down by 0.53 drams to 484.40 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 4.36 drams to 571.59 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate down by 0.03 drams to 6.46 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 0.67 drams to 628.46 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price down by 29,962.59 drams to 429.45 drams. Silver price down by 30,123.27 drams to 30552.72 drams. Platinum price stood at 15201.09 drams. Donald Trump signalled earlier this week he will not formally prepare for his three debates against Democratic foe Joe Biden, and a new report suggests he will wing each session on a bet the former vice president will trip himself with gaffes and forgetfulness. The 74-year-old president for months has tried casting the 77-year-old Mr Biden as too old and mentally slow as he approaches 80 to be the so-called leader of the free world. He has tried sowing seeds of doubt into the minds of remaining undecided voters and key blocs he is trying to win back, like just enough suburban white women. The president himself made the decision to skip a 2016-like debate preparation session, when former New Jersey Governor Christie played the role of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mr Christie had reportedly been tapped to play the role of Mr Biden, but it appears that will not happen. A presidential debateisnt something you have to practice, Mr Trump told aides, unnerving some of his closest advisers, NBC News reported. He is set to go face-to-face with Mr Biden in a few weeks, and Mr Trump intends to wing it. He signalled just that during a wild 47-minute phone interview with Fox & Friends, his favorite right-leaning morning cable news and opinion show. One of the hosts asked how he plans to prepare for the three debates. Mr Trump, notably, did not describe what are sometimes called murder board sessions with Mr Christie or another GOP figure mimicking Mr Biden. Instead, the president essentially said he is too busy getting back on the campaign trail to spend hours practicing canned spiels about policy proposals and witty attack lines for his opponent. Well, I sort of prepare every day by just doing what I'm doing. I was in California yesterday (Monday). I went to Arizona, which is doing great by the way, the state is doing, is booming. And done a really good job with the virus too, you know down to, it's down to, it's very low, he said, sending a shoutout to one battleground state before mentioning another possible one that he has to hold to have any shot at a second term. An excellent governor, excellent in Texas, Mr Trump said of ally Greg Abbott, also a Republican. The president described campaign trips as the best kind of debate prep. I've been to Texas over the last few days, I've been to Louisiana, Florida, I mean, I've been all over the place, he told Fox before slamming Mr Bidens lighter schedule, which never seems to take him that far from his Delaware home. And I watch this guy (Biden) sitting home and I say, maybe I'm doing it wrong, you know what maybe I'm doing it wrong, the president said mockingly. He also contended he cannot prepare for the debates because Mr Biden performed unevenly in the Democratic primary debates. Well, I don't know which Biden is going to show up because I watched him during the debates where they had 20 people on the stage and, you know, before they started calling it out, and I watched him and he was a disaster. You don't get worse, he was grossly incompetent, Mr Trump alleged. Then, I watched him against Bernie [Sanders] and he was okay. He wasn't Winston Churchill, I can tell you that, but he was okay. By PTI NEW DELHI: Sudarshan TV on Thursday defended in the Supreme Court its programme on alleged "infiltration of Muslims in civil services", saying it was not against their entry but has used the term 'UPSC Jehad' based on information that 'Zakat Foundation' received funds from various "terror-linked organisations". The top court had restrained the channel on Tuesday from telecasting the episodes of 'Bindas Bol' for two days saying that "the intent" of the episodes "prima facie" appeared to "vilify" the Muslim community. In an affidavit, Suresh Chavhanke, Editor-in-Chief of the channel, sought lifting of the stay from airing the remaining six episodes and said that there was "no justification to continue the pre-telecast/prior restraint direction". The affidavit said: "The Answering Respondent (Chavhanke) has used the words "UPSC Jehad" because it has come to the knowledge. through various sources that Zakat Foundation has received funds from various terror-linked organizations." "It is not that all contributors to the Zakat Foundation are terror-linked. However, some of the contributors are linked to organizations or are organizations that fund extremist groups." "The funds received by the Zakat Foundation, in turn, are used to support aspirants for IAS, IPS or UPSC". Zakat Foundation provides training and study materials to Muslim students who aspire to join civil services. "When it comes to light through various sources that funds contributed by tainted organizations are being used to facilitate people joining UPSC, there is a serious issue requiring public debate, discussion and scrutiny." "There is no statement or message in the four episodes broadcast that members of a particular community should not join UPSC. UPSC is an open competitive examination and members of every community may participate in the entrance examination and qualify," the journalist said in his 91-page affidavit. In the response to the plea filed by lawyer Firoz Iqbal Khan, seeking banning of the programmes, the channel said the thrust of its episodes was that there appeared to be a conspiracy which needed "to be investigated by NIA or CBI" as the "terror linked organizations" were apparently funding the Foundation in India, which in turn has been supporting Muslim UPSC aspirants. "Terrorism is a global menace. There are several international organizations that provide monetary support to extremists. The spread of extremist philosophy is undesirable and it is imperative that cross border funding that could encourage the spread of extremism should be stamped out," the affidavit said and referred to the offshore organizations which are funding the foundations. Referring to records including the FCRA papers of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the affidavit said that the Zakat Foundation has received donations from various organizations such as 'Muslim Aid (UK)' and moreover it has links with Zakir Naik as well. "Zakir Naik's Islamic Research Foundation has been banned under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, (UAPA). The Cabinet note regarding the ban said that Zakir Naik has been promoting enmity between religious groups and inspiring Muslim youth in India and abroad to commit terrorist acts," the reply affidavit said. Calling himself an investigative journalist, Chavhanke referred to various documents and said that it appeared that Zakat Foundation of India has received funds from terror tied Zakat Foundation of America (Khalil Demir) who has a direct/indirect link with Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) and Turkish Humanitarian Relief Organization (IHH) both of which have terror links. "Reports also stated that Turkish Humanitarian Relief Organization (IHH) distributed aid to the Salafist group Ahrar al Sham, which fought alongside ISIS and the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra." The journalist said that the minority community has been taking quota benefits of the OBC and he minority scheme simultaneously and the same being a "political and social issue" can be debated in the media. The top court would hear on Friday the plea which has raised grievance over the programme whose promo had claimed that the channel would show the 'big expose on conspiracy to infiltrate Muslims in government service'. Meanwhile, the Centre has also filed an affidavit in the matter and said if the apex court decides on the issue of media regulation then such an exercise should be undertaken with the digital media first as it has faster reach and information has the potential to go viral due to applications like WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. The government has told the apex court that sufficient framework and judicial pronouncements exist for the electronic and the print media. We want working for ABD to not just be a job, but a rewarding home to cultivate their career. Automated Business Designs (ABD), developers of Ultra-Staff EDGE staffing software, was named one of the Nations Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in 2020. This distinguished honor is the fourth consecutive year that ABD has been recognized by the National Best and Brightest program. In June, the software company was also recognized as one of Chicagos Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in 2020. The competition identifies and honors organizations that display a commitment to excellence in operations and employee enrichment that lead to increased productivity and financial performance. With over 20 years of experience conducting the Best and Brightest competitions, the National Association for Business Resources (NABR) have identified numerous best Human Resource practices and provided benchmarking for companies that continue to be leaders in employment standards. The national program celebrates those companies that are making better business, creating richer lives and building a stronger community as a whole. The Summer Best and Brightest National winners honored 147 winning organizations from across the country out of 1,300 nominations. ABDs nomination included details of their comprehensive benefits package, employee education programs, employee recognition, charity work, and innovative company culture. We are ecstatic to be recognized as a 2020 National Best and Brightest Company to Work For, said John Roeslmeier, Vice President, at Automated Business Designs. Every year our goal is to invent new ways to help our employees grow both professionally and personally. We want working for ABD to not just be a job, but a rewarding home to cultivate their career. Automated Business Designs will be honored during the virtual Illuminate Business Summit in October, 2020. All recognized companies will also be featured in the online edition of Corp! Magazine. To learn more about Automated Business Designs and Ultra-Staff EDGE staffing software, visit https://www.abd.net. Details about the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For program are available at https://thebestandbrightest.com/. About Automated Business Designs Automated Business Designs (ABD) produces the staffing and recruiting software solution, Ultra-Staff EDGE. Designed for temporary, direct hire, and medical staffing, Ultra-Staff EDGE allows you to seamlessly stay connected with clients and candidates through a robust all-in-one solution that includes front office, back office, web portals, data analytics, and mobile. ABD has been servicing the staffing industry for 37 years and is an active member of the American Staffing Association (ASA), National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS), Wisconsin Association of Staffing Services (WASS), New York Staffing Association (NYSA), and board member status in the Illinois Search and Staffing Association (ISSA). JK Rowling has once again been criticised for her new novel, after she was accused of 'transliterating' one of the book's working class characters by spelling their dialect differently. Troubled Blood, written under Rowling's pseudonym Robert Galbraith, was released Tuesday and sees detective Cormoran Strike work out what happened to missing GP Margot Bamborough. The book originally came under fire for featuring a 'transvestite serial killer' called Dennis Creed, who murders his victims while wearing female clothing and a wig, sparking furious backlash online, amid accusations of transphobia against the author. Now, journalist and Current Affairs Editor of Pink News, Nick Duffy has started a fresh row - this time about Rowling, 55, using a working class dialect, spelled differently, to reflect the accent of one of her characters. An extract shared on Twitter by Nick revealed that a line in the book from a character called Janice reads: 'Well, 'e 'ad these 'ead pains and 'e was def'nitley nervous. Depressed maybe,' said Janice.' Furious Twitter users quickly branded the Edinburgh-based writer 'patronising' and 'deeply snobbish'. JK Rowling (left) has once again been criticised for her new novel Troubled Blood (right), after she was accused of 'transliterating' one of the book's working class characters by spelling their working class dialect differently Journalist and Current Affairs Editor of Pink News, Nick Duffy has started a fresh row about Rowling and shared an extract of her book in which she is 'transliterating' the character Janice In response to the extract, Nick wrote: 'The main thing that struck me about JK Rowling's new novel is that this is how she thinks working class people talk.' Others suggested the writer believes she is 'better than ordinary working people'. 'I have an absolute abhorrence of any transliteration of speech like this', wrote one, 'Always just seems incredibly patronising to both reader and character. At least some of this is probably based on how often hiberno-English gets this treatment.' WHAT IS TRANSLITERATING? Transliterating is the act or process of writing words using a different alphabet. The text aims to produce a phonetic transliteration of a certain dialect. Transliteration is usually used to help people speak a language by showing the pronunciation in a language they understand. Advertisement Another said: 'I feel like every book on writing I've read have warned against writing accents in this manner. Just give me some details of where they're from, and I can have a rough idea how they sound in my head. I don't enjoy reading dialogue written this way. At least not this excessive.' A third raged: 'Omg. Im working class as was my extended family. They came from all parts of South East England, were rough and ready, but NEVER spoke like this. Its all just so wrong. Deeply snobbish and patronising from Rowling. She genuinely thinks shes better than ordinary working people.' Author and journalist Huw Lemmey accused writers who use transliteration in their text of insinuating certain characters are 'different from us' in the text. Furious Twitter users quickly branded the writer 'patronising' and 'deeply snobbish' for using a working class dialect in her novel, suggesting the writer believes she is 'better than ordinary working people' 'Some people's accents are transliterated in text as a silent pact between author and reader that we are the same', he penned, 'And this character is different from us. The implication is that *we* don't pronounce words like that (otherwise it wouldn't need transliterating)'. He added: 'Because no accent is neutral, but you'll rarely see the Queen transcribed saying "Wyell nyo, Sar Alex, I would not like a baaarth tonight," even though that's what she sounds like.' An example of writers who have used transliteration is Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh in his classic novel Trainspotting and many of his other works, which are set in Scotland and characterised by writing with a thick, raw Scots dialect. This comes after the author became embroiled in yet another trans row, after it was revealed that the villain in her latest book is a male serial killer who dresses as a woman to slay his victims. Author and journalist Huw Lemmey accused writers who use transliteration in their text of insinuating certain characters are 'different from us' in the text An early review of the 900-page book by The Daily Telegraph - in which the critic states the book's 'moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress' - sparked immediate backlash online. Furious readers rushed to Twitter to share their thoughts, making #RIPJKRowling trend in the UK. Others said the book - which is not released until Tuesday - is not transphobic at all and over-eager detractors should read it before jumping to conclusions. Observer journalist Nick Cohen wrote: 'I've read the latest Strike novel, and the claim it's anti-trans is total sh***. 'I can't tell you why it is total sh*** without giving away the ending. So until you read it yourself, which you should, you will just have to trust me: this is total sh***.' A Twitter user called Steve replied stating: 'But when you combine it with all the negative stereotyping she's done about trans women, it shows a clear pattern. 'It's not anti-trans as such but it does play into the fears that trans women are cis males looking to spy on women.' Cohen replied: 'Read the bloody book why don't you?' Piers Morgan added: 'The fact #RIPJKRowling is trending says all you need to know about the woke brigade - they're nastier and more viciously intolerant than anyone they preach about.' In June, the Harry Potter author hit the headlines after she mocked an online article using the words 'people who menstruate' instead of 'women'. Rowling's remarks sparked backlash from a range of stars JK Rowling pictured with Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in 2001 She was hit by what she described as 'relentless attacks' after she wrote: 'I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?' The acclaimed novelist then penned a deeply personal essay to address the controversy, revealing she was sexually assaulted in her 20s and saying she still feels the scars of 'domestic violence' in her first marriage. Rowling's remarks sparked backlash from a range of stars including Ron actor Rupert Grint, Emma Watson who played Hermione in the film franchise, Daniel Radcliffe who played Harry and Eddie Redmayne, who stars in her Fantastic Beasts films. Little, Brown Book Group are owned by Hachette, one of several publishers involved in Miss Rowling's children's book The Ickabog. In June, several of those involved in The Ickabog, are said to have staged their own rebellion during a heated meeting where staff had announced they were no longer prepared to work on the book. The Okada Riders Association of Ghana says its members may vote for the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) following several disappointments by the both NPP and NDC. The Association has disclosed that its leaders had a meeting with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) when it was in opposition, about the prospects of legalising the use of motorbikes for transporting passengers (Okada), which the party promised to do, in the lead-up to the 2016 general elections, should it win the polls that year. The General Secretary of the association, Mr Majid Amadu, told Kwabena Prah Jr on Accra100.5FMs morning show, Ghana Yensom, on Thursday, 17 September 2020 that the promise was made to them by the NPP after meeting with Mr John Boadu, General Secretary of the party; and subsequently with the then-vice-presidential candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on their plight with the law vis-a-vis their livelihood. Mr Amadu said the Okada riders sought solace in the NPP after they were sacked from the office of the then-incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC), by Mr Joshua Akamba, when they went there to seek help from him as far as the legalisation of their trade was concerned and to also complain about the constant harassment they endured from the police. Mr Amadu said the Okada riders feel let down by both the NDC and NPP, and, thus, threatened that they are likely to vote for a neutral political party like the Convention Peoples Party (CPP). On Wednesday, 16 September 2020, Vice President Bawumia said the government will not legalise the Okada business. I know that theres been a recent discussion about Okada in Ghana, I think that in the context of what we are doing we will rather encourage the Okada riders to come in and try to lease these vehicles so that they can run businesses. They need to graduate from this risky and less safe Okada riding to a safer means of transportation. Their problem will be a lack of capital but if you bring in new leasing policies and we have our national ID cards with our digital addresses we can have a credit system working and give you an option other than this risky job. You dont want to finish driving school and then make a life in Okada riding. You can have a better option and well give you a better option. So, yes, we will not legalise Okada business. It may be a tough decision but it is in the interest of Ghanaians. We have had discussions but we will stick to our decision to provide a better alternative to Okada riding. Lets give them an opportunity to lease vehicles and pay over time, Dr Bawumia said at the strategic collaboration of Volkswagon & Blackivy to launch Volkswagons new assembled cars in Ghana on Wednesday, 16 September 2020. The Ministry of Transport recently said it will hold final consultations on whether or not to legalise the Okada business in October this year, after which a report will be forwarded to Cabinet for consideration. The second phase of the consultations is to engage stakeholders in the six (6) newly-created regions of Bono East, Ahafo, Western North, Savannah, North East and Oti Regions. Other key interest groups and civil society organisations would also be consulted, the ministry announced in a statement, adding that they include the following: i. Center for Democratic Development (CDD) ii. Danquah Institute, iii. Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) iv. Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) v. Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) vi. Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) vii. And Political Parties It said: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the final stage of the stakeholder engagement is expected to commence in October 2020, and a report presented before Cabinet for consideration. The Okada issue became topical after the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), former President John Mahama, promised to legalise it in his next administration should he win the 7 December 2020 polls. Speaking to the chiefs, people and party supporters at Kpando in the Volta Region on Friday, 21 August 2020, Mr Mahama said: I've been seeing young people who have finished school and they cant find a job and, so, they are looking for something they can do and many of our young people are riding motorcycles and transporting people from place to place, and we call them Okada. But in our law, it says Okada is illegal but Okada is a reality, it has come to stay, you can't stop it, and, so, I've suggested and I say when we come into office, we will legalise Okada but we will regulate it, Mr Mahama said. He explained further: We will regulate it and we will give them training so that they can do their business safely without causing the lives of people, they must obey all the traffic regulations in order that they be allowed to pursue their profession. ----classfmonline More than 4,000 troops from nine participating countries will participate in the drills. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took part in the opening ceremony of the Rapid Trident 2020 multinational military drills in Lviv region. The opening ceremony took place at the Yavoriv training ground during the president's working trip to Lviv region, an UNIAN correspondent reports. "I am glad to start my working trip to Lviv region with a visit to the International Peacekeeping Security Centre. I am glad to meet with Ukrainian soldiers and our friends military armies of NATO countries. I congratulate all of you on the start of large-scale international military drills," he said. "Every time I meet with international leaders, I emphasize: the war in the east [of Ukraine] is not only a threat to Ukraine, it's a threat to the security and stability of all countries in Europe and the world," Zelensky said, adding that international partners are in solidarity with Ukraine on the issue. The president stressed the need to overcome existing challenges and find mechanisms for an adequate response to tackle them. "One of these is Ukraine's integration into NATO. At the beginning of the week, I approved the National Security Strategy, according to which NATO membership is the strategic course of Ukraine," the president said. Zelensky noted the importance of quickly achieving compatibility of Ukraine's Armed Forces with the NATO militaries, as well as intensifying reforms that will allow Ukraine to join Membership Action Plan. Rapid Trident 2020: background A dentist in Anchorage, Alaska, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for extracting an unconscious patient's tooth while riding a hoverboard. It's common knowledge that a medical procedure like tooth extraction is extremely delicate and requires due care. But this doctor for some reason overlooked the risks involved. YouTube Seth Lockhart was filmed carrying out a tooth extraction on patient Veronica Wihelm while riding a hoverboard. The video that has gone viral shows Lockhart spinning around after performing the dangerous procedure. Also Read: Indian Dentist In Kuwait Reportedly Country's Second Medical COVID-19 Fatality According to reports, the doctor named Seth Lookhart was convicted on 46 felony and misdemeanor counts in Anchorage Superior Court. During the hearing, the patient in the video, Veronica, testified she did not consent to being filmed nor to having her tooth taken out while Lockhard was on the hoverboard, CNN affiliate KTUU reported in January. I would've said 'hell no!' No, that's unprofessional. It's crazy, she said. Also Read: Desperate After Not Getting A Dentist Appointment, British Man Pulls Out His Own Tooth Image For Representation "Lookhart almost killed many patients by performing anesthesia thousands of times without training or consent, on patients outside his scope of training and expertise, while stealing money from Medicaid and embezzling from his bosses," sentencing Judge Michael Wolverton told during the hearing. Also Read: Meet The Pakistani Dentist Who Quit Her Job To Kick-Start Her Career As A Glitter Artist Lookhart was also charged with medical assistance fraud for billing Medicaid for procedures that were either unnecessary or not properly justified and theft of $25,000 (Rs 18,38,496) or more by diverting funds from Alaska Dental Arts, among dozens of others. Reports state, Lookhart began his dentistry practice at Alaska Dental Arts in 2015. In 2017, his dangerous schemes were busted by an ex-worker who told the cops how he was earning money by performing unnecessary sedation. A non-governmental organisation, the Civil Society for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (CiSHAN), says about 900,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS in the country are yet to show up for treatment and are currently unaccounted for. The Executive Secretary of CiSHAN, Walter Ugwocha, said this in Abuja at a virtual media round table for the commencement of the national campaign for HIV self-testing in the country. Out of the 1.9 million people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, about 900,000 are yet to show up for treatment and are currently unaccounted for, he said. Mr Ugwocha said based on the 2018 Nigeria AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS), Nigeria is still lagging behind in achieving the first 95 of the 95-95-95 target by 2030. He said the HIV self-testing campaign is focused on pushing Nigeria towards achieving the targets. He said the campaign will create awareness and demand for HIV self-testing, identification and early treatment of newly diagnosed HIV-positive individuals. This he said will be geared towards the mandate of reaching about 10 million people with HIV self-testing kits by the end of 2020. We will be going to a state in each of the geo-political zones; Kogi, Delta, Gombe, Kaduna, Abia and Lagos, to help close the existing HIV testing gap. The COVID-19 lockdown significantly decreased access of community members -general, key and vulnerable population to HIV testing. The need to evolve community-driven HIV testing strategies was further re-affirmed by the anecdotal field reports by CiSHAN during the lockdown, he said. He calls on individuals and stakeholders in the country to support the donation of the HIV test kits to pregnant women and indigent citizens. We also call on PEPFAR, Global Fund, and other donors to increase their commitment to HIV self testing in the country as a means of reaching the unreached populations. We call on all state governments to procure self-test kits and deploy the same to institutions of learning, churches and facilities it use during outreaches to community members as a way to bridge the gap in HIV testing coverage especially during this COVID-19 era, he said. He urges the Federal Ministry of Health, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), and various state Ministries, Agencies, and Departments involved with the HIV/AIDS response to disseminate HIV Self Testing guidelines urgently. North Penn School District parents take board to task over mask-taping incident YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS (Press Release, IDea). The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative awarded the fifth annual Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity to Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman, the mother and daughter team who lead the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre in Somalia. As Aurora Prize Laureates, they will receive a US $1,000,000 award and a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by supporting the organizations that have inspired their humanitarian action. Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman have selected three organizations Love Does, Panzi Foundation, and Prajwala that fight for freedom and human rights, provide healthcare to marginalized populations, and save victims of sex-trafficking to be the beneficiaries of their million dollar prize. Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman were chosen among the 2020 Aurora Humanitarians, or finalists, announced on April 24, 2020. Besides the Somali human rights defenders, these outstanding heroes include Congolese activist Angelique Namaika, refugee rescuers Sophie Beau and Klaus Vogel, and educator Sakena Yacoobi from Afghanistan. To date, Aurora has launched or supported numerous projects in nearly 30 countries, benefitting almost a million people suffering from the atrocities of war, famine, lack of healthcare, genocide or human rights violations. Granted on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the Aurora Prize seeks to expand the global humanitarian movement by enabling humanitarians worldwide to continue the cycle of giving. Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman have been protecting womens rights, promoting peacebuilding, and rehabilitating child soldiers for many years. Their courage, resilience, and unwavering commitment to the people of Somalia has brought this mother and daughter team global recognition. Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman embody the spirit of the Aurora Prize and our philosophy of Gratitude in Action, and we are delighted with this opportunity to express our deepest admiration and appreciation to them for the amazing work they are doing in Somalia. They give people a second chance, hope for the future, and inspiration to lead a meaningful life. Their courage, self-sacrifice, altruism, idealism, as well as actions on the ground reflect the values of the global Aurora movement, noted Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, and Member of the Selection Committee. Lord Ara Darzi, Co-Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and Chair of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee, noted in his video announcement of the Laureates, 2020 has been a tumultuous year, but as with all crises, it has brought us together. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many new modern-day heroes like Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman emerged, reminding us of our common humanity. For the last five years, Aurora has been spreading the message that acts of kindness make a difference when you add them up, and Fartuuns and Ilwads courageous activism is a vivid testament to that, said Samantha Power, Harvard professor, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Aurora Prize Selection Committee member. Previous Aurora Prize Laureates include Burundian activist Marguerite Barankitse (2016), American physician and missionary Dr. Tom Catena (2017), Rohingya human rights campaigner Kyaw Hla Aung (2018) and Yazidi activist Mirza Dinnayi (2019). On October 19, 2020, a special Gratitude in Action virtual event will be broadcast live from the New York Public Library to celebrate Auroras fifth anniversary by honoring the Aurora Prize Laureates and paying tribute to New York City COVID-19 heroes. A live event will also be held in March 2021 in New York City, along with an ecumenical service to commemorate those who fell victim to the coronavirus. The funds raised at the events will help to continue the efforts of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and the Aurora Prize Laureates. You can join Aurora and support Gratitude in Action by making a contribution and learn more at www.auroraprize.org. * * * About the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is a global humanitarian award. Its mission is to recognize and support those who risk their own lives, health or freedom to save the lives, health or freedom of others suffering as a result of violent conflict, atrocity crimes or other major human rights violations. The Aurora Prize Laureate is selected based on the nominees demonstration of courage, commitment and impact. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, an Aurora Prize Laureate is honored each year between 2015 and 2023 (in remembrance of the eight years of the Armenian Genocide 1915-1923) with a US $1,000,000 award, which gives the Laureate a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving and support the organizations that have inspired their humanitarian action The husband and wife were alone in her boutique, but the security cameras captured it all: him pushing her down, punching her, slapping her and dragging her by the hair across the floor. In footage from last year that recently circulated online, he can be seen hauling her into another room. Minutes later, the woman her hair flailing plummets from the second floor onto the street below in the central Chinese city of Shangqiu. The woman, Liu Zengyan, said later it was the only way she could escape. As she lay in the hospital after the assault, with fractures in her ... The flames are unrelenting on the West Coast again this year. Water bombers sound like thunder, and although they are enormous, they fly as low as crop-dusters. When they lumber overhead, the vibration leaves a tingling sensation behind. The first time our house burned down in the tiny community of Cobb, California, we glued ourselves to fire maps, refreshed images, looked for landmarks, and refreshed again. The Valley Fire started when someones spa created a spark and the whole mountain blew up, taking our house with it. I was still skinny back then, weak from a year of chemo, surgery, and radiation. At 50, my grip on survival felt tenuous. All my life, I enjoyed robust health, but when my family and I returned home from six months in Costa Rica, my husband, Gary, found a lump in my breast. He called it a romance buster. Whats this? he asked, guiding my fingers to the spot. It stopped me short. Ill get it checked in the morning, I said, and we fell into a fitful sleep. The next day, my doctor told me not to worry about that lump, that it didnt meet the characteristics of cancer. That didnt sound right, so I scheduled a mammogram anyway. The first available appointment was on New Years Eve, and I grabbed it. Our rural hospital was deserted when I arrived, and the tech and I had the department to ourselves. My breast was pressed in a vice when she said something memorable from behind her screen. I know where you can get cheap chemo. Chemo? Me? It must be cancer. The next morning, which was the first day of 2014, the Affordable Care Act kicked in, and the new law attached three extra digits to my health insurance policy. Those numbers indicated that it was noncompliant. No doctors would see me. Gary and I set up a war room in the kitchen and called every healthcare provider for miles. The answer was no. Gary and I are entrepreneurs. Weve started all sorts of businesses, everything from a flight school to a walnut farm. We used our skills until we finally found an oncologist who agreed to see me, but he said we had to pay cash. The office was dingy with one tired plant and neon lights flickering overhead. We peeled off $300, and the doctor told us Id likely be dead in three months. He said we couldnt afford chemo and without insurance, no one would give it to me. Best case, he said, youll end up with a Frankenboob. I had triple-negative breast cancer, spread to other parts of my body, and when I did manage to get treatment, my prognosis was bleak. When the Tubbs Fire blasted Santa Rosa two years later, it traveled 12 miles in three hours. Again we scrutinized screens, cringing when the fire got close and bargaining with God. That inferno consumed 8,000 structures, including our house. The following year, it happened again. This time we watched flames sweep down the mountains that surround our home in the community of Upper Lake. Fire maps indicated that our town was gone. I thought about our house. The pencil holder my daughter made in third grade. The book of poems my mom found at a garage sale. A painting my husband bought in Kansas City, one I hated but later came to love. I didnt want to lose any of it. Not again, I thought. But the map was wrong, and we were spared. Now, bombers are back. The air in Lake County, consistently rated the cleanest in the nation, is now thick with smoke. Ash clings to our tomato plants, and our sunsets are brilliant orange and hazy gloom. The petals on my roses are singed where embers landed, inches from our century-old wood frame house. It looks like someone flicked the fiery end of a cigarette over the top of my blossoms. Chemos going to burn holes in your tumor, a nurse told me during treatment. Itll look like Swiss cheese. I ran my thumb over the scorched pockmarks and thought of her. My experience with cancer gave me a perspective that helps me endure these fires with a sense of calm. I still grieve the unbearable losses of property, dreams, and precious life. Like fire, cancer came with chaos and loss. Back when my death seemed imminent, I knew with clarity what was important. It gave me a sneak preview of what was to come at the end of my life. I wasnt going to be thinking about homes and treasures. I would see only the faces of the ones I loved. Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Companies continue to bring employees back to the office as some area schools reopen and the rate of Houstonians testing positive for COVID-19 falls. Houston office occupancy rose to 31.8 percent, the third highest occupancy rate among a 10-city index compiled by Falls Church, Va.-based Kastle Systems. The security company estimates weekly occupancy counts by analyzing access data from the 3,600 buildings it secures in 47 states. Dallas and Los Angeles had the top two positions. The vacant Green Mountain Race Track grandstand was severely damaged by a massive fire that started Wednesday night. Pownal Race Track Fire Deemed Suspicious; Authorities Seeking Information Williamstown, Mass., firefighters putting out hotspots on the grandstand roof on Thursday. See more photos here. POWNAL, Vt. Fire officials are calling the blaze that heavily damaged the Green Mountain Race Track grandstand on Wednesday night suspicious, citing previous fires and trespassers at the long-closed facility. State police are requesting anyone with information related to the fire or events immediately preceding it to contact authorities. A news release on Thursday afternoon by state police Det. Sgts. Steven Otis and Matt Hill and Assistant State Fire Marshal Stan Baranowski of the Division of Fire Safety says the massive structure was so compromised by the fire that it was "deemed too dangerous to conduct an internal examination." The blaze at the 64,000-square-foot mostly glass and concrete grandstand was reported on Wednesday night at 10:48 p.m. and firefighters from numerous mutual departments worked through the night to keep it contained. First arriving crews noted heavy fire throughout the long-vacant building. The fire progression was extensive and it was decided by Pownal Fire Chief Keith Coon to only fight the fire from the exterior to prevent injury or possible death by any internal firefighting efforts by fire personnel, according to the report. Members of the investigative team arrived at about 9 a.m. According to their statement, "based upon the examination of the exterior and noting several areas of collapse in the roof and the damage to heavy support columns to the three-story steel and concrete building it was deemed too dangerous to conduct an internal examination." There was no power to the structure and there were no reports of any lightning prior to the report of the fire. Because of the size of the complex and the fire's progression, Coon requested assistance from the following fire departments: Pownal Valley Fire Department, Bennington Fire Department, Bennington Rural Fire Department, Shaftsbury Fire Department, and Arlington Fire Department; the Williamstown Fire Department in Massachusetts; and New York fire departments from Hoosick, Hoosick Falls, North Hoosick, Petersburgh, Pittstown, and Raymertown. Stamford Fire Department was also called to cover the Pownal station. Once the fire became under control, Coon then requested assistance from the state Department of Public Safety Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit in determining the origin and cause of the fire. Information was obtained that the building was the scene of several other small fires over the summer that had been put out by the Fire Department as well as numerous events of vandalism and littering throughout the property. These were deemed to be young adults hanging out in the area and entering the building to vandalize the structure, skateboard and even more recently, all-terrain vehicle riders were noted inside the structure driving around. A video and numerous social media posts by people entering the structure over the past few years show water damage, graffiti, vandalism and little to no glass left in the windows. The building has been closed for more than two decades and various attempts to revive the complex since greyhound racing ended in the early 1990s never took off. The 144-acre complex is owned by Green Mountain Race Track LLC and recent Facebook posts by one of the co-owners showed the property in the process of being boarded up with the expectation it would be demolished in the coming year to make way for a music festival venue. Now Open 17 September 2020 Park Inn by Radisson, the upper midscale hotel brand that delivers stress-free experiences, good food and upbeat environments, is proud to announce the opening of its first hotel in Jeddah. The newest addition brings the group's portfolio to over 45 hotels, resorts and serviced apartments in operation and under development, accelerating Radisson Hotel Group's expansion across the country. A gateway to the holy city of Makkah, Jeddah attracts travelers from across the globe as a center for international business and a canvas for public art. Located within close proximity of King Abdulaziz International Airport, the Park Inn by Radisson Jeddah Madinah Road is about 25km from the heart of the city, making it an ideal location for both business and leisure travelers. In addition to celebrating the opening of its latest addition to its growing portfolio in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Radisson Hotel Group is also marking another milestone in the Group's commitment to Balanced Leadership, and its drive to improve diversity and inclusion within its business. Maram Kokandi, General Manager of the Park Inn by Radisson Jeddah Madinah Road made history, with her appointment as the world's first female Saudi General Manager in the global hospitality industry. Park Inn by Radisson Jeddah Madinah Road is a fresh and energetic hotel offering vibrant environments with a touch of color, contemporary design and friendly personalized service. The hotel consists of 84 contemporary rooms and suites where guests can revive and rejuvenate in a relaxing environment. Guests can fuel their culinary cravings at one of the hotel's casual dining spaces. Those seeking to relax and recharge can enjoy the spa and fitness center, with separate areas for men and women, or head up to the runway lounge for a dip in the pool while overlooking the airport runway. Business guests have access to three modern and spacious meeting rooms which offers free high-speed Wi-Fi and audiovisual equipment. Park Inn by Radisson's Smart Meetings and Events has been developed with the guest in mind, offering a fresh and attentive service from start to finish, for all meeting and event types. Radisson Hotel Group's highest priority is the continued health, safety and security of its guests, team members, and business partners. In May 2020, the hotel group announced its Radisson Hotels Safety Protocol in collaboration with SGS, the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. Additionally, Radisson Hotel Group supports the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC)'s 'Safe Travels' health and safety protocols and stamp to create consistency across the Travel and Tourism industry. For regular updates on Radisson Hotels Safety Protocol, please visit: https://www.radissonhotels.com/en-us/social-responsibility/health-safety. Electricity supply company Pinergy faced a five-fold increase in unpaid bills and couldn't secure a State-backed loan from its bank during the depth of the Covid-19 lockdown. CEO Enda Gunnell says the business is out the other side of it now, but admits it didn't always look like that back in March when then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar ordered the lockdown. "Our direct debit run on the 28th of March had a five-fold increase in failed direct debits," he said. "We faced maybe 75,000 in failed payments that week. Some customers rang and said, 'Look, we're not paying the direct debits.' Some rang and said, 'Could you help us on this? Rather than pay you 10,000 on this direct debit, could I split it over the next three months?' Everybody was in crisis, so everybody was holding on to their cash." Mr Gunnell feared "we'd get no cash in, even though we have an obligation to pay cash out - and we'd get squeezed". "The lockdown was an extremely intense period because I had to plan for the worst and then work damn hard to make sure we came in better than that," he said. Pinergy managed to avoid cutting off any of its 2,000 commercial and 30,000 residential customers for non-payment. "Some are still figuring it out, but the cancellation rate has improved and the failure rate has come down, thankfully," said Mr Gunnell. His own firm took its 45 staff off State wage subsidies in July. "The supports helped keep cash flowing in the economy, which was really important." He said the crisis illustrated a weakness in Ireland's regulated energy market. "We are obligated to pay the wholesale market as a condition of being a regulated supplier. The market is structured to protect the generators. But the suppliers are the ones at the front dealing with customers in crisis. We were obligated to protect everybody else down the supply chain." To boost liquidity, Pinergy won approval from the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland for a Covid-19 emergency loan but couldn't win the support from its bank to access the loan. "That 80pc Government guarantee wasn't enough to get it over the line," he said, declining to name the bank. Fire-fighting isn't new for the former Mazars business consultant. Gunnell recalls dark days in 2016 when Pinergy, which he'd founded three years earlier, came close to having its own lights go off. He's convinced an aggressive push to install 'smart' electricity meters in every customer's home was ahead of its time - but it was driving losses, not profits. To work, the metered 'pay as you go' business model had to keep residential customers for about 18 months just to cover installation costs. But customers were being won away before that by competitors' introductory discounts. "We were in real trouble. We needed a new direction and a strategic partner to get us there," the CEO says in the boardroom of Pinergy's Clonskeagh offices, otherwise deserted as staff work remotely. Pinergy shifted focus to target businesses. Since late 2018 it's rolled out services targeting retail and hotels, manufacturers and agri-business firms along with their existing client base among property managers and commercial property firms, including Savills. Its core offering now is based on 'smart' meters and data analytics that show clients how they're wasting energy and how to stop it. Customers now include some of the nation's biggest dairy farms, top-end apartments like the Comer Group's Number One Ballsbridge, warehouses and factories, and retail and hotel chains. In exchange for higher per-unit costs and contracts lasting two to three years, Pinergy business clients get multiple meters in their premises to pinpoint use and wastage, as well as LED fittings and discounts on hours of peak demand. "For the rest of the industry, the more kilowatts that are wasted in a domestic home or commercial premises, the more money they make," he says. "We want to sell less electricity. We want to help customers to reduce their energy spend by reducing the quantity they use. We believe energy is a resource, not a commodity." He says businesses particularly want help reducing energy consumption at a time when trade lost to Covid-19 is tightening their own margins. "It's almost a conflict of interest," he says of other utilities. "They spend heavily on above-the-line advertising and get into the discounts game." Pinergy has a battle on its hands to turn rising sales into profit in what remains a particularly competitive corner of the economy. It lost its first fight primarily at the hands of Prepaid Power, which had a two-year advantage on Pinergy in the 'pay as you go' space and ultimately wooed away much of its customer base. Nor could Pinergy compete with the advertising spend and door-to-door sales armies deployed by the market's four big guns: ESB's Electric Ireland, Centrica-owned Bord Gais Energy, SSE-owned Airtricity and US private equity-owned Energia. They have been joined in the past year by Spain's Iberdrola. Too often, after investing around 400 in meter installations in each customer's home, Pinergy ended up having to write off the value of those abandoned meters. That included a 5.5m impairment booked in 2018. "Those smart meters are still smart, but it's so easy for people to switch. When we bought and paid for the installation of a meter in a house and that person switches to another supplier, that asset is stranded and written off," he says. Bouncing back followed backing from investors Peter and Denise Coates. The father-daughter billionaire owners of Bet365 have pumped more than 20m into Pinergy since becoming majority owners in 2016. They have loaned a further 8.7m this year and are poised to convert much of their loans to preference shares. "From day one I'd spent half of my time raising money to grow the business. That changed once the Coates family came on board. They bought into the vision and the plan that we presented to them," says Gunnell, who still owns more than 10pc of Pinergy equity. A fresh crack at the residential market will target an estimated 400,000 tech-savvy households expected to receive new State-provided smart meters in their homes. "I can't wait for the national smart metering programme. We have products ready to go when they turn on smart services from next January," he says. For now the focus is on showing businesses how to consume less power. Commercial clients have doubled in the past year to 2,000 and now account for 55pc of all electricity provided by Pinergy. Unlike the residential side, they pay on an arrears basis. New clients include more than 200 dairy farms, including the country's largest in Co Cork with 1,000 cows. Pinergy's app offers farmers a digital dashboard to monitor their real-time power usage at multiple metering locations, and advice starts before the first bill. "Dairy farms are big users of power, and they're under pressure to achieve sustainability goals and cut C02 emissions," says Gunnell, a native of Roscrea, Co Tipperary. "We've put in a time-of-use tariff specifically for dairy farms, giving them an extra hour in the morning at night-time rates. This allows the farmer to get the milking done cheaply," he says, adding that the firm also focuses on reducing the cost of operating milking machines and coolers. The Covid lockdown did ruin rural sales for two months because, as Gunnell puts it: "Farmers like to talk to somebody literally over the gate." Asked if he fears big rivals poaching ideas and customers, Gunnell admits it's a real risk that requires Pinergy to stay a step ahead. "If we still had all the customers that we installed residential meters for," he says, "we would have had a very successful and profitable business years ago." New Sep 17 : An overwhelming majority of Indian-Americans will be voting for the Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden, whose running mate is Kamala Harris, according to a voter survey, but President Donald Trump has also made a double-digit increase in support among the community. Biden was assured 66 per cent of the Indian-American votes and Trump of only 28 per cent if the election was held on the day they were polled, the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey (AAVS) has found. But Trump's backers have increased by 12 per cent since 2016. Hillary Clinton, who ran against him on the Democratic ticket, received 77 per cent of the Indian-American votes to only 16 per cent that Trump got, according to the 2016 Post-Election National Asian American Survey. There appears to be an 11 per cent erosion in support for the Democratic Party in the last four years. However, Biden's margin of 38 per cent over Trump among the Indian-Americans is still more than six times the margin in the national polls covering all ethnicities. The RealClearPolitics aggregation of national polls on Wednesday showed Biden having only a 5.9 per cent lead, with 49 per cent support compared to 43.1 per cent for Trump. Speaking at a panel discussion during the release of the report on Tuesday, Niraj Antani, a Republican Ohio State Assembly member, described the increase in Trump's support among Indian-Americans to his outreach to them, his India visit and his neutrality on issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act and the ending of Kashmir's special constitutional status. "Biden's opposition to those issues have sort of polarised the community," he said. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Illinois, said that Biden has to conduct "a vigorous outreach" to the Indian-American community. But he said that Indian-Americans should "absolutely not" worry about India losing support under Biden and Harris because he "has been a stalwart friend of India through different prime ministers". US-India relations transcends partisanship in the US, he said, adding: "As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I can tell you for a fact that our national security is bound up with the security of India" because of the China factor and US-India relations are going to grow closer. The influence of Harris is not fully factored into the AAVS because her pick as the Vice Presidential nominee was announced only on August 11, midway through the poll between July 15 and September 10. Krishnamoorthi said Harris's nomination is going to be "a big play" in the Indian community. She should "talk a little more about her biography, talk about her Indian heritage and her roots and talk about how that informed and influenced who she is today", he said. Ninety-eight per cent of Indian-Americans have planned to vote in the November election, according to the AAVS produced by APIAVote, AAPI Data, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. And 58 per cent said they were more enthusiastic about voting this year. While the percentage of Indian-Americans who back the Democratic Party candidate has come down, the party has solidified its base in the community. The percentage of those who consider themselves Democrats has increased to 54, up by 8 per cent from 46 per cent in the 2016 survey. Those who consider themselves Republican has meanwhile dropped to 16 per cent from 19 per cent in 2016. Those who consider themselves independent has also fallen from 35 per cent to 24 per cent in the four years. he survey showed that 44 per cent Indian-Americans had a "somewhat favourable" view of Biden and 26 per cent "very favourable" view of him, with only 14 per cent having a "very unfavourable" view and six per cent acesomewhat unfavourable". In contrast, 54 per cent of Indian-Americans had a "very unfavourable" view of Trump and 8 per cent "somewhat unfavourable". Only 20 per cent had "very favourable" views of him and 16 per cent "somewhat unfavourable". Karthick Ramakrishnan, the director of AAPIData, said that the high unfavourable rate for Trump "really limits his ability to make much more headway in the Indian-American population". The survey showed that Indian-Americans were overwhelmingly liberal in their outlook, both political and social. Indian-Americans are concerned about growing inequality with 40 per cent saying that it was an extremely important issue, 38 per cent a very important issue and 20 per cent somewhat an important issue. Sixty-eight per cent of Indian-Americans said there was a lot of discrimination against Muslims in US society, 21 per cent some discrimination and only 9 per cent none. Sixty per cent of Indian-Americans agreed strongly and 22 per cent "somewhat strongly" that the government should do more to give Blacks equal rights with Whites, and 38 per cent had very favourable views of the Black Lives Matter movement, and 32 per cent "somewhat favourable" views Thirty-eight per cent of Indian-Americans considered policing reforms extremely important, 46 per cent very important and 10 per cent somewhat important. On government size, 56 per cent of Indian-Americans backed having a bigger government, while 22 per cent favoured smaller one. Eighty-six per cent of Indian-Americans were supportive of affirmative action programmes that give preference in jobs and admissions to educational institutions. There is concern over foreign interference in US elections and 43 per cent of Indian-Americans worry about frequently, 23 per cent somewhat frequently and 18 per cent never. The only area where there wasn't a huge difference in perceptions of Democrats and Republicans was in dealing with the economy and jobs: 39 per cent of Indian-Americans said Democrats did a better job and 31 per cent Republicans, while 27 per cent saw no difference between the two parties. The Asian American Survey 2020 was carried out by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, Asian American Pacific Islander Data and Asian Americans Advancing Justice surveyed members of all Asian ethnic groups around the country. The survey to gauge Asian views on a number of subjects included 250 Indian Americans and breakdown of their views by community was given. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Hyderabad, Sep 18 : A birthday party thrown by a police constable led to the spread of COVID-19 among the police personnel in Rachakonda police commissionerate here. Taking serious note of the violation of COVID rules by constable Shiv Kumar, Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat ordered his suspension. Two other constables were issued charge memo while a show-cause notice served on an inspector. Shiv Kumar, attached to Keesara police station, hosted a birthday party for colleagues and friends at a resort at Keesara on the outskirts of Hyderabad. They all consumed liquor at the party. The issue came to the notice of higher-ups when Shiv Kumar posted a picture of the party as his WhatsApp DP. The officers directed Shiv Kumar and two other constables who had attended the party to undergo COVID test. Shiv Kumar and another constable Naveen tested positive. Shiv Kumar has been suspended while Naveen and another constable were issued charge memo. The police commissioner ordered a Deputy Commissioner of Police to conduct an inquiry and submit the report. Police were also contemplating action against others who attended the party. Senior officials said the police constable violated the COVID-19 rules. Police personnel have been strictly told not to organise any parties in view of the pandemic. Rachakonda is one of the three police commissionerates covering Hyderabad and suburbs. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The keen plant speaks to the mechanical and assembling advancement and is mix of cutting edge apparatuses and innovative specialists. Savvy plant can be characterized as a blend of generation, data, and correspondence advancements, having the capacity for joining over the whole assembling store network. The developing interest for supportable and benefit situated business rehearses the shrewd processing plant is structured. It relies on adaptability, versatility, adaptation to non-critical failure, and hazard the executives. Savvy Factory comprises of various innovations such Enterprise asset arranging (ERP), Supervisory control and information obtaining (SCADA), Programmable Automation Controller (PAC), Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), Distributed Control System (DCS) and Human Machine Interface (HMI). Undertaking asset arranging (ERP) is the ongoing administration of business forms encouraged by programming. Supervisory control and information securing is a controlled framework engineering which utilizes PCs, graphical UIs and system information interchanges for abnormal state forms. Human Machine Interface incorporates the hardware required to flag and control the territory of Smart Factory gear. Global Smart Factory Market report includes different applications such as Sensors, Industrial Robots, Industrial 3d Printing, Machine Vision Systems, Communication Technology, Control Devices and Control Valves. Request For Report sample @ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/9310 This report aims to estimate the Global Smart Factory Market for 2018 and to project the expected demand of the same by 2023. This market research study provides a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Global Smart Factory Market. It provides a comprehensive review of major drivers and restraints of the market. Major companies such as ABB Ltd., ATOS SE, Emerson Electric Co., Fanuc Corporation, Schneider Electric SE, etc. are profiled in this report. Global Smart Factory Market is also segmented into major application and geographies. Various secondary sources, such as encyclopedia, directories, and databases to identify and collect information useful for this extensive commercial study of Global Smart Factory Market have been used. The primary sources, experts from related industries and suppliers, have been interviewed to obtain and verify critical information as well as to assess the future prospects of Global Smart Factory Market. Global Smart Factory Market has grown significantly during the last few years, and it is expected to grow at a rapid pace in the next five years, mainly driven by a growing consumption in the North America region. Global Smart Factory Market is valued at $ xx million in 2018, growing at a CAGR of X% and is expected to reach $ xx million by 2023. More Info of Impact Covid19 @ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/9310 Accusing fingers point to climate change as the reason behind Sudans devastating floods, but other factors have come into play Nile waters in Sudan have begun to drop to after reaching record levels, causing severe damage in several cities, the Water and Irrigation Ministry in Khartoum said Sunday. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok tweeted Sudan hasnt seen similar floods since 1912, instructing state institutions to coordinate efforts to save Sudan from the catastrophic repercussions of the floods. Heavy rains across large parts of Sudan resulted in floods that killed more than 106 and injured 56 people, according to the civil defence authority. More than half a million Sudanese nationwide were affected by the floods that destroyed and damaged homes and created the perfect environment for water-borne diseases to spread, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA). Sudans Security and Defence Council declared a state of emergency nationwide for three months, designated the country a natural disaster zone, and ordered the formation of a committee headed by Minister of Labour Lina Al-Sheikh and comprising all ministries, states and bodies concerned. Sudans usual rain season takes place annually between June and October. Water levels in the White Nile rise from spring to May and in the Blue Nile from July to September. This year, the equatorial sources of the River Nile, prime among which is Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, witnessed torrential rains that contributed to the increased water level in the White Nile. Less than two months later, Ethiopias Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile, saw heavy rains, especially in August, increasing the water levels of the Blue Nile to a record 17.67 metres on 7 September. On Sunday, water levels dropped to 17.36 metres, further decreasing in northern water stations to 15.6 metres in Atbara and 15.22 metres in Dongola. These water levels confirm statements by Sudanese Minister of Irrigation Yasser Abbas that opening the gates of Egypts Aswan High Dam will not improve conditions in Sudan. Social media users linked Sudans floods to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that is currently under construction, and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. The allegation was denied by Abbas and ministry officials at a press conference 1 September. Khartoum is located 350 metres above sea level, the Aswan High Dam 182 metres above sea level, which means that water took its natural course and slid into the High Dams reservoir, which didnt reach its maximum water storage capacity. The High Dam has a high drainage capacity when its reservoir reaches maximum storage capacity, with each of its gates, Toshka endorheic basin, and the backup canal behind the dam, able to drain 250 million cubic metres of water daily, which proves that opening the gates of the High Dam will not decrease the level of floods in Sudan in any way. The other claim is that the heavy rains are the result of storing water in the GERD reservoir. The refutation to the claim is that five billion cubic metres of water cant change the surrounding environment. The High Dam has a storage capacity of 164 billion cubic metres and rainfall seasons and quantities didnt change to the north nor to the south in north Sudan two regions known for poor rains. Other people cited global climate change as the reason for torrential rains in Sudan. The claim is the nearest to the truth, albeit not the only cause. The rising temperature of Earth results in increased evaporation in oceans, including the hot Indian Ocean. Clouds forming in above-average rates, pushed by winds to the east to India and Pakistan, resulted in Sudans floods this year, and to the west towards Yemen and East Africa extending from Ethiopian highlands in the north all the way through Sudan to the African Great Lakes in the south, which resulted in the increased water levels of the Blue and White rivers all throughout the year. This is also the reason for the floods in the Juba and Shebelle rivers in south Ethiopia and Somali and in Yemen, where UNESCO heritage sites were damaged. Environmental experts, however, believe climate change is not the only reason for the heavy rains the region witnessed in 1946 and 1988 as well. Heavy rains havent occurred for more than 30 years and for climate change to be the culprit the region should see more heavy rain occurrence in the next 30 years, experts said. It is still too early to support the climate change theory. Proving the theory requires more time and similar occurrences, said Osama Mohamed Ali, a professor of water resources at the University of Khartoum. It is an exaggerated statement to tie [Sudans] heavy rains to climate change. Sudan has suffered dry weather for most of the 1980s before the 1988 flood took place, which left more damage than the current flood, Ali added. The dry weather Sudan endured from 1981 to 1987 rendered the country in famine, contributing to the fall of former president Jaafar Numeiri in April 1985. The drought that followed in the late 1990s compounded the social conditions in Darfur even further, intensifying the conflict between farmers, who depend on rain for their crops, and herders who released their livestock on agricultural lands to be fed. Complicating the social status in the region was the Chad war where [former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi] used a large number of tribal youths in Sudan who returned to their dry homeland after their defeat, Ali said. Climate change resulted in fluctuations in the amount of rain in Sudan, further disbanding social systems in Darfur to the west, Kordofan, central west and the east, he added. Water storage protocols in west Sudan were negatively affected by rising temperatures, where basins dug to store rain water saw elevated evaporation. Crops also decreased and the quality of the soil deteriorated. Small rivers in Sudan were filled with rain water and spilled over to large swaths of land, damaging hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land across the country, stated Ali. The worst part is, after the floods are over, more damage can be discovered, such as the destruction of crops, he said. Similar heavy rains have occurred in Yemen, Algeria, Somalia, India, China and Japan, and their effects were evident in US west coast states, such as California, Oregon and Washington, where drought resulted in massive fires. Climate change had a hand in all such disasters, but it is not the only culprit, Ali insisted. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: ABC/Image Group LAKeith Urbans wife, actor Nicole Kidman, is a supportive partner who always tries to be there to cheer her husband on during big career moments. At the ACM Awards on Wednesday night, in true 2020 fashion, she had to do so through a screen. Nicole is currently in Australia, according to People, filming her upcoming Hulu limited series, Nine Perfect Strangers. Sadly, that means she couldnt be in Nashville during the 2020 ACM Awards, where Keith served not only as show host but also gave a performance. Still, Nicole found time to watch the show on her laptop. The actor posted a video of herself on social media cheering on Keith from afar, watching her husband's monologue with a smile on her face as he kicked off the event. Wishing I was there, she wrote alongside her post. On the day of the show, Nicole also celebrated her husbands upcoming ACMs performance: The world television premiere of One Too Many, his new duet with pop star Pink. Nicole posted a throwback photo of herself and Keith with Pink, sharing how excited she was for the two artists new collaboration. By Carena Liptak Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. The number of married same-sex households in the U.S. was 568,110 in 2019 up almost 70% since 2014, the year before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, AP notes. The big picture: 58% of the 980,000 same-sex couple households reported in 2019 were married couples. D.C. had the highest concentration of same-sex households (2.4%), followed by Delaware (1.3%), Oregon (1.2%), Massachusetts (1.2%) and Washington state (1.1%), according to the American Community Survey. By the numbers: 48: Average age for respondents in same-sex marriages. 47: Average age for their spouses. 82% identified as white. 13%+ were Hispanic. Almost 7% identified themselves as Black. Almost 4% were Asian. 16%+ of same-sex married households were interracial couples, double the rate for opposite-sex married couples. Go deeper: 850 LGBTQ people are running for office in 2020 Scam ads for debt charities, car insurers and investment firms make looking for money advice on the worlds biggest search engine a risky business. An investigation of Googles pay-per-click service, which allows businesses to pay for prominent spots on search results, found scammers have effectively hijacked searches for financial services to advertise fake and fraudulent websites. Which? found the search results for common saving terms such as top Isa, best bonds and best fixed rate bonds were dominated by dubious ads for investment finder services that encouraged prospective investors to fill in their details. In a bid to discover exactly what happens when the unsuspecting public clicks through, one Which? investigator posing as a novice investor completed a form on a suspicious ad for fixedrates4u.com. They were contacted by someone claiming to be from SGZ Bank Ireland and urged to visit their website sgz-bank.com. While the site appeared legitimate and even included links to the Financial Conduct Authoritys Financial Services Register for SGZ-Bank Ireland PLC, alarm bells rang when the investigator discovered the webpage was only registered a month ago the international bank has been around for decades. Which? contacted their parent company German DZ Bank, who confirmed the SGZ Bank Ireland part of its operations had been closed for years, and that the website was clearly a scam. Shortly afterwards, the rogue website was taken down and a warning appeared on the FCAs register. But others will undoubtedly pop up in its place. One victim recently lost 160,000 after clicking on an ad for an Aviva investment scheme. Despite doing their due diligence to ensure the website was legitimate, they had been speaking with a fraudster who assumed the name of a real Aviva employee. The individual only discovered they had fallen victim to a scam after spotting a warning on the FCAs website. This victim has since been reimbursed under the terms of the authorised push payment scams voluntary code, after their bank decided they had indeed taken numerous steps to try to ensure the contact was legitimate and were not to blame. But if those who carefully do their fair share of due diligence still get defrauded, what hope for those in stressful circumstances? Smash and grab Distressed motorists at the roadside after a traffic accident have also been targeted by click-to-dial ads that lead those looking for their insurers phone number to contact dodgy claims management companies. Consumers are told these firms are working on behalf of their insurer to submit a claim, however their details are passed on to numerous third-party companies and consumers can find themselves owing thousands of pounds for services that would have been covered and paid for by their genuine insurer. Which? found search results for Admiral claims number, NFU phone number and Aviva claims department were topped by adverts for third-party websites referring to themselves with terms such as the official claims line and claims department, in a clear bid to deceive and defraud. Another victim unwittingly fell into the hands of crooks after clicking on the first click-to-dial ad when searching for the phone number of his insurers claims department. After being passed through three or four people on the call, he became suspicious and refused to cooperate. But the problem didnt end when he put the phone down and he has since received hundreds of calls from firms urging him to make bogus personal injury claims. Glaring loophole Which? even found suspicious lead generator ads, when searching for leading debt charities like StepChange, that appeared to mimic genuine adverts from the charity and its official URL. Criminals encourage people to submit personal details that are then sold to insolvency practitioners (IPs). Victims are contacted and pushed to take often unsuitable Individual voluntary agreements (IVAs) a legally binding debt repayment plan. While IVAs can be an appropriate solution to debt issues, they are far from easy wins and shouldnt be entered into lightly. IPs can charge large fees and IVAs may impose restrictions on or bar people from certain jobs. Google has since removed ads for sites such as stepchanging.org.uk, which to be crystal clear is a scam address. Google has announced plans to verify all advertisers on its platform to help tackle fraudulent activity. Working with the FCA, it introduced a verification programme for advertisers promoting financial services and products in July however, the wider programme to verify all advertisers is currently only applied to advertisers registered in Canada, India, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. Under new rules, advertisers promoting financial services or products now have to submit documentation to verify their legal identities and business operations. However, rather than being verified before their adverts go live, these advertisers have 21 days to submit documentation and their ads will remain live during this time which is more than enough opportunity for scammers to rip off victims. Google told Which? this grace period will be removed for some users from September, but did not explain how these users will be identified. The wider verification programme for all advertisers, which will give them a 30-day grace period, will be rolled out in phases, but campaigners have urged Google to introduce clear and transparent labels for ads listed by unverified advertisers so consumers can consider the risk and trustworthiness of an ad before clicking on it. There are also growing calls for the fraudulent content of these sites that lead to scams to be included in the scope of the governments online harms legislation. This would give online platforms more responsibility for harmful content and activity on their sites, and would require tech companies like Google to have in place better controls to prevent fake adverts from appearing and take them down swiftly when identified or reported. Protecting users from ad scams and fraud is a key priority, claimed a Google spokesperson in response to the Which? research. To more effectively prevent predatory financial ads in the UK, we now require certain advertisers promoting financial products or services to complete our business operations verification programme. This will allow us to gain more information about the advertisers identity, business model and relationships with third parties so users can trust the ads theyre seeing. This policy update follows months of engagement with and input from the FCA to ensure were effectively addressing the bad actors responsible for predatory financial ads. But there are still far too many impersonator advertisers slipping through the net, and appearing not just on Google but increasingly on social media platforms too. Stepchange the real one believes that one of the root causes of the problem stems from the patchy regulatory oversight structure in the IVA market, where fees are high and selling incentives poorly aligned to consumers best interests. Advertising regulation is also not currently powerful enough to address these root issues. People are shocked when they realise that predators are out there impersonating legitimate debt charities, determined to make money by cynically exploiting people in vulnerable financial circumstances, says Richard Lane, director of external affairs at the debt charity, who warns that if the website were viewing isnt stepchange.org, the organisation isnt StepChange. Yet, to date, regulators and search engines have failed to put in place robust mechanisms to stop this from happening. It takes time, effort and money to pursue each of these impersonator incidents, and has become a frustrating game of cat and mouse, which is ultimately harmful and damaging to people who are already facing enough difficulty without this additional element. We continue to urge the regulators and those responsible for accepting online advertising, including Google, to go further and do more to clamp down on these offenders more effectively. This is more important than ever at this time, when more people will be looking online for debt help in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesperson for the FCA responded: Many frauds and scams operate outside the FCAs regulatory jurisdiction, and are often facilitated by the ability to advertise on a range of online platforms including Google. The FCA has no power to direct Google or other social media to stop advertising online scams and frauds, nor does any other agency. This is why we strongly believe this should be covered in the Online Harms Bill. While we welcome Googles decision to apply their business operations verification requirement, we believe that there is still much more that they can and should do to protect consumers. We will continue to work with Google to ensure that our concerns are recognised and consumers are better protected from scammers using digital advertising channels. The FCA launched an online advertising campaign on Google earlier this year to alert consumers to the potential scams appearing on the search engine. Google charged the regulator for the ads. If you are unsure about a firm, or simply want to do your own due diligence on a business you have been contacted by, check the FCAs register (register.fca.org.uk) and contact the firm on the details provided to verify that they are dealing with the regulated firm. You should also check its ScamSmart pages (https://www.fca.org.uk/scamsmart). In 2016, 77 percent of the community cast their votes for Hillary Clinton, while 16 percent went for Donald Trump. This time around, if trends hold, Biden stands to secure 70 percent of the vote, with 30 percent going to Trump. As much as 66 percent of Indian Americans favour Vice President Joe Biden as compared to the 28 percent, who favor President Trump, as per a survey released by Indiaspora and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Data. Indiaspora, a nonprofit member organisation of global Indian diaspora leaders, released this joint survey on 15 September, has sent worrying signals to the Democrats that the support of this influential ethnic community can no longer be taken for granted. The survey showed that a majority of Indian-Americans still favour former Biden, the Democratic Party's nominee in the 3 November US presidential election. It found that the 74-year-old US president, seeking re-election, has a part of his foot in the Indian-American vote bank despite the fact that Biden has a strong relationship with the community and played a key role in bilateral ties over the past few decades. Biden, 77, also scripted history last month by selecting Senator Kamala Harris, 55, as his running mate. According to the survey, six percent remain undecided. Notably, in the 2016 presidential election, 77 percent voted for Hillary Clinton, and 16 percent voted for President Trump. If the remaining undecided voters broke in the same pattern as those who have made up their mind, Biden would secure 70 percent of the vote, when compared to 30 percent for Trump. In 2012, as many as 84 percent Indian-Americans voted for Barack Obama. Dr Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside, and founder of AAPI Data who is author of the survey, said that the Indian-Americans support to Trump, in case of a swing of the undecided Indian-Americans, would probably reach the 30 percent mark. Democrats absolutely should be concerned about making sure that they conduct sufficient outreach to the Indian-Americans," Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said. "The Democrats should conduct sufficient outreach to the different groups that comprise Indian-Americans, because every vote is going to count, especially in those battleground states as the survey result indicated, he said. There are a lot of Indian-Americans, for instance in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and North Carolina, among others and they in conjunction with other Asian-Americans could certainly be a part of the tipping factor, he said, asserting that the Indian-Americans would finally come home to the Democratic Party. Seema Nanda, visiting fellow, Harvard Law School Labour and Worklife Programme and former CEO, Democratic National Committee, said: It is a vote (of Indian-Americans) that this research shows, absolutely, cannot be taken for granted. While the support for Biden has dropped as compared to Clinton in 2016, the support for the Republican Party has dropped from 19 percent to 16 percent in these four years. Given the Indian diasporas increasing political importance in the US, its no surprise they are being courted by both sides of the aisle, said MR Rangaswami, founder of Indiaspora. Its great that both major political parties have begun to realise just how critical it is to reach out to Indian-Americans our impact is only going to increase over time, he said. Milan Vaishnav, director, South Asia Programme, at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said: The Trump campaign has made a lot of efforts, frankly, to reach out to Indian-Americans, including putting together a nice video advertisement featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Howdy Modi in Houston last November, showing the camaraderie between the president of the United States and Prime Minister of India. Describing Trump as a polarising factor, Representative Niraj Antani from the Ohio State Assembly said that there are a lot of reasons for this swing of votes. The President's outreach (to the community), (him) going to India and standing with the Prime Minister (Modi in Houston and Ahmedabad). (His) neutrality on issues like Citizenship (Amendment) Act, abrogation of (Article) 370, as opposed to Biden's opposition has polarised the community, Atani said. The swing of Indian-Americans from the Democrats towards Trump for the first time was reported by New York-based Al Mason, co-chair of Trump Victory Indian American Finance Committee. Mason, who conducted a survey in battleground states of Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Texas, said the results show as many as 50 per cent of potential Indian-American voters, the vast majority of whom traditionally have voted for Democrats in past presidential elections, will defect from the Democratic Party and vote for Trump in 2020. This mass defection could add tens of thousands of new Trump voters in key battleground states and could very well end up helping to secure the presidents reelection, Mason said as he challenged the results of the latest survey, asserting that the swing of Indian-Americans towards Trump is much greater than reported by the survey of Indiaspora and AAPI Data. Indian-Americans are positioned to make a difference in several swing states that may be close in this election, such as Florida (87,000), Pennsylvania (61,000), Georgia (57,000), Michigan (45,000) and North Carolina (36,000) and perhaps even Texas which has 160,000 Indian-American voters, said Ramakrishnan. Currently, there are 1.8 million Indian-Americans in the US who are eligible to vote. As per the survey, issues that were at the forefront of the Indian American voters included, education (94 percent), jobs and economy (92 percent), health care (92 percent), and the environment (88 percent). Additional issues of importance included racial discrimination (84 percent), policing reforms (84 percent), national security (84 percent) and immigration (80 percent). US foreign policy in Asia was an issue lower in priority compared to other issues, at 66 percent. The survey results were based on interviews of 260 registered voters regardless of party affiliation who identify as Asian Indian, with an overall margin of sampling error of +/- 6 percent. Now while these numbers are not to be considered definitive, it is an indication of what the Indian-American community feels, which is a community that has become a political factor in US elections given their ability to influence the demographics of different congressional districts and elect Indian American political leaders at the local, state and national levels at numbers. With inputs from PTI Terry Branstad says he will work on behalf of President Donald Trump but not in any official role. Outgoing United States Ambassador to China Terry Branstad says he will help out Republicans campaigning in his native Iowa after returning home next month. Branstad also told Hong Kongs Phoenix TV he considered the phase one trade deal between China and the US as the biggest achievement of his three years in China. Branstad, 73, said he would be working on behalf of President Donald Trump, Senator Joni Ernst and others, but not in any official role. My son is very involved in [Trumps] campaign, and I will be a volunteer to help him, to help Joni Ernst and other friends for the election in Iowa. But I will strictly be a volunteer, Branstad told the station in a report broadcast on Thursday. Ernst, the states junior senator, is locked in a tight race, with Democrats hoping to capture her seat on the way to flipping the Senate. As Iowas governor, Branstad was an early Trump supporter and has served as his top envoy to China during the most tempestuous period in relations since diplomatic ties were established in 1979. Branstad was governor of the major farming state for 22 years over two spans, from 1983 to 1999 and 2011 to 2017. Early in his first term, he met Xi Jinping, now Chinas leader, when the then county-level Communist Party official visited Iowa on a 1985 trade trip. The phase one trade deal reached between the US and China in January amid the continuing tariff war between the sides represented a truce but did not address the more fundamental complaints of the American side. Still, Branstad said he believed it was ultimately in the best interests of both sides to follow-through with it. This was a long and difficult process, Branstad said. They worked long and hard to reach an agreement that I think is fair and reciprocal. And its going to make a difference for both of our countries. Branstad will leave at a time when tensions between the sides are also running high over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the coronavirus pandemic and allegations of spying and technology theft. In July, the US ordered the closure of Chinas consulate in Houston, calling it a center of malign activity. China retaliated by ordering the shuttering of the US consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu. Boris Johnson has been accused of blaming the British people for chaos in the coronavirus testing system after he said a colossal spike in demand was causing delays. At prime ministers questions in the House of Commons, Mr Johnson insisted that the UK was testing more people than any other country in Europe, but urged families to comply with guidance about when to get a test to help the system deal with a huge, huge surge in requests. But Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner challenged his assertion that 240,000 tests are being conducted a day, pointing to leaked documents which suggested at the weekend that the true number of people tested daily was around 62,000. She took a swipe at the PMs top adviser Dominic Cummings as she raised cases of people being told to travel hundreds of miles to get tested, telling MPs: The next time a man with Covid symptoms drives from London to Durham, itll probably be for the nearest Covid test." Ms Rayner was standing in for the first time at PMQs for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who was freed from self-isolation shortly before the Commons clash as one of his children got a negative coronavirus test result. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London. PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty Starmer has said that his child got a test quickly after showing symptoms on Monday only because his wife works in the NHS. And Ms Rayner said she had a message for the PM from a man called Keir: Keir wasnt able to go to work today, and his children couldn't go to school because his family had to wait for their coronavirus test results, despite the prime minister promising results within 24 hours." Responding to Mr Johnsons claim that difficulties in the testing system were caused by a spike in demand, Ms Rayner said: Once again we see that the prime minister says it's somebody else's fault, that it's the public that are using up the tests. And she added: Infections are rising and the testing system is collapsing. When you are the prime minister, you can't keep trying to blame other people for your own incompetence. We have the highest death toll in Europe and we are on course for one of the worst recessions in the developed world. This winter we are staring down the barrel of a second wave with no plan for the looming crisis. Ms Rayner challenged the governments decision to exempt grouse shooting from the rule of six law restricting public gatherings, which she said would be good news for grouse moor owner David Ross, who gave the PM a holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique over the New Year. People can't say goodbye to their loved ones grandparents can't see their grandchildren and frontline staff can't get the tests that they need, said the Labour deputy leader. And what was the top priority for the Covid war cabinet, this weekend? Restoring grouse shooting. Mr Johnson defended the governments record and accused Labour of raising tangential scare stories over the coronavirus effort. We have delivered on the most thoroughgoing testing regime anywhere in Europe and the number of tests, per day conducted has gone up from 210,000 last week to 240,000 this week, he said. Per 1,000 people, this country is testing 2.54, Germany 1.88, Spain 1.91 and France 1.89. In other words, we are delivering exactly what we said we would do. What is happening is that the British people, quite understandably, are responding to that system with a huge, huge surge in demand. And so it's very important that everybody follows the guidance about when they should be getting a test. Mr Johnson said that there had been a colossal spike in requests in the past few days, and insisted that the coronavirus testing programme was being massively accelerated in response. In the last two weeks alone, the capacity of the system had been increased by 10 per cent, with the establishment of four new labs and the target of 500,000 tests a day by the end of October, said the PM. And he said: I don't think anybody is in any doubt that this government is facing some of the most difficult dilemmas that any modern government has had to face. But every day, we are helping to solve them, thanks to the massive common sense of the British people, who are getting on with delivering our programme, getting on with delivering our fight against coronavirus. And its with the common sense of the British people that we will we will succeed and build back better and stronger than ever before. A teenager has been gang-raped by at least 11 men and thrown to her death off a six-floor building in Somali capital Mogadishu. Student Hamdi Mohamed Farah, 19, was raped and thrown from a six-floor building to her death last Friday, according to local media reports. Police say 11 suspects have been arrested and efforts to track and identify other suspects are ongoing. Student Hamdi Mohamed Farah, 19, (pictured) was raped and thrown from a a six-floor building to her death last Friday, according to local media reports The victim was reportedly invited to the location in Mogadishu's Wabari district by a man she thought of as a friend. The group of at least 11 men proceeded to rape her before throwing her off the six-floor building, police allege. According to relatives, Hamdi left home on Friday afternoon. Her family later received a call to say that her body was at the mortuary at Medina Hospital. On Monday, police said they had arrested 11 suspected members of the gang. In a statement, authorities said: 'We have arrested 11 people over the recent rape case in Wabari neighborhood in Mogadishu and efforts to track and identify other suspects are ongoing.' The incident has sparked outrage and protests in Somalia, with Sheikh Bashir Ahmed Salad, chairman of Somalia's religious council, demanding the perpetrators be brought to justice. 'I and other religious leaders are demanding of the government that it should conduct a serious investigation into this rape case Hamdi and her family need justice,' he said during a news conference in the capital. In a tweet, Somali senator Ilyas Ali Hassan said: 'The rising cases of gruesome rape and killing of our young girls and boys is not only unacceptable but shameful. 'These incidents are heinous and are against our Islamic and human rights law.' UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she was 'alarmed' by 'an increase in reports of sexual violence against women, girls and boys with minimal investigation.' The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike. We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve. ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- By the time Hurricane Sally made landfall in Pensacola, Florida, The Salvation Army had already served more than 300,000 meals in Lake Charles and areas affected by Hurricane Laura. Now the organization is once again activating its Emergency Disaster Services to meet the immediate needs of survivors and first responders. "The need to serve the most vulnerable is greater than ever," said Jeff Jellets, Emergency Disaster Services director for The Salvation Army's Southern Territory. "The simultaneous natural disasters across the country are only amplifying the hardships for people reeling from the health and economic crises caused by COVID-19. For those who've lost their homes to natural disasters or eviction, we're committed to providing hope and healing." Disaster Preparedness Overview (September 17) 12 p.m. EDT The Salvation Army's Southern Territory is deploying disaster assistance personnel and equipment to areas effected by Hurricane Sally: An incident management team is deploying to Pensacola, Florida , to coordinate Salvation Army relief efforts in impacted areas of coastal Florida and Alabama . , to coordinate Salvation Army relief efforts in impacted areas of coastal and . Sixteen (16) mobile feeding units (canteens) from Florida , Arkansas , Oklahoma , and Tennessee are mobilizing to serve survivors and first responders , , , and are mobilizing to serve survivors and first responders Each mobile feeding unit can serve 500 to 1,500 meals per da Working with state and local disaster emergency management officials to coordinate response efforts Working in partnership with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief which is sending a field kitchen to the region The Salvation Army also continues to serve those recently impacted by Hurricane Laura: 21 mobile feeding units remain active in Lake Charles, Louisiana , and the surrounding area , and the surrounding area Since Hurricane Laura's landfall, more than 300,000 meals have been served to survivors and first responders For people who may need a listening ear in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, The Salvation Army has launched the Emotional and Spiritual Care Hotline in both English and Spanish. If you need someone to talk with, our trained emotional and spiritual care operators are standing by to take your call at 844-458-HOPE (4673). We are available, and we care. Pick up the phone and call between 9 AM and midnight Eastern Standard Time. A digital media kit with B-roll, photography and social media assets can be found here. With more than 7,600 centers of operation in the U.S., The Salvation Army is uniquely positioned to support survivors of widescale disasters. In addition to disaster relief, The Salvation Army has been providing social services to those impacted by COVID-19. Since the beginning of March, The Salvation Army has provided over 100 million meals to those suffering from food insecurity, emotional and spiritual care to over 813,000 people in need of a caring voice and listening ear, and more than 1.5 million nights of shelter for those without a place to call home. In light of the pandemic, The Salvation Army has evolved service delivery to include extra precautions, such as social distancing at food distribution sites, adapted feeding models, and personal protective equipment requirements. For more information on The Salvation Army's continued response, visit www.salvationarmyusa.org or www.disaster.salvationarmyusa.org. To make a financial gift to support ongoing disaster relief efforts: Donate online: www.salvationarmyusa.org Donate by phone: 1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769) About The Salvation Army The Salvation Army annually helps more than 23 million Americans overcome poverty, addiction and economic hardships through a range of social services. By providing food for the hungry, emergency relief for disaster survivors, rehabilitation for those suffering from drug and alcohol abuse, and clothing and shelter for people in need, The Salvation Army is doing the most good at 7,600 centers of operation around the country. During times of disaster, 100 percent of designated donations to The Salvation Army are used for immediate response and long-term efforts. In the first-ever listing of "America's Favorite Charities" by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Salvation Army ranked as the country's largest privately funded, direct-service nonprofit. For more information, visit salvationarmyusa.org. Follow us on Twitter @SalvationArmyUS and #DoingTheMostGood. SOURCE The Salvation Army Georgia Toffolo has praised the 3.49 concealer beauty fans have hailed 'a dream', and says it's just as good as her 24 Charlotte Tilbury favourite. The reality star, 25, from London, shared an IGTV video sharing her favourite products of the week, including the Catrice Liquid Camouflage High Coverage Concealer, which she compared to Tilbury's Magic Away Liquid Concealer. The product, which has received rave reviews online, is 'highly pigmented, cruelty-free and waterproof' and shoppers have claimed the concealer provides 'high-coverage and a matte finish'. Georgia Toffolo has praised the 3.49 concealer beauty fans have hailed 'a dream', and says it's just as good as her 24 Charlotte Tilbury favourite. She is pictured (L-R) before and after covering a blemish with the product The reality star, 25, London, shared an IGTV video sharing her favourite products of the week,including the including the Catrice Liquid Camouflage High Coverage Concealer, which she is pictured using 'So, so impressed by this little concealer,' said Toff in the video. 'As soon as I tried this product I got all over excited and went and bought the job lot as you do! 'And I was seriously surprised at how all the products really perform at such a low price point, the whole collection is under 12.00 including foundations and big palettes.' The collection starts at 2.29 for an eye pencil, includes foundation for 6.95, while their most expensive product is a set of six face and eye brushes for 15.95. Toff was then seen applying the product and quickly covering a blemish on her cheek while using the concealer as a base for her make-up. The product description claims the 3.49 product is highly pigmented, cruelty-free and waterproof 'As you can see the spot is really covered', she said, 'Its really blendable. It really reminds me of the Charlotte Tilbury concealer that I go through by the shed load.' She went on: 'Its such a better price point, particularly for people like me that have an obsession with using a concealer as your base. I think this one from Catrice is such a good, cheap option! Love it!' The Made in Chelsea star has been open about her skin struggles and battle with adult acne, and in 2018 revealed she would be starting controversial medication Roaccutane to clear up her skin. The product description claims: 'Catrice Liquid Camouflage High Coverage Concealer is a must-have for precise on-the-go coverage - masking blemishes, dark spots and under-eyes circles in a flash. Many shoppers left five star reviews insisting the product 'blends nicely' while providing 'high coverage and a matte finish' Adding that the product: 'Offers optimal coverage without drying out the skin'. And it seems beauty fans have put the concealer to the test, with many leaving five star reviews insisting the product 'blends nicely' while providing 'high coverage and a matte finish'. One wrote: 'Easy application, high coverage, matte finish. For the price, you really can't go wrong. I love it'. Another said: 'Very fully coverage, blends nicely and covers all my blemished and dark circles'. 'Really lovely formula not cakey lasted a while and easy to blend', wrote a third. A fourth gushed: 'Covers my hyperpigmentation like a dream! Wont use anything else.' En conferencia de prensa, la ministra Mazzetti insto a la poblacion a no confiarse ni relajar las medidas sanitarias para prevenir casos de #COVID19. Ademas, dio detalles de los procesos de verificacion que daran inicio a los ensayos clinicos de la vacuna. https://t.co/azbQsHZf50 Netflixs dark and violent thriller The Devil All the Time began streaming this week, which is music to the ears of folks anticipating this star-studded adaptation from director Antonio Campos. Devil began shooting in Alabama in February 2019, filming scenes in locations such as Montevallo, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Helena, Anniston and Riverside. Pine Flat Church in Elmore County is prominently featured on screen, and at least one scene was filmed near a lake at Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham. The film currently holds a 68 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, whose Critics Consensus says, The Devil All the Times descent into darkness can be harrowing to the point of punishment, but its offset by strong work from a stellar cast. Indeed, the talented cast gives it a go. But what about those tricky Southern accents? Donald Ray Pollock, the Ohio native who wrote the book on which the film is based, told AL.com about the accent work you hear. I think the actors did a really good job of sounding like Southern or Midwestern people. It was important that they get that part of it right. I cant really say they were Ohio or West Virginia accents, but theyre south of the Ohio River accents. They could have easily gone overboard with the Southern accents. I think they sounded natural. I asked a friend (a Louisiana native), who just moved from Alabama to work in Ohio, if hed so far heard what sound like Southern accents in the state, which we might forget borders West Virginia and Kentucky. He said, on the whole, most people have what we might consider Northern accents, but there is a subset of folks who bring a little twang, perhaps a result of their tri-state backgrounds. Regardless, what you hear in The Devil All the Time sounds like they went full-on Southern, as best they could. And frankly, they did just fine! Nobody really stunk up the joint, especially impressive because half the cast was born outside the U.S., like Robert Pattinson and the films lead Tom Holland. Im no linguist or dialect expert (like this genius), but as a movie-obsessed Southerner, I know the real thing when I hear it. Below are our rankings of those accents. While some might pull it off better than others, we applaud the all-around effort. Warning: There might be spoilers for The Devil All the Time. 14. Sebastian Stan (Sheriff Lee Bodecker, Sandys older brother), born in Romania Im the law around here, little sister. And that makes all the difference. Ol' Bucky Barnes turns in a nuanced performance as a corrupt sheriff and troubled big brother, but he doesnt really spring for a noticeably regional sound. 13. Jason Clarke (Carl Henderson, Sandys husband), born in Australia Not that youd appreciate it, but tears make for a good photograph. Similarly, Clarke sounds like himself when he goes American in other roles, if a bit gruffer through some phrases like Aint she somethin'? That said, we also learn he has a more Midwestern background anyway. Tom Holland is best known for playing Spider-Man in several Marvel action films. Now he's taken on the role of Arvin Russell, the troubled main character in "The Devil All the Time." As an actor, I always look for a challenge, and what really attracted me to this role was the fact that I would be pushing myself in ways I hadnt before, Holland said in a Netflix press release. Arvin Russell is definitely a character who explores avenues of life Ive never portrayed before, nor experienced in my own life. ... Arvin is a very aggressive, angry person while also being a very caring, loving and calm person.(Glen Wilson/Netflix) 12. Tom Holland (Arvin Russell, Willard and Charlottes son), born in England Anyway, everyone says aint no one doesnt like you, you know that. So chicken livers it is. The London product gets an A-plus for effort, and he hides his real accent particularly well as Parker Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its also hard to buy him as a dangerous drifter, despite his tragic upbringing. 11. Eliza Scanlen (Lenora Laferty, Arvins step-sister), born in Australia Well maybe you should try prayin for em then. Would that hurt none? Poor Scanlen catches big roles in films like this and Little Women, but her characters just cant catch a break. The talented actress delivers a wholly sympathetic performance as a tormented victim trying to do right by her family, doing a fine job with the accent. 10. Mia Wasikowska (Helen Hatton, Lenoras mother), born in Australia Bless me, reverend. Bless me. The Lawless and Crimson Peak star gets surprisingly very little to do as yet another tragic figure in Pollocks tangled web of misery, with just a few minutes of screen time. But talented Australian actress makes do. 9. Harry Melling (Roy Laferty, Lenoras father), born in England Lemme tell you something, friends. Before I found the Holy Ghost, I was scared plumb to death of spiders. Best known for playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films, Melling was most recently seen in the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Netflixs action flick The Old Guard, so its nice to see him pop up in another prestige project going full-on fire and brimstone as a misguided preacher who thinks he can speak directly to God. Over the top? Yes. But sometimes the cuckoo characters call for it. Bill Skarsgard, left, portrays Willard Russell, a tormented war veteran who uses blood sacrifice in an effort to save his dying wife, in "The Devil All the Time." Michael Banks Repeta plays his son, Arvin Russell, during childhood. As an adult, the character is played by Tom Holland.(Glen Wilson/Netflix) 8. Bill Skarsgard (Willard Russell, Arvins father), born in Sweden Now, you pray on what happened today. Now remember, be honest. No bullsh---in'. Hell know. The Swedish actor terrified audiences as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the adaptation of Stephen Kings horror novel It, so we love seeing his range on display. While he doesnt fully nail it, wed put it in the same ballpark as Heath Ledgers mumbling introvert in Brokeback Mountain," and its a character we root for early on. 7. Haley Bennett (Charlotte Russell, Arvins mother and Willards wife), born in Florida Pick me up some sugar? Previously seen in The Girl on the Train, the Florida natives handle on the accent is just right and far too brief! 6. Michael Banks Repeta (9-year-old Arvin Russell) Its a prayer log...But it dont work too good. We just want the best for this poor kid, who suffers too much heartache for a 9-year-old. But young Michael Banks Repeta even outshines some of his adult cast mates. Preston Teagardin, a character in "The Devil All the Time," is a corrupt preacher who stirs up trouble at his new congregation. He's portrayed by Robert Pattinson.(Glen Wilson/Netflix) 5. Robert Pattinson (Reverend Preston Teagardin), born in England But, friends...the pour soul that brung in them chicken livers on that beat-up plate...lets just say Im inspired to preach on it for a minute before we eat. As the sniveling scoundrel of a new preacher, Pattinson makes some interesting vocal choices, going up a few registers that immediately tip us off on this guy being very bad news. A far cry from what weve seen so far from his Batman, Pattinson further illustrates hes a chameleon eager to take deep dives into his characters, no matter how cartoonish. Deluuuusion!! Jason Clarke and Riley Keough portray Carl and Sandy Henderson, a team of roving serial killers, in "The Devil All the Time."(Glen Wilson/Netflix) 4. Riley Keough (Sandy Henderson, Carls wife and Lees younger sister), born in California Carl used to teach at Sunday school! Didnt you, babe? Its no surprise to us that the granddaughter of Elvis Presley would nail a Southern accent. Youve seen the California native in other stories set in the South like Magic Mike and the NASCAR heist flick Logan Lucky, so shes well-versed. 3. David Atkinson (Uncle Earskell), born in Georgia Looks like a dandy cake! Of course, he says this moments before giving Arvin a Luger pistol, which his dad brought home from the war. Earskell says he doesnt have much use for handguns himself. Atkinson grew up in Georgia, so its no wonder he nailed it. Also appeared in other Southern-set shows like Justified and True Blood. 2. Kristin Griffith (Emma), born in Texas I would ask you to get down and thank Jesus with me, but I can smell the liquor on your breath. Easily the most likable character, Griffith instills a warm grace and dead-on accent that makes us feel right at home. And nevermind what that rotten preacher might say, well gobble up this sweet ladys homemade chicken livers without hesitation. 1. Donald Ray Pollock (author, The Narrator), born in Ohio Four hundred or so people lived in Knockemstiff in 1957, nearly all of them connected by blood to one godforsaken calamity or another, be it lust or necessity or just plain ignorance. As Preston Teagardin swished the juice from the chicken livers around in his mouth, he felt the stirrings of a sermon coming on. I mean, is this even fair? For one, I love Campos' choice to let the actual author narrate his own story. Lets hear more of that in movies, please. But Pollock knows his characters and setting so well, its no wonder he gives the film its much-needed authenticity. Where any actor might fall short or go too far on the accents, Pollock brings us all back down to Earth and guides this sordid story rather smoothly. Social isolation. Financial worries. They're two unfortunate realities causing great anxiety for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also may raise the risk of death by suicide. While no definitive data exists yet on suicide rates during the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a study in late June on mental health, substance use and suicidal ideation in U.S. adults. The results showed elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Thirty-one percent of respondents reported symptoms of anxiety or depression and 11% reported having seriously considered suicide in the 30 days prior to the study. The results are concerning given the tie between suicide and mental health conditions such as major depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. About 90% of individuals who die by suicide have either a diagnosed or diagnosable mental health disorder." Dr. Ahmad Hameed, Psychiatrist, Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center Suicide isn't inevitable. It's preventable, and individuals considering suicide want help. "A majority of the time, individuals who survived a serious suicide attempt say they were relieved that they are alive and that someone was there to listen to them and understand what they were going through," Hameed said. Impact of COVID-19 Helping to prevent suicide begins with understanding of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. For people already prone to anxiety, the pandemic's stressors-;health concerns, potential job losses, worries about loved ones, non-stop COVID-19 news reports-;can seem unbearable. A Duke University study published in July revealed that individuals experiencing unemployment, homelessness, debt, bankruptcy or a lower income were 20 times more likely to attempt suicide. While anxiety among adults is high, the risk for suicide crosses across demographics and affects some groups, such as military veterans, more than others. Eighty percent of people who die by suicide are men. In the June CDC study, younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers and unpaid adult caregivers reported disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use and elevated suicidal ideation. And a study published on Sept. 11 showed that primary school students in China experienced more depressive symptoms and made more suicide attempts after schools were closed during the pandemic. Helping people prevent suicide As the U.S. recognizes Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in September, "it's time for loved ones, friends and family members to be really mindful of any potential behaviors they might see in a person with a mental health condition," Hameed said. Look for signs that a person's depression, anxiety or isolation is worsening. Are they more distant? Are they able to care for themselves? Are they experiencing sudden weight loss or weight gain? Are they having trouble sleeping? Do they talk about not wanting to live? Have they made a plan to die by suicide? Has their alcohol or drug use increased? Did they recently buy a gun (more than half of people who die by suicide use a firearm)? Are they getting their affairs in order? People who recognize warning signs can then assist individuals at risk for suicide by following these four steps: Ask if they are struggling with their emotions or considering suicide. if they are struggling with their emotions or considering suicide. Listen to their concerns without judgment. to their concerns without judgment. Validate their feelings. their feelings. Help. Guide them to the right professional resources. Options include bringing a loved one to a psychiatrist, therapist, primary care provider or emergency department. People considering suicide can also speak with a counselor for free 24/7 by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line. Or host a free lifeline chat. In addition, the CDC offers these tips on coping with COVID-19-related stress. "People really do want help," Hameed said. "All we have to do is ensure that the help is readily available." Felshtinsky: So, when you need to catch a suspected spy, all you need to do is to ask him (or her) a question: what does he (or she) think about these events. Photo by Zakhar Leventul / Facebook How to catch a Russian spy? It is actually very easy. Every time Kremlin creates international crisis, a damage control operation starts. Since those crises are usually very serious, Russias FSB and GRU are allowed what is called "to burn agents." Instructions are sent to all spies, agents, assets and sleepers to deal with the critical issue by all available means, even with the risk to open yourself to public and foreign intelligence agencies as a Russian spy. There were several international crises created by Putin recently. Let us name them: Murder of Alexander Litvinenko, November 2006 Invasion of Georgia, August 2008 Invasion of Ukraine, March-April 2014 Russian interference into US presidential elections of 2016 Poisoning of Sergei and Julia Skripal, March 2018 And the latest: poisoning of Alexei Navalny, happening now. So, when you need to catch a suspected spy, all you need to do is to ask him (or her) a question: what does he (or she) think about these events. If the person of interest is a Russian spy, asset or agent, their answers would be along the following lines: There is no proof that Litvinenko was poisoned by Putin. Indeed, Russians would never be so stupid to use radioactive poisoning. This was probably done by Putins enemies to damage Putins image abroad. It is not clear what actually happened in Georgia in 2008. It looks that Georgia started the war against its own republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Russia had no choice but to intervene to save peoples lives. Crimea always belonged to Russia. Russia has the rights to this territory. People of Crimea wanted to be united with Russia, which desire was confirmed by referendum. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has nothing to do with Russia and there is no proof that Russia is involved there. We need Russia there to end this internal Ukrainian conflict peacefully. There is no proof that Russia interfered in US elections of 2016. We do not have any proof that Russia was behind the Skripals poisoning. Novichok is produced by some other countries, not just by Russia. We haven't had any proof yet; we do not know what exactly happened to Navalny. But what if you do not have any suspects? How do you catch a spy in this case? Actually, it is very easy using the Internet. You go on a fishing expedition. You look for those who were giving Russian damage control answers similar to the above. Take, for example, Navalny case and run "Navalny. We have not had any proof yet." And the answer is: Oops Bingo! We have a winner! We caught Putins spy and that is Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America. Yuri Felshtinsky is the co-author of Blowing Up Russia with Alexander Litvinenko And The Age of Assassins with Vladimir Pribylovsky 2020 Higginbotham Honorees "Our 2020 Higginbotham Event highlights our fight for racial justice and celebrates champions for justice. Now more than ever, we are focused on safeguarding voting rights and securing civil rights amid an unprecedented pandemic." - Kristen Clarke, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Hosts 20th Annual Gala to Spotlight Movement for Racial Justice on September 17, 2020 Contact: Don Owens, press@lawyerscommittee.org, 202-934-1880 The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the nations preeminent civil rights organization, will host its 20th annual A. Leon Higginbotham Event on Thursday, September 17, 2020 at 3pm ET. This marquis event highlights the multifaceted work of the Lawyers Committee while shining a light on civil rights champions and corporate leaders. This year, the Lawyers Committee honors David Abney, Executive Chairman of UPS, with the 2020 A. Leon Higginbotham Corporate Leadership Award. The Award Event, now in its 20th year, recognizes corporate leaders who embody exemplary practices in promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace and celebrates civil rights icons. For the past 57 years, we have been on the front-lines in the fight to advance racial justice and equality across the nation, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Our A. Leon Higginbotham Event shines a light on our work to advance racial justice, provides an opportunity to highlight corporations that exemplify best practices with respect to diversity and inclusion, and allows us to lift up champions for racial and social justice. We are proud to recognize UPS for their efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. This year, the Higginbotham Event takes on special significance in helping accelerate our work to protect voting rights, advance racial justice and promote equality for Black people following the tragic killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others. In addition to honoring Mr. Abney, the event will celebrate the significant contributions of several other notable individuals. Nikole Hannah-Jones will receive the organizations Beacon of Justice Award for her Pulitzer-winning The 1619 Project, The New York Times Magazines groundbreaking exploration of the legacy of Black Americans starting with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619. Ms. Hannah-Jones will discuss The 1619 Project and more with Soledad OBrien, award-winning journalist, speaker, author and philanthropist who anchors and produces the Hearst Television political magazine program Matter of Fact with Soledad OBrien. Robert F. Smith, the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, will receive the organizations Robert F. Kennedy Prize. Smith has helped to recruit and support underrepresented students in STEM fields through scholarships, graduate fellowships and program funding, and recently pledged to pay off student loans for graduating seniors at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will be honored for her distinguished leadership in confronting the current health crisis and addressing the stark impact that the pandemic has had on communities of color. Her calm, compassionate and straightforward approach to addressing concerns around racial violence and police brutality have provided a model for other communities that are similarly wrestling with these issues. The Honorable Karen Bass will receive the Legacy of Justice Award. Congressmember Bass was re-elected to her fifth term representing the 37th Congressional District in November 2018. Congressmember Bass holds many leadership roles and also serves as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. She recently led the effort to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the House. Attorney Ben Crump has been serving in the pursuit of justice with a passion for advocacy since the beginning of his career. Crump is being recognized with the Lawyers Committees Trailblazer Award for his tireless dedication to serving and providing legal representation to victims and families impacted by police violence including George Floyd and countless others. Special guests include Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General for the United States and partner in King & Spaldings Special Matters & Government Investigations practice, Ernest Greer, Co-Director, Greenberg & Traurig LLP, and Hill Harper, award-winning actor, best-selling author, philanthropist, youth advocate and the Lawyers Committees long-standing National Spokesperson. Each year, the Higginbotham Awards Gala draws hundreds of lawyers, advocates and leaders from across the nation. This years Gala will be broadcast nationally in partnership with Roland S. Martin's #Unfiltered. The prestigious Higginbotham Corporate Award, named in honor Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., a pioneering civil rights advocate, author and federal appeals court judge, was established in 2000. Past honorees include: Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services; The Home Depot; Ernst & Young LLP; Toyota Motor Sales; DuPont; J.P. Morgan Chase Investment Bank; McDonalds; Aetna Inc.; BellSouth Corporation; Citigroup Inc.; Colgate-Palmolive Company; Fannie Mae; General Electric Company; Microsoft Corporation; The New York Times Company; PepsiCo, Inc.; Qualcomm, Inc.; and Time Warner, Inc. Please click here to register for the event, and click here to support our movement for racial justice. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to activate lawyers in the fight against racial discrimination. Now in its 57th year, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law maintains one of the most comprehensive racial justice programs of any organization in the country. The principal mission of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice for all, particularly in the areas of voting rights, criminal justice, fair housing and community development, economic justice, educational opportunities, and hate crimes. For press inquiries or further information, contact: Don Owens, press@lawyerscommittee.org, 202-934-1880. New sailors are expected to retain a lot of information, from the Sailor's Creed to the complex Navy rank structure and a whole lot more. Fortunately for new recruits, this is exactly the sort of stuff you learn during your eight-week training aboard Naval Station Great Lakes. Of course, there's a lot of other stuff recruits are expected to learn during their tenure at recruit training, so anything you can manage to absorb before your first day of boot camp will give you a significant leg up. With that concept in mind, here are a few things you could benefit from learning before arriving at recruit training to ensure you're set up for success. Make sure to check out our other piece on preparing for Navy Recruit Training here. Read next: History of U.S. Navy uniforms The Sailor's Creed The Navy's Sailor's Creed emphasizes the importance of self-respect, respect for others and the Navy's core values of honor, courage and commitment. As the Navy points out, the Sailor's Creed is a part of the Navy's very culture and often is recited similarly to students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The creed itself was first adopted in 1993, but its roots in the Navy reach back much further than that. Here's the Navy's Sailor's Creed: I am a United States Sailor. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me. I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and those who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world. I proudly serve my country's Navy combat team with Honor, Courage and Commitment. I am committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all. The 11 General Orders of a Sentry You'll be required to know the 11 General Orders during your time at recruit training and regularly will be tasked with reciting them from memory. These orders will help you to understand your responsibilities on post, and it's generally recommended that you commit them to memory before leaving for boot camp. 1. To take charge of this post and all government property in view. 2. To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing. 3. To report all violations of orders I am instructed to enforce. 4. To repeat all calls from posts more distant from the Guardhouse than my own. 5. To quit my post only when properly relieved. 6. To receive, obey and pass on to the sentry who relieves me all orders from the Commanding Officer, Command Duty Officer, Officer of the Deck, and Officers and Petty Officer of the Watch only. 7. To talk to no one except in the line of duty. 8. To give the alarm in case of fire or disorder. 9. To call the Officer of the Deck in any case not covered by instructions. 10. To salute all officers and all colors and standards not cased. 11. To be especially watchful at night, and during the time for challenging, to challenge all persons on or near my post, and to allow no one to pass without proper authority. Navy Tattoo Policy The Navy utilizes four pieces of criteria when assessing whether or not your tattoos are permitted: content, location, size and cosmetic. You'll have to go over these with your recruiter before shipping to recruit training if you're concerned about any of your tattoos. Content: Put simply, the Navy does no permit tattoos that could be seen as obscene, sexually explicit or in any way discriminatory. Likewise, you can't have any tattoos or brands that indicate membership in a gang or extremist groups, or that encourages the use of drugs. Location: Tattoos are not permitted on the head, face, ears or scalp, though one small tattoo (not to exceed one inch) is permitted on the neck or behind the ear. Tattoos on the torso of the body should not be visible in uniform. Size: Size restrictions are only in place on tattoos placed on the neck or behind the ear, which are not to exceed one inch in any direction. There is no limit to the size of tattoos on limbs or your torso. Cosmetic: Cosmetic tattoos meant to correct medical conditions are subject to different rules, as dictated by the medical staff. Your Chain of Command at Recruit Training As a recruit training to serve in the Navy, you may be required to know a number of levels of your chain of command. This information is not only essential for good military order, it's also a crash course in the framework of the Navy's command infrastructure. As a recruit, this is what your chain of command looks like, from the top down: President of the United States Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Secretary of Navy (SECNAV) Chief of naval operations (CNO) Master chief petty officer of the Navy (MCPON) Chief of naval personnel (CNP) CNP fleet master chief petty officer Commander, Naval Education and Training Command (CNETC) NETC force master chief petty officer Commander, Naval Service Training Command (CNSTC) NSTC command master chief petty officer Commanding officer, Recruit Training Command (RTC) Executive officer, Recruit Training Command Military training director (MTD) MTD leading chief petty officer Fleet commander Fleet leading chief petty officer Ship's officer Ship's leading chief petty officer Recruit division commander (three per division) Beginner Drill Etiquette While a good portion of your time at Great Lakes will revolve around practicing drill, you'll be a step ahead of your peers if you arrive with a basic understanding of a few fundamental commands and positions. Attention The position of attention may be the most important one to get right before you arrive for recruit training, and is the most basic of all military positions. Upon receiving the command of "attention," bring the heel of your left foot to the heel of your right and stand straight up. Your feet should remain at a 45-degree angle, chest out, with your thumbs resting on the seams of your trousers. The part new recruits tend to get wrong most often is hand placement. Make sure your thumbs are touching your trouser seems and you're good to go, even if it feels more natural to let your hands sit further forward. Parade Rest When given the command, "parade rest," pick up your left foot and bring it to approximately shoulder width apart from your right and join your hands behind you (right over left). Your palms should be facing away from your body. At Ease When given the command, "at ease," your right foot must remain in place, but you otherwise can relax and move as you wish. Fall In and Fall Out When given the command to fall in, head to your designated place in the formation and stand at attention. When given the command to "fall out," you may break ranks and go about your day. Navy Policy on Earrings and Rings Rings are generally acceptable for both male and female sailors, provided you wear only one per hand (with the exception of a wedding band/engagement ring combination). You can't "double stack" rings or wear large or bright colored rings in uniform. Men are not authorized to wear earrings while in uniform, nor are they permitting in civilian attire any time you're in a duty status or are serving aboard a ship. Basically, you can wear earrings inside your house, but better not any time you're on base or ship. Women are authorized one earring per ear, and when in uniform, the color is dictated by your rank. Officers and CPOs wear gold, while E6s and below should wear silver. Body piercings are not permitted. This information has been updated. Read the original article on Sandboxx. Want to Know More About the Navy? Be sure to get the latest news about the Navy, as well as critical info about how to join and all the benefits of service. Subscribe to Military.com and receive customized updates delivered straight to your inbox. But local leaders of the reentry housing and source of discrimination campaigns say Charlotte should still amend its own ordinance. "Where we do have the political capital, (and) that interest, is here in Charlotte," said Ryan Carter, advocacy and outreach coordinator for Habitat Charlotte, one of the groups championing the source of income proposal. "I don't want to see this get gobbled up in a legislative agenda, then go to Raleigh where it dies some unceremonious death in a committee backlog when we can do it here, now," he said. Council member Braxton Winston said Wednesday he was in favor of amending the Charlotte ordinance to expand protections for people with vouchers and convictions while still working to make statewide changes. "Yes, we know that we need federal and state support to make this have teeth," he said. "But there are things that we can do at the local level to really push this conversation forward." The government will provide about $500 per enrolled child to community-based, local government and school providers to provide free access to 15 hours of kindergarten per week. The government will also provide extra funding for cleaning. "This has been a tough year for all of us - including some of our littlest Victorians. We'll give some extra help to families and childhood services as our kinder kids [get] back on-site and we take careful steps towards COVID normal," Mr Andrews said. Education Minister James Merlino said there would also be additional help for vulnerable children. Mr Merlino said $4 million would be set aside to help with schooling transition by bringing teachers to kindergartens to engage with children starting school in 2021 as school tours for those children would not be possible this year. Mr Merlino also confirmed that primary schools in regional Victoria would be able to receive students from October 5 instead of the originally slated start date of October 12, due to regional Victoria's low numbers. "They will make a decision about whether they have their preps on the Monday or the great six the Monday but the transition will happen in that first week," he said. Mr Merlino said there was no changes to the plans for regional high schools, and no changes from the roadmap plan for metropolitan Melbourne for any schools. Average down but concern at Casey cluster Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer Professor Allen Cheng said a cluster in the Casey local government area - mainly around Hallam and Narre Warren - was of concern for health authorities. Half of today's 28 cases are linked to known clusters, including five from Casey. Loading Professor Cheng said there was a number of different households linked to the Casey cluster. "There's a number of households they are but we are looking into that and trying to find out where everyone has been so we can make sure the transmission chains are controlled," he said. The 14-day average fell below 50 for the first time since the peak of the second surge in cases on Wednesday to 49.6. In its road map to recovery, the state government said restrictions would only start to ease from the end of September in Melbourne if the 14-day average remained between 30 and 50 cases. The state recorded 42 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, but the overall tally of cases only increased by 32 after 10 cases were reclassified due to duplication. Of the new cases reported on Wednesday, 29 were linked to known outbreaks but 13 remain under investigation. The vast majority of Victoria's 143 active cases in healthcare workers are staff from aged care facilities, not hospitals, Professor Cheng said. The 463 active cases linked to aged care facilities, which itself is around 50 per cent of total active cases in the state, includes staff members, That means the overwhelming majority of active cases in aged care are in residents. Professor Cheng was asked why aged care workers were not all required to wear full PPE (such as gowns, shields and gloves) until there was an outbreak in a facility. "I would just make the point that a mask and eye protection is the most important part," he said. "We often encourage people not to wear gloves... when people wear gloves, often they don't do hand hygiene properly, and actually it is one of the most important parts." Health officials have also added three new locations to the list of high-risk COVID-19 exposure sites in Melbourne. Anyone who visited Clifton Hill Mitre 10 last Thursday (September 10), Craigieburn Shopping Centre last Friday (September 11) and KFC at Westgate Port Melbourne last Thursday and Friday (September 10 and September 11) is being urged to monitor for symptoms and get tested immediately if they feel unwell. Business consultation defended The Victorian Premier has batted away questions about his role in consultations with the business sector in the formulation of the state's roadmap out of restrictions. "Those matters have been appropriately delegated to the Minister for jobs and industry recovery," Mr Andrews said. A reporter put it to the Premier that some business owners were told by ministers that the strategy had been locked in before any consultation had happened with the business community. "That's not accurate in any way. There have been detailed consultations [and] we will continue to have consultations, they have informed our decision-making," Mr Andrews said. "For instance, if you look at regional Victoria, I think most restaurant is, publicans, cafe owners didn't expect that there would be able to be 20 patrons inside, they came from feedback as well as detailed public health advice." Mr Andrews has asked anyone who does have a permit to travel into regional Victoria for work to be extra vigilant to follow COVID-19 hygiene practices. "You should be wearing a mask, you should be there doing what you lawfully need to do, and you should be mindful, not just as a function of the rules but just as a function of common sense, if you are from an area where there is much more virus and you are going into an area, lawfully, where there is much less," he said. He did not elaborate on whether people could go shopping or visit cafes or restaurants while in regional areas for work, but yesterday Victoria Police asked regional hospitality operators not to accept bookings or visits from those from metropolitan Melbourne. In regional Victoria, residents can now have visitors to their homes, restaurants and cafes can have seated indoor and outdoor dining, beauty services can reopen and people can gather in groups of 10 outside. Geelong residents were enjoying brunch at cafes for the first time in weeks on Thursday morning. Of his area's new-found freedom, Wharf Shed cafe owner Andrew Clark said: "It tastes fantastic ... "It's a great day for regional Victoria and for the hospitality industry we're open at long last with restrictions," he told the Today show. "We have a limit of 20 per venue and an outside limit of 50, but we're working [with] that. "We really feel for Melbourne people - we just hope they abide by the rules." In an effort to stop Melburnians travelling to regional Victoria, police checkpoints have been beefed-up. Police and Australian Defence Force personnel were stopping every single car and truck at the Nar Nar Goon checkpoint near Pakenham on Melbourne's eastern outskirts on Thursday morning. Melburnians face an almost $5000 fine for trying to travel to the country without a valid reason. Advertisement Burberry kicked off the beginning of this year's London Fashion Week with an impressive outdoor show for an audience of none. Taking place deep in the British countryside, the beautiful models showcased the new Spring/Summer 2021 collection strutting their stuff down a wood clearing. But the impressive display was unable to be witnessed and appreciated by a physical audience due to coronavirus restrictions - which threatened to put the brakes on the much-loved week of designer catwalks. Taking place deep in the British countryside, the beautiful models showcased the new Spring/Summer 2021 collection strutting their stuff down a wood clearing whilst social distancing The latest collection was displayed as the models strutted their stuff in the nature-inspired show, which took place in between ferns and tall pine trees The impressive display was unable to be witnessed and appreciated by a physical audience due to coronavirus restrictions - which threatened to put the brakes on the much-loved week of designer catwalks A photograph was provided by Burberry to capture the 'ambience' of the setting of the runway show which took place in a forest Instead, those keen to catch a glimpse of the show were forced to watch it through a screen via live stream on Instagram and Twitch this afternoon. It is just the latest development and adaptive measure the fashion industry has taken to try and work around the virus restrictions which has meant shows are now open to all as never before. The looks, designed by chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci, ranged from simple white t-shirts and hoodies to elaborate colourful designs with flashes of orange and azure blue. Stilettos were ditched for boldly-coloured thigh high boots, with accessories including clear-framed glasses and black leather sunhats. Models walked the woodland runway in a selection of bright and bold outfits, but maintained a social distance from one another Models strutted through the fantastical woodland, with Leomie Anderson donning a full leather outfit in the catwalk show The looks, designed by chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci, ranged from simple white t-shirts and hoodies to elaborate colourful designs with flashes of orange and azure blue Models donned all-leather outfits and trench coats with added leather and denim panelling gave a daring edge to the wardrobe staples. While walking down the long track, surrounded by looming tall pine tress, the models maintained a safe social distance - in line with government guidelines. The show is one of many to take place this year, despite fears they would be axed amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Instead, fashion houses have been forced to host pared-down versions of their usually grand shows - sometimes taking place without and audience or a smaller crowd. Live catwalk shows were given the green light by The British Fashion Counci (BFC) at the beginning of this month. The BFC said: 'LFW is one of the few international events to still be going ahead in London, proving the industry's resilience, creativity and innovation in difficult times.' Other models wore modern takes on the classic Burberry trench with flashes of denim and the traditional check on show While walking down the long track, surrounded by looming tall pine tress, the models maintained a safe social distance - in line with government guidelines More than 80 designers, including Paul Costelloe and Victoria Beckham, are expected to be showcasing their designs during the week long event, with seven of the shows taking place in front of a condensed live audience. Around 20 of the shows will be an amalgamation of physical and digital, while the other 50 will take place online - like Burberry's display today. The twice-yearly showcase is an integral part of the UK fashion sector, which in 2019 contributed 35 billion to the economy and fashion employed more than 890,000 people before the pandemic. The menswear collection saw all-white outfits with shark and mermaid print detailing and hints of punk-like silver spikes Many of the models wore electric-blue garments featured in Burberry's new Spring/Summer 2021, with white and cream accessories Around 100 million in orders is usually placed during LFW each season from industry buyers shopping for designer stock for high-end department stores, boutiques and fashion websites. Those keen to take in the magic of the event will be able to anyone can access the official LFW hub (london fashionweek.co.uk), which will be hosting exclusive multimedia content, until next Tuesday. Because the scaled-down show format cannot deliver the usual 'wow factor' many, including Victoria Beckham, have created digital films to dazzle, too. Other designers are offering more intimate one-to-one showroom appointments to present to small fashion teams. This all comes in stark contrast to the usual 50 to 100 shows staged over six days during LFW, where designers out-do each other in choosing extraordinary venues, from car parks to gin palaces, and hundreds of bodies cram into a tight space. Protests erupted in several districts of Kerala on Thursday as opposition parties demanded the resignation of state education minister KT Jaleel, who is being questioned in connection with the Kerala gold smuggling case. KT Jaleel had reached Kochi on Thursday morning for questioning by the NIA. Opposition lawmaker from Congress, VT Balaram was injured when the police charged with batons at protesters from both Congress and BJP during a protest in Palakkad. Several protesters had sustained injuries due to police action. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala called the police action as Vijayan-led governments measure to suppress a genuine protest. While speaking to ANI, Chennithala said, NIA questioning KT Jaleel is serious. NIA normally probes terrorism crimes. The #Kerala Education Ministers involved in this gold smuggling case & the public are disgusted with this govt. So the UDF is planning a more vigorous agitation. Several BJP workers protesting at the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram were also dispersed using water cannons, according to a video shared by news agency ANI. The workers in the video were mostly women and were seen protesting standing next to the police barricade. There was widespread commotion as the water cannon fired high speed streams of water. KT Jaleel came in the crosshairs of the opposition party when investigation revealed that the minister had spoken to Swapna Suresh - one of the main accused in the gold smuggling case - several times, according to phone records accessed by the agencies. The gold smuggling case was taken up by police after the customs officials at the Thiruvananthapuram airport seized 30 kg gold from a consignment that came in the name of an official of the UAE consulate. Two senior officials, CMs principal secretary M Sivasankar and CMs IT official Arun Balachandran have been removed by the state government because of their connection with the gold smuggling case. 30 people have been arrested so far for their involvement with the case. (with inputs from Ramesh Babu) While exact details of the deal have not been confirmed publicly, reports say the proposal completely avoids the outright sale of TikTok's US arm. Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images ByteDance, the worlds most valuable start-up, warned on Thursday that its proposal to seal a partnership rather than an outright sale between TikTok US and computing tech giant Oracle (ORCL) will ultimately need approval from both China and US officials. ByteDance, valued at $78bn (61bn), only launched video sharing app TikTok in September 2016 but, outside China, it has already amassed 300 million active users and 1.4 billion total installs to date. TikTok has been downloaded 175 million times in the US alone. On 14 September, Oracle confirmed in a statement that it had won the bid for TikTok US over Microsoft (MSFT) as a trusted technology provider. While exact details of the deal have not been confirmed publicly, a range of media reports say the proposal completely avoids the outright sale of the US arm of the social video platform giant and that ByteDance will keep a majority ownership of TikTok. China's state broadcaster CGTN reported that ByteDance will not sell TikTok's US operations to Oracle and South China Morning Post said that the tech upstart has decided not to sell or transfer the source code behind its popular video app. Reuters also supported these reports that the Oracle deal would not require ByteDance to apply to Chinese authorities for an export license for TikToks algorithm. READ MORE: TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer quits amid Trump ban fallout However, the ByteDance proposal massively conflicts with US president Donald Trumps two executive orders: On 6 August, Trump signed an executive order on giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with ByteDance due to come into effect on 20 September. The second requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by 12 November. Trumps administration, and a number of governments around the world, have voiced concern over TikTok being a data and security risk. But even before Oracle confirmed it will be part of ByteDances proposal, Trump in August gave his blessing for technology company Oracle run by Trump supporter Larry Ellison to enter the running. Company watchers see this as potentially sweetening the ask for Trumps administration to approve the proposal even if it counteracts the US presidents executive order for TikTok US to sell up and divest. China officials would also have to approve the agreement. Earlier this month, China said it would rather see TikTok US close rather than be pushed into a forced sale. A Huntsville man was killed in a head-on collision Saturday in Murfreesboro, Tenn. KeAnte Q. Clemons, 20, died Saturday in a crash that happened about 2:30 a.m., on Interstate 840 westbound near South Lowery Street, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Kathleen Woodie, of Ohio, was driving a Volkswagen Jetta east in the westbound lanes. Her vehicle crashed head-on into a Toyota Camry driven by Clemons. Both drivers were dead on the scene. Clemons, a junior at Middle Tennessee State University, was a member of St. Luke Church and was a 2018 graduate of Columbia High School. His funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Keilah P.B. Church. One person remembering him on social media described Clemons as a special person. Always, always respectful and manner-able. [street noise] matina stevis-gridneff Kalispera. Kalispera. [interposing voices] matina stevis-gridneff There are hundreds, if not thousands, of asylum seekers sleeping rough. Theyve pitched up tents with bamboo and other dried leaves. There are a lot of children here. I can see a tiny, tiny baby, I think no older than three months thats crying. Some of the people here have small backpacks with whatever belongings they were able to rescue. Some are looking at their asylum papers, which are actually probably the most valuable thing they own. [street noise] matina stevis-gridneff And now I think Im entering the segment of this street thats occupied by Afghans. I can see a mom helping her little girl pee and pouring some water on her. And this is really, really grim. megan twohey From The New York Times, Im Megan Twohey. This is The Daily. Today: Thousands of refugees are on the streets in Greece after a massive fire burned down their camp. My colleague, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, on how they ended up there in the first place. Its Thursday, September 17. Matina, tell me about Moria. matina stevis-gridneff Moria is a place in Greece, a vast, sprawling space in the hills of Lesbos, which is a really picturesque island in the Northeastern Aegean. Where over the years, among the olive groves, this sort of slum city of huts and tents and containers has sprung up. Where thousands and thousands of asylum seekers, coming from countries of conflict or abject poverty, or people facing other kinds of persecution in their homelands in the Middle East, in Africa, or elsewhere travel, go through Turkey, get on boats and end up on this island. megan twohey And how exactly did this happen? How did so many people end up in one place? matina stevis-gridneff So in order to answer that question, we need to go back to the summer of 2015 and examine what happened then. That was the height of the so-called European refugee crisis. [music] It was a moment when the Syrian conflict was really flaring up. archived recording 1 Hundreds of thousands of people, fleeing violence and terror in places like Syria and Iraq. archived recording 2 Some have come from other parts of the world and are looking for better economic opportunities in Europe. matina stevis-gridneff People were making their way out of Syria and other parts of the Middle East, and transiting through Turkey to the Greek islands. archived recording 1 And in Greece, desperate people are putting their lives at risk on rubber dinghies. archived recording 2 These people, families have just risked their lives, everything they own, everybody they love, to cross this narrow strait here to arrive here in Greece. archived recording 3 More than 50 bodies of refugees recovered from the sea after failed attempts to get to Europe over the last three days. Once again, the Greek island of Lesbos saw the most of the misery. matina stevis-gridneff There were up to 3, 4,000 people arriving every day on these tiny, tiny islands. megan twohey Right. I remember. There was that photo of the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean. matina stevis-gridneff That photo was so important. It was such a turning point in the development of the early stage of the refugee crisis. Because it caused this moral pressure on richer, northern European countries in particular, Germany to open their doors to these people. And thats exactly what happened. archived recording 1 German Chancellor Angela Merkel says her country will not limit the number of refugees it takes in. Shes calling for other E.U. members to do the same. archived recording 2 Germans gathered at the station to cheer and clap as refugees went through a temporary processing center set up outside. matina stevis-gridneff By 2016, about one million Syrian refugees had left the Greek islands, transited through Europe, and reached safe haven and a new life in Germany. megan twohey And how does Moria fit into these efforts? matina stevis-gridneff At the beginning of the crisis, the authorities thought they had to do something that normally happens when you have a humanitarian disaster of this scale flare up. They thought, we will create some basic facilities on this island, which is the first port of entry for these thousands and thousands of people. And what well do is well try and offer them some basic things like shelter and food. And we will register their asylum applications. And hopefully, the plan was back then, these people will then quickly transit through an asylum system to new homes around Europe. megan twohey And what is the attitude of the Greeks? What is their response to all of these people passing through? matina stevis-gridneff So one of the really heartwarming things about this was seeing Greeks step up and the people of Lesbos just really opening their arms and their hearts to the refugees who were overwhelming their island. Remember, Greece had just been through one of the worst financial crises in modern history. People were poor. They were devastated and exhausted themselves. But still, they offered everything they could. And then, in early 2016, something happens that makes things worse. megan twohey What is that? What happens? matina stevis-gridneff Well, the European Union sees a situation of dozens of thousands of asylum seekers in Greece, just as even more are continuing to arrive on Lesbos. archived recording 1 Well, as the refugees move North through the European Union, theyre enduring terrible conditions and resistance. archived recording 2 Germany has just registered its one millionth refugee. [CROWD CHANTING] And these people want to send them home. archived recording 3 Germany, which had opened its doors, now appears to be closing them. matina stevis-gridneff And Germany, as well as other countries, they dont want to take more people in. So they start to close their borders. And collectively, theyre looking for a way to just lessen the flow of refugees and asylum seekers into Europe. And what they do is they strike a deal with a country that these people are arriving through, which is Turkey. archived recording Its a deal that will affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of stranded refugees and migrants, a game changer in a crisis thats shaken the very foundations of the European Union. matina stevis-gridneff This deal is struck in April 2016. And archived recording 1 Under the plan, starting at midnight on Sunday, all migrants who reach Greece will be sent back to Turkey if their asylum claim is rejected. archived recording 2 In return, Turkey gets political and financial rewards. matina stevis-gridneff Basically, what it is is that Europe hands a few billion dollars to Turkey to help them fund facilities and services for the more than three million refugees theyre hosting, to stay there instead of coming to Greece and moving on into Europe. And Turkey starts to slow down this flow of migrants into Greece. But it doesnt entirely stop. People still do cross over to Greece and end up in Moria. So theyre just stuck. And by the beginning of 2020, it already looks like something is going to go terribly wrong. archived recording President Erdogan says the E.U.s aid has been slow to come. But Angela Merkel says more than three billion euros have been paid out. And she expects Erdogan to uphold the deal. matina stevis-gridneff Tensions between Greece and Turkey and the European Union and Turkey begin rising. And Turkey, at the very end of February 2020, says weve had enough. Were opening our borders. If youre a refugee, if youre a migrant, please go to Europe. Our doors are wide open. megan twohey Wow. matina stevis-gridneff And not only that, but it actually helps people get to the border with Greece. It buses thousands of people from Istanbul and other parts of the country into Greece. And the people on Lesbos are looking at this situation unfolding. And theyre thinking, Turkey is going to start releasing boats full of more asylum seekers who will come here. And our island is already overwhelmed. By the time I visited Lesbos in March this year, the camp had swelled to more than 20,000 people. megan twohey And how are things for the migrants in the camp? I mean, that sounds like an absolutely chaotic, difficult combination of forces that these migrants are dealing with on the island. matina stevis-gridneff Well, of course, theyre extremely frustrated and living in these squalid conditions. But they dont realize its actually about to get worse. Because Covid hits. The first case of Covid-19 is detected in Moria. And in response, the Greek authorities put the whole camp on lockdown. And that sets off a lot of anger and a lot of fear in an already really tense environment. And then it all comes to a head. A small group of migrants set fire to the camp. And everything burns to the ground. megan twohey Well be right back. archived recording 1 [SIRENS BLARING] archived recording 2 [COMMOTION] archived recording 3 What is the situation in Lesbos tonight? archived recording 4 Its very, very, very, very, very, very difficult. They see the smoke. The situation is very bad. archived recording 5 A massive fire has almost completely destroyed Greeces largest refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. archived recording 6 [FLAMES BLAZING] megan twohey Matina, what happened with this fire? matina stevis-gridneff It was scenes of complete chaos. archived recording 1 The fire start to come on this side. Look, even on the floor. There is little fire. Ah! Ah! Come back! archived recording 2 [PEOPLE YELLING] archived recording 3 Come back! Come back! matina stevis-gridneff Of course, flames engulfing this really combustible set of materials you know, you have tarpaulin, gas canisters at nearly every tent used for cooking and sometimes heating. And these thousands of people just grabbing everything they could and running out of the camp. And it went on for two nights as the first big blaze on the first night burned down the majority of the camp, and then additional fires the second night finished it. archived recording My house is finished. House fire is many all finished. [FLAMES BLAZING] megan twohey And what caused this fire? matina stevis-gridneff Based on testimonies, both from Greek officials but also other asylum seekers and aid workers, what happened was that a small group of irate, angry asylum seekers who were being asked to quarantine themselves because members of their family had tested positive for Covid, they started rioting. And according to these witnesses, this is how the fire started. megan twohey And why would this group of migrants set fire to their own camp? matina stevis-gridneff People were just extremely upset. Not only about the overall poor conditions of the camp, but because they felt that Covid was being used to hurt them even more. The authorities had tried to prepare some plans for a Covid response at the camp. But at the end, not much seemed to really be there. So when the outbreak started growing in the camp, and 35 people were tested positive for Covid, and many more people were told they have to quarantine, not in an isolation clinics, but in some container, people were very angry. And so after the fire has decimated Moria, I go to Lesbos to see whats happened. [crowd commotion] matina stevis-gridneff So weve just arrived at one of the spots where asylum seekers who have been displaced by this fire have gathered. Theyre being blocked by the riot police from going further into town. There are people coughing. There are people who have clearly slept here for the last three nights and are just waiting to see where theyre going to go next. matina stevis-gridneff And it was just thousands and thousands of people on the street. I remember quite immediately seeing a mother with a very small baby on the street. They had put down a few blankets that they were using as mattresses. And thats where they had spent the night before. And thats where they were going to spend the night after. matina stevis-gridneff And others are trying to clean their tiny piece of street that theyre sleeping on with makeshift brooms. crowd commotion matina stevis-gridneff Yes. car honking matina stevis-gridneff So a woman on a scooter just drove past and screamed, filthy dogs at the asylum seekers. How are you? speaker Im fine, thank you. matina stevis-gridneff Youre OK? Whats your name? speaker My name is [INAUDIBLE]. matina stevis-gridneff What was the last name? speaker [INAUDIBLE]. matina stevis-gridneff And I stopped in front of one family. It was a dad, actually, with his little girl and speaker One baby, 13 months. matina stevis-gridneff Uh huh. Its a tiny little girl whos walking very well. speaker Thank you. matina stevis-gridneff Well done. Oh, youre beautiful. speaker Thank you. matina stevis-gridneff I love her shoes. Very nice shoes. matina stevis-gridneff And he said to me, when the fire started I just grabbed her and took my wife and we just ran. matina stevis-gridneff I see. And you just ran? speaker Yes, yes. Running fast, baby, my wife, running in the outside, away from area. matina stevis-gridneff And what do you think will happen now? matina stevis-gridneff And within 10 minutes, our tent was burned. The fire was everywhere. speaker We want just freedom. matina stevis-gridneff Where do you want to go? speaker I dont want a new camp. I dont want Moria now. matina stevis-gridneff You dont want speaker I just want freedom. matina stevis-gridneff And at that point, this family, with some of their relatives and other people they knew, they had been sleeping on that road for four nights. But he tells me that hes been in Moria for a year. And hed actually rather stay on the streets. crowd talking and children screaming matina stevis-gridneff Good luck. speaker Thank you. matina stevis-gridneff Thanks for talking to me. speaker Glad to meet you. matina stevis-gridneff And you. speaker Goodbye. matina stevis-gridneff Take care. megan twohey What does that mean when he says he wants to sleep on the street? Why would he want that? matina stevis-gridneff The Greek authorities had been feverishly putting together a temporary tented shelter for these people so they wouldnt have to sleep on the street. But people were so suspicious, so angry, so traumatized by living in Moria and by the fire that they just didnt want to go to the new camp. This man told me, I am not going to this new camp. And this was something I heard over and over again. speaker From Turkey? iram Yeah. speaker And your English is not bad, huh? matina stevis-gridneff Very good English. interposing voices matina stevis-gridneff Whats your name? iram My name is Iram (ph). speaker Iram? matina stevis-gridneff Iram. iram Yeah. matina stevis-gridneff I remember this 13-year-old girl matina stevis-gridneff Ayyubi? (ph) iram Yeah. matina stevis-gridneff who was carrying her little brother. And then she was actually very upbeat and quite enthusiastic. matina stevis-gridneff He is very, very cute. You look similar. iram Not cute. matina stevis-gridneff Very cute. So how long have you been on the island? iram The Lesbos? matina stevis-gridneff Yes. iram The Lesbos is nine months. matina stevis-gridneff OK. Nine months. And were you with your family when the fire started? iram Yeah. When the fire starts, we come to here. matina stevis-gridneff I heard that they are making new tents for you. Do you want to go there? iram No, no, no. The tent is not good. I want to go to [INAUDIBLE] and the Germany and the France. matina stevis-gridneff But until you go there, should you not have somewhere to sleep where youre covered and safe? iram No problem. matina stevis-gridneff And she said to me, listen. I dont want to go to this new camp. I dont want to go to this place that the Greek government is building. iram I dont like the tents. We dont. We dont we dont go to the tents. matina stevis-gridneff You dont iram The tent is the problem. matina stevis-gridneff And Moria, you did not like living there? iram No, no, no. I dont like. I dont like living here. Because here is where problem is. And you understand? Its not good. Its very problem here. matina stevis-gridneff I understand. Im sorry. Thank you very much. Good luck. megan twohey So these refugees are desperate not to end up back in a camp. And so how is this resolved and who resolves it? matina stevis-gridneff Its not resolved, Megan. Its not resolved. The only positive news has been that 400 unaccompanied minor refugees, children that had arrived in Greece on their own and had been living in Moria on their own without parents or other family, they have been taken to other European Union countries where, hopefully, theyll start a life. And Germany stepped up and said they would relocate 1,500 people. That leaves around 10,000 people still in need of resettling. But whats also been clear, as a message from the Greek authorities, is that theyre also not in a rush to get people off Lesbos, which is what both the locals and the migrants themselves are demanding. The reason for that is they dont want to send a message that, if a refugee camp burns down, then you get to be relocated to Germany or another country. So there is clearly an element of management and some say punishment in this pace at which people are being resettled. megan twohey And Matina, youve covered the refugee crisis and Moria since 2015. I mean, seeing what its come to now, what do you think happens next? Well, part of me thinks that, if in 2015 and 2016 Europe was able to deal with more than one million refugees arriving, then surely it can humanely handle 10,000 people. This isnt the same kind of crisis. But the cynical side of me wonders if this new tented camp on Lesbos will just become another purgatory. Theres this Greek proverb that goes a bit like this: It says, there is nothing more permanent than whats temporary. And I think of that when I think of Moria. mahbube You can get selfie here? matina stevis-gridneff Ah, yes. How are you? You speak some English? mahbube Yes. matina stevis-gridneff Oh, very good. Whats your name? mahbube Mahbube (ph). matina stevis-gridneff Mahbube. Whats your family name? mahbube Afzali (ph). matina stevis-gridneff Afzali. How old are you? Youre very young? [yelling in background] mahbube 15. matina stevis-gridneff 15. And youre from Afghanistan? mahbube Yes. And you? matina stevis-gridneff Im from Greece, actually. mahbube Greece. matina stevis-gridneff Yes. matina stevis-gridneff I interviewed this really dynamic 15-year-old girl. And she was full of energy. matina stevis-gridneff How many months have you been on the island? mahbube 10 months. matina stevis-gridneff 10 months? mahbube Yeah. matina stevis-gridneff OK. matina stevis-gridneff She said shed been on Lesbos for 10 months. She came from Afghanistan. mahbube And we are coming in here because we want a future. And we are waiting because Moria, its building again. matina stevis-gridneff You dont want to go back to Moria? mahbube No, I dont want. matina stevis-gridneff And what about the new tents that theyre making, do you want to go there? mahbube No, I dont want anymore. matina stevis-gridneff She said she wanted to go to Germany to have a future, to build a life. mahbube I want to go to Germany, French. Like, country I can make a future. I want to go. And I think Greece not lot like me. matina stevis-gridneff But what struck me was that even someone this young, who clearly had so much hope for the future, in that moment in time, she was beginning to give up on that hope. mahbube And coming in here, but I think now, I wish had not come. matina stevis-gridneff You wish you had not come to Greece? mahbube Yeah. matina stevis-gridneff You wish you were back in Afghanistan? mahbube Yeah. matina stevis-gridneff She felt that after living in Moria for 10 months without school, after this fire, after everything that had happened to her, she just wasnt sure it had been worth leaving Afghanistan in the first place. Good luck. Thanks for talking to me. mahbube Thank you. matina stevis-gridneff I think I feel two things about the situation I witnessed. The one is that theres just so much human energy and potential among these people that no country will accept. And theyre stuck in some of the worst conditions. And the other thought was that precisely because no country will accept them, Moria, which was supposed to be this transitory place, will never really be a transitory place. Theres always going to be these places where hopes end rather than begin. megan twohey Well, thank you so much, Matina. matina stevis-gridneff Thanks for having me. megan twohey Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today. archived recording (dr. robert r. redfield) Today, and even after we have a vaccine, C.D.C. encourages all Americans to embrace the powerful tools that we have right now, to wear a mask, particularly when theyre in public. megan twohey During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, the Director of the C.D.C., Robert Redfield, told lawmakers that wearing masks is the single best way to slow and potentially even stop the spread of the coronavirus. archived recording (dr. robert r. redfield) I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine. Because the immunogenicity may be 70 percent. And if I dont get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will. megan twohey Redfield also said that a vaccine could be available for limited use by the end of the year and for wider distribution by the middle of 2021. This contradicted what President Trump said the day before during an ABC town hall event, when he claimed a vaccine could be ready in three to four weeks. And archived recording [RAINS AND WINDS BLOWING] megan twohey A U-Haul moving truck parked in a suburban neighborhood in San Ramon, California. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Moving-truck rates from California are wildly expensive thanks to high demand, according to Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan-Flint, and Jalopnik. Business Insider reviewed U-Haul and Budget Truck Rental rates to and from California and found a huge increase in price to leave the state over the same time frame. U-Haul and Budget moving-truck rental rates were between two and five times as expensive to leave California than to move into it, Business Insider found. Perry wasnt so quick to blame the demand on the COVID-19 pandemic or the recent wildfires, however. He said California has historically been a top outbound state. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. An easy way to determine who's moving where is to look up moving-truck rates to and from cities. And the moving-truck rates from California cities well, they're high. Certainly higher than rates from other cities to California. The trend was first pointed out by Mark J. Perry, a professor of finance and business economics at the University of Michigan-Flint, who tweeted: "Leaving California is getting expensive due to high demand and a shortage of available trucks. Moving to California is getting really cheap due to low demand and a surplus of available trucks." Not long after, Jalopnik reported similarly, where an apparent increase in demand is causing moving-truck rates out of California to spike. Perry said higher outbound prices from California are a long-term trend that's "not necessarily related" to the COVID-19 pandemic or wildfires, but Business Insider took a look at rental-truck rates for ourselves. Here's what we found. With a September 30 departure date, U-Haul moving truck rates from Austin, Texas, to Los Angeles, California, ranged from $711 for a 10-foot truck to $935 for a 26-foot truck. Story continues U-Haul moving truck rentals. Screenshot via U-Haul Rates on the reverse route, Los Angeles to Austin, over the same period of time ranged from $1,883 for the same 10-foot truck to $3,964 for the 26-foot truck. These prices amounted to between a two- and fourfold difference from the other way around. U-Haul moving truck rentals. Screenshot via U-Haul Over at Budget Truck Rental, it was the same story. Also on a September 30 departure date, rates from Austin to San Francisco, California, ranged from $459 for a 12-foot truck to $976.50 for a 26-foot truck. Budget Truck Rental to California. Screenshot via Budget Truck Rental Rates from San Francisco to Austin increased to $2,154.60 for the 12-foot truck and $5,420.70 for the 26-foot truck. These prices amounted to about a whopping fivefold difference from the opposite trip. Budget Truck Rental from California. Screenshot via Budget Truck Rental It should be noted that one-way rentals are historically more expensive than round-trip ones. But a U-Haul spokesperson told Jalopnik that "it is reasonable to conclude there is far greater demand for one-way equipment in the market reflecting higher costs for departures." Business Insider has reached out to U-Haul and Budget, asking for additional data that would suggest a spike in demand, how long they predict this demand will last, and elaboration on how rental rates are determined. This story will be updated if they respond. It's not clear if the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown measures, and the biggest wildfire in California's history are causing the spike, but Perry wasn't so quick to pin the blame on current events. Perry told Business Insider in an email that the rates leaving California have been much higher than the rates into California for many years, and that state-to-state migration patterns indicate California has been the among the top outbound states "for at least several years." This is consistent with U-Haul truck rates, Perry said. In a November 2019 blog post for the American Enterprise Institute, Perry wrote that California was the fourth-ranked top outbound state. "So, this is a long-term trend that's not necessarily related to COVID or wildfires," Perry told Business Insider. "It reflects a trend of companies and households leaving CA for states like Texas, Arizona and Nevada for lower taxes, lower housing costs, lower energy costs and more business-friendly environments." "As companies leave CA and job opportunities fall, households leave for better job prospects in other states. So, I think businesses leaving CA is what drives households leaving, and many rent U-Haul trucks to relocate." Read the original article on Business Insider Charges filed against 15 for their alleged role in February violence as activists accuse police of targeting minorities. Indian police have filed charges against 15 people over Hindu-Muslim riots in the capital, a spokesman said on Thursday, prompting criticism from rights groups that authorities were targeting the opposition and minority Muslims. Februarys violence killed more than 50 people and drove thousands from their homes, most of them members of the Muslim minority, which forms about 15 percent of the countrys roughly 1.3 billion population. The riots followed months of protests against a new citizenship law that critics say discriminates against Muslims. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed last December, fast-tracks nationality for minorities from three neighbouring countries but excludes Muslims. The charges were filed in a court in eastern New Delhi, said police spokesman Anil Mittal, adding that the evidence against the accused runs to more than 17,000 pages. Mittal did not identify those charged, but domestic media have named former members of two opposition parties and academics at one of the main protest sites, the Muslim-dominated university of Jamia Millia Islamia. Arbitrary arrests By arbitrarily arresting outspoken activists, the government is not only attempting to silence dissent but also sending a message to supporters that they have free rein to commit abuses against minority communities, said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. Prashant Bhushan, a Supreme Court lawyer and vocal government critic, said the charge-sheet was farcical. Broadcaster NDTV called the investigation a whitewash, adding that several members of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party made incendiary speeches hours before Februarys riots but had escaped censure. Amnesty International India in its report published last month accused Delhi police of complicity and bias in the February violence. The government and Delhi police have defended their handling of the case, saying those involved in the riots will be punished regardless of political or religious ties. This latest move follows the arrest of a former student leader who was arrested on Sunday for his alleged role in the February violence, a move denounced by activists as a witch-hunt exercise. Umar Khalid, 33, was arrested under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the riots. Legal experts have questioned the polices application of the UAPA on students and activists, as the law reduces the scope for bail, meaning jail terms without trial. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:03:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visits the home of a descendant of the protagonist of a revolutionary story, in the village of Shazhou, Rucheng County, central China's Hunan Province, Sept. 16, 2020. The revolutionary story features an impoverished villager named Xu Jiexiu, who offered shelter to three female Red Army soldiers during the Long March in the 1930s. Upon the soldiers' departure, they cut their only quilt into two pieces, leaving one part with Xu to show their care. Xi on Wednesday inspected Hunan Province. (Xinhua/Li Xueren) CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, stressed CPC's people-oriented attribute during an inspection tour in central China's Hunan Province Wednesday. Xi made the remarks while visiting the home of a descendant of the protagonist of a revolutionary story, in the village of Shazhou, Chenzhou City. The revolutionary story features an impoverished villager named Xu Jiexiu, who offered shelter to three female Red Army soldiers during the Long March in the 1930s. Upon the soldiers' departure, they cut their only quilt into two pieces, leaving one part with Xu to show their care. The descendant told Xi that his family has shaken off poverty and their life has been improved a lot. Xi said that the changes illustrate the people-oriented nature of the CPC and the Party delivers on its promises. Enditem By Gabriela Baczynska and Guy Faulconbridge BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - The head of the European Commission said on Wednesday the chances of reaching a trade deal with Britain were fading by the day as the British government pushes ahead with moves that would breach their divorce treaty. The British government announced draft legislation last week which it acknowledges would violate its international legal obligations and undercut parts of the divorce deal it signed before Britain formally left the European Union in January. Brussels wants Prime Minister Boris Johnson to scrap ... Cover Story The preschool culture in India is undergoing a massive transformation as parents increasingly discern the importance of cognitive, social and emotional development of their children during their early childhood. The custom of parents sending their child to the nearest preschool or the most popular pre-school in the vicinity has become a thing of the past, thanks to the timely, revolutionary interventions of insightful Edupreneurs like Prajodh Rajan, who is the Co-Founder & Group CEO of EuroKids International. Under the aegis of Prajodh, EuroKids, which started with just two preschools in 2001, has now grown as a wide network, comprising 1200+ preschools and over 30 K12 schools across multiple brands EuroKids, EuroSchool, Kangaroo Kids, Billabong High & EuroVarsity in 350+ cities. In... Hasidic pilgrims at Ukraine border refuse to return despite Israel plea Crowds of believers began building up on the closed Ukraine border and pilgrims were still refusing to leave Around 1,000 Hasidic Jews were massed on Ukraine's border Thursday, with some vowing to stay, even though Kiev refused their entry citing coronavirus restrictions and Israel urged them to return. Tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews travel to the central Ukrainian city of Uman every Jewish New Year -- which falls on September 18-20 this year -- to visit the tomb of Rabbi Nahman, the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement. The mainly American, French and Israeli believers departed for Uman this year even though both the Ukrainian and Israeli governments last month urged them not to travel because of the pandemic. Kiev has closed its borders for most of the month of September but the pilgrims attempted to bypass the restrictions by travelling through Belarus. Speaking to AFP from the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, one of ultra-Orthodox pilgrims, Itsik Cohen, said the believers were hoping for divine intervention. "I'm waiting and praying that they open the borders, so we can have the privilege of being with our Rabbi, God willing," said Cohen, an Israeli Breslov Hassid from Jerusalem. "We believe in God, and if God wants it this way, we need to do anything we can to show our determination, to the very last minute." Ukrainian authorities said the situation had not changed since Monday when crowds of believers began building up on the closed Ukraine border and pilgrims were still refusing to leave. A video released by Ukraine's border guards on Thursday showed tents and sleeping bags on the roadside along with piles of garbage. "They are dancing, they are singing, they are praying," the spokesman for the Ukrainian border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, told AFP. He said that some 1,000 pilgrims had reached the no-man's land at several border crossings, while the total number of believers in Belarus hoping to cross was closer to 2,000. Ultra-Orthodox members of the Israeli coalition had pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enable the tradition, despite the objection of health officials who feared the crowded mass event would increase contagion. Story continues - Call to return home - But an Israeli minister indicated Thursday that efforts to enable ultra-Orthodox believers' access to Uman had failed. "Ukraine announced it wouldn't allow entry via border crossings or any form of small delegation," Higher Education and Water Minister Zeev Elkin, who is Ukrainian-born, said on Twitter. "I call on our citizens to return to Israel and uphold the quarantine instructions upon their arrival." Moshe Garcin, a 44-year-old pilgrim who arrived in Uman days before Ukraine closed its borders, told AFP that "it's not for them (Israel government) to say this". And pilgrim Cohen dismissed the Israeli minister's call. "Elkin doesn't determine the reality, there's a God in the world," he said. Both Ukraine and Israel are keen to avoid a spike in coronavirus infections, with Kiev closing the borders to foreigners until late September. Israel is set to be the first developed country to enforce a second nationwide shutdown, to begin on Friday afternoon. The Belarus border guard service said 1,216 people had attempted to cross since Monday, including 337 children. The pilgrims' standoff on the border has led to diplomatic tensions between Ukraine and Belarus. Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday accused Belarus of giving them false hope of entering despite the restrictions by spreading "rumours" that the Ukrainian border may still be open to foreigners. Minsk has called on Kiev to open dialogue with the pilgrims and show respect for their rights. "The Red Cross came and gave us water, hot water and cold water and tea, and provided medical care to whoever needed it," pilgrim Cohen said. Meanwhile, up to 3,000 Hasidic Jews have arrived in Uman for the celebrations, local police said. Law enforcement has tightened security near Rabbi Nachman's tomb where pilgrims have congregated. Ukraine has reported more than 166,000 cases of coronavirus and 3,400 fatalities. On Thursday, Ukraine reported a new daily record of 3,584 coronavirus infections. jjm-osh/jbr/gd No easing GST rate, automakers should cut royalty payments: FinMin sources Finance ministry sources have indicated that there may not be any cut in the goods and services tax (GST) rates on automobiles despite a demand to this effect by the Covid-19 hit sector. The sources said the rates payable by auto firms under the new indirect tax system are lower than those under the old regime of excise duty and value added tax. They have, instead asked the industry to be more efficient by reducing costs and royalty payments to their parents abroad. Read More... SC rejects SBI plea to vacate ... Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China have reopened the talks for a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, putting an end to the stalemate caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Under the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, especially the Philippines as the Coordinator of China-ASEAN Dialogue Relations and co-chair of the COC consultations, we have resumed the working group meeting on COC through an on-line video conference on September 3, the Chinese Embassy in Manila announced in a statement on Thursday. It said both sides are trying to make up for the time lost after meetings were disrupted by restrictions imposed by countries to arrest the spread of the coronavirus disease. The novel coronavirus has now infected millions worldwide after it was discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The Code of Conduct was among the issues discussed in the virtual ASEAN-China Ministerial Meeting led by Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Teddy Boy Locsin, Jr. and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Locsin said he pushed for progress in the Code of Conduct, which will determine the only allowable actions countries can take in contested areas of the South China Sea. The first reading of the single draft negotiating text was done last year and the second reading has also begun, Locsin said. He committed to start with the third reading before turning over the coordinatorship to Myanmar in 2021. 'Resist interference to push talks forward' China welcomed Locsins statement but took a swipe at a certain country outside the region for interfering in the negotiations and in the maritime dispute. While it did not mention the United States, Chinese officials have previously accused the US of stirring up trouble between ASEAN states and China. Beijing insists on owning almost the entire South China Sea, including areas that are part of Manila's exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea. Other ASEAN countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei also claim parts of the resource-rich waters. The US conducts freedom of navigation operations and rejects China's "unlawful" claim to the global waterway. In a separate video conference last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the 10-member ASEAN to stand up against Beijings aggressive actions and cease doing business with Chinese companies that Washington had blacklisted for involvement in illegal activities in the South China Sea. China criticized the move of the United States and thanked the Philippines for not following through with the sanctions. How to resist the interference is crucial for pushing forward the future consultations of COC, the Chinese Embassy said. China is sincere in its attitude and firm in resolve, it added, noting that it was Chinese Premier Li Keqiang who proposed the three-year timeline to come up with a code by 2021 which was later adopted by the ASEAN. Locsin pushes for COC approved by 'rest of the world' China expressed confidence that the code will be completed at the earliest possible time to ensure peace and stability in the region. In a tweet responding to this statement from China, Locsin said, China has my word on that and it will be a COC with which the rest of the world will be totally comfortable, friends and enemies alike. ASEAN has been pushing for a legally binding Code of Conduct for decades but critics have pointed out that progress has been slow due to resistance from Beijing. In September 2019, Locsin announced that a draft has been reached after Beijing "softened its insistence on controversial provisions" which earlier delayed the passage of the accord. China rejects the Philippines' arbitration win wherein an international tribunal in The Hague recognized Manilas sovereign rights in areas within its exclusive economic zone that Beijing contests. However, both sides said they agree to disagree on the landmark decision to pursue cooperation. Many Nigerians have kicked against the creation of Proceeds of Crime Recovery and Management Agency, thus calling for the vitalisation of the existing Anti-Corruption agencies. The country has two anti-graft agencies: the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), both established in 2000 and 2003 respectively. The Federal Executive Council, on Wednesday, announced that it has sent a bill for the creation of the new agency to the National Assembly. The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said the agency is expected to manage all recovered assets across the country. The Office of the Attorney General and the Federal Ministry of Justice presented a council memo today. The council memo is about a bill which sought the approval of the council to transmit to the National Assembly for passage a bill on the management of recovered assets. It is a Proceeds of Crime Recovery and Management Agency Bill. It is in essence, a bill that is targeted and intended to have in place, a legal and institutional framework. Mr Malami explained that the new agency would help coordinate the management of recovered assets, unlike the current situation, where such assets are managed by multiple agencies. What happened before now was that the proceeds of crime were scattered all over and mostly in the hands of different and multiple agencies of government inclusive of the Police, the Directorate of State Services, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, including the Ministry of Justice. Reactions While some accused Mr Malami of being interested in usurping the management of the proceeds from corruption, others called for the strengthening of the ICPC and EFCC. In 2019, Mr Malami asked the National Assembly to approve a commission of 2.5 per cent of recovered loots to be paid to the Asset Recovery Unit in his office. The money, according to him, while defending his ministrys budget for 2020 in the National Assembly, will be used to service bills. Recall that the suspended acting chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, accused the Attorney-General of working with the commission in the disposal of vessels involved in illegal activities to the extent of sabotaging the country to the tune of N283 million in recovered assets. Also, some persons questioned the sincerity of the anti-Corruption fight under the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, and raised concerns about the duplicity of agencies and its effect on the cost of governance. Mr Buhari had, in 2019, vowed to cut down the cost of governance through necessary measures including a review of the Steve Oronsaye report, which recommended the rationalisation of government parastatals and agencies. Speaking to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, a human rights lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, described the proposed agency as unnecessary and nonsensical. It is nonsense to me. To begin with, if there are assets recovered from criminal suspects and corrupt individuals, they are supposed to be remitted into the Federation account. It is going to go into the public revenue of the Federation. After that, the national assembly must now appropriate by way of budget. The government on its own does not have powers to start spending. If it is about recovery of looted assets, it is nonsensical to create a new agency. EFCC already has the powers to do that under its establishment act. This is another multiplication of executive agencies which does not have any bearing in fighting corruption. If the federal government is keen on fighting corruption, it is supposed to strengthen EFCC. We dont need another similar agency, he added. Mr Effiong, however, urged the National Assembly to throw out the bill because it does not hold any weight. Another human rights activist, Festus Ogun, feared that the creation is meant to achieve a selfish political interest of the Presidency, and not necessarily to fight corruption. Creating a new agency to fight corruption, when we have two different ones, is an abuse. At a time when Nigerians are advocating the merger of the EFCC and ICPC to enhance efficiency, the creation of an additional one can be likened to filling a basket with water. Mr Ogun said Nigerians must rally round to resist this reckless wastage. Advertisements Meanwhile, when confronted with these reactions, Mr Malamis spokesperson, Umar Gwandu, promised to respond to PREMIUM TIMES enquiries. He is yet to respond as of the time of reporting. Below are other reactions from social media OgbeniDipo You have EFCC and ICPC already handling corruption related cases. A new agency is a clear waste of taxpayers monies. AyeMojubar Buharis administration has approved the establishment of a new anti-corruption agency Proceeds of Crime Recovery and Management Agency (PCRMA). Of what reason and at whose expense, when we still have ICPC and EFCC? Wastage everywhere! DrJoeAbah Both EFCC and ICPC have that mandate. I would like to read the draft bill to understand the rationale, if any. I reiterate that we need to reduce the number of agencies. I have often advocated for the introduction of a new rule: For every new agency you create, scrap at least two existing ones. Still, I would like to read the draft bill first. I reiterate that we need to reduce the number of agencies. I have often advocated for the introduction of a new rule: For every new agency you create, scrap at least two existing ones. Still, I would like to read the draft bill first. Dr. Joe Abah (@DrJoeAbah) September 17, 2020 Osasuo It is ridiculous to set up yet another government agency for corruption. This is a government that is borrowing externally to meet recurrent expenditure! Osi_Suave When you can create departments within the Efcc and ICPC to do this job. You are setting up an agency to document and manage recovered stolen assets Lmaooo a damn shame Ekwulu This is madness. why not strengthen the EFCC and the ICPC? Olorunwababs Here comes another directionless idea on creating agencies for the fun of it. After over 5 years of haphazard asset recovery with little or no transparency, instead of strengthening @ICPC_PE @officialEFCC to optimally deliver on their mandate. OlayinkaT It is quite ridiculous that we have the EFCC, ICPC, CCB, NFIU & the MOF and yet creating another agency/body with the aim of dealing with looted funds is on the minds of the AGF & lawmakers. Why the duplicity? Funkyshinaayo Suddenly, EFCC and ICPC are not enough. They want to create a parallel Anti-graft agency. Very likely, the same role with Extra budget allocated when we should be cutting costs. TeeWhyfene EFCC, ICPC now this. We were talking about how to cut down by phasing out duplicitous agencies. Alas, we are trying to triplicate things. Elpresidentey I dont see a reason for this agency. EFCC and ICPC should even be merged into one agency to cut costs. Instead you are creating a new agency. This government lacks forward thinkers. Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Oyorkor Botchwey has briefed members of the Diplomatic Corps on the outcome of the consultative meeting on the Malian political instability. Members of the Diplomatic Corps present at the briefing included; Ms Cludia Turbay Quintero, the Columbian Ambassador to Ghana, who doubles as the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps. Ms Botchwey outlined some of the key decisions reached at the consultative meeting held at Aburi on Tuesday, September 15, including the need for a transition government led by a civilian President and Prime Minister in Mali. She said the Authority asked the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP), the military Junta that ousted Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on August 18, 2020, to immediately nominate two civilians as President and Prime Minister, to oversee the transition process, which should not go beyond 18 months. Ms Botchwey said the Authority reaffirmed its demand for civilian-led transition administration to ensure a swift return to constitutional rule in Mali. The Authority stated that the military Junta would be dissolved immediately the civilian transition government was constituted, she added. Ms Botchwey noted that the ECOWAS Authority agreed to lift all the sanctions imposed on Mali when the transition president and prime minister were appointed. Ms Botchwey said the Leader of the Military Junta, Colonel Assimi Goita, and his delegation, however, told the Authority that, they would have to go back and make further consultations with the decision-makers in the CNSP. It is expected that Nigeria's former President Goodluck Jonathan would visit Bamako next week to assess the status of the implementation of the decision arrived at the Aburi meeting. ECOWAS suspended Mali and imposed sanctions due to the political uprising that ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's government on August 18, 2020. The bloc suspended financial transactions between Mali and its 14 other member countries, and also suspended the troubled nation from its internal decision-making bodies, and asked the military Junta to appoint a President and Prime Minister by September 15, 2020, or face further sanctions. Tuesday's meeting in Aburi was convened by President Akufo-Addo, Chair of ECOWAS, to reinforce the decisions in the Charter agreed on at the 57th ECOWAS ordinary summit held in Niamey, capital of Niger. ---GNA Union Home Minister Amit Shah was on Thursday discharged from AIIMS where he was admitted five days ago for a post Covid-19 "check-up" before the start of Parliament Session. The 55-year-old top BJP leader is likely to attend Parliament from Monday onwards, sources said. He was taken to AIIMS for the second time on Saturday night after he complained of breathing trouble. However, an AIIMS statement had said that he was asked to come to the hospital for a "complete medical check-up before Parliament Session for 1-2 days". The Monsoon Session of Parliament started last Monday and official papers and Bills listed in his name were tabled by Ministers of State for Home. Shah was detected with Covid-19 on August 2 and was discharged from Medanta Hospital in Gurugram after recovery on August 14. However, he was admitted to AIIMS-Delhi on August 18 after he complained of fatigue and body ache. He was later discharged on August 31 only to get back to the hospital again on September 12 night. A Bayonne man with a long criminal history is wanted for his role in an incident late last month in which police officer was struck by a fleeing car, authorities said. Jersey City police have issued an arrest warrant for Jabar Ford related to the Aug. 30 incident in which another Jersey City police officer was struck by the car fleeing police, Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said. The 38-year-old Ford, who has at least seven convictions dating back to the year 2000, was a passenger in the car. Marcus Bell, the driver, was charged with striking the officer with the car on Custer Avenue, while his girlfriend, Jasmine Brown, was charged with filing a false report. After striking the officer, the car was found later on Armstrong Avenue. Brown and Bell reported to police that the vehicle had been stolen the night before. They were arrested on Sept. 3 after police reviewed surveillance video and determined they had lied. Authorities said that police conducting a narcotics investigation saw Ford lean out of the car and attempt to rack," or prepare, a gun to be fired, two times. Police then moved in on car, authorities said, adding that Bell then fled and struck the officer. During the pursuit, the gun was discarded, and then recovered by police. Among the charges Ford faces are unlawful possession of weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and certain persons not to possess a weapon. The 38-year-old Ford made headlines when he escaped from a halfway house in Newark in late 2011, with only eight days left on a 4-year prison term, The Jersey Journal reported. Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale released Bell for the duration of his prosecution, with restrictions. This report was updated at 4:40 p.m. with new information. By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) - The man who leaked the 'Pentagon Papers' about the Vietnam War defended Julian Assange at his London extradition hearing on Wednesday, saying WikiLeaks had acted in the public interest and warning Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States. Australian-born Assange, 49, is fighting to stop being sent to the United States, where he is charged with conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law over the release of confidential cables by WikiLeaks in 2010-2011. Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked documents known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other papers, told the court that WikiLeaks' disclosures had shown Americans how they had been misled about U.S action in Iraq and Afghanistan just as his leaks, which also revealed previously secret information, did about the Vietnam War By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) - The man who leaked the "Pentagon Papers" about the Vietnam War defended Julian Assange at his London extradition hearing on Wednesday, saying WikiLeaks had acted in the public interest and warning Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States. Australian-born Assange, 49, is fighting to stop being sent to the United States, where he is charged with conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law over the release of confidential cables by WikiLeaks in 2010-2011. Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked documents known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other papers, told the court that WikiLeaks' disclosures had shown Americans how they had been misled about U.S action in Iraq and Afghanistan just as his leaks, which also revealed previously secret information, did about the Vietnam War. Ellsberg cited a U.S. military video, which WikiLeaks published in 2010 under the title "Collateral Murder", showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. "I was acutely aware that what was depicted in that video deserved the term murder, a war crime," he told London's Old Bailey court via videolink. "I was very glad that the American public was confronted with this reality of our war." James Lewis, the lawyer representing the U.S. authorities, said Assange was not wanted for publishing the 2007 video but for disclosing a small number of documents with the unredacted names of sources or informants. Lewis said many of these had suffered harm or threats because they had been named. He said some had disappeared, although he conceded that there was no evidence this was directly linked to the WikiLeaks' publication. "How can you possibly say ... that there is no evidence that Mr Assange's publication of WikiLeaks put anyone in danger. That's just pure nonsense," Lewis said. Ellsberg, who was himself charged with breaking the espionage law in a case that was later dismissed, said there was no evidence of physical harm or deaths because of the leaks. The exchange with Lewis led to an outburst from Assange in the courtroom, with the judge warning him to remain silent. REDACTIONS Earlier, John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany's Der Spiegel magazine on the first publication of the documents in 2010, said Assange was careful to ensure that the names of informants in hundreds of thousands of leaked secret U.S. government documents were never published. Goetz said WikiLeaks was frustrated when a password that allowed access to the full, unredacted material was published in a book by Guardian reporters in February 2011. Assange's lawyers argue that he would not receive a fair trial in the United States and that the charges are politically motivated. They have also said he would be a suicide risk if sent to the United States, where they say he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison. In 2012, Assange took refuge in Ecuadors London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was accused of sex crimes, which he denied and which were later dropped. After seven years, he was dragged from the embassy by British police in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail related to the Swedish case. He has remained in prison ever since, after the United States made its extradition request. (Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Tattersall) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. United States Senator Lamar Alexander on Wednesday said Congress needs to break the cycle of panic, neglect, panic in response to public health threats. Senator Alexander made his remarks at todays Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 response efforts so far, as well as what steps Congress can take now to prepare for the next pandemic. He said, Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, said the biggest difference with this pandemic versus those in the past is the jet plane, which enables millions of people to carry infections from one place to another overnight. Because of this, the next pandemic could be as early as next year. This is not a new problem. Fifteen years ago, then Majority Leader of the Senate, Dr. Bill Frist, made 20 speeches predicting that a viral pandemic was no longer a question of if, but a question of when. Four presidents and several congresses have done some of what needed to be done to prepare for pandemics, but clearly not enough of it. In preparing for future pandemics, we tend to go from panic to neglect to panic. In other words, while we're in the middle of a pandemic, it's got our attention, but as soon as it's over, we don't do all the things that we should do. So my hope is that with any action that we take this year, we would include the three or four things that we should do to make sure that we provide sustained funding for a period of years. As the chairman of the Senate health committee, Senator Alexander has held nine hearings on issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic and put out a white paper in June to get feedback on what steps Congress could take to avoid the cycle of panic, neglect, panic. From the more than 350 comments received in response to his white paper, he is focused on three recommendations that Congress can accomplish now: Sustained on-shore manufacturing capacity, to be able to rapidly manufacture enough tests, treatments, and vaccines to respond to the next pandemic Improving and sustaining state stockpiles of personal protective equipment, medical equipment, and medicines Strengthening the federal Strategic National Stockp ile Senator Alexander asked Dr. Bob Kadlec, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, if he thought that maintaining state stockpiles would require a lot of money. Dr. Kadlec responded: No, sir. Most of these items are commonly used anyway daily in hospital use and health care use, and just maintaining that stockpile over time doesn't require a business model to support that. Senator Alexander said, We need to sustain our support for these critical activities, so they do not get caught up in a cycle of panic, neglect, panic. Witnesses at Thursdays hearing included: Admiral Brett Giroir, M.D., Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services; Dr. Bob Kadlec, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Department of Health and Human Services; and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. MILFORD Police have identified the body of a 54-year-old man found dead in the wreckage of a fire on Roses Mill Road this week. David Dupuis was found dead by crews working in the burned building, Milford police said Thursday. The cause of death is still unknown at this time, but foul play is not suspected, Police Officer Marilisa Anania said. Dupuis was homeless living in Milford, Anania said. No other remains were found in the derelict building. Multiple fire units were called to 51 Roses Mill Road a little after 10 p.m. Monday after flames engulfed the rear of a boarded-up three-story commercial building there. Crews on scene reported the first floor of the structure was gone, forcing them to fight the blaze from the outside of the building. A video posted to the departments Facebook page showed flames and smoke engulfing the structure while multiple fire units and a ladder truck worked to extinguish the blaze. The wood frame commercial building was built in 1990, according to Milford property records. It was sold in April last year. A spokesman for the fire department said the cause of the fire has not been determined yet. The overnight low Monday before midnight was 58 degrees, but the temperature dropped to 49 degrees Tuesday morning. That was the lowest temperature so far this month and a new record low, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center. Jim Shay contributed reporting. Journalist Bob Woodward said President Trumps false claim at a town hall this week that he never sought to downplay the threat of the coronavirus shows Trump has lost his way, not just as president but as a human being trying to assess whats real and whats unreal. In a wide-ranging live interview with Yahoo News Editor in Chief Daniel Klaidman and Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff for the Skullduggery podcast Thursday, Woodward said Trumps assertion during the ABC town hall that he up-played the threat of COVID-19 to Americans was so confusing, it makes you dizzy. This idea of up-playing, I dont think thats even a word, Woodward said. Now it will be in one of those slang dictionaries. In a Feb. 7 interview for Woodwards new book, Rage, Trump told him he knew that the virus which has now killed over 190,000 Americans was more deadly than even your strenuous flus. You just breathe the air and thats how its passed, Trump said, adding: This is deadly stuff. But publicly, Trump sought to downplay the virus, which he acknowledged in another interview with Woodward on March 19. I wanted to always play it down, he said. I still like playing it down, because I dont want to create a panic. Journalist and author Bob Woodward on the Yahoo News podcast "Skullduggery" on Thursday. (Via Yahoo News Video) On Skullduggery, Woodward called Trumps efforts to conceal his knowledge of the virus from the public one of the most tragic, outrageous acts by a sitting president in, maybe in history. Woodward has faced sharp criticism for not disclosing Trumps private recognition of the danger posed by the coronavirus months ago, when it might have affected the course of the pandemic. He said that at the time of Trumps Feb. 7 comments, there were few cases in the U.S. of the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China. It was a China story, Woodward said. And when Trump acknowledged he was downplaying the threat of COVID-19 in late March, Woodward said the public already knew how infectious it was. [Will Trump refuse to leave office? Woodward says anything is possible] Story continues Woodward, who conducted 19 on-the-record interviews with Trump for the book, said he asked Trump at one point what he considered to be the job of the president. He said, To protect the people, that is job No. 1, Woodward recalled. Job No. 2 is to tell the truth. Woodward said Trumps failure to do either of those saddens him. And its also why the legendary author, who has written books on presidents dating back to Richard Nixon, said he felt a responsibility to conclude his latest with the assessment that Trump is the wrong man for the job. You cant duck what is an obvious conclusion, Woodward said. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: The announcement is a testament to Johnson Controls commitment to develop advanced digital solutions that can improve performance, reliability, safety and energy usage of buildings and its occupants. It will allow the company to further build on unique technologies and innovations from similar state-of-the-art sites it currently operates in: Cork ( Ireland ) ( ) Milwaukee and Birmingham ( USA ) and Birmingham ( ) Wuxi ( China ) ) Pune ( India ) ( ) San Jose ( Costa Rica ) These centers are all designed to accelerate the reinvention of urban living, with significant investments targeted at digital innovation. "Artificial Intelligence and machine learning will play a pre-eminent role in reshaping how we create comfort for people and energy efficiency in a building", said Mike Ellis, executive vice president and chief customer & digital officer for Johnson Controls. Our unprecedented focus of co-innovating cutting-edge technologies through collaborations such as with NUS will spark greater innovation and true differentiation for our customers." The 240 square-meter center, housed in SDE4, Singapore's first new-build net-zero energy building, will have sensors fitted throughout the indoor space including overhead ventilation to measure air flow. The lab staff and collaborating researchers will collect and analyze data using Johnson Controls unifying technology suite and analytics to obtain qualitative and quantitative understanding of the interactions among technology, well-being, and indoor environments. The ecosystem of partners will tap on the intelligence generated from the center to create evidence-backed solutions for healthier, safer connected indoor spaces. NUS will serve as a testbed for OpenBlue Innovation Center's pioneering solutions, which will help the university in its ongoing efforts to develop a smart, sustainable and safe campus for its staff and students. The collaboration also includes joint research and innovation in the areas of built and urban environments, particularly in data analytics, sustainability and operations, as well as people and wellness. There will also be opportunities for collaborations on teaching and internship programs. The underlying Johnson Controls unifying technology suite, OpenBlue, is a complete suite of connected solutions and services that combine the Company's 135 years of building expertise with cutting-edge digital technology. This open digital platform, when integrated with Johnson Controls core building systems and enhanced by ecosystem partners, connects traditionally separate systems to create new capabilities for safer, more agile and sustainable space usages. With support from the Singapore Economic Development Board, the facility is expected to have more than 100 employees within four years. Johnson Controls currently employs around 800 employees throughout Singapore, and has its products installed in many of the commercial buildings in Singapore. The investment marks the company's commitment to spearhead the creation and adoption of disruptive solutions for the built environment industry in the region. About Johnson Controls: At Johnson Controls, we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. From optimizing building performance to improving safety and enhancing comfort, we drive the outcomes that matter most. We deliver our promise in industries such as healthcare, education, data centers and manufacturing. With a global team of 105,000 experts in more than 150 countries and over 130 years of innovation, we are the power behind our customers' mission. Our leading portfolio of building technology and solutions includes some of the most trusted names in the industry, such as Tyco, YORK, Metasys, Ruskin, Titus, Frick, Penn, Sabroe, Simplex, Ansul and Grinnell. For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow us @johnsoncontrols on Twitter. SOURCE Johnson Controls International plc Related Links https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/ NASA analyzes rainfall and rainmaking capability in Hurricane Sally NASA satellites provided a look at the rainfall potential in Hurricane Sally before and after it made landfall in southern Alabama. NASA's Aqua satellite and IMERG analysis were used to analyze the storm's flooding potential. Sally came ashore on Wednesday, Sept. 16 around 5:45 a.m. EDT near Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale with sustained winds near 105 mph (169 kph). As a slow-moving storm, Sally generated a lot of rainfall, left behind flooded streets and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands on the U.S. Gulf Coast. NASA's Infrared View of Sally Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides are stronger than others. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud top temperatures. NASA provides that data to forecasters at NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC so they can incorporate it in their forecasting. On Sept. 16 at 3:11 p.m. EDT (1911 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Sally using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around the center of circulation and to the northeast and east of the center. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain. At that time, the AIRS image showed those strong storms over the Florida Panhandle, much of Alabama, Georgia and extending into western South Carolina. On Sept. 16 at 3:11 p.m. EDT (1911 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Sally using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found the coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around the center of circulation and to the northeast and east of the center. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain. Credit: NASA JPL/Heidar ThrastarsonNASA Calculates Sally's Rainfall NASA combined data from multiple satellites to estimate the rainfall from Hurricane Sally in near-real time at half-hourly intervals from September 11-16, 2020. Rainfall rates and rainfall accumulations are estimated using NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) algorithm. IMERG combines observations from a fleet of satellites, in near-real time, to provide near-global estimates of precipitation every 30 minutes. Rain rates along Sally's track periodically exceeded 1 inch/hour near its core and combined with its slow speed, led to high accumulations along the Gulf Coast. By 5:00 a.m. CDT (1000 UTC) on Sep. 16, IMERG had estimated total accumulations along the southern Alabama coastline and western Florida Panhandle exceeding 16 inches in some locations. NOAA rain gauge observations were broadly consistent with the IMERG accumulations. Sally Breaks a Pensacola Rainfall Record The National Weather Service at the Pensacola Regional Airport in Florida reported 18.17 inches of rainfall from Sally on Sept. 16. That broke the previous record of 5.28 inches on that date in 1979. Forecast for Excessive Rainfall Over the U.S. Southeast NHC's key message is about the rainfall from Sally: Widespread flooding is expected from central Georgia through southeastern Virginia. Along the central Gulf Coast, most widespread moderate to major river flooding from the historic rainfall event will crest by the weekend, but rivers will remain elevated well into next week. NHC Rainfall totals expected as Sally moves across the Southeast U.S. through Friday: Central Georgia: Sally will produce additional rainfall totals of 3 to 6 inches, with localized higher amounts, on top of 3 to 6 inches, which has already fallen. Widespread flash flooding and minor to moderate river flooding is likely. Central to upstate South Carolina: 3 to 6 inches, with isolated amounts of 10 inches. Widespread flash flooding and minor to moderate river flooding is likely. Western to central North Carolina into south-central and southeast Virginia: 4 to 6 inches, isolated amounts up to 8 inches. Flash flooding and widespread minor river flooding is likely. Sally's Status on Sept. 17 At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Depression Sally was located near latitude 31.8 degrees north and longitude 85.7 degrees west. The center was about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Montgomery, Alabama. The depression is moving toward the northeast near 12 mph (19 kph) and a northeastward to east-northeastward motion is expected into Friday. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 30 mph (45 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure based on nearby surface observations is 1000 millibars. Senior Hurricane Specialist Stacy Stewart of NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. noted, "Although the overall convective cloud and rain shield in satellite and radar imagery continues to erode, Tropical Depression Sally is still producing significant rainfall across east-central Alabama and west-central and central Georgia. Surface observations and Doppler radar data indicate that Sally has weakened to a 25 knots [29 mph/46 kph] depression over southeastern Alabama." Sally's Forecast Track NHC says that additional weakening is forecast during the next couple of days, and Sally is expected to become a remnant low by tonight or Friday morning. On the forecast track, the center of Sally will move across southeastern Alabama this morning, over central Georgia this afternoon and evening, and move over South Carolina late tonight into Friday, Sept. 18. ### NASA Researches Earth from Space For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration. For updated forecasts, visit: http://www. nhc. noaa. gov By Rob Gutro NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Mount Greylock School Committee Passes Modified Agreement with Union WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Tuesday night approved a number of modifications to the memorandum of agreement with the district's union about procedures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. By a vote of 5-2, the committee OKed changes that include the structure an "remote academy" for elementary school pupils, the metrics that will be used for switches between remote and in-person instruction and safety precautions that will be in place during the school day when the district moves to a hybrid model of in-person and remote instruction on Oct. 5. School officials had to rethink the remote academy idea for families choosing to keep their children at home throughout the pandemic after learning this month that fewer families were picking the remote model than previously anticipated. Instead of having a single teacher for each grade in the remote academy, the district will assign one teacher to lead the remote cohort in Grades 1 and 2, one to teach Grades 3 and 4 and one to teach Grades 5 and 6. A single teacher also will teach the kindergarten remote cohort and have another assignment not specified in the three-page agreement approved on Tuesday. To compensate the four teachers in the remote academy for their additional workload, each will receive a stipend of $5,000 over and above their contracted salary. The updated MOA also clarifies that all teachers in the district's three schools Lanesborough Elementary, Williamstown Elementary and Mount Greylock middle/high school will be allowed to work from home on the "remote Wednesdays" that are part of the plan for hybrid instruction. The MOA specifies that the district will move to fully remote instructions under the following scenarios: direction from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, direction from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, direction from the member towns health agents, a 3 percent or greater COVID-19 positive test rate in the county, a 3 percent or greater test rate in "the combined member towns" of Lanesborough and Williamstown or a rating of either Lanesborough or Williamstown as "Yellow or Red" on the commonwealth's map for three consecutive weeks. If the schools go remote because of a ranking of yellow or red for three consecutive weeks, they will return to hybrid or in-person instruction if both member towns are rated green or gray for three consecutive weeks, according to the MOA. The last point, the use of the commonwealth's gray-green-yellow-red matrix, drew criticism from one member of the School Committee. After the panel met in executive session for an hour and a half to review the MOA that was negotiated with the Mount Greylock Educators Association, the committee returned to open session to hold its vote. Steven Miller attempted to modify the MOA, making a motion for an amendment that died for want of a second. "As we've just seen, the state metrics do not always work well for small-sized populations," Miller said, perhaps referring to last week's apparent discrepancy between the state's and town's numbers in Williamstown. "This is why the state has already adjusted its metric once. "I'm a little concerned about putting this in the agreement that we automatically go remote with three weeks of yellow. I think it would be better to say instead we go to remote if it's three weeks of red, and if it's yellow for three weeks, we do what the state says, which is take into account the local conditions and make a determination of whether we should be remote or hybrid." Carolyn Greene said she understood Miller's point but noted that the agreement as drafted and presented to the committee was worked out over weeks of negotiation. "While your point is well taken about this being an abundance of caution, there is a lot of nervousness and anxiety around getting back to school," Greene said. "It is in all of our best interests at this point to be overly cautious, given that we now know that we have COVID in our community. It was bound to happen, and it will continue happening. We need to be safe, and we need to be cautious, and we will continue to get kids into the schools as much as we can. "This is really the best we're going to do. It's a good agreement, and we need to go with it. School starts tomorrow. Any amendments now that we know are not approved by MGEA will potentially delay the start of school." Unlike most students around the county, students in the Mount Greylock district began classes on Wednesday, a result of pre-existing contractual agreements that did not allow the start of a 10-day professional development period to begin until Sept. 1. Miller was joined by Regina DiLego in voting against the memorandum of agreement. The same two voted in the minority of a 4-2 vote to approve an initial MOA on Sept. 1. Unlike Miller, DiLego on Tuesday did not express any of her objections to the agreement in open session. The revised MOA specifies six safety precautions for the schools' day-to-day operations; three relate to the operation of the schools' HVAC systems. Clause E(iii) of the agreement states that the district will work toward two air exchanges per hour and ultraviolet light treatment of air in all three of its buildings. Subsequent clauses say that teachers working in rooms with fewer than two air exchanges per hour will be issued five KN95 facemasks and that those rooms will have portable air purifier units. Three of the safety precautions in the agreement relate to food. Staff covering lunch duty when students will not be wearing face coverings will be issued KN95 masks. Pupils at the elementary schools will not have snack during the morning or afternoon sessions of in-person instruction, and students at the middle/high school will not have lunches in their classrooms as previously discussed. Just before the School Committee adjourned, Miller said that despite the split decision from the panel on the MOA, the agreement has the full committee's support. "As is the tradition of the School Committee, we can disagree, but we do so civilly, and once a decision is made, we all support the decision of the School Committee," Miller said. "I'm happy to write the state and talk to them about how to have the right metrics. I'll leave it at that." Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias will travel to Slovenia and the Czech Republic tomorrow, Friday, 18 September. In Ljubljana, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will have talks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia, Anze Logar. He will then address a Joint Session of the Slovenian Parliaments Foreign and European Affairs Committees. Completing his trip to the country, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will be received by the President of the Republic, Borut Pahor, and Prime Minister Janez Jansa. On the same day, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will travel to the Czech Republic, where he will meet with Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek. Their talks will focus on bilateral, regional and European issues, with emphasis on developments in the Eastern Mediterranean and the migration issue. A fire that burned the parish offices of the St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church in the early-morning hours has rattled members of San Franciscos Armenian community, some of whom are calling the incident an act of arson. Police and firefighters responded to reports of a fire at the church offices on Commonwealth Avenue in at 4:13 a.m. Thursday, a police spokeswoman said. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined and the citys Arson Task Force is conducting a full investigation. The fire comes less than two months after an Armenian school was vandalized with hateful graffiti. Community members who gathered outside the church to survey the wreckage Thursday morning said they believe the incidents could be related. The fire destroyed the interiors of the first floor and basement of the building, which houses the churchs offices, meeting rooms and Sunday school classrooms. No one was inside when the fire started, said community members at the scene. The suspected arson follows months of mounting hostility between Armenia and its neighbor, Azerbaijan. The two former Soviet republics clashed in July over disputed territory, the second time since a 1994 ceasefire. Nora Mishanec / The Chronicle Attacks on Armenian meeting places have been on the rise since the flareup of tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijan border in July, said Stephan Astourian, a professor of Armenian history at UC Berkeley. Thursdays church fire and the vandalism of the KZV Armenian School in the Parkmerced neighborhood on July 17 are part of a larger pattern of attacks seen around the world against members of the Armenian diaspora, Astourian said. Church members sifting through piles of charred Bibles and Sunday school books outside the offices Thursday said the fire hits close to home more so now as the second such incident in so short a span. I am horrified by what has happened, said Seta Tchakerian, the churchs accountant. You think you are safe and you find out you are not safe. Tchakerian was able to salvage some financial documents from the mounds of charred paper and books, but many baptism and marriage records going back more than 60 years have been lost, she said. Church leaders believe the fire was set in an act of arson to intimidate the community. It is unbelievable that people have so much hatred toward us, the Armenian people, Tchakerian said. But many at the scene expressed relief that the church itself remains unharmed. I was praying the whole way that it wasnt the church, said Rostom Aintablian, the churchs chairman, who rushed to the scene from his home in San Bruno after getting an early-morning phone call about the fire. The church may have emerged unscathed, but Aintablian said the pastoral offices will be difficult to replace for the 1,200 Armenian families who use it as a community center and meeting place, as well as a religious home. The offices were purchased in 1953 and the church was built 13 years later on adjacent land to serve the Bay Areas then-burgeoning Armenian population. The church community grew with each wave of refugees and immigrants who made the Bay Area their home. Alex Bastian, deputy chief of staff in the San Francisco District Attorneys Office, who is of Armenian descent, took to Facebook to publicize the incident he characterized as a hate crime and also to highlight his communitys resilience. Here is a message to the perpetrators of this cowardly act: we will not be terrorized, bullied or intimidated, he wrote. News of the fire quickly spread throughout the Armenian community on Thursday. Many church members at the scene relayed photos of the debris to relatives and friends. Onlookers drove by in droves, clogging the otherwise quiet residential block. Raffi Gharakhanian watched Thursday as community members arrived to see the damage for themselves. Although he is not a member of the church, he said he felt compelled to show up as an Armenian. It is disappointing to see hate crimes against Armenians. It happens all over the world, but this hits close to home, he said. I felt it was important to be here. Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @NMishanec MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said both sides should refrain from taking any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation, and focus on easing tensions in the friction areas New Delhi: India on Thursday said China should take forward the process for complete disengagement of troops from all friction points including the Pangong lake area in eastern Ladakh, and asked it not to make unilateral attempts to change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control(LAC). At a media briefing, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said both sides should focus on easing tensions in the friction areas by refraining from any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation. There have been at least three attempts by the Chinese People's Liberation Army(PLA) to "intimidate" Indian troops along the northern and southern bank of Pangong lake area in the last three weeks where even shots were fired in the air for the first time at the LAC in 45 years. "The Chinese side should sincerely work with the Indian side for complete disengagement at the earliest from all friction areas including Pangong Lake as well as de-escalation in border areas in accordance with the bilateral agreements and protocols on the maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas," Srivastava said. The assertion by Srivastava came in the backdrop of remarks by the Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday that it was for India to initiate the process to disengage and restore peace along with the border areas. "We hope the Chinese side will strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control and not make further attempts to unilaterally change the status quo," said Srivastava. The MEA spokesperson also referred to the "consensus" arrived at separate meetings between defense ministers and foreign ministers of the two countries in Moscow on 4 September and 10 September respectively. "There was consensus between the ministers of the two sides, during both the meetings, that there should be quick and complete disengagement of troops from all friction areas along the LAC," Srivastava said. "Both sides should, therefore, focus on easing tensions in the friction areas by refraining from any actions that may lead to an escalation in the situation. This requires strict adherence to the bilateral agreements and protocols and not making unilateral attempts to change the status quo," he added. The MEA spokesperson also referred to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's comments on the border standoff in Parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, saying he has categorically stated that India is committed to peaceful dialogue with the Chinese side, including through diplomatic and military channels. Both sides reached a five-point agreement to resolve the border row at a meeting between External Affairs S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on 10 September on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO) meet in Moscow. The agreement included measures like quick disengagement of troops, avoiding action that could escalate tensions, adherence to all agreements and protocols on border management, and steps to restore peace along the LAC. Tension in eastern Ladakh increased manifold following the Galwan Valley clashes on 15 June in which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed. The Chinese side too suffered casualties, but it is yet to give out the details. The situation deteriorated again after China unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Indian territory in the southern bank of Pangong Lake on the intervening night of 29 and 30 August. India occupied a number of strategic heights on the southern bank of Pangong lake and strengthened its presence in Finger 2 and Finger 3 areas in the region to thwart any Chinese actions. China has been occupying the areas between Finger 4 and Finger 8. The mountain spurs in the area are called Fingers. China has strongly objected to India's move. However, India has maintained that the heights are on its side of the LAC. India has also rushed in additional troops and weapons to the sensitive region following China's transgression attempts. Following China's fresh attempts to change the status quo in the southern bank of Pangong lake, India has further bolstered its military presence in the region. La ministra Pilar Mazzetti participo en la ceremonia de lanzamiento de la Operacion Thani en el Cuartel General del Ejercito, a traves del cual el personal del Minsa hara pruebas de descarte y tratamiento de #COVID19 a unos 4000 efectivos militares y empleados civiles. pic.twitter.com/ObB1NMTjBH The retired pastor of a Horsham church was sentenced to 200 years in federal prison Thursday for video-recording himself sexually abusing two children over a period of years. Jerry Zweitzig, who led the nondenominational Horsham Bible Church until his retirement in 2016, apologized for his actions moments before U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone imposed the maximum punishment for each of the seven child pornography counts to which he had pleaded guilty, with each to be served consecutively. As recently as earlier this year, prosecutors noted, the 72-year-old Hatboro resident was still seeking to justify and explain away the abuse he inflicted on children. Children are taught to be ashamed of their bodies, Zweitzig said during a presentencing interview quoted in court filings, in which he discussed the elder of his victims. I taught [the child] that in the house, there was nothing wrong with nudity. I really felt that I was trying to help. The mother of Zweitzigs victims rejected that assertion in a letter submitted to the judge. Her child, she said, learned about deception at a young age from a man who stood at the pulpit every Sunday preaching the word of God. While he talked to the congregation about how they should be living, he spent his private time getting sexual satisfaction from abusing my children. Zweitzigs sentencing came nearly two years after his arrest by Horsham Township police and six years after the elder child first accused the pastor of abuse in a report to police. Zweitzig did not meet the children through his work as a minister, but maintained a close relationship to his victims' family. The Inquirer is not identifying them or describing the nature of their ties to Zweitzig in line with its policy to not identify sexual abuse victims. When first confronted by police in 2014, Zweitzig denied any illicit contact and insisted he had done nothing more than speak to his accuser about puberty. It wasnt until the child made a more detailed complaint in 2018, after moving out of the area, that investigators obtained a search warrant for the pastors home. There, they found a cache of thousands of sexually explicit photos and videos of children he had downloaded as well as the videos he shot of the child who made the complaint. In footage from 2014, Zweitzig was seated on a bed as he encouraged the child, then age 9, to feel free to tell him anything without having to be afraid. He mentioned that soon the child would have a significant other but that underage people dont know what theyre doing. The video showed Zweitzig pulling down his pants and masturbating in front of the child, who then ran out of the frame, visibly distressed, to hide in a bathroom nearby. Other images shot by Zweitzig depicted the child in various states of undress or being forced to perform sex acts on him. When confronted by a family member about those images after his arrest, Zweitzig maintained that he didnt believe that they were illegal because he took them only for his personal use, prosecutors said. It wasnt until after Zweitzig pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges last year that investigators discovered another video in his collection this one, shot in 2010, of him abusing the one victims then-infant sibling. He was charged in a separate case and pleaded guilty to those charges in May. The depravity of [Zweitzigs] conduct cannot be overstated, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric L. Gibson said in court papers leading up to the pastors sentencing. Undoubtedly, [he] has left his victims' self-worth and ability to trust in tatters, and their psyches will struggle to heal for the rest of their lives. Zweitzigs attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Katrina Young, described her client Thursday as deeply remorseful and extremely ashamed and regretful despite his initial failure to acknowledge his actions. She suggested that his upbringing in an extremely devout family and immersion in the world of the church contributed to his failure to seek help earlier for his sexual impulses toward children. From a very young age, Mr. Zweitzig was taught that faith was the only means of overcoming problems and that prayer was the only cure for psychological issues and addiction, she said, though she added: To be clear, Mr. Zweitzig makes no excuses for his behavior and fully acknowledges the gravity of his offenses. In addition to his prison term, Zweitzig was ordered to pay restitution to his victims. He still faces state charges brought by the Montgomery County District Attorneys Office for the abuse he inflicted on the elder child. DUSHANBE -- Tajikistan on September 16 experienced a one-hour Internet outage that coincided with an address by an exiled opposition leader in the United States that was streamed live online. Tajikistan's State Communications Service has not given any official explanation for the outage. The service's representative told RFE/RL on September 17 that the Internet unexpectedly stopped working at around 7:40 p.m. for unknown reasons and that the operator had to switch to its backup system to bring it back after about 30 minutes. The representative added that "specialists are working to determine the cause of the outage." Tajik social-media users say the outage lasted for one hour, some adding that mobile phone service was also affected. The outage occurred at exactly the time when the exiled chairman of the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), Muhiddin Kabiri, was delivering an online address to an event organized by George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In his address, Kabiri, who resides in an EU country, accused the authorities of barring opposition candidates from taking part in the presidential poll scheduled for October 11. The IRPT, long an influential party with representatives in the government and parliament, was labeled a terrorist group and banned in 2015. Dozens of IRPT officials and supporters have been prosecuted and many of them imprisoned, drawing criticism from human rights groups. In recent years, there have been several cases when access to social networks and the websites of independent media outlets have been blocked at sensitive times. The presidential campaign kicked off in Tajikistan on September 15. The Central Election Commission has said that five candidates, including incumbent Emomali Rahmon, have been registered. Many in Tajikistan expect that Rahmon will be announced as the winner again, saying that the other candidates were registered just as a facade. The only opposition party functioning inside Tajikistan, the Social Democratic Party, said earlier that it will boycott the poll. In Tajikistan's last presidential election, in 2013, Rahmon, who has been running the country since 1992, was reelected by a landslide with 84 percent of the vote. None of the five presidential elections won by Rahmon has been deemed free and fair by Western election observers. The Lafayette Public School System wants to inform families that Louisiana is providing another opportunity to apply to receive 2019-2020 Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) benefits if they have not already applied. This program provides extra help buying groceries for the families who normally receive free and reduced-price meals at school in order to replace those meals. In addition, all students who attend Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) Program Schools are eligible for the program. The CEP schools are as follows: CEP Schools Acadian Middle School Edgar Martin Middle School L.J. Alleman Middle School Acadiana High School Ernest Gallet Elementary School Myrtle Place Elementary School Alice Boucher Elementary School Evangeline Elementary School Northside High School Broussard Middle School Green T. Lindon Elementary School Ossun Elementary School Carencro Heights Elementary School Judice Middle School Paul Breaux Middle School Carencro High School J.W. Faulk Elementary School Prairie Elementary School Carencro Middle School J.W. James Elementary School Ridge Elementary School Charles Burke Elementary School Katharine Drexel Elementary School Scott Middle School Comeaux High School L. Leo Judice Elementary School S.J. Montgomery Elementary School Cpl. M. Middlebrook Elementary School Lafayette Middle School Truman Early Childhood Center Dr. Raphael Baranco Elementary School Lerosen Preparatory Academy School Westside Elementary School Duson Elementary School Live Oak Elementary School Woodvale Elementary School Families must complete this online application in the P-EBT portal of the Louisiana Department of Education website to receive benefits: https://pebt.doe.louisiana.gov/PublicApps/SNP/. The portal opened September 8, 2020, and the deadline to apply is September 29, 2020 by 5:00 p.m. This application period is for children who have not yet received P-EBT. This is not an additional benefit, so children who already received P-EBT earlier in the summer are not eligible to apply. Applicants must provide the full names of the student and parent, date of birth, Social Security number, home address, school, and school district. Without the requested information, DCFS cannot issue the P-EBT card and provide benefits. Eligible families who complete an online application will be issued a P-EBT debit card by the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to access benefits. The P-EBT card will function like a standard EBT card, and the same guidelines will apply. Families will receive $285 in total P-EBT benefits per child. Unused benefits will roll over month to month and must be used within 365 days. The P-EBT program was authorized by Congress in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020. For additional information about P-EBT benefits, eligibility and FAQs, visit the Louisiana Department of Children & Family Services website at www.dcfs.la.gov/pebt. LPSS is aware that our families financial situations are changing due to COVID-19. Families are always able to apply for meal benefits by completing an online application for meal benefits at https://www.myschoolapps.com/Home/PickDistrict. The community had the opportunity to speak out in support or against a permanent civil emergency provisions ordinance at a virtual town hall on Sept. 10, though the feedback the Borough Assembly received was mostly negative. The Petersburg Borough requested those who wanted to ask questions during the town hall to submit them about a week in advance to allow borough staff time to answer the questions. The public could still ask questions at the end of the town hall, which began with presentations on the emergency ordinance by borough staff. To begin the community feedback portion of the town hall, Moderator Sarah F. Fine read the submitted questions and provided answers out loud. Brian Lynch, Assembly Member Jeff Meucci and Marjorie Oines all submitted questions. Lynch requested borough staff explain the legality of a portion of the civil emergency provisions ordinance that allows the borough manager, incident commander or Borough Assembly to prohibit public gatherings during an emergency or disaster. According to a written response in a document provided during the town hall meeting, the United States Supreme Court held that constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted to combat a public health emergency in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The ruling was made over 115 years ago during an outbreak of smallpox. This year, plaintiffs in a case against the state of California asserted that shelter-in-place orders were a violation of their right to exercise of religion. Courts upheld the verdict in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, ruling in favor of the defendant. Meucci asked a series of questions related to the effects the emergency ordinance would have on life in Petersburg. Because the civil emergency provisions would only be in place if an emergency is declared by the borough manager, everyday life in the borough would not be affected should the emergency ordinance pass in its third reading on Monday, according to the document. At the beginning of the pandemic, the assembly passed a shelter in place mandate, but it was soon overtaken by several state health orders. Since early April, no other local mandates that closed non-essential businesses have been issued, according to the document. Local health mandates that ordered evacuations, curfews and limitations on single gatherings have never been enacted. The document clarified that the borough would have the final say in all emergency response matters and currently has authority to issue emergency orders and mandates. Oines submitted an amendment to the civil emergency provisions ordinance that assures residents have the right to defend themselves and property, and items used to protect themselves can't be confiscated. A written response in the document said the Alaska Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms in defense and prevents municipalities from confiscating firearms. The borough assembly did not vote for or against Oines' amendment, because the town hall meeting was not an assembly meeting; therefore, no action was taken. After Fine read through the submitted questions and responses, the public had their opportunity to ask additional questions or express their opinions on the emergency ordinance. All three residents that called into the meeting were critical of the permanent civil emergency provisions ordinance. Dana Thynes said the emergency ordinance allows an overreach of the public sector and cautioned the public to not let their liberty be silently stolen. "Totalitarian governments can come about through legal means and quickly," said Thynes. "People forget Hitler never stole an election. Hitler was elected legally by a vote of the people." Rob Schwartz said while fires and tsunamis eventually come to an end, the current pandemic hasn't ended after six months of emergency protocols in place. During an emergency, Schwartz said he has a duty to protect his family and would not comply with the emergency ordinance. "You can pack the jails, but as far as I'm concerned, this is absolute B.S.," said Schwartz. Other members of the public submitted written responses prior to the town hall. The Borough Assembly received nine letters, seven of which were against the emergency ordinance. Residents against the permanent civil emergency provisions cited similar concerns over personal rights being taken away and borough officials having too much authority. "I understand that no one intends to miss use [sic] the power that would be established by this document and that the push behind it is intended for the common good," wrote Bosjun Reid. "However, this document is unbelievably out of line." Bill Tremblay and Jim Schwartz both submitted letters supporting the emergency ordinance. Tremblay writes that while there are protocols in place, there are still residents who don't follow them. During a public health concern, Tremblay said the community should rely on medical professionals. "The discussion is about our general welfare as stated in the preamble of our Constitution," wrote Tremblay. "It isn't about 'individual rights,' as some have protested, since we've seen that many rights provided in our Constitution have been clarified to benefit the general public over time." In his response, Jim Schwartz noted the death toll of COVID-19 and the effect protocols like social distancing and face masking have had on the virus' spread. He credited the strict protocols Alaska Airlines has put in place as a cause for Petersburg's low case count. "If this coronavirus flares up strongly in Petersburg, we will need to mandate safety measures to protect the most vulnerable in our community-our family, our friends, our neighbors," wrote Schwartz. "Please make sure that the emergency powers are in place to stop the deadly disease here in Petersburg." Head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that face coverings are the most powerful public tool that nations have against the coronavirus pandemic. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield claimed that face masks might even better protect the disease than a vaccine. Redfield said they have clear scientific evidence face masks work and act as the best defense. "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine," Redfield was quoted in a report. A potential coronavirus vaccine may only have immunogenicity of 70 percent, according to Redfield. The CDC director also told the Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health, and other related agencies, that the vaccine might only be available in limited numbers by the end of the year. Immunogenicity is the ability of a vaccine to build an immune response to a virus. Health experts, including the nation's top infectious expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that the likelihood of creating a highly effective coronavirus vaccine is slim. In August, Fauci said that scientists are hoping to create a vaccine that is at least 75 percent effective. The Food and Drug Administration said it would grant an emergency authorization as long as it is safe and at least 50 percent effective. CDC said that a 50 percent effective vaccine would be roughly on par with that influenza but below the effectiveness of one dose of measles vaccination. One dose of a measles vaccine is about 93 percent effective. Redfield said that he does not get an immune response; the vaccine will not protect him, saying that wearing a face mask will. The CDC director then continued to urge Americans, especially those between 18 and 25, to continue wearing face masks. He repeated that they could help bring the pandemic under control in a matter of weeks if people wore them universally. On Wednesday, the CDC mentioned a place to make COVID-19 vaccines free to all Americans. Redfield forecasted that it would take six to nine months to get every American vaccinated. He added that the United States should have enough doses to return to regular life by the third quarter of next year. The CDC and the World Health Organization promote the wearing of face coverings to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus disease. The disease can be spread through respiratory droplets when a person coughs, sneezes, or talks. Assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Brett Giroir, also told the lawmakers that wearing a face mask can be one of the most important things people can do to prevent the spread. Some people have been infected and do not symptoms. However, they could still spread the virus even if symptoms do not manifest. As of now, the United States has a total of 6.64 million COVID-19 cases, with around 196,000 deaths. Want to read more? Check these out! WASHINGTON - It would be months before Louis DeJoy took the reins of the nation's mail system, and the U.S. Postal Service already was mired in crisis. Mail carriers were revolting, fearful they had few protections against the newly emerging coronavirus. The Trump administration was bearing down on its finances, sending USPS officials scrambling over what they saw as a potential illegal takeover of agency operations. And then there was a looming standoff with Amazon, which privately signaled it could take some of its lucrative delivery business elsewhere. The tensions surfaced at an April 9 meeting, when Amazon executives "stated their concerns" about the Postal Service's economic plight amid the pandemic and questioned its "viability to them as a continued shipping partner," according to a once-secret memo circulated within the agency, which described the situation as an "inflection point." (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The wide-ranging headaches that so troubled the USPS in April ultimately foreshadowed a summer of upheaval, thrusting the once-venerated mail service into a political maelstrom months before a presidential election. Newly disclosed details of these struggles are laid bare in nearly 10,000 pages of emails, legal memos, presentations and other documents obtained by The Washington Post from American Oversight, a watchdog group that requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, which mostly span March and April, depict an agency in distress, as its deteriorating finances collided with a public-health emergency and a looming election that would be heavily reliant on absentee ballots. During that period, the USPS occasionally relied on the legal counsel of well-connected Republicans, including Stefan C. Passantino, who once served as a top White House lawyer under President Donald Trump. Passantino, whose role has not been previously reported, is also part of a new pro-Trump legal coalition preparing for the possibility of a contested election, a relationship that has raised new ethical flags among the administration's critics. The records also offer fresh detail about the Postal Service's precarious position in the White House's early pandemic response. At one point in April, USPS leaders drafted a news release announcing plans to distribute 650 million masks nationwide, enough to offer five face coverings to every American household. The document, which includes quotations from top USPS officials and other specifics, was never sent. But it suggests that the government's initial interest in tapping the Postal Service as part of its campaign to combat the coronavirus may have been far more advanced than initially reported this spring. The Postal Service declined to discuss its specific dealings with the White House, Treasury Department or Amazon about its plans to distribute masks or its finances. David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, stressed in a statement that the mail agency is "firmly committed to being a source of constancy and reliability in every community." The Postal Service later demanded in a letter that American Oversight remove some of the documents it had shared publicly online, citing the fact some of them had been improperly released. "Our more than 630,000 employees are working to make sure our customers can depend on us," Partenheimer said. "We're on the front lines - delivering needed medicines, supplies, benefit checks, financial statements and the important correspondence every family counts on." But the emails and other records obtained by The Post offer fresh insight about the Postal Service, its philosophical shifts and the little-known board of governors overseeing its operations and finances. Lawmakers already have trained their attention on board leader Robert M. Duncan, a top Republican financier, for his political ties. The board later picked DeJoy, whose support for Trump, history of GOP fundraising and controversial USPS cost-cutting moves have stoked widespread criticism. "I see President Trump's fingerprints all over," said Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight. "It's clear from the president's public comments, and the actions of his administration, he has a major agenda for the post office - and we see a lot of it in black and white here." - - - The frantic emails began reaching the Postal Service leadership in March, mere weeks after the coronavirus is believed to have arrived in the United States. Mail carriers and, in some cases, their spouses practically pleaded with then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan and her top aides for help in protecting themselves on the front lines. At the time, New York City was emerging as the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic. Yet postal employees continued delivering letters and packages even as broad swaths of the state had started to shut down. A local union leader, whose name is redacted in email records shared with The Post, urged Brennan to follow suit and temporarily cease operations in the city. "I literally was on the phone today with many of my members screaming at me to do something [and] I don't want to die," the unnamed union official wrote, noting they had 12 confirmed coronavirus cases among the ranks by March 25. "You cannot expect the unions to convince the employees that if they come to work they have nothing to worry about." Roughly a week later, USPS publicly pledged to stock up on personal protective equipment and allow employees to more easily take leave as soon as they felt sick. But angry notes continued to flood Brennan's inbox, as postal workers and their families expressed fears for the public health crisis to come. "WHY IN GOD'S NAME ARE THEY DELIVERING UNESSENTIAL MAIL to EVERY HOUSE in a HIGHLY INFECTED AREA!!!!" wrote an unidentified woman who described herself as the spouse of a mail carrier in Pennsylvania. "Do you want them to get the coronavirus! . . . You as post master seem to be the ONLY ONE who can do something about the situation . . . so DO SOMETHING, before the virus does it for you!" Brennan did not respond to a request for comment. Partenheimer, the USPS spokesman, said in a statement that "supply chain issues" had affected the mail agency just as it had other businesses and institutions in the early stages of the pandemic. "However, those issues have long since been addressed and we are ensuring millions of masks, gloves and cleaning and sanitizing product are available and distributed to more than 30,000 locations every day through our Postal Service supply chain," he added. Inside the agency, though, leaders at the time appeared to be scrambling to keep operations running smoothly. The Trump administration had deemed postal workers essential, with the critical task of delivering medicine, supplies and other goods to a nation upended by the pandemic and largely staying at home. Unlike other elements of the economy, the U.S. Postal Service simply could not shut down. Some top administration officials even hoped to tap the mail service's vast network - and its unrivaled ability to reach every U.S. Zip code - to help Americans obtain personal protective equipment. The idea originated out of the Department of Health and Human Services, which suggested a pack of five reusable masks be sent to every residential address in the country, with the first shipments going to the hardest-hit areas. At the time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been working on coronavirus guidance that recommended face coverings, a reversal of its previous position, in the face of mounting evidence that people could spread the coronavirus without experiencing symptoms. The Postal Service prepared for the possibility it might be deputized in the effort, drawing up a news release touting that it was "uniquely suited" to help. The service specifically identified Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana as the first areas to receive face coverings, with deliveries shortly thereafter to King County, Wash.; Wayne County, Mich.; and New York, according to the newly unearthed document, which is labeled a draft. Before the news release was sent, however, the White House nixed the plan, according to senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Instead, HHS created Project America Strong, a $675 million effort to distribute "reusable cotton face masks to critical infrastructure sectors, companies, healthcare facilities, and faith-based and community organizations across the country." About 600 million of the 650 million masks ordered have been distributed, according to an HHS spokesperson, including 125 million set aside for schools. "There was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic," one administration official said in response to the scrapped mask plan. - - - The Postal Service, meanwhile, faced a panic of its own. And it soon would try to turn to some of Trump's closest political allies for help. For years, the agency had been operating in the red. Its mandate to deliver to every U.S. Zip code had come at great cost, and it struggled to meet its workers' sky-high retirement obligations - leaving it $160.9 billion in debt. The pandemic only exacerbated its financial standing, with agency officials in April predicting a $23 billion loss over the next 18 months and expressing fears the mail service could run out of money by October. To bridge the gap, the Democratically controlled House proposed setting aside $25 billion for the USPS as part of the March debate over coronavirus relief legislation. But the Republican-led Senate whittled that down to $13 billion, and Trump soon after threatened to veto any bill that included direct aid to the agency. Ultimately, Congress replaced the funding with a $10 billion loan in the package that became known as the Cares Act, a pot of money the Treasury Department was tasked with administering. The approach appeared to spook the USPS, agency email records show. The money seemed insufficient, the law itself presented serious legal challenges, and some mail service leaders questioned the Trump administration's involvement, according to its emails and other records, prompting them to go on the offensive. To boost its legal and political standing, the USPS turned to Passantino, a partner at the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich and a former deputy White House counsel for Trump. He departed the administration in fall 2018, but he never fully severed his ties to Trump's orbit. Passantino has since helped the Trump Organization handle investigations led by House Democrats, for example, and he has consulted for a firm assisting his reelection campaign. Duncan, the USPS board chairman, brought in Passantino and his law firm in part to help ease the agency's financial stress, according to emails and people involved with high-level USPS deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a frank assessment of the agency. The board also retained Republican consultant Rick Hohlt and others to address lingering policy and budget issues in Washington, the records reveal. An April 1 memo also shows the USPS considered tapping one of Passantino's colleagues - Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff and Republican National Committee chairman - believing he could help break a Washington logjam over the need for additional stimulus aid. People familiar with the matter said Priebus never made those calls, and Priebus is barred by executive order from lobbying the White House until 2022. Priebus and Hohlt declined to comment. Passantino and his law firm did not respond to requests for comment. The Postal Service did not answer detailed questions about their work, including the extent to which Passantino or Hohlt worked on matters related to the election, but it confirmed the hires came at a time when the board of governors was understaffed. Ethics watchdogs raised concerns about new evidence showing additional overlap between the Postal Service, which will deliver ballots this fall, and the Republican Party. "Why did the Postal Service need the services of Stefan Passantino when his primary claim to fame, the primary reason you hire him, is to carry out Donald Trump's personal and political defense work?" asked Evers, the head of American Oversight, who called him the "fox in the hen house." The document trove also includes three separate email chains referencing calls with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other agency officials over nine days in early April. Two people familiar with the matter say Treasury drove a hard line, demanding operating control over the agency in exchange for the $10 billion congressionally approved loan. Such a demand was unprecedented, postal experts said, and appeared to lead the USPS to hire another law firm in the spring to study the legality of the issue. That firm, Mayer Brown, concluded that Treasury's request was illegal. "Any agreement by the Postal Service to surrender its authority to the Secretary of the Treasury or to the [Federal Financing Bank] therefore would be illegal," lawyers concluded in an unreleased April 24 memo, referring to a federal borrowing entity. The Treasury Department ultimately backed away from the idea of assuming control of USPS operations, amid swelling opposition from congressional Democrats and Postal Service leaders. During an April 9 meeting between Kip Kranbuhl, a Treasury assistant secretary; Gary Grippo, a career Treasury official; and Postal Service executives, Grippo said Treasury would not seek to take operating control as part of the terms, according to notes from the meeting. But the agency continued to press the idea for weeks, insisting that any loan to the USPS should result in it assuming operational control of the mail agency, three people familiar with the talks said. Asked about the proposed arrangement, Monica Crowley, a Treasury spokeswoman, said in a statement that the USPS had been losing money - so the Trump administration sought to "protect" billions of dollars in loans ultimately authorized for the mail service. "As in any arms-length negotiation, some of these proposals were rejected by USPS, while other reforms, such as enhanced monthly and quarterly financial reports, were agreed upon as part of the recent $10 billion loan that Treasury and USPS agreed to terms on last month," she said. "Treasury's proposed financing conditions have at all times been commercially reasonable and consistent with law. It is absurd to describe commonsense conditions on continued taxpayer funding as a 'takeover.' " But the revelations still troubled some White House critics on Capitol Hill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., faulted the administration in a statement for being "hell-bent on sabotaging the USPS," adding, "Congress must protect the USPS from attacks by Trump and his cronies - tens of millions of Americans across the country are counting on us to act." - - - Amazon would prove to be a bigger headache, according to USPS email records, which reveal new details about the e-commerce giant's financial ties to the U.S. mail system. Trump for years has alleged without evidence that the Postal Service is undercharging companies, particularly Amazon, that rely on it to deliver to addresses the company itself can't reach - or, in industry parlance, the "last mile." In April, the president even called on the agency to "raise the price of a package by approximately four times," marking the latest in a long line of attacks against the company. But the documents unearthed by American Oversight suggest Amazon is a lucrative client for the mail service. Amazon drove roughly $3.9 billion in revenue, and $1.6 billion in profit, for the USPS in fiscal 2019, according to multiple emails and financial statements obtained via open records laws. The Postal Service delivered 1.54 billion packages on Amazon's behalf last year, about 30% of the company's total volume in 2019, and deliveries and revenue increased this year, the documents also indicate. Amazon declined to answer questions about its relationship with the USPS. "For more than two decades, Amazon has partnered closely with the United States Postal Service to invent and deliver for our customers, which has resulted in significant revenue for the USPS and thousands of American jobs," company spokeswoman Rena Lunak said in a statement. "USPS continues to be a great partner in serving Amazon customers." White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said in a statement that the agency "has been losing billions of dollars for more than a decade and is projected to lose tens of billions more in the next decade." The tensions came to head in April as Amazon and the USPS attempted to negotiate a new contract to determine the cost at which the country's mail service will deliver packages on Amazon's behalf. The relationship is a crucial one for the USPS, which warned throughout the spring that it stood to "cede" control to its competitors if it raised rates on Amazon too high, according to emails and memos obtained by The Post. In response to the president's attacks, the agency appeared to circulate a memo internally that appeared to fact-check his statements. Trump, for example, had claimed during a meeting of his coronavirus task force in late March that the agency "lose[s] money every time they deliver a package" for Amazon. USPS, however, countered that "unfunded government mandates," such as its retirement obligations, are driving its budget woes - not Amazon. "Amazon made it very clear that the USPS is alone, globally, among their partners in having this pricing uncertainty," indicated the document. It is not clear who drafted it, or to whom it was sent. The documents do not indicate the status of the Postal Service's talks with Amazon, but they do presciently list some of the e-commerce giant's lingering questions about the agency amid a roiling pandemic that had thrust it and its finances into doubt: "What does the USPS look like in the new few weeks, the next few months and the next several years?" - - - The Washington Post's Jay Greene contributed to this report. The economy will not come back anytime soon if we starve the states that bore the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. If more workers are laid off, thats fewer people providing services, buying things, fewer people with health insurance, eating out, paying rent or mortgages echoing down the chain. We need a lifeline and the GOP is mouthing outdated ideologies. America is not great when the President creates a culture war out of a major global health crisis. Its not great when he lies about the extent of the virus, politicizes the CDC, takes no responsibility for coordinating a national response and manipulates the data. Its not great when he threatens the schools with loss of funding, rather than providing the resources needed to do so safely. Its not great when he focuses on looters, praising right wing gun toting militias, while ignoring the systemic racism that brought out enormous numbers of people in peaceful protests. Its not great when his enablers in the Senate and House are silent and dont hold him accountable. We all want to work and open schools and businesses. These are not Democrat or Republican issues. We need a major safe and rational national response. (Susan Rappaport is a West Brighton resident.) Trumps campaign organizers were warned that defying regulations could be dangerous Trump is having a hard time following COVID-19 regulations. At a recent indoor rally in Nevada, the president attracted thousands of supporters violating the states restrictions of 50 people or more. Read More: ICE deports witness in sexual assault investigation at Texas center According to CNN, the event was held at the Xtreme Manufacturing facility in Henderson, Nevada. The facility decided to go forward with the rally despite warnings from the city that it violated state regulations. Kathleen Richards the city of Henderson spokeswoman issued a statement that read: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at Xtreme Manufacturing on September 13, 2020 in Henderson, Nevada. Trumps visit comes after Nevada Republicans blamed Democratic Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak for blocking other events he had planned in the state. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) The City of Henderson has issued a compliance letter and verbal warning to the event organizer that the event as planned would be in direct violation of the governors COVID-19 emergency directives. Specifically, gatherings of more than 50 people in a private or public setting is prohibited. Large live events must be approved by the Nevada Department of Business and Industry, Division of Industrial Relations and at this time, the City has not been notified that this event has been approved. The City may assess a fine of up to $500 per violation of the governors directives as well as suspend or revoke the business license. The violations eventually racked up to a whopping $3,000. According to KTNV, Xtreme Manufacturing was fined for facilitating a crowd that exceeded over 50 people, failing to social distance, and neglecting to wear face coverings. Originally the rallies were going to be held at Nevadas airport hangars but they pulled out when they discovered the event would exceed the 50 person limit. There have been almost 200,000 coronavirus deaths but despite the alarming numbers Trump supporters say they have every right to attend the rally. I feel like thats my freedom as an American to attend the event, said Trump rally attendee Kyle Hackett told CNN. And if I catch COVID, thats the consequences of my actions, so Im willing to take that risk and have a good time today. Story continues Before the rally, event organizers said they had a plan to keep attendees safe. Read More: Trump says he up-played virus after telling Woodward he wanted to play it down Every attendee will get a temperature check prior to admission, be provided a mask theyre encouraged to wear and have access to plenty of hand sanitizers, a campaign official told CNN. Have you subscribed to theGrios podcast Dear Culture? Download our newest episodes now! The post Trump indoor rally site fined $3K for virus violations appeared first on TheGrio. Travala.com has begun courting tourists in China, one of the few regions in this pandemic-restricted world where travel is rebounding to pre-crisis levels. The Binance-backed online travel agency has launched a Chinese language website, rolled out a regional customer support team and began marketing to travelers in the country on Thursday. CEO Juan Otero told CoinDesk the move positions Travala.com to capitalize on domestic jet-setters and hotel guests in one of the worlds only stabilized travel economies. Europe, the U.S. and our other strong markets will potentially take a good three to four months to recover, whereas in China, the recovery is happening now and very fast, Otero said. Chinas beating everyone in travel recovery: Domestic flight bookings are back to pre-COVID-19 levels and hotels are filling up for the upcoming Golden Week holiday at least in Macau. China is one of the largest domestic travel markets in the world, together with the U.S. and one of the fastest growing as well, Otero said. Finally the ground work is being laid to get Sammy fixed. This morning I will make one last slow and easy trip to the Big Village. I will gather money and drop the part money off at the shop in another small village on the way back.I have to stock up on food and whatnots, for the time frame for being done is the kicker Once the shop gets the parts, I will take Sammy to them and they will bring me to the Tiny Russian Village to wait until it gets done. Thus, I must be self-sufficient for at least two or three weeks. So, since nothing is set in stone, I will stock up today for the worst case situation 10,000 rubles for all parts and 7,000 rubles for labor = 17,000 rubles ($226 at todays rate.) I will also stop at my favorite home supply store and get a few goodies to allow me to continue my projects. But, some projects have had to be put on hold until next year. Sammys clutch was unexpected and has taken money from Peter to pay Paul.so to say Therefore, this morning I will be busy as I do some creative financing and with Svetas help over the last few days, we will get the Volga done and back in good shape. The easiest way to make sure that information is being crisscrossed correctly is to have two Russians communicate. I get by very well in everyday transactions, yet when it comes to detailed things like automobiles, being smart is better than being stupid and assuming that what you say is accurate It is interesting, Sveta and I both remember when we did clutch work on the Volga and I am like, But we had work done, why is the clutch a problem? Sammy the Volga was bought in 2009 and the clutch is one of the first things done. After looking up that info, I realize that we have had Sammy for all these years and time just flies. There has been a bunch of kilometers put on the clutch work that was done in Moscow and it is simply time to do it again.time does fly A Volga clutch is good for 40,000 to 100,000 kilometers, Varies by the driver and we have put that 100,000 kilometers on Sammy easily. So it is time, no matter how much it seems like yesterday that we had work done Gotta go and get ready to go to the Big Village Time Flies! WtR The Washington Post reports that a clear racial gap persists in Districts pot arrests. In other words, D.C. police officers (a majority of whom are Black, by the way) are far more likely to arrest Blacks than Whites for marijuana-related offenses. According to the Post, Blacks account for almost 90 percent of those arrested on marijuana-related charges in D.C. and 84 percent of those arrested for public consumption of the substance. Yet, they make up slightly less than half of the citys population, and studies claim that marijuana use is equally prevalent among Whites and Blacks. The Post notes that this racial gap persists even though marijuana arrests have declined by more than half in the past five years. Such arrests have declined due to reforms intended to decrease arrests in the hope of eliminating or reducing the racial gap. Neither the city nor the Post should be surprised that reducing the number of arrests didnt have the desired racial impact. As Jim Scanlan has shown, and we have often pointed out, reducing an adverse outcome here, a certain type of arrest tends to increase relative racial differences in rates of experiencing the outcome. As for why the racial gap exists in the first place, the answer is so obvious that even the Post supplies it (if you read far enough). Reasonably enough, the city deploys its police officers primarily to areas plagued by high rates of violent crime. These areas are populated mostly by Blacks. Thus, even if Whites are using marijuana as much as Blacks are, officers dont often encounter White users. But why do officers arrest Black users? After all, as the Post says, marijuana-related charges usually are either dropped or pleaded out with only a probationary sentence. However, a marijuana arrest can be an entree for the police to obtain information about more serious crimes. As one defense lawyer told the Post, officers can pat down people found to be using marijuana for illegal weapons and check for outstanding warrants. They can also try to turn users into informants or state witnesses. This seems like good policing practice to me. But whatever one thinks of it, one cannot rationally attribute the racial gap in marijuana arrests to racism by the D.C. police force. Nor can one hope to reduce that gap by reducing the total number of such arrests. Russia will try again to kill Alexei Navalny despite Western outrage at the Novichok poison plot against the Kremlin critic, NATO intelligence officials believe. NATO sources told Business Insider that there was 'no other explanation' except that Moscow ordered the hit against Navalny, who is recovering in a Berlin hospital after allegedly being poisoned with a water bottle in Siberia last month. While the West has demanded answers and the European Parliament today urged tough sanctions against Russia, the NATO officials warned that the diplomatic row would not prevent the Kremlin's operatives from trying again. Asked whether the pressure on Moscow would keep Navalny alive if he returned to Russia, one said: 'Short-term maybe, but long term absolutely not.' One official said that Putin had emerged relatively unscathed from the poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and Sergei Skripal in 2018, despite the suspicion that he was behind both. 'If he doesn't give a f*** about killing people on British soil because nobody will do anything to him, what on earth will stop him from killing one of his own in Russia?,' they said. Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has claimed that a German laboratory found traces of Novichok nerve agent on water bottles provided by the hotel he was staying in A video posted on Navalny's Instagram account on Thursday showed the water bottles in the hotel room Navalny fell violently ill on a domestic flight in Russia last month and was subsequently airlifted to Berlin for treatment MEPs today accused Putin's regime of a 'systemic effort' to stifle opposition, saying that the nerve agent Novichok which was used to target Navalny was 'only available to military structures and secret services in Russia'. Moscow has denied involvement, but the European Parliament passed a resolution today urging EU leaders to take 'ambitious restrictive measures' against Russia. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that any sanctions in Navalny's name would be 'manifestly anti-Russian', accusing the EU of a 'destructive course against our country'. While his friends initially suspected he was poisoned at Tomsk airport, they claimed in an Instagram post today that traces of Novichok were found on a water bottle in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk. A video posted on Navalny's Instagram account today showed members of his team searching the room he had just left in the Xander Hotel in Tomsk on August 20, an hour after they learned he had fallen sick in suspicious circumstances. The video shows the room, including two empty water bottles that were left on a desk. The water bottles are seen being placed in plastic bags. The Instagram post read: 'Two weeks later, a German laboratory found traces of Novichok precisely on the bottle of water from the Tomsk hotel room. 'And then more laboratories that took analyses from Alexei confirmed that that was what poisoned Navalny. Now we understand: it was done before he left his hotel room to go to the airport.' The post said that Navalny's team collected the bottle and other items that may have left toxin traces in the hotel room after hearing he fell ill. 'It was decided to take everything that could be hypothetically useful and hand it over to doctors in Germany,' the post said. 'The fact that the case would not be investigated in Russia was also quite obvious.' Navalny fell violently ill on the domestic flight in Russia last month and was subsequently airlifted to Berlin for treatment. Germany says he was poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent. Russia says it has seen no evidence he was poisoned. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny poses with his wife Yulia and their children at the German hospital where he is being treated after being poisoned with Novichok A global chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Thursday that it had sent experts to Germany to collect samples from Navalny and that results of tests for Novichok poisoning were 'forthcoming'. Berlin had formally requested its 'technical assistance' over Navalny's alleged poisoning, the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said. The West has pushed Russia to shed light on the incident involving Navalny, who has long been a thorn in Moscow's side. 'A team of experts from the (OPCW's) Technical Secretariat independently collected biomedical samples from Mr Navalny for analysis by OPCW designated laboratories,' the OPCW said in a statement. 'Results of this analysis are forthcoming and will be shared with the German authorities.' OPCW chief Fernando Arias earlier this month voiced 'grave concern' over the Navalny incident. Doctors at the Charite hospital (pictured) say Navalny's condition is improving, after a German military lab found that he had been poisoned with a nerve agent Germany said on Monday that labs in France and Sweden had confirmed its own finding that the banned weapons-grade substance was used, but that it was awaiting the OPCW's evaluation. The Navalny case threatens to cause fresh tensions at the toxic arms watchdog. Germany could ask the OPCW to use its recently-acquired mandate to attribute blame for chemical attacks - powers that Russia and its allies have bitterly opposed. Until OPCW member states voted to give the body the new powers in 2018, it was only able to say whether chemical weapons had been used, but not by whom. Britain drafted in the OPCW for 'technical assistance' after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok in the city of Salisbury in 2018, but that was before it had the new powers. About 13% of tenants have already missed rental payments due to COVID-19 or had to make alternative arrangements in order to pay their rent, according to a survey. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire/PA Images A quarter of tenants in the UK are concerned about paying rent in the upcoming months, according to a study. About 13% of tenants have already missed rental payments due to COVID-19 or had to make alternative arrangements in order to pay their rent, as lettings agents report a rise in rental arrears, a survey of 2,750 UK renters by property technology company Goodlord found. Meanwhile, an additional 12% are concerned about their ability to pay their rent going forward. Over a quarter (28%) of tenants believe their current income isnt secure, or are unsure about its security, with those aged 18 to 24 being under the most financial strain. Only two in five tenants definitely agree their income is secure, the research found. READ MORE: Brits get more joy from family and finances than relationships in COVID-19 pandemic The research also found many Brits are considering moving to a new property, as working from home becomes the new normal and financial situations shift. Over a quarter (27%) of tenants said they are considering moving house as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. Of these, just under a quarter (24%) currently live in London, the research found. With over half (51%) of tenants expecting to be working remotely, either full-time or part-time, over the next five years, many are exploring a move to more rural or suburban areas, leading a quarter (24%) to consider moving to a different part of the country. COVID-19 has had an impact on the way tenants are looking for a new home to rent over half (52%) of respondents said they would make an offer on a property they hadnt viewed in person, with a third (32%) saying they would make an offer on a home they had only viewed virtually. READ MORE: Women take eight months longer to save for first home A third of tenants said they would prioritise different features when looking for their next property, as a result of the pandemic. The study also found over half (55%) of current renters expect to still be renting in five years time, with only 45% of tenants likely to buy a property during this time. Those aged 25 to 34 are most likely to be able to buy a property, despite being the age group demonstrating the most signs of financial strain, the data shows. The commander of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) hasn't given up on buying aircraft for close-air support and precision strike, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, but he acknowledged that congressional uncertainty over the fiscal 2021 defense budget may delay plans to purchase a new fleet of light-attack aircraft designed for the task. Earlier this year, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) announced a new contract solicitation to eventually buy 75 manned aircraft for Armed Overwatch for special operations missions. The command asked for $106 million in its fiscal 2021 budget request for the proposal. But AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. James Slife said recently that, while congressional committees understand the overall need for Armed Overwatch, they may not be convinced that fiscal 2021 is the time to buy new aircraft. Read Next: Air Force Pushes Back Plans to Restart PT Tests "I'm not really sure where we are to land, to be honest with you. ... Really, the question is one of timing whether [fiscal] 2021 is the time to jump into procurement or if we need perhaps a different acquisitions strategy that doesn't move quite as quickly as the one that SOCOM had originally proposed," Slife told reporters at the Association of the Air Force's virtual Air, Space & Cyber conference. Earlier this summer, the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the 2021 defense policy bill proposed that AFSOC hold off on buying Armed Overwatch aircraft until Air Force leaders show that the service can't already offer the same capability, Air Force Magazine reported. Program officials had planned to conduct vendor demonstrations in November, but that may be delayed until next year, Slife said. "Based on the delays in the budget timeline ... I would judge it unlikely that we will be doing vendor demonstrations in November, but I could be mistaken about that. I do think we will be doing demonstrations in 2021," he said. Program officials are still working to define formal requirements such as "how many pounds of equipment it should carry, how long it should stay aloft, how long the runway would need to be for it to operate," Slife said. "I believe we are going to make some substantial progress in 2021," he said. "I don't know if we will get to procurement in 2021, but I do believe we will conduct the demonstration and refine our requirements documents before we do a broader solicitation in 2021." SOCOM's light-attack push came after the Air Force remained noncommittal on its own light-attack endeavor. The Air Force announced in 2016 that it had plans to hold flight demonstrations with a handful of aircraft to test whether lighter, less expensive and off-the-shelf aircraft might be usable in combat zones such as Afghanistan. The service first held a series of light-attack experimental fly-offs and maneuvers at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in 2017 in a two-phase approach. The second phase of the experiment was canceled following a fatal crash in June 2018. Even with the second phase cut short, Air Force officials determined that the Textron Aviation AT-6 Wolverine and Sierra Nevada Corporation/Embraer Defense & Security A-29 Super Tucano were the best fits for its light-attack needs. But last year, the service announced that it plans to purchase two or three light-attack aircraft from each company at most, stationing some of the aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and some with AFSOC at Hurlburt Field, Florida. -- Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this report. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Related: US Special Operations Command Now Wants its Own Light Attack Aircraft Fleet BERLIN - The UN and Germany are planning to hold another online summit on Libya on October 5, DPA reports. The meeting will include UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, foreign ministers, and representatives of the conflicting parties in Libya, as well as representatives from Germany and the UN, the United States, Britain, France, China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Congo, Italy, Egypt and Algeria as well as the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League. The meeting comes after Berlin organized a summit in January, where parties agreed to stop supplying weapons to the warring factions but the agreement was not implemented. Violations of the weapons embargo have been recorded by the UN by Turkey, Russia, and the UAE, all countries that signed the final declaration, Deutsche Well reported. A Spitfire, the plane which drove Hitler's Luftwaffe from the skies over Britain exactly 80 years ago, will salute a new band of heroes with a series of flypasts of Northern Ireland hospitals today and tomorrow. It is a novel way of saying thank you to those who are fighting an even more devious enemy than the Nazis - the potentially lethal cornonavirus. Like The Few, as Churchill hailed the vastly outnumbered Spitfire pilots after the Battle of Britain, the nurses, doctors, paramedics and all NHS staff who come in contact with patients with the virus deserve the greatest praise. They are in the front line and have never shirked their duty. Indeed, across the UK, some have paid the ultimate price, succumbing to the virus. The flypast of the Spitfire is also an opportunity to raise money for the NHS with donors getting their names stencilled on the aircraft. During the Second World War readers of this newspaper donated the money to build 17 Spitfires. No doubt they will be generous again to show their admiration for the very deserving staff of the NHS. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global market for organic face care ingredients is estimated to be valued at USD 1,650.5 million, with a CAGR of 4.85% from 2019 to 2024 (forecast period). The study provides a brief overview of the COVID-19 analysis on theOrganic Face Care Ingredients Industry to provide the latest insight into the emerging market dynamics. The report includes estimates, review, discussion of emerging developments in the sector, market growth, market share forecasts, and key market players. Face care ingredients are the raw materials used in the manufacture of face care products. Ingredients can be synthesized chemicals or naturally produced substances. Organic face care ingredients are produced mainly without the use of any chemical compounds. The various categories of organic ingredients used in the manufacture of face ingredients are surfactants, emollients, active ingredients, sugar polymers, and preservatives. Market Dynamics The global market for face care has seen significant growth over the last few years. Market growth is boosted mainly by the release of new face care products, including skin-whitening creams, anti-aging creams, and many more. In addition, the rising geriatric population across the globe, along with an increasing consumer desire to look younger, is expected to increase the demand for anti-aging creams, which, in effect, will fuel the growth of face care ingredients market. The need for organic face care is growing in the broader field due to increasing consumer awareness about synthetic compounds' detrimental effects. Therefore, the manufacturers of facial care products are emphasizing in the organic ingredients to introduce organic face care products. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1562 Segmentation The global market for organic face care ingredients has been segmented based on product type and application. Based on product type, the global market for organic face care ingredients has been classified into surfactants, emollients, active ingredients, preservatives, sugar polymers and others. Based on application, the global market for organic face care ingredients has been classified into face wash skin-whitening creams, anti-aging creams, cleansing wipes, and others. Regional Analysis The global market for organic face care ingredients has been analyzed for four key regionsNorth America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and the rest of the world. Europe is estimated to hold the largest market for organic face care ingredients, both in value and volume. The growth of the market for organic face care ingredients is related to a variety of factors. The production of face care products is remarkably high in the European region due to the strong demand for face care products. Consumers in Europe are compelled towards natural products in order to avoid skin allergies, which could lead to excessive use of synthetic ingredients. In addition, Europe is expected to account for the substantial market share of the dominant market share of the organic face care ingredients market. Among the European countries, Germany and France have a significant market share due to the high production facility for face care products. North America contributed 32% of the global market share of organic face care ingredients in 2018. It is anticipated to see a modest growth rate during the forecast period. The Asia Pacific region is estimated to see significant growth during the forecast period 2019-2024. Access Full Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/organic-face-care-ingredients-1562 Key Players Some of the significant participants operating in the global organic face care ingredients market are Akzo Nobel N.V. (Netherlands), BASF SE (Germany), SILAB (France), Clariant AG (Switzerland), Ashland, Inc. (US), The Agrana Group (Austria), Croda International PLC (UK), Evonik Industries AG (Germany), Lubrizol Corporation (US), GatteFosse SAS (France), Galaxy Surfactants Ltd. (India), Cargill, Incorporated (US), Solvay S.A. (Belgium), Symrise AG (Germany), Lucas Meyer Cosmetics (US) Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com The Texas hotel industry suffered its worst decline on record in the second quarter as business and leisure travel ground to a halt in the early months of the pandemic and very little has returned. Statewide hotel revenue plunged 64 percent compared with the year earlier to $1.2 billion, according to new data from San Antonio-based Source Strategies. Demand, measured by number of room nights sold, fell by nearly half as COVID-19 decimated the states and countrys lodging industry. This is an economic disaster on a scale that we have not seen before, Source Strategies President Todd Walker said in a statement. Many hotels will not survive if demand remains anemic, he added. Occupancy rates: Have you returned to the office yet? Hotels have been the most heavily hit sector of the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, according to data firm Trepp, and experts are predicting a wave of foreclosures in the industry. Among metro areas with the highest percentages of delinquent hotel CMBS loans mortgages that are bundled into securities Houston had the highest at 66 percent, according to a recent Trepp report based on data as of July. Tens of thousands of hotel employees will lose their jobs and small business industries that depend on these hotels to drive local tourism and economic activity will likely face a similar fate, Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said in a statement last month urging government assistance. Houston hotel occupancy fell into the single digits during the early days of the pandemic. Typically, occupancy is between 60 percent and 70 percent, according to the Greater Houston Partnership, which said more than 9,000 hotel jobs were lost in March and April. From May through June, just 1,400 of those jobs came back. Gov. Greg Abbotts stay-at-home order was in effect for most of April, but hotel demand remained low after the order was lifted. Across the state, no metro market was spared, the Source Strategies report shows. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston is experiencing a pandemic-fueled housing boom. Here's what's selling The largest markets were hit hardest. Revenue in the Austin-Round Rock area was down nearly 80 percent; San Antonio fell 74 percent; Dallas was off 73 percent and Houston tumbled 61.4 percent. Statewide occupancy in the second quarter averaged 35.8 percent, down 31.3 points from a year earlier. Occupancy in the Houston region was 36.8 percent, just above the state average. Houston's average daily room rate fell 33 percent to $73.07. Tourism markets performed the best during the quarter with Corpus Christi posting the highest occupancy at 51.4 percent. The top hotels for revenue-per-available-room a measure of rates and occupancy during the quarter were primarily beach markets, including Galveston, Port Aransas and South Padre Island. The San Luis Hotel in Galveston was at the top of the list. nancy.sarnoff@chron.com twitter.com/nsarnoff A n Indian politician who encouraged people to sit in mud puddles to become immune to Covid-19 has tested positive for the disease. Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria, a minister from the northern state of Rajasthan, tested positive on the first day of the Parliaments monsoon session, according to reports in local media. A month before his diagnosis, the politician shared a video of himself on Facebook sitting in a mud bath. "Go out, get wet in the rain, sit in the dirt, work on the farm, blow a conch and eat 'desi' things," said Mr Jaunapuria in Hindi. Desi is a Hindi term meaning local or indigenous. "One gains immunity from doing these things," he added. He also said: "Blowing a conch makes our lungs stronger." The bizarre clip shows Mr Jaunapuria sitting topless in a mud puddle while he blows on a conch shell. The MP filmed himself eating a leaf from a nearby bush / Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria He then walks over to a tree and some bushes where he pulls a leaf from a branch and eats it. Mr Jaunapuria was among 24 politicians who tested positive for coronavirus recently. It comes after India confirmed another record jump in coronavirus cases on Thursday, logging 97,894 cases in the past 24 hours. The Health Ministry said that the new cases raised the nations confirmed total to more than 5.1 million since the pandemic began. It said 1,132 more people died in the past 24 hours, for a total of 83,198. At the current rate of infection, India is expected within weeks to surpass the 6.6 million reported cases in the United States, currently the country with the most reported infections. Nationwide, India is testing more than one million samples per day. Skye Melissa Fuller, from the Gold Coast, admitted she had taken the psychoactive drug when officers found it along with two other illegal steroid-related substances and a syringe in her handbag A nightclub manager was high on GHB when she went on a wild 150km/h rampage, bumping into guardrails and swerving into oncoming traffic, a court has heard. Skye Melissa Fuller, from the Gold Coast, admitted she had taken the psychoactive drug when officers found it along with two other illegal steroids and a syringe in her handbag. Police prosecutor Sergeant Kylie Vanderbyl told the court the 26-year-old was driving at excessive speed, and collided with guard rails and barriers on either side of the Pacific Motorway at 12.35pm on May 8. 'The silver Holden Captiva was observed swerving in and out of lanes, tailgating vehicles, reducing speed before accelerating and tailgating and other vehicles were required to move out of the way to avoid a serious collision,' she said. Sgt Vanderbyl said when officers finally pulled Fuller over, she appeared confused about where she was. 'Police allege the defendant's driving was dangerous, she put her own life at risk and other road users,' the prosecutor said. 'She was nervous and trembling and her pupils appeared to be small and pin point in size. She appeared confused. Sgt Vanderbyl noted Fuller, who manages a nightclub in Surfers Paradise, was 'extremely apologetic and clearly distressed' by her actions. Fuller's defence lawyer Nicholas Crawford said his client was diagnosed with a serious illness and 'spiralled' and began to abuse 'illicit substances' in April this year when her health deteriorated, the Courier-Mail reported. She pleaded guilty to six offences including dangerous operation of a vehicle while adversely affected and excessively speeding and three counts of unlawful possession of a dangerous drug. Chief Magistrate Terry Gardiner disqualified Fuller from driving for nine months and sentenced her to 15 months' probation. Mr Gardiner warned Fuller to take the consequences seriously so she doesn't land back in court. The gigantic ice caps contain enough frozen water to lift oceans 65 metres Sustained greenhouse gas emissions could see global sea levels rise nearly 40 centimetres this century as ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland continue to melt, a major international study concluded Thursday. The gigantic ice caps contain enough frozen water to lift oceans 65 metres, and researchers are increasingly concerned that their melt rates are tracking the UN's worst case scenarios for sea level rise. Experts from more than three dozen research institutions used temperature and ocean salinity data to conduct multiple computer models simulating the potential ice loss in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers. They tracked two climate scenariosone where mankind continues to pollute at current levels and another where carbon emissions are drastically reduced by 2100. They found that under the high emissions scenario ice loss in Antarctica would see sea levels rise 30 cm by century's end, with Greenland contributing an additional 9 cm. Such an increase would have a devastating impact worldwide, increasing the destructive power of storm surges and exposing coastal regions home to hundreds of millions of people to repeated and severe flooding. Even in the lower emissions scenario, the Greenland sheet would raise oceans by around 3 cm by 2100beyond what is already destined to melt due to the additional 1C of warming humans have caused in the industrial age. "It's not so surprising that if we warm the planet more, more ice will be lost," said Anders Levermann, an expert on climate and ice sheets at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "If we emit more carbon into the atmosphere we will have more ice loss in Greenland and Antarctic," he told AFP. "We have in our hands how fast we let sea levels rise and how much we let sea levels rise eventually." ISMIP6 mean projections for rise in sea levels through 2100 due to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The red-shaded area is the projection for the pessimistic scenario, while the blue-shaded is the projection for the optimistic scenario . Credit: Heiko Goelzer, et al., The Cryosphere, September 17, 2020. Outpacing predictions Until the turn of the 21st century, the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets generally accumulated as much mass as they shed. Runoff, in other words, was compensated by fresh snowfall. But over the last two decades, the gathering pace of global warming has upended this balance. Last year, Greenland lost a record 532 billion tonnes of icethe equivalent of six Olympic pools of cold, fresh water flowing into the Atlantic every second. This run-off accounted for 40 percent of sea level rise in 2019. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a special report on Earth's frozen spaces predicted last year that Greenland ice melt could contribute 8-27 cm to ocean levels by 2100. It estimated Antarctica could add 3-28 cm on top of that. A study published earlier this month in Nature Climate Change said the mass already lost by melt-water and crumbling ice between 2007-2017 aligned with the most extreme IPCC forecasts for the two sheets. They also predicted a maximum of 40 cm sea level rise by 2100. Authors of Thursday's research, published in a special edition of The Cryosphere Journal, said it highlighted the role emissions will play this century on the world's seas. "One of the biggest uncertainties when it comes to how much sea level will rise is how much ice sheets will contribute," said project leader Sophie Nowicki from the University of Buffalo. "And how much the ice sheets contribute is really dependent on what the climate will do." Levermann said uncertainty in the projections "cannot be a reason to wait-and-see" in terms of emissions cuts. "We already know that something will happen. We just don't know how bad it is going to get." Explore further Sea level rise from ice sheets track worst-case climate change scenario More information: tc.copernicus.org/articles/special_issue1019.html Heiko Goelzer, et al. The future sea-level contribution of the Greenland ice sheet: a multi-model ensemble study of ISMIP6. The Cryosphere. September 17, 2020. doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3033-2020 Helene Seroussi, et al. ISMIP6 Antarctica: a multi-model ensemble of the Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the 21st century. The Cryosphere. September 17, 2020. doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3071-2020 Journal information: Nature Climate Change 2020 AFP By Tom Balmforth MOSCOW (Reuters) - Imagine a painting of a female nude but with the bare flesh of her legs and body blotched with purple, green and yellow bruises as she lies on the floor and embraces an outline of her country Belarus. The striking protest image, an oil painting by Belarusian artist Yana Chernova, takes aim at what rights groups says is systematic violence and torture used by police to try and quell mass anti-government protests. Tens of thousands of Belarusians have taken part in nationwide protests against veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko for more than five weeks. Women have taken a particularly prominent role in the movement. Related video: Over 100,000 protest in Belarus "Everything happening with us here is injustified cruelty against people, against girls - it is a mockery of everything that is wonderful, everything that is soft and warm. It is not just against women, but against Belarus," Chernova said. The Interior Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment about torture by police on Wednesday. The government has previously denied accusations of abuses. Chernova's painting shows a female figure lying with her arms around the red shape of Belarus against a white backdrop, colours she said she chose to match the red and white flag that protesters have made a symbol of their struggle. Chernova, 24, an artist in her final year of art academy in Moscow, said by telephone from Belarus that she has long been critical of the Belarusian government. "I was born in this regime, I grew up (in it), I saw and listened to stories of what has happened and continues to happen. It's not news in Belarus that people disappear, are killed and kidnapped,"she said. "This has always happened and I don't know how you can support authorities like that." (Editing by Angus MacSwan) Islamabad, Sep 17 : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced that his government will soon introduce a three-tier legislation providing for the registration of sex offenders, exemplary punishment for rape and child abuse and effective policing. Khan made the announcement while addressing a joint sitting of Parliament after the passage of a number of Financial Action Task Force-related bills, reports Dawn news. "Such incidents ruin the lives of victims and their families also have to suffer," he said referring to the September 9 gang-rape on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway. He pointed out that the main suspect in the case was a 'history-sheeter', explaining that global data indicated that such criminals were repeat offenders and therefore maintaining their data was important. Khan said the legislation would also contain provisions for registration of sex offenders and effective policing. He admitted that only a very small percentage of such cases were reported to police in the country. Even after the arrest of offenders in rape and child abuse cases, their conviction was not easy in absence of proper prosecution and concrete evidence, he said, adding that for this reason, the bill would also provide for witness protection. As per the latest reports, the two rapists named Abid Ali and Waqar ul Hasan have been identified through geo-fencing and DNA testing. Hasan has been arrested and a manhunt is underway to track down Ali. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text LANSING The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) urges Homes for the Aged (HFA) to conduct regular testing for COVID-19, and announced today an expansion of state assistance and reimbursement to support more testing in these facilities. HFAs provide room, board and supervised personal care to 21 or more individuals ages 55 or older. Due to the significant risk of outbreaks in long-term care facilities and the higher likelihood of severe health outcomes caused by COVID-19 among the elderly, it is imperative that HFAs provide routine testing to identify infections quickly and contain spread. As of Sept. 10, 45 ongoing outbreaks and four new outbreaks had been reported at long-term care facilities across Michigan, including nursing homes, HFAs, assisted living and adult day care. COVID-19 presents acute risks to older adults, especially in congregate care settings. Robust testing is vital to protect these facilities, and the residents and staff from outbreaks, said Robert Gordon, director of MDHHS. We encourage all Homes for the Aged to start testing programs to protect residents as quickly as possible if they havent already; the state stands ready to help with testing resources and funding. MDHHS recommends HFAs in regions of medium risk or higher on the MI Safe Start Map, test all residents and staff: One-time baseline testing of all residents and staff. Weekly testing, until all staff and residents are negative for 14 days since the last positive test. At the time of admission for new residents. Before new staff members start work. When having COVID symptoms. After close contact with a COVID-positive individual (within six feet for fifteen minutes or more). To help implement these recommendations and encourage more testing in HFAs, MDHHS is providing expanded testing assistance and reimbursement. HFAs that conduct COVID-19 testing for residents or staff will be eligible for reimbursement of laboratory costs not covered by insurance or by other types of state assistance. MDHHS Financial Guidance for HFA Testing provides more details on this process. Facilities can alternatively seek state assistance to conduct testing. The state can provide medical staff, supplies, and/or laboratory processing, depending on the needs of the facility. HFAs with a medical provider who can order a test should complete the states testing request template and submit it to MDHHS at MDHHS-LTCRequests@michigan.gov. HFAs without a medical provider to order the test should contact their local health department to request testing assistance. Information around this outbreak is changing rapidly. The latest information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus. The department said Thursday afternoon that the shooter, a 72-year-old white man, knew the other three people. He approached them in the apartment complexs parking lot brandishing a gun, and an argument ensued. The department did not offer any details about the argument. At some point the man opened fire and then shot himself, the DOJ said. Peoples Committees of cities and provinces need to ensure safety of activities at sea, coordinate with concerned forces to control the operation of vessels. (Photo: VNA) Hanoi Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on September 16 issued a notice, asking relevant ministries, agencies and localities to keep a close eye on the development of Storm Noul and put forth specific tasks. Peoples Committees of cities and provinces need to ensure safety of activities at sea, coordinate with concerned forces to control the operation of vessels, and guide local residents to take preventive measures in order to protect crops, houses and other facilities. Human resources and equipment should be ready for the evacuation of people in dangerous areas, with attention paid to COVID-19 prevention and control, according to the notice. The PM has warned of flash floods and landslides in mountainous areas after heavy rains, saying measures are needed to ensure the safety of reservoirs, especially important ones or those under construction. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will provide update about the storm for people and relevant agencies. The Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control will inform vessels of dangerous areas, and instruct ministries, agencies and localities in response efforts. Specific tasks have also been assigned to other ministries and agencies in the notice. At 4 a.m. on September 17, storm Noul is forecast to be around 450 km to the southeast of Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago, off the central coast, with a maximum wind speed of 90 kph. Weather forecasting centers in Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines, and Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) - a leading forecaster and mapper of tropical storm activity - predict the storm will keep strengthening until wind speeds reach 110-120 kph and head toward central Vietnam. Storm Noul is the fifth formed this year in the East Sea. The fourth storm, Higos, hit last month, making landfall in China. Natural disasters like droughts, floods and landslides killed 133 people in Vietnam last year and caused losses worth around 7 trillion VND (302.6 million USD), according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In the first half of this year they claimed 47 lives and caused losses worth 3.3 trillion VND. The East Sea could see 11-13 storms and tropical depressions this year, half of them affecting the country, meteorologists have warned. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. In an effort to protect people from being allured by bookmakers and subsequent potential losses, the Armenian government passed a decision on September 17 that allows bookmakers to operate solely at locations which are a certain distance away from heavily populated areas, as well as educational or cultural institutions, governmental offices or hospitals. Finance Minister Atom Janjughazyan said at the Cabinet meeting that currently bookmakers have offices mostly in heavily populated areas. This is negatively impacting the society by creating the dangers of easily being allured with gambling, he said. In Yerevan, bookmakers will have to relocate their offices at least 150 meters away (direct line) from any educational, historic-cultural institution, state and local self governing offices and hospitals. The distance is 100 meter elsewhere, with the exception of administrative centers of Syunik, Meghri and Tavush where the limit is set at 50 meters. Authorities said theyve studies international practice in developing the law. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan Servicemen take part in the Rapid Trident 2020 international military exercises in Lviv Region, Ukraine, on Sept. 17, 2020. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters) Ukraine-US Military Exercises Begin as Russia Holds Drills in Belarus KYIVUkraine and the United States. launched joint military exercises on Thursday, two days after Russia began joint military drills with forces in neighboring Belarus. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said the U.S. Army-led Rapid Trident exercises, taking place near Yavoriv in western Ukraine, would involve about 4,000 servicemen from 10 countries. It said the exercises show the strength of the U.S.-Ukraine strategic partnership and commitment to enhance readiness in a challenging operational environment, which increases the strong relationships that are necessary for peace and stability. U.S. Army servicemen attend the opening of the Rapid Trident 2020 international military exercises in Lviv Region, Ukraine, on Sept. 17, 2020. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a speech at the opening of the exercises that a modern, equipped and capable Ukrainian army was his priority, and this army must be the guarantor of the free development of Ukraine. Russian and Belarusian forces began drills in the Brest region near Belaruss border with Poland on Tuesday. Interfax news agency quoted Russias defense ministry as saying the drills, due to run until Sept. 25, were for counter-terrorism purposes and were not directed against other countries. Kyivs relations with Moscow deteriorated in 2014 after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and backed pro-Russian separatists in Ukraines Donbass region. Ukraines relations with Belarus soured when Kyiv last month condemned the Aug. 9 presidential election in Belarus as neither free nor fair after the election commission declared Lukashenko the winner. Facing mass demonstrations by protesters who say the vote was rigged, Lukashenko, who denies electoral fraud, has been pushed back closer to traditional ally Moscow. Belarusian state news agency Belta quoted him on Wednesday as naming Ukraine and the United States among countries be accused of organizing the protests. Mumbai, Sep 17 : A Mumbai court has sent a drug peddler from Goa - Chris Costa - to judicial custody till October 1, after his two-day remand with the Narcotics Control Bureau ended here on Thursday. Costa was among the seven drug peddlers, suppliers, and dealers arrested - including 6 from Mumbai - in the NCB swoop at different locations on Sunday as it attempts to unravel the Bollywood drug nexus in the case of the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. So far, a total of 17 persons, including ex-girlfriend of Sushant actress Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik, and Sushant's schoolmate Suryadeep Malhotra, have been arrested besides the drug peddlers. The others arrested are currently in either judicial custody or NCB custody for varying periods depending on the charges against them. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery Within the scope of the European Union for Sustainable Energy in Armenia Program, a program for promotion of renewable energy is being carried out in Artik town of Shirak Province of Armenia at the initiative of the Foundation for Support to Energy Saving and the Union of Communities. Through the program, a 600 kW photovoltaic solar power station will be built in Artik in order to solve the towns energy issues and sell the produced electricity to the Electric Networks of Armenia. The Public-Private Partnership format will be tested for the first time for construction of the solar power station in Artik. According to the solar maps of Armenia, Artik has sufficient resource for solar power, which is a major guarantee for effectiveness of the program. Three suspected rebels and a 45-year-old woman were killed on September 17 during a gunbattle between government forces and anti-India rebels in the main city of disputed Kashmir, officials said. The gunfight erupted shortly after scores of counterinsurgency police and soldiers launched an operation based on a tip about the presence of militants in a Srinagar neighborhood, said Pankaj Singh, an Indian paramilitary spokesman. Singh said the fighting left three militants dead and a paramilitary officer wounded. He said a local woman was also killed in the exchange of gunfire. There were no other details immediately available about the civilians killing. As the fighting raged, many residents marched near the site in solidarity with the rebels and chanted slogans seeking an end to Indian rule over the region. Government forces fired shotgun pellets and tear gas at the stone-throwing protesters. No casualties were immediately reported in the clashes. India and Pakistan claim the divided territory of Kashmir in its entirety. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel cause that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. Armed rebels have fought Indian rule since 1989, which New Delhi calls Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris call it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict. A new proclamation supported by the Napa City Council declares the legacy of racism and discrimination to be a threat not only to civil rights, but to the public health of minorities. Approved in a unanimous council vote Tuesday night, the resolution labels systemic racism and discrimination as a public health crisis depriving people of color and other minorities of an equal shot at health, housing and public safety, as well as education and employment all factors that backers called contributing factors to lifespan and quality of life. Following more than three dozen statements of support by email and telephone and the endorsement of Californias public health director all five Napa council members voted in support of the declaration, which begins a process for seeking community and staff guidance focusing on identifying systemic racism in city employment, training, development and housing programs. City Manager Steve Potter announced the city will begin a mandatory, multi-year training program for workers covering racial equality, implicit bias, cultural awareness, LGBTQ rights and gender identity. Potter, who previously served as Napas police chief, promised to update the council on the progress of equality efforts semi-annually. I think a lot of people would like to think that racism doesnt exist in Napa, said Councilmember Mary Luros, an attorney who recalled her past pro bono work for Legal Aid and described encountering 1950s housing covenants barring non-whites from buying Napa homes. Having heard all those people talk, its clearly evident that this is an issue for us. People of color face vast disparities in terms of job opportunities, health care, education, safe housing and food security due to their ethnicity or skin color. The declaration is the confluence of the two trends that have dominated debate in Napa and across the country in 2020 the toll of a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 196,000 American lives since March, and the wave of protests against racial injustice that arose after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest by Minneapolis police in May. Members of the Peoples Collective for Change, which organized a series of downtown anti-racism protests starting less than a week after Floyds death, entered talks with Napa Police Chief Robert Plummer over the summer to discuss reforms of use-of-force policy and other policing issues. In August, Plummer offered a slate of recommendations for Napa Police that included quarterly training in defensive tactics, better record keeping of use-of-force cases, cultural awareness training, and a community advisory committee to review police policies. The citys Rainbow Action Network has been pushing for a public health declaration since July and has worked with city officials on the language, said Anne Sutkowi-Hemstreet, Community Programs Manager for First 5 Napa, which created the network to work for justice and inclusion for LGBTQ residents. Napas public health declaration gained strong backing from Californias public health director Dr. Karen Smith, who served in the same role in Napa County before her promotion to state office in 2015. During a videoconference with council members, she described the barriers to equal opportunity less as the result of open bigotry by individuals and more as the by-product of policies that shortchange the disadvantaged. Systemic racism does not mean systems filled with racist people, said Smith, who continues to live in Napa. It means policies and ways of doing business that systematically and disproportionately limit peoples opportunities based on their race or ethnicity. Unfortunately, we have policies and practices that disproportionately limit the opportunities of some members of our society more than others. Smith cited disproportionately high levels of poverty for Napas minority communities in a 2019 study by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society while 39% of city residents are Latinx and less than 1% are Black, they accounted for 55% and 28%, respectively, of Napas families who live below the standard for self-sufficiency. The coronavirus pandemic has made such inequities even starker, she argued, pointing to a Latinx community that has accounted for more than half of Napa Countys reported COVID-19 infections. The failure to cope with discriminatory policies of the past has set minority residents behind the curve on the social determinants that improve the chance at good health, according to Smith, including access to education, employment, safe housing and high-quality food. While the long-term effects of Napas declaration of inequality as a public health threat remain to be seen, Councilmember Scott Sedgley praised the gesture as a reminder of the need for vigilance in protecting the most vulnerable. Im a product of the 60s, and looking back at what we went through with the riots and the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam and all those things, you get into this false sense of security that as a society, weve moved ahead, weve advanced, were better than that, Sedgley said. Personally, it could be that I got complacent, that I needed a kick in the pants. This is a continuing education moment: Hey, we live in our bubbles in the community and we have to see beyond that. Not everybody starts at the same point on the track, he continued. Those that are starting a little bit behind, we as a civilized society need to help them catch up and have the same opportunity. Watch Now: Black Lives Matter vigil in St. Helena You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com 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. Almost 24 hours after Massachusetts health officials labeled Worcester at high risk for spreading coronavirus, city officials on Thursday said the number of new cases reported in the last week is trending downward. Worcester has averaged 9.5 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks, according to data released by Massachusetts health officials on Wednesday evening. That case count puts Worcester into the states red category, meaning the community is at a high risk of spreading coronavirus. Since the start of the pandemic, Worcester has had 6,132 cases of coronavirus. In the last week, the city has had 106 new positive cases, City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said during a Thursday news conference. This summer, Worcester officials have been updating the public on new coronavirus case counts on a weekly basis. Previously, Worcester had three consecutive weeks of rising cases. Last week, the city 140 new cases. Thats good news, Augustus said. That means this weeks caseload is 34 less than last weeks caseload so those three weeks of ever-increasing numbers week after week has, at least for this past week, gone down. Augustus said the new red designation is an opportunity to increase awareness and keep caseloads trending downward. We are still significantly below that 10% threshold for positivity that would trigger a rollback, said Augustus, noting the city has been below that threshold since late May. Now is not the time to let our guard down and this is a reminder that this virus will come back quickly if we do let our guard down. Worcester has had 287 deaths through the pandemic, Augustus said. The local hospital systems, UMass Memorial Health Care and Saint Vincent Hospital, have, combined, seen 375 deaths related to the virus. As a city, we are still in good shape with capacity in our health care system, Mayor Joseph Petty said, encouraging residents to keep up with safety measures like wearing a face mask, washing hands and sneezing into your elbow. Michael Hirsh, Worcesters medical director, said these new cases do not appear to be putting a strain on the local health care system, which currently is caring for about 11 inpatients with the virus. Augustus said some of the new cases appear to be related to larger family gatherings. He stressed that family members who do not live together should wear face masks and keep a social distance when seeing one another. While local colleges have had some coronavirus cases, students do not appear to be a significant factor in increased cases, Augustus said. The red designation brings some additional resources, said Augustus, adding that officials will meet with state officials Friday to discuss what those additional services may be. The city is expecting help with educational campaigns, more testing and enforcement assistance. In recent weeks, just fewer than 5,000 coronavirus tests have been administered in Worcester through the Stop the Spread free testing campaign with a 2% positivity rate, Augustus said. That campaign will continue in Worcester, the manager said. Officials noted that flu season is also approaching and that influenza yearly contributes to thousands of trips to the emergency room. Next week, the Worcester Public Schools is offering free coronavirus testing and flu shots during two clinics for students and families. Related Content: Breonna Taylor's image has appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine and in giant murals around the county -- but Tamika Palmer says she still wears a T-shirt bearing her daughter's likeness to make sure no one forgets her name and how she died in a hail of police gunfire in her own home. "I wear this shirt just to remind people that every day I'm fighting for her," Palmer told ABC News. "It doesn't matter if my day is full of me running errands; when I'm out and about, people see me so they need to see her name." On Tuesday, Palmer stood before news cameras wearing her T-shirt as she and the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, announced a $12 million settlement in a lawsuit she filed against the city after three white police officers serving a "no-knock" warrant on Taylor's apartment in March broke down the door and shot her multiple times. The settlement, which lawyers for the Taylor family say is the largest ever paid out for a Black woman killed in an alleged police misconduct case, also includes an agreement to implement major reforms in the Louisville Metro Police Department in hopes they will prevent anything similar from occurring again. PHOTO: Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers after they allegedly executed a search warrant of the wrong home. (Breonna Taylor Family) "The police reform will definitely be a part of her legacy," Palmer said of her daughter. "So it'll help to continue to let her name live on now." Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said the reforms are intended to build stronger connections between the city's police department and the communities officers serve. They include establishing a housing credit program to incentivize officers to live in certain low-income neighborhoods in the city, and encouraging officers to volunteer two hours every two-week pay period in the communities they serve. A program will be established to include social workers in the police department to assist officers on certain calls, particularly those involving people suffering from mental illness. The reforms will also require the police department to overhaul how search warrants are obtained, and to create an Office of Inspector General to oversee an "early-warning system" that tracks use-of-force incidents and citizens' complaints in an attempt to weed out bad officers, Fischer said. Story continues PHOTO: Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, speaks during a news conference announcing a $12 million civil settlement between the estate of Breonna Taylor and the City of Lousiville, in Louisville, Kentucky, Sept. 15, 2020. (Bryan Woolston/Reuters) In the six months since the 26-year-old Taylor was shot to death, protesters throughout the country have repeated her name in their almost daily calls for justice for her and a growing list of Black people killed in confrontations with police. Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Taylor family, told ABC News that he and Palmer hope the reforms reached in Louisville, which also include policies to increase police accountability and transparency, will "be used as a model all across America in the name of Breonna Taylor." "That was her conviction from the very beginning when we started to negotiate," Crump said of Palmer. "She wanted to have reform." He said the program to incentivize officers to live in the communities they work in is particularly important. MORE: $12 million settlement reached in fatal Kentucky police shooting of Breonna Taylor "We've always said it's important that if the police knew the individuals in the communities that they were policing there would be less of this ignorance of one another," Crump said. "You wouldn't fear these young Black people when you saw them because they would be your neighbors." Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping inside their Louisville apartment on March 13 when police officers attempted to execute a "no-knock" search warrant. Three plainclothes officers forced open Taylor's front door and "blindly" fired into the apartment, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Palmer in April. Taylor, a certified emergency medical technician, was accused of accepting USPS packages for an ex-boyfriend who police were investigating as an alleged drug trafficker, according to the warrant. No drugs were found in her home, officials said. MORE: What we know about Breonna Taylor's death and the ongoing fight for justice The police officers claimed they knocked several times then used a ram to open the door before they were met with gunfire. Walker said he called 911 before he used his licensed firearm to fire one shot, which struck one of the officers in the leg. The three officers involved in the shooting, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and detectives Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, were placed on administrative reassignment pending the results of an investigation. MORE: 'Egregious': Medical alerts, tripped alarms and open doors have all gotten people killed by police at their homes Hankison was later fired for his role in the incident. According to his termination letter that was shared with local reporters, Hankison violated procedure when he fired 10 rounds into Taylor's apartment while executing the warrant. Taylor's family has called for the officers to be criminally charged. Kentucky state Attorney General Daniel Cameron released a statement this week saying the case remains under investigation. Palmer said she will not rest until the officers responsible for her daughter's death are held accountable. "We need charges brought against these officers," Palmer told ABC News. "I'm still working for getting justice for her. For me, it will never be over." Breonna Taylor's mom hopes settlement with Louisville serves as national model for police reform originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Thousands of workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) continued into day three of their strike Wednesday, joining more than 800 University of Illinois (UI) Hospital nurses, who have been on strike since Saturday. The university has refused to meet the strikers basic demands. Workers are calling for higher wages, better staffing, improvements on workload and time off, and personal protective equipment (PPE) like N95 masks for all health care workers and hospital staff. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 is negotiating the contracts for 4,000 maintenance, clerical, professional, technical and service workers at the university. What is happening on UICs campus and at the UI Hospital is part of a broader upsurge of the class struggle. Graduate students at the University of Michigan struck for over a week against their universitys reckless reopening of in-person classes, with a sellout agreement only forced through last night under threats of court injunctions and through the efforts of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, which intervened over the last deal to scuttle the strike. There have also been significant protests by students at Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, San Diego State University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Wisconsin and other universities in recent weeks, along with growing anger among teachers at public schools around the country. In an indication of the ongoing fear within ruling circles over the possibility of the struggles at UIC and UI Hospital triggering an explosion of pent-up social opposition in the run-up to the US elections, the corporate media continued its effective blackout of the strikes Wednesday, with neither the Chicago nor the national press carrying coverage of the walkouts over the last two days. Many workers at UIC are outraged by the contempt with which the university administration treats them. The university has claimed that it is bound only by Illinois minimum wage of $8.75, instead of Chicagos $14 minimum. Grace, a UI health nurse, told the World Socialist Web Site on the picket lines Wednesday, Theres definitely enough money to meet our demands. We have people making just a little bit more than minimum wage, and thats not fair. Were out here dealing with COVID-19 every day. We have had over 200 nurses infected and four died. A veteran nurse chimed in to add that two truck drivers had also died since the pandemic began. Grace While many campus workers are making less than it costs to live in the area, the president of the University of Illinois system, Timothy Killeen, was handed a 40 percent pay raise by the board of trustees at the beginning of the year, boosting his annual salary to $835,000. The university president got a 40 percent raise, but wheres our raise? Thats not fair, we got nothing and theres 40 percent for one person? one service worker at the picket lines demanded. Another worker added, The Republicans and Democrats control a lot of money. But were the workers, were the ones who are doing the job. Theyre getting bonuses, and were getting nothing. Thats why we need to get out here all together. Since the onset of the pandemic, workers at UIC have had to fight for basic PPE for themselves. Now theyre forced to continue the same struggle for students as well. A clerical worker said, We have had to fight to get them the proper protective equipment. Both nurses and service workers said they believed that a nationwide strike of workers and students against the deadly conditions in workplaces and schools would have a great impact. It definitely would be stronger if we did, the nurses said. A service worker said, It would be great to get the point across. When you talk about the whole country getting involved, thats everybody from everywhere. The university administrationand behind them, the Democratic Party, which dominates its board of trusteesare increasingly nervous over the support striking workers have elicited, and the real possibility of their struggle intersecting with the opposition building up among students. On Wednesday, UIC and the UI Hospital administration sent a dishonest and manipulative email to students, attempting to present their wage increase offers as reasonable, while saying nothing about their reckless nurse-to-patient ratios and understaffing at the hospital, nor the abominably low level of wages that are actually paid to university and hospital workersin some cases, less than fast food workers make in Chicago. The unsafe and inhumane working conditions being fought against at UIC are not solely the result of the callousness of UICs management, but are rather the consequence of a deliberate policy by the ruling class to reopen workplaces and schools in the midst of an out-of-control pandemic in order to ensure the exploitation of the working class for profit continues. While spearheaded by the Trump administration, this policy has been supported in all essentials by both the Democrats and Republicans at the federal, state and local level. Workers can and must combat the universitys blatant disregard for workers and students lives, but they must do so separate from the corporate-controlled trade unions, which have overseen the deterioration of wages and working conditions to their present abysmal state. To carry the struggle forward, striking nurses and workers must form rank-and-file committees to successfully wage a fight for safe and humane working conditions. An appeal must be made to the broadest sections of workersautoworkers, health care workers, teachers and othersalong with students to mobilize in opposition to the ruling classs murderous policies. Contact the WSWS to discuss organizing a rank-and-file committee or to share your story. SUNNYVALE, California, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Plug and Play announced today the selection of 147 new startups into their winter 2020 batches. The startups were selected to join one of the following programs that will run through November 2020: Energy , Fintech , Health , Insurtech , Internet of Things , Mobility , Real Estate & Construction , and Travel & Hospitality . Of the 147 startups, 56 of them are internationally based and represent 15 different countries. Visit Plug and Play's website to see the full list of startups. "We are excited to start our winter curriculum and see the connections these startups make," said Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play. "These companies have shown their potential in the industry and have proven that they are ready to take on the challenges that come with it. They will bring new value and ideas to our existing network of partners and industry leaders." With the lasting constraints of COVID-19, Plug and Play will continue to operate virtually. Nonetheless, the selected startups will still have full access to Plug and Play's global network of venture capitalists, corporate partners, and alumni. This will allow startups to grow, connect, and engage with some of the top industry leaders. The curriculum will include private one-on-one sessions with partners, mentorship, and access to exclusive online events hosted by Plug and Play. A virtual graduation for this batch of startups will commence November 16-19th at Plug and Play's Winter Summit . About Plug and Play Plug and Play is a global innovation platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we have built accelerator programs, corporate innovation services, and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, our programs have expanded worldwide to include a presence in over 30 locations globally, giving startups the necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond. With over 30,000 startups and 400 official corporate partners, we have created the ultimate startup ecosystem in many industries. Companies in our community have raised over $9 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club and PayPal. For more information, visit https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/ Media Contact Allison Romero (408) 524-1457 allison@pnptc.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/835431/PNP_Logo.jpg New South Wales has recorded another five new coronavirus cases as fear around a Sydney pub cluster grow. Two of the new infections are from hotel quarantine while another two are linked to known clusters. The other new case recorded on Thursday is still under investigation and has not been linked to any known infections. One of the cases had attended the Eastern Suburbs Legion Club in Waverley in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The cluster at the pub has now grown to nine. NSW has recorded five new cases of COVID-19 with two in hotel quarantine (two women wear face masks in Circular Quay) Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the fifth case is likely to be a false-positive. Diners who attended a Thai restaurant in Casula in Sydney's south-west have also been urged to get tested immediately. 'Anyone who attended the Five Stars Thaitanic, Casula on Saturday 12 September from 4.20pm-5.20pm is considered a casual contact and must monitor for symptoms and get tested immediately if they develop,' NSW Health said. 'After testing, they must remain in isolation until a negative test result is received.' Another case identified on Thursday is from a healthcare worker from the Concord Emergency Department. The staff member had been in isolation while infectious as the cluster in the Liverpool and Concord Emergency Department grows to 21 infections. Eight staff members have contracted the virus from these hospitals. 'NSW Health is again urging anyone feeling unwell even with the mildest of symptoms such as a runny nose or scratchy throat to come forward and get tested, so cases in the community are identified as quickly as possible,' health authorities said. 'This is even more important with the upcoming school holidays, when people will travel across the state.' There are currently 86 patients being treated for COVID-19 with four in intensive care and three on ventilation. One of the cases had attended the Eastern Suburbs Legion Club (pictured) in Waverley in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The cluster at the pub has grown to nine Diners who attended a Five Stars Thaitanic in Casual in Sydney's south-west have also been urged to get tested It comes as Ms Berejiklian announced stadium capacity in the state would increase to 50 per cent. Currently major venues are limited to 25 per cent capacity with a maximum of 10,000 guests. Patrons will still have to adhere to the four square metre rule and will be required to wear a mask while moving to their seats. NSW will also move to relax restrictions around its border with Victoria. The NSW border region will now be expanded to Pleasant Hills, Lockhart, Benalla, Bright and Mount Beauty. Anyone in the areas with existing border region permits will be able to move freely. Since midnight on Wednesday those in regional Victoria have been permitted to leave their homes without any restrictions following a large drop in cases. " " Federal judges are required to abide by a strict code of ethics. The Constitution grants Congress power to create and abolish federal courts, although the United States Supreme Court is the only court that cannot be abolished. Congress also has the authority to determine the number of judges in the federal judiciary system. In general, federal courts have jurisdiction over civil actions and criminal cases dealing with federal law. Jurisdiction can overlap, and certain cases which that may be heard in federal court can instead be heard in state court. Federal courts can only interpret the law in the context of deciding a dispute. A court cannot approach an issue on its own or in a hypothetical context. Advertisement Federal judges, with a few exceptions, are appointed for life -- until they die, retire or resign. The Constitution calls for federal judges to act with good behavior, and they can be impeached for improper or criminal conduct. A strict code of conduct exists for federal judges, guiding their behavior. Many judges are also considered scholars in their field and spend time speaking, working in the community, teaching or writing in legal journals. Judges who retire, known as senior judges, may be called up on a full- or part-time basis to help with cases. Senior judges handle 15 percent to 20 percent of the workload for appellate and district courts. Appointed by the President, federal judges are confirmed by the Senate and have their pay determined by Congress. Most federal judges make about the same amount as members of Congress ($150,000 or more), though like some members of Congress, many federal judges have previous experience in more lucrative positions with large law firms. The Constitution doesnt actually require that judges are lawyers, but so far all federal judges have been members of the Bartrained lawyers. Each federal court has a chief judge who handles some administrative responsibilities in addition to his or her regular duties. The chief judge is usually the judge who has served on that court the longest. Chief justices for district and appeals courts must be under age 65 and may serve as chief judge for seven years but not beyond age 70. Each court also has its own staff of employees, including court reporters, clerks and assistants, who are vital to the operation of the court. A courts primary administrative officer is the Clerk of the Court, who maintains records, is responsible for the courts finances, provides support services, sends official notices and summons, administers the jury system and manages interpreters and court reporters. " " A clearly structured hierarchy allows the federal court system to maintain distinct spheres of jurisdiction for each court. Types of Jurisdiction Earlier in this article, we introduced the notion of jurisdiction. All courts have two types of jurisdiction: subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction. Lets go over how these types of jurisdiction work for federal courts. Subject Matter Jurisdiction Subject matter jurisdiction concerns the area of law over which a court has authority. There are two subsets of subject matter jurisdiction. Federal Question Jurisdiction Federal courts can decide cases involving disputes under federal law, the U.S. government, conflicts between states or between the U.S. and foreign governments. The case has to raise a federal question in order to be heard in federal court. Diversity Jurisdiction A case can be filed in federal court because of a diversity of citizenship of the parties involved, meaning that the case involves citizens of different states. Only cases involving more than $75,000 can be filed in federal court, and any diversity jurisdiction case can also be brought in a state court. Personal Jurisdiction Personal jurisdiction is the question of whether a court has authority over an individual or business entity. For example, a court in Vermont cannot make a California resident come to Vermont to defend a lawsuit if hes never had contact with that state -- either by going to that state, having contact with someone in that state, selling something to a Vermont resident, etc. Similarly, foreigners cant be made to come to U.S. courts unless the foreigner has had contacts with people in the U.S. relating to the case. Generally, corporations are treated like individuals in federal and state courts. They can sue and be sued. For the purposes of diversity jurisdiction, there are also rules that determine of which state a corporation is a citizen. Now that weve gone over some of the basics of federal courts and judges, lets look at the different types of courts, starting with the most important of them all, the Supreme Court of the United States. The Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party clashed over the issue of COVID-19 management in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, with the AAP terming as 'foolish' the prime minister's call to clap and beat utensils in honour of coronavirus warriors. IMAGE: BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi speaks in Rajya Sabha during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, on Thursday. Photograph: RSTV/PTI Photo BJP's Sudhanshu Trivedi hit back, saying the PM's move was symbolic and sought to unite the country socially just like Mahatma Gandhi chose the symbol of 'charkha' for national cohesion during the freedom struggle. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in March asked people to clap, beat steel plates and ring bells to express gratitude towards those risking their lives and working tirelessly during the coronavirus outbreak. Singh, while participating in the debate on COVID-19, further used the occasion to accuse the government of looking for opportunity in times of disaster and alleged corruption in the procurement of equipment to fight the disease including thermometers and oxymetres. "I want to ask this government, tell me any one research in the world that shows COVID can be prevented by clamping utensils and by clapping. "The entire opposition will not go home, but will clap with the prime minister and light 'diyas' in Parliament premises. "You bring such absurd and foolish schemes and expect the entire country to be befooled by you," Singh said. IMAGE: AAP MP Sanjay Singh speaks in Rajya Sabha. Photograph: RSTV/PTI Photo Countering him, Trivedi said,"Burning diyas and beating utensils and clapping were symbolic in the fight against coronavirus.... "Would the British have run away by the use of the 'charkha' (spinning wheel). The 'charkha' was symbolic which Mahatma Gandhi chose in uniting the country against the British. "The same way, PM Modi made the 'diyas' and beating utensils symbolic in bringing together all Indians in the fight against COVID," Trivedi said. The BJP member, without naming Rahul Gandhi, also too a swipe at the former Congress president for his vision of giving an early warning about COVID-19 and said he was himself not even in the country when the Congress was seeking a ban on international flights. He also countered the opposition charge that the lockdown was not imposed early as the BJP wanted to topple the Madhya Pradesh government of the Congress, saying at that time there were only 29 coronavirus cases in the country and not a single case was reported in Madhya Pradesh at that time. Five cases of African swine fever (ASF) found this week have been confirmed in wild boars in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, the Brandenburg state government said yesterday. The cases were found in dead wild boars, not farmed animals, close to the location of the first confirmed case of ASF last week, the Brandenburg state health ministry said. Pig prices in Germany steadied at 1.27/kg this week, despite a series of import bans after a case of African swine fever (ASF) was found in the country, the association of German animal farmers VEZG said on Wednesday. Prices had been about 1.47/kg slaughter weight before the ASF case was confirmed on Thursday, and fell to 1.27/kg on Friday. China, South Korea and Japan have all banned German pork imports in the past few days after a case of ASF was found in a wild boar - not a farm animal - in east Germany. The disease is not dangerous to humans but is fatal to pigs, and pork importing nations often impose import bans on countries where it has been found, even in wild animals. German pork exports to China more than doubled in the first half of this year, the Federal Statistics Office said on Wednesday, highlighting the likely impact of a ban on pork imports there after Germany confirmed its first case of African swine fever. Germany sold 233,300t of pork to China in the first six months of this year, equivalent to some 26.8pc of total exports of the meat. That made China Germanys biggest export market for hog meat, overtaking Italy, said the Office. In the slaughterhouse pig market, the ASF events and the repercussions for the export markets continue to cause uncertainty, the association said. But after the strong price falls last week unchanged prices for slaughterhouse pigs were named. One trader said the loss of Chinese and other export markets had been priced in on Friday, and attention was now on how fast Germany could develop alternative export markets, especially in the European Union where German pork exports are still allowed. The CDC has had more prominence this year than usual, thanks to the Wuhan virus. However, when America looked to it for help, it wasn't ready, whether with tests or useful advice. Its lack of preparedness might have been because the CDC's been expending its time and your money training its people in Critical Race Theory (CRT) rather than disease control. And while I'm currently agnostic about a vaccination's efficacy (I need a lot more information), I'm also suspicious when the CDC's director, Dr. Robert Redfield, announces that his surgical mask is what will save him and what will save all of us. Aside from being inherently distrustful of the CDC thanks to its epic run of errors and unpreparedness, I'm also suspicious about the timing of Redfield's attack on Trump's plans for the vaccination. The CDC just engaged in a small but significant power struggle with Trump. Days after Trump exercised his constitutional executive authority to end CRT seminars in federal agencies, the CDC announced that it would proceed with a mandatory 13-week CRT seminar. The administration has canceled the training, but it's clear that the CDC is at war with the administration. There's one more reason why I'm skeptical about Redfield's praise for masks when he spoke before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. I recently received an email from someone who specializes in masks, and he gave me some fascinating facts that I'll share with you (with my correspondent's permission). Here's Dr. Redfield. Please note that the mask he's waving around is the classical surgical mask. It's thin and fits relatively loosely over the nose and mouth: CDC Director Redfield: These facemasks are the important, powerful public health tool we have I might even go so far as to say that this facemask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.pic.twitter.com/r7InIImX9u Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 16, 2020 To set the stage, the person who sent the email is a chemist who has worked in the filtration industry. He's helped develop masks used in medical and industrial settings. He also holds patents on several filters. As he says, "I know a little bit about filters." That's why he believes that masks of the type Redfield is waiving around are useless: Surgical masks were not designed as filters and were not intended to be used as filters. Surgical masks were designed to be used by surgeons standing face down over an operating table holding a patient with an open wound. The surgeon wearing the mask would be able to talk to others in the room without discharging spittle droplets into the patient's wound. Spittle droplets are large and can cause infection. I witnessed a test of surgical masks. Small plaster particles were generated in a room. They were visible as a white dust in the air. A man was properly fitted with a surgical mask and spent a short time in the room. When he came out, the mask was removed. A camera was focused on the man's face. The entire area that had been covered by the mask was coated by the white dust. The camera showed that his nostrils and his mouth had been penetrated by the white dust. The dust particles were measured and found to be around 40 micrometers in diameter. The particles that penetrated the mask were the same diameter. Covid-19 virus molecules are about 0.1 micrometers in diameter. That is 400 times smaller than the plaster particles that penetrated the mask. Surgical masks will not prevent the wearer from inhaling or exhaling viruses or bacteria. They provide absolutely no protection for either the wearer or anyone nearby. They create a very dangerous false sense of security for everyone. They also force the wearer to rebreathe carbon dioxide, which will, over time, reduce the wearer's blood oxygen level. That can become very dangerous, especially for older people. This farce is being promoted by sleazy politicians who believe that if they can convince people that they are protecting them or creating a safe environment for them by pushing this mask farce, those people will re-elect them. All politicians pushing this dangerous mask farce should be voted out of office as soon as possible. I'm already starting to hear anecdotal evidence that students are getting fungal and bacterial infections thanks to the masks they have to wear all day (especially because students don't keep their masks very clean). This is worrisome because the front of the face is called "the triangle of death" because it's close to the brain. When a doctor who has government power at his back waves around a mask that has no utility and can cause bad infections in vulnerable areas, I start to worry. Image: Created by A. Widburg on Pixlr using public domain image. Delhi Metro's Aerocity-Tughlakabad corridor being built as part of the Phase-4 project has been christened as 'Silver Line' by the DMRC, officials said on Wednesday. This will be the 10th corridor of the network so it will also be called Line 10. "Silver has been selected as the colour code for the Tughlakabad-Aerocity Metro corridor of Phase 4," the DMRC said in a statement. There is no specific rule to decide the colour code of a line. However, easily distinguishable colours which can be remembered by the commuters are generally selected, it said. "This section is the 10th line to get a colour code. The Majlis Park-Maujpur corridor or Line 7 is an extension of the Pink Line and will have the same colour code while the Janakpuri West-R K Ashram Marg corridor will be an extension of the Magenta Line or Line 8 with the same colour code," it said. The Union Cabinet, in a meeting chaired by the prime minister, in March last year had approved three out of the six corridors of the Delhi Metro's proposed phase-4 which will further improve connectivity in the capital. Under approved segment of phase-4, 61.679-km of new metro lines shall be constructed across three different corridors comprising 45 metro stations. These new sections shall provide inter-connectivity among the already operational lines of the According to the government, the Mukundpur-Maujpur, R K Ashram-Janakpuri West and Aerocity-Tughlakabad corridors were approved by the Cabinet. The other three proposed corridors of phase-4 which have not yet been approved by the Union Cabinet are Rithala-Bawana-Narela, Inderlok-Indraprastha and Lajpat Nagar-Saket G Block. (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.) Berlin, Sep 17 : The German government's short-time work program, which has already received additional funding due to the coronavirus pandemic, would be extended until the end of 2021, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs announced. "Short-time work is our model for success, which we use to secure the livelihoods of millions of employees and their families. We will continue to follow this path," Xinhua news agency quoted Labour and Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil as saying on Wednesday. Short-time work in Germany is a social insurance program that was heavily used as crisis management tool amid the Covid-19 pandemic. It allows employers to reduce working hours instead of cutting staff, and employees received most of the payment for lost hours from the government. The extended package includes simplified access conditions to short-time work compensation, the increase of the short-time work allowance as well as the opening up of short-time work benefits for temporary workers until the end of next year, according to the Ministry. Heil said that with further training and qualification, German companies could better face the challenges of structural change. "We therefore create incentives to use the time of short-time work and invest in further training. "In this way, short-time work not only becomes a bridge over a deep economic valley, but also a way into the future," he added. The number of short-time workers in Germany fell from 5.6 million in July to 4.6 million in August after hitting an all-time high of 7.3 million in May, according to a survey. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Since the middle of July, a fire has been burning in the wetlands of west-central Brazil. It has left a burned area that is larger than New York City. The wetlands, known as the Pantanal, are smaller and less-known than the Amazon jungle. But the area attracts many different animals because of where it is in South America. It is between the rainforest, Brazils grasslands and Paraguays dry forests. The fires are now threatening one of the most diverse environments on the planet, biologists say. The Pantanal is about 150,000 square kilometers in size. The wetland is home to 1,200 vertebrate animal species. Thirty-six of those species are close to dying off completely. Fire is not new there, but the current fires are historic. The biggest ones in the Pantanal this year are four times the size of the largest fire in Brazils Amazon rainforest, NASA satellites show. A record 23,490 square kilometers have burned through September 6. A study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro said that represents nearly 16 percent of the Brazilian Pantanal. Warming in the Atlantic Ocean The Pantanal is known for being wet, not dry. The worlds largest floodplain normally fills with water during the rainy season, which lasts from November to April. This year, the floods never came. The Paraguay River, which crosses the Pantanal, fell to its lowest level since 1973. That estimate comes from Julia Arieira, a climate researcher at Brazils Federal University of Espirito Santo. Scientists blame the dry weather on warming in the Atlantic Ocean. That warming takes moisture away from South America and sends it north where it can form hurricanes. Doug Morton is a scientist with the U.S. space agency NASA. He said this process is caused by changes in ocean temperatures. These changes are known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. This weather event is to the Atlantic Ocean what El Nino is to the Pacific Ocean. Unlike El Nino, however, which usually happens every two to seven years, the oscillation changes between hot and cold every 30 to 40 years. Changing ocean temperatures are a likely driver of the dry conditions weve seen so far this year in the Pantanal, said NASAs Morton. Morton is concerned global warming could change the Oscillation and leave it permanently warm possibly leading to more fires. Even if that does not happen, scientists fear global temperature increases could make large fires more common. Philip Fearnside is an ecologist at Brazils National Institute of Amazonian Research. He said destruction of the Amazon rainforest is worsening dry conditions in the Pantanal over the long-term. He said jungle trees take rain and push the moisture back into the air. This moisture is then carried by winds to nearby areas. Amazon deforestation the act of cutting down forests - has increased 34.5 percent in the 12 months through July, compared to the same period a year earlier. That increase comes from early estimates released by the government space research agency Inpe. Humans and animals Mato Grosso state firefighting Lieutenant Colonel Jean Oliveira said no humans have died in the Pantanal fires. The victims, he said, are wildlife - reptiles, mammals, and more. Oliveira has been leading the government response to the fires. Biologist Rogerio Rossi at the Federal University of Mato Grosso estimated that thousands of animals have died. Local guide Eduarda Fernandes is working with the rescue team in the area. She picked up a snake that had been burned in the fire. It had bitten itself. A biologist said the snake likely had an uncontrolled reaction as it tried to escape the heat. Asked what she thought happened, Fernandes responded, Pain. Despair. Im John Russell. Jake Spring reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story diverse adj. made up of people or things that are different from each other vertebrate adj. biology: describes an animal that has a backbone species n. biology : a group of animals or plants that are similar and can produce young animals or plants : a group of related animals or plants that is smaller than a genus floodplain n. an area of low, flat land along a stream or river that may flood; an area of land built up from soil left by floods moisture n. a small amount of a liquid (such as water) that makes something wet or moist We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. STAMFORD Despite having his conviction overturned for allegedly cutting his ex girlfriend with a knife eight years ago, a city man will have to serve out his entire 17-year jail sentence imposed after he was convicted of that charge and of slashing the womans new boyfriend in the face, a Stamford judge has ruled. During an emotionally charged sentencing hearing that lasted 45 minutes at the Stamford courthouse this week, Judge Gary White said he would not reduce Divenson Petions jail sentence, even though the state Supreme Court found there was insufficient evidence to convict him on one of the two first-degree assault charges a Stamford jury found him guilty of in 2014. The high court in 2019 ruled that the forearm cuts that the mother of Petions daughter suffered in the alleged attack one was .3 inches long and the other 1.57 inches long were not serious physical injuries, and therefore could not be used to sustain a first-degree assault conviction. According to the criminal court case, Petion, then 25, arrived unexpectedly at his ex-girlfriends Norwalk apartment on Connecticut Avenue on May 26, 2012. There, he found the womans new boyfriend celebrating his birthday and, after telling him to leave, used a knife to cut the mans face, leaving a severe gash along the mans left cheek, according to court records. The former girlfriend allegedly received her cuts as she tried to intervene, according to court records. Following Petions trial in January 2015, Judge White sentenced him to 17 years in jail to be followed by three years special parole. At Mondays hearing, the prosecutor who tried the case against Petion, Senior Assistant States Attorney Maureen Ornousky, told White that she did not think that Petion deserved any time off from his sentence. Ornousky said the only reason Petion, who has spent eight years in jail after being arrested for the incident in 2012, did not face a murder or manslaughter charge was because the boyfriend was able to quickly able to drive himself to a nearby hospital. White said he would do what the Supreme Court told him to do and throw the other first-degree assault charge out, but he remembered the victim testifying during the trial about the severity of his wounds. Ornousky said special accommodations had to be made for the man, who is a teacher, because he appeared scary to his young pupils. He cannot make normal facial expressions, including smiling, and has trouble closing one of his eyes, she said. She also mentioned that while in jail following his trial, Petion pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to commit or incite injury to a person, which involved witnesses who testified against him at the trial. He was sentenced to three years in jail for that conviction, a term that ran concurrent with his 17-year sentence. But Petions attorney, Frank Bevilaqua, said Petion is one of the brightest individuals he has ever represented, and the 33-year-old man currently being held at the McDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield is not the same man who was convicted at trial. Bevilaqua also said that Petion is suffering from health problems, including blood clots, and if he were to contract COVID-19 it would surely be a death sentence for him. He said that as a former gang member, Petion reportedly is a former member of the Bloods, he is subject to abuse at the maximum security prison. He is a target in jail and needs to be release. He needs to be released, Bevilaqua said. Petion, a father of four who grew up in Stamford, told White that a lot has changed for him since 2012 and he has worked to educate himself. I have grown. I have inspired myself to become more educated and more understanding, he said. He also said that he grew up without a father and had to do what he could to protect his family. Yes, I was part of a gang. Yes, I lived in a hostile environment. But in that environment I had no choice. It was eat or be eaten. My mother did her best raising three boys by herself. It was a hard neighborhood on Connecticut Avenue and Custer Street, Petion said about the Stamford neighborhoods he grew up in. I know she is there and I want to say, Sorry Ma. Its not your fault. Petions mother softly sobbed into a handkerchief at the end of a courtroom pew as she heard her son speak. After pledging to become a productive member of society, Petion said, All I ask is to be given a chance to be reunited with my family. But White was quick to criticize Petion for not mentioning his victims during his remarks. He also said that he gave Petion concurrent sentences for each assault conviction, meaning they would run together. I didnt even give him the maximum sentence. I could have given him 20 years to serve, but I did not do that, White said. I think the sentence I gave the defendant was more than fair. Petion said he did not mean to leave the victims out of his plea for leniency. He said he did not rehearse what he said for the hearing and he was sorry for what he had done. I do regret the disfiguring. I am really sorry about that and I express this to my family all the time. I am really sorry about that. That was the old me. That was the old me, he said. But White said he was taking Petions newly found expression of regret with a grain of salt. The remorse that Mr. Petion just expressed to me is somewhat diluted because he brought that up after I made my remarks. He had all the opportunity to say what he just said before what I said and he didnt do it, White said, adding he could not pretend that did not happen. White then ruled that he would not take a day off the prison sentence, but because he felt badly for Petions children and family he would remove the three years of special parole Petion was to serve after prison. jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com Nairobi Metropolitan Services Director-General Mohamed Badi has dismissed reports that traders were forcefully evicted from the premises of the Nairobi Railways Club. Property of unknown value was lost after authorities descended on the area with cranes and excavators on Tuesday night as Kenya Railways moved to reclaim the land for construction of the Nairobi Expressway Road Project. Speaking on Wednesday morning, Badi said all the traders had been briefed about the demolitions and came to an agreement. Badi visited the scene following the demolitions and assured the business owners that a reasonable agreement would be reached. He explained that the demolitions will pave way for the construction of a green park terminus that will be used to hold all PSV vehicles plying on Mombasa, Langata and Ngong roads. Badi assured that no one will lose their businesses as claimed. He said traders who had leased the premises for other businesses such as the car dealers will be compensated by Kenya Re while those who run restaurants will not be evicted. All we are asking for is cooperation from the business community. The changes that will be here are for good because as we intend to reduce congestion in the CBD, there will be services that will be needed here. We assure businessmen of their securitywe are not chasing you away. All we are doing is redesigning and realigning the businesses. Once complete, those with restaurants will be smiling because with a bus terminus there will be a lot of people to be served food, Badi said. Traces of the Novichok nerve agent allegedly used to poison Alexey Navalny were found on a water bottle in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was staying before he fell critically ill, according to the Russian opposition leader's colleagues. The discovery is potentially an important clue in understanding how Navalny was poisoned and left fighting for his life. His colleagues on Thursday though said it did not appear the bottle itself had contained the nerve agent but that it had picked up traces of the chemical from Navalny when he drank from it, after he had been poisoned. That suggests Navalny was exposed to the poison before he left the hotel and not at the airport, where initially it was suspected he may have ingested it in a cup of tea. Navalny fell critically ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow almost a month ago and was later airlifted to Berlin in an induced coma. Toxicology tests showed Navalny had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family, a type of military chemical weapon developed covertly by Russia and used in the 2018 poisoning of the former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal in Britain. MORE: Alexey Navalny, Russian opposition leader suspected of being poisoned, slowly recovering Navalny's team said in an Instagram post on Thursday that a German lab had found traces of the nerve agent on one of several hotel water bottles that his colleagues in Tomsk collected immediately after learning he had fallen sick. Fearing Navalny had likely been poisoned, they decided to quickly gather potential evidence. "It was clear from the very beginning that he had been poisoned," Georgy Alburov, a member of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation who was among those who collected the bottles from the hotel room, told ABC News on Thursday. He said they decided they need to gather the things "even if there was a microscopic chance that it could be useful." PHOTO: Water bottles are seen in a hotel room where Russian opposition politician AlexeiA Navalny stayed during his recent visit in the Siberian city of Tomsk, on this still image from a social mediaA videoA obtainedA by Reuters. (Courtesy of Instagram @NAVALNY/Social Media via REUTERS) The Instagram post included a video showing Navalny's colleagues in the hotel room wearing rubber gloves and collecting water bottles. Alburov said they also took shampoo bottles and sealed everything in a sealed bag. Story continues "If we could have taken the bed, we would have taken the bed," he said. Two weeks later, the German military lab found traces of the Novichok nerve agent and three other labs that took samples from Navalny confirmed it was the same he was poisoned with, Navalny's team said. That ruled out any possibility that Navalny had been poisoned after he left the hotel. But Alburov said the concentration of nerve agent found on the bottle was so small that it was clear the bottle had not contained the poison itself. He ruled out that the Novichok could have been in the water Navalny had drunk. "No, in the water, no way. There wasn't some kind of very big concentration, but there were enough traces that Alexey had touched that bottle," he said. Tiny traces, likely left by Navalny's saliva, had remained on the bottle, Alburov said. "That bottle isn't the first source of the poison. It is a sort of fingerprint because it was used by Alexey -- he drank water from it when he was already poisoned," he said. Two labs in Sweden and France also have confirmed Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. French President Emmanuel Macron called President Vladimir Putin this week, demanding Russia urgently shed light on the circumstances around Navalny's poisoning. MORE: Before Navalny, a long history of Russian poisonings Navalny regained consciousness from the induced coma last week and appears to be recovering. This week he posted his first public message since the poisoning, along with a photo of himself sitting up and awake in his hospital bed surrounded by his family. His spokeswoman has said he intends to return to Russia once he recovers. Navalny's family and colleagues have accused the Kremlin of being behind his poisoning and that the use of Novichok, a military nerve agent closely held by the Russian state, means it must have been conducted with Putin's approval. The Kremlin has denied any involvement and has pointed to claims by Russian doctors who initially treated Navalny that they found no signs of poisoning. Navalny was taken to a hospital in Omsk, where the plane made an emergency landing after he collapsed on board. He was treated there initially before his family had him flown to Germany. Navalny's relatives and colleagues accused the Kremlin of deliberately delaying Navalny's evacuation to try to make it harder for German doctors to identify what he was poisoned with. The Omsk hospital has suggested Navalny had suffered an episode of severe low blood pressure caused by a "metabolic disorder." But Alburov noted that the Omsk paramedics who first treated Navalny on the airport runway had given him atropine, an antidote for poisoning. FILE PHOTO: Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny takes part in a rally to mark the 5th anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov's murder and to protest against proposed amendments to the country's constitution. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters) A number of opposition figures and Kremlin critics have been poisoned previously in Russia, who have struggled afterward to identify the poison because they have been unable to get samples fast enough to independent labs abroad and Russian authorities refused to investigate. Navalny's colleagues have said they were sure from the beginning that Russian authorities would also obstruct any investigation into Navalny's poisoning and therefore decided they needed to preserve everything they could. Alburov said he and others had spread the bottles out among different cars to transport them first to Omsk while Navalny was being treated there, saying they had taken the precautions because local police had sought to them. From Omsk, he said, the bottles and other objects were placed aboard the medical evacuation plane provided by a German NGO that then carried Navalny to Berlin. He said Russian police in Omsk had not taken any steps to investigate besides seizing CCTV camera footage at the hotel. MORE: Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent, German government says "It was pretty obvious the case will not be investigated in Russia," Navalny's team wrote on Thursday. "And that was right: nearly one month after, Russia hasn't recognized Alexey's poisoning." Russian police have so far said they see no grounds for opening a criminal investigation into Navalny's case since Russian doctors have not confirmed he was poisoned. The head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, Sergey Naryshkin, said on Monday that all Novichok stocks in Russia had been destroyed and insisted there was no evidence Navalny had been exposed to anything toxic. This report was featured in the Friday, Sept. 18, 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. Navalny's team says nerve agent used to poison him found on hotel room water bottle originally appeared on abcnews.go.com HONG KONG, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- HKT (SEHK:6823) PCCW Global, a leading international communications service provider, and New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX), the only Cable Landing Station (CLS) colocation campus in the U.S offering Tier 3, carrier-neutral data center capabilities, today announced the launch of a new point-of-presence (PoP) at NJFX CLS for direct access to PCCW Global's MPLS network and the Console Connect platform. The availability of Console Connect's Software Defined Interconnection platform at the NJFX carrier-neutral CLS facility in New Jersey immediately brings connectivity on-demand to NJFX customers, giving them instant and easy access to a global ecosystem of leading cloud, data center, SaaS, UcaaS, IX and IoT partners. Console Connect's Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform also offers extended coverage to more than 350 data centers in 44 countries worldwide. The automated Console Connect fabric is underpinned by PCCW Global's industry-leading IP backbone and MPLS network which spans more than 3,000 cities and 160 countries. Via the new PoP at the NJFX CLS, users can access PCCW Global's MPLS network either by using the Console Connect centralized port or by leveraging the open API platform and directly reach major cities across Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Financial organizations located at NJFX CLS can also leverage the secure, uncontended PCCW Global MPLS network to access financial markets globally. Mr. Marc Halbfinger, Chief Executive Officer, PCCW Global, said, "Establishing a PoP at NJFX provides Console Connect and PCCW Global users with access to direct, low latency routes to major business hubs along the east coast. At the same time, we are excited to bring Console Connect's on-demand global connectivity to NJFX customers, who can experience the agility and flexibility of Software Defined Interconnection." NJFX's carrier-neutral CLS colocation campus offers direct access to multiple independent subsea cable systems interconnecting North America, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. The facility serves a growing ecosystem of global carriers, content providers, enterprises and government entities, and offers access to more than 10 terrestrial backhaul fiber routes across North America. Mr. Gil Santaliz, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of NJFX, said, "We welcome PCCW Global to NJFX's rich carrier-neutral CLS ecosystem. Our 'Tier 3 by the Subsea' motto emphasizes NJFX's unique advantage of having diverse interconnection options located at a cable landing station. With PCCW Global, our customers now have increased access to routes across Asia Pacific through their robust global IP network." About PCCW Global PCCW Global is a leading international communications service provider, offering the latest mobility, voice and data solutions to multinational enterprises, telecommunications partners, cloud and application service providers. Our truly global coverage combined with local on-the-ground knowledge has helped us build best-in-class global connections linking Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. Our network supports a portfolio of integrated communications services including connectivity, applications, and tailored solutions integrated and orchestrated by the Console Connect on-demand digital Software Defined Interconnection platform, one of the first global platforms to fully automate switching and routing of all communications for seamless interconnection. To learn more about PCCW Global, please visit www.pccwglobal.com. About Console Connect Console Connect is PCCW Global's Software Defined Interconnection platform which spans over 40 countries, capitalizing on our low latency, fully-redundant, uncontended global MPLS Network. The Console Connect digital platform allows users to instantly self-provision connectivity between carriers, enterprises, cloud, SaaS, IX, IoT, UCaaS, Security-as-a-service and other network-as-a-service partners in seconds. About NJFX NJFX owns and operates a 64,800 square foot purpose-built Tier 3 Cable Landing Station (CLS) Colocation facility and 58-acre campus in Wall, NJ. This unique campus is the only carrier-neutral CLS colocation campus in the U.S supported by several route-independent carriers that offer direct access to multiple independent subsea cable systems interconnecting North America, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. The facility offers direct access to TGN1, TGN2, and Seabras. The building is the subsea cable landing of HAVFRUE/AEC2 this year as well as Wall-LI in the future. High and low-density colocation solutions are available with 24/7 support. For more information, visit www.njfx.net. For more information, please contact: Ivan Ho PCCW Group Tel: +852 2883 8747 Email: [email protected] JSA NJFX Tel: +1 866 695 3629 ext 13 Email: [email protected] SOURCE NJFX Related Links http://www.njfx.net It is hardly a secret that a covey of inept Democratic Governors and the Democratic Mayors of some of the largest cities in the United States have willfully enabled horrible and unconscionable terror and destruction in places like Minneapolis, Portland, New York and Chicago. It was just learned that Wednesday the rioting by criminals that has occurred this summer cost our country this just in more than $2 billion (with a b.) To Americas horror, the stand down orders by the liberal limp-wrists are totally and clearly to blame. In Chattanooga it hasnt been so bad but every bit as blatant; then the thugs caused damage at the County Courthouse and were photographed defacing a Confederate monument. Just like anybody else who watched closely, President Trump had nothing to do with the carnage. Each and every time he tried to step in, he was rebuffed by the cowards. Thats a fact, Jack, to the point the District Attorney in Portland brazenly announced his office would not prosecute those the police had arrested. Mercy! A lot of elected Democrats should have been shackled for blatant dereliction of duty after giving their sworn oath they would act otherwise. So, we watch New York both the Heart of America - and Rochester and Chicago and Portland and Minneapolis and the weekly target practice in Chicago, and we grimace. We utter Thank God that isnt here. But it is my friend. oh, yes, you are getting ready to pay for Democratic stupidity. You can bet your country music booties. Tennessee has a catastrophic problem in the very center of our state. It has just been learned Nashville Mayor John Cooper wrote a hand-wrenching plea to Governor Bill Lee that Nashville needs an emergency $82.6 million due to the damage COVID-19 has done to our state capital. At first blush, we say get in line. Tennessees four largest cities have Democratic mayors, and all are money thirsty. Yet the difference in Nashville is that The Music City, despite unprecedented growth, is on the very verge of becoming insolvent and being taken over by the state you and me are part of that and John Cooper is about to be recalled by an enraged constituency and run out of town. Thats the message that then states Comptroller Justin Wilson laid at the feet of the Nashville City Council on Tuesday. Wilson, who has been before the Nashville council once before this year with a dire warning, told the Council that a very possible repeal of the Mayors outlandish 34 percent tax increase in December would saddle the city with a $332 million budget shortfall by mid-year. State law demands every city have a balanced budget. Without the tax increase due to the Mayors alleged wide-reaching incompetence Nashville will go belly-up. Right now, Nashvilles cash-on-hand balance is tittering on five percent of the budget about $120 million of the $2.4 million budget and a sure precursor to imminent failure. Get this in late August, a well-organized group of angry Nashvillians presented over 20,000 signatures demanding a special city-wide election in early December to repeal Mayor Coopers life-or-death 34 percent tax increase. I can virtually guarantee four distinct happenings in Nashville before the end of the year: 1) John Coopers cry for $82.6 million from the state in COVID relief will not happen. Governor Lee is well aware that Coopers lavish spending, his horrid response to the protesters encampment and rioting in Nashville have resulted in the Mayor becoming a very unpopular figure in Nashville. He is roundly being called the worst in our capital citys history. Governor Lee is most aware of the COVID suffering across the state and, pray tell, how can the Governor in clear conscience give Nashville $82.6 million while Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga are strained beyond their resources. How about Dayton, Shelbyville, Jackson, Murfreesboro, and Johnson City? John Cooper is a desperate and most pathetic man and it is by his own hand. His fate is not Governor Lees problem and it will not be. 2) There will most definitely by a Dec. 5 special election in Nashville. The result will be overwhelming. John Cooper will be ousted before his next appointment to have his teeth cleaned. 3) Over a year ago this before COVID the legislature was fully aware the state would have to intercede in Nashville. Because of Coopers rampant incompetence and his willful arrogance, state Comptroller Wilson told the Metro Council on Tuesday, Metro will be kind of like a teenager coming to their parent asking for $20 to go to the movies," Wilson said. "You do not want that ... The cuts would be deep and painful." According to the Nashville Tennessean, The tax repeal, if approved by voters in a possible special election on Dec. 5, would be a blow to city services and could result in severe cuts to public safety personnel, as well as a nearly a 25% slash to the school district's budget, which Cooper outlined in a press release Monday. The city will be "unrecognizable," Cooper said to Metro Council Tuesday, warning of the lack of public safety protection, teachers leaving to work in surrounding counties and infrastructure needs languishing. The city's credit rating will go down, while borrowing costs go up, the newspaper account read. "Our progress as a great city will end," Cooper added in his rebuttal to the Metro Council Tuesday. "It takes the problem of financial weakness and makes it chronic and permanent." Well yeah. 4.) Nashville, our state capital will be added to the Democratic catastrophes in 2020. The difference in Nashville and other cities of ruin is that the state taxpayers will have to pay for John Coopers folly. What, youre not laughing at the parade of dunces who have been foisted by the Democratic Party upon us? Then add Tennessee to that $2 billion of money our nation will never get back. And it is all because stupidity was never challenged, no? Vote wisely in November. When you do, remember this: (D) stands for dunce. royexum@aol.com A 28-year-old Perth woman who narrowly avoided a six-month jail sentence for dodging hotel quarantine after a trip to Victoria has revealed why she did it. Asher Faye Vander Sanden was jailed after sneaking into Western Australia in a truck from Victoria, breaking quarantine laws, last month. She was sentenced to six months prison after pleading guilty to failing to comply with a direction under WAs Emergency Management Act, the toughest penalty handed down for a coronavirus breach in WA. She appealed the sentence and on Tuesday Supreme Court Justice Jenni Hill found that the sentence was unreasonable and plainly unjust. Ms Vander Sanden, who avoided quarantine after looking after her unwell sister for a month in Victoria, was instead imposed a six-month community-based order and must complete 50 hours of community service. Asher Vander Sanden successfully appealed a six-month jail sentence for dodging hotel quarantine. Source: Facebook I tried all other options Speaking to 6PR radio, Ms Vander Sanden claimed she dodged quarantine because she was at her wits end after she struggled to return to the state though the proper channels. I tried all the other options, I first bought a plane ticket in early July and Jetstar grounded all their flights so I lost that flight. Then when I got my G2G pass, I booked a hotel room and booked a flight from Mildura to Melbourne and flight from Melbourne to Perth, and then last minute the taxi cancelled and I missed my flight, she said. I was dealing with a lot of family issues in Victoria and I was suffering really badly from anxiety, I reached out for help in Victoria and I got absolutely none. I didnt know what to do and I just wanted to go home, I felt like I was going to lose it there. I just did the mercy dash back to Perth without even thinking. The 28-year-old was arrested on August 11 after hitching a ride back to WA in a truck. Her boyfriend had picked her up at a service station and took her back to his home in the beachside suburb of Scarborough. She had applied for and was granted an exemption to fly to WA but was required to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days at her own expense. Story continues Police made inquiries after Ms Vander Sanden, who is a WA resident, did not arrive at Perth Airport as outlined in her application. With her niece suffering from asthma, Ms Vander Sanden told 6PR she took coronavirus seriously and was not moving throughout the community once she arrived at her partners house. I had the house stocked up before I got there, and just locked the door and just stayed in the house until I was able to contact a lawyer and hand myself in, she said. Asher Vanden Sanden returned to WA from Victoria after hitch-hiking on a truck. Source: Nine News Ms Vander Sanden expressed remorse and said she could have put the public at risk, and was not in a good headspace at the time she made the decision to flout the rules. Definitely, there was a definite chance [of putting the public at risk]. In my mind, and in the state that I was in at the moment, all I thought was, if I get to WA and I self-isolate, like everything would be okay, she said. But then when I got to WA and had a chance to breathe, everything really hit me. Unfair punishment compared to others, she claims With Ms Vander Sanden in prison for three weeks before she was released on bail, the young woman felt she copped harsher consequences than other rule breakers. In a sense like, I guess what I did, it did deserve that, she told 6PR. But then when you have other people that have like gone to WA without a permit, and then left the hospital and went to a pub, and then theyve got hotel isolation or the millionaires over in Victoria ... that's what made me feel it was unfair. I thought it was unfair to the fact Im the only one that had that happen. As a result of the ordeal, Ms Vander Sanden said she had learnt to think decisions through more clearly and not put herself in a similar situation again. Individuals found to have breached WA's strict quarantine laws face a maximum penalty of 12 months' imprisonment or a $50,000 fine. With AAP 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. OSLO: This year's Nobel Peace Prize could go to green campaigner Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement to highlight the link between environmental damage and the threat to peace and security, experts say. The winner of the $1 million prize, arguably the world's top accolade, will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 9 from a field of 318 candidates. The prize can be split up to three ways. The Swedish 17-year-old was nominated by three Norwegian lawmakers and two Swedish parliamentarians and if she wins, she would receive it at the same age as Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel laureate thus far. Asle Sveen, a historian and author of several books about the prize, said Thunberg would be a strong candidate for this year's award, her second nomination in as many years, with the U.S. West Coast wildfires and rising temperatures in the Arctic "leaving people in no doubt" about global warming. "Not a single person has done more to get the world to focus on climate change than her," Sveen told Reuters. The committee has given the prize to environmentalists before, starting with Kenya's Wangari Maathai in 2004 for her campaign to plant 30 million trees across Africa, and in 2007 to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the era of the coronavirus crisis, the committee could also choose to highlight the threat of pandemics to peace and security, said Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "There is a relationship between environmental damage and our increasing problem with pandemics and I wonder whether the Nobel Peace Prize Committee might want to highlight that," he told Reuters. If the committee wanted to highlight this trend, he said, "there is obviously the temptation of Greta Thunberg". The Fridays for Future movement started in 2018 when Thunberg began a school strike in Sweden to push for action on climate. It has since become a global protest. Thunberg and her father Svante, who sometimes handles media queries for her, did not reply to requests for comment. Many were sceptical when Greta, as she is often referred to, became the bookmaker's favourite to win last year's Nobel Peace Prize, especially with regards to her age, but her second nomination could strengthen her chances. "Greta is re-nominated, which was the case for Malala. I said Malala was young when she was nominated the first time and I said Greta was young the first time she was nominated," Sveen said. Yousafzai won in 2014. NOT TRUMP Other known candidates included the "people of Hong Kong", NATO, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and jailed Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul. Other possible choices are Reporters Without Borders, Angela Merkel and the World Health Organization, experts said, though it is unclear whether they are nominated. Nominations are secret for 50 years but those who nominate can choose to publicise their choices. Thousands of people are eligible to nominate, including members of parliaments and governments, university professors and past laureates. It is not known whether Donald Trump is nominated for this year's prize, though he is up for next year's award after a Norwegian lawmaker named the U.S. President for helping broker a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He is unlikely to win, Sveen and Smith agreed, not least for his dismantling of the international treaties to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a cause dear to Nobel committees. "He is divisive and seems to not take a clear stance against the violence the right wing perpetrates in the U.S.," said Smith. "And that is just the first list." This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Sebastian Vettel staying in Formula 1 beyond 2020 is "great" not just for Formula 1, but for Toto Wolff as well. It was announced at Mugello, where Ferrari was celebrating its 1000th race, that Vettel is switching to the rebranded Aston Martin project from 2021. Wolff is the Mercedes team boss, but he also recently bought some Aston Martin shares. When asked about Vettel's move, Wolff smiled to TZ newspaper: "I have shares in Aston Martin, so it's great from that perspective. "But had he actually left, Formula 1 would have lost fans in Germany, which is a very important market for the sport," he added. "Seb is the second most successful driver of the decade. So it's important that someone like him, in his prime, does not leave Formula 1. "He also brings an enormous amount of knowledge to Aston Martin." There have been rumours that, with Vettel now signed, Wolff may also decide to move on to Aston Martin - with the pair then potentially wooing Red Bull's famous designer Adrian Newey. Wolff is yet to announce his decision about the future, but he has hinted that his Mercedes team boss role will at least be divided in two for 2021. "I'm not sure if the concept of the team principal still works in Formula 1," he is quoted by AS newspaper. "I am responsible for 2000 people - 1000 at the engine factory and 1000 in the other factory. Should one person bear all of that responsibility?" he added. (GMM) +4 Public Safety Building question looms large in Cape May race for mayor CAPE MAY While the nation closely watches the race for president, in Cape May, the Novembe This year, Donohue is after a fourth term on committee, and the chance to keep it entirely Republican. The world has changed a lot in the last few months since I announced I was going to run again, Donohue said. In the short term, we hope to make sure that everything is stable financially in the township. There are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to the governors budget. His challenger, Jackson, grew up in West Cape May, where he served as mayor from 2001 to 2005. Jackson cited his experience in West Cape May as part of his reason for running for office this year. Ive just been so dismayed by what Ive seen since leaving office. I believe I can do this, the way I did it then; with integrity, following the law. You dont get advantage because you know Bob Jackson, he said. Jackson has run unsuccessfully for county freeholder, and formerly served on the state Pinelands Commission. He said he wants to address homelessness in Middle Township and ensure that various communities in the township are represented in local government. Donohue cited the impact of COVID-19 and the economic downturn that came with it. The Pakistan government plans to make Gilgit-Baltistan the countrys fifth province, two years after powers of the Islamabad-controlled council for the region were transferred to a local assembly. The governments plans were outlined by the federal minister for Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan affairs, Ali Amin Gandapur, during an interaction with a group of journalists in Islamabad on Wednesday. He said the region will be accorded the status of a full-fledged province with constitutional rights such as representation in both houses of Parliament. Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to visit the region soon and make a formal announcement about the change, Gandapur was quoted as saying in reports in the Pakistani media. After consultation with all stakeholders, the federal government has decided in principle to give constitutional rights to Gilgit-Baltistan, he said. Our government has decided to deliver on the promise it made to the people there. There was no immediate reaction to the ministers remarks from Indian officials, though New Delhi has consistently opposed changes made in the disputed region by the Pakistan government. India claims Gilgit-Baltistan as part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Gandapur also said that subsidies and tax exemptions for the region wouldnt be withdrawn after the grant of constitutional rights. Until the people there stand on their feet, they will continue to enjoy this facility, he said. Also read: After Senate defeats, Pak govt passes all FATF-linked bills via joint session People familiar with developments said the Pakistani military establishment had been in touch with political parties regarding the changes. Khans ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is backing the changes with an eye on upcoming elections in Gilgit-Baltistan so that it can make political gains and form the next government in the region. Gandapur said the elections were likely to be held in mid-November. Preparations had been completed and the distribution of tickets by the PTI will begin soon, he added. He contended that the deprivation faced by the people of Gilgit-Baltistan for 73 years would end with the change. Besides constitutional rights and a provincial setup, important steps are being taken for developing the region, he said. This includes work on Moqpondass special economic zone under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and steps to improve health care, tourism, transport and education, he said. In 1999, Pakistans Supreme Court ruled that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are Pakistani citizens and directed the federal government to start appropriate administrative and legislative measures. In 2009, the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order was introduced, whereby the Northern Areas were renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan and the region was given province-like status but without representation in Parliament. In 2015, a committee constituted by the federal government proposed giving Gilgit-Baltistan the status of a province, and three years later, a new order transferred all powers of the local council to the local assembly. The people cited above said any move to give the region the status of a full-fledged province would be welcomed by local residents. Some stakeholders had suggested the region should be provisionally given the status of a province and it should be made a full province only after the Kashmir issue is resolved, the people said. Though the proposal made by the committee in 2015 didnt go through because it didnt have the blessings of the security establishment, it appears that the Pakistan Army has had a change of heart in view of the changes in Jammu and Kashmir since August last year, the people further said. Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Food and Drug Administrations vaccine advisory panel, was skeptical that Pfizer could be so sure of its timeline. I think its irresponsible they dont know, he said. I think the more responsible answer is, Hopefully, well know something by the beginning of next year. That would seem to me to be the most likely scenario. Modernas top executives said in interviews this week that they could have initial results by November. But a trial blueprint the company released on Thursday indicated an even longer timeline, suggesting that the first analysis of the trial data may not be conducted until late December, and that there may not be enough information then to determine whether the vaccine works. Later analyses, projected for March and May, are more likely to provide an answer, the company said in its blueprint. (A company spokesman said the November estimate is an updated assessment of what was in the blueprint.) AstraZenecas timeline is also in question after it halted global trials this month because of a participant who had developed severe neurological symptoms after receiving the experimental vaccine. The company has not released details about the medical condition of the person, nor has it said whether the reaction was because of the vaccine. The trials have since resumed in the United Kingdom and in Brazil, but not in the United States, where it has been paused since Sept. 6. What could delay or speed up the timeline? While clinical trials are underway, independent panels of experts periodically check in on the data. If the vaccine shows signs that it is extremely effective, the board could decide it would be unethical to continue the trial and keep giving some participants a placebo. This outside panel could also ask a company to stop a trial if it was not preventing Covid-19 cases, or if there were serious safety concerns. Whether the vaccine is effective is determined by comparing how many people in each group the vaccine group and the placebo group develop the disease. If many more people in the placebo group get infected, that means the vaccine works. As a result, the trials speed is determined by how fast the virus is spreading in the communities where trials are underway. Organizers try to guess where infections are on the rise and set up trials there, but in a fast-moving pandemic, thats not always easy. Trial pauses for safety reasons like the one recently announced by AstraZeneca could also slow down the timeline, even if the safety problems are ultimately found to be unrelated to the vaccine. By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijani pianist Togrul Huseynli has won the 16th MozArte 2020 International Piano Competition. The festival was held in the city of Aachen (Germany). Live broadcasts of the contestants' performances were presented on the project's YouTube channel, Trend Life reported. According to the results of the competition, the first place was taken by the Azerbaijani musician Togrul Huseynli, the second place went to the Ukrainian Galina Gusachenko, while Chinese musician Yuewen Yu ranked third. Togrul Huseynli has been passionated by music since childhood. He was the soloist of the Aysel Children's Theater. In 2000, Huseynli entered the Bulbul Secondary Special Music School (piano class). During his studies, he took part in republican and international competitions. In 2011, the musician entered the Higher School of Music in Cologne. Togrul Huseynli is a laureate of prestigious international competitions. He is a graduate of the Cologne Conservatory, a doctoral student at the Mozarteum Conservatory in Salzburg. His name is included in the Golden Book of Azerbaijan's young talents. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz CAMBRIDGE Four people three of them teenagers are facing charges after a bank robbery in Cambridge led to a police chase along Highway 401. On Wednesday at around 3:30 p.m., Waterloo Regional Police were called to a Scotiabank on Hespeler Road for reports of a bank robbery. Officers said suspects entered the bank, brandished a firearm, and demanded money from bank employees. After receiving an undisclosed amount of money, they fled in a Mazda sedan. Waterloo Region Police then reached out to the Ontario Provincial Polices highway safety division, who picked up the chase on the 401. OPP media officer Dan Hunter said the highway pursuit continued until a collision prevented the officer from continuing the chase. The suspects were able to keep going after the crash. The OPP officer involved in the crash received a minor leg injury. When the suspects got off the highway in Mississauga, they travelled to a residential neighbourhood and then got out. OPP officers teamed up with the Peel Regional Police Service to form a perimeter around the suspects and eventually arrested them. They were taken into custody a little more than three hours after the chase began, Hunter said. A 15-year-old Etobicoke male and an 18-year-old Brampton male have been charged with robbery with a firearm and disguise with intent. A 21-year-old male from Burlington and a 16-year-old male from Brampton are facing charges of robbery with a firearm and have been released on an undertaking. Wednesdays incident was the third bank robbery in Waterloo Region in 2020. Read more about: Do Covid-19 lockdowns work? Almost countless factors will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, be it countries, states, counties, cities, or whatever. That said, a comparison of one country with essentially no lockdown and another with perhaps the worlds harshest and longest (indeed, still ongoing and officially called The New Normal) may be instructive. In brief, we have Sweden that basically got it over with quickly and not without pain, and the Philippines where maybe initial cases and deaths were dampened but is now in a horrible fantasy that could be called The NeverEnding Lockdown despite a population that demographically is highly-Covid resistant. Rather than joining most nations hell-bent on becoming the first to wipe out an airborne virus by quarantining the healthy, Sweden emphasized personal responsibility, social distancing and good hygiene to slow the disease to ensure medical facilities wouldnt be overwhelmed. In that, it clearly succeeded. Otherwise the country simply allowed people to become infected in the knowledge that one way or another thats what happens. The Philippines, conversely, took advantage of Covid-19 to become more authoritarian than before, then used that enhanced authoritarianism to crack down hard with practically any restrictions that fertile politician minds could think of. Significantly, where other countries use health officials, Americas former colony of 110 million people has often used generals. War metaphors are no metaphors, though the enemy can be debatable. Yes, much is control for its own sake that would cause even some lockdown advocates to cringe. Much is designed to aid corruption from the top down. The worse off the people, the more foreign aid, the more money for government officials to skim. That said, regardless of motivations its still been a lockdown advocates dream. Facemasks have been mandatory even outdoors everywhere since April 1 (putting to lie CDC Director Robert Redfields claim that masking up for just 1-2 months could work magic in the U.S.). Masks plus face shields are now mandatory in some areas, despite a lack of evidence of the efficacy of the two together outside of indoor medical settings. About half the population those below 21 and over 60 have to stay at home at all times except for proven emergencies. Theres a nightly curfew and most businesses close long before it begins. Early on it was illegal to venture out on Sundays at all, and all liquor sales were banned. In some jurisdictions they still are. More recently, businesses and buildings containing businesses are forced to have entrants fill out contact tracing forms that everyone Ive asked is convinced are thrown out at the end of the day. You also have to dip your shoes in disinfectant, have a forehead thermal reading, and receive a squirt of hand sanitizer. All of this led to an added bonus. Laws have largely become superfluous. With all life evolving around Covid-19, with the sudden thrust into a post-apocalyptic movie set, the people are absolutely terrified and self-isolate accordingly. Many have fled the more-densely populated cities and you can spot people wearing two masks at once in the stultifying heat and humidity. Signs warn against talking, regardless of masks and shields. A food commercial shows a family replacing hugs with elbow taps. Likewise, perhaps more powerful than any law has been the breaking of spirits. Depression is ubiquitous and social media are filled with stories of suicide, although the largely-state controlled media wont report on it. As in other countries but to a greater extent, health problems aside from Covid-19 have been declared non-essential, and Covid-19 deaths would assuredly be far higher except for, yes, being declared Covid-19 deaths. So what has been the impact on the nations economies and the epidemic? SWEDENS ECONOMY IS HURTING; THE PHILIPPINES HAS TANKED As part of the world economy, Sweden certainly has suffered. Severely. That said, one of the major critics of Swedens soft touch towards Covid-19, NPR, admitted that while It is next to impossible to say what effect, if any, the country's response had on its economy, since there are so many factors at play. It is clear, however, that the Swedish economy has fared much better during the second quarter than many other European economies. But as to the Philippines, Thanks to an overly strict lockdown which shuttered up to 75% of economic activity but still failed to halt the spread of the virus the Philippines just posted its worst quarterly economic performance on record, with the economy shrinking 16.5% in the three months to the end of June compared to robust growth of 5.4% for the same period last year, as Nikkei Asian Review noted last month. And again, the lockdown continues. Not at the original level (though harsher in some ways, as with face shields), but with restaurants and other businesses not permitted to open at sustainable levels, they will continue to go out of business. The Philippines is essentially imploding and yet the lightest quarantine level permitted anywhere ensures that many businesses will continue to be unable to make money. Areas once packed with young people every night of the week are ghost neighborhoods. Nobody seems to even be proposing less-restrictive quarantines. So the situation can only get worse. Already months ago, over a fifth of Filipinos said they were going hungry. The country has no safety net of any kind; for a while rice, canned goods, and a small amount of money was being passed down (and skimmed at each level), but President Duterte announced an end to that in August. A lack of funds was the explanation, notwithstanding that billions of dollars in foreign aid continue to pour in. TO WHAT PURPOSE? Sweden still has relatively high deaths compared to most of Europe, but its steep decline since peaking indicates that by not locking down they essentially front-loaded mortality and have induced immunity in a large portion of the population. Swedens death rate has recently slipped below that of the U.S. and is below the level of several European countries. As has been true in the U.S., these deaths are grossly disproportionately from homes for the elderly, for which the government has accepted responsibility unlike in the U.S. where New York governor Andrew Cuomo has been hailed a hero. Whatever the purpose, if lockdown advocates have suggested it, the Philippines has implemented it. As such, if locking down works anywhere to any degree then the Philippines should be as free of coronavirus as Britain is of rabies. But thats hardly the case. Yes, Filipino deaths are remarkably low and always have been. The median age is 23.5 years versus 41.2 for Sweden, with very little in the way of pre-existing conditions that accompany older populations and Western lifestyles. While Americans circle parking lots to get a few spaces closer to an entrance, Filipinos with their mass transportation banned have taken to walking miles to work if theyre lucky enough to still have a job. (At the same time, if Filipino deaths are so low [far below those for TB] why the never-ending lockdown?) But cases didnt level off until the end of July and level they remain. No decline. Swedish cases peaked in June and there are no deaths most days. Filipino deaths, low though they may be (around 20 a day) are actually somewhat higher than a few months ago. Quarantine levels havent been relaxed somewhat because of progress against the disease, but rather because starved bodies in the streets despite massive foreign aid is bad P.R. Sure, it would be hard to find two countries less comparable than Sweden and the Philippines in virtually any terms you can think of. But the Philippines has also locked down much harder and longer than its neighbors in Southeast Asia, with whom it has much in common. Thus Communist Vietnam mostly unlocked in late April, yet its cases and deaths remain quite low. The Philippines situation is so extreme that you dont need peer-reviewed publications with a million mathematical equations and 50 contributors to see that locking down harder, tighter, longer, while destroying the GDP and the mental and physical health of a population is no way to combat Covid-19, and that the lockdown advocates dream is indeed nothing short of a brutal nightmare. Credit: CC0 Public Domain If you were comparing immigrants to the United States from Algeria and Israel and were asked which group had higher levels of education and skills, you'd probably assume the answer is the Israelis. After all, the average Israeli has completed 12.5 years of schooling, compared with 7.6 years for Algerians, according to the American Community Survey. But you'd be wrong. Algerian immigrants to the U.S. are not only better educated than those from Israel, they also have completed more schooling than the average, native-born resident of the United States. What explains this seeming oddity? It's the built-in bias of the U.S. immigration system, which heavily favors applicants who have family ties in the United States, says Stanford Graduate School of Business economist Edward Lazear. Since there are relatively few Algerians living in the U.S., the immigration process requires that Algerians seeking to enter the country must do so primarily on the basis of their skills. If this unexpected outcome applied only to immigrants from a few countries, it wouldn't be significant. But recently published research by Lazear found flaws in long-held theories of how immigrants with varying levels of educational attainment manage to migrate to the United States and other advanced countries. Market Forces vs. Regulations Since the 1960s, immigration was understood to resemble market-driven investment decisions. People would weigh the costs and benefits of migration in much the same way they might choose to change occupations. Highly skilled people living in countries where they are underpaid for their abilities were likely to move to countries where their experience would be better rewarded. When looking at historic migration within the U.S.from one part of the country to anotherthat's a reasonable theory, Lazear says. In the first half of the 20th century, for example, millions of African Americans migrated from the South to the industrial centers of the North. The move was expensive both in terms of tangible economic costs and less tangible, but still real, social and psychological costs. Why they were willing to uproot themselves was no mystery: There was more economic opportunity in the North and a perceived chance to escape racial oppression and discrimination. And there were no government policies to restrain their movements. According to Lazear, some economists have adopted similar models to explain international migration patterns. But today the U.S. is faced with what he calls an "excess supply" of potential foreign immigrants. Unlike the past, when market forces held sway, government regulations that ration legal immigration now determine who gets to stay legally. In any given year, about 25 million people apply for permanent admission to the U.S., 1 million immigrants obtain green cards, and almost 4 million applicants remain on the waiting list, Lazear says. Who is allowed entry to the U.S. is largely determined by what amounts to a rationing system. "Policy rather than migrant desire determines who ends up in the U.S. and how well they do," he explains. Lazear notes that his findings may seem obvious. But he adds that his argument is based on empirical evidence garnered from 129 countries. "The important implication is that we can have any group of immigrants or attainment we want," he says. "From our point of view, there are no bad countries. Every country, even those with poor educational systems like Algeria, produces highly skilled, educated people." Lazear, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President George W. Bush and has advocated for replacing the current quota system with a skills-based immigration policy. However, he emphasizes that his recent paper is not an argument for any particular immigration policy and it does not contain policy recommendations. Underrepresented and Overachieving The U.S. radically shifted immigration priorities when the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 changed the allocation system from quotas based on national origin to one that favored family reunification. The effect was swift and dramatic. The number of immigrants increased by nearly one-third, and they came from a different mix of countries. Immigrants from Asia, for example, quadrupled in the five years after the law's passage, while the share of immigrants from northern Europe dropped. The share of U.S. immigrants from France fell from 4 percent to about 1 percent in the same time period, because relatively few immigrants from France were already living in the U.S. The use of family ties as an immigration entry vehicle tends to overrepresent some countries and underrepresent others. Algerians are underrepresented among U.S. immigrants by a factor of 10 compared to their share of the world's population, while Israelis are overrepresented by a factor of three, according to Lazear. Mexico is overrepresented relative to India as a country of origin, but Indian immigrants are second from the top in educational attainment while those from Mexico are near the bottom. Historically, the best-educated immigrant group were those who came from the Soviet Union to the U.S. in the 1980s. You might think that immigrants from countries where they are insufficiently rewarded for their advanced education, skills, and expertise would be the most likely to come to the U.S. But Lazear found no such correlation. Lazear's research indicates that the phenomenon he found in the U.S.lower educational attainment of overrepresented groupsholds true in Sweden and other advanced countries. Sweden, Lazear notes, is an interesting comparison because its immigration policy is so different than that of the U.S.it is weighted in favor of refugeesbut the outcome is similar. "The general point is that the more overrepresented [groups are], the lower the attainment. The U.S., he says, can decide what skills and levels of educationor other criteria, such as refugee statusit wants to emphasize. "This isn't about good or bad source countries. It's how many the U.S. takes from each country relative to the pool in that country." Explore further Increase in immigration has little impact on the wages of US citizens More information: Rationing as a Determinant of Immigrant Composition and Outcomes: Rationing as a Determinant of Immigrant Composition and Outcomes: www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-r composition-outcomes Prime Minister of Nepal KP Sharma Oli conveyed his greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the latters 70th birthday. PM Modi was born on September 17 in 1950. The Nepal PM said that the two leaders will continue to work closely together towards strengthening relations between India and Nepal. Warm greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji on the auspicious occasion of your birthday. I wish you good health and happiness. We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries, Oli tweeted. Russian President Vladimir Putin also congratulated PM Modi on his birthday. I look forward to continue constructive dialogue with you and work closely together on topical issues of the bilateral and international agenda, President Putin said. Meanwhile, to mark PM Modis birthday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched Seva Saptah in which various activities like planting of saplings, distribution of fruits in Covid-19 hospitals, donation of artificial limbs and other equipment to 70 differently-abled people in every district of the country will take place. The party had sent a circular to all its state unit chiefs, suggesting activities that could be taken up as part of the week-long campaign from September 14 to September 20. BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe on Thursday said that he has tested positive for the coronavirus COVID-19 infection. Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, he stated that earlier he had tested negative and attended the ongoing Monsoon Session of the Parliament. Sahasrabuddhe further said that on September 16 night he developed a headache and mild fever, following which he got examined and the result came out positive. Last Friday had got examined and was tested Negative hence attended Parliament!But last night I had headache+mild fever,got examined n have tested Positive for Covid-19!Operating under strict protocols n medication as advised byDocs!Those interacted with me may pl consult doctors Dr. VINAY Sahasrabuddhe (@vinay1011) September 17, 2020 He added that he is operating under strict protocols and taking medication as advised by the doctors. He asked all those who interacted with him to consult doctors. "Last Friday had got examined and was tested Negative hence attended Parliament!But last night I had headache+mild fever,got examined n have tested Positive for Covid-19!Operating under strict protocols n medication as advised byDocs!Those interacted with me may pl consult doctors," he tweeted on Thursday evening. Ahead of the monsoon session, a total of 23 MPs had tested positive for the COVID-19. The monsoon session is scheduled from September 14 to October 1. Six Rajya Sabha MPs had tested coronavirus positive including two MPs each from the BJP and Congress and one each from RJD and TMC, according to sources. At least 17 Lok Sabha MPs had tested positive for COVID-19 including Meenakshi Lekhi, Anant Kumar Hegde and Parvesh Sahib Singh, added the sources. Other MPs who were found COVID-19 positive are Sukhbir Singh, Hanuman Beniwal, Sukanata Majumdar, Goddeti Madhavi, Pratap Rao Jadav, Janardan Singh, Bidyut Baran, Pradan Baruah, N Reddeppa, Selvam G, Pratap Rao Patil, Ram Shankar Katheria, Satya Pal Singh and Rodmal Nagar. The BJP has a maximum number--12, the YRS Congress has two MPs, the Shiv Sena, DMK and RLP one each. Hectic preparations were underway for the Monsoon Session with several first-time measures taken because of the coronavirus pandemic. These new measures include testing of MPs, staggered seating arrangements in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and the use of both chambers and galleries to accommodate the members. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla had said that 257 members will be seated in the Lok Sabha hall, 172 in Lok Sabha gallery, 60 in Rajya Sabha and 51 in the Rajya Sabha gallery due to the COVID-19 crisis. He had said attempts were made to mimise the use of paper and MPs will mark their attendance digitally. Screen LEDs will be put up to conduct the proceedings smoothly. Chambers will be sanitised and the MPS will have to undergo the RT-PCR test for COVID-19 before the session begins, the Lok Sabha Speaker had said. Amid the Opposition's demand for the election of the Deputy Speaker, the Lok Sabha Speaker had said the house and the government have to take a call on it. Birla had said holding the monsoon session this year was a challenge because of the COVID-19 pandemic but it will be "historic". "Holding the monsoon session was a challenge during the pandemic but we have to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities. We want Parliament to become more accountable and answerable to people," Birla had said at a press conference. "This session will be a historic session as it is being held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our effort is to conduct the session as per the guidelines issued in the wake of the pandemic," he had added. Birla had said the Zero Hour will be of half-an-hour duration and there will no Question Hour but written questions could be asked and they will have to be answered. When asked about opposition leaders asking about the Deputy Speaker election, Birla had said he doesn't have to elect, and it is for the house and the government to decide. The HSE is set to buy isolation pods for use in ambulances to transfer seriously ill patients with Covid-19 or other diseases. The health authority's ambulance wing has begun the process of purchasing units which it says must be capable of being used to transport patients who are ventilated to help them breathe. "The HSE National Ambulance Service requires two new specialised Isolation PODS for the transport of patients with High Consequence Infectious Diseases to the National Isolation Unit in the Mater Hospital or other defined location," says the tender advertised on the e-tenders.ie website. "This specialised isolation environment provides enhanced health and safety for those engaged in this type of patient transport and allows decreased contamination risks to equipment and transport vehicles," says the tender advertised on September 16. Tender documents the pods must facilitate oxygen supply and be capable of carrying supporting a ventilated patient. It should be capable of being lifted with a patient contained without the need of additional lifting devices. The tender says the isolation pod covers must have full-length transparency for patient visibility. A pod cover must be fully removable from the base unit. Units must be reusable and be capable of being disassembled and decontaminated. Each pod should have a minimum of six patient care ports. The HSE has set a deadline of October 8 for companies to reply to the tender invite. By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements on Tuesday to normalize ties with Israel, becoming the first Arab states in a quarter century to break a longstanding taboo, in a strategic realignment of Middle East countries against Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the White House ceremony, capping a dramatic month when first the UAE and then Bahrain agreed to reverse decades of ill will without a resolution of Israel's dispute with the Palestinians. In front of a crowd of several hundred people on the White House lawn, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed accords with Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Bahrains Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani. The deals, denounced by the Palestinians, make them the third and fourth Arab states to take such steps to normalize relations since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Meeting Netanyahu earlier in the Oval Office, Trump said, "We'll have at least five or six countries coming along very quickly" to forge their own accords with Israel. Later Trump told reporters a third Gulf Arab state, Saudi Arabia, would strike an agreement with Israel "at the right time." The Saudi cabinet stressed in a statement the need for a "just and comprehensive solution" to the Palestinian issue. Saudi Arabia is the biggest Gulf Arab power. Its king is custodian of Islam's holiest sites and rules the world's largest oil exporter. Despite its own reluctance, the kingdom's quiet acquiescence to the agreements was seen as crucial. 'CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY' The ceremony provided Trump with valuable imagery as he tries to hold on to power in a Nov. 3 presidential election. Flags of the United States, Israel, the UAE and Bahrain were in abundance. "We're here this afternoon to change the course of history," Trump said from the White House balcony. Story continues Trump called the deals "a major stride in which people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity" and declared that the three Middle East countries "are going to work together, they are friends." The back-to-back agreements mark an improbable diplomatic victory for Trump. He has spent his presidency forecasting deals on such intractable problems as North Korea's nuclear program only to find achievements elusive. Bringing Israel, the UAE and Bahrain together reflects their shared concern about Iran's rising influence in the region and development of ballistic missiles. Iran criticized both deals. All three of the Middle East leaders hailed the agreements and Trump's role in glowing terms, with Netanyahu saying it gave hope to "all the people of Abraham." But the UAE and Bahraini officials both sought to reassure the Palestinians that their countries were not abandoning them or their quest for statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despite the Palestinian leadership having decried the deals as a betrayal of their cause. In a sign that regional strife is sure to continue while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza into Israel during the ceremony, the Israeli military said. Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service said paramedics treated two men for light injuries from flying glass in Ashdod, and four others suffered shock. "This is not peace, this is surrender in return for the continuation of the aggression," read a tweet posted on the Twitter account of the Palestine Liberation Organization. "There will be no peace before Palestine is free." TRUMP'S EVANGELICAL SUPPORT With Trump seeking four more years, the accords could help shore up support among pro-Israel Christian evangelical voters, an important part of his political base. Another target of the White House plans, in addition to Saudi Arabia, is Oman, whose leader spoke with Trump last week. Oman sent its ambassador to Tuesday's ceremony, a senior U.S. official said. No Saudi representative attended. Meeting the Emirati foreign minister before the ceremony, Trump thanked the UAE for being first in the Gulf to agree to ties with Israel and left little doubt the Iran issue was overhanging the event. Trump predicted that Iran, under heavy U.S. sanctions, would want to reach a deal with Washington, which has been trying to get it to renegotiate an international nuclear accord. Tehran shows no sign of budging. Netanyahu faces criticism at home of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and a corruption trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust that have led to frequent street protests. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and describes his trial as a leftist political witch-hunt aimed at unseating a popular right-wing leader. In a nod to the coronavirus, the White House encouraged but did not require participants to wear masks. It was left to the leaders whether to shake hands, and they did not do so in public. Most people in the crowd did not wear masks. Some differences remain despite warming ties. Trump said on Tuesday he would have no problem selling advanced stealth F-35 fighter jets to the UAE, which for years has sought to obtain them. Israel, which has the F-35, objects to such a sale. Frustrated by the Palestinians' refusal to take part in Trump's Middle East peace initiative, the White House has sought to bypass them in hopes they will see the deals with the UAE and Bahrain as incentives, even leverage, for peace talks. Speaking to Fox News hours before the ceremony, Trump predicted the Palestinians would eventually forge peace with Israel or else be "left out in the cold." The Palestinian leadership has long accused Trump of pro-Israel bias and denounced the Arab rapprochement with Israel, even though Netanyahu agreed, in return for normalization with the UAE, to suspend a plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Although Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in 2014, some Gulf Arab states and several other Arab countries have long had quiet, informal contacts with Israel. (Reporting By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Dan Williams, Aziz El Yakoubi and Maha El Dahan, Doina Chiacu, Stephen Farrell, Jeffrey Heller, Ali Sawafta, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Nayera Abdallah Editing by Howard Goller) Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA Arun Yadavs recent comment on late actor Sushant Singh has triggered a controversy with several slamming the legislator. The RJD MLA had said that actor Sushant is not a Rajput as those belonging to Maharana Prataps dynasty do not die by suicide Yadavs remark came on Wednesday during an inauguration of a newly-built road in Saharsa district in Bihar, the RJD MLAs assembly constituency. The comment has triggered a nationwide criticism with many asking Yadav to apologise for his remark against the late actor. #WATCH: He was not a Rajput, as descendant of Maharana Pratap cannot die by suicide... We are sad, he should not have died by suicide. He was a Rajput, he should have fought back: Bihar RJD MLA Arun Yadav#SushantSinghRajput (16.09.2020) pic.twitter.com/nRkciaG4Cn ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2020 Bihar is currently prepping for the assembly election and with the late actor originally belonging from Bihar, his death has turned into a political issue. Slamming Yadavs comment as bizarre and shameful, JD(U) spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Prasad asked the MLA to apologise to Bihar and Sushants fans. There cannot be a more bizarre and shameful statement than the one made by the RJD MLA on the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, which has moved the entire nation. The MLA should seek an apology from the people of the state and Sushants fans, JD(U) spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Prasad was quoted by PTI as saying. Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nikhil Anand condemned RJD MLA Arun Yadavs comment and said its rubbish and covered in casteism mentality. He also slammed Rashtriya Janata Dal party by terming their leaders and workers as habitual offenders. Actor Sushant Singh Rajput died on June 14 at his Mumbai residence. Mumbai Police had declared it a case of death by suicide. However, Sushant Singh Rajputs father, KK Singh registered an FIR in Patna under sections related to abetment to suicide and later demanded a CBI investigation. With a conflict between Maharashtra and Bihar government, the Supreme Court on August 19 had directed the central agency to investigate the case while holding that the FIR (first information report) registered in Patna over the actors death was legitimate. Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is currently probing the actors death case. Press Release Opfikon, September 17, 2020; 06:45 a.m. CET Court rejects Salt's application for an interim injunction On 16 September 2020, Sunrise Communications AG, a fully owned subsidiary of Sunrise Communications Group AG ("Sunrise") has received a ruling from the Commercial Court of the Canton of Zurich by which the court rejected an application from Salt Mobile SA ("Salt") for an interim injunction against Sunrise. In its application, Salt was seeking an injunction against Sunrise, ordering Sunrise to procure that (a) freenet AG and (b) members of the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team (Management Board) of Sunrise Communications Group AG will not tender their Sunrise shares under the public tender offer of UPC Schweiz GmbH. Salt's application was based on an alleged breach by Sunrise of the Exclusivity Agreement between Sunrise and Salt in respect of the Fiber Joint Venture announced earlier this year. After an oral hearing took place on Monday, 14 September 2020, the court did not find a breach of the Exclusivity Agreement and consequently rejected Salt's application. The decision of the Commercial Court is subject to appeal with the Federal Supreme Court. Sunrise Communications Group AG Corporate Communications media@sunrise.net www.sunrise.ch Phone: 0800 333 000 Outside of Switzerland: +41 58 777 76 66 SRCG / Valor 026729122 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces the co-founding of The Climate Pledge at the National Press Club on September 19, 2019, in Washington. Amazon on Thursday announced the first recipients of its $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund. The Climate Pledge Fund, launched by Amazon in June, is designed to invest in "sustainable and decarbonizing technologies," across a number of industries, such as transportation and logistics, energy generation, manufacturing and food and agriculture. One of the recipients is Redwood Materials, founded by ex-Tesla CTO JB Straubel. Amazon is also investing in four other companies: CarbonCure Technologies, which has developed a technology to consume carbon dioxide in fresh concrete during production; climate technology start-up Pachama; smart motor start-up Turntide Technologies; and Rivian, an electric van start-up Amazon has invested in previously. Amazon also uses Rivian's electric vans across a portion of its delivery fleet. Amazon declined to say how much it's investing in each company, adding that the amounts range from hundreds of thousands in seed and early-stage investments to multimillion dollar investments. "The Climate Pledge Fund invests in visionary companies whose products and services can empower a low carbon economy," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "Today, I am excited to announce that we are investing in a group of companies that are channeling their entrepreneurial energy into helping Amazon and other companies reach net zero by 2040 and keep the planet safer for future generations." The fund is a part of Amazon's "Climate Pledge," which was first unveiled by Bezos last September. As part of the plan, Amazon has committed to be carbon neutral by 2040. It also pledged to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris accord's goal. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement in 2017. Amazon previously said the $2 billion is an "initial" commitment, signaling that the fund could grow. The company said Thursday it's looking to get other Climate Pledge signatories involved in the venture capital fund, including Verizon, India-based Infosys and German automaker Daimler's Mercedes-Benz. Amazon has faced mounting pressure from employees to address its environmental impact. At Amazon's annual shareholder meeting in May 2019, thousands of employees submitted a proposal asking Bezos to develop a comprehensive climate-change plan and reduce its carbon footprint. The proposal was built on an employee letter published a month earlier that accused Amazon of donating to climate-delaying legislators and urged the company to transition away from fossil fuels. Since then, Amazon has made several moves to advance its goal of relying on renewable energy. As part of the Climate Pledge, Amazon agreed to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian, after it invested $440 million in the company. In April, Amazon invested $10 million to help conserve or restore forests in the U.S. Northeast. Additionally, Bezos in February pledged $10 billion to launch a new Earth Fund for combating climate change. It will issue grants to climate-oriented scientists and activists and other organizations to "preserve and protect the natural world." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan Thu, September 17, 2020 07:32 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4542611 1 National Nias-Island,North-Sumatra,tourism,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,restriction,access Free The North Sumatra administration has canceled its plan to suspend all air and sea travel to and from Nias Island to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the popular tourist destination. North Sumatra Governor Edy Rahmayadi said although access to air and sea transportation would remain open, entrance points would be closely guarded by integrated posts. In addition, the province will oblige people leaving for Nias to carry a COVID-19-free certificate and undergo self-isolation for two weeks after arriving on the island. These posts will monitor people arriving by land, air or sea. Those who come to Nias have to show a negative COVID-19 swab test certificate to the postal officers, who will direct them for isolation, Edy told reporters on Tuesday. Health workers and security officers would be exempt from this provision, he added. Edy said the provincial administration would distribute logistical assistance to visitors under self-isolation. Read also: North Sumatra to restrict access to Nias Island following surge in COVID-19 cases Edy announced the 14-day lockdown plan after a meeting with Coordinating Maritime and Investment Minister Luhut B. Pandjaitan on Monday. The coordinating minister, however, did not give permission immediately. Gunungsitoli Legislative Council (DPRD) chairman Yanto disagreed with the governors plan, arguing it was not the main solution in breaking the chain of COVID-19 transmission. COVID-19 already exists on Nias Island, and it is spreading rather fast. What the provincial administration needs to do now is to multiply swab tests instead of isolating [the region], Yanto said on Wednesday. Yanto claimed that hundreds of people were now waiting to get tested amid limited testing equipment. In such circumstances, he added, hospitals on Nias Island were forced to send swab samples to Medan city. The Nias COVID-19 task force said the island had zero confirmed cases last month, before being infected recently, with more than 90 people testing positive for the coronavirus so far. (syk) BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 By Zeyni Jafarov - Trend: The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have signed a framework agreement on conducting swap operations for lending to SMEs in Azerbaijan in national currency during 2020, the CBA told Trend. According to CBA, within a country strategy for 2019-2024, which regulates cooperation between the EBRD and Azerbaijan, directions of cooperation between the EBRD and the CBA are envisaged. Along with this, an agreement of intent was signed between the CBA and the EBRD to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country, develop local capital markets, provide additional incentives to reduce interest rates, and cooperate in increasing interest in the foreign exchange market. Following the agreement, it is planned to conclude a swap agreement with the EBRD in the amount of up to $200 million, as a result of which the funds attracted by the EBRD will be transferred to local companies, especially the relatively small companies facing temporary difficulties. Swap transactions are planned to be carried out not only during the COVID-19 pandemic but also in subsequent periods, the CBA noted. Azerbaijan has been closely cooperating with the EBRD since 1992, and this cooperation is characterized by useful activities in the field of active support for reforms in the country's economic development. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @jafarov_zeyni The 72nd Emmy Awards will be held on Monday (Australian time) and revamps in all kinds of necessary ways due to the global pandemic. Executive producer Reginald Hudlin, told Deadline, what is planned has never been done before. As experienced as this entire production team is we have all done the biggest awards shows no-one has done anything like this. And given how the show is live we wont have seen it until it is all done. There are segments that are pre-taped but 90% is a live show. We are relying on talking to people all over the world. We have 130 cameras in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London, Berlin, Tel Aviv. I presume that is all gonna work just great, he said. The Staples Center in Los Angeles is the nerve centre for the entire event, where host Jimmy Kimmel and a very few select presenters will be present. The production team has sent elaborate camera kits to all the nominees, including in Australia, with equipment they will have to set up themselves. Elaborate is the term. And that was the trick. We want the best quality sound, the best quality picture. And at the same time we are sending people a simple unit. They only have to plug in a few things, so it is very user friendly, he said. Timezones are also a concern with not everybody agreeing to stay up until 4 in the morning in some countries. But the event does plan to keep up tradition with all nominees on screen at the same time before the winner is announced. We will do that, but how we present them will change from category to category. Once you start reinventing the show you say, Why do we always do it this way? However, dont expect every winner to be handed a trophy on the day. There is no way we can get the statues in the hands of all 23 winners. But we are gonna try some experiments with a few and we will see how that turns out, he said. And also rule out the frocks. No red carpet. Tracksuits and pyjamas ok. FOX Arena will screen the event Live into Australia from 10am Monday, with TV Tonight live blogging. https://youtu.be/MLQS_f4Ig5I NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Executive compensation consultancy Pearl Meyer today announced that Scott Landis has joined the firm's Houston office as managing director. Landis brings nearly 30 years of compensation consulting experience working with both boards and management teams across a variety of industries. Landis has noted expertise in the energy industry, specifically in the oil and gas industry sectors (upstream, oilfield services, midstream, and refining/marketing). "Scott's skills in incentive and employment contract design, as well his deep knowledge of compensation philosophy, stock ownership policies, and director compensation design will be a strong resource for our clients," said Jannice Koors, senior managing director and president of Pearl Meyer's Western region. "His experience in a wide range of business sectors, specifically in oil and gas, will be an excellent complement to our Houston office." Landis was previously a partner and southwest region director with Aon. He is a frequent speaker on executive compensation topics and holds an MBA and a Master of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Mississippi State University, as well as a BA in Psychology from the University of Alabama. About Pearl Meyer Pearl Meyer is the leading advisor to boards and senior management on the alignment of executive compensation with business and leadership strategy, making pay programs a powerful catalyst for value creation and competitive advantage. Pearl Meyer's global clients stand at the forefront of their industries and range from emerging high-growth, not-for-profit, and private companies to the Fortune 500 and FTSE 350. The firm has offices in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, Raleigh, and San Jose. SOURCE Pearl Meyer Related Links https://www.pearlmeyer.com WASHINGTON In a congressional hearing Wednesday, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, held up the disposable surgical mask he had been wearing and declared that the simple covering may ultimately be better than a much-hoped-for vaccine. This face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, Redfield said, referring to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. That disease has now killed about 200,000 people in the United States. Redfield went on to say that a vaccine could have an immunogenicity of 70 percent, meaning that it may not work in close to one-third of people to whom it is administered. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. (Andrew Harnik/AFP via Getty Images) If I dont get an immune response, the vaccines not going to protect me. This face mask will. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that since masks can filter out some virus-containing droplets but not all viral particles, a mask could act as a kind of exposure therapy, prepping the body to fight the coronavirus without actually sickening the subject. If this theory bears out, population-wide masking, with any type of mask that increases acceptability and adherence, might contribute to increasing the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infections that are asymptomatic, the article said. The reasoning behind this idea is that people wearing masks would receive a much smaller viral load than people without masks. (SARS-CoV-2 is the internationally accepted name for the coronavirus, which emerged in China late last year.) The idea that mechanical barriers can be more effective than vaccines in stopping transmission isnt crazy, University of Chicago computational biologist Sarah Cobey explained to Yahoo News. Its basically how we controlled cholera and other enteric pathogens: We improved plumbing rather than developing an especially effective vaccine. It is not clear if Redfield was responding specifically to the New England Journal of Medicine study, but there is plenty of other evidence that masks prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Story continues The comments bluntly contradicted what President Trump said during a televised town hall the evening before. A lot of people think the masks are not good, he said before going on to discuss how restaurant waiters play with their masks. He also wondered why Joe Biden, the former vice president, has not instituted a mask mandate. As a private citizen, Biden does not have that power. As a current government official, Trump does. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks to reporters Tuesday before boarding his plane at Tampa International Airport. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Trump did correctly note that Redfield and other top scientists told people not to wear masks early in the pandemic. That was in part because some officials feared that a run on face coverings could deplete hospitals of personal protective equipment. In addition, the novel nature of the coronavirus meant that scientists had not yet fully grasped how relentlessly it spreads through the air. That guidance has long been discarded, with many governors and local officials from both parties encouraging people to wear masks. Trump and his closest supporters are outliers in that regard, evidently seeing resistance to masks as a potent argument to rally conservatives. Redfield has struggled to assert his independence from the White House, but the methodical, apolitical doctor often seems poorly suited for the bare-knuckle style of Washington under Trump. But at least on the matter of masks, he had no trouble making the case on Wednesday morning. These face masks are the most important public health tool we have, Redfield said. The comments were widely and approvingly shared on social media almost as soon as they were made, suggesting that most Americans are exhausted by the face mask culture war. In fact, the vast majority of people support mask wearing, at least in principle, regardless of political affiliation. Redfield testified at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing along with Dr. Brett Giroir, an assistant health secretary, and Dr. Bob Kadlec, another high-ranking deputy in that department. In his own remarks, Giroir said recent successes in driving down infection and fatality rates could be fleeting or even reversed if we do not continue to follow the national plan and exercise personal responsibility, especially wearing masks and avoiding crowds. The White House did not respond to a Yahoo News request for comment. A national mask mandate from Trump is highly unlikely. Absent a mask mandate or new lockdown-like restrictions, the nation will have to wait for a vaccine. That could be a long wait. In his testimony, Redfield said that even if such a vaccine is forthcoming in the next two or three months, its supply will be very limited, meaning that it will be many more months until ordinary Americans are able to receive inoculations. Redfield predicted that that level of vaccination, and the accompanying resumption of ordinary life, will not occur until the end of 2021. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: T hailand and Singapore have been added to the list of travel corridors, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said. It means travellers arriving in England from those countries after 4am on Saturday will no longer need to self-isolate for 14 days. It comes as quarantine restrictions were imposed on travellers from Slovenia and Guadeloupe. The Department for Transport (DfT) said there has been a significant change in both the level and pace of confirmed cases of coronavirus in both destinations. Announcing the latest changes to the travel corridors list, Mr Shapps tweeted: Latest data shows we need to remove Slovenia and Guadeloupe from the Travel Corridor list to keep everyone safe. This means if you arrive in the UK from these destinations after 4am Saturday, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days. Separately, we will be adding Singapore and Thailand to the Travel Corridor list. Please check before you travel as both countries may have extra requirements before entering. A reminder that travellers to the UK (from ANY location) MUST complete a Passenger Locator Form by law. This is vital in protecting public health & ensuring those who need to are complying with self-isolation rules. Travellers from Slovenia and Guadeloupe will also be required to quarantine for 14 days on arrival in Scotland and Wales from 4am on Saturday. Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said people should think very hard before committing to non-essential travel abroad. Managing the risk of importing cases from communities with high risks of transmission is vital in our efforts to suppress the spread of the virus in Scotland and imposing quarantine restrictions on those arriving in the UK is our first defence," said Mr Yousaf. We continue to closely monitor the situation in all parts of the world and base the decisions we make on the scientific evidence available. We are also in regular discussions with the other three governments in the UK. More details about what the quarantine requirements mean can be found on the Scottish Government website. Air bridges: Portugal and Hungary added to England's quarantine list Wherever somebody has travelled from whether an exempt country or not it remains a legal requirement to complete a Passenger Locator Form and provide it to Border Force officials. Failure to do so can also result in a fine since this, along with any failure to self-isolate where required, poses a significant risk to wider public health across Scotland." Those arriving from Gibraltar and Thailand in Wales from 4am on Saturday will not have to quarantine. Health minister Vaughan Gething said the decision followed a review of the latest advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC). It comes after the Scottish Government received data about the possibility of a pilot scheme to test passengers arriving at airports for coronavirus, Transport Secretary Michael Matheson told MSPs on Wednesday. Easyjet resumes it's flight during Coronavirus lockdown ease 1 /6 Easyjet resumes it's flight during Coronavirus lockdown ease PA PA PA PA PA He said ministers still believe the current quarantine system, with 14 days self-isolation required for travellers entering Scotland from Covid-19 hotspots, is the most effective way to prevent importing the virus. Mr Matheson confirmed the industry which has been pressing for testing as an alternative to the two-week quarantine period has now submitted data to clinical advisers in the Scottish Government. This is now being reviewed, he said, adding once this has happened more talks can take place. The Transport Secretary said: That only took place in the course of the last day or so, so once we have had an opportunity to consider that we will then be in a position where we can have further discussions with the airports to look at these issues. With Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar having said the quarantine policy is a travel ban in all but name, Mr Matheson insisted ministers recognise the impact the requirements are having on the struggling sector. He said: But we are also clear that we have to mitigate the risk of importing Covid-19 cases and the current 14 day-self isolation period is the most effective way to do that. The Scottish Government takes very clear clinical advice on such issues, he said. PLANE CRASH: Im here at the Keaton Beach boat ramp where search crews have returned with wreckage of a small plane that crashed offshore. Two people were on board the plane. The call came in late last night @WCTV pic.twitter.com/oIXlb97XP5 Jacob Murphey (@jmurpheyWCTV) September 14, 2020 Hurricane Sally is disturbing the search for Roman Scarfo of Sarasota and his flight instructor, Haram Patrick Yu of Tampa, who left from Palmetto on a cross-country training flight. The Taylor County Sheriffs told the Herald-Tribune on Wednesday that deteriorating weather conditions have had a negative effect on the search. Smaller pieces of the downed plane have been located in a debris field offshore from Tide Swamp between Fish Creek and Steinhatchee. The sheriffs office reported Tuesday that it had found a debris field during its search. The Vans RV-9, a two-seat home-built plane made from a kit, was carrying Scarfo and Yu. They took off Thursday on a 550-mile cross-country flight from Airport Manatee 48X in Palmetto to Jack Edwards National Airport in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Weather in the area was unstable at the time of the flight because of Hurricane Sally. Airport Manatee is a private airstrip that has flight instruction, aircraft rental and repair. It is the home of the Tampa Flying Club. Scarfo was training for his private pilots license. Niko Posado, a friend of Haram Patrick Yu, asked for prayers for the two pilots in a Facebook post: Enough aircraft parts have been found to positively identify aircraft that Haram Patrick Yu and Roman Scarfo were in. PRAY for findings of bodies. Local authorities and Volunteers in ground and air are working hard to spot them. PRAY for low tide and good weather for search. PRAY for lots of Strength as families and friends are on a confusing and hurting stage. GOD has greater plans than us ALWAYS. At approximately 12:15 p.m. Sunday, on their return flight from Jack Edwards National Airport, they were diverted from Ocala International Airport to Cross City. The plane, flying at 9,000 feet and 130 mph parallel to the Gulf, turned toward land but disappeared from radar. The air traffic website Flightradar24.com shows the aircrafts last reported location was about a mile from land between Steinhatchee and Fish Creek the Tide Swamp Wildlife Management Area. The Federal Aviation Administration called the Taylor County Communication Center at 12:43 p.m. Sunday to report it had lost radar and communication with a small aircraft near Tide Swamp. The plane was identified as a Vans RV-9, reportedly carrying two occupants from Jack Edwards National Airport in Gulf Shores, Alabama, to Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport in Sarasota. Since the receipt of the call, a search was underway in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, approximately a mile offshore from the mouth of Dallus Creek. Friends of Scarfo identified him and his instructor to the Herald-Tribune. The Taylor County Sheriffs Office is being assisted by the Florida Forest Service, Dixie County Sheriffs Office, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, G-Fast and other private individuals. The Civil Air Patrol Florida Wing has established a search and rescue incident command post. The auxiliary of the United States Air Force is conducting search patterns with ground teams on standby. CAP launched one aircraft with a mission pilot, mission scanner and mission observer. Its missions are launched by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at the request of other agencies. Manufacturer: Vans Aircraft, Aurora, Oregon First flight: December 1997 Design: Two-seat, single-engine, low-wing homebuilt airplanes sold in kit form Number built (2019): 1,134 Cost: $44,000-$82,000 Incidents: At least 52 accidents since 2004. 2020 Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Fla. Visit Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Fla. at www.heraldtribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. CLEVELAND, Ohio The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has released a report that estimates Ohio could save between $199 million and $264 million a year by adopting what the organization considers common sense bail reform policies. The changes would also lead to fairer treatment of Black suspects, who are more likely to be faced with higher bond amounts in order to be released from jail, according to the report. The report was based on data from jails in Cuyahoga, Franklin, Athens and Vinton counties that was analyzed by an economist hired by the ACLU. The recommend changes include instituting a presumption of release that would allow all suspects to be released the day they are arrested unless a judge deems them a flight risk or threat to a specific person, according to a news release from the ACLU. In those cases where a suspect is detained, a hearing on conditions of release would be held within 48 hours. Bail reform has been at the center of cleveland.coms Justice for All series, which has been examining inequities in the judicial system. The ACLU of Ohio is urging state lawmakers to enact its recommendations. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, incarceration levels in Ohio were among the highest since 1970, according to the ACLU, adding that in 2018, between $300 million and $400 million was spent housing almost 12,600 suspects awaiting trial on any given day. The per-day cost was estimated to be between $64.50 to $87.40 per inmate. In Cuyahoga County, the report found that 10% of defendants were released once their bond was reduced, having already spent an average of 24 days in jail. The average bond reduction was not quite $50,000. Our report further reveals that the current system disproportionately punished and targets Black people and other people of color, states ACLU of Ohio Policy Counsel Claire Chevrier. Ohios current money bond system costs our communities in ways we cannot quantity. True bail reform would promote public safety, end wealth based detention, and allow more families to be at home with their families before their trial date. The report found that Black suspects in Cuyahoga County were more likely to have a bond set over $10,000 and more likely to be denied release compared to white individuals charged with a crime in the same category, the release states. A number of organizations have called for varying degrees of bail reform, including the Ohio Supreme Court. Among the high courts recommendations announced in January are that judges impose the least restrictive conditions when setting bail and to set bail in an amount and type which are least costly to the defendant while also sufficient to reasonably assure the defendants future appearance in court. A water bottle that was found in a hotel room where the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny stayed before being poisoned contained traces of Novichok, his aides claimed Thursday. In an Instagram post, Navalnys team said German investigators found Novichok traces on the ordinary plastic water bottle from a room in the hotel in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where the politician and his film crew were staying last month as they conducted an investigation into alleged corruption. NBC News could not independently verify the claim. A spokesperson for the German government declined to comment. Shortly after Navalny, one of the fiercest Kremlin critics, fell ill on a flight from Tomsk on Aug. 20, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh suggested that he may have been poisoned at the airport, where he had a cup of tea before boarding. Navalny was taken to Germany for treatment, where the German government announced he was poisoned by Novichok, a class of several advanced chemical agents developed in the former Soviet Union beginning in the 1970s. German officials have not explicitly stated how Navalny was poisoned. An hour after hearing that Navalny fell ill, his team said in the Instagram post that the politician's associates who remained in Tomsk to finish the investigation called a lawyer, went up to the room where Navalny was staying and began to record, describe and pack up everything they had found there, including hotel water bottles." A video attached to the Instagram post shows people walking around a hotel room, wearing latex gloves and packing items, including three plastic water bottles, into plastic bags. There was no particular hope of finding anything, the post said, adding that Navalny's associates made a decision to take everything that might "be hypothetically useful in some way" and hand it over to doctors in Germany, assuming the case would not be investigated in Russia. Image: Water bottles in a hotel room where Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny stayed during his recent visit in the Siberian city of Tomsk, Russia. (@navalny / Reuters) And that is exactly what has happened: almost a month has passed, and Russia has yet to acknowledge Alexei was poisoned, the politician's team said. Story continues The Kremlin has insisted there is no definitive proof that Navalny was poisoned. Russian doctors who treated him before he was airlifted to Germany suspected he was suffering from a metabolic disease. Two weeks later, it was on the bottle from the Tomsk hotel room that the German laboratory found traces of Novichok on, Navalnys team said in the post. And then two more laboratories that took tests from Alexei confirmed that Navalny was poisoned by it. Now we understand: this was done before he left his room to go to the airport. Later Thursday, one of Navalny's associates, lawyer Lubov Sobol, noted on Twitter that finding traces of Novichok on the water bottle found in his hotel room doesn't necessarily mean that Navalny was poisoned via the bottle. The German government announced Monday that laboratories in Sweden and France have confirmed their findings that Novichok was used to poison Navalny. The politicians condition has been steadily improving, German doctors have said. He posted the first photo from his hospital bed in Berlin on Tuesday, saying he is able to breathe on his own. Shortly after falling ill on the plane, he was put into an induced coma and on a ventilator. Meanwhile, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Thursday it will provide technical assistance to Germany regarding the alleged Novichok use. The organization said in a statement that a team of its experts independently collected samples from Navalny for analysis in its laboratories, and the results will be shared with the German authorities. PORTLAND, Ore.: From a mountaintop observatory near Los Angeles to the normally verdant Cascade range in the Pacific Northwest, crews on Wednesday battled monster wildfires that raged well into their second week as scientists tracked the smoke drifting across Europe. Scores of fires have burned some 3 million acres in California since mid-August and another 1.6 million in Oregon and Washington state since Labor Day, laying waste to several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and claiming at least 34 lives. The fires have thrust concerns about climate change to the forefront of the U.S. election campaign, with Republican President Donald Trump downplaying the role played by global warming. Democratic challenger Joe Biden called Trump a climate arsonist" who has ignored a central crisis" facing the nation. Trump late on Tuesday declared a federal disaster for the hardest-hit parts of Oregon, a state unaccustomed to the size and number of blazes sweeping the Northwest, many sparked by intense lightning storms and stoked by record-breaking heat and high winds. You cant fight a 20-foot wall of fire thats multiple miles wide with a couple of fire engines," said Shannon Pettner, a battalion chief with Oregons Sweet Home Fire Department. With improved weather finally enabling fire crews to take the offensive, Pettner has been helping beat back the states largest conflagration this season - the 190,000-acre Beachie Creek fire. As a local, she said losses from the blaze struck her on a personal level. Places that we would take our children camping or go and visit, weve seen those altered permanently," she told Reuters. We wont see those places look the same probably in my lifetime. Firefighters in Southern California scored a notable victory on Tuesday night, saving the famed Mount Wilson Observatory and its telescopes from being swallowed in the so-called Bobcat fire raging through the rugged peaks of the San Gabriel range above Los Angeles. I was telling people yesterday (Tuesday) that the defense of the Mount Wilson Observatory was taking on the feel of a mini-Alamo," said John Clearwater, a spokesman for Angeles National Forest, where the blaze erupted on Sept. 6. Twelve firefighting crews on the ground waged an all-out campaign with water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers loaded with flame retardant, which crept to within 500 feet of the site. Also saved was an adjacent complex of broadcast and emergency communication towers. But the blaze, still burning mostly uncontained, continued to pose a threat to several nearby foothill communities under evacuation orders. The West Coast wildfires, which officials and scientists have described as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, have filled the regions skies with smoke and soot, compounding a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Smoke levels abated enough on Wednesday that environmental agencies lifted an air quality advisory for coastal Oregon and southeastern Washington. WHERE THERES SMOKE Scientists tracked the smoke as far away as Europe. The European Unions Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) was monitoring the fires and movement of smoke across the United States and beyond. The fact that these fires are emitting so much pollution into the atmosphere that we can still see thick smoke over 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) away reflects just how devastating they have been in their magnitude and duration," CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington said in a statement. The simultaneous burning of dozens of fires along the West Coast has stretched the resources of the three states to their limit, particularly in Oregon, where fires rarely impact the normally rainfall-rich Cascade Mountains the way they have this year. Trumps disaster declaration, requested by Oregons governor, bolstered federal assistance for the state. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said on Wednesday it had allocated $1.2 million to bring relief to Oregon. Eight deaths have been confirmed in Oregon, with 12 people reported unaccounted for as search teams continued to scour incinerated towns for the missing. Nearly 4,000 evacuees remained displaced, according to the American Red Cross. In California, authorities said 17,000 firefighters were still battling 25 major fires on Wednesday, as the states death toll stood at 25. One fire-related fatality has been confirmed in Washington state. Nearly 8,000 homes and other structures have been reduced to rubble by fires in all three states. 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 operating model of an organization is the bridge between its strategic intent and effective execution. It includes organizational structure, accountabilities, governance, and ways of working alongside people, process, and technology. Design principles for the operating model should crisply reflect how a company has chosen to compete and win. For example, optimizing for rapid integration would reflect a choice to drive growth through acquisitions. If you are choosing to compete and win as a data-driven enterprise, your operating model probably needs to change in some obvious ways. Your technology architecture must be optimized for real-time data processing. Your people need to skill up on turning that capability into reactive apps using the modern stack. But there are some equally important but no-so-obvious ways as well. Data-driven enterprises get compounding returns from the scale of data, the scope of data, or both. They must optimize their operating models to muster both sufficient boldness and patience to do what it takes to achieve them. Weve seen this play out in the technology sector. It took Netflix until 2013 to achieve the scale needed to create data-driven original content. Now, with the expanded scope for experimentation that this affords them, they are able to turn the flywheel of insight into both what viewers like among content that already exists and where there are binegable gaps to fill even faster. In 2009, Microsofts partnership with Yahoo was the price it had to pay for the scale needed to keep its Bing search engine competitive with Google. Both cases point to the winning way of working for a data-driven enterprise: doing more with more. The connective tissue of your organizational structure, accountabilities, and governance were probably not optimized to create data volume and velocity in order to exploit data abundance. Consider how an opportunity for a data-driven enterprise might stress the legacy operating model. Delivering a new value proposition combining data produced by two different lines of business may be possible only if one of them achieves a scale it would not achieve organically. And then an advantageous third-party tie-up may be possiblebut only if the new offer is first past the post needed to reach a compelling scale before the competition. The worst-case scenario is implicit or explicit pressure to focus time and attention first and foremost on doing more with less. The good news is that you can detect the misalignment of incentives by the questions teams are putting at the head of the queue. If they are prioritizing Who negotiates data access between business units?, How do we charge third parties so we can monetize the data immediately?, How do I justify storage costs?, or How often should the data committee meet? they are actively creating execution risk for the data-driven enterprise strategy. Instead, teams should be diving into questions of How could we exceed our competitions NPS by 20% through data products?, How can the data products increase our average customer transaction volume?, What might stop us from delivering data features at the speed of app features?, and Who are your data product owners?. If they answer these questions about velocity and value, what follows will be the right answers to questions about cost and control. But if they start with the latter, at best theyll get to the former slowlyand maybe not at all. Read about how data-driven enterprises can make data most valuable for consumers here. General MM Naravane, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) on a two-day visit to Kashmir, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. COAS arrived in Srinagar today and proceeded to undertake a firsthand assessment of the situation along the Line of Control (LC) in North Kashmir. (PTI Photo) SRINAGAR: Indian Army chief, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, on Thursday held a series of meetings with local Army officers to review the security situation in the Valley. He also flew to a couple of locations along the Line of Control (LoC) for a firsthand assessment of the security prevailing in the frontier region. In the evening, Gen. Naravane who is on a two-day visit of the Valley met J-K Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, at the Raj Bhavan to discuss several important issues related to effective management of internal and external security, particularly in the context of attempts at infiltration and the steps required to be taken for more effectively dealing with terrorist activities. He was accompanied by Lt. Gen. YK Joshi, Army Commander, Northern Command and Lt. Gen. BS Raju, GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps which is also known as Chinar Corps, a Raj Bhavan spokesman said. According to defence spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia, Gen. Naravane, during his interaction with the soldiers deployed in high altitude areas of the Valley, appreciated their high morale and complimented them on their response to Pakistan ceasefire violations. He also commended use of technology to ensure effective day and night surveillance across the LoC which has resulted in many successful operations to foil infiltration bids from POJK in the recent past. The Army chief reinforced the need to extend all possible support to civilians residing in the border areas who are victims of targeted ceasefire violations by Pakistan Army and are facing hardships due to the pandemic, the spokesman said. He said at his meetings with the Army commanders and jawans deployed in the hinterland, Gen. Naravane reiterated that it was the dawn of a new era of development, peace and prosperity in Kashmir and applauded them for their high level of morale and contribution to peace building in J-K. Tanzania and Uganda signed a $3.5 billion deal to begin construction of an oil pipeline on September 13 sparking a wave of outcry from environmental groups. Oil prices have collapsed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 crisis and long-term concerns about climate change. But in some parts of the world, oil companies ambitions have continued unabated with French supermajor Total, Chinas CNOOC and flagging British firm Tullow Oil teaming up to plan a 1,445 km pipeline transporting oil from Uganda to Tanzania. After years of discussion, the pipelines particular route has been confirmed: it will connect oil fields in Ugandas Lake Albert region to the port of Tanga on Tanzanias Indian Ocean coastline, near the Kenyan border. Work on the pipeline will begin by the end of the year, and it is expected to carry nearly 200,000 barrels of oil per day. This is a very crucial project for our people, Tanzanian President John Magufuli declared upon signing the deal with his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni. Our signing today is a crucial step towards implementing the project which will not only create jobs, but also promote cooperation within the region, and stimulate economic development in areas the pipeline crosses, Magufuli continued. We want our people to work fast and start this project, Museveni added. On paper, Tanzania expects the project to create 10,000 jobs. But it cannot be realised without adversely affecting the local ecosystem and local peoples lives, human rights group FIDH and NGO Oxfam have warned. In two reports published on September 10, both groups called on the Tanzanian and Ugandan governments to listen to the people concerned. UN officials have also expressed concern over the project. Estimates suggest that at least 12,000 families will lose part or all of their land thanks to this project, Sacha Feierabend, a globalisation and human rights consultant at FIDH, told FRANCE 24. Companies go door-to-door and buy land, promising to resettle the inhabitants in new villages with new land, she continued. Story continues However, such compensation looks unlikely to satisfy the local inhabitants. The pipeline plans dont take their customs into consideration, Feierabend said. For example, in some Ugandan villages where families have already been resettled, clans have been mixed and are now living on top of each other. Meanwhile certain crucial components of the common good, such as wells and pasture land shared with neighbours, cannot be moved. Another concern is that air and water quality could be threatened. Oil exploration activities carried out a few years ago in Uganda have already made access to safe drinking water more complicated, Feierabend noted. There is no reason why it should be any different today; a leak could have disastrous consequences on the lakes and rivers in the local area, she continued. The threat is all the more serious as the project envisages 419 oil wells being drilled near Lake Albert, one of Africas largest lakes. This is an exceptional ecosystem, which allows thousands of fishermen to live off its resources, so it is crucial to prevent drilling in these protected areas, Feierabend said. Although the project looks set to go ahead, as things stand, Total will have to defend its role before the Frances Court of Appeal on October 28. NGO Survie, the French branch of Friends of the Earth and Ugandan associations Afigeo, Cred, Nape and Navoda have filed a complaint against the French supermajor. In particular, they accuse Total of breaking the law by expropriating land before compensating its inhabitants. This article was translated from the original in French. Tully, NY - A student at Tully Junior-Senior High School has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Tully School Superintendent Robert Hughes. Hughes sent a letter to parents today informing them of the positive test. In the letter, Hughes said the Onondaga County Health Department was notified immediately, and has reached out to anyone who had close contact with the student. The district said it learned of the positive case earlier today. Hughes said the school is remaining open after consultation with the health department. The student and any other students, faculty or staff who were exposed wont return to school until the health department clears them, the superintendent in the letter. This is the third school district in Onondaga County to report a COVID-19 to date. Baldwinsville and Jamesville-DeWitt school districts also have had cases. Elizabeth Doran covers education, suburban government and development, breaking news and more. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact her anytime at 315-470-3012 or email edoran@syracuse.com Ronald Koeman's second game as Barcelona boss delivered the same result as his first as the Catalans claimed a 3-1 win over Girona on Wednesday evening The starting XI chosen by the Dutchman played 60 minutes before the reinforcements were introduced and we're already seeing signs of what Koeman's side will look like. Sergi Roberto is ahead of Nelson Semedo, while Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba are holding onto their positions. Ronald Araujo was the only outfield player to complete the 90 minutes at centre-back, and Francisco Trincao is showing signs of convincing as well. Antoine Griezmann keeps looking for space, but he's still lacking a No.9 ahead of him to open space. Trincao started and showed his ability again, assisting Philippe Coutinho's opener. The 20-year-old is showing that he's a serious player and was part of the first XI, getting 60 minutes under his belt and leaving Ousmane Dembele on the bench. Frenkie de Jong made a costly mistake that led to a goal. The Dutchman looked a little lost at times, but he's a player that Koeman wants to get the best out of. Mistakes like that on Wednesday cannot be allowed. Konrad de la Fuente doesn't look like he's just passing through the first team. He's the first American player to represent Barcelona - born in Miami - and he had already shown his level against Nastic de Tarragona. He did that again against Girona, carved out a chance for Pedri and he looks like he could play a part under Koeman. Remember the name. The suspect raising a gun before shooting the two deputies ((Los Angeles Sheriff's Department)) Los Angeles County sheriff Alex Villanueva has warned officers to look out for each other, as the search continues for the suspect in a shooting of two deputies at the weekend. On Saturday, two deputies were shot while sitting in their patrol car at a Metro rail station in Compton, California, and police are still searching for the shooter. The deputies, a 24-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman, are expected to recover after they both underwent surgery over the weekend, with the former released from hospital on Wednesday, according to Los Angeles County sheriff Alex Villanueva. On Saturday, the department released footage of the shooting from a nearby surveillance camera, and offered a $100,000 (77,556) reward, which has since been increased to $300,000 (232,222), to anyone who could help identify the alleged shooter. The surveillance footage showed a suspect walk up to the patrol car and fire two shots into the passenger side window before running from the scene. Speaking to ABC News earlier in the week, Mr Villanueva warned officers to look out for each other, while the search for the shooter continued. This is going to cause us to be a lot more concerned about when we approach vehicles when were out there on the streets, he said. We have everybody paired up in two-man vehicles now. So, were going to have to be watching out for each others back out there on the streets, the sheriff added. On Sunday, a social media post that claimed to identify the suspect in the shooting spread, which prompted the department to refute the claims. The department tweeted: Currently, there is a social media post that is being circulated which identifies a male out of the Los Angeles area as the suspect responsible for the ambush of our two deputies yesterday. This is ERRONEOUS information and there are no named or wanted suspects at this time. The authorities were also forced to confirm that a man arrested following a car chase on Tuesday was not linked to Saturdays shooting, after there was speculation on social media. Story continues In recent weeks, the department has faced scrutiny over police brutality, following more than three months of Black Lives Matter protests across the US that were sparked by the death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police. A small group of Compton residents protested against police outside the hospital where the deputies were recovering on Sunday, with the sheriff describing the gathering as an unlawful assembly of a group of protesters. The FBI is aiding the department with its ongoing investigation into Saturdays shooting. Read more LA Sheriffs department hits out at social media posts falsely identifying Compton gunman as they offer 100k reward LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva calls on LeBron James to match reward for arrest of gunman in Compton deputy ambush shooting Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur says 'bring it on' after LA threatens jail time Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur took an insouciant attitude toward threats of jail time over his churchs decision to hold indoor services amid ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns, saying hell simply open a jail ministry should he find himself behind bars. In an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, MacArthur revealed that he recently received a letter threatening up to six months in jail if he continues holding indoor worship services at his church in Sun Valley, California. Of course, my biblical hero apart from the Lord Jesus Christ is the Apostle Paul, MacArthur said. And when he went into a town he didn't ask what the hotel was like. He asked what the jail was like because he knew that's where he was going to spend his time. So I don't mind being a little apostolic if they want to tuck me into jail, I'm open for a jail ministry, he continued. I've done a lot of other ministries and haven't had the opportunity to do that one. So bring it on. On Sunday, Grace Community held an indoor service just days after Las Angeles Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff temporarily barred the church from holding indoor worship. Speaking from the pulpit, MacArthur explained why Grace Church does not just comply with the orders that have been laid down for churches. He condemned the countys ongoing restrictions six months after the first lockdown as utterly impossible to follow, adding that doing so would completely shut the church down. "Obviously, this is not constitutional, but more importantly, it goes against the will of the Lord of the church, who calls us together," the pastor said. So look at the person next to you and say, I don't know who you are but I'm so glad I'm sitting next to you. MacArthur has led in-person services since late July in violation of Gov. Gavin Newsom's second round of lockdowns and repeatedly criticized California for restricting worship. Were under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He says to have church, and we will, he told CNN on Thursday. Over the last few weeks, the county has repeatedly attempted to get a court order to close the church and used various methods to prevent the congregation from gathering. Last month, the county told the church it would terminate a lease for a parking lot the congregation had used for 45 years. Earlier this week, the county fined Grace Community $1,000 for allegedly violating a COVID-19 sign ordinance due to the placement of the sign. MacArthur called the countys approach harassment and argued that government officials are attempting to impede on his and his congregations free exercise of religion by criminalizing activity directly required by our faith. As a church, we have a moral and religious obligation to continue allowing our congregants to gather in our sanctuary to worship the Lord, the pastor said, adding that the church is the core of life for thousands from nursery to seniors. Other churches across California have faced opposition for holding services in defiance of state health mandates constraining worship services. North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara was forced to stop hosting indoor services after accruing over $112,000 in county fines. Last month, Ventura County, a suburb of Los Angeles, fined Rob McCoy, pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel, $3,000 for holding six services against local orders. Katy-area students and children can benefit from free breakfasts and lunches beginning Monday, Sept. 21, through Thursday, Dec. 31. The meals will be provided at no cost through an extended waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA), pending available funds. Related: Katy ISD looking for parents to review new instructional materials All students are eligible for one breakfast and one lunch meal per day per federal guidance, said Donna Pittenger, Katy Independent School District nutrition and food service executive director Parents can however add funds to their students Pay N Go meal account for a la carte purchases or in preparation for when the USDA waiver ends. Katy ISD students learning virtually and children up to 18 years that are not enrolled in Katy ISD can pick up breakfast and lunch at three school curbside distribution sites from 4 to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. The meals are ready to be heated and consumed at home and are intended for the next days use. The three distribution sites are located at: Cinco Ranch High School, 23440 Cinco Ranch Blvd Mayde Creek High School, 19202 Groeschke Road Morton Ranch High School, 21000 Franz Road Parents that are picking up meals without a child present must have one form of documentation for each child. An official letter, email, electronic school application, student report card, student ID card, attendance records with the students names or a birth certificate will work. Related: Creech Elementary a second home for Katy family with six children After the waiver expires, Katy ISD will return to the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Katy ISD parents will need to apply for free and reduced meals at www.schoolcafe.com/KatyISD to determine whether they are eligible for benefits. tracy.maness@hcnonline.com LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Teens from throughout California are invited to help educate the driving public about a common yet very dangerous behavior behind the wheel speeding. It's a factor in 26 percent of all fatal traffic crashes, killing more than 9,000 people every year. The Drive Safe California PSA Challenge, sponsored by The National Road Safety Foundation and promoted by the LA Auto Show, is open and accepting ideas for a public service announcement about the dangers of speeding. The winner will receive a $2,000 cash prize and the opportunity to work with an Emmy Award-winning producer to turn the winning idea into a finished 30-second TV public service announcement. The runner-up will receive a $1,000 award. The winning spot will debut at the LA Auto Show before being broadcast on more than 160 TV stations nationwide. The teachers or school advisors of the winner and runner-up will each receive a $100 honorarium. "The general attitude about speeding is that 'everyone does it.' The biggest perceived risk of speeding is getting stopped for a ticket, paying a fine and getting points on your license," said Michelle Anderson of The National Road Safety Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes safe driving behavior. "Too many drivers forget that speeding can result in far more than a ticket. It can cause a crash that takes lives and devastates families. That's the message we want California teens to help us communicate -- speeding can be so much more than a ticket." "Today's cars are safer than ever, with technological advances that help avoid crashes," said Terri Toennies, President of the LA Auto Show. "But we need to remain vigilant in spreading the message, especially with young drivers, about the importance of responsible driving. We are proud to continue our support of the National Road Safety Foundation and look forward to having them at our show this May." Teens ages 13-19 attending school in California are invited to enter the contest by sending in a script or treatment for a television ad that warns their peers and others about speeding. Entries must be received by Oct. 26, 2020. The winner will be announced at the LA Auto Show where his or her video will be shown. All contest entrants will receive a complimentary ticket to attend the Los Angeles Auto Show, courtesy of show management. Information about the Drive Safe California contest is at www.nrsf.org/teenlane/content/drivesafeca. The site also has winning PSAs from previous years. The LA Auto Show, a premier global auto show with a rich tradition of over 110 years, returns to the Los Angeles Convention Center May 21-31, 2021. For show info visit www.laautoshow.com. The National Road Safety Foundation, Inc. (NRSF) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit charitable organization that for nearly 60 years has been dedicated to reducing crashes, deaths and injuries on our nation's highways by promoting safe driving habits through greater public awareness. NRSF programs cover distracted driving, speed and aggression, impaired driving, drowsy driving, driver proficiency and pedestrian safety. The Foundation works with key youth advocacy groups and sponsors contests to engage teens in promoting safe driving to their peers and in their communities. For information or to download free programs, visit www.nrsf.org or www.teenlane.org. About the LA Auto Show: Founded in 1907, the LA Auto Show, one of the world's premier auto shows and cherished LA icon will take place May 21-31, 2021 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. AutoMobility LA, the show's Press and Trade Days will take place May 19-20, 2021. AutoMobility LA is where the auto industry unveils groundbreaking new vehicle and tech innovations, while making strategic announcements in front of media and industry professionals from around the globe. The LA Auto Show is endorsed by the Greater LA New Car Dealers Association and is owned and operated by ANSA Productions. To receive the latest show news and information, follow the LA Auto Show on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and sign up for alerts at http://www.laautoshow.com/. For more information about AutoMobility LA, please visit http://www.automobilityla.com/ and follow AutoMobility LA on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Contact: David Reich 914 325-9997 [email protected] SOURCE The National Road Safety Foundation Related Links http://www.teenlane.org NEW DELHI: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday (September 17, 2020) blamed China for current standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) said that it continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq km in the Union Territory of Ladakh. The Defence Minister, while speaking in Rajya Sabha, said that China actions reflect a disregard of our various bilateral agreements. Blaming China for the tense situation at the Line of Actual Control, Singh said, The deployment of the troops by China goes against the 1993 and 1996 Agreements. Respecting and strictly observing Line of Actual Control is the basis for peace & tranquillity in the border areas. China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq. km in the Union Territory of Ladakh. In addition, under the so-called Sino-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq. km. of Indian territory in PoK to China, the Defence Minister told lawmakers in Rajya Sabha. China also claims approximately 90,000 sq. km. of Indian territory in the Eastern Sector of the India-China boundary in Arunachal Pradesh," he added. Live TV The Defence Minister said this while replying to Opposition queries on the India-China border tensions in the Rajya Sabha. He stated that it was the Chinese Army that provoked the Indian side. "Conduct of our armed forces throughout these incidents shows that while they maintained 'Sayyam' in face of provocative actions, they also equally displayed 'Shaurya' when required to protect the territorial integrity of India." On 15 June, Colonel Santosh Babu, along with his 19 brave soldiers, made the supreme sacrifice in the Galwan Valley towards the cause of defending the territorial integrity of India. Our PM himself went to Ladakh to boost the morale of forces, Singh said in the Upper House. Singh said that Chinese actions reflect a disregard of various bilateral agreements between the two nations, such as the amassing of the troops by China, which goes against the 1993 and 1996 agreements. We have informed China through diplomatic and military channels that Chinas transgressions along the LAC will not be accepted by India, Singh said. The Defence Minister said that India feels that bilateral relations with China could be improved and a discussion on LAC could happen simultaneously, but added that any attempt to disrupt peace and tranquillity at the LAC would hamper these efforts. Both India and China have formally agreed that the boundary debate is a complex issue which requires patience and committed to seeking a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through dialogue and peaceful negotiations, he said, adding that both sides agree that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas is essential in the interim. Rajnath Singh says India also ramped up our infrastructure after China upped its infrastructure along the border. He also said, "I would like to emphasise, that India remains committed to resolving the current issues in our border areas through peaceful dialogue and consultations." The Defence Minister said that India wants peaceful resolution but remains prepared to deal with all contingencies. "The situation this year is very different both in terms of the scale of troops involved and number of friction points. We do remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the current situation. At the same time, we remain prepared to deal with all contingencies," Singh said. Singh had earlier addressed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday over the India-China border issue, saying that it remains unresolved, with no mutually acceptable solution till now. China doesnt recognise the traditional and customary alignment of the boundary. We consider that this alignment is based on well-established geographical principles, Singh had said. After Singhs address to Lok Sabha MPs, Congress MPs demanded a discussion on the border issue. On 15 June, clashes between Indian and Chinese troops along the LAC in eastern Ladakh led to the loss of lives of 20 Indian soldiers. The Indian government had claimed that over 40 soldiers on the Chinese side were also killed. These clashes are being termed as the deadliest along the Sino-India border since the 1962 war between the two countries. Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt. Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Australian Potash (ASX:APC) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'. View our latest analysis for Australian Potash How Long Is Australian Potash's Cash Runway? A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. As at June 2020, Australian Potash had cash of AU$3.4m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$4.4m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 9 months from June 2020. To be frank, this kind of short runway puts us on edge, as it indicates the company must reduce its cash burn significantly, or else raise cash imminently. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time. How Is Australian Potash's Cash Burn Changing Over Time? Whilst it's great to see that Australian Potash has already begun generating revenue from operations, last year it only produced AU$163k, so we don't think it is generating significant revenue, at this point. As a result, we think it's a bit early to focus on the revenue growth, so we'll limit ourselves to looking at how the cash burn is changing over time. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 4.6%, which suggests that management are increasing investment in future growth, but not too quickly. However, the company's true cash runway will therefore be shorter than suggested above, if spending continues to increase. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years. Story continues How Easily Can Australian Potash Raise Cash? Since its cash burn is increasing (albeit only slightly), Australian Potash shareholders should still be mindful of the possibility it will require more cash in the future. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and drive growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations. Australian Potash's cash burn of AU$4.4m is about 6.7% of its AU$66m market capitalisation. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money. Is Australian Potash's Cash Burn A Worry? Even though its cash runway makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Australian Potash's cash burn relative to its market cap was relatively promising. Even though we don't think it has a problem with its cash burn, the analysis we've done in this article does suggest that shareholders should give some careful thought to the potential cost of raising more money in the future. Readers need to have a sound understanding of business risks before investing in a stock, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Australian Potash that potential shareholders should take into account before putting money into a stock. If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow. 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. WASHINGTON, D.C. - September 16, 2020 - Social distancing is a key component of the expert-recommended strategy to reduce the spread of COVID-19. According to the World Health Organization, the SARS-CoV-2 virus passes from person to person primarily through saliva or airborne respiratory droplets. Protective precautions like wearing masks, washing hands, and avoiding close contact with other people can prevent the spread of droplets. Avoiding contact with others, however, may have repercussions in a person's gut microbiome. In a perspective published this week in mSphere, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, a group of microbiologists in Portugal call for scientists to more closely examine the ways in which COVID-19--and our response to it--interact with microbial health. A more thorough analysis of that relationship, they argue, is needed to prepare for long-term health consequences and to develop comprehensive control strategies. "Our behaviors have consequences," said lead author Teresa Nogueira, Ph.D., microbiologist at the National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research and Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes at the University of Lisbon. "We are doing social distancing, which makes sense during the pandemic. But in the long term, social distancing can have consequences on the biodiversity of our microbiota." In the paper, Nogueira and her colleagues highlight 2 critical ways to look for the effect of social distancing on the microbiome. One may be harmful, and the other helpful, leading the authors to describe the effects as a "double-edged sword." First, they worry that social distancing may worsen the prognosis for individuals with many diseases, including COVID-19. Their hypothesis is based not on new findings, but on drawing conclusions from previous ones. Recent studies connect social isolation to less bacterial diversity. Extreme lack of diversity can lead to an imbalance called dysbiosis, which is associated with reduced numbers of protective bacteria. Previous studies have connected dysbiosis to higher risk of opportunistic infections; it's also been shown to increase the risk of influenza infections in the lung. Preliminary studies from the last few months similarly suggest that a person's microbiota influences their response to COVID-19, and that hospitalized COVID-19 patients do face increased risk of dysbiosis . Given what's known about the virus and the microbiome, Nogueira and her colleagues hypothesize that social distancing favors dysbiosis and thus worsens a person's response to COVID-19. It could produce a loop, where dysbiosis triggers poorer responses, which leads to more widespread social distancing, which can exacerbate dysbiosis. But, she cautions, rigorous studies haven't yet been done to support this hypothesis. The second way that social distancing may influence the microbiome is by limiting the transmission of antibiotic resistant microbes between people and the exchange of resistance genes between microbes. Taking antibiotics leads to an increase in antibiotic resistance genes among a person's microbiota. Recent studies by Nogueira's group, however, show that the diversity of these genes increases in time by spreading from person to person. Social distancing limits personal contact, which means it likely limits the transmission of antibacterial resistance as well, Nogueira said. "In situations where people avoid one another, we would expect to break this transmission," she said. "In these populations, the resistant bacteria tend to disappear over time." However, as in the case of the connection with dysbiosis, she said that studies haven't rigorously demonstrated that social distancing will reduce antibiotic resistance. Recent years have shown that the microbiota plays a critical role in many aspects of human health, and the authors of the mSphere perspective urge researchers to better probe how the bacterial balance may be affected by social distancing in the short and long term. "We're not suggesting any changes to control strategies," Nogueira said. "We want to ask the scientists working in the field to check for this. This is the window of opportunity to do so." ### The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences. ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications, educational opportunities and advocacy efforts. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences. Portland landlords must pay to move residential tenants who cant afford any rent increase after the City Council unanimously agreed Wednesday to temporarily modify its renter relocation assistance policy. The rule goes into effect immediately and applies to any rent increase between September and March 31, 2021. Tenants must provide written notice they cant afford the higher rate and will need to move. The previous policy applied only to rent increases of 10% or more. The rule calls for landlords to pay between $2,900 to $4,500 to help tenants move. The City Council plans to discuss later this year whether to keep the temporary revision through March or extend it further. Portland requires landlords to give tenants at least 90 days' notice of any rent increase. With the new rules, city leaders said landlords will have the option to rescind any September rent increase and refund any increased rent paid by the tenant. To qualify, tenants must provide written notice that they need assistance either 45 days after being given notice of the rent increase or until Sept. 30, whichever period is longer. The proposal was announced by Mayor Ted Wheeler last week and the policy change was crafted by members of his office and the Portland Housing Bureau. He said it was necessary to help keep renters in their homes amid the coronavirus pandemic as the statewide eviction moratorium is slated to end Sept. 30. If the deadline on the moratorium isnt extended, March 31 marks the end of the six-month grace period for Oregonians to pay all of their outstanding rental payments. Wheeler and other council members acknowledged the new rule could further burden landlords and that even this provision and rent assistance funds from the city wont be enough to more fully address issues faced by tenants and landlords without more significant state and federal aid. I want to be crystal clear about this. We arent saving anybody, Wheeler said. Were temporarily suspending the coming eviction tidal wave and the potential loss of local building owners and landlords. Rent increases disproportionally impact households of color, city officials said. According to city data of around 264,000 Portland households, 47% are renters and the other 53% are homeowners. But 43% of white households in the Portland area are renters while as many as 74% of Black households rent. Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who was the architect behind the original relocation assistance policy, said she was disappointed rent and mortgage forgiveness programs havent caught traction among state and federal legislators. She said she felt the city had to prioritize more vulnerable Portlanders, noting that renters typically have fewer financial resources than landlords and rent increases without the option of relocation assistance would be a recipe for displacement. I want to assert that in this moment of crisis, when we know that half of our renters were cost-burdened before COVID, we cant balance landlord housing pressures on the backs of renters, Eudaly said. She also noted that the rule change doesnt ban landlords from raising rent and that increases can still take place in the city for tenants who can afford it. There was no public testimony on the proposal before the City Council vote. Wednesday marked the first City Council meeting with five members as Commissioner Dan Ryan took part. He was sworn in last week. Ryan was elected last month to serve the remaining two years on the term of late Commissioner Nick Fish, who died in January of cancer. -- Everton Bailey Jr; ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 | @EvertonBailey Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Pastors wife known as saint drowns while rafting with church group on Nolichucky River Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Louvella Arrowood, the beloved wife of a North Carolina pastor, considered by some who knew her to be a saint, drowned Saturday while rafting with a church group along the Nolichucky River. She was 63. Matt Moses, CEO of USA Raft, said in a statement that Arrowood, whose husband is the Rev. Jimmy Arrowood, was on the 2:30 p.m. rafting trip with 14 guests and three guides when the raft she was traveling in was flipped by a rapid. The trip started at Poplar, North Carolina, and was set to run through Class 3-4 whitewater for 8 miles to the takeout at Erwin, Tennessee. At the beginning of a substantial rapid, a raft flipped. Two other rafts were positioned downstream as part of standard safety procedures and immediately began recovering guests. All guests were recovered by the other rafts quickly, Moses said in his statement. Sgt. Gale Wilson with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which investigates all accidents on state waterways, told the Citizen Times that the pastors wife was under water for about 5 to 8 minutes before she was pulled from the river. We are heartbroken to report that she passed away, he said. Arrowood was pulled from the river into a raft and found to be unresponsive. USA Raft guides as well as guests provided CPR until emergency services arrived but they could not revive her. At this point, we are doing everything we can to support the family and our staff members that were both on the river that day or involved in the efforts from our headquarters in Erwin. What happened Saturday was a tragedy for our guests, our guides and community. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the deceased as well as everyone that was on the trip or otherwise involved, Moses said. Arrowood was a nurse serving Blue Ridge Regional Hospital and several private practices over the years and she loved spending time with her grandchildren, according to an obituary. It also noted that while she attended Odoms Chapel Free Will Baptist Church she was a member of Middle District Free Will Baptist Church where Pastor Scott Jenkins remembered her fondly. RIP Louvella. You will be forever loved and greatly missed. You left a wonderful legacy. We are comforted in the truth that we will be reunited in Gods glorious heaven one day, Jenkins, noted in a statement on Facebook. Smithville, Texas, resident Hattie Belle Crader, who says Arrowoods husband previously served as her pastor, remembered her as a saint. Rest in Heaven Louvella, hug my daddy for me. Rev. Jimmy Arrowood was my pastor growing up, the man who baptized me in that little creek.His lovely wife Louvella was in my opinion, a saint. She taught me so much more than she ever knew, about life, God, and love. I'll never forget it... I know she's touched a lot of lives, she will be very missed. Sending up prayers for the family and all who are heartbroken by this loss, Crader said in a statement on Facebook. Along with her husband, Arrowood is survived by her daughter, Christy Cain Adam; son, Aaron Arrowood; sisters Angie Hopson and Elenia Yelton; brother, Eugene Yelton, and several grandchildren. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The 22 Filipino fishermen abandoned by a Chinese vessel which hit their boat in the West Philippine Sea may move closer to justice as the government determines the compensation that they are supposed to receive for the 2019 incident. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Thursday prosecutors in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro found that the 22 fishermen on board the Filipino fishing boat Gem-Ver are due civil damages amounting to over 12 million. He did not provide the exact amount that should be received by each of the fishermen and the vessel owner, who are from Occidental Mindoro. DOJ was tasked to determine the monetary compensation to be paid by the owner of the Chinese vessel, which rammed the Filipino boat on the night of June 9, 2019. The incident happened in the vicinity of Recto Bank, also called Reed Bank, an underwater feature in the West Philippine Sea also being claimed by China. The Filipinos were abandoned by the Chinese crew, floating at sea for hours before they were rescued by Vietnamese fishermen. The incident has sparked outrage in the Philippines, with protesters burning Chinese flags. President Rodrigo Duterte has been criticized for describing it as a little maritime accident. "The total estimated civil damages amount to something like 12 million plus pesos for the repair of the fishing boat that was rammed by the Chinese vessel, also for lost income or wages for a period of six months. These fishermen and the owner of the vessel also asked for moral damages," he told CNN Philippines' The Source. The compensation estimate has been forwarded to the Department of Foreign Affairs, which will then send it to the Chinese government. "Well just be waiting for the reaction of the Chinese government on the matter of payment of the civil damages," the Justice Secretary said. Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., previously said both Manila and Beijing have arrived at the same conclusion that the Chinese vessel was at fault. A joint investigation report of the Philippine Coast Guard and the Maritime Industry Authority concluded that it was a "very serious" marine incident, noting that the Chinese vessel could have but failed to take action to avoid the risk of the collision. The report said the Chinese vessel failed to extend its assistance after it rammed into Gem-Ver, causing the boat to be half submerged. China, in a statement released by its embassy on June 14, said that the captain of its vessel did not rescue the Gem-Ver for fear of being besieged, having just recently escaped a siege from other Filipino boats. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:49:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KABUL, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 23 Afghan soldiers and 31 militants were killed and several fighters wounded in separate clashes in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar and western Badghis provinces during Wednesday night, as peace efforts being made, provincial officials confirmed on Thursday. In Nangarhar province, 20 soldiers and 29 militants were killed and 15 security forces and 20 militants were wounded when security forces repelled militants' attacks in Khogiani, Shirzad and Hesarak district, provincial government spokesman Attaullah Khogiani told Xinhua. In western Badghis province, three soldiers and two militants were killed and six soldiers and five militants wounded when security force fought back attackers who stormed district offices in Qadis district. "Parts of district office building and an armored military vehicle caught fire after security force members forced militants who tried to overran the offices," district chief Haidar Sharifi told Xinhua. The clashes came as peace talks between a government delegation and Taliban representatives were underway in Doha, capital of Gulf state of Qatar. Enditem Families of missing seafarers aboard MV Gulf Livestock Vessel off Japan are not giving up hope just yet. They are appealing to President Rodrigo Duterte to expand the search for the missing crew members. They are also demanding that the manning agency send an independent team to look for any sign of life. US President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) A decision on the TikTok-Oracle deal is likely to be taken by United States President Donald Trump in the next 24-36 hours, sources told CNBC. This comes after he reportedly questioned ByteDance retaining a majority stake in TikTok's US operations. As per the report, Walmart may tie up with Oracle in a deal that would give the latter a roughly 20 percent stake in the much-popular social media video-sharing app. Last month, the Trump administration had issued an executive order calling ByteDance the parent company to sell or to completely shut down TikTok's US business operations, citing national security concerns. The US government had given ByteDance a 90-day-deadline to do so. The US President had said TikTok would need to be acquired by an American company to run its business in the US and that all the data should be stored within the country. TikTok is among the most popular apps in the US, especially among teenagers. The acquisition will help Oracle gain valuable data on various trends across the user demographic. T he night-time economy is on the brink of collapse with more than 700,000 jobs at risk and the end of the furlough scheme could be the final blow, an industry body has warned. A survey of Night-Time Industries Association (NTIA) members found 71 per cent of businesses are set to make more than half of their workforce redundant in a matter of weeks. The Job Retention Scheme, which has seen the Government pay 80 per cent of wages for more than 10 million furloughed employees during the Covid-19 pandemic, is set to end on October 31. Indoor performances at music venues have been allowed since August 15, although many venues such as nightclubs remain shut due to physical and financial issues surrounding social distancing. The NTIA warning comes after the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics reported a drop in employment of 695,000 jobs since March 2020, when lockdown began. Michael Kill, CEO of the Night-Time Industries Association, said: While these unemployment figures are harrowing, they come as no surprise. The night-time economy alone has been hugely damaged by the coronavirus pandemic and is on the brink of collapse and an onslaught of redundancies. The end of the furlough scheme is fast approaching, and our industry is one of few without a road-map to reopening or sector-specific support. The end of the Job Retention scheme will come as the final blow to thousands of businesses struggling for survival. We are reaching a critical point and without decisive and comprehensive action from the Government, businesses will be forced to make tough decisions about their futures and those of their staff." Loading.... A handful of London clubs, such as Brixton Jamm, The Cause and Studio 338, have moved their venues outside in order to reopen in a Covid-secure way. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Special warm clothes, special tent for living and adequate arrangement of weapons and ammunition have been made for Indian Army soldiers to cope with the extreme weather conditions at the Line of Actual Control, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh informed the members of Rajya Sabha on Thursday as border tension continued with China. "The spirits of our soldiers are high. They are capable of serving at forbidding altitudes with scarce oxygen and in extremely cold temperatures, something that they have effortlessly done over the last many years on Siachen, and Kargil," the Defence Minister said. He also said that the morale and motivation of Indian Armed Forces is very high, and the soldiers are committed to overcome any challenge that might come their way. This time also, soldiers have chosen patience and courage over aggression. "Our soldiers are a living symbol of restraint, bravery and valour," he said. The minister detailed the House about ongoing border tension. Since April, India had noticed a build-up of troops and armaments by the Chinese side in the border areas adjacent to Eastern Ladakh. In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off. Even as this situation was being addressed by the Ground Commanders as per the provisions of our bilateral agreements and protocol, in mid-May the Chinese side made several attempts to transgress the LAC in other parts of the Western Sector. This included Kongka La, Gogra and North Bank of Pangong Lake. These attempts were detected early and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces. "We made it clear to the Chinese side both through diplomatic and military channels that China was, by such actions, attempting to unilaterally alter the status quo. It was categorically conveyed that this was unacceptable," the minister said. Given the growing friction along the LAC, the Senior Commanders of the two sides in a meeting on June 6, 2020 agreed on a process of disengagement that involved reciprocal actions. Both sides also agreed to respect and abide by the LAC and not undertake any activity to alter the status quo. However, in violation of this the Chinese side precipitated a violent face off on June 15 at Galwan in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. "Our brave soldiers laid down their lives and also inflicted costs including casualties on the Chinese side," he said. The minister said that while no one should doubt our determination to safeguard our borders, India believes that mutual respect and mutual sensitivity are the basis for peaceful relations with neighbours. "As we want to resolve the current situation through dialogue, we have maintained diplomatic and military engagement with the Chinese side," he said. In these discussions, India have maintained the three key principles that both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC, neither side should attempt to alter the status quo unilaterally and all agreements and understandings between the two sides much be fully abided by in their entirety. However, it is apparent from Chinese activities that their words don't match their actions. A case in point is that even when the discussions were going on, the Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of August 29 and August 30 in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake. But yet again, timely and firm actions by our armed forces along the LAC prevented such attempts from succeeding. As is clear from these events, the Chinese actions reflect a disregard of our various bilateral agreements. The amassing of the troops by China goes against the 1993 and 1996 Agreements. Respecting and strictly observing the Line of Actual Control is the basis for peace and tranquility in the border areas and explicitly recognized in both 1993 and 1996 agreements. While Indian Armed Forces abide scrupulously by it, this has not been reciprocated by the Chinese side. Their actions have led to face-offs and frictions from time to time along the LAC. He also said that as of now, the Chinese side has mobilized a large number of troops and armaments along the Line of Actual Control as well as in the depth areas. There are several friction areas in Eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake. "In response to China's actions, our armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that India's borders are fully protected," the minister apprised the House. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text A dentist from Alaska has been sentenced to 12 years in jail after he extracted a patient's tooth while riding a hoverboard last year. The medical professional was also charged with Medicaid fraud. Unprofessional behavior According to the New York Post, the Anchorage Superior Court sentenced Seth Lookhart on Monday for several crimes that stemmed from his unprofessional conduct, including removing a patient's teeth without their permission. In January, authorities convicted Lookhart with charges of reckless endangerment, illegally practicing his profession, and fraud of medical assistance. While handing how the suspect's sentence, Judge Michael Wolverton said after he reviewed Lookhart's case, the dentist nearly killed several of his patients due to the misdeeds he conducted. One of the patients, Veronica Wilhelm, gave her testimony in court. In the footage of Lookhart extracting the tooth of a patient while riding a hoverboard, Wilhelm was the victim and was sedated during the procedure in July 2016. The cellphone video of the dentist showed him riding away on his hoverboard and raising his hands in the air celebrating his triumphant procedure. Lookhart allegedly sent the video to at least eight acquaintances telling them it was a "new standard of care." The suspect previously had his dental license suspended in 2017. A judge also ordered Lookhart not to practice his profession for at least ten years while his probation was ongoing after his release from prison. Also Read: Jealous Boyfriend Burned His Fiancee to Death Because She Exposed Her Body on the Beach On Monday, prosecutors asked the judge to order the suspect to pay $2.2 million as restitution for the fraud and embezzlement charges. However, the actual amount will be determined during a hearing scheduled for later this month, as reported by Anchorage Daily News. Lookhart allegedly had Shauna Cranford, his former office manager, to extract a patient's tooth despite not having a license in dentistry. She accepted a consolidated plea agreement and has been scheduled to be sentenced this week. Convicted dentist On Tuesday, a former Lockport pediatric dentist was sentenced to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a young girl. According to Buffalo News, 58-year-old Louis Surace from O'Connor Drive accepted the plea deal that would reduce his crime to an attempted first-degree criminal sexual act. While the charge was reduced, it remains a violent felony and gives a hefty prison term. The State Supreme Court Justice Richard Kloch Sr. announced the suspect to five years in prison despite the possible sentences ranging from three and a half years up to 15 years. He added that his decision was in hopes that it provides closure for the alleged victim. Adding to the prison sentence, Kloch Sr. placed Surace on parolelike postrelease supervision. The Supreme Court Justice said he would be choosing between duration of five and 15 years of supervision on November 30 when Surace will be sentenced. Before the sentencing, the suspect will remain free and will be given a $20,000 bail bond. The assistant district attorney of Niagara County, Lisa Baehre, said Surace conducted the crime sometime between May or June 2017. However, the suspect was not arrested until January 11, 2019, when he was officially charged in the Lockport Town Court. Surace's victim was only identified in court as a minor female and Baehre, and the defense attorneys refused to comment further. Related Article: Pedestrian Dead After Being Ran Over by South Dakota Attorney General Who Initially Reported Hitting a Deer @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said the government was aiming to bring down India's Covid-19 mortality rate to less than 1 per cent from the current 1.64 per cent, which is still the lowest in the world. IMAGE: Union Minister for Health Harsh Vardhan speaks in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, on September 17, 2020. Photograph: RSTV/PTI Photo. Replying to a debate in Rajya Sabha, he said the country's recovery rate of 78-79 per cent was one of the highest in the world, adding that though the total cases may have crossed 50 million, active cases are less than 20 per cent. Deaths in India due to the coronavirus pandemic are less than many nations in Europe and the government was determined to better the testing rate of the US, he said. Vardhan said there are chances that a vaccine could come in the country early next year but till then it was necessary for people to follow social distancing and wear masks. The minister said that despite the number of cases, the mortality rate in the country remained one of the lowest in the world. He said steps like testing, isolation of infected persons and other steps can be attributed to this lower mortality rate. Citing the examples of Spain and Brazil, he said the mortality rate in those countries was over 11 times that of India. "We want to bring it (mortality rate) to less than one per cent. We have 50 lakh cases right now but out of these, only 10 lakh are active cases in the country right now," Vardhan said. He said that various international experts had predicted that the cases in India will rise to 300 million by July-August, resulting in the deaths of 5-6 million people. "In a country of 135 crore people, we are doing 11 lakh tests now and are second to the US only. It has been possible only due to the united fight against the disease," he said. On the development of a vaccine, he said the science and technology ministry, ICMR and drug companies have come together for a solution. This matter was also being personally monitored by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added. "Vaccines can come in future. Extensive planning is underway to execute how to manage the scenario," Vardhan said. During this time, his reply was interrupted for a few minutes as the sound system faltered with members in Rajya Sabha unable to hear. Vardhan was speaking from his allocated seat in the Lok Sabha. Continuing after a few minutes of disruption, he said there are three vaccine candidates which have reached phase one, two or phase three level of trials. "Under the prime minister, an expert group is studying this. We expect by the beginning of next year we can have a vaccine in the country. In this regard we are also coordinating with WHO and global organisations," he said. India was among the few countries globally which has been able to isolate the virus, Vardhan noted. He noted that since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country, the central government has worked in close collaboration with the state governments. The minister said that all decisions during the period were taken after taking state governments in confidence. He said that for the last eight months, the central government, in association with state governments, has worked tirelessly to fight the pandemic. "I want to say that the whole country, in the last eight months, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has fought against the pandemic," he said. He said the first case in the country surfaced on January 30 and by then the health ministry had already dispatched advisories to state governments regarding the disease. The advisories went on January 17 and since then the government has been working tirelessly to fight the disease. History will remember Prime Minister Modi for continuously monitoring the situation at a personal level and coordinating the efforts with state governments over the last eight months, Vardhan said. "He (PM) did not take even a single decision without consulting experts and state chief ministers. Every decision was taken after ensuring complete consensus of the entire country," he noted. Terming the lockdown as a historic step, he said the measure taught people to fight the pandemic. Saluting Covid warriors and their families, Vardhan said the central and state governments have fought the battle against the disease with full dedication under the leadership of Modi. He said the central government from day one helped the state governments with thousands of crores given to them to fight the pandemic. Vardhan said from one laboratory (for Covid-19) the figure has now increased to 1,700 with the help of ICMR. He said even the cost of testing kits has been brought down with the local manufacturing kicking in. There used to be no one manufacturing PPE kits here, but now there are 110 manufacturers. Similarly, there are 25 makers of ventilators now in the country, Vardhan said. The central government helped every state without thinking which political party was in power, he added. Best practices from each state were brought together and shared with the entire country, he noted. The minister noted that despite a difficult economic situation, the prime minister allocated Rs 15,000 crore for health, a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package for poor and Rs 20 lakh crore for self-reliance initiative. He said that crore of rupees were also given under various government schemes during the period. On the issue of migrant workers, the minister said: "There is no doubt that for some time migrant workers faced problems...during the Covid period, 64 lakh of our migrant workers were sent to their native places by trains, buses." Replying to a query by Anand Sharma (Congress) on the benefits of imposing the lockdown, Vardhan said the government had derived the figures from the findings of five scientific bodies, including Boston Consulting Group, PHFI and ministry of statistics and programme implementation. On Wednesday, Sharma had questioned the government on how it had derived the figures that the lockdown decision prevented approximately 14-29 lakh cases and 37-78 thousand deaths in the country. "These bodies did five studies and based on that we prepared this data," Vardhan said. Replying to another query on the use or BCG vaccine against Covid-19, he said six clinical trials have been registered and ICMR was part of this study. Actor-turned-politician Ravi Kishan who spoke against the drug menace in parliament on Monday responded to Jaya Bachchan's Bollywood defense, and in an exclusive interaction with Republic TV said that he is not 'alone in this fight against drugs in the industry.' "The movement has begun and the nation is standing in this fight against drugs. There are few dirty fishes of 'left wing' who are not standing up in this fight. I was only thinking about my generation. I don't know what will happen to me, I haven't asked for security yet, Mahadev is with me. I have 135 crore security with me," Kishan said. Jaya Bachchan indirectly called out Ravi Kishan's statements in the parliament saying, "Just because there are some people, you can't tarnish the image of the entire industry. I am ashamed that yesterday one of our members in Lok Sabha, who is from the film industry, spoke against it. It is a shame." Kishan in response to this, said, "Few people in this industry want to make this hollow intentionally. The nexus needs to be broken. I am not alone in the fight, the nation has woken up." WATCH VIDEO 'Drug addiction is on a rise': Ravi Kishan On Monday, BJP MP from Gorakhpur Ravi Kishan raised the issue of 'drug addiction' in Bollywood and praised the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) which has launched a massive crackdown on a drug racket linked to the film industry. "I want to bring an important issue to the notice of all the MPs. The problem of drug trafficking/addiction is on a rise in our country and a conspiracy is being hatched to destroy the country's youth. Our neighbouring countries are contributing as the smuggling of drugs from Pakistan and China is done every year via Punjab and Nepal," Ravi Kishan said. "Drug addiction is in the film industry too. Several people have been apprehended and the NCB is doing very good work. I urge the central government to take strict action, apprehend the culprits soon, give them befitting punishment and bring an end to conspiracy of neighbouring countries," the BJP MP stated. Jaya Prada reacts to Jaya Bachchan's Parliament statement, backs Ravi Kishan NCB's film industry drug nexus probe raised in Parliament; BJP's Ravi Kishan urges action Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment. The (SAD) will decide on whether to remain in the ruling NDA or not in a meeting of the party later, its chief said on Thursday after party leader submitted her resignation from the Union Cabinet in protest against three farm sectors bills. Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, Badal said the SAD is ready to make any sacrifice for and their welfare. The party's future course of action and whether to stay in the BJP-led Democratic Alliance (NDA) or not will be decided in a party meeting later, he said. Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who submitted her resignation to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), told reporters, "I don't want to be part of a government which brought farm sector bills without addressing apprehensions of " Her resignation came soon after her husband and SAD president strongly opposed the bills in Lok Sabha, claiming that they will "destroy" the agriculture sector in Punjab, and announced that the Union minister will quit the government in protest. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills -- the Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill -- in Lok Sabha, said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work put in by successive Punjab governments and farmers to build the agriculture sector. Lok Sabha passed the two bills by voice vote on Thursday. Another bill related to the farm sector, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, was passed on Tuesday. These three bills will replace ordinances promulgated by the government earlier. (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.) Hours before law enforcement forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in early June amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd, federal officials began to stockpile ammunition and seek devices that could emit deafening sounds and make anyone within range feel like their skin is on fire, according to an Army National Guard major who was there. D.C. National Guard Maj. Adam D. DeMarco told lawmakers that defense officials were searching for crowd control technology deemed too unpredictable to use in war zones and had authorized the transfer of about 7,000 rounds of ammunition to the D.C. Armory as protests against police use of force and racial injustice roiled Washington. DeMarcos account contradicts the administrations claims that protesters were violent, tear gas was never used and demonstrators were given ample warning to disperse a legal requirement before police move to clear a crowd. (Washington Post) Featured stories Trump again scorns science on masks and vaccines (New York Times) Biden says he believes president has legal authority to implement mask mandate (ABC News) Barr blasts his own DOJ prosecutors, equates them to preschoolers and headhunters (NBC News) 737 Max crashes that killed 346 were horrific culmination of failures by Boeing and FAA, House report says (NBC News) National news At least 1 dead as Hurricane Sally unleashes catastrophic and life-threatening flooding along Gulf Coast (CBS News) Top HHS official takes leave of absence after Facebook rant about CDC conspiracies (NBC News) Trump calls for stimulus payments and massive economic relief bill, upending Republicans' more limited approach (Washington Post) Parents send student to school while knowingly infected with coronavirus, mayor says (CNN) Hundreds of thousands of trees need to be removed along Oregon 22; nearly 300 miles of state highways closed indefinitely (oregonlive.com) Smoke from the U.S. West Coast wildfires has reached Europe (CNN) Nearly two-thirds of U.S. young adults unaware 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust (The Guardian) No emergency training for crew on dive boat where fire killed 34 in California (Associated Press) Hoverboard-riding dentist sentenced to 12 years for Medicaid fraud (NBC News) World news Taiwan calls for global coalition against Chinas aggression as US official flies in (The Guardian) Indian, China troops exchanged gunshots twice last week as tensions rose (Reuters) Belarus protests: Maria Kolesnikova charged under security law (BBC) Russia says Navalny sanctions talk is affecting its borrowing plans (Reuters) Britain does not break treaties: EU president quotes Thatcher as she tells Boris Johnson he cannot change Brexit deal (The Independent) Coronavirus: Second national lockdown would be disastrous, PM says (BBC) Germany to take in 1,500 migrants from Greece, after huge fire left thousands homeless (CNN) Barbados to drop Queen Elizabeth II as head of state (ABC News) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Deborah Bloom and Brad Brooks (Reuters) Portland, Oregon Thu, September 17, 2020 07:16 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4541397 2 World wildfire,US,california,oregon,smoke Free As fire crews continued to battle deadly wildfires sweeping the western United States, thousands of evacuees in Oregon and other states faced a daily struggle while scientists in Europe tracked the smoke on Wednesday as it spread on an intercontinental scale. With state resources stretched to their limit, President Donald Trump on Tuesday night approved a request from Oregon's governor for a federal disaster declaration, bolstering federal assistance for emergency response and relief efforts. Dozens of fires have burned some 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of tinder-dry brush, grass and woodlands in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, ravaging several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 34 people. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has obligated more than $1.2 million in mission assignments to bring relief to Oregon and has deployed five urban search and rescue teams to the wildfire-torn region, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday. Search teams scoured incinerated homes for the missing as firefighters kept up their exhausting battle. The wildfires, which officials and scientists have described as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, have filled the region's skies with smoke and soot, compounding a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Scientists in Europe tracked the smoke as it bore down on the continent, underscoring the magnitude of the disaster. The European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) is monitoring the scale and intensity of the fires and the transport of the resultant smoke across the United States and beyond. "The fact that these fires are emitting so much pollution into the atmosphere that we can still see thick smoke over 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) away reflects just how devastating they have been in their magnitude and duration," CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington said in a statement. CAMS said it uses satellite observations of aerosols, carbon monoxide and other constituents of smoke to monitor and forecast its movement through the atmosphere. Eight deaths have been confirmed during the past week in Oregon, which became the latest and most concentrated hot spot in a larger summer outbreak of fires across the entire western United States. The Pacific Northwest was hardest hit. The fires roared to life in California in mid-August, and erupted across Oregon and Washington around Labor Day last week, many of them sparked by catastrophic lightning storms and stoked by record-breaking heat waves and bouts of howling winds. Weather conditions improved early this week, enabling firefighters to begin to make headway in efforts to contain and tamp down the blazes. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said 16,600 firefighters were still battling 25 major fires on Tuesday, after achieving full containment around the perimeter of other large blazes. Firefighters in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles waged an all-out campaign to save the famed Mount Wilson Observatory and an adjacent complex of broadcast transmission towers from flames that crept near the site. Topics : wildfire US california oregon smoke Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 16:46:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GABORONE, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Non-bank financial institutions regulator in Botswana have applied for a court order to liquidate one of the country's fund managers. The decision announced Wednesday came after Bluthorn Fund Managers (BFM) failed to align with compliance, despite repeated engagements. Boa Chombah, head of Communications and International Affairs at the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA), said the authority has acted on the statutory manager's recommendations and filed an application at the High Court, seeking an order to liquidate the BFM. The BFM was licensed by the authority in 2016 to operate as a Collective Investment Undertaking within the capital markets industry, having satisfied the licensing and legislative requirements. However, supervisory activities by the NBFIRA in May 2019 found that the BFM was not fully compliant with relevant financial services laws. Chombah said it was discovered that the BFM channeled the majority of investor funds into one of its related companies, Prime Employee Benefits. In addition, Chombah said the BFM's audited financial statements of February 2018 revealed that the company was insolvent as liabilities exceeded assets and the authority requested the BFM to recapitalize accordingly. BFM did recapitalize shortly thereafter, however, a subsequent on-site inspection by the authority revealed that BFM had not recapitalized appropriately. "Failure by the management of BFM to satisfactorily and timeously rectify the areas of noncompliance observed, despite repeated engagements, led the authority to place it under temporary closure from January to April 2020 and then subsequently under statutory management from April 2020 to date," said Chombah. Meanwhile, the authorities have assured BFM clients that a liquidator has the legal authority to take a number of steps to recoup funds on behalf of the BFM's creditors. Over the years, statistics have indicated that the retirement funds assets continued to be a significant contributor to the non-bank financial institutions sector. Enditem When we made the decision to start the new school year remotely, so many families reached out to us and the Park District, asking if we could offer some type of child care, District 25 Superintendent Lori Bein said. We knew all along that this would work for some families and not for others. But we wanted to offer an option, which was in response to requests from many families. JOHANNESBURG - South African gathered Thursday to pay tribute to lawyer George Bizos, who represented anti-apartheid leaders including Nelson Mandela in their legal battles against the government during racist white rule. Bizos died earlier this month at the age of 92 after a lengthy career fighting injustices in his adopted country. He was credited with helping Mandela avoid the death penalty at his 1964 treason trial and served as his personal attorney for decades. Throughout Mandelas daunting decades of imprisonment, he served as a trustworthy political envoy to Oliver Tambo and other highly placed leaders, said Dikgang Moseneke, a former deputy chief justice who described Bizos Thursday as a mentor. Bizos played a key role in the legal fight to end apartheid, the racist system used to oppress South Africas Black majority for decades. After apartheid ended in 1994, he went on to represent the families of victims of apartheid crimes at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday that Bizos was a titan of the legal profession who displayed a life-long commitment to justice. Bizos immigrated to South Africa when he was 13, fleeing the Nazi occupation in Greece. As a result, he had a deeply personal experience of being forced away from the land of ones birth and being treated like a second-class citizen, Ramaphosa said. There can be no doubt that his personal background influenced and nourished the great well of empathy and solidarity that drove George in the practice of his craft, he added. Bizos is credited with getting Mandela to add the words if needs be to his speech from the dock in which he said he was prepared to die for his ideals. The addition was seen as an escape clause, avoiding any impression that Mandela was goading the court to impose the death penalty. During Mandelas years in prison, Bizos helped to look after his family, and he played a key role in negotiations for Mandelas release in 1990. Bizos also represented the families of slain activists such as Steve Biko, and helped write the laws for the newly democratic country after apartheid ended. He also pursued other injustices in the country including the killing 44 miners by the police during a mining strike in Marikana in 2012. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) Pennsylvanias top lawyer asked a federal judge Wednesday to retain Gov. Tom Wolfs limits on crowd size, at least for now, warning that allowing large groups to congregate during a legal battle over Wolfs public health orders will result in peoples deaths from the coronavirus. The office of Attorney General Josh Shapiro asked the judge, an appointee of President Donald Trump, to delay enforcement of his ruling that many of the Democratic governors pandemic shutdown orders were unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV in Pittsburgh ruled against the states current size limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings, saying they violate citizens' constitutional right to assemble. The state has been enforcing a gathering limit of more than 25 people for events held indoors and more than 250 people for those held outside. Shapiros office, which is representing the Wolf administration in its planned appeal, said in court documents Wednesday that Stickmans ruling does not consider the manner in which COVID-19 is spread or the rationale for adopting the congregate limits. Its request for a stay also pointed out that other federal judges, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, have upheld Wolfs pandemic shutdown orders. The split in authority created by the Courts opinion makes it difficult, if not impossible, for (the Wolf administration) to manage the pandemic effectively and has created confusion and uncertainty throughout Pennsylvania, the states motion said. Stickmans ruling also invalidated key parts of the Wolf administrations early pandemic response, including his orders requiring people to stay at home and shuttering thousands of businesses deemed non-life-sustaining. Wolf had since eased many of the restrictions the plaintiffs objected to in their lawsuit, and he said he has no plans to reinstate them. Attorney Thomas W. King III, who represents the plaintiffs, said Wednesday the plaintiffs will vigorously oppose the states request for a stay, which King said would amount to a reimposition of unconstitutional restraints on Pennsylvania residents. The plaintiffs include hair salons, drive-in movie theaters, a farmers market vendor, a horse trainer and several Republican officeholders. An Anglo-Saxon burial ground has been painstakingly uncovered in Suffolk. A total of 17 cremations and 191 burials were found at the 1,400-year-old site, which is said to be of 'national importance'. But due to the acidity of the soil and the poor preservation methods used upon entombment, no bones remain, just shadow-like 'sand silhouettes' of the skeletons and coffins that were buried there. This form of preservation is extremely delicate but allowed archaeologists to find out the site was a burial ground for several generations of a farming community. The land in Oulton, near Lowestoft was being cleared for a new housing development. It is 40 miles from the Sutton Hoo, a royal burial ground where an Anglo-Saxon funerary ship was found in 1939. Scroll down for video An Anglo-Saxon burial ground has been painstakingly uncovered in Suffolk. Due to the acidity of the soil and the poor preservation methods used upon entombment, no bones remain, just a shadow-like 'sand silhouette' (pictured) Remains discovered at the site were extremely fragile but allowed archaeologists to find out the area was a burial ground for several generations of a farming community A total of 17 cremations and 191 burials were found at the 1,400-year-old site which is said to be of 'national importance' Andrew Peachey, of Archaeological Solutions Ltd who led the excavations, said: 'These shadows also revealed traces of the wooden coffins. 'Unusually, many of the graves also included fragments of pottery and decorated pots. 'Many of the artefacts were so fragile they had to be removed still in the earth for analysis and conservation and we also recovered pieces of textiles and leather.' The site contained remains of men, women and children, as well as a smattering of burial goods. Ongoing studies will endeavour to learn more about the people who were laid to rest in the plot of land. The site contained remains of men, women and children, as well as a smattering of burial goods. These included decorated pots (pictured) Pictured, a metal item which was likely buried alongside one of the dead. These finds, as well as amber strings, glass beads and wrist clasps, will go on display in amuseum soon A Suffolk county council spokesman said: 'This is a nationally significant discovery and continues to show what a historic place Suffolk is. 'The site lies within the 7th Century Kingdom of the East Angles, made famous by the royal burial ground at nearby Sutton Hoo.' Many of the finds were extremely fragile when first discovered and archaeologists were reluctant to dig deeper in the field. Some artefacts had to be block lifted, a process where a large area of land is dug out and lifted whole before being transported, and undergo micro-excavation at Norfolk Museum Service. The site has now been fully excavated, paving the way for further studies to unpick the details of the 200 Anglo-Saxons who were buried here. NORWALK Three Norwalk restaurants were ordered to temporarily close last month, and a handful of others were given written warnings, for violating reopening protocols issued by the state. El Tenampa, Our House and El Mexicano Restaurant were all sent cease-and desist-notices on Aug. 10, saying they needed to close immediately for failing to comply with guidelines for reopening under COVID-19 set by Gov. Ned Lamont. The notices were obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media via a Freedom of Information Act request. The request filed to the city on Aug. 3 and fulfilled Sept. 16 includes all of Norwalks reports or write-ups relating to restaurants violating coronavirus regulations from May through August. According to the notices, all three restaurants ordered to temporarily close were serving alcoholic drinks without food, which is against Lamonts reopening guidelines. El Tenampa was also cited for having tables closer than 6 feet apart, not meeting the requirements for bar seating and not having staff wear face coverings. El Mexicano also failed to meet the requirements for bar seating and did not have 6 feet of empty space between customers. Inspection reports from Aug. 10 state that all three restaurants were only serving chips to customers, while El Tanampa was letting people sit a bar with no barriers installed. A manager at El Mexicano said they were able to reopen last month after working with the Health Department. A call to Our House states the number has since been disconnected. El Tenampa did not return a request for comment Thursday, but the restaurant appeared to have since reopened. Five other Norwalk restaurants were issued written warning notices for violating guidelines. Public Wine Bar, Bandido Mexican Restaurant, Tablao Wine Bar and Restaurant, and El Rancho were all issued warnings in July for selling alcohol without food. Public, Bandido and Tablao were all issued warnings on the Fourth of July around 12 a.m. The reports also show Saltwater Restaurant and Bar was issued a violation for staying open past hours set in one of Lamonts executive orders regarding outdoor dining guidelines. An employee at Saltwater Restaurant said Thursday that, since the warning, they have not run into further issues. Other restaurant inspection reports show some establishments were issued verbal warnings or asked to adjust on site. Manny Fernandez, a manager at Public Wine Bar, said police told him the restaurant needed to shut down for the night on July 4 after letting people drink without ordering food when the table was about to put in their order. The wine bar had been keeping its kitchen open late in order to comply with the governors guidelines for serving alcoholic drinks with food, and have worked to ensure guests order either a main course or food when placing a drink. We havent had any issues since then, he said. The coronavirus thing has changed the world. Christian Villa, who does marketing for Bandido, said it has been difficult to comply with reopening guidelines because the standards vary depending on whos inspecting. The one thing thats very noticeable is theres multiple people that come and do regular check ups from the Health Department, Zoning Department and Police Department, he said Thursday. Everyone gives out their best vision on whats OK and whats not. Theres no clear direction of what types of food consumption needs to be permitted. Villa said Bandido has had no incidents since its warning in early July, when he says many other South Norwalk restaurants were issued verbal warnings about following guidelines. The restaurants have since banded together, he said, to ask the city for a more uniform approach to enforcement but they have not run into much luck. We all care about our own health and the health of people visiting, he said. We want people to feel comfortable. erin.kayata@hearstmediact.com T he cladding firm tasked with the Grenfell Tower refurbishments failed to check fire-resisting measures with the architects, the inquiry into the blaze has heard. Fire-resisting cavity barriers were not installed around the windows on the building, after the designer who translated architects drawings into a construction-ready form failed to double-check ambiguous aspects of the architects concepts. Kevin Lamb, a freelancer hired by cladding specialists Harley Facades, said he followed the drawings of architects Studio E, sent his drawings back to them, which were approved, and that the "buck stopped" with them. During proceedings on Thursday, drawings for windows from Studio E provided to Mr Lamb around March 2015 were shown. Inquiry lawyer Kate Grange QC said an inquiry expert analysed them and "was not clear whether a cavity barrier was marked there", and asked whether Mr Lamb considered double-checking with Studio E whether they were supposed to be there, in line with building regulations and guidance. The main contractor on the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower "came to the conclusion" that the project "didn't need a fire consultant", the inquiry heard / PA Mr Lamb said it was discussed internally at Harley, but it was decided if the architects wanted it, it would have been made clearer and shown on the sill level of the drawings. Inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick said: "You were translating the architects drawings into fabrication drawings, so you needed to understand yourself what was shown on the architects drawings didnt you? "It sounds as though there was some debate within Harley as to what these drawings did actually show, and you didnt think it appropriate to say well I really need to hear from the architects so I can do the right sort of drawing." Mr Lamb said: "Correct, correct, but obviously everything Harley told me to do would supersede that I was happy with advice from Harley. People hold balloons during a commemoration to mark the third anniversary of the fire / REUTERS "They were the cladding specialists, they obviously felt it wasnt necessary, or theyve had discussions, I dont know." Mr Lamb agreed with Ms Grange that there was a requirement for cavity barriers around windows under building regulations, and they were "not an insignificant detail" and were "potentially relevant to life safety". Ms Grange said: "For a detail thats that important in terms of life safety, external and internal fire spread why wouldnt you want that expressly flagged and considered carefully by all of the design team?" Mr Lamb said: "My superior, my client, gave me confidence to do exactly what I did, which was to follow the architects drawings. People stand during commemoration to mark the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire / REUTERS "By virtue of following his drawings, weve produced our drawings and hes approved them. You can expect that hes happy that there is conformance." He disagreed it was "obvious these were very early drawings" and that it was his job to develop the design, "including developing the design of the cavity barriers". Mr Lamb, who has 30 years experience in design and manufacture within the cladding industry, said: "I think they are quite detailed as far as an architects drawings are concerned." In his evidence on Wednesday, Mr Lamb had said: "The architects reviewed Harleys drawings and as part of that process I would expect any non-compliance with the building regulations and in particular parts related to fire safety to be picked up and flagged. "I assumed that Studio E had the benefit of specialist advice from, amongst others, fire specialists." During the inquirys first phase, expert Dr Barbara Lane found that "the construction detailing around the windows, including the materials and their arrangement, increased the risk of a fire within the flat breaking out into the large cavities surrounding the windows". The inquirys phase one report added: "She also emphasised that the windows were not provided with any fire-resisting cavity barriers and instead were surrounded by combustible materials in her view, if a fire started near a window, there was a disproportionately high probability that it would spread into the cladding regardless of how it had started." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) Commuters will have to sit a meter apart from each other again, as the Department of Transportation said it would be reinforcing the rule on physical distancing in PUVs pending President Rodrigo Duterte's decision. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque made the announcement at his regular briefing on Thursday, saying, "Sa pulong po ng IATF na nagpaptuloy hanggang ngayon, sinabi po ni DOTr Secretary (Art) Tugade na samantalang isususpinde po yung implementasyon ng .75 (meter) na distancing sa pampublikong transportasyon at ibabalik ito sa one meter." [Translation: At the IATF meeting which is happening right now, DOTr Secretary Tugade said the they would be temporarily suspending the implementation of the .75 distance in public transportation and will be reverting to one meter.] Roque said this would be in place until the President makes his final decision, which would likely be announced on Monday during his weekly address to the nation. He added Tugade made the move to ease the pressure from President Duterte in making a rushed decision. "Parang, kung iimplement 'yan it becomes urgent, the President must act on it right away. So sabi niya to give the President all the time he needs to study the matter babalik muna tayo sa one meter (distance), and until he says so we will not implement the .75 (meters)," he said. [Translation: If that is impelemted, the it becomes urgent and the President has to act on it right away. So he said, to give the President all the time he needs to study the matter, we will revert to one meter, and until he says so we will not implement the .75.] The DOTr has yet to make a formal announcement on the matter. The government eased physical distancing in public transport from one meter to .75 meters starting September 14 after it was approved last week by the Inter-Agency Task Force and National Task Force Against COVID-19. The new rule pushed by the DOTr and the Economic Development Cluster was met with criticism from netizens and a number of sectors. The IATF had vowed to review the policy after a physician's group earlier warned of a possible rise in COVID-19 transmission due to the easing of distancing rules. Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano was skeptical about the move and said he would propose a second look at the new rule. He said he preferred to keep the distance at one meter, as it was the minimum health standard according to science. Health Secretary Francisco Duque III also said he preferred to keep the one-meter distance between passengers. Both secretaries said they were not present at the IATF meeting where the move was discussed and eventually approved. In an interview with CNN Philippines on Wednesday, Roque said the IATF has crafted its fresh recommendation on the much-debated transport protocol. He did not give further details, only saying that it is based on science. Businessman Kevin O'Leary told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. government should not provide another round of financial aid to airlines during the coronavirus pandemic. "No more money for airlines. We don't need it anymore. The fact is, you have to let some of them go bankrupt," the "Shark Tank" investor said on "Squawk Box." O'Leary's comments came ahead of a meeting Thursday between U.S. airline executives and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regarding further aid for the industry. The CEOs are advocating for another $25 billion in support on top of the assistance that was granted as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March. As part of that initial $25 billion, the carriers were prohibited from cutting jobs through Sept. 30. But with air travel still suppressed due to Covid-19, albeit better than its April nadir, some major U.S. airlines have said they may furlough or lay off thousands of employees perhaps as soon as next month. There is some support in Congress for additional airline relief, which would protect jobs through March. However, negotiations on a broader coronavirus aid package have been stalled for weeks as Democrats and Trump administration leaders struggled to agree on the scale and scope of possible legislation. FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed oil pump jack is seen in front of displayed stock graph and Opec logo in this illustration picture By Vladimir Soldatkin, Ahmad Ghaddar and Rania El Gamal MOSCOW/LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - OPEC and allies, led by Russia, are scheduled to hold an online meeting on Thursday to discuss compliance with their agreed output cuts and demand trends amid falling oil prices and a faltering economic recovery outlook. The key OPEC+ panel will be reviewing an internal document which warned that a rise in coronavirus cases in some countries may curb oil demand despite signs of economic recovery and initial indications of a decline in oil stocks, according to a copy of the report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The panel of major producers including Saudi Arabia and Russia from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, is unlikely to recommend any changes to their current output reduction target of 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or around 8% of global demand. They will, however, press laggards such as Iraq, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates to cut more barrels to compensate for overproduction and possibly extend the period for the compensation, OPEC+ sources said. On Wednesday, a technical OPEC+ panel, known as the JTC, met to review the compliance of the oil exporting group which was 101% of the agreed target in August, according to OPEC sources and the document seen by Reuters. "There are signs of economic recovery in some parts of the world, visible through the relative improvement in mobility, and some initial indications of declines in oil stock overhang," the panel said in the report. "Nevertheless, signs of an increase in COVID-19 infections have appeared in some countries, leading to some worries regarding its impact on economic recovery and oil demand." The technical panel also said it was concerned about the rise in the cumulative overproduction, which has reached 2.38 million bpd from May until August, according to the report. Thursday's monthly meeting, known as the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), is expected to start at 1200 GMT, OPEC+ sources said. Story continues OPEC+ producers have been reducing production since January 2017 to help support prices and reduce global oil stockpiles. They increased their cuts to a record 9.7 million bpd from May to July after demand plunged in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. The group has called on Iraq and others to pump below their quota in September to compensate for overproduction between May and July. (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Jason Neely and Tomasz Janowski) WEST POINT, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast NBCUniversal, Drexel Hamilton and HumCap were honored today as the winners of the 3rd annual Patriots in Business Award for their outstanding contributions to helping America's veterans, active duty military and military spouses. Chief Executive Group The award, presented annually by Chief Executive magazine and Thayer Leadership at West Point, is part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness of best practices among America's corporate leaders when it comes to helping military veterans and their families. The award ceremony will take place during Chief Executive's 2020 CEO Talent Summit, Sept. 24 (more information: ceotalentsummit.com). The Patriots in Business awardpresented to categories of large enterprises (greater than $1B annual revenue), medium-sized businesses ($10M-$1B annual revenue) and small businesses (less than $10M annual revenue)recognizes outstanding businesses that lead our nation in supporting active duty military members, veterans and their families and exemplify the U.S. Military Academy values of Duty, Honor and Country through their business practices and throughout their community and industry. "Comcast NBCUniversal is honored to receive this award," said Dave Watson, President and CEO of Comcast Cable. "It's a reflection of our ongoing support to the military community and our commitment to creating an inclusive environment for our thousands of veterans, military spouses, and National Guard and Reserve employees." Comcast NBCUniversal won in this category in 2018 as well. Anthony Felice, CEO, Drexel Hamilton, winner in the medium-sized category, said: "On behalf of Drexel Hamilton and our military veteran employees we are extremely honored to be recognized by the Chief Executive Group and Thayer Leadership. Our success hiring military veterans and making a difference within our military veteran communities would not be possible without the partnership of so many. We are proud to be united with those patriots who exemplify the values of Duty, Honor and Country alongside us through our business practices." Tad McIntosh, founder and president, HumCap, winner in the small business category, said: "At HumCap we are proud to serve our veteran community as they have served us all well to ensure the great freedoms we have in America. We love to support successful career transitions from Service of our Country into Service in our country. We continually look for veterans to work at HumCap because of the Mission focus, service focus and team focus of veterans." These three companies rose to the top of a highly competitive, nationwide judging process in which a panel of Thayer veterans affairs experts and CEOs with military backgrounds assessed each nominated company on their efforts to make hiring veterans and military spouses a priority; to train and retain veterans, National Guard and Reserve and their spouses; and to promote awareness and support of veterans initiatives. "There's nothing we do that is more important than recognizing the efforts of companies like these to improve the lives of our nation's veterans," said Marshall Cooper, CEO, Chief Executive Group. "Their leadership on this critical issue should inspire all of us." "Today's veterans have led through the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous scenarios and have learned the importance of focusing on mission and values, learning from mistakes, cultivating clear communications and leading dispersed teams," explains Dan Rice, president of Thayer Leadership. "These award-winning companies display incredible leadership to support veterans and their families and demonstrate how supporting veterans aligns with their corporate mission, vision and values." About Chief Executive Group Chief Executive Group is the leading community for business leaders worldwide. It publishes Chief Executive magazine (published since 1977), ChiefExecutive.net, Corporate Board Member and BoardMember.com, as well as conferences and roundtables that enable CEOs to discuss key subjects and share their experiences with their peers. The Group also runs the Chief Executive Network, the leading CEO membership organization arranged by industry, and facilitates the annual "CEO of the Year," a prestigious honor bestowed upon an outstanding corporate leader, nominated and selected by a group of peers. Visit ChiefExecutive.net for more information. About Thayer Leadership at West Point Thayer Leadership is an innovative leadership institute led by an elite faculty of retired senior military officers many of whom taught at West Point while in uniform and led at the highest levels in the military who work with business executives sharing military experiences and leadership techniques. Thayer utilizes a diverse range of customized programs to build leaders of character by offering leadership and ethics education grounded in the U.S. Army leadership philosophy of "Be, Know, Do" and the West Point values of "Duty, Honor, Country" in the inspirational venue of the Historic Thayer Hotel at West Point on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy, as well as onsite, online, and virtually around the world. Thayer has trained more than 100,000 executives and front-line leaders from over 400 companies across multiple industries, including automotive, pharmaceuticals, financial services and more. It is a for-profit corporation not endorsed or affiliated with the U.S. Government. Learn more at thayerleadership.com. Media Contact Dan Rice, President, Thayer Leadership [email protected] 845.446.4731 ext. 8924 SOURCE Chief Executive Group Related Links http://www.chiefexecutive.net KITCHENER Kitchener council unanimously passed a resolution Monday affirming the value of local news media. The resolution, introduced by Mayor Berry Vrbanovic, endorses laws and regulations to support and rejuvenate news outlets across Canada and urges Ottawa to move quickly to support an ecosystem for a healthy news media. The local media really is what ultimately protects our democracies, Vrbanovic said. And having a strong media helps ensure that the tough questions get asked, and that elected politicians and public servants are held accountable. The resolution was the brainchild of a group of retired Waterloo Region journalists who have started a grassroots campaign calling for measures to ensure the country continues to enjoy the benefits of a thriving news media, which has been hard hit by declining revenues. All 12 of the local councils have passed similar resolutions, as have councils in Hamilton, Windsor, Kingston and elsewhere. Now, only weeks away from the election, the Trump administration is making its boldest move yet against Iran by triggering the snapback of U.N. sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal, a legal interpretation shared by only a handful of U.S. allies. Trump is expected to sharply criticize Iran and claim victory in beating back its more egregious behavior when he speaks to the United Nations General Assembly next week, an annual diplomatic extravaganza pared down to virtual appearances by most world leaders because of the coronavirus pandemic. Meghalaya: A 25-year-old man was arrested after arms and ammunition were allegedly recovered from him at Thapa Daregnchi in Meghalaya's North Garo Hills (NGH) district on Thursday, police said. Tengman D Shira was arrested during a raid conducted jointly by the district police and a team of Gorkha rifles of the army at about 2.30 AM, they said. The recoveries included one 7.65 mm pistol with 3 rounds (Chinese make), 9 mm pistol with 8 rounds, one Chinese pistol with 18 rounds along with 4 magazines. SP MGR Kumar said coordinated efforts by police and army teams had resulted in containment and deterrence of arms smuggling groups in the area. The district has seen a period of peace mainly after the surrender of the entire north command of the Garo NationalLiberation Army (GNLA) early last year. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Professor Dr Sudhir Gupta, Head of Forensic Department, AIIMS, who is leading the forensic team in Sushant Singh Rajput death case on Thursday said that the Medical Board's opinion will be given to the CBI next week. "I hope it will be conclusive without any doubts. Reports can't be shared since the matter is subjudice," he told news agency ANI. This comes a day after sources have informed Republic Media Network that a CBI team will meet the AIIMS forensics body on Thursday to discuss and assess the top medical institute's report on the autopsy of Sushant Singh Rajput. Not ruling out the murder angle, the AIIMS panel earlier had said that it would require two weeks to table the report. Last week, Dr Sudhir Gupta said that the possibility of murder needed to be examined. Three members from the AIIMS panel also accompanied a CBI team to Sushant's Bandra residence on September 5 along with the late actor's sister Mitu Singh, Siddarth Pithani, cook Neeraj and Keshav. The CBI team was seen recording visuals of the terrace of the building. Three doctors from the AIIMS board in Mumbai went along with the CBI team to Sushant's residence. Officers of the CBI investigating the Sushant Singh Rajput death case will be travelling to Delhi to assess the AIIMS report. MSHRC claims 'clean chit' to Cooper Hospital Meanwhile, in a shocking development amid three central agencies' and AIIMS' probe into the Sushant Singh Rajput death case and perhaps even the erstwhile probe under the Maharashtra government, the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission (MSHRC) has given a clean chit to Mumbai's Cooper Hospital and the Mumbai Police. READ | 'Disha Salian dialled 100' questions make Maharashtra HM walk; A gesture then silence... MSHRC has claimed that they looked into the matter based on media reports, but did not find a breach on the part of Cooper Hospital or the Police. The details of the protocol have been followed and so the suo moto matter is disposed of, the state Human Rights Commission said, maintaining silence on Republic's extensive investigative reportage in the case and the CBI's own finding of 'technical lapses' in the Mumbai Police probe, which sources in the agencies have confirmed to Republic. READ | Disha Salian dialled '100' after June 8 party: Nitesh Rane's huge claim on Mumbai Police The AIIMS report is expected at a time when even more sensational disclosures have come to light regarding not just the Sushant death case but also regarding the death of his manager Disha Salian of an alleged suicide just a week prior. READ | In Sushant case shocker, MSHRC claims 'clean chit' to Cooper Hospital & Mumbai police READ | In massive Sushant case development, CBI team to meet AIIMS body to assess forensic report By next week, signs advertising the sale of a major piece of Osborne Village real estate will be posted north of Confusion Corner, heralding a change in the urban landscape. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. By next week, signs advertising the sale of a major piece of Osborne Village real estate will be posted north of Confusion Corner, heralding a change in the urban landscape. More than a half acre of land has changed hands on the west side of Osborne Street between Gertrude and McMillan avenues, with the sale of 197, 207, 209 and 213 Osborne. The four lots currently home to Gags Unlimited and formerly occupied by AAA Consignment, Village Laundry and Peg City Yoga moved into the portfolio of Adam Sharfe and Seekville Inc. late this summer. While plans have yet to be drawn up for the properties, Sharfe, vice-president of operations for Seekville, said the land has the potential for mixed-use residential development, with commercial units along on the main floor and residential suites above. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The properties 197, 207, 207 1/2, 209, 211, and 213 Osbourne St., all of which changed owners today. Any new build will be a long way out, Sharfe said, noting the earliest development applications could be submitted is in about two years. However, he has started preliminary discussions with planners and architects, and intends to consult with neighbours and local businesses on the future of the block. "I do want to follow the proper process, so that the businesses and neighbours in close proximity are aware of it before anything comes out," Sharfe said. "I want to be the one to break the news first to the neighbours." MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The four lots currently home to Gags Unlimited and several other businesses moved into the portfolio of Adam Sharfe and Seekville Inc. late this summer. Previously, Seekville Inc. has been involved in the development of 181 single-family residential lots over three projects in Winnipeg and the surrounding area, including the Scotswood Meadows development in Charleswood. "Any time a building changes hands, we always hope that somebody is buying it for the right reasons and that theyre going to make an investment into the building," said Brian Timmerman, executive director of the Osborne Village Business Improvement Zone. "Its heartening to hear that buildings that were up for sale did manage to get sold. "Thats always a good thing because usually the buyer is motivated, especially at this time with the COVID and all that people are wondering which way is business going to go, how are things going to turn around and when do we get back to normal to me that sounds encouraging." Any time a building changes hands, we always hope that somebody is buying it for the right reasons and that theyre going to make an investment into the building. Brian Timmerman, executive director of the Osborne Village Business Improvement Zone Roman Panchyshyn owns the property next door at 217 Osborne and has operated his pop culture shop Wild Planet at the south end of the block since 2008. The business owner said he welcomes a change of scenery, but worries ongoing development in the area that lacks character and diminishes the existing culture of Osborne Village will weaken the neighbourhood allure. "They've had a tough time filling retail up, so you know all the best and good luck," Panchyshyn said. "Theres so many empty spaces, especially during this last COVID period, and especially this block, which is virtually empty now." While stores such as Wild Planet continue to attract shoppers from outside the Village, Panchyshyn said foot traffic in the area has waned noticeably. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The land has the potential for mixed-use residential development, with commercial units along on the main floor and residential suites above according to the new owners. "Its going to be really interesting to see where this area goes. And in terms of what was Movie Village, and all these boutiquey stores theres just none of that left, its just sort of generic culture and were sort of the last cool place standing, I feel, besides Out of the Blue and Urban Waves." Just a block north, work is underway to transform the former site of the Osborne Village Inn into a mixed-use, six-storey residential development with 89 units and two four-storey buildings with 59 units each to the rear. Across the three buildings, the project by Private Pension Partners will offer about 6,000 square feet of commercial space at street level, plus "live-work" units. Realtor Jon Blumberg, who brokered the sale of 197 to 213 Osborne St. with partner Tyler Ellis, said the block could be another future "development marquee" site in the city. "Likely what youll end up seeing is some sort of commercial-residential redevelopment. When you look at the neighbourhood, that appears to be what its most posed for," Blumberg said, adding hes noted increased interest from young and entrepreneurial buyers in the area. 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. "Especially in Osborne, held by landlords of an older age demographic, and were starting to see some youthfulness come to the area as well," Blumberg said. "I think thats really important, especially as it pertains to redevelopment. "I think that next generation will have a longer-term time horizon, in so far as how that property will unveil and the types of tenancies that theyre looking to attract." danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca Bears took control of Dalal Street on September 17 after the bulls' presence in the previous session had helped the Nifty surpass the 11,600 mark. The market erased almost all its previous day's gains, following correction in global peers amid no comments on stimulus measures by the US Federal Reserve. The Sensex fell 323 points to close at 38,979.85, while the Nifty dropped 88.40 points to 11,516.10 and formed a small bodied bearish candle on the daily charts, which indicates a false upside breakout attempt to its resistance at 11,600 levels. "The formation of Thursday's pattern could signal an emergence of profit booking from the highs, but we are not anticipating any sharp reversal from the highs as of now. There is an absence of long bear candle formation at the highs and this downward correction is likely to end soon," Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst at HDFC Securities, told Moneycontrol. "Any decline from here, Nifty could find support at 20-day EMA (Exponential Moving Average) around 11,430, but we have seen a mild upside bounce from this moving average recently. The Nifty also failed to continue with its bullish positive sequence of higher tops and bottoms recently, which could be a cause of concern for bulls at the highs," he said. The broader markets also corrected with the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices falling 0.24 percent and half a percent, respectively. Among sectors, Nifty Bank, financial services and metal indices declined over a percent each. Ajit Mishra, VP-Research at Religare Broking, reiterated that a directional move in the market seems difficult unless there is an alignment between the Nifty and Bank Nifty. He advised traders to maintain their focus on sectors, which are attracting buying interest, and plan their trades accordingly. We have collated 15 data points to help you spot profitable trades: Note: The open interest (OI) and volume data of stocks given in this story are the aggregates of three- month data and not of the current month only. According to pivot charts, the key support levels for the Nifty is placed at 11,480.67, followed by 11,445.23. If the index moves up, the key resistance levels to watch out for are 11,569.37 and 11,622.63.The Bank Nifty fell more than Nifty, down 253.25 points, or 1.12 percent, to 22,320.30 on September 17. The important pivot level, which will act as crucial support for the index, is placed at 22,223.46, followed by 22,126.63. On the upside, key resistance levels are placed at 22,460.76 and 22,601.23.Maximum Call OI of 34.13 lakh contracts was seen at 12,000 strike, which will act as crucial resistance in the September series. This is followed by 11,600, which holds 29.16 lakh contracts, and 11,500 strikes, which has accumulated 28.44 lakh contracts. Call writing was seen at 11,500, which added 9.74 lakh contracts, followed by 11,600, which added 8.57 lakh contracts, and 12,000 strikes, which added 7.86 lakh contracts. There was hardly any Call unwinding seen on September 17. Maximum Put OI of 31.86 lakh contracts was seen at 11,500 strike, which will act as crucial support in the September series. This is followed by 11,000, which holds 31.47 lakh contracts, and 11,400 strikes, which has accumulated 22.77 lakh contracts. Put writing was seen at 10,800, which added 5.54 lakh contracts, followed by 11,000, which added 4.29 lakh contracts, and 11,400 strikes, which added 3.39 lakh contracts. Put unwinding was witnessed at 11,200, which shed 1.13 lakh contracts, followed by 11,600 strikes, which shed 57,450 contracts. A high delivery percentage suggests that investors are showing interest in these stocks. Based on OI future percentage, here are the top 10 stocks in which long build-up was seen. Based on OI future percentage, here are the top 10 stocks in which long unwinding was seen. An increase in OI, along with a decrease in price, mostly indicates a build-up of short positions. Based on the OI future percentage, here are the top 10 stocks in which short build-up was seen. A decrease in OI, along with an increase in price, mostly indicates a short-covering. Based on the OI future percentage, here are the top 10 stocks in which short-covering was seen. : Keynote Capitals acquired 4,41,000 equity shares in the company at Rs 4.65 per share. India Max Investment Fund bought an additional further 15,00,694 equity shares in the company at the same price, whereas Grovsnor Investment Fund sold its entire 1,941,694 shares at same price on the BSE. Happiest Minds Technologies: Plutus Wealth Management bought 10 lakh shares in the company at Rs 350 per share on the NSE. United Polyfab Gujarat: Promoter entities Vinodkumar Mangalchand Mittal, Urmila Nirmal Mittal, Radha Vinodkumar Mittal, Nirmalkumar Mangalchand Mittal, Kusumdevi Sureshkumar Mittal, Kamaladevi Anilkumar Mittal, Anilkumar Mangalchand Mittal and Sureshkumar Mittal acquired 51,000 shares each at Rs 12.85 per share. However, Dhanshree Barter Pvt sold 4,08,000 shares in the company at the same price. (For more bulk deals, click here) : Meeting of the board of directors is proposed to be held on September 23 to consider the financial results for four months ended July. Mahindra & Mahindra representatives will meet Fidelity Investments on September 18 and attend Ambit Virtual Investor Conference on September 21 and JP Morgan Virtual Investor Conference on September 22. KPR Mill: Meeting of the Board of Directors is scheduled on September 24 to consider among other subjects the current business scenario. Ramco Cements: Online investors' meet is scheduled on September 18 organised by Axis Mutual Fund and HDFC Mutual Fund. Dr Lal PathLabs representatives will meet Mirae Asset Management via conference call on September 18. Endurance Technologies: A tele-conference with Wellington Management Singapore has been scheduled on September 18 to discuss the company's business and the automotive industry. receives an order worth Rs 460 crore in Chile. Hindalco Industries and Hindustan Copper signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for supply of copper concentrate. Dr Reddy's Laboratories settles patent litigation for Revlimid with Celgene, a Bristol Myers Squibb Company, which allowed the company to sell Lenalidomide in the US post March 2022. Asian Paints: Promoter entity Sattva Holding and Trading created a pledge on 18.71 lakh equity shares. Arrow Greentech: Production operations will recommence at Ankleshwar plant as Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) issued interim revocation order. EIH sets rights share issue price at Rs 65 per share. Shareholders will receive eight rights shares for every 85 shares held. TVS Motor Company appointed Auteco SAS as new distributor in Colombia. Fund flow Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) net sold shares worth Rs 249.82 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) net offloaded shares worth Rs 1,067.83 crore in the Indian equity market on September 17, as per provisional data available on the NSE.Thirteen stocks -- Adani Enterprises, Aurobindo Pharma, Bank of Baroda, Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), Canara Bank, Escorts, Indiabulls Housing Finance, Vodafone Idea, Jindal Steel & Power, L&T Finance Holdings, Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Tata Chemicals and Vedanta-- are under the F&O ban for September 18. Securities in the ban period under the F&O segment include companies in which the security has crossed 95 percent of the market-wide position limit. India says it has doubled funding for tactically-important roads and bridges along its borders with China and has accused the Communist State of bolstering combat troops and armaments in the disputed Himalayan region of Ladakh. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh's comments were India's first official statement in parliament since military tensions flared after 20 Indian soldiers died in a hand-to-hand brawl with Chinese troops in Ladakh on 15 June. "Our government too has stepped up the budget for border infrastructure development to about double the previous levels. As a result, more roads and bridges have been completed in the border areas," minister Singh said. India has sanctioned 73 roads and 125 bridges and upgrading or building frontier airfields on its side of the contested borders with China. The government has also approved nine strategic rail lines. Border 'friction' The Indian official also named four sectors in Ladakh as potential friction points. "As of now, the Chinese side has mobilised a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) as well as in the depth areas," minister Singh said in the national legislature. Our armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that India's security interests are fully protected." A festering dispute over their 3,440-kilometre border known as the Line of Actual Control or LAC sparked a bitter and bloody war in 1962. Minister Singh also said China occupied 38,000 square kilometers of territory in Ladakh. China on the other hand claims 98,000 square kilometers or the whole of India's Arunachal Pradesh -- as its own. Troops dug in for the long haul Military experts such as former army Lieutenant General Deependra Singh warned the two rival armies were dug in for the long haul. I think these are issues that are not going to be sorted out in an early time frame and we have to be prepared for the long haul, Hooda said. Let us also not underestimate the Chinese and think the Chinese will fold up and go back, the general told media. Wide-bodied military planes have ferried huge quantities of fuel, sacks of ration, kerosene stoves, tents, high altitude gear and bottled water besides ammunition at forward bases in Ladakh. Private lorries and mule trains have also been deployed to speed up the stockpiling, officials said. Giving diplomacy a chance On 5 September, India's defense minister met his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe in Moscow while foreign ministers of the two countries also held talks a few days later in the Russian city to try and cool tempers. Sun Weidong, China ambassador in India, praised the Moscow talks as an important step. Other diplomats such as Nirupama Rao, a former Indian ambassador to China, also suggested talks should be encouraged. We obviously cannot throw up our hands in the air and say 'this is goodbye to diplomacy, this is goodbye to negotiations, we can't have talks in such a situation'. We have to be patient and we have to see how we can take this process forward, Rao told a TV station. In the early 1990s China and India signed agreements that pledged peace and tranquility along the LAC. Meanwhile, opposition politician Rahul Gandhi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not doing enough to counter China. Tiffany Trump enjoyed a night out with friends in the Big Apple on Tuesday, but, just like Cinderella, she made it home before midnight. The 26-year-old law school graduate stepped out of her New York City apartment flanked by her Secret Service detail around 7:30 p.m. She and her three-vehicle convoy then headed to the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South. Four hours later, Tiffany was seen leaving the luxury hotel with a few of her friends, and all of them wore protective face masks as they made their way outside. Living it up: Tiffany Trump, 26, was seen out in New York City on Tuesday evening Outfit of the day: Tiffany donned a black motorcycle jacket, frayed black jeans with red and white stripes down the sides, and a pair of white patterned loafer slides Tiffany looked like the quintessential 20-something New Yorker in her black motorcycle jacket and frayed black jeans featuring a pair of red and white stripes down each leg. She had a teal scarf tied to her black quilted handbag, which she carried in the crook of her arm. Her wrists were covered in bracelets, and she topped off her look with a pair of white patterned loafer slides. Her friends were less bundled up, however, with one wearing a black halter dress on the cool summer night. Tiffany's long blonde hair was styled in loose waves, and while half of her face was covered by her mask, she was sporting smokey eye makeup. Night out: The first daughter stepped out of her New York City apartment flanked by her Secret Service detail around 7:30 p.m. and headed to the Ritz-Carleton hotel (pictured) Fun times: Tiffany was seen leaving the hotel with friends four hours after she got there Safety first: The law school graduate donned a cheerful pink face mask as she walked through the hotel Say cheese! Before stepping out the doors, she stopped to take a picture of one of her friends Unlike her older sister Ivanka, who has a tendency to match her protective face masks to her outfit, Tiffany wore a cheerful pink one. While the president has had a wavering stance on masks, both his daughters have been seen faithfully wearing them whenever they are in public. Before Tiffany stepped out the building's double doors, she snapped a photo of a friend who was posing in front of a black SUV which was likely one of the first daughter's Secret Service vehicles. When she joined her friends outside, she removed her mask to take a phone call. She appeared to be talking on speakerphone as she held her cellphone up to her mouth with a smile on her face. Strike a pose: The friend was posing in front of a black SUV, which was likely one of Tiffany's Secret Service vehicles Having fun: Tiffany seemed to be smiling behind her mask as she took the photo Saying goodbye: The president's youngest daughter was also seen giving one of her friends a hug while wearing her mask Off they go: Tiffany's friend donned a black halter dress, and she led the way as they left the luxury hotel Tiffany finally left around 11:30 p.m. with two of her friends in tow. After dropping them off, she went straight home. Her long-time boyfriend Michael Boulos, 23, didn't appear to be with her at all on Tuesday night, and it's unclear if he is even in the country. The couple was seen out and about in the city earlier this month, with Michael later meeting up with Tiffany's mother Marla Maples outside what appeared to be his apartment building. It's unclear if he has always had an apartment in the city or procured one after he started dating the president's daughter. Getting ready: Tiffany ran her fingers through her long blonde hair as she made her way outside Accessories: Tiffany had bracelets dangling from each of her wrists Missing the Big Apple? Tiffany seems to be living in New York following her graduation from Georgetown Law in the spring Tiffany and Michael have had a long-distance relationship for the past three years as she attended law school at Georgetown University. Michael, who grew up in Nigeria, is believed to be based in London, and Tiffany frequently visited him across the pond when she had breaks from school. For the most part, Tiffany has kept her private life private throughout her father's presidency, and while she mentioned job-hunting in her speech at the Republican National Convention, she has yet to reveal where she plans on living or working now that she is done with school. She traveled to Houston last Saturday to join Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence at a Trump campaign fundraiser. It cost guests $2,800 for a roundtable, $1,500 for a photo op, and $500 for the reception, depending on what they wanted to do. Missing someone: Tiffany's long-distance boyfriend Michael Boulos didn't appear to be with her on her night out Still talking: Tiffany and her friends stood outside the hotel for a bit before finally parting Ring, ring! Tiffany appeared to have gotten a phone call why she was outside Unveiled: Tiffany pulled down her mask while she was outside to take the phone call Good spirits: The first daughter had a smile on her face as she held the phone up to her mouth Tiffany got her makeup done by makeup artist Sheila Ybarra, who shared an airbrushed photo of herself with the first daughter. The former student was dressed in a cozy bathrobe, but her eyeliner, foundation, and lipstick were all perfectly applied. The makeup artist couldn't help but gush about Tiffany in her caption. 'What a pleasure it was to do makeup on Tiffany Trump @tiffanytrump today. Shes smart, down to earth, witty, stunning, has a big personality and an even bigger heart! This woman is a SWEETHEART,' she wrote. 'Ohhhh and she has PERFECT SKIN.' It's possible Tiffany is waiting until after the presidential election on November 13 to start the next chapter in her life and she certainly has plenty of options. Saying hello: Tiffany appeared to be on speakerphone as she held the phone to her mouth and not her ear Waiting game: Tiffany stood next to a black vehicle that was parked outside the hotel Back in the Big Apple: Tiffany has been spotted out in New York City a number of times since she spoke at the Republican National Convention in late August Mystery: Tiffany has yet to disclose whether she plans on taking the bar exam or what she plans on doing post-graduation She can stay in New York with her mother and older half-brothers Don Jr. and Eric or live in D.C., where she will be close to her father, stepmother Melania, half-brother Barron, and half-sister Ivanka. Tiffany would likely be welcome to join the family business as all three of her older siblings have done, with Ivanka later leaving the Trump Organization to work as a White House senior adviser. Her father, President Donald Trump, who was impeached in late 2019, joked at the time of her law school graduation that a lawyer in the family is 'just what I need.' Tiffany has yet to disclose whether she plans on taking the bar exam, but her appearance in Houston and her speech at the RNC suggest that she may take on a more prominent role in her father's presidential campaign. Protected: Tiffany's Secret Service detail appeared to be parked in front of the hotel as they awaited her to come out Helping dad: Tiffany traveled to Houston last Saturday to join Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence (left) at a Trump campaign fundraiser All smiles: Tiffany got her makeup done by makeup artist Sheila Ybarra, who shared an airbrushed photo of herself with the first daughter Fan club: The makeup artist couldn't help but gush about Tiffany in her caption Looking back: Tiffany is pictured with her mother Marla Maples (far left) and boyfriend Michael (far right) last month President Trump's youngest daughter gave a well-received speech four years ago at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where she talked about her father in personal terms, showing a different side to the GOP nominee. But this time around, she took a cue from her father and older siblings and railed against the media, the tech giants, and the education system, suggesting they keep the American people 'mentally enslaved.' 'People must recognize that our thoughts, opinions, and even the choice of who we vote for are being manipulated and invisibly coerced by the media and tech giants,' the Georgetown Law graduate said. Likely speaking from experience, she said that in the academic arena, students with opposing viewpoints are 'too afraid to speak,' while the system promotes 'groupthink.' She recently revealed she feels 'so much more confident' since undergoing a breast augmentation. And Georgia Harrison looked sensational as she displayed the results of her recent boob job while going for dinner at Novikov in Mayfair on Wednesday. The former Love Island star, 25, showcased her incredible figure as she donned a white crop top that highlighted her taut abdomen. Wow: Georgia Harrison, 25, looked sensational as she displayed the results of her recent boob job while going for dinner at Novikov in Mayfair on Wednesday Georgia paired it with brown trousers while she added height to her frame with white open-toed heels. Showing off her sun-kissed glow, Georgia accentuated her stunning features by styling her tresses into a sleek updo. The reality star completed her look for the outing with a pair of gold hoop earrings and a gold and pearl necklace. Joining Georgia for her night on the town were TOWIE stars Nicole Bass, Clelia Theodorou, Fran Parman and her Love Island 2017 castmate Olivia Attwood. Stunning: The former Love Island star showcased her incredible figure as she donned a white crop top that highlighted her taut abdomen Nicole, 28, opted for a casual look in a black crop top and blue skinny jeans along with a black blazer. Fran, 29, donned a black sleeveless minidress for the outing while she also sported a pair of matching heels. Olivia, 29, wowed in a cream bodycon dress and leopard print thigh-high boots as she exuded glamour. It comes after Georgia revealed she already feels 'so much more confident' with her new boobs, and said she had the operation after her 3.5stone weight loss left her with sagging skin and stretch marks. The television personality told Closer magazine: 'I'd see myself on TV wearing swimwear and think, "Oh, my boobs don't look good", and it made me feel very self-conscious.' Outfit: Georgia paired it with brown trousers while she added height to her frame with white open-toed heels Glamour: Showing off her sun-kissed glow, Georgia accentuated her stunning features by styling her tresses into a sleek updo Beauty: TOWIE star Nicole Bass, 28, opted for a casual look in a black crop top and blue skinny jeans along with a black blazer Georgia went on to say she would limit what she would, only opting for padded tops or tops with high necklines. Explaining why she had surgery, the reality star said: 'I'm around 8.5st now, but when I was about 19 I was nearer 12st and my boobs were a lot bigger, I was working abroad and had a really unhealthy lifestyle, and I'd drink and just eat junk. 'But when my weight dropped a bit, so did my boobs, it looked like there was space to fill. I also had a problem with inverted nipples that I wanted to fix.' Pals: Fran Parman, 29, donned a black sleeveless minidress for the outing while she also sported a pair of matching heels Fun: Bride-to-be Olivia Attwood was also seen at the restaurant on the night Georgia first found fame with a brief stint on The Only Way Is Essex in 2014, before becoming a household name with an appearance on 2017's Love Island. The bubbly reality star then gained an American fanbase when she starred in series 33 of The Challenge in 2018, reaching the final and finishing in eighth place. The Challenge saw reality stars from around the world come together to compete in a series of physical and mental challenges in the hope of the scooping prize money. Style: Nicole styled her brunette locks into an updo and she also carried a black handbag Prohibitory orders restricting movement and gathering of people have been extended in Mumbai till 30 September in the wake of rising coronavirus cases, a police official said on Thursday. The restrictions under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure are in place in the city since lockdown began, an official told news agency PTI. Maharashtra cabinet minister Aditya Thackeray urged Mumbaikars not to panic as it is an extension of the 31 August order. NO need to PANIC The order issued under section 144 CrPC is only an extension of the previous order issued on 31st August. No new restrictions have been imposed by @MumbaiPolice . Please share and dont panic. #Section144 #Mumbai Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) September 17, 2020 However, no new restrictions have been imposed, the official said. The order is an extension of existing order, all exemptions under Unlock to continue and will be applicable in Mumbai City till September 30. DCP Operations issued an order under Sec 144 CrPC yesterday, applicable in Mumbai city up to 30 September. "It's issued as per guidelines of State Govt on 31st August regarding easing of restrictions 7 phase-wise opening of lockdown and no new restrictions imposed by Mumbai Police," said DCP PRO. In other words, under Section 144, Mumbai Police imposed restrictions on movement and gathering in the city. "All movement of one or more persons in the areas designated as 'Containment Zones' by the Municipal Authorities is prohibited, except for essential activities, supply of essential goods and medical emergencies," the order stated. Movement of one person or people prohibited except for listed emergency and non-emergency services, it added. Government/Semi-Government agencies and their officials on duty are permitted during this order. Food, vegetables, ration, milk booth and other stores to remain open. Banking, Stock Exchange, Clearing Corporation, depositories, Stock Brokers and SEBI registered participants operating through these institutions will be permitted to function. Hospital, medicine, pharma, pathology laboratories, medical nursing colleges and more will also be open. Trucks or tempos carrying goods and manpower related to the above services. Other establishments providing essential services such as telephone, internet services, electricity, petroleum, oil, media services, e-commerce delivery and other activities related to essential and non-essential commodities are allowed as well. Meanwhile, Mumbai on Wednesday reported 2,378 cases in the day, taking its count to 1,75,974 while the cumulative death toll rose to 8,280, including 50 in the day. The Mumbai division, which consists of Mumbai city and satellite towns, reported 5,603 new cases, raising the total count to 4,14,377. A total of 14,378 people have died so far in the region, the official said. Along with that, Maharashtra's Covid-19 tally spiked to 11,21,221 on Wednesday with the single-day addition of 23,365 new cases, state health department said. With 474 deaths during the day, the total count in the state mounted to 30,883, it said. A total of 17,559 patients were discharged after treatment during the day, taking the total number of recoveries to 7,92,832, it said, adding that the state now has 2,97,125 active cases. 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 Christian persecution is ever increasesing in Pakistan. Without evidence, the authorities have power over many Christians who faced death and traumatizing physical beatings. International Christian Concern (ICC) reported a 37-year old Pakistani Christian has been sentenced to death for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages in 2013. Under Pakistani law, Asif Pervaiz was sentenced to death with no evidence even after being represented in court with an attorney. The Court made an accusation against Pervaiz from more than 7 years ago as Pervaiz wasn't aware of the charges. International Christian Concern reported the police arrested his relatives including two brothers-in-law, and his mother, Naseem Akhtar. The police reported to Akhtar if she doesn't help them locate Pervaiz properly, he will be killed. Currently, in Pakistan, there are well over 25 believers who were arrested and detained for believing in Christ. For any small problems, police often take away the brothers and sister's family members one by one. "Akhtar led the police to the home of Waseem Anway, Pervaiz's brother. There, police beat Waseem until he was confessed to knowing where Pervaiz was hidden. According to Khokar, Pervaiz was converted to Islam which Pervaiz strongly refused to be." (ICC) The death sentence motivated violence against minority communities as Christians will face more accusations and extreme violence by following Jesus. How did you get started? Due to the coronavirus, we were sheltering in place like a lot of people when this all started. We started ordering our groceries. But when we got the produce, sometimes it would be rotten in the middle or really bruised up. My kids didnt want to eat it because it didnt look good. We have two boys, 10 and 7. Washington, D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed an emergency action against Adam Rogas, the former CEO of Las-Vegas-based NS8 Inc., which purports to provide fraud detection and prevention software to e-commerce merchants, seeking an asset freeze and charging Rogas with defrauding investors by falsely claiming millions of dollars in revenue. According to the SEC's complaint, from at least 2018 through June 2020, Rogas altered NS8's bank statements to show millions of dollars in payments from customers. Rogas allegedly sent the falsified bank statements and revenue figures on a monthly basis to NS8's finance department, which used them to prepare NS8's financial statements. In at least two securities offerings, NS8 and Rogas allegedly provided investors and prospective investors the false financial statements, showing millions of dollars in revenue and assets and other information incorporating the falsified revenue figures. The SEC alleges that as a result of Rogas's fraud, NS8 raised approximately $123 million in 2019 and 2020, and that Rogas ultimately pocketed at least $17.5 million of investor funds. "As alleged in our complaint, Rogas falsely presented NS8 as a successful business by fabricating revenue figures and providing them to investors," said Kurt L. Gottschall, Director of the SEC's Denver Regional Office. "Investors are entitled to accurate information about a company's financial condition and the SEC is committed to holding accountable corporate executives who deceive investors." The SEC's complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges Rogas with violating antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC seeks injunctions, disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and financial penalties. The SEC's investigation, which is continuing, is being conducted by Eric Day and John A. Dwyer of the Denver Regional Office and supervised by Danielle R. Voorhees, Jason J. Burt, and Kurt L. Gottschall. The SEC's litigation is being led by Polly A. Atkinson, under the supervision of Gregory A. Kasper. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the aftermath of Sushant Singh Rajputs death, his personal life and past romantic relationships are also being discussed and scrutinised in the media regularly. Sara Ali Khan, who made her Bollywood debut with Sushant in Kedarnath, has also been in the limelight for allegedly dating her co-star for several months before breaking off due to unknown reasons. Now, Saras name has also cropped up during Rhea Chakrabortys investigation with the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). Kangana Ranaut, in an interview with Times Now, stated that the movie mafia was responsible for Sara and Sushants break up. The movie mafia that banned and troubled Sushant Singh Rajput, I have spoken openly against them. When he was dating Sara then they made sure they break up and even Kareena Kapoor went on record saying dont date your first hero. Openly they character-assassinate you and ridicule you. When he (Sushant) was totally cornered another group of emotional vultures came and they did what they did. This same gang is targeting me too," Kangana asserted. On Movie Mafia- Section of media & B-Town ensured SSR-Sara break up. This suicide gang has tried to target me as well: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/Gp6jCkosaL TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 In the same interview, Kangana also reiterated her stand against Jaya Bachchan who said in Parliament that people speaking against the film industry are tarnishing its image. Read: Urmila Matondkar Posts Note on Revenge and Patience After Kangana Calls Her Soft Porn Star Appointment 17 September 2020 Chef Patrick Cleary joins Cheeca with 17 years of experience in hospitality with leading companies including Hilton, Hyatt, and Waldorf Astoria. His expertise spans through a variety of roles in managing a diverse portfolio of kitchens, including large convention hotels to historic and iconic resorts. Before joining the Cheeca team, Cleary served as Executive Chef at the Hilton Denver City Center in Denver, Colorado. In his role at Cheeca, Cleary will oversee the management and kitchens at the recently acquired Morada Bay Beach Cafe, and Pierre's. With the addition of Chef Cleary, Pierre's will showcase its unique fusion of coastal French cuisine blended with influences of its picturesque bayside region. At Morada Bay Beach Cafe, Chef Cleary will continue to fuse Mediterranean flavors with hints of the Caribbean, offering diners delectable dishes that embody Cheeca's island paradise. Chef Cleary will use these kitchens to create unique flavor combinations and new dishes to debut to the 214-guestroom historic resort If your first experience of pizza was the deep-dish version served by the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory on St Stephen's Green, or at a branch of Pizzaland (where it came with sides of baked potato and coleslaw) or from the DIY counter at Superquinn, where mandarin orange segments were just one of the toppings on offer, the news that Cirillo's on Dublin's Baggot Street has been named the 16th Best European Pizzeria may come as a surprise. (The Dough Bros in Galway came in at 21.) Ireland at the forefront of pizza-making in Europe? Surely not. Pizza is everywhere these days. You'll find it in chains and homegrown independents, as well as in pubs up and down the country, where 9 is the magic number. It's perfect food for a pandemic and has never been more popular - or ubiquitous. But until a few years ago, with some honourable exceptions - I'm thinking Gotham on South Anne Street and Independent Pizza in Drumcondra in particular - the standard of Irish pizza was nothing to get too excited about. So what has happened to Irish pizza to bring it from the stodgy indulgence that it was back in the 80s - when the heft of the dough and the bizarre combination of toppings were almost guaranteed to result in heartburn, if not a full-blown coma - to a gourmet food worthy of international recognition? A thread on Donal Fallon's Come Here To Me blog is a mine of information when it comes to exploring the history of pizza here. According to contributor Fabio Gentile, the first pizza sold in Ireland - but only to private parties - was made by Mario Gentile at Bernardo's on Lincoln Place, which opened in 1954. Mario and his brother Bernardino had worked at the Italian embassy in Lucan and went on to open The Coffee Inn on South Anne Street, a student hangout where many had their first taste of pizza, topped with mozzarella, anchovies and peppers. Read More In 1967, Dr Dionisio Tullio and his wife Irene, the parents of the Irish Independent's much-loved restaurant critic, Paolo Tullio, who died in 2015, opened The Honey Bee on Wicklow Street in 1967, serving pizzas made by Joe Forte from Naples. Now in his 30s, James Cirillo, owner of Cirillo's, grew up in an Italian restaurant family in Dublin - his uncle Emilio Cirillo owned Nico's on Dame Street, where his father, Armando, was the chef. "Pizza in Ireland has definitely had a chequered past," he says. "I remember going to Pizza Stop on Chatham Lane on Sundays when Nico's was closed. It was run by Italians and the pizzas were good, but back then, they were made with a harder, Roman-style dough. I think the first place in Dublin to start doing more Neapolitan style pizzas was Paulie's on Grand Canal Street, which opened in 2010. "Neapolitan pizza has always been softer than Roman-style, but five or six years ago, all the pizzaiolos in Naples started trying to outdo each other by playing around with hydration levels to make a really soft dough. The higher the water content of the dough, the lighter and softer it is, but also the more difficult it is to work with, so it's a test of skill." Prior to opening Cirillo's, James made numerous research trips back and forth to Naples, where the soft dough of the best pizzas is stretched by hand so it puffs up in the hot oven and forms large bubbles around the edges, which take on a crackling black char, known as leoparding. "I wanted to serve top quality pizzas," he says, "so I hired pizzaiolo Daniele Accardo from Ancona and we built a traditional Neapolitan pizza oven from brick. We cook with a mix of kiln-dried oak and ash - the oak is heavier and burns slower, so it goes on the bottom, and the ash is for heat and flame. "The Neapolitan style of pizza is quite sparse when it comes to toppings, but ours are a little more generous and better suited to the Irish palate. We serve the traditional pizzas you'd find in Naples - margherita, marinara, diavola - which is the most popular - and salsiccia and friarielli, a white pizza with Italian sausage and a type of broccoli. At first, we couldn't sell the white pizzas - people would be asking where the tomato sauce was, but now many of our regulars look for them and we often do them as specials." Although some pizza restaurants here use Irish mozzarella, James brings his in from Italy and uses Irish toppings, including Young Buck, Cashel Blue, Hegarty's Cheddar and Gubbeen Chorizo. Cirillo's has always supplied pizzas to customers of Toner's across the lane and has continued to do so during the restrictions. During lockdown, its delivery and takeaway business boomed and is now making up for the reduction of the number of seats inside. On Tuesday, the restaurant made 250 pizzas. "It seems as if every week I hear about a new pizza restaurant opening," says James. "I guess it's seen as cheap and easy, but it still has to be done right. It's a lot of work to do it properly, monitoring the oven and the dough, and the quality can diminish as the quantity goes up." Some Irish pizzerias use sourdough, but James prefers a traditional yeast dough which proves for 30 hours developing complexity and nuance. "Sourdough is very hard to work with," he says. "You wouldn't really find restaurants in Naples using sourdough as it's too temperamental. One night during lockdown, we left the air conditioning on overnight and the dough was ruined - temperature is key and if the weather is very humid, sourdough can go bananas." The judges of the Best Pizzerias list, who visited anonymously, paid fulsome tribute to Cirillo's. "The atmosphere is more like that of a pub than a pizzeria," they said, "but there is no doubt about the product. The pizza is remarkably like the traditional Neapolitan pizza, well risen and, more importantly, well baked. There is an obsessive research into Italian products, from the tomatoes to the extra virgin olive oil. A real surprise was finding some excellent friarielli! The service is very attentive, the Italian spirit is all in the food and not flaunted in a folkloristic way. The best in Dublin." While the quality of the pizza on offer at Cirillo's is up there with the finest in Europe, and a new generation of pizza-makers is producing ever-lighter, ever-more photogenic pizzas using top quality ingredients, there is still plenty of nostalgia for the pioneers of pizza in Ireland. Pizzerias such as The Bad Ass Cafe in Temple Bar, Pizza & Cream in Bray, Chew & Chat in Ranelagh and Gino's in Cork were loved as much for their exotic atmosphere as for the pizzas themselves. It's not possible to create a pizza as good as Cirillo's at home without a wood-fired oven of your own, but that doesn't mean you have to resort to a desultory freezer cabinet option either. Irish company Pizza da Piero has been producing great pizza bases for 13 years and if you make a simple sauce with pureed San Marzano tomatoes, seasoned well, and top it with creamy buffalo mozzarella rather than the cheap rubbery stuff, you'll be off to a good start. Pizza is a blank canvas for great ingredients and there's no sign that we will be falling out of love with it any time soon. Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill has accused Secretary of State Brandon Lewis of telling porkies over the discussions he had with local parties on the introduction of the Internal Market Bill, which could see the UK break international law. However, asked for a response to the senior politicians claim, a spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office said Mr Lewis spoke to NI party leaders about UKIM ahead of the Bills introduction. Mr Lewis was in front of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee yesterday defending his recent comment that the Internal Market Bill would break international law in a specific and limited way. He told MPs his assertions were consistent with advice from the Governments main legal adviser, Attorney General Suella Braverman QC. He said: My answer was in line with the legal opinion given by the law officers. The position I took at the dispatch box is not a breach of the ministerial code but I am not the arbiter of that. He added: I gave a very straight answer to Parliament last week in line with the Attorney Generals position. My position is absolutely in line with the legal advice that the Attorney General put out. Mr Lewis expanded on the circumstances of his comments during an urgent question on the Bill in Parliament. He said: I read out something very specific because I wanted to ensure that what I said, to make sure that I was giving the House a straight answer. He also said he spoke to the Northern Ireland parties about the Internal Market Bill. South Belfast MP Claire Hanna asked if he understood why people cant trust your government. And do you have any handle on the anxiety and the unease and the instability your government is creating every day in Northern Ireland, which is a fragile society? she said. Mr Lewis said he disagreed with the question and the Internal Market Bill was a safety net to protect the interests of the UK and NI. He added: I had discussions with various colleagues across government talking to our partners and friends in the EU which obviously the Irish Government is a part of. I myself was in conversation with parties in NI and have been consistently throughout the process. Ms Hanna asked which parties he consulted and if they were aware of the bill. In advance of that I had spoke to the leaders of all parties, he said, adding he and his officials routinely spoke with the parties. Ms Hanna said with confidence the SDLP was not consulted on the specifics of the bill, although her party leader Colum Eastwood, in a tweet, clarified that he spoke with Mr Lewis the day before he made the extraordinary statement in the Commons revealing his Governments intention to break international law. At no point in that conversation did he mention breaking the law. He didnt go into any detail at all. I didnt see any detail on the bill until it was published, Mr Eastwood tweeted. Mr Lewiss remarks on talking with the parties drew swift online reaction. Michelle ONeill tweeted to say the Secretary of State was talking through his hat. She added: Brandon Lewis informed us of the bill, but did not consult us, which implies consent. I made my strong opposition clear. Not for the first time Mr Lewis is telling porkies." UUP leader Steve Aiken also took to social media on the matter saying his party was consulted. "We said in the politest terms it was a deeply & massively flawed piece of legislation on par with the equally flawed NI Protocol & WA (which we were less polite about)," he said. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Four years back, the first class made him uncomfortable -- an alien dance form, rich kids all around, those sleek uniforms and shoes... The then sixteen-years-old Kamal Singh, son of an e-rickshaw driver could not wait for it to get over. But the teacher, Fernando Aguilera, director of a ballet school and company in New Delhi knew immediately there was something special about the young boy. If you think this is straight out of the film 'Yeh Ballet', you are right. Recently, when The English National Ballet School of London, England, sent an invitation, offering him a place in their one-year Professional Trainee Programme, he just could not believe it. It was both great and sad news. "That was the happiest day for me. But the fee -- eight thousand pounds and living expenses in London to the tune of a thousand pounds per month, how could I even think of affording that?" he tells IANS. For someone who wants to see himself in 'Swan Lake' and 'Sleeping Beauty', a modern day fairy tale unfolded soon. When his teacher started a crowd funding campaign for Rs 15 lakh on Ketto on September 1, he had no idea that by September 16, the entire fund would be raised, with actor Hritik Roshan contributing Rs 6 lakh, becoming the biggest donor from India. The shy 20-year-old smiles: "I still can't forget the initial years , those moments when you are inching closer to your dreams but terrified of everything evaporating in minutes, despite all the hard work. I come from a family where my father earned Rs 300 a day, there were times when there was not enough to have a meal at night." Attributing his success to Aguilera, originally from Argentina, who came to India 23 years back, the dancer says that it was only after the teacher offered him a scholarship, promised to take care of his transportation and uniform expenses that he could seriously think of joining regular classes. "Otherwise how could I pay the institute's fee? It would take me more than one hour one way to travel from my home in Vikas Vihar to the institute in Saket." Excited that after the year's training in London, he would have the chance to a to enter the English National Ballet Company, as a professional dancer on a monthly salary, Singh says that initially it did take some effort to convince his father to let him concentrate on dance. "And Aguilera helped there too. He met my father and told him that I had the potential to become a professional and dream of a better life. Of course, the fact that money was a constant problem at home kept bothering me," remembers Singh who has two siblings. A student of the Government Boys Senior Secondary School in Vikaspuri, he has been staying at his teacher's house ever since the lockdown was clamped. "He did not want my training to suffer, so invited me to stay at his place. You know whenever I thank him for all he has done for me, he just tells me to keep quiet." Fernando Aguilera makes it clear that it was tough to ignore Singh's natural flexibility and flair, even during the warm-up session of the first class. "And as the classes progressed, I was smitten by his commitment and discipline. Honestly, discipline is the key here. He would keep smiling even if I told him to repeat a step hundred times, which happened often," he tells. The teacher, whose 12 students have now joined professional ballet companies across the world and several more are instructors, insists that despite all the hurdles, Singh refused to quit. "The financial background of his family, the problems with English... there were many, but the point is, he overcame all. And yes, he did not run away because I am strict," he laughs. (Sukant Deepak can be contacted at sukant.d@ians.in) After enduring months under coronavirus curfew, Filipinos are raising their voices. But the popular pastime of karaoke has come under attack from authorities who urged residents to dob in neighbours for singing too loudly - especially those who are drunk and out of tune. To show how serious they are, police have set up a special karaoke hotline in the province of Cavite, with residents encouraged to make a complaint for the sake of their own health. While karaoke is already a favourite pastime in the country, an 8pm curfew has emptied city streets and brought sound systems to residential areas. One of the most important defences against Covid is having a strong immune [system], governor Jonvic Remulla wrote, adding that a good nights sleep was essential. Even if you say that you are inside your home, the noise caused by [karaoke] can be considered unlawful for the curfew hours. Learn to respect your neighbours who have to wake up at 4am. He added: Please text +63 916 916 986 0679 your grievances and concerns to lessen and stop good for nothings and noisy ones who sing, especially those who are drunk and out of tune." Filipinos are known for their love of a celebration and regularly perform karaoke at birthdays and weddings. In 2017, Cavite ruled that karaoke systems could not be played in residential areas past 10pm except for public holidays. The Philippines has suffered more than 269,000 coronavirus cases with nearly 5,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Universitys tally. The country was placed in strict lockdown between March and June. Some areas, including the capital Manilla, still face partial restrictions until the end of September. Representatives of South Dakota school boards, administrators and teachers told lawmakers on Wednesday that trying to manage coronavirus infections among students and staff has so far been a nightmare. As the number of COVID-19 infections in schools has grown, administrators have found themselves trying to balance keeping schools open, protecting students and staff, and considering the legal liability they could face if they dont do enough to prevent infections, said Wade Pogany, the director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota. Administrators have taken on the extra work of assisting contact tracing investigations from the Department of Health to keep track of which students could be exposed to someone with an infection. Pogany called it an overwhelming process that has heaped stress on school staff trying to keep classrooms open. Its just a nightmare, he said. There have been 667 cases among students and staff in South Dakotas schools, ranging from kindergarten through high school, according to the most recent count from the Department of Health. Over 450 of those cases have fully recovered. It feels like the Department of Health is overwhelmed with everything and the follow-through with contact tracing is falling behind, said Loren Paul, president of South Dakota Education Association, a group that represents teachers. The Department of Health released a statement that said it rejected that claim. It currently has more than 275 people working on case investigation and contact tracing. To handle increasing case numbers, it has added 100 staff in the past month. Health officials reported eight new deaths and 297 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. Over the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new cases has decreased by 93, a decrease of 29%. But the state has still ranked second in the country in new cases per capita over that time period, with nearly 368 new cases per 100,000 people. Health officials have said that many of the cases have been linked to younger people as universities and schools reopened. A committee of lawmakers focused on the states education systems received public input on Wednesday as they cast about for ideas to assist the states COVID-19 response. Lobbyists from the states school districts made a pitch for more funds, flexibility to spend the money into next year and legislative protection from liability if staff or students fall ill or die from COVID-19. While representatives of the states education system said that schools are scrambling to contain infections and stay open, one education activist, Florence Thompson of Rapid City, president of South Dakota Parents Involved in Education, said that concerns about the coronavirus are overblown and schools should be incentivized to stay open. The states schools have been granted $116 million so far in federal funds to address the pandemic, but education groups said they would continue to need funding through the spring. You must be logged in to react. Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 2020 Elections and the US Constitution The United States is entering into the 2020 election season. This election year also has a presidential election, all members of the US House, one third of the US Senate, state representatives and senators for the North Carolina legislature. The most important state contests are for NC Supreme Court justices. The Chief Justice seat along with two associate justices and five Court of Appeals judgeships are on the ballots across the state of North Carolina. During the last two election cycles, actions by the North Carolina Legislature have systematically gutted the NC Supreme Court of conservative jurists that rule on the laws and regulations as written and signed into law by the governor. The legislature and the NC State Board of Elections have tinkered with the method of placing judges names on the ballots. First, they made judges races non-partisan which removed the political party affiliation from the names on the ballots. Next, they determined that all candidates names would be placed on the ballot with Republicans listed first and Democrats second, except for the non-partisan judges, where the Democrat's name was listed first without the party affiliation. Voters were left to believe the first judge's name on the ballot was a Republican and many voted accordingly. The result is that over the last four years, the Supreme Court has gone from a 5-2 Republican majority to a 6-1 Democrat majority. With this court, Governor Cooper can and has usurped his authority granted by the NC Constitution without any concern the Supreme Court would rule against him. His refusal to seek the Council of State's support, as clearly required by law, for the state-wide lockdown of businesses and schools is but one example. For the upcoming 2020 election, the legislature has gone back to listing party affiliation on the ballot with the candidate's name. Justice Paul Newby (R) is seeking the Chief Justice seat on the NC Supreme Court. The Chief Justice controls the court docket, so this could be the most important race on the ballot in North Carolina in 2020. The two Republican Associate Justice candidates are also constitutional conservative candidates. Why is this important? The General Assembly passes a Bill and the Governor signs the Bill into law. The law takes effect upon the date established by the General Assembly. Should someone with standing take issue with the law and challenges it in court, it is heard by a judge. Should the judge agree with the plaintiff, the judge can issue an injunction preventing the law from taking effect. Should the plaintiff appeal to a higher court and the case makes it to the NC Supreme Court, then it is imperative that the laws be applied according to the US and State Constitutions. Should a liberal progressive court decide the Constitution is irrelevant and rules the Bill unconstitutional then is the will of the people ruled unconstitutional? An example of this is the Voter ID law that was voted on by the people of North Carolina on a ballot referendum that was overturned by one elected judge. Government of, by, and for the people is no longer a principle we can depend upon which has been enshrined in the US Constitution for over 240 years. Article I, Section 2, of the NC Constitution reads as follows: "All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole." The people of North Carolina voted overwhelmingly for Voter ID. Overriding the clear and unambiguous will of the people by any judge, while ignoring the will of the people, cannot be allowed to stand. It is up to the voters to address such absurd rulings as this at the ballot box. One cannot depend upon a liberal progressive Supreme Court to curb this type of judicial abuse of power. The people of North Carolina must elect judges that respect the US and NC Constitutions. On the national level there is the presidential race, with President Donald Trump (R) opposed by former Vice President Joe Biden (D). Biden has been in Washington, DC for over 44 years as a US senator for 36 years, and Vice President for eight years. He has little to show for his tenure. Trump is the obvious choice here. Thom Tillis (R) is running for reelection to the US Senate against Cal Cunningham (D). Tillis has disappointed conservatives at times. However, he has voted for President Trump's Supreme Court nominees. As unappealing as he is in his lack of support for limited government, seating constitutional conservative judges to the high court is paramount. We can be reasonably sure that Cunningham would oppose Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court. The next president will likely appoint two or three justices to the high court. Should Joe Biden become the president and if the senate were to be controlled by the democrats, that scenario would spell the end of the constitutional republic as we know it. Just imagine Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jerrold Nadler, Adam Schiff, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley controlling the national agenda. They would completely upend the Bill of Rights and turn the US into a mob controlled democracy, not the constitutional republic our fore fathers gave us. Although North Carolina's US congressional districts were just realigned in 2018 by court decree, the congressional districts will be reset again in 2021 after the 2020 census is released. Since the last 2010 census the population is North Carolina has possibly increased sufficiently to warrant an additional seat in the US Congress. As you recall, the 2018 redistricting moved Beaufort County into a district that runs from Beaufort County to the Virginia state line. The district is currently comprised of Beaufort, Martin, Bertie, North Hampton, Vance, and Warren counties. The northern counties are predominately democrat strongholds. Chuck Early (R) ran for the NC senate seat in the 2018 election in Senate District 3. He lost that race by 4,000 votes. What is disturbing about this is that out of approximately 32,000 registered voters in Beaufort County, only 16,000 citizens voted. This loss to Erica Smith (D) resulted in Beaufort County having very little representation in the NC Senate for the past two years. Thomas R. Hester Jr. (R) is running for this seat against Earnestine (Byrd) Bazemore (D). Hester is a businessman and county commissioner from Vance County. Beaufort County also saw a change as the new NC Congressional District 79 was created in 2018. Beaufort County is now in this newly organized Congressional District 79. This district is composed of Beaufort County and the northern part of Craven County. Representative Keith Kidwell (R) has served this district for two years. He is opposed by Nick Blount from Beaufort County, a newcomer to the political process with an unknown political position on any issue. Kidwell has aligned with Representative Michael Speciale, Larry Pittman, and other conservatives in the state house to limit government and reduce taxes. The 2020 elections also have elections for county commissioners, school boards, and district judges and other local offices. Two NC District Court judges are on the ballot, both unopposed. They are Chris McLendon, District 2, Seat 3 and Keith B. Mason, District 2, Seat 4. Sitting judges seldom have opposition. The NC Legislature ensures this by requiring a judicial candidate who files to run for a seat on the court to live in the district where they file to run. The NC Constitution does not support this legislation, but a liberal interpretation can be drawn from the language. In local races in Beaufort County, there are four seats on the ballot for the county commission. Currently the commission is comprised of five republicans and two democrats. One would think that this would result in a fiscally responsible governing body that would restrain spending and maintain reasonable tax rates. In reality, three of the republicans are in name only (RINOS). Waters, Evens, and Rebholz vote with the two big spending democrats more often than not. The result of this betrayal of conservative principles resulted in the demolition of the Belhaven hospital in the middle of the night, takeover of the Beaufort County Hospital trust fund and then using it for maintenance projects in the county, assuming ownership of the federally owned VOA Site A for a few months only to release it to the NC Wildlife Commission after spending over $100,000 for aviation lights on the 300 foot tall towers and security, purchasing the Wrights Creek dredge spoils property, and failure to oppose Governor Cooper's unconstitutional lockdown of North Carolina's economy. The democrats and RINOS refused to recognize the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution as they opposed concealed carry for county employees and the general public on county property. Commissioner Evans was defeated in the republican primary earlier in 2020. Commissioner Rebholz was selected by the Republican executive committee after the untimely passing of Commissioner Gary Brinn (R) to serve the remainder of Brinn's term. Commissioners Rebholz, Richardson, and Langley are on the ballot for election this year. In addition, there are three new candidates on the ballot contending for these seats. They are Tandy Oliver Dunn, John Carbone, and Randy Walker. Beaufort County elects county commissioners by "limited voting." Limited voting allows a voter to vote for only one candidate even though there are four seats available. Richardson and Langley have a solid base of support and thus are unlikely to be defeated in the general election. Rebholz is relatively new and has supported the democrat agenda and party platform since his appointment to the board. He has on occasion voted with Stan Deatherage and Hood Richardson, but this still resulted in a four-three decision. This allowed Rebholz to feign voting conservative and allowing him to proclaim that he did not vote for that. Beaufort County voters can put an end to this never ending charade by voting for truly conservative candidates; Hood Richardson, Tandy Oliver Dunn, or Randy Walker. The odd numbered Beaufort County School districts have uncontested elections for school board members. There are five incumbents on the ballot for re-election. This is an important election. If you are considering sitting this one out, you are leaving the future of this country, state, and county in the hands of those that have the destruction of the US Constitution as their goal. The rioting, looting, property destruction, tearing down of historical statues, and burning of government owned and private property is being used as a cudgel to beat citizens into caving to the one world government eventually leading to socialism and complete abandonment of Judea-Christian principles upon which this nation was founded. Freedom loving Americans cannot allow this to occur. Two generations of educating young people that socialism is a superior form of government and that capitalism is evil has taken the US to where it is today. Please exercise the duty of voting for our leaders in this election. And please vote for the people and principles that will preserve the liberties we hold dear and the freedoms enshrined in the US Constitution. The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development. The Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it. It has long been an anomaly in Middle Eastern affairs that Arab nations felt compelled to publicly treat Israel as a pariah in their midst, while many of them including the U.A.E. and Bahrain pursued all sorts of economic and security links with Israel. Yet the notion, put forward by one conservative Norwegian lawmaker, that President Trump or the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for what they are calling the Abraham Accords is far-fetched, and not just because of their political records or reputations. Past Nobel laureates who have been honored for advancing peace in the Middle East Yasir Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Anwar el-Sadat, Menachem Begin have not been saints. But their actions required courageously overcoming deep hatreds and ending painful hostilities, for which two of the laureates, Mr. Sadat, then the Egyptian president, and Mr. Rabin, then prime minister of Israel, paid with their lives. By contrast, Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have never been in conflict, and the normalization of their ties carried few risks for any of them, while heaping considerable political benefits on Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. The agreements, moreover, made only a perfunctory nod to what Middle East peace has long referred to: peace between Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinians, in fact, were not warned in advance that the Emirates was hatching a deal with Israel and the United States, although the catalyst for it was Mr. Netanyahus threat to annex much of the West Bank. The threat of annexation had the potential of inflaming Arab citizens. To forestall it, the U.A.E. reportedly turned to the Trump administration with the idea of normalizing relations in exchange for Israel suspending its annexation plans. Bahrain, a tiny kingdom closely tied to Saudi Arabia, followed suit. Oman and Sudan could be next. Minister of International Cooperation Al-Mashat said the strategic relations between Egypt and the EU reflect positively on Egypts development Egypt and the European Union (EU) renewed on Thursday their framework of joint cooperation for six more years. The 2021-2027 partnership framework will strengthen Egypts long relationship with the EU that began in 1977. Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat met on Thursday with Ambassador of the EU in Cairo Christian Berger to renew the framework of cooperation in various fields and strengthen economic diplomacy as instruments of driving growth. Berger took the EU chair in early September in the presence of Ambassador Raouf Saad, head of the National Office for the Implementation of the Egyptian-European Partnership Agreement, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the meeting, Al-Mashat noted that the strategic relations between Egypt and the EU reflected positively on Egypts development, adding that Egypt is currently part of the EUs support framework for the period 2017-2020, which has allocated up to 528 million to support several sectors, including sustainable energy, the environment, social protection, stability promotion, governance, capacity building and civil society. Turning development into real success human stories, the minister referred to Egypt's stories especially with regards to women's empowerment. The Ministry of International Cooperation and the National Council for Women, in cooperation with the World Economic Forum, launched the first of its kind in the Middle East and Africa Gender Gap Accelerator to close the gender gap through public-private collaboration, as well as her recent visit to Sinai to inspect a group of community developmental projects to provide inspiring living conditions for Bedouins. Al-Mashat reiterated the ministrys vision to apply the three principles of economic diplomacy, including regularly organising multi-stakeholder platforms, adopting a consistent Global Partnerships Narrative, People & Projects & Purpose (P&P&P), and mapping official development assistance financing to SDGs. Berger asserted the EU wants to support Egypts development efforts. EU grants to Egypt have amounted to 1.35 billion since 1977. Search Keywords: Short link: Could we be heading back to the dark days of the pandemic? Some medical experts believe it is possible that coronavirus could kill as many, if not more, people than in the spring. Other experts disagree. An increase in cases in recent days and weeks suggests that the risk of things getting really bad again is real. So is the risk that the healthcare system could be swamped over the winter months. Your columnist has no medical expertise. But as an economist I analyse lots of data all the time. Looking at the figures on coronavirus fatalities from around the world provides some reassurance that we are not going back to March and April. In recent months, nowhere in the world has seen deaths rise at the rate they rose in the initial phase. Nowhere has seen protracted periods in which the death rate has kept accelerating, as was (rightly) feared would happen when almost nothing was known about the disease. Closer to home, developments in Europe also suggest that a replay of April and May is not happening. New Covid cases in Spain and France, adjusted for population size, are among the highest in Europe. They are much higher than they are now in Ireland and have been rising more rapidly for longer. Spain, where the second wave started earliest, has seen more deaths as a result, but fatalities are less than a tenth of the peak. In France it is even lower. Looking at Ireland's data also provides reassurance. While the numbers needing hospital treatment for Covid-19 are creeping up, they are doing so gradually. They are not soaring, as they did in the spring. They are also still very low - there were 66 people in hospital suffering from the disease across the entire country as of yesterday's figures. At the worst of the pandemic, 13 times more people were hospitalised with Covid. The situation in intensive-care units is of slightly more concern. The number in ICUs across the country rose from seven one week ago - a level it had been stable at for weeks - to 14 yesterday. It is extremely important in interpreting these numbers that we consider both the absolute numbers of people in hospital and the speed with which hospitalisations are changing. The Government's plan to live with the virus, published on Tuesday, sounded sensible on the need to do exactly this. It also reflected the multi-dimensional nature of the gargantuan challenge society faces in confronting Covid-19, including the "psycho-social impacts of the disease on the population". But it did not give any concrete indications of what thresholds would trigger more restrictions. Nowhere does it tell citizens and businesses what number of new cases or cases in hospital would trigger movement from one level of restrictions to another. As a result, the plan does not reduce uncertainty for anyone, least of all businesses, many of which will not survive much longer. It fails to reduce uncertainty despite acknowledging that "without a functioning economy we cannot maintain delivery of public services or support businesses to keep people in employment". It also acknowledges that 'in the same way the disease hits some groups harder, restrictions also have greater impact on some groups than others'. But the plight of younger people may not have received the recognition it deserves, particularly because they are the ones who are making the biggest sacrifices with the least to gain. Not a single person under the age of 15 has died of Covid-19 in the Republic. For babies and children without serious health conditions, Covid presents a risk to life in the order of a lightning strike. The risks change little among 15- to 24-year-olds. As of the latest figures this week, a solitary death has taken place among those who are coming of age and starting their adult lives. Those in the latter group are living what is the most exciting time of life. Usually, they would be tasting freedom, experimenting with independence and experiencing the pleasures of adulthood for the first time. They have been hindered from doing so for half a year. There is little prospect that they will live fully normal lives, doing things like clubbing and concert-going, for at least another six months. Young people's life chances are being damaged too. The education that they have missed out on will damage their development and one in five people in that cohort has lost their job. Criticism of young people and claims that they are acting selfishly is grossly unfair, given the sacrifices they are making - overwhelmingly for the health of others, not themselves. ***** Let's conclude with some good news, because God knows we need all of it we can get. The resilience of Irish industry continues to be remarkable. In July, the amount of stuff manufactured in Ireland grew by 15pc. In every other country in the EU, bar one, industry contracted. In many cases by a lot. The amount being manufactured in our free-trading nation was to be seen in foreign sales figures. In the first seven months of the year, Ireland was the only country in the EU to grow its merchandise. The decline in the amount of stuff we import was also the smallest of any country in the bloc. These are pretty impressive facts. They're all the more impressive given that we are an island. It says something about the resilience of our supply chains, which move massive quantities of goods on to and off the island, that we can be an outlier in making and trading. This resilience, among other things, offers some hope that the trading shock we will experience when Britain leaves the EU single market at the end of the year can be managed. The World Trade Organisation ruled on Tuesday that tariffs imposed on $234 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2018 are illegal under international trade regulations. But the decision is not going to yield any relaxation of the Trump administrations trade war against China and its assault on the international trading system more broadly. Rather it will see its further intensification. The decision, made by a three-person panel of the WTO, is the result of action launched by China against the imposition of tariffs by the US in 2018 under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which empowers the American president to take action against countries deemed to be acting against US commercial interests. The panel found that the United States has not met the burden of demonstrating that the measures are provisionally justified. China took action on the grounds that the US measures contravened the most-favoured nation principle because they were not applied to all WTO members but singled out China. The panel agreed. China has demonstrated that the additional duties apply only to products from China and thus fail to accord to products originating in China an advantage granted to like product in all other WTO members, it said. In a statement on the decision, Chinas Ministry of Commerce said it approves of the objective and fair ruling of the expert group and described the WTO as the core of the multilateral trading system which forms the cornerstone of multilateral trade. It said China hoped that the American side will fully respect the ruling of the expert group. There is no chance of that. Under WTO rules, the US has 60 days to appeal the decision. But that will not take place. This is because the Trump administration has rendered the WTO appeals system inoperable by refusing to back the appointment of new judges to the appellate body when the terms of existing members expired. As a result, the appeals process has been unable to function since December last year. The attack on the appeals system is part of a broader campaign against the WTO, with key sections of the administration reaching the conclusion that it should be abolished because its decisions have been to the detriment of the US while benefitting China. These positions, which are supported by the Democratic Party, were on display in the reaction to WTO decision by key figures in the administration and the Republican Party. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the panel report confirmed what the Trump administration has been saying over the past four years. The WTO is completely inadequate to stop Chinas harmful technology practices. He claimed the panel did not dispute the extensive evidence submitted by the US of intellectual property theft by China but the WTO provides no remedy for such misconduct. The United States must be allowed to defend itself against unfair trade practices, and the Trump administration will not let China use the WTO to take advantage of American workers, businesses, farmers and ranchers. Speaking to reporters on the WTO decision, Trump said he would consider the ruling. That consideration is certain to involve further attacks on international trade rules. Maybe well have to do something about the WTO because they let China get away with murder. Well take a look at that. Maybe they did us a big favour. This last remark indicates where the administration is likely to head as it seizes on the decision to portray the US as the victim of biased WTO decisions as it seeks to overturn the organisation and the international trading rules on which is based. That course of action was certainly indicated in the twitter remarks of Republican Senator Josh Hawley. He wrote that the ruling was more evidence that the WTO is outdated, sclerotic, and generally bad for America. USA should withdraw and lead the effort to abolish it. That such sentiments are being articulated by leaders of the Republican Party, which in the past was an advocate for free trade, is a remarkable indication of the turn by powerful sections of the US ruling class to a policy of overturning the international trade rules established after World War II and returning to the dog-eat-dog relations that proved so disastrous in the 1930s. This turn is an expression of the extent of the economic decline of the US and the view in growing sections of the ruling class that Chinas economic advancement is a direct threat to American economic dominance. These positions have also become entrenched in the Democratic Party, with one of the themes of the Biden campaign being that Trump has been too soft on China. The call for stronger action against the WTO was also voiced by Michael Stumo, the president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, an anti-China business lobby group. He told the Wall Street Journal that the WTO ruling shows that Geneva bureaucrats do not want the US to protect its national and economic security interests and that the relevance and the usefulness of the WTO has been further called into question as it protects Chinas state-directed economy from change. The reaction from the administration has implications that go far beyond China. The European Union is facing a tariff threat from the US over the demand that it open its markets to a greater volume of US agricultural exports. Action could also be taken under Section 301 if EU member states go ahead with plans to impose a tax on high-tech US digital companies. Reporting on the WTO decision, Bloomberg said the 27-member EU may breathe a sigh of relief over Tuesdays WTO verdict because it had been threatened with Section 301. This is a complete misreading of the situation. The reaction to the decision indicates that the administration will double down on its actions as it sends a wrecking ball through the international trading system and its organisations. The planning legislation has been panned by politicians across the political spectrum, who described it as a "wild power grab by the Planning Minister" that benefited developers at the expense of the community. Liberal MP Mike Nahan said it provided developers with a shortcut to get approval for projects that would otherwise never have been allowed without any input from residents and local government. "The minister can override existing plans, override councils, override the JDAPs, and expedite the process. They have carte blanche powers," Dr Nahan said. "These people basically went out and said, 'Listen, come forward with your big projects and we will facilitate you, go for your life'. "The bill lacks transparency and lacks a requirement to have input from the local council and the community and isn't supported by necessary investment in infrastructure." Dr Nahan voiced concerns about the influence exerted by property developers because there were few restrictions on their donations to political parties in WA. Opponents are concerned developers will misuse the new planning pipeline to avoid opposition. Credit:Erin Jonasson Greens MP Alison Xamon echoed Dr Nahan's concerns and said the lack of safeguards around donations, paired with unprecedented ministerial powers, would undermine the community's trust in the planning system. "The legislation will give power to the minister to issue directions to other government agencies and bodies to comply with the WAPC approval," she said. "It is almost as though there will be an implicit expectation that the project will be approved." Loading The state's peak industry body for local councils, the WA Local Government Association, has also raised concerns about the shift in decision-making power to the WAPC. "These changes represent a major shift to the role of local government in the planning assessment process and do not necessarily make use of the existing planning expertise across the sector in assessing development applications and applying local planning schemes," WALGA president Tracey Roberts said. A lack of transparency in WA's planning system has long been a concern for local governments and residents, particularly regarding the WAPC. In 2018, head David Caddy flagged incoming changes and earlier this year began to publish agendas and minutes online, but most of the items remained confidential, and those that weren't contained only a snippet of information about the projects due for consideration. However, a spokeswoman from Ms Saffioti's office said the WAPC was the decision-maker, not the minister. "All the Minister for Planning can do is refer a development application to the Premier through cabinet for their consideration," she said. "The WAPC would still be the ultimate decision-maker if the premier, through cabinet, chose to refer a development." The spokeswoman said the new pathway was limited to 18 months and approvals would lapse if construction on the project hadn't substantially started. It also required consultation. "This is all about supporting the economy and local workers through COVID-19," she said. Loading Nedlands Mayor Cilla de Lacy said the council had made the decision to retrospectively amend the local planning scheme after realising a loophole in the policy meant there were no limits on the bulk and build of future developments in the area. "As you can understand, any new legislation that comes to place has loopholes, this is what we are finding because we are being tested every single day," she said. "I do not believe that we have reacted poorly with this particular proposal." Ms de Lacy said since opening up to higher density development, the council had been swarmed by applications and was currently assessing more projects than the Stirling and Wanneroo councils combined. Elizabeth Riley had mixed feelings Thursday when she dropped off her two grandchildren at McDonogh 42 Charter School in New Orleans for their first day of in-person class since coronavirus shut down schools across the state six months ago. She watched from a distance as the students confronted the first sign of this unusual academic year: instructions for them to wait their turn then line up single file on the sidewalk for temperature checks administered by teachers and staff wearing face masks, face shields and bright blue gloves. +32 Photos: Orleans public schools welcome back students for first day of in-person class with coronavirus restrictions A first day of school like any other with last moment hugs and kisses but also unlike any other as New Orleans charter schools welcomed back s "I need them [school staff] to keep them safe from whatever this is, this coronavirus, this killer virus," Riley, 51, said as she stood outside the prekindergarten-through-eighth grade school in the Seventh Ward. "But I'm here because the kids need education. They need contact with their teachers. We can't do the job they can do." Riley's two grandkids, 5-year-old L.C. Riley and 8-year-old De-Quine Broussard, were among about 11,100 students in pre-K through fourth grade to register for in-person class this semester in New Orleans public schools. NOLA Public Schools is the last public school system in the New Orleans area to begin in-person class for the 2020-21 year. Online classes started online in August. Online learning to resume in New Orleans public schools Wednesday; in-person class starting Thursday Distance learning will resume for about 45,000 students in nearly 80 New Orleans public schools on Wednesday after being canceled Tuesday beca The return-to-school process got off to a slow start Thursday, with only a dozen schools welcoming back their youngest students at first. More elementary schools are expected to bring back pre-K through fourth grade students next week. Under the school system's new guidance, the charter schools it oversees have until Sept. 25 to reopen classrooms inside school buildings, but only for kids in fourth grade or lower, or for students with exceptional needs. Older students are expected to return to classrooms by mid-October, unless coronavirus infection rates spike. Most older students will have a hybrid schedule, with at least two days of in-person class a week and virtual learning the rest of the time. The limited schedule is to ensure in-person classes can be capped at 25 people, including teachers, to adhere to New Orleans' Phase 2 of reopening. +2 As classrooms reopen, only 389 Louisiana schools are enrolled in state coronavirus warning system As thousands of students streamed back into Jefferson and St. Tammany Parish classrooms in recent days, state health and education officials w "It's a very different day," NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said as he watched students trickle in to McDonogh 42. "But we're trying to remain safe, and remain in school through the year." Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up In addition to the temperature checks and masks, students will also be encouraged to remain six feet apart and adhere to a strict schedule of hand-washing and sanitizing. And many will eat lunch at their desks, because cafeterias have been repurposed as bigger classrooms for more efficient social distancing. Even with precautions in place, not all families were willing to take the risk. Lewis said roughly 38% of the system's pre-K through fourth grade families, about 7,000 children, have chosen virtual learning, at least through the first quarter of the academic year. Arts programs limited in New Orleans charter schools, and challenge continues with coronavirus New Orleans is a city that prides itself on artistic and cultural heritage, yet the public school district has fewer students enrolled in arts At McDonogh 42, where a little more than half of families chose in-person learning, about 180 children were expected for class on Thursday, said Jamar McNeely, the chief executive officer of the InspireNOLA charter network that runs the school. The rate of in-class participation varied from school to school. Across town at Lusher Charter School, almost three out of four elementary school students from kindergarten through fifth grade 5 planned to come to school, Lusher spokesperson Heather Harper said. Officials at McDonogh 42 and Lusher said they had worked hard to make parents and students feel more comfortable about the return, with team-building exercises such as group chants and social-emotional learning through group circle exercises. "Innovation is what we do," McNeely said. Other schools touted efforts, too. Esperanza Charter School, run by the Choice Foundation network, has set up outdoor classrooms for safer instructional time, while Ben Franklin Elementary, which expects almost half of its youngest students back next week, has set up boxes of supplies such as glue, water colors and Play-Doh for each student, to eliminate the need for shared materials. Joel Castro, the CEO of New Orleans College Prep Schools, said about 70% of students at Crocker College Prep had opted to return. He expected the rate to "rise quickly as parents become more confident in our school's health and safety protocols." Lusher mother Leigh Ward, for one, said she grew comfortable over time with the school's plans. In a matter of months she went from thinking that her five-year-old kindergarten student, Charlie, would do full distance learning to sending him back for full days of class. "This was the hardest decision I ever made in my life," Ward said. "But this school made us feel comfortable." The testing fiasco has hit almost every school in the UK with up to 25,000 teachers in England already forced to stay at home and self-isolate. Leaders of teaching unions warned of 'lockdown by default' yesterday as thousands of pupils are being sent home from lessons after showing symptoms of the virus. The government's prioritisation of NHS staff for tests means that pupils and teachers have been unable to get checked for the virus and have instead been forced out of the classroom. Some schools have reported up to a fifth of their staff having to stay home, while unions warned the crisis was spinning out of control. Headteachers have now called on the government to prioritise the education sector for tests as the crisis may make 'staffing unsustainable'. It was reported yesterday that at least 740 schools have shut or sent children home because of suspected outbreaks, with some sending whole year groups away. However, some private schools are paying 120 to test symptomatic students and teachers. One Guildford private school teacher told the Guardian: 'If schools can afford to take the hit, private companies don't have any problems providing tests. On the other hand, state schools are fast using up the 10 testing kits supplied by government at the start of term regardless of the school's size. Thousands of pupils are being sent home from school, sparking union fears of a 'lockdown by default' Headteachers representing more than 16,000 pupils in Gateshead in north-east England, have written a letter to MPs warning about the effects of the testing crisis. Gateshead is on the government's watchlist because of its high infection rate and school leaders have now warned that the lack of testing capacity would 'break' some schools. The letter from the Gateshead Association of Primary Head Teachers, which represents 67 schools, cited 'significant problems' caused by a lack of testing. Mustafaa Malik, chair of the association and head of Harlow Green primary school in Gateshead, said a fifth of his teaching staff were isolating as well as a 'double figures' number of its 400 pupils. He said: 'It's just unsustainable. The parents can feel the anxiety growing. It's taken a lot of convincing them that it's safe but we're starting to get a buildup of fear in some communities.' Today the Government will try to wrest control of the crisis by publishing a 'priority list' spelling out which groups should be offered swabs first. But this is only likely to cause further controversy because schools and their staff are lower in the rankings than hospitals, care homes and the inhabitants of virus hotspots. Robert Halfon, Tory chairman of the Commons' education select committee, called for schools to have access to coronavirus tests within 48 hours amid the threat of further closures. Robert Halfon has called for schools to have access to coronavirus tests within 48 hours But Boris Johnson yesterday insisted that groups of children should only be sent home if there has been a positive test, rather than someone just developing symptoms. The Prime Minister said it was important for teachers and parents to examine the Public Health England guidance about testing. Reiterating Government policy, he told MPs on the liaison committee: 'The reasons for sending such a class home, or a bubble home, would be if somebody tests positive.' Teaching unions hit back last night, warning that schools are in the 'impossible position' of being forced to make their own decisions about who to send home due to delays in getting official health advice. Current guidance, endorsed by Public Health England, states that in the event of a positive case, schools must work with local health protection teams and 'send home those people who have been in close contact with the person who has tested positive'. This is defined as a face-to-face conversation within one metre of someone, contact for more than 15 minutes within one to two metres, or travelling in a car with an infected person. But Julie McCulloch, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: 'Schools are having to make what is essentially a public health decision.' Mary Bousted, of the National Education Union, said: 'Being able to acquire a test result positive or otherwise is a rather large assumption in the Prime Minister's thinking.' The Department for Education stepped in and launched a national helpline for schools to report positive virus cases. Schools have now been told that instead of contacting local public health teams, from today there will be a 'dedicated' advice service. Earlier yesterday, three unions wrote to Mr Johnson, urging him to 'personally take charge' of the crisis. Leaders of ASCL, the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Governance Association warned that nearly every school in the country is experiencing difficulties in getting tests and they said they had a 'deep sense of foreboding' that this would get worse. A survey of 6,700 teachers in England by the app Teacher Tapp found that 4 per cent were off for Covid-related reasons, according to The Guardian. That would equate to around 25,000 teachers nationally. Sadiq Khan has urged the government to freeze rents in London to prevent a surge in Covid-19 evictions. The mayor of London has asked to be given the powers to make it against the law for landlords to increase their rent for two years, arguing hundreds of thousands of renters in the capital are at risk of eviction because of the pandemic. The ban on evictions imposed at the start of lockdown is due to lapse at the end of this week, giving landlords their first opportunity to force out tenants who may be in rent arrears. Research carried out by the Greater London Authority suggests as many as 500,000 private renters were potentially facing eviction notices having been unable to keep up with their rent during lockdown. A quarter of the capitals 2.2m tenants told pollster YouGov they had fallen behind on their rent or were likely to do so because of the pandemic. The end of the furlough scheme means even more renters in the capital are now at risk of pay cuts or losing their job, Mr Khan said. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 January 2022 Willesborough Windmill, a white smock mill built in 1869 is bathed in the morning sunshine as the moon sets behind in Ashford, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 January 2022 A jet skier jumps the waves off the coast at Blyth in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 19 January 2022 Britains Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, participate in a therapy session with individuals who have experienced the care system, during a visit to the Foundling Museum in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty Yet at every stage of this pandemic, renters have been treated as an afterthought by the government, with protection measures only ever rushed out at the last minute. This uncertainty is causing unnecessary anxiety and stress. If Berlin can freeze rents for five years, theres no reason London shouldnt be able to freeze rents for two years in these extraordinary times. The mayor argued that until there is a widely available vaccine, the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 will continue, putting renters with poorly-paid or precarious jobs at risk of being made homeless. A rent freeze is only one part of a package of measures renters urgently need from government to ensure no one is forced out onto the streets as a result of this pandemic, he added. Mr Khans call was backed by the campaign group Generation Rent, whose director Alicia Kennedy said some landlords had raised the rent during lockdown in an effort to force out tenants they could not legally evict. With the economy in recession and coronavirus cases on the rise, landlords should not be permitted to raise rents and force a tenant into an unwanted move. We're delighted that the Mayor has adopted Generation Rent's proposal for a freeze on rents to ensure tenants are able to stay safely in their homes for the duration of this crisis. Although the ban on private evictions is about to end, the government has announced it will extend a separate ban on business evictions until the end of the year. Rules introduced earlier this year prevented companies which were struggling because they had to close during the lockdown from being kicked out of their premises. They had been due to expire at the end of September, but the Communities secretary Robert Jenrick has now confirmed they will be extended for a further three months, to stave off potential job losses. Responding to Mr Khans proposal, a spokesperson for Mr Jenricks Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the department had already taken unprecedented action by imposing a ban on eviction in the first place and argued controlling rents was the wrong course of action. We have now gone further by changing the law to increase notice periods to 6 months to help keep people in their homes over the winter months and introducing a winter truce on the enforcement of evictions. Together, these measures strike a balance between protecting vulnerable renters and ensuring landlords whose tenants have behaved in illegal or anti-social ways have access to justice in direct contrast to rent controls which could drive responsible landlords out, reduce investment in high quality housing and ultimately push rents up. South Korea will provide US$300,000 worth of humanitarian aid to Sudan to help the African country cope with massive floods that have killed over 100 people, the foreign ministry said Thursday. The aid will partly be provided in kind, such as relief goods like water purification tablets and blankets, while the rest of the provision will be used to support the U.N. humanitarian body for its emergency relief activities in Sudan, the ministry said in a release. Massive floods caused by months of heavy rains in Sudan have killed at least 103 people and inundated over 100,000 houses. The authorities have declared a state of emergency, appealing for international aid to deal with the crisis. (Yonhap) Earlier in the Day: Its was a relatively busy start to the day on the economic calendar this morning. The Kiwi Dollar and the Japanese Yen were in action. For the Kiwi Dollar Current account figures for the 2nd quarter were in focus. Quarter-on-quarter, the current account surplus widened from NZ$1.56bn to NZ$1.83bn. Economists had forecast a narrowing to NZ$0.60bn. Year-on-year, the current account deficit narrowed from NZ$8.51bn to NZ$5.77bn. Economists had forecast a narrowing to NZ$7.37bn. The current account as a percentage of GDP stood at -1.9% in the 2nd quarter. This was up from -2.7% in the 1st quarter. Economists had forecast a percentage of GDP of -2.5%. The Kiwi Dollar moved from $0.67124 to $0.67128 upon release of the numbers. At the time of writing, the Kiwi Dollar was up by 0.01% to $0.6715. For the Japanese Yen In August, Japans trade surplus widened from 10.9bn to 248.3bn. Economists had forecast a deficit of 77.6bn. According to figures released by the Ministry of Finance, In August, exports slid by 14.8%, year-on-year. While exports to Asia fell by 7.8%, exports to China rose by 5.1%. A 4% fall in exports to HK, a 13.8% fall to South Korea, a 31.3% slump in exports to Thailand, and a 26.1% decline to Singapore weighed. Exports to Australia slumped by 20.9%, with exports to the U.S tumbling by 21.3%. Things were not much better to Europe, with exports to Western Europe sliding by 15.3%. Imports tumbled by 20.8% in August, year-on-year. While imports from Asia fell by 11.2%, imports from Australia tumbled by 43.4%. Imports from the U.S slid by 22%, with imports from Europe falling by 22.2%. The Japanese Yen moved from 105.402 to 105.308 upon release of the figures. At the time of writing, the Japanese Yen was up by 0.14% 105.29 against the U.S Dollar. Elsewhere At the time of writing, the Aussie Dollar was up by 0.03% to $0.7305. The Day Ahead: For the EUR Its a relatively quiet day ahead on the economic calendar. Key stats include July trade data for the Eurozone. Story continues We dont expect too much influence on the EUR, however, barring particularly dire numbers. On the day, the monetary policy and geopolitics will be key drivers. Brexit will be a key area of interest, with the FOMC policy decision and economic and interest rate projections of particular interest. We saw the Dollar tumble in response to the lower for longer and policy framework revision. Following last weeks ECB press conference, a dovish FED could see the EUR head back towards $1.20 levels. At the time of writing, the EUR was down by 0.05% to $1.1841. For the Pound Its a relatively busy day ahead on the economic calendar. Key stats include August inflation figures. While consumer prices will influence, expect wholesale inflation figures to have a greater impact early in the day. Away from the economic calendar, Brexit will remain the key driver, however. Theres been plenty of chatter over the Internal Market Bill and the PMs desire to protect Northern Ireland from the EU. Any further updates will be of influence as the Internal Market Bill gets sliced and diced in Westminster. At the time of writing, the Pound was up by 0.09% to $1.2900. Across the Pond Its also a relatively busy day ahead for the U.S Dollar. Key stats include August retail sales figures. Expect the numbers to influence risk sentiment ahead of the main event. Consumer spending is a key contributor and will need to continue to rebound to support the economic recovery. The main event of the day is the FOMC monetary policy decision, however. With the FOMC expected to stand pat, the market focus will be on the FOMC economic and interest rate projections. Following the announcement of the new monetary policy framework, the markets are expecting interest rate forecasts to remain dovish. The FOMCs outlook on the economic recovery is an area of uncertainty The Dollar Spot Index was up by 0.12% to 93.166 at the time of writing. For the Loonie Its a busier day ahead, with key stats including August inflation and July Foreign Securities Purchases figures. Expect the inflation figures to have the greatest impact on the day. We will also expect the weekly crude oil inventory numbers to also provide direction. At the time of writing, the Loonie was up by 0.02% to C$1.3183 against the U.S Dollar. For a look at all of todays economic events, check out our economic calendar. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: The mother of a Niagara student believes District School Board of Niagaras back-to-school plan doesnt address students with an individualized education plan. Pam Meyer, whose son is entering Grade 9 this fall at Westlane Secondary School in Niagara Falls, said the board has not done anything to address my childs needs, Im in a constant state of unknowing. Meyers son has been diagnosed with autism, Tourettes syndrome and depression. The specialized school to community program, known as SSTC, is intended to prepare students with exceptionalities for life beyond secondary school by providing a variety of life skills to promote greater independence. Meyer said DSBNs plan does not support Keegan and also said an educational assistant will only be available to him while he is at school. Her son officially attended school in person on Sept. 10. The Niagara Falls Review reached out to DSBN chief communications officer Kim Yielding for a response. Unfortunately, for reasons of privacy, we cannot share any information about one of our students, said Yielding. I can certainly share with you general information about how DSBN schools accommodate the requirements in a students IEP, and support students with special needs. Meyer hopes the board will reconsider her childs need and other students who require additional support. The DSBN needs to re-evaluate what cohort C currently is, said Meyer, referring to the group of students in the boards back to school plan which attend their programs in persopn daily. Meyer wants the board to offer week-long in-school support to students in cohort C. She said the DSBN should provide students who require more attention and those who are on an IEP with an alternative option. In an attempt to convey her concerns, Meyer sent an email to two superintendents assistants on Aug. 7. After reading the newest back-to-school plan, I am left concerned that my Grade 9 students need will not be considered for a full day at Westlane, said Meyer. My son, (Keegan) Meyer, could not cope with the lack of in-person support in the past. I need to ensure that he will be in a full day starting Sept. 8, in order to access in-person support. That email went unanswered, she said. Meyers frustration led her to contact the principal of the school directly. In an email sent to Westlane principal Karen Simpson on Aug. 20, Meyer said, I am checking in on our request for Keegan to come into the school this week. I am currently arranging a time for my other child with his school spec-ed program (special education) and would like to avoid cross-bookings. I also need to check in about a previous email, with regard to everyday in-person attendance for Keegan, said Meyer. He is not capable of online synchronous and asynchronous learning. He needs to be in a classroom setting. Simpson followed up via phone call. Simpson confirmed that Meyers son would not be in school full time but did direct Meyers desire to meet the special education resource teacher. Meyer and the teacher met on Sept. 4. She left that meeting with more questions than answers. She followed up again with Simpson for additional clarification. Simpson responded. Your (education assistant) will be available to support Keegan while he is at school, however, on his online days from home, you will need to access her Google Classroom and post questions to her as they arise, said Simpson. EAs are allocated to the school for our (specialized school to community) classes only so Keegan will not have access to an EA as a regular ed(education) student. A serial driving offender who left two pedestrians seriously injured when he drove onto a busy footpath while high on drugs has dropped his appeal against an eight and a half year sentence at the last minute after being warned that the term of imprisonment could also be increased. Lawyers for Paul Connolly (38), of Cregg Court, Kilmeague, Robertstown, Co Kildare, were due to appeal the sentence imposed by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in May 2019 after he had pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing serious bodily harm to Michael Igoe (54) and Francis Dhala (19) at Coolmine Road, Coolmine on May 1, 2018. Connolly, who was driving his young child to school at the time, was under the influence of drugs when his vehicle mounted the footpath and injured the two men, leaving Mr Dhala, a young law student, with a catastrophic brain injury. Witnesses described how Connolly had passed a line of traffic waiting at a level crossing at Coolmine train station by mounting the footpath before doing a U-turn and calmly driving away. Gardai arrested Connolly a short time later after being alerted to his location by a driving instructor who had pursued his vehicle after seeing the incident. At the time Connolly was serving a 25-year driving ban and had only been released from prison a month earlier. He also pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of drugs; possession of cannabis; failing to remain at the scene; failing to offer assistance; failing to alert gardai; as well as driving without insurance or a driving licence on the same occasion. Connolly had 215 previous convictions, including 14 for dangerous driving and three for hit-and-run incidents. The sentencing judge, Judge Melanie Greally, imposed an eight and a half year prison term on Connolly but suspended the final 18 months. Lawyers for Connolly told the Court of Appeal on Thursday that the case could be withdrawn following an adjournment for lunch. Before the break, Mr Justice John Edwards presiding, with Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, had advised Connolly of the courts powers to either reduce or increase the original sentence in appeal cases. Kenosha, Wisconsins fire chief says damage from the unrest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake has now topped $11 million. Fire Chief Charles Leipzig told the Police and Fire Commission the record fire loss came in the days following the Aug. 23 shooting of Blake, who was left partially paralyzed by the gunshots to his back. To put into context, thats three years of fire loss for us in the span of about a week, Leipzig told commissioners, the Kenosha New s reported. Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times by a white police officer after walking away from the officer and two others who were trying to arrest him. The shooting was captured on video and posted online, sparking the protests and violence in Kenosha, where roughly two dozen fires were set and numerous businesses were destroyed. On the second night following Blakes shooting, prosecutors say 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot two demonstrators and wounded a third. His attorney claims it was self defense. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Wisconsin LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- BlackRock, JP Morgan Asset Management and Robeco were the major category winners of the 2020 Broadridge Distribution Achievement Awards. At this week's ALFI Rentree virtual conference, the winners of each category were announced via a daily video. Now in their fourth year, the awards recognise excellence in various aspects of fund distribution. The winners are identified by Europe's leading third-party fund selectors from Broadridge's Fund Buyer Focus Intelligence survey and through interview data covering the 12-month period to June 2020. The Broadridge Distribution Achievement Awards celebrate the efforts and innovation of marketing, sales and service teams in European fund distribution. The diversity of this year's winners reflect the breadth of talent and collaboration of teams working across the industry. While global heavyweights BlackRock and JP Morgan featured in the main categories, smaller managers such as Nordea and Flossbach Von Storch were recognised in the fastest riser awards. Top ESG credentials saw Robeco named as leading group for the third year running, while in a significant move, BlackRock was named as the fastest riser in this category. Commenting on the award winners, Mauro Baratta, Vice President, Distribution Insight, Broadridge said: "In a year of massive change for the industry, asset managers have had to contend with intensified competition, the acceleration of ESG investing and rapid digital transformation. The nominees and winners of this year's awards demonstrate their resilience, innovation and ability to adapt while remaining focused on delivering a first-class client experience." Camille Thommes, Director General of ALFI, said: "Across the globe, projects are looking for financing, while investors want to channel their money towards projects worth supporting. Asset managers bring both sides together, aiming for the perfect match. As we honour their achievements in distributing investment funds, we hope to facilitate more perfect matches every day." The awards are based on responses from some 900 fund selectors participating in the annual Broadridge Fund Buyer Focus survey. The survey seeks to identify the changing demands of Europe's key fund distribution influencers, and the fund providers that are delivering best-in-class standards. These fund selectors represent over 3trn of third-party client assets in Europe and are a representative voice of investors in the ten markets they serve. Award categories and winners: Sales Services The sales relationship continues to become more nuanced, with fund selectors seeking a relationship that spans deep technical expertise, responsiveness and a clear understanding of individual business and clients' needs. JP Morgan remained the leader in delivering the optimal balance. At the same time, Flossbach Von Storch's fastest riser award highlights the skill and ability of smaller managers to provide a personalised and memorable service. Overall winner: JP Morgan Asset Management Fastest riser: Flossbach Von Storch AG Marketing In today's digital world, the marketing function has become critical in driving and delivering engaging, personalised experiences for clients and prospects as an integral part of the sales process. ESG and sustainability campaigns were a major focus for many asset managers, and proved an area where the resourceful BlackRock was able to stand out from the crowd, launching and promoting a new suite of ESG products, which helped it wrestle the Marketing award from JP Morgan's powerful grip. Overall winner: BlackRock Fastest riser: Nordea Investment Management ESG/Socially Responsible Investing With increasing investor appetite for ESG and responsible investing and concerns over 'greenwashing', managers and their products faced increased scrutiny to demonstrate their credentials. Robeco, an early pioneer of ESG and thematic investing, demonstrated its authenticity and held on to the top award. In the past, smaller players have dominated this category while the large global houses, particularly from the US, have lagged. In a major shift this year, BlackRock's new approach to ESG fast-tracked the group to fastest riser for this category. Overall winner: Robeco Fastest riser: BlackRock Brand Regardless of size, the multi-faceted components of a company's brand must work together to convey a clear conviction and purpose. The nominees and winners in this year's awards displayed these characteristics. BlackRock's supermarket offering for all weathers, augmented by its new ESG offerings, helped it maintain its clear lead with European selectors. Meanwhile, Nordea's multi-boutique expertise promoting a dependable and stable brand resonated well with selectors, particularly in challenging market conditions. In times of uncertainty, investors and selectors alike gravitate towards a trusted, reliable pair of hands. Overall winner: BlackRock Fastest riser: Nordea Investment Management For Further Information: Lynn Pattinson Senior Editor, Global Insights Broadridge +44 (0) 7747 760263 Lynn.Pattinson@Broadridge.com Anna Ferreri Senior Communications Manager ALFI Tel: +352 22 30 26 48 Anna.Ferreri@alfi.lu Notes to editors: Broadridge Distribution Achievement Awards The Broadridge Distribution Achievement Awards are based on the company's authoritative fund selector survey and the interview results collected during the period 1 July 2019-30 June 2020. This regular survey, which has been running for more than a decade, is based on in-depth telephone interviews, in local language, with over ~900 fund selectors from 10 European countries every year. These fund selectors account for 3trn of third-party assets or an estimated 70% of accessible third-party assets in Europe. The focus of the interviews is to provide feedback to asset managers on which fund groups these selectors prefer to work with overall and which groups offer superior support in the categories of marketing, sales and account management, product quality, brand and pricing. Fund selectors are asked to nominate their three preferred suppliers in each category on an unprompted basis. The top supplier is awarded three points, the second, two points and the third, one point. This data is then aggregated to produce a ranking of named fund groups that can be compared from one time period to another. The Awards are based on the latest rankings available - period is 12 months to June 2020. Fastest risers calculated from a comparison between June 2020 data and the previous 12 months to June 2019. The Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI) represents the face and voice of the Luxembourg asset management and investment fund community. The Association is committed to the development of the Luxembourg fund industry by striving to create new business opportunities, and through the exchange of information and knowledge. Created in 1988, the Association today represents over 1,500 Luxembourg-domiciled investment funds, asset management companies and a wide range of businesses that serve the sector. These include depositary banks, fund administrators, transfer agents, distributors, legal firms, consultants, tax advisory firms, auditors and accountants, specialist IT and communication companies. Luxembourg is the largest fund domicile in Europe and a worldwide leader in cross-border distribution of funds. Luxembourg-domiciled investment funds are distributed in more than 70 countries around the world. For further information, do not hesitate to consult www.alfi.lu. To keep up with all the news from ALFI and the fund industry in Luxembourg, join us on LinkedIn, Twitter (@ALFIfunds), YouTube and Flickr. About Broadridge Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), a U.S $4 billion global Fintech leader, is a leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions to banks, broker-dealers, asset and wealth managers and corporate issuers. Broadridge's infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 50 percent of public companies and mutual funds globally, and processes on average more than U.S. $8 trillion in fixed income and equity securities trades per day. Broadridge is part of the S&P 500 Index and employs over 12,000 associates in 17 countries. For more information about Broadridge, please visit www.broadridge.com FN Media Group Presents Microsmallcap.com Market Commentary NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Precious metals prices have been sent skyrocketing in the wake of the global economic shutdown. As a result, there has been a renewed focus on the epicentre of gold and silver mining in the United States - Nevada. Since breaking $2,000 per ounce for the first time in late August, gold has hovered above $1,900 per ounce. Silver has stayed above $800 per ounce since early August. For companies with assets in the Silver State, companies like Kinross Gold(NYSE: KGC) (TSX: K), Argonaut Gold Inc. (TSX: AR) (OTCPK: ARNGF), Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL), Coeur Mining (NYSE: CDE), and Blackrock Gold Corp (TSXV: BRC) (OTCQB: BKRRF), these market conditions could not be better. Every year, the Fraser Institute's rankings of the most attractive mining jurisdictions in the world consistently place the State of Nevada at or near the top, and with good reason. Nevada was ranked 3rd overall in 2019 and 1st overall in 2018. As gold and silver continue their upward trend, the same factors that have always made the state attractive to mining companies glisten all the brighter. Those factors include a very mining-friendly bureaucracy, with quick permitting processes and a favorable industry tax rate. Over the course of the state's long mining industry history, Nevada has built up world-class mining infrastructure throughout the state. The sheer size of the Nevada mining industry assures that the state is home to a strong mining workforce of experienced professionals. Nevada's mining industry is built around unique geology leading to an abundance of both ultra high-grade underground mines and large open pit 'Carlin-type' deposits, giving it the highest mineral wealth in the country. The Tonopah Silver District: Nevada's Last Great Silver District As a precious metals surge adds to the attractiveness of the Silver State, Blackrock Gold Corp (BRC.V) (BKRRF.QB) is conducting drilling on one of Nevada's most desirable districts. The last great silver district to be discovered (way back in 1900!), which grew to be the second-largest in the state, the Tonopah Silver District has produced more than 174 million ounces of gold and 1.8 million ounces of silver. Blackrock is the first group to target these historic workings, bringing modern exploration back to the district since production shut down nearly 100 years ago. Blackrock Gold Corp (BRC.V) (BKRRF.QB) now controls more than half of the Tonopah District. The company's Tonopah West land package includes 97 patented and 17 unpatented mining claims covering 4.5 sq km (1,100 acres). The company's very first drill result into the project from July highlighted a new vein yielding 3 meters grading 2,198 g/t silver equivalent. That same drillhole intersected another vein that ran 30 meters of 965 g/t Ageq. In early September, Blackrock Gold Corp announced a second discovery at Tonopah drilling 2,215 G/T silver equivalent over 3.0 meters within 4.6 meters of 1,577 G/T silver equivalent. Blackrock has 2 drill rigs turning and more assays pending on this very same program. SilverCloud: A Rare Grassroots Opportunity Blackrock Gold Corp (BRC.V) (BKRRF.QB) is also set to commence a 3,500 meter, 14-drillhole program at a second property in September. The Silver Cloud project in Northeastern Nevada contains 573 claims covering 45 square kilometers. The property was first staked in 1999 and has been owned by three mining majors including the Newmont Corp, but a series of unfavorable royalty agreements combined with low gold and silver values at the time rendered production unprofitable. The property was foreclosed in 2017, rendering the royalties void and has since been acquired by Blackrock Gold Corp just as precious metals prices entered a boom period. Silver Cloud is located at the tip of the Carlin Trend, where it collides with another prolific gold belt known as the Northern Nevada Rift, with neighboring mines owned by some of the biggest names in the surrounding mining industry. Blackrock Gold Corp announced that it intends to spin out Silver Cloud into a seperate company that will be owned by Blackrock shareholders, giving investors exposure to two public companies with gold hovering around all-time highs. Nevada Attracts the Biggest Names in Mining Long before this gold and silver run, Nevada was attracting major mining companies. Kinross Gold (NYSE:KGC) (TSX:K) added to their stake in the prolific region in 2016 when it purchased 50% of the Bald Mountain project. This is in addition to theirRound Mountain mine near Tonopah, Nevada, which has poured over 15 million ounces of gold since it first came online. In 2018, the company acquired the remaining 50% of Bald Mountain from Barrick Gold and now owns the largest private mining land package in the US. Bald Mountain has 1.27 million ounces of gold in proven and probable reserves and produced 187,961 ounces of gold in 2019. Hecla Mining (NYSE:HL) owns several mines in Nevada, including the company's Hollister mine, which is located just five kilometers from Blackrock Gold Corp's (BRC.V) (BKRRF.QB) Silver Cloud mine. In 2017, Hollister produced 172,301 ounces of silver and 32,887 ounces of gold. Coeur Mining (NYSE:CDE) owns the Rochester mine in Pershing County, which produced 3.7 million ounces of silver and 35,400 ounces of gold, as well as the Sterling Gold Project located near Beatty, Nevada, which has a total inferred gold resource of approximately 709,000 ounces, averaging 0.066 oz/t. Canadian gold company Argonaut Gold Inc. (TSX:AR)(OTCPK:ARNGF) also gained a slice of gold-endowed Nevada this year when it acquired Alio Gold Inc and its Florida Canyon mine, which has an inferred resource of 276,000 ounces of gold and 1.66 million ounces in the indicated resource estimate. On July 3, the company announced the results of an updated life of mine (LOM) plan for Florida Canyon which includes average annual production of 77,000 ounces of gold at all-in sustaining costs under $1,050 per ounce over 9.5 years. This gold and silver run is a very opportune set of circumstances for companies with precious metals assets in the state of Nevada, and Blackrock Gold Corp (BRC.V) (BKRRF.QB) has two of the best. In fact, they just announced that they intend to spin out a second company, giving shareholders exposure to two public companies, unlocking value for both of their projects. For more information about Blackrock Gold Corp (TSXV:BRC) (OTC:BKRRF), click here. Disclaimer: Microsmallcap.com (MSC) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. MSC owns and operates StreetSignals.com. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with MSC or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by MSC are solely those of MSC and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable MSC and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. MSC and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author (MSC), and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author (MSC) has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, MSC, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment. FNM was not compensated by any public company mentioned herein to disseminate this press release but was compensated twenty five hundred dollars by MSC, a non-affiliated third party to distribute this release on behalf of Blackrock Gold Corp FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE. This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and MSC and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements. Media Contact: FN Media Group, LLC info@financialnewsmedia.com +1(561)325-8757 Rev Geraint Hughes, 85, was found not guilty of sexual assault by a jury at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court A retired vicar has been cleared of sexually assaulting a woman curate after being accused of leaping at her like a rabbit out of a rabbit hole. Rev Geraint Hughes, 85, pictured, allegedly told her I really miss having cuddles after being recently widowed. The woman claimed she tried to fend off the clergyman by saying Let us pray when he kissed her three times. She was visiting his home last year to discuss Sunday services when he wrapped his arms around her, it was alleged. Hughes, the former Dean of Brecon Cathedral in South Wales, admitted hugging the married curate and kissing her once. But he said it was all a misunderstanding and he didnt cross the line. A jury at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court took less than 30 minutes to find him not guilty of sexual assault. Sting, Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana and More Unite to Celebrate the Release of Narada Michael Waldens 18th Solo Album IMMORTALITY Because hes such a great musician, he attracts the best simple law of attraction - Sting On Saturday, September 19 at 7PM PT/10PM ET, three generations of legendary artists will unite to celebrate the release of Narada Michael Waldens 18th solo album, IMMORTALITY on Quarto Valley Records (QVR). Presented by Laudable Productions, the livestream event features a lineup of conversations with Sting, Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, Billy Amendola, Larry Batiste, and others who reflect on their long-standing relationships with Narada. Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/c/OfficialNarada and https://www.facebook.com/NaradaMichaelWalden The event will air again on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 6 PM 7:30 PM Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/DOiocTHJZwI The virtual retrospective will give viewers a behind the scenes look at his expansive career as a drummer and producer, earning multiple GRAMMY Awards for his work with legends such as Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Clarence Clemmons and Whitney Houston, just to name a few. The livestreaming event also incorporates the premiere of a new music video We Can Live Forever, the lead-off track from IMMORTALITY, and a reprise of Naradas COVID-era collaboration with John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana and Cindy Blackman. Broadcast partners include DW Drums, PAiSTe, Modern Drummer Magazine, and Quarto Valley Records. The superb musicianship and masterful production of IMMORTALITY are fueled at every beat by Naradas abundance of amazing energy. He is a true artist, in a class by himself, said QVR President & CEO, Bruce Quarto. Multiple GRAMMY and Emmy-winning Narada Michael Walden released his dynamic new solo album, IMMORTALITY, on August 7, 2020 via Quarto Valley Records. Before he became a mega-successful producer with hits constantly dominating the pop and R&B charts, Walden burst on the music scene as a virtuoso drummer with the groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra. Soon after, his impeccable rhythmic chops and inveterate creativity made him a first-call drummer and collaborator for other instrumental heavyweights such as Jeff Beck, Tommy Bolin, Joe Zawinul, and Weather Report. IMMORTALITY is an album for that part of my fan base, Walden explains. I love pop music, but I come from a world in which we mix it all up together jazz, rock, pop, funk, soul and R&B. Thats what fusion is all about. A lot of my early fans still want to hear me stretch out and fly, so this record is me drumming and singing and putting my heart out to them. People can hear the love thats inside of me when they listen to this record. Walden, who plays both drums and keyboards on IMMORTALITY, produced and recorded the album at his own Tarpan Studios in San Rafael, California, with his longtime engineer, Jim Reitzel, and his astonishingly gifted band Thunder (keyboardist Frank Martin, bassist Angeline Saris and guitarist Matthew Charles Heulitt). IMMORTALITY makes good on Waldens goal of making a killer jazz-fusion/progressive-rock record, but its also an album that was made to be performed live. I was always thinking, Were going to take this music out to the people, he says. Im looking forward to playing with the band in the spring. Its going to be a love fest. My thing has always been to shake, rattle and roll with good spirits and electricity. I cant wait to get out there, play my drums and bring good times to all of my fans. Because hes such a great musician, he attracts the bestsimple law of attraction - Sting His whole purpose on this planet is to raise, uplift, and elevate consciousness. - Carlos Santana About Narada Michael Walden: Producing hits for artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin (including the platinum Freeway of Love.), Steve Winwood, Ray Charles, Wynonna Judd, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Mariah Carey, Barbara Streisand, Lionel Ritchie, Lisa Fischer, Stevie Wonder, Tom Jones, Jeff Beck and The Temptations, the Emmy and multi-GRAMMY winner (Producer, Album and Song of The Year) has been at the helm of hit music that spans decades. His music flows freely from pop, rock and soul, to the rarified realms of jazz, fusion and world music. Walden was an integral part of introducing Whitney Houston (producing six of her seven #1 hits to break Michael Jacksons record) and mega-star Mariah Carey to millions of fans worldwide, producing and writing the breakthrough hits that first brought these divas to the spotlight. Billboard Magazine honored him as one of the Top Ten Producers of all time. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NaradaMichaelWalden Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TarpanStudios http://www.naradamichaelwalden.com/ About Laudable Productions: The broadcast is produced by Laudable Productions, a creative agency that is pioneering new ways for artists and audiences to connect during the pandemic. Recent projects include Sweet Honey In the Rocks Juneteenth | A Remembrance, which was streamed live from the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC; Women Take The Stage, star studded celebration marking the passage of the 19th amendment; and The Cocker Power Spectacular, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Joe Cockers legendary Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. About Quarto Valley Records: Founded by tech entrepreneur Bruce Quarto, California-based independent label Quarto Valley Records represents diverse genres with an impressive roster of existing and upcoming releases featuring legacy artists and emerging talent including Paul Rodgers, Savoy Brown, Edgar Winter, Narada Michael Walden, The Immediate Family, Richard T. Bear, Deborah Bonham, Denny Seiwell and Dominic Quarto. Facebook: https://facebook.com/quartovalleyrecords Twitter: https://twitter.com/quartovalley Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quartovalleyrecords/ https://quartovalleyrecords.com/ Media Contact: Michael Jensen and Erin Cook, Jensen Communications, 626-585-9575, erin@jensencom.com Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Chile Sebastian Pinera Echenique. Dear Mr. President, it is on the occasion of the 210th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Chile that on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan I wish to cordially congratulate you and through you, your people, the Azerbaijani president said. On this pleasant day, I wish strong health and success to you, and peace and prosperity to the friendly people of Chile, President Aliyev said. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Lee Min-hyung Jonathan Oh, CEO at BNP Paribas Cardif Life Insurance HSIL said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 21 September 2020, to consider, the proposal of buyback of the fully paid-up equity shares of the company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 16 September 2020. Shares of HSIL rose 3.51% to settle at Rs 67.85 yesterday. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 71.35 on 16 September 2020. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 34.70 on 25 March 2020. HSIL offers sanitaryware, faucets and glass bottles. The company's segments include building products division and packaging products division. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A growing chorus of lawmakers wants to know why the Trump administration says Egypts ex-prime minister should be immune from prosecution in a lawsuit brought by a US citizen accusing him of torture. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he was "shocked to learn" that the State Department had taken the grave step of attempting to immunize from accountability state-sanctioned torture when, at the request of the Egyptian government, it certified the immunity of former interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi. I am deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding this issuance and the impact it will have on an ongoing legal matter, said Connolly, chair of the House subcommittee overseeing government operations, in the letter obtained by Al-Monitor. The lawsuit in question was filed by Mohamed Soltan, a Virginia-based human rights activist who says Beblawidirected the brutal torture he endured as a political prisoner in Cairo between 2013 and 2015. Soltan is suing Beblawi in the US District Court in the District of Columbia under the Torture Victim Protection Act, a US law that makes it possible for victims of state-sponsored torture to file civil suits against the foreign officials deemed responsible. Why it matters: Beblawi, who now works at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, wants the case dismissed. In court filings, his lawyers have said the lawsuit could compromise the US-Egypt relationship and pose a threat to significant long-standing policy interests. His legal team has also argued Beblawi should be immune from liability in the suit. The State Department indicated as much in a July letter to Beblawi's defense, writing that its records show the former prime minister holds the title of principal resident representative and is therefore entitled to "the same privileges and immunities as are accorded to diplomatic envoys." Questions mount: In his letter to Pompeo, Connolly points out that the State Department declared Beblawi immune despite warnings from human rights groups that Cairo was retaliating against Soltans family in an attempt to silence him. Egyptian security forces arrested his cousins during overnight raids on their homes in June, and Soltans father, a US green card holder, was moved from his prison cell to an undisclosed location where he hasnt been heard from since. Given the apparent reprisals, Connolly has asked whether the State Department ever considered denying Egypts request to certify Beblawi as a "principal resident representative" or revoking it once it was offered. Hes also seeking more information on when the United States first granted the status and under what circumstances. Growing pressure: Connolly joins a number of lawmakers who have raised Soltans case with the State Department. In a letter last month, 40 House members called on Pompeo to hold Egypt accountable over its targeting of US citizens and others with close ties to Americans, including Soltans family. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is also seeking more information on how Beblawis immunity certification came together. Hes asked the State Department for a copy of the notice that Egypt sent the US government regarding Beblawi's position when he was named to the IMF board in 2014. Know more: Get up to speed on Soltans lawsuit, and read more from Elizabeth Hagedorn on how Congress is weighing Egypt-US relations in light of the governments ongoing human rights crackdown. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 03:49:05|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BANJUL, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Gambian President Adama Barrow told lawmakers on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic has left a devastating impact on the growth of the national economy in 2020, indicating that the GDP growth could decline from 6 percent to 2 percent in 2020. The president was delivering his mandatory annual state of the nation's address in Banjul, where he also blamed COVID-19 for slowed implementation of several development plans earmarked for this year. "The Gambia has been experiencing a slowdown of economic growth due to the reduction of economic activities, as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. An initial analysis shows that GDP growth rates this year could decline from six percent to two percent," he said. The president said the decline in import volumes and economic activities will correspondingly lead to shortfalls in import duties and other tax revenues. "Based on the current situation, an estimated twenty percent of expected revenue will be lost," he disclosed. According to him, the total estimated fiscal impact from the decline in import duties and other tax revenues is 2.3 billion Dalasis (about 44 millions U.S. dollars). Enditem A 24-year-old Boston man accused of pinning an officer between two cars during a traffic stop in Roxbury on Thursday was found with a loaded gun and dozens of oxycodone pills, police said. The initial traffic stop and subsequent violent altercation at 51 Regent St. led to one arrest and the injury of an officer, who was taken to the hospital with wounds that were not considered life-threatening, according to officials. While on patrol near Moreland Street at 1:48 a.m., officers spotted a gray Toyota Avalon with a broken tail light on the drivers side. The car also did not have a valid inspection sticker, the Boston Police Department said in a statement. Officers tailed the Toyota from the intersection of Warren and Moreland streets and activated their cruisers lights and sirens to pull the driver over, according to the statement. The operator continued down Regent Street, though, without slowing down or pulling to the side of the road, the statement said. Police followed the Toyota until it pulled into a driveway next to 57 Regent St. Officers quickly exited their cruiser and approached the driver inside the car, according to authorities. The officers explained to the driver, who was later identified as Tarique Hokett Richardson, why he was being stopped, which was for the broken tail light, police said. The 24-year-old man is accused of arguing with the officers and refusing to acknowledge the validity of the stop, according to the Boston Police Department. At this time, officers ordered the operator out of the vehicle as he was being taken into custody for failing to stop for police, the department said. The male in turn refused to comply with the officers commands and reached down to the shifter in an attempt to put the vehicle into reverse. Law enforcement claimed a back-and-forth ensued between the driver and the officer at the door of the Toyota. The policeman tried to stop Richardson from reversing his car, and the Boston man allegedly deflected him. Richard is accused of then shifting his car into the neutral position. The officer tried to reach into the car again to place it into the park position, but the suspect kept using his left arm to block the policeman, according to authorities. After successfully shifting his car into reverse, it is suspected that Richard immediately accelerated the Toyota with the officer trapped between the car door and the frame of the Toyota, police said. The suspect continue to block the officer from stopping the car or escaping to a place of safety, according to law enforcement. The driver eventually crashed into the front end of the officers' cruiser, dragging the policeman who was stuck on the car door for several feet and pinning him between the Toyota and the cruiser, authorities said. The Roxbury man is accused of crashing into another parked car as he attempted to evade the officers, according to the police department. The suspect continued to reverse onto the lawn in an effort to turn back onto Regent Street from the parking lot, but he eventually crashed into a tree, the department said. The suspect exited the vehicle and attempted to flee, but both the injured officer and his partner gave chase. Officers eventually caught up to the suspect and violently struggled with him. Richardson, police claimed, actively resisted arrest and kept reaching toward his waistband. More officers responded to the scene and were eventually able to handcuff him. Once the suspect was taken into custody, police approached the Toyota and found a loaded Springfield Armory XD-40 handgun on the ground next to the open drivers door, according to officials. Authorities also discovered a pill bottle containing 51 white pills believed to be oxycodone, law enforcement said. Richardson is expected to be arraigned in Roxbury District Court at a later date. Among his charges are assault to murder or maim, unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, failure to stop for police and possession with intent to distribute oxycodone, according to police. Related Content: Boston police officer injured, person arrested during traffic stop in Roxbury Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced a new plan to expand the United States Navy in order to meet a growing threat from China Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced Wednesday an ambitious plan to expand the US Navy with a range of unmanned and autonomous ships, submarines and aircraft to confront the growing maritime challenge from China. The Pentagon chief said a sweeping review of US naval power dubbed 'Future Forward' had laid out a 'game-changer' plan that would expand the US sea fleet to more than 355 ships, from the current 293. The plan, which requires adding tens of billions of dollars to the US Navy's budget between now and 2045, is aimed at maintaining superiority over Chinese naval forces, seen as the primary threat to the United States. 'The future fleet will be more balanced in its ability to deliver lethal effects from the air, from the sea, and from under the sea,' Esper said in a speech at the Rand Corp. in California. The expansion will add 'more and smaller' surface ships; more submarines; surface and subsurface vessels that are optionally manned, unmanned and autonomous; and a broad range of unmanned carrier-based aircraft. The plan is for a fleet of ships more able to survive a high-intensity conflict, to project US power and presence, and to deliver precision strikes at very long distances, he said. The plan calls for expanding the Navy's fleet of ships from its current number - 293 - to 355. The image above shows the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in July An example, Esper added, is a new guided missile frigate program, producing ships with 'increased lethality, survivability, capability and capacity to conduct distributed warfare.' He also said trials were underway on the Sea Hunter, a 132-feet trimaran drone that can autonomously survey the seas for rival submarines for more than two months at a time. 'These efforts are the next step in realizing our future fleet, one in which unmanned systems perform a variety of warfighting functions, from delivering lethal fire and laying mines, to conducting resupply or surveilling the enemy,' Esper said. 'This will be a major shift in how we will conduct naval warfare in the years and decades to come.' Esper reiterated that China is the top US security threat and that the Indo-Pacific region is the 'priority theater' for the US military. 'Not only is this region important because it is a hub of global trade and commerce, it is also the epicenter of great power competition with China,' he said. A Pentagon report on the People's Liberation Army released early this month said that Beijing has the world's largest naval fleet with 350 ships and submarines. Esper reiterated that China is the top US security threat and that the Indo-Pacific region is the 'priority theater' for the US military. The stock image above shows enlistees in the Chinese military Still, Esper stressed, the Chinese navy lags in strength and capability. 'Even if we stopped building new ships, it would take the PRC years to match our capability on the high seas.' Esper said reaching the goal of 355 ships means the navy will have to grab a larger percent of the Pentagon budget, but also that the United States has to put more resources into expanding and modernizing shipyards, where China has a clear advantage. More than 50 years after becoming an independent nation, Barbados is set to remove the Queen as its head of state. Other than the UK, there are 15 countries where the Queen is head of state, known as commonwealth realms. From next year that number will be down to 14. Barbados isnt the first Caribbean island to remove the Queen as head of state. In 1970, Guyana took the step. Then in 1976, Trinidad and Tobago followed suit and in 1978, Dominica did the same. The question now is whether Barbados decision will trigger another chain reaction in the remaining realms. Melissa Murray, professor of law at New York University, told Yahoo UK that she believes: it will likely spur other Commonwealth realms to reconsider whether they wish to retain the Queen as head of state. The Jamaican government has indicated that becoming a republic is a priority, so perhaps this move from Barbados will prompt action on this front elsewhere in the Caribbean, she added. Queen Elizabeth II in Jamaica in February 1983. (Avalon/Getty Images) Jamaicas politicians have been talking about removing the Queen for some time, but the nations complicated constitution has stopped it happening so far. According to University College London (UCL): In Jamaica successive prime ministers have long advocated that Jamaica should become a republic, and several have committed to achieving that. Both major parties want Jamaica to become a republic. The difficulty lies in the Jamaican constitution, which has very high thresholds for constitutional change: two thirds majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and any change to the monarchy must also be submitted to referendum. Back in 2012, Brian Meeks, who was then a professor of social and political change at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, told Time Magazine: The Queens our head of state, but we still need a visa to visit her and thats one of the many underlying incongruities pushing us toward a republic. Britain also occupies a different place in the mind for countries like Jamaica, where slavery was part of colonialism, than it does for countries like Canada or Australia. Story continues The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh during one of their royal visits to Australia. (PA Images) In 2003 and 2010, Jamaicas respective leaders, PJ Patterson and Bruce Golding, both spoke about replacing the Queen as head of state with a home-grown president. And in 2012, just hours after saying she would hold a referendum on the Queen being head of state, then prime minister Portia Simpson Miller was pictured hugging Prince Harry during his royal visit to the island, revealing the complicated nature of the islands relationship with the crown. St Vincent and the Grenadines rejected the idea of removing the Queen as head of state in a 2009 referendum. Away from the Caribbean, Australia has a history of republican sentiment, though a referendum held in 1999 to remove the Queen as head of state was lost by the republicans, at 55% to 45%. UCL explained that when Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister: In 2016 [Turnbull] said the issue would be raised again after the Queen's death; but republicans would need first to decide whether the new head of state should be directly elected by the people, or selected by Parliament (divisions on this issue led to defeat in the 1999 referendum). Sandy Biar, national director of the Australian Republic Movement, thinks his cause is gaining momentum. As the governor-general of Barbados Dame Sandra Mason said: This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving' and the same could be said for Australia, he told Yahoo UK. Its time we had our independence from the British Monarchy too. The head of Australia should be someone who puts the Australian people and our national interests first. Its what every self-respecting and independent nation deserves to have. In recent years the push towards Australia having a head of state that represents Australians and is chosen by Australians has been gaining momentum. There are now more people engaged in the campaign than at any time since the last referendum, and opinion polls are showing overwhelmingly that Australians want this change to happen. Prince Harry embraces the then-prime minister of Jamaica Portia Simpson Miller in 2012, hours after she promised another referendum on the matter of the monarchy. (PA Images) In July 2020, a YouGov poll of 4,500 Australians found 62% wanted an Australian head of state. Of that poll, Australian Republic Movement (ARM) chairman Peter FitzSimons said: Since I have been involved with the ARM, which goes back two decades now, the traditional magic number has been 60% - as in the politicians have said to us, Get it over 60% and you will have a strong enough backing that we might back you. But the Australian Monarchist League (AML) criticised the poll as warped and said in a statement: The inference in the question was that we are somehow a vassal of the United Kingdom, which we are most definitely not. We find that the emphasis in the question is misleading and would corrupt any response. The statement continued: The plain fact is that our system of constitutional monarchy works because we have checks and balances which cannot be replicated in any republic where most are totally controlled by politicians and big-business. Therefore, becoming a republic would be a retrograde step for Australia. A poll commissioned by the Jamaica Observer in August found that 55% of Jamaicans thought the Queen should be removed as head of state. While that may not seem like overwhelming support for her removal, only 30% said she should continue in the role. There have not been any immediate copycat announcements by the remaining Commonwealth realms, which include Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu and Canada. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:07:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The State Council, China's cabinet, on Thursday decided to further streamline government administration and improve services. It also specified measures to support the country's state-owned and private firms, according to a statement issued after a State Council executive meeting, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang. The country will facilitate the inter-provincial handling of frequently-processed administrative items, such as the registration of market entities and applications for social security cards, according to the statement. The meeting also decided to simplify the procedures for residents and small companies to get electricity. The country will support the development of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as well as private companies. SOEs will be relieved the burden of offering social services and encouraged to strengthen major innovations, while more areas will be open to private companies, the statement said. Enditem 09/17/2020 Photo (c) Jorge Villalba - Getty Images Students who attended the college chain ITT Tech, which went bankrupt in 2016, will have their student debt forgiven under a nationwide settlement. This week, the attorneys general of almost all 50 states and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a settlement that will wipe out a collective $330 million in debt for the 35,000 students who attended the school and still have outstanding balances. The now-defunct school imposed high-interest loan payments through private lender PEAKS Trust, and these debts have continued to affect the credit scores of former students. "The default rate on the PEAKS loans is projected to exceed 80%, due to both the high cost of the loans as well as the lack of success ITT graduates had getting jobs that earned enough to make repayment feasible," the Ohio Attorney General's office said in a statement. "The defaulted loans continue to affect students credit ratings and are usually not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Deceptive practices In a complaint filed by the CFPB, government prosecutors said ITT knew borrowers would be unable to repay the high-interest loans. In some cases, the loans were signed by ITT employees without the borrowers knowledge or permission. Their tactics were wild, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey wrote on Twitter. ITT offered students temporary credit upon enrollment to be repaid the next year. When some students couldn't pay, ITT allegedly pulled them out of class and threatened to expel them if they did not refinance their debt with a high-interest PEAKS loan." Former students don't need to take any action to have their ITT debt erased; PEAKS will send students a notice. Students with questions for PEAKS can email the company at customerservice@peaksloans.com or call 866-747-0273. The Western-funded non-governmental organizations voiced earlier this week serious concerns over two of those justices nominated by Pashinians government and a national convention of judges, saying that they were linked to Armenias former leadership. One of them, Yervand Khundkarian, has headed the Court of Cassation for the last two years while the other, Edgar Shatirian, taught law at a university. Some civic activists claim that their election on Tuesday by the Armenian parliament controlled by the ruling My Step bloc constituted a betrayal of the goals of the 2018 Velvet Revolution that brought Pashinian to power. The prime minister blasted the critics when he spoke in the National Assembly on Wednesday. He charged that they are primarily concerned with their own parochial interests, rather than the rule of law. He also said they cannot act like ardent defenders of the revolutions values because they played no part in the popular uprising in the first place. Daniel Ioannisian of the Union of Informed Citizens challenged Pashinian to name names instead of talking abstractly about everyone. Ioannisian said he and other disgruntled activists have a moral right to speak up on the matter because of their history of human rights advocacy in the country. Besides, he said, many of Pashinians own loyalists used to work for the former regime or did not participate in the revolution for other reasons. Even if some group wanted to see some people join the Constitutional Court, whats wrong with that? said Levon Barseghian, the head of the Gyumri-based Asparez Journalists Club. Barseghian insisted that Pashinians administration made bad decisions regarding the new Constitutional Court members. The constitutional crisis in the country has not been solved, he said. The crisis was not about replacing three judges. At issue are radical reforms, including a reform of the Constitutional Court. For more than a year, Pashinian was locked in a standoff with seven of the nine Constitutional Court judges installed before the revolution. He pressured them to resign, accusing them of maintaining close ties to the countrys corrupt former rulers and impeding his judicial reforms. Three of those judges were controversially ousted as a result of constitutional amendments enacted by the current authorities in June. The amendments also required Hrayr Tovmasian to quit as court chairman but remain a judge. Tovmasian and the ousted judges refused to step down, saying that their removal is illegal and politically motivated. They appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to have them reinstated. With a price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 16.4x Textainer Group Holdings Limited (NYSE:TGH) may be sending bullish signals at the moment, given that almost half of all companies in the United States have P/E ratios greater than 19x and even P/E's higher than 37x are not unusual. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the reduced P/E. Textainer Group Holdings certainly has been doing a good job lately as its earnings growth has been positive while most other companies have been seeing their earnings go backwards. It might be that many expect the strong earnings performance to degrade substantially, possibly more than the market, which has repressed the P/E. If not, then existing shareholders have reason to be quite optimistic about the future direction of the share price. View our latest analysis for Textainer Group Holdings pe If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report on Textainer Group Holdings. What Are Growth Metrics Telling Us About The Low P/E? The only time you'd be truly comfortable seeing a P/E as low as Textainer Group Holdings' is when the company's growth is on track to lag the market. Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 65% gain to the company's bottom line. Although, its longer-term performance hasn't been as strong with three-year EPS growth being relatively non-existent overall. Therefore, it's fair to say that earnings growth has been inconsistent recently for the company. Shifting to the future, estimates from the lone analyst covering the company suggest earnings should grow by 18% per annum over the next three years. With the market only predicted to deliver 13% per annum, the company is positioned for a stronger earnings result. With this information, we find it odd that Textainer Group Holdings is trading at a P/E lower than the market. Apparently some shareholders are doubtful of the forecasts and have been accepting significantly lower selling prices. Story continues What We Can Learn From Textainer Group Holdings' P/E? It's argued the price-to-earnings ratio is an inferior measure of value within certain industries, but it can be a powerful business sentiment indicator. Our examination of Textainer Group Holdings' analyst forecasts revealed that its superior earnings outlook isn't contributing to its P/E anywhere near as much as we would have predicted. When we see a strong earnings outlook with faster-than-market growth, we assume potential risks are what might be placing significant pressure on the P/E ratio. It appears many are indeed anticipating earnings instability, because these conditions should normally provide a boost to the share price. And what about other risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Textainer Group Holdings (of which 1 can't be ignored!) you should know about. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with a strong growth track record, trading on a P/E below 20x. 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. [September 17, 2020] Ntirety Launches NetNation, A Secure White Label Web Applications and Solutions Provider AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ntirety , a leading global managed services provider for highly secure multi-cloud solutions, today announced the launch of NetNation , a web service solutions provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) specializing in white-labeled delivery models. NetNation offers its services through a diverse portfolio of retail brands, including Hostway, Gate.com, MyHosting.com, HostMySite, and DomainPeople, and via private label capabilities, serving as the white-label SMB web service provider for some of the most well-known business-to-business (B2B) SMB brands in the world. "The launch of NetNation is a natural progression for Ntirety," said Emil Sayegh, CEO and President, Ntirety. "We are equipped with an already-established, highly experienced team, and the most advanced white-label integration capabilities in the web services industry. The launch of NetNation allows us to shine a light on our security portfolio and our established partner capabilities as a top white-label web services provider for B2B brands." Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada, NetNation's tagline of Serving the Brands that Serve Small Business reflects their commitment to serve B2B companies, enabling them to: Expand their SMB value-added solutions portfolio Get new products to market faster Increase average revenue per customer Increase customer stickiness Save on overhead Increase customer loyalty "Our mission is to deliver the products, tools, and services that SMBs need to thrive securely on the web," said John Enright, President, NetNation. "Services such as email, domain names, websites, managed security, and hosted applications are more critical than ever as SMBs strive to acquire and service their clients remotely. We specialize in working with large B2B service providers to make it easy and secure for them to integrate and sell these solutions, thereby making it easier for SMBs to obtain the solutions they need from brands they trust." NetNation helps B2B providers overcome one of the key hurdles to offering business email, web, and application solutions: the complexity ad overhead required to develop, maintain, and support them. Working closely with each client to understand their unique customer profile, technology stack, and delivery model, NetNation designs secure custom solution sets and seamlessly integrates the customer experience with partners' existing platforms. Once the solution is deployed, NetNation also handles sales enablement, order fulfillment, customer support and service management all on a completely private-labeled basis. NetNation's extensive portfolio of white-label services include: Platform and Service Migrations: The ability to move services or applications from any source to any destination with minimal customer disruption. The ability to move services or applications from any source to any destination with minimal customer disruption. Service and Customer Experience Design: The ability to design and power exceptional user experiences that integrate seamlessly within existing portals, marketplaces and account management platforms. The ability to design and power exceptional user experiences that integrate seamlessly within existing portals, marketplaces and account management platforms. Risk Mitigation, Service Operation and Management: The delivery of a superior level of security, availability and reliability removes the overhead and risk associated with maintaining web services and applications for B2Bs. With two decades of experience managing large scale web services platforms, NetNation detects and resolves issues and threats before impacting customers. The delivery of a superior level of security, availability and reliability removes the overhead and risk associated with maintaining web services and applications for B2Bs. With two decades of experience managing large scale web services platforms, NetNation detects and resolves issues and threats before impacting customers. Service Delivery and Integration: The ability to integrate provisioning and service management workflows within existing billing and account management systems and create turn-key service delivery solutions for startups. The ability to integrate provisioning and service management workflows within existing billing and account management systems and create turn-key service delivery solutions for startups. Support Services: The resolution of customer issues in real-time during first contact, transforming customer engagements into a positive experience. The resolution of customer issues in real-time during first contact, transforming customer engagements into a positive experience. Go-To-Market Strategies and Assistance: KPI-centric go-to-market expertise on product positioning, bundling, pricing, market segmentation, road mapping, sales and marketing, and execution. "B2B service providers must offer critical services such as websites, domains and email to their clients, or risk losing them to competitors. But it is not easy to build and scale those services internally," said Philbert Shih, Managing Director, Structure Research. "The NetNation team has built these capabilities and has an established history of delivering these services to large telecommunication (telcos) and cable companies (cablecos), helping integrate with existing systems and manage operational overhead." NetNation is currently available to B2B-focused businesses throughout the United States and Canada. The company now serves more than 500,000 businesses through its retail brands and channel partners. "NetNation has been a valuable partner of Comcast's for over ten (10) years," said John Guillaume, Chief Design Officer, Comcast Business. "NetNation's suite of business web services such as domains and web site hosting are simple to use, and affordable for our SMB customers." ABOUT NETNATION NetNation is a leading provider of white-label web service solutions for small business service providers across North America, allowing brands to expand their solutions portfolio, get new products to market faster, and increase their average revenue per customer. In addition to our white-label web service offerings, we manage a family of retail brands, collectively serving 125,000+ small business end-users worldwide. With main offices in the United States, Canada, and Europe, we employ more than 200 full-time employees across the globe. For more information, visit www.netnation.com . ABOUT NTIRETY Ntirety is the only Managed Solutions Provider for multi-cloud solutions with guaranteed business outcomes. Our solutions enable a future-ready, agile enterprise backed by the industry's first and only Guidance Level Agreements (GLAs): actionable insights that improve mission-critical application availability, performance, security and cost. Our engineers in North America, Europe, and Asia deliver solutions that shift tactical Enterprise IT operations to business transformation for thousands of global customers. With fourteen data centers around the world, Ntirety also ensures strict compliance to PCI, HITRUST, HIPAA, FERPA, and GDPR guidelines and regulations. For more information, visit www.ntirety.com . View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ntirety-launches-netnation-a-secure-white-label-web-applications-and-solutions-provider-301133154.html SOURCE Ntirety [ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ] An aspiring model was arrested by police after she was kicked out of her first professional shoot after ten minutes for drinking half a bottle of vodka to calm her nerves. Amy Enright, 25, was given vouchers to take part in a modelling shoot at an unnamed Manchester photography studio in Manchester's Northern Quarter on August 5. But after arriving at the studio at 10.20am, Enright became so 'overwhelmed' that she began drinking vodka in the dressing room whilst she was getting ready, Manchester magistrates court heard. Staff kicked Enright out of the studio after ten minutes for being intoxicated and then called the police because they were concerned about the welfare of an unnamed child who was in Enright's care. Police officers questioned Enright, who was said to be slurring her words, in Stevenson Square after she had left the studio and arrested her for being drunk in charge of a child. Amy Enright, 25, was arrested at an unnamed studio in Manchester's Northern Quarter just after 10am on August 5 after drinking half a bottle of vodka to calm her nerves Enright was asked to leave after 10 minutes because she was so intoxicated that the stylist was unable to do her hair and makeup, Manchester magistrates court heard The court heard that Enright had become so intoxicated while at the studio that the stylist was unable to do her hair and makeup and she was struggling to sit upright for photos. Enright could barely string a sentence together when she was questioned by officers and gave letters instead of numbers when she was asked for her phone number. The 25-year-old first told officers that her last drink was at 1am but, when she was asked again, she said she had drunk at around 6 or 7am. Officers found half a bottle of vodka when searching her bag. Enright later claimed that she 'rarely leaves home' due to an anxiety condition and admitted to drinking half a bottle of vodka since breakfast on that day. The unnamed child she was looking after was taken to relatives. Enright, who lives with her parents in Sale near Altrincham, sobbed in court and admitted to being drunk in charge of a child. The 25-year-old was fined 120 and ordered to pay 119 in costs and surcharges. The aspiring model, who is currently on furlough from an undisclosed part time job, regularly posts selfies on Facebook and has 1,300 followers on her Instagram page. Prosecutor Peter Conoray said: 'When she arrived at 10.20am she initially appeared to be okay and did not smell of alcohol or appear intoxicated at all. But from the point that she sat down to get prepared for the shoot, she was asking to go in and out of the private changing room.' Enright claimed she 'rarely leaves home' due to an anxiety condition and panic attacks, and had drunk half a bottle of vodka since breakfast Mr Conoray added that after being asked to leave, Enright returned a couple of minutes later because she had forgotten some of her belongings. He said: 'Workers contacted the police as they were concerned for the welfare of the child. 'Police attended and saw the defendant and straight away on the first indication could see she was very unsteady and seemed to be confused as to why the police wanted to speak.' Mr Conoray told the court that Enright had 'pointed in the complete opposite direction to where the studio was' when officers asked her where she had been. In mitigation defence lawyer Karl Benson said: 'The defendant rarely leaves her house and has recently separated from her partner. She was given a voucher for a photo studio to have some photos taken but she didn't feel she would be able to leave the house to go to the place and unfortunately drank before. She went to the appointment and was taken by her mother who took her in the car.' Mr Benson added that the 'defendant is not an alcoholic and does not drink every day', arguing that she had on this occasion because she did not 'feel capable' of going to the studio. Enright (left and right), who lives with her parents in Sale near Altrincham, admitted to being drunk in charge of a child. She was fined 120 and ordered to pay 119 in costs and surcharges He said: 'She's very introverted and has no friends and doesn't go out and she made a mistake by having alcohol. 'She feels so much shame and she can't express she's so remorseful for that. She has been having dreams in regards to her biggest concern which is the reporting of this matter and it being out there and local people would look at her and that has caused her some distress.' Mr Benson told the court that Enright has social anxiety disorder, extreme anxiety and panic attacks, describing her as a 'very vulnerable young lady' who is eager to get help. JP Larry Collier told Enright: 'This was a relatively serious offence. The police described you as being very unsteady on your feet and confused and smelling of alcohol which indicated to us that you were drunk. 'I'm not going to go into a lecture but you do have a duty of care when you are with a child and you have failed in that duty.' Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 23:27:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NAIROBI, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Kenya has lost 16 healthcare workers to COVID-19 while 945 have contracted the virus since mid-March when the first positive case was reported in the country, health officials said on Thursday. Mercy Mwangangi, chief administrative secretary in the Ministry of Health, said that healthcare workers have grappled with higher risk of contracting the coronavirus while in the line of duty. "During the response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the health workers have faced several challenges specific to the pandemic," Mwangangi said at a briefing in Nairobi. They include infections, violence, stigma, psychological and emotional disturbances, illness and even death. This in essence makes health workers' safety a critical matter in our health service, she added. Mwangangi spoke during a daily COVID-19 briefing that coincided with marking of this year's World Patient Safety Day whose theme was "Health Workers Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety". She said the government appreciates the contribution of healthcare workers on the frontline of combating a pandemic that has impacted negatively on livelihoods. "Without the invaluable support of our health workers, who are our frontline soldiers, we could not have managed to deal with this virus, in the manner in which we have done so far," said Mwangangi. She said that healthcare workers have also been exposed to other infectious diseases like Hepatitis B, Tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS while taking care of COVID-19 patients. Mwangangi said the government has prioritized the provision of personal protective equipment (PPEs) to ensure that healthcare workers have a negligible chance of contracting the virus. "Their mental well-being is taken care of, by dedicating psychosocial counselors and psychologists among others to take care of them during these stressful moments, "said Mwangangi. She said the ministry of health has developed a comprehensive policy to promote safety of doctors and nurses on the frontline of fighting infectious diseases. Meanwhile, Kenya's total COVID-19 caseload reached 36,576 after 183 patients turned positive to the virus out of a sample size of 4,188 that was tested in the last 24 hours. Among the patients who tested positive included a seven-month-old infant and an 80-year-old elder, while the capital Nairobi and the second and third-tier cities of Mombasa and Kisumu carried the bulk of caseload. The national recovery tally hit 23,611 after 82 patients including 33 domiciled in home-based care programs and 49 who were admitted in healthcare facilities were declared free from coronavirus. Kenya's COVID-19 death toll reached 642 after five patients succumbed to the disease. Enditem The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it has charged five Chinese residents and two Malaysian businessmen in a wide-ranging hacking effort that encompassed targets from video games to pro-democracy activists. Federal prosecutors said the Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking more than 100 companies in the United States and abroad, including software development companies, computer manufacturers, telecommunications providers, social media companies, gaming firms, nonprofits, universities, think-tanks as well as foreign governments and politicians and civil society figures in Hong Kong. U.S. officials stopped short of alleging the hackers were working on behalf of Beijing, but in a statement Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen expressed exasperation with Chinese authorities, saying they were at the very least turning a blind eye to cyber-espionage. We know the Chinese authorities to be at least as able as the law enforcement authorities here and in likeminded states to enforce laws against computer intrusions, Rosen said. But they choose not to. He further alleged that one of the Chinese defendants had boasted to a colleague that he was very close to Chinas Ministry of State Security and would be protected unless something very big happens. No responsible government knowingly shelters cyber criminals that target victims worldwide in acts of rank theft, Rosen said. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Beijing has repeatedly denied responsibility for hacking in the face of a mounting pile of indictments from U.S. authorities. Along with the alleged hackers, U.S. prosecutors also indicted two Malaysian businessmen, Wong Ong Hua, 46, and Ling Yang Ching, 32, who were charged with conspiring with two of the digital spies to profit from computer intrusions targeting videogame companies in the United States, France, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. The Justice Department said the pair operated through a Malaysian firm called SEA Gamer Mall, an online gaming store. SEA Gamer said in a statement it was aware of the allegations against their employees but denied that the company was involved in wrongdoing. Without compromising the integrity of any ongoing legal process, suffice to say that the company has never engaged in any illegal activity, it said, adding that it was cooperating with authorities. U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said on Wednesday that the Malaysian defendants were in custody but were likely to fight extradition. The Justice Department said it has obtained search warrants this month resulting in the seizure of hundreds of accounts, servers, domain names and dead drop Web pages used by the alleged hackers to help siphon data from their victims. The Department said Microsoft Corp. had developed measures to block the hackers and that the companys actions were a significant part of the overall U.S. effort to neutralize them. Microsoft acknowledged this in a statement that applauded government officials for taking action to protect our customers. (Reporting by David Shepardson, Susan Heavey, Raphael Satter and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang) Topics Cyber USA Abuse Molestation China Wellington (AP) New Zealands economy shrank by a record 12.2 per cent in the second quarter due to a strict coronavirus lockdown, but forecasts indicate activity is bouncing back. Statistics New Zealand released figures Thursday showing GDP had fallen far more than ever previously recorded and signaling the nation of 5 million people is officially in recession for the first time in 11 years. On an annual basis, GDP fell by 2 per cent. Economists said the decline will likely be followed by a record increase in economic activity during the third quarter as many businesses get back to work. And forecasts released by the Treasury this week predict unemployment will peak at 7.8 per cent, lower than earlier predictions of nearly 10 per cent. Many countries have seen large drops in economic activity due to the virus. When the second quarter began in April, New Zealand was in a full lockdown, which was gradually eased until all restrictions were lifted in June. The largest city Auckland temporarily reentered a lockdown last month due to a new outbreak of the virus, with the impact of that to be reflected in the third-quarter numbers. The second-quarter figures showed construction activity declined by 26 per cent, manufacturing fell by 13 per cent, and household spending was down by 12 per cent when compared with the previous quarter. Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr said there were few surprises in the numbers. You lock up the economy, activity falls, he said in a statement. The focus must now turn to the recovery. And the current quarter looks pretty good. Its the path we take over the next three years that needs attention. Kerr predicted GDP would jump by 10 per cent in the third quarter, but said more needs to be done over the medium term to return the nation to full employment. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the lockdown was necessary to save thousands of lives and get on top of the virus so the economy could bounce back faster. He said the fall in GDP was better than initial Treasury forecasts of a 16 per cent contraction. New Zealands government has pumped billions of dollars into the economy to sustain activity and minimize unemployment. As a result, net government debt is expected to shoot up from just over 20 per cent of GDP before the pandemic to 54 per cent of GDP by 2023. New Zealand continues to pursue a bold strategy of trying to eliminate the virus altogether rather than just contain its spread. It has reported just over 1,800 cases and 25 deaths.(AP) . 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 " " A wildlife care specialist at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park holds a four-month-old echidna baby or puggle. The puggle the first-ever to hatch at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park was estimated to have hatched on Feb. 14, 2020. Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Safari Park 1. They Dig for Their Food These guys eat ants, grubs and termites, so digging for food is key. Areas with loose topsoil work well, although these animals can plow through hard-packed dirt as well. "Once an echidna detects its prey," says Schwartz, "it uses its long, sharp claws and short, sturdy limbs to dig into the soil and expose the invertebrates." They also take advantage of a very strong sense of smell to locate their food underground or beneath wood or leaf litter, says Nicole Ellis, a pet expert and certified trainer with Rover.com. "It's believed that they use special cells in their nose that are sensitive to the electromagnetic signals of their preya sense usually associated with sharks," he says. "The unique sense is extremely advantageous when searching for colonies of insects." Advertisement 2. They Don't Have Teeth Instead, they use their sticky, slender, long tongue to catch their food. "Hard pads at the base of the tongue and on the roof of its mouth grind food into a paste for swallowing," says Schwartz. Interestingly enough, he adds, the taxonomic family name for echidnas, Tachyglossidae, means "fast tongue." 3. They're Named After the Greek Mother of Monsters In Greek mythology, Echidna was a half-woman, half-snake creature perceived to have qualities of both mammals and reptiles. She also was called the "mother of all monsters," because she birthed most of the mythical Greek creatures. 4. It's Hard to Tell Males and Females Apart You can't simply determine an echidna's gender by looking at it, says Schwartz. "They have no gender-specific features, and their reproductive organs are internal," he explains. "Both male and females are born with spurs (which typically indicates a male), while females are meant to lose the spurs as they mature. Mating, of course, can establish a male from a female and DNA blood sampling can determine sex." 5. They Are Endothermic That means they have the lowest body temperature of any mammal around 89.6 Farenheit (32 degrees Celsius). "Their long-life spans up to 50 years in managed settings are due to their low body temperature and slow metabolism," says Schwartz. "Echidnas can enter an inactive state known as torpor, which is used by many animals to help them conserve energy. When in torpor, echidnas reduce their metabolic rate and lower their body temperature." 6. They Host the World's Largest Flea The short-beaked echidna serves as a host to the echidna flea (bradiopsylla echidnae). It's thought to be the world's largest flea, reaching 0.5 inches (1.3 centimeters) in length. 7. Their Mating Ritual Is Odd Echidna breeding season is during July and August (winter in Australia), according to Schwartz. Now this is where it gets a little strange. "Male echidnas often line up behind a female, nose to tail, forming long trains, up to 10 echidnas long," he says. "These trains are the first part of the strange echidna courtship and mark the beginning of the breeding season. When the female is finally ready to mate, the males dig a trench in the ground around her. The males compete for mating honors by pushing each other out of the trench. The last one remaining gets to mate with the female. Male echidnas may also mate with hibernating females." 8. Males Have a Four-headed Penis "During sex, two of the heads shut down while the other two grow bigger to fit into the female's two-branched reproductive tract," says Schwartz. "Echidnas alternate which heads they use when mating with different partners to improve their chances of becoming a father." 9. Babies Are Called "Puggles" An adult female echidna usually lays a single, leathery egg once a year, according to Schwartz. "She rolls the newly laid egg, about the size of a grape, into a deep pocket (or pouch) on her belly to keep it safe," he says. "Ten days later, the baby echidna, called a puggle, hatches. It weighs only about half as much as a miniature marshmallow! The puggle uses its tiny, see-through claws to grip the special hairs within the mother's pouch. The mother does not have nipples the way other mammals do. Instead, the little puggle laps up milk that the mother's body secretes from special glands in her pouch. "Fortunately for the mother, the puggle does not yet have spines sticking out," adds Schwartz. "It remains in the pouch until its spines begin to break through its skin, at about 53 days. Then the mother puts the puggle into a burrow, where she returns to feed it every five to 10 days, until it is big enough to go out on its own at about seven months old." 10. Their Spines Are Actually Hair The spines made of keratin (or long, tough, hollow hair follicles) are an echidna's main line of defense when predators strike. "If an alarmed echidna can't run away or hide, it curls into a prickly ball to protect itself or digs itself to safety," says Schwartz. In addition to being covered in spines, echidnas also are clad in shorter fur to keep them warm. 11. Males Also Have Spurs "These are not venomous," says Schwartz. "Scientists have discovered that male echidnas use the spur on their hind leg to communicate with other echidnas, unlike the platypus, who use their leg spur as a weapon." 12. You Can Pick Up an Echidna, But Carefully! While you should never pick up or disturb a wild animal, says Schwartz, echidnas can be picked up, when necessary. "It is recommended to wear thick leather gloves when handling an echidna, to protect your hands from their spines," he says. Now That's Interesting The short-beaked echidna is common and well-protected in Australia, and it's even listed as a species of Least Concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Due to overhunting and habitat loss, however, long-beaked echidnas have experienced declines of at least 80 percent since the 1960s, and all long-beaked echidnas are listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. A top US diplomat landed in Taiwan Thursday, the highest-ranking State Department official to visit in 40 years, in a further sign of Washington's willingness to defy China and its campaign to isolate the self-ruled island. Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, will attend a memorial service for late president Lee Teng-hui on Saturday, the US State Department has announced. The trip, by the second highest-ranking US official to visit to the island since Health Secretary Alex Azar met with President Tsai Ing-wen on 10 August, triggered an angry response from Beijing. Krach's visit to bring misfortune to Taiwan reads an editorial in the Beijing-controlled Global Times. The US and the island of Taiwan continue to adopt the 'salami tactics' to expand the space for their ties, increasing US arms sales to the island, and attempting to force the Chinese mainland to swallow such a trend, according to the newspaper, which will lead to Taiwan's inhabitants being "plunged into misery. If that day comes, Taiwan authorities will be an unforgivable sinner for both the island and the rest of China. Inseparable part Beijing rejects any official recognition of Taiwan, where nationalist troops fled after the civil war that was won by Mao Zedong's Communist Party in 1949. Since then, Beijing systematically demands any country that wants to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China to recognise that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the mainland. As a result of aggressive lobbying, the number of countries that recognise Taiwan's diplomatic relations has dwindled to only 15, with Palau, Nauru, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu in the Pacific; Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is Taiwan's only diplomatic tie with Africa. Vatican City Taiwan's diplomatic stronghold is Latin America, with embassies in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Belize, Haiti, St. Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and Paraguay. The island's only tie with a western 'country' is the one with Vatican City, that has a centuries-old feud with Beijing over who is in charge of China's millions of Catholics. But Since 2016, the Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati have severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour of diplomatic relations with China. Most other countries have non-diplomatic Trade or Commercial offices, most of them manned by professional diplomats. Turning point Taiwan's increasing isolation started in 1979 when Washington switched ties from Taipei to Beijing a direct result of the visit by the US President Richard Nixon to China in 1972. Most other countries then followed. But the US issued the Taiwan Relations Act guaranteeing support to Taipei in case of an invasion by the mainland, and providing yearly arms sales to beef up Taiwan's military forces. In 2019, US Congress added the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (Taipei) Act which reiterates that the US ''conducts regular transfers of defense articles to Taiwan that are tailored to meet the existing and likely future threats from the People's Republic of China, and encourages the travel of high-level United States officials to Taiwan, in accordance with the Taiwan Travel Act''. Drones, mines and missiles Coinciding with the Krach visit, Reuters reported that the US pushes an arms sale surge to Taiwan, intending to sell seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones. This latest move contributed to an increasing hostility between Beijing and Washington, where ties were already strained by a trade war, US criticism of China's human rights violations in Xinjiang, Beijing's increasing influence in Hong Kong, China's aggressive expansion into the South China Sea while violating decrees issued by the International Court of Justice, accusations involving cyber spying and warfare, and US accusations that China is responsible for the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic. The Bharatiya Janata party and the Shiromani Akali Dal alliance has run into rough weather over the latters disapproval of the three farm bills being pushed by the government in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament. On Thursday, after SADs Harsimrat Kaur, who is a minister for food processing, announced her resignation from the Modi cabinet, the BJP remained tight lipped. However, a party leader said there is no threat to the alliance. The SAD, which clarified that it continues to be part of the NDA government, is opposed to the farm bill moved by the government, alleging that it is anti-farmer. Also Watch | Harsimrat Kaur resigns from Union Cabinet in protest against farm bills SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal on Thursday said that the farmers produce trade and commerce (promotion and facilitation) Bill 2020 and the farmers (empowerment and protection) agreement on price assurance and farm services Bill 2020 do not have the partys sanction. The third bill, the Essential Commodities (amendment) Bill 2020 has already been passed in Lok Sabha, though the SAD opposed that as well. A senior BJP functionary on condition of anonymity said the outstanding issues will be taken up and sought to downplay the differences that have cropped up between the allies. After the 2019 general election, this is the second time that the BJP has been drawn into a disagreement with an ally. Soon after the Maharashtra assembly election; the BJP fell out with its oldest ally, the Shiv Sena over power sharing in the state. At the time, Sena had demanded a rotational chief minister, but the BJP turned down the suggestion. Eventually, the two allies parted ways and the Sena joined hands with the Congress and the NCP to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government in the state. On Wednesday, BJP chief JP Nadda described the three bills as revolutionary, adding that this farsighted legislation will lead to empowerment of farmers. He said the farmers would be free to sell their produce in a competitive market of their choice and only the Congress is opposed to them. When asked about the SADs opposition to the bills, Nadda indicated the issues had been resolved. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON By Jamie Freed SYDNEY (Reuters) - Qantas Airways Ltd said on Thursday it would operate a seven-hour scenic flight over Australia next month, adding to a growing trend in Asia of "flights to nowhere" that take off and land at the same airport. Tough border restrictions to keep the coronavirus under control have led to a 97.5% plunge in international travel in the region, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. Many frequent flyers miss getting on planes and airlines including Taiwan's EVA Airways Corp and Japan's ANA Holdings Inc, desperate for ... Dramatically shorter worship services. No sermons. Huge outdoor tents. Excitement that technology is enlivening and making more intimate an ancient Jewish holiday. Despair that technology is sucking the life out of an ancient Jewish holiday. The High Holidays, which begin Friday night with Rosh Hashanah, are the latest tradition to be upended by the novel coronavirus pandemic. According to the somber, introspective liturgy, this is the period when God decides who will live and who will die, when Jews are commanded to look hard at their own mortality and to make amends. It is the time of the year that draws more Jews to the synagogue than any other. Six months of social distancing, on top of racial, economic and political turmoil, has many desperately wanting community, encouragement and spiritual nourishment this year. The virus has forced Jewish leaders to be creative in responding to that need. Most Jewish communities in the Washington region are conservative about in-person gatherings, and the majority of synagogues remain closed, with beefed-up services online, according to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. A handful - especially those serving more traditionally observant Jews - have created intricate sign-up sheets and rented hotel courtyards and ballrooms to allow properly spaced, in-person groups. Before the pandemic, Kol Ami Reconstructionist synagogue in Arlington, Va., hosted three prayer services a month. Now, operating via Zoom, congregants want more, and there are five services a week, said Rabbi Gilah Langner, who indicated that she is optimistic about online services for the holidays. Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Md., shifted from its usual few weeks of High Holiday programming to two full months. "We started putting together a 'design thinking' approach," said Hannah Olson, chair of the synagogue's High Holiday Task Force, using a trendy term for inventors and consultants and others being open and user-centered in tackling problems. The task force found that people love the High Holidays - which end 10 days after Rosh Hashanah with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement - in part for the spontaneous interactions at synagogue with people they only see a few times a year. "So how do we meet those needs? Let's give people lots of opportunities to 'run into' someone," Olson said of the daily emails Ohr Kodesh has been sending with a bit of scripture learning, cooking programs and games. Many institutions have found new ways to share in the blowing of the shofar, the hollowed-out ram's horn that is sounded on Rosh Hashanah, at the end of Yom Kippur, and every day at services during the month leading up to the holidays. Some communities are teaching extra congregants how to blow the twisty, long horn, so that it will cut down on the number of gatherings, or placing masks over the cover to limit the spray of germs. Others in D.C., Chicago, New York City and other spots have planned citywide shofar-blows from rooftops, parks or front lawns. Sometimes the shofar-hearing is virtual. That's the case for students at Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, Md., who choose to do their required morning prayers by Zoom. Each morning for a month, they have watched and listened to Chanokh Berenson, the science department chair, sounding the instrument from his Silver Spring, Md., apartment. "It's this sound of waking up and gathering together. There's something poignant about that in a year when waking up is so particularly needed," said Guila Franklin Siegel, associate director of the community relations council. "Inherent in the whole spirit of the high holidays is the humility of the fragility of life. And boy, has this been a year to remind us of that fragility." Some of the region's Orthodox synagogues, which don't permit the use of electronics or technology like Zoom on the Sabbath and holy days, are working hard to have some in-person services, spacing people out in sanctuaries or tents and holding multiple services a day to keep the numbers manageable. With the number of members able to attend in person greatly reduced, Rabbi Nissan Antine, of Beth Sholom in Potomac, said he felt the distance from his congregation so profoundly that he personally baked 415 holiday challahs for synagogue members. The loaves were delivered to homes this week along with learning materials and prayer guides for the holiday. Rabbi Herzel Kranz of the Silver Spring Jewish Center spent much of the last month calling local officials to get them to let more people on the High Holidays into his center, which he said can fit more than 200 people. But Kranz's activism, he said, has been unpopular with his own community, which he characterized as "on strike" because he said he is not following the rules. He now has 60 or 70 people on a typical Sabbath, he said, mostly refugees from other shuttered synagogues. Kesher Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, has been holding very small in-person prayer services since D.C. resumed allowing such gatherings. Since it owns no real backyard space, the synagogue is renting space at two nearby hotels for the holidays. Services will be shorter (about two or two-and-a-half hours instead of five hours), with no singing and all participants masked. Sermons were canceled in an effort to minimize people's time together in person. "I think the 'Pikuach Nefesh' have played out quite strongly through this," said Rabbi Abbi Sharofsky, rabbi in residence with the community relations council, using the term for the Jewish legal principle holding up the preservation of life above most else. Rabbis of congregations where worshiping online during the holiday is permitted said Zoom in some ways provides a more intimate and meaningful experience than small, socially distanced in-person services. "I could never see how meeting six feet apart with masks and not be able [to] sing well and worrying - how does that make your holiday good?" Langner said. "If you can't sing and you can't hug, what kind of high holidays is it?" "In the start, we were like: 'Zoom is terrible.' Now people are like, 'Wow, I see people's faces right now! Not the back of their head?' It was like: This is community." Synagogues don't tithe; they raise money by membership dues and High Holiday tickets. But many are forgoing any charge for online services, or reducing the usual cost significantly. For congregants, the decision of whether to log on for Rosh Hashanah services Friday night, Saturday or Sunday is only one of the adjustments for the holiday this year. Visits from family have been severely curtailed, holiday dinners with guests are safer if held outside, and college students are wary of returning home from campus for fear of bringing the coronavirus with them. Joel Rubin, who was Jewish outreach director for former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, has three daughters and normally goes with his family to a synagogue in Northwest D.C. This year, he said, their holiday will be on Zoom. The family will eat a traditional "sweet year" food of apples and honey, say some blessings, fast on Yom Kippur, and, he predicts, have a "very individual" experience. He's worried about the impact, especially for the many Jews who only connect with institutional Jewish life once or twice a year. "These aren't replaceable events. These are life experiences that are temporal," Rubin said. "For me there's a fear of a disconnect from the community. We're holding on by our fingernails to the infrastructure that helps us to be able to practice and promote Judaism for us and our families. Maybe we can get away with it once." Pfizer vaccine trial bets on early win against coronavirus, documents show FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a sign outside Pfizer Headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City By Marisa Taylor and Dan Levine (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc is betting that its coronavirus vaccine candidate will show clear evidence of effectiveness early in its clinical trial, according to the company and internal documents reviewed by Reuters that describe how the trial is being run. In recent weeks, Pfizer has said it should know by the end of October whether the vaccine, developed together with Germany's BioNTech SE<22UAy.F>, is safe and effective. If the vaccine is shown to work by then, Pfizer has said it would quickly seek regulatory approval. It has not said what data it would use. President Donald Trump, who is seeking re-election, has said a vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic is possible before the Nov. 3 U.S. vote, raising concerns over political interference. Scientists have questioned whether drugmakers will have enough evidence to achieve success by that time. Pfizer's clinical trial protocol outlines for the company, scientists and regulators how the drugmaker could show that its vaccine meets efficacy and safety standards set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A company's protocol is submitted to the FDA for review and is overseen by an independent panel of experts known as a Data and Safety Monitoring Board. The protocol calls for a first assessment of the vaccine's performance by the monitoring board after 32 participants in the trial become infected with the novel coronavirus. So far, more than 29,000 people have enrolled in the trial that started in July, some receiving the vaccine and the others receiving a placebo. The FDA has said that a coronavirus vaccine must prove to be at least 50 percent more effective than a placebo in a large-scale trial to be considered for approval. However, a smaller sample of infections in a clinical trial changes the calculation of how that standard is met, according to researchers. Pfizer's vaccine would need to be at least 76.9% effective to show it works based on 32 infections, according to its protocol. That would mean that no more than six of those coronavirus cases would have occurred among people who received the vaccine, the documents showed. Story continues If the drugmaker's vaccine does not meet the 76.9% efficacy target at this first interim analysis, it would face tougher statistical significance thresholds during subsequent interim assessments, biostatisticians who reviewed the protocol said. Pfizer said its interim analyses were designed to show conclusive evidence "as quickly as possible amid the devastating pandemic if our vaccine meets the stringent standards set by FDA." Pfizer would not say whether it would use an interim analysis as the basis for seeking approval. The FDA declined to comment on whether it would consider such data sufficient for approval. SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE? Interim analyses typically are used by data and safety monitoring boards to determine whether an experimental drug appears safe and effective enough to continue a trial, or whether it should be stopped if a safety problem arises. But if a vaccine meets FDA benchmarks at an interim analysis without any serious safety problems, it could make sense to use it as a basis for authorization to help curb a pandemic that has killed about 940,000 people globally, said Thomas Lumley, chair of biostatistics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Moderna Inc , another front-runner in the vaccine race, told Reuters it would seek emergency FDA authorization to use its vaccine in high-risk groups if an interim assessment of its trial showed its vaccine was at least 70 percent effective. Moderna, which made its protocols public on Thursday, said its first interim analysis of 53 infections is likely to come in November. Some vaccine experts have said drugmakers should wait to reach their final analyses of more than 150 cases before seeking FDA approval. They note the speed at which vaccines are being developed for COVID-19, compressing what can be a decade-long process into months. Relying on the more limited interim analyses could overstate a vaccine's effectiveness simply because not enough trial participants fell ill, they have said. Moving more quickly through the trial process also means a drugmaker could miss potential side effects that could materialize if trials were given more time. "These interim analyses have a flashing sign of short cuts," said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. "You miss safety issues and you may very well exaggerate the benefits." In addition to Pfizer and Moderna, Reuters reviewed the clinical trial protocols for vaccine candidates developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson . AstraZeneca set its first interim analysis when about 40 coronavirus infections are reported among participants. Its U.S. trial is currently on hold after a patient fell ill. J&J's first analysis would begin at 20 infections, according to the protocol of their large-scale trial due to begin on Sept. 21. AstraZeneca and J&J declined to comment. (Reporting by Marisa Taylor in Washington and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Will Dunham) Fayez al-Serraj, the prime minister of Libyas internationally recognised government, said on Wednesday he intended to hand over power by the end of October. Mr Al-Serraj, the head of the UN-recognised government of National Accord (GNA), said this in a televised speech. I declare my sincere intention to hand over the tasks of power to the coming executive authority in a time no later than October, he said. He added that the political and social situation in Libya was in a state of severe polarisation, making all attempts to reach a political settlement to prevent bloodshed difficult. The premier acknowledged that recent UN-sponsored consultations between Libyan rivals have led to a new preparatory phase to unify state institutions and to pave the way for parliamentary and presidential elections. Mr Al-Serraj is the head of the Tripoli-based Presidency Council, established by a UN-brokered political agreement signed in December 2015. The council presides over a government in Tripoli, with Mr al-Serraj serving as prime minister. Libya has been in turmoil since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Gaddafi and has become a battleground for rival proxy forces. The oil-rich country has two competing administrations: the GNA in Tripoli and a government based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which is allied with commander Khalifa Haftar. Mr Haftar has been laying siege to Tripoli in a bid to seize it from the GNA since April 2019. In recent months, Libyans have increasingly suffered from frequent power outages and short water supplies. In the capital Tripoli, hundreds of demonstrators on Sunday gathered outside the headquarters of the Presidential Council, denouncing lack of basic services and calling for long-delayed elections to be held in the North African country. Also, protests in the countrys east, controlled by Haftar, prompted the government led by Abdullah al-Thanni to offer its resignation on Sunday. Snowflake's shares more than doubled in their New York Stock Exchange debut on Wednesday (US time), a day after the Warren Buffett-backed data warehouse company raised more than $US3 billion ($4.1 billion) in the largest US listing of the year thus far. Snowflake's spectacular market debut reflects the hearty appetite for new stocks, as low interest rates drive investors into equities. Prior to the IPO, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway committed to purchase $US250 million worth of stock at $US105 a share. Credit:Bloomberg The market overlooked Snowflake's losses, focusing on the prospects of its software business of data sharing on cloud systems, which has seen rapid growth as offices around the world adapt to remote working. Snowflake shares started trading at $US245 apiece on Wednesday, more than double its $US120 IPO price, and closed up 111 per cent at $US253.93 to value it at over $US70 billion. Deputy Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan Azizbek Madmarov met Thursday with Ambassador of Israel to Kyrgyzstan Liat Vekselman, Trend reports citing Kabar. According to the press service of the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry, in the course of the meeting, the sides discussed topical issues of Kyrgyz-Israeli cooperation and prospects for further interaction in agriculture, medicine, education and tourism, as well as within international organizations. Madmarov expressed gratitude to Ambassador Liat Vekselman for the humanitarian assistance provided to the Kyrgyz side in the fight against COVID-19. The ambassador expressed readiness to make every effort to develop bilateral relations and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. Los Angeles County could reopen more widely sometime in October, the countys public health director said on Wednesday. But, warned Barbara Ferrer, post-Labor Day numbers could potentially thwart that move. L.A. county is in the most restrictive, or purple, level of Californias four-tier virus-tracking roadmap. The county already has a low enough seven-day average testing positivity rate around 3.2% to move to a less- restrictive tier, but average new case numbers are still too high, currently averaging 8.1 cases per 100,000 residents. The state threshold for advancing to the less-restrictive red tier is 7 cases per 100,000. NEW: California is launching a Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Its simple. Your county will be assigned a color based on: Case rate Positivity rate Your color determines how businesses can operate in your county. Find your color & whats open https://t.co/xtXFwVeWc2 pic.twitter.com/fFXR7rbtU1 Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 28, 2020 Ferrer said numbers in all categories have been trending downward over the past six weeks, following a spike seen after the Fourth of July holiday weekend. If we dont see a surge in cases and hospitalizations associated with activities over Labor Day and we continue to reduce our rate of community transmission over the weeks ahead, we could enter tier 2, which is a less restrictive tier, sometime in October, Ferrer said. This comes after Ferrer caused a stir with comments last week on a conference call with educators. We dont realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier two [red] or to reopening our K-through-12 schools at least during, at least until after the election, after, you know, in early November, Ferrer said on the call, a recording of which was first obtained and aired by KFI radio. Story continues Ferrer then denied on Tuesday that plans for keeping L.A. school campuses closed amid the coronavirus pandemic are politically motivated and meant to damage President Donald Trumps election chances. Considered through that lens, Ferrers most recent statement seems a surprising turnaround. Health officials have said repeatedly they will not consider any more business reopenings in the county until at least late September, after determining if virus cases and hospitalizations increase following the Labor Day holiday weekend the way they did after Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. If the county gets its average new case numbers below 7 per 100,000 residents, and maintains that level for two weeks, then L.A. will be able to move into the states red tier. That would allow more businesses to reopen, including potentially movie theaters and gyms, as well as school campuses for in-person learning. Ferrer said the county is now seeing its lowest average testing-positivity rate of the pandemic. Last week, we saw the lowest positivity rate to date, at around 3.4%, she said. This means that almost 97% of the tests that people took for COVID-19 ended up being negative. Just a month ago, in mid-August, this rate was around 5%. So were happy to see the progress that weve made and were very much hoping that this number continues to decrease. Of course, the countys testing numbers are also down. The countys health services director, Dr. Christina Ghaly, said overall testing numbers over the past week had dropped, due in part to closures of some testing centers due to poor air quality caused by the regions wildfires. She said some testing sites have two-thirds of their appointment slots available. The daily number of cases has fallen nearly in half from a high of over 20,000 tests a day in early July to a 7-day daily average of 9,772 on Wednesday. Ferrer again warned that the impact of the Labor Day holiday weekend has yet to be borne out in case numbers, since the virus has a 14-day incubation period. She also said upcoming fall and winter holidays, including the start of Rosh Hashanah this weekend, could lead to setbacks if people become lax about social distancing and other preventive measures. The autumn and winter months are filled with special times that we all are looking forward to, she said. Theres many secular and religious holidays that we usually celebrate by spending time with our friends and extended family members. And the pandemic has been difficult and frustrating in many ways, including placing limits on how we can celebrate safely. I do encourage all of us to think now about how we might want to modify our plans so we can share the joy of the holidays while reducing the risk of transmitting a dangerous and sometimes deadly virus. Ghaly urged people to get a flu shot, noting that as flu season arrives, people who contract both influenza and COVID-19 may be susceptible to severe illness. The county on Wednesday reported 31 coronavirus-related deaths, although one of those fatalities was actually announced Tuesday by health officials in Long Beach. Long Beach announced two additional deaths Wednesday afternoon. The total number of fatalities in the county stood at 6,305 as of Wednesday. Data Shows L.A. County Makes Continued Progress against COVID-19; 31 New Deaths and 1,148 New Positive Cases of Confirmed #COVID19 in Los Angeles County. View https://t.co/uSs6osB7FW for more pic.twitter.com/gkh4vtKLgp LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) September 17, 2020 The county also announced 1,148 newly confirmed cases, while Long Beach added 40 cases and Pasadena reported six, lifting the cumulative total since the start of the pandemic to 256,194. There were 804 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the county, up slightly from Tuesday. Ghaly noted that the sharp downward trend seen in hospitalizations over the past month appears to have slowed or leveled off. But hospitalization numbers till remained at dramatically lower levels than they were a month ago. City News Service contributed to this report. More from Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Grocery prices look set to skyrocket as Australian farmers are forced to destroy crops after struggling to find enough pickers. Farmers across the country have been gearing up for this years harvest which could be one of the biggest the country has seen in five years. But travel restrictions and border closures have created major problems with sourcing workers to pick the crops. Australia's $14.4 billion horticulture industry relies heavily on workers from the Pacific Islands and backpackers to fill those jobs. Farmers are predicting they will struggle to fill the estimated 40,000 harvest positions with less than 8,000 seasonal workers in the country and barely any backpacker arrivals since March. Luciano Monte, who runs a farm in Perth, has already been forced to destroy 100,000 market-ready lettuce heads this week due to worker shortages. Scroll down for video The coronavirus pandemic means Australia needs at least 70,000 foreign backpackers to work on regional farms during harvest season (stock image) His farm usually has about 100 pickers helping them out but for the past two months they've been down to just 60. Fruit and vegetables likely to increase in price: Mango Lettuce Cauliflower Broccoli Advertisement 'Come by Christmas time there'll be no fruit and veg on the shelves,' he told 7news. He said all growers were having to destroy crops as they struggled to keep up with demand. 'It's every single grower mate, everyone's doing the same.' National Farmers Federation president Tony Mahar has warned food prices will skyrocket as a result of worker shortages. 'There could be a reduction in the supply of products because it just won't be able to be picked in time,' Mr Mahar told The Australian. 'There will be an increased cost in products because of the delay and demand for labour. People may have to be paid more and it might cost more to get the crop off.' Farmers are predicting they will struggle to fill the estimated 40,000 harvest positions with less than 8,000 seasonal workers in the country and barely any backpacker arrivals since March. Western Australia's Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Steve Thomas, has urged the state government to ease border restrictions to allow foreign farm workers in. A farmer checks his wheat crop as it grows in a paddock on his property near Gunnedah, New South Wales, on August 25, 2020 A farmer on a tractor sprays his crop in north west New South Wales on May 05, 2020 in Dungowan, Australia. Rain across the region has helped ease conditions of the current drought which began in 2017 'We're going to need to see these additional workers put in place by October.' Despite the grim prediction, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has urged farmers to look within the state for workers, ABC reported. 'Our priority is to employ WA workers,' he said. 'In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's time for industry to rethink the way it employs workers and look to locals to fill these roles.' A parliamentary inquiry set up to replenish the casual workforce has suggested school leavers work as fruit pickers in exchange for a discount on university fees. The proposed 'Australia Needs You' campaign would also allow the unemployed to earn money working on farms without losing JobSeeker benefits, and provide one-off payments to cover travel and accommodation costs. Chair of the inquiry, New South Wales Liberal MP Julian Leeser, released an interim parliamentary report on Tuesday with the ambitious recommendations, which are supported by both sides of parliament. A farmer walks towards a tractor during the sowing of wheat in a field at a farm near Gunnedah, New South Wales, Australia A parliamentary inquiry has proposed 'Australia Needs You', a campaign which would offer school leavers discounts on university fees for doing farm work (stock image) When the coronavirus pandemic struck in March, labour companies and farmers reported a rise in Australians contacting them for work - but that dropped off as soon as the government announced JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments. Global travel restrictions due to COVID-19 also meant school leavers have been unable to take their usual overseas holidays. Mr Leeser said if the 40,000 young Australians who have a gap year in the UK, US and Canada worked on farms instead, it would fill the labour shortfall. 'Young Australians love adventure, they want to meet other Australians,' he said. 'They want to make some money at a time when a lot of jobs they would otherwise do in hospitality and retail aren't there.' The interim report recommends the government offer a discount on university HECS fees but has left the final figures up to the Treasurer and Education Minister. Unemployed Australians would also be paid for farm work and be allowed to keep their JobSeeker payments under the plan. During the consultation, Mr Leeser heard concerns that travels costs would be to high so the committee suggested a travel and accommodation allowance as well. Mr Leeser warned action needs to be taken to support farmers who are facing the prospect of not being able to harvest fruit from their trees. Lauryn Smith sat on the sidewalk during a sit-in on Indiana Avenue earlier in September and thought about whether its actually possible for police to have a good, trusting relationship with the community. It is possible, she decided, but not likely. How do you want to form a relationship if we cant trust you? That makes no sense, she said. Therein lies the problem for Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department as it tries to add more officers and sell the community on its beat policing model. Theres a legitimacy problem that has to be addressed first. Why is the answer more police? IMPD has a staffing goal of 1,743 officers but is consistently short of that currently by about 85 officers. The departments proposed 2021 budget, which would be a $7.3 million increase from 2020, includes the money to reach that goal. The idea is IMPD needs more officers in order to shrink the geographic size of patrol areas from zones to beats. Despite still being short of its staffing goal, the department recently announced a move from 78 beats to 106. This process began in 2016. Mayor Joe Hogsett said in an interview the beat policing model allows for officers to build relationships with community members in ways that just arent possible with zone-based policing. This way, Hogsett said, residents can go to police officers they actually know because officers are supposed to have more time to get out of their cars and get to know the communities where they patrol. If those officers dont spend their whole shift responding to calls, the thinking goes, they can get to know residents concerns and earn the trust of people who have information about crime activity. IMPD Chief Randal Taylor said mistrust comes from things that have happened in the past and currently the department does a great job with citizens. I dont believe anyone in the community has always has bad experiences with the police, he said in an interview. Two IMPD officers were recently indicted on charges including battery after they were caught on camera beating a woman in May during protests that were sparked in part by the fatal shootings of Dreasjon Reed and McHale Rose. These incidents often hurt the relationship between the police and community. Were not gonna be able to change overnight, Taylor said, because the injustices have happened over a period of time. IMPD Deputy Chief Josh Barker used to be a beat officer in the area of 10th and Rural streets in the early 2000s and said he took pride in getting to know the residents and business owners. I think that those interactions are happening, but its definitely been a process to get back to that style of policing, he said. Hogsett said hes just trying to help the department get back to where it was before Indianapolis Police Department merged in 2007 with the sheriffs department to become IMPD. The department took on more responsibilities and couldnt keep up with staffing plus there was a hiring freeze during former mayor Greg Ballards administration which led to a zone-based model. For too long we have lived in a city where in too many neighborhoods they dont really know their officers, Hogsett said. I see that as shady Monique Buckley, standing outside of her car near 42nd Street and Post Road, shook her head no when asked if she could see herself having a conversation with an officer. I see that as shady, she said. After going back and forth on whether its realistic to think police and his neighbors can have a good relationship, Diondray Owens, standing next to Buckley, thought about all the possible ways that interaction might go sideways. What if he moves too quickly and the officer thinks hes reaching for a gun? Its these types of fears that have to precede any kind of conversation about trust and cooperation with police. Gallup published a poll in August that showed 48% of respondents have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in police, which marks the first time in 27 years its been below 50%. About three-quarters of Black respondents said they have some or very little confidence in police. Another July poll from Gallup showed 80% of Black respondents want police to spend the same amount of time or more in their area, but what these responses dont capture is an apparent generational divide. Smith, who said police cant hope to build a relationship without trust, is a 20-year-old college student at IUPUI. Her generation seems more likely to outright reject these attempts by police to make inroads with the community. Then there are those like 53-year-old Anthony Fultz. His father still works in the Cook County Sheriffs Office in Chicago, where Fultz is from, and his mother is retired from there. He moved to Indianapolis in 2011. All cops aint bad, but they all aint good either, he said. Fultz is clear that he doesnt believe police are going to transform any high-crime or violent neighborhoods for the better hes much more optimistic about the community getting resources to help itself but that doesnt mean police are the enemy, he said. Whats the impact on crime? Indianapolis saw a decline in homicides last year for the first time in nearly a decade, but there were already 127 homicides this year through Aug. 29. There were 159 homicides in all of 2018, which was the last record-setting year for Indianapolis. The citys murder rate in the late 1990s and early 2000s was better than it has been in recent years, but it was also much lower in 2011 and 2012 when there were fewer officers. Taylor said its possible that even if all goes well, the departments strategy could just lead to a reduction in low-level crimes and not violence. Violent crime outside of homicide has declined this year. The department will look for small victories in the short term, Taylor said. Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick. IMPD Northwest District Commander Lorenzo Lewis talks with protesters Kyra Jay (middle) and Michael Gould (right) about police protocol and the facts of the investigation into Dreasjon Reeds killing. (Photo/Tyler Fenwick) A woman who lost her husband and three of her children in a grisly shooting in Oshawa, Ont., said she and her surviving son are struggling to come to grips with the loss, and simply getting from one day to the next sometimes feels like an "impossible task." Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A Durham Police forensics truck sits in front of a home on Parklane Avenue in Oshawa, Ont. on Friday, September 4, 2020. Mourners will gather in Oshawa, Ont., today to remember the four members of the Traynor family who were killed in a shooting earlier this month. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn A woman who lost her husband and three of her children in a grisly shooting in Oshawa, Ont., said she and her surviving son are struggling to come to grips with the loss, and simply getting from one day to the next sometimes feels like an "impossible task." Loretta Traynor, who was injured in the Sept. 4 shooting, spoke alongside her son Sam, a university student, at a funeral service for their four family members on Thursday. The four were "taken too soon, too violently, and without warning," Traynor said, adding she can't believe or accept that any good will come out of their tragic deaths. "I have lost so many parts of me that made me a better person. They were the best of me," said Traynor, who used a wheelchair during the service. "I have lost so many parts of me that made me a better person. They were the best of me." Loretta Traynor "But with Sam beside me and all of you supporting me, I have hope that those parts of Chris, Bradley, Adelaide and Joey those parts that make up the best parts of me can find their way back in." Fifty-year-old Chris Traynor and the couple's children, 20-year-old Bradley Traynor, 15-year-old Adelaide Traynor and 11-year-old Joseph Traynor were killed in their home earlier this month. Durham regional police have identified the shooter as 48-year-old Mitchell Lapa of Winnipeg, who is also related to the family. Media reports say he is Loretta Traynor's brother. Police say Lapa died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Loretta Traynor painted a vivid picture of a joyous, tight-knit family as she paid tribute Thursday to her husband and three children, her voice breaking at times. "I wish with all my heart that it could have been longer, and we could have all gone through life together." Sam Traynor Her husband Chris, she said, loved to make her laugh, and still found new ways to do so after 23 years of marriage. Together, they would laugh "until we had tears in our eyes," sometimes loudly enough to draw the kids from elsewhere in the house, she recalled. Bradley was "kind, honest and loving," and communicated his feelings through a variety of groans so distinct the family had planned to compile a guide to help others decipher them, she said. Adelaide, meanwhile, was a "firecracker and a flower wrapped into one," the kind of girl who "radiated joy" during an exercise class even though she was doing all the steps wrong, her mother said. "She took my breath away," Traynor said. Joseph, she said, was "born with a smile on his face and he never, ever stopped smiling since," and had a gift for bringing other people into whatever he was doing. Speaking after his mother, Sam Traynor described the family home as "chaotic" and "always so full of joy and love," and urged people to remember the happiness the four brought rather than the tragedy of their deaths. "I wish with all my heart that it could have been longer, and we could have all gone through life together," he said. "I wish dad could have seen me graduate from university... I wish Bradley could be the best man at my wedding. I wish I could watch Adelaide grow into the powerful young woman I could already see her becoming. I wish I could see Joey achieve his dreams of playing for the Dodgers." 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. Saying goodbye to them has been "the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said. Mourners wore masks and sat distanced in the pews of the St. Mary of the People Catholic Church in Oshawa, Ont., on Thursday, some wiping away tears as the pair delivered their eulogies. Some masks bore the slogan "Traynor Strong." The funeral was by invitation only for family and close friends, but was live-streamed for the public. Members of the public were also able to participate Wednesday in a drive-past visitation. An online fundraiser for the family had collected more than $180,000 as of Thursday afternoon, along with countless messages of sympathy from friends and strangers alike. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. Criminals found guilty of conspiring to carry out gangland murders face up to life in prison under new laws that will increase the maximum prison sentence for the crime. Since the outbreak of the Hutch-Kinahan feud gardai have foiled over 60 murder bids, which has led to an increase in the number of people before the courts charged with conspiracy to murder. However, the current legislation, which dates back to 1861, fixes a 10-year jail term as the most severe punishment. It has meant that criminals intercepted on their way to carry out gangland killings, and those directing murder plots, have gotten sentences averaging between six and eight years. Maximum However, a new bill being drafted by Justice Minister Helen McEntee will increase the maximum sentence to life imprisonment on conviction. Ms McEntee has secured approval from Government colleagues to draft the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020, which will update the law and give judges more leeway to impose severe sentences. "Criminals have been intercepted and prevented from murdering people thanks to the good work of An Garda Siochana," she said. "The fact that gardai are doing their job effectively and arresting criminals who are determined to murder should not make conspiracy to murder a lesser offence. "The seriousness of the crime must be reflected in the sentence our judges can impose." Until recent years suspects were rarely charged with murder conspiracy. That has now changed and it has become a major weapon to be used in the fight against gangland criminals since the eruption of the Kinahan-Hutch feud, following the Regency Hotel attack in Dublin in 2016. Ireland's maximum sentence for the crime is at the lower end of the European scale and the British amended their legislation to increase it to life imprisonment in 1977. The 10-year sentence, usually reduced by the courts if the accused pleads guilty, has been a source of frustration to gardai, particularly those involved in the war on gangland crime. Kinahan associate Luke Wilson was jailed for six years last year for conspiring to murder a rival linked to the Hutch faction, while he was given an 11-year sentence for possession of the handgun which gardai said was to have been used in the planned shooting. Reduced Another Kinahan hitman, Estonian Imre Arakas, also received a six-year sentence in the Special Criminal Court last year when he pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder James 'Mago' Gately. The sentences they serve could be reduced further with remission of a quarter of the jail stretch for good behaviour behind bars. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:03:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JAKARTA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A small plane with 10 crews search the area where the missing helicopter lost contact in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua on Thursday, but failed to locate the chopper, according to a local official. The Bell helicopter with three people on board lost contact at 10:25 a.m. local time after departing from Nabire district, the spokesman of the National Search and Rescue Office Yusuf Latiefsaid, citing the chopper was heading to Baya Biru of Paniai district. "A small plane has headed to the scene and flew above the area, but failed in its mission," Latief told Xinhua via phone, saying clouds were enveloping the airspace. The helicopter was operated by a utility helicopter company operating in Indonesia, PT National Utility Helikopter, according to the official. The operation involves rescuers from the local search and rescue offices, soldiers, police, personnel of the air navigation office and others, he said. Separately in Papua province, about 24 rescuers from search and rescue offices in Biak and Nabire districts have been preparing for resuming the search mission on Friday, a small plane would also be deployed to support the mission, Head of Search and Rescue Office of Biak District Gusti Anwar Mulyadi said. "Our personnel and colleagues from Nabire will jointly start the mission again tomorrow (Friday)," Mulyadi told Xinhua via phone. Enitem People can travel to Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from Monday without having to self-isolate for 14-days when they return to Ireland. However, some of the countries on the list have their own local rules and restrictions for people arriving, including testing and quarantine measures. All the countries have a 14-day incidence rate of less than 25 per 100,000. Ireland's incidence rate is currently 51.46. The existing list remains in effect until midnight on Sunday, with Italy, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Norway and Estonia to be removed from the list due to their rates exceeding 25. Country: 14-day incident rate per 100,000: Cyprus 6.1 Finland 10.7 Germany 23.7 Iceland 19.0 Latvia 4.2 Lithuania 17.3 Poland 19.0 Ireland 51.46 Anunt de selectare a participantilor si participantelor la cel de-al doilea curs de instruire din cadrul Programului educational pentru dezvoltarea competentelor lucratorilor de tineret The toxin produced by a dangerous 'stinging tree' is comparable to a scorpion or spider's bite, according to a new study. Found all over eastern Australia, the dendrocnide plant is among the most toxic flora on Earth and stings can kill dogs or horses and cause excruciating pain in humans that last weeks, even months. But until now researchers haven't been able to identify the neurotoxin the plant, also known as the Gympie-Gympie tree, secretes - until now. The team discovered the culprit is a new class of toxic miniproteins that has been named 'gympietides,' in honor of the Indigenous name for the stinging tree. Scroll down for video The Dendrocnide moroides plant, also known as the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree, is the world's most painful stinging nettle. Until now, scientists haven't been able to identify the neurotoxin the plant secretes The Gympie-Gympie's leaves, stems and raspberry-like fruit are densely covered in hair-like protuberances called trichomes, which are less than a fifth of an inch long. Those hairs make the leaves look inviting, Gilding told The New York Times, 'like it's a furry, friendly green plant that you'd want to rub.' But when they make contact with skin they're more like tiny hypodermics, breaking off and injecting a painful toxin. The Gympie-Gympie stinging tree is covered in tiny hairs that look inviting, but stick into the skin and inject a toxin that causes agonizing pain A child stung by a giant Australian stinging tree. One researcher compared it to 'being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time.' As reported in the journal Science Advances, Kalani Gilding, Irina Vetter and a team of researchers at the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience discovered the culprit was a completely new class of toxic miniproteins. Dr. Marina Hurley, who did her PhD work in stinging trees, said a brush with the plant, nicknamed the 'suicide tree,' is 'like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time.' 'Not only do you feel pain from where you are stung, if it is a really bad sting, within about 20 minutes your lymph nodes under your arms swell and throb painfully,' Hurley wrote on The Conversation. '[They] feel like they are being slammed between two blocks of wood.' In one historical account from the 1940s, a soldier said the pain was so bad he had to be tied to his hospital bed for three weeks. The trichomes remain potent for decades, Hurley said, and dead, dried-up specimens from a century ago can still sting. A magnified view of the tree's trichomes. The fine hairs remain potent for decades - dried-up specimens from a century ago can still sting There's no real cure - the hairs are so fine that wax hair removal strips are sometimes used to yank them off. The Gympie-Gympie, known scientifically as Dendrocnide moroides, can grow to 10 feet tall with leaves 20 inches long. Dr. Marina Hurley studied the huge toxic plants for her PhD and had to wear a dust mask and cover her arms and legs when she was working. Standing near one unprotected for 20 minutes is enough to cause violent sneezing, nose bleeds and even breathing problems. But you don't even have to touch it to feel its wrath - standing near one unprotected for 20 minutes is enough to cause violent sneezing, nose bleeds and even breathing problems. The hairs can remain in the skin for months, and with stings recurring if the skin is pressed hard or washed with hot or cold water. Hurley said the only way she'd handle the free is wearing a dust mask and thick, padded welding gloves. Although they come from a plant, the gympietides target the same pain receptors as the venom found in arachnids and cone snails, the researchers say, making the Gympie-Gympie a truly 'venomous' plant. Vetter says the enduring pain may be caused by the gympietides permanently changing the sodium channels in a victim's sensory neurons, not due to the fine hairs getting stuck in the skin. 'By understanding how this toxin works, we hope to provide better treatment to those who have been stung by the plant, to ease or eliminate the pain,' she said. Because the trees' toxins target a nerve-cell molecule that's fundamental to our pain response, researching them may also help unlock how to block pain receptors. It's still not clear why the Gympie-Gympie evolved this off-putting defense. While it's toxic to humans and other animals, their leaves and fruit are a prized meal for beetles, birds and pademelons, an Australian marsupial related to the wallaby. President Trump on Wednesday evening pushed back against comments made earlier in the day by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, who called face masks "the most important, powerful public health tool we have" to fight against the coronavirus. While testifying before a Senate panel, Redfield said if masks are embraced by "all Americans," it could bring the pandemic, which has killed nearly 200,000 Americans, "under control." He added that he "might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine. Because the immunogenicity may be 70 percent, and if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will." During a press conference at the White House, Trump claimed that Redfield "made a mistake" when he discussed the importance of wearing a mask. Face coverings, Trump said, must be "handled very gently, very carefully," and "have problems, too." He also said incorrectly that the CDC director must have been confused when he told the Senate panel a coronavirus vaccine likely won't be widely available until 2021. Trump said the vaccine may be ready "by mid-October," and "under no circumstance would [it] be as late as the doctor said." More stories from theweek.com How a productivity phenomenon explains the unraveling of America How the Trump-Russia story was buried The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment Its not hard to see where this is heading: a nightmare in which we have a vaccine yet mistrust of the government is so great that people wont take it. Three in four Democrats say if a vaccine were to become available this year, their first thought would be that it was rushed without enough testing, CBS reported. These numbers just strengthened my resolve. I knew I had to do my part to help create a safe vaccine. I have never felt myself to have a calling but all of a sudden, I felt like a middle-aged Joan of Arc, except Jewish and without any of the actual fighting, and none of the fabulous armor (and hopefully no burning at the stake.) The experience itself wasnt particularly scary. A nurse ushered me to a comfortable little cubicle. She gave me ginger ale and an off-brand trail mix with fake M&Ms. Soon after a doctor came in to make sure I understood what I was signing up for. We went through the agreement and I happily signed. A nurse came in to draw blood; I self-administered a coronavirus test and then I waited for the vaccine to come out of cold storage. Two nurses came and gave me the shot; after that I waited around the office for 30 minutes to make sure I didnt have any kind of allergic reaction and then I went home. I am not a particularly brave person and so it was perhaps one of the bravest things Ive ever done. The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) says 15bn needs to be injected into infrastructure and housing projects over the next six years to tackle the impact of the pandemic on the sector. The CIF made the plea to government in its pre-Budget submission made after a meeting this week between the federation, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath. An analysis prepared for the CIF by economic advisory EY-DKM that forms part of the federation's submission predicts that for every 1bn invested in infrastructure, and additional 1.85bn is added to gross domestic product. It also results in 1,200 additional full-time jobs, 140m in revenue for the Exchequer, and 680m circulating in the economy in terms of wages and profits, the research claims. The lockdown here saw the construction sector here effectively closed for a number of weeks earlier this year. The Ulster Bank Construction Industry Purchasing Managers' Index released this week showed that activity in the sector sank last month following a post-lockdown surge. Most construction firms have also reported a fall in orders. "The government has a unique opportunity to drive our recovery, solve the housing crisis, build climate change resilience and facilitate our Covid-19 response by increasing investment in infrastructure, housing, and other construction activity," according to CIF director general Tom Parlon. He said CIF members have reported a 45pc year-on-year decrease in housing starts and infrastructure projects, particularly in regional Ireland. "The CIF will engage with Government to identify key projects based on the immediate need for stimulus and sustainable and balanced regional development within the National Development Plan and Project Ireland 2040," added Mr Parlon. But even if, the Government decided to plough money in infrastructure projects, they could be so delayed that their economic impact would not be felt for years. Dublin's Metro project, for instance, has been talked about for decades. Mr Parlon said that the potential for the construction sector to lift the economy will be "stymied without radical changes in how the State engages with the industry". "The current system, involving multiple bureaucratic, regulatory and political objectives, adds cost and delay to the delivery of private and public construction," he said. The CIF wants the Government to extend the generous help-to-buy scheme for homebuyers until at least 2025. Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday asked the government to reconsider its decision to privatise the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) at Navi Mumbai, saying it would be a loss of a national property. Raising the issue as part of a Zero Hour mention in Rajya Sabha, Raut said everyone knows that the economic situation of the country is serious. After demonetisation, the country is faced with the coronavirus pandemic, and the situation is such that the GDP as well as the RBI are "bankrupt", he said. In such a backdrop, Raut said the government has decided to put the Railways, Air India, and LIC on the block. "There is a very big sale. JNPT has also been put on sale," he said The member of the Shiv Sena, which is running a coalition government in Maharashtra along with Congress and NCP, said giving this important port to private players would be big loss of a national property. He pointed out that the JNPT is also very important from the view point of national security. Raut said with privatisation of JNPT, about 7,000 acre valuable land would also go in the hands of private players. He said the JNPT provides employment to a large number of people and privatisation would lead to retrenchments. "I believe the government should not privatise JNPT," Raut said. In his Zero Hour mention, D P Vats (BJP) made a case for peacetime gallantry award to frontline corona warriors of the country. He said the COVID-19 pandemic has created a war-like situation globally. Frontline Covid warriors, especially doctors and paramedics, doing duties in COVID ICUs, operation theatres, labour rooms and isolation wards are akin to soldiers crossing the mine field forsaking their personal safety, Vats said. Fatality rate among frontline corona warriors is the highest all over the world and India was no exception, he said, and added various incentives, including insurance cover, given to them are insufficient. "Through You (Chairman) I recommend that frontline corona warriors should be awarded service/gallantry peace medal at par with military or police services like air hostess Neerja Bhanot was awarded," he said. Bhanot, the senior most flight attendant on board a Pan Am Mumbai-New York flight, was shot dead by terrorists, who hijacked the flight at Karachi in 1986, in her courageous bid to save the lives of passengers. She became the youngest recipient of India's highest peacetime military award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra. Vishambhar Prasad Nishad (SP) raised the issue of filling up of vacancies against quota for backward classes in the central government. He said said vacancies were not being filed up and there was a huge disappointment among the youth belonging to backward classes. The 27 per cent quota for backward classes is not being filed up by departments leading to despair among educated youth, he said. According to him, only 10 per cent quota has been filled up till date since 1994 and in central universities the number is almost zero. He demanded action against officials responsible for not filing up such vacancies. N Gokulakrishnan (AIADMK) said the backward class of society is feeling increasingly insecure in terms of employment in central government offices and educational opportunities in higher education like medicine. Though the Mandal Commission recommendations have been implemented, they are only on paper and hardly 5 per cent of the central sector employees belong to the backward class despite over 20 years of implementation, he added. Use your phone. Do it at work. Answer that knock at the door. Check your mail for another form. Alabama leaders need residents who havent responded yet to the 2020 U.S. census as time runs out to respond. At stake are millions in federal tax dollars that will come to Alabama or to other states. Schools. Libraries. Roads. Medicare. Food assistance. These programs and more share $653 billion in federal funding divided in part by where Americans live. Thats counted every 10 years in the Census, and Alabama is last in responding this time. With little more than a week until Sept. 30, the counts last day, Alabamas total response is 85 percent, which doesnt sound bad, but is lower than all the others states, the District of Columbia (91 percent) and Puerto Rico (95 percent). Total response includes both self-response (the people who fill out a form and return it) and people who respond to Census workers knocking at the door. Alabama is now last in Census response One big Alabama county has been pushing from the start and is trying to finish strong. Its Madison County, home of the Rocket City of Huntsville, where federal dollars fund the giant Redstone Arsenal with its military and NASA centers and federal contractors. If we need to have a good count anywhere, its here, Huntsville census consultant James Vandiver said this week. So far, Madison County has a 74 percent self-response, second only to Shelby Countys 77 percent. Huntsvilles campaign includes a big employer push to persuade workers that 10 minutes of time will have a 10-year impact. Claire Aiello, vice president for marketing and communications of the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce, had another reminder this week. Companies, please alert all of your employees, Aiello said. "Think about the ones who might be in the field, who you dont see face to face that often. You can add an important reminder to the weekly schedule or attach a note to their paycheck. However you get important updates to them, this falls in that category. Please give them time during the workday. It just takes six minutes, on my2020census.gov. They can do it on their phone or on a computer at the office. That telephone number may be the easiest way to answer in modern everyone-has-a-phone America. Its 844-330-2020 and all you need to give the person answering is your address. The person answering will not ask for immigration information, bank account numbers or any other questions like those, Vandiver said. All information you give to a Census official online, by phone or in person cant be used for anything else, he added. Its also possible youll get a knock on the door in the next 13 days. Another wave of Census workers will be out in some counties for the rest of the month. Theyll be easy to spot carrying a laptop or laptop bag with the word Census on it and an Official Business notice on their vehicle. If youre not home, you may find the form hanging from the front door when you return. Its not junk mail, so dont throw it away. Need more persuading? Theres also a lot at stake politically, Vandiver said. Alabama is in real danger of losing a congressional seat, and Census numbers are used to decide how seats and districts are divided in the state House and Senate and the local city council. Prosecutor seeks 8.5 years in penal colony for ex-head of Globex Bank in embezzlement case RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 09:39 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) A prosecutor has asked the Tagansky District Court of Moscow to pass an 8.5-year jail sentence upon a former president of Globex Bank Vitaly Vavilin charged with embezzling 12 million euros from the financial organization, the courts spokesperson Zulfia Gurinchuk has told RAPSI. Additionally, the prosecutor demanded a 1 million-ruble ($13,300) fine for the defendant. Investigators believe that in 2015 Vavilin used his job position to give an unrecoverable 12-million euros loan to a company controlled by businessmen, brothers Alexey and Dmitry Ananyev. The credit deal terms have been allegedly changed and debt obligations to Globex have been transferred to a foreign organization, which is yet to return the money. Vavilin pleads not guilty and denies his involvement in granting the loan. In February, the Moscow City Court ordered the defendant to be released from detention and put under house arrest. The Moscow business ombudsman Tatiana Mineyeva has noted that the businessmans rights were violated in the framework of the case: firstly, he was detained, and, secondly, his actions could not be qualified as embezzlement, because a commercial court found that the bank suffered no damages. Established in 1992, Globex Bank is one of major Russian banks with most of its shares (99.9 percent) owned by the state-run Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs. A priest accused of sexually abusing two young brothers after plying one of them with drink and playing strip poker claimed to be an exorcist who worked for the FBI, a court heard. Father Stephen Motroni, 63, claimed he was linked to the US intelligence and security agency as well as involvement in evicting demons, it is alleged. Motroni is charged with carrying out indecent acts against the children in Scotland and Italy when they were aged between five and 13. Former priest at St Mary's RC church in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Stephen Motroni, 63, is accused of plying two young brothers with drink and playing strip poker when they were aged between five and 13 Motroni appeared at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court today where the court heard one witness say he would squeeze their bums when they were young One alleged victim said Motroni had a 'dominant' role as a priest, conducting mass at St Mary's RC church in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, and in local family homes. The man, now 34, said Motroni was a member of the Sacred Heart Fathers who, over the years, said he was linked to 'all sorts of things'. The witness, now 34, added: 'Once, he told us he was involved in exorcisms and once he said he was going to Israel to help the FBI.' He said it was a source of great pride that his family knew the priest but his parents did not know he was being 'groped' by him. 'Stephen would squeeze my bum from as far back as I remember when I was young,' he told Kilmarnock Sheriff Court. 'It was frequent. I felt uncomfortable because as a child it's difficult to articulate how you feel, but you assume adults know best. 'He acted as if he was trying to straighten my clothes out by putting his hand in the waistband of my trousers and running his hand round the inside of my trousers or shorts or whatever.' Motroni would also massage the boy's shoulders at Smithstone House, a priests' residence in Kilwinning. While speaking at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court, pictured, one of the witnesses said Motroni would act as if he was trying to straighten the boy's clothes out by putting his hand in the waistband and running it round the inside The man said: 'He would just come behind me and start massaging. It felt very uncomfortable as he was the only male adult to touch me that way. A hug would suffice if I was in need of solace.' Motroni took holidays in Barga, Italy, where he had relatives, at similar times when his alleged victims' family was there on vacation and they often met, the court heard. The witness said Motroni massaged him at the pool and would ask for one in return, when he was aged between 12 and 17. 'When we were in Italy he asked me to put sun cream on him,' he added. 'I think he was trying to get a kick out of it. Groping is how I would describe it. 'It's affected every aspect of my life for the last 10 years. I thought naively that he would realise that what he did was wrong but I came to the conclusion he is not a good man.' The man's brother, now 33, said Motroni took the then five-year-old to his bed to 'comfort' him in a thunderstorm when the boy was at Smithstone House. He said: 'I remember him carrying me back to my own bed. I was pretending to be asleep but I wasn't. I quite enjoyed thunderstorms.' The witness described being on holiday in Italy with his family and meeting Motroni before ending up having a game of strip poker after the priest allowed him to drink wine. 'He was winning to the extent i was in my underpants at the table and he was fully clothed,' he said. 'I felt very uncomfortable and asked for it to stop but didn't tell my family.' Gerard Brown, defending, asked is he was aware that card games were a 'big thing' in Italian families. He replied: 'Yes, but I'm not sure strip poker is, though.' The witness added he had been in therapy for a long time as a result of the incidents. Motroni, of Stockport, Cheshire, denies two charges of lewd and libidinous conduct between April 1992 and April 2001. The trial was adjourned. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 18:20:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JUBA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- South Sudanese President Salva Kiir on Wednesday evening sacked finance minister Salvatore Garang Mabiordit and replaced him with Athian Diing Athian. Kiir also removed Chon Thon Deng Abel from his position as managing director of the state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet) and Erjok Bullen Geu from the position of acting National Revenue Authority commissioner-general. In a presidential decree announced on state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) television, Kiir did not give any reason for the sacking of the officials. The new finance minister, Athian was a former deputy finance minister until 2018 when Kiir fired him. The dismissal of the finance minister came amid deteriorating economic situation and the devaluation of the local currency which has resulted in the soaring of commodity prices. South Sudan's citizens recently decried skyrocketing prices of basic commodities like food due to the deteriorating economic situation in the world's youngest country. The landlocked oil-rich but war-torn east African nation depends on oil revenue to finance 98 percent of the budget but production has reduced due to COVID-19 disruptions that have negatively impacted revenue generation. Kiir also appointed Africano Mande as the deputy commissioner-general of the National Revenue Authority and Bol Riing Muorwel as the new Nilepet managing director. Enditem The strategic course of Ukraine is to receive NATO membership and achieve interoperability of the Armed Forces with the relevant structures of member states as soon as possible. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky stated this in a speech during the opening of the Rapid Trident 2020 military exercise in Lviv region, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. The President stressed that Ukraine should achieve interoperability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the relevant structures of the Alliance as soon as possible. Zelensky also stressed the importance of enhancing reforms that will allow Ukraine to receive invitations and join the NATO Membership Action Plan. As Ukrinform reported, President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Lviv region for an official visit on Thursday. On September 14, President Zelensky signed a decree enacting the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) decision of September 14, 2020 "On the National Security Strategy of Ukraine." University of Miami President Julio Frenk and Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho shared some lessons they learned from leading a swift transition to remote learning last springas well as their plans for navigating the rest of the school year during a global pandemicat a Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce webinar on Wednesday. Both the University and the school system are closely monitoring the countys COVID-19 statistics, which recently showed a downward trend in positivity rates. These are hovering around 5 percent throughout the past two weeks, according to the Florida Department of Health. While the University of Miami started its semester in person, with many safeguards in place and some students opting to attend remotely or through a hybrid approach that combines in-person and remote learning, Miami-Dades more than 300,000, K-12 public school students began the year by meeting their teachers through a computer screen. Despite the massive technological progress both institutions have made since March, the leaders were hopeful that a return to in-person classroom instruction can occur for all students in the near future. The pandemic has created a craving for interpersonal communication. So, as we faced the choice of what to do in the fall, we decided to give a choice to our students. And interestingly, three-quarters of them opted to come to campus, said Frenk. Even with restrictions, such as masks required indoors and outdoors and a host of new technology required for teaching with physical distancing, we have been able to reopen. Still, making that happen was no easy task. Students at the University faced several obligations to attend in-person classes this fall, including taking a COVID-19 test before heading to campus. In addition, Frenka global health expert who led Harvards T.H. Chan School of Public Health and served as a minister of health in Mexicospent the summer working with faculty and staff to develop a safe return to campus plan in which the University has invested millions of dollars. And, Frenk shared that in the past month, data has shown that University of Miami students who have tested positive for COVID-19 are far more likely to contract the virus in social settings off campus, according to the Universitys vigorous testing and contact tracing program. The same holds true for faculty and staff. So far, things are moving in the right direction, although we can never let our guard down, Frenk added. While technological snags marred the start of the countys remote school year, Carvalho is meeting with a team of medical experts this week to get advice about physically reopening. And he said an announcement could be made by Monday about when Miami-Dade students might return to schools. He pointed out that students would go back in phasesstarting with the countys most fragile learners, then followed by its youngest students. We are looking forward to welcoming students back to the schoolhouse, Carvalho said. There is no comparable, equitable, or equal place for a child, particularly a young child, than a nurturing, organic space where teaching and learning can take place. This issue of socialization is so important, particularly for younger students, but also as a societal protection against the ills that can in fact impact kids. Both institutions heavily invested in technology ahead of the pandemic, and Carvalho and Frenk said they were grateful for that foresight because it allowed a relatively smooth transition to distance learning last spring. Now, Frenk said, University faculty members are well-versed in online tools, and classes will likely always have the option of a remote component. At the U, we have invested in technology for some time. So, this has allowed us to put it to the test, he said, adding that the University is the first in the nation to enable 5G technology as a result of its partnership with AT&T. And our experience over the past six months has cemented our commitment to a blended model of education that facilitates life-long learning. According to Carvalho, technology also played a key part in the countys ability to pivot to remote learning last March.This was possible because the school system issued a bond that was passed by voters in 2012 that provided $1.2 billion for infrastructure. This allowed the district to purchase a large amount of technology equipment for the countys students that helped facilitate remote learning. It also distributed more than 120,000 laptops and many wireless hotspots to students in need last spring. Still, he said, there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with teachers, particularly to help the regions most vulnerable students reach key learning goals. Last spring our attendance average was over 91 percent. But Im not going to lie to you, while attendance is one thing, engagement is a very different thing. And we know for a fact that some of our most fragile students have regressed, he said. English-language learners, students in poverty, and students with disabilities really struggled with distance-learning protocols, but we made it through. Now, were looking forward to a good school year as never before, regardless of the impossible nature of the challenge before us. We have the determination and will to do it right. Kangana Ranaut continues to make headlines with her controversial statements on matters ranging from Sushant Singh Rajput's death to Bollywood's alleged drug nexus to calling Mumbai PoK and so much more. Recently, in her interview with Times Now, Ranaut unabashedly answered questions about BMC's demolition of her office, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut's remarks and her controversial comments about Mumbai, among other issues. Here we have listed out 10 things that Kangana Ranaut said in her fiery interview amid the ongoing controversy: 1. On Sanjay Raut Using Haraamkhor For Her Stating that she wants Raut to apologise to her, Kangana asserted that as the highest-paid actress in the industry, she had not only offered employment to the people she hired and who benefitted from her movies, but was also among those who paid the highest taxes in the nation. She then went on to question how exactly did Sanjay Raut contribute to the economy. Check out the clip here: Watch Kanganas most befitting response to H#@MKHOR slur. I am the highest paid actress, gave Rs 15-20 cr taxes. My work provides employment to several people: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/gyOvxl5Lwe TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 2. On Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray BCCL I want to ask Uddhav Thackeray, that he inherited everything from Balasaheb Thackeray. But I want to ask him, what about the core values of Shiv Sena. Today, it has become Sonia Sena... Who is muftkhor then? I told you that everything I earn is being utilised for Maharashtra, Kangana said. 3. On Calling Mumbai, Like PoK I was told they will break my face, I am haraamkhor and I said 'this doesn't seem like Mumbai, it seems like PoK'- then they took advantage of that and tried to gather a mob to lynch me. I said PoK, I should have said Syria. When Rahul Gandhi says India is like Syria, nobody lynches him. Nobody breaks his house. What is the matter with these people?, Kangana said. After I bust the drug racket,political parties joined hands with some from industry. Hadn't I got the security I would have been lynched like the sadhus: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor, tells Navika Kumar on Frankly Speaking. | #FranklySpeakingWithKangana pic.twitter.com/lqmsUOP2o6 TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 Even as she faces immense backlash for comparing Mumbai to PoK, the 33-year-old actor did not budge from her stance, tweeting that she was right on the day she left the city. , ! , !! Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) September 14, 2020 4. On Receiving Y-Grade Security From The Centre gulte The way they got Sadhus lynched, they're trying to collect a mob around me and lynch me to death. I saw that. The whole country could see this. That's when my sister approached the Home Minister's office and expressed concerns that 'these people are trying to lynch her, turn the entire state against her, that too based on blatant lies'. Two days later, we got a call from the Home Minister's office telling us, "you got to be very careful. Your threat is real. And you'll be getting Y+ security". Ever since nothing has been the same, she said. 5. On The BMC Demolition She compared the demolition to 'getting raped', stating that a house is like an extension of yourself. They (BMC) broke the lock, they completely broke the house down. Unhone mere ghar ka taala toda aur kam se kam 40-50 ghar todne wale laaye the... when I saw that I felt like I was raped, I felt violated mentally and psychologically, she said. 6. On Urmila Matondkar's Remarks About Her In a series of interviews, actor Urmila Matondkar had called out Kangana on her remarks about Mumbai and alleged that Kangana was playing a victim and woman card. Responding to that, Kangana said, I saw one very derogatory interview given by Urmila Matondkar. The way she was talking about me, pulling faces, making a mockery about my struggles, attacking me on the fact that I am trying to appease BJP for a ticket. One doesn't have to be a genius to figure for me it is not very difficult to get a ticket. Even Urmila is a soft porn star. She is not known for her acting for sure, what is she known for? For doing soft porns right. If she could get a ticket, why wouldn't I get a ticket? Kangana hits out at @UrmilaMatondkar over her remark on BJP ticket. I don't have to work much to get a ticket: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/wrlzgr4zB7 TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 7. On Whether She Is Fighting For Sushant, For Political Gain Or To Wage A Drug War She clearly stated that she is fighting for herself, but by cleansing the path, she would help many as she too has survived molestation and abuse from the industry. Fight against 'Drug Mafia'. I am fighting for myself, will cleanse the system - trying to clean the path for many: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/MrSQZjAQxC TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 8. On Jaya Bachchan's Views About The Industry Drugs affected me at the start of my career. What does Jaya (Bachchan) Ji have to say about this? : Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/tZ1VsJdD9e TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 9. On Sushant Singh Rajputs Ostracization By Bollywood Talking about how Sushant was ostracized from the industry and how Bollywood did not speak up at the time, Kangana added that even the people supporting Rhea in the name of 'attacking patriarchy' were not doing it of their own free will, but rather, on someone's orders. Here, check out what she said: SSR always said that he's been bullied, ostracised. Where was Bollywood at that point in time? : Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/1wn0vDORQv TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 'Patriarchy' applies only to Rhea, not Kangana? Exactly because someone is remote controlling them. There are layers of people who brainwash you: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/qaVAUGeSZT TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 10. On The Alleged Use Of Drugs By A-Listers At Karan Johar's Party Kangana also added that before her entry into the industry, women were subject to only item numbers, and talked about the alleged use of drugs at Karan Johar's party - the video of which went viral last year on social media. 2019 drugs viral video- Easy to identify when someone does drugs. Trying to cover-up is like lying to yourself: Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam), Actor tells Navika Kumar on #FranklySpeakingWithKangana. pic.twitter.com/FnXA1MHg3i TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 16, 2020 (With inputs from Frankly Speaking with Navika Kumar) Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Perfumes and fragrances are solutions designed to stimulate the olfactory senses. The global perfume & fragrances market report compiled by Market Research Future (MRFR) contains insights and analysis on latest trends, benchmarking of products, and coverage of key regions for the period of 2017 to 2023 (forecast period). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects are analyzed on the market dynamics for the forecast period. Market Scope The global Perfume Market is projected to witness a growth rate of 6% during the forecast period. It is predicted to reach a valuation of USD 64,690.27 million by 2023. It was valued at USD 43,112.3 million in 2016. Rapid urbanization is the primary driver of the market. Use of these liquids to be presentable in professional settings will fuel its demand greatly. Moves by perfume manufacturers to improve their packaging design are expected to assist in sales. Offerings in different flavors and marketing campaigns are likely to drive the market demand. Lifestyle changes and improved living standards are factors expected to fuel market growth. Rising wave of health consciousness is likely to pave the path of natural fragrances and perfumes. Segmentation The global perfume & fragrances market has been segmented based on product type, ingredients, category, and distribution channel. Based on product type, it is segmented into Eau Fraiche, Eau de parfum, Eau de Toilette, Eau de Cologne, and others. The Eau de Parfum segment is expected to dominate during the forecast period and will exhibit 6.33% CAGR till 2023. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4748 The global perfume & fragrances market has been segregated, based on ingredients, into natural and synthetic. Synthetic fragrances accounted for 76% share in 2016, while natural fragrances accounted for 24% market share. By category, it targets men, women, and unisex. Women accounted for a large market share and will register 5.67% CAGR during the forecast period. However, men can register a larger share during the assessment period due to introduction of new fragrances and perfumes targeted at men. The global perfume & fragrances market has been divided, by distribution channel, into store-based, and non-store based. Store-based distribution channel has been further segmented into supermarkets & hypermarkets, specialty stores, and others. Regional Analysis The global perfume & fragrances market has been analyzed for four key regionsNorth America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), South America, Middle East and Africa (MEA). Europe is expected to dominate the global market due to fragrances and perfumes acting as ideal gifts for celebrations or special occasions. France is expected to dominate the market and kickstart the trend of natural fragrances and perfumes owing to its aversion to synthetic perfumes. Intense promotional campaigns in Germany as well as reduced prices of luxury fragrances can foster market growth. APAC is projected to be highly lucrative for the global perfume & fragrances market due to its high production and sales in China. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges in terms of the supply of flavors and fragrance ingredients and threatens to upend the perfume & fragrances market in India. However, ease of permissions can help dealers in logistical issues and bolster the domestic demand. Competition Abdul Samad Al Qurashi, Chanel S.A., Oriflame Holding AG, PDC Brands, Vivenza, Inter Parfums Holdings, S.A., Rasasi Perfumes Industry LLC, Shiseido Company, Limited, AlQuraishi Fragrances, International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc.,Avon Products, Inc., Royal Beauty Group Co., L'Oreal S.A., The Estee Lauder Companies Inc., and Revlon, Inc. are key players of the global perfume fragrance market. Access Full Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/perfume-fragrance-market-4748 The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the sales of functional fragrances. Functional fragrances can uplift a persons mood accordingly and offered with various aromas. Whiff, a Singapore company, has decided to capitalize on the trend and launched a range of hand sanitizers with a functional fragrance. Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com A transgender couple who both identify as the opposite sex have revealed that their son's biological father has undergone her gender affirmation surgery after years of waiting. Louise Draven, 34, from Middlesborough, is biological father to their son Star Cloud, while Charlie Draven is his biological mother. Five weeks ago Louise underwent gender reassignment surgery in order to be in her 'ideal body'. Appearing on This Morning today Louise explained that after nearly ten years she finally feels 'comfortable with herself as a person', and feels as though she can move with her life without the 'emotional baggage' she had before her surgery. Meanwhile, Charlie has been on a waiting list to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria for 26 months, and admitted it's 'emotionally draining' that he has no idea when his first appointment will be. While the parents initially raised their child with no specific gender, they told today on the show that their son now identifies as male, and said he was 'happy' about his undergoing surgery. Scroll down for video Louise Draven, 34, from Middlesborough is biological father to son Star Cloud, and underwent gender reassignment surgery in order to be in her 'ideal body' after nearly ten years of waiting Appearing on This Morning today, Louise and partner Charlie (pictured left) appeared to speak about the procedure Speaking of her surgery, she said: 'It's pushing nine or ten years since I started on everything. It is literally five weeks today outside of surgery, and it's been a really good time. 'It's been emotional, it's been up and down. It's been one of those things where people think it must be a cure all fix. 'Everything has fallen into place more comfortably, I feel more comfortable with myself as a person and I can deal with the stuff I have to deal with, without dealing with a lot of emotional baggage I did before the surgery.' While Louise now feels 'everything is in the right place', she admitted it wasn't the 'Julie Andrews reaction' she had once expected. Biological father Louise, 32 (left in both pictures) before she had surgery to complete her transition to being a woma, with their son Star. Star's biological mother Nikki (pictured right) is set to undergo a female-to-male procedure and will be called Charlie Louise explained that after nearly ten years she finally feels 'comfortable with herself as a person' and feels as though she can move with her life without the 'emotional baggage' Louise started preparing for the transition process in 2011 and lost 16 stone - dropping from 25 stone to a slimline nine stone. The Dravens, who married in 2012, were believed to be Britain's first entirely gender fluid family. Their son Star now identifies as a boy 'It wasnt like that,' said Louise. 'Quite a lot of people were expecting the Julie Andrews reaction where everything is fantastic and it wasnt over the top. 'But you wake up that first morning and everything felt right and in place, and everything was where it should be, and this is my definition of who I am.' The pair also discussed news that the British Medical Association said transgender people should be allowed to legally change their gender identity without a doctor's consent. Charlie explained that while he feels a 'new set of problems' will arise if these reforms are made, being on the waiting list for so long has 'drained' him, and feels transgender people need more support while they are waiting for a diagnosis. The pair previously revealed that Star was being raised gender neutral, however their son has since identified himself as male He told: 'For me I think they should work on the waiting lists rather than the gender reform. I do agree with having a medical diagnosis. If that is not there it opens up a whole new set of problems. 'However being on the waiting list so long is emotionally draining,' Charlie went on. 'I have been on for 26 months now. Current rules under the Gender Recognition Act At present, those hoping to legally change their gender must apply to the Gender Recognition Panel for a Gender Recognition Certificate. Applicants must have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, be over the age of 18 and have lived in their gender for more than two years to apply. Those hoping to change gender must also pay 140 and state that they intend to live in their gender for life. Source: Gov UK Advertisement 'Because of the Covid crisis, they arent sure when my fist appointment is going to be, but there are people who have been waiting longer than I have. 'In the gender clinic I understand there are two doctors who can give the diagnosis and I think we need a little bit more support while we're waiting on the lists and things.' The pair previously revealed that Star was being raised gender neutral - with his parents focusing on raising a 'person' not a 'boy', however their son has since identified himself as male. 'For star with Louise he's always known Louise as mum, said Charlie, 'But the only difference is mum has to go to the bathroom three times a day. 'He knows she's doing something she needs to do and we havent told him the ins and outs, but he knows the doctors are help mummy to be she needs to be.' When asked how he reacted to the news of the surgery, Charlie explained: 'He asked if mummy would bring something back because she was going so far away, but after that he said if mums happy Im happy.' Over six months into a global pandemic, the search for an "safe and effective" vaccine against novel coronavirus is still on. When will India have a vaccine against COVID-19? Answering to this question, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said that COVID-19 vaccine may be available in India by first half of 2021. COVID-19 vaccine candidates in India: Three vaccine candidates are at different stages of clinical trial in the country. Developed by Bharat Biotech International Limited along with Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Virology, Covaxin was India's first indigenous vaccine candidate against the novel COVID-19. Covaxin is currently in Phase II human trials in the country. "There had been 'no side effects' in the phase I trial of Covaxin," Dr E Venkata Rao, principal investigator of the trial at Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, faculty of medical sciences, said. ZyCoV-D, developed by Zydus Cadila began its phase II clinical trials from August 6. "The company reports that the doses of the vaccine administered to healthy volunteers in the phase I clinical trial, which began on July 15, 2020, has been well tolerated," Cadila Healthcare said. Pune based drugmaker Serum Institute of India recently commenced the advance clinical trial of vaccine made by the University of Oxford in the country. The vaccine maker selected 17 sites across the country for the trial. Around 1,600 people between the age of 18 and 25 will be enrolled for the clinical trial. Russian Direct Investment Fund inked a deal with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories to conduct a clinical trial and distribution of Sputnik V in India. Under the agreement, Russia's sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of Russia's COVID-19 vaccine to Indian drug maker. Who will get COVID-19 vaccine first? The COVID-19 vaccine will be first made available to those who need it the most, irrespective of their paying capacity, the health minister reiterated. The central government has been considering emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccination especially in the case of senior citizens and people working in high-risk settings, Harsh Vardhan said. To allay fears regarding the safety aspect of the vaccines, he earlier said, "I shall be the first to offer myself for receiving COVID vaccine, if people have a trust deficit." "We are not lagging behind anyone else in the whole world in our efforts to contribute towards the vaccine against COVID... In India we have about 7-8 vaccine candidates, three of them in the clinical trial phases and rest in the pre- clinical trials," Vardhan said earlier. 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!! 0.5C of additional warming has a huge effect on global aridity Tokyo, Japan - In a new climate modeling study, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have revealed major implications for global drought and aridity when limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Drought has serious negative impacts on both human society and the natural world and is generally projected to increase under global climate change. As a result, assessment of the risk of drought under climate change is a critical area of climate research. In the 2015 Paris Agreements, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposed that the increase in global average temperature should be limited to between 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels to limit the effects of severe climate change. However, there have been few studies focusing on the relative importance of this 0.5C of global average temperature rise and what effect it might have on drought and aridity around the world. "We wanted to contribute to the understanding of how important that 0.5C could be, but it such a study is not easy to conduct based on previous modeling approaches," explains corresponding author Hyungjun Kim. "This is mainly because most models look at the extreme high levels and you cannot simply take a slice out of the data while the model spins up to this maximum. Therefore, we used data from the specially designed Half a degree Additional warming Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project to assess the impacts on aridity based on estimations of the balance between water and energy at the Earth's surface." The study revealed that 2C of warming led to more frequent dry years and more severe aridification in most areas of the world compared with 1.5C, which emphasizes that efforts should be made to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. "There is a really strong message that some parts of the world could have more frequent drought at 2C than at 1.5C. This situation could be especially severe in the Mediterranean, western Europe, northern South America, the Sahel region, and southern Africa," says lead author Akira Takeshima. "However, this situation is highly regional. In some parts of the world, like Australia and some of Asia, the opposite situation was simulated, with a wetter climate at 2C than at 1.5C." These findings show the importance of considering the regional impacts of the additional 0.5C of warming, especially with respect to any future relaxation of the 1.5C target. ### The article, "Global aridity changes due to differences in surface energy and water balance between 1.5C and 2C warming" was published in Environmental Research Letters at DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab9db3 About Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo is one of the largest university-attached research institutes in Japan. More than 120 research laboratories, each headed by a faculty member, comprise IIS, with more than 1,000 members including approximately 300 staff and 700 students actively engaged in education and research. Our activities cover almost all the areas of engineering disciplines. Since its foundation in 1949, IIS has worked to bridge the huge gaps that exist between academic disciplines and real-world applications. This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. (Bloomberg) -- U.S. competition enforcers are preparing a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter. The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Facebook for more than a year over whether the social media giant has harmed competition and could file a case by the end of the year, said the person, who was granted anonymity because the inquiry is confidential. No final decision has been made, the person added. A lawsuit by the FTC would mark another major escalation by U.S. officials in their campaign against Americas technology giants, which have come under intense scrutiny in Washington over their dominant market positions. The Justice Department is preparing to sue Alphabet Inc.s Google in a matter of weeks. Facebook and the FTC declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the agencys lawsuit preparation. It is standard practice for antitrust enforcers to prepare for litigation as part of an investigation, and filing a lawsuit would require a majority vote of the FTCs five commissioners. Technology giants are grappling with sprawling inquiries by federal agencies, Congress and state attorneys general. The U.S. House antitrust panel is preparing recommendations for reining in the power of tech companies like Facebook after a yearlong investigation of the industry. On Tuesday, a Senate Judiciary panel laid out a case for how Google has used its dominance in search and digital advertising to benefit its products and harm competition. The FTC opened the Facebook investigation in June 2019 just as it leveled a $5 billion penalty against the company for privacy violations. The probe is focused in part on whether Facebooks past acquisitions, like its deals for Instagram and WhatsApp, violated antitrust laws. Facebook Chief Executive Office Mark Zuckerberg was questioned last month by FTC officials. To critics, the Instagram and Whatsapp takeovers allowed Facebook to acquire two smaller companies that could have have emerged as real competitors to the company. Although the FTC investigated and approved both deals, it has the authority to revisit past transactions and go to court to unwind them if it determines they were anticompetitive. FTC Chairman Joe Simons said last year he is prepared to take such action. Story continues At a hearing in July, House lawmakers investigating U.S. tech giants accused Zuckerberg of acquiring smaller companies as a strategy to eliminate competition from rivals. Documents showed Zuckerberg internally discussed how Instagram could be very disruptive to us. He countered that Instagram succeeded because of investments Facebook made after the 2012 acquisition and that it was far from certain that the photo-sharing site would become as big as it is today. In addition to the FTC, Facebook is facing an antitrust investigation by a nationwide group of attorneys general led by New Yorks Letitia James. The states could join any FTC lawsuit against Facebook or pursue their own case against the company. Did Big Tech Get Too Big? U.S. Crackdown Seeks Answer: QuickTake (Updates with investigation, starting in sixth 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. It was a lucrative business, allegedly earning the doctor $140,000 over 2 years from a drug company. But two patients lost their lives, federal officials say. Now the Scranton doctor accused of over-prescribing opioids in exchange for cash incentives from a drug manufacturer is facing federal charges for his allegedly illegal prescriptions. As FOX56 and WNEP-TV reports, 68-year-old Dr. Kurt Moran appeared in federal court in Scranton Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. Details from WNEP: Back in 2018, federal agents raided his Scranton office, taking box after box of patient files. Now, more than two years later, the doctor faces a federal indictment accusing him of being part of an elaborate scheme to overprescribe an opioid called Subsys to 13 of his patients. According to paperwork filed in federal court, two of Morans patients -- a 35-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman -- overdosed and died from the drugs he prescribed. The indictment alleges the drug company paid Moran kickbacks to prescribe the drug and disguised those payments as speaking fees. It is alleged Moran was paid $140,000 over the course of two years to prescribe this drug. The company that allegedly paid kickbacks to Moran -- Insys Therapeutics -- last year agreed to pay a $225 million settlement to the government. The doctors not guilty plea sets up a federal trial in the case that if hes found guilty, could put Moran in prison for the remainder of his life. READ MORE: Pa. man accused of texting 15-year-old boy for sex, but it turns out to be a cop Pa. man, 60, accused of sexually assaulting girl, 6: cops Pregnant woman extremely critical after being struck by stray bullet on Pa. street Pa. man, 78, shot son and wife in head, then himself: such a tragedy Black Lives Matter protesters accused of harassing diners at Pa. restaurants face charges Pa. high school football games attract big crowds despite COVID-19 limits: I dont know how they expect schools to stop it Couple dead, man injured, in shooting inside Pa. home - but cops are mum on details Pa. man accused of raping 12-year-old after posting her naked pictures online: cops 3 charged in shooting, killing of 1-year-old Pa. boy M ore than 3,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK in the last 24 hours, the Government has announced. As of 9am on Thursday there had been a further 3,395 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK. Overall, 381,614 cases have been confirmed. The Government also said a further 21 people had died across all settings within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday. This brings the UK total to 41,705. Separate figures published by the UKs statistics agencies show there have now been 57,500 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. A further 18 people who tested positive for the virus have died in hospitals in England, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals to 29,705, NHS England said on Thursday. Patients were aged between 56 and 95 and all but two patients had known underlying health conditions. The dates of the deaths were between September 12 and September 16, with the majority on or after September 15. Six other deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result. Loading.... It comes after Matt Hancock told MPs in the Commons that new measures were needed to tackle rising infection rates in Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, Sunderland and County Durham. Almost two million people in the North East of England will be banned from socialising with other households, following the concerning rise in infections. Boris Johnson said that actions to stop a second surge of coronavirus must be tough now in order to protect Christmas. He told The Sun: Christmas we want to protect, and we want everyone to have a fantastic Christmas. Hancock announces new restrictions for the North East But the only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas is to be tough now. So if we can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump. Meanwhile in Wales, three people have died after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing its total number since the beginning of the pandemic to 1,600. The number of cases of Covid-19 in Wales increased by 168 on Thursday, bringing the revised confirmed total to 20,048. Schools return in England during Coronavirus pandemic 1 /16 Schools return in England during Coronavirus pandemic Year 7 pupils arrive for their first day at Eden Park high school. Lucy Young Pupils wash their hands on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Year 7 pupils arrive for their first day at Eden Park high school. Lucy Young A sign shows the different drop off times for pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Year 7 pupils arrive for their first day at Eden Park high school. Lucy Young Pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils wash their hands as they arrive on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils and parents queue at drop off on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London PA Pupils and parents queue at drop off on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London, as schools in England reopen to pupils following the coronavirus lockdown PA First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed a total of 290 people have tested positive for coronavirus in Scotland in the past 24 hours. Speaking in the Scottish Parliament, she said 23,573 people have now tested positive in Scotland, up from 23,283 the day before. This is 4 per cent of newly-tested individuals. Of the new cases, 112 are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 52 in Lanarkshire and 47 in Lothian. No deaths of confirmed Covid-19 patients have been recorded in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities remains at 2,501. There have been a further 149 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Northern Ireland in the last 24-hour reporting period, the Department of Health has said. This brings the total number of cases in the region to 8,780, including 689 in the last seven days. Loading.... No further deaths from Covid-19 were reported on Thursday, leaving the death toll recorded by the department standing at 573. The Spanish Health Ministry on Wednesday reported 239 new coronavirus victims, the highest such figure so far during the second wave of the health crisis in the country. In total, there have been 30,243 official Covid-19 deaths, according to government statistics, compared to the 30,004 that figured in the previous days report. But this data only includes those who died after a positive PCR test, and other indicators such as excess death surveys suggest a much higher death toll. Not since June 19 have so many fatalities been reported by the ministry, and that date was exceptional given that it saw the inclusion of hundreds of older cases in the total after two weeks without an update. Apart from this anomaly, such a high figure has not been seen since the beginning of May, when Spain was under a state of alarm and nearly two months into its strict lockdown. A total of 4,728 Covid-19 cases were diagnosed in the previous 24 hours the highest figure since April As well as the overall total, the Health Ministry also supplies a figure for the number of victims who died over the past seven days. On Wednesday, that total was 366. This statistic has been rising fast in the last few weeks and has doubled in the last 15 days. On September 2, there were 177 Covid-19-related deaths registered over the previous week. Infections are also continuing to rise, with 11,193 added to the overall total since the crisis began, which now stands at 614,360. The latter figure now includes data from Catalonia, which was not updated on Tuesday due to technical difficulties. It does not, however, include information from the Murcia region, which also had the same difficulties in reporting its latest coronavirus statistics to the ministry. Of these new cases, 4,728 were diagnosed in the previous 24 hours, with the rest corresponding to diagnoses on prior days but that have only just been reported. This is also a record not since April has the data point been so high. As has been the case in recent days, Madrid continues to be the region with the most new infections: 3,438. Nearly one in every three new cases corresponds to the region. With 1,854 cases diagnosed in just the previous 24 hours, Madrid is well ahead of the Basque Country, which reported 429, and Andalusia, with 327. Of the deaths in the last seven days, Madrid accounted for 124, which is a third of the total. In Madrid, 22% of PCR tests are coming back positive, compared to the national average of 8.5% The Madrid region is also currently suffering the greatest amount of pressure on its hospitals, with 22% of its beds occupied by coronavirus patients. The average across Spain is currently 8.5%, according to last nights report. The regions of Aragon, the Balearic Islands, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia, the Basque Country and La Rioja are also all above the average. In second place on the table is Castilla-La Mancha, with 13%. The percentage of PCR tests carried out that come back positive is also on the rise, and is at 13% according to the ministrys figures. Madrid, with 22%, is the region with the worst rate. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers that this rate needs to be kept below 5% in order to have the epidemic under control. There are currently 9,180 coronavirus patients in hospital, which is 58 more than on Tuesday. Of these, 1,281 are in intensive care units a rise of eight on the day before. On Wednesday, the deputy health chief in Madrid, Antonio Zapatero, announced that there would be selective confinements in the areas with the highest incidence across the region. However, sources close to the regional premier, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, later backtracked on those comments, stating that no decision has yet been made regarding stricter measures in Madrid. For now Madrilenos are unaware of what could happen in the coming days and weeks. English version by Simon Hunter. (Newser) Danielle Pletka doesn't sugarcoat what she sees as President Trump's shortcomings: "his odious tweets, his chronic mendacity and general crudeness"; his "erratic, personality-driven decision-making"; his "contempt for NATO"; his encouragement of "execrable gun-toting racists." And many more. But in an oped piece in the Washington Post, the senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute writes that though she didn't even think about voting for Trump in 2016, she might well cast her ballot for him in 2020. Many things about the president worry her, Pletka concedes. "But I fear the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party even more," she writes. story continues below Former Vice President Joe Biden, the party's nominee, could turn out to be a figurehead "who would run a teleprompter presidency with the words drafted by his party's hard-left ideologues," Pletka writes. A Biden victory probably would mean Democrats in control of the House and Senate, she says, which could speed what she sees as harmful trends. "I fear the grip of Manhattan-San Francisco progressive mores that increasingly permeate my daily newspapers, my childrens curriculums and my local government," Pletka writes, and "the virtue-signaling bullies who increasingly try to dominate or silence public discourseand encourage my children to think that their being White is intrinsically evil, that Americas founding is akin to original sin." A flawed Trump, she says, might be a better bet. Read the full column here. (Read more Election 2020 stories.) Months after Megxit, Meghan Markle finally gave a definitive reason why she and Prince Harry chose to leave their senior royal positions in the monarchy. Prince Harry and Meghan have been painted in a negative light even before they left the royal family. Their strained relationship with the royal family members, specifically with Prince William and Kate Middleton, has also been largely talked about. These caused royal fans to speculate that the ugly treatment and unpleasant relationships pushed them to give up their royal status. However, Meghan finally freed herself up in her recent interview with Gloria Steinem. During the interview with the feminist icon, she encouraged people to vote in the upcoming presidential election. This came after she bluntly spoke up against President Donald Trump and branded him "misogynistic" and "divisive" back in 2016. The duchess then boldly hinted that her resentment toward the unfair rankings in the royal fmaily led them to leave the monarchy. She said: "We are linked, not ranked." This, again, stirred criticisms due to the perceived hypocrisy she has while using her title, Duchess of Sussex. Her statement resonated with what was already revealed in Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand's book "Finding Freedom." In Prince Harry and Meghan's biography book, the authors claimed that the ex-royal couple did not like how Prince William and Kate outweigh them. For instance, they always had to put projects on hold if it clashed with the Cambridges' schedules. The Sussexes reportedly felt "cut adrift" and overlooked in the pecking order as they witnessed how Prince William and Kate received all the official duties. "There are buckets of bitterness. It will certainly not help relations with the Royal Family," a source stated in the book. The royal family cannot grant Meghan's demand as it has a rigid structure that even the Duchess can never change. Prince Harry, Meghan Did Not Like Being the "Second" Furthermore, Meghan Markle's statement reached "Pod Save the Queen" where Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers explained to host Ann Gripper how Prince Harry and meg "didn't like playing second fiddle." Meghan's issue with the royal pecking order has been deemed as ill-mannered since the monarchy is inherently hierarchical since the beginning. Myers then questioned this thought before adding that he finds it "really surprising" to know how the Sussexes want to have more respect than the Cambridges. "I think that they did think that and there are certain arguments in the book that argued courtiers believe or were worried that Harry and Meghan would become more popular than monarchy and I think that's probably taking it a bit too far," he went on. However, this fact contradicts what Meghan is fighting for -- her belief that everyone is equal. Myers then suggested that the resentment Prince Harry and Meghan felt is truly one of the main reasons why they stepped down as senior royals. Gripper then replied, "[And] it just made me think OK, when that is such a core part of your being and I think this was one of the things that came through in Finding Freedom, a lot of people's interpretation of it was finding the pecking order that you get in the Royal Family was a problem." Since they are already far from the British royal family, Meghan has been working on equality and democracy by speaking up about her political views. READ MORE: King's Heartbreak: Prince Charles Gets Brutally Honest About Waiting To Become King Writer and producer Chris Whipple, whose most recent book is "The Spymasters," in Washington, D.C., in 2015. (David Hume Kennerly / Getty Images) Richard Helms, the legendary director of Central Intelligence, once described his job in chillingly succinct terms: "It's not enough to ring the bell," he said, referring to foreign threats. "You have to make sure the president hears it." Its a tough mission statement. But the CIAs own blunders over the years have too often made a mockery of Helms credo. The agency has been battered like a pinata before, but never, perhaps, as much as today, and from so many directions. Republicans who once defended the agency against Democratic charges of secrecy and subterfuge now blast it as a Deep State conspirator. Democrats who once denounced the CIA as evil angrily protest GOP attacks on its independence. Meanwhile, the presidents Justice Department is investigating the CIAs investigation of foreign interference in his election. Theres a brave new world at Langley and its captured vividly in Chris Whipples new book, The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future. A journalist-historian, Peabody-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker, Whipple profiled presidential chiefs of staff in his previous book, The Gatekeepers. The Spymasters illuminates the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence gathering. He spoke to The Times about how the agency and the threats have changed from Vietnam to 9/11 to the pandemic and the Trump administration. (Scribner) Richard Helms was CIA director from 1966 to 1973. Why is his admonition about ringing the bell still relevant? Its impossible to overstate the stakes here. The CIA director is the person we depend on to prevent another 9/11 or a lethal pandemic. For the past 50 years, theyre the ones telling presidents things they dont want to hear. Its not their job to advocate policy. Theyre the honest brokers of intelligence. Youve said President Trump is unbriefable. What does that mean? He doesnt absorb information he doesnt want to hear. Hes incurious. He doesnt read the Presidents Daily Brief prepared for him by the director of national intelligence. But theres a larger problem: He has contempt for the intelligence community and is convinced its full of enemies trying to bring him down. Hes the most extreme case but certainly not the first president who thought that. Story continues Is President Nixon a good example? Yes. The Spymasters begins with Nixon at war with his intelligence community, and Helms rebuffing his demand to help shut down the FBI investigation of Watergate. It ends with Trump getting impeached because of an anonymous CIA whistleblower in the Ukraine affair. And the outbreak of a pandemic which the president ignored. How does Nixons White House compare to Trumps? The situation is worse now. The guys in the White House back then were almost amateurs when it came to politicizing intelligence. Nixon would blush looking at what Trump has done, and the results are sobering. Nixon resigned, Trump did not. Whats the most disturbing thing you uncovered? One was the lead-up to 9/11. Richard Blee, who ran the CIAs Bin Laden unit, sounded the alarm about clues that Al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States, and he presented the case to Condoleezza Rice in July. He spoke to me on the record about this for the first time. All Rice had to do was convene a principals meeting. Thats when you bring together senior national security advisers and Cabinet officials. You shake the trees and things fall out. They would have discovered in all likelihood that two Al Qaeda hijackers were already on U.S. soil. But Rice didnt do it. Administration officials didnt want to deal with it. They wanted it to go away much as Trump wanted the virus to go away some 20 years later. Its a recurring pattern of wishful disbelief. But it cuts both ways: While presidents fail to act on hard truths, sometimes the agency fails to give them the truth for fear of angering them. Is there a recent example? Were seeing evidence now that intelligence being given to the president is being skewed and soft-pedaled. A recent intelligence report said Russia is trying to interfere in the 2020 election but so are China and Iran. Theres no comparison between the Russian threat and China and Iran, who simply have a preference for who wins. The three cases were lumped together so as not to anger Trump. This is what happens when the president hands your head to you every time you tell him something he doesnt want to hear. Whos the most fascinating CIA director you examined? Helms, without a doubt. He was a flawed, complex and heroic figure all wrapped into one. He was the quintessential director a James Bond-like character with a martini in one hand and a Chesterfield in the other. Helms fought to protect the agencys integrity, but he also did a lot of dirty work for Lyndon B. Johnson. He was no angel. At the same time, Helms ordered up a damning report on his own authority finding that the domino theory, the strategic basis for the Vietnam War, was half-baked nonsense. It infuriated Johnson, but Helms was standing up for the truth. How do you view Gina Haspel, the CIAs current director? The jurys still out. The intelligence community gave her the benefit of the doubt when she started, given her track record as a covert operative and running CIA stations abroad. But now theres a sinking feeling that she cant stand up to Trump. No one was encouraged when she stood up at his State of the Union speech and cheered his lines. CIA directors arent supposed to do that. Shes trying too hard to please the president but shes not the first director to do that. What was the most challenging part of writing The Spymasters? Getting directors to open up. Not only are they loath to talk about conversations with presidents; much of what they do is classified. Yet I quickly learned that what some directors consider off limits, others regard as fair game. Its no wonder the spy world is called a wilderness of mirrors. How tough is the job of CIA director? If youre not prepared to make life-and-death decisions every day, if youre not ready to face ethical dilemmas every day, you shouldnt be running the agency. The job has changed over the years, but one thing remains constant. The CIA director commands an army of analysts, operatives and drones. But if he or she doesnt have the ear of the president, the whole enterprise is for naught. Getlin is a former national correspondent for The Times. The Big Banana. Uluru. The Opera House. Bondi Icebergs. Austalia has a lot of big bright tourist attractions. But there are also some more underground destinations deserving of some love. With the pandemic sparking a resurgence in domestic trips (the corollary to a massive slump in overseas travel), to help travellers go beyond the tourist trail, online travel agency Webjet has launched a competition which aims to uncover Australias lesser lauded locales. The competition encourages Australians to share unique and interesting shots of their local area on Instagram, with the hashtag, #ShowUsYourAus, in return for the chance to win a $1,000 Webjet eGift Card. Launching at the start of September, Webjets Show Us Your Australia campaign has seen 538 posts at the time of writing, ranging from under bridge angles of Queenslands Hervey Bay to quirky shots of Adelaides growing city scene (caption: not a single building in this photo is over three years old) to understated images of The Murray River National Parks Lyrup Flats. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Clinton Blair Photographer (@chippieb) on Sep 13, 2020 at 2:36am PDT Thats before we get to the incredible rockpools at Western Australias Injidup View this post on Instagram A post shared by | (@katnielsencreates) on Dec 9, 2018 at 2:37am PST the dramatic Redbank Gorge View this post on Instagram A post shared by Emma Jane Haylett (@emmajaneeh) on Sep 9, 2020 at 4:04pm PDT and the whales at Middleton beach. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alex (@gasgaslex_photos) on Aug 5, 2020 at 6:06pm PDT Further shots show how, just around the corner from some of the countrys most oversaturated tourist destinations (think: Manly and Bondi), there are some lesser licked slices of paradise ripe for the gramming (see: the bower off Shelly Beach and Bronte). In launching this competition, Webjet says it aims to make everyday Aussies the experts, giving them a platform to boast about their favourite regional spot be it somewhere in their home state, or a place theyve visited in the past. Those that share are in with the chance to win a $1,000 Webjet eGift Card, to put towards visiting other highlighted top spots themselves. Entrants have two options to get involved: visual entries can be submitted through Instagram, using an original photo they have taken of their nominated location or place. All Instagram entries must tag Webjet (@webjet_au) and include the hashtag #ShowUsYourAus and #competition. Alternatively, entrants can visit the Webjet Facebook page and post their answer, in 25 words or less, to the question, Why do you want to show off Your Australia to other travellers?. These written responses can be submitted in the comments section of the pinned Show Us Your Australia post. Four winners will be selected from Instagram and four winners will be chosen from Facebook. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Travel Bootcamp (@thetravelbootcamp) on Sep 1, 2020 at 1:00am PDT David Galt, Webjet OTA CEO comments, We all know that 2020 has been one of the toughest years on record for tourism. Webjet is committed to sustaining and rejuvenating the travel industry, by providing those areas and economies reliant on tourism with much needed support. As restrictions on international travel continue indefinitely, domestic tourism is the way forward for many of us. With our Show Us Your Australia campaign, we want to provide both getaway inspiration and the chance for locals to show us their own part of their hometown or region. This is the opportunity for locals to shout about those unique and interesting spots that others may not be aware of for who knows a destination better than the people who call it home? We are looking forward to seeing an incredible array of places to visit, and hope that the prospect of seeing and experiencing these sights further tempts travellers into getting out to regional Australia and supporting those that live there. More to come as the (film) develops. Read Next When a wooden statue of Melania Trump was erected near her hometown in Slovenia last year, it was mocked as looking like a Smurfette or a scarecrow. Then it was set on fire. Now, the artist who commissioned it is back with a new one and this sculpture, made of bronze, is intended to have a more enduring legacy. The bronze statue representing first lady Melania Trump was unveiled in Sevnica this week. Credit:AP "With the Black Lives Matter protests, there's been a tendency to rip down monuments, so I wanted to install a permanent one," the artist, Brad Downey, an American, said in a telephone interview from Slovenia on Wednesday. Although Downey said he did not support US President Donald Trump or his anti-immigrant policies, the artist said that Melania Trump's origins obliquely contradicted her husband's views. Apple on Wednesday upgraded Safari for Mac owners running macOS Catalina or macOS Mojave, giving those users a new browser before releasing the Big Sur operating system refresh. Safari 14 can be downloaded by selecting "System Preferences" from the Apple menu, then clicking on the "Software Update" icon. The browser will also be bundled with macOS 11, aka Big Sur, which has yet to be given a release date. This week's upgrade targets users who will, whether permanently or temporarily, stick with 2019's Catalina or 2018's Mojave. (Apple simultaneously supports three editions of macOS, but only one version of Safari. When the Cupertino, Calif. company ships Big Sur, that means it will continue to supply patches for the past two editions Catalina and Mojave but will halt support of 2017's High Sierra. Safari 13 support stopped as of the launch of Safari 14.) Anyone running High Sierra and/or Safari 13 should consider switching to a browser that will continue to receive security fixes, like Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox or Microsoft's Edge. A year's worth of new stuff Unlike other browser makers, who crank out updates every few weeks Mozilla, for instance, refreshes Firefox every four Apple rolls out a new Safari just once a year. Rather than spread out new features and functionality across a dozen or so updates, Apple packs the bulk of new into a single upgrade. Among the notable new features and functionality in Safari 14 are expanded tab management, website Touch ID authentication, a new privacy report, and additional customization options for the new tab page. Some of Safari 14's new features require macOS 11, Big Sur, including page translations to and from English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese, and streaming YouTube videos in 4K quality. Most of the new in Safari, however, works in the older OSes. Apple also discontinued all support for Flash with Safari 14. Adobe will stop servicing and distribution of Flash Player at the end of this year; since April 2017, when Adobe announced its Flash plans, browser makers, including Apple, have been stripping capabilities from their wares. Apple was never much of a Flash fan, having banned it from iOS and required users of OS X and macOS since 2010 to fetch the player utility themselves rather than find it included with the OS. Where the softness of Jeyifouss metal statues is merely simulated, the nearly life-size personages in Through the Kitchen Door actually are soft. Artist Melanie Kehoss cut the two-dimensional silhouettes from Tyvek, a paper-like plastic. The Arlington artist is known for using such cutouts to construct vignettes in light boxes. Her current effort, on display a few steps from Waterfront Park in the Torpedo Factorys New Project Studio, expands on this approach. Visitors walk into a kind of box, and are surrounded on three sides by a half-dozen black-and-white, backlit kitchen scenes depicting life during six eras between 1790 and today. Stirista Buys Location Data Platform Nikaza In the US, data-driven marketing solutions provider Stirista has acquired location-based data measurement and attribution platform Nikaza. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Launched in 2016 by former Neustar exec Mano Pillai (pictured) and headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Nikaza was developed to understand consumer interactions across the physical and digital worlds, and connect brands to people in and out of the home. User businesses can provide smartphone users with a contextually relevant interaction with physical world objects nearby. With the Nikaza acquisition, Stirista will offer a solution that allows marketers to use data-driven first party location insights, build targeted segments, and measure campaign effectiveness. In addition, the deal will enhance Stirista's media buying platform AdStir, enabling brands and agencies to run omnichannel campaigns and measure their effectiveness through multi-touch attribution of in-store and online purchases. Pillai comments: 'The Nikaza platform fills in the gaps in traditional attribution models and helps measure the effectiveness of marketing spend across channels including CTV, mobile, out of home and online. Stirista has built its reputation on delivering data-driven marketing campaigns for enterprise and mid-level brands, and building on our collective expertise, the AdStir platform will be second to none in the marketplace'. Web sites: www.stirista.com and www.nikaza.io . A Conservative MP has announced he intends to skip unconscious bias training offered in parliament because he believes it to be undemocratic and unproven. It follows reports that the Commons is to begin piloting a course aimed at countering entrenched racism and sexism. Staff in parliament have already received similar training. Ben Bradley said he would try to persuade his colleagues not to attend, adding that we should be unabashed in our cultural conservatism and resist the imposition of woke values promoted by the Black Lives Matter movement and others. He has previously described Black Lives Matter as divisive. While protesters aims were very positive and laudable, he said, when you start to push everyone to identify themselves by the colour of their skin, that is not a good thing. Writing on the Conservative Home website, Mr Bradley said: "Nobody doubts that racism exists and can make life more challenging for some people. Nor that sexism exists, [or] ageism and discrimination across a whole spectrum. That much is true. "What I doubt here is that these things are somehow buried deep in all of our subconscious, steering us at every turn, and that with the help of some genius educator I can be cured of my unseen evil. Im yet to see the evidence of it achieving a great deal, apart from big profits for the training company. Theres something deeply undemocratic about it too, in my view. Im elected to this place to represent my constituents. To share their thoughts and views with the House. Weve already seen through the Brexit debates how the views of Leave voters were characterised as racist and unacceptable, and now were to be educated about which views are appropriate for us to speak about. Mr Bradley said he had already attended training about valuing everyone, which he described as a pleasant way to spend two hours but not worth its reported 750,000 cost. The MP for Mansfields comments chime with the stance of Boris Johnson, who has said that Britons must avoid self-recrimination and general wetness about their national history. Speaking amid the recent row over the BBCs Last Night of the Proms, the prime minister said: I think its time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture." Mr Johnson has previously said he does not believe the UK is a racist country, though admitted discrimination does exist. We have made significant progress on this issue but there remains more to do and we will not be complacent in our efforts to stamp out racism and discrimination where it happens, he said in June. Pennsylvania members of the Committee to Protect Medicare said Thursday that politically-motivated attacks on Gov. Tom Wolfs actions to control COVID-19 are a danger to their patients and all state residents. They said they are speaking out because of this weeks opinion by a federal judge which said restrictions including the state-wide state-at-home order were unconstitutional. The lawsuit was driven by Republicans who echo views similar to President Donald Trump, who pressed Wolf and other governors to reopen their states even as COVID-19 cases were rising and public health officials feared hospitals would be overwhelmed. As physicians, were concerned that blind, unquestioning loyalty to President Trump by elected officials in Harrisburg is getting in the way of good public health policies and endangering peoples lives, said Dr. Max Cooper, a Chester County emergency physician. Physicians have a responsibility to speak out when we see harm being done, and harm is being done right now to the people of Pennsylvania. The stay-at-home order and closings of non-essential businesses which the federal judge found unconstitutional have been eased. However, Cooper said Wolf might need to resume some of them if cases spike again, as many experts predict will happen this fall. Cooper further said that study data and his own experience at a hospital convinced him that the Wolf restrictions saved many lives. The exact impact of the federal judges ruling remains unclear. The Wolf administration noted that the requirement to wear face masks and restrictions on restaurants and bars remain in effect. But Wolf also said he will ask for a stay to prevent the court decision from being enforced and file an appeal. The Committee to Protect Medicare has 170 members in Pennsylvania, which has about 40,000 active physicians. It has 2,600 nationally, according to a spokeswoman. The morning after . . . Right now we roundup the latest, local murder scene thats the result of bad hombres partying too hard in this towns original Latino enclave . . . The upshot: Every local demographic is contributing tot his town's historic homicide spike as we quickly approach a murder record. Moreover . . . THE BIG PUBLIC SAFETY COMPLAINT HERE WAS THE EPIC CROWD OF MEXICANS DESPITE CORONAVIRUS CROWD LIMITS!!! Money line and neighborhood complaint after the Blvd was shut down without any permit . . . "Police said their preliminary investigation indicates there was a large gathering of vehicles and people in the street throughout the 2600 block of Southwest Boulevard when multiple shots were fired from an unknown vehicle." Local note from the scene was sent our way last night as the carnage was widely witnessed via social media: "One chick was shot and she looked dead, Snapchat video of her laying there is all over social media. And apparently 2 other cars started shooting at each other.. It was like the Las Vegas shooting videos, everyone was running, we had a group of 20 on the ground.. using a car as a shield, gun shots from both sides but it was quiet as a mouse, no screaming.. just the gun shots." Accordingly, this might put a damper on other festivities for Hispanic Heritage Month . . . Check the links: Fox4: 1 killed, 1 injured in overnight shooting on crowded Kansas City street KSHB: Woman killed after shots fired into large crowd near 26th Street, Southwest Boulevard KMBC: 1 woman hurt, 1 dead after shooting in Kansas City Developing . . . Seeing Paris Hilton's revealing documentary for the first time was a "very emotional" experience for little sister Nicky Hilton. In an exclusive interview with E!'s Zanna Roberts Rassi at Monse's Fall 2020 pop up at New York Fashion Week, Nicky recounted her sneak peek at Paris' new film, This Is Paris, which premiered Sept. 14 on YouTube. "It was very, very emotional. We watched it for the first time. She didn't even want to show my mother the movie. So we snuck downstairs and we were watching it together. She said, I don't want mom to see it.' I was like, Well she's going to see it in a few weeks when it's on YouTube for the whole world to see,'" the 36-year-old said. Nicky continued, "We watched it together. We laughed. We cried. I'm just so proud of her, because going through so much trauma and reliving it with the whole world watching is very brave." Paris Hilton's Documentary Bombshells: Abuse, Family Secrets and More Revelations The YouTube documentary details Paris' allegations of physical and emotional abuse during her time at boarding school. During a recent appearance on E!'s Daily Pop, the heiress said she now feels "empowered" and "free" that her family knows what she endured at Provo Canyon School in Utah. Paris Hilton, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, 2017 NYFW Star Sightings Nicky also explained why she's proud of her big sis for opening up about such a personal topic and inspiring others along the way. "I've got so many messages today from people I know who've been through similar things, from strangers saying, I'm so happy that I don't feel alone anymore.' I'm so thrilled that she did it," Nicky said. "I think a lot of people were shocked and just seeing her allow herself to be so vulnerable without the glam team and just so raw." During an opening scene of This is Paris, the DJ reveals, "Something happened in my childhood that I never talked about with anyone... I still have nightmares about it. I wish I could bring, like, a camera into my dreams, and, like, show you what it's like. It's terrifying. And I relive that every night. I experienced it and to this day I am still traumatized and I think the only way to have these nightmares stop is to do something about it." For more from Nicky, press play on the video above! Read about Paris' most shocking revelations in the documentary right here. New Delhi, Sep 17 : As the government pushes for self reliance in the mobile phone and electronics industry with the clarion call for 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', data shows that over 45 per cent imports of smartphone components in the last financial year (FY 2019-20) came from China. Citing data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Thursday said that the total imports of smartphone components in the country in FY2019-20 were worth Rs 56,039 crore, out of which imports from China were to the tune of Rs 25,441 crore, which amounts to about 45 per cent. In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the ministry also said that the total electronic component imports in the country in FY2019-20 was of Rs 1,15,558 crore, out of which the import from China was of Rs 42,983 crore, which amounts to about 37 per cent of the total imports. On the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the supplies to India, the ministry said that the outbreak in China coincided with the Chinese New Year festivities which extended till mid-February 2020 and Indian electronics companies had already stocked raw material or components till end-February 2020. Though most factories in China were able to resume operations and achieve around 50 per cent capacity utilization by mid-March 2020, the virus had spread in other parts of the world, including India, by such time and a nation-wide lockdown was imposed on March 23, 2020. This led to a complete halt in all production activities, including electronics manufacturing, with the exception of a few companies who were manufacturing electronic components for essential medical equipment such as ventilators, the ministry said. "It was only after the lockdown was lifted that the domestic companies in the electronics sector resumed production and other associated activities. The shutdown of factories for about two months has impacted the domestic electronics manufacturing sector," it added. According to the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA), there will be production loss of 20-25 per cent in 2020-21, compared to 2019-20, the ministry said in its reply. Ask Matt ... what's going into Rite Aid space The former Rite Aid pharmacy will be home to Immunotek Bio Centers, a blood plasma business. [MATT MATTESON/Hendersonville Lightning] Q. What is going in the former Rite Aid Building on Asheville Highway and Justus Street? Just in time when hospitals are crying for blood plasma, here comes Immunotek Bio Centers, a Louisiana-based for profit plasma donation center that will move into the former pharmacy. The company, which boasts a dozen locations nationwide, will open next February with 15 employees. The next closest Immunotek center is in Columbia, South Carolina. Plasma is the greenish yellow stuff that makes up 55 percent of your blood. To get it, a phlebotomy technician painlessly draws whole blood from your vein, then the plasma is mechanically separated from the red blood cells and the blood is returned to your body. This process, called plasmapheresis, takes about 90 minutes. A typical draw is 810 ml (1.7 pints). The Immunotek Bio Center in High Point pays donors $75 for the first three sittings and $50 thereafter. They also say you can donate plasma twice every seven days although the Red Cross advises 28 days. Immunotek officials would not share what they do with the plasma but it is generally known that pharmaceuticals buy plasma because its enzymes, antibodies and proteins are needed for medications. Just up the road in Asheville is another private plasma collection center named Plasma Biological Services. They pay up to $100 for the first two donations. The neat thing about plasma is that it can be frozen and easily stored. So is there a blood feud? Perhaps so because when Immunotek comes to town there will be competition for donors. One competitor is The Blood Connection, a whole blood and plasma donation center located on Spartanburg Highway. Another is the American Red Cross but it only takes plasma at the center in Asheville. Of the three, only Immunotek pays cash to donors. The other two offer gift cards, T-shirts or snacks. The story of The Blood Connection is an interesting one. The nonprofit started in the blood business in 1962 in Upstate South Carolina and has grown steadily. Today it runs a $60 million business that supplies blood products to 74 hospitals in the Carolinas. Using 10 donation centers and a fleet of 50 mobile units, the company assisted over 158,000 hospital patients. The Blood Connection is the primary supplier of whole blood for Pardee, AdventHealth (Park Ridge), and Mission hospitals but none of the three was eager to talk about their relationship with blood and plasma suppliers. The obvious question here is how did The Blood Connection wrestle the blood business away from the American Red Cross? We were invited into the community by the hospitals to be their blood provider, said Allie Van Dyke, a Blood Connection spokesperson. The evolution began locally about six years ago. I suspect that the new blood and plasma collection agencies got into the business the same way FedEx got into mail delivery there was a demonstrated need, room to operate and they could do it for less. The Blood Connection takes pride in having a local focus. Our products are used for hospital transfusions, not sold to pharmacies, said Van Dyke. And it is 100 percent patient directed. All the blood they collect is shipped to a lab in Greenville where it is tested, processed, and distributed to local hospitals. The lab operates 24/7 and the turn-around time is just 24 to 48 hours. The Red Cross does 40% of the nations blood business. And they do some amazing work in disaster recovery, assistance to military families, and training such as CPR and lifeguard, but the trend is down in biomedical services. In just the past five years, the Red Cross has lost 18% of its blood and platelet donations by volume, had 600,000 fewer donors, and dropped 100 hospital and blood transfusion center clients. It should come as no surprise that The Blood Connection was a factor in their loss of market share. Theres room for all, said Megan Robinson, executive director of the WNC Chapter of the American Red Cross. Last year we collected 24,000 units of blood in the 16 counties we serve. Robinson said the Red Cross has working relationships with some of the smaller hospitals such as those in Haywood, Rutherford and Swain counties. One niche market held by the Red Cross is filling a need for rare blood types. Robinson said they are now collecting convalescent plasma from those who have recovered from Covid-19. This plasma contains antibodies that can help patients who are actively fighting the virus. There is a shortage of this product, she said, and we need all hands on deck. Robinson was not overly concerned with the coming of Immunotek or the growth of The Blood Connection. We try to build a personal relationship with our donors. Many have been with us for years and wont go elsewhere. They know their blood is going to a trauma victim or cancer patient. In fact, many of our donors use a cell phone app to track their donated blood to see where it ended up. Blood taken by the Red Cross in WNC is tested and processed in Atlanta before it is redirected. Some years ago the Red Cross got away from owning real estate and closed the office on Grove Street but tried to maintain the same level of services with blood drives. It still keeps a small office on First Avenue East that was once the Countys E-9-1-1 Center. From that office, Red Cross staff and volunteers handle emergencies such as house fires. When the pandemic hit this spring, the agency opened a temporary four-bed blood donation station. Lets recap the local players. The Blood Connection does plasma and other blood products. They are big, growing, but remain a nonprofit. They serve several local hospitals. The American Red Cross still does blood drives locally and plasma donors can give in Asheville. Red Cross collected blood can either serve some local hospitals or go where there is a need. Immunotek Bio Center will open its local center here and pay donors for plasma. Blood money? In my research for this story it was impossible to avoid reading about the dark world of plasma how some who live in poverty rely on the money they get as plasma donors. Or that plasma is a $20 billion industry that sells the product to pharmaceuticals for many more times what is paid to the donor. It might be of some comfort to know that because of the risk of possible infectious agents in the blood supply, our Food and Drug Administration regulates some aspects of blood collection and inspects centers periodically. ADD SHIRTTAIL -30- The first busload of New Orleans refugees to reach the Reliant Astrodome overnight was a group of people who commandeered a school bus in the city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and drove to Houston looking for shelter. Jabbar Gibson, 20, said police in New Orleans told him and others to take the school bus and try to get out of the flooded city. Gibson drove the bus from the flooded Crescent City, picking up stranded people, some of them infants, along the way. Some of those on board had been in the Superdome, among those who were supposed to be evacuated to Houston on more than 400 buses Wednesday and today. They couldn't wait. The group of mostly teenagers and young adults pooled what little money they had to buy diapers for the babies and fuel for the bus. After arriving at the Astrodome at about 10:30 p.m., however, they initially were refused entry by Reliant officials who said the aging landmark was reserved for the 23,000 people being evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome. "Now, we don't have nowhere to go," Gibson said. "We heard the Astrodome was open for people from New Orleans. We ain't ate right, we ain't slept right. They don't want to give us no help. They don't want to let us in." Milling about the Reliant entrance, Sheila Nathan, 38, told her teary-eyed toddler that she was too tired to hold him. "I'm trying to make it a fairy tale so they won't panic," said Nathan, who had four grandchildren in tow. "I have to be strong for them." After about 20 minutes of confusion and consternation, Red Cross officials announced that the group of about 50 to 70 evacuees would be allowed into the Astrodome. All were grateful to be out of the devastation and misery that had overtaken their hometown. "I feel good to get out of New Orleans," said Demetrius Henderson, who got off the bus with his wife and three children. Many of those around him alternated between excited, cranky and nervous, clutching suitcases or plastic garbage bags of clothes. They looked as bedraggled as their grueling ride would suggest: 13 hours on the commandeered bus driven by a 20-year-old man. Watching bodies float by as they tried to escape the drowning city. Picking up people along the way. Three stops for fuel. Chugging into Reliant Park, only to be told initially that they could not spend the night. Every bit worth it. "We took the bus and got out of the city. We were trying to get out of the city," James Hickerson said. Several passengers on the bus said they took the matter into their own hands earlier Wednesday because they felt rescuers and New Orleans authorities were too slow in offering help. "They are not worried about us," said Makivia Horton, 22, who is five months pregnant. salatheia.bryant@chron.com cynthia.garza@chron.com Toby Antony By Express News Service KOCHI: The NIA Court here will examine a diplomat, who had served at the Indian Embassy in Iraq, in connection with the trial in the first case relating to the Islamic State (IS) in Kerala in which charges of waging war against a friendly nation or Asian power were slapped on the accused, on Friday. Though the identity of the diplomat is yet to be revealed, NIA recently filed a petition in the court to examine the diplomat. The case against Thodupuzha native Subahani Haja Moideen, who allegedly fought for the IS in the Arabian peninsula, is the first in the state where IPC Section 125 was invoked. Though witness examination is over, the NIA court is holding the final hearing as the NIA requested to examine one more witness. The diplomat was with the Indian mission in Iraq in 2015 when Subahani allegedly fought for the IS in Mosul, Iraq. The diplomat is currently serving in India. V T Raghunath, defence counsel, said he was unaware of the diplomats identity. The witness is a last-minute inclusion by NIA. It is a usual practice of NIA to bring in witnesses in the last stage of the case. We dont know what statement the person has given to NIA. We will cross-examine him on the basis of his deposition in the court. We feel the new witness is being brought to claim that the accused indeed went to Iraq and fought a war against the Asian power and a friendly nation. We dont think it will make any major impact, he said. The case is unique as it is one of the rare incidents in which an accused, after participating in a war abroad for a terrorist organisation, returned home. The court has examined around 50 witnesses after the trial began in 2019. Arjun Ambalapatta is the prosecutor for NIA. Subahani was arrested after Ansarul Khilafah-Kerala, which follows the radical ideology of IS, was busted by NIA in 2016. Fall 2020 Data Governance Trends Report Key findings show how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced CIOs to reimagine data governance plans in the context of remote-first (and remote-only) working conditions. Today Egnyte, whose intelligent platform enables businesses to manage and govern content everywhere, published its inaugural Data Governance Trends Report, based on findings from a survey of 400 IT executives in August 2020. The Data Governance Trends Report highlights the challenges associated with the data type most greatly affected by remote working scenarios: unstructured data. (Unstructured data includes all the information stored in files like Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents, as well as images, video and more.) The demands on data governance leaders have been intensifying for the past several years, said Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain. There is more and more content straddling on-prem and multi-cloud environments. Business users are clamoring for consumer-like, self-service models of accessing files anytime, anywhere. Meanwhile, companies must adapt to a new slate of GDPR-style privacy regulations, and in parallel, theres an explosion of new opportunities to interpret and analyze these huge unstructured datasets. Key findings show how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced CIOs to reimagine data governance plans in the context of remote-first (and remote-only) working conditions. It reveals new and emerging security threats associated with the work-from-everywhere paradigm, and digs into the strategies companies have adopted (and plan to adopt) to keep up. While companies face a diverse set of challenges, several major trends emerged: Remote work is driving more data sprawl than ever before. Seventy-six percent of IT executives are concerned about unstructured data sprawl, and more than half say remote work is the main culprit. Remote is risky. Away from the office, 29 percent of employees are accessing corporate files through unsecured WiFi networks and on personal devices with no password requirements. On average, they report that 47 percent of files contain sensitive information. Employees arent doing enough to protect sensitive information. Just 29 percent of C-suite IT executives give their employees an A grade for following policies and procedures to keep files and documents secure. Nobody loves their content management architecture. Ninety-seven percent of CIOs say that content management is rife with problems, citing as examples files sitting on unsecured devices, data loss, and mismanaged permissions. The digital future is automated. To take the load off workers, more than half of companies plan to invest in AI and machine learning to automate content management and data security. To read the full Data Governance Trends Report, visit egnyte.com/governance-trends. For additional insights from the Egnyte team, register for the State of Data Governance on October 27. Methodology The Data Governance Trends Report was commissioned by Egnyte and conducted by an independent firm, Wakefield Research (http://www.wakefieldresearch.com). The study was fielded between July 31 and Aug. 12, 2020 using an email invitation and an online survey. Respondents comprised 400 U.S. C-Levels with Technology/IT titles at companies of 100 or more employees. About Egnyte Egnyte is the new standard for business content in a work-from-everywhere world. Egnyte provides one unified platform to manage, govern, and gain insight into business content across file shares, devices, and apps. More than 16,000 businesses trust Egnyte to empower distributed teams, protect business-critical data and reduce file-sharing cost and complexity. Investors include Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, and Goldman Sachs. For more information, visit http://www.egnyte.com. A medical robotic hand could allow doctors to more accurately diagnose and treat people from halfway around the world, but currently available technologies aren't good enough to match the in-person experience. Researchers report in Science Advances that they have designed and produced a smart electronic skin and a medical robotic hand capable of assessing vital diagnostic data by using a newly invented rubbery semiconductor with high carrier mobility. Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston and corresponding author for the work, said the rubbery semiconductor material also can be easily scaled for manufacturing, based upon assembly at the interface of air and water. That interfacial assembly and the rubbery electronic devices described in the paper suggest a pathway toward soft, stretchy rubbery electronics and integrated systems that mimic the mechanical softness of biological tissues, suitable for a variety of emerging applications, said Yu, who also is a principal investigator at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH. The smart skin and medical robotic hand are just two potential applications, created by the researchers to illustrate the discovery's utility. In addition to Yu, authors on the paper include Ying-Shi Guan, Anish Thukral, Kyoseung Sim, Xu Wang, Yongcao Zhang, Faheem Ershad, Zhoulyu Rao, Fengjiao Pan and Peng Wang, all of whom are affiliated with UH. Co-authors Jianliang Xiao and Shun Zhang are affiliated with the University of Colorado. Traditional semiconductors are brittle, and using them in otherwise stretchable electronics has required special mechanical accommodations. Previous stretchable semiconductors have had drawbacks of their own, including low carrier mobility - the speed at which charge carriers can move through a material - and complicated fabrication requirements. Yu and collaborators last year reported that adding minute amounts of metallic carbon nanotubes to the rubbery semiconductor of P3HT - polydimethylsiloxane composite - improves carrier mobility, which governs the performances of semiconductor transistors. Yu said the new scalable manufacturing method for these high performance stretchable semiconducting nanofilms and the development of fully rubbery transistors represent a significant step forward. The production is simple, he said. A commercially available semiconductor material is dissolved in a solution and dropped on water, where it spreads; the chemical solvent evaporates from the solution, resulting in improved semiconductor properties. It is a new way to create the high quality composite films, he said, allowing for consistent production of fully rubbery semiconductors. Electrical performance is retained even when the semiconductor is stretched by 50%, the researchers reported. Yu said the ability to stretch the rubbery electronics by 50% without degrading the performance is a notable advance. Human skin, he said, can be stretched only about 30% without tearing. Thursday's announcement from Gov. Greg Abbott about Texas bars remaining closed wasn't unexpected for Houston bartender Stacy Gouty. But the decision is still tough to swallow for bartenders such as Gouty. Bartenders typically work several gigs at once to stay afloat. "Restaurants, nail salons can reopen, but bars no, nothing. We're just hanging in there," Gouty said. "I have optimism, but that only gets you so far." NEW REOPENING RULES: Abbott allows restaurants to expand capacity, bars must remain closed At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, the governor announced plans to allow restaurants to expand their indoor dining capacity, while still requiring that Texas bars remain closed. Abbott's executive order states that restaurants will be allowed to seat diners up to 75 percent of their normal capacity staring on Monday, increasing from the 50 percent capacity limit implemented in July. Gouty wasn't surprised at all by Abbott's announcement. "Whenever they said that bars were shown to cause virus spread, it does feel like they are picking and choosing," Gouty said. "At the same time, I do agree with them. I saw it firsthand. It is hard to contain what people do. Bars are social places." He added that some Houston bars have reopened by offering a single food item or even converting the parking lot to offer space for customers. "There are a lot of restaurants that are opening with one food item," Gouty said. "I do think it is possible for bars to reopen. It just depends upon the circumstances. The other bar I work at, Barbarella, we're talking about opening the parking lot up, to be able to do it. We talked about that at Cottonmouth Club, but I don't think they will lean towards opening like that." What Gouty's witnessed a few times is that some bars will open up no matter what, without careful guidelines for social distancing and masks. "Everyone wants to reopen, but some people will just reopen and not put any precautions in," Gouty said. "There's no social distancing, no masks in some places. Just a lot of places that just do whatever they want and open up. A lot of DJ friends don't get a lot of help from the government and they're taking gigs wherever they can--and the videos they post are packed bars. Bars do nothing but spread COVID-19." Gouty mentioned a Houston club just down the street from him that could technically reopen because they offered food, but it's been dangerously crowded on the weekend. "On Sunday, they had 60 people on the patio, dancing like a dance floor," Gouty said. "They technically have food, but they're not seating people and requiring that they have masks. It doesn't seem like the city or the state is policing them. Once they get in the door, they don't leave their masks on. They're drinking to have fun. They're under the impression that they're safe or they don't care." Gouty said that although he's taken a step back from working at The Cottonmouth Club, he plans to be selective about his next gig in the hospitality industry. He wants to make sure it's a safe working environment. "I want it to be at a place that takes [safety] seriously and values lives over money," Gouty said. "It's up to us to do the right thing." A knowledgeable, skillful, motivated and cautious healthcare workforce is critical in providing appropriate and safe care to patients. The World Patient Safety Day was established in May 2019 by the World Health Assembly, and the day itself is celebrated on 17 September. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and its associated institutions and nations are virtually celebrating this day in 2020 with the theme Health Worker Safety: A priority for patient safety and the slogan Safe health workers, safe patients. It might seem strange at first glance that the focus on patient safety also highlights the need for better protection of healthcare workers but the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has underlined this need. The WHO points out that the pandemic is among the biggest challenges faced by the world at present and healthcare is perhaps living its greatest crisis in patient safety. The pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems from around the world, and every one of these health systems depends on the vital service of health workers. A knowledgeable, skillful, motivated and cautious healthcare workforce is critical in providing appropriate and safe care to patients. But the pandemic has also shown that healthcare workers are currently facing an immense challenge and working in the stressful conditions of a pandemic has increased the threats faced by them. How COVID-19 has impacted healthcare workers A study published in ERJ Open Research in April 2020 indicated that a month after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, global health systems showed gross unreadiness for such a situation and most countries left their healthcare workers in the lurch. The shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), for example, was felt globally and left most healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19 infection even as they rallied to serve patients in need. The study also anticipated that community transmission and asymptomatic carriers could put healthcare workers at more risk during the pandemic, underlining the need for more protective measures beyond the hospital setting. Another study, published in the Indian Journal of Otolaryngol Head Neck Surgery in June 2020, conducted a cross-sectional hospital-based survey between April and June and found that 40 healthcare workers were infected within the first two months of the pandemic at just one hospital. About 57.5 percent of the infected healthcare workers reported positive for psychological parameters like anxiety, fear, anger, irritability and insomnia, and yet, 42.5 percent received no psychological counselling at all. The importance of keeping healthcare workers safe This Indian study highlights that workplace risks for healthcare workers, even after contracting the infection while serving patients, are very high and very little is being done to manage the psychological stress the workers are under. Media reports from August 2020 suggest that 87,000 healthcare workers in India have so far been infected with COVID-19, with just six states Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, West Bengal and Gujarat reportedly accounting for three-fourths of the positive cases. A more recent report by the Indian Medical Association says that 382 health workers have already died of COVID-19 infection. These reports suggest that healthcare workers may not be receiving the support and care they require to perform their much-needed duties during the pandemic. As the WHO points out, these challenges faced by healthcare workers not only increase their risks of being infected and contributing to outbreaks within the healthcare facility they work at but also increase the chances of inducing errors which can potentially harm patients and colleagues. The psychological duress and the risks of stigma, violence, illness and death exacerbate the crisis faced by healthcare workers. It is only with urgent action taken by healthcare administrators, policymakers, governments, industry and civil society that these crises faced by healthcare workers can be mitigated. And lets not forget that their mitigation is a vital part of ensuring optimal patient care and safety. For more information, read our article on Patient rights in India. Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal The harrowing confrontation last Saturday between a New Mexico State Police K-9 officer and an Arizona man charged with attempting to kill her during a traffic stop on Interstate 40 is described in a new federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday. The newly released details are based in part on video from the officers vehicle dashcam, her lapel camera and the condition of her ballistic vest, which showed a significant amount of dried blood and what appeared to be a bullet hole in the upper right panel of the vest near the neckline, according to the complaint filed by the FBI. She suffered injuries to her hands, right shoulder, face and eyes in the incident, and she underwent emergency surgery, the complaint states. State Police arent disclosing her identity for now as the investigation continues. The new federal criminal complaint charges Robert Benjamin Nelson of Scottsdale, Arizona, with attempted murder of a U.S. employee or officer and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Nelson, 28, previously had faced second-degree felony charges in state court in Cibola County, where a magistrate set a $500,000 bond earlier this week. Those charges have since been dropped to permit prosecution by the U.S. Attorneys Office in New Mexico. The federal charges carry a potentially stiffer prison sentence upon conviction. Nelsons initial appearance before a U.S. Magistrate judge in Albuquerque is set for Thursday. According to the FBI complaint, the K-9 officer had just been trained and certified last month as a federal task force officer with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations in Albuquerque. She was engaged in official duties as a federal task force officer because she was conducting highway drug interdiction investigations with her K-9 partner the morning of Sept. 12, the complaint states. It isnt clear from the complaint what prompted the traffic stop, but she pulled over a GMC Sierra truck with Arizona license plates traveling eastbound west of Albuquerque. When she walked up to the passenger-side window, the driver raised his right hand and fired a handgun that was clearly orientated at (her) face and eyes, the FBI complaint states. As the first bullet travelled through the window, muzzle blast and glass shards impacted (her) face and eyes. She fell to the ground, drew her pistol and returned fire as the truck sped away, headed east on I-40. But the officer managed to get back to her State Police vehicle, call radio dispatch to say she had been shot and took off after a man later identified as Nelson. As she overtook the GMC truck farther east on the interstate, the driver of the truck pulled over again and she parked about 50 yards behind him, the complaint states. Her hands visibly bloody from gunshot wounds, she cocked her State Police rifle, the complaint states. Meanwhile, two Laguna Pueblo police officers arrived on the scene and the driver got out of his truck unarmed, raised his hands and walked toward the officers without incident. State Police agents seized the truck. There was a gray metal revolver on the front seat and an AK-47 rifle behind the seat, but no contraband was noted. State Police Chief Tim Johnson on Wednesday praised the K-9 officers iron will and bravery in the face of the disgusting and unprovoked attack. The bravery displayed by our officer during and after this incident is nothing short of heroic, Johnson told the Journal. By Chris Franklin Times Guest Columnist Aqua and DELCORA are continuing to make progress toward the completion of an acquisition and merger of operations that will ensure continued reliable wastewater service at the most affordable rates for thousands of Delaware County and Chester County wastewater customers, despite opposing efforts. Unfortunately, the efforts of Delaware County Council to thwart the transaction are costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and frivolously postponing the opportunity for DELCORA ratepayers to receive future rate relief through a trust specifically set up to benefit customers of DELCORA. Today, I wanted to reiterate why this acquisition and merger of operations is so beneficial to ratepayers. What first prompted the decision by DELCORA to seek a partner is the forthcoming tidal wave of mandated environmental improvements and capital costs. The primary driver of these costs is a requirement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that all combined (sanitary and storm water) sewer systems, like those in Chester and Philadelphia, be dramatically reduced or eliminated. As a result, DELCORA faces capital improvements costs to upgrade the combined sewer system in Chester and a large portion of the system in Philadelphia with a price tag of almost $700 million. In addition, through 2042, DELCORA projects the need to spend another $520 million in capital upgrades. These staggering costs total approximately $1.2 billion. Staring at this forthcoming tidal wave of costs, the DELCORA board voted to seek a partner who could help manage this work and associated costs, was knowledgeable about the local community, and was committed to maintaining its existing workforce. After an exhaustive and transparent process that included community open houses, public meetings with Delaware County Council and numerous meetings with local municipal sewer authorities, DELCORA chose to partner with Aqua. Our company is proud to partner with DELCORA because we have a long and deep history in Delaware County, where we were founded. We know the county and its people, having served the county first as Springfield Water Company beginning in 1886 and where we now serve approximately 500,000 Delaware County residents. The merger has other significant benefits. The DELCORA/Aqua merger of operations includes the creation of a trust fund from the net proceeds of the sale price, expected to be about $200 million. This trust will keep rates at a steady 3% annual increase while also allowing all the mandated improvements to be made. Without this trust, rates were expected to spike to 10% annually. Unfortunately, some politicians, in an attempt to get control of the $200 million, are mischaracterizing the use of the trust. To be clear, if Aqua/DELCORA makes the necessary capital improvements, and the PUC deems the expenditures to be prudent, those costs will be recovered in rates. The $200 million would be used to offset those rate increases, capping them at no more than 3% a year for the next decade. It is important that Delaware County Council does not raid this trust and use it for other projects or programs. We must act quickly, since DELCORAs contract with the City of Philadelphia to manage a part of its wastewater treatment expires in 2028 and the improvements are expected to take eight years to complete. Time is running out. Today, I encourage all customers served by DELCORA, including those served by Darby Creek Joint Authority, Muckinipates Authority, Central Delaware County Authority, Chester Ridley Creek System, Southwest Delaware County Municipal Authority, and Southern Delaware County Authority to contact Delaware County Council and tell them to stop blocking this acquisition and merger of operations, which will bring rate relief to customers. This acquisition and merger of operations benefits customers. It brings necessary upgrades to the wastewater system. It preserves jobs. It is good for Delaware County. Chris Franklin is Chairman & CEO, Essential Utilities Inc. Champion jockey Pat Smullen has been remembered as a gentleman and a serious generational talent as tributes flooded in following his death. Smullen (43), from Rhode, Co Offaly, a nine-time Irish champion flat jockey, died surrounded by his family on Tuesday in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. He had been diagnosed in 2018 with pancreatic cancer and took a step back from riding last year. Fellow jockey and friend Ruby Walsh was among those to speak of hi determined character. "He led by example," Walsh said on RTEs Morning Ireland. "I knew it was coming for the last while. If there was a horse ever named for Pat Smullen to ride it was Refuse to Bend, because he refused to bend as a jockey and he refused to bend all through his illness. "From that day forward both himself and his wife Frances got stuck in to try and figure out how you're going to deal with it and cope with it. "And ultimately aim to make it better, but nobody was ever under the illusion other than that it was going to be a very big battle." President Michael D Higgins expressed his "deep sadness" at Smullen's death and conveyed his sincere condolences to his family, wife and children. "His remarkable performances at home and abroad brought joy to so many," he said. Trainer Gordon Elliot spoke of Smullen as a gentleman and said he was one of the best the world had seen. "So sad to hear of Pat's passing. One of the greatest jockeys we've ever seen and above all a true gentleman who I was fortunate enough to know," he said. Charities "Condolences to Frances, Hannah, Paddy, Sarah and all his family. May he rest in peace." There were also condolences from figures in other disciplines. Smullen was active in raising funds for cancer charities. Cancer Trials Ireland yesterday revealed in a letter to his family how he had raised 2.6m for pancreatic cancer clinical trials. "People diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in Ireland will feel the benefit of it for years, if not decades, to come," a statement said. Speaking to RTE Sport a year ago, Smullen said: "Sure, life is full of setbacks, you just have to deal with it. "You have to face it, what else do you do? Lie down and give up? You can't do that." Its always a pleasure to chat with Homage co-founder and chief executive Gillian Tee because of her nuanced take on how technology can help elderly and other vulnerable people. According to the United Nations, the fastest-growing age bracket worldwide is aged 65-years-old and older. At the same time, there is also an acute shortage of caregivers in many countries, complicated by high rates of burnout in the profession. "Its absolutely one of the most important social topics and global issues," Tee said during her Disrupt session (the video is embedded at the bottom of this article). Founded in Singapore four years ago, Homage's platform uses a matchmaking engine to help families find the best caregivers, while its telehealth platform provides services like online medical consultations and screenings. It has since launched in Malaysia and yesterday announced a new strategic investment from Infocom, one of the largest healthcare technology companies in Japan. The partnership will enable Homage to accelerate its Asia-Pacific expansion. Before starting Homage, Tee was co-founder of New York-based Rocketrip. A ticket-booking platform created to reduce work travel-related costs for companies, Rocketrip attracted investors like Google Ventures, Y Combinator and Bessemer Ventures, and raised more than $30 million. But in 2016, Tee decided to return to Singapore, her home country, after living abroad for about 15 years. In her Disrupt session, Tee said this was to be closer to her mother, and because she felt that her startup experience could also be applied to Southeast Asia. Tee knew that she wanted to launch another company, but she didnt decide to tackle the caregiving space immediately. That idea materialized when several of her close relatives were diagnosed with chronic conditions that needed specialized care. "We didnt know how to cope or how even to start thinking about what was required, and that was when I realized, wow, I needed to get myself schooled in many ways," Tee said. Story continues Many families around the world are dealing with the same challenges as their populations age and social dynamics shift. Family members who traditionally would have been carers for relatives are unable to do so because they have moved away or need to work. Families often rely on word-of-mouth or agencies to find caregivers, a complicated, time-intensive and often emotionally difficult process. Homage uses matching algorithms to make it easier. One of the most unique things about the platform is how much detail it goes into. Providers are not only screened based on their certifications and the kind of care they provide (for example, long-term care, respite care, physical therapy or rehabilitation), but specific skills. For example, many patients need mobility assistance, so Homage assesses what kind of transfers they are able to safely perform. Then its matching technology decides which caregivers are best suited for a patient, and final assignments are made by Homage's staff. By streamlining the process, Homage also lowers its costs, making its services accessible to more people while increasing pay rates for providers. Better pay taps into another one of Homage's goals: expanding the caregiving pool in its markets and retaining talent. Other ways it addresses the issue is by placing caregivers on its platform into the jobs they are best suited for, organizing continuing education programs and making sure they are not over-scheduled. Some caregivers on the platform have long-term contracts, while others work with Homage clients only a few days a week. A holistic approach to "age-tech" In June, Homage launched its telehealth service. Called Homage Health, the platform has been in development for a while, but its launch was accelerated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote consultations fit into the "high-touch," or in-person, care side of the companys business because many patients need regular screenings or consultations with doctors and specialists. For patients who have limited mobility or are immunocompromised, this makes it easier for them to make routine consults. Hardware, including wearable sensors, also show promise to identify potential health issues, like heart conditions, before they require acute care, but one challenge is making them easier for patients to integrate into their daily routines or remember to wear, Tee said. Overall, Homages mission is to create a holistic platform that covers many caregiving needs. Its new partnership with strategic investor Infocom will help bring that forward because the company, which Tee said Homage has been talking to for several years, works with about 13,000 facilities in Japan, including senior residences and hospitals. Infocom develops software for a wide range of verticals, including drug, hospital and medical record management, and medical imaging. Infocom also runs its own caregiving platform, and its partnership with Homage will enable the two companies to collaborate and reach more patients. Japan has one of the largest populations of elderly people in the world. Tee said at minimum, half a million caregivers need to be mobilized within the next five to 10 years in Japan in order to meet demand. "We need to start building infrastructure to enable people to be able to access the kind of care services that they need, and so we really align in terms of that mission with Infocom," said Tee. "They also have a platform that engages caregivers to apply for jobs in Japan and they see the Homage model as being particularly applicable because its curated as well." https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/themes/techcrunch-2017/features/shortcodes/vidible-callback-js.php?id=1 Trump admin. combats China's 'egregious human rights abuses' by blocking goods made using slave labor Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The United States government has banned the import of certain goods from China that it says are made by forced laborers from the Xinjiang region, where millions of Uighurs and other Muslim and religious minorities are held in mass detention camps. On Monday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued five Withhold Release Orders on products from China, blocking the import of certain goods including hair products, apparel, and computer parts. The order specifically names five companies or industrial parks in Xinjiang and one company in eastern Anhui province the CBP says uses prison and forced labor to make products. One of Xinjiang's "vocational skills education and training centers" is also named in the order, a name the CPB says is a euphemism for Chinas re-education internment camps. Estimates suggest that as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims have been subject to internment camps, where they are taught to be secular citizens who will be subservient to the ruling Communist Party. "This is not a vocational center, it is a concentration camp," said Ken Cuccinelli, the senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. "A place where religious and ethnic minorities are subject to abuse and forced to work in heinous conditions with no recourse and no freedom. This is modern day slavery." In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that banning the entities is part of combating the "egregious human rights abuses" that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious groups in Xinjiang are facing. Such abuses "include subjecting individuals to forced labor and stripping them of their freedom and agency to choose how and where they work, Pompeo said. These actions send a clear message to the PRC that it is time to end its practice of state-sponsored forced labor and to respect the human rights of all people. In the past year, the Trump administration has issued eight withhold release orders to block goods from China suspected to have been made with forced labor from entering the country. Previous bans included toys, peeled garlic, hair products, and artificial sweeteners. Last month, Nury Turkel, a Uighur American attorney born in Xinjiang and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, revealed that forced labor has been part of Uighur life for as long as he can remember. Its one of the methods, one of the vehicles the Chinese used to repress the Uighur religion and Uighur culture, he said. "When you buy anything made in China, if it's a textile cotton product, I think it should be something that gives you pause. As a consumer, please do your due diligence. Please stop at least buying any cotton or textile products coming from China ... this should be something easy to tackle. Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, said that the tactics used against Uighur Muslims represent the cutting edge of religious persecution. Though they live in a remote region, China is employing its most aggressive technology to oppress Uighurs, including sophisticated cameras, facial-recognition technology, and collecting DNA samples, Brownback said. They've got technology deployed now where they've got surveillance cameras virtually everywhere in the public, he noted. They've collected genetic data on most of the people in the region to where you can be tracked on the internet, they have facial recognition systems. They could now theoretically close all the concentration camps and you would still live in a virtual police state if you were a Uighur in Xinjiang. China has also given Chen Quanguo, party chairman of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, a vast amount of resources to persecute Uighurs, allowing him to implement a comprehensive surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program in the region, Brownback said. My great concern is what it does to the Uighur people, but also that these systems will be replicated in other authoritarian regimes around the world, he stressed. And we've got this huge global battle going on between democracy and dictatorships, and dictatorships have been doing pretty well lately, unfortunately. China deploys its money resources very effectively and shrewdly and craftily to get a number of countries, particularly Muslim countries, not to speak up under threat. They will threaten aggressively. Recently, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore urged Christians to care about the plight of Uighur Muslims in China, warning that authoritarian regimes rely on tribalism to keep their system of persecution alive. The way of Jesus Christ says that we pay attention to our neighbor on the side of the road who is persecuted, who is being beaten, he said. So let's pray for the Uighur [and] for other persecuted peoples. Let's pray not just individually, but together, and pray for them by name. Let's be the people who stand up for whoever is being made invisible, whoever is being intimidated and bullied in our own neighborhoods and in our own communities because we're the people of Jesus Christ. Politicians across Wales have expressed dismay after a multi-billion pound nuclear power plant project in Anglesey was scrapped. Horizon Nuclear Power, the firm which was building the Wylfa Newydd plant, said on Monday its would be winding down its operations after its parent company Japanese conglomerate Hitachi decided it could not continue. Most of the workers building the site had been stood down since January 2019 after Hitachi paused the project following its failure to agree a funding package with the UK government. Now, however, the technology and engineering giant has abandoned the scheme, which would have seen a new power plant capable of powering five million homes constructed next to a decommissioned facility on the north coast of Anglesey. Up to 9,000 jobs would have been created on the island if the project had gone ahead. Horizons chief executive, Duncan Hawthorne, said he knew the decision would be disappointing for many in Wales. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty In particular I would like to thank our lead host community of Anglesey in Wales, represented by the Isle of Anglesey County Council and Welsh Government. In a statement, Hitachi said the coronavirus pandemic had made it even harder than before to secure the necessary funding for the building to go ahead. Hitachi made this decision given that 20 months have passed since the suspension, and the investment environment has become increasingly severe due to the impact of Covid-19. Politicians have reacted with consternation to the news. The Welsh governments minister for economy and North Wales, Ken Skates, said the announcement was deeply disappointing. There has been a tremendous effort by Horizon Nuclear Power, Ynys Mon Council, the North Wales region and all our partners to bring this important project forward, he said in a statement. Now is the time to continue with this strong partnership and build upon those efforts. We must not lose sight that Wylfa remains one the best sites in the UK for new nuclear development. The leader of Anglesey Council, Llinos Medi, said shutting down the nuclear project would hit the islands economy hard. This decision is a devastating blow to the Anglesey economy, she said. The Wylfa Newydd project had the potential to transform the Anglesey and North Wales economy, particularly that of North Anglesey. The new facility would have been built next to the old Wylfa power station, decommissioned in 2015, (Getty Images) I will now be calling for an urgent meeting with both UK and Welsh Governments to discuss the future of the Wylfa Newydd site. Mr Skates said the Welsh government would not give up on building a new nuclear power station on Anglesey and would explore all other options, including new companies overseas. The MP for the island, Conservative Virginia Crosbie, said Hitachis decision was hasty, given the government was due to announce its final approval to build the plant on 30 September and would also soon release a white paper on energy. It is with great disappointment that I have received this news, she said. The timing of the news is regrettable. She was already in talks with the business and energy secretary, the chancellor and the prime minister about the issue, Ms Crosbie added. I know that many people on Ynys Mon will feel disillusioned to hear that there has been another setback in the plans for Wylfa. However, I remain committed to my manifesto pledge to bring quality jobs, skilled employment and investment to Ynys Mon. But local campaigners against the nuclear facility have welcomed the news, arguing it was always excessively expensive and dangerous. A nuclear power station would have endangered lives on Anglesey and beyond, not just for our own generation but for generations to come, People Against Wylfa B said. UK approves Hinkley Point nuclear power plant It would have created tons of radioactive waste, with no solution to the problem of getting rid of the poison. It would have ruined the environment over an area which is ten times greater than the current site. A decade had been wasted by focusing on a second power plant in North Anglesey, the group said. Angleseys economic future has been put in the hands of a few people in a room in Tokyo. The hopes of a generation of young people for work in their home area were shattered. Several of the governments planned new generation of nuclear power stations, mostly built by private financing, have been scrapped in recent years. The only project definitely going ahead, Hinkley Point, is controversial because not only are a Chinese state-owned company involved, but to facilitate it the government guaranteed to buy energy from the station at a significantly higher price than the wholesale market, effectively transferring much of the cost onto future consumers. India should immediately correct its mistakes and disengage at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as soon as possible, China said on Thursday, once again blaming New Delhi for the ongoing tension in eastern Ladakh. The Chinese foreign ministry said the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops always abide by the agreements between the two countries on maintaining peace and tranquility along the disputed boundary. It is imperative for India to immediately correct its wrong practices, disengage on the ground as soon as possible and take concrete actions to ease the tension along the China-India border, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a ministry briefing. Chinese border troops, he said, have always strictly abided by the agreements between the two countries; they are committed to safeguarding Chinas territorial sovereignty and maintaining peace and tranquility in border areas. On Wednesday, Wang had said China was not to blame for the ongoing crisis at the border, which has plunged bilateral ties to its worst levels in decades. But China is not to blame for the current situation. It is the Indian side that has breached the agreements, first trespassed the territory first and fired shots to threaten the safety of the Chinese border troops first, Wang said on Wednesday. The Indian government has already dismissed similar allegations made by the Chinese earlier, saying that PLA troops were the first to provoke and not ready to disengage. External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava clearly spelt out the Indian governments position on the disengagement process earlier, saying the LAC must be strictly respected and observed as this is the basis for peace and tranquility in the border areas. Separately on Thursday, the nationalistic tabloid Global Times accused India of not being sincere in honouring the consensus to disengage in the backdrop of Thursdays meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) national security advisors. The article said while the meeting is a good opportunity to ease the ongoing border tensions between China and India, it depends on Indias sincerity. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, are expected to attend the BRICS video conference organised by Russia. Hu Zhiyong, from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that China should be prepared to face the fact that a consensus with India is possible if they meet, but should also remain vigilant over whether India can keep its promises. Zhao Gancheng, from the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, said since Yang and Doval know each other for a long time, the BRICS meeting brings hopes of peace. Zhao, however, added that whether the ultimate solution will be reached depends on India, as it has been showing no sign of conceding since the border standoff in May, and continues to provoke the PLA. A former adviser to Mike Pence and the White House coronavirus taskforce will vote for Joe Biden because of Donald Trumps flat out disregard for human life during the pandemic. Olivia Troye, who left the Trump administration in August, told The Washington Post that the presidents main concern was the economy and reelection, and that she wouldnt trust a Covid-19 vaccine that launches before the November vote. Ms Troye said the president claimed that Covid-19 was a good thing because it meant he didnt have to shake hands with disgusting people. She said he was referring to his own supporters. "Those disgusting people are the same people he claims to care about. These are the people who are still going to his rallies today, who have complete faith in who he is." She joins several former officials, or what the White House calls disgruntled ex-employees, to flip on the president to detail the dysfunctional inner workings of his administrations first term. The presidents rhetoric and his own attacks against people in his administration trying to do the work, as well as the promulgation of false narratives and incorrect information of the virus have made this ongoing response a failure, Ms Troye said in an interview with the Post. While former national security advisor John Bolton and former defence secretary Jim Mattis have previously opened the book on their time inside Mr Trumps presidency, Ms Troye is one of the first to focus on his handling of coronavirus. She was a major, if behind-the-scenes, participant in the White Houses coronavirus taskforce, working closely with Mr Pence on the response, briefing the vice president, writing his comments, and setting meeting agendas, according to the Post. I would not tell anyone I care about to take a vaccine that launches prior to the election I would listen to the experts and the unity in pharma. And I would wait to make sure that this vaccine is safe and not a prop tied to an election, she said. She said the White House missed months to slow the virus because of the delay in advice from public health officials to recommend wearing masks. The mask issue was a critical one. If we would have gotten ahead on that and stressed the importance of it, we could have slowed the spread significantly It was detrimental that it became a politicised issue. It still lingers today. Ms Troye, who left the vice presidents office to work at the not-for-profit National Insurance Crime Bureau, was speaking as part of an anti-Trump Republican group called Repair 45, started by former Homeland Security Department chief of staff Miles Taylor. In the campaign video, she says virus was unpredictable but by mid-February they knew it was a matter of when, not if, Covid would become epidemic in the United States. But when the president didnt want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success, she said. It was shocking to see the president saying that the virus was a hoax, saying that everythings ok when we know that its not. The truth is he doesnt actually care about anyone else but himself. Mr Pences national security advisor, Keith Kellogg, told the Post in a statement that she was disgruntled her detail was cut short because she was no longer capable of keeping up with her day-to-day duties and showed a lack of moral courage by not expressing any concerns about the coronavirus response when she had the opportunity. White House spokesman Judd Deere, meanwhile, said in his response to the article that Ms Troyes assertions have no basis in reality and are flat out inaccurate. Health Minister Edward Argar today failed to rule out a return to compulsory working from home in England as coronavirus case numbers continue to increase. Mr Argar said there are 'no plans at the moment' to advise all workers who can work from home to do so as he left the door open to the possibility in the coming weeks. The minister said the Government is focused on 'making the rule of six work' and the hope is that the new restriction on social gatherings will be enough to get the virus back under control. But he said the Government is 'continuing to review the science' as well as the latest infection rates amid fears that tougher lockdown rules could soon be reimposed. His comments came after Boris Johnson urged people to stick to the new rule in order to avoid a return to even more draconian restrictions as he warned: 'We don't want to go there.' Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics revealed the proportion of adults travelling to work has now risen above 60 per cent for the first time since it started its coronavirus impact survey back in May. During lockdown the Government told all workers who were able to work remotely to do so. Ministers then changed the advice at the start of August as they encouraged employees to head back to their desks amid fears over the long term future of town and city centres. The Government is still encouraging workers to return to their normal commutes but the recent increase in coronavirus cases has sparked speculation that the back to work drive could be ditched. Mr Argar was asked this morning on Sky News about the Prime Minister's warning and whether people could be ordered to work from home again within a couple of weeks. The Health Minister replied: 'I think what the Prime Minister is saying there is he is emphasising just how important it is that the rule of six is adhered to. 'It is there for a very good reason, it is to get that infection rate down and actually facilitate us getting back to normal life.' Pushed on whether people will be told to work from home if the rule of six fails to curtail the spread of the disease, Mr Argar said: 'We are continuing to review the science, we continue to review the infection rates. 'There are no plans at the moment for any compulsory working from home or similar sort of regulations. 'We are making the rule of six work.' He added: 'The rule of six we think will work and is working but we continue to review those infection rates. 'We have got clear guidelines for workplaces. We believe it will work but it is up to all of us to make it work.' The latest ONS data showed that between June 11-14 some 38 per cent of UK adults were working from home exclusively and 41 per cent were travelling to work. But between September 9-13 only 20 per cent of UK adults were working from home exclusively while 62 per cent travelled to work. Mr Johnson urged people overnight to follow the rule of six in order to avoid further restrictions on freedoms being put in place. He told The Sun: 'We don't want to go there. We want this package to work. 'We are urging people to be cautious. We want people to be disciplined to get the R down.' At the start of September Mr Johnson had told his Cabinet that 'people are going back to the office in huge numbers across our country and quite right too'. The Government has faced sustained pressure from Tory MPs to do more to encourage workers to return to their offices. They fear continued working from home will sound a death knell for many businesses in urban centres which are reliant on commuter footfall to survive. Lausch said his office objects to witnesses being asked about grand jury proceedings, communications with prosecutors or federal law enforcement agents related to the federal investigation, as well as any questions that could reveal confidential information about the course of our investigation and could deter cooperation with our investigation by that witness and others. The UN Secretary-General warned Wednesday the coronavirus pandemic is "out of control," and he called for global solidarity in making a future vaccine affordable and available to all. "The virus is the No. 1 global security threat in our world today," Antonio Guterres told reporters. There have been nearly 30 million confirmed cases worldwide of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and more than 936,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which tracks global data on the virus. Guterres spoke ahead of Tuesday's start of the UN General Assembly annual debate, which typically draws more than a hundred presidents, prime ministers and other senior officials to New York each year. But due to the pandemic, leaders will send pre-recorded video messages, and side meetings will be held virtually. The UN chief said he will appeal next week for full implementation of his March 23 call for a global cease-fire by the end of this year so all attention could be focused on defeating the virus. The next day she got tested for coronavirus, before returning a negative result On Tuesday, the premier attended former Mackay MP Tim Mulherin's funeral Annastacia Palaszczuk was accused of breaching her own tough COVID-19 rules Annastacia Palaszczuk has been accused of breaching her own tough COVID-19 rules by attending a funeral and waiting two days to get tested after having a creaky voice. The Liberal National Party questioned the embattled Queensland premier after she admitted having a hoarse voice during an online debate on Monday night. 'Sorry,' she said before clearing her throat, 'I've lost my voice from last week at Parliament I think.' On Tuesday, the premier attended former Mackay MP Tim Mulherin's funeral. Annastacia Palaszczuk has been accused of breaching her own tough COVID-19 rules by attending a funeral and waiting two days to get tested after having a croaky voice The following day she got tested for coronavirus, before returning a negative result on Thursday. Spokespeople for the premier said she did not have any symptoms and was sufering from voice strain. Treasurer Cameron Dick told reporters the premier's results had come back negative. 'The premier lost her voice ... she had a COVID test that came back negative, so she's done the right thing, she's listened to the health advice, she's obeyed the science and the science that informs the health advice and that's the appropriate thing for Queenslanders to do,' Mr Dick said. LNP health spokeswoman Ros Bates accused the premier of being reckless and not taking her own health advice. 'I'm glad to hear the Premier tested negative to COVID, but it raises many questions,' Ms Bates said. 'The official advice is that if people are feeling unwell they should get tested. 'It appears the Premier has done neither and contradicted her own advice after being tested on Wednesday night two days after having symptoms.' Ms Palaszczuk has come under fire for attending the funeral after Sarah Caisip, from virus-free Canberra, was escorted by police to a Brisbane cemetery after her father's funeral had ended. On Wednesday Ms Palaszczuk got tested for coronavirus, before returning a negative result on Thursday The 26-year-old nurse wasn't allowed to attend her father's service because she was in hotel quarantine at the time. Amid a media furore and growing exasperation with the state shutting its doors to the rest of the country, Ms Palaszczuk welled up as she said: 'I'm human like everyone else. The LNP and federal politicians have branded Ms Palaszczuk 'heartless', while the state government has accused the opposition of using family tragedies for political gain. Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles accused the prime minister's office of masterminding a campaign to boost the LNP's chances at the state election. 'Why is Scott Morrison is so fixated on Queensland, so determined tear down our premier?' Press Release September 17, 2020 Bong Go renews call for passage of bill creating Medical Reserve Corps; pushes for measures seeking to improve the delivery of health services to Filipinos During a hearing conducted by the Senate Committee on Health and Demography on Tuesday, September 15, Senator and Committee Chair Christopher "Bong" Go called for the timely passage of a bill seeking to create a Medical Reserve Corps that may be mobilized during national emergencies to bolster the existing health force and support emergency response efforts. "The reality is, our medical personnel are strained by the number of COVID-19 patients which hinders our capacity to combat the disease immediately and effectively. Thus, we urgently see the need for a Medical Reserve Corps. In his recent State of the Nation Address, the President has acknowledged the need for this measure and encouraged Congress to pass a law instituting the Medical Reserve Corps," said Go. During the hearing, Dir. Gloria J. Balboa of the Department of Health's Health Emergency Management Bureau expressed their support for the measure which will "complement the minimum population-based health service components of the province or city-wide health systems" outlined in the implementing rules and regulations of the Universal Health Care Act which, in turn, mandates the establishment of a "timely, effective and efficient preparedness and response to public health emergencies and disasters". Senate Bill No. 1451, also known as the Medical Reserve Corps Act of 2020, gives the Secretary of Health the authority to mobilize, in coordination with the Secretaries of the Department of National Defense, Department of Education and Department of Interior and Local Government, persons with degrees in medicine, nursing, medical technology and other health-related fields who have yet to obtain their licenses. Those deployed shall be properly compensated. "Bibigyan po nito ng oportunidad ang mga Pilipino, lalo na ang ating mga healthcare professionals, na magserbisyo sa kanilang kapwa Pilipino at makapagsilbi sa kanilang bayan," Go said. The Secretary of Health may approve or disapprove a request for deployment from a national government agency or local government unit if the number of personnel requested does not exceed 150 and the period of deployment does not exceed 60 days. However, if the number of personnel requested exceeds 150 or the period of deployment exceeds 60 days, the Secretary of Health must make a recommendation to the Office of the President which shall be obliged to decide on the request within 24 hours. In case of a declaration of war or state of emergency, the Secretary of Health may recommend the mobilization of the Corps to the President. The President shall also have the authority to assemble the Medical Reserve Corps. Once deployed, the personnel of the Corps shall assist and supplement the public health and medical response system of the national government or a local government unit. They will be trained occasionally to ensure they maintain the appropriate level of skills, knowledge and abilities. Go's proposed measure likewise directs the DOH to establish and maintain a registry of public health and medical graduates. Upon completing their degrees, the graduates will be issued individual serial numbers which shall serve as their identification in case of deployment. In addition, the DOH shall publish an annual report outlining its accomplishments, the status of its operations, number and demography of the Medical Reserve Corps, an assessment of their readiness for mobilization, an account of the each mobilization for the year and finally, an audit of the funds spent, collected or advanced. A Medical Reserve Corps Fund will be set up exclusively for the implementation of the objectives and purposes of the bill. The Senator also called upon Congress during the hearing to pass SBN 1803, filed by Go last September 1, which will institutionalize a system for providing e-Health services, implement a mechanism for providing such services to Filipinos, regulate the practice of telemedicine and e-Health, and establish standards of practice. Furthermore, they discussed House Bill No. 6849 which shall increase the authorized bed capacity of the Benguet General Hospital in La Trinidad, Benguet from 200 to 400 beds. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Thomas Urbain with Paul Handley (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States Thu, September 17, 2020 14:00 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4564904 2 Entertainment Cuties,Netflix Free The controversial French film "Cuties", accused of sexualizing little girls, has been pulled into the US election fray with Republicans using the movie to appeal to conservatives while casting Democrats as soft on child abuse. Statements by Republican lawmakers and an online campaign have tapped into concern over child sexual molestation, making the film political leverage in the battle to re-elect Republican President Donald Trump. While the initial reaction to "Cuties" was to attack Netflix, which launched the film online last week, Republican activists are now charging that the social drama is a by-product of an overly liberal culture -- and that it promotes pedophilia. Republican lawmakers have called for a federal investigation into the film. Senator Ted Cruz told Attorney General Bill Barr in a letter that the film is "likely" to encourage pedophiles. "The film routinely fetishizes and sexualizes these pre-adolescent girls as they perform dances simulating sexual conduct in revealing clothing," said Cruz. He said that the Justice Department should determine if the French filmmakers or Netflix "violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography." In a separate letter to Barr, Republican Congressman Ken Buck said the film normalizes "sexual abuse and exploitation of children by pedophiles" and raises alarms that the filmmakers "exploited" young girls who appear in it. The film, called "Mignonnes" in French, portrays a young, rebellious French Senegalese girl who joins a pre-teen hip-hop dance group that is pushed into performing suggestive dances. The story ultimately becomes a critique of the over-sexualization of young girls, and earned director Maimouna Doucoure an award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Debate about sexualization In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Wednesday, Doucoure rejected the charges of abusing girls, and said her film was about the objectification of women and children, and the pressure pre-teen girls feel to be pretty and sexy. "This film is my own story," the Senagalese-French filmmaker wrote, which she said she made "to start a debate about the sexualization of children in society today". The initial campaign against "Cuties" called for conservatives to close their Netflix accounts. Variety, the Hollywood journal, reported Tuesday that cancellations had soared eight times their normal levels as a result. But Republicans have used the animosity towards the film as a way of accusing Democrats of not doing anything about child abuse. Trump's son Donald Jr. asked in a tweet Monday why Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a Trump ally, is "essentially the only mainstream Democrat who was willing to come out against the normalization of pedophelia and the sexualization of our children? The rest seem to be rushing to the defense of Cuties." And just as the furor exploded online, Republican activists propelled the hashtag "pedoBiden" on Twitter on Monday to falsely smear Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic presidential rival, posting pictures of him with young women. Trump himself retweeted a post with that hashtag on Tuesday, with the White House offering no justification. Echoes of 'Pizzagate' The attention appeared designed to fire up a base of conservative voters, particularly women interested in child welfare issues, as Trump struggles behind Biden in polls. Trump's campaign has made a concerted push to woo suburban women voters, claiming Democrats threaten their families and communities. One particular driver of the "Cuties" furor is the QAnon network, whose mostly pro-Trump followers subscribe to baseless theories involving organized rings of Satanists who in kidnap and abuse children. According to Travis View, who researches QAnon, women in the network are particularly active in organizing "Save Our Children" rallies that reference child abuse fears. "Save Our Children rallies are actually QAnon rallies and if the organizers say otherwise, they are lying," View wrote on Twitter Monday. The controversy over "Cuties" echoes the viral "pizzagate" conspiracy theory of 2016, which was driven by Trump supporters who alleged that his rival Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were part of a child kidnapping ring operating from the basement of a Washington pizzeria. That almost ended in tragedy when a man who believed the story invaded the restaurant with an assault rifle and shot off several rounds -- but ultimately did not hurt anyone. "Cuties is not child porn. It's commentary AGAINST sexualizing young girls," noted Evan Shapiro, an assistant professor of business at New York University. Topics : Cuties Netflix The Saudi energy minister warned traders on Thursday against betting heavily in the oil market saying he will try to make the market jumpy and promised those who gamble on the oil price would be hurt like hell. The comments by Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, OPECs most influential minister, came after a virtual meeting of a key panel of OPEC and allies, led by Russia, known as OPEC+. Prince Abdulaziz told the gathering OPEC+ could hold an extraordinary meeting in October if the oil market soured because of weak demand and rising coronavirus cases, according to an OPEC+ source. Anyone who thinks they will get a word from me on what we will do next, is absolutely living in a La La Land Im going to make sure whoever gambles on this market will be ouching like hell, Prince Abdulaziz told a news conference when asked about OPEC+ next steps. He said OPEC+ would take a proactive and pre-emptive stance in addressing oil market challenges. To those who want to short the oil market, Prince Abdulaziz had the following warning: Make my day, he said in an apparent reference to Hollywood star Clint Eastwoods expression from the Dirty Harry neo-noir thriller. Brent oil prices extended their gains to trade up 3 percent on the news about a possible extraordinary meeting, above $43 a barrel. On Thursday, OPEC+s key panel, known as the joint ministerial monitoring committee, pressed for better compliance with oil output cuts against the backdrop of falling crude prices as uncertainty reigns over the global economic outlook. The group warned that rising COVID-19 cases in some countries could curb energy demand despite initial indications of a decline in oil stocks. The panel did not recommend any changes to their current output reduction target of 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 8 percent of global demand. OPEC+ has been reducing production since January 2017 to help to support prices and reduce global oil stockpiles. They increased their cuts to a record 9.7 million bpd from May to July after demand plunged due to the coronavirus crisis and a price war instigated by Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to crash. The panel pressed laggards such as Iraq, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates to cut more barrels to compensate for overproduction in May-July while extending the compensation period from September to the end of December. The panel said cumulative overproduction has reached 2.38 million bpd from May until August. The Chinese defense chiefs whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia this month will start to roll back growing U.S. influence in the region if China follows up with peaceful action, analysts believe. Defense Minister Wei Fenghe met his regional counterparts September 7 to September 11 in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, a Chinese government website says. His visits coincided with a series of statements by U.S. officials criticizing Beijings expansion in the South China Sea and U.S. commitments to protecting countries that feel slighted by China. Southeast Asian states have claims in the same waterway and say China, backed by stronger armed forces, has trespassed. China cites historical records to support its claims. Weis trip was aimed first at sustaining Chinas relations around Southeast Asia, where governments may otherwise be tempted into a U.S.-led, anti-Chinese alliance, scholars say. The idea is to maintain stability in the region, said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation. China cares a lot about that. This is especially in light of the worsening relations with the U.S. China doesnt want a united front against them right now, so they want to deescalate tensions. During his meetings, Wei brought up safeguarding the stability in the South China Sea, Chinas State Council said last week on its website. China and the Philippines, for example, should adhere to the principle that regional issues should be solved by the regional countries through consultation and sustain peace and tranquility in the South China Sea, Wei was quoted saying on September 11 after meeting Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana. What he mainly would like to see is of course (that) Southeast Asian countries dont fall toward the U.S. side, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. U.S. officials have increased pressure against Chinas maritime activity since July. Washington lacks a claim in the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea but disputes Beijings argument that about 90% of the waterway is Chinese. Chinese officials, wary of the U.S. government as a former Cold War foe, argue that Washington wants to keep Beijings rise in check. Trade, technology and consular problems already weigh on Sino-U.S. relations. The Chinese maritime claim overlaps the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. China competes with Indonesia over a tract near the Indonesian-held Natuna Islands. The sea is prized for fisheries and energy reserves. Chinese landfilling of the seas tiny islets, in some cases for military use, has upset neighbors over the past decade. U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in July called Chinas claims illegal and pledged support for countries that feel impacted. In August, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States would not cede an inch to other countries. Pompeo repeated his China stance at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) event September 9. U.S. Navy ships periodically enter the disputed sea for freedom of navigation operations, in turn angering Beijing. Chinese officials must take palpable action within weeks to convince Southeast Asian governments of the defense ministers peace message, Rabena said. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana last month accused China of fabricating its maritime claim boundary and illegally occupying Philippine waters, domestic media outlet Rappler.com reported. The sinking of a fishing boat and passage of surveillance vessels near Vietnamese waters have soured Vietnam toward China this year to date. Wei hopes to reassure South China Sea littoral states of Chinas peaceful intention, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, in a September 12 commentary. But without follow-up, the ministers visits come off as too little, too late and too general and too superficial, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. I think there is some change, but its just one step, Nguyen said. And to come up with a pattern for Chinese behavior, we have to wait for some time. Southeast Asian states generally avoid taking sides with either superpower, Nguyen said. They hope to accept Chinese investment as well as U.S. military support as needed. The 10-member ASEAN bloc now wants China to wrap up years of negotiations on a code of conduct that would help prevent mishaps in the contested sea. Chinese officials have said a code should be signed by next year. Rohingya groups around the world displayed a rare show of solidarity on Thursday with Myanmars ethnic Rakhine, who they say are suffering horrifically familiar war crimes and atrocities at the hands of the military. The armed forces are currently locked in battle with the Arakan Army (AA), a militant group fighting for more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in the countrys northwest. The area has long been a tinderbox of religious and ethnic tensions. Military operations in 2017 forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh in violence that sees Myanmar facing genocide charges at the UNs top court. Ethnic Rakhine mobs stand accused of aiding soldiers to drive out the long-oppressed group. But Thursdays announcement from 29 Rohingya advocacy groups around the world showed signs of a potential rapprochement between the two minorities. Our fight for justice is a fight for everyone that has been killed, injured or abused by the Tatmadaw, read the joint statement, referring to the military by its Myanmar name. It accused the military of committing war crimes and atrocities against Rakhine civilians. For us Rohingya, these crimes are horrifically familiar, it said. We stand in solidarity with our Rakhine brothers and sisters. Both the military and AA militants accuse the other of human rights abuses in the ongoing unrest that has seen hundreds killed or wounded and forced some 150,000 from their homes. On Monday, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet slammed the military for the apparent targeting of civilians she said may constitute further war crimes or even crimes against humanity. Symbolically important The alleged atrocities evoke accounts of the 2017 military crackdown, which Myanmar has justified as a means of rooting out Rohingya militants. But the emergence last week of video confessions of two former soldiers filmed and released by the AA could potentially add weight to the allegations. The soldiers detailed how they were ordered to exterminate Rohingya Muslims and wipe out their villages before taking part in the massacre of scores of men, women and children. The military disputed the testimony, saying the confessions had been given under duress a claim dismissed by the rebel group. The Rakhine political parties contacted by AFP declined to comment on the Rohingya groups statement, though activist Nyo Aye said she welcomed their support and solidarity. While the move was symbolically important, analyst David Mathieson said it was hard to see how it would help bring a peaceful resolution on the ground. Inter-communal relations in Mrauk U, a town in northern Rakhine, remained as tense as ever, one Rohingya man told AFP. He described how the Rohingyas movements were restricted by street patrols of ethnic Rakhine, not soldiers. The Rakhine do not mean us well, he said by phone, asking not to be named. A Bengaluru court on Wednesday remanded Kannada actress Sanjjanaa Galrani to judicial custody till September 19 in an alleged drugs case. Along with her, the court also remanded to judicial custody high-profile event organiser Viren Khanna, Ravi Shankar and others till September 19. The Central Crime Branch police concluded its investigations involving Galrani and others, as a result of this, the CCB did not seek any extension of her custody with them. While in the case of another Kannada actress Ragini Dwivedi whose bail application came up for hearing, but the court postponed the hearing till September 19, which means she may have to remain in Parapappana Agrahara central prisons till then. Earlier in the day, actor-couple, Aindrita Ray and Diganth Manchale who were summoned for questioning by the Central Crime Bureau of the Bengaluru Police in the alleged drugs case involving Sandalwood stars have been let off after the first day's interrogations. Confirming this to the media, Joint Commissioner of Bengaluru Police (Crime), Sandeep Patil said that the preliminary interrogations of Ray and Diganth have concluded but the police have instructed them to be present whenever they are required for further investigations. Addressing the media, the actor-couple who were returning from the CCB office stated that they were ready to cooperate whenever the police summoned them in this connection. "We cooperated in today's investigations, we will do it in future as well, whenever they call us, we will present ourselves in front of them," they said while getting into their vehicle and leaving. According to a senior police officer, neither Aindrita nor Diganth showed any sign of resistance during the entire course of interrogations. "They cooperated fully. When we asked them to hand over their mobile phones, without resisting they handed them over. We will have to probe into these mobile phones based on inputs we may gather from these devices, we might summon them for second round of investigations," the officer added. The officer pointed out that in both cases involving Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjana Galrani, both actresses resisted besides name dropping when the police summoned them or raided their premises, and this was one of the main reasons why the police acted tough. "Their behaviour was very crude when we met them for the first time. Therefore, it becomes more important for us to remain tough in those cases," he explained. Meanwhile, the CCB police have arrested an African drug peddler, who allegedly supplied drugs to be used at high-end parties and was also allegedly involved in the drugs case. The accused drug peddler has been identified as Benald Uddena, an African national and the police have also recovered 12 gms of cocaine from him. Confirming his arrest, Joint Commissioner (Crime) Bengaluru Police, Sandeep Patil described that he is a very important link in this (Sandalwood drugs) case. "We were looking for three African drug peddlers based on our investigations. After digging deep into Benald's antecedents, it emerged that he is the same person who used to impersonate using three names - John, Coke, and Blackie - while selling drugs to his clients." Patil asserted that he would be taken into custody for further investigation. Benald is the second African national, while the first one was Senegal national Loum Pepper Samba who was nabbed in this case and who was remanded to judicial custody by the court last week. The peace agreement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain is a historic moment that brings together the most advanced states in West Asia for the good of humanity. Combining forces and finding common ground has never been more urgent than now, in the midst of a pandemic, and the Abraham Accord is set to generate immediate results. This historic agreement also brings opportunities for India, which enjoys strong bilateral relations with these developed and thriving economies. India will benefit greatly by expanding its cooperation in many areas including health care, energy, agriculture, cyber security, regional security, technology, water and more. The leaders of Israel, the United States (US) and the UAE hailed the agreement as a historic diplomatic breakthrough that will advance peace in the Middle East, chart a new path, and unlock the great potential in the region. Indias ministry of external affairs praised the agreement between Israel and the UAE, defining both as key strategic partners of India. The scope for successful collaboration among the three countries is huge. For example, the health ministers of both Israel and the UAE have already agreed to cooperate on health issues, particularly on the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Israel and India have also been cooperating on joint research and development for rapid testing of Covid-19, as well as new technologies to combat the pandemic. Developing together, and subsequently utilising the significant relative advantage of India in manufacturing, can bring promising results for the sake of humanity and the whole world, as well as harmonising with the great vision of Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi of Making in India, for India, and for the world. While business delegations and a student exchange programme are being planned, the UAE and Israel have also committed to working together on medical research and pharmaceuticals, collaborating particularly in the development of treatments and vaccine trials for Covid-19. Apex National Investment has signed a memorandum of understanding with Israels Sheba Medical Center, establishing Israel as a major destination for medical tourism from the UAE. Both countries have suffered under the ongoing coronavirus crisis, and its, therefore, fitting that the first field of cooperation is in health care. Like India, Israel and the UAE are young countries that have managed to develop dynamic, thriving economies in a few decades. Both the UAE and Israel will gain from the expansion of trade and commercial ties. The Israeli ministry of economy and industry has estimated that Israeli exports to the UAE could jump to $500 million a year, and that Emirati investments in Israel could reach $350 million a year. The cyber-security, medical, financial, and communications industries are expected to benefit in particular from the newfound expansion of trade and investment between the two countries. Given that both countries are strategic partners of India, we can imagine the promising potential that is embedded in this exciting peace agreement. These initiatives and collaborations represent a bit of what is to come in the normalisation of relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. The citizens of all three countries will quickly see their lives enriched as a result of this agreement, paving the way for increasingly more countries in the region to realise the vast potential that exists in making peace with Israel. As economic opportunities in the region arise, they will also expand beyond the immediate region to benefit our friends in India. The challenges we are facing today know no borders, and it is essential that we combine our capabilities for the benefit of all of our citizens. We call on all those following this historic moment to voice their support for the agreement. This historic peace agreement opens a new era of peace and prosperity for the whole of West Asia, India, and the world. Ron Malka is Israels ambassador to India The views expressed are personal I have not been bored, said Jordan Melis, a freshman art major and a friend of Rounds. Throwing a ball or Frisbee around Monroe Park is a popular activity. Staying outdoors and socializing in a small group is also common. Rainy days make it especially difficult to have fun, though VCU has built tents with desks and chairs for outdoor study or socializing. As with classes, some activities that would have been in person are now taking place online. The Graduate and Professional Student Programming Board is hosting a virtual movie night next week. Students can pick up a free bag of snacks, take it home and watch Jurassic Park together through Netflix Party. The Catholic Campus Ministry has moved its small groups onto Google Hangout, where they convene weekly. From all appearances, fewer VCU students are visiting bars. There were small crowds on Thursday and Friday night at Southern Railway Taphouse in Shockoe Bottom. Gatherings at establishments on West Main Street in the Fan District were even smaller. By Saturday night, there were dozens of people on Southern Railways outdoor patio, but there was plenty of space left inside. The standard VCU crowd isnt showing up, said Brett Francis, a manager at Southern Railway. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AME welcomes the Economic Recovery Plan released today by Premier John Horgan and Finance Minister Carole James. AME recognizes the importance of the short-term measures put in place to stimulate economic recovery in all regions of the province. In particular, AME applauds the $20 million to be invested in short-term jobs training for in-demand jobs. Mineral exploration and mining will play an important role in the strong economic recovery of British Columbia. With strengthening commodity prices and efforts by the provincial government to expedite permitting, it is expected that the mineral exploration industry will require trained workers in all areas of the province. The small and medium sized business recovery grant of up to $30,000 for companies and a PST rebate on machinery and equipment are also expected to help service and supply companies for the industry hard hit by the pandemic. A tax credit to support businesses that continue hiring employees is also welcome. The Association for Mineral Explorations (AME) President and CEO, Kendra Johnston, noted: We applaud the governments prudent approach to prioritizing stimulus measures that will help economic recovery in the short term. With an eye on the longer term, we are eager to see further support for the mineral exploration industry, as recommended by the multi-partisan Select Standing Committee of Finance Government Services. Mineral exploration is a vibrant and resilient sector and, together with mining operations, will play an essential role in BCs economic recovery in the months and years to come. It is critical we ensure BC remains globally competitive for mineral exploration as strong demand and pricing for gold and copper should continue to attract significant capital for exploration into our province. The BC legislative Select Standing Committee on Finance Government Services has recommended that the provincial government examine making enhancements to mineral exploration tax credits to ensure BC remains globally competitive for investment and to continue to support the BC Geological Survey. Specifically, AME has recommended increases in the Mining Exploration Tax Credit (METC) and Mining Flow-Through Share (MFTS) rates; creating an investment fund with a mandate of investing in homegrown mineral exploration companies that are operating in BC; and ensuring that the BC Geological Survey receives $6 million in funding in Budget 2021. Ms. Johnston continued: Now is absolutely our time to grow BC as a centre of excellence for mineral exploration, attracting global capital and leading the world in responsible exploration practices. We look forward to leading these conversations at AMEs Remote Roundup conference in January in advance of Budget 2021. About AME AME is the lead association for the mineral exploration and development industry based in British Columbia. Established in 1912, AME represents, advocates and promotes the interests of almost 5,000 members who are engaged in mineral exploration and development in B.C. and globally. AME encourages a safe, economically strong and environmentally responsible industry by providing clear initiatives, policies, events and tools to support its membership in delivering responsible projects that advance reconciliation and provide benefit to all British Columbians. The court battle over ballot access for the Green Party in Pennsylvania could put a snag in the plans of Cumberland Countys election bureau to send out absentee and mail-in ballots in early October. While the county has been telling voters to expect their vote-by-mail materials at the beginning of next month, a legal stay on the states certification of ballots means that counties cant finalize and print the materials until the matter is resolved. Because its in the courts hands, we dont know when well be able to move forward with the ballots, said Bethany Salzarulo, director of the Cumberland County Bureau of Elections. If not resolved within the next week, the issue will likely push back the timeline for county voters to receive their ballots, given that the county cant immediately begin mailing out the materials as soon as it receives the OK from the state. Its not like if they give us the ballot certification tomorrow, we can start to print ballots immediately, Salzarulo said. County staff must do counting tests, prepare the print files and coordinate with the print shop, a process that takes about a week. On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted a request to stay the Pennsylvania Department of State from certifying the list of candidates until the matter can be resolved, according to the courts docket sheet. The action results from the appeal of a case in which Democratic Party officials challenged the legitimacy of Green Party candidates ballot standing, saying they have not met the requirements to appear on Pennsylvanias ballot and would have to run as write-ins. Last week, a Commonwealth Court judge dismissed the attempt to bar the Green Partys Presidential candidate from the ballot, but agreed that the Green Party vice presidential candidate should not appear on the ballot. Ballots The state requires county election officials to begin mailing out ballots toward the end of October, and Cumberland County has typically started doing so at least two weeks before it is required to, in order to give voters as much possible lead time to complete and return the ballots, Salzarulo said. The county is also printing an unprecedentedly large number of ballots with the expectation of record vote-by-mail numbers. In the June primary, more than half the votes cast in the county were by mail, with 31,769 absentee and mail-in votes recorded several times that of previous years, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as changes to Pennsylvanias voting law that now allows voters to apply for a mail-in ballot without providing an excuse, which is otherwise needed for absentee ballots. Voters must submit a request for an absentee or mail-in ballot by 5 p.m. Oct. 27. Once they receive the actual ballot, they must return it to their county election office by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, in order for it to be counted. Election officials are already wary of logistical stresses caused by the tight timeline; any delays caused by the state Supreme Court case will compress the timeline that elections staff have to process vote-by-mail requests and send the ballots out to voters. In the June primary, many voters who waited until the last minute opted to turn their ballots in by hand to the countys election office in Carlisle a practice that may increase for the general election, given fears about cuts to the U.S. Postal Service and potential delays in ballots being mailed back to election offices, especially if voters receive them later. Pennsylvania officials have floated a number of solutions, including allowing counties to begin counting ballots before Election Day, although results would not be released until all ballots in-person and by mail are counted. Some officials have also suggested allowing counties to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, even if the ballots arent received until several days later. Negotiations are ongoing between Pennsylvanias Republican legislative majority and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who has said he will veto any voting legislation that restricts access, including a proposal by the PA Senate GOP to move the vote-by-mail ballot request deadline to an earlier date in October. Email Zack at zhoopes@cumberlink.com. 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. Tax cut to businesses of little use since most are losing: experts Providing a 30 percent income tax cut to all businesses regardless of scale will not be of much benefit since most are making losses, analysts warn. A government advisory board recently proposed a 30 percent corporate income tax reduction for every business this year over Covid-19 impacts. Vietnam now imposes corporate income tax of 20 percent on companies' profit. The proposal, submitted by the Private Economic Development Research Board (Fourth Board), would allow large corporations to enjoy the tax cut, instead of only small and medium companies with revenues of less than VND200 billion ($8.6 million) and less than 200 employees as approved by the National Assembly in June. Economist Pham The Anh said the proposal was "ineffective and unfair." A survey by the Fourth Board shows only 2 percent of companies are not affected by the pandemic, while 76 percent are struggling to balance their books. This means only the 2 percent will benefit from the corporate income tax cut, he said. If the proposal is approved, businesses that are on the brink of bankruptcy will feel unfairly treated because the government is only helping companies that are making profits, Anh added. Nguyen Minh Cuong, a specialist with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), also said that businesses do not need corporate income tax cuts when they are making losses. The Fourth Board defended its proposal with standing deputy director of its office, Pham Thi Ngoc Thuy, saying the proposal does not seek to give big companies any advantage because they themselves are posting losses. Thuy added the proposal seeks to motivate companies to restructure their business and find ways to make profits (and therefore enjoy the tax break), which will contribute to economic growth. There are different approaches to how the government should support businesses, and there is no right or wrong approach, she said. The Vietnamese government has been considering several options to support businesses amid the major damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, aiming to ensure positive economic growth this year. Many countries are reporting negative economic growth this year. In the first eight months, nearly 34,300 companies in Vietnam suspended their business, up 70.8 percent year-on-year, while GDP growth in the first six months fell to a 10-year low of 1.8 percent, according to the General Statistics Office. KEY FACTS 12:30 p.m . Ontario is reporting 21 additional active COVID-19 cases among students and staff in publicly-funded schools across the province, for a total of 62. 12:20 p.m.: Ontario is considering much lower social gathering limits of 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors 10:18 a.m. Ontario is reporting 293 cases of COVID-19 The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file is no longer updating. Click here to read the latest. Web links to longer stories if available. 8.18 p.m. B.C. has once again topped its previous daily record for new COVID-19 cases, the Richmond Sentinel reports. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced 165 new cases since Wednesday. That raises the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 7,663. There are 1,705 active cases, an increase of 91 from yesterday, and of nearly 300 from a week ago, the Sentinel reports. Health Minister Adrian Dix said its important to put the high case count in context; yesterday, there were 7,674 tests conducted across B.C., the highest number in a single day since the pandemic began. 4 p.m. Asked about imminent new City requirements around the wearing of masks, Mayor John Tory said he felt more could be done in workplaces. The virus has been seen to be spread in there and new mask provisions are likely to apply as a result, Tory said. Toronto Tory thanked the Province for putting in a new limit of 10 people for indoor gatherings and 25 people for outdoor events, as he addressed new measures to contain the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa. This will help us stop the spread of COVID-19, Tory said at a press conference. Bigger fines will help City enforcement staff to drive home the message not to congregate in larger groups to those who flout the rules. Someone caught organizing a gathering above the number permitted is liable for a $10,000-fine, while an attendee at such an event faces a $750-fine. Some very smart people are behaving as though they have not heard the rules or they are not following them, and its got to stop, said Tory, who noted that the time for education is over. Asked if police would, actually, now start to break up gatherings or stick to procedures that they say prevent them from doing so, Tory said he felt due process could be expedited in what is, essentially, a life-or-death circumstance. The time for leniency and second chances is over, he said. Asked if he felt it was a mistake on the part of the Premier not to include banquet halls (where weddings and wedding receptions are often held) in the list of places where large gatherings are not permitted, given reports a recent wedding was responsible for 22 new COVID-19 cases, Tory said it was a concern the halls are not subject to the rules. It seems as though these are places where the virus is spreading, Tory said. He said he thought people should think about postponing weddings. They will be more fun if they are held at a later date, he said. Its important people not engage in dancing and singing, which spread the virus, he noted. 2:57 p.m. An employee at a grocery story in North York has tested positive for COVID-19. The employee was last working at the Metro store at Bathurst Street and Lawrence Avenue West on Sept. 11. The store was notified three days later, on Monday. The store said in a statement out of an abundance of caution, with each case that is reported, we will deep clean and sanitize the location. The location remains open. 2:51 p.m. The Manitoba government says its going to ease restrictions in the western part of the province, where COVID-19 case numbers are dropping. Starting Friday, people in the Prairie Mountain health region will no longer be required to wear masks in indoor public places and at outdoor gatherings. Public gatherings in the region will no also longer be limited to 10 people, but will be in line with the rest of the province with caps at 50 people indoors and 100 outside. Tighter restrictions were put in place last month, when active cases in the region were more than 200. That number has dropped to 38. Health officials are reporting 11 new COVID-19 cases, eight of which are in Winnipeg. 2:30 p.m. Canadas Olympic team doctor believes the Tokyo Games can happen in 2021 without a COVID-19 vaccine, but feels the event will require major modifications. While he calls the global effort to produce a vaccine unprecedented, Dr. Mike Wilkinson doesnt expect it to be ready for mass distribution by the opening ceremonies July 23. I think we have to plan for these Games occurring without a vaccine, Wilkinson said on a Canadian Olympic Committee conference call. Vaccines usually take long to develop even with accelerated testing and trials that are going on. I do believe were able to do it safely without a vaccine, but I think its going to take some major adaptations as to how the Games are run, how we as sports staff, teams and athletes are managed within the Games, and how we manage ourselves and our interactions. 2:20 p.m. The arrival of COVID-19 has taken the concept of telemedicine from a pipe dream to a fixture across Ontario, with many doctors expressing the hope that the change is here to stay long beyond the pandemic. Patient advocates describe the shift as a double-edged sword, saying the increased health-care access that remote care can provide is often countered by drawbacks that place seniors, disabled Canadians and other marginalized communities at greater risk of harm. Dr. Samantha Hill, president of the Ontario Medical Association and a practising cardiac surgeon, said the change came about abruptly as the medical profession hastened to adapt to a health-care landscape turned upside down by the novel coronavirus. But she said now that the transition is well underway, it seems unlikely that the system will revert back to pre-pandemic norms. I dont think theyre going to be able to put this back in the barn, Hill said of governments, health-care providers and patients alike. But there needs to be work done on the system and how we move forward to make sure that ... were not creating a second tier of medicine. 2 p.m. An outbreak of coronavirus disease has prompted Western University to shut down many non-academic activities. The school in London, Ont., says 28 students most of them off-campus have tested positive.One student in residence is in isolation. The school, like Queens University in Kingston, Ont., is also warning it will crack down on those who put the health of others at risk. Among new measures, Western has suspended athletics and recreation, as well as in-person club meetings and events. Access to libraries and several other buildings are also now restricted. We know our students desperately want to have some on-campus experiences, Alan Shepard, the universitys president, said in a statement. Unfortunately, this development means we will be limiting those experiences. On-campus classes continue, with about 25 per cent of courses having an in-person component. Residences are also still open. 1:48 p.m. Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa will have gatherings restricted to 10 indoors, 25 outdoors as of Friday, Premier Doug Fords government confirms. Numbers for gatherings were increased to 50 indoors and 100 outdoors with physical distancing as the pandemic eased over the summer and more businesses were allowed to open. Since then, there have been many cases of the illness spreading at weddings, house and yard parties. 1:45 p.m. The TTC announced it is recalling 132 workers as it continues to ramp service back up from a pandemic low-point this spring. In May the agency temporarily laid off 450 workers after it reduced service in response to plummeting transit demand. But it has gradually started deploying more vehicles as the city opens up and people start riding again, particularly this week as students started going back to school. Last month the agency recalled 150 of the furloughed employees, and it says the remaining 168 who havent already been slated to go back to work will be called in once TTC ridership reaches 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. At that point the agency intends to reverse all service cuts made during the crisis. Ridership is currently at about 35 to 40 per cent of what it was before COVID-19. 1:34 p.m. Nearly one in four customers of the major credit-card companies were unable to make monthly payments this spring, according to a survey released on Thursday by J.D. Power. J.D. Powers May and June survey of more than 6,700 credit-cardholders also suggested that consumers whose income was dented during the pandemic were generally less satisfied with their credit-card companies. While credit card issuers in Canada are faring somewhat better than their U.S. counterparts in averting the negative effects of COVID-19 on customer satisfaction, they are not out of the woods, said John Cabell, director of banking and payments intelligence at J.D. Power, in a statement. Credit card companies are falling behind in key areas related to the customer experience. J.D. Power said that while overall credit-card satisfaction is flat compared with last year, people are less satisfied with credit-card companies online help and call centres. The survey indicated that wait times at credit-card companies call centres hit 12 minutes during the pandemic, compared with less than eight minutes prior to the pandemic. 1:18 p.m. (updated) More than 5,000 asylum seekers left homeless after Greeces notoriously overcrowded Moria camp on the island of Lesbos burnt down have now been housed in a new facility, the countrys migration minister said Thursday afternoon. Speaking on the island, Notis Mitarachi said rapid coronavirus tests found 135 of the former residents of Moria positive for the coronavirus, and these people were being kept in special areas where they receive the appropriate medical conditions. More than 12,000 people had been sleeping rough by a roadside since the squalid Moria camp burnt down last week. Authorities said the fires were set deliberately by a small group of migrants angered by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions imposed after an outbreak in the camp. Six Afghans, including two minors, have been arrested on suspicion of arson. Police launched an operation Thursday morning to persuade people to move from the roadside into the new camp in the islands Kara Tepe area. The operation included 70 female police officers and no violence was reported. 12:30 p.m. Ontario is reporting 21 additional active COVID-19 cases among students and staff in publicly-funded schools across the province, for a total of 62. The latest provincial update Thursday morning has revealed 11 more active cases in GTA schools, bringing the total in the Toronto area to 30. Only one school in Ontario has been closed the Stars Kristin Rushowy reported Wednesday a Pembroke high school shut down after at least one teacher came to work with symptoms of COVID-19 and others werent wearing masks. At least three teachers have fallen ill as a result of the outbreak at Fellowes High School. While the province reports that 51 schools have an infected case, it notes that this number is 1.06 per cent of the 4,828 schools in Ontario. 12:20 p.m.: Ontario is considering much lower social gathering limits of 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors for areas experiencing the sharpest increases in new COVID-19 cases, sources said Thursday morning. An announcement is expected from Premier Doug Ford at his afternoon news conference as the province reports another 293 residents have been infected with the highly contagious virus, down slightly from 315 the previous day, which was the highest since early June. Numbers for gatherings were increased to 50 indoors and 100 outdoors with physical distancing as the pandemic eased over the summer and more businesses were allowed to open. Since then, there have been many cases of the illness spreading at weddings, house and yard parties, along with some in restaurants, bars and even playdates arranged by parents for their children. Read the full story by the Stars Rob Ferguson and Robert Benzie 10:18 a.m. Ontario is reporting 293 cases of COVID-19. There are 85 new cases in Toronto with 63 in Peel and 39 in Ottawa. Seventy per cent of the new cases are in people under the age of 40. More than 35,000 tests were completed. 9:56 a.m. Senior government officials say new limits for gatherings in Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa are still being finalized. They are expected to be 10 indoors down from 50 and 25 outdoors, down from 100. The decision is still being determined. 9:29 a.m. Canadas 20 richest people saw their fortunes grow by $37 billion during pandemic, says a new study as low-wage workers were disproportionately hit by COVID-19s economic fallout. The most-wealthy list, which includes several grocery store magnates, shows the countrys top billionaires are collectively worth $178 billion while front-line grocery store workers at outlets like Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys and Save-On-Foods recently lost their $2 an hour hero pay. Overall, some 1.8 million Canadians have lost their jobs or seen their hours reduced as a result of COVID-19, according to labour force survey data. And even as the country sees glimmers of economic recovery, the gains are uneven. While the highest wage earners in the country have returned to pre-pandemic employment levels, those earning less than $16 an hour have yet to see employment rates fully recover, says the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Read the full story from the Stars Sara Mojtehedzadeh 9:17 a.m. The British Columbia government is expected to reveal how it plans to stimulate an economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Premier John Horgan and Finance Minister Carole James are scheduled to release details today of the $1.5-billion economic recovery plan. Last week, James announced the provinces most recent financial numbers from April to June project an economic decline of 6.7 per cent for this year. She said the budget is forecast to post a deficit of almost $13 billion for the 2020-21 fiscal year. 8:51 a.m. Lebanons largest prison on Thursday was grappling with an alarming coronavirus outbreak, as many inmates refused to take preventative measures or get tested under the impression that catching the virus could speed up their release as part of a rumoured general amnesty, the head of the countrys doctors union warned. Over 200 of the 3,000 detainees at Roumieh prison have tested positive in recent days, Sharaf Abu Sharaf, president of Lebanese Order of Physicians, told The Associated Press. The outbreak in the prison east of Beirut, which is notorious for overcrowding, comes as Lebanon is witnessing a sharp increase in coronavirus cases and deaths. Some detainees families have urged the state to issue amnesty to certain detainees to reduce the possibility of the virus sweeping through the countrys prison population. 8:22 a.m. Greek police are moving hundreds of migrants to an army-built camp on the island of Lesbos Thursday after a fire destroyed an overcrowded facility, leaving them homeless for days. Wearing masks and white coveralls, police escorted migrants camped out on a roadside to the new site in the islands Kara Tepe area. The notoriously squalid Moria camp burned down last week, leaving more than 12,000 people in need of emergency shelter. Thursdays operation included 70 female police officers and no violence was reported. As long as it is peaceful, we believe it is a good move, said Astrid Castelein, head of the U.N. Refugee Agencys office on Lesbos. Here on the street it is a risk for security, for public health, and its not dignity which we need for everyone. Authorities said the fires had been set deliberately by a small group of inhabitants angered by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Six Afghans, including two minors, have been arrested on suspicion of arson. Most of the migrants made homeless set up makeshift shelters made of sheets, blankets, reeds, and cardboard along a stretch of road near the gutted camp. The new site consists of large family tents erected in an old army shooting range by the sea. By late Wednesday night, it had a capacity of around 8,000 people, according to the UNHCR, but only around 1,100 mostly vulnerable people had entered. 7:37 a.m. The number of Americans who sought unemployment benefits last week likely numbered in the hundreds of thousands with COVID-19 seeding broad economic damage nine months after the first case was confirmed in the U.S. Economists believe that around 850,000 people sought jobless aid, down from 884,000 the week before, according to a survey by the data firm FactSet. The pandemic has delivered an unprecedented shock to the economy. Until the pandemic upended the operations of American companies, from factories to family diners, weekly jobless aid applications had never exceeded 700,000 in the U.S. The overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, collapsed at an annual rate of 31.7 per cent from April through June, by far the worst three months on record, as millions of jobs disappeared. The economy and job market have recovered somewhat from the initial shock. Employers added 10.6 million jobs from May through August, but thats still less than half the jobs lost in March and April. 7:36 a.m. The CEO of the Manitoulin Health Centre is urging calm after Public Health Sudbury & Districts confirmed an Islander has tested positive for COVID-19. The patient was tested in an assessment centre on Manitoulin, Lynn Foster said in a release Wednesday. The management and staff of the Little Current and Mindemoya locations of the Manitoulin Health Centre wish to remind the public to remain calm, Foster said. We must continue to follow and encourage others to follow Public Health guidance to slow the spread of the virus. 7:28 a.m. At least one teacher at a Pembroke high school came to work with symptoms of COVID-19, and more were not wearing masks before an outbreak that has left at least three teachers ill and prompted the first school closure in the province, the Star has learned. All students at Fellowes High School have been ordered to learn from home, online, effective immediately ... and until further notice, the Renfrew County District School Board told parents in a letter posted Wednesday on its website. The infections occurred before the reopening of school and were a direct result of educators not abiding by public health guidelines they were not wearing masks, they attended school while being symptomatic, which obviously goes against all public health guidelines, including the guide to reopening schools, said a source familiar with details of the outbreak. Read the full story from the Stars Kristin Rushowy 7:19 a.m. A disconnect between the provinces assurances of smaller in-person class sizes and the reality playing out in Ontarios classrooms has left parents surprised and doctors worried. As thousands of students return to schools this week in the age of COVID-19, some parents expecting smaller classes were shocked to learn their children are in classes roughly the same size or larger than usual. I think theres a huge disconnect between the messaging coming from the government and the reality that parents are experiencing, said parent Laura Boudreau, who was initially told last Friday that her five-year-old son, Miller, a student at Howard Junior Public School near Roncesvalles Ave. and Bloor St. W., would be in a senior kindergarten class of 15 students. Then, on Monday night the day before school started Boudreau and her husband Ian received an email from the school with final classroom allocations and were stunned to see that Miller would be in a kindergarten class with a total of 29 students. Read the full story from the Stars Kristin Rushowy and Kenyon Wallace 7:06 a.m.: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Thursday that authorities will have to impose tougher measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 and protect the Christmas holidays as the government prepared to introduce stricter measures in northeast England. Johnsons comments came amid reports that the government plans to impose a 10 p.m. curfew on pubs and restaurants in response to a recent jump in confirmed coronavirus cases. Local officials asked for more restrictions now to prevent a tighter lockdown later. Johnson wrote in a piece published in The Sun newspaper that the only way to be certain the country can enjoy the winter holidays is to be tough now. He said he wants to stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump. 6:29 a.m.: Africas top public health official says the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been in talks with nine vaccine manufacturers about potential coronavirus vaccine clinical trials on the continent. John Nkengasong says the talks include the Oxford University group thats developing a vaccine with drug company AstraZeneca and already has a clinical trial in South Africa. The African Unions 54 member states want to secure more than 10 late-stage COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials in Africa. Theyre motivated by memories of watching millions die while years passed before affordable drugs or vaccines for diseases reached the continent of 1.3 billion people. Health experts say COVID-19 vaccine trials must include Africans to make sure any effective vaccine can be rolled out quickly in Africa along with the rest of the world. 5:37 a.m.: Hawaiis governor says that starting Oct. 15, travellers arriving from out of state may bypass a 14-day quarantine requirement if they test negative for the coronavirus. Gov. David Ige said Wednesday that travellers will have to take the test within 72 hours before their flight arrives in the islands. Ige says drugstore operator CVS and health care provider Kaiser Permanente will conduct the tests. The state has previously delayed the start of the pre-travel testing program twice as COVID-19 cases spiked on the U.S. mainland and in Hawaii. Leaders hope pre-travel testing will encourage tourists to return while keeping residents safe. Tourism traffic to the state has plunged more than 90% during the pandemic, closing hundreds of hotels and putting many people out of work. 5:31 a.m.: The U.N. humanitarian chief says reports from inside Syria point to a much broader spread of COVID-19 cases than the 3,628 confirmed cases conveys. Mark Lowcock told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that the extent of the outbreak wont be known until laboratory testing is increased across the country. He said: We do know that community transmission is widespread, as almost 90% of newly confirmed cases cannot be traced to a known source. He added: Infection rates among health workers have also been rising. 5:20 a.m.: Pakistani authorities have closed as many as 22 schools across the country after detecting violation of social distancing regulations amid a steady decline in COVID-19 cases. The government action comes two days after authorities allowed the reopening schools. Thursdays announcement by the military-backed command and control centre came after health officials alerted the government that students at some schools were violating social distancing guidelines. 5:15 a.m.: The emergencies chief of the World Health Organization says scientific disagreements over COVID-19 interventions like masks and vaccines shouldnt be treated as some kind of political football, but acknowledged that it isnt easy for everyone to be on message all the time. Asked to respond to the open disagreements between U.S. President Donald Trump and the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the effectiveness of masks and when a coronavirus vaccine might be available, Dr. Michael Ryan said it is important that we have consistent messaging from all levels. This is complicated stuff, Ryan said at a press briefing on Thursday. What is important is that governments (and) scientific institutions step back, review the evidence and give us the most comprehensive, easy-to-understand...information so that people can take the appropriate action. He warned against turning scientific messaging into some kind of political football. 5:12 a.m.: When Narayan Mitra died on July 16, a day after being admitted to the hospital for fever and breathing difficulties, his name never appeared on any of the official lists put out daily of those killed by the coronavirus. Test results later revealed that Mitra had indeed been infected with COVID-19, as had his son, Abhijit, and four other family members in Silchar, in northeastern Assam state, on Indias border with Bangladesh. But Narayan Mitra still isnt counted as a coronavirus victim. The virus was deemed an incidental factor, and a panel of doctors decided his death was due to a previously diagnosed neurological disorder that causes muscle weakness. He died because of the virus, and there is no point lying about it, Abhijit Mitra said of the finding, which came despite national guidelines that ask states to not attribute deaths to underlying conditions in cases where COVID-19 has been confirmed by tests. Such exclusions could explain why India, which has recorded more than 5.1 million infections second only to the United States has a death toll of about 83,000 in a country of 1.3 billion people. Indias Health Ministry has cited this as evidence of its success in fighting the pandemic and a basis for relaxing restrictions and reopening the economy after Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a strict lockdown of the entire population earlier this year. But experts say the numbers are misleading and that India is not counting many deaths. 5:06 a.m.: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government has imposed a three-week lockdown, beginning on Friday afternoon just hours before Rosh Hashanah starts. Israels first lockdown, in March and April, put a damper on Passover, the Jewish spring holiday marking the deliverance of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Now, the Jewish High Holidays look to be similarly subdued. Israel has seen new daily cases of COVID-19 skyrocket in recent weeks, climbing to more than 5,000 on Wednesday one of the highest per capita infection rates in the world. Since the pandemic began this year, it has recorded more than 169,000 cases, including 1,163 deaths, as of Wednesday, according to Health Ministry figures. Religious and secular Israelis alike mark Rosh Hashanah with festive holiday feasts with family and friends. They pack synagogues, often spending hours in prayer, especially during the fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which falls later this month. But this year, traditional family gatherings will be muted, synagogue prayers will be limited to small groups and travel restrictions will leave many roads deserted. Some of the liberal streams of Judaism, particularly in the United States, are turning to technology to help connect people. 4:05 a.m.: The British Columbia government is expected to reveal how it plans to stimulate an economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Premier John Horgan and Finance Minister Carole James are scheduled to release details today of the $1.5-billion economic recovery plan. Last week, James announced the provinces most recent financial numbers from April to June project an economic decline of 6.7 per cent for this year. She said the budget is forecast to post a deficit of almost $13 billion for the 2020-21 fiscal year. 4 a.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will begin consultations today with opposition leaders about next weeks throne speech, which could theoretically bring down his minority Liberal government if no opposition party supports it. He is to speak by phone with Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, who is in self-isolation along with most of his 31 MPs after an aide tested positive Monday for COVID-19. Blanchets wife has also tested positive. Trudeau also plans to speak with the Green partys parliamentary leader, Elizabeth May. He is expected to speak with Conservative Leader Erin OToole, who is also in isolation after a staffer tested positive, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Friday. The throne speech is well on its way to being completed but government officials maintain that doesnt mean the opposition consultations are an empty gesture. Thursday 8:40 p.m.: A saliva-based COVID-19 test is likely to be available this fall, say private and public health officials touting various methods under consideration across the country as lineups grow at COVID-19 assessment centres and cases emerge in newly reopened schools. Public Health Ontarios chief of microbiology and laboratory science lists several issues to be resolved before broad provincial use but expects saliva collection will soon make it easier to detect infection, especially among children and others unable to tolerate a nasopharyngeal swab. I do foresee it being an option in the near term, Dr. Vanessa Allen said in a recent interview. Were aiming in the space of weeks to months. Sometime later this fall looks very probable. While not as accurate as the gold standard method in which a long, flexible swab is inserted deep into the nostril saliva collection is easier, meaning this approach could capture infections in people who otherwise would not be tested but should be, says Allen. To be clear, these are not the at-home saliva tests that generate an immediate result, but lab-based tests that use the same molecular analysis to detect novel coronavirus in a nasopharyngeal sample. Correction - Sept. 18, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled Pembroke, Ont. Click here to read more of Wednesdays COVID-19 coverage. Read more about: Peel Region police are searching for a hit-and-run driver after a woman was struck in an underground parking lot in Brampton on Thursday. The woman was rushed to hospital but police are still looking for the driver of a dark-coloured Jeep Cherokee who fled the scene near Malta Avenue and Steeles Avenue West at around 10 a.m. Officers said the victims injuries are considered life-threatening. Two males in their 20s were in the car. The Cherokee has a dark licence plate cover and tinted windows. Officers are asking anyone in the area who may have been a witness or has a dashcam video to call (905) 453-3311. Irelyne Lavery is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: ilavery@thestar.ca Read more about: The Pallister government has agreed to spend $33 million on transit across the province, which will allow it to access the same amount in federal funding. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Pallister government has agreed to spend $33 million on transit across the province, which will allow it to access the same amount in federal funding. It means municipalities across Manitoba will share $66 million for transit. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said Wednesday he was looking forward to hearing from the province on how the money will be divvied up. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. In July, he said he hoped the province would spend that transit cash based on each municipalitys population. The funding is part of a $19.8-billion pot of money set aside by the federal Liberals to help provinces and territories cover expenses incurred due to the pandemic. Information released Wednesday shows $12.9 billion will be administered by provinces, of which Manitoba will receive $418 million "to support critical needs over the next six to eight months." The finalized funding allocations correspond with the request by the Pallister government that was outlined in a July memo. At that point, the province wasnt sure whether it would take the transit cash, which required it to match funding. As requested, Manitoba will receive $109 million for contact tracing and data management, $109 for personal protective equipment, and $24 million for child care. Not all the federal funding will go to the provinces; for example, a $1.1-billion fund will be set aside for sick pay. Canadians will be paid to take two weeks of sick leave if they suspect they have COVID-19. President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA ) a move that would wipe out coverage for more than 18 million Americans during a killing pandemic. Does Trump have an alternative health-care plan? Just ask him. I have it all ready, Trump said at a town hall two days ago, ...its a much better plan for you and its a much better plan. In fact, Trump already has a plan. It was the American Health Care Act (called the Act here to avoid confusion of ACA and AHCA) of 2017. It nearly passed except for John McCains No vote. Here, I compare that plan to former Vice President Joe Bidens well-articulated plan for the future of health care that essentially does the opposite of Trumps: it builds on the ACA and covers virtually everyone. I hope this can serve as a guide for the reader to better understand the issues expected to arise in the debates. Coverage Bidens plan brings health care coverage to 97 percent of the population. He introduces a public option that brings a Medicare-like program to states. This would not replace private insurance but would allow those who have private insurance to keep it. Bidens public option would additionally enroll those in states where Medicaid coverage was not expanded. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that expanding access has had a dramatic and life-saving effect in the states that took that option, unlike Texas. Additionally, Biden would lower the age for Medicare to 60, increasing coverage to an additional 23 million people. He makes coverage more affordable and help pay the deductible the amount paid by the individual before coverage kicks in. The deductible is frequently forgotten as it was in the ACA; deductibles for a family average $5,300. Under Trump, if the ACA is repealed, 18.2 million formerly uninsured people lose coverage. Trump has repeatedly said that those with pre-existing conditions would be covered but the Act and Trump would permit plans to charge more. Thats the catch: yes, its covered, but no way can you afford to pay the premium. The Commonwealth Fund estimates 53.8 million people with preexisting conditions could be left out in the cold for their diseases such as cancer, depression or heart disease. Cost Biden has a number of ways to reduce the cost of health care: He would stop surprise medical billing, a practice where a patient may require emergency care but have no idea of the cost and is then required to pay. He has multiple approaches to reducing the price of prescription drugs including permitting the government to negotiate drug prices through Medicare and importing drugs from other countries. He will establish an independent review board to assess drug value. If a drug costs too much or isnt worth the money, the board does not approve it. Other countries have such boards and they function well. Trump reduced the cost by eliminating coverage for approximately 18 million people. The Act made no attempt to reduce the cost of health care in other ways. Quality Biden plan: health care is a right. Biden requires insurers to cover certain services for people, so that they know what they are buying. Before the ACA, insurers were permitted to sell skimpy health plans that had extremely poor benefits. Consumer Reports said that these plans were ...so riddled with loopholes, limits, exclusions, and gotchas that [they] wont come close to covering their expenses.. The ACA changed that loophole requiring certain minimum benefits. Biden plans to lower costs and improve health outcomes by improving with innovative solutions. One such program leveraging people and technology, using certified nurse aides or community health workers in telemedicine contact with a nurse supervisor, has the lowest published hospital readmission rate compared to other programs, for example where higher cost nurses are sent into the home. In the Act, Trump brought back the skimpy health plans and has actually expanded them. He also eliminated mental health services from Medicaid coverage. He did continue coverage of those of up age 26 on a parents plan. Conclusion: Which do you like? Whatever Trump says in the debates, the Act sure does seem to be the plan. If you like Trumps plan, you are not going to like Bidens. Amazing to me: the Biden plan seems the most obvious. But there are millions who will choose the opposite. I ask them to think carefully. One thing is certain: the entire U.S. health-care system depends on this election. Garson is former Dean for Academic Operations at Baylor College of Medicine and VP of Texas Childrens Hospital. He is past President of the American College of Cardiology and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. His most recent book is, Exposing the 20 medical myths: Why everything you know about health care is wrong and how to make it right. 4th generation warfare: Non state actors have made civil society new frontier of war NSA Ajit Doval attends BRICS meet on security India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday attended a virtual meeting of top security officials of five-nation grouping BRICS. The 10th meeting of the NSAs of the grouping was attended by China's State Councillor Yang Jiechi and senior security officials from Russia, Brazil and South Africa, officials said. Govt says it did not incur expenses for 'Howdy-Modi' event in Houston last year It was hosted by Russia, the current chair of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa). The meeting exchanged views on combating terrorism and extremism besides deliberating on global and regional security issues, according to details provided by a Russian official. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News The official said an agreement was reached on further expanding the dialogue on security issues, and providing for closer coordination among law enforcement agencies of the member nations. BRICS represents over 3.6 billion people, or half of the world population, and they have a combined GDP of USD 16.6 trillion. EU member states urged to impose arms embargo over Khashoggis killing and the war in Yemen. The European Parliament has urged the European Union member states to impose an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the war in Yemen. In the EU arms export report adopted on Thursday, EU lawmakers urge all members of the bloc to follow the example of Germany, Finland and Denmark, which, after the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi adopted restrictions on their arms exports to Saudi Arabia. The document also points out that arms exported to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, as well as other members of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, had been used in the country, where 22 million people find themselves in need of humanitarian aid and protection. The report also urges the remaining EU countries to impose similar sanctions to prevent further civilian suffering in the Yemen conflict. Khashoggi, the 59-year-old columnist for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered by a group of Saudi operatives shortly after he entered the countrys consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul in October 2018. Riyadh offered conflicting narratives to explain his disappearance before acknowledging he was murdered in the diplomatic building in a rogue operation. Earlier this month, the Riyadh Criminal Court commuted death sentences and handed down prison terms of up to 20 years to the convicts, saying they were pardoned by the journalists family. They were sentenced to death last year. UN human rights investigator Agnes Callamard also called the Saudi prosecutors verdict on the murder a parody of justice that spared high-level plotters. Yemen has been in violence and chaos since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee the country the following year. The crisis escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led military coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains. Tens of thousands of Yemenis, including civilians, are believed to have been killed in the conflict, which has led to one of the worlds worst humanitarian crisis with 3.65 million internally displaced people and 15 million in need of immediate humanitarian aid. New Delhi: Delhi international airport on Thursday opened an exclusive terminal to handle the flight operations of private jets. The terminal has 57 parking bays and can handle up to 150 private jet flights per day. It was inaugurated by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday afternoon. The minister said the Delhi airport was handling around 40 general aviation" flights per day before the pandemic, and it is currently handling around 20 such flights per day. Flight operations of private jets are classified under the general aviation" category. This terminal looks good. People like me use the other terminals (earmarked for commercial passenger flights) but those who use this terminal, I am sure their feedback - when they start using it - will also be very positive," Puri said. I am sure this (terminal) will be a small but significant boost to general aviation," Puri added. The new terminal has spacious passenger lounges, retail and food and beverage sections and 247 personal concierge services, said Delhi airports operator DIAL in a press release on Thursday. There is a common processing area with customs and immigrations and there is an immediate access to private jet aircraft stands from the terminal, the DIAL noted. The terminal can handle over 50 passengers every hour, stated the GMR group-led DIAL. 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 Capt Amarinder Singh and Nitin Gadkari Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday thanked Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari for accepting state governments proposal to approve substitution of 72 km stretch of Beas-Mehta-Batala-Dera Baba Nanak under Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-I as a part of year-long commemoration of 400th Prakash Purb of Ninth Sikh Guru Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji. The Chief Minister also expressed gratitude to Chairman of the Nation Highways Authority of India (NHAI), Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, for clearing this prestigious road project, linking Beas with the historic town of Dera Baba Nanak, connected with the life and times of founder of Sikhism Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Advertisement Captain Amarinder Singh The Chief Minister said that the upgradation of this road project as four-lane would go a long way to give further impetus to the overall development of the region, besides harnessing its religious tourism potential and giving infrastructural boost to the industrial town of Batala. Captain Amarinder said that with the approval of this project, the long-pending demand of the residents of the border area, and especially the Sikh Sangat, has been fulfilled, which will enable them to pay obeisance at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib in a hassle-free manner. Advertisement Nitin GadkariThe Captain Amarinder government had earlier proposed to the Centre that the project be sanctioned as a part of 550th Prakash Purb of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and 400th Prakash Purb of Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, to provide easy access to the pilgrims visiting Sri Kartarpur Sahib, where the first Sikh Guru almost spent the last 18 years of his life, and Baba Bakala, the sacred place associated with Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji. BEVERLY, MA The Beverly-based Massachusetts Task Force 1 faced a charred and devastated landscape, shrouded in smoke-filled and toxic air, when its 25-member unit arrived in Oregon to help support firefighters battling the Pacific Northwest blazes this week. The unit, which departed from Logan Airport on Monday, traveled across the country to provide search and rescue support for crews battling the raging wildfires. Their mission is to look for any survivors or victims caught in the raging fires, as well as survey damaged buildings and other structures. "The air quality is very rough," said Thomas Gatzunis, the planning team manager and structure specialist for Task Force 1, told Patch on Thursday. "Communication is very difficult, not only because of the terrain, but because of all the smoke in the air." Gatzunis said members of Task Force 1 must wear half-face respirators while outdoors due to the toxic air from all the smoke and burned buildings, cars and homes. "It's not easy," he said. "I am sure people know during COVID what it feels like to wear a surgical or cloth mask all day and how that can make breathing difficult. To work with these types of respirators in these conditions is that to a much greater degree of difficulty trying to breathe and take in oxygen." The equipment combined with the terrain make the mission taxing and treacherous, at times, for the unit. "They are not walking on nice, smooth flat pavement," Gatzunis said. "It's hilly and debris-filled. A lot of times the roads are closed so they are walking a great distance just to get to the area they need to get to." Gatzunis said he is in contact with the unit as much as possible from Massachusetts, but radio and phone transmissions from the fire areas are spotty. "Satellite phones aren't working and cell service is poor," Gatzunis said. "Even at the tops of mountains, it's difficult to get good cell coverage." Story continues The program, which is managed through Beverly's Emergency Management Agency on behalf of the federal government, includes members from all New England states. Gatzunis said crews are generally sent out for two weeks at a time with a new unit rotating in every 14 days as necessary. Photos are provided to Patch courtesy of Massachusetts Task Force 1 Related Patch Coverage: Beverly-Based Task Force 1 Heads To Oregon For Wildfire Support This article originally appeared on the Beverly Patch It was discovered that people who had one copy of the Dantu gene had 40 percent protection against malaria and those with two copies of Dantu gene had 70 percent protection against the disease. As per the 2018 World Malaria Report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), India and countries in sub-Saharan Africa account for 85 percent of the worlds malaria cases. Malaria causes approximately 435,000 deaths every year globally, 61 percent of which are children under five. Malaria is a disease caused by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito which carries Plasmodium parasites. It usually presents with fever, chills and headache and can be life-threatening if not treated. The vaccine for malaria is not effective enough as it provides only 35 percent protection. However, scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, along with the University of Cambridge and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya, have found that people with a rare blood group, Dantu, may have protection against the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Apart from the blood group system that we normally use (ABO blood group system) there are 34 other blood group systems including the MNS blood group systems. Blood groups are determined by the antigens (proteins) present on the surface of the red blood cells. The MNS blood group antigens were discovered in the 1920s. Dantu is a type of blood group seen in the MNS blood group system. Examining blood group Dantu against malaria The red blood cells (RBCs) have specific proteins on them called glycophorins. Glycophorin A (GYPA) and Glycophorin B (GYPB) are two of the many receptors that Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria, uses to enter into healthy cells. Both these glycophorins (coded by the genes of the same name) also carry the antigenic determinants of MN and Ss blood groups. The GYPA and GYPB genes are present on the same chromosome and they rearrange in various ways to make specific antigens in the MNS blood group. Dantu antigen is one such hybrid of GYPA and GYPB gene. The latest study found that people with GYPB-A hybrid gene are less likely to develop severe complications of malaria and the sequence of this particular hybrid was found to be that of Dantu antigen. To examine the effects of Dantu blood group, scientists collected red blood cell samples from 42 healthy children in Kenya, who had one, two or zero copies of the Dantu gene. These red blood cells were then exposed to the malaria parasite in the laboratory. The samples were examined using multiple tools along with time-lapse video microscopy, which identified the point where the parasite invasion was impaired. Results of the study The results of the study showed that the red blood cell samples that had the Dantu gene formed cells with higher surface tension, which can be visualised as a drum with tighter skin. At a particular point, the malaria parasites were unable to enter the cells, thus their lifecycle halted in the blood. Dr Silvia Kariuki, from the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, explained that malaria parasites work in a lock-and-key' manner to enter the human red blood cells. The Dantu gene increases the tension of the red blood cell surface, thus inhibiting the entry of the parasite. So, in a way, the virus still has the key to the lock, but the door gets extremely heavy to open. The scientists explained that the Dantu blood group has a chimeric protein (protein structure formed after the fusion of two proteins) on the surface of red blood cells, which increases the tension of the cells. It was discovered that people who had one copy of the Dantu gene had 40 percent protection against malaria and those with two copies of Dantu gene had 70 percent protection against the disease. Future plans Scientists stated that the surface tension of human red blood cells naturally increases as the cells age. The normal lifespan of a red blood cell is 90 days. They believe that by designing the drugs that naturally increase the surface tension of red blood cells, we will be able to prevent malaria infection or reduce its severity. For more information, read our article on malaria. Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health. The bank says it will be boosting financial support for projects to enhance human development globally. The World Bank has said Ukraine needs more and better targeted investment in education, health care, and social protection in order for the Ukrainian people to reach their full human potential. That's according to the Bank's press service. Assessment of human capital in Ukraine In particular, the World Bank noted the country's low level of human capital development. "In Ukraine, a child born today can only expect to achieve 63% of the productivity of a fully educated adult in optimal health. While this is above the average for countries of a similar level of economic development worldwide, it is below the average of Europe and Central Asia," the press release says. Ukraine's Human Capital Index "Most disconcertingly, and in contrast to most other countries in the region and the world, in Ukraine there has been no improvement in the HCI [Human Capital Index] between 2010 and 2020," the press service said. Read alsoCapital investment in Ukrainian economy shrinks by 34.9% in H1The World Bank says it will be boosting financial support for projects to enhance human development globally. Preceding developments The World Bank on September 11 called on Ukraine to speed up the adoption of the laws required for the launch of the farmland market, which is expected to be open in July 2021. (Newser) It was only after the transport truck had pulled away from the loading docks, loaded up with seven hot tubs worth more than $110,000, that workers at a Canadian spa company in Thorsby realized they'd been robbed. And it wasn't the first time such a heist had happened in Alberta: Per the Guardian, just days earlier, hundreds of pounds of beef worth about $175,000 had been lifted from a Brooks meatpacking plant in another "brazen" daytime robbery. In both cases, drivers from a Quebec company supposedly called Transport Pascal Charland had driven up in their trucks, presented forged paperwork to unwitting employees, and then cruised off with their stolen goods. "It's the first time in my 12 years of policing that I've seen this type of thing, certainly this amount of hot tubs or stolen beef," Royal Canadian Mounted Police rep Rob Gilles says. story continues below Per Global News, the first robbery took place Aug. 30 at the JBS meatpacking facility, where the suspect vehicle was described as a burgundy-colored semitruck pulling a white refrigerated trailer. On Sept. 2, a different truck (a white Volvo with a sleeper) driven by a man with a different description than the one who was driving the first truck stole the seven hot tubs from Blue Falls Manufacturing. Both drivers, however, produced papers claiming they were from Transport Pascal Charland. Dennis Kellner, president of Blue Falls Manufacturing, says he was "dumbfounded" on how the robbery at his site was pulled off, noting it seemed to be a sophisticated operation, per CTV News. He says his company has since upped its security procedures around pickups. Police believe the two robberies are linked and will continue to investigate. (Read more weird crimes stories.) As part of efforts to curb the proliferation of firearms, the Niger State command of the Nigeria Police Force has issued an ultimatum for submission of illegal and prohibited firearms. The Niger State Police Command hereby calls on members of the public who are in possession of illegal and prohibited firearms such as single barrel, double barrel, automatic pump action and locally fabricated gun etc to render such firearms to a nearby Police Division, Area Command or State Headquarters on or before 30th September, 2020, said the commands spokesperson, Wasiu Abiodun. Upon the expiration of this ultimatum, the command shall commence aggressive firearms mop-up exercise in the state and anyone found in possession of firearm without compliance to the aforementioned directive shall be arrested and prosecuted for unlawful possession of firearm. He said this is in line with the directive of the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to mop up illegal and prohibited firearms in circulation across the country. Mr Adamu had in August ordered the arrest of those in possession of illegal and prohibited firearms ahead of the Edo and Ondo state governorship elections. The order is targeted at addressing the proliferation and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms in the country which is contrary to the provisions of Chapter F.28 LFN 2004 of the Firearms Act. State police commissioners were directed to convene an enlightenment meeting of all vigilante groups and quasi-security outfits spread across the country in order to ensure that their activities are in conformity with the extant laws guiding their establishment and operations. Meanwhile, Mr Abiodun warned the general public about the danger in arming people in the guise of defending their communities. He said such communities should instead partner with the police. He believes that the partnership will bring crime to its barest minimum in Niger State. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham revealed that former FBI Director James Comey will testify in his probe of alleged FBI misconduct just weeks before the November elections. Graham, a Trump loyalist who has been probing the FBI's 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation that kicked off the Russia probe, announced the development on Fox News host Sean Hannity's program. 'The day of reckoning is upon us when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane,' he said. Former FBI Director James Comey has agreed to testify in a Senate GOP-run probe of the 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation that kicked off the Russia probe Graham said Comey had agreed to come voluntarily, without need for a subpoena. He indicated an ongoing push to bring in former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, like Comey another top target of President Donald Trump's. 'I appreciate Mr. Comey coming before the committee and he will be respectfully treated but asked hard questions. We are negotiating with McCabe; we are hoping to get him without a subpoena -- time will tell,' said Graham. Graham said Mueller, who like Comey also delivered blockbuster testimony in Congress last year, won't be coming. 'Mueller has declined the invitation to the committee to appear to explain his report,' Graham said. He said Mueller 'says he doesn't have enough time.' Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced Comey's voluntary appearance while speaking on Fox News Wednesday night Graham's probe comes as President Trump continues to rail against people he says 'spied' on his campaign in 2016 President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during an Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017 Graham and his Democratic opponent Jamie Harrison are tied 48-48 in a new poll Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller 'says he doesn't have enough time' to appear, said Graham Graham said the committee has also invited former FBI lawyer and investigator Peter Strzrok, another Trump target, to testify. Democrats have blasted the probe as a partisan exercise. Trump has continued to fume that the Obama administration 'spied' on his campaign. Meanwhile, U.S. attorney John Durham continues his probe of alleged FBI misconduct. Last week, a top aide, Nora Dannehy, resigned in what colleagues told the Hartford Courant was a move influenced by pressure to take action before the elections. Graham made additional cryptic comments on Hannity's show earlier this week, following disclosures that devices belonging to Mueller's team had been wiped before they could be analyzed. 'You think you are mad about the phones being wiped?' Stay tuned. We'll talk in about 10 or 12 days and we'll see if there is something else you can get mad about,' he said. It is unclear if he may have been referring to Comey's testimony or some other development. Graham's investigatory push, which could provide fuel for President Trump's attacks on what he calls the 'witch hunt,' may have come at a personal price at home. A new Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday had Graham tied with his Democratic challenger, Jamie Harrison, 48-48 as he seeks election to a fourth term in a heavily Republican state. 'A victor by almost 16 points back in 2014, Senator Graham stares down the first real test of his Senate tenure. Outspent and accused by some of being a Trump apologist, he is in a precarious tie,' said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy. Mumbai, Sep 17 : Gurmeet Choudhary is back in Mumbai along with the rest of the unit, after an outdoor stint for the film, The Wife, in Jaipur. He said it wasn't easy to shooting the film amid Covid-19, and shared his experience of being on the set after lockdown. "Completing the film was a challenge during this pandemic as we weren't shooting in Mumbai, we were shooting out of the city. When you are shooting outside the city, the major concern is if someone contracts in the team Covid-19 then we would need at least a 21-days quarantine and keep the shoot on hold. The cycle would going if the number of cases increased," he said. "I think our film is the first one in Bollywood to start during the pandemic and end smoothly with no (Covid positive) cases," Gurmeet added. He expressed concern about the workers. "We had to be sure that even when the shoot was over, everyone needed to be negative. The entire team of 100 to 120 tested negative and after that we took the decision to return. I feel it is an achievement in itself that as a team we worked together and headed back safely," he said. "Many shoots have been kept on hold and people have lost their jobs. Lightmen, cameramen, actors, spots, directors, assistants and roughly 300 people are involved in making a film. Many have been sitting at home without work, or heading back to their villages. I think this is positive that a film went on floor in the Covid-19 era and it worked out smoothly," Gurmeet said. "The Wife" is as an urban-horror film, co-starring Sayani Dutta. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) South Africa: Youth policy under the spotlight Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, is expected to host a consultation webinar focusing on key legislative and policy instruments for the youth sector. These are the National Youth Policy (NYP) 2030 and the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) Amendment Bill. The youth policy seeks to guide stakeholders in the design of youth interventions geared towards responding to the needs of young people. On one hand, the policy further outlines interventions to enable the optimal development of young people, both as individuals and as members of South African society, enhancing their capabilities to transform the economy and the country. On the other hand, the NYDA Act is the founding legislation of the National Youth Development Agency. Its amendment will further strengthen the agencys delivery of programmes, and help enhance governance, visibility and reach of the agency. Fridays webinar is part of an extensive consultation campaign that has been active since November 2019, with the objective of ensuring that the policy is as representative and comprehensive as possible. The National Youth Policy has been consulted with young people, youth-serving and youth-led organisations, government departments, government clusters, business and civil society organisations. The objective of the webinar is to gather further inputs from youth formations and student organisations in order to enrich the draft legislation and the youth policy document before finalisation. Among other things, the discussion will reflect on the current challenges facing the youth, as well as creative and innovative solutions to address the identified challenges, working with government and all other non-State actors. Government recognises that the NYP is not only a government policy, but the State's commitment to youth development in South Africa. The National Youth Policy can be found at www.women.gov.za. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The federal government outlined its plans Wednesday for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine free to all Americans, with the Defense Department leading the operational planning, oversight and logistics of distribution -- without ever touching the product, senior officials said in a phone call with reporters Wednesday. Noting there's been "a lot of confusion" about the DoD's role in the country's expedited coronavirus vaccine program, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, or OWS, officials said the department is conducting an "extraordinary logistically complex undertaking" with the goal of ensuring that a product will ship within a day of receiving approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Read Next: Army Proposes Limiting Retiree Burials in Arlington National Cemetery "Our goal for Operation Warp Speed is that, within 24 hours of an [emergency use authorization] or [biologics license application], that we have vaccines moving to administration sites," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, OWS deputy chief of supply, production and distribution. To make that happen, the DoD has led a "very deliberate planning process," according to Ostrowski, sorting out details of supply chain logistics, distribution, inoculations and monitoring. The Pentagon is responsible for controlling distribution, ensuring that vaccines go to the right people, as laid out in federal planning documents; handling the supply chain; tracing distribution and allocation of vaccines; and ensuring that states and localities can get vaccines out to their populations, Ostrowski said. This will include establishing vaccination centers other than pharmacies and hospitals and working with the company contracted to manage vaccine distribution, McKesson Corp., to ensure that everyone who receives a shot is tracked, he said. "Most of these vaccines will be two-dose vaccines. ... We have to be able to tell the person that we vaccinated when it's time to come back in for a second shot, and we have to make sure they have the right vaccine on that second dose," Ostrowski explained. The Trump administration issued its plans for beginning the vaccination effort by the end of the year or in early 2021 in a report delivered to Congress on Wednesday. The report included detailed instructions for states and localities to develop distribution plans and sketched out goals for the program. At first, when limited supplies may be available, vulnerable populations such as the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions, as well as health workers and essential employees, will be vaccinated. Other groups will follow, as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and recommendations from the National Academy of Medicine. According to the academy's recommendations, deployed military personnel participating in operations, as well as police and fire personnel, would receive vaccines after the first group has completed theirs. Other members of the population would be vaccinated in later phases, as supplies are available. According to the report, the government intends to distribute vaccines at no cost to patients. The federal government has largely underwritten the development process, spending billions on six current vaccine candidates, including three that are in advanced phases of efficacy testing. "As part of Operation Warp Speed, we have been laying the groundwork for months to distribute and administer a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it meets FDA's gold standard," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement Wednesday. "This in-depth, round-the-clock planning work with our state and local partners and trusted community organizations, especially through CDC, will ensure that Americans can receive a safe and effective vaccine in record time." Many Americans have expressed skepticism over development of a vaccine, with roughly 75% of the population believing the process is being driven more by politics than science, according to a poll conducted by STAT, a Boston-based health publication, and the polling company Harris. An Associated Press poll found that 20% of Americans said they would not get a coronavirus vaccine. Seeking to quell concerns over the safety of a new preventive developed at record speed, Dr. Anthony Fauci said last week that science will prevail and a vaccine is key to a return to "normality." "The American public should feel confident. The [Food and Drug Administration] has pledged that they would make sure that no vaccine that is not safe and effective would be allowed to be given to the American public," Fauci said. Administration officials on Wednesday also responded to anti-vaccination and COVID-19 conspiracy rhetoric that has been fueling doubt about the program, including concerns about the government's role in development. "I know there has been a lot of confusion about what the role of the Department of Defense will be" in vaccine distribution and oversight, said Paul Mango, HHS deputy chief of staff for policy. "For the overwhelming majority of Americans, there will be no federal official who touches any of this vaccine before it's injected into Americans." Previously, Mango and CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield had said they could envision a scenario where local or state governments may want assistance from their state National Guards to man inoculation centers. "We're not going to take anything off the table," Redfield said. More than 60,800 people affiliated with the DoD have tested positive for COVID-19, including nearly 42,000 service members, since the pandemic began. As of Wednesday, seven U.S. troops, seven dependents, 57 civilian DoD employees and 21 contractors had died, according to the Pentagon. Across the U.S., there have been 6.6 million cases of COVID-19 and 196,103 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University -- 22% of the world's total cases and 21% of the world's coronavirus deaths. "CDC's goal, and that of the U.S. government, is to have enough COVID-19 vaccine for all people in the U.S. who want to be vaccinated," Redfield said. -- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime. Related: US Troops May Not Get Priority for COVID-19 Vaccine After All Jackie 'O' Henderson split up with her ex-husband, Lee Henderson, almost two years ago. And on Thursday, the radio queen revealed the type of man she wants to date. In a discussion with co-host Kyle Sandilands on the Kyle and Jackie O show, the 45-year-old revealed she wants a 'man's man'. Ready to find a man! Radio queen Jackie 'O' Henderson revealed the type of man she wants to date, two years on from her split with ex-husband Lee Henderson. On Thursday, she told co-host Kyle Sandilands that she was looking for a 'a man's man' Kyle, 49, asked: 'But you still like the rough man right? Not too rough?' 'Yep, just like a man's man,' she explained. The radio shock jock picked up a newspaper and asked Jackie to flick through the pages to see if there was a man in there that caught her eye. Could he be the one? After flicking through a newspaper, she stopped when she saw a man dressed in an orange hi-vis shirt and posing with a chain saw. 'Who's this guy? He's alright. He's a timber producer,' Jackie said before showing Kyle (pictured above) She stopped when she saw a man dressed in an orange hi-vis shirt and posing with a chain saw. 'Who's this guy? He's alright. He's a timber producer,' Jackie said before showing the photo to Kyle, who was shocked at her choice of man. 'I like the look of him,' she explained, as Kyle, still baffled, said: 'This guy? There's no way!' Exes: She was married to British photographer Lee Henderson (pictured), but they announced their split after 18 years together back in October 2018 Co-parenting: Jackie and Lee share a nine-year-old daughter Kitty (pictured) 'Unbelievable,' Kyle said, before telling their producer to track down the man. She was married to British photographer Lee Henderson, but announced their split after 18 years together back in October 2018. They share a nine-year-old daughter Kitty. Jackie was first married to Hot30 Countdown co-host 'Ugly' Phil O'Neil in 1994, but the marriage ended in 1999. Police in Maine are trying to track down a woman who is putting dog poop in the mailboxes of President Trump supporters. According to authorities, the offender has deliberately been targeting homes in the Hampden area that have Trump signs erected in their front yards. The woman is alleged to have carried out the caper on Sunday and Monday, with startled Republicans calling cops after discovering dog feces alongside their mail. Hampden Police have now released a photo of the suspect out on her bicycle amid fears she may strike again. Police in Maine are trying to track down a woman who is dumping dog poop into the mailboxes of President Trump supporters. Authorities in Hampden released this image of the alleged suspect Startled Republicans in Hampden called cops after discovering dog droppings alongside their mail The image shows that the apparent offender is a middle-aged white woman with shoulder-length brown hair. She was last seen dressed in a purple t-shirt, denim shorts and lavender colored Crocs. The woman also donned a black face mask while carrying out her criminal activities. Alyshia Canwell, a patrol officer with Hampden Public Safety, told WGME on Thursday that the woman has also been 'defacing Trump signs' that residents have put up ahead of the November election. Concerned locals took to Facebook to encourage cops to catch the offender. 'I wonder if she will get federal charges for messing with mailboxes. Isn't it illegal on some level to mess with political signs too?' one asked. Another wrote: 'What is wrong with people, cant wait for 2021. I am so over all this cr*p, no pun intended.' Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden makes a fist as he answers questions from reporters after a speech about the effects on the U.S. economy of the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic during an appearance in Wilmington, Delaware, September 4, 2020. LONDON Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has become the latest U.S. lawmaker to warn the U.K. government about plans to potentially break international law. The U.K. government published legislation last week that, if approved by British lawmakers in its current form, could override previously legislated Brexit commitments on the Irish border issue. The plan has resurfaced old disagreements with the European Union, sparked opposition from some British lawmakers, and caused concern among a number of American politicians. "We can't allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit," Biden said on Twitter late Wednesday. The U.K. agreed with the European Union at the end of 2019, as part of its departure from the bloc, that state aid granted to Northern Ireland which would impact trade with the EU would need approval from Brussels. This commitment, which was translated into law in January, aimed to prevent a harder border between Northern Ireland (a member of the U.K.) and the Republic of Ireland (a member of the EU) and respected the Good Friday Agreement a U.S. brokered deal that brought peace between both parts of the island in the late 1990s. The bill called the Internal Market Bill would also potentially change requirements that Northern Irish firms complete export summary declarations when shipping goods to the mainland. "Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period," the presidential hopeful also said via Twitter, suggesting a trade deal with the United States could be at risk if Biden enters the White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned last week that there cannot be a trade agreement with the U.K. if the latter chooses to breach international law. Four congressmen wrote a letter to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this week outlining their concerns, according to the BBC. In reaction to Biden's comments, Edward Argar, the U.K.'s junior health minister, denied Thursday that the peace deal was at risk. The British government has put on a charm offensive this week with Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, traveling to Washington to reassure lawmakers about the plans. In a press conference with U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo, Raab said: "Our commitment to the Good Friday Agreement and to avoid any extra infrastructure at the border between the north and the south is absolute." Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 23:20:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at a gala dinner held by the U.S.-China Business Council in Washington D.C., the United States, on Dec. 4, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) "To be fair, some of the differences will remain with us for many years to come. We have to recognize that there will always be differences between us because we are two different countries with very different historical heritages, different cultures, and different political and economic systems," said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai in an interview. WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China and the United States have to manage their differences in a constructive way as the two countries' common interests and mutual needs always outweigh whatever differences they have, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has said. "To be fair, some of the differences will remain with us for many years to come. We have to recognize that there will always be differences between us because we are two different countries with very different historical heritages, different cultures, and different political and economic systems," said Cui in a recent interview with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on the podcast program "Straight Talk with Hank Paulson." The conversation, held on Aug. 28 and aired on Monday, covered topics including current China-U.S. relations, bilateral economic and trade cooperation, global governance, and China's economy. Workers make toys at a toy factory in Zaozhuang City, east China's Shandong Province, May 30, 2020. (Xinhua/Fan Changguo) "But we have to manage the differences in a constructive way. We have to keep in mind that our common interests and mutual needs always outweigh whatever differences we have. We are faced with so many global challenges. Neither China nor the United States can handle them all by itself, whether the pandemic or climate change or natural disasters," he said. "It is the expectation of the international community that China and the United States should work with each other, not against each other, on these global challenges. This is the larger common interest," he said. "As for our differences, I have to be very frank that many issues, including those you just mentioned, such as the situation across the Taiwan Strait, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the South China Sea, if we look at the map, they are either part of the Chinese territory or very close to China. None of them is close to the United States. Certainly none of them is part of the U.S. territory," said the ambassador. A visitor takes photos with a local tourist guide at a homestay in the ancient city of Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Sept. 11, 2020. (Xinhua/Ma Kai) "So for us, it's a matter of sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity. Sometimes we just don't believe why these issues should become issues between our two countries. They are internal issues for China," he said. "As the Chinese nation strives to achieve modernization, we have to solve the issues concerning our sovereignty and territorial integrity in the process. They are our own affairs," the ambassador added. Sydneysiders are flocking to the beach as temperatures soar - but are warned to brace for smoke as authorities conduct hazard reduction burns. The mercury will hit 30C in most suburbs on Thursday, before a southerly change blows the first real taste of summer away. Weatherzone meterologist Brett Dutschke said the warm weather is 'not unusual' for this time of year, despite being well above the September average. 'In spring we always get a taste of summer but it's usually brief,' he said. 'But having said that, the city's 30C forecast is about 10C above average for this time of the year. Pictured: Map of Australia shows heat across the country at about midday on Thursday Sydneysiders are flocking to the beach as temperatures soar to 30C. Pictured: A woman walks along the sand at Bondi Beach on Thursday A couple make the most of warm weather on Thursday at Sydney's Bondi Beach A group of friends enjoy the warm weather on Thursday at Sydney's popular Bondi Beach Sydneysiders flocked to the beach as temperatures reached 30C - the first real taste of summer 'In the western suburbs its about 7C above average for this time of year.' According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the average maximum temperature for September - recorded at Observatory Hill in Sydney's CBD - is 20.1C. Mr Dutschke said the 30C forecast was widespread across the city but the beaches would linger around the 26C, 27C mark. He explained the heat has been pulled to the east coast from the interior. 'Today we've got winds blowing from the north-west and it's drawing some heat from the interior where it has been building for the past few days,' he said. 'With north-westerly winds, it's drawing that heat closer to the east coast.' But the summer-like conditions are expected to come to a 'rapid end' with a southerly wind change in the late afternoon. Mr Dutschke said temperatures should drop 'by about 10C in an hour or two'. Tattooed men splash around in the water at Bondi Beach as the temperature soars to 30C Weatherzone meterologist Brett Dutschke said the warm weather is 'not unusual' for this time of year, despite being well above the month's average. 'In spring we always get a taste of summer but it's usually brief,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Pictured: Two women at Bondi Beach Crowds begin to gather at Bondi Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Thursday morning A man walks back to his belongings on Bondi Beach after cooling down in the water on Thursday Mr Dutschke said the 30C forecast was widespread across the city but the beaches would linger around the 26C, 27C mark. Pictured: Beachgoers at Bondi 'By the time we get to 6pm, most of Sydney will be colder than 20C, cloudy and later this evening, showers are possible,' he said. The southerly change will bring 'strong' winds of about 30 to 40km/h on the coast. 'Strong warning for coastal waters in relation to that southerly change and also on the harbour. It will get quite bumpy as well,' Mr Dutschke said. The winds will ease by Friday and will turn more south-easterly and north-easterly. There will be increased humidity over the weekend and a chance of showers across the city. 'Just about everywhere in Sydney is the chance of a shower during Friday and Saturday,' Mr Dutschke said. NSW Rural Fire Service released a smoke warning on Thursday as they conduct 'controlled hazard reduction burning in a number of areas across NSW over coming days'. Two men greet each other with a socially distanced wave as they go for a run on Bondi Beach Two women embrace for a hug in front of lifeguards at Bondi Beach on Thursday A woman runs along Bondi Beach as crowds begin to gather on Thursday morning A group of friends kick around a football at Bondi Beach on Thursday 'Smoke from these planned burns may settle in a number of areas in particular parts of the Greater Sydney, Illawarra, Central Coast, Armidale, Inverell, Liverpool Plains and Mid Coast areas,' they said. NSW RFS warned smoked from bush fires and hazard reduction burning can affect some people more than others. Children, older adults and people with heart and lung conditions are most susceptible to air pollution and excessive smoke. 'If you have asthma or a lung condition, reduce outdoor activities if smoke levels are high and if shortness of breath or coughing develops, take your reliever medicine or seek medical advice,' NSW RFS said. The water was packed with locals swimming as they enjoyed the first bit of summer this year Two friends head back from the water on Thursday at Bondi Beach where temperatures reached 30C Melburnians in Stage Four lockdown can expect a maximum of 14C on Thursday, with light rain forecast. On Friday, it will be slightly warmer when the mercury reaches a maximum of 19C, but the showers are set to stay. Brisbane will see mostly sunny conditions with a high of 27C, while Adelaide will reach a maximum of 19C. Rain will dampen the mood in Brisbane, with a 40 per cent chance of showers expected on Friday. Adelaide will soar to 27C on Friday, up eight degrees from the cool 19C on Thursday. There is a possible late shower expected in the state. It is partly cloudy in Perth and Darwin, with a max of 21C and 34C respectively. Perth will reach 23C on Friday while Darwin remains the same throughout the weekend. Hobart is still experiencing cooler temperatures at just 13C on Thursday, but this will slightly increase to 15C on Friday. Indoor screening will take place at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, using Christie Solaria Series digital cinema projectors. It has not been without its challenges and we are here today thanks to the support from our industry partners, like Christie. We are grateful for the past 20 years and look forward to the future. Diane Cappelletto, Director, Technical Production Services, Toronto International Film Festival. Christie is proud to celebrate its 20th year as the Official Digital Projection Partner of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Kicking off its 45th year, and running until September 19, the Festival will screen 50 new films across venues adapted to the global pandemic, including a drive-in theater, an open-air cinema, and indoor venues tailored for public safety. While this years Festival will look different from previous iterations, including the number of venues and films that will be screened, the inspiration of the Festival remains unchanged: to bring the very best in film to the broadest possible audience. For the first time TIFF will screen films at an outdoor location set up as a drive-in. Ontario Place, which recently hosted the successful Lavazza Drive-In Film Festival, will be home to outdoor screenings this year as part of the Festival. Audiences will be able to enjoy films on a massive 60-foot by 30-foot screen, lit up by a Christie CP4440-RGB pure laser cinema projector. Indoor screening will take place at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, using Christie Solaria Series digital cinema projectors. This year represents a bold evolution for TIFF, says Diane Cappelletto, Director, Technical Production Services, Toronto International Film Festival. It has not been without its challenges and we are here today thanks to the support from our industry partners, like Christie. We are grateful for the past 20 years and look forward to the future. Festival highlights include the opening night feature David Byrnes American Utopia directed by Spike Lee, Nomadland starring Frances McDormand, directed by Chloe Zhao, and Mira Nairs A Suitable Boy, to close the Festival. This years films are a diverse selection of voices from around the globe, representing TIFFs commitment to normalizing gender parity and racial equality. We could not be prouder to support TIFF in bringing films to audiences, this year more than ever, says Arlonna Seymour, senior director, Corporate Marketing, Christie. In our twenty-year history with TIFF, weve seen cinema evolve from film to digital, and now to RGB pure laser. And whether were watching films in a theater or from our car at the drive-in, were excited to help bring people together again, safely, and put the best possible images on screens for audiences to enjoy. About Christie Christie Digital Systems USA, Inc. is a global visual and audio technologies company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Ushio Inc., Japan. Christie revolutionized the movie industry with the launch of digital cinema projection, and since 1929 has embraced innovation and broken many technology barriers. From the worlds largest mega-events to the smallest applications, our technologyfrom advanced RGB pure laser and SDVoE technology to image processing and LED display solutionsempowers people to create the worlds best shared experiences. Visit http://www.christiedigital.com. INSIDE STORY by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape 20, 576pp) Martin Amis says his latest book on the boil for almost two decades grew out of a long-abandoned manuscript called, simply, Life: A Novel. Inside Story is a fit-to-burst ragbag of memoir and musing on all his usual hobbyhorses, from Hitler to Islamism to the nuts and bolts of how to write an ear-pleasing sentence. There's also some juicy gossip (sort of) involving a vengeful lover from Amis's salad days in Seventies London. Amis, born in 1949, devotes plenty of room to misty-eyed memories of bragging about his sexual exploits to his late friend, the journalist Christopher Hitchens. He tells us that one of his lovers, Germaine Greer, was 'unwaveringly kind and gentle... but the amatory demeanour of the world's most glamorous feminist is surely of scant general interest in this day and age'. Tease! Martin Amis's new book Inside Story reveals details of his life but it has been marketed as a novel Even those readers who love to hate Amis and there are many may struggle not to be moved by his passages on Hitchens's death from cancer in 2011, aged 62. Still, Inside Story leaves you scratching your head as to why it has been marketed as a novel. What makes this book different from Amis's 2000 autobiography, Experience? The answer lies in the fad for 'autofiction' novels drawn from life but with ample wriggle room if the lawyers come calling (the genre's leading light, Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, is married to Amis's publisher). Amis's title is a cute pun: Inside Story promises dirt, yet hints that everything it contains must be read through the frame of fiction, AKA a heavy pinch of salt. He tells us that one of his lovers, Germaine Greer, was 'unwaveringly kind and gentle... but the amatory demeanour of the world's most glamorous feminist is surely of scant general interest in this day and age'. Pictured: Greer in 1970 What, then, to make of the book's central crisis, which begins the day after the 9/11 attacks? 'It was not Osama bin Laden who threw me,' says Amis. 'It was an ex-girlfriend, a woman called Phoebe Phelps', who may be the only person here not to appear under their actual name, if she even exists. Amis recounts his Seventies fling with this one-time nude model and escort who, 30 years later, sends him a letter claiming that his father author Kingsley Amis tried to bed her while she and Mart were an item. Inside Story, by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape 20, 576pp) She says Kingsley told her it was OK because Martin wasn't actually his son, but Philip Larkin's. This letter arrives when Amis is already reeling, lost for words to describe the attack on the World Trade Center. The claim is false, but it sparks a private psychodrama that serves as bait to keep us reading through Inside Story's windier detours. Amis doesn't spell it out, I can't help feeling he is bringing up this supposed identity crisis (fictional or not) as a way to explain his rather unhinged output post-9/11, when a ghoulish obsession with terrorism 'horrorism', he called it led him down many a blind alley, not least a lurid short story about the bowel movements of the Twin Towers hijacker Mohamed Atta. My heart sinks when Amis reveals that he's currently at work on a story collection dealing with race in the U.S. what can he possibly have to say about that? He has always chased weighty subjects. Yet the lesson of this peculiarly enjoyable book is that his own navel offers more than enough to keep him and us going. UAE-based Mohammed Al Beloushi, CEO of Barker and Booth Commercial Agency LLC, to lead strategic investment in Israeli startup Fintica, launching partnership to develop Fintica's activity in the UAE. Fintica's next generation AI enhances predictive analytics for wealth and asset managers, hedge fund, financial markets infrastructure and global data vendors. TEL AVIV, Israel and DUBAI, UAE, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the signing of the Abraham Accords by Israel and the UAE in Washington DC, UAE-based Mohammed Al Beloushi, CEO of Barker and Booth Commercial Agency LLC, announced a first of its kind strategic investment in Israeli startup Fintica AI Ltd. The move will see the launch of a partnership with the intention of developing Fintica's capabilities, resources, and market share in the region bringing with it, new technology for the financial sector. Fintica's disruptive autonomous AI technology gives real-time market analyses, providing asset managers with a unique understanding of vast amounts of data. This provides a qualitative edge for efficient and well-informed decision making. Commenting on the historic collaboration, Mohammed Al Beloushi, CEO of Barker and Booth Commercial Agency LLC noted, "It's our duty to support the visionary leadership of the United Arab Emirates whose underlying desire is to advance global peace with sincerity and persistence. In the words of our respected Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, "Peace requires courage and shaping the future requires knowledge." He added, "Acknowledging that this historic achievement will better the lives of our youth, and our youth are our future, we support initiatives which encourage and invest in the promotion and exchange of skills, knowledge and expertise, and this will have a positive impact in the region. We are ready to play our part in this new era." Philippe Metoudi, CEO of Fintica AI, noted the significant potential for growth in the sector. "Fintica is delighted and honored to embark on this historic partnership with our UAE counterparts, and together to work on expanding our impact in the investment market." He stressed, "Our two nations have begun a new era of cooperation, yet the world's markets remain volatile and turbulent. Our partnership will help Fintica offer investors around the UAE the ability to achieve a deeper understanding of changing market structures and conditions." AUSTIN Gov. Greg Abbott announced a new round of business reopenings Thursday, including restaurants, gyms and nursing homes, as the state continues to see a drop in infections and hospitalizations from the coronavirus. The reopenings apply to every region except Victoria, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, where hospitals are still dealing with large numbers of infected patients. Hospitals in the greenlit regions are also allowed to return to normal operations; elective procedures had been restricted while the state fought to overcome a summer surge. Abbott said the state will allow most businesses to reopen at 75 percent of their maximum occupancy in those regions where COVID patients make up less than 15 percent of the total people hospitalized. Bars are still prohibited from reopening, though some have been able to work around the restriction in recent weeks by rebranding as restaurants with sit-down service. Texans have shown that we can address both the health and safety concerns of COVID-19 while also taking careful, measured steps to restore the livelihoods that Texans depend on, Abbott said in his first statewide briefing on the pandemic in months. Related: Hurricane, holiday starting to show COVID-19 impact Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick acknowledged that doctors recently have noted a significant uptick in local cases of coronavirus, which largely have been attributed to evacuation for Hurricane Laura and Labor Day celebrations. However, hospitalizations have largely stabilized and meet Abbotts threshold. Im happy for our businesses and think its probably appropriate given the trends that weve seen, he said. But I do think its important that we not let this good news make us let down our guard. We still need to exercise good sense. Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames said that, in light of Abbotts moves and after conversations with local doctors on Thursday, shes requested that a work session on reopening city facilities be changed to a discussion with a vote. Gov. Abbotts new orders Starting Monday, several types of businesses can reopen in regions where COVID patients make up less than 15 percent of the total people hospitalized. They include gyms, restaurants, retail stores, offices, manufacturing facilities, museums and libraries. The businesses can operate at 75 percent of their maximum occupancy, provided they require customers to wear masks and distance themselves from patrons who are not members of their immediate families. Essential visitors will be allowed at nursing homes and assisted living facilities where infections remain low. Each resident can designate up to two such visitors, and only one visitor is allowed in at a time. Non-essential visits will be allowed in outdoor settings, without close contact. Effective immediately, hospitals in greenlit regions can resume elective procedures. See More Collapse Ames has been one of the members of the council most vocally opposed to reopening those facilities. However, she said recent case confirmation trends make her more comfortable about reopening the venues and with Abbotts plan to allow 75% occupancy at certain businesses. At some point we have to move forward cautiously and reading (Abbotts) order, thats what hes saying, she said. Hes still making the plea that residents continue following CDC guidelines like wearing masks and social distancing. She also added that clear thresholds, such as the 15% coronavirus hospitalization set forth by Abbott, help elected officials make the best decision on how to continue to respond to the virus. Related: SETX to get additional COVID-19 testing site As of Thursday, 57 coronavirus patients, or nearly 12% of total hospitalization, were checked in to Jefferson County hospitals, said Dr. Praphul Joshi, Director of the Master of Public Health program at Lamar University. Joshi has provided statistics to city and county officials about coronavirus local impact, among other virus-related assistance. He added that hes still sorting through the information, but the county appears to have had another single-day spike in cases confirmed on Thursday. Branick added that, while he is not second-guessing Abbott and the doctors who have been consulted, it doesnt make sense to him to allow some establishments that essentially are bars open to 75% when others, that have a different type of license, still arent able to open at all. Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox The new regional threshold marks a significant shift for the Republican governor as the states pandemic response moves into the fall, with flu season arriving and many schools about to reopen for in-person instruction. He previously resisted committing to a regional approach, and said he would rely on a range of metrics not just hospitalizations to determine policies. But the states health agency has been dogged by data backlogs, and some counties said they had lost confidence in state metrics such as the number of new daily infections and the percent of positive COVID tests, also known as the positivity rate. While the state has remedied at least some of the issues, hospitalization data have been more reliable throughout the pandemic. Other large states, including New York and California, are currently using regional reopening plans based on several criteria, including new cases and test positivity. Public health experts caution against relying on hospitalizations alone, since they lag behind infections and therefore provide a delayed glimpse into the community spread of the virus. All but two of the states 22 hospital regions have previously surpassed the new 15-percent threshold, according to the states calculation. The governor did not provide the methodology for how they calculated the percentages, and a spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about how the benchmark was selected. The state has reported nearly 700,000 infections since March and nearly 14,500 deaths, a toll similar to that in other large states, including California and Florida. New York has reported fewer infections but more deaths, stemming from a surge earlier this year. Texas has been below 10 percent test positivity for at least two weeks now. Earlier this week, state health officials unveiled a new method of calculating the rate, which shows it first dropped below 10 percent in mid August. Abbott has said before that he would consider further reopenings once the state remained below that threshold for two weeks. Related: Updated COVID metric shows Texas outbreak on the decline since mid-July Under the new plan, nursing homes and assisted living facilities will be able to reopen for essential visits starting next week. Nursing homes have been ordered to begin testing residents regularly, and Abbott said those that have high infection rates will be forced to close down visitations going forward. Democrats immediately blasted the governor for abandoning earlier metrics, and for failing to provide health care relief to hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed Texans. Gov. Abbotts press conference today was notable for what he didnt say, House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, said in a statement. There was no mention of a contact tracing program, no mention of improving the states unreliable data and no mention of expanding Medicaid to increase access to health care for the millions of Texans who are uninsured. Restaurants and bars have been among the hardest hit industries from the pandemic, and several bar owners sued the governor this summer, trying to throw out his emergency restrictions. Abbott said Thursday that across the nation, bars have been hotspots for spreading the virus. Alba Huerta, owner of Julep craft cocktail bar in Houston, said the governors office continues to imperil the industry by not allowing bars to reopen and failing to offer solutions for how to protect them. Its like were invisible to the governor, said Huerta, a leading figure on the national bartending scene. Ive never in my life been this disappointed with local government and their continual disregard for people and businesses that are hanging on by a string. How is it possible that you can keep one particular business closed for months when theres some kind of lifeline for others? Jeremy Blackman reported from Austin. Greg Morago and Cayla Harris contributed. Taiwanese domestically built Indigenous Defense Fighters take part in the live-fire, anti-landing Han Kuang military exercise, which simulates an enemy invasion, in Taichung, Taiwan, July 16, 2020. Reuters Taiwan's foreign minister Joseph Wu urged the international community Wednesday to help defend his country and region against "expansionist" Chinese moves, saying Taipei feared Beijing would resort to force. Taiwan was "on the front line defending democracies from being taken over by the communist China" and needed help from other countries, he told the France 24 TV station. Wu said China "has been intensifying its military threat against Taiwan" in recent years and had stepped up military exercises in the region. More than 30 Chinese military planes have recently crossed into Taiwan's air defence identification zone, he said, describing this as "very threatening". "We have been trying very hard in the last few years to beef up our own defence capabilities and at the same time we also want to let the international community understand that Taiwan as a democracy has been threatened by China, which is an authoritarian country which is trying to expand its influence," the minister said. Teenage Drug Dealer - Marie-Reine Mattera /Getty Images Contributor The number of referred cases of modern slavery by ruthless county lines gangs has more than doubled during lockdown, official figures show. Between April and June this year the number of referrals to the countrys National Referral Mechanism (NRM) rose to 409, the highest on record. These more than doubled from 199 for the first part of this year. The vast majority of these cases were children, making up 92 per cent of the referrals, according to Home Office figures. This is despite the overall number of referrals of suspected number of modern slavery victims fell by almost a quarter during the same time. Anne Longfield, the Childrens commissioner said that lockdown has provided criminals with a golden opportunity to exploit children while theyre away from school. Vulnerable children who fall through the gaps in the system are easy prey for ruthless criminal gangs, she said. Sadly lockdown, where many of the most vulnerable children were often out of sight and out of school, has been a golden opportunity for those who want to exploit them. Many areas are still not facing up to the scale of the challenge, not taking notice of the risk factors such as vulnerable home environments, exclusion from school or going missing, and not providing the services and support these children need to protect them. We know that less than half of child offenders involved in gangs are being supported by childrens services. The Government and local areas have long been aware of these problems but still lack the political will to provide what is needed to divert the most vulnerable children away from the dangers of county lines. Earlier this year police were told not to pursue criminal charges for less serious crimes such as drug offences to help clear the backlog of cases in court. Sara Glen of the National Police Chiefs Council said that forces should review cases to give out-of-court measures such as cautions or curfews, rather than making an offender face a day in court. Story continues Dame Sara Thornton, the UKs Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner urged police forces should make sure that they are not allowing criminals to get away with modern slavery by prosecuting them purely for drug offences. When organised crime groups are deliberately exploiting children and vulnerable adults to carry drugs, it is essential that they are prosecuted for trafficking human beings as well as illicit substances, she told the Telegraph. Concern about the backlog of cases in the Crown Courts should not be used to stop this from happening. I urge police and prosecutors to ensure that cases of exploitation are effectively prosecuted as Parliament intended under the Modern Slavery Act, so that justice can be done for some of the most vulnerable in our society. Baroness Butler-Sloss, co chair of the APPG on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, speaking at an event last night, stressed her concerns that criminals were being convicted for smaller offences, with shorter sentences rather than for modern slavery. Despite the number of modern slavery cases flagged to the CPS for prosecution remaining level at 301 in the last year, the number of actual prosecutions carried out by the CPS has almost halved in three years. This year there were only 71 prosecutions, down from 142 a year ago. What I find very extraordinary and really very depressing as someone who helped get the modern slavery act up and running that almost none of the costs of the Act which could be used or being used by the CPS, said Baroness Butler-Sloss. Maybe through the police or through the CPS, I don't know, it is in fact, finding other offenses of which these traffickers are guilty, and therefore presumably easier to find convictions. The result is that, of course, thevery, very long sentences capable of being awarded and the modern slavery act are not very long sentences and these other offenses, and this is a disturbing trend that's happened even before the Modern Slavery Act, but it hasn't abated since something needs to be done about that. A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The Government is determined to crack down on criminal gangs who are exploiting children and having a devastating impact on our communities." "As part of our 25 million programme to tackle county lines we are investing in specialist support for victims of this abhorrent form of exploitation. "We have already implemented a number of significant reforms to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) and are embarking on an ambitious transformation of the NRM to build on this work - giving vulnerable victims the tailored support they need to move on with their lives." MOLOCO Cloud provides self-serve programmatic advertising for mobile marketers MOLOCO Cloud gives marketers direct control over their programmatic advertising operations through self-serve functionality that lets them bring their mobile marketing in-house while leveraging the same machine learning algorithms MOLOCO uses to maximize campaign performance for its managed services MOLOCO (http://www.molocoads.com), a leader in machine learning and growth solutions for mobile marketers, today announced the launch of its programmatic advertising platform, MOLOCO Cloud. MOLOCO Cloud gives marketers direct control over their programmatic advertising operations through self-serve functionality that lets them bring their mobile marketing in-house while leveraging the same machine learning algorithms MOLOCO uses to maximize campaign performance for its managed services. Our goal at MOLOCO is to provide marketers with the tools and technical infrastructure needed to thrive in the modern mobile marketplace, said Ikkjin Ahn, co-founder and CEO of MOLOCO. With MOLOCO Cloud, were taking the next natural stepgiving more control to advertisers so they can take a hands-on approach to managing their programmatic ad campaigns on a global scale while still enjoying the full benefits of our performance optimization algorithms. MOLOCO Cloud provides mobile marketers with direct access to real-time campaign data so that they can optimize performance at the impression level. Delivering a more comprehensive solution than what is available today, MOLOCO Cloud provides total transparency over programmatic operations and complete control over every aspect of campaign management. Other current features include: Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) traffic targeting: Exclusively target limit ad tracking traffic at the campaign level Automated performance optimization: Self-optimizing campaigns use proprietary machine learning algorithms to maximize returns in real time Consolidated campaign management: Use one centralized campaign management hub for all mobile ad exchanges reaching 90% of devices worldwide Full-funnel data transparency: Manually optimize and scale campaigns with access to data down to the impression level including media cost, exchange data, sub-publisher data, and more Custom campaign performance models: Campaigns can be optimized for any performance metric including clicks (CTR), app installs (IPM), in-app events, and ROAS. Advertisers can reach more than 7.5 billion unique mobile devicesmore than 90% of all mobile devices worldwidethrough the platforms integration with all leading mobile ad exchanges. MOLOCO Cloud also comes with the support of MOLOCO's full suite of managed services, including a dedicated account manager, data science support, and machine learning consultation. MOLOCO Cloud strikes the ideal balance between intelligently automating and optimizing campaigns while giving marketers more control over their programmatic advertising, said Yi Gong, Sr. Growth Marketing Manager, at Tilting Point. With MOLOCOs powerful algorithms and their high standards of client support, weve been able to achieve a significant boost in returns from our programmatic efforts. MOLOCO is currently accepting applications for the beta version of MOLOCO Cloud, with general availability expected later this year. Interested marketers can apply through http://www.molocoads.com/moloco-cloud-beta. About MOLOCO MOLOCO is a programmatic advertising company that empowers mobile businesses to unleash the power of their data for fast, sustainable growth. Founded in 2013, the company offers a complete suite of proprietary advertising solutions to help mobile companies optimize the performance of their acquisition, retention, and monetization efforts. MOLOCO Cloud is a top-rated cloud platform that provides scale across more than 7.5 billion devices. MOLOCO is headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Jakarta, London, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.molocoads.com. # # # Media Contact Lauren Tascan Fluid Group lauren @ fluidprgroup.com So you think Snowflake up over 100% on its first day is a big deal? Nah, there's been plenty of companies that have had first day pops bigger than that this year. They include biotech firm CureVac, up 249% on the first day of trading, software as a service firm BigCommerce up 201%, biotech firm Berkeley Lights up 197%, cloud company nCino up 195%, and insurance fintech firm Lemonade up 139% on its first day of trading. 2020 IPOs: big first-day pops CureVac up 249% (biotech) BigCommerce up 201% (software) Berkeley Lights up 197% (biotech) nCino up 195% (cloud) Lemonade up 139% (fintech) What they all have in common is they are either tech or biotech firms. Are these outliers? Marginally, but the first day pop for IPOs this year is notably higher than usual. The historic first-day pop has been about 14% for an IPO. Not this year. The average is 36%, according to IPO tracker Renaissance Capital. What's going on? It's not that stocks are cheap. Matt Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist for Renaissance, notes that multiples for many tech IPOs this year are historically high. "People are willing to pay more for them because there is a higher degree of risk appetite," Kennedy said. If you're suddenly inspired to start buying high-flying IPOs, Kennedy advises investors to be cautious. The post-first-day returns of high flyers this year is not encouraging. The 11 other IPOs this year that have popped more than 100% on the first day have averaged a negative 1% return from the first-day close. Buyer beware. Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and live business day programming from around the world. Russias Presidential Human Rights Council to protect digital rights of citizens RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 14:37 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) The Presidential Human Rights Council is to establish a working group on protection of digital rights of Russian citizens, the bodys Chair Valery Fadeyev informs on Thursday. The Council had already begun to discuss this issue, Fadeyev said addressing participants of Digital Threats to Human Rights roundtable. As digitalization is underway, it brings a lot of good things people are happy to use; nevertheless, it is well known that any bold technological and technical progress has its negative aspects, which accumulate over time, the rights activist noted. Among the negative consequences of digitalization Fadeyev named cyberbullying, inadequate protection of personal information, unlawful access to and use of security cameras for video surveillance, and cyber fraud. President of Kribrum company Igor Ashmanov speaking at this roundtable proposed that digital rights of citizens need to be protected by laws on communications and on personal data, or by a separate digital legal code; such legal instruments needed to be formulated in such a way, he said, so to define and protect human rights in the digital world. Ashmanov believes citizens are to have the right to protection of their digital identity and safeguards are to be put in place to prevent artificial intelligence to take important decisions affecting peoples lives without human guidance. US Customs and Border protection has seen a 1,000 percent spike in drug seizures since the coronavirus pandemic (Getty Images) Coronavirus cases aren't the only thing that's spiked in the US since March. According to ABC News, US Customs and Border Protection has reported a 1,000 percent increase in drugs seized along the Canadian border since the pandemic began. A CBP officer says the agency has seized nearly 40,000 pounds of marijuana valued between $100 million and $120 million since mid-March. Kevin Kelly, who heads the Homeland Security Investigations field office in Buffalo, New York, told ABC News that the surge is largely due to the legalization of marijuana in Canada. "Since March 16, we've seen a huge uptick in marijuana seizures at the ports of entry," Mr Kelly said, adding that the groups smuggling drugs into the US through Canada are more "symbiotic" than those on the southern border. "What you're seeing is traditional organized crime, Asian organized crime, East Indian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs all having a piece or a stock in this sophisticated coordination of getting marijuana into the US," Mr Kelly explained. "It's well structured, it's well choreographed, it's a business model." Canada legalized cannabis for recreational purposes in 2018. While some US states have legalized or decriminalized marijuana, it remains illegal at the federal level which may explain why smuggling the drug into the US has become so rampant. Supervisory CBP officer Aaron Bowker also noted that there has been an increase in gun and weapon seizures along the border this year. In August, the CBP's Detroit Field Office, which covers all points of entry throughout Michigan, reported a spike in narcotics seized since travel restrictions were put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Detroit Free Press, US customs agents seized over 5,500 pounds of marijuana at the border between March and August, six times the total for 2019. A restriction of all non-essential travel across the border was recently extended by Canadian officials until 21 September. Story continues Read more $30 million in drugs seized in sophisticated border tunnel Coronavirus: Canada extends travel restrictions Syracuse, N.Y. Mayor Ben Walsh said he doesnt usually talk publicly about his support for political candidates, but this year is different. "There has never been a more important (election) in my lifetime,'' Walsh said today in an interview. There couldnt be more riding on it. Walsh, who is not affiliated with a political party, said he is publicly supporting Democrat Joe Biden. The mayor hasnt issued an announcement on that, but when asked he freely shares his thinking. The reasons he listed all had to do with President Trump. Trump, he said, failed to manage the coronavirus pandemic, inflamed racial divisions, has not supported cities and has ignored the threat of climate change. And then there is Trumps demeanor. "On all of those issues, hes not only on the wrong side of them but hes extremely divisive in the process, at a time when as a city and a country we need to be coming together,'' Walsh said. Walshs father, former U.S. Rep. James Walsh, a Republican, also has endorsed Biden this year. The younger Walsh, who has never enrolled in a party, easily won the mayors race in 2017 running as a soft-spoken independent who vowed to replace bitter partisanship with collaboration. His style could not be more different from the pugilistic Trump. "I pride myself on bringing people together,'' Walsh said today. "I think as a public servant its important to be honest and transparent, and I dont see those as values that the president embodies.'' Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon, a Republican who has a strong working relationship with Walsh, has not announced who he supports for president. Asked in late August, McMahon said he was still considering whether to make an endorsement. Walsh plans to run for re-election in 2021, but he said he gave little thought to how his support for Biden would play next year with Syracuse voters, who are predominantly Democratic. "It was the least of my considerations,'' Walsh said. "For me, this is much bigger than politics. This is about policy and its about humanity. There are fundamental values that are important to me, and I think important to the city and to this country, where President Trump simply doesnt reflect those.'' Walsh said Syracuse has suffered from the Trump presidency in several ways. Walsh said he blames Trump and Republicans in the Senate for a lack of federal aid to Syracuse and other cities in the wake of a financial crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Race relations are strained all across the country, including Syracuse, where Walsh has tried to work with protesters and others to improve police-community relations. Walsh said Trump has made those efforts harder with divisive statements. Although the coronavirus would have taken a toll in any case, Walsh said Trump has consistently failed to mitigate the impact. As recently as yesterday, Trump openly contradicted CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield on the value of wearing masks, Walsh said. Syracuses outlook for a recovery from the pandemic and its fiscal reverberations will improve if Biden replaces Trump in the White House, Walsh said. "I believe strongly that a Joe Biden presidency is in the best interest of the city of Syracuse,'' he said. News tips? Contact reporter Tim Knauss of syracuse.com/The Post-Standard: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023 The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into Princeton University after the Ivy League schools president claimed racism is embedded at the university, the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday. Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber made the assertion in an open letter published September 2, which addressed in part the protests and riots over the summer following the police killing of George Floyd. Racism and the damage it does to people of colorpersist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies, Eisgruber wrote. Racist assumptions from the past also remain embedded in structures of the University itself. For example, Princeton inherits from earlier generations at least nine departments and programs organized around European languages and culture, but only a single, relatively small program in African studies Following the open letter, the Education Department notified Princeton that it was investigating whether the university lied to the department and general public regarding its nondiscrimination polices, in a letter obtained by the Examiner. Based on its admitted racism, the U.S. Department of Educationis concerned Princetons nondiscrimination and equal opportunity assurances in its Program Participation Agreements from at least 2013 to the present may have been false, the letter read. The Department is further concerned Princeton perhaps knew, or should have known, these assurances were false at the time they were made. The investigation comes after Princeton in June decided to remove the name of President Woodrow Wilson from the universitys Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy. Wilson held racist views and upheld segregationist policies for southern states. More from National Review The Devil All the Time Director - Antonio Campos Cast - Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgard, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Harry Melling, Mia Wasikowska Impeccably acted and directed with unwavering confidence by Antonio Campos, Netflixs The Devil All the Time is a hellish ride from start to finish, but in the best way possible. It isnt merely content with criticising religion in a matter-of-fact manner, its gunning for obliteration. It wants to take a rusty World War 2 Luger and shoot it between the eyes. Campos performs an autopsy on the allure of organised religion, and those who succumb to it. Neither the idea of God, nor the people who believe in it, the movie says, are sane. It is no coincidence that the most overzealous characters in the film all appear to be in need of an immediate exorcism. There is a delirium in their eyes as they perform sermons before a sedated crowd. Watch The Devil All the Time trailer here The Devil All the Time tries to attribute this insanity to the fact that in post-war Knockemstiff, Ohio a town of 400 in the middle of middle of nowhere everyone is connected by blood by one calamity or another. But in reality, Knockemstiff is just like the rest of America stunned into a stupor by the promise of salvation. Borrowing liberally both in terms of tone and tempo from Paul Thomas Andersons masterpiece, There Will be Blood, Campos attempts to investigate the reasons behind Americas moral corruption. The rot, he discovers, set in decades ago. Our story begins immediately after the war, when a PTSD-ridden soldier named Willard Russell, played by Bill Skarsgard, returns home to his hamlet, and finds that he has nothing better to do than to impregnate the local waitress and perform beatdowns on common criminals. His idle mind, having personally invited the devil to work in it, becomes obsessed with the idea of regaining his lost faith. And so he builds a little church for himself in his backyard. He will sacrifice not only his sanity, but also his life in this pursuit. Years later, Willards young adult son, having assumed the mantle of protagonist, is haunted by the sins of his father. Played by Tom Holland, Arvin lives with his devotee grandparents and a step-sister, Lenora. He adores her, but when she falls prey to a perverted new preacher in town, played by Robert Pattinson, Arvin is forced to seek retribution. He has no choice, he says. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, that is what he believes in. Arvin is the least religious character in the film, and despite his murderous mission, also its moral centre. The movie is quite ham-fisted that way. The Devil All The Time: Tom Holland as Arvin Russell. (Glen Wilson/Netflix) The godman problem isnt unique to India, just as blind faith isnt unique to America. Look closely, and youll observe psychological patterns between Pattinsons Reverend Preston Teagardin and the baba next-door. But while the notorious Ram Rahim Singh Insaan appeared to be channelling Daler Mehndi, Reverend Teagardin seems to have been possessed by the spirit of Daniel Plainview. This Pattinson performance is something else. It might be the last time we see him swing for the fences before we lose him to blockbusters for a few years. The sheer courage of playing an irredeemable predator aside Pattinson is, you must remember, one of the most desirable men in the world its almost as if he deliberately wants to destroy the image that he has built over the years. Its astounding really, if you consider just how carefully other movie stars cultivate their personas. Together with Harry Melling, who once again manages to stand out in a stacked cast, Pattinson seems the most at ease with the films deliberate language. There is a luxuriant musicality to the writing that recalls the movies of the Coen Brothers. Even Pattinsons veiled threats sound oddly intoxicating. The Devil all the Time is the sort of sweaty Southern Gothic thriller in which characters have names like Earskell and Leroy; theyre perpetually unwashed and constantly swatting at mosquitoes. As fluent as the film is in genre conventions, however, the unrelenting violence and bleak tone might be slightly overwhelming for certain audiences. Especially those who press play expecting a fun romp featuring two Marvel stars, the new Batman, and Elvis granddaughter. Also read: The King movie review: Robert Pattinsons unhinged performance outshines Netflixs period drama The movie, pretentiously, never lets you forget just how important it is. By suggesting that God and the devil might be the same person, Campos not only subverts the concept of Christianity, but together with cinematographer Lol Crawley repeatedly hammers home this idea through haunting images. Shots of desecrated crucifixes one appearing early in the film and another just a few minutes later are nearly as blasphemous as the one William Friedkin so memorably directed in The Exorcist. With The Devil All the Time, Netflix is on course for another stellar awards season, having recently released Charlie Kaufmans Im Thinking of Ending Things and with prestige dramas by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher around the corner. Watch it before its buried five scrolls under a pile of new content next week. Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar CHADDS FORD In conjunction with anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine, the Brandywine Conservancy has released a Hiking Through History map featuring key battles of the American Revolution and a score of regional trails, preserves and parks. The Brandywine Conservancys Hiking Through History map blends our more than 50 year work on preserving precious landscapes, the natural world, our cultural heritage and the essence of places we call home, said Ellen Ferretti, director of the Brandywine Conservancy. Ferretti added, Now more than ever we realize the healing and essential need for nature in our lives, clean air and water, beauty and balance. It is imperative to our very being that we continue on this course to define what is important to us and work diligently to protect it. The map showcases the battle sites and key historical moments of the American Revolutions Philadelphia Campaign of 1777. Regional trails featured include the pathways of the Mason-Dixon, Brandywine, Chester Valley, Horse-Shoe, Schuylkill River, Perkiomen, Wissahickon, among others, plus the East Coast Greenway, which spans 3,000 miles. The American Revolution is the most important event in our history, said Scott Stephenson, president and chief executive officer of the Museum of American Revolution. It secured our independence as a nation. It established our commitment to those high ideals still unrealized for all of liberty, equality and the dignity of ordinary people. It is also a human drama of epic proportions that has engrossed me since childhood and shows no sign of ending. Said Stephenson: I am a firm believer in experiential learning, and this map is just another fantastic tool to unlock outdoor adventures that bring you closer to the people and events of the American Revolution. Of the new Hiking Through History map, Stephenson said, In our overwhelmingly digital world, made more so by the pandemic, there is no better way to feel empathy for and a real physical connection to those who struggled and sacrificed to create the nation than to get out and experience the landscapes that they knew so well. The map covers more than 330 miles of regional multi-use trails and greenways. And the trails represent not only conserved space for hiking and biking, but also represent American Revolutionary historical routes, too. We are so blessed in this region to be right in the middle of so many historic sites that played a crucial role in our founding. The buildings, landscapes, art and artifacts are all around us. You can see the ghosts everywhere. Key revolutionary moments The Battle of the Brandywine was the longest single-day battle fought between American rebels and British soldiers during the Revolutionary War, roughly 14 months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Like many places in what would become the United States of America, Chester County was home to an incredibly diverse population who did not share a single vision of the future in 1776, Stephenson said. Free and enslaved, indigenous and immigrant, faithful and feckless: they were all here. Many of them passionately supported the cause of American Independences, but just as many were principled pacifists who abhorred war. Others were committed loyalists. Looking at the American Revolution through the eyes of Chester Countians is a great reminder that the work of creating the nation was messy and the outcome was uncertain, perhaps never more so than on Sept. 11, 1777. Earlier that year, American patriots fought against British forces in New Jersey prior to moving the war into the Greater Philadelphia Region and specifically this area, now known as Delaware and Chester counties in southeastern Pennsylvania. The Battle of Princeton Jan. 3, 1777 capped a dramatic series of military actions sometimes called the Ten Crucial Days that began with General Washingtons Christmas Night 1776 crossing of the Delaware River and the First Battle of Trenton, Stephenson stated. These victories, coming on the heels of the disastrous loss of New York and much of New Jersey to British forces in the summer and fall of 1776, restored hope that the American revolutionaries could rest, reinforce and return to action the following year. 1777 would be a test to see if the American Revolution could survive another year. Stephenson said, Through much of the eight year-long Revolutionary War, the British Navy dominated the waters off the Atlantic coast and was able to move men and supplies quickly to strike targets up and down the coast and sometimes deep into the interior. This was the case in 1777, when an invading British force sailed from New York to the Chesapeake Bay to land near Elkton, Maryland, and ultimately capture Philadelphia. He continued, After France allied with the United States in 1778, the addition of its land and sea forces challenged British dominance and in 1781, the French Navy played a crucial role in the capture of British forces under General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. Hiking Through History The map provides residents and visitors with a unique and fun tool to use as they explore the recreational opportunities and trails in the Brandywine and Delaware Valley regions, said Sheila Fleming, manager of the Municipal Assistance Program for the Brandywine Conservancy. But what makes this map so special is the fact that users can also discover and experience the landscapes that were such an important part of American history and the American Revolutionary Wars Philadelphia Campaign of 1777. She said during the last decades or so, the Brandywine Conservancy in partnership with other land trusts, local, county, state and federal agencies has been working to preserve lands located within the 64,745-acre federally designated Brandywine Battlefield National Historic Landmark and an area designated by Pennsylvania as a Commonwealth Treasure. Because of this commitment to preserving the Battlefield, the Brandywine Conservancy holds 32 easements covering 740 acres and owns an additional 420 acres within the landmark, Fleming noted. Many non-profit organizations are working on other land and historic preservation efforts that help shape our communities today. Free copies of the map are now inside the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford off Route 1 in Delaware County, near the border of Chester County. The public is invited to pick up a map during normal hours of operation; and the museum is now closed every Tuesday. Digital copies of the map are available online, too. We are not aware of any other map that displays layers of historic troop movements, trails and parks together on a single map, Fleming said. There are 11 separate battles, 33 regional parks and preserves, and nine regional trails highlighted on the map. Each element is described briefly, and it is fascinating to compare the boots on the ground movement of the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777 with how our regional trails and parks have evolved. The wait is over! Jun Ji Hyun is finally back after four years of hiatus as she is set to star in a new drama, "Jiri Mountain"! The Hallyu icon's last major appearance in television was her mermaid character in 2016, "Legend of the Blue Sea", with actor Lee Min Ho. The actress also made a special appearance in Netflix's "Kingdom" Season 2. Many speculated if Jun Ji Hyun will soon be cast in its season 3 (Kingdom) since her character may provide a transition to another story plot. But no confirmation has been made as of today. RELATED: Ju Ji Hoon and Jun Ji Hyun Confirmed to Work Together in New Drama Penned by "Kingdom" Writer To our surprise, Jun Ji Hyun was cast as Seo Yi Kang as a top ranger who knows a lot in navigating the terrains of Jirisan Mountain. It's another challenging role that Jun Ji Hyun is committed to delivering in an upcoming drama. The drama is picked up by tvN network, which will hold 16 episodes with the air time of 70 minutes each. It will set to air on Saturday and Sunday. The cast members are collectively called "the strongest dream team" as Jun Ji Hyun will star alongside Ju Ji Hoon, Sung Dong Il, Oh Jung Se, and more! The production company Ace Story announced they signed a 20.8 billion won (approximately 17.7 million USD) deal with Studio Dragon. To note, Studio Dragon handles the past production of hit drama "Crash Landing on You", "The King: Eternal Monarch", and the planner/creator of drama, such as "Its Okay To Not Be Okay, "Hotel Del Luna", and many more. "Jiri Mountain" will be directed by Lee Eung Bok, known for his hit drama like "Descendants of The Sun", "Goblin", and many more. Writer Kim Eun Hee will reveal interesting plots that will surely glue the viewers, the same with her past scripts "Kingdom" and "Signal". RELATED: Sung Dong Il and Oh Jung Se to Join Ju Ji Hoon and Jun Ji Hyun in Upcoming Drama "Jiri Mountain The cast and crew will be on a filming journey for eight months starting mid September and last until May 2021. The drama will air in the second half of 2021. Below is recent SNS picture of Jun Ji Hyun with Vice Chairman of Shinsigae group at an art exhibition held on September 16. Are you excited to see Jun Ji Hyun in the upcoming drama? Share your thoughts with us below! Uttar Pradesh Minister of State for Health and BJP MLA from Ghaziabad city, Atul Garg has been accused by his cousin Shyam Garg of land grab. Shyam Garg threatened suicide if justice is not delivered in his case and has also written to the Prime Ministers Office in this regard. The ministers cousin said that they continue to live in a joint family set-up and there had been no division of assets. Despite this, my immediate brothers Alok, Anuj Ram, uncle and minister Atul Gargs family have taken possession of movable and immovable property. Not only this, life threats are being issued if we demand our share, alleged Shyam Garg in his complaint to the DM, SDM, SSP, CO and SO. Shyam said that his family is living in misery and claimed that he had spoken to the minister regarding partition of assets many times but was shooed away each time. He said that his familys survival is becoming difficult and added that if he doesnt get justice within 72 hours, he will kill himself along with his family members. He said that if he were to take such an extreme step, the district administration and the minister should be held responsible. However, the minister termed the allegations by his cousin baseless. Atul Garg said that if the government constitutes an inquiry committee, he will extend his full support. He attributed his cousins deteriorating financial condition as the motive behind these allegations. The MoS Health maintained that he has no dispute with his cousin and his image was being maligned without any basis. Lok Sabha on Thursday passed two bills related to the agriculture sector amid protests by the Opposition and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a constituent of the ruling NDA. The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill were passed by voice vote as the Congress, DMK and Revolutionary Socialist Party members staged a walkout. Live TV Another bill related to the farm sector, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, was passed on September 15. These three bills will replace ordinances promulgated by the government earlier. Union Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday evening resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills tabled in the two Houses of Parliament. About the lone Shiromani Akali Dal's minister in the Narendra Modi government, her party announced in Lok Sabha today that Harsimrat Kaur will resign from the government. Harsimrat Kaur Badal took to social media to inform that she has resigned from the Modi cabinet. In a tweet, she said, "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister." During a discussion on two of the farm bills, the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced in Lok Sabha that she will quit the government. The Akali Dal had earlier protested against the first of three such bills, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha. In his speech on two of the farm bills, Sukhbir Singh Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work put in by successive Punjab governments and farmers to build the agriculture sector, and recalled Punjab's contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. "I want to make an announcement that our Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from Cabinet," he said in concluding remarks, refuting suggestions that his party initially supported three ordinances, which these bills seek to replace. He asserted that Harsimrat Kaur Badal had expressed her concerns in the Cabinet meeting and also wrote to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, highlighting "flaws" in the proposed legislation. Sukhbir Singh Badal accused the Congress party of "doublespeak" on the issue and said that the abolition of the APMC Act was part of its manifesto in both the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab. The three bills, including the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, which has been passed by Lok Sabha, are going to affect 20 lakh farmers and 15-20 lakh farm labourers in Punjab alone, said the SAD president. The state with 2.5 per cent of the country's landmass produces nearly 50 per cent of food grains for the country, he said, adding that Punjab's mandi system is the best in the world with a network of 1,900 setups across 12,000 villages. Notably, the Shiromani Akali Dal is the BJP's oldest ally and it has stood by the saffron party through thick and thin. He just finished up at Nova after revealing her was leaving the radio station back in July. And now Marty Sheargold has sparked rumours is heading over to Triple M. According to The Herald Sun, industry whispers are suggesting that the 49-year-old could be joining the Hot Breakfast show next year, which is hosted by Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy. Could Marty Sheargold be moving to Triple M? Radio star (pictured) sparks rumours he'll be heading to station's breakfast show after leaving Nova The publication reports that the two hosts will have contract talks later this year. Marty broadcast his final show for Nova on Friday, and has been replaced on the drive show by comedian Joel Creasey, 30. He shocked fans in July when he announced he was leaving his Nova national drive show, Kate, Tim and Marty. New gig? According to The Herald Sun, industry whispers are suggesting that the 49-year-old could be joining the Hot Breakfast show next year, which is hosted by Eddie McGuire (pictured) and Luke Darcy New talent: Marty broadcast his final show for Nova on Frida, and has been replaced on the drive show by comedian Joel Creasey, 30 (pictured) During the announcement, he explained to his co-hosts Kate Ritchie and Tim Blackwell that he 'spent the last 'four or five months tossing up' what to do in 2021. 'Kate, Tim and Marty will no longer feature Marty at the end of the day,' he said on-air. 'Thank you to the network for having me, putting up with me. 'Over the last four or five months I've been tossing up what I'd like to do in 2021, and what I've decided to do is leave the show,' he added. Gone: Marty shocked fans in July when he announced he was leaving his Nova national drive show, Kate, Tim and Marty. Pictured with his former co-hosts In an official statement, Marty thanked his co-hosts for their support in his decision. 'I've had a fantastic 10 years with the Nova Network, having worked with buildings full of talented and dynamic people,' he said. 'I'd like to thank Tim and Kate for their support of my decision and wish them continued success with the show. 'Now feels like the right time for me professionally to keep challenging myself and to embrace future opportunities with renewed vigour and enthusiasm.' While he's yet to reveal his next move, Radio Today understands a podcast and a return to his comedic roots may be on the cards. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Triple M for comment, in relation to this story. BY LEVERAGING THE MOBILITY SOLUTIONS EXPERTISE OF PEAK-RYZEX AND TECHNOLOGY PARTNER HONEYWELL, BREEZEMOUNT HAS OVERHAULED ITS MOBILE DEVICES, IMPROVED KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND ENSURE DRIVERS ARE INSTANTLY CONNECTED TO THE JOB UPDATES THEY NEED CHIPPENHAM, England and WILTSHIRE, England, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Peak-Ryzex - a provider of digital supply chain, mobile workforce and retail solutions - continues to support organisations operating in transport & logistics and the supply chain with a recent solution rolled out for two-man home delivery provider, Breezemount. With this new solution in place, its drivers can now capture customer information at the point of delivery and access real-time job updates direct from head office. After identifying that its existing mobile device estate no longer fit for the intended business case, Breezemount worked with Peak-Ryzex to create a solution that met the exact needs of its current ePOD (electronic proof of delivery) applications as well as seamlessly integrating with its already established MDM (mobile device management) system. Implemented in partnership with Honeywell - a long-standing partner of Peak-Ryzex with decades of experience in hardware & software design for business applications - Peak-Ryzex introduced the Honeywell EDA51 mobile computer, a cost-effective device leveraging the speed & dynamic applications of the Android operating system. "Our longstanding partnership with Honeywell continues to pay dividends for our customers, including those operating in T&L and the supply chain," says Dave Halliwell, enterprise sales director at Peak-Ryzex. "And by leveraging the power of the EDA51 mobile computer alongside our diverse suite of mobility technology solutions, Peak-Ryzex has helped transform the productivity of Breezemount's nationwide home delivery service as it serves its customers across the United Kingdom & Ireland." This new end-to-end solution has enabled Breezemount's drivers to capture customer information and signatures at the point of delivery and stay up-to-date with the latest job developments as they happen. Breezemount has also been able to protect and underpin its KPIs (key performance indicators) thanks to the productivity & efficiency boosting benefits of a Peak-Ryzex mobility solution. "With an end-to-end mobility technology solution provided by Peak-Ryzex, including its ongoing managed service support of our home delivery services, our drivers are now fully connected to the information they need in the field, ensuring our customers receive the very best Breezemount home delivery experience," adds Gareth Parry Head of Systems & Business Improvement at Breezemount. "It was a great pleasure in supporting and working with Peak Ryzex to propose the Honeywell EDA51 solution offering to Breezemount," adds Nick French, Channel Business Manager at Honeywell. "From the outset, working collaboratively we were able to provide Breezemount with the exact solution that would see them improve their delivery operations and at the same time improving the customer experience. Peak-Ryzex's intimate knowledge of the customer and overall requirements ensured that we partnered together to ensure the desired solution was delivered within the customer's timeframe for go-live." Click here to read the case study in full, or here to download a PDF copy. About Peak-Ryzex Peak-Ryzex provides end-to-end, digitally connected supply chain, mobile workforce and re-tail solutions for performance-driven organisations focused on improvements in operational efficiencies and a focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience. Peak-Ryzex serves as a trusted business partner for some of the world's largest companies, while also supporting local and regional customers with an extensive coverage footprint throughout North America and Europe. Visit www.peak-ryzex.co.uk and www.peak-ryzex.com to find out more. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276643/Peak_Ryzex_Breezemount_1.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276644/Peak_Ryzex_Breezemount_2.jpg FBI director Christopher Wray testified on Thursday that Russia was actively attempting to influence the 2020 election by trying to denigrate Joe Biden through "malign foreign influence". Meanwhile, a "steady drumbeat of misinformation" to create the perception, though not the reality, of insecure elections was the biggest concern for election security, Mr Wray told the House homeland security committee on Capitol Hill. He said the agency had seen "very active" efforts by the Russians through social media, state media, online journals and use of proxies in an effort to sow divisiveness and discord against what it sees as the "anti-Russian establishment" of the Democratic candidate. That is counter to Moscow's efforts in 2016 that focused on efforts to hack emails and election systems. FBI director Christopher Wray warns of 'drumbeat of misinformation' to undermine confidence in election Mr Wray said the FBI has recently alerted Facebook and Twitter to fake accounts traced back to Russia, which were subsequently removed. The testimony comes after a warning on 7 August by National Counterintelligence and Security Centre that Russia, China, and Iran were attempting to interfere in US politics, although the Trump administration has tried to play down the role of Moscow. While Mr Wray didn't offer any further specifics about the interference efforts, he said his biggest concern was the perception of election insecurity that would leave people feeling their votes are futile. "In many ways what concerns me the most is the steady drumbeat of misinformation, and sort of amplification of smaller cyber intrusions that contribute over time, I worry that they will contribute over time to a lack of confidence of American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote," he said. "I think that would be a perception, not a reality. I think Americans can and should have confidence in our election system and certainly in our democracy, but I worry that people will take on a feeling of futility because of all of the noise and confusion that's generated." When it came to China, Mr Wray said the FBI was opening a new counterintelligence investigation related to China every 10 hours to monitor its efforts to steal US technology and other information. A Mercer County man stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death last month the morning after he was released from a Pennsylvania jail and following a dispute over his missing mobile phone, investigators said in court papers. Irvin Hayes, 33, is charged with murder and related weapons charges for the death of Shamira Williams, 32, who was found dead in the living room of her Trenton home on Aug. 25. Williams was a mother of two who worked in food services at The College of New Jersey for 12 years - the past two as a supervisor. She loved seafood, buying sneakers and her family, who called her Ladybug, her obituary says. Her killing was the culmination of a series of incidents over 10 days that included a domestic disturbance, arrests, a dying grandmother and Hayes' insistence that Williams stole his mobile phone, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in support of the murder charge against Hayes. Hayes and Williams started dating in January 2020, but he recently broke up with her, authorities said. On Aug. 15, Hayes called police to his home in the Tiffany Woods development in Lawrence saying Williams was being combative. She fled the home with his cell phone and police later arrested her on a theft charge. The phone, though, was not found during her arrest. Lawrence police checked both of them for warrants, and found Hayes had an outstanding warrant from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania on four theft and forgery charges filed against him in 2019. The officers took him to the Mercer County jail for processing, the affidavit says. As he was transferred to the Mercer jail, Hayes allegedly told officers that if his grandmother died while he was in custody, they or someone was going to pay. Hayes' grandmother died on Aug. 19. On Aug. 21, Hayes was transferred to the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania jail. Records show he was released from the facility on Aug. 24 at 4:37 p.m. The next morning, Trenton police and EMS responded to a 911 call from Williams' home on Laurel Avenue at 5:56 a.m. and found her on a couch bloodied with multiple wounds. Another resident awoke to a smoke detector, found rags burning on the stove, put out the flames and found Williams, the affidavit says. Mercer County homicide detectives smelled bleach at the scene and saw wetness on the floor, as if someone tried to clean the crime scene, the affidavit says. They also found blood on the front door and porch. Nearby security footage showed a masked and gloved man entering Williams home at 4:17 a.m. and leaving at 5:45 a.m. carrying two white plastic bags. Homicide Detective Luis Vega, who has known Hayes for decades, said the man in the footage resembled Hayes and the way he walks, the affidavit says. The next day, another homicide detective, Scott Peterson, was tipped that Hayes may be at an apartment in downtown Trenton, authorites said. Hayes was not there, but a resident said he had been a day prior, and had an injury on his right hand, authorities said. Hayes said hed been in a fight in jail in Pennsylvania, the affidavit says. Peterson contacted the Pennsylvania jail, who had no reports of Hayes being in such a fight. The jail also sent the calls Hayes made while locked up, four which he made to his mother, who told Hayes she was in contact with Williams on Hayes' missing cell phone. [Hayes)] was adamant about getting his cell phone back from [Williams] because he wanted pictures that were stored to be displayed at his grandmothers upcoming funeral," lead Detective Janaye Jones wrote in the affidavit. Detectives found Hayes on Sept. 1 at a house on Beatty Street in Trenton. He ran, but a detective tackled him, authorities said. Hayes told detectives he was at a friends house the night he was released from jail and returned to his home at 4 a.m. the next day, Aug. 25, the affidavit says. He said the injury to his right hand occurred during landscaping work that day while cutting branches and using a circular saw. He also told investigators he did not attend his grandmothers funeral. Its unclear if Hayes has an attorney, and the affidavit does not say if he got his phone back. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. BAR HARBOR, MAINE -- Modern medicine has made tremendous strides in replacing organs and hips. But what about those all-important tendons, which enable joint movement by connecting muscle to bone? Tendon injuries, such as those in the knee, elbow, Achilles tendon and rotator cuff (shoulder) exact a huge cost in terms of health care, productivity and quality of life. Prayag Murawala, Ph.D., a scientist at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has received a grant of 280,000 ($332,000) to address the problem of tendon injury. He is seeking to determine if the same cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for regenerating tendons during limb regeneration in the axolotl, or Mexican salamander, also come into play during tendon regeneration after injury. The subject of the study draws on Murawala's previous research on the mechanisms governing tendon regeneration in the axolotl limb. The knowledge gained from the study of tendon regeneration in the axolotl could one day be used to develop drugs and therapies to trigger tendon regeneration in adult humans, who are for the most part incapable of regenerating tissues and organs. Murawala and colleagues at the MDI Biological Laboratory's Kathryn W. Davis Center for Regenerative Biology and Aging use the axolotl, which is considered nature's champion of regeneration because of its ability to regenerate almost any body part, including limb, heart, brain, eye and spinal cord, to explore why the axolotl is capable of such remarkable feats of regeneration while humans are not. "Very few labs in the world are studying tendon biology, which is surprising given how common, painful and debilitating tendon injuries are, and the fact that existing treatments often fail to fully restore function," Murawala said. "This grant is great because it will allow us to apply what we have learned from our studies of limb regeneration in the axolotl to an area of biology that is in urgently in need of greater investigation." In the United States, more than 15 million soft tissue and ligament injuries, which include tendon injuries, are reported every year, with Achilles tendon injuries being one of the most common due to overuse or repetitive use. Though tendon injuries are often associated with athletes, such injuries also occur among sedentary populations and are common among the elderly due to age-related degeneration. The three-year grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), or German Research Foundation, which is financed by German state and federal governments, will support the salary of a doctoral student and consumable laboratory supplies. The student's time will be divided between the MDI Biological Laboratory and Hannover Medical School in Hanover, Germany, where Murawala also holds an appointment. "We are very grateful to the German Research Foundation," said Hermann Haller, M.D., president of the MDI Biological Laboratory. "Because of our focus on aging, we are especially interested in applications for the elderly, for whom the traditional treatments for age-related tendinopathy, such as surgical stitching, are more challenging due to the deterioration in tissue structure and healing ability that occur as we age." In his earlier research on limb regeneration in the axolotl, Murawala discovered that cells in a regenerating limb called fibroblasts acquire stem cell-like capabilities that allow them to differentiate -- or transform into -- tendon progenitor cells. Tendon progenitor cells are the main source of the various types of connective tissue that proliferate to form a newly regenerated limb, including tendon tissue. The grant will allow Murawala to study whether a fibroblast's capability to transform into a tendon progenitor cell occurs only during full limb regeneration, or if it also takes place during injury; and, if the same mechanism is employed to heal a tendon injury as to regenerate a limb, what molecular signals guide the transitions that occur during the regenerative process and why they occur in axolotls and not in humans. The grant will also allow him to study the role of the extra-cellular matrix (ECM), which is the three-dimensional network surrounding the cell, in the transformation of fibroblasts into tendon progenitor cells. Earlier research has demonstrated that the remodeling of the ECM is critical to tendon regeneration. Murawala's interest in tendon regeneration represents one facet of his broader quest to understand limb regeneration. But his research also has applications for other types of regeneration, including kidney regeneration, which is a focus of research at the MDI Biological Laboratory. "What we learn about regeneration in one part of the body can be useful for understanding regeneration in other parts of the body," he said. Marawala, who recently joined the MDI Biological Laboratory, was formerly a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Elly Tanaka, Ph.D., a highly regarded scientist who studies limb and spinal cord regeneration in the axolotl at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria. ### About the MDI Biological Laboratory We aim to improve human health and healthspan by uncovering basic mechanisms of tissue repair, aging and regeneration, translating our discoveries for the benefit of society and developing the next generation of scientific leaders. For more information, please visit mdibl.org. Peter Y. Qiu, attorney for Seeto, Jiang, and Fortune Food, told the Tribune Wednesday his clients are cooperating with the government and that Fortune Foods operations have been shut down for several months. He said the company had not received any complaints about its products. Within the first week of the pandemic, we added curbside pick-up to our system, and that was a big help for our franchisees sales," said Patrick Conlin, President of Wayback Burgers. "Our marketing efforts changed from a national focus to a hyper-local focus around each franchisees location." Wayback Burgers, Americas favorite hometown burger joint, and one of the nations fastest-growing burger franchises, is reflecting on the first half of 2020 and looking forward to continued expansion and innovation in the later part of the year. The year 2020 has been one for the history books, and that is no different for Wayback Burgers. Despite the pandemic, Wayback Burgers has awarded eleven new franchises to date. Popular promotional products and campaigns drove excitement and sales for franchisees of the thriving brand. In the middle of all this, Wayback Burgers launched a family meal pack, a milkshake promotion on Memorial Day, and of course still held our Free Shake Day giveaway, said Patrick Conlin, President of Wayback Burgers. Additionally, we launched a Summertime Lemonade LTO. We also saw an increase in milkshake sales nationwide of around two percent year over year. The brand believes this uptick is from people wanting to treat themselves during the shutdown, and a milkshake is something most people do not have the ingredients or blenders to make at home. In addition to an increase in milkshake sales, June, July and August saw increases in system wide and traditional comp sales. System wide sales for June were up 9.6%, July saw an increase of 10.3%, while August also saw an increase of 10.1%. While June traditional comp sales were up 8.49%, a larger increase occurred in July with 18.9% and 14.2% in August. Menu item promotions in 2020 bolstered not just the brands engagement with guests but contributed to the community at large. Wayback Burgers continued to develop its national partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America. A portion of every burger and sandwich sold goes to BGCA. Since the partnership began on June 1, 2018, $300,000 has been donated to the Clubs. When the pandemic began shutting down dining rooms, many Wayback Burgers franchisees had to quickly pivot to conducting almost all of their business as takeout, delivery, and curbside pickup. A huge benefit for the brand is that for more than nine years, an online ordering system has been in place. Additionally, two years ago, the Wayback mobile ordering app was launched. In addition, most franchisees also were set up and using the major third-party delivery services prior to the COVID pandemic. If we did not have these systems in place prior to the pandemic, I do not believe we would have achieved the sales increases that we are seeing, said Conlin. Within the first week of the pandemic, we added curbside pick-up to our system, and that was a big help for our franchisees sales. Our marketing efforts changed from a national focus to a hyper-local focus around each franchisees location. Our franchise community embraced this approach which engaged them to spend additional marketing dollars in their areas. Switching gears on how patrons experienced Wayback Burgers was not the only challenge at the beginning of the pandemic. We produced a COVID-19 procedures manual and supplied every franchisee with a kit for display in their restaurants, including branded face masks, said Conlin. Our franchisees jumped in and helped out their local communities with charitable endeavors, such as food donations and delivery to hospitals, EMS stations, and unemployed workers from various industries impacted by the pandemic. A big thank you goes out to our franchisee community and all their team members for working under extremely difficult conditions and remaining open to serve their communities. Plans and Goals for 2020 The last part of the year will bring increased expansion as well as a new look for Wayback Burgers restaurants. Wayback Burgers has a goal of awarding another nine new franchises by the end of 2020. For existing franchisees that want to expand to another location, Wayback Burgers is planning to charge a $10,000 initial franchise fee. The entire franchise fee will be used to remodel the franchisees existing restaurant. Currently, the brand is seeing early interest in this initiative with six existing franchisees seeking more information. Wayback Burgers believes this is a great fit for our outstanding franchisees to expand and take advantage of second-generation restaurant spaces that are available around the country, said Conlin. This program is designed to save money during the construction phase and help refresh our brands look and feel. About Wayback Burgers Founded in 1991 in Newark, Delaware, Wayback Burgers is a Connecticut-based fast-casual franchise with a reputation for cooked to order burgers and thick, hand-dipped milkshakes, served in an environment that hearkens back to a simpler place and time when guest service meant something and everyone felt the warmth of the community. Wayback Burgers currently operates in over 31 states with over 166 locations nationally and internationally in Brunei, Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Canada, and the Netherlands. Through its executed master franchise agreements, Wayback Burgers plans to open in 38 provinces/countries in the Middle East, Northern Africa, South Africa, Pakistan, Brunei, Bangladesh, Ireland; Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada; and the Netherlands, with a pending letter of intent sent out to Germany. For more information about Wayback Burgers, please go to https://waybackburgers.com/. For franchising information about Wayback Burgers, please go to https:// waybackburgers.com/franchising. Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday, wishing him good health, happiness, well-being and success. In a letter written to Modi that was shared with CNN-News18, Putin said he values the kind, friendly relations that have developed between the two over the last few years. Kindly accept my heartfelt congratulations on your 70th birth anniversary, he wrote. Paying compliments to Modi about his work, Putin said his activity as the Indian Prime Minister has earned him the well-deserved respect of compatriots and high international prestige. Under your leadership India is successfully moving along the path of socio-economic, scientific and technical development, he said. Modi and Putin share a good personal rapport that has further strengthened the dependable India-Russia partnership. Modi was the first world leader to speak to Putin and congratulate him in July after Russian voters approved changes to the constitution that will allow him to hold power until 2036. Russia has over the last few months played a crucial role in trying to defuse tensions between India and China following the standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Last week, Moscow acted as a mediator at a trilateral meeting among the foreign ministers of Russia, India, and China, bringing New Delhi and Beijing together following fresh clashes in Ladakh. Emphasising the friendly relations between the two countries, Putin, in his letter, said he looks forward to continuing the constructive dialogue with Modi and working closely together on topical issues of the bilateral and international agenda. It is hard to overestimate your personal contribution to the strengthening of the special and privileged strategic partnership between our countries, he added. The close ties with Russia will also help India in its battle against the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday, Russias sovereign wealth fund agreed to supply 10 crore doses of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik-V, to Indian drug company Dr Reddys Laboratories. Dr Reddys, one of Indias top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of the vaccine in India, pending regulatory approval, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said in a statement. The deal comes after the RDIF reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to produce 30 crore doses of the vaccine in India. By Akbar Mammadov Iraq has always supported Azerbaijans just position in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, members of Iraqi parliaments international relations committee have said during the meeting with Charge d'Affaires of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Iraq Nasir Mammadov, Azertag reported on September 16. Duringt the meeting, Mammadov stressed the importance of increasing the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group and the international community to resolve the conflict within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. He also gave detailed information to the Iraqi MPs about the demand for the unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian occupying forces from the territories of Azerbaijan enshrined in the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union and the European Parliament, as well as other influential international organizations on the conflict. At the meeting, Mammadov also underlined that as a continuation of Yerevan's aggressive policy, on July 12-16, the Armenian armed forces attacked using heavy artillery the Azerbaijani positions in the direction of Azerbaijans border Tovuz region. He noted that Armenias provocation failed. Furthermore, Mammadov emphasized that Azerbaijan attaches special importance to expanding cooperation with Iraq in various fields. He also noted the importance of mutual visits and effective work of intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary working groups to further strengthen relations between the two friendly countries and added that several draft agreements to be signed between the two countries are considered. Mammadov stressed the significance of further strengthening relations within international organizations, especially the traditional cooperation and mutual support within the UN and ECO. He also said that the number of Iraqi students in Azerbaijani universities has been growing year by year. In turn, Iraqi MP Muzahim Mustafa al-Tamimi expressed his countrys readiness to take relevant steps to develop bilateral relations. During the meeting, the sides noted the importance of increasing mutual investments, developing transport potential, establishing joint ventures and establishing cooperation in the humanitarian sphere. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz BY CAROLINE DE GRUYTER Last April, while Dutch and Italian politicians were trading insults on the European COVID recovery package, the Corriere della Sera wrote that in early days of European integration, young Italian diplomats posted to Brussels were told to apply the following principle: In case of doubt, f the Dutch. There was even a diplomatic version in circulation in Romes foreign ministry, the Farnesina: Let the Dutch speak and take the diametrically opposite position. This is not just an amusing anecdote. It is probably as true today as it was at the start of the European communities: In many respects the Dutch are, again, more skeptical about European integration than the Italians. Yesagain. Nowadays, many who remember the Dutch as engaged, enthusiastic Europeans are puzzled by the harsh positions on eurozone reform or the COVID-19 package coming from The Hague. But this is not new. During the first two decades of European integration, the Dutch behaved the same way. They only softened their stance after the accession of the United Kingdom in 1973. Taking a closer look at recent history, it is clear the Dutch feel better in Europe with the British on their side. And that the problems they currently have are partly the result of Brexit. After the Second World War, the Dutch dreamed of a loose, transatlantic alliance focused on trade with the UK, United States and others. Apart from a protestant culture they have much else in common with the British: their love of the sea, a sober outlook on life and a commercial disposition. Both are liberal, seafaring and trading nations that once had overseas empires, used to striking out on their own. But the transatlantic alliance never materialized. Instead, in 1950 the Dutch heard (on the radio) that France and Germany decided to form the European Coal and Steel Community, run by a supranational authority. The Dutch were not informed of this Schuman plan, which was officially launched on 9 May 1950: Paris and Berlin assumedcorrectlythat they would oppose it. Indeed, the Dutch government was unhappy that its two large neighbors, one a recent occupier, planned to join political forces. The small, liberal, pragmatic country always looking west, fearing being smothered by, alternately, the heavy German legalistic culture and French etatisme that the Dutch love to hate. But the Netherlands had little choice. The post-war economy was weak. Losing its colonies, the country needed to earn its income closer to home. Its first post-war trade agreement with Germany functioned wellalready the Netherlands was, economically speaking, becoming a German province. In short, the Dutch couldnt afford to say no to the Schuman plan. Since France and Germany would go ahead anyway, it would be smarter to join and water it down from the inside. This is what the Dutch have been doing ever since, to various degrees. It is their own, instinctive European Pavlovian response. From the first day, The Hague had a mission: to get the UK to join. In 1973, after several French vetoes, it finally managed. For the Dutch, UK accession finally brought cultural and political meaning to the continents economic reality. The Dutch have always been Anglophiles. They set up multinationals like Shell and Unilever with the UK. They speak much better English than German or French. Alongside the British the Dutch finally felt at home in continental Europe, and became more confident. The two countries fought, and won, many liberal battles togetherfor the single market and several enlargements, for example. This is when the Dutch lost some of their aversion to political integration, jumping head-on into Schengen, the monetary union and much else. From the mid-Seventies till the mid-Nineties, roughly, they could definitely be described as euro-enthusiasts. But the British drifted off. While the Dutch proposed full political union for the Maastricht treatyan unthinkable move todayLondon refused to join Schengen, the euro or judicial cooperation. The British wanted the internal market and little else, and negotiated several opt-outs. They became outsiders. This is when Dutch ambivalence in Europe resurfaced, and euroskepticism started to rise. It is partly directed against the EU itself, but mainly against many successive Dutch governments that failed to explain why the country sits in the heart of European integration. At school, Dutch children learn nothing about the EU, its purpose and history. Newcomers wanting to become Dutch must pass an exam, for which they must be able to answer how the Dutch celebrate birthdays and what the waterworks are forbut in the accompanying textbook Europe is mentioned just twice: as a market. Most Dutch citizens, while opinionated about the EU, cant tell the difference between the Council and the Commission. For an open, exporting country dependent on European networks, this is an awkward situation. The Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot recently said that thanks to the EU, each Dutch household earns between 6,000 to 10,000 euros more per year. Knot is no cheering Europhile. But he understands that more European integration, including beefed-up eurozone resilience, will be necessary in todays mercantilist world where raw power prevails. Knot urged party leaders to discuss this more often ahead of parliamentary elections early next year. Debating Europe, however, is difficult in a country that still loves looking west. Former Prime Minister David Camerons insistence on the repatriation of powers from Brussels was popular in the Netherlands. Most Dutch love the internal market and are positive about EU membership, but many reject the political aspects of European integration. European defense, a common foreign policy, or European taxes make them jittery. Their first reflex is to oppose those things. The central question in The Netherlands is therefore an existential one: What are we doing in the heart of Europe? The honest answer is, of course, something like this: We are there because Germany and France are there to avoid more war, and we thought it wasnt wise not to join. This is too complicated a pitch for most politicians. So they stick to the economic narrativethe EU is a marketignoring the political origin and character of European integration. Thats why in a Europe whose main challenges are now profoundly political, the Dutch behave like bookkeepers. When Italy needs solidarity, the Dutch respond by counting beans. This reflex grew stronger because of Brexit and the phantom pain it caused. Brexit weakens the liberal, northern voice in Brussels. It strengthens the power of Germany and France, and of Europes south. The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is traumatized by Britains departure. He knows it could happen in his country, too. Ruttes liberal-conservative party, the VVD, is the largest in the Netherlands. But the far-right euroskeptic PVV, led by Geert Wilders, is second. Another far-right party, Democratic Forum, is also fanning anti-European sentiment. Mr Rutte is determined to avoid a Dutch exit. It would devastate a country that participates in every European program under the sun. But the more Rutte wants to avoid the political debate about Europe, the more the opposition presses the point. In this respect, he is in the same spot as David Cameron was before the Brexit referendum: failing to make a strong, convincing case for continued membership. But theres also a difference between the two: the Dutch Prime Minister doesnt withdraw from Brussels. On the contrary, hes actively forming new alliances across the continent. He understands that Brexit changes the political ballgame in Europe. The UK often amplified positions in Brussels. Now, if the Dutch want to be heard, they need new allies. Dutch diplomats and civil servants are fanning out to European capitals, listening, trying to make deals. The shape of these alliances depends on the issue. In some aspects, the Dutch are getting closer to Germany. They are reaching out to France, too, on single market issues and even trade. Spain and Austria have also come into the picture. For financial and economic issues, the Dutch formed a kind of new Hanseatic league, which puts pressure on Germany not to make too many concessions to France. The fact that the group partly consists of small Nordics outside the eurozone and banking union doesnt seem to bother The Hague. In the budget and COVID-19 recovery battles of the summer, the Dutch fought like lions. But with Germany and France teaming up because both felt Europes political future was at stake, the Dutch did not manage to fundamentally alter the planthey mostly got financial concessions. When Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to Berlin afterwards, she talked about having averted a European disaster. President Emmanuel Macron spoke about Europe, too. Mr Rutte, back at The Hague, said he was happy that Dutch contributions to Brussels had not risen. End of story. No wonder Rutte needed an extensive session in Parliament afterwards to explain himself, before securing approval for the deal. Just 10 percent of the Dutch thought he should have been more lenient during the July Council. According to a recent ECFR poll in 27 capitals, the Netherlands is currently seen as the fourth most disappointing country in the EU. Of course the Dutch care about the diplomatic fallout. In The Hague the dominance of the Finance Ministry on European affairs, to the detriment of the diplomats in the Foreign Ministry, has led to fierce discussions. The government was also quick to take in 100 children from Greeces burnt Moria camp, a clear gesture of goodwill to other EU countries. But its financial and monetary positions that caused the fallout in the first place, havent changed. Few observers expect this to happen before the elections. So, no, it isnt surprising that Italian diplomats are sometimes reminded of Dutch obstructionism in the early days in Brussels. They call it the fracassi principlefrom the Italian fracassare: to shatter. And fracassi, it so happens, rhymes beautifully with the Italian word for the Netherlands: Paesi Bassi. : foreignpolicy.com According to ICMR, a cumulative total of 6,05,65,728 COVID-19 samples have been tested up so far with 11,36,613 samples being tested on Wednesday alone New Delhi: With 97,894 COVID-19 infections being reported in single day for the first time, India's overall count on Thursday crossed 51 lakh, according to the recent data released by the Union Health Ministry. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease crossed 40 lakh on Thursday, said the ministry. The total coronavirus cases mounted to 51,18,253, while the toll climbed to 83,198 with the virus claiming 1,132 lives in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed. The total recoveries surged to 40,25,079 while the active cases of COVID-19 crossed 10 lakh for the first time. The COVID-19 case fatality rate due to the coronavirus infection was recorded at 1.63 percent. There are 10,09,976 active cases of COVID-19 in the country which comprises 19.73 percent of the total caseload, the data stated. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on 7 August, 30 lakh on 23 August, 40 lakh on 5 September and it went past 50 lakh on 16 September. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a cumulative total of 6,05,65,728 samples have been tested up so far with 11,36,613 samples being tested on Wednesday alone. This is the touching moment two elderly Chinese parents are reunited with their long-lost son 38 years after he was abducted. The 70-year-old man and his wife had spent the last nearly four decades praying for the return of their child, nicknamed Jin Shui, who was snatched from their home at the age of two in 1982. Emotional footage shows the family breaking down in tears as they finally got to embrace each other again today after police tracked down the son with the help of a national DNA database. This is the touching moment two elderly Chinese parents are reunited with their long-lost son 38 years after he was abducted. Emotional footage shows the family breaking down in tears The boy, nicknamed Jin Shui, who was snatched from their home at the age of two in 1982 Emotional footage shows the family breaking down in tears as they finally got to embrace each other again today after police tracked down the son with the help of a national DNA database The family from a remote village in northwestern Chinese province Shaanxi had lived a simple and happy life before it was all shattered on the wee hour of May 12, 1982. The father, Su Bingde, had left home earlier that day to visit a relative, reported local media. Thinking he would return by the night, Mr Su did not lock the house while his wife and two children stayed home. But the father did not manage to come home while the mother, Huang Renxiu, tucked the children into bed. In the early morning, Ms Huang was woken up by her daughter who wanted to use the toilet. The mother was horrified to find that her two-year-old son Jin Shui, who was in a sound sleep next to her, had suddenly disappeared. Ms Huang immediately contacted her husband and other villagers as they spent the rest of the night looking for the toddler. But the little boy was nowhere to be seen. Refusing to give up, the family then began a decade-long quest to search for their beloved child. On September 17, the Chinese family finally met each other again after nearly four decades The mother, Ms Huang, is seen wiping her tears during the reunion ceremony in Shaanxi today Mr Su started going to other towns and cities in the hope to find any information about his sons abduction. The impoverished villager travelled mostly by foot to save money and sometimes spent hours walking non-stop. Struck by grief, the mother began suffering mental issues, putting more strain on the devastated family. Although local police launched an investigation soon after Jin Shuis disappearance, the officers were unable to solve the case due to the remote location and limited information. Nearly 40 years later, the silver-haired parents still prayed that their long-lost son would return one day. Mr Li (pictured centre) now has a family of his own with a wife and two sons. They live in Hebei province, 1,104 kilometres (686 miles) away from his birth parents. The picture shows the Chinese man with his wife and two sons sitting with his parents after 38 years Ms Huang and her long-lost son Jin Shui are pictured being interviewed by local press today Mr Su said that he had spent the past few years saving money for his funeral. He told reporters in a interview earlier this year: I dont want to trouble the family. Ive sorted it out myself. My one last wish is to see my son Jin Shui once again. The familys prayers were finally answered when they were notified by police on Tuesday. After comparing DNA samples in a national database, the officers located Jin Shui, who is now a 40-year-old man, known by the name Li Guolin. Mr Li now has a family of his own with a wife and two sons. They live in Hebei province, 1,104 kilometres (686 miles) away from his birth parents. On September 17, the family finally met again after nearly four decades as they hugged one another and burst into tears. Mr Li and his parents are pictured having a banquet at the village after their reunion today The overjoyed father said: I had waited for this day for 38 years. I didnt think I would also meet my grandsons! Other clips show the reunited family returning to the village as they gathered friends and relatives for a banquet at home. Human trafficking has been a serious issue in Chinese society. An estimated 70,000 youngsters from babies up to teenagers are snatched away from their families in the country every year. Some are bought, some are simply stolen. They end up as labourers, in forced marriages or as the adoptees of wealthy families, either in China itself or overseas. In brief: American semiconductor giants are planning to build up to 19 manufacturing plants in the US, but they won't do it without substantial federal investment. What they're asking is that the US government spend at least half as much as China does for securing a larger share of global semiconductor manufacturing. In July we took a deep dive into China's ambitious plan for technological self-sufficiency, which is largely motivated by the US-China trade war and the insistence on replacing all foreign hardware and software solutions from its public infrastructure. At the same time, the Trump administration has been pushing hard for manufacturing to be brought back to the States, especially when it comes to the electronics industry. The "Made in America" initiative has had limited success, with Apple being heralded as a positive example while Foxconn's long-promised Wisconsin plant -- which still hasn't opened -- will merely produce "robotic coffee houses". According to the Silicon Industry Association, America's semiconductor giants are theoretically inclined to reverse the long trend of moving production to Asia. But to achieve that goal, they're asking Washington to mirror China's aggressive investment strategy. To appease these companies, the US government would have to deploy anywhere from $20 billion to $50 billion -- a fraction of the $100 billion that China is pouring into government subsidies for semiconductor companies. SIA represents several industry giants such as Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm, noting that "six months ago, I don't think we could have had this discussion, the world's gone in our direction." This suggests that companies believe it's the right time to pitch this idea, as it will become increasingly risky for the US to rely on China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Israel for vital components used in its electronics -- especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The downside is that building a manufacturing plant in the US is estimated to cost ~30 percent more over the span of 10 years than it does in Asia. Total operational costs over that period can reach as high as $40 billion, but government incentives could cut that to just $13 billion. This is because chip makers already invest approximately one fifth of their annual revenue into research and development. The association is also banking on the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act (CHIPS), which would inject tens of billions of dollars into researching, developing, and manufacturing semiconductors in the US. The bill has already garnered bipartisan support and would introduce a refundable investment tax credit for companies that need to purchase semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment. Last month, Foxconn said China can no longer be the world's factory, but given the number of alternative locations that are just as cheap, the US has only a small window of opportunity to bring manufacturing back home. SIA believes that federal manufacturing incentives are key to making the US a more attractive option and creating up to 70,000 high-paying jobs for engineers, fab technicians, and material suppliers. In mid-October 2012, President Obamas reelection campaign was in trouble. He had just turned in a listless debate performance against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and his three-point lead in the polls had evaporated. So anticipation was high for the second debate, a town hall. Another stellar performance by Romney might torpedo Obamas prospects. Candy Crowley, a twenty-five-year CNN veteran, was moderating when the discussion turned to the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Republicans were incensed about Obamas response, and about his administrations initial inclination to blame the violence on an anti-Muslim video. Romney told the audience that it took the president fourteen days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror. Crowley fact-checked him on the spot, though it was confusing: He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea, there being a riot out there about this tape, to come out. You are correct about that. The truth was somewhere in the middle; immediately after the killings, Obama said, No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, but he wasnt more specific for many days. Crowley was quickly savaged by conservative commentators. She had no business trying to fact-check in real time, because she was incorrect, fumed Gov. John Sununu, a surrogate for Romney. Thank you for distorting the truth, Candy Crowley, harrumphed Fox Newss arbiter of accuracy, Sean Hannity. Crowleys follow-up also wasnt entirely clear. She said shortly after the debate that while Romney was right in the main, I just think that he picked the wrong word. (Crowley left the network two years later and could not be reached for comment.) Fifteen months after the debate, Romney was still sore. I dont think its the role of the moderator in a debate to insert themselves into the debate and to declare a winner or a loser on a particular point, he said. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Such semantic issues seem almost quaint today, while were battling a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and devastating wildfires. Now journalists need to intervene when the air becomes thick with lies. Which means that they could easily be overwhelmed, starting September 29, when Fox Newss Chris Wallace moderates the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. For five years, and particularly in the six months since the covid-19 epidemic began, Trump has been front and center on our screens. Through rallies, speeches, and briefings, he has made himself endlessly available to the press and the public. And when things start to go badly at one of these appearances, Trump has learned to change the mood by calling on a friendly reporter, turning the microphone over to a subordinate, or leaving the stage altogether. He is up-front about his motives. A few weeks ago, sycophantic One America News personality Chanel Rion asked Trump whether journalists are afraid they might lose their jobs if they dont attack you the way they do every day. The president admitted what hell do when a reporter confronts him with a question he doesnt like: Ill say, Thank you very much. Bye-bye. And I leave. That will change with the debates. Wallace has already shown he can be tough on Trump; he hasnt been able to demonstrate that with Biden, since the vice president has ducked his interview requests. But tough questions wont be enough. The candidates must be confronted when they start lying. Thats going to be a particular issue for Trump, given his casual and halting relationship with the truth. Wallace will have a lot of latitude, as will NBCs Kristen Welker, who is moderating an October 22 debate. The Commission on Presidential Debates is allowing them to choose six segments, of fifteen minutes each, on whatever topics they want. After each candidate responds to the question and to each other, the moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic. Meanwhile, c-spans Steve Scully is hosting a town hall on October 15. So while Wallace, Welker, Scully, and their teams need to prepare tough questions, they also need to be prepared for Trumps mendacity. They cant expect one candidate to fact-check the other. And they cant wait for the post-debate news crews to clean up the mess. Its not easy. At a tough town hall Tuesday night, ABCs George Stephanopoulos did his best to challenge Trump on healthcare, particularly given how often the president renews his bogus two weeks promise to provide an Obamacare replacement plan. But because of the format, and because its hard to stanch a firehose of lying, Trump still flooded the zone with falsehoods. Given that Wallace and Welker will get a lot of leeway, theyll need to have Glenn Kessler or Daniel Dalequality fact checkers in their control room, providing instantaneous quality control on the candidates claims. So armed, moderators can help voters see which candidate is more capable of handling and delivering the truth. And they can do it almost in real time, with more support and more clarity than Crowley could offer in the Obama-Romney debate. This will be a challenge with Trump, who gets testy when called out on a lie. In a briefing at Trumps Bedminster, New Jersey, club last month, CBS reporter Paula Reid asked him about one of his most frequent whoppers: Why do you keep saying that you passed Veterans Choice? It was passed in 2014. But it was a false statement, sir. Trump listened, ignored the question, and responded, Okay, thank you very much everybody as he walked off the dais to applause from his club patrons. In his OAN interview, Trump made clear that he thinks he should be the one to judge whats legitimate: I dont mind tough questions. What I dont think is fair are some of these questions that are really statements more than questions. Theyre supposed to be asking questions of the president of the United States. And if they cant do that, then I just do something else. For three nights this fall, Trump wont be able to do something else. Lets hope our journalists, and the fact checkers who support them, are up to that challenge. NEW AT CJR: Ten questions for the Trump ally who runs US funded media Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Bill Grueskin is on the faculty at Columbia Journalism School. He has previously worked as founding editor of a newspaper on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, city editor of the Miami Herald, deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, and an executive editor at Bloomberg News. He is a graduate of Stanford University (Classics) and Johns Hopkinss School of Advanced International Studies (US Foreign Policy and International Economics). By PTI CHANDIGARH: Jannayak Janta Party leader Digvijay Singh Chautala on Thursday apologised for the lathicharge on farmers in Kurukshetra's Pipli last week, saying if any of them was hit, they feel it was the family of the late Devi Lal. Digvijay Chautala, whose party is a coalition partner of the BJP in the state, is the great grandson of the former deputy prime minister. Earlier, his elder brother and Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala had condemned the lathicharge on farmers during a protest on September 10. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the JJP leader said he belonged to a farming family and know their feelings. We apologise to the farmers who were lathicharged, he said, assuring that the "matter will be probed". He said if farmers faced any pain and hit by lathi (stick), they feel it was not on them but on the "family of Jannayak Chaudhary Devi Lal". Digvijay said the JJP always stood by farmers and their interest will be supreme for them. He also hit out at the Congress, saying the party is "conspiring" to defame Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala. He said the deputy CM had no role in the lathicharge on farmers. The JJP leader said the Centre has assured that the MSP regime for crops will continue. "We have to take the Union government's word. There is no need for farmers to get misled and feel upset," he said, adding that opposition parties were misleading them for their selfish interests. JJP state president Nishan Singh too assured farmers that his party will work with the government to fulfil their promises. In response to a media query about JJP MLA Devender Babli, who has demanded a change in the party leadership claiming that there was "dissatisfaction" among most of the party's 10 MLAs, Digvijay Chautala said this is an "internal" matter of the party. "Our entire party is like a family and we will sit together and talk," he said. New Voters Reminded Of Oct. 5 Deadline To Register New Voters Reminded Of Oct. 5 Deadline To Register The Tuesday, November 3, election will include races ranging from United States president down to local elections that were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who are not registered to vote and would like to make their voices heard are reminded that the voter registration deadline is approaching. Monday, October 5, is the last day that a voter may register and be eligible to vote in November's election. Texas residents may vote if they meet the following criteria: They are a United States citizen They are a resident of the county in which the application for registration is made They are at least 18 years of age on election day (Application can be made at 17 years and 10 months of age.) They have not been convicted of a felony, or must have (1)fully discharged the sentence, incarceration, parole or supervision, or completed a period of probation ordered by any court; or (2) been pardoned or otherwise released from the resulting disability to vote They have not been determined by a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be (1) totally mentally incapacitated or (2) partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote. Voters can easily register in a number of ways. Voter registration forms are available from the Hill County Elections Administration Office, libraries, many post offices and high schools. From the website www.votetexas.gov, an official, postage-paid application can be requested and will be mailed. Or, an informal application can be downloaded from the website and returned by mailing it with a stamp. Those applying for or renewing a driver's license can also register to vote at that time. After obtaining a form, read the instructions, fill it out, and either mail or hand deliver it to the Hill County Elections Administration Office at P.O. Box 725, Hillsboro, TX 76645. A voter will receive a voter registration certificate in the mail after the county voter registrar has processed the voter registration application. Upon receipt of the voter registration certificate, sign it, fold it and keep in it in your wallet and take it to the polls with you when you vote. For more information about voting, visit www.votetexas.gov or call Elections Administration at 254-582-4072. Los Angeles: City of Everett, in the western state of Washington on Friday filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, the maker of the pain reliever OxyContin, accusing the company of helping fuel an opioid crisis that has devastated the town. There is clear evidence that Purdue ignored their responsibility to stop the diversion of OxyContin into the black market, directly leading to the heroin crisis on our streets today, Ray Stephanson, the mayor of Everett, in the western state of Washington, said in announcing the suit. Their drive for profit caused this epidemic, which has overwhelmed our treatment and emergency systems. The first-of-its-kind civil suit asks that the drugmaker be made to pay the costs of handling the crisis as well as punitive damages. The Connecticut-based drug firm has previously been accused of misleading doctors and patients about the addictive nature of OxyContin, a prescription drug that often leads to heroin abuse. The company agreed to pay more than USD 600 million in fines in 2007 for minimizing the risks of its blockbuster pain reliever pill. The suit filed by city officials in Everett, which has a little over 100,000 residents, accuses Purdue of allowing OxyContin to flood the citys streets in total disregard for the communitys wellbeing. Purdue placed profit over the health and safety of our community, and we can see the tragic results of that decision throughout Everett, Stephanson said. Weve already invested significant taxpayer dollars to deal with impacts of opioid addiction in our city, and we know that substantial additional resources will be needed to deal with this crisis in the coming years. City officials said the epidemic is affecting residents from all walks of life. We only have a 16-bed detox center in our county right now... but on any given day we have 10 times that many people detoxing in our jail, city spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke said. The scope of the problem is so big that without additional resources, we dont feel like were going to make significant progress. A representative for Purdue told AFP in a statement that the company shared public officials concerns about the opioid crisis and was committed to help find solutions. Although OxyContin accounts for only two per cent of all pain-related opioid prescriptions, Purdue is an industry leader in abuse deterrence as we were the first pharmaceutical company to develop an opioid medication with abuse-deterrent properties, Bob Josephson said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. The Labour Party has today confirmed it has written to transport secretary Grant Shapps calling on him to bring forward the ban on sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars. Prime minister Boris Johnson has already backed proposals to accelerate a scheduled deadline for the ban from 2040 and Shapps himself has suggested the cut-off date could be brought forward as early as 2032. However, Matthew Pennycook, Labour's shadow minister for climate change, said 2030 is an 'ambitious but achievable' target date that would help to 'create jobs, cut carbon emissions, and reduce air pollution'. New petrol, diesel and hybrid cars should be banned from 2030, the Labour Party has said in a letter to transport minister Grant Shapps The letter intensifies the growing pressure on the transport minister to accelerate the switch to electric cars more rapidly, with reports suggesting Mr Shapps is already being pushed by many Tory MPs to phase out polluting vehicles to improve the nation's air quality. The current deadline for the end of sales of combustion engine cars is 2040 but a consultation began earlier this year on bringing that date forward. The Government is due to publish results of the consultation this month and could favour a two-tier approach with pure petrol and diesel cars banned from 2035 and hybrids (which have petrol engines to supplement onboard batteries and electric motors) phased out five years further down the line. However, Labour has urged decision makers to introduce a blanket ban at the earliest of the two dates. A 2030 deadline would bring the UK in line with other countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, which intend to only sell new electric cars from that point. Labour's Mr Pennycook warned that having a cut-off date any later than 2030 'risks further damage to the UK's car industry' and the nation's 'credibility on the global stage' as hosts of the COP26 -the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties - summit in Glasgow next year. Matthew Pennycook (left), Labour's shadow minister for climate change, said 2030 is an 'ambitious but achievable' target date that would help to 'create jobs, cut carbon emissions, and reduce air pollution' in a letter sent to Grant Shapps (right) In his letter, Mr Pennycook wrote: '2030 is an ambitious but achievable date by which to phase out the sale of new petrol, diesel, and hybrid vehicles, one that would give a new lease of life to the UK car industry, whilst combatting climate breakdown and cleaning up the air that dangerously pollutes so many of our towns and cities. 'But as well as accelerating the phase out, the Government must also set out a credible plan to get there one that backs the low-carbon jobs and industries of the future and ensures that workers and communities are properly supported in the transition to a fairer and cleaner economy. 'It's time for Ministers to seize this opportunity as part of a world-leading green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, creating good jobs across the country, and generating real momentum for next year's COP26 climate summit.' The Committee on Climate Change, the government's independent advisory body, said in June that the phase-out date for new cars with petrol and diesel engines must be brought forward to '2032 at the latest' if the UK is to meet its legally-binding 2050 net-zero emissions target. That demand was backed by a third of Tory MPs last month who voted in favour of a 2030 deadline as part of plans to 'build back greener' after the coronavirus pandemic. Pressure is mounting on policy makers to fast-track the 2040 ban on the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars to accelerate the shift to cleaner electric vehicles that are better for the environment Labour claims by implementing an earlier cut-off date, the Government would secure not only significant environmental and public health benefits but would 'create new high-skilled jobs in towns and cities across the country'. The party said in a statement: 'Studies suggest that manufacturing batteries to replace internal combustion engines, for instance, would boost direct employment in the automotive industry from about 170,000 jobs today to as many as 220,000 by 2040. 'In contrast, a failure to accelerate the development and rollout of new technologies risks exacerbating the severe challenges already facing the UK car industry.' It added: 'The UK risks falling behind while other nations race ahead towards ending the use of fossil fuel cars.' Despite a fall in demand for new cars caused mostly in part by the Covid-19 crisis, sales of electric vehicles are - relatively - booming. In the first eight months of the year, 44,708 new battery electric cars have been registered - up 157 per cent on the same period a year earlier. But while demand is undeniably growing, battery-powered cars still account for just one in 20 new motors sold in the UK. New car registration data for August - published today - shows that battery electric vehicle (BEV) demand is up 157% year-on-year. Some 44,708 pure electric cars have been bought so far in 2020, though they still only make up 1 in 20 new motors purchased in the UK While MPs are desperately trying to bring forward the deadline for the ban on new petrol and diesel cars in the UK, consumer surveys suggest many Britons believe they won't want a battery-powered vehicle by 2035, not least five years sooner A nationwide survey by the UK's automotive trade body published earlier this month found that 44 per cent of motorists don't think they'll be ready to run a battery vehicle in 2035, many of them saying they can't see themselves ever owning one. The poll commissioned by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders found that just over a third are 'optimistic' about buying a full electric vehicle by 2025 - some 15 years earlier than the ban is currently due to be enforced. But plenty more people are concerned that battery cars aren't right for them, with 44 per cent saying they won't be ready to make the switch by 2035. A quarter of the 2,185 drivers interviewed claimed they don't foresee themselves ever buying an electric car in their lifetimes, despite the impeding ban in 2035. Commenting on the survey results, SMMT chief executive, Mike Hawes, said: 'Manufacturers are working hard to make zero and ultra-low emissions the norm and are committed to working with government to accelerate the shift to net zero but obstacles remain. 'Until these vehicles are as affordable to buy and as easy to own and operate as conventional cars, we risk the UK being in the slow lane, undermining industry investment and holding back progress,' he added. The SMMT said it is imperative for the government to ramp-up the availability of incentives to encourage motorists to ditch their petrol and diesel cars in favour of cleaner electric vehicles - else the nation will fail to hit its targets for cutting pollution The YouGov poll found that the UK is lagging behind when it comes to plans to buy an electric vehicle next A separate YouGov survey of 11,000 European motorists in June found that just 17 per cent of Britons are considering purchasing an electric vehicle as their next car - the lowest figure for the nine countries analysed (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden). However, UK driver interest in electric vehicles in June was measured 3 per cent higher than it was when the same YouGov poll was conducted in January - months before the coronavirus pandemic struck Europe. When it comes to recommending plug-in vehicles, the UK was measured among the highest across the European markets surveyed. In January, 16 per cent of Britons recommended an electric car to friends, family or colleagues. By June, this figure increased to 22 per cent. This represents the largest increase of any country surveyed and in terms of recommendation the UK is now only behind Italy (23 per cent) and Spain (26 per cent), the study said. As well as public appetite for electric vehicles, the government has also set ambitious targets for the UK to be at the forefront of the industry, promising funds to ramp-up the nation's research and development for both electric and autonomous vehicles. Britishvolt is currently looking to secure a site to build the nation's first Tesla-rivalling 'gigafactory' for the production of electric car batteries, with St Athan in South Wales said to be the preferred location. The firm said the initial wave of 1.2billion of investment into the site will eventually lead to around 3,500 jobs. The Mini Electric is one of just two mainstream battery-powered models produced in the UK. BMW's Plant Oxford has already built more than 11,000 examples in a year Currently, the Mini Electric and Nissan Leaf are the only mainstream battery electric cars produced in the UK in Oxford and Sunderland respectively. In a statement issued in response to news of Mr Pennycook's letter to the transport minister, Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: 'Hats off to Labour for backing a 2030 ban for all new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars and vans. 'They have joined the chorus of businesses and councils that have also been calling for a more ambitious phase out date and policies to support workers to transition, in order to dramatically reduce emissions and help secure a future for the UK automotive industry. 'Now that Labour and over 100 Conservative MPs have thrown down the gauntlet, will the government live up to their claims of being a world leader on climate, and back a 2030 ban too?' A South Australian man who kidnapped and raped a European backpacker in a pig shed on his regional property has lost a bid to have his convictions overturned. Gene Charles Bristow held the 24-year-old woman for two days after he answered a Gumtree advertisement she posted in search of farm work in 2017. After being found guilty of aggravated kidnapping, rape and indecent assault, he was jailed for 18 years with a non-parole period of 12 years and six months. Gene Charles Bristow held the 24-year-old woman for two days after he answered a Gumtree advertisement she posted in search of farm work in 2017 The European backpacker was held in a pig shed on Bristow's regional property But in arguing his appeal, Bristow questioned the use of some of the evidence during his trial, including details of how the woman had managed to release herself from her chains and subsequently use her computer to send messages for help. After sending the messages, the woman had chained herself back up before her release the next day. In a unanimous judgment on Thursday, the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed Bristow's arguments, with Chief Justice Chris Kourakis finding no error in law or miscarriage of justice in how the trial judge handled the email messages. In his reasons, Justice Kevin Nicholson also said he had no concerns that the jury might have put undue weight on the content of the emails to the benefit of the prosecution. He said it was apparent throughout the trial that the central issue was whether the prosecution had excluded, as a reasonable possibility, that the woman had made up a series of lies to implicate an innocent man. 'It could not have escaped the jury that to acknowledge such a reasonable possibility necessarily meant that the email and search content had also been concocted,' he said. While she was in the shed, Bristow threatened to shoot her and told her fake stories about police corruption and his involvement in a kidnapping ring In sentencing Bristow, District Court Judge Geraldine Davison said he lied to the woman to lure her to the farm at Meningie, 150km southeast of Adelaide, then chained her hands and legs 'in what must have been a terrifying experience for her'. 'You took her mobile phone and disposed of it, and left her alone in that shed in the middle of nowhere,' she said. 'You raped her on a number of occasions.' While she was in the shed, Bristow threatened to shoot her and told her fake stories about police corruption and his involvement in a kidnapping ring. 'It is impossible to understand how alone and devastated she must have felt as you humiliated and degraded her in a foreign country,' Judge Davison said. But she said it was the woman's courage, resourcefulness and practicality that led Bristow to eventually release her in Murray Bridge. 'She managed to undo the chains and to use her computer to alert others that she needed assistance,' Judge Davison said. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The government and the opposition are at loggerheads on tensions with China on the LAC as the opposition wants a discussion on the issue after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement in both houses of Parliament. The Congress has upped the ante and alleged that the government is involved in doublespeak on the issue. While cracks have appeared in the opposition with BSP openly supporting the government on the issue, the Samajwadi Party cautioned the government as party chief Akhilesh Yadav said, "BJP should not make the same mistake as Congress had made in 1962." Congress' Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad said that "the party is with the government on the issue of China and with the Indian Army but China should move to its positions prior to April and there should be no compromise on status quo ante." BJD MP Prasanna Acharya and Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena cautioned the government on entering into any agreement with China over the present situation while former Defence Minister A.K. Antony said that status quo ante should be restored and this means "sovereignty". The Defence Minister stated in the Rajya Sabha that "the spirits of our soldiers are high. They are capable of serving at forbidding altitudes with scarce oxygen and in extremely cold temperatures, something that they have effortlessly done over the last many years on Siachen and Kargil," he said. The minister informed the House about the ongoing border tension. Since April, India had noticed a build up of troops and armaments by the Chinese side in the border areas adjacent to eastern Ladakh. Toronto police have released a composite sketch of someone suspected of attempted murder in a shooting that took place in Chinatown in March. It was reported that someone entered a restaurant in the Dundas Street West and Spadina Avenue area, and had a brief verbal interaction with a 41-year-old man before taking out a handgun and shooting him, said police. They added that the suspect then left the restaurant and fled the area in a vehicle. Officers previously said the person shot was found inside the restaurant shortly after 4 a.m. and was taken to a trauma centre with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. The suspect is described as Asian, clean shaven, 25-30 years old, wearing a black wool winter coat, black hoody with the hood up and a black dress pants. Police are asking anyone with information to contact them at 416-808-2510 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477). With files from Miriam Lafontaine Manuela Vega is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: mvega@thestar.ca As China Rules Out Stepping Back from LAC, Indian Army Builds Up Arsenal China has insisted it will hold its existing positions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh through this winter, government sources familiar with ongoing diplomatic dialogues have told News18, ruling out the possibility of any territorial adjustments in military-to-military negotiations expected to take place later this month. Faced with the prospect of a protracted stand-off between massed forces on either side of the LAC, the sources said that New Delhi has authorised an emergency military acquisition programme that could run to over $1 billion. READ MORE New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad & Bengaluru Drop in Global Smart City Index Four Indian cities - New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru - witnessed a significant drop in their rankings in the global listing of smart cities that was topped by Singapore. The Institute for Management Development (IMD), in collaboration with Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD), has released the 2020 Smart City Index, with key findings on how technology is playing a role in the COVID-19 era. The Smart City Index said Indian cities have suffered more from the pandemic because they were not prepared. READ MORE A Nobel for Greta Thunberg? In the Age of Climate Change and Virus, it is Possible This years Nobel Peace Prize could go to green campaigner Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement to highlight the link between environmental damage and the threat to peace and security, experts say. The winner of the $1 million prize, arguably the worlds top accolade, will be announced in Oslo on Oct. 9 from a field of 318 candidates. The prize can be split up to three ways. READ MORE No Power in World Can Stop Our Soldiers from Patrolling: Rajnath Singh on China Row Hitting a measured yet aggressive note, in his statement on the India-China border row, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that no power in the world can stop our soldiers from patrolling. In response to a question, Singh said that patrolling pattern of Indian soldiers is a traditional exercise and is well defined. Sending across a stern message to Beijing, Singh also added, It is apparent from Chinese activities that their words dont match their actions. READ MORE Kangana Ranaut Gets Lesson on Twitter for Calling Urmila Matondkar a Soft Porn Actress Kangana Ranaut is getting a lesson on feminism today after she called Urmila Matondkar a soft porn actress on national television. Even Urmila, she is a soft porn star. I know its very blatant. But she isnt known for her acting for sure. What is she known for? For doing soft porn right? If she can get a ticket, why wont I get a ticket? Her comments led to many calling out her hypocrisy for she calls herself a feminist. READ MORE Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma Continue to Lead ICC ODI Rankings for Batsmen | SEE LIST Star Indian batsmen Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have maintained their top two positions in the latest ICC rankings for ODI batters which got updated following the completion of the three-match series between England and Australia. While Kohli is at the numero uno spot with 871 rating points, Rohit has 855 rating points and is currrently placed at the second spot. READ MORE NAB indulged in more than a bit of fanfare when it trumpeted that it was going to mothball its corporate headquarters at 700 Bourke Street and 800 Bourke Street in Docklands. It seemed the right thing to do in the COVID climate, apparently. But it appears there was one small snag in the plan: the boss. Chief executive Ross McEwan was based at 700 Bourke Street, and despite plans in place to shift all workers still required in the office further up the street to another, older NAB building, he obviously wants to stay put. Last week, McEwan appeared via video link before the federal governments economics standing committee, along with chief risk officer Shaun Dooley from you guessed it 700 Bourke Street. It sounded pretty lonely at the top. I'm sitting in a building here that was built for 5000 people, maybe five and a half thousand people, and there are probably six in it today, McEwan told the committee. DIDCOT, UK / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Altus Strategies Plc (AIM:ALS)(TSXV:ALTS) announces that it was informed on 16 September 2020 by Steven Poulton (CEO and Director) that he had purchased 43,000 Ordinary Shares of 0.05 each ("Ordinary Shares") at an average price of 64.4p per Ordinary Share. Following this purchase, Mr Poulton's shareholding in the Company has increased to 5,608,097 Ordinary Shares, representing approximately 8.0% of the Company's issued share capital. The information set out below is provided in accordance with the requirements of Article 19(3) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation No. 596/2014. Notification and public disclosure of transactions by PMDR and persons closely associated with them. 1 Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities / person closely associated a) Name Steven Poulton 2 Reason for the notification a) Position/status Chief Executive Officer and Director b) Initial notification/ Amendment Initial notification 3 Details of the issuer emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor a) Name Altus Strategies plc b) LEI 2138001P93D9LMFIUA28 4 Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii each type of transaction; (iii each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted a) Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument Ordinary Shares of 0.05 each b) Identification code GB00BJ9TYB96 c) Nature of the transaction Purchase of Ordinary Shares d) Price(s) and volume(s) 43,000 at 64.40p e) Aggregated information Aggregated volume 43,000 Price 64.40p f) Date of the transactions 16 September 2020 g) Place of the transactions AIM For further information you are invited to visit the Company's website www.altus-strategies.com or contact: Altus Strategies Plc Steven Poulton, Chief Executive Tel: +44 (0) 1235 511 767 E: info@altus-strategies.com SP Angel (Nominated Adviser) Richard Morrison / Soltan Tagiev Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0470 SP Angel (Broker) Abigail Wayne / Richard Parlons Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0471 Yellow Jersey PR (Financial PR & IR) Georgia Colkin / Charles Goodwin / Henry Wilkinson Tel: +44 (0) 20 3004 9512 E: altus@yellowjerseypr.com About Altus Strategies Plc Altus Strategies is a London (AIM: ALS) and Toronto (TSX-V: ALTS) listed mining royalty company generating a diversified and precious metal focused portfolio of assets. The Company's focus on Africa and differentiated approach, of generating royalties on its own discoveries as well as through financings and acquisitions with third parties, has attracted key institutional investor backing. The Company engages constructively with all stakeholders, working diligently to minimise its environmental impact and to promote positive economic and social outcomes in the communities where it operates. For further information, please visit www.altus-strategies.com. TSX Venture Exchange Disclaimer Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Market Abuse Regulation Disclosure Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 ("MAR") until the release of this announcement. SOURCE: Altus Strategies PLC View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606452/Director-Dealings-PDMR-Notification Greenlands melting ice sheet is past the point of no return; Death Valley climbed to the hottest temperature ever on Earth (130F); fatalities are mounting from a summer of floods in regions of China and the Indian subcontinent. This is the climate news. This week alone. If it wasnt already abundantly clear, the climate is in crisis and its well past time for the break glass in case of emergency plan. Not that youd know it from conservatives. Gloom and doom!, Doom and gloom! rang the mockery across Fox News this week, castigating the Democrats convention for highlighting Americas myriad of challenges: Among them the Covid-19 pandemic, the ravaged economy, gun violence, and the overarching climate emergency. But one persons doom and gloom is anothers lived reality. This was no more aptly captured than by the voices of young people who spoke during the tackling climate change segment on Wednesday, the night the convention pivoted to policy. Alexandria Villasenor, a teen protester whose asthma flared dangerously while visiting California during the Camp Fire wildfires in 2018; Andrew Adamski, a Wisconsite farmer, whose 120-year-old family farm has switched to sustainable methods, because the effects of climate change are happening right in front of us. And Afro-Latina activist Katherine Lorenzo, who spoke to her experiences growing up with pollution in a low-income neighbourhood a childhood that speaks to how people of color and the poor, time and again, disproportionately bear the brunt. Climate change is impacting us now and its robbing my generation of a future, said Villasenor, who has been striking each Friday for the past two years in front of the United Nations in New York. The youth activists followed after a video clip made with cinematic flair (and an Oscar-worthy voiceover from a Pennsylvania union worker called Rob) which joined the dots from NASAs moon landing in 1969 to the tech innovations that will be needed to tackle the crisis today. Maybe youve read some of the millions of pages of scientific evidence on climate change or maybe youve felt it as you walked the neighbourhood, Rob said, as images of flooding, hurricanes and wildfires, flicked across the screen. Not to say there havent been blunders. Climate was never going to be an easy topic to drill down into with the pandemic-friendly virtual format. New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grishams speech was an earnest but plodding intro on the third night of a convention thats already seen considerably lower viewing figures compared to 2016. Powerful progressive voices on the issue, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, champion of the Green New Deal and co-chair of Joe Bidens climate panel, were criminally under-used. The popular congresswoman from New York was given just a 90-second appearance to make a symbolic nomination of former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders ahead of Tuesdays delegate roll call. Sen. Sanders, the Democratic socialist from Vermont, had been granted a lengthier slot on Monday, an apparent nod to all the unity thats taking place in the Democratic party among the establishment and progressive wings. But Sanders, who was always going to be one of the most rousing speakers and didnt disappoint, fairly galloped through all the ground to cover. He had just enough time to squeeze in climate policy snippets Rebuild crumbling infrastructure! Transition to 100 per cent clean electricity! Good-paying jobs! before his Zoom call time was up. And then there was that awkwardly-timed revelation on Tuesday that the DNC had dropped language calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies from its platform despite both Biden and newly-minted VP candidate Kamala Harris campaigning on the issue. It sparked outrage from climate voters and progressive activists, who have followed Sanders' lead and fallen in line to back a more moderate ticket. Youth climate activists call on voters to give them a 'fighting chance' at DNC An email earlier this week from Tamara Toles OLaughlin, director of 350.org, an environmental organization that campaigns to end fossil fuels, warned they would be holding the potential White House occupants accountable for their promises. (Bidens camp has since said he continues to be committed to ending US fossil fuel subsidies and then rallying the rest of the world to do the same). But for all the stumbles, here is the nub. We have about a decade before climate breakdown runs away from us, irreversibly. The window to stay below the 1.5C of heating, set out by the Paris agreement, is rapidly closing. And after four years of Donald Trumps climate denial, attacks on science, ditching of our allies and a tsunami of environmental rollbacks, here was 15 minutes of clunky and sober party political broadcasting that said: We get it. And weve got a plan for that. "We can, and we will, deal with climate change. It's not only a crisis, it's an enormous opportunity, said Biden during remarks at the close of the convention on Thursday, as he accepted the nomination. Throw all the hyperboles of pessimism at it you want. Its the best shot weve got. No. 11 NC State Baseball Makes a Quick Turnaround to Host UNC Greensboro Tuesday No. 11 NC State baseball (2-0) is set to make a quick turnaround Tuesday when it hosts in-state opponent UNCG (2-1) at Doak Field at Dail Park for its first midweek contest of the season. First pitch is set for 3 p.m., and the game will be broadcast on the ACC Network Extra. Gasparian on August 8 drove his vehicle in the direction of the reporters, almost running over them, after seeing that they were filming his luxury house located in the lakeside area. He threatened them with violence and, using offensive language, forced them to erase their footage. RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported the incident to the police, which Gasparian headed for seven years before being dismissed after the change of the countrys government in May 2018. "We demand that police investigate the incident, and that Mr. Gasparian be held accountable for endangering journalists who were simply doing their jobs," RFE/RL's acting President Daisy Sindelar said in a statement. Armenias Investigative Committee said on Thursday that Gasparian has been formally charged with obstruction of legitimate professional activities of journalists, a crime punishable by fines and up to year one of corrective labor. In a statement, the law-enforcement agency said the former police chief has signed a written pledge not to leave the country pending investigation. Gasparian denied any wrongdoing following the incident. He did not immediately react to the indictment. The Investigative Committee announced on September 2 that it has launched a separate inquiry into the legality of Gasparians villa and other lakeside properties making up a vast compound. It said some of the properties may have been built and officially registered in violation of Armenian laws strictly regulating construction in the environmentally sensitive area. Newly appointed Environment Minister Romanos Petrosian said last month that authorities will soon start dismantling illegal constructions near Lake Sevan. Several other former high-ranking officials also reportedly own houses located there. UN Secretary-General has called upon India and Pakistan to move in a positive way to resolve their differences. He sidestepped a question by a Pakistani reporter at a news conference on Wednesday about what the journalist asserted were demographic changes India was making to Kashmir, and instead referred to a statement he made last year and said, "It is absolutely essential to move forward in a positive way according to what I expressed then and I maintain today." In that statement issued last year soon after India rescinded its special constitutional status Guterres had referred to the Simla Agreement of 1972 which, he said, "states that the final status of is to be settled by peaceful means, in accordance with the Charter of the " "The position of the on this region is governed by the Charter of the and applicable Security Council resolutions," he had also said while expressing concern over reports of restrictions on movement "on the Indian-side" which "could exacerbate the human rights situation in the region." On Wednesday he said, "I will make exactly the same statement I made in that moment" last year in August. The Simla Agreement between India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who held the office Pakistan's president at that time, laid down that disputes between the two countries would be settled bilaterally without third party involvement. The main Security Council resolution on Kashmir requires Pakistan to withdraw from there as a precondition for a plebiscite for which Pakistan and its supporters clamour. Resolution 47 adopted on April 21, 1948 demands that the Pakistani government "secure the withdrawal from the State of of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting, and to prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State." (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis) --IANS al/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.) Harry Seidler changed the face of Brisbane. Now, the city is celebrating the German art and design school that produced the renowned Austrian-Australian architect. The Bauhaus Now: art+design+architecture, a legacy of migration and modernism in Brisbane exhibition examines the school's impact in Australia. This was one of two instruments with colour chords. Credit:Jocelyn Garcia The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 but was closed by the Nazi regime in 1933. Curator Andrew McNamara said Bauhaus teachers Johannes Itten, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Josef Albers focused on exploring materials through play and colour. Australian home hunters are increasingly looking to buy a house in an outer suburb a long way from the city centre. The ability to work from home instead of commuting into a central business district office is changing buyer tastes, data from online property sales site Domain has revealed. This change is particularly pronounced in Sydney's outer south-west where serious searches - involving home inspections and multiple viewings of property listings - soared by 27.3 per cent in the four weeks to September 6. Australian home hunters are increasingly looking to buy a house in an outer suburb a long way from the city centre. In Sydney's outer south-west where serious searches - involving home inspections and multiple viewings of property listings - soared by 27.3 per cent in the four weeks to September 6. Pictured is a Picton house Buyer interest in the Wollondilly Shire Council area - taking in the towns of Picton, Tahmoor and Bargo - was was almost triple greater Sydney's average monthly increase of 9.5 per cent. Outer suburbs enticing potential buyers Wollondilly Shire, outer south-west Sydney: up 27.3 per cent Mudgeeraba and Tallebudgera, Gold Coast hinterland: up 44.3 per cent Weston Creek, western Canberra: up 13.9 per cent Playford council, Adelaide's north: up 31.2 per cent Source: Domain Buyer Demand Indicator of serious home searches in the four weeks to September 6 Advertisement Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March, buyer interest in this bushland area along the Old Hume Highway has surged by 73.7 per cent. Picton's median house price of $617,000 is also much cheaper than Sydney's mid-point value of $986,000, CoreLogic data showed. Domain senior research analyst Nicola Powell said white collar professionals who could work from home were increasingly attracted to outer suburbs that offered lifestyle and value. 'Lifestyle locations that offer affordability where buyers can purchase larger blocks, people are seeing these outer areas,' Dr Powell told Daily Mail Australia. 'Working from home has become the new normal so they're starting to look further afield.' Outer areas of Sydney, in particular, were becoming more enticing as the digital transformation of workplaces negated the need for a long commute to work. 'While a tree-change or sea-change from higher-density living has always been appealing, the commute into the city has been a strong enough deterrent for many,' Dr Powell said. 'Many Sydneysiders will continue to work from home or split on a part-time basis, making the distance between our homes and work less crucial.' The Gold Coast hinterland area was also popular with potential buyers, with serious searches in Mudgeeraba and Tallebudgera (house pictured) soaring by 44.3 per cent in just four weeks - significantly above nearby greater Brisbane's 1.4 per cent increase. Committed searches have soared by 172.7 per cent since the start of the coronavirus crisis six months ago The Gold Coast hinterland area was also popular with potential buyers, with serious searches in Mudgeeraba and Tallebudgera area soaring by 44.3 per cent in just four weeks - significantly above nearby greater Brisbane's 1.4 per cent increase. Committed searches have soared by 172.7 per cent since the start of the coronavirus crisis six months ago. Buyer interest by city SYDNEY: Houses up 9.5 per cent, units up 4.5 per cent MELBOURNE: Houses down 13.8 per cent, units down 19.7 per cent BRISBANE: Houses up 1.4 per cent, units down 9.6 per cent PERTH: Houses up 11.4 per cent, units up 18.4 per cent ADELAIDE: Houses up 31.2 per cent, units up 14.1 per cent CANBERRA: Houses up 4.9 per cent, units down 1.0 per cent HOBART: Houses down 4.3 per cent, units up 6.3 per cent DARWIN: Houses up 43.7 per cent, units up 29.1 per cent Source: Domain Buyer Demand Indicator for the four weeks to September 6 based on advanced searches Advertisement Canberra, the home of federal public servants, is also in on the trend with buyer interest in the western suburbs of Weston Creek soaring by 13.9 per cent - more than double the Australian Capital Territory's monthly increase of 4.9 per cent. Adelaide's northern suburbs were also popular, with buyer interest soaring by 49.3 per cent in the Playford council area covering poorer suburbs like Elizabeth. This was an even bigger increase than the South Australian capital's already impressive 31.2 per cent. Melbourne was the only capital city to see a plunge in both house and apartment interest, following Stage Four lockdown bans since an August 2 on open home inspections and public auctions across the city. Interest in houses dived by 13.8 per cent in four weeks, with the slump even more severe than April during the first full month of the earlier lockdowns. Dr Powell put that down to potential buyers being uncomfortable with purchasing a home they hadn't seen. She expected a 'pretty swift' rebound to occur, particularly in the Mornington Peninsula on the edge of Port Phillip Bay once Victoria eased coronavirus restrictions and managed to contain the virus. 'Once lives return to near-normal, the commute to the office will play a less crucial role in deciding the location we reside, it may be one of the reasons for a shift in demand to Mornington Peninsula,' she said. 'While the lockdown has forcibly introduced working from home, the concept is likely to stay for businesses able to transition permanently.' Regional Victoria markets saw a surge in buyer interest despite groups of ten people or more being banned. Warrnambool, on the western end of the Great Ocean Road, saw a 63.3 per cent monthly increase in serious buyer enquiries. Premiers will be given a frank assessment of the quality of their hotel quarantine arrangements as Prime Minister Scott Morrison boosts the number of stranded Australians allowed home each week from 4000 to nearly 6000. Former health and finance department boss Jane Halton has finished her review of quarantine arrangements and will give a verbal briefing to national cabinet on Friday. State leaders will hear the results of former top bureaucrat Jane Halton's review of their hotel quarantine arrangements. Credit:Jamie Brown The state leaders have yet to see her report but federal government sources expect it to prompt a discussion of the differing levels of quality of quarantine arrangements. Ms Halton was generally happy with what she saw across the states, a source said, and Queensland was probably the best. (Newser) A release date has been set for the first part of former President Obama's memoir, and demand is expected to be "extraordinary," the New York Times reports. A Promised Land, the 768-page first installation of a two-volume set, will debut globally on Nov. 17 via Penguin Random House and be available in more than two dozen languages. The $45 book will focus on everything from the former president's early political ventures and his first run for the White House in 2008 all the way up to when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. "There's no feeling like finishing a book, and I'm proud of this one," Obama says in a statement. "I've spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency," and in this book, "I've tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office," including "all the incredible highs and lows." story continues below The AP calls the memoir "the most anticipated presidential memoir in memory," not just because of the content, but also because Obama is known to be an excellent writer, sometimes called "the most literary president since Abraham Lincoln." The Crown imprint putting out the memoir thinks so many people will want to scoop it up that it has ordered 3 million copies for the first run in the US; 1 million of those books will be printed in Germany and transported to America in more than 100 shipping containers on three ships. An Obama rep says that the former president didn't want to release the memoir before the election in November, as he didn't want it taking away from his efforts to help Joe Biden campaign for the presidency. It's not yet clear when the second volume of his memoir will hit the shelves. (Read more Barack Obama stories.) The resignations are a forceful public signal that something is seriously awry with the Justice Department under Mr. Barr. A hallmark of the department, where both of us worked, is its tradition of political independence, forged over decades since its creation in 1870. Neither of us ever heard of career civil servants resigning because they believed the attorney general was acting politically. Never and thats even accounting for the departments strong conservatives and liberals in its career ranks. Mr. Barrs bizarre project, headed by John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, was created to reinvestigate the investigators of Russian election interference and to cover ground already explored in detail by the departments inspector general. Ms. Dannehys departure casts real doubt on Mr. Barrs design to try to vindicate Mr. Trumps narrative that he was targeted in 2016 by the deep state. Ms. Dannehy poses a looming further threat to Mr. Barr. She didnt just withdraw from the investigation; she resigned from the department entirely. That means Mr. Barr cant muzzle her and, in turn, she can warn Congress and the rest of us about what prompted such a dramatic move by a highly regarded career public servant who had previously managed to oversee the investigation into the politically fraught firings of seven U.S. attorneys in the George W. Bush administration. She will have constraints like attorney-client privilege and classification. But that still leaves plenty of room to unmask Mr. Barrs shenanigans. That should happen immediately in testimony before the House of Representatives. To lay bare Mr. Barrs mischief is, in significant part, to defang it. This, not Mr. Durhams unfinished report, is what needs to happen before the election. Even in just the past week, Ms. Dannehy wasnt the only person to resign. A state prosecutor serving on Mr. Trumps presidential commission on law enforcement quit, too. And a senior Department of Homeland Security official filed a whistle-blower complaint accusing Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, of ordering him to suppress intelligence on Russian election interference and white supremacist violence, in part because it made the president look bad. These unusual actions have one thing in common: In every instance, they put the interests of Mr. Trump ahead of the countrys. Startup Tales As the Indian startup sector booms, here is where AWS sees themselves in the ecosystem As technology transforms every aspect of our lives, startups are increasingly being built as cloud-native platforms. This puts players like Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the largest cloud service providers in India, at a critical juncture. Read here to know where Navdeep Manaktala startup business for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) thinks the ecosystem is headed. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:45:07|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- More than 260 Mongolian nationals have returned home from abroad on a chartered flight on Thursday, according to Mongolia's State Emergency Commission (SEC). The Hong Kong-Ulan Bator flight with a total of 266 passengers onboard landed at the Buyant-Ukhaa International Airport here on Thursday afternoon, the SEC said in a statement. The repatriated group consisted of pregnant women, the elderly, children, the sick, and those with financial or other problems, the commission said, adding that they will be isolated at designated facilities for 21 days. Following its suspension of international commercial flights during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mongolia has repatriated around 22,000 nationals on chartered flights, trains and buses from different parts of the world, according to the commission. The Asian country planned to send a total of 13 chartered flights this month to COVID-19-hit countries to repatriate more nationals. As of Thursday, Mongolia has reported a total of 311 COVID-19 cases, all of which were imported. No local transmissions or deaths have been reported in the country so far. Enditem Two Cambodian rappers charged with inciting public discontent over the 35-year rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen are ineligible for assistance from a legal team set up by the government to defend the poor, Cambodian sources told RFA Thursday. Rappers Kea Sokun and Long Puthera were arrested this month in Siem Reap province after releasing songs criticizing the Cambodian governments handling of its border dispute with Vietnam and suggesting that Hun Sens lack of leadership had led to Cambodias economic decline. They are now being held awaiting trial on charges of incitement to commit a felony or cause social unrest under Article 495 of Cambodias Penal Code, Siem Reap Provincial Court spokesman Chhuon Sophana told RFA on Tuesday. Cambodian NGOs have now sent or requested lawyers to defend the pair, with Am Sam Athdeputy director of the rights group Licadhosaying the two rappers had only voiced their views and had not committed any crime. They had simply expressed their views through music, which was not a case of incitement. Their arrest is a violation of their basic rights, he said. Licadho is sending a lawyer to defend Kea Sokun, while the group Legal Aid of Cambodia will represent Long Puthera. Chan Chamroeun, Siem Reap provincial coordinator for the rights group Adhoc, said that he has also asked for lawyers who will request the pair be freed on bail. Phum Bunphann, a Siem Reap lawyer working for Hun Sens team of legal volunteers, meanwhile told RFA on Thursday that he cannot defend the pair, saying he can provide services only to the poor, to vulnerable women, and to women facing issues with the law. We help the poor, but we cant help everyone. Clients must meet certain criteria, he said. Flu spreads in prisons The rappers arrestspart of a sweep against youth activists, labor unionists, and environmentalistscome as Cambodian NGOs have voiced concern over inmates health amid a severe influenza outbreak in the countrys overcrowded prisons, with Adhoc member and former prisoner Ny Sokha urging Cambodias Ministry of Health to take immediate action to stop the further spread of the disease. The Prison Department should distance inmates from each other according to instructions from the Ministry of Health. When I was in prison, we had skin diseases and could easily spread infections from one person to another, he said. Ministry of Health spokesman Ly Sovann confirmed to RFA that severe influenza is spreading rapidly in the prisons, while a Ministry statement on Sept. 16 said the flu is spreading in jails, pagodas, and villages in the provinces of Takeo, Preah Vihear, Koh Kong, Battambang, and Banteay Meanchey. Though many monks fell ill last week, none tested positive for COVID-19, Sy Lovann said, adding that the flu is now spreading more quickly during the rainy season. Nuth Savana, spokesman for the Prison Department, meanwhile said outbreaks have occurred in three prisons in Koh Kong, Kampong Cham, and Preah Vihear. He provided no details on how many inmates are now infected, but said that the department is working closely with health officials to prevent a further spread. We are handling this with the same procedures that we use for Covid-19. We have also given the prisoners pills, and they are getting better, he said. New wave of arrests The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said last week that it had documented the arrest of 24 human rights campaigners since popular labor leader Rong Chhun, the president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, was taken into custody July 31, including eight in September alone. The wave of arrests come three years after opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) president Kem Sokhas September 2017 arrest over an alleged plot to overthrow the government with the help of Washington. Cambodias Supreme Court banned his party in November that year for its supposed role in the scheme. The move to dissolve the CNRP marked the beginning of a wider crackdown by Hun Sen on the political opposition, NGOs, and the independent media that paved the way for his ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) to win all 125 seats in parliament in the countrys July 2018 general election. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Richard Finney. This is a community calendar. To accommodate demand for the print edition, we ask that items be brief and include time, date, place, address, admission cost and a contact number for publication. Inclusion of items is at the discretion of the newspaper. Further information is available at 541-812-6078 or jane.stoltz@lee.net. Assistance TODAY Corvallis School District free grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for all children ages 1 to 18. Open 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Adams Elementary School, 1615 SW 35th St.; Jaguar Elementary School, 825 NW 27th St.; Lincoln Elementary School, 110 SE Alexander Ave.; Wildcat Elementary Schools, 2701 NW Satinwood St.; Cheldelin Middle School, 987 NE Conifer Blvd.; Linus Pauling Middle School, 1111 NW Cleveland Ave.; Clemens Primary School, 535 S. 19th St., Philomath; Santiam Christian School, 7220 NE Arnold Ave., Adair Village. Open 4 to 6 p.m.: Corvallis High School, 1400 NW Buchanan Ave., 16th Street entrance. Meals can be ordered a week ahead at https://tinyurl.com/csd-meal-preorder. Information: 541-757-5859. FRIDAY Emergency food boxes, by appointment, North Corvallis Ministry Center, 5050 NE Elliott Circle. Appointments: 541-220-1040. Corvallis Men's Shelter, 211 SE Chapman Place. Now serving men and women in need during the COVID emergency. Hot meal, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; food, showers and laundry available from 1 to 6 p.m.; overnight shelter not available. Information: 541-791-6691. Greater Albany Public Schools offers free grab-and-go sack lunches for all children ages 1 to 18: 11 to 11:30 a.m., Columbus Greens, Memorial Middle School, Oak Elementary School, Tangent Elementary School; 11:15 to 11:45 a.m., Lafayette Elementary School, Lake Creek Ranch; 11:20 to 11:50 a.m., Waverly Elementary School; 11:30 a.m. to noon, Albany Meadows, Sunrise Elementary School; 11:40 a.m. to 12:10 p.m., Periwinkle Elementary School, South Shore Elementary School; 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Albany Boys & Girls Club; Takena Elementary School; noon to 12:30 p.m., Lexington Park, South Albany High School, Three Lake Estates. Corvallis School District free grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for all children ages 1 to 18. Open 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. See locations in "today" announcement. Stone Soup hot lunch for all, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Hygiene Center, 211 SE Chapman Place, Corvallis. Free meal for those in need. Stone Soup lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., gymnasium, St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St., Corvallis. Free meal for those in need. Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 4 p.m., St. Vincent de Paul Society Corvallis Conference Food Pantry, campus of St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St. No appointment needed. A thrift store is in the same building; proceeds help support the pantry. Information: 541-286-4183. Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. by appointment, FISH of Lebanon, 145 Ash St. FISH also offers help with basic expenses such as rent, utilities, water, propane, prescriptions, clothing, identification cards, driver's licenses and other emergency needs. Appointments: 541-259-3200, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Free meal, 5 to 6 p.m., soup kitchen, St. Mary's Catholic Church, 815 Broadalbin St. SW, Albany. Closures The following Corvallis Transit System bus stops will be out of service today, from beginning of service until 6 p.m.: inbound Route 7 stops at 11th Street and Circle Boulevard, 13th Street and Circle, and 17th Street and Circle; and inbound Route 5 stop at 17th and Circle. Due to street work, the outbound Route 4 stop at Highland Boulevard and Circle will be out of service till further notice. Events FRIDAY "We're Puzzled," 10 a.m. to noon, table outside, Lebanon Senior Center, 80 Tangent St. Take a new puzzle or two to work on an home. Wear your mask and use the hand sanitizer provided before touching puzzles. A box will be available for receiving puzzles for later use. Fundraisers FRIDAY "Coffee for a Cause: 10th Annual Buck for Kids," Dutch Bros Coffee locations. Dutch Bros will donate $1 for every drink sold to organizations committed to creating a bright future for children. To find a location near you, visit www.dutchbros.com/locations. Government TODAY Joint Linn and Marion county commissioners meeting, 2 p.m., 1-888-330-1716, ID 3658333#. Health FRIDAY Fee-for-service clinic, 8:30 to 11 a.m., Community Outreach, Inc., 865 NW Reiman Ave., Corvallis. Cost: $100 for new patient visits; $50 for follow-up appointments. Patients can bill their own insurance if they qualify. Appointments: 541-758-3000. Rapid HIV testing, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Westminster House, 101 NW 23rd St., Corvallis. Free testing and counseling. Information: 541-740-0405. American Red Cross mobile blood drive, noon to 5 p.m., Life Bible Church, 23650 Peoria Road, Harrisburg. American Red Cross mobile blood drive, noon to 5 p.m., Northwest Hills Community Church, 3300 NW Walnut Blvd., Corvallis. Spanish-language food handler class, 1:30 p.m., Benton County Environmental Health, Sunset Building, 4077 SW Research Way, Corvallis. Information: 541-766-6841. Plan ahead Corvallis Climate Action Alliance Week of Action, Monday through Sept. 27. Information: http://corvallisclimateactionalliance.org. Support groups Alcoholics Anonymous during the COVID-19 pandemic: Local hotline, 541-967-4252, answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by members of the local AA community. Many local and global AA groups are hosting meetings virtually. You can attend virtual meetings on your computer, smartphone or by dialing in. Attendees will remain anonymous and need only introduce themselves by first name. To access both local and global meetings taking place online 24 hours a day, visit https://aaoregon-district21.org. Narcotics Anonymous: Noon to 1 p.m., 7 to 8 p.m., Room 11, First Christian Church, 602 SW Madison Ave., Corvallis. Twenty-four-hour help line: 877-233-4287. Information: www.lblna.org. Codependents Anonymous, 6 p.m., Room 13, Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 333 NW 35th St., Corvallis. Information: 541-231-1438. Crystal Meth Anonymous, 6 p.m., 115 NW Sixth St., Corvallis. Information: 541-286-0137. Sex Addicts Anonymous, 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., Guadalupe House, St. Marys Catholic Church, 706 SW Ellsworth St., Albany. Tailored for newcomers, but all are welcome. Information: 541-740-1127 or saa.albany@gmail.com. Al-Anon, 7 p.m., Conference Room 4, Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, 525 N. Santiam Highway. Those whose lives are affected by someone's drinking can find answers. Information: 541-224-6651. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Adit Ventures, a leading venture capital investment firm, is proud to be an investor in Palantir Technologies, Inc. We are looking forward to their NYSE Direct Listing on Wednesday, September 23rd. About Adit Ventures: Adit Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in California, Florida, New York, Texas, and Utah. An "Adit" is an entrance to a mine and serves as an anagram for the firm's services, since it provides Access, Diligence, Insight and works with Trusted partners across the United States and around the world. Its business model focuses on purchasing shares from early-stage investors or employees seeking liquidity before the company has a liquidity event. Adit's investment objective is 3x return of capital within a 3-5-year time frame. Adit buys both primary and secondary shares on behalf of investors from a global network of relationships cultivated over their 100 years of principal investing experience. Adit seeks to capitalize on long-term secular trends in the global economy where they see dynamic areas of growth. It is in these sectors Adit sees the best opportunities for long term capital appreciation and to make a positive impact on the world by improving quality of life, while generating a healthy return on our invested capital in alignment with their investors & principles. Current sectors of interest include AI & Machine Learning, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Defense, Educational Technology, FinTech, Health Tech, IoT, Life Sciences, Media, Shared Economy and Space. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Cohesity, Decision Sciences International Corporation, Esme Learning, Klarna, Netskope, Palantir, SpaceX and Turo among others. Please visit www.aditventures.com for further information. Adit Ventures uses a 10-step investment process incorporating its proprietary research on both quantitative and qualitative factors. Quantitative: -Valuation at entry is a critical discipline, as this is one thing we control. -Revenue growth rate drives future valuation, so is a key element to Adit. -Margins and cash flows are vital to an enterprise's success, and drive valuation. -Scalability of business across various markets is a big factor in the valuation of any business. -Profitability: A clear path to profitability is essential to any investment. Qualitative: -Is it a good business model, in a good sector with long term secular tends driving it? -Is there a good management team, with depth and experience in meeting challenges, competitive threats and executing its goals? -Does it have a good capital base, board of directors/investors and well-regarded savvy Venture Sponsors? -Does the business adhere to fundamental ESG principles with character and integrity in its practice? -Will the business make a difference by adding value for its customers, it's employees and the community it serves, as well as its shareholders? Adit has invested in some of the world's leading companies with exits in GoPro, Lemonade, Spotify, Snap and Lyft. Contact: Julie Klugman [email protected] www.aditventures.com SOURCE Adit Ventures Related Links https://www.aditventures.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) - COVID-19 testing firm LabX founder Thomas Navasero recommended the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to increase the required sensitivity rate in giving antigen tests. Navasero told CNN Philippines' Rico Hizon on Thursday the required sensitivity rate for antigen tests must be raised from 80 percent, as stated in the IATF Resolution No. 69, to around 97 percent with one to three false negatives and zero false positives. "We can use a very accurate antigen test in prevalent-based community like in the Philippines which has 3,000 cases per day," he said. Navasero clarified that the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendation does not prohibit the use of antigen tests, especially in domestic travel. The WHO directive, he said, gives guidelines to countries on how to use antigen tests and what kind are suited for each nation. The LabX founder emphasized that antigen tests will be more effective if they have higher sensitivity and specificity rates. In his interview with CNN Philippines on July 16, Navasero explained that sensitivity in antigen tests measures the false negative test results for the virus, adding that specificity rate identifies if a patient is positive of the virus. The Department of Health announced on Monday the IATF will review Resolution No. 69, which allows the use of rapid antigen testing for domestic air travel, following the recent pronouncement of WHO that such tests are not advisable to be use in borders. Antigen tests have been considered as an alternative to the "gold standard" reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing in detecting COVID-19 among probable patients. "This is such a pivotal time in our country. Zeta is working hard to get our communities to the polls and to be counted in the Census, because our voices matter," said Valerie Hollingsworth Baker, Zeta International "Centennial" President. "By arming women with a greater understanding of the issues that matter most, they can select national, state and local candidates who best meet their needs," Hollingsworth Baker stated. The study, which represents diverse voices of Black and White women, uncovered that COVID-19 is an important issue for all; however, White women are 46% more likely than Black women to report increased anxiety and stress related to the new virus. Whereas, 61% of Black women rank the rise in hate crimes and racism as their top concern, which increased 20 percentage points from Dec. 2019 to Sept. 2020. Zeta members, Kendra Hatcher King, National Brand Director for the sorority and executive at Publicis Sapient, will review the study findings and moderate the panel discussion; and Dr. Rochelle Ford, Dean, Elon University School of Communications will moderate the interactive discussion with the audience. The topline report will be available at www.zphib1920.org on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020 following the townhall. The Divine Nine sorority will also host virtual regional townhall meetings on Oct. 5, 13 and 19 to continue the dialogue. "The division in our country is at an all-time high. Our study helps foster a mutual understanding among diverse groups of women," said King. "It is our hope that these discussions will help bridge existing gaps and create greater solidarity," she added. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated was founded in 1920 on the campus of Howard University and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Zeta has initiated a diverse membership of more than 125,000 college-educated women with over 950 chapters in North America, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East. For more information about Zeta, visit www.zphib1920.org. SOURCE Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. Related Links http://www.zphib1920.org In the second message, he was told "not to worry" because there would be a transitional cabinet and that he would be part of that ministerial team, precisely because his father was a member of that party. "We must be aware that Popular Action is a party which has a democratic tradition, and I'm sure that what has happened to me does not represent the party," he said. Remarks were made during a meeting with representatives of the Association of Municipalities of Peru (AMPE), the Network of Urban and Rural Municipalities of Peru (Remurpe) and the National Assembly of Regional Governments (ANGR). The event took place at Lima Convention Center. Hoy, con profunda conviccion democratica, debo senalar que las dos personas cercanas a Accion Popular que se comunicaron conmigo son Daniel Huarcaya Clemente y Santiago Arancibia Ortega. Ambos, de manera inoportuna, me enviaron mensajes que considero impropios. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/sAzfTXvpJM - Yusuf Asamu Olalere has made himself proud as he finished from Nigerian Law School as the overall best student - That was after he graduated from UI with a first class in law - Showing appreciation to God, he said he is a pure product of grace A young Nigerian man, Yusuf Asamu Olalere, has finished his law school in a grand style as he emerged as the overall best graduating student. To honour his achievement, the Nigerian Law School gave him 12 awards to celebrate him. It should be noted that Olalere also graduated with a first-class from the University of Ibadan (UI). In his Twitter post on Tuesday, September 15, the UI graduate called himself a product of grace, adding that he is eternally grateful to God. Read his tweet below: His tweet has drawn so many engagements that people sent him congratulatory messages from far and wide. There were some who chipped in pieces of advice on how he should chart his future path. Below are people's reactions to his tweet: Isaac Light said he is attached to the student's grace, while also appreciating the effort he put into achieving the feat. A collage showing the best graduate student. Photo source: Yusuf Asamuu Olalere Source: UGC According to William Kaura Abba, the awards are fruits of his labour, adding that he will achieve greater things. Sir Phransisco prayed for him to keep attaining greater heights. Fatai K prayed for Allah to grant Olalere long life and good health to reap the fruit off his labour. Abu Francis is hoping that Olalere brings sanctity to the bar and bench. Cathy J noted that Olalere's achievement was no mean feat, praying for grace for him to achieve more. Chidinma prayed for God to make him greater than his expectations. Meanwhile, YEN.com.gh earlier reported that a Nigerian lady took to social media to celebrate her win after graduating as one of the top 10 best graduating students in corporate law out of over 1,700 students. The young lady with the Twitter handle @_omobanjo, who is part of those that were recently called to bar, shared the good news on the platform. In other related news, Chika Eze on Monday, June 8, was sworn to the State Bar of Georgia. According to her, the ceremony was performed by Judge Emily K Richardson of the Fulton County Superior Court. With the swearing-in, Chikas name can now be found in the Georgia attorney directory and also the Nigerian Bar Association. She is under 30 years and has two bar licenses in the US and Nigeria. Source: YEN.com.gh ST. HELENA A 65-room hotel proposal next to Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch got its first public hearing this week. The Planning Commission heard presentations from city staff and applicant Ted Hall of Long Meadow Ranch, asked questions about the project, and heard five public comments. After three and a half hours, the commission adjourned and were scheduled its next meeting Sept. 17. In a presentation to the commission, applicant Ted Hall of Long Meadow Ranch said the project would generate $2.6 million in tax revenue for the city increasing the General Fund by 17% and bring more foot traffic to downtown businesses located a short walk or bike ride north of the hotel. Hall made the case that adding lodging to the existing restaurant would have less impact than building a new hotel from the ground up. Were not a new hotel, he said. Were part of an existing food and beverage business. He said the lodging would reinforce Long Meadow Ranchs values of agriculture, sustainability and farm-to-table dining. The whole premise is to expand the campus in a way that will deepen our guests understanding of how food is grown for the table, he said. Hall also touted innovative solutions to impacts like water and housing. He said a new stretch of purple pipe along Mills Lane would more than offset the hotels use of city water by creating the first link in a network that will deliver recycled water from the citys soon-to-be-upgraded wastewater treatment plant to the schools, parks and vineyards along Grayson and Crane, which would no longer have to rely on potable water for irrigation. Were going to create a net water-generating project, Hall said. To offset the projects 51 new jobs, the developers would pay $3.2 million to the city affordable housing trust fund, with $1 million earmarked for the nonprofit Our Town St. Helena to buy the Phelps property south of the hotel site. The so-called Phelps Village project could include at least 30 workforce housing units. Mary Stephenson of Our Town praised the applicants, city staff and Councilmembers David Knudsen and Mary Koberstein for negotiating an unprecedented development agreement that requires a hotel developer to actually make a genuine contribution to housing. This sets a historical precedent for housing impact fees for the county, Stephenson said. The developers will be required to build new storm drains and sidewalks, upgrade the crosswalk at Highway 29 and Charter Oak Avenue, and realign Mills Lane with Grayson Avenue, forming a four-way intersection with Highway 29. Fees and capital expenditures by the developers would total $9.7 million. Environmental impact Some opponents, including environmental groups, say the project needs a full environmental impact report and question the methodology of the less extensive mitigated negative declaration (MND) prepared by consultants. Water Audit, which has sued St. Helena and other Napa County jurisdictions over water management, questioned whether the MND underestimates the projects water needs, and also questioned whether the city water system would be able to deliver the necessary water. Grant Reynolds, a director of Water Audit, called for the city to defer a decision on the hotel until it investigates whether the use of the Stonebridge wells is reducing flows in the nearby Napa River. Mike Hackett of Angwin raised the same concern. Youre on the cusp of a very dangerous situation in St. Helena water-wise, Hackett said. Thinking about any hotel projects or any development at this point in time is foolhardy and leaves you open for litigation, he added. In an Aug. 17 letter, an attorney for the Bell Canyon Watershed Alliance said the project would transform the property into an event center, and argued that the MND doesnt properly analyze the effects on water, groundwater, traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality and historic resources. Establishing a baseline Attorney Michelle Black of the law firm Chatten-Brown, Carstens & Minteer said Farmstead engages in activities that werent allowed by its 2009 permit, such as retail sales at the Logan-Ives House, an outdoor cafe, and various events. She said the new impacts should be compared with what was originally allowed, not whats currently happening. The preparation of an MND for a 53,200-square-foot addition to enable operation of a year-round events center is laughable, Black wrote. Commissioner Bobbi Monnette raised similar questions about using existing conditions rather than those that were permitted in 2009 as a baseline for the projects impact. How can I look at that data and feel that it is accurate? said Monnette, adding that shes complained in the past about loud concerts at Farmstead. It is not factoring in all the changes to the environment that have happened with the current use that went beyond the use permit. Assistant City Attorney Ethan Walsh defended the use of existing conditions as a benchmark. He said it would be difficult to use the old information from 2009 and do the environmental analysis for changes that have already occurred and been on that site for several years now. Hall said the applicants are not requesting any expansion of use beyond our current activities. He said Farmstead obtained building permits to convert the former Whiting Nursery into an auxiliary kitchen and meeting space in 2012. These changes that we made were done with overt city approval, Hall said. He said Farmstead holds ancillary events that are completely consistent with what any typical restaurant would undertake. Checks all the boxes St. Helena resident Steve Goldfarb, a board member of Our Town St. Helena, said the project checks all the boxes in terms of what kind of development we want in this community. This is an opportunity for us to get back on track so that this city can do the things that this city said it was going to do for the community for as long as I have been here, he said. We cant do that now because we dont have any money in this town. Jim Sweeney of St. Helena praised the Halls and said approving the hotel is critical to the community. Former Mayor Alan Galbraith also offered his support, citing St. Helenas declining sales taxes from downtown retail. The Farmstead project is a vital shot in the arm for downtown retail, he said. If approved by the commission, the hotel will go before the City Council, which will have to approve the development agreement and various entitlements. Watch Now: Hotel Dos & Donts! Here Are a Few Ways You Can Make Your Hotel Stay Better! You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com. 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. When protesters came face to face with Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) officers downtown May 30, the anger and confusion from the crowd was palpable. Why are you dressed like that? one protester shouted toward the officers, who were covered in riot gear: protective helmets and gloves and armed with batons and as protesters would soon realize tear gas canisters. When someone in the crowd, as IMPD alleges, threw a water bottle, the officers responded with tear gas a chemical agent banned in war and chaos ensued, resulting in an injured officer and civilian deaths. It isnt just about riot gear and weapons, but the militarization of policing is also about the violent tactics and intimidation used to subdue suspects, experts said. Thomas Stucky, association professor of criminology at IUPUI, said there is an inherent contradiction between the military and policing that makes the militarization of police potentially problematic. The military is very much a group setting and involves a specific objective they work together to meet, Stucky, a former police officer, said. Police work is very different. It involves discretion and individual choices on the part of the officer. History of militarization The militarization of police, however, is not new, and certainly not unique to Indianapolis. While the War on Drugs in the 1970s and the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s was notorious for an increase in police militarization, the process actually started during Prohibition in the 1920s. To combat bootlegging and mafia activity, police throughout the country began stocking up on semiautomatic weapons and tactical vehicles. In recent years, the militarization of police has made headlines in Ferguson, Missouri, when officers showed up to protests following the death of Michael Brown in tanks and tactical gear. In Indianapolis, activists view IMPD and Indiana State Police (ISP) officers arriving to protests with riot gear as proof officers are trying to escalate situations. While police say they want better relations with the community theyre sworn to protect and serve, residents say such tactics do little to build trust and a positive relationship. They came trying to start s**t, one protester said May 30, referencing IMPD officers near Monument Circle. We dont have helmets and s**t, we just got on regular clothes. We arent trying to start anything. Stucky said the most effective course of action to bridge the gap between officers and civilians would be to have conversations and building better relationships. Id like to tell you I have the blueprint for how to do that, Stucky said. Relationships are built over time and nurtured and developed over time. Good relationships recognize that experiences may be different. Stucky said both parties, police departments and communities, need to work together to come to a mutual understanding. Its absolutely clear that within the African American community, their perspectives and experiences have been very different than majority communities, Stucky said. We would all be well served to start from a place of trying to understand different perspectives. That discussion has to start with an open mind and requires hard work from both sides. Stucky said, however, he understands why civilians, particularly Black civilians, would feel a heightened sense of danger when police show up to protests in riot gear. Mat Davis, the leader of the Indiana Racial Justice Alliance (IRJA), frequently reminds anyone at protests that Police dont de-escalate a g*****n thing. This belief has led Davis and the IRJA to call for defunding IMPD and reallocating funds to community organizations to prevent crimes before they happen by addressing the root causes. Clashes over funding Despite calls from the community and Indy10 Black Lives Matter, Mayor Joe Hogsett proposed earlier this year that IMPD would receive more funding in the 2021 fiscal year. Next year, IMPD will receive $261 million, roughly $7.8 million more than the department received in the 2020 budget. While nothing in the budget confirms any of this money will go toward tactical gear, some community members have expressed concern that more funding will ultimately lead to more militarization of the police and more civilian deaths in Indianapolis. Before Hogsetts 2021 budget was released, the ACLU of Indiana released the following statement: IMDPs budget makes up more than 30% of the citys budget. As Mayor Hogsett works with the city council to begin the 2021 budget process, we must shift resources away from law enforcement and towards Black and Brown community-based initiatives that support true safety, health and well-being. We can demand that our local officials, including city council members and mayors, stop allocating funds for more officers and more militarized equipment. Statistically, when police are more militarized, Black and brown communities are more likely to be negatively impacted, according to a 2018 study by Northwestern University. In the study, researchers found militarized police units are more often deployed in areas with high concentrations of African Americans, even after adjusting for local crime rates and other community rates. But there is no firm evidence that SWAT teams lower an agencys violent crime rate or the rates at which officers are killed or assaulted. However, the study did find that the more militarized the police are, citizens are more likely to engage negatively with police and have a distrust of officers. Stucky, the IUPUI professor, said he isnt surprised by the findings, arguing that by showing up in riot gear, police are implying they are ready for a fight and view the public as a threat. Toxic to mental health Dr. Carrie Dixon, a psychologist and member of the Indiana Association of Black Psychologists, knows firsthand the impact police brutality and a fear of police in general can have on the mental health of Black individuals. Moreover, she said police officers, particularly white police officers, have a fear of Black people ingrained in them. History has shown that white officers do not perceive compassion as readily when theyre dealing with a Black person as they do while dealing with white people, Dixon said. Black people, they see as dangerous, whether conscious or unconscious. White policemen are more apt when they see someone in mental health crises, they are more apt to see that person as being dangerous if its a Black person. Its just in their DNA. The issue of mental health and military-style policing has come under scrutiny following the death of Daniel Prude, 41, in Rochester, New York. Police were initially called to respond to Prudes mental health crisis in March. After an altercation which included Prude having a bag placed over his head as he sat naked in the street Prude died a week later from complications from asphyxia. A day before his death, Prude had been in the hospital following another mental health episode. Many organizers throughout Indianapolis, including NiSean Jones of Black Out for Black Lives, voiced concern about the training individuals go through before becoming police officers. It should take longer to become an officer than it does a beautician, Jones told a group during a protest. On average, a cosmetology license takes 1,400 hours, whereas police officers need just 672 hours of basic training to join the force. Part of that training, according to Dixon, should include how to best handle mental health issues in those they are apprehending to avoid unnecessary injury or violence. Policemen need to learn to understand mental illness and how to de-escalate the problem, Dixon said. They cant do that by yelling and threatening someone who is already out of control. They need training on that, along with training of how to respectfully restrain a subject, especially one who is under mental duress. In a previous interview with the Recorder, Indiana State Police (ISP) Superintendent Doug Carter conceded officers are expected to be superhuman, but getting changing the current style of policing to one community residents are advocating for would take decades. Many in the community dont feel they can wait decades, however. If you want to see change happen for the better, Stucky said, continuing to do what youve been doing may not be the best approach. Contact staff writer Breanna Cooper at 317-762-7848. Follow her on Twitter @BreannaNCooper. Police with masks, shields and batons stand on the south side of Washington and Meridian streets May 31, facing protesters on the other side. (Photo/Screenshot from Recorder video) Covid update: India allows sanitiser, mask export; Russia vaccine deal From the Government of India lifting the ban on export of many medical items, to an Indian pharmaceutical major striking a deal with Russia for the latter's vaccine - here are the top news updates on the Covid-19 pandemic. The government has ended curbs on export of sanitisers, 2/3 ply face masks and PPE (personal protection equipment) kits. However, export of diagnostic kits and N95/FFP2 masks is still subject to a monthly quota. Meanwhile, Dr Reddy's Laboratories announced an agreement with Russia over the Sputnik-V vaccine. Russia said that it will provide the company with 10 crore doses following approval from Indian regulators for which Dr Reddy's will conduct Phase 3 trials locally. The Sputnik-V was the first Covid vaccine to be approved, though after only 2 phases of trials. Internationally, one of the most promising vaccine candidates - developed by Oxford university and pharma AstraZeneca - has run into fresh hurdles in the United States of America, where the authorities have paused trials to see if there's any safety issue. Meanwhile, in Spain, some volunteers reportedly quit the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial over reports regarding AstraZeneca. In India, among the newest cases are government functionaries like Union minister Nitin Gadkari, Karnataka Home minister Basavaraj Bommai, and politicians like Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta. Watch the full video for more updates regarding the spread of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus. ...read more We are telling you when and why the flags for the United States of America or Arizona are flown at half-staff. We'll also toss in those notice An unrepentant prankster who dived into a zoo aquarium is also accused of breaking into an emu enclosure and fighting with them. Mohammed Ali Khawaja, 30, was filmed by laughing friends swimming with fish in his boxer shorts at Sydney Zoo on July 27. The video shot by Richie Chaalan enraged the owners of the zoo in Eastern Creek, western Sydney, they vowed to press charges. Khawaja pleaded not guilty to three charges in Blacktown Local Court on Thursday, which revealed his alleged mischief wasn't just aquatic. Unrepentant prankster Mohammed Ali Khawaja, 30, who dived into a zoo aquarium, is also accused of breaking into an emu enclosure and fighting with them He is also accused of 'causing two emus distress by chasing and pretending to fight them'. 'Mak', as his friends call him, is charged with behaving in an offensive manner in public, entering an animal enclosure, and entering enclosed land to interfere with a business. Mr Chaalan made no apologies for the aquarium intrusion, claiming to Daily Mail Australia in July that Sydney Zoo was in the wrong. He could be heard laughing on the video as his mate Mak swam into view on the viral video. 'What the f*** is that,' Mr Chaalan says as he laughs hysterically while the aquarium intruder ducks and dives in and between the fish. Another friend can also be seen filming Mak's antics. Mr Chaalan told Daily Mail Australia the stunt wasn't planned. 'My friend is a big fish lover and thought it would be good idea to jump in while we were visiting the zoo,' he said. 'We have no regrets and are hoping to do it again.' Khawaja, 30, was filmed by laughing friends swimming with fish in his boxer shorts at Sydney Zoo on July 27 Khawaja pleaded not guilty to three charges in Blacktown Local Court on Thursday, which revealed his alleged mischief wasn't just aquatic He was unfazed about threats of police and legal action and accused Sydney Zoo of animal cruelty. 'They're the ones in the wrong by entrapping aquatic life against their will,' he said. 'I don't think they found out yet,' Mr Chaalan commented online after a friend asked what happened to the aquarium intruder. 'I can't believe he done that,' he captioned the footage. The video sparked an angry response from Sydney Zoo, which slammed the men involved. Richie Chaalan filmed his mate Mak swimming in the aquarium at Sydney Zoo (pictured) Mr Chaalan told Daily Mail Australia Mak is a 'big fish lover' who thought it would be good idea to get in the aquarium 'Your behaviour is unacceptable and completely idiotic,' the zoo posted online. 'You are trespassing and we have reported you to the police, who will contact you shortly. 'Your conduct is offensive. You've jumped a safety barrier to get into this position and you have compromised the welfare of our precious animals. 'Our lawyers and the police will be taking further action.' In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, Sydney Zoo managing director Jake Burgess described the men's behaviour as 'appalling'. 'This not only jeopardises their own safety but more importantly the welfare of the animals at Sydney Zoo,' he said. Khawaja will return to court on February 9. China lauded the success of its vocational and jobs schemes in the troubled Xinjiang region on Thursday, just days after the US government said they were being operated from facilities run like "concentration camps". Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in the resource-rich region, where rights groups say as many as one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps. US customs said Monday it would bar a raft of Chinese products from Xinjiang over fears of forced labour, saying "religious and ethnic minorities are... forced to work in heinous conditions with no recourse and no freedom". Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told reporters: "This is not a vocational centre, it is a concentration camp." But Beijing says the centres are for vocational training, necessary for counter terrorism efforts and to provide education for alleviating poverty. On Thursday the government published a white paper staunchly defending its policy in the region, where it says training programmes, work schemes and better education mean life has improved. The report says Xinjiang has "vigorously implemented employment projects, enhanced vocational training, and expanded employment channels and capacity". It says vocational training for millions has improved the quality of the workforce. "Xinjiang has built a large knowledge-based, skilled and innovative workforce that meets the requirements of the new era," the report reads. Training includes teaching written and spoken Mandarin, labour skills and giving knowledge of urban life, according to the report, which says rural people have started businesses or taken employment in factories after state support. Every year between 2014 and 2019, Xinjiang gave "training sessions" to an average of 1.29 million urban and rural workers, it says, adding that employment policies "meet the people's needs (and) improve their wellbeing". Story continues However, the white paper warns there is a low level of vocational skills and says "terrorists, separatists and religious extremists" have encouraged the public not to learn Chinese, to "reject modern science, and refuse to improve their vocational skills". Swedish clothing giant H&M said this week it was ending its relationship with a Chinese yarn producer over accusations of "forced labour" in Xinjiang, which is China's largest cotton growing area. Beijing has denied claims of forced labour and in Tuesday's report said it would take "resolute action" against it. The EU meanwhile has urged China to allow independent observers to travel to the highly surveilled region. China this week said experts were "welcome" but did not detail if they would be allowed free access to the controversial faciltiies. State media frequently shows apparently happy vocational students studying or working in the large facilities. But rights groups have warned of forced detentions and political indoctrination as part of a campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to erase the ethnic group's identity and culture. In a white paper on Xinjiang in March, China defended its controversial security crackdown and said nearly 13,000 "terrorists" have been arrested there since 2014. rox/apj/dan Further support will depend on transparency in the selection process. The European Union and the United States take note of a decision taken by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, to appoint a commission that will select candidates for the position of the chief of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). This is announced by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine on Twitter on September 17. "The European Union and the United States take note of the Ukrainian parliament's decision to appoint members to the commission to choose the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor. The commission needs to embark on a transparent process with candidates' integrity and merits at its core. Our further support will depend upon it," it said. Read alsoSAPO chief selection: Rada appoints commission members despite western partners' warning Changing SAPO's chief: Recent developments TRENTON, N.J., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Loop, the global circular shopping platform launched last year by TerraCycle, announced that it is now available in every ZIP code in the 48 contiguous states. This marks a milestone as the platform's initial pilot phase is now expanded to an unlimited number of users nationwide. Since its launch in 2019 in the Northeast U.S. and Paris, France and, most recently in the UK in July, Loop has seen substantial growth in its brand partners and product assortment now with over 80 brands and 400 products globally and more than 100,000 people signed up for the service. Loop enables consumers to shop for brands in durable packaging that is reused until the end of its life, creating a circular system designed to put an end to disposable single-use packaging. From global companies such as Unilever and Nature's Path to independently owned businesses such as Reinberger Nut Butters, Melanin Essentials and Soapply, brands of all sizes in multiple categories have joined Loop and rethought their packaging to make it durable. "Consumers across the country have urged us to bring Loop to them so we've scaled as quickly as possible to make that happen," said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Loop and TerraCycle. "With consumers shopping more and more online this year, the need for our sustainable, waste-free solution has become even more important." As of today, U.S. consumers can order over 100 products from more than 30 brands in categories ranging from beauty to grocery to household goods with that assortment expected to double by year's end. While available solely online today, Loop will be available in-store when it is embedded in its retail partners brick and mortar spaces in 2021. Next year, consumers will be able to shop for Loop products in select Kroger stores in the United States. Also in 2021, Loop is scheduled to expand to Canada, Australia and Japan. How Loop works: Loop customers can place orders at www.loopstore.com (US), www.maboutiqueloop.fr (France) or www.loopstore.co.uk. They receive their durable products in Loop's exclusively designed shipping tote. After use, consumers place the empty containers back into the Loop tote and go online to schedule a pickup from their home. In the future, customers will be able to drop off empty containers at retail locations. Loop cleans the packaging and will promptly replenish products as needed to the consumer. About Loop Loop is an initiative from TerraCycle, www.terracycle.com, an innovative waste management company whose mission is to Eliminate the Idea of Waste. Operating nationally across 20 countries, TerraCycle partners with leading consumer product companies, retailers, cities, and facilities to recycle hard to recycle waste. Loop has been designed to addresses the issue of waste at its source by providing consumers a circular shopping platform while encouraging manufacturers to own and take responsibility for their packaging on the long term. To arrange Interviews with Tom Szaky and/or a Loop partner please contact Eric Rosen at [email protected] or 215-651-9393. Contact: Eric Rosen, [email protected], 215.651.9383 mobile SOURCE Loop Related Links https://loopstore.com/ Fayez al-Sarraj, PM of internationally-recognised govt, cites progress in talks to unify state and prepare for polls. Fayez al-Sarraj, the head of Libyas internationally-recognised government, has said he wants to quit by the end of October and hand over power to a new executive authority as efforts to find a political solution to the countrys years-long conflict gather pace. In a brief televised speech on Wednesday, al-Sarraj said United Nations-brokered talks between the countrys rival factions have led to a new preparatory phase to unify Libyan institutions and prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections. I announce to all my sincere wish to cede my functions to the next administration before the end of October at the latest, he declared from the capital, Tripoli. Al-Sarraj is head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), while eastern Libya and much of the south is controlled by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA). Haftars LNA which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia launched an offensive in April 2019 trying to capture Tripoli from al-Sarrajs government. But the campaign collapsed in June when the Turkish-backed GNA forces gained the upper hand and drove the LNA from the outskirts of the capital and other western towns, with the front lines now solidified near the central city of Sirte. Under heavy international pressure, delegates from the rival camps met earlier this month and agreed on a preliminary deal that aims to guide the country towards elections within 18 months and demilitarise Sirte. The coastal ity, which is controlled by Haftar, is the gateway to Libyas major oil fields and export terminals, also held by the 76-year-old. The LNA has blockaded energy exports since January, depriving the Libyan state of its main source of revenue, worsening living standards and contributing to protests in cities controlled by both sides. Starting gun In Tripoli, the protests fuelled tensions between al-Sarraj and the influential Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha, whom he briefly suspended last month before restoring him to his post. Talks are expected to resume soon in Geneva. This is effectively the starting gun for a new round of manoeuvring for what comes next, Tarek Megerisi, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Reuters News Agency, referring to al-Serrajs plans to step down. Ultimately itll leave the GNA as an entity, and western Libya, a bit degraded, he added. Al-Sarrajs departure could lead to new infighting among other senior GNA figures, and between the armed groups from Tripoli and the interior ministers coastal city of Misrata that wield control on the ground. The militia issue will be more vivid, said Jalel Harchaoui, a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute. Al-Sarraj has headed the GNA since it was formed in 2015 as a result of a UN-backed political agreement aimed at uniting and stabilising Libya after the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that removed Muammar Gaddafi. Despite the failings and weakness of the government he led, al-Sarraj has been seen as a moderate with whom parts of the eastern faction and their foreign allies, as well as other international players, were comfortable dealing. Al-Sarraj, who arrived in Tripoli on Wednesday after a visit to his close ally Turkey, urged negotiators to quickly name the new administration to secure a peaceful and smooth transition. Separately, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday said Turkey and Russia were close to reaching an agreement on a ceasefire and a political process to end the long-running conflict following the latest round of talks between the two power brokers in Ankara. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, told a news conference on Wednesday that Libya required a new political process. That political process needs to renew the institutions that exist and, at the same time, to move for elections in an acceptable delay, he said. There are signs of hope. Guterres said also there are promising contacts to agree on a lasting ceasefire rather than the currently existed military standstill. The wife of disgraced former MP Charlie Elphicke has revealed he turned up on her doorstep begging for help after she separated from him. Mr Elphicke, 49 - a self-proclaimed 'naughty Tory' - was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of three sexual assaults on two younger women. His wife Natalie - and successor as Dover MP - accompanied him to court throughout the trial but then announced she would divorce him less than an hour after his conviction in July. Speaking about her decision, she said she was 'angry' after her husband was convicted, leading to her publicly calling an end to their marriage. However, she has now revealed that Elphicke turned up at the door of the house that they had shared, begging to be let in, after the judge had ordered he live at home before being sentenced. Mrs Elphicke said she had little choice but to let him stay in their downstairs room, while she 'began deleting memories of their 25 years of marriage'. The disgraced MP, who was branded a 'sexual predator' that 'told a pack of lies' by a judge in court, immediately released a statement following his sentencing, announcing his intention to appeal and insisting he was innocent. And, just weeks after dumping him, mother-of-two Mrs Elphicke sensationally decided to stand by her shamed husband, who she claims had an unfair trial. She is also backing his appeal against his sex crime conviction and hasn't ruled out rekindling their relationship. Former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke, with his wife, MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London In an opinion column published in The Sun, she described hearing about her husband's infidelity in court, saying she 'couldn't believe his stupidity'. But that 'a consensual affair, however wrongful in his marriage to me, is a very different thing from being accused of sex crimes.' She gushed that her husband is 'charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful' and 'an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations.' Mrs Elphicke added: 'Following an unfair trial during the Covid-19 pandemic, I believe that Charlie was convicted in a terrible miscarriage of justice. 'It was obvious to me from reading the evidence during lockdown that the criminal allegations against him were complete nonsense, and I still believe they are. 'He is appealing his sentence and the verdict. I fully support him in that.' The MP for Dover said that after his conviction, Mr Elphicke was ordered to stay at the home he shared with his wife by a judge in anticipation of his sentencing. During that time she said he had 'so many messages of support after the verdict.' Mrs Elphicke said: 'Person after person messaged about the difference Charlie had made for our community over years of public service. Mrs Elphicke said she would fight to clear her jailed husband's name and had not ruled out getting back with him Natalie Elphicke tweeted that her marriage to the 'only man I have ever loved' was over after 25 years after he was convicted on July 30 'People wrote of his individual kindnesses and the help he had given to them. Help that had made a real difference in so many cases. 'We discussed his sentence. I looked at the guidelines. It seemed clear to me that community service should be ordered. 'A senior probation officer filed a report agreeing a community sentence was appropriate. But always the concern had to be that the court could be on a mission in sentencing, as I believed they had been during the trial.' She added that at the moment she has not decided on the couple's future. Mrs Elphicke said: 'I wanted him to continue to co-parent our teenage son while he is growing up. 'But I can't consider our future together, and he can't co-parent our son, because not only was he wrongly convicted he is now wrongly in jail.' At Mr Elphicke's sentencing hearing on Tuesday, judge Mrs Justice Whipple told him: 'You made your victims come to court. They told the truth, and you told a pack of lies - not only to the jury, but your wife, the whips and the police.' The judge said she 'considered carefully' whether the sentence should be suspended. But she told Elphicke: 'Bearing in mind the gross breach of your position of power... I am satisfied that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody.' Elphicke, 49 - a self-proclaimed 'naughty Tory' - was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of three sexual assaults on two younger women He was told he would likely serve up to half that term in prison before being released on licence. Prosecutor Eloise Marshall QC, read statements from the victims. Reading the the first victim's statement she said: 'The effect of what he did to me has had a lasting impact. 'I have found that I have a significantly increased sense of anxiety and caution when meeting and working with any man. 'I feel like things I once enjoyed have been taken away from me. 'It was not easily recovered from. It took me a long time to get back on my feet and to be able to be stable in my home and job again.' Reading the second statement, she added: 'I remember feeling trapped, frightened and constantly on edge. 'I used to freeze every time that door would open or every time I was left alone with him. 'My mental health suffered because of the emotional and psychological turmoil that he put me through. 'When he did what he was found guilty for and abused his position of authority, I was incredibly vulnerable; left with feelings of complete powerlessness and inferiority. 'Because of his acts, he stole a large part of my self-worth and my self-esteem, and he crushed a part of my spirit.' Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nageeb Gounjaria (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, September 18 2020 About 27.7 percent (1 out of 4) Indonesian children under 5 years of age remain stunted, despite massive efforts by the government. This figure from the Health Ministry's 2019 Basic Health Research (Riskedas) indicates an improvement from the 2018 national average of 31.8 percent. But with a stunting prevalence of 42.6 percent, East Nusa Tenggara one of the archipelago's most deprived and neglected regions is perhaps a better gauge of the nation's success, if not trials and tribulations, in its ongoing battle against this scourge. Stunting, a term that conjures up images of film doubles engaged in death-defying moves, actually refers to a condition where undernourished children suffer reduced growth of body and brain. The more conspicuous sign is a shorter stature or low height for age, or a low weight for age in the case of extreme undernourishment, a condition called wasting. Less apparent, though more serious, is the deleterious effect on the nervous system, impairing cognitive and learning abilities. Stunted and wasted children are inexorably condemned to a life of protracted pain and suffering, if they manage to avoid a premature death. A weakened immune system exposes them to a litany of diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia. A compromised brain drastically lowers their academic achievement. 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 While several BJP leaders are waiting for a chance to be inducted into the state Cabinet, those who defected from the Congress and JD(S) are also aspiring for ministerial berths Kalaburagi: Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa on Thursday said the much-awaited expansion of his Cabinet will be discussed during his visit to New Delhi, where he will also be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Union ministers regarding the development of the state. Yediyurappa, who was in Kalaburagi to take part in Kalyana Karnataka Utsav programme, left for Delhi. "I'm directly going to Delhi from here, I will be there tomorrow and the day after. Prime Minister has given time, seven to eight ministers (Union Ministers) have also given time (for meeting)," Yediyurappa said. Speaking to reporters, he said during the visit he will hold discussions regarding Cabinet expansion and the development of the state. "I will meet concerned Ministers and the Prime minister... I will return to Bengaluru on 19 September," he added. During the visit, Yediyurappa is expected to meet top BJP leaders including BJP national president JP Nadda, during which the discussion on Cabinet expansion is likely to come up, party sources said. Cabinet expansion or reshuffle is expected to be a tightrope walk for the 77-year-old leader, considering too many aspirants. While several of the old guard are waiting for a chance to be inducted into the ministry, those who defected from the Congress and JD(S) like AH Vishwanath, R Shankar and MTB Nagaraj, who are now BJP MLCs, are also aspiring for slots. The Cabinet currently has 28 members and six berths are still vacant. There are also strong speculations about the possible change in leadership in the future, considering Yediyurappa's age. However it has been rejected by senior party leaders like its state president Nalin Kumar Kateel, Minister R Ashoka among others. Flood relief, development projects related to states and GST compensation are the key issues that are likely to figure during the chief minister's meeting with Modi and Union ministers. Karnataka has estimated the loss due to the recent floods to be around Rs 8,071 crore, and is seeking for enhanced relief from the Centre. The BJP-ruled Karnataka has opted for the first among the two options provided by the Centre for borrowing, to meet the shortfall in GST revenues, under which the state will be eligible for total compensation of Rs 18,289 crore. Yediyurappa's travel to Delhi, comes ahead of the Monsoon Session of the Karnataka legislature from 21 to 30 September, during which the Opposition has decided to corner the government on flood and COVID-19 management, financial condition of the state, among other things. Former President John Dramani Mahama, has reiterated his promise to upgrade the Amantin Health Centre in the Bono East Region to the status of a polyclinic if elected President on December 7. Mr Mahama, ahead of the 2016 polls, made the same promise to the people of Amantin but lost the election to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The NDC flagbearer, who was speaking at a durbar of chiefs and elders of Amantin on Thursday, 17 September 2020, reiterated his commitment to the earlier promise. Mr Mahama noted: In 2016, I came before you the chiefs and people and made a promise to build you a polyclinic. tin5 It is a promise I remain committed to and will honour when I become President, Mr Mahama said. The NDC flagbearer also urged the people of Amantin to participate in the population census scheduled to take place in 2021. He indicated that taking part in the 2021 census will help determine their population size and aid in the decision to upgrade the community to become a district so it can experience the development that comes with becoming a district, including a police station, hospital among others. For farmers in the community, the NDC flagbearer said he would ensure that an agricultural mechanisation centre is built and equipped with ploughs, tractors, a boom sprayer and other equipment, which will provide services for farmers. The farmers can, however, pay for the services after harvesting their crops. Mr Mahama expressed optimism that this intervention would entice the youth to venture into farming. The NDC flagbearer also promised to build a dining hall and other needed for facilities for the Amansie Senior High School. For his part, the Chief of Amantin, Osabarima Nana Owusu Ababio II, called for peace ahead of the December polls. The NDC flagbearer is currently on a tour of the Bono East Region. ---classfmonline Powerful storms with heavy rainmaking capabilities appeared over the coast of central Vietnam in NASA provided infrared imagery on Sept. 17. NASA's Infrared Data Reveals Heavy Rainmakers Tropical cyclones are made up of hundreds of thunderstorms, and infrared data can show where the strongest storms are located. That is because infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach highest into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures. On Sept. 17 at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 UTC), the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite revealed a large area of the most powerful thunderstorms (yellow) were around Noul's center where cloud top temperatures were as cold as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). Those storms were mostly in the western quadrant of the storm and over the central Vietnam coast and they extended over the South China Sea. Strong storms with cloud top temperatures as cold as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6. degrees Celsius) surrounded the center and were generating large amounts of rain. Noul was encountering some northeasterly vertical wind shear. That is, outside winds blowing from the northeast and pushing the bulk of clouds and precipitation toward the southwest of the center of circulation. National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF) is a governmental organization belonging Vietnam Meteorological Hydrological Administration (VMHA). NCHMF has authority to issue forecasting/warning information for weather, climate, hydrology, water resource, marine weather (i.e. hydrometeorology) and provide hydrometeorology services. NHCMF has issued coastal warnings for central Vietnam. Those warnings can be found on their website: https://nchmf.gov.vn/KttvsiteE/en-US/2/index.html. Noul's Status on Sept. 17 At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), Noul had maximum sustained winds near 45 knots. It was located over the coastline of central Vietnam, near latitude 15.9 degrees north and longitude 110.9 degrees east, about 191 nautical miles east of Da Nang, Vietnam. Noul was moving to the west and is forecast to move across Laos and Thailand over the next couple of days as it weakens due to interaction with land. NASA Researches Earth from Space For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration. ### By Rob Gutro NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The Indian Railways will soon start levying a user fees as part of train fares for redeveloping railway stations and modernising infrastructure for bringing in investment, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Thursday. The user development fees model will be used by the national transporter for the first time. User Development Fee (UDF) is part of the tax paid by air passengers. UDF is charged at various airports and the rate of UDF varies from airport to airport based on various factors. Railways plans to levy the user fees across nearly 700-1000 railway stations. We are going to keep a very small amount for the user charge. We will issue a notification for the user charge for all stations including both who are getting redeveloped and those which are not. When the redevelopment of the stations gets completed the money will go to the concessionaires, till then that money will go to the railways for improving facilities across stations. It will be an affordable amount, but it is important to levy if we want to provide world class facilities similar to the airport developments. We want to upgrade all our major railway stations, railway board CEO VK Yadav said. We will not levy the charge across all our 7,000 stations but all major stations where the footfall of passengers is increasing over the next five years. It will be done in about 10-15% of all our stations where we expect the footfall to increase, he added. This comes in the backdrop of the governments plan to bring in private investment in the national carrier. The railways plans to redevelop 50 railway stations, and monetise its land. The redeveloped hubs will be called Railopolis, according to the railways. It will lease the land out for 60 years for commercial purposes. We want railways to drive Indias growth story. In countries like Japan and South Korea the growth story was also driven by railway infrastructure. We are confident going forward railways will contribute 1-2% towards Indias growth, Kant said. Apex policy think-tank Niti Aayog had, in October, pulled up the ministry of railways for delayed implementation of the Centres plan. Niti Aayog had recommended an empowered group of top bureaucrats to develop 50 stations on priority basis. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had in 2016 announced its plan of redeveloping 400 railway stations during its first tenure. As per the plan, the cost of station redevelopment project was to be met by leveraging commercial development of land and air space in and around the stations. The railway ministry also began the formal process to allow a private company to run trains on 109 routes -- a process that aims to, for the first time, open up one of the governments most prominent enterprises that has in recent decades been outpaced by the demands of a rapidly growing economy. The focus is Make in India, even the global companies that participate in this will have to follow the Make in India norms by the DPIIT. This will bring in manufacturing capacity in India. When Alstom and Bombardier can manufacture metro trains in India then why cant trains be manufactured. Everything will set up in India, Kant said. In mid-August, 2020, an unusual heat wave fixated over California, leading to a series of lightning storms across the state and numerous wildfires. Hundreds of thousands of acres were burned and tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate their homes. Below is an account of how the fires spread and officials responded to the emergency. Read the previous updates from Sept. 12-13 Read the next updates from Sept. 16-17 Updates from Tuesday, Sept. 15: 10:30 p.m. Three more victims identified in North Complex fires: Butte County Sheriffs officials announced identities of three more people who died in connection to the North Complex fires. The death toll remains at 15. The newly identified are: Jacob Albright, 74, of Feather Falls; Paul Winer, 68, of Berry Creek; and Randy Harrell, 67, of Feather Falls. 9:05 p.m. Containment in CZU Complex grows to 93%: The CZU Lightning Complex, which has burned 86,509 acres in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, was 93% contained as of Tuesday evening, Cal Fire said. Officials expect to fully contain the fires by 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 20. 8:55 p.m. SCU Complex remains 98% contained: The SCU Lightning Complex, which has burned 396,624 acres in seven Northern California counties, was 98% contained as of Tuesday evening, Cal Fire said. The fire is now in patrol status with no fire activity noted for over a week, Cal Fire said. Officials expect the fires to be fully contained on Wednesday. 8:35 p.m. Smoke from West Coast wildfires blows into East Coast cities: Wildfire smoke from the enormous fires blazing on the West Coast has made its way to the East Coast, bringing hazy conditions for the next few days, meteorologists said. A large-scale weather pattern with a ridge of high pressure blew smoke from blazes in California, Oregon, and Washington across the country and into East Coast cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 4:44 p.m. Kamala Harris sounds climate change alarm from ruins of California fires: The Democratic vice presidential nominee viewed homes leveled by the Creek Fire in the Sierra foothills outside Fresno and redoubled the tickets new message on the dangers of climate change to peoples lives, health and property. This is not a partisan issue, the California senator said. Read the story. 3:26 p.m. Evacuation warnings removed in parts of Santa Cruz County: Evacuation warnings in some portions of Santa Cruz County have been removed for the CZU Lightning Complex, Cal Fire said Tuesday afternoon. No direct threats to property remain in those areas. 3:06 p.m. Town just north of state border flattened: Phoenix, Ore., a town of 4,500 people about 20 miles from the California border, has seen maybe more wildfire destruction than any other town this year, laid to waste by the Alameda Fire, the New York Times reports. A local pastor and school bus driver who had created a charity for his hometown, Paradise, following the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, now faced disaster in his new home. Hes thrown himself into yet another relief effort. 2:48 p.m. Portland Classic reduced: The LPGA Tours Portland Classic set for this weekend has been reduced to 54 holes because of poor air quality caused by wildfires that have been burning across the West. The course and practice facilities at Columbia Edgewater Country Club remained closed Tuesday, and Wednesdays Pro-AM has been canceled. Portlands air quality has been at dangerous levels because of wildfires. 2:42 p.m. LA observatory threatened: Firefighters burned off vegetation in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles on Tuesday to protect historic Mount Wilson Observatory from the Bobcat Fire. The blaze was within 500 feet the observatory by early afternoon and crews were waiting for it, the Angeles National Forest tweeted. The blaze was just 3% contained after growing to more than 64 square miles. 2:20 p.m. Giants foiled by smoke this time: The Giants, who endured two postponements over the weekend after a coronavirus scare, have now been sidelined by smoky air from fires in the Northwest. Tuesday nights game against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park was postponed and the Giants were flying home, according to sources. They were set to start a two-game series. Read the story here. 1:35 p.m. Point Reyes partly open after Woodward Fire: Areas of the Point Reyes National Seashore unaffected by the 4,910-acre Woodward Fire have reopened; but all southern portions of the park, including Limantour Road, remain closed to visitors, officials said Tuesday. Crews completed a small burnout operation near the parks Bear Valley Visitor Center and continued to monitor hotspots withing the 95%-contained fire. We have had people frequenting the fire site and wed like to remind everyone many trails are closed, said Jordan Reeser of Marin County Fire. 1:19 p.m. Insurance problem makes cannabis farmers more vulnerable in fires: California cannabis cultivators are racing to harvest their crops amid fierce wildfires that in some cases destroy even plants that are spared by the flames. The industry suffers more than most businesses affected by fires: Cannabis crops are more difficult to insure because growing the plant is still illegal under federal law. Read the story here. 12:59 p.m. August Complex fires rage in Mendocino, Humboldt: The August Complex fires have overtaken 794,801 acres, based on new aerial surveys, officials said Tuesday. Firefighters focused on the western edge of the blaze, aided by crews from Montana, Utah, Texas and New Jersey. The complex was 30% contained, Cal Fire said. Evacuation orders for Mendocino and Humboldt counties directed people to several evacuation sites, including the Humboldt County Fairgrounds. 11:57 a.m. LNU Complex containment holds at 97%: Fire crews were putting out smoldering hotspots Tuesday in densely-forested areas of the Walbridge Fire, part of the 363,220-acre LNU Complex, a Cal Fire spokesman said. The North Bay fires were 97% contained as of Tuesday morning, with the remaining 3% located in hard-to-reach terrains, including the northeast portion of the Hennessey Fire, Cal Fire said. 11:44 a.m. Full containment expected Wednesday for SCU Complex: Firefighters patrolled the perimeter of the 98%-contained SCU Complex fires Tuesday, with full containment expected on Wednesday, according to a Cal Fire update. Officials have reported no new eruptions within the 396,624-acre complex for the past week. The flames injured six people and destroyed 222 structures as they charged across seven counties including Santa Clara, Alameda, San Joaquin and Stanislaus. 11:20 a.m. Dolan Fire south of Big Sur 40% contained: Firefighters have made progress containing the 119,488-acre Dolan Fire along Highway 1 south of Big Sur, fire officials said Tuesday. Crews prepared for a burnout operation intended to prevent the fire from moving further south of the Ventana Wilderness Area and Los Padres National Forest. The fire was at 40% containment as of Tuesday morning. 10:35 a.m. Fires at California-Oregon border 10% contained: The Slater and Devil fires burning in Klamath National Forest on the California-Oregon border have consumed 136,030 acres and are 10% contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The fires are burning in Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in California and Josephine County in Oregon. Evacuations and road closures are in place in all three counties but evacuation orders were lifted for the town of Happy Camp on the south end of the fire. The national forest is closed along with all national forests in California. 10:20 a.m. Creek Fire torching trees on uphill run: The Creek Fire raced uphill to the northeast in the San Joaquin River drainage overnight, Cal Fire reported Tuesday. Firefighters braced for increased burning day and night with expected warmer temperatures over the next two days, and will focus on holding containment lines around communities and key pathways toward developed areas, Cal Fire said. Tuesdays primary focus was Jose Basin, where fire breached lines and threatened structures a day earlier. The Creek Fire was 16% contained and had burned 220,025 acres as of Tuesday morning, Cal Fire said. 9:56 a.m. Trump denies climate change amid wildfires: On the Fifth & Mission podcast, Sacramento reporter Alexei Koseff recaps President Trumps surreal visit to California, during which he listened to Gov. Gavin Newsoms polite plea to take climate change seriously, then assured state officials that, Itll start getting cooler. You just watch. Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot told him, I wish science agreed with you. Click here to listen. 9:05 a.m. Winds muted for now in North Complex: High winds were feared overnight in Butte County where the western zone of the North Complex blaze continues to burn near Lake Oroville. But the winds, which could spread the fire, failed to materialize and arent likely to show up for at least the next two days, Cal Fire officials said. The west zone fire has raged through 76,900 acres and is 20% contained. Its part of the broader North Complex of fires in Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties that has burned a total of 269,338 acres, with 32% containment as of Tuesday morning. 8:50 a.m. Beyond Bay Area, choking air persists: Relief from putrid, dangerous air spewing from massive western wildfires wont come until later in the week or beyond, forecasters say, and hazy and gunk-filled skies might stick around even longer. Some areas of central California are unlikely to see relief until October, meteorologist Dan Borsum said; smoke from fires throughout the West is pooling in the Central Valley. Oregon officials extended an air quality alert to Thursday that was to expire on Monday. The air was so thick that Alaska Airlines announced it was suspending service to Portland and Spokane, Wash., until Tuesday afternoon. 8:19 a.m. This has been the worst air, almost ever: Clean, fresh air is starting to seem like a vague memory from before lightning-caused wildfires exploded across California. If last weekend felt particularly awful, thats because it was. Thursday through Sunday ranked among the Bay Areas dozen worst air-quality days since officials started keeping track in 1999. Read the story here. 7:52 a.m. Minimal fire burning as CZU Complex is 91% contained: Cal Fire reported minimal fire remaining Tuesday morning over the majority of the CZU Complex fire area, as firefighters continued mop up and control of hotspots. Blackened hillsides tell the story up and down coastal Highway 1 and further inland, after the blaze burned 86,509 acres in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. The fire was 91% as of Tuesday morning, Evacuation orders and warnings remained for parts of both counties. 7:38 a.m. Inmate firefighters brave conditions theyve never seen: The 1,354 incarcerated firefighters on the front lines of Californias historic blazes represent a 30% decrease from last years crew, their numbers reduced by the states early release of thousands to prevent coronavirus spread. But the crews in the field are pushing themselves to levels theyd never imagined through long and dangerous days as Cal Fire tries to do more with less. Read the gripping details of their efforts. 7:28 a.m. Weather conditions should aid firefighters: Winds near Oroville, where the west zone of the deadly North Complex fire was burning, were light overnight and not expected to pick up until Thursday or Friday, the National Weather Service said Tuesday. A system that moves in Thursday will increase winds slightly but could also bring higher humidity and lower temperatures, said meteorologist Jim Mathews. I think it will assist firefighters in their heroic efforts, he said. 7:13 a.m. In sync?: Gov. Gavin Newsom said after meeting on wildfires with President Trump that he had wanted Trump to know that we have established an engagement we would like to build on ... And yes, frankly, to state in a way that wasnt trying to take a cheap shot ... to make the argument, we believe in climate change out here. We dont believe it just because science says it; we observe it, we experience it, Newsom said. Trump while reporters were in the room Monday did not discuss global warming, preferring to talk about forest management, except to predict it will start getting cooler. As reporters were led out he said, I think were totally in sync. Read the story here. 7:02 a.m. Improving smoke conditions, light winds: Light onshore winds are expected to blow away some of the smoke thats choked the Bay Area for the past week, according to the National Weather Service. General idea is for improving conditions today through Friday, weather service tweeted Tuesday morning. Air quality index readings in much of the Bay Area were improved but still in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range with some areas of moderate conditions. Updates from Monday, Sept. 14: 9:05 p.m. Sequoia National Park closing due to fire: Sequoia National Park is implementing a full park closure, with all entrances closed, at 6 a.m. Tuesday because of the Castle Fire of the SQF Complex. Many park staff have been evacuated. The adjacent Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra remained open, but visitors will be unable to access Sequoia National Park from Highway 198 or Highway 180 out of Fresno. The Giant Forest and sequoia trees will be inaccessible to visitors. Campground fees will be refunded. Mineral King Road remained closed. Acting Park Superintendent Lee Taylor said the closure would help ensure any pending evacuation goes as smoothly as possible. 8:27 p.m. Butte County issues update on death toll, identities: The county sheriff said Monday night that the death toll is now at 15 from the North Complex fires. Of those 15, seven Berry Creek residents have been postively identified and their families have been notified. They are: John Butler, 79; Sandra Butler, 75; Jorge Hernandez-Juarez, 26; Philip Rubel, 68; Khawar Bhatti, 58; Millicent Catarancuic, 77; and Josiah Williams, 16,. 3:15 p.m. A different global warming problem where there are no fires: As President Trump dismisses the evidence of linkage between California wildfires and global warming, another huge warming problem looms in a far different environment. Two Antarctic glaciers that have long kept scientists awake at night are breaking free from the restraints that have hemmed them in, increasing the threat of large-scale sea-level rise possibly 10 feet from the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. The Washington Post reports on the new findings published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2:53 p.m. Fire smoke creates ocean cyclone: The historic wildfires raging across the West Coast have produced so much smoke that it has billowed more than 1,000 miles across the Pacific and gotten pulled into a cyclone over the ocean. Dramatic imagery from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite shows smoke traveling west across the ocean and joining the storm as it swirls counterclockwise. Read the story here. 2:33 p.m. Wildfires have destroyed more than 4,200 structures: Cal Fire reported Monday that nearly 16,500 firefighters are working to contain the states 28 major wildfires that have cost 24 lives. Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned over 3.2 million acres across the state an area larger than Connecticut. The current spate of fires that began Aug. 15 after thousands of lightning strikes has destroyed more than 4,200 structures, Cal Fire said. 2:19 p.m. Trump stunningly states that climate will get cooler: At a briefing on California wildfires, the states Natural Resources secretary urged President Trump to recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests. Wade Crowfoot added, If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think its all about vegetation management, were not going to succeed together protecting Californians. Trump retorted, It will start getting cooler, just you watch. Crowfoot said he wished the science agreed on that. I dont think science knows, actually, rejoined Trump. Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California 2:05 p.m. Crews bolster North Complex fire lines: Fire crews started a firing operation Monday to burn out vegetation along Highway 70 on the northern portion of the 264,374-acre North Complex in a bid to protect residencial areas of Plumas County, fire officials said. Crews gained an upper hand on the eastern portion of the complex as flames burned into the scars of 2018s Camp Fire, where vegetation is younger and less volatile, a spokeswoman said. Containment of the complex fires jumped to 38% as of Monday afternoon. 1:15 p.m. State insurance losses could top $13 billion: Ravenous western fires are damaging an economy already singed by the coronavirus outbreak, putting a strain on economic activity that could linger for a year or more. The credit rating agency A.M. Best estimates that insured losses from the blazes in California could top the unprecedented $13 billion recorded in 2017 when the state was hit by three of the five costliest fires in U.S. history. 12:49 p.m. Trump honors California National Guardsmen for fire rescue: President Trump on Monday awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross to seven California National Guard members who participated in a harrowing Sept. 5 chopper rescue of more than 200 people trapped by wildfire at Mammoth Pool reservoir in the Sierra.Trump pinned the medals on the rescuers at a Sacramento ceremony. 12:22 p.m. Firefighters work to check expansion of August Complex blaze: Firefighters on Monday bulldozed containment lines on the western and southern perimeters of the 30%-contained August Complex fire, officials said. Aerial crews dropped water and surveyed the blaze for a clearer picture of where Californias largest-ever fire has expanded. The fire was previously thought to cover 877,477 acres of Mendocino and Humboldt counties, but officials reduced that estimate to 755,603 acres on Monday, citing data from new aerial surveys. 12:02 p.m. Bay Area marks another dubious distinction as air pollution hits 30-day milestone: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has extended its Spare the Air alert into Wednesday, marking 30 days of pollution and poor air quality, officials said Monday morning. Thats the agencys longest continuous stretch of warnings ever, far surpassing the previous record of 14 days during the deadly Camp Fire of 2018. Spare the Air alerts make it illegal to use fireplaces and wood-burning devices. 11:57 a.m. Newsom emphasizes federal role: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday politely reminded President Trump who repeatedly blames Californians forest management for runaway wildfires of a fundamental fact, that half of the forest land in the state is federal forest, while 3% is state land. Newsom, however, also thanked the president for a new state-federal initiative to double forest management efforts, and said that theres no question looking back over the years that as a state we have not done justice to the needs in fire management. 11:45 a.m. Newsom tells Trump global warming is self evident: Gov. Gavin Newsom told President Trump on Monday at a wildfire briefing near Sacramento that, We feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter, the drys are getting drier. Something has happened to the plumbing of the world. Newsom said he respects political differences on the issue, but said science makes it self-evident that, Climate change is real. Trump nodded through part of Newsoms comments but then quickly turned to someone else to speak. 11:29 a.m. Poor air quality to remain through week: A deep marine layer blanketed the Bay Area in higher humidity Monday morning, good news for crews fighting to suppress fires throughout the region, according to the National Weather Service. But the air blowing inland off the ocean is filled with wildfire smoke, meaning it is unlikely to bring a reprieve from poor air quality, meteorologists said. To the southeast, parts of the Central Sierra Nevada where the Creek Fire and Sequoia Complex Fires are raging could see bouts of dry lightning later in the week as moisture from a tropical storm in the Pacific moves in. The best case scenario would bring rain showers, but at worst the moisture would dissipate, creating prime conditions for more dry lightning, meteorologists said. 11:14 a.m. Trump in California again blames forest management: President Trump arrived in the Sacramento area Monday for a wildfire briefing with Gov. Gavin Newsom and repeated that California doesnt manage its forests a large portion of which are in federal jurisdiction to curtail wildfires. He brushed aside a question about the role of climate change, which scientists see as a key wildfire factor. When trees fall down, after a short period of time, Trump said, they become very dry. They become like a matchstick ... They can explode. He said dried leaves are a problem, too. They have to do something about it, he told reporters on his way to the briefing. He also accused the state of not creating cuts fire lines to contain fires. 10:55 a.m. Biden calls Trump a climate arsonist: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed President Trump for science denial and inaction on climate change that has millions of people worried about the air they breathe and the damage to their lungs due to historic wildfires while they are also anxious about coronavirus transmission. Donald Trumps climate denial may not have caused these fires, Biden said in an address from Wilmington, Del., but if he gets a second term these hellish events will continue to be more common, more devastating, more deadly. Biden highlighted his own transformative climate change agenda, including: a return to the Paris Accord and global warming leadership, beefed up fuel and lighting efficiency, rebates and initiatives for electric vehicles, creating 1 million domestic auto jobs through EV production, and a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035. 10:19 a.m. LNU Complex containment is at 97%: Cal Fire reported Monday morning that the LNU Complex fires in the North Bay were 97% contained, having burned across 363,220 acres. Residents were warned to be alert for road closures due to ongoing repair work. 10:04 a.m. SF air quality is very unhealthy: San Franciscos air quality readings reached the very unhealthy level early Monday. Officials said children and people with respiratory diseases should avoid all physical activity outdoors. 9:48 a.m. Communities along Oregons I-5 razed: OWildfires in Oregon are reaching place that havent burned in the past: entire communities along the I-5, the main north-south interstate highway along the West Coast, have been razed. We havent had anything ever this close, said Margot Cooper, who for the last three decades has lived in Scio, southeast of Salem. Its the first time its literally in our backyard. 9:15 a.m. Creek Fire only 10% contained: The Creek Fire burned actively overnight in Fresno County, with winds pushing smoke down to the lower elevations, and flames continuing to move northeast in the San Joaquin River drainage, according to a Cal Fire update. It was threatening structures in the foothills, including in Jose Basin and Shaver Lake. The blaze covered 212,744 acres and was 10% contained as of Monday morning. In Madera County, a number of evacuation warnings were lifted in the northwestern area of the fire, including for Coarsegold and Oakhurst. 8:55 a.m. Newsom, Trump to meet in private: Gov. Gavin Newwom was set to meet privately with President Trump during his brief visit to California Monday, without a joint public appearance. Newsom, with state fire and emergency officials, planned a private wildfires briefing for Trump at McClellan Park near Sacramento, a firefighting staging area, Newsoms office said. Newsom then heads to tour an undisclosed fire area, and Trump plans an event to honor the California National Guard. Read the story here. 8:27 a.m. North Complex fire grows: The North Complex wildfires grew to 261,488 acres by Monday morning, and was 26% contained, Cal Fire reported. The situation could worsen through the day with windy conditions forecast. 8:16 a.m. Family was ready to go, but did not evacuate: Survivors are mourning three members of a vibrant family who were not wildfire novices and who were packed and ready to flee the North Complex fire that ended up ripping across the Butte County community of Berry Creek. For some reason, the ended up staying. Read the details in The Chronicles story. 7:42 a.m. Trump visit comes amid growing clash over global warming: With President Trump visiting California Monday as crews battle wildfires that have enveloped the West Coast in smoke, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders in the Democratic-led states still clash with Trump over the role of climate change. The Democratic governors say the fires are a climate change consequence. Trump blames poor forest management. Scientists say the wildfires are all but inevitable, but the main drivers are plants and trees drying out due to global warming and more people living closer to areas that burn. 7:30 a.m. Spare the Air again: Monday launched the week with yet another Spare the Air-alert day under gray smoky skies. Air quality rated unhealthy blanketed most of the Bay Area, meaning older people, kids and those with health conditions should curtail time outside and everyone else should avoid strenuous outdoor activities. Air quality is expected to improve a little after Monday. 6:34 a.m. Climate change, poor forest management collide, worsening California fires: In recent years, nearly 150 million trees died around the state as their roots delved fruitlessly for water and a devastating bark beetle infestation took hold. Both the drought and the insect spread that came with it were exacerbated by changing climate conditions linked to humans burning fossil fuels, scientists concluded. Now those trees, like so much else in the American West, are burning as California contends with a reckoning more than 100 years in the making. Read the full story here. A TikTok star has created an astounding video demonstrating how Sunrise host David Koch has hardly aged a day over the past decade. The hilarious clip, uploaded on Wednesday by Sware, uses two almost identical photos of Kochie that were in fact taken 10 years apart. The 64-year-old's appearance hasn't changed much since 2010, and he still doesn't have many wrinkles despite being almost eligible for the old-age pension Scroll down for video What's Kochie's secret? A TikTok star has created an astounding video demonstrating how Sunrise host David Koch has hardly aged a day over the past decade. Pictured left: in 2010, and right: in 2020 The finance journalist has hosted Seven's breakfast show for 18 years, after initially being hired as a temporary replacement for Chris Reason in 2002. The viral video opens with the bold claim that 'David Koch is a vampire', before offering a catalogue of tongue-in-cheek evidence to support this theory. 'Here is a photo of David Koch earlier this year, seems pretty reasonable,' says Sware. 'Here is a photo of David Koch 10 years ago, hmmm, looks exactly same! He's 64 by the way, or so he says...' 'David Koch is a vampire': The hilarious clip, uploaded on Wednesday by TikTok user Sware (pictured), uses two almost identical photos of Kochie that were in fact taken 10 years apart 'Still don't believe me? Well, look up Koch Media. What do they make? Movies about vampires!' Sware added. Koch Media, which is a global developer, publisher and distributor of videogames, actually has no ties to Kochie. However, Kochie does own his own business: the boutique media production agency Pinstripe Media. In February 2018, Kochie was left baffled when a lie detector machine claimed he had answered a question regarding plastic surgery 'with deception'. 'Have you had any cosmetic surgery done?' he was asked after being strapped to the polygraph. 'No,' the host replied with a firm shake of the head - but the machine ruled that his answer was false. The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has indicated that the decision by the government to pass the Public Universities Bill (PUB) into law, will do more harm than it claims to fix. According to the University of Ghana-Legon branch of the association, the PUB if not withdrawn, would only hobble public universities by bringing it under a direct day-to-day management of the Minister of Education. Speaking at a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday, September 16, 2020, Dean of International Programmes at the University of Ghana UG, Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo explained that having a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation for universities will only inhibit its growth and innovation. By seeking to centralize University admission under one platform, the Bill takes the process for admission of new students away from individuals universities. This would not only be cumbersome but would strip from universities in the country the ability to seek the best students for their unique programmes, Prof. Adomako lamented. She added that this centralized admission which will be controlled by the government under the PUB would lead to the pervasive nepotism and expansion of protocols admission. This would only deepen the disadvantage of students without means or political connection, she added. The University of Ghana section of UTAG is therefore urging for the withdrawal of the controversial decision by the government for passage of the Public Universities Bill (PUB) into law. Meanwhile, Director of Programmes at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) Ghana, Dr. Kojo Asante, on his part said the sponsors of the bill have not provided an honourable justification for it to be passed. "Despite a proposal for the bill to be withdrawn, the government has since not heeded to our proposal but we are calling for the bill to be withdrawn because it poses a threat to Ghana's growth in higher education and the autonomy of universities," he stressed. Background: The new Public Universities Bill signed by the Education Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, seeks to regulate the activities of public universities under one law. The proposed law seeks to change the structure of the governing councils of the public universities with the majority of the members being appointed by the President. According to the Education Ministry the Bill, "is to provide the procedure for the establishment of Public Universities, principles of management of public universities, the legal status of public universities, the procedure for financing Public universities and administration and supervision of the activities of Public universities and related matters." 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 Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will oppose in Parliament three anti-farmer bills that seek to replace ordinances introduced earlier this year to free up the countrys antiquated agriculture sector. The ordinances have triggered farmer protests, especially in Punjab and Haryana. The protesters say the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance in particular threatens the federally fixed minimum support prices they get for their produce. Also read: What to expect today on Parliament monsoon session Day 4 The Congress, and the Left have opposed the proposed laws including the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance Bill and Farm Services Bill. They have backed farmers groups that oppose the bills and have called for coordinated protests in Parliament. The Opposition parties plan to stall the bills in Parliament and have sought to send them to parliamentary select committees for a review. The three agriculture bills are anti-farmer in nature. Farmers across the country are protesting against them. The central government should roll back the law. The Aam Aadmi Party will oppose the three Bills in the parliament, tweeted Kejriwal, who is also AAPs national convenor. AAP has one member in the Lok Sabha from Punjab and three in the Rajya Sabha. It is the second biggest party in the Punjab assembly with 19 seats in the 117-member House. Farmers in Haryana and Punjab have been protesting against the three ordinances. The Bharatiya Kisan Union held a rally and blocked the National Highway 44 near Kurukshetra. Elon Musk is hailed as an innovator and disruptor who went from knowing next to nothing about building cars to running the world's most valuable automaker in the space of 16 years. But his record shows he is more of a fast learner who forged alliances with firms that had technology Tesla lacked, hired some of their most talented people, and then powered through the boundaries that limited more risk-averse partners. Now, Musk and his team are preparing to outline new steps in Tesla's drive to become a more self-sufficient company less reliant on suppliers at its "Battery Day" event on Sept. 22. Musk has been dropping hints for months that significant advances in technology will be announced as Tesla strives to produce the low-cost, long-lasting batteries that could put its electric cars on a more equal footing with cheaper gasoline vehicles. New battery cell designs, chemistries and manufacturing processes are just some of the developments that would allow Tesla to reduce its reliance on its long-time battery partner, Japan's Panasonic, people familiar with the situation said. "Elon doesn't want any part of his business to be dependent on someone else," said one former senior executive at Tesla who declined to be named. "And for better or worse - sometimes better, sometimes worse - he thinks he can do it better, faster and cheaper." Tesla has battery production partnerships with Panasonic, South Korea's LG Chem and China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) that are expected to continue. But at the same time, Tesla is moving to control production of cells - the basic component of electric vehicle battery packs at highly automated factories, including one being built near Berlin, Germany and another in Fremont, California where Tesla is hiring dozens of experts in battery cell engineering and manufacturing. "There has been no change in our relationship with Tesla," Panasonic said in a statement provided by a company spokeswoman. "Our relationship, both past and present has been sound. Panasonic is not a supplier to Tesla; we are partners. There's no doubt our partnership will continue to innovate and contribute to the betterment of society." Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Make Everything Since he took over the fledgling company in 2004, Musk's goal has been to learn enough - from partnerships, acquisitions and talent recruitment - to bring key technologies under Tesla's control, people familiar with Tesla's strategy said. They said the aim was to build a heavily vertically integrated company, or a digital version of Ford Motor Co's iron-ore-to-Model-A production system of the late 1920s. "Elon thought he could improve on everything the suppliers did - everything," said former Tesla supply chain executive Tom Wessner, who is now head of industry consultancy Imprint Advisors. "He wanted to make everything." Batteries, a big chunk of the cost of an electric car, are central to the Musk method. While subordinates have argued for years against developing proprietary Tesla battery cells, Musk continues to drive toward that goal. "Tell him 'No', and then he really wants to do it," said a third former Tesla veteran. The changes in battery design, chemistry and production processes Tesla expects to reveal next week are aimed at reworking the math that until now has made electric cars more expensive than carbon-emitting vehicles with combustion engines. Reuters reported in May that Tesla is planning to unveil low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles. Tesla is also working to secure direct supplies of key battery materials, such as nickel, while developing cell chemistries that would no longer need expensive cobalt as well as highly automated manufacturing processes to speed up production. 'Straight for Mars' Panasonic is partnered with Tesla at the $5 billion Nevada "Gigafactory", while CATL and LG Chem supply cells to Tesla's Shanghai factory, where battery modules and packs are assembled for its Model 3 sedan. Panasonic recently said it is planning to expand its production lines in Nevada, which supply the cells that then go into the battery modules assembled next door by Tesla. But the Nevada Gigafactory partnership almost didn't happen, according to two former Tesla executives. Musk ordered a team to study battery manufacturing in 2011, according to one former executive, but eventually partnered with Panasonic in 2013. Now, Tesla is testing a battery cell pilot manufacturing line in Fremont and is building its own vast automated cell manufacturing facility in Gruenheide in Germany. The roller-coaster relationship with Panasonic mirrors other Tesla alliances. During its development alliance with Germany's Daimler, which was an early investor in Tesla, Musk became interested in sensors that would help keep cars within traffic lanes. Until then the Tesla Model S, which Mercedes-Benz engineers helped refine, lacked cameras or sophisticated driver assistance sensors and software such as those used in the Mercedes S-Class. "He learned about that and took it a step further. We asked our engineers to shoot for the moon. He went straight for Mars," said a senior Daimler engineer said. Meanwhile, an association with Japan's Toyota, another early investor, taught him about quality management. Eventually, executives from Daimler and Toyota joined Tesla in key roles, along with talent from Alphabet Inc's Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, as well as rival carmakers Ford, BMW and Audi. The Musk spin Some relationships did not end well, however. Tesla hooked up with Israeli sensor maker Mobileye in 2014, in part to learn how to design a self-driving system that evolved into Tesla's Autopilot. "Mobileye was the driving force behind the original Autopilot," said a former Mobileye executive, who declined to be named. Mobileye, which is now owned by Intel, also recognized the risk of sharing technology with a fast-moving startup like Tesla, which was on the brink of collapse at the end of 2008 and now has a market value of $420 billion. But Tesla and Mobileye had an acrimonious and public split after a driver was killed in 2016 when a Model S using the Autopilot system crashed. At the time, Amnon Shashua, who is now Mobileye president and chief executive, said Tesla's Autopilot was not designed to cover all possible crash situations as it was a driver assistance system, not a driverless system. U.S. tech firm Nvidia followed Mobileye as a supplier for Autopilot, but it too was ultimately sidelined. "Nvidia and Tesla share a common strategy of developing software-defined vehicles powered by high-performance AI computers. Elon is very focused on vertical integration and wanted to make his own chips," said Nvidia's senior director of automotive, Danny Shapiro. Both Shapiro and the former Mobileye executive said there was no question of Tesla improperly using their technology. In addition to partnerships, Musk went on an acquisition spree four years ago, buying a handful of little-known companies - Grohmann, Perbix, Riviera, Compass, Hibar Systems - to rapidly advance Tesla's expertise in automation. Maxwell and SilLion further boosted Tesla's ability in battery technology. "He learned a lot from those people," said Mark Ellis, a senior consultant at Munro & Associates, which has studied Tesla extensively. "He leveraged a lot of information from them, then put his spin on making it better." 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 The Taos News delivered to your Taos County address every week for a full year! We offer our lowest mail rates to zip codes in the county. Click Here to See if you Qualify. Plan includes unlimited website access and e-edition print replica online. Your auto pay plan will be conveniently renewed at the end of the subscription period. You may cancel at anytime. Iraq has shipped more crude oil abroad so far this month, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed, even though OPECs second-largest producer has promised time and again in recent months that it is committed to complying with the OPEC+ production cuts. Between September 1 and 15, Iraqs crude oil exports stood at 3.26 million barrels per day (bpd), 8 percent higher than the August average, Bloombergs estimates show. In August, Iraqs crude oil exports had dropped to 2.597 million bpd, down from 2.763 million bpd in July. It is not certain that the rising trend in September will continue throughout the rest of the month as shipments tend to be unevenly spread through any given month. Still, the increase in exports, even if part of those exports come from storage, suggests that Iraq is once again above its quota as per the OPEC+ production agreement. Iraq promised additional cuts of around 400,000 bpd in August to compensate for the lack of compliance with the OPEC+ deal in the previous months. Iraqs production in August was 3.652 million bpd, down by 100,000 bpd compared with July, as per OPECs secondary sources, which the cartel uses for reference and for calculating compliance. Iraq, which has been the least compliant member of the OPEC+ production cut pact since it was first launched in January 2017, has been promising for months that it would reduce its oil production and fall in line with its quotasomething it hasnt done since 2017. OPEC+ has given Iraq and other laggards in compliance until the end of September to additionally cut production on top of their share of the cuts, to offset the overproduction between May and July. The OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) is meeting on Thursday and could extend the period in which non-compliant members can compensate for their prior overproduction, sources told Reuters earlier this week. Iraq has signaled that it could ask the OPEC+ panel to extend the period in which it can compensate for its lack of compliance through November, instead of by the end of September. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: NORWICH The state Department of Public Health announced Wednesday it has ordered all patients to be removed from the Three Rivers Healthcare nursing home following an investigation into a deadly COVID-19 outbreak. Since July 24, DPH officials said, at least 21 residents and six staff members at the Norwich nursing home were infected with the virus. Four of the patients have died. The order, called a rare enforcement action, was made by Department of Public Health Acting Commissioner Deidre S. Gifford. This is a difficult and sad step that we have to take, but the department has concluded that its in the best interest of the health and safety of the residents, staff and families at this facility, Gifford said. An inspection of the facility recently found numerous serious violations related to infection control, staffing and other issues that led to the appointment of a temporary manager. DPH Order by Peter Yankowski on Scribd The emergency order signed by Gifford calls for the discharge of all residents. She said residents who are COVID-negative will be moved to nursing homes near Norwich. A union that represents health care workers in Connecticut, including those in nursing homes, said the decision will most likely ensure Three Rivers closes, which could let the home operator off the hook. Residents will now suffer through transfers in the middle of a pandemic, said Pedro Zayas, a spokesman for SEIU 1199, adding that workers there could also face lost jobs if the facility does close. The union said the state should have brought in outside management to take over the facility based on the apparent collapse of the previous management. While action needs to be taken, we believe there were alternative measures available that would have ensured the safety of the residents and provide for a pathway for the nursing home to fall back in compliance under a new administration, Zayas wrote. The state DPH started to investigate the outbreak on Aug. 17, including daily on-site visits, interviews with residents and staff and reviews of facility records. State DPH personnel have been on site to monitor the situation at Three Rivers since the investigation began, officials said Tuesday. Two trade organizations that represent nursing homes said Wednesday they agreed with the agencys decision on Three Rivers. Nursing home residents must be our collective priority and we are pledging the resources of our associations to facilitate and assist in the safe and compassionate transfer or residents to nursing homes in the area under these extraordinary circumstances, said Matthew Barrett and Mag Morelli in a joint statement. Barrett heads the Connecticut Association of Healthcare Facilities and the Connecticut Center for Assisted Living, which represents for-profit homes. LeadingAge Connecticut, Morellis organization, represents nonprofit homes. An investigation at the nursing home on Sept. 9 revealed the outbreak started on July 24 when a staff member tested positive through routine weekly testing, officials said. There were serious violations found facility-wide in general infection control practices, staffing, cohorting (grouping together) residents who tested positive, and use of personal protective equipment, the state DPH said. This is a challenging time for Three Rivers Health Care, our residents and our staff, the JACC Health Center of Norwich, which operates Three Rivers Health Care, said in a statement released Wednesday. Since the initial COVID outbreak, we have been cooperating with the state Department of Public Health to bring our facility into full compliance with state and federal regulations, including the engagement of a temporary manager to oversee the facility. Following an initial assessment, the temporary manager concluded that bringing the facility back into substantial compliance within the time frame mandated by regulatory bodies was not feasible due to a number of concerns, including the absence of critical staff. A CNN panel was left speechless, briefly, after hearing remarks Attorney General William Barr had made earlier in the evening. Speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Barr made a comparison between slavery and the lockdowns due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, calling the lockdowns an intrusion on civil liberties. Once they could find the words, the panel poked very large holes in Barrs argument, from the fact that slaves first had to be free before they could even think about civil rights, and that Americans werent forced to stay in their homes. People could leave the house for essential tasks. And Dr. Sanjay Gupta worried that Barrs assertion could take the country in the wrong direction when it comes to the fight against the coronavirus. New Delhi, Sep 17 : Almost a month after the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) went to Mumbai to probe the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, it has returned to Delhi and will hold a meeting next week with the AIIMS forensic team, sources said on Thursday. According to CBI sources, the team of the SIT has returned to Delhi on Wednesday and will now be holding meetings with the AIIMS forensic team on Sunday and later in the coming week also to take its medico legal opinion in the case. The team had gone to Mumbai along with the forensic team on August 20, a day after the Supreme Court gave its nod to the CBI probe into the death of the late actor. During the CBI's stay in Mumbai, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) forensic team also visited the flat of Sushant and recreated the crime scene along with Sushant's sister Mitu, Pithani and personal staff. The CBI last month had roped in the AIIMS forensic department to take its assistance in studying the autopsy report prepared by the Cooper Hospital, the crime scene recreation and to guide the federal agency if there was any foul play in his death. Sushant was found dead in his Bandra flat on June 14. AIIMS Forensic Department head Dr. Sudhir Gupta has constituted a medical team to assist the CBI. AIIMS sources said, "We are in the process of perusal of the case after due medical board meeting and subsequent meeting with the CBI." The source said that the AIIMS forensic department medical board's opinion will be given to the CBI, and hoped it will present a total conclusive report without any confusion or doubts. The source, however, said that the reports could not be shared as the matter was sub judice. He further said that next week the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) findings and the CBI investigation findings have to be understood before a final medical opinion is arrived at. The CBI team during its stay in Mumbai recorded the statement of Sushant's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik, father Indrajit, his house manager Samuel Miranda, flatmate Siddharth Pithani, former celebrity manager Shruti Modi, talent manager Jaya Saha, personal staff Neeraj Singh, Keshav Bachne, Dipesh Sawant and several others. The CBI team also recorded the statement of Sushant's sister Mitu Singh in Mumbai, and his father K. K. Singh and elder sister Rani Singh in Delhi. The CBI's SIT also visited the flat of Sushant Singh Rajput several times and the Cooper Hospital where his autopsy was done. The team also visited the Waterstone resort, where Sushant stayed for several months. However, officials of the CBI remained tightlipped on the return of the SIT members from Mumbai and the meeting of the team with the AIIMS forensic department. Besides CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) are also probing the death of Sushant. The NCB has arrested Rhea, Showik, Miranda, Sawant and several others in the drug related case. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text SAULT STE, MARIE, MI Round-the-clock work has begun at the Soo Locks. The Army Corps of Engineers, District Detroit, said Wednesday that phase one of an extensive, multiyear project to update existing locks and to create a new lock at the Upper Peninsula facility shifted into high gear on Sept. 8. To start, Trade West Construction is deepening the north channel of the decommissioned Sabin Lock to a depth of 30 feet and positioning the materials to the northwest pier, which will eventually become a break wall for the new lock. The project, outlined in detail below, has a 2027 target date for completion. The Soo Locks currently has one lock, the Poe Lock, that is capable of accommodating vessels up to 1,000 feet in length and 105 feet in width. Since the Poes construction, Great Lakes fleets in the United States and Canada have replaced many of their older vessels with newer, larger vessels, most of which can only use the Poe because of their size. RELATED: Michigan company awarded $7M contract to replace WWII-era valves at Soo Locks As a result, 89 percent of all the cargo passing though the locks is restricted to using the Poe. According to the Corps, this critical dependency on the Poe presents a significant risk not only to Great Lakes shipping, but to the nations overall economy since mechanical failures or other causes at the lock would be felt throughout North America. A second lock capable of handling large ships would alleviate this concerns and funding has finally been secured. Congress reauthorized construction of the new lock in October 2018 with an estimated project cost of $922.4 million (including $32 million spent prior to 2019). The State of Michigan provided $52 million in December 2018 to help advance the project and allow it to rank more highly among national infrastructure needs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also received $32.4 million in federal funds for fiscal year 2019, and fiscal year 2020 budget included an additional $75.3 million. The new lock will replace the closed Davis and Sabin locks, but will have the same dimensions as the Poe and will provide much needed redundancy for the aging Poe. The construction project consists of three main phases: Deepening the upstream approach channel (2020-2021). Rebuilding the upstream approach walls (2020-2022). Construction of the lock chamber (2022-2027). This schedule assumes Congress will continue to provide efficient funding for the project. More than 75 million tons of cargo and 3,000 cargo vessels pass through the locks annually. Owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lock system raises and lowers vessels approximately 21 feet to overcome the difference in elevation between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Barr Defends His Power to Overrule Decisions Made by Lower-Ranking Prosecutors Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended his authority to overrule prosecutorial decisions made by career prosecutors at the Justice Department (DOJ), while describing some of those lawyers as headhunters who are too consumed with taking down high-profile targets. The notion that line prosecutors should make the final decisions within the Department of Justice is completely wrong and it is antithetical to the basic values underlying our system, Barr said, according to prepared remarks for a speech delivered at Hillsdale Colleges annual Constitution Day Celebration on Wednesday night. Name one successful organization or institution where the lowest level employees decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There arent any, he added. Barr has been criticized for decisions to intervene in politically sensitive high-profile cases involving associates of President Donald Trump, such as former political adviser Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, with critics accusing him of acting as the presidents personal attorney and politicizing the DOJ. Barr defended his decisions to intervene in those cases as his responsibility to uphold the rule of law and to apply a consistent standard of justice across the board. This has been going on for decades, this strange idea that political officials interfere in investigations or in cases, the attorney general said. Under the law, all prosecutorial power is vested in the attorney general. And these people are agents of the attorney general. As I say to FBI agents, Whose agent do you think you are? Now, I dont say this in a pompous way, but that is the chain of authority and legitimacy in the Department of Justice. The departments top law enforcement official also delivered a rebuke toward some federal prosecutors who he says are too invested in prosecuting, in particular prominent public figures, rather than serving justice to the people. We are the Department of Justice, not the Department of Prosecution, he said in his prepared remarks. The Justice Department has sometimes acted more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice based on clear and sensible legal rules. In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyper-aggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong and we must stop doing it. Thus, it is important, he said, that there are layers of supervision to evaluate the conduct of individual prosecutors in order to ensure that the fair-handed administration of justice is being delivered. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target. Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process, the attorney general said. He said that federal prosecutors should be aggressive and tenacious in their pursuit of justice but should also ensure that justice is ultimately administered dispassionately. Barr did not mention any particular events or cases in his speech but was likely responding to the onslaught of criticism he has been receiving for the Flynn and Stone cases, where career prosecutors withdrew from the cases after the attorney general stepped in. In the Flynn case, the DOJ said it was dropping the case after it determined that the FBI had no justifiably predicated investigation when bureau agents went to interview Flynn at the White House in early 2017. Federal prosecutors then moved to dismiss the case, but the judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan, refused to accept the dismissal and has instead pushed for further proceedings while appointing an amicus curiae (friend of the court) to argue against the dismissal. The case is now scheduled for a hearing later this month after going through several decisions in the appeals court. Meanwhile, in the Stone case, Barr intervened to ask for a lighter sentence, without specifying a sentence, after four career prosecutors handling the matter recommended seven to nine years imprisonment for the 67-year-old, who was convicted of lying to and obstructing Congress and witness tampering. The DOJ later called the recommendation excessive and unwarranted and filed a revised sentencing memorandum. The judge in the case eventually sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison. In July, right before Stone was to surrender to prison, the president commuted his sentence. It is important for prosecutors at the Department of Justice to understand that their missionabove all othersis to do justice. That means following the letter of the law, and the spirit of fairness, Barr said. Sometimes that will mean investing months or years in an investigation and then concluding it without criminal charges. Other times it will mean aggressively prosecuting a person through trial and then recommending a lenient sentence, perhaps even one with no incarceration. A critical turning point has been reached in the coronavirus pandemic crisis in Australia. Powerful sections of the ruling class have concluded that any further lockdown measures and related safety restrictions can no longer be tolerated and that big business and finance capital must be allowed free rein. A full-throated government, business and media campaign is underway to eliminate the limited and inadequate restrictions put in place by state governments, and fully reopen the economy by forcing more workers back into their workplaces, regardless of the dangers presented by continuing community transmission and the worsening resurgence of COVID-19 globally. This turn erupted in response to the announcement on September 2 that the Australian economy has entered the worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression. The 7 percent June quarter contraction of the economy is the precursor of far worse to come. It does not include the impact of the Victorian state lockdown nor the winding back of the JobKeeper and Jobseeker payments on September 28, which will see unemployment, poverty levels and class tensions soar. Moratoriums on evictions and rent relief are due to be lifted by the end of the year, as will the ability of companies to trade while insolvent. Multi-billion-dollar subsidies for business helped boost corporate profits by 15 percent in the three months to June 30, while total wages were cut by 2.5 percent. Not every section of corporate Australia, however, has benefited from the crisis. The financial press recently reported the case of billionaire Solomon Lew, who has lost more than $80 million on his investment in retail giant Myer. The unanimity of the National Cabinet has been somewhat undermined in the face of this burgeoning economic crisis. Made up of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the state and territory government leaders, both Liberal-National and Labor, and backed by the union leaders, this unconstitutional body has all but sidelined parliament since March. After claiming to have flattened the first wave of coronavirus infections in Australia, and having bailed out the corporate elite, the National Cabinet agreed to a premature and dangerous lifting of the initial restrictions in May. These had been strictly limited, with manufacturing, construction, retail and other industries continuing as normal. New measures were only put in place in Melbourne after infections spiked, signalling a second wave, and threatening to trigger the collapse of Victorias grossly underfunded healthcare system. From July 8, stage three restrictions were imposed. After these proved ineffective in stemming the spread of infection, a stage four lockdown and state of disaster was declared on August 2. The political establishments show of unanimity was initially maintained during the second wave. Morrison declared: Were all Victorians now. Such rhetoric is no longer being heard. Sharp tactical divisions have erupted to the surface of political life. The Victorian Labor government announced on September 6 its roadmap out of pandemic restrictions, but was denounced by Morrison and corporate lobby groups for not moving more quickly. A central aspect of the campaign involves opposition to the only partial reopening of the states schools, with Years Prep-2 and 11-12 due to resume classroom learning in Term 4, but other grades staying online, potentially forcing many workers with children to remain away from their places of employment. All other states education systems have reopened entirely. One business chief openly complained that health measures have taken priority. Morrison described the roadmap plan as crushing news. The media, led by the Murdoch and financial press, have played a spearhead rolean editorial in the Australian Financial Review denounced the public health cult of elimination [of coronavirus]. Last week, Morrison, in a calculated provocation, exploited the case of a woman from Canberra who was unable to attend her fathers funeral in Queensland due to coronavirus border restrictions, to push for the lifting of limitations on travel from state to state. The episode confirmed that the campaign for a faster elimination of restrictions in Victoria was only part of the wider agenda of dispensing with every remaining hindrance to big business operations across the country. These rifts were triggered by the unprecedented economic and social crisis that has emerged. The corporate and political elite has concluded that the working class must be made to pay for the crisis. The extraction of the necessary surplus value from workers labour power requires the end of coronavirus restrictions. This goes in tandem with the refashioning of class relations through mass sackings and the further evisceration of working conditions, pay rates and standardised hours, to be enforced by the trade union bureaucracy. Having already helped axe jobs, penalty rates and other conditions at the outset of the pandemic, the unions have been collaborating for months with the government and employers in five working groups on industrial relations and other pro-business measures. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott spelled out the logic of this class war agenda, in a September 1 speech. Abbott denounced lockdown measures as representing health dictatorships, condemned attempts to preserve almost every life at almost any cost, and suggested older people with coronavirus could be left to die instead of receiving healthcare. He echoed US President Donald Trumps refrain that the cure cannot be worse than the disease. Build independent rank-and-file committees! In the fight against this homicidal agenda, the working class confronts a political struggle against the entire ruling elite. The Labor Party is an instrument of big business and is no less responsible than the Liberal-National parties for the disaster that has emerged. State and territory Labor governments have sought to adopt only the most limited coronavirus safety measures. Last May, along with their Coalition counterparts, they rushed to junk these even as community transmission continued. Throughout the pandemic, there has been no mobilisation of the necessary social resources. Health and aged care workers still lack proper personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 testing remains limited, and contact tracing inadequate. To the extent that the Victorian Labor government has not yet fallen entirely in line with demands to immediately lift lockdowns, and governments in Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania have retained border restrictions, they are motivated by two concerns within sections of the ruling class itself. Firstly, calculations that business interests are best served by first lowering rates of community transmission, then opening up the economy, and secondly, intense fears of triggering opposition from the working class. The state of disaster declaration in Victoria showed the state governments concern over increasingly frequent workers protests after infections in their workplaces. There were multiple strikes in July and early August, including in warehouses, the Spotless commercial laundry and JBS Swift meatworks. The government was also evidently alarmed at the ferment among teachers and education staff, as dozens of schools were forced to close following reported outbreaks. The situation confronting the working class has only become even more severe. Unemployment and under-employment are predicted to exceed 20 percent by years end, with young and casualised workers suffering the most. The cuts to the meagre income supports provided to working class households since the crisis erupted in March are aimed at giving workers no choice but to return to unsafe workplaces. The ruling elites campaign to eliminate all coronavirus restrictions has capitalised on the grossly inadequate health and welfare support systems implemented by the Victorian authorities. People have been left to fend for themselves during the lockdown, with no genuine mental health services provided, nor proper assistance for other vulnerable people struggling to cope. The lockdown has been accompanied by an 8 p.m.6 a.m. curfew on Melbourne and heavy-handed police measures against working people, following on from the JulyAugust hard lockdown of public housing residents in high-rise towers. Given a free hand by the Labor government, police violence has escalated, including against small anti-lockdown demonstrations organised by the extreme right-wing and disoriented social layers being whipped up by the media campaign against the coronavirus restrictions. State governments have banned protests against the police murder of George Floyd in the US and police violence in Australia, and levied large fines on people just for leaving their homes. The experience through which the working class in Australia is passing is an international one. Governments in every country have responded to the threat of the pandemic from the standpoint of protecting profits, not lives. The health crisis has revealed the inability of capitalism to respond in the interests of society as a whole. This underscores the necessity for the working class to take action independently of, and in opposition to, the trade unions. Workers, both employed and unemployed, should form rank-and-file workplace and community safety committees to organise resistance, including strike actions, against unsafe conditions and in defence of jobs, wages and conditions. These committees should fight for the necessary society-wide pandemic safety measures, as indicated by epidemiologists, medical scientists and other experts, guided by the central consideration of preventing harm to health and loss of life. Workers, youth and students, small business operators and other ordinary people affected by lockdowns or other restrictions aimed at bringing the pandemic under control must receive full income compensation. Enormous resources must be poured into the public health and education systems, with privatisation measures reversed. Health workers must be protected with proper provision of PPE, free mental health services must be available to everyone who needs them, schools must remain closed in areas where there is coronavirus community transmission, and all students must be provided with free, high-speed internet and computer facilities to allow equitable online learning. All workplaces within socially necessary industries must be operated with the fullest precautions. Every vulnerable member of societyincluding the elderly, disabled, refugees, and othersmust be freely provided with the necessary social supports. These essential measures can be financed through the expropriation of the banks and major corporations and the redistribution of wealth away from the financial oligarchy, along with the $575 billion allocated for wars and military preparations over the next decade. The billionaires continue to expand their fortunes amid the pandemic crisisby June, Australias richest 20 people had increased their wealth by 32 percent, to a total of $189 billion, since last year. The collective fortunes of this roomful of people far exceed the entire federal budget for health and education in 201920, $118 billion. The working class, the vast majority of the population, has to advance its own revolutionary solution to the pandemic crisis. The formation of rank-and-file workplace and neighbourhood committees must develop through a struggle against the entire political establishment, including Labor and the Greens, directed towards the establishment of a workers government to implement socialist policies. Only the Socialist Equality Party, along with our sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International, fights for this perspective. We urge all workers and youth to join our movement in order to end the moribund capitalist system. T he number of coronavirus infections rose above 30 million today as cases of the disease continue to increase sharply around the world. The global caseload jumped by about 300,000 to reach 30,043,000 by 9am, according to the tracking website worldometer.info, passing yet another grim milestone in the pandemic. India is the latest epicentre and today reported a world record in new coronavirus infections with 97,894 cases in the past 24 hours, pushing its total above five million second only to the United States. The worlds second most populous country has been reporting more new daily cases than the US since mid-August and accounts for just over 16 per cent of global known cases. At the current rate of infection, India is expected to surpass the 6.6 million reported cases in the US within weeks. In America, President Donald Trump became embroiled in a new row with one of his top health chiefs last night as he continued to insist a vaccine could be announced as soon as next month, in time for Novembers election. That was dismissed by Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who told a US Senate committee a vaccine was unlikely to be ready until mid to late 2021. He misunderstood the question, probably, the President told reporters at the White House. We will be ready at a faster pace than he said, Mr Trump said of Mr Redfields estimate. Based on what Im hearing, results are very good. Much of Europe is in the grip of a second wave of infections, although death rates remain far lower than they were at the peak of the crisis. France reported new 9,784 confirmed cases yesterday, its highest since the disease started to spread at the end of the winter. Deaths increased by 46 to 31,045, the third highest rise since July but still a fraction of the 1,437 record on April 14. South Africa, meanwhile, is moving to reopen its borders to international visitors as its figures improve. In an address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa said international travel would gradually and cautiously resume from next month. We have withstood the coronavirus storm, he said. It is time to move to what will become our new normal for as long as the coronavirus is with us. At an outdoor town hall meeting Thursday night just outside his childhood hometown, Joe Biden railed against President Donald Trumps handling of the coronavirus pandemic, framed the 2020 election as a choice between Main Street and Wall Street, and highlighted in stark terms the differences between his upbringing and Trumps. The former vice president, taking questions from voters in an open-air parking lot in Moosic, Pa., said Trumps failure to be honest with Americans about the severity of the virus cost thousands of lives. Trump admitted to downplaying the threat in a recently released recorded interview from March with journalist Bob Woodward. Hes all about his reelection. It should be about the American people, and theyre in trouble, Biden said during the town hall, televised on CNN. Youve got to level with the American people shoot from the shoulder. Theres not been a time theyve not been able to step up. The president should step down. Biden, saying the contest was between the ideals of working-class Scranton and upscale Park Avenue, said Trump only cares about the stock market." The way we were raised up here in this area, an awful lot of hard-working people bust their neck," the Scranton native said. All [Trump] thinks about is the stock market.... In my neighborhood in Scranton, not a whole lot of people own stock. (Trump said Tuesday that stocks are owned by everybody. About 55% of Americans own stock.) Later, asked whether he had benefited from white privilege, Biden said he had. Trump responded to a similar question from Woodward with derision, saying Woodward really drank the Kool-Aid. Ive benefited just because I dont have to go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through, Biden said Thursday. He then turned the focus, as he often does, to his own upbringing in Scranton and later Delaware, alluding to how journalists have noted that he would be the first president since Ronald Reagan without an Ivy League degree. Who the hell thinks you need an Ivy League degree to be president? Biden said in one of the only lines that generated applause from the audience. Guys like me, the first in my family to go to college ... we are as good as anybody else. And guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited, are the people Ive always had a problem with. The night featured mostly friendly questioning, largely from Democratic voters, a stark contrast to the pointed questions Trump faced at an ABC town hall event in Philadelphia on Tuesday. During that event, Trump gave no ground, rewriting the history of his response to the pandemic with assertions directly at odds with his own comments in public and on tape. Biden said little that would seem to alienate moderate or undecided voters, sticking to his usual practice of empathizing with those in front of him, sharing long-winded personal stories and decrying Trump as a president who has shredded American norms. Ive been doing this a long time," Biden said at one point. I never, ever thought I would see such a thoroughly, totally irresponsible, administration. Taken together, the Trump and Biden town halls served as something of a preview of the first presidential debate on Sept. 29, which may be one of Trumps last high-profile chances to upend a race in which Biden has held a steady but not commanding lead in public polls nationally, and in critical battleground states like Pennsylvania. Trumps campaign blasted Bidens evening on stage as more promotional than informational. Virtually every question for Joe Biden was an invitation for him to attack President Trump, while moderator Anderson Cooper offered almost no pushback, giving Biden a total pass on his lies and misrepresentations, Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh said in a statement late Thursday. Asked about the controversial drilling process known as fracking which has lifted local economies in the parts of Northeastern and Southwestern Pennsylvania that make up the core of Trumps support in the state Biden repeated his insistence that he wont ban it, even as he promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Fracking has to continue, because we need a transition," he said. "Theres no rationale right now to eliminate fracking. Asked about the sweeping Green New Deal climate plan championed by liberals, Biden said: I have my own deal. And asked by a local police chief about civil unrest in American cities and attitudes toward law enforcement, Biden said he condemns every form of violence, whereas Trump has yet to condemn the far right and the white supremacists. Protesting is one thing. A right to speak is one thing," he said. "Violence of any kind, no matter who it is coming from, is wrong and people should be held accountable. The Scranton area, and Northeastern Pennsylvania more broadly, have been a hotbed of political activity this election. Biden was last in the region in July. Vice President Mike Pence went to Luzerne County earlier this month for a Workers for Trump campaign rally. In many ways, the shock of the 2016 election can be traced to places like Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties (Moosic is in Lackawanna). The traditionally Democratic region broke dramatically toward Trump, giving him a 55,000-vote swing compared the 2012 presidential race, in a state he ultimately won by about 44,000 votes, or 0.7%. Gary Lineker's brother Wayne has said that despite having 'more temptation' from women thanks to his 'lean physique', he isn't a bad boyfriend. The father-of-four appeared on Good Morning Britain via video link from Ibiza, the day after being criticised online for revealing a list of criteria for his future girlfriend - which includes 'giving up her career, having no children, and having a defined body'. The 58-year-old appeared alongside British actor Tamer Hassan, 52, to debate whether women prefer men with 'dad bods', and the bar owner admitted that men with toned bodies are more likely to 'distract themselves from their relationship'. However Wayne, who owns Ibiza's famous Ocean Beach nightclub, feels that while he may have 'more temptation' because of increased attention from women, it all comes down to the individual, and that he doesn't have a 'cheater's mindset'. Scroll down for video Gary Lineker's brother Wayne (pictured centre, surrounded by women) revealed his bizarre criteria for his future girlfriend - which includes 'giving up her career, having no children, being able to cook and having a defined body' The father-of-four appeared on Good Morning Britain in a bizarre interview today where he insisted that despite having 'more temptation' from women thanks to his toned body, he isn't a 'bad boyfriend' Speaking about a survey which suggests women don't look for toned partners, host Kate Garraway asked: 'Do you feel cross that after all the effort to stay fit and toned it may not be what women are after?' A confused Wayne replied: 'I'm not so sure to be honest, are we talking about what women want here?' After explaining the debate once again to Wayne, Kate admitted: 'I'm a bit worried you don't know why you're here.' Finally answering the question, Wayne went on: 'Well, no. I don't really understand that to be honest. I don't think there's a difference in people's personality, if they're over weight or under weight really. The 58-year-old appeared alongside British actor Tamer Hassan (pictured left), 52, to debate whether women prefer men with 'dad bods' 'The guys with the better bodies get more temptation to distract themselves from their relationship, but as far as a decent boyfriend or husband is concerned I think once you're a cheat you're always a cheat. 'It's all about the mind-set and fortunately it's not a mindset of mine,. I've never been a cheater, but I'll keep my lean physique if that's okay.' He explained that he hasn't been able to keep as fit as usual due to a shoulder injury, saying: 'Normally I would go five times a week, it's something I enjoy. 'I like to make myself look the best I can, but that doesnt mean Im not a good boyfriend.' Yesterday, the club owner shared his bizarre list of criteria, which included being able to cook 'Waitrose ready meals' and 'loving R&B'. The list was posted to the club owner's Instagram account with the hashtag 'banter' but sparked outrage on social media from followers disgusted with Wayne's demands - such as 'loving the gym and having body definition' and not being the same age as him because 'that would just look weird'. The list (above) was posted to the club owner's Instagram account with the hashtag 'banter' but sparked criticism on social media from followers disgusted with Wayne's demands 'Truly unprecedented levels of creep exuding from Wayne Lineker these days,' one unimpressed Twitter user wrote. Father-of-four Wayne has been married once and has had several girlfriends, but is thought to have been single since his 2018 split from ex-fiancee Danielle Sandhu in 2018, who was 31 years his junior. Last month, Wayne hit back at haters who criticised a video shared of him picking which 'dream doll' to take on a date at his club in Ibiza - and knocking the rejected women in the pool by their chests. Following the criticism of his criteria, Wayne added to his message: 'This post is purely tongue in cheek banter.' Taking to Instagram, Wayne wrote: 'So, my family have decided I need a girlfriend for my own sanity and health...so heres my criteria. Taking to Instagram, Wayne (pictured centre, surrounded by a group of women) wrote: 'So, my family have decided I need a girlfriend for my own sanity and health...so heres my criteria' Wayne, pictured, added: 'You must like older men but only me...You have to be a worldly and above 30 (OK, 28 or 29 could work) but not my age as that would just look weird' 'OK, lets start this off like Im normal: strong, nice, and loving personality. Now to more important things: 'You must like older men but only me...You have to be a worldly and above 30 (OK, 28 or 29 could work) but not my age as that would just look weird. 'You must like to travel and to fly business class and stay in incredible hotels. Be prepared to give up your career or job or at least be able to work from a laptop on a tropical beach somewhere. Despite finishing the post with '#banter', some social media users (above) were left unimpressed with Wayne's demands 'You will need to spend the summer in Ibiza and the winter in Dubai with two weeks in the UK for Christmas and New Year with the families and holidays to the Maldives.' The club owner then explained that any potential love interest should come without children because his 'are all grown up'. However, he added that 'a dog is acceptable' if they have a passport. He continued: 'You must be able to cook as I love cooking, especially Waitrose ready made meals. You also dont need to be verified I can sort that for you. 'House music and R&B lovers only. No heavy rock or pop music. You must like Netflix especially Money Heist and also real crime. No chick flicks, watch them with your mates. 'You need to be confident enough to be able to go to the front of the queue in nightclubs and accept a table and free drinks from the owners.' Father-of-four Wayne has been married once and has had several girlfriends, but is thought to have been single since his 2018 split from ex-fiancee Danielle Sandhu (pictured together) in 2018, who was 31 years his junior Last month, Wayne hit back at haters who criticised a video shared of him picking which 'dream doll' to take on a date at his club in Ibiza - and knocking the rejected women in the pool by their chests (pictured) Wayne insisted that any girlfriends should have a driving license to share his Bentley and a future 'Lamborghini Jeep' purchase. He also refused to consider any women who have shared teeth whitening posts, appear on OnlyFans, or dating websites, and who are 'boring' or bad at geography. 'You must love the gym, healthy food and have body definition as I will have soon,' he added. 'Accept and love my children and grandchildren and realise no more kids for me.. (never say never though). 'You must be able to let my PA book all yours and our flights and purchase items online for you. You must be able to accept my friends as I will accept yours, and accept I have to reply to girls direct messages and not just guys.' Despite finishing the post with '#banter', some social media users were left unimpressed with Wayne's criteria. However, some people (pictured above) could see the funny side of Wayne's announcement Wayne (pictured) insisted that any girlfriends should have a driving license to share his Bentley and a future 'Lamborghini Jeep' purchase Wayne (pictured) also refused to consider any women who have shared teeth whitening posts, appear on OnlyFans, or dating websites, and who are 'boring' or bad at geography One person wrote: 'Wayne Lineker is an actual embarrassment, nah I'm not having it. How is a man of 58 years of age seriously writing a girlfriend requirement list on his Instagram. Don't know what's worse, that or the sad and desperate girls about to message him. 'Has Wayne Lineker been hacked or is he just being himself? Hard to say', another person mocked. 'Wayne Lineker should be banned off all social media in my opinion' a third added. 'Bad vibes. Gary Lineker, sort him out, will you.' However, some people could see the funny side of Wayne's announcement and said: 'You tell 'em Wayne', while a second added: 'Bro this is gold.' MailOnline has contacted Wayne's representative for comment. Tara Sutaria has shared a behind-the-scene picture from her last film Marjaavaan. She is seen decked up as a bride and striking a funny pose for the camera. The actor however, drew more attention for her caption, in which hinted at her wedding. She is currently in relationship with actor Aadar Jain. Sharing the picture on Instagram, Tara wrote, All brides are beautiful okay ( Gotta love/thank Bollywood for letting the inner bridezilla out before the real deal happens ) @milapzaveri @nikkhiladvani. She looks lovely in a golden lehenga, complete with a jhumar and other bridal jewellery but makes a funny face while posing for the camera. Tara had confirmed dating rumours with Aadar in an Instagram post on his birthday. She had shared a picture of the two of them twinning in white outfits and captioned it, Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours! Happy Birthday to my favourite person @aadarjain. Aadar had reacted to the post with I love you with a heart emoji and Tara had also replied to his comment with, I love you. Tara had made headlines with her dance performance with Aadar at his brother Armaan Jains wedding. She was also a part of a family picture that his cousin Riddhima Kapoor Sahni had posted on Instagram. Also read: Urmila Matondkar challenges Kangana Ranaut to share names of drug addicts in Bollywood: Ill be first to say thumbs up to you On being asked about making her relationship official with Aadar, Tara had told Pinkvilla in an interview, I think if it is something beautiful, wonderful and magical, something that all human beings crave in their lives... I dont think you should hide something that is beautiful. That is my take on it. I have nothing to hide but I understand why so many people keep it to themselves. I am a really private person as well. I havent really spoken about it ever so people will think what they want to think. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations. Surrogates for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are holding a series of online events to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on Michigan businesses. The campaign plans to criticize President Donald Trump for his handling of the pandemic, blaming Trump for mass layoffs affecting nearly a quarter of Michigan workers during the height of the coronavirus recession. Two events scheduled for Friday and Sunday, Sept. 20 will focus on laid-off casino workers and Michigan union workers, with additional events planned to highlight the impact on steelworkers, breweries and college campuses. Eric Hyers, Michigan state director for the Biden campaign, said surrogates will also focus on Bidens plan to spur economic recovery. The former vice president visited metro Detroit last week to unveil his plan to incentivize companies to bring back domestic jobs and his wife Jill Biden visited two cites in West Michigan Tuesday. President Trump admitted to downplaying the coronavirus, and Michigan continues to pay the price for his ongoing failure to address the pandemic every single day -- in lost jobs, lost lives, and lost businesses," Hyers said in a statement. It didnt have to be this bad. Unlike Trump, Biden has a plan to put an end to this pandemic by working with Governor Whitmer to create millions of manufacturing and innovation jobs, and to help build our economy back better. Biden and Trump have both argued they are best-suited to lead the economic recovery during recent campaign stops in Michigan. At an event in Warren last week, Biden said the presidents response to COVID-19 crashed the economy, noting he would be the first president since the Great Depression to experience a net loss in U.S. jobs while in office. Our economys down 4.7 million jobs since he took office, Biden said in Warren. The president said the economy is quickly recovering during a rally in Freeland last week. Trump also said Bidens support for the North American Free Trade Agreement has caused Michigan manufacturing jobs to leave the state. Joe Biden devoted his career to offshoring Michigans jobs, Trump said. The economy is recovering. The unemployment rate has steadily declined during the last four months but remains much higher than the 3.5% rate in February. There were 13.6 million unemployed Americans in August, according to federal data. The U.S. unemployment rate in August was 8.4%, with a 13% unemployment rate for Black Americans. On Friday, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, will join laid-off union workers who were previously employed at the MGM Grand Detroit. The casino announced it would be laying off 1,100 employees less than a month after it reopened form a four-month shutdown ordered by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. On Sunday, voting rights activist Stacey Abrams will join the Michigan AFL-CIO for a discussion on how Biden will mobilize union voters. Biden said he would be the most friendly union president during a campaign stop at UAW Region 1 in Warren last week. The former vice president also praised Whitmer, who attended his event in Warren. Governor, youve done an incredible job steering the people of Michigan through a turbulent time, he said. Much of it is brought on by Donald Trumps lack of leadership. Youve been rock solid, governor. Youve listened to the experts and youve led with science and you put the needs of the people, who are hurting first, helping them get through this crisis. Additional stops will be announced by the campaign at a later date. The campaign said the events will focus on Michigans tourism and beer industries, which saw a significant drop in business over the summer due to COVID-19 outbreaks and state-mandated shutdown orders. READ MORE ON MLIVE: Michigans U.S. Senate candidates talk COVID recovery, police reform in town hall Jill Biden focuses on veterans issues, food insecurity in West Michigan campaign swing Donald Trump Jr. says Biden decimated Michigan jobs at campaign rally with Kid Rock BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev sent a congratulatory letter to Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Japan. "Dear Mr. Prime Minister, I sincerely congratulate you on your election as the Prime Minister of Japan. We attach a particular importance to the comprehensive development of our friendly and cooperative relations with Japan. I believe that we will put joint efforts to further strengthen the ties between our countries and successfully develop our mutually beneficial collaboration. I extend my best wishes to you and wish you strong health, happiness and success in your responsible endeavor for the sake of prosperity of the friendly people of Japan," the letter said. New River Community College recently received the prominent Gerald L. Baliles Rural Virginia Horseshoe Initiative Award from the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education. The award was renamed to honor the legacy of the late Gerald L. Baliles, the 65th governor of Virginia, a native of rural Patrick County and a forward-thinking leader, who worked to ensure that all Virginians had access to education and training. The RVHI Award is aimed at reducing the number of rural residents without a high school diploma from one in five to one in 10, and to increase the number of rural residents with an associate degree, diploma or certificate from 26% to 52%. To date, the RVHI has provided more than $10 million in direct and matching funding toward achieving these goals. Significant outcomes indicate that the population of the RVHI region age 25 and over without a high school degree has decreased by 4.2% and those with at least an associate degree has increased by 4%. NRCCs award will be used to continue funding a Student Resources Specialist staff position. This position is housed in the Student Services department and provides direct support by engaging current and future NRCC students as they navigate the college process, from consideration to completion. This award allows us to continue serving our students through personal support and direct contact, said NRCC President Pat Huber. We are always striving to offer the best student support experience possible, and this award helps us to continue to meet the expanding student needs in our local community. The VFCCEs mission is to build student success through support of Virginias 23 community colleges. NRCC was one of 13 to receive the 2020 Gerald L. Baliles Rural Virginia Horseshoe Initiative Award, which is determined through a competitive application process. The NRCC Educational Foundation will be providing matching funds through local efforts. To help support this effort, visit www.nr/edu/foundation or call 674-3618. Submitted by Jill Ross Kakoli Mukherjee By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Vitamin D, a micro-nutrient that nearly 80 percent of Indian population is deficient in, plays a vital role in vital body functions. Not having sufficient levels of vitamin D can make your bones weaker, cause body aches and decrease your ability to fight infections. In fact, its deficiency has been linked to depression, too. But, how big a role does this nutrient play in fighting Covid-19? There is an indirect link between vitamin D levels and Covid-19. In many studies, it has been found that persons who succumbed to the virus had low levels of vitamin D. So, having a good level of this micro-nutrient in the body is necessary at this time, when people are mostly working from home. Staying indoors, we are not exposing ourselves to sunlight, which is the primary source of this vitamin. Even before the pandemic, more than 80 percent of the population in India have been found deficient in vitamin D, which plays an important role in fighting infections.That is why, it is better to consult a doctor, and get vitamin D levels checked, says Dr B Sujeeth Kumar, consultant surgeon at department of surgical GI and laparoscopic surgery in Apollo Health City. How can this vitamin help in fighting Covid-19? Dr KK Aggarwal, president of HCFI and editor-in-chief at Medtalks, explains: Vitamin D is an immuno-modulator. Therefore, it helps in reducing cytokine crisis. It also upgrades the ACE2 receptors, the ones that Covid-19 virus downgrades. That is how, it reduces lung inflammation. So, vitamin D is essential in treatment of Covid-19, but we cannot say that taking the vitamin can bring down mortality. Covid-19 treatment is multi-pronged vitamin D is as important as vitamin C or anti-virals or steroids. Irrespective of Covid-19, human beings should maintain the requisite levels of vitamin D i.e. 2,000 units per day. It helps us to fight any infection that our body might suffer from. Echoing his thoughts, Dr Praveen Koppula, critical & intensive care specialist at Basavatarkam Indo American Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, says: Vitamin D is important to fight all infections, just not Covid-19. Most Indians are deficient in this micro-nutrient either due to our skin tone or rapid urbanisation. We are not going out in the sun in the hours when we can manufacture this nutrient. Even globally, the level of vitamin D has been persistently low till we could measure it. It is a costly process and today, you have to shell out around Rs 1500 to get the levels checked. If the levels are good, we have better protection against viral and bacterial diseases. However, we cannot say that if a person has low vitamin D, she has a higher chance of getting sicker. It is necessary that we consult a doctor while getting vitamin D levels checked. Says Dr Sujeeth, If a person has low levels for a long time, the vitamin D receptors inside the body becomes insensitive. If there is more than 32 nanogram of vitamin D in the body, then calcium absorption and body functions will be better. However, in most people, the levels range between 15 and 25 nanogram. In order to sensitise the receptors, the doctor may recommend vitamin D injections, as capsules take a longer time to be absorbed in the body. We still do not understand completely how coronavirus acts in our body. Even prestigious institutions like the World Health Organisation has made contradictory statements. That is why, it is better to take all known precautions. Good levels of vitamin D, good sleep, immunity-boosting food will help us remain healthy. Signs of low Vitamin D Fatigue Weak bones Headache Hair loss Muscle pain Vitamin D is made with the help of UV B rays of sunlight. In a city environment, pollution does not allow most of the rays to reach human beings. For a fair-skinned person, half-an-hour exposure to sunlight is enough to manufacture the requisite amount. Its a myth that we will make more of this vitamin if we sit in sunlight longer. On the contrary, too much exposure can destabilise the vitamin-D already formed. For dark-skinned persons, 45-minute exposure to sunlight is enough. Kakoli Mukherjee kakoli_mukherjee@newindianexpress.com @KakoliMukherje2 A coronavirus testing centre has shut down to make way for a lorry park to deal with queues expected after Brexit. The land at Ebbsfleet International railway station in Kent is understood to be earmarked as one of an array of inland facilities being prepared in up to 29 council areas to allow hauliers to deal with the extra paperwork caused by Brexit. The government expects at least an additional 200 million export documents to be required annually after the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December, whether Boris Johnson secures a free trade agreement or not. Ministers have already identified a location in Ashford, Kent, to handle some of the thousands of lorries expected to be delayed passing through Dover and other ports every day. And other sites are expected to be created further away from the ports, with a leaked official document today predicting queues of up to two days, with truckers having to obtain a Kent entry permit before travelling to the county. Planning permission was granted in September 2019 to allow use of the Ebbsfleet site temporarily for customs clearance until the end of this year. But work at one of the car parks at the station this was put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty The site has been used as a Covid testing site, with a capacity for about 2,000 tests a day, but earlier this month testing staff were told "out of the blue" that it would be closing, the BBC reported. Local councillor Sacha Gosine warned that the arrival of large numbers of trucks would cause disruption in the area, telling the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "The infrastructure at Ebbsfleet cannot cope with lorries." Cllr Gosine said it would be a "logistical nightmare" for officials. Kent County Council declined to comment on the development, saying decisions were taken at a central government level. The Ebbsfleet coronavirus testing centre during its operation in April (AFP via Getty Images) A UK Government Spokesperson said: "Regional testing sites were set up at great speed and selected for their immediate availability, security and access. The regional testing site at Ebbsfleet has ceased operations and a new regional testing site is operating at Curtis Way, Rochester. The relocation will allow the network to continue operating as long as needed. "In July 2020, the government committed to spending 470m on new border infrastructure to support ports in building extra capacity to meet the new control requirements where there is space to do so, and, if necessary, to build additional inland sites across the country where checks can take place. "Final decisions on inland sites will not be made until we have established the extent of new infrastructure that will be delivered at ports." ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With COVID-19 causing uncertainty about voting logistics and procedures across the country, IBM (NYSE: IBM) has technology to help states use the AI capabilities of Watson to put this critical data and information directly into the hands of voters. With states facing a deluge of information requests related to voting procedures, citizens may face wait times to receive answers to their most frequently asked questions. IBM announced it will help states use AI capabilities of Watson to put critical information directly into the hands of voters. Here, IBM Watson Assistant helps communicate registration and absentee ballot procedures to Idaho citizens. To help ease this burden and address citizens' voting-related inquiries online or by phone, IBM is offering Watson Assistant on the IBM public cloud to U.S. states at no charge for 60 days. As part of this offering, IBM will assist with initial set up, which typically can be done in a few days. The offering uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) built by IBM Research and available in IBM Watson Assistant for citizen-facing virtual agents, and Watson Discovery for text analytics that, when combined, quickly respond to voter questions and requests about the election process. The tool can advise citizens on everything from finding polling places and voting hours to procedures and deadlines for requesting mail-in ballots, and more. Language is a unique challenge for businesses because it is always evolving and lives in many different forms. Organizations need AI that can understand the language of their business. NLP can parse language into its elemental pieces to help organizations unearth insights, make more informed decisions, and create conversational experiences. "Early in the pandemic, we mobilized Watson and its natural language processing technology to help organizations quickly deliver critical information and services to citizens, customers, and employees," said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager, Data and AI, IBM. "With success there and the upcoming U.S. election, we are now mobilizing Watson to manage the flood of information requests and questions from citizens regarding voting logistics and resources." In March, the state of Idaho determined that there would be no in-person voting for its May primary election due to COVID-19. The Idaho Secretary of State's Office turned to IBM Watson Assistant to help communicate to its 900,000 registered voters how to cast their ballots by mail through the existing absentee voting system. Heading into the U.S. Presidential election in November, Idaho will continue to use Watson Assistant to field voter queries. "In short turn, our office needed to communicate the registration and absentee ballot procedures to Idaho voters, and we were bracing ourselves for a wave of calls," said Idaho Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck. "In just two weeks, two of our people got started with Watson Assistant and trained it to provide important information about how and when to vote. We're now exploring its capabilities throughout the remainder of this election season and beyond to help convey information about the other services and functions we provide for the people of Idaho." The Watson Assistant offering uses Watson Discovery to find and surface currently available data about voting processes and logistics from external sources, including federal, state and county websites and local sources such as news reports and documents on websites. The offer includes access to more than 25 pre-trained "intents" or queries specific to voting and election logistics. "Intents" are purposes or goals that are expressed in a citizen's input, such as answering a question. By recognizing the intent expressed in a citizen's input, Watson Assistant can choose the correct dialog flow for responding to it. The system is focused specifically on assisting with the act of voting. It does not provide insights or recommendations regarding individual candidates or their positions on specific issues. Watson Assistant uses advanced NLP capabilities to automate responses to frequently asked questions about voting procedures through the pre-trained intents, that come in via phone call or text, such as "When is my absentee ballot due?", "How do I request an absentee ballot?", "How do I update my voter registration details?" and "When will my polling location be open?". States can work with IBM to customize Watson Assistant on top of the base model and intents to include tailored information, expanded use cases or add additional questions that are specific to their state or county, as well as integrate with back-end ERP systems. To date, IBM Watson Assistant has been deployed by businesses and government agencies in more than 25 countries around the world to respond to COVID-19 and reimagine the way work will get done in this new operating environment. Today's news builds on a series of announcements that demonstrate how IBM is advancing Watson's ability to understand the language of business so that companies can generate new insights - from commercializing cutting-edge capabilities from Project Debater to transforming the fan experience at the US Open to bringing more diverse voices into the public square with 'That's Debatable'. IBM is helping businesses and consumers take action in six key areas to emerge smarter, more resilient and more agile for years to come. For more information about how businesses in any industry can use Watson Assistant, visit: https://www.ibm.com/watson/covid-response. Media Contact Hanna Smigala IBM Media Relations [email protected] SOURCE IBM Related Links https://www.ibm.com/ Houston's famous restaurant scene could find itself in an even more dire position without a significant influx of government cash, according to a recent survey. The Texas Restaurant Association released results of a survey this week predicting half percent of Texas restaurants will close within the next six months if they don't receive federal funding. Latest survey results available and they are not good. The biggest takeaways: - 71% of Texas operators say they dont... Posted by Texas Restaurant Association on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 In Texas, the pandemic took a particularly heavy financial toll on the restaurant industry, leaving many of the restaurants to shutter their doors. The industry lost an estimated $4.2 billion in sales and nearly 700,000 jobs from March to April, according to the TRA. Houston restaurant favorites including Patrenella's, Bernie's Burger Bus and Barry's Pizza were forced to close permanently as the pandemic dragged on and sales foundered. "We'd been thinking about [the possibility of closing] since Christmas, but then the virus came along and we had to close. The restaurant business was in terrible shape," Patrenella's Owner Sammy Patrenella told Chron.com's Marcy de Luna. According to the survey, 71 percent of restaurant operators dont believe sales will return to normal (pre-coronavirus numbers) within the next six months. The cost of doing business has also risen, with 73 percent of those surveyed saying operational costs have increased. Many restaurants have moved their sales online and are offering delivery, curbside pick-up or purchases through third-party delivery apps. The survey noted that 77 percent of businesses reported that off-site sales currently outweigh in-store sales. Houston foodies, there's a way to support some of your favorite restaurants. The TRA has created a Texas Relief Restaurant Fund, a nonprofit which has provided $2.5 million in grants to more than 500 restaurants. Donations can also be made by texting TRRF to 31996. Washington, Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Genesis Water Technologies, Inc. (GWT) has been named 2020 Small Business Exporter of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Maitland, Florida-based company will be recognized during SBAs National Small Business Week, an annual event honoring the accomplishments and contributions of the best small businesses in the nation. This years National Small Business Week activities will include numerous educational panels providing retooling and innovative practices for entrepreneurs as our nations small businesses look to pivot and recover toward a stronger economy. Genesis Water Technologies, Inc. owner and Technical Director Nick Nicholas, along with other national winners and finalists for the National Small Business Person of the Year, will be honored in a virtual event that will be held on September 22-24. Genesis Water Technologies, Inc. has a tremendous impact in providing access to safe drinking water around the world. They are a great example of how a small business can flourish by entering global markets. We are proud that the SBA was able to assist them as they grew into an international company, said SBAs Office of International Trade Associate Administrator Loretta Greene. Under Nicolas leadership, the companys revenues more than doubled in 2019, and GWT started tackling the water supply issues with sustainable water treatment systems. Nicholas is passionate about educating people about the impact that polluted water has on the world. Genesis Water Technologies, Inc. began exporting industrial water filtration systems to Saudi Arabia in 2009. Today, the export business makes up 40 percent of the companys total sales and supports the workforce of 100 employees. GWT received a State Expansion Program (STEP) grant for $2,500, which provided a roadmap for the international expansion of GWT. The company launched a digital marketing campaign to include translating its website into 24 local dialects and invested in search engine optimization tools to increase traffic to its website. The company now uses its expertise and solutions to serve municipalities and industrial clients in 43 countries, fulfilling its mission of providing water and wastewater reuse solutions to communities around the world. GWT believes it can make a difference in the worlds access to safe and clean water. For registration and additional information on National Small Business Week, please visit sba.gov/NSBW. About the U.S. Small Business Administration The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit https://www.sba.gov. --- Cosponsorship Authorization #SBW2020. SBAs participation in this Cosponsored Activity is not an endorsement of the views, opinions, products, or services of any Cosponsor or other person or entity. All SBA programs and services are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis. Details and registration information will be posted on sba.gov/NSBW as events are finalized. By Park Moo-jong The door-to-door delivery business is flourishing thanks to the stubborn COVID-19 pandemic. The boom naturally causes the shortage of motorbike-riding delivery persons. All the food delivery platforms, either small or big, are all out to secure riders with the number of orders increasing sharply as social distancing measures have continued to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The rush of the riders in this time of unemployment, however, is adding fuel to the already serious traffic problems caused by motorcycle delivery rider, often dubbed, "street outlaws." The outlaws of today in Seoul reminded me of the 1969 U.S. film "Easy Rider," featuring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper who travel on Harley-Davidson choppers to the rock beat of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," carrying the proceeds from a cocaine deal. As if born to be wild, the two riders search for freedom or the illusion of freedom on their motorbikes in the midst of paranoia, bigotry and violence, exploring the societal landscape, issues and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise of the hippie movement, drug use and communal lifestyle. Half a century later, our riders on their "otobai" (meaning motorcycle as a Konglish word coined from a portmanteau of "auto" from automobile and "bi" from bicycle) are threatening the safety of citizens here, there and everywhere, even at the risk of their life. These riders have appeared to be the "most" dreadful thing on Seoul streets for they drive so dangerously, zigzagging between lanes and between bumper-to-bumper cars "to save time," even though Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), one of the founding fathers of the United States, coined the phrase "Time is Money" in his book, "Advice to a Young Tradesman" (1746). The riders' purpose is quite simple: not to deliver cold food and to get more orders for delivery. It is a piece of cake for them to run red lights. Some even joke that the riders are color-blind or stuntmen. What startles people most is the "acrobatic" bikers passing through sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. What is more serious is that few take issue with such illegal behavior threatening their safety. The sharp increase of the riders following the outbreak of the epidemic is worsening the traffic conditions in major cities and threatening their own safety, especially on rain-soaked slippery roads. Statistics show the seriousness of the situation. Over the past eight months of this year, as many as 336 riders were killed in accidents, 1.4 persons per day on average. More than 20,000 motorbike accidents took place last year alone, according to related transportation authorities. It is true that many citizens complain of the aggressive riding of delivery riders, posting petitions on various government sites, including the presidential office's online board. They argue over what the law enforcement authorities are doing against the illegal behavior of the riders. The riders claim that they have to meet the demands of their customers on time and they are unable to do so if they fully abide by traffic rules due to the around-the-clock traffic congestion of the city. But many of them change lanes without signaling and ignore traffic signs, as if doing so is a matter of course on that excuse. Engine noise has also appeared as a major public nuisance. Of course, there are traffic police and related law enforcement officials from the ward offices on streets. But it seems that they are helpless because there are really "too many" violators to crack down on. They complain of "difficulty" in stopping the speeding motorbikes. Yet, it is never too late to do something to correct the wrong. Government authorities and major platforms like Coupang, Baemin and Yogiyo have to roll up their sleeves at once to help prevent accidents and thus to ensure safety. What is urgent to effectively fight against the street outlaws is safety education provided by the delivery platforms for their riders. Street order is the very basis of any society where people from different spectrums of life are supposed to get along together peacefully. Thus abiding by traffic rules is a fundamental part of a democratic society and a form of respect to other citizens to guarantee peaceful coexistence. Even if the Western proverb says "there is no rule without exception," there can be no excuse for delivery riders defiance of traffic rules. In this difficult time when all of us are fighting the pandemic, delivery riders who bring food and other necessities to our doors are a thankful existence. They should not be seen as a "necessary evil." Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974. LOS ANGELES We gave a damn too late. Sometimes, I think that will be the legacy of this generation. Or maybe Im just tired of seeing people walking around without masks as if a pandemic had not taken almost 200,000 American lives. Then again, it could just be the smoke. On a normal morning, the sky here is a metallic gray. Today, it is a queasy yellow. The sun is blurry and the air smells faintly like a backyard barbecue. The Golden State is burning, dozens of wildfires charring its forests, darkening its skies. One fire, burning north of San Francisco, is being called the largest in California history. The previous record holder was just two years ago. We have come here, my wife and I, for a family funeral. We drove because we didnt want to end up wedged in an airline seat next to some MAGA hat-wearing COVID-19 denier who thinks being required to wear a mask infringes her civil rights. But we could have saved ourselves the trouble, because from a restaurant in Missouri to a gas station in Arizona, maskless faces are unavoidable all across America. Indeed, some shoot dirty looks when you walk by with your face covered. Nicola Sturgeon (Russell Cheyne/pool/AFP via Getty Images) New Scotland secretary suggests Nicola Sturgeons inaccurate use of coronavirus stats helped drive anti-English protests at Scottish border Alister Jack says Sturgeons claim that virus was five times more prevalent in England led to bad feeling However, he fails to mention Sturgeon spoke out against border protests Visit the Yahoo homepage for more stories A minister has accused Nicola Sturgeon of inflaming tensions at the English-Scottish border. Scotland secretary Alister Jack suggested the first ministers inaccurate claim that COVID-19 was five times more prevalent in England than Scotland led to bad feeling which drove anti-English protests at the border this summer. Jack, however, didnt mention the fact Sturgeon spoke out against the protests and urged people not to take part. Speaking at the Scottish affairs committee on Thursday, he told MPs: I thought it was disgraceful that on many occasions over the summer when the first minister was, I think, not helping the situation at the border with people standing with banners saying the English werent welcome. Scotland secretary Alister Jack (NurPhoto via Getty Images) The idea was the virus was all but suppressed and gone in Scotland and the prevalence she kept saying was five times higher in England. That statistic was repeated many times, it was totally untrue, totally unhelpful. Sturgeon was eventually rebuked by the UKs chief statistician in July for making the claim, which was based on incomplete and unpublished data. Watch: Can the coronavirus affect the brain? Jack continued: Its that sort of conduct that actually leads to bad feeling between us. Were one United Kingdom, were all in this together. Theres been huge support from the UK government in terms of the furlough scheme and other things. Thats as it should be and Scotland pulls her weight as does Wales and Northern Ireland but we should be in this together, supporting each other, and that sort of pointing the finger and saying youre doing a bad job and Im doing a good job I find that totally unhelpful. Story continues There is no love lost between the Westminster and Holyrood governments, with tensions having been visible throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Sturgeon has been a vocal critic of Boris Johnson, attacking his government over shambolic decision making. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter In a massive crackdown, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Thursday conducted raids at three different locations across Mumbai to probe the Bollywood-drug nexus that is growing wider in connection with Sushant Singh Rajputs death case. As per reports, separate teams of the NCB were deployed at three locations in the city after receiving a major lead from those already in the custody of the agency. Despite making 16 arrests into the drug case so far, the connection of drugs with the Indian film industry seems to grow wider with each revelation in Sushants case. Meanwhile, more details regarding drug peddlers have come to light in the latest updates of the case. During the ongoing interrogation with the drug peddlers, it was revealed that two of them had attended a rave party held in Sri Lanka in 2017. Sources told Republic TV that suppliers of illegal goods from other countries had also attended the party in Sri Lanka. Two of them are already in NCBs custody. The agency is now trying to establish an international link if any. Names of the two arrested individuals have been withheld. READ | Sushant Case: AIIMS Board Issues Statement; Opinion To Be 'conclusive With No Doubts' NCB picks up Goan drug peddler, six others Alleged drug peddler Chris Costa was brought to Mumbais NCB office from Goa for transit remand on Tuesday. Costa will be examined by the NCB for further probe into the drug nexus and its links with Bollywood and the Sushant death case, as per sources. The news came a day after the NCB detained Showik Chakraborty's school friend Suryadeep Malhotra after conducting searches at his house. Both Chris Costa and Suryadeep Malhotra were taken for a medical at the time of publishing. READ | Disha Salian Death Case: Nitesh Rane Dares Rohan Rai, Says 'will Go To CBI, If He Doesn't' The Mumbai Zonal Unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau had earlier arrested six more persons in connection with the drug nexus linked to the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. Karamjeet Singh, Dwayne Fernandes, Sanket Patel, Ankush Arneja, Sandeep Gupta and Aftab Fateh Ansari will be produced in the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate(ACMM) court via video conferencing. Showiks school friend Karamjeet is alleged to have supplied drugs through Sushant's staff Dipesh Sawant and house manager Samuel Miranda more than 10 times. Chris Costa's name had surfaced then as well, for allegedly supplying LSD to Anuj Keswani - with sources claiming that he allegedly deals in chemicals from his Goa base. READ | In Sushant-Disha Cases, Mumbai Builder With 'bhai' Link Likely To Be Grilled By CBI & NCB READ | Sara Ali Khan & Rakul Preet's Names Surfaced; No Summons Yet: NCB On Rhea's Questioning India logs over 3.17 lakh new Covid cases in last 24 hours; daily positivity rate up at 16.41 per cent Onus on Pak to create conducive atmosphere to resolve issues peacefully: India India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: India on Thursday said it desires to have normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan and issues, if any, between the two countries should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully in an atmosphere free of terror, hostility and violence. At the same time, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the onus is on Pakistan to create such a conducive atmosphere, including by taking "credible, verifiable and irreversible" action to not allow any territory under its control to be used for cross-border terrorism against India. Pakistan court indicts 4 close aides of Hafiz Saeed in terror financing cases The minister was replying to a question in Rajya Sabha on India's policy towards Pakistan, and its foreign policy initiatives to counter that country on the issue of terrorism. He said India has consistently raised the issue of Pakistan's continued support to cross-border terrorism in bilateral, regional and multilateral platforms. As a result of India's efforts, he said there is now enhanced concern globally on terrorism emanating from Pakistan, including the continuing activities of internationally designated terrorist entities and individuals like Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen etc. "India desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan. Our consistent position is that issues, if any, between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, in an atmosphere free of terror, hostility and violence," he said. Muraleedharan said many terrorist entities and individuals, operating from Pakistan and engaged in terror activities in India, have been proscribed by the UN, the European Union and other countries. He also referred to a decision by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February to retain Pakistan in the 'Grey List' due to continuing terror financing related concerns. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News "These vindicate India's consistent stand that internationally designated terrorist groups and individuals continue to operate from and raise financial resources with impunity in Pakistan, and use territories under its control for carrying out cross-border terrorism in India and elsewhere in South Asia," the minister said. He said India's call to condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestation and delink terror from religion has found greater acceptance among the international community, and is reflected in a number of outcome documents issued after bilateral and multilateral summits. NEW YORK, N.Y. -- New York City students will not all return for in-person learning Sept. 21 as planned and will instead return for in-person learning in phases by grade levels starting next week. De Blasio said he decided on the latest reopening plan after he heard real concerns from school union leaders in recent days, specifically concerning the lack of staff in schools. I heard an honest concern and it just was clear to me that we did not have a clear enough number, and that we had to agree to a number that folks who had the ability to hear exactly from every school what was going on in a different way than the [Department of Education] bureaucracy hears that they have to help us figure out what the true number was and how long it would take to put that number into play, de Blasio told reporters Thursday of the conversations he had with the heads of the UFT and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators about their concerns. Students will return for in-person learning by grade level starting on Monday through Oct. 1 This is a summary of the new reopening plan: Sept. 21: 3K, Pre-K, District 75 Sept. 29: K-5 and K-8 Oct. 1: Middle and high schools, secondary schools and transfers and adult education All students in full remote programs will continue as planned starting full-day instruction on Sept. 21 and will follow the blended learning schedules according to the schedules their schools provided. De Blasio also said he planned to add 2,500 more teachers for the start of in-person learning, bringing the total of additional teachers to 4,500. He said he was confident that the city had enough teachers for remote learning. I know that our school leaders and teachers and all of our staff, as well as of course, and probably more so than anyone else, our parents, and students would much rather be walking into school buildings on Monday morning in any form that we can possibly put together, whether its this remote form with some of them coming or not, said Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Mark Cannizzaro However, it wouldnt be safe. Our folks have been telling us, and the teachers and the school leaders, and all the folks whove been working in the schools have been letting us know that, right now, currently theyre understaffed, they need some other items, some schools need some more safety tools, its varied across the city, but opening Monday to everyone would not have been safe for our students, Cannizzaro said. Earlier this month, de Blasio announced that the 2020-2021 school year would be delayed until Monday, Sept. 21 for remote and blended learners, with three days of an instructional orientation beginning remotely on Sept. 16. Asked Thursday if he could guarantee there would be no more delays for parents, de Blasio did not make any promises. The plan is the right plan, but we have to make sure its implemented properly, is exactly right. And thats what parents would want of us, he said. They would want us to get it right. So, its never easy. I do sympathize and I feel for any parent class to make new arrangements for a few days, come up with something new. Its always hard. I understand that. Ive been in that situation myself, youre struggling to find child care. Youre struggling to find options. Its not easy, but I know that people will do what they have to do. And then well be able to provide that support. Inglewood Park Cemetery Launches City Of Angels Photo Contest As a subject for the lens, cemeteries around the world attract photographers of all skill levels. Taking advantage of this inherent interest, Inglewood Park Cemetery invites photographers throughout Southern California to participate in a new photography contest, which launches officially on Tuesday, September 15, 2020. The contest, entitled City of Angels, focuses on the 115-year-old cemeterys numerous stone angels scattered throughout the memorial park, some dating back to the cemeterys early start. Two categories will be open: Pure Photography for images employing the art of color or black & white photography with minimal evident post-processing or special effects; and Creative Eye which allows for greater imaging freedom. The contest is open to amateurs, photography enthusiasts and professionals alike over the age of 18. The last day for submissions is November 30, and judging will occur in December. There is no entry fee. ADVERTISEMENT We have a remarkable and historic setting that has attracted photographers over our many years, said general manager, Rick Miller. But with our new brand message, Soul of the City of Angels, it only made sense for this contest to honor all the historic angel monuments installed throughout the cemetery. Its one of the many unique features that people remark on when they visit. All rules and details are posted online on the cemeterys Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/InglewoodParkCemeteryCA) or at www.IPC-PhotoContest.com. Photo entries must be submitted electronically via the cemeterys Facebook page or contest website (plus an entry form which must be mailed in). Judging will be by online votes plus a juried panel of photography experts in early December. Photographers of all kinds at all levels are encouraged to participate. The contest provides a unique and COVID-safe photographic opportunity that image-makers are seeking during the pandemic. Each category will have three winners. The first-place prize entry in each category will win $500, the second-place prize entry will win $250, third-place prize earns $100. According to Mr. Miller, the six winning photographs along with a selection of other noteworthy entries will be exhibited online, and perhaps in a future live exhibit depending on the safe return of physical gatherings. ADVERTISEMENT Over the past 100-plus years, there have been so many incredible features that have come to grace our property, from beautiful historic mausoleums to magnificent works of stained glass art to our magnificent stone angels, added Mr. Miller. I think all who come out to capture Inglewood Park Cemetery with their cameras will see something to excite their artistic sensibilities. For more information about the City of Angels Photography Contest at Inglewood Park Cemetery, visit the website www.IPC-PhotoContest.com, the cemeterys Facebook page or email [email protected] COVINGTON, GA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Best Platinum Roofing Contractor of Conyers & Covington GA, Braswell Construction Group, honored with the 2020 Platinum Preferred 'Product Excellence' Award for their industry-leading contributions to the roofing category. Owens Corning Roofing Platinum Preferred Contractor, Braswell Construction Group (BCG), was once again recently honored with the 2020 Platinum Preferred Product Excellence Award for their industry-leading contributions to the roofing category. This industry recognition reflects BCG's continued focus on bringing a results-oriented, customer-driven methodology to running their business and delivering trustworthy, reliable work with superior customer service for their customers. This award commends BCG's ongoing commitment to education, training, and roofing industry product knowledge. The 'Product Excellence' recognition awarded to Braswell Construction Group distinguishes them from their competitors by acknowledging their excellence in overall System Selling performance for America's number one most trusted and recognized roofing brand, Owens Corning. Chris Braswell, founder and owner of BCG states, "we recognize that this award is a significant achievement and momentous triumph for our company. We appreciate this high distinction from Owens Corning and thank our loyal customers who continue to trust us to deliver the high-standard of service homeowners deserve." For more information please visit https://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com About Owens Corning Roofing Platinum Preferred Contractors Owens Corning is a household name in the roofing industry and helps homeowners across the country choose the most reputable roofing contractor in their area. The Owens Corning Roofing Platinum Preferred Contractor program is considered one of the industry's most exclusive customer reward and loyalty programs. There are 17,000 contractors that supply Owens Corning roofing products. Of those 17,000, just 11,000 contractors receive the "Preferred Contractor" distinction and only 144 of this group are "Platinum" Preferred Contractors. Braswell Construction Group is proud to be a 'Platinum Preferred Contractor.' To qualify for this exclusive position, BCG not only met the highest standard requirements, but exceeded them in all areas of their trade. Once named as an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor, the provider is considered among the best in the industry. About Braswell Construction Group Braswell Construction Group (BCG) has been locally owned and operated since 2002, and prides itself on its high-quality craftsmanship, exceptional customer service, and professional acumen. BCG has a reputation for always completing its roofing and restoration projects on time and on budget. The company states: "BCG is a full-service roofing company with extensive knowledge in many different roofing systems. With our 5-year craftsmanship warranty you can rest at ease that we have you covered." Chris Braswell summarizes his overall mission by offering the following statement. "We strive to achieve the highest quality and reliable services in order to surpass all expectations. Your home is a lifetime investment and your most precious asset; this is why we value each and every customer's desire to have a qualified professional working on the premises of your home." Braswell Construction Group has been featured several times in Yahoo Finance, ABC, FOX, NBC, among many others as an industry leader and the top Roofing Contractor and best Shake & Slate Roofing Specialist in the state of Georgia. You can learn more about BCG and their high-standing reputation via these past features here: https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2019-10-17/best-roofer-covington-ga-receives-cedur-roofing-shakes-contractor-award https://money.yahoo.com/best-roofer-covington-ga-awarded-035900719.html Braswell Construction Group operates from four Georgia locations to service homeowners with all their roofing and restoration needs in Covington/Conyers, Atlanta, Stone Mountain, Greensboro/Lake Oconee, and their respective surrounding areas. For more information please visit https://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com Contact Info: Braswell Construction Group, Inc. Roofing & Restoration? Name: Michelle Bird Email: chris@braswellconstructiongroup.com Organization: Braswell Construction Group, Inc. Roofing & Restoration Address: 6105 Emory St NW, Covington, GA 30014 Phone: +1-678-283-2551 Website: http://www.braswellconstructiongroup.com SOURCE: Braswell Construction Group View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606582/Covington-Roofer-Braswell-Construction-Group-Receives-2020-Owens-Corning-Roofer-Product-Excellence-Award The first of a three-phase, revolutionary product update was recently made available to Wirex users in the European Economic Area (EEA), in line with a close partnership with payment solution company LHV. A range of features are now live, including five new currencies (HRK, CZK, PLN, RON, and HUF), free multicurrency individual IBANs and free SEPA multicurrency transfers and SEPA instant for EUR transfers, while foreign exchange fees or currency conversion fees when topping-up with a local currency card have been removed. Wirex also announced the upcoming release of its new multicurrency Wirex Card, supported by Mastercard. The news comes off the back of the crypto-native platform's Mastercard principal membership announcement in July. The new Wirex card is already being touted as a potential competition-killer with the potential to set a new standard in the FinTech and crypto payments space. Linked to 19 secure crypto and traditional currency accounts in the Wirex app, it allows cardholders to seamlessly spend multiple fiat and cryptocurrencies in day-to-day life without exchanging or offboarding. The company believes that these game-changing features, combined with sky-high limits and next-to-no fees, gives the new Wirex Mastercard a significant advantage over its competitors. To complete the product overhaul, Wirex has also announced a significant upgrade to its rewards programme. The new offering includes up to 2% Cryptoback rewards for all Wirex card spending (online and in-store) and up to 6% rewards on customers' WXT balance annually. The upcoming changes are the latest in a long line of payments innovations from the London-headquartered FinTech startup. Wirex not only debuted the world's first crypto-compatible debit card, but also the first crypto rewards scheme, Cryptoback, which enables users to automatically earn free Bitcoin by spending in-stores with their Wirex cards. While the global pandemic has forced many FinTech businesses to reevaluate their business models, Wirex has continued to grow exponentially throughout 2020, recording an all-time high number of transactions within the month of August. Having recently achieved a milestone of over 3.1 million users on its database, the upcoming launches are set to further solidify its fundamental goal of bridging the gap between the traditional and digital economy. "As a company, we have always believed that Wirex will play a pivotal role in the mass adoption of digital currencies and the inevitable shift from a fiat to a token-based economy; the new product confirms this. While other platforms creep towards mainstream adoption through iterative updates and improvements, Wirex makes the everyday use of digital currencies mainstream now," says Wirex CEO and co-founder Pavel Matveev. Today's announcement caps an extremely eventful few years for the London-headquartered company, which included a successful expansion into the vast APAC market, the release of their native Wirex Token (WXT) and office openings in Tokyo, Singapore, Atlanta, Dallas, Toronto and Dublin. During this period, Wirex also made significant inroads in the acquisition of local licences in Singapore, Japan and the USA - testament to its commitment to observing the appropriate regulatory practices in the territories in which it operates. About Wirex Wirex is a worldwide digital payment platform and regulated institution that has forged new rules in the digital payments space. In 2015, the firm developed the world's first contactless payment card that gives users the ability to seamlessly spend digital and traditional currencies in real life. Wirex was created in 2014 by CEOs and co-founders Pavel Matveev and Dmitry Lazarichev, who identified the need to open up the esoteric world of cryptocurrencies and make digital money accessible for everyone. With the core aim of making it as easy as possible to use digital assets in everyday life, Wirex provides a trusted and cost-effective service for digital and traditional currency transactions by integrating the next generation of payments infrastructure integrated with cryptocurrency blockchains. With over three million customers across 130 countries, the company offers secure accounts that allow customers to easily store, buy and exchange multiple currencies instantly at the best live rates on one centralised mobile app. Quick and simple money transfer options are available, as well as the freedom to spend 150+ fiat and cryptocurrencies in more than 54 million locations around the world using the Wirex card. Wirex continues to develop the product in line with market developments, whilst adhering to regional regulations and securing appropriate licencing where it exists. A proven industry pioneer, Wirex introduced the world's first bitcoin reward programme, Cryptoback, which earns cardholders up to 1.5% back in Bitcoin for every in-store transaction they make. They also launched their own native utility token, WXT, which entitles holders to rewards and incentives such as heavily-discounted fees and higher Cryptoback rates. Wirex is based in London with offices in Singapore, Kyiv, Tokyo, Toronto, Dallas and Atlanta. With over $3bn worth of transactions processed already and rapid expansion into new territories, Wirex is uniquely placed to support and promote the mass adoption of a cashless society. | wirexapp.com | SOURCE Wirex Related Links wirexapp.com We use cookies. By Clicking "OK" or any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Read more in our privacy policy Demonstrators gathered outside the Hennepin County Family Justice Center on 11 September as pretrial hearing was held for the four former Minneapolis Police officers charged in the death of George Floyd. (Getty Images) The trial of four police officers accused of killing George Floyd will be broadcast in the UK as part of a new series dedicated to covering court action. The forthcoming trial of the Minneapolis men is one of the highlights promoted by the production company behind Court TV, which launched on Wednesday on Sky. Floyds death on 25 May triggered protests and riots across the US and led to demonstrations by the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe. Floyd died after a white police officer held him down by pressing a knee into his neck for nine minutes. Derek Chauvin has been charged with murder and manslaughter, while three others Thomas Lane, J Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao face charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. The trial of former Minneapolis police officers (clockwise from top left) Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J Alexander Kueng for the killing of George Floyd will be broadcast in the UK. (Reuters) George Floyd (Ben Crump Law) Court TV ran for 27 years from 1991 in America. It was relaunched two years ago by Katz Networks and the EW Scripps Company, and is now airing in Britain. Another forthcoming case on Court TV centres around three white men accused of murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was shot while jogging through his south Georgia neighbourhood. Jonathan Katz, president of the Katz Network, said: Theres been nothing like Court TV in the United Kingdom until now. The death of George Floyd sparked worldwide anti-racism demonstrations. (Corbis via Getty Images) We anticipate viewers in the UK will embrace having a front-row seat to American criminal justice. Trial coverage will air at primetime in the UK to allow for the time difference between the UK and US. Court TV is planning content for the UK to explain the differences between the two countries justice systems, including why cameras are allowed in courtrooms in the US, but not in the UK. The former officers appeared in court on 11 September for a hearing on the prosecution's request to hold a joint trial, a defence request to move the trial out of Minneapolis, and other issues. Prosecutors told a judge that the men should face trial together because the evidence and charges against them are similar, and multiple trials could traumatise witnesses and Floyd's family. Story continues But defence lawyers have argued for separate trials, saying they could offer "antagonistic" defences and the evidence against one officer could negatively affect another. The full trial is expected to begin in 2021. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news, advice and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter Watch: What are the current UK government guidelines on face coverings within schools? Zwift, a 350-person, Long Beach, California-based online fitness platform that immerses cyclists and runners in 3D-generated worlds, just raised a hefty $450 million in funding led by the investment firm KKR in exchange for a minority stake in its business. Permira, the Amazon Alexa Fund and Specialized Bicycle's venture capital fund, Zone 5 Ventures, also joined the round, alongside earlier backers Highland Europe, Novator, Causeway Media and True, which is a Europe-based consumer specialist firm. Zwift has now raised $620 million altogether and is valued at north of $1 billion. Why such a big round? Right now, the company just makes an app, albeit a popular one. Since its 2015 founding, 2.5 million people have signed up to enter a world that, as Outside magazine once described it, is "part social-media platform, part personal trainer, part computer game." That particular combination makes Zwift's app appealing to both recreational riders and pros looking to train no matter the conditions outside. The company declined to share its active subscriber numbers with us -- Zwift charges $15 per month for its service -- but it seemingly has a loyal base of users. For example, 117,000 of them competed in a virtual version of the Tour de France that Zwift hosted in July after it was chosen by the official race organizer of the real tour as its partner on the event. Which leads us back to this giant round and what it will be used for. Today, in order to use the app, Zwift's biking adherents need to buy their own smart trainers, which can cost anywhere from $300 to $700 and are made by brands like Elite and Wahoo. Meanwhile, runners use Zwift's app with their own treadmills. Now, Zwift is jumping headfirst into the hardware business itself. Though a spokesman for the company said it can't discuss any particulars -- "It takes time to develop hardware properly, and COVID has placed increased pressure on production" -- it is hoping to bring its first product to market "as soon as possible." Story continues He added that the hardware will make Zwift a "more immersive and seamless experience for users." Either way, the direction isn't a surprising one for the company, and we don't say that merely because Specialized participated in this round as a strategic backer. Co-founder and CEO Eric Min has told us in the past that the company hoped to produce its own trainers some day. Given the runaway success of the in-home fitness company Peloton, it wouldn't be surprising to see a treadmill follow, or even a different product entirely. Said the Zwift spokesman, "In the future, its possible that we could bring in other disciplines or a more gamified experience." (It will have expert advice in this area if it does, given that Zwift just brought aboard Ilkka Paananen, the co-founder and CEO of Finnish gaming company Supercell, as an investor and board member.) In the meantime, the company tells us not to expect the kind of classes that have proven so successful for Peloton, tempting as it may be to draw parallels. While Zwift prides itself on users' ability to organize group rides and runs and workouts, classes, says its spokesman, are "not in the offing." The Duke of Cambridge is set to join a star-studded line-up to give a virtual TED talk about climate change. Prince William, 38, will appear alongside a panel of keen environmentalist and celebrities at TED's Countdown Global Launch on 10 October to discuss how the world can tackle global warming and ensure a better, healthier future for the planet. The Duke will be joined by impassioned activists at the online conference including Al Gore, as well as A-list actors Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Will Smith's son, Jaden Smith. Earlier this year, Prince William launched the Earthshot Prize initiative, declaring the Earth was at a 'tipping point' and humans had just ten years to save the world. The Duke of Cambridge, 38, is set to join a star-studded line-up to give a virtual TED talk about climate change in October The Duke will take part in the fourth and final session of the conference, appearing alongside climate change activists, engineers and popstars. The session, which is titled 'Breakthroughs' is described online as 'exploring the nexus of protection, regeneration and transformation using powerful examples.' The description continues: 'The world around us is mainly made of two things: nature and the materials that we extract from it. 'To fight climate change, we need to protect and regenerate nature and transform materials into low or zero-carbon alternatives.' Prince William's profile online describes 'protecting the natural environment for future generations' as one of the royal's 'key priorities' Meanwhile a description of the Duke's profile states: 'Protecting the natural environment for future generations is one of Prince William's key priorities.' Alongside celebrity appearances, the virtual conference promises to bring together 'scientists, activists, entrepreneurs, urban planners, farmers, CEOs, investors, artists, government officials,' and more to 'find the most effective, evidence-based ideas' to help combat climate change. Part of the conference's overall pledge is to work to find a way to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by half by the year 2030. Viewers can watch the event live online on YouTube with further events planned throughout 2021 ahead of the Countdown Summit in Edinburgh next October. William's involvement signals a determination to follow his father Charles's lead on environmental issues. The Duke will appear at the virtual conference alongside a host of celebrities and environmental activists, including Al Gore At the end of last year, the Duke launched the Earthshot Prize, an award, which has been endorsed by Sir David Attenborough, which will grant millions of pounds to those who can come up with solutions to global warming. The ambitious decade-long project will see a total of 50 environmental pioneers awarded a cash prize for their work tackling major problems across climate and energy, nature and biodiversity, oceans, air pollution and fresh water. Palace officials at the time said he hopes to build a unique coalition of scientists, economists, activists, leaders, governments, businesses, philanthropists, cities and countries. The Earthshot Prize will celebrate the achievements of five individuals, teams or organisations each year for the next decade. Meanwhile other A-listers set to speak at the conference include Hollywood actor Chris Hemsworth The project, which will span the globe and seeks to produce 'at least 50 solutions by 2030', was launched with a video narrated by Sir David Attenborough that was shared on the @KensingtonRoyal Instagram page on New Year's Eve last year. Kensington Palace said William wanted the world to show the spirit of Project Apollo in the 1960s and 1970s. Nasa's 'Moonshot' missions helped develop innovations such as solar panels, CAT scanners, smoke detectors and advanced water filters. William insisted that the same level of ambition and ingenuity could solve the climate crisis. CAMBRIDGE A kindergarten student at a Catholic elementary school has tested positive for COVID-19. Waterloo Region Public Health informed staff members at St. Anne Catholic Elementary School of the case on Wednesday afternoon, the school said in a letter sent to parents on Wednesday. Public health is following up with all high-risk contacts of the positive case and providing guidance. In this case, an entire class as well as certain contacts on the school bus have been asked to self-isolate and get tested, public health said in a statement. Public health will continue to work closely with our school board partners to ensure appropriate infection prevention and control practices are in place and that they have all necessary supports. The school and classroom have been thoroughly cleaned and an extra custodian has been assigned to the school, said John Shewchuk, board spokesperson. The classroom remained closed on Thursday. Kindergarten students at the Catholic school board started attending classes last week. The school board said it is not providing any further information about the case due to privacy legislation. In following provincial guidelines, the school board is posting case information on its website. This is the second COVID-19 case to be reported in a Waterloo Region school in the past 10 days. The Waterloo Region District School Board reported over a week ago that a staff member at Edna Staebler Public School in Waterloo had tested positive for COVID-19. Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood and other nominees for Entertainer of the Year kicked off the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards with a medley of their hits in Nashville, Tennessee. Bryan and Underwood, the only woman nominated in the category, both performed their songs from the iconic Grand Ole Opry, but one thing was missing: an audience. 55th Academy Of Country Music Awards - Show (Getty Images for ACM) Despite no cheering or applause, both performed stirring renditions of two classic songs from their catalogs. Underwood belted "Before He Cheats," her huge breakup hit from 2005. Bryan also chose an oldie but goodie, performing his 2010 tune "Rain Is A Good Thing." Bryan said to the empty seats, "We're gonna get you dancing tonight!" Eric Church, Luke Combs and Thomas Rhett performed as well from various locations around Nashville. The awards were broadcast from three iconic spots in Nashville: the Grand Ole Opry, the Bluebird Cafe and the Ryman Auditorium. Due to the pandemic, the Academy of Country Music Awards postponed their annual awards show that was originally scheduled for April 5 in Las Vegas. Keith Urban will serve as the show's host for the first time ever. Kane Brown, Dan + Shay, Florida Georgia Line, Riley Green, Jimmie Allen, Kelsea Ballerini, Gabby Barrett, Mickey Guyton, Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw, Maren Morris, Old Dominion, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, Taylor Swift, Tenille Townes, Morgan Wallen and Trisha Yearwood are all slated to perform as well. "(I'm excited) that the show's going on!" Urban told People. "It was a challenge to figure out how we were going to do this with no audience and not in Las Vegas and not in April. But we'll be in Nashville, and I'll be live at the Grand Ole Opry. We'll also have artists at the Bluebird Cafe and Ryman Auditorium. It's going to be a fun night." Urban said the three locations are "equally magical" to perform at "for different reasons." "The Opry, it's sacred," he said. "The Ryman Auditorium is just so hallow that stage, that venue is probably the best sounding venue I've ever played at in my life, and I've heard other artists say that, including Chris Martin from Coldplay. It's an amazing sounding venue. I saw Coldplay play at the Ryman Auditorium on one of their first tours in the states it was extraordinary." New Delhi: India has told the United Nations as a "leading contributor to climate action", it has reduced 38 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually. India's statement was at the Open Debate on "Humanitarian Effects of Environmental Degradation and Peace security". In a written statement at UN Security Council (UNSC), India has highlighted in last decade "around 3 million hectares of forest and tree cover has been added" which has "enhanced the combined forest and tree cover to 24.56 per cent of the total geographical area of the country". It listed out that India aims to "restore 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land and achieve land-degradation neutrality by 2030" and have set "additional targets of eliminating single-use plastic by 2022 and installing 450GW of renewable energy by 2030." India also pointed out principles such as Common But Differentiated Responsibilities are sacrosanct when it comes to environmental protection and "steering away from these principles....attempting to discuss such issues by obfuscating those responsible for addressing them will only do a disservice to the real issue rather than make it more meaningful to address them". Climate action has been part of the government and last few years saw it playing a proactive global role especially by proposing India led International solar alliance which has more than 120 countries as its members. London, Sep 17 : The UKs nodel cyber agency on Thursday warned that cyber criminals are increasingly targeting universities with ransomware attacks and there has been a trend for cyber criminals to threaten to release sensitive data stolen from the network during the attack, if the ransom is not paid. In July, hackers compromised student and alumni data at least eight universities in the UK and Canada including University of York, University College, Oxford, University of Leeds and University of London via a massive attack on a US-based software provider called Blackbaud. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said in the latest update that the targeted ransomware attacks on the UK education sector by cyber criminals are on the rise. "This alert details recent trends observed in ransomware attacks on the UK education sector. It also provides mitigation advice to help protect this sector from attack," NCSC said. Since August this year, the NCSC has been investigating an increased number of ransomware attacks affecting education establishments in the UK, including schools, colleges and universities. "There are many high-profile cases where the cyber criminals have followed through with their threats by releasing sensitive data to the public, often via 'name and shame' websites on the darknet". The NCSC observed that Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is one of the main protocols used for remote desktop sessions, enabling employees to access their office desktop computers or servers from another device over the internet. Insecure RDP configurations are frequently used by ransomware attackers to gain initial access to victims' devices. "Often, the attacker has previous knowledge of user credentials, through phishing attacks, from data breaches, and credential harvesting. User credentials have also been discovered through brute force attacks because of ineffective password policies," the agency said. The July hack involved data of former students, staff, existing students and other supporters. In some cases, the stolen data included phone numbers, donation history and events attended. "Recently, attackers have also been seen to sabotage backup or auditing devices to make recovery more difficult, encrypt entire virtual servers, use scripting environments (PowerShell) to easily deploy tooling or ransomware," the NCSC said. The NCSC recommended that organisations implement a 'defence in depth' strategy to defend against malware and ransomware attacks. Hundreds of residents in Srinagar took to the streets clashing with security forces after the deadly gun battle. Hundreds of angry residents clashed with government forces on Thursday in the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir after three suspected rebels and a woman were killed in a gunfight, police and witnesses said. Counterinsurgency police and federal paramilitary forces surrounded the Batamaloo neighbourhood of Srinagar after midnight following a tip-off that rebel fighters were hiding in a house, triggering an exchange of fire. Three suspected rebels, believed to be locals, were killed in the gun battle that lasted several hours, police announced on Twitter. One young woman also died during the encounter, a police officer told the AFP news agency. The woman was caught in the crossfire. Her death is unfortunate, Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh told reporters. Protesters throw stones during clashes with government forces in Batamaloo neighbourhood in Srinagar [Tauseef Mustafa/AFP] A paramilitary trooper was also injured during the firefight, Singh said. As news of the deaths spread, hundreds of residents took to the streets, throwing stones at government forces who fired tear gas and metal pellets. The crowd shouted slogans, such as Long live Pakistan and We want freedom, according to an AFP photographer at the scene. No injuries were immediately reported from the clashes. Armed encounters between rebels and government forces are frequent in the territory, but rare in the regional capital. The last such firefight occurred in June in which three local rebels were killed and 15 houses destroyed in the heart of Srinagar. The deaths come a day after similar protests in Sopore, where 26-year-old Irfan Ahmed Dar was found dead hours after he was detained [Tauseef Mustafa/AFP] Thursdays deaths came a day after similar protests in northeastern Kashmiri town Sopore, where Irfan Ahmed Dar, 26, was found dead hours after he was detained by police. Dars family allege police tortured and killed him, later dumping his body in an open area. Police however claim Dar was an overground associate of anti-India rebels and escaped from police custody before he was found dead. Dars body was not released to his family, and officers buried him in a graveyard reserved for slain rebels. At least 192 rebels, 73 government forces personnel and 47 civilians have been killed in armed violence this year across the disputed territory also claimed by Pakistan which administers a part of it. India and Pakistan claim the divided territory of Kashmir in its entirety. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel cause that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. The two countries have exchanged small arms fire and mortar shells almost daily for months across their disputed border in Kashmir, leading to the death of soldiers and civilians on both sides. On Wednesday, an Indian soldier was killed during cross-border firing in the south. Anxiety and anger have deepened in the restive Himalayan region since August 2019 when New Delhi revoked its semi-autonomous status and brought it under direct federal rule. HAMDEN A staff member at Helen Street Elementary School has tested positive for COVID-19, officials confirmed Thursday. Superintendent of Schools Jody Goeler said in a letter to the school community that he was notified Wednesday night of the case. Goeler said the administration has informed anyone who was in close contact with the staff member and has given them instructions on next steps. Goeler didnt specify how many other members of the school community may have been affected or required to self-isolate. I wish to express my profound hope that our staff member experiences a rapid and complete recovery, Goeler said. The administration sent an automated call to parents across the district informing them of the staff member who tested positive. We are closely monitoring this situation will provide you with updates as we know more, Goeler told families. Because elementary schools are structured as cohorts, students and staff members who have not been in close contact with the employee are able to remain in school, Goeler said. Hamden public school students returned to class Tuesday under a hybrid model that alternates in-person schooling and learning remotely, but about 30 percent of students have opted for full remote learning. This is the first confirmed case of coronavirus to appear in the school since students returned. This incident highlights the need for us all to remain vigilant and to continue our efforts to mitigate the risk of this disease, Goeler said, urging people to continue practicing preventive measures. mdignan@hearstmediact.com LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Intelligent Label Solutions (ITL Group) is a leading labelling company established in 1991 with an impressive track record that spans more than four decades. Now the head of the company has won two Business Worldwide Magazine 2020 CEO Awards for his excellent work in helping businesses stay competitive in challenging times. The awards seek to identify and honor the Most Respected C-level executives across the globe from a variety of different sectors. Unlike many business awards that focus on the overall companies' success, here the spotlight is individuals who make the corporations tick namely senior executives such as CEOs, Managing Directors, Directors and senior-level management. The intention is to give worthy individuals the recognition they deserve, using their example to inspire others to achieve similar success. Chris Currie was named 'Best CEO | Global Labeling and Packaging Industry' & 'Most Innovative CEO of the Year - South Africa' In an interview with Business Worldwide Magazine, Chris discussed the company's successes to date and its role in helping businesses survive the Covid-19 pandemic. ITL Group specialises in helping businesses enhance their brand identities and share essential information about their products. The global company has fourteen manufacturing hubs and nine sales offices around the world, providing quality label solutions for businesses of all types and sizes. Chris comes from a finance background and was attracted to ITL Group by its strong values and clear commitment to helping businesses adapt to changing times. Since then, he has steered the company through impressive and sustainable growth, and it is now one of the most highly respected labelling companies in the world. ITL Group now produces over 4 billion labels across 10 different product lines and supplies 5 solution offerings for over 100 different apparel retailers across the world. Its products are made to order across the world with each bespoke order manufactured consistently within a few days. The advent of Coronavirus presents the biggest challenge that many business leaders have ever seen, but Chris and his team have helped their customer weather the storm. The pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the labelling and retail industries, which are largely based upon discretionary spending by consumers out shopping. But through strong close relationships with shareholders, Chris and his team of high performing business experts understood the need to accept the reality, adapt and take impactful steps very early on. Together they have been able to rapidly adapt to the changing times and find solutions that protect businesses, both now and in the future. Chris explained what winning the awards mean to him: "I am humbled to have been included in this process and feel honoured to have received recognition for the achievements we have made at the ITL Group; a business I am very proud to be a part of." Further information about ITL Group can be found on the company website, https://itl-group.com/ An article on the company can be found on the BWM website: https://www.bwmonline.com/2020/08/17/leadership-and-adapting-to-survive-c-19-and-thrive/ Further information about the Business Worldwide Magazine CEO Awards 2020 visit https://www.bwmonline.com/awards/ceo-awards-2020-winners/ About Business Worldwide Magazine Business Worldwide Magazine is the leading source of business and dealmaker intelligence throughout the world. Our quarterly magazine and online news portal enables an established audience of corporate dealmakers to track the latest news, stories and developments affecting the international markets, corporate finance, business strategy and changes in legislation. This readership includes of CEO/CFO - Banks, Corporate Lawyers and Venture Capital/Private Equity Companies to name a few. Contact David Jones Awards Department E: [email protected] SOURCE Business Worldwide Magazine David Cameron is right on one point: no one seriously doubts that Ed Miliband dropped a comment in the hearing of BBC executives about weaponising the NHS. The PM says it was a disgusting thing to say. But where could Ed Miliband have picked up that ugly word weaponise? Has he perhaps been studying the way the Tories analysed their own failure to win the 2010 election? Janan Ganeshs biography of George Osborne describes the future Chancellors frustration at the way fellow Tories fought the campaign: He wondered aloud why other frontbenchers were less diligent at weaponising policy. The sentiment was echoed by the editor of the ConservativeHome website, Tim Montgomerie, in July 2010. He condemned party campaign managers for a failure to weaponise or retail-ise policies. On 28 May 2013, Isobel Hardman, of The Spectator, noted that Osbornes love of weaponising policy can irritate his colleagues at times. In The Daily Telegraph on 20 February 2014, she mentioned the Chancellors desire to weaponise welfare policy. This is horrible. Weapon is a noun. It is not a verb. Leaving bad politics aside, its an abuse of language. PMs praise like kiss of death Political journalists do not generally like having praise heaped on them in public by politicians. It suggests too cosy a relationship. So one can only imagine what the BBCs Nick Robinson the source of the information that Ed Miliband used the word weaponise must have gone through, at home, feeling ill, as he watched PMQs and heard David Cameron describe him as one of the most respected political journalists in Britain and, seconds later, as one of the most respected journalists in our country. I can only wish him a speedy recovery from his illness and from this excruciating endorsement. Official: Sun not very bright It was big of The Sun to fess up to a mistake. This is from its Corrections and Clarifications column today: In Mondays paper we described the new Greek government as the Halloumi Left. We are happy to clarify that halloumi cheese comes from Cyprus, and not from mainland Greece. Fatuous comment of the day After the survivors of Auschwitz reassembled, possibly for the last time, on the 70th anniversary of their liberation, it fell to the former Plaid Cymru leader Lord Wigley to make the days most fatuous Auschwitz comparison. Asked on the BBC what it would do for employment if the Faslane Trident naval base were moved from Scotland to Wales, he replied: No doubt there were many jobs provided in Auschwitz and places like that, but that didnt justify their existence. He has since apologised. Memories are made of this Helen Macdonalds H is for Hawk, winner of the 2015 Costa Prize, has been described as three books in one. One theme is bereavement. She trained a goshawk as a kind of therapy when her fathers sudden death drove her to the edge of a breakdown. I had read almost the entire book without realising who her father was. Alasdair Macdonald was a much respected press photographer. He spent most of his career with the Daily Mirror, though he was working for the Evening Standard on 20 March 2007 when he was sent to look for storm damage and photograph it. As he did so, he was struck down, at the age of 67, by a heart attack. The next day was Budget Day, when photographers and hacks gather in Downing Street to see the Chancellor come out and the media stood for a minutes silence in Alasdairs memory. By Express News Service JAGATSINGHPUR: Even as violation of Covid guidelines continues blatantly across the district, Jagatsinghpur on Wednesday recorded it biggest single-day spike of 188 positive cases. Though the situation is alarming in the district which has so far reported 3,370 positive cases, people continue to disregard the safety norms with crowded marketplaces and Government offices becoming a common sight. Sources said recently, political parties conducted public meetings for the upcoming Tirtol by-polls where people brazenly violated the social distancing and mask norms. Besides, traders in various markets of Jagatsinghpur, Rahama, Raghunathpur, Paradip and Kujang are protesting the strict enforcement of coronavirus guidelines by the administration. On the day, the district administration closed the offices of Balikuda and Erasama blocks for three days after detection of positive cases among the staff. Locals alleged that marriages and other religious ceremonies are being organised without adherence to the safety norms. Though are obtaining permission for holding marriages and death ceremonies with 50 and 20 guests respectively from the administration, gatherings of around 400-500 persons are found during these events. Neither the revenue officials nor police are properly supervising these events or penalising the violators, they claimed. Residents opined that inadequate testing facilities are a major reason behind the spike in infections in the district. The district headquarters hospital (DHH) is turning away persons who are visiting for tests. Besides, shortage of staff and lack of space are resulting long queues of people waiting outside testing facilities without maintaining social distance. Such is the situation that in the last one week, Jagatsinghpur MLA Prashant Muduli, the local tehsildar, an executive engineer of electricity department, police officers, doctors and nurses have tested positive for Covid-19 apart from the general public. The active contacts of these infected persons are reluctant to visit hospital for tests as health workers are not collecting swab samples from the doorsteps. Of the total Covid-19 cases in Jagatsinghpur, 2,232 cases have recovered while 944 are active. Delhi police have attached the statement of an insider in the charge sheet on the February riots filed on Wednesday, in which this person claims to have been present in three meetings of anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protesters, during which he heard one of the accused , Asif Iqbal Tanha, saying bomb aur bullet chalengay (there will be bomb and bullets). The person added in the statement that former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid, whose arrest on Sunday triggered protests that the police investigation was biased and motivated , was also present in the meeting. A statement to the police under the Code of Criminal Procedure 161 can be used by investigating agencies, but is not admissible as evidence in court. HT could not confirm if the insider has also given a similar statement under the Code of Criminal Procedure 164 before a judge, which is admissible evidence. No senior Delhi police officer was willing to comment on the record on the insiders role. Officials familiar with the charge sheet and the investigation that went into filing it said the insiders statement was crucial evidence and shows that some anti-CAA protesters such as Tanha and Khalid planned the riots by blocking roads. HT has learnt that the insider told the police he was among the protesters; he claimed to have participated in three meetings on February 16,17 and 22 at the makeshift Chand Bagh office of the protesters, and heard Tanha asking all leaders to leave Jafrabad when violence escalated. Also read| Delhi riots: High court to hear pleas against politicians for hate speech Tanha was among the 15 charged by the Delhi police for conspiring to orchestrate the riots. Tanha, according to police records, is a member of the Jamia Coordination Committee and the Students Islamic Organisation of India- the students wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, which is not a banned organisation. Apart from this, police have collected evidence in the form of WhatsApp chats, call data records, and a money trail to connect the arrested suspects such as Khalid, suspended Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain, activist Khalid Saifi, and student activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita to show that they orchestrated the violence. In February, the national Capital was shaken by communal riots, the worst in at least three decades, with clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups in several parts of northeast Delhi. Houses were burnt and broken into, while vehicles were set on fire. Fifty-three people were killed and around 400 injured in the riots that started as clashes between pro- and anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act groups on the evening of February 23 near the Jafrabad metro station. While a city court on Thursday took cognizance of the polices charge sheet and will soon frame charges before beginning trial, Delhi polices investigation has been criticised by many activists, civil society members, and former Indian Police Force officers. Also read: Delhi Police targeting CAA-NRC critics, says Umar Khalid in video recorded before arrest Earlier this week, after the police arrested former JNU student Khalid, nine retired Indian Police Service officers wrote to Delhis police commissioner SN Srivastava, saying they were pained at the police implicating anti-CAA protesters while letting off the hook all those who instigated violence and are associated with the ruling party. Denying allegations of Khalids involvement in the violence and accusing police of framing him, Khalids lawyer, Trideep Pais had told a court on Monday said that his client was against the citizenship law but was not present in Delhi during the riots. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON TCMA signs an MoU on clinker substitution with government ministries and 16 organisations 17 September 2020 The Thai Cement Manufacturers Association (TCMA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with several ministries and 16 organisations to reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission by at least 300,000t CO 2 by 2022 through clinker substitution. The MoU is for "The Integrating Collaboration on Climate Change Management for Thailand Achieving Target of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction-Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU) Sector: Substitution of Clinker Substance." Mr Chana Poomee, chairman of Thai Cement Manufacturers Association (TCMA), announced that "with the determination of all parties concerned namely government, professional, industrial and academic sectors joining forces to drive for the promotion of the extensively use of low clinker cement-hydraulic cement (TIS 2594-2556) will enable us to achieve target of mitigate the CO 2 emission not less than 300,000t carbon dioxide in the year 2022." The MoU signatories include the Council of Engineers Thailand, Engineering Institute of Thailand under the Patronage of His Majesty the King, and the Thai Concrete Association with the support of the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment joined forces with five ministries and 16 organisations. The signing of the MoU is only a first step, according to Dr Raweewan Bhuridej, secretary-general of the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning, "The success requires the strong collaboration from public and private sectors to increase the use of cement and concrete products which mitigate the greenhouse gas emission ie, hydraulic cement (TIS 2594-2566), ready-mix concrete (TIS 213-2560). Expecting that with this action, it will help increase the countrys potential in reducing the greenhouse gas up to 850,000t of carbon dioxide," she said. Published under Meghan and Harry on the red carpet for the Lion King in July 2019. (Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will appear at an event celebrating TIMEs list of the 100 most influential people, which will be broadcast on television for the first time. The TIME lists announcement is usually accompanied by a series of in-person events but they cannot take place this year due to ongoing coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Instead, ABC will broadcast an hour-long special on 22 September, featuring musical performances from Halsey, Jennifer Hudson and The Weeknd. This years list of the most influential people has not been revealed yet, but Harry and Meghan appeared on the list in 2018, and being named for the event has fuelled speculation they will be on the 2020 list. However TIME has said they are attending as previous honourees. TIMEs studios president Ian Orefice told E news: In a year in which we are unfortunately unable to convene the TIME100 community together in person, we are excited to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of the members of this year's list with a brand-new experience on ABC that will allow more people to participate than ever before. Sir Elton John wrote about Prince Harry for the 2018 TIME 100 list. Seen here together in 2018. (Getty Images) Rob Mills, ABC's senior vice president of alternative series, specials and late night, added: Amidst this unprecedented year, we hope that viewers at home will not only be entertained but feel inspired by the impact that the honourees of the 2020 TIME100 list have made on the world. In 2018, actor and friend of Meghan, Priyanka Chopra wrote about the duchess, saying: More than anything else, Meghan is an important influencer in a world that needs strong public figures to respect and look up to. People the world can be inspired by. Meghan, standing shoulder to shoulder with Harry, will be a princess for the people. Elton John, writing about Prince Harry, said: Prince Harry has that rare ability to walk into a room full of strangers and make everyone feel comfortable and at ease. As he has grown in maturity, I have watched him take on these causes with the remarkable skill to see and communicate how it truly feels for the people he is trying to help. Story continues Harry and Meghan, here with the Queen in July 2018, stepped back from their roles as senior royals in March. (Getty Images) Read more: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle donate $130,000 to charity on his birthday Harry and Meghan have signed a mega deal with Netflix to make documentaries, scripted series and childrens programming, and already have two projects underway. They are preparing to set up a production company, the name of which has not yet been revealed. Its the biggest step the couple has made as they seek financial independence, and it led to them paying off the renovation bill on Frogmore Cottage, their UK home, as well as ending their reliance on any funding from Prince Charles. Harry celebrated his 36th birthday on 15 September and the couple marked the day by matching donations made to CAMFED, a pan-African charity, after a fundraiser held by the Sussex Squad, their online supporters. TIME100 will air on 22 September at 10pm ET (3am BST) on ABC. US President Donald Trump raised questions on Wednesday about plans by Chinas ByteDance to keep a majority stake in the US operations of popular social media platform TikTok after six Republican lawmakers urged him to reject the proposal. Trump said he would be briefed on Thursday about a proposal that calls for Oracle Corp to become a trusted technology provider for TikToks US operations, but he did not favour the idea of having the Chinese firm retain control. Senator Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators on Wednesday urged the administration to reject the deal as long as ties remained to Chinese owner ByteDance, and suggested the president could block the proposal. Trump had previously threatened to ban the app unless its US operations were sold to a US company and the US government received a share of the proceeds. Conceptually, I can tell you that I dont like that, Trump told a news conference when asked about a reported proposal to give Oracle only a minority share. Im not prepared to sign off on anything. Theyre going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and Ill let you know. Rubio, the first senator to call on the administration to investigate TikTok over censorship concerns, cited serious questions remained about Oracles role, the technology it would provide to ByteDance, and the future of the applications algorithm in a letter to Trump dated Wednesday. We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any US-based version of TikTok, he wrote. We are heartened that this deal still requires government approval, and if reports indicating this proposed deal will retain links to ByteDance or other Chinese-controlled entities, we strongly urge the administration to reject such a proposal on national security grounds, he added. Late on Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz sent a separate letter to Trump arguing that the Oracle ByteDance deal failed to meet the intent of the presidents executive orders and raises serious national security concerns. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier told reporters a decision would be made in short order. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said security and the ownership question were of paramount concern. The Rubio letter, also signed by Senators Thom Tillis, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker and Dan Sullivan, is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers raising questions about the deal. On Monday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who heads a national security panel reviewing the proposal, calling for the deal to be scuttled, if it does not allow for the full emancipation of TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control. US national security officials fear that ByteDance could provide American user data to the Chinese government. But Trump may not want to alienate 100 million-odd American TikTok users so close to the Nov. 3 elections. Trump has also said he is a fan of Oracles co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison, one of few tech executives to openly support him. Meanwhile, China has updated its export control rules to give it a say over the transfer of technology, such as TikToks recommendation algorithm, to a foreign buyer. Chinese officials have said ByteDance should not be coerced by the United States into a deal. Oracle announced on Monday it was part of a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the US Treasury Department to serve as trusted technology provider, to ByteDance, providing no further details on the terms of the deal. US Attorney General William Barr has drawn sharp condemnation for comparing lockdown orders during the coronavirus pandemic to slavery. In remarks Wednesday night at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Barr had called the lockdown orders the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history since slavery. Representative James Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democratic leader, told CNN Barrs remarks were the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things Ive ever heard because they wrongly equated human bondage with a measure aimed at saving lives. Slavery was not about saving lives, it was about devaluing lives, he said. This pandemic is a threat to human life. It is not the first occasion that Barr has condemned stay-at-home orders. He has previously said some orders are disturbingly close to house arrest and the Justice Department sent letters to several states warning some of their virus-related restrictions might be unlawful. Prosecutors also filed statements of interest in several civil cases challenging some of the restrictions. Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money. Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists. Chris Rock lives in New Jersey. Except it isnt really New Jersey, he once mused ... because its Alpine. He bought a home in the tony, celebrity-stocked Bergen County neighborhood just north of the George Washington Bridge in 2001, for $3 million. Rock shared the house with his then-wife Malaak Compton and their daughters Lola, now 18, and Zahra, 16. When the couple separated (theyre now divorced), Rock bought a house around the corner, he said in his 2018 Netflix comedy special Tamborine," which covered his infidelity and pornography addiction, among other topics. But he was never really able to make full use of one of the homes amenities the swimming pool. Starting this year, he can. In a Hollywood Reporter cover story published online Wednesday, Rock says he learned to swim at age 55. The superstar comedian, actor and director can be seen in the upcoming fourth season of FXs anthology series Fargo." He tells the magazine that the swimming was part of a new fitness regimen along with weightlifting, walking and nixing sugar that saw him develop washboard abs. Do you know how f---ing hard it is for a grown-up to learn how to swim?" Rock says. Youve got to not be scared to die ... The other day, this guy says to me, OK, youre going to dive into the deep end and swim to the other side, and Im like, Are you f---ing crazy? But then I dove into the deep end and I swam to the other side, and its a metaphor for what Ive been trying to do during this time. Rock says hes overhauled his life with fitness but also a ton of therapy" he says he commits to seven hours a week. He sought out therapy after a friend suggested he might have Aspergers syndrome. After undergoing cognitive testing, Rock was diagnosed with nonverbal learning disorder. He says he has trouble picking up on nonverbal signals and often takes things too literally. "All I understand are the words, he tells the magazine. Rock joined other celebrities who live in New Jersey, including Whoopi Goldberg and Jon Stewart, at the virtual Jersey 4 Jersey benefit for the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund in April. In Fargo, which is set in 1950s Kansas City this season, Rock plays Loy Cannon, the head of an African American crime family. Rock calls it the best part hes ever had. The fourth season of Fargo premieres with two back-to-back episodes at 9 p.m. ET/PT Sept. 27 on FX, available the next day on Hulu. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Send a coronavirus tip here. if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi... Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 00:11:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ISTANBUL, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal Thursday urged the world to exert more efforts to carry out effective mediation for the peaceful resolutions of conflicts across the globe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "Today, the need for effective mediation is even greater. The pandemic has further complicated some conflict dynamics," Onal said, addressing the 7th Istanbul Mediation Conference. The conference was held online due to the pandemic under the theme of "Peace Mediation in the New Normal." During his speech, Onal noted that unique challenges have occurred, especially in the conflict regions and fragile states, as a result of the severe conditions of the coronavirus. In his view, COVID-19 aggravated the humanitarian situation in such landscapes where people have been struggling against the conflict. "As we try to flatten the curve of the disease, conflicts continue to take their toll on innocent people," he said, noting that around 2 billion people already live in countries affected by the conflicts. He said due to the pandemic, 200 million people are to be affected by a severe decline in employment, and an additional of 130 million people could be pushed to the edge of starvation by the end of 2020. "That is why the need for preventive diplomacy and effective mediation is greater," he said. Prominent mediators, high-level officials from several international organizations, and some renowned experts on a digital platform attended the conference, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said at a press release. Turkey has been organizing the Istanbul Mediation Conferences in a bid to raise awareness and build capacity in support of mediation within the framework of the Mediation for Peace initiative, which was launched in 2010 by Turkey and Finland at the United Nations. Enditem Globally, there are a multitude of different answers (and even more non-answers) to the economic puzzle of how to account for and financially balance (aka pay for) negative environmental externalities. In Canada, the widely accepted answer to this issue is the polluter-pays principle, a core tenet so simple that a kindergartener could understand it, and indeed, could have written it. Canadas Globe and Mail explains it like this: A central tenet of industrial development is the polluter-pays principle: Those who profit must pay for the mess generated by pulling resources from the ground or turning raw materials into goods. If you want to own the upside, youve got to own the downside. The last thing Canadians should want are privatized profits, and socialized liabilities, the Globe and Mail article asserts. Even in Canada, however, where the polluter pays principle is widely accepted and adopted, there were and are still many companies and projects that have managed to skirt the issue when it actually comes to payment. There are many examples, reports the Globe and Mail. Take the Giant mine, near Yellowknife. It was one of Canadas oldest gold mines, but after trading through various corporate hands numerous times, the last owner went bust and left behind 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide. Giant is part of a $2.2-billion taxpayer-funded cleanup of eight abandoned northern mines that will take 15 years. This conversation is particularly relevant now because the future of Canadas oil sands depends on it. Due to the Albertan oil sands naturally occurring crude bitumen - a thick, viscous, and sticky kind of crude oil that is particularly dirty and environmentally unfriendly - the oil sands stand to face huge polluter pays payments if the industry continues to expand, or even just exist as it is now. Canada is at a crossroads - the countrys rhetoric leans heavily on environmental consciousness and combating climate change, but they are simultaneously one of the largest contributors to the fossil fuel industry. If Alberta, with its population of four million people, were a country, it would be the fifth-largest oil-producing nation, National Geographic reported last year. While it produces conventional oil, most comes from the Alberta oil sands, the worlds third-largest proven oil reserve at 170 billion barrels. The figures come from an article entitled This is the world's most destructive oil operationand it's growing. Related: China Not Looking To Ban Gasoline Powered Cars Any Time Soon COVID-19, however, threw a major wrench in Albertas plans. The Canadian oil sector, which has already had a particularly rough few years thanks to a severe pipeline shortage and volatile oil prices, was hit especially hard by the pandemic-fuelled oil price crash, which sent a lot of investors fleeing the scene. And just last week, an investigation conducted by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) spurred by whistleblowers found consistent evidence of seepage from tailing ponds (which, according to National Geographic, contain a toxic slurry of heavy metals and hydrocarbons from the bitumen separation process) into the groundwater in Alberta. Much ink has been spilled about the Canadian oil sectors future in the wake of the COVID-19 economic crash and the ever-lengthening list of environmental catastrophes associated with the oil sands. The latest is a cautiously optimistic opinion column published by the Globe and Mail this week that gives the oil sands a hopeful - if tempered - prognosis, under the headline The oil sands have a future, and it includes polluter pays. In the column, the Globe and Mails editorial board posits that while companies such as Suncor are losing money this year, they booked multibillion-dollar profits last year, even with relatively low oil prices. Theres no reason to assume the public must subsidize any future cleanup. The oil sands have been mined for more than half a century but only a fraction has been cleaned up. In short, the oil sands have been through hard times before, and theres no reason to assume that they wont bounce back from these setbacks just as easily. This time, however, polluter pays looks set to be an essential part of making the oil sands a sustainable part of the countrys economic future. There is a lot of work left to do, writes the Globe and Mail. In the oil sands, Alberta and Canada have to make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: New Delhi: Markets ended in green on Wednesday amid sustained foreign fund inflows with the Nifty reclaiming 11,600 level. The 30-share BSE index ended 258.50 points or 0.66 percent higher at 39,302.85 while the NSE Nifty rose 82.75 points or 0.72 per cent to 11,604.55. Here are Stocks in focus on September 17, 2020 Dr Reddy's The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russias sovereign wealth fund, and Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd. Have agreed to cooperate on clinical trials and distribution of Sputnik V vaccine in India. Upon regulatory approval in India, RDIF shall supply to Dr. Reddys 100 million doses of the vaccine, Dr Reddys said in a release on Wednesday. SpiceJet Budget carrier SpiceJet on Wednesday launched a dedicated cargo service connecting the North East with the rest of the country and international destinations with 14 aircraft to transport all types of goods, including fruits and vegetables. The SpiceJet has launched 14 new cargo flights to and from North Eastern states using its Bombardier Q400 freighters, thus ensuring uninterrupted connectivity with the rest of the country. The company said that it also operates a fleet of 13 cargo aircrafts, including two wide-body planes, and is the only Indian carrier to operate long-haul cargo flights to Europe, Africa and CIS countries. Vodafone Idea Vodafone Idea will need a rise in ARPU to meet its obligations in the long run, and without undertaking tariff hike, its cash from current fundraising will sustain operations till the end of the financial year 2022-23, according to a report. Tariff hike is imminent to fund Voda Idea''s financial obligations and capex (capital expenditure) plans, Axis Capital has said in its latest report. Hexaware Technologies IT firm Hexaware Technologies on Tuesday said market regulator Sebi has allowed extension of closure of its delisting offer to September 16. The voluntary delisting process of Hexaware Technologies from the BSE and the NSE had started on September 9. The delisting offer with a floor price of Rs 264.97 per share was slated to close on September 15. Deepak Fertilisers Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd on Friday said its board has approved an issue price of Rs 133 per share for the company''s proposed sale of shares through a rights issue. The full amount of issue price will be payable on application. September 17 will be the record date for the purpose of determining the shareholders who will be eligible to apply in the rights issue. Abu Dhabi is now requiring people arriving by air to wear wristbands during their mandatory two-week quarantine. The measure is a sign authorities in the United Arab Emirates are tightening restrictions as daily COVID-19 cases reach all-time highs. The latest regulations stipulate that travelers flying into Abu Dhabi International Airport self-isolate for 14 days. They must wear a medically approved wristband for the duration, an Etihad Airways spokesperson told Al-Monitor on Thursday. Abu Dhabi-based Etihad is the UAEs flagship carrier. Immigration authorities will provide travelers with the wristband after they are cleared to enter the country, according to the spokesperson. The wristband presumably tracks the movements of those wearing it to ensure they are abiding by the mandatory quarantine. Jordan has also used a tracking wristband to monitor people flying into the country. In addition to the wristband, everyone flying into Abu Dhabi must be tested for the coronavirus upon arrival, except children under 12. Diplomats, children, people with chronic illness and the elderly are exempt from wearing the band, though these groups still must self-isolate, according to the airline. All travelers entering the UAE, whether they are clearing customs or transiting, already had to provide a negative COVID-19 test to fly. The UAE is currently facing an increased outbreak of COVID-19. There were 786 confirmed cases registered on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Health and Prevention, bringing the current number of infections to more than 10,451 in the Emirates. The daily rate of new cases is now close to the previous peak in late May. The total number of active cases remains below the high of around 17,000 in early June, according to Worldometer. The UAEs other major city Dubai remains open for tourists, though the requirement to test negative for the virus before flying remains in place. Emirati authorities are beginning to take other actions to curb the current outbreak. On Monday, the UAE government approved the use of an emergency COVID-19 vaccine for at-risk workers. Successive governments have put more faith in diplomacy than the armed forces in achieving security objectives. Diplomacy can accomplish little in the absence of strategic vision and resolve or adequate leverage. The diplomatic blunders of 1948 (Kashmir disputes internationalisation), 1954 (Panchsheel Agreements acceptance of the Tibet region of China), 1960 (Indus Waters Treaty), 1966 (Taskhent) and 1972 (Simla) have imposed enduring costs. Worse still, India has learnt little from its past. Today, with Chinas multi-thrust aggression, history is repeating itself, underscored by a common Indian refrain that Beijing has betrayed Indias friendship. Chinas latest stab in the back raises key questions, not about Beijing (which consistently employs deception, concealment and surprise in peacetime), but about India. What explains Indias hug, then repent proclivity over the decades? Why has India repeatedly cried betrayal, not by friends, but by adversaries in whom it reposed trust? Why has Indian diplomacy rushed to believe what it wanted to believe? What makes India keep repeating the cycle of bending over backward to court a foe and then failing to see aggression coming (as in Kargil, Pathankot or Doklam)? Why does India stay at the receiving end of its foes machinations? Why has it never repaid China with its own salami slicing? Also Watch l Theres a difference in what China says & does: Rajnath Singh in Rajya Sabha One reason history repeats itself is that virtually every prime minister, although unschooled in national security at the time of assuming office, has sought to reinvent the foreign-policy wheel, rather than learn from past blunders. Another reason is that intellectuals and journalists shrink from closely scrutinising foreign policy moves. Overselling outcomes of summit meetings with China from 1988 to 2019 for leadership glorification has led to Indias worst China crisis after the 1962 war. For example, five separate border-management agreements were signed at summits between 1993 and 2013, with each accord hailed in India (but not China) as a major or historic breakthrough. Now, India admits China has trashed all those agreements with its aggression. Yet India still plays into Chinas hands by clinging to the accords, and by agreeing recently in Moscow to build on them through new confidence-building measures (CBMs). China is showing it is a master in protracting negotiations to buy time to consolidate its territorial gains, while exploring the limits of its adversarys flexibility and testing its patience. For Beijing, any agreement is designed to bind not China but the other side to its terms. It is seeking fresh CBMs to make India respect the new, Chinese-created territorial status quo and to restrict India from upgrading its border infrastructure. Chinas foreign minister claims the consensus reached at Moscow is to meet each other halfway. Meeting China halfway will validate its 10 miles forward, 5 miles back strategy, with China gaining half but India losing half. This illustrates Beijings definition of give and take the other side gives and China takes. Yet, India has placed its faith in diplomacy ever since it discovered Chinas intrusions in early May. It reined in its armed forces from taking counter-actions until recently. Had it permitted proactive counter-measures earlier, once sufficient acclimatised troops and weapons capability were in place, Chinas territorial gains would have been more limited. China used the talks to make additional encroachments, especially on the critical Depsang Y-Junction, which controls access to several areas. Of all the land grabs China has made, the largest is in Depsang, the sector of utmost importance to Indian defences. Yet, this has received little attention. In fact, some Indians are drawing a false equivalence between the Chinese and Indian military actions. While China has seized several areas that traditionally were under Indian patrolling jurisdiction, India has occupied its own unmanned mountain heights in one area in order to pre-empt another Chinese land grab. The defence ministers statement in Parliament, however, shows the government remains loath to admit that China has encroached on Indian areas. Shielding the governments image, alas, comes first. This explains why India hasnt labelled China the aggressor, leaving the field open for China to repeatedly call India the aggressor. Having redrawn the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in several Ladakh sectors, China is now seeking to replace the term LAC with the looser expression border areas. It had its way in the Moscow agreement, which repeatedly mentions border areas, not LAC. All the boundary-related bilateral accords and protocols are LAC-centred. But China is treating LAC as a line to actually control by changing facts on the ground. The Moscow agreements use of the vague term border areas helps obscure Chinas encroachments and creates space for more Chinese salami-slicing. Diplomacy is unlikely to deliver the status quo ante India seeks. In fact, China seems intent on continuing, below the threshold of armed conflict, coercive military pressure along the entire frontier until India acquiesces to its demands, including reconciling to the new status quo. Will Chinas win-without-fighting warfare campaign help create a new India steeped in realism and determined to break the cycle of history repeating itself? At a minimum, it promises to shake up Indias business-as-usual approach to national security. Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist The views expressed are personal Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Emma Batha (Thomson Reuters Foundation) London, United Kingdom Thu, September 17, 2020 16:05 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4571448 2 World Singapore,Helsinki,Zurich,smart-city Free Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich are the world's smartest cities, according to an index published on Thursday amid a growing debate on the future of urban design for a post-COVID era. From smart traffic cameras and car sharing apps to pollution monitoring and free wifi for all, cities around the world are racing to embrace technology, but researchers said the real test was whether citizens felt the benefits. "The world's 'smart' cities don't simply adopt new technology, they make sure it truly improves citizens' lives," said Arturo Bris of the Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development (IMD), which published the index. The Smart City Index, now in its second year, surveyed more than 13,000 people in 109 cities, focusing on how they perceived the impact of technology in five areas: health and safety, mobility, activities, opportunities and governance. Others in the top 10 included Auckland, Oslo, Copenhagen, Geneva, Taipei City, Amsterdam, New York, while Abuja, Nairobi and Lagos ranked bottom. The index, a collaboration with the Singapore University for Technology and Design, showed that many countries are developing smart secondary cities beyond their capitals. The Spanish city of Bilbao ranked higher than Madrid, while Britain's second city Birmingham has risen up the index faster than London. Bris, director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, said cities' priorities in using technology varied widely. The Colombian city of Medellin - once notorious for its drug cartels but now a posterchild for smart planning - has seen crime drop after introducing free wifi, which made it easier for people to report crime, he said. Although many cities around the world have introduced car sharing schemes in a bid to cut congestion, Bris said Moscow had been particularly successful in persuading drivers to join them after introducing free parking for users. Experts say COVID-19 has accelerated a shift towards more inclusive, greener, smarter cities. Bris also predicted a growing trend towards smaller cities. "I think we're moving to a world where we will be more dispersed. We will be safer if we live in smaller cities," he added. He said the survey underscored that megacities often found it difficult to become smart. "Smaller cities have an advantage," he added. "In the case of Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich, their size allows them to invest significantly in technology that reaches all citizens." Although China is developing hundreds of smart cities equipped with sensors, cameras and other gadgets that can crunch data on everything from pollution to public health, they ranked relatively low in the index. Bris said this was because of their size but also because of concerns about data privacy and surveillance. For the past couple of months, Suzuki Auto Philippines has been giving out deals on their latest models. But if you think you missed out, don't worry. This weekend is the start of the 2020 Suzuki Auto Festival, and even more deals and discounts await. This year, however, the Suzuki Auto Festival will not be a live event due to the current situation. Instead, it will be a virtual show that will be broadcasted live at Suzuki Auto Philippines' Facebook page. The online event kicks off at 11:00 AM this Saturday, September 19. We are more than delighted to make this event possible especially for those who have been eagerly anticipating our yearly Auto Festival. We strongly believe that opportunities like this, especially in the new normal, where we are able to connect with our customers and Suzuki fans through a special event is one that we all embrace as a company, said Keiichi Suzuki, Suzuki Philippines Vice President, and Automobile Division General Manager. A whistleblower complaint filed in the US has sparked calls for a federal probe after it was alleged that an Indian-descent gynecologist had conducted mass hysterectomies on immigrants without their full understanding and consent at a privately-run detention centre in the state of Georgia. The complaint, filed by an employee of the detention centre, did not identify him. But lawyers representing the victims have named the doctor as Mahendra Amin, according to US media reports. We are aware of the whistleblowers allegations as they relate to Dr Amin and we vehemently deny them, said Scott Grubman, the doctors attorney, in a statement. We look forward to all of the facts coming out and are confident that, once they do, Dr Amin will be cleared of any wrongdoing. Amin, 68, is an obstetrics and gynecology specialist. Prism, the news website that first reported the whistleblower complaint, said he is based in Douglas, Georgia and is affiliated with Coffee Regional Medical Center, which has since removed references to Amin from its website. According to reports, Amin studied medicine at the Government Medical College of South Gujarat University in Surat, India, and also interned there at a hospital. On Wednesday, 173 Democratic members of the House of Representatives wrote to the US department of homeland security, demanding an investigation into the whistleblowers complaint. Pramila Jayapal, Indian-American congresswoman who initiated the joint letter along with senior party leaders, said, It appears that there may be at minimum 17 to 18 women who were subjected to unnecessary medical gynecological procedures from just this one doctor, often without appropriate consent or knowledge, and with the clear intention of sterilisation. Dawn Wooten, a licensed nurse employed by Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) operated by private prison company, LaSalle Corrections, had filed the whistleblower complaint through Project South, a non-profit, with the inspector general of the department of homeland security on Monday. Wootens complaint alleged the conduct of mass hysterectomies amid rampant disregard for Covid-19 guidelines and unsanitary conditions at the facility. Project South said it learnt about the hysterectomies in interviews with multiple inmates. One of them reportedly confirmed, A lot of women here go through a hysterectomy. Also, some women subjected to the procedure reportedly seemed confused why they were made to undergo it. Wootens account, in her own words, is chilling. Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy, just about everybody. Hes even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady, Wooten reportedly said, recalling a particular case. She (the victim) was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst. He took out the right one. She was upset, she had to go back to take out the left ovary and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She wants children. So she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she cant bear kids... she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him (the doctor) tell the nurse that he took out the wrong ovary. The outrage sparked by the allegations was fuelled by a well-documented and alarming history of sterilisation of people of colour in the US aimed at preventing the rapid growth of their population. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Contributed /Connecticut State Police BRANFORD Connecticut and federal authorities arrested a 33-year-old man Wednesday wanted on child sex abuse charges in Florida, the U.S. Marshals said. Maurice Lewis was taken into custody at a gas station on Main Street in Branford around 8:30 a.m. by the agencys Violent Fugitive Task Force, a press release said. Jha Washington: US President Donald Trump has said that mailing ballot is a bigger threat" than the reported foreign interference in the presidential polls because such a move on a mass scale may open up opportunities for electoral malpractice. Ahead of the November 3 presidential election, governors of state ruled by the Democratic party are encouraging people to vote by mail-in-ballot and avoid coming to polling booths to exercise their right to franchise. Trump argues that such a move could lead to electoral malpractice, as others might be voting on someones behalf, among other things. In addition hundreds and thousands of ballots have gone missing. The Democrats argue that this is a well-established practice and mail-in-vote needs to be the preferred option in view of the coronavirus pandemic. Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. To me thats a much bigger threat than foreign countries. Because much of the stuff coming out about foreign countries turned out to be untrue," Trump told reporters at the White House. The biggest problem we have right now are the ballots. Millions of ballots going out. Thats the biggest problem. When you talk about other countries whether its China, Russia or many others that get mentioned they are in a much better position with these paper ballots to do something than they ever would be under the old system and thats our biggest problem, he argued. What is true is that many elections have taken place over the last year and a half using this ballot system. They have been off by 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent I think I read one at 40 percent, and these are small, easy to control elections, he said. The ballots will be stolen. Who knows where they are going? Who knows where they are coming from? Its not just the counting of the ballots, which by the way, which will take forever it will take forever, Trump said. Such a move, he alleged, is being done by the Democrats on purpose. This is a disgrace. This is being done on purpose. They know its no good. They know its going to be fraudulent. Its going to be fraud all over the place. Who is getting the ballots? Who is sending the ballots? They have people saying you dont need a verified signature. This is a serious threat to our democracy, he said. As far as China is concerned and Russia they say North Korea, they say Iran, they say places who knows, who knows. But they say all these different places. They can make forgeries of these ballots. They can do things that will blow your mind. And the Democrats know its wrong. They know it is going to end up being a disaster, Trump said. 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 Bachelor's Juliette Herrera didn't shy away from name dropping when she revealed to Locky Gilbert who had been sliding into her DMs, before she was brutally dumped by the Survivor star on Wednesday night's show. And the 34-year-old stylist just can't seem to keep her mouth shut. On Thursday, Juliette claimed she has an inbox full of direct messages (DMs) from several interested suitors. 'I probably shouldn't but it's out there now': The Bachelor's Juliette Herrera has revealed a list of international celebrities sliding into her DMs She told news.com.au she has been chatting with a rising rapper from the US, who has been signed to Young Thug and Machine Gun Kelly's record label. Juliette also alleged that she's been talking with a producer from American pop duo The Chainsmokers and a 'businessman with a nice car.' She then went on to claim she has received several messages from 24-year-old Spanish TikTok star, Javi Luna. 'I probably shouldn't have said his name, but there we go, it's out there now,' she said of the social media sensation, who has 9.2 million followers. Famous friends? She told news.com.au she has been chatting with a rising rapper from the US, who has been signed to Young Thug and Machine Gun Kelly's record label Name dropping: Juliette also alleged that she's been talking with a producer from American pop duo The Chainsmokers and a 'businessman with a nice car.' Pictured is Chainsmoker band members Alex Pall (left) and Drew Taggart (right) 'I can't be in LA right now so it's a bit of a tease for me,' the brunette added of the other admirers messaging her. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Javi Luna for comment. On Wednesday, Juliette was brutally dumped by Locky after she confronted him at the cocktail party. She told producers: 'I thought, does he know that in my DMs I'm not replying to, like, certain people from LA? Really? She then went on to claim she has received several messages from 24-year-old Spanish TikTok star, Javi Luna 'I probably shouldn't have said his name, but there we go, it's out there now,' she said of the social media sensation, who has 9.2 million followers. 'I could be, you know, talking to TikTok stars right now and my rappers, and I'm ignoring them. Like, I'm actually holding off for you.' 'Javi Luna, with 4 million TikTok followers, follows me and talks to me. And I'm here waiting for little old Locky,' she added. 'I have to remember who I am. Hello! I'm amazing! That's too confronting for Locky, then just get rid of me. 'Cause I've got DMs to go back to,' Juliette cheekily told producers, before she was seen in the back of a limo heading home. The Bachelor continues Thursday at 7.30pm on Channel 10 Figure 1 Bonnefond Plan view - DDH 100; 107; 111; 114; 122 to 131 and Extensions of DDHs 068; 079 and 084. Bonnefond Plan view - DDH 100; 107; 111; 114; 122 to 131 and Extensions of DDHs 068; 079 and 084. Figure 2 QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets Figure 3 QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- QMX Gold Corporation (QMX or the Company) (TSX:V: QMX) is pleased to release assay results from seventeen (17) drill holes on the Bonnefond Deposit (Table 1). These results expand the Bonnefond footprint both to the East and West of the intrusive. The Bonnefond Deposit is located in the Val dOr East Zone of QMXs extensive land package in Val dOr, Quebec (Figure 3). Following on DDH 17315-20-121 (Press Release; August 18, 2020), which set out the depth potential at Bonnefond, these assay results indicate the Bonnefond footprint is also expanding to the west and to the east. The drilling campaign to the north of the intrusive was recently completed (assays pending) and QMX is currently drilling Bonnefond at depth in the intrusive and to the south of the deposit. Highlights include (Grades are uncut; lengths are measured along the holes, Table 1): In the Bonnefond intrusive: DDH 17315-20-111 returned 1.70 g/t Au over 78.5 m, including 9.48 g/t Au over 6.0 m DDH 17315-20-114 returned 1.18 g/t Au over 136.2 m DDH 17315-20-128A returned 1.28 g/t Au over 50.4 m; 2.31 g/t Au over 22.5m and 40.52 g/t Au over 2.0m East of the Bonnefond intrusion: DDH 17315-20-100 returned 3.98 g/t Au over 15.0m, including 4.91 g/t Au over 4.5m in a shear zone. West of the Bonnefond intrusion: Extends the shear zone system on a 200m strike west of the intrusive (Figure 1) DDH 17315-18-068-Ext returned 62.44 g/t Au over 1.0m in a shear zone DDH 17315-20-123 returned 3.44 g/t Au over 6.0m in a shear zone DDH 17315-20-124 returned 27.20 g/t Au over 1.5m in a shear zone North of the Bonnefond intrusion: DDH 17315-19-084-Ext returned 6.43g/t Au over 3.0m in a shear zone. We are very happy to report the western extension of mineralization in connection with the shear zones already encountered within the Bonnefond intrusion, says Dr. Andreas Rompel, Vice President Exploration, Bonnefond continues to expand in all directions including at depth. As we await assay results from our recently completed drill program to the north, we have started drilling the gap to the South, between Bonnefond and New Louvre. Story continues Table 1: Highlights from DDH 100; 111; 114; 123, 124, 128A and Extensions of DDHs 068 and 084 Bonnefond Deposit. Hole Number From (metre) To (metre) Length* (metre) Au** (g/t) Comment 17315-20-100 343.5 358.5 15.0 3.98 East Shear Including 343.5 348.0 4.5 4.91 17315-20-111 307.0 385.5 78.5 1.70 Tonalite Including 337.5 343.5 6.0 9.48 17315-20-114 356.8 493.0 136.2 1.18 Tonalite 17315-20-128A 174.0 224.4 50.4 1.28 Tonalite 268.6 291.1 22.5 2.31 Tonalite 427.6 429.6 2.0 40.52 Tonalite 17315-20-123 327.0 333.0 6.0 3.44 West Shear 17315-20-124 375.0 376.5 1.5 27.20 West Shear 17315-18-068-Ext 275.0 276.0 1.0 62.44 West Shear 17315-19-084-Ext 209.1 212.1 3.0 6.43 North Shear * Reported length measured along the hole. ** Au uncapped Bonnefond Main zone and East extension Seven of the drill holes reported in this batch of assays are located on the eastern side and in the main part of the Bonnefond deposit. The holes were drilled to test the mineralization in the Bonnefond intrusive and in the shear zone system south and east of the intrusive. Two of the reported holes were extensions of 2019 drill holes, 17315-19-079 and 084. DDH 100 and 111 were drilled towards the north-west, along the strike of the intrusive to intersect its eastern contact and test the distribution of the mineralization. DDH 100 intersected 3.98 g/t Au over 15.0m, including 4.91 g/t Au over 4.5m in a shear zone south-east of the intrusive. Even though the drilled angle for DDH 111 and 100 was not optimized to intersect the mineralized veins, DDH 111 encountered 1.70 g/t Au over 78.5m, including 9.48g/t Au over 6.0m in the intrusive. DDH 128A was the last drill hole of a series of 3 down plunge hole testing the mineralization at depth in the intrusive. It was drilled on the western edge of the tonalite and exited the intrusive after 450m down the hole. It returned a series of mineralized intervals with 4.66 g/t Au over 6.7m; 1.28 g/t Au over 50.4m; 2.31 g/t Au over 22.5m; 16.14 g/t Au over 1.3m and 40.52 g/t Au over 2.0m. DDH 079; 084; 107 and 114 were drilled towards the south to complete the drilling pattern in order to raise the confidence level in the inferred part of the resource located in the intrusive to the indicated category. DDH 114 intersected 1.18 g/t Au over 136.2m in the intrusive. The extension of DDH 084 intersected a shear north of the intrusive grading 6.43 g/t Au over 3.0m. Bonnefond Shear System Expanding 200m to the West Ten drill holes reported in this batch of assays are located west of the Bonnefond deposit. The holes were drilled to test the western extension of the Bonnefond shear system (Figure 1) between the Bonnefond intrusive and the western limit of the property. One of the reported holes was an extension of an earlier drill hole, 17315-18-068. All holes were drilled toward the south, except for DDH 122 and 125 which were drilled in a south-east direction to intercept the West Fault and shear zones in the process. The best intercepts include 62.44 g/t Au over 1.0m in DDH 068 and 27.20 g/t Au over 1.5m in DDH 124. These assays results are the final batch to be included in the 2020 resource estimate update for the Bonnefond deposit. These new results confirm the extension of the Bonnefond shear system on both sides of the mineralized tonalite and extend the already defined 400m long shear zone systems increasing the overall footprint of the project. Figure 1: Bonnefond Plan view - DDH 100; 107; 111; 114; 122 to 131 and Extensions of DDHs 068; 079 and 084. https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d5fe255b-872c-42c3-a9b9-b5635662b27b Ongoing drilling at Bonnefond QMX is currently operating two drill rigs in the Bonnefond area and recently completed the 9,000m drilling program north of the Bonnefond intrusive. The program tested the extension and geometry of the shear system north of the intrusive. One of the drill rigs has now mobilized to the western part of the New Louvre project, to the south of the Bonnefond Deposit, in order to test the western extension of the New Louvre shear system (Figure 2). Following the positive results from DDH 121A (Press Release; August 18, 2020), the second rig moved back on the Bonnefond intrusive to complete a 4,000m drilling program focusing on expanding the deposit at depth. A third drill rig will be added on the property during the fall to support these programs. Figure 2: QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a1e3d536-62c9-4e6f-8e92-7aa1308b31b8 Figure 3: QMXs extensive and target-rich land package and 2020 targets https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/10027205-7ba5-4984-9d6a-fbcfe0ad844d Corporate Update QMX would like to welcome Paul Bozoki to the team as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Bozoki has over 20 years of international accounting, tax and corporate finance experience largely in the mining industry. This appointment follows Deb Battisons resignation as Chief Financial Officer of QMX. Ms Battison will remain available to ensure a smooth transition. QMXs Board of Directors and management would like to express their gratitude to Ms. Battison for her invaluable contributions since joining QMX in 2003 and wishes her all the best in her future endeavours. QMX also announces that it has relocated its registered head office to 77 King Street West, TD North Tower Suite 700, P.O. Box 118 Toronto, Ontario, M5K 1G8 Quality Control During the drilling program, assay samples were taken from the NQ core and sawed in half. One half is sent to Swaslab Ltd., a certified commercial laboratory. The other half of the core is retained for future reference. A strict quality assurance and quality control program was applied to all samples, which included insertion of mineralized standards, blank samples and duplicates inside each batch of 20 samples. The gold analyses were completed by fire-assay with an atomic absorption finish on 50 grams of material. Repeats were carried out by fire-assay with a gravimetric finish on each sample containing 5.0 g/t Au or more. The gold analyses were undertaken by fire-assay on 50 grams of pulp with an atomic absorption finish. Repeats were carried out by fire-assay with a gravimetric finish on each sample containing 5.0 g/t Au or more. Qualified Persons The scientific and technical content of this press release has been reviewed, prepared and approved by Melanie Pichon, P.Geo, M.Sc, Exploration Manager, who is a "Qualified Person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). About QMX Gold Corporation QMX Gold Corporation is a Canadian based resource company traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol QMX. The Company is systematically exploring its extensive property position in the Val dOr mining camp in the Abitibi District of Quebec. QMX Gold is currently drilling in the Val dOr East portion of its land package focused on the Bonnefond Deposit and in the Bourlamaque Batholith. In addition to its extensive land package QMX Gold owns the strategically located Aurbel gold mill and tailings facility. Contact Information: Brad Humphrey Louis Baribeau President and CEO Public Relations Tel: (514) 667-2304 Toll free: +1 877-717-3027 Email: info@qmxgold.ca Website: www.qmxgold.ca Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information: This press release contains or may be deemed to contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding future plans, operations and activities, planned drilling programs, projected mineralization, timing of assay results, and the ability of the Company to continue as a going concern. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company, its properties and/or its projects to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to those risks described in the disclosure documents of the Company filed under the Companys profile on SEDAR. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. 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. Table 2: Results from DDH 100; 107; 111; 114; 122 to 131 and Extensions of DDHs 068; 079 and 084 Bonnefond. Hole Number Azimuth () Dip () Hole Length From (metre) To (metre) Length* (metre) Au** (g/t) Comment 17315-20-100 315 -55 741 151.5 172.5 21.0 1.44 East Shear Incl 162.0 168.0 6.0 2.52 246.0 250.2 4.5 1.95 East Shear 343.5 358.5 15.0 3.98 East Shear Incl 343.5 348.0 4.5 4.91 450.0 456.0 6.0 1.11 Tonalite 460.5 463.5 3.0 4.51 Tonalite 531.0 540.0 9.0 1.31 Tonalite 546.0 549.0 3.0 2.58 Tonalite 600.0 603.0 3.0 2.32 Tonalite 17315-20-107 175 -55 447 154.5 156.0 1.5 4.12 Tonalite 172.5 175.5 3.0 1.75 Tonalite 181.5 184.5 3.0 2.08 Tonalite 369.0 372.0 3.0 1.36 South Shear 413.5 420.5 7.0 1.08 South Shear 17315-20-111 295 -45 663 228.0 233.0 5.0 1.79 North Shear Incl 228.0 229.0 1.0 5.09 307.0 385.5 78.5 1.70 Tonalite Incl 337.5 343.5 6.0 9.48 396.5 415.5 19.0 0.80 Tonalite 423.5 425.5 2.0 3.92 Tonalite 455.0 457.0 2.0 4.47 Tonalite 466.5 469.0 2.5 1.70 Tonalite 504.5 512.5 8.0 2.97 Tonalite Incl 506.5 508.5 2.0 9.04 527.0 529.0 2.0 3.59 Tonalite 561.0 563.9 2.9 4.40 Shear zone 652.8 655.5 2.7 2.93 Shear zone 17315-20-114 175 -80 655 356.8 493.0 136.2 1.18 Tonalite Incl 362.8 364.8 2.0 5.09 Incl 411.0 414.0 3.0 12.14 539.9 543.3 3.4 1.49 Shear zone 590.3 592.0 1.7 3.19 Shear zone Hole Number Azimuth () Dip () Hole Length From (metre) To (metre) Length* (metre) Au** (g/t) Comment 17315-20-128A 10 -70 663 99.0 105.7 6.7 4.66 Tonalite 159.0 160.5 1.5 6.33 Tonalite 174.0 224.4 50.4 1.28 Tonalite 258.4 260.6 2.2 5.90 Tonalite 268.6 291.1 22.5 2.31 Tonalite 360.7 362.0 1.3 16.14 Tonalite 427.6 429.6 2.0 40.52 Tonalite 456.2 457.8 1.6 3.41 South Shear 533.9 535.5 1.6 3.64 South Shear 547.0 550.4 3.4 2.88 South Shear 17315-19-079-Ext 180 -85 768 527.1 530.1 3.0 4.43 South Shear 17315-19-084-Ext 180 -85 654 209.1 212.1 3.0 6.43 North Shear 380.8 397.2 16.4 2.00 Tonalite 405.5 409.1 3.6 1.80 Tonalite 424.9 426.0 1.1 3.02 Tonalite 446.8 449.6 2.8 3.02 Tonalite 454.2 456.2 2.0 2.53 Tonalite 474.2 477.4 3.2 2.56 Tonalite 534.8 538.4 3.6 2.83 South Shear 576.5 479.8 3.3 2.34 South Shear 591.7 594.3 2.6 2.71 South Shear 17315-20-122 115 -50 264 121.3 125.3 4.0 2.07 West Shear 169.5 173.7 4.2 2.54 West Shear 170.9 172.3 1.5 5.93 West Shear 17315-20-123 180 -85 408 327.0 333.0 6.0 3.44 West Shear 17315-20-124 180 -85 402 375.0 376.5 1.5 27.20 West Shear 17315-20-125 115 -50 447 373.9 375.0 1.1 4.56 West Shear 411.2 413.5 2.3 2.27 West Shear 17315-20-126 180 -85 444 No significant result Hole Number Azimuth () Dip () Hole Length From (metre) To (metre) Length* (metre) Au** (g/t) Comment 17315-20-127 180 -85 510 160.5 165.0 4.5 2.34 West Shear 278.0 281.0 3.0 3.08 West Shear 438.0 439.5 1.5 4.58 West Shear 17315-20-129 180 -85 555 442.9 444.4 1.5 3.66 West Shear 496.1 497.5 1.4 6.27 West Shear 17315-20-130 180 -85 345 322.5 327.0 4.5 1.33 West Shear 17315-20-131 180 -60 327 106.0 109.5 3.5 1.85 West Shear 17315-18-068-Ext 180 -85 504 275.0 276.0 1.0 62.44 West Shear * Reported length measured along the hole. ** Au uncapped Businesses are going through unprecedented financial and economic challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis and economic slowdown. Under these circumstances, it is imperative that companies are able to raise funds to survive and grow their businesses. However, there are certain tax provisions that were designed to be anti-abuse arrangements but are acting as major roadblocks in raising funds. Generally, it would be presumed that the issue of shares or transfers of shares are transactions on capital account and would not be subject to tax except in the event of capital gains arising on the sale of shares. Taxability in case of issue of shares at premium In case, the shares are issued by an unlisted company at a price which is higher than the fair value to residents, then the amount in excess of the issue price over the fair value is deemed to be income in the hands of the issuing company as per Section 56(2)(viib) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (IT Act). For this purpose, the fair value is determined as per the book value of the company or as per the discounted cash flow method at the option of the issuing company. Also Read: Has Modi's tax policy deepened govt's resource crunch? A Tamil Nadu legislator believes so In several cases, the issue of shares would be at a premium to the book value or DCF (discounted cash flow) due to industry outlook, investor appetite, and other business factors. For instance, digital businesses, health care & life science businesses, e-commerce businesses, etc. attract a significant amount of investment at a substantial premium. While the DCF valuation method does provide certain flexibility for valuation but can be a matter of divergent views due to underlying assumptions. Further, the tax assessment takes place after a lag of time and some of the assumptions for valuation may not converge with the actual results. In the case of Karmic Labs Pvt. Ltd vs. ITO (ITAT Mumbai), it has been held that the assessee has the choice to choose a prescribed method for ascertaining the market value of the shares transferred. If the assessee has chosen one method of valuation provided under Rule 11UA (i.e. DCF method), the AO (assessment officer) has no power or jurisdiction to change that method to another method. Section 56 allows the assessee to adopt one of the methods of his choice. But, the AO held that the assessee should have adopted only one method for determining the value of the shares. In our opinion, it was beyond the jurisdiction of the AO to insist upon a particular system, especially when the Act allows to choose one of the two methods. Until and unless the legislature amends the provision of the Act and prescribes only one method for valuation of the shares, the assessee is free to adopt any one of the methods. While this tribunal verdict can provide some respite, but in practice, tax authorities often challenge the basis of assumption and the underlying assumptions, thereby resulting in unwarranted tax litigation. Generally, the issue of shares being a capital transaction should not result in any taxability. This provision is unprecedented, and it is difficult to find similar provisions in any other country globally. Taxability in case of issue or transfer of shares below the book value In case of the receipt of shares at a consideration which is below the fair market value, the difference is deemed to be income in the hands of the recipient as per Section 56(2)(x) of the IT Act. For this purpose, the valuation methodology for fair market value is based on adjusted book value method (book value of shares as adjusted by increase in value of immovable property, etc.). In several cases, the business valuation is lower than the book value of the shares. This can be due to the sectoral outlook, investor appetite, regulatory developments, or even the COVID-19 crisis. Section 50CA of the IT Act states that where the consideration received or accruing as a result of the transfer by a person of a capital asset, being share of an unlisted company is less than the fair market value of such share determined in such manner as may be prescribed, the value so determined shall, for the purposes of section 48, be deemed to be the full value of consideration received or accruing as a result of such transfer: Under the said section 50CA, the fair market value of shares is to be considered for the purpose of computing the capital gains whereas the sales consideration may be less than the fair market value. Notional capital gains can be imposed in this case in hands of the seller under Section 50CA as well as notional tax in the hands of the buyer under the provisions of Section 56(2)(x) of the IT Act on account of receipt of shares for inadequate consideration. The aforesaid provisions provide for notional taxation which is against the basic principle of taxation of real income. These notional tax propositions are divorced from the business reality. These provisions were primarily introduced as anti-abuse provisions to prevent unscrupulous transactions relating to issuing or transferring of shares at ridiculous valuation but in practice, the said provisions are hampering genuine businesses from raising capital. There are several mechanisms to deal with abuse of the provisions by focused investigation and review of commercial rationale. Also Read: Toyota to not expand further in India; blames high taxes It is a fact that business valuations are driven by a multitude of economic, geopolitical, regulatory, and financial factors and cannot be fitted into the straight jacket of mathematical formulae. For India to promote itself as an investment-friendly jurisdiction and to facilitate the revival of economy, it is imperative to scrap such provisions (i.e. Section 56(2)(viib), 56(2)(x) and Section 50CA ) related to notional taxation. (The author is Founder, RSM India.) Kochi, Sep 17 : Two days after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan gave a clean chit to State Higher Education Minister K. T.Jaleel in the Kerala gold smuggling case, the latter appeared before the NIA probe team on Thursday. And, the opposition was quick to intensify its demand for Jaleel's resignation. Jaleel has already been questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). He arrived at the NIA office around 6 a.m. in the vehicle of a former CPI-M Legislator and the police had cordoned off the entire area. Incidentally, it was IANS which broke the news on Tuesday, that as part of widening its probe into the Kerala gold smuggling case, the NIA is all set to question Jaleel in the next two days. "We will record the statement of Jaleel in the Kerala gold smuggling case," a senior NIA official had told IANS. The NIA official also said that the anti-terror probe agency is going through the digital evidence it collected so far from Swapna Suresh, the kingpin in the case, which points fingers to some VIPs. The official clarified that Jaleel is not named in the case, but the agency wanted to question him to know if there was any gold smuggling activity under the guise of distribution of religious texts. Jaleel himself when the news first surfaced, said that it was the UAE Consulate which sought his help to distribute Holy Quran and he did only that. For the past six days, ever since reports surfaced that Jaleel was questioned by the ED, the opposition parties have been vehemently demanding his resignation. Vijayan, however, seems to have feigned ignorance of what was happening and has gone on record to say that he was not having any clue as to what wrong has Jaleel done, and there was no reason for him to quit. Reacting to the fresh turn of events, leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said time is up for Jaleel and he has no other option but to quit. "The NIA is the agency that looks into terror related cases and Jaleel, instead of getting more shamed, should quit. Vijayan is now worried as he fears he will also be questioned. This act of questioning should not be seen lightly," said Chennithala. State BJP president K. Surendran said Jaleel's position is weakening by every moment as both the ED and the NIA are after him. "Vijayan is scared. He is worried that he too may be investigated or his other other ministers also may be probed. Jaleel has to quit," said Surendran. The gold smuggling case was unearthed when P.S. Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram, was arrested by the Customs on July 5 when he was facilitating smuggling of 30 kg gold in diplomatic baggage to the state capital from Dubai. Things turned murkier when the name of Swapna Suresh, a former employee of the Consulate and later employed with the IT Department, surfaced. Later, her links with the now-suspended IAS officer M. Sivasankar, then posted as Principal secretary to Vijayan and also the IT Secretary, came to light. So far, the NIA has zeroed in on 25 accused, of which 20 have been arrested. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The couple adopted a child, Polo, years earlier. For a long time in Ema, we hear of the boys acts of violence and anger, his penchant for starting fires, his desolation and now, with a new family, relocation after Ema and Gaston threw in the towel and went back to the fevered artistic and sexual pursuits. In linear terms Larrains film is about how Ema makes her own kind of amends, which involve seducing young Polos new father and mother. The movies quite nuts, and blithely unconcerned wiith the usual earnest hand-holding in the fractured-family-unit storytelling genre. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:22:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close LA PAZ, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Bolivia's Interim President Jeanine Anez declared on Wednesday a national emergency after more than half a million hectares of forest have been burnt in Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia. Meanwhile, a decree permitting controlled burning for agricultural and livestock activities was annulled. "Today, something very important and significant is happening: we are presenting two decrees. One to reinforce the fight against fire, and another to repeal the decree that allowed controlled burning," Anez said during an event in the town of San Ignacio de Velasco in Santa Cruz. Anez also instructed the Ministry of Defense to transfer its civil defense team so that it could work with the Ministry of the Environment and local governments to address the crisis. Minister of the Presidency of the Interim-Government Yerko Nunez reiterated at a press conference that the Forest and Land Authority has been instructed to put out the fires in vulnerable areas. According to the Forest and Land Authority, 598,716 hectares of area were affected by fires in the first week of September. Enditem BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: The export of cement from Turkey to Kazakhstan surged by 136.9 percent in the past 8 months of 2020 compared to the same period of 2019, making up $7.9 million, the Turkish Trade Ministry told Trend on Sept.17. Turkey exported cement worth $605,000 to Kazakhstan in August this year, which is 19 percent more than in the same month of 2019. Turkeys export of cement to world markets from January through August 2020 increased by 2.3 percent compared to the same period in 2019, has exceeded $2.3 billion the cement export from Turkey amounted to 2.3 percent of the countrys total export for the reporting period. "In August 2020, Turkeys export of cement to international markets amounted to $319.6 million, which is 12.5 percent more compared to the same month of 2019," the ministry said. Turkeys export of cement to foreign markets in August this year amounted to 2.6 percent of the countrys total export. During the last 12 months (from August 2019 through August 2020), Turkey exported cement for more than $3.5 billion. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu By Express News Service KOCHI: In a major blow to the Customs probing the smuggling of gold via the diplomatic channel, the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (Economic Offences) Court on Wednesday granted statutory bail to KT Rameez, the alleged mastermind of the incident, in the case registered by the agency after the latter failed to file a final report within 60 days of his arrest. The other accused persons will soon move court seeking bail.Rameez, who was arrested on July 12, filed the bail plea on Tuesday. Though he has received bail in the Customs case, he will not be released as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has also registered a case against him. The Customs, which had registered a case in the gold seizure from Thiruvananthapuram airport on July 5, is yet to file a final report in the case. As per norms, the final report of the case has to be filed within 60 days of the arrest of an accused person. Under this provision, the other accused persons can also approach the court seeking bail, said advocate Niresh Mathew who represented Rameez. When the court considered Rameezs petition on Tuesday, the Customs claimed that the probe was on and several pieces of evidence were to be collected. However, as is usual practice, they could have filed a final report and said further probe was required. They could then have received enough time for the probe. They did not do this, which also indicates sufficient evidence has not been collected till now, Niresh said. While granting him bail, the court asked Rameez to execute a bond of `2 lakh with two solvent sureties each for the like sum. The sureties should produce original title deeds for verification. Rameez should appear before the probe officer every Monday between 10am and 11am for three months or until the filing of final report. NIA team collects probe details from ED Kochi: The NIA team probing the gold smuggling case, held a meeting with Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials, who are probing the money laundering aspect behind the smuggling, on Wednesday. A senior officer of ED from New Delhi also arrived in Kochi to evaluate the probe. The NIA team reached the ED office in the evening. ED sources said some of the facts and statements collected in the case were shared with NIA. The statement of minister K T Jaleel given to us was also discussed. We also sought some information collected by NIA, said a source. Meanwhile, Sushil Kumar, special director, ED, from New Delhi visited the ED office in Kochi. He also held a meeting with the Assistant Solicitor General regarding the legal aspects. Considering its nature, senior officers in New Delhi are also reviewing the case. Some key decisions have to be taken as we will question more persons soon, said the ED source. NIA gets three-day custody of accused Kochi: The NIA has been granted the custody of an accused in the gold smuggling case for three days till Friday. The NIA Court issued the directive when accused Muhammad Anwar T M was produced before it on Wednesday. Though he was to be brought to the court on Tuesday as per the warrant, a technical error at Viyyur Central Jail delayed this. As part of the probe, the NIA had seized mobile phones and other digital devices from Anwars possession. The gadgets were analysed with the help of C-DAC, Thiruvananthapuram, based on which his custody was sought for further interrogation. NIA has also sought the custody of Swapna Suresh, a key accused in the case. However, she could not be produced before the court due to medical reasons. The Viyyur Central Jail superintendent has filed a report about her medical condition and a warrant is likely to be issued to bring her to the court soon. Federal prosecutors have hit Lev Parnas with fresh charges, accusing him of defrauding investors in a startup company called 'Fraud Guarantee.' The charge was announced on Friday by Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a superseding indictment that also levies new charges against Parnas' associate David Correia. Parnas, along with his associate Igor Fruman, were originally charged in October of 2019 with planning to direct funds from foreign nationals to U.S. politicians while trying to influence U.S.-Ukraine relations, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors have hit Lev Parnas (above) with fresh charges, accusing him of defrauding investors in a startup company called 'Fraud Guarantee' Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (left to right) were charged with violating the ban on political donations by foreign nationals in October 2019 Parnas and Fruman famously assisted Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, in his freelance investigation into allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine when he was vice president. The new charges stem from Parnas' startup, Fraud Guarantee, a nebulous entity incorporated in Florida, which was dissolved by state officials in 2014 after failing to file an annual report. Fraud Guarantee promised to offer an insurance product that would allow policyholders to recoup their losses in the event they lost money due to fraudulent conduct, but the company never got a product to market. Lev Parnas (left) helped Rudy Giuliani in his investigation into Joe Biden's dealing in Ukraine when he served as vice president Pictured: World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden (left) and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (right) attend the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on Pictured: President Donald Trump (left) posing with Lev Parnas (right) In the superseding indictment unsealed on Friday, prosecutors say that Parnas and Correia lied to at least seven investors, telling them their investments would be used to build the business, but instead siphoning off cash for personal expenses. Prosecutors say those personal expenses included hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for Parnas personal residence and tens of thousands of dollars at luxury car leasing companies. The investments involved in the scam totaled more than $2 million, according to the indictment. Developing story, more to follow. UP Polls: Amit Shah to conduct door-to-door campaign in Kairana on Saturday Union Home Minister Amit Shah discharged from AIIMS Delhi India oi-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been discharged from AIIMS Delhi, four days after he was re-admitted for a check-up after recovering from COVID-19. He was discharged from the hospital after post-COVID care on August 30 and was admitted again for a complete medical checkup on September 13. On August 2, Shah, 55, had said on Twitter that he had tested positive for COVID-19. He had undergone treatment for the coronavirus infection at Medanta Hospital and was discharged after he tested negative for the disease. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News He was discharged after testing negative on August 14 only to re-admitted in AIIMS days after to treat his post-COVID syndromes on August 18. He had complained of breathing issues then. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, September 17, 2020, 19:15 [IST] Does the following sound familiar? Kids have gone back to school and now one of thems got a cold and a bit of a temperature. Just like they do every year. Probably nothing to worry about. Except that this year, they could be passing around a deadly disease, so they need to have a test. But there are no tests available so theyll have to stay home. And so will their sister. And youll have to self-isolate, and so will everybody else in your household. And so, with that same deadly pandemic stalking the land, Britain accidentally brought itself to its knees through the common cold. The eighth biggest economy in the world, or whatever it is these days, taken down by the sniffles. If it sounds familiar, thats because it is. If its not happening to you its kicking off on your Facebook and in all of your WhatsApp groups. And its not just in schools. NHS workers are stuck at home in ever larger numbers because they dont know if its safe to go in. The testing centres in the countrys coronavirus hotspots like Oldham and Bolton are suffering something of a system meltdown. It is a proper crisis. And it was precisely to avoid this highly foreseeable situation that the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has made a Very Big Deal about how important it is to increase coronavirus testing capacity. And it is precisely because he has failed to achieve it that he turned up in the House of Commons, yet again, to try to explain away the unexplainable, and to fail yet again. Maybe its the consequence of the long, grinding years of mono-purpose Brexit government that has shifted the window on what a politician imagines they can get away with. The constant, attritional Westminster warfare over internecine and entirely constitutional matters had the effect of elevating political debate to an almost synthetic realm. The average man in the street, for example, would be forgiven for not entirely understanding how it was he came to vote for a prime minister holding an oven-ready deal, who won a huge majority and who is now staring, nevertheless, down the barrel of what is commonly termed a no-deal Brexit. What happened to the deal? What happened to the oven? Does the average man know or care that, well, theres kind of two deals really, one for withdrawing, one on future trade, and theyre kind of linked but not really and well yada yada yada. So much of this, for so long, and perhaps you come to forget about the trifling thing called actual real life. The realm of the real has been almost entirely forgotten, and Matt Hancock really can stand there and deny the world as it exists around him. Yesterday there were precisely no coronavirus tests available in any of the 10 major Covid-19 hotspots all around the country. None, to be precise, in Bolton, Salford, Bradford, Blackburn, Oldham, Preston, Pendle, Rochdale, Tameside or Manchester. Asked what was going on, Mr Hancock explained that, as ever, he had been a victim of his own success. Or rather, we all had. The first defence that was offered is that the UK is doing more tests than any other country in Europe. Which is dubious in truth, to say the least, and is, nevertheless, a little factoid that is of little use to the family trying to avoid two needless and economically ruinous weeks stuck indoors for the sake of a five-year-old with a minor cold. Last week he said all this would be sorted in two weeks. One of those weeks has gone now, so Jeremy Hunt asked him if that meant it would be sorted next week. But two weeks has now become a matter of weeks". A matter of weeks. How many weeks are there in a matter? A life is a matter of weeks. Dinosaurs walked the Earth for a matter of weeks, a matter of weeks ago. Best to think of all this being sorted as, you know, more of an aspiration. A hope. Which is itself difficult. Because the only plan in town is whats been deliberately sold as Operation Moonshot. 10 million tests a day, every day, the results back in an instant. Trouble is, when youre trying to cover your arse by promising the impossible, you do have to get the absolute basics right in the meantime. Or everyone will think youre just flailing about in the darkness, making it up as you go along, trying to make it through to the next day, and the next phoney promise to make up for the one you just stopped keeping. Zara owner Inditex bounces back from virus slump (photo: zara.com) The group, which also owns the Bershka and Massimo Dutti brands, posted a higher-than-expected net profit of 214 million euros ($253 million) in the three months from May to July. Inditex, which runs its business year from February to January, had booked a loss of 409 million euros in the previous quarter -- its first Q1 loss in nearly 20 years --- when it was forced to close more than 90 percent of its 7,000 shops around the world due to Covid-19 lockdown measures. The second-quarter results were better analysts' expectations for net profit of some 58 million euros. Inditex said 98 percent of its stores had reopened although they are operating at a limited capacity and with reduced hours in certain countries because of the pandemic. The "third quarter continues to see a progressive return to normality, with online sales growing sharply and store sales recovering gradually," the company said in a statement. In the period from May to July, sales rose to 4.73 billion euros from 3.30 billion in the previous quarter. But the figure is down by 32 percent when compared to the second quarter of 2019. For the first half, Inditex posted a loss of 195 million euros. Internet sales surged by 74 percent during the six-month period as it began selling online in nine more countries, including Argentina and Peru. "I am particularly pleased with our online sales growth, which demonstrates the critical importance of our integrated store and online platform strategy," Inditex executive chairman Pablo Isla said in the statement. The retailer said it recently recorded one million online orders in a single day for the first time as many customers switched from shopping at the company's shops. Since 2012, Inditex has invested around 2.5 billion euros in beefing up its online sales by reducing its stock of smaller older shops and investing in larger stores in high-profile locations. The company aims to have digital sales account for at least 25 percent of all sales in two years, up from 14 percent in 2019. Inditex's results compare positively to those of its biggest rival, Sweden's H&M, which posted a net loss of 477 million euros in the second quarter before returning to profit in the third. The Covid-19 outbreak that began in China late last year and spread around the world prompted governments to close businesses and order millions of people to stay at home to try to slow the contagion, causing retail sales to slump. The media is full of stories about how students and schools are adapting to the pandemic. The spirit of the Hidden Gems rankings is all about considering schools from a new perspective. This year, that mindset is more important than ever. College Raptor announced its 2021 Hidden Gem Rankings, which highlights hundreds of fantastic but lesser-known colleges as part of their mission to help students and parents find their best college match. Raptor helps millions of families each year discover colleges that fit students academic, cultural, and financial needs. For 2021, notable schools include the University of the South and the University of Mary, both of which are featured on four different lists. Haverford College came out as the top Hidden Gem school in Pennsylvania. A newcomer to the #1 spot for its state is the College of Idaho. During a pandemic that has greatly impacted higher education, College Raptor added brand new ranking lists inspired by changing trends and student needs. Hidden Rural Gems, for example, aims to highlight colleges that are located in rural settings for students who desire a bit more space around campus. In recent months, colleges and students have adapted to non-traditional education -- in the same vein, this year's Hidden Gems includes a showcase of great schools with alternate tuition plans. The media is full of stories about how students and schools are adapting to the pandemic. The spirit of the Hidden Gems rankings is all about considering schools from a new perspective. This year, that mindset is more important than ever, said Bill Staib, College Raptors CEO. Each student is unique and so is every school featured in the Hidden Gems rankings. These lists serve as a starting point for students to use CollegeRaptor.com and discover colleges they might not otherwise have thought about. View the complete College Raptor 2021 Hidden Gems at https://www.collegeraptor.com/hidden-gems-2021/ About College Raptor, Inc. College Raptor leverages artificial intelligence to help students, parents, counselors, and colleges resolve significant challenges in college planning. With its motto, The Right College, The Best Price, Raptor is the only college search platform that enables students and families to discover quality, affordable college options based on personalized estimates of financial aid, scholarships, academic match, and acceptance chances at every four-year college in the country. As a result, students and their families find cost-effective, academically-appropriate college options that prepare them for their careers. For more information about College Raptor, visit CollegeRaptor.com. Phuket emergency services on alert amid heavy weather warning PHUKET: Phuket Vice Governor Wongsakorn Nunchukan has ordered emergency services on alert to respond to any flash floods following a weather warning issued by the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) over the weather fallout from Category 3 tropical storm Noul. weatherSafetymarine By The Phuket News Thursday 17 September 2020, 11:59AM Phuket is expected to be in for heavy weather tomorrow through Sunday (Sept 18-20). Image: Phuket MET To prevent and mitigate disasters from floods, windstorm and mudslides which may threaten peoples safety and their property, we ask all local administrative officers to closely follow the weather report from the Thai Meteorological Department, check the situation in areas under their responsibility and be alert and ready to help people, V/Gov Wongsakorn said this morning (Sept 17). The TMD reported that at 4am today tropical storm Noul was centered at about 600 kilometers northeast of Da Nang, Vietnam, with sustained winds of 80km/h. The storm is moving west at a speed of about 20km/h, and is expected to develop into the Category 5 typhoon and make landfall on the central Vietnam coast. It will then move into the Northeast and the North of Thailand tomorrow through Sunday (Sept 18-20), the TMD forecast in its warning. The southwest monsoon across the Andaman Sea, Thailand and the Gulf will become stronger with more rain. Torrential rain will be possible with strong winds first in the Northeast, then the North, the Central, the East and the South, TMD Director-General Somsak Khaosuwan said in the warning issued today. People in risk areas should beware of the severe rains that may cause flash floods and water runoff, he added. The TMD also urged people to beware strong winds and to keep indoors during storm periods, and to berware large trees that might unsecured buildings that might be affected by the heavy weather. In the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, the wind waves will be stronger with waves in the Andaman Sea reaching 2-3 meters high, and about 2 meters high in the Gulf of Thailand, and more than 3 meters high during thundershowers, the TMD warned. All small boats were advised to keep ashore until the heavy weather passes, currently expected to clear by Sunday (Sept 20). Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been discharged from AIIMs on Thursday after he was admitted four days ago with complains of breathlessness. According to reports, he has reached his home, as well. Shah was admitted around 11 pm on Saturday night and was being kept in CN tower, a facility reserved for VVIPs. The BJP leader was being treated by Dr Randeep Guleria, director of AIIMS. Shah has been suffering from post-Covid ailments for a month now. He was previously admitted to AIIMS on August 18 after he experienced post-Covid ailments days after his recovery from coronavirus. On August 2, Shah had said on Twitter that he had tested positive for Covid-19, following which he was treated in Medanta Hospital, Gurugram. He was discharged on August 14 after testing negative, but was re-admitted in AIIMS days after to treat his post-COVID complication on August 18. Amit Shah, Union Home Minister, is admitted at AIIMS, New Delhi for post-COVID care. He has recovered and is likely to be discharged in a short time," AIIMS had said in a statement on August 30. Quite a few Union Ministers have tested positive for the coronavirus disease, since the pandemic took root in India. Union minister Prahlad Singh Patel said on Thursday that he had contracted the virus, and asked those who had met him Tuesday to take adequate precautions. A day earlier, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari broke the news about testing Covid-19 positive, as well. In charge of the Road and Transport Ministry and the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Gadkari said he was feeling weak and consulted his doctor. During the course of my check up, I have been tested Covid-19 positive, he said in a tweet, adding that he was doing well and had isolated himself. A police chief has hit out at climate change protesters for going floppy when they face arrest and told them to "behave like adults. Sir Steve House said tactics used by Extinction Rebellion (XR) are a flipping nuisance and a complete pain in the neck. The Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee some demonstrators go limp when officers try and detain them resulting in officers having to carry them off instead. He told the room: We have asked them to stop being floppy. It might seem like a silly thing to say, but when we arrest them and pick them up they go all floppy, which is why you see four or five officers carrying them away. A man being carried at a demonstration in central London / AFP via Getty Images Its a complete waste of officers time, and a complete pain in the neck. If they could just behave like sensible adults youve made your point, you wanted to be arrested, youve been arrested, get up and walk away with one officer and stop wasting police time. This is a real issue, and they will not do it, and it is a flipping nuisance. Extinction Rebellion: London demonstrations 1 /102 Extinction Rebellion: London demonstrations PA PA Extinction Rebellion UK AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA Getty Images Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA AFP via Getty Images Jeremy Selwyn The environmental campaign group has planned events to be held at several landmarks in the capital PA Extinction Rebellion protesters in Parliament Square, London PA Extinction Rebellion protesters tussle with police officer in Parliament Square PA Extinction Rebellion protesters in Parliament Square PA Actor Juliet Stevenson speaks at an Extinction Rebellion protest PA PA AFP via Getty Images PA PA REUTERS AFP via Getty Images PA Jeremy Selwyn Jeremy Selwyn Jeremy Selwyn Jeremy Selwyn Jeremy Selwyn PA AFP via Getty Images PA REUTERS PA Reuters AFP via Getty Images Reuters PA Jeremy Selwyn AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Reuters PA Reuters Reuters PA AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA PA Reuters Getty Images Getty Images REUTERS AFP via Getty Images Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AP REUTERS AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images XR held 10 days of protests in central London at the start of September, with the latest figures from the Met showing that 680 people had been arrested. These were for alleged offences including obstructing the highway, criminal damage and breaching the legal conditions set on the demonstration. Sir Steve went on: The problem with them going floppy and four officers carrying them away is that it looks to the general public like the police are overreacting here. Were not making them go floppy theyre just being a nuisance." American Exceptionalism and Exclusions Hip Hop Lyrics, Broadway Musicals, and the American Story Revisited Tainted Cultural Touchstones Recovering the Promise of American Possibilities We all know the old narrative essentially that America was a great nation living according to great ideals, and though we sometimes didnt quite live up to them, we were better than any other nation in all of human history. Thanks to the ways in which more voices have been heard in the construction of history in the last 40 years, and to the really important work of several generations of scholars to tell something like the whole story of the American experiment, not merely one comfortable to powerful white males, we now know that that old narrative was an agreeable lie. Just ask the Mandan or the Crow Indians or ask the descendants of slaves or children of the Japanese internment during World War II. Still, it has been an amazingly tenacious narrative. Its the one that conservative thinkers like Dinesh DSouza, William Bennett and Lynne Cheney embrace with such outrage that anyone could disagree with them.The new narrative of the academic left that America has always spouted largely empty ideals to cover the fact that, in essence, we are no different from other nations in history, equally driven by thirst for power, social hierarchies, racism, imperialism, sexism, and greed is (to me) a disagreeable lie. We are not as good as our lofty ideals. We are also not a nation whose idealism and magnanimity are merely rhetorical.The truth, surely, is somewhere in between. I know of no person in a calm spirit who would refuse to accept that there is something very special about the United States of America, both in our history and in our ideals. Its not just that we are the richest and most powerful nation in the world (though we are), but there is something unusually aspirational in our national experience. Until we can find a new consensus on at least a core narrative of our national unfolding, we not only cannot cheer up as a people and solve some of the difficult problems before us, but we are in danger of a genuine constitutional fissure. Some of the alarmists think we may see serious secession movements in the decade ahead or that the country could break up into no less than two new republics: coastal blue and heartland red. I disagree. Disillusionment and cynicism cannot be our national outlook. Nor can a kind of naive and self-satisfied patriotism, that overlooks the dark side of American history or pretends there are not significant unresolved issues in American life.The problem is that there are several Americas now and we no longer have a shared national understanding of who we are and what we should signify at home and in the world. Great nations have shared values, shared aspirations, and a shared historical narrative. That does not mean everyone agrees, but there has to be at least a baseline understanding of our national purpose (and our history) that we can agree on, and from which we can formulate policy debates.It would be easy enough to account for the collapse of a common American narrative. The old one had too many exclusions of African Americans, of women, of the poor, of indigenous peoples, of ethnic and religious minorities. Its amazing it lasted as long as it did. Meanwhile, the United States had its own Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s. The old paradigms were shattered or fractured, and a wide range of new study focuses attainted scholarly legitimacy at the nations colleges and universities. Then the coming of fashionable postmodernism produced a generation of disillusioned academics and public intellectuals who called into question a wide range of American verities: objectivity, truth, justice, freedom, equality, beauty, separation of powers, free speech, due process, etc.While I dont think it even minimally fair to argue that establishment academics hate America, I do think there has emerged a fierce new orthodoxy at some of our colleges and universities that has, among other things, been particularly hard on any notion of American exceptionalism. Or even Americas essential goodness.The debate about just what American means has been going on since the very beginning of our national experiment. The debate has always been sharp, but almost everyone feels that it has taken on a particular virulence in the third decade of the 21st century. From a historical perspective, the Founding Fathers represent a useful allegory for the range of views about the American project.Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the chief exponent of the most idealistic view America as a shining secular city on the hill, a beacon of liberty and happiness for people everywhere, the template for what will eventually be a successful worldwide movement towards enlightenment. Jefferson believed that whatever was un-perfected in American life could be fixed with good will and public education.Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), the namesake of the popular American musical, was not altogether without idealism, but he was more interested in American geopolitical glory than in what we now call soft power. He dismissed Jefferson as an intellectual voluptuary, and regarded him as either a gadfly or an impediment to Americas greatness. Hamilton did not think the people were up to the challenge of self-government. He believed nations must do whatever is in their interest, without any fuzzy loyalty to friendship or old alliances. Hamilton believed that the world was driven by ambition, by the search for profit, by the desire for power and dominion, and by the thirst for military glory. He was a pessimist about human nature. His famous June 18, 1787, address to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia decried average people as the rabble. Because of his pessimism about the bulk of humankind, Hamilton insisted that presidents and senators should serve for life, that the president should have an unqualified veto over acts of Congress and that governors of individual states should be chosen by the national executive.Somewhere in the middle was John Adams (1735-1826), the crabby realist, who wanted a republic as much as Jefferson did, but who was pretty certain that the people were not quite up to the challenge, at least without some checks and guardrails to prevent an unthinking tyranny of the majority. Adams respected, admired, and even loved his friend Thomas Jefferson, so much that he took the first vulnerable step of repairing their friendship in 1812, after the partisan passions of the 1790s had driven them apart. Adams nevertheless believed that Jefferson was a utopian visionary insufficiently grounded in the real world. He once asked Jefferson if he had been fast asleep in philosophical tranquility when the passions of the French Revolution made Philadelphia (then the seat of the U.S. government) a locus of significant social and political unrest. Adams regarded his fellow humans as rascals, especially if they got a little power in their hands.For Adams, who did not share Jeffersons belief in the perfectibility of man, but who found Hamiltons ambition and glory-seeking nauseating, creating a stable republic required three important elements. First, the president must be an individual of exceptional character who rose above partisan politics. Second, there must be a solid moral and religious core in the hearts of the people. Third, the constitution must have a large number of checks and balances to prevent any branch of the government, any faction, any party, any geographic section, or any individual from grabbing too much power.There were other voices, of course. Benjamin Franklin reckoned we were all scamps, but with bemusement and some good sense, we would always manage to muddle through. Abigail Adams warned her voluble husband to remember the ladies when he and his fellow patriots fashioned a new constitutional system for the now-united colonies. Benjamin Banneker and Phillis Wheatley did what they could to convince the white founders of the dignity and capacity of African American slaves and free Blacks. The Iroquois (Cayuga) leader Logan appealed to any white man to recognize Native American rights, sovereignty, and generosity of spirit.More than 200 years later, all this seems a little quaint. We are jaded and we are effectively cut off from the wisdom of the past by the collapse of the humanities and social studies in America. We are now presentists unprecedentedly fixated on our own time and increasingly ignorant of our history. It shows. The past was prologue. The abandonment of civics and ethics in our K-12 curriculum, and the loss of rigor in social studies, have cut us off from the heritage of America as never before. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.It is depressing to ask what now is the common inheritance, the common culture, or the agreed-upon narrative of the American project. In ancient Rome, the epic poet Virgil wrote a national epic (the) to make sense of the troubled history of the Roman people. For many centuries thewas not only the best narrative of the rise of Rome and its culmination in the rule of August Caesar, but it was one of the central texts of western civilization at least until the 17th century. The United States, which bears considerable resemblance to ancient Rome in all of its phases, glories and follies, has no such core text or (now) even a cluster of core texts. Ifhas now been fatally derailed by Twains constant use of the N-word, and if the Lewis and Clark Expedition is now seen as the harbinger of an imperial occupation of the Native American world, where do we turn for a story or a text that embraces the American experience in a way that simultaneously explains and uplifts, analyzes and inspires?A nation without a shared narrative is a nation that has lost its confidence. When a nation loses its confidence, it ceases to do big things. The New Deal was successful because Franklin Roosevelt crafted a compelling national narrative of suffering and recovery. Think of the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration , the Grand Coulee Dam (with its troubadour Woody Guthrie ), rural electrification, and Social Security. John F. Kennedys New Frontier rushed a space capsule to Tranquility Base on the surface of the Moon in 1969 and attempted to address the historically intractable problems of civil rights. Ideas matter. Words and stories matter. A compelling narrative can move a people forward.What is the story of America in 2020? The conservatives appear to want to lock the country into some previous narrative the world of "Leave It to Beaver" or "The Andy Griffith Show" and the progressives have been unable to fashion a narrative that extends beyond the worldviews of their own coalition of tribes and interest groups. If your narrative doesnt embrace the world beyond your base, its not going to bring healing to America.We need to have a serious national conversation about who we are and who we would like to be through the rest of the 21st century. I dont think we can really go on without that common sense of national purpose. It wont be easy to forge the new consensus, because we now acknowledge that our history is much more complicated, rich, nuanced, and (frankly) troubled than we were previously willing to acknowledge.We should not, in my opinion, leave that narrative to the academics because for all of their brilliance they are often out of touch with the lives of the mass of American citizens, certainly those of the vast interior. Academics should be involved in the project at every turn, but the story needs to be fashioned by the broad public of America. We need Walt Whitman not and Noam Chomsky for this purpose. If I were Congress, I would appropriate several billion dollars to the National Endowment for the Humanities, to the National Endowment for the Arts, national public media, and to the U.S. Department of Education to convene the requisite conversations across the continent for the rest of this decade.All the stakeholders need to be at the table this time. The flowering of books, essays, works of art, music, and dance that would come out of this great conversation would help all of us make sense of things. These acts of national deliberation might actually help to heal us. After 9/11 we created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to protect us as we traveled. After an earthquake or hurricane, we send in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). At this critical juncture in our history, we need to send in the national guard of the cultural agencies to help us move forward with confidence in re-forming a national narrative that does justice to every constituency. The emergency, in my view, is that grave.The currently fashionable view that the United States is in decline or slow-motion collapse, that the best of our days are behind us, that we are likely to fissure into mutually hostile enclaves and regions, is premature. We have been through very difficult times before. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of our national demise are greatly exaggerated. But we are going to have to get deadly serious about the crisis of national confidence, and I think we now all agree that it is not going to be solved in the political arena. Its in the deeper, broader, more representative American culture that the breakthrough is likely to come.As is so often the case, it is that fabulous crafter of the national narrative, the imperfect genius Thomas Jefferson, who helps us understand American possibilities. Compromised though he is, he can still point the way. In his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1801, Jefferson called America:Eleven years later, safely out of office, but chastened by the strain of steering the American republic through the troubled waters of the Napoleonic wars, in the first of his retirement letters to John Adams, Jefferson retained his insight and his fundamental optimism:We must find a new and authentic optimism. The Worcester Red Sox figuratively tipped their cap to their new home by honoring the 508 area code in announcing the capacity of Polar Park on Thursday. The organization announced the ballpark will hold 9,508 fans - the final three digits representing the area code for much of Central Massachusetts. Its the latest nugget nestled into the ballpark that pays homage to Worcester, including heart-shaped lights and smiley faces on the foul poles. As [chairman and president] Larry Lucchino has said so many times, this ballpark will look and feel and smell and taste like Worcester, said WooSox President Dr. Charles Steinberg. In announcing the stadiums capacity, the team also laid out the seating format of Polar Park. Sections begin in the seating bowl on the third base side with section 1, and rotate counter-clockwise to the first base side, ending at section 16. Beyond the seating bowl, fans overlooking the WooSox bullpen will be in section 17. Down the right field line, an elevated open space is listed as section 18. Rows will also be numbered, starting with Row 1 being closest to the field. The number of rows in a section varies, as does the number of seats in a row. Seat numbers start at 1 on the left side of each section when viewed from the concourse. The goal is clarity, Lucchino said in a statement. We are all fans, and we know how frustrating it can be in some venues when your seat location is not intuitive. All seating categories have ADA seating. Next to the WooSox dugout, a Fan Dugout dubbed the Big Blue Bug Batters Box is available for group outings of up to 20 fans. Atop the Worcester Wall in right field, the sections are numbered starting with 101 at the foul pole and continuing counterclockwise to 105. The triple digit outfield seating sections continue with the FLEXcon Porch, representing sections 106 and 107 in right-centerfield, and can seat 42 and accommodate 114 including standing room. The seating continues in centerfield with section 108 and left field with 109. A section by the visitors bullpen will be Section 0. On the upper level, the DCU Club behind home plate, sections start with 201 on the third base side and ends at 207 on the first base side. Group areas on the 200 level include the Hanover Deck at section 200 on the third base side and the Rodenhiser Party Bridge or section 208, which connects the suites to the Right Field Party Deck (section 209) on the first base side. We have worked with our partners, the City of Worcester leadership, to design and construct an intimate, compact, innovative urban ballpark that this city can be proud of, Lucchino said in a statement. And this important part of the design brings us one giant step closer to its completion." Season tickets are now on sale. Early-bird pricing continues through Dec. 31, when team officials anticipate the allotted amount of season tickets will sell out. Only six of approximately 20 different ticket categories at Polar Park are being made available on a season ticket basis. Currently fans can only selection a section to purchase tickets in, but will have the opportunity to select specific seats later this month. Season ticket holders renewing from Pawtucket will have the first selection. From there, the team will work its way down its Booster Club members from Hall of Fame membership to team membership. Polar Park is expected to open in April of 2021. Related Content: CART OR DASH CART? BUSY AREA (TNS) Alexa is going to be busy Thursday on the west end of the San Fernando Valley.Thats because the first Amazon Fresh grocery store opens in Woodland Hills.Long in the making, the stores debut at the former site of the Toys R Us on Topanga Canyon Boulevard ushers in a new brick-and-mortar chapter for the e-commerce giant.Amazon officials tout the store as highly convenient with decent prices (like 15-cent bananas) and new tech-driven forms of in-store shopping.The concept brings the companys artificial intelligence assistant, Alexa, right to the aisles. And, if customers prefer, they can run-in-run-out without ever going through a traditional checkout. Or, in a nod to the COVID-19 era, they can stick with online shopping and pick up the goods at the store.Theres a lot that goes into a grocery store, and were quite excited about this one, said Jeff Helbling, vice president of Amazon Fresh Stores.Woodland Hills will be the first to get a taste of food shopping with the Amazon Dash Cart, a tech-laden grocery cart enabling shoppers to use Alexa to manage shopping lists and navigate aisles, then skipping the checkout lane.The cart uses a series of inward-facing cameras and a combination of computer algorithms and sensors to track what goes in or out of the basket. Its like that little cart icon on the Amazon website or app. Only now its real life.If shoppers cant find the Cheerios, Alexa is just a prompt away. Reach out to her and shell get you going in the right direction, Helbling said.When shoppers are done, theyll run the smart cart through a designated aisle on the way out. While in the Dash Cart lane, payment is completed automatically after users log in using a Fresh QR code on their smartphones.If shoppers arent hip to the tech or Amazon Prime customers, they can go old-school and use a traditional cart and cashier.It will be a very fast, convenient shopping experience, said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the New York-based Strategic Resource Group, which has studied Amazon, Whole Foods and the retail industry for decades.Flickinger noted that Amazons technology infrastructure, particularly the ability to process consumer payments, will invigorate the market and make the store a destination.Its the proverbial Star Wars store, he said. Its exciting. Its state of the art. Its fast, efficient. Its fun.The store which opened late last month serving invited customers to get early feedback employs roughly 200 people.Sister stores will follow in North Hollywood, Northridge and Irvine. Outside of Southern California, three stores are planned for the Illinois suburbs. All of those stores have yet to open to regular everyday foot traffic. But, like Woodland Hills, they are suburbs, not far from metro areas like Downtown L.A. or Chicago.Helbling declined to elaborate on further growth plans but said Amazon is hopeful the model will resonate in those markets.They are markets that likely have something else in common: tech-savvy consumers and a high concentration of budding young families, analysts suggest.The Woodland Hills store opens in a shopping plaza that is part of a rapidly developing section of L.A. Warner Center, complete with higher-end multi-unit residential dwellings and nearby commercial hubs such as Westfield Topanga and The Village.Officials confirmed in November that a new store was coming, after months of speculation.At the time, Amazon was beginning to publish job openings for the West San Fernando Valley location. The starting pay rate varied from $15.35 to $16.90 per hour. It took some time for the gray facade with bright green trim to get its sign. The store, in the shade of a new residential complex, is neighbors with Sees Candy.Amazon Fresh is the latest step into the grocery world the Seattle company has taken since its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017.The move wont rock the boat for big-name competitors, but it will help push the grocery industry further into the 21st century.For the high value, low-price leaders, where its important for shoppers to save, theres no worry for Aldi, no worry for Trader Joes or Costco or Kroger or WinCo. Theyll all still generate record-breaking sales results, Flickinger said. But what it does do is geometrically increase the technological breakthroughs and initiatives to make shopping easier and more convenient, where competitors will be mirroring and building on Amazon initiatives.The emergence of the Fresh stores also represents a new direction for Whole Foods, which has pulled back on its failed Whole Foods 365 initiative, Flickinger said.The new store isnt far from a busy Whole Foods at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Topanga.Each store serves its own market niches, Helbling said.They serve two different customer needs and occasions, and were investing in growing both of them, he said. We think they co-exist nicely throughout the city.The new store adheres to physical distancing directives and will be operating at 50% capacity Davos: As India and China are emerging as a sweet spot to rev up world economic growth, inward-looking approach for development as new normal raised questions over the future of globalisation at the WEF meet at Davos, while Indian leaders listed out demonetisation as a measure owed to people in the fight against black money. As leaders and economists debated the future of globalisation in Davos at WEF, the emerging narrative shifted to growth booster from Asia for the global economy amid darkening prospects for trade worldwide. While asserting that UK would retain its internationalist approach despite Brexit, Prime Minister Theresa May said the countrys biggest manufacturer Tata is Indian but still there cannot be anything more British than its product Jaguar Land Rover. India was today applauded as a major driving force alongside China for world growth with leaders and economists emphasising the need for increased regional cooperation. Veteran banker and New Development Bank President K V Kamath said a new normal is emerging where many countries would prioritise an inward look at their national policies even as India remains in a comfortable position. While stating that India and China contribute a big chunk today to the global growth, he India is in a sweet spot as the country absorbs investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and areas driving the consumer sector. Against the backdrop of rising uncertainties, business leaders and economists felt that India and China have a great role to play in taking forward the Asian growth story by engaging in regional cooperation and eventually boost the global trade. Reflecting the optimism over the two leading economies, Malaysias Minister for International Trade and Industry Mustapa Mohamed said India and China are very important in taking forward the Asian growth story. As the prospects for global trade seem to darken, noted economist Kishore Mahbubani said there is indeed a vacuum at the leadership position and it needs to be seen who fills it. He also noted that ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has a great potential though a lot of people generally focus mostly on India and China. Making a strong defence of demonetisation, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government owed such a step to the nation for eradicating the black money menace. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Miller was one of four final candidates who visited the county and took part in two days of interviews Sept. 8 and 9. They answered questions from department supervisors and took part in a public forum where they each answered questions about how they would operate as county administrator. During the forum, Miller said he and his wife wanted to live in Sauk County because it is close to his daughters and their families. He cited the recreation opportunities and complemented the landscape as well as the countys economic development. Miller has been in county administration work for 22 years. Miller said in Shawano County he oversees the operations of 21 departments and a $56 million budget. He served in the National Guard for 11 years before retiring and 10 years in active duty where he earned a bronze star in Afghanistan for combat operations. I think hes excited for the challenge and has been very interested in Sauk County from the inception of the recruitment process, Bretl said of Miller. I think you have a well qualified candidate to serve as your first county administrator. Man arrested for causing car accident that killed United Methodist bishop Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A man suspected of having killed an African United Methodist Church bishop in a car accident has been arrested by Sierra Leone police and charged with multiple counts. Last month, Sierra Leone Area Bishop John K. Yambasu was on his way to preach at a funeral for a former district superintendent when the driver of an SUV struck him. Mohamed Allie Saw was arrested after fleeing the scene and was charged with seven counts earlier this month, including speeding and driving without due care and attention. Saw was driving a vehicle owned by another individual to a garage when he lost control of the vehicle and fatally injured Yambasu, according to UM News. By the time we cleared the traffic and safely packed the vehicles from off the road, the driver had disappeared, said Mbalu Kabbah, traffic commander for the Calaba Town Police, as quoted by UM News. We first detained the owner of the vehicle when the driver could not be located. We released him after his blood pressure shot up. From there, family members of the owner of the SUV searched for and located Saw, who had been uninjured in the crash, and was handed over to police. A native of Sierra Leone, Yambasu was elected as a bishop of the UMC in 2008. He was killed in the accident days before he was to turn 64, and was survived by his wife and their five children. UMC Bishop Samuel Quire of the Liberia Episcopal Area said in a statement last month that Yambasus death was a great blow to the people called United Methodists. It is our hope and prayers that God will comfort the family in particular and The United Methodist family at large. May his soul rest in perfect peace, said Bishop Quire. During the debate within the UMC over LGBT issues, Yambasu was a theological conservative who called on the denomination to retain its official biblical position that homosexuality is sinful. More recently, Yambasu was integral to bringing together a theologically diverse group of United Methodists to craft an amicable separation plan for the denomination. Known as the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, the proposal would provide $25 million to conservative Methodists to create their own denomination. The United Methodist Church and its members aspire to multiply the Methodist mission in the world by restructuring the Church through respectful and dignified separation, read the protocol, which Yambasu signed with several other UMC leaders. The undersigned agree to use their best efforts to persuade any groups or organizations with which they are affiliated to support the legislation necessary to implement the Protocol." UNITED NATIONS : The United Nations chief says the COVID-19 pandemic remains out of control," with the world approaching the grimmest of milestones: 1 million lives lost to the virus." Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a news conference Wednesday that the coronavirus is the number one global security threat in our world today," posing a crisis that is unlike any in our lifetimes." He said thats why he called for a global cease-fire on March 23 to tackle the pandemic. And in his speech to world leaders at next Tuesdays mainly virtual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Guterres said he will make a strong appeal to the international community to mobilize all efforts for the global cease-fire to become a reality by the end of the year." The secretary-general urged the international community to come together to defeat the virus, stressing that a vaccine alone cant solve the crisis. But he stressed that a vaccine must be seen as a global public good, because COVID-19 respects no borders" and it must be affordable and available to all a peoples vaccine." Meanwhile, The US government outlined a sweeping plan Wednesday to make vaccines for COVID-19 available for free to all Americans when proven safe and effective, though a top public health official made clear that widespread vaccination of millions of Americans couldnt come until well into next year. In a report to Congress and an accompanying playbook" for states and localities, federal health agencies and the Defense Department sketched out complex plans for a vaccination campaign to begin gradually in January or even late this year, eventually ramping up to reach any American who wants a shot. President Donald Trump asserted Tuesday that a vaccine could be three to four weeks away. But the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress Wednesday that it would take six to nine months after any shot's approval to distribute it nationally. CDC Director Robert Redfield said any vaccine available in November or December would be in very limited supply," and reserved for first responders and people most vulnerable to COVID-19. The shot wouldnt be broadly available until the spring or summer of 2021, he estimated. Redfield and other health officials testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee also emphasized the effectiveness of masks in stopping the pandemic's spread, given that no vaccine is 100% protective. The flu vaccine, for example, is generally about 40% to 60% effective against the annual viral strain. Redfield, masked in the hearing room, said,I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine." Trump has continued to downplay the effectiveness of masks in spite of the recommendations of his own health experts, mentioning Tuesday that waiters have struggled with their face coverings and do not like them. The entire vaccine enterprise faces continued skepticism. Only about half of Americans said theyd get vaccinated in an Associated Press-NORC poll taken in May. Since then, questions have only mounted about whether the government is trying to rush treatments and vaccines to help Trumps reelection chances. 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 Earlier this month it emerged she had enjoyed a secret relationship with Hollywood star Joel Edgerton several years ago. And now The Bachelor's Juliette Herrera has confirmed her past romance. During an interview with KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O, the 34-year-old stylist was probed about whether she had sex with the Aussie actor during their brief time together. Spilling the beans! The Bachelor's Juliette Herrera confirmed her secret relationship with actor Joel Edgerton during an interview on the Kyle and Jackie O Show on Thursday 'Forget those girls, tell me about when you were having sex with Joel Edgerton?' shock jock Kyle Sandilands asked, after Juliette talked about her Bachelor co-stars. 'I can't believe you just said that!' Juliette answered with a laugh. 'Look, he was actually very respectful and patient and we never had sex,' she said of Joel. Details: Juliette explained that she chose not to sleep with the Boy Erased star - or anyone - as she was 'seeking God'. She added that is still celibate 'We were taking it very slow.' Juliette explained that she chose not to sleep with the Boy Erased star - or anyone - as she was 'seeking God.' 'I think it's because I was seeking God for a long time and I didn't want to be hypocrite or live a party girl life, I was focusing on God,' she said. It was recently revealed on The Bachelor that Juliette has been celibate for 12 years. The brunette beauty added on the Kyle and Jackie O Show that she 'doesn't know if she'll have sex again.' 'They need to be amazing, charismatic, kind,' she said about potential suitors, explaining she would need to form a connection with them first. Earlier this month, a close friend of the reality star told Daily Mail Australia Juliette and Joel dated for four months from September 2011. 'Juliette was working as a stylist for [Cosmopolitan magazine] at the time and he was about to start filming Gatsby, so they kept their relationship low-key,' the source revealed. Former flames: Earlier this month, a close friend of the reality star revealed to Daily Mail Australia that Juliette and Joel dated for four months from September 2011 'They've kept in touch and been really cool about their break up, and Juliette has been respectful of his romance with Christine (Centenera).' In fact, Juliette attended a screening of his 2018 film Boy Erased in Los Angeles. Following their failed romance, Joel met and dated model Alexis 'Lexi' Blake in 2012 for two years after they met while holidaying in Bali. However, they decided to call it quits so Joel could pursue filmmaking. Joel has since been dating Christine Centenera after they 'debuted their romance' at GQ Australia's Man of the Year awards in Sydney on November 14, 2018. They first sparked romance rumours a month earlier, when they were pictured in an intimate embrace in Sydney. Customers willing to spend a few hours buried in banking paperwork could potentially earn themselves 325 in one-off switching bonuses, after HSBC became the third bank in three weeks to launch a three-figure welcome offer. Those who switch to either its Advance or Premier accounts through the official switch service can earn 125 if they open an account and move over a previous one with at least two direct debits or standing orders within 30 days. HSBC's return to the switching arena signals that the competition for current account customers has really heated up among Britain's biggest banks as they relaunch welcome bonuses in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown, even if they are smaller than they were before. The return of the current account competition: HSBC, Lloyds and RBS have all relaunched bank account switch bonuses in the last three weeks The bank has gained at least 15,000 net current account customers through the official switch service in every three month period since the start of 2018 on the back of several generous switch bonuses. It gained nearly 34,000 net accounts in the first three months of 2020 on the back of a 175 welcome offer, which it shelved towards the end of March as it focused on its existing customers. Newcomers cannot have held a First Direct, HSBC or M&S Bank account since January 2017, and those signing up to its Advance account must pay in 1,750 a month or 10,500 in six months. Those looking to switch to its Premier account meanwhile must either have an annual income of 75,000 and hold a HSBC mortgage, life insurance or investment product, or hold 50,000 in savings or investments within six months of opening an account. HSBC gained a net 33,994 current account customers in the first three months of this year on the back of a market-leading 175 switch offer. It has relaunched the welcome bonus but shaved off 50 Its offshoot First Direct's current account, and the accompanying 100 switch bonus it was offering newcomers, remains closed six months on from the bank's decision to shut its doors to new customers. However, it told This is Money that it will reopen to new customers again from next month, but it remains to be seen if First Direct will offer the bonus. But consumers on the hunt for three-figure cash bribes still have plenty of options, with Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Bank both offering 100. It is the first time since mid-March that three banks have each offered at least 100 for switchers. Royal Bank of Scotland launched its own 100 switch bonus at the start of September, following the lead initially of Halifax, which was the first bank to bring back a cash carrot RBS only requires customers switching to its free Select or 2-a-month Reward account to open an account by 19 November, switch, pay in 1,500 and log in to mobile or online banking by the end of December. The money will be paid by 29 January. Meanwhile Lloyds' switch bonus, which ends on 9 November, is open to those who switch to its Club Lloyds or Club Lloyds Platinum accounts. Club Lloyds comes with a 3 monthly fee if customers do not pay in 1,500 a month, while Club Lloyds Platinum costs 21 a month and comes with perks like travel insurance and breakdown cover, in addition to the same rules. How current account switching collapsed this year Month Total switches January 2020 71,361 February 2020 96,122 March 2020 113,037 April 2020 41,549 May 2020 28,678 June 2020 27,965 Source: Current Account Switch Service How to (potentially) take advantage of all three The lack of requirements to maintain direct debits or keep accounts open for a certain period of time mean that, provided newcomers have not held a HSBC account since January 2017, received a switching bonus from RBS, customers could potentially make 325 from all three banks as long as they move fast enough. Here's how: Customers can switch their existing bank account to Club Lloyds by 9 November and pay in enough money to avoid the 3 fee, then open and switch to HSBC after they receive the money, which Lloyds says will be paid within 10 days. Provided they set up direct debits or standing orders of as little as 1 and pay in 1,750, they can open and switch to HSBC Advance and receive 125 within 30 days. Who did best in 2019? The coronavirus pandemic put the current account competition into the deep freeze for six months of this year, but banks still gained thousands of customers last year through the official switch service. Here are the three which did the best: - Nationwide Building Society - 105,157 - HSBC - 63,635 - Monzo - 63,164 And finally, as long as the deal is still open, customers can open and switch to RBS Select, pay in 1,500 and log into mobile or online banking, with the money paid into their account by next February. While savings rates are slowly beginning to improve, it would still take around 28,000 held in the top easy-access account around, offered by Skipton Building Society and paying 1.2 per cent, to match the 325 offered by at the moment by the three banks. However, changing current accounts over such a short period could potentially have an impact on a customers' credit file, so there is a reason to be cautious before diving in. James Jones, head of consumer affairs at Experian, warned: 'While the appearance of a new hard footprint and a new account on your credit report may lead to a temporary score reduction, moving forward your credit score should be fine as long as you don't chop and change too much or shift everything at once, as lenders prefer to see stability in your credit accounts. 'For example, try not to move home, change credit cards or apply for several different new current accounts at the same time. 'If you are planning on applying for a mortgage soon, it would make sense to be more cautious. Showing a steady length of time with the same bank will typically work in your favour for a mortgage application.' This could potentially cost customers money in the form of worse credit card or loan deals or a lower likelihood of being accepted for a mortgage. INCHEON, South Korea, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Samsung Biologics (207940.KS) has entered into a service agreement with Panolos Bioscience to develop PB101, an Fc-fusion protein intended to treat solid tumors. Under this agreement, Samsung Biologics will provide a full scope of its development services from cell line development, process development, to non-clinical and clinical material manufacturing. According to Panolos, PB101 is expected to suppress tumor angiogenesis more effectively by targeting VEGF-A and PlGF simultaneously, overcoming the limitations of existing treatments. Leveraging Samsung Biologics' robust capabilities and expertise in developing complex proteins, Panolos intends to achieve successful IND approval for validation to further establish the substance as the new platform known as ARTTM(anti-angiogenesis-based Artifact Re-targeting Tri-specifics) to treat various VEGF related illnesses. Dr. Hyeseong Lim, CEO of Panolos Bioscience stated, "PB101 is itself a promising candidate as a treatment for solid tumors and VEGF-related diseases. Furthermore, it is also a platform technology that has demonstrated its versatility as a foundation on which multi-specific biologics can be developed. Through close collaborative efforts, Panolos will endeavor to deliver quality biopharmaceuticals to address global unmet medical needs." "We are extremely proud to be partnering with Panolos in bringing PB101 closer to market," said Dr. Tae Han Kim, CEO Samsung Biologics. "By delivering faster and better development services and helping our clients focus on discovery, we will continue supporting biotech companies in their efforts to help patients in need all around the globe." About Samsung Biologics Co., Ltd. Samsung Biologics (KRX: 207940.KS) is a fully integrated CDMO offering state-of-the-art contract development, manufacturing, and laboratory testing services. With proven regulatory approvals, the largest capacity at a single site, and the fastest throughput, Samsung Biologics is an award-winning partner of choice and is uniquely able to support the development and manufacturing of biologics products at every stage of the process while meeting the evolving needs of biopharmaceutical companies worldwide. For more information, visit www.samsungbiologics.com. Media contact Claire Kim [email protected] SOURCE Samsung Biologics India Willoughby said: 'I don't want to upset people but there has to be red lines' Transgender TV presenter India Willoughby has blasted British Medical Association (BMA) calls to allow people to legally change gender without a medical diagnosis. The broadcaster said that, under the proposed changes, someone with a 'full beard could click his fingers and say he is a woman'. It follows doctors backing a motion at the BMA's annual meeting on Tuesday which asked the Government to pursue a 'simplified' way for transgender and non-binary individuals to gain legal recognition of their gender. Transgender TV presenter India Willoughby, pictured, said on This Morning that, under the proposed changes, someone with a 'full beard could click his fingers and say he is a woman' Appearing on ITV's This Morning today, India, 55, said: 'I think if you're not taking the medical route and simply identifying without making meaningful changes to who you are then, I'm sorry, no. 'I don't want to upset people but there has to be red lines, I transitioned to be a woman, I love the world we live in and I think it makes sense, I think you have to see both sides of the argument. 'If you go down the route, you could have someone with a full beard and no changes whatsoever and clicks his fingers and says he's a woman and starts using areas used by women. 'Then there starts to be problems and we get into the whole JK Rowling issues.' Earlier in the programme, she added: 'It's such a difficult subject even within that community. 'But I think basically you have a block of people who are born with gender dysphoria who go on a medical pathway and fit in with the world as it is. Appearing on ITV's This Morning (above) today, India, 55, said: 'I don't want to upset people but there has to be red lines'. It follows doctors backing a motion on Tuesday Transgender people and supporters pictured gathering in Parliament Square, London, to protest against potential changes to the Gender Recognition Act Current rules under the Gender Recognition Act At present, those hoping to legally change their gender must apply to the Gender Recognition Panel for a Gender Recognition Certificate. Applicants must have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, be over the age of 18 and have lived in their gender for more than two years to apply. Those hoping to change gender must also pay 140 and state that they intend to live in their gender for life. Source: Gov UK Advertisement 'They dont want to change language or signs and if you fit in with that you should be able to change your details at an early stage.' At present, people in Britain need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to legally change their gender identity under the Gender Recognition Act. But the BMA hopes the Government will adopt models similar to those in the Republic of Ireland and Denmark, which allow individuals to gain legal recognition of their gender through a witnessed sworn statement. The move has been criticised by the LGB Alliance, which accused the Association of using an 'ambushing practice' after allegedly only distributing briefing documents an hour before the decision was made. The Alliance also blasted the BMA for what it claimed was agreeing 'to treat any man with a beard and a penis who "identifies as a woman" as a woman in hospital.' The proposal - which was passed by a narrow margin - also called on the Government to allow transgender individuals to 'receive healthcare in settings appropriate to their gender identity'. It asked that 'transgender healthcare workers are able to access facilities appropriate to the gender they identify.' The BMA did, however, admit the motion is not 'uncontroversial', writing: 'The involvement of doctors or other health professionals who have experience in working with those with gender dysphoria may enable discussions about emotional and physical well-being that may be helpful to the transgender person.' A women stands by a Google logo. Yonhap By Kim Hyun-bin Korean application developers are crying foul against Google for potential changes to its app store policies that would force local developers to use its platform's payment system only. Google currently requires local game companies to use its in-app payment system, which takes a 30 percent cut from all purchases, but plans to extend this to all applications. If an app developer decides to use a different payment system, there are concerns Google could weed out their applications from the Google Play store. The 30 percent commission made from each app sale could hurt the livelihood of small businesses and startups, which make up over 60 percent of mobile application firms in Korea. According to the industry, external payment methods, in comparison to Google's system, take at most 10 percent in fees. These firms will be heavily burdened by the high commission fees, which in the long run will make them more profit-driven to pay the fees rather than investing in and developing innovative content and services. Google will not reveal how it came to the 30 percent figure, and the changes were only notified to a few companies. Many small businesses became aware of the possible change through the media. This is not the first time Google has abused its market presence. In March, Google Play weeded out several COVID-19 related applications that were created by local app developers as well as the government and hospitals. Google said it had taken down the applications to stop the spread of inaccurate information, although the apps were made for public awareness and convenience. Many critics around the globe have called out scores of problems surrounding Google including its vulnerable management of customer information and freeloading on telecom companies' networks. Google Play Store has over 63.2 percent of the local app market and when added to Apple's App Store's 24.8 percent market share, the two have over 88 percent of the market. The monopolistic structure has Google with a strong leverage against app companies and worries are on the rise the U.S. firm could abuse its power. This is a reason major Korean online companies submitted a complaint to the country's telecommunications regulator over potential changes to the app store policies. The Korea Internet Corporations Association, which represents major local tech companies such as top portal operator Naver, requested the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) launch a probe into the policy changes on Google's platform, claiming it was a violation of local laws. As the potential changes sparked controversy, a spokesperson for Google said the company has made no decisions related to the alleged policy changes. "What Shant's done is completely amazing. He's determined, gritty and relentlessly positive," said Guaranteed Rate's President and Chief Executive Officer Victor Ciardelli. "But he's also a great Dad, husband, and community leader. He hasn't sacrificed one thing for another. He's always had big dreams and belief he could accomplish every single one." With more than a decade of mortgage industry experience, Banosian holds an impressive career volume of over $4 billion in funded loans and has ranked as the #1 Loan Originator in the U.S. by Scotsman Guide in 2018 and 2019. For five years running, Shant has also been Guaranteed Rate's #1 Loan Officer nationwide and has been the top producer in Massachusetts consistently since 2013, according to Banker and Tradesman. "Reaching this incredible milestone is a reflection of all the hard work and dedication my team and our partners have poured into serving our clients over the past decade," said Banosian, who holds a 95% client satisfaction rate. "We pride ourselves on not only being the best in the business, but also providing the best possible service to our wide-range of clients throughout the country. I look forward to continuing to reach new milestones as we help clients achieve their American Dream of homeownership." A Massachusetts native, Banosian graduated from Bentley University, where he met his wife, Kara. They currently reside in Belmont, Mass., with their three daughters. Banosian credits his amazing team, adding that "surrounding yourself with the right people and working together to accomplish big goals is a lot of fun." He also credits his parents for their support and instilling in him work ethic, confidence, character and strong core values. Banosian is heavily involved in charitable events in his community, consistently fundraising for the Greater Boston Food Bank and participating in the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Walk/Run. This year, he is seeking to raise $50,000 for the organization's virtual event. Banosian is also involved in the Guaranteed Rate Foundation, which has granted more than $4 million to individuals and families in need. Along with the achievements of Banosian's team, Guaranteed Rate Companies is having a record-setting year. In the first half of 2020, the company funded double the total loan volume compared to the same time last year. In August alone, the company locked $12 billion in loan volume, breaking its record for total locked volume in a single month. About the Guaranteed Rate Companies The Guaranteed Rate Companies, which includes Guaranteed Rate Inc., and Guaranteed Rate Affinity, LLC, has over 6,000 employees in a total of 700 offices across the U.S. and funded $37 billion in 2019. Headquartered in Chicago, Guaranteed Rate Inc. is one of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the United States. Founded in 2000 and licensed in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., it has helped homeowners nationwide with home purchase loans and refinances. The company has established itself as an industry leader by introducing innovative technology, offering low rates and delivering unparalleled customer service. 2017 marked the launch of Guaranteed Rate Affinity, LLC, a mortgage origination joint venture between Guaranteed Rate, Inc. and Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), a global leader in residential real estate franchising and brokerage. Collectively, the companies have earned honors and awards including: HousingWire's 2020 Tech100 award for the company's industry-leading FlashClose SM technology; Top Lender for Online Service for 2018 by U.S. News & World Report; No. 3 ranking in Scotsman Guide's Top Retail Mortgage Lenders 2019; Top Lender 2016, 2017 and 2018 by Chicago Agent Magazine; Chicago Tribune's Top Workplaces list for seven consecutive years; and Best Online Mortgage Lender, Best Mortgage Lender for VA loans and Best Conventional Mortgage Lender by NerdWallet in 2019. Visit rate.com for more information. SOURCE Guaranteed Rate Related Links rate.com The NSW-Queensland border battle is more controversial than going to Bondi Icebergs and not announcing it on Instagram. But whether you see interstate restrictions as petty posturing or a smart long term health play, the fact remains: as it stands, New South Wellians despite living in a state with significantly fewer confirmed cases than Victoria are still seen as a risk by Queensland and Western Australias premieres. But well leave the opening up argument for another time: today Qantas has announced a savvy way of getting around the restrictions, offering a flight (potentially flights) which opens up some of Australias furthest and widest tourist attractions to Sydneysiders. The best part? The flight will operate without ever breaking COVID 19 border restrictions. The reason its able to do this? This is a scenic, boomerang flight, which never touches down at its destinations, and which then returns to Sydney. 9News reports, The seven-hour display of aerial tourism will depart and arrive from Sydney Airport on Sunday October 10 and will take in sights such as Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast. Because the flight never lands in another state, passengers will not have to quarantine or apply for any border exemptions. Qantas has said it is operating the flight after frequent flyers have remarked on missing flying. Just six months ago, we would have never imagined not being able to jump on a plane and visit family interstate or take a holiday internationally, CEO Alan Joyce said of the initiative. While we may not be able to take you overseas right now, we can certainly provide inspiration for future trips to some of Australias most beautiful destinations. The flight will take place on a 787 Dreamliner, which has the largest windows of any commercial aircraft. This flight, and possibly more like it, means work for our people, who are more enthusiastic than anyone to see aircraft back in the sky, Mr. Joyce has announced. The flight has already sold out. But before it did, as news.com.au reports, 150 seats were listed for $787 for an economy seat, $1,787 for Premium and a few business class seats for $3,787. In accordance with Qantas Fly Well protocol, guests will be provided with face masks and hand sanitiser and are advised not to move about the cabin. The October 10 flight will also feature a Neil Perry dining menu, a gift bag and a pre-flight auction of memorabilia from Qantas recently retired fleet of 747 aircraft. Qantas is also offering scenic flights to Antarctica, in a similar vein. Read Next The city has begun the consultation process for creating a mental health emergency response team that would act as an alternative to police, a move that activists say signals a positive step toward the creation of a non-police-led response to mental health crisis calls. Asante Haughton and Rachel Bromberg, whose idea to implement the Reach Out Response Team a community-led mental health emergency response team separate from police gained traction over the summer amid large protests in Toronto and worldwide against police brutality after the death of George Floyd, signed a contract with the city Tuesday to help kick-start the process of implementing the program theyve envisioned, with the help of the community. Its a move that has encouraged Haughton and Bromberg, who say the city is showing its willing to dedicate money and resources to making a non-police, community-led crisis response team a reality. It says to me that the city is really committed to this and that theyre in it for the long haul, Haughton said. The contract states the city will pay $20,000 for Haughton and Bromberg to hold six town halls in the month of October that will gather feedback from Torontonians, including from addiction and substance-use organizations and front-line health workers, on what a non-police mental health crisis response team should look like. They will also be sharing research theyve done on similar programs in other countries, build an interactive database of existing mental health crisis intervention programs in the city, and participate in monthly accountability meetings with the city in the next few months to track the progress of these consultations. The goal is to use data from their research and town halls to draft recommendations on what a non-police emergency crisis response team should look like in Toronto and guide an implementation plan for a service like this in the future. Calls for an alternative response model that is separate from police have intensified in the city over the summer when Regis Korchinski-Paquette, an Afro-Indigenous woman, died in May after police was called to her apartment at the request of her mother, who asked that her daughter be transported to the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions. Ejaz Choudry, a 62-year-old Mississauga man, died the following month after being shot by police during a mental health crisis. Torontos city manager, Chris Murray, confirmed to council in a report Wednesday that a team of city staff and community experts have begun the process of developing alternative community response models. Murrays report added that a team is also working with the Toronto Police Services Board and Toronto Police Service to enhance the Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams (MCIT) a mental health crisis response team that includes a senior police officer and a mental health nurse while a community-led response is being developed. He also confirmed the creation of an Accountability Table that will be composed of representatives from Indigenous, Black and racialized non-profit serving agencies, mental health and addictions experts, homeless advocates and other groups. The group is expected to meet for the first time in early October. Haughton said aside from signalling a commitment to implement a non-police crisis response team, the contract also shows the citys willingness to get feedback from the community on how it should look. The city partnering up with us says to me that, to some extent, they are prioritizing the community voice and want to make sure that whatever is built is representing what folks are asking for, Haughton said. Toronto City Council passed a motion in June to create a non-police-led response to mental health crisis calls that dont involve weapons or violence, and where police response is not necessary. The creation of such a response, the motion said, would be done in consultation with police. It is something members of the Toronto board have previously said they support. Both Bromberg and Haughton have already been holding town halls throughout the summer to ask the community what theyd like to see in a non-police emergency mental health response program for people in crisis. Around 300 people have attended those sessions so far, they said. The response from those town halls, Bromberg said, reflected a wide desire for an emergency response program that is empathetic to the needs of an individual in crisis. The biggest key theme was the importance of having a team that can be present with people that listen to them and support them, and that isnt focused on rushing to the next call, Bromberg said. She added that many said its important the crisis response team members include people from the community they serve, and is a multidisciplinary team that includes nurses, social workers and paramedics. Another key concern is to ensure a service like this is implemented in the 9-1-1 dispatch system, as the emergency number is the most accessible in a crisis. Pay phones, for example, can call 9-1-1 for free, and most phones can dial it without a SIM card, meaning its often the only option for those in need. Haughton said many hope the response team will also be closely partnered with existing crisis support centres so those in crisis can receive longer-term support. While there are many ideas on the table, consultations and town halls are only the beginning of a lengthy process that could lead to a non-police, city-funded emergency crisis response team being launched in Toronto. Bromberg said it would take at least a year for a pilot project to come together. But the first step, Haughton added, is one that shows the communitys voice is at last being heard. The momentum that weve built is a reflection of the deep desire of communities across Toronto to have a mental health crisis service that is accessible, competent and safe, Haughton said. Nadine Yousif is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering mental health. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Follow her on Twitter: @nadineyousif_ The Dallas Independent School district apologized for an assignment that asked high school students to write an essay about a modern "hero" and suggested Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Dallas ISD apologized for a teacher's writing assignment posted to students this week (via NBC DFW) Rittenhouse was suggested as "hero for the modern age" along with the possible subjects of Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, George Floyd and Joseph Rosenbaum one of the Rittenhouse's alleged victims. Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the Aug. 25 shooting deaths of Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber during protests over the shooting by police of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha. Kristian Hernandez said that her younger brother, a student at W.T. White High School in Dallas, shared details of the assignment with his family. "My brother was really in disbelief that this was actually an assignment," Hernandez told NBC affiliate KXAS. "The juxtaposition of George Floyd's name with Kyle's name was just astounding," she said. The value of Black lives are not up for debate, and thats what it felt like this was sort of getting at by way of the names that were included." The Dallas Independent School District apologized for the "unapproved assignment" and removed it from its online portal, according to NBC affiliate KXAS. Students do not have to complete the assignment. In a statement provided to KXAS, the school district said the post is under investigation and that it would not provide further comment. "Racial equity is a top priority in Dallas ISD, and we remain committed to providing a robust teaching environment where all students can learn. It is important that we continue to be culturally sensitive to our diverse populations and provide a space of respect and value," the district said. MACOMB COUNTY, MI A guardianship company will dissolve after its owner illegally charged an elderly couple $400,000 for services from companies she and her husband own. The self-dealing case that shows a court-appointed guardian was financially benefiting by hiring her own companies to provide services and charging a shocking amount of money was settled out of court by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Financial aspects of the settlement have not been released but the injunctive aspects are detailed in a news release from the AGs office. Guardianship company Caring Hearts Michigan Inc., owned by Catherine Kirk, will immediately cease operations and legally dissolve by the end of the year, the release said. In addition, Kirk and her employees are permanently barred from operating any other guardianship or conservatorship entity. Of particular concern in this case was a web of connections between Kirks guardianship company and two other companies she hired to provide services to elderly people she had guardianship over. Our involvement in this case revealed what we feared: fiduciaries with a clear financial conflict of interest who billed a shocking amount of money in a relatively short period of time, Nessel said. Caring Hearts was appointed by Macomb County Probate Judge Kathryn George as both guardian and conservator for Robert Lee Mitchell and Barbara Delbridge, despite a petition submitted by the daughter and stepdaughter of the couple. In a span of six months, Caring Hearts Michigan; Executive Care, a 24-hour in-home care company, also owned by Kirk; and law firm Kirk, Huth, Lange and Badalamenti PLC owned in part by Kirks husband billed the elderly couple $400,000. Almost 72 percent of the bills were for Executive Care. The Estates and Protected Individuals Code prohibits this kind of financial self-dealing by the guardian, Nessel said. In addition, courts are not permitted to appoint a guardian agency that financially benefits from directly providing housing, medical, mental health or social services to the legally incapacitated individual, she said. Nessel places responsibility on the courts to ensure that the states guardianship system is protecting the vulnerable and that court-appointed guardians and conservators fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to those in their custody. To help, my team continues to look for similar instances of self-dealing and we will take swift action when it is discovered, Nessel said. Complaints about professional guardian or conservator entities who are engaging in similar self-dealing can be filed online with the Attorney Generals office. READ MORE: Standoff ends after alleged gunman who shot deputy is found dead Police arrest man after he jumps his car over drawbridge in Detroit 85-year-old man fatally stabbed at Meijer; suspect detained by armed customer In a relief to Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani, the Supreme Court has dismissed State Bank of India's plea seeking vacation of stay on personal insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings against the businessman. The plea pertains to a personal guarantee given by Anil Ambani against a loan taken from SBI by Reliance Communications and Reliance Infratel. During a hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court said the Delhi High Court can take up the issue on October 6 and the state-owned lender can also seek removal or modification of the stay order. Notably, this is first such case where the personal guarantees of a promoter have been invoked. The IBC covered only Indian companies and not promoters till November last year. However, the new rules are now also applicable against personal guarantees on loans worth Rs 1,000 crore or more too. SBI had provided credit facilities of Rs 565 crore and Rs 635 crore to the now insolvent Reliance Communications (RCom) and Reliance Infratel (RITL), respectively, on Anil Ambani's personal guarantee in 2016. Both RCom and RITL had defaulted on their loans and their accounts were declared as non-performing accounts (NPAs) with effect from August 2017. It invoked personal guarantee against Anil Ambani in January 2018 and issued a notice to him. Anil Ambani failed to repay the loans despite various reminders by the bank. The Delhi High Court had stayed IBC proceedings against the tycoon on August 27. The decision came after Ambani challenged the 'constitutional validity' of the 'personal guarantee clause' in the IBC, making the Ministry of Corporate Affairs a party to the case. He also approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against an order by the Mumbai bench of National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), which allowed bankruptcy proceedings against him on August 20. The court, however, asked Ambani not to dispose of or transfer any of his personal assets. It also added his liabilities as personal guarantor can also be examined during the resolution process. Also read: Anil Ambani to challenge personal insolvency proceedings in NCLAT Also read: Anil Ambani: How the brother of India's richest man is on edge of bankruptcy Singapore's Supreme Court. (PHOTO: Yahoo News Singapore) SINGAPORE As a young boy in Nigeria, Ilechukwu Uchechukwu Chukwudi witnessed a massacre in his hometown of Wukari, during which he was almost killed, and he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) afterwards. So when he was arrested in Singapore by anti-narcotics officers for drug trafficking in 2011 after unknowingly handling a luggage containing drugs Ilechukwu overestimated the threat to his life and spun a web of lies in a bid to save his skin. He felt that the raid by officers on his hotel room was akin to war and chaos. Ilechukwu was so distressed by the arrest and his charge, which carried the death penalty, that he refused food and drink thrice when offered. And he believed that lying would get him out of his traumatic predicament. But his lies and omissions to law enforcement officers resulted in Ilechukwu spending nine years behind bars. On Thursday (17 September), Ilechukwu, now 34, was finally acquitted of his trafficking charge after a government psychiatrist earlier found that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) when his statements containing blatant falsehoods were recorded. The Court of Appeal, in a split 4-1 ruling, found that there was a rational and credible connection between (his) PTSS and the lies and omissions in his statements (to law enforcement officers). Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, along with Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and Judith Prakash, and Senior Judge Chao Hick Tin comprised the majority of the apex court which ruled in favour of acquittal. However, Judge of Appeal Tay Yong Kwang, who dissented, said in his judgment that Ilechukwus excuses for the lies were wholly unsatisfactory and unbelievable and there was no acceptable explanation for the lies save for his realisation of guilt. About the case On 13 November 2011, Ilechukwu arrived in Singapore with a black suitcase that a friend had given him to pass along to someone else. Inside, unbeknownst to him, was not less than 1,963.3g of methamphetamine. Story continues At the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, the bag underwent a physical check and X-ray scan without incident. When he arrived at Changi Airport, Ilechukwu was detained for questioning before being released. The luggage also underwent both an X-ray scan and a physical check, again without incident. Ilechukwu later went to a hotel in Chinatown but did not have enough Singapore dollars on him. He left the suitcase at the lobby for 12 minutes in search of a moneychanger. Later that night, he was contacted to pass the bag to a woman, Hamidah Awang. He met Hamidah and passed her the bag in her car and later went back to his hotel. Hamidah was stopped at Woodlands Checkpoint later that same night with the black luggage in her car. Officers cut open the sides of the bag to reveal the stash of drugs. The next morning, Ilechukwu was arrested by a party of officers from the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) who raided his hotel room. Various statements were recorded from him on that day and in the following days, in which he told a series of lies and also omitted information. Three years after he was arrested, on 5 November 2014, the High Court acquitted Ilechukwu of his trafficking charge after the judge accepted his evidence that he came to Singapore to buy electronic goods for his business he had brought along US$5,000 with him and a Singapore company director testified that he had arranged a Singapore visa for Ilechukwu. The High Court judge, Justice Lee Seiu Kin, also found the Ilechukwus conduct was inconsistent with knowledge of the drugs. The judge also noted that the drugs were so well hidden that (Ilechukwu) could not have known about it unless he was told of it. But the prosecution appealed against the acquittal and Ilechukwu remained in remand. The next year, on 29 June 2015, the Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal. The key issue that the apex court comprising Justices Chao, Phang and Tay considered was: whether Ilechukwu lied for innocent reasons, or did so because he knew that telling the truth would link him to the crime. The court found that his lies were more consistent with having had knowledge of the drugs before his arrest. Said the apex court then, It is clear to us that he had deliberately lied to distance himself from the drugs in the black luggage, the existence of which he knew. Quite simply, there is no acceptable explanation for the lies save for his realisation of his guilt. To suggest that (Ilechukwu) was justified to lie as a defensive move would be to turn reason and logic on its head. Following the conviction by the Court of Appeal, the case was sent back to the High Court for sentencing. It was during this stage, in March 2017, that a psychiatric report stated that Ilechukwu was suffering from PTSD, and that his symptoms were triggered after he was told by CNB officers that he faced the death penalty and that the PTSD caused him to lie in his statements. In light of the new and important evidence, Ilechukwu applied to the apex court the next month to reassess his conviction. In August that year, in a rare move, the Court of Appeal agreed that the psychiatric report raised a powerful probability that the conviction finding made by the apex court earlier was wrong and allowed the case to be reopened. The apex court then asked the High Court to make findings on the extent to which PTSD affected Ilechukwu when he gave his statements to the CNB, among other things, before it heard the case. Four psychiatrists in all testified on PTSD before the High Court. In July last year, the court found that Ilechukwu was suffering from PTSS at the time he gave his statements. The case then went back to the apex court. On Thursday, the Court of Appeal said in the majority judgment, Having analysed the totality of the evidence apart from the lies and omissions, we find that it is more probable than not that (Ilechukwu) did not know that there were drugs in the black luggage. (He) has consistently maintained that he came to Singapore for a business purpose and was asked by (an acquaintance) to help pass the black luggage which was checked multiple times and it seems to us that both these assertions are plausible and credible, viewed in the light of all the circumstances... The picture that emerges from the evidence is that (Ilechukwu) had grossly misjudged (a friend and an acquaintance), and naively believed that he was doing a simple favour in return for promised business contacts. Unwittingly, he had been deceived into transporting drugs on their behalf to (the acquaintances) contact in Singapore. Justice Chao, who wrote the majority judgment, added that if the psychiatric evidence had been before him and Justice Phang while they were sitting on the apex court bench earlier, they would not have overturned Justice Lees acquittal. Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore Other Singapore stories: General manager fined for wrongfully confining 3 errant workers COVID-19: Singapore confirms 18 new cases, one in the community Man charged for assaulting bus captain after being told to wear mask Police issue stern warning to Sengkang GRC MP Raeesah Khan for social media posts A major tragedy was averted in south Kashmirs Pulwama district on Friday after security forces recovered 52 kg of explosives at a spot close to Srinagar-Jammu national highway and also near to the site of February 14, 2019 attack in which 40 CRPF men were killed. In a statement, an army spokesperson said that in a search operation at 8 am today, at Karewa area of Gadikal, Pulwama, a Syntex tank that was buried with 52 kgs of explosives, was recovered. There were 416 packets of explosives with each packet of 125 gm. Subsequently on further search in another such Syntex tank 50 detonators were recovered, he said. The location in Karewa is very close to the national highway and just nine kilometres of Letapora, where a local Kashmiri fidayeen (suicide) militant Adil Ahmed rammed his vehicle packed with explosives into a paramilitary bus they were travelling in on the highway on February 14 last year. In the worst casualties suffered by the security forces in peacetime operations, 40 CRPF personnel were killed and several others wounded. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror outfit had claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video clip of the suicide bomber which it claimed was shot before the young man carried out the audacious attack in Lethpora, about 30 km from here. Sources said since that dreadful incident, security forces have bettered their capability for training, bettered in terms of equipment, tactics, mobility and navigation which has ensured no such attacks were repeated. They said even though frequent inputs keep on coming that militants may target security forces convoys on the highway but given the changed strategy and the security drills the force has adopted since last February, it wont be a cakewalk for them (militants) now. An unprecedented international operation involving judicial and law enforcement authorities in 10 countries has resulted in the complete takedown of the Albanian-speaking KOMPANIA BELLO criminal group, one of the most active cocaine-trafficking networks in Europe. In the early hours of 15 September, hundreds of police officers, including special intervention teams in close cooperation with prosecutors and investigative officers, and with the support of Europol and Eurojust, carried out coordinated raids against the members of this highly professional criminal syndicate. As a result of this joint action, 20 individuals were arrested in Italy (5), the Netherlands (2), Germany (2), Greece (2), Romania (1), Hungary (1), Spain (1), Albania (5) and Dubai (1). The suspects have been placed in pre-trial detention for international narcotic substances trafficking, illegal possession and distribution of drugs and brutal assaults, including murder. These arrests follow those of 84 other members of this criminal group early on in the investigation in Italy, Ecuador, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany. This international sweep follows a complex 5-year long investigation led by the Italian State Police (Polizia di Stato) under the direction of the Public Prosecutors Office of Florence (Procura della Repubblica di Firenze). It is considered the biggest of its kind ever against Albanian-speaking organised crime and is the result of a Joint Investigation Team with the participation of Italy and The Netherlands, in which the parties have worked closely together for five years. Close to 4 tonnes of cocaine and over 5.5 million in cash were seized over the course of this investigation. A sophisticated business model For years, international importers of cocaine worked separately from the wholesalers and the gangs distributing the drug on the streets. In this case, the Albanian-speaking network under investigation ditched the entire model and controlled the whole chain from arranging huge shipments directly from South America to distribution all across Europe. Using sophisticated encrypted communication means, the organisations ringleader a 40-year old Albanian based in Ecuador negotiated directly with the South American drug cartels, arranged huge shipments of cocaine to the major ports of Europe and, with the help of accomplices based in Italy, the Netherlands and Albania, organised distribution throughout Europe. The cocaine was smuggled across European borders concealed in vehicles equipped with sophisticated hidden compartments. The criminals laundered their proceeds using an underground alternative remittance system of Chinese origin, known as the fei chien system. Much like the Islamic hawala transfer system, people using the fei chien deposit a sum in a network agency in one country. Another operator withdraws the equivalent amount elsewhere in the world and passes it on to the intended recipient. Leaving not a trace of tell-tale evidence for law enforcement investigators, the network is believed to have laundered millions of euro through this system. A joint strategy to target the whole chain Operation LOS BLANCOS, coordinated at the international level by Europol and Eurojust, was the culmination of many months of meticulous planning between law enforcement and judicial authorities in preparation for the action. Initiated by the Italian State Police in 2015, under the direction of the Public Prosecutors Office of Florence (Procura della Repubblica di Firenze), a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was set up between Italy and the Netherlands with the assistance and financing of Eurojust and Europol. The partners in the JIT have since worked closely together to reveal the actual magnitude and complexity of the criminal activity of the KOMPANIA BELLO gang, to establish a joint strategy and to organise the intensive exchange of information and evidence needed to prepare for the final phase of the investigation. All through the action day, smooth and effective cooperation took place at many European border crossings. A joint Operational Command Room was set up at Europols headquarters to coordinate the different actions taking place simultaneously across all the countries involved. A Europol expert was also deployed to Florence to provide appropriate operational support to the Italian authorities, ensuring swift analysis of new data as it was being collected during the action and adjusting the strategy as required. Judicial coordination was provided from a coordination centre at Eurojust, with the real-time involvement of prosecutors and investigative judges for execution and adaptation of the mutual legal assistance requests needed to carry out the cross-border actions. The following authorities took part in this investigation: It had been six months since I had gotten a pedicure. I felt oddly guilty, but it was my birthday weekend and after plans to go on a hike were thwarted by smoky air, I decided it was time for my first pandemic pedicure. After making an appointment, I showed up, stepped only a few feet into the salon to pick a polish color and was back out on the sidewalk of busy Divisadero within seconds, settled into a cushy orange chair nestled between a tall plexiglass shield on my left and the spas window on my right. The technician offered me a sealed plastic water bottle (that I declined) and I brought my own magazine. When I left, the technicians excitedly told me theyd be back inside doing services on Monday (the first day allowed by the city). Oh great! I said with fake enthusiasm and a wave as I walked out. I knew Id never come back if they were only offering indoor services. I draw the COVID line at indoor activities. Ive yet to go into someones house other than my own (except rarely to use the bathroom). I dont plan on heading back to the gym, and grocery shopping still makes anxiety run fiercely through my veins. Until theres a vaccine, if Im interacting with other people in any way, its going to be outside (with a mask on as much as possible). I called Toe-asis Spa back this week and a representative said they were no longer officially offering the services outdoors, but if I wanted it, they could accommodate me outside. Its a nice offer, but it would make me feel bad demanding an outdoor service when everyones happy inside. While they have a small alcove for services out front and a small backyard, some salons in San Francisco arent so fortunate. La Petite Nail Shop is located on the corner of a steep hill in Potrero Hill, and owner Charlene Yip said it would be almost impossible to provide services outdoors. I joke that theyd walk away with crooked nails, she said. But we were close to shutting down. Even with the reduced capacity of indoor services, were not even sure if were going to last. Blair Heagerty / SFGate Twenty-four hours after Yip announced on social media that theyd be reopening on Sept. 23, she said they were booked for nearly three weeks straight. Annie Stancliffe, the owner of High Five Nails in NoPa, said she was resistant to opening for services outdoors when they were allowed to in August because she didnt want it to be something she cobbled together. Then, when it didnt look like the city was going to allow indoor services any time soon, she realized she was nearing six months of the shop being closed. That six-month mark was a breaking point, Stancliffe said. If were going to do it, were not going to just stick a table on the sidewalk. Were going to invest in creating a protected environment so we can effectively and safely deliver our services. She applied for a grant from a new local initiative called Block Party, which will help design and construct a parklet for small businesses in need via the citys Shared Spaces permit. High Five will also have two sidewalk manicure stations directly adjacent to the shop facade. Renderings in hand, the city announced theyd be allowed to open Sept. 14 for indoor services. Stancliffe will also offer services indoors and said she hopes that not only will this help get her business back up and running again, it will also be safer for her customers. We get customers reaching out every day asking if we could come do backyard services. Thats not legal. It was popular totally understandably because there was no choice, but its just not safe. It also jeopardizes the license of individual technicians and we didnt want to put our team at risk. Theres just a lot of consumer confusion since there are other salons in San Francisco publicly advertising house calls. Thats illegal. Annie Stancliffe She said if the parklet and outdoor services are successful, the additional space could be a great long-term solution to helping businesses recoup faster. Were in an industry where the economics are hard. Were not making tons of money. It really helps to have that extra capacity so we can expand our footprint. These parklets have enlivened the city in a really meaningful way, she said. Im hopeful that some of these changes to public spaces will continue on for many years. Speaking with other business owners, many have said theyd love to keep them going if its an option. During my outdoor pedicure, I felt the same way. The air may have been a little smoky, but the temperature was balmy and the soft breeze was pleasant against my newly adorned toes. Plus, I think my nails dried a little faster. Tessa McLean is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her at tessa.mclean@sfgate.com or follow her on Twitter @mcleantessa. Alrighty then! Saturday Night Live has recruited Jim Carrey to play former U.S. vice-president Joe Biden in its upcoming season, having the Ace Ventura and The Mask star go head-to-head with Alec Baldwins Donald Trump. The Kidding star, now an artist, bestselling author and two-time Golden Globe Award winner, has hosted the show multiple times since 1996 and made a cameo during a 2003 Foo Fighters performance on the NBC sketch comedy. The Biden role was previously filled by SNL alum Jason Sudeikis during the Obama administration. Comedian John Mulaney and actor Woody Harrelson have also appeared on the show as the Democratic presidential hopeful. Youll see the same people. Maya Rudolph is coming back, and Alec Baldwin will be back. And Jim Carrey is going to do Biden, longtime producer Lorne Michaels told Vulture. Presumably, Rudolph will resume her impersonation of Bidens running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. Michaels said the casting began with Carrey expressing interest in the part, and then it came down to discussions of what his take was. He and co-head writer Colin Jost had a bunch of talks. He and I as well. He will give the part energy and strength ... Hopefully its funny, Michaels added. After wrapping up last season with SNL at Home episodes, the Emmy-winning sketch series will be returning to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center when Season 46 premieres Oct. 3. And itll have a limited studio audience. We need the audience, obviously. With comedy, when you dont hear the response, its just different, Michaels told Vulture. With the kind of comedy we do, which quite often is broad, timing gets thrown off without an audience. And for me, what is most important is when youre absolutely certain of some piece on Wednesday, and then the dress-rehearsal audience sees it on Saturday and tells you youre wrong. The show will also work closely with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos team to ensure health and safety for the cast, crew and small audience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Michaels is also slightly changing up the airing format to cover the presidential election. The new season kicks off with five consecutive weekly shows on Oct. 3, 10, 17, 24 and 31. I made the decision early on, or at least about a month ago, that we would do something we hadnt done before, which was five shows in a row, Michaels said. Because there are four debates and then its Halloween, and thats the weekend before the election. And sadly, if the election gets extended, then well be doing six or seven shows in a row. Also announced Wednesday, SNL has added three new cast members: Upright Citizens Brigade alum Lauren Holt, Space Force actor Punkie Johnson and SNL staff writer and comedian Andrew Dismukes. The show has also added Anna Drezen as a head writer. Read more about: Government plans to make serious offenders spend longer in prison could increase the risk of riots, reoffending and radicalisation, according to an official impact assessment. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, said a raft of proposals in the new sentencing white paper would reduce reoffending and protect the public. The first duty of any government is to keep the public safe from harm, he said in a speech in London on Wednesday. It is a responsibility this government takes extremely seriously, and my department has been working on a range of measures to make the sentencing system work better to protect people and reduce crime. Mr Buckland denied that the policy aimed to create easy headlines and pledged to better address the root causes of crime. But impact assessments by the Ministry of Justice warned that delaying the release of violent and sexual offenders from the halfway to two-thirds point of sentences, and allowing more whole-life orders, may compound prison instability, self-harm, violence and overcrowding. They show that the combined effect of government changes is likely to see 2,400 inmates serving longer jail terms by 2028. A document published on Wednesday said the resulting overcrowding would reduce access to rehabilitative courses and training, which have already been hit by coronavirus restrictions. Serving longer periods in custody may mean family breakdown is more likely, affecting prisoner mental health and subsequent reoffending risk, it added. A shorter licence period may inhibit reintegration into society. The white paper proposes powers to halt the automatic release of offenders who have become a terror threat while in prison, after a series of alleged attacks by serving and released inmates sparked alarm about radicalisation behind bars. But the impact assessment said the change could increase the risk that other prisoners could become radicalised or more dangerous due to the greater time in custody for the affected individual, affording more time for further proselytising in the prison population. Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Show all 22 1 /22 Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Armed police officers on Streatham High Road. The Metropolitan Police warned people to stay away from the Streatham area boguta37/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings The man was shot dead by police after two stabbed in 'Islamist-related' terror attack in London boguta37/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Sudesh Amman, the attacker, has been named as a convicted terror offender who was released from prison days ago Metropolitan Police/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Items left on the pavement at the scene in Streatham High Road Isis supporter Amman was just 18 when he was jailed in December 2018 after police found a stash of bomb-making manuals and other propaganda. Now 20, he had declared his own wish to carry out a terror attack and stockpiled a combat knife, air gun and black flag at his family home in London PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings He was being monitored by undercover police and being followed as part of a proactive counterterrorism operation when he started the rampage in Streatham AP Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Amman was able to stab two people before being shot dead by armed officers outside a busy row of shops Gabriel Video/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A woman reacts as police officers interview people near to the scene Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings An armed police officer on Streatham High Road Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lucy DOrsi said Amman was wearing a fake suicide ves Gully/PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers work outside of a Boots store AFP via Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police officers at the scene Getty Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A police forensic officer works at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Items left on the pavement at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A police officer on the scene Dave Chawner/SWNS Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers are seen near the site Reuters Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police officers on the scene outside an Iceland supermarket Andy Bullemor/SWNS Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police are seen near a site where a man was shot Reuters Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A policeman secures the site of the incident EPA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A view of the scene Megan Tobeck Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Armed police at the scene in Streatham High Road PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A view of the scene Michael Owens Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings Police forensic officers at the scene PA Streatham attack: Man shot dead by police after stabbings A Police officer is seen near a site where a man was shot Reuters A separate document also published on Wednesday, which examines the consequences of delaying the automatic release of serious offenders jailed for between four and seven years, said there was a potential transitional risk to prison stability. It added: Those prisoners sentenced under the [new] measure will serve longer in custody than other prisoners given an equivalent sentence prior to its introduction. This could lead to increased tensions in prison establishments, with consequent impacts on prisoner violence or self-harm. It said increased numbers could impact upon the ratio of staff to offenders and the ability to provide a full regime of activities and time out of cell, a factor which is associated with increased levels of violence, as well as poor rehabilitation. A report released by the Public Accounts Select Committee last week warned that prisons in England and Wales could run out of space by 2023, because staggering government failings meant that new places were not being created fast enough. Asked by The Independent how capacity would be addressed, Mr Buckland said harsh lessons had been learned from the report, adding: Im taking a very personal interest in the development of the 10,000 extra prison places. The justice secretary said the construction of new jails was progressing, and that the prospects of delivery are frankly leagues better than they were. He argued that with serious offenders being incarcerated, reoffending rates naturally are lower and said other measures in the white paper aimed to address the causes of reoffending and improve the monitoring of released offenders. Mr Buckland said: This white paper, when you look at the whole thing, is a very end-to-end document rather than something that is just designed to get some easy headlines while ignoring the underlying causes and issues that still beset us. The broader Ministry of Justice impact assessment said the sentencing changes would result in improved victim and public confidence and protection, while reducing demand on the probation service and police because of shorter licence periods. Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the proposals had not undergone proper testing of the evidence on what works to reduce reoffending. None of the proposals are likely to protect victims. Indeed, by pushing more men into prisons for longer, it is likely that more victims will be created. Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, accused ministers of reheating the failed policies of so many previous governments. He added: Sentencing has been getting tougher for three decades, with no impact on either crime or public confidence. All it guarantees is an overcrowded prison system that makes it harder for the people it holds to build a crime-free future. The white paper, which is the first step towards new sentencing laws being brought forward next year, proposes increasing powers to put offenders under curfew and expand GPS tagging to include released burglars, robbers and thieves. It contains initiatives to divert low-level offenders with mental health and addiction problems away from prison and into treatment programmes. The government wants to increase judges confidence in community sentences, which are an alternative to custody, after years of poor performance by outsourced companies. Problem-solving court models will be piloted in up to five courts and will target repeat offenders. Ministers also plan to reduce the time period during which people must declare past criminal offences to employers, in order to increase their chances of finding a job. As of 1 August, Phase I and II of the vaccine were complete and by 11 August, Russian President Vladimir Putin had registered it as the world's first vaccine. Indian pharma giant Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) have partnered up to conduct clinical trials for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Dr Reddy's will also take on distribution of some 100 million doses of the vaccine in India after Phase 3 human trials are completed, and approvals granted by Indian regulators. Delivery of the vaccine is expected to happen by November 2020. The Sputnik V vaccine is being developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute along with the Russian Defence ministry. As of 1 August, Phase I and II trials for safety testing of the vaccine are complete. By 11 August, Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced that the vaccine was "registered" the world's first vaccine against COVID-19. Only recently did a team of researchers who conducted these trials published results in The Lancet. They reported no major adverse effects, and a stable immune response generated in all trial volunteers both of which are important considerations in a successful vaccine trial. The vaccine will now go through what the Russians are calling 'post-registration clinical trial' the third phase of trials, including 40,000 volunteers. These trials are currently in various stages of recruitment and have been planned in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, India and Brazil. The results of these trials are expected to be published in October or November 2020. The vaccine is expected to provide immunity from the coronavirus for up to two years, according to the Russian Health Ministry. Speaking of the benefits of a prompt vaccination drive in India, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, said in a statement, India is amongst most severely impacted countries from COVID-19 and we believe our human adenovirus dual vector platform will provide a safe and scientifically validated option to India in the battle against COVID-19," he added. G V Prasad, Co-Chairman and Managing Director of Dr Reddys Laboratories said in a statement, "The Phase I and II results have shown promise, and we will be conducting Phase-III trials in India to meet the requirements of the Indian regulators. Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID-19 in India. RDIF has also signed deals with Brazil's Health Ministry to supply the country with up to 50 million doses of the vaccine. Mexico's Landsteiner Scientific pharmaceutical company has partnered with the RDIF to supply 32 million doses of the vaccine to vaccinate around 25 percent of the Mexican population. Both countries are expected to receive the vaccine in November 2020, once the third phase of clinical trials complete, and national regulators approve the vaccine. Dmitriev also said, "RDIF partners will receive an effective and safe drug to fight the coronavirus. The platform of human adenoviral vectors, which is the core of the Russian vaccine, has been tested in more than 250 clinical studies over decades, and it has been found safe with no potential negative long-term consequences. Also Read: Russias Sputnik V vaccine could produce antibodies, didnt show any adverse effects in Phase 1, 2 human trials The will not agree to a ceasefire unless peace negotiators discuss the main reason behind the war, said their spokesperson Mohommed Naeem. The spokesperson claimed that the terrorist group reduced violence levels with the beginning of the preliminary round of talks but the government has not halted its "offensive operations, according to Tolo News. "It does not make sense to end 20 years of war in one hour. In our perspective, it will be logical to discuss the main aspects of the problems and the war and then finalise a ceasefire so that the problem is resolved permanently," Mohammad Naeem told TOLOnews. "Suppose, if we announce a ceasefire today, but then we fail to reach an agreement at the negotiating table tomorrow, do we go toward the war again? What does this mean?" he added. Naeem further said that the wants an Islamic system "that is answerable to the public and the nation". "One of our objectives was to end the invasion of The other one was that there is a true Islamic system that is answerable to the public and the nation," Tolo News reported quoting the spokesperson. Naeem said that despite the possibility of ups and downs in the negotiations, he is optimistic about the outcome of the talks between the two. "We have entered the peace process with a strong will and determination. We want this problem finally to be resolved. The process is complicated and it has its own complexities, but we are hopeful that the problems come to an end," added Naeem. It has been five days since the opening ceremony of the intra-Afghan talks between the delegation representing the Islamic Republic of and the in Doha but the two sides have not managed to finalise procedures and methods to conduct formal negotiations. (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.) Palmdale, CA (93550) Today Mostly clear and windy. Low around 40F. NE winds at 25 to 35 mph, decreasing to 10 to 20 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear and windy. Low around 40F. NE winds at 25 to 35 mph, decreasing to 10 to 20 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. WASHINGTON - A lack of information from some D.C. residents who test positive for the novel coronavirus is hurting the city's efforts to corral the virus's spread, officials said Thursday. Six months after the first confirmed case in the nation's capital, the city released new statistics demonstrating challenges in contact tracing and containing the coronavirus. While infections in D.C. are far below their peak, officials say those who become infected are sometimes hesitant to provide details that could prevent future transmissions. Figures released Thursday indicate the city has reached three-quarters of newly infectious people for interviews about their activities and social exposures, but only 58% of those interviews have been within three days of a diagnosis. Speedy interviews are essential to identify people exposed to the virus before they could spread it, experts say. According to city officials, only 37% of newly infected people provide contact information for the people they exposed. And on average, they provided information for one person. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the city's top public health official, said two reasons for the lower numbers include immigrants wary of providing information to government officials and people afraid of the "stigma" of being identified as the person who spread the virus. "They're worried that they've been out socializing with friends, they've been to happy hour, they went to a restaurant with people outside of their household, they showed up at the fundraiser that was less than 50 people and they don't want people to know that they're the potential reason there could be an outbreak in their small social circle," she said. Nesbitt said contact tracers do not share who might have exposed a person, only that someone has been exposed and should quarantine while monitoring for symptoms. She said the city is working on strategies to assuage concerns, such as testimonials from people who participated in contact tracing and had their information remain private. "Participating in an interview itself is a social good, and we know people in D.C. like to generate social good," Nesbitt said. Her comments came as Mayor Muriel Bowser, D, gave a presentation on the state of the coronavirus half a year after the city confirmed its first case. Infections are far below the worst-case 93,000 projection the city disclosed in April, with about 15,000 confirmed cases to date. Hospital overflow space was never used, a sign the city prevented the health care system from being overwhelmed. "The virus has underperformed in this city because of willingness of people to adhere to the public health guidance, so we are grateful for that," Bowser said. "We have been able to moderately contain the spread of the virus, but it's still circulating, it's still out there, people are still getting the virus and people are still dying." The mayor also placed the onus on the public to help the city eliminate the virus threat. Bowser said the city is approaching $1 billion in pandemic costs and that it has limited capacity to offer additional relief to businesses struggling to keep their doors open. "We know we won't be able to locally fill all of those gaps, and that's why having real federal stimulus and sustained federal stimulus is what our businesses need," she said. The seven-day rolling average of new infections in D.C. stood at 54 on Thursday. That's up from 40 one week ago, but well below the early-May peak of about 190 daily confirmed cases. The city averages about one virus-related death each day. The greater Washington region on Thursday reported 1,779 new coronavirus infections and 44 additional deaths. Virginia had 1,101 new cases and 36 deaths, Maryland had 631 new cases and six deaths, while D.C. had 47 new cases and two deaths. Virginia's death toll was well above average for a third consecutive day, lifting its seven-day average number of fatalities to 30 - up from eight to start the week. The state reported a record 96 deaths on Tuesday, citing a reporting backlog that included deaths that occurred over the past month. Virginia health officials said that backlog was also a factor in higher numbers Wednesday and Thursday, when 27 of the state's 36 daily fatalities were attributed to the backlog. In Maryland, the test positivity rate in Baltimore dropped below 2% for the first time. The rolling seven-day average positivity rate statewide stood at 3.3%. Across the region, the average number of new infections Thursday stood at 1,679. That number has increased slightly in recent days, but is mostly unchanged since late August. While the economic fallout of the pandemic continues, the Labor Department announced Thursday that residents of Maryland, D.C. and Virginia filed 20,058 new unemployment claims for the week ending Sept. 7. That's up slightly from 19,818 such claims a week earlier. - - - The Washington Post's Dana Hedgpeth and Justin Moyer contributed to this report. Hurricane Sally gave residents a harsh history lesson on Wednesday morning. By Friday, the scope of the damage across multiples states was coming into focus and the death toll had climbed to three. Two of the fatalities occurred in Georgia as Sally worked its way inland, as one man was killed on Wednesday night after a tree fell on his Atlanta home and another woman was killed on Thursday morning when a tree fell on her in Snellville, according to WSBTV.com. In Orange Beach, one person was killed from Sally's impacts and another remains missing, according to Mayor Tony Kennon. While Kennon said that there were no further details to add, the fatality did occur in the area most impacted by flooding. On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Ivan striking Gulf Shores, Alabama, Hurricane Sally made landfall in the same town at 4:45 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, leaving coastal areas of Alabama and Florida turned upside down as one of the busiest hurricane seasons on record raged on. Although originally forecast to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, AccuWeather meteorologists rated Sally a 2 on the RealImpact Scale for Hurricanes, thus bringing moderate flooding and significant damage to the coast. After Sally did indeed suddenly strengthen to Category 2 wind speeds, its ensuing impacts certainly resembled moderate flooding and significant damage to the coast. AccuWeather estimates the total damage and economic loss caused by Hurricane Sally will be $8 billion to $10 billion, according to the company's Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers, who has studied the impacts of powerful hurricanes for decades. Myers said the economic impact estimate is greatly impacted by the flooding rain that has occurred and was continuing inland Thursday and the fact that close to 500,000 homes and businesses in the affected areas were still without power early Thursday afternoon. The estimate is based on an analysis incorporating independent methods to evaluate all direct and indirect impacts of the storm and is based on a variety of sources, statistics and unique techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate damage. Story continues AccuWeather's estimate includes damage to homes and businesses as well as their contents and cars, job and wage losses, infrastructure damage, auxiliary business losses, medical expenses, and closures. The estimate also accounts for the costs of power outages to businesses and individuals and for economic losses because of highway closures and evacuations, as well as expenses for rescue and cleanup operations. Heavy winds left widespread damage in Gulf Shores, Alabama, the spot of Hurricane Sally's landfall. (AccuWeather/Bill Waddell) In the wake of Sally's direct impacts, communities throughout the Alabama and Florida coastline have been left with weeks of cleanup, particularly at beach areas. In Alabama, Gulf Shores, the spot of Sally's landfall, is closed to visitors for 10 days, along with the areas of Orange Beach and the Fort Morgan peninsula. In an interview with FM 1065, Kennon commented on the extensive damage, saying there wasn't a road in Orange Beach without a boat on it. He later told AL.com that he was exaggerating but added that the storm "was a surprise for everyone." "People left them on lifts assuming they would ride it out," Kennon said, referring to the boats. "They are in the roads, businesses, backyards. It's comical in a way." On Facebook, Orange Beach officials shared photos of those boats strewn throughout neighborhoods, storm debris across residences and widespread flooding. Sally's impacts have extended far beyond its immediate impacts and the communities that were directly hit. Nearly 48 hours after landfall, over 300,000 people were still without power, mainly from Alabama and Florida but also extending into Georgia, according to PowerOutage.us. Boats were strewn throughout the Orange Beach, Alabama, area, according to Mayor Tony Kennon. (Facebook/City of Orange Beach) Much of the impacts to strike Florida came via the intense rains that arrived before and after Sally's landfall. The heavy flooding forced the need for hundreds of rescues. In Pensacola, a loose barge struck and destroyed a section of the Pensacola Bridge, which connects Pensacola, Florida, to Gulf Breeze, Florida, via U.S. Highway 98. Pensacola fire chief Ginny Cranor told CNN that the hurricane brought "four months of rain in four hours," as the area was one of multiple areas in the state that received over 2 feet of rain. On Tuesday, Florida Sen. Doug Broxson said that the state is deploying 125 National Guard troops to northwestern Florida to assist in recovery efforts and added that the state has also requested that President Donald Trump add Florida to his emergency declaration. Previously, Trump had issued declarations in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. While many long-term residents in Florida have seen a plethora of hurricanes over the years, the storm striking Alabama marked the first hurricane experience for many in the state. This was the first hurricane experience for one family in Fairhope, Alabama, just a few miles north of where Sally roared ashore before daybreak on Wednesday. "I really didn't expect it because so often you get told that one's coming and you prep and you do everything and then it's almost nothing," Fairhope resident Terri Phipps told AccuWeather National News Reporter Bill Wadell. "But there was a different energy in the air like it was buzzing." Located along Mobile Bay, the family in Fairhope is glad that they took Sally seriously. The storm may not have been considered a major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which is considered to be Category 3 or higher, but it unleashed a tremendous amount of rain on top of the inundating storm surge along the coast of the bay. "We got all prepped up, thank goodness we did," Phipps said. "It was pretty crazy." Other residents in Fairhope that had weathered storms in the past reported that they were not ready for Sally like Phipps was. "I've been through storms before so I kind of knew what to expect and what to look for. I wasn't prepared for this one because I didn't think it was going to do all this," Marla Hinton told Wadell. "Next time I'll better prepare." Hinton was in her home on Wednesday night and told AccuWeather what it felt like as conditions deteriorated in the middle of the night as Sally neared landfall. "When I was laying in my bed, it felt like the trailer was going to take off," Hinton told Wadell. "I kept hearing things, but of course you can't see." These are just two of countless families across the region that have been told to expect the possibility of being without power for several weeks as crews work to gradually repair the damaged infrastructure. The storm's slow movement added to the astronomical rain totals, which were measured in feet in some parts of the Florida Panhandle, and forecasters say that flooding dangers aren't in the rearview mirror just yet. The areas of Bellview and Pensacola received the most rain from the story, totaling 30 inches and 24.8 inches, respectively. Such heavy rain in Florida and neighboring states, such as Georgia and South Carolina, also threatened extensive flooding, however less rainfall fell than expected in the Carolinas. River flooding, which was previously a major concern for the area, has now diminished as rivers are peaking at minor to moderate flood stages. According to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski, an accelerated forward speed of the storm system and underachieving rainfall are the main reasons why many of the previously-held flooding worries have been averted. Additional reporting by Bill Wadell and Jonathan Petramala. Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios. The White House is once again protecting Wall Street, with all its might. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens of Wall Street on Parade. On December 6 of last year, four reporters at Bloomberg News signaled that the U.S. Department of Justice was close to a settlement of its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs in the 1MDB matter. The reporters wrote as follows: The Justice Department and other federal agencies, in internal discussions held in recent weeks, have weighed seeking penalties between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, the people said. Thats less than what some analysts have signaled Goldman might have to pay. While a settlement could be announced as soon as next month, the terms could change before a deal is finalized The terms, indeed, seem to have changed. Its now more than 9 months since that article was published and there hasnt been a peep out of the Justice Department about criminal charges against Goldman Sachs. According to the Bloomberg report, Barr has directly immersed himself in the case. Both Barr and the Deputy Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, hail from Kirkland & Ellis, one of the primary law firms representing Goldman in the matter. Barr was Of Counsel to Kirkland while Rosen worked at the law firm for 29 years. (See Top Men at Justice Department with Final Say on Goldman Sachs Felony Charges Got Big Payouts from Kirkland & Ellis Goldmans Law Firm.) 1MDB is a sovereign wealth fund in Malaysia. Goldman raised over $6 billion in bond offerings for the fund. According to the Justice Department, $4.5 billion of that was misappropriated and used to fund the co-conspirators lavish lifestyles, including purchases of artwork and jewelry, the acquisition of luxury real estate and luxury yachts, the payment of gambling expenses, and the hiring of musicians and celebrities to attend parties. Bribes and kickbacks were also allegedly made. Goldman made more than $600 million in fees from the bond offerings. In July, the Malaysian government settled the case against Goldman Sachs for $3.9 billion. Another law firm representing Goldman Sachs is Sullivan & Cromwell. On June 19, Barr released a statement announcing that Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney (i.e. top federal prosecutor) for the Southern District of New York (where Goldman Sachs is headquartered), would be stepping down. Barr said President Trump would be naming Jay Clayton, the sitting chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to fill the slot. Clayton hails from Sullivan & Cromwell. The problem was, Berman had not agreed to step down; he said so publicly, and was, in reality, being ousted by Barr in the midst of numerous key criminal cases being handled by his office Continue reading the article BANGALORE, India, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the Latest Market Research Report "Battery Energy Storage System Market by Technology ( Flow Batteries, Lead-acid Batteries, Lithium-ion Batteries, and Sodium-sulfur Batteries), Connection Type (Off-grid Connection and On-grid Connection), by Application (Non-residential, Residential, and Utilities), and Region Global Forecast to 2025", published on Valuates Reports. The Global Battery Energy Storage System Market size is expected to grow from USD 2,194.70 Million in 2019 to USD 6,905.64 Million by 2025 at a CAGR of 21.05% during the forecast period. Major factors driving the Battery Energy Storage System Market size are the increased demand for grid-connected solutions, rising demand for lithium-ion technology, and a decrease in lithium-ion battery prices. This report focuses on the Battery Energy Storage System Market's volume and value at the global, regional, and company levels. From a global perspective, this study reflects the overall Battery Energy Storage System Market size by examining historical data and prospects. Get Detailed Analysis of COVID-19 Impact on Battery Energy Storage System Market : https://reports.valuates.com/request/sample/360I-Auto-6F64/The_Global_Battery_Energy_Storage_System_Market TRENDS INFLUENCING THE BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET SIZE The renewable energy penetration and increasing demand for distributed power generation across several economies are expected to accelerate the Battery Energy Storage System Market size growth. Battery energy storage systems help energy producers conserve surplus electricity for later use, thus enhancing the grid's stability and efficiency in terms of power generation, transmission, and distribution. These factors are expected to drive the Battery Energy Storage System Market size during the forecast period. The demand for uninterrupted power is expected to rise exponentially in the coming years due to continuous population growth, infrastructure development, and rapid industrialization. These factors further stress the need for efficient energy storage infrastructure, thereby increasing the Battery Energy Storage System Market size. In the telecommunications industry, the replacement of diesel generators by highly efficient batteries is expected to increase the battery energy storage systems market size. Market players in the telecommunications industry have contracts with manufacturers of battery energy storage systems that facilitate continuous and cost-effective power supply. The increase in the number of telecom subscriptions has contributed to the growth of telecom tower facilities, which is expected to have a positive effect on the demand for battery energy storage systems. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/360I-Auto-6F64/the-global-battery-energy-storage-system BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS North America is expected to hold a significant Battery Energy Storage System Market share during the forecast period. Energy storage has been the core of all energy planning in the US due to the rising number of utilities and companies. Due to a rise in demand for battery energy storage systems from key economies such as India, China, Japan, and Korea, among others, Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Growing government spending in renewable energy projects across emerging economies like India and China is driving the growth of this region's markets. Inquire for Regional Data : https://reports.valuates.com/request/regional/360I-Auto-6F64/The_Global_Battery_Energy_Storage_System_Market BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET SEGMENTATION This research report categorizes the Battery Energy Storage System to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: BASED ON TECHNOLOGY, THE BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET STUDIED ACROSS Flow Batteries, Lead-acid Batteries, Lithium-ion Batteries, Sodium-sulfur Batteries. BASED ON CONNECTION TYPE, THE BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET STUDIED ACROSS Off-grid Connection On-grid Connection. BASED ON APPLICATION, THE BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM MARKET STUDIED ACROSS Non-residential, Residential, Utilities. KEY PLAYERS The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Battery Energy Storage System Market including ABB, AEG Power Solutions, General Electrical, Hitachi, LG Chem, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung SDI, Siemens AG, Tesla. THE REPORT PROVIDES INSIGHTS ON THE FOLLOWING POINTERS Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments Buy Now for Single User: https://reports.valuates.com/api/directpaytoken?rcode=360I-Auto-6F64&lic=single-user Buy Now for Enterprise User: https://reports.valuates.com/api/directpaytoken?rcode=360I-Auto-6F64&lic=enterprise-user SIMILAR REPORTS : Virtual Power Plant Market The global virtual power plant market size was valued at USD 1.3 Billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 5.9 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.3% from 2020 to 2027. Major factors driving the Virtual Power Plant Market size are the growing penetration for renewable energy in the power generation sector and changes in the dynamics of power grids from centralized to distributed. Major players have adopted product launch, business expansion to sustain the intense market competition. The key players profiled in the report include ABB Ltd., AGL Energy, AutoGrid Systems, Inc., Enbala Power Networks, Enel X Inc., General Electric Company, Siemens AG, Schneider Electric SE, Limejump Ltd., and others. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/ALLI-Auto-0M193/virtual-power-plant Energy Storage Market The Global Energy Storage Market size to grow from USD 71831.56 Millions in 2018 to USD 164704.67 Millions by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.58% during the forecast period. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/360I-Auto-6Q18/global-energy-storage-market Battery Energy Storage for Renewables Market Instability of renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy, increasing awareness about the environmental crisis, government support, and carbon dioxide emission is the main factor contributing to the market's growth. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Othe-2M358/battery-energy-storage-for-renewables Battery Energy Storage Systems for Smart Grid Market The Americans dominated the smart grid's battery energy storage market and accounted for most of the total market share. Much of the region's growth can be attributed to the increasing use of smart grids and the increasing need for energy storage for distributed systems. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Othe-1Y353/battery-energy-storage-systems-for-smart-grid Advanced Battery Energy Storage Systems Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-35Z1927/global-advanced-battery-energy-storage-systems Super Capacitors Battery Energy Storage System Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-31C1047/global-super-capacitors-battery-energy-storage-system Residential Solar Energy Storage System Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-37B1771/global-residential-solar-energy-storage-system Mobile Energy Storage System Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-19I1435/global-mobile-energy-storage-system Industrial Battery Energy Storage System Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Othe-3S319/industrial-battery-energy-storage-system Battery Energy Storage System for Power Grid Market View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-31E2585/covid-19-impact-on-battery-energy-storage-system-for-power-grid ABOUT US: Valuates offers in-depth market insights into various industries. Our extensive report repository is constantly updated to meet your changing industry analysis needs. Our team of market analysts can help you select the best report covering your industry. We understand your niche region-specific requirements and that's why we offer customization of reports. With our customization in place, you can request for any particular information from a report that meets your market analysis needs. To achieve a consistent view of the market, data is gathered from various primary and secondary sources, at each step, data triangulation methodologies are applied to reduce deviance and find a consistent view of the market. Each sample we share contains detail research methodology employed to generate the report, Please also reach to our sales team to get the complete list of our data sources CONTACT US: Valuates Reports [email protected] For U.S. Toll-Free Call +1-(315)-215-3225 For IST Call +91-8040957137 WhatsApp : +91 9945648335 Website: https://reports.valuates.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/valuatesreports Linkedin - https://in.linkedin.com/company/valuatesreports Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/valuatesreports SOURCE Valuates Reports For the last few weeks, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West have been making strides in getting their marriage back to a good place. While their efforts have been paying off, it appears the couple has once again hit a pitfall in their relationship. This time, one of the rappers headline-making social media posts is to blame as a recent video of him urinating on his Grammy Award isnt sitting too well with the reality star. Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West| Lars Niki/Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine Innovators Awards Kanye Wests recent behavior has put a strain on his marriage to Kim Kardashian West Recently, the Wests have been going through a rough patch in their marriage. Their marital problems first kicked off back in July after West revealed some very personal details about their relationship namely that he and Kardashian West considered aborting their 7-year-old daughter North during his first presidential rally in South Carolina. After displaying such shocking behavior at the event, Wests outrageous antics continued. Amid his controversial comments, the rapper lashed out against his friends and family publically on social media. He even attacked Kardashian West and her mother, Kris Jenner, on Twitter, saying they had been trying to fly to his Wyoming ranch and lock [him] up, presumably under the belief that he was having a bipolar episode. Though the reality star kept quiet when her husband publicly slammed her on Twitter, she eventually issued a statement about his bipolar disorder on Instagram, ultimately defending his actions. After her statement, West apologized to the KKW Beauty mogul. Later, Kardashian West flew to Wyoming, where she and West had a tense conversation about their future together. While the reality star was considering divorce, the Selah rapper suggested they take a family trip to work through their issues and focus on their marriage. Following their reunion, the couple headed to the Caribbean with their four kids for a week. After that, KimYe spent time in Colorado with their loved ones in an attempt to breathe new life into their marriage. Since returning home, the reality star and their rapper have been continuing to work on their marriage and were reportedly doing well. But after Wests latest display on Twitter, it appears that he has once again put a major strain on their marriage. Kanye West drew significant backlash over his latest tweet On Sept. 16, West tweeted over a hundred times in one hour, sharing a series of photos and videos which have been blowing peoples minds, to say the least. First, the rapper shared a series of photos of his Universal Recording contracts. He told fans that the PDFs would not upload to Twitter, so instead, he took pictures of them. He then tweeted images of 10 documents, including his recording agreement. Here are my 10 Universal contracts, West tweeted before uploading the images of the documents. I need every lawyer in the world to look at these. In addition to the photos, Ye also shared several Bible verses and tweets demanding that the music industry simplify their overly complicated contracts. But the rappers most shocking and questionable tweet came when shared a video of himself urinating on one his 21 Grammys. Trust me, he captioned the bizarre video. I WONT STOP. Trust me I WONT STOP pic.twitter.com/RmVkqrSa4F ye (@kanyewest) September 16, 2020 RELATED: Why Did Kanye West Share a Video Peeing on 1 of His Grammy Trophies? West immediately drew major backlash over the tweet, with many Twitter users slamming him for his disgusting antics. Some even criticized the rapper for publicizing a meltdown for profit. How Kim Kardashian West and her family really feel about Kanye Wests tweet Like many fans who were shocked after seeing West give his Grammy award a golden shower, the Kardashian family was also appalled by the rappers jaw-dropping antics. According to In Touch, the famous bunch is in disbelief that West disrespected his Grammy award in such an unmannerly way. While the family has always defended Wests controversial behavior, they believe that he went a little too far this time. The family is used to Kanyes outrageous antics, but he keeps crossing the line, an insider close to the Kardashian-Jenner clan says. They are very concerned. As for how Kardashian West feels about her husbands latest online display, she reportedly cannot deal with his behavior anymore. RELATED: Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West Might Never Live Together Again Kim [Kardashian] cant make excuses for him any longer, the source added, Shes at the end of her rope. Peeing on his Grammy is just downright disrespectful. While theres no word on where KimYes marriage stands amid the rappers latest tweet, as of right now, its not looking too good for them. The 14-day incidence rate of cases per 100,000 people for Ireland is now 51.46, putting us 17th in the list of 31 European countries, according to data from the European Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). In the two-week period between September 3rd and 16th, Ireland recorded 2,344 additional cases of the virus. We had gone 16 days without recording a death due to Covid-19 between August 24th and September 8th, while in that same two-week period from September 3rd, 10 deaths were recorded. Despite this, Ireland still has a relatively low 14-day incidence rate of Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people, with just 0.2. Breaking down the figures to a county-by-county basis, Dublin continues to have the highest incidence rate, now 109.6, prompting speculation that the county will be moved to Level Three of the Government's new restrictions framework. Advertisement The county continues to record vastly different incidence rates in different areas, however the rate of cases in each of the eight zones have risen to above 90, except for Dublin South. Area: 14-day incidence rate (September 15th): Dublin South 50.0 Dublin South East 134.2 Dublin South City 94.7 Dublin South West 115.0 Dublin West 107.5 Dublin North West 161.8 Dublin North Central 106.7 Dublin North 95.7 The framework, which was announced on Tuesday, would see visitors from only one other household being allowed in your home at one time and a ban on social gatherings in any other setting if Dublin were to be placed in Level Three. Louth, Leitrim and Waterford have also noted sharp increases in their incidence rates, recording 88.5, 81.1 and 71.4 respectively. Tipperary, Mayo, Cork and Cavan all have incidence rates of less than 20, while Sligo is the only county with a rate under 10. Figures have also been on the increase in the UK, with their 14-day incidence rate steadily rising since July 14th, when is was just 12.32, to where it is now, at 55.6. The UK has recorded 37,060 additional cases of the virus since September 3rd, and 160 deaths. Spain continues to be one of the worst affected countries in Europe, with all bar one region in the North of the country recording an incidence rate in excess of 120. As a whole, Spain's current incidence rate is by far the highest in Europe at 281.6, followed by France with 162.8. Across the Atlantic, the US has a similar rate of 161,25, recording 51,473 cases of Covid-19 and 1,407 related deaths on September 16th. A father has been left paralysed after another man tried to kill him by running him down with his ute during an argument over missing meat. Darryl Dighton, 49, drove to James Tickle's property in Acacia Hills, in rural Darwin, to 'borrow' some meat for Australia Day on January 26. The pair were not known to each other, Mr Tickle was friend's with Dighton's wife. When he got to the home at midday and found no one was home, Dighton decided to help himself to steak and sausages in the freezer before driving off. Darryl Dighton, 49, drove to James Tickle's property in Acacia Hills, in rural Darwin, to 'borrow' some meat for Australia Day on January 26 When he got to the home at midday and found no one was home, Dighton decided to help himself to steak and sausages in the freezer before driving off He returned to the property after a few drinks with his mate to let Mr Tickle know what he'd done. But still no one was home, so he left once more, driving off in his Nissan Navara, leaving behind skid marks on his way. Dighton's wife then began getting messages calling her husband a 'grub' and challenging him to return to the property to face up to what he'd done. On arrival he found Mr Tickle standing on the side of the road with a metal pole and wooden club. Dighton yelled for Mr Tickle to drop his weapons and 'fight like a man' as he approached him. Mr Tickle then swung the club, hitting Dighton several times on the head. 'He just hit me with a stick, jump into the vehicle and I'll drive over the c***,' Dighton yelled as he ran back to his ute. Dighton bowled Mr Tickle over with his ute before driving over him several times. Dighton appeared in the the Supreme Court this week where he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and attempted murder Mr Tickle was flown to Adelaide to with 'catastrophic injuries'. He has likely permanently lost the use of his legs. Dighton appeared in the the Supreme Court this week where he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and attempted murder. Dighton's barrister, Peter Maley, told the court his client had very little memory of the 'showdown'. '(He) was emotional and couldn't believe what he did, and he said, in fairness, ''I deserve to be punished'',' Mr Maley said. The matter will return to court on November 6 for sentencing. Markus Peuler is CEO of NeXR Technologies, a provider of digital solutions for future technologies in Berlin. "We are working simultaneously on different areas on the Extended Reality. This includes 3D scanning of people and objects, animation, and the creation of virtual environments, applications and experiences," explains Peuler, adding, "Everything revolves around the next reality, expanding Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. What is about to come will have a much stronger impact on everyday life and will be increasingly applicable for the masses." NeXR Seminar opens up operational areas for further education virtual reality learning. The seminar use case was realized with the Scientific Advisor of the project, Alexander Sascha Wolf (Dictyonomie Institute for value-based networking). Wolf is a leading specialist for networking and collaboration and teaches techniques to connect people effectively in groups. This task was challenged by the Corona crisis, in which events, congresses, conventions, trade fairs, and trips to further training and seminars can no longer be planned with certainty. It has accelerated the search for good VR applications for such events at NeXR Technologies. Now the company offers comprehensive VR events for immersive learning for enterprise based training. "The decision to go for VR seminars provides you with a 100% guarantee that no one will be infected," says Wolf, and adds: "But that is not the main reason for VR corporate training. VR makes it possible to suspend the laws of nature, such as gravity and time. You can fly, meet Julius Caesar in a journey through time, or we can take you to the moon. That way we have endless and new possibilities to convey knowledge and information. This is the new way of training: You dive into a virtual world of unlimited possibilities and can learn immersively instead of staring at PowerPoint slides." "Immersive is a special expression in dealing with VR. It means that a person forgets the real world and is completely immersed in the virtual environment. Until one leaves this environment again," adds Nicola Mizon, who is responsible for the set up of the production pipeline at VRiday, the consulting and VR development agency of NeXR Technologies. Markus Peuler: "We have developed a product that is unique in this form. We create lifelike avatars, animate them realistically using state-of-the-art motion capture technology and are in a position to offer live seminars in VR. There are virtual rooms available on the market, but in order to have sustainable success in the B2B sector, you have to move away from gimmicks and towards real VR learning solution experiences." The B2B training solutions in the VR environment are emotional, efficient and economical, especially because travel time and costs are saved. "It is a sustainable product and only a matter of time before companies switch to VR training," says Peuler. "With Alexander Wolf as a veteran speaker, we realized the new experiential training. He is now one of the first worldwide to offer live seminars with his avatar in a VR environment." More at nexr-seminar.com. - Learn how a VR seminar is created: Download the presskit at NeXR-Seminar.com. About NeXR Technologies NeXR Technologies (HQ Berlin) stands for the development of technologies and apps of the future generation. The combination of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) form the extended reality (XR). While VRiday as an agency offers consulting, planning, implementation and publishing of VR Experiences for companies and brands, the technology of the business field 3D Instagraph is used for the creation of 3D avatars, which can be animated and integrated into virtual worlds with the help of the Motion Capture Studio OnPoint. 3D Instagraph develops and distributes its own 3D scanners and application software. With the help of the scanners photorealistic 3D avatars can be generated in seconds. NeXR Technologies connects the know-how of its three business areas scanning, motion capture and agency for VR Experiences to get the best product for companies, brands, educational institutions and others. nexr-technologies.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276253/NeXR_Seminar.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276252/NeXR_Seminar_Logo.jpg Contact: Lydia Herrmann VP Marketing & Communications NeXR Technologies SE Telephone +49 (0) 30 403680140 Email [email protected] SOURCE NeXR Technologies SE Related Links https://www.nexr-technologies.com Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) has launched Indias first exclusive general aviation terminal facility for private jets at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA). The new terminal has been built keeping in mind the need to support the movement and processing of passengers flying chartered flights from IGI airport. DIAL has stated that the terminal has been set up in compliance with all the safety and precautionary measures that have come into effect due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Facilities in the new terminal include city side parking and a capacity to cater to 150 private jets including Code C type aircraft on a daily basis. Also Watch: Passengers will witness spacious passenger lounges, retail as well as food and beverage section, 247 personal concierge services, common processing area with customs and immigration and immediate access to private jet aircraft. The new General Aviation terminal at Delhi Airport, according to Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, is the need of the hour which would significantly support this growth. This terminal will cater to the growing passenger traffic when the aviation sector lands back to pre-COVID times and make their travel experience more convenient and comfortable, GBS Raju, Business Chairman, GMR Airports, was quoted in the release. Record 97,894 New Coronavirus Cases in India Take Tally Past 51 Lakh, Active Cases Top 1 Million India reported a record daily jump of 97,894 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking its total case count past the 51-lakh mark, health ministry data showed. In the 24-hour period, India reported 1,132 deaths linked to the virus, taking the total number of fatalities to 83,198. For the first time, the number of active cases in the country have crossed the 10-lakh mark, the data showed. READ MORE Centres Committee to Study Ancient History Without Dravidians and Women Kicks Up Row Wittingly or unwittingly, the central government has kicked up a row by constituting an experts committee to study the Indian Culture for the past 12,000 years. The Committee set up by the ministry of culture has 16 members and all are from north India. It has led to a furore in the South, which believes that the Dravidian history is the oldest and Dravidians are the original inhabitants of what we call India, today. READ MORE Rich Nations Have Cornered More Than Half of Future Covid-19 Vaccine Supply: Report A group of wealthy nations representing 13 percent of the global population have already bought up more than half of the promised doses of future Covid-19 vaccines, according to a report by Oxfam on Wednesday. The non-governmental organization analyzed deals struck by pharmaceuticals and vaccine producers for the five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials. The five vaccines analyzed were from AstraZeneca, Gamaleya/Sputnik, Moderna, Pfizer and Sinovac. READ MORE Set Rules for Digital Media First, Becomes Viral Easily: Centre Opposes SCs Call to Regulate TV Channels The central government has opposed the Supreme Courts call for new guidelines to regulate TV channels. In its affidavit before the apex court, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has said that a broader exercise, which is too general in nature is neither warranted nor permissible since every matter will need to be adjudged on its own facts. The ministry has filed its reply to a bunch of pleas against telecast of a show by Sudarshan TV channel on entry of Muslims in civil services. READ MORE Mumbai Man Disappears After Telling Wife He Tested Positive for Covid-19, Moves to Indore for Lover In a bizarre incident, a 28-year-old married man from Maharastras Navi Mumbai lied to his wife about testing positive for the novel coronavirus, travelled to Indore and was finally traced by police officials. The man, rang up his wife on July 21 and told her that he had tested positive for Covid-19. He even claimed he was going to die", after which he switched off his mobile phone and remained untraceable. After an elaborate hunt, it was found that he was having an extramarital affair. READ MORE Urmila Matondkar Responds After Kangana Ranaut Calls Her Soft Porn Star After Urmila Matondkars support to Jaya Bachchans comment in Rajya Sabha, her spat with Kangana Ranaut has taken a very unpleasant turn. While speaking to a TV channel, Kangana called Urmila a soft-porn star. I know its very blatant. But she isnt known for her acting for sure. What is she known for? For doing soft porn right? In response to this, Urmila wrote a cryptic note on social media that seemed to be in response to Kanganas shocking statement about her. READ MORE Britain may revive Blankety Blanks with a pilot to be filmed later this year. Blankety Blank (as it was called in the UK) ran at various times from 1979 to 2002, hosted first by Terry Wogan, then by Les Dawson and later Paul OGrady as Lily Savage. The Sun reports The Chases Bradley Walsh is tipped to be host but Paddy McGuinness and Rylan Clark have also been mentioned. An unnamed source says, A pilot is being filmed later this year and if its a success, itll go on to become a new series. Everyone is confident itll be a hit and its a perfect fit for Saturday night. Its likely to nab a primetime spot and cash will be pumped into the series if it does go ahead. In Australia the show was famously hosted by Graham Kennedy for just 2 seasons, and later Daryl Somers and briefly, Shane Bourne. TV Tonight posed a revival question for Australia last year, with 61 comments weighing in Source: Radio Times (Natural News) This is a Guest Post. Guest Posts do not necessarily represent the official editorial position of Revolver News. (Article by Sam Faddis republished from Revolver.news) Kenosha, Wisconsin has been ravaged. Minneapolis has been burned. Black Lives Matter and Antifa continue to tear the heart out of once-great cities like Portland. A siege of the White House is being planned. Nationwide, violence has moved into suburban areas and residential neighborhoods. Groups of extremists are specifically targeting the residences of mayors, chiefs of police and other political enemies. The establishment press continues to peddle the notion that what we are seeing across the nation is nothing more than peaceful protest designed to achieve change within the existing system. No doubt, even many people in the streets believe this. They think they are marching for more humane police forces, or reduced incarceration, or a few new social programs. They believe that, when the protests and riots are over, they will still live in the United States that they knew before, but it will just be a slightly better nation. Of course, people harbored the same delusions in 1959 Cuba and 1917 Russia. Even the foot soldiers of those revolutions likely believed they would still have the countries they grew up in, just with a brighter, more democratic future. They discovered far too late that at the heart of the movement in which they were caught up were hard men with very different ideas about the future. We cannot afford to repeat this naivety. We are not experiencing a wave of social unrest generated by injustice or police brutality. We are watching an insurrection in progress, one which uses police violence as a pretext, but which has as its goal the destruction of the existing social, economic and political order in the United States. Refuse Fascism is one of the primary umbrella organizations supporting Antifa demonstrations nationwide. Refuse Fascism is a creation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States. If you watch footage of the chaos in our streets, you will quickly see signs linked to both groups. The leader of the so-called RevComs is Bob Avakian. Avakian is a lifelong revoutionary, who spent his youth with Students for a Democratic Society, a domestic extremist group active in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2016 Avakians RevComs and other leftist groups formed Refuse Fascism. Avakian is remarkably direct about about the goals of this movement. Lets get down to basics. We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit, he said recently. Avakians party is no less direct. It has published a proposed constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which it hopes to establish. Some excerpts from it read as follows: The New Socialist Republic in North America isa form of dictatorship the dictatorship of the proletariat In accordance with this, the governing bodies and processes of this socialist state, at all levels, must be vehicles for the furtherance of the communist revolution The armed forces, militia and other organs of public defense and security shall be under a system of overall leadership combining the central Executive Council and the Revolutionary Communist Party, with the Party having the ultimate leadership responsibility and role. The responsibility for the enforcement of the laws and the defense of the Constitution by the organs of public security resides with the Executive Council, with the overall and ultimate leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party. [RevCom.us] Behind the RevComs, Refuse Fascism and their allied organizations is a fundraising and financing apparatus that has been building inside this nation for decades. For instance, Refuse Fascism is partially funded by an organization called the Alliance for Global Justice. The Alliance for Global Justice originated in an organization called the Nicaragua Network, a group created to support the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The founders of the Alliance are both veterans of that effort and have strong ties to the Sandinistas. One of them, Chuck Kaufman, was also one of the founders of a group called A.N.S.W.E.R., an organization focused on ending U.S. threats against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba and an end to the colonial-style occupation in Palestine and in Haiti. The Alliance for Global Justice, in turn, receives funding from a wide range of organizations. One of them is the Tides Foundation. You may have never heard the group, but its power is vast: It annual spending is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Tides is generally credited with having pioneered anonymous Dark Money transactions for leftist organizations. Structural racism is a common theme in many Tides Foundation projects, as is the concept of white privilege. Other financiers of The Alliance for Global Justice include George Soross Open Society Foundation, the Arca Foundation (which also backs the Communist regime in Cuba), the New World Foundation (which sponsors radical leftists movements in El Salvador), and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, an extreme environmental group that sees humans as a plague on the Earths surface. More connections could easily be drawn, but the point is not the individual links. What matters is the big picture: The mobs wrecking our cities and terrorizing the public are not spontaneously organizing or self-funding. They are the manifestation of years of preparation, organization, and sponsorship from a vast network of foundations and front organizations. The groups sponsoring the 2020 rioters are hostile to the United States of America as it currently exists. They have long since made common cause with some of our most dangerous enemies. Now, what they want is not reform. Phrases like Black Lives Matter are a deliberate obfuscation, a time-honored tactic of radical left groups, used to make themselves and their goals seem less threatening. What these extremist groups really want is something much more profound. It is, as one leftist speaker recently put it, the abolition of the United States as we know it and its replacement with a Marxist state. That is why it is profoundly delusional to believe the riots of the past three months will end with the November election. They will not. Should President Trump win, his victory will immediately be declared invalid and illegitimate by the mob, and the level of violence will explode. If Biden wins, the people and groups tearing this nation apart will consider him their puppet and will accelerate their efforts at revolution. If Biden proves unwilling or unable to accommodate them, he will suffer the same fate as Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, who endures antifa harassment of his home as the price of failing to submit. This is not about reform. It is about revolution, and revolutions dont care about elections. Sam Faddis is a retired CIA ops officer who spent decades undercover in the Middle East and South Asia. He is a national security commentator who appears regularly on television and radio. Senior Editor of AND Magazine and a Senior Partner with Artemis, LLC. Read more at: Revolver.news and LeftCult.com. By Stephanie Kelly NEW YORK, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Colonial Pipeline, the largest pipeline in the United States carrying refined products such as gasoline and diesel, was operating normally after Hurricane Sally made landfall on Wednesday, the company said. The company was in contact with refiners and suppliers during the storm and had implemented disaster preparedness plans as a precaution, it said on Wednesday. Sally crashed into Alabama's Gulf Coast earlier in the day as a Category 2 hurricane and was expected to bring catastrophic flooding to the region. Colonial connects Gulf Coast refineries with markets across the Southern and Eastern United States through more than 5,500 miles (8,850 km) of its pipeline system, delivering gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products. (Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; editing by Jonathan Oatis) 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:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b6fdc0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486a9b158)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b6fdc0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486a9b158)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b18bc0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486a9b158)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486a9b158)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f04861ebf38)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e4dd8)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e4dd8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) Dito Telecommunity will pay the Armed Forces of the Philippines for rent and security for the cell sites it will put up in military camps, a company official said Thursday. Contrary to earlier remarks of AFP Spokesperson MGen. Edgard Arevalo, Dito's chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said the signed deal specifies rates per square meter for leasing space within AFP properties where cell towers will be built not just "in kind." "We will be paying actual pesos to AFP for rent and security," Tamano said during Dito's Kapihan with the media. He said they also have to pay for their electricity bills and fuel for backup generators. The Dito executive said a "substantial" amount of the fees will be for security, to cover for the reduced risk of communication towers being torched or attacked by rebels in remote areas. While confidential, Tamano said the AFP agreement provides commercial terms and does not give Dito a free pass inside camps. Dito's chief technology officer and retired military general Rodolfo Santiago offered an explanation to the conflicting statement from AFP, saying that the deal was amended several times before it was signed by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana. The AFP earlier said there was low risk for Dito's facilities to be used for spying or eavesdropping, contrary to the fears of legal experts and lawmakers that China Telecom, its foreign partner, will use the towers to mine sensitive information especially inside military facilities. READ: Streamlined application rules as Duterte orders to fast-track cell site construction Santiago pointed out that there were specific provisions in the AFP deal which guarded against possible spyware, with the military authorized to do spot checks on Dito facilities whenever they wish. Tamano added that China Telecom is merely an investor and adviser, with business management left to Filipinos executives. Dito officials added that no Chinese or other foreigners will be allowed entry to military camps. Arevalo earlier said non-Filipinos may be allowed to enter camps for construction and maintenance work subject to stringent security checks. RELATED: Allowing China-backed Dito to build cell sites in military camps a dumb move as security concerns hound PH Carpio The company has not yet started construction inside camps, Santiago said. Dito will only set up inside military camps which already host the towers of Globe and Smart, Santiago added. However, he said other AFP quarters have also asked Dito to set up facilities there, citing the "lousy" service of existing providers. Tamano went on to allay fears that the Chinese state-run corporation could be using Dito for leverage against the Philippines, saying that the third telco player is a "true Filipino company" and that foreigners only own under 39.92 percent of the firm. Dito is looking to launch in March 2021, with a promise to deliver at least 27 Megabits per second (Mbps) of internet speed to at least 37 percent of the population. Tamano said they are eyeing to launch earlier than that date, with its initial requirement of 1,300 cell towers expected to be finished by end-October. READ: Dennis Uy's Dito wants to corner 30% of telco market in 3 years Dito is also in talks with the Department of Education to assist in online learning, as well as to possibly co-locate in DepEd offices for cell towers and equipment. An American constitutional law expert has said that the US indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under an "extraordinarily broad" spying law that has been used in the past for politically motivated prosecutions. Speaking during Mr Assange's extradition hearing in London, human rights lawyer Carey Shenkman called the century-old Espionage Act "one of the most contentious laws in the United States". Mr Shenkman, who co-wrote a book on the history of the act, testified as a witness for Mr Assange, 49, who is fighting his extradition from the UK to the US. US prosecutors indicted Mr Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Mr Assange's defence team argues that he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing leaked documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His lawyers say he is facing a politically motivated prosecution that will stifle press freedom and put journalists around the world at risk. 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 Mr Shenkman also said in a written witness statement that the administration of Donald Trump "has prosecuted disclosures of national security information more aggressively than any presidency in US history". He said there were eight Espionage Act prosecutions of media sources during former president Barack Obama's two terms more than any previous administration and eight in less than four years under Mr Trump. Mr Shenkman said there has never been a successful prosecution of a publisher under the act, although there have been attempts, including over the 1971 "Pentagon Papers" leak of documents about the Vietnam War. Leaker Daniel Ellsberg faced 12 Espionage Act charges and faced up to 115 years in prison, but the charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct against him. Mr Ellsberg, one of the most famous whistleblowers in living memory, came to Mr Assange's defence on Wednesday, telling London's Central Criminal Court that he and the WikiLeaks founder had "very comparable political opinions". The case, which is being held under coronavirus social distancing restrictions, has been plagued by technical glitches as witnesses give evidence by video link. Mr Shenkman testified with a cellphone pressed to his ear after audio problems. Mr Shenkman acknowledged during a testy cross-examination by Clair Dobbin, a lawyer for the US government, that he was part of a team that represented Mr Assange several years ago. He said it was not relevant to his analysis of the Espionage Act, and noted he was a very junior lawyer at the time. "In the food chain of lawyers, I was plankton," he said. The US government says WikiLeaks put the lives of US informants in conflict zones and others at risk by publishing secret documents. Defence witness John Sloboda, co-founder of the organisation Iraq Body Count, said WikiLeaks was careful to ensure names were removed before publication. He disagreed with a suggestion by a prosecution lawyer that Mr Assange took a "cavalier attitude" to redaction. Mr Sloboda, who was involved in the publication of the Iraq war papers in 2010, said they "were over-redacted for caution". He said his group developed software to help speed the process by removing all words that were not in an English dictionary, though he acknowledged it was not perfect. Mr Assange, who has been embroiled in legal battles for a decade, has been in a British prison since he was ejected from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. The extradition hearing at London's Old Bailey criminal court is due to last until early October. AP Theyre worried that theyve been out socializing with friends, theyve been to happy hour, they went to a restaurant with people outside of their household, they showed up at the fundraiser that was less than 50 people, and they dont want people to know that theyre the potential reason there could be an outbreak in their small social circle, she said. New Delhi: Ahead of the visit of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who will be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India and UAE will hold their first strategic dialogue on Friday to discuss cooperation in key areas including energy, trade and security. Announcing Al Nahyans visit between January 24-26, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup on Thursday said the dignitary would call on the President and the Vice-President as well as hold discussions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on bilateral, regional and global issues of common interest. The Strategic Dialogue, being held for the first time since the two sides have agreed to elevate the mutually beneficial relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership after Modis visit there in 2015, will be co-chaired by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs M J Akbar and his Saudi counterpart Anwar Mohammed Gargash. According to officials, the Strategic Cooperation Agreement is expected to be finalised during Fridays meeting and is likely to be signed after the meeting between Modi and Al Nahyan, who is also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of UAE. This is the second visit of the Crown Prince to India who travelled here in February 2016. He will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including Ministers, senior officials and captains of industry. During the visit, the two sides will explore ways to strengthen ties in key areas of energy and trade. The two countries have been among each others top trading partners with a well-balanced bilateral trade of about USD 50 billion in 2015-16. UAE is among the top investors in India in terms of foreign direct investments. It contributes significantly to Indias energy security and is the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16, Swarup said. Noting that there was about 2.6 million strong and vibrant Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in UAE, he said, Their positive and well-appreciated contribution in the development of their host country has been an important anchor of our excellent bilateral engagement. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. DanHenson1/iStockBy PATRICK REEVELL, ABC News (MOSCOW) -- Top members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs have submitted a resolution demanding that Russia free Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine jailed by the country who U.S. officials suspect is being used as a political bargaining chip. Reed, 29, from Granbury, Texas, was sentenced by a Moscow court to nine years in a Russian penal colony in late July, after already spending over a year in detention. He was convicted of assaulting two police officers, but in his trial police presented virtually no evidence Reed had actually done so and repeatedly contradicted their stories. Reed is the second former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia following the case of Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years jail in Russia on espionage charges in June, and whose family and U.S. officials believe was also taken as a bargaining chip. The United States has condemned the jailing of both men and urged Russia to release them. On Capitol Hill Wednesday, 21 Republican and Democrat representatives from Texas introduced a resolution to the Committee on Foreign Affairs demanding that Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately free Reed. The resolution was submitted by the lead Republican on the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, and ranking member Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and is backed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. "The trumped up charges brought against Trevor are clearly politically motivated," the lawmakers sponsoring the resolution said in a statement. "His sentence was based on evidence that was so utterly ludicrous that it was met with laughter in the courtroom, including from the Russian judge. We urge the Vladimir Putin regime to put a stop to this ordeal and release Trevor immediately." Speaking at a press conference outside the Capitol with Reed's mother, Paula, after introducing the resolution, McCaul said, "I hope this sends a strong message to the Putin regime that America will not stand idly by as Putin and his cronies hold U.S. citizens as political pawns." Reed's detention began in August 2019 after he allegedly became heavily intoxicated at a party in Moscow where he was visiting his girlfriend and studying Russian. On the way home, Reed forced friends to pull over and refused to get back in the car. Concerned he might hurt himself, they called the police to take him to a drunk tank or a police station to sober up. Two police officers arrived and drove Reed to a station. The officers later claimed that Reed attacked them while they were driving, causing their car to swerve dangerously. But in his trial, video evidence produced by the defense showed the car never swerved and the officers repeatedly changed their accounts. Despite that, the judge gave Reed the maximum sentence, the longest ever given in Russia for such an offense, according to his lawyers. U.S. officials have said they believe Reed's military background, like Whelan, made him a target of opportunity for Russian authorities. "It's clear that once they found out that Trevor had been a Marine -- and an embassy Marine -- the Putin administration thought they had a tool or a pawn that they could use to further their goals," Conaway said at the press conference. Reed's mother spoke at the press conference, saying the past year had been a "nightmare." "He is an innocent man," she said. The draft resolution calls on the U.S. government to raise Reed's case in all interactions with Russia and demands that Russia provide unrestricted consular access to him. The White House National Security Council and the State Department have also denounced Reed's trial as unjust and called on Russia to release him. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun on a visit to Moscow last month raised Reed and Whelan's detentions during talks. U.S. officials have said they believe Reed and Whelan have both been taken by Russia to use as possible leverage with the U.S. Russian officials have publicly floated the idea of trading Whelan and Reed for two Russian citizens currently jailed in the U.S. -- Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted of large-scale drug smuggling, and Viktor Bout, one of the world's best-known arms dealers convicted on terrorism charges. Both men have suspected ties to Russian intelligence. U.S. officials have declined to comment publicly on whether any trade could be possible. But such an exchange for Bout and Yaroshenko is viewed as problematic given the U.S. considers them serious criminals and Reed and Whelan to be innocent tourists. "I think the problem with this matter is that they're using him as a political pawn to release two very dangerous criminals. So it's like apples and orange," McCaul said. Asked whether President Donald Trump was aware of Reed's case, McCaul said he was and that it had been raised to the "president's level." Reed is currently still in a Moscow jail, awaiting transfer to a more remote penal colony. Whelan was moved last month to a penal colony a few hundred miles from Moscow. Reed's father, Joey, has already spent over a year in Moscow trying to help his son. Paula Reed pleaded for his release on Wednesday. "We have no part in the dispute between the United States and Russia," she said. "And I badly need my son Trevor to be back at home in Texas so that he can continue on with his life." Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Representative image Stressing that there should no politicisation of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the Shiv Sena on Thursday asked the Centre to release money to states from the PM Cares Fund and also clear GST dues to help them deal with the coronavirus situation. During the second day of discussion in Rajya Sabha on the pandemic and steps taken by the Centre, Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena) took exception to the criticism by some BJP leaders, including Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, of the measures taken by the Maharashtra government to control the pandemic. "More than 30,000 people have recovered from COVID in Maharashtra. How did it happen?," he said In an apparent dig at Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, Raut said did those people recover by eating "Bhabhi Ji Papad". Meghwal had come under fire after he reportedly claimed that the ingredients of a papad brand ''Bhabhi Ji Papad'' helps in formation of antibodies needed to fight COVID-19. Raut further said all states were doing their best to deal with the pandemic. It''s not that opposition ruled states like Maharashtra, West Bengal and Delhi were doing bad, and only BJP-led NDA states were excelling in the fight, he added. "We should not be pointing fingers at each other," he said, and stressed that the Shiv Sena has been been maintaining that the battle against COVID has to be fought under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He charged that from September 1 onwards, the Centre has stopped supplies of medical equipment like PPE Kits and masks, putting an additional burden of Rs 350 crore on the Maharashtra government. If the Centre wants the states to fight the COVID battle on their own, it should clear all GST dues, he demanded. The PM Cares Fund too is for all states, and money should be released to them, he said. His party colleague, Priyanka Chaturvedi, a first time MP, also expressed disappointment over politicisation of the fight against the pandemic. She said every single state has been asked to take care of medical equipment on their own "Considering that state governments are already under tremendous financial burden of not getting their due GST, how do you expect the states to give its response," she said. Chaturvedi wanted to speak with her face mask off. However, on insistence of Deputy Chairman Harivansh, she put it back and participated in the discussion. Praful Patel of the NCP, which is in a coalition government with the Shiva Sena and the Congress in Maharashtra, voiced concern over the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country and called for a joint effort to deal with the pandemic. He said all states have been following the central guidelines on lockdown as well as the unlocking process. "When we all are fighting together, there is no need of pointing fingers at each other," Patel said. He said the states were facing a fund crunch and sought release of GST dues from the Centre. SAO PAULO, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- BRF S.A. ("BRF") communicates to its shareholders and to the market in general that it priced, on the date hereof, an international offering of senior notes in the aggregate amount of U.S.$ 500,000,000.00 (the " Notes "). The investors' demand exceeded approximately ten times the amount offered by the Company. The Notes, which will mature on September 21, 2050, will be issued with a coupon of 5.750% per year, which is payable semi-annually in arrears, beginning on March 21, 2021. BRF intends to use a portion of the net proceeds of the offering of the Notes to repay certain of its outstanding indebtedness, which may include all or a portion of its outstanding 5.875% Senior Notes due 2022, 2.750% Senior Notes due 2022, 3.95% Senior Notes due 2023 and 4.75% Senior Notes due 2024, with the remainder, if any, used for general corporate purposes. The Notes have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (" Securities Act "), and may not be offered or sold in the United States of America absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. The Notes are being sold exclusively to qualified institutional buyers, as defined under Rule 144A of the Securities Act, and to non-U.S. persons pursuant to Regulation S under the Securities Act. The Notes have not been, and will not be, registered with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios CVM). The Notes were not offered and will not be sold in Brazil, except in circumstances that do not constitute a public offering or unauthorized distribution under Brazilian laws and regulations. BRF will apply to list the Notes on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange for trading on the Euro MTF Market, subject to approval by the same. This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell the Notes nor a solicitation of an offer to buy the Notes, nor shall any offer or sale of these Notes take place in any state or jurisdiction in which such offering is prohibited under the securities laws of that state or jurisdiction. About BRF BRF is a sociedade anonima (corporation) organized under the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil. Our principal executive offices are located at Av. das Nacoes Unidas, 8501 1st Floor, Pinheiros, 05425-070, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil, and our telephone number at this address is +55-11-2322-5000/5355/5048. BRF S.A. Investor Relations Department Av. Nacoes Unidas, 8,501, 1st floor 05425-070 Sao Paulo SP Brasil Tel.: 11 2322-5377 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE BRF Related Links https://www.brf-global.com/en Talks to form a new government in Lebanon have broken down despite a Tuesday deadline agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron. Lebanese politician Fouad Makhzoumi has accused the ruling elite of reverting to their sectarian habits. French efforts to set Lebanon on a new course after decades of looked in jeopardy on Tuesday as the countrys leaders failed to deliver on a promise to form a new government. Talks have hit a snag over who should run the all-important finance ministry, which would play a central role in salvaging the economy after last months massive port blast. The French 15-September deadline was always going to be tricky given that it usually takes months to form a government. Lebanese independent MP Fouad Makhzoumi says a lack of willpower has slowed talks down. President Macron came with a very clear idea that 'I would like to help you,' he said, referring to the French leaders two official visits to Lebanon in less than a month. Unfortunately, the Lebanese people have learnt how to play the masquerade party. They smiled, they agreed, they did everything. But then all of a sudden, we see they're back to their old routine, he told RFI. Old habits Thanks to Lebanons confessional system, the country remains dependent on a handful of sectarian leaders who divide and share spoils among themselves. If youre a Sunni, you have to go to Saad Hariri, if youre a Shiite you have to go to Hezbollah, if youre a Maronite (Christian) you have to go to this, says the independent lawmaker, who heads Lebanon's National Dialogue party. But lets not kid ourselves. Every prime minister, general or judge since 2005 has been appointed by Hezbollah. They run the government. Lebanons designated prime minister Mustafa Adib, appointed ahead of Macrons second visit at the end of August, is reportedly seeking a rotation of leadership in key ministries to implement crucial reforms demanded by France. But a shakeup could threaten the parties hold over them. Story continues Makhzoumi claims that Lebanons top political parties, including the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) founded by President Michel Aoun, the Amal movement of parliament speaker Nabih Berri and the Future Movement, headed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, are reverting to their old sectarian habits to resist change. They have no intention of eliminating the sectarian divide. Without that system, whereby the Shiites hate the Sunnis, the Sunnis hate the Druze and so forth, they cannot win. End of the line That system today has reached its limits, he believes. It was fine when we didnt know we were bankrupt. Because like everywhere else in the world politics came second. But when you start realising that this group stole our money, because of their corruption, because of their negligence, people are saying, 'Hold on, this does not work anymore.' Since last October, the Lebanese people have taken to the streets of Beirut demanding an end to government corruption, rekindled by the 4 August port blast that was blamed on government negligence. We need an international investigation for what happened at the port. I don't trust the judicial system. Once we do that, there will be a lot of big names that are going to be exposed and they will have to be put on trial, says Makhzoumi. Last week, the US administration blacklisted two former government ministers it accused of enabling Iran-backed Hezbollah, which Washington accuses of acquiring weapons. Makhzoumi says sanctions are the only way to scare the hell out of Lebanons ruling class to make them realise that the international community no longer has time for games. Fight against corruption Macron, who has been the highest-profile foreign advocate of a recovery programme for Beirut has made international aid conditional on reform. I think President Macron is genuinely trying to help, comments Makhzoumi amid criticism that France is trying to reconquer its former protectorate. Historically, we have a good relationship with France. Unfortunately, the politicians that France was used to dealing with were all crooks. The independent MP, who also runs prestigious pipeline company Future Pipe Industries, has himself come under scrutiny for allegations of corruption. In 2017, Makhzoumi was accused of paying former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon 45,000 euros to benefit from his prestigious black book, giving him access to meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and oil giant Totals boss Patrick Pouyanne. The agreement with Mr Fillon was a consultancy agreement. It was recorded in our books. Whether he reports it or not it is not my business to decide," retorts the businessman. "This was done in Europe, in France and it was public. There was nothing called a payment because it was a contract, he insists, eager to keep the focus squarely on corruption in Lebanon. US-France coordination He has urged Macron to work with the US to put pressure on Lebanons political class to form a cabinet quickly. I think the Americans and the French have to work hand in hand. Currently the two allies differ in their approach to Hezbollah, which Washington sees as a terrorist group but which Paris maintains should play a role in the countrys future, or in its elected institutions at least. I think with the pressure the Americans can put on the region and on Lebanon and the diplomacy of France, I think we might have a good chance of moving towards a better Lebanon, Makhzoumi said. What is Bitcoin? (TNS) Somewhere among the hundreds of supporters who have contributed a stunning $1.1 million to the congressional campaign of self-proclaimed Islamophobe Laura Loomer are the donors backing the 27-year-old newcomer not with dollars but with a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Until recently, digital assets like Bitcoins were the preferred currency of far-right conservatives and die-hard libertarians. The attraction? Cryptocurrencies provide anonymity and the opportunity to snub banks and governments, which have no power over cryptocurrencies because they do not recognize them as legal tender.The option to contribute to campaigns using Bitcoin has been primarily offered by candidates, like Loomer, who appealed to the Libertarian and far-right demographic."Bitcoin promotes financial freedom," said Loomer, who said she owns cryptocurrency. "We are telling the old power structure that we dont need them anymore. We pave our own destiny financially, intellectually and with speech freedoms."But with more fringe candidates stepping into the political arena this election cycle and mainstream, tech-savvy candidates wanting to appear hip to the crypto crowd, donations via the controversial currency are now being accepted by candidates on both sides of the aisle.Democratic presidential hopefuls Andrew Yang and California U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell both accepted Bitcoin contributions before they each dropped out of the race. The campaign of Minnesota U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer , chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus , is also accepting cryptocurrency contributions."Embracing cryptocurrency signals to those who hold it that your campaign is open-minded, forward-thinking, and up to speed on how consumers are transacting in their daily lives," said Perianne Boring, founder and chairman of the Chamber of Digital Commerce . "It also demonstrates a strong commitment to innovation and its impact on the economy, national security and American leadership."Others see cryptocurrency donations as a political stunt and a tool that makes it easier for bad actors to do an end run around campaign finance laws.I see Bitcoin often as more of a gimmick, said Daniel Weiner, the deputy director of election reform at the Brennan Center for Justice . "The danger with Bitcoin in this realm is that it is essentially designed for anonymity and when we talk about campaign contributions the most important thing is they be disclosed."The U.S. Department of the Treasury this month sanctioned three employees of the Russian troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, for their support of the IRA's cryptocurrency accounts. The IRA uses cryptocurrency to sow discord between political parties as part of Moscows broader efforts to undermine democratic countries and institutions, according to the department.Bitcoin was invented in 2009 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency is strictly digital and has no physical form no coins or bills. It also is not regulated by any financial institution or government meaning transactions are made peer-to-peer, also known as P2P, without going through a third party, like a bank or payment processor such as Paypal.Users of Bitcoin dont identify themselves with their real names. Instead, they use Bitcoin addresses, seemingly random strings of numbers and letters, and pseudonyms. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public, digital ledger called a blockchain.Despite there being a verified record of the transaction in the blockchain, the parties can remain anonymous because they are identified only by their Bitcoin address or pseudonym in the blockchain. No bank, payment processors or government agency has a record of the transaction.That has made Bitcoin donations popular not only with libertarians who oppose any government interference in their lives but also money launderers, fraudsters and foreign political operatives seeking to covertly dump illegal amounts of cash into campaign coffers.Recognizing Bitcoins potential for fraud in campaigns, and that cryptocurrency donations cannot be easily inspected by the public, the Federal Elections Commission issued an advisory opinion in 2014 with instructions on reporting cryptocurrency donations.Under the opinion, cryptocurrency donations must be reported as in-kind contributions, like reporting the value of pizzas that a donor purchases for a campaign event. But while the value of the donated pizza will not change, Bitcoin valuations can be wildly volatile.The value of a single bitcoin in March dropped to $5,800. By Sept. 15, a Bitcoin had a market value of $10,785. So, the fraction of a bitcoin donated today may be below the $2,800 individual contribution limit but above the limit on the day the campaign report is filed.The FEC addressed that problem by requiring bitcoin contributions be valued on the day they are given. Loomer said she avoids that dilemma by immediately converting all bitcoin donations to cash."I think there is a lot of fake news about Bitcoin," said Loomer. "It's disingenuous to say it's any different than accepting cash."Bitcoin donations can only be accepted after donors provide their names, addresses, employers and affirm that they own the bitcoins and that they are U.S. citizens. As with all donations, the campaign treasurer is responsible for ensuring transactions are legal and that when the contributions are added to others by the same donor, do not exceed contribution limits."There is little difference in the fraud risk of accepting cryptocurrency versus the risk of accepting credit card donations online," said Boring. As for fraud concerns, 15 percent of adults in the U.S. own some form of cryptocurrency and at least one-third of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses accept cryptocurrency as payment, Boring said.Just because a donor uses Bitcoin rather than cash does not mean the donor is trying to hide something, Boring added."Many donors prefer to donate cryptocurrency because they want to support the growth of cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange and transfer," Boring said. "Cryptocurrency holders are passionate about this emerging technology and they are eager to support and encourage candidates who accept cryptocurrencies."Loomer said she got interested in cryptocurrency several years ago. That was about the time she was kicked off Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Lyft, Medium and other sites and services for her use of hate speech. Loomer also lost the ability to transfer money when third party money processsors, like PayPal, GoFundMe and Venmo also banned her."I'm proud I am one of the only candidates in the nation that accepts bitcoin donations," said Loomer, the Republican candidate challenging the longtime Democratic incumbent, Lois Frankel Loomer said she had not received many bitcoin contributions but she did not respond to a request for information about the number and amount of Bitcoin donations that her campaign has collected.Campaign finance rules require donors be identified only if their cumulative donations to a candidate exceed $200. Most of Loomer's donations fall into that category. While some candidates identify all donors regardless how small the donation, Loomer has chosen not to do so.How widespread cryptocurrency donations are in federal and state races across the country is hard to calculate. An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity published in 2018 found 20 candidates running for all levels of office who solicited or had received cryptocurrency donations.The Center for Public Integrity found federal election records revealed eight candidates who had raised cryptocurrency contributions worth at least $550,000 since 2014.The cryptocurrency rules that apply to candidates for federal offices do not necessarily apply to candidates in state races. According to the Center for Public Integrity, in 2018, at least eight states and the District of Columbia have created their own limitations or added instructions about cryptocurrency donations in their election manuals. At least seven others state have banned cryptocurrency contributions altogether.As for Florida, there is no mention of cryptocurrency transactions in campaign manuals or the statute governing campaigns. The state Division of Elections did not respond to repeated requests about whether Florida regulates cryptocurrency use in campaigns.Whether cryptocurrency transactions in campaigns is a fad or the future of fundraising has yet to be determined. Among the biggest hurdles is the hassle of converting crytocurrency donations to dollars a process that requires documentation and a payment processing fee or transfer fee, said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, DC."TV stations are not going to take bitcoin for ad buys," said Libowitz, adding that he has not seen major donors switching to Bitcoin. "Campaigns like being simple and this is complicated." (Natural News) Those who line up to get injected with Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines this fall can expect to have their entire vaccination history permanently stored on some government server somewhere, thanks to the invisible quantum dot tattoos that Bill Gates is ensuring will be quietly embedded within them. A special dye containing nanocrystal quantum dots has reportedly been funded by Gates for inclusion into the jabs, emitting near-infrared light that can be detected using a specially equipped smartphone. These quantum dots can supposedly persist for five years under the skin, which presumably has to be replaced with a new injection for another five years of stored vaccination history. Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Gates funding, these new tattoos silently store peoples health records without them even knowing it, a Mark of the Beast type of technological system that aligns with key provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. This technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated, stated Kevin McHugh, a former MIT postdoc who now works as an assistant professor of biotechnology at Rice University in Houston. A new study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine explains how the technology utilizes copper to make the medical records on-patient, meaning inside their bodies and still readable by scanning devices that can detect near-infrared spectrum light. The dots are only about 4 nanometers in diameter, but they are encapsulated in biocompatible microparticles that form spheres about 20 microns in diameter, reports Great Game India. This encapsulation allows the dye to remain in place, hidden under the skin, after being injected along with a vaccine. Is the Mark of the Beast coming through Operation Warp Speed? The way this dye is delivered is through a microneedle patch rather than a traditional syringe and needle. Like its name suggests, the microneedle patch contains a patchwork of microneedles that, when affixed to the skin, injects the venom with minimal pain or invasion. The microneedle patch also dissolves on its own, its constituents being a mixture of simple sugar and a special polymer known as PVA. So once the job is done, it basically disappears with no visible waste, making it sustainable in the eyes of Gates and his supporters. All of this is a dream come true for Gates, who seems to have been waiting his entire life for this moment to unleash what amounts to tracking chips for the human cattle of the world all disguised as a vaccine, of course. How this all ties into President Trumps Operation Warp Speed (OWS) program for fast-tracked Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines remains to be seen. Will all of them contain the quantum dot tattoos being pushed by Gates, or will it just be some of them? Or will there even be any vaccines at all, as some believe OWS is a ruse and cover for some other unstated operation? Another point of concern is the Trust Stamp technology also funded with Bill Gates cash. The Trust Stamp is already being implemented by Mastercard and GAVI as a type of biometric digital identity program, which appears to directly coincide with quantum dot tattoo technology. The program said to evolve as you evolve is part of the Global War on Cash and has the potential dual use for the purposes of surveillance and predictive policing based on your vaccination history, reports further indicate. Those who may not wish to be vaccinated may be locked out of the system based on their trust score. More related news about the upcoming Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines and what they will do to humanity can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: GreatGameIndia.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com File image: Donald Trump at a campaign rally When the 45th President of the United States arrived in India for his maiden visit in late-February, the COVID-19 pandemic had yet to rock the world, and, in fact, was still commonly known as the Wuhan Virus. That city in Chinas Hubei province had been under lockdown for a month at the time of Donald Trumps departure from Washington. If he was overly concerned with the potential devastation the Coronavirus could cause in the months ahead, he showed no signs of it as his speech at Ahmedabads Motera Stadium during the Namaste Trump event had no reference to the disease. Trump, though, was certainly aware by then of the possibility of a health calamity. According to excerpts from journalist Bob Woodwards book Rage, Trump told him during the course of a telephone interview that this was deadly stuff. As of the evening of September 15, the US has totalled 6.6 million cases and 195,000 deaths from COVID-19, more than a fifth of the global toll, easily making it the worst impacted country in the world. Trump knew of the menace nearly a month before his visit to India, as his National Security Advisor Robert OBrien had briefed him about the emerging threat on January 28, but, as Woodward writes, Trump wanted to always play it down. In a news conference at the White House, Trump tried to explain himself in his typical bombastic style: Im not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength. Of course, the trajectory of the pandemic was unpredictable and remains so since its onset, a problem compounded by Chinas concealment of critical facts that if revealed in time, may have controlled its spread, and by the World Health Organizations criminal misdirection amid ignoring warnings from Taiwan. Those facts will be wielded by Trump in his defence as he faces an onslaught over his nonchalance in the face of an impending catastrophe. Not only were his actions wanting initially, so was his personal demeanour refusing to set an example by wearing a mask, for instance. Such disregard to a first line of defence against the virus continues as he regularly castigates reporters at White House news conferences if they ask questions wearing such protection. Less than two months before the US presidential elections, the massive body count in the US coupled with the information now being made public, would have ordinarily crippled a campaign. The question, however, is whether his rival, Democrat Joe Biden, can take advantage of the opening. Trump has already pointed out that leading members of Bidens party including Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Commons, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, played down the threat of the Coronavirus as well, and even opposed him when he shut down flights from China and parts of Europe. There is also the real possibility that the Trump administration will place pressure on pharma companies to rush out a vaccine, possibly even just prior to the election on November 3. Bidens running mate Kamala Harris has already warned of the risks of such a move driven by political calculation rather than sound medical judgement. In return, she has been tarred an anti-vaxxer as Trump keeps tom-tomming Operation Warp Speed, the effort to counter the Coronavirus quickly, which has already seen nearly seven months of futility. What Harris actually said was that she would not trust Donald Trump, and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about. Trump, however, promptly called upon Biden and Harris to immediately apologize for the reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric that they are talking right now, talking about endangering lives. Attack has always been Trumps favourite ploy when found floundering. That strategy has worked since 2015, when he first entered the Republican Party primaries, and he has indeed appeared immune to issues that would have sunk another politician. Hence the label Teflon Don. However, the daily reminder of COVID-19s impact will be a different kind of challenge. After all, this isnt like any another controversy that fades in the wake of a worse one day later. Teflon may be non-stick and protect Trump from any mud-slinging, but theres no evidence that its virus-proof. Seabourn, the ultra-luxury resort at sea, is offering an unforgettable journey around the globe with its 2022 World Cruise: Extraordinary Horizons, a 145-day voyage on Seabourn Sojourn, visiting 72 extraordinary destinations and ports in 28 countries on five continents. The ultra-luxury Seabourn Sojourn will depart Los Angeles on January 11, 2022, and travel westbound, visiting Hawaii, the islands of the South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, a number of destinations in Asia, Arabia, Africa, before ending in Athens, Greece, on June 6, 2022. Among the notable highlights is Seabourns return to Egypt since 2014, with an overnight visit scheduled for Safaga (Luxor), as well as a stop at Sharm el-Sheikh. The 2022 World Cruise is now open for sale, and the entire itinerary is available on Seabourns website. Our 2022 World Cruise promises to be an extraordinary journey across the world, whether guests take the full world cruise or join us on one of the many segments, they will visit many of the worlds most prized destinations and immerse themselves in diverse cultures, said Josh Leibowitz, President of Seabourn. With so many of us limited on travel this year, booking a Seabourn world cruise for 2022 offers a much-needed extraordinary experience to look forward to and chance to explore the world around us. Seabourn Sojourn will call at 72 ports and destinations in 28 countries throughout the course of the sailing, featuring a combination of visits to popular marquee ports, cosmopolitan cities and smaller hidden gems. The voyage will include 20 overnights and linger late into the evening in 21 ports, offering guests ample opportunities to explore these fascinating destinations in depth. There will be three exclusive world cruise events planned for guests booked on the full 145-day voyage, as well as local shows, regional cuisines, and palate-pleasing wines for all guests to enjoy as they sail around the globe. In addition, the World Cruise will include two of the lines most popular signature events available to all guests on a complimentary basis: Caviar in the Surf beach barbecue at Ko Kood, Thailand; and Evening at Ephesus at Kusadasi, Turkey, featuring a private classical concert in the ancient ruins under the stars. A sampling of destination highlights includes: Sydney, The Great Barrier Reef and Queensland Coast - Try sand-tobogganing on the worlds tallest dune, and marvel at the blue-white beauty of the breathtaking Whitsunday Islands. Two days in Cairns highlight the ships exploration of Queenslands coast with awe-inspiring UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and the primeval rain forests of Daintree National Park. Darwin in the Northern Territory provides two days of WWII history, jumping saltwater crocodiles and timeless Aboriginal culture. Marvels of Japan, Korea and China - Discover the sun-swept islands of Japans Caribbean - Amami-ringed with coral reefs and Okinawas ancient Shureimon Gate, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Take in Kagoshimas picturesque skyline, dominated by snowcapped Sakurajima volcano, and contemplate Hiroshimas poignant Memorial Peace Park. Overnight stays in bustling Busan, South Korea, and Nagasaki, Japan, provide a memorable crescendo to three full days in Chinas luminous Yangtze River showplace Shanghai. Southeast Asian Treasures - Zhujiajians bridges preserve a medieval Chinese character now hidden in enclaves among Hong Kongs towering skyscrapers. An overnight stay in Vietnams Halong Bay invites guests to absorb its ethereal beauty at every hour. Seabourn Sojourn sails right up the Saigon River to the heart of fascinating Ho Chi Minh City. Ko Koods unspoiled, white sand beach is the ideal setting for the lines extravagant Caviar in the Surf beach barbecue, with complimentary watersports. Egypt, Petra and the Suez Canal - The two-day visit at Safaga provides guests with ample time to explore Luxors immense sculptural colonnades and avenues, tour the temples of Luxor and Karnak with its vast Hypostyle Hall of carved lotus columns, and much more. Later, from Aqaba, discover the long-lost Nabatean city of Petra carved into the walls of a natural canyon fortress. The Holy Land and Aegean Empires - Few places integrate antiquities with a modern, cosmopolitan outlook better than Israel. The two-day stay at Haifa is filled with Unesco World Heritage landmarks of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Judea and Galilee, as well as the Bauhaus White City, colourful markets and seaside promenades of Tel Aviv. Complete your epic Seabourn Sojourn voyage tracing the roots of European history from Minoan Bronze-age Crete to the marble streets of Ephesus and onward to the sophisticated symmetry of the Parthenon standing high atop modern Athens. The line is planning an array of optional shore excursions in more than 25 ports with designated Unesco World Heritage Sites thanks to its unique partnership with Unesco. The world cruise will also feature a number of optional, mid-voyage overland excursions where guests will disembark at one port and rejoin the ship at another port, providing them with a more in-depth experience at certain destinations and sites such as the Luxor & the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, outback adventures in Australia, the magnificent Taj Mahal in India, Unesco World Heritage sites in China and Cambodia, and more. Also available are optional Seabourn Journeys, offering guests an immersive longer pre- and post-cruise land-based excursion to and from select destinations such as Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney. For guests who book the full 145-day voyage, they will receive a value-packed menu of complimentary benefits and amenities, including: Gala Bon Voyage dinner and overnight hotel stay at the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey prior to departure in Los Angeles; Three exclusive World Cruise events; Exclusive World Cruise Presidents event; and Special World Cruise pillow gifts. For guests who book the full 145-day voyage by May 31, 2021, they will receive the above amenities, as well as the following additional benefits: Roundtrip Business Class Airfare; $2,000 shipboard credit per person for Oceanview and Veranda suites; $3,000 shipboard credit per person for Penthouse and Premium suites; Unlimited Internet package Private car transfers door-to-door between home and airport; Personal Valet luggage shipping service between home and ship in Los Angeles and Athens, Greece Unlimited laundry, dry cleaning and pressing on board Visa package (US and Canadian citizens only) 50 percent reduced deposit (US/CAD/AUS markets only) In addition, the line is offering a special five percent discount for repeat full World Cruise guests. Certain restrictions apply. For guests who cannot sail on the entire 145-day voyage, shorter segments ranging from 22 to 89 days are also available. Guests who book either the full world cruise or segments and pay in full by May 31, 2021, will receive an additional 3 percent savings off the cruise-only fare. Guests who book and pay in full by November 10, 2020 will receive a 6 percent savings off the cruise-only fare. Certain restrictions apply, said the line. - TradeArabia News Service Kolkata: Idols of Goddess Durga being prepared at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: Idols of Goddess Durga being prepared at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: Idols of Goddess Durga being prepared at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: An artiste busy painting an idol of Goddess Durga at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: An artiste busy painting an idol of Goddess Durga at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: An artiste busy painting an idol of Goddess Durga at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: Idols of Goddess Durga being prepared at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata: Idols of Goddess Durga being prepared at a Kumartuli workshop on Mahalaya - the day when the goddess Durga is believed to have descended to Earth - in Kolkata on Sep 17, 2020. (Photo: Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS) Image Source: IANS News Kolkata, Sep 17 : It has been an age-old tradition for artisans of Kolkata's century old potter's town Kumartuli to draw the eyes of Goddess Durga on Mahalaya, as a part of their final touch to the process of idol-making. This year, the scene was completely different at Kumartuli located in the crumbling neighbourhood of north Kolkata. Most of the studios wore a deserted look with half-done Durga idols and many of them still remained as mere bamboo structures. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, the vintage art district of this bustling eastern metropolis is reeling under a severe financial crunch and few orders for Durga idols from various puja committees. "The rituals to draw the eyes of Goddess Durga couldn't be performed this year on Mahalaya as most of the idols were not ready. Many of the puja organisers have still not booked their idols and sent an advance," said Kumartuli artisan Chaina Pal, adding that if they do not receive an advance payment and booking how would they finish the idols on time. Pal said that unlike every year, this time the festival would be held after more than one month from the day of Mahalaya. "That also made all the artisans and organisers go slow on the preparation," she said. Sources at Kumartuli said that only a few idols, those which are made of fibre or which will travel to remote corners of the country from Kumartuli, have been given the finishing touches so far. The rest are still in an unfinished state. Since the budget for Durga Puja has been slashed by organisers from across platforms, the artisans of Kumartuli also had to make heavy compromises on the pricing, size and volume of the Goddess to make them fit into tiny budgets. Interestingly, the traditional family pujas of Kolkata also made certain changes in their annual celebration. According to sources in Kolkata's Daw family, this year their Durga idol would be smaller in size than the previous year. They said that even the dhakis would be brought in from their villages two weeks before the five-day festivity actually starts. "The decision to bring the dhakis home two weeks before the festival was taken keeping in mind the Covid safety issue. They will be quarantined for two weeks," a family member said, adding that no outsider would be allowed to participate in their family puja this year. "Only close family members, those who are directly involved in the puja, will be there this year," she said. Sources at Kolkata's famous Shobhabazar Raj Bari said that they would also not allow any outsider to participate in their family puja as part of Covid-19 safe measures. The family is now mulling to show their puja live virtually on the social media. Latest updates on Navratri Festival 2020 By Jethro Ibileke As countdown to the zero hour for the Edo State governorship election continues to tick, gladiators in the election are ready for the final showdown that will climax in the emergence of the governor-elect. Nick-named The Heart Beat of the Nation, Edo State was created on August 27, 1991, when the then Bendel State was split into Edo and Delta States. It occupies a very strategic location in the physical and political arrangement of the country. Located in the South-South Region of Nigeria, Edo State covers a total area of 17,802 km2 (6,873 sq ml), ranks 22nd largest of the 36 states in Nigeria, with a population of 3,233,366 (2006 census, now estimated to be five million in 2014). Till date, Edo State has been governed by five military administrators and four democratically elected governors. Below is the profile of previous governors: 1. Col John Ewerekumoh Yeri This army officer was the pioneer governor of Edo State. He served as Governor of Bendel State between 1990 and 1991, and then continued as governor of Edo State until January 1992 after Bendel State was split into Edo State and Delta State. He handed over to Chief John Odigie Oyegun who was elected governor in 1992. During his tenure, the administration made some investment in improving the roads of the state. 2. John Odigie Oyegun John Odigie Oyegun is the first executive governor of Edo State. Born on 12 August 1939, in Warri, Delta State, to an Edo father and Urhobo mother from Agbarha Ughelli, Oyegun attended St. Patricks College, Asaba, from where he proceeded to the University of Ibadan where he obtained a bachelors degree in Economics. He later served in various capacities as a federal civil servant working as a development planner. Oyegun was elected as civilian governor of Edo State on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He served from January 1992 to November 1993, He was however removed in November, 1993, when the the late General Sani Abachas military junta sacked the civilian government after a military coup. Later, when General Abdusalam Abubakar restored the nation back to democracy in 1999, Oyegun again found his way back to politics and became a leader of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). 3. Col Mohammed Onuka Mohammed Abul-Salam Onuka was a Nigerian soldier who served as Military Administrator of Edo State between 9 December, 1993 and 14 September, 1994. He took over from the civilian governor, John Odigie Oyegun, after General Sani Abacha led a coup that overthrew the civilian government in 1993. Colonel Onuka who hailed from Okene in Kogi State, is first cousin to the present Governor of Kogi, Alhaji Yahaya Bello. His attempt to develop the tourism potential of the scenic area of Ososo, in Edo North, was truncated with the sudden end of the Abacha military government. 4. Group Captain Baba Adamu Iyam He served as Military Administrator of Edo State during the military regime of General Sani Abacha, from 14 September 1994 to 22 August 1996. He will be remembered for his inglorious commando-like format of government, during which he sacked 8,000 civil servants with a stroke of the pen. He also halted all grants to the State-owned University in February 1997, allegedly on the ground that government ought not to fund universities. He appointed a Sole Administrator for the university. 5. Navy Captain Anthony Onyearugbulem Born on 9 July, 1955, at Ikeduru, Imo State, Navy Captain Anthony Ibe Onyearugbulem was appointed Military Administrator of Edo State in August 1998. Being the last military governor, he handed over the reins of power to democratically elected governor, Chief Lucky Igbinedion on 29 May, 1999. He died on 26 July, 2002 at the age of 47. 6. Chief Lucky Igbinedion Lucky Nosakhare Igbinedion was born on 13 May 1957. He is the eldest son of billionaire business magnate, the Esama of the Kingdom of Benin kingdom, Sir (Chief) Gabriel Osawaru Igbinediin. He attended the University of Wyoming, Laramie and The Jackson State University, Mississippi, USA, where he bagged a BSc (Marketing) and an MBA in 1982 and 1983 respectively. His political career began in 1987 when he was elected chairman of Oredo local government area, a position he held till 1989. During his tenure as chairman, he chose not to be paid any salary by the council and was remunerated by his family business. Luckys achievements as Chairman of Oredo local government which included upgrading the facilities in Benin City, perhaps endeared him to the people of the state, resulting in his being election as Governor of Edo State in 1999 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He was subsequently re-elected in 2003 for another four-year term. During his term as governor, Lucky was elected by his colleagues as Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. Upon leaving office as governor in 2007, Lucky retired to his private business. He was later appointed Deputy Chancellor of Nigerias premier private university, Igbinedion University, Okada. 7. Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor succeeded Chief Lucky Igbinedion as governor of Edo State after contesting election on the platform of the PDP and was sworn-in on 29 May, 2007. The professor of law was born on 5 October, 1951, in Iruekpen, Esan West Local Government Area of the state. He attended P.T.T.C Demonstration Primary School, Igueben, from 1957 to 1962, then Anglican Grammar School Ujoelen Ekpoma from 1963 to 1968 and then obtained his sixth form at Holy Trinity Grammar School Sabongidaa-Ora Edo State. He studied law at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigerian Law School and the University of Warwick. Osunbor was elected Senator for Edo Central at the start of the Nigerian Fourth Republic, in 1999 and again in 2003, on the platform of the PDP. He served as chairman of several committees, and was nicknamed Attorney-General of the Senate by his colleagues. Osunbor later contested and was named governor of the state in 2007 on the platform of the PDP. He was however sacked from office by the State Election Petition Tribunal on 20 March, 2008, a decision later upheld by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court respectively, on 11 November, 2008. 8. Adams Oshiomhole Popularly known as Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, this former labour leader was sworn-in as governor of Edo State on 12 November, 2008. He altered the political calendar of the state from that of the country. Oshiomhole was born on 4 April 1952 at Iyamho, near Auchi in Etsako West Local GovernmentAarea. He was born Muslim but was later converted to Christianity by his late wife Clara. He was baptized as a Catholic in Kaduna by Rev. Father Matthew Kuka. He adopted the name, Eric at his baptism. He had his primary and secondary education at his village, Iyamho. After his secondary education, he relocated to Kaduna, where he got a job with the Arewa Textiles Company, where he was elected union secretary. He became a full-time trade union organizer in 1975. He then studied at Ruskin College, Oxford in the United Kingdom where he majored in economics and industrial relations. He also attended the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos. After democracy was restored in 1999, he became president of the Nigerian Labour Congress. Early in the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo he negotiated a 25 per cent wage increase for public sector workers. In April 2007, Adams Oshiomhole contested for governorship of Edo State on the Action Congress. Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was however declared the winner, a result the AC contested at the State Election Petition Tribunal. On 20 March 2008, an Edo State Election Tribunal nullified the election of Oserheimen Osunbor and declared Oshiomhole the winner. On 11 November, 2008, a Federal Appeal Court sitting in Benin City upheld the ruling of the states elections petitions tribunal, declaring Oshiomole the Governor of Edo State. In 2012, he was elected to a second term, winning the elections in a massive landslide. He ended his tenure on November 12 2016 9. Godwin Obaseki Mr. Godwin Obaseki, is the 10th governor of Edo State. He assumed office on 12 November, 2016. Born in Benin City, on 1 July, 1957, to late Pa. Roland Obaseki and Stella Osarhiere Gbinigie, Obaseki attended Eghosa Grammar School, Benin City, from where he proceeded University of Ibadan, where he studied Classics. He later studied at Columbia University and Pace University. Obaseki began his career as a stockbroker in 1983 with Capital Trust Brokers Limited, Lagos. He later transferred his services to the International Merchant Bank. He moved to AVC Funds Limited, Lagos, in 1988, where he served as a Project Manager. He later moved back to New York and worked as a Principal of Equatorial Finance Company, a Financial Advisory firm. He focused on Africa and provided Structured Trade Finance for African-related transactions. In 1995, Godwin Obaseki founded Afrinvest West Africa Limited (formerly Securities Transactions & Trust Company Limited (SecTrust), which has grown to become one of the most reputable investment banking and management firms in Nigeria. Before becoming the Edo State Governor, Obaseki served as Chairman of the Economic and Strategy Team. He pioneered a number of policy reforms that saw the state restructure its public finance, secure funding for infrastructure and improve the business environment to attract investment in power, agriculture and other critical sectors. Obaseki was also instrumental in attracting the Edo-Azura power project, with support from World Bank to the state. For seven years in the administration of Governor Adams Oshiomhole, he served as voluntary Chairman of the Edo State Economic and Strategy Team as well as Chairman of Tax Assessment Review Committee for Edo State Internal Revenue Service (TARC) and the Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), respectively. Pundits tagged him the Wake-and-See Governor, because he prefers working and delivering infrastructural projects without prior fanfare. He is currently seeking a re-election on the platform of the PDP after falling out with the APC. Share this post with your friends: Related College closures can create profound ripples that reverberate well beyond their doors, impacting local communities, and potentially derailing opportunities for economic advancement, said Shea ONeill, Vice President of Research at U3 Advisors. A new analysis of 2,300 universities identifies geographic hotspots for campus closures, highlighting the impact that these closures could have on the 124 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and all 50 states, and recommends strategies for institutions to avoid a closure crisis. As the well-documented crisis in higher education has accelerated due to Covid-19, the challenges facing Americas colleges for the last decade have been amplified, leaving hundreds of small colleges questioning their futures. The study, The Geography of Campus Closures & How to Avoid Them, conducted by U3 Advisors and brightspot strategy, tracks risk factors that focus on each universities competitive advantage and identifies best practices from colleges working to mitigate these risks. Findings show that almost a quarter of all universities, 560 schools, find themselves at serious risk for closure, with 40% of schools at greatest risk located in just six states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts. The geographic inequity of risk is particularly stark when comparing different metropolitan areas; the report highlights that potential college closures could impact a diverse set of metro regions including Detroit, MI; Columbia, SC; and Oklahoma City, OK, which could see more than 40% of colleges and universities shut down. College closures can create profound ripples that reverberate well beyond their doors, impacting local communities, and potentially derailing opportunities for economic advancement, said Shea ONeill, Vice President of Research at U3 Advisors. In the top ranked six states, the highest risk schools enroll just 22% of undergraduates, yet they enroll 40% of low-income undergraduates, and 50% of non-traditional learners (undergraduates over 25). College closures may in turn impact disproportionately low-income and diverse students, calling out larger questions of racial and economic equity. For example, even higher-performing metros will see unequal impacts among students of color: the Baltimore City MSA, ranked 73 nationally, shows that of the universities at risk, 46% are students of color. For the San Francisco-Oakland MSA, ranked 34 nationally, shows that of the universities at risk, 62% are students of color. Its tragic that campus closures will disproportionately impact low-income and non-traditional students, said Elliot Felix, Founder and CEO of brightspot strategy. In so many ways, colleges and universities were not designed for todays students who are first-gen, low-income, or adult learners. Now is the time for institutional redesign not just to meet these students needs but to stop a closure crisis before it starts. The analysis further provides innovative solutions, highlighting the importance of system-wide changes. These include broadening appeal, space and student service efficiency, monetizing real estate, alumni engagement, resilient online and hybrid programs, rethinking campus capacity, and program prioritization and focus. Some institutions may be able to control and mitigate their risk factors by applying these strategies. Other institutions may soon be forced to merge or close their doors, but can work to transition intentionally and productively. Now is the time for institutions to think ahead so that the decisions that will push colleges in one direction or another will not be made in isolation or in panic. The outcomes of these decisions affect not just students and staff, but communities, cities, and broader campaigns for racial and economic justice. So, every institution will need to take an unflattering look at enrollment, financial projections, and their operations. But given the tight relationships between supply and demand -- especially for smaller, regional colleges -- policymakers, educational consortia, and foundations also have the opportunity to engage from a collective standpoint to reimagine their programs, student services, real estate, and connections to local communities, industry partners, and each other. When one school is on the verge of closing, it requires individual action; when many schools are on the verge of closing within the same city or state it suggests a need for creative and collective action from institutional, civic, governmental, and philanthropic leaders, said Shea ONeill, Vice President of Research at U3 Advisors. The playbook for responding to the Great Recession shifting the financial burden from states to students and increasing international student enrollment were not sustainable and wont work again now, said Elliot Felix, Founder and CEO of brightspot strategy. Colleges and universities need a new playbook. By focusing their programs, improving the experience and efficiency of their spaces and student services, and better engaging their applicants, students, and, alums, institutions cannot just survive but thrive. Download the full report here. Download supporting data tables here. View interactive Tableau. To engage more, please contact Shea ONeill (soneill@u3advisors.com) or Elliot Felix (Elliot@brightspotstrategy.com) U3 Advisors is a consulting firm based in Philadelphia and New York that helps institutions advance bold visions, identify shared values, and take action to realize their goals for economic, physical, and cultural development. Learn more at: https://www.u3advisors.com/ brightspot strategy is a strategy consultancy on a mission to transform the higher education experience with smart strategy that better connects people, programs, and places on campus and online to increase student success, improve research support, and enable staff productivity. Learn more at: https://www.brightspotstrategy.com/ The New York City jogger who was attacked by a 'Karen' who threw a glass bottle at her and called her the n-word says she was the victim of a hate crime and is demanding justice. Tiffany Johnson, 37, was on a run at 53rd Place and Broadway in Woodside, Queens around noon on August 17 when she passed a corner and a woman threw a glass bottle at her feet unprovoked. The woman shouted, 'Get out of here n*****, go back to Africa,' according to video release by the NYPD on Wednesday. 'Its a hate crime. Its not acceptable. She has to be [held] responsible for her behavior,' Johnson said to the New York Post. New York City jogger Tiffany Johnson, 37, who was harassed by a 'Karen' who threw a glass bottle at her and called her the n-word on August 17 is speaking out and says she was victim of a hate crime The August 17 attack was caught on video. The suspect behind the attack pictured above sipping from a glass bottle at the corner of 53rd Place and Broadway in Woodside, Queens As Johnson approached the corner the suspect suddenly threw the bottle at her feet and yelled 'Go back to Africa, n****r', police say The woman threw the glass bottle and it shattered on the ground near the jogger's foot Johnson revealed she thought the woman had mistaken her for someone else, and didn't initially think the attack was racially motivated. But once the woman started to scream hateful insults at her, she realized it was because she is black. 'She could see the color of my skin and she reacted to that,' Johnson said. 'I was definitely shocked. I was surprised but more importantly I wanted to get away from her,' she added. In the clip Johnson is seen turning back confused and saying 'What is your problem?' when the woman berates her and then continues her run. Police are asking for the public's help in identifying the suspect The suspect then repeatedly screamed 'Get out, Go back to Africa, n****r!'. Johnson looked back and said, 'What is your problem?' before continuing her run 'Im entitled to go for a job, live my life, enjoy my life and enjoy the things that makes me happy,' she said. Johnson said she took the route of being the bigger person and leaving rather than arguing with the woman. 'Thats not on me. Thats a reflection on her. She needs to look at herself and figure out why she looks down on somebody,' she said. 'We are always trying to give reasons for what people do but I cant get into her head. I only know what she did, what she said and her actions,' she added. Johnson revealed she is happy police are on the hunt for her attacker a woman described as light-skinned in her 40s who appears to have a foreign accent. She is described as 5'5", has blue eyes, long blonde hair and was wearing a black tank top, white shorts, and dark sunglasses She is described as 5'5", has blue eyes, long blonde hair and was wearing a black tank top, white shorts, and dark sunglasses. 'Im glad the video surfaced so, hopefully, she wont do this to someone else. People shouldnt have to deal with that type of behavior,' Johnson said. 'I refused to and thats why I walked away nope, nope!' she added. Johnson did not report the incident at the time until a friend saw the witness video on social media. She told ABC7 she has not gone back to that neighborhood since the incident, but has received an outpouring of support from groups like Black Girls Run. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. Spanish speakers should call 1-888-577-4782. All calls will be kept confidential Participants of the regular meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) which was held in the format of videoconference on Wednesday, September 16, stated that the ceasefire regime in Donbas, introduced on July 27, 2020, was observed, despite some provocative attacks by illegal armed formations. "The Ukrainian delegation called for exhaustive measures to preserve the comprehensive regime of silence, in particular through the proper implementation of a package of additional measures to maintain the ceasefire regime," the presidential press service said. Head of the Ukrainian delegation Leonid Kravchuk expressed gratitude to the OSCE and its Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine for their mediation efforts aimed at resolving the international armed conflict in Donbas. "We have never questioned the OSCE mandate and we are against its transfer to anyone," he said. Particular attention was paid to the implementation of the agreements reached in Paris on December 2019 by the leaders of the Normandy format's member states on ensuring full and unconditional access of the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detainees. "The Ukrainian side provides such access in full, which is confirmed by reports on the work of international humanitarian organizations in Ukraine. Ukraine's position on the access of the ICRC to detainees in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, which must be ensured in the near future, has been clearly stated," he said. The TCG continued to discuss the issue of preparation for the next stage of mutual release of detainees under the all for all principle. The Ukrainian side reiterated that Ukrainians illegally detained in the temporarily occupied territories should be released immediately and without any political conditions. A man later identified as Gavaughn Gaquez Streeter-Hillerich participates in arson during a riot in Portland, Ore., on June 26, 2020. (ATF) Portland Man Faces 40 Years in Jail for Helping Set Fire to Police Precinct A 22-year-old Portland man faces up to four decades in jail on a federal arson charge for allegedly setting a police precinct on fire on June 26. Gavaughn Gaquez Streeter-Hillerich was charged this week with two counts of arson. According to a criminal complaint, the man was part of a group of demonstrators who gathered around the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct. An individual later identified as Streeter-Hillerich was seen intentionally setting a fire at an outside corner of the building, authorities said. The fire was set on top of a large garbage dumpster that had been flipped backwards and pushed up against the wall of the building where plywood had been affixed to windows to minimize damage and/or prevent break-ins from the ongoing civil unrest, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives wrote. Due to the fire, the building sustained damage in the form of peeling paint, soot deposition, burned plywood that was affixed to the window, and burn damage to the awning above. Officers used a fire extinguisher on the fire in an attempt to put it out. The smoldering fire was finally doused by firefighters using a hose. A crowd gathers around people committing arson during a riot in Portland, Ore., on June 26, 2020. (ATF) Damage to a retail store after a riot in Portland, Ore., in an undated photo. (ATF) The building not only houses the police precinct, but a number of private businesses. The part of the building that was damaged by the fire houses a retail store called Mid-K Beauty Supply No. 1. Video footage given to authorities by a private individual who chose to remain anonymous was used to identify the suspect. A tattoo on his arm helped authorities determine he was involved, as did a portion of the video that showed him not wearing a mask and vehicle records that led to a Facebook account he used under a fake name. Streeter-Hillerich tried to light the fire and, before it got going, moved a tire so the fire would burn faster, and tried to prevent an onlooker from extinguishing the flames, according to the complaint. Streeter-Hillerich told police officers that the original intent of the protest was to occupy the North Precinct. He also admitted that he ignited the dumpster and that he and others added flammable material to produce a more significant fire. The lighter he was using didnt work, he said, so another person ended up lighting the fire. He said he believed it would remain a controlled fire and was surprised when it spread, even though he knew people were pouring chemicals onto the flames they typically used to treat protesters wounds. Gavaughn Gaquez Streeter-Hillerich poses in an undated photograph, with the tattoo on his arm highlighted. (ATF) Streeter-Hillerich said he was angry that tear gas had been used against him. The complaint stated: He believed igniting the dumpster would assist him in controlling his anger and getting his anger out. When asked if he knew anyone else that was present at the fire, he advised some of the individuals were anarchists and a couple of people were leaders with the Rose City Justice organization. Rose City Justice describes itself as a black-led, community-born platform that mobilizes the public toward racial justice reform. No contact information for the group could be found. The public defender representing Streeter-Hillerich told The Epoch Times that he doesnt talk about clients cases with the media. The defendant was released pending further proceedings after appearing in court this week. In a speech at Hillsdale College Wednesday, Attorney General Bill Barr insulted career prosecutors at the Department of Justice while once again taking aim at the prosecutions arising out of the Russia investigation. Barr drew an analogy between career prosecutors and preschoolers, saying, Devolving all authority down to the most junior officials does not even make sense as a matter of basic management. Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but its no way to run a federal agency. The insulting comparison attracted the most attention. But his open disdain for his employees is not simply bad management. The comments are part of his broader argument that the political appointees at the Department of Justice should be making all the important decisions, not the career prosecutors. According to Barr, because he is appointed by the president, he is democratically accountable and so his decisions are more legitimate than the decisions of career prosecutors. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement This argument is very convenient for Barr personally. He has taken a lot of heat for interfering in the prosecutions of President Donald Trumps allies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, prompting career prosecutors to abruptly resign from the cases. Some have argued his involvement in those cases was highly inappropriate, if not corrupt. It appears that his actions are now the subject of an inspector general investigation. By crafting a vision of the DOJ in which only his decisions are legitimate, Barr can swat away questions about the career prosecutors who resigned in protest of his interference. Barrs Wednesday remarks included some not-even-thinly veiled criticism of the prosecutions arising from the Obama administrations investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election. He has appointed John Durham to investigate the origins of that investigation. Yet it appears that the attorney general is interfering in Durhams investigation as well, pressuring the prosecutors on that case to release a report before the presidential election. In his speech, he talked about the evils of independent counsel investigations and spoke about how prosecutors should not bring criminal charges for technical violation of the law and that sometimes they should recommend a lenient sentence. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Its remarkable that Barr compared his own subordinates to preschoolers after he tried to unwind a prosecution meant to be insulated from DOJ politics. Its also important to note that Barrs argument about political appointees is a radical departure from the prevailing federal norms. The Justice Department has, for decades, sought to insulate its decision-making from charges of partisanship or political influence. The George W. Bush administration had an enormous scandal because appointed U.S. attorneys were being pressured and fired over their decisions in individual cases. Within months after the scandal broke, a number of senior officials associated with the controversy had resigned, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. A grand jury was empaneled to consider criminal indictments against those involved in the controversy, and, although no charges were ultimately brought, the DOJ inspector general released a report saying that the firings were improper because they were politically motivated. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Barrs embrace of political prosecution does not appear to extend to local prosecutors. He has been quick to condemn so-called progressive prosecutors for refusing to prosecute various cases and for seeking sentences that are pathetically lenientthe types of decisions he praised in Wednesdays speech. He openly scorns these local prosecutors because they style themselves as social justice reformers. His argument for prosecutorial discretion and leniency in sentencing seems to be limited to people who have worked with Trump. Advertisement Advertisement Barr claims that because he has been appointed by the president, he has more democratic legitimacy and so he should make all important decisions. But the local prosecutors Barr is criticizing havent just been appointedthey have been directly elected by their communities. Those prosecutors ran for office on a platform of shrinking the criminal justice system, and their policies were ratified by votersso why arent their decisions entitled to the same deference that Barr claims for himself? The answer to that question is, unfortunately, all too clear: Barr doesnt actually believe in the principles that he espoused in this speech. His argument isnt really about democratic legitimacy or about the need for prosecutors to be more circumspect about filing criminal charges. Hes just looking for a way to justify his own personal behavior. And he doesnt care if he rejects DOJ policy, looks like a hypocrite, or even insults his own subordinates while he does that. Members of pro-Maratha outfits staged protests in Jalna, Pune Kolhapur on Thursday, demanding that the government take steps to continue reservation for the community in jobs and education. The recently passed an interim order staying implementation of 2018 law that granted reservation to the Maratha community. In Jalna, some activists of the Maratha Mahasangh shouted slogans of "Jai Bhavani Jai Shivaji" and "We want reservation", and blocked the way of state Health Minister Rajesh Tope when he came out of a function in Town Hall area. The police quickly intervened and detained three activists, an official said. In Kolhapur, members of various Maratha outfits staged a protest outside the Gokul Milk Union office and warned that they would not allow any milk tanker to go to Mumbai and Pune. Some protesting members were later detained by police, another official said. In Pune, members of the Maratha Kranti Morcha wearing black clothes and holding placards over their demands staged a protest outside the office of district Collector Rajesh Deshmukh and submitted a memorandum to him. "We handed over a memorandum to the district collector and demanded that the state government take all necessary legal steps to lift the ban on the reservation," the Maratha outfit's convener Rajendra Kondhare said. They also demanded that admissions of students from the Special Economically Backward Class (SEBC) done before the stay be secured and concessions granted to students from that category should continue, he said. They also demanded speedy justice in the Kopardi rape and murder case. A Class 9 student belonging to the Maratha community, was found brutally killed after being raped in July 2016 at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district. Three culprits, all Dalits, were awarded death sentence by a sessions court in Ahmednagar in November 2017. The sentence is yet to be confirmed by the Bombay High Court. (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.) As the accused man allegedly had two explicit text message conversations with what he thought was a 15-year-old boy, he was always wary about cops. According to an account in the Citizens Voice newspaper, the suspect, identified as Robert Lynn Henkel Jr., 54, was asked by the cop posing as the boy if he had a problem with the fictional boys age as they planned their meeting for sex. Henkel allegedly replied, As long as you arent a cop or working with the cops. And once again as Henkel allegedly made specific arrangement to meet the boy in a second text conversation Tuesday, he expressed reservations, according to the criminal complaint cited by the Citizens Voice: And just to ask again, when I come get you, Im not going to be met with cops or anything to get busted, right? You see news stories all the time about an adult getting busted by getting together with someone much younger than them, Henkel allegedly wrote. He was right to be wary. BREAKING: Pa. doctor faces federal charges for over-prescribing opioids for cash after 2 patients die Instead of a meeting between the suspect and a boy, Police in Kingston, Luzerne County, arrested Henkel. This, after Henkel, in two text conversations with what turned out to be Detective Stephen Gibson, described in explicit detail what he wanted to do with the fictional boy. In a police interview, Henkel allegedly admitted to Gibson and Detective Charles Balogh, of the Luzerne County District Attorneys Office, that he agreed to meet and have sex with the fictional boy. Henkel now faces seven felonies, including contact with a minor or a law enforcement officer posing as a minor for the purpose of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; criminal solicitation to commit aggravated indecent assault and other sexual crimes; and one misdemeanor charge of indecent assault. At last report, Henkel was unable to post $250,000 bail and was jailed at Luzerne County Correctional Facility to await a Sept. 29 preliminary hearing. READ MORE: Pa. man, 60, accused of sexually assaulting girl, 6: cops Pregnant woman extremely critical after being struck by stray bullet on Pa. street Pa. man, 78, shot son and wife in head, then himself: such a tragedy Black Lives Matter protesters accused of harassing diners at Pa. restaurants face charges Pa. high school football games attract big crowds despite COVID-19 limits: I dont know how they expect schools to stop it Couple dead, man injured, in shooting inside Pa. home - but cops are mum on details Pa. man accused of raping 12-year-old after posting her naked pictures online: cops 3 charged in shooting, killing of 1-year-old Pa. boy Job applicant at Pa. restaurant accused swiping tip jar right after applying Pa. man, 21, slapped with 88-year sentence for rape, sexual assault at his moms day care PUNE The members of various Maratha outfits held a protest at the district collectorate office on Thursday for reservation in education and employment even after an appeal by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray not to resort to agitation in the light of Covid-19 pandemic. Wearing black ribbons as a mark of protest, they later submitted a memorandum to district collector Rajesh Deshmukh. The protests continued even as the Pune police served notices to Maratha Kranti Morcha convenors. We handed over a memorandum to the district collector and demanded that the state government take all necessary legal steps to lift the ban on the reservation, said, Rajendra Kondhare, convenor, Maratha outfit. We also demanded that admissions of students from the Special Economically Backward Class (SEBC) done before the stay be secured and concessions granted to students from that category should continue, he said In Kolhapur, activists of Sakal Maratha Samaj staged protests for Maratha reservation while attempting to cut Pune and Mumbais milk supply. A large number of workers gathered in front of Gokul dairy to block tankers carrying milk for other cities through heavy police bandobast ensured vehicles left the milk distribution centre without any problem. The police detained some protesting members, said officials. Maratha Kranti Morcha members also held a protest in Jalna and Nanded while attempting to gherao ministers. In Jalna, some activists of the Maratha Mahasangh shouted slogans and blocked the way of state health minister Rajesh Tope when he came out of a function in Town Hall area. The police intervened and detained three activists, an official said The apex court on Wednesday stayed implementation of the Maratha quota law and referred petitions challenging the law to a larger constitution bench. BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- During these extraordinary times, more and more Americans are seeking to escape their homes and spend time in the great outdoors. Today, Marriott Bonvoy, Marriott International's travel program, announces its marketing partnership with the National Park Foundation (NPF), the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. The introduction of a dedicated travel planning website makes it simple for members to take advantage of discounted rates for stays at Marriott's 406 properties located near national parks, as well as the option to redeem points for America the Beautiful - The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Passes and to donate points to the NPF. The website will also provide travel tips and inspiration from Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, offering trip planning guides from local experts. To learn more about the National Park Foundation and Marriott Bonvoy marketing partnership visit https://hotel-deals.marriott.com/national-parks/. Drive-to vacations and getaways serve as a popular option for Americans looking to embark on local adventures. According to the National Park Foundation, most Americans live within 100 miles of a national park. With 419 national park sites in the United Statesand at least one national park in every stateMarriott Bonvoy members can plan a national park road trip earning points for stays at Marriott properties throughout their journey toward free nights for future trips and qualifying nights toward elite status. "In 1916, legislation creating the National Park Service was enacted. The noble vision behind the act has provided generations of Americans and visitors abroad the gift of experiencing our country's greatest treasures," said Brian King, Global Officer, Digital, Distribution, Revenue Strategy & Global Sales, Marriott International. "We are thrilled to offer Marriott Bonvoy members a convenient way to plan road trips and explore historical sites and national wonders with their friends and families with this one-of-a-kind travel partnership. The opportunity to experience breathtaking scenery in pristine wilderness settings while giving back to the National Park Foundation is invaluable and will help preserve parks for future adventure seekers." Examples of nearby Marriott properties near national parks include Springhill Suites Springdale Zion National Park in Utah and Courtyard Gatlinburg Downtown and Fairfield Inn & Suites Gatlinburg Downtown near Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Members can easily plan their national park getaways by visiting the website. From there, they can access travel-related articles from Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, book their desired property and receive the best member rates which start as low as $99 per night, redeem points for annual park passes and donate up to $500 worth of points to the National Park Foundation. Donations will help NPF in its mission to protect and enhance America's national parks for current and future generations. "National parks have something for everyone, and we can all play a role in helping to preserve them," said Stefanie Mathew, Senior Vice President of Corporate Partnerships at the National Park Foundation. "The National Park Foundation is thankful to Marriott Bonvoy for not only offering members a nearby place to rest their head after a day full of park adventures, but also the support to help ensure these treasured natural and cultural sites are protected now and into the future." America's national parks offer endless opportunities for enjoyment for everyone from first time visitors to experienced park enthusiasts. For the best experience possible, travelers should #RecreateResponsibly and plan ahead by visiting the National Park Service website. For travelers who are not members of Marriott Bonvoy but want to take advantage of the discounted member rates, Marriott Bonvoy is free and easy to join here. Members earn points when staying at any of the more than 7,400 participating hotels globally. They can redeem points toward free nights at Marriott International brands ranging from The Ritz-Carlton, The St. Regis, W Hotels, Marriott Hotels and Westin to Aloft, AC Hotels by Marriott, Courtyard and Residence Inn. In addition, members residing in the U.S. can accelerate the number of points they can earn and enjoy other benefits with co-branded credit cards from JPMorgan Chase and American Express. Members also achieve higher levels of elite status and benefits the more nights they stay at participating hotels. To learn more about the National Park Foundation and Marriott Bonvoy marketing partnership visit https://hotel-deals.marriott.com/national-parks/. To learn more and enroll in Marriott Bonvoy, visit https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/member-benefits/member.mi. About Marriott Bonvoy Marriott Bonvoy, Marriott International's travel program, comprises the company's portfolio of 30 hotel brands and home rental offering Homes & Villas by Marriott International. Members can earn and redeem points for stays and accelerate the points they earn with co-branded credit cards from JP Morgan Chase and American Express. The program offers exclusive member experiences and destination tours and adventures on Marriott Bonvoy Moments. When members book direct on Marriott.com they receive perks including free and enhanced Wi-Fi and exclusive member-only rates, and on the Marriott app they enjoy mobile check-in and checkout, Mobile Requests and, wherever available, Mobile Key. To enroll for free or for more information about Marriott Bonvoy, visit MarriottBonvoy.com. To download the Marriott app, go here. Travelers can also connect with Marriott Bonvoy on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. About The National Park Foundation The National Park Foundation is the official charity of America's national parks and nonprofit partner to the National Park Service. Chartered by Congress in 1967, the National Park Foundation raises private funds to help protect more than 84 million acres of national parks through critical conservation and preservation efforts and connect all Americans with their incomparable natural landscapes, vibrant culture, and rich history. Find out more and become a part of the national park community. SOURCE Marriott International, Inc. Related Links www.marriott.com A state appeals court has upheld the double-life prison sentence of a man who was convicted last year of killing a mother and her teenage daughter after firebombing their Adams County house more than 40 years ago. Abraham Cruz Jr., now 59, failed to convince a Superior Court panel that the county jury which convicted him of the murders of Nancy Patterson, 41, and Deborah Patterson, 17, shouldnt have been shown photographs of the victims' bodies. Cruz was apprehended in Puerto Rico in 2015 and charged with committing the slayings with three other men in Freedom Township on Aug. 30, 1980. Investigators said the men tossed Molotov cocktails made with gasoline and empty beer bottles into the Patterson home. They shot the mother and daughter as they fled the blaze. Nancy Patterson was shot in her yard and her daughter was killed as she tried to hide under a parked truck, Senior Judge John L. Musmanno noted in the state courts opinion. Keith Patterson, Nancys son, was charged with the slayings but was acquitted after a trial in 1981. Police didnt link Cruz and his uncle, Erasmo Cruz, to the killings until 2008, Musmanno wrote. Erasmo Cruz and another man charged in the case, Ruperto Garcia, pleaded guilty in 2014 and testified against Abraham Cruz. The fourth man police linked to the Adelberto Andujar, died before he could be charged. Abraham Cruz was 17 at the time of the murders. He claimed in his failed appeal that showing the two photos of the victims' corpses improperly inflamed the emotions of the jurors against him. Those photos were in black and white and were not close-ups, Musmanno noted. Neither photograph shows a close or clear depiction of the injuries to either body, he wrote. While it can be easily inferred from the context of the photographs that Nancy and Deborah are deceased, the trial courts determination that the photographs were not inflammatory is supported in the record. Musmanno also rejected Abraham Cruzs argument that a mistrial should have been declared on grounds that the prosecutor improperly elicited testimony from a former girlfriend of Cruz during the 2019 trial. Cruz claimed that questioning prejudiced the jurors by implying that Cruz had physically abused the woman during their relationship. The prosecutors questions and the womans answers would not have led the jurors to make such a conclusion, Musmanno found. Two Sheriffs Deputies Shot in Compton; Los Angeles County sets $100,000 Reward for Any Information Tuesday September 15, The County of Los Angeles has updated the community with critical news surrounding COVID-19. The County remains cautious as numbers reflect that the curve is flattening, and positive cases continue to decline. The Los Angeles Public Health department disclosed data reflecting stabilization in multiple state ordered benchmarks, which will result in the County having more opportunity to reopen. Public officials continue to stress the importance of a communal effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. There has been a significant increase in selfless acts among the community. With the pandemic creating extreme hardship in certain areas, Los Angeles has seen over 1,000 volunteers offer their time and a variety of businesses go above and beyond to answer their call to civic responsibility. Chairwoman Kathryn Barger stated, All of this is a testament, that the community is working together to weather this storm. Los Angeles is also experiencing turbulence amid residents and those sworn to protect them. Chairwoman Barger disclosed that two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies were ambushed and shot over the weekend. Supervisor Mark-Ridley Thomas and Barger are offering a $100,000 reward for any information leading to a capture of those who committed the violence. ADVERTISEMENT Barger stated, The events of this weekend has made it clear to me, that anti law enforcement rhetoric expressed by many elected officials, community leaders, and others has created a toxic environment amid the time of civil unrest. COVID-19 has casted a different light on the community, it has shown how extremely generous and mindful Los Angeles can be, but it also revealed an ugly truth of hate and treacherous acts are still lurking within the shadows in the County. Barger closed with instructions to be there for each other, and she urged residents to continue to strive to be a shoulder to lean on. Recent statistics were disclosed by Dr. Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles Public Health Director. The reports shown on Monday reflect 24 additional deaths, nine of these individuals were over the age of 80, six of them had underlining health conditions. Five people who died were between the ages of 65-79, four victims had preexisting health concerns. Ten individuals were between the ages of 50-64, and eight of them had underlining health problems. Two people who passed were between the ages of 30-49, all of them had previous medical issues. This brings the total COVID-19 related deaths in L.A. County to 6,231. There were 733 new COVID-19 reports. In summary, there is a total amount of 254,656 coronavirus cases in the Los Angeles region. 11,170 incidents were reported in the city of Long Beach and 2,476 cases in the city of Pasadena. The relationship between COVID-19 infection and ethnicity were provided. The racial background collected from 5,859 fatal cases showed 10% were African American, 15% were Asian, slightly less than 1% were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 51% were LatinX, 23% were White, and 1% identified as a different race or ethnicity. 92% of those who died due to COVID-19 had preexisting health concerns. Through these numbers, Ferrer confirmed the placement of Los Angeles reopening schools, grades k-12. There have been cohorts prototypes recently; opening campuses for in-person learning for selected groups of schools. These trial pods of students and faculty looks to find the safest social distancing procedures, while they are in-person school environment. Ferrer shared that they are still collecting information and will determine if these school cohorts will be the example of the future in-person educational experience. From loaning pandas to welcoming tourists to hike to sacred monuments, to regulating the sale of wild animals for meat, policies across the world seek to forge clear paths to sustainability. A group of sustainability scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) examined those policies and discovered they sometimes have more success than intended to achieve some of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet in some cases, those paths have created roadblocks and detours to success. The example of such unintended sidesteps is starkly illustrated in wildlife trading that provides economic benefits but has resulted in outbreaks of diseases that jump to humans, such as the current novel coronavirus. The work is published in this week's open-access journal Sustainability. "Today's world is extremely connected, and decisions are not created in a bubble," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, MSU Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability. "Our analysis has shown how important it is not just to look at the direct relationship between an action and a specific problem. It's crucial to look far and wide to see what else has been affected. Sometimes there are more wins. Sometimes, a problem solved in one place creates another elsewhere. We are learning the hard way how an action in one part of the world can have consequences thousands of miles away." The scientists looked at 22 cases of tourism and instances of wildlife being relocated for various reasons across six continents. They looked at these cases through the lens of metacoupling - a new framework that helps scientists examine an action from the perspective of human-nature interactions across space and time. In this paper, they lined up these cases with the 17 SDGs, adopted by world leaders from 193 countries and identify synergies - cases where success begat more success - or trade-offs, in which gaining ground in an SDG in one place meant losing ground on another SDG elsewhere. The scorecard: they found 33 synergies and 14 trade-offs among 10 SDGs within the systems between which tourism, trade or animal movement happened - and across spillover systems - the places between. Tourism accounts for one in 11 jobs worldwide (in the time frame of this study, before the pandemic) and is specifically called out in SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). They found in the 12 cases they studied that beyond SDG 8, tourism in protected areas enhanced or compromised other SDGs, including SDGs 2 (zero hunger), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 12 (responsible consumption and production), 14 (life below water), 15 (life on land) and 17 (partnerships) within focal systems, and 1 (no poverty). Examples of synergy can be found in Sagarmatha National Park of Nepal and Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, where tourism not only fulfilled SDG 8, but also contributed management funds for the parks - a win for SDG 15. But things were different in Peru's Machu Picchu, where the 900,000 visitors limited access for indigenous peoples and degradation of the site - a blow to SDG 12. Moving animals around by trade, as a method of conservation or animal management - can have great benefits or harms. When raccoons were moved from their Florida homes to West Virginia to boost the local population, an SDG 15 win, SDG 3's good health and wellbeing took a hit when the Florida coons brought rabies with them. The current pandemic is a dramatic call to better understand how the world works, and how to scrutinize actions for possible outcomes, according to the paper's first author Zhiqiang Zhao, who was a postdoctoral associate at MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). Liu is CSIS director. The trade of bats in China may not have seemed relevant to people in Europe or America, yet it shows us it's just one stark reminder that it both is critical to do better to pursue global sustainability and to make sure our good intentions continue to result in good," Zhao said. "We are following the flows and working to show ways to quickly see all sides of a story." ### Besides Liu and Zhao, "Metacoupled Tourism and Wildlife Translocations Affect Synergies and Trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals across Spillover Systems" was written by Meng Cai, Thomas Connor and Min Gon Chung. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and Michigan AgBIoResearch. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:06:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia will strengthen cooperation in supporting international anti-pandemic cooperation, setting an exemplar of major-country peaceful coexistence, enhancing cutting-edge technological innovations and safeguarding international justice and equity, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday. Wang attended a meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries in Moscow and visited Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia from Sept. 10 to 16. He and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, following face-to-face talks, have reached a series of important consensus on strengthening bilateral ties and dealing with international and regional challenges, Wang told Xinhua in an interview. On a joint statement by the two ministers, Wang said it has interpreted the common position of China and Russia on almost all international issues, showing the two countries have become the key stabilizers in the current international landscape. As the world is undergoing changes unseen in a century, accelerated by the onslaught of COVID-19, Wang said that in a bid to maintain and consolidate the sound development of China-Russia ties, the two ministers agreed to strengthen cooperation in four areas. First, the two countries will support international anti-pandemic cooperation, and in particular, support the World Health Organization in playing a coordinating role, support various countries in accelerating drug and vaccine research and development, and call for efforts to stop politicizing the pandemic and virus. Second, China and Russia will set an exemplar of major-country peaceful coexistence, and constructive major-country coordinative relations are indispensable to solve global problems. Third, the two sides will strengthen cutting-edge scientific and technological innovations. China and Russia have complementary advantages in science and technology, and will implement the projects of the Year of Scientific and Technological Innovation, improve applications of scientific and technological advances, promote two-way exchanges of talents, and encourage investment in high-tech, internet and other fields. Fourth, they will safeguard international justice and equity. China and Russia will firmly safeguard the core position of the United Nations in international affairs, defend international laws and the basic norms governing international relations, and actively reform and improve the global governance system. Noting such tests as certain country's unilateral bullying, wantonly interference in other countries' internal affairs, and containment and suppression of China and Russia, Wang said that the two countries' friendship is unbreakable and their strategic cooperation will not change due to the influence of the external environment. As the world is entering a period of turbulence and change, strong China-Russia relations are of more prominent significance in sustaining regional and world peace and security, according to Wang. China and Russia will unwaveringly develop future-oriented relations, and work with the international community to construct a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, equity, justice and win-win cooperation and build a community with a shared future for mankind, so as to make greater contributions to the cause of human peace and development, Wang said. Enditem She's not shy when it comes to flaunting her sensational figure. And on Thursday, Simone Holtznagel showed off her ample assets in a busty selfie while on-set at a racy beachside photo shoot. The 27-year-old stunner struggled to contain her cleavage in a clay-coloured string bikini top as she posed for the photo. Busting out! Model Simone Holtznagel struggled to contain her ample assets in a tiny bikini top during a racy beachside photo shoot on Thursday She teamed her raunchy display with a wide-brimmed straw hat, that sat on her wavy blonde tresses which cascaded down her shoulders. Simone's makeup was kept simple with a hint of pink on her pout and lashings of mascara. 'Sun safe is sexy,' she wrote in the caption of her Instagram post. The blonde beauty also shared a similar photo on her Instagram Story, showing off her many assets. Racy display! The stunner also shared a similar photo on her Instagram Story, showing off her ample assets Simone first shot to fame in 2011 after she placed second runner-up on Australia's Next Top Model. From there, the blonde bombshell landed her first Playboy cover in October 2015, covering 'The College Issue.' She has also featured in campaigns for Guess and Bras N Things. Cover girl! Simone first shot to fame in 2011 after she placed second runner-up on Australia's Next Top Model. From there, the blonde bombshell landed her first Playboy in October 2015, covering 'The College Issue' Simone, who hails from Sydney's Wollongong, recently relocated back to Australia after living in Los Angeles for her career. She appeared on the Australian version of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2018. Earlier this year, she starred on Channel Seven's First Dates, but failed to find love on the show. BOOK OF THE WEEK AGENT SONYA by Ben Macintyre (Viking 25, 416 pp) Her scones were the envy of the Oxfordshire hamlet of Great Rollright, where the friendly woman known as Mrs Burton lived in a stone farmhouse. In her late 30s, she moved there with her three children and husband Len just after the end of World War II. She had a faint foreign accent but the locals took no notice and she soon became a stalwart of village life. They were unaware of the massive secret she was hiding one that even now, 75 years later, had me reeling in amazement at the audacity and ingenuity it involved on her part. Ben Macintyre's book Agent Sonya tells the story of Soviet spy Colonel Ursula Kuczynski And the unforgivable treachery. Because, beneath the mask of respectability, Mrs Burton was really Colonel Ursula Kuczynski of the Red Army aka Agent Sonya, a dedicated communist, decorated Soviet intelligence officer and highly trained spy who had conducted espionage operations in China, Poland and Switzerland before coming to Britain on Moscow's orders. In Oxfordshire, she was very much on active duty. In the privy was a radio transmitter tuned to Soviet intelligence headquarters. Best-selling biographer Ben Macintyre reveals all this in the first 400 words of his book, Agent Sonya, confident of our amazed attention as he then spins gloriously through one of the most extraordinary private lives of the 20th century. She lived in Oxfordshire hamlet Great Rollright and was known as Mrs Burton. Pictured: The spy with her husband Len Burton Her scones were the envy of the Oxfordshire hamlet of Great Rollright Ursula, who died in 2000 aged 93, was a unique personification of the political and ideological conflicts of that turbulent century, from Kaiser Wilhelm to Vladimir Putin. Drawing on her own confessional autobiography, Macintyre paints a vivid picture of dedication, daring, passion, lust and, above all, subterfuge. For all her misguided convictions about the Soviet Union, hers was a life lived to the full, and more. Growing up in a family of Left-wing Jewish intellectuals in Berlin, Ursula committed herself to communism as a teenager, joining the party (whose paramilitary wing taught her to shoot) and being clubbed to the ground by police at a banned May Day demonstration. She had a faint foreign accent but the locals took no notice and she soon became a stalwart of village life. Pictured: Len (left) and Ursula as a younger woman She was a highly trained spy who had conducted espionage operations in China, Poland and Switzerland before coming to Britain on Moscow's orders. Pictured: her homemade Morse code tapper She married young, to Rudi, an architect, who took a job in Shanghai. It was there that Ursula was recruited and seduced by a Soviet agent, Richard Sorge, a charismatic womaniser later described by Bond author Ian Fleming as 'the most formidable spy in history'. Via his bed she was drawn into his espionage ring, while still with her unsuspecting husband and their newborn son. Her double life had begun. As for her motivation, Macintyre concludes she became a spy on ideological grounds, but also for herself, driven as she was by 'an extraordinary combination of ambition, romance and adventure'. Three times a week, while the children slept, she would transmit reports to Moscow, often about Britain's atomic bomb research. She would meet nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs in the Oxfordshire countryside She proved remarkably adept at living a lie. During one of many lengthy separations from Rudi, a husband so besotted he tolerated her infidelities, she went to Moscow for espionage training. Radio transmission became her speciality, but she was also taught how to blow up railway tracks. Moving to China, she was paired with a spy named Johann Patra. There her task was to supply communist insurgents: she would smuggle radio parts inside her little boy's teddy bear. Messages she couldn't put into code she would leave in a hollow tree root for 'Sergei' from the Russian Embassy to pick up. Pictured: A younger Ursula reads in a tree She and Patra became lovers and he fathered her second child. Her next assignment was in Poland, where she would collect reports from communist spies while pushing her new baby in a pram and then, at night, transmit them to Moscow on a radio hidden inside a gramophone. On the eve of war she was in Switzerland, planning to assassinate Hitler at his favourite Munich restaurant, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact. Her world turned upside down with an order from Moscow: 'Cease all activities against Germany.' She was mortified and also had a problem: she was in Switzerland on a German passport. She fled from England to East Berlin in 1950 when Fuchs was arrested and confessed to spying for the Communist regime In danger of being sent back to Germany and certain death at Nazi hands, she quickly divorced her husband and married a fellow spy, a working-class Englishman who'd fought in Spain. It was a marriage of convenience but she soon fell for handsome Len Burton, at 25 seven years younger. Her third child was born. Despite the misgivings of MI5 in London, which saw her as a potential security threat, her British passport was issued and, in 1941, she settled outside Oxford. When Hitler invaded Russia, she resumed working for Moscow and was promoted to colonel. Effortlessly she switched between her two identities. As Mrs Burton, she had a settled home, contented children and friendly neighbours. As Agent Sonya, she had a camera for producing microdots, a network of sub-agents and a radio transmitter in her bedroom cupboard. Three times a week, while the children slept, she would transmit reports to Moscow, often about Britain's atomic bomb research. Her source was the nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs, a leading member of the so-called 'Tubes Alloy' project, Britain's equivalent of America's Manhattan Project. She would meet him in the Oxfordshire countryside where he would hand over technical documents, drawings and blueprints, for her to copy and transmit. Those she couldn't put into code she would leave in a hollow tree root for 'Sergei' from the Russian Embassy to pick up. Fuchs, a German communist fugitive, believed it wrong for Britain and the U.S. not to share this world-changing nuclear knowledge with the Soviet Union, a supposed ally: passing over secrets was redressing an unfairness. Once behind the safety of the Iron Curtain, she gave up the espionage game For Ursula, however, it was the spy's perfect cornucopia, the richest haul of secrets, much of it going directly onto Stalin's desk. Thanks to her and Fuchs, he would soon have his own nuclear bomb. Better still, he could keep the West, which planned to use theirs as a threat to keep him in check, guessing until Russia's first nuclear test in 1949. Here was the key that determined how the East-West power struggle would work out. And she was its sine qua non. AGENT SONYA by Ben Macintyre (Viking 25, 416 pp) Miraculously she was never caught, despite being watched, having her post intercepted and telephone tapped. She even bluffed her way through MI5 interviews. And when Fuchs was arrested and confessed to spying for the Soviet Union she was one jump ahead, fleeing the country with her children for East Berlin the day before his trial. Fuchs was jailed for 14 years in 1950. Once behind the safety of the Iron Curtain, she gave up the espionage game. Twenty years was enough, she told her Soviet bosses and, as a mark of her achievements, Ursula Burton was allowed to come in from the cold. Her loyalty to the lost cause of communism never wavered nor did her devotion to her children which, surprisingly given their disrupted childhoods, they returned. But that's another story. 'She lived several whole lives in one very long one,' Macintyre concludes, 'this woman of multiple names, numerous roles and many disguises'. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ardila Syakriah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17 2020 Indonesia has lost yet another senior government official to COVID-19 following the passing of the Jakarta administration's secretary Saefullah, who has spent the last 36 years of his life working for the capital. Saefullah died at age 56 from irreversible septic shock and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to COVID-19 at 12:55 p.m. on Wednesday at the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital (RSPAD) in Central Jakarta. The COVID-19 transmission led to a severe infection of his lung tissue and his whole bodily system, causing irreversible respiratory failure and inadequate oxygen absorption, according to details from the administration. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login By Trend NEQSOL Holding and companies within the holding continue to support projects to fight the coronavirus pandemic and mitigate its negative effects in line with their corporate social responsibility strategies. With an aim to support the healthcare system during the pandemic, NEQSOL Holding has financed the arrival of 26 foreign healthcare experts and doctors in Azerbaijan and their activities in the country. NEQSOL Holding has implemented various measures to support the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this year, various companies within the holding donated funds to the Coronavirus Response Fund, previously established in Azerbaijan. Besides, during the quarantine regime, the holding and the companies within the holding provided food assistance to low-income families in different regions of the country. One of the companies within the holding has allocated funds for the purchase of express test kits, which allow quickly detect coronavirus infection, as well as artificial respiration units and special equipment used at a building entrance to measure the temperature of a person at a distance. Also, together with the relevant government agencies, the company provided support to healthcare workers, as well as contributed to the creation of various services and online platforms to fight coronavirus and implemented other social projects. Taking care of the safety of employees, customers, and partners, NEQSOL Holding and the companies within the holding have been implementing since February a series of safety measures in their offices, production facilities, and customer service centers following the instructions of the Operations Headquarters. NEQSOL Holding will continue to take measures to support the fight against coronavirus in the country. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Rajesh Asnani By Express News Service JAIPUR: In a major verdict, a CBI court has ordered registration of a criminal case against former Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie, former Disinvestment secretary Pradeep Baijal, and three other people for alleged corruption involving the sale of the famous Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel in Rajasthan's Udaipur district in 2002. The court wants the hotel sale case to be reopened and has noted that the government-run hotel was sold at a huge loss to the exchequer under Arun Shourie's watch as Disinvestment Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. The special CBI judge PK Sharma also ordered that the hotel be handed over to the state government. Earlier, run by the Indian Tourism Development Corporation, the Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel was sold to the Bharat Hotels Limited, which now runs the Lalit Group of hotels, in 2002. The Hotel Laxmi Vilas was valued at over Rs 252 crores but was sold for a mere Rs 7.5 crores to the private group. A former royal property, Laxmi Vilas is a five-star hotel on the banks of the Fateh Sagar lake and is now called the Lalit Laxmi Vilas Palace. The judges orders came while hearing a closure report by the CBI in the case of alleged loss of Rs 244 crore to the government by the sale of the hotel. The CBI in its report in late 2019 said that there was "no evidence" in the 2002 case. "It is concluded that evidence worth launching prosecution was not found in the entire process of disinvestment of M/s Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel, Udaipur," the CBI had claimed. But the special court in Jodhpur rejected the CBI report and ordered further investigation. The court even criticised the CBI for presenting a closure report in the case. Prima facie, it appears that the then minister Arun Shourie and then secretary Pradeep Baijal misused their offices and caused a loss of Rs 244 crore to the central government in the deal, the court said. The CBI is a reputed agency of the country, closure report by it despite facts pointing towards criminality is a cause of concern, judge Sharma further remarked. According to the CBI's report, the disinvestment of the government-run luxury hotel "resulted in wrongful loss of about Rs 143.48 crore to the government and corresponding wrongful gain to the accused persons individually/jointly". But the agency in its report had pinned the blame on the valuation done by a private firm M/s Kanti Karamsey and company stating that the property was undervalued at Rs 7.85 crore and based on that faulty valuation, the reserve price for the hotel was fixed at Rs. 6.12 crore. The CBI had registered a case on source-based information in August 2014 on the basis of a preliminary enquiry which alleged that Pradeep Baijal had abused his position in the disinvestment of Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel. On the CBI's closure report filed in 2019, the Jodhpur court said: The unknown officers and private persons indulged in this conspiracy from 1999 to 2002 to cause loss of money to the government. The land was valued at Rs 45 per square yard. Even a spoon in the hotel would be costlier than that. Besides Arun Shourie and Pradeep Baijal, the three other people accused in the case are Ashish Guha, then MD of investment firm Lazard India Limited, Kantilal Karamsey, then Head of the valuation firm Kanti Karamsey & Co, and Jyotsna Suri, Chairperson, and MD of Bharat Hotels Limited. The court has ordered that they may all be booked under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and section 13 (1) D of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The court has also said that the accused should be summoned through arrest warrants. The CBI court has also directed the District Collector of Udaipur to take over the hotel immediately. We have enforced the courts order, said Udaipur collector Chetan Dewda. The sale of this prestigious property at such cheap rates had raised a furore in Udaipur right from the time of its sale in 2002. Its being said that the Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel may now be handed over to the Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation. More than 50 Syracuse businesses will get some help from the city to pay for coronavirus-related expenses such as masks, plexiglass shields and hand sanitizer. The Syracuse Industrial Development Agency announced this week it awarded 24 non-profits and 28 small businesses grants or loans to help cover costs of personal protective equipment and other gear to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. SIDA is doling out a total of $308,000 to the local businesses, which include retail, hospitality, service, fitness and other industries. City officials said the agency received applications requesting more than $500,000. SIDA, which had originally committed $175,000 to the program, added another $133,000 in funding. The city advertised the program as primarily intended to help businesses and non-profits cover equipment and gear purchased to help prevent the spread of the virus, and meet state guidelines. Only businesses and non-profits with 50 or fewer employees could apply. Businesses applied for funds to purchase masks, shields, thermometers, plastic dividers, touchless faucets and air purification filters, city officials said in a press release. The mayor and head of SIDA noted these added expenses create a burden on small businesses that are essential to the local economy. The pandemic affects our lives every day, and it continues to take a steep toll on small businesses and non-profits, Mayor Ben Walsh said. Many are in jeopardy of closing their doors, which would be devastating to the City. SIDA was allowed to offer grants and loans directly to small businesses due to a change in state law, pushed by local legislators. Sen. Rachel May and Rep. Al Stirpe co-sponsored the legislation. Most of the funds went toward grants which will not need to be paid back. SIDA issued one loan, to the Volunteer Lawyers Project, a non-profit that provides legal assistance to people in need. The following businesses and non-profits received grants: AMC Painting Solutions LLC Anything But Beer Band Personal Care Protection Cellphone Expo Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation Chiodo Plumbing & Heating CNY Dental Arts PLLC Discovery Center (The MOST) Dunbar Center Force Funk 'N Waffles Gypsy Freedom Heritage Bread Company Housing Visions Huntington Family Center InterFaith Works of CNY J B Brady Inc. (Brady Systems) Lacis Ventures LLLC (Lacis Tapas Bar) Learning Disabilities of CNY (LAUNCH) LiteracyCNY M Lemp Jewelers Inc. Moms Diner Musical Associates of Central New York (Symphoria) MZHoque Enterprises NE Community Center Pamela McAlpine Partners in Learning Inc. Personal Fitness Programs Inc. Redhouse Arts Center Inc. Salt City Coffee LLC Samaritan Center Inc. Scratch Bakehouse Sky Armory Southside Fitness LLC SubCat Studios Surf City Enterprises of Syracuse Sweet Praxis Syracuse Center for Peace and Social Justice Syracuse Area Landmark Theatre Syracuse City Ballet Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union The Cora Foundation (Art Rage) The Reading Lounge The Westcott Inc. Volunteer Lawyers Project Westcott Community Center Yankel & Company Catering (Todays Special) Yvette Edwards Zip Networks Inc. 125 East Water Street LLC (The Evergreen) 500 West Onondaga Street, Inc. CNY BACK IN BUSINESS Cuomo to NY businesses still closed: Were not back to normal yet #LetTheMusicPlay: CNY-based group leads fight against Cuomos music restrictions Home sweet home: CNY bakers launch new businesses from their kitchens amidst pandemic In a rough year, a Syracuse tent company is suddenly a big man on campus Sign up for the Back In Business newsletter to get small business advice delivered to your email inbox Small business owners: Have a question or a story to share about how youre coping through the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent shutdown? We want to hear from you. Contact Back in Business reporter Julie McMahon: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992 Amid her rumored relationship with Hollywood star Brad Pitt, Nicole Poturalski is making headlines after her subtle jab at Angelina Jolie. It came after the German model posted a cryptic message on Instagram that talks about "hate." "Happy people don't hate," she wrote alongside a photo of herself wearing a muted orange dress paired with a brown baguette bag and shades. However, the public speculated that she is referring to Pitt's ex-wife who is said to be "furious" with Pitt's new flame. According to The Mirror, the "Maleficent" star was bummed out that his former husband "could stoop this low." "It grosses her out that he's cavorting around Europe so publicly with this girl, instead of keeping a private and dignified lid on his love life," the source explained to the publication. Jolie's alleged reaction came after the 56-year-old actor and Poturalski had a romantic escapade in South of France. The "Once Upon a Time" star reportedly brought her much younger girlfriend to the Chateau Miraval -- where Brad and Ange secretly exchanged their vows in 2014. Nicole Poturalski's Savage Clapback After receiving a wave of backlash from Jolie's fans who accused her of shading the mother-of-six, the 27-year-old model set the record straight. One of her followers bravely took to the comment section to give an unsolicited advice to Poturalski. "If so, then why you & Brad hate Angelina? Practice what you preach, girl," the fan said, to which she responded: "Not hating anyone." Brad Pitt, Nicole Poturalski Dating Since November 2019? Both the BAFTA winner and the model were hush-hush about their new romance despite the ongoing speculations surrounding their relationship. Last August, dating rumors sparked after Pitt and Poturalski were spotted boarding a private jet in Paris as they were headed to the South of France. "They are spending some time together on vacation and are enjoying each other's company while traveling," an insider shared to People. However, multiple reports noted that the two have actually been hanging out for quite some time now and were even photographed in November 2019 during Kanye West's concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. They were spotted chatting and having a good time as they sat in the VIP box during the show. Pitt's New Girlfriend in an Open Marriage? On the other hand, the budding relationship of the two has been tainted with intrigues -- one of which stated that Nicole is still "married" but is in an open relationship. The Daily Mail previously reported that the 5-foot-10 stunner remains married to the German restaurateur Roland Mary for eight years, with whom she shares her 7-year-old son Emil. "They are still married, but you could describe their relationship as an 'open marriage,'" a source revealed to the news outlet. "He has been married several times and has five children. He is not interested in negativity or jealousy." READ MORE: Jennifer Lopez Net Worth: Who Is Richer Between J.Lo and Fiance Alex Rodriguez? The global automotive steering gearbox market size is expected to grow by USD 2.06 billion during 2020-2024. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect the impact to be significant in the first quarter but gradually lessen in subsequent quarters with a limited impact on the full-year economic growth. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005062/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Automotive Steering Gearbox Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire) Request challenges and opportunities influenced by COVID-19 pandemic Request a Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impacts Technological advancements have raised the demand for higher torque, better steering control, and improved responsiveness of steering systems in the heavy-duty truck market, especially in Class 8 trucks. These requirements in steering systems are met with developments in steering gears. For instance, TRW Automotive, a subsidiary of ZF Friedrichshafen, offers TAS series power steering gears, which are designed to meet specific demands of medium and heavy-duty vehicles as they have higher torque. In addition, steering gears such as RCS assist gears are capable of providing Class 8 trucks with better performance and higher torque. Other benefits include increased reliability at low operating temperatures as these steering gears make use of automatic poppets for easy installation and an automatic bleed system to improve the lifespan of steering systems. Thus, with demand for higher torque and performance growing, advancements in steering gears are expected to increase. Improvements in steering gears are expected to drive the global automotive steering market during the forecast period. To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR44896 As per Technavio, the increasing adoption of electric power steering will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other significant trends and market drivers that will influence market growth over 2020-2024. Automotive Steering Gearbox Market: Increasing Adoption of Electric Power Steering The increasing demand for comfort and convenience for the driver and the need to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles has brought about many developments in the automotive industry. Technological advancements in steering systems are allowing automotive manufacturers to adopt electric power steering and steer-by-wire systems. These transformations have paved the way for the further development of automotive steering system components, including steering columns and steering gearboxes, among others. The pump in a hydraulic power steering system is always on, even when the steering is idle, and this reduces fuel efficiency. As electric power steering systems are highly fuel-efficient, their adoption rate is increasing, especially in passenger cars. Therefore, the growing adoption of automotive electric power steering systems will drive the revenue growth of the global automotive steering gearbox market during the forecast period. "Other factors such as the stringent regulations to control emissions, and the development of magnetic torque overlay will have a significant impact on the growth of the automotive steering gearbox market value during the forecast period," says a senior analyst at Technavio. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Automotive Steering Gearbox Market: Segmentation Analysis This market research report segments the automotive steering gearbox market by application (electric power steering, hydraulic power steering, and electro-hydraulic power steering) and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and MEA). The APAC region led the automotive steering gearbox market share in 2019, followed by Europe, North America, South America, and MEA respectively. During the forecast period, the APAC region is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to the increasing focus on the development of electric power steering systems to deepen penetration in the passenger car and light commercial vehicle segments Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report Some of the key topics covered in the report include: Market Drivers Market Challenges Market Trends Vendor Landscape Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors Competitive scenario About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005062/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Public health officials declared the first code orange at a Manitoba school on Wednesday, after seven COVID-19 cases were confirmed, sending three cohorts of students home in a test of the provinces remote learning backup plan. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Public health officials declared the first code orange at a Manitoba school on Wednesday, after seven COVID-19 cases were confirmed, sending three cohorts of students home in a test of the provinces remote learning backup plan. Winnipegs John Pritchard School is the first in the province where its believed the virus has spread within the school. "This is the first that weve been aware of," chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said. "Were still doing our investigation, but we are still considering this transmission within the school," he said at a media briefing with Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen. Public health officials advised parents and guardians Tuesday night that Grade 4/5 split class, grades 6, 7 and 8 as well as the before- and after-school program at John Pritchard would switch to remote learning for 14 days. The time may be lengthened or shortened as the investigation continues. Any close contacts connected to the cases have been identified, contacted and advised to self-isolate. Others are being told to watch for symptoms. "We have a single cohort (thats) mostly involved, and a single individual outside that cohort that weve been unable to link," Roussin said. Another cohort was included because it has a link to one of the involved cohorts, said Manitobas top doctor, who would not provide any information that might identify the people infected. All other grades and cohorts can remain at school, Roussin said. COVID testing sites swamped Public health officials reported 23 new cases of the novel coronavirus in Manitoba on Wednesday, bringing the total number of active cases to 283. Twenty of the cases are in Winnipeg, two cases are in the Interlake-Eastern health region and one case is in the Northern Health region. In Winnipeg, public health reported a list of possible public exposures to COVID-19 involving one previously announced case: on Sept. 5 at the Tavern United on St. Matthews Avenue, U Putz on McPhillips Street, McPhillips Street Station and the Hampton Inn near the airport on Berry Street; and on Sept. 6 at CF Polo Park Shopping Centre. click to read more Public health officials reported 23 new cases of the novel coronavirus in Manitoba on Wednesday, bringing the total number of active cases to 283. Twenty of the cases are in Winnipeg, two cases are in the Interlake-Eastern health region and one case is in the Northern Health region. In Winnipeg, public health reported a list of possible public exposures to COVID-19 involving one previously announced case: on Sept. 5 at the Tavern United on St. Matthews Avenue, U Putz on McPhillips Street, McPhillips Street Station and the Hampton Inn near the airport on Berry Street; and on Sept. 6 at CF Polo Park Shopping Centre. Times are listed online here. Public health reported another possible exposure at Parkview Place Long Term Care Home at 440 Edmonton St. in Winnipeg on Sept. 11 and 12 involving a health-care worker. The care home has been moved to a "critical" (red) level on the pandemic response system to protect staff and vulnerable residents with visits to Parkview now restricted. A day after COVID-19 testing sites in the Winnipeg were swamped, with some having to turn people away, the province's chief of public health said it is beefing up its COVID-19 testing capacity. "We are working on an overall testing strategy that involves sample collecting sites, the lab and the reporting," Dr. Brent Roussin said at a media briefing Wednesday, when the five-day COVID-19 positivity rate was 1.5 per cent. He couldn't say when there would be an expansion to accommodate the rise in demand for COVID-19 testing. "We are working on every aspect of that to ensure we can ramp up the volume of testing and work on our turn-around time." There were 1,266 laboratory tests conducted on Tuesday - well below the system capacity, said Roussin. More people are now going for testing, he said. Responding to demand that fluctuates "does pose a challenge," he said. In April, the health care system put elective surgeries and procedures on hold anticipating an influx of COVID-19 hospitalizations that didn't materialize. That freed up health care staff to help out with collecting the nasopharyngeal swab samples, said Roussin."People were not doing their normal work so shifting people from other areas was easy at that time." Now the system is trying to catch up on the backlog of rescheduled surgeries and diagnostic tests, and he couldn't say when they could marshal the resources to be able to collect more samples from Manitobans lining up to get tested. Close All seven cases at John Pritchard were asymptomatic at school, then developed symptoms and were tested, said Roussin. Initially, when the first COVID-19 case was discovered there, public health advised the risk of transmission was low and face masks were worn. Now, with indications the virus has spread in the school prompting the pandemic response system to declare it a "restricted" code orange Roussin said officials are reviewing how they evaluated the risk. "Were going to look at those transmission chains," the public health chief said. "Its too early to say whether the first diagnosed case was actually the index (source) case or not. "Like anything in this pandemic, were going to review, were going to learn, if needed, and apply what we learned." At John Pritchard School, the shift to remote learning will affect at least 250 students, said Goertzen. The school, like others in the province, was prepared, he said. "School divisions back in June were asked to prepare reports for different scenarios," said Goertzen. "One of these was remote learning. They were able to start that process today: teachers would be connecting with students, ensuring that theres an at-home learning environment thats very different than what we had in March." Back then, at the start of the pandemic, Manitoba schools were ordered to close with little time to prepare for remote learning. Classes resumed Sept. 8 and the virus has shown up at several Manitoba schools, with one case each at New Era School in Brandon, Winnipegs Churchill High School, Daniel McIntyre Collegiate, Beaverlodge Elementary, St. Aidans Christian, and now seven cases at John Pritchard School. Goertzen said there were 450 school-related COVID-19 cases across Canada as of Wednesday. In Manitoba, the virus is showing up in the community, so it was inevitable it would appear in schools, he said. "There are 220,000 students and tens of thousands of teachers," said Goertzen. "Of course, we knew there would be cases within the school system and we wanted to ensure there would be a quick response when those cases arose," he said. The principal and staff at John Pritchard School quickly informed parents and guardians and worked well into Tuesday evening cleaning the school so it would be prepared to reopen to the remaining students Wednesday, said Goertzen. Under code-orange restrictions, the school has to ensure there are two metres of physical distance between students in the classroom, said Roussin. With 250 learning remotely now, that shouldnt be difficult. "Thats what the opportunity is there," said Roussin. "Now that there is some proportion of students who are self-isolating, theyll be able to meet the two-metre requirement because of that added space." NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the outbreak in the Winnipeg school illustrates the need for smaller class sizes to ensure two metres of physical distancing between students. He said the Pallister government should make the necessary investments to ensure this happens. "It is clear that with lower numbers of students in classes, more distance in between desks, we can help prevent future outbreaks," Kinew said. "We can help keep our kids safe." The NDP leader said the John Pritchard School situation underscores the need for the federal and provincial governments to implement the promised paid sick-leave program during the pandemic. "All those parents who got the notification last night that they couldnt take their kid to school in the morning would have had to take a sick day today," he said. 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. If Ottawa doesnt step forward quickly to address the issue, the province should initiate at least a temporary paid sick-leave program so parents dont lose income, Kinew said. The Manitoba Teachers Society is "deeply concerned" about the welfare of students and staff at John Pritchard School and funding from the provincial and federal levels cant come quickly enough, MTS president James Bedford said Wednesday. "There is $185 million in provincial and federal funding available for safety measures in schools. MTS would like to see those funds deployed quickly and effectively in the best interests of all Manitobans," he said. The organization is calling for the province to provide a comprehensive COVID-19 response plan that is consistent in all schools and to use funding in part to hire additional substitute teachers to ensure classrooms can maintain physical distancing guidelines. with files from Larry Kusch and Malak Abas carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca More than 6.6 million people are now positive with COVID-19 in the United States. As help from the government, it announced its plans to give out the vaccine to each American that needs the shot. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump says the vaccine ready within four weeks from now. Who needs a vaccine? The United States government has now given hope to each citizen of America. On Wednesday, Sept. 16, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense released a joint document explaining Pres. Trump's "detailed strategy to deliver safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine doses to the American people as quickly and reliably as possible." According to the paper, the federal government aims to make the drug available to "every American who wants to receive a COVID-19 vaccine." The paper also includes details that require the vaccine to be free to all who needs it. As written in the paper, the vaccine must be delivered "with the goal of no upfront costs to providers and no out-of-pocket cost to the vaccine recipient." As of now, the feds are still waiting for the Food and Drug Administration's approval before doing the said mass vaccination. The US targets to do this process in 2021. For now, the strategy outlines that the "priority populations" would be the first ones to get the vaccine. Once it's done, the vaccine will gradually ramp up its availability for more people next year. The government targets to distribute at least 100 million vaccine doses for all who need it. "The Department of Defense is using its world-class logistical expertise to plan for distributing a safe and effective vaccine at warp speed," said General Gustave Perna. "Americans can trust that our country's best public health and logistics experts are working together to get them vaccines safely as soon as possible." Trump: Vaccine ready three to four weeks from now Though the U.S. still waits for at least one or two vaccines from American companies, Pres. In a recent Bloomberg report, Trump boasted that the vaccine shot could be available within four weeks from now. "The previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine, because of the FDA and all the approvals," Trump said on Tuesday. "We're within weeks of getting it. You know, could be three weeks, four weeks." We don't know now for sure if this timetable is accurate. After all, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said the vaccine could be created earliest at the end of the year. ALSO READ: Experts Discover Smallest Antibody Named Ab8--It Could Block COVID-19 and Is More Effective This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Jamie Pancho 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On Monday, three months after 25-year-old Hannah Fizer of Sedalia, Missouri was murdered by a sheriffs deputy while on her way to work, the special prosecutor appointed in the case, Stephen Sokoloff, released a letter announcing that no charges would be brought against the killer cop. Fizer, who was unarmed, was pulled over by a still publicly unidentified Pettis County Sheriffs deputy on the night of June 13 for speeding and imprudent driving. In less than 10 minutes, the young woman was dead, having been shot five times by the officer. In his letter addressed to Judge Jeff Mittlehauser, who is overseeing the case, Sokoloff wrote that the shooting, albeit possibly avoidable, was justifiable under current Missouri criminal law. James Johnson and Hannah Fizer Protesters and family members met outside the Sedalia courthouse on Tuesday night to express their anger and disgust at the state cover-up. Among them was Jessica Fizer, Hannah Fizers cousin, who spoke to local media. I was heartbroken, and I hate to say this, but I was not surprised, she said. I dont think it was justifiable, I do agree it was avoidable. She continued: This world needs change, and if we dont stand up, if we the people dont stand up, then we are not going to get that change. This latest example of class justice has received little media coverage. That is largely because it cuts across the Democratic Party narrative, which interprets police violence, along with all other social issues, entirely from a racial standpoint, covering up the more fundamental class issues. Fizer was white, as is the deputy who is believed to have killed her, Jordan Schutte. Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond has refused to publicly identify the deputy who shot Fizer. He released a letter in response to the special prosecutors report that hailed the investigation and decision as an example of transparency and thoroughness. Bond wrote: We at the Sheriff's Office have allowed Rule of Law to properly take its course, and we await delivery of the report to complete our internal investigation into the matter. In his letter, Sokoloff acknowledged that an alternative approach might have avoided the confrontation that led to the officer having to discharge his weapon. He was quick to add, however, that this was not relevant to any criminal liability in the case. Sokoloff did not provide any new information in his letter that had not already been made public. The letter included the same self-defense justification the Sheriffs office released the night of the murder. Fizer is alleged to have threatened to shoot the deputywith a gun she did not possessand then reached down into the floorboard of the car and raised up towards him. In making his determination, Sokoloff relied on surveillance video from a nearby business, which had no audio. This forced him to piece together the short dispatch call from the deputy with the video to provide a more complete information package. The surveillance tape, according to Sokoloff, shows Fizer moving vigorously in the vehicle before the deputy assumed a defensive posture and shot her five times. Fizer did have a cell phone and repeatedly told the deputy she was recording him. This video, if it exists, has yet to be made public. The state has yet to release any audio of Fizer threatening to shoot the cop. The long-time prosecutor admitted that his determination to not bring charges was made somewhat more difficult by the absence of a body-worn camera, with audio, as the video from the adjacent security system, although of good quality for such a system, especially at night, is not totally clear. In his letter to the judge, Sokoloff blamed Fizer for her own murder, claiming her actions caused a reasonable belief that he (the officer) is in imminent danger of serious physical injury or death, as a result of the actions of the suspect. This type of argument, amounting to a virtual license to kill, has been used by agents of the state for decades to justify their crimes. Fizer, like a large majority of the over 1,000 people killed by police in the US each year, was on the lower rungs of the income ladder. She had recently been promoted to assistant manager at the convenience store where she worked. Her long-time boyfriend James Johnson is a production worker for the multi-billion-dollar chicken giant Tyson Foods, which has remained open throughout the pandemic. As of last month, over 10,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported at Tyson Foods US-based facilities according to the Food & Environment Reporting Network. The US justice system is designed to shield police from prosecution, as illustrated by the case of Hannah Fizer and hundreds more. While black workers and youth and other minorities are disproportionately the victims of police violence and murder, and racism is certainly widespread among the police, along with other forms of right-wing and backward thinking, police violence is not rooted in white racism. Indeed, more whites are killed by police than blacks or other minorities. Rather, the police are an arm of the capitalist state, the special bodies of armed men tasked with protecting the property, wealth and power of the ruling class against the working class. The ongoing multi-racial protests against police killings demonstrate the deeply felt hostility in the working class to racial oppression and support for democratic rights. The refusal to bring charges in the murder of Fizer coincides with the announcement of a $12 million settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit in the killing of 26-year-old Louisville, Kentucky nurse Breonna Taylor. The settlement, which Mayor Greg Fischer pointed out does not admit any fault on the part of the city, includes a number of toothless police accountability reforms, which Fischer, a Democrat, said illustrated a renewed commitment to addressing structural and systemic racism in our city and our country. No announcement has been made as to whether the police who murdered Taylor in her own home will be charged. Meanwhile, while the cops who killed Taylor and Fizer are breathing free air, at least seven protesters in Lancaster Pennsylvania remain behind bars after Magisterial District Judge Bruce Roth set their bail at $1 million, a gross violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The demonstrators were arrested Monday morning while protesting against the police killing on Sunday of 27-year-old Ricardo Munoz. Munoz suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He was shot by an unnamed cop after lunging towards him, while appearing to be holding a knife. The police left Munozs uncovered corpse lying on the sidewalk for several hours after killing him. Lancaster Bureau of Police Chief Jarrad Berkihiser urged the judge to set a punitively high bail amount. He said that while we did not request a specific bail amount... we did request high bail for each individual we arrested due to the serious nature of the riot... Jamal Shariff Newman, Barry Jones, Yoshua Dwayne Montague, Matthew Modderman, Talia Gessner, Kathryn Patterson and Taylor Enterline were each charged with several felony and misdemeanor counts and had their bail set at $1 million. Six others were also arrested, however their bail information has yet to be released as of this writing. According to a GoFundMe for Enterline, set up by her friend Hailee Paige, Taylor Enterline was working as a medic the night of the protests and has been participating in protests against police violence since 2018. Reffie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, issued a statement on Tuesday calling the bail amount an egregious and unacceptable abuse of the bail system. The statement continued, Cash bail should never be used to deter demonstrators and chill speech. The grandstand, seen from a distance, was in flames Thursday morning. Smoke could be seen rising from the four-story grandstand. Access to the site was limited to emergency vehicles. PreviousNext Multiple Fire Departments Battling Green Mountain Race Track Blaze POWNAL, Vt. Multiple fire departments were battling a massive blaze at the former Green Mountain Race Track into the early hours of Thursday morning. The fire apparently started sometime late Wednesday night and billowing smoke could be seen pouring from the back of the building. By about 1:20 a.m., heavy fire began to appear in the front of the building. The 64,000-square-foot glass and metal grandstand and some smaller outbuildings are set back from Route 7 and access to the site was limited to emergency vehicles. There was a long line of emergency vehicles at the southern entrance to the property and tankers roared up and down Route 7 as they refilled from a hydrant the Pownal Fire Department on Route 346. Green Mountain was opened as a thoroughbred track in 1963 by the Rooney family that owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, and added harness racing until switching to greyhounds in the 1970s. There have been several attempts to rejuvenate the 144-acre complex from restoring harness racing to a biomass facility to a concert venue but none got past the concept stage. As late as March of this year there were plans for a music festival although the Select Board was less than enthusiastic about the idea. Those plans never had a chance to come to fruition as the novel coronavirus pandemic shut down any large gatherings. Berkshirestock 2 was rescheduled to next July. The property is currently owned by Green Mountain Race Track LLC, which nearly lost it to foreclosure last year. There is also a commercial solar array on the property. The building hasn't been used in years and concert promoter Michael Sayer's Facebook page has several postings from June and July about the building being boarded up over safety concerns "until it is demolished." "I got approval from Pownal building inspector to demo the building. It's coming down," Sayers wrote in June. A YouTube video from last year made by filmmakers who explore abandoned buildings shows shattered windows, piles of debris and the 4,500 wooden bleacher seats. The four-story grandstand had been a landmark along Route 7 since its opening but time has taken its toll. The size of the structure and especially access to water appeared to be hampering firefighters' efforts, according to scanner reports. Tankers were being called in from Bennington County, Berkshire County in Massachusetts and Rensselaer County in New York. Stamford Fire Department was called to cover the Pownal station. An incomplete list of responding fire departments gathered from scanner calls included Powal, Pownal Valley, Bennington Rural, Hoosick Falls, N.Y., Shaftsbury, Arlington, Stamford, and Williamstown, Mass. A white Nebraska bar owner who shot dead a black man during a chaotic night of protests has now been charged with manslaughter months after the shooting was initially deemed self-defense. Jake Gardner, an ex-Marine, was indicted by a grand jury this week for fatally shooting 22-year-old James Scurlock in Omaha back on May 30. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine had initially declined to file charges against Gardner, saying he had reviewed witness statements and video and believed the bar owner acted in self-defense. Kleine, who was slammed for overlooking Gardner's alleged racist history, asked the grand jury to review the case after he was heavily criticized. Special Prosecutor Frederick Franklin said the grand jury reviewed additional evidence that Kleine didn't have, including texts from Gardner's phone, messages on his Facebook profile and his interactions with bystanders before coming into contact with Spurlock. Jake Gardner (left), an ex-Marine, was indicted by a grand jury this week for fatally shooting 22-year-old James Scurlock (right) in Omaha back on May 30 He declined to provide specifics of what the new evidence shows except to say it undermines the self-defense theory. 'There was significant evidence that was consistent with there being an intentional killing by Jake Gardner and that evidence comes primarily from him,' Franklin said. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine had initially declined to file charges against Gardner, saying the shooting was in self-defense Gardner was also charged with attempted assault, making terroristic threats and using a gun to commit a felony. The shooting happened outside Gardner's bar as protests and civil unrest unfolded in Omaha and across the US in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd. Authorities have said Gardner shot Scurlock outside his downtown bar as he sought to ward off any theft or property damage. Kleine later showed reporters some surveillance video that seemed to show Gardner, his father and protesters exchanging words before Gardner, flashing a gun, backed away. Gardner was shoved to the ground by two people before he fired two shots, sending people scrambling. Scurlock then jumped on Gardner's back and Gardner shot him. Surveillance video showed Gardner in a confrontation with BLM protesters outside his bar prior to the shooting. Gardner was shoved to the ground by two people before he fired two shots. Scurlock then jumped on Gardner's back and Gardner shot him Scurlock (above) was fatally shot outside Gardner's bar as protests and civil unrest unfolded in Omaha and across the US in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd While there was no audio with the video, Kleine said Gardner warned Scurlock to get off of him several times before he fired the fatal shot. Critics of the initial investigation said Scurlock was trying to stop Gardner from hurting anyone. Some witnesses initially said that Gardner had allegedly 'taunted' protesters and went out to the sidewalk yelling 'n****r lover'. Scurlock's death sparked protests across Omaha in the days after prosecutors initially declined to file charges. Franklin said he hopes the charges won't ignite new protests in Omaha. 'This is not a time for celebration or exuberance. These are simply charges,' Franklin said. 'Jake Gardner is a man presumed innocent as I stand here before you right now.' Just hours before the deadly clash, Gardner posted a status update on Facebook about protecting his business amid the unrest Scurlock's death sparked protests across Omaha in the days after prosecutors initially declined to file charges In the wake of the shooting, prosecutors were accused of turning a blind eye to the Gardner's alleged racist views and background. Court documents have shown that he has a past criminal record stretching back to the late 1990s, which includes multiple weapons-related charges, as well as arrests on counts of assault and battery. In 2016, Gardner, who reportedly self-identifies as a Libertarian, sparked a controversy when he posted on Facebook that transgender women should not use the women's bathroom at his establishment, unless they have had their 'appendage' removed and their identification legally changed. Just hours before the deadly clash, Gardner posted a status update on Facebook about protecting his business amid the unrest. 'Just when you think, 'what else could 2020 throw at me?' Then you have to pull 48 hours of military style firewatch,' Gardner wrote. He is a retired Marine who served tours of duty in Iraq and Haiti between 2000-2004. Gardner has not spoken publicly about the shooting and deleted all of his social media accounts in the aftermath. As India, like the rest of the world, desperately waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said that it could be made available in the country by the start of next year. bccl "Just like other countries, India is also making efforts. Three vaccines candidates are in different phases. Under Prime Minister's guidance, an expert group is looking at it and there is advanced planning in place. We are hopeful that by the start of next year a vaccine will be available in India," Harsh Vardhan said in Rajya Sabha on Thursday. Read more Karnataka Police Just Busted Nearly 10,000 Kilo Of Weed In a massive haul, Karnataka Police have seized 9,872 kilograms of ganja after busting a marijuana cultivation racket in the Rampura area of Chitradurga district. . The police have also arrested three people in connection with the case. However, the main accused is still at large. Read more Large Number Of Devotees Take Holy Dip Flouting All Social Distancing Norms September 17 in 2020 is an auspicious day, mostly for the people in Bengal. For it is Mahalaya. Photo by bharat kumar on Unsplash Usually, it comes less than a week, but this time due to a celestial anomaly, it is 5 weeks before. Nonetheless, it does hold value for people in Bengal. Read more Delhi Sees Highest Single-Day Spike With 4473 New COVID Cases Delhi's COVID-19 tally has risen to more than 2.30 lakh after 4,473 fresh cases were reported on Wednesday, which was the highest single-day spike in the national capital recorded so far. afp The previous highest single-day spike was 4,321 cases, which was recorded on Saturday last week. Read more SDMC Councillor Wants To Name A Road In South Delhi After Actor Sushant Singh Rajput South Delhi Municipal Council (SDMC) Congress councillor Abhishek Dutt has proposed to name a stretch of road in south Delhi after late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Sushant Singh Rajput / Agencies The Andrews Ganj councillor in the BJP-led South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has sent the proposal to the civic bodys road naming and renaming committee. Read more Brain-Dead Hyderabad Man Gives A New Life To Eight People Through Organ Donation The grieving family of a Hyderbad man who met with an accident has spread joy to the loved ones of eight people by donating his organs. facebook Kanumuri Seetharamaraju, a bank manager in Union Bank, Solapur, Maharashtra had met with a road accident when he was returning to Hyderabad on September 11. Read more Netflix has released the first trailer for its upcoming documentary about the 2018 Chris Watts murders. American Murder: The Family Next Door takes a close look at the case that began in August of that year, when Shannan Watts and her two young daughters went missing in Frederick, Colorado. Chris Watts, who had asked for his familys safe return on television, was eventually arrested and pleaded guilty in a deal that spared him the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison in November 2018. Netflix has described the documentary as an immersive and truthful examination of a police investigation and a disintegrating marriage, told entirely through archival footage that includes social media posts, law enforcement recordings, text messages and never-before-seen home videos. The trailer released on Wednesday includes footage of investigators searching the home following the three disappearances, as well as excerpts of Wattss interrogations with law enforcement. American Murder, directed by Jenny Popplewell, will be released on 30 September in the US and in the UK. The Derda family of Washington was able to share in the joy of a major milestone when two officers, a husband and wife, were promoted on the very same day. For Col. Kristin Derda and Lt. Col. Krystian Derda, both longtime members of the U.S. Army and Washington National Guard, the shared ceremony had been a long time coming. Kristin and Krystian received their promotions during a ceremony on Sept. 3 at Camp Murray in Washington. The honor of pinning the couples new rankings was bestowed upon their children, Dominik, Emilia, and Maksymilian. The Derda family pictured together at the joint promotion ceremony at Camp Murray, Washington, on Sept. 3, 2020. (Peter Chang/U.S. National Guard) All these years, I have never been able to synchronize our promotion, Krystian said in an interview with the National Guard, so this is a special day for us. Brig. Gen. Dan Dent, commanding general of the Washington Army National Guard, officiated the ceremony. You will remember this day, you will tell your Soldiers, I was there the day the Derda family was promoted, Brig. Gen. Dent said. The commanding general then praised the Derdas for their deep commitment to the Guard, to its soldiers, to their family, and to each other. Maj. Krystian Derda (L), Lt. Col. Kristin Derda (C), and Brig. Gen. Dan Dent (R) salute the flag prior to the Derdas joint promotion ceremony on Sept. 3, 2020. (Joseph Siemandel/U.S. National Guard) The Washington National Guard shared photos from the Derdas promotion ceremony on Facebook on Sept. 4, the day after the big event. The post read: Congratulations to both Col. Kristin and LTC Krystian Derda on their joint promotions yesterday! The couple was able to celebrate with their family, friends, and fellow soldiers, the post said. Some were in attendance at Camp Murray, and some beamed in virtually as the ceremony was filmed and broadcast online. Between them, the Derdas have committed almost 45 years of combined service, 29 years of which have been spent with the Washington National Guard. (LR) Maksymilian, Dominik, and Emilia Derda prepare to promote their parents on Sept. 3, 2020 (Joseph Siemandel/U.S. National Guard) Krystian, who comes from a military family, joined the U.S. Army in 2004 straight from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was tasked as a platoon leader with 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington. This was the time when the two met, got married, and started their family before Krystian deployed to Iraq in 2006, the National Guard stated. Krystian retired and joined the Washington National Guard after eight years of active duty and multiple deployments to Iraq. He was the lead planner for Operation Evergreen Ember, a statewide wildfire training initiative, and now serves as the states deputy personnel officer. Kristins career journey began in 1992 when she enlisted in the U.S. Army as an automated logistics specialist. She left active duty seven years later to join the Washington Army National Guard. The mom of three ascended the ranks over the course of 20 years, was deployed to Iraq in 2004, and has held multiple leadership positions at the company, battalion, brigade, and state levels. Col. Kristin Derda hugs her daughter, Emilia, after being promoted at Camp Murray, Washington, on Sept. 3, 2020 (Joseph Siemandel/U.S. National Guard) Kristin told the National Guard that she is still in disbelief amid her promotion. Who would have thought that I would be standing here today? Kristin said. Twenty-eight years ago, when I came home with a recruiter to enlist, my parents were in shock. At the time of writing, Kristin commands the Washington Guards Recruiting and Retention Battalion. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc Online Learning Livestreamed Chemistry Labs Keep Learning Real Mistakes, Spills and All To offer more than pre-recorded lab demonstrations or virtual laboratories to remote students, two chemistry instructors at Missouri S&T have refined their approach, which uses real-time live-streamed demonstrations of experiments. Klaus Woelk, an associate professor of chemistry, and Philip Whitefield, professor emeritus of chemistry, have published a paper through the American Chemical Society about their experiences with online chemistry labs to provide best practices for other educators in similar circumstances. To keep students engaged, the synchronous sessions include small-group breakout sessions and on-the-spot activities like having students name compounds; balance chemical equations; predict the outcomes of experiments; and calculate masses, amounts and concentrations for the chemicals used. The sessions last for three hours and run on Zoom. Breakouts include groups of four, allowing the students to discuss the experiments and make their calculations before they're called back to the main room to give their answers. The university's current physical distancing guidelines limit the number of people in a lab to three, which is exactly how many it takes to do the livestreaming. Each virtual lab includes an instructor, a teaching assistant and a camera operator. They run two cameras one attached to the board where the instructor writes formulas, and the other a portable webcam that moves around the room and shows close-ups of chemical measures, mixtures and reactions. A university article on the process mentioned that the camera operator "always has the right-of-way." Since the experiments are live, there's no editing unlike many videos showing online labs. "How helpful is it when the chef says to saute the onions until they're translucent, then the camera cuts to the finished onions?" said Whitefield. "You sit there and think, 'How long do you cook them? I don't know.'" As a result, in the livestream labs, mistakes and spills can happen, which is part of the learning too. The instructors show how to clean up the spills following safety guidelines. In fact, writing safety rules is part of the students' coursework in the class. A particular challenge of the virtual labs, the faculty members noted, was the "lack of sensory experience, especially smell." "Some substances smell fruity, some are minty, some produce a rough smell, and we need to be creative to emulate that online for our students," explained Woelk. "When students are back on campus, I think we'll send them little samples. Once the experiment is done, I can have them open the sample of the product and they can report the scent." Another drawback is a lack of participation in large groups. As the two instructors pointed out, some students "log in only for the points given and pay no attention to the livestream." For that reason, future sessions "may require students to add screenshots of the livestreamed sessions to their post-lab reports and provide individual answers to assigned tasks during the livestream," said Woelk. Recordings won't be made available, thereby preventing students from scanning through the session to find the answers they need for their reporting. Classes for the latest semester at Missouri S&T began in late August. Now about 144 students attend science classes in person, while another 400 are continuing with livestreamed instruction. "As Close as It Might Get to the Real Lab Experience Live-Streamed Laboratory Activities" is available to subscribers of the Journal of Chemical Education. The Chief of Takoradi, Osahene Katakyie Busumakura III has praised the efforts of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government for the massive infrastructural development in the Western Region, especially Takoradi. Speaking at the sod-cutting ceremony to commence the construction of the first interchange in the Western Region christened, "PTC interchange in Takoradi, he said Takoradi had become a major beneficiary of infrastructural projects over the past few years under the NPP administration. According to the Chief, he and the people of Takoradi would be unfair if the Akufo-Addo led government was not commended for transforming the Metropolis. I am here to congratulate and commend the President of Ghana, who is represented here by his Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, he emphasized. He added, I sit here as the Chief of this City and I have the responsibility to support the government of the day. I can say without fear that four years ago, I congratulated the NDC for opening a cold store. I was invited as a Special Guest. Why do you think I should not congratulate the President of Ghana for bringing the first interchange to the Western region?. Vice-President, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia at the sod-cutting ceremony stressed that the infrastructural projects the government was implementing would help in the overall development of the nation. We have changed the face of Ghana, everywhere you go, you will see road construction going on. And if it had not been because of COVID-19, we would have cut the PTC interchange a month ago, he stressed. He commended the people of Takoradi for not being distracted by the arguments from the opposition National Democratic Government against the developmental projects and instead trust in the Akufo-Addo led Government to deliver on its promises. If we had followed the NDC argument, none of these projects would have taken place in Ghana and so we are thankful that you did not listen to them, Dr. Bawumia pointed out. Dr. Bawumia also paid a courtesy call on the Western Regional House of Chiefs (WRHOC) and inspected some on-going projects like the construction of the Ntankorful Town road and the new administration office complex for the Effia-Kwesimintsim Municipal Assembly (EKMA). 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 China has lauded the success of its vocational and jobs schemes in the troubled Xinjiang region on Thursday, just days after the US government said they were being operated from facilities run like 'concentration camps'. On Thursday the Chinese government published a white paper staunchly defending its policy in the Muslim-inhabited region, where it says training programmes, work schemes and better education mean life has improved. But the facilities were slammed by Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, who told reporters: 'This is not a vocational centre, it is a concentration camp.' China has lauded the success of its vocational and jobs schemes in the troubled Xinjiang region on Thursday. Women wearing face masks work at a garment factory in a resettlement area on June 21, 2020 in Yecheng County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China This photo taken on May 31, 2019 shows watchtowers on a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained on the outskirts of Hotan, in China's northwestern Xinjiang region Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in the resource-rich region, where rights groups say as many as one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps. US customs said Monday it would bar a raft of Chinese products from Xinjiang over fears of forced labour, saying 'religious and ethnic minorities are... forced to work in heinous conditions with no recourse and no freedom'. But Beijing says the centres are for vocational training, necessary for counter terrorism efforts and to provide education for alleviating poverty. The new report issued by Chinese authorities says Xinjiang has 'vigorously implemented employment projects, enhanced vocational training, and expanded employment channels and capacity'. It says vocational training for millions has improved the quality of the workforce. 'Xinjiang has built a large knowledge-based, skilled and innovative workforce that meets the requirements of the new era,' the report reads. Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli (pictured centre on Janaury 31, 2020 in a briefing) told reporters: 'This is not a vocational centre, it is a concentration camp Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in the resource-rich region. A woman is pictured in the file photo working in a textile factory in Xinjiang This photo taken on June 2, 2019 shows a facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in Artux, north of Kashgar in China Training includes teaching written and spoken Mandarin, labour skills and giving knowledge of urban life, according to the report, which says rural people have started businesses or taken employment in factories after state support. Every year between 2014 and 2019, Xinjiang gave 'training sessions' to an average of 1.29 million urban and rural workers, it says, adding that employment policies 'meet the people's needs (and) improve their wellbeing'. However, the white paper warns there is a low level of vocational skills and says 'terrorists, separatists and religious extremists' have encouraged the public not to learn Chinese, to 'reject modern science, and refuse to improve their vocational skills'. Swedish clothing giant H&M said this week it was ending its relationship with a Chinese yarn producer over accusations of 'forced labour' in Xinjiang, which is China's largest cotton growing area. Beijing has denied claims of forced labour and in Tuesday's report said it would take 'resolute action' against it. Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in the resource-rich region, where rights groups say as many as one million Uighurs are being held in internment camps. The file picture reportedly shows detainees in a re-education camp located in Xinjiang Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China on September 4, 2018 The EU meanwhile has urged China to allow independent observers to travel to the highly-surveilled region. China this week said experts were 'welcome' but did not detail if they would be allowed free access to the controversial facilities. State media frequently shows apparently happy vocational students studying or working in the large facilities. But rights groups have warned of forced detentions and political indoctrination as part of a campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to erase the ethnic group's identity and culture. In a white paper on Xinjiang in March, China defended its controversial security crackdown and said nearly 13,000 'terrorists' have been arrested there since 2014. The Hawai'i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment. The opinion holds that even if butterfly or "balisong" knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion: The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knivesa relatively obscure weaponthe same way the Heller Court viewed the ban on handgunsthe "quintessential"self-defense weapon. Doing so would neglect the Supreme Court's emphasis on the regulated weapon at issueand by extension much of the Court's reasoning that led to its ultimate holding. This case simply does not amount to the same level of "destruction of the [Second Amendment] right" as Heller. The plaintiffs are appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals. The District Court opinion shows how appeals courts hostile to the Second Amendment have been successfully salami slicing away Second Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has been deadlocked and unable or unwilling to protect the exercise of those rights. Without the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the Second Amendment would be dead letter law across the United States. ..... Yesterday (September 16), Hyderabad police finally arrested Telugu film producer G Ashok Reddy in connection with popular TV actress Sravani Kondapalli's suicide case. For the unversed, Manasu Mamata actress Sravani died by hanging herself at her residence in Hyderabad on September 8. The cops have already arrested two accused Devaraj Reddy and Sai Krishna Reddy on September 14 in connection with the actress' death. Ashok Reddy was in a relationship with Sravani in 2018. They came close to each other during the making of the film Premato Karthik. The RX100 producer also supported Sravani's family members financially. However, their relationship got strained and they broke up with each other. The report published in Bangalore Mirror suggests that all three accused promised to marry Sravani at different points in time, but they allegedly harassed her. All the accused were jealous of each other. After the arrest of Devaraj and Sai, the police was trying to trace Ashok. He was reportedly hiding from the cops, but they later served a notice to him to appear before them for questioning. "Sravani came in contact with Devaraj Reddy in 2019 and the two began an affair. When Devaraj Reddy came to know about Sravani's past affairs with Sai Krishna Reddy and Ashok Reddy, he decided to part ways. Devaraj also rejected her proposal due to her previous relationships," police said. Also Read : Sravani Suicide Case: Hyderabad Police Arrests Devaraj Reddy And Sai Krishna Reddy Deputy Commissioner of Police, AR Srinivas told TOI, "On September 8, Sravani called up Devaraj Reddy and informed him that she was fed up with her life and wanted to die due to his, Sai Krishna Reddy and Ashok Reddy's torture." Also Read : Actress Sravani Of Manasu Mamata Dies By Suicide In Hyderabad 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 A white police officer in Utah was charged with second-degree felony assault after ordering a K9 dog to bite a Black man who had complied with his command to raise his hands, prosecutors announced Wednesday. The Salt Lake City District attorney's office charged Salt Lake City officer Nickolas Pearce with aggravated assault stemming from the April 23 incident in which he ordered his dog to bite Jeffery Ryans after responding to a domestic dispute call. Video footage released last month by The Salt Lake Tribune shows Pearce with a K9 dog approaching Ryans, 36, in his backyard. "Get on the ground! Get on the ground or you're gonna get bit," Pearce says in the video. Prosecutors said Pearce kicked Ryans in his leg and forced him onto his knees. Pearce then ordered the dog to "hit" and the dog bites into Ryans' left leg for about 20 seconds while another officer handcuffed him, the video shows. "Good boy," Pearce tells the dog as Ryan shouts, "I'm on the ground. Why are you biting me?" Jeffery Ryans points at his ankle as he discusses his encounter with Salt Lake City police at his attorney's office in Salt Lake City last month. A Utah police officer was charged with aggravated assault after ordering his dog to attack Ryans, who had put his hands in the air, prosecutors announced Wednesday. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) [Ryans] wasnt resisting arrest, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the Salt Lake City newspaper Wednesday. He certainly wasnt posing an imminent threat of violence or harm to anyone and he certainly wasnt concealed. He was fenced in an area and was being compliant. The Salt Lake City Police Department said in a statement Wednesday that it is taking the district attorney's decision and the Civilian Review Board's findings "very seriously." "Both will be evaluated and taken into account as the Department is finalizing its Internal Affairs Investigation. If Internal Affairs finds that Officer Pearce committed a policy violation, the Chief's Office will follow the disciplinary process required under state and federal law," the statement says. 'It's nothing but pain': The latest on the cases of violence against Black people that sparked America's racial reckoning Story continues Ryans told The Tribune last month that he was confused by the officers' orders as one told him to get on the ground while another ordered him to come to him. "I wasnt running, he told the newspaper. I wasnt fighting. I was just cooperating. Weve been through this. Weve seen this. Always cooperate with the police, no matter what." Pearce told the Civilian Review Board he ordered the dog to bite because he felt that Ryans grasping onto the fence with one hand would allow him to get up and fight the officers, the board's report says. After the bodycam footage was published by The Tribune, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall announced the police department had suspended Pearce and the use of K9 dogs on suspects. One of Ryans' attorneys, Dan Garner, told USA TODAY last month that Ryans was "emotionally drained" from the incident. Garner said his client wanted reforms, including the ability to file excessive force complaints without interacting with police and an end to qualified immunity. Ryans lost his job as a train engineer and had multiple surgeries after the attack, according to The Tribune. Garner did not immediately respond to a USA TODAY phone message seeking comment on Wednesday. Contributing: Joshua Bote, USA TODAY; The Associated Press This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Utah officer who ordered dog to bite Black man charged with assault Tory MPs hit out at US presidential challenger Joe Biden today after he waded into the Brexit row with an attack on Boris Johnson. They took aim at the 77-year-old Democrat after he used social media to attack the Prime Minister's attempt to give ministers the power to undo part of the Withdrawal Agreement signed last year. The Internal Market Bill (IMB) currently going through the Commons would allow the Government to unpick sections relating to Northern Ireland's status after the end of the year. But in his first direct intervention on the matter since becoming the Democrat challenger to Donald Trump, Mr Biden warned that the move - which would breach international law if enacted, would threaten the UK-US trade deal currently being negotiated. The deal has to be ratified by the US Congress and Democrats who control the lower House of Representatives have already threatened to halt its progress. Mr Biden last night tweeted: 'We can't allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.' But his comments provoked an uproar of anger from Brexiteer Tories, with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith telling the Times: 'We don't need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden. 'If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the USA to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.' US presidential candidate Joe Biden (pictured last night in Wilmington, Delaware) says the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland cannot become a 'casualty' of Brexit This prompted fury from Brexiteer Tory backbenchers, with US-born MP Joy Morrissey accusing him of chasing 'the Irish-American vote' ahead of the November election, while Conor Burns also waded in US-born MP Joy Morrissey accused the Democrat of chasing 'the Irish-American vote' ahead of the November election. And former minister Conor Burns, a close friend and supporter of the PM, added: 'Hey Joe Biden, would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast Agreement so it doesn't offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I'm a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.' Mr Biden's comments came as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was in Washington to meet politicians threatening to block a UK-US trade deal if Mr Johnson breaks international law. The Prime Minister wants to introduce measures in new British legislation that would allow ministers to unpick part of the Withdrawal Agreement he signed last year relating to Northern Ireland's status after the end of the year. A No10 spokesman today defended the bill, telling reporters: 'The PM has been clear throughout that we are taking these steps to precisely make sure that the Belfast Agreement is upheld in all circumstances and any harmful defaults do not inadvertently come into play. 'We continue to remain absolutely committed to no hard border and no border infrastructure between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and we will continue to engage with our US partners on a bipartisan basis to ensure that our positions are understood.' Mr Biden, who has previously talked about the importance of his Irish heritage, retweeted a letter from Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, to Mr Johnson calling on the British leader to honour the 1998 Good Friday peace deal. Engel urged Johnson to 'abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts to flout the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement.' He called on Johnson to 'ensure that Brexit negotiations do not undermine the decades of progress to bring peace to Northern Ireland and future options for the bilateral relationship between our two countries.' Engel said Congress would not support a free trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom if Britain failed to uphold its commitments with Northern Ireland. The letter was signed by Representatives Richard Neal, William Keating and Peter King. Mr Biden, who has previously talked about the importance of his Irish heritage, retweeted a letter from Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, to Mr Johnson calling on the British leader to honour the 1998 Good Friday peace deal The intervention by the Democratic Party nominee last night came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces concerted opposition to Government moves that would override the divorce deal with Brussels regarding trade with Northern Ireland. The Government will table an amendment to the UK Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before it can use powers which would breach the deal brokered with Brussels last year. Around 30 Tory rebels were thought to be preparing to vote for an amendment on Tuesday which would have required a Commons vote before the provisions in the Bill relating to Northern Ireland could come into force. Downing Street relented and announced in a joint statement with Conservative MPs Sir Bob Neill and Damian Green that it would seek to amend the Bill to require the Commons to vote before a minister can use the powers contained within it. Mr Biden's comments echoed those of Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Before of a meeting with Ms Pelosi, Mr Raab accused Brussels of the 'politicisation' of Northern Ireland issues in the context of Brexit trade talks. He said the EU stance threatened the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Raab said he had made clear the UK has an 'absolute' commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy also jumped on Mr Biden's words 'The UK action here is defensive in relation to what the EU is doing, it is precautionary, we haven't done any of this yet, and it is proportionate,' he said. 'What we cannot have is the EU seeking to erect a regulatory border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain.' He was earlier backed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who rallied behind Boris Johnson's Government. Donald Trump's senior lieutenant said he trusted the PM and his administration to 'get it right' when asked about his proposals to override the Withdrawal Agreement with the UK Internal Market Bill. 'Yes we trust the United Kingdom. I am confident they will get it right,' he told a press conference. Ms Pelosi has warned Congress would never pass a free trade agreement with the UK if legislation to override the Brexit divorce settlement was to 'imperil' the peace process. Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy also jumped on Mr Biden's words, saying: 'This shows the scale of the damage the Government have done to Britain's standing in the world. 'They've lost trust and undermined co-operation at the moment we most need it - and all to tear up an agreement they negotiated. Reckless, incompetent and utterly self-defeating.' Meeting Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in Washington, Mr Pompeo said he still trusted the UK to act properl Mr Johnson risked further conflict with the EU today when he said Brussels was not acting in good faith. He told the Sun: 'We assumed our EU friends and partners would want to negotiate in good faith. We've been paid up members for 45 years.' The Government's top law officer for Scotland resigned on Wednesday amid reports he was unhappy about the plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. Lord Keen of Elie QC, the Advocate General, said in his resignation letter: 'Over the past week I have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a Law Officer with your policy intentions with respect to the UKIM Bill. 'I have endeavoured to identify a respectable argument for the provisions at clauses 42 to 45 of the Bill but it is now clear that this will not meet your policy intentions. Labour's shadow attorney general Lord Falconer said: 'This has been a week of chaos from the Government's own law officers, whose legal advice has been renounced by its own Government and the voice of the law officers has been muted, and their authority is completely shot.' New Delhi: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's daughter Suhana Khan is missing her friends abroad. The stunner dropped a beautiful picture, posing with her girl gang from New York. Take a look here: Suhana Khan is a popular star kid on social media. Her pictures and videos often break the internet. There are various fan pages dedicated to her as curiosity around her movie debut is high amongst followers. SRK and Gauri Khan's darling daughter headed to New York University last year where she is studying acting. She completed her graduation from Ardingly College in England. Speculation of her making her starry entry into movie business has always been around and now that she is studying acting as a course, looks like very soon the pretty girl will be making her big-screen debut. She has acted in several plays and also in a short movie. Army Chief General M M Naravane on Thursday arrived in Srinagar on a two-day visit and took "a firsthand assessment" of the situation along the Line of Control in North Kashmir, a defence spokesperson said. During his interaction with soldiers deployed in the high altitude areas, he appreciated their high morale and complimented them on their response to Pakistan's ceasefire violations, Col Rajesh Kalia, spokesperson of the prestigious XV corps, said in a statement. The Army Chief also commended the use of technology to ensure effective day and night surveillance across the LoC which has resulted in many successful operations to foil infiltration bids in the recent past. Gen Naravane reinforced the need to extend all possible support to the civilians residing in the border areas who are victims of targeted ceasefire violations by Pakistan Army and are facing hardships due to the pandemic. He later proceeded to interact with commanders and troops deployed in the hinterland, the spokesperson said. While interacting with jawans, the General highlighted that it was "the dawn of a new era of development, peace and prosperity in Kashmir" and applauded them for their high level of morale and contribution to peace building in Jammu and Kashmir. He appreciated the high level of coordination amongst all government agencies towards maintaining peace in the Valley and efforts to reach out to the people to overcome the challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later in the day, he reviewed the overall security situation along with the Northern Army Commander and Chinar Corps Commander, Col Kalia said. The Army chief called on Lt Governor of JK Manoj Sinha and discussed issues concerning the present security situation in the Union Territory. He assured the wholehearted support of the Army in ushering in peace and stability in the region, the statement said. Gen Narvane is scheduled to return to New Delhi on Friday. Peace Weekend 2020 Global Broadcast Just as things around the world seem dark and full of chaos, Peace Weekend 2020 represents an opportunity for us all to bring the light of hope, joy and transformation. Building upon decades of great work by many peace pioneers we can help the world shine a little brighter. Ben Bowler - UNITY EARTH The Global Broadcast features powerful ceremonies, concerts, expert discussions, offers innovative solutions as well as cultural celebrations from around the planet. Speakers include Deepak Chopra, Jane Goodall, Rev Matthew Fox, Pat McCabe, Ken Kragen, Foster & Kimberly Gamble, Jonathan Granoff, Audrey Kitagawa, Chief Phil Lane Jr and hundreds of change makers all over the world. Peace Weekend 2020 sees the convergence of multiple online summits and music festivals including the UP Convergence, Peace One Day Live Digital Experience as well as the Shift Festival and Music Festival. Peace Weekend is the culmination of the 4 year long Road to 2020 including the Caravan of Unity Across America and Around the World, as well as the climax of the 11 Days of Global Unity. The Global Broadcast is an initiative of UNITY EARTH, anchored by Hubcast Media in Vancouver in partnership with ground support from Creative Minds Audio Visual. The event is generously supported by Purpose Earth. Highlights: Saturday September 19th Manifest 2030 Dance Party Global Release of Calliope's Dream by Kristin Hoffmann & Michael Fitzpatrick Celebration of Cosmic Mass with Mathew Fox, Mirabai Starr, Pat McCabe and guests - Return of the Divine Feminine UN 75 Panel Discussion Global Engagement Hour at UP Convergence Poetry Slam for Peace Shift Summit & Music Festival Decentralized Dance Party Gaia Dance with David Nicol Sunday September 20th Peace on Earth by 2030 Public Launch from New York Shift Summit & Music Festival One Humanity Institute live Concert from Auschwitz Infinite Potentials Film Release and Panel Dance of Blessings Ceremony opening First Peoples Embassy, Stony Point, NYC Eco-Conscious Music Alliance Special Concert Global Engagement Hour at UP Convergence Shift Festival Indigenous Council with Chief Phil Lane Jr. Interfaith Roundtable of Hawaii Dance Party from New York City Global Engagement Hour at UP Convergence Monday September 21st - International Day of Peace Peace One Day Broadcast Live from UK and around the world Shift Summit and Music Festival Global Engagement Hour at UP Convergence Peace Day Broadcast from Patagonia Peace Day Celebrations from Chicago Peace Day Celebrations from Tokyo Program From African Union ECOSOCC Special presentation from Tillman (UN) Chapel in New York featuring the Global Silent minute at 12:00pm EDT UPLIFT event Concert in Jerusalem and synchronized moment of global Prayer Featured presentations with global Peacebuilders including Deepak Chopra, Avon Mattison, Ken Kragen, Artie Kornfeld, Jane Goodall, Jonathan Granoff, Foster & Kimberly Gamble and more! Contact Ben Bowler ben@unity.earth - whatsapp/cell +61 4322504100 or Delanne Young Reid delanney@hubcastmedia.com If you can weedwhack past the drama surrounding it - angry politicians, QAnon, a terrible ad campaign followed by misguided petitions - you can perhaps enjoy "Cuties" for what it is: one of the more compelling movies you've likely seen in months. Funny and deeply uncomfortable, sweet and sometimes sad. I never would have stumbled on it, were it not for the increasingly frantic discussions happening around it, which is all a long way of saying, thanks, Ted Cruz! A French film by director Maimouna Doucoure, "Cuties" was the subject of controversy even before it landed on Netflix last week. The streaming platform previewed it with a poster of tweenage girls in scant costumes, accompanied with the synopsis, "Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew." Things went south. Cruz, who either didn't see the movie or didn't understand it, claimed the film "routinely fetishizes and sexualizes these pre-adolescent girls," and called on the Department of Justice to "investigate whether Netflix, its executives, or the filmmakers violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography." Pre-emptively hating the movie was a bipartisan affair: Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy, joined in the hashtag #CancelNetflix, asking the platform to apologize. And this weekend, Netflix's cancellation rates were eight times higher than they'd been the month before, according to analysis in Variety magazine - a multiyear cancellation peak. Which is all a shame, because "Cuties" is the kind of story that isn't told well very often, and deserves to be told more. It focuses on an 11-year-old girl named Amy as she figures out what it means, to her, to be a woman in an era of TikTok celebrities and viral fame. Like Doucoure, Amy is the daughter of Senegalese immigrants. Amy's parents are now raising their family in a working-class Parisian neighborhood. Their culture permits polygamy, and when the movie opens Amy's father has recently traveled back to Senegal to bring home a second wife. "All I wish for them is that they marry for love," Amy's mother says in phone call to a relative. Then she hangs up and, not realizing her daughter is in the same room, bursts into tears. The apartment building's laundry room is where Amy first meets her neighbor and classmate Angelica, who dances as she folds her clothes. Amy becomes entranced by Angelica and her midriff-baring, hip-swiveling friends, who call themselves "Cuties" and dream of winning a local dance competition. Soon Amy's part of the crew, too, choreographing twerks and pouts, and tying her own T-shirts so they ride above her navel. You can see where this could get uncomfortable for viewers. The dance routines become progressively more explicit and the camera filming them is unflinching. One minute-long sequence, set to upbeat music as the girls finalize their routine, includes a series of closeups on the girls' gyrating thighs, butts and stomachs. (The movie was filmed with a counselor on set, and the project was approved by the French government's child-protection authorities). Healthy adults won't see the characters as sex objects; they'll see them as children and they'll see the dancing as disturbing. But they might also wonder about how unhealthy adults could perceive what's happening on the screen. Whose gaze does the camera represent? How is this scene supposed to make us feel? These are the kind of nuanced discussions that art is meant to encourage - and that fast-twitch social media has squashed. Instead of wrestling with the content, we have QAnon Facebook groups speculating that maybe the film was secretly funded by the Obamas. What uncareful viewers will miss, though, is that the Cuties are not portrayed as aspirational. The group is portrayed as an escape tunnel that only leads to another sinkhole. When Amy posts an intimate photo of herself on social media, desperately looking for approval, a male classmate takes it as an invitation to slap her butt, and her new friends find the picture appalling. They're sassy, not slutty, they explain - can't Amy tell the difference? But no, she can't, because the divisions are baffling. At home she's presented with a version of womanhood that means marriage and acquiescence. Out in the world, she sees another version that means sexiness and Instagram likes. Amy fumbles and falters her way through the film, learning that she's meant to be appealing but chaste, naughty but good, a girl but a woman. In the end, she's just tired and confused. Part of why I think people are struggling with this movie is that, while it doesn't sexualize tweenage girls, it is a frank look at their exploration of sexuality: the influences they respond to or rebel against, the power they think they have, the things they think they understand. "Spend an hour on social media and you'll see preteens - often in makeup - pouting their lips and strutting their stuff as if they were grown women," wrote Doucoure, the film's director, in a recent essay for The Washington Post. "The problem, of course, is that they are not women, and they don't realize what they are doing." In one scene the girls, full of bravado and giggles, flirt with a boy at the bus stop. In the next scene, one of them discovers a condom and, not knowing what it is, picks it up. "You're gonna get AIDS," her friends shriek, terrified, dragging her to a bathroom where they pour liquid soap in her mouth, convinced this is suitable protection. They're kids. And their desire to grow up only underscores how young they are. Often when Hollywood gives us stories on this topic, they're filmed like "Lolita," in which a middle-aged pedophile preys on his fiancee's daughter. The story is told from his perspective. He tries to convince us that she's the seductress, but she's never given an inner monologue of her own. That film is explicitly about pedophilia, but it's a more comfortable viewing, in some ways, than "Cuties." It allows the viewer to falsely believe that girls are complicit in their own sexualization, that they're inviting the leering and harassment. "Cuties," on the other hand, is an excellent look at betweenness, at the moment where children are old enough to mimic, but not old enough to understand. It exists in a world in which adults are tangential, and adult men are mostly nonexistent. It cares only about what it means to be a young, Black, immigrant girl. It allows that experience to be complicated, silly, scary and moving. It centers an experience that has long been underrepresented. The fact that its critics (not film critics, who love it) find "Cuties" so terrifying is, perhaps, the biggest clue that they need to watch it and then demand more movies like it. Netflix assumed the risk the filmmakers took for the purpose of bringing us this uncomfortable, challenging but ultimately worthwhile work. Can we handle it? Or should it be watched with training wheels - with film studies and women's history professors on speed dial, to prevent us from misinterpreting a critique of society as an endorsement? In the end - well, I won't spoil the end of the movie. Except to say that after watching it, viewers are likely to spend a lot of time thinking about girlhood. The girls they know, the girls they were. The girls they want to raise, the forces that make that difficult. The bubbles we try to keep girls in, when the only people we're actually protecting are ourselves. Reasonable people might agree with that distinction if the General Assembly possessed the power to amend North Carolinas constitution. But it doesnt. By majorities of three-fifths in both chambers, the legislature can place amendments on the ballot. Only North Carolinians themselves can amend their constitution as, indeed, they did in 2018 by adding a voter ID provision to the constitution, among others. If the existence of gerrymandered districts truly established a justification for judges to prevent an illegitimate legislature from enacting laws, it would make more sense for judges to strike down ordinary laws, not constitutional amendments. After all, if voters dont like an amendment, they can vote it down. But voters cant do the same to laws or budgets. Two of three judges on a Court of Appeals panel made precisely this point in a mid-September decision that, at least for now, restores the voter ID provision (although other litigation has blocked its enforcement for the 2020 election cycle). Let me put it another way: By popular vote, by direct democracy, North Carolinians decided to require voter ID. The governor and his allies claim this outcome was undemocratic. It is an extreme position to defend, and not just for Cooper. The N.C. Supreme Court will ultimately decide the case. Three of its seats are up for election this fall. Youll be hearing a lot about voter ID again this cycle, like it or not. John Hood (@JohnHoodNC) is chairman of the John Locke Foundation and appears on NC SPIN, broadcast statewide Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on UNC-TV. GREENWICH Annie Lamont, the states first lady and a leader in the field of venture capital, is feeling bullish about Connecticut. The source of her optimism is the influx of new residents who have found homes in Connecticut during the coronavirus crisis. If youre coming from New York City, youre paying half what you were in taxes when you move here, Lamont said. It feels like a tax reprieve coming to Connecticut, and obviously, real estate taxes are lower here than New Jersey and New York. A town resident and the wife of Gov. Ned Lamont, Annie Lamont was the guest speaker in a fireside chat with the League of Women Voters of Greenwich on Zoom on Wednesday night. File / Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Those new residents are discovering the beauty of small towns again in Connecticut, particularly in how the communities value their education systems, she said. That shows in the loving thought and care that towns and cities put into reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. League member Becky Gillan conducted the interview during the members-only Zoom stream during the annual meeting for league, which is marking its 100th year. During the 45-minute chat, Gillan asked several questions about Lamonts views on the state and about the venture capital industry. Lamont spoke of the need to see more diversity in her field and about the differences between a successful enterprise in government versus in the private sector. In both government and industry, Lamont said she sees a passion around the mission, particularly when it comes to lowering costs and improving quality in health care. Workers in both areas want to do good when they focus on a positive mission, but good leadership is a must, she said. Its all about attracting great people who want to work with you, Lamont said. In government administrations, its the same thing, I think. Its getting people around you. Its being able to evaluate what good is and attracting people with different mindsets to come together. Its diversity not only of color and gender and sexual orientation, its also diversity of thought, where not everybody has gone to the same college or lives in the same place. Gillan said she thought businesses had more of a bias to action with their missions and visions along with the desire to satisfy customers and create loyalty. I dont always see that bias to action in government, Gillan said. Lamont replied that there could be a bias to inaction in government. Change is hard and youre always going to upset someone when you do things differently, Lamont said. The thing about politics is administrations tend to look at what they can get done in their term or how people perceive their term as opposed to investing in the future. It should be the exact opposite from business because you hope a business is going to be around 10 or 20 years from now, she said. But the state of Connecticut is going to be around forever. We should have incredibly long-term thinking about what were doing and how were investing. To that end, Lamont expressed her hope that Connecticut could reimagine and push forward in health care. She speaks from a position of authority on financial and venture capital issues. Gillan noted in her introduction that Lamont is managing partner of Oak Investment Partners and Oak HC/FT, which focuses on health care and financial technology. Lamont is also a board member on 11 companies, many with a focus in health care, and has been involved with investments in more than 100 health care and financial technology firms that went public or were acquired by other companies. Its really not a surprise that shes been described as one of the most successful women in the history of venture capital, Gillan said. Lamont said her interest in health care goes back to her college days. While a junior at Stanford, her father became ill and had no health insurance. Her family couldnt afford to pay her tuition, forcing her to return home. She went to work that summer while taking classes at the University of Wisconsin to earn credits. The next year she was able to return to Stanford and graduated. But she said she found out 25 years later that her father had cashed in his life insurance to pay for her final year of college. It really instilled in me a lifelong feeling that our health care system needed to be transformed because of the payment process and the accessibility and the damaging effects it could have on a family when you personally cant afford to pay for it, Lamont said. I think this was a seminal reason I got into the health care industry. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com Nobody was 'expecting' to see the 'really sizeable increase in demand' for checks, the Government's coronavirus testing tsar claimed. Baroness Harding's comments, which come despite the return of schools and more people heading back to work, sparked outrage as she told MPs 'none of the modelling' had suggested there would be such a steep uptick in requests. The head of the NHS Test and Trace programme blamed the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for seemingly getting its predictions wrong as she said testing capacity had been built based on the panel's recommendations. Meanwhile, she revealed that demand for Covid tests is currently up to four times greater than the system's capacity. However, while some centres are stretched to the limit trying to deliver, others remain empty, with one worker even pictured falling asleep on the job at a site in Heathrow. There have been numerous reports of staff at deserted walk-in testing centres turning people away if they didn't have an appointment or weren't showing obvious coronavirus symptoms. It is not clear exactly why the Heathrow site was so empty, however it is a remote drive-in centre where tests are carried out by appointment, involving swabbing through the car window. A coronavirus testing centre near Heathrow Airport was so quiet today that no one was seen accessing the site in a 90 minute period, leaving staff with nothing to do The swab testing facility near Heathrow was almost empty despite a nationwide surge in demand for tests Baroness Harding's comments prompted a swift rebuke from MPs who said it was clear 'you didn't prepare enough' given the Government knew schools were reopening at the start of September and ministers were encouraging people to ditch working from home. Munira Wilson, Liberal Democrat Health, Wellbeing and Social Care spokesperson said: 'It's unacceptable that the people responsible for this test and trace fiasco aren't admitting that they have failed to meet their own targets. 'Making excuses about excessive demand is utterly unacceptable, given that testing capacity is nowhere near the levels we were told the Government was aiming for back in July. 'Given the obvious risks of a second wave as our economy and society reopened - particularly with the start of the school year - Ministers should have done more to meet the inevitable surge in demand for testing. There is no excuse for the current chaos. 'We need to hear not just from Dido Harding, but also from the Health Secretary why the testing programme has gone so badly wrong, and what action they are taking to get it sorted as a matter of urgency. Failure to do so puts lives and livelihoods at risk.' The Tory peer's appearance in front of the Science and Technology Select Committee came as the Government was facing growing pressure over the lack of availability of tests across the nation. There have been widespread reports of people having to travel hundreds of miles to get checked and of people being unable to book a test at all despite a Government pledge that testing capacity will hit 500,000 a day by the end of October. Greg Clark, the Conservative chairman of the committee, told Lady Harding this afternoon: 'Clearly you didn't prepare enough for the schools coming back and people going back to work. 'The fact that the end of October was the target date to have this capacity in place, was that because you expected a second wave to be in October? Has it come earlier than expected? Is that the problem?' Lady Harding replied: 'I don't think anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase in demand that we have seen over the course of the last few weeks. 'In none of the modelling was that expected and that is why I said I think we all have to think really hard about how we prioritise the use of these tests, that we are clear you should only get tested if you have the coronavirus symptoms.' Mr Clark said it was 'dispiriting' that the 'right capacity' was not put in place despite the planned return of schools and workers to offices - circumstances which he described as 'entirely predictable'. Lady Harding appeared to try to pass the buck for the testing shambles to SAGE as she said the current daily capacity of 240,000 had been put in place 'based on SAGE modelling for what we should be preparing for for the autumn'. She revealed there is a staggering mismatch between the number of people wanting tests and the ability to carry them out as she claimed 27 per cent of people requesting a check have no symptoms. She told MPs that she did not have precise numbers for how many people wanted tests. But she said phone calls and website visits suggested it was 'three to four times the number of tests we have available'. She denied that the system was 'failing' and said the processing of test results had been deliberately delayed. 'We made a conscious decision because of the huge increase in demand to extend the turnaround times in order to process more tests, over the course of the last couple of weeks,' she said. Lady Harding said the Government is 'on track' to increase capacity to 500,000 antigen tests a day by the end of October but she conceded even that will not be enough. 'I am certain we will need more as we go beyond the end of October,' she said. The performance of the Government's testing programme has prompted some MPs to call for Lady Harding to quit. Richard Burgon, Labour's former shadow justice secretary, said: 'It is time for Dido Harding, the head of the Test and Trace programme, to be sacked and replaced with an expert.' In another bruising day in the coronavirus crisis: Boris Johnson was accused of 'thrashing about' today as he pleaded for Britons to 'save Christmas' by obeying his 'Rule of Six' - warning that lockdown will only get stricter if the country does not 'flatten the hump of the camel'; Some 9.2million people will be under local lockdown measures by tomorrow as the North East is added to the list from midnight; Boris Johnson's approval ratings over the coronavirus crisis have hit a new low at net minus 33, according to a YouGov poll; The proportion of the public travelling to their workplace has reached 62 per cent, despite hints from ministers that an edict to work from home might be needed again in future; Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg risked a backlash as he complained that people are 'endlessly carping' about the difficulty getting tests, and people should be celebrating the 'phenomenal success' of the testing system; Baroness Dido Harding (right) was grilled by Science Committee chair Greg Clark (left) and other MPs There have been long queues at some Covid testing sites, such as this one in Southend-on-Sea, but others have been deserted despite people struggling to get screened Dido Harding: The key parts of the testing tsar's grilling by MPs On demand for testing: Lady Harding said the number of people calling 119 and visiting the website to try to book tests was 'three to four times the number of tests that we currently have available'. On who is responsible for setting testing capacity goals: Lady Harding said: 'We built our testing capacity plans based on Sage modelling.' On whether there are enough tests for everyone who needs one: 'As the Prime Minister said yesterday, plainly we don't have enough testing capacity today and we are doing everything in our power to increase the testing capacity.' On prioritising tests: Lady Harding confirmed that hospital patients were the top priority, followed by social care and NHS staff, with the three categories accounting for around 50 per cent of tests. Following that, testing was targeted at outbreak areas. Among the 'broad general public', Lady Harding said: 'We are looking to prioritise, within that, key workers, particularly teachers.' On why there are delays to processing tests: 'We have to restrict the number of people who are taking tests in the testing sites so that there's no risk of those tests going out of date when they are processed in the labs. So I do understand how frustrating it feels that when you arrive in the testing site and it doesn't look like it's very busy and you can see it could do more, but the capacity constraint isn't in those testing sites, it's back in the lab.' On how she got the job: 'I didn't apply to do the job I'm doing at the moment, I was asked to serve by by ministers. I suspect like everybody working on the COVID response, I felt it was the appropriate thing to do to serve my country and and say yes to that request.' Advertisement There are fears that the country could be plunged into a 'lockdown by default' because people with mild symptoms cannot prove they are negative and have to stay in quarantine. Experts say that perhaps half a million people a day will develop Covid-like symptoms at this time of year, even in a normal times. Hundreds of schools are already believed to be partly or fully closed due to pupils and teachers having to self-isolate. Lady Harding said patients, social care and NHS staff accounted for around half of the available diagnostic testing. She said that in anticipation of the return of schools 'we planned for a sizeable increase in testing capacity'. 'As the Prime Minister said yesterday, plainly we don't have enough testing capacity today and we are doing everything in our power to increase the testing capacity.' But Mr Clark told her that the spike in demand was 'entirely predictable': 'It is dispiriting to find that we are now in September, in circumstances which are entirely predictable people are going back to school, people are going back to work and we haven't had the right capacity put in place during the quieter times of June, July and August,' he said. Lady Harding said the 'constraint' in the testing system was in processing and laboratories. She said there had been concern that some labs were operating above 100 per cent of capacity recently. 'We have to restrict the number of people who are taking tests in the testing sites so that there's no risk of those tests going out of date when they are processed in the labs,' she said. 'So I do understand how frustrating it feels that when you arrive in the testing site and it doesn't look like it's very busy and you can see it could do more, but the capacity constraint isn't in those testing sites, it's back in the lab. 'And it would be very dangerous to send too many samples back to the laboratory, have them not be processed and people not know what their results were.' Lady Harding said the Government was also able to use overseas labs to support testing capacity. These facilities, alongside others in the UK, were 'surge capacity labs'. Lady Harding said these had a capacity of 'low order tens of thousands'. The session came as new figures suggest pre-school colds and coughs have played a major role in sinking the coronavirus testing system. Waits for Covid test results soar as system struggles with demand The proportion of people in England receiving an in-person Covid-19 test result within the Government's 24-hour target period has hit its lowest point since the middle of June, new data shows. Official NHS Test and Trace figures also showed that the weekly number of positive tests in England has risen to its highest level since the system was launched at the end of May. Some 33.3 per cent of people who were tested for coronavirus in England in the week ending September 9, at a regional site, local site or mobile testing unit a so-called 'in-person' test received their result within 24 hours. This is the lowest proportion since the week to June 17, when the figure stood at 31.3 per cent. The 33.3 per cent figure is also down from 66.5 per cent in the previous week, according to statistics released by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on Thursday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously pledged that, by the end of June, the results of all in-person tests would be back within 24 hours. Meanwhile, a total of 18,371 new people tested positive for Covid-19 in England in the week to September 9. This is an increase of 75 per cent in positive cases on the previous week, and is the highest weekly number since Test and Trace was launched at the end of May. Advertisement Details released by the Department of Health today show government tests carried out on children ages 5-9 in commercial labs were up 138 at the beginning of in September compared to a month earlier. The figures were up even more among those aged 10 to 14, at 150 per cent. In contrast, the overall numbers of tests in Pillar 2 only increased by 29.1 per cent. Separate data showed the proportion of people in England receiving an in-person Covid-19 test result within the Government's 24-hour target period has hit its lowest point since the middle of June. Official NHS Test and Trace data also showed that the weekly number of positive tests in England has risen to its highest level since the system was launched at the end of May. Some 33.3 per cent of people who were tested for coronavirus in England in the week ending September 9, at a regional site, local site or mobile testing unit a so-called 'in-person' test received their result within 24 hours. This is the lowest proportion since the week to June 17, when the figure stood at 31.3 per cent. The 33.3 per cent figure is also down from 66.5 per cent in the previous week, according to statistics released by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on Thursday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously pledged that, by the end of June, the results of all in-person tests would be back within 24 hours. Meanwhile, a total of 18,371 new people tested positive for Covid-19 in England in the week to September 9. This is an increase of 75 per cent in positive cases on the previous week, and is the highest weekly number since Test and Trace was launched at the end of May. Politicians have questioned why Lady Harding was appointed, amid a public furore over the national shortage of Covid tests. The 52-year-old former TalkTalk was appearing alongside former Apple executive Simon Thompson, who was appointed to run the contact-tracing app project after the Government abandoned a previous attempt which failed to work properly on iPhones. Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg risked a backlash today as he complained that people are 'endlessly carping' about the difficulty getting tests. A TIMELINE OF COVID-19 TEST AVAILABILITY IN THE UK January Sick travellers: During the early days of the pandemic, before the virus was known to be spreading in the UK, people could only get tested for coronavirus if they had symptoms of the disease at the time a cough and/or a fever and had travelled to an at-risk area or been close to someone who had. To begin with, this at-risk area began with the city of Wuhan - the pandemic's ground zero - then later expanded to include China as a whole and other countries including Thailand, South Korea and later Italy. March Hospitals only: Testing was stopped for members of the public on March 12. This now-controversial move came because the virus was so out of control and rife among travellers returning home from February half-term ski trips in the Alps that there weren't enough tests to have a meaningful impact. The only people who could get a Covid-19 test were hospital patients those who were seriously ill and staff working in the hospitals. April Key workers: In April swab testing for the public returned. Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on April 23 that key workers and their families (excluding children under five) could get tested if they had symptoms a new persistent cough or a fever. People who were not key workers and didn't live with one, or who didn't have one of those two symptoms, were still not allowed to get tested. Later April Over-65s: At the end of the month, on April 29, testing was expanded to allow anyone over the age of 65 with symptoms to get tested. This age group has accounted for the vast majority of coronavirus deaths in Britain and is far worse for them than for younger people. May Anyone with symptoms: On May 18, three weeks after the Department of Health claimed to have hit its target of doing 100,000 tests in a day a claim that later turned out to be false testing was expanded again. Now, the Health Secretary said, anyone over the age of five with symptoms of Covid-19 this list was expanded on the same day to include lost or changed senses of smell or taste could be tested. Later May Under-fives: The rule was expanded again on May 27 to include under-fives, meaning anyone of any age in the UK was eligible for a test if they had Covid-19 symptoms. This rule is still in place now anyone with symptoms can get a test. It has never been the Government's policy to offer tests to people who don't have one of the three symptoms, but there are some exceptions, such as people taking part in studies or who have been officially referred by their employer. July Tests for care homes: The Government pledged to offer routine swab testing to care home staff and residents on July 3. Care homes, in which more than 14,000 people have died, suffered badly during the height of the crisis because they did not have access to tests on a large scale. Care homes now use up around 100,000 tests per day about half of the national capacity as part of a scheme to test all staff once a week and residents once per month. This system is still fraught with problems, however, and Care England's chief executive Martin Green told The Times: 'There are delays in the couriers not coming to take swabs and problems with the labs getting the results back in time... 'The testing regime needs a thorough root and branch review.' August Tests for schools: As schools prepared to return to class after a six-moth break through lockdown and the summer, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson pledged all schools would have access to DIY tests to send home for pupils with symptoms. But teachers say they have not been given enough tests and that pupils and staff, unable to get tests through the buckling national testing system, are languishing at home in self-isolation without knowing whether they do or don't have Covid-19. Jim Blakely, head at Garstang St Thomas' School in Preston, told the Today programme: 'That's what we need really urgently... a 24 hour turnaround on tests ideally, so families can get back to work and children can get back to school.' August 'Please get a test': Baroness Dido Harding, chief of NHS Test & Trace, urges members of the public to get tested. Concerned that cases were not falling because people were avoiding using test and trace, she said: 'Please do play your part to stop the virus from flaring up again this system will only work if you come forward for a test and help us to trace your contacts. So if you have symptoms, however mild, get a free test immediately.' September 'Stop getting so many tests': In September Health Secretary Matt Hancock issued a plea for people to stop getting tested if they didn't have coronavirus symptoms. He said a surge in 'ineligible' people was putting strain on the testing system, which was by now buckling under the pressure of processing 200,000 swabs per day. The Department of Health estimates that one in four tests are now taken by people who shouldn't be taking them. Mr Hancock said on September 9: 'We have seen an increase in demand including from people who are not eligible for tests, people who don't have symptoms.' The number of people getting tested for coronavirus has surged from below 20,000 in April to more than 200,000 per day now Advertisement He insisted people should be celebrating the 'phenomenal success' of the testing system. 'We all have an obligation to try and stop the dangerous disease spreading, but the issue of testing is one where we have gone from a disease that nobody knew about a few months ago to one where nearly a quarter of a million people a day can be tested,' he told the Commons. 'And the Prime Minister is expecting that to go up to half a million people a day by the end of October. 'And instead of this endless carping, saying it is difficult to get them, we should actually celebrate the phenomenal success of the British nation in getting up to a quarter of a million tests of a disease that nobody knew about until earlier in the year.' Meanwhile, the public has continued to vent anger about the difficulties getting tests. HGV mechanic Brad Cockburn made a 100-mile round trip from Bedale, North Yorkshire, to the Doxford Park testing site in Sunderland only to find there were no staff, not even a tent or other infrastructure, at the site on the out-of-town business park. The 28-year-old said: 'There's no organisation, it's piss-poor performance as usual.' His employer booked him the test as he felt he had flu-like symptoms and he cannot work until he has got the all-clear. Mr Cockburn said: 'I took this afternoon off, unpaid, and I won't be able to work tomorrow now. They're supposed to put these things in place to get people working again. Now they've got all these people congregating here and nobody to test them.' Rob Reid, a 58-year-old cash and carry manager from Sunderland, booked a test this morning for 3.45pm, only to find there were no staff. He said: 'It annoys me. My concern is about my health and it comes across that the Government is not that concerned, when they are taking bookings on the NHS website and there's nobody here to do it.' When another driver was asked how he felt, he simply replied: 'Stressed.' Colin Thompson, 59, from County Durham, travelled to the testing centre with his 15-year-old granddaughter, Sophie Littlemore. He said: Someones head should roll for this. If this was me or you we would get sacked. Its absolutely diabolical. My daughter and my granddaughter have been waiting for four days to get a test. When we got here the car park was about three quarters full but there was no one around to do the tests. People didnt know what was going on. They were upset.' Although cases have been surging over 3,000 a day, it was initially among younger people, who are less likely to be badly affected. But now Covid-19 cases are soaring among middle-aged people in England and have risen by upwards of 90 per cent in a fortnight as the outbreak continues to grow. The PM claimed the chart of infections is starting to resemble a camel's back, so ministers are implementing new measures to ensure the virus doesn't 'rip' through the country. Mr Johnson said: 'All this is to say that: Christmas we want to protect, and we want everyone to have a fantastic Christmas. 'But the only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas is to be tough now. So if we can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, stop the second hump of the dromedary, flatten the second hump. 'Dromedary or camel? I can't remember if it is a dromedary or a camel that has two humps? Umm. Please check. 'Anyway a double hump. So that is what we need to do!' There were claims today that chief medical officer Chris Whitty has been urging an immediate two-week national lockdown, and the true number of daily cases could be 38,000. But Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University dismissed the idea that the disease was 'out of control' again. 'Most of the problems here occurred if you look at the data, after the Bank Holiday Monday, from about the 2nd of September onwards,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'You can argue here that one of the issues here that happened was significant people met over that weekend, and then we've had a bit of a surge. 'But the language of ''out of control, we need more testing, this is terrible' needs to be dialled back. Look, we have problems, significant problems, but we also have shifting policy every day now. 'I think what we've got a huge problem here, we are losing the trust of the population This is a huge moment right now, and what we have to do is slow down our thinking, pause and start to be more analytical about the steps we take. 'We rush in, like with the test and trace programme, it is falling over.' Dr Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the lack of testing meant 'blunt tools' were needed to control the outbreak. 'I think we are getting to the point where potentially we are losing our ability to accurately track the virus,' he told Today. 'That means that we could have a situation where it is getting into risk groups, we start to see more cases appear and we don't have good warning of that. 'It also affects our ability to have more targeted, nuanced measures. If we lose the ability to track the virus it ends up that more blunt tools will be deployed. That is what we saw earlier in the year.' It is the first chance MPs have had in months to grill Lady Harding following the summer recess. Opposition MPs questioned the lack of apparent scrutiny over her role in test and trace, and her appointment to head Public Health England's successor, the National Institute for Health Protection. Labour MP Barry Sheerman tweeted: 'What has Dido Harding actually achieved since she was parachuted into the House of Lords and [put] in charge of Johnson's NHS Test and Trace programme?' Ian Lavery, the Labour MP for Wansbeck, questioned the decision to put her in charge of testing, and to outsource test centres to the private company Serco. He said it was 'the perfect ingredients for a chaotic disaster... where decent folk pay the price'. Her appointment was controversial because her professional background lay in business rather than public health, and her refusal to sit as a cross-bench peer rather than a Tory, given her role as a public official. She was put in charge of the Government's first attempt at a contact-tracing app, announced in April. The 11million app was abandoned after the Government was forced to admit it had not worked. The replacement app, using Google and Apple technology, is due to be launched in England and Wales next week, months after similar apps were rolled out in other developed countries. Baroness Harding was chief executive at telecoms giant TalkTalk when data linked to 157,000 customers was accessed by hackers, including bank account details. The breach cost the firm an estimated 77million, including a record 400,000 fine imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office. Dido Harding: Tory peer hailed by Hancock for 'fantastic leadership' skills has overseen months of farce Baroness Dido Harding was hailed for her 'fantastic leadership' skills by Health Secretary Matt Hancock when she was appointed in May. But after the Tory peer was put in charge of implementation of the new NHS app, mass testing and contact tracing programme in May it has become a national embarassment. Baroness Harding is a former jockey, though she quit racing after hitting 40 and promising her husband she'd stop The app has been massively scaled back in scope and it may be next year by the time a full mass testing scheme is in place. The Government's reaction to her failures has been to give her another job. Last month she was put in interim charge of the replacement body for Public Health England. Experts said making her interim chief of the new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP) made as 'much sense as Chris Whitty [England's chief medical officer] being appointed a head of Vodafone'. That was a reference to Harding's lack of public health experience and her previous stint as chief exec of telecoms giant TalkTalk - where she oversaw one of the worst data breaches in the UK that saw hackers to steal bank details from 157,000 customers. Baroness Dido Harding of Winscombe, 53, was raised on a Somerset pig farm and is the granddaughter of Field Marshall Lord Harding, the commander of the Desert Rats who became the most senior soldier in the British army. A former jockey, she is married to John Penrose, the Conservative MP for Weston-super-Mare. She studied Policy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, alongside David Cameron and upon graduating, she held a slew of roles at Thomas Cook, Woolworths, Tesco and Sainsbury's. Baroness Harding was appointed CEO of TalkTalk in 2010, serving in the role for seven years, during which the company was the victim of a cyber attack that saw the personal and banking details of 157,000 customers accessed by hackers. She was subjected to repeated blackmail attempts after the hack, with demands for Bitcoins in exchange for stolen data, which included customers' names, email addresses, mobile numbers, home addresses and dates of birth. In the aftermath, TalkTalk was fined a record 400,000 for security failings which allowed the data to be accessed 'with ease' in one of the biggest data breaches in history. TalkTalk is thought to have lost 60million from the fallout with an estimated 100,000 angry customers leaving, mainly to BT, while 2015 profits halved to 14million and shares lost nearly two-thirds of their value. Baroness Harding faced repeated calls to step down over the breach, but stayed on until 2017, when she resigned to focus on her 'public service activities'. Later that year, she was appointed chairwoman of NHS Improvement, responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals. A powerful figure, she refuses to believe her gender has ever held her back, nor will she endorse female quotas on company boards, which she sees as political meddling. She also thinks that workers have too much maternity leave, despite admitting being the boss has allowed her to successfully juggle her own career with spending time with the two daughters she has with her husband. Earlier this year she was criticised over her role on the board of Cheltenham Festival organiser the Jockey Club. Scientists have dubbed the festival which went ahead in March a 'disaster' and claimed it accelerated the spread of coronavirus in the UK after 260,000 people flocked to the racecourse just days before lockdown began. Advertisement ANDREW PIERCE: The testing fiasco is threatening to shut down hundreds of schools... so where on earth has Dido Harding been? Dido Harding walks to 10 Downing Street, September 16 By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail As the testing fiasco threatens to shut down hundreds of schools, it's the deafening question: what is the test-and-trace tsar Baroness Harding doing about the crisis? There has been barely a trace of her. The former businesswoman, who was appointed in a blaze of publicity in May, has apparently largely gone AWOL. She was spotted going into Downing Street yesterday, but she has not been seen in television studios nor gracing our airwaves to explain what has gone wrong. Instead, she has left the Health Secretary Matt Hancock to face the flak. Humiliatingly, six months into the pandemic, Hancock yesterday had to admit that Covid tests will have to be rationed to the general public, to ensure frontline workers can get a test along with care home residents. This is despite Boris Johnson in June pledging a 'world-beating' service with all test results turned round within 24 hours. The crisis in testing dominated Prime Minister's questions yesterday. Yet Harding kept her head below the parapet eschewing interview requests. On Twitter she has said nothing about testing since July. 'She's a cross between the Scarlet Pimpernel and Macavity the cat who was never around when there was trouble,' said one exasperated Whitehall source. 'The test and trace system is imploding yet there is silence from the Baroness.' Despite increasing numbers of Tory MPs now criticising the testing system, Harding has so far ducked the chance to defend it in the House of Lords to which she was elevated in 2014. In fact, she hasn't spoken in the Upper House since March 24 when she talked about Covid for four minutes and emphasised the importance of 'expanding testing capacity'. The omens for her tenure as test and trace tsar were hardly auspicious. One of her first acts in July was to get rid of a chart showing the UK's progress on crucial coronavirus testing from daily Downing Street briefings. At around the same time, the much vaunted NHS test and trace app was delayed because the technology was not up to scratch. Humiliatingly, six months into the pandemic, Hancock yesterday had to admit that Covid tests will have to be rationed to the general public, to ensure frontline workers can get a test along with care home residents That same month Harding, who has no scientific background, made a disastrous appearance before the Commons' health committee when she refused to say what proportion of tests were completed within the 24-hour time period the Prime Minister had pledged. Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is the committee's chairman, could not conceal his irritation at her refusal to answer questions. 'You're telling me that you actually don't know how many tests come back within 24 hours and you are in charge of NHS test and trace,' he said. Ever since the bruising encounter, Harding seems to have retreated from public view. This does not mean, however, she is any less influential in Government circles. In August, when the Government announced it was axing Public Health England, it emerged Baroness Harding an Oxford contemporary of David Cameron would lead the body that replaces it, the National Institute for Health Protection. Intriguingly, she is married to Tory MP John Penrose who is on the board of think-tank '1828' which has called for Public Health England to be abolished. 'Dido Harding has locked herself away in the old Public Health England building setting up the new National Institute,' claims the Whitehall source. 'The real priority should be getting on the front foot of test and trace but we can't prise her out of her hideaway.' Baroness Dido Harding pictured at a Downing Street press conference in July Harding, a former jockey, is also on the board of the Jockey Club which famously put on the Cheltenham Festival, attracting crowds of 250,000 people just as lockdowns were taking effect all over the world While Harding was chief executive of TalkTalk in 2015 the company suffered one of the biggest data breaches in commercial history when 4million customers' private details were hacked. That year she was paid 2.8million, an increase of 1million on the previous year. Despite calls for her to step down, she remained at the helm until 2017. She then joined NHS Improvement, a body that oversees NHS trusts, for which she was paid 62,000 for a three day week. When the Commons' committee on health examined her appointment, it remarked on her 'complete lack of experience' of health issues. Harding, a former jockey, is also on the board of the Jockey Club which famously put on the Cheltenham Festival, attracting crowds of 250,000 people just as lockdowns were taking effect all over the world. The granddaughter of Field Marshal Lord Harding, who became the most senior soldier in the British army, she grew up on a Somerset pig farm and went to catholic private school St Antony's Leweston. In a 2015 interview, she admitted: 'I have an enormously privileged position. I make a lot of money a matter of public record I have a huge amount of help, and I'm more in control of the day and what I do than someone working shifts on the checkout.' Since she is up before a select committee today, perhaps she'll explain why she has lost control of the test and trace system. A California family has accused Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of trespassing on their fire-ravaged property for a photo opportunity. The lawmakers visited Fresno County on Tuesday to survey areas that have suffered the most damage during the Creek Fire, as dozens of other wildfires continue to rage across the West Coast. Harris and Newsom were both briefed by officials from Cal Fire and the US Forest Service about the challenges theyve faced in fighting the fire, which has burned more than 213,000 acres and is still only around 18 percent contained. They also stopped by Pine Ridge Elementary in Auberry, before walking across the street to observe a residence that had been burnt to the ground. The fire just swept through. So everything is gone except the chimney, Harris told reporters. Those chimneys, they remind me - when you look at a neighborhood that's been wiped out, those chimneys remind me of tombstones. In a Facebook post later the same day, Trampas Patten, who identified himself as the homeowners son, accused Harris and Newsom of using his familys tragedy for their own political gain. A California family has accused Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of trespassing on their fire-ravaged property for a photo opportunity during their tour of a burn zone Siblings Trampas and Bailee Patten (both pictured above) blasted Harris and Newsom on Facebook, saying their parents own the property and they didn't seek permission to enter Trampas Patten, who identified himself as the homeowners son, accused Harris and Newsom of using his familys tragedy for their own political gain Referencing a photo later shared by Harris of the Senator and Newsom standing near the ruins of the home, Patten condemned the pair saying his family never gavee them permission to go traipsing around the property. In the post, which has since been shared more than 1,500 times, Patten said: What has me really frustrated right now is the fact that these two politicians used my parents loss for a photo opportunity to push their political agenda. Political party wouldnt have made a difference in this moment, he continued. Decent human beings that have character and class, wouldnt air someone elses misfortune on national television! He added: I guess those property taxes my parents pay allow politicians to do this! Private property doesnt exist in California anymore! A Fresno County Sheriffs Office spokesman said the exact letter of the law isnt clear as to whether the lawmakers needed permission to explore the charred remains, according to GV Wire. Voting records show that Patten and his mother, Bonnie Patten, are registered Republicans, the outlet said. His sister, Bailee Patten, also waded in to voice outrage, saying that her family hasnt even been given the opportunity to visit the home themselves as an evacuation order is still in place. Referencing a photo later shared by Harris of the Senator and Newsom standing near the ruins of the home, Patten condemned the pair saying his family never game them permission to go traipsing around the property California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., talk as they asses the damage during the Creek Fire A Fresno County Sheriffs Office spokesman said the exact letter of the law isnt clear as to whether the lawmakers needed permission to explore the charred remains Bailee said seeing the pile of rubble that was once their family home for the first time on social media was a real gut-punching blow. When we saw those photos, it was - there aren't words, because it's like, we haven't even seen our house. We haven't seen our property. There is no house, we haven't even seen our property. This isn't just devastation, this is our lives, she continued to FOX26. This is where we grew up, these are our memories. And to not have that - to feel so helpless - and I guess that's what we've all been thinking, is that we were so helpless. Because we weren't there, we haven't gotten to deal with our loss. Instead, we're having to watch it play out on social media and news, she said. Harris told reporters as they filmed her walking around the property: These are the stories behind these fires. The people who are victimized by these, they could care less - and their children could care less - who they voted for in the last election. But Bailee Patten said she feels Newsom took her familys loss to parade it all over social media and news networks to push your agenda. That agenda can wait, she blasted, adding that neither Harris nor Newsom has reached out to see if the family needs help. When approached for a statement on the claims of trespassing, Senator Harris Communications Director told FOX26: I'm not going to have anything about that, and declined to comment further. Bailee said seeing the pile of rubble that was once their family home for the first time on social media was a real gut-punching blow Bailee Patten said she feels Newsom took her familys loss to parade it all over social media and news networks to push your agenda' During the tour of the area, Harris and Newsom spoke about climate change and the role its playing in stoking the wildfires. According to the California Fire Department, more than 17,400 firefighters continue to fight 26 major and three extended attack wildfires in the state. The fires so far caused 25 deaths and destroyed nearly 5,400 structures in California as of Thursday. Harris called the climate a public health crisis. It is incumbent on us, in terms of the leadership of our nation, to take seriously the extreme changes in our climate, she said. Newsom added: The hots are getting hotter. The dries are getting dryer. Climate change is real. If you dont believe in science, come to California and observe with your own eyes and not be in denial about this reality. After the visit, Harris tweeted a photo of her with Newsom in front of what appeared to be a fireplace, where the Pattens say their familys home once stood. Im incredibly grateful for the courage of our brave firefighters and those who have come near and far to help those fleeing the destruction, Harris wrote in the post. Do you want this kind of leadership, using you and your loss for political gain?! Trampas Patten thundered on Facebook in response. Joan Marcus, 2019 If you need to brush up on the Constitution before the election, Amazon's got you covered. They announced on Thursday that a filmed version of the Tony-nominated play What the Constitution Means to Me will premiere Oct. 16 on Amazon Prime Video. Starring the show's creator Heidi Schreck, the show was filmed during the final week of its Broadway run by director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). Schreck has also signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios to create additional content to premiere exclusively on Prime Video. What the Constitution Means to Me stars Schreck as herself, resurrecting her teenage self who earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the country. Through interrogation of these memories and her prize-winning speeches, she traces the profound relationship between four generations of women and this nation's founding document that shaped their lives. Directed for the stage by Obie Award-winner Oliver Butler, What the Constitution Means to Me also features Mike Iveson, Rosdely Ciprian, and Thursday Williams. I'm delighted with how beautifully Mari Heller has translated Constitution to the screen and Im thankful to Big Beach and Amazon Studios for making it possible to share the show with more people especially right now when we cant gather together in theaters, said Schreck in a statement. In light of the moment we are living through, I am donating part of my proceeds from this film to the Broadway Cares COVID Relief Fund and to the NAACP Legal Defense Funds Voting Rights 2020 initiative. Amazon Studios The critically-acclaimed play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and it won the Obie and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play. Schreck also received two Tony Award nominations for Best Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. "[Schreck] weighs the soul of America and finds it both beautiful and wanting, a bittersweet exploration of how disillusionment can both obscure and fuel pride," EW noted in a review of the touring production. "What the Constitution Means to Me is an essential examination of our country and an urgent reminder that we should never stop holding the Constitutions (and those whove sworn to uphold it) metaphorical feet to the fire...[It's] the ultimate reminder that the personal is political." Story continues What the Constitution Means to Me was executive produced by Schreck, Heller, Robin Schwartz, Kyle Laursen, Peter Saraf, and Marc Turtletaub. The special was produced by Big Beach and Defiant By Nature, Hellers newly launched production company. The producers of the Broadway production Diana DiMenna, Aaron Glick, and Matt Ross also serve as producers of the filmed version. "Heidi Schreck is one of todays most relevant and original voices, and What the Constitution Means to Me delivers a point of view that is equal parts hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful, said Albert Cheng, COO and Co-Head of Television, Amazon Studios, in a statement. We are proud to bring the award-winning Broadway show to the screen for Prime Video and we know that Schrecks next projects will embody the same intelligence and humanity." Related content: The FBI is increasingly worried about potential violent clashes between extremist groups on the right and the left ahead of the November election, Director Chris Wray said The FBI is increasingly worried about possible violent clashes between ideologically-motivated extremist groups before the November election, director Chris Wray said Thursday. Wray said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is keeping a close eye on groups who have faced off in protests in various cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. In those places, anti-racism and anti-police groups have squared off with right-wing and white nationalist activists who are often armed. Wray told a Congressional hearing that the FBI was deeply concerned about the growing tension on US streets, and groups that are "hijacking" protests to incite violence. "Now you've got an additional level of combustible violence," he said, citing "violent extremist groups or individuals committing violence." "Now you have both groups from the opposite sides adding to the combustibility and danger of the situation," Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee. "We have certainly seen that in a number of cities. That's a force multiplier, in a bad way, that I'm concerned about." Several people have been killed in those situations. In August, a 17-year-old with ties to arch-conservative groups was charged with shooting dead two people protesting against police mistreatment of blacks in Kenosha. And at the end of August in Portland, an activist aligned with the leftist Antifa movement shot dead a supporter of a far-right Patriot Prayer group during a protest. The Antifa shooter, Michael Reinoehl, was killed by police days later. Wray told lawmakers that, aside from "lone wolf" attackers inspired by foreign jihadist groups like Islamic State, white supremacists remain the biggest domestic terror threat. "Within the domestic terrorism bucket as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group," he told the committee. Story continues "Within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist ideology is certainly the biggest chunk." Wray did point out that while white supremacists have been responsible for most of the lethal terror attacks inside the United States in recent years, there has been a noteworthy shift this year, with attacks by "anti-government, anti-authority" actors. That includes the May murder of two policemen in California by a follower of the extreme right, often heavily armed "Boogaloo Bois" movement. In the same hearing, National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller confirmed that white nationalists were a particular focus of their concerns. He said that some of the US extremists have loose ties with similar groups in Germany and Russia, including the Russian Imperial Movement that Washington formally designated a terror group in April. But the links between US white supremacist and the foreign groups are so far relatively loose and informal, Miller said. Although some Americans have traveled to Russia to train with the Imperial Movement, the cross-border ties between groups are "nothing monolith... we are not picking up anything of a routine, systemic connection," he said. It is "More ad hoc, because they are all sitting on line together, chatting." pmh/st Workers at a rural cooperative make embroidery works in Tekes county, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on Aug 10, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China issued a white paper on employment and labor rights in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Thursday. The white paper, published by the State Council Information Office, says Xinjiang takes the facilitation of employment as the most fundamental project for ensuring and improving people's wellbeing. Through its proactive labor and employment policies, Xinjiang has continuously improved the people's material and cultural lives, and guaranteed and developed their human rights in every field, according to the document titled "Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang." There are six chapters in the white paper: employment in Xinjiang, proactive employment policies, full respect for workers' job preferences, labor rights protection, better jobs for better lives, and application of international labor and human rights standards. Enditem Full Text: Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang The disaster solutions company One Concern , whose SaaS products use artificial intelligence to predict damage from natural disasters, is expanding to Japan with $15 million in new funding from the insurance company SOMPO Holdings.According to a news release on Aug. 31, One Concerns multi-year agreement will allow it to expand into new geographic territory in Japan and start selling to private industry customers. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company was founded in 2015 and has raised almost $75 million to date, following a $37 million round last year led by NEA and Sozo Ventures.One Concern bought the AI company Datmo in January this year, not for its product but for its talent, who were brought on to lead One Concerns solutions and data science teams.One Concerns work with AI so far has been about helping governments mitigate damage from natural disasters, with its initial offerings focused on floods and earthquakes. The company creates highly detailed digital models of cities by pulling data about streets and structures from various proprietary and open sources around the world, including governments, insurance companies, satellites or even crowdsourcing. By running a model through a simulation with certain criteria for instance, showing potential impacts on the local health-care system the AI can generate detailed information about which physical structures will be damaged, if and where power will go out, who will be affected and so forth.As per a story last year, some government officials, technologists and seismologists have expressed concerns that the company exaggerated or misrepresented what its software can do. Thereported in August 2019 that One Concern had secured contracts with Arizona, Pennsylvania and the World Bank, while San Francisco had ended its contract and Los Angeles allowed its deal with One Concern to expire.SOMPO Holdings has also established a financial relationship with another American tech company, Palantir, which is in the process of going public In a Medium post , One Concern described a pilot project in Kumamoto, Japan backed by SOMPO to map every waterway in and around the city, and then recommend ways to mitigate damage in the event of floods. With SOMPO Holdings, Japans second-largest property insurer, as a strategic partner, One Concern is billing what it calls resilience-as-a-service as a must-have for cities in the face of climate change.The world wakes up each day facing an uncertain future whether its the current global pandemic, California wildfires, or twin tropical storms in the Caribbean, said Ahmad Wani, One Concerns CEO and co-founder, in the statement. Reducing that uncertainty to build lasting resilience is at the heart of what One Concern does. Fans of Hilary Mantel shook a fist at the judges of the prestigious Booker Prize after the English author's The Mirror and the Light the final instalment of the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, both previous Booker winners didn't make the prize's shortlist on Wednesday. Part of the controversy was the fact that Mantel's seemingly guaranteed spot was usurped by, as one Australian publication put it, an "unconventional" bunch, including four first-time authors and four authors of colour. Hilary Mantel missed out on this year's Booker Prize short list. Credit:Getty Images This year's nominees are Tsitsi Dangarembga (This Mournable Body), Diane Cook (The New Wilderness), Avni Doshi (Burnt Sugar), Maaza Mengiste (The Shadow King), Douglas Stuart (Shuggie Bain) and Brandon Taylor (Real Life). In the face of some criticism, the Booker's chair of judges, Ghanaian-born British publisher Margaret Busby, who has long campaigned for greater diversity in the publishing industry, defended the selections of the judging panel, which also included authors Lee Child, Lemn Sissay, Emily Wilson and critic Sameer Rahim. Brussels: European Union leaders are pushing for their industries to have greater independence from China and the United States, ensuring the 27-nation bloc can better confront future issues after the coronavirus pandemic and its ensuing recession. In her first State of the Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen doubled down on the flagship goals she set out on taking office last December: urgent action to combat climate change and a digital revolution. 'This is the moment for Europe': EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers her first SoU address. Credit:AP "This is the moment for Europe," von der Leyen told the European Parliament in a wide-ranging speech that ran for about 80 minutes. "The moment for Europe to lead the way from this fragility to a new vitality." Von der Leyen, who wants Europe to become the world's first climate-neutral continent by mid-century, unveiled a plan to cut the greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030, up from an existing target of 40 per cent. She also pledged to use green bonds to finance those climate goals. (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has a history of shrugging off crises. A decade ago, Europes No. 1 operator of top-tier shopping malls and offices doled out cash to shareholders even as banks collapsed and austerity ruled. The rise of online shopping only pushed it further to keep buying trophies like Westfield. That halo of invincibility has well and truly slipped after Covid-19. The groups market value has shriveled to 5.1 billion euros ($6 billion) from 27 billion euros in 2018 after a global round of coronavirus-induced lockdowns robbed malls of shoppers and tenants of sales. Even now that its sites have almost all reopened, the threat of a resurgence of Covid-19 and a deeper hit to property values have pushed the company to announce a 3.5 billion-euro capital hike and a 4 billion-euro asset-sale plan. The fall from grace is astounding. Unibail trades at a whopping 80% discount to book value, which a year ago would have made the company seem like a screaming buy. Pressure from hedge funds has been immense: Short interest is an estimated 28% of free float, according to Markit, higher even than Germanys Wirecard AG before its spectacular collapse. Speculators saw this big, dilutive share sale coming. If Unibail pulls off its deleveraging plan, the firm reckons its loan-to-value ratio can drop to 30.9% from its current level of 41.5%, well below the 60% level that would constitute a breach of debt covenants. Encouragingly, Chief Executive Officer Christophe Cuvillier said footfall is almost back to normal in continental Europe and 70% of third-quarter rents have been collected. But is that enough? Rent payments and consumer spending depend on the direction of travel of Covid-19, and the ability of governments to keep supporting the economy. The earnings outlook is exceptionally cloudy: If the second half of this year is as bad as the first, annual profits could fall 25%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sue Munden. Mall valuations could also plunge more than the firm expects: Analysts at Barclays Plc see Unibails loan-to-value ratio hitting as much as 57% in 2022. Story continues Notwithstanding the possibility of a vaccine or treatment against the coronavirus, work-from-home habits are spreading, online spending is rising, and demand for commercial property is falling in major cities. Leisure businesses from movie theaters to restaurants to hotels are having to rethink their model. This is a pandemic warning that goes beyond property. The ripple effects of Covid-19 extend further than lockdowns. Theyre upending companies that previously looked unassailable, and have encouraged investors to put their marginal dollars elsewhere: Online retailer THG Holdings Ltd., which listed in London this week, already has a market value higher than Unibail. After years of proving mall skeptics wrong on the mixed model of clicks and mortar, and transforming malls into full-on experience centers, Unibail is now scrambling to overhaul itself. If it cant, the only people profiting will be the bankers collecting fees from the firms cash call and the hedge funds, of course. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes. 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. Foreigners arrive at the International Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCMC on March 13, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran. The Ministry of Transport on Wednesday asked carriers to only sell air tickets to foreign passengers bearing entry visas and having booked prior accommodation in Vietnam. Airlines will be responsible for confirming whether passengers test negative for Covid-19 within three days before boarding flights in their host countries. Foreign passengers must have their body temperatures checked and install Bluezone, a Vietnamese Bluetooth-based app that helps determine if a person has come into close contact with a Covid-19 patient, before boarding flights, the ministry stressed. The government has allowed commercial flights to mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan from September 15, followed by Laos, Cambodia to reopen from September 22, the Government Office said Tuesday evening. However, the transport ministry said relevant authorities are working to determine Covid-19 testing procedures and quarantine expenses as well as sufficient quarantine facilities and medical staff before welcoming foreign passengers. After reaching a conclusion, the transport ministry would allow airlines to release specific flight schedules. So far, Vietnamese carriers have yet to reveal specific plans for two-way commercial flights to the six Asian destinations. Under the governments decision, passengers allowed entry include Vietnamese citizens, foreigners carrying diplomatic and official passports, experts, business managers, high-skilled workers, investors, and their family members, as well as international students and family members of Vietnamese citizens. Vietnam suspended all international flights on March 25. Many foreigners who have been kept out of the country due to travel restrictions have pleaded with the government to reopen the borders and resume international flights so they could reunite with their families. Upon landing in Vietnam, arrivals would be tested again via the RT-PRC method at centralized quarantine camps. The quarantine period for those who test negative twice would be reduced from 14 to five days, following which they have to remain at their place of accommodation or work until the 14 days are up, under supervision of local authorities. Those showing signs of infection will have to remain at specified centralized quarantine facilities. Under the transport ministry's proposal, there would be two weekly round trips on the HCMC-Guangzhou route, two weekly services on the Hanoi-Tokyo and HCMC-Tokyo routes, as well as four trips from Hanoi and HCMC to Seoul, along with four weekly trips to Taipei. Vietnam's Covid-19 count is currently at 1,063, including 89 active cases. It has gone two weeks without a new domestic infection. U.S. Postal Service mail carrier Lizette Portugal finishes loading her truck amid the COVID-19 pandemic in El Paso, Texas, on April 30, 2020. (Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images) USPS Performance Rebounding After Overhaul-Related Dip, Democrats Report Finds The U.S. Postal Service has ramped up on-time deliveries to nearly the levels seen before a dip in performance triggered by cost-saving measures enacted by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, according to a report (pdf) ordered by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). While denouncing DeJoy for ordering the cost-saving measures without considering the impact on the timeliness of mail delivery, the report shows that the percentage of first-class mail delivered on-time has rebounded and by early September was only 2.7 percent below the average levels seen before the start of DeJoys tenure. Service performance returned to normal in the Northeast and nearly so in the Pacific area during the week of Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, according to the report. Service in other areas is still below the levels seen prior to the rollout of the cost-saving measures. During the second week of August, the percentage of on-time deliveries dropped to 10 percent below average levels, resulting in 85 million late deliveries, the report found. The results of my investigation clearly show that Postmaster General DeJoys carelessly instituted operational changes to the Postal Service resulted in severe service impacts that harmed the lives and livelihoods of Michiganders and Americans, Peters said in a statement. I have repeatedly made it clear to Mr. DeJoy, that his actions have had consequences for many of my constituents and people across the nation. My report shows his decisions were reckless and caused significant harm to the American people. While some of the cost-saving measures were already in motion prior to DeJoys arrival, he ordered trucks to run on schedule, which resulted in mail pile-ups as the rest of the system adjusted. On-time transportation had increased to 97 percent from 89 percent by late August, according to a fact sheet from the USPS. Getting trucks running on time created a temporary dip in delivery, which we previously acknowledged. That dip is now largely gone, USPS spokesman David Partenheimer wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. By insisting that trucks run on time, we have now seen improvements in all categories of delivery, he added. We are taking the steps necessary to run a world-class, efficient, and effective logistics operation that delivers six days a week for the American people. Peters received more than 7,700 responses from USPS employees and people from across the country. Some of the responses from the mail workers contradict what the postal service told the Senate, including reports of reductions in overtime. Democrats targeted the USPS for scrutiny after President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr criticized the prospect of a mass mail-in election. Part of Trumps criticism focused on how the inefficiency of the USPS would throw the election into disarray. The USPS, which says it has more than enough capacity to handle election mail, delivers 433 million pieces of mail every day. If every American voted by mail, the ballots would amount to roughly three-quarters of the volume of mail the USPS handles every day. Some 100 million Americans will automatically receive ballots or ballot request forms for the 2020 election. Early voting has already begun in some states. Las Vegas, NV, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP), a global leader in the industrial hemp industry with an 85,000 square-foot multipurpose industrial hemp processing facility in Spring Hope, North Carolina; a 500-acre hemp growing Veteran Village Kins Community in Golden Valley, Arizona; two model Small Family Hemp Farms in North Carolina and Arizona; a hemp pre-roll blending manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, NV; a 5,000 square-foot retail store (The King of Hemp Store) in Kingman, Arizona; and recently surpassed over $2 million in sales of their pre-98 OG Bubba Kush buds, has announced that its CEO Bruce Perlowin has been featured in a Fox Business article. The article, USDA reopens comment period on hemp regulations as lawmakers, growers worry rules could stunt budding industry, covers the United States Department of Agriculture and the reconsideration of hemp regulations as it relates to the testing and disposal of hemp. The USDA has reopened the comment period for the interim final rule (IRF) to discuss two regulations, one that would require labs that test hemp to be registered with the DEA and one that would require law enforcement to be present during hemp disposal processes. The story features commentary from hemp growers, thought leaders, and senators that believe these new directives will hinder the growth of the industry. Hemp, Inc. CEO Bruce Perlowin was one industry professional cited in the story for his thoughts on the proposed new regulations. Perowin mentions that he has more concern for the smaller farmer and how these regulations could send them into turmoil. "It's not a bunch of hippies anymore growing marijuana that are protesting the war. That era is gone," he told Fox Business reporter Tyler Olson. "What you're talking about is the American farmer, the red, white and blue farmer. The guy who is going to take it, try new crops, and you're going to go burn his crop and plow it under? I mean think about that, he's going to lose the farm." Story continues Speaking to the new testing regulations in question, Perlowin suggests the proposed directives will create an unnecessary barrier for farmers to access the rapidly evolving U.S. hemp market. "You can't test in a DEA lab. There's not enough of them," he said. "So you've got this massive bottleneck, you know, looming in the future unless it's changed." According to Vote Hemp, states have licensed a total of 21,496 hemp growers in 2020, a 27 percent increase compared to the 16,877 farmers and researchers licensed in 34 states in 2019. The number of growers licensed for 2019 showed a 476 percent increase over 2018. To read the Fox Business article, click here. To see one-minute videos of Hemp, Inc.s current activities, visit Bruce Perlowins personal Facebook page, where he shares daily posts of Hemp, Inc.s activities around the country. Additionally, follow Hemp, Inc. on Instagram here and on Twitter here. Those interested in King of Hemp pre-rolls or hemp-derived CBD tinctures should visit www.kingofhempusa.com or email sales@kingofhempusa.com. To view the webinar featuring Hemp, Inc.s CEO, Bruce Perlowin, click here. WHAT IS HEMP, INC.? What is Hemp, Inc.? With a deep-rooted social and environmental mission at its core, Hemp, Inc. seeks to build a business constituency for the American small farmer, the American veteran, and other groups experiencing the ever-increasing disparity between tapering income and soaring expenses. As a leader in the industrial hemp industry with ownership of the largest commercial multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in North America, Hemp, Inc. believes there can be tangible benefits reaped from adhering to a corporate social responsibility plan. FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURES This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. To clarify the issue of OTC placing a stop sign next to Hemp, Inc.s stock trading symbol, that symbol indicates Hemp, Inc. does not report their financials. As a non-reporting pink sheet company, Hemp, Inc. is not required to report. The company does, however, choose to publicly report its quarterly and yearly financials on its website. According to the companys CEO, the OTC stop sign is a misrepresentation of that reporting fact. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties. Contact: Hemp, Inc. 855-436-7688 ir@hempinc.com Police have charged a Markham man operating a boat after he lost control of his vessel at Woodbine Beach, resulting in a crash that led to the death of another man on the boat and injured others aboard. Police said the 46-year-old suspect had been charged with a count of criminal negligence causing death and two counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm. The man was piloting a 20-ft. bowrider vessel with six passengers aboard on Sept. 3 when the boat crashed into the rocks, near Woodbine Beach. Const. David Hopkinson, media relations officer with Toronto police, told the Star that a male passenger, 47, died after from injuries sustained in the crash. A number of other passengers on the boat were injured, Hopkinson said. Four other people were taken to the hospital and three were treated at the scene, according to reports. Except for the person who lost his life, all the other injuries were not considered life-threatening, Hopkinson said. Thamilagan Olivernicholas is slated to appear in court on November 4. Kevin Jiang is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach him via email: kjiang@thestar.ca Blogger to stay detained until October in case over access to secret data RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 17:30 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court on Thursday upheld detention of blogger Andrey Pyzh charged with illegal access to the data constituting a state secret until October 5, the courts press service told RAPSI. The blogger runs Urbanturizm channel where he publishes video about closed and abandoned objects. The case is classified. If convicted, Pyzh could face up to 8 years behind bars. LAS VEGAS, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Watching two-year-old Justin Oliver laugh, run, play and even count to 10, you'd never believe that this time last year, the joyful toddler was fighting for his life following a double-lung transplant. "He was on life support for 97 days, in intensive care for 107 days," recalls his mother, Ericka Easterling. "After all the suffering he's been through, he's a normal two-year-old. He loves to run around. He's super excited about Halloween. He likes the scary stuff!" Miracle Flights logo Two-year-old Justin Oliver from Charlotte, North Carolina, just celebrated the one-year anniversary of the double-lung transplant that saved his life. His ongoing treatment requires frequent travel to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. The national charity Miracle Flights flies Justin and his mom to every appointment, free of charge But the frights of Halloween have nothing on the "scary stuff" Justin has already survived. He was born with pulmonary veno-occlusive diseasea genetic condition so rare, it affects less than 2 in 10 million people, according to the National Institutes of Health. The disease is nearly always fatal without treatment. Ericka first noticed her son's labored breathing when he was just three weeks old, but months of pediatrician appointments, x-rays and ER visits yielded no answers. Then at 15 months, Justin's condition took a devastating turn. He contracted an illness and went into respiratory failure. Given just 48 hours to live, he was airlifted to Texas Children's Hospital in Houstonmore than a thousand miles from the family's home in Charlotte, North Carolina. There, doctors diagnosed Justin's condition and placed him on a waiting list for a double-lung transplant. For three months, Justin clung to life support as his mother anxiously awaited a donor. On August 30, 2019, the family's prayers were answered, and Justin received his life-saving surgery. One year later, Justinnicknamed "Big Deuce" for his fighting spiritis thriving. He travels to Houston every few months for follow-up appointments, and he likely will until he's an adult. It's an expense that could quickly add up, but Justin and his family don't have to worry about that: Miracle Flights is covering the cost for every flight they need. As the nation's leading medical flight charity, Miracle Flights provides financial assistance to families like Justin's, who need help reaching complex medical care far from home. Free plane tickets are provided to both patients and their caregivers to any treatment facility in the country, as many times as necessary. "Miracle Flightsyou've got the name right. It is a miracle," says Ericka. "If I didn't have Miracle Flights, when it came time for his check-up, I couldn't do it." Justin and Ericka will take their next Miracle Flight to Houston on Sunday, September 20. To support Justin on his medical journey, or to request a flight for your own family, visit miracleflights.org. About Miracle Flights Miracle Flights is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides free air transportation to children and adults who need help reaching specialty medical care only available far from home. The organization, founded in 1985, has provided 132,482 flights and typically books more than 600 flights per month on commercial airlines across the United States. To request a flight, learn more or donate, call 800-359-1711 or visit miracleflights.org. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram. Press Contact: Erika Koff: (702) 261-0494 or [email protected] SOURCE Miracle Flights Related Links http://miracleflights.org Chandigarh, Sep 17 : Slamming the SAD for its concerted attempts to divert the public attention from its failure to protect the rights and interests of the farmers, Punjab Congress leaders on Thursday said the party was totally in unison over the farm Bills in sharp contrast to the Akalis. They were reacting to the statement of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema over the fact that the Chief Minister had led a delegation on Wednesday to submit a memorandum to the Governor on the issue 'instead of directing his MPs to express solidarity with the farming community by voting against the agriculture ordinances'. "The Congress MPs have been fighting against these dangerous anti-Punjab ordinances from the outset and knew which way to vote, unlike those of the SAD, whose MPs were totally lost due to the total lack of clarity or direction from their leadership, which has been changing its stance on key issues to suit their personal interests," said Manish Tewari, himself an MP. He was joined by PPCC President, Sunil Jakhar, and Cabinet Ministers, Manpreet Badal, Sukhjinder Randhawa and Bharat Bhushan Ashu. The Congress MPs, not just from Punjab but around the country, had voted against the Bills, which, unfortunately, the BJP-led NDA, of which the Akalis continue shamelessly to be a part, succeeded in passing through brute majority in the House by a voice vote, they said in a statement. The Congress MPs already had clear directions from the party leadership, including Amarinder Singh as well as the high command in Delhi, on the party's stand on the ordinances, which the Akalis openly and clearly supported at the time of their introduction, they said. "Why would they need new directions, given that there had been no change in Amarinder's or Congress stand on the issue, unlike SAD's Sukhbir Badal?" they quipped. They pointed out that it was SAD, along with the BJP, which had refused to reject the ordinances during the all-party meet convened by Amarinder Singh, and had subsequently stayed away from the Vidhan Sabha session to avoid voting for the resolution against them. The sudden U-turn by SAD President Sukhbir Badal, thereafter, naturally left the Akali MPs at a loss to figure out what their party's stand was, necessitating a whip to vote against the Bills in Parliament, they added. "The Congress, with its principled stand on the issue all through, did not need to issue any such whip," said the Congress leaders, adding that 'these theatrics by the SAD would not help undo the damage they had already done to the farmers of Punjab and, in fact, the entire country'. "The Congress will continue to fight against these Legislations within and outside Parliament and will not get sidetracked by the SAD drama," the ministers asserted. Police investigating the suspected murder of a 23-year-old man in 1992 have asked an anonymous letter writer to get in touch again. Steven Clark went to visit the toilet while on a family walk near Saltburn Pier in Cleveland in December 1992 but was never seen again. His elderly parents Doris and Charles, who live in Marske-by-the-Sea, Cleveland, this week confirmed they had been arrested on suspicion of his murder, with his mother describing the situation as 'absolutely ludicrous'. Cleveland Police made the arrests following a cold case review. Now, police have urged an anonymous letter writer, who contacted police in September 1999, to get in touch again. Police said their records showed the letter was assessed by officers and the information was recorded. However, the force is refusing to reveal the content of the letter or why it is now seen as important more than 20 years after it was sent. Doris and Charles Clark, parents of missing Steven Clark, leaving Kirkleatham Police station in Redcar yesterday afternoon Steven Clark vanished 28 years ago after he walked into a public toilet near Saltburn Pier and never emerged Steven left his home in Marske for on a family walk before using the gents' public toilets near the pier on the promenade at Saltburn, Cleveland, while his mother went into the ladies' at the same time. He was never seen again Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Page asked the letter writer to call Crimestoppers anonymously or the investigation team directly and give them any additional information they may have. He said: 'For operational reasons I can't divulge the contents or topic of the letter, but it was sent through the post and addressed to the incident room at Guisborough Police Station. 'The person who sent it may know more that could help our inquiry team. 'They obviously felt compelled to write the letter seven years after his disappearance and I would like to hear from them again now. 'It's clear from the response that we have had overall from the public that a lot of people knew Steven from living in Marske. 'I would like to thank the local community for their co-operation in this investigation so far. 'We do still want people to come forward and tell us if they knew Steven or if they have any information that would benefit the inquiry.' No body has been found but detectives are treating his disappearance as murder. The force said it is conducting searches in the Marske area. A missing persons report said the family had been on a walk just after Christmas 1992 when Steven Clark used a public toilet near the promenade in Saltburn, while his mother went to the ladies'. Mr and Mrs Clark were pictured leaving Kirkleatham Police Station in Redcar, Cleveland, after being quizzed for more than six hours Missing person posters were issued at the time of Mr Clark's disappearance The report said that when he did not come out his mother assumed he had gone home, but he was never seen again. Police would not reveal the age or sex of the two arrested people, but on Tuesday Mrs Clark confirmed she and her husband had been arrested, saying: 'It's just absolutely ludicrous. There's nothing more to say, it's surreal.' Asked if they denied murdering their son, she replied: 'Absolutely, yes. 'It's just too hard to believe really, but we have to believe it and suffer the consequences.' She said being on bail was 'horrendous', adding: 'There's nothing I can say, except for the shock of being arrested. 'It's difficult isn't it? 'You get so tense and upset, we've just got to get on with it, I'm afraid. There's nothing we can do, just wait and hope we get through it.' Mr and Mrs Clark were pictured leaving the station in Cleveland six hours after arriving. Speaking on the doorstep as they arrived home in the evening, Mrs Clark added: 'We've just got back, we've been there all day.' Doris and Charles Clark, the parents of missing Steven Clark, arriving at Kirkleatham Police station in Redcar yesterday morning Police have urged an anonymous letter writer, who contacted police in September 1999, to get in touch again Doris Clark pictured in 1998 outside the toilets on Saltburn beach, the last place her son Steven was seen She admitted the last few days have been tough following the sudden accusation, but she and Charles maintain they are innocent. She said: 'After all these years we still wonder what happened to him. 'We didn't kill Steven. That's all I can really add at the moment, we just hope a good outcome comes out of it.' Asked if she thought publicity about the case could help solve the mystery, she replied: 'It's 28 years ago. How on earth can anyone remember anything on that day? How can they (the police) ask other people, I cannot imagine anybody would remember. 'They (the police) have to do their job and that's it.' Mrs Clark said her husband was 'all right', adding: 'It's gone on for all these years, it's a nightmare really, nobody seems to understand that.' The couple, who also have a daughter, have been supported by friends, Mrs Clark said. Their son walked with a pronounced limp as a result of a childhood road accident which also left him with other disabilities. At the time he disappeared, he attended the Rathbone Society in Redcar, which worked with people with disabilities to improve their employment skills, and he had won the Apprentice of the Year Award. Speaking in 1997, Mrs Clark said her son 'vanished in a puff of smoke with no warning or even a word of goodbye'. She said at the time: 'I started to wonder if someone had frogmarched him away at gunpoint.' When he failed to come back, the missing persons report stated his mother thought he must have made his way home, but they never saw him again. No body has ever been found. Detectives from the Cleveland and North Yorkshire Cold Case Unit reopened the case earlier this year. To add insult to injury, Yoon also posted messages of support to Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae, who is trying to thwart her own prosecution for finagling her son's extended leave from the military. Model and former actress Yoon Ji-oh, who is wanted by police in connection with her bizarre behavior after the suicide of fellow actress Jang Ja-yeon in 2009, has thumbed her nose at her pursuers by posting pictures of her birthday party in Canada on social media. Almost a decade after the suicide, Yoon stepped into the spotlight last year when she claimed she was the only witness of sexual abuses her late friend suffered and had new information about the events leading to Jang's suicide. She claimed she decided to speak out after all those years to clear her friend's name. This led to an outpouring of public donations to help her, but there were indications that she used them for private purposes. Her tales were later revealed to be full of holes, and when she was accused of fraud and lying, she fled to Canada. Police sent Yoon three summonses to appear for questioning, but she refused citing health problems. Responding to questions about Yoon's whereabouts from opposition People Power Party lawmaker Cho Su-jin, the Justice Ministry said Yoon is on a wanted list but police do not know where she is. "Yoon's whereabouts remain uncertain, so an arrest warrant has been issued and she has been placed on a wanted list," a ministry official said. "We are in the process of locating her with the assistance of Interpol and other police agencies." Yoon posted the images on Instagram on Sept. 8, showing her celebrating her birthday on the rooftop of a hotel. She also posted photos of herself on Aug. 26 smiling in front of a birthday cake. It took little deductive power to discover that the photos were taken in Toronto since the city's landmark CN Tower can be seen in the background, and soon the hotel itself was identified by online sleuths. Yoon also personally tagged the location of a video she uploaded on social media. The ministry has not explained why it still has no idea where she might be. Prosecutors closed the case against Yoon on May 11 citing her absence from the country. More So. Baptists embracing alternate Great Commission Baptists name in wake of racial unrest Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Southern Baptist Convention churches are being encouraged to use an alternate name, Great Commission Baptists, in another step by the worlds largest Baptist denomination to distance itself from its racist past amid ongoing racial unrest. The alternate name, which was approved for use by SBC messengers in 2012 as one fully in keeping with our Southern Baptist Convention identity, has been drawing a lot of interest from church leaders around the country in recent weeks, the denominations president, J.D. Greear, told Baptist Press. It will also be the focus of the SBCs 2021 Annual Meeting under the theme We Are Great Commission Baptists. In the last month we started receiving emails from around the country with pastors and leaders asking about using the name. By making this our annual meeting theme and encouraging the use of the alternate name, we do not in any way want to minimize the significance of our past, either its accomplishments or its failures, Greear said. Utilizing Great Commission Baptists is simply one more step to make clear we serve a risen Savior who died for all peoples, whose mission is not limited to one people living in one time at one place. Every week we gather to worship a Savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear. Greear said The Summit Church, which he leads in Durham, North Carolina, will begin to use Great Commission Baptists in support of the 2012 decision to highlight the primary reason why the church is a part of the SBC. Our leadership affirms the decision made by messengers in 2012, Greear said. We believe now is a good time to use it due to the fact that the primary reason we are part of the convention is for the Great Commission. Last month, the SBC Executive Committee published a new logo on their website reflecting the alternate name and Pastor Marshall Blalock, who served on the 2012 SBC task force, encouraged churches to embrace Great Commission Baptists. Will you opt to use this mission-focused name rather than the regional name (SBC) rooted in the past? We honor Christ most when we are truly Great Commission Baptists. #optforGCB, Blalock, who leads First Baptist Charleston in South Carolina, the oldest Baptist church in the South, urged on Twitter. The SBC was organized in 1845 by Baptists in the South who supported slavery and disagreed with their brethren in the North. It wasn't until 1995 when the SBC passed a resolution, officially apologizing for its past including the practice of slaveholding, not supporting the civil rights of African Americans, and racism. In the resolution, they "unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin;" "repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest;" and "apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously." Spence Shelton, lead pastor of the Mercy Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, argued in an op-ed published in the Biblical Recorder that the prevailing name of the denomination comes with too much baggage and limits it to the South while Great Commission Baptists opens it up to a bigger vision. Our future leaders are not confined to the South. Lets look down the road a bit. If God in His kindness should turn the tide and increase salvation numbers through our cooperative efforts to reach the nations, then He is also going to raise up leaders for tomorrows church among those people. One of our future presidents of Great Commission Baptists may never set a childhood foot in the Bible Belt, he wrote. What if our banner has created blinders to the possibilities God has for us across the world? What if 50,000 churches could be 500,000 churches in 30 years? That is the kind of vision I hope we start dreaming of as Great Commission Baptists, he continued. I have one life and so do you. I want to be known for what I am for the glory of God in the unyielding hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lets lock arms together under the banner of the Great Commission. Hunter Baker, dean of arts and sciences and professor of political science at the private Christian Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, praised support of the alternate name Tuesday. The movement to rename the SBC as Great Commission Baptists is back. It's the right idea. Why not have a name that refers to something organic to Christianity rather than one that refers to a not very good time in American history? he said in a statement on Twitter. Ronnie Floyd, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee, who will be sharing more details on their 2021 annual meeting on Tuesday evening, revealed last Friday that he recently completed a period of 40 days of fasting and prayer in response to the ongoing upheaval in the nation over matters of race and the pandemic as well as strife in the Christian community over these issues. Many Southern Baptists and evangelicals would rather live in the downstream of cultural disagreements and infighting between themselves than provide spiritual leadership to a nation that desperately needs it, Floyd wrote. The angry, cruel, ungodly, and carnal statements by Christians and even some Christian leaders via social media, articles, or comments in the media. These create suspicion and greater fear rather than faith and hope. Floyd said during his fast, God gave him a word for His people found in Haggai 1:5 and 1:7. I wanted so much to hear what the Spirit was saying to me through Gods Word each day. Our gracious God gave some special words on days 37 and 38 of the fast. These words were declared by our God four times in the book of Haggai. This statement is given only in Haggai 1:5 and 1:7, when the Lord of Armies says: Think carefully about your ways, Floyd said. As God spoke these words to prepare His people for a great and new work among them in their days, I believe He is also preparing us for a great and new work for the days ahead. These resounding words of God need to be heard by all of us: Think carefully about your ways. (L)-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in a file photo. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images); (R)-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a file photo. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) House GOP Leader Rejects Conservative Push to Remove Pelosi as Speaker Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are attempting to convince House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to back an effort to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), which McCarthy rejected. He told Fox News on Wednesday night that he wont pursue the long-shot move against Pelosi. The Freedom Caucus has only 40 of the Houses 435 seats. What Im in favor of is defeating Nancy Pelosi and [Jerry] Nadler and all the others through elections, McCarthy said, referring to longtime Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Judiciary panel. If we were able to remove Nancy Pelosi youd have another Democrat. The real challenge would be, were four weeks away from [the] election, or 40-some days. These Democrats could actually vote against Nancy Pelosi, use it in their campaigns to say theyre not with her, even though they vote with her 95 percent of the time, he told the news outlet. The House Freedom Caucus previously mounted an effort to remove former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, which was unsuccessful. I dont think its the best move at this moment, McCarthy added in the interview. I think the best move is win 218 seats and that defeats Nancy Pelosi. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), however, said that Republican House leadership should promote the effort. Isnt it past time for Rep. Nancy Pelosi to leave her office as Speaker of the House? he wrote on Twitter. I call upon our leaders in Congress to put forward the Motion to Vacate the Chair that has been prepared and merely needs to be brought to the floor. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) testifies at a House hearing in front of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, in Washington on July 12, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Earlier this month, Biggs wrote an opinion article making the case for removing Pelosi as speaker. Pelosi recently referred to members of Congress who support President Donald Trump as domestic criminals,' Biggs wrote. The left hates President Trump and the Americans who voted for him. In and of itself, it is a most despicable statement designed to divide the nation, but it shows a disregard for the institution itself. In order for the vote to go through, all 198 House Republicans and the lone Libertarian congressman would have to convince 17 Democrats. Do you know that there are fewer Democrats in the House since Nancy Pelosi held the gavel? At that moment, we needed 19 seats to win the majority, today we only need 17, McCarthy added. We won every special election we played in and that was in Democrat seats that Democrats won by more than 9 points and it happened to be in California. USPS in Brookline A United States Postal Worker delivers the mail in Brookline, Mass., on Aug. 17, 2020. Credit - Jessica RinaldiThe Boston Globe/Getty Images When the United States Postal Services internal watchdog published its assessment in August of what had gone wrong with mail-in ballots during this years primary season, its first recommendation was for federal Postal Service leadership to improve its communication with state and local election officials. That hasnt happened. Since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took the reins in June, multiple state officials tell TIME that communication from federal leadership has gotten both markedly worseand more ham-fisted. Much of the outreach from federal USPS officials to both state officials and their constituents has resulted in fierce pushback and occasionally litigation. Its really been since DeJoys tenure that this has suddenly become a major issue, from a national perspective, says Nellie Gorbea, a Democrat and Rhode Islands Secretary of State. Historically, my office has had a good relationship with our local postmaster, she says. Its not like we woke up this year and because were doing predominantly mail in ballotswe suddenly discovered we need to talk to the Postal Service. In interviews this week, half a dozen Secretaries of State told TIME that while they valued their partnerships with local Postal Service officials, communication problems with Washington were rife. I distinguish between people in Minnesota who have been helpful and innovative, says Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. The higher ups at the federal level in Washington seem tone deaf. One significant example of this failure of communication occurred earlier this month, when USPS began sending, without prior warning to Secretaries of State, millions of postcards to every voter nationwide, urging them to request a ballot at least 15 days before election day, mail their ballots at least seven days before and, if necessary, to make sure their envelopes were postmarked. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), a bi-partisan organization was not informed of the mailing beforehand, according to the organizations spokeswoman, Maria Benson. The information was inaccurate in some states. Story continues Republican and Democratic election officials across the countryincluding in swing states like Nevadaurged their constituents to ignore the federal mailings. In Colorado, where every registered voter automatically receives a ballot, Jena Griswold, the Secretary of State, promptly filed a lawsuit alleging that USPS outreach will confuse and disenfranchise her constituents. A Colorado district judge subsequently issued an injunction, noting that the USPSs postcard provides false or misleading information about the manner of Colorados elections and will sow confusion amongst voters by delivering a contradictory message. Even officials in states like Minnesota and Iowa, who say the information on the USPS postcard is largely pertinent in their states were befuddled by USPS officials failure to inform them of the mailing ahead of time. It could have been handled better, says Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican. This is my third statewide election and Ive never seen this absence of coordinated communication from the top, says Minnesotas Simon, a Democrat, who found out about the USPS postcard when he found one in his own mailbox. In a statement to TIME, USPS spokeswoman Martha Johnson that the mailer was intended to be general all-purpose guidance on the use of the mail, not guidance on state rules and that the organization has provided links for voters to check the regulations for their individual states. We have not done an Election Mail public information campaign on this scale before. However, for every election cycle we employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail, including ballots. This includes close coordination and partnerships with election officials at the local and state levels, she says. On Thursday, DeJoy will host a conference call with all Secretaries of State. Griswold says she doesnt expect anything except excuses from the conversation. Jim Condos, Secretary of State for Vermont, questioned whether he would even show up for the call. A man at the "Save The Post Office" rally outside a post office building on August 25, 2020 in New York City. Alexi RosenfeldGetty Images Ronald Stroman, the former Deputy Postmaster General at USPS who resigned in June after nearly a decade at the organization, says USPSs recent national outreach strategy marks a departure from previous years. During his tenure, Stroman recalled, USPS had a very good working relationship with the states. He was frequently in touch with Secretaries of State about mail-in-voting and would regularly brief election officials before voting started, he says. The lack of communication this election cycle has led to distrust among state election officials, Stroman added. He described the working relationship between state election officials and USPS as a toxic environment. If you have no trust, its hard to work through problems, he says. An internal USPS election playbook for this year, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit Protect Democracy, highlights the need to communicate with state election officials. When asked about the implications for the November election of this shift in communication, Stroman wasnt optimistic. If things stay as they are, he say he foresees problems. Stroman notes another recent example of poor communication from federal Postal Service officials: a series of letters that USPS general counsel Thomas Marshall sent in late July to 46 states and Washington D.C., warning them that some components of their election laws may be incongruous with the Postal Services delivery standards. Stroman says that USPS has sent similar letters in past election cycles; his office did so during his tenure. But in the past, federal USPS leadership always discussed the contents of the letter, and their implications, with state officials prior to mailing. Unfortunately, it appears that there was little if any communication with state election officials about the content of the letter before it was sent, says Stroman. This lack of communication resulted in varying interpretations about the meaning of the letter. After the letter was circulated, NASS, the bipartisan organization for Secretaries of State, requested a meeting with DeJoy to discuss the USPS plans for the election. On August 27, DeJoy and Marshall held a conference call with the groups leadership. During the conversation, NASS members offered to review election communications before USPS sent them out. Iowas Pate, who was briefed on the call by participants afterwards, says he was told DeJoy was receptive to concerns. He didnt just say elections were a priority, he implied they were the priority, he says. But its unclear if the conversation had an impact. USPS did not take NASS up on its offer to review election communications, and the surprise postcards were mailed two weeks later. The deadline for requesting ballots in most states is the end of October. Stroman says there is still time to rectify the lack of communication between state officials and USPS leadership, and to secure a successful mail voting process. DeJoy and the USPS election-mail task force, he says, need to communication to state officials concrete measures, like evaluating the readiness of processing plants for an election-mails urge; ensuring that all political and election mail are cleared from processing plants every night; informing all employees in writing that ballots should be processed as First-Class mail; and providing weekly performance data for First-Class and marketing mail. You need employee-level specificity, he adds, otherwise its going to be confusion. Correction, Sept. 17 The original version of the story misstated Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pates role in an Aug. 27 phone call between Postmaster Louis DeJoy and Secretaries of State. He was briefed on the call afterwards, he did not participate in it. 5 Ways To Tap Into Music Marketing Collaborations In this case study, the people of Indepreneur break down the remarkable success of a recent marketing campaign by hard rock band Small Town Titans, and how they achieved viral exposure from a relatively minor financial investment. Guest post from Indepreneur There is a commonly held music industry trope that rock music is dead. But, you wouldnt know it if you asked our most recent case study, agency client, and all around success story Small Town Titans Thats because, over the last 6 months, STT has achieved over 33 MILLION views for their videos on Facebook. In the process, theyve built a feasible small business by getting over 21x return on their marketing investments As the Operational Lead for our IndieX music marketing agency, I oversee dozens of marketing campaigns for 10+ artists each month. And, over time, Ive become numb to the excitement our campaigns can generate. Its hard to surprise me so, when I was knocked out of my seat by the results that the Small Town Titans achieved, it was no small feat If youve ever wondered how orchestrating powerful digital marketing campaigns for your music can help you increase your reach and generate virality around the globe, this story should put a smile on your face Testing the Waters During the Summer of 2018, I had the pleasure of working with Pennsylvania-based hard rock band Small Town Titans. I had actually attended undergrad with the band members at Lebanon Valley College and we had kept in touch over the years since graduation. The guys had followed the successes of other bands launching video campaigns and reached out to me for some insights on strategy. After a quick chat to go over their goals and creative assets, we decided to work together to build a one-off FanFinder campaign. In less than a weeks time, Small Town Titans was ready to launch their first Fan Finder campaign for their live music video for the song Wreck. The campaign was a big success and started generating new listeners for the band all around the globe, from across the US into Canada, Australia, the UK, and beyond. The band used Wreck as a listener-generating machine that could be turned on like a faucet on demand, creating retargetable listeners, over 100k views, and tons of engagement in the form of comments, shares, and Facebook page likes. Hows that for an argument spurring headline for Small Town Titans single Wreck?! Small Town Titans Kick It into Viral High Gear In December 2017, Small Town Titans had recorded a heavy live cover video of the Christmas classic Youre a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. Over the holidays, a PR push helped the video gain some traction on YouTube. However, it wasnt until the band built out a Fan Finder campaign for the cover video the next holiday season that things really took off. Facebook Ads Manager metrics from the Small Town Titans Youre a Mean One Mr. Grinch live music video Launching just a few days before Thanksgiving 2018, with a heap of IndiePRO training under their belts, the boys of Small Town Titans budgeted just over $100 on a Facebook ad campaign to unleash the Christmas cheer to the masses. Less than 3 days later, the Small Town Titans had gone absolutely viral. The video has since racked up over 33 MILLION views. Notice how Small Town Titans used the headline of their Facebook ad to catch their listeners attention in the newsfeed. The Proof is in The Follow Up Vanity metrics, you say? Think again. Those 33 million listeners of Youre a Mean One, Mr. Grinch have added up in numerous retargetable audiences that acts as an immediate return path for the band to follow up with. And follow up they did! With a heaping serving of posts already living on their Facebook page, the band was eager to get personal with their new fans, hanging out on Facebook Live, commenting back, and responding to as many messages as they could muster. Not an easy feat when your page grows from 7.5k likes to over 100k in a matter of days. Real life relationship building with fans. Taking a page from The Buddy System training, Small Town Titans put together a special offer to their new fans for the holidays: A free, signed copy of their newest record The Hybrid Sessions EP. All fans needed to do was pay for the shipping and handling and the music would be on its way. This offer exploded with the Titan Army (as the band affectionately calls its clan) resulting in massive sales in just a few weeks with zero paid traffic. Since rolling out their FanFinder for The Grinch, Small Town Titans has been featured in Billboard, Alternative Press, iHeartRadio, and rose to the top of the iTunes Rock charts. Congrats to the band and kudos to you for taking MASSIVE action on your digital marketing. Were proud to be a part of your journey! Digital Marketing Puts The Power Back in Your Hands Small Town Titans are a shining example how artists with great music and solid videos can take advantage of paid advertising to explode their listener base in a short amount of time (and maybe even go viral!). Using the Fan Finder Method, you too can learn how to laser target your ideal fans on Facebook and run an affordable music video Facebook ad campaign to get your music in front of them. The Fan Finder method is available inside IndiePRO, our music marketing training library which is jam-packed with 11 strategies to help you build a fanbase and grow the career of your dreams! Share on: Burma Myanmar, S. Korea Pledge to Step Up Cooperation on Trade, Investment, Energy Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in attend a state dinner in Naypyitaw in September 2019. / Blue House YANGONMyanmar and South Korea have agreed to cement their economic cooperation, particularly in the trade, investment and energy sectors, to help Myanmar overcome the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking via videoconference during Wednesdays first meeting of the two countries Joint Commission for Trade and Industrial Cooperation, South Korean Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Sung Yun-mo said his country would boost investment and trade relations with Myanmar despite COVID-19s hampering of the economy. The meeting aimed at finding ways for Myanmar to expand economic ties with South Korea. The two sides exchanged ideas on pressing economic issues between the two countries relating to COVID-19. Sung said Seoul would help Myanmars products reach the global consumer market by setting up a Korea desk in Myanmar, a single-window system designed to help South Korean companies and investors deal with administrative issues. The meeting follows South Korean President Moon Jae-ins visit to Myanmar in September last year, during which the two sides reached major economic agreements on finance, trade and investment cooperation, as well as on setting up the Korea desk and infrastructure projects. However, implementation of some major projects and activities has been delayed due to the pandemic. One of Myanmars largest economic partners, South Korean investment in the country stood at more than US$4 billion (5.3 trillion kyats) as of August, according to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), the Myanmar governments investment agency. Union Minister for Commerce U Than Myint said he hoped economic cooperation with South Korea would help Myanmar overcome its current economic crisis. He added that Myanmar is willing to work closely with South Korea in the trade, investment and energy sectors. During the meeting, officials from South Korea also discussed the implementation of the Myanmar-Korea Apparel Testing Research Institute (MKATRI) and the Technology Advice and Solutions from Korea (TASK) scheme, as well as investments in the Myanmar textile sector and bilateral cooperation in the foodstuffs production and packaging sectors. The two sides also agreed to develop rules and regulations for motor vehicles and to boost Koreas assistance for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Myanmar. Myanmar is a focus of Seouls New Southern Policy, which prioritizes boosting trade and investment. During Moons trip to Myanmar, the two sides launched the Korea Myanmar Industrial Complex (KMIC) project, a joint industrial complex in Hlegu, north of Yangon. With an estimated cost of $110 million, KMIC will comprise industrial and commercial areas, a research-and-development facility and a training school. According to the Yangon Project Bank, it will be built on 225 hectares and will focus on producing goods for export. South Korea said around 200 Korean companies are expected to invest in the production facilities, which will generate a projected $10 million in taxes annually. However, construction of the facility has been delayed by COVID-19. During Wednesdays meeting, South Korea and Myanmar agreed to begin construction of KMIC in December. Currently, South Korea is also helping to build the Korea-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, which will link downtown Yangon to Dala Township on the opposite bank of the Yangon River. It is also planning to build a new industrial complex in Dala. You may also like these stories: N. Korea Fires Projectiles, Rejects S. Koreas Senseless Dialogue Pledge Govt Seeks Investors for Economic Zones on Chinese Border Myanmars COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan Attracts Mixed Reactions from Industrial Insiders Military officers from ASEAN member states exchanged views on issues regarding regional security and measures to enhance results-oriented cooperation between the operations departments of armies in the region, during the 10th ASEAN Military Operations Meeting (AMOM-10) held online on September 16. The meeting was chaired by Lt. Gen. Thai Dai Ngoc, head of the Operations Department under the General Staff of the Vietnam Peoples Army. Lt. Gen. Thai Dai Ngoc, head of the Operations Department under the General Staff of the Vietnam Peoples Army. This was the first time Vietnam assumed the role of the host. With the theme "Military Cooperation for a Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN", delegates shared their views on regional security issues of mutual concern and measures to strengthen substantive cooperation among the military operational agencies of ASEAN countries. In his opening remarks, Lt. Gen. Thai Dai Ngoc said that, in the face of the negative impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, inherent security hotspots were increasingly complicated. He stated that the risk of military conflict in the East Sea and East China Sea is increasing, due to the increase in military activities despite international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) and regional commitments. The Covid-19 epidemic dispersed public concerns as well as international security management mechanisms, he said. Non-traditional security challenges are increasingly diversified and complex such as: terrorism, piracy, cybersecurity, the effects of climate change, natural disasters, and especially the Covid-19 pandemic ... These have made a profound impact on world politics and relations between countries, Ngoc said. "This proves that if common awareness of non-traditional security challenges such as marine security, security of the marine environment, and security of water resources on rivers, the consequences will be very unpredictable," Lieutenant General Thai Dai Ngoc said. Ngoc said that it is necessary to strengthen cooperation in building trust through international law and regional commitments, working together such as drills, code practice, and avoidance of marine sudden collisions and guidance to avoid unexpected air collisions. The exchange of dialogues between the forces operating on the field will contribute to improving mutual understanding and solving conflicts from the very beginning. Lt. Gen. Ngoc said that the countries are neighbors of each other on land or at sea, and should refrain from using force in any case. Regarding the response to the unprecedented challenge posed by Covid-19 pandemic, each ASEAN army has carried out regular missions and participated in the joint efforts of the governments and countries to prevent and repel the disease. In Vietnam, since the outbreak of Covid-19, the military has actively participated in the joint efforts of the Government, providing quarantine locations, participating in disinfection and detoxification at outbreaks, researching and producing testing kits, managing and monitoring border and border areas, and implementing epidemic prevention in the army and people. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the field cooperation activities among the militaries of ASEAN countries, some of which have been delayed or forced to cancel. However, difficulties and challenges are also an opportunity to demonstrate ASEAN's resilience, cohesion and adaptation, including the military force. The militaries of ASEAN countries have promoted activities in accordance with the context, shared online experiences on epidemic prevention, and organized online seminars. In particular, through the ASEAN Military Medical Center, an online drill on handling cases of epidemic prevention among ASEAN military medical staff was held in May 2020. The representative of Vietnam said: "Disease and other security challenges cannot hinder our cooperation, and under such conditions, cooperation must be strengthened to overcome the difficulties and challenges brought by circumstances." At the meeting, delegates pointed to diverse, complex non-traditional security challenges like terrorism, piracy, cyber security, climate change, and natural disasters. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted field military cooperation activities between armies of ASEAN countries, they said, commending the role played by forces in the fight against the pandemic. They also lauded Vietnam as the ASEAN Chair 2020 amid the pandemic, saying the country has successfully organized many defense-military meetings and promptly raised proposals and implemented initiatives in the pandemic fight and defense-military collaboration. Operations departments will increase discussions on regional security issues of shared concern, while working to enhance their mutual understanding and trust, they agreed. Delegates reached consensus on the action plan for 2020-2022, to be submitted to ACDFM-17 for approval. Ngoc transferred the AMOM Chairmanship to Brunei at the meeting. Thanh Nam Neither the coronavirus nor the wildfires put much of a damper on Bay Area real estate in August, as the median price of an existing single-family home hit a record high of $1,068,000, according to a California Association of Realtors report issued Thursday. The median price rose 1.7% from July (which tied a previous record) and a robust 18.7% from August of last year. The number of homes sold in August was up 10.8% from last August but down 6.3% from July. The report excludes condominiums, newly constructed homes and properties not advertised on a Multiple Listing Service. Sales are a lagging indicator because it typically takes about a month for deals to close. Last months sales and prices mostly reflect deals that were entered into before major wildfires broke out in and around the Bay Area on Aug. 17 and 18. For a more up-to-date picture, experts look at the number of sellers accepting offers each week. That data suggest the fires did dampen activity, but only for about two weeks, and mostly in areas closest to the fires. Between the first and second half of August, the number of listings going into contract declined only 3% in the nine Bay Area counties plus Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. Four counties, however, saw double-digit declines Santa Cruz (29%), Sonoma (18%), Monterey (11%) and Napa (10%), according to Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst with the Compass real estate firm. By the first two weeks of September, however, the number of sellers accepting offers across the region was essentially back to where it was in the first two weeks of August. When the fires broke out because of the lightning strikes, our market took a dip, it was off for probably two weeks, said Rick Laws, a regional vice president with Compass in Santa Rosa. But then the number of homes going into contract in Sonoma County rebounded. That surprised me. I didnt think people would say, Lets come up and look at properties (when) you cant even see the properties. Meanwhile, a profound shift in the market that started in June, after the Bay Area climbed out of a major downturn in April and May, continued into August. Buyers gravitated away from San Francisco, particularly high-rise condos, in search of larger homes with more land, especially in Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties. Santa Cruz and Monterey counties have also seen an influx of buyers from Silicon Valley looking for a more rural lifestyle and somewhat cheaper homes, said Morgan Lukina, president of the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors. The market will become more challenging, since the CZU fires destroyed 925 homes, mostly in Santa Cruz County. Those were some of our most affordable homes, she added. The shifts in demand are a direct result of the pandemic. As people become less tethered to their offices and schools, they want more space for work and play. Unable to travel, many people who have the means are buying second homes with pools in resort-like areas. Expensive second homes are very much in demand, usually in less populated areas (of Sonoma County) like Healdsburg, Sebastopol and the Sonoma Valley, Laws said. The same thing is happening in other markets such as Lake Tahoe, Aspen, Colo., and the Hamptons in New York, said Maurice Tegelaar, a Compass agent in Sonoma. The only Bay Area market that saw a decline in luxury-home sales between this summer and last summer was luxury San Francisco condos, where sales were down 19%. Luxury home sales were up 176% in Sonoma County, 116% in Contra Costa, and 109% in Marin, according to Carlisle. Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle The median price is the point where half of homes sold for more and half for less. Median prices can go up because homes in general are appreciating, because there has been a shift in sales from lower-priced to higher-priced homes, or both. On a year-over-year basis, median prices were up in every Bay Area county last month. The strongest were Napa and Marin, where median prices were up 24% and 23%, respectively, and sales were up 52.2% and 37.8%. In San Francisco, sales were up 28.9% and prices were up 3.8%, but remember this report excludes condominiums, which make up a much larger percentage of sales in San Francisco than other counties and are much weaker than single-family homes. The condo segment is by far the weakest in the Bay Area, and within the condo market, the weakest is South of Market and the Van Ness, Market Street corridor, Carlisle said. Condos in some areas, such as Noe Valley and Eureka Valley, that have a lot of two- and three-unit buildings with decks or a yard, are holding up. Where the condo market has really been hammered is the high-rises with no separate entrance or private outside space, he said. The number of active listings with a price cut in San Francisco has soared in recent months, from 148 in May to 428 in August. About 78% of the price cuts were on condos, the rest on single-family homes. The number of San Francisco condos for sale is the highest in at least 10 years. That should put downward pressure on condo prices, but its not showing up in any drastic form yet, Carlisle said. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes On new condos, developers are slow to cut prices, preferring to offer incentives such as upgraded finishes or six months of homeowners association dues. Millennials Ally Sillins and her husband, Santosh Vadlamani, found the San Francisco market to be quite competitive, at least in their target areas. Both work for a large technology company in Silicon Valley, but the pandemic and their ability to work from home, perhaps for an extended period, didnt affect their decision to buy in San Francisco. Many of their friends working in technology have fled the city, but I genuinely love San Francisco, Sillins said. Growing up in Atlanta, she used to visit an aunt and cousin in San Francisco and I thought they were so cool. I thought San Francisco was this dream. They made their first offer in May, on a tenants-in-common unit in Duboce Triangle. It had three offers and the winning bid was $200,000 over the asking price. In June, they bid on a TIC unit North of the Panhandle. It had nine offers, ours was the lowest and we put in $50,000 over asking, she said. It was just mind-blowing. Finally, their agent heard about a TIC unit in North Beach that was in contract but likely to fall through because of a loan issue. Before it went back on the market, they offered a little over asking. It was accepted, and they closed in late August. Their Telegraph Hill unit is one of four spread across two buildings. While much of downtown looks like a ghost town, North Beach is happening now. People are probably having too much fun when they should be indoors, Sillins said. On the flip side, just because a market is strong doesnt mean people will buy anything, Carlisle said. In Wine Country, there is still a lot of inventory in the high end, although its selling three to four times faster than last year. Constance Kopriva just cut the price on an 18-acre property with a vintage four-bedroom farmhouse in Sonoma by $1 million, to $3.75 million. Kopriva, a mostly retired real estate agent, listed the property on Cassidy Ranch Road. She and her husband have owned it for almost 20 years but dont live there currently. Their son makes wine, and they planned to plant vineyards and open a winery and tasting room on the property, but it took them four years to get the permit and now we are having second and third thoughts, she said. The permit is good for two years, so they decided to list it for sale around Aug. 10. Out-of-towners want luxury houses with pools. This is more for wine growers, she said. The price reduction is trying to find a sweet spot. Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender A ctors were, in a sense, already match-fit for lockdown. Its an idle thought and understates all the many varieties of misery the country has been plunged into, but sitting at home with nothing to do except consider the disintegration of the polar ice caps is something actors are used to. Even well-known ones eternally emerge from and return to the primordial slime of unemployment (Simon Callow). Consequently they develop coping strategies for filling time: a lot of yoga. Day-drinking. Writing Fleabag. Clearly the most efficient way of escaping your immediate circumstances is to turn on the TV. For actors this is problematic because theres every chance they may see something brilliant which they are not in, which makes them feel worse. Or they might see something brilliant which they are actually in, but in which they are bad; or something bad that they are in, in which they are no better. So its lose/lose, hence their tendency to write screenplays instead. Which hopefully they can both be in and be not bad. But for everyone else, watching stories on TV is a good escape. Some offer a reality wildly different from your own. Others reassure you with something more familiar. Us, as the title suggests, is one of these. Its about a family holiday in Europe. The sort of holiday people may even have planned to go on this summer. Its also a story about a wife and a son and a father who are struggling with a family dynamic that is tiring them all and in the midst of which they dream of escape. Sound familiar? BBC Studios/Drama Republic Ltd/Colin Hutton The son (Tom Taylor as Albie; brilliant) is desperate to get to college and start a life for himself. The wife (Saskia Reeves as Connie; brilliant), facing an empty nest, wants to get out of the marriage and find a new life for herself before its too late. And really the only thing stopping them is husband and father Douglas Petersen (um I enjoyed doing it), who is trying to hold his little family together, because he quite likes the reality hes in, and doesnt want to lose it. And he loves them. In fact they all love each other. Thats what makes it hard. Its a sort of reverse rom-com. Instead of watching people who love each other try to get together, we watch people who love each other try to break up. I wont spoil the ending. Its also slightly a holiday from hell. So if you were deprived of a trip abroad this summer, you may be relieved to see how bad it could have been. David Nichollss writing is witty and charming and touching. The four episodes, deftly directed by director Geoffrey Sax, take place in two time periods. The present, in which Connie wants to leave Douglas, and back in the Nineties when they first met and got together. Their younger selves are played by Gina Bramhill (brilliant) and Iain De Caesteker (brilliant). And in each episode the story swings back and forth at delicately chosen moments, to show us what time has done to them. Its clever, and its kind. Davids script is what drew everyone, and is the star of the show. And for anyone who got together in the Nineties and now has nearly adult children... well theres a lot theyll recognise. So might the children. We shot it last summer. In Europe, in what seems like a bygone age, where we did all those things that film crews and tourists used to do like cram ourselves into packed minibuses and train carriages and jostle through tourist hubs and sit too close to each other while eating. If you do feel like revisiting the very recent old world without leaving your sofa, you might enjoy it. BBC Studios/Drama Republic Ltd/Colin Hutton If by the way, you believe the performing arts are worth protecting, its because the giving and receiving of stories can save you. The sharing of the common problem of being alive. TV does this and so does the theatre for several thousand years now and on a much smaller budget. And theatre is often where TV draws its talent in the first place, people like David Nicholls. The Government, with its 1.57 billion rescue package for the arts, has made a huge contribution to saving the institutions themselves. But for the people who actually work in theatres, the majority of whom do not earn a living wage, this Covid time is an existential threat. As it is for so many sectors, I realise, but this is the one I know. The vast majority of the theatre community are not on a six-figure salary from Netflix with a regular role in a Marvel franchise. They have long been used to subsidising themselves with a side hustle. Out-of-work theatre people work in restaurants, Robert de Niro owns restaurants its a sliding scale of side hustle. Europe's museums and galleries reopen after lockdown - in pictures 1 /24 Europe's museums and galleries reopen after lockdown - in pictures People walk behind a poster showing the safety distance for visiting the Gemaeldegalerie 'Alte Meister' (Old Masters Picture Gallery) in Dresden, central Germany, Wednesday, May 6, 2020 AP Visitors wearing protective face masks look at the paintings, on first day of reopening at Leopold Museum, during the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna, Austria REUTERS A staff member checks the body temperature of a visitor at the entrance of the Jacquemart-Andre Museum on the first day of the reopening in Paris on May 26, 2020 AFP via Getty Images Two women wearing the face masks visit the Jacquemart-Andre Museum on the first day of the reopening in Paris on May 26, 2020 AFP via Getty Images Visitors wearing protective face masks look at the The Sistine Madonna, a painting by Raphael, at the Old Masters Gallery at the Zwinger palace complex on the first day the palace reopened to the public during the coronavirus crisis on May 05, 2020 in Dresden, Germany Getty Images People wear protective face masks as they watch the exhibition "Genealogies of the art, or art history as visual art" at the Picasso Museum open to the public, as some Spanish provinces are allowed to ease lockdown restrictions during phase one, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Malaga, Spain, May 26, 2020 REUTERS People wear protective face masks as they watch the exhibition "Genealogies of the art, or art history as visual art" at the Picasso Museum open to the public, as some Spanish provinces are allowed to ease lockdown restrictions during phase one, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Malaga, Spain, May 26, 2020 REUTERS A traffic light system allows visitors to tour the Rosenborg Castle museum while observing social distancing, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday May 26, 2020 AP A traffic light system allows visitors to tour the Rosenborg Castle museum while observing social distancing, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday May 26, 2020 Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Ima A man wearing protective mask visit the Museum of Illusion on May 13, 2020 in Paris, as France eased lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the of the COVID-19 pandemic. AFP via Getty Images A woman walks through the outdoor exhibition area after the reopening of the exhibition 'Karl Lagerfeld Photography. The retrospective.' in the Moritzburg Art Museum in Halle, Germany, Friday, May 22, 2020 AP A woman walks through the outdoor exhibition area after the reopening of the exhibition 'Karl Lagerfeld Photography. The retrospective.' in the Moritzburg Art Museum in Halle, Germany, Friday, May 22, 2020 AP After over two months of closure, the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum opens its doors to the public, after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions eased, in Aarhus, Denmark May 22, 2020 via REUTERS A museum attendant wearing a face mask and shield stands in a room at the Galleria Borghese museum in Rome on May 19, 2020 AFP via Getty Images Visitors wearing a face mask view "David", a 1623-1624 marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Galleria Borghese museum in Rome on May 19, 2020 AFP via Getty Images A visitor wearing a protective face mask stands next to a painting by US painter Edward Hopper entitled "Cape Cod Sunset" after the reopening of the exhibitions Edward Hopper and Silent Vision Images of Calm and Quiet at the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen near Basel, on May 15, 2020 AFP via Getty Images Visitors wear face masks, to prevent the spread of coronavirus, as they look at The Death of Marat painting by Jacques-Louis David at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, Tuesday, May 19, 2020 AP A visitor wearing a protective face mask watches a dancer perform the installation piece "Our Labyrinth" at the Lee Mingwei exhibition at the Gropius Bau museum on the first day the museum reopened since March during the coronavirus crisis on May 11 in Berlin, Germany Getty Images But the problem is, with the side hustles going bust (not Nobu, dont panic completely) very many freelancers are making decisions now that will trade in their hustle for a full-time job (if they can find one) effectively taking them out of the industry entirely. And we wont have a representative theatre and film industry in 2030 if the only young creatives to make it through the Covid pandemic were those who were cushioned by a trust fund or a buy-to-let portfolio. So forgive a little begging here, but Im not on social media so cant do it there. I contribute to the Royal Theatrical Fund, which in 1991 paid for me to have a knee operation privately so I wouldnt miss a theatre tour that I had been offered while waiting for the operation: Celia in As You Like It a great part in a much-loved production. So I am forever grateful to them. The RTF was founded by Charles Dickens and has quietly supported the profession ever since. Now it has gone into an arrangement with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Olivia Colman to create something called the Theatre Community Fund. Its a hardship fund if youre in the mood, the website is here. And if youre in the mood to watch Us, its on BBC1 from Sunday night. Momcilo Krajisnik, a Bosnian Serb leader who was convicted of crimes against humanity for his involvement in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was 75. The cause was the novel coronavirus, the hospital said. Mr. Krajisnik, a hard-line Serbian nationalist, was one of the most prominent politicians in the Bosnian war, which claimed 100,000 lives and displaced more than two million people. As the speaker of the separatist Bosnian Serb Parliament and a close adviser to the wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, he was among the leadership that oversaw plans to persecute and expel non-Serbs from parts of Bosnia. In 2006, after a 30-month trial before the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the judges found Mr. Krajisnik guilty of the deportation, persecution, murder, extermination and forced transfer of Bosnian Muslims and Croats. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison. At the time, with Mr. Karadzic still at large, Mr. Krajisnik was the highest-ranking Serbian politician convicted by the court. Mr. Karadzic was convicted of war crimes in 2016. By Laman Ismayilova A new art competition has been announced in Azerbaijan. Students of art faculties at higher educational institutions are invited to presented their art works dedicated to a young sculptor Samir Kachayev, who died in fierce April battles in 2016. The project is co-organized by the Foundation for the Promotion of Spiritual Values, Azerbaijan State Academy of Arts and the Public Association for the Promotion of Art Criticism, Trend Life reported. Photos of works should be sent to the following e-mail: [email protected] until October 5. The winners will be announced in the second half of October. April War, or a four-day war, started on April 2, 2016 when the frontline positions and settlements of Azerbaijan came under heavy artillery fire by the Armenian armed forces. Six civilians were killed, including two children aged under 16, and 26 people were injured as a result of shelling of Azerbaijans settlements located along the line of contact by Armenia. Numerous public and private facilities, including civil infrastructure, were severely damaged as a result of the offensive, 232 houses, 99 power transmission line poles, three electric power substations, kilometers of water and gas pipes were destroyed. The battles resulted in the victory of the Azerbaijani Army. Some positions in the direction of the heights around Talysh village of Tartar region, Lalatapa height of Jabrayil region and Jojug Marjanli, Gulustan village of Goranboy region and Madagiz village of Tartar region were liberated. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Metrica Partners Pte. Ltd. sent the following letter to the board of LINE Corp. today. The letter can also be viewed at https://www.metricapartners.com. Mr. LEE Hae-Jin Chairman of the Board LINE Corporation JR Shinjuku Miraina Tower 23F 4-1-6 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0022 Japan Dear Mr. Lee, Metrica Partners Pte. Ltd. (Metrica) is the manager of, and adviser to multiple funds that own shares in LINE Corp. (LINE, Securities Code: 3938). We refer to yesterdays announcement by LINE, showing that a majority of independent shareholders joined Metrica in refusing to tender their shares into the Joint Tender Offer by SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank, Securities Code: 9434) and NAVER Corporation (NAVER, Securities Code: 035420). Metrica stands by its previously expressed (note 1) opinion that the tender offer price was inadequate: It represented only a 17% premium to the undisturbed price, compared with a historical average premium of 38% for similar takeovers in Japan (source: Mergermarket Limited, 6 December 2019). It was lower than the mid-point of the financial advisors DCF valuation, which explicitly did not include the effect of synergies, despite the recommendation in the METI Fair M&A Guidelines (the Guidelines) that minority shareholders facing a squeeze-out should receive a portion of the expected synergy benefits. It was not revised at the launch of the Joint Tender Offer in August to reflect the meaningful improvement in LINEs business as evidenced in 2Q results as well as the significant increase in comparable company valuations. It was set with reference to a market price which did not incorporate LINEs previously undisclosed management forecasts, which revealed that LINE is on the point of turning profitable on an operating basis. It represents a substantial discount to JPY 8,288, the value per LINE share obtained by NAVER through the Business Integration (note 2), based on 15 September 2020 closing prices. Furthermore, Metrica believes that LINEs other independent shareholders may share Metricas concerns that the procedures leading up to the Special Committees decision to express, and subsequently reaffirm, its support for the Joint Tender Offer did not meet the required standard of fairness envisioned in the Guidelines: The Joint Tender Offer did not include any minimum shareholder acceptance condition, and there is no mention of any corresponding enhancement of other Fairness Ensuring Measures recommended by the Guidelines. Two of the Special Committee members joined the board of the ultimate acquiring party Z Holdings, contradicting guidance that the Special Committee should have no significant interest in the success or failure of the M&A transaction different from that of general shareholders. One of the Joint Tender Offer parties is a major client of the financial advisor to the Special Committee, paying them US$250 million in the two years leading up to the transaction. This potentially creates a perception that the advisor has a serious interest in the success or failure of the transaction, contrary to the Guidelines. NAVER is deriving substantially more value from the Business Integration (JPY 8,288, as noted above) than is being offered to minority shareholders (JPY 5,380), and this is far in excess of anything that can be explained as an appropriate division of expected synergy benefits, in Metricas view. Over the last two weeks, Metrica has been approached by many other LINE shareholders that have expressed similar sentiments regarding the Joint Tender Offer price and the perceived fairness of the transaction. While many of these shareholders are major institutional investors that, similar to Metrica, have the time and financial resources to fund an appraisal rights action through the Japanese court system, Metrica has also been contacted by retail investors for whom such an action would be well beyond their means. Metrica is disappointed that the Joint Tender Offer parties plan to forcibly acquire the shares of retail investors at a disadvantageous price and in a manner that effectively leaves them with no recourse. In the interests of fairness, LINE must therefore immediately take action to protect the interests of all minority shareholders, large and small, by postponing the Share Consolidation EGM and asking SoftBank and NAVER to resubmit the Joint Tender Offer with both a fair price and a minimum shareholder acceptance condition. Sincerely, Damian L. Edwards Chief Investment Officer Metrica Partners Pte. Ltd. Note 1: https://metricapartners.com/blog/2020/08/24/metrica-partners-will-not-tender-into-the-line-joint-tender-offer-and-urges-other-shareholders-to-consider-following/ Note 2: According to Metricas analysis, NAVER stake in LINE was worth JPY 802 billion at LINEs closing price of JPY 4,585 on 13 November 2019 (the undisturbed price date). NAVER is also expected to contribute about JPY 196 billion of cash to the Business Integration, consisting of about JPY 186 billion as part of the Joint Tender Offer, and a further JPY 10 billion as part of the JV Conversion Transaction. Upon the conclusion of the Business Integration, NAVER will own over 2.4 billion shares in Z Holdings, which are currently worth JPY 1,636 billion. This equates to a profit for NAVER of more than JPY 638 billion, which is equivalent to JPY 3,643 for each share that NAVER currently owns in LINE. It means that NAVER ultimately ends up with value equivalent to at least JPY 8,228 (= JPY 4,585 + JPY 3,643) per share. About Metrica: Metrica Partners Pte. Ltd. is a Singapore-based manager of investments in Asia-Pacific. Investors in Metricas funds include global institutions, family offices, high net worth individuals and its employees. Metrica promotes good corporate governance and works with its portfolio companies to enhance shareholder value. More information is available at https://metricapartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005449/en/ Farms could contribute billions more dollars to the U.S. economy with the help of precision agriculture technology, but this cant happen without more broadband, said experts during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webinar yesterday.Titled Smart Agriculture: Driving Innovation in Rural America, the webinar featured, among other speakers, Megan Nelson, an economic analyst with the American Farm Bureau Federation. She shared research showing that U.S. farms could generate $18 billion to $23 billion annually if they had high-speed connectivity and adopted the latest technologies.We need broadband access, Nelson said during the webinar. We need accurate broadband maps We cant have spotty service because theres a rainy day.Both Nelson and Dennis Buckmaster, agricultural and biological engineering professor at Purdue University, outlined numerous ways technology can boost American farms.Buckmaster, for instance, covered a wide range of farming tech that can do everything from tracking weather conditions, which can be tied to massive crop losses, to combining data sets for improved decision-making. He emphasized the potential impact of artificial intelligence, which can lead to automated processes and allow less-experienced farmers to tap into the knowledge and expertise of other individuals.Nelson said tech could help farmers better connect to markets and get people aware of what theyre growing.Such great potential, though, wont come about without reliable high-speed Internet. In 2019, the United Soybean Board released a report indicating that almost two-thirds of surveyed farmers dont have adequate internet connectivity to run their businesses.In a recent editorial , Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer of John Deere, said the pressure on farmers to provide food for a projected 9.7 billion people worldwide needs to be offset by superior connectivity.There are already disruptions to the meat supply that are persistent as a consequence of the pandemic, Hindman wrote. Dairy farmers are also being challenged, as 50 percent of demand from restaurants, school cafeterias, and other food services is cut off. Contending with these added pressures makes it even more important to look for solutions to make other aspects of a farmers job more seamless and rural broadband is key to that.Local stories confirm farmers struggles with connectivity. Two Maine farmers reported that their sales are all online, but their Internet service is so slow that they frequently must wait until night, when fewer people are using the Internet, to actually do business. In Nebraska , farmers who live just a few miles outside of a city like Lincoln may experience difficulty uploading files to the cloud.In regard to connecting farms, the answer may not be as simple as identifying a last-mile solution. During the webinar, Chad Rupe, administrator of the Rural Utility Service for USDA, said that you cant get to the last mile without sufficient middle-mile infrastructure.Rupe said hes been working with electric cooperatives to help provide middle-mile fiber. He pointed out that most farms lacked electricity until co-ops were able to help, with the implication being that co-ops may have to play a large role in bringing high-speed Internet to farms.Rupe also talked about a new USDA rule that allows up to 10 percent of a grant or loan from a Rural Development program to be used for broadband infrastructure. This change could give states and local areas more flexibility in how they may fund rural broadband.Through this regulation, RD enables limited integration of broadband deployment with other rural investments funded through its broad suite of programs, the USDA rule states . It does so without adding the burden of seeking funding through separate program areas.Buckmaster mentioned a unique solution to the farm broadband problem in Indiana. Wabash Heartland Innovation Network, a regional group that covers 10 Indiana counties, has a plan for an aerostat , a kind of blimp, to provide broadband for tens of miles, Buckmaster said.Buckmaster added that the results of the aerostat project will be shared through a Global City Teams Challenge SuperCluster that he co-chairs.Outside of broadband, another significant issue with precision agriculture tech is interoperability, Buckmaster said. For example, a livestock feeding system should be able to communicate with a weather tracking system so that the feeding system can know the temperatures that cows have experienced. A roadblock to interoperability is lack of cooperation between companies due to competition.They ought to work together and be interoperable, Buckmaster said. More than half of Suga Yoshihide's cabinet ministers were part of an Abe government -- a reflection of the new leader's intentions to continue his predecessor's policies. Aso Taro will stay on as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. He has been in the position for more than seven years. Kato Katsunobu takes over for Suga as Chief Cabinet Secretary -- leaving the post of Health Minister. Motegi Toshimitsu will continue as foreign minister. Motegi was leading trade talks with the US and Britain. Abe's younger brother Kishi Nobuo will take on his first cabinet post, as Defense Minister. Takeda Ryota will oversee the telecommunications and broadcasting industries. Kamikawa Yoko becomes Justice Minister. Hagiuda Koichi retains his post as Education Minister. Tamura Norihisa returns to cabinet to become Health Minister, a post he held under a previous Abe administration. Nogami Kotaro is the new Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister. Kajiyama Hiroshi retains his portfolio as the trade and industry minister. Akaba Kazuyoshi, from the LDP's junior coalition partner Komeito, remains Infrastructure Minister. Environment Minister Koizumi Shinjiro will continue his role. Hirasawa Katsuei becomes the Reconstruction Minister. Okonogi Hachiro will oversee the national police watchdog group. Sakamoto Tetsushi is the Minister for All Citizens' Active Engagement. Hirai Takuya will take on one of Suga's prioritized policies, the government's digitalization. Nishimura Yasutoshi will continue overseeing Japan's coronavirus measures, to balance those efforts with the revitalization of the economy. Kono Taro will shift to a new role in cabinet -- Administrative Reform Minister. Suga has emphasized the importance of work to create a more efficient government. Hashimoto Seiko retains her position, taking charge of the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. Inoue Shinji will take a new post in charge of the World Expo, to be held in Osaka in 2025. New 26-country database could enable more standardized analyses of how politicians use Twitter Researchers have compiled a new database of tweets from parliament members from 26 European countries and illustrated how this resource could help address challenges in the burgeoning field of Twitter research. Livia van Vliet of the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues present the new database and findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 16, 2020. In recent years, numerous studies have drawn on Twitter data to investigate a broad variety of social processes, including Twitter communication by politicians. However, most studies of Twitter use by politicians are "one-offs" that often focus on just one or a few countries at a time and use different methodologies, thus limiting opportunities to compare findings and surface new insights. As part of research conducted for the ODYCCEUS project in an effort to improve research on politician Twitter research, van Vliet and colleagues have drawn on multiple sources to build a new database of tweets by parliament members in 26 European countries and the European parliament. Data sources include Twitter's streaming API and a number of existing sources of information on parliaments and political parties. The new database includes tweet IDs from as early as May 2017 through the present. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this new database of parliamentarians on Twitter is the most comprehensive of its kind, and it could open up new opportunities for analyses of Twitter use by politicians. In particular, it could address a lack of data availability that has previously limited cross-border research. To illustrate the advantages of the new database, the researchers applied it to explore a variety of questions, such as how parliamentarians from different countries differ in their use of Twitter "retweets" and "mentions." They also examined how the use of hashtags differs between political parties and how parliamentarians from different countries interact with each other on Twitter. This initial exploration suggests that the new database could help enable a more standardized approach to future research on parliamentarians' use of Twitter, both within countries and across borders. The authors add: "The Twitter Politician Database provides a starting point for studying politician communication, cooperation and contention both within countries and across boarders for cross-country comparative and transnational research. As far as we are aware, the database is the most comprehensive database of parliamentarians on Twitter that is currently available." ### Citation: van Vliet L, Tornberg P, Uitermark J (2020) The Twitter parliamentarian database: Analyzing Twitter politics across 26 countries. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0237073. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237073 Funding: Funding has been provided to J.U and P.T by European Commission H2020 FETPROACT-2016 Action ODYCCEUS (Grant No. 732942). https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/206203/factsheet/en NO. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237073 Prime Minister Modi celebrates his 70th birthday on September 17. The ruling BJP government has been organising a Seva Saptah to mark his birthday week and the campaign will continue till Sunday. One of the most popular leaders on social media, PM Modi has been known to post images and videos on Twitter and Instagram that have gone viral. On his birthday, here are 5 instances where posts by the Prime Minister of India created a social media storm. PM Modi Feeds Peacocks during Morning Exercise In this around 2 minute video posted by the prime minister himself in August, he is seen feeding peacocks at his residence during his morning exercise routine. Since being posted, the video received over 70 lakh views. Rare 20-year-old Image of PM Modi Outside White House BJP Telangana president G Kishen Reddy shared pictures of his visit with PM Modi to the White House about 20 years ago. Back then, Modi along with some other political leaders was invited by ACYPL (American Council of Young Political Leaders). He took a picture in front of the White House, oblivious to the fact that after two decades he would be invited back as the PM of the largest democracy in the world. PM Narendra Modi Shares Photo with a Very Special Friend The Prime Minister shared the image with a very special friend on Instagram where he is seen playing with a toddler in his arms. View this post on Instagram A very special friend came to meet me in Parliament today. A post shared by Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) on Jul 23, 2019 at 2:12am PDT PM Modis Birthday Created a Guinness World Record In 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his 66th birthday went to his hometown to meet his mother Heeraben and seek her blessings. After that, he went to Navsari where he attended a function where aid was distributed to the differently-abled people. About 989 lamps were lit simultaneously in Navsari making it a Guinness World Record. Navsari (Guj): 989 lamps lit simultaneously on eve of PM Modis birthday, makes Guinness World Record. pic.twitter.com/xH8uhBdPKe ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2016 PM Modis Video of Sun Temple in Gujarat The Prime Minister shared a video on his Twitter of the iconic Sun Temple in Modhera, Gujarat. He captioned the post, Modheras iconic Sun Temple looks splendid on a rainy day! Have a look." In the video, one can see water cascading through the steps of the temple. Since being posted, the video has garnered over 3 lakh likes. Modheras iconic Sun Temple looks splendid on a rainy day !Have a look. pic.twitter.com/yYWKRIwlIe Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 26, 2020 Did you know, Modis book of poetry titled A Journey: Poems by Narendra Modi, which was published in 2014 deals with all the same themes that we also find in his political campaigns like that of Hinduism, and nationalism? Big Events Ghana, organizers of the prestigious Radio and Television Personality (RTP) Awards have announced nominees for the 10th edition. Among the nominees for the Best Radio Personality in Central Region for the year 2019/2020 is the host of the most-listened to drive time show on GBC's Radio Central, Amansan Krakye. Since 2017 that the drive time show on GBC Radio Central was handed over to Amansan Krakye, he has performed overwhelmingly to the admiration of all. Amansan Krakye has been able to get his listeners addicted to the mouthwatering celebrities and upcoming artistes he interviews regularly on the show. Most of his interviews are featured on the major news portals in Ghana. The list of nominees saw some of Ghana's biggest names in the media space compete for the award and year-long bragging rights in various categories. The scheme is designed to celebrate radio and television personalities who have excelled in the field. The 2020 Adonko RTP Awards which is scheduled for November 7 at the Kempinski Hotel promises to be full of excitement and cheers. The nominees announced for over 41 categories has kick-started the call for voting with the short code *447*111# as it has been associated with the scheme since its inception in 2011. Apart from Amansan Krakye, the following were also nominated for Best Radio Personality in Central; Adu Gyamfi Marfo, Kwame Dapaah, Nak Abrantse, Candymann Lucas Mensah, Conscious Queen, Shaq B and Don Kay. Former President, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, has accused Professor Kwamena Ahwoi of twisting events in his (Prof Ahwois) book Working with Rawlings. According to him, Prof. Ahwoi did not present the true state of events, especially his (Rawlings) relationship with the late President Prof. John Evans Atta Mills to make him look bad. He took particular exception to a claim by Prof. Ahwoi in the book that he (Rawlings) was working behind the scenes to have the late President lose the bid to become the flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2008 general elections. The former President made the comments when a delegation of chiefs and queenmothers from the Ave Traditional Area in the Volta Region called on him at his office last Wednesday. This is the third time former President Rawlings has expressed his displeasure about the book by Prof. Ahwoi, who served as minister during his 19- year rule and was a member of his inner circle. Working with Rawlings In the book, Prof. Ahwoi said former President Rawlings asked Mr Ato Ahwoi, his elder brother, to contest for the NDC flag bearer position for the 2008 elections, and even asked him (Prof. Ahwoi) to convince Mr Ato Ahwoi to accept the proposal. Professor Ahwoi described the move by former President Rawlings as treacherous, adding that the former President knew the relationship the Ahwoi brothers had with the late President Mills and also the fact that it was through them that the late President became the running mate to former President Rawlings in the 1996 general election and subsequently, the Vice-President of Ghana. Twisted information However, former President Rawlings accused Prof. Ahwoi of twisting the facts to make him look bad. He said he only suggested the names of certain presidential hopefuls after Prof. Mills told him that he was not well and, therefore, wanted to step aside. He called me one mid-morning to say he could not continue and that he wanted to step aside. I asked him to wait till he returned and I also sought to know if he had mentioned it to anyone. He was silent and did not answer so I assumed that he might have done so. "The next day or so, I invited the elders, some former ministers, and other seniors for a meeting during which I attempted to put across the condition of the Professor without being specific. Towards the end of the meeting, I did however suggest that names of presidential hopefuls should be floated. The point is, the NDC party was looking visually and politically vulnerable while the NPP looked like a party with more presidential potential than it could handle or contain. "These were my personal observations. My next intervention was to ask who came second at the last congress. I was not sure whether it was Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu or Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah. I did not know or think that an attempt to ensure that we were prepared for any eventuality would cause an affront to his handlers. The following day or so, I spoke to Ato Ahwoi on the phone insisting that they must publicise names of presidential potentials and hopefuls among our people and to include their own names they the Ahwois. "I later realised that they were preparing to receive Professor Mills with a huge crowd at the airport, which was okay for morale. But as the days went by, the language took on an unpleasant tone creating the impression I was up to some ill motive. "The Prof. arrived and was debriefed, I hear by his handlers and the meeting, I was hoping and waiting for never took place. He was in the meantime being publicised in subsequent days doing a house-to-house campaign. In spite of the developments that took place, my wife and I did not hesitate to campaign vigorously towards the 2008 elections. After all, I had backed Mills since 1998 and was not going to back down in the middle of a crucial election, the former President said. Integrity The former President said what had sustained him in politics was his integrity and abhorrence to thievery and lies. I did not come to public office to steal and never did. We had to go through a lot of sacrifices to get to where we are today as a country, and there's no way I was going to compromise on my integrity. What has sustained some of us is our attachment to the principles of truth, justice and fair play it is not a vulgar quest for materialism, a trait which has sadly perpetuated itself into the leadership structures of our society, the former President stated. Flt Lt Rawlings said it was unfortunate some abandoned the positive principles along the way in spite of the fact that, we won all our elections and survived some of the most trying times of our nations history for as long as we did, bringing hope and relief to our people because of those solid values and principles. According to him, the refusal to reinstate truth, transparency, and most of all justice into the fabric and psyche of the nation led to the institutionalisation of crime and corruption, eventually resulting in NDCs electoral loss in 2016. 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 Its an outcome that practically no one wants, but its starting to look like a real possibility: a 50-50 Senate. An evenly split Senate would make life grueling for whoever is president next year. Any one senator could determine the fate of critical nominations or key pieces of the partys legislative agenda. And in an era of already deep polarization, it could lead to even worse gridlock, as inconceivable as that sounds. A 50-50 Senate makes it really difficult for the party of the president to do everything that they may want to do because party discipline, conference discipline, is very challenging, said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). But if Democrats pick up a net three seats, thats what happens. Should Joe Biden win the presidency, theyll hold the majority; if President Donald Trump is reelected, Democrats need four seats to do so. Thats because under an evenly divided chamber, the party that holds the White House runs the Senate, with the vice president casting the deciding 51st vote to break any tie. As of now, the struggle for the majority is being bitterly contested in a half-dozen states. GOP Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine face tough challenges in November. Democrats are also investing heavily in Iowa and Montana, while there are two Senate races in Georgia that could present them with pickup opportunities. Meanwhile Sen. Doug Jones has an uphill reelection bid for a Democrat in Alabama. Michigan Democrat Gary Peters holds a small lead over his GOP challenger, although Bidens strength in the swing state will aid the incumbent. Who is running the Senate might not actually be known until January if the two Georgia Senate races go to runoffs. But interviews with more than 15 senators in both parties found agreement on this much: Hardly anyone is rooting for it. Everyone's got leverage, said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who said he didnt want to think about that outcome just yet. Were just talking about pedal to the metal and hopefully winning as many [seats] as we can. Story continues A split Senate also would drastically reduce the likelihood that Democrats nix the legislative filibuster if they gain full control of Washington. Progressives have urged using the nuclear option to unilaterally gut the filibuster in order to enact a bold agenda for a President Joe Biden, but getting all 50 Democrats in the ideologically diverse caucus to sign on would be difficult. (The vice president could be the deciding vote on a rules change in the event of a 50-50 split.) Of course, the senators hastened to add, if it means being in the majority, theyd take it. Better than a Senate with Mitch McConnell in charge ... but not as good as a 52-48 Senate, said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii.) It would just make it harder to get legislation passed. If youre ever not unanimous, you cant pass a bill, assuming that the Republicans oppose everything that Joe Biden proposes. An evenly split Senate is a rarity. Its only happened three times in the Senates storied history, in 1881, 1953 and most recently after the 2000 election, and that didnt last long. Amid frustration with George W. Bushs conservative agenda, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party in May 2001 to caucus with Democrats and deliver them full control of the body, at least for the 107th Congress. Republicans won back the majority in 2002. The makeup of the Senate shapes how it is run, and Jeffords switch upended a careful balance that had been worked out between then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). With then-Vice President Dick Cheney giving them a 51st vote, Republicans held the committee chairs. But funding for staffers and office space huge issues in the Senate were divided equally between the two parties. The chamber adopted unique rules that allowed either Lott or Daschle to move bills and nominations if there was a deadlock inside the committees. Those who served during that last 50-50 Senate arent exactly eager to see it happen again. I like a majority better, said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) Ive tried both, and I think thats whats going to happen. But Inhofe also recalled that there was more comity in a 50-50 Senate. Senators note that as long as the 60-vote threshold to move forward on most legislation remains in place, members will still need to work across the aisle to get anything substantial through the body. Other senators suggested a split Senate could force more bipartisan compromise, because it would amplify the voices of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) or Collins, whose votes with their party will be key with such a small margin of power. When asked about the potential pressure of a 50-50 Senate under a Democratic majority, Manchin responded, It wouldnt be tough at all. It would be a great place to be, thered be common sense back to this place, the West Virginia Democrat said. A 50-50 Senate could pose bigger obstacles for the president when it comes to the confirmation of executive branch nominees, federal judges and Supreme Court justices, who need only a simple majority to get through the Senate. The White House wouldnt be able to afford to lose a single vote in their party and given the increasingly partisan nature of nomination fights, the vice president might end up spending a lot of time in the Senate. It just means Mike Pence is going to have to do a whole lot of voting, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). Party leaders would face the same scenario if they tried to pass major legislation through complex budget reconciliation procedures, where only a simple majority is required. Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare because they couldnt muster the 50 GOP votes as Pence looked on. Both Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), chairs of their respective party campaign arms, declined to speculate on the likelihood of the Senate splitting 50-50. Instead, they each predicted their side would win. But some senators acknowledge that regardless of whether the Senate is 50-50 or 51-49, its going to be hard to govern. I dont know that it looks a lot different than a 51-49 Senate, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Its going to be difficult to get 50 votes on anything if theres 50, 51, 52 Democrats. ... Im not sure that fundamentally changes the dynamics. Leadership will be hard no matter what. Andrew Desiderio contributed to this report. The Ghana Civil Service, under the auspices of the Office of the President, would from Thursday, September 17, begin activities to commemorate the 2020 Civil Service Week and awards ceremony. The celebration, as part of the Public Sector Reform for Results Project, is on the theme: Civil Service and Private Sector Synergy - A National Development Imperative. A statement issued in Accra by Mr Tony Goodman, Head of Public Relations, office of the Head of Civil Service, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the programmes sought to recognise the strategic importance of the synergy between the Civil Service and the private sector for national development. The celebration, which ends on September 25, is also to honour dedicated civil servants for their selfless service to Ghana. A press launch would be held at the Civil and Local Government Staff Association (CLOGSAG) Auditorium on September 17 to usher in the celebration followed by Christian and Muslim thanksgiving services at the CLOGSAG Auditorium and the Ministries Mosque, respectively, on September 18. A live streaming public lecture would be held at the CLOGSAG Auditorium on September 22, Open Day in all ministries and departments on September 23 and clean-up exercise at the MDAs, Health talk (live streaming), Blood Donation, and Medical Screening at the CLOGSAG Auditorium on September 24. The programme would be climaxed on September 25 with a Civil Service Awards Ceremony at the Accra International Conference Centre. The statement said it was a service-wide programme and would involve all ministers, chief directors, directors and staff of the various ministries and departments in the Civil Service. The public and private sector, academia, media and civil society organisations would also play a vital role in the celebration, it said. "It is our hope that the media, who has been a partner of the Civil Service, will give it the necessary support for a successful celebration," it 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 Jerry Harris, star of the Netflix series Cheer, was arrested Thursday and charged in federal court in Chicago with producing child pornography. Following a raid Monday at his home in Naperville, Illinois, Harris, 21, was charged with soliciting pornographic videos and images of minors and soliciting sex from a 13-year-old victim at cheerleading competitions, according to the Chicago Tribune. He, was charged in a criminal complaint with one count of production of child pornography, which carries a minimum of 15 years in prison upon conviction. According to WLS-TV in Chicago, Harris contacted an underage boy using social media and then enticed the victim to produce the sexually explicit videos and photos of himself and send them back to Harris. The boy reportedly told Harris during their initial encounter that he was 13 years old. The complaint stated Harris also admitted to soliciting and receiving child pornography on Snapchat from at least between 10 to 15 other individuals he knew were minors. Earlier this week, USA Today reported on the allegations against Harris. A spokesperson for Harris issued a statement Tuesday in response to the USA Today story denying that the Netflix star solicited sex and sexually explicit photographs from minors. Cheer, a six-part Emmy Award winning documentary series, follows the nationally ranked 40-member Navarro College Bulldogs Cheer Team from Corsicana, Texas. In March, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said they had won a major victory in the governments fight to enforce sanctions on Iran when a jury convicted an Iranian man who was accused of illegally funneling more than $115 million to his family business. Within months, though, the case fell apart, and prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the charges against the man, Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, after acknowledging problems in the way they had turned evidence over to the defense. In one instance, a prosecutor had proposed to a colleague that they bury a document that should have been provided to the defense. The judge overseeing the case soon vacated the conviction and started her own inquiry. On Wednesday, in a highly unusual decision, the judge, Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court, excoriated the government for its handling of the case and also took aim at the offices leadership for having failed to unequivocally condemn these prosecutors improper actions and communications. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Member of Parliament from the ruling My Step faction Armen Pambukhchyan has resigned, Speaker of Parliament Ararat Mirzoyan said in a statement. The lawmaker will continue working in the government. The lawmaker also issued a statement on Facebook which says: I want to state that by my wish and the consent of the political team I will continue my state service in the government. I want to thank all my colleagues in the Parliament for the productive work. Of course, I want to specifically thank the My Step faction for the discussions aimed at the common goals and the decisions made. I assure you that the faction has been and remains a strong institute holding the values of the Revolution and serving the interests of our statehood. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan A Waterbury man has been sentenced to more than five years behind bars after being convicted in a heroin and cocaine trafficking operation. Pedro Santos, 47, was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in New Haven to 66 months in jail, followed by four years of supervised release, for trafficking heroin and cocaine, authorities said. According to court documents and statements made in court, the case stems from a joint investigation headed by the DEA New Haven Task Force and the Waterbury and Naugatuck police departments into a heroin and cocaine trafficking operation headed by Keith Jordan, of Waterbury. According to a release from the office of John Durham, of U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, the investigation included the use of court-authorized wiretaps, physical surveillance and controlled purchases of narcotics. The probe revealed that Jordan was receiving large quantities of heroin from various suppliers, including Santos, and selling the drugs to other distributors and street-level customers, Durham said. Jordan also purchased and distributed cocaine, Durham said. In November and December 2018, investigators intercepted hundreds of calls on Santos phone that were pertinent to drug trafficking. The intercepts revealed that Santos was receiving narcotics from co-conspirators and supplying heroin and cocaine to a network of street-level drug distributors, the release stated. On March 13, 2019, a grand jury in Hartford returned an indictment charging Santos, Jordan and 27 others with various offenses related to the distribution of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and crack cocaine. Several of Santos co-defendants were arrested in March 2019. In association with the arrests, investigators seized approximately 3,000 bags of heroin, 400 grams of cocaine, 350 grams of fentanyl/heroin mixed, 400 grams of heroin, 10 grams of crack, 20 pounds of marijuana, fentanyl patches, a one-kilogram press, four handguns, approximately $120,000 in cash and four vehicles, authorities said. Santos evaded capture until Aug. 8, 2019, when he was apprehended in Holyoke, Mass. He has been detained since his arrest. On Jan. 23, Santos pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute, and to possess with intent to distribute, 100 grams or more of heroin. Jordan pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing. Governments Need Boundaries, and Functional Courts Are Needed to Enforce Them Commentary After nearly six months in the trenches of civil liberties advocacy during COVID lockdowns, two things have become patently clear: governments need boundaries, and Canadians need a fully functioning judicial system to enforce those boundaries. Since lockdown measures were imposed in March, neither of these needs have been met. Governments have granted themselves unprecedented powers to intrude into our lives, pushing all previous boundaries beyond recognition. And our primary checks on that power, the courts, have to varying degrees declared themselves non-essential at exactly the time they are most needed. On March 20, in an article for the Post Millennial, I warily noted that if the lockdown went on too long, the costs of the deprivation of liberty and the shutdown of the economy could outweigh the benefits of lockdown measures. I warned that civil strife could ensue, and that the cure could end up being worse than the disease if the government forced public health measures to go on longer than absolutely necessary. I also expressed concern about the shutdown of courts: that it was unsettling that some of our courts had essentially ceased operations, and that they would have to find a way to ensure access for constitutional challenges and judicial review should governments prolong their emergency powers or infringe our liberties unjustifiably. Six months later, many of these lockdown measures are proving quite sticky, and arguably permanent. The Justice Centre office continues to be inundated with pleas for help and concerns about government overreach from across the country. Peoples lives have been impacted in profound and sometimes very painful ways, and not from the virus itself. Businesses have been shuttered, mental health is precarious, suicide rates have shot up, the elderly have deteriorated or died in what has amounted to solitary confinement, children are being raised in a culture of fear, and young adults are missing significant milestones, like graduations. Whether in K-12 or at university, students are being deprived of normal educational opportunities despite the almost complete absence of risk to their demographics personal health and safety. Many of the restrictions are clear violations of the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While infringements may be justified in a free and democratic society, they must be proportional to the goals the government is seeking to achieve and must minimally impair the rights to the extent possible. In other words, a balancing act needs to happen. Most government authorities seem loath to conduct that balancing act themselves. They have been laser-focused on a moving target of goalsfrom preventing hospital overload, to the complete eradication of the virus, whether it is killing in statistically significant numbers or not. This is why courts are essentialthey force this necessary balancing act to occur, and make governments satisfactorily prove that ongoing infringements of Canadians rights and freedoms are justified. Governments understand this only too well. In at least five cases that the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has undertaken since the lockdown, the government in question has pulled back when litigation has been started or threatened. In Alberta, the government introduced Bill 10 which granted to any one government minister the power to write new laws without legislative oversight. The Justice Centre wrote numerous articles and news releases to raise the alarm about this unconstitutional and undemocratic overreach, to no apparent effect. After court proceedings were threatened, however, the Alberta government announced that it was sending the Bill back to committee for possible amendment. In the Aylmer Church of God case, the police were threatening to lay charges against a small-town congregation that was meeting for drive-in services, at no risk to public health. Neither the weeks of discussions between government officials and church leaders, nor the dispute waged in the media between the Aylmer police chief and the pastor of the Church of God, managed to move the dial. Threats of draconian fines loomed large, as the police converged on the church parking lot to videotape parishioners. A Charter challenge was initiated by the Justice Centre in the Ontario Superior Court, accompanied by a press release. Within days, the Order prohibiting religious gatherings was amended to permit drive-in services. A short time later, we were approached by members of the Orthodox Jewish community who were unable to meet for prayers (even if socially distanced) in a group of 10 men as required by their religious tradition. Other faith leaders also approached us with concerns about getting back into their buildingsdrive-in services were of no use in inner-city churches or in Orthodox communities that do not use vehicles on the Sabbath. Months of lobbying and petitioning by religious leaders for even modest accommodations had largely been ignored. The Justice Centre issued a press release advising that it was commencing legal proceedings. Again, within days, the Order was amended to allow places of worship to reopen, although only at 30 percent capacity and with many additional restrictions. Federally, passport offices across the country had been shut down for months, with people who could otherwise leave the country being unable to renew their passports without demonstrating urgency to the satisfaction of a government bureaucrat. This was clearly contrary to the Charter-protected mobility rights of Canadians. First a legal demand letter was sent to the federal government by the Justice Centre, and after proceedings were commenced in Federal Court, lo and behold, passport processing suddenly started up again, although only by mail. Most recently, the Ontario government announced that long-term care residents would be allowed access to their family caregivers after months of lobbying, heartbreaking stories in the media of declining physical and mental health and even deaths of elderly residents without this care and companionship, and despite numerous reports from medical and nursing experts arguing that the benefits of reintroducing family caregivers far outweighed any harms. The government had insisted on a risk-avoidance strategy of keeping seniors under house arrest until a lawsuit was filed and announced by the Justice Centre. Shortly thereafter, a new visitor policy was announced to allow family caregivers back in, although it was done by unenforceable guidelines, rather than a binding directive. It is as if governments are worried about having to prove their caseperhaps because some of these measures were never justifiable in the first place. They seem to understand that there is a line and that they have crossed it. All they were waiting for was someone to hold them accountable. Legal action, or its threat, helps to establish the boundaries that governments evidently need. Our courts have the critical job of providing checks and balances required in a democratic country that is subject to the rule of law. With a few exceptions, however, they have not fulfilled this responsibility as well as they should have. The shutdown suspended normal court operations across the country, and hearings were deferred. Since March, in most Canadian provinces a court action could not be started by simply going up to the courthouse counter, as usual, and having a clerk process it. Even with documents now being filed electronically (a positive development that is 20 years overdue), courts would not accept new applications without a hearing or review by a judge to determine if it was sufficiently urgent. This new gatekeeping function, which still persists in some courts almost six months later, presents a barrier to access to justice by unnecessarily restricting the crucial first step in court proceedingsone that is normally conducted without question and without judicial involvement. In all of the cases highlighted above, the government backed down in the face of litigationbut not as far as they might have been ordered to if they had tried to justify their measures in an actual trial or hearing. Now, depending on the region and jurisdiction, a judicial gatekeeper may have the power to decide if backing down a little bit is good enough to avoid a finding of urgency, and to keep the ultimate question of the constitutionality of these measures out of the courts. In March, preventing social interactions between people on a temporary basis was understandable. In September, with the epidemiological information we now have, it is completely unreasonable. Both governments and courts must fall back to their proper positions behind clearly demarcated boundaries, in the interest of good governance and access to justice. Lawsuits work. Courts need to work too. Lisa Bildy is a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. She can be followed on Twitter at @LDBildy. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. It has emerged that in the hours before Donald Trumps photoshoot outside a church near the White House this summer, military police sought out controversial crowd control weapons and even began stockpiling ammunition. Protesters were cleared by force from in front of the White House using tear gas and non-lethal projectiles, clearing the way for Mr Trump to walk across Lafayette Square and pose in front of St Johns Church holding a bible. However, according to testimony from a whistleblower, federal defence officials reached out to the DC National Guard seeking an Active Denial System (ADS), a controversial microwave-based device that heats the skin of targets to an intolerable level with the aim of clearing them from a given area. The email also mentioned a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), which can be used for announcements or as a sonic weapon. Neither device was ultimately used to clear the area outside the White House; instead, protesters were dispersed with tear gas and non-lethal projectiles. The whistleblower, Major Adam DeMarco, told a House of Representatives committee that he was copied into an email describing the use of the different weapons. The ADS, it said, can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. Major DeMarco also said that during the protests, M4 carbine assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition were transferred to the DC Armory. He gave his account in a written response to questions from the Democratic-led House Committee on Natural Resources, which has been investigating the incident in Lafayette Square since June. In his answers, obtained by NPR, he describes hearing from another national guardsman that the guns were transferred to the DC Armory around six hours before Mr Trumps photoshoot at the order of the commander of a DC National Guard unit. He then describes three occasions on which he heard from the national guards operations officers that some 7,000 rounds of ammunition had been sent their way, including from Missouri and Tennessee. The committees official Twitter feed thanked NPR for running the story. Many reporters like @radleybalko have done great work uncovering elements of this story, it wrote. The more we look at what the administration did at #LafayetteSquare to unarmed American citizens and what it wanted to do the clearer it is that they think of us as enemy combatants. Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns 70 today, coming from a humble background; Modi, a hardworking man has shown that anything is possible with sheer dedication and continuous effort. On this special day, we take a look at his political careerNarendra Modi was born on September 17, 1950 to a family of humble origins in a Vadnagar, Gujarat. (Image: Narendra Modi App) A 23-year-old man was arrested Monday in Cold Lake, Alta. after being wanted in an investigation into a sexual assault in Peterborough. City police received a complaint about a sexual assault in February 2017. After an investigation, a Canada-wide warrant was issued for the man on Aug. 18 of this year. The man was arrested on Monday and returned to Ontario on Wednesday by city police officers. Shayne Ruddy, 23, of Cold Lake, Alta. was charged with sexual assault and obstructing a peace officer. He was to appear in court Thursday. A resurgence in Covid-19 cases in some countries could further dampen oil demand and interfere with a decline in oil inventories, Reuters has reported, citing an internal document of the OPEC+ technical panel. Cases have been rising in many European countries, total infections in India have passed 5 million, and new cases are on the rise in some U.S. states. Meanwhile, OPEC itself, as well as the International Energy Agency, earlier this week revised their oil demand outlook for the year. Both are now expecting a bigger contraction than they anticipated a month ago. The IEA now expects 2020 oil demand to be 8.4 million bpd lower than it was a year ago, and OPEC sees it contracting by 9.5 million bpd. Thats up from 8.1 million bpd and 9.1 million bpd, respectively, that was forecast just a month ago. At the same time, according to the document, global oil inventories are falling. Commodity trading giant Vitol recently chimed in with this opinion, seeing a strong reduction in oil inventories in the next three months, between 250 and 300 million barrels. Not everyone in the industry agrees, however, with Trafigura, who noted a supply-heavy market through the end of the year. Meanwhile, OPEC+ has dramatically improved its compliance with the production cuts agreed in April to restore balance on the oil market. In August, sources from the cartel told Reuters, compliance hit 101 percent. The improvement followed Saudi Arabias threat to laggards, which include Iraq and Nigeria, with a reversal of its own cuts if they failed to fall in line and compensate for their overproduction in May and June. Later today, OPEC+ ministers are meeting to discuss compliance levels and oils fundamentals amid yet another negative trend in oil prices, driven by the growing worry about demand. Iraq could complicate matters, with recent reports suggesting OPECs number-two may have plans to increase production the first chance it gets to boost vital oil revenues. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: THE Department of Transportation (DOTr) has suspended the implementation of reduced physical distance between passengers in all public transport units. Sa pulong po ng IATF na nagpapatuloy hanggang ngayon, sinabi po ni DOTr Secretary (Arthur) Tugade na pansamantalang isususpinde ang 0.75 meter physical distancing at ibabalik sa one meter (In the ongoing IATF meeting, DOTr Secretary Tugade said they will temporarily suspend the 0.75 meter physical distancing and bring it back to one meter), Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque told reporters on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. Balik one meter muna tayo sa physical distancing sa pampublikong transportasyon habang wala pang desisyon ang Presidente kung ito nga po ay pwedeng maibaba sa 0.75 (Were back to one meter physical distancing in public transportation while the President has yet to decide whether or not to bring it down to 0.75), Roque added. The DOTr first proposed to reduce the required physical distance between passengers inside public transport units to 0.75 or 3/4 meter from the current one meter to increase ridership. The measure which was initially approved by the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases was supposed to begin implementation on Monday, Sept. 14. However, the implementation was delayed pending clarifications on the matter before it was declared suspended on Thursday. The reduced physical distancing proposal inside PUVs received varying reactions from the public and local government officials. On the national level, a group of Presidential economic advisers supported the move while Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Ano expressed his reservations. In Cebu, Victor Caindec, Land Transportation Office-Central Visayas (LTO 7) director, defended the proposed reduction of the distance between passengers inside PUVs saying it was aimed to help commuters. In a statement on his official Facebook page on Wednesday, Caindec said when the government placed Central Visayas and other parts of the country under the more relaxed modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) until Sept. 30, it actually weighed in on two important factors: continuing measures to help curb the spread of the coronavirus disease and ways to help the public regain their source of income and ultimately revive the badly-hit economy of the country. Story continues Caindec said if the reduced physical distancing in public transport will help the majority, then the public should be more responsible in protecting themselves while inside the PUVs by wearing face masks and face shields. Too risky For Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella, reducing the physical distance between passengers inside PUVs would be too risky. Labella welcomed the temporary suspension of the plan and issued a memorandum to the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) and Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) to continue to enforce the one-meter physical distancing between passengers inside PUVs. In order to sustain our efforts in preventing the transmission of Covid-19, you are hereby directed to continue implementing a one meter physical distancing between passengers in all public utility vehicles plying through Cebu City roads, effective immediately, Labella said in his memorandum dated Sept. 17. Labella expressed fears that reducing the physical distance between PUV passengers may cause another spike of Covid-19 cases in the city. We are really doomed to create a surge again. The farther the distance, the lesser chances of the virus being transmitted, said Labella. He noted that the one-meter physical distance is the standard set by the World Health Organization (WHO). CCTO head Alma Casimero, for her part, said although the PUVs plying the city are still not sufficient to cater to passenger demand, observing a one-meter physical distance between passengers inside the PUVs will ensure the safety of both the passengers and the drivers. (WBS, JJL) The European Commission chief has said she is convinced a trade deal remains possible with the UK but called Boris Johnsons attempt to override the Brexit treaty an unpleasant surprise. Ursula von der Leyen, in comments made to reporters on Thursday, said Downing Streets controversial UK Internal Market Bill had distracted very strongly from the two sides being able to secure fresh trade terms before the looming deadline. The post-Brexit transition period, during which relations between the European Union and the UK have remained static, is due to end after December 31 and leaders on both sides of the Channel have warned that an agreement is needed by October if a deal is to be ratified in time for the start of 2021. With the cliff edge only a month away, the Prime Minister has faced criticism domestically and on the world stage for pursuing legislation that would defy the Withdrawal Agreement brokered with the EU last year, breaking international law in the process. Mr Johnson was forced on Wednesday to agree to table an amendment to the Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before the Government can use the powers related to Northern Ireland which would breach the treaty. But the compromise has not seen Brussels back down, with Eric Mamer, chief spokesman for the European Commission, telling a press briefing that its position had not changed and it still wanted the offending clauses to be withdrawn from the legislation. Despite the wrangle over the Bill which has been derided by every living former prime minister, scores of senior Tory backbenchers, US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Brussels commission president Ms von der Leyen said she remained sure that consensus on a future partnership with the UK could be reached. Expand Close Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced criticism over the UK Internal Market Bill (House of Commons/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced criticism over the UK Internal Market Bill (House of Commons/PA) It comes after the former London School of Economics student used her annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament on Wednesday to warn Mr Johnson the UK could not unilaterally set aside the Withdrawal Agreement. Ms von der Leyen, in comments reported by Politico, told reporters on Thursday: Where the UK is concerned, we want an agreement, and I think the attempt to violate the Withdrawal Agreement distracted very strongly from the ongoing negotiations. This was an unpleasant surprise. And therefore it is time now that our British friends restore the trust in the validity of a signature under treaty, and that we keep on going, focused to negotiate because time is running out. In reply to another question, the German politician said she was still convinced a deal with London can be done. The commission presidents comments come as the UK confirmed some limited progress had been made between the negotiation teams during informal talks in Brussels this week. The UKs negotiating team had useful informal discussions with the EU this week as we seek to reach an agreement by mid-October on our future relationship, said a UK Government spokesman. These covered a broad range of issues and some limited progress was made, but significant gaps remain in key areas, including fisheries and subsidies. We will continue to work hard to bridge those gaps in talks next week, without compromising our fundamental position of being an independent country. Netflix cancellations skyrocket over 'Cuties' controversy: report Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Netflix has experienced a spike in cancellations that's about eight times the normal rate, due to outrage over the controversial film Cuties, according to a report by a data analytics group. Netflix has garnered criticism for its decision to stream the French film Cuties, which features sexualized 11-year-old girls dancing provocatively and has been compared to child porn. Variety magazine reported on how YipitData found that by Sept. 12, the cancellation rate for Netflix was eight times higher than the average daily levels recorded last month. While noting that the spike in cancellations was a multiyear high, Variety cautioned that this might be a short-term blip for a service that regularly has people cancel and sign up. As of June, Netflix had approximately 193 million paid customers globally, according to Variety, with nearly 26 million new subscribers in the first half of the year. Written and directed by Maimouna Doucoure, the film centers on an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim girl who defies her family and joins an all-girl pre-teen dance team where she twerks, grinds, and simulates sex in dance routines. Recently, Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, called on the Department of Justice to investigate Netflix for allegedly distributing child porn. "I urge the Department of Justice to investigate the production and distribution of this film to determine whether Netflix, its executives, or the individuals involved in the filming and production of 'Cuties' violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography," wrote Cruz in a letter to Attorney General William Barr. " And it is likely that the filming of this movie created even more explicit and abusive scenes, and that pedophiles across the world in the future will manipulate and imitate this film in abusive ways." Netflix first garnered outrage over the film for its promotional artwork that showed the young girls, including the main character, in scantily clad outfits and posing suggestively. While Netflix eventually apologized for the artwork and changed its promotional advertising for the film, many still called for users to cancel their accounts with the streaming service for carrying the film, which was far worse than the artwork Netflix created. In advance of the release of the film on Sept. 9, a petition calling for Netflix to drop Cuties was posted online and as of Thursday, has more than 715,000 signatures. The Twitter hashtag #CancelNetflix went viral and was promoted by notable figures, including Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. [Netflixs] child porn Cuties will certainly whet the appetite of pedophiles & help fuel the child sex trafficking trade. 1 in 4 victims of trafficking are children. It happened to my friend's 13 year old daughter. Netflix, you are now complicit. #CancelNetflix, tweeted Gabbard. Others, including both Netflix and Doucoure, have defended the film as an effort to spread awareness about the dangers of sexualizing children rather than glorifying the practice. Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children, a Netflix spokesperson told The Daily Caller. Its an award winning film and a powerful story about the pressure young girls face on social media and from society more generally growing up and wed encourage anyone who cares about these important issues to watch the movie. Doucoure told Medium that they "auditioned 700 girls" for the film. Questions have since been raised about the audition tapes and what the filmmakers asked each girl to do during the audition. There have been a couple of articles published in the last two days reporting on an impromptu sweep that took place outside of a venue we are using for our TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco this week. We wanted to detail what we know about what happened and the steps that are being taken to make this right. This week we are hosting a virtual version of our TechCrunch Disrupt conference from a studio in San Francisco. In order to stage the show we rented a venue from a company named Non Plus Ultra. Yesterday we were informed by Non Plus Ultra that a reporter had reached out to ask about a sweep that had taken place in the early hours of last Thursday morning before our team arrived. This was the first time we had heard about Non Plus Ultra having coordinated an unsanctioned sweep outside of their building. This was not an action that we asked Non Plus Ultra to perform and is not something that we would ever ask them to do. Upon further investigation, we discovered that belongings and personal effects had been removed or discarded by a private company hired by Non Plus Ultra. This is absolutely unacceptable, and were working to take immediate action. First, we will no longer be working with Non Plus Ultra at any of their venues in San Francisco for any TechCrunch event in the future. In addition, Non Plus Ultra has committed to working with local partners Community Housing Partnership and DISH to support the homeless community on 12th Street. They are also committing to set up a system to replace or, where possible, return property to the people who were unfairly targeted by this sweep. TechCrunch will ensure that Non Plus Ultra follows through on these commitments. The city of San Francisco continues to struggle with a housing crisis and a large houseless population. Our neighbors who are living on the streets are suffering even more as they endure a pandemic and hazardous air quality from the California wildfires. Everyone deserves to be treated with compassion and humanity, regardless of how or where they live. TechCrunch focuses on technology and the economy that drives it; much of that economy is centered in and around the Bay Area. Story continues Many of us live in San Francisco and in the surrounding areas and we feel it is our basic duty as humans to see that our events benefit the community and do no harm to our neighbors. To those affected by this situation we are deeply sorry. We will make every effort to see that this is made right. Thank you. Indian Army ready to fight full-fledged war with China even in winters India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: Asserting that it is fully prepared to fight a full-fledged war even in winters in eastern Ladakh, the Indian Army on Wednesday said if China created conditions for war, they will face a better trained, better prepared, fully rested and psychologically hardened Indian troops. In a statement, it said compared to physically and psychologically battle-hardened Indian troops, Chinese troops mostly are from urban areas and not used to hardships or prolonged deployment under field conditions. The Army's Northern Command headquarters made these assertions reacting to China's official media Global Times reports that India's operational logistics is not geared up adequately and it will not be able to fight through winters effectively. "This can best be attributed to ignorance. Indian Army is fully prepared and more than capable of fighting a full-fledged war even in winters in eastern Ladakh," a Northern Command spokesperson said here. "India is a peace-loving country and wishes to have good relations with its neighbours. India always prefers to resolve issues through dialogue. While talks are in progress to resolve the border issues with China in eastern Ladakh, at the military level it is well prepared for the prolonged stand-off," he said. Also Read: He said altitudes in Ladakh range from "high to super-high altitude" and there is a lot of snowfall - up to 40 feet after November. "Coupled with this, the temperature dipping down to minus 30 to 40 degree Celsius is a usual phenomenon. Wind chill factor makes matters even worse for the troops. The roads also get closed due to the snow. But despite all this, the most encouraging part for India is that the Indian soldiers have a huge experience of winter warfare and are psychologically tuned to operate at short notice," the spokesperson said. While these facts are known to the world, he said, adding the operational logistics capabilities, however, are hardly known. "Logistic capability relates to mobility, habitat and billeting, quality services for health, special rations, repair and recovery, heating systems, high-quality weapons, ammunition, quality clothing, and so on. While much of these capabilities existed earlier and troops could simply plug and play, a lot has also been boosted since May this year when China showed first signs of aggression," he said. The spokesperson said it is important to understand that the Army has the experience of Siachen, the highest battleground in the world, where conditions are much more demanding than the frontiers with China. "Traditionally there were two routes for moving into Ladakh, that is through Zojila (Srinagar-Leh Highway) and Rohtang Passes (Manali-Leh). Recently India commissioned a third road from Darcha to Leh which is much shorter distance-wise and less prone to closure," he said. The spokesperson said completion of Atal tunnel on the Rohtang route has force multiplied the logistic capacities. "In addition, we have a large number of airbases with the help of which we can maintain the Army well. Modern snow clearing equipment has also been placed on these routes to keep them open beyond November, thus giving us more time for daily maintenance of the troops," he said. The spokesperson said special fuel and lubricants for tanks and armoured personnel carriers have also been stocked adequately, including spares for their maintenance. "Water points and tube wells have been established for the troops and animals like mules and yaks. The living barracks have also been prepared which are comfortable and warm," he said. He said facilities such as the central heating system are some of the high points of these facilities. "Ammunition of various types including small arms, missiles and tank and artillery ammunition have also been adequately stocked. The medical system is also in place for any eventuality." PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News The spokesperson said "China's concept has always been to win the wars without fighting, hence if they create conditions for war, they will come across better trained, better prepared, fully rested and psychologically hardened Indian troops. "These worries have been percolating in the minds of Chinese troops and are visible in Chinese media," he said. ROME, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- China's opening up to the world and its role as an important member of the global economic community is key to the world's economic recovery, experts have said. Speaking to more than 500 business leaders at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China is set to achieve its main annual targets and register positive GDP growth in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. As China strives for positive economic growth, the EU economy is expected to contract by 7.1 percent this year, and the U.S. economy would shrink by 5.9 percent, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund. Noting that the Chinese economy has been deeply integrated into the global economy, Li stressed that China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, and the world needs China for further development. "No matter how the external environment may evolve, China will only open wider to the world; China will move forward, not backward, in all areas of opening-up," Li said. China's increased integration with the global economy will be an essential part of the global economic recovery, said Carlo Filippini, an emeritus professor of economics at Bocconi University in Milan. "The relative strength of the Chinese economy is important, as China is an important exporter and importer," Filippini told Xinhua. Filippini said he did not believe the problems associated with the global coronavirus outbreak will slow the integration process. Javier Noriega, chief economist with investment bankers Hildebrandt and Ferrar, said that Li's remarks at the forum were evidence of China's role in the world economic community. "If there are three main economic poles in the world, China is the most economically vibrant of them," Noriega said, referring to the United States and the European Union as the other two economic poles. China's economic strength and the direction the country takes will play a big role as global economies seek to overcome the current crisis, Noriega said, adding that the revival of world trade and strengthening of global supply chains would be an "essential" part of the global economic recovery. The impacts of the pandemic were so large because countries are so interconnected, therefore reinforcing these connections are key for a recovery from the current situation, the expert said. Former prime minister David Cameron today urged Boris Johnson not to be afraid to surround himself with experienced politicians - urging him to bring former leadership rival Jeremy Hunt back into the Cabinet. Mr Cameron said that Mr Hunt, the former health and foreign secretary, 'talks a lot of sense' in his current role as health committee chairman, adding: I hope his talent isn't lost to politics forever if I can put it that way'. Mr Johnson has been accused of having a weak Cabinet filled with Brexiteer loyalists chosen for their unlikeliness to rebel or challenge the Prime Minister. But in an interview with Times Radio, Mr Cameron said Mr Hunt had been a 'brilliant Health secretary who still had a lot to add. 'My approach was - I didn't fear the tall poppies. Ken Clark and I didn't always agree, and often Ken would begin his explanation with why you're wrong by saying ''well as Ted (Heath) used to say'' and then ''as Margaret (Thatcher) used to say''. 'And by the time you got to me you felt, OK, this guy's got a lot of experience. But I liked having the big beasts, the Clarks, the (George) Osbornes, (William) Hagues, George Young, Iain Duncan Smith and the rest of it around the table.' Mr Johnson has been accused of having a weak Cabinet filled with Brexiteer loyalists chosen for their unlikeliness to rebel or challenge the Prime Minister Mr Hunt became health committee chairman ater losing to Mr Johnson in the Tory leadership election in July last year and being axed as foreign secretary Mr Hunt, took up his committee chairmanship after losing to Mr Johnson in the Tory leadership election in July last year and being axed as foreign secretary. He was previously the longest-serving health secretary. He has been outspoken during the coronavirus pandemic, lambasting ministers for slowness in organising mass testing, tests for NHS staff, the explosion in cases in care homes and the release of scientific data. It came as Mr Boris Johnson today pleaded for Britons to 'save Christmas' by obeying his 'Rule of Six' - warning that lockdown will only get stricter if the country does not 'flatten the hump of the camel'. The PM begged the public to keep faith with his draconian rules despite the testing system descending into a shambles, with fears schools and offices will have to shut because people with mild symptoms cannot prove they are negative. Amid bitter clashes between experts over the best way to respond to the spike in Covid cases, the North East is the latest area facing new curbs, including forcing pubs to shut at 10pm and a ban on households socialising with anyone else. In London, public health chiefs have warned of looming curfews, while ministers have hinted that the edict for everyone to work from home could be reinstated soon if infections do not come back under control. The new rules for the North East are expected to come into force just after midnight after a dramatic rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in the area. In an interview with The Sun justifying his agenda, Mr Johnson emphasised that social restrictions, localised lockdowns, and a 'ramped up' testing were being used in a bid to prevent a second wave. He warned: 'The only way to make sure the country is able to enjoy Christmas is to be tough now.' Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has resigned from Prime Minister Narendra Modis government, as the BJP ally on Thursday opposed the two farm bills that seek to liberalise the agriculture sector, exposing a crucial rift on the issue of farmers and agricultural reforms. I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister, tweeted Harsimrat Badal. The party, however, continues to be a part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance. While announcing the SADs decision to withdraw their minister from the Modi Cabinet, her husband and party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal said the SAD would continue to support the government and BJP, but will oppose the anti-farmer policies. Watch | Harsimrat Kaur resigns from Union Cabinet in protest against farm bills These bills have many provisions that go against farmers interests. We have repeatedly asked the government that please address the apprehensions of farmers, but the government has done nothing. Therefore, I oppose these bills, SAD MP from Ferozpur, Sukhbir Singh Badal said in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, which replace similar ordinances. The SAD had been requesting the Centre not to go ahead with the three agriculture-related bills for approval of Parliament until all reservations expressed by farmers organisations, farmers and farm labourers are addressed. On September 12, the party had formally asked the Centre not to enact three farm ordinances during the monsoon session of Parliament, which began on September 14. On Tuesday, Sukhbir Badal, the MP from Punjabs Ferozepur, voted against the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha, saying the proposed legislation was against the interests of farmers. The legislation will affect the entire procurement system. It is not just about mandis. It doesnt take into account the realities of our farm sector, Badal said, opposing the bills today. The SAD was a party of farmers, Sukhbir Badal said. The Centre would have done better to organise a meeting with farmers before moving ahead with the bills and adequately address their concerns, he said. The Congress government in Punjab had passed a resolution in the Vidhan Sabha against the ordinances, prompting the SAD to fiercely oppose the bills after initially supporting it. The SADs core committee had issued a press release saying they had met farm organisations, farmer representatives and representatives to take their views. Farmers are against these bills because it would make them vulnerable, Badal said. Farmers are already protesting these ordinances in food bowl states, such as Haryana and Punjab, and influential farmers unions are also preparing to square off with the government on the demand of making profitable sales in the form of minimum support prices, or MSPs, a legal right. The All-India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), a front for nearly 200 farmers groups, has opposed the bills. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh is also unhappy with the ordinances. It demanded safeguards for the farming community, so has the Bhartiya Kisan Union. Farmer groups said they feared the new changes would lead to big monopolies. This would be just as bad as current cartelisation in mandis known as agricultural produce market committees (APMCs). We want the ordinances to be signed into law with appropriate safeguards, such as a national portal of farm trade corporations, said Mohini Mohan Mishra, all-India secretary of the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. The news drew protests as the presidents critics took to social media and the streets, organizing demonstrations in Manila to voice their anger at Dutertes decision. Many members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community thought the president was sending a signal that the Philippine government doesnt believe that the lives of transgender women are important. It tells us how, even in our own country, if you are of a particular gender, if you are a transgender woman, your life matters less, Valmores-Salinas says. This is about how we are the people that are silenced, that are raped, that are killed first because we are the ones that society listens to last. Beyond the question of whether the pardon was an anti-trans reaction by Duterte, it may have also been a strategic move to gain an advantage in relations with the United States. For nearly a century, the United States maintained a large military presence at a series of bases across the Philippines a period that saw much abuse and violence against Filipina women and girls by American service members. At that time, military personnel were protected from prosecution in Philippine courts under a Status of Forces Agreement; criminal actions, when they were acknowledged, were instead addressed by the U.S. military justice system. In 1991, after years of protests from anti-base campaigners, a volcanic eruption and the end of the Cold War, the Philippine Senate rejected a renewal of the treaty, ending Americas ongoing military presence. But U.S. troops returned eight years later under a new Visiting Forces Agreement and continue to participate in hundreds of joint military exercises every year. In February, Duterte gave notice that he was terminating the Visiting Forces Agreement, a move that many interpreted as a response to the U.S. State Department revoking the visa of Senator Ronald dela Rosa, the former National Police chief widely regarded as the architect of the administrations notoriously violent war on drugs. Then in June, Duterte confirmed that he wouldnt be canceling the agreement for at least another six months, and in July, dela Rosa announced that the United States would be reinstating his visa. Despite Dutertes outwardly critical stance toward the United States, relations between the two countries remain strong. In August, the U.S. Agency for International Development donated 100 ventilators to the Philippines, as part of more than $22 million in U.S. funding to help the country tackle the novel coronavirus. Days earlier, the State Department approved a $126 million sale of scout, assault and light support boats to the Philippine government. Its the latest in more than $1.5 billion in arms that Dutertes administration has moved to purchase from the United States this year, despite calls from Human Rights Watch for Congress to block the sales, citing the Philippine armed forces lengthy history of military and human rights abuses. John Schaus, a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says Duterte was always likely to take a pragmatic approach to Pembertons release. Hes willing to engage with us, but its not his first preference in most situations, Schaus says. But when an opportunity presents itself to advance his priorities in a way that is palatable to him, hes willing to entertain it. He doesnt strike me as someone who is going to terminate things or cut things off if theyre beneficial to him. Just months before a general election in the United States, he added, it would make more sense for Duterte to wait to see the outcome before deciding whether to scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement. From a U.S. military perspective, visiting forces agreements (and status of forces agreements in countries where the military is permanently based) are necessary precautions in countries where the United States wants to maintain a strategic presence including the Philippines, a key player in responding to Chinas rising power in the western Pacific. The Visiting Forces Agreement ensures that the two countries have a predetermined process to be followed if a service member is arrested and charged with a crime, when tensions are likely to be high. In Pembertons case, Schaus thinks the process proved a success: Pemberton was consistently subject to Philippine law. Whether or not he should be incarcerated longer or has served an adequate amount of time the Philippine court system came up with a judgment about that, based on its own internal standards, and I think thats exactly what the Visiting Forces Agreement would call for, Schaus says. Upon leaving the Philippines on Sunday, Pemberton was brought to Camp Smith in Hawaii. The Marine Corps is taking appropriate administrative action, Perrine said. He was unable to indicate whether Pemberton will be demoted, or if he will be given a less-than-honorable discharge. Greta Thunbergs climate protests and transatlantic boat journey feature in the trailer for a forthcoming documentary about her life. The two-minute teaser for I Am Greta sees the teenage climate activist issue a warning about the fate of the planet. People always tell us that young people are going to save the world, but there is simply not enough time to wait, she says. Unseen footage from Swedish environmental filmmaker Nathan Grossman begins with Thunbergs one-person school strike outside the Swedish Parliament. Students around the world soon begin following her lead, staging regular large protests, and Thunberg is invited to speak at various conferences. The film culminates with her voyage across the Atlantic to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City. Last month, Thunberg joined other young activists for talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel regarding climate issues. I Am Greta is produced by Cecilia Nessen and Fredrik Heinig. Video of the Day It will be released in UK cinemas on October 16, following the films world premiere at Venice Film Festival this month. Photo: Contributed A Quebec-based forestry innovation organization says it has figured out how to make a single-use face mask filter out of fully-biodegradable wood products. Stephane Renou, the president of FPInnovations Inc., says it could be a game-changer for the environment and for a made-in-Canada supply of masks. "The impact could be massive," he said, in an interview. "The amount of masks used around the world is just gigantic." Earlier this year an article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology estimated that during the COVID-19 pandemic people are throwing out 129 billion face masks every month, some of which become litter that eventually washes into oceans. Canada alone has ordered more than 153 million N95 respirators, almost 400 million surgical masks and 18 million non-medical face masks. That doesn't include demand from the private sector. The FPInnovations filter won't meet either N95 or surgical-mask standards, though Renou said that work is ongoing. Currently the vast majority of disposable face masks have two outer layers with a filter between them, all made from woven plastic fibres. Renou says over eight weeks this summer 20 FPInnovations employees created, tested and then perfected a filter made entirely from various wood pulps, that can block 60 per cent of small particles. He says they are now working on the two outer layers and hope to have a full mask completed by the end of the year. FPInnovations is a non-profit research and development organization that counts as members more than 180 forest companies and related firms. The mask project came up when employees wanted to do something to help with Canada's COVID-19 response efforts, said Renou. It received about $1 million in funding from Natural Resources Canada to do the filter development, and another $2 million more recently to expand that work to include the outer layers of the mask. Renou said the filters can be easily made on existing machines, many of which also make toilet paper. The filters are made of wood pulp from both hardwood and softwood trees. There are companies around the world trying to make more environmentally friendly masks. A company in Vietnam claims to have made reusable, biodegradable and antibacterial face masks using coffee beans. In June, researchers at the University of British Columbia also said they were seeking Health Canada approval for a medical-grade face mask made of wood products. The FPInnovations mask filter is being tested by non-government agencies at the moment, and would not be intended for use in hospitals but rather by the general public. Demand for face masks has soared since March, with many municipalities in Canada now requiring them in public indoor spaces, at schools, and on transit. Sarah King, head of Greenpeace Canada's Oceans and Plastics campaign, said she would rather see the focus on making reusable masks, "A single-use mask made of wood fibre, even if theoretically biodegradable, is likely still ending up in a landfill, or even as pollution in our communities," she said. "Biodegradable means nothing if a mask's end of life is someone's bathroom garbage can or a garbage can on the street." Darcey and Stacey Silva now have their very own spinoff called Darcey & Stacey. The dynamic duo has made the decision to go to Los Angeles and look at possible housing options so they can move to the West Coast and focus on their fashion line, House of Eleven. However, there is one more hurdle the twins must overcome. Stacey has to talk to her fiance, Florian Sukaj, about the possible move. Florian is from Albania, and he just landed in the United States to start a new life with Stacey. This week, Stacey takes Florian to the gym, and they discuss the situation. Stacey Silva and Florian Sukaj talk about the trip to LA Darcey Silva and Stacey Silva | Brad Barket/Getty Images for Discovery, Inc. The couple does some workouts together, and Florian acts as Staceys spotter. They even do some push-ups side by side. Next, Florian puts some weights on a barbell and he sits down to put some work in. I think Florian and I are in a good place, but I want to tell him about getting back to LA, Stacey tells the cameras. Thats where we need to be to run a successful business. Florian knows about House of Eleven, and he knows how important it is to me. But I dont know how Florians going to react. He just got here. I just hope he understands that thats our dream. The twins created House of Eleven in 2010 in LA with their father, Mike, after the sisters were each divorced. It was created in honor of their brother who passed away from cancer. Stacey is ready to reveal the plans to her fiance. She tells him that she has some news. You know Darcey and I have been wanting to launch the clothing line, get the business going again? She asks him, and he says Yeah. Well, we talked the other day, and we decided were going to take a trip to LA, just to test it out to see if this is the right time, Stacey explains to Florian. He asks about when that will be happening, and Stacey says, Like soon. She insists it will only be for a couple days. Stacey says its for work, and its so they can rebuild the fashion line that she shares with her sister. Florian continues to question it. Why now, why? he asks. Then, he brings up Darcey. Whats like to rush Darcey? Stacey tells him that she told her sister theyre going, and Florian replies with, Who cares? Who is Darcey? When Florian has his chance to speak to the cameras he says, Darcey pressure Stacey so much. Darcey like to do something its like to do right now, understand? Florian tells his fiance that he has only been in Connecticut for a week. Florian gets up and walks off to the side RELATED: Darcey & Stacey: Darcey and Stacey Silvas Father Convinces Them to Cancel Their Plans to Visit Los Angeles When the couple talks to the cameras together, things escalate quickly. Im done for this decision, Florian says. I dont f****** care. Next, Florian gets up and says, Lets squash it. He walks off to the side, saying that she doesnt understand. Eventually, he comes back and sits down, saying, Darcey push so much. While still at the gym, Stacey tells Florian that she wants him to go with her, and suddenly he says hell be coming along as well. I have you, I have everything, Florian says. Although Florian agrees to go with Stacey, plans change rather quickly when Mike, Stacey and Darceys father, talks to them about the coronavirus (COVID-19). He convinces them to cancel their plans to visit LA, so it looks like Florian wont have to worry about going right away anyways. Authenticity at work boosts productivity, engagement and ultimately, a companys bottom line. Photo: Getty Were always told to be ourselves at work, but while we can be as individualistic as we like in private, its often harder when were in professional mode. In order to fit in, we tend to hide aspects of our personality in a phenomenon known as covering a term coined by sociologist Erving Goffman in his 1963 book Stigma. Covering is a form of identity management in which we change our personalities, how we communicate and how we look in order to assimilate into an environment. Essentially, were driven by an inherent need to please and conform either to downplay a stigmatised identity, or to avoid appearing as different. According to a 2014 report by Deloitte, 61% of employees do some form of covering. Often people feel they have to have a professional persona at work, a lot of this goes back to how we think about traditional workplaces where the culture made it difficult to talk about personal lives, and challenges people face. READ MORE: Why forcing people to turn on their Zoom cameras isn't inclusive A lot of this comes down to fear fear of what other people may think, fear of appearing not professional enough, fear of not fitting in with the norm which can be hard because were social beings and appearing to be the same as others is comfortable, says Gemma Leigh Roberts, performance psychologist and Founder of the Resilience Edge. As it turns out, the way teams allow people to be themselves at work has important implications. Recent research suggests that work environments where people feel able to take interpersonal risks not only perform better, but are also more creative. Benefits of authenticity Its important for employees to feel that they can be themselves without being judged to make them feel psychologically safe, explains Roberts. First described in a 1999 academic paper by Amy Edmonson, an organisational behavioural scientist from Harvard University, psychological safety describes a climate in which speaking up is allowed and expected. If an employee feels psychologically safe, theyre able to be themselves, take risks and be creative without fear of being ostracised and embarrassed. Story continues READ MORE: Why being a 'jack of all trades' is a good thing This in turn makes it easier to connect with others, lean on team members for support, be honest when mistakes happen, push the boundaries of innovation without worrying if things dont go to plan, Roberts says. Being authentic at work is also a lot about aligning personal values with organisational values. If an employee can be themselves comfortably, theyre a lot more likely to be motivated, a high-performer and happy, she adds. Creating a culture which celebrates diversity is also better for business too. Highly inclusive organisations generate 1.4 times more revenue and are 120% more capable of meeting financial targets, according to Deloitte research. Being authentic is a key factor when it comes to building trust in an organisation. Being able to trust your colleagues and managers not only makes it easier to work together everyday, but it also boosts productivity, engagement and ultimately, a companys bottom line. Research suggests another key benefit of being yourself at work is the ability to problem-solve more effectively. In 2018, a study by Mark Fotohabadi and Louise Kelly published in the Journal of General Management showed that more authentic leaders tend to engage in active, constructive conflict behaviours. In other words, being authentic is essential to resolving conflict at work in a helpful and positive way. READ MORE: How to get over 'career fear' That being said, showing the side of you that your family and friends see while at work is easier said than done. So how can you be more authentic? Firstly, leaders need to model the behaviour themselves, so employees know there is no risk of judgement or embarrassment if they are themselves too. Focus on creating a culture that supports psychological safety. If people feel safe to be themselves without experiencing negative reactions, theyre more likely to embrace authenticity, Roberts says. Its also important not to make people reveal more about themselves than they are comfortable with. Dont force people to show every part of themselves at work, just help them to show their true selves where its comfortable, she adds. For example, I may not want to speak with my clients the same way I do with my friends over a glass of wine on a Friday night. READ MORE: Is a noisy office ever a good thing? And remember, you still want boundaries. Theres nothing wrong with wanting to appear more diligent, agreeable and organised in a working environment. In a Totaljobs survey of 4,000 UK-based employees, 52% said that changing some aspects of their personality at work is essential. Moreover, 97% of respondents who change their personality said they do it to appear more professional. This is less about hiding your identity, but enhancing characteristics necessary for working in a professional environment. Yes authenticity at work is ideal, but you still need to help people make the judgement call about whats appropriate behaviour, Roberts says. President Moon Jae-in, second from left, meets citizens at a bar in central Seoul, July 26, 2018. Courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae By Do Je-hae After his inauguration, one of the things President Moon Jae-in highlighted was his determination to communicate often with the people. When he took office in May 2017, one of the first things he did was visit the press center at Cheong Wa Dae to personally announce the names of candidates for the position of prime minister and some of his senior aides, along with explanations about why these specific candidates had been nominated. This left an impression with the Korean public who were used to the rigid and uneasy communication style of his ousted predecessor Park Geun-hye. During the early stages of his presidency, Moon was enthusiastic about getting close to the public and eager to hear their views. One such occasion was a meeting with citizens over beer at a bar in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, on July 26, 2018, during which he had "frank conversations" with office workers, business owners and jobseekers about their situations, according to the presidential office. But such occasions for open communication with the public have become sporadic as his presidency progressed. In addition, his press conferences have been infrequent as well, a sign of a lack of enthusiasm for talking directly with the press. This is in contrast to world leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump, who held 59 press conferences this year alone, according to a survey by Rep. Park Soo-young of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP). The survey shows that Moon is well behind in the number of press conferences compared to his global counterparts such as French President Emmanuel Macron who took office around the same time as Moon. The French leader held 22 press conferences this year, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 13. Moon has had six press conference since he took office, and only two this year, one at the beginning of the year and another one in May to mark the third anniversary of his inauguration. His liberal predecessors were far more active, with Kim Dae-jung holding 20 press conferences and Roh Moo-hyun holding 45, while conservative presidents Lee Myung-bak had nine and Park held only seven. Moon still has some time before his term ends in May 2022, but it seems unlikely that he will turn around the disregard for open communication with the public or the press. The survey also shows that Moon lacks participation in Cabinet meetings, compared to his weekly meetings with his senior aides at Cheong Wa Dae. He has attended just 34 percent of the 193 Cabinet meetings held since his inauguration. Former President Kim Dae-jung's participation rate was around 80 percent, Roh's 51 percent, Lee's 49 percent and Park 30 percent. "Moon participates in almost every meeting with his senior aides, but he is often absent from Cabinet meetings. This means Moon is more dependent on the political judgment of his aides than the expertise of career officials," Rep. Park, a former presidential aide during the previous Roh administration, said in a statement. For effective solutions to the various socioeconomic troubles Korea is facing, it is more important than ever for the Korean leader to collect opinions and advice from various sources, even from critics and the opposition. But the current attitude fails to convince the public that the President is still committed to the "active communication" he highlighted during his inauguration speech. Moon should listen to what the opposition is saying because their sentiment is increasingly shared by the public amid political wrangling over the alleged acts of wrongdoing by his key aides and ministers, as well as his administration's various policy failures and missteps in issues related to employment and the economy. "The President is isolated in his office," PPP floor leader Rep. Joo Ho-young said during a National Assembly speech last week. "It is not enough to speak unilaterally about his stance during meetings with the Cabinet and senior aides. He must give sincere answers to questions that people have and listen to issues that have frustrated them." Wray argued that much of the violence stemming from racial-injustice protests that have gripped pockets of the country this summer does not appear to be coordinated by any one particular group or movement, though he added that law enforcement has seen instances of local protesters coordinating on tactics, which he said was concerning because that can lead to dangerous interactions with law enforcement. PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) Rivers swollen by Hurricane Sallys rains threatened more misery for parts of the Florida Panhandle and south Alabama on Thursday, even as the storms remnants were forecast to dump up to a foot of rain and spread the threat of flooding to Georgia and the Carolinas. Coastal residents, meanwhile, looked to begin the recovery from a storm that turned streets into rivers, ripped roofs off buildings, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and killed at least one person. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents and visitors in flooded areas that they would need to remain vigilant as water from the hurricane subsides, because heavy rains to the north were expected to cause flooding in Panhandle rivers in coming days. So this is kind of the initial salvo, but there is going to be more that youre going to have to contend with, DeSantis said. At least one death was blamed on the hurricane. Orange Beach, Alabama, Mayor Tony Kennon told The Associated Press one person in the popular vacation spot died and another was missing as a result of the storm. He said he couldnt immediately release details. Sally blew ashore near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Wednesday morning as a major hurricane with 105 mph winds. It moved slowly, exacerbating the heavy rains' effects. More than 2 feet fell near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet of water covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service reported. Some Pensacola streets looked like rivers with whitecaps at times. The waters swamped parked cars before receding. A replica of Christopher Columbus' ship the Nina was missing from where it was docked at the Pensacola waterfront, police said. The ship was later seen run aground in downtown Pensacola, Pensacola News Journal reported. Sally weakened to a tropical depression late Wednesday and picked up speed. By early Thursday, it was producing torrential rains over eastern Alabama and western and central Georgia. Forecasters say tornadoes are possible Thursday across southern Georgia and northern Florida. More than 22,000 homes and businesses in Georgia were without power by early Thursday morning, according to the poweroutages.us website. News outlets reported some trees were toppled in Georgia. In Clayton County, fire officials warned residents to avoid areas where power lines had fallen. The National Hurricane Center said the system was moving through southeast Alabama, would cross over central Georgia and reach South Carolina on Thursday night. Flash flooding and river flooding was possible in each state. Forecasts say up to 1 foot of rain is possible in some spots. In Orange Beach, Kennon said the damage was worse than that from Hurricane Ivan, which hit 16 years to the day earlier. It was an unbelievably freaky right turn of a storm that none of us ever expected, Kennon said of Sally, which once appeared to have New Orleans in its sights. Waves crash near a pier at Gulf State Park, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, in Gulf Shores, Ala. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, file)AP At least eight waterways in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle were expected to hit major flood stage by Thursday. Some of the crests could break records, submerge bridges and flood some homes, the National Weather Service warned. Included in the warnings were the Styx and Fish rivers, Murder Creek and Big Escambia Creek. In Florida, major crests were expected on the Perdido, Blackwater, Shoal and Yellow rivers, forecasters said. As a hurricane, Sally tore loose a barge-mounted construction crane, which then smashed into the new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay, causing a section of the year-old span to collapse, authorities said. The storm also ripped away a large section of a fishing pier at Alabamas Gulf State Park on the very day a ribbon-cutting had been scheduled following a $2.4 million renovation. Storms in the Atlantic as of Thursday morning, Sept. 17, 2020. (National Hurricane Center/NOAA) Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center was tracking two other Atlantic storms. Hurricane Teddy strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane early Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. The storm was located early Thursday about 625 miles east-northeast of The Lesser Antilles. Teddy was moving toward the northwest at about 12 mph, the general motion it is expected to continue through the weekend. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days; Teddy could become a major hurricane Thursday night or Friday, the hurricane center said. By JAY REEVES, ANGIE WANG and JEFF MARTIN, The Associated Press More: Chilly weather likely this weekend, thanks to Hurricane Sally DMCC, a global free zone and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise, and Innoway, a Chinese platform established by the Beijing and Haidian Government, today (September 17) held their first virtual matchmaking event to highlight innovation and technology opportunities in Dubai for Chinese entrepreneurs. The session was joined by UAE companies and Chinese innovators, in the first collaboration between DMCC and Innoway, that has successfully incubated over 3,841 start-ups and raised a total of AED 41.8 billion ($11.38 billion), following the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in May. Innoway will establish offices in DMCCs Jumeriah Lakes Towers (JLT) in the near future, a statement said. The event highlighted the opportunities available by setting up a business in DMCC to the many companies invited by Innoway, including five of their unicorn companies: Beijing NOBOOK Education Technology, MEGVII, Terminus Group, Guangzhou Hongyu Science & Technology Co.Ltd and Neolix Technologies Co.Ltd. DMCC also provided details on how to set up a business within the leading tech hub that it has created in its Jumeirah Lakes Towers community. Feryal Ahmadi, Chief Operating Officer, DMCC, said: Innovation is in Dubais DNA; it is part of the culture and way of life here and this creates progressive, vibrant and enabling environments for those with potential. As one of the worlds most dynamic cities, Dubai is the perfect setting for Chinese companies looking to expand their operations in the Middle East and beyond. The DMCC-Innoway partnership serves as the launch pad for Chinese start-ups and entrepreneurs seeking to transform the future. Over the years, DMCC has established an environment that enables these types of companies to thrive. This partnership is set to drive increased collaboration between China and the UAE, attracting foreign direct investment that supports Dubais innovation strategy, she added. Nie Lixia, General Manager, Innoway, said: Innoway will set up an office at DMCC to strengthen the innovation and cooperation between both sides. Innoway has actively helped Chinese technology-based enterprises setup in the UAE and helped UAE technology enterprises to open in Zhongguancun. So far, we have connected more than 50 Chinese and Arab enterprises, and we look forward to working with DMCC. DMCC has established a comprehensive strategy to attract innovative companies to Dubai, in turn contributing to the nations wider economic diversification drive. As with UAE, China remains an important market for DMCC. In 2017, the Yingtian Chinese Business Centre DMCC was established to aid Chinese companies wanting to set up operations in the Free Zone. The DMCC website was also launched in Mandarin in the same year to further increase the ease of doing business in Dubai.TradeArabia News Service Prime Minister Boris Johnson attends a virtual press conference to announce new social restrictions, at Downing Street in London on Sept. 9, 2020. (Stefan Rousseau-WPA Pool/Getty Images) Britons Must Obey Restrictions, As Second UK Lockdown Would Be Disastrous, Johnson Says Britons must obey social restriction rules in order to flatten the second hump of CCP virus infections, save Christmas, and save the country from a disastrous second nationwide lockdown, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said. Positive cases of COVID-19 among people aged over 80 in England are now 12 per 100,000, doubling the rate from only a few days ago and is growing, Johnson told the Parliaments Liaison Committee on Wednesday. Although the number is far smaller than it was in the spring, Johnson said the reality is that those infections will proportionally lead to mortality. While talking to The Sun on Wednesday, he described the surge as the second hump of a camel. Only if Britons can grip it now, stop the surge, arrest the spike, flatten the second hump, they would be able to enjoy Christmas, Johnson told the British tabloid. However, Johnson does not want to impose another nationwide lockdown upon an already battered economy. The crucial thing now is that I do not wish to go into some great lockdown again that stops business from functioning, he told The Sun. When asked about a second nationwide lockdown during the Liaison Committee hearing, Johnson said, I very much doubt that the financial consequences will be anything but disastrous and said that his government is going to do everything in its power to prevent it. We have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means that we have set out, Johnson said. In absence of an effective cure, hes banking his hopes on social restrictions and ramping up testing capacities. So when I see people arguing against the rule of six or saying that the government is coming in too hard on individual liberties and so onI totally understand that, I sympathize with that, but we must, must defeat this disease, Johnson said. He told the Liaison Committee there will be 500,000 tests per day by the end of October. Johnsons government has faced criticism in the last few days after demand for tests surged but there was insufficient capacity, with some people having to travel some distance to get a test. Johnson said that, although its reasonable for people to want to get tested so they can be released to get on with their lives in the normal way, only people showing symptoms are advised to get a test. Since Sept. 14 it has been illegal for more than six people in England to gather in a group for social purposes, with some exceptions. Dedicated to continuing education, Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL) earned accreditations from the National Association of Environmentally Responsible Mold Contractors (NAERMC) including Certified Green Indoor Air Quality Specialist, Certified Mold Hygienist, Certified Green Mold Remediation Contractor, and Certified Remediation Technologist. NAERMC courses are approved by the State of Florida for the Florida Mold Licensing Program. Coursework covers mold assessment and remediation; testing; inspecting; standards of practice per the EPA and IICRC; mold toxins and mold health; moisture intrusion; green chemical-free remediation procedures; reporting and protocol. The in-depth training is based on case studies with hundreds of photo examples from real jobs. The courses were developed by Gary Rosen, Ph.D. Dr. Rosen is a Florida licensed building contractor, certified indoor environmental consultant, and holds licenses in mold assessment and remediation. He is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accredited professional (AP). LEED is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. He is certified in mold remediation and water mitigation by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC). The mission of the IICRC is to establish and advance globally recognized standards and certifications for the inspection, cleaning, restoration and installation industries. He is certified in mold assessment & remediation by ACGIH. ACGIH is a 501(c)(3) charitable scientific organization that advances occupational and environmental health. Rosen was a Post-Doctorate Fellow for Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul D. Boyer, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Rosen earned his doctorate degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and graduated with a Bachelors of Science from the University of Florida with honors. We are committed to maintaining leading accreditations and education to better serve our customers. The NAERMC courses include excellent knowledge, says Stephen Shanton, CEO and president, Venture Construction Group of Florida. According to the Florida Department of Health, four kinds of health problems that come from exposure to mold include allergies, irritant effects, infection, and toxic effects. People with severe allergies to molds may have more serious reactions, such as hay-fever-like symptoms or shortness of breath. People with chronic illnesses or people with immune system problems may be more likely to get infections from certain molds, viruses and bacteria. Molds can also trigger asthma attacks in persons with asthma. Headaches, memory problems, mood swings, nosebleeds and body aches and pains are sometimes reported in mold complaints. Some types of molds can produce chemicals called "mycotoxins". These molds are common, and are sometimes referred to as "toxic mold". According to the department website, they recommend treating all molds the same when it comes to health risks and removal. All indoor mold growth should be removed promptly, no matter what type(s) of mold is present, or whether or not it can produce mycotoxins. For information on the health effects of mold exposure, call your County Health Department's Environmental Health Office, the Florida Department of Health, Radon and Indoor Air Program at 1-800-543-8279. For additional information on the safe removal of mold, call VCGFL at 1-866-459-8351 for a consultation with a Mold Remediation Specialist. About Venture Construction Group of Florida Founded in 1998, Venture Construction Group of Florida (VCGFL) is an award-winning leader in construction, restoration, renovations, roofing, storm damage repairs, and 24/7 emergency services throughout Florida, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Bahamas and the Caribbean. Specializing in industrial/ commercial projects, VCGFL assists property managers, condominium boards, homeowner associations, association boards, hotels, and business complexes with general contractor services, roofing, specialty construction, historical restoration, water and flood mitigation, and property repairs due to fire, flood, water, wind and hurricanes. With offices in Boca Raton, Ft. Myers, Naples, Panama City Beach, Orlando, Stuart, Tampa, San Juan, and Nassau, VCGFL is committed to operational excellence and exceptional customer service. VCGFL takes care of the details every step of the way including roofing, siding, windows, drywall, flooring, paint, gutters to rebuilding properties after major storm events from hurricanes, tornadoes, and hailstorms. VCGFL has earned leading industry awards including the Gold Coast Builders Association (GCBA) Silver PRISM Award for Safety Team of the Year, GCBA Gold PRISM Award for Craftsmanship- Commercial Exterior, GCBA Silver PRISM Award for Craftsmanship- Commercial Exterior, Owens Corning Pinnacle Award for Safety, Construction Business Owner Award, Roofing Alliance MVP Award, Coatings Pro Contractor Award, Pro Remodeler Forty Under 40 Award, Qualified Remodeler Top 500 Remodelers Award, Qualified Remodeler Master Design Award, Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association S.T.A.R. Spotlight Trophy for the Advancement of Roofing Awards in Sustainability and Community Service. CEO Stephen Shanton is an esteemed member of the prestigious Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). Entrepreneur Magazine hails YEC Consists of Some of the Most Well-Respected Minds in Entrepreneurship. Shanton is a certified member of the WindStorm Insurance Network and is a WIND Certified Umpire, WIND Certified Appraiser, and WIND Certified Fellow. VCGFL carries advanced accreditations and is an exclusive certified National Storm Damage Center Preferred Contractor and Certified Member of the United Association of Storm Restoration Contractors. VCGFL is a proud member of Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) Industry Members Association (EIMA); Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association (FRSA); Gold Coast Builders Association (GCBA); Insurance Appraisal and Umpire Association (IAUA); National Association of Environmentally Responsible Mold Contractors (NAERMC); National Association of Home Builders (NAHB); National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA); NRCA Qualified Trainer; Property Liability and Resource Bureau (PLRB); Restoration Industry Association (RIA). VCGFL is a registered U.S. Federal Government Contractor and holds leading manufacturer certifications including Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor, Mule-Hide Legacy Contractor, Certified CertainTeed Contractor, and Duro-Last Certified Contractor status. VCGFL credentials have been vetted and screened through independent third-party Global Risk Management Solutions. For more information, call 866-459-8351 or visit us online at http://www.VCGFL.com About The National Association of Environmentally Responsible Mold Contractors The National Association of Environmentally Responsible Mold Contractors (NAERMC) is the nations premier organization for environmentally responsible mold remediation and mold assessment training & certification for professional mold contractors. Learn more at https://bit.ly/2Fya3Lq Media Inquiries: Sarah Barrett Elev8 Consulting Group Ph: 386-243-5388 Web: http://www.elev8cg.com A leaked AstraZeneca report has claimed that the trial of one of the world's most promising coronavirus jabs was briefly halted amid fears a 37-year-old woman suffered a rare neurological condition that left her struggling to walk. Researchers paused trials of the vaccine made by Oxford University scientists last week over safety fears, after it was reported that a volunteer was hospitalised. CNN said an internal file has claimed the adverse side effect the unidentified British woman had was 'transverse myelitis', preliminary findings showed. This is an inflammation around the spinal cord, typically triggered by viruses but a potential side effect of other vaccines. AstraZeneca, which owns the rights to the vaccine named AZD1222, never confirmed what the side effect was and has today dismissed the report as being 'inaccurate'. It also insisted there is no proof that the vaccine was to blame. The London-based firm's chief executive reportedly confirmed that the woman did receive the real experimental jab and not a placebo shot. However, the firm has insisted there is no proof that the vaccine was to blame. She was given the first dose in June, after which she felt fine, and the second was at the end of August. But she started to suffer difficulty walking, pain and weakness in her arms and a headache, after tripping while running in September. Doctors restarted the trials in the UK on Saturday after five days, while regulators in the US have yet to resume the experiments over the incident amid reports they are 'highly concerned'. But one of the US' top medical chiefs, Dr Anthony Fauci, has today insisted the trial will resume in America imminently and that the side effect was a one-off. Oxford's vaccine is one of nine candidates in the world to have reached final stage clinical trials, and has been earmarked as the most promising by the World Health Organization. More than 50,000 people worldwide had been taking part in 'phase three' studies to see whether the Oxford jab can actually prevent people getting infected with Covid-19. It has been given to 18,000 people across the world so far, AstraZeneca says, and scientists have reassured the public that reactions are not unexpected but always investigated. Millions of doses have been ordered by nations around the world, should the vaccine prove to be effective and safe to use. The UK has already secured a deal to purchase 100million doses. A leaked AstraZeneca report claims that the trial of one of the world's most promising coronavirus jabs was briefly halted after a 37-year-old woman suffered a rare neurological condition that left her struggling to walk More than 50,000 people worldwide had been taking part in 'phase 3' studies to see whether the Oxford jab can actually prevent people getting infected with Covid-19. Pictured a volunteer receives an injection at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg In response to the article in CNN, AstraZeneca said it contained 'inaccuracies including the diagnosis, which is based on preliminary findings'. MailOnline have contacted AstraZeneca to confirm the statement which was shared on Twitter The AstraZeneca document, which is labelled an 'initial report', was sent to doctors running the clinical trials to warn them of the hospitalised British patient. Concerned researchers filed what's called a 'Suspected or Unexpected Serious Adverse Reaction report' (SUSAR) on September 10, which is what CNN claims to have seen. It described how the study participant 'had trouble walking, weakness and pain in her arms, and other symptoms'. WHAT IS TRANSVERSE MYELITIS AND COULD IT BE CAUSED BY THE VACCINE? Transverse myelitis is a neurological disorder which causes inflammation of both sides of one section of the spinal cord. The condition damages the myelin sheath, an insulating barrier of fatty protein that protects the nerves, and interrupts messages sent by spinal cord nerves. This can cause pain, muscle weakness, paralysis, sensory problems, or bladder and bowel dysfunction. TM can be caused by viral infections, leading to pain, muscle weakness and numbness. 'This is a serious adverse event. It led to hospitalization but the reason it stopped the trialis because the real cause of transverse myelitis is imperfectly understood,' Dr William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told DailyMail.com. 'It's thought to be due to an immune response. Yes, it is theoretically possible that a vaccine could induce this aberrant immune response and cause transverse myelitis. This is exactly the sort of response that would pause the trial and then lead the data safety monitoring board to do an investigation.' Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, said: 'It's inflammation of nervous tissue which can be caused by a number of agents, one of which is viruses. 'The stoppage might be because the symptoms are plausibly linked to the vaccine, although it could be something else.' Professor Terry Nolan from the University of Melbourne, said it was entirely plausible the volunteer had suffered transverse myelitis (TM) as a direct result of the vaccine. Transverse myelitis is the broad name of the disease, and there are various sub-types. Causes of the condition include infections, sometimes caused by bacteria in raw foods, immune system disorders, and other disorders that may damage or destroy myelin, the fatty white insulating substance that covers nerve cell fibers. Inflammation within the spinal cord interrupts communications between nerve fibers in the spinal cord and the rest of the body, affecting sensation and nerve signalling below the injury. That can lead to paralysis. The condition can affect people of any age, gender, or race. It does not appear to be genetic or run in families. Some people recover from transverse myelitis with minor or no long-term problems, but most suffer permanent impairments that affect their ability to perform ordinary tasks of daily living. There is no cure for the disease. Advertisement Fourteen days after receiving her second dose of the vaccine in late August, the woman 'experienced confirmed transverse myelitis', the report allegedly says. On September 2, while running, the study participant 'had a trip (not fall) with a jolt.' The report notes that she did not have any obvious injury to her cervical spine. The next day, the woman had symptoms including difficulty walking, pain and weakness in her arms, pain and reduced sensation in her torso, a headache and reduced ability to use her hands. She was hospitalised on September 5, several days prior to the SUSAR sent to doctors, and medical news website Stat said she was due to be discharged on September 9 a discharge date was never officially confirmed. The AstraZeneca report mentions twice that the woman was diagnosed with 'confirmed' transverse myelitis - which is in contrast to the company's claims last week that the condition was yet to be confirmed. The cover sheet on the report, allegedly sent by a contractor hired by AstraZeneca, also described her illness as 'confirmed' transverse myelitis. A neurologist who saw the woman said her case 'suggested the symptoms were consistent with the diagnosis of transverse myelitis' and that she had no past history of neurological symptoms or significant illnesses. But at another point, the report claimed to highlight there was 'limited information concerning the subject's relevant medical history.' The neurologist said the woman's symptoms started to get better quite rapid 'considering her illness started only four days ago'. 'Her symptoms were improving. Her strength and dexterity in her hands was getting better,' the report said. Physicians diagnose transverse myelitis by performing a thorough neurological examination. They use tests, such as an MRI and lumbar puncture, to rule out any other problems, such as an injury. In response to the article in CNN, AstraZeneca said it contained 'inaccuracies including the diagnosis, which is based on preliminary findings'. But it refused to reveal what they were. It did not share what the final conclusions on the woman's diagnosis was, and a University of Oxford spokesperson wrote in an email to CNN that 'we cannot disclose medical information about the illness for reasons of patient confidentiality'. An AstraZeneca spokesperson continued: 'The information shared by CNN was not obtained from internal documents, but rather reports sent to investigators and doctors running trials that should not be shared because they contain confidential patient records. 'We are unable to comment further on this individual case because of internal norms governing the integrity of clinical trials and protection for the privacy of individuals.' It reiterated it was 'commonplace' that in large scale clinical trials like this, some patients will become unwell. MailOnline has contacted AstraZeneca to confirm the statement which was shared by journalist Meg Tirrell, a senior health and science reporter at CNBC, on Twitter. A 'participant information sheet' on Oxford's website, updated on September 11, gives further clues into the situation. That sheet refers to volunteers in the trial who 'developed unexplained neurological symptoms including changed sensation or limb weakness' but not transverse myelitis. The document says 'after independent review, these illnesses were either considered unlikely to be associated with the vaccine or there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine'. The exact reason for transverse myelitis is not known and sometimes it cannot be traced back to a cause. Graphic explains how the Oxford vaccine could work, and how it differs from Cambridge University and Imperial College London On Saturday, Oxford University confirmed trials would resume across all UK clinical trial sites AstraZeneca's candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, is in phase 3 trials - the final stage before safety and efficacy data can be submitted to regulators. Pictured: A Brazilian volunteer receiving the Oxford vaccine HOW HAVE OTHER VOLUNTEERS FARED? The British woman's illness - potentially related to receiving Oxford's vaccine - sent waves of concern around the world. But nobody suffered any bad side effects from the vaccine in the phase 1 clinical trials, the results of which were published on July 20 in the medical journal The Lancet. Some people developed headaches, tiredness and pain in their arm after they were given the jab, but scientists claimed none of the side effects were severe. One vaccine volunteer revealed he suffered fever, chills, headache and fatigue 14 hours after having the anti-Covid jab. The volunteer, who has asked not to be named and received his first shot in May, told MailOnline: 'I woke up about 2am and I was freezing, but had a temperature above 39C. 'I felt incredibly weak and couldn't really get up and move so my partner had to get me a paracetamol. 'The temperature continued for about a day, and I just felt really weak and lethargic and couldn't really do anything.' The volunteer said he felt so unwell and fatigued that all he could do was sleep for most of the second day after the injection. The volunteer said he was due to have a booster shot on Monday, but the night before he received an email from the project manager cancelling the appointment. The email read: 'As an illness in a volunteer that may or may not be related to vaccine has been identified, we are postponing clinics till we have more information. Oxford coronavirus volunteer Jack Sommers, 35, also received a dose Jack Sommers, 35, from London, has also taken part in the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trials. Mr Sommers, a freelance journalist, had his first injection in May and has since volunteered to have another dose He said: 'If I was to keel over I would have done it by now. That's why I'm not scared of having it again.' This is so careful, it's run by Oxford University, it's got the Government involved and it's got AstraZeneca backing it. 'They've already been through ferrets, mice and monkeys, so they're about as certain as they can reasonably be that it's not going to do anyone any harm. 'My sense is that anyone who volunteered in the first place will not be put off by this, because you've got this appreciation of the risks.' AstraZeneca said trials had been paused in July after another participants fell ill. They were found to have had an 'undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis', which was deemed to be unrelated to the vaccine. It did not explain how that conclusion was reached or why it waited more than a month to mention it publicly. Advertisement There are many different reasons transverse myelitis may occur, including viruses such as HIV, hepatitis B, mumps, measles, Ebola and Herpes viruses, including the one that causes shingles and chickenpox, the Mayo Clinic reports. It could also be caused by infections and immune system disorders that attack the body's tissues, or myelin disorders, such as multiple sclerosis. People with transverse myelitis usually experience only one episode of symptoms. including pain and loss of sensation. However, complications often linger. There have been several reports about the woman's state of health since AstraZeneca first announced trials were being paused on September 8. The drug giant announced studies in the UK, US, South Africa and Brazil had been paused indefinitely while it investigated whether the patient's illness was connected to the vaccine. No details about the patient suffering the potential side-effect, or the nature of the reaction, were given in the initial statement, which said: 'In large trials illnesses will happen by chance but must be independently reviewed to check this carefully.' Medical news site Stat first reported the pause in the study, while The New York Times quoted a source saying a trial volunteer had transverse myelitis. Amid rife suspicion, on September 9, Stat News reported AstraZeneca's CEO, Pascal Soriot, told investors in a conference call that the trial was stopped because the woman had symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis. Later that day, AstraZeneca said the media reports were 'incorrect', and that Mr Soriot had 'stated that there is no final diagnosis and that there will not be one until more tests are carried out'. Temporary holds of large medical studies are not uncommon, and looking into any unexpected reactions is a mandatory part of safety testing. The UK Government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told a press conference what has happened in the Oxford trial is not unusual. He added similar events should also be expected in some of the other vaccine candidate trials. On Saturday, the trial in the UK resumed after an investigation by The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Oxford University said: 'The ongoing randomised controlled clinical trials of the Oxford coronavirus vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 will resume across all UK clinical trial sites. 'Globally some 18,000 individuals have received study vaccines as part of the trial. 'In large trials such as this, it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety.' However the trial has not resumed in the US while the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducts an independent investigation as well as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH, told CNN Tuesday that it is 'just a matter of time' before the trial resumes in the US, offering hope the vaccine will be back on track to become one of the first approved. He added that he considered the participant's illness a 'one-off' at this point, and that 'it would be unusual to completely stop a trial on the basis of one single adverse event.' 'You have to be extra special careful and watch out to see if it happens again, and then if it does, it becomes an entirely different situation,' he said. The series of events regarding the British woman has caused some scientists to raise concerns AstraZeneca is not being fully transparent about the course of its trials - which could be detrimental to the general population's trust. It didn't bode well that the company waited a month to reveal there was a 'brief pause' in July, when another study participant became ill. The company said that first participant was found to have had an 'undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis' which was deemed unrelated to the vaccine. But it is not clear who came to this conclusion or how. In a tweet last week, Dr Eric Topol asked pharmaceutical companies running coronavirus vaccine clinical trials to be more open about their work. 'The [Covid-19] vaccine companies haven't been transparent; the stakes are big,' wrote Topol, executive vice president of Scripps Research in California. Upon the completion of the Lagos-Ibadan railway project by December, the Federal Government will immediately commence construction of the Eastern rail line, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said. The Eastern rail line connects Port Harcourt Bonny to Maiduguri. The minister disclosed this in Ibadan on September 15 while inspecting the Lagos-Ibadan railway project. According to a release from the office of the minister, commencement is subject to approval by the Federal Executive Council. The minister also listed other projects in line for commencement to include the Kano/Maradi line and the Ibadan to Kano section of the Lagos to Kano rail line. We have sent to the cabinet the request for approval of two railway contracts, Port Harcourt Bonny to Maiduguri. If that is awarded, that will be the next assignment for the Ministry of Transport. Also, the Kano Maradi line, which passes through Kano, Dutse, Kazaure, Daura, Katsina, Jibiya, Maradi. We are also pursuing the loan for the contract which has been awarded for the Lagos to Calabar rail line. We also expect that Ibadan to Kano will commence before the end of this year, Mr. Amaechi said. On the Lagos-Ibadan railway project, he said that much work has not been done on the Apapa station because the building of the station just commenced. He, however, said that he wants the contractors to finish all the stations at the same time. And I have insisted that a special task force be set up to make sure Apapa station is completed the same time as all the others. If you see the station at Olodo, there are improvements, they finished flooring, roofing, lighting, ceilings; just doors and windows left. Again, what is left at Kajola is just painting. There is an improvement in Olodo and Ebute-metta. The only station in which I am not satisfied is this last station in Ibadan. However, they have given us the following targets: End of September, three stations will be ready; the end of October, all the seven minor stations will be ready; end of December, everything will be ready, he said. He also said the contractors were expecting more engineers on-site to speed up construction. The timeline hasnt changed, but they didnt meet my target for this inspection, my target was that by today (September 15), they would have finished the minor stations, but they gave an excuse that because of Covid they hadnt enough engineers on site. What you have is the same engineers supervising Agbado and Agege, so they move in between and that is slowing down the work. As for me, I want this job done because I want to move out of Lagos. Their submission is that by next week, all engineers will be on-site and work will commence and once work commences, they will be faster and by the end of September, they should finish the three major stations. Reacting to the accident that occurred in Oshodi on Monday, Mr Amaechi said the ministry will collaborate with the Lagos State government to ensure the fencing of the tracks, which he said has already begun in some parts to avert such incidents. Right now we start off with a tribute to old school Pamela and her body of work along with more pop culture, community news and top headlines. Community Despite COVID KC metro COVID-19 survivors unite through social media KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Desa Hanchette didn't understand how close to death she had come until she began to reflect. "It was that quick," she said. At a follow up appointment in November for a then-recent hand surgery, Hanchette's health took a sudden turn for the worse and her vitals dropped in a matter of minutes. Win Across The Bridge Northland apartment standoff ends peacefully KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) - Police were involved in a standoff at a Northland apartment complex Wednesday night. Just before 7 p.m., Kansas City police detectives conducted a residence check for an adult male who is wanted for a felony warrant in the 8400 block of N Overland Court. Local Snakes Abound Watch out: It's baby copperhead season in Missouri, Kansas Officials want to remind people to watch out for baby copperheads, as this is the time of the year the venomous snakes are having babies.Copperheads are one of the few venomous snakes found in Kansas and Missouri.Officials with the Missouri Department of Conservation said the baby snakes are born with venom and ready to defend themselves. Pamela Good Life Endures Pamela Anderson Is Dating Her Bodyguard After Jon Peters Divorce: 'She's Very Happy' Pamela Anderson is dating her security guard Dan Hayhurst, a source tells PEOPLE The actress and Jasmin spokeswoman, 53, is dating her security guard, Dan Hayhurst, seven months after splitting from her ex-husband Jon Peters. Anderson and Peters were married for just 12 days before separating. New USA Tech Hotness Debuts US military police 'sought use of heat ray' to disperse White House protesters A military whistleblower has said federal officials sought to use some controversial crowd control devices, including a so-called heat ray, to disperse protesters outside the White House in June. Tragic Comparison AG Barr: Besides Slavery, National Coronavirus Lockdown Is The 'Greatest Intrusion On Civil Liberties' William Barr claimed that, "other than slavery," calls for a national lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic were "the greatest intrusion on civil liberties." Second Wave Starting Europe on high alert as coronavirus cases rise and targeted lockdowns return LONDON - There are growing concerns in Europe at what is being seen as an alarming rise in coronavirus cases, with the number of new daily infections reaching record highs in some countries. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned Wednesday that the 14-day case notification rate (the number of newly reported cases) for the EU, European Economic Area and the U.K. YOU FIRST!!! Enough people have to take a Covid-19 vaccine for it to be efficient, Fauci says If not enough Americans get a Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available, it won't help reduce the spread of the deadly virus, the nation's top infectious disease official said. All Things Considered, This Number Is Actually AMAZING Trump Stuck at 42% Job Approval Story Highlights Americans' approval of Trump has been steady near 42% since June Recent winning incumbents had 49% or better approval at similar point Less than half of U.S. adults watched either party convention in August WASHINGTON, D.C. Pricey Fashion Premieres Local maker Culture Thread shows off Kansas City spirit through luxury streetwear design Clothing designer Brice Edwards of Culture Thread shows off Kansas City spirit through luxury design. He crafts customizable streetwear and clothing with Black Lives Matter prints-Royals' outfielder Nick Heath has been spotted sporting Culture Thread's BLM mask-and collaborates with local DJ Ashton Martin on T-shirt designs. Plaza Plans Artsy Comeback Plaza stores holding window art walk featuring works from local Black artists KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The community is putting a different spin on the beloved Plaza Art Fair. It was canceled due to coronavirus concerns, but next weekend, artists work will still take over the Country Club Plaza. Stores are getting creative and inclusive to display local artwork. Kansas City Pumpkin Spice Season Arrives Soon Feeling like fall to end the week Cooler and less humid air settles in today The great weather lasts for the final weekend of summer with highs in the low/mid 70s Fall arrives Tuesday with warmer temperatures back to the 80s KANSAS CITY'S MOST ACCURATE FORECAST Thursday: Near perfect! Sunny and cooler with low humidity. Wind: NE 5-10 mph. #1 this week in 1990 - Wilson Phillips "Release Me" is the #TBT song of the day and this is the OPEN THREAD for right now . . . Hope Centre would not reject demand for restoration of statehood in J&K before polls: Ghulam Nabi Azad We are a big loser, J&K better off when governed by CMs: Ghulam Nabi Azad J&K was better off before Article 370 was abrogated: Azad Indian government wasted golden months to stop Covid-19: Ghulam Nabi Azad India oi-Briti Roy Barman New Delhi, Sep 17: During a debate on coronavirus crisis in Rajya Sabha, Congress MP Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the government wasted golden months to stop Covid-19. "The Govt wasted the golden months to stop Covid-19. WHO had sounded a warning in Dec 2019. As China is our neighbouring country, we should have been alert first. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also alerted that an epidemic was looming over us," he said, as quoted by ANI. Participating in a debate on coronavirus pandemic in the Upper House, the former health minister attacked the government for losing "golden months" to stop the spread of the disease despite a warning from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December 2019 about the spread of the infectious virus in neighbouring China. On 24 March 2020, the Government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, limiting movement of the entire 1.3 billion population of India as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic when the number of confirmed positive coronavirus cases was approximately 500 in India. It was ordered after a 14-hour voluntary public curfew on 22 March. After extending the lockdown twice, on June 8, services resumed in a phased manner. India's current COVID-19 case tally crosses 51-lakh mark with a spike of 97,894 new cases and 1,132 deaths in the last 24 hours. The nation is now at 2nd place worldwide in terms of COVID effected numbers after US. The total case tally stands at 51,18,254 including 10,09,976 active cases, 40,25,080 cured/discharged/migrated and 83,198 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News Azad on Thursday also told India should be well placed to get the vaccine at an "affordable price" and at an "early stage" through a mechanism like pooled procurement. The government should be "over cautious" about the quality, safety and efficacy of a new vaccine as any long term side effects would impact India which has a large and young population, the Congress leader said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, September 17, 2020, 15:36 [IST] YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Residents of a Yerevan building which was partially destroyed in a gas leak explosion on August 26 will be provided with financial compensation meant for buying new apartments. 12 apartment owners of the 1 Raynis Street building will receive the money in the form of special vouchers worth total of 182 million drams which they can only spent on buying an apartment wherever they choose. The decision was approved at the Cabinet meeting. The average price per square meter in that district was calculated to be 333,000 drams and each of the residents will receive compensation accordingly. The vouchers can even be used as prepayment for mortgages. If the price of an apartment is cheaper than the vouchers sum, the residents are entitled to keep the remainder. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan Solar power has easily proven its usefulness in providing energy for homes and businesses, with things like portable phone chargers, cooktops, and pathway lighting powered by the sun already close to becoming the norm. Unfortunately, the technology has yet to effectively translate to the transportation industry, although many companies are currently hard at work in the research and development phase for solar cars, public transit, and even commercial transport. Now, at least one company is toying with the idea of a solar-powered recreational vehicle (RV). Renderings for German company Dethleffs' Solar-Powered RV. German company Dethleffs came up with the concept vehicle back in 2017, though they still have yet to outline plans for production. Still, early renderings encourage an interesting vision of a future filled with solar-powered RVs traveling highways and parked at campgrounds. The e.home Solar Motorhome concept is a true beauty. Its an electric vehicle in its most basic form, though the design also calls for it to be completely wrapped in thin-film solar cells that can be used to top-up the vans batteries while stationary or traveling down the road. The motorhomes cabin is built onto the base frame of an existing Iveco Daily Electric van. It offers a battery pack that can last between 100 and 175 miles on a single charge, depending on the load its carrying. The mock-up also includes infrared heating elements in the floor and furniture to keep the space comfortable, as well as latent heat accumulator plates that capture excess heat during the day and allow it to be used after the sun goes down. In addition to a film-wrapped exterior, foil technology is used in the RVs windows and lighting to reflect heat and provide privacy. All of the major systems including heating, lighting, electrical, and central locking can be controlled via a central smart hub. The inside of the solar-powered RV is sleek and luxurious. No sacrifices on quality for sustainability here! Providing power and sustainable features doesnt mean forfeiting luxury features, of course. This concept vehicle is loaded with all the comforts of home including all-electric appliances, multiple sleeping areas, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Story continues Anyone who currently owns an RV can attest to the fact that theyre really lacking in the way of fuel efficiency, averaging around 10 miles per gallon. And thats just optimistically speaking if the rig is empty. Load it down or climb a hill, and you can expect a big drop to about four mpg. In addition to the monetary savings of having a big rig without a gas tank, the environment would benefit from the reduction in exhaust fumes. Of course, there are a host of potential issues with the technology, too. For example, only half the solar film will receive a charge at any given time, begging the question about how efficient it will actually be and what output it can provide. How to charge it, where to charge it, funding the installation of charging stations or charging strips built-in to the road, waste of the solar components, and limitations on the distance traveled are other considerations that will benefit from further R and D. In the end, the company hopes that other businesses will run with the idea to help forge deeper into the electric and solar markets. Renderings for German company Dethleffs' Solar-Powered RV. There are also a number of new technologies which will change the comfort, quality of life, plus the safety of future generations of motorhomes. Through this evolving process, systems will be further developed and we expect rapid progress over the coming years for our e.home concept, says Alexander Leopold, Dethleffs Managing Director. In three high-profile U.S. Senate races in Maine, South Carolina, and Kentucky where longtime Republican incumbents are seeking re-election, only one of those incumbents has a clear lead, one is now an underdog, and one is locked in a dead heat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters in each of the states released Wednesday. Senate control hangs in the balance as the GOP confronts a likely nail-biter in South Carolina and a possible knockout in Maine, offset by a presumably solid lead in Kentucky, Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said. Maine Democrat Sara Gideon leads the race among likely voters for the U.S. Senate 54-42 percent over Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is seeking her fifth term. Eighty-nine percent of likely voters who selected a candidate in the Senate matchup say their minds are made up, and 10 percent say they might change their minds before the election. "The tide has turned on Sen. Susan Collins, who was so popular in Maine that she won nearly 70 percent of the vote the last time she ran. Likely voters are sending the message that there's no 'middle of the road' when it comes to President Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the state," Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Mary Snow said. Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump in the race for the White House 59-38 percent. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is seeking his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, is tied with his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison. Ninety-three percent of likely voters who selected a candidate in the Senate matchup say their minds are made up, and 6 percent say they may change their minds. "A victor by almost 16 points back in 2014, Sen. Graham stares down the first real test of his Senate tenure. Outspent and accused by some of being a Trump apologist, he is in a precarious tie," Malloy said. In South Carolina, Trump leads Biden in the race for the White House, 51-45 percent, according to the poll. Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is seeking a seventh term, leads the race 53-41 percent over Democratic challenger Amy McGrath. Ninety-one percent of likely voters who selected a candidate say their minds are made up, and 9 percent say they might change their selection before the election. "After 36 years in the Senate, Majority Leader McConnell appears to have a comfortable path to six more years in Washington in one of the most expensive Senate races to date," Malloy said. In Kentucky, Trump leads Biden in the race for the White House 58-38 percent. Voting in 2020 A majority of voters in each state expect to cast ballots in person on Nov. 3. In-person voting is most popular in South Carolina, where 72 percent of likely voters say they think they will vote in person on Election Day, and only 24 percent say they will vote by mail or absentee ballot. In Kentucky, 56 percent of likely voters say they think they will vote in person on Election Day, while 26 percent say will vote by mail or absentee ballot. Kentucky will also have early voting locations, and 13 percent of likely voters say they plan to cast their ballot at those sites. In Maine, 54 percent of voters plan to cast their ballot in person on Election Day, and 42 percent say they will vote by mail or absentee ballot. Trump approval When asked how Trump is handling his job as president, likely voters had varying opinions across the three states. In Kentucky, 55 percent approve, 41 percent disapprove. In South Carolina, 50 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove. In Maine, 38 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove. Trump coronavirus response When asked how Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus, likely voters gave similar responses to his overall job approval. In Kentucky, 54 percent approve, 43 percent disapprove. In South Carolina. 49 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove. In Maine, 37 percent approve, 61 percent disapprove. To view the complete poll results, click here. San Francisco, Sep 17 : In a tough action on Groups that spread harmful content, hate speech and misinformation, Facebook on Thursday said admins and moderators of Groups taken down for policy violations will not be able to create any new Group for a certain period of time. For members who have any Community Standards violations in a Group, their posts in that Group will now require approval for the next 30 days, Facebook said in a blog post. "This stops their post from being seen by others until an admin or moderator approves it," said Tom Alison, VP of Engineering at Facebook. Sometimes admins may step down or leave their Groups. "Our proactive detection continues to operate in these Groups, but we know that active admins can help maintain the community and promote more productive conversations. "We now suggest admin roles to members who may be interested. A number of factors go into these suggestions, including whether people have a history of Community Standards violations," Facebook informed. In the coming weeks, the social network will begin archiving Groups that have been without an admin for some time. "Moving forward, when a single remaining admin chooses to step down, they can invite members to become admins. If no invited members accept, we will suggest admin roles to members who may be interested. If no one accepts, we'll archive the group," Facebook said. Facebook said it removed about 1.5 million pieces of content in Groups for violating its policies on organised hate. It also removed about 12 million pieces of content in groups for violating its policies on hate speech. "When it comes to groups themselves, we will take an entire group down if it repeatedly breaks our rules or if it was set up with the intent to violate our standards. Over the last year, we took down more than 1 million groups for violating these policies," Alison informed. Currently, if admins or moderators repeatedly approve posts that violate Community Standards, Facebook removes the Group. Groups that repeatedly share content rated false by fact-checkers are not recommended to other people on Facebook. "We rank all content from these groups lower in News Feed and limit notifications so fewer members see their posts," Alison noted. In another bid to help people get health information from authoritative sources, Facebook said it is starting to no longer show health groups in recommendations. R-Squared-edu Cover Photo - Abuse Regardless of one's financial status, age, religion, class, race, or creed, who one was raised by or where, all human souls are worthy of their own light. ~ Seanna Smallwood While there may be people that can afford to invest in themselves for commodities like personal development, self-love, therapies, and big spa days, the reality is, everyone needs access to these commodities so they are afforded the opportunity to heal from whatever traumas they may have experienced in their lives - especially those that can not afford to invest in themselves. Regardless of one's financial status, age, religion, class, race, or creed, who one was raised by or where, all human souls are worthy of their own light. After nearly three decades of success in real estate and mortgage loan originations, Seanna took the deep dive to return to her passion career in helping people heal from childhood traumas and help families break cycles of abuse - leading others to heal from their experiences and learn how to teach what they've learned through those experiences to others. Children do not know they're being abused and most adult survivors of child abuse do not have the conscious realization that they were abused as children. It's a remarkable discovery and can be paralyzing and painful when these buried memories resurface into a person's conscious mind. It can potentially have adverse effects on their children, their finances, their marriage, their emotional, psychological, and physical health, their employment status -- the list goes on and on on the powerful impact. Current healthcare modalities for treating therapy patients typically refuse to look at the "upstream" cause and effect; thereby, focusing on the problem itself - avoiding the much deeper roots of the cause. When we lead the human population to experience a paradigm shift using an approach that focuses on shifting their own individual perspectives on their experiences -- shifting how they look at those experiences in a progressive manner, something really remarkable happens -- healing begins. R-Squared follows their own unique biopsychosocial model of progression from victim mentality, to survivor mentality, to breaking the cycle. R-Squared is a platform that offers payment optional courses to any individual who wishes to transform their life by stepping out of the darkness and into the light. To-date, there are two courses available on the platform and numerous YouTube videos, PodCasts, and even an Amazon Alexa Skill that allows people to share experiences, have their voices heard (anonymously or publicly), and even build their own community of supporters through Community Forums on the site courses and via their Facebook Group exclusively designed for R-Squared students. Just ONE share of any of the courses or YouTube channel content could potentially save thousands of lives and could heal family cycles of abuse for generations to come. The subconscious mind is a wildly misunderstood and overlooked aspect of ourselves, children, peers, social groups, even teachers and mentors. The world is asleep! Its time to wake up to the truth of what everyone appears to be ignoring. Everyone on the planet has been abused in some way as children. Children do not know theyre being abused until theyre adults and have something to compare their experience with. Smallwood is not saying your parents were evil abusers; nor is she saying they knowingly did so. Rather, some aspect of every parent, exhibited behaviors that have shaped us into who we are today good, bad, or indifferent some have been negatively affected more than others. RSquared-edu seeks to help students discover what aspects of this deep subconscious phenomenon has been overlooked inside of everyone. Their goal is to help their students discover who they truly are. Why is it that people focus so much on what's outside of themselves? Instead, they tend to focus on our external environments, the cover of the book. When people jump on the hamster wheel of what's in their external environments they fail to look inside themselves, their children, their friends and family, and everyone else to love others for who they truly are - their true authentic selves. Then suddenly, people become angry and feel victimized when they realize they've never been truly loved, not even by their own parents. -- This is what their message is, this is their mission. Their YouTube content and online classes take that deep dive into WHY people behave the way they do, why people stay on cycles they dont even realize they're on, and why people generally fear and even run from their own healing. Take a peek at their course offerings. New courses are released often. Seanna remains committed to posting more content & live podcasts on the R-Squared playlist. If you want to be a featured guest to share your story of abuse, your cycle, or a success story as to how one of their courses helped someone transform their life? Simply schedule a discovery call. They've added a new, fun and engaging PodCast topic, "Life with Seanna Smallwood & a Not So Random 12-Year Old" that might also interest you. Here's their 1st ever episode. LONDON, Sept. 17 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- TreasuryXpress, the global leader in on-demand treasury management solutions (TMS) today announced its partnership with JCAP Treasury Services, the premier provider of treasury services and risk management solutions to Fiduciary and Fund Administration providers the Channel Islands. With stringent region-specific regulations, the partnership will combine JCAP's knowledge of the local market with TreasuryXpress' innovative treasury automation software to deliver services and solutions to help fund administrators achieve best treasury and corporate governance practices. "In the Channel Islands, there are very tight regulations around transaction monitoring and reconciliations. Fund administrators and fiduciaries in this market often face significant scrutiny around their payment processing, making risk mitigation and controls vital," says David Elgie, Chief Operating Officer, at JCAP. "This partnership delivers both the regulatory expertise and automation that specifically address our clients' precise needs for treasury controls and efficiencies. We are very excited to partner with TreasuryXpress on this initiative." Through this joint offering, clients will now be able to: Achieve automated and accurate cash positioning through streamlined and secure bank connectivity Improve cash utilization and liquidity Automate the reconciliation process Monitor and mitigate counterparty risk Maximize cash ROI through secure automated payment workflow "The opportunity cost associated with manual, time-consuming reconciliation and payments processes for fund administrators is great. As service providers themselves, it is critical that the partners they chose share the same vision and ability to deliver quality, efficiency, and service," says Tom Leitch, Chief Operating Officer at TreasuryXpress. "This relationship exemplifies the quality and value that we at TreasuryXpress perpetually strive to bring to our clients' experience. We are pleased to be partnering with JCAP." Partnering with JCAP, supports TreasuryXpress' vision of delivering on-demand cash management and payment solutions that provide clients with rapid access to high volumes of bank and transaction information, regulatory expertise, and best-in-class experiences that continuously improve their daily and strategic treasury operations. ABOUT TREASURYXPRESS At TreasuryXpress, we specialize in delivering innovative solutions that work for treasury making it easy to achieve 100% bank visibility, consolidate cash information, manage end-to-end payment processing, and distribute useful and critical reports to all internal stakeholders automatically and efficiently. Our solutions centralize more than 10,000 bank accounts daily and process electronic payments for over 7 billion USD each year. Our rapid time-to-market and diverse hosting options make it easy for treasuries to do business with us. From solution development to delivery and service, our teams actively engage with customers regularly and proactively. The result? TreasuryXpress is able provide simply better, more innovative solutions that solve business problems. To learn more about TreasuryXpress, visit us at www.treasuryxpress.com or contact us directly at [email protected]. ABOUT JCAP Treasury Services JCAP is an independent team who provide operational and regulatory compliant solutions for the effective management of cash, payments, and counterparty risk. Based in Jersey and formed in 2009, JCAP works with clients who operate in the crown dependencies, the UK and in multiple jurisdictions around the world. Press Contact: Tracy Kantrowitz VP, Chief Marketing Officer, TreasuryXpress Phone: +1.347.920.1673 | Email: [email protected] SOURCE TreasuryXpress, Inc. Related Links https://treasuryxpress.com Australia is experiencing its first recession in almost 30 years, prompting the government and central bank to embark on a vast stimulus spending programme Australia's unemployment rate fell slightly to 6.8 percent in August, spurring hopes that the worst of a coronavirus-fuelled recession may have passed. The country's statistical agency said Thursday that unemployment had fallen 0.7 points from the 7.5-percent rate posted in July, with the economy adding 111,000 more jobs. Australia is experiencing its first recession in almost 30 years, prompting the government and central bank to embark on a vast stimulus spending programme to avert a full-blown depression. Around a million people have lost their jobs and many more have been forced to take pay cuts or seen hours slashed. Thursday's figures smashed economists' forecasts of a rise in the jobless rate to around eight percent. But beyond the headline figure -- which is seasonally adjusted -- there was some cause for concern. The number of people present in the job market, hours worked and underemployment remained largely unchanged -- pointing to an economy still in serious pain. Prime Minister Scott Morrison cautioned that the "effective rate" of unemployment was still well above 10 percent, while claiming "we are doing better than almost every other developed economy in the world". Michele O'Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, said "921,000 Australians are now unemployed and another 1.5 million are underemployed", criticising the government for plans to withdraw pandemic wage subsidies. "Working people and the unemployed need more support, not less," she said. Earlier this week Morrison unveiled plans for a "gas-fired recovery", with proposals to build a taxpayer-funded gas power plant near Sydney, new pipeline infrastructure and encouraging drilling and fracking of vast untapped gas deposits. Critics said the plan would lock in fossil fuel dependence for another generation in a country already ravaged by climate change. arb/hr/dan Experts from the management company Industrial Park Management have started the work within the framework of the project Foundation of Best Practices for the Development of Industrial Parks and Industrial Real Estate in Eastern Ukraine. Bila Tserkva Industrial Park said in a press release that the duration of the project shall be eight months from September 2020 to April 2021. The project is administered by GoLOCAL. This project became possible due to the support of the USAID Economic Support to Eastern Ukraine Project (USAID Project). The result of the project will become viable concepts for the development of industrial parks and industrial real estate, implemented in practice. The project will consist of four stages. The first stage is educational one. It provides a three-day course on industrial real estate development to be held in the cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Kramatorsk for 90 participants business representatives, local authorities, and NGOs. The second stage of the project consists of visits to the industrial parks in Ukraine and Serbia. The purpose of such visits is to gain knowledge regarding the practical aspects of industrial real estate development, financing, marketing and work with clients, local and state authorities. Project participants will get the opportunity to study the work of industrial parks (IP), in particular IP Bila Tserkva (Ukraine), MIND (Serbia), and others. The third and fourth stages of the grant project are practical one. Experts will analyze the conditions of the market and prospects for the development of industrial parks and industrial real estate in Eastern Ukraine and will work with the concepts of industrial parks developed in the region and will provide practical advice on their improvement. The results of the experts' work will be presented at the final event for stakeholders in Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Kramatorsk. Entrepreneurs, representatives of industrial enterprises, local governments, business associations, and non-profit organizations of Luhansk, Donetsk, and Azov regions are invited to participate in the project. Agriculture minister on Thursday said the (MSP) mechanism for will continue and that the mechanism will not be impacted by two proposed legislations. Moving The Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, and The (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020' Bills in Lok Sabha, Tomar said the bills are aimed at making farming profitable. The minister also clarified that these bills would not have any impact on the (MSP) mechanism which will continue. Further, he assured that these proposed legislations would not encroach upon the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Acts of the states. "These two bills will ensure that farmers get better prices for their produce. They will not be subject to the regulations of mandis and they will be free to sell their produce to anyone. They will also not have to pay any taxes. "These bills will increase competition and promote private investment which will help in development of farm infrastructure and generate employment," Tomar said. The minister noted that because of these two reform bills farmers will be able to connect directly with big business and exporters, and will be able to make farming profitable. Initiating the debate on the bills, Congress member Ravneet Singh demanded the bills should be withdrawn. He also said that Punjab collects about Rs 3,630 crore from mandis, which are used for welfare activities for farmers and creation of rural infrastructure like roads. He also wondered why the Centre was interfering when agriculture is in the concurrent list. "There are state assemblies... you want to snatch away the powers of states," Singh said, adding that the meaning of having "absolute" or "golden" majority does not mean that the centre would take all the power. He asked how small farmers would be able to resolve disputes with big corporates and claimed that the laws will "finish farmers". Singh said that farmers of north India should join hands on the issue as he urged the government to withdraw the bills. RSP leader N K Premachandran demanded that the bills should be sent to the standing committee and that there was no justification for promulgation of an ordinance. "What is the urgency in promulgating the ordinance?," he questioned. He also alleged that the ordinances were passed to bulldoze the farmers' interests while taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. All the ordinances are aimed at facilitating the interests of corporates, he said. Virendra Singh (BJP) said that the bills will strengthen farmers, and help India to become 'aatma nirbhar'. (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 hospital's statement came on Thursday after media reports claimed that the BJP MP died while being treated for COVID-19 Amid rumours of BJP MP's Ashok Gasti's demise, the Bengaluru hospital where he is being treated has clarified that Rajya Sabha legislator is in critical condition and suffering from COVID-19, according to several media reports. "He is crucially ill, but all efforts are being made," medical director of Manipal Hospital Dr Sudarshan Ballal told NDTV. The hospital has said the MP was admitted with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and is critical with multi-organ failure. He is on life support in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), as per the report. Gasti was admitted to a private Bengaluru hospital on 2 September after testing positive for coronavirus, as per India Today. A first-time Member of Parliament, Gasti was elected to Rajya Sabha in June this year. The BJP had ignored the advice of its Karnataka unit, which had recommended the names of Prabhakar Kore, Ramesh Katti and Prakash Shetty, and instead fielded Gasti and Eranna Kadadi for the Rajya Sabha elections, as per PTI. Gasti was previously a booth worker, as per NDTV. A resident of Raichur, Gasti, is a lawyer by profession and former general secretary of the BJP's OBC Cell. He is also the former chairperson of the Backward Class Development Corporation, PTI said. With inputs from PTI There are too many generals and admirals in the American military, or are there? In 2010 the leadership in the U.S. Department of Defense, sought to do something remarkable; reduce the number of flag officers (generals and admirals) as part of a plan to deal with sharp budget cuts. American troops were pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and much less was being spent on those conflicts. This seemed to present an opportune time to reduce the number of flag officers by about five percent. Some cuts were made but then those lost flag officer jobs slowly reappeared. On closer examination it was discovered that there werent just more flag officers but more officers in general. And some of the reasons for that were very practical. Higher rank had become a recruiting and retention tool. The number of these senior officers was not the main problem, but how they were used. For example, during World War II, a lot more technology was adopted by the military, and that required some hard-to-get and expensive talent to supervise development, operation and maintenance. The military can't use many cash incentives, but it can offer rank and all the flattery and respect that goes with it. This works in commercial firms and politics and it worked in the military. But another cause for the growing number of senior officers is bureaucratic rot. This is a phenomenon in all large organizations, be they commercial or government. The United States did not have a large peacetime military until the late 1940s, in response to the threat posed by the Cold War with Russia (the Soviet Union and its allies). While lean and efficient when created, organizations tend to grow bloated and less efficient as they increase in size and age. Additional layers of command make it more difficult to get anything done, even for strong willed people at the top of the command pyramid. The Department of Defense was not immune to the disease, and efforts to impose a cure have not succeeded. The historical pattern of growth in senior leadership is quite clear. At the end of the World War II, there were 5,400 troops for each admiral or general. By the end of the Cold War in 1991, there were 3,400 troops for every admiral or general. Despite the reduced size of the American military in the 1990s by 2010 there were about 3,000 troops for each of these senior officers. This made it more difficult to get things done because more senior officers meant more layers of bureaucracy you had to go through to get a decision made. In World War II there were fewer than ten layers of bureaucracy between most soldiers or sailors and the top military commanders. Now there are over twenty layers and the number is increasing. Much effort has been put into making decisions more quickly using better communications and powerful software. There have been some successful efforts to mitigate the damage inflicted by all those layers. One of these was the establishment of regional combatant commands where one senior general or admiral was the senior leader and had a lot of autonomy on how to use the forces he controlled. It's not just problems with too many generals and admirals. The ratio of all troops to all officers has gone from about ten to one in 1945, to six to one today. This ratio varies from service to service. In the Marines the ratio is 8.8:1, the Navy is close behind at 7:1, trailed by the army's 6.1:1, and the Air Force, with an extraordinarily low ratio of only 4.4:1, just half that of the marines. The low Air Force ratio is due to the large number of pilots and the high proportion of very technical jobs. The enormous growth in technical jobs, and the difficulty in recruiting and keeping the needed techies, has led to more officer jobs, and cash bonuses for both officers and enlisted personnel in hard to fill slots. Supply and demand keeps these officer jobs, or cash bonuses, in play. Many of the additional admirals and generals are in charge of very technical operations, that require a lot of skill and experience to carry out. Sometimes the military cannot find qualified people to fill these jobs, and just puts in an available general or admiral and hopes for the best. Another problem is that cutting positions for admirals and generals is complicated by the fact that these are the men (and, increasingly, women) who make the decisions about who gets cut. Any effort to cut the fat in the senior ranks will get interesting and likely not succeed. Leadership and management issues aside, the bean counters know that each senior officer position eliminated will save several million dollars. The salary and benefits for the senior officer is only a small part of this. The big expense is for the staff, fringe benefits and office space required to show the proper respect. But its not just about money, it's about leadership, and sometimes less is more. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on Thursday that a report which claimed Attorney General Bill Barr had suggested charging her with sedition for allowing the 'CHOP' zone to be created in her city is chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration. The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the President to target those who have spoken out against this administration's actions, Durkan, a former US attorney, said in a statement. That is an act of tyranny, not of democracy. Ultimately, this is not a story about me. It is about how this President and his Attorney General are willing to subvert the law and use the Department of Justice for political purposes. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (left) said on Thursday that a report which claimed Attorney General Bill Barr (right) had suggested charging her with sedition for allowing the 'CHOP' zone to be created in her city is chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration The 'Capitol Hill Organized Protest was a three-week long 'occupation' by anti-racism protesters in Seattle who set up a several-block perimeter where there were no police presence within the boundaries. Two people were killed and several were wounded in shootings in the CHOP Durkan called the report chilling and the latest abuse of power from the Trump administration. The Department of Justice cannot become a political weapon operated at the behest of the President to target those who have spoken out against this administration's actions, Durkan, a former US attorney, said in a statement 'I will continue to fight for what I believe is right, and I will not be distracted by these threats from meeting the challenges facing our great city,' the Seattle mayor said It is particularly egregious to try to use the civil rights laws to investigate, intimidate, or deter those that are fighting for civil rights in our country. Durkan was reacting to a Wall Street Journal report which said Barr told federal district attorneys in a conference call last week that a law against plotting to overthrow the US government was among charges they could use against participants when protests turn violent. The WSJ reported that he divulged details of two statutes that could help bring about the charges. In order to prove sedition, they would have to prove imminent danger to government officials or agents as part of a conspiracy. However without the plot it can fall under expressing violent anti-government sentiment under the First Amendment. Brian T. Moran, the US attorney for western Washington State, says he is not aware of any investigation into Durkan Another statute could bring federal charges on someone who obstructs law enforcement responding to unrest. CNN and the New York Times confirmed the recommendation by Barr. Two people on the call said Barr has asked whether charges could be brought against Durkan for allowing people to create a police-free zone. Barr said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court has determined the executive branch has 'virtually unchecked discretion' on whether to go ahead with a prosecution. But a US attorney in Washington State says that he has never heard anyone at the Justice Department discuss bringing charges against Durkan. 'Throughout this lengthy period of civil unrest, I have had multiple conversations with Department of Justice leadership,' Brian T. Moran, the US attorney for Western Washington, said in a statement. 'They have asked for information about protest activity devolving into violence, about federal interests implicated by the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, and about the cases filed in this District regarding federal crimes. 'At no time has anyone at the Department communicated to me that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is, was, or should be the subject of a criminal investigation or should be charged with any federal crime related to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). 'As US Attorney I would be aware of such an investigation.' On July 1, city crews dismantled the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area outside of the Seattle Police Department's vacated East Precinct The zone was created after protesters forced Seattle police to abandon the East Precinct Barr's DOJ was also reportedly considering criminal charges against top political officials in Portland, Oregon. The Justice Department explored whether it could pursue either criminal or civil rights charges after clashes erupted there night after night between law enforcement and demonstrators, a department spokesperson said Thursday. The revelation that federal officials researched whether they could levy criminal or civil charges against the officials - exploring whether their rhetoric and actions may have helped spur the violence in Portland - underscores the larger Trump administrations effort to spotlight and crack down on protest-related violence. In early July, Seattle police cleared away the so-called 'autonomous zone' set up by protesters in the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. The 'CHOP', which was later renamed 'CHAZ,' or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, was set up along a few square blocks of the downtown Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill on June 8. Protesters forced Seattle police to clear out of the East Precinct and insisted on keeping the area 'police-free.' TIMELINE OF VIOLENCE IN SEATTLE'S CHOP ZONE June 8: Protesters occupy the area; police abandoned the precinct June 20: A 19-year-old man is shot dead and a 33-year-old man was wounded June 24: Nearby businesses and property owners filed a federal lawsuit against the city June 29: Two teens shot - one fatally - in Jeep at zone's concrete barriers June 30: Barricades at Seattle's cop-free zone are torn down as protesters replace concrete barriers with trash cans and couches July 1: Early hours : Mayor Jenny Durkan demand all barriers are removed after a 525 per cent spike in violent crimes in the area 5am: Police swarm the zone 5:30am: Eyewitnesses say officers have cleared the area 7am: Chief Carmen Best confirms police have taken back precinct Advertisement During the CHOP/CHAZ, Durkan appeared to downplay the severity of the protesters' actions, comparing the incident to a 'block party' while insisting that 'it's not an armed takeover. It's not a military junta.' But there were a total of four shootings either in the zone or in its vicinity, killing two and wounding several others. The 'autonomous zone' was eventually cleared out in early July, though the reverberations of the Floyd protests continue to be felt. Efforts to cut spending on police - a key demand of anti-racism demonstrators in Seattle and across the nation - claimed an unlikely target: Seattles first black police chief, who enjoyed deep support in its minority communities, stepped down in protest. Carmen Best announced her retirement last month just hours after the City Council voted to cut her annual $285,000 salary by $10,000, as well as the salaries of her command staff, and to trim as many as 100 officers from a force of 1,400 through layoffs and attrition. She said that she was OK with her pay cut, but not with having to lay off young officers, many of them minorities hired in part to improve the departments diversity. 'That, for me - I'm done. Can't do it,' she said at a news conference. 'It really is about the overarching lack of respect for the officers.' Best, a military veteran who joined the department in 1992, was named chief two years ago. Durkan initially left her off a list of finalists for the job, but selected her after an outcry from community groups who had long known Best and wanted her to be chosen. The Trump administration has seized on the violence in Seattle and other cities, including Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere to highlight the need for a stronger presence of law enforcement. President Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish the protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. While protest-related crimes usually bring only local charges, under Barr's guidance district attorneys and federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 demonstrators with crimes that bring heftier penalties. Asked about the report on Barr, Trump said his government will treat demonstrators toughly. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said, adding: 'And I think the American public wants to see that.' According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, about 93 percent of protests this summer were peaceful. Such a sedition charge has been used with extreme rarity and the most recent example, a case brought against a Michigan armed militia group, failed in 2012 due to weak and 'circumstantial evidence'. President Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said Barr's comments on Wednesday amounted to a striking, and unusual, rebuke of the thousands of prosecutors who do the daily work of assembling criminal cases across the country. Rejecting the idea that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring, Barr described them instead part of the 'permanent bureaucracy' and said they were in need of supervision from 'detached,' politically appointed leaders who are accountable to the president and Congress. 'Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target,' Barr said. 'Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.' Ernakulam: Kerala erupted into widespread opposition protests for the fifth day in a row on Thursday, demanding the resignation of minister KT Jaleel who was summoned by the National Investigation Agency Kochi that is probing the recent gold smuggling scandal. The protestors blatantly violated covid-19 protocols, even as the state's daily caseload touched a new high of 4,531 on the day. On multiple cities, the police and the protestors clashed with each other. In the capital Thiruvanthapuram, the protests turned violent and several activists of opposition parties the Congress, the BJP and the Muslim League were injured. Legislator V T Balaram was injured in police lathicharge against the Congress workers in Palakkad. He alleged that the police action was without any provocation and demanded an enquiry. At least 12 officials were injured when protesters clashed with the police at Palakkad. Shoulders of three officials were dislocated while one official was injured with a sharp object on his cheek. He got 12 stitches," a police official told Press Trust of India. The NIA office premises here also witnessed separate protests by activists belonging to youth wings of the Congress and the BJP. The police action is likely to fuel further protests in the coming days. Meanwhile, in his daily evening covid-19 press briefing, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the protestors, including at least two legislators, will be booked under the stringent rules to prevent the spreading of epidemic diseases. Jaleel is Minister for Higher Education, Welfare of Minorities, Wakf and Hajj in the LDF led ministry. He has not been named in the gold smuggling case so far. But he has been in the dock for accepting religious books and flood-relief kits through the diplomatic baggage route at United Arab Emirates Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram, which is currently probed for being used as a cover for smuggling gold. He has also allegedly violated bureaucratic protocols while accepting the goods. Jaleel reached the NIA office here at around 6 am in a private car after being summoned by the agency, nearly a week after he was interrogated twice by the Enforcement Directorate on the same issue. Although the minister reached the NIA office early in the morning to evade media attention, cameras of a Malayalam news channel followed him closely. Multiple rings of police security were thrown around the NIA office as the news broke about the ministers appearance before the NIA team probing the gold smuggling case. The scenes of Jaleel at the doorsteps of the terror probing agency is likely to spell more damage for the LDF government, while it could give a leg-up to the Congress and the BJP. The developments are crucial since Kerala is nearing local body polls in October and assembly polls mid-2021. As the opposition sharpened its attack against the ruling LDF, the leadership of the CPI(M) rallied behind the embattled minister, saying seeking information" was part of the procedure of investigation and there was no need for anyone to resign. PTI contributed to this 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 The global bamboo toothbrush market is growing rapidly. The market growth attributes to the rising environmental concerns due to billions of plastic toothbrushes tossed into landfills each year. Besides, the increasing popularity of natural and biodegradable products drives the growth of the market. Moreover, growing government initiatives to promote the use of biodegradable products escalate the market growth on the global height. As stated by Market Research Future (MRFR), the global bamboo toothbrush market valuation is estimated to reach USD 842.1 MN by 2024, registering 7% CAGR throughout the assessment period (2019-2024). The widespread awareness regarding oral hygiene, alongside the rising adoption of proper oral care routines, acts as a key tailwind for the growth of the market. The changing consumer preferences encourage market players to focus on R&D to launch new & innovative products that can meet the dynamic market needs. The rising health consciousness among people and advances in manufacturing techniques boost the growth of the global bamboo toothbrush market. Conversely, the lack of product awareness is a significant factor expected to impede the growth of the market during the forecast period. Nevertheless, rising initiatives by the public and private sectors to create awareness about the sustainable toothbrush would support the market growth throughout the analysis period. Global Bamboo Toothbrush Market Segments The report is segmented into three dynamics; By End User : Children and Adults. By Distribution Channel : Store-Based and Non-Store-Based. By Regions : Americas, Europe, APAC, and Rest-of-the-World. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/8182 Bamboo Toothbrush Market Regional Analysis Europe dominates the global bamboo toothbrush market. The largest market share attributes to the rising awareness for natural products and massive uptake of bamboo toothbrushes across the region. Besides, increasing the government to promote sustainable alternatives to plastics and initiatives to spread awareness about ecological concerns arising from the plastics ending in oceans drives the regional market growth. The burgeoning natural product industry, along with per capita expenses on wellness in the UK and Germany, contributes to the regional market growth. Germany, among other countries, accounts for the largest share in the regional market. The European bamboo toothbrush market is expected to retain its dominance over the global market throughout the forecast period. North America stands second in the global bamboo toothbrush market. The market is driven by rising awareness and demand for natural products. Moreover, the expanding product portfolios of key industry players drive regional market growth. The US and Canada contribute to the growth of the regional market majorly. The region is a hub of advanced technologies and has well-developed regulatory agencies & government organizations demonstrating the vast potential for revenue generation for natural products. The North American bamboo toothbrush market is projected to exhibit a moderate growth rate during the forecast period. The bamboo toothbrush market in the Asia Pacific region is growing briskly. Factors such as the increasing disposable incomes of demographics, and the emphasis on biodegradable products foster regional market growth. Additionally, the raw material advantages and a large consumer base positively impact regional market growth. The APAC bamboo toothbrush market is projected to grow at an impressive CAGR during the forecast period. Global Bamboo Toothbrush Market Competitive Analysis Highly competitive, the bamboo toothbrush market appears to be fragmented due to the presence of several well-established industry players. They incorporate strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, collaborations, expansion, and product & technology launch to gain a larger competitive share. Players emphasis on new product development and initiate expansion strategies to increase their footprint. The market is anticipated to witness relentless innovations and product developments, which would, in turn, intensify market competition among the automotive lighting manufacturers. Major Players Players leading the global bamboo toothbrush market include Organic Labs (India), Church & Dwight (US), Brush with Bamboo (US), Bamboo Toothbrush Bam&Boo (Portugal), Sweetness and Pea Ltd (UK), The Bamboo Brush Society (Netherlands), Bamboo India (India), Bamboo Brush Co. (Australia), Mother's Vault (US), The Green Root (Canada), Anything But Plastic (UK), Nature & My Limited (UK), BlueRock Products Ltd. (UK), The Humble Co. (Sweden), and Boobam (US), among others. Access Full Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/bamboo-toothbrush-market-8182 Industry/ Innovation/ Related News: March 10, 2020 ---- NOS toothbrush launched its sustainable Everloop toothbrush that is made with replaceable bamboo bristles and recycled plastic. This bamboo toothbrush features a clever clipping mechanism allowing the replacement of 100% natural bamboo bristles every few months. The Everloop toothbrush's bristles are made from bamboo, and the body is made of recycled plastic from disposed toothbrushes. After analyzing different options, NOS decided to bring in the market a clipping mechanism that can replace bamboo bristles. This mechanism allows users to open and close the head of the toothbrush, in order to insert a new set of bristles. Also, NOS has designed a unique packaging solution made of thermoformed 100% compostable paper pulp. Additionally, the shipping carbon footprint is lowered based on the whole life cycle of the pack. The packaging includes eight sets of replaceable bristles and a wall holder. Despite dire warnings about breaking international law, the government won the first vote on the UK internal market bill on Monday night by a comfortable majority of 77. Only two Conservative MPs Sir Roger Gale and Andrew Percy voted against the bill, while more than 20 abstained. The Tory rebellion was somewhat offset by the support for the bill from the Democratic Unionist Party, which backs Brexit but opposes the withdrawal agreement. The most difficult moment in the House of Commons will probably come on Tuesday next week, when there will be votes on amendments to take out the clause of the bill that gives ministers the power to override the withdrawal agreement, or to make it subject to a further vote of parliament. At that point, several of the abstainers might vote against the government, and other rebels who voted for the principle of the bill will join them. Damian Green, who was Theresa Mays deputy, voted for the bill in principle on Monday, but has said he will vote for an amendment that would require another vote, which has already been tabled by Sir Robert Neill, one of the abstainers. Boris Johnson tried to bamboozle the rebels by suggesting that, if the powers were ever needed, ministers would return to this house with a statutory instrument on which a vote would be held but he didnt say that such a vote would come after, rather than before, the powers were invoked. Demonstrators take part in a protest against the new national security law in Hong Kong on July 1, 2020. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images) Freedom House Honors Hong Kong Protesters With Freedom Award Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement, which has been fighting against the Chinese Communist Partys encroachment of the citys liberties, has been awarded the 2020 Freedom Award by the Washington-based think tank Freedom House. Freedom House honors the protesters of Hong Kong, the think tank said in an online awards event held on Sept. 16. It explained: Hong Kong has now joined other groups mortally oppressed by China. Unfortunately, the think tank group said that it could not publicly name anyone in the movement because it would put their lives at risk. It pointed out that since Beijings innocently labelled national security law went into effect in Hong Kong in late June, students have been detained, protest leaders arrested, activists disappeared, [and] professors fired. The pro-democracy movement, alongside wider calls for preserving Hong Kongs freedoms and rule of law, began in June last year, when millions of Hongkongers took to the street to protest the local governments now fully-scrapped extradition bill. The movement has since evolved in calls for greater democracy, such as universal suffrage for the citys voters. Beijings national security law punishes vaguely-defined crimes such as secession and subversion with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. In response, the U.S. government has revoked Hong Kongs special trading status with the United States, and sanctioned Hong Kong and Chinese officials responsible for undermining the citys autonomy. We all look forward to the day when we can say their names, the think tank said, since freedom will prevail [and] the human spirit cannot be controlled by the communist government of China. Freedom House has been handing out its annual Freedom Award since 1943 to recognize leaders who have championed freedom and democracy. Past honorees included Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Sudanese Professionals Association and the Organization of the December Revolution Martyrs Families were also awarded a Freedom Award. All of us here at Freedom House are deeply moved by the courage and dedication of this years honorees in their work on behalf of freedom and democracy, said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, according to a press release. House leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) spoke at the online event. The Hong Kong protesters extraordinary outpouring of courage stands in stark contrast to a cowardly government that refuses to respect the rule of law or the one country, two systems framework, guaranteed more than two decades ago, Pelosi said. #FreedomAwards: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi says that protest is a pillar of freedom that has been essential to building a just and equal world. @SpeakerPelosi https://t.co/qnLmWoaNhS pic.twitter.com/WFmL7a1ljN Freedom House (@freedomhouse) September 16, 2020 In 1984, China and the UK signed an international treaty called the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which outlined the terms of Hong Kongs handover back to China in 1997. Under the treaty, Hong Kongs mini-constitution or Basic Law was drafted, which was to guarantee the city a high degree of autonomy from Beijing for at least 50 years after 1997 under the one country, two systems model. I cant think of a better group of people for Freedom House to recognize than the people of Hong Kong, particularly those involved in defending democracy and freedom, Rubio stated. Rubio added: While we watch in horror by what Beijing is doing [in Hong Kong], we are inspired by the bravery and the courage and the vision of those who are fighting to demand and protect democracy. Hong Kong activist Nathan Law, who is now in London after fleeing Hong Kong in early July, also spoke at the online event. Hong Kong is a forefront of the clash of authoritarianism and democratic values, Law said. Law said that western governments, like the United States and the United Kingdom, have played a critical role in containing [Chinas] authoritarian expansion and in demanding that Beijing address its human rights violations. Freedom for me is about having eternal vigilance towards the injustice in society, Law stated. On Sept. 8, Hong Kong police announced on its Facebook page that 10,016 people had been arrested since the start of the mass protests in the city last June to Sept. 6. Among those arrested, 2,210 have been charged for crimes such as rioting and illegal assembly. Families of Boeing 737 MAX crash victims are urging US lawmakers to ensure the aircraft maker is held accountable for accidents that together killed 346 people by blocking a key legal defence, according to a letter sent on Tuesday and seen by Reuters. Chicago-based Boeing Co is facing around 100 lawsuits by families of 157 victims of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash and has argued that because the aircraft was certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration, it is immune from liability, court filings show. But families say manufacturers should not be allowed to "hide behind" FAA certification when a certified airplane turns out to be defective. "No amount of regulation should shield Boeing and other manufacturers from responsibility when airplanes crash and kill innocent people," they wrote in the letter to bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee. Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: "Boeing has offered to work with the victims' families to schedule mediations to discuss settlement of claims on terms that fairly compensate them and are committed to this mediation process." However, some families are pursuing a jury trial, which would give liability lawyers greater access to Boeing's internal records and expose the company to deeper scrutiny over its relations with the FAA. The 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia occurred just five months after a similar disaster on a Lion Air flight in Indonesia. It triggered a global grounding of the aircraft, which has been parked for 18 months. "Accountability is the best way to encourage the design and manufacture of safe airplanes, so this does not happen again," said the families of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302. The letter comes as the Senate Commerce Committee voted on Wednesday on sweeping reforms to how the FAA certifies new aircraft. Boeing has already settled the majority of lawsuits related to the Lion Air crash but but is still the target of a U.S. federal criminal probe and investigations by U.S. lawmakers and aviation and transportation authorities. (R Boeing is preparing to bolster the long-term safety of its plane a computer program and produces readings that mimic what costly additional sensors provide. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns 70 today, heres a look at some of his timeless pictures from the past that capture his meteoric rise from Vadnagar in Gujarat to 7, Lok Kalyan Marg in New Delhi. 1. A rare childhood photo of PM Modi, who was born on September 17, 1950, in Vadnagar. BCCL 2. A young Narendra Modi participating in a play called Hariyali Kranti (Green Revolution) during his college days. BCCL 3. A rare picture of PM Modi from his teenage days. BCCL 4. PM Modi while attending a family wedding in Vadnagar. BCCL 5. Heres a candid picture of PM Modi with his mother Heeraba. BCCL 6. Prime Minister Modi seeking blessings from his mother. BCCL 7. PM Modi's throwback picture from his school days. BCCL 8. A rare picture from his young days in Gujarat. BCCL 9. PM Modi with former president APJ Abdul Kalam BCCL 10. In March 23, 1995, BJP secured a majority in Gujarat Assembly Elections, winning 121 seats with Narendra Modi as Organisation Secretary. BCCL Meanwhile, on the occasion of PM Modis birthday today, the BJP will mark Seva Saptah, which began from September 14, across the country to pray for the long life and good health of Prime Minister Modi. "BJP has taken a very big decision and it is observing 'Seva Saptah' from September 14 to September 20. The Prime Minister's birthday falls on September 17 and we will pray for his long life and good health so that he can continue to take decisions in the national interest," BJP National Vice President and in-charge Jammu and Kashmir Avinash Rai Khanna said. Over the past week, Hardin County has seen more than 150 new positive cases of coronavirus - only about 50 fewer than Jefferson County, which has about four times the population. Additionally, Hardin County saw seven more fatalities, and the number of county residents hospitalized over the past week has tripled. Hardin County Judge Wayne McDaniel in his weekly COVID-19 report said many of the new cases confirmed over the past week can be linked to gatherings over the Labor Day holiday as well as to residential evacuations ahead of Hurricane Lauras arrival. People are getting lax on wearing masks and distancing themselves from others, McDaniel said. Additionally, people are showing up to work and other public places while sick. It continues to be very important that we follow all of the practices necessary to prevent or slow the additional spread of COVID-19. Related: Hurricane Laura didnt stop coronavirus concerns Other area cities and counties are starting to see COVID-19 case reports that could be reflecting similar behaviors by other Southeast Texas residents. After a slight dip in cases being confirmed at the end of August, Jefferson County has seen a rise in the average number of coronavirus cases confirmed each day. That number takes a slight dip around weekend reports, but its stayed pretty consistent in the upper 20s - a more than 450% increase in cases confirmed each day compared to late August. The makeup of whos testing positive also appears to be changing. According to Port Arthur Health Department Director Judith Smith, speaking anecdotally, shes noticed a larger number of area residents in their 70s and 80s being confirmed to have the virus. More Information Coronavirus testing When: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday Where: Bob Bowers Civic Center, 3401 Cultural Center Dr., Port Arthur See More Collapse Six of the 33 coronavirus cases confirmed in Port Arthur residents older than 80 were reported in the past several days, the Health Department reports. That comes after weeks of very few, if any, cases confirmed in those age ranges. Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox Smith said she wasnt yet sure why that might be, but it could be linked to Hurricane Laura evacuations. She noted that elderly individuals were more likely to evacuate or be evacuated into a location that might require them to mingle with other individuals. I just noticed those numbers at the end of last week, she said. I saw more people in their 70s or 80s testing positive. We havent seen that in a while. For a good while it was mostly people in their 20s and 30s. The number of COVID-19-positive patients at Jefferson County hospitals appears to have remained steady over the past week. Additionally, its been about a week since the county reported a residents life had been claimed by the virus. Since the first coronavirus case was reported in mid-March, Jefferson County has confirmed at least 5,559 positive cases. 100 county residents have died as a result of the virus. kaitlin.bain@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/KaitlinBain Photograph: John McDonnell/EPA Christopher Wray, the FBI director, on Thursday warned that Russia is interfering in the 2020 US presidential elections with a steady stream of misinformation aimed at undermining Democrat Joe Biden as well as sapping Americans confidence in the election process. Moscow is also attempting to undercut what it sees as an anti-Russian US establishment, Wray told the Democratic-led House of Representatives homeland security committee in a hearing on Capitol Hill. He said his biggest concern was a steady drumbeat of misinformation that he said he feared could undermine confidence in the result of the 2020 election. Related: Russian hackers targeting US political campaigns ahead of elections, Microsoft warns Wray repeatedly addressed election meddling in his testimony to the House committee, saying the bureau is committed to blocking such interference efforts in this years elections. He specifically said the bureau has witnessed very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020. Russian agents, Wray said, were mainly trying to affect the election through malign foreign influence, such as social media, state media and the use of proxies. He noted the Russians efforts were meant primarily to denigrate vice-president Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment. Wrays testimony follows a 7 August warning by the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center that Russia, China and Iran were all trying to interfere in the 3 November election. Multiple reviews by US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia acted to boost Donald Trumps 2016 campaign and damage his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. The Republican president has long bristled at that finding, which Russia officially denies despite special counsel Robert Mueller indicting Russian operatives for meddling in order to help Trump. Trump himself has repeatedly and without evidence questioned the increased use of mail-in ballots, a long established method of voting in the United States which are expected to see a surge in use this election cycle because of the risks of the coronavirus. On Thursday Trump wrote on Twitter, without evidence, that they could make it impossible to know the elections true outcome. Story continues After a series of wild tweets about election chaos, Twitter slapped a label on one of the presidents tweets about voting by mail, which the president has falsely claimed is particularly vulnerable to voter fraud. On China, Wray said that the FBI is so active in monitoring Chinese efforts to acquire US technology and other sensitive information that it is opening a new counterintelligence investigation related to China every 10 hours. Wray said the FBI is conducting multiple investigations into violent domestic extremists. He said the largest chunk of investigations were into white supremacist groups. The director took a question about threats of domestic terrorism, specifically about anti fascist radical activists known collectively as Antifa, which the president has repeatedly denigrated. Wray emphasized that the FBI did not view threats in terms of liberal or conservative politics. Were focused on the violence, not the ideology, he said. SOMM TV is the leader in producing and distributing great content for wine lovers. Theres no better home for the Sip Trip series, my passion project for the past 3 years. - Jeff Porter, Sip Trip host and producer Sip Trip, Italy (http://www.siptripitaly.com), the video road trip through Italys best wineries and wine regions, will debut on SOMM TV on October 1st. Sip Trip host and producer, Jeff Porter, and Jason Wise, SOMM TV producer and founder, announced the partnership today. We love fun and informative video content about wine, and we love Jeff, said Jason. Like a glass of Chianti Classico and Bistecca alla Fiorentina, this is a perfect pairing. Jeff added, SOMM TV is the leader in producing and distributing great content for wine lovers. Theres no better home for the Sip Trip series, my passion project for the past 3 years. In total, there are 14 episodes of Sip Trip, Italy, averaging approximately 20 minutes each; they will be released weekly on SOMM TV. Episodes will be released with Closed Caption and, in the coming weeks, will be translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Italian to serve the global SOMM TV audience. The first three episodes are: 1. Bubbles. The world is a lot bubblier than just Champagne. The Sip Trip crew goes from Milan to Venice discovering just what makes Italian bubbles pop. 2. Criss x Cross: Orvieto to Rome to San Benedetto del Tronto to Naples all in 36 hours! Sounds exhausting BUT when Jeff is on a hunt for great food and wine, time is relative. 3. No Borders: Jeff gets a history lesson that spans over a thousand years and learns that vines know no borders. Though governments may draw boundaries, the people, the vines, and the food just don't care. Sip Trip was shot entirely on location in Italy. Jeff and two Somm friends (different friends on four different trips, covering more than 10,000 miles in total) went to over 40 wineries and wine regions from Alto Adige to Sicily, from sipping Trentodoc and snowshoeing in the Dolomites to night hiking up Mount Etna followed by bottles of Etna Rosso. When reviewing the Sip Trip episodes, we immediately recognized the connections Jeff made with the winemakers and his talents as a storyteller, said Jason. We know our audience and we believe they will connect with the show, experiencing Italy through Jeffs wine knowledge, sense of adventure and infectious personality. The concept for Sip Trip is simple: I travel with Sommelier friends to Italys greatest wineries and wine regions, drink great wine, interview interesting people and explore the culture and history of Italy. Were seeking to better understand a people through what they drink; Sip Trip truly is Culture through Beverage, explains Jeff. The tone of Sip Trip is fun and informative while the format is fast-paced and experiential. Jeff and friends tell compelling stories of great wines, estates and regions in their historical and cultural context. Americans love Italy and Italian wine but dont necessarily have the opportunity to explore the places Jeff visited and get to know the people he met, says Sip Trip co-producer, Gino Colangelo. Sip Trip will allow SOMM TV viewers to vicariously experience these beautiful places and leading Italian wine personalities. Added co-producer Marina Nedic, Jeff is the perfect host. He knows wine, he knows Italy and he can talk to wine lovers in terms they can relate to. About SOMM TV http://www.sommtv.com SOMM TV is the first SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) streaming platform and full podcast network in the wine, food, and travel space with exclusive new shows, films, and educational content created from the ground up by the team that made the award-winning SOMM documentary series. SOMM TV is available on every device and smart TV worldwide through our custom app and website. Our podcasts can be found on all major platforms including iTunes and Spotify. Participating Sip Trip Wineries and Wine Marketing Organizations Allegrini, Argiano, Argiolas, Brancaia, Ca del Bosco, Cantina Santadi, Castello di Monsanto, Ciu Ciu, Col d'Orcia, Col Vetoraz, Colpetrone, Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico, Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino, Consorzio Tutela Lugana D.O.C., Consorzio dell'Asti D.O.C.G., Consorzio Barbera dAsti e Vini del Monferrato, Famiglia Cotarella, Fontanafredda, Gagliole, Giovanni Rosso, Graci, Jermann, Masi, Mastroberardino, Michele Chiarlo, Mionetto, Pertinace, Pieropan, Pio Cesare, Planeta, Primosic, Produttori di Manduria, Renato Ratti, Rocca di Frassinello, Roeno, Sella e Mosca, Tasca d'Almerita, Tenuta Sant'Antonio, Tommasi, Tornatore, Torre a Cona, Trento D.O.C., Umani Ronchi, Zenato. About Jeff Porter Originally from Texas, Jeffs passion for wine started while at the University of Texas at Austin. He began his career at Central Market in Austin, Texas. After graduating, Jeff moved to California where he worked as a salesperson for a wholesaler in the Bay Area. His sommelier career began in Napa Valley working at Tra Vigne Ristorante in St. Helena, California. He joined the Bastianich Hospitality Group in 2009 at Osteria Mozza. In 2011 he moved to New York to become the wine director for Del Posto, and in 2014, Jeff became the Beverage Operations Director of the B&B Hospitality Group, overseeing the beverage programs for Babbo, Del Posto, Esca, Lupa, Otto, Babbo Pizzeria & Enoteca in Boston. Most recently, Jeff has joined forces with famed pit master Billy Durney to introduce an all-natural wine program to the Hometown BBQ restaurants in Brooklyn and Miami as well as the newly minted New York Times 1-star restaurant, Red Hook Tavern. A British child has been brought home from Syria as part of a plan to rescue orphans or unaccompanied young people who had been caught up in the war on Isis. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, announced the repatriation of the child on Wednesday. They cannot be named for legal reasons, nor can their mother, who left the UK to join Isis and whose whereabouts are unknown. Mr Raab said on Twitter: "Pleased we have been able to bring home a British child from Syria. As I have said previously, we assess each case carefully. "Safely facilitating the return of orphans or unaccompanied British children, where possible, is the right thing to do." In a statement issued by the Foreign Office, Mr Raab added: "We will take the necessary and secure steps to bring home British unaccompanied or orphaned minors from Syria. "These are children who have experienced the worst horrors of war and bringing them home is the right thing to do." Mr Raab last year told MPs that children rescued from the fighting in northern Syria could be allowed to return home as long as there was "no security threat". Save the Children said at the time that as many as 60 British children remained stranded in appalling conditions in Syria. The charity said on Wednesday that the child had been living at one of its centres in the country. When it was time to leave, Save the Children said the child asked if the others there, of some 20 different nationalities, could join them in Britain. A spokesperson added: Every child saved is a triumph of compassion and this is very welcome news. Were proud to have cared for this child and supported the UK government to bring them home. When the child was rescued, they asked if other children at our centre could come too. "Children in Syria who have fled Isis-held areas are innocent, including those with their mothers. They are swept up in horrific events far beyond their control and their short lives have been full of violence and fear. "The threat to children in these camps is huge. Recently eight children under the age of five died in just five days and coronavirus has reached the camps, raising fears of a devastating outbreak. The UK government can and must bring the remaining British children home to recover in safety. This has never been more urgent and todays good news shows it can be done. Additional reporting by PA SYDNEY/SINGAPORE Qantas Airways Ltd said a seven-hour scenic flight over Australia's Outback and Great Barrier Reef had sold out in 10 minutes, as it joined a growing trend in Asia offering "flights to nowhere" that take off and land at the same airport. Tough border restrictions to keep the coronavirus under control have led to a 97.5% plunge in international travel in the region, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. Many frequent flyers miss getting on planes and airlines including Taiwan's EVA Airways Corp and Japan's ANA Holdings Inc, desperate for revenue and to keep their pilots' licences current, have offered special sightseeing flights. The Qantas flight, in a Boeing Co typically used for long-haul international journeys, will fly at low levels over Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour before landing back in Sydney. Tickets cost between A$787 and A$3,787 ($575 and $2,765) depending on the seating class and the 134 available seats were quickly snapped up, a Qantas spokeswoman said on Thursday. Its probably the fastest selling flight in Qantas history, she said. People clearly miss travel and the experience of flying. If the demand is there, well definitely look at doing more of these scenic flights while we all wait for borders to open. Taiwan's EVA used one of its iconic Hello Kitty livery planes for a special father's day flight last month, while ANA used an Airbus SE AIR.PA A380 that usually flies to Honolulu for a 90-minute flight with a Hawaiian experience on board. Tickets costing $6,888 Taiwan dollars ($236) for a Tigerair Taiwan flight from Taipei that will circle over South Koreas Jeju Island reportedly sold out in four minutes. The price includes a one-year voucher for round-trip tickets from Taiwan to Korea, which can be used after COVID-19 travel bans are lifted. Chen Shu Tze, 44, an engineer from Taipei, said she signed up for the flight because the voucher made it a good deal and she missed being able to travel - especially to South Korea, a favourite destination. The pandemic has a devasting impact on the tourism and airline industry, so I want to help boost the economy, and I miss flying, she told Reuters. All of the countries where the flights are on offer have relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases by global standards. Among other airline stunts, Thai Airways International PCL this month opened a pop-up restaurant on the ground, offering in-flight meals served from airline seats to would-be travellers. Climate concerns Singapore Airlines Ltd is also eyeing scenic flights from next month, the country's Straits Times newspaper reported on Sunday, an idea that received widespread criticism from environmentalists and online commenters. "First, it encourages carbon-intensive travel for no good reason and second, it is merely a stop-gap measure that distracts from the policy and value shifts necessary to mitigate the climate crisis," said awareness group SG Climate Rally. Singapore Airlines said it is considering several initiatives but no final decision has been made on whether to offer sightseeing flights. Qantas said it would pay to offset the carbon emissions on its scenic flight from Sydney, though online critics noted that would not actually reduce emissions. The concept of scenic flights is not new. Antarctica Flights has chartered Qantas jets for scenic flights over Antarctica for 26 years. An Air New Zealand Ltd sightseeing flight over Antarctica in 1979 crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board. ($1 = 1.3695 Australian dollars = 29.1490 Taiwan dollars) DUBLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Movable Walls Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2020-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global movable walls market by revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 11% during the period 2019-2025. The global movable walls market size is forecast to surpass revenues of over $5.4 billion by 2025 and is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period. The market is mainly driven by the development of new buildings and the growth in renovation or replacement activities. Movable walls are used in commercial sectors such as retail, hospitality, recreational facilities, and institutions such as hospitals and educational institutes, government facilities, workspaces, and offices. They are also used to enhance the security of the space and protect against environmental impacts. The global movable walls market share is expected to be largely affected as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, nationwide lockdowns, and several containment policies taken up government agencies across the world. The global market experienced significant growth in 2019, the growing demand for flexible space utilization and the increasing number of flexible workspaces, however, factors such as disruption in the global supply chain, reduced economic growth, macroeconomic slowdown, political volatility, and trade conflicts are likely to impact the demand for movable walls globally. The outbreak of COVID-19 is expected to develop increased opportunities for movable wall systems, especially in the healthcare sector. The use of these systems in healthcare facilities is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period. The highly infectious disease requires effective control to prevent the spread of infection. They can create a flexible condition in hospitals or clinics while ensuring to limit the spread of diseases. The following factors are likely to contribute to the growth of the movable walls market during the forecast period: Green and Sustainable Building Demand for Acoustic Solution Expansion of Co-working Spaces & Need for Flexible Office Increased Flexibility & Ease of Installation The study considers the present scenario of the movable walls market and its market dynamics for the period 2019-2025. It provides a detailed overview of several market growth enablers, restraints, and trends. The report offers both the demand and supply aspect of the market. It profiles and examines leading companies and other prominent ones operating in the market. North America is the fastest-growing market for movable walls. It accounted for shares of over 33% in 2019. However, the region is expected to exceed Europe in terms of total revenue, contributing an estimated 41.97% of revenue by 2025. The global market is highly fragmented with the presence of several global and regional manufacturers. Vendors typically compete on key parameters such as product design, quality, reliability, support services, and price. Rapid technological advancements are adversely affecting vendors as consumers are expecting continuous innovations and upgrades of products. The present scenario is driving vendors to alter and refine their unique value proposition to achieve a strong market presence. Hufcor, Dormakaba, Transwall, Haworth, and Faraone are some major vendors that are dominating the global movable walls market. These vendors have a large set of product offerings with a widespread presence in the global market. Major vendors are adopting innovative technologies to retain their strong market position. Key questions answered in the report: What is the movable walls market size and growth rate during the forecast period? What are the factors impacting the growth of the movable walls market share? Which product/application/region is generating the largest revenues for the North American market? Who are the leading vendors in the global movable walls market, and what are their market shares? What is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the movable walls market? Companies Mentioned Hufcor Dormakaba Transwall Haworth Inc. Faraone Allsteel Movawall System Liko-S ATTACA Parthos Trendway Corporation Accordial Ltd. Style Partitions Franz Nusing Komfort Environamics Inc. Moving Design Ltd For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ba757s About ResearchAndMarkets.com ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com Even though Scientific American had never endorsed a US presidential candidate in the magazines 175-year history, its top editor has said there was little internal debate over a decision to back Democrat Joe Biden. Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth said President Donald Trumps administration was much worse for the scientific community than the magazine had feared. The magazines endorsement was posted online on Tuesday, a day after Trump questioned the science of climate change in relation to the California wildfires. Helmuth said the timing was coincidental and the editorial was written during the past two months. Scientific American said that the evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has basically damaged the United States and its people because he rejects evidence and science. The editorial by senior editor Josh Fischman sharply condemned Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The magazine criticised Trump for seeking cutbacks in scientific funding and hobbling the US response to climate change. Biden, the magazine said, has a record of following the data and being guided by science. There was no immediate reply to a request for comment from the Trump campaign. Theres been some pushback. Conservative columnist SE Cupp tweeted, I do have mixed feelings on whether this is a good use of scientific clout. Bigg Boss season 14 hosted by Salman Khan is all set to go on air on Colors from October 3, 2020 (Saturday). Ever since Bigg Boss 14 premiere promo was released, fans can't keep calm to witness the dhamaka on the small screen. Amidst all, Marathi audiences are also quite excited for the third season of Bigg Boss Marathi. For the unversed, the previous two seasons hosted by director and actor Mahesh Manjrekar had created a solid buzz amongst the masses. But now, it seems like Bigg Boss Marathi 3 has been cancelled due to Salman Khan's Bigg Boss 14. Well, Bigg Boss Marathi 3 and Bigg Boss 14 share the same set which has been built in Filmicity, Mumbai. But this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the makers of Bigg Boss Marathi had postponed the show and it is now clashing with Hindi Bigg Boss. Hence, they are said to have cancelled the third season. It's also being heard that the makers have given preference to Salman Khan's Bigg Boss 14 (Hindi) owing to its buzz. After all, Bigg Boss 13 broke all TRP records last year. Hence, fans were very excited for the 14th season. However, there is no official confirmation from the makers of Bigg Boss Marathi yet. Also Read : Bigg Boss 14 Makers Announce Premiere Date With New Promo; Fans Excited To Watch Salman's Show Talking about the show, Bigg Boss Marathi season 1 and 2 was won by Megha Dhade and Shiv Thakare, respectively. The show has entertained Marathi audiences with a lot of controversies as well as love angles. Colors Marathi had re-run Bigg Boss Marathi 2 earlier this year, and now, they have started re-telecasting the 1st season. Also Read : Bigg Boss 14 Contestants: YouTubers CarryMinati And Kanchana 3's Nikki Tamboli To Enter The House? The news is quite heartbreaking for Bigg Boss Marathi fans, but we have to wait for the channel's official confirmation! Prohibitory orders restricting movement of people have been extended in Mumbai till September 30 in view of rising coronavirus cases, an official said on Thursday. The restrictions under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure are in place since lockdown began. They were extended as per the August 31 guidelines about easing of lockdown of the Maharashtra government, and no new restrictions have been imposed, the official said. Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray tweeted urging people to not panic as the order issued by Mumbai Police was just an extension of the previous order and not fresh restrictions. NO need to PANICThe order issued under section 144 CrPC is only an extension of the previous order issued on 31st August.No new restrictions have been imposed by @MumbaiPolice . Please share and dont panic. #Section144 #Mumbai Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) September 17, 2020 Thackeray tweeted this after the Mumbai police extended their orders issued under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure till September end. Thackeray said it was mere continuation of the previous order of August 31. The current prohibition on presence or movement in public places under Section 144 CrPC is an extension of the previous prohibitory order. No new restrictions have been imposed. All exemptions as per government of Maharashtra guidelines to continue," the Mumbai Police later clarified in a tweet. Turkish and Russian officials have met to discuss the safety of the patrols and the persistent dangers in the northwestern province of Idleb reports Al-Masdar. Russian and Turkish military leaders in Syria met in the northwestern part of the country on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing situation. According to a field source, the two sides discussed the deteriorating ceasefire inside Idleb Governorate and the safety of their patrols along the M4 highway (Aleppo-Lattakia). At the same time, the Syrian army and rebels have traded attacks in the southern countryside of Idleb Governorate, resulting in casualties on both sides. The clashes in southern Idleb first broke out last night, when jihadist rebels launched an attack along the frontlines in the Jabal al-Zawiya region. Prior to the clashes, the Russian Air Force launched their largest attack in several months over Idleb Governorate, targeting jihadist positions north of the administrative capital. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. A United States Congressional report blames the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes on the manufacturers design and the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) approval process. The 737 MAX was grounded in March 2019 several days after an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, killing 157 people. Five months earlier, a Lion Air 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia. All 189 passengers and crew were killed. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee wrote in the report that the crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event. It said, Boeing failed in its design and development of the MAX, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft. Pete DeFazio is the Transportation Committee Chairman. He said, This is a tragedy that never should have happened. DeFazio told reporters, Were going to take steps in our legislation to see that it never happens again as we reform the system. Boeing said in a statement that it learned many hard lessons as a company from the accidents ... and from the mistakes we have made. It said it had cooperated fully with the House committee and that it has since followed experts advice on engineering and testing of the plane. The FAA said it would work with the lawmakers to put in place improvements identified in the report. The investigation The House released the report Wednesday after an 18-month investigation into the crashes. It identified five problems with the design and approval process for the 737 MAX. First, it said Boeing cut costs during production in order to compete with a new plane from Airbus. Second, it said Boeing made false assumptions about the airplanes software, designed to prevent aerodynamic stalls. In the two crashes, the software repeatedly forced the nose of the airplane down as pilots struggled to keep the planes in the air. Many pilots were not informed about the software. Yet, the report said Boeing expected that pilots would be able to deal with the safety issues. Third, the committee found that Boeing hid software information from the FAA, the airlines and 737 MAX pilots to avoid any requirements for additional pilot training. Investigators found that under a 2011 contract with Southwest Airlines, Boeing would have had to cut its airplane sale price by $1 million if more pilot training were required. That drove a whole lot of really bad decisions internally at Boeing, and also the FAA did not pick up on these things, DeFazio said. Fourth, the report found that Boeing employees failed to warn the FAA of possible safety issues. And, finally, lawmakers reported that Boeings influence over the FAA approval process led the agency to make poor decisions. It said FAA management overruled its own technical and safety experts in support of Boeing. DeFazio said, Our report gives Congress a roadmap on the steps we must take to reinforce aviation safety and regulatory transparency, increase Federal oversight, and improve corporate accountability to help ensure the story of the Boeing 737 MAX is never, ever repeated. The United States House of Representatives is controlled by the Democratic Party. DeFazio said the transportation committee is working with the Republican-controlled Senate on new legislation. At the same time, Boeing is testing new flight control software for the MAX, hoping to get approval to fly the plane again later this year or early 2021. I'm Caty Weaver. Hai Do wrote this story for Learning English with additional reporting from the Associated Press and Reuters. Caty Weaver was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story mismanage - v. to control or manage badly oversight - n. the act or job of directing work that is being done certification - n. official approval assumption - n. something that is believed to be true but that is not known to be true aerodynamic - adj. regarding how objects move through the air stall - n. sudden stop internally - adv. coming from the inside The government on Wednesday said that it has asked district authorities to strengthen COVID care facilities at the local level, but did not put any ban on the movement of patients to and The government's clarification came in the wake of criticism from various quarters, including the opposition BJP and Congress, which said that patients should not be discouraged from visiting and as the best of medical facilities are available in the two cities. "The government is not banning movement of patients to and It's regulating their movement to ensure that they travel safe and with proper medical advice and logistics," Chief Secretary A K Tripathy said in a statement. In a bid to reduce the extra load on medical facilities in the state capital following surge of cases, the government on Tuesday asked district authorities to strengthen COVID care facilities and to refer less number of patients to hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, P K Mohapatra said that the order was issued to ensure proper care during inter-facility transfer of critically ill patients. "We have received grievances from different quarters. The state government has no intention to restrict people from districts getting treatment in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. The people in districts too have equal rights on availing good treatment in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack," he said. Mohapatra said that district authorities have been told to strengthen their critical care facilities and ensure that movement of critical patients is made in a proper manner with all logistics. More training should be imparted at the grassroot level and district level hospitals, so that patient management is accurate and referral should be reduced, Mohapatra had said in a letter to all district magistrates-cum collectors and commissioners of municipal corporations. Patients insisting on being referred to Bhubaneswar and Cuttack should be counselled and dissuaded, as there is life risk in transport, he had said. Patients in transit should be accompanied by emergency medical technician, he said, adding that unless stable, they should not be transported, the letter said. It said that in order to decrease the load on ICU, there should be step-down ICUs and the patients, who have become stable in ICU, should be shifted to step-down ICU or HDU or Semi ICU beds. He said that the number of dialysis beds, maternity beds, oncology beds and trauma beds should be increased for COVID patients, especially in peripheral facilities. However, opposition parties have criticised the move. Leader of the opposition P K Naik of the BJP said that there should not be any restriction on movement of patients to the twin cities. "It is not proper to discourage patients from visiting Bhubaneswar and Cuttack where the best of medical facilities are available," said Congress MLA Taraprasad Bahinipati. The opposition parties also slammed the state government for its order to district authorities for closing down COVID Care Centres, COVID Care Homes and Temporary Medical Centres due to inadequate patients in the facilities. (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 Mayflower Autonomous Ship during a special ceremony to mark its launch in Plymouth south west England on Sept. 16, 2020. (Susie Blann/AP) High-Tech UKUS Ship Launched on 400th Mayflower Anniversary PLYMOUTH, EnglandWith a splash of Plymouth gin, the U.S. ambassador to Britain officially launched a ship named Mayflower on Sept. 16, 400 years to the day after a wooden vessel with that name sailed from an English port and changed the history of two continents. Unlike the merchant ship that carried a group of European Puritan settlers to a new life across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, the Mayflower christened by U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson has no crew or passengers. It will cross the sea powered by sun and wind, and steered by artificial intelligence. Johnson said the high-tech ship, developed jointly by UK-based marine research organization ProMare and U.S. tech giant IBM, showed that the pioneering spirit of the Mayflower really lives on in the trans-Atlantic partnership. Were heading out with the same spirit of adventure and determination and vision for the future as the original colonists, the American diplomat said at a ceremony also attended by the head of the Royal Navy, Adm. Tony Radakin, and Dutch Ambassador Karel van Oosterom. Like the Mayflower in 1620, the new vessel will travel from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, but on a marine research trip rather than a colony-founding journey. The coronavirus pandemic has delayed its trip until the spring of 2021. The ships launch in Plymouth, 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of London, is part of Mayflower commemorations disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. They involve British, American, and Dutch institutions (many of the 17th-century Pilgrims had fled England for Holland in the years before the voyage), and the Wampanoag people, who had lived for millennia in what is now New England. In 1620, the Wampanoag helped the exhausted Mayflower settlers survive their first winter. But soon colonial expansion, conflict, and new diseases were having a devastating impact on North Americas indigenous peoples. Wampanoag stories have been marginalized on past Mayflower anniversaries, but they are playing a big part in events and exhibitions this time around. Its going a long way to lend balance to this story, said Paula Peters, a Wampanoag writer and educator who has helped create anniversary exhibitions, including an opening later this month at The Box museum in Plymouth. We dont expect people to take one side or the other, Peters said. But certainly the story of the Mayflower is one that really cant be told without telling also the story of the Wampanoag. The Mayflower voyage plays a central role in American history but is less studied in Britain. Charles Hackett, chief executive of Britains Mayflower 400 events, said he has been surprised at how much the story really resonates and is important to different communities in the UK, from the towns that nurtured the Puritans to Harwich, the eastern England port where the Mayflower was built. He thinks the 17th-century voyage, with people desperately crossing oceans, also strikes a chord with many in our era of a global pandemic, climate crisis, and mass migration. While half the Mayflowers passengers were religious dissenters, the rest were economic migrants, he said. The Mayflower Autonomous Shipits creators decided against a snappier nameis intended to be the first in a new generation of crewless high-tech vessels that can explore parts of oceans too difficult or dangerous for people to reach. Andy Stanford-Clark, chief technology officer for IBM UK and Ireland, said the ships launch is a very exciting stage of the journey towards autonomous shipping that could pave the way for AI-driven cargo ships, water taxis, and research vesselsas well as warships. Radakin, the British navy chief, said he was excited by the potential of automation to increase our availability, our sustainability, and our lethality. The 50-foot (15-meter) trimaran will undertake six months of sea trials and short trips before setting out on its trans-Atlantic trip to measure ocean health: assessing the impact of climate change, measuring micro-plastic pollution, and studying populations of whales and dolphins. Along the way, its AI captain will have to make complex decisions in response to wind, waves, vessels, and unknown surprises. Were quietly confident were going to make it, Stanford-Clark said. Ultimately, the sea will decide. Sept. 16s event on Plymouths seafront, yards from where the Mayflower passengers embarked in 1620, was deliberately low-key to prevent large crowds from gathering in breach of social distancing rules. Repeated reminders about hand sanitizer and masks slightly undermined the grandeur of the occasion. But the Mayflower is woven into the fabric of Britains chief naval city, and hundreds of people gathered along the seawall to watch the sleek new ship leave harbor. Retired teacher Richard Jackelman said he could remember as a boy joining a 350th-anniversary parade dressed as a Pilgrim and making money off the many American tourists who came to town. I used to sell bits of concrete here as a kid, saying that the Pilgrim Fathers had sat on itand the Americans would buy it! he said. Jackelman is proud of Plymouths association with the Mayflower, which he thinks epitomizes a British spirit of adventure. Hes sorry to see events disrupted because of the pandemic. The anniversary means a lot, he said. It was going to be such a wonderful year. By Jill Lawless EDENVILLE, MI -- The state is moving forward with needed repairs after the devastating failure of the Edenville Dam. Michigans Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) has issued an emergency work order to Edenville Dam owner Boyce Hydro. The order is to partially breach the Edenville Dams Tobacco River spillway. This is intended to improve the stability of the Tobacco River portion of the Edenville Dam. We dont want residents who live downstream to face another devastating flood," said EGLE Director Liesl Clark. "Boyce needs to step up and do whats right for the community and property owners, make sure that no further damage is done to natural resources and allow for critical infrastructure work. While the order requires Boyce Hydro to do the work, the state has already said it doesnt anticipate the serially delinquent company to make the repairs. Theyve not had one deadline or met one milestone that weve asked, Clark said during a Sept. 1 press conference announcing the work plans and that an emergency order was likely. Attorney for Boyce Hydro Lawrence Kogan said the state is trying to bypass the courts and rule of law, preferring instead to rely upon its kangaroo agency administrative process to secure a procedural advantage. The agency has issued an emergency dictate against Boyce without ever having established via scientific or engineering evidence, that the Tobacco side of the Edenville Dam poses an immediate/urgent public safety risk, he said in an email to MLive. If Boyce Hydro does not make the repairs itself, the state will move forward without the company and then seek to recoup the costs later, which could prove difficult. Boyce Hydro, LLC and Boyce Hydro Power, LLC, both owned by Lee Mueller, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early August. The emergency work order requires Boyce Hydro to immediately hire a contractor to do the work and send EGLE proof of a contract by Sept. 21. The company also has to complete applications for permits by Sept. 25, and start construction on the project by Oct. 19. In May, a flood triggered by heavy rains and the failure of the Edenville and Sanford dams largely wiped out the village of Sanford, and flooded parts of downtown Midland and beyond. Midland County officials have estimated that the flooding caused upwards of $209 million in damage. About 10,000 residents were forced to evacuate the region and five impacted counties, Midland, Saginaw, Gladwin, Arenac and Iosco, estimated that more than 3,700 properties were damaged, many without flood insurance. The Edenville Dam is still listed as a high hazard dam meaning that if it fails, it could result in severe damage downstream and possibly result in casualties. The work order is a way to relieve pressure from water held back by the Tobacco River side of the dam and return the Tobacco River back to its natural path. It would also allow for the repair of the destroyed M-30 causeway bridge, EGLE said in a release. The continued rerouting of the Tobacco River is delaying necessary safety measures and fixes that are important to stabilize the area affected by the Edenville Dams failure, Clark said. There are currently several ongoing investigations. An independent forensic investigation will look into what caused the dams to fail and who is responsible. There will also be a review of the states dam safety operations, performed by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials and the new Michigan Dam Safety Task Force will provide recommendations to the state on how to limit risks going forward. Ahead of the dam safety operations review, the state announced that it was hiring a third dam safety engineer. More From MLive: Fair fight bills would alter clock on PFAS lawsuits in Michigan Mystery celebrity awarded $500K by Michigan judge in revenge porn extortion case Coronavirus cases more than tripled among Michigan residents under age 25 since July 5 Brooklyn, NY- After his pot-smoking father rolled onto him while they were sleeping in the same bed, it resulted in the death of the four-month-old baby based in an inquest heard. The said incident occurred in September of last year in Brooklyn wherein Tragic Isaac Newton was discovered lifeless with blood running around his nose by his distraught father at that time. After realizing what happened to his four-month-old baby, Mr. Newton ran frantically around his home shouting and even screaming for help. Because of what he witnessed, he even attempted to perform CPR on his baby, The Sun reported. Despite the efforts of rushing the little boy to the Blackpool Victoria Hospital still, the four-month-old boy was pronounced dead. An officer shared the inquest into the death of the youngster that the father stated to the cops that it is his fault. Read also: TikTok Star Adil Rajput's Wife Fakes Husband's Death as a Ploy to Increase Followers When he was examined for a drug test, the system of Mr. Newton contains the evidence of prescribed medication and cannabis but the said discovered evidence is not enough to warrant Mr. Newton for criminal charges. Before joining his little boy in bed to sleep, Mr. Newton had smoked cannabis after he put Isaac to bed wherein the little boy was surrounded by pillows. According to New York Daily News, Dr. Alison Armor examined the body and ran a postmortem examination to the body of Isaac wherein she had found that the little boy had been dead for some hours and was lying face down the bed when he was discovered. She also mentioned that it was unlikely Isaac had rolled into a face-down position on his own. Even the family of the little boy shared that he was not able to roll over yet. During the hearing, Dr. Armor shared that the cause of death was due to overlaying, which only occurs when the weight of an adult body overlays the body of the four-month-old baby. She also added that the effects of this on the abdominal region and the chest prevent the baby from breathing. Doctor Armor also mentioned that it is exacerbated by the presence of drugs or alcohol and in this case, the cannabis levels in the father indicated previous cannabis use. Despite both parents being warned for sleeping together with their son as it is dangerous. The court heard that Isaac sleeps most of the time together with his parents who live in Preston. After handing down the conclusion that what happened was an accidental death, coroner Alan Wilson shared that this is a very upsetting set of circumstances. He also added that during the course of the evening, Isaac's father had smoked some cannabis and it is possible that having one joint of cannabis did impair him. The coroner, Mr. Wilson also mentioned that he is planning to write a letter to the Department of Health and local children's services in order to raise concerns regarding the unsafe ways during sleeping and the incident must be an eye-opener to everyone that we must always ensure the safety of the kids. Related article: Pedestrian Dead After Being Ran Over by South Dakota Attorney General Who Initially Reported Hitting a Deer @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Criminals found guilty of conspiring to carry out gangland murders face up to life in prison under new laws which will increase the maximum prison sentence for the crime. Since the outbreak of the Hutch/Kinahan feud, gardai have foiled over 60 murder bids which has led to an increase in the number of people before the courts charged with conspiracy to murder. However, the current legislation dating back to 1861 fixes a 10-year jail term as the most severe punishment on conviction. It has meant that criminals intercepted on their way to carry out gangland killings, and those directing murder plots, have received sentences averaging between six and eight years. Expand Close Justice Minister Helen McEntee. Photo: Julien Behal / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Justice Minister Helen McEntee. Photo: Julien Behal However, a new bill being drafted by Justice Minister Helen McEntee will increase the maximum sentence to life imprisonment on conviction. Ms McEntee has secured approval from Government colleagues to draft the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020 which will update the law and give judges more leeway to impose severe sentences. "Criminals have been intercepted and prevented from murdering people thanks to the good work of An Garda Siochana," she said. "The fact that the gardai are doing their job effectively and arresting criminals who are determined to murder should not make conspiracy to murder a lesser offence. The seriousness of the crime must be reflected in the sentence our judges can impose," the Justice Minister added. Until recent years, suspects were rarely charged with murder conspiracy because of the difficulties involved in preventing the crime before it was carried out. But that has now changed and it has become a major weapon in the fight against gangland criminals since the eruption of the Kinahan-Hutch feud with the Regency Hotel attack in Dublin in 2016. Ireland's maximum sentence for the crime is at the lower end of the European scale - Britain amended its legislation to increase it to life imprisonment in 1977. The 10-year sentence, usually reduced by the courts if the accused pleads guilty, has been a source of frustration to the gardai, particularly those involved in the war on gangland crime. Kinahan associate Luke Wilson was jailed for six years last year for conspiring to murder a rival linked to the Hutch faction while he was given an 11-year sentence for possession of the handgun, which gardai said was to have been used in the planned shooting. Kinahan hitman Imre Arakas also received a six-year sentence in the Special Criminal Court last year when he pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder James 'Mago' Gately. In April, the non-jury court found that senior cartel associate Liam Brannigan directed a conspiracy to murder drug dealer Gary Hanley and jailed him for eight years. The sentences they serve could be reduced further with remission of a quarter of the jail stretch for good behaviour in prison. Separately, a six-year sentence was also handed down in 2008 to Sharon 'Lying Eyes' Collins, from Ennis, Co Clare, and her hired accomplice, Essam Eid, who had a contract to kill her partner and his two sons. She was jailed for soliciting Eid to kill the three intended victims and subsequently lost an appeal against the conviction with the court rejecting all 23 grounds of her case. Collins was released from Mountjoy prison in 2012 after serving three years and nine months of the six-year sentence. Lead Crown attorney Andrew Sabbadini wasted no time trying to shake Michael Durants claims of innocence in his first-degree murder trial. Sabbadini used police wiretaps of conversations between Durant and his ex-wife, Dana Arnold, while Durant was in jail at Niagara Detention Centre on another charge. Sabbadini played short segments of the wiretaps and then followed up with rapid-fire questions. Durant, for his part, repeatedly challenged Sabbadini. Dont stand up here and try to twist what I said, and what I meant, Durant said, his voice rising. You have been doing that for 17 years. Durants lawyer, Joe Wilkinson, is defending his client by trying to show the victims ex-boyfriend, John McNeil, is the killer. McNeil died in 2005. A publication ban protects the 32-year-old victims name. She is being referred to as DD during the trial. Her body was found in a rural area between Niagara Falls and Welland in the summer of 2003. Sabbadini asserted the conversations suggest Durant and his wife were panicking under the pressure of police investigation. Im going to suggest you are wrong, Durant said. The police were putting pressure on Dana and I wanted her to be safe, and our daughter to be safe. You were concerned because you and Dana killed (DD), Sabbadini said. No, Durant said. Johnny killed (DD) in my garage. We werent talking about (DD). They were looking at me for five murders at the time. Not one. Not two. Five. We are talking about Ms. Arnold being arrested, Sabbadini said. We dont need to talk about the other murders. Last year, the Court of Appeal overturned Durants conviction from his 2012 trial. The trial was moved to Kitchener because of pretrial publicity. Superior Court Justice Gerald Taylor delayed the start of Durants testimony so police and court staff could figure out how best to have Durant testify. Sgt. Jodie Chessell of Waterloo Regional Police told Taylor there were issues with Mr. Durant in custody that could result in charges. Police wanted Durant in leg shackles because of the risk to court personnel. Some of these events go back a few days, Wilkinson said, but I cant recall anything that Mr. Durant has done in the courtroom that hasnt been fairly exemplary. Its probably not a shock someone incarcerated for years, subject to transport and locked down during COVID-19 might have some occasion to run into conflict. I would like him to be able to testify as unencumbered as possible. Sabbadini told Taylor he would be more comfortable if he were in leg shackles given his feelings toward the officer and me. Im not saying I think anything will happen, but I would be more comfortable if he were shackled. Taylor made an order that Durant testify in leg shackles, but without handcuffs. Two special constables now accompany Durant during proceedings. A police constable sits in the gallery. Durant is always neatly dressed in a suit jacket with his long hair pulled back tightly. He watches the proceedings intently and confers quietly with his attorney when necessary. Flight doesnt appear to be a concern, but he is charged with first-degree murder, Taylor said for the record. I cant bury my head in the sand not to be aware of certain out-of-court incidents that have resulted in delays in these trial proceedings. It appears to me there have been times when Mr. Durants conduct has been less than exemplary. PUNE Pune rural police have arrested a man for posing as Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and calling a 17-year-old boy. The teenage complainant is a resident of Khadki, Daund. He works at a local restaurant and comes from a poor family, according to the police. The arrested accused (name not disclosed) was produced in a local court on Thursday, according to senior inspector Sunil Mahadik of Daund police station who is investigating the case. The 17-year-old and his paternal cousin sister are locked in a land dispute case with the latter wanting to sell their land against the wishes of the former. The accused knew about the situation and took advantage of it, said Mahadik. The accused called the teenager and asked him to withdraw from the land dispute, according to the complainant. He says he did it for fun. There are voice clips on the internet of the deputy CM calling people and solving matters directly. He probably heard one of those and decided to mock the complainant, said Mahadik. A case under Sections 170 (personating a public servant) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of Indian Penal Code is registered at Daund police station against the man. The stellar wind of R Aquilae resembles the structure of rose petals. Credit: L. Decin, ESO/ALMA Astronomers have presented an explanation for the shapes of planetary nebulae. The discovery is based on a set of observations of stellar winds around aging stars. Contrary to common consensus, the team found that stellar winds are not spherical, but have a shape similar to that of planetary nebulae. The team concludes that interaction with an accompanying star or exoplanet shapes both the stellar winds and planetary nebulae. The findings were published in Science. Dying stars swell and cool to eventually become red giants. They produce stellar winds, flows of particles that the star expels, which causes them to lose mass. Because detailed observations were lacking, astronomers have always assumed that these winds were spherical, like the stars they surround. As the star evolves further, it heats up again and the stellar radiation causes the expanding ejected layers of stellar material to glow, forming a planetary nebula. For centuries, astronomers were in the dark about the extraordinary variety of colorful shapes of planetary nebulae that had been observed. The nebulae all seem to have a certain symmetry but are almost never round. "The sunwhich will ultimately become a red giantis as round as a billiard ball, so we wondered: How can such a star produce all these different shapes?" says corresponding author Leen Decin (KU Leuven). Her team observed stellar winds around cool red giant stars with the ALMA Observatory in Chile, the largest radio telescope in the world. For the first time ever, they gathered a large, detailed collection of observations, each of them made using the exact same method. This was crucial to be able to directly compare the data and exclude biases. What the astronomers saw, surprised them. "We noticed these winds are anything but symmetrical or round," Professor Decin says. "Some of them are actually quite similar in shape to planetary nebulae." Professor Leen Decin (KU Leuven) discusses how her team discovered an explanation for the mesmerising shapes of planetary nebulae. Their discovery is based on an extraordinary set of observations of stellar winds around ageing stars. The team found that stellar winds have a shape similar to that of planetary nebulae and concluded that interaction with an accompanying star or exoplanet shapes both the stellar winds and planetary nebulae. Credit: KU Leuven Companions The astronomers could even identify different categories of shapes. "Some stellar winds were disk-shaped, others contained spirals, and in a third group, we identified cones." This is a clear indication that the shapes weren't created randomly. The team realized that other, low-mass stars or even heavy planets in the vicinity of the dying star were causing the different patterns. These companions are too small and dim to detect directly. "Just like how a spoon that you stir in a cup of coffee with some milk can create a spiral pattern, the companion sucks material towards it as it revolves around the star and shapes the stellar wind," Decin explains. This image gallery of stellar winds around cool ageing stars shows a variety of morphologies, including disks, cones, and spirals. The blue colour represents material that is coming towards you; red is material that is moving away from you. Credit: L. Decin, ESO/ALMA The team put this theory into models, and indeed: the shape of the stellar winds can be explained by the companions that surround them, and the rate at which the cool evolved star is losing its mass due to the stellar wind is an important parameter. Decin: "All our observations can be explained by the fact that the stars have a companion." Up until now, calculations about the evolution of stars were based on the assumption that aging sun-like stars have stellar winds that are spherical. "Our findings change a lot. Since the complexity of stellar winds was not accounted for in the past, any previous mass-loss rate estimate of old stars could be wrong by up to a factor of 10." The team is now doing further research to see how this might impact calculations of other crucial characteristics of stellar and galactic evolution. Credit: KU Leuven The future of the sun The study also helps to envision what the sun might look like when it dies in 7000 million years. "Jupiter or even Saturnbecause they have such a big massare going to influence whether the sun spends its last millennia at the heart of a spiral, a butterfly, or any of the other entrancing shapes we see in planetary nebulae today," Decin notes. "Our calculations now indicate that a weak spiral will form in the stellar wind of the old dying sun." "We were very excited when we explored the first images," says co-author Miguel Montarges (KU Leuven). "Each star, which was only a number before, became an individual by itself. Now, to us, they have their own identity. This is the magic of having high-precision observations: stars are no longer just points anymore." The study is part of the ATOMIUM project, which aims to learn more about the physics and chemistry of old stars. "Cool aging stars are considered to be boring, old and simple, but we now prove that they are not: they tell the story of what comes after. It took us some time to realize that stellar winds can have the shape of rose petals (see, for example, the stellar wind of R Aquilae), but, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery said in his book Le Petit Prince: "C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose, qui fait ta rose si importante." ("It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.") Explore further Stellar wind of old stars reveals existence of a partner More information: L. Decin el al., "(Sub)stellar companions shape the winds of evolved stars," Science (2020). Journal information: Science L. Decin el al., "(Sub)stellar companions shape the winds of evolved stars,"(2020). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi 1126/science.abb1229 (Natural News) An unprecedented number of migratory birds have been dropping dead in southern New Mexico over the last few weeks. Wildlife experts are still uncertain what caused the die-off, but its posited that the extreme weather conditions in the western United States may have forced birds to migrate before theyre ready. Martha Desmond, an ecologist at the New Mexico State University (NMSU), said that many birds were discovered dead at the White Sands Missile Range and the White Sands National Monument in August. The discovery was ruled an isolated incident until similar reports came in from other locations statewide, including Dona Ana County, Jemez Pueblo, Roswell and Socorro. Weve never seen anything like this Were losing probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of migratory birds, said Desmond. On Saturday, about 300 bird carcasses were found at Knox Hall at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Residents also reported the day before that birds were exhibiting odd behavior and gathering in large groups before dying. Desmond is working with a team of biologists to determine the cause of the deaths, although she suspected that drought conditions and the fires in the West might have forced birds, which were all migratory species, into early migration. Fires, drought may have caused bird die-off The affected birds include warblers, swallows, blackbirds, sparrows, flycatchers and the western wood pewee. Most of them were insectivores, though some birds were also seed eaters. Desmond bemoaned the die-off, as the populations of some of these species have already gone down in previous years. In fact, a recent study found that the number of North American birds declined by three billion in the last 50 years. About 90 percent of the losses affected 12 bird families, including sparrows, warblers and swallows. Trish Cutler, a wildlife biologist at the White Sands Missile Range, said that none of the birds dying were local mainstays in New Mexico. According to Cutler, We have resident birds that live here, some of them migrate and some of them dont, but were not getting birds like roadrunners or quail or doves. She added that several reports described the birds looking sleepy and weak. They also had just molted, in which the birds replaced their feathers in preparation for migration. She said that the birds likely got in trouble after they started their migratory route; to molt, Cutler explained, birds have to be healthy. Other biologists also suspected that the birds fled the wildfires and the drought conditions in the western United States but were not yet ready to migrate. Desmond explained that birds need to store a certain amount of fat to survive each leg of their migration journey. They usually travel for three straight nights before coming down to feed like crazy and put on more fat. Then, they resume their flight. Furthermore, the birds might have had suffered direct damage to their lungs, according to Desmond. Its also possible that the cold snap that passed through the state last week contributed to their death. (Related: Lethal pesticides responsible for killing hundreds of birds, including parrots and cranes.) Desmond is collaborating with wildlife experts from the Bureau of Land Management, the NMSU and the White Sands Missile Range to determine what caused the die-off. Meanwhile, some carcasses were recently sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Oregon for further analysis. People who find a group of avian carcasses are encouraged to report their findings through the iNaturalist app. If possible, they can also collect the birds by using gloves or a bag, said Desmond. We dont advocate touching the birds with their hands. Bag them, double bag them and put them in the freezer. Extinction.news has more on mysterious animal deaths. Sources include: StrangeSounds.org MedicalNewsToday.com Lucknow: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Thursday that the problem of unemployment was not a political issue, but a humanitarian one and promised to extend all possible help in the matter. Holding a video conference with around 50 youths, who hailed from different districts of Uttar Pradesh and had cleared the test for teaching posts but have not got their appointment, Priyanka Gandhi said it was her belief that the government would have to listen to the voice of the youth. We will have to fight from the roads to the legislature. The Congress is not going to back out on this," a party release quoted Priyanka Gandhi as saying. This is not a political issue for us, but a humanitarian matter. This is a question of justice." The Congress general secretary assured the youth that her party would extend all possible help in this matter. The video conference, which lasted for over one-and-a-half hour, was attended by over 50 youths, state Congress media convenor Lalan Kumar said, adding that event was a part of the dialogue over unemployment. Speaking to Priyanka Gandhi, a woman candidate said she had given the exam in 2016 and was happy on her selection, but has still to get appointment. The woman said she had faced depression for two years and her family was facing immense hardships because of this. One of the youths said he was somehow earning his livelihood by giving tuition, but that has also stopped because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, while another said his marriage was called off as he did not get the job. The youths said they worked hard and performed well in the exam, but the government is continuously changing rules", according to the statement. During the interaction, Priyanka Gandhi also sought their views over reports that the state government was mulling a five-year contractual service for employees of Group B and C. PTI SAB HMB 09171448 NNNN. 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 elderly parents of a disabled man who disappeared almost 30 years ago have been arrested on suspicion of his murder. Steven Clark, aged 23 at the time, was last seen using toilets near Saltburn Pier in Yorkshire during a family trip to the seaside on 28 December 1992. A missing persons report said Mr Clark entered the mens toilets while his mother went into the womens at the same time, but there was no sign of him coming out, and he did not return to the family home in nearby Marske. His parents Doris, 81, and Charles, 78, who were arrested and later bailed, confirmed their detention, describing it as absolutely ludicrous. Mrs Clark said that she and her husband absolutely denied murdering their son and added that being on bail was horrendous. She reported Steven missing on the day of his disappearance but was told to wait 72 hours in case he had left of his own accord. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA Police officers from the Cleveland and North Yorkshire cold case unit reopened an investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance earlier this year. Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Page said there were many question marks over the case. As a result of our initial reinvestigation and the fact that there is no proof of life, we believe that Steven has come to harm, he said. I appreciate that were asking people to think back to the 1990s, but there may be people who knew Steven and have information that may prove vital to this case. I would urge them to come forward. Steven walked with a pronounced limp as a result of a childhood road accident, which also left him with other impairments. Shortly before he went missing, he was named apprentice of the year at the Rathbone Society in Redcar, which worked with people with disabilities to improve their employment skills. Additional reporting by Press Association A 63- year old British drowned in Corfu in latest tragedy involving a UK tourist on the island. His body was recovered from Issos beach, in South Corfu, Greece, today. Leukimi port authorities have launched an investigation on the scene. The 63- year old's body was recovered from Issos beach in South Corfu, Greece Earlier this month two more Britons died on the island, a mother-of-four was killed by a speedboat in Avlaki beach and a 27-year-old man drowned off Kerasia beach. Claire Glatman, 60, from Bedale, North Yorkshire, waved for help after being hit by a 'speeding water-ski' vessel. The 27- year old was swimming several hundred feet from the shore of Kerasia beach in northeastern Corfu, when he was seen struggling in the water, Corfu Press reports. The Donald Trump administration is hoping to upgrade its partnership with Qatar to the status of "non-NATO ally," a senior State Department official said Thursday. We're going to move ahead, we hope, with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Arabian Gulf Affairs Timothy Lenderking said on a call with reporters. Spokespeople for the State Department and for Qatar's government did not immediately return Al-Monitors request for comment. Reuters first reported the officials statement. Qatar houses the largest US military base in the Middle East, al-Udeid, at which some 10,000 US troops are typically present. The potential partnership upgrade would put Qatar on the same footing with Kuwait and Bahrain, home to the US Navys Fifth Fleet. Earlier this week, US officials and their Qatari counterparts concluded this years strategic dialogue. The discussions in Doha centered on the two countries economic and defense partnerships as well as opportunities for regional cooperation and mechanisms for the defeating of malign actors arrayed against us, said Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani. The dialogue came amid a simultaneous push led by the White House to convince Arab leaders to normalize ties with Israel ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed an agreement with Israel, with the United States as the guarantor, at the White House earlier this week. Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia and Sudan, have not expressed immediate interest. We dont think that normalization was the core of this conflict and hence it cant be the answer, Qatars Deputy Foreign Minister Lolwah Alkhater said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. The core of this conflict is about the drastic conditions that the Palestinians are living under as people without a country, living under occupation. The State Departments Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker said last week that there has been some movement on repairing the rift between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors that has left Qatar blockaded since 2017. Schenker said during an event in Washington that he hoped to see progress toward resolving the dispute in the next few weeks. The US Department of Justice said Monday it would require AJ+, the Washington-based online video affiliate of Qatars Al Jazeera news network, to register as a foreign-funded agent that engages in political activities on Dohas behalf. In a statement to The New York Times, Al Jazeera accused the UAE of requesting the DOJs move, a charge Emirati Ambassador to the United States Yusuf Al Otaiba denied. By Akbar Mammadov A trespasser crossing the Azerbaijani border from Iran was killed and other one escaped during the armed incident near southern Beylagan region, Azerbaijan's State Border Service (SBS) press service said on September 17. The SBS reported that the trespassers disobeyed the border service guards order to stop and opened fire on the border guards. One of the violators was shot in return fire while the remaining one managed to escape taking advantage of the complex terrain. The wounded trespasser died at the scene from a gunshot wound, the SBS said. The incident took place in the service area of "Horadiz" border detachment of the Border Troops of the SBS near Ikinci Shahseven village of Beylagan region. The State Border Service Border had also found a rifle and 2 bags of drug-like substance weighing about 15 kg in the scene of the incident. In addition, Azerbaijani citizen Mammadov Adish who had illegally entered the border zone to take the trafficked cargo from the trespassers, was also detained. Azerbaijani and Iranian border officials met at the scene of the incident. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and head of the central leading group on Hong Kong and Macao work, meets with a high-level delegation of the Macao Special Administrative Region disciplined forces led by Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Han Zheng on Wednesday met with a high-level delegation of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) disciplined forces led by Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak. Han, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, heads the central leading group on Hong Kong and Macao work. Han commended the disciplined forces for playing an important role in maintaining social stability and order in the Macao SAR. He urged the forces to remain committed to implementing the "one country, two systems" principle, continuously improve the supporting legal system and enforcement mechanisms for safeguarding national security in the Macao SAR, give full support to the chief executive in governing the SAR in accordance with the law, and make greater contributions to the steady development of "one country, two systems." Wong briefed Han on the work of the disciplined forces and pledged to safeguard "one country, two systems" and the prosperity and stability of the Macao SAR. CONCORD, N.H. - First lady Melania Trump used her first solo trip outside Washington since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic to showcase a piece of her Be Best youth well-being initiative on Thursday in a state her husband is hoping to win in November. The first lady toured Concord Hospital in New Hampshires capital city with James Carroll, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an effort to highlight the hospitals treatment programs for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Mrs. Trump, who has focused many of her public efforts on health issues such as the nations opioid crisis, tweeted earlier in the day that the appearance was a nod to Recovery Month. The appearance came during the stretch run of the presidential election, in which President Donald Trump needs to pick up swing states like New Hampshire to win reelection. Trump lost the state to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by fewer than 3,000 votes in 2016. It was the second narrowest margin of victory in the election. Only Michigan was closer, and Trump won that state. During Thursdays appearance, Melania Trump said combating opioid abuse is one of the three pillars of my Be Best initiative. She also touted her husbands administrations release of $1.5 billion to states and tribes to address the crisis. Be Best encourages the creation of a safer, healthier and more hopeful world for our children, Mrs. Trump said. And thanks to my husband and this administration, we are doing exactly that. The first lady wore a face mask for the entirety of her appearance at the hospital. The tour included a roundtable discussion with Carroll and hospital officials, and a tour of the hospitals Simulation Center, which included activities designed to help provide comfort to babies born after being exposed to drugs in the womb. Carroll said the administrations goal is to reduce the supply of drugs on the street, to try to give these people a chance to put their hand up and say Im here. Melania Trump also delivered 20 fleece Be Best blankets to the hospitals special case nursery. The opioid crisis has hit New Hampshire hard. The state had nearly 36 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 residents in 2018. That was one of the six highest rates in the country. The first lady also made a stop at the Manchester Fire Department Central Station, where she and the president visited in 2018. With filming finally back under way in Berlin, after shutting down for several months due to COVID-19, Neil Patrick Harris revealed new details about The Matrix 4. Filming started back up again in Berlin last month, five months after filming was shut down in San Francisco as COVID-19 started to spread more rapidly. Harris, who was cast in an unspecified role back in October, told The Jess Cagle show that the overall style of the sequel has 'shifted' from the original trilogy. New details: With filming finally back under way in Berlin, after shutting down for several months due to COVID-19, Neil Patrick Harris revealed new details about The Matrix 4 Shifted style: Harris, who was cast in an unspecified role back in October, told The Jess Cagle show that the overall style of the sequel has 'shifted' from the original trilogy When asked if fans will be 'blown away' by the sequel, Harris said, 'I have great hope that, that fans will appreciate all the work that Lana and everyone is putting into this movie.' 'I'm a big Lana Wachowski fan. I think she's a great person. I think she has a great inclusive energy and her style has, has shifted, um, visually from what she had done to what, um, she is currently doing,' Harris added. Wachowski is directing the movie solo, without her sibling and co-writer/co-director on the original Matrix trilogy, Lily Wachowski, though Harris hinted her style changed, 'in an evolved way,' adding 'she's such a bright light. Sequel: When asked if fans will be 'blown away' by the sequel, Harris said, 'I have great hope that, that fans will appreciate all the work that Lana and everyone is putting into this movie' 'I would have been happy to be in any capacity in this. I would have been happy to just go and visit the set of a big giant franchise movie,' Harris added. 'So the fact that I get a small part in this, and can watch from a far in, in, you know, and the majority of it, and see how it's working and see sort of the machine of it all, machine probably being appropriate since it's the Matrix, I just, I've just been having a blast,' he added. Harris also praised the filmmaking team as 'very smart,' since they're, 'making a giant movie and under very unique conditions. Happy: 'I would have been happy to be in any capacity in this. I would have been happy to just go and visit the set of a big giant franchise movie,' Harris added 'I've always wanted to be a lead in a big giant action movie with wires and stuff and I've, and this is not that for me, but it's certainly tangential and fun for me to be able to admire it and at least play in the sandbox a little bit,' he added. The actor also said he 'can't wait' until the day that theaters can safely open again (approximately 60 to 70% of the nation's theaters are open, though major markets like New York and Los Angeles are still closed). He added that The Matrix 4, 'deserves to be seen on a big scale,' adding, 'It's ambitious and, everyone involved in, as far as I'm aware is crushing it.' Crushing it: He added that The Matrix 4, 'deserves to be seen on a big scale,' adding, 'It's ambitious and, everyone involved in, as far as I'm aware is crushing it' While Harris' role has yet to be revealed, he'll be starring alongside original The Matrix trilogy stars Keanu Reeves as Neo, CarrieAnne Moss as Trinity and Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe. Newcomers to the franchise include Priyanka Chopra, Jonathan Groff, Jessica Henwick, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ellen Hollman. Warner Bros. has already set an April 1, 2022 release date for The Matrix 4. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland is one of three districts that recently won $42 million in a case against the Ohios Department of Education disputing school funding. Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo schools claimed the state improperly distributed funding in fiscal years 2005-2007, failing to properly add funding for each community school student, including those who enrolled mid-year, according to a district press release. Read the full ruling in the document viewer at the bottom of this post, or click here. The ruling was issued in Franklin County Common Pleas Court by Judge Gina Russo. Cleveland is set to receive more than $13.7 in restitution. The Department of Education does not yet have a comment on the ruling or whether the state plans to appeal, a spokeswoman wrote in an email on Thursday. Our students who lost educational opportunities because of the Ohio Department of Educations wrongdoing are likely long gone from our district, Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon said in the release. But the funding that flows from the courts decision will provide an opportunity for students filling their seats today. We take comfort in knowing that our current children, parents, and teaching community will be the beneficiaries of the money awarded by the court. 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:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b23498)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486b1d288)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b23498)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486b1d288)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b26d90)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486b1d288)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486b1d288)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f04861ec1a8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e4ea0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e4ea0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 The head of struggling department store David Jones has admitted the company has "too many stores" and has stepped up plans to shut some and shrink its network by 20 per cent as losses are deepening in the COVID-19 crisis. Roy Bagattini, the former Levi's boss who was recently appointed to head David Jones' South African parent company Woolworths Holdings, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the upmarket department store chain was "overstored" and customers could expect a number of closures in the next 24 months. David Jones is accelerating its plans to shut down stores. Credit:Paul Rovere "There's no doubt we have too many stores for what I think our business purpose is in Australia," Mr Bagattini said on Thursday in a telephone interview. "It is overstored...and I would expect to see a level of reduction coming through." This could mean as many as 10 stores could close their doors, with Woolworths having previously touted plans to shrink more than 20 per cent of David Jones' floor space by 2025. However, Mr Bagattini said the COVID-19 crisis meant he now wants those plans accelerated and completed in the next two years. Olga Edwards would have removed her children from their schools and moved house had she been notified her estranged husband was applying for a gun licence, an inquest into the murders of the couple's children has heard. During Family Court proceedings over the custody of Jack, 15, and Jennifer, 13, who were later gunned down by their father, Olga laid out a long list of reasons why she and her children feared Edwards, including because he kept a machete under the bed. John Edwards killed his children Jennifer and Jack in 2018. The list included assaults, a stalking episode she had reported to police, and other incidents such as the fact he regularly threatened to kill one of his ex-partners "because she had taken the children away from him". "That was something Olga had heard every year in the relationship that bore on her mind," her former barrister Peter Fowler told the inquest. Vehicle checkpoint on the Pacific Highway on the Queensland-New South Wales border in Brisbane on April 15, 2020. (Patrick Hamilton /AFP via Getty Images) Federal Government Urges States to Lift Caps on International Arrivals The federal government is urging the states and territories to lift their caps on the number of international arrivals allowed into their jurisdictions ahead of the national cabinet meeting on Friday. Federal Minister for Trade, Tourism, and Investment Simon Birmingham told ABC Radio on Wednesday that the federal government had put forward a proposal for the national cabinet to work through. Birmingham said he wanted to see states and territories work constructively with the federal government towards a solution. We dont want to see any repeat of the failure that happened in Victoria, said Birmingham. So whether its standing up a new facility, looking at how we manage arrivals through airports, or which states we are seeing the growth in quarantine capacity in, well work with them to ensure that with their health officers there is absolute safety and all the right precautions are put in place. Some states and territories have reportedly indicated that they are willing to agree to lift their caps, while others have not. South Australia will reportedly lift its limit on arrival numbers to 800, but Queensland and Western Australia have not yet agreed to increase their numbers. Western Australias premier, Mark McGowan, wasnt happy that the deputy prime minister publicly announced the intention to lift the caps and not at the national cabinet meeting. We would consider it, but we want to have a proper conversation and proper consideration of it, he said, as reported by Perth Now, on Wednesday. I dont really like the fact that this has been sprung via a press conference without a discussion with the people required to actually implement it and I would have thought that is very directly outside the spirit of the national cabinet, he said. Under the plan announced by Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Western Australia would take an extra 500 international arrivals per weekalmost double its current number. McGowan suggested Australians returning home could be quarantined at immigration centres or army barracks. That said, he will reluctantly consider using the popular holiday destination Rottnest Island. I dont exactly want to close down Rottnest just before the school holidays when people have holidays booked, McGowan said. It may take some weeks for us to consider an option around Rottnest and thats something Im happy to work with the Commonwealth on. When asked by ABC Radio about this decision, Birmingham said: Its up to them as to what they think will work best in their cities. Commercial Airlines Will Be Used National Labor leader Anthony Albanese wants the federal government to use official government and military aircraft to repatriate Australians instead of commercial airlines. However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Sevens Sunrise program the health advice says there is no need for it. We went through a process with our officials to work out the best way to get people home, and its on commercial flights through the hotel quarantine system, said Morrison. There are plenty of commercial planes. They just need to lift the cap so they can run the services to Australia. Its the caps that were stopping the planes. We were happy to agree to the premiers request [to put the caps in place] back in July, but we are over that hump now, and we can start lifting those caps, he said. Morrison said an extra 2000 Australians a week would be allowed to return under the new plans. Meanwhile, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has called for a standard medical-based definition of COVID-19 hotspots to be used to decide when borders should open and close. What doesnt make sense to us is we have states with low cases or no cases that are closed to other states, Joyce told ABC Radio National on Thursday. New South Wales has shown that we can keep things open with precautions and still keep the borders in control, he said. Qantas has launched a petition calling for borders to be reopened more broadly. The final draft of the bill could be introduced into Parliament in late October. Among the concerns is a fear that under the so-called News Media Bargaining Code, news businesses will be able to somehow control their algorithms, Australias fair trade regulator Rod Sims said. Well engage with them and clarify that so that theres no way that the news media businesses can interfere with the algorithms of Google or Facebook, Sims said. (Photo | Wikimedia Commons - Sollok29) Canberra: The author of proposed Australian laws to make Facebook and Google pay for journalism said Thursday his draft legislation will be altered to allay some of the digital giants concerns, but remain fundamentally unchanged. Australias fair trade regulator Rod Sims, chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said he would give his final draft of the laws to make Facebook and Google pay Australian media companies for the news content they use by early October. Facebook has warned it might block Australian news content rather than pay for it. Google has said the proposed laws would result in dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, put free services at risk and could lead to users data being handed over to big news businesses. Sims said he is discussing the draft of his bill with the US social media platforms. It could be introduced into Parliament in late October. Google has got concerns about it, some of it is that they just dont like it, others are things that were happily going to engage with them on, Sims told a webinar hosted by The Australia Institute, an independent think-tank. Well make changes to address some of those issuesnot all, but some, Sims said. Among the concerns is a fear that under the so-called News Media Bargaining Code, news businesses will be able to somehow control their algorithms, Sims said. Well engage with them and clarify that so that theres no way that the news media businesses can interfere with the algorithms of Google or Facebook, Sims said. He said he would also clarify that the platforms would not have to disclose more data about users than they already share. Theres nothing in the code that forces Google or Facebook to share the data from individuals, Sims said. Sims was not prepared to negotiate the core of the code, which he described as the bits of glue that hold the code together, that make it workable. These included an arbitrator to address the bargaining imbalance between the tech giants and news businesses. If a platform and a news outlet cant reach an agreement on price, an arbitrator would be appointed to make a binding decision. Another core aspect was a non-discrimination clause to prevent the platforms from prioritising Australias state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corp. and Special Broadcasting Service, whose news content will remain free. Sims said he did not know whether Facebook would act on its threat and block Australian news, but he suspected that to do so would weaken the platform. Spain and France and have both failed to make Facebook and Google pay for news through copyright law. Sims said he has spoken about Australias approach through fair trading laws to regulators in the United States and Europe. Theyre all wrestling with the same problem, Sims said. The defendants named in the lawsuit are Gov. Kevin Stitt and Agriculture Secretary Blayne Arthur. The Act would fail any level of First Amendment scrutiny, the lawsuit states. The Act is a content-based regulation of speech. The act is unreasonable and does not advance a legitimate government interest, the suit alleges. No state besides Oklahoma requires that labels for plant-based foods have disclaimers uniform in size and prominence to their product names, the suit says. There are cigarette labels that have product names the same size as mandatory disclaimers on the labels. Uptons Naturals ensures that its products are labeled vegan and clearly state that the foods do not contain meat, the documents say. In order to describe its foods in the clearest possible manner, Uptons Naturals uses meat terms as part of its descriptions on its labels, the suit says. These terms include, but are not limited to, bacon, hot dog, and chorizo. No consumer would be misled by the labeling, the claim says. Hundreds of people have signed a petition calling for one of Scotlands most prestigious state schools to be renamed after Malala Yousafzai. James Gillespies High School, in Edinburgh, has been targeted in a campaign urging it to stop using the name of its founding benefactor, a tobacco merchant whom it condemns as a direct contributor to the slave trade. The petition, drawn up by current pupils, cites the 23-year-old Nobel Prize laureate Yousafzai, whose name adorns the schools main building, as an example of a role model who better represents its principles. It calls for the name to be changed in order to reflect the diversity that exists within our school, stating: This is not an attempt to cover up our history, rather a way of saying that we dont believe that this man is someone who should be celebrated anymore. Yousafzai is a renowned human rights activist, who began campaigning for girls education in Pakistan and was first brought to Britain for treatment in 2012 after being shot by the Taliban. Malala Yousafzai championed girls education in Pakistan Mr Gillespie made a fortune from Virginia tobacco, a product of the slave trade, and became one of 18th-century Edinburghs richest men. He left a quarter of his wealth for the creation of a school for underprivileged children. The schools website says: We acknowledge the connections to the North Virginia slave-owning tobacco plantations We are updating our curriculum to take more account of this history and of the Black Lives Matter movement. Edinburghs streets and buildings, like in many other cities, are littered with references to the slave trade, having gained a large part of its wealth from so-called Tobacco Lords. A City of Edinburgh Council spokesperson said: All our schools are committed to addressing racism and inequality in all its forms. He added: Its important that we all critically examine the historical evidence around us, ensuring that black history and its role in our city are a core part of a decolonised and inclusive curriculum. By doing this we will understand the wrongs of the past and dismantle their harmful and persistent legacy in present day racism and structural inequalities. In a progression from previous reminiscences about punishing school days, Janet Griffin of Breakfast Point observes that "at Willoughby Girls High in the 1950s it was compulsory to take one year of Home Science in order to prepare us for our future roles as wives and mothers. In one whole year we learned how to cook three versions of suet steamed pudding, launder garments using a ribbed wash board, hand-sew a pair of bloomers and embroider a doily. Not exactly life skills, and not ones I have ever used". When it is time to adjust to a new normal after this pandemic is over, Pritam Ghosh of Beverley Park wonders if we need reconsider old ways of doing things. "It used to be good manners to cover your mouth when you yawn, but now with a mask on, do you still need to do that?" Andrew Taubman of Queens Park is inclined to assume "from their mutual oVic ending that the Two Georges (C8) are refugees from Melbourne?" Even George Manojlovic of Mangerton is bemused. "Good grief, same room again! It's getting hard to tell vich vich is vich, by George (C8)." According to Jeff McNamara of Ulverstone (Tas), "things never go well for pears (C8), so they always assume their natural shape". As one of a pair of Hudsons currently in the Walgett area, Ken Hudson of Wollongbar observes that the powers that be there are "trying to irradiate a pest called the Hudson pear. Should we be worried?" J ewish people all over the world are set to celebrate one of the most important days in the religious calendar - even if it's virtual. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day religious festival which begins on Friday, commemorating the Jewish new Year and the creation of the world. It marks the beginning of the High Holy Days ('Days of Awe'), a 10-day period which ends with the holiday of Yom Kippur, and is usually celebrated with prayers, candle lighting and delicious food. A special instrument made from the horn of a kosher animal - known as a shofar - is traditionally blown during synagogue services while some usually perform the atonement ritual of tashlikh on the afternoon of the first day of celebrations. However, this year festivities will be heavily stripped back given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and curbs on social gatherings. Here is everything you need to know about the religious holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Jewish New Year celebrations will be heavily curtailed this year / REUTERS What is Rosh Hashanah? Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish celebration of the creation of the earth that marks the beginning of the year, and is the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, and therefore humanity. Rosh Hashanah is also a judgement day, when Jews believe that God observes the good deeds over the last year against their bad deeds, and decides what the next year will be like for them. God will then record this judgment in the Book of Life, detailing who is going to live, who is going to die, who will have a good time and who will have a bad time in the upcoming year. The book and judgement are sealed on Yom Kippur, which marks the end of the "Days of Awe" - known as 10 days of Repentance. This is the concept behind the traditional Rosh Hashanah greeting "Be inscribed and sealed for a good year." When is Rosh Hashanah? Getty / Brendan Hoffman This year, Rosh Hashanah will begin on the evening of Friday, September 18. The festival will end on the evening of Sunday, September 20. The exact date varies each year as it's based on the lunar calendar, and marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the "Days of Awe." Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, begins on Sunday, September 27 and ends on the evening of Monday, September 28. How is Rosh Hashanah celebrated? A great deal of time may also be spent in the synagogue when there are special services that emphasise God's kinship. One of the synagogue rituals is the sounding of the shofar, the ram's horn. Hearing the shofar's call is a reminder for us to look inward and repent for the sins of the past year. However, traditional celebratory events will be severely curtailed this year due to ongoing local lockdown curbs in Britain and the "rule of six", banning social gatherings of more than six people indoors or outdoors. The Government has set an exemption for religious ceremonies, allowing these to take place in groups of up to 30 in a public place, however the guidelines state: "This only covers the ceremonies, and does not include celebrations of these events." Jerusalem's Great Synagogue will be closed for the first time over Jewish New Year, as Israelis brace for a second lockdown to tackle the coronavirus. Israel has recorded the world's highest coronavirus infection rate over the past two weeks, according to a tally by the AFP news agency. Jerusalem's Great Synagogue will be shut for the first time during Jewish New Year / AFP via Getty Images Rosh Hashanah greetings You can wish others a Happy New Year by saying "Shana Tova", which means "good year" in Hebrew. Sometimes people say "shanah tovah u'metukah" which literally translates to "a good and sweet new year". In Hebrew, "Rosh Hashanah" translates to "the head of the year." What food is eaten during Rosh Hashanah? Pomegranates are often at the table during Rosh Hashanah (Charles Deluvio/Unsplash ) / Charles Deluvio/Unsplash Food is an important part of Rosh Hashanah. Sweet foods are often eaten as they are intended to symbolise hope for a sweet and happy year ahead, such as honey cakes and apples dipped in honey. Apples are dipped in honey and a sweet carrot stew called a tzimmes is often served. During Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish Challah bread comes as a round loaf rather than a plaited loaf, to symbolise the continuation of life and the year ahead. There's also often a pomegranate on the table because of a tradition that pomegranates have 613 seeds, one for each of the commandments that a Jew is obliged to keep. Congress legislators on Thursday staged a silent protest here against the Himachal governments mismanagement of the Covid crisis and accused the ruling party of throttling the Oppositions voice. Leader of Opposition (LoP) Mukesh Agnihotri alleged that the government did not pay any heed to the issue of public importance raised by it during the monsoon session of Assembly. People are now left to fend for themselves. The government has left them to the mercy of gods, said Agnihotri. Congress legislators also raised objections over the cut-out of chief minister Jai Ram Thakur erected just behind the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at The Ridge here. Is the CM above the father of the nation? The government should immediately remove it, he said. Senior Congress legislator Asha Kumari said the BJP MLAs and Speaker did not allow them to speak on the serious issues they were raising in the Assembly. WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Brotherhood of Teamsters today released an informational video highlighting the hundreds of millions of dollars Republic Services has spent on stock buybacks that fund Republic's top executives, all while failing to provide the necessary safety equipment and livable wages to its frontline workers amid the pandemic. The union is running advertisements nationwide with the video on digital and social media channels to educate consumers whose municipalities use Republic about the company. The union represents about 20 percent of the company's work force and is supporting tens of thousands of other Republic workers who are fighting for safe working conditions and a voice on the job. Along with the video, the union is also launching a petition authored by Republic employees calling on Gates to use his power as Republic's top investor (with holdings equal to nearly one third of Republic's stock) to ensure the company provides clear policies including guaranteed quarantine pay and workplace safety standards. Republic Services is the second largest private sanitation company in the country and posted revenues of $2.45 billion for Q2. Instead of investing in the business and supporting its workers with better salaries, new trucks and safety equipment, Republic Services has chosen to support its wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks. With fewer shares available to the public, Republic's share price goes up along with shareholders' earnings per shareearning the company and its wealthy stakeholders millions. Just last quarter, Republic paid its shareholders $129 million in dividends. Meanwhile, Republic workers, who have been begging the company to invest in their safety throughout the pandemic, continue to find themselves with substandard sanitation gear and low wages. "The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. It's time Republic Services stop investing in billionaires and start supporting its essential workers and those most at risk during this crisis," said Chuck Stiles, Teamsters Waste Division Director. "Republic Services paid its shareholders four times more in dividends last quarter than it has spent on PPE for its 35,000 employees over the course of the pandemic. While major stakeholders like Bill Gates continue to add to their billions, sanitation workers in one of the most dangerous jobs in this country are demanding a real plan from management to protect them from COVID, including regular deep cleaning of the facilities and equipment and sufficient paid sick time for all workers." Bill Gates, who owns nearly one-third of Republic Services and is one of the wealthiest people in the world with a net worth of $113.7 billion, is estimated to receive more than $176 million in dividends from Republic by the end of 2020. Amid the pandemic, Gates has been at the forefront of the conversation to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and strategize how the U.S. and global community can best combat the deadly virus. Meanwhile, Republic Services workers are increasingly fearful for their health, as well as the safety and well-being of their friends and family they come in contact with. "Sanitation work is the fifth most dangerous job in the country, and the pandemic has only increased our riskwe share small spaces in garbage trucks and processing facilities, and dispatchers work less than 3 feet apart in offices," said Demetrius Tart, a sanitation worker at Republic Services in Cumming, Georgia. "Meanwhile, Republic won't even tell us if someone we worked with has a suspected case so we can get tested ourselves. Workers like me have proposed safety steps and offered to help. I've even personally offered to provide wall-mounted thermometers and safety equipment at my facility, but management never even responded. They're too busy lining the pockets of Bill Gates, who is making millions off my work at Republic." The Teamsters, which represent more than 7,000 Republic Services workers across the country, have been demanding PPE for sanitation workers since the start of the pandemic. In their newly released digital ad, the Teamsters' analysis shows that Bill Gates could provide every frontline worker with N95 masks, face shields, protective suits and two weeks of quarantine pay for sick workers for one yearall for about $154 million. This is less than .01 percent of Gates' total wealth and less than 1 percent of the $11.5 billion Gates has made in the few months since the pandemic began. In addition to failing to provide sanitation workers with the proper safety equipment, Republic Services has denied sick pay to workers forced to quarantine by the company. Republic, which requires two negative tests before allowing quarantined employees to return to work, is denying sick pay to quarantined workers who do not test positive for COVID-19. In order to guarantee two weeks of quarantine pay to every frontline worker this year, it would only cost the company around $52 million, or 8.6 percent of the $600 million Republic is spending on stock buybacks in 2020. Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters. Contact: Zoe PiSierra, (603) 339-0042 [email protected] SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters Related Links http://www.teamster.org Tokyo, Japan - In a new climate modeling study, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have revealed major implications for global drought and aridity when limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Drought has serious negative impacts on both human society and the natural world and is generally projected to increase under global climate change. As a result, assessment of the risk of drought under climate change is a critical area of climate research. In the 2015 Paris Agreements, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposed that the increase in global average temperature should be limited to between 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels to limit the effects of severe climate change. However, there have been few studies focusing on the relative importance of this 0.5C of global average temperature rise and what effect it might have on drought and aridity around the world. "We wanted to contribute to the understanding of how important that 0.5C could be, but it such a study is not easy to conduct based on previous modeling approaches," explains corresponding author Hyungjun Kim. "This is mainly because most models look at the extreme high levels and you cannot simply take a slice out of the data while the model spins up to this maximum. Therefore, we used data from the specially designed Half a degree Additional warming Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project to assess the impacts on aridity based on estimations of the balance between water and energy at the Earth's surface." The study revealed that 2C of warming led to more frequent dry years and more severe aridification in most areas of the world compared with 1.5C, which emphasizes that efforts should be made to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. "There is a really strong message that some parts of the world could have more frequent drought at 2C than at 1.5C. This situation could be especially severe in the Mediterranean, western Europe, northern South America, the Sahel region, and southern Africa," says lead author Akira Takeshima. "However, this situation is highly regional. In some parts of the world, like Australia and some of Asia, the opposite situation was simulated, with a wetter climate at 2C than at 1.5C." These findings show the importance of considering the regional impacts of the additional 0.5C of warming, especially with respect to any future relaxation of the 1.5C target. ### The article, "Global aridity changes due to differences in surface energy and water balance between 1.5C and 2C warming" was published in Environmental Research Letters at DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab9db3 About Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo is one of the largest university-attached research institutes in Japan. More than 120 research laboratories, each headed by a faculty member, comprise IIS, with more than 1,000 members including approximately 300 staff and 700 students actively engaged in education and research. Our activities cover almost all the areas of engineering disciplines. Since its foundation in 1949, IIS has worked to bridge the huge gaps that exist between academic disciplines and real-world applications. #AppleEvent 2 minutes silence for those who sold their old iphones in hope to buy a new iPhone 12 2 minutes silence for those who sold their old iphones in hope to buy a new iPhone 12 pic.twitter.com/IYcGsW1KuB September 16, 2020 pic.twitter.com/675yx1jxZ1 Me when I sat through the whole apple event and they didnt even mention the iPhone 12 #AppleEvent September 15, 2020 You all MFs are so excited about iPhone 12 but most of you can't afford even iPhone 6 pic.twitter.com/kF9dFS4wqM September 15, 2020 Apple held an online event recently at the companys headquarter in Cupertino, California, and launched several new products, including iPads, smartwatches, and subscription services. However, there was no mention of the much-awaited and highly anticipated iPhone 12, and that disappointed Apple customers all over the world. But people quickly turned their disappointment into humor as Tweets about the absence of the latest iPhone started rolling out one after another.The tweets were full of funny Gifs and memes, targeting everyone who was waiting for the launch of the iPhone 12 through this event and ended up seeing everything else but the much-coveted iPhone.However, it is not so surprising or difficult to understand why the iPhones were missing from the launch event. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Apple's supply chain faced massive disruptions and that is the main reason behind the delay in the launch of the iPhone 12.The other interesting products that were launched in this online event include the new Watch Series 6, which will run the latest operating system, watchOS7. The series comes with improved tools for customization and brings an array of health and fitness features.This new smartwatch can measure oxygen levels in the blood within 15 seconds, and Apple is very excited to use this technology to conduct three health studies with other researchers. They are aiming to find ways to use blood-oxygen levels for monitoring the health of individuals in a new Health App. Apple is also collaborating with the government of Singapore for its personalized health program, LumiHealth. The company aims to use this program to encourage a healthy lifestyle using Apple Smartwatch.This new smartwatch also allows sleep tracking, better parental controls, an automatic hand-wash detection technology, and an improved battery lifeThe star of this event was the eighth generation iPad which features an A12 Bionic chip processor. It uses advanced machine learning technology and incorporates Artificial Intelligence.According to Apple, the A12 Bionic chip delivers a 40% faster processor with twice the graphics capability. So, this new iPad is twice faster than the latest Windows laptop, thrice faster than the latest Android tablet, and almost six times faster than the latest Chromebook.For premium customers, Apple launched a new iPad Air also, which comes with an A14 bionic chip and an integrated touch ID sensor.In this event, Apple also launched the Fitness+ service, which is a fitness experience built for Apple Watch and incorporates metrics from Apple Watch that can be viewed on users Apple products like iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. This feature will allow health enthusiasts to access gym-like workouts with the help of excellent and renowned trainers.Apple also launched an easy subscription plan called Apple One, through which all other Apple subscription services can be collected in a single, simple plan including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, iCloud, and Apple Arcade.It is still not known when the iPhones will be launched though, meanwhile, enjoy how users are reacting on social media:Read next: US Predicted to Record its most Successful Holiday Shopping Season Ever; Buyers to Spend over 1 Billion Hours on Android! Online travel company MakeMyTrip on Thursday announced its foray into the United Arab Emirates with its portfolio of travel offerings across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain. The new market entry will be led by an engaging marketing campaign in India and the UAE as MakeMyTrip partners with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), Mumbai Indians (MI) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK), the company said in a statement. Also read: US lawmakers' panel slams Boeing for hiding design defects in 737 MAX 8 jets Federal and State Ministers responsible for censorship agreed to the new procedures at a meeting in Sydney yesterday. CANBERRA. Radical film censorship procedures will be introduced in Australia First published in The Age on September 19, 1970 Introduction of an "R" certificate for films to be shown only to people over the age of 18. Establishment of an appeal board or boards of specially qualified people to replace the existing single appeal censor. A scene from the 1972 Australian film Alvin Purple, produced specifically to take advantage of the new R-rating classification. Provision for recourse to the courts to determine whether or not a film is obscene. The adoption of the new film censorship code was announced last night by the Minister for Customs and Excise (Mr. Chipp), who presided over the Sydney meeting and proposed the overhaul of the existing system. JK Rowling has revealed the cross-dressing villain in her new book is based on real-life serial killers Jerry Brudos and Russell Williams after facing another transphobia row. The Harry Potter author released Troubled Blood under her crime-writing pseudonym Robert Galbraith earlier this week. The thriller sees detective Cormoran Strike try to work out what happened to missing GP Margot Bamborough. He fears she fell victim to Dennis Creed, who has been dubbed a 'transvestite serial killer' for murdering his victims while wearing female clothing. An early review of the 900-page book by The Daily Telegraph - in which the critic states the novel's 'moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress' - sparked immediate backlash online. Furious readers rushed to Twitter to share their thoughts, making #RIPJKRowling trend in the UK. However, she has since clarified that she drew inspiration for the character from Brudos, who murdered four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969 and had a fetish for women's shoes, and Williams, who broke into 82 women's houses to steal underwear, which then led to sexual assault and two counts of rape and murder. JK Rowling released Troubled Blood under her crime-writing pseudonym Robert Galbraith earlier this week The thriller sees detective Cormoran Strike try to work out what happened to missing GP Margot Bamborough Jerry Brudos murdered four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969 and had a fetish for women's shoes Russell Williams broke into 82 women's houses to steal underwear, which then led to sexual assault and two counts of rape and murder On the Robert Galbraith website, responding to a question about the book's themes, she wrote: 'The suspects in Dr Bamboroughs disappearance include a womanising patient who seems to have developed feelings for her, a passive-aggressive husband who wanted her to quit her job to become a full-time mother, and a sadistic serial killer active in the 60s and 70s, who was loosely based on real life killers Jerry Brudos and Russell Williams both master manipulators who took trophies from their victims.' It comes as the book soared to the top of Amazon's best seller list, ahead of the likes of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and Captain Tom Moore's autobiography, Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day. While many criticised, others said the book - which came out on Tuesday - is not transphobic at all and over-eager detractors should read it before jumping to conclusions. Observer journalist Nick Cohen wrote: 'I've read the latest Strike novel, and the claim it's anti-trans is total sh***. 'I can't tell you why it is total sh*** without giving away the ending. So until you read it yourself, which you should, you will just have to trust me: this is total sh***.' A Twitter user called Steve replied stating: 'But when you combine it with all the negative stereotyping she's done about trans women, it shows a clear pattern. 'It's not anti-trans as such but it does play into the fears that trans women are cis males looking to spy on women.' Cohen replied: 'Read the bloody book why don't you?' Piers Morgan added: 'The fact #RIPJKRowling is trending says all you need to know about the woke brigade - they're nastier and more viciously intolerant than anyone they preach about.' The book has soared to the top of Amazon's best seller list, ahead of the likes of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and Captain Tom Moore's autobiography, Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day Observer journalist Nick Cohen wrote: 'I've read the latest Strike novel, and the claim it's anti-trans is total sh***' Piers Morgan added: 'The fact #RIPJKRowling is trending says all you need to know about the woke brigade - they're nastier and more viciously intolerant than anyone they preach about' In June, Rowling hit the headlines after she mocked an online article using the words 'people who menstruate' instead of 'women'. She was hit by what she described as 'relentless attacks' after she wrote: 'I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?' The acclaimed novelist then penned a deeply personal essay to address the controversy, revealing she was sexually assaulted in her 20s and saying she still feels the scars of 'domestic violence' in her first marriage. Rowling's remarks sparked backlash from a range of stars including Ron actor Rupert Grint, Emma Watson who played Hermione in the film franchise, Daniel Radcliffe who played Harry and Eddie Redmayne, who stars in her Fantastic Beasts films. WHITEHORSEThe president of the first university in Canadas North has resigned after fewer than three months on the job. Yukon University says in a statement that Mike DeGagne has resigned his position following his appointment as president and vice-chancellor for a five-year term that started on July 1. DeGagne says he made the decision with a heavy heart. David Morrison, chair of the universitys board of governors, says theyre disappointed that DeGagne is unable to continue as president but respect his decision. A spokesperson for the school offered no further information about DeGagnes departure, while Maggie Matear, vice-president for university services, will now serve as interim president. Prior to joining Yukon University, DeGagne served as president and vice-chancellor of Nipissing University in North Bay for seven years. When he was appointed, DeGagne said in a statement that he was inspired by the schools commitment to northern-focused research and reconciliation. Yukon University began as a vocational institute and technical training centre in 1963 and became a college in 1988 before it was granted university status earlier this year. Read more about: A 20-year-old ballet dancer from Delhi has refused to let financial constraints stop him from achieving his dreams. Kamal Singh, son of an e-rickshaw driver, had not even heard of ballet until 4 years ago. "But fate led me to a chance encounter with Maestro Fernando Aguilera, director of a ballet school and company in New Delhi. I fell in love with this beautiful, rigorous, classical form," Singh says, adding that he aims to represent India on the international ballet stage. After training intensively for four years, Singh's dream of attending the prestigious English National Ballet School of London is on the verge of realisation. The English National Ballet School has sent me an invitation, offering me a place in their one-year Professional Trainee Programme, he says. However, the 20-year-old, who attended a local government boys school in Delhi, is short of funds. Founded in 1988 by Peter Schaufuss, the English National Ballet School is a specialist classical ballet school based in London. Singh has launched a fundraiser to raise Rs 15 lakh which will be used to pay tuition fees and cover his living expenses for a year. After a year of training, Singh will get the opportunity to enter the English National Ballet Company, as a professional dancer on a monthly salary. "This is an incredible opportunity for someone of my background, who started training at the late age of 17," Singh says, adding that he is the first dancer from India to be accepted in the school. "Unfortunately, I cannot afford the fees of the 1-year programme, which costs 8000 (approx Rs 7.6 lakh), not to mention the additional living expenses in London, at least 1000 ( approx Rs 95,000) per month so I launched the fundraiser," he says. Singh, who hoped to raise 5 lakh by September 18, has already raised more than 12 lakh with the help of 187 contributors. Thanking patrons for their support, Singh said, "I did not think I will be able to attend the English National Ballet School but after seeing this miracle, I have no doubts." If you wish to contribute, click here A 57 page "playbook" just in from the US government outlines a comprehensive plan to make the COVID-19 vaccine available free to all Americans once it is proven safe and effective. The shot wouldn't be broadly available to most of the US population until the summer or fall of 2021, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Robert Redfield told the Congress on Wednesday. At this time, public polling is showing that less than 50 per cent of all Americans are willing to get a shot even when the vaccine is widely available. Any version available this year would be in "very limited supply", Redfield said, while appealing to Americans to mask up because "they really work". "The goal of the US government is to have enough COVID-19 vaccine for all people in the United States who wish to be vaccinated," read the first page of the report from the CDC. In an optimistic scenario, US health agencies are hoping for a vaccination campaign to begin in January 2021 or even as early as December 2020 and reach population scale by next summer. The Pentagon would be involved in vaccine distribution while civilian health workers will be pushing needles into bare arms. The CDC assesses that for most vaccines, people will need two doses about 21 to 28 days apart. These double-dose vaccines will have to come from the same drugmaker. CDC's existing centralised distributor contract with McKesson, which distributed the H1N1 vaccine in 20092010, includes an option for the distribution of vaccines during a pandemic. The McKesson contract can cover rapid distribution of doses of refrigerated (28 degrees Celsius) and frozen (-20 degrees Celsius) vaccines. Angela Rayner had got her bovver boots on. Great clod-hopping things they were, the sort that Teddy Boys used to wear while out on the razzle. Not for her the genteel kitten clackers Theresa May used to fashion. One swing of the Rayner hoof in these babies could do a man some serious damage. Labours deputy leader had just come stomping into the chamber for her debut appearance at PMQs. Johnson v Rayner. As showdowns go, this was a lip-smacker. Im amazed Don King didnt try to put it on pay-per-view. Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner had a dig at Dominic Cummings, suggesting that the next time a man with symptoms drives from London to Durham, itll probably be for the nearest Covid test Miss Rayner is a coarse but likeable bruiser who left school at 16 while pregnant, sans qualifications. Boris? Well, lets just say Ange wouldnt mind connecting one of those boots with a soft and sensitive part of his anatomy. Parking herself in front of the despatch box, Rayner shot her colleague Valerie Vaz a sisterly smile. If there were a flight of butterflies flapping around her tummy, she wasnt showing it. As the Prime Minister tumbled into his seat, Labours chief whip Nick Brown rolled over like a Russian doll to growl something in Rayners ear. Good luck possibly. Or more probably: Dont cock it up, luv. Rayner began well. Very well. Ive got a message from a man called Keir, she announced, a dig at Jeremy Corbyns habit of reading out messages from the public. The government benches laughed appreciatively. Keir had apparently been self-isolating for the past two days while one of his children awaited a result from one of the Governments creaky test centres. Somehow this segued into a question about care homes. How much, Rayner asked, did the average care worker earn? Boris made that stuttery noise Hugh Grant used to make in Richard Curtis movies. Labour leader Keir Starmer (pictured right) skipped PMQs on Wednesday but is out of quarantine after he had been self-isolating for the past two days while one of his children awaited a result from one of the Governments test centres. Uh-uh-ugh, Mr Speaker. Uh-uh-uh. Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) began imitating him. Several other MPs joined in. SNP leader Ian Blackford permitted himself a vulpine smile. So did the Lib Dems Sir Ed Davey. Short odds are that neither pompous puffball had any clue either, but they were revelling in the PMs discomfiture. Eventually, Boris pointed out that workers were paid substantially more since the Government implemented the living wage. THAT was Rayners best moment. From then on, she went all wooden. That early zap deserted her. Turning her attention back to testing, she essayed a gag about Dominic Cummings, suggesting that the next time a man with symptoms drives from London to Durham, itll probably be for the nearest Covid test. It may have read well during rehearsal but her delivery was clunkier than an old Lada Riva. Boris was much better than in the past couple of weeks, shaky start aside. He was serious and workmanlike. Johnson v Rayner: Boris Johnson's blood pressure hopped briefly following a silly suggestion from Rayner that the Government had allowed grouse shooting to continue simply because one of Boris donors Nor did he try to rough up or get smart with the stand-in oppo. Instead, he treated her with rare deference. Of course the Hon. Lady is right to express the frustration of people across this country about the massive demand there is now for tests His blood pressure hopped briefly following a silly suggestion from Rayner that the Government had allowed grouse shooting to continue simply because one of Boris donors, ex-Carphone Warehouse tycoon David Ross, owns a grouse moor. Appalled groans erupted from the government benches. Boris accused his opponents of carping from the sidelines over issues that are tangential. Attacking country pursuits is of course a Labour obsession. There is never any consideration for the thousands of low-paid workers who rely on it as a livelihood. When Sir Lindsay Hoyle called time, Rayner hovered for a while. She grinned at colleagues, flashing them a thumbs-up. It was obviously quite a moment for her and quite right too. Such a pity families remain barred from the public galleries. HEIDENHEIM, Germany, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Together with the "World Day for Patient Safety" of the World Health Organization (WHO), today HARTMANN is launching its initiative to reduce the risk of healthcare-related infection - Mission: Infection Prevention (M: IP). The company is thereby putting an even stronger focus on one of the greatest global health risks. In Europe alone, almost four million infections are recorded in healthcare facilities every year. The current corona pandemic is also a reminder of the impact infections can have on society. Together with medical professionals and its customers, HARTMANN is now embarking on a holistic mission to support healthcare facilities and raise public awareness. "HARTMANN offers a holistic program for infection prevention. The goal of Mission: Infection Prevention is two-fold: educate healthcare professionals, and improve the safety of the patients they work with. This ranges from individual consultation in clinics and nursing homes, for example, to optimize processes and interrupt risk chains, to public education to help make infection prevention comprehensible," explains Thomas Haeni, Vice President of the Hospital-acquired Infection Program at HARTMANN. Program against hospital germs Corona is currently the dominant topic in the healthcare sector. However, long before the pandemic, so-called hospital germs, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), posed many challenges to healthcare facilities. The follow-up costs of such infections in Europe amount to around seven billion euros per year, not to mention the avoidable suffering of patients and the loss of confidence in the healthcare system. "I personally know of a clinic which had difficulty finding staff, because a previous germ outbreak severely damaged its reputation, despite the fact that the hospital was otherwise considered exemplary. Holistic prevention can save human lives and avoid subsequent costs," Thomas Haeni continues. Mission: Infection Prevention now focuses on the four most common types of infection: ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), urinary tract infections through catheters (CAUTI), postoperative wound infections (SSI), and bloodstream infections through central venous catheters (CLABSI). Of course, infectious diseases outside of hospitals are also considered: "The classic flu or now COVID-19 are not only dangerous, but in many ways avoidable. We will address this with our mission," reports Thomas Haeni. Comprehensive and individual - M: IP combines both A key element of the mission is the establishment of a content hub at www.missioninfectionprevention.info. The digital platform offers information, developments and tips on infection prevention in a bundled form. The focus is on an outcome-based approach. In this context, HARTMANN can rely on the know-how of its research facility, the Bode Science Center. "We offer digital and semi-digital solutions for hygiene monitoring and process optimization, tools for campaign design and disinfection planning, as well as other aids to limit the risks of infection in a hospital, nursing home or outpatient care center. We will also support our partners with training and knowledge seminars (e.g. webinars) and, of course, offer product bundles tailored to their needs," adds Thomas Haeni. "We will also be providing lots of relevant information. Because you can only initiate changes and improvements if you have the right knowledge. This is how we can best fulfill our role as partner." - Picture is available at epa european pressphoto agency (http://www.epa.eu) - Contact: Philipp Hellmich HARTMANN GRUPPE Tel.: +49-7321-36-1308 E-Mail: Philipp.Hellmich@hartmann.info HOUSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Superior Energy Services, Inc. (the "Company") today announced that the Company was notified by the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") of its determination to commence proceedings to delist and suspend trading of the Company's common stock due to failure to meet the NYSE's $15 million, 30-trading day average market capitalization standard. The Company anticipates that, effective September 18, 2020, its common stock will commence trading on the OTCQX Market under the symbol "SPNX". The Company's transition to the OTCQX Market is not expected to affect the Company's business operations. About Superior Energy Services Superior Energy Services serves the drilling, completion and production-related needs of oil and gas companies worldwide through a diversified portfolio of specialized oilfield services and equipment that are used throughout the economic life cycle of oil and gas wells. For more information, visit: www.superiorenergy.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains, and future oral or written statements or press releases by the Company and its management may contain, certain forward-looking statements within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Generally, the words "expects," "anticipates," "targets," "goals," "projects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks" and "estimates," variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. All statements other than statements of historical fact regarding the Company's business operations, financial position, financial performance, liquidity, strategic alternatives, market outlook, future capital needs, capital allocation plans, business strategies and other plans and objectives of our management for future operations and activities are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by the Company's management in light of its experience and prevailing circumstances on the date such statements are made. Such forward-looking statements, and the assumptions on which they are based, are inherently speculative and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from such statements. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of uncertainties and factors, many of which are outside the control of the Company, which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These forward-looking statements are also affected by the risk factors, forward-looking statements and challenges and uncertainties described in the Company's Form 10-K, the Company's Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2020 and June 30, 2020, and those set forth from time to time in the Company's other periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.superiorenergy.com. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Superior Energy Services, Inc. Related Links http://www.superiorenergy.com Morgan County Sheriff ARRESTS, CITATIONS Gail L. Bartholomew, 54, of 1588 Portuguese Hill Road was booked into the Morgan County jail at 11:13 p.m. Tuesday on charges of domestic battery, battery, criminal damage to property and resisting a peace officer. Jacksonville Police ARRESTS, CITATIONS Heather N. Hartwick, 35, of 722 W. College Ave., Apt. 5, was arrested on a retail theft charge at 8:17 p.m. Tuesday after being accused of taking a cart full of groceries from County Market, 1255 W. Morton Ave., without paying. ACCIDENTS Yanni M. Armstrong, 19, of 902 N. Clay Ave. was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence and cited on charges of having no valid drivers license, disobeying a stop sign, improper lane use and operating an uninsured vehicle after the car he was driving hit a tree at South Fayette Street and West Beecher Avenue at 7:35 p.m. Tuesday. Armstrong and a passenger, Jasmine L. Powell, 19, of 134 Walnut Court, were taken to Passavant Area Hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, police said. OTHER REPORTS A resident of the 300 block of North Clay Court told police a woman came to her door at 10:33 p.m. Tuesday and threw something at her, damaging a window in the process. Murrayville Police ARRESTS, CITATIONS Lamariss E. Fortune, 38, of 30 Maple Creek, Woodson, was booked into the Morgan County jail at 10:43 p.m. Tuesday on a charge of driving while license is revoked or suspended. Compiled by David C.L. Bauer "You have to eat!" It's a sentiment that illustrates how central food is to Italian culture, but the woman who uttered these words also happens to be struggling with bulimia nervosa. Carmela is one of many Italian-Australian women who has a conflicted relationship with food which is inextricably linked to culture, according to University of South Australia researcher Michelle Caruso. The social work PhD student has undertaken the first study looking at how Italian culture can influence women's experiences of disordered eating in contemporary Australia. In her interviews with Italian-Australian women in Adelaide, Caruso explored how many of the women were 'plied with food' as young children, with meals linked to family, culture and identity. Many of these women were not allowed to determine their own food consumption during childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood. Food was habitually pushed and forced onto them, resulting in early conflicts which have manifested as eating issues in their later years." Michelle Caruso, Researcher, University of South Australia She deliberately uses the term "disordered eating," linking it to culture, in contrast to "eating disorder," which infers a medical or psychiatric condition. "Women diagnosed with binge eating, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are typically treated based on psychiatry. One of the greatest weaknesses of the psycho-medical approach is its failure to contextualise the disordered eating experiences of women from diverse cultural backgrounds," Caruso says. The researcher chose Italian women for her study, but her findings could equally apply to many other migrant women with entrenched cultural beliefs around food, she says. Previous research shows that Italian women have a higher prevalence of disordered eating than women in comparable European countries such as Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Caruso identified three key themes central to the women in her study: "il cibo e tutto, il cibo e amore" (food is everything, food is love), "fare la bella figura" (to make a good impression), and "il mio piatto" (it's my plate). "All expressions illustrate the significant cultural symbolism and meanings attached to food in Italy. In the Italian culture, everything is cooked with love. Food and feeding are important processes which help build and maintain relationships, connections and a sense of home and belonging," Caruso says. "The childhood memories of the women I interviewed are mostly positive, connected to pleasure, love, safety, protection and comfort. But the women also expressed a sense of lacking autonomy, control and personal power associated with their consumption of food. This led to an ongoing complex, conflicted connection with food. "Through their disordered eating experiences, the women in this study were able to construct a sense of power, control and self-agency, where they were able to decide what to consume or reject." The relationship with food is so central to the Italian culture that many families are unwilling to accept that food has anything but positive connotations, Caruso says. "In the eyes of an Italian mother or grandmother, rejecting food is akin to personal rejection. And because women with disordered eating don't want to bring shame or embarrassment on their family, they are unlikely to admit they have a problem and know their family probably won't accept it if they do try to discuss it." Australia - like many western cultures - puts a high value on female thinness, while Italian culture values food and eating together, placing significant conflicting pressures on women from Italian backgrounds, Caruso says. "Migrants hold onto their food practices so tightly when they migrate to another country. It's a way of staying connected with their identity and their culture." Caruso says it's time that health practitioners and ethnic communities recognised the part that culture plays in disordered eating and ensured that women were given the appropriate support. Donald Trump has often espoused misinformation on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and the president's YouTube channel is no different with a new report detailing a bevy of inaccuracies featured in his most popular video. The video, titled With Joe Biden, China Is In Charge has received over 21 million views by the time of publication on Thursday. It was released in mid-August, and attacks the former vice president for his apparent record surrounding Beijing and Chinas economic rise on the global stage. But its loaded with the same misinformation Mr Trump has used against his 2020 opponent across other platforms, as the Washington Post reported. Like many other videos shared on the presidents YouTube channel, his most-popular content on the site includes selectively-edited clips to make Mr Biden appear soft and weak when it comes to trade and security negotiations with China. For example, the video Mr Trump shared shows Mr Biden saying We want to see China rise before the following statement is displayed: While China was crippling America Joe Biden was standing up for China. In reality, Mr Biden was speaking at a 2015 State Department luncheon about the strategic relationship between Washington and China a US policy that existed before the former vice president served in the White House and which transcended multiple administrations, as Washington Post noted in its report. Yes, Mr Biden did in fact express support for Chinas rise at that luncheon. But the full quote provides significant context left absent in the Trump campaign advertisement. Let me be clear: We do not fear Chinas rise. We want to see China rise, to continue to rise in a responsible way that will benefit you most, China, because you have an important role to play, Mr Biden said in the full quote that was not included in Mr Trumps video. He added: A rising China can be a significant asset for the region and the world, and selfishly, for the United States. Perhaps ironically, many of the quotes the Trump campaign used against Mr Biden in its advertisement were actually part of speeches in which the former vice president was hitting Beijing or otherwise expressing US strength over international economic policies. At one point the Trump campaign ad quotes Mr Biden saying: China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. Again, the full quote paints a clearer picture of Mr Bidens actual sentiments: China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They cant even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west. They cant figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, theyre not bad folks, folks. But guess what, theyre not competition for us. On the other hand, Mr Bidens YouTube page which has far less views and is much less popular on the video-sharing platform does not contain misinformation and instead offers a positive view in much of its content, the Post reported. As these words are being written, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are in Washington DC to sign agreements to normalize relations between their countries and the state of Israel. While the United States and Israel were represented by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Arab states sent their foreign ministers to represent their countries at the signing ceremony. This may have less to do with protocol and more to do with the fact that both Trump and Netanyahu are fighting for their political lives and for them, this was a much needed public relations stunt. Todays spectacle was a far cry from the resolute, principled, and courageous stance that was presented by Arab leaders in Khartoum almost exactly 53 years ago. In the aftermath of the Israeli assault on Arab lands in 1967, even as the gun barrels were still smoking, a meeting of the heads of the Arab states was convened in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. This meeting brought about a courageous resolution that said no to recognition, no to negotiations, and no to peace with Israel. The Arab armies of Egypt, the largest of all the Arab states, Syria and Jordan were demolished completely, close to 18,000 Arab soldiers were killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians were made homeless, and yet the leaders of the Arab states stood and said, no to the mighty aggressor, Israel. The resolution of the Arab states to reject the brutal apartheid regime of Israel was accepted in August of 1967, at the Arab League summit just two months after Israel had decimated the armies of three Arab states and had violently taken the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and had completed the conquest of Palestine by taking the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. That resolution, which later became known as the Three Nos, is still used by Zionist propagandists to demonstrate the Arab states unwillingness to make peace with Israel, and recognize the so-called Jewish State. However, in light of the deadly Israeli assault on these countries, their unwillingness to capitulate was heroic. What is unfortunate, however, is the success of the Zionist movement to reverse the Arab commitment to Palestine. Step by step, starting with the largest Arab state, Egypt, then Jordan, and now with the Gulf States and even Sudan, the Arab regimes have been normalizing relations with Israel. Access to the empire If one could imagine themselves as the head of an Arab state just for a moment, what would that be like? One would see that the Arab countries that were steadfast in their support of the Palestinian cause are now destroyed. Starting with Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. The punishment for those who did not capitulate willingly was severe. Further afield is Iran, and while for the moment it is safe from an all-out military attack, mostly because the U.S. and Israel are incapable of facing the Iranian forces head-on, it is suffering greatly from severe sanctions. Relations with Israel provide access to much desired U.S.-made weapons and other perks such as security and economic cooperation. As a leader of an Arab state, what choice would one make? Commentators on CNN repeatedly said that the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain, and possibly other Arab states that will be normalizing relations with Israel soon, decided to put the Palestinian issue behind them and focus on other issues like economic cooperation, tourism, and to place the needs and indeed the future of their own countries ahead of the Palestinian issue. It is easy to criticize the Arab states for turning their back on their Palestinian brothers and sisters. However, larger and more influential countries are no different. Russia, the European Union, China, and India all conduct a great deal of business with Israel and have long since forgotten about the Palestinians. Israel has successfully taken the Palestinian issue off the world stage. Regardless of how often Israel attacks Gaza or how viciously it attacks, regardless of how many Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons and how severe the conditions in which Palestinians live, Israel succeeded in getting the world to look the other way. The opposition There have been reports about popular resistance in Bahrain by groups who oppose the normalization of relations with Israel and rightfully see it as a betrayal of the Palestinian people. The expectation is that these voices will be silenced quickly by the Bahraini government. Furthermore, Kuwaiti government sources announced that Kuwaits position towards Israel is unchanged after its accord with the United Arab Emirates. Kuwaiti officials also denied Israeli flights to fly through Kuwaiti airspace. Sudan Israels attempts to build alliances go beyond the Arabian peninsula and into Africa as well. The Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdokmet recently met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who visited Sudan following a trip to meet Israeli officials in Jerusalem. Israel was Pompeos first stop in a tour designed to convince more Arab countries to normalize ties with the Zionist state. Furthermore, reports confirm that the US secretary of States visit to Khartoum was meant to discuss relations between Sudan and Israel. The Sudanese Prime Minister told Pompeo that his government had no mandate to normalize ties with Israel, and he added that the subject of lifting Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list should not be linked to normalizing ties with Israel. Clearly, removal from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list is the carrot Pompeo is offering Sudan. Following the meeting, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that Pompeo and Hamdok discussed positive developments in the Sudan-Israel relationship, which should come as no surprise. It is hard to imagine that the Sudanese leadership can afford to refuse an offer from the U.S., certainly one as attractive as lifting the designation of State Sponsor of Terrorism, which will open doors and allow for economic growth for the African nation. Now, lets return for a moment and imagine ourselves as the head of an African or Arab nation. The choice is submission and relations with the Israeli apartheid regime, which will lead to new economic possibilities, or maintaining a firm, principled stance, and suffering destruction by war or slow suffocation through sanctions. Feature photo | From left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-NahyanAbraham, stand on the Blue Room Balcony during the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 15, 2020, in Washington. Alex Brandon | AP Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Generals Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, and Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. A 100-year-old 'Aussie battler' has miraculously beaten coronavirus, potentially making him the country's oldest survivor. Great-grandfather Roy Bartlett, from Melbourne, caught COVID-19 after falling ill with pneumonia earlier this year. The diagnosis came just months after he lost his wife of 70 years, Lorna, to cancer in November. Great-grandfather Roy Bartlett (pictured), from Melbourne, has successfully beaten COVID-19 aged 100 'Hes definitely a true Aussie battler,' Mr Bartlett's granddaughter Lauren Penrose told 7NEWS. 'Always surprises us and always beats the odds.' The centenarian spent his 100 birthday on June 27 at St Vincent's private hospital, where he celebrated with nurses and enjoyed cake. He finally left this week after spending 42 days in hospital, the Herald Sun reports. Ms Penrose said her family will be forever grateful to the staff that cared for him. 'They may be someones grandfather, and they maybe 100 years old, but theyre part of someones family, and theyve got loved ones and they really truly do matter,' she said. Mr Bartlett's return home comes days after two other Melbourne seniors defeated the virus. Vic Cornell, 95, and his partner Jean Schofield, 87, were released on Monday after successfully fighting off the illness following a ten-week stint in Healesville & District Hospital. ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University systems engineers examined data from a busy New York state food bank and, using a new algorithm, found ways to better distribute and allocate food, and elevate nutrition among its patrons in the process. "In order to serve thousands of people and combat food insecurity, our algorithm helps food banks manage their food resources more efficiently - and patrons get more nutrition," said lead researcher Faisal Alkaabneh, Cornell's first doctoral graduate in systems engineering. Alkaabneh and his adviser, Oliver Gao, professor of civil and environmental engineering, are co-authors of "A Unified Framework for Efficient, Effective and Fair Resource Allocation by Food Banks Using an Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach," published in the journal Omega. The researchers reviewed data of the Food Bank of the Southern Tier, which serves six counties in upstate New York. In 2019, the food bank distributed 10.9 million meals to about 21,700 people each week. Nearly 19% of its patrons are seniors and about 41% are children, according to the group's data. Last year, the food bank distributed 2.8 million pounds of fresh fruit through 157 partner agencies, and moved about 3.4 million pounds of food through local mobile pantries. The algorithm Gao and his team used to determine how to allocate several food categories efficiently, based upon pantry requests, demonstrated a 7.73% improvement in efficiency from 2018 to 2019, compared to standard food bank allocation practices. Their calculations also showed a 3% improvement in nutrition using a wider variety of food, Alkaabneh said. "We hope our research is used as a baseline model for food banks improving practices," Gao said. "and boosting nutrition and policies to help people at risk for hunger." ### 100 Years Ago 1920: Governor Sproul, who was 50 years old yesterday, celebrated his birthday anniversary with his family at his home in this county. He expressed the belief that New York will give Harding and Coolidge a big majority, his opinion being based upon personal observations in the Empire State, and he said he was condiment that the Republican Presidential ticket will sweep the country in November. The governor plans to spend the week-end at Philadelphia and will go to Chicago to receive the 33rd degree in Masonry, to be conferred Monday. 75 Years Ago 1945: Approximately 2,500 workers are busy today in the Chester branch plant of the Ford Motor Company, it was reported by Neil S. Brown, superintendent. The workers are engaged on the Army Ordinance project and on the job of reconverting the plant to peacetime operations. The newly-installed assembly line for trucks and commercial cars suspended work a week ago when the flow of parts from Detroit was halted due to the strike in the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company plant. 50 Years Ago 1970: The Nether Providence school Board adopted a new busing policy which will provide transportation for every student living in the district. The schedule will begin Monday in conjunction with the opening of the new high school. Asst. County Schools Supt. Dr. Clifford Hendrikson said today he did not believe any Delaware County school district had such an all-encompassing busing plan. 25 Years Ago 1995: Swarthmore Borough Council will discuss in October whether to ask the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board to consider returning an elementary school to a district building in Swarthmore now leased out. The former Swarthmore Elementary School and former Swarthmore High School are both partially rented out. The district plans constructing new classrooms in Nether Providence to meet projected enrollment increases. Retired social studies teacher Irma Zimmer, of Education Systems Research Associates, called for a community school in the borough and said she was strongly supported by a number of residents. 10 Years Ago 2010: Prospect Park Borough Council announced at a recent meeting that a 15-ton limit has been issued for the Wanamaker Bridge near the Morton Homestead. Councilman Patrick OConnell said PennDOT notified the borough of the restriction Sept. 7 and put up the sign the next day. PennDOT gave us little time to react to it, said OConnell. The borough is seeking exemptions for its fire trucks. According to OConnell, PennDOT conducted a study and determined the bridge was deteriorating. We dont know their (PennDOTs) plan as far as replacing it, he said. COLIN AINSWORTH By Vladimir Soldatkin, Ahmad Ghaddar and Rania El Gamal MOSCOW/LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - OPEC and its allies, led by Russia, pressed for better compliance with oil output cuts on Thursday against the backdrop of falling crude prices as uncertainty reigns over the global economic outlook. The group, known as OPEC+, warned that rising COVID-19 cases in some countries could curb energy demand despite initial indications of a decline in oil stocks, according to a copy of a report by the group's technical panel seen by Reuters on Thursday. The panel of major producers, including ... Tom Mangan asks "who will teach the teachers?" Now that COVID-19 lockdown is easing, many retired English teachers might actually enjoy a day out, offering services to teachers to address gaps in basic skills knowledge and confidence. I'll pass, though. Back in the 1990s, on principal's request, I presented a short course on punctuation to staff after the dismal standard of that aspect of literacy became obvious in annual reports to parents. I well remember the yawns of some colleagues, who resented something they clearly regarded as lacking in relevance. Leone Toker, Port Macquarie I was educated in the 1950s and I did not find learning about grammar soul destroying (Letters, September 16). On the contrary, I enjoyed parsing sentences for gerunds and participles. And as a result, today I find myself a part of a small but happy group of people who know, for example, how to use apostrophes correctly, and exactly when to say "my wife and me" and not "my wife and I". It's not rocket science. Rob Hughes, Oatley Hands up anyone under 40 who knows what a split infinitive is. Michael Morton-Evans, Mosman Jobs and dollars: what price a life? While Chris Uhlmann and other commentators strongly advocated the need to strike a balance between public health and the economy, in reality it is extremely difficult to draw that line (Letters, September 17). How many new cases would we accept in return for 500 jobs? How do we compare the financial and mental impact due to a failing business versus the anguish of losing your mother to COVID-19? I am blessed to live in a society where we are free to express opinions, but I am also glad that our political leaders are taking advice predominantly from chief health officers rather than from business groups. Vincent Wong, Killara As someone not far short of 70, Im with Uhlmann and correspondent Peter Bower. We dont destroy our society and economy and peoples livelihoods by banning motor vehicles, smoking, alcohol, sugar, red meat and dangerous recreational activities because every single life is precious. We compromise for the good of the whole and our lifestyle and accept an ongoing death toll from a huge number of controllable sources that affect all age groups. Thats life. Why are we now making such a special and irrational exception for what is just another (and certainly not the last) serious disease to afflict humanity? Alynn Pratt, Killara I applaud the selfless willingness of your correspondent to sacrifice himself. However, I can assure him, the shutdowns are not about just saving high-risk individuals such as 80-year-old men. Our health system would have been rapidly overwhelmed by a laissez-faire approach to the virus. Indeed, the blow-out in waiting lists, now affecting the lives and economic activity of many thousands, shows just how parlous this situation actually was. Allowing the virus to run an uncontained course means not only many thousands of deaths but extensive ongoing health impacts, physical and mental. Fortunately in this instance, at least temporarily, our politicians were able to take scientific advice on board and act for the benefit of all, not just those in high-risk groups. Marie-Louise Dreux, Petersham Labor disingenuous It is a bit rich for Bill Shorten to criticise the NDIS complaints commission when it was a Labor government that effectively privatised the long-term disability care sector ("Disability watchdog has issued just one fine despite 8000 complaints", September 17). Labor privatisation of technical education gave rise to a tsunami of rorts and scams, so why did they expect anything else when they effectively privatised long-term disability care? John Croker, Woonona Disability watchdog or toothless tiger? Tim Overland, Castle Hill States of disrepair Your editorial draws attention to the declining prestige we are now prepared to attribute to the US (''Falling US prestige as big a problem as China's rise'', September 17). While some may wish to trace this decline solely to the presidency of Donald Trump, the roots of reduced respect for America can be found much earlier, going back to the Vietnam War and the ill-conceived Bush administrations response to 9/11. As we have become better informed of unconscionable US interference in the politics of other countries and the multiple cracks apparent in US society, it is understandable that we no longer hold that country in high esteem. Irrespective of a Biden or Trump presidency, the US is not a guiding light for us as once imagined, and our best interests will be served by workable relationships with countries to our north. Ross Butler, Rodd Point Not so welcoming Anyone hoping for a massive revival of international inbound tourism when the pandemic crisis eases may be in for a rude shock considering the disgraceful way we have simply abandoned countless students from many countries (''Overseas students fear running out of cash'', September 17). Given that it follows our widely deplored treatment of refugees, the damage to Australias reputation as a friendly, welcoming country may well be irreparable. Gillian Appleton, Paddington Playing to stadium Pru Goward makes a convincing case that Deputy Premier John Barilaros outbursts are an attempt to gain support from farmers and graziers struggling in an increasingly regulated environment (Why the Nats arent roadkill, yet, September 17). Barilaros ultimatums to the Liberals are an attempt to reassure this group of National Party voters that he understands their problems and is working hard for them, but the impact of these threats on the Premier is weakened if National Party ministers are not prepared to give up their cabinet posts. Although the Liberals know that disunity is electoral poison, the extent of the bad feeling is shown by the fact that none of them spoke in support of Barilaro on the parliamentary no-confidence motion moved by the Labor Party. Barilaro once described himself as a mongrel fighter, but he needs some lessons on technique and tactics. James Moore, Kogarah Pru Goward is wrong. Barilaro is quite demonstrably not very appealing at all. Ashley Collard, Fairlight I am quite sure I know what most people would pick if they had to choose between a cuddly koala and a garrulous Barilaro. Roy Clark, Forestville Collection chaos The Minister for the Arts, the chairman of the board of the neutered Powerhouse Museum and the neophyte chief executive should hang their heads in shame at the announcement that the Trevor Kennedy collection of Australiana is headed for Canberra (''Passion project becomes treasure trove'', September 17). For years it was destined for Sydney as the bulk of the objects have special relevance to NSW. But along with many other disillusioned donors, Kennedy has been studiously ignored in the march to transform a serious, internationally respected museum into a playpen for luvvies and self-declared '''creatives''. Leo Schofield, Potts Point Turn back shop clock Many people wore their best clothes to enjoy the almost magical experience of shopping in department stores until the mid-1950s. Then the magic faded and stores began to close ("Lew has new kingmaker in Myer's game of thrones", September 17). The magic didn't die, however. From the 1960s, it, and crowds of shoppers, reappeared in shopping centres. Stores such as David Jones and Myer are doomed unless they can recreate the enchantment they lost some six decades ago. Norm Neill, Darlinghurst Barbados leads the way How dare they do it before us (''Barbados says it will remove Queen Elizabeth as head of state'', smh.com.au, September 16)? Mokhles Sidden, South Strathfield If Barbados can do it, we can do it too. Trevor Taylor, Port Macquarie Wiradjuri name needed As European settlers moved west into Wiradjuri country they had enough sense to keep the Wiradjuri names for many towns (''Bad name for new airport won't fly'', September 16). So we have the towns of Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, Narrandera, Wodonga, Cootamundra and the Murrumbidgee River, to cite but a few of our wonderfully named Wiradjuri places. Judy McVittie, Leeton Scone-led recovery Forget the NSW Parliament barramundi (Letters, September 17). Go there for the scones available in the public cafe as well as inside. They are the best you will ever taste. Properly marketed, they would solve the state budget problem. Stein Boddington, St Clair WESTPORT In the aftermath of the tropical storm that caused massive damage to the community, the towns top officials said they want to find ways to work more collaboratively in the towns disaster response. A number of us on the RTM got a great number of inquiries from our constituents after the storm was fully passed both letting us known the difficulties they faced in the aftermath of the storm, and asking what the RTM was going to do to address those difficulties, Stephen Shackelford, a RTM member in district 8, said. The town was one of the hardest communities hit in the wake of Tropical Storm Isaias, with many left without power for days. As RTM members for Westport, we want to make sure that we can be helpful however we can at the local level with processing the lessons learned and with helping to drive improvements that the town can implement to deal with the next storm, Shackelford said. Sal Liccione, a RTM member in District 9, said when the storm hit, many of his constituents in downtown Westport were left with no information because of a lack of communication from the town. They were trying to find when the power was going to come back on, when businesses were going to open, Liccione said, saying a more dedicated link between first responders and the RTM could help aid future communication efforts. Sara Harris, operations director for the town, said Westport already is in the middle of reviewing way to improve its storm response including better communication all around. With all emergency situations, we always do an after action we will do individual write ups on what worked and what didnt work, Harris said. We talk amongst ourselves, all of the individuals on the emergency response team, and go over that. She said the emergency response team is finalizing a document on storm response for a Board of Selectmen presentation. The review would also help to set out better procedures for the future, she said. No date has been set for the report. The process of having an after action meeting is standard, but it is usually just with the emergency response team, Harris said. Its not standard to have it discussed in a public setting, but we understand the public wants to hear more. Hence we will do that this time. She said part of the report would include Eversources response to the storm and storm and communication problems caused by the prolonged power outage. Public communication, as far as how we were reaching the public and what the public was aware of, will also be discussed as well as our own internal communications, Harris said. The reports presentation will give people a chance to weigh in on the storm response, she said. RTM members will wait until after the presentation to decide if further discussion is needed. Shackelford said he and his colleagues look to be open minded in finding out the best way they can help. He said however that is best done they are committed to working with other town agencies to accomplish this. Theres a lot going on already, Shackelford said. We want to figure out how the RTM can participate constructively alongside these other efforts. dj.simmons@hearstmediact.com W hen I was a little kid, I loved James Bond movies. There was just one problem: all those annoying love scenes, which seemed pointless compared with the awesome safari suits and cars with ejector seats. Ugh why is he always trying to kiss girls? I remember asking my mum. Just you wait, just you wait, she replied. Over the past few weeks, whenever someone complains about how terrible 2020 has been, Ive found myself saying the same thing my mum told me: Just you wait. This already bonkers year could be about to get even nuttier thanks to the very real possibility of chaos in the US presidential election in November, and the nightmarish risk we end up with no clear winner for months on end. I sincerely hope this doesnt happen, but heres why its more likely than not. Because of Covid fears, huge numbers of Americans are expected to vote via postal ballots vastly more than in any previous election. This summers Democratic primary races gave us a good sense of how the US electoral system is likely to cope with this huge influx of postal votes. New Yorks primary elections in June saw 10 times as many mail-in votes than usual and it took two months for all the results to be announced, while more than one in five mail-in votes were ruled to be ineligible. As Democrat politician Suraj Patel commented, this shambolic primary count is a canary in the coal mine for the looming presidential contest, which will see far more postal votes cast nationwide. It was a similar story in Pennsylvania, where a week after their Democratic primary on 2 June, half the counties in the state were still counting votes with no result in sight. According to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: A repeat in November could draw the entire country into a legal brawl. Just imagine the omnishambles in New York and Pennsylvania repeated across America this November. In a tight presidential race, we may not have a clear result by Christmas with both sides claiming victory, and angry supporters taking to the streets in droves. Yesterday the New York Times reported that Joe Bidens camp is preparing a financial and legal arsenal to fight back if Donald Trump tries to derail the results. What really concerns me is how other global leaders might make the most of political pandemonium in America and the lack of legitimate leadership in the most powerful nation in the world. Just look at how China took advantage of the fact that other countries were busy grappling with coronavirus, and quickly pushed ahead with their strategic goal of reducing political freedoms in Hong Kong. Thats not a coincidence thats the harsh reality of geopolitics. As observers have pointed out, having taken action to consolidate its authority in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the next objective for the Chinese Communist Party is to bring Taiwan to heel, which would be normally be extremely difficult, given Americas likely response. For Chinas leaders, a power vacuum in Washington DC could be a once in a generation opportunity For Chinas leadership, a power vacuum in Washington DC could be a once in a generation opportunity to achieve its historic task of complete reunification. (And remember, President Xi has made clear that when it comes to fulfilling this goal, he makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary means.) Of course, it wont just be Chinas leaders thinking through their options. You can be damned sure that smart people working for Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong-un will be looking at ways to capitalise on potential political chaos in America, and try to push forward their geopolitical ambitions. Isnt that the rational thing to do, after all? And equally scarily, how might Donald Trump react militarily to any perceived transgressions abroad all the while facing furious calls from his opponents to resign, even as his own supporters are claiming victory? Who knows and hopefully we never get to find out. Nothing would give me more pleasure than being totally wrong about all of this. Of course theres still the chance that the US election goes off without a hitch or even that a frustratingly slow tallying of votes nevertheless leads to a clear result that both sides accept without legal challenge. Unfortunately, I think thats unlikely and as a result, this miserable year could well be about to get even worse. As my mum would say, just you wait. (Natural News) With the November election fast approaching, tensions on both sides of the political aisle continue to escalate. And because violence is often the outcome, Attorney General William Barr is urging state attorneys general to remember that the worst forms of it can be prosecuted under a rarely executed sedition law. During a recent conference call with U.S. attorneys all across the country, Barr emphasized that the chaos will more than likely worsen as we approach Nov. 3. Particularly on the left, anarchists, you might call them, are hellbent on spreading death and destruction, which is already unraveling civil society at breakneck speed. To help minimize the fallout, Barr wants legal experts to know that if there is strong evidence to suggest that protesters are conspiring against government agents or officials that sedition charges could be warranted. While admittedly difficult to prove in court, a sedition case involving imminent danger can be won, resulting in stricter penalties than those for, say, disorderly conduct or rioting. Theres all these different statutes the government can use if they are worried about things like property damage, says Jenny Carroll, a law professor at the University of Alabama who contends that sedition charges represent an escalation of the governments response to such violence. If you start charging those people, even if you dont get a conviction, it may make people think twice before going out to exercise their right to free speech. If the violence isnt stopped, it will continue to escalate A sedition charge is unique in that it serves as a heightened response to more serious cases involving extreme forms of violence. Plotting to overthrow an entire police department, for instance, or strategically setting fires to cause mass destruction and death may qualify. Such charges were brought against three individuals who back in June were accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at New York City police vehicles during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. Back in 2010, a Michigan-based militia group was also charged with sedition after its members were accused of plotting to kill a local police officer. The case ended with an acquittal, however, after a federal judge said the governments case was built on circumstantial evidence. Concerning more recent events, BLM and Antifa rioters like the late Michael Forest Reinoehl of Portland may, if he was still alive, qualify for sedition charges. The same might be true of VICE writer Donovan Farley, who openly egged on Reinoehls violence and encouraged others to follow in his footsteps. President Trump has repeatedly addressed the violence problem in recent days, both on Twitter and at his rallies, urging public officials to start taking action. Trump wants the Department of Justice (DOJ) to bring more cases against violent demonstrators that involve longer prison sentences, which he sees as a strong deterrent against the types of violence that now plague many of our nations biggest cities. Should Joe Biden win the election, the violence we are seeing today will escalate exponentially, Trump contends. And this escalation is already apparent today as the election approaches, bringing increasing strife and conflict to our already deeply divided nation. Back in June, Barr formed a task force specifically to counter what he described as antigovernment extremists who are engaging in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order. No question, Antifa is a movement, Barr stated during a recent interview with NBC News. They have websites. They are organized Anyone who has spent a moment at these things and heard their chants and what theyre calling for can see right away that they are, they say they are, revolutionaries, that this is a revolution. The collapse of America at the hands of violent rioters appears to be imminent. To keep up with the latest, check out Collapse.news. Sources for this article include: WSJ.com NaturalNews.com The Coulee COVID-19 Collaborative relayed concern about the local rise in cases Wednesday and expressed support for UW-La Crosses two-week stay-in-place order. The Collaboratives webpage, which is updated on Wednesdays, showed an average of 100 cases per day during the seven-day period ending Sept. 15, with a 47% positivity rate. As of Tuesday, the community had 961 active cases of the coronavirus. According to Wisconsin Department of Health Data, La Crosse County cases increased by 122 on Wednesday, with 50 attributed to individuals age 10 to 19 and 54 to those 20-29. Total cases have reached 2,011, and on Wednesday The New York Times put La Crosse at No. 1 on the list of fastest rise in new cases of any metro area in the U.S. per 100,000 people over the seven days. One week ago La Crosse had 130 new cases, and now has had 626 new cases in the past seven days, with a difference of 363 cases per 100,000. Since the pandemic hit locally in March, more than half of all coronavirus cases in La Crosse County have been in patients in their 20s. Demographic information from the most recent seven-day period, including ages, was not available as of press time. The recent marked increase in positive COVID-19 cases among 20-29 year-olds who live in our community has far-reaching impacts, the La Crosse County Health Department said in a release. Many of these young people are college students and all are important members of our community. Many are young professionals, members of young families, and workers who fill vital roles in the local workforce. Earlier this week, UW-La Crosse made the decision to close campus buildings and issue a shelter-in-place order for all campus housing facilities for two weeks. Some parents and students have questioned the aggressiveness of the response. However, Collaborative member Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald of Mayo Clinic Health System believes it was a warranted action and should be honored by students and staff. I credit the medical team at the university they are working incredibly hard ..., Fitzgerald said. You can look at UW-L as a campus as an endemic area, a high-risk area with a lot of virus. (With a) positivity rate over 70%, anyone in that area has probably been exposed, and putting a hold on the area I think is a very legitimate response. Jen Rombalski, director of the La Crosse County Health Department, adds the university was quickly maxing out isolation and quarantine spaces and notes there are pros and cons to the order. There is no black-and-white answer, no one-size-fits-all in this situation, Rombalski said. ...These students were given a two-hour notice and many left campus, which concerns us since it means they may bring disease home to their families. Another consideration, Rombalski said, is that many of these individuals work and need to support themselves and we dont want to see unintended consequences. For students employed at elder-care facilities and youth organizations, going to work while asymptomatic could cause quick spread. However, if those without symptoms or a positive coronavirus test refrain from working, places in crucial need of staffing could be short handed. Its a tough situation all around, Rombalski said. At UW-L, both PCR and antigen tests are available for COVID-19. Only PCR tests are counted as confirmed cases, and Fitzgerald says they are very rarely falsely positive, with more than 99% accuracy. Antigen tests are generally used as preliminary testing, as the results are quicker though less accurate. College COVID-19 Dashboard updates The UW-L COVID-19 dashboard, updated daily, indicated no new PCR tests were administered Tuesday, while 10 out of the 129 given antigen tests given were positive. UW-L currently has 81 isolation rooms occupied. Western Technical Colleges dashboard, which is updated on Wednesdays, reported seven active COVID-19 cases among students as of Sept. 16. This is up two cases from the previous seven-day period. As of Sept. 14, Viterbo has 63 students currently infected with the virus, according to the universitys dashboard. The Collaborative is closely working with universities and school districts to monitor case rates and provide guidance. Coulee COVID-19 Collaborative metric update Metric status for the week ending Sept. 13 (seven-day rolling average): New case rate: 67.9 per 100,000/day (rising, red/caution category) New hospitalization rate: 2.36 per 100,000/day (satisfactory, green category) Hospitalization Care Capacity: all patients can be quickly tested and cared for (green) Cases interviewed within two days, 85% goal: 60.1% (unmet, red) Identified contacts traced, 90% goal: 73.5% (unmet, red) Contacts reached within 1-2 days, 75% goal: 64.2% (unmet, red) Daily testing goal,75% goal: 238.6% (met, green) Testing turnaround time, 85% within two days goal: 92.6% (met, green) Positive test ratio, under 10% goal: 34.4% (unmet, red) Statewide Data Wisconsin reported 1,408 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, for a running total of 92,712 lab-confirmed positives. Negative tests total 1,295,313, an increase of 10,788 since yesterday. An additional 48 people were hospitalized for the coronavirus, with 6,454 ever hospitalized. Eight more patients have died from COVID-19, bringing fatalities to 1,228. Community recommendations Given the information from these metrics and the growing case rates in La Crosse County, the Coulee COVID-19 Collaborative highly recommends the following to assure a safe and healthy community If you have any symptoms consistent with COVID-19, stay home and reach out to healthcare to get tested. If you have been in close contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive, quarantine for 14 days and only get tested if symptoms occur. If you are asymptomatic, only get tested if you develop symptoms or are advised by county health officials. If you need to be tested, call medical facilities prior to arrival for screening purposes and pre-registration. Wear a mask and keep a six-foot distance when with others outside your household. Wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face. Businesses should prioritize and/or resume active screening of employees. Symptomatic employees should stay home. Organizations that care for populations vulnerable to COVID-19 including older adults, individuals at high risk or with underlying health conditions, etc. should limit visitors and increase screening of employees. Avoid unnecessary travel. Personal social gatherings are not recommended. Minimize mass gatherings in businesses, public buildings, and venues. Capacity should be limited to 25% of total capacity or 50 people indoors or 100 outdoors, whichever is less. Masks and physical distancing should be required. Avoid businesses and locations that are not following recommendations on masks, physical distancing and capacity limits. What we do today and the decisions we make today will impact us in one to two weeks, Rombalski said. We need to take action now to follow these recommendations. Emily Pyrek can be reached at emily.pyrek@lee.net. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:02:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close XI'AN, China, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- 16 powered hang gliders, driving 10 powered hang gliders, started their campaigns in the 2020 Great Way Qin Zhidao Rally of Power Delta Wing, held in Jingyang county of China's northwest Shaanxi province on Thursday. Qin Zhidao was a name given to an ancient military road which was built during the Qin Dynasty, from 221-206 BC. The road was regarded as the first "highway" in China. The competitors will fly along the abandoned ancient road, from Jingyang county, Shaanxi province, to Batou, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The organizers set eight resorts in the competition which will last around 12 days. The opening ceremony featured several aviation performances, including shows of the paragliders, model planes, autogiros and parachuting. "We host the event in order to attract more people's attention about the sport, and what's more, we'd like to suggest the local governments around the Great Way to rejuvenate Qin Zhidao, making the way into a cultural belt which can bring local economic growth," said Wang Hongwei, general secretary of the organizing committee. The first stage's match was cancelled on Thursday because of an air traffic control issue. On Friday, the event will continue its games in Huangling resort, Yan'an city. "We will fly on the plain, coteau, desert and grassland in the 800-kilometer route, we will use different skills according to the landforms and the matchday weather, in order to finish the rally safe and sound," said Liu Tuanjie, a Power Delta Wing flyer from Henan province. Enditem Hamilton County Emergency Communications responded to a Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) request for TERT teams to deploy to disaster areas in Alabama. On Wednesday evening Hamilton County Emergency Communications deployed a six-person TERT team to Baldwin County, Al. to assist Public Safety Communication Centers in that county. TERT is a vital program that highlights the drive to help that is at the core of each public safety communications professional. When Public Safety Emergency Communications Centers need help, we help each other as any family would, said Jeff Carney, director of Operations and National Joint TERT Initiative Committee Board member The team will work in and support the areas Emergency Communications Centers until such time they can return to normal operations. Hurricane Sally dumped a large amount of rainfall on the Gulf Coast over the last days, resulting in major flooding. Many areas are currently inaccessible, leaving the citizens as well as Public Safety personnel in desperate need of assistance. Hamilton County Unified Emergency Communications has over thirty Public Safety Telecommunicators trained and equipped to support requests for mutual aid assistance as members of TERT. TERT teams aid other Public Safety Communications Centers in times of disaster when their resources are limited and/or stressed. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 01:04:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close By Ronald Ssekandi KAMWENGE, Uganda, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chimpanzees are some of Uganda's prized tourist attractions. In the western Ugandan district of Kamwenge, the East African country has opened its gates of Kibale National Park, a destination conservationists describe as the world's "primate capital" because of the concentration of 13 primate species in one place. The park, a medium altitude tropical rain forest, measuring some 795 square-kilometers, is home to 13 species of primates, 372 bird species, 350 tree species, 71 mammal species, according to Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), a state-owned conservation agency. Chimpanzees totaling 1,400 in number are a major highlight in this park. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 90 tourists used to visit the park daily. When the first case was registered in the country in March, the park, like many tourists destinations in the country, was closed. Lydia Nakami, warden Kibale National Park, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the park was closed because of fear that humans may pass on the coronavirus to the chimpanzees. Six months later, government has reopened the tourism sector. The country earns some 1.6 billion U.S. dollars from the sector annually. Tourists can now visit the chimpanzees after following the standard operating procedures given by government to stop the spread of COVID-19. As the gates are open, all tourists are obligated to hand sanitize and have body temperature taken before they are allowed in. "The new procedures include hand sanitizing, the temperature guns; at the gate there is a staff who takes your measurements, if you are over 37 degrees Celsius, you don't enter." said Nakami. Social distancing is emphasized. Instead of using the briefing room, tourists are briefed from outside the building. While in the forest, tourists are not allowed to get close to the primates. They stand not less than 10 meters away from the chimpanzees. Before COVID-19, tourists used to stand eight meters away. During the lockdown, UWA deployed a team of rangers to continue monitoring the primates. "As guides we continued following the chimpanzees as we do the monitoring and habituation. With chimpanzees that have been habituated, if you stop visiting them on a daily basis, then it is possible that they get back into the wild," said Bosco Bwambale, a game ranger. "During the five months, we have been following the chimpanzees, without tourists. We have been using masks, we are sure that these chimpanzees are not going to react due to the masks," he added. Abiaz Rwamwiri, director of Africa Wild Explorations, a tour agency, told Xinhua in a recent interview that as the country moves to open up the country's Entebbe International Airport, agencies hope to record an increase in tourist numbers. The country is currently running a one month live-streamed virtual safari. According to UWA, the virtual safari aims to incentivize tourists when the borders open. The first virtual safari was streaming from Kibale National Park show casing the Chimpanzees. Enditem Fianna Fail TD Jim OCallaghan said he is concerned that further restrictions would prolong the countrys struggle with coronavirus. This came as Dublin faces a looming upgrade to level three on the five-point plan and further tightening of restrictions after rising case numbers and hospitalisations in the last week. Speaking on RTE's Claire Byrne show, the Dublin Bay South TD said, What will happen is if we introduce more restrictions, numbers will drop and then in three weeks we will lift those restrictions. But, as sure as night follows day, those numbers will rise again in six weeks or so. The solution to this lies with the Irish people. We have to live with caution and not fear. We need to take into account other factors other than purely public health. We need to recognise that we have managed to suppress this virus. Back in April, on one day there were 155 people in ICU with the virus, today there are 14. Read More This second phase of the pandemic is not like the first phase. My concern is the impact this is having not just on young people and children but on the mental health of the elderly and the anxiety levels of the country. We can't have a situation whereby restrictions are brought in, then removed, numbers go back up again. Well drive ourselves mad if we keep doing this for another five or six months, Deputy OCallaghan said. This comes after NPHET member Prof Philip Nolan said he was more worried about case numbers and modelling projections now than at any other time since the peak of the pandemic. The Fianna Fail backbencher also said Taoiseach Micheal Martin has his full support and that he believes he has done equally as well as Leo Varadkar as leader of the country during the pandemic. Deputy OCallaghan rejected the notion that this was the right time for a leadership change within Fianna Fail amid poor polling results last weekend. "All I know is that I want Micheal Martin to succeed as Taoiseach, he is doing a good job and he has my support, he said. Fianna Fail TD Eamon O Cuiv on Tuesday called for a leadership change within the party due to its flagging support as the party received just 10pc in the latest Red C poll. OCallaghan disagreed with the notion that Leo Varadkar has run rings around the Taoiseach since his appointment and said he has done quite well in the circumstances. The Dublin Bay South TD said he was concerned about the partys popularity nationally and said if Fianna Fail didnt survive as a strong centre-left option for the electorate, then Irish politics would become polarised like the US or the UK, between a party on the left and one on the right. He said the media and the partys opposition were not to blame, but rather Fianna Fail needed to communicate the partys identity better to the public. On his decision to turn down the Minister of State job, Jim O'Callaghan said he was happy that he did and that he saw it as a limited role, "I see my responsibility as a senior back bench Fianna Fail TD as to play my role in trying to ensure that we can strengthen Fianna Fail as a party". Four US-made F-16 fighter jets cross the sky during a drill near the Suao navy harbour in Yilan, eastern Taiwan, on April 13, 2018. The United States plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions said, as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on China. Pursuing seven sales at once is a rare departure from years of precedent in which U.S. military sales to the island were spaced out and carefully calibrated to minimize tensions with Beijing. But the Trump administration has become more aggressive with China in 2020 and the sales would land as relations between Beijing and Washington are at their lowest point in decades over accusations of spying, a lingering trade war and disputes about the spread of the novel coronavirus. At the same time Taiwan's desire to buy weapons increased after President Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected here in January and has made strengthening Taiwan's defenses a top priority. Taiwan is China's most sensitive territorial issue. Beijing says it is a Chinese province, and has denounced the Trump administration's support for the island. Washington has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as "Fortress Taiwan," as Beijing's military makes increasingly aggressive moves in the region. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said the reported package was a "media assumption," and that it handled weapons purchase talks and assessments in a low-key, confidential way, so could not offer public comment until there was a formal U.S. notification of any sales to Congress. Taiwan's military is well-trained and well-equipped with mostly U.S.-made hardware, but China has a huge numerical superiority and is adding advanced equipment of its own. The weapons packages from Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Atomics are moving their way through the export process, three people familiar with the status of the deals on Capitol Hill said, and a notification to Congress is expected within weeks. One industry source said President Donald Trump was slated to be briefed on the packages this week by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Some of the deals had been requested by Taiwan more than a year ago, but are only now being moved through the approval process. A State Department spokesman declined to comment. A senior U.S. official, citing Chinese assertiveness in the Taiwan Strait, said: "There is no equilibrium today. It is out of balance. And I think that is dangerous." Trump's White House has made an here effort to export weapons to U.S. allies trying to bolster their defenses, decrease dependence on U.S. troops while boosting U.S. companies and jobs. As he fights for re-election on November 3, Trump and Republican supporters have ramped up their rhetoric against Beijing and sought to portray Democratic opponent Joe Biden as soft on China. Other factors include Taiwan's bigger defense budget, and the fear in Taiwan that if Trump loses, Biden would be less willing to sell the U.S.'s most advanced weapons to them. Taiwan's interest in U.S. weapons and equipment is not new. The island is bolstering its defenses in the face of what it sees as increasingly threatening moves by Beijing, such as regular Chinese air force and naval exercises near Taiwan. The senior U.S. official said Taiwan's increased defense spending was a good step, but it had to do more. "Taiwan, frankly, needs to do more in order to ensure that they indigenously have an ability to deter Chinese aggression," the official said. CAMBRIDGE One man is dead and another is charged with second-degree murder following a stabbing Wednesday night in Cambridge. Waterloo Regional Police were called around 10 to a townhouse complex on Linden Drive in Preston for a weapons call. When officers arrived they found a 26-year-old Cambridge man suffering from stab wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. When neighbour Sai Kallem saw flashing lights from police vehicles from his home a few doors down, he went outside and saw officers run into a home with guns. He later saw officers arrest a man. He was crying while they were arresting him, Kallem said. Sandeep Jassal, 28, of Kitchener is facing a charge of second-degree murder. Police did not identify the victim and said he and the accused are known to one another. There are no other suspects in the case. Officers were still on scene Thursday morning. What looked like blood marked the doorstep to the home and caution tape blocked off the front and back of the house. Sunil Ganti has owned a house in the area since March. He rents the property to Kallem and said there are a lot of college students who live in the neighbourhood. Ganti said the area is peaceful and was surprised to hear what happened. It was kind of shocking, he said. It was quite unfortunate what happened. Wednesdays death marks the sixth homicide in Waterloo Region this year. The last occurred less than a week ago at a Cambridge townhome near Queen Street West and Winston Boulevard. Kayla Duff, 22, died of multiple stab wounds, an autopsy determined. Police charged Melissa Duff-Shore, 41, with second-degree murder. Her next scheduled court date is Friday. Anyone with information about the investigations is asked to contact police at 519-570-9777, ext. 8191. Anonymous tips can be left with Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. Mao Zedong vowed to abolish Chinas capitalists. Deng Xiaoping said they could get rich. Now Xi Jinping, Chinas current leader, has his own message for the countrys private businesses that reflects a drive for both economic growth and greater Communist Party control: Were here to help you, but you must also help and heed us. The party that leads the worlds second-largest economy after the United States laid the groundwork this week for greater party influence over private business, while also promising them more support and opportunities to convey their needs. Though lacking many specifics, the guidelines underscored the competing economic and political undercurrents bearing on Mr. Xis government. China needs to shore up growth, especially after a hit from the coronavirus epidemic. At the same time, Mr. Xi sees smaller private firms as a weak spot in his efforts to secure Communist Party dominance across society. Unify members of the private sector around the party, and do better in promoting the healthy development of the private economy, Mr. Xi said in orders to officials published Thursday by Peoples Daily, the partys main newspaper. Multiple Senate Republicans on Thursday disavowed President Trump's claim that the results of the 2020 election may remain unknown indefinitely, Politico reports. Why it matters: Twitter flagged a tweet of the president's on Thursday as a potentially misleading statement after he said without evidence that because of mail-in ballots: "the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want." What they're saying: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): Its just not accurate. I dont think well have inaccurate election results," Rubio said, per Politico. They may take a lot longer than they ever have because of the amount of mailed ballots that are going to come in and so forth. But I dont have any concerns about the accuracy of the election. (R-Fla.): Its just not accurate. I dont think well have inaccurate election results," Rubio said, per Politico. They may take a lot longer than they ever have because of the amount of mailed ballots that are going to come in and so forth. But I dont have any concerns about the accuracy of the election. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.): Im confident the election process is going to work just fine. (R-S.D.): Im confident the election process is going to work just fine. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah): We will know the results of the November election. (R-Utah): We will know the results of the November election. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) defended no-excuses-needed absentee ballots, saying they have worked "very well" in her state. (R-Maine) defended no-excuses-needed absentee ballots, saying they have worked "very well" in her state. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he is concerned that results might be unclear until after Election Day, but eventually the U.S. will have a winner. (R-Texas) said he is concerned that results might be unclear until after Election Day, but eventually the U.S. will have a winner. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he has no reason to believe the results will be inaccurate. Meanwhile, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is privately encouraging voting by mail and warned Trump that the GOP could be "screwed" by his fight against mail-in voting, Axios' Alayna Treene writes. The big picture: FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress on Thursday that his greatest concern related to election security is the "steady drumbeat of misinformation and sort of amplification of smaller cyber intrusions" that could sow distrust in the results of the election. Washington, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. Small Business Administration announced two women-owned firms will receive awards honoring their work in federal contracting. Action Facilities Management, Inc. (AFM) , an 8(a)-certified commercial facilities management firm specializing in infrastructure and security support services from Morgantown, West Virginia; and , an 8(a)-certified commercial facilities management firm specializing in infrastructure and security support services from Morgantown, West Virginia; and Specialty Materials Inc. (SMI), a firm specializing in composite fiber and prepreg products that support the aerospace industry from Lowell, Massachusetts, has been named the National Subcontractor of the Year. These two women-owned small businesses were selected from among a strong field of candidates submitted by SBAs ten regional offices. Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year: Diana Lewis Jackson, President, and CEO, Action Facilities Management, Inc. (AFM) Morgantown, West Virginia Diana Lewis Jackson is President and CEO of Action Facilities Management, Inc. (AFM), a minority-owned, woman-owned certified small business specializing in government and commercial facilities management. With more than 300 employees, AFM supports clients in 11 states and Washington, D.C. They provide a full spectrum of integrated facilities management, infrastructure and security support services with core competencies in facility operations and maintenance, construction, administrative support services, and emergency management. Diana is a graduate of the SBAs 8(a) Program and was the SBAs 8(a)-Graduate of the Year in 2016 and 2013 West Virginia Small Business Person of the Year. Small Business Subcontractor of the Year: Monica Rommel, CEO, Specialty Materials Inc. (SMI) Lowell, Massachusetts Monica Rommel is an innovator and entrepreneur with 35 years of leadership in materials science related to the use of composites in advanced aerospace applications. Rommel is the Chief Executive Officer for Specialty Material Inc., a woman-owned small business specializing in composite fiber and prepreg products since 1971. Rommel purchased SMI with her company, Global Materials, in 2019. SMI is the only remaining source of continuous boron fiber in the world. Its materials are primarily used to reinforce advanced composite materials. SMIs products support several industries, including aerospace, aviation, and sporting equipment, with improved structural integrity and controlled thermal expansion. It is a volume producer of Chemical Vapor Deposition based Boron and Silicon Carbide fibers. These awards are a part of the SBAs National Small Business Week virtual events on September 22-24, 2020. Additional honors will be awarded to industry leaders, including the Dwight D. Eisenhower Awards, the 8(a) Graduate Firm of the Year, as well as the finalists for the National Small Business Person of the Year. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Award for Excellence recognizes large prime contractors that have excelled in the utilization of small businesses as suppliers and subcontractors within the construction, research and development, services, and manufacturing industries. Winners were selected for the following Eisenhower Award category: Research & Development and Services. Research & Development: Mr. C. Scott Anderson, Assistant Director for Operations Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL) Lexington, Massachusetts Mr. C. Scott Anderson is the Director of Operations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory (MITLL), which operates as a federally funded research development center on behalf of the Department of Defense. The laboratory conducts research and development pertinent to national security for DOD, the military, and other federal agencies where national security is mission-critical. It focuses its research on: space systems and technology, air, missile, and maritime defense; communication systems; cybersecurity and information sciences; intelligence; surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and technology; advanced technology; tactical systems, homeland protection, and air traffic control. The laboratory subcontracts more than $500 million annually, with 40-50 percent going to small businesses. In FY 2019, MIT LL awarded 43.6 percent in subcontracts to small businesses totaling $264.7 million. Additionally, through MIT LLs efforts to support small and disadvantage businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses received .81 percent of subcontracting dollars totaling $5 million, small disadvantaged businesses received 3.5 percent in subcontracting dollars totaling $21.5 million, women-owned small businesses received 22.2 percent in subcontracting dollars totaling $134.6 million, and HUBZone-owned businesses received .3 percent in subcontracting dollars totaling $1.6 million. Services: Carla Elena Undurraga Sector Manager and Small Business Liaison Officer Global Supplier Diversity Programs Northrup Grumman Systems Corporation Technology Services Sector McLean, Virginia Carla Elena Undurraga serves as Senior Manager and Small Business Liaison Officer for Northrup Grumman Technology Services (TS), an innovative leader in delivering full life cycle solutions and services supporting mission-critical networks and systems in six primary focus areas, including sustainment & modernization in aircraft, electronics, and software, strategic missile systems support, secure infrastructure & cyber operations support and training support services. Some of its clients include the U.S. Department of Defense, federal, civilian, health agencies, and the international defense communities. In FY 2019, Northrup Grumman Technology Services awarded 51 percent in subcontracts to small businesses totaling $655.6 million in contract dollars and 6.7 percent in subcontracts awarded to small disadvantaged businesses totaling $112.19 million. Northrup Grumman also awarded 9.2 percent in subcontracts to women-owned businesses totaling $118.3 million and 5.2 percent in subcontracts to HUBZone-owned small businesses totaling $66.3 million. It also awarded 5.5 percent in subcontracts awarded to service-disabled veteran-owned businesses totaling $70.5 million. 8(a) Graduate Firm of the Year: Cy A. Oatridge, CEO, Oatridge Security Group, Inc. Tacoma, Washington Cy A. Oatridge, is CEO of Oatridge Security Group, (OSG) Inc., a graduate of SBAs 8(a) Business Development Program, which provides protective service programs that meet and exceed commercial and government requirements. OSG offers armed and unarmed security officers, executive protection, fire alarm systems, electronic security, and consulting services. It is established as a small business leader in the protective security services industry in the greater Northwest area and beyond. OSG operated out of an office space that was less than 250 square feet for six years of its tenure in the 8(a) Program. Now, OSG has more than 115 employees and $10 million in revenues. The company participated in the SBA Mentor-Protege program with Evergreen Fire and Security and was able to secure many government contracts. As a result of this program, OSG was able to expand business operations to Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Colorado, and California. SBAs 8(a) Business Development Program is a nine-year program that provides socially and economically disadvantaged firms access to government contracting opportunities and specialized business training and counseling to help them become viable competitors in the federal marketplace. -###- About Federal Government Contracting Goals The federal government awarded over $132.9 billion in federal contract dollars to small businesses in FY19, the highest the federal government has ever awarded to small businesses. The $132.9 billion in prime contracts and the $90.7 billion in subcontracts awarded to small businesses translate to the creation of more than one million jobs. This represents an incredible impact on the American economy that supports job creation, innovation, and growth. About the U.S. Small Business Administration The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit https://www.sba.gov. --- Cosponsorship Authorization #SBW2020. SBAs participation in this Cosponsored Activity is not an endorsement of the views, opinions, products, or services of any Cosponsor or other person or entity. All SBA programs and services are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis. The trials of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate were halted world over after one volunteer developed 'unexplained illness' The DCGI order came after SII submitted the recommendations of the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), United Kingdom and DSMB India and sought permission to restart enrolment in the clinical trials. (AP) New Delhi: The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has revoked its suspension and allowed Serum Institute of India to resume the Phase 2 and 3 of clinical trials of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate in the country. However, the DCGI has asked Serum Institute of India (SII), which is conducting the trials in India, to submit the details of the medication used as per protocol for the management of the adverse events. This comes at a time when overall cases of novel coronavirus reached 50.50 lakh in India while death toll reached closer to 82,500, as per COVID19India.org. In another development, Indias Dr. Reddys Laboratories Limited and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) have decided to collaborate for the clinical trials and distribution of Russian Sputnik V vaccine in India. Once regulatory approvals are given by the Indian authorities, RDIF will supply to Dr. Reddys 100 million doses of the vaccine. The Phase I and II results have shown promise, and we will be conducting Phase-III trials in India to meet the requirements of the Indian regulators. Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID 19 in India, said G.V. Prasad, Co-Chairman and Managing Director of Dr. Reddys Laboratories. Deliveries could potentially begin in late 2020 subject to completion of successful trials and registration of the vaccine by regulatory authorities in India, RDIF said in a statement. As for Oxford vaccine trials, the DCGI order came after SII submitted the recommendations of the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), United Kingdom and DSMB India and sought permission to restart enrolment in the clinical trials. The trails were halted world over after one volunteer developed unexplained illness. "You may recommence the clinical trial dated August 2, 2020, as recommended by the DSMB, India as per already approved protocol and the provisions laid down under New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 subject to the conditions mentioned which are to be scrupulously followed such as extra care during screening, additional information in the informed consent and close monitoring for similar events during the study follow-up," the DCGI letter to SII said. India has recorded 90,123 new cases of novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours taking its overall tally to 50.20 lakh, as per union health ministry daily bulletin. With more than 20,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, Maharashtra is leading the tally, followed by Andhra Pradesh (8846) and Karnataka (7576). In fact, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu compose close to 60% of the Active Cases while 70% of the total Active Cases are found in nine most affected States/UTs. So far 82, 066 deaths have been recorded out of which 1, 026 deaths took place in the last 24 hours. Union health ministry officials said, India continues to record a spate of very high recoveries. India logged in the highest number of single day recoveries in the last 24 hours. After 82,961 COVID-19 patients were cured and discharged from home/facility isolation and hospitals, steeply pushing the Recovery Rate to 78.53%, officials said. The total recovered cases stand at 39,42,360 while there are 9,95,933 active cases in the country as on date. In the last 24 hours, Maharashtra (19423) contributed 23.41% of the new recoveries while Andhra Pradesh (9628), Karnataka (7406), Uttar Pradesh (6680) and Tamil Nadu (5735) contributed 35.5% of the fresh recoveries. Nearly 59% of the new recoveries came from these five states while 27 states/UTs have reported Recovery Rate more than 70%. Countrys overall Recovery Rate is 78.53%. The World Health Organization and WHO's appointed Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization have issued a worldwide COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan. The said COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan opposed the so-called vaccine nationalism, wherein each country should prioritize its citizens. In WHO's distribution plan, it promotes a global approach, prioritizing vaccination among the most vulnerable people everywhere. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the top priority must be vaccinating some people in all counties, rather than all people in some countries. The WHO Director-General also said that vaccine nationalism would prolong the pandemic, not shorten it. The WHO's proposed vaccine distribution method ensures that all countries will access the COVID-19 vaccine once it is available. Participating in upper and middle-class income countries will provide funding for the vaccine accelerator program. This with a long-term goal in mind, which is global prosperity. Over 78 "self-financing" countries have joined the program, with Germany, Japan, and Norway. The European Commission this week expressed an interest in participating in the program's facility. Currently, a total of 170 nations plan to participate in the program called COVAX. This represents about 70 percent of the world's population. However, the United States is not part of those who intend to participate. Dr. Ruth Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H., founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute for Bioethics, said that the idea behind the COVAX facility is that the world community unite in an enlightened self-interested way to both and then distribute the vaccine. Faden added that the countries whoa re self-financing are essentially helping themselves by helping the world. WHO also looked at vaccination properties within each country. Its guidelines do not include the order in which certain groups would receive the vaccine. But the plan does highlight certain vulnerable groups as a high priority for global impact. Faden said they did not specifically say which groups should be prioritized first, second, and third. She added that this would come later. Faden added that there are factors that influence distribution tactics. These factors are local transmission patterns, the available quantity of vaccine supplies, and a nation's infrastructure. She said that these will likely change now and then, especially when a vaccine is approved as more information becomes available. The SAGE group will then start to first work on specific groups. However, the COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan is exemplified in the way children will be considered for vaccination. Faden said as the vaccine becomes available, the first-line strategy may be to vaccinate teachers and school staff and not children. Faden explained that this is because the data will be available first in adults. Pfizer and Biontech recently said their plans to expand testing to adolescents as young as 16. "The WHO framework is particularly notable for its emphasis on global equity, with specific objectives aimed at wealthy countries. The framework considers not only the public health impact of vaccine allocation but also the social and economic impacts," Faden was quoted in a report. Check these out! Chennai, Sep 17 : With the wage agreement concluded in the banking sector, the National Confederation of General Insurance Officers' Associations (Confed) has urged the General Insurance Public Sector Association (GIPSA) to hold wage revision talks. In a letter to GIPSA Chairman Girish Radhakrishnan, the Confed pointed out that 37 months have passed from the date the wage revision had become due for the employees of the four public sector non-life insurers. The GIPSA is an association of four government owned insurance companies viz., National Insurance Company Ltd, The New India Assurance Company Ltd, United India Insurance Company Ltd and The Oriental Insurance Company Ltd. The Confed also referred to the Memorandum submitted by the all the trade unions in the four companies jointly to resume the wage revision talks which had become due from August 1, 2017. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. We all know that the New York City restaurant industry has taken a huge financial hit from the coronavirus pandemic, including here on Staten Island. But hitting diners with a new tax wont make it better. But thats what the City Council has done, approving a bill from Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) that would allow restaurants to add a 10 percent COVID-19 Recovery Charge to every customers bill. Restaurants can add the surcharge or not as they see fit. The tax would sunset 90 days after the full return of indoor dining. Which these days looks very far in the future indeed. City Hall said that Mayor Bill de Blasio enthusiastically supports the bill and would be proud to sign it. Of course he would. This is the same mayor who made class warfare out of restaurant dining by saying that only the privileged really have the money to eat out anyway. So it only follows that hed be proud to drop another tax on them. That aside, whoever thought wed ever see such concord between de Blasio and Borelli? It was only a few days ago that Borelli on Twitter lambasted de Blasio, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the State Liquor Authority, as pieces of st over last weekends enforcement action at Joyces Tavern in Eltingville. If de Blasio truly wants to save the New York City restaurant industry, hed fight like a wolverine to fully restore indoor dining. Restaurants will be allowed to open indoors at 25 percent capacity at the end of the month. They will only be able to serve until midnight. They will have to perform health screenings and gather contact tracing information from diners. Its not going to be nearly enough to right the industrys ship. We all want to help the restaurant industry, which is so vital to the citys economy and which is a huge part of Staten Islands business and cultural lives. But it borders on the insulting to ask customers to pay more after theyve supported their favorite eateries these last six months by ordering takeout and delivery meals and by taking part in outdoor dining. I dont know about you, but Ive ordered out a lot more over the last six months than I usually do. Ive made a point of dining out a bit more often once outdoor dining was allowed. I was happy to do it. Dont penalize me for it now. Allowing for a surcharge ignores the fact that many restaurant patrons are facing financial difficulties of their own. Theyve lost jobs. Theyve had their salaries cut. Theyve been out on furlough. An extra fee might not only discourage diners from patronizing establishments but might affect how much they order and the amount they tip if they actually do go out. That doesnt help anybody. Thankfully, some restaurants have already said that they wont take advantage of the surcharge. They wont charge their customers that extra 10 percent. Diners should should show their gratitude by giving these establishments more business. And while restaurants have taken a massive hit, they arent the only businesses that have suffered financially because of the pandemic. Broadway theaters, bars, movie theaters and concert halls remain shuttered, likely for the long haul. Thats untold numbers of people unemployed and ancillary businesses still suffering. Other business have reopened but still took a beating from the virus, including malls, gyms and mom-and-pop retail stores. Theyre operating at reduced capacity and still struggle to make back money lost to the pandemic. Wheres their lifeboat? And lets face it: Restaurants can already institute their own COVID Recovery Charge by incrementally increasing prices on the menu, and can do it without rubbing it in the face of their customers. Better that than a new tax. By Jun Ji-hye InterContinental commences offering 2020 Chuseok gift sets The Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas and InterContinental Seoul COEX are offering 2020 Chuseok gift sets until Oct. 4. Alongside the gift sets, a premium meal for use in ancestral ceremonies prepared by InterContinental's Korean cuisine chefs is also available this year for the very first time. Twelve types of "InterContinental Chef Choice" items handpicked by chefs including the Grand Deli Choice comprising renowned local specialties and the Sommelier Selection chosen by InterContinental's head sommelier are on offer. "Chef's Assorted Memorial Service Table for Ancestors" introduced for the first time this year is made from top-quality local ingredients, including dried corvina, Korean beef and octopus. Prepared by InterContinental's Korean cuisine chefs, nine types of generously portioned memorial service dishes are packed and safely delivered by the hotel staff. It needs to be reserved 48 hours in advance. Andaz Seoul Gangnam presents a 'City Break' promotion The Andaz Seoul Gangnam, a luxury lifestyle hotel brand of Hyatt International, is presenting the "City Break" promotion, which features a discount of up to 30 percent on the daily room rate for late summer and fall hotel staycation guests. The promotion is being offered at five Hyatt hotels in Korea until Oct. 11, with the stay period valid until Dec. 22. Andaz Seoul Gangnam offers a variety of hotel essentials for a reasonable price. Guests can book a room for a discount of up to 30 percent off the daily rate, receive a welcome drink at check-in and access a complimentary in-room minibar (alcohol excluded). They can also enjoy a heated indoor pool, three Jacuzzis and 24-hour fitness center. The 30 percent discount rate is available to World of Hyatt members, who can also enjoy other membership benefits such as point accumulation. Guests who are not members yet can simply join World of Hyatt free of charge. The discount rate for non-members is up to 25 percent off. The Lounge at Park Hyatt Seoul presents "The Taste-Fermentation" dinner set Polish President Andrzej Duda expressed his thanks for the affection of the Vietnamese leaders and people towards the Polish people and appreciated the warm welcome that Vietnam gave him during his official visit to Vietnam in 2017. He also expressed his delight at the positive developments in the friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Poland over the past 70 years while acknowledging the contributions of the Vietnamese community living in Poland. The Polish President affirmed his wish to continue to foster multifaceted cooperation between the two countries. He also conveyed his greetings and best wishes to Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong along with other Vietnamese senior leaders. The Vietnamese diplomat also sent greetings from Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong to President Andrzej Duda, the Government and people of Poland. He also informed the President of the socio-economic achievements of Vietnam over recent years as well as goals and national development strategies for the future. Ambassador Nguyen Hung affirmed that Poland is an important partner of Vietnam in Central Europe and the two countries still have large potential for cooperation, particularly after the effectiveness of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). He pledged to act as a bridge to contribute to lifting the bilateral relations between the two countries to a new level for the mutual benefit of the two peoples. Bay of Plenty Have you got your Class 2 manual license and are looking to get your foot in the door of a well renowned company? Read on!he... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz Nicki Minaj has landed a significant win in a copyright lawsuit brought against her by Tracy Chapman. A judge ruled Wednesday that the 10-time Grammy nominee did not commit copyright infringement in her song based on Chapman's Baby Can I Hold You. US district judge Virginia A Phillips found that her use of the song constitutes 'fair use,' protecting a common practice in the music industry of developing new music based on existing work, and requesting license from the original artist before release. Big win: Nicki Minaj has landed a significant win in a copyright lawsuit brought against her by Tracy Chapman (pictured in August, 2018) Judge Phillips wrote: 'Artists usually experiment with works before seeking licenses from rights holders and rights holders typically ask to see a proposed work before approving a license. 'A ruling uprooting these common practices would limit creativity and stifle innovation within the music industry.' Minaj based her 2017 track Sorry (featuring Nasir Bin Olu) off Chapman's song from her 1988 self-titled debut album. Her representatives sought permission from Chapman, who repeatedly refused, citing a blanket policy she has against such licensing. Art imitating art: A judge ruled Wednesday that the 10-time Grammy nominee did not commit copyright infringement in her song based on Chapman's Baby Can I Hold You (pictured in January, 2014) Fair use: US district judge Virginia A Phillips found that her use of the song constitutes 'fair use,' protecting a common practice in the music industry of developing new music based on existing work, and requesting license from the original artist before release (pictured in May, 2019) Although Sorry was dropped from Minaj's 2018 album Queen, a copy of the unreleased track DJ Flex, a New York radio personality who played it on the air. Portions of the song later played on The Breakfast Club, and it's since become widely available online. Chapman accused Minaj of providing DJ Flex with the track, but she and Flex have both denied it come from her or her representatives. Oldie but goodie: Minaj based her 2017 track Sorry (featuring Nasir Bin Olu) off Chapman's song from her 1988 self-titled debut album Request denied: Her representatives sought permission from Chapman, who repeatedly refused, citing a blanket policy she has against such licensing Bootleg release: Although Sorry was dropped from Minaj's 2018 album Queen, a copy of the unreleased track DJ Flex, a New York radio personality who played it on the air The Pink Friday artist's legal team argued that artists should be free to create work based on existing material, without fearing legal action from the original artist when pursuing license. The attorney stated: 'Such free-flowing creativity is important to all recording artists, but particularly in hip hop. 'With that category of music, a recording artist typically goes into the studio and experiments with dozens of different beats or snippets of melodies, before hitting upon a pleasing combination.' Although the judge agreed, she ruled that the dispute over whether Minaj provided the music to DJ Flex would need to go to jury. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 19:04 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4579d03 1 National omnibus-bill-on-job-creation,Education,Nahdlatul-ulama,PKB,house-of-representatives Free Indonesian lawmakers and academics have demanded education issues be scrapped from the omnibus bill on job creation, arguing that some provisions within the draft may end up being "counterproductive" to the efforts to improve quality education in the country. The bill, currently being discussed by the House of Representatives and the government, would amend a number of articles in Law No. 20/2003 on the national education system, Law No. 14/2005 on teachers and lecturers as well as Law No. 12/2012 on higher education. A number of House members, especially those with close ties to Indonesia's largest Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), raised concerns over some articles they deemed would commercialize the education sector and turn it into a business commodity. For instance, they criticized a provision in the draft bill -- a copy of which was obtained by The Jakarta Post -- that changes the principle of nonprofit management for higher education institutions as an option instead of an obligation as initially stipulated in the 2012 law. House Legislation Body (Baleg) member Abdul Wahid of the National Awakening Party (PKB), which is regarded as the unofficial political wing of NU, criticized the revision, emphasizing that the country should have responsibility for ensuring access to education. "I'm afraid that this will endanger the nation. Don't commercialize education, Abdul said during a hearing between Baleg and the government on Tuesday. Hasani Bin Zuber, a member of House Commission VIII overseeing social affairs from the Democratic Party, further raised concerns over an article in the bill requiring people to secure a business license from the central government to establish education institutions, including Islamic boarding schools (pesantren). The bill also stipulates a fine of up to Rp 1 billion (US$66,834) for those who fail to obtain a license. Read also: Govt prepares implementing regulations for omnibus bill on job creation "I think we should review the revisions so they dont become a problem in the future," said Hasani, who is also known as an NU activist. Chairman of House Commission X overseeing education and PKB politician Syaiful Huda touted the articles in the education cluster of the draft bill to be "counterproductive to the philosophy and objectives of education in Indonesia." "This will have an impact on the tradition-based educational institutions such as pesantren [Islamic boarding schools] and will increase the costs of education," Syaiful said. Indonesia is home to some 4,670 universities and other higher education institutions, 122 of which are state-run universities while the rest are private institutions. Of the figure, NU operates around 257 higher-learning institutions, which are among up to 6,000 education institutions -- ranging from kindergartens to universities -- run by the Islamic organization in the archipelago. The group also runs more than 23,000 pesantren of up to 29,000 Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia, according to NU data. Lecturers and teachers also voiced concerns over the revision. Hariadi Kartodihardjo of the Board of Professors at Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) in West Java highlighted the elimination of all requirements for foreign universities to operate in Indonesia. The bill scraps, among other things, the requirement for foreign universities to be accredited and relaxes the obligation for them to collaborate with domestic higher-learning institutions. Hariadi argued that facilitating investment in higher education without accreditation standards could reduce its quality, saying that foreign universities should obtain accreditation both in their country and in Indonesia. Read also: Its to prevent sexual violence: UI clarifies, rebuffs criticism against consensual sex topic We dont want Indonesia to have too many universities that dont necessarily benefit the nation," he said. "Many other countries, for example, Japan, have succeeded in increasing global competitiveness not by opening investment for foreign universities but focusing on increasing the capacity of their universities to conduct research and development, including cooperation with businesses." The Indonesian Teachers Association (PGRI) argued the bill would lead to discrimination against teachers who graduated from domestic universities. The bill stipulates that teachers or lecturers with a bachelor's degree from an accredited foreign university are no longer required to have an educator certificate, while those who obtained their bachelor's degree from a domestic university are still required to have one. PGRI chairwoman Unifah Rosyidi called on the House to drop the education cluster from the bill, which generally aims to ease business licensing and attract investment. The PGRI demand the House and the government exclude the education cluster from the bill and they could make a separate omnibus bill, she said, questioning the need for the issues to be included in the bill. Elen Setiadi, an expert staff member at the Coordinating Economic Ministry, said during Tuesday's hearing that Indonesia had to catch up in science and innovation so some relaxations on regulations related to the education sector were necessary. Science and innovation development requires a large investment," Elen said, "The state is still responsible for the educational system without being profit-oriented. Lucknow: A day after ruling out tie-up with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Samajwadi Party said on Friday it has not got any "positive response" from Congress on alliance and that it could give the party only 85 of 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party, which is not on the same page with Congress on the issue of inclusion of RLD, said if that party wanted to defeat BJP, it should accept SP's formula of seat-sharing. "Under this formula, SP would give those seats to Congress on which its candidate were in first place or seats where SP was at third, fourth or fifth spots," SP National Vice President Kironmay Nanda told reporters here after SP released its list of 191 candidates. "Thus, Congress will get 54 seats. But if it (Congress) talks seriously, we can also give them 25-30 additional seats. The maximum seats we can give to them will be 85," he said. Noting that the main objective of SP was to defeat BJP in the assembly polls, he said, "For this, we are trying for alliance with Congress but till now we have not got any positive response from them." To a question, Nanda expressed his party's inability to give Amethi seat held by it to Congress. When it was pointed out that in Friday's list SP has fielded candidates on various seats on which Congress candidates had won 2012 polls, Nanda said, "If alliance takes place, SP will withdraw its candidates from those seats." Formation of a 'maha gathbandhan' (grand alliance) in Uttar Pradesh appeared to be a matter of dispute between prospective allies SP and Congress, with both parties airing divergent views on inclusion of RLD headed by Ajit Singh. Sources said RLD wanted more seats than what SP was ready to part with. Congress reportedly offered some 20 seats to RLD chief's son Jayant Choudhary, who is in touch with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. According to insiders, Singh has said he will not accept less than 30 seats and was now contemplating going solo. To a query on tie-up with RLD, Nanda said, "There was no talk with RLD on alliance." When asked whether it has become difficult to forge alliance with Congress now, he said, "It will be too early to say so. We still want an alliance with Congress but on our own conditions. Poll process has already started and SP cannot wait for a long time." For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. The Navy has ships, submarines and aircraft in the North Atlantic this week as the service tests its ability to detect and track undersea vessels in a region where Russian activity has been ramping up. Exercise Black Widow, which started Saturday and runs through the end of the week, is focused on anti-submarine warfare. The exercise follows several public comments from Navy leaders about increased Russian undersea activity there, posing new challenges in a region they say must be viewed as a contested battlespace. "This is where the fight is ... where the competition is," Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, commander of U.S. 2nd Fleet, told reporters Wednesday. "We've got to maintain our positional advantage over the adversary -- specifically in the Atlantic, the undersea capability of the Russians. We have got to maintain that advantage." Read Next: Former Missile Defense Agency Chief Harassed Female Employee for 7 Years, IG Finds The amphibious assault ship Wasp; guided-missile destroyers Arleigh Burke and McFaul; two fast attack submarines -- one Virginia class and one Los Angeles class; and patrol aircraft are participating in Black Widow. The name of the new exercise stems from a submarine tactic that involves breaking a bullseye into quadrants, resembling a spider web. Undersea Warfighting Development Center decided on Black Widow since its the most powerful and lethal spider. Navy leaders declined to say whether they spotted any Russian underwater activity during the exercise. Both the Russians and Chinese have invested heavily in undersea-warfare capabilities, said Vice Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of Submarine Forces Atlantic. Russia is fielding some of the most advanced subs in the world -- both fast-attack guided-missile shooters and ballistic-missile shooters, Caudle said. "That is their capital ship," he said. "... This is a significant issue." The Russians "took a knee" for more than a decade, Caudle added, leaving many to believe the American homeland was not under threat from the country. That's no longer the case, he said. "We have to be prepared here to conduct high-end combat operations in local waters just like we do abroad now because of the threats," he said. Navy leaders have stressed that the service needs to invest heavily in unmanned technologies to better address threats from more tech-savvy and sophisticated adversaries. Lewis declined to answer a question from Military.com about whether the Navy is using unmanned platforms during Black Widow, or if they see a need for them during the exercise. The Navy is using MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and P-8 Poseidon maritime-patrol and reconnaissance aircraft during the exercise, which Rear Adm. Jim Waters, commander of the newly re-established Submarine Group Two, called "a very lethal combination." Both can see below the waterline -- the Seahawk from lower altitudes and the reconnaissance aircraft from higher up. Black Widow has been a test in command and control as the Navy has put submarines, ships and aircraft in the region to practice anti-submarine warfare. "I think this exercise is reflective of the absolute commitment of the Navy -- all communities in the Navy -- to anti-submarine warfare," Waters said. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Related: Russian Submarine Activity Has Picked Up in Atlantic, Navy 3-Star Says Photo taken on March 11, 2020 shows the White House in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) Routine COVID-19 tests for journalists covering the White House were delayed Wednesday because they were told by White House staff members that "we had a couple of positives today." WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Several White House staffers reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, but White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows refused to confirm the news. According to tweets by Brazilian journalist Raquel Krahenbuhl, routine COVID-19 tests for journalists covering the White House were delayed by some 30 minutes Wednesday because they were told by White House staff members that "we had a couple of positives today." The reporter, joined by press pool reporters on the driveway at the White House complex, later asked Meadows if he had information about those positive tests. "I don't comment on any health-related issues as it relates to the White House ever," Meadows responded. The report came less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump traveled to Philadelphia on Tuesday for a town hall event with undecided voters. CLEVELAND, Ohio A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is providing more evidence of how easily children can pick up COVID-19 in a group setting and infect family members at home. Twelve children who were infected with COVID-19 at daycare centers in Utah passed the virus on to at least another 12 people between them, according to a CDC analysis of outbreaks in that state. One mother had to be hospitalized after presumably being infected by her child, the study said. This is sobering information for Northeast Ohio school districts beginning in-person instruction soon. Bay Village school district started a hybrid of in-person and online instruction this week, while Rocky River schools will switch to a similar hybrid model later this month. Other studies have looked at whether children could be important carriers of COVID-19. Children with only mild symptoms, or experiencing no symptoms, can spread the coronavirus for weeks, suggests a recent study that looked at children in 22 South Korean hospitals. The paper was recently published on the website of JAMA Pediatrics. A study published last week in the Journal of Pediatrics found high viral loads in the airways of children infected with the coronavirus. But its authors, a team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, did not assess the potential for those children to pass the virus to others. This infographic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows how COVID-19 spread in three childcare centers in Utah. The CDC study in Utah investigated COVID-19 outbreaks at three childcare centers near Salt Lake City. At all three centers, the first known case was a staff member. Two employees went to work even though a person in their household had COVID-19 symptoms, the CDC said. The 12 infected children ranged in age from 8 months to 10 years old, and were either asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, the study said. In one case, an 8-month-old passed COVID-19 to both parents, the study said. Not all of the sick childrens close contacts were tested for the illness, so some infections associated with the childcare centers may have gone undetected, the study said. Expanded testing of adults and children in childcare centers who are exposed to a confirmed case of COVID-19 could help control the spread of the illness, the studys authors said. Testing should include children who do not show symptoms. The CDC also recommends that daycare employees wear face masks, especially around children too young to wear them, wash their hands frequently, clean high-touch surfaces often and stay home when sick. Manoj Viswanathan By Express News Service KOCHI: An order issued by the General Administration Department allowing asymptomatic migrant labourers to work in exclusively marked zones has triggered a controversy. The order was issued as the Industries Department sought relaxations of quarantine norms saying the restrictions were delaying infrastructure projects in the state. While a section of doctors have opposed the order, many said it will benefit the workers. If the labourers are allowed to work in exclusively marked areas while taking precautions, it will be beneficial. Less than 5 per cent of migrant labourers who tested Covid positive in Ernakulam district are symptomatic. The labourers are healthy and dont seem vulnerable. They continue to stay in Kerala as our health system is better and they can support their families back home who have been affected due to job loss, National Health Mission (NHM) nodal officer for Athithi Devo Bhava migrant welfare projects Dr Akhil Xavier Manuel told TNIE. He said we had to accept Covid as a reality and learn to live with, treat and mitigate it. The suggestion is not meant for footloose labourers who mingle with the public but for those employed in the industrial sector and live on the premises of the site. In fact, we implemented the method in Ernakulam three weeks ago. We monitor the pulse oxygen levels of asymptomatic patients twice a day and shift those who develop health problems to Covid First-Line Treatment Centres, he said. Executive director of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development Benoy Peter said though chances of a migrant labourer working in an industrial unit contracting Covid is low, the infection will spread in the community if one person gets infected as they live in crowded labour camps.Migrant labourers in the organised sector rarely mingle with people and mostly live on project premises. Hence, chances of infection are scarce. However, I dont think it is practical to segregate the workers who tested positive and allow them to work in exclusive areas. Providing them FLTC-like facilities on the work site may also not be practical, Benoy said. There are around 35 lakh migrant labourers in Kerala and around 3.5 lakh workers returned to their native states in Shramik special trains when the pandemic hit. The number of labourers who returned by bus and flights is not available. Most of the migrant workers are employed in the organised sector and are not willing to return home as the employers are providing them all amenities here and they are able to support their families back home, said Benoy. Downing Street last night insisted the Government is not preparing to impose a new two-week lockdown on the entire country. Officials were forced to deny claims the chief medical officer has been pushing for short, sharp nationwide restrictions to tackle the rise in infections. Professor Anthony Costello, a former director at the World Health Organisation, tweeted: 'I'm hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. 'Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two-week national lockdown.' But he later rowed back on the claim after it was fiercely denied by the Government. Sir Chris Whitty, pictured, is not pushing for a new two-week national lockdown, contrary to claims made by a former World Health Organisation expert Anthony Costello, who sits on the independent SAGE panel, made the statement on Twitter on Wednesday evening, adding that daily infections could be as high as 38,000 He wrote: 'I'm hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day. Chris Whitty is advising PM for a two week national lockdown' A Downing Street spokesman said: 'We don't recognise that at all.' Asked if he could rule out the possibility that it was true, he replied: 'Yes.' A Whitehall source went further, describing the claim as 'b*******'. Prof Costello later tweeted: 'I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a two-week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record.' In a further clarification, he added: 'Please note that Chris Whitty has indirectly informed me that this is not his view so I am happy to correct this statement.' Boris Johnson has made clear his resistance to imposing a second nationwide lockdown. But yesterday it was claimed that, privately, he is worried the public will become increasingly frustrated with restrictions that are kept in place or reintroduced. The Spectator reported that he warned a friend recently: 'Wait for the autumn if you think people are restless now.' Earlier this week, Mr Johnson said that a second national lockdown would be likely to have 'disastrous' financial consequences. But he later rowed back on the claim, writing: 'I've been told by another insider I respect that Chris Whitty does not support a two-week lockdown, so I'm pleased to correct the record' At the Commons liaison committee on Wednesday, the Prime Minister was asked by Conservative MP Julian Knight, chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, whether the UK could afford another national lockdown. Mr Johnson replied: 'I don't want a second national lockdown I think it would be completely wrong for this country and we are going to do everything in our power to prevent it. 'And can we afford it? I very much doubt that the financial consequences would be anything but disastrous, but we have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means that we have set out. So when I see people arguing against the rule of six or saying that the Government is coming in too hard on individual liberties and so on I totally understand that and I sympathise with that, but we must, must defeat this disease.' During a visit to Scotland yesterday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for ministers to sort out problems with testing in order to prevent the need for another nationwide lockdown. He said: 'I certainly hope not to go into a generalised lockdown but really it depends on government action, both here in Scotland and across the UK, to deal much more effectively with things like testing.' L.A. Sparks Honors Veterans, First Responders with Resources Panel The Los Angeles Sparks hosted Military/Veterans and First Responders Night during their battle against the Washington Mystics on Thursday. Prior to tipoff, the Sparks franchise hosted a resource panel for veterans. Several topics were touched upon during the panel including transitioning out of the military, career opportunities and mental health. The event consisted of three discussions: a Women in the Military panel, a Transition and Entrepreneurship panel and guest speakers. The moderator of the event was Renee Bobb of Bunker Labs. ADVERTISEMENT The Women in the Military panel featured USC World Relief office director Lauren Duncan, El Camino College associate director Brenda Threatt, and Goodwill veteran employment program manager Melanie Alvarez. Threatt was inspired to join the military in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Although she did not qualify for combat, she designed license plates that commemorated to the tragic event and anti-terrorism. I sent the plate to then Herb Wesson who is the Speaker of the House, she said. We took it to the governor and lo and behold, they adopted my plate that plate has raised over $10 million to Defend California, [and] anti-terrorism in California. Alvarezs advice for overcoming barriers as a woman is to be authentic and do what you love. Looking for things, looking for content thats intellectually stimulating, gravitating towards people who have positive energy that definitely helps a lot, she said. I always keep in mind the women that I served with, the people who are the women in my squadron because theyre really the ones who bring me out of my shell. Duncan mentioned to viewers to not succumb to their insecurities and to not believe that there are limited opportunities. ADVERTISEMENT As long as you guard your happiness, you compete only with yourself, Duncan said. Do not become a person who believes in a smallness mindset. L.A. County Department of Mental Health clinical psychologist Dr. Rebecca Gitlin talked about mental health during the pandemic. Many actions, like self-isolating, forgetting to eat or shower, or having cynical thoughts are normal behavior in reaction to the uncertainty of the pandemic. The dip that many of us are seeing in our mental health is to be expected, Gitlin said. Its not something we want, but it is kind of an appropriate reaction to the times that were navigating. She also shared how the apps Headspace, Virtual Hope Box and My3 could help people with their mental health. Metro Veterans Program manager Dennis Tucker noted how it takes 30 months for a veteran to transition to civilian life. They should start preparing a year before leaving the military. The Transition and Entrepreneurship panel consisted of US Navy Master Chief Latoya Luter, Southern California program manager Thomas McDaniel, battalion chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department Kris Larson, and Bunker Labs CEO Blake Hogan. The panelists talked about different types of military benefits that help with college and career readiness, like the post 9/11 G.I. Bill and transition assistance workshops. For entrepreneurship, panelists expressed the importance of listening to the needs of customers and having multiple streams of income. McDaniel noted that onetonline.org was a helpful resource. It was introduced to me through one of my counselors, He said. That one website helped me develop a plan for myself. The L.A. Sparks has a history of creating programming for the military through their initiative Spark the True You. The franchise hosted resource fairs and discussions that promote, health, wellness and professional development. EQS Group-News: Research Dynamics / Key word(s): Research Update Report on CPH by Research Dynamics: Investor Day update 17.09.2020 / 17:40 This report is published by Research Dynamics, an independent research boutique At the forefront of the sustainability CPH hosted an annual investor day event and the key theme that emerged was the company's ability to leverage its competitive positioning in the Paper Division to mitigate the prevailing weak market for the print paper. Moreover, the group also showcased that reducing carbon footprint remains top on their agenda. We also took a tour of the Perlen Papier plant, which induced confidence in us about the group's preparedness about achieving carbon neutrality and to tide over the challenging market conditions. Strategy 2020-2024 - Implementation progressing well The strategy's objectives encompass balanced net sales composition between the three divisions, a higher share of net sales from outside Europe, and reducing exposure to the Swiss Franc to minimize currency fluctuations. Last month the company announced that the Packaging Division acquired the remaining 40% shares of Perlen Packaging Anapolis, Brazil, and invested a higher single-digit millions to expand its Brazilian production facility to provide a new PVdC film coating plant with a capacity of 6.500 tons a year which should commence its operations in the first quarter of 2022. In addition, the Perlen Packaging is providing a loan to its Brazilian business partner for the construction of a new mono PVC film manufacturing facility, with which the division will be able to cover the full supply chain with the local Brazilian production facilities, from mono films to coated blister pack films. Paper Division well placed to mitigate challenges CPH's Paper Division has been in operations since 1873 under the Perlen Papier name and is Switzerland's only producer of newsprint and magazine paper and the country's biggest wastepaper recycler. It operates two paper machines with a combined annual production capacity of 565,000 tons of newsprint and magazine paper. To manufacture the newsprint paper, it uses the PM7 machine since 2010, which is the most advanced machine in Europe. The newspaper and magazine paper market has been bearing the brunt of twin challenges for many years. On one hand, the growing importance of digital channels has led to the falling consumption of print media by -8 to 10% a year; on the other hand, the excess capacities have had an adverse impact on the realizations. However, the company responded to market developments with key strategic thrusts. Through efficient structures and processes, it emerged as the most cost-efficient player in the region. Over 2009-2019, Perlen Papier has been able to reduce its variable costs by 32% and fixed costs by 49%. Over the same period, the cumulative productivity gains were +72%. With its direct customer contacts and efficient customer services, Perlen has been able to increase its market share in Western Europe from 2.5% to about 7%. Moreover, Perlen's focus on differentiation through modified and eco-efficient products also helped. All these measures have helped the division consistently deliver an EBITDA margin (for Perlen) higher than the competitors. The lynchpin in reducing carbon footprint and sustainable production Perlen Papier maintains a wastepaper sorting facility in Utzenstorf and is Switzerland's only paper recycler. The raw materials include 500,000 tons a year of recovered paper (75% of which comes from Swiss domestic sources), 100,000 tons a year of wood (85% from Swiss), and 2,000 tons a year of pulp. Perlen also founded the 'APS' brand in 2018 for the procurement, sorting, and trading of wastepaper. Moreover, in 2012, the Paper Division helped establish the Renergia waste incinerator facility in Central Switzerland, which is situated close to the Perlen paper factory. The Paper Division uses steam from the Renergia facility to dry its paper rolls, saving 30mn liters of heating oil and substantially reducing its carbon emissions by 90,000 tons. The energy generated from 250,000 tons of waste disposal is helping to generate 160 GWh of electricity, which is enough for 38,000 homes. Having consistently reduced its fossil CO2 emissions by 87% since 2013, Perlen Papier now has a carbon footprint that is 75% smaller than those of its European competitors. Last year, its Perlen factory emitted just 19kgs of CO2 per ton of paper produced that was 16 times lower than the emission targets agreed with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. Perlen has been able to achieve almost carbon-neutral paper production by having short delivery journeys that minimized its carbon emissions on the transport front. Domestically produced paper essential for sustainability Interestingly, the proportion of the finished paper used in Switzerland imported from abroad rose 21-50% between 2017-19. The company is making efforts to keep populations and publishing houses informed that it makes less sense to export wastepaper that has been recovered in Switzerland to neighboring countries when it could easily be recycled domestically into new paper products. Moreover, the Covid outbreak has shown the importance of having raw materials such as recycled papers close to the operations, which would establish a sustainable and reliable domestic manufacturing chain. Digital media lacks print in sustainability The advent of technological changes has resulted in the massive adoption of the digital information channels that resulted in a gradual decline in demand for newsprints. It is pertinent to note that paper publication has superior ecological credentials as compared to digital channels. Based on the study conducted by the Institute for Further Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT), over the entire production cycle reading news online has a significant adverse impact on the environment than a printed newspaper. This is because far more energy gets consumed in storing and transmitting the data, and in manufacturing such devices. Also, the study found that paper is relatively softer on the environment. Valuation and conclusion We value CPH using DCF and relative valuation techniques. Our intrinsic value of CHF 87.2 per share is the same as our previous target price (CHF 87.2), implying an upside of 30.2% from current levels. For relative valuation, since the Group operates in three entirely different divisions, we compare each of CPH's divisions with different sets of relevant industry peers. We have employed three parameters - EV/EBITDA, P/S and P/E - to analyze the relative valuation of the Group. CPH currently trades at a P/S multiple of 1.3x (FY2020E), a ~33% discount to the weighted average multiple of division peers. We remain encouraged by the management's focus on keeping the operations competitive even during the challenging times like we are facing at present. Most importantly, while doing so the group has not taken the focus off the commitment towards environmental sustainability, which has never been so important as the way it today is as the world goes through rapid climate changes. That said, in the short-term, we expect the uncertainty to continue in 2H2020 as economic activity is likely to pick up only gradually amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. However, in the medium term, as business activity picks up steam, we expect the valuation discount to narrow and the stock to witness a revaluation. We opine that the company's growth prospects in key markets, improved operating efficiencies from new production facilities, and expansion of the Packaging and Chemistry Divisions should lead to a valuation improvement. The Paper Division should benefit from the local market, cost leadership, cost-saving initiatives, advanced technology and continued operational improvements, although the business environment continues to remain challenging due to over-capacities and decreasing demand for newsprint paper. However, over time the tough operating environment may push marginal paper producers out of business which should lead to reduced capacities and aid recovery in paper prices. Moreover, we expect the group-level cost optimization initiatives to offer support to the company's stock price. Additional features: File: CPHN_Investor Day Update_Research Dynamics_17.9.2020 End of Media Release Halton police say a 16-year-old boy, found shot to death in Milton, was completely innocent and was simply caught in the middle of a dispute between others. Officers provided an update on their investigation into the death of Ezekiel Agyemang of Brampton during a news conference on Thursday. Halton police Supt. Kevin Maher said as a result of a homicide investigation, Halton police executed search warrants in Toronto and Hamilton and made two arrests on Wednesday. Toronto, Peel and Hamilton tactical units assisted in the arrests. Tawane Mohamed, 22, of Toronto is charged with first degree murder and kidnapping with a firearm. Abdikadir Jumale, 29, of Hamilton and Toronto is charged with kidnapping with a firearm. Maher said arrest warrants have also been issued for two other men. Ahmed Ismail, 24, of Toronto is wanted for first degree murder and kidnapping. Stanley Frempong, 20, of Toronto is wanted for kidnapping with a firearm. Police said Ismail may be in the Calgary area while Frempong may still be somewhere in the GTA. Agyemang was found dead by a passerby on No. 10 Side Road, near Guelph Line in Milton on the morning June 30. The 16-year-olds death was ruled a homicide after it was determined he had been shot to death. Ezekiel was a Grade 10 student at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Brampton who enjoyed playing basketball and aspired to be an engineer, said Maher. Ezekiel, or Zeke, as he was known by his family and friends was an innocent teenager who was intentionally targeted by a group of male adults who were known to him. Maher went on to say Agyemang was targeted because of a dispute that was taking place between a group of men and another man who was Agyemangs friend. The superintendent would not provide further information regarding what the dispute was about and stopped short of saying Agyemangs death was some kind of act of retaliation. Maher said Agyemang was abducted in Brampton on June 29 and held against his will at multiple locations throughout the GTA before he was killed. Police said none of the men accused in connection with Agyemangs kidnapping and murder had any connection with Milton. The shooting of Ezekiel Agyemang was senseless. A young man with all the potential in the world is now gone, said Halton Police Deputy Chief Jeff Hill. As a parent it is horrifying for me to imagine what it would be like to lose a child. Members of the Halton Regional Police Service stand with the family of Ezekiel Agyemang as they grieve and begin to heal. To Ezekiels friends: You are far too young to be exposed to the depth and breadth of such a tragedy in your lives. I am so sorry for your loss. Please know that you have our support. Hill said Halton is not immune to gun violence but noted Halton police would relentlessly follow every lead to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. He called on the media and members of the public to help push the two men wanted in connection with Agyemangs death out of the shadows. We are asking you to share photos of the two accused far and wide so they have no place to hide and can take no shelter in our communities, said Hill. This violent and unprovoked attack is not reflective of the safety of our community. Our service remains committed the two outstanding suspects are brought to justice and held accountable for the devastation that has been wrought on this boys family and friends. Maher urged Ismail and Frempong to contact a lawyer and to turn themselves in at the nearest police station. Halton police Chief Stephen Tanner said police across the GTA are sick of the gun violence that has plagued many communities in recent months. Tanner said Halton itself has seen four gun-related homicides in the last 12 months. He emphasized Agyemang was innocent of any wrongdoing and noted his death is beyond tragic. The gun and street violence is unacceptable. It has got to end, and it should end now, said Tanner. In the City of Toronto alone there were 70 shooting incidents in the month of August. Any amount is totally unacceptable . . . Look for us to be doing a lot of work. We will do everything in our power to end this summer and year of violence, which has been like no other. Anyone with information about the Agyemang homicide or who knows where Ismail and Frempong are is asked to contact Halton police at 905-825-4776 or the Calgary Police at 403-428-8877 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). Both Ismail and Frempong are believed to be "armed and dangerous," police said, asking the public through Twitter to "please share" the news that they are looking for the two men. If seen residents should not approach them, but instead call 911. DL David Lea is a general assignment reporter for InsideHalton.com and its sister papers. Reach him via email: dlea@metroland.com Read more about: MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indianas coronavirus epicenter. Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university officials to admonish students. University President Geoffrey Mearns wrote that the cases apparently were tied not to classrooms or dormitories but to poor personal choices some students are making, primarily off campus. The actions of these students are putting our planned on-campus instruction and activities at risk, he said. Similar examples abound in other college towns across the nation. Among the 50 large U.S. counties with the highest percentages of student residents, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states have since Sept. 1, according to an Associated Press analysis. On average, infection rates in those 20 counties have been more than three times higher than their states overall rates. At James Madison University in Virginia, which recently sent students home through September amid a surge in cases, the county is averaging a weekly infection rate of nearly 90 cases per 100,000 people, or more than eight times the statewide average. Health officials fear that surges among college students will spread to more vulnerable people older ones and those with underlying health problems and trigger a new wave of cases and hospitalizations. Some worry that colleges could overwhelm hospitals already bracing for increasing cases of COVID-19 and flu this fall and winter. Theres this waiting game. Does it stay on college campuses or will it escape? said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at the University of Wisconsin medical center in Madison, where cases among college students have been climbing. While universities have emerged as hot spots in nearly every state, many of the worst outbreaks have been scattered across the South and Midwest. Of the 50 college counties analyzed by the AP, James Madisons had the highest infection rate, followed by counties that are home to the University of Georgia, Florida State and Indiana University in Bloomington. In the 10 counties with the highest infection rates, colleges have reported at least 15,000 cases among students and employees in recent weeks, though testing and reporting practices vary significantly and the actual number is probably much higher. For many colleges, the return to campus was a carefully orchestrated process that took months to plan and millions of dollars to pull off. But as safe as theyve made their campuses, many colleges have struggled to curb off-campus gatherings that have been tied to thousands of infections. Parties were blamed for dozens of cases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brought students back in early August only to send them home weeks later. Other schools have cracked down on parties and disciplined students. The University of Missouri in Columbia announced this week that it expelled two students and suspended three others for violating rules meant to slow the viruss spread. The outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns. Amid a spike in cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder, county health authorities Tuesday urged all students to quarantine for two weeks. Students and others at the university have accounted for 76% of the countys 663 positive cases over the past two weeks, officials said. More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle, Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health, warned in a letter to students. In a letter to students, the schools chancellor, Philip DiStefano, warned that the quarantine will be strictly enforced and that students who violate it could face suspension or other discipline. Already, DiStefano said, more than 400 students face university discipline for violating public health orders. At Miami University in Ohio, county health authorities ordered all of the schools athletes to isolate for 14 days last month after 27 tested positive for the virus. Last week, local police cited six men at an off-campus house party that included several students who had recently tested positive. As cases increase at Boston College and the campus runs out of quarantine space, the mayor of nearby Newton is asking the school not to use any of the towns hotels or other property to isolate students. Some cities have tightened rules at bars to discourage students from gathering. As cases surged at Illinois State, the towns mayor issued an order requiring all bar customers to be seated to be served. He also limited gatherings near campus to no more than 10 people. Still, residents and officials in many college towns are rooting for universities to work through outbreaks and avoid campus closings that could further hurt the local economy. Fred Pryce, who manages a series of stores in a strip mall near Ball State, said sending students home would hurt the areas businesses big time. Thats 20,000-plus potential patrons that will vanish, Pryce said. There are ways to keep students in Muncie safely while they do their classes. Ball State, roughly 60 miles from Indianapolis, has about 22,000 students on a campus of red brick buildings and sleek, modern dorms in Muncie, where the university is the citys second-largest employer after Ball Memorial Hospital. On campus last week, sophomore LaTricia Williams, wearing a mask, said she was glad to be back instead of sitting on the couch with her laptop at her familys home, taking online classes. But I get that it comes with some risk, she said. You can give students a whole bunch of rules for what they should and shouldnt do while theyre back at the school, but theyre not going to stop doing certain things here or going out into the community. Caleb Henry, a Ball State junior who lives off campus, said that he and other students have been frequenting local bars and meeting at friends houses but that he and most others are behaving responsibly, with masks and social distancing. He said students are being vilified unfairly. Everyone seems to be getting upset at college kids right now, accusing us of spreading the virus and making us out to be these highly infectious creatures that need to be sent home, Henry said. What about all the other people around town going to bars having parties, weddings, whatever? Were only doing the same things they are. As cases mounted at Ball State last month, the school tried to ban students from visiting dorms other than their own, but officials reversed the rule after a backlash from students. Even so, officials say infection rates have started to subside, and the school has no plans to suspend campus instruction. While some colleges have sent students home amid outbreaks, many others are digging in. Some have moved classes online but urged students to stay where they are until cases drop. Among them is the University of Notre Dame, which paused in-person classes Aug. 18 and moved them online amid a surge that saw as many as 89 new cases per day. Weeks later, after a sharp decrease in infections, classes have started to resume on campus. Other schools are hoping to replicate that success, including the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and West Virginia University, which recently shifted classes online as the virus spread. In a recent call with governors, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cautioned against sending students home, saying that could spark outbreaks elsewhere. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also endorsed Notre Dames approach, saying colleges that work through it and find ways to isolate infected students are more likely to end up in the best place. In a letter to students at Ball State this week, the university president thanked students for helping reduce virus rates. Still, he warned: This data is not a cause for celebration. Rather, this data is a call for continued action. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Skincare products have gained pace in recent times, as the people are getting conscious about their health powered by the rise in spending capacities. The people are getting aware of the dangers included while using synthetic products, which has provided an instant boost to this market and is getting stronger as the awareness spreads. The rapid urbanization, awareness, and per capita incomes are among the major factors propelling the market worldwide, mainly in rapidly developing regions. These products are available in different base ingredients useful in different conditions and suitable for varying skin types. The companies are strengthening their supply chains to make herbal products to all sectors to meet the rising demands. The companies invest in research & development programs to unfold the new aspects, imposing an extra load on the market and helping the market gain accelerated speeds. Apart from the uses and features, the global Herbal Skincare Products Market by Applications faces challenges from the fake products available, which has restrained the global market growth. This report provides a comprehensive outlook on competition, opportunities, drivers & restraints, and other factors affecting the local and global herbal skincare products market. The global market is anticipated to register approximately a 07 % annual growth during this period. Market Division The global herbal skincare products market is segmented into classes as follows: The global herbal skincare products market is categorized into sunscreens, moisturizers, cleansers, and others based on types of products. The global herbal skincare products market is divided into liquid, powder, cream, and others based on forms. The global herbal skincare products market is divided organic and conventional based on product categories. Offline (stores, specialty stores, and others) and online portals supply mediums employed of the global herbal skincare products market. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3792 Regional Classification The herbal skincare products market has gained global adoption due to a rise in awareness regarding skin health, increasing per capita incomes, and a rise in living standards. The Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the rest of the world are the major market studies for the global herbal skincare products market. Asia Pacific region is leading the market due to the presence of key manufacturers, demand for natural products, rising awareness, the vast population covers, rapid urbanization, rise in disposable incomes, and others with India and China among the major contributors in consumption production capacities. The European and the North American regions are also growing at impressive rates due to increasing preferences for new products, high living standards, and other factors. Industry News The global herbal skincare products market is growing at lightning speeds due to rising demands for natural skincare products and a rapid increase in urbanization due to high per capita incomes. The offline supply medium segment will be the market leader among all segments. The Asia Pacific region is the current market leader and will maintain its post during this tenure, with rapidly developing economies like India and China among the major contributors to this market. Access Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/herbal-skincare-products-market-3792 Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com The effort to put a positive face on the state of the Trump campaign comes as the two November rivals are pressing markedly different strategies with fewer than 50 days before the election. Like Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden is flooding the television airwaves at far greater levels than Trump, while he has all but abandoned in-person campaigning in the face of the coronavirus pandemic to try to ensure his safety and reinforce his message of abiding by health officials advice. The Michelle Obama Podcast featured her brother, Craig Robinson, telling a childhood story with their mom. Craig Robinson, brother of former first lady Michelle Obama, speaks to guests at the Obama Foundation Summit held last October at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Michelle Obamas brother and mother were her guests on her podcasts season finale, and the subject quickly turned to race in America. The former first ladys older sibling, Craig Robinson, recounted a story Wednesday detailing how when he was 10 years old, two police officers stopped him as he rode on his new bike. In this 2012 photo, then-First Lady Michelle Obama sits with her brother Craig Robinson during Day Two of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) You were riding down the street, and you got stopped by the police, and they accused you of stealing your own bike, Obama said. And they would not believe you, to the point where you were like, Take me to my home.' Robinson said that the experience in his youth was terrifying and remained with him. I was always taught that the police are your friends, and theyll believe the truth, and I was telling them the truth, and this guy would not believe me, he recalled on The Michelle Obama Podcast. And he would not believe me, and I was absolutely heartbroken, and I finally said to him, Listen, you can take me to my house, and I will prove to you. This is my bike. Read More: First volume of Barack Obamas memoir coming Nov. 17 The officers drove him home, Robinson told Obama, where Marian Robinson, their mother, was waiting. Mrs. Robinson said that she explained to the officer that he was canceling out the things she had been teaching her children about trusting the police, and she noted the officers were Black. Robinson said she felt like racism and mistrust is ingrained in police culture. You know, nobody thinks about the fact that we all come from good families that are trying to teach values, Obama said, but when you leave the safety of your home and go out into the street, where being black is a crime in and of itself, we have all had to learn how to operate outside of our homes with a level of caution and fear because you never know. Story continues Read More: Police leaders pressed Rochester to keep Prude video secret We have to be better to just be equal, Mrs. Robinson contended, so the fact that therere people out there that treat us less-than, when were working so hard to be better-than, thats where the pain comes from. Thats what these young people are so angry about, she said, because theyre doing everything right, everything they are told, and it doesnt matter. A police officer will still stop them and accuse them of stealing a bike that their parents worked hard to get. That hurts. Have you subscribed to theGrios Dear Culture podcast? Download our newest episodes now! The post Michelle Obamas brother speaks on terrifying experience being stopped by police appeared first on TheGrio. With the news dominated by stories of wildfires blazing in the Northwest, costing lives and destroying towns, the new movie, The Dark Divide, offers a look back at a less devastating time in the Northwest wilderness. The film, which stars David Cross and Debra Messing, is available in select theaters and through virtual cinemas, beginning Sept. 18. The Hollywood Theater, in Portland, is streaming The Dark Divide as part of its ongoing #OregonMade series, presented in partnership with Oregon Film. The Dark Divide can be rented for $9.99, by going to this link: https://www.altavod.com/content/the-dark-divde-hollywood-theatre The Dark Divide is based on Robert Michael Pyles journey into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, in Washington. In 1995, Pyle, a naturalist and an expert in butterfly conservation, set out into the undeveloped wilderness in search of new species, and a greater understanding of the ecology of the area. The film is based on Pyles book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. Pyle, who lives in western Washington, told the Chinook Observer that he hoped his writing and the film will be a useful tool or force for the conservation of The Dark Divide. The area where the story takes place, Pyle said, is the largest unprotected wilderness in Washington, adding that the area needs more protection than it has. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest hasnt been spared from the wildfires that have been burning on the West Coast, as firefighters are battling a blaze in a region of the forest. The role of Pyle offers a more emotional showcase than the comedy projects that Cross has become known for, including Mr. Show, Arrested Development and The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. The films cast also includes Debra Messing (Will & Grace) as Pyles late wife, Thea, along with Cameron Esposito, David Koechner, Gary Farmer and Patterson Hood, the musician who co-founded the band, Drive-By Truckers, and who now lives in Portland. The Dark Divide is directed by Tom Putnam, a Lake Oswego native whose credits include the 2011 documentary, Marwencol, on which Putnam was a producer, and BURN: One Year on the Frontlines of the Battle to Save Detroit, a 2012 documentary co-directed and co-produced by Putnam. In his interview with the Chinook Observer, Pyle emphasized that he hopes watching The Dark Divide may inspire people to take action. My remaining greatest ambition as a conservationist is to see a Dark Divide conservation area established while Im still kicking, Pyle told the Chinook Observer. If we manage to save a good amount of Bigfoot habitat, whether or not Bigfoot walks, well have managed to save one of the greenest wild places in the country. Friday, September 18: stream a brand-new movie with us as part of the #OregonMade series that we host along with @oregonfilm. THE DARK DIVIDE tells the true story of a butterfly expert who embarks on a life-changing trek through Oregon.https://t.co/KyRcbtMiQE Hollywood Theatre (@HollywoodTheatr) September 16, 2020 More of our coverage: Bandon-filmed thriller, The Rental: Director Dave Franco calls the thrillers Oregon location beautiful and ominous Report: ABC cancels Portland-set series, Stumptown Subscribe to our What to Watch newsletter. Email: -- Kristi Turnquist kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:47:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, stressed the effectiveness of primary-level public services while inspecting a village service center in the county of Rucheng, central China's Hunan Province, on Wednesday. Xi learned about the work at the service center and urged efforts to make such services more targeted to cater to the needs of ordinary people. He also called for better training of service staff at primary levels to enhance their awareness and capacity of serving the people. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:49:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SHANGHAI, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai reported four imported COVID-19 cases and no domestically transmitted cases on Wednesday, the municipal health commission said Thursday. All the four cases were Chinese nationals working overseas. They arrived at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport from Equatorial Guinea, India and Singapore, respectively. They started to show symptoms while under quarantine in Shanghai and were later diagnosed as confirmed cases. The four have been hospitalized. A total of 150 close contacts have been put under quarantine. As of Wednesday, Shanghai had reported 612 confirmed imported cases and 342 locally transmitted cases. Enditem Latest released the research study by Market Research Future (MRFR) on Surgical Chips Market Demand, offers a detailed overview of the factors influencing the global business scope. These technological advancements are leading to widening the applications of these chips for various tasks that have been directed towards reducing the costs of products. The surgical chips market is growing pervasively mainly due to the burgeoning healthcare sector. Additionally, factors such as the advancements in technology and increasing automation in the healthcare sector are substantiating market growth. However, recent developments in surgical chips such as high integration of advanced artificial intelligence (AI)technology along with the spreading awareness towards the advantages and usages of surgical chips for patient tracking, medical records management, and healthcare quality control are expected to support the growth of the surgical chips market throughout the review period. Also Read - https://www.medgadget.com/2020/06/dry-mouth-relief-market-share-expected-to-touch-2777-14-million-usd-by-2026-global-industry-driving-factors-after-the-impact-of-pandemic-2020.html Global Industry Key Players: Competitive Dashboard The growth and immense revenue generation opportunities that this market is currently demonstrating, is, in turn, attracting several new entrants. Nevertheless, those newly entered players find it challenging to survive in the market with the rapid introduction of new technologies. They strive to develop a well-established infrastructure that can allow seamless implementation of advanced technologies. Key players leading the global surgical chips market include, Agilent Technologies Inc. (US) PerkinElmer Inc. (US) Abbott Laboratories (US) Illumina Inc. (US) GE Healthcare (UK) Fluidigm Corporation (US) Cepheid (US) Roche Diagnostics (Switzerland) Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. (US) and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (US) among others. Global Surgical Chips Market Segmentations For enhanced understanding, the market has been segmented into four key dynamics: By Types : DNA Chips, Brain Chips, Lab Chips, Protein Chips, and Tissue Chip among others. By Application : Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment, Gene Expression, SNP Genotyping, Genomics, and Clinical Diagnostics among others. By End-users : Hospitals, Research Centers, and Clinics among others. By Regions : Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest-of-the-World. Global Surgical Chips market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regions. Browse Complete Research Brief along with Detailed TOC https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/surgical-chips-market-1310 Global Surgical Chips Market Geographical Analysis The North American region, heading with the well-established healthcare sector, accounts for the leading market for the surgical clips. Factors such as the increasing demand for chip-based technology and devices and the growing prevalence of lifestyle-borne and chronic diseases positively impact the growth of the regional market. The Europe surgical chips market led by the increasing healthcare expenditures and availability of advanced treatment facilities, accounts for the second-largest market, globally. Factors such as the increasing government initiatives & funding for research activities, rising demand for technology-based medical devices, and advancements in the treatment procedures options are fostering the growth of the regional market. The Asia Pacific surgical chips market backed by the faster adoption of healthcare technology is rapidly emerging as a promising market. Moreover, factors such as favorable government policies to improve the quality of healthcare alongside the favorable reimbursement and insurance policies are fostering the growth of the APAC surgical chips market. Similarly, other major factors such as the growing adoption of advanced medical devices and developing healthcare infrastructure are fuelling the growth of the regional market. Industry/Innovation/Related News: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur is a public engineering institution established by the government of India announced its plans to develop coin-sized biological chips to develop advanced battery-free implantable medical devices for treatment of brain, nerve, muscle or spinal cord disorders that are untreatable by using standard medical practices. Olympus America Inc. (US), a leading global technology player designing and manufacturing medical and surgical products announced receiving the Surgical Products 2018 Excellence in Surgical Products (ESP) Award. Related Reports Vulvar Cancer Market Hearing Screening and Diagnostic Devices Market About Market Research Future: we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. The tributes paid to Charles Kennedy were genuine. He was a supremely talented and popular political leader destroyed by an addiction to alcohol. I was granted the first interview with him after his election to the Lib Dem leadership in 1999. He was talking a lot of sense, but not providing me with anything that would make an eye-catching headline, so as the interview drew to a close I asked him about cannabis. His predecessor, Paddy Ashdown, had battled hard to stop the Lib Dems from taking a soft line on drugs. I knew very well that Kennedy did not agree with him. Getting him to say so would make a great front-page story. Kennedy did a double take, the adviser at his side made a move as if to tell him to shut up, but after a moments thought, he went staunchly on to give a straight answer. He said that the law on cannabis was too harsh, drug laws generally were a mess, and that there should be a Royal Commission to clear them up. The following morning, I turned on the radio to hear Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative shadow Home Secretary, fulminating about Kennedys irresponsibility. Charles Kennedy clearly has yet to learn how a responsible party leader should behave, she said. This is an unbelievable first commitment which will alienate many of the people who put a cross by his name. I never heard an angry word from Kennedy for dropping him in it. Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 1986 Charles Kennedy at the SDP conference in September 1986. He had become Britain's youngest MP three years earlier and the party later merged to become the Liberal Democrats. Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 1987 Charles Kennedy attends the Joint Liberal Assembly, October 1987. Getty Images/Hulton Archive Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 1999 Charles Kennedy being congratulated by his girlfriend and future wife, Sarah Gurling, and mother Mary after being elected Lib Dem leader in 1999 PA Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2001 Charles Kennedy greeting supporters at a rally before the 2001 general election, when he was the Lib Dem leader Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2002 Mr Kennedy at his wedding to Sarah Gurling, outside the House of Commons in London. The couple divorced in 2010. Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2003 Charles Kennedy speaks during a question and answer session at the Liberal Democrat Party annual conference in Brighton Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2004 Charles Kennedy and his then wife arrive at the British Academy Television Awards in London Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2005 Charles Kennedy unveiling a Lib Dem campaign poster ahead of the 2005 general election Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2005 Charles Kennedy with his then wife Sarah and new born son Donald James on 12 April 2005. He returned to the election campaign trail days later Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2005 Charles Kennedy celebrating the Lib Dems' gains after the 2005 general election, when the party won 62 seats Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2006 Charles Kennedy admitted his drink problem and called a leadership election in January 2006 Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2006 Charles Kennedy is canvassing in Dunfermline for a by-election a month after his resignation as Lib Dem leader Getty Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2006 Sir Menzies Campbell, Lord Rennard and Simon Hughes give Charles Kennedy a standing ovation after his speech to the party conference in September 2006, his first since his resignation Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2007 Charles Kennedy and his predecessor Paddy Ashdown congratulating Nick Clegg on his election as Lib Dem leader in December 2007 AFP/Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2010 Charles Kennedy with Nick Clegg on the campaign trail ahead of the 2010 general election Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2011 Charles Kennedy launching the pro-AV campaign for the 2011 proportional representation referendum in Glasgow Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2014 Charles Kennedy with Danny Alexander and fellow Lib Dems campaigning for a 'no' vote in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 AFP/Getty Images Charles Kennedy - his political career in pictures 2015 Charles Kennedy campaigning with Jo Swinson in East Dunbartonshire in April ahead of the 2015 general election, where he lost his seat Getty Images Not the Beebs fault The Daily Mail, of course, will never pass an opportunity to attack the BBC. In March, after Kennedy had put in an excruciating performance on Question Time, the Mail suggested that it was the BBCs fault for letting him go on air when drunk. Yesterday, their columnist Andrew Pierce repeated the accusation on Twitter. For the record, Kennedy was not given alcohol by anyone from the BBC. Other participants in the programme have told me that he turned up at the studio at the last moment, and did not join them in the hospitality suite. He must have been drunk before he arrived. Assuming that the floor manager even spotted the problem in time, was he or she supposed to tell a politician of Kennedys stature to go home and dry out? Reaching for the stars The author Dominic Shelmerdine, who put a book together by writing to famous people asking them what their first ambition was, solicited a reply from Charles Kennedy that having watched the Moon landings on television at the age of 10 one of my first ambitions, not surprisingly, was to be an astronaut. Crossing the fine line I hope you realise what a fine line you are treading, read an ominous email from Matthew Smith, a Ukip councillor, after I noted that police investigating alleged electoral fraud in Norfolk had seized his computer. I hope I wont be crossing that fine line if I just mention that Matthew Smith has been sentenced to 200 hours community work and disqualified as a county councillor for five years after admitting that he forged signatures on a nomination paper. Rearguard action The Labour MP Ronnie Campbell was rebuked by the Speaker John Bercow yesterday for mentioning a ministers bottom. Why dont you get off that backside of yours? he said to the health minister, Ben Gummer. May I just exhort you to have some regard to considerations of taste. This is a new minister, said the Speaker. Do we infer that it is OK to say that sort of thing to an old minister? Rochester Rochester police dispersed demonstrators from in front of City Hall on Wednesday morning as protests over the suffocation death of Daniel Prude continued. Protesters who gathered outside the downtown building Tuesday had said that they would remain there until police officers involved in Prude's detainment in March were arrested and fired. A line of helmeted officers swept through the area around City Hall at about 8 a.m. Dozens of chanting protesters remained on the scene for several hours. Police said 16 people had been arrested and cited for disorderly conduct. The city has been roiled by protests since police body camera videos were made public by Prude's family earlier this month. The videos show Prude handcuffed and naked with a spit hood over his head as an officer pushes his face against the ground, while another officer presses a knee to his back. The officers held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. He was taken off life support a week later. Police commanders this summer urged city officials to hold off on publicly releasing the footage because they feared it could incite violence if it came out during nationwide protests over George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Mayor Lovely Warren on Monday fired Police Chief La'Ron Singletary and suspended two top city officials without pay for 30 days amid continuing fallout from Prude's death. Protesters have called for Warren to resign. Vedanta group firm Ltd (HZL) on Thursday said it proposes to raise up to Rs 4,000 crore via debentures. "The company proposes to offer rated, unsecured, redeemable, non-cumulative, non-convertible debentures aggregating up to Rs 4,000 crores in one or more tranches, and in this regard is holding a meeting of its duly constituted Committee of the Directors on September 22," HZL said in a BSE filing. The above issuance is pursuant to the approval of the board of directors in its meeting held on July 21, it 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.) The trial in the Kerala nun sexual assault case began at the additional district sessions court in Kottayam on Wednesday even as the court restrained the media from publishing any matter relating to the in-camera proceedings. The lone accused in the case, former bishop of Jalandhar, Franco Mulakkal, appeared before the court. The court has barred media coverage after Mulakkal moved an application. The order was passed after Mulakkal said the prosecution had leaked to the media a statement given by one of the main witnesses earlier. Last month, the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea filed by Mulakkal seeking discharge from the case. Earlier, the trial court and high court had also rejected his plea observing that there was prima facie evidence to put the case to the trail. The assault case surfaced in 2018 after a 43-year-old nun complained to the police in Kottayam that Mulakkal had raped her several times between 2014 and 2016. The nun is a member of the missionaries of Jesus congregation of Roman Catholic Church based in Punjab. But Mulakkal denied it saying he was implicated after he took action against her for financial irregularities in the convent. Also Read: Kerala court frames charges against rape-accused ex-Bishop Franco Mulakkal Later, a special investigation team was constituted which arrested Mulakkal in September 2018. After spending 40 days in jail, he was granted bail. He was also removed from the post of the bishop later. There were many attempts to delay the trail. Also Read: I am being starved by the church, says expelled Kerala nun The special investigation team had filed the charge sheet against Mulakkal last year but he failed to appear before the court several times. Later, the trial court issued an arrest warrant against him. But his bail was not cancelled after he gave an assurance that he will be present throughout the hearing. London insurance intermediary Global Risk Partners (GRP) will seek further deals here after closing an acquisition of a majority stake in Irish commercial broker, Crotty Insurance Brokers. The GRP deal will see Crottys Dublin offices becoming a hub for the UK firm here and, according to the company, signals its intention to seek further acquisitions.. Stephen Ross, Head of Mergers and Acquisitions for GRP, said: Were delighted to be bringing such a well-respected and successful business on board and to be entering the Republic of Irelands thriving insurance sector. Finbarr Crotty, Eoin Greene and Graham Devine will all continue as executives, directors and shareholders in the business. Mike Bruce, Group CEO at GRP, said: Weve always seen Ireland as a great opportunity to grow the business beyond the UK, so were very pleased with this deal and look forward to further growth in the ROI market. Crotty was advised by Key Capital who acted as lead corporate finance advisor, Crowe who provided financial and tax advice and Wallace Corporate Counsel who provided legal advice. Matheson provided legal advice and KMPG provided financial and tax advice to GRP. Union Food Processing Minister and Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills tabled by the Centre in Parliament. She had been the only SAD representative in the Modi government. The Punjab party is the oldest BJP ally. She later tweeted that she will always stand with farmers as their daughter and sister. I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 According to reports, the Akali leader, who represents Bhatinda in the Lok Sabha, walked out of the Lok Sabha when the House was taking up discussion on the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020. Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also her husband, had announced in Lok Sabha that she will quit the Modi government over the issue. "I announce that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from the government," he said in Lok Sabha. However, the party will continue to support the BJP-led government at the Centre and will also remain a part of the NDA alliance. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills, Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. He recalled Punjab's massive contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. The farm bills have evoked strong reactions from farmers of Haryana and Punjab -- the bread baskets of India. Farmers from these states have taken to the streets to oppose the bills, which the BJP is pitching as big-ticket farm reforms. The SAD was under tremendous political pressure after the Congress government in Punjab passed a resolution in the Vidhan Sabha against the ordinances, prompting the NDA ally to fiercely oppose the Bills after initially supporting it. The Badals party patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, former deputy CM Sukhbir Badal and Ms Badal had not opposed the government's move in June when it had brought ordinances for the same. The SAD, sources said, had told the BJP that they will not be able to support the Bills as there is massive unrest among farmers in Punjab. All monetary amounts are expressed in Canadian Dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Pasofino Gold Limited. (TSXV: VEIN) (FSE: N071) ("Pasofino" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its press release of July 9, 2020, it has completed its acquisition of all the issued and outstanding shares of ARX Resources Limited ("ARX"). Pursuant to the transaction, Pasofino issued an aggregate of 134,860,049 shares (the "Consideration Shares") to the shareholders of ARX (the "Vendors"). The Consideration Shares issued to the Vendors will be subject to a two-year contractual lock-up, released in 25% installments every six months, with the release of the first 25% of the Consideration Shares to occur six months from today. ARX is party to an earn-in agreement with Hummingbird Resources PLC ("Hummingbird PLC") in respect of the Dugbe Gold Project in Liberia (the "Project") whereby, in accordance with the earn-in agreement (the "Option Agreement"), ARX is entitled to earn a 49% interest (not including the 10% carried interest issuable to the Government of Liberia) in Hummingbird Resources (Liberia) Inc. ("Hummingbird Liberia"), which owns 100% of the Project and is subject to various conditions. These include the payment by ARX to Hummingbird Liberia of a non-refundable deposit of US$2 million ("Deposit") with the Deposit funds to be used in connection with the Project. When the 10% carried interest is issued by Hummingbird Liberia to the Government of Liberia, the interest earned or held by ARX will be a 44.1% economic interest (consisting of a 39% shareholding interest in Hummingbird Liberia and economic rights in 5.1% of the equity securities of Hummingbird Liberia held by Hummingbird PLC). In addition, Hummingbird PLC will transfer to ARX 49% of the inter-company loans owing by Hummingbird Liberia to Hummingbird PLC. Story continues Prior to the closing, the Company advanced approximately US$2.2 million to ARX pursuant to a secured loan in order to fund the Deposit and to cover certain expenses related to the Project. In order to earn its interest under the Option Agreement, ARX is required to complete a Feasibility Study, under joint management committee oversight, on the Project, undertake the mutually agreed exploration program; and cover the overhead and operating costs associated with the Project during the two year earn-in period. In addition, ARX is required to fund during the term of the Option Agreement approximately US$700,000 of the payment obligations of Hummingbird Liberia under the Mineral Development Agreement with the Government of Liberia. The Project is subject to a secured 2% net smelter royalty payable to an affiliate of Anglo Pacific Group PLC ("APG"). This royalty provides that following the date that is six months from the commencement of commercial production in the event that quarterly sales of gold produced are less than 50,000 oz, additional quarterly payments will be required until such time as the cumulative royalty paid is US$15 million (the maximum total payment in any such quarter is equivalent to the royalty that would have arisen on sales of 50,000 oz of gold). Following this period, the royalty is 2% except where both the average gold price is above US$1,800 and sales of gold are less than 50,000 oz, in which case it increases to 2.5% in respect of that quarter. US$15 million is repayable to APG in certain limited circumstances, such as a change in control of Hummingbird Liberia and the concurrent termination of the royalty by APG. Certain events of default under the royalty, (e.g. non-payment of the royalty), are secured by legal charges over the assets of Hummingbird Liberia and a legal charge over the shares of Hummingbird Liberia, including the shares issuable to ARX under the Option Agreement. In addition to the Project, Hummingbird Liberia is subject to an option to acquire a mineral exploration license number MEL 9000518 covering approximately 204 sq. km for the exploration of gold (the "License"). The mineral property subject to the License provides Hummingbird Liberia the opportunity to consolidate its land package around the Project. The amount remaining payable under this option (should Hummingbird Liberia wish to continue with the option) is US$500,000 within five business days of the approval of the assignment of the License to Hummingbird Liberia by the Government of Liberia (not yet obtained) and US$900,000 by June 4, 2021. Pasofino is also pleased to announce an update to the closing of the C$10,020,000 bought deal private placement led by Stifel GMP, on its own behalf and on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters (together with Stifel GMP, the "Underwriters") first announced by the Company on August 21, 2020 (the "Offering"). The TSX Venture Exchange has conditionally approved the Offering, which is scheduled to close on or about September 22, 2020. The Pasofino technical team has mobilised and is now on the ground at the Dugbe Project in Liberia where preparation for the start of the Mineral Resource development and exploration program is underway. In addition, the drill contractor is now in country and has started to prepare for mobilisation to site with four drill rigs. Rehabilitation of the access road to site from the port of Greenville is about to start with completion of initial access planned before year end. Capital equipment to support the operation is in transit to the country including a new 70-man camp. The selection of the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment ("SEIA") and Feasibility Study ("FS") consultants is almost complete, and the work is expected to be awarded next week. As the project has now started, the timeline to completion of the FS, SEIA and Mineral Resource and exploration program, is planned for the end of the third quarter 2021 with drilling of the first targets planned for early November this year. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the 1933 Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act, as amended, and application state securities laws. About Pasofino Gold Limited Pasofino Gold Ltd. Is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company. For further information, please visit www.pasofinogold.com or contact: Steve Dunn, President & CEO T: (416) 361-2827 E: sdunn@pasofinogold.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Statements. This news release contains "forward-looking statements" that are based on expectations, estimates, projections and interpretations as at the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "seek", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "suggest", "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's intentions and ability to meet its obligations under the Option Agreement, the anticipated completion date of the Offering, the ability to raise the funds to finance its ongoing business activities including the acquisition of mineral projects and the exploration and development of its projects. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to, the results of exploration activities; the ability of the Company to complete further exploration activities; the ability of the Company to complete transactions on terms announced; timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms and those risk factors outlined in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis as filed on SEDAR. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws. THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64066 He was among one of the famous faces revealed to be taking part in the Channel Nine's Celebrity Apprentice Australia next year. But it seems listeners aren't convinced radio host Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli will do a good job on the show, and have taken to social media to roast his casting. On Thursday, Wippa read out some of the comments left by his followers on his Instagram post of the announcement. 'You were pathetic in the jungle, how will you be here?' He was among one of the famous faces revealed to be taking part in the Channel Nine's Celebrity Apprentice Australia next year. But it seems listeners aren't convinced radio host Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli will do a good job on the show, and have taken to social media to roast his casting 'Surely you do Dancing With The Stars first... I feel as though you've leap frogged one here,' one commented. 'You were pathetic in the jungle who will you be here?' another said, referring to his stint on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here in 2016. Elsewhere on the social media post, a third said: 'If Carole Baskin is considered a celebrity in the USA, then I think you're Bonfide in Oz.' Ouch! On Thursday, Wippa read out some of the comments left by his followers on his Instagram post of the announcement Roasted: Another fan said he should have done Dancing With The Stars first, while a third wrote: 'If Carole Baskin is considered a celebrity in the USA, then I think you're Bonfide in Oz' 'You look good in this pic!' Wippa's friend, comedian Hamish Blake, even joined in the roasting. He wrote: 'Can't wait. You look good in this pic,' referring the promo photo of Celebrity Apprentice's CEO Lord Alan Sugar Wippa's friend, comedian Hamish Blake, even joined in the roasting. He wrote: 'Can't wait. You look good in this pic,' referring the promo photo of Celebrity Apprentice's CEO Lord Alan Sugar. Another follower joked: 'Are you a contestant or is that you as the host?', to which the radio presenter quipped back: 'what a pity.' Despite being picked on by friends and followers, there were fans excited to see he was cast on the reality show, including one who said: 'Can't wait to watch you.' Tuning in! Despite being picked on by friends and followers, there were fans excited to see he was cast on the reality show, including one who said: 'Can't wait to watch you' Cast mates: Joining Wippa on the reality show is fitness guru Michelle Bridges (left) and Ninja Warrior's Olivia Vivian (right) Joining Wippa on the reality show is fitness guru Michelle Bridges and Ninja Warrior's Olivia Vivian. Channel Nine announced the reboot of Celebrity Apprentice Australia at the Channel Nine Upfronts, on Wednesday. The new series will air in 2021 with British billionaire Lord Alan Sugar as CEO. Trump administration officials have expressed skepticism over a deal that would leave Chinese-based ByteDance with a majority stake in TikTok, saying in order to quell national security concerns over the app American investors should hold a majority share. In an executive order last month, President Trump gave ByteDance 45 days to sell its U.S. TikTok operations or face a ban over concerns that the data TikTok collects from U.S. consumers could be shared with the Chinese Communist Party. In order to avoid President Trumps ban, the deal must be settled by Sunday. A deal presented to the administration for review would have ByteDance partner with the U.S.-based Oracle to form a new company that would take over TikTok operations but ByteDance would retain a majority ownership stake in the new firm. Senate Republicans and others say the proposal doesnt meet the full U.S. acquisition the president was seeking when he issued his executive order, leaving open the door to security concerns over the Chinese governments potential access to U.S. user data in the future, the Wall Street Journal reported. When asked about the idea of ByteDance maintaining majority ownership of TikTok, the president said, Conceptually, I can tell you, I dont like that. Trump said he will be fully briefed on the deal on Thursday and wont sign off until he receives more information, according to the Journal. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other U.S. officials and investors are seeking a deal that would leave U.S. ownership share of the new company well over 50 percent. U.S. investors such as venture firms Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic currently own about 40 percent of ByteDance, while the firms founder, Zhang Yiming holds just under a quarter and ByteDance employees own 20 percent. About 20 percent is held by other non-U.S. investors. The new structure proposed by U.S. officials would see all of ByteDances assets owned by the new company, in which Oracle and Walmart would become investors as well, leaving U.S. investors with more than 50 percent ownership. Story continues U.S. officials and the American investors want an even larger U.S. stake than that plan has proposed, suggesting that one answer to that problem would be to take the new U.S.-based company public. It is unclear if the original proposal submitted to national security regulators, which left ByteDance a majority stake, had been amended as part of the review process, the paper reported, though a person familiar with the matter said the current proposal under consideration is one with U.S. investors holding a majority stake. Under the proposed deal, ByteDance would allow Oracle to review TikToks source code and software to check for backdoors that would allow the Chinese government to access the data. Oracle would also regularly check data flows to ensure that data isnt going anywhere it should not go. Additionally, the U.S. government would need to approve U.S. board members and one board member will be a data expert with national security credentials. Senate Republicans said they would closely review the deal in a letter Wednesday. Any deal between an American company and ByteDance must ensure that TikToks U.S. operations, data, and algorithms are entirely outside the control of ByteDance or any Chinese-state directed actors, including any entity that can be compelled by Chinese law to turn over or access U.S. consumer data, said the letter signed by Senators Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), Rick Scott (R., Fla.), Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska) and John Cornyn (R., Texas). More from National Review Hyderabad, Sep 18 : Police in Hyderabad have arrested three youths for blackmailing a Class 10 girl after befriending her over social media. The accused were arrested by Malkajgiri police under Cyberabad police commissionerate limits after a complaint was lodged by the girl's family. According to police, the girl's parents had recently bought her a smartphone to attend online classes. She started chatting with the three youth on Instagram. The accused, all minors, had also met the girl and taken a few photographs and made some videos. After a few days, they started blackmailing her by threatening to upload the videos and photographs on social media. A police officer said the girl had been accepting their demands for money. "They collected Rs 1.13 lakh from her and spent the money. The girl also gave them one iPhone. We have recovered the phone. They were demanding more money and even a bike from her," he said. The girl's family grew suspicious when the youths came to their home. They questioned the girl, who revealed the entire episode. The family lodged a complaint with the police, which took up investigations and arrested the trio. According to police, the accused are not friends and are residents of different areas in the city. One of them is a bike mechanic. Police have advised parents giving smartphones to children for online classes to keep an eye on how they are being used. Boris Johnson has said he does not think parliament's international development committee should be scrapped, amid fears that scrutiny of overseas aid is set to be diminished. The Independent reported in August that the committee, which is chaired by Labour MP Sarah Champion, was engaged in a tussle with Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg over its continued existence. Mr Rees-Mogg was understood to be keen to shut down the body because of the government's impending merger of the Foreign Office and Department for International Development. Parliament normally has a single committee shadowing each government department, and on this basis the committee would be merged with the Foreign affairs committee under Mr Rees-Mogg's plans. But MPs had argued that without a dedicated committee, overseas development aid would get less scrutiny potentially leading to aid cash being spent unwisely. Asked on Wednesday whether he was scared of parliamentary scrutiny of development aid, Mr Johnson replied: "No, not at all! I relish it. I think it's extremely important." The prime minister went on to say that he did not endorse the "suggestion" the committee should be abolished, but that the ultimately decision was up to parliament. "I perfectly understand parliamentarians should want to have a separate group that can look at development issues even if you are ultimately interrogating people from the same department [as the foreign affairs committee]," Mr Johnson told MPs on the liaison committee. "That's often the way in life anyway, it's a matter for parliament and I won't impose my own views on parliament but I have sympathy with that approach." The prime minister's decision not to whip Conservative MPs to abolish the committee means it is likely to survive. 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 Ms Champion had told the Independent that the absorption of the UKs 15 billion overseas development aid programme by the Foreign Office made continued scrutiny all the more vital. NEW HAVEN No one was carrying a machete, but thats what it has taken. That plus perseverance and the ability to see what an an overgrown easement along the Mill River could look like if people viewed it as an opportunity. Longtime volunteers and city officials, who often were one and the same, Thursday celebrated the progress made on the Mill River Trail, which extends from Grand Avenue to an entrance from Murphy Drive with plans to negotiate an easement along the next segment with Amtrak officials that will bring it to Humphrey Street. Shortly, there will be a second celebration when color-changing LED lights will be installed to illuminate what is now a dark tunnel under railroad tracks on Humphrey. It will be an art piece and a gateway to Fair Haven. From there, it is a short walk along the river at the edge of property known as the District, a tech center and co-working place, and then to Blake Field near the ice-skating rink. In the other direction it will connect with Criscuolo Park. Chief among the volunteers are architect Aicha Woods, who is now New Havens city plan director, and J.R. Logan, who runs MakeHaven, New Havens maker place that attracts the many tech workers in the area who like to tinker, as well as those up to more serious endeavors, such as Nicholas McGhee designing an incubator to use on Mars. Woods said Logan remains the driving force behind the beautification of this space for residents in the area, as well as workers at companies that abut the river. J.R. is able to make these kind of things fun. My kids have grown up weeding with J.R. on Thursday afternoons, Woods said of her sons, who would tag along with the grownups and now are teenagers. Mayor Justin Elicker supported it when he headed the Land Trust and has continued to do so as mayor. He said he called up emails he has gotten on the project going back to 2013 from Logan, Woods and now state Rep. Roland Lamar, D-New Haven, on how this trail could save this area. You are right that this is a complex mess, Elicker quoted Lemar as saying in 2013. But it is exactly the type of thinking that could turn this horribly under-utilized area into a a spectacular asset for the neighborhood, while providing multi-modal access across multiple neighborhoods. Woods said she can remember sitting at a table with city officials at former Mayor John DeStefano Jr.s retirement tribute that year sharing the vision, which had always been promoted by her predecessor, Karen Gilvarg. The project is now is under the supervision of Anne Hartijan, a senior planner for the city. Logans sees the trail eventually extending from Sleeping Giant in Hamden all the way down and around the shores of Fair Haven with a spur that goes into Long Wharf. He said the celebration it is not just about the infrastructure. Without people who care about it, there will be weeds that grow in. ... There will be new environmental threats to the river that need to be handled. What really lasts is our shared understanding and appreciation of the river, he said. Too long we have ignored our urban rivers and it is time for us to remember some of the older stories of what this brought to us. Settlers and Native Americans chose to live on this land because there were rivers. ... The work we have put into this trail is really the manifestation of the idea that this asset is valuable, Logan said. Woods said the most valuable tool the city has is the ability to get access to the rivers through easements sanctioned by federal law. She said often property owners will say, why would anyone want to go there, but it is consistently recognizing the value that is important. John Wilson, an executive with Industrial Flow Solutions, is the latest property owner along the trail who has partnered with the city. We are exciting about our ability to grow in this area, to attract new talent and really happy to be part of the team, he said. Michael Harris, executive director of the New Haven Innovation Collaborative, one of the funders for the trail, took the long view and how the area could be a major economic driver by connecting assets along the river, while also bringing jobs to the area, which is in a federal opportunity zone. He said New Haven is ringed on all all sides by infrastructure that disconnects it from its waterfront. He said the trail is one of the ways to reconnect with the water, but he has found that the residents are already using it to fish. The real challenge is to make the developments that happen here meaningful for the residents who live two blocks from the river, by making sure they share in the economic growth. mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577 Violence and rioting exploded again in Portland this weekend as the shooting of another unarmed black man this time in Wisconsin fired up Black Lives Matter and anti-police protesters across the US. The city is still tense after more than three months of angry demonstrations, which have seen police and federal troops using force against protesters some of whom have in turn escalated their actions, setting fire to police property and using violence themselves. The weekends protests were galvanised by footage of police in Kenosha, Wisconsin firing on unarmed Jacob Blake. He is now in hospital fighting for his life after being shot in the back seven times while getting into a car with his son who was celebrating his birthday that same day. Last night, the Portland Police Bureau declared an unlawful assembly around the citys North Precinct, tweeting that criminal activity has been observed. Rocks and glass bottles have been thrown at officers. Powerful green lasers are being pointed. Stop attacking officers. The crowd did not disperse, and the force doubled down. Criminal Activity has continued, it announced. This event is now a RIOT. All persons must leave to the SOUTH. Failure to adhere to this direction may subject you to citation, arrest, and/or crowd control agents including, but not limited to, tear gas and impact weapons. Protesters in the streets chanted Every city, every town, burn the f***ing precinct down!. Some attempted to set fire to the precinct building, with a firework thrown onto the roof; police used teargas on the crowd, then attempted to drive them back in the streets.while arresting multiple people. The events on Sunday evening were the culmination of some of the angriest moments in the city since federal troops were withdrawn not all of them involving the police. On Saturday, protesters clashed with a large crowd of activists from far-right groups including the notorious Proud Boys, who had arrived to stage a nominally pro-police Back the Blue rally. The police themselves largely stood back as the two sides exchanged blows, paintballs and fireworks, chasing each other down the streets in broad daylight. Nine people arrested following tense protests outside the Lancaster Bureau of Police Station over the shooting death of Ricardo Munoz were granted significantly lower bail Thursday, prosecutors said. Politicians and criminal justice advocates alike expressed confusion and anger earlier this week when bail was set at $1 million for protesters facing charges of arson, vandalism and rioting, among others. Judge Dennis Reinaker on Thursday lowered their bail to $50,000 or $100,000, depending on the individual and what they are accused of. The judge cited public opinion and several of the protesters' petitions for modification in his decision. Reinaker acknowledged the $1 million bail was set on the spur of the moment, but said these are all serious matters we are dealing with, according to a news release from the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office. Bail was originally set by Magisterial District Judge Bruce Roth. First Deputy District Attorney Travis Anderson was not opposed to modifying bail, but asked that some protesters receive substantial monetary bail to be held responsible for their actions, according to the district attorneys office. This was a mass event. A lot of people contributed to the alleged bad things that happened, Anderson said. Some contributed more than others that will be factored into our specified recommendations. The nine protesters along with four others were arrested in the days following Sunday and early Monday protests outside the police station. A dumpster was set on fire and bricks were thrown through the police stations windows, authorities said. The police station has been closed to the public since the protests. Protests erupted Sunday evening after an officer shot and killed Munoz, 27, during a domestic disturbance call on the 300 block of Laurel Street. Body camera footage showed Munoz lunged at the officer with a knife and was shot moments later. Munozs family disagreed with the officers decision to shoot, citing the 27-year-olds struggle with mental illness. In addition to bail, Anderson requested the suspects receive supervised release and stay at least a block away from the Lancaster police station. Reinaker agreed to place several on house arrest pending release. The $1 million bail announcement was met by criticism from multiple angles. In a tweet, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman called the ruling blatantly unconstitutional. The one million dollar cash bail orders for several young Black Lives Matter protesters last night is an egregious and unacceptable abuse of the bail system, said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Cash bail should never be used to deter demonstrators and chill speech. After the ACLU demanded answers from prosecutors, District Attorney Heather Adams' office issued a statement Wednesday explaining it played no role in setting $1 million bail. Four of the protesters will be placed under house arrest if they post bail. Five were granted $50,000 bail; three were granted $100,000 and one $25,000. READ MORE: Ex-Pa. man denied break on double-life prison term for 1980 murders of woman, teen daughter Despite Dillan the bears happy ending, PETA pushes for criminal charges against Pa. sportsmens club that held him Pa. man accused of texting 15-year-old boy for sex, but it turns out to be a cop TV actor Devoleena Bhattacharjee, who is all set to reprise her character from popular show Saath Nibhana Saathiya, says she is unaware about the track that the new season will take. In an exclusive interview with Hindustan Times, the former Bigg Boss contestant also reveals she is yet to even receive the script for season 2 of Saath Nibhana Saathiya. There was always a rumour that its returning with season 2 but the talk was among the fans and I did not take it seriously. My show was trending on TikTok and it was recently shown again on other channels, and always received great feedback. But after the Rasoda rap song, the makers approached me and then I was sure that it actually is happening. Of course, it was a proud moment, an excited Devoleena said. Asked about her role and storyline in the upcoming season of the show that last aired in 2017, Devoleena revealed, Seriously we are yet to start shoot. I havent received any script. She added that she has only shot the promotional video and the sets looked pretty safe. I just shot a promo. It was safe as well as fun filled, she added. While Rupal Patel will return as the iconic Kokilaben, newcomer Sneha Jain will essay the role of Gehna. Harsh Nagar will play the male lead. Devoleena, who has been supporting Ankita Lokhande, also said that while she is not aware of the details of the actors death, she knows that Ankita has always cared for people. I really have no idea on his (Sushants) death. And I didnt make any judgements. But it was officially announced that Rhea was into drugs. However, coming to Ankita, she is a sweetheart and has always cared for her people. Well Well Well..who knows better than me what the media trial is..btw it was way more worst in my case because the media without having any information they made headlines of me getting arrested bla bla.But truth prevails as we all know.And here i am https://t.co/DnoXEPKufg Devoleena Bhattacharjee (@Devoleena_23) September 10, 2020 Devoleena also talked about the online trolls she faces most days and added, I was aware about it (trolling) since before (becoming active on social media). But as u know, if you are not at fault you can roar like a lion. Also trolls are now a part of life and they are unwanted guest on social media. Asked if the industry is indeed unfair to outsiders and freshers, Devoleena said, For fresher, its difficult to get a platform to perform.But once you have it, you can make a career with your skills and hard work. Also read: Swara Bhasker calls Kangana Ranauts rebuttal to Jaya Bachchans speech sickening, says abuse me if you want Devoleena, who had to quit Bigg Boss 13 last year mid way due to health reasons also told HT that she is completely fit and fine now but does not plan on going on the Salman Khan show. Asked if she has any other project at hand, Devoleena said, As of now Gopi is the plan and lets see whats next. Interact with the writer @swetakaushal Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON CORRALES, N.M., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ideum, an interactive design firm that focuses on installations for public spaces, announces the release of a revolutionary new touchless device. The Touchless Pedestal allows visitors to safely interact without touching a screen or any physical interface elements. This unique device includes a LeapMotion controller for interaction along with controlled LED lights and a small circular 3.4" LCD display for onboarding and real-time feedback. The system's software is provided by the Touchless Design initiative which Ideum launched earlier this year with partial funding from Intel as part of its Pandemic Response Technology Initiative. Ideum's touchless pedestal can be used for zero-touch interaction for large displays, video walls, and projection environments. The Touchless Pedestal is the second touchless device Ideum has made available. Earlier this year, Ideum announced an add-on device that works with its popular Drafting II multitouch table. That device, along with Touchless Design software, won first prize in UltraLeap's international Beyond Touchscreens competition. Ideum has been working on a series of touchless exhibits for museums, including a zero-touch wayfinding exhibit for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which was announced in July 2020. "The pandemic has created new obstacles. It is our job as designers, educators, and technologists to explore and develop new interactive paradigms. If people feel that touch isn't safe, we can create touchless experiences for museums and other spaces that are intuitive and robust," said Ideum founder Jim Spadaccini. "The challenges here are considerable, but so are the opportunities not just for the current situation, but we can also shape the future of interaction and the design of public spaces." For the Touchless Pedestal, Ideum collaborated with Intervoke to create a new version of the Brain Odyssey exhibit the team first developed with the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium. The original touch version of this "fantastic journey" into the human brain is nominated for this year's Digital Signage Expo's APEX Awards in the Educational Environments category. Intervoke created the stunning interactive 3D medical animations at the heart of this immersive experience. This immersive exhibit is available for purchase from Ideum and Intervoke. Touchless Design software is available now, and additional materials in the form of visitor evaluation and case studies will soon be available on the Touchless.Design website at https://touchless.design. The Touchless Pedestal is available for purchase directly from Ideum. The first units will ship in October. High-resolution images can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ideum/albums/72157715047140858. A video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAHRaQgrG4. About Ideum Ideum is a 20-year-old digital design firm based in Corrales, New Mexico. The firm has worked with museums and corporations across the globe developing cutting-edge digital exhibits. Ideum develops touch and touchless hardware, designs and fabricates custom exhibits, and develops interactive software. For more information, please visit www.ideum.com. For more information, contact: Dov Philips Ideum Phone: 505-792-1110 x1 [email protected] Related Images interacting-with-the-touchless.jpg Interacting with the Touchless Pedestal Ideum's touchless pedestal can be used for zero-touch interaction for large displays, video walls, and projection environments. Related Links Ideum Touchless Design SOURCE Ideum PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has ruled out allowing a delegation from South Africa to meet his critics, including opposition parties and civic organisations, slamming the door on efforts by the neighbouring country to negotiate an end to the political impasse that has paralysed Zimbabwe. The South African ruling African National Congress (ANC) party delegation on Tuesday said it would return to the country soon to meet opposition parties and other stakeholders after meeting Zanu PF and Mnangagwa on previous two visits following international outcry over deteriorating human rights abuses and a worsening economic situation. After the two visits, ANC officials said Zimbabwe was in a mess which required urgent outside intervention.But Mnangagwa and his party insist that there is no crisis or basis for South Africas mediation. He denies allegations of abduction and torture of opposition activists, insisting that he is merely enforcing COVID-19 lockdown rules. Speaking before yesterdays Zanu PF politburo meeting, Mnangagwa said the envoys were a President-to-President engagement, while last weeks meeting was party-to-party, adding anyone who believed otherwise should continue dreaming. The truth must be told, that presidential envoys remain presidential envoys from one President to another, he said. Party envoys remain party envoys from one party to another. Those who dream otherwise, allow them obviously to dream. In a clear sign that Mnangagwa was not amenable to another ANC visit, the Zanu PF leader said he wanted to push for dialogue with local players. This morning, I was pleased to receive a delegation of Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations which comprised the leadership of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, Catholic Bishops Conference, Zimbabwe Council of Churches and the indigenous churches, he said. Dialogue must be encouraged throughout all sections of society. This is the culture of the second republic, of nation building, of peace, unity and love as we develop the Zimbabwe we all want. Ramaphosa, who is also the African Union chairman, has so far dispatched two teams after a hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter highlighted human rights abuses ahead of the foiled July 31 protests which resulted in investigative journalist Hopewell Chinono and opposition Transform Zimbabwe leader Jacob Ngarivhume being arrested and spending 45 days in remand prison. Several abductions were reported while a number of members of the opposition and activists were forced into hiding. Speaking after the politburo meeting, Zanu PF acting spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa called on the ANC to rein in its senior members accused of distorting the resolutions made by the two parties at their recent meeting. He said Zanu PF would be contacting the ANC with the view of asking them to put some of their members on leash. Politburo encouraged the ANC to rein in its errant elements who are communicating unfairly on our nation, contrary to what was agreed on and endorsed by the two parties in the communique, Chinamasa said. Upon returning to South Africa, some members of the ANC insisted that Zimbabwe was burning and in a political crisis which needed Ramaphosas intervention, statements Zanu PF has described as unfair. Blade Dzimande, the Higher Education minister in South Africa, said denying that Zimbabwe was in a crisis was tantamount to denying self-evident truth. The Nelson Chamisa-led MDC Alliance had pinned hope on South Africa taking a lead to broker a political solution to the crisis which has attracted global attention. MDC Alliance vice-president Tendai Biti said the statements from Zanu PF were all false bravado, and insisted that dialogue would happen, saying they were happy with the involvement of South Africa. That is false bravado, we will find a solution to the political crisis in Zimbabwe way before 2023. They are facing a crisis of legitimacy and a crisis of delivery, a solution will be found, Biti said. But Chinamasa said: Politburo agreed that the oppositions happiness in creating drama and faking abductions as well as engaging in acts of provocations whenever there is an international event should be ignored. He said Zanu PF had, instead, already set its sights on winning the 2023 general elections, with Mnangagwa saying that was now the bagged prize. With 2023 elections in sight and our resounding and landslide victory imminent, let us remain unwavering in our revolutionary course by consistently strengthening and increasing our party membership base, Mnangagwa said. Newsday A US military whistle-blower has said federal officials sought to use a controversial crowd control device called a heat ray to deal with protesters outside the White House on June 1 when law enforcement forcibly cleared Lafayette Square. In written responses to questions from a House committee, National Guard Major Adam DeMarco said the Defense Departments lead military police officer for the National Capital Region sent an email asking if the DC National Guard possessed a long-range acoustic device used to transmit loud noises or an Active Denial System, the so-called heat ray. DeMarco said he responded the Guard was not in possession of either device. National Public Radio and The Washington Post first reported DeMarcos testimony on Wednesday. After the crowds were cleared from outside the White House, US President Donald Trump appeared [File: Tom Brenner/Reuters] Use of either the acoustic device or the Active Denial System would have been a significant escalation of crowd control for the Guard members, particularly since the Defense officials ordered that the Guard troops not be armed when they went into Washington, DC. Law enforcement personnel were armed. And although active-duty military troops were sent to the region, they remained at bases outside the District in case they were needed but never actually entered the District. The Active Denial System was developed by the military nearly two decades ago, and was unveiled to the public around 2007. It is not clear that it has ever actually been used in combat, although there are reports it has deployed. The system, which emits a directed beam of energy that causes a burning heat sensation, was considered a non-lethal way to control crowds, particularly when it may be difficult to tell the enemy from innocent civilians in war zones. Use of the device appeared to stall amid questions about whether it actually caused more serious injuries or burns than initially thought. Trump staged a photo opportunity at an historic church near the White House [File: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky] The Long Range Acoustic Device, also called a sound cannon, sends out loud messages or sounds and has been used by law enforcement to disperse crowds. The US military has, in recent years, ordered the LRAD for the Navys Military Sealift Command to be used by ships to hail or warn other vessels. DeMarco testified in late July before the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating the use of force against crowds in Lafayette Square that night. His remarks on the crowd control devices came in response to follow-up questions from the committee. DeMarcos lawyer sent his answers to the committee on August 28 NPR posted the document online Wednesday. Law enforcement and security officers on June 1 clubbed and punched protesters and unleashed mounted officers and chemical agents against them [File: AP Photo/Alex Brandon] The Trump administration has said vicious attacks by protesters led federal forces to turn on what appeared to be a largely peaceful crowd on June 1 in the square in front of the White House. Law enforcement and security officers that night clubbed and punched protesters and unleashed mounted officers and chemical agents against them in one of the most controversial confrontations at the height of this years nationwide protests over the killing of Black people at the hands of police. The forceful clearing of Lafayette Square, long one of the nations most prominent venues for demonstrations, came minutes before President Donald Trump appeared in the area, on his way to stage a photo event in front of an historic church nearby. In this article MORN Ariel Skelley The cost of investing in your 401(k) plan at work is hitting new lows. Too bad hidden fees can chomp away at your savings. Generally, it's cheaper to invest in your retirement plan at work, versus going out on your own to shop for mutual funds. For example, the average expense ratio for an equity mutual fund in a 401(k) plan was 0.39% in 2019, according to the Investment Company Institute. In comparison, the general average expense ratio for equity mutual funds was 1.24%. Investors are also generally paying less to invest in their plans now than in previous years: Back in 2000, plan participants were paying an average expense ratio of 0.77% for a stock mutual fund in their 401(k). Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards Nevertheless, the cost of investing tells only part of the story. Participants are still shelling out for other plan expenses and they continue to dig into their pockets for one-off costs, including distribution fees once they pull cash from the 401(k). Even splitting a retirement plan account in accordance with a divorce settlement known as a qualified domestic relations order carries a fee that ranges from $200 to $500, according to new data from Human Interest, a plan provider specializing in small to medium-sized businesses. "This is a place where there are a bunch of hidden fees, and what can you do as an employee?" said Jeff Schneble, CEO of Human Interest. "Not a lot." Downward pressure on 401(k) costs There are two major drivers behind falling investment expenses in 401(k) plans in recent years. First, back in 2012, the Labor Department mandated fee disclosure for retirement plans. That effort required plan service providers to formally divulge their costs to employers, so that plan sponsors could ensure the fees were reasonable. Employers are also required to provide 401(k) investors with fee disclosures at least annually. Check with your benefits representative if you haven't received one. You're likely able to access it online through your plan's recordkeeper or you may receive a disclosure on paper in the mail. Those fees don't get headlines because that's not what 401(k) lawsuits are focused on. Aaron Pottichen senior vice president at Alliant Retirement Consulting Second, plaintiffs' attorneys began pursuing large retirement plans in court. The lawyers would allege that employers breached their fiduciary responsibilities by choosing costly investments that underperformed other low-cost funds. Even with those developments, high costs may still lurk particularly for plans with fewer assets and less bargaining power. Businesses with higher asset levels tend to be eligible for institutional pricing, which helps keep costs down. For instance, total plan costs can vary from 0.38% for the largest plans to 1.42% for the smallest plans, according to an analysis of 22,000 retirement plans conducted by Morningstar. Small plans those with less than $1 million in assets can have investment expenses as high as 0.95% and plan expenses of 0.47%, Morningstar found. One-off costs Shapecharge You don't hear much about check fees and other one-off expenses from retirement plans because they depend on specific events at the employee level. "Those fees don't get headlines because that's not what 401(k) lawsuits are focused on," said Aaron Pottichen, senior vice president at Alliant Retirement Consulting in Austin, Texas. "These one-off fees are based on specific actions employees take as opposed to being in the plan," he said. But those expenses could sting for savers with smaller balances or for retirees who kept their savings in their 401(k) and draw down a check every month. More from Invest in You: Remote work burnout growing as pandemic stretches on Working women are in recession 'bull's-eye.' Here's how to cope Parents at breaking point as they cope with getting kids to school "A younger investor with $1,000 saved who's being charged $50 here and $25 there that could be your entire return if you're earning 5%," said Tony Isola, a certified financial planner at Ritholtz Wealth Management in New York. What a service provider charges for a task, like reversing an excess contribution to a 401(k) plan, will vary from one company to the other. "For some of these transactions, there's legitimate work that needs to be done behind the scenes to make sure the paperwork is correct," said Pottichen. "Distributions, loans, hardship withdrawals and qualified domestic relations orders have the highest fees." What you can do The Belarusian leader says that this is a "forced" measure. Belarus is beefing up securing on the border with Ukraine and is to shut down its border with Poland and Lithuania. This was announced by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to the Belarusian media outlet tut.by. "We are forced to withdraw troops from the streets, put half of the army under arms and close the state border in the west with Lithuania and Poland," Lukashenko said. Meanwhile, according to him, security on the border with Ukraine will be stepped up. "We are forced to strengthen the state border, to the greatest regret, with our fraternal Ukraine," he added. As Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty's Belarusian service adds, it is not yet clear in practice what this move means. Lukashenko insists he is not an aggressor, mentioning he grew up in a village where everyone protected and helped each other, tut.by said. "I don't want our country to fight. Moreover, I don't want Belarus and Poland, Lithuania to turn into a theater of military operations where other than our issues will be resolved," he said. He also appealed to the peoples of Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine: "Stop your insane politicians, don't let the war break out." As he was speaking at a forum for women, he called on them not to worry, as "the men will solve this problem." He also called the situation "very complicated" and suggested that "the situation of the entire Europe is being decided here." "It shouldn't be let to turn into a hot war. Their arsenal has not so many tools left, and we are on the brink of a terrible disaster. If they come here, we will have to answer. We won't kneel even if we face this [situation] alone," Lukashenko stressed. Read alsoLukashenko asks Putin for "some types of weapons" Recent developments in Belarus in brief THE ISSUE: An 11-year-old boy is killed during a drive-by shooting in Troy. THE STAKES: The violence in our cities must be curbed before more children die. It was probably inevitable that one of the many bullets flying around our cities in recent months would someday kill a child. There had been several close calls, after all, before Sunday night, when bullets from a passing car in Troy struck and killed Ayshawn Davis, 11. He had just started sixth grade. Like the shooting death of 10-year-old Kathina Thomas in Albany 12 years ago, the killing of Ayshawn is a horror that should shock the region's conscience and provoke action. It must force us to honestly confront the spike in violence this year that has plagued Albany, Troy and, to a lesser extent, Schenectady. This is a crisis, and we need to start treating it like one. Let's focus for now on Troy. Ayshawn was its 12th homicide victim this year, apparently a record, a staggering number for a city of just 50,000 people. For now, at least, Troy's homicide rate is higher than Chicago's and that of other big American cities with reputations for mayhem. The situation facing Troy, then, is both extraordinary and alarming. The violence in all the region's cities must be addressed before more children die. Yet the question of what, exactly, should be done would be easier to answer if we more fully understood what was driving the spike. Could it be linked to coronavirus lockdowns and the shattering of the economy? Is it because of changes to policing in the wake of George Floyd's killing? Does it stem, even in part, from any of the recent changes in New York's criminal justice system? Is gang activity on the rise? The answers to those questions aren't yet clear. But some things are. We know crime is driven in no small part by the inequities, economic and otherwise, that the coronavirus has exacerbated. We know such violence is made possible by too many guns on our streets. We know it is fueled by the hopelessness and despair concentrated in our poorest neighborhoods. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. We know, most of all, that the killing of Ayshawn Davis is unacceptable. A society that can't or won't protect its children is one disastrously weakened by apathy. This cannot be who we are, shrugging this aside as a tragedy that we're powerless to stop. To look now at photos of Ayshawn and his infectious grin is to realize that we must accept greater collective responsibility for safer streets and the protection of children. Ending the violence will require a sustained community effort and perhaps the confronting of uncomfortable truths. All potential answers must be considered. Already in Troy, there are calls for more police on the streets. But law enforcement alone cannot solve this, nor can a cash-strapped city forge its own solution. The violence of recent months is a regional problem, and a state and national one, that requires a broad confrontation of the forces that have led us to this. Ayshawn's death is both wake-up call and moral test. If the death of this beautiful child doesn't spur action, shame on us all. Her age may have posed a challenge but 100-year-old Mai Handiques battle against COVID-19 was won by her positivity, doctors said on Thursday. Handique, Assams oldest COVID-19 patient, was discharged from the Mahendra Mohan Chowdhury Hospital (MMCH) in Guwahati on Wednesday, they said. A resident of the Mothers Old Age Home, she was admitted to the hospital ten days ago after testing COVID- positive. The doctors and nurses who were treating her held a small celebration before she was discharged. Handique, who was beaming with excitement, joined the party singing several Assamese songs in her full-throated voice. Handique, called Aita (grandma) by all at the hospital, told reporters that she enjoyed her stay and the food. We were given fish or meat on most of the days while egg and banana were given daily. We were also given ruti- bhaji (chappatis and vegetables) which I enjoyed the most, she said. She also thanked all those who treated her, saying, The girls (the nurses) and the doctors took very good care. Handique also had a special word of praise for Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma -- He is doing very hard work for all of us and I bless him to continue to help people who are suffering from this disease. Sarma, too, wished her on the recovery. Steely resolve of 100-year old Mai Handique is monumental. With brilliant support of doctors at MMCH, she defeated coronavirus, giving us a lesson in having the right will power, he said. Steely resolve of 100-year-old Mai Handique is monumental. With brilliant support of doctors at MMCH, she defeated #coronavirus, giving us a lesson in having right will power. As she gets back to Mother's Old Age Home, Hatigaon, Guwahati, I join my team in wishing her the best. pic.twitter.com/5PTutoSjXO Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) September 16, 2020 A doctor treating Handique said, Initially, we were worried due to her age and she also has hypertension, but she was always cheerful and in a positive frame of mind. Twelve residents of the Mothers Old Age Home have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and five of them have been discharged so far. Australias Asiapacificnews newspaper on September 15 posted an article praising Vietnams international prestige, in which it recognized Vietnams active contribution to realizing the targets and programs of the United Nations since its accession to the organization in 1977. According to the article, United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Australian expert Carlyle Thayer, have highlighted Vietnam's remarkable achievements over the past 75 years, especially its diplomatic and military milestones. The article posted on Asiapacificnews on September 15 In his warmest congratulations to the Vietnamese Government and people on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the country's National Day (September 2), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres praised Vietnam for being always a strong partner since its entry to the worlds largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in 1977, the article said. The Vietnamese army has been joining the UN's peacekeeping activities, and Vietnam's leading role in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals lays a solid foundation for the country to implement the Sustainable Development Program 2020, Guterres noted. The vision and aspiration of the Sustainable Development Goals will become more important than ever when the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, he stressed. According to the UN's top leader, Vietnam has been making great contributions to supporting sustainable peace in its capacity as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC), the article said, quoting Guterres saying that in 2020, Vietnam is the ASEAN Chair and a UNSC non-permanent member, reflecting its strong presence on the international arena. On behalf of the U.S. Government, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on September 1 sent congratulations to the Vietnamese people. We commend Vietnam for its successful Chairmanship of ASEAN in this challenging year, and we appreciate your close coordination in the fight against COVID-19, the United States top diplomat stated, noting that the two countries are working together to build a more peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. Professor Carlyle Thayer, the University of New South Wales, Australian Defense Force Academy, shared the same view. Vietnam's international prestige today is at an all-time high. The evidence for this is Vietnam's unanimous selection by the Asia bloc in the UN as its candidate for a non-permanent seat on the UNSC and Vietnam's receipt of 192 votes out of 193 in the election held by the General Assembly, he said. In addition, Vietnam is serving as ASEAN Chair for the third time and its term overlaps with the first year of its two-year tenure on the UNSC. The article pointed out 6 major diplomatic milestones and 3 defense hallmarks of Vietnam, including Vietnams membership of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November 1998; membership of the World Trade Organization in November 2006; being elected a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the first time for the 2008-2009 period; Hanoi being selected as the venue for the second summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and DPRK Chairman Kim Jong-un in February 2019; being elected a non-permanent member of the UNSC for the second time for the 2020-2021 period; and as ASEAN Chair 2020, and Vietnams response to COVID-19 demonstrating decisive leadership in re-orientating ASEAN to combat this threat to public health in Southeast Asia. The three milestones included Vietnams decision in 2006 to modernize its navy and air defense-air force; the upgrade of Vietnam's Maritime Police in 2008 to an armed service and renamed Vietnam Coast Guard with responsibility for maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and sovereignty protection in the East Sea; and its commitment to United Nations' peacekeeping by deploying army medical staff to a Level II Field Hospital in South Sudan in 2018./. Mumbai Police on Thursday reimposed Section 144 in the city from midnight to September end, triggering concerns of whether the maximum city is at the threshold of a second Covid-19 wave. The ministry of home affairs has already dismissed rumours that India might impose a strict lockdown from September 25 in the wake of the increasing number of Covid-19 cases being reported daily. The re-imposition of Section 144, which prohibits the gathering of four or more people in an area, effectively doesnt change anything, it has been clarified. Here is all you need to know 1. The order is an extension of the existing order. Section 144 was already imposed in Mumbai. No additional restriction has been added. 2. Exemptions which have already been granted will continue. 3. Movement and gathering of people are prohibited except for listed emergency and non-emergency services, as it was there. 4. Existing restrictions in containment zones will continue. Also Read | No need to panic: Aaditya Thackeray on Section 144 imposed in Mumbai due to rising Covid-19 cases 5. Whereas Mumbai city continues to be threatened with the spread of Covid-19, it is considered expedient to issue prohibitory order for restricting any presence or movement of one or more persons in public places or gathering of any sort anywhere, including religious places to prevent further spread of the Covid-19 virus in the areas under the control of Commissioner of Police, Greater Mumbai, the order said. 6. WhatsApp messages started circulating leading to panic over new restrictions. Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray took to Twitter and clarified no new restrictions have been imposed. 7. The Covid-19 situation of Maharashtra was raised in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. Maharashtra has contributed 40 per cent of the Covid-19 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. 8. Mumbai recorded 2,411 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 178,385. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dogma Therapeutics ("Dogma"), a Viva Biotech Portfolio Company, has reached an agreement for the acquisition of its oral PCSK9 program by AstraZeneca. Dogma will receive upfront as well as downstream payments linked to global regulatory and commercial milestones. The pursuit of a convenient, oral PCSK9-based therapy has been the singular focus of Dogma scientists for nearly a decade. Through Viva Biotech's world-leading structure-based drug discovery platform, the Dogma team improved the Dogma inhibitors' binding to PCSK9, ultimately achieving picomolar affinity. In preclinical models of hypercholesterolemia, multiple Dogma small molecule inhibitors were proved to significantly lower the LDL-C level when dosed orally. "Viva Biotech has begun to incubate and invest in Dogma Therapeutics since 2017. It was an exceptionally rewarding experience for our team to have a close partnership with Dogma during the exciting discovery phase," said Dr. Zhixiong Ye, the Chief Scientific Officer at Viva Biotech. "An orally-bioavailable small molecule PCSK9 inhibitor will greatly impact the unmet medical needs of cardiovascular patients." Historically, several antibody-based inhibitors emerged following the rapid accreditation of the PCSK9 target through human genetics. However, despite large outcome trials showing a 15-20% reduction in cardiac events, the cost-effectiveness and wide use of antibody-based PCSK9 injectables have been questioned. Alternate approaches to PCSK9 inhibition have been stymied by the expansive binding surface targeted by the antibodies, and to date, only indirect approaches to PCSK9 inhibition by small molecules have been reported. "We have built a robust data package that highlights the cholesterol-lowering and safety potential of our oral PCSK9 program," noted Dogma CEO Brian Hubbard, Ph.D. "This agreement with AstraZeneca meets our strategic goal to accelerate access to patients unable to meet target LDL-C. I would like to especially thank our scientific partners Charles River Laboratories, Viva Biotech, Anji Pharma, and our CRO partners - for their commitment to this project and their world-class problem solving." Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca said: "Raised LDL cholesterol is a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is estimated to cause 2.6 million deaths worldwide every year. Whilst PCSK9 is a well validated target for lowering LDL cholesterol it has been a hugely challenging target to inhibit with small molecules. This agreement with Dogma Therapeutics offers us the opportunity to develop the first small molecule, orally bioavailable PCSK9 inhibitor, for patients at risk of cardiovascular disease." About Viva Biotech Viva Biotech operates a leading structure-based, integrated drug discovery platform, providing drug discovery services to biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers worldwide. Viva Biotech actively combines conventional cash-for-service (CFS) and unique equity-for-service (EFS) approaches to realize a combination of short and long term innovation-driven returns. CFS covers the full spectrum of its customers' needs for early-stage drug discovery, including target protein expression and structure research, hit screening, lead optimization, and drug candidate determination. As of June 30th, 2020, Viva Biotech has served 495 pharmaceutical customers worldwide, worked on over 1,300 independent drug targets, delivered approximately over 17,000 protein structures, and incubated/invested 56 early-stage biotech startups. For More Info, Please Visit www.vivabiotech.com About Dogma Therapeutics Dogma Therapeutics has discovered bona fide small molecule inhibitors of PCSK9 function that are orally bioavailable across multiple preclinical species. Guided by dozens of high-resolution x-ray structures of our molecules bound to PCSK9, we have utilized structure-based design to achieve picomolar affinity. For More Info, Please Visit www.dogmatherapeutics.com SOURCE Viva Biotech An innovative device designed to stop patients accidentally spreading coronavirus to ear, nose and throat surgeons is rolling out free to NHS clinics across the UK. The SNAP device - the brainchild of two Midlands surgeons, Ajith George and Chris Coulson - was developed in a matter of months thanks to a collaboration with engineers at Aston University and specialist UK-based manufacturing firms. The need for better PPE for ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeons was thrown into sharp focus shortly after lockdown in March, when Amged El-Hawrani, 55, an ENT specialist, became the first UK doctor to die after contracting Covid-19. ENT surgeons performing nasendoscopies - where a small flexible tube fitted with a camera is inserted into the nose - are at risk of contracting the virus because the procedure can make patients cough and sneeze. Until now, patients have had to remove their own face masks for the endoscope to be inserted, leaving surgeons reliant only on their own PPE gear. As a result, many hospitals have had to dramatically scale back the number of nasendoscopies they can perform. In normal times, around 500,000 procedures are performed in the NHS each year, typically to diagnose and treat diseases affecting the nose and throat including cancer and serious infections. The technique is also used in speech and language therapy, in which patients are often required to practise speaking with a tube inserted. Currently, the NHS is only able to perform around 10% of procedures due to the risk of patients spreading coronavirus droplets around clinics, requiring deep cleaning between appointments. The SNAP device - comprising a two-part valve and speculum - clips onto either side of a standard surgical face mask, creating a hole for an endoscope to be inserted and for patients to keep their nose and mouth completely covered. On withdrawal of the endoscope, a one-way valve closes the hole. Any coughs, splutters or sneezes during the procedure are caught within the mask, which is disposed of at the end. In tests, the SNAP device has been shown to dramatically reduce the spread of particles when a patient coughs, compared to either no mask or a mask with a hole cut in it. This reduction in particulate spread will reduce the likelihood of Covid-19 being transferred to clinicians. The SNAP device was developed as a practical response to the Covid-19 crisis by doctors Ajith George and Chris Coulson, working ENT surgeons at Midlands hospitals who co-founded their spin-out company, Endoscope-i, in 2012. The firm specialises in making endoscopic adapters for smartphones that allow clinicians to carry out complex imaging work. Mr Coulson, who works at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, said: "As surgeons ourselves, we were concerned about the safety of doctors but also about the risk of missed diagnoses and opportunities for treatment of patients. So our aim has been to produce an easy-to-use, cheap device that would allow clinicians to return to their routine practice, while minimising the risk to themselves and other staff." The pair won a 50,000 grant from Innovate UK to help develop their device as part of the government agency's support for innovations designed to alleviate the impact of Covid-19. Mr George, who is based at the Royal Stoke University Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, added: "It's incredibly exciting to see this device going from concept to reality so quickly. As working surgeons, our innovation work is driven by creating things we would want to use ourselves. Covid-19 has led to heightened awareness about the spread of disease in clinical environments, so we see the SNAP device having practical applications during the pandemic and beyond." Dr Mark Prince, a 3D printing expert from Aston University's College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, was seconded to Endoscope-i earlier this year and has led the design work. Using an industrial-grade 3D printer borrowed from the university during the lockdown period, he created around 2,000 prototype versions of the device from his home in Kidderminster. He said: "It sounds disproportionate for something that is effectively such a simple idea, but each prototype had to be produced in multiples so they could be tested in clinics. With something so important, it has to be exactly right. If it helps get the NHS back to a more normal service, even in just this one specialism, it will all have been worth it." The final design received a CE mark approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulation Agency (MHRA) and was then sent to Haverhill (Essex)-based injection-moulding specialists Form Moulds and Tooling for manufacture, before the finished SNAP products were passed on to DTR Medical in Swansea for medical sterilisation. The initial batch of 30,000 devices will be dispatched in the coming weeks, with 5,000 going out free to NHS ENT clinics nationwide. Interest in the device has also come in from as far afield as the USA, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and the Philippines. ### The head said eleven staff had contracted COVID-19 by Tuesday. (Reach) A headteacher has spoken of his upset at his colleagues after a large number of school staff became infected with COVID-19, apparently after attending an event. In a letter on the school website, John Aspin, the head of Holy Trinity Stacksteads Church of England Primary School in Bacup, Lancashire, criticised staff who went to a social event at the home of a former colleague on 5 September. Aspin said he had been wondering what has gone wrong in the school after eleven of his employees become infected with the coronavirus, and that he believes some of those were people who didnt attend the event but were subsequently infected by those who went. Read more: 'We're losing track of COVID spread because of testing failures' Aspin said that on Monday he was told a significant number of staff went alongside people not employed at Holy Trinity. Watch: What are the complications linked to coronavirus? In doing so they were not breaking any of the lockdown rules in place at the time, but what they did do was jeopardise the hard work that had been put in creating bubbles within school, and numerous cleaning and organisational protocols, by mixing with each other, he said. Had I been aware of the event I would have told them that they should not attend because of the risks, but sadly I was not informed. Read more: All the places you legally have to wear a mask in England Given that to date eight of the staff members who attended the event have contracted COVID-19, and a further three, who did not attend, have subsequently been infected during this week most likely as a result of working in close proximity to those infected at the event, the dangers of attending such events has been brought into sharp focus. The virus can be picked up at any time and in any place, and it is now clear that the schools procedures are robust and not at fault for the outbreak. He added that he apologised to parents for the upheaval and worry that you have had to endure and insisted the individuals concerned were very misguided but not malicious and would regret their decision. Aspin said he made my feelings of disappointment known to the staff who attended the event and apologised to colleagues who did not attend, especially to those who have now contracted the virus. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter US Attorney General Bill Barr compared US coronavirus lockdowns to American slavery on Wednesday night as it was revealed he is encouraging prosecutors to charge police brutality and racial injustice protesters with sedition whenever possible. Barr spoke out at the Constitution Day celebration at Hillsdale College in Michigan, suggesting the measures put in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 were on par with an alternative to being put in prison, but one step down from the restrictions slaves endured. 'You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,' Barr told a crowd which applauded in response, CNN reported. Barr likened the pandemic to life for Black people before slavery was abolished after he was asked to explain 'constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19.' US Attorney General Bill Barr spoke out at the Constitution Day celebration at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Wednesday and said about coronavirus lockdowns: 'Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history' As he compared national lockdown to house arrest, it was reported that Barr wants sedition charges for violent protesters. Pictured, the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct is set on fire during a third night of protests following the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, on May 28 He then blasted state governors, claiming they were using their executive powers to prevent businesses from reopening and people from returning to work. 'Most of the governors do what bureaucrats always do, which is they ... defy common sense,' Barr said. 'They treat free citizens as babies that can't take responsibility for themselves and others. 'We have to give business people an opportunity, tell them what the rules are you know the masks, which rule of masks, you had this month... and then let them try to adapt their business to that and you'll have ingenuity and people will at least have the freedom to try to earn a living.' More than 6 million American have been infected with the virus and 196,000 have died from COVID-19. Barr's speech came on the same day it was revealed he told federal prosecutors that protesters demonstrating for reforms of a justice system that has been compared to modern-day slavery, could be charged with sedition. As the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, declared racism a public health issue this summer, protesters have also asked for equality in wider systems. Amid the demonstrations, the CDC also said in July that long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. It's due to factors such as discrimination, the income gap and disproportionate representation in essential work. As California has the highest number of coronavirus cases and residents are currently ordered to stay home unless out for essential business. Pictured, people gather on the beach on the second day of the Labor Day weekend amid a heatwave in Santa Monica, California on September 6 A woman wearing a mask walks past a 'made in NYC, NYC tough, were back stronger than ever' sign as the city continues Phase 4 of re-opening following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus on Wednesday Barr blasted state governors, claiming they were using their executive powers to prevent businesses from reopening and people from returning to work The Wall Street Journal said Barr told federal district attorneys in a conference call last week that a law against plotting to overthrow the US government was among charges they could use against participants when protests turn violent. The WSJ reported that he divulged details of two statutes that could help bring about the charges. In order to prove sedition, they would have to prove imminent danger to government officials or agents as part of a conspiracy. However without the plot it can fall under expressing violent anti-government sentiment under the First Amendment. Another statute could bring federal charges on someone who obstructs law enforcement responding to unrest. CNN and the New York Times confirmed the recommendation by Barr. Two people on the call said Barr has asked whether charges could be brought on Seattle's Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing people to create a police-free zone. Barr said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court has determined the executive branch has 'virtually unchecked discretion' on whether to go ahead with a prosecution. 'The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,' Barr said at an event in Washington celebrating the Constitution. 'That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.' University of Alabama law professor, Jenny Carroll, told the WSJ: 'If you start charging those people, even if you don't get a conviction, it may make people think twice before going out to exercise their right to free speech.' Two people on the call said Barr has asked whether charges could be brought on Seattle's Mayor Jenny Durkan The charge would be for allowing people to create a police-free zone in Seattle in June Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish the protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said President Donald Trump has called for the Justice Department to heavily punish the protesters, whom he and Barr have labeled extreme left anarchists. While protest-related crimes usually bring only local charges, under Barr's guidance district attorneys, federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 demonstrators with crimes that bring heftier penalties. Asked about the report on Barr, Trump said his government will treat demonstrators toughly. 'If you have a violent demonstration, yes, we will put it down very very quickly,' he said, adding: 'And I think the American public wants to see that.' According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, about 93 percent of protests this summer were peaceful. Such a sedition charge has been used with extreme rarity and the most recent example, a case brought against a Michigan armed militia group, failed in 2012 due to weak and 'circumstantial evidence'. Barr's comments on Wednesday amounted to a striking, and unusual, rebuke of the thousands of prosecutors who do the daily work of assembling criminal cases across the country. Rejecting the idea that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring, Barr described them instead part of the 'permanent bureaucracy' and said they were in need of supervision from 'detached,' politically appointed leaders who are accountable to the president and Congress. 'Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target,' Barr said. 'Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.' Barr on Wednesday also rejected the idea that prosecutors should have final say in cases that they bring. Barr's comments appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the fracas that arose ahead of the February sentencing of Roger Stone, a confidant of President Trump Barr's comments appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the fracas that arose ahead of the February sentencing of Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump. In that case, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of the trial team in favor of a lighter punishment. The move prompted the entire trial team to quit before Stone's sentencing hearing. Barr was accused of undue intervention on behalf of an associate of the president, but in his speech Wednesday night, he bristled at the idea that it was even possible for an attorney general to be accused of meddling in the affairs of a department that he leads. 'Name one successful organization where the lowest level employees decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There aren't any,' Barr said. He added: 'Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but its no way to run a federal agency. Good leaders at the Justice Department - as at any organization - need to trust and support their subordinates. But that does not mean blindly deferring to whatever those subordinates want to do.' He also took a veiled swipe at one of the senior members of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation team, suggesting that one of the reasons why the Trump administration was more successful than the Obama administration before the Supreme Court was because the latter had a member of the Mueller team writing briefs. That appeared to be a reference to Michael Dreeben, a highly respected lawyer who argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court for Democratic and Republican administrations before his retirement from the solicitor general's office. Twitter has suspended the profile of Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, after she publicly claimed that China had manufactured Covid-19 in a Wuhan lab. The Twitter account remained suspended with a message on the page that now reads: Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules. Earlier, in May, Twitter had started flagging her tweets with disputed claims on coronavirus, according to Daily Mail. While its not known whether a particular tweet was the reason her account was suspended, Yan on a US TV talk show commented that she was suspended because they dont want the people to know this truth." Yan, who had fled China, had claimed she had proof that the SARS-Covid-2 virus is in fact man-made in a Wuhan lab. Speaking on ITVs Loose Women, Yan who was described as a scientist who was working at the Hong Kong School of Public Health when she turned whistleblower on the Chinese Government, after she alleged they knew about the spread of the coronavirus before publicly acknowledging the outbreak." The description also adds that a result, Dr Li claims she had to flee to the US for her own safety and is now determined to spread her findings to the world. She joined the Loose Women from a secret location to tell us why she felt compelled to speak out, even if it meant putting her life on the line." Yan states that while working at Hong Kongs School of Public Health, her supervisor first asked her to investigate a new SARS-like" virus in Wuhan on December 31 - but that her efforts were later stifled. She said she reported back that cases appeared to be rising exponentially but was told to keep silent and be careful." We will get in trouble and well be disappeared," is what was allegedly told to her. She also said she has proof that the virus came from a virology lab in the city and not from the wet-food market. The genome sequence is like a human fingerprint," she says in the video released on YouTube. Also Read: Chinese Virologist Claims She Has Proof the Covid-19 Virus Was Made in Wuhan Laboratory Based on this you can identify these things. I will [use this] evidence to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the ones who made it," she adds. Anyone, even if you have no biology knowledge, will be able to read it, and check and identify and verify it yourself." She added that the Chinese authorities began to discredit her even before she fled the country. They deleted all my information and also they told people to spread rumours about me," she said. The Chinese National Health Commission, World Health Organisation and University Of Hong Kong disputed her claims, according to The Sun. In July, Hong Kong University in fact put out a statement which read Dr Yan Limeng was a post-doctoral fellow at HKU. She has left the University. HKU notes that the content of the said news report does not accord with the key facts as we understand them. Specifically, Dr Yan never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus at HKU during December 2019 and January 2020, her central assertion of the said interview." Bodies of two girls were recovered from Chambal River on Thursday morning, a day after a boat ferrying 40 persons capsized killing 13 people on Wednesday. 11 bodies were fished out on Wednesday by the rescue teams deployed by the state disaster response force (SDRF) near Gothda village in Rajasthans Kota district. SDRF commandant, Kota, Amrita Duhan confirmed the recovery of the two bodies on Thursday. They were identified as Jyoti (14) and Alka (13). The deceased belonged to different villages. The bodies have been sent for autopsy, said Duhan. Although all the 13 bodies of the missing persons in the boat tragedy have been recovered, the district administration will take a decision if the rescue operation has to be terminated or continued, Duhan said. Six of the 13 people confirmed to have died in the tragedy are men, four are women and three are girls. A boat carrying over 30 devotees to a temple in Rajasthans Bundi district had capsized in the Chambal river on Wednesday. Twenty devotees had been rescued. Also Read: Anguished: PM Modi on Rajasthans Chambal river boat accident that killed 13 Belonging to the KhatoliItawa area of Kota, they were going to the Kamleshwar temple in Indergarh of Bundi to offer prayers. The accident took place around 8.45 am near Gotra village under the Khatoli police station, about 110 kilometers from Kota district headquarters. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON MONTREAL - PHI Studio and Emmy-winner Felix & Paul Studios have formed a new joint venture, which will create and market large-scale immersive projects including a travelling exhibition that's planning a five-year tour of North America and Europe starting in Montreal. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. MONTREAL - PHI Studio and Emmy-winner Felix & Paul Studios have formed a new joint venture, which will create and market large-scale immersive projects including a travelling exhibition that's planning a five-year tour of North America and Europe starting in Montreal. Financial terms of their collaboration weren't included in the announcement Thursday. However, the two Montreal-based companies say their "Infinity: Living Among the Stars" tour will include footage from a 3D film about the International Space Station shot for a series produced by Felix & Paul Studios and Time Studios in collaboration with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Felix & Paul's other co-productions include an interactive program about Barack and Michelle Obama's life in the White House that won a Prime Time Emmy in 2017 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. Felix & Paul Studios also received an Emmy nomination in 2019 for "Travelling While Black" in the same category. It has collaborated since 2014 with PHI Studio, which specializes on producing travelling exhibits that use virtual reality, augmented reality and extended reality technology. For PHI, this joint venture is also a unique opportunity to expand the notion of curating into the realm of deep space VR," PHI's founder Phoebe Greenberg said in a joint statement. Felix Lajeunesse, co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios, said the two companies previously collaborated on immersive experiences based on "Travelling While Black." and "Gymnasia.." "We are thrilled to work together to help bring millions of spectators to space through this latest venture, Lajeunesse said. . Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Alya Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 20:30 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c457f0e4 1 World Indonesia,India,Foreign-Affairs-Ministry,Foreign-Minister-Retno-Marsudi,Foreign-Ministry Free The government has repatriated another 122 Indonesian members of the global Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat who were stranded in India after attending an Islamic gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said on Thursday. On Wednesday, the Indonesian Embassy in New Delhi sent off 122 Indonesians. Thank God, they have arrived safely in Jakarta today [Thursday], Retno said during a press briefing in her office. With the latest repatriation, a total of 515 Indonesian Tablighi Jamaat members have returned home, more than 60 percent of the 751 Indonesian pilgrims who have become stranded in 12 states in the South Asia country, according to the ministrys data. Retno said repatriating the pilgrims amid the pandemic was not an easy matter. The repatriation of 122 Indonesian citizens is the result of various efforts made by the teams in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as between capitals [New Delhi and Jakarta] so that our brothers and sisters can return to Indonesia, she said, adding that she had asked the Indian foreign minister to continue assisting the repatriation process of the remaining Indonesian Tablighi Jamaat members. As reported previously, 436 Indonesian members of the group stood trial in India for violating the countrys immigration and quarantine policies. Last month, the ministry reported that as many as 431 Indonesians had accepted the court's ruling and been required to pay penalties ranging from 5,000 Indian rupees (US$67.89) to 10,000 rupees. Militants killed Srinagar: Three militants and a civilian woman were killed, while two CRPF personnel, including an officer, sustained injuries in a predawn gunbattle on Thursday in Batamaloo area of the city, officials said. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Firdousabad locality in Batamaloo area at around 2.30 am following information about the presence of militants there, the officials said. Advertisement Militants killed They said the search operation turned into an encounter after militants opened fire on security forces. One civilian identified as Kaunsar Riyaz was killed in the firing, while two CRPF personnel, including an officer, were injured, the officials said. Advertisement Militants KilledThe injured personnel were taken to hospital and the operation was still in progress, they said. In the ensuing encounter, three unidentified militants were killed, police tweeted, adding the searches were still going on. Talk of the designation comes as other Gulf states normalise relations with Israel, a move Qatar has rejected. The United States hopes to move ahead with plans to name Qatar as a major, non-NATO ally, a status that provides foreign nations with benefits in defence trade and security cooperation with Washington, a senior US official said on Thursday. Were going to move ahead, we hope, with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally, Timothy Lenderking, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for Gulf affairs, told reporters during a conference call. US and Qatari officials, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Qatar Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, met in Washington, DC earlier this week. Major non-NATO ally (or MNNA) status gives a country preferential access to US military equipment and technology, including free surplus material, expedited export processing and prioritised cooperation on training. Flags of NATO member countries are seen at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium [File: Francois Lenoir/Reuters] Currently, 17 countries have MNNA status, including Gulf Arab states Kuwait and Bahrain, which hosts the US Navys Fifth Fleet. Qatar, host of the largest US military facility in the Middle East, has been locked in a dispute with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt since 2017. The quartets blockade of Qatar severed diplomatic, economic and transport ties as they accused Qatar of supporting terrorism. Qatar vehemently denies all allegations. Washington, which has strong ties with all the states involved in the dispute, sees the rift as a threat to the Trump administrations efforts to contain Iran and has pushed for unity. News of a potential MNNA designation for Qatar comes after two Gulf states Bahrain and the UAE signed normalisation agreements with Israel that were brokered by the US. The deals with Israel were slammed by Palestinians as a betrayal. US officials have recently expressed a desire to sell the F-35 stealth warplane to the UAE after the normalisation agreement. However, Israeli officials have objected, citing US policy for Israel to maintain a military advantage in the region. Qatar has ruled out normalising ties with Israel, saying it cant be the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Andalusia Fire Department rescued a father and his two sons who were swept into a drainage ditch Wednesday afternoon as Hurricane Sally pummeled south Alabama. One of the sons -- a teenager -- was paddelboarding in the drainage ditch that runs from Walker Avenue through Robinson Park in Andalusia, the fire department said. The teen was then pulled into the underground drainage ditch, leading his brother and father to try and rescue him. The department responded to a call of a teen drowning when they found the three victims in the drainage ditch. Fire officials brought them to safety. None of the victims had any injuries, the department said. The department used the incident to warn residents about taking precautions, pointing out that Sally was expected to bring three to five inches of rain Wednesday afternoon. Roger Crandall is optimistic that COVID-19 wont stop MassMutual from opening its doors in Boston by next fall. The insurance companys chief executive not only anticipates the swift delivery of a vaccine, but one that works. He expects employees will be able to work inside the new 17-story commercial tower in the Seaport District, spending their lunch breaks alongside joggers, tourists and other wanderers on the plaza that will face the Fan Pier Marina and Boston Harbor. The coronavirus pandemic hasnt shaken that vision, Crandall told MassLive after company leaders celebrated the raising of the last iron beam on the steel structure. The pandemic has opened everybodys eyes about the ability to work remotely," said Crandall, who has been CEO since before the company bought the land in 2005. Are we going to live in a world where everybody goes to work five days a week? Probably not, but I think theres a huge desire for people to get together, see each other, collaborate." COVID-19 has killed more than 9,000 people in Massachusetts alone, infected hundreds of thousands nationwide and put companies out of business. The public health crisis also revived the debates about the future of the workplace as employees across the country turned their kitchen tables and dens into remote offices. A Deloitte study on the future of work published in April suggests the global public health crisis has accelerated what was until recently a painfully slow shift from industry leaders to remote work, automation and other practices that were believed to be years away. Company leaders believe employee productivity has increased and teams are learning how to collaborate remotely. IT issues remain a challenge, but the study suggests the key shift was not in investing in new tools, but in using existing resources for collaboration. The pandemic has opened everybodys eyes about the ability to work remotely, Crandall said. Its particularly gotten managers comfortable with people working remotely. While work-from-home evangelists saw the coronavirus as a possible nail in the coffin for the physical workspace, company executives and elected officials are pushing to keep the office relevant. Were not stopping. Were not slowing down in Boston, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat, said Wednesday during the topping off ceremony. Were moving forward." Walsh said the city approved construction for more than 2.6 million square feet of new space, collectively worth $1.6 billion in investments, despite the nine-week construction pause due to COVID-19. They led to 2,300 construction jobs and 1,200 other jobs. Those approvals included not only commercial projects, but 2,000 residential units with nearly 1,200 of them being income-restricted, Walsh said. When the Seaport project is completed, the tower will house 1,000 employees, some retailers on the ground floor and MassChallenge, the startup accelerator. The project is part of the companys plans to expand across Massachusetts. MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall signs the last iron beam before it is lifted up 17 stories to the top of the company's Boston building, which is expected to open in fall 2021. The insurance company started in a small office in downtown Springfield in 1851. The companys State Street headquarters, a Georgian-style building, was built in 1927 with Turner Construction Company. The company also worked on the Boston build site, which had to adopt new protocols as the novel coronavirus spread across the state. After a nine-week hiatus, workers underwent temperature checks, sanitized tools after use and wore masks on the job. MassMutual has been on an expansion track the last two years, but it recently sold its retirement plan to Colorado-based Empower Retirement for $3.35 billion. The sale affects about 2,000 employees, most of whom work in MassMutuals Enfield, Connecticut, office. MassMutuals plans to expand in Massachusetts havent seemed to change, neither in Boston nor its Springfield headquarters. Crandall insists the company will be bigger a decade from now. The Seaport construction project, he added, is the latest step in the companys long-term plan. The intention was to try to create a building that would both fit in but also just wouldnt be a glass box. I think weve achieved that," Crandall said, referencing the design by David Manfredi, CEO of Elkus Manfredi Architects. "Most importantly, inside, its going to be a great place for people to collaborate and work together. Related Content: The number of farmers committing suicide has been decreasing for four consecutive years and last year it was the lowest in 25 years. Farmer suicides are often seen as an indicator of economic distress among farmers. But these numbers do not show us the full picture. A look at four reasons why this may be. 1. Total suicides going down At least 10,281 people engaged in farming committed suicide in 2019, according to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which works under the ministry of home affairs. This is the lowest figure since 1995, the earliest year for which the number is available. The decline in the number of farmers suicides marks the continuation of a trend since 2016. Farmers suicides have often been seen as the most macabre reflection of what many believe is a growing crisis of viability in Indian agriculture. Indias farms employ more than 40% of its 400 million plus workforce, while its share in Gross Value Added (GVA) has fallen below 15%. GVA is the value of goods and services produced by the country minus the cost of inputs and raw materials , Do the falling farmers suicide numbers capture an improvement in the material well-being of Indias farmers? Activists and experts believe that the official numbers suffer from underreporting. The fact that the NCRB has discontinued the practice of giving the share of farmers suicides because of economic distress has only added to the confusion. 2. Suicides among cultivators did not decrease in 2019 The headline farmer suicide numbers includes both farmers who cultivate crops on their owned or leased land as well as agricultural labourers who work on farms for a wage. The NCRB started giving this break-up in 2014. Except in 2014, the number of suicides by cultivators has always been greater than the number of agricultural workers. Also, most of the fall in headline farmers suicide numbers has happened because of a fall in the number of suicides by agricultural workers. Suicides by cultivators actually went up from 5,763 to 5,957 between 2018 and 2019. Even as the number of suicides by agricultural labourers has shown a decreasing trend over the last six years, suicides among daily wage earners the main difference between the two is that the former work in agricultural fields has been constantly increasing in this period, from about 15,700 in 2014 to nearly 32,600 in 2019. 3. States underreport data Many large states report no farmer suicides, according to the NCRB data. In 2019, for instance, 5,957 farmer (cultivator) suicides were reported from 17 states and union territories while 19 others did not report any. At least a third of the farmer suicides were reported by just three states Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Nine states have not reported a single suicide by cultivators in last six years. These include states such as Bihar and West Bengal. On the other hand, 12 states have reported farmer suicides every year in the last six years. 4. Reason of suicides not known There has always been a debate on whether farmers suicides are the result of economic distress or something else. For example, a 2015 Rajya Sabha reply by the then agriculture minister, Radha Mohan Singh, listed love affairs and impotency along with economic distress as the reasons driving farmers suicides; expectedly, his reply triggered a huge controversy (https://bit.ly/3h9C1Kn). This debate was somewhat settled when NCRB published data on reasons for suicides among farmers in 2014 and 2015. The 2014 and 2015 numbers showed that farmers were more likely to commit suicide due to economic reasons than others. Of the cultivators who killed themselves in 2015, an overwhelming 59% did so for reasons such as poverty, farming-related issues and bankruptcy or indebtedness. Among agricultural labourers, only about 9% killed themselves for these reasons. Among all persons who committed suicide, 4.5% killed themselves for these reasons. NCRB has stopped giving data on the reason of suicides among farmers since 2016. Vijoo Krishnan, leader of the All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the organisation has details of farmers who killed themselves in several states that have officially reported no farmer suicides in recent years. Actually there is a gross underreporting. Comrades in Bengal and Bihar informed us that many farmers committed suicide there last year but the official data shows no suicide, he said, adding: Even in states which have reported a large number of suicides, the actual number of suicides is higher. Krishnan said it was also possible that some of the farmers were being classified as daily wage earners in the NCRB reports. When poor farmers are in extreme distress, they work as agricultural workers or as daily wage workers. Agriculture specialist Devinder Sharma said many farmer unions have been contesting the data reported by the states. States want to present a good image that they are actively taking steps to address agrarian distress, he said, adding: A lower number of farmer suicides officially reported by states gives an impression that things are improving in the states. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If you feel anxious or have anxiety about being in this place, you are able to leave. You are not locked down here. We dont want this to be like a jail, Noe Rodriguez, Tulsa Day Center associate director, told the guests. You have the ability to leave when you need to leave, to access your room, the gym and classrooms. Before their arrival, Salvation Army Maj. Mark Harwell told reporters that each persons daily needs will be met, offering a chance to truly shelter in place, except for work responsibilities. He said a few in the homeless population have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Meals will be provided by Iron Gate, with telemedicine offered by Morton Comprehensive Health Services. Shower and laundry facilities also are available. Some of them are looking at it as if, Ive gotten the golden ticket, because theyre coming over to a very private setting, Harwell said. Something we might take for granted a stable place to call our own here they are going to have a private home. For some, theyre considering it a luxury. Imperial Valley News Center Breathing in wildfire smoke Imperial, California - Breathing for residents across the west coast of the U.S. is becoming increasingly difficult as wildfires continue to spread across large portions of several states, according to news reports. "Because of the severe wind in the areas involved, exposure to wildfire smoke can even occur if an individual is located several hundred miles away from the actual fire," says pulmonologist Dr. Clayton Cowl, Chair of the Mayo Clinic Division of Preventive, Occupational and Aerospace Medicine. Although wildfire smoke contains a number of respiratory irritants, such as particulate matter, hydrocarbons and other organic chemicals, Dr. Cowl says probably the greatest health risk is from ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs. He adds that, unfortunately, use of a standard paper dust mask, while probably better than nothing, really does not fully protect the respiratory tract from most particulate matter that becomes airborne. These particles can create nasal congestion and cause eyes to sting and burn, but they also can aggravate the respiratory status of people with chronic heart and lung disease. "The most vulnerable populations include the elderly, children, pregnant women, and those with chronic lung or heart disease," says Dr. Arveen Bhasin, a Mayo Clinic allergist. "Common symptoms include coughing, wheezing, trouble breathing, chest pain, irritated eyes, sneezing and scratchy throat." "Probably the greatest health risk is from ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs." Dr. Clayton Cowl All types of smoke inhalation, from cigarettes to campfires, have a common denominator, according to Dr. Cowl: You are breathing in air from combustible products. He says the wildfires consume vegetation, homes, building structures with plastics and other products that release thousands of airborne chemicals. "Some of those chemicals are extremely toxic, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and chlorine-based compounds," says Dr. Cowl. Dr. Bhasin recommends that people stay indoors, keeping windows and doors closed, both at home and in the car. "Run the air conditioner to recirculate clean air, and avoid cigarette smoke or vaping," says Dr. Bhasin. "Do not burn anything in the home including wood, gas stoves or candles." Dr. Cowl agrees and says air purifiers can be considered, as can personal respiratory protection. He says the best type of air purifier is one with a high-efficiency particulate air filter. "Use of ozone or ionic air purifiers are not typically suggested for protection from wildfire smoke since they provide minimal protection from the very small particles released, referred to as ultrafine particles of less than 0.3 microns in diameter," says Dr. Cowl. Dr. Bhasin reminds people that it's important to take medications as prescribed and have refills available. Keep an eye on local air quality reports, and if you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms, it's important to seek medical care. "Maintaining adequate oral hydration by drinking water and other fluids is also important to preserve the function of cilia, the microscopic broom-like cells in the airways that help sweep out particulate contaminants inhaled from the environment," adds Dr. Cowl. Sanjeev Sabhlok resigned from the Victorian Treasury last week A former economist for the Victorian Treasury has quit in protest of Premier Daniel Andrews' strict lockdowns after letting loose on social media and sharing a scathing letter. Sanjeev Sabhlok resigned from the Victorian Treasury last week after rallying against Melbourne's strict COVID-19 lockdowns and politicians online. Mr Sabhlok, who moved to Melbourne from India in 2001, took to Twitter to announce his resignation with a stern warning to Mr Andrews. 'I served your government as an economist until 10 September 2020 but have resigned to protest your Police State,' he wrote. 'I did not come to Australia to be a slave of whimsical government. You have not implemented risk-based management, no evidence-based policy, no cost-benefit analysis. 'No justification. Just whimsy. You must reset Victoria's policies right now. But if you won't, then go!' Mr Sabhlok, who moved to Melbourne from India in 2001, took to Twitter to announce his resignation with a stern warning to Mr Andrews (pictured) The former economist claims he resigned because of Mr Andrews' 'police state' and lockdown laws Mr Sabhlok has tweeted regularly to his 3,000 followers throughout the pandemic in disagreement with Melbourne's strict lockdowns. 'We are living in what will come to be known in history as the Great Hysteria. Enjoy the ride!' he wrote on September 7. Another tweet read: 'One good thing about this pandemic is that we have seen the true colours of our leaders - and they were all red.' In another post Mr Sabhlok accused Mr Andrews of 'totally destroying Victoria'. 'Coronavirus is a bad common cold - entirely harmless to the overwhelming majority; and virtually no deaths among the young even in Victoria,' he wrote. 'Yet, that's good enough excuse for Daniel Andrews to totally destroy Victoria.' In a devastating opinion piece for the Australian Financial Review on Wednesday, Mr Sabhlok explained how he had been approached by the head of HR at Treasury and asked to remove his critical social media posts. 'I considered deleting the few direct criticisms, but they wanted all indirect criticism removed too. I resigned on the same day, the only honourable course for a free citizen of Australia,' he wrote. The long-time public servant says the pandemic policies in Victoria are the 'most heavy-handed possible' and they are a 'sledgehammer to kill a swarm of flies'. 'These policies are having hugely adverse economic, social and health effects, with the poorer sections of the community that don't have the ability to work from home suffering the most,' Mr Sabhlok said. Mr Sabhlok said Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) was 'whimsy' and warned him to resign People are seen exercising with masks on at Eastern Beach on September 17 in Geelong 'Australia is signalling to the world that it is closed for business and doesn't care for human freedoms. This will dampen business investment but also impact future skilled migration, the education industry and tourism.' He also accused politicians and health officials of using 'scare tactics' and attacked Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton for claiming COVID-19 for being the 'greatest public health challenge since the Spanish flu'. Mr Sabhlok said coronavirus was 'no Spanish flu' and even if it was he insists the draconian lockdown laws 'would never have been justified'. In the piece Mr Sabhlok writes that it was obvious as early as February that COVID-19 affected the elderly the most and steps should have been taken to protect them. 'The need for good policy process does not disappear just because we face a public health crisis,' he wrote. Police and ADF check work permits and identification at a road block in Little River on September 17 in Geelong Mr Sabhlok also accused politicians and health officials of using 'scare tactics'. Pictured: For lease signs in Melbourne's CBD which was locked down due to an outbreak of coronavirus Mr Sabhlok said he 'repeatedly' tried to raise the concerns among Treasury but said his attempts were ignored. 'So what happens now? Billions of dollars in income and wealth have been wiped out in the name of a virus that is no worse than the Asian flu,' he said. Mr Andrews was questioned about the opinion piece during Thursday's press conference. 'That may be his version of what occurred, I'm not briefed on the accuracy or otherwise of that,' the premier told reporters. 'He's entitled to his views, but you, your readers and all Victorians should be assured that we receive frank and fearless advice from the public service each and every day.' Victorian Treasury has been contacted for comment. Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned on Thursday from the Modi government even as the Lok Sabha passed the controversial farm sector reform bills that allow farmers to sell their produce beyond APMC limits and paves way for contract farming. Akali Dal is the second ally of the BJP to part ways with the Modi government, the first being Shiv Sena who quit the ruling alliance last year. Like Shiv Sena, Akali Dal was also among the earliest allies of the BJP. I have resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter and sister, Harsimrat Kaur Badal said. The bitter parting of ways came during the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill legislations touted as farm sector reforms by the government. Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from the government to protest the farm bills, Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal announced in the Lok Sabha while participating in the discussion on the bills. Soon after Sukhbir made the announcement, the ministers aide submitted her resignation to the Prime Ministers Office. Facing sharp attacks from Congress, Akali Dal was under pressure since the two laws were promulgated through the Ordinance route by the government on June 5. The opposition to the laws is so severe that farmers had warned Akali Dal leaders that they would not be allowed to enter villages if they continued to support the contentious laws. Harsimrat told reporters that she had been telling Prime Minister Narendra Modi about concerns voiced by farmers in Punjab but to no avail. The Lok Sabha passed the two bills by voice vote amid a walkout by Congress and other opposition parties. Earlier, Congress leaders Ravneet Singh Bittu and Gurjeet Singh Aujla made impassioned speeches in Punjabi terming the two bills as black law and targeting Akali Dal and Minister Badal in particular. I appreciate the sentiment and emotions of madam Harsimrat Kaur who has displayed her guts and gumption by opposing this draconian legislation. The three ordinances are nothing but toxic triangle, Chowdhury said. Besides the Congress, the bills were opposed by NCP, Samajwadi Party, TRS, BJD, Trinamool, AIMIM even as farmers had hit the streets in Punjab and Haryana against the legislation. The opposition leaders accused the Modi government of dismantling the minimum support regime and encroaching upon the state governments rights to govern the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMC). Replying to the nearly five-hour debate, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar rejected opposition claims of dismantling the MSP regime and snatching the rights of APMCs. Government would continue to buy at MSP rates and this bill merely gives farmers the option to sell their produce beyond the APMC limits, Tomar said. The Minister dubbed the opposition to the bill as political in nature, contending that the Congress had made similar promises of ushering in reforms in its party manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Apart from BJP, the bills were supported by YSRCP, Shiv Sena, JD (U), and AIADMK. WATERFORD Police said they are asking the publics help to identify a suspect who stole $600 in merchandise from Lowes and then tried to return it for a refund. On Wednesday, police posted photos of the suspect on their Facebook page. WASHINGTON A top Justice Department official on Thursday supported a suggestion by Attorney General William P. Barr to consider bringing sedition charges for violent crimes committed during nationwide protests this summer. The deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, said in an email to federal prosecutors that they should consider use of the sedition statute and other federal laws to try to stop violence at protests this summer even in instances where local law enforcement would typically bring charges. Mr. Rosen sent the email a day after reports that Mr. Barr had told federal prosecutors on a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests, even in cases where local prosecutors might typically take the case; and to consider all available federal charges, including sedition. Some on the call viewed it as a highly unusual use of the charge. The attorney general and I recently discussed with you the need to consider the use of a variety of federal charges when they may be appropriate, including seditious conspiracy, Mr. Rosen wrote. HCL Technologies and Google Cloud announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to bring HCL's Actian portfolio, starting with Actian Avalanche, to Google Cloud. Actian Avalanche is a high-performance hybrid cloud data warehouse designed to power an enterprise's most demanding operational analytics workloads. HSIL said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 21 September 2020, to consider, the proposal of buyback of the fully paid-up equity shares of the company. Shares of Happiest Minds Technologies will debut on the bourses today, 17 September 2020. The company has fixed final issue price at Rs 166 per share, the upper end of price band of Rs 165-166. Dhanuka Agritech said the company approved the proposal of buyback of shares worth up to Rs 100 crore and fixed 28 September 2020 as record for determining the entitlement of equity shareholders. Intellect Design Arena's banking platform has gone live for Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait. Suven Pharmaceuticals' board has set 28 September 2020 as record date for 1:1 bonus issue. The board of directors of Puravankara approved the issue of fully secured, unlisted, redeemable, cumulative, non-convertible Series I Debentures aggregating to Rs 70 crore. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In view of rising cases of coronavirus COVID-19, the Mumbai Police have extended prohibitory orders restricting the movement of people in the city till September 30. However, no new restrictions have been imposed, the police stressed. An official statement on September 16 read, "...it is considered expedient to issue prohibitory order for restricting any presence or movement of one or more persons in public places or gathering of any sort anywhere, including religious places to prevent further spread of the COVID-19 virus..." "Mumbaikars, the current prohibition on presence or movement in public places under Sec. 144 CrPC, is an extension of the previous prohibitory order. No new restrictions have been imposed. All exemptions as per Govt. of Maharashtra guidelines to continue," tweeted the Mumbai Police. Mumbaikars, the current prohibition on presence or movement in public places under Sec. 144 CrPC, is an extension of the previous prohibitory order. No new restrictions have been imposed. All exemptions as per Govt. of Maharashtra guidelines to continue Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) September 17, 2020 "The order issued under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is a mere extension of our previous order (issued on 31st August) and no new-fresh restrictions have been imposed," said city police commissioner Param Bir Singh. The restrictions were extended to curb the spread of coronavirus, said a police spokesperson. Social distancing (minimum of six feet between two persons) must be followed in public places, the orders said. "All movements of one or more persons in the area designated as Containment Zone by municipal authorities is prohibited, except for essential activities, the supply of essential goods and medical emergencies," the orders stated. NO need to PANIC The order issued under section 144 CrPC is only an extension of the previous order issued on 31st August. No new restrictions have been imposed by @MumbaiPolice . Please share and dont panic. #Section144 #Mumbai Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) September 17, 2020 All movements of one or more persons in the city is prohibited, except for medical emergencies and emergency duties, government-semi government agencies and their officials on duty, the orders said, before listing further exemptions. Establishments providing essential services like food, vegetables, milk supplies, groceries, hospitals, medical shops, pathology laboratories and medical-nursing colleges, telephone-Internet services, electricity, petroleum, oil and energy-related entities are exempted. Banks, stock exchange, clearing corporations, depositories, stockbrokers and SEBI registered participants operating through these institutions are too exempted. IT, IT-enabled services, media, ports, services providing home delivery of foods, groceries and essential commodities, E-Commerce activities are also exempted. The activities exempted as per the orders issued on August 31 by the Maharashtra government regarding easing of restrictions and phase-wise opening of lockdown (`Mission Begin Again') will be allowed. Deputy Commissioners of Police of each zone can grant further exemptions whenever needed, the orders said. Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday asked Mumbai residents not to panic over the issuance of prohibitory orders in the city. No new restrictions have been imposed, he assured. Thackeray tweeted this after the Mumbai police extended their orders issued under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure till September end. Thackeray said it was a mere continuation of the previous order of August 31. "No new restrictions have been imposed by Mumbai police," he said. Mumbai on Thursday reported 2,389 new COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day count so far, taking the tally to 1,78,275 on Thursday, news agency reported quoting the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. Also, 43 more patients succumbed to the infection, pushing up the toll to 8,320, it said. The previous highest single-day case count was 2,371, reported on September 10. According to the civic body's update, the city's active COVID-19 cases rose to 32,849, the highest in the past couple of months. The civic body said the number of recovered patients increased to 1,36,739 with 1,173 more patients discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours. Mumbai has a recovery rate of 77 per cent, the BMC said. According to the BMC, Mumbai's average growth rate of COVID-19 cases is 1.24 per cent, while the average doubling rate is 55 days. Meanwhile, the number of sealed buildings, where at least one or more positive patients had been found, rose to 9,365, the civic body said. The count of containment zones in slums and chawls rose to 590, it said. The civic body has conducted 9.64 lakh COVID-19 tests so far. In a significant development, Goan Drug Peddler Chris Costa, who was arrested by Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) earlier this week has been sent to judicial custody by a Mumbai Court till October 1. Costa was picked up by the agency on Tuesday as a part of its probe into the alleged drug nexus of Bollywood and the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. He was then taken for a medical examination along with Showik Chakraborty's school friend Suryadeep Malhotra who was also detained by the NCB earlier this week. Read: In Sushant Case, NCB Seeks To Cancel Bail Given To Drug Peddler Kaizen Ibrahim Read: Karan Johar To Have 'Koffee With NCB' Soon: Manjinder Sirsa Turns Up Heat On Bollywood NCB Conducts Multiple Raids Across Mumbai Earlier in the day, the NCB conducted raids at three different locations across Mumbai to probe the Bollywood-drug nexus that is growing wider in connection with Sushant Singh Rajputs death case. As per reports, separate teams of the NCB were deployed at three locations in the city after receiving a major lead from those already in the custody of the agency. Despite making 16 arrests into the drug case so far, the connection of drugs with the Indian film industry seems to grow wider with each revelation in Sushants case. Meanwhile, more details regarding drug peddlers have come to light in the latest updates of the case. During the ongoing interrogation with the drug peddlers, it was revealed that two of them had attended a rave party held in Sri Lanka in 2017. Sources told Republic TV that suppliers of illegal goods from other countries had also attended the party in Sri Lanka. Two of them are already in NCBs custody. The agency is now trying to establish an international link if any. Names of the two arrested individuals have been withheld. Read: On Bollywood & Drugs, Sirsa 'will File Case On Mumbai Cops' Post NCB Plaint On Karan Johar Read: Manjinder Sirsa Urges NCB To Investigate 'Udta Bollywood' Video From 2019; Writes Letter Hospitalisations in Delhi during third Covid wave significantly lower than second Coronavirus outbreak: India records nearly 98,000 new COVID-19 cases, 1,132 deaths in last 24 hours India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Sep 17: Union Health Ministry on Thursday said that India reported 97,894 new positive cases of coronavirus and 1,132 deaths in the last 24 hours. With new cases, the total number of infected patients in the country has surpassed 51 lakh mark. India records more than 97,000 Covid cases in 24 hours, active cases cross 1 million mark | Oneindia The country's coronavirus tally now stands at 51,18,254, while the death toll has mounted to 83,198. Of the total cases, 40,25,079 have been successfully treated while one case has been migrated from the country. There are 10,09,976 active cases of COVID-19 in India. Fact check: Image of actor shared as doctor who succumbed to COVID-19 It can be seen that Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected by the coronavirus outbreak in the country with the novel coronavirus tally crossing 11 lakh mark. The total number of positive cases in the state has climbed to 11,21,221 and 30,883 deaths. Recently, Andhra Pradesh has become the second-worst hit in the country with 5,92,760 confirmed cases and 5,105 deaths. Tamil Nadu is placed at the third spot having reported 5,19,860 COVID-19 cases and 8,559 deaths, followed by Karnataka (4,84,990 lakh cases, 7,536 deaths) and Delhi (2,30,269 cases and 4,839 deaths). Don't let coronavirus dampen festive spirit: Mamata Banerjee on Mahalaya The total number of samples tested up to September 16 is 6,05,65,728 including 11,36,613 samples tested yesterday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said today. A record 82,961 new Covid-19 recoveries were reported on Wednesday, almost a quarter of them from Maharashtra alone, pushing the overall figures close to 39.5 lakh and the recovery rate to 78.53 per cent, Health Ministry data showed. Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/17/2020 -- A new business intelligence report released by HTF MI with title "Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Insights by Application, Product Type, Competitive Landscape & Regional Forecast 2025" is designed covering micro level of analysis by manufacturers and key business segments. The Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market survey analysis offers energetic visions to conclude and study market size, market hopes, and competitive surroundings. The research is derived through primary and secondary statistics sources and it comprises both qualitative and quantitative detailing. Some of the key players profiled in the study are ZoomInfo (United States), DiscoverOrg (United States), Marketo (United States), Act-On (United States), InsideView (United States), Datanyze (United States), Adapt (United Kingdom), LeanData (United States), Infer (United States) and 6sense (United States) etc. What's keeping ZoomInfo (United States), DiscoverOrg (United States), Marketo (United States), Act-On (United States), InsideView (United States), Datanyze (United States), Adapt (United Kingdom), LeanData (United States), Infer (United States) and 6sense (United States) etc Ahead in the Market? Benchmark yourself with the strategic moves and findings recently released by HTF MI Get Free Sample Report + All Related Graphs & Charts @ : https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/2834509-global-marketing-account-intelligence-software-market-insights Market Snapshot Showcasing account knowledge programming assists with accumulating wise data to assist advertisers with building up the rundown of records which fit a client's optimal client profile. Promoting account knowledge frameworks are actualized to satisfy the failures of the customary "splash and supplicate" showcasing approach. By conveying this product, advertising associations boosts the endeavors on accounts. It has a high probability of changing over to clients while limiting time and cash went through on possibilities with a low likelihood of changing over. These sorts of instruments additionally help deals groups by giving sharp data, for example, a possibility's function inside the organization order or a possibility's organization segment.This development is basically determined by Increasing Focus on Marketing by Enterprises is Fuelling the Market and Benefits Such as Better Customer Engagement, Decision Making and Others. Market Overview of Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software If you are involved in the Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software industry or aim to be, then this study will provide you inclusive point of view. It's vital you keep your market knowledge up to date segmented by Applications [Large Enterprises, SMEs], Product Types [,Cloud Based, Web Based] and major players. If you have a different set of players/manufacturers according to geography or needs regional or country segmented reports we can provide customization according to your requirement. This study mainly helps understand which market segments or Region or Country they should focus in coming years to channelize their efforts and investments to maximize growth and profitability. The report presents the market competitive landscape and a consistent in depth analysis of the major vendor/key players in the market along with impact of economic slowdown due to COVID. Furthermore, the years considered for the study are as follows: Historical year 2014-2019 Base year 2019 Forecast period** 2020 to 2026 [** unless otherwise stated] **Moreover, it will also include the opportunities available in micro markets for stakeholders to invest, detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product services of key players. Enquire for customization in Report @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/2834509-global-marketing-account-intelligence-software-market-insights The titled segments and sub-section of the market are illuminated below: The Study Explore the Product Types of Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market: ,Cloud Based, Web Based Key Applications/end-users of Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market: Large Enterprises, SMEs Top Players in the Market are: ZoomInfo (United States), DiscoverOrg (United States), Marketo (United States), Act-On (United States), InsideView (United States), Datanyze (United States), Adapt (United Kingdom), LeanData (United States), Infer (United States) and 6sense (United States) etc Region Included are: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific etc Important Features that are under offering & key highlights of the report: Detailed overview of Marketing Account Intelligence Software market Changing market dynamics of the industry In-depth market segmentation by Type, Application etc Historical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and value Recent industry trends and developments Competitive landscape of Marketing Account Intelligence Software market Strategies of key players and product offerings Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective towards Marketing Account Intelligence Software market performance Market players information to sustain and enhance their footprint Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/2834509-global-marketing-account-intelligence-software-market-insights Major Highlights of TOC: Chapter One: Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Industry Overview 1.1 Marketing Account Intelligence Software Industry 1.1.1 Overview 1.1.2 Products of Major Companies 1.2 Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Segment 1.2.1 Industry Chain 1.2.2 Consumer Distribution 1.3 Price & Cost Overview Chapter Two: Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Demand 2.1 Segment Overview 2.1.1 APPLICATION 1 2.1.2 APPLICATION 2 2.1.3 Other 2.2 Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Size by Demand 2.3 Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Forecast by Demand Chapter Three: Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market by Type 3.1 By Type 3.1.1 TYPE 1 3.1.2 TYPE 2 3.2 Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Size by Type 3.3 Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Forecast by Type Chapter Four: Major Region of Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market 4.1 Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Sales 4.2 Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Revenue & market share Chapter Five: Major Companies List Chapter Six: Conclusion Complete Purchase of Latest Version Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Study with COVID-19 Impact Analysis @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=2834509 Key questions answered - What impact does COVID-19 have made on Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software Market Growth & Sizing? - Who are the Leading key players and what are their Key Business plans in the Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software market? - What are the key concerns of the five forces analysis of the Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software market? - What are different prospects and threats faced by the dealers in the Global Marketing Account Intelligence Software market? - What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors? Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia. Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT)-Allahabad will play a key role in counseling and admission to undergraduate degree programmes of engineering, technology, and architecture including BTech courses in all NITs, IIITs and other government-funded institutions of the country based on JEE (Main) scores this year. MNNIT director Prof Rajeev Tripathi has been appointed chairman of the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) by the union ministry of education. As a result, a dedicated CSAB headquarters will soon become functional at MNNIT Allahabad campus with a team of institute officials and staff to shouldering the responsibilities of counselling for 2020-21. For admissions, the Education ministry sets up a Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) to manage and regulate the joint seat allocation for admissions to participating institutes for each academic year. Last year this included 23 IITs, 31 NITs, 25 IIITs, and 28 other-government funded technical institutes (Other-GFTIs). Admission to all the academic programs offered by these Institutes will be made through a single platform. The CSAB simultaneously undertakes counselling for admission to NITs, IIITs, and other JEE participating institutes, and based on this the candidates need to report to the allotted institutes and take admission. However, after it, when still seats remain vacant, the CSAB then conducts a special round of counselling for remaining seats. For the close work that CSAB does along with JoSAA in counselling and admissions, the chairman of CSAB is also a member of JoSAA, inform officials. The core committee of CSAB has a representative of Education ministry, directors of four NITs, and one IIIT also as members. All though it is the first time MNNIT is shouldering the responsibility of CSAB, it was the institute that had kick-started the online counselling process for admissions in coordination with National Informatics Centre (NIC). It handled the role of CSABs former version of CCB or Central Counselling Board in 2002 and 2003 with success. In 2004 the responsibility was given to Delhi College of Engineering before the task against being entrusted to MNNIT in 2008. However, this time this responsibility has come to MNNIT after a gap of 12 years now, shared MNNIT director, Prof Rajeev Tripathi. Last year, the responsibility of CSAB was handled by NIT-Trichy, he added. Prof Tripathi said that JEE (Advanced) is scheduled to be held on September 27 and after its result declaration, the process of online registration and choice locking for admissions will kick start from October 6 and continue till October 16. The first round of seat allotment would then take place on October 17. In these tough times of Covid-19 pandemic, to maintain social distancing, physical reporting has been eliminated. Due to this, radical change has been inducted in business rules in terms of online reporting, online document verification, and online admission, keeping the safety of the aspirants and stakeholders on priority, he said. Some of the important features of the seat allocation process for admission through JoSAA-2020 includes: Seat allocation process this year would involve six normal rounds, to be conducted by JoSAA-2020 for admission to IITs and NIT+ system, which will be followed by two special vacant seats filling rounds, to be conducted by CSAB 2020, only for NIT+ system. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Although the men had been close, in October 2016, their relationship had deteriorated, and authorities say Collins was looking for Bailey, intent on a fight. The two met in an alleyway, and Bailey shot Collins after Collins rushed at him and pushed him. Believe it or not and I know many people will refuse to believe it right now New York City may be among the best places in America to avoid catching the coronavirus. In New York State as a whole, the number of people dying daily from Covid-19 is only slightly higher than the number killed in traffic accidents. In New York City, only around 1 percent of tests for the coronavirus are coming up positive, compared with, for example, more than 12 percent in Florida. How did New York get here from the nightmarish days of April? Its no mystery: partial herd immunity might be a small factor, but mainly the state did simple, obvious things to limit virus transmission. Bars are closed; indoor dining is still banned. Above all, theres a face-mask mandate that people generally obey. New York isnt the only such success story. At first, Arizonas Republican governor, Doug Ducey, did everything wrong; not only did he keep the bars open, but he refused to let the (mostly Democratic) mayors of the states biggest cities impose local face-mask mandates. The result was a huge spike in cases: For a few weeks in July almost as many people were dying daily in Arizona, population seven million, as in the whole European Union, population 446 million. 17.09.2020 LISTEN A final year BECE student of Apowa Methodist Junior High School in the Ahanta West Municipality, Richard Mensah, popularly known as Kofi has died. The deceased died at the Jemima Hospital on Wednesday after complaining about headache. The grandmother of the boy told Empire News, Richard Mensahs sickness worsened in the morning when he was preparing to go sit for the Science and French papers at the St. Marys Boys Senior School. The body of the boy has been deposited at private morgue for preservation and autopsy Meanwhile, two female Junior High School students who are among the over 3,000 candidates sitting for the 2020 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Effia-Kwesimintsim Municipality are reported pregnant. Confirming the development to Empire News, Western Regional Public Relations Officer at the Ghana Education Service (GES) Catherine Andoh-Biney said several attempts to persuade the teenagers to write the papers were unsuccessful while in the Jomoro Municipal three of the female students are also reported pregnant. ---Starrfm Annual Report to Shareholders Brisbane, Sep 16, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - During the year, State Gas Limited ( ASX:GAS ) successfully embarked on the production testing of Nyanda-4 in the southern portion of the 100% owned PL231, Serocold-1 in the central portion and testing of Aldinga East-1A in the northern reaches. All of these have shown CSG presence across Reid's Dome, surely making PL231 a new CSG province which, with the further work envisaged this year should see PL231 become highly productive. Flow rates exceeding 230mscf/d at Nyanda-4 have been particularly encouraging for an open hole completion with no sentinel wells in little over 8 weeks of de-watering.The existence of conventional gas at Reid's Dome alongside the CSG should enable State Gas to better meet the increasingly volatile demand profile of the Eastern Seaboard gas market. This demand-volatility is being caused by the increasing use of gas for intermediate/peak power as the need for dispatchable electricity increases to offset the intermittency inherent in renewable electricity. Nothing beats optionality in times of volatility.The Federal Government's recently announced energy policy highlights the key role natural gas will play in the post COVID-19 recovery phase for the national economy. It is the company's intention that State Gas will play its role in this national objective. Commissioning the production facilities in late 2022, and selling gas in 2023 - the very year in which a critical shortage is forecast to eventuate.To view the Annual Report, please visit:About State Gas Limited State Gas Limited (ASX:GAS) is a Queensland-based developer of the Reid's Dome gas field, originally discovered during drilling in 1955, located in the Bowen Basin in Central Queensland. State Gas is 100%-owner of the Reid's Dome Gas Project (PL-231) a CSG and conventional gas play, which is well-located 30 kilometres southwest of Rolleston, approximately 50 kilometres from the Queensland Gas Pipeline and interconnected east coast gas network. Permian coal measures within the Reid's Dome Beds are extensive across the entire permit but the area had not been explored for coal seam gas prior to State Gas' ownership. In late 2018 State Gas drilled the first coal seam gas well in the region (Nyanda-4) into the Reid's Dome Beds and established the potential for a significant coal seam gas project in PL 231. The extension of the coal measures into the northern and central areas of the permit was confirmed in late 2019 by the Company's drilling of Aldinga East-1A (12 km north) and Serocold-1 (6 km to the north of Nyanda-4). State Gas is also the 100% holder Authority to Prospect 2062 ("Rolleston-West"), a 1,414 km2 permit (eight times larger than PL 231) that is contiguous with the Reid's Dome Gas Project. Rolleston-West contains highly prospective targets for both coal seam gas (CSG) and known conventional gas within the permit area. It is not restricted by domestic gas reservation requirements. The contiguous areas (Reid's Dome and Rolleston-West), under sole ownership by State Gas, enable integration of activities and a unified super-gasfield development, providing economies of scale, efficient operations, and optionality in marketing. State Gas is implementing its strategic plan to bring gas to market from Reid's Dome and Rolleston-West to meet near term forecast shortfalls in the east coast domestic gas market. The strategy involves progressing a phased appraisal program in parallel with permitting for an export pipeline and development facilities to facilitate the fastest possible delivery of gas to market. State Gas' current focus has been to confirm the producibility of the gas through production testing of the wells. POLITICS EAT THE BUDDHA by Barbara Demick (Granta, 18.99, 272pp) The very word 'Tibet' has romantic, resonance. The 'Roof of the World' conjures the vast snowy wastes of the High Himalayan plateau, populated by yaks, nomadic herders, yetis and Buddhist lamas in russet robes, capable of levitation and clairvoyance. Alas, there is a very different side to modern-day Tibet, a place of police checkpoints, arbitrary arrests and punishment beatings; of a sullen second-class citizenry subdued by a Chinese state equipped with advanced biometric data, facial recognition technology and, it is said, millions of closed-circuit cameras one for every two citizens. Tibet, a former empire itself, was incorporated in 1950 into communist China by force majeure as an autonomous region of the People's Republic. Tibet, a former empire itself, was incorporated in 1950 into communist China. New book Eat The Buddha, by Barbara Demick, tells the tragic story of the region's people Today it is autonomous in name only. It is also the world centre for self-immolation suicide as a political gesture, with the protester dousing themselves with petrol and lighting a match. Since 2009, 159 Tibetans have chosen this excruciatingly painful death to demand autonomy for Tibet and the return of revered spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Barbara Demick's Eat The Buddha focuses on Ngaba, a small city on the eastern side of the Tibetan plateau where two-thirds of the suicides have taken place. To tell her story, the former Los Angeles Times Beijing correspondent homes in on the lives of its ordinary citizens. It is also the world centre for self-immolation. Since 2009, 159 Tibetans have chosen this excruciatingly painful death to demand autonomy for Tibet and the return of revered spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (pictured) By spinning their oral histories into a single narrative, she captures not just the events, but how they affect the daily lives of her protagonists. Woven between is a history of Tibet and its dramatic, tragic story of the past six decades. She starts in 1958 with Gonpo, a seven-year-old Tibetan aristocrat's daughter, who returns home to find Chinese troops outside. Woven between the story of the city of Ngaba's people is a history of Tibet and its dramatic, tragic story of the past six decades. Pictured: File photo Her parents are sent into exile and to early deaths. We follow her through to her 60s, first as an enthusiastic Communist, through her exile in the Cultural Revolution, her happy marriage to a Chinese man and, finally, her role as an adviser to the Dalai Lama in exile in India. There is also Tsegyam, an academic radicalised by his love of Tibetan history, who becomes the Dalai Lama's private secretary; and Tsepey, a good-time boy politicised by the clampdown after rioting in 2008 who escaped to Shenzhen miles away, was then found and escaped again. Demick does not dodge uncomfortable facts. Several of her subjects start out enthusiastic for the materialism the Chinese economic miracle brought. Demick does not dodge uncomfortable facts. Several of her subjects start out enthusiastic for the materialism the Chinese economic miracle brought Even today some exiled Tibetans are drifting back, lured by the comfortable life China can provide. To do so means accepting the daily indignities of Chinese racism, the bureaucratic barriers to Tibetan advancement and Beijing's demonisation of the beloved Dalai Lama. It was these realities that first hardened Tibetan hearts and fostered a dogged resistance which, handled differently, may never have built up. Eat The Buddha by Barbara Demick (Granta, 18.99, 272pp) Time and again one is struck by the gentleness of Tibetan culture rooted in a Buddhism characterised by non-violence and compassion. (Suicide as rebellion is deemed acceptable as it harms no one but the practitioner. Elsewhere, a prayer is said over a fly, drowned in a bowl of soup.) Today, there are regrets too over President Xi Jinping's hardline assimilation strategy. His more liberal father was sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, Demick writes, and for decades wore a watch given to him by the young Dalai Lama. This remarkable book offers a unique insight into Tibet's plight, allowing the reader to understand what it is like for its people to be tossed about in a political storm they neither want nor understand. Demick's title references the ravenous Maoist cadres who, during 1934's Long March, ate the flour and sugar Buddhas made by Tibetans as votive offerings symbolic of the cultural cataclysm to come. 'All revolutions devour their children,' as the old saying has it. But who was to know, back then, that the next meal on the Chinese revolutionary menu would be the Tibetan people themselves? Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden will be in Moosic, Lackawanna County, Pa., tonight for a CNN Town Hall moderated by anchor Anderson Cooper. The event begins at 8 p.m. on CNN and is expected to last for an hour. CNN selected 100 people to attend the town hall in the parking lot of PNC Field. No one from the public can attend. Those attending will be recognized by Cooper to ask questions. Moosic is a small town near Scranton, which is Bidens hometown. According to Gov. Tom Wolfs COVID-19 guidelines, gatherings are limited to 250 people. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bidens running mate, Kamala Harris will be in Philadelphia today but the newspaper said its still unclear when or what shell be doing here. On Tuesday, President Trump participated in an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia to answer questions from undecided voters. Pennsylvania has been noted by analysts to be a key battleground state in the upcoming election. Donald Trump Jr. was in Dauphin County yesterday at Blue Ridge Sportsman Club. Biden and President Trump were at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County on Friday, Sept. 11, for the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Polls have shown Biden leading in Pennsylvania but that lead appears to be shrinking. The Real Clear Politics average of polls in Pa. on Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump 49% to 44.7%. The average of national polls has Biden leading 49.6% to 43%. READ MORE I dont wear a face mask as regularly as I did. Now I keep it in the car or in my pocket, in case I need it to enter places that insist I wear one though there arent many of those these days, Ahmed Mohsen, 37, told Al-Ahram Weekly. His remarks are likely to echo with many members of the public. Yet on Saturday the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying that legal action had been taken in a single, 24-hour period, against 1,851 drivers of public transport vehicles for not wearing face masks. Masks have been mandatory since 30 May on public transport, in shops, banks, government offices and private businesses, with violators facing fines of up to LE4,000. The publics increasingly cavalier attitude to the wearing of masks is reflected in calls on the government from the manufacturers of medical supplies not to renew the decision, issued at the beginning of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, preventing the export of personal protective equipment. Trade and Industry Minister Nevine Gamea said on Wednesday that Egyptian manufacturers are now allowed to export all anti-coronavirus supplies including alcohol by-products, protective masks and suits, latex gloves, mask shields, and medical goggles. Gamea issued a decree in March banning the export of preventative supplies, including face masks and alcoholic hand washes, for three months. It was renewed in June. The market is suffering from declining demand, which is expected to continue until the end of the year, head of medical supplies division at the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce (FECC) Mohamed Ismail told the Weekly prior to Gamea's Wednesday decision. It is time for the cabinet to allow for exports. Before the emergence of Covid-19, local consumption of disposable masks was 180 million annually, of which 120 million were imported from China, according to Ali Ouf, head of the pharmaceutical division of the FECC. We had only seven production lines for masks prior to the coronavirus crisis but now Egypt has 186 production lines with a production capacity of at least 20,000 masks per day, says Ouf, adding that even if a second wave occurs Egypt has enough masks in stock. Since the outbreak of the global pandemic, Egypt has sent millions of face masks and other medical aid to other countries, including Italy, China, the US, and several African states. Islam Anan, a pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics lecturer at Misr International University (MIU), said a false sense of security among the public has led to non-compliance with preventative measures, including the wearing of masks. With the relaxing of lockdown measures and relatively low and stable infection rates, people are taking less care than they should. But while the number of new coronavirus cases has been hovering around 150 a day since August, experts warn the figures could increase dramatically come autumn. The most important thing now, says Anan, is to adapt to the new normal by remaining committed to all preventive measures. Egypt began the move towards a gradual reopening of the economy in June, lifting the night-time curfew, reopening restaurants and places of worship, and resuming regular international flights as part of its plans to coexist with the virus. The cabinet has warned, however, that restrictions will be reimposed should infection rates rise. Because so little is known about the new coronavirus we have no choice but to compare it to previous epidemics as we try to predict the intensity of any second wave. Either the second wave will be weaker than the first, as has been the case with other coronavirus strains; it will be as intense, like seasonal influenza; or the second wave will be much stronger, which happened with the Spanish flu, Anan told the Weekly. He warned that caution must be exercised as policy-makers hoped for the best but planned for the worst, Anan stressed. On Saturday, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi directed government agencies to coordinate and extract the lessons learned from Egypts experience in combating the repercussions of coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak, so they can be used to deal with any second wave. Al-Sisis remarks came during a meeting with the presidencys health adviser Mohamed Awad Tageddin to follow up on efforts to deal with the pandemic and preparations to confront a possible resurgence. A presidential statement added that among the precautionary measures needed is a concerted public awareness campaign, made especially urgent as the new school year approaches. Egypts 2020-21 school year is slated to begin on 17 October, with 23 million students enlisted in schools. The start of the academic year has already been pushed back from September because of the coronavirus. During the meeting Tageddin reviewed ongoing efforts to address the epidemic, including developing hospitals, launching mobile clinics, applying detection, isolation and coexistence procedures, expanding laboratory capacity, and constantly updating medical treatment protocols and national research efforts to develop vaccines. Health Minister Hala Zayed told the media on Friday that 6,000 Egyptians will participate in phase 3 clinical trials for two potential coronavirus vaccines being developed by a Chinese company which she did not name. Zayed said that during the trials, which will also be carried out in Bahrain, UAE and Jordan, volunteers, who first take a PCR test to make sure they have not been infected with the virus, will receive two injections, 21 days apart, and be monitored over a year. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli has announced a further easing of restrictions. From 21 September open-air funerals, wedding ceremonies, film festivals and conferences will be allowed. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Dublin GP Dr Ray Walley has said that Dublin should be at Level 4 of the Governments Living with Covid-19 strategy. The Glasnevin based doctor said he was particularly concerned that under Level 3 up to 25 people could gather at a function such as a wedding. Speaking on RTE radios Today with Claire Byrne show, Dr Walley warned that the age profile is increasing (among Covid patients) and this will have an impact downstream. Read More Here's what the five levels of the Living With Covid plan mean for you Nphet will hold its weekly meeting today to discuss the latest data and evidence of the prevalence of the virus and suggest measures to stem or curb its spread. If it finds that infections in Dublin have not stabilised and further action is required, preparations will be made for an incorporeal Cabinet meeting on Friday to give effect to its findings. That could mean that Dublin and its population of 1.4 million would be subject to tighter regulations than the other 25 counties. Level 4 restrictions include a ban on social or family gatherings indoors or outdoors, additional restrictions on indoor dining, as well as people being told not to travel outside the county. No matches or events will be allowed and no spectators allowed at any games that do take place. Dr Walley said the concern was that the rate of infections had increased because of social gatherings, this could spread to older people who have a higher morbidity rate and require more hospitalisation. It is like flooding on flooding, it takes longer to go away. All of this takes a long time to recover. Nphet has to consider putting Dublin at Level 4, he said, and there also needs to be more positive messaging. People should be told what they can do, not what they cannot do. They also need to know how to maintain their health while living with the virus. Dr Gabrielle Colleran of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association warned that there was an urgent need to double ICU beds and number of consultants as Ireland has half the EU average of ICU beds and lowest level of consultants. She called on the HSE to fast track ICU beds. If there was a doubling of capacity it would help medics cope with the surge, she said. Last winter was the worst winter with regard to trolleys, the issue needed to be tackled now, she added. We need to have enough staff to deal with this. A consultant to the federal Health Department warns aged care homes face insolvency as providers are forced to hand back millions of dollars in deposits as residents exit the system amid the coronavirus pandemic. With 582 Victorian aged care residents dying in the last nine weeks as coronavirus swept through homes, the warning of a wider impact on the $25-billion-a-year industry has been sounded by Ansell Strategic, a consultant to many of the larger home providers. Ansell Strategic managing director Cam Ansell said in a memo to the Health Department, tendered to the aged care royal commission this week, that the second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria would hit many nursing home operators hard. "The compounded effect of the first shutdown with the current increased spread of the virus will lead to potential insolvencies happening during the infection period," Mr Ansell wrote. mayd85 BHPian Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: Pune Posts: 49 Thanked: 102 Times Re: Toyota halts India expansion, blames We Dont Want You taxes I do not really understand the logic of Toyota here, especially in claiming that India has 'Toyota we don't want you' tax. Let's look at their argument w.r.t. their competition - 1. As repeated by multiple members before, Toyota's competitors are thriving despite facing the same tax structure. 2. Competitors, by the virtue of their product quality and choices offered to customers, are making good volumes as well. Heck, even newcomers like Kia are selling really good numbers. 3. Question is why Toyota is not able to enter the market segments where these volumes and numbers are. Despite everything, except VW, all players coming to India have at least tried to bring India specific products and have stayed relevant in the market to varying degree of success. All we have seen from Toyota are half-hearted attempts which offer no real value to the customer except for the T badge. 4. If Toyota had said that we have not been able to figure out Indian market and hence, we are not scaling up, people would have gladly accepted. GM did the same, rolled over belly up and left the market. Now let us look at government policies - 1. GST - was coming for a long time. Implementation was a mess, but we cannot say it affected Toyota so significantly that GST is the only reason for their current state. Moreover, Toyota's bread-winners like Crystas and Fortuners selling at prices upwards of 25L ARE luxury goods. There is nothing wrong in taxing them at higher rates. 2. Emission standards - BS4 to BS6 change was hard. But at least there was no dilly-dallying in it with a firm transition date set. All OEMS had sufficient time to deal with it and all of them were successful launching compliant products before the deadline. Even Indian OEMs like TML & M&M launched BS6 compliant products. Toyota, with their global presence had the tech even before it was made mandatory in India. Coming to costs imposed by BS6 transition, Toyota not having scale in India is bound to increase their input costs. Is it really government's fault? 3. EV policy - Here lies Toyota's real pain. Having invested heavily in hybrids since the 90s, India's sudden decision to skip the step and go for EVs was a big shock for Toyota. Unfortunately their lobbying along with Suzuki did not work and hybrids seem to be heading nowhere in India at least. The electrification targets of the government may be over-ambitious but it is a step in the right direction, not only for reducing the pollution, but also to reduce our crude oil import bill and consequent forex outflow. This decision has been taken with long term strategic vision. Only problem is that government is still not making it clear how it will be implemented and has not laid out any plan for infra development. Let's hope it will happen sooner than later. Considering all this, I feel Toyota is being nothing but a crybaby here. And coming to investment of 2000+ Cr planned this year, for a big company like Toyota, this looks to me like capital equipment replacement expenditure and nothing related to new development. NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Since settling a $4.5 million Philadelphia wrongful death lawsuit, the Trapani Law Firm has built its reputation as a top Pennsylvania wrongful death law firm. This comes on the heels of a $2 million wrongful death settlement in Allentown PA. The Allentown wrongful death accident took place when a propane gas explosion engulfed a mobile home in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia wrongful death case arose from a wrongful death motorcycle accident in Philadelphia, PA. The Trapani Law Firm made sure that both families achieved the financial compensation they deserved after losing a loved one in a Pennsylvania wrongful death accident. Philadelphia wrongful death attorney Matthew Trapani said the following: "I am honored to represent the victim's entire family. As a result of this Pennsylvania wrongful death lawsuit, the family will have the financial compensation to rebuild their life. I am very satisfied with the lawsuit settlement stemming from this wrongful death case and feel that fairness was obtained for the victim and their family. This multi-million dollar wrongful death settlement in Pennsylvania will help the family get back on their feet after such a devastating loss." All further details regarding this Allentown wrongful death lawsuit settlement are confidential. The Trapani Law Firm aggressively represents Pennsylvania wrongful death victims and families across Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, PA. Attorney Trapani has recently been involved with child wrongful death lawsuits caused by infant inclined sleepers made by Fisher Price, Kids II, and Dorel Juvenile Group USA. If your baby has lost their life while using an infant-inclined sleeper, do not hesitate to call the Trapani Law Firm to speak with a Pennsylvania wrongful death lawyer. Furthermore, Attorney Trapani and his team have earned a perfect five out of five stars based on many google reviews. Story continues Daniel C., a client from Allentown PA said, "I've had to call the Trapani Law Firm for legal advice on several occasions. I'm always very happy with their lawyers. Attorney Trapani paid very close attention to detail and went out of his way to make sure we got the best result possible. My parents live in Allentown, and we plan on using the Trapani Law Firm for any future legal issues that may arise. Call the Trapani Law Firm if you're looking for a personal injury attorney in the Lehigh Valley." The Pennsylvania wrongful death lawyers at the Trapani Law Firm represent families who have lost a family member due to the negligence of another or the reckless actions of a company, like Fisher Price or Amazon. Attorney Trapani handles infant wrongful death cases across the state of Pennsylvania. The wrongful death law firm handles fatal truck accident lawsuits, wrongful death medical malpractice, explosion, wrongful death motorcycle accidents, drowning and electrocution death cases and construction accident wrongful death lawsuits across Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley, PA. Unfortunately, there are over 125,000 wrongful death lawsuits filed across the US each year. The Pennsylvania wrongful death lawyers at the Trapani Law Firm understand the heartache and stress that follows after the loss of a loved one in a Pennsylvania wrongful death accident. If you have lost a loved one in a Pennsylvania wrongful death accident, do not hesitate to call a Philadelphia wrongful death attorney at the Trapani Law Firm. To contact this Pennsylvania wrongful death law firm, visit their official website or call them anytime at (610) 351-2330. Company: Trapani Law Firm Email: m.trapani@ltlaw.com Phone: (610) 351-2330 Website: LTLaw.com SOURCE: Trapani Law Firm View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606514/The-Trapani-Law-Firm-Handles-Pennsylvania-Wrongful-Death-Lawsuits President Donald Trump on Thursday charged the results of November's election may 'never be accurately determined' as part of his continued crusade to cast doubt on the outcome as polls show rival Joe Biden in the lead. Trump, per usual, blamed mail-in ballots. The president has long argued mail-in voting will lead to a 'rigged' election even as studies show there is very little voter fraud in the United States. 'Because of the new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots which will be sent to voters, or wherever, this year, the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want. Another election disaster yesterday. Stop Ballot Madness!,' Trump wrote on Twitter. He urged governors - many of whom have expanded mail-in voting options in their states - to go back to traditional Election Day voting 'The big Unsolicited Ballot States should give it up NOW, before it is too late, and ask people to go to the Polling Booths and, like always before, VOTE. Otherwise, MAYHEM!!! Solicited Ballots (absentee) are OK,' he added. President Donald Trump charged the results of November's election may 'never be accurately determined' President Trump been on a crusade to discredit the election as Democratic rival Joe Biden leads him in the polls His latest rant against mail-in ballots comes as Biden continues to lead in their November contest. Biden is up by almost six points in the RealClearPolitics polling average on the race. Around 80 million Americans are expected to vote by mail this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Given the high level of voting, results may not be known in the immediate aftermath of November 3, which could help the president in his bid to cast doubt on the electoral process. Democrats have been worried President Trump won't accept the election results if Biden is the winner of their November contest. On Wednesday, President Trump railed about mail-in voting, which he cast as vulnerable to foreign interference and raised the prospect that a contested presidential election could be thrown to the House. He also vowed to squelch any violent protests on Election Day, warning they will be 'put down very, very quickly. The president exploded about mail-in voting at a White House press briefing after DailyMail.com asked him about his earlier vow to 'put down' any potential violent election protests, which he said would amount to an 'insurrection.' Trump said at a White House briefing that 'at a certain point it goes to Congress' raising the prospect of a contested election He then raised the prospect of an election so disputed that it ends up being decided not by the direct vote or the Electoral College, but by the House of Representatives. 'It's not just the counting of the ballots, which, by the way will take forever,' Trump fumed. 'It'll take forever. You think November 3rd? You might not have I guess, at a certain point it goes to Congress. At a certain point it goes to Congress you know that,' he said. The Constitution provides for the House to decide disputed elections, where each state delegation gets a single vote a situation that could favor the Republicans, depending on the composition of the new Congress. Although Democrats currently control the House and are likely to keep it, Republicans currently control a majority of state delegations. Trump unloaded on mail-in ballots, which he describes as fraudulent, even as he defended his own absentee ballot in Florida. Several states use mail-in ballots for their elections. People outside a Dolce & Gabbana store in Soho on Monday, June 1, 2020 in Manhattan, N.Y. Trump vowed to put down any violent demonstrations on Election Day Trump was asaked about Attorney General Bill Barr urging prosecutors to go after violent prosecutors with sedition charges, as well as his own comments about putting down violent protests, which he previously termed an 'insurrection' The president raised the prospect of a contested being thrown to the House The president once again railed against mail-in voting. Here a workere prepares absentee ballots for mailing at the Wake County Board of Elections in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020 'It's very dangerous for our country. And you know who knows that better than anybody? The Democrats,' Trump said. Asked about his prior comments, made on Judge Jeanine Pirro's show on Fox, as well as attorney general Bill Barr urging prosecutors to go after violent prosecutors with sedition charges, Trump responded: 'If there's any kind of demonstration of violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this product, this vote.' 'There's going to be nothing,' he added. 'If we have violent demonstrations yes we will put it down very, very quickly if there is, absolutely. Then he continued: 'The biggest problem we have right now are the ballots. Millions of ballots going out. That's the biggest problem.' Trump then dismissed intelligence warnings about Russian election interference, as well as preferences by China and Iran. 'When you talk about other countries, whether it's China, Russia, or many others that get mentioned, they're in a much better position with these paper ballots to do something than they would ever be under the old system,' Trump said. Trump said he considered Democratic governors pushing mail voting amid the pandemic a greater threat than Russia. 'Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. To me that's a much bigger threat than foreign countries,' Trump said. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Barr had warned prosecutors that violent protests could escalate as the elections approach, and pushed them to use the rarely used sedition laws, which would require the feds to prove a conspiracy against the government. The president's comments ran through a handful of issues that threaten to form a toxic combination on Election Day: new and competing forms of voting, the potential for foreign interference, accusations of partisanship in election oversight, and angry demonstrations after a summer of protest. He declined to answer repeated follow-ups by DailyMail.com about whether he might declare victory before mail-in ballots are counted. 'This is a disgrace. This is being done on purpose. They know it's no good. they know it's going to be fraudulent. It's going to be fraud all over the place. Who's getting the ballots? Who's sending the ballots?' Trump asked. 'They have people saying you don't need a verified signature. This is a serious threat to our democracy, and the Democrats know that,' Trump said. Trump defended his own use of the mail to vote with the frequent flier saying he couldn't make it to battleground Florida, where he switched his residence from New York. 'If you solicit the ballot, you go through a process. You ask for a ballot because you can't be there for a large number of reasons I'm doing it myself,' Trump said. 'I won't be able to be in Florida. You solicit and they send it back. You do it and you send it back. that's the process that you go through.' But he would only give his full support to in-person voting, and said the coronavirus would be less of a threat by Election Day. 'The thing that really works is you go to the ballot box. it's going to be very safe,' he said. 'I think by that time covid will be even lower. it's going to be very low. It's going to be a very safe process,' Trump said. He complained about Nevada's Democratic governor Steve Sisolak holding oversight over elections in his state, and brought up a recent grievance after having two planned outdoor rallies shut down. He called Sisolak someone 'who is a political person, very political, far beyond being governor, where they try to stop you from making a speech unsuccessfully, but we had to move around a lot, had to move quickly. So this same guy that tried to stop you from making free speech outside, they forced us inside because of what they did. But outside. This is the guy that's controlling ballots,' Trump said. He complained about 'missing ballots, ballots that never showed up, ballots with bad signatures, ballots with no signatures ...' He claimed without evidence that Democratic governors would open states once the elections are over and claimed they wanted bad coronavirus numbers. 'It'll open on November 4th. it'll open up right after the election. but they want people to -- they want our numbers to be as bad as possible,' Trump said. Trump's politically volatile comments came at a briefing where he started out showing a chart with morbidity from the coronavirus. 'The blue states have tremendous death rates,' Trump said of traditionally Democratic-voting states. 'If you take the blue states out, we're at a level I don't think anybody in the world would be at,' he said. Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday (September 17) slammed some Rajya Sabha MPs for raising questions over Maharashtra governments handling of the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. Speaking in Rajya Sabha during Parliaments monsoon session, Raut asserted on the high number of coronavirus recoveries in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena MP noted that even the World Health Organisation (WHO) lauded the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for keeping coronavirus outbreak under control in Dharavi, which is Asia's largest slum. My mother and brother are infected with Covid-19. Many people in Maharashtra are recovering also. Today, the situation in Dharavi is under control. WHO has appreciated efforts of BMC. I want to state these facts as some members here were criticising Maharashtra government yesterday, Raut said in the Upper House. I want to ask the members how did so many people recover? Kya log bhabhi ji ke papad kha karke theek ho gaye? This isnt a political fight but a fight to save the lives of people, he added. Live TV The 'bhabhi ji ke papad' comment was in reference to Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal s endorsement of Bhabhiji Papad, which, according to minister, can help in creating antibodies to fight against the coronavirus. Interestingly, the Meghwal himself tested positive for coronavirus few days ago. Meanwhile, a record single-day increase of 97,894 infections pushed India's coronavirus COVID-19 tally to over 51 lakh, while the number of people who have recuperated from the disease crossed 40 lakh on Thursday, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The total coronavirus cases mounted to 51,18,253, while the death toll climbed to 83,198 with the virus claiming 1,132 lives in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed. The total recoveries surged to 40,25,079 while the activecases of COVID-19 crossed 10 lakh for the first time. Long live Niagaras Grape King. Well, at least for another year. John Fedorkow, a grape farmer and owner of Fruithaven Farms in Niagara-on-the-Lake, was named Grape King in 2019. The title is awarded annually by Grape Growers of Ontario at the associations luncheon, and signals the start of the annual harvest and is the harbinger of related events including the Niagara Wine Festival. However, in a Thursday news release, the Grape Growers said the COVID-19 pandemic has required us to rethink all of our related events this fall, including the cancellation of the Grape Growers 2020 Luncheon, and Grape King selection. Fedorkow, who has been acting as an industry ambassador in his role as Grape King, accepted the Grape Growers board of directions invitation to stay the position for an extra year, the release said. For years, the Trump administrations peacemaking efforts in the Middle East have been the object of relentless derision in elite foreign-policy circles, some of it justified. Yet with Bahrain joining the United Arab Emirates as the second Arab state in 30 days to normalize ties with Israel, the administration has done more for regional peace than most of its predecessors, including an Obama administration that tried hard and failed badly. There are lessons in this, at least for anyone prepared to consider just how wrong a half-centurys worth of conventional wisdom has been. At the heart of that conventional wisdom is the view, succinctly put by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in February, that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains key to sustainable peace in the Middle East. Untie that Gordian knot, so the thinking goes, and the regions many problems become easier to solve, whether its other regional conflicts or the anti-Americanism that feeds international terrorism. That thinking was always dubious though it had the convenience of giving Arab regimes a good way of deflecting blame for their own bad governance. But since the (misnamed) Arab Spring began nearly a decade ago, the view has become absurd. The rise and fall of ISIS, civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya, Turkeys aggression against Kurds, proxy battles and hunger in Yemen, political turmoil and repression in Egypt and Iran, the bankruptcy of the Lebanese state, the plight of Middle Eastern refugees if any of these catastrophes have something in common, its that they have next to nothing to do with the Jewish state or its policies. One may still hope for a Palestinian state, but it wont save the region from itself. What would? The best option is an alliance of moderates and modernizers anyone in power (or seeking power) who wants to move his country in the direction of greater religious and social tolerance, broader (that is, beyond energy) economic development, less preoccupation with ancient disputes, more interest in future opportunities. Such an alliance is the only hope for a region being sucked into the maw of religious fanaticism, economic stagnation, environmental degradation and perpetual misrule. Now this alliance may finally be coming into being. Unlike Israels peace with Egypt and Jordan both based on strategic necessity and geographic proximity the peace with the Emirates and Bahrain has no obvious rationale, even if a shared fear of Iran played a role. The larger factor is shared aspiration. Israel is the most advanced country in the region because for seven decades it invested in human, not mineral, potential, and because it didnt let its wounds get the better of its judgment. The choice for the Arab world is stark. It can follow a similar path as Israel; be swallowed by Iran, China, Russia, Turkey or some other outsider; or otherwise continue as before until, Libya-like, it implodes. As consequential as the peace deals themselves is the Arab Leagues refusal to condemn them, eliciting a furious Palestinian reaction. Thats not surprising: It means the Palestinian grip over the leagues diplomatic agenda may finally be loosening. Perhaps it also means that the grievance-driven politics that have dominated the Palestinian issue for decades are finally over, too. If so, its bad news for those Palestinian leaders and activists who think that, with unflagging obstinacy, they can somehow restore the status quo ante 1948, when Israel didnt exist. Whats bad news for some Palestinian leaders may be good news for ordinary Palestinians. Peace between Israelis and Arabs will not come from the inside out. Yet it isnt crazy to think that peace might come from the outside in: from an Arab world that encircles Israel with recognition and partnership rather than enmity, and which thereby shores up Israels security while moderating Palestinian behavior. A final point about these deals: This wasnt supposed to happen. Not under the leadership of Israels supposedly bellicose Benjamin Netanyahu; certainly not through the diplomatic offices of the usually crazy/amateurish/perverse Trump administration. Luck and timing played a part, as they always do. But it behooves those of us who are so frequently hostile to Netanyahu and President Donald Trump to maintain the capacity to be pleasantly surprised that is, to be honest. Whats happened between Israel and two former enemies is an honest triumph in a region, and a year, thats known precious few. United States President Donald Trump has identified India along with 20 other nations as major drug transit or illicit drug-producing countries and asserted that his administration is taking the fight to criminal organisations engaged in narcotics substances and their enablers on an unprecedented scale. In his presidential determination, Trump also designated Bolivia and the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela as having failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counter-narcotics agreements. "A country's presence on the foregoing list is not necessarily a reflection of its government's counter-narcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the United States," Trump said. He said countries such as Afghanistan, India, The Bahamas, Belize, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic among others are a major drug transit or illicit drug producing nations. Trump alleged that the most complicit kingpin in this Hemisphere is the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro. "In Colombia, President Ivan Duque and his government remain strong partners of the United States, and Colombian police and military forces have shown great bravery and commitment by targeting high-level drug traffickers, interdicting drug shipments, and manually eradicating coca," he said. Nevertheless, coca cultivation and cocaine production remain at unacceptably high levels, Trump added. Trump expressed concern that coca cultivation and cocaine production remain near historical highs in Peru, another longstanding US ally. "Peru is a valued law enforcement partner of the US and has demonstrated continuous commitment to fighting all aspects of the drug trade," he said. He said Mexico must also clearly demonstrate its commitment to dismantling the cartels and their criminal enterprises and do more to protect the lives of Mexican and American citizens threatened by these groups. "The Mexican government should acknowledge the alarming trend of fentanyl production inside its territory," he said. The police have booked 19 cases in connection with cultivation and sale of ganja in the last nine months in Hassan district and have seized around 30 kg of ganja, said Superintendent of Police R Srinivas Gowda. Addressing media persons in the city on Wednesday, the SP said, The police, along with Excise and Forest department officials, are conducting the operations. Most of the ganja in Hassan district is grown amid ginger and other crops in Arsikere, Belur and other taluks. The people from neighbouring Kerala and Tamil Nadu encourage locals to grow ganja. Besides, ganja grown in Hassan is supplied to other states, he said. The police have registered 11 cases in the last 20 days and have recovered 18 kg of ganja. Cases have been filed at Alur, Arsikere, Hassan, Channarayapatna and Arkalgud taluks, the SP informed. There is a network supplying ganja to school and college students and also to those who are addicted. They have a connection with the people from Mysuru, Bengaluru and locals. The parents should keep a vigil on their children pursuing degree and professional courses like engineering. In case they are found to consume or are addicted to such habits, they should be admitted to rehabilitation centres for treatment, he said. As ganja cases are on the rise, a meeting of owners of resorts and homestays in Sakleshpur and surrounding region was held. They have been directed to ban the sales and use of narcotic substances. They have been warned against rave parties, Srinivas Gowda said. As homestay and resorts attract large number of tourists from other states, the Police department is strengthened and additional personnel are deployed at check points. All vehicles will be thoroughly checked before entry, he explained. In case, the public come across any sales of narcotic substances, they can contact him on his mobile phone 94808 04701. The identity of the informer will be confidential, the SP said. Chennai: Tamil Nadu government will soon take steps for holding banned Jallikattu event with the backing of the Centre, Chief Minister O Panneerselvam said on after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi who expressed government's inability to promulgate an ordinance on the issue. "We will soon take steps with the backing of the Centre for the holding of the sport. You will soon see (the steps). All is well that ends well. Wait, good will happen," he told reporters after the meeting with Modi during which he urged the Central government to issue an ordinance to enable the sport to be conducted. As protests demanding the lifting of the ban on bull taming sport Jallikattu spread across Tamil Nadu, the Chief Minister rushed to meet the Prime Minister with a request for ordinance. He was accompanied in the meeting by Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan. Modi told the Chief Minister that he fully understood and respected the sentiments of Tamil Nadu people on the Jallikattu issue. "I am aware of the feelings of the people of Tamil Nadu on the issue," Modi was quoted by the Chief Minister as having told him. After the Chief Minister pressed for immediate steps for promulgation of an ordinance, the Prime Minister told him that the Supreme Court was yet to give its verdict on the notification of the government on the issue but the Centre would support any steps taken by the state government on this. Panneerselvam also recalled that AIADMK chief Sasikala has written a letter to the Prime Minister seeking Centre's ordinance to hold the sport. The Chief Minister said he told the Prime Minister that Jallikattu is a traditional right of Tamil Nadu and a sport symbolising bravery and that it should be allowed. Earlier, the PMO indicated the government's inability to promulgate an ordinance on allowing Jallikattu noting that the matter is sub-judice. "While appreciating the cultural significance of Jallikattu, the Prime Minister observed that the matter is at present sub-judice," the PMO said after the meeting. At the same time, it said, "The Centre would be supportive of the steps taken by the state government." For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. South Africa: EXCOs of warring taxi associations dissolved The ongoing standoff plaguing two Gauteng taxi associations has forced Public Transport and Road Infrastructure MEC Jacob Mamabolo to dissolve its executives committees. In a statement on Thursday, the department announced the dissolution of both the Witwatersrand African Taxi Owners Association (WATA) and Nancefield Dube West Taxi Association (NANDUWE) following deadly clashes that have resulted in the murder of at least two people. This comes after two NANDUWE squad members were shot dead near Nancefield Hostel in Soweto on Tuesday. The associations have been engaged in a scuffle over routes in the south of Johannesburg, said the department. In the statement, Mamabolo expressed dismayed at the latest incident. We cannot allow the taxi industry to turn our province into the capital of murder and violent gangs, said the MEC. Mamabolo, who is empowered by law to place under administration warring taxi associations, in the statement also offered his condolences to families and loved ones of the deceased. The MEC has also called on law enforcement agencies to spare no effort in capturing those behind the killings. The North Gauteng High Court recently ratified an agreement between Gautengs major taxi structures - the Gauteng National Taxi Alliance (GNTA) and the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO-Gauteng), giving the MEC powers to dissolve taxi associations involved in acts of violence. We will not be deterred in our efforts to modernise this industry, so that it takes its rightful place as part of a safe, efficient and integrated public transport system, said Mamabolo. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-09-17. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:36:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Wednesday threatened to impose new sanctions to prevent foreign arms trade with Iran after the expiration of the UN arms embargo against Tehran. "We will return to the United Nations to reimpose sanctions so that the arms embargo will become permanent next week," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a press briefing with visiting British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. The United States will "do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced," Pompeo added. All UN sanctions against Iran will be restored on Saturday evening, Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative for Iran and Venezuela, said later in the day. "The arms embargo will now be reimposed indefinitely and other restrictions will return, including the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development, and sanctions on the transfer of nuclear and missile-related technologies to Iran," Abrams told reporters in a phone briefing. Abrams also noted that details of the sanctions enforcement measures will be announced on Monday, which he called "will have a very significant impact." The Trump administration has sought to invoke the "snapback" mechanism to restore all pre-2015 UN sanctions against Iran after its failed and isolated attempt in the UN Security Council to extend the arms embargo against Tehran. However, the overwhelming majority of Security Council members asserted that the United States has no right to invoke the "snapback" mechanism as the country is no longer a participant after its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. Indonesia's UN ambassador Dian Triansyah Djani, whose country holds the Security Council presidency for the month of August, said last month that he "is not in the position" to take further action as there is no consensus among council members over the issue. Under Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the arms embargo against Iran expires on Oct. 18, 2020. Tehran said it will not accept a renewal of the embargo. Enditem Paul Merson has lambasted Chelsea's decision to allow experienced winger Willian to leave and join rivals Arsenal on a free transfer this summer. The Brazil international's deal expired after an unsavoury contract stand-off brought an end to his seven-year Stamford Bridge spell, and his debut for Arsenal was marked by a hat-trick of assists against Fulham last weekend. Merson says Chelsea have taken an unnecessary risk by not stopping Willian from walking away - and also insists Frank Lampard is now under pressure to deliver after a remarkable spending spree. Paul Merson has slammed Chelsea's decision to allow Willian to join Arsenal on a free transfer The ex-Arsenal man also insists the pressure is on for Frank Lampard to deliver success soon Chelsea were keen to keep Willian and thrash out an extension, but the 32-year-old had demanded a three-year deal. With the club only willing to offer him two years, Arsenal were able to steal in. 'I cannot believe Chelsea let Willian go. I know they have gone out and got special players, but there is nothing to say they are going to hit the ground running,' Merson told Sky Sports. 'In Willian, you have got someone there who is ready-made. I like who they have signed, but they cost a lot of money, and their wages are probably the same as Willian.' Willian's contract stand-off allowed Arsenal to steal in and seal the bargain switch this summer Willian won two Premier League trophies, an FA Cup, a Carabao Cup and the Europa League in west London before making the controversial move across the capital. He starred on his top-flight debut for his new club at Craven Cottage, while Timo Werner and Kai Havertz - two of Chelsea's big money signings - also made their bows in the scrappy win over Brighton. Merson says that Chelsea's patience with club legend Lampard may rapidly wear thin if he is unable to secure silverware soon. Lampard has been keen to manage expectations after Chelsea's remarkable spending spree He added: 'Frank Lampard has to win now. He has not got four years. That's management, I'm not being horrible. 'Even if Frank wins the league this year, it does not mean he is going to be there in four years. We know that and how it changes. 'Who is to say this is not going to take time for Chelsea? And I don't think they've got time at the moment.' moderna says it will likely have enough data from its coronavirus vaccine trials to know whether or not the shot works by November, the firm's CEO told Reuters. If the company's COVID-19 vaccine proves to be at least 70 percent effective, it plans to seek emergency authorization for its use in high-risk groups, CEO Stephane Bancel said. Moderna's vaccine candidate - mRNA-1273 - is nearing the finish line in its push to enroll 30,000 individuals in a late-stage trial of a novel coronavirus vaccine. But the company may be able to declare victory early if it is able to show that people who got the vaccine fared much better in its trial that people who didn't. In the meantime, Moderna has scaled up its manufacturing and is confident it can make 500 million doses a year, and perhaps as many as one billion. The timeline projected by its CEO on Thursday fits well into President Trump's hopes that a vaccine will be available before Election Day on November 3, and follow an uptick in coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, with 23 percent more fatalities last week than the one Moderna's CEO Stephane Bancel said the company should have enough data from its coronavirus vaccine trials to know whether the shot is more effective at preventing infection than a placebo by November (file) Vaccines must demonstrate they are at least 50 percent more effective than a placebo to be considered for approval. To prove that, government officials have said, at least 150 COVID-19 infections must be recorded among trial participants with at least twice as many occurring among the placebo group. If a vaccine is especially effective, companies could have their answer sooner. An independent safety board will take a first look at Moderna's data as soon as a total of 53 people in the trial become infected with COVID-19. Moderna is projecting the interim analysis will occur in November, but it could come as early as October. 'Our most probable plan is November, the is our base plan. Our best possible outcome is it could be in October,' said Bancel in a SquawkBox interview. 'If the infection rate in the country was to slow down in the next weeks, it could be pushed out, I think the worst case scenario is December. 'We need people getting sick to calculate...how many people get the disease with a vaccine and how many get the disease on placebo to calculate the efficacy.' If most of the people who got sick got the placebo shot, that would indicate the vaccine was protecting those inoculated and could be enough evidence to seek U.S. regulatory approval for Emergency Use Authorization(EUA). Moderna's shares by about four percent after the firm released the details of its late-stage coronavirus vaccine trial and CEO Stephane Bancel (right) said his company expects to know if the shot works by November 'If the interim readout is deemed by the independent safety committee as positive with 70 or 80 or 90 percent efficacy, we will indeed consider approval,' Bancel, said in a telephone interview. 'At such a level of efficacy, if we get there, we can protect a lot of lives in the people at the highest risk, and so, we will consider filing for an EUA for a very limited population,' Bancel said. He said the FDA will determine whether the benefit of the vaccine to a small group of high-risk individuals outweighs the risk of not having a full readout of safety data from all 30,000 study participants. The company has already recruited 25,296 out of its 30,000 planned participants. And 10,000 of those enrolled have already received both doses of the vaccine. The two groups of high-risk individuals who might be covered in such an EUA would be healthcare workers and the elderly, Bancel said. Bancel said the company wants to gather more data on the safety of the vaccine in the study population over a period of several months before seeking full FDA approval. "We care deeply that this vaccine is trusted by the public, clinician and nurses around the country," says @Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel. pic.twitter.com/ohsowfd6yv Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) September 17, 2020 Moderna released its study protocol on Thursday, making public details on how its vaccine will be evaluated. If the vaccine does not reach the efficacy mark after 53 cases, the data safety and monitoring board will take another interim look at the data after 106 cases, and a final look after 151 people in the trial become infected with the virus. Public health officials have said that approving a vaccine for widespread use based on a small number of cases would not offer enough safety information to show how the vaccine would perform. Moderna, which has never brought a vaccine to market, has received nearly $1 billion from the U.S. government under its Operation Warp Speed program. It has also struck a $1.5 billion supply agreement with the US In a presentation to investors on Tuesday, Pfizer Inc said the company has enrolled more than 29,000 people in its 44,000-volunteer trial to test an experimental COVID-19 vaccine the company is developing with German partner BioNTech . Pfizer expects to have enough data to show whether the vaccine works by the end of October. Last month, the CDC sent state instruction to prepare for the arrival of coronavirus vaccines by the end of October. That timeline was reiterated yesterday as the agency and its White House and Department of Defense partners published a plan to start distributing vaccines, at no cost, to all Americans by January. President Trump continued this week to express optimism that a vaccine will be available by or shortly after the November 3 election day. CDC Director Robert Redfield said that the 'game plan' was designed to ensure that state are ready to distribute vaccines as soon as possible whenever they might be approved, but that the general public is unlikely to be vaccinated until spring or summer of 2021. US officials plan to ship the first doses within 24 hours of the FDA issuing emergency use authorization or approving a vaccine. Trump's latest coronavirus adviser, Dr Scott Atlas, said Wednesday the US would have 700 million doses by March. Thursday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that the US will have 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of October and 300 million by January. Vaccines made by multiple companies will be distributed to Americans, according to the new federal government plans. If all goes according to plan, Moderna's shot will almost certainly be one of them, if not the first. Though born and raised in Houston, Rev Ward visited Huntsville many times as a child to go hunting in the piney woods with his dad. The Ward family had deep connections in the area. Revs aunt and uncle Annie Mae and Douglas Collins D.C. Ward lived there and were active members of New Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Rev would eventually become an ordained Baptist minister, thus the name Rev, short for Reverend. Annie Mae was known for her cooking, and especially barbecue, that she prepared for family and parishioners at the church. Rev remembers her cooking barbecue on a 55-gallon metal drum that was cut in half, topped with wire mesh and filled with coals. Annie Maes barbecue became so famous that by the mid-1970s she and D.C. started selling barbecue to support the church. In time, New Zion Missionary Baptist Church BBQ known as Church BBQ became one of the most legendary barbecue joints in Texas. Rev continued to visit while in high school, helping out on weekends and learning recipes from his aunt. She continued to run the restaurant until retiring in 2003 after which new church members took over. After high school, Rev joined the Army, serving in the 1st Infantry Division from 1980 to 1984. He specialized in foodservice, managing commissaries and officers clubs in West Germany. Texas 202 Barbeque 27120 Fulshear Bend Drive, No. 400, Fulshear; 346-707-834 Closed Mondays. See More Collapse In 1985 he returned to Texas and became a corrections officer for the Texas Department of Corrections, based in Beeville. As part of his job, he made frequent trips to Huntsville and continued to visit Church BBQ and learn recipes and techniques from his aunt and uncle. In 1992, his fellow corrections officers lamented the lack of good barbecue in Beeville. Rev decided to open his own place in a small building off Highway 202 with his wife Felicia. They called it Texas 202 Barbeque and ran it until 2005. That year, Rev decided he wanted to go back to school for his masters degree in Human Resource Management. He and Felicia moved to Maryland so he could attend the University of Maryland, where many ex-military members attend college. After graduating, he continued to work in the foodservice department at the university. By 2016, Ward got the barbecue itch again. He and Felicia opened a new Texas 202 Barbeque in the city of Brandywine, Maryland. The restaurant was well-received Washington Post food writer Tim Carman named it one of the top barbecue joints in the Washington, D.C. area in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, Rev and Felicia sold the restaurant in Maryland and moved back to Houston to be near his elderly mother. They started looking for a place to open a new barbecue joint. They found a small space that had previously been a barbecue joint in an H-E-B-anchored shopping center in a bustling area of Fulshear. Fortunately, most of the equipment was still in the space, so Rev and Felicia only needed to do some basic maintenance and upgrades to get the restaurant ready. They opened their latest edition of Texas 202 Barbeque Sept. 8. The Wards have hit the ground running with a full menu that combines both contemporary Central Texas-style barbecue with influences from the East Texas-style his aunt and uncle were known for. Theres the classic Texas Trinity of brisket, ribs and sausage. They embellish that with a classic East Texas menu of fried shrimp, catfish and gumbo. There is a full menu of chicken wings and associated sauces. Though they have only been open a couple of weeks the sign is not even up above the door the quality of the food is excellent. The Wards continue to honor the memory of their ground-breaking relatives Annie Mae and D.C. Ward of Church BBQ in Huntsville. jcreid@jcreidtx.com twitter.com/jcreidtx Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 12:14:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China sincerely hopes that all parties to Afghanistan's peace talks will prioritize the interests of its people as well as the nation, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday. Wang made the remarks when answering questions during an interview with Xinhua about the negotiations starting Saturday between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. He stressed that the fundamental direction of political settlement, the basic principle of the Afghan-led approach, and the framework goal of broad inclusiveness should be adhered to. At the same time, it is hoped that the new Afghan governmental structure will unswervingly combat terrorism, pursue a peaceful and friendly foreign policy, and earnestly push Afghanistan onto a path of peace, stability and development, he added. China will, as always, continue to be a supporter, mediator and facilitator of the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan, Wang said, noting that China calls on the international community and countries in the region to uphold justice, and work together to support Afghanistan's peaceful reconstruction and orderly withdrawal of foreign military forces in a responsible manner, so as to ensure a smooth transition of the situation in Afghanistan. Enditem Comedian and TV host Stephen Colbert is trying to help people get informed about what they need to do to vote this fall, and hes going state by state. On September 15, the YouTube channel for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert shared a video for Colberts Better Know a Ballot series. In the video, Colbert goes over the details that Pennsylvania voters will need to know to get registered, send in a mail-in ballot or vote in person, with the deadlines for the various approaches. Do you want to vote in the 2020 election?" Colbert asked. O"f course you do! Everybody knows that Pennsylvania is the smartest state in the nation." Sure, The Late Show host is releasing similar, humorous voting guides for every state, in which he no doubt refers to each of them as his favorite. But were pretty sure he likes us, the Votin' Keystoners, the best. Remember, Pennsylvania is a swing state, so its more important than ever to cast your vote, Colbert said. "I know you can do this. Pennsylvania has a special place in my heart. Its the part thats not already blocked by a cheesesteak I had back in 2008. Check out the video here: You started this whole America thing, Colbert said, after mentioning that Philadelphia was home to the nations Constitutional Convention in 1787 (attended by none other than Gritty, according to Colbert) . You kind of have to lead by example. Get out there and vote, Pennsylvania! For info on Pennsylvanias voting process, visit BetterKnowABallot.com. CPP staunch member, James Kwabena Bomfeh has slammed former President John Dramani Mahama over his recent comments. The former President, who doubles as Presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has been censuring President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government, claiming the President has woefully failed Ghanaians. Mr. Mahama, delivering a speech at the NDC Town Hall meeting in Kumasi, described the sod-cuttings by the government as the country nears the December elections as ''Sakawa''. If they come to your town to cut sod for a project ask them two questions, let them tell you if the project were captured under the 2020 budget or whether parliament has approved a loan for the project. If theyre unable to answer then it means the sod cutting is a scam, its because of the elections. It is sakawa or 419, the former President said. He has also made several comments which are suggestive that the Akufo-Addo government is corrupt. But James Kwabena Bomfeh a.k.a Kabila has admonished Mr. Mahama to tone down on his utterances. To him, Mr. Mahama's comments are feeding into the notion that politicians are corrupt. According to him, the stereotyping where politicians are always associated with corruption or what the former President terms as ''419'' must stop, stressing there are very decent political figures in the country. "I disagree with that notion. I disagree with that argument. It is not true. There are decent and honest non-corrupted people in NDC. There are decent, honest, non-corrupted people in NPP. There are decent, non-corrupted, honest people in CPP; just as we have got corrupt individuals in all these parties." Kabila exclaimed that Mahama should raise the political bar. " . . where from all this stereotyping and what do we gain from that? Especially so when President Mahama, you have been President before. Things were said of you and the office you didn't like and some of us, at the time, stood with that position that it's not good. Today, you're the first in the history of our country as former President coming to contest again; I think he should raise the bar," he stated on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo'. 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 Bengaluru: Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners on Thursday said that it will expand its focus and launch its operations in the Southeast Asian market. Choosing Singapore as its regional headquarter for the market, this news comes just months after the venture capital firm announced raising over $4 billion across four different global funds to support early and growth stage startups. Lightspeed said that it is deploying capital in the Southeast Asian market, from these global funds. In India, Lightspeed has backed several category-leading unicorns, including edtech major, BYJUs, B2B trade commerce platform, Udaan; hospitality unicorn OYO Rooms, as well as soon-to be unicorn Sharechat. Southeast Asia is one of the worlds fastest-growing economies and startup ecosystems, and this is due in no small part to the regions extraordinary entrepreneurial talent. We believe the startup ecosystem will continue its significant expansion and are excited to partner with entrepreneurs as they build and scale disruptive companies," said Akshay Bhushan, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Globally, more than 70% of the venture firms investments have been in firms at early stages, often being the first institutional capital partner. In Southeast Asia as well, Lightspeed is actively engaging with ventures in sectors like commerce, fintech, edtech and SaaS amongst others. Lightspeed has already invested in the region across Singapore-based super-app Grab, social commerce platform Chilibeli; B2B marketplace app Ula, enterprise artificial intelligence software provider NextBillion.ai as well as fulfilment and shipping gateway company Shipper. Additionally, many of Lightspeed portfolio companies are scaling up business in Southeast Asia and have regional headquarters in Singapore including Snap (earlier Snapchat), OYO Rooms, Yellow Messenger and Darwinbox among others. With a large, tech-savvy and young population, Southeast Asia is leading the charge in technology-driven innovation. We have a strong belief in the opportunities here and the capabilities that founders of this region have demonstrated," said Bejul Somaia, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Globally, Lightspeed manages over $10 billion of committed capital and invests in the U.S. and internationally, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, Southeast Asia and China. Recently, in July, even venture-capital firm Sequoia India announced two new India- and South-East Asia (SEA)-focussed fundsa $525-million venture fund, and a $825-million growth fund. The blue-chip firm had then said that it plans to invest in startups across India and Southeast Asia, where it has made over 200 investments, till date. 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 Specialist device detection provider selects industry-leading IP intelligence technology to further enhance global product offering Digital Element, the global IP geolocation data and services provider, today announced the integration of its GeoMprint location technology with the 51Degrees data pipeline for both existing and new clients. 51Degrees' platform is used by adtech companies, brands, publishers, eCommerce, digital agencies and content management systems. The company's mission is to provide insights into online user preferences and device-specific behaviour, enabling companies to target advertising, tailor web content, help prevent fraud and enrich experiences no matter what device the customer is using or where they are in the world. By integrating Digital Element, 51Degrees will broaden its scope and offering to its customers, enabling businesses to improve localised content and ad targeting. GeoMprint is a reverse geocoding solution from Digital Element which takes latitude and longitude data from mobile device traffic and converts the raw location coordinates into more useful geographical information such as postcode, country, city and region. Prior to reverse geocoding, opted in location-based services could only provide coordinates in the form of numbers and decimals, but with GeoMprint, these coordinates can enable the provision of more contextually and locally relevant advertising and content for on-the-go mobile interactions. "We were delighted to integrate the Digital Element GeoMprint location solution for the launch of our new real-time data pipeline. Digital professionals can add location data to analytics, address capture and targeting systems." said James Rosewell, CEO and Founder of 51Degrees. "Setup takes a matter of minutes using the free trial options. The permissively open source APIs make enhancements and audit super simple." "We are delighted this collaboration will now be readily available to 51Degrees' clientele. This long-term partnership of industry-leading solutions through specialist suppliers will bridge the gap to offer a total package for current and prospective clients," said Charlie Johnson, VP, UK and Ireland, Digital Element. "51Degrees has a reputation for providing high-quality device detection and this combined with GeoMprint's rich geographic and connection data that has unmatched accuracy, and reliability, will not only compliment 51Degrees' solution but also broaden the scope of what they already offer within the marketplace." GeoMprint can be trialled and purchased from 51Degrees today. Learn more Try it now About Digital Element Since 1999, Digital Element has been providing global geolocation data and services that bring anytime, anywhere relevance and context to online initiatives-from desktops to mobile devices. The company's patented technology has been certified and accredited to deliver real-time access to accurate and reliable location intelligence without invading Internet users' privacy. For nearly two decades, many of the world's largest websites, brands, security companies, ad networks, social media platforms and mobile publishers have trusted Digital Element's technology to target advertising, localize content, enhance analytics, and manage content rights as well as detect and prevent fraud. Visit http://www.digitalelement.com for more information on how to bring the power of location to the online world. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @DigitalElement then like us on Facebook. Headquartered in Atlanta and London, Digital Element is a division of Digital Envoy Inc. About 51Degrees 51Degrees was founded in the UK in 2010 and is the only commercial open source device detection solution available. Leaders in AdTech, Publishing, Content Management Platforms, Digital Agencies and over 1.5 million* websites including global brands like eBay, Sitecore, Opentext, Tencent and HSBC use 51Degrees. Visit https://51degrees.com/ for more information. *Numbers accurate at time of publication but may be higher View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005553/en/ Contacts: Press Contact Naomi Whittome naomi.whittome@digitalelementpr.com Tel: +44 (0)203 642 1124 When "Selena: The Series" premieres on Netflix, audiences far beyond the Tejano-blaring region will meet the sparkly bell bottom-wearing icon, and a South Texas native is helping ensure her story, and those of other Latinos, are told authentically. Jaime Davila, born and raised in McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley, launched Campanario, the production company working with the Quintanilla family to bring the Selena series to life. He launched the production company in 2014 with his father Jaime Davila Sr. "I started this company to elevate voices that weren't being represented in Hollywood," he said. He's working on his mission from the inside out, ensuring his six-person, Los Angeles-based team is as diverse as the stories they're producing and are in tune with the communities they're representing on screen. "I think there's a lot Hollywood can learn from our community. We are as American as anyone else. We represent duality that you can be Latinx and American," Davila said. "We've been able to build such a diverse, inclusive team. Hollywood can learn from that diversity and inclusion. The Latinx community is all shades." Davila's young company has produced a range of Latinx stories for different markets, both domestically and internationally, like "Como Sobrevivir Soltero," a dramedy on dating for Amazon Prime Video. His previous projects include "Mexican Dynasties" for Bravo and "Laugh Factory en Espanol." He's also covered family separation in "Colossus," a documentary on immigration. The scope of his work from hardship to comedy reflects the message he's working to convey to Hollywood. "There's a nuance to our identity, we understand that life is complicated, but we also have such amazing experiences in this country," he said. "We have such amazing stories to tell, we're just like you. We are such a resilient culture. You can learn from us that if you work hard, focus and deal with problems as they come, you can deal with it." While his repertoire is impressive, Davila, who identifies as a "diehard" Selena fan, says working on the project is "so special." "Working with the family, especially Suzette, has been a dream," he said. "I grew up knowing the Quintanillas are American icons and should be viewed as such." He called the partnership between his team, the family and Netflix the "perfect combination." "Neflix has been amazing in wanting to make sure they're doing this right," he said. "Young girls, young boys and anyone who feels like an underdog will see the Quintanilla family and be inspired by it. It's obviously very personal for me, I'm very humbled by it. The whole team is working hard to ensure those themes of being a trailblazer really shine through." Davila said partnerships like the one sharing Selena's story worldwide are part of the solution for proper representation in Hollywood and mainstream media. "They (Hollywood) want to be doing more," Davila said. "But they want to get it right." He says his Campanario team is obligated to helping bridge the gap between the camera and the Latin American communities they're a part of. "We want to create content that is inclusive, that resonates with Latinos, but also with a wider audience," he said. "Everyone can relate to being an underdog." He said odes to Selena performed by stars like Beyonce and Kacey Musgraves prove their "mission is right on and our culture can transcend." In the meantime, Davila is excited for Netflix to unveil what the team has been working on to honor Selena, though he was tightlipped on a release date. "I still pinch myself that it happened," he says of the series. "You're going to find out things you never knew about the family. I think fans will love the series, even if you're just a fan of family shows and music and laughing, you're going to love the show." Madalyn Mendoza covers news and puro pop culture for MySA.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @maddyskye India on Thursday asked Pakistan to appoint an Indian lawyer or Queens counsel for death row prisoner Kulbhushan Jadhav so that he receives a fair trial in his death sentence review. Queens Counsel is an advocate or a barrister or advocate who is an appointed Counsel to the UK Crown on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava on Thursday said the Pakistan has not been able to fulfil its obligations to implement ICJ judgement in Kulbhushan Jhadav case. It has not yet addressed the core issues, which include provision of all documents related to the case, providing unconditional and unimpeded consular access to Kulbhusan Jadhav and appointment of an Indian lawyer or a Queens counsel to ensure a free and fair trial, Srivastava said at a video conference with media, as quoted by PTI. Pakistans Parliament recently extended four months an ordinance that allowed Jadhav to file an appeal against his death conviction in a high court as required by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). (Newser) A US judge on Thursday blocked controversial Postal Service changes that have slowed mail nationwide, calling them "a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service" before the November election, the AP reports. Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction sought by 14 states that sued the Trump administration and the US Postal Service. The states challenged the Postal Service's so-called "leave behind" policy, where trucks have been leaving postal facilities on time regardless of whether there is more mail to load. They also sought to force the Postal Service to treat election mail as First Class mail. The judge noted after a hearing that Trump had repeatedly attacked voting by mail by making unfounded claims that it is rife with fraud. story continues below Many more voters are expected to vote by mail this November because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the states have expressed concern that delays might result in voters not receiving ballots or registration forms in time. "The states have demonstrated the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service," said Bastian, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. He also said the changes created "a substantial possibility many voters will be disenfranchised." Following a national uproar, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was suspending some changesincluding the removal of iconic blue mailboxes in many cities and the decommissioning of mail processing machines. (The White House reportedly killed a USPS plan on masks.) Angry local councillors are urgently seeking a meeting with the ESB to express their alarm and sense of shock at the news reports last week that it's being proposed to demolish the power station in Shannonbridge. West Offaly Power Station cost 200 million to build and was opened in 2004. There were proposals to change it from a peat-fired to a biomass-fired station but these have been put to one side. Cllr John Leahy, Chairman of Birr Municipal District, told the September meeting of Birr MD, in Aras an Chontae Tullamore, that everyone was shocked to the core when they read the news in the media that the ESB was planning to completely knock the station. The news came completely out of the blue, he said, we were given no heads up. We used to have a good relationship with the ESB, now it is simply not responding to our correspondence. Cllr John Clendennen reminded the councillors that there had been talk last January of demolishing the station. At the time I proposed at the time that we shouldn't knock the building but should repurpose. There are a number of positive, other uses for it. We had hoped this issue had gone and so it was very disappointing when we read last week that the ESB is seeking a contractor for its knocking. We have heard nothing from the Just Transition Commissioner Kieran Mulvey in response to this. Surely he would say or do something. Demolishing it doesn't make sense. We now need to prioritise this cause and explore all avenues. Time is short and it might not be long before the wrecking ball is unleashed. The councillor pointed out that alternative uses include tourism uses, remote working, cultural and educational uses; all of which could benefit Shannonbridge and the surrounding area. He said there is unfortunately a difficult reality facing the county with the cessation of carbon fuel dependency. The County Council, he feels, should lead the way in providing innovative and sustainable alternatives. Cllr Peter Ormond remarked that all the councillors were very shocked by last week's sudden, unexpected news. He reminded them that the news of the station's closure was first announced last November. Since then we have had no communication at all from the ESB, nothing in the last ten months. The station is state of the art. It's only 16 years old. It cost a vast amount of money to build. And yet they are going to knock it. It doesn't make sense. He pointed out the premises could be used for office spaces and for other industries. Energy production would make sense because Offaly has always been an energy source hub. I am very concerned about this. I am concerned that it seems to be happening so fast. It is a regrettable and retrograde step. Cllr Eamon Dooley said the situation is deeply disappointing, depressing, and shocking. He said the Municipal District had to seek a meeting with the ESB as soon as possible. Cllr John Carroll said the whole thing from the point of view of the powers that be seems disorganised and confused. It would leave you wondering if one hand knows what the other hand is doing. He agreed that a meeting with the ESB is an urgent priority. A Council official said the Planning Department in the County Council has been in contact with the ESB in regard to the decommissioning of the plant but the ESB hasn't replied yet and no meeting has been set up. Cllr Leahy pointed out that there used to be a good relationship between the ESB and the County Council. However it's now obvious that the ESB used to meet with us when they had need of us. Now they have no need of us they don't respond to our emails and they won't meet us. That shows you, I think, the type of people that we are dealing with. As a result, Offaly is being left behind. And all this from an organisation which levies many millions in taxes from the taxpayers every year. They are disrespecting us as public representatives. Cllr Ormond said the Council has until October 9 to act, which is the deadline date for the submission of tenders by potential contractors. If we don't act by then the place could be a greenfield site in a very short period of time. West Offaly Power Station is due to cease production in December 2020. The ESB had submitted an application to An Bord Pleanala in 2018 seeking planning permission to transition West Offaly Power from peat to biomass over a number of years starting in 2020. This planning application was rejected by An Bord Pleanala in July 2019, pushing the company towards its closure plans. The contractor employed by the ESB will be asked to remove all structures, buildings and plant components with associated waste disposal as per the stipulations outlined in the planning and environmental regulations for each site. The contract will include: Fuel supply system, Ash removal system, Powerhouse structures, Chimneys, Site buildings, Underground structures / services, All power plant components remaining after the asset recovery programme. The establishment of a dedicated Energy Hub and a Centre for Climate Change in the Midlands were among the key recommendations made by Kieran Mulvey in May when he published his eagerly awaited Just Transition report. Mr Mulvey said the dismantling of the power stations in Offaly and Longford shouldn't happen until the Energy Hub option is explored. When contacted by the Tribune after the news broke, a spokesperson for the ESB outlined: In November 2019, ESB took the difficult decision to close the two midland stations. This decision followed an extensive review of all options and was based on the key planning, climate and commercial issues associated with generation at the sites. Regrettably, ESB concluded that there is no viable business model to operate the plants beyond 2020. As a commercial business, ESB is continuously reviewing opportunities for all our sites and assets. The two midland stations sites are valuable generation sites and as such, ESB is continuing to assess development opportunities for these sites. It should be noted prior to any development opportunity taking place and to enable future development, ESB must satisfy our planning requirements to remediate the existing sites. In remediating the sites a number of commercial contracts are required, including those for specialist services. Due to the complexity of these services and the anticipated value of the contracts, they will be advertised through the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), an EU-wide process. This process has now commenced and will be done in a manner that ensures that ESB complies with EU procurement guidelines. ESB will continue to seek the best commercial value from the plant assets. Meanwhile, Barry Cowen, TD called on the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment to clarify commitments to the midlands region in terms of supporting the livelihoods of the community in Shannonbridge. Deputy Cowen made the comments as the e-ender for the demolition of the two ESB midlands stations in Shannonbridge and Laneborough were made live. He commented: I worked hard to secure commitmetns that the Just Transition funding targeted areas most high by job losses, including Offaly. Communities rightly believed the two power stations in the midlands would be repurposed in some form. This looks extremely unlikely now and I am call on the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment to clarify the Government position. Included in the Mulvey report was the issue of exploring alternative uses for Shannonbridge and Lanesborough station. The Programme for Government makes strong commitments to the people of the midlands and the move away from peat in the region. Minister Ryan needs to clearly explain why this process has been expedited, what if any consultation his Department has had with stakeholders in the region, and what plans the Department have for the people of the Midlands who have been seeking and want to provide alternatives which will secure jobs and communities in the region, concluded Deputy Cowen. Two Pennsylvania universities will be joining forces on educational programs targeted to boost the regions workforce. Harrisburg University of Science and Technology and Shippensburg University have announced plans for new joint programs between the schools. The goal is to collaborate on targeted workforce needs in south-central Pennsylvania, focusing on health, health equity and connecting people to health and social programs. We at Harrisburg University are particularly focused on career advancement and meeting the needs of the workforce," said HU President, Dr. Eric Darr, in a press release. "And were thrilled to partner with Shippensburg University by doing that exact thing, particularly in our shared part of the world here in Central Pennsylvania and meeting the great needs that our region has. Not only today, in terms of its workforce, but in terms of its future. I look at this as just a place to start, and as we continue the conversation and have wins in the short-term, I know there will be more energy and more opportunity to work together. The agreement between the schools will include study into both rural and urban perspectives on health issues, as well as exploring dual bachelor-master degree programs. Examples include combining Shippensburg Universitys bachelors in biology and chemistry to Harrisburg Universitys masters in biotechnology and pharmaceutical science, Shippensburgs bachelors in mathematics to Harrisburgs masters in analytics, or Shippensburgs psychology and sociology to Harrisburgs masters in human-centered interaction design We are so thrilled to have this partnership finally come to fruition," said Shippensburg University President, Dr. Laurie Carter, in a press release. "Our strategic priorities really emphasize the need for engagement with our educational partners to meet the demands for a skilled workforce in our region. And the changing face of southcentral Pennsylvania requires a renewed commitment to higher education in ways that are to the advantage of students and provides them more choices. And thats what this agreement is about. Shippensburg University values Harrisburg University as a partner and commits to continuing this joint leadership to work together to develop talent our region needs. Russian-occupation forces violated the ceasefire in Donbas twice over the past day, a Ukrainian serviceman was killed due to careless handling of a grenade, the press center of the Joint Force Operation (JFO) headquarters said. "In the area of Novotoshkivske, one Ukrainian defender was killed as a result of careless handling of a grenade," the headquarters said on its Facebook page in the morning. The headquarters said that over the past day, on September 16, in the zones of responsibility of our brigades, two violations of the ceasefire by Russian-occupation forces in Donbas were recorded. In particular, a shot towards the Ukrainian positions using a grenade launcher was recorded near Katerynivka, and unaimed shot from small arms was detected in the area of Vodiane. "These fire provocations of the enemy did not pose a threat to our defenders, so the Ukrainian units did not use weapons in response. There are no combat losses or injuries among the Ukrainian defenders as a result of the shots," the Ukrainian military said. Since the beginning of the current day, on September 17, ceasefire has been observed in all sectors of the front, no fire provocations from Russian-occupation forces have been recorded. "Units of the Joint Forces comply with the terms of the ceasefire and are ready to adequately respond to any enemy actions," the headquarters said. After a decade and a half of peaceful relationship-building with the federal government, Birdtail Sioux First Nation Chief Ken Chalmers is wondering if it was all for naught. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us After a decade and a half of peaceful relationship-building with the federal government, Birdtail Sioux First Nation Chief Ken Chalmers is wondering if it was all for naught. Chalmers is now considering actions he refused to take previously, such as a legal injunction to block a rail line that crosses through Birdtail. In April 2019, Birdtail and the federal government signed a framework agreement, which states the government will "explore and seek a mandate to negotiate a BSFN Core Treaty Relationship." The goal is self-determination for the community of approximately 1,300 people, intended to address governance alongside infrastructure and socio-economic gaps that have developed over the past 150 years theyve lived without a treaty. So far, Birdtail and the federal government have met five of a planned 10 times in hopes of obtaining the mandate, have it go through the Orders in Council process a legal instrument recommended by a minister after which the two parties would negotiate a settlement by way of the core treaty. "We were five meetings away from that (a mandate) when COVID struck," said Chalmers. Federal negotiators could not travel to Manitoba, so talks stopped. "Weve been messing around for 14 years, now," Chalmers said. "We want to know. We understand about COVID but, come on, give us an answer." The story goes back much further than 14 years. The federal government has considered the Dakota people American refugees since 1867. In the framework agreement, the government acknowledges that Birdtail members, as descendants of the Dakota, "traditionally used and were present on the lands that would become Canada after Confederation." In June 2009, as chair of the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council and Chief of Birdtail, Chalmers testified before the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. "We are considered refugees in Canada. We have really no home and Canadas position is that we are refugees ... so we have no treaty. We are non-treaty Birdtail Sioux. We recently engaged with the Government of Canada in the last couple of years through Bill McKnight. Former Indian and Northern Affairs Minister (Jim) Prentice referred him to us in order to look at our grievances," he told the committee at that time. Even then, he faced pressure from Birdtail members to blockade pipelines and rail lines, as he told the committee. But, under his leadership, Birdtail had promised not to take such actions. The proviso: moving forward with negotiations. "Well, were not moving forward," Chalmers said. "So its getting serious, now." The pressure from band members is mounting. Theyve watched the actions, including rail blockades, taken by First Nations in British Columbia and Quebec, which often yielded positive results. Theyre asking Chalmers why he keeps his promise and, as far as hes concerned, the federal government is forcing his hand. "Weve watched these bands across Canada that had legitimate grievances get those things settled and pushed forward. And weve sat here and kept our promise," Chalmers said. Meanwhile, the federal government is seemingly using the pandemic to avoid further meetings. People are flying now, Chalmers said, and there are obviously other ways to have discussions. Chalmers wrote the government a letter last month and is still waiting for a genuine response. "They did respond with, Well get back to you. We understand your position. That was it," he said. Chalmers added that, at this point, suspending rail service through Birdtail looks like a real option, possibly by legal injunction. According to the band, the federal government, which owned CN at the time, unlawfully took a portion of the reserve to build a rail line in the early 1900s. "If we dont get an answer, were going to have to do something about it. These are my people and my council telling me what to do. Weve kept our promise for 14 years. They (the government) have broken it," he said. "Is this a useless effort? Are you just stringing us along?" Chalmers plans on one more letter. He said Birdtail may be the last thing on the governments mind now, but that can change quickly if the band doesnt get an answer. "Its very easy to pick up the phone and say, You have your claim for Birdtail Sioux. Lets move forward. We can get our lawyers and negotiators, and we can do this," he said. "Its a settlement 150 years in the making." Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada did not reply to questions by deadline. mletourneau@brandonsun.com Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism. Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is once again working closely with Vice President Pence on debate preparations and serving as Pences foil in practice sessions, effectively playing the role of Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), according to two people familiar with the sessions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Oil pumping jacks, also known as "nodding donkeys", are reflected in a puddle as they operate in an oilfield near Almetyevsk, Russia, on Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020. LONDON A group of some of the world's most powerful oil-producing nations on Thursday met to review production policy, amid a faltering recovery from the pandemic-driven rout and a bleak outlook for energy demand. During the meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC allies, sometimes referred to as OPEC+, ongoing flexibility was emphasized as oil prices continue to trade at depressed levels. "The JMMC [Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee] observed that the recovery has not been even across the world and an increase in COVID-19 cases has appeared in some countries," a statement from OPEC read. "In the current environment, the JMMC emphasised the importance of being pro-active and pre-emptive and recommended that participating countries should be willing to take further necessary measures when needed." OPEC+ did not announce additional output cuts at Thursday's meeting, which was in-line with analyst expectations. The energy alliance agreed in July to cut output by 7.7 million barrels per day from August through to December, in an effort to prop up oil prices by limiting supply. Iraq and others also pledged to pump below their quotas in September to offset overproduction earlier in the year. "The JMMC reiterated the critical importance of adhering to full conformity and compensating overproduced volumes as soon as possible," OPEC officials said. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia, the two biggest producers in the alliance, have both pushed for full conformity in recent months. Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has previously used OPEC meetings to publicly press recalcitrant members to stick to the pledged output cuts. The central agencies are keeping an eye on around 2,500 social media accounts that are spreading Chinese propaganda in India, according to sources in the security agencies. The sources added that most of these accounts are operating through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These accounts have their IP addresses traced in the countries of Pakistan, Hong Kong, UK, Russia and China. This comes a day after reports of snooping on some Indian leaders by China-based companies, according to news agency PTI. Live TV The government on September 16 took up the issue with the Chinese envoy, according to a letter by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Congress leader KC Venugopal reported PTI. The letter stated that the matter has also been taken up with the Chinese Foreign Ministry. "The matter was taken up by the Ministry of External Affairs with the Chinese Ambassador today. Our Embassy in Beijing also raised it with the Foreign Ministry of China. The Chinese side conveyed that Shenzen Zhenhua is a private company and had stated its position publicly," the minister told Venugopal. "In their part, the Chinese Foreign ministry maintained that there was no connection between the company concerned and the Chinese government," he also said. Jaishankar's remarks came after Venugopal, during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, raised the issue that some Indian leaders were being spied on by Chinese companies and asked the government what it was doing in this regard. Jaishankar in his letter said that in their statement, a representative of Shenzen Zhenhua has stated that the data collected was from open sources and is no different from its peer organisations in western countries. The minister said they have denied accessing private information from confidential sources. "The Government of India takes very seriously the protection of the privacy and personal data of Indian citizens. It is deeply concerned at any report that suggests that foreign sources are accessing or seeking to access the personal data of our citizens without their consent," the External Affairs Minister told the Congress leader. Jaishankar said the government has constituted an expert committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study these reports and evaluate their implications. The panel will assess any violations of law and submit its recommendations within 30 days, he said. On September 16, in an attempt to distract Indian troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), China put up loudspeakers at Finger 4 area of Pangong Lake in eastern Ladakh and belted out Punjabi songs. The China forces have resorted to this old propaganda to mislead the troops. This comes in the wake of Indian troops setting up an around the clock observation at the dominating height near Finger 4, overlooking the positions of the Peoples Liberation Army, according to news agency ANI. According to ANI sources, the post at which the Chinese Army has put up loudspeakers is under 24x7 constant watch by Indian soldiers. On September 15, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had asserted that China is in unauthorized occupation of about 38,000 square km of land in Ladakh, adding that its action shows its disregard towards our various bilateral agreements. Speaking in Lok Sabha, Singh had stated that under a so-called Boundary-Agreement in 1963, Pakistan illegally handed over 5,180 square km of Indian land of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to China. "As this House is aware, China is in unauthorized occupation of about 38,000 square km of land in Ladakh. Also, under a so-called Boundary-Agreement in 1963, Pakistan illegally handed over 5180 square km of Indian land of PoK to China. China's action shows its disregard towards our various bilateral agreements. The deployment of large amounts of troops by China is a violation of the 1993 and 1996 agreement," the Defence Minister had said. Singh had also stated that respect and strict adherence to the LAC is the basis for peace and harmony in the border areas, and is explicitly accepted in the 1993 and 1996 agreements. "While our armed forces fully follow it, it has not happened from the Chinese side," the Defence Minister had said. "As of now, the Chinese side has mobilized a large number of troops and ammunition in the LAC and interior areas. East Ladakh and Gogra, Kongka La and Pangong Lake have several friction areas on North and South Banks," he had said. 17.09.2020 LISTEN The Managing Director of Atinka Media Village, a subsidiary of the Tobinco Group, Albert Dwumfour, has been promoted to Corporate Affairs Manager within the group. Mr. Dwumfour will be handling matters relating to corporate communications for the group and will directly report to the Executive Chairman, Nana Amo Tobbin I. The current National Organising Secretary of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), who is also gunning for the GJA presidency, is expected to bring to bear on his new role his vast experience in corporate communications and PR and media consultancy in a group which comprises, Tobinco Pharmaceuticals, Entrance Pharmaceuticals and Research Center, Entrance University Hospitals, Entrance University of Health Sciences, Toblues Properties, Abii National Savings and Loans, Priority Insurance, Samuel Amo Tobbin Foundation, Dors Event and Atinka Media Village. Mr Dwumfour has risen through the ranks within the group: first as Chief Operation Officer in Charge of Media for the Tobinco Group, then General Manager of Atinka while serving as Board Secretary to the JAM Media Group, now Atinka Media Village (AMV). He was subsequently appointed Managing Director of Atinka Media Village, which comprises Atinka TV, Atinka FM, Agyenkwa FM in Kumasi, Ahoto FM in Takoradi and Atinkaonline.com. He has served in his current capacity for two years and has been promoted to the Tobinco Group at Spintex as part of a restructuring process within the company. Mr Dwumfour, who has consulted for several reputable organisations in the country as PR consultant, believes his desire for success and professionalism will enable him to perform well in his new role and also help push the vision of the Group Chairman, Nana Amo Tobbin I. Confirming the appointment, the Chairman of Tobinco Group, Nana Amo Tobbin I, said, Albert is being moved from a subsidiary of the Tobinco Group to the group level because of his vast knowledge and experience in the media to help push the vision of the group. Indeed, we wouldnt have settled on a better person in such a strategic appointment than him at this time as far as media relations of the group are concerned, Nana Tobin added. - One fan launched a GoFundMe in an ambitious bid to raise funds for his club to buy Jadon Sancho - Sancho, who currently plays for Borussia Dortmund, is valued at 108 million - The initiative has so far raised 75 (KSh 10,000) - United have only signed Donny Van de Beek in the summer transfer window PAY ATTENTION: Click 'See First' under 'Follow' Tab to see Tuko.co.ke news on your FB Feed One determined Manchester United fan has decided to go out of his way to attempt to help the club acquire their long-term target Jadon Sancho. The ambitious fan went to the lengths of launching a go fund me to try help his club bring the talented England forward to Old Trafford before the transfer window shuts on October 5. READ ALSO: 53-year-old Japanese striker becomes 1st player to play professionally across four decades One Manchester United fan decided to launch a funds drive to help the club buy Jadon Sancho. Photo: GoFundMe.com Source: UGC READ ALSO: Kurt Zouma says Chelsea will hurt Liverpool when they clash Sancho , who was involved in more than 40 goals (20 goals,20 assists) for Dortmund this season, has been heavily linked with United but Dortmund reportedly offered him a new deal to fend off interest. Amid reports a transfer is imminent, the youngster has been playing in friendlies for Dortmund. READ ALSO: Kapsaret: Mshukiwa wa ujambazi ajitoa uhai ili kukwepa kukamatwa United fans have been plunged into a tedious wave of uncertainty concerning the Sancho situation and at one time, it was almost certain he was bound for the Premier League. READ ALSO: Kurt Zouma says Chelsea will hurt Liverpool when they clash For one ardent fan, he seems to have had enough of the speculation and decided to take matters into his own hands, quite literally. Borussia Dortmund currently value Sancho at around 108 million (KSh 14 billion) and a fan identified as Matthew Kelley wants to help raise funds to acquire the talent. READ ALSO: Marcelo Bielsa: Why Leeds United boss prefers to sit on a bucket during games READ ALSO: Delight as Pierre Emerick Aubameyang finally signs new contract at Arsenal So far, his ambitious initiative has only raised 75 but he remains optimistic. On his decision to establish the Go fund me, Kelley analysed that the Manchester United hierarchy was not reliable enough to single-handedly complete the Sancho deal. READ ALSO: Charlie McNeil: Manchester United Sign 600 youth-goal striker from Manchester City "I'm sick of seeing that boy Dan James run with the ball like a bull that sees a red flag. I'm raising money for the transfer for Manchester United as they can't afford him for some strange reason, the fan stated. United have been fairly quiet in the transfer market this season, having only signed Donny Van de Beek from Ajax. Even then, some pundits have analysed Van De Beeks signing as a panic buy to appease fans who are increasingly growing discontent with the lack of transfer activity within the Manchester United camp. Do you have an inspirational story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Tuko news I have infected multiple men with HIV, my entire family hates me -Kiki wa Nge'ndo | Tuko TV: Source: TUKO.co.ke Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 17, 2020) - Relay Medical Corp. (CSE: RELA) (OTCQB: RYMDF) (FSE: EIY2) ("Relay" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the closing of a non-brokered private placement financing (the "Offering") of gross proceeds of $1,833,316.02 through the issuance of 10,185,089 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.18 per Unit. Each Unit is comprised of: (i) one common share in the capital of the Company (each a "Common Share"); (ii) one Common Share purchase warrant (each, a " Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.20 on or before September 17, 2022. Gross proceeds raised from the Offering will be used for working capital and general corporate purposes. The securities issued upon closing of the Offering are subject to a hold period until January 18, 2021, pursuant to applicable securities laws. Certain eligible persons (the "Finders") were paid a cash commission equal to 8% of the proceeds raised from subscribers introduced to the Company by such Finder and also issued an aggregate of 129,644 finder warrants (the "Finder Warrants") to the Finders. Each Finder Warrant entitling the holder to acquire one Common Share at a price of $0.20 for a period of twenty-four (24) months from the date of issuance. In addition, the Company announces that it has entered into debt conversion agreements with arm's length and non-arm's length creditors, pursuant to which the Company has settled an aggregate of $101,500 of indebtedness through the issuance of 441,300 Common Shares at a price of $0.23 per Common Share (the "Debt Settlement"). The Common Shares issued pursuant to the debt settlement are subject to a four-month hold period and completion of the transaction remains subject to final acceptance of the Canadian Securities Exchange. The Debt Settlement constituted a "related party transaction" as defined in Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Securityholders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"), as insiders of the Company acquired 126,090 Common Shares. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, as the fair market value of the participation in the Offering by insiders does not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the Company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before the closing of the Offering, which the Company deems reasonable in the circumstances so as to be able to avail itself of the proceeds of the Offering in an expeditious manner. About Relay Medical Corp. Relay Medical is an evolving "Integrated MedTech Accelerator" headquartered in Toronto, Canada, acquiring early-stage technologies and inventions, advancing and preparing them for pre-commercial acquisitions in the HealthTech marketplace. By integrating the funding, development and exit process into one organization led and managed by one expert team, Relay Medical is building the capacity to accelerate and transact technologies with high efficiency and grow into a leading engine for MedTech innovation in the global HealthTech marketplace. Website: www.relaymedical.com Contact: W. Clark Kent President Relay Medical Corp. Office. 647-872-9982 ext. 2 TF. 1-844-247-6633 ext. 2 investor.relations@relaymedical.com Bernhard Langer EU Investor Relations Office. +49 (0) 177 774 2314 Email: blanger@relaymedical.com Forward-looking Information Cautionary Statement Except for statements of historic fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is 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. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements including, but not limited to delays or uncertainties with regulatory approvals, including that of the CSE. There are uncertainties inherent in forward-looking information, including factors beyond the Company's control. There are no assurances that the commercialization plans for UXD described in this news release will come into effect on the terms or time frame described herein. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties that could affect financial results is contained in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/64067 A year to the day nearly to the hour after Dulce Maria Alavez disappeared from Bridgeton City Park on Sept. 16, 2019, her family returned to the spot to pray for her safe return Wednesday evening. Dulce was visiting the park in the afternoon with her family when she disappeared. Her case has drawn international attention, a $75,000 reward and plenty of theories, but the childs fate remains unknown. She turned 6 years old in April. Her mother, Noema Alavez Perez, was joined by family, friends and volunteers Wednesday, as they gathered by a tree dedicated in Dulces honor. A tearful Alavez Perez, wearing a mask with a photo of her daughter, thanked everyone for attending. Thank you for the support you are showing to me and my family, she said, delivering her remarks in Spanish. Please share the photo of my daughter. We want and desire that she returns back home to us. Pastors David Gonzalez, with Overcoming Victory Church in Bridgeton, and Daniel Cabezas, with Seventh Day Adventist Spanish Church in Bridgeton, led the group in prayer and Gonzalez, who also serves on Bridgeton City Council, provided translation services during the program. The large oak sits a short distance from the playground where Dulce was last seen and is surrounded by flowers, stuffed animals, pictures and messages of support. Authorities have publicized this new flier regarding the search for Dulce Maria Alavez. Speakers offered words of hope and determination. I pray that this event will help stir someone to share information about the whereabouts of Dulce, Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly told the crowd. I pray in my heart that we find Dulce soon. Bridgeton Police Chief Michael Gaimari told attendees that the case remains a priority for his department and will remain one until the mystery is solved. He urged community members to step forward if they know anything that might help. The investigators have put together a puzzle of what may have occurred, but they need some missing pieces, he said. FBI Special Agent Daniel Garrabrant commented recently that the child was likely abducted by a stranger looking to take a child, rather that someone targeting Dulce. Others, including Gaimari, have said that all potential scenarios remain on the table. They all agree someone likely has valuable information that could crack the case, but may not realize what they know is important. What we know for sure is that the person that took Dulce Alavez was in that park in Bridgeton from at least 4 oclock to 4:30, Garrabrant said in August, noting that the park was a busy place that day. We really believe that there are people out there that saw something that would be critical for us. Witnesses may not step forward because they dont believe they have information of value or because they are afraid of landing themselves in trouble, he said. Officials have repeatedly assured undocumented immigrants living in the area that no one investigating Dulces disappearance is interested in checking a witnesses' immigration status. Noema Alavez Perez, the mother of 5-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez, cries as she talks during a vigil in Bridgeton City Park, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. Dulce disappeared from the park one year ago today. Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Based on descriptions of a man seen at the park around the time Dulce disappeared someone police have not been able to locate the abductor could be a Hispanic man, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, possibly in his 30s, with facial acne. While the playground area itself does not have cameras a project to install them is in the works investigators have pored over huge amounts of surveillance video from homes and buildings in the immediate area in search of a suspect vehicle. The majority of the vehicles we have fully identified, this is the car, this is who was driving it, this is why they were in the park, but we probably have 10 to 12 vehicles that we just dont know because we dont have a tag or we have a real general description, Garrabrant said. We believe that, in all likelihood, we do have a suspect vehicle on video someplace. Its not possible to get out of the park without being picked up by a camera, he noted. Former Bridgeton resident Tammara Williams, who has run a fundraiser to place several billboards about Dulce in the Bridgeton area, drove 8 hours from West Virginia to attend the vigil. I used to play in this park and I grew up right in town, she said. "Just to think that somebodys child was kidnapped from this park it breaks my heart. It could have happened to any of us. We could have turned our head for a split second and somebody could have snatched our child. The family of 5-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez, who went missing one year ago, holds a vigil in Bridgeton City Park, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com As sunset approached, attendees lit candles and offered prayers for Dulce Speaking after the program, Alavez Perez said the event left her emotional and appreciative for everyone who took time to attend the vigil. She vowed to keep searching for her child. Im not going to stop looking for her," she said. "I want her to be home with me. She knows that. Anyone with information about Dulce is asked to contact authorities using one of these numbers. Bridgeton Police: 856-451-0033 Cumberland County Prosecutors Office: 856-453-0486 New Jersey State Police: 609-882-2000, ext. 2554 FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI. Select option 4, then option 8. Anonymous tips: Text to 847411 with CCPOTIP and your tip in the message line. Bridgeton City Police Chief Michael A. Gaimari Sr. bows his head in prayer during a vigil for 5-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez in Bridgeton City Park, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. Dulce disappeared from the park one year ago today.Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Yoshihide Suga, the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was chosen as Japan's new prime minister to succeed Shinzo Abe in an extraordinary parliamentary session on Wednesday. Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga began work as the nation's leader Thursday vowing to "meet people's expectations." Speaking to reporters at the prime minister's office, Suga said his Cabinet would be results oriented. "I want to meet people's expectations by creating a Cabinet that works for people and achieves results," Suga said. Newly appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, meanwhile, reiterated the former administration's commitment to fighting the coronavirus pandemic and preventing an explosive rise in infections. "The important thing is to prevent infections and bring economic and social activities back to normal and revive them," Japan's new top government spokesman said. Kato added that under Suga's stewardship, the government will continue to tackle the nation's demographic crisis and forge deeper ties with Japan's closest neighbors. Suga, the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was chosen as Japan's new prime minister to succeed Shinzo Abe in an extraordinary parliamentary session on Wednesday. The parliament formally chose Suga as the nation's 99th prime minister in an extraordinary session convened at which he was elected by both chambers of Japan's bicameral parliament, winning 314 votes in the more powerful 465-member lower house and 142 votes in 245-member upper chamber. Late last month and just days after becoming the nation's longest-serving leader in terms of consecutive days in office, Abe abruptly announced that he planned to step down because of the same intestinal disease and ulcerative colitis that forced him to relinquish his role as prime minister during his first stint as leader beginning 2006. Suga has formed a Cabinet comprising of a number of ministers who served under Abe in a bid to maintain continuity. He has retained the services of LDP veteran heavyweights including Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi. Fifteen of Suga's picks for his 20-member Cabinet held ministerial portfolios in the previous administration. Suga, who at 71 is the oldest prime minister to take office since Kiichi Miyazawa in 1991, will serve as LDP president for the remainder of Abe's current three-year term through September 2021. There has been speculation, however, that he may call a general election as early as next month, although he has stated that for the time being tackling the coronavirus pandemic is his priority. Search Keywords: Short link: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is presenting a distorted account of President Donald Trumps words on the coronavirus, wrongly suggesting Trump branded the virus a hoax. In fact, Trump pronounced Democratic criticism of his pandemic response a hoax. Biden tweeted a video mashup of Trumps rhetoric on the crisis, sampling the many times the president has underplayed the severity of the pandemic. A look: BIDEN VIDEO: Trump in public: Hoax. Trump in private: Killer. BIDEN VIDEO, showing Trump saying at a Feb. 28 campaign rally in South Carolina: The coronavirus and this is their new hoax. THE FACTS: The accusation and the selective video editing are misleading. At the rally featured in the video, Trump actually said the phrases the coronavirus and this is their new hoax at separate points. Although his meaning is difficult to discern, the broader context of his words shows he was railing against Democrats for their denunciations of his administrations coronavirus response. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, he said. You know that, right? Coronavirus. Theyre politicizing it. He meandered briefly to the subject of the messy Democratic primary in Iowa, then the Russia investigation before returning to the pandemic. They tried the impeachment hoax. ... And this is their new hoax. Asked at a news conference the next day to clarify his remarks, Trump made clear he was not referring to the coronavirus itself as a hoax. No, no, no. he said. Hoax referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody, because weve done such a good job. The hoax is on them, not -- Im not talking about whats happening here. Im talking what theyre doing. Thats the hoax. He continued: Certainly not referring to this. How could anybody refer to this? This is very serious stuff. The videos reference to Trump in private calling the virus a killer comes from the presidents interview in April with author and journalist Bob Woodward, whose new book Rage contains Trumps acknowledgment that he was playing down the virus threat in public, so as to avoid panic. But it is incorrect for Biden to suggest, as the video does, that Trump insisted the virus was a hoax before ultimately acknowledging to the author in April that it was deadly and serious. Trump on several occasions before that did refer publicly to the virus as a plague and a killer, while also falsely dismissing it as something that would go away on its own, in hot weather or otherwise. ___ 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 Creative Discovery Museum is officially re-igniting its $10 million capital campaign after temporarily suspending efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ignite Discovery: Creating the new CDM capital campaign will fund comprehensive renovations of CDMs 43,000 square foot facility, providing opportunities for children and families to explore, innovate, create and play for generations to come. The initiative is centered on three goals: to ensure CDM remains a leader in experiential learning, a gathering place for all children and a gateway to a vibrant downtown Chattanooga. To date, nearly $7.1 million has been raised from a broad base of supporters including corporations, foundations and community leaders. CDM received several large contributions to the campaign during the suspension: $250,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, $250,000 from the Clarence E. Harris Foundation, $200,000 from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, $100,000 from the City of Chattanooga, $60,000 from Southface Good Use, $50,000 from PlayCore and $50,000 from the George R. Johnson Family Foundation. Recent gifts and the steadfast support of our community throughout have been tremendous and very heartening. This shows that even in the face of uncertainty, we understand how critical an institution like Creative Discovery Museum is to the future of our city, said Patrick Stowe, CDMs board chair. Officials said the pandemic and 14-week shutdown of the Museum have had a significant impact on CDMs finances. However, grant-based relief funding and strong financial footing created by reserves and endowment are helping to address these issues and enabling the campaign to move forward. As we look to the future, we recognize that it is more important than ever to proceed with the comprehensive renovation project that is designed to position CDM for long term success, said Henry Schulson, executive director. To advance our vision and mission, we must invest in our building, exhibits and outreach programs so that the next generation has high quality, hands-on learning experiences in the arts and sciences that are imperative to the development of every child. Ignite Discovery addresses community challenges that were identified in a 2018 Feasibility Study conducted by POWER 10, an Atlanta-based fundraising firm that previously assisted with the campaign. These challenges include strengthening early childhood education, providing new opportunities for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) learning, increasing access for all children regardless of background and helping revitalize the Riverfront District. In addition to facility renovations, this campaign addresses each of the needs by updating and installing new exhibits, expanding outreach programs and creating a new, vibrant urban space on the CDM Plaza. Construction is set to begin August 2021 and be completed by May 2022, just in time to celebrate the Museums 27th birthday. Ignite Discovery: Creating the new CDM is chaired by Susu and Paul Brock and Leah and Jay Hill. Since opening its doors in 1995, CDM has welcomed over 5 million visitors. It has been nationally-ranked by Trekaroo and Child magazines. CDM received the CICL Pinnacle Award for its work in biofuels distance learning lessons. Locally, CDM was named Best Museum in the Times Free Presss Best of the Best competition and is a two-time Nonprofit of the Year finalist. In addition, CDM was the first organization in Tennessee to participate in Museums for All, a national initiative that encourages cultural organizations to provide significantly reduced admissions to families that receive food assistance. For more information about Ignite Discovery: Creating the New CDM, visit www.ignitecdm.com or contact Katie Hanners, CDMs director of advancement, at 423-648-6043. Growing cannabis on an industrial scale involves managing margins while continually adhering to compliance laws. For many growers, large and small, this consists of constant data entry from seed to sale. Canix's solution employs a robust enterprise resource planning platform with a steep tilt toward reducing the time it takes to input data. This platform integrates nicely with common bookkeeping software and Metrc, an industry-wide regulatory platform, through the use of RFID scanners and Bluetooth-enabled scales. Canix launched in June 2019, and in a little over a year (and during a pandemic), acquired over 300 customers spanning more than 1,000 growing facilities and tracking the movement of 2.5 million plants. Canixs founders are upfront with the softwares goal: reduce labor cost. During a talk with TechCrunch, the founders stressed how growers could increase margins through improved labor costs. Growers generally rely on enterprise resource planning platforms to track and forecast their crops, and Canix handles invoicing, costing and reporting while keeping the company compliant. Along with monitoring current inventory, Canix includes forecasting features. Starting with just plant clones, these prediction features will help growers predict yield 90 days away. Before understanding Canix, its essential to know the landscape of growing legal cannabis in the United States. Growers have to adhere to strict oversight, including submitting paperwork each time a plant moves throughout facilities -- and its lifecycle. This involves a lot of data entry, and most states require growers to submit this information in Metrc. Metrc itself is a startup. The company launched in 2013 and now tracks cannabis operations in 13 states. In October 2018, Metrc raised $50 million. The platform is designed to track cannabis from seed to sale with a deep focus on compliance. Its not an enterprise resource planning platform though some growers use it as such for the sake of simplicity. Though detailed and built for a modern agriculture operation, for some growers, inputting data into Metrc is often a labor-intensive job requiring cultivators to employ staffers to remain compliant. Story continues Canix is designed for commercial operations that have a cannabis license. Several startups, including MJ Platform and BioTrack, are building similar platforms for this market, but Canix says the companys focus on improving data entry makes it stand apart. Stacey Hronowski and Artem Pasyechnyk founded the company after identifying a shortcoming in Metrc. "I first started Canix when I was consulting for a Bay Area cannabis company," said Stacey Hronowski, co-founder and CEO. "I was writing software that would connect their CRM and distribution systems, and reduce the double data entry they did every time they created an invoice. The company asked me to look into connecting the system I built to Metrc. I began looking at Metrc, and I was very surprised to find that growers were writing down barcodes on paper. That was when the initial idea for Canix came about." Hronowski met Canix's co-founder Artem Pasyechnyk through a mutual friend at Facebook and they started building a platform. After the beta received positive feedback, the pair expanded to a full-scale operation. Canix caught the eye of several critical investors in its short life. The company was part of Y Combinators summer 2019 program and, in May 2020, raised $1.5 million seed from Floret Ventures, Yleana Venture Partners, Altair VC, Mava Ventures, Nano LLC, and Andrew Freedman (former Colorado Cannabis Czar). https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/themes/techcrunch-2017/features/shortcodes/vidible-callback-js.php?id=5 New Delhi: There is no plan to drop the civil services aptitude test (CSAT) from the civil services examination, the government said on Thursday. The civil services examination is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) annually in three stages -- preliminary, main and interview -- to select officers for Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) among others. The CSAT is part of the civil services preliminary examination. "No sir," was the response given by Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha to a query on the plans to drop the CSAT. He also responded negatively when asked whether the government was going to change the pattern of the UPSC civil services examination, including the replacement of interviews with a psychological test. In a separate reply, the minister said that there is no such test that has not been conducted even after one year of its registration by the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts entrance examinations for admission/fellowship in higher education institutions. Live TV "National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts entrance examinations for admission/fellowship in higher education institutions, has informed that there is no such entrance exam which has not been conducted even after one year of registration for the same," Singh said. He said due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the schedule of release of notification of examinations for the year 2020 could not be maintained from the month of April, 2020 onwards. "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the declaration of result of Tier-III of Combined Graduate Level Examination 2018 has been delayed. However, every effort is being made to complete the process of declaration of result at the earliest," the minister said. 'Elegant' is not the first word people use to describe the 45th President but readers will be curious to see how making things beautiful has played out in his life. The author said of The Elegant Trump, "I felt driven to write this book because newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media were not writing about his softer side. The record had become either woefully negative or nonexistent." "This Trump is not the mainstream media's Trump and surprisingly not conservative media's either. Without entering the political wars, Claudia shows a man whose life's work and personality make most of what the left claims impossible. You won't see him the same way after reading The Elegant Trump," says Walton Mendelson head of 12 on 14, (Prescott, AZ) who designed The Elegant Trump. Each chapter explores a different aspect of Donald Trump's individuality from his swoopy hair and red tie to his famous tweets to how he branded his Make America Great Again campaign to what he has in common with great 18th century conservative thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton and Edmund Burke. This trove of photos while not exclusive has been specifically sourced to illustrate under-reported events in Trump's life before becoming president and as president. The author is available for interviews and media engagements. The Elegant Trump can be purchased exclusively at: TheElegantTrump.com. ABOUT Oxbow Creative founder, Claudia B. Logan, is a business writer who has written extensively for clients in technology, medicine and finance. A former New York City resident for nearly her entire adult life, she now enjoys living in the exurbs of northern New Jersey. Contact: Claudia B. Logan Publisher & Author Oxbow Creative, LLC P.O. Box 739 Newfoundland, NJ 07435 Ph.: (973) 697 4718 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Elegant-Trump-115469433585936 Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClaudiaTETLogan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claudialogan2084/ SOURCE Oxbow Creative Related Links http://www.oxbowcreativellc.com Leading up to the 2020 edition of National Caretaker Appreciation Day virtual events taking place on the weekend of September 18 - 20, Standardbred Canada will profile caretakers from across the country in our Faces of Racing series. The series concludes with a profile on Shanisty Andres of Airdrie, Alberta who is employed by the Dave Kelly Racing Stable based at Century Downs, near Calgary, Alta. Most people find themselves using Kijiji to purchase new and used items, cars, real estate, vacation rentals, or concert tickets. Shanisty Andres used it to search for a new job. After searching online for Jobs with horses and discovering an ad posting for Barn Help working with Standardbreds, Shanisty was introduced to the harness racing industry. With zero prior experience or knowledge that harness racing even existed, Andres jumped at the opportunity because of her love for animals and horses. Fast forward two years later, she has now added a handful of Alberta circuit trainers to her resume, and is currently employed by the Dave Kelly Racing Stable. For the short amount of time that Shanisty has been working in the industry, shes had the opportunity to learn the trade from numerous trainers, but admits that her knowledge of Standardbreds has certainly fast-tracked since landing a job with Dave Kelly. I dont really have one person in particular for a role model. I have had the opportunity to work for a lot of experienced trainers and each has taught me something, explained Andres. I would like to give Dave Kelly a shout-out. He has really taken the time to teach me whatever I have been willing to learn, whether it be training, shoeing, or other similar things around the barn. Andres has been employed with the Kelly Stable for a year and has become an essential part of the team working day in and day out. Dave has 23 horses right now, so we are the first ones there [at Century Downs] in the morning and the last ones out in the afternoon. After settling into the Kelly Stable, Andres got the chance to work with the four-year-old pacer Wind Writer, who she now considers her favourite horse. He had the sweetest personality, I spoiled him so much. I think I liked him more then he liked me, but thats OK! Wind Writer was claimed this past July, which Shanisty confesses is one of the toughest parts of her job. Its hard when you get attached to them and they get claimed, but you just have to learn to love them and look after them the best you can while they are in your care. Harness racing is filled with ups and downs and having a horse claimed can be one of the less-than-ideal circumstances, but Andres acknowledges that the work she performs as a caretaker is very rewarding and pays off once the horse goes to the races. Being a caretaker is hard work. Youve got to be willing to put in the time and remember to always put the horse first, no matter what. They dont have to win but its so rewarding when they try, and you know you helped them get as ready as they could be for the race! Since becoming a Standardbred caretaker, Shanisty has learned how versatile and well-rounded the breed is. I think my favourite part about Standardbreds is how functional they are. They can pull carts and you can ride them. I know there are some horses that retire from racing and go to work on farms. The possibilities are endless, she explained. These horses, for the most part, are all bred to go fast. Its our job as horsemen and women to help them reach their full potential and to pay attention to their body language and attitude. I think the most important thing is not to look at them as a dollar sign but as a horse. The horse doesnt know whether you paid $3,000 for it or $30,000. Its your job to help it reach its best, either way. Shanisty is motivated to continue working as a caretaker in the industry and to continue learning to ensure she is the best caretaker she can be. I want to be the best horsewoman I can possibly be, and the only way to do that is to keep an open mind, have a good work ethic, patience and a sense of humour -- you can never take yourself too seriously! And Dr. Maragakis noted that any number of factors could confound the data, and it may be that wearing glasses is simply associated with another variable that affects risk for Covid-19. For example, it could be that people who wear glasses tend to be older, and more careful and more likely to stay home during a viral outbreak, than those who do not wear glasses. Or perhaps people who can afford glasses are less likely to contract the virus for other reasons, like having the means to live in less crowded spaces. Its one study, Dr. Maragakis said. It does have some biological plausibility, given that in health care facilities, we use eye protection, such as face shields or goggles. But what remains to be investigated is whether eye protection in a public setting would add any protection over and above masks and physical distancing. I think its still unclear. Health care workers wear protective equipment over their eyes to protect them from droplets that can fly from coughs and sneezes, as well as aerosolized particles that form when patients undergo medical procedures, such as intubation. But for the vast majority of people, that extra level of protection probably isnt needed if a person is wearing a mask and keeping physical distance in public spaces. Theres also the possibility of introducing risk by wearing glasses some people might touch their faces more when they put on glasses, rather than less, noted Dr. Maragakis. That said, more study is needed to see if the trend holds up in other study populations, said Dr. Thomas Steinemann, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and professor of ophthalmology at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland. I think its provocative, and its extremely interesting, Dr. Steinemann said. But Dr. Steinemann noted that the study shouldnt cause worry among people who dont wear glasses. It probably cant hurt to wear glasses, but does everybody need to do that? Probably not, he said. I think you have to consider the practicality of wearing eye protection or a face shield. People in certain occupations, first responders, caregivers for someone who is ill, those are people who should maybe take special notice. The findings also raise interesting questions about how often the eyes might be the entry portal for the virus. Its long been established that viruses and other germs can enter the body through facial mucous membranes in the eyes, nose and mouth. But the nose seems to be a main entry point for coronavirus, because it has a high number of receptors that create a friendly environment in which the virus can replicate and move down the respiratory tract. But doctors are seeing a small percentage of patients with eye symptoms, including conjunctivitis or pink eye, which suggests the virus may also be entering the body through the eyes. Although eye symptoms are less common than other symptoms like cough or fever, various studies have reported that eye complaints can be a sign of Covid-19 infection. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock A memo by Senate Republicans campaign arm has admitted that control of the upper chamber is at risk and that Democrats could win the Senate in Novembers elections. The September 2020 political update from the National Republican Senatorial Committee summarizes the state of the race of 10 states with Senate races around the country and how the outcome of each could factor into whether Republicans or Democrats control the chamber in January. The memo, obtained by the Guardian, has been circulating among political operatives, donors and interested parties. It comes just shy of 50 days before the November 2020 elections. The next few weeks will define the future of our country for generations to come, the NRSC memo reads. Memos like these are often shaped like dispassionate updates but in actuality they are often used to convince interested parties that races slipping out of reach are still in play. They are also often used to juice donations to lagging candidates and counter trending narratives. Democrats need to pick up three or four seats to take control of the Senate. The fact that the NRSC memo categorizes seven Senate races as ones that simply cant be lost or deserve serious attention suggests that its possible, but not certain that Democrats can take control of the Senate. Make no mistake: the Senate Majority is at risk. Beyond the four battleground states of Colorado, North Carolina, Arizona and Maine, Democrats are going on offense in historically red states like Montana, Iowa and Georgia, the memo continues. Theyre even eyeing states like South Carolina, where [Democrat] Jaime Harrison just reported raising a staggering $10.6m in August alone. The memo goes on to list four states under its firewall rubric: Iowa, Montana, Georgia and Kansas. Those states generally trend red but Democrats have staked their hopes on candidates with track records of appealing to both Republicans and Democrats or who can rally key voting blocs. Story continues All four of those states, though, are usually more fertile ground for Republicans. Georgia, in particular, has been a state Democrats have hoped to flip for the last few presidential cycles. Three states fall under the memos battleground rubric and they have all been trending toward Democrats in the past few cycles. The Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly, in particular, has consistently maintained a low double-digit or high single-digit lead over the incumbent Republican senator Martha McSally. The memo also warns that North Carolina will be a knife fight in a phone booth until the end Still, the memo urges Republicans to take solace that despite the defensive map all is not lost. Republicans are highly likely to flip at least one Senate seat: Alabama. Notably, two major Senate races are not on this list; Kentucky and Texas. For years Democrats have vainly promised that one day Texas would flip in a statewide race. But its leaning remains toward Republicans. In Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is up for re-election. That races omission from the memo suggests that the Senate leaders re-election is not a pressing concern for Republicans. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, the 2020 US Democratic presidential nominee. Getty Joe Biden triggered a row in the UK by threatening to veto a transatlantic trade deal if Prime Minister Boris Johnson breaks his Brexit deal with the European Union. Johnson has vowed to disapply the deal he signed with the EU over trade and border provisions with Northern Ireland and to break international law in order to do so. Senior congressional lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have told Johnson that there would be no free-trade deal with the US if he went ahead with this plan. On Wednesday, Biden tweeted that any trade deal was "contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border." Johnson's supporters branded Biden a "Boris hater" and ordered him not to lecture the prime minister. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Joe Biden enraged supporters of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday by threatening to veto a transatlantic trade deal if the UK goes ahead with its plan to break its Brexit agreement with the European Union. Johnson caused an international row this month when his government admitted that it planned to break international law by overwriting its deal with the EU related to Northern Ireland. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a group of senior congressional lawmakers have said that any attempt to break the Brexit deal would wreck any hopes of a UK-US trade deal. Biden, the US Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted on Wednesday: "We can't allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period." Johnson's domestic opponents welcomed Biden's remark, with Lisa Nandy, the opposition Labour Party's shadow foreign secretary, saying that it showed "the scale of the damage the Government have done to Britain's standing in the world." Story continues Conservative Party supporters of Johnson reacted furiously. Conor Burns, a former UK trade minister, accused Biden of not understanding the Good Friday Agreement, while another former UK Cabinet minister told Politico Playbook that Biden was a "Brexit and Boris hater" who "doesn't understand" the Northern Ireland issue. Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, went further, telling Biden to stop lecturing the UK. "We don't need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr. Biden," he told The Times of London. "If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the USA to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations." A spokesman for Johnson suggested on Thursday that Biden had misunderstood the government's plans. "We continue to remain absolutely committed to no hard border and no border infrastructure between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and we will continue to engage with our US partners on a bipartisan basis to ensure our position is understood," the spokesman said. The UK's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, went to Washington this week to reassure congressional lawmakers that Johnson's plan would not undermine the Good Friday Agreement and peace on the island of Ireland. However, Raab's attempts to calm fears across the Atlantic appeared to fail, as Biden warned the UK government that it risked jeopardizing any prospect of a post-Brexit free-trade agreement with the US. And following a meeting with Raab on Wednesday, Pelosi reiterated her warning that there would be no UK-US free-trade deal if Johnson's government did not uphold the Northern Ireland protocol agreed with the EU last year. She said in a statement that she told Raab that "if the U.K. violates its international agreements and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement passing the Congress." The UK's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, left, at a press conference with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. NICHOLAS KAMM/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Johnson's plan to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland protocol infuriated Brussels, with the EU threatening to take legal action against the UK unless it changed course. It also caused consternation in Westminster, with Johnson on Wednesday agreeing to give Parliament a vote on the move amid a rebellion from dozens of his own Conservative MPs. However, the interventions of several senior US politicians suggest that the move would damage the prospect of not only a UK trade deal with the EU but an agreement with the US. On Tuesday, four top US representatives Eliot Engel, Richard Neal, William Keating, and Peter King told Johnson they were "disturbed" by the move. "We therefore urge you to abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts to flout the Northern Ireland protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement," they said in a letter. Washington has a strong interest in how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland; the US played a key role in brokering peace in the province. There is fear that a failure to uphold the Northern Ireland protocol, designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, would lead to the return of physical border infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. At a press conference on Wednesday, Raab risked further inflaming tensions with Brussels, saying that any threat to the Good Friday Agreement "has come from the EU's politicization of the issue" of Northern Ireland. Read the original article on Business Insider Avi Yemini Raises Over $50K in One Day for Victoria Government Supreme Court Lawsuit Australian journalist Avi Yemini has attracted over $50,000 in donations to help cover the cost of a lawsuit filed against the Victorian government in the states Supreme Court on Sept. 15. The fundraiser was launched by his employer, Rebel News, on Sept. 17 and surpassed its $50,000 goal within 6 hours. Yemini told The Epoch Times on Sept. 17 that he was humbled by the publics response. It shows how upset people are with whats happening here in Melbourne, Yemini said. For the past few months, Melbourne has endured a second wave of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus. In response to the outbreak, the state government has enforced strict lockdown rules that have raised concerns around heavy-handed policing, the mental wellbeing of Victorians, and the legality of the curfews. Discontent about lockdown measures has grown in recent weeks after the Victorian government extended its emergency powers in September for an additional six months and extended stage four restrictions by two weeks. On Sept. 5, Melbournians gathered for a rally against the Stage Four lockdown at Albert Park. The gathering was then disrupted by Victoria Police, and Yemini, who was there working as a reporter, was arrested. Victoria Police confirmed Yeminis arrest in a statement, saying: A 34-year-old male from Berwick was arrested for hindering police at a protest in Melbournes CBD on Saturday 5 September. The man had been asked to move on multiple times by the Forward Commander as he was obstructing the police response to the protest. After repeatedly failing to comply with police direction, he was arrested for hindering police. He was then released with enquiries pending, the statement read. Yemini denies that he was acting unlawfully and that police did not tell him to move on. He said that his case is clear cut and indicated he is confident that there wasnt much chance of losing. The commander initially said he was arresting me because I didnt have a purposeful reason to be there, which was false, Yemini said. So they changed it to hindering which was just as ludicrous. Ezra Levant, the publisher of Rebel News, told The Epoch Times the video clearly shows police misconduct. The videotape shows that Avi was not hindering any police work; he was with other media, and no police asked him to move, Levant said. On the Rebel News donation site, Avi wrote: I was reporting on an anti-lockdown protest by Australian citizens fed up with China-style infringements on their civil liberties. Suddenly, a police commander walked up to me, jabbed me in the chest, and ordered his troops to arrest me. Youve probably seen the videoI was picked up, smashed to the ground and arrested, and led away in handcuffs. For no reason whatsoever, he wrote. In a Statement of Claim for the lawsuit, Yemini alleges that police officers arrested him while he was performing his work as a journalist without sufficiently explaining the basis for the arrest at the time, only later telling him the reason was for allegedly hindering police. Yemini alleges in his lawsuit that as a result of the arrest he suffered physical injury, stress and anxiety, affected reputation, humiliation, hypervigilance and consciousness of surveillance of his home, and effects on his family life. Monday 05 September, 2016 Reliable information reaching Biafra writers desk has it that the life of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indi... Michel Barnier has told EU ambassadors he believes a trade deal with the UK can still be agreed despite mounting tensions between the two sides after Boris Johnson accused the bloc of being 'abusive' during talks. The EU's top negotiator is said to have informed diplomats from the bloc's 27 member states at a meeting yesterday that he still remained hopeful of a deal being done but that the coming days will be decisive. One source with knowledge of the meeting told the Reuters news agency that 'Barnier still believes a deal is possible though the next days are key'. A second diplomatic source said 'the hope is still there' while a third insisted Mr Barnier had 'stressed he will keep negotiating until his last breath'. Relations between the two sides have become increasingly strained in recent days after Mr Johnson announced his intention to tear up parts of the Brexit divorce deal, a move which ministers have admitted will break international law. Mr Johnson today risked worsening the row as he said his proposals to override the Withdrawal Agreement were necessary in order to prevent the EU from pushing an 'abusive or extreme' interpretation of what was agreed in the accord struck last year. Michel Barnier, pictured in Brussels yesterday, is said to have told EU ambassadors that he still believes a trade deal with the UK is possible Boris Johnson's plans to tear up parts of the Brexit divorce deal have inflamed tensions between the two sides The Government sparked a furious row with the EU after it published its UK Internal Market Bill last week. The legislation will enable the UK to unilaterally make decisions on key issues, like customs arrangements between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, contained within the Withdrawal Agreement. Brussels is adamant that the decisions must be made by a joint committee made up of people from both sides - as set out in the treaty. But the Government argues its proposals are necessary in order to protect the integrity of the UK should the two sides be unable to agree terms. The EU has given Mr Johnson until the end of the month to withdraw the plans or face legal action, with Brussels also warning that a failure to perform a U-turn will collapse trade talks. But the Government is adamant it will not be backing down with Mr Johnson telling The Sun the Bill is needed in order to put in place 'watertight bulkheads that will stop friends and partners making abusive or extreme interpretations of the provisions' contained within the Withdrawal Agreement. Mr Johnson has also accused the EU of negotiating in bad faith. Brussels today signalled it is standing firm on its demand for the PM to drop his plans. Eric Mamer, chief spokesman for the European Commission, told a press briefing: 'We have as you know set out a position extremely clearly, it is in our statement, and it relates to those clauses being withdrawn from the law. 'That position has not changed and we have asked the UK to do this at the earliest possible convenience, and by the end of September at the latest. That has not changed.' The spokesman also insisted the EU carries out all of its negotiations in 'good faith'. Trade negotiations remain ongoing ahead of the end of the Brexit transition period in December but the chances of a breakthrough appear slim after months of deadlock. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, said yesterday: 'With every day that passes, the chances of a timely agreement do start to fade.' As well as prompting EU fury, the PM's Brexit plans sparked considerable concern on the Conservative backbenches. Tory rebels had put forward an amendment to the Bill to give Parliament a veto on any attempt by the PM to depart from the terms of the divorce accord. The Government last night caved in on the issue in order to avoid a damaging rebellion. Ministers and the rebels have agreed to change the Bill so that MPs will get a 'parliamentary lock' on overriding the Withdrawal Agreement. Any plan to move away from the divorce deal will have to be backed by MPs in a vote in the House of Commons before the PM can go ahead with it. The Government this afternoon published the details of its compromise, saying that Parliament will be asked to support the use of the powers if the UK believes the EU is guilty of a 'material breach of its duties of good faith or other obligations' which undermine the Northern Ireland protocol. It provided a number of examples of what such behaviour could be, including Brussels insisting on paperwork having to be filled out to send goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or refusing to designate the UK as a third country for 'unreasonable or poorly justified reasons'. The latter move would effectively amount to the EU banning the export of UK agricultural goods into the bloc. The Government also confirmed it will 'always activate appropriate formal dispute settlement mechanisms with the aim of finding a solution' and that this would happen in 'parallel' with using the powers to override the divorce deal. The Treasury Department, TikTok owner Bytedance Ltd. and Oracle Corp. have tentatively agreed to terms for Oracle's bid for the U.S. operations of the social-media service, according to people familiar with the matter. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent Bytedance a revised terms sheet late Wednesday and the company and Oracle accepted it, the people said. They described the changes as addressing national security concerns about the transaction and asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Bytedance is trying to win U.S. approval for a transaction with Oracle that would leave the Chinese-headquartered parent company with majority ownership of TikTok. President Donald Trump demanded the sale of the service in August, declaring in executive orders that the popular video-sharing app is a national security threat. Any deal needs to be approved by both Trump -- who could still reject the transaction -- and the Chinese government, where officials have accused the U.S. of "economic bullying." White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is aware of the revised terms but hasn't reviewed the latest details in depth and hasn't weighed in on whether Trump should sign off on the deal, one person familiar with the matter said. The White House and Treasury declined to comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington didn't respond to requests for comment. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said early Thursday that he's concerned that Oracle's bid for TikTok may be a "repackaging" that won't meet the president's goals. "We're still looking at the potential details of the deal, and whether it meets the national-security thresholds, the American-interest thresholds," Meadows said. "My big concern is if all we're doing is repackaging it and still keeping it as a predominantly Chinese-government run company, that would not sit well with the original goal the president outlined." Under the plan, Oracle would acquire a minority stake in a newly formed TikTok that would be headquartered in the U.S. with an independent board approved by the U.S. government. The new terms, which are designed to protect the data of U.S. citizens from falling into Chinese hands, include 20 pages of detailed provisions over data and national security, the people said. Under those terms, the board of directors would have to consist entirely of U.S. citizens and would include a national security committee. That body would be chaired by an American data-security expert who would be the primary contact with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which would oversee any issues of concern to the U.S. government. The previous terms hadn't included language on the formation of that committee. Terms of the proposed deal would give Oracle full access to TikTok's source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the company's Chinese parent to access data on the video-sharing app's 100 million American users, Bloomberg reported. At least three shareholders in TikTok's Chinese parent company -- General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management -- would take stakes in the new business, Bloomberg has reported. Walmart Inc., which had previously partnered with Microsoft Corp. to make an outright bid for TikTok's U.S. business, remains interested in investing as well, and could also end up with a seat on the board, according to one of the people. With Oracle, Walmart and the continued involvement of existing U.S. investors, the new company, TikTok Global, would have a strong contingent of American investors, some of the people said. Scrubbing toilet cleaner over grime-ridden grouting will leave it gleaming in seconds, a viral TikTok video has revealed. The clip, which was posted by American actress Savannah Meyer, starts with a close-up of a tiled kitchen floor with grubby black stains running along the grouting. The 28-year-old from Utah then pours a drop of Clorox toilet bowl cleaner onto the tiles, leaves it to soak for five minutes and scrubs it gently with a brush. Dark discolouration lifts off easily, leaving the strips between each tile sparkling white. 'Should I do my whole kitchen?' Ms Meyer asked in the caption. Scroll down for video American actress Savannah Meyer restored the grimy grouting of her kitchen floor (left) to a sparkling white finish (right) with a drop of Clorox toilet bowl cleaner and a scrubbing brush And many felt that she should. 'Wow what a difference. I desperately need to do this in my kitchen but there are way too many tiles!' one woman said. 'I just tried this and it worked! Have never done it before, good for a deep clean,' said another. When one person commented that the hack will 'erode your grout if you keep doing it', Ms Meyer replied: 'You don't do it regularly, it's a one time thing to remove build-up and then you simply maintain.' Australian viewers urged her to buy special grout cleaner from Bunnings, but Ms Meyer said she was sorry to reveal that the hardware giant does not have any stores in the US. American actress Savannah Meyer, whose grout cleaning hack has become a viral sensation Australian viewers urged her to buy special grout cleaner from Bunnings, but Ms Meyer said she was sorry to reveal that the hardware giant does not have any stores in the US It's the latest cleaning hack to become a viral sensation, following a TikTok clip which details an Australian mother's simple recipe for DIY 'deodoriser' that leaves cupboards smelling fresh and clean without spraying toxic chemicals. In the video, Melbourne parenting blogger Mama Mila pours rice into a glass jar and adds 10 drops of essential oil on top, then covers it with a lid before shaking the contents together. 'Try this one out for your shoe closet,' Mila wrote in the caption. In the video, Melbourne parenting blogger Mama Mila pours rice into a glass jar (left) and adds 10 drops of essential oil (right), then covers it with a lid before shaking the contents together Replying to comments under the clip, she said the jar should last 'four to six months' depending on the size of the room or closet it's placed in. Uncooked rice is a natural deodoriser that absorbs smells, flavours and moisture that hang in the air. Its moisture-absorbing properties also prevent silver from tarnishing, which is why some people keep a small muslin bag of rice at the back of their cutlery drawer. Mila's video drew delighted responses after it was posted online with comments including 'this is amazing' and 'I will definitely be trying this'. As she sat down to discuss the U.S. decision to end tariffs on Canadian aluminum exports, you could see Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland who also has responsibility for U.S. trade relations was pleased. Canadian diplomats and political leaders have been working on the Trump administration to drop the tariffs. When that actually happened, it left Team Canada looking very good. Just before imposing counter-tariffs in the same amount as the Trump tariffs, the mouse that roared had prevailed. Its a great storyline. And its not untrue. But its also not complete. The Trump administration dropped those aluminum tariffs because they served their purpose, and threatened to backfire had they not been removed. Trump first imposed the tariffs not because they were justified but because they told a good story to his base. Look, see how Im protecting American jobs against the big bad Canadians, taking advantage of us yet again ... The flimsy basis for the tariffs was a blip in the amount of aluminum imported into the U.S. from smelters, largely in Quebec. The blip was caused by reduced demand for certain types of refined aluminum, which made it appear as if less-refined aluminum imports had grown. The key here is blip. It wasnt a trend, it was caused by the pandemic, and it has already largely passed. But the thing about tariffs is that they cut both ways. Their main impact is on the price of the product. In short they hurt the tariffing market as much as the tariffed market. Which is why the American businesses hurt by Trumps tariffs were angry, and made their feelings known in ways that were not helpful to Trumps re-election hopes. The lustre of the aluminum tariffs started to fade quickly for Team Trump. Then, and this is where Canada did a typically solid job negotiating, Freeland and her colleagues announced dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs which would have come into force the same day as the Americans backed off. With that development, Trumps politically expedient tariff tool turned toxic. Now other sectors that would have been hit by the Canadian counter-tariffs joined with the U.S. aluminum sector and stated the obvious these tariffs and tariffs in general hurt American businesses and consumers. And that is why American trade negotiators killed the tariffs before the counter-tariffs were applied. Why does all this matter? Because the top reason the tariffs were yanked had to do with Trumps re-election. What will happen if he is re-elected in November, which is entirely possible? He will feel validated by the election outcome. He will believe that his bully tactics in so many areas, including trade and bilateral relations with Canada and Mexico, were successful. And we can expect another four years of temper tantrum diplomacy. Canada should be prepared for this. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has suggested that next time Trump pulls something like this, Canada should retaliate quickly and any revenue generated by counter-tariffs should be directed to the sector being hurt by Trump tariffs. Donald Trump has a thing about Canada. This observation has been made by numerous observers, including former U.S. ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman. For some reason, Trump feels demonizing the country that has been among his countrys best friends over the years is good politics. There is no evidence to suggest that is true, but we have seen it repeatedly. If Trump is re-elected as many predict, or if he somehow manages to hold on to power even if he loses, this country should be prepared for more years of turbulence. Read more about: WHEN: Competition on Thursday, Sept. 17 at 5 p.m.; winners to be announced on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 5 p.m. WHERE: Both events will be held online; free registration and information is available at http://bit. ly/ M2D2 Challenge Events. WHAT: Entrepreneurs developing medical devices and technologies to improve health outcomes will pitch their innovations to a panel of expert judges for the chance to share in $200,000 in in-kind resources to advance their work. The ninth annual M2D2 $200K Challenge will feature 15 finalists pitching new ideas for everything from a GPS-guided system to locate and excise tumors and a medication to regenerate damaged heart muscle to a technology for synthetic cartilage implants for damaged joints and more. More than 250 entrepreneurs from around the world entered the competition last spring vying for the chance to present their innovations in Thursday night's finals. Inventors, venture capitalists and global leaders in business, industry and government will participate in the event, held virtually for the first time. Jennifer Griffin, vice president of industry strategy and investments for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, will be the program's keynote speaker. The competition is presented by the Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2), a business incubator operated in partnership by UMass Lowell and UMass Medical School that assists biotech and medical-device startups in bringing their inventions from concept to commercialization. Since it was founded in 2007, M2D2 has worked with more than 100 client companies, which in turn have secured more than $50 million in external funding for their ventures. Along with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, event sponsors include Amgen, Argenta Advisors, Asahi Intecc USA Inc., Boston Scientific, Deshpande Foundation, Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre, Hologic, Johnson & Johnson, Mintz, Omni, RQMIS, Sarepta Therapeutics and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe). With just a few weeks remaining to file the 2020 U.S. Census form, the city of Alvin plans to hit social media hard in a push to get all of its residents counted. I have several social media posts scheduled for the remainder of the month, City Secretary Dixie Roberts said. With 58.9 percent of the citys households completing the Census as of Sept. 15, Alvin trailed the states participation rate of 61.5 percent but was ahead of Houstons 57.3 percent. The state and city participation rates refer to individuals who completed the form on their own and not to those reached by door-to-door Census workers. Roberts said her citys rate is about par for the course. The percentage is close to what our participation rate was at the last Census, she said. Local cities Census participation rates so far Residents' self-response rate as of Sept. 15 Friendswood 78.2% Pearland 72.9% Manvel 68.1% Iowa Colony 65.8% Texas 61.5% Alvin 58.9% Houston 57.3% See More Collapse In northern Brazoria County as of Sept. 15, Pearland had a self-response participation rate of 72.9 percent, Manvels rate was 68.1 percent and Iowa Colonys was 65.8 percent. Pearlands neighbor to the east, Friendswood, had a participation rate of 78.2 percent after a concerted effort on several digital platforms urging the importance of filing the census form. The last day to submit the 2020 census form is Sept. 30. The Census is taken every 10 years and is used in a variety of ways. It is used to draw district boundaries for government representation at the state and national level. It also is used when determining how much federal funding cities will receive for infrastructure and drainage projects. School districts also count on the Census when it comes to receiving federal education money. The last day to submit the 2020 Census form Is Sept. 30. For months, Mayor Mike Foreman and various city council members have been sharing with residents the message of how important it is to get an accurate count, Friendswood Public Information Officer Jeff Newpher said. The city has, is, and will continue to use social media channels, email, and the citys TV channel to reiterate the message. To file online, visit 2020census.gov. To complete the Census by phone, call toll-free 844-330-2020 for English and 844-468-2020 for Spanish. John DeLapp is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at texdelapp@gmail.com. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 15:56:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SEOUL, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's approval rating gained 0.8 percentage points over the week to 46.4 percent, a weekly poll showed Thursday. According to the Realmeter survey, the negative assessment on Moon's conduct of state affairs rose 0.3 percentage points to 50.3 percent. Support for Moon's ruling Democratic Party went up 2.3 percentage points from a week earlier to 35.7 percent this week. The main conservative opposition People Power Party held 29.3 percent of support this week, down 3.4 percentage points from the previous week. The minor center-left Open Democratic Party, the minor progressive Justice Party, and the minor center-right People's Party all garnered 5.7 percent of approval score. The results were based on a survey of 1,512 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had plus and minus 2.5 percentage points in margin of error with a 95-percent confidence level. Enditem (Natural News) A Fox News panel lost their minds earlier today when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich mentioned George Soros role in supporting Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA terror displays. (Article by Shane Trejo republished from BigLeaguePolitics.com) Gingrich told Fox News host Harris Faulkner that it is district attorneys funded by George Soros who are responsible for the violence because they routinely allow violent rioters to be back on the streets. This is when the situation became extremely awkward and tense. Im not sure we need to bring George Soros into this, left-wing panelist Marie Harf interjected. He paid for it, Gingrich responded. George Soros doesnt need to be part of this conversation, Harf commented. Okay, Gingrich said confusedly. So its verboten. Alright, were good, Faulkner said to cut Gingrich off. The clip ended with a bizarre period of silence before Faulkner tersely changed the subject. https://twitter.com/TrumpJew/status/1306286099296382978 While it may be expected that a liberal commentator might not want to discuss Soros, the fact that Faulkner a supposedly non-biased straight news anchor would carry water for the progressive oligarch is highly disconcerting. Of course, Gingrich brought up a great point about Soros bankrolling far-left DAs who protect rioting terrorists at war with the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Big League Politics reported on how a Soros front ponied up a large donation to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner after she vowed to prosecute the McCloskey family for standing up for their rights against a left-wing mob coming to their doorstep: A front funded by far-left billionaire George Soros has issued a $78,000 donation to the re-election campaign of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who is currently investigating the McCloskey family for defending their property against a marauding mob outside of their home. The Missouri Justice & Public Safety PAC made the donation. This is a Washington, D.C.-based entity that also papered over Gardners campaign in 2016. They have apparently re-branded from Safety and Justice PAC to Missouri Justice & Public Safety PAC in order to dupe voters that they are a state-wide organization. Soros minions admit the oligarchs collaboration with the fronts. Yes, its no secret we contribute to Safety and Justice PACs, Soros spokesman Michael Vachon, said to Just the News. We are for criminal justice reform. Gardner is railroading the McCloskeys after they were forced to confront left-wing terrorists who had barged through a gate and were threatening their home. The McCloskeys have had their home raided, their firearms confiscated, and their lawyer expects Gardner to officially file charges against them in the days to come. I believe the charges are imminent based upon Gardners past administrative actions and I believe any charges filed are wholeheartedly unwarranted, said St. Louis attorney Joel Schwartz, who is serving as legal counsel for the McCloskeys. Mary Pat Carl, a lawyer who quit her job as a homicide prosecutor after Gardner won election, is attempting to unseat Gardner. She claims that nearly 40 percent of prosecutors have resigned under Gardners stewardship, showing how disastrous her tenure has been for the rule of law and public safety. President Donald Trump has more frequently accused Fox News of being a tool for the globalists in recent months. .@FoxNews just doesnt get whats happening! They are being fed Democrat talking points, and they play them without hesitation or research. They forgot that Fake News @CNN & MSDNC wouldnt let @FoxNews participate, even a little bit, in the poor ratings Democrat Debates.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020 .fraud @donnabrazile (and others who are even worse). Chris Wallace is nastier to Republicans than even Deface the Nation or Sleepy Eyes. The people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry. They want an alternative now. So do I! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020 Based on their covering for Soros role in supporting ANTIFA/BLM terrorists, Trump seems to be correct in his assessment. Fox News has been subverted by globalists, and alternative America First cable outlets such as OAN and Newsmax need to be supported by Trump supporters. Read more at: BigLeaguePolitics.com A firefighter battles the Creek Fire as it threatens homes in the Cascadel Woods neighborhood of Madera County, Calif ((Noah Berger via AP)) Each hour of exposure to wildfire smoke is equivalent to smoking cigarettes continuously for the same amount of time, according to one lung expert. Smoke is billowing from hundreds of fires across California, Oregon and Washington, drifting cross country and reaching as far as eastern Canada and Europe. While the smoke was not expected to impact air quality in any eastern states, it remained at dangerous levels in the west. One of the most dangerous pollutants from wildfires is tiny particles which suspend in the air as the fires burn. The particles are no larger than one third the diameter of a hair follicle, according to the American Lung Assocation, and can lodge deep in the lungs when breathed in. "If you are exposed for 12 hours of smoke in the air, then that is like 12 hours of continued smoking, Dr Zab Mosenifar, a critical care pulmonologist at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, told NBC. Particle pollution triggers asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes and can be deadly. Studies of children in California found that those who breathed the smoky air during wildfires had more coughing, wheezing, bronchitis and colds. They were also more likely to need medical care for respiratory causes, especially from asthma. Here are some tips to protect yourself. Seal your home from smoke Priority number one should be keeping doors and windows shut if youre living in an area where the air quality is at dangerous levels. If you have leaks, use weather sealing or masking tape along window gaps. A damp towel can also be placed at the base of a door to prevent smoke from seeping in. The safest place within your home is where there are few doors, windows, and ventilation ducts connected to the outside. Remain in that room for the majority of the day if possible. Use an air purifier Air purifiers, which can be purchased online through most retailers, help filter the air within your home. Consider purchasing an air purifier to help improve your indoor air quality. Those properly fitted with HEPA filters can reduce particle concentrations by as much as 85 per cent, according to the EPA. Story continues If an air purifier is not available for purchase then run your air conditioner in recirculation mode so it only circulates the air within your home instead of pulling from outdoors. Also, if using your air conditioners fan, make sure it is set to on instead of auto. Avoid activities that increase indoor pollution Vacuuming, frying food, using a gas stove, and smoking are all activities that can increase your indoor air pollution. Experts recommend limiting these activities as much as possible to keep the air within your home free of pollutants. Clean your air filter The filters within your air ducts should typically be switched out two to three times per year. But wildfire smoke can increase how often these filters should be cleaned. Check your filters daily to make sure they are still properly trapping debris from passing into your home. Besides keeping filters clean, it is also important for you to have the right size filter to make sure it traps as many particles as possible. Health experts recommend using HEPA filters, as they use a fan to force air through fine mesh that will trap particles in indoor heating, ventilation, cooling and air purification systems. Avoid outdoor activities Exercising outdoors, mowing the lawn, or performing other outside activities will increase your exposure to unsafe conditions. The CDC and other health experts recommend limiting your exposure outdoors and avoiding strenuous activities like working out. If you go outside, an N95 mask is one of the best to filter out particles, though these masks are not easily available due to the coronavirus pandemic. Masks made from multiple types of fabrics, such as cotton and silk woven together, can be another alternative for a face covering if N95s are not available. Read more Wildfires, coronavirus and house prices force residents to ditch the California dream Trump blames California forest management for deadly fires - is he right? West coast wildfires: How to help those affected State officials in Pennsylvania are calling a judge's decision to set a protester's bail at $1m "blatantly unconstitutional." Protesters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania have been demonstrating over the police killing of Ricardo Munoz, 27, who was shot by an officer after charging him with a knife. Officers responding to the demonstrations claimed they had devolved into riots and arrested 12 adults and one juvenile attending the protest. Police claim that protesters vandalised local businesses and started fires in addition to causing damage at the police station. Lieutenant Bill Hickey of the Lancaster Bureau of Police told Fox43 that the department requested the judge set a high bail due to the "serious nature" of the defendant's alleged crimes. The office of Judge Bruce Roth, who set the bail, confirmed that he set the unusually high amount at the request of the police. Recommended Police fire tear gas on crowd protesting fatal police shooting in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman criticised the judge's decision. "In this particular case, it's blatantly unconstitutional given the nature of the charges. And I'm pointing that out," he said. The adult protesters face charges that include conspiracy to commit arson, rioting, institutional vandalism and disorderly conduct. Chip Patterson, the father of protester Kathryn Patterson, a 20 year-old who he said was attending the protest as a medic, called the bail "obscene." Everything that I know so far, which is not a lot, indicates that Kat is not guilty of those charges. But then again, well have to wait and see, he told the Associated Press. Mr Patterson said he hasn't been able to speak with his daughter since her arrest. I cannot tell you how long this night has been, he said on Tuesday afternoon. I think regardless of what these people did or didnt do, the bail amount is just outrageous and clearly against the Eighth Amendment." The Eighth Amendment states that "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" on citizens charged with crimes. Reggie Shuford, the executive director of the state's American Civil Liberties Union chapter, issued a statement decrying the bail. "The $1 million cash bail orders for several young Black Lives Matter protesters last night is an egregious and unacceptable abuse of the bail system," he said. "Cash bail should never be used to deter demonstrators and chill speech." The Lancaster Bureau of Police released body camera footage of the incident that sparked the protests. In the video, an officer arrives at a house to respond to a domestic disturbance call. After a moment, Mr Munoz appears and begins chasing the officer. It appears he is holding a knife in his right hand. After a short chase, the officer turns and shoots Mr Munoz, who collapses to the ground. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Its going to chill any action, because youre afraid youre going to be embroiled back in litigation. Youre not sure whether youve got the power and youre acting in the shadows of a very unfavorable ruling, Gostin said. In most of the hot spots in the South and West at the moment, theres a lot of politicization of the pandemic. . . . And so basically its saying to governors and public health commissioners, Be decisive at your own risk. Back in August, many media outlets incorrectly reported that neck gaiters were not only less effective than normal face masks, but worse than no mask at all. Though the scientists who performed the study were quick to clarify that this wasnt true, the popularity of that story shows that people are worried about the efficacy of their masks. So is there a way to test, at home, if your mask is effective? The answer is complicated. The problem, as weve reported a few times before, is that no mask can work as a magic bullet that keeps you from spreading or contracting Covid-19, and theres no simple way to acquire the complex equipment that NIOSH (The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) uses to individually test the N95 masks imported into the United States. However, there are quick and dirty tests that you can perform at home on N95 and KN95 masks that will give you an idea if the mask is effective. While passing them doesnt guarantee that a mask works, failing them is a big sign that they dont, and might be counterfeit masks sold as part of a scam. For this article, I performed these tests on Honest PPEs KN95 masks, one of our readers most-purchased masks this month. It came in a 10-pack of individually wrapped items, and was provided to me free by Honest PPE. They are both DFA and CE Registered, though not NIOSH approved. KN95 - FDA - Individually Wrapped honestppe.supply $1.99 Shop Now The Water Test On the recommendation of both Sciencealert.com and Honest PPE founder Shahzil Amin, the first test I performed on the KN95 mask was filling it with water and then letting it sit. Science Alert recommends watching to see if the water beads immediately, while Amin invited me to fill the mask with water and hang it from a door knob and wait -- so I did the latter. Why cut them any slack? At first I intended to only wait five minutes, but then my day sort of got away from me and I left it hanging for almost half an hour. It made no difference: not a drop spilled through the fabric, and the mask was completely dry when I poured the water out into my sink (and also onto my floor). So thats a pass, for what its worth. The Candle Test Another recommended test is attempting to blow out a candle when wearing the mask, most famously demonstrated by pop-scientist Bill Nye. He attempted to blow out a candle from roughly 6-inches away using a cloth mask, but since a KN95 is supposed to be significantly stronger than that, I pushed my mask as close to the flame as I could without burning my face and blew as hard as I could. The flame didnt move. Since the mask passed with such flying colors, I do want to reiterate the the limits of this test. Amy Price, a senior research scientist at Stanford University's Anesthesia Informatics and Media Laboratory, told NPR that Its an OK rule of thumb . It isnt scientific, but its a pretty good estimate. Still, I could not get that flame to move. The smell test This test is simple: you wear a mask, and see if you can smell something with a strong odor. The website used Sweet & Low, I used a Patriot Candles Scented Candle (Whiskey & Tobacco, because Im a big tough man). I found this test on ipromo.com, a manufacturer of KN95 masks -- which is of course a big red-flag when it comes to its efficacy since one should never trust a companys word on its own product (this is also known as caveat emptor or buyer beware, and its why many corporations are able to legally lie to their customers). However, the test reminded me of what CDC representatives told me are the biggest misconceptions about face masks, which is that they prevent spreading rather than contracting the COVID-19 virus. It also reminded me of OSHA fit-tests for N95 masks, which basically amounts to the same thing: you wear the mask and see if you can smell an odor. Without my KN95 mask, I was able to smell the candle quite well, and with my ordinary face mask (an Everlane 100% Human mask) the smell was still quite detectable, though perhaps marginally weaker. The 100% Human Face Mask 5-Pack - Black everlane everlane.com $25.00 Shop Now When I was wearing the KN95, however, I couldnt detect the candle at all. Again: these are basic at-home tests. Im certain theyre inferior to any test that could be performed in a laboratory, and I want to reiterate that even the most effective masks out there provide nowhere near as much safety as simply staying at home. But if nothing else, they gave me something to do, and a little peace of mind -- and both those things are pretty valuable right now. Hearst Newspapers participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Joshua Sargent is an editor for Hearst Newspapers. Email him at josh.sargent@hearst.com. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Laura Schoen, president, Global Healthcare and chair, Latin America at Weber Shandwick, and chief healthcare officer of Constituency Management Group (CMG), was inducted into the 2020 class of PRWeek's Hall of Femme in a ceremony today. This annual program honors women nominated by their peers and colleagues for their excellence in the industry and their role in lifting and leading the next generation of communications professionals. Schoen has led Weber Shandwick's global healthcare practice since joining the firm in 2000, quadrupling its size during her tenure and providing strategic counsel and insights into many of the largest multinational healthcare and pharmaceutical brands in the world. Under her leadership, Weber Shandwick's healthcare work has been recognized with prestigious awards by Cannes Lions Health, CLIOS Health, PRWeek and PRovoke. Additionally, as chair of Weber Shandwick Latin America, Schoen spearheaded Weber Shandwick's introduction in the region in 2011 and its rapid expansion since then building a network of five wholly-owned offices in Brazil, Mexico City and Colombia, instituting digital and creative capabilities to address regional client needs and boasting double-digit growth in 2019. In 2020, the firm's operation was named the Latin American Agency of the Year by PRovoke and Best Agency in LATAM by PRWeek. "Laura's cri de coeur is: strive to make a difference. She has done that for Weber Shandwick, absolutely building the firm's healthcare practice into a global powerhouse and boldly expanding our footprint in Latin America," said Weber Shandwick President and CEO Gail Heimann. "But beyond her ability to straddle these two worlds and the multiple dimensions of our business, what makes Laura one of the greats is her commitment to delivering impact with integrity, and using the power of communications to change lives." In 2020, Schoen also took on the role of chief healthcare officer at CMG, driving the healthcare-related vision and capabilities evolution for all agencies within the CMG brand. "When considering the communicators who've made the biggest impact in the healthcare communications space in recent years, there's no doubt Laura Schoen tops the list," said Andy Polansky, Chairman & CEO, CMG and Executive Chairman, Weber Shandwick. "Beyond her many accomplishments, Laura brings tremendous tenacity and heart for going beyond the status quo. She's a champion for our teams at CMG and for our industry more broadly, and this honor is so well-deserved." Schoen was inducted into Medical Marketing and Media's (MM+M)'s Hall of Femme in 2017, recognized as PRWeek's Best PR Professional in LATAM in 2019 and has been named to PRWeek and MM+M's Health Influencer 50 each consecutive year since the honor was introduced in 2016. In 2014, she served on the inaugural Health Jury at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Schoen is a member of the Executive Committee of The Coalition for Healthcare Communication, an organization that promotes the free exchange of accurate, credible scientific and medical information. She previously sat on the advisory board for CancerCare a national organization in the U.S. dedicated to providing free support services to anyone affected by cancer, from counseling and support groups to educational workshops and financial assistance. About Weber Shandwick Weber Shandwick is a leading global communications network that delivers next-generation solutions to brands, businesses and organizations in major markets around the world. Led by world-class strategic and creative thinkers and activators, we have won some of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Weber Shandwick was named to Ad Age's Agency A-List in 2020 and Best Places to Work in 2019. Weber Shandwick was also honored as PRWeek's Global Agency of the Year in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, and PRovoke's Global Agency of the Year in 2015, 2017 and 2019. The firm earned 25 Lions at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Data-led, with earned ideas at the core, the agency deploys leading and emerging technologies to inform strategy, develop critical insights and heighten impact across sectors and specialty areas, including brand and B2B marketing, healthcare marketing, change management, employee engagement, corporate reputation, crisis management, data and analytics, technology, public affairs, social impact and financial communications. Weber Shandwick is part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). For more information, visit http://www.webershandwick.com Contact: Jill Tannenbaum Company: Weber Shandwick Phone: 212-546-7815 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Weber Shandwick When it comes to the possibility of a fall election in the midst of a global pandemic that seems to be getting worse rather than better, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to be clear. He doesnt want one, but its a little irresponsible to rule it out. Got that? Not entirely. The prime minister left the door open a crack to a snap election this week, even as the bad news about the resurgence of COVID-19 kept on coming. He should slam it shut. An election this fall would be unnecessary, disruptive to efforts to fight the pandemic, and likely to be seen as an opportunistic power grab by a minority government looking to capitalize on public fears about the threat to our collective health. It would be, in a word, irresponsible. So the government, and indeed the opposition parties as well, should definitively rule it out. Its not even a year since Canadians last went to the polls, and the record of the past year shows it has been possible for the government to wage an effective battle against COVID-19 without having a majority in Parliament. At this point it should redouble its efforts to continue that fight. Its far from over, as the worrisome events of the past week have shown. The number of new COVID cases has been rising steadily; the daily average across the country has reached 779, double the level in July. Canadas top public health official, Dr. Theresa Tam, now warns the country may be losing its ability to keep the pandemic at a manageable level. Back-to-school efforts are shaky at best, disastrous at worst. Quebec already has almost 300 schools with COVID-19 outbreaks, and some are questioning whether Ontario will be able to keep schools open for the long term as new cases pop up every day. In Toronto and neighbouring Peel Region, new restrictions are being slapped on social gatherings and authorities are threatening to impose stiffer fines to stem the spread of the disease. Lines for testing are now hours long. It is, in short, far from the scenario of just a month ago, when the number of new cases of COVID-19 was falling, gradually but steadily, almost everywhere. It looked like we had gotten on top of this scourge. All too predictably, though, it is on the upsurge as people resume normal life and relax their guard. After six months we all hoped to see light at the end of this particular tunnel, but right now all we can see ahead is a lot more tunnel. So its no wonder the government is dialling back expectations of what to expect from next weeks Throne Speech. In August it sounded like we could be hearing an outline of the New Jerusalem a comprehensive vision for a green, inclusive, more equitable post-COVID world. With, presumably, the spending to match. Now, though, with every day that passes it seems the reality of COVID resurgence is biting, and the government is more likely to focus more tightly on continuing to battle the pandemic and supporting Canadians through it. That would be appropriate, and there would be even less reason than before for the opposition parties to bring down the Liberals and force an election. There would also be less reason for the Liberals to engineer their own defeat, if they thought they could strike quickly and pick up support. True, that worked for the Progressive Conservative government of New Brunswick this week, which turned its minority into a majority. But the situation in one small province with few COVID-19 cases doesnt apply on a national scale. The Liberals should not look there for inspiration. To top things off, both Conservative Leader Erin OToole and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet have self-isolated this week after COVID scares in their family or offices. What more reminder do the politicians need of the folly of trying to conduct an election at this time? Canadians would certainly see it as irresponsible, and they would punish whichever party forced the issue. For reasons of both the public good and partisan advantage, the message to the politicians should be: dont go there. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Cruciverbalist. A 14-letter word for a person skillful in creating and solving crossword and word puzzles. The definition doesnt seem to do justice to the skill and passion of George G. Raventos. Raventos, 81, creator of the beloved weekly Staten Island Advance Word Search puzzle since 1986, and composer of hundreds of crossword and word puzzles published and circulated around the world, died Monday after a fall he suffered in his Sea View residence. Words and word puzzles of every kind, especially the Advance Word Search this was his passion, what he lived for, said his son, George L. Raventos. Raventos, who settled on Staten Island in 1961, when he arrived from his native country of Chile, was a partner with his son in Word Searches of America. According to his family, the business published and sold patriotic-themed word puzzle books marketed to tourist gift shops across the United States, including several National Park Service sites. Raventos often used the pen-name Jake McRaven, his son said. Thirty-four years ago, in 1986, Raventos pitched an idea for a weekly themed Word Search puzzle to his hometown newspaper, the Advance. The late Advance Editor Les Trautmann thought the idea could have merit and invited Raventos to submit a few puzzles as a try-out. The Word Search puzzles, which appeared in the Sunday Advance, caught on with readers. Readers were invited to complete and submit each puzzle by a cut-off day. Readers who completed the puzzle correctly were sorted and placed in a drawing for prizes. Over time the Advance began receiving a thousand or more Word Search entries each week. Raventos wound up designing close to 2,000 original Word Search puzzles for the Advance, his son said. Each puzzle involved arranging 15 to 20 words around a specific theme, such as a holiday, or an event in Island history, to appear within an allotted space on the newspaper page. He often worked ahead, and at the time of his death, had completed several unpublished puzzles, family members said. LOVE FOR AMERICA, LANGUAGE AND HISTORY Raventos was born in the South American city of Santiago, Chile. His father died as a child, and he relocated with his mother and siblings to the site of an American-owned copper mine, where an uncle lived and worked. He attended school at the camp, where he learned English, and developed a passion for reading, writing and American history. He came to love America, and everything American, his son said. It was a passion that lead him to come to the United States in 1961 when he was 21 years old, with his then-wife, the former Milda Wollner. He settled in South Beach, and later moved to Dongan Hills. He lived in Eltingville until 2017, when he moved into the Park Lane senior apartment complex in Sea View. Raventos worked for a time in the import-export trade, with several Manhattan-based firms, while pursuing his passion of solving and creating word puzzles. At the urging of a family friend he decided to pursue a career as a freelance cruciverbalist. His freelance puzzles appeared in several newspapers and publications, including the New York Times and TV Guide, family members said. On Sept. 8, 1970 Raventos took his oath and became an American citizen. That was probably his greatest moment. He loved America; it really was the land of opportunity for him. He was able to pursue his dream, to develop his passion for words, and developing puzzles, his son said. Along with his word puzzles, Raventos was an accomplished chess master, and had competed in several chess tournaments. He was also listed in Whos Who Among Latin Americans In addition to his knowledge and skill with words, family members said Raventos would want to be remembered as a gentle, kind, and compassionate man. He always had a positive attitude. There was no malice or sense of anger in him, his son said. Raventos was predeceased by a brother, Christian, who died in 2007. In addition to his son George L., he is survived by sons Walter and Arthur; six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He is also survived by his former wife, Milda Cabello. Raventos had requested his body be donated for scientific research; arrangements are being handled by Anatomy Gifts Registry, Hanover, MD. A memorial service is being planned at a later date. Scandal-hit Malaysian fund is at the heart of the US Department of Justices biggest-ever asset recovery effort. The Department of Justice in the United States said on Wednesday that it was seeking to recover an additional $300m in assets it says are linked to the multibillion-dollar scandal surrounding Malaysian state fund 1MDB. The Justice Department said it had traced the assets to an escrow account in the United Kingdom. US and Malaysian authorities estimate $4.5bn was stolen from 1MDB in an elaborate scheme that spanned the globe and implicated high-level officials including former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, executives at US bank Goldman Sachs, and others. Najib is on trial in Kuala Lumpur in a series of cases related to 1MDB, and has denied wrongdoing. In a complaint filed in the Central District of California on Wednesday, the Justice Department said the $300m was traceable to a line of credit extended by Venezuelas state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela to Saudia Arabias PetroSaudi Oil Services in connection with an oil-drilling venture. The companies are already embroiled in a legal dispute over the funds that the Malaysian high court has sought to freeze with cooperation from the UK authorities. Billions of dollars are thought to have been looted from the now-defunct 1MDB, which was ostensibly set up to accelerate Malaysias economic development. The Justice Department said it was also seeking four dozen promotional movie posters that Riza Aziz, a Hollywood producer and Najibs stepson, acquired with more than $4m in funds traceable to assets embezzled from 1MDB. Prosecutors in Malaysia dropped money-laundering charges against Aziz in May after reaching a deal in which he agreed to help authorities recover 1MBD-related assets. Goldman Sachs reached a $3.9bn settlement in July, which Malaysias finance minister says resolves all outstanding charges and claims against the investment bank. Shortly afterwards, Najib was found guilty of all charges in the first of the 1MDB-linked cases he faces, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He has appealed the decision. Wednesdays complaint brings the total value of assets the US has sought to recover in relation to the scandal to $2.1bn the largest-ever asset recovery action brought by the agency. So far the US has recovered or assisted Malaysia in recovering nearly $1.1bn. A bail fund promoted by Sen. Kamala Harris and some Joe Biden campaign staffers reportedly helped release a Minnesota man accused of sexually assaulting a child. Records obtained by Fox News indicate that that Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) may have assisted in the release of Timothy Wayne Columbus. Columbus, 36, was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly sexually assaulting a young girl. She was around 8 years old. A warrant was issued for Columbus' arrest on June 25 but he was later bailed out of jail and, per court documents obtained by Fox News, filed to have his bail returned to MFF. The Minnesota Freedom Fund , a bail fund based in Minneapolis, was publicized by Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris (pictured) Harris and more than 10 campaign employees linked to Biden have requested donations from their followers during the demonstrations in Minneapolis this summer. The story was first reported by The Daily Caller and Alpha News MN. Harris shared a Twitter post that asked people to donate to MFF on June 1, just one week after George Floyd died in police custody and nationwide demonstrations against police brutality gripped the nation. 'If youre able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,' Harris tweeted. According to Fox News, court documents said that Columbus was a friend of the young girl's grandmother and the girl was living with her at the time. Kamala Harris on June 1 shared a tweet that asked people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund amid demonstrations over the death of George Floyd Documents said that when the child was around eight, she told authorities that 'Tim' had sexually assaulted her on the couch. 'Victim did not tell anyone what happened at the time but years later told a family member.' the publication reports. The warrant said the grandmother had seen Columbus say to the child 'this is our secret', prompting her to suspect Columbus of harming the child. It wasn't until years later that the mother said she learned 'something happened.' Columbus denied the allegations and maintained his innocence to authorities. He could face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, if convicted. Columbus had a bail set at $75,000 for conditional release, Fox News reports, and $300,000 for unconditional release. His bail request that asked the money be returned to MFF reportedly does not list the amount, but a judge approved Columbus for conditional release on July 1. MFF's website said that it has used at least $3,475,000 for bailing people out from the county jail, and $210,000 specifically for demonstrators connected to the protests. Pictured: Kamala Harris 'Bail, also known as bond, is money charged by the state to release a person from custody while their criminal or immigration case proceeds,' according to Believers Bail Out. When a person pays bail and appears for their scheduled court appearances, the money is refunded. In regards to bail funds like MFF, people who have received that money will sign documents asking that the money be given back to the fund. MFF's website said that it has used at least $3,475,000 for bailing people out from the county jail, and $210,000 specifically for demonstrators connected to the protests. Fox 9 reported in August that MFF had raised $35million following Floyd's death. President Trump mentioned MFF during a press conference on August 31, where he attempted to disparage the group by linking it directly with protesters. Pictured: Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden departs after attending campaign meetings at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware 'Thirteen members of Bidens campaign staff donated to bail and rioters theyre getting them out of jail. Looters they got them out of jail. And his running mate, Kamala, urged their supporters to do the same thing,' he said. Trump was referring to a Reuters report that said at least 13 Biden campaign staffers said they had contributed to the fund in Twitter posts between May 26 and 27. But as pointed out by The Washington Post, MFF only contributed to a small number of protest-related jail releases during initial protests. WaPo reports that 92 per cent of arrested protesters did not have to pay bail and just 10 per cent used a monetary bond, according to the American Bail Coalition. The bail also helped release some non-protesters, including Christopher Boswell, who was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. MFF reportedly allocated $100,000 for Floyd and $350,000 for Boswell. Fox News reports that Boswell was previously convicted on sexual assault charges and faced prosecution by Sen. Amy Klobuchar. A report from Reuters said that at least 13 staffers with Joe Biden campaign publicized donations for MFF on Twitter Biden staffer: 'Cash bail is discrimination against the poor and must be abolished Let's keep up this support for the [MFF]. Who's next?' Per a statement, the MFF does not 'make determinations of bail support based on the crimes that individuals are alleged to have committed,' MFF interim director Greg Lewin said, WaPo reports. 'We are, however, taking steps to strengthen our internal procedures for ensuring that those we bail out receive support, especially if they are in need of housing or medical treatment. 'Those processes involve renewing our commitment to listen to the communities directly impacted by our efforts, and ensuring those we bail out have the necessary support to safely return to their families and their community.' On MFF's website, the group said that it views every individual as innocent until proven guilty. 'MFF believes that every individual who has been arrested by the police is innocent until proven guilty, and if a judge deems them eligible for bail, they should not have to wait in jail simply because they dont have the same income or resources as others with more privilege,' it read. Joe Biden (pictured): 'The cash bail system incarcerates people who are presumed innocent. And, it disproportionately harms low-income individuals' Bail advocates and the Biden campaign have expressed favor in ending cash bail because it oftentimes affects people of color, some of whom may not be able to afford the fee, and cause them to lose income as they await trial. 'Cash bail is discrimination against the poor and must be abolished Let's keep up this support for the [MFF]. Who's next?' one Biden campaign staffer wrote on Twitter. 'While massive criminal justice and immigration reform is needed immediately we have to do what we can now.' another wrote. According to Biden's website, 'Cash bail is the modern-day debtors prison. ' 'The cash bail system incarcerates people who are presumed innocent. And, it disproportionately harms low-income individuals. 'Biden will lead a national effort to end cash bail and reform our pretrial system by putting in place, instead, a system that is fair and does not inject further discrimination or bias into the process.' Pronab Mandal By Express News Service KOLKATA: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has rejected the Bengal government's plea seeking permission to facilitate Chhath puja at the eco-sensitive Rabindra Sarovar. The NGT upheld its 2018 order banning Chhath puja at Rabindra Sarobar after environmental activists and wildlife lovers started a movement. The petition was moved by environment activist Subhas Dutta. The activists had earlier moved the Calcutta High Court as well to stop the practice. Firhad Hakim, the urban development minister, said the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), which appealed the NGT seeking relaxation in its earlier order two days ago, said it would move the Supreme Court. While the opposition termed the appeal before the NGT as another move by the TMC-led government to woo the Hindi speaking voters before the 2021 Assembly elections, environment activists expressed their concern. Rabindra Sarovar covers 192 acres of artificial lakes and 7,000 trees. About 200 species of resident and migratory birds have been sighted here. Despite the ban, hundreds of devotees broke open the gates of Rabindra Sarobar in November last year to perform Chhath puja. They even used crackers and played drums at the Sarobar although the government has earmarked alternative water bodies in the city. The violation in front of law-keepers triggered a huge controversy. Kolkata police and KMDA officials expressed their helplessness. "The ritual is performed by women. We could not be harsh on them last year. At one point of time, we had to me mute spectators," said an official of Kolkata police. Taking a jibe at Mamata Bannerjee, BJP's national secretary Rahul Sinha said, "It is shameful that the state government is appealing the NGT for an act which will cause harm to the waterbody and nature around it, instead of protecting the city's beauty. She took nine years to realise Hindi speaking people's sentiment. It is too late." The virtual meeting between the Committee of Permanent Representatives to ASEAN and UN officials was co-chaired by Vietnamese Ambassador Tran Duc Binh, head of the Vietnamese mission to ASEAN, and UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Khaled Khiari. The delegates commended major development steps in the ASEAN-UN comprehensive partnership, with regular meetings at different levels, and the completion of 97 out of 103 action lines set in the action plan. These cooperation activities cover the three pillars of politics-security, economy, and culture-society, as well as experience exchange in narrowing the development gap and enhancing connectivity in ASEAN, and improving the capacity of the ASEAN Secretariat. They said most of cooperation plans in politics-security and economy have been completed ahead of schedule, especially in the areas of the UNs strength like peacekeeping, the settlement of natural disaster consequences, gender equality, economic integration, narrowing the development gap, and sustainable development. They spent much time discussing the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic both regionally and globally. The UN backed initiatives of ASEAN and Vietnam, as ASEAN Chair in 2020, and wished to further aid the bloc in realising its post COVID-19 recovery framework, assisting refugees in Myanmars Rakhine state, and handling other issues regarding women, peace, security, climate and cyber security. ASEAN and the UN agreed to advance their comprehensive partnership, and committed to closely coordinating in implementing the 2016-2020 action plan and completing a draft action plan for the next five years that will be submitted to the ASEAN-UN Ministerial Meeting in October for approval. The UN will continue to send experts to help ASEAN improve its capacity in the combat against terrorists and cross-border crime, and other spheres like cyber security, human rights, women empowerment, economic integration, energy security, food, forest protection and support to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The two sides consented to join hands in implementing goals of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development Goals, humanitarian aid, natural disaster settlement, climate change, education and health care, and step up collaboration between their Secretariats. BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Education has rolled out policies to help Chinese students who are facing difficulties in studying overseas amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry has been encouraging international students to finish their courses online as organized by their universities. The policies make it clear that students' alternative learning experience will not affect the authenticity of their college certificates and degrees. On the premise of ensuring educational equity, the ministry will allow a number of existing Chinese mainland-based cooperative educational institutions and programs between China and other countries and between the mainland and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to admit more qualified students. The enrolment is meant for students who have already been admitted to universities overseas and planned to pursue an undergraduate or postgraduate degree starting this fall semester, according to the ministry. Meanwhile, the ministry will guide the communication between the Chinese embassies and consulates with the education departments and universities in the host countries to address the concerns of Chinese students. China now has about 1.4 million students studying abroad, and many of them were forced to alter, delay and even cancel their plans due to various restrictions placed by the host countries on entry, visas and flights amid the pandemic. Amaravati, Sep 17 : There was no secrecy when the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) declared Amaravati as the capital city of Andhra Pradesh when it was in power, a party spokesperson claimed on Thursday. "There was no secrecy about the declaration of Amaravati capital during the TDP regime but now the YSRCP government has taken a U turn and is bent on destroying it out of sheer greed and political vendetta," claimed TDP national spokesperson Bonda Umamaheshwara Rao. He asserted that Amaravati was chosen with openness, transparency and after giving due consideration to the suggestions made by the Sivaramakrishanan Committee at that time, as per the conditions laid down by the Central government. According to him, even the media houses affiliated to the ruling YSRCP had reported at that time that Vijayawada was the best place for the location of the capital. He claimed that even the national media carried reports on the selection of a place between Vijayawada and Guntur. "It was not correct on the part of the YSRCP ministers now to talk badly about Amaravati and the great historic tradition it has got," he said. The TDP spokesperson claimed that the ruling YSRCP is harbouring ulterior motives to perpetrate and continue its multiple scams and mafia activities in sand, liquor, water and other state resources. "They were planning to shift the capital to Visakhapatnam only to make sure that the values of their land already acquired there goes up multiple times. The YSRCP top leaders have acquired over 30,000 acres in the surroundings of the port city," he alleged. Though the TDP planned to develop Amaravati on the lines of Hyderabad, Rao claimed that the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government is destroying the capital city just for the sake of creating wealth for a few leaders of the ruling party. "YSRCP ministers were spreading lies and betraying all sections of people even as their misdeeds have pushed the state into a financial crisis. Over 60 lakh construction workers starved due to sand shortage caused by YSRCP leaders but the government did not bother to assuage their hunger," Rao claimed. He also demanded that the YSRCP ministers and MPs explain why their party did "not object" to the declaration of Amaravati as the capital city of Andhra Pradesh when the TDP regime took that decision. Pennsylvania's highest court gave the Democratic Party a series of victories Thursday in the presidential battleground state, relaxing deadlines on a fledgling mail-in voting law, approving more ballot collection sites and kicking the Green Party's presidential candidate off the November ballot. The state Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic majority, granted the Democratic Party's request to order an extension of Pennsylvania's Election Day deadline to count mailed-in ballots. The extension it granted will allow three more days to receive ballots that were mailed before polls closed. Democrats and their allies had cited the prospect of postal service delays in invalidating huge numbers of ballots. In party-line decisions by the state's elected justices, the court also said the law allows the use of satellite election offices and drop boxes by counties, and ruled that the Green Party's candidate for president did not strictly follow procedures for getting on the ballot in November and cannot appear on it. The rulings came amid a flurry of partisan lawsuits and a partisan stalemate over updating Pennsylvania's voting laws. Days of delay? The path to victory for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden is likely to run through swing state Pennsylvania, with counting of ballots which arrive the Friday after election day now legally mandated to take place Avalanche expected: Mail-in ballot applications are far ahead of previous years in Pennsylvania because of the pandemic and could now be crucial to the national outcome Heated controversy: Donald Trump's tweets on election integrity have included this message which was flagged by Twitter Thursday Polls show a tight race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in Pennsylvania. Losing Pennsylvania could prove fatal to Biden's chances of defeating Trump: No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since Harry S. Truman in 1948. Democrats and liberal groups cheered the court's decisions on the mail-in voting law. Mail-in voting will help 'protect our right to vote in the most critical election of our lifetimes,' NextGen Pennsylvania said in a written statement. Republican lawmakers said the court jeopardized the security, integrity and accountability of the election process, and suggested the fight was not over. The 'blatantly political decision to violate the law irresponsibly heightens the risk that our state will experience a lengthy, disputed, and controversial outcome in what is expected to be an extremely close presidential race,' said U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican. The fall election will test Pennsylvania's ability to handle a massive mail-in vote. Under a year-old state law greatly expanding access to mail-in balloting in Pennsylvania and, fueled by concerns over the pandemic, more than 3 million voters are expected to cast ballots by mail in the state's Nov. 3 election. That's more than 10 times the number who voted by mail in Pennsylvania in 2016's election, when Trump's 44,000-vote victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania helped propel him to the White House. In extending the deadline to count mail-in ballots, the court said ballots must be postmarked by the time polls close and be received by county election boards at 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, three days after the Nov. 3 election. Off the ballot: The Green Party's Howie Hawkins will not be up against Biden and Trump in Pennsylvania, another victory for Democrats who feared he could siphon votes from their candidate Ballots can be counted if they lack a postmark, a legible postmark or some proof of mailing, unless a 'preponderance of the evidence' shows it was mailed after Election Day, the court said. Republicans have opposed changing that deadline. Most states make Election Day the deadline, but 18 states - about half of which backed Trump in 2016 - have a post-Election Day deadline. The court's backing the legal use of satellite election offices and drop boxes to help collect the expected avalanche of mail-in ballots in the presidential election came as Philadelphia and its suburbs - where one in three registered Democratic voters live - are planning to deploy them. Republicans had protested that drop boxes and satellite election offices are not explicitly authorized under state law. In a slightly earlier decision Thursday, the high court reversed a ruling by a Republican judge in a lower court on the candidacy of Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins. The court's two Republicans agreed the Green Party did not meet the law's requirements, but, in a dissenting opinion, said it might be possible to allow the Green Party to fix it retroactively. In this case, Democratic party activists challenged what they said were disqualifying irregularities in how the Green Party filed affidavits for the presidential candidate to get on the ballot. The high court's rulings come as Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature are at a stalemate over some of the issues, less than seven weeks before the election. To a great extent, they are clashing over how to prevent vast numbers of ballots from being discarded and how to head off the specter of a presidential election result hanging in limbo on a drawn-out vote count in Pennsylvania. The court also upheld the state's poll-watcher law, which Trump's campaign had sought to invalidate in federal court. Under that law, poll watchers - a political party-appointed volunteer who sits inside of a polling place to monitor Election Day activity for perceived irregularities - must be a registered voter from the county. Republicans say they are unable to must enough poll watchers in Philadelphia, where one in five of Pennsylvania's Democratic voters live. Democrats charge that lifting the long-standing restriction would open the floodgates to voter intimidation in polling places. D onald Trump has insisted that a vaccine will be ready "in weeks" despite his own health expert's prediction that it won't be ready for the public until the middle of next year. Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that key workers and those at high risk may get a vaccine in January but it was unlikely to be available to the public before late spring or early summer 2021. However, speaking at a White House press conference on Wednesday, the US president quickly rejected this timeline, saying that the vaccine will be rolled out "sometime in October". Mr Trump also disagreed with Dr Redfield about the effectiveness of protective masks - which the president recommends but almost never wears - and said he would telephone the CDC director to tell him. It comes amid speculation that Mr Trump's push for a vaccine ahead of November's election is politically motivated. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr Robert Redfield (file photo) / POOL/AFP via Getty Images During the congressional hearing, Dr Redfield said that health care workers, first responders and others at high risk would get the vaccine first, perhaps in January or even late this year. However, he said it was unlikely to be available more broadly before late spring or summer. Dr Redfield also spoke emphatically of the importance of everyone wearing protective masks to stop the pandemic, which has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. He floated the possibility that a vaccine might be 70 per cent effective in inducing immunity, and said: "I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine." US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference / AFP via Getty Images But Mr Trump undermined Dr Redfield's comments, saying: "We think we can start sometime in October," when asked about when vaccines would be rolled out. The president also disagreed about masks, saying: "Vaccine is much more effective than the mask." Earlier this week, he told a town hall special in Philadelphia: "We're very close to having a vaccine. "If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals. And we're within weeks of getting it... Could be three weeks, four weeks.". The president made the prediction even though the vaccine is still being tested in human subjects. Meanwhile, some health experts have said they believe a safe and highly effective vaccine is several months way, if not much longer. Earlier this week, the CDC sent all 50 states a "playbook" for distribution of a vaccine to all Americans free of cost when one is proven safe and effective. Adding to logistical complications, vaccines likely will have to be given in two doses spaced weeks apart and will have to be refrigerated. Dr Redfield said states are not ready to deal with the demand for such a distribution and some 6 billion (4.62 billion) in new funding would be needed to get the nation prepared. US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference / AFP via Getty Images Unswayed, Mr Trump said: "We're ready to move, and I think it will be full distribution." The vaccine would not be broadly available until the spring or summer 2021, Dr Redfield estimated. He also rejected questions about whether the CDC's timeline for states to be ready for a vaccine by November 1 was politically motivated. "The worst thing that could happen is if we have a vaccine delivered and we're still not ready to distribute," Dr Redfield told Senate lawmakers. "There was absolutely no political thinking about it." Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said while campaigning that he trusts what scientists say about a potential vaccine - but not Mr Trump. Mr Biden has said he would take a vaccine "tomorrow" if it were available but he would want to "see what the scientists said" first. As for the planned vaccine campaign, Dr Redfield said his agency will be working with state health officials to implement the preparations in coming days. DUBLIN, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Insurance Brokers & Agents Global Market Report 2020-30: COVID-19 Impact and Recovery" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global insurance brokers & agents market as it emerges from the COVID-19 shut down. The global insurance brokers & agents market is expected to decline from $362.7 billion in 2019 to $358.3 billion in 2020 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -1.2%. The decline is mainly due to economic slowdown across countries owing to the COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain it. The market is then expected to recover and grow at a CAGR of 6% from 2021 and reach $426.6 billion in 2023. Reasons to Purchase Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 50+ geographies. Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates. Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis. Identify growth segments for investment. Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market. Understand customers based on the latest market research findings. Benchmark performance against key competitors. Utilize the relationships between key data sets for superior strategizing. Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis Report will be updated with the latest data and delivered to you within 3 working days of order. Where is the largest and fastest growing market for the insurance brokers & agents? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The Insurance Brokers & Agents market global report answers all these questions and many more. The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider insurance brokers & agents market, and compares it with other markets. The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market. The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market, the impact of the Covid 19 virus and forecasting its recovery. Market segmentations break down market into sub markets. The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It covers the impact and recovery trajectory of Covid 19 for all regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets. Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified. The trends and strategies section analyses the shape of the market as it emerges from the crisis and suggests how companies can grow as the market recovers. The insurance brokers & agents market section of the report gives context. It compares the insurance brokers & agents market with other segments of the insurance(providers, brokers and re-insurers) market by size and growth, historic and forecast. It analyses GDP proportion, expenditure per capita, insurance brokers & agents indicators comparison. North America was the largest region in the global insurance brokers & agents market, accounting for 44% of the market in 2019. Western Europe was the second largest region accounting for 31% of the global insurance brokers & agents market. Eastern Europe was the smallest region in the global insurance brokers & agents market. Bancassurance is gaining prominence within the insurance intermediation industry. This distribution channel is being used by banks to cross-sell its products and services and generate additional revenue. Bancassurance also benefits the insurance company by providing an exposure to a wider customer base via the bank's distribution network of agents and branches. The adoption of more diversified and enhanced products offered by banks is expected to drive the bancassurance market at a CAGR of nearly 8% to 2019. The insurance brokers and agents market consists of sales of insurance policies by entities (organizations, sole traders and partnerships) and individuals that act as intermediaries (i.e., agents, brokers) in selling annuities and insurance policies. They represent consumers or insurance providers or both in insurance premium collection. Insurance brokers and agents can be contracted with single or multiple insurance companies as they try to meet different client needs with available insurance products. This market excludes the direct selling of insurance products by insurance companies. The value of the market is based on the fees or commissions paid to brokers by the insured, both commercial and personal. Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Report Structure 3. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Characteristics 3.1. Market Definition 3.2. Key Segmentations 4. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Product Analysis 4.1. Leading Products/ Services 4.2. Key Features and Differentiators 4.3. Development Products 5. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Supply Chain 5.1. Supply Chain 5.2. Distribution 5.3. End Customers 6. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Customer Information 6.1. Customer Preferences 6.2. End Use Market Size and Growth 7. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Trends And Strategies 8. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Size And Growth 8.1. Market Size 8.2. Historic Market Growth, Value ($ Billion) 8.2.1. Drivers Of The Market 8.2.2. Restraints On The Market 8.3. Forecast Market Growth, Value ($ Billion) 8.3.1. Drivers Of The Market 8.3.2. Restraints On The Market 9. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Regional Analysis 9.1. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, 2019, By Region, Value ($ Billion) 9.2. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, Historic And Forecast, By Region 9.3. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, Growth And Market Share Comparison, By Region 10. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Segmentation 10.1. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, Segmentation By Type, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 10.2. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, Segmentation By End User, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 10.3. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, Segmentation By Mode, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 10.4. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market, Segmentation By Insurance, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 11. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Metrics 11.1. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Size, Percentage Of GDP, 2015-2023, Global 11.2. Per Capita Average Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Expenditure, 2015-2023, Global 12. Asia-Pacific Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 13. Western Europe Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 14. Eastern Europe Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 15. North America Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 16. South America Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 17. Middle East Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 18. Africa Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 19. Insurance Brokers & Agents Market Competitive Landscape 19.1. Competitive Market Overview 19.2. Market Shares 19.3. Company Profiles 19.3.1. Marsh & McLennan Cos Inc 19.3.1.1. Company Overview 19.3.1.2. Products And Services 19.3.1.3. Strategy 19.3.1.4. Financial Performance 19.3.2. Willis Towers Watson PLC 19.3.2.1. Company Overview 19.3.2.2. Products And Services 19.3.2.3. Strategy 19.3.2.4. Financial Performance 19.3.3. Aon PLC 19.3.3.1. Company Overview 19.3.3.2. Products And Services 19.3.3.3. Strategy 19.3.3.4. Financial Performance 19.3.4. Arthur J Gallagher & Co 19.3.4.1. Company Overview 19.3.4.2. Products And Services 19.3.4.3. Strategy 19.3.4.4. Financial Performance 19.3.5. Brown & Brown Inc 19.3.5.1. Company Overview 19.3.5.2. Products And Services 19.3.5.3. Strategy 19.3.5.4. Financial Performance 20. Key Mergers And Acquisitions In The Insurance Brokers & Agents Market 21. Market Background: Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market 21.1. Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market Characteristics 21.2. Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F Growth, By Segment, Value ($ Billion), Global 21.3. Global Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market, 2019, By Region, Value ($ Billion) 21.4. Global Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, Historic And Forecast, By Region 21.5. Global Insurance(Providers, Brokers and Re-Insurers) Market, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, Segmentation By Type, Value ($ Billion) 22. Recommendations 22.1. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market In 2023- Growth Countries 22.2. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market In 2023- Growth Segments 22.3. Global Insurance Brokers & Agents Market In 2023- Growth Strategies 23. Appendix 24. Copyright And Disclaimer Companies Mentioned Marsh & McLennan Cos Inc Willis Towers Watson PLC Aon PLC Arthur J Gallagher & Co Brown & Brown Inc For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/anuxd8 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com Yves here. Were returning to Andrew Dittmers libertarian series after a Labor Day hiatus. His Code Name Cain wrestles with the apparent necessity of lobbying. By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience. This post was first published on December 5, 2011 Simulposted at The Distributist Review This is the fifth installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppes 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed. ANDREW: In the last interview, you told us how GLOs [government-like organizations] in the Middle Ages were noblemen, publicly recognized as being a cut above the ordinary person. Have the rich people and corporate leaders of today also risen to the top by being natural leaders? CODE NAME CAIN: No. Rich men still exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortune directly or indirectly to the state. Hence they are often more dependent on the states continued favors than people of far lesser wealth Their conduct is not marked by special virtue, dignity, or taste but is a reflection of the proletarian mass culture of present-orientedness, opportunism, and hedonism. [73-74] ANDREW: How did this happen? CNC: Unfortunately, democracy has succeeded in the ultimate destruction of the natural elites. The fortunes of great families have dissipated, and their tradition of culture and economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership has been forgotten. [73] ANDREW: Its the fault of democracy? The noble families themselves bear no responsibility for their decadence? CNC: Maybe the noble families should have tried harder to resist democracy, but yes Hans-Hermann Hoppe proves in his book that democratic government always leads to welfare state socialism. The United States of today is a case in point. ANDREW: Libertarians are in general very critical of modern democracies. Still, many think that a legitimate government could exist, provided that it is very small and only does things that libertarians think are good. CNC: Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, and even the sellouts at the Cato Institute have all worked hard to defend the rights of producers. However, they naively imagine that democratic government can be tamed: transformed into a reliable machine that will safeguard property and contracts without getting other ideas about its proper role in society. ANDREW: Are you sure that they are wrong? CNC: Completely sure. As I just told you, the destructive nature of government is a theorem, proven by applying the rules of elementary logic. ANDREW: Can you explain the theorem to us? CNC: The proof is best explained using the concept of time preference from Austrian economics. Draw a downward-sloping time preference curve for a given individual in the beginning of humanity ANDREW: Even though you might find a technical approach more elegant, you will reach a bigger audience if you explain the idea in ordinary language. CNC: Some precision will of course be lost, but I can try The idea is simple, yet profound. Begin by assuming that a government official is rational, and therefore acts in order to use the government apparatus to his personal advantage [Since] he does not own [the government] [h]e cannot sell government resources and privately pocket the receipts from such sales, nor can he pass government possessions to his personal heir [Consequently, a] president will use up as much of the government resources as quickly as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume. [24] ANDREW: Past presidents like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are millionaires. If your theory was correct, they would have plundered so much of the countrys resources that they would be richer more like billionaires. CNC: Ahh Thats what I thought when I first read Hans-Hermann Hoppes book. But you see, Dr. Hoppe thinks at the level of abstract theory. You have to understand how to apply his categories to the real world. Although Dr. Hoppe uses president as an example of a government official, there are many government officials, and they are all trying to plunder the government. What is more, there are official government officials, and there are also unofficial government officials, like lobbyists and campaign contributors and the presidents of too-big-to-fail (i.e. government-sponsored) banks. The plunder tally is too small if you dont count the booty of both official and unofficial government officials. ANDREW: Is this just your interpretation, or is it Dr. Hoppes, too? CNC: Well, he could maybe have been a little clearer. But he definitely understands. For instance, he points out that it is not likely that dullards, even if they make up the majority, will systematically outsmart and enrich themselves at the expense of a minority of bright and energetic individuals frequently it will actually be the better-off who succeed in being subsidized by the worse-off. [97] In other words, he agrees that welfare states mainly end up subsidizing unofficial government officials. ANDREW: I see. Anyway, you were explaining why you think other libertarians are chasing a mirage when they strive for a government that is as small as possible CNC: Right. As I was saying, Dr. Hoppes theory is strikingly accurate. Even professors from the mainstream like Tom Ferguson and Simon Johnson admit that Dr. Hoppe is right and that U.S. government decisions are, in reality, made by lobbyists and large campaign contributors. There is also broad agreement that any given unofficial government official is not sure when the party will be over for the interests he represents, and so he tries to plunder as much as possible now, with no thought for the future. Now lets take those pro-government libertarians I just mentioned. They know that the masses are not intelligent, they know that democracy is just a theater where the unofficial government officials use coercion to steal from productive people and then they forget it all and mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people [92]. They foolishly think that they can use the democratic process to redirect the unofficial government officials! Or that they can persuade the unofficial government officials to give up the benefits of lobbying and move toward a free society!! ANDREW: So youre saying that lobbyists run the government, the corporations they represent dont want a libertarian-style small government so it wont happen. CNC: Exactly. ANDREW: Id like to prove a theorem, too. Can I try? CNC: Sure but keep in mind that it takes a lot of practice to reason correctly about economic affairs. ANDREW: Ill never learn unless I try Begin by assuming that CEOs are rational, and therefore act in order to use the corporate apparatus for their personal advantage. Since they dont own the corporation, their incentive is to use up the corporations resources as quickly as possible what they dont consume now, they might never be able to consume. CNC: Your amateurism is showing. The behavior you describe is impossible, since stockholders only allow a CEO to run a corporation if they are confident that the CEO will act in their best interests. ANDREW: I thought there was lots of evidence that CEOs have been extracting much larger payments from their corporations than in the past. Are you sure you arent mindlessly accepting the myth that corporate governance is of, by, and for the stockholders? CNC: Sophistry. ANDREW: But think of how well your theory generalizes from democratic governments to GLOs! For example, bank traders at European banks like UBS deliberately bought lots of risky securities so that they could manipulate their own accounting rules and get paid large bonuses. We could call the traders unofficial corporate officials who cooperated with the official corporate officials in consuming the banks resources. CNC: If this was really happening, then stockholders would have stopped investing in the bank in question. Unless, of course, there was government interference. Thats why its so important to concentrate on the flaws of democratic government. ANDREW: Hmm If you and Dr. Hoppe think that the problem with democracy is that government decisions are bought and sold with money, why dont you try to fix the democracy so that it is less about money and lobbyists? CNC: Try to stop productive people from influencing elections using their money? Thats a terrible idea it means stifling individuals and organizations with large sums of money. It means suppressing their views about politics. ANDREW: Is it that you want everyone to be able to express their views about politics, or is it particularly important for some people to do so? CNC: The latter, of course. [I]magine that the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds. [The resulting governments] policies would most definitely reflect the legitimate concerns of children to have adequate and equal access to free french fries, lemonade, and videos. [95] Similarly, if we had democratic decision-making on a global scale, the government would probably find that the so-called Western world had far too much wealth With these thought experiments in mind, there can be no doubt about [95] the negative consequences of one-person, one-vote. ANDREW: So the problem is that the wrong people will end up voting. But what if only the right people vote? Would you support turning the U.S. into a dictatorship ruled by the Chamber of Commerce? Or if you prefer, you could put Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform in the top spot. CNC: The result would certainly be more farsighted, future-oriented decisions than we have today However, you have forgotten that libertarians do not make compromises when defending liberty. My principles would compel me to oppose a government of the sort you describe, no matter how economically sensible its policies might be. And to set the record straight, I am confident that Grover shares my idealism. ANDREW: Since you think the role of money in democracy should not change, that must mean that you accept lobbying as a necessary evil linked to the existence of a government. CNC: There are certain dark realities that we have to deal with while living in an unfree society. ANDREW: Do you lobby governments? CNC: Personally, I wish only to work, produce, and enjoy the fruits of [my] labor. However, if politics is permitted, even [people like me are] affected. In order to defend themselves against attacks on their liberty and property by those who have fewer moral scruples, even honest, hardworking people must become become political animals and spend more and more time and energy developing their political skills. [275-276] ANDREW: You are sometimes forced to engage in lobbying. CNC: Yes. For example, the current meme in the investment community is that the combination of climate change and population growth will make it almost impossible to have enough food for the world by the year 2050. Farmland is soaring in price. My hedge fund discovered uncultivated land in the African country of ***. The land did not belong to anyone, and so we tried to buy it from the relevant government. Outrageously, certain officials from *** insisted on ANDREW: Bribes? CNC: arrangements before they would agree to sell the land at a fair price. ANDREW: Was this farmland unoccupied? CNC: No one owned the land before we bought it. ANDREW: But was someone living there? CNC: There were some local tribesmen who claimed that they had a vague traditional right to the land. Decisive action was necessary before they stopped squatting on our land. ANDREW: Involving trucks of men carrying machine guns. Has it ever occurred to you that this success for your hedge fund was achieved at the cost a lot of real coercion of real people? CNC: It has occurred to me an unruly band of people aggressively trespassed on my land. My rights were violated and I was forced to make a substantial financial sacrifice in order to defend myself from coercion. ANDREW: It must have been terrible One thing that I have been wondering about it sounds like you do not have much respect for many GLOs of today. You believe that few of them are led by productive geniuses instead, many business leaders are instead disreputable people who lobby governments and owe their fortunes to the State. CNC: I criticize immoral behavior whether the perpetrators are government officials or businessmen. If CEOs spend their time lobbying and being political entrepreneurs, that is bad. You need to remember that competition is not always good. Competition in the production of goods is good, but competition in the production of bads is not. [275] As a result of open political competition the entire character structure of society [becomes] distorted, and more and more bad characters [rise] to the top. [275] ANDREW: But then why are you trying to help these people dominate the world of the future? CNC: You ask an interesting question. Its true that a lot of current GLOs are actually looters and moochers. But trying to sort out which GLOs are legitimate and which are illegitimate would be complicated and ultimately impossible and so why not create a society in which at least some of the GLOs in charge will be people who have earned their wealth by engaging in productive activities? ANDREW: People like you? CNC: Yes, like me. In the concluding part of this interview, Code Name Cain tries to delve deep into the cognitive biases that prevent his interviewer from having a mature understanding of libertarian principles. _____ Note: bank traders at European banks like UBS deliberately bought lots of risky securities Yves Smiths ECONNED, Chapter 9 NASA satellites provided a look at the rainfall potential in Hurricane Sally before and after it made landfall in southern Alabama. NASA's Aqua satellite and IMERG analysis were used to analyze the storm's flooding potential. Sally came ashore on Wednesday, Sept. 16 around 5:45 a.m. EDT near Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale with sustained winds near 105 mph (169 kph). As a slow-moving storm, Sally generated a lot of rainfall, left behind flooded streets and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands on the U.S. Gulf Coast. NASA's Infrared View of Sally Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides are stronger than others. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud top temperatures. NASA provides that data to forecasters at NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC so they can incorporate it in their forecasting. On Sept. 16 at 3:11 p.m. EDT (1911 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Sally using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around the center of circulation and to the northeast and east of the center. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain. At that time, the AIRS image showed those strong storms over the Florida Panhandle, much of Alabama, Georgia and extending into western South Carolina. On Sept. 16 at 3:11 p.m. EDT (1911 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Sally using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found the coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around the center of circulation and to the northeast and east of the center. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain. Credit: NASA JPL/Heidar ThrastarsonNASA Calculates Sally's Rainfall NASA combined data from multiple satellites to estimate the rainfall from Hurricane Sally in near-real time at half-hourly intervals from September 11-16, 2020. Rainfall rates and rainfall accumulations are estimated using NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) algorithm. IMERG combines observations from a fleet of satellites, in near-real time, to provide near-global estimates of precipitation every 30 minutes. Rain rates along Sally's track periodically exceeded 1 inch/hour near its core and combined with its slow speed, led to high accumulations along the Gulf Coast. By 5:00 a.m. CDT (1000 UTC) on Sep. 16, IMERG had estimated total accumulations along the southern Alabama coastline and western Florida Panhandle exceeding 16 inches in some locations. NOAA rain gauge observations were broadly consistent with the IMERG accumulations. Sally Breaks a Pensacola Rainfall Record The National Weather Service at the Pensacola Regional Airport in Florida reported 18.17 inches of rainfall from Sally on Sept. 16. That broke the previous record of 5.28 inches on that date in 1979. Forecast for Excessive Rainfall Over the U.S. Southeast NHC's key message is about the rainfall from Sally: Widespread flooding is expected from central Georgia through southeastern Virginia. Along the central Gulf Coast, most widespread moderate to major river flooding from the historic rainfall event will crest by the weekend, but rivers will remain elevated well into next week. NHC Rainfall totals expected as Sally moves across the Southeast U.S. through Friday: Central Georgia: Sally will produce additional rainfall totals of 3 to 6 inches, with localized higher amounts, on top of 3 to 6 inches, which has already fallen. Widespread flash flooding and minor to moderate river flooding is likely. Central to upstate South Carolina: 3 to 6 inches, with isolated amounts of 10 inches. Widespread flash flooding and minor to moderate river flooding is likely. Western to central North Carolina into south-central and southeast Virginia: 4 to 6 inches, isolated amounts up to 8 inches. Flash flooding and widespread minor river flooding is likely. Sally's Status on Sept. 17 At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Depression Sally was located near latitude 31.8 degrees north and longitude 85.7 degrees west. The center was about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Montgomery, Alabama. The depression is moving toward the northeast near 12 mph (19 kph) and a northeastward to east-northeastward motion is expected into Friday. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 30 mph (45 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure based on nearby surface observations is 1000 millibars. Senior Hurricane Specialist Stacy Stewart of NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. noted, "Although the overall convective cloud and rain shield in satellite and radar imagery continues to erode, Tropical Depression Sally is still producing significant rainfall across east-central Alabama and west-central and central Georgia. Surface observations and Doppler radar data indicate that Sally has weakened to a 25 knots [29 mph/46 kph] depression over southeastern Alabama." Sally's Forecast Track NHC says that additional weakening is forecast during the next couple of days, and Sally is expected to become a remnant low by tonight or Friday morning. On the forecast track, the center of Sally will move across southeastern Alabama this morning, over central Georgia this afternoon and evening, and move over South Carolina late tonight into Friday, Sept. 18. ### NASA Researches Earth from Space For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration. For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov By Rob Gutro NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Dallas, Texas, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Hand and Equipment Sanitizers Market by Product (Gel, Foam, Liquid, Others), Distribution Channel (Hypermarket & Supermarket, Specialty Store, Drug Store), and Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, Central and South America), Global Forecasts 2020 to 2028 study provides an elaborative view of historic, present and forecasted market estimates. Request a pdf sample at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/1607 It aims to increase the growth of the global manual sanitizer market by providing the customer inclinations in health and wellness as product innovation such as fragrance addition to sanitizer formulation. The market is projected to reach more than USD 9 billion by the end of 2025. A higher prevalence of chronic conditions is projected to increases demand for hand hygiene products. The risks of infections in hospitals and increased chronic diseases have led to increased attention being focused on how to lessen them. In APAC, the number of operations is high due to the increasing number of cosmetic operations. The need for sanitizers in the healthcare industry is rising, due to the increased number of surgeries. Browse the full report with Table of Contents and List of Figures at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/industry-reports/hand-and-equipment-sanitizers-market Equipment sanitizers improves the quality and shelf life of finished goods in the complete Ecolab system of products and service. Its easy to prepare the sanitizing solution by mixing x amount of equipment sanitizer with x gallons of water to provide x ppm available chlorine by weight. At nearly 100 ppm equipment sanitizers act as an effective sanitizer against vibrio cholerae, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi and Escherichia coli. If the solution contains chlorine that is less than 50 ppm, then either discard the solution or add enough product to restore the required PPM residue as specified in a suitable test kit. In terms of geography, the market is segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa. Key players include Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, Procter and Gamble, The Himalaya Drug Company, GOJO Industries, Inc., Henkel AG and Company, Unilever, Vi-Jon, Chattem, Inc., Best Sanitizers, Inc., Kutol Direct purchase the report at https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/researchreport/purchase/1607 Major Points from Table of Contents: Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Research Methodology Chapter 3. Executive Summary Chapter 4. Market Outlook Chapter 5. Hand and Equipment Sanitizers Market by Product, 2019 2028, (in USD billion) Chapter 6. Hand and Equipment Sanitizers Market by Distribution Chanel, 2019 2028, (in USD billion) Chapter 7. Hand and Equipment Sanitizers Market by Region, 2019 2028, (in USD billion) Chapter 8. Company Profiles Chapter 9. Appendix Access research repository of Upcoming Reports @ https://adroitmarketresearch.com/upcoming.html About Us: Adroit Market Research is a global business analytics and consulting company incorporated in 2018. Our target audience is a wide range of corporations, manufacturing companies, product/technology development institutions and industry associations that require understanding of a markets size, key trends, participants and future outlook of an industry. We intend to become our clients knowledge partner and provide them with valuable market insights to help create opportunities that increase their revenues. We follow a code Explore, Learn and Transform. At our core, we are curious people who love to identify and understand industry patterns, create an insightful study around our findings and churn out money-making roadmaps. Election season is underway in N.J. with some county clerks saying they have started to send out mail-in ballots ahead of the Oct. 5 deadline for counties to get them in the mail. In Union County, ballots have already been mailed to voters in Berkeley Heights, Clark, Cranford, Fanwood and Garwood, according to Joanne Rajoppi, the Union County Clerk. She said ballots for Elizabeth are being mailed on Thursday, and the county will mail ballots on a rolling basis in alphabetical order. Theyre going out in waves, Rajoppi said. If we sent them all at the same time, we dont want there to be a problem with the post office. Rajoppi said the county is sending 80 different ballot types some are still being printed and they will go out to more than 360,000 voters. Hunterdon County started mailing its ballots on Sept. 9, said Mary Melfi, the countys clerk. I am mailing towns alphabetically 26 municipalities and have mailed Alexandria Township. Raritan Township is going in the mail (Thursday) for a total of approximately 71,000 ballots with five municipalities to go Readington, Stockton, Tewksbury, Union and West Amwell. Melfi said she hopes the mailings will be completed next week, and shes updating voters on Facebook and the countys election website. Cumberland County said it started mailing military and overseas ballots, but its approximately 85,000 county ballots will start to be mailed on Sept. 28. Other counties havent started yet. In Bergen County, more than 600,000 ballots will be mailed starting on Monday, Sept. 21, said Bergen County Clerk John Hogan. Theyre being printed now and are next headed to the mail house, he said. They dont all go out at once. They will probably go out by regions as the printer finishes them and the mail house gets them, he said. Hogan said he doesnt expect any issues with the postal service, noting theyve had meetings about the election and Bergen County hasnt had problems in the past. They were told to expect delivery within seven days, he said. If for some reason a town calls and says deliveries are approaching seven days, we have a contact in the postal service that we can call, he said. Hogan called voting by mail safe, secure and easy. The time of debating and discussing how the election is going to be carried out has passed, he said. No more resisting, no more conspiracy theories. Now lets deliver the election. Sussex Countys target date to start mailing ballots is Sept. 25, said Deputy Clerk Angela Rosa. The county will mail ballots to 104,000 registered voters covering 24 ballot types. If we can get them out earlier, we will, Rosa said. In Monmouth County, the ballots will start to go out in late September, said Christine Giordano Hanlon, the county clerk. Im planning to mail them all in a short time period not weeks apart. More like days apart as they are ready to go, she said. Shes telling voters to contact her office if they dont get their ballot by Oct. 13. Its not because of anticipated postal service issues, but because some ballots may be returned to the county because the address in the statewide voter registration system may be incorrect. For the primary, more than 8,000 ballots were returned to the county, she said. If that ever happens to you, the county will mail you a new ballot or you pick one up at the clerks office, she said. Hanlon also said voters shouldnt worry about what they see on social media as it relates to the postal service and ballot delivery dates. She said her town, for example, has always received mail a few days later than neighboring towns. Also, she noted, those who register to vote close to the Oct. 13 cutoff probably wont have their ballots mailed with the first batch. As new registrations come in, ballots will go out on a rolling basis or it could be one big batch, she said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com. A dog named Emma Zen isnt a Dalmatian, but shes visited most of the fire departments on the West Coast. When the Great Dane/Labrador retriever mix was just 4 months old, firefighters rescued her from the devastating wildfires in Southern California in 2017. They took her to an animal shelter in Anaheim, California, where she was placed on a fire hold to wait to be reunited with her family. Sadly, no one ever came to claim her but when she became available for adoption, Debra Jo Chiapuzio took her home. Shes as Zen as her name: super mellow, super sweet, easygoing and very adventurous, Chiapuzio told TODAY. For decades, Chiapuzio had been teaching pet first aid and CPR in her spare time. She wanted the fire department in Anaheim to have special pet oxygen masks to protect dogs in her community like Emma Zen. Oxygen masks for humans cant properly fit over animal snouts, but pet oxygen masks have rubber seals with give and take to completely cover noses and mouths. A firefighter uses a pet oxygen mask on a puppy. (Courtesy of Debra Jo Chiapuzio) Chiapuzio donated 17 masks to the department and trained firefighters on how to use them. Thinking other fire stations could benefit, she created the nonprofit Emma Zen Foundation in 2011 and started reaching out to fire departments from home and on vacation with the organizations namesake by her side. I would go on vacation throughout our Western states and every time I saw a fire department, I'm stopping, Chiapuzio recalled. Im pretty sure Emma has been in about 90% of the fire departments on the West Coast. Emma Zen poses in firefighter gear. (Dogma Pet Portraits) Thanks to that legwork and donations ranging from individual donors and Girl Scout troops to the Annenberg Foundation, the Emma Zen Foundation has donated more than 7,500 pet oxygen masks to firefighters and first responders across America. The masks have primarily saved dogs and cats, but theyve also been used on miniature pigs, guinea pigs and an iguana. The iguana was cute, she said. I saw in New York a firefighter taking a child and a little cage and they put a mask over a hamster just to give him some air because they had taken a family out. Story continues Related: Firefighter John Williams was performing a sweep of a single-family home in Florida when he encountered a critter who needed help. While people dont always know where the masks that helped save their pets come from, Chiapuzio is always moved when she hears from those whose pets have survived fires. In 2017, she got to meet a family with young children and their puppy, Penelope who had been resuscitated by a firefighter who used a mask from the Emma Zen Foundation. The mom said her children weren't really affected like the adults were when it came to property. The only thing they knew was life, and their puppy had it because of us, she said. It just touched my heart in ways I don't think I've ever felt. The adults knew the devastation and the children only knew life. Debra Jo Chiapuzio holds a puppy rescued from a fire alongside the dog's family. (Courtesy of Debra Jo Chiapuzio) Chiapuzio, 58, is a former medical tattoo artist who worked with cancer survivors and burn victims like firefighters. Word spread with firefighters after she successfully tattooed hair onto the burned leg of a man named Patrick, and he was able to wear shorts for the first time in 12 years. He told a friend, who told a friend, who told a friend, and I was working on adding continuity of tone, color, skin and hair to people who had been in fires, she said. I found myself in this really unique niche and I loved to be there. Debra Jo Chiapuzio hugs Emma Zen. (Courtesy of Debra Jo Chiapuzio) Since the need for emergency preparedness shows no signs of slowing down, Chiapuzio now focuses her attention on The Emma Zen foundation full time. Emma Zen herself, now 13, continues to support the cause. Shes got arthritis and is slowing down, but her foundation is not, Chiapuzio said. Emma Zen enjoys home life with Chiapuzio and her husband, as well as a host of pets that includes three macaws, a 200-pound tortoise and a 150-pound pig named Baby Banks. A bird rests on the back of a pig. (Courtesy of Debra Jo Chiapuzio) We jokingly call it the Zen Zoo, she said with a laugh. Everybody walks around with everybody else. The parrots ride on the back of the pig; the cat sleeps with the dog. While her path in life has had many twists and turns, shes grateful for her experiences and to Emma Zen for inspiring the Emma Zen Foundation. If I died tomorrow, we left behind Emma and I something that means more to me than anything, and thats the animals on this planet, she said. This has been my biggest accomplishment, and I was led there by a dog. LANSING, MI - Two parents carried rifles while their daughter shouldered a BB gun. Others wore British Revolutionary War costumes to mock Gov. Gretchen Whitmers coronavirus-prevention policies. And some Black Detroiters were there advocating for more diversity in the gun rights movement. They were among about 1,000 demonstrators from across Michigan gathered on the State Capitol lawn Thursday in Lansing to support open-carry gun rights and protest a recent push to ban guns from the Capitol building. Panel votes down Michigan Capitol gun ban proposals, but talks continue While occasionally addressing other issues such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-home measures, speakers at the Sep. 17 rally focused on the rights of protesters, many of whom carrying pistols and rifles out in the open. Whether you decide to open carry or concealed carry, that is your choice. It is not my job to make that decision for you," said Tom Lambert, former president of Michigan Open Carry, to the crowd before pointing back to the Capitol building. It is not their job to make that decision for you either. While the protest was planned weeks prior, the gun rights rally comes days after the Michigan State Capitol Commission voted down two proposals to impose weapons bans in the state Capitol building. The six-member state panel voted down a proposal to completely ban firearms in the Capitol 2-4, and split 3-3 on a motion to ban open carry in the building. The panel is deliberating with Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield to try to find common ground, said Commission Chair Gary Randall. Firearms have long been allowed in and around the Michigan Capitol building, and members of the public are allowed to enter the building without being checked by security. Thats not the case in the U.S. Capitol and many other state Capitol buildings around the country. A few Republican politicians spoke about the proposal, including Sen. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte. He argued the Capitol Commission doesnt have the authority to ban guns from the building. The Capitol Commission deals with the care and upkeep of the Capitol building, the grounds here that you see and upkeep of the statues, he said. But they dont have the ability to set policy within the Capitol building itself. Both Attorney General Dana Nessel and independent counsel retained by the commission found the panel does indeed have the authority, although some commissioners were hesitant to make a determination without some legislative input. Its been four months since armed gunmen stood above elected officials while they worked, Michigan Senate Democrats said via Twitter this week. Legislators, staff, children & teachers shouldnt have to fear guns in the Capitol. David Dude Dudenhoefer, Republican challenger for U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaibs 13th District seat, said while the optics of hundreds of rifled protesters in the Capitol building during an April 30 rally may not look good to some, its no reason to deny people their Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense. Protesters pack into Capitol, chant let us in when blocked from House proceedings Wherever you go, you have the right to defend yourself, he said. If there are places where they restrict that right, thats a criminal empowerment zone. He also pointed that no armed protester has discharged a shot in front or inside the Capitol building, comparing it to violence during police brutality protests in Detroit. It changes nothing: Detroit police chief defends department after judge issues restraining order After two hours of speeches, approximately 1,000 demonstrators marched around the Capitol grounds to the Michigan Hall of Justice. Organizers warned those carrying firearms were not allowed to bring their guns into the Hall of Justice due to a Michigan Supreme Court administrative order. Instead, the throng gathered on the Hall of Justice steps and chanted U-S-A" and Four more years for President Donald Trump. At one point, about two dozen members of the Proud Boys, a western chauvinist group that was recently involved in physical scuffles during a march in Kalamazoo, started chanting F--- Antifa! Why the Proud Boys visited Kalamazoo Phil Robinson, a member of the Michigan Liberty Militia, spoke at Thursday, Sep. 17's gun rights rally about how some groups that show up distract from Second Amendment issues. Photo by Nicole Hester, MLive.Nicole Hester Members of the group declined to be interviewed. Other protesters didnt want to be associated with the controversial group, such as Phil Robinson of Michigan Liberty Militia. We are here exercising our rights, nothing more, Robinson said. Some people seem to be here spinning different messages, but we dont want that here. Robinson, a Berrien County man, and his group marched with Black Lives Matter protesters in Grand Rapids and Hastings in the wake of George Floyds death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. He stressed that gun rights are for people of every color and background. Everyone should be out here exercising their rights," he said. Everybody! I encourage it. After the march to the Hall of Justice, demonstrators returned to the Capitol lawn before breaking down tents and heading home without incident. Read more from MLive: Nursing home debate gets heated with Michigan health director testifying at COVID-19 oversight hearing AG Barr compares pandemic lockdown to slavery during Hillsdale College speech, takes aim at BLM Biden campaign launches virtual tour of Michigan businesses harmed by COVID-19 Enable Irelands annual Life With No Limits campaign takes place from September 19-30. The public can support Enable Irelands services for over 9,200 children and adults with disabilities by purchasing Life With No Limits merchandise from Enable Irelands charity shop in Longford or by donating online at www.enableireland.ie The campaign provides a platform for children and adults with disabilities using Enable Ireland services to share their life experiences while raising much-needed funds to support the charitys work. This year more than ever, the charity is relying on the publics support for their vital therapy and support services. Like many charities, Enable Ireland has been significantly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and is facing a loss of 1.5million in funding due to the cancellation of fundraising events and their charity shops being closed for three months. This years Life with No Limits champion is Cillian McSweeney. Cillian is a talented songwriter and a music lover. He plays and writes music using assistive technology on his computer. Cillian attends Enable Ireland services in Little Island, Cork. Cillian says, Technology is a huge part of my life. It allows me to be independent as I also use a power wheelchair using head switches and I use eyegaze technology to write and communicate. My message for others is not to give up hope. I have always had a dream - I always wanted to perform with a band, and to write music. My disability has never bothered me, I have always believed in myself. I believe you can make your own dreams come true. I have a lot of hope and that gives me strength. Donal Kitt, Enable Ireland National Fundraising Manager comments on the campaign, It is a really positive campaign and vitally important for raising awareness of living with a disability and raising funds for Enable Irelands services. There are lots of ways you can help buy our Life With No Limits merchandise in our charity shops or make a donation online at www.enableireland.ie. Now more than ever we need the help of the public to raise funds to support our services for children and adults with disabilities. Enable Irelands services for children with disabilities and their families cover all aspects of a child's physical, educational, and social development from early infancy through adolescence. For adults, they offer a range of services which include day care, training, personal development, supported and independent living, and social and leisure activities. Support the Enable Ireland Life with No Limits campaign from 19-30 September and help raise vital funds for disability services. Life with No Limits merchandise is on sale in Enable Ireland charity shops nationwide. You can also support Enable Ireland this September by donating a bag of quality clothing or household items into any TK Maxx store nationwide as part of their Give Up Clothes For Good campaign. Or visit your local Homesense store to pick up a special notebook with quotes inspired by children and young people from Enable Ireland services. A handwritten note by late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, which dates back to April 2018, has been found. The note details his daily activities, from waking up at 2.30am to chanting Vedic hymns after having tea and a cold shower. In the note, which is from April 27, 2018, Sushant also mentions a to-do list, which includes no smoking. It appears that he was trying to kick the habit in 2018. The note also mentions that he must spend time with Kriti, presumably referring to his close friend and Raabta co-star Kriti Sanon. The note, accessed by India Today from Sushants Pavana farmhouse, also reminds him to read the script of Kedarnath the next day. It has no mention of Rhea Chakraborty, whom he entered into a relationship with in April 2019. Sushant was found dead at his apartment in Mumbai on June 14. After an initial investigation by the Mumbai Police, the case is now being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). A parallel investigation is being run by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), who are looking into the money laundering and drugs angles, respectively. Also read: Ram Gopal Varma backs Urmila Matondkar after soft porn star jibe, says she has more than proved her versatile talent Rhea was arrested by the NCB on September 8 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. She has been accused of procuring drugs for Sushant. However, no contraband was found at her residence at the time of her arrest. She is currently lodged at Byculla jail. Sushants family filed an abetment to suicide case against Rhea in July. In a press conference earlier this month, senior advocate Vikas Singh, who is representing the family in the case, said that they had doubts that it was not a case of suicide. After the events that have unfolded after the registration of the FIR, the family has doubts that it could be murder as well. But we are leaving it to the investigation. We hope that the CBI will get to the bottom of this, the lawyer said. If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist. Helplines: Aasra: 022 2754 6669; Sneha India Foundation: +914424640050 and Sanjivini: 011-24311918 Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Captain Amarinder Singh Chandigarh: Slamming SAD for its concerted attempt to divert public attention from its failure to protect the rights and interests of the farmers, a group of Punjab Congress leaders, including PPCC president and Cabinet Ministers, on Thursday said that in sharp contrast to the Akalis, the Congress was totally in unison over the Farm Bills, and had not needed a whip to vote against the Union Governments reprehensible bid to destroy the states agriculture. Congress Advertisement They were reacting to the statement of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema over the fact that the Chief Minister had led a delegation yesterday to submit a memorandum to the Governor on the issue instead of directing his MPs to express solidarity with the farming community by voting against the agri ordinances. The Congress MPs have been fighting against these dangerous anti-Punjab ordinances from the outset and knew which way to vote, unlike those of the SAD, whose MPs were totally lost due to the total lack of clarity or direction from their leadership, which has been changing its stance on key issues to suit their personal interests, said Manish Tiwari, himself an MP. He was joined by PPCC president, Sunil Jakhar, and cabinet ministers, Manpreet Badal, Sukhjinder Randhawa and Bharat Bhushan Ashu. Advertisement Sunil JakharThe Congress MPs, not just from Punjab but around the country, had voted against the bills, which, unfortunately, the BJP-led NDA, of which the Akalis continue shamelessly to be a part, succeeded in passing through brute majority in the House by voice vote, they said in a statement. The Congress members of Parliament already had clear directions from the party leadership, including Captain Amarinder Singh as well as the high command in Delhi, on the partys stand on the Ordinances, which the Akalis openly and clearly supported at the time of their introduction, they said. Why would they need new directions, given that there had been no change in Captain Amarinders or Congress stand on the issue, unlike SADs Sukhbir Badal? they quipped. They pointed out that it was SAD, along with the BJP, which had refused to reject the Ordinances during all-party meet convened by Captain Amarinder, and had subsequently stayed away from the Vidhan Sabha session to avoid voting for the resolution against the same. Advertisement The sudden U-turn by SAD president Sukhbir Badal thereafter naturally left the Akali MPs at a loss to figure out what their partys stand was, necessitating a whip to vote against the Bills in Parliament, they added. Amarinder Singh and Sukhbir BadalThe Congress, with its principled stand on the issue all through, did not need to issue any such whip, said the Congress leaders, adding that these theatrics by SAD would not help undo the damage they had already done to the farmers of Punjab and, in fact, the entire country. Nor would their crocodile tears befool the people of Punjab, on which the Akalis had inflicted massive damage during 10 years of their misrule and whose interests they shamelessly continued to harm as a member of the Union Government. Advertisement Even now, they said, Sukhbir and his wife Harsimrat Badal, a minister in the Union Cabinet, continue to cling to their pretense of power in the NDA in the hope of promoting their petty personal interests. Why has Harsimrat not quit the Cabinet? Why has Sukhbir not pulled SAD out of the NDA even after the Narendra Modi government failed to address their purported concerns on the farm Bills? asked the Congress ministers & MPs, adding that the entire drama had clearly been enacted by the Akalis for public consumption, with no intent whatsoever to protect the interests of Punjab and its farmers. Captain Amarinder SAD has not only made a mockery of itself but has also thrown Punjabs interests to the wind with their shocking display of double standards on this grave issue, which would affect the states agriculture and further devastate its fragile economy, they said. The Congress leaders expressed shock at Cheemas dismissal of the Chief Ministers submission to the Governor as a photo-op, saying it was obvious that the Akalis did not want the Congress to succeed in raising the grave issue at any important forum. As for acting against the Union Minister of State Raosaheb Danve, who had misled the Parliament with his false statement on Punjabs stand in the high-powered committee on the ordinances, they pointed out that Captain Amarinder had already sought an unequivocal apology from the minister. But the Chief Ministers priority was not taking on one central minister but to try and stop the Centres dangerous Bills, which the Akalis were responsible for bringing to Parliament in the first place, they said, adding that diverting attention from major issues was an Akali forte and the Congress believed in focusing on the main issue at hand, which in this case was to oppose the anti-farmer and anti-federal Bills. CongressThe Congress will continue to fight against these legislations within and outside Parliament and will not get sidetracked by the SAD drama, the party leaders asserted. They were reacting to the statement of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema over the fact that the Chief Minister had led a delegation yesterday to submit a memorandum to the Governor on the issue instead of directing his MPs to express solidarity with the farming community by voting against the agri ordinances. The Congress MPs have been fighting against these dangerous anti-Punjab ordinances from the outset and knew which way to vote, unlike those of the SAD, whose MPs were totally lost due to the total lack of clarity or direction from their leadership, which has been changing its stance on key issues to suit their personal interests, said the ministers. The ministers said the Congress MPs had voted against the bills, which, unfortunately, the BJP-led NDA, of which the Akalis continue shamelessly to be a part, succeeded in passing through brute majority in the House by voice vote. The Congress members already had clear directions from the party leadership, including Captain Amarinder Singh as well as the high command in Delhi, on the partys stand on the Ordinances, which the Akalis openly and clearly supported at the time of their introduction, the minister said. Punjab governmentWhy would they need new directions, given that there had been no change in Captain Amarinders or Congress stand on the issue? they quipped. The ministers pointed out that it was SAD, along with the BJP, which had refused to reject the Ordinances during all-party meet convened by Captain Amarinder, and had subsequently stayed away from the Vidhan Sabha session to avoid voting for the resolution against the same. The sudden U-turn by SAD president Sukhbir Badal thereafter naturally left the Akali MPs at a loss to figure out what their partys stand was, necessitating a whip to vote against the Bills in Parliament, they added. The Congress, with its principled stand on the issue all through, did not need to issue any such whip, said the ministers, adding that these theatrics by SAD would not help undo the damage they had already done to the farmers of Punjab and, in fact, the entire country. Nor would their crocodile tears befool the people of Punjab, on which the Akalis had inflicted massive damage during 10 years of their misrule and whose interests they shamelessly continued to harm as a member of the Union Government. Sukhbir Badal Even now, said the ministers, Sukhbir and his wife Harsimrat Badal, a minister in the Union Cabinet, continue to cling on to their pretense of power in the NDA in the hope of promoting their petty personal interests. Why has Harsimrat not quit the Cabinet? Why has Sukhbir not pulled SAD out of the NDA even after the Narendra Modi government failed to address their purported concerns on the farm Bills? asked the ministers, adding that the entire drama had clearly been enacted by the Akalis for public consumption, with no intent whatsoever to protect the interests of Punjab and its farmers. SAD has not only made a mockery of itself but has also thrown Punjabs interests to the wind with their shocking display of double standards on this grave issue, which would affect the states agriculture and further devastate its fragile economy, said the ministers. The ministers expressed shock at Cheemas dismissal of the Chief Ministers submission to the Governor as a photo-op, saying it was obvious that the Akalis did not want the Congress to succeed in raising the grave issue at any important forum. As for acting against the Union Minister of State Raosaheb Danve, who had misled the Parliament with his false statement on Punjabs stand in the high-powered committee on the ordinances, they pointed out that Captain Amarinder had already sought an unequivocal apology from the minister. But the Chief Ministers priority was not taking on one central minister but to try and stop the Centres dangerous Bills, which the Akalis were responsible for bringing to Parliament in the first place, they said, adding that diverting attention from major issues was an Akali forte and the Congress believed in focusing on the main issue at hand, which in this case was to oppose the anti-farmer and anti-federal Bills. The Congress will continue to fight against these legislations within and outside Parliament and will not get sidetracked by the SAD drama, the ministers asserted. World Health Organization regional director for Europe Hans Kluge has warned that the situation in Europe is as bad as it was at the height of the pandemic. (Getty) As coronavirus cases rise across Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded the alarm about how bad the situation really is. WHOs regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, warned on Thursday the situation was very serious. He said: In the spring and early summer we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off. In June cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers, however, should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Watch: Can the coronavirus affect the brain? Children across Europe have gone back to the classroom. (Getty) Here are three statistics the WHO raised that show how bad the situation is in Europe. Case numbers are higher than they were during the peak of the pandemic Kluge pointed out that weekly case numbers have exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked back in March. Last week, Europe reported more than 300,000 cases. Nations across the continent are carrying out far more tests than they did back in March at the start of the pandemic, so it is accepted the situation was worse back then, but the rapid growth is a cause for concern. France and Spain recorded the highest number of cases in the past two weeks, with 130,000 and 106,000 respectively. Both nations have seen their pandemic get out of control in recent weeks despite strict new guidelines being enforced across their countries. The UK has had the fifth-highest number of cases in the past two weeks at just over 35,000. Read more: Why is Germany faring better than France in the Covid-19 epidemic? crossing the border is prohibited because of the declared quarantine Half of European countries have seen their cases rise by 10% in the past two weeks Half of all countries in Europe have seen at least a 10% increase in cases in the past two weeks. These include most of the high population nations across the continent, including the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Russia. Many nations are introducing new measures to try and combat the spread, and Kluge noted that we now have much more knowledge around combating the virus than we did in March. Story continues But, most countries are reluctant to introduce another nationwide lockdown after the last one had a devastating impact on their economies. Seven countries have seen their coronavirus cases double in two weeks Among the half of nations that have seen at least a 10% increase, seven of them have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period. From those seven countries, Hungary and Georgia have seen by far the steepest rise, with 428% and 591% more cases than they did during the previous two week period respectively. The other nations are: The Czech Republic with a 207% increase in cases Denmark with a 169% increase in cases The UK with a 125% increase in cases Montenegro with a 122% increase in cases Norway with a 100% increase in cases The cost has already been high There have been 4,893,614 cases of COVID-19 across the continent. The total number of cases is likely much higher due to the lack of testing availability at the start of the pandemic. From those nearly five million cases recorded in Europe, WHO says 226,524 people have died. Kluge was keen to point out that these numbers only point out part of the story, he said the cost on our economies, society and mental health has been monumental. He acknowledged many people were suffering from a fatigue when it came to complying with guidelines aimed at stopping the rise in infections and implored nations to find ways to reach out to them. Looking to the future Kluge said: Where the pandemic goes from here is in our hands. We have fought it back before and we can fight it back again. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news, advice and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday extended his greetings on the occasion of Mahalaya and wished the people of the country good health and happiness. Mahalaya marks an end to the month of Pitru Paksha, which is observed by Hindus by remembering their ancestors. The families offer food, money and other gifts to their `Pitras` (ancestors) as a sign of reverence. "This Mahalaya, we pray to Maa Durga to bless with the strength to overcome the global pandemic. May the divine blessings of Maa Durga ensure good health and happiness in everyone`s life. May our planet prosper! Shubho Mahalaya!" PM Modi tweeted. This Mahalaya, we pray to Maa Durga to bless with strength to overcome the global pandemic. May the divine blessings of Maa Durga ensure good health and happiness in everyones life. May our planet prosper! Shubho Mahalaya! Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 17, 2020 Live TV Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also extended her wishes to the people. "On the auspicious occasion of Mahalaya, I extend my warm regards to one and all. Although COVID-19 has restricted how we celebrate festivals, we shall not allow it to dampen the spirit of this Durga Puja. To this end and to lighten up every home, I undertake Mahalaya Protishruti," Banerjee tweeted. On the auspicious occasion of Mahalaya,I extend my warm regards to one & all.Although #COVID19 has restricted how we celebrate festivals, we shall not allow it to dampen the spirit of this Durga Puja. To this end & to lighten up every home,I undertake #MahalayaProtishruti. (1/2) Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) September 16, 2020 As a part of this pledge, I vow to ensure that this Durga Pujo, no one is devoid of the festivities. I urge everyone to come forward, extend a helping hand to those in need & spread joy everywhere. Shubho Mahalaya to everyone! (2/2) Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) September 16, 2020 She also urged everyone to extend a helping hand to those in need. "As a part of this pledge, I vow to ensure that this Durga Puja, no one is devoid of the festivities. I urge everyone to come forward, extend a helping hand to those in need and spread joy everywhere. Shubho Mahalaya to everyone!" she further wrote. Beijing Further Cracking Down on P2P Industry and Its Victims: Leaked Documents China has started shutting down the popular internet finance platform P2P (peer-to-peer lending) since 2018. Just five years ago, P2P, with the backing and promotion of the Chinese regime, became the cutting-edge investment product in China, drawing trillions of funds from private investors. However, P2P has been plagued with collapse and scandal, robbed millions of Chinese of their life savings and even caused some victims to commit suicide. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has started to see the P2P industry and its victims as threats to its political stability and is further cracking down on both of them this year, as shown in the leaked government documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times. The documents and sources also disclosed the secrets behind the dramatic rise and fall of P2P in China and the CCPs heavy involvement. As early as November 2013, Communist Party leader Xi Jinping announced the Decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues of Comprehensively Deepening Reform, formally proposing to develop inclusive finance and encourage financial innovation at the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the CCP. Internet finance, as a product of inclusive finance, quickly gained popularity among local governments of various provinces and cities, and developed very quickly. As a segment of internet finance, P2P was praised by the then governor of the Central Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, in an article published in the central banks media China Finance in October 2015. Zhou said in the article that the Party Central Committee and the State Council encourage and support the development of internet finance. According to industry data, the P2P started to emerge in mainland China in 2007. In 2012, there were only about 160 platforms in the five years. However, since 2013, the number of P2P platforms surged to more than 10,000 in 2018. There were more than 6,000 included in the official statistics and the financing scale exceeded trillions of yuan. P2P Platforms: Government Backed Ponzi Schemes A senior financial expert in mainland China, who goes by the name of Liu Yanlin, in an interview with the Chinese language Epoch Times earlier, revealed the reason behind the CCP regimes strong support for P2P back then. In 2013, China was facing a financial crisis, state owned banks had a huge number of bad debts. The CCP needed to pass on the financial risks to someone else, so it began to foster P2P. Liu explained the key to the CCPs P2P games: the CCP officially advocated P2P online finance, and at the same time, the bad assets that should have been written off as bad debts were repackaged into P2P wealth management products to sell to the Chinese people. Moreover, it loosened up financial supervision and even gave P2P platforms easy access to the fund pool so that the CCP can conveniently play the Ponzi scheme by borrowing the new debts to pay for the old. Liu pointed out that when the risk was passed on to the people who bought the P2P products, the CCP began to tighten its internet financial policy, preparing to puncture the P2P bubble and let it explode. The P2P platforms and the government that backed them just took away the money, while people who invested in the P2P suffer the loss. Ezubao was the typical example of such P2P schemes. Its victims attempts to get justice and compensation were identified as organized threats and should continue being highly concerned, according to the leaked document of Fuyang Public Security Bureaus report in 2020. Ezubao was established in July 2014. With the endorsement and promotion of the CCPs official media such as CCTV, it defrauded nearly 60 billion yuan from the Chinese people in just over a year, and the total amount involved was more than 70 billion yuan. Millions of investors (lenders) lost their life savings. Due to heavy losses and no way to defend their rights, many victims of ezubao have committed suicide, according to a report by Radio Free Asia. More Chinese P2P platforms have collapsed, causing heavy losses to investors. The CCP proposed the Implementation Plan for the Special Rectification of P2P Network Lending Risks in April 2016, requiring all regions to start rectifying P2P platforms. However, the 2016 remediation plan mainly emphasized on the comprehensive investigation, finding out the bottom line and strengthening the guidance of public opinion, nothing about protecting investors rights and helping the victims. In practice, the CCP had continued to condone P2P expansion and allowed the bubble to burst. The Chinese regimes direct involvement in the P2P can also be found in mainland Chinas own media reports. According to a report by China Times in June 2016, the Wannian county government of Jiangxi Province established the provinces first county-level P2P online lending platform in April 2016. The platform was led by the local government and wholly owned by the government, and cooperated with Jiangxis largest P2P platform Bojindai to establish a subsidiary. Wannian county may be the first CCP local government to openly participate in the operation of P2P, but it is not an exception. More local governments and influential people, like financial sharks with ties to CCP officials, were lurking behind the P2P scene. Police at the P2P protest in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang Province, China on Oct. 1, 2018. (The Epoch Times) In 2018, the United States launched a trade war to counter the CCPs economic aggression; at the same time, the negative consequences of Chinas shared debt stimulating the economy strategy began to erupt. Under domestic and foreign difficulties, Chinas debt crisis has deteriorated rapidly, the capital chain of internet finance has been broken on a large scale, and P2P has become a minefield. In the same year, the CCP started cracking down on the P2P sector, as it saw the large number of P2P victims as a threat to its political stability. P2P Is a Stability Issue for the CCP Since 2018, the CCP has started cracking down the P2P sector through tightened regulations and put more efforts on the oppression of P2P victims. In 2020, the CCP continues to eradicate it, which shows clearly in the internal documents of different regional governments. Instead of helping the victims, the CCP sees them as a potential threat to its stability that needs to be squashed, ordering local governments to be on high alert and preventing them from organizing to protect their rights and seeking compensations, as the recently leaked government documents reveal. For example, the Anhui Mutual Financial Remediation Office issued the Notice on Quickly Filling in Information Related to the Disposal of Stock Business on April 3, 2020, and the Notice on Establishing a System for Reporting the Progress of Disposal of Stock Business of Discontinued Online Loan Institutions on Aug. 20both documents show the CCP continues to shut down the P2P platform this year. In October 2019, the Notice on Transferring Mass Complaints forwarded by the Anhui Provincial Mutual Fund Remediation Office to Fuyang city showed that P2P victims had nowhere to ask for help, despite reported cases to various government departments. And they were blocked from requesting investigations. Some victims were preparing to rally to defend their rights, and they were being stabilized (cracked down upon) by the authorities. According to a report by Chinese news portal Sina on Aug. 14, Guo Shuqing, Chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, admitted that there are currently only twenty-nine P2P platforms in the mainland, and more than 800 billion yuan loan funds remain lost. Current affairs commentator Li Linyi pointed out that the 800 billion funds of the Chinese people were defrauded by the P2P platform and the black hand of the CCP, and powerful people behind it. The CCP does not investigate P2P fraud or pursue the defrauded funds. Instead, it strives to suppress the victims who lost their life savings. It is difficult to imagine how many people have fallen victim to it. The possibility of these people organizing to defend their rights and fighting to get back their hard-earned money is what the CCP fears most. As the historic agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain continue to reverberate across the globe, the reaction from Turkey, the first majority Muslim country to recognize the Jewish state, has triggered a mix of mockery and disbelief. When news broke in late August that the UAE was normalizing ties with Israel, Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara might suspend its own ties with Abu Dhabi because we side with the Palestinian people. Last week, when Bahrain declared it was following suit, Turkey charged this would further encourage Israel to continue illegitimate practices toward Palestine and its efforts to make the occupation of Palestinian lands permanent. It then protested Moroccos decision to open its airspace to civilian flights to Israel. Turkeys own flag carrier, Turkish airlines, makes 14 flights a day to Israel, observed Namik Tan, a former Turkish ambassador to the United States and Israel. The statements are nothing less than laughable, the former envoy said. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogans anti-Israel tirades have made him a hero among Palestinians, but its done little to serve Turkeys national interests. Friendship with Israel had, on the other hand, served Ankara royally. Tight military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries, which peaked in the 1990s with Israeli air force pilots training over Turkish skies, allowed both countries to project power across the region. In Western capitals, it helped Ankara sustain its strategic currency beyond the Cold War. In Washington, being Israels closest Muslim ally ensured bipartisan support in beating back the powerful Greek and Armenian lobbies on the one hand while averting potential sanctions over its dismal human rights record on the other. Today, the United Arab Emirates has succeeded, with much help from Erdogan, in stripping Turkey of its niche status. Rubbing salt in Turkeys wounds, the tiny Gulf nation is getting state-of-the-art, US-made F-35 fighter jets as its ruthless repression of domestic dissent gets swept under the carpet. Turkey has been kicked out of the F-35 consortium and will no longer be getting the planes it helped produce. This is because it refused to scrap its deal with Russia for S-400 missiles that are designed to shoot the US aircraft down. From the point of view of mainstream US policymakers, Erdogan's hostility toward Israel and outreach to Hamas appears to be ideologically motivated and an extension of a broader Islamist, disruptive agenda in the Middle East, noted Merve Tahiroglu, Turkey program coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a think tank in Washington. Its overall impact on the United States has been to magnify Turkey's policies toward the rest of the region and evaluate those moves as part of a broader, strategic Turkish reorientation under Erdogan, she told Al-Monitor. Turkey is a treaty ally to the United States, so it is supposed to be closer than any of the Gulf monarchies. But what is happening in effect is that Washington's doors are closed to Turkey, while the same doors are being opened to the Gulf monarchies, said Selim Koru, an expert at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara. A common fear of Iran is widely seen as the main driver of Israeli and Gulf rapprochement. But Turkeys unabashed mentoring of Hamas and fellow Muslim Brotherhood entities alongside its increasingly aggressive posturing in Syria, Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean are cited as a further reason. This is probably an exaggeration, and Israeli officials emphasize in private that the deal is not against Turkey. Yet Turkey is simultaneously at odds with its NATO allies the United States, France and Greece, as it is with governments in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and most of the Gulf nations. Its sole regional friend is Qatar, who is keen to not alienate Israel. Iran remains neither ally nor foe. Increasingly isolated, its economy on the ropes and its democracy in shreds, Turkey is no longer the beacon that inspired millions of Muslims, lamented a former Turkish diplomat who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name. In hindsight, Erdogans determined political break with Israel starting with his dressing down of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos over Israeli atrocities in Gaza and accelerated by the Mavi Marmara showdown may well have presaged Turkeys gradual unmooring from traditional partnerships with its Western allies. However, Israels behavior under its veteran prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also changed, Koru argued. Turkey and Israel were both market-based economies, roughly rules-based when it came to international conduct, he said. That has changed more for Turkey than for Israel, but it changed for both, I think. Theyre both more political than they used to be. Israeli sources contend, however, that while Turkey remains undeniably influential, its on the wrong side of history. The Abraham Accords have changed the whole paradigm of peacemaking in the Middle East, said a well-placed Israeli source who closely follows Turkey. Turkey could have been the one helping to broker [the accords], but its aligned with Iran and Hamas. Might Turkey reverse course? RTE doesnt have it in his DNA, the source insisted, using Erdogans initials. What is left for RTE is to try to sabotage the deal. In 2009, former Turkish President Abdullah Gul went to Syria and said it was Turkeys gate to the Middle East. Today, Turkeys sole gateway to the Middle East is through the port of Haifa, the Israeli source, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, asserted. He was alluding to trade between the two countries, which paradoxically has continued to expand even after Turkey asked Israels ambassador to leave Ankara in 2018 over further carnage in Gaza and something President Donald Trump did that is, move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. But things may be changing on the economic front as well. Gallia Lindenstrauss, a senior research fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies who specializes in Turkish foreign policy, said, The [commercial] opportunities that are now opening for Israel in the Gulf will influence also Israel's trade relations and aviation connections with Turkey and are likely to cause a decrease in the phenomenal numbers we saw in 2019 both in terms of the number of Israeli [transit] passengers going through Turkey and the record-high trade volume. Of course we will be able to judge the true influence of the Abraham Accords in this respect only after the COVID-19 pandemic will be contained. But it is already clear that there will be an economic impact to this shift of Israel toward the Gulf states, said Lindenstrauss. The question of whether Turkey will continue to lead an independent Muslim Brotherhood axis or whether it will grow closer to Irans axis of resistance is still an open one, Lindenstrauss remarked. Either way, It would be in the interest of Israel and the Gulf states to keep the degree of animosity at a level that will not push Turkey toward Iran beyond their existing cooperation, Lindenstrauss concluded. Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Shimon Peres as Israel's "former Prime Minister." The largest ever survey on global public attitudes towards genomic research and data sharing suggests that work is needed to raise levels of public trust in how genetic data is used in order for that data to fulfil its promise to advance human health and medicine. Researchers from the Society and Ethics Research group at Connecting Science and their collaborators found that less than half of those surveyed would be happy for their genetic information to be shared for more than one purpose. The study, published today (17 September) in the American Journal of Human Genetics, highlights the extent to which public audiences are unfamiliar with, and unwilling to participate in, genomic research. This lack of trust in who data is shared with could significantly hinder genomic research, which relies on the ability for clinicians, non-profit and for-profit researchers to share genetic data with each other across the world. To gauge public attitudes towards genomic research and data sharing, researchers in the Society and Ethics Research Group and collaborators across the world delivered the 'Your DNA, Your Say' survey, which was completed by 36,268 members of the public across 22 countries and in 15 languages. The work contributes to policy for the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), the international community standards organization for genomics. In total, around two in three respondents said they were unfamiliar with DNA, genetics and genomics. While 52 per cent of people said they would donate anonymous DNA and medical information for use by medical doctors, just one in three said they would donate it for use by for-profit companies. Overall, just 42 per cent of respondents said they would trust at least two individuals or organisations with their DNA and health information. Dr Richard Milne, an author of the study from Connecting Science's Society and Ethics Research group, said: "Our survey found a wide gap between how medical professionals on one hand and for-profit researchers on the other are trusted to use personal genetic and healthcare data. Given the prevalence of public-private partnerships in many countries, this is a problem that needs to be addressed - because the benefits to human health that genomics provides requires data to be open to all researchers." The global nature of the study revealed some national idiosyncrasies. Fewer than 30% of participants in Germany, Poland, Russia and Egypt said they trusted more than one user of data; whereas more than 50% in China, India, UK and Pakistan trusted multiple users. In some countries - most notably India, but to a lesser extent the USA, China and Pakistan - the distinction between non-profit and for-profit research is less distinct, with slightly greater acceptance of the need to share data with for-profit organisations. Peter Goodhand, CEO of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), said: "No single research institute or country will be able to fully understand how genes and environment interact to cause disease without global collaboration. The community must develop harmonized approaches to the sharing of anonymised genetic and healthcare data from millions of individuals, representing the whole spectrum of human diversity. We must build broad societal acceptance that donation and sharing of data is of benefit to humankind, so that public audiences can be part of the conversation that determines how genomics will deliver the best outcomes for society." Professor Anna Middleton, Head of Society and Ethics Research in Connecting Science at the Wellcome Genome Campus and lead author of the study, said: "Genomic research is at heart a Big Data science, but it can be easy to forget that each data point originally belonged to a human being. We have shown that public willingness to donate genomic data and trust in data sharing is low around the globe; it is time for the research community to take this seriously. A loss of a global trust could irreparably damage our ability to carry out genomic research, stalling access to important societal benefits. Genomic research exists to serve society, not the other way around." ### Contact details: Dr Matthew Midgley Press Office Wellcome Sanger Institute Cambridge, CB10 1SA Phone: 01223 494856 Email: press.office@sanger.ac.uk Notes to Editors: Publication: Middleton A., Milne R. and Almarri M.A. et al. (2020). Global public perceptions of genomic data sharing: what shapes the willingness to donate DNA and health data? American Journal of Human Genetics. Funding: This research was supported by Wellcome (grant 206194). Selected websites: Your DNA, Your Say (YDYS) Your DNA Your Say is a global social sciences project led by the Society and Ethics Research Group, Connecting Science at the Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge, UK. YDYS is part of the participant values task team of GA4GH. The project website is here; Follow us on Twitter and see our Blog Film overview of the Your DNA Your Say project and translations: https://youtu.be/Dpl3DX0CvLg The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) is an international, nonprofit alliance formed in 2013 to accelerate the potential of research and medicine to advance human health. Bringing together 600+ leading organizations working in healthcare, research, patient advocacy, life science, and information technology, the GA4GH community is working together to create frameworks and standards to enable the responsible, voluntary, and secure sharing of genomic and health-related data. All of our work builds upon the Framework for Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Health-Related Data. Connecting Science Wellcome Genome Campus Connecting Science's mission is to enable everyone to explore genomic science and its impact on research, health and society. We connect researchers, health professionals and the wider public, creating opportunities and spaces to explore genomic science and its impact on people. Connecting Science inspires new thinking, sparks conversation, supports learning and measures attitudes, drawing on the ground-breaking research taking place on the Wellcome Genome Campus. https://connectingscience.wellcomegenomecampus.org/ The Wellcome Sanger Institute The Wellcome Sanger Institute is a world leading genomics research centre. We undertake large-scale research that forms the foundations of knowledge in biology and medicine. We are open and collaborative; our data, results, tools and technologies are shared across the globe to advance science. Our ambition is vast - we take on projects that are not possible anywhere else. We use the power of genome sequencing to understand and harness the information in DNA. Funded by Wellcome, we have the freedom and support to push the boundaries of genomics. Our findings are used to improve health and to understand life on Earth. Find out more at http://www.sanger.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and on our Blog. About Wellcome Wellcome exists to improve health by helping great ideas to thrive. We support researchers, we take on big health challenges, we campaign for better science, and we help everyone get involved with science and health research. We are a politically and financially independent foundation. https://wellcome.ac.uk/ The invaders demand that Ukraine hold local elections in the occupied areas before Russia withdraws its troops and control over the border is handed back to the Ukrainian government. Journalist Sergiy Garmash, who is a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on Donbas settlement, has said the work of the political subgroup and the prisoner swap are being blocked at the Minsk talks. "Despite plenty of conspiracy theories about some secret agreements reached at the latest meeting of the Normandy Four, today's meeting of the Minsk TCG allows us to say that nothing global has been agreed there. Because nothing has changed in the TCG: the work of the political subgroup is still being blocked, as well as the prisoner swap efforts," he wrote on Facebook. Read alsoElections in Donbas amid "leaky" border unimaginable Kuleba "The reason is the same the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada on local elections. Collaborators from ORDLO [certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions] demand that it be brought into line with the Minsk agreements. Russia is still pretending to be an observer," Garmash added. TCG talks: latest Taylor Swift has so effectively reinvented herself as a pop superstar over the past seven years that when she surprise-released her Americana-leaning Folklore album this past July, it almost seemed like a radical departure, rather than a return to her country roots. But on Wednesday, the nine-time Academy of Country Music Award-winner reminded everyone just where she got her start, when she gave her first performance on any country music awards show since 2013, crooning the Folklore track Betty from Nashvilles Grand Ole Opry House at the 55th Annual ACM Awards. Swifts last country awards show performances took place at the 2013 ACMs, when she duetted with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban on McGraws Highway Dont Care, and at the Country Music Association Awards that same year, when she sang the title track to her final country-categorised album, Red, with Vince Gill and Alison Krauss. Read more: Taylor Swift hits out at former labels shameless greed Taylor Swift attends the 55th Academy of Country Music Awards at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo: TASRIGHTSMANAGEMENT2020/Getty Images) A year later, she released her first official pop album, the blockbuster 1989 and aside from a trip to the ACM podium in 2015 to receive a Milestone Award and a couple appearances as a country awards show presenter, she has seemingly never looked back. This Wednesday, Swift still donned some sequins worthy of an appearance on the Billboard Music Awards or VMAs, but her acoustic, stool-seated, harmonica-embellished Betty on the bare Opry stage was an otherwise subdued affair, stripped of all the bells, whistles, backup dancers, and giant hydraulic rattlesnakes of her recent awards show performances and stadium tours. Unsurprisingly, with the ACMs primetime broadcast being a family-friendly affair, she switched the songs original caustic line Would you tell me to go f*** myself? to the radio-edit versions decidedly tamer Would you tell me to go straight to hell? Wednesdays ACM Awards ceremony was historic not just because of Swifts much-hyped prodigal-daughter return, but because it was the first ACMs to actually take place in the city of Nashville. It was also, obviously, the first ACMs to take place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Story continues Read more: Taylor Swift sent embroidered blanket to Katy Perrys newborn Originally slated for April 2020 before it was delayed due to coronavirus concerns, the rejiggered ACM Awards telecast, hosted by Keith Urban, aired from three socially distant, iconic Music City venues: the Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, and the Bluebird Cafe. Other performers on Wednesday included Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Luke Combs, Mickey Guyton, Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Thomas Rhett, Carrie Underwood, and two reality-show couples: The Voice coaches Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani, and recently married American Idol Season 16 alumni Gabby Barrett and Cade Foehner, who are expecting their first child. Whats it like when chefs host each other at home? Alison Vega-Knoll and Chris Wilson can tell you through countless dishes the two longtime friends have cooked on their downtime through the years. Soon, they will open a new gourmet market and deli informed by that kind of experience. The Larder is taking shape at 3005 Veterans Blvd. It is slated to open in November, ahead of Thanksgiving. Vega-Knoll and Wilson each come to the project with long histories in New Orleans food. Vega-Knoll, who created Vega Tapas Cafe in the 1990s, is chef and co-founder of Station 6, the popular modern seafood restaurant in Bucktown. Wilson spent 28 years in different positions at Emeril Lagasses company, from chef to culinary director, a tenure that ended during the pandemic. With the Larder, the two are focusing on dishes for easy meals at home, staples for home entertaining and quick meals at the deli. Its all about presenting restaurant-quality food in a different format, said Vega-Knoll. +5 What's next for Bravo restaurant at Lakeside Mall? New idea from a growing local group The longtime home of Bravo! Italian Kitchen at the Lakeside Mall in Metairie is now being transformed into a new Italian restaurant from a New Wilson calls the concept a kicked-up market, with grab-and-go dishes, family-sized meals for home, and tables for a sandwich, a salad and a glass of wine on the spot. The market will open in a stand-alone building along a busy stretch of retail businesses near Causeway Boulevard. It was previously a location of New Orleans Coffee & Beignet Co. For some, the concept may bring to mind Foodies Kitchen, the market opened in Metairie by the Commanders Palace branch of the Brennan family back in 1999 (it later expanded with an Uptown location, but both closed). The Larder is a smaller venture, however, and Wilson said one key of the project is the way it works in some facets that have become pivotal during the pandemic, like family-sized meals to go and curbside pickup. A drive-through window will play an important role in the operation. When you order a pan of lasagna or meatballs, you can select a certain pick-up time and just drive right through here to pick it up, Wilson explained. Walk in and youll see a gelato case right up front, stocked by Piccola Gelateria, a standout for frozen Italian desserts on Freret Street. Next to that will stand a coffee station with brews from local roaster French Truck Coffee. Food and restaurant news in your inbox Every Thursday we give you the scoop on NOLA dining. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up +15 How birria tacos keep a Metairie tortilla bakery going, and a family dream alive This story is part of an ongoing look at how New Orleans restaurants are contending with the pandemic. The deli cases will have cold salads noodle salad, Mexican street corn salad, good old chicken salad and prepared platters of everything from crab cakes to escargot. Charcuterie and specialty cheeses will have their own area, and so will the take-and-heat soups and dips and other dishes. The Larder will stock beer and wine. A grassy stretch out front will have picnic tables to dig in right away outdoors too. The idea combines the two chefs experiences in the business with the way they like to cook at home. Weve basically been cooking for each others families for 20 years, and we decided to bring some of that to the market, Wilson said. The Larder will also be home base for Cajun Caviar, a brand that spans the markets own family ties. Back in the 1990s, Cajun Caviar introduced Louisiana caviar, made with roe from locally plentiful bowfin fish. In 2016, that brand was bought by a partnership of Vega-Knoll, Amy Wilson, who is married to Chris Wilson, and Alden Lagasse, who is married to Emeril Lagasse. When it opens, the Larder will sell Cajun Caviar in its cases and distribute the delicacy to its restaurant and retail clients. Vega-Knoll first made her name at Vega Tapas Cafe, which she opened in Old Metairie in 1996 and sold in 2004. She and her husband Drew Knoll, also a chef, moved to Antigua, working at resort restaurants there before opening their own restaurant, which was also called the Larder. They moved home to New Orleans as their family grew and opened Station 6 in 2016. The Larder 3005 Veterans Blvd., Metairie Projected opening November 2020 +8 Stacked, packed, stuffed potatoes turn a food truck into a new Tulane Avenue restaurant The stuffed potatoes are packed and stacked at Mr. Potato. Everything from roast beef with gravy to lobster tails turn once-humble spuds into Blunders on maternity wards are costing the NHS nearly 1billion a year, the former Health Secretary warns today. Jeremy Hunt has revealed that almost twice as much is spent on lawsuits following poor care of mothers and babies as on the combined pay of all the labour doctors in Englands hospitals. The expenditure was part of the health services astonishing 2.4billion bill for legal fees and compensation in 2018/19. A nurse is pictured taking a video of a premature baby to send to the baby's parents in Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey Mr Hunt, now chairman of the Commons health select committee, also uncovered figures showing three quarters of hospitals are refusing to publish reliable data on the number of avoidable deaths of patients in their care three years after he ordered them to do so. He highlighted research showing up to 150 lives are being lost needlessly every week in NHS hospitals. Writing for the Mail today, he described this as appallingly high. In a damning verdict of the system he once led, Mr Hunt says the scandal is widespread, affecting babies, mothers in labour, teenagers with mental health issues and dementia sufferers. He is particularly worried about the needless harm in maternity services and through a freedom of information request obtained figures showing that 952million was paid out in litigation and compensation associated with the sector in 2018/19. Jeremy Hunt is pictured visiting St George's Hospital in Tooting, west London in 2017. As Health Secretary in 2017, Mr Hunt ordered trusts to publish data on the number of avoidable deaths in hospitals calling it the biggest scandal in global healthcare By comparison, the combined salaries of all obstetricians and gynaecologists working in the health service in England came to 586million. In total that year the latest for which figures are available the NHS paid out 2.4billion on litigation, up 137million on the previous year. Referring to the stark difference in the figures, Mr Hunt writes: Something has gone badly wrong. As Health Secretary in 2017, Mr Hunt ordered trusts to publish data on the number of avoidable deaths in hospitals calling it the biggest scandal in global healthcare. But freedom of information responses from a snapshot of 59 hospital trusts about half of the total found less than a quarter provided meaningful data on needless deaths. Just 14 out of 59 hospitals were prepared to provide the data. Another ten claimed they had not had any needless deaths between 2017 and 2019 including two major London teaching hospitals which is statistically highly improbable. A further 25 trusts reported theyd had less than five avoidable deaths over those three years which is also extremely unlikely. The remaining ten refused to publish any data at all with some claiming the information was confidential. Mr Hunt, who served as Health Secretary for nearly six years from 2012 to 2018, believes that one of the key problems is staff failing to admit to their errors. Last month the Mail revealed that one of the countrys largest hospitals was suspected of covering up baby deaths by failing to report suspicious cases to coroners. East Kent Hospitals which is at the centre of a major probe into maternity failings referred just 24 out of 124 deaths over the past seven years. Writing for the Mail, Mr Hunt cites major cultural challenges which are deterring doctors and nurses from accepting blame, including preying lawyers who get involved almost immediately. Mr Hunt, who served as Health Secretary for nearly six years from 2012 to 2018, believes that one of the key problems is staff failing to admit to their errors But he fears the deeply ingrained issues will be forgotten too quickly, unlike the coronavirus pandemic which is expected to prompt a major public inquiry and reforms. Mr Hunt says: We have appallingly high levels of avoidable harm and death in our healthcare system. In healthcare we seem to just accept it as inevitable. Mr Hunt also cited research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which found that 4 per cent of all healthcare deaths were potentially preventable, the equivalent of up to 150 deaths a week. Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: This ongoing lack of transparency over avoidable deaths is deeply concerning. A cover-up culture and lack of transparency have long been the NHSs least attractive characteristics and should be addressed urgently. Peter Walsh, of the patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, said: It is scandalous so many trusts are not publishing their data about avoidable deaths. An NHS spokesman said: Delivering the safest possible health service for patients is a priority and the national policy on learning from deaths is clear that hospitals must publish this information every three months, as well as an annual summary, so they are clear about any problems that have been identified and how they are being addressed. How CAN we spend more on maternity blunders than we pay doctors and nurses on maternity wards, asks former Health Secretary JEREMY HUNT By Jeremy Hunt for the Daily Mail Had someone told me last summer that more than 50,000 people could die this year from a new, killer virus I would have been sceptical to say the least. Understandably, much of the focus on the Governments handling of an unexpected pandemic has been on examining how many of those deaths could have been avoided especially in hospitals and care homes where we expect our loved ones to be safe. Future inquiries will debate where the responsibility lies for any mistakes and rightly balance that against important achievements such as the fact that not a single coronavirus patient was denied an intensive care bed or ventilator, unlike in northern Italy and New York. A patient is pictured above being cared for in the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge On top of which, as the Commons health select committee discussed with Health Secretary Matt Hancock last week, are many additional deaths caused by the interruption to vital services such as scanning and chemotherapy for cancer patients. Future inquiries will debate where the responsibility lies for any mistakes and rightly balance that against important achievements such as the fact that not a single coronavirus patient was denied an intensive care bed or ventilator, unlike in northern Italy and New York. They will also recognise the heroic contribution made by frontline NHS and care staff, without which many more lives would have been lost. What will be forgotten too quickly, I fear, is that in normal times too we have appallingly high levels of avoidable harm and death in our healthcare system. The Mail recently highlighted the terrible story surrounding the death of baby Harry Richford at East Kent Trust, but such tragedies are part of a pattern that has gone on for too long and led the Select Committee to open an inquiry this summer into maternity safety across the NHS. But the issues dont just affect babies. As we start the new academic year, people will remember the recent spate of student suicides at Bristol and other universities, many of which might have been prevented with better mental health support. Things are no better when it comes to the older patients. Neglect of dementia patients in particular can lead to more rapid decline and untimely deaths. So what is the scale of the problem? When I was Health Secretary I asked how many preventable deaths we had in our system. I was told about a highly respected study by Professor Nick Black and Helen Hogan of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. They said around 4 per cent of hospital deaths were assessed by independent doctors as having a 50 per cent or more chance of being preventable. That worked out as about 150 deaths every week in the NHS in England alone. If a commercial airline were falling out of the sky every week it would be a major scandal but in healthcare we seem to just accept it as inevitable. The Mail recently highlighted the terrible story surrounding the death of baby Harry Richford at East Kent Trust, but such tragedies are part of a pattern that has gone on for too long and led the Select Committee to open an inquiry this summer into maternity safety across the NHS We urgently need to change the culture in healthcare. As Health Secretary I ordered all hospitals to publish their own estimates of the levels of avoidable death. But data released today shows that three years on, only a quarter are complying. Much work remains to be done if we are to prevent so many tragedies being repeated. It would, however, be quite wrong to point to this as an NHS issue. Other healthcare systems have similar problems and indeed the independent Commonwealth Fund says the NHS has some of the safest care in the world. But the sheer scale of the issue is illustrated by the World Health Organisation, which estimates that globally, there are 2.6 million preventable deaths every year which works out as five deaths every single minute. The WHO says medical error is one of the top ten killers in a list alongside cancer, heart disease and stroke. That is why, however honoured I was to fly the flag for my country as Foreign Secretary or Culture Secretary responsible for the Olympics, it is improving patient safety to prevent these terrible tragedies that has become my passion and principal focus. Last year I persuaded the WHO to institute an annual World Patient Safety Day which falls this Thursday. This years theme is the protection of healthcare workers because if they are unable, for example, to access protective equipment in a pandemic it becomes very dangerous for patients too. Some estimates said that at the height of the pandemic one fifth of coronavirus patients in our hospitals had actually picked up the infection in their hospital. But alongside practical challenges such as proper provision of PPE, there are also some major cultural challenges. Lets go back to the baby deaths at East Kent: Typically when these tragedies happen lawyers get involved almost immediately. Doctors, nurses and midwives worry they could lose their licence if they are found to have made a mistake. Hospital managers worry about the reputation of their organisation. The one thing that needs to be done before anything else establishing what happened, learning from mistakes and putting in place procedures across the NHS to stop them being repeated ends up being bottom of the list. Or even not happening at all. Thats why were currently spending more taxpayers money on litigation over life-changing maternity mistakes than the entire yearly bill for maternity doctors and nurses salaries. Something has gone badly wrong. Other countries have found a better way to support frontline medics to learn from their mistakes. If we had the same neonatal death rate as Sweden 1,400 fewer babies would die every year. But in Sweden court cases are virtually unheard of and all the effort goes into establishing the truth so that the agony of losing a child is not repeated. In fairness the NHS has made huge strides in addressing these issues. Hospitals are independently inspected and given Ofsted-style ratings, the only system in the world brave enough to be totally public about hospital safety standards. With a pandemic, our democracy for all its faults is open and robust enough to learn the necessary lessons. But will we learn the bigger lessons about the need to change culture in modern healthcare? Staff are pictured above caring for a patient at the Intensive Care unit at Royal Papworth Hospital Inside hospitals, staff have someone independent to whom they can report any concerns. In areas like maternity safety the NHS has enthusiastically embraced big objectives such as to halve baby deaths by 2025. But still much needs to improve if we are to make healthcare as safe as other high-risk sectors such as the airline or nuclear power industry. In my last year as Health Secretary a junior doctor in Leicester was nearly struck off after making a series of mistakes when she was under high pressure. Fortunately the Court of Appeal reversed the decision but the fact the case went to court at all sent a shiver down the spine of many doctors. Whilst we cannot have any truck with recklessness, it must surely make sense to allow for the fact that doctors, too, are human beings who are likely to get some things wrong in the course of their work. With a pandemic, our democracy for all its faults is open and robust enough to learn the necessary lessons. But will we learn the bigger lessons about the need to change culture in modern healthcare? Only by allowing frontline clinicians to learn from their mistakes will patients be as safe as they should be and we will stop the ranks of bereaved families from growing yet further. Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary from 2012 to 2018 The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact especially on older adults and researchers at McMaster University are trying to learn more about it. From measuring loneliness to physical movement, the universitys Institute for Research on Aging has a number of research projects underway to paint a picture of the experiences of older adults during these unprecedented times. Three researchers shared their projects and early findings with The Spectator. 1. We can all help each other Early in the pandemic, Facebook groups sprung up across Canada to pool resources, share information, and offer help with groceries and other basic needs. Membership quickly exploded, including in Hamilton where 1,700 people joined in mid-March and there are currently about 7,000 members. Hsien Seow, an associate professor in the department of oncology, has been studying the impact of these #CareMongering campaigns on social isolation in older adults during the pandemic. The idea that communities can help each other is really the key, said Seow, who noted that membership has remained consistent in these groups over the months since the pandemic began. Theres still this desire to connect beyond COVID, he said. This is a realization that we need to help people. Seow and his team interviewed moderators of the groups and also launched a survey this month to collect stories from members. The researches set out looking for the impact of these groups on older adults, and while they found that those who were marginalized, affected by layoffs, and low income benefited the most from the groups, age wasnt as significant a factor. One of our take-homes was you cant think of people who can help each other in boxes. Younger people helped older adults, but older adults can help older adults, too, and older adults can help younger adults, he said. He added that there was a blend in giving and receiving, and some who received help also extended it to others. Everybody was in it together, Seow said. People are a mix of haves and have-nots, and we want to share what we have with others. 2. We are moving less during the pandemic and falling more Its no secret that self-isolation has affected the exercise in older adults. A study led by Marla Beauchamp, assistant professor at the School of Rehabilitation Science, is looking at how much Hamiltonians age 65 and over are moving around and participating in life events during the pandemic. Her team is conducting a telephone survey of 271 participants three times over six months. One round of the survey has been complete so far, and the preliminary results show that 35 per cent of older adults fell at least once in the previous year already a high number but 30 per cent of that group had fallen in the previous month. Its definitely worrisome to see that, she said, noting that participants said they were doing less physical activity during the pandemic. When you move less, you get a little bit weaker, said Beauchamp. It can increase your risk of falling. She added that almost 60 per cent of participants half of them lived alone said the pandemic made their ability to maintain a social life worse. Thats going to have a big effect down the line on older people, she said. Were going to have to think about ways that we can reach people and make sure they do not feel isolated. 3. Storytelling can help us cope with loneliness In 2019, Victor Kuperman, an associate professor in the department of linguistics and languages, found loneliness affected the words people use to express their experiences. When we collect stories from people, we look at what words they choose, said Kuperman, noting that his team then matches the words to ratings for how positive and negative the words are perceived to be. Those ratings are used to develop a score to determine the level of loneliness and social isolation an individual might be experiencing. He decided to apply that research to the pandemic and determine how self-isolation was affecting older adults. For the first four months or so, older individuals were about as positive as they were before the pandemic, said Kuperman. Then we saw their stories take an emotional plunge as it were, they just became more negative and theyve stayed this way so far. In August, his team launched an app called WritLarge, which allows people to read and tell their own stories online. Almost 1,000 stories have been posted so far. Kuperman hopes in addition to measuring the loneliness of older adults during the pandemic, the app will also help people combat the loneliness. We all want to be heard, we all want to be listened to, he said. Hearing or reading stories written by people with similar circumstances, and writing your own stories, thats what breaks through this loneliness. Good morning, Bay Area. Its Thursday, Sept. 17, and some Bay Area firefighters are losing their own homes while trying to save others. Heres what you need to know to start your day. Six months ago today, the Bay Area hunkered into isolation, the first place in the nation shut down by the nascent coronavirus pandemic. At the time, many people assumed the order would last a few weeks, maybe into the summer. Fast-forward to now: The virus remains widespread. The economy and labor market are sluggish. Most Bay Area offices and schools are empty. Just about everyone is still huddled in their homes. As Erin Allday reports, what is clear now is that people are learning how to coexist with COVID-19. What was so unnatural has become second nature. Where are they now? Revisiting the Bay Areas most memorable coronavirus stories. See the charts: A six-month look at how the Bay Area compares to major U.S. metropolitan areas that have been coronavirus hot spots. Pandemic poll: A tale of two different Californias Worries about the coronavirus and support for continuing and even increasing state and local restrictions are highest among the states poor and communities of color, while concerns are far lower among white residents and the better-off, according to a new poll. While 28% of California adults overall are very concerned that they will be hospitalized because of the coronavirus, that number rises to 34% among those in households making less than $40,000 a year, 48% among African Americans and 39% among Latinos, the Public Policy Institute of California poll found. In the Bay Area, only 20% of all adults are very concerned, the lowest percentage of any part of the state. Read more from John Wildermuth. Could your phone indicate whether youve been exposed to coronavirus? Bay Area trial hopes to find out. Santa Clara County order to fine health care providers $5,000 for not doing coronavirus testing. Pandemic perk: Bay Area companies increasing mental health help for remote workers. Firefighters lives upended Sara Gobets / Special to The Chronicle As wildfires have sprinted across more than 3 million acres in California this year, the unprecedented devastation has upended the lives of firefighters whove lost their own homes while trying to save others. The fires have destroyed more than 6,000 buildings in the state, including the homes of at least 12 firefighters. While most firefighters on the line are struggling with new extremes of physical and mental exhaustion, an unlucky few are also facing the daunting task of figuring out where to stay in the short term and how to rebuild. Read more from Sarah Ravani. The fires are coming for you: These Californians found Oregon no longer an escape. Bay Area breathing easier as air quality improves. California Fire Tracker: The latest on wildfires across the state. Around the Bay Election 2020: Californias affirmative action repeal trails badly in poll; Prop. 13 revision leading. Not a normal fire: 5-alarm blaze in Oakland scorches Chinatown building. DA files charges: Police say man tried to set people on fire in Berkeley. In the courts: Ruling denies California public workers the right to recover union dues if they leave. 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. Harrowing accounts: NTSB documents detail Conception dive-boat disaster that killed 34. Fitness fallout: Yoga Tree studios go into hibernation for foreseeable future. Chronicle Food + Wine V. Sheree Williams / A new wine bar and shop is coming to Oakland in early 2021, and its founders want it to be a force for positive change by highlighting producers from underrepresented backgrounds. CoCo Noir, slated to open in a ground-level suite in the luxury Atlas apartment complex on 14th Street, will stock 50% to 80% of its shelves with wines from women or BIPOC makers, say founders Alicia Kidd and Mari Kemp. The duo, who are both Black women, have spent years fighting for better representation in the wine industry. Read more from Esther Mobley. Visit The Chronicles searchable, crowd-sourced list of Black-owned restaurants in the Bay Area that are open right now. The seemingly impossible: An artisanal bottle of California wine for $10. Iranian pop-up Komaaj debuts its herb-packed fare in a new S.F. cafe. Planned for summer 2021, Oakland's Town Revival restaurant bets on brighter future. Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact Brown at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com. A U.S. Air Force staff sergeant from New Hampshire has died from non-combat injuries suffered in an ATV accident in Kuwait, the Department of Defense said. Ronald Ouellette, 23, of Merrimack, died Monday, Col. Craig Peters, 439th Airlift Wing commander, said in a news release. Ouellette was assigned to the 42nd Aerial Port Squadron, Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts. The accident happened at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The accident is under investigation. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement that Ouellette was an American hero whose service to the country will never be forgotten. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in a statement, We have a solemn obligation to always honor the memory of Staff Sergeant Ouellette and hold his family close. Ouellette represented the best that our state has to offer, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan said in a statement. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE Just days after a Women for Trump bus tour across New Mexico drew large crowds of people with few visible face coverings, a top Department of Health official is warning political party leaders about complying with the states public health order. In a letter sent this week, acting DOH deputy secretary Billy Jimenez said all campaign rallies must abide by a mask mandate and limits on large public gatherings or face possible fines or citations. While these gatherings are normal components of any election season, this is not a normal election season and these larger gatherings are strictly prohibited, Jimenez wrote in his letter, which was sent to top employees in the state Republican and Democratic parties, as well as to certain political committees. State Republican Party executive director Anissa Tinnin called the letter a violation of equal treatment under the law, saying Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams administration has not issued similar warnings to participants in other large public gatherings, including a recent Black Lives Matter rally in Rio Rancho. To single out RPNM is wrong by the Lujan Grisham administration, Tinnin said in a statement Wednesday. Again, the governor picks and chooses selected groups with obvious political implications that continues to violate the U.S. Constitutions principle of equal protection. Under the states current public health order aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19, face masks are required in all public settings with a few limited exemptions and public gatherings are limited to no more than 10 people at one time. Violations of the face covering requirement are subject to $100 fines, though a limited number of such citations have been issued statewide. This isnt the first time that state Republicans have bristled at Lujan Grishams handling of the coronavirus pandemic. GOP leaders have kept up steady criticism of the Democratic governor for her decisions regarding reopening New Mexicos economy, even while coronavirus case counts were surging this summer. In addition, Lujan Grisham sparked criticism and praise in July by urging political parties to forbid their candidates from door-to-door campaigning. She called such campaigning, long a staple of candidates voter outreach efforts, problematic given the close proximity between voters and candidates during the coronavirus pandemic. While the Democratic Party has said its focused on running largely virtual campaigns, some Republicans around New Mexico have said they have no plans to halt traditional campaign rallies and door-to-door campaigning. The recent three-day Women for Trump bus tour across New Mexico featured stops in eight cities, including Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Rio Rancho and Hobbs. Photos of tour stops showed dozens of supporters, candidates and state GOP leaders holding signs in close proximity, with few if any wearing masks. The DOH letter sent this week did not directly mention the bus tour, though Jimenez said the agency had become aware that face some parties and candidates have not been following mask and social distancing requirements. Lujan Grisham spokesman Tripp Stelnicki said the Department of Health has also sent warnings to other groups and candidates about public events. This (letter) was sent to both parties and campaign committees, so there was no targeting of any particular group, Stelnicki said. If one group feels targeted, perhaps its because theyve been more outward with their behaviors that are not always COVID-safe. Several victims of California's North Complex wildfire burned to death in or near their cars as they desperately tried to escape the raging inferno. On Thursday, investigators revealed that DNA testing has been needed to identify victims of the blaze, as their bodies were burned beyond recognition. Forensics helped determine the identities of two locals who were found trapped in or near their vehicles. The charred remains of Jacob Albright, 72, were found inside a car close to Berry Creek, authorities told local publication SFGate. Meanwhile, the burned body of Paul Winer, 68, was also discovered a short distance away. Winer was just 10-feet from his pick-up truck, and it appeared as if he was trying to flee from the blaze on foot. The body of a third person was discovered on a roadway just meters away. The name of that victim has not yet been determined, but investigators believe they were with Winer shortly before the fire roared through. The Berry Creek area (a home pictured) has been nearly decimated by the North Complex Fire The names of the new victims come after it was confirmed another Berry Creek resident also died inside of his car as the blaze ripped through the town last Thursday. Phillip Ruble, 68, burned to death inside his Toyota pickup truck on his property. It's believed he was in the process of trying escape with his companion Millicent Catarncuic, 77, before the blaze moved in. Catarncuic was found dead in a nearby embankment. Family members say the pair were preparing to evacuate the area when they changed their minds based on 'erroneous information' that the wildfire was 51 per cent contained. Phillip Ruble, 68, (right) burned to death inside his Toyota pickup truck on his property. It's believed he was in the process of trying escape with his companion Millicent Catarncuic, 77, (left) before the blaze moved in Several victims of the North Complex Fire burned to death inside their vehicles as they tried to escape the blaze Grandmother e Sandra Butler, 75, died in the fire alongside her long-time husband John Butler, 79, is one of the 15 confirmed fatalities Elsewhere, the identities of several other victims have also been determined. Randy Harrell, 67; Mark De La Gardie, 61; Ken Lee, 64; Jorge Hernandez-Juarez, 26; Khawar Bhatti, 58; and Josiah Williams, 16, all died in the North Complex fire. Grandfather John Butler, 79, and his wife Sandra, 75, also perished. The Butlers' granddaughter-in-law, Jessica Fallon, says her family has been left devastated by their deaths. 'God is very lucky to have gained both of those beautiful angels,' she told KRCR News. So far the death toll from the North Complex fire still stands at 15. More than a dozen remain people remain missing. The North Complex Fire is the eighth largest in California history. It has torched more than 273,000 acres and destroyed nearly 800 structures. Dozens of other fires have burned some 4.5 million acres of tinder-dry brush, grass and woodlands in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, ravaging several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 34 people. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said 16,600 firefighters were still battling 25 major fires after achieving full containment around the perimeter of other large blazes. Meanwhile, eight deaths have been confirmed during the past week in Oregon, which became the latest and most concentrated hot spot in a larger summer outbreak of fires across the entire western US. The Pacific Northwest was hardest hit. The fires roared to life in California in mid-August, and erupted across Oregon and Washington around Labor Day last week, many of them sparked by catastrophic lightning storms and stoked by record-breaking heat waves and bouts of howling winds. Attorney General William Bar took sharp aim at federal line prosecutors and compared coronavirus lockdowns to slavery in remarks at Hillsdale College's "Constitution Day" celebration Wednesday evening. "Even the most well-meaning people can do great damage if they lose perspective," Barr said. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target." In a question and answer session following his remarks, Barr argued that governors who have continued limiting movement and gatherings in their states due to the COVID-19 pandemic run the risk of infringing on their citizens' constitutionally protected liberties. Barr made the extraordinary argument that the idea of "putting a national lockdown" and "stay at home" orders was -- "other than slavery" -- "the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history." Barr suggested that, prior to his leadership, the Department of Justice was run similar to a preschool by allowing line prosecutors to make decisions separate from an approval process designated by politically confirmed appointees. "Name one successful organization or institution where the lowest level employees' decisions are deemed sacrosanct -- there aren't. There aren't any letting the most junior members set the agenda," Barr said. "Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it's no way to run a federal agency." MORE: Justice Department seeks to defend Trump in E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit Barr's remarks come as he has repeatedly faced pushback within the department from federal career prosecutors involved in cases related to allies of President Donald Trump, such as self-proclaimed "dirty trickster" Roger Stone and Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Career prosecutors resigned from both cases after what they believed were Barr's improper interventions in matters of direct political interest to Trump. Story continues And just last week, a top prosecutor for U.S. attorney John Durham, assisting him in his probe of the Russia investigation, resigned from the DOJ. The Hartford Courant reported the resignation was related to pressure from Barr to produce an interim report prior to the November presidential election. In his remarks, Barr clearly sought to reassert his authority over career officials -- repeatedly taking shots at what he suggested were politically rogue agents acting against the interests of the true leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, himself. PHOTO: President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr step off Air Force One upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sept. 1, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images, File) Barr recounted what he described as his own meetings with FBI agents where he posed them the question, "Whose agents do you think you are?" "These people are agents of the attorney general," Barr said. "I don't say this in a pompous way, but that is the chain of authority and legitimacy in the Department of Justice." The remarks amount to the sharpest public rebuke in recent memory by an attorney general aimed at officials employed by his own department, tasked with the often-grueling daily work of enforcing federal law around the nation. "Line prosecutors ... are generally part of the permanent bureaucracy," Barr said. "They do not have the political legitimacy to be the public face of tough decisions and they lack the political buy-in necessary to publicly defend those decisions." "The attorney general, senior DOJ officials and U.S. attorneys are indeed political, but they are political in a good and necessary sense," Barr added. MORE: Barr gives false recounting of Texas voter fraud case in effort to cast doubt on mail-in voting Barr argued that the DOJ in recent years "has sometimes acted more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice based on clear and sensible legal rules." The statement appears to be an echo of his arguments in the wake of his extraordinary decision to drop charges against Flynn, who he has cast as a victim of overzealous prosecutors from former special counsel Robert Mueller's office. "In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyper-aggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong and we must stop doing it," Barr said. "We should want a fair system with clear rules that the people can understand. It does not serve the ends of justice to advocate for fuzzy and manipulable criminal prohibitions that maximize our options as prosecutors. Preventing that sort of pro-prosecutor uncertainty is what the ancient rule of lenity is all about." PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General William Barr speaks on Operation Legend, the federal law enforcement operation, during a press conference in Chicago on Sept. 9, 2020. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images) The remarks also mark a continuance of Barr's recent unapologetic tour where he has freely expressed openly partisan positions while accusing his opponents of being responsible for tearing down the norms in U.S. society. All the while, he has spent much of the time defending his own extraordinary and sometimes unprecedented actions intervening in department matters of direct political interest to Trump. At one point, Barr even took an underhanded and unprompted shot at Mueller's prosecutors in a portion of his remarks where he argued that because the Obama administration lost more cases before the Supreme Court than the Trump administration, accusations by Democrats that Trump officials are acting "lawlessly" are completely unfounded. "Again, the Obama administration, you know had some of the people in Mueller's office writing their briefs for the Supreme Court so maybe that explains something," Barr said. "You know, they're not crowing so much after they got whooped in the Supreme Court." This report was featured in the Friday, Sept. 18, 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. AG Barr takes aim at DOJ prosecutors, compares lockdowns to slavery originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is expected to address the Oppositions questions in Parliament on situation at India-China border in Ladakh. Rajnath Singh will comment on the border row in the upper house Rajya Sabha at 12pm. The defence minister made a statement in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, where he said that tension at the border was bound to negatively affect bilateral relations between India and China. China had engaged in aggressive behaviour and sought to unilaterally change the status quo at the border, he told the lower house. The amassing of the troops by China goes against our 1993 and 1996 agreements. Respecting and strictly observing the Line of Actual Control is the basis for peace and tranquillity in the border areas and explicitly recognised in both agreements. While our armed forces abide scrupulously by it, this has not been reciprocated by the Chinese side... In the recent incidents, this year, the violent conduct of Chinese forces has been in complete violation of all mutually agreed norms, Singh said in Lok Sabha. The House should have full confidence that our armed forces will always rise to the challenge and do us all proud, he added. While he accused the Chinese of not honouring the existing border agreements and pacts between the two countries, China claimed on Wednesday that it was committed to maintaining peace. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that the country has been honouring the agreements signed between China and India. Covid-19 is on course to strike up to 1,000 people a day in only a month, more than half of whom will be in Dublin. There is growing alarm about the resurgence of the virus, not only in Dublin but in other counties, particularly Louth, Waterford and Donegal. The grim forecast of between 500 and 1,000 cases a day emerged last night as doctors warned it is again spreading at a worrying level among older age groups and leading to more deaths. "The rest of the country is on a similar trajectory to what is being seen in Dublin. People across the country need to act at an individual level," they told the Department of Health Covid-19 briefing. Professor Philip Nolan, who is tracking the virus, said: "I am more concerned than I have been at any point since late April. Deaths "If we do not interrupt transmission now, we could have 500 to 1,000 cases per day by October 16, some 50 to 60pc of which would be in Dublin." He was speaking as 254 more people were diagnosed with the virus yesterday, with three more deaths. However, he also warned that the virus is ominously spreading in other parts of the country and there are worrying trends in Louth, Waterford and Donegal. There were 136 new cases yesterday in Dublin, 20 in Donegal, 13 in Louth, 12 in Wicklow, nine in Waterford, seven in Carlow, seven in Cork, six in Galway, five in Kerry, five in Wexford and the remaining cases were diagnosed in Clare, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan, Offaly, Ros- common and Westmeath. Prof Nolan and acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn appealed to everyone to reduce the number of people they meet during the day and to cut down on activities while practising the basics of physical distancing, hand washing, wearing a mask and contacting their GP if they have any symptoms. Among the most disturbing trends is the rise in hospitalisations and deaths. There were 73 patients with Covid-19 in hospital yesterday, nine of whom were admitted in the previous 24 hours. Fourteen of the patients are seriously ill in intensive care. Prof Nolan said the hospitalisations are heavily concentrated in Dublin, where 50 patients are now in wards after being admitted with the virus. The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) will meet today to discuss the crisis in Dublin and nationwide. It is expected Dublin will be moved up from Level 2 to Level 3 of the Government's Covid-19 plan, which will see a range of new restrictions, including restraints on indoor dining in restaurants and pubs as well as in areas like sporting activities. The spread of the virus in Dublin is particularly concerning because it is due not to flare-ups in a particular workplace but to clusters across the city, often in people's homes. "We are seeing many, many small clusters in the city and county," Prof Nolan said. He said four people died of Covid-19 in August, but already this month 14 have died from the virus. The deaths are in older people in the community rather than in nursing homes. The R number, which indicates how many people someone infected with the virus will pass it on to, is between 1.3 and 1.7 nationally. It needs to be at 1 to bring the spread under control. Successful The public health chiefs said the message to people needs to be not what they can do but what they "should do". Dr Colm Henry of the HSE said the reopening of schools has been successful. There have been around 300 cases of the virus among children, but only in around two or so of these was the infection picked up in the classroom. Dr Mary Favier, Covid-19 advisor to the Irish College of General Practitioners, said: "While we have been conducting a large number of tests on children, thanks to the vigilance of parents around symptoms and contacting GPs with concerns, we have not witnessed a disproportionate rise in the number of confirmed cases in children." CHICAGO and DALLAS, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- George Jon, Inc. (George Jon) and UNICOM Engineering are pleased to announce the formation of a global strategic partnership that unites George Jons eDiscovery platform architecture and consulting expertise with UNICOM Engineerings global technology sourcing, integration, and logistics capabilities. George Jons eDiscovery platforms, or Kits, are specifically designed and rigorously tested to provide performance, stability, and perfect eDiscovery functionality. George Jons eDiscovery Kits are built in collaboration with Dell Technologies Design Solutions on a broad portfolio of leading Dell Technologies infrastructure, including Dell Precision mobile workstations and Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to span customer needs from remote office to mobility and enterprise. UNICOM Engineerings wide-reaching integration and service network enables George Jons eDiscovery Kits to be configured to exacting specifications for individual clients and rapid deployment worldwide. UNICOM Engineering prides itself on the utmost in flexibility to meet the changing needs of our customers and their business initiatives, said Rusty Cone, General Manager UNICOM Engineering. In order to capitalize upon the rapid growth of the eDiscovery industry in emerging markets and to continue to service our clients located in twenty-plus countries and on six continents, we pursued a partner that could add depth to our operational capabilities, says Adam Chardukian, George Jons COO. In UNICOM Engineering, we not only found the operational depth we were seeking, but a shared commitment to unparalleled customer service a rarity in this line of business. About George Jon, Inc. George Jon is an eDiscovery platform, product and process specialist, delivering performant, scalable, fault tolerant environments to global corporations, leading law firms, government agencies, and independent resellers/hosting companies. GJ quickly and strategically implements large-scale eDiscovery platforms, troubleshoots and perfects existing systems, and provides unprecedented 24/7 core services to ensure maximum performance and uptime. Employing a modular framework that has been tested and perfected over fifteen years of R&D, environments can be customized (e.g. scaled) to individual client needs, budgets and requirements (storage, compute, application availability, tiering). The best practices developed by George Jon have become the standard for global eDiscovery systems, driving productivity, profits and peace of mind throughout the industry. For more information, visit georgejon.com . About UNICOM Engineering UNICOM Engineering is a leading provider of server-based application platforms, storage solutions, and lifecycle support services for software developers, OEMs, and enterprises worldwide. Through its expertise and comprehensive suite of design engineering, system integration, global logistics, trade compliance, support, and business analytics services, UNICOM Engineering is redefining application deployment solutions to provide customers with a sustainable competitive advantage. More than two decades of appliance innovation and strong technology partnerships make UNICOM Engineering one of the most trusted deployment partners in the industry. Founded in 1997, UNICOM Engineering is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts with facilities in Plano, Texas and Galway, Ireland. For more information, visit unicomengineering.com . For more information about this release, please contact: George Jon: Reynolds Broker, +1.312.698.7165, rbroker@georgejon.com Published on: 17 September 2020 Queen Mary's students aspire to tackle major societal challenges. Queen Mary's students aspire to tackle major societal challenges. The fund will empower students and recent graduate entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing society today. A UK first The fund is the first student-led venture capital fund investing in student-led social enterprises in the UK. Built by students, the fund provides opportunities for students to develop their entrepreneurial knowledge and skills with support from industry mentors as well as academics from Queen Mary. Student investors will advise and invest in real-life early-stage start-ups with a social mission. Dr Joanne Zhang, Director of Entrepreneurship hub & founding academic of the fund said: Diversity and inclusion remain a barrier to success in the start-up world. It takes start-ups of all shapes and sizes to tackle the challenges in our society today. Recent research shows that doing good has become good business and social impact investing ecosystem is being built from the bottom up. There is no better place to start shaping the future and empowering the next generation of social entrepreneurs and investors from diverse backgrounds. Tackling societal challenges Jamie Macfarlane, CEO of the Creator Fund, a VC fund which is running the training program for the Queen Mary students said We are thrilled to be working with Queen Mary to teach students about venture capital, and how to find and support high potential startups. Creator Fund invests in student startups across the UK, and we know the potential that universities have to create world leading technology businesses. It is exciting that Queen Mary is focusing on social ventures, and we are proud to be part of an initiative backing students who aspire to tackle major societal challenges. The initiative is part of Queen Marys Student Knowledge Exchange Through Community Hubs (SKETCH) programme in which students provide pro bono consultancy and venture capital services to East London local communities, start-ups, third sector organisations and beyond. The social venture fund builds on Queen Marys School of Business and Managements Entrepreneurship programmes, as well as Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship which is specifically designed for the social sector. The programme, the first of its kind in the UK, enterprises allows students to earn, learn and change the world. More information Farmers return home after lifting their block on a national highway during the third day of a protest against agriculture-related ordinances brought by the Union government, in Beas, some 55 kms from Amritsar on September 16, 2020. (AFP) The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill. It has already passed Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill. The three bills will now be tabled in Rajya Sabha and become laws after the Upper House also passes them. They will replace ordinances promulgated by the Union government. The two bills were passed by voice vote in Lok Sabha earlier in the evening amid protests by Opposition parties, with Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal also vehemently opposing them, calling these measures as anti-farmers. The SAD's lone member in the Union Cabinet, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, also quit the government, accusing it of not taking farmers on board. Hailing the passage of three farm sector bills in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described these proposed legislations as historic and asserted that they will rid farmers and the farm sector of middlemen and other bottlenecks. In a subtle dig at the Opposition, Modi claimed that many forces were trying to "mislead" farmers and assured the farming community that minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement of their produce will continue along with a lot of new opportunities for them. It is to be noted that farmers in Haryana and Punjab, two of India's biggest agriculture hubs, have been opposing the Bill, claiming that the latest amendments will encourage hoarding by big farmers but marginalise smaller players. Farmers protesting against the newly-passed Bills have also noted that they are only likely to enhance the corporatisation of the agriculture sector, leading to reduction of farmers' bargaining power and crippling them financially. The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of being inconsistent with its policy proposals ahead of the 2020 polls. According to the governing party, some promises in the NDC's manifesto are deviations from initiatives the NDC opposed on principle while in government. In an interview on The Point of View on Citi TV, National Organiser of the NPP, Sammi Awuku argued that the NDCs position on the free Senior High School policy, trainee nurses and teachers allowances ahead of the 2016 election is at variance with what it is trumpeting now. Mr. Mahama in 2016 said even if it will cost his presidency, he will not restore teacher and nursing training allowance. That was on record but today if you check the NDC manifesto, they say they will maintain the status quo with regard to payment for allowances for teacher and nursing trainees. I want to ask that this status quo that Mr. Mahama and the NDC are talking about, is it the status quo of the NDC deciding to cancel it or the status quo of Nana Akufo-Addos NPP ensuring that they restored it. So we need clarity on that. Advancing his argument, Mr. Awuku questioned if the opposition leader is aware of developmental and social intervention programmes being rolled out in the country by the NPP. In fact, Mr. Mahama did say, free education will destroy Ghanas education system. But now, Mr. Mahama and the NDC are saying that they will extend the free SHS to private SHSs. They are also saying, they will provide free TVET, but we have already implemented it. So I dont know if the NDC is not really following what is happening in the country. Sammi Awuku also said the former President and flagbearer of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama is an impediment to the development of the Ghanaian youth . He indicated that Mr. Mahama and his party failed to implement formidable policies and programmes aimed at promoting youth development and charged Ghanaians to reject the NDC because the party has little to offer. Mr. Mahama remains the biggest obstacle to the advancement of our youth development. In 2008, the NDC did promise that they will legalize Galamsey activities so there was a mad rush for people to go into that venture yet the government at the time stayed aloof. They did not regulate these activities and this led to the pollution of our environment. Mr. Awuku also criticized Mahama for promising to legalize okada if elected. The NDC under Mr. Mahama, for the avoidance of doubt, declared okada business illegal. It was under him [Mr. Mahama]a law was passed to ban okada. So now, is it one of the mistakes he wants to come and correct? He said the party intends introducing policies that will not put the lives of the youth at risk. Our plan is not to put lives on the streets and put them at risk. If we need to support these young ones, we surely will. citinewsroom On Tuesday evening, Middle East Time, US President Donald Trump stood next to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu at the White House ahead of the signing of the normalisation agreement between Israel and the UAE and announced that at least five or six Arab countries Bahrain has already signed up will be following suit. The first Arab-Israeli peace agreement since the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty gifted Trump an invaluable photo-op, raising his foreign policy profile ahead of the US elections. It also marked the beginning of a major shopping spree by the UAE and other Gulf countries whose appetite for arms looks increasingly insatiable. While these are far from negligible considerations for the current US administration, Middle East diplomats and informed commentators say the 15 September ceremony at the White House was about much more. Today we are witnessing a change in the Middle East, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan said in his remarks ahead of the signing. Many analysts would agree. What was on show, they say, was nothing less than the emergence of a new Middle East that has been more than a decade in the making. In December 2008 the then Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni stood shoulder to shoulder at a joint press conference in Cairo with her Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul-Gheit, now the Arab League secretary-general, to announce that the Middle East was no longer defined by Arabs vs Israelis but by moderates vs extremists. In the lexicon of Israel and its Arab friends, both overt and covert, the extremists comprised Islamic resistance movements such as Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, of which Iran was and is a key supporter, and the regimes of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria and of Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan. More than a decade later, following the Arab Spring and its reversal, the division between who is moderate and who is not has evolved. Iran remains firmly in the extremist camp, as do the Islamic resistance movements it supports in no less than five Arab countries. But now they have been joined by Turkey whose leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is effectively championing Islamist expansion. Today, it is all too obvious that Arab countries are themselves divided into two camps. One accepts and finds ways to work with and around political Islam, while the other is vehemently opposed to political Islam in all its forms. Egypt and the UAE lead the second camp. According to a European ambassador who has served in Abu Dhabi, whatever Cairo and Abu Dhabi might agree or disagree on at the regional and bilateral levels they will always be allies because of their shared opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East, and to Turkey. According to one Arab diplomat, wherever Turkey is operating in the region, from the west of Libya to north Lebanon, the UAE will follow and establish a counterbalance. In the case of Libya it is in the east, but in Lebanon it is in the north. Saudi Arabia is, of course, firmly ensconced in the second camp. Riyadh and Tehran view each other as arch-enemies, and Saudi Arabias effective ruler, Mohamed bin Salman, is a close associate of his UAE counterpart Mohamed bin Zayed. They are joined in their loathing of political Islam, Iran and Erdogans expansionist Turkey, by Israel. This is not new. The deals and the exchange of visits is a novel development but not the shared concerns and shared interests, especially between Israel and the UAE, notes the Arab diplomat. He adds that the growing economic relations between Israel and a number of Gulf states, including the UAE, Oman, possibly next in line for a normalisation agreement with Israel, and Qatar, which has kept its arms open to Iran, Turkey, the Islamists and Israel, has been an open secret for years. During the last decade, says the same source, Israeli-Gulf relations have steadily moved beyond the economic to encompass security concerns, Israel and a number of Gulf countries have extremely close security coordination. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority (PA) itself has institutionalised security coordination with Israel, which has allowed for the arrest, and at times elimination, of Hamas members. As far as the Arab diplomat and European ambassador are concerned there was nothing surprising about Trumps announcement late last month that Israel and the UAE had agreed to establish diplomatic ties. The significance of the announcement, argue both, lies in the message it sends to those in the other camp that the front opposed to them is consolidating. That said, the Arab diplomat doubts that anybody in Iran, Turkey or the Palestinian Territories expected such a fast-tracked signing of an agreement. Not that the UAE-Israel agreement, and the upcoming agreement between Bahrain and Israel, is likely to wrong-foot Turkey, Iran and their associates. The agreements simply signal a formal acknowledgment of the security and intelligence cooperation that everyone knew was already taking place. The treaties, commentators agree, are far more important for the parties directly involved than their enemies. With the agreement between Israel and the UAE signed, they argue, the doors are wide open for Mohamed bin Zayed to position himself as the new Middle Easts peacemaker. This is no easy job given the anger of the PA which has called the treaty a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, nor is it impossible. According to informed diplomats, the UAE is already working on creating a new Palestinian entity, an off-shoot of the Fatah movement that, once the elderly Mahmoud Abbas is out of the way, will be in a position to take over Fatah, and possibly the PA. The same diplomats say the UAE could start to host some form of Palestinian-Israeli dialogue in less than 12 months. It need not be official talks but could consist of discussions between public intellectuals from both sides. In an article published Tuesday morning Hesham Youssef, an Arab diplomat closely associated with the Middle East peace talks and currently a senior fellow at the US Institute for Peace, argued that what is now at stake are the basic parameters of Middle East peacemaking. The diplomatic agreements being signed this week among the UAE, Bahrain and Israel present formidable challenges to the long-standing paradigm for peacemaking in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are yet to provide a viable substitute, wrote Youssef. For decades, Palestinians and most of the international community have envisioned the same sustainable final settlement, the two-state solution, and the diplomatic tools for building it. The notional stick has been Israelis eventual recognition that the alternative to two states an Israel that is either undemocratic or subject to a non-Jewish majority is objectionable. The carrot was peace and Israels acceptance and integration into a region of Arab states. Now, Youssef argued, all stakeholders to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have justifiably focused on Israels threat to annex Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The suspension of that disastrous step is indisputably a positive development, and the accord with the UAE contributed significantly to achieving this objective. Whatever the intricacies of Youssefs argument, his analysis is restricted to Abu Dhabis role vis-a-vis the Palestinian cause, something which is being paid less and less attention by Arab governments which are busy with their own internal affairs and increasingly willing to distance themselves from the issue. Beyond the Palestinian cause, however, this weeks developments, in terms of Israeli-Gulf Cooperation Council relations, appears to be fulfilling the Gulf moment prophecy that has become popular among many of Abu Dhabis most prominent intellectuals. Abu Dhabis direct relations with Israel, and its close association with the US, has now positioned it to assume a far more central role in orchestrating regional security arrangements. Unlike Egypt or Jordan, which have had peace agreements with Israel for decades, the UAE has never been in a state of war with Israel. Nor, say informed regional diplomats, will it shy away from hosting security coordination meetings designed to combat Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah. *A version of this article appears in print in the 17 September, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the title: A case of deja vu Search Keywords: Short link: WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - China's ambassador to Washington said on Thursday that China's relations with the United States were facing "severe difficulties" and the two countries should lose no time in putting them on the right track. Ambassador Cui Tiankai told a virtual ceremony to mark China's National Day that Beijing was willing to develop relations with Washington with "goodwill and sincerity." (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sandra Maler) In the presence of Ministers Paulette Lenert and Romain Schneider, a first meeting of a working group of the health round table was devoted on Wednesday to the lack of personnel in the health sector. The coronavirus pandemic has once again demonstrated the importance of doctors, nurses and other health professions. However, it is well-known that Luxembourg has long been short of medical staff. The problem must be tackled urgently to avoid a shortage in the medium term, according to Minister of Health Paulette Lenert, because Luxembourg staff alone cannot cover the Grand Duchy's needs. Ways of making these professions more attractive have been developed in a working group of the health round table ("Gesondheetsdesch"). Promotional campaigns will also soon be launched in order to attract a wider public to the health professions. Maxime Gillen (RTL) Maxime Gillen (RTL) The photos published on this site are subject to copyright and may not be copied, modified, or sold without the prior permission of the owner of the site in question. Background Three doctors per 1,000 inhabitants: Luxembourg is poorly ranked compared to nearby countries such as the Netherlands or Switzerland. It is also well below the OECD average of 3.8. All the representatives of the health sector gathered for this round table agreed on one point: we must act quickly. Five options were discussed. The fact is that many young Luxembourgers who go abroad to study medicine often decide to stay there after their studies. This is a trend that those in charge want to reverse. They want the best for Luxembourg, with attractive training and working conditions and modern, future-oriented medicine. Innovation and digitisation are other key elements. Another possibility that should be considered is that of professionals being able to join forces within a company. This is not possible for the moment, but it could be interesting for young people, in order to be able to make bigger investments and have more flexibility. Nurses have an increasingly important role in care. With 11.7 nurses per 1,000 inhabitants, Luxembourg is above the OECD average of 8.6, and in line with the Netherlands and Switzerland. But fewer and fewer young people are enrolling in nursing schools. This is why a campaign should be launched relatively quickly to promote this and other health professions. So far, these are only first ideas, and not conclusions. In the following weeks, they will be further developed in different working groups. All the working groups of the round table will meet by December in order to draw up a first assessment before the end of the year. Somany Ceramics Limited has enthralled travellers with a powerful communication message at Mumbai International Airport. Somany in partnership with Times OOH, the advertising partner for Mumbai airport, chose the most premium media located in the domestic departure, security check-in of the Mumbai Airport. It captivates the attention of departing fliers with Somany Tiles & Bathwares alluring brand campaign While developing the campaign strategy we chose airport advertising, said Vivek Gupta, Marketing Head - Somany Ceramics. Airport media is so substantial to us. The premium pillar media located at security check-in area are very strategically placed, and it will give a big boost to Somany as a brand to entice passengers eyeballs when they are waiting for security frisking. The brand campaign with Salman Khan will also showcase Somanys humble and rooted approach with the tag line Zameen se Judey. Moreover, Salmans personality, will help bring forth campaigns essence, which is, no matter how high you soar or how successful you are, you should always be rooted & remain grounded,Gupta said. We are proud to partner Somany Ceramics in delivering such impactful branding exercise that would have a long-lasting positive association in the minds of the passengers. Airport advertising has offered brands a niche target audience, which no other medium can offer with such low distraction and high dwell time. The current situation has led to even higher dwell times at the airports due to the safety measures. said Sumit Chadha, Times OOH. Times OOH offers comprehensive media solutions across Airports, Metro and Street furniture in India and Mauritius. Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India) Jabil Inc. (NYSE: JBL), a global manufacturing solutions provider, is announcing the promotion of May Yap to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO). She succeeds Gary Cantrell, who recently retired. In her new role, May will be responsible for driving end-to-end technology services and solutions, developing and executing technology applications in support of business growth and coordinating digital initiatives across the Jabil enterprise. Said Michael J. Loparco, Executive Vice President and CEO of Jabil EMS, In todays fast-changing environment where industry leaders are so often determined by technology advancements powered by data, we welcome Mays deep insights, experience and capability. As May enters this role at such a critical time of transformation, were confident shell help us achieve our long-term business objectives and further our global technology infrastructure and data solutions. Yap said, At this inflection point in our industry, we are seeing an acceleration of the need for intelligent data and digital solutions. Customers are looking to Jabil to increase innovation and competitive advantage by combining technology, data and scale to harness actionable insights. Im excited for this opportunity to help further drive the companys leading digital transformation strategy. With more than 20 years of work experience, May joined Jabil Green Point (JGP), a segment within Jabil, in 2014 as Vice President and CIO, overseeing IT operations across more than 20 JGP sites and 60,000 employees. During her tenure in JGP, May undertook structured steps to drive effective digital transformation throughout the business and helped set the stage for the next-generation connected and cognitive factories. May also carries a passion for expanding diversity and inclusion (D&I) and is a regular speaker at internal Jabil D&I forums. A highly accomplished leader, May has held several senior roles in global companies, including IBM and PwC Consulting, where she focused on IT and business strategy formulation and implementation, IT management and large-scale business and process transformations. May graduated with double majors in Mathematics and Computer Science, and has both an MBA and Masters degree in Computer Science. She is a qualified practitioner in quality and process management with deep knowledge in Lean Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) principles. She is also a certified ITIL V2 and V3 Service Manager. Mays rich skill sets include strategic IT management, human capital management and cross-cultural leadership. She has acquired extensive work experience in many countries including: USA, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, South East Asia, United Kingdom and Japan. Born and raised in Singapore, in her free time, May has volunteered as a museum guide and served as a translator for a local Chinese Literature Association to help promulgate Chinese literature to youth in Singapore. About Jabil: Jabil (NYSE: JBL) is a global manufacturing solutions provider that delivers comprehensive design, manufacturing, supply chain and product management services to hundreds of leading brands. Leveraging the power of over 200,000 people across 100 sites strategically located around the world, Jabil simplifies complexity and delivers value in a broad range of industries, enabling innovation, growth and customer success. For more information, visit jabil.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005516/en/ Supplier News 16 September 2020 Rome, Italy - Lybra - developer of the Assistant, the most advanced, machine learning, demand-centric revenue management system (RMS) available on the market, and HS LATAM - developer of state-of-the-art online distribution and competitor analysis solutions - is proud to announce the upcoming Travel Tech APAC Online Conference, taking place September 21-25, 2020. The Travel Tech APAC conference will feature expert speakers from top travel technology companies, including Lybra, Amadeus, SiteMinder, ReviewPro, eRevMax and many others. The Travel Tech APAC conference was created to bring focus to the importance of operational technology to support hotels' success - especially in a down market, as we are currently experiencing, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The conferences were designed to bring together international travel technology companies and hoteliers from around the world for online networking opportunities. Finally, the Travel Tech APAC conference aims to create a forum for discussion and sharing of expertise from top travel technology experts to hoteliers, who are struggling to survive the effects of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. "There are benefits for hotels in investing in operational technology today, to establish a strong foundation for a better financial future," said Vinicius Geraldo, CEO of HS LATAM and Founder of Travel Tech. "Today, hoteliers are facing brand-new, never-before-seen market conditions and all types of operational technologies - be it revenue management, property management, channel management, rate shopping, etc. - are must-haves for hotels to maintain a competitive advantage today and into the future, no matter how the pandemic affects demand." "Because demand is at an all-time low, revenue management is an especially challenging part of operations for hoteliers who aren't using technology to make pricing decisions," said Fulvio Giannetti, CEO of Lybra and one of the expert speakers on Day 1 of the conference, which focuses on optimizing revenue. "Even for hoteliers already using an RMS, the unprecedented lack of demand makes all historical data useless and, unfortunately, the majority of traditional RMS rely predominantly on historical data to predict room rates. That means that traditional revenue management strategies and technologies have become obsolete and so, hoteliers need to prepare for the challenging, highly competitive 'new normal' of the post-pandemic travel industry." The conference is organized with one panel presentation on a specific topic, each day of the conference. Sessions include: Full details and registration links for each session are available on the Travel Tech APAC website: traveltech.space/en/forum-apac/. All hotels and/or travel technology companies are invited to attend the Travel Tech APAC Online Conference, from September 21-25, 2020, to learn more about the benefits of investing in technology now, to establish a foundation for a stronger financial future. Register today at TravelTech.space, as spots are limited. To learn more about the upcoming Travel Tech APAC conference, to obtain a media pass or for an interview with the event organizers - Lybra and HS LATAM, please contact Jennifer Nagy at any time: [email protected] or +1.786.420.1160. Lybra will support and sponsor HS LATAM in organizing other regional Travel Tech conferences in the coming months, including Travel Tech LATAM from October 19-23, 2020, and Travel Tech EMEA on November 23, 2020. To find out more about these conferences, please contact Vinicius Geraldo, CEO of HS LATAM and Founder of Travel Tech, at [email protected]. About Travel Tech Travel Tech APAC is from September 21-25, 2020. is from September 21-25, 2020. Travel Tech LATAM is from October 19-23, 2020. is from October 19-23, 2020. Travel Tech EMEA is on November 23, 2020. Find out more and register for the upcoming is on November 23, 2020. Find out more and register for the upcoming Travel Tech APAC at traveltech.space. The Travel Tech series of online conferences will bring together companies with national and international renown in the hospitality, travel and tourism industries to address and dissect technology-related subjects within the global hospitality industry. About Lybra (Formerly Lybra.Tech) Lybra is a leading global hospitality technology company, offering an innovative, machine learning revenue management system (RMS) for the global hospitality industry. Lybra'sRMS was designed to improve the quality of hoteliers' lives, by simplifying and automating daily operations to skyrocket their property's bookings and revenue - even in times of decreased demand, like the current COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, Lybra was acquired by The Zucchetti Group, a leading international technology company offering software, hardware and ITC services to many global sectors, including hospitality, education, transport and logistics, manufacturing, among others. As part of The Zucchetti Group, Lybra is even more well-positioned to offer hotel clients the most accurate pricing suggestions because of the wealth of international market and demand data - compiled by the global hospitality technology companies that are owned by The Zucchetti Group - that is now integrated into the company's Assistant RMS. To learn more about Lybra, visit lybra.tech. New York: Hours before he takes the oath of office as the 45th US President, Donald Trump on Thursday left New York, a city that bears the real-estate tycoons imprints, for Washington for his inauguration ceremony on Friday. Trump, 70, and his family left New York City for Washington, this time not flying in his private plane that bears his name but in a military jet headed to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland near the nations capital. Joined by his family, wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and sons Don and Eric, Trump will take the oath of office as the leader of the worlds most powerful nation tomorrow as hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington to both support and protest his inauguration. A report in CBS News said as Trump and his family drove away from Trump Tower, his luxurious power centre and campaign headquarters in Manhattan, some onlookers and hecklers gathered on the street to watch the motorcade. Trump, who enters the White House with the promise of transforming US politics over the next four years, began his day today with tweeting: The journey begins and I will be working and fighting very hard to make it a great journey for the American people. I have no doubt that we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Trumps swearing-in tomorrow noon, a date and hour set by the US Constitution, will be attended by his unsuccessful Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, three former presidents and numerous other dignitaries. The Republican billionaire has no previous political or military experience and has never held a public office before. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. MOSCOW - Colleagues of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Thursday that a water bottle with a trace of the Novichok nerve agent was found in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk after he fell ill on a flight from there to Moscow last month. Navalny later was flown to Germany, where he was kept in an induced coma for more than two weeks as he was treated with an antidote at Berlins Charite hospital. Members of his team accused the Kremlin of involvement in the poisoning, charges that Russian officials have vehemently denied. The Kremlin has bristled at calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to answer questions about the poisoning, urging Germany to provide its evidence. On Tuesday, Navalny posted a picture of himself from his hospital bed, hugged by his wife and children. I still cant do almost anything on my own, but yesterday I managed to breathe on my own for the entire day, he added in the post. A video posted on Navalnys Instagram account on Thursday showed members of his team in plastic gloves inspecting his hotel room in Tomsk shortly after he left the city on Aug. 20 and collapsed on a flight home. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was hospitalized before being taken to Berlin two days later on a medevac plane. Navalnys Instagram post said they went to the room an hour after learning that he had fallen ill, accompanied by a lawyer, and packed half-empty plastic water bottles and unspecified other items for further inspection. In the video post, someone who appears to be a hotel employee could be heard telling members of the Navalny team that they need to ask police before taking any items from the room, and one of them refuses to do that. Two weeks later, a German laboratory found a trace of Novichok on a bottle from the Tomsk hotel room, they said. And then another three labs that took Alexeis samples proved that he was poisoned with it. Now we understand: It was done before he left his room to go to the airport. The founder of the Berlin-based organization Cinema for Peace, which helped organize the medevac flight for Navalny, said that some bottles were brought to Germany last month. I made sure that we flew some of Navalnys water bottles with us on our plane with Navalny, Jaka Bizilj told The Associated Press in a text message. There had been previous speculation that Navalny was poisoned at the airport, where he drank a cup of tea before boarding the flight. We didnt have much hope of finding something, members of Navalnys team said on Instagram. But as it was absolutely clear to us that Navalny wasnt just slightly unwell or under the weather and candy wouldnt help, we decided to take everything that could hypothetically be of use and hand it over to doctors in Germany. They noted that they did so because they were aware that Russian authorities would be reluctant to launch a probe. It was quite obvious that they wouldnt investigate the case in Russia, they said. And so it happened: Nearly a month after Russia hasnt recognized that Alexei was poisoned. Navalnys spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok at the hotel before he went to the airport. But Lyubov Sobol, a top Navalny associate, later tweeted that while traces of Novichok were found on a bottle from the hotel, it doesnt mean that Navalny was poisoned specifically with the bottle. Georgy Alburov, a close colleague of Navalny who inspected his hotel room in Tomsk along with other associates, said in a live broadcast on YouTube that German experts said the bottle wasnt the source of the Novichok and only had a trace amount of the nerve agent, probably left by Navalny when he drank from it after he had already been poisoned. Alburov alleged that Navalny probably was poisoned in the hotel, adding that its management had refused to show them recordings from surveillance cameras. He said police in Tomsk later seized computer servers containing the recordings. A German military lab determined that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, the same class of Soviet-era agent that Britain said was used on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the German lab conducted tests on various samples from Mr. Navalny, but neither she nor other German officials have elaborated. On Monday, the German government said independent tests by labs in France and Sweden backed up its findings. The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is also taking steps to have samples from Navalny tested at its designated labs. The Kremlin has said that Russian doctors who treated him in Omsk found no sign that Navalny was poisoned. Russia has repeatedly prodded Germany to share Navalnys analyses and other medical data and compare notes with the Russian doctors. German officials have responded to Moscows request for evidence by saying that Russian authorities must have the samples already since Navalny spent two days in the Omsk hospital. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who cancelled a scheduled trip Tuesday to Berlin, said in a TV interview earlier this week that Russian authorities have conducted a preliminary inquiry and documented the meetings Navalny had before falling ill, but he emphasized that investigators need to see evidence of poisoning to launch a full criminal probe. Lavrov accused the West of trying to smear Russia and use the incident as a pretext for new sanctions against Moscow. He argued that Navalnys life was saved by the pilots of the plane who quickly landed in Omsk after he collapsed on board and by the rapid action of doctors there something he said Western officials have failed to recognize. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized the European Unions plan to name a prospective sanctions mechanism for punishing human rights violators in honour of Navalny. We hope that the EU will regain common sense, and our partners will abandon the practice of finger-pointing and will make conclusions only on the basis of real and confirmed facts, she said. ___ Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed. Read more about: What is this all about?, asked Donald Trump as he retweeted a fake video showing Joe Biden dancing to the song F**k tha Police. The video was originally shared on Twitter by The United Spot, a conservative satirical account producing videos such as that shared by the US president on Tuesday night. It starts with footage from the Democratic presidential nominees campaign event in Florida on Tuesday, where he told an audience I just have one thing to say, before holding up-his mobile to a microphone. The 77-year-old then played the song Despacito to an audience of Latino voters and supporters, commending the talent of artist Luis Fonsi, who was in attendance at the Biden campaign event. I tell you what, If I had the talent of any of these people Id be, Id be, elected president by acclamation, said Mr Biden on Tuesday. That clip soon went viral, with Republicans deriding the Democratic candidates use of a song that - when translated from Spanish - means Slowly. Does Joe Biden realise that Despacito means slowly?, wrote Trump campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp on Twitter, adding that it Fits well with Slow Joe, the nickname used by Mr Trump to mock his election opponent. The United Spot then turned the video into a parody, replacing Despacito with N.W.As 1988 hit, F**k tha police. Mr Biden appeared to be listening to the lyrics: F**k the police comin' straight from the underground, A young n**** got it bad 'cause I'm brown. Following the presidents retweet, Twitter labelled the video as Manipulated media, directing users to the original video featuring Despacito. Ogun State government workers have embarked on a one-week warning strike in Ogun over the refusal of the government to implement the new national minimum wage. The strike was declared on Tuesday evening by Emmanuel Bankole, the state chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). The NLC had given a 14-day ultimatum to the state government on the implementation of the new minimum wage. Following the expiration of the ultimatum, the workers protested at the governors office, Oke-Mosan, in Abeokuta on Tuesday. While the protest was ongoing, the leaders of the NLC, Trade Union Congress and Joint Negotiating Council went for a closed-door meeting with the government. The meeting later ended at deadlock. Speaking with journalists after the meeting, Mr Bankole said asides minimum wage, they were demanding the abolition of the pension reform bill, the payment of gratuities, payment of outstanding six years leave allowances, three years promotion and 134 months unpaid pension. Unfortunately the negotiation ended in a deadlock. And so the one-week warning strike will commence at 12 midnight tomorrow (Wednesday). With the facts before us, Ogun State is not the poorest in the South-West. So, we are saying no, all their excuses are unacceptable to us. The position of the government is unacceptable to us. What they said was that minimum wage will have to be delayed so that they can do certain things and we said no, enough is enough. In a swift reaction, the Special Adviser to Governor Dapo Abiodun on Public Affairs, Remmy Hazzan, said the strike is unnecessary. He said the state has no financial capacity to implement the minimum wage. In October 2019, the federal government and the labour unions reached an agreement on consequential adjustments in salaries that must be implemented across all boards in line with the new minimum wage law. Only 17 of the 36 state governments have begun the implementation of the new minimum wage. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks after the rally at Scranton Cultural Center on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019. Biden will be returning to the Scranton area on Thursday to take part in a town hall event that will air on CNN. Read more Biden Town Hall in Pennsylvania Date: Thursday, Sept. 17 Time: 8 p.m. Eastern Location: PNC Field, Moosic, Pa. TV: CNN President Donald Trump participated in a town hall in Pennsylvania earlier this week. Now its Joe Bidens shot. Less than seven weeks until Election Day, the former vice president will travel to Moosic, a small town just outside of his childhood home of Scranton, to take part in a town hall on CNN moderated by longtime anchor Anderson Cooper In an unusual setup forced by the coronavirus pandemic, the town hall will be held in the parking lot of PNC Field. One hundred attendees, all chosen by CNN, will drive in and park near the stage, where theyll be called on by Cooper to ask questions. Outdoor gatherings are limited to 250 people in Pennsylvania under Gov. Tom Wolfs coronavirus orders, though those restrictions were recently ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV, a Trump appointee. Wolf said he plans to appeal the ruling. Biden last visited the Scranton area in July, and delivered a speech at McGregor Industries in Dunmore, promising to build the economy of the future. He also criticized Trump as singularly focused" on the stock market. Pennsylvania, and its 20 electoral votes, could ultimately decide the 2020 election. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by just 44,000 votes, a margin less than 1%. Though polls have tightened since the summer, Biden has continued to hold a lead over Trump. Real Clear Politics has Biden ahead by a little more than 4 percentage points, based on an average of recent polls. A new NBC News/Marist College poll released last week showed Biden widening his lead to 9 percentage points over Trump. Heres everything you need to know to watch and stream the town hall: How can I watch and stream Bidens Scranton town hall? The town hall, which will air on CNN, is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Eastern and last about an hour. You can stream the town hall on the CNN app and on CNN.com. The network is also available on several so-called skinny bundles, including YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and AT&T Now. Who will be moderating Bidens town hall? Moderating the town hall will be longtime CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who interviewed Biden at the end of August. In that interview, the former vice president condemned the violence surrounding protests in Kenosha, Wis., and claimed Trump and his allies were rooting for violence. Cooper also moderated a Democratic debate during the primaries in October, and drew scrutiny for asking Biden if it was proper for his son, Hunter, to do business abroad during his tenure as vice president. Senate Republicans are investigating Hunter Bidens former role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said was political retribution intended to help the president keep his job. My son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, Biden said. I carried out the policy of the United States in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. Kamala Harris will be in Philadelphia on Thursday Bidens running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), arrived in Philadelphia Thursday morning for her first campaign swing through Pennsylvania since being added to the ticket. According to my colleague Sean Collins Walsh, Harris will participate in a Sister to Sister, Mobilizing in Action event hosted by City Councilmember Cherelle Parker, a meeting with U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) and a small business owner, and a conversation with Latino elected officials and community leaders. Shell also attend a virtual fundraiser tonight with Biden from the campaigns headquarters in Center City. Earlier this week, Harris held a Zoom fund-raiser with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Saturday Night Live cast member Maya Rudolph, who earned an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of fun aunt Harris during the Democratic primary. Trump to hold a rally in Wisconsin Thursday night Trump will travel to Mosinee, Wis., Thursday for a campaign rally, according to his public schedule. Trump is expected to speak to supporters at Central Wisconsin Aviation at 9 pm. Eastern, just after Bidens town hall is scheduled to end. The president has been criticized for continuing to hold large rallies with thousands of supporters, many who flout the White Houses own guidelines on social distancing and face masks. The indoor site in Nevada Trump held a campaign event on Sunday was fined $3,000 for violating state coronavirus guidelines banning large gatherings. Trump won Wisconsin in the 2016 election by just 22,478 votes, a margin less than 1%. Recent polls show Biden increasing his lead in the state an ABC News/The Washington Post poll released Wednesday shows the former vice president up 6 percentage points. Real Clear Politics has Biden ahead in Wisconsin by nearly 7 percentage points, based on their average of recent polls. Recent stories about the 2020 election in Pennsylvania 2020 presidential debate schedule The Trump and Biden campaigns have agreed to three debates during the 2020 election: Sept. 29: Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, moderated by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace Oct. 15: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, moderated by C-SPAN Political Editor Steve Scully Oct. 22: Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., moderated by NBC News White House correspondent (and Philadelphia native) Kristen Welker A debate between Harris and Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled for Oct. 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page will be the moderator. A retired Army Major who had his passport taken away by the Dubai authorities and was stuck in the country for five years took his own life following a business failure, a coroner ruled. Military veteran Hugo Rosen trained at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst and went on to command the Coldstream Guards before retiring from the army and moving to the United Arab Emirates to work in security in 2010, an inquest into his death heard. The 'persuasive' father later took the plunge to set up his own company, Miro Commodities DMCC which specialised in the global trade of commodities, a coroner was told on Thursday. Retired Coldstream Guards major Hugo Rosen (pictured) was found hanged in Dubai last October However, after falling into financial difficulties, Major Rosen was barred from leaving the country for five years, to his family's dismay, his father said. Providing evidence, his father Mr Rosen Senior told the inquest into his son's death: 'Hugo could be very persuasive and was good at making deals. He built up debts in Dubai and borrowed money until the profit came, in which they never did. 'In 2012 he came home from Dubai but on his return, he had his passport confiscated. After that, Hugo became argumentative and his drinking got worse. 'At one point, we contacted the embassy in Dubai and asked them for help. They contacted Hugo and arranged to meet him but he turned up and convinced them everything was fine using his charm.' After reaching a settlement with Dubai authorities, Hugo was allowed to fly home to be with his wife Lucinda and sons who lived in Windsor, Berks. In a statement, his elderly father said: 'Hugo was looking for jobs in the UK and he had many friends from his Sandhurst days but he felt they were all successful and he did not want them to see that he was not. 'In May 2019, Hugo returned to Dubai to take over a business with friends but his latest business venture did not take off. He told us it was going well.' The night before his death on October 4 last year, Hugo was partying before taking a taxi back to a friend's home where he stayed up and consumed an entire bottle of vodka. Having gone out the next morning to run some errands, his friend was horrified to find 43-year-old Hugo in his bathroom, Reading Coroners Court heard. Major Rosen was pronounced dead at the scene with the cause of death offered by the Dubai authorities as intentional self-harm by hanging. 'Perhaps in his inebriated state he felt his life was never going to be successful,' the heartbroken father added. Having trained at the prestigious Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Mr Rosen had been a Major in the 1st battalion Coldstream Guards. He completed three six-month tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and he won campaign medals for both. He had been in command when the battalion was mounted at Buckingham Palace in November 2006 when the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, had travelled in State to the Palace of Westminster to open the session of Parliament. Before setting up his own business, Major Rosen was a business development manager for security firms across Dubai operating across Asia. Reading Coroners Court heard in May 2019, Hugo returned to Dubai to take over a business with friends but his latest venture did not take off He was responsible for the sales and marketing functions of a well established Private Security Company for Iraq and the Middle East. A spokesman for the Coldstream Guards Association, Sunderland Branch, said: 'It is unfortunately my sad duty to inform those that knew him, that Major (Retd) Hugo Rosen has sadly passed away. I'm sure you will all join me in offering our sincere condolences to Hugo's family and friends at this terrible time. Rest in peace, gone but not forgotten sir!' Posting a tribute to Mr Rosen, Stefan Breg said: 'Hugo mate, such happy memories, will miss your cheeky smile and the way you engaged with even the meanest of people in Dubai on a night out and left them smiling, real magic from a man with a big heart' Ken Hunt said: 'Top bloke. Could drink the mess dry.' The assistant coroner for Berkshire, Alison McCormick concluded: 'Hugo Rosen was a 43-year-old married man. He died on October 4 by hanging. 'It is clear that he had a successful career in the Army, he was clearly a talented man at leading people. He later pursued business interests in Dubai but he did not enjoy success. 'He most recently left the UK in May 2019 and lived there until his death. It is most likely that he ventured into another business venture which did not succeed. 'The night before his death he had consumed at least a bottle of vodka. Perhaps Hugo was adversely affected by his business failure and the effects of drinking. I am satisfied that Hugo Rosen hanged himself at the home address of a friend with the intention of ending his life.' If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article then you can call the Samaritans on 116 123, alternatively you can visit the website by clicking here. Naomi Campbell And Benedikt Taschen Celebrate The Los Angeles Launch Of "Naomi" At Taschen Beverly Hills TV personality Kim Kardashian and model Naomi Campbell take a selfie in 2016. Credit - Charley Gallay/Getty Images The world of social media was a little quieter than usual on Wednesday: Celebrities ranging from Kim Kardashian West to Mark Ruffalo froze their Instagram accounts for 24 hours, to protest hate speech and misinformation being spread on Facebook, Instagrams parent company. I cant sit by and stay silent while these platforms continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation, wrote Kardashian West, who has 188 million Instagram followers, in a tweet on Tuesday, before encouraging her fans to join her. I love that I can connect directly with you through Instagram and Facebook, but I cant sit by and stay silent while these platforms continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation - created by groups to sow division and split America apart pic.twitter.com/XkxzABn7qw Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) September 15, 2020 The day-long freeze, during which the celebrities ceased to share photos or posts on either platform, was organized by Stop Hate for Profit, a coalition of nine civil rights groups that are asking Facebook to make policy changes to address online harassment and conspiracy theories that spread place on the platform. By Wednesday night, according to Stop Hate for Profit, the Instagram freeze was seen by over 1 billion people. (A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times on Tuesday that it had no comment about the situation.) But while the boycott temporarily reshaped the Instagram feeds of the celebrities collective millions of followers, it was also met with criticism. The critiques paralleled similar concerns about two other major social-media activism campaigns in recent months: #BlackoutTuesday, for which Instagram users posted black squares to show support for Black Lives Matter, and #ChallengeAccepted, a campaign that involved users posting black-and-white selfies in a declaration of womens empowerment. Story continues For all three, a central question dogged the hashtags: what could short-term social-media action actually do to create long-term change? In fact, argues Tia C.M. Tyree, professor and interim Associate Dean of Howard Universitys Cathy Hughes School of Communications, social media-activism can have a major impactif its done right. Whether its Black Lives Matter or the #MeToo movement, people are taking to social media to voice their opinions and really call attention to some of the issues that have been problematic in U.S. society in past years and now, Tyree says. Theyre able to get exposure in a different light because social media is so prevalent and pervasive in todays world. According to Tyree, however, that power can only be realized if the campaign also exists offline. Despite the criticism, she thinks Stop Hate for Profit has the potential to be a good example of how an online campaign can go beyond a symbolic gesture. The Instagram freeze is part of a week of action organized by the coalition, which includes clear objectives like educating people about election disinformation and asking people to register to vote. These campaigns give everyday people a chance to do something larger than themselves, but there has to be online and offline goals and objectives, Tyree says. To offer up the idea that were not going to utilize a platform for a day is not a goalits a tactic that should be used as an overall part of a bigger campaign to evoke larger change. The backing of an campaign like Stop Hate for Profit is not in fact necessary to make an impact, Tyree says, but it helps to have an established set of goals and ideas to back up the posts. She points to the way the hashtag #MeToo went viral when used in a tweet by Alyssa Milano. While Milanos tweet brought the phrase to the mainstream, the movement gained momentum because the phrases creator Tarana Burke had long been doing the work of empowering sexual abuse and harassment survivors. Ultimately, however, while social media can raise money and awareness, its only one part of a larger puzzleone that wont be solved by any single campaign. Tyree stresses that while the 24-hour Instagram freeze was created to draw awareness to the hate speech and misinformation on Facebook, the bigger issue that needs to be addressed is the existence of the hate itself and the realities of the world that produced it. Social media is a reflection of society, she says. We also have to put the mirror to ourselves and understand that this is really a reflection of who we are as a society. Researchers have found a new family of toxins, which they've named 'gympietides' after the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree. The painful toxins wielded by a giant Australian stinging tree are surprisingly similar to the venom found in spiders and cone snails, University of Queensland researchers have found. The Gympie-Gympie stinging tree is one of the world's most venomous plants and causes extreme long-lasting pain. Associate Professor Irina Vetter, Dr Thomas Durek and their teams at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience found a new family of toxins, which they've named 'gympietides' after the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree. The tree's scientific name is Dendrocnide which literally means 'stinging tree'--a member of the nettle family which can be found in Australia from the Northern Rivers region of NSW, through Gympie QLD and all the way to the tip of the Cape York Peninsula. "The Australian stinging tree species are particularly notorious for producing excruciatingly painful sting, which unlike those of their European and North American relatives can cause symptoms that last for days or weeks. "Like other stinging plants such as nettles, the giant stinging tree is covered in needle-like appendages called trichomes that are around five millimetres in length--the trichomes look like fine hairs, but actually act like hypodermic needles that inject toxins when they make contact with skin," Associate Professor Vetter said. Historically, small molecules in the trichomes such as histamine, acetylcholine and formic acid have been tested but injecting these does not cause the severe and long-lasting pain of the stinging tree, suggesting that there was an unidentified neurotoxin to be found. "We were interested in finding out if there were any neurotoxins that could explain these symptoms, and why Gympie-Gympie can cause such long-lasting pain," Associate Professor Vetter said. The team did indeed find such neurotoxins - a completely new class of miniproteins that they termed "Gympietides", after the indigenous name for the plant. "Although they come from a plant, the gympietides are similar to spider and cone snail toxins in the way they fold into their 3D molecular structures and target the same pain receptors--this arguably makes the Gympie-Gympie tree a truly "venomous" plant. Associate Professor Vetter said the long-lasting pain from the stinging tree may be explained by the gympietides permanently changing the sodium channels in the sensory neurons, not due to the fine hairs getting stuck in the skin. "By understanding how this toxin works, we hope to provide better treatment to those who have been stung by the plant, to ease or eliminate the pain," she said. "We can also potentially use the gympietides as scaffolds for new therapeutics for pain relief." With these toxins from both plants and animals having a shared method of causing pain, it begs the question, when and how did these toxins evolve? The researchers point to two possibilities for the toxin's evolution from either an ancestral gene in an ancient shared ancestor or convergent evolution, where nature re-invents the most fitting structure to fit a common purpose. The research team hope that the gympietides will provide new information on how pain-sensing nerves function and contribute to developing new painkillers. ### Contributed Photo / Google Streetview BRIDGEPORT An individual and their three dogs were rescued by first responders after the sailboat they were on crashed on the rocks in the harbor, according to initial dispatch reports and officials. At 6:20 a.m. Thursday, firefighters and the harbor master responded with the police departments marine unit for a report of a boat in distress in Cedar Creek Harbor behind Wheelbrator on Howard Avenue, according to the fire department. Donald Trump plans to talk Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and to discuss the new stimulus package to deliver the aid before the election. Pres. Donald Trump and his administration have been persistent in pushing for a new round of stimulus package since the first round of the relief package expired in July. The President's top officials even went into a series of discussions to come up with a stimulus package with strong bipartisan support. However, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some Democratic lawmakers continuously rejected the proposal, including the stimulus bill Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced last week. However, Pres. Trump and his administration are still optimistic that the second relief aid will be delivered before the election. Pres. Trump recently said that he would talk at the right time to Nancy Pelosi and discuss the new stimulus package amid the continuous stalemate in reaching a bipartisan agreement over a new relief aid. He said this during ABC News town hall on Tuesday. When asked about why he did not meet Pelosi in the past few weeks to discuss the stimulus, Pres. Trump explained, "Because they know exactly where I stand. At the right time, I'll do right, but they know exactly where I stand." He also added, "What they want is a bailout of Democrat-run states that are doing poorly, and, you know, I don't think this is the right way to go about it." When he was asked if he has plans to meet Pelosi, he said, "Yes, at the right time. Meanwhile, there is also a growing tension in the House as Democrats slowly disagree with Pelosis's actin not to disagree with the GOP's proposed stimulus package. A House Problem Solvers Caucus, which is evenly composed of four dozen Republicans and Democrats, drafted a new stimulus package worth roughly $2 trillion. They also urged Pelosi to act on the new stimulus, and some of the Democratic lawmakers in the House do not want to go home and will have a campaign empty-handed. For sure, Democratic lawmakers seeking reelection will have a slimmer chance to win if they cannot pass a new stimulus. The growing tension within the rank of Pelosi has led her to announce that she and her colleagues are committed to staying in the Capitol until they reach an agreement that meets millions of Americans' needs. This is to make sure that the relief aids will be delivered before the government operation shuts down. It can be remembered that Pelosi stressed out before that they will only come up with a new stimulus agreement deal after the election. However, with the emerging tension and division in the Democratic-dominated Congress, it seems that the new stimulus will be released before the election. The new stimulus includes $1,200 direct stimulus checks, PPP loans for businesses, funding for schools, budget for COVID-19 vaccines, and more. This will not only help millions of Americans but also candidates from both parties who re seeking reelection. Check these out! Tunis, Tunisia (PANA) - The Arab institute for human rights, in partnership with the Tunisian ministry of Relations with constitutional bodies and civil society, Wednesday held a workshop here on ways to protect migrants and refugees during Phase III of the spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) Advertisement A staggering 98 per cent of people taking home coronavirus tests do not get their result within 24 hours, shock data showed today as Boris Johnson's target of turning all tests around within a day slipped even further out of reach amid the government's swabbing fiasco. The home test kits are the most used route for the public but also the slowest, with just 1.9 per cent getting results within a day. Turnaround also faltered in all other situations, with drive-in centres managing to return only 38 per cent within 24 hours and two thirds (64.7 per cent) getting their results the day after the test. Admitting it doesn't have the lab capacity to cope with the more than 200,000 swabs being completed each day, the Government is facing down the barrel of catastrophe and has failed to diagnose any cases of Covid-19 since Monday in England's worst-affected areas. No positive cases have been detected in tests submitted on September 15 or September 16 in Bolton, Oldham, Salford, Blackburn with Darwen, Preston, Pendle, Rochdale, Tameside or Manchester, MailOnline can reveal. This suggests that no tests done on these dates have been fully processed, meaning local authorities and public health directors do not have up-to-date data on the situation on the ground in the country's Covid-19 hotspots. In a bid to stem the flow of bad news, the Department of Health this morning promised to set up two new major 'Lighthouse Labs' in Newcastle and Bracknell in Berkshire to help cope with mounting demand for swabs but they won't be fully operational until February and March next year, respectively. People all over the country have reported not being able to get tests and some drive-in sites stand empty while other centres are overloaded and turning people away. Testing tsar Baroness Dido Harding faces a roasting from MPs today, amid accusations that she is presiding over 'chaos' and lacks any experience in public health. NHS Test & Trace weekly data from between September 3 and September 9 show more people than ever are now waiting for days to get coronavirus tests results, left in limbo and fearing for their health as labs scramble to process record numbers of samples. Data from the testing system has also confirmed that cases are on the rise 18,371 people were diagnosed in the first week of September, up 75 per cent from 10,489 a week before and a 167 per cent rise in a fortnight. It is the highest number of positive tests in a week since the service was set up in May. It comes as the Prime Minister yesterday admitted that Britain doesn't have the capacity to carry out the number of coronavirus tests it needs to and he today warned that the nation is approaching a 'second hump' of cases of the disease. Mr Johnson had promised to get all coronavirus test results turned around within 24 hours by the end of June but that target now looks further away than ever, with all testing methods this week recording their slowest turnaround times for months. The proportion of people getting their Covid-19 test results within 24 hours has plummeted for all kinds of test, performance data showed today The median time taken for people to receive test results has soared for the most common testing routes in recent weeks between September 3 and 9, satellite tests and home testing accounted for more than 500,000 out of 876,000 tests (Median is a middle-point, with half of people waiting long and half of people waiting for a shorter time) Data from the testing system has also confirmed that cases are on the rise 18,371 people were diagnosed in the first week of September, up 75 per cent from 10,489 a week before and a 167 per cent rise in a fortnight Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged that all coronavirus test results would be turned around within 24 hours by the end of June but that target is now further away than it has ever been Test & Trace figures show that the home testing 24-hour return rate the time from taking a test and posting it to receiving the result fell from 3.8 per cent to 1.9 per cent in the first weeks of September. The numbers show that 172,886 home test kits were done between September 3 and 9, out of a total 876,903 tests. Around 340,000 swabs were carried out at satellite test centre swabs, which are used mainly by care homes. And second most common for members of the public are mobile testing units, which saw 24-hour result return drop from 72.5 to 38.4 per cent. At regional drive-in test centres 37.9 per cent of people got their results within a day, down from 66.6 per cent the week before. And at local test centres those set up in at-risk areas 20.4 per cent of test results were sent out within 24 hours of the swab being taken, down from 53.2 per cent a week earlier. In a data analysis published yesterday, academics revealed that, as of September 15, only nine per cent of Britons testing positive for coronavirus were finding out within two days of taking a test. Professor Alastair Grant, an environmental scientist at the University of East Anglia, crunched the data published on the national testing dashboard. He revealed that until the end of August around 70 per cent of positive tests were reported within two days, but the rate has been 'falling steadily' ever since and dropped to just nine per cent on Tuesday, September 15. Another 40 per cent of tests on that day were from swabs taken at least four days earlier, according to his report. It has not been verified by fellow experts. Writing in his number-crunching article, Professor Grant claimed: 'The problems seem to be a consequence of the laboratories that process the tests reaching capacity. 'Backlogs of unprocessed samples are building up, and limits are being placed on the number of testing slots made available to try to control this.' In pledges to boost laboratory capacity, the Department of Health has said it will open a further two Lighthouse Labs in Bracknell and Newcastle, capable of processing a combined 120,000 tests per day, early next year. This adds to promises of a lab near Loughborough by the end of this month, and two others in Newport and Charnwood in the Midlands, which are expected to be ready by the end of October. Chief of the National Institute for Health Protection, Dido Harding, said: 'Each day, around 200,000 people are successfully booking and taking tests and we are growing our capacity to 500,000 tests across the UK by the end of October, with more and more capacity being added each week.' Experts say getting test results fast and carrying out contact tracing immediately is vital to stopping the spread of coronavirus because there is only a short window to alert people that they are at risk of infecting others without yet knowing they're ill. Members of the public are pictured queueing outside a coronavirus testing centre in Edmonton, North London, as people across the country say they are struggling to get hold of tests A queue is pictured outside a swab-testing site in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, this morning Testing sites in some areas are struggling to offer people appointments because swabs are being rationed for places where infection rates are higher (Pictured: A queue outside a test centre in London this morning) Britain's coronavirus testing system is crumbling despite doing fewer tests each day than the Department of Health claims it is capable of. Official data show that on September 14, the most recent numbers available, testing labs processed 30,000 fewer tests than they could have done. Despite this, hundreds of people across England are unable to book testing appointments and others are being directed to centres hundreds of miles from home. Cracks in the system have become evident as no new coronavirus cases have been reported from the worst-affected areas of England since Monday. NUMBER OF COVID-19 PATIENTS ON INTENSIVE CARE VENTILATORS AT TWO-MONTH HIGH IN ENGLAND The number of Covid-19 patients on intensive care ventilators in hospitals in England has hit its highest level for two months as cases of the disease are rising. As of Tuesday, September 15, there were 115 people needing the life support machines, which force air into people's lungs when they are unable to breathe on their own. This was up 22 per cent in a week, from 80 on September 8, and the highest figure since 137 on Tuesday, July 21 eight weeks ago. Patients on ventilators are the most seriously ill of all coronavirus patients and have a survival rate of around 50 per cent. Ventilators are usually a doctor's last resort for when the patient's lungs no longer work on their own. The increase in ventilator patients has come as more people are being admitted to hospital in general with coronavirus, whether critically ill or not. As of Monday, September 14, an average 140 people per day were being admitted to NHS England hospitals each day. This was up almost three times on the average 56 per day two weeks ago and from a low of 45 in the last week of August. There were 172 admissions on September 14, compared to 79 on September 2. Advertisement Figures reveal that no positive cases have been detected in tests submitted on September 15 or September 16 in Bolton, Oldham, Salford, Blackburn with Darwen, Preston, Pendle, Rochdale, Tameside or Manchester. This suggests that no tests done on these dates have been fully processed, meaning local authorities and public health directors do not have up-to-date data on the situation on the ground in the country's Covid-19 hotspots. The delay risks prevention measures being taken too late to stop the virus spiralling out of control, and forcing the UK into a 'lockdown by default'. Residents in the top ten virus hotspots have struggled to get hold of tests and an official has warned that the government has sought to 'throttle' demand when there are too many requests by reducing the number of tests available. The data shows that Bradford is the only coronavirus hotspot to have had any samples submitted on September 15 processed, with three new cases identified. It is expected that this number will rise as it detected 28 on September 14, 39 on September 13 and 61 on September 12. The highest number recorded in a single day in the city was 114 seen on September 7. The delays seen in these regions suggest other areas of the country are also waiting for more than 48 hours to have tests processed, meaning new outbreaks may not be detected until they have spread markedly. Boris Johnson promised on June 3 that all tests would be completed within 24 hours by the end of the month. 'We already turn around 90 per cent of tests within 48 hours,' Mr Johnson said at the time. 'The tests conducted at the 199 testing centres, as well as the mobile testing centres, are all done within 24 hours, and I can undertake to him now to get all tests turned around in 24 hours by the end of June, except for difficulties with postal tests or insuperable problems like that.' But by July 1 the government was unable to confirm whether its target had been met, with data published at present suggesting most tests are taking more than 48 hours to complete. The government's website says they 'aim' to return test results within 48 hours of a swab being taken, or 72 hours of a home test. After a test is completed it is sent to a laboratory which examines the sample to see whether the individual has coronavirus. If they test positive they are added to the total number of cases identified on the date when the test was carried out. Health Secretary Matt Hancock claims demand for tests is soaring but his department has refused to reveal how many people are trying to get swabs. The number of people actually getting tested has gone up by 23 per cent since the end of August while capacity has increased by 12 per cent but never been matched. Capacity has risen roughly in line with the number of tests being done and there are now more tests being done each day than would have been possible even a week ago. Scientists are starting to doubt whether the system can really process as many as health chiefs say it can. And as the Government begins to ration tests to the worst-hit parts of the countries, testing centres are seen deserted in some places but with people queuing down the street outside others. Sodexo, which runs the centres, has posted job adverts for people to staff the drive- and walk-in sites as the UK scrambles to prepare for surging numbers of cases as infections are now on the rise in people of all age groups in England. Labour MPs have called the testing fiasco a 'farce' and 'unacceptable', while scientists admit they are seriously concerned that the Government hasn't prepared for what they've known for months would eventually happen. Coronavirus testing centres have been pictured empty today despite hundreds of people saying they cannot book an appointment online. Meanwhile the company that runs them, Sodexo, is recruiting more staff and officials will say only that they are diverting capacity to badly-hit areas (Pictured: A test site in Leeds) Testing sites were pictured empty this week after Matt Hancock said it was time to 'prioritise' coronavirus testing, meaning it is now rationed to badly affected areas. As a result, people in many areas are unable to get tested. While some are directed to centres a long way from home, others have been denied access altogether. Mr Hancock yesterday admitted there is a backlog of tests worth up to a day's lab processing capacity, which is now equal to almost 250,000 tests. But experts aren't convinced the capacity figure is a true reflection of what the system can handle. Professor Alan McNally, a geneticist at the University of Birmingham who helped set up a Government lab in Milton Keynes, told BBC Breakfast yesterday there were 'clearly underlying issues which nobody wants to tell us about'. He said: 'I think there is a surge in demand [and] I think our stated capacity is very different from actually how many tests can be run in a given day.' Dr Joshua Moon, from the University of Sussex Business School, added: 'One of the deeper issues is why we are seeing an acute shortage when total tests per day currently sit at two thirds of the governments claimed testing capacity. 'I am particularly worried about why the claimed capacity was so much higher than it actually was. 'Without proper understanding of the systems capacity, there is a fundamental weakness in ability to plan for the future.' The current lab capacity for diagnostic tests, as claimed by the Department of Health on September 10, is a maximum of 243,817 per day. But the system has never come close to hitting this but is still in such a sticky situation, with a backlog, that people are being denied tests even in some of the country's hotspots, such as Bolton and Pendle in Lancashire. Since capacity hit that figure on September 8 there have been an average of 214,656 tests done each day, topping out at 238,640 on September 12. In total, the Government claims it can handle 374,917 tests per day but many of these antibody blood tests which are not used for diagnosing people with the disease, but for surveillance. When pressed on why the testing system is rejecting people and sending them absurd distances cross-country to get tests, officials have blamed lab capacity. Although the system is operating at below-maximum capacity, they claim there is surging demand piling pressure on the processing chain even though it appears much of this demand is never realised because people are denied the tests. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Irani gang is spreading its tentacles all over India, duping people with a unique modus operandi by posing as police officers from the CBI or the Crime Branch. Taking advantage of their built and height, as well as fluency in the local dialect, they convince their targets they are undercover police officers and ask the victims to part with their jewellery on the pretext of keeping it safe in a packet. Usually, they then pack the jewellery in a paper packet and instead of returning the real jewellery, hand over fake jewellery in a similar packet to the victim. During this time, another gang member pretending to be a passer-by, also hands over his belongings to the impersonator to gain the confidence of the victim. Another member, who will be stationed some metres away, will keep a watch and other gang members wait in a car or bike to flee with the booty. Members of these gangs, who hail from Iran, mostly come to Delhi-NCR from Maharashtra and commit offences, such as robbing people of their belongings after offering lifts or conning elderly people, especially women, and stealing their jewellery by posing as police personnel. Sometimes, they trick women into removing their jewellery by cooking up stories of violent snatchings in the neighbourhood. Police say Irani gang members work in groups of about five people and usually reside in hotels on the outskirts of the city in which they carry out the crime. Such gangs are believed to be active in Ambewali, Shivaji Nagar (Maharashtra), Bidar (Karnataka), Pipariya (Madhya Pradesh), Deoband (Uttar Pradesh) and Kaliyar Sharif (Uttarakhand). Recent incidents of robberies in Delhi and the National Capital Region indicate a similar pattern of crimes carried out by a gang of unknown people posing as cops. Keeping in view the gravity of the crime and unique modus operandi followed by gang members, a team was formed by the Crime Branch. The team recently succeeded in arresting four gang members from IP Park near Sarai Kale Khan. The recovered gold and ornaments were traced back to cases in Faridabad in Haryana. The gang also used a stolen mobile phone which was also recovered. Amjad, one of the arrested accused, a resident of Ambewali, Kalyan in Maharashtra has at least seven cases registered against him including cheating and attempt to murder. "The gang also targets courier boys of jewellery Shops who carry huge quantities of gold. They pose as Crime Branch and CBI personnel and on the pretext of checking, rob them and flee," said Bhisham Singh, DCP Crime branch. (Zafar Abbas can be reached as zafar.a@ians.in) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text REXBURG On Monday, Lori Vallows defense attorney Mark Means filed a motion asking that she be allowed to wear street clothing during her court appearances. District Judge Dane H. Watkins Jr. granted the request. Vallow can now wear clothing of her choice to hearings and proceedings as long as they are solely provided by the defendant. Vallow and her husband Chad Daybell face felony charges relating to the cover-up of the deaths of Vallows children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old J.J. Vallow. Both face two counts for conspiracy to commit destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence. Daybell is facing two additional felony charges for the destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence. Each count carries a punishment of up to five years imprisonment and/or up to a $10,000 fine. The search for the children and reports of the couples purported doomsday beliefs have garnered international attention. With high profile cases, it is not uncommon for defendants to receive criticism of their looks. Facebook groups dedicated to the case routinely pick apart every aspect of Vallows appearance. Loris hair looks like a rats nest, her blue nail polish is chipping, and the color was all wrong for her read a few of the comments. Fox Nation host Nancy Grace has previously criticized Vallows lipstick and hairstyle. These jabs at her appearance may be particularly concerning to Vallow who was both a former beauty pageant contestant and a hairstylist, according to NBCs Dateline. However, the request regarding Vallows appearance may be about more than just vanity. A study from Cornell University found that juries convict attractive people less often. According to another study, defendants wearing prison attire are convicted at a higher rate. An image of a person in an orange prison jumpsuit may elicit contentions that he or she is in fact guilty because they are already depicted as a prisoner, the Winona State University study states. The judges stipulation that Vallow must provide her own clothing seems to be intended to prevent anyone else from spending money on Vallows appearance. In last years high profile case surrounding New York scam artist Anna Sorokin, Sorokins attorney hired her a professional stylist, according to Rachel Tashjian at GQ. In a second document filed Monday, Means said Vallow has no objection to state prosecutor Rob Woods motion to try the cases of Daybell and Vallow jointly. On Sept. 1, Wood wrote the cases should be joined based on the fact the charges against the Defendant and the Co-defendant allege they participated in the same act or series of acts and conspired to commit the alleged acts or series of acts. Due to the overlap, Wood believes it would be both more efficient and beneficial for witnesses and victims to only have to go through a single trial. The lack of objection from Vallow is in opposition to her husbands motion. Daybells attorney John Prior filed an objection on Sept. 9 saying joining the cases would combine the media attention surrounding each defendant which only adds to the level of attention and knowledge prospective jurors would have in this case. Several new hearings have been set for Daybell this week. Two hearings will be held on Oct. 29. A hearing regarding Daybells request to have his case dismissed will be heard at 9 a.m. by District Judge Steven Boyce. That same day, another hearing regarding the motion to join Daybell and Vallows cases will be held at 10 a.m. A hearing regarding Daybells request to change the trials location is set for 9 a.m. on Nov. 24. The couple also is under investigation for the October 2019 death of Daybells first wife, Tammy Daybell. Vallow and Daybell married 17 days after his wife of 29 years died in her sleep under what police have called suspicious circumstances. Vallow is under further investigation for her involvement in the deaths of her third husband, Joseph Ryan, and fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 19:55:16|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Hazza Harding GUANGZHOU, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Four decades ago, upon being designated as China's inaugural special economic zone (SEZ), Shenzhen had a mere 30,000 residents. Now that number represents one of Shenzhen's newer demographics: its permanent foreign resident population. For Glenn Ball, an Australian entrepreneur who first set foot in Shenzhen in 2001, the numbers speak for themselves. "From 30,000 people to almost 14 million (permanent residents) in just four decades, Shenzhen is a vibrant and developing city of the future in the making," Ball observed. Only 3G phone signals were available when Ball first arrived, but by 2015, when Ball became the general manager of an online grocery service tailored to expatriates, 4G had become the norm, enabling him to run his business more efficiently. "Now, Shenzhen leads the country to roll out full 5G coverage, which will further draw in global business," the 49-year-old entrepreneur said. Realizing full 5G coverage is not the only first the city has marked. Shenzhen's pioneering spirit and many nation-leading breakthroughs also assisted Ball in his entrepreneurial endeavors. "Shekou, being one of the first free trade pilot zones for importing ... really was a boon for business, and [they] are just some of the reasons why Shenzhen is such an innovative city." The fact that Ball was even able to successfully run a business targeting the city's expatriates also speaks volumes about how internationalized Shenzhen has become in mere decades, thanks in part to its rising appeal for not just foreign businesses, but also international students. "As an economist, Shenzhen was a very attractive place for me because it is a thriving city with an interesting and successful economic development story," said Carolina Mendoza from Colombia, explaining her choice to pursue postgraduate study at the Peking University HSBC Business School located in Shenzhen's Xili Town. Through her studies, Mendoza witnessed first-hand Shenzhen's tremendous changes. "When I first arrived in the city, only one subway line from the Window of the World to Luohu existed. Now they have this elaborate transport system, with a full fleet of electric buses," Mendoza said. After completing her master's degree in economics in 2013, Mendoza used Shenzhen as a springboard to find a job in Foshan, another city in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. She cites the pace at which Shenzhen grew around her as a form of motivation. As the country's first SEZ, Shenzhen also boasts a strong connection between the East and West, as attested by Fabiola Benitez, the Canadian co-founder of Global Friendship that connects Chinese people and expatriates. "There is definitely a feeling of openness in Shenzhen," she told Xinhua. "As soon as you arrive in the city, you can feel the modernization that it offers, which extends to our members and business partners that we have been able to connect and organize events with." Benitez is particularly impressed by the city's infrastructure and transport system, telling Xinhua that when she first arrived in the city in 2018, her first thoughts were: "Wow, this is what a new city looks like. When you compare the cities, you can really see the convenience of Shenzhen." Ball and Mendoza also refer to the city as being open when sharing their thoughts on the southern metropolis, and 40 years on since Shenzhen became a "window" of China's reform and opening-up drive, these expatriates remain excited about what the city's future will hold for them. "Shenzhen has been a huge part of my life and defined who I am. I also look forward to being able to contribute in my own way to Shenzhen's future," said Ball. Enditem More revelations are appearing that point to what lay behind last weeks sensationalised media reports that Chinese authorities had subjected two Australian journalists to midnight raids, forcing them to leave the country. It is increasingly clear that this development was bound up with an escalating US-led offensive against China, in which both the Trump administration and the Australian government are taking extraordinarily provocative actions. While Washington is taking unprecedented action to force the Chinese firm ByteDance to sell the video sharing app TikTok to an American company, Australias Liberal-National government is orchestrating matching moves against Beijing. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported yesterday that Australian police agencies have at least twice this year accessed the communications of Chinese diplomats, in violation of international law, triggering a sharp deterioration in relations between the two governments. Such material is protected by the Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular relations, which are also enshrined in Australian law. But communications involving Chinese officials were seized in operations targeting John Zhang, a Chinese-Australian citizen who was a part-time electorate officer for a New South Wales (NSW) state Labor Party MP, Shaoquett Moselmane. In January, at Sydney International Airport, Australian Border Force (ABF) officers searched Zhangs computers and phones when he, his wife and their daughter returned from lunar new year celebrations in China. According to Zhang, the officers read and copied email and phone exchanges with Chinese embassy and consular officials in Australia. Zhangs devices were again accessed in June when Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officers raided his home, company and the NSW Parliament. In a blaze of publicity, Moselmane was also raided before dawn on June 26accused by various media outlets of being a Chinese agent. Last week, Chinese authorities revealed that four Australian-based Chinese journalists were raided at the same time, and were told not to report the police operation. The journalists later left Australia. As required by the ASIO Act, Attorney-General Christian Porter personally authorised the raids, exposing the involvement of Prime Minister Scott Morrisons government at the highest levels. The ABC reported it was told that Zhangs computers and phones contained a long history of emails, messages and records of calls with Chinese diplomatic and consular officials and some of their family members. They included the most recent Sydney consul-general, Gu Xiaojie, and officials and families at the senior ambassadorial level in Canberra. Zhang last month wrote to Porter, Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, complaining of the unlawful downloading of these communications from his laptops and phones. These developments indicate the degree to which the Australian government and its security agencies, working closely with their US counterparts, are ratcheting up moves designed to inflame tensions with China. This is the context of last weeks much-dramatised departure from China of the last two journalists there representing Australian media outletsthe ABCs Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Reviews Michael Smith. It seems to be the result of Australian government provocations. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department, which would have known of the earlier secret operations against Zhang and the four Chinese journalists, had advised the pair to leave China. They were both booked on flights for the next day, when the Chinese authorities instructed them not to leave until they answered questions relating to a legal case. The Australian embassy in Beijing then further intervened, hosting the two journalists in diplomatic residences for five days until a deal was worked out for them to speak to the Chinese police and then leave the country. If the Chinese embassy had taken similar action in response to Junes raids on Chinese journalists, the corporate media would have been full of headlines accusing Beijing of blocking police and legal proceedings. The latest revelations further underscore the sweeping scope of, and political agenda behind, the foreign interference laws jointly pushed through parliament in 2018 by the Liberal-National government and the opposition Labor Party, setting a global precedent hailed by the US political establishment. The raids against Moselmane, Zhang and the Chinese journalists are seen as the first test of these laws, which the Australian government has been under US-linked pressureto put into practice. US President Trump listens to remarks by Australia PM Scott Morrison during a White House function in September, 2019. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead) Search warrants seen by the ABC reportedly show that the AFP is investigating whether Chinas Sydney Consul Sun Yantao worked covertly with Zhang to influence political opinion in Australia. That is an offence that carries up to 20 years imprisonment under the foreign interference legislation. The allegedly covert discussions consist of a discussion group on WeChat, which reportedly mostly consisted of sharing articles, speeches, jokes and memes, and to organise social outings. WeChat is used by millions of people around the world. As a prominent figure in the Chinese-Australian community, Zhang has been far from covert. He has made no secret of his relationships with Chinas embassy in Canberra and its Sydney consulate, and has boasted in media articles of his ties with Australias political elite One cited 2014 blog by Zhang indicates the type of soft diplomacy being practised by China, like every other country. Speaking of Moselmane, he wrote: Through these influential friends in Western society, Chinas social and economic development is better understood and China's cultural values are better accepted. Zhang expressed the hope that the gap between East and West will gradually disappear. Instead, however, first under Obama and then Trump, Washington has intensified its military and economic confrontation, seeking to prevent China from ever challenging the hegemony over the Asia-Pacific and much of the globe established by the US through World War II. No doubt, whatever activities the Chinese embassy conducts pale into insignificance compared to those of the US embassy. It has intervened to overturn at least two Australian governmentsthose of prime ministers Gough Whitlam in 1975 and Kevin Rudd in 2010that were regarded as insufficiently reliable in implementing the US alliance. The US embassys collaboration with protected sources in the Labor Party to oust Rudd was documented by leaked US cables published by WikiLeaks. Once Julia Gillard was installed as prime minister, she aligned the country completely behind the Obama administrations anti-China pivot to Asia. Moselmane and Zhang have been accused of making pro-China statements and of criticising the foreign interference laws as part of an anti-China witch hunt. To make such political views a crime is an outright assault on free speech. Zhang has launched a High Court challenge, exposing the nebulous nature of the accusations hurled against him and charging the government and ASIO with violating the implied freedom of political communication in the Australian constitution. Interviewed on national television last Sunday, Home Affairs Minister Dutton took the threat to freedom of speech further. He said any foreign journalists in the country who provided a slanted view of Australian affairs might come under similar scrutiny from the security agencies. The initial targets of these police raids may be figures linked to China but they will not be the last. Already, media reports have described former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr as a mentor of Moselmane. Even those in the political establishment, like Carr, can be victimised if they differ with the ferocity of the anti-China drive because it affects the lucrative profits that sections of the ruling class derive from iron ore and other exports to China. Beyond that, anti-war opposition and political dissent can be criminalised, as part of a drive to whip up a poisonous wartime-like atmosphere. As the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party have warned, the foreign interference laws contain sweeping offences, ranging from treason to breaching official secrecy and cooperating with a foreign organisation. These provisions could be used to outlaw opposing Australian involvement in a catastrophic US-led war against China. MINSK -- Leading independent media outlets in Belarus have published blank front pages with the words, There should have been a photo here," in solidarity with two photographers -- including one from RFE/RL -- who have been jailed over their coverage of a mass protest in Minsk. The blank pages published or posted on websites on September 17 noted that Alyaksandr Vasyukovich and Uladz Hrydzin were sentenced to 11 days in jail "for taking part in an unsanctioned action." Hrydzin, who had been an RFE/RL correspondent in Minsk before he was stripped of his accreditation on August 29, and Vasyukovich, a freelance photojournalist working for various media, were found guilty of violating Belarus's law on mass gatherings on September 16. A third man and friend of the two journalists, Yahor Kalyahin, was fined 540 rubles ($210) by the Frunze district court on the same charge. The three were detained in a Minsk bar by a group of people wearing balaclavas on September 13, the day when tens of thousands rallied in the Belarusian capital to protest against official results from an August 9 presidential election that handed victory to the incumbent, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The Interior Ministry reported more than 400 arrests on that day. RFE/RL deplores the jail sentences imposed on journalists Uladz Hrydzin and Alyaksandr Vasyukovich, simply for doing what journalists do -- reporting the news," acting RFE/RL President Daisy Sindelar said in a statement on September 16. "These sentences are the latest examples of the Belarusian governments ongoing assault on independent journalism -- and a clear attempt to silence reporters telling the truth about Belarus's deeply flawed elections and the brutal crackdown on citizens that the world has been witnessing for weeks," she added. The protesters and opposition leaders say the election was rigged. Lukashenka, who took just over 80 percent of the ballots according to official results, denies vote-rigging. Since the vote, thousands of people have been detained and beaten by police while nearly all the opposition's key leaders have been forced to leave the country or been arrested in a widening crackdown condemned by the United States and European Union. The crackdown includes stifling the media. On September 4, six Belarusian journalists were sentenced to three days in jail after being detained while covering an anti-government protest in Minsk. Belarusian authorities have stripped accreditations from at least 17 journalists from major foreign news organizations -- including five from RFE/RL or its affiliates -- who have been covering the countrys turmoil. The way in which people are booking flights has altered massively thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Many have seen holiday plans scuppered in recent months and a battle to obtain refunds. However, appetite for an overseas trip hasn't waned for everyone - and it appears last minute bookings, to see what countries are on the 'safe' to travel list, have grown in popularity. Emma Coulthurst, expert at TravelSupermarket, said: 'In the last week or so, we are seeing people looking at coronavirus rates, booking and going within a few days.' Airlines have dramatically reduced their capacity due consumer confidence during Covid-19 She adds: 'The lead time between looking, booking and going has drastically reduced as a result of Covid.' 'Prices are low to try and stimulate bookings. As airlines need to consolidate due to demand being less than they'd hoped, you may see some flights being cancelled but any cancellation will require a full refund.' Anyone who is able to quarantine will be more likely to book a holiday, data from the travel comparison website suggests. Easyjet recently announced that it would be flying less than the 40 per cent of planned capacity it had earlier this year, due to a drop in consumer confidence amid the ongoing pandemic. It is not the only airline that has had to dramatically reduce the number of flights it was planning. Government travel restrictions have limited the amount of people ready to fly abroad, with the latest rules quarantining those who returned to the UK from several Greek islands. Ryanair has chopped its capacity by 20 per cent whilst British Airways is also flying less than 30 per cent of its usual schedule. However, while prices have soared for those who are having to make a quick return from their holiday when government guidelines change, the cost of some flights have plummeted as carriers battle for business. It can be difficult to plan schedules at the moment as restrictions are constantly changing Scheduling headache for airlines Many airlines will be unwilling to cancel flights unless strictly necessary to avoid cutting their schedule further and paying out hundreds of pounds to customers in refunds. Cancelling flights could also see tens of thousands of holidaymakers stranded abroad. However, flights would not automatically be immediately cancelled due to a change in travel advice. There are a number of customers who will still choose to travel, for example, if they are nationals of that country, live in that country or if they are returning home as they will need flights to continue. The situation with coronavirus rates for different countries has made it really difficult, if not impossible for airlines to capacity plan. Emma Coulthurst - Travelsupermarket But it can be incredibly difficult for companies to plan their schedule as the advice given to those travelling is changing all the time. Emma says: 'The situation with coronavirus rates for different countries has made it really difficult, if not impossible for airlines to capacity plan. 'Regular quarantine measures have brought regular and mounting dents to consumer confidence and these have impacted load factors.' It has been suggested that a more rigorous testing system - or introducing one to begin with - should be put in place to ensure all those flying are safe and also to encourage more people to travel, knowing there are systems in place to protect them from the coronavirus. Coulthurst added: 'Most people go away for a week so, perhaps a test before you go and then a test on return would work best to ensure those who are positive are found and those who don't have the virus can get back to their daily lives and work. 'Whatever system is deemed best, it is needed as soon as possible. Currently, demand is low as those who can't afford to or are unable to quarantine are not likely to travel.' Ryanair is reducing its prices by 50% to try and encourage travellers to book flights abroad What are airlines offering short-term? Ryanair has dramatically reduced some of its prices with the hope of luring customers to book fights. Last week, the airline launched 50 per cent off over 750,000 seats for travel in September and October to 240 destinations. It also released a seat sale at the beginning of September with fares as low as 5 across one million seats. This week, the website is had a 'clearing out sale' on 100,000 seats, starting from under a tenner. These types of deal could continue in the near future. Clear out: Ryanair is offering deep discounts on flights for the coming weeks Despite the tempting offers, it confirmed it has been forced to cut 20 per cent of its capacity for the months of September and October due to a slowdown in demand caused by government travel restrictions. Forward bookings with the airline have notably weakened, given continuing uncertainty over recent Covid case rates in some EU countries. It confirmed that most of these cuts would be frequency reductions rather than route closures and they will be heavily focused on those countries such as Spain, France and Sweden, where rising recent Covid case rates have led to increased travel restrictions. This includes Ireland which continues to impose a uniquely restrictive Green List, imposing 14 day quarantines on visitors from most other EU countries such as Germany and the UK, which have lower Covid case rates over the last 14 days than Ireland. It is currently finalising its winter 2020 schedules which run from the end of October to the end of March, deciding how many flights it is likely to go ahead with. Ryanair has cut 20% of its capacity for September and October due to a slowdown in demand A spokesperson for Ryanair said: 'These capacity cuts and frequency reductions for the months of September and October are necessary given the recent weakness in forward bookings due to Covid restrictions in a number of EU countries. 'Over the past two weeks as a number of EU countries have raised travel restrictions, forward bookings especially for business travel into September and October have been negatively affected, and it makes sense to reduce frequencies so that we tailor our capacity to demand over the next two months. 'Proper testing at airports, and effective tracing, as is being conducted in Germany and Italy, is the only realistic and proportionate method of supervising safe intra-EU air travel while effectively limiting the spread of the Covid-19 virus.' This is Money contacted Jet2 but it said it was unable to comment on seat availability as the information was 'commercially sensitive'. However, it is also offering cut price tickets to entice customers, giving 100 off per person of all summer holidays booked on the site for 2021. The offer is available only to the first 50,000 customers whilst it is also offering 10 per cent off all summer holidays for 2021, again to the first 50,000 customers. Holidaymakers can choose which offer depending on which gives them the biggest discount and what is still available. Meanwhile, BA has also cut flights due to the ongoing pandemic with a spokesperson saying: 'We are now in the sixth month of flying less than 30 per cent of our schedule. This is a fast-changing situation, and we keep our schedule under constant review so we can respond to customer demand as necessary.' However, if a customer's flight is cancelled they are entitled to a voucher or a full refund with its Booking with Confidence policy covering customers due to travel up to the end of September 2020. This means that if a customer wants to change their booking they can re-booking or taking a voucher for future travel which is likely to encourage more people to book with BA. Deep travel discounts in 2021? With some flight schedules still being worked out and the likeihood of reduced flight capacity, it is currently hard to establish whether prices will rise thanks to shrunken space, or fall because of lack of demand. Currently, it appears the latter is happening - with Jet2 for example, as mentioned above, offering discounts for summer 2021 bookings now. Gavin Harris, commercial director at Skyscanner, said: 'Travel providers continue to offer extremely attractive pricing for travel into 2021 and are doing everything they can to ensure flight schedules, keen to instill consumer confidence during this time of uncertainty. 'Although travel has looked different in 2020, we have seen that UK travellers are still eager to get away and are finding ways to do so within the rules. 'Unfortunately, schedule changes are sometimes required to comply with regulations and fluctuating passenger volumes. 'To mitigate this, many airlines are offering new flexible booking policies, so you won't lose out if your flights need to be changed or cancelled. You can also book hotels with free cancellation. That way, it is easy to stay flexible. You can book now, then decide if it's right to go later.' Those looking to travel abroad are urged to take caution before booking as travel restrictions change from day to day. If possible, they should try and get travel insurance, which may not cover them for catching coronavirus, although some do, but should still cover them for loss of belongings. The Tennessee Secretary of States office is launching a new essay contest for students age 16 and older who serve as poll officials for the Nov. 3 election. Serving as a poll official is an unmatched opportunity for students to see our electoral process in action, said Secretary of State Tre Hargett. Students participating in this contest not only have the opportunity to win scholarship money by sharing their election experience in writing, but they are helping their local election commission run a safe and secure election. Contest winners will receive a TNStars 529 College Savings Program scholarship. Each of Tennessees Grand Divisions will have a first, second and third place winner. The three first-place winners will receive a $1,000 scholarship, with the second and third place winners receiving $500 and $250 scholarships, respectively.The contest is open to any Tennessee resident who is age 16 or older and is enrolled in a public, charter or private school or home school association. Essays will be judged based on creativity, organization, development of ideas and response to the theme, Civic Duty. For contest rules and guidelines, visit sos.tn.gov/products/civics-essay-contest.Students who serve as poll officials may help with several critical polling site tasks, including greeting voters, answering questions and processing absentee by-mail ballots. Poll officials are compensated for working on Election Day and for attending required training sessions.All poll officials, including essay contest participants, are supplied with face coverings, gowns, face shields, gloves and other personal protective equipment and are trained in social distancing protocols.This essay contest is part of the Secretary of States civics engagement initiative to prepare students to be actively engaged citizens. For more information about the essay contest and our other civic engagement education efforts, visit sos.tn.gov/civics.To apply to be a poll official in your county, visit pollworkers.govotetn.com. Marysville, CA (95901) Today Partly cloudy. Low around 45F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy. Low around 45F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. ARCHIVED - Dozen boats of irregular migrants reach Almeria coast Over 200 landed in neighbouring Murcia at the same time as criminal gangs continue mass launchings This year the pattern of migration on the Western Mediterranean route has changed, with Algerians becoming the principal migrants as wave after wave of small boats (pateras) continue to arrive on the coastlines of Murcia, Almeria and Alicante, with mass launchings becoming the norm, criminal gangs organising these waves of small boats. On Wednesday, 15 boats reached Murcian waters with 223 Algerian migrants detected, and at the same time, a dozen boats were heading for Almeria waters, with both Magrebi and Algerian migrants on board. Several boats were also detected on Tuesday as well as three men trying to cross on a jetski who were rescued out at sea. A dozen boats with migrants on board have arrived in the last 24 hours on the Levante coast of the province of Almeria reaching the beaches of Nijar, Carboneras, Mojacar, Pulpi and Cuevas del Almanzora, a spokesman for the emergency service 112 confirmed on Thursday morning. The 54 occupants of six of the boats were located by the Civil Guard upon disembarking throughout the day on Wednesday and were attended by members of the Red Cross, who had to provide health care for 15 of them. On Wednesday The Civil Guard and the Red Cross attended a number of reported arrivals between 07:40 and 18:00, on the beaches of Monsul, in the first boat three Maghreb adult males, one of them wounded were found; in the Cala de la Concha de Cuevas de Almanzora, 16 men, also all adults and of Maghreb origin landed; and on the Nijar beach of San Jose, 13 adult males arrived, of which seven required health care. In San Juan de Los Terreros, in the municipality of Pulpi, five people were given help after disembarking, in Cala Arena, in Nijar, another eleven Maghreb adult males, seven of them also wounded, and on the beach of Los Muertos de Carboneras, six men. Another six boats have reached land and been sighted on Thursday by residents of the area, who called 112, informing of the arrival in Playazo, in Nijar, and Sombrerico in Mojacar of two boats with 12 and 25 people on board. Another boat containing 12 people, "many minors", are being taken to the port of Endesa in Carboneras. The emergency service also report calls at 9:00 p.m. and 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday that reported two boats with between 15 and 20 people had arrived at the Genoveses cove and the Aguamarga coast, in Nijar. There are still no final totals available detailing the number of occupants, but there are believed to have been around 60 people in these pateras. This year the number of migrations to Spain has been lower than normal, due prinicipally to the restrictions caused by Covid-19, but in recent weeks there has been an upsurge in activity as organised crime gangs take advantage of the opportunity to bring increased numbers of economic migrants into Spain. The desire to seek a better life and try to find employment is understandable, as unemployment is high in Algeria, the country is suffering from severe economic problems, and opportunities, particularly for young people, are extremely limited. Political opposition against the current regime has lead to public protests and an increased level of dissatisfaction within the country, leading many particularly young people to look at Europe as potentially offering better opportunities. A migrant we spoke to a short time ago stated that Spain was not the ultimate destination for the migrants and that many would continue their journeys to France and Belgium, although some would continue on to try and reach the UK. Although the number of migrants targeting the Murcia region as an entry point has been more noticeable in the last 3 months, the overall totals of migrants entering Spain via the Western Mediterranean route has fallen considerably, mainly due to the almost complete absence of Moroccans making the journey to enter Europe via the Spanish coastline. Frontex, the EU border force, reports that there were nearly 1 600 detections of illegal border crossings on the Western Mediterranean migratory route in August 2020, 7% less than in the previous month. The total for the first eight months of 2020, was nearly half the figure from the same period in the previous year at 8,200, down 46%. However, Algerians have accounted for nearly two-thirds of all detections on the route this year, and the August figure was six times the figure from a year ago, which ties in with the deteriorating economic and political situation in Algeria, and the border closure in Morocco, which is preventing many of the sub-Saharan migrants getting into Morocco in the first place. The distance for Algerians to the Spanish coastline favours the Murcia Region and Alicante as chosen destinations, although many Algerians also head for Almeria, the increase in Algerians logically leading to an increased level of traffic to these three destinations. NB: The migrants are referred to as irregular immigrants by the EU; the Spanish media tend to call them sin papeles meaning those with no paperwork entering the country illegally, others refer to them as illegal migrants. The phrase irregular migrants is used on MT in an attempt to convey that these are not refugees, but economic migrants, in this case from Algeria, entering Spain and the EU in an illegal fashion, without passports or documentation and without any legal right to enter the EU as Algeria is not an EU member and there is no migration agreement between the two countries. Donate to Cruz Roja; Humanitarian work to ensure those arriving in Spain are treated with dignity is undertaken by the humanitarian organisation Cruz Roja. If you would like to donate, here is the link: Cruz Roja Espanola Further reading EU Action plan against Migrant Smuggling 2015/2020 Click to read EU Directive f2008/115/EC Common standards and procedures in EU Member States for returning illegally staying third country nationals. Click to read FRONTEX European coast guard and border control agency. This explains more about the migration issue and shows the different routes taken. Our routes here are the "Western Mediterranean" routes used principally by Moroccans And Algerians.Click Frontex A comeback of McCormick Place would have an impact that would extend far beyond its Near South Side campus. Even Chicagoans whove never stepped into any of its exhibition halls or meeting rooms, or the ballrooms of its two adjacent hotels or its affiliated Wintrust Arena, have benefited from the out-of-towners who have. Based on economic impact studies by Choose Chicago, the citys business-promotion council, the MPEA had projected that the greater McCormick Square complex would pump $2 billion into the economy this year; it would also support more than 15,000 full-time jobs and fill an average of almost 4,000 downtown hotel rooms each and every night. Michelle Obama has reflected on the time her brother, Craig Robinson, was accused of stealing his own bike by Chicago police officers when he was just 10 or 11 years old. The moment was brought up during the latest episode of the former first ladys self-titled Spotify podcast with Mr Robinson and their mother, Marian Robinson, as the two guests for the week. With her brother and mother on the podcast, Mrs Obama focused the episode around childhood and parenting. One memory that stood out to her was when a young Mr Robinson was accused of stealing his own bike: a yellow ten-speed Goldblatt gifted to the child by their parents. Mr Robinson estimated he was about 10 or 11 years old when two Chicago police officers stopped him while he was riding his bike. During the incident, the officers had grabbed the bike and refused to let it go even after the child pleaded with them and said it was his. I was always taught that the police are your friends ... and theyll believe the truth, and I was tellin em the truth and this guy would not believe me, Mr Robinson said. I was like Oh, you got this all wrong, this is my bike. Dont worry, this isnt a stolen bike, and [the cop] would not believe me, and I was absolutely heartbroken. And I finally said to him, Listen, you can take me to my house, and I will prove to you, this is my bike, he continued. Help came for Mr Robinson when the cops brought him back to home to his mother, Marian who had that tight lip as she prepared to defend her son. Mrs Robinson then chimed into the podcast where she revealed the cops were friends with the people who initially accused her son of stealing the bike. She demanded that those people come directly to her home so they could admit [they] made a serious mistake. Overall, Mr Robinson called the experience heartbreaking, specifically because he felt the cops were trying to trip him up when questioning him about where he got the bike. I could tell [the cops] were trying to ask me questions that would trip me up, he said. If I wasnt so sure that that bike was mine and showed any kind of reticence, I could see them taking me off to the police station, not calling mom until after Ive been, you know, booked or whatever they do. This was when Mrs Obama chimed into the conversation, and she mentioned how the story illustrated a problem other black families face within their neighborhoods even if they strived to teach their children important values. Nobody thinks about, you know, the fact that we all come from good families that are trying to teach values, but when you leave the safety of your home and go out into the street, where being black is, is a crime in and of itself, we have all had to learn how to operate outside of our homes with a level of caution, and fear, because you never know, Mrs Obama said. It was then revealed that the two police officers involved in the incident were both black males, which the family said proved how racism was ingrained in the system. Because those two policemen were black. And they were acting exactly the same as any other policeman, Mrs Robinson said. Its almost like, this is what they thought they were, how they were thought they were supposed to act. The story on the podcast ended with Mr Robinson commenting about the relationship with police officers and black communities has not changed, specifically as Black Lives Matter protests calling for police reform spread across the country. Thats the perfect example of what all of these young, black people are dealing with now, because this was, almost fifty years ago? he said. Gianluca Iori, BEATS (the beamline for tomography at SESAME) beamline scientist in charge of coordinating the construction of the new tomography beamline at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan, is at the ESRF for a 3-week training. BEATS is a European project, funded under the EUs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and coordinated by the ESRF. The BEATS project was launched in January 2019 and spans a four-year period which will see the design, construction, assembly and commissioning of a tomography beamline at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan. A consortium of nine partner institutes, provide a large pool of expertise and experience to benefit SESAME across the seven activity work packages of BEATS. During Gianlucas training, he will meet scientists, engineers and staff at the ESRF to gain insight into the complexities and technicalities of building a beamline, benefitting from the ESRFs experience and exchanging work cultures, techniques and expertise. For Harald Reichert, ESRF Director of Research and member of the BEATS steering committee, "It's a pleasure for the ESRF to welcome BEATS beamline scientist, Gianluca Iori, for this 3-week training programme at the ESRF. The ESRF is proud to play a role in coordinating the BEATS project and I can only stress how important it is for us, as a larger facility with almost 30 years' experience in synchrotron research, to help smaller facilities come into operation. As well as building scientific and cultural bridges between diverse societies, this project will benefit the scientific communities in the Middle East by providing them with the first tomography beamline in the region." Gianluca Iori is an Italian scientist with a background in both mechanical engineering and as a user of synchrotron radiation for research. One of his first roles as BEATS beamline scientist was to contribute to the writing of the Technical Design Report, which was submitted to the European Commission on 31st August 2020. He will also coordinate the construction of the beamline, as well as proposing and coordinating an in-house scientific programme in close collaboration with the BEATS partners and the SESAME Scientific Director. Visit the BEATS website. Texte by Kirstin Colvin CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland Rape Crisis Center has opened a new office on Clevelands west side in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. This new office center inside the Astrup Building on West 25th Street aims to serve Clevelanders, including Latinx survivors, says Sondra Miller, president & CEO of Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. The new office is part of a multi-year plan to take the crisis centers services to where people live. Our selection of the Clark-Fulton neighborhood was partially driven by the fact theres a very dense population of the Latinx community, and we are intentional in wanting to let Latinx survivors know we are here for them, Miller said. The Astrup Building is located around the corner where Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight were held captive for years. This neighborhood has a history that we never want to forget, but Cleveland Rape Crisis Center also wants to be a part of its strong future, said Miller. The Clark-Fulton neighborhood is vibrant and diverse, and we believe we have the opportunity to make a real impact in this community. The mission of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center is to support survivors of rape and sexual abuse, promote healing and prevention, and advocate for social change. The new office is supported by a mix of private and public funding, including the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation and the Cuyahoga County Department of Public Safety and Justice. We believe that survivors of rape and sexual abuse deserve access to healing services no matter where live and what their life circumstance is, said Miller. Rape is one of the most under-reported crimes, with nearly two-thirds of rapes never reported. The Clark- Fulton office will provide intensive onsite services to victims through the following programming: Individual counseling Child and family counseling Support groups Crisis-intervention, advocacy, and counseling for survivors of sex trafficking Advocacy Case management Outreach education Professional training The Clark-Fulton office will strive to create a haven for both youth and adult survivors. All services are available regardless of immigration status or whether a survivor reports their assault or abuse to law enforcement. Many services are also offered in Spanish. We want the community to know we are here for them when they need us, said Miller. The Houston Police Department plans to join Harris Countys cite-and-release program, fulfilling advocates long-running request to implement a policy they say keeps low-level offenders out of jail and saves law enforcement resources for more serious threats. In a presentation to the city councils Public Safety Committee, Assistant Chief Wendy Baimbridge on Thursday laid out the program HPD will use for a set of six misdemeanors offenses. The strategy mirrors that already used by the Harris County Sheriffs Office and other local departments, using a program set up by Harris County court-at-law judges. In those cases, officers now would be required to give people a citation with the time and date they must appear in court, instead of hauling them to jail, unless certain exceptions apply. Like the sheriffs office, HPD officers who use their discretion to disqualify an accused offender from the program would have to get supervisor approval and list the reason in their report. Chief Art Acevedo said HPD will implement the program imminently, once he receives the final policy from the Turner administration. Some advocates who have lobbied for the measure for months and in some cases years lauded the plan as a victory for the recent movement protesting over-policing and brutality. State law first allowed such programs in 2007, and Turners transition team endorsed the idea in a March 2016 report. The policy isnt perfect, but at the end of the day, its the first real step weve seen toward changing policing in Houston, said Sarah Labowitz of ACLU Texas. The group is part of the Right2Justice Coalition, which released a July report recommending a slew of reforms, including cite and release. Darrell Jordan, a Harris County court-at-law judge who helped design the cite-and-release program, said the city could have opted into the program months ago. The countys cite-and-release court has processed 113 cases since the programs launch in February. I dont believe in applauding people for waiting six months to fix a problem, he said. Thats six months Houstonians had less officers on the streets. How many victims have suffered waiting for police officers to respond? How many alleged criminals have gotten away? Judge Franklin Bynum, who helped craft the program, said HPD, along with the county District Attorneys office, was the most obstructionist during the process. The District Attorneys office did not respond to a request for comment. They were not interested in doing it, he said of HPD. Alex Bunin, the Harris County public defender, was also in the meetings and said of HPD: I dont think that there was a lot of push to get it done. Acevedo denied that, citing his adoption of the policy in Austin before his tenure here. He said cite and release was one of the first things he advocated for when Houston hired him in 2016. He blamed the delay on unspecified technological problems trying to get the city and the county on the same system. Im just grateful that finally the county is putting in the technological systems we needed to get it done, Acevedo said to council members. He told the Chronicle later, I have been very, very vocal in my desire to have cite-and-release. For them to say that, theyre misinformed. The offenses available for cite and release are: criminal mischief of up to $750 in damage; graffiti resulting in up to $2,500 damage; theft of up to $750; theft of service worth up to $750; bringing contraband into a correctional facility; and driving with an invalid license. Minor marijuana arrests will continue to be directed to Harris Countys marijuana diversion program. The Right2Justice report estimated those offenses accounted for 9 percent of HPD arrests from March 2014 to March 2020. That includes 29,000 arrests, nearly half of which involved Black people. Internal numbers show between 2,600 to 3,000 arrests last year would have been eligible for the program, HPD said. The HPD plan does allow for exceptions: eligible people must be 18 or older and a resident of Harris County; they cannot have outstanding warrants or face additional charges that do not qualify for the program. Police can disqualify a person if they refuse to sign the citation or demand an immediate appearance before a judge. There are additional carve-outs for accused offenders that are combative, cannot be positively identified, or if there is reason to believe they will not appear in court. The latter requires supervisor approval, and the basis for this determination shall be specifically stated in the offense report, according to HPDs presentation. Councilmember Mike Knox, the vice chair of the committee and a retired HPD officer, said it is important to give officers discretion in the matter. One of things we dont want to do is get in the way of on-site decisions of patrol officers or supervisors on scene, said Knox. The program has wide buy-in, including the Houston Police Officers Union. If theres a way for us to not take someone to jail, were going to do that, said Ray Hunt, the unions past president. I really would like for you to consider not just cite and release, but warn and release Give us some discretion on Class Bs and As. We have none now. Jay Jenkins, with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, questioned how meaningful the change would be in wake of Harris Countys bail reform, which allows certain misdemeanor offenders to quickly get out of jail on a personal recognizance bond, or a promise they will appear in court. Acevedo and other officials said the change still is noteworthy in that could prevent the physical interaction in which an officer handcuffs the offender, which can escalate. It also prevents a persons car from getting impounded if they were driving at the time of the arrest. It is a huge deal when you limit the physical custody, the chief said. Still, some reform advocates said they were concerned giving police wide discretion to make arrests would result with Black and Latino residents facing higher rates of arrests than others. Will entrance into the cite and release program be applied equally and fairly to all that are eligible to participate in the program? asked Joy Davis, with the Texas Organizing Project. Will Black people continue to account for a majority of those arrested when a ticket could have been issued? Progress is being made, but we have a very long way to go. dylan.mcguinness@chron.com st.john.smith@chron.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 17) The House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations decided to suspend deliberations on the 2021 proposed budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways due to the absence of top officials. The budget hearing for DPWH that lasted for almost an hour was attended by only two of six undersecretaries and three of five assistant secretaries. Public Works Secretary Mark Villar, who was virtually present via Zoom, was grilled on why the proposed budget had few details. House Minority Leader Benny Abante questioned the absence of top officials of the department, noting that the budget deliberation was held in the plenary hall for them to able to attend. "With due respect Mr. Chair, mahirap makipag-usap ng mahusay rito (it is difficult to discuss well here) because even the DICT admitted that our internet is very slow, so Mr. Chair, with reservation, I would like to move for a deferment of the deliberation of this budget," Abante added. The move was supported by another lawmaker, prompting the committee chairman, CWS party-list Rep. Romeo Momo, to suspend the hearing. The committee has not yet announced when the next hearing will be held. The DPWH proposed 2021 budget is at P667.3 billion, 34 percent higher than what it got in 2020. It is also second among the departments which received the bulk of the P4.506 trillion national budget for the next fiscal year. Officials have said that the infrastructure program Build, Build, Build is key in helping the economy recover from the adverse effects of the health crisis. Of the total budget, P643.17 billion is allocated for both infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects, up 15 percent from 2020. During the hearing, Gabriela party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas again questioned the P397.2 billion lump sum budget for 2021, which she noted was only scattered to various regional projects. This issue was also raised during the Development Budget Coordinating Council hearing in early-September, when Brosas noted that about 60 percent of the departments total budget lacks breakdown. Brosas also cited double and exactly identical fund insertions in the departments budget. Villar said that the breakdown for all the projects are already available. He also stressed that there are no double insertions in the budget, and that these are only continuation of existing projects. Meanwhile, Negros Oriental Rep. Arnie Teves questioned the low allocation for infrastructure projects in his district at less than P2 billion despite ranking eighth in terms of absorptive capacity, while other areas get more compared to them. Villar explained that this might be due to the presence of flagship projects being prioritized by the administration. CNN Philippines Paolo Barcelon contributed to this report. UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Wednesday called for political and economic progress in South Sudan's peace process. The economic and humanitarian situation in South Sudan has deteriorated as a result of COVID-19 and falling oil prices, and the implementation of the peace agreement faces many challenges, Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, told the Security Council. China welcomes the progress in the appointment of state governors and other political issues and encourages all parties in South Sudan to bear in mind the overall interests of national unity and development, continue to advance dialogue and consultation, and take steps to solve outstanding issues of the peace agreement, said Dai. The international community should fully respect the ownership of the government of South Sudan, strengthen coordination with the African Union and Intergovernmental Authority on Development and support their mediation efforts, he said. He called for efforts to uphold the hard-won peace in South Sudan. Recently, the cease-fire has been generally maintained. China hopes that all parties will work to sustain the positive momentum. Meanwhile, sporadic inter-communal clashes, which might undermine the cease-fire, deserve the great attention of all parties in South Sudan, he said. South Sudan's economic foundation and health system are weak; its economic development and food security are under pressure; there are practical difficulties brought by the pandemic, he said. The international community should actively provide assistance to South Sudan, especially in the economic and health areas, scale up investment in agriculture, energy, infrastructure and health care, and help South Sudan implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. China has helped build a cervical screening center in South Sudan and sent a medical expert team to join the fight against COVID-19. This was welcomed by South Sudan, said Dai. China appreciates the contributions by David Shearer, the UN secretary-general's special envoy, and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to peace and stability in South Sudan, he said. China has noted that UNMISS has made great efforts to protect civilians. It should be pointed out that the fundamental solution lies in the success of the political process and economic reconstruction, through which a peaceful and stable environment could be created for the displaced persons to return home, and to provide job opportunities for the people, he said. China will continue to support South Sudan's political process and contribute to its fight against COVID-19 and its effort to achieve economic development. China is ready to work with the international community to promote the early realization of peace, stability and sustainable development in South Sudan, he said. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The state of Ohio has begun paying out an additional $300 in weekly unemployment benefits, retroactive to Aug. 1, for the temporary program ordered by President Donald Trump after negotiations between the White House and Congress broke down on a longer-term fix. The pay is a replacement for $600 in added unemployment benefits recipients had been receiving through the end of July under the pandemic relief bill known as the CARES Act. However, the new program called Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) is to run only as long as the $44 billion set aside for it lasts. Each state participating initially received three weeks of money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, then more as available. Ohio has been approved to distribute the payments for six weeks - the weeks ending Aug. 1 through Sept. 5 - according the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services website. First up are those on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, according to the ODJFS website, starting the week of September 16, which was Wednesday, starting at $300 a time up to $1,800 for the six weeks. PUA is the program created this year for those who do not qualify for traditional unemployment, such as self-employed people and low-wage workers. We are working to implement the system programming necessary to provide LWA to eligible traditional unemployment, Trade and SharedWork Ohio claimants, as well as claimants receiving extended benefits. This work is expected to be complete in mid- to late September, the states announcement said. These payments will be retroactive to Aug. 1 as well. Ohio applied for the program Aug. 24, after about half the states were approved. FEMA approved Ohios application two days later. The payments, under federal rules, are to be issued only to people unemployed (or working substantially less in some cases) because of COVID-19 reasons, and qualifying for at least $100 per week in other unemployment benefits. Unemployment checks in Ohio normally amount to no more than half the lost weekly income, topping out at $480 for a single person or $647 for someone with at least three dependents. The extra $600 under the CARES Act was designed to replace an average wage nationally, once combined with the regular unemployment benefits. The Democrat-led U.S. House in May approved an extension through January. However, the Republican-controlled Senate has not passed any version of the bill. Talks between the White House the Democrats broke down in early August, thus ending the original program. President Trump then announced a temporary program for up to $400 a week, but that required a $100 contribution from the states. Ohio, like most states, is not paying the extra $100. However, a longer-lasting extensions remains possible. A 50-member bipartisan group of U.S. House members earlier this week introduced a compromise that calls for a new $450 extra weekly for eight weeks, followed by up to $600 per week that would not exceed the total paychecks workers earned before the pandemic. The proposal also includes a new round of $1,200 direct stimulus checks to taxpayers, plus $500 per dependent child. Read related unemployment coverage How to get $300 extra in unemployment, 13 weeks in extra benefits, and more: Q&A Wheres my $300 extra for unemployment? How about my missing stimulus check? - Q&A $300 Ohio unemployment benefit to be retroactive, other updates on unemployment, stimulus checks: A lawsuit filed in federal court on Wednesday accused a for-profit jail in Texas of civil rights violations, including neglect and abuse, that led to the death of a woman with H.I.V. who was held for two months as a pretrial detainee. The woman, Holly Barlow-Austin, 46, was housed in deplorable and inhumane conditions of confinement, deprived of water and denied vital medications, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Ms. Barlow-Austin was arrested on a violation of the terms of her probation last year and held at the Bi-State Justice Center in Bowie County, Texas, on the border with Arkansas. The jail is operated by LaSalle Corrections, which operates jails in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. The lawsuit claims that LaSalle failed to monitor and treat Ms. Barlow-Austins life-threatening medical needs, and that jail employees failed to transport her to the hospital until it was too late to save her life. A 63-year old man accused of kissing his young granddaughter in an "inappropriate and sexual manner" up to 30 times went on trial in Belfast on Thursday. The defendant, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the complainant, is also accused of touching the youngster in his bedroom whilst she stayed in her grandparents home overnight. A jury of six men and six women were sworn at Belfast Court Crown and are being asked to reach verdicts on three counts of sexual assault of child under 13 - offences which the accused has denied. It's the Crown's case that the sexual abuse occurred between September 2017 and April 2019, when the girl was aged around nine. Opening the Crown case, prosecuting barrister Kate McKay told the jury that the youngster spoke to her parents last May and told them her grandfather had touched her private area. The girl, who is now 13, told her parents that whilst staying at her grandparents house some time before her 10th birthday, her grandfather came into her bedroom and said 'will you come here a second.' She said he then took her into his bedroom, and that after touching her on the bed, he said 'sshhhh, don't tell anybody.' Ms McKay said the child also told her parents that both before and after this incident in the bedroom, her grandfather kissed her "in an overtly sexual way" and "not the way a grandfather would kiss his grandchild". Telling the jury the child didn't like her grandfather kissing her like that, Ms McKay said this occurred around 30 times, and that afterwards the accused would say 'thank you' to the girl "in a weird voice". The girl's parents challenged the accused, and a formal complaint was made to the police. After the girl spoke to specially trained officers about the allegations in June 2019, her grandfather was arrested. During police interviews, he accepted the girl has stayed with him and his wife at their Co Antrim home, and said that while she would have been in his bedroom at times, they were never in the room alone. He also made the case that whilst he did kiss her on occasion, it was in a "grandfatherly way". Ms McKay said that when asked by police why his granddaughter would have made this up, the accused said the only reason he could think was that the child's mother didn't get on with his other daughter-in-law. Literacy at Home Campaign Urges Turning Captions on to Improve Reading Skills Want to promote more reading? Encourage students and families to turn on the captions while they stream video. That's what a new literacy campaign targeting students aged 8 to 12 is promoting. "#captionsON" is an initiative launched by Caption Cool. Caption Cool has no products other than free stickers it will send to any teacher, administrator, parent or literacy champion who signs up on its website. According to the organization, 30 minutes of screen time with captions on is comparable to reading 30 pages of a grade 5 book. Caption Cool was created by Leib Lurie, co-founder of Kids Read Now, a nonprofit that produces a K-3 summer reading program and gifts books to students across the country. Lurie entered the literacy business in the early 1990s with a $249 appliance that would plug into a VCR and show captions on the television screen. He and his wife, Barbara Lurie, a teacher and reading specialist, launched Kids Read Now in 2012. Their latest project has drawn the attention of "literacy champions," including educators, to promote the practice of running captions during student screen time. "We endorse #captionsON because we believe it will motivate more children, particularly disadvantaged youth and English language learners, to turn their screen time into reading time," said Chris Piper, superintendent of Troy City Schools in Ohio, in a testimonial on the Caption Cool website. Troy is where Caption Cool is located. "Reading is so important and exposure to text, like captions, builds fluency and comprehension for students," added Laura Bemus, assistant superintendent of curriculum for Greenville City Schools in Ohio. "My lifelong love of reading was established as a child and through making choices of great reading material of high interest." More information about #captionsOn is available through the Caption Cool website. Daniel Mays smoked so many cigarettes while filming Des that he was given his own award. Des, which told the story of real-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen, concluded on Wednesday (16 September), with audiences praising the show for its gritty and gripping depiction of one of Britains most notorious criminals. However, a number of viewers complained about the amount of smoking taking place on screen, with both Nilsen (David Tennant) and police officer Peter Jay (Mays) being constantly shown with a cigarette in hand. Acknowledging the comments about the series, director Lewis Arnold shared a picture to Twitter of Mays holding an unofficial ITV award for Most Cigarettes Smoked Onscreen. Lots of people tweeting about the smoking, Arnold wrote. We are aware there is a lot. So much so we got @DanielMays9 an award Mays as Peter Jay in ITV's 'Des' (Rex Features) Des was set in the 1980s, a time when smoking indoors was still legal. While some criticised the amount of smoking in the show, others pointed out that it was normal at the time. I was a cop at the time. Trust me, nowhere near enough smoking in Des, one commenter joked. Smoking in government buildings and enclosed public places; became illegal only; in 2006 in Scotland and 2007 in the UK, another wrote. To those of us who have seen many moons, this is rather normal or even minimum! Others pointed out that with Nilsen killing at least 12 young men and the show describing the details of how he disposed of the bodies in some detail, smoking felt like a minor thing to complain about. Makes me laugh (sort of); people complaining about all the smoking, and not remotely disturbed by a man who boiled somebody's head in a pan on the stove, one fan replied. Read our review of the final episode of Des here. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is today made an statement on India-China border situation in the Rajya Sabha. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that the China attempted to change the status quo along the LAC with its provocative military manoeuvres late last month and that there is a mismatch between what Beijing says and does. Making a statement on the situation in eastern Ladakh in Rajya Sabha, the minister said that China shouldn't doubt India's resolve to protect Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity. Rajnath Singh on China in Rajya Sabha: Here's full text I rise today to brief the esteemed Members of this august House about the developments on the Borders of Ladakh over the past few months. Innumerable countrymen have made sacrifices to build our great nation. The Armed Forces of independent India have never hesitated in rendering the highest sacrifices for the security of our borders. You are all aware that on 15th June 2020, Col. Santosh Babu and our 19 brave soldiers sacrificed their lives in the defence of our motherland at Galwan valley. Our Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi ji, himself visited Ladakh and raised the morale of our brave soldiers. I too, have experienced the valour and indomitable courage after meeting them. This House has also paid homage to our twenty martyrs of Galwan by observing two minutes silence at the beginning of the session. 2. I would like to take some time first to briefly provide some details of our boundary issue with China. As the House is aware, India and China are yet to resolve their boundary question. China does not accept the customary and traditional alignment of the boundary between India and China. We believe that this alignment is based on well-established geographical principles confirmed by treaties and agreements, as well as historical usage and practice, well-known for centuries to both sides. The Chinese position, however, is that the boundary between the two countries has not been formally delimited, that there exists a traditional customary line formed by the extent of jurisdiction that they claim was exercised historically by each side, and that the two sides have different interpretations of the position of the traditional customary line. The two countries had engaged in discussions during 1950s-60s but these efforts could not yield a mutually acceptable solution. 3. As the House is aware, China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq. kms in the Union Territory of Ladakh. In addition, under the so-called Sino-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq. kms. of Indian territory in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to China. China also claims approximately 90,000 sq. kms. of Indian territory in the Eastern Sector of the India-China boundary in Arunachal Pradesh. 4. Both India and China have formally agreed that the boundary question is a complex issue which requires patience and have committed to seeking a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through dialogue and peaceful negotiations.In the interim, the two sides also agree that maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border areas is an essential basis for the further development of bilateral relations. 5. I would like to mention here that as yet there is no commonly delineated Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the border areas between India and China and there is no common perception of the entire LAC. Therefore, in order to ensure peace and tranquility in the border areas, especially along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the two countries have concluded a number of agreements and protocols. 6. Under these agreements, the two sides have agreed to maintain peace and tranquility along the LAC without any effect to their respective positions on the alignment of the LAC as well as on the boundary question. It is on this basis, that our overall relations also saw considerable progress since 1988. Indias position is that while bilateral relations can continue to develop in parallel with discussions on resolving the boundary question, any serious disturbance in peace and tranquility along the LAC in the border areas is bound to have implications on the positive direction of our ties. 7. A key element of both the 1993 and the 1996 Agreements is that the two sides will keep their military forces in the areas along the Line of Actual Control to a minimum level. These agreements also mandate that pending an ultimate solution to the boundary question, the two sides shall strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control. Furthermore in these agreements, India and China also committed to clarification and confirmation of the Line of Actual Control to reach a common understanding of the alignment. Thus, in late 1990s and upto 2003, the two sides engaged in an exercise to clarify and confirm the LAC. But, thereafter the Chinese side did not show a willingness to pursue the LAC clarification exercise. As a result, there are some areas where the Chinese and Indian perceptions of LAC overlap. In these areas, as also with other sections of the border areas, the various agreements govern the manner in which troops of both sides should operate and deal with situations of face-offs to maintain peace and tranquility. 8. Before I apprise the House of the current developments, let me inform that the Government has an elaborate and time tested coordination mechanism amongst different intelligence agencies including intelligence units of the Central Armed Police Forces and the three armed forces. The technical and human intelligence is continuously gathered in a well coordinated manner. It is shared with the armed forces which help them in taking decisions. 9. Let me now apprise the House of the developments this year. Since April, we had noticed a buildup of troops and armaments by the Chinese side in the border areas adjacent to Eastern Ladakh. In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off. Even as this situation was being addressed by the Ground Commanders as per the provisions of our bilateral agreements and protocol, in mid-May the Chinese side made several attempts to transgress the LAC in other parts of the Western Sector. This included Kongka La, Gogra and North Bank of Pangong Lake. These attempts were detected early and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces. 10. We made it clear to the Chinese side both through diplomatic and military channels that China was, by such actions, attempting to unilaterally alter the status quo. It was categorically conveyed that this was unacceptable. 11. Given the growing friction along the LAC, the Senior Commanders of the two sides in a meeting on June 6 2020 agreed on a process of disengagement that involved reciprocal actions. Both sides also agreed to respect and abide by the LAC and not undertake any activity to alter the status quo. However in violation of this the Chinese side created a violent face off on June 15th at Galwan. Our brave soldiers laid down their lives and also inflicted costs including casualties on the Chinese side. 12. The conduct of our armed forces throughout these incidents shows that while they maintained Sayyam" in the face of provocative actions, they also equally displayed Shaurya" when required to protect the territorial integrity of India. I would like the House to appreciate the courage and valour of our soldiers, who undergo immense hardship in the most difficult conditions to keep us all safe and secure. 13. While no one should doubt our determination to safeguard our borders, India believes that mutual respect and mutual sensitivity are the basis for peaceful relations with neighbours. As we want to resolve the current situation through dialogue, we have maintained diplomatic and military engagement with the Chinese side. In these discussions, we have maintained the three key principles that, determine our approach: (i) both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC; (ii) neither side should attempt to alter the status quo unilaterally; and (iii) all agreements and understandings between the two sides much be fully abided by in their entirety. The Chinese side, on its part, took the position that the situation should be handled in a responsible manner and ensure peace and tranquility as per bilateral agreements and protocol. However, it is apparent from Chinese activities that their words dont match their actions. A case in point is that even when the discussions were going on, the Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of 29thand 30thAugust in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake. But yet again, timely and firm actions by our armed forces along the LAC prevented such attempts from succeeding. 14. As is clear from these events, the Chinese actions reflect a disregard of our various bilateral agreements. The amassing of the troops by China goes against the 1993 and 1996 Agreements. Respecting and strictly observing the Line of Actual Control is the basis for peace and tranquility in the border areas and explicitly recognized in both 1993 and 1996 agreements. While our Armed Forces abide scrupulously by it, this has not been reciprocated by the Chinese side. Their actions have led to face-offs and frictions from time to time along the LAC. As I mentioned earlier, the agreements have detailed procedures and norms to deal with the situation of face-offs. However, in the recent incidents, this year, the violent conduct of Chinese forces has been in complete violation of all mutually agreed norms. 15. As of now, the Chinese side has mobilized a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC as well as in the depth areas. There are several friction areas in Eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake. In response to Chinas actions, our armed forces have also made appropriate counter deployments in these areas to ensure that Indias borders are fully protected. The House should have full confidence that our armed forces will always rise to the challenge and do us all proud. This is still an ongoing situation and obviously involves sensitive operational issues. I would, therefore, not be able to give more details in public and I am confident about the understanding of the House in this regard. 16. This rapid deployment by our armed forces including ITBP has taken place in a challenging time of COVID-19. Their efforts need to be appreciated. It has also been made possible by the high importance that the Government has placed for developing border infrastructure in the last few years. The House is aware that over the last many decades, China had undertaken significant infrastructure construction activity that enhanced their deployment capabilities in the border areas. However, in response, our Government too has stepped up the budget for border infrastructure development to about double the previous levels. As a result, more roads and bridges have been completed in the border areas. This has not only provided much needed connectivity to the local population, but has also provided better logistical support for our armed forces, enabling them to be more alert in the border areas and respond more effectively where required. In the coming years too, the Government remains committed to this objective. We will not back down from taking any big and tough step in the interest of our country. Honble Chairman, 17. I would like to emphasize, that India remains committed to resolving the current issues in our border areas through peaceful dialogue and consultations. It was in pursuit of this objective that I met my Chinese counterpart on 4th September in Moscow and had a detailed discussion regarding the current situation with him. I conveyed in clear terms our concerns related to the actions of the Chinese side, including amassing of large number of troops, their aggressive behavior and attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo that were in violation of the bilateral agreements. I also made it clear that even as we wanted to peacefully resolve the issue and would like the Chinese side to work with us, there should also be no doubt about our determination to protect Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity. My colleague, Shri Jai Shankar, the External Affairs Minister, has thereafter met the Chinese Foreign Minister in Moscow on 10th September. The two have reached an agreement, which, if implemented sincerely and faithfully by the Chinese side, could lead to complete disengagement and restoration of peace and tranquility in the border areas. 18. As the Members are aware, in the past too we have had situations of prolonged stand-offs in our border areas with China which have been resolved peacefully. Even though the situation this year is very different both in terms of scale of troops involved and the number of friction points, we do remain committed to the peaceful resolution of the current situation. Through the House, I want to assure 130 crore people of our country that we will not let the country down. This is our firm resolve towards our nation. 19. Honble Chairman, this House has had a glorious tradition that whenever the country is faced with a challenge, this House has always exhibited its strength and unity towards the resolve and determination of our Armed Forces. This House has also reposed its full confidence in the indomitable spirit, gallantry and bravery of our Armed Forces deployed on our borders. 20. Sir, through you, I want to assure the people of our country that the morale and motivation of our Armed Forces is very high, and our soldiers are committed to overcome any challenge that may come in their way. This time also, our soldiers have chosen patience and courage over aggression. We have a saying " meaning Victory resides in courage". Our soldiers are a living symbol of restraint, bravery and valor. Sir, the reassuring visit by our PM has ensured that our commanders and soldiers that 130 crore people of India are with them. Special warm clothes, special tent for their living and adequate arrangement of all their weapons and ammunition have been made for them suitable to the extreme weather conditions. Sir, the spirits of our soldiers are high. They are capable of serving at forbidding altitudes with scarce oxygen and in extremely cold temperatures, something that they have effortlessly done over the last many years on Siachen, and Kargil. 21. Honble Chairman, it is true that we are facing a challenge in Ladakh, but I am confident that our country and our brave soldiers will be able to surmount every challenge. I urge this House to unanimously honour the courage and valour of our Armed Forces. A message of unity and complete confidence of our brave soldiers will resonate not only across the country but also across the world and shall infuse a new confidence, new energy and unlimited enthusiasm in our forces. Jai Hind." 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 Shapoorji Pallonji group on Wednesday said it has missed a deadline to repay dues to group company Sterling and Wilson Solar Ltd, raising doubts about the groups ability to service its debt amid a faltering fundraising plan. In a regulatory filing, Sterling and Wilson, controlled by construction tycoon Pallonji Mistry and his family, said that the promoters have repaid only 103 crore of the 1,000 crore it owed to the company, the deadline for which ends this month. In the filing, Sterling and Wilson said its promoters will repay the rest of the dues by September 2021. The repayment is part of 2,644 crore dues that the promoters owe Sterling and Wilson. View Full Image Sarvesh Kumar Sharma/Mint The loan was to be repaid within 90 days of Sterling and Wilson Solars IPO, which ended mid-November, but was extended to September 2020, as the group blamed significant and rapid deterioration in the credit markets". The group is facing one of its worst crises," said a senior banker directly aware of the development. The Mistry family has been desperately looking to raise cash to meet its debt obligations but hasnt had much success so far." The promoters were banking heavily on pledging their 18.4% stake in Tata Sons, estimated to be worth about 1.5 trillion, a second person said. But the recent developments surrounding the pledges have derailed those plans, leaving the promoters in deep trouble," the person, also a banker, said. On 11 September, Mint reported that Tata Sons had moved an urgent application before the Supreme Court to restrain the Shapoorji Pallonji Group promoters from raising capital by pledging their shares in Tata Sons. According to the application, Tata Sons has sought to prevent the creation of any direct or indirect pledge on its shares. Tata Sons argued that any pledge will amount to transfer of shares and under the companys articles of association (AoA); the board of Tata Sons has the first right to buy the shares at fair market value. The move by Tata Sons has scuttled Mistry familys efforts to raise funds from Canadian alternative investment manager Brookfield. The Mistry family was in advanced talks to borrow 3,750 crore from Brookfield by pledging its shares in Tata Sons, the people cited above said. The money was to be used to service some of the existing promoter debt. The Mistry family had raised close to $200 million from several foreign lenders last year by pledging Tata Sons shares," said the first person cited above. The group is already behind repayment schedule in one of the loan facilities availed from Deutsche Bank, the person said. The latest developments with regard to the pledging of Tata Sons shares will put the foreign lenders in a spot because they may not be able to access the collateral," the person added. Deutsche Bank, Shapoorji Pallonji Group and Brookfield declined to comment. According to the latest corporate filings, the Shapoorji Pallonji group has an overall debt of around 30,000 crore across promoter entities and operating companies. The group has been in discussions to sell some of its assets, including the Eureka Forbes range of water purifiers and home appliances, solar and real estate assets to raise funds. So far, the group has managed to sell 317 megawatts (MW) of solar projects to private equity firm KKR and Co. for around 1,554 crore and another sale of 194MW of solar assets to Sprng Energy (owned by PE firm Actis). Mint reported on 1 August that Shapoorji is also seeking buyers for 300-350MW of planned solar projects and has held discussions with a few buyers including Brookfield. swaraj.d@livemint.com 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 Carmen Lassus, a volunteer at The Center for Returning Citizens Community Healing Center, helps hand out food to people in the community along Broad Street in North Philadelphia in July. Read more Philadelphias poverty rate fell and its median household income increased in 2019 economic developments both hailed for moving the city in the right direction, and dismissed as now irrelevant in the age of COVID-19. Riding the decade-long economic recovery from the Great Recession, the city and surrounding region were making progress until the coronavirus rerouted so many of the up arrows on financial graphs. The pandemic has done massive financial destruction, particularly to lower-income groups, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moodys Analytics in West Chester. This was the best economy in 50 years, with low unemployment good enough for all boats to be lifted. Then we got nailed, and it will take us quite some time to get back to anything like that. On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey revealed that Philadelphias poverty rate decreased from 24.5% to 23.3% between 2018 and 2019. In the same period, its median household income edged up slightly, from $46,116 to $47,474. Even though the city was improving in 2019, nearly every piece of good news was counterbalanced by a less-than-welcome development that occurred before the coronavirus struck. READ MORE: Federal report surprises, saying Philadelphia poverty is down, and income is up (from 2019) Poverty dipped, but Philadelphia remained the poorest of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, and the only big city with a poverty rate above 20%. Median household income went up, but it was still about $21,000 below the nationwide median of $68,703. Black poverty declined from around 29% to under 27%; but Hispanic poverty rose to more than 40% from 37%. And Asian poverty was climbing, from 21% to more than 23%. Both rises were attributed to increases in immigrant populations, according to local experts. White poverty dropped from 14% to just under 13%. Childhood poverty slid a bit from about 34% to more than 32%, but Temple University sociologist Judith Levine said that having one-third of all kids in poverty is unacceptable. READ MORE: Philadelphia among worst counties for children, report says; N.J. counties among the top There also was nothing good to say about deep poverty, which measures the incomes of those living at 50% or below the federal poverty line of $26,172 annually for a family of four (in 2019 dollars). Still the highest among Americas biggest cities, Philadelphias deep-poverty rate was at 11.1% in 2018 and 2019, with more than 170,000 individuals stuck in that untenable spot. What the 2019 numbers showed, said Levine, director of the Temple Public Policy Lab, is that theres a certain intractable poverty problem here that is very hard to reduce for the most disadvantaged people. Zandi agreed: The poverty problems Philadelphia has been struggling with for years are deep-seated and broad. Were the first economy to suffer when things go off the rails, and the last to see improvement when things get back on track, hindering us in good times and bad. Other parts of the region enjoyed a better 2019. Philadelphias collar counties and South Jersey all saw a drop in poverty, except for Delaware County, where it rose from 8.6% to 9.9%. I dont know why specifically that happened, but Delaware is one of the poorest counties in the state, said Beverly Donaldson, executive director of the Neighbor to Neighbor Community Development Organization in Sharon Hill. Similarly, the median household income shot up in every county Delaware included in 2019, with Gloucester County reporting the highest jump, from $81,849 to $89,447. Chester became the only local county to exceed a $100,000 median household income ($102,016 to be precise). People there work in biotech, pharmaceuticals, and computer software," Zandi said. "Theyre highly skilled and compensated. Chester County is one of the richest in America. The survey reported that Camden Citys poverty rate plummeted from around 41% to less than 29%. Im surprised by that, said sociologist Laura Napolitano at Rutgers-Camden. None of the indicators I know of would show that people in Camden are getting less poor. No ones wages went up that much. It could be a data-coding error. READ MORE: Incomes were up and poverty was down across America in 2019 and then COVID-19 hit Overall in Pennsylvania, the poverty rate saw an increase, from 11.7% to 12%, at the same time the median household income swelled from $60,905 to $63,463. In New Jersey, the poverty rate was shaved from 9.5% to 9.2%, with the median household income jumping from $81,740 to $85,751. Reacting to the poverty drop in 2019, Mayor Jim Kenney said, This data gives me confidence in the strategies we adopted during the first term of our administration to tackle the systemic challenge of poverty in Philadelphia. He added, Like the coronavirus pandemic, systemic poverty is too complex for one body to solve alone; it rests with all of us and requires shared bold solutions. Mariana Chilton, a poverty expert at Drexel University, had a different take. These numbers demonstrate just how slow change in the Philadelphia area has been, especially for people living in deep poverty, said Chilton, professor of health management and policy director for the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at the Dornsife School of Public Health. State policy makers, Philadelphia government and local businesses must dig a lot deeper if they dont want to continue their legacy of exploitation, neglect, and disrespect towards Philadelphias poorest families. As much as experts appreciated the modest improvements in poverty demonstrated by the census survey, they indicated that so much of the good was swamped by the COVID-19 tsunami. We are seeing 60% more people accessing the charitable food network here and in the United States since we were hit by the COVID reality, said Loree Jones, CEO of Philabundance, a regional hunger-relief agency. She noted that Philabundance was feeding 90,000 people a week in nine area counties even before the pandemic. Those numbers were alarming and concerning then, she said. The current thinking is that local food insecurity not having access to enough food for a healthy life will rise from 16.3% in 2018 to 21.2% in 2020. READ MORE: Hunger expected to explode here, throughout America, because of COVID-19 Kathy Fisher, policy director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, said that while she was encouraged by some improvements in 2019, its heartbreaking to know the pandemic has shattered any hope of continued progress." "If Congress doesnt pass additional COVID relief very soon, its daunting to think how long it will take to climb out of the current deep crisis and tragic to know how many people will be left behind. BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Flywire , a vertical payments company, is partnering with Mastercard to provide students with discounted foreign exchange rates on cross-border tuition payments made with Mastercard. The offer is available during the 2020 Fall term to international students originating from UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Kenya and Ghana attending any school around the world that offers Flywire as a preferred payment method for international tuition. Students will be able to make their international tuition payments in their local currencies using Mastercard credit or debit cards as the lowest cost card payment option with Flywire. Flywire is the payment provider of choice for students and education institutions around the world. Its solution enables schools to offer international students a highly-tailored, convenient and secure online payment experience customized by country, and currency while also accelerating funds flow, easing reconciliation and streamlining operational expenses. Flywire also offers multilingual customer service to assist students and their families 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with multiple channels of communication. We are delighted to announce this partnership with Flywire. This initiative will allow millions of parents and students to pay their fees securely, seamlessly and at the most competitive rate. We are committed to continuously evolve the digital payment infrastructure to further support the students educational journey, said Gaurang Shah, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Digital Payments & Labs, Middle East and Africa Mastercard. Our client schools and their student families around the world trust Mastercard for convenient and secure payments, said Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire. Were pleased to continue to partner with Mastercard on special offerings like this one to ensure a seamless digital payment experience while passing on valuable savings to reduce the cost of international education. Resources Embarking on Lifes Most Important Moments: A Flywire Video Payment plans for higher education, healthcare, and travel: https://www.flywire.com/ About Flywire Flywire is a high-growth vertical payments company trusted by organizations around the world to deliver on their customers most important moments. Unlike other payment companies, Flywire is proven to solve vertical-specific payment and receivables problems for organizations that deliver high-value services. Whether in education, healthcare, travel or technology, Flywire has vertical-specific insight and technology that allows organizations to optimize the payment experience for their customers while eliminating operational challenges. To date Flywire has processed over $16 billion in total payments volume for over 2,000 clients around the world. The company is headquartered in Boston, USA and has offices around the world. For more information, visit www.flywire.com . Boris Johnson has faced bruising criticism in the House of Commons over the Internal Market Bill. - AFP Britain backed down in the food blockade row with Brussels on Thursday and agreed to EU demands for further details on its food and animal health regime after Brexit. The news emerged as a Government policy paper set out details of the compromise Boris Johnson struck with Tory rebels over the Internal Market Bill. The compromise makes it more difficult to trigger provisions that would break the Withdrawal Agreement and international law. Boris Johnson had accused the EU of threatening to cut off food supplies from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland during trade negotiations with the UK by withholding third country listing. If British animals and animal products are not added to the blocs Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) lists for non-EU countries, exports such as cheese, lamb, eggs and beef would be illegal in the EU and Northern Ireland. It will also be much harder for pets and racehorses to travel. Brussels said it needed clarity on what the UKs future rules would be from the end of the transition period on January 1, when the country leaves the Single Market and Customs Union. Michel Barnier clearly stated that the EU is not refusing to list the UK as a third country for food imports, a commission spokesman said. We are still waiting for comprehensive information on what the UKs future rules will be, in particular for imports, after 31 December 2020 and when these rules will be adopted. The spokesman said the UK had told Brussels it would use a modified version of EU rules on animal and public health. We are waiting for this legislation to be put forward," he said. We will be laying secondary legislation next month to clarify listing procedures in future, a UK government spokesman said, we are operating the same rules and will be at the end of the transition period. The commission said listing could take place in a matter of days once the information was given. The UK was listed in 2019, once Theresa Mays government showed legislation proving that the EUs SPS regime would effectively continue if there was a no deal. Story continues The prime minister used the threat of the blockade, which EU diplomats dismissed as spin and fake news, to justify his Internal Market Bill. The Bill has no provisions over SPS but does on export declarations from Britain to Northern Ireland and state aid rules. Downing Street confirmed on Thursday that ministers would require Parliament's approval before using powers in the Internal Market Bill which would alter the Brexit divorce deal The compromise paper said ministers would only seek permission to use the powers if the EU had engaged in a "material breach of its duties of good faith or other obligations." Examples include the EU refusing to grant third country listing to UK agricultural goods for "manifestly unreasonable or poorly justified reasons", which would in effect result in what Mr Johnson described as a "food blockade." In what rebels believe to be a concession, the Government has agreed that it will trigger the formal dispute mechanisms set out in the Withdrawal Agreement "in parallel" with using the powers. This was a key demand of Geoffrey Cox, the former attorney general, who said that it would make the Government's actions legal. Last night peers signalled the climbdown would fail to placate Conservative rebels in the House of Lords, which could seek to hold up the Bill for weeks. Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader and prominent Brexiteer, warned that the deal struck with MPs still failed to address his key objection that the legislation still required "Parliament to break international law." One EU diplomat said that the moves towards compromise were promising but other sources suggested that Brussels could not accept any legislation undermining the Withdrawal Agreement. It may convince the Commons but not the EU, said a senior European diplomatic source. It is still a violation of the Withdrawal Agreement but it is an interesting development, said an EU official. Sir Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU, told the Irish Times that he thought Mr Johnson now wanted no deal. He is quite Trumpite in method. He was always fascinated by Trump and his strategy to take the other side by surprise and destabilise it, he added. Clement Beaune, Frances Europe Minister, said that if the threat to renege on the treaty was a tactic, it would not work. He said the bloc should not fall into a British trap of breaking off trade talks. A senior EU diplomat said that the Bill had damaged the blocs trust in Britain but that trade negotiations would continue. We are distressed and appalled but at the same time we should not overreact, the diplomat said. David Frost, the UKs chief negotiator, met Mr Barnier in Brussels on Thursday for preparatory talks ahead of a full round of trade negotiations the week after next. FILE PHOTO: The messenger app WeChat is seen among U.S. flags in this illustration picture By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - WeChat users will not face civil or criminal penalties even if the United States bans the Chinese-owned messaging app through other actions next week, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. In August, President Donald Trump unveiled a proposed sweeping ban on U.S. transactions with Tencent Holdings Ltd, owner of the popular mainland Chinese app. The executive order, which called WeChat and Bytedance's short-video app TikTok "significant threats" to national security, followed stepped-up U.S. efforts to purge "untrusted" Chinese apps from U.S. digital networks. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is set to release regulations by Sunday clarifying what WeChat transactions will be prohibited. WeChat users have filed a motion in U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking a preliminary injunction to bar the Trump administration from prohibiting the use of WeChat in the United States by individual users, businesses and groups. A hearing on the request is for Thursday. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Wednesday that Ross does not plan to target persons or groups who only download or use WeChat to convey personal or business information and said they would not face criminal or civil penaltes. But the department added that "use of the app for such communications could be directly or indirectly impaired through measures targeted at other transactions." The WeChat users who sued said the order apparently prohibits "millions of WeChat users in the United States ... from using the most popular social media space for Chinese speakers in the world." WeChat has been downloaded 19 million times in the United States, showed data from Sensor Tower, but in China, the app is ubiquitous as a medium for services, games and payments. Trump's order said WeChat "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users," which "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information." (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang) Then Acting Secretary for Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks about an initiative to prevent online child sexual exploitation, at the Justice Department in Washington on March 5, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf Resists Subpoena, Skips House Hearing Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf didnt appear before Congress on Thursday despite a subpoena issued to attempt to compel his appearance. Wolf has chosen to defy the subpoena, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said during his opening statement. That he would refuse to come before the Committee after committing to do so should appall every Member of this Committee. Insisting Mr. Wolf keeps his commitment to testifying before Congress isnt playing politicsits doing our job. A back-and-forth between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the committee took place in recent weeks, unfolding in a flurry of letters and leading to the Sept. 11 subpoena. Beth Spivey, the assistant secretary of the DHS Office of Legislative Affairs, told Thompson that it would not be appropriate for Wolf to testify because of his pending nomination to become permanent Homeland Security secretary. When President Donald Trump nominated Wolf earlier this month, he became unavailable to testify before Congress on matters unrelated to his nomination and will regain the ability to do so when the Senate completes the confirmation process, she added. Thompson didnt address the argument, instead accusing Wolf of evading congressional oversight as he announced the subpoena. Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told the hearing that Wolf had offered to testify in both July and August. Unfortunately the majority refused to make either of those dates work. Now due to his nomination, Mr. Wolf is prohibited from testifying under a policy thats been in place under both Republican and Democrat administrations for decades, Rogers said. Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testifies on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on March 11, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in Washington on Sept. 17, 2020. (John McDonnell/Pool/Getty Images) House Homeland Security Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) in Washington on Sept. 17, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) Nevertheless, due to the significance of todays hearing the department offered to have Mr. [Ken] Cuccinelli testify. Hes the second-highest ranking official at DHS and perfectly qualified and informed on todays subject matter. I ask unanimous consent to include his testimony for the record, Rogers added. That request was approved, but Cuccinelli was not allowed to testify. Cuccinelli is the acting deputy director of DHS. Rogers said Thompson, the chairman, chose not to allow Cuccinelli to testify instead of Wolf, which he referred to as a political stunt. Thompson responded by saying: The so-called standard practice by which the department says Mr. Wolf cannot testify is the administrations own self-imposed limitation. If the minority wanted to hear testimony from Mr. Cuccinelli they had every right to invite him to appear as their witness at this hearing today. Im not aware of the minoritys requesting his testimony, he added. DHS said Wednesday that Thompson refused multiple offers from the department to have a senior department official testify before his committee. Chairman Thompson can complain all he wants, but the facts are clear, and they are not on his side. Longstanding precedent says that pending nominees dont testify to other committees as their nomination is pending. In light of that precedent, DHS offered to accommodate their request to hear about threats, Cuccinelli said in a statement. I had testimony prepared and had my schedule clear to show up at this mornings hearing. Instead, the committee majority decided that they would rather put on a show for the media. Instead of serving the American people and working to keep them safe, they would rather use the American peoples time and money to stage a political spectacle. Sadly, putting politics ahead of public safety has become far too common for many politicians across the country in recent months, and the swamp is no exception. Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report. Getty As the coronavirus began spreading across the country in March, a white-and-blue postcard from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in every mailbox in the United States. It communicated basic public health dos and dontswash your hands, avoid crowds, stay home if you feel sickwhich were billed as President Trumps Coronavirus Guidelines for America. Most of the 330 million Americans who got the postcard probably disposed of it quickly. Six months later, however, the memory of it lingers in at least one place: the U.S. Postal Service. Thats because the agency has yet to be reimbursed by the Department of Health and Human Services for the cost of delivery. In March, USA Today reported that the Postal Service was working with the Trump administration on a reimbursement plan. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the USPS told The Daily Beast that the agency has not received any reimbursement at this time from the federal government. Representatives for HHS, the cabinet department in which the CDC sits, did not respond to requests for comment. While no information was provided, or is publicly available, about how much it cost to send the mailer, the expense was likely significant. Experts told The Daily Beast that the cost of sending a piece of commercial mail to every address in the country would add up to roughly $20 million to $25 million. In some of the federal governments massive departmental budgets, $20 million might be a rounding error. Less so with the U.S. Postal Service, which has faced a cash crunch for years and is currently hoping for emergency funding from Congressthe leading bills propose anywhere from $10 to $25 billion in reliefas the coronavirus pandemic batters the agencys finances. To those familiar with the workings of the USPS, its no small thing that the beleaguered public service remains on the hook for the cost of a massive delivery it orchestrated half a year ago. The U.S. Postal Service is a self-funding agency, said Kevin Kosar, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank who studies the USPS. By law it should be paid whenever it provides delivery serviceswhether the buyer is the private sector or a government agency. Im dismayed the CDC has failed to live up to its obligation to pay for the millions of postcards that USPS workers delivered six months ago. These same workers risk their health every day, and the agency is incurring additional operating costs due to COVID-19. Which makes it all the more important that the CDC pay its bill. Story continues Congress Is Just As Responsible for Clusterfuck at USPS The Postal Services shaky finances formed the justification for a regime of aggressive cost-cutting by the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoyreforms that ended up sparking widespread mail delivery delays and a crisis of confidence at the USPS. In testimony on Capitol Hill in August defending his leadership of the agency, DeJoy repeatedly pointed to the need to reduce overhead and increase efficiency in order to secure long-term viability for an agency teetering on the fiscal edge. Only in Washington,D.C., DeJoy said, would the agencys $10 billion cash on hand reserves be a good position to be in. To the Trump administrations critics, its hard to separate the issue of the cost from the content of the mailer itself. While the public health guidelines outlined on the back of the postcard were straightforward, the layout of the frontwhich places President Trumps name front-and-centerraised eyebrows at the time. Michael Carome, of the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen, argued to USA Today in March that Trump was using the levers of government to promote his own interests. Reached by The Daily Beast on Tuesday, Carome described the failure to pay back USPS as one more drop in the bucket of ineptness of the administrations COVID-19 response. And Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project, an anti-corruption nonprofit group, argued that Trump essentially stole $20-25 million of work for his campaign through the mailer, calling it a new step in Trumps war on vote by mail. 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. Institutional Placement and Entitlement Offer Melbourne, Sep 17, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Vintage Energy Ltd ( ASX:VEN ) advises that it has undertaken a share placement to institutional and sophisticated/professional investors ("Placement") at an issue price of $0.06 per share, raising gross proceeds of $3.1 million. A non-renounceable entitlement offer ("Entitlement Offer") for eligible shareholders will be undertaken at $0.06 per share on a 1 for 2 basis, targeting gross proceeds of up to ~$12.1 million.The funds received from the Placement and Entitlement Offer will be used to advance two potential production and cash generating projects. These are the Vali Field pipeline connection to the Moomba gathering system, and the testing of the Nangwarry CO2 discovery (both subject to regulatory and joint venture approvals). Funds will also be used to increase production from the Vali Field through drilling two further wells, as well as drilling the nearby Odin prospect (both subject to regulatory and joint venture approvals and rig availability). More specifically, funds and uses will primarily be as follows (net to Vintage):- ~$3.5 million - Vali Field connection into the Moomba gathering system;- ~$5.0 million - Drilling of two further Vali Field wells;- ~$2.5 million - Drilling the Odin prospect;- ~$1.0 million - Testing the Nangwarry CO2 discovery;- ~$0.2 million - Long lead items for drilling the Cervantes prospect; and- ~$3.0 million - Geological, Geophysical and Engineering studies ("GG&E").The connection of the Vali Field to the Moomba gathering system is the most immediate priority for Vintage. If less than the full $12.1 million is raised under the Entitlement Offer, residual funding will be allocated to those work programs that are deemed by Vintage to be the most value accretive.Vintage's Managing Director, Neil Gibbins said, "Vintage is well positioned for first production and cash flow in the first half of next year. This is a very exciting time for the company as we look to deliver first gas production into the eastern Australian gas market from the Vali Field in the Cooper Basin, build on the success at Vali with further wells in the Vali Field, drill the nearby 'Vali look-a-like' Odin prospect, and flow test the under-the-radar CO2 discovery at Nangwarry in the Otway Basin. All of these projects have the potential to be value accretive for Vintage and its shareholders, with the funds raised used to develop the infrastructure and undertake the test work needed for first cash flow, which in turn will provide funding optionality in the future."Capital raising termsVintage is seeking to raise up to ~ $15.2 million through the combination of the Placement and an Entitlement Offer by issuing new fully paid ordinary shares at $0.06 per share. Shares in the Placement have been placed with institutions and sophisticated/professional investors (who qualify under s.708(8) to (12)).PlacementThe Placement was conducted by Taylor Collison and MST Financial Services using a single tranche structure in accordance with the Company's available placement capacity pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.1. The Placement will comprise 51.6 million shares at a price of $0.06 per share to raise a total of $3.1 million.The Placement price of $0.06 per share represents a discount of 14.3% to the Vintage's last closing price of $0.07 per share on 14 September 2020 and a 20.2% discount to the 5-day VWAP. Settlement of the Placement is expected to occur on 23 September 2020, with Placement shares expected to be allotted and commence trading on 24 September 2020 (along with an Appendix 3B confirming the exact allotments).Entitlement OfferVintage is also offering existing eligible shareholders the opportunity to participate in an Entitlement Offer to raise up to ~ $12.1 million, through the issue of 201.1 million shares at the same issue price as the Placement, being $0.06 per share. Eligible shareholders recorded on the register at 7:00 pm (AEST) on 24 September 2020, will be entitled to apply for shares on a 1-for-2 ratio based on their existing shareholding. Eligible shareholders will be entitled to apply for additional shares if they have taken up their entitlement in full.Participation in the Entitlement Offer is entirely optional and is open to all shareholders, other than shareholders who have registered addresses in countries outside Australia and New Zealand where regulatory requirements make participation by the shareholder unlawful or impracticable.The Entitlement Offer is partly underwritten by Taylor Collison and MST Financial Services to the extent of $5.2 million on a proportional basis to the percentage shortfall1. In addition, Vintage Directors and management have committed to take at least $500,000 of their entitlements.Vintage will apply for quotation of the new shares issued under the Placement and Entitlement Offer on the ASX, which will rank equally in all respects with existing Vintage fully paid ordinary shares.Investor PresentationFurther details of the capital raising are detailed in the investor presentation here:About Vintage Energy Ltd Vintage Energy Ltd (ASX:VEN) has been established to acquire, explore and develop energy assets principally within, but not limited to, Australia, to take advantage of a generally favourable energy pricing outlook. COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A Sri Lankan magistrate on Thursday ordered the captain of an oil tanker that caught fire off the countrys coast to appear in court as authorities seek $1.8 million from the ships owner for assistance provided in fighting the blazes. On Wednesday, Attorney General Dappula de Livera directed police to name the Greek captain of the MT New Diamond as a suspect in the fire and produce him before the Magistrates Court. He was ordered to appear on Sept. 28. The Attorney Generals Office said the country is seeking $1.8 million from the ships owner for the help given to the vessel since Sept. 3, when the first fire broke out. It includes services provided by the Sri Lankan navy, air force, ports authority and Marine Environment Protection Authority, said Nishara Jayaratne, the co-ordinating officer in the Attorney Generals department. She said the claim has been submitted to the ships owner and a separate claim will be presented for damage caused to the environment after studies are complete. Greece-based Porto Emporios Shipping Inc. is the registered owner of the 20-year-old vessel. The ship, which was carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude oil, was damaged off Sri Lankas east coast by two fires over a week. Sri Lankan and Indian ships and aircraft took part in extinguishing the fires. The second blaze was doused last week. Since then, experts have been working to salvage the ship, which remains in Sri Lankan waters. The tanker was transporting crude oil from the port of Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip, where the state-owned Indian Oil Corp. has a refinery. The initial fire killed one Filipino crew member and injured another, while 21 other crew members escaped uninjured. The 21, including the captain, are currently staying in a coronavirus isolation centre for seafarers. Read more about: Jenn Oakley is ready to move to a home with basic necessities like power and running water. But Oakley, who lives in one of the Tuff Sheds set up by Oakland to help shelter homeless people, is running into roadblocks. Since February, Oakley, 42, has completed a construction-training program at Rising Sun Center for Opportunity. Shes currently taking automotive tech classes at Chabot College in Hayward. Her goal is to become a heavy equipment operator and mechanic, and shes waiting to hear back about a Caltrans apprenticeship. Shes had a full-time security job since March, but on Monday she started a full-time job at a Jiffy Lube in Castro Valley. She told me shell work the security job on her days off. Oakleys determination to find a home could be an inspiration for others clawing their way out of homelessness, but her story reveals the sobering and sad truth about life in the Bay Area: Having a steady paycheck is no guarantee youll be able to afford living here. Private landlords are wary of her credit and rental history. Meanwhile, her applications with affordable housing programs run by the city arent going anywhere. Im doing my own research. Im applying to all these places, and Im not getting anything, said Oakley, whom I met in May as she was fixing her car outside the sheds near Lake Merritt. Im not getting a lot of this stuff because Im not disabled. The infrastructure to house homeless people, especially during the pandemic, was designed to help people with health risks and disabilities people who need a deeper level of support to find and maintain housing first. Everybody else has to wait in a long, long line. If Oakley cant be helped quickly, what does that say about our systems to house people? It just speaks to the lack of deeply affordable housing, Lara Tannenbaum, manager of Oaklands community housing services, told me. For many people, that is the solution. They need affordable housing, period. Oakley, eligible for a subsidy that will pay a deposit and the first three months of rent, needs more than money. She said prospective landlords and roommates have asked about her rental and credit histories. Before the sheds, she lived in RVs and hotels. She says shes in the process of repairing her credit score. Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle After moving to Oakland from Tennessee 14 years ago, Oakley sold insurance. Her slide into homelessness began when her father died in 2009. Her mother is also deceased, and she hasnt talked to her sister in more than a decade around the time she started using methamphetamine and lost everything. She has some cousins in Kentucky, and talks to her moms ex-boyfriend on Facebook sometimes. The few people Oakley can count on are in Oakland. Darin Lounds, executive director of Housing Consortium of the East Bay, an organization that provides housing services and manages transitional sites, including the Lake Merritt sheds, said a persons past criminal record, blemished credit report, lack of references creates additional housing challenges. Someone whos employed and may be in recovery and doing everything else they need to be doing to get back on their feet will still have to kind of correct some of the things from the past, he said. And thats not our rule. Thats the market. The stringent shelter-in-place rules and the smoke from wildfires have fueled an exodus from the Bay Area. Rental prices are dropping around the region 9% in San Francisco and as much as 15% in the South Bay, my colleague J.K. Dineen reported but Oaklands prices have remained stubborn. In August, the average one-bedroom apartment in Oakland cost $2,469 per month, according to Rent Jungle, a real estate tracking website. Thats only a 4% decrease from a year ago. Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle Housing experts and developers believe the rental market will eventually become more affordable. That doesnt mean our neighbors already struggling to pay rent will benefit from the lower prices. What Im hearing from providers is that the market has not loosened up because of the pandemic because of the protections that are in place for renters, which is a good thing for now, Tannenbaum said. When eviction moratoriums lift, then the market may loosen up, but that would be also a bad thing, because then more people will be evicted and becoming homeless. So its kind of a double-edged sword. At the end of the day, we just need more housing. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In August, the Oakland City Council approved a bid to buy a dorm from the California College of the Arts for $13 million and voted to partner with local affordable housing groups to acquire two Oakland hotels and 20 single-family homes. But, as my colleague Nora Mishanec reported, the initiative depends on Oakland receiving funds from the state, which isn't guaranteed. The pandemic has shaken loose in some ways some money, some urgency, some processes that we didnt have before, Tannenbaum said. So are we doing enough? Absolutely not. Are there people on the streets who are older and sicker and vulnerable? Absolutely. But many hundreds of them are not on the streets now because of the COVID response. Recently, Oakley watched money shed been saving go up in smoke because she rented hotel rooms to escape unhealthy air. And two weeks ago, she rented a hotel room in Sacramento the night before an early-morning apprenticeship test. Im spending some of my savings, but I feel like Im doing that for my future, so its OK, said Oakley, whos lost almost 30 pounds since we first met. You can see how hard shes working. Getting a home would be the apex of her decadelong battle with homelessness, including recovering from a stroke in October. I just need a little help, and then they can forget about me, she said. Just let me get on my feet, and get used to paying bills again. Correction: An earlier version of this column misquoted Lara Tannenbaum. She said many hundreds of homeless people are not on the streets now because of the COVID response. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr By PTI BHOPAL: An organization working for the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy on Thursday alleged that widows of the victims are not getting pension since December. "The Madhya Pradesh government should resume the Rs 1,000 monthly pension to 4,998 women," said Balkrishna Namdeo, president of the Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha. "They haven't been getting pension since December. These widows are living in penury in these testing times amid the COVID-19 outbreak," he added. Some of these women are on a relay hunger strike for the last two days at Jeevan Jyoti Colony here to press the demand, he said. The 2011-12 annual report of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department had announced that widows of the victims will receive lifelong pension, he said. The December 1984 gas leak at a pesticide plant of Union Carbide in Bhopal, which claimed at least 3,000 lives, is termed as one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. By Sabrina Valle RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Decio Oddone, the former head of Brazil's national oil regulator, will replace Lincoln Guardado as chief executive officer of oil producer Enauta Participacoes SA, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Enauta's board is expected to confirm Oddone's nomination on Monday, the oil producer said. Guardado has decided to step down after more than 10 years in the position and has overseen the succession process, Enauta said. Oddone, who made a career at state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, stepped down as the head of Brazil's national oil regulator, known as the ANP, in January at the end of his four-year term. Oddone oversaw a record 11 oil auctions as ANP head. The engineer was part of a government effort to ease regulations in the oil sector, in a bid to reduce Petrobras's dominance and welcome foreign producers to the country's deepwater fields. (Reporting by Sabrina Valle; Editing by Lincoln Feast.) Working-class roots, empathy on display as Biden commands town hall White House candidate Joe Biden spoke face to face with a crowd of voters on September 17, 2020 for one of the first times since he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June Joe Biden on Thursday lashed President Donald Trump over his "close to criminal" handling of the coronavirus as the Democrat fielded questions from voters impacted by the pandemic in a state that is key to his election hopes. Returning to the gritty city of his birth, the former vice president engaged in an outdoor town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he painted himself as the champion of hardworking Americans who he said have been ignored by a president more concerned about boosting Wall Street than helping working families. Biden, appearing energized as he handled participants' questions, also accused Trump of knowing the seriousness of the coronavirus threat early this year and hiding it from the nation. "He knew it and did nothing. It's close to criminal," Biden said in one of several fiery criticisms of Trump. "This president should step down," he added. The 77-year-old candidate also used a populist inflection, framing the 2020 election between him and billionaire real estate mogul Trump as "a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue." Blue-collar Americans -- like the family Biden grew up in -- "are as good as anybody else," he said. "And guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited, are the people that I've always found a problem with -- not the people who are busting their neck." The tough remarks appeared aimed at working-class white voters with whom he must do better if he is to win back swing states that went to Trump in 2016. Biden also showed his famously empathetic side when speaking to questioners who had medical ailments, whose relatives died from Covid-19 or who were suffering financially. "Thank you for what you do," he told a nurse who voted for Trump in 2016. - Contrasting styles - With less than seven weeks before the November 3 election, Biden has ramped up his public appearances after spending large chunks of time at his Delaware home, even as Trump repeatedly barnstorms swing states. Story continues Now both candidates are hitting the physical campaign trail in earnest, although still in different ways. Trump returned to Wisconsin Thursday for a public rally fueled by his signature bravado -- a contrast to Biden's quieter style. Ahead of his departure, Trump railed on Twitter against the move by many states to encourage voters to mail in their ballots, thereby avoiding possible coronavirus risks in polling stations. The shift, which is popular with Democrats, will promote "ELECTION MAYHEM," he tweeted, claiming that the results of the November 3 vote "may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED." He offered no evidence for his claims, and US mail-in voting has never been tied to any wide-scale fraud. Biden is attempting to project a calming alternative to Trump's fury. At the CNN town hall Biden took questions from a live, socially distanced audience of 100 people, who parked in front of the stage to watch the event. Trump, talking to supporters in Wisconsin, branded Biden's drive-in town hall "the weirdest thing I've ever seen." Trump focused on promises of economic growth -- one area where polls consistently show him ahead of Biden -- and claimed that under the Democrat pension funds would "go down like to depression levels." Biden has largely kept close to his home in Delaware during the pandemic which has so far killed nearly 200,000 Americans. He has traveled to swing states like Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania, but has dodged crowds and engages with voters in small, controlled settings. The dueling events come amid rising tensions over the handling of the pandemic, and Trump's insistence that a safe and effective vaccine was just weeks away. Biden rejected the timeline. "I don't trust the president on vaccines," Biden said, explaining that he trusts the government's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci instead. "If Fauci says the vaccine is safe, I take the vaccine." The animosity has ramped up between Trump and Biden ahead of their first debate, scheduled for September 29 in Ohio. Biden has consistently led Trump in national polls. He is also ahead in several key battleground states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- all won by Trump in his shock 2016 election victory -- although by dwindling margins. mlm/bfm EAST ALTON The Illinois RiverWatch Network and the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) is hosting the Illinois RiverWatch Fall Speaker Series, featuring free Zoom presentations from four different scientists. According to RiverWatch Director and Stream Ecologist Danelle Haake, the RiverWatch Fall Speaker Series will help make RiverWatch more of a year-round program. We hope the series will give people an opportunity to learn more about water through a series of online events, Haake said. We are focusing on how the choices we make in the watershed can impact streams and the animals who live in them. Following is a list of dates, times, speakers and topics along with registration information: Impact of Urban Heat Islands on Freshwater Fish: 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 22. Speaker is Megan Pagliaro, Ph.D. student at UCB. The Important Role of Streamside Vegetation in a Changing Climate: 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 6. Speaker is Dr. Jason Knouft, professor of Biology at St. Louis University. 3D Printing and the Evolutionary Ecology of North American Riverine Snails: 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 26. Speaker is Dr. Paul Brunkow, associate professor of Biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. How Winter Road Salt Hurts Water Quality and What We Can Do About It: 7 p.m., Thurdsday, Nov. 12. is Dr. Danelle Haake, NGRREC RiverWatch Director and Stream Ecologist. To sign-up for the events, visit the Illinois RiverWatch Facebook page at www.facebook.com/IllinoisRiverWatch or send an email to riverwatch@lc.edu. Those interested can register until the day of the event. Zoom links will be emailed to registrants prior to each presentation. For more information about the Illinois RiverWatch program, visit www.ngrrec.org/RiverWatch or contact Haake at 618-468-8724 or dhaake@lc.edu. Terming three bills related to agriculture "anti-farmer", convener and Delhi Chief Minister on Thursday demanded that the Centre withdraw them, saying his party will vote against the bills in The has three Rajya Sabha MPs and one LoK Sabha MP. "The three bills related to farming and brought in the are anti-farmer. all over the country are opposing them. The central government should withdraw these three bills. The will vote against them in Parliament," he tweeted in Hindi. The Centre had on Monday introduced The Farmers' Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Bill, The (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, and 'The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill to replace the ordinances promulgated earlier. These bills seek to provide barrier-free trade for farmers' produce outside notified farm mandis, and empower farmers to enter into farming agreements with private players prior to production for sale of agri-produce. (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 proposed Protected Geographical Indicator (PGI) for grass-fed beef won't be a 'silver bullet' for the sector, but can be a significant help, according to the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue. Minister McConalogue went on to say that while there is merit in developing a PGI, it was important that it is done in a co-ordinated way and properly marketed and driven. He also said that effort and resources must be put into this PGI, once it is hopefully agreed in partnership, to ensure it is properly marketed abroad, connects to the consumer and delivers the greatest possible return. He was speaking in response to Independent TD Michael McNamara who questioned whether the PGI scheme was just another tool to penalise farmers with. He said this nationwide PGI, while a good idea in theory, will be just one more thing that farmers will be penalised by processors for not adhering to. He went on to say that the PGI register will be in the hands of the factories rather than the farmers, saying it will make it harder for individual farmers who wish to register a PGI, because there will be one PGI register for the whole country which will be in the control of processors rather than producers. "The whole PGI mechanism, be it in Ireland, Italy or any other country in Europe, is about a product. It gives control to producers. I am not surprised that it is happening this way in Ireland because it is the way that the Department and Bord Bia work. The PGI scheme has come in for a lot of criticism among farm organisations in recent weeks. A statement issued by the IFA earlier this month said it was clear that there was considerable farmer disquiet over Bord Bias direction of travel in relation to the PGI. The organisations president Tim Cullinan also encouraged farmers to read the full PGI document saying farmers should read the full document rather than the spin from Bord Bia. U.S. Park Police keeps protesters away after they attempted to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House on June 22, 2020 in Washington, DC. A military whistleblower says federal officials sought some unusual crowd control devices including one that's been called a "heat ray" to deal with protesters outside the White House on the June day that law enforcement forcibly cleared Lafayette Square. In written responses to questions from a House committee, National Guard Maj. Adam DeMarco said the Defense Department's lead military police officer for the National Capital Region sent an email asking if the D.C. National Guard possessed a long-range acoustic device used to transmit loud noises or an "Active Denial System," the so-called heat ray. DeMarco said he responded that the Guard was not in possession of either device. National Public Radio and The Washington Post first reported DeMarco's testimony. Use of either the acoustic device or the Active Denial System would have been a significant escalation of crowd control for the Guard members, particularly since the Defense officials ordered that the Guard troops not be armed when they went into D.C. Law enforcement personnel were armed. And although active-duty military troops were sent to the region, they remained at bases outside the District in case they were needed but never actually entered the District. The Active Denial System was developed by the military nearly two decades ago, and was unveiled to the public around 2007. It's not clear that it's ever actually been used in combat, although there are reports it has deployed. The system, which emits a directed beam of energy that causes a burning heat sensation, was considered a non-lethal way to control crowds, particularly when it may be difficult to tell the enemy from innocent civilians in war zones. Use of the device appeared to stall amid questions about whether it actually caused more serious injuries or burns than initially thought. The Long Range Acoustic Device, also called a sound cannon, sends out loud messages or sounds and has been used by law enforcement to disperse crowds. The U.S. military has, in recent years, ordered the LRAD for the Navy's Military Sealift Command to be used by ships to hail or warn other vessels. DeMarco testified in late July before the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating the use of force against crowds in Lafayette Square that night. His remarks on the crowd control devices came in response to follow-up questions from the committee. DeMarco's lawyer sent his answers to the committee on Aug. 28; NPR posted the document online Wednesday. The Trump administration has said that vicious attacks by protesters led federal forces to turn on what appeared to be a largely peaceful crowd June 1 in the square in front of the White House. Law enforcement and security officers that night clubbed and punched protesters and unleashed mounted officers and chemical agents against them in one of the most controversial confrontations at the height of this year's nationwide protests over the killing of Black people at the hands of police. Mission nurses vote to unionize In what the union hailed as a landslide vote, nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville voted this week to approve a union the first in North Carolina to do so and the largest hospital union win in the South since 1975. National Nurses United, the labor group that now represents about 1,800 nurses at two addresses in Asheville, said in a statement Thursday morning it believes this is the largest union election win in the South in a dozen years for a union of any type. Were all thrilled that weve finally won, said Lesley Bruce, a registered nurse, who works in chest pain observation at Mission. In her statement, she added, This victory means we can use our collective voice to advocate for patient safety and safer staffing. Nearly 1,400 people voted, and the ballots were counted from late Wednesday into early Thursday. Of those, more than 70%, or 965, voted in favor of a union. A spokesman for the National Labor Relations Board said 100 ballots were challenged by one side or the other, but even if all of them voted against the union, the outcome would be the same. In a statement sent midmorning Thursday, Mission Health/HCA Healthcare North Carolina Division spokeswoman Nancy Lindell said the company respects the nurses right to decide on a union but hinted the fight may not yet be over from its end. In the coming days, the hospital will thoroughly examine the election process and the manner in which the election was conducted, Lindell said. The NLRBs process allows both parties time to review the election and the conduct of the parties prior to the election; the hospital may utilize that process to ensure that all of our nurses had the fair election that they deserve. Bruce Nissen, a retired labor studies professor at Florida International University, said HCAs language hints at months or even more than a year of exploiting loopholes in labor law to draw out the union organizing process as long as possible. They are talking about not accepting the results, Nissen said of HCAs statement. But because of the large margin of victory, Nissen predicts that further resistance by HCA is not going to be successful, and there probably will be a really strong union there because of the struggle the workers had to go through to establish a union. Once the dust settles, the nurses and HCA will hammer out a collective bargaining agreement, which outlines working conditions, pay and raises. NNU represents nurses at 19 other HCA hospitals across the country, the majority of which are in Florida. The NNU vote count exceeded most others conducted recently by the NLRB, in which many efforts had only a handful or a few dozen votes involved. Collective bargaining by public employees is banned in North Carolina, but Mission Hospital workers are not public employees. Workers in North Carolina dont have to join a union and cannot be forced to pay union dues under the states right to work laws. North Carolina has the second-lowest percentage of union-represented workers in the country, at 3.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released last year. Only South Carolina has a lower percentage of its workforce unionized, at 2.7%. According to its website, Mission Hospital is hiring dozens of nurses in a variety of fields. HCA bought nonprofit Mission and its suite of North Carolina hospitals and clinics for $1.5 billion in early 2019. It was then that many nurses started talking about forming a union. Last fall the hospital raised its minimum wage to $12.50 per hour, with $15 for nursing support positions. Nurses may also qualify for tuition reimbursement of up to $5,250 per year. Asheville nurses ramped up their talk of forming a union in March, with new parent company HCA Healthcare pushing back against allegations of poor working conditions. Around the same time, N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein sent HCA a list of questions prompted by consumer concerns, including those regarding the quality of health care and staffing at the Western North Carolina hospitals. HCA in turn sought to delay the union vote, citing the pressures from the new coronavirus. At the time, in mid-March, hospitals around the region were bracing for a predicted influx of patients suffering from COVID-19. Initial hearings with the NLRB were delayed again, in part due to the effects the coronavirus had on public life. Nurses were eventually able to cast ballots in mid-August. Nurses have accused HCA of forcing them to attend anti-union briefings on the clock during the ongoing pandemic. HCA called the sessions an important investment to provide factual information and inform nurses of their legal rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The vote count was conducted over streaming video, with some NLRB staff physically handling the envelopes and ballots while lawyers for both sides watched remotely. Normally, such a tally would be done in person, but COVID-19 has changed even this. Game changer? Nissen, the retired labor professor, said the resounding union vote at Mission could be contagious. Unions in the South have faced headwinds because of the history of slavery and racism, he said. The South has always been the Achilles heel of the U.S. labor movement, Nissen said. Theres been very few victories for unions in the South, and very, very few of them of this comparable size. It could have a major impact on the fate of organized labor and unions in the South. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 17:03:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close XIAMEN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- As sunshine poured on the tables by the French window through the bamboo dome, visitors sipped coffee and went around the cafe looking at the exquisite exhibits. For Fang Guoxi, owner of the cafe -- Enjoy More -- in east China's coastal city of Xiamen, all this seemed impossible over a decade ago when he first arrived at the site, which was occupied by an old factory workshop. In 1980, China's State Council approved the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone in the district of Huli, which was then mostly covered by paddy fields. Companies from both home and abroad rushed in later to set up plants in the area. By the time Fang arrived at Xiamen in 1998 after graduating from college, factory clusters dotted the district. "The streets were packed with people during commuting time, and manufacturing was prosperous back then," Fang recalled. As Xiamen restructured its economy later on the island, many of the industries were moved to other places, leaving behind the old plants. The local government launched an initiative in 2006 to transform the deserted plants into a zone for creative industries. Fang grabbed the opportunity to set up his own business. "We hoped to retain the industrial vibe of the area through design while still telling the story of the special economic zone," Fang said. In the following years, more creative industrial parks were set up in the shuttered plants. So far, 615 companies had settled in seven such parks, generating a total revenue of about 1.48 billion yuan (216 million U.S. dollars) by July. In one of the creative industry parks, old containers are painted and transformed into shops, and former workshops have been changed into photo studios and fashion show stages. Wan Yifang, a garment designer who returned from London after graduating, set up her own workshop in Huli district in 2015, and another exhibition space in a newly opened park this year. "I love the spacious old factories as they provide many possibilities for free transformation," said Wan. "As more creative industry insiders gather here, we have a better environment for creation and the parks have become more lively." Enditem Bridget James couldnt put the tissue up her nose fast enough to stop the bleeding. Paper towels soaked through. She pulled them away and saw blood clots. After a week, she went to her doctor, who sent her to the ER. Had she had any nose trauma? he asked. The only thing she could think of was the coronavirus test shed taken in her neighborhood, Sunnyside, just before the bleeding started. The swab had gone so far up her nose that she leaned out of her car and puked. The doctor sent her home with a nasal spray of steroids. She told her pastor at First Missionary Baptist Church, Henry Price II. Its a lot of BULL going on in the neighborhood with these test sites! Price said. You get anybody in the hood doing these tests. They say, Oh, well people here are not going to go get tested. Well, this is WHY. The doctor couldnt say for sure that the test caused James nosebleed. People at testing sites around the country have reported minor nosebleeds after the nasal swab. But because Sunnyside has always gotten the worst if the neighborhood gets anything at all it was easy to assume that it had gotten the worst of the testing sites. Sunnyside is a historically Black neighborhood in south Houston, set up for Black people in 1912 by a white councilman as the other segregated neighborhoods in the city center grew crowded. The city of Houston didnt annex it until 1956. In the 1960s, Sunnyside had so many Black-owned businesses that residents called a stretch of Cullen Boulevard Black Wall Street. By the end of the 1980s, most of the businesses had shuttered. Over a century after its founding, Sunnyside finds itself atop the lists of worsts. In 2013, an article from NeighborhoodScout.com dubbed Sunnyside the sixth-most dangerous area in America, an article the entire neighborhood read and most resent. As the pandemic picked up, Sunnyside was near the top of the bottom again: In May, the neighborhood had 3 coronavirus cases per 1,000 residents, nearly double the Harris County average. Mayor Sylvester Turner responded quickly, promising and delivering a testing site to the neighborhood. But tests couldnt fix what had put Sunnyside so high on the list in the first place, and the residents know it. And no prevention measures could come in time to prevent the funerals that Henry Price would officiate when the pandemic took hold. Ignored - till election time Three weeks after she took the coronavirus test, Bridget James had a handful of friends over. Its a tradition theyd put off when the virus came: On Sundays, the women come over to James house after she gets back from church. She cooks (that Sunday, fried steak) and they gossip. Most of the women grew up in Sunnyside. James has lived in Sunnyside all her life. She was born at the now-defunct Sunnyside General Hospital. Her grandmothers house was right next to First Missionary Baptist Church. She sang in the choir with the woman who would become Henry Price IIs wife and played with her friends in the small park across the road. She inherited her parents house, paying down a reverse mortgage her mother took out with help from a cousin. Many people she grew up with are in their parents old places. Just as many were forced out, unable to pay back reverse mortgages or navigate inheritance when there was no will. Its how many families especially in Black communities lose their homes. She used to walk around at night in Sunnyside. Not anymore. We dont hear from nobody until its election time, then they bombard your mailbox with brochures and blow up your phone when they call, she said. I dont see a lot being done. My pastors trying. But if theres a lot being done, Im not aware. Five years ago, James and her husband arrived home to find their house had been broken into. James called the cops. No one came. Four hours passed. She didnt hear anything. When she called back, she lied and said someone had been shot. It worked. The arriving officer warned her not to ever lie to police again. I say, We been waiting on yall for hours. So is that what it takes for yall to move? Its almost like you have to be all but dead for them to come, she said. James hadnt seen any signs pointing her to a testing site. She went because she got a call from a neighbor telling her she could get tested at Sunnysides Worthing High School, and there was no line. Shed heard on the news Sunnyside had some of the highest rates of coronavirus, so she thought itd be worth it. James keeps thinking how her test went. She wondered: Would that have happened in another, whiter area of the city? I think its because its a Black community, James said. And they look at us like trash. Like garbage. So if you look at somebody like garbage you gonna treat them like garbage. Dumping ground Nearly two decades before it was formally annexed, the best use the city of Houston could find for Sunnyside was, quite literally, garbage. The city put a 300-acre dump in the neighborhood in 1937. In 1964, the city opened a second dump in Sunnyside. Three years later, a new incinerator on the original dump spewed toxic fumes into the neighborhood. (Price has been asking for an air monitor in Sunnyside for years so people can learn what, exactly, theyre breathing. It hasnt materialized.) The dumps have shut down now, with the promise of a solar farm to replace one. Sunnyside is a food desert: It has exactly one grocery store (a Fiesta). Over 10 percent of Sunnyside residents have asthma, more than double the city rate (those with asthma are an at-risk group for COVID-19). Sunnyside residents have protested for decades over slumlords, dump sites and school closings. In the last five years, leaders have gathered data and drawn up action plans. A 2019 comprehensive needs assessment found that people wanted better drainage, a police department they could trust and a second grocery store in the neighborhood. A 2015 neighborhood action plan lays out short- and long-term action plans from a homeowner stabilization program to enforce fines against owners of multiple properties who let them fall into disrepair. There have been some results: A Sunnyside Place Community Development Corporation initiative, led by a pastor who grew up in the neighborhood, helped bring a partnership with the Houston Food Bank and the city police. But residents are still waiting on services as basic as sidewalks. The neighborhoods oldest subdivision just has drainage ditches on the side of narrow roads, serving as a dumping ground for trash (and, occasionally, a body). They have been promised things for so long by people with clipboards and a pen they get their information, say, Were gonna do this for the community, and then nobody ever did nothing, said Price, who helped with the Sunnyside Plan in 2015 and is part of the Sunnyside Community Redevelopment Organization. Everybody came back here and got our information, and nobody has done nothing. So Price and local leaders do it themselves. Sandra Massie Hines, dubbed the Mayor of Sunnyside for her activism, has a phone filled with the numbers of elders who need food. Pastor James Nash, leader of the Sunnyside Place Community Development Corp., drives around handing out face masks. Until the pandemic, Price distributed food from his church every Thursday. No one who knew Henry Price II growing up would have expected him to work with any clipboard-carrying organization, but it feels right to him to help a neighborhood hed wronged. He started dealing drugs as a teenager and got so much business that he had men under him and multiple drug houses including in Sunnyside. His wife and son once watched him pistol whip a man who dared show up at his own home. Three arrests, a military discharge and six calls from God later, Price had taken over Sunnysides First Missionary Baptist Church in 2008. He found God under a green blanket in the Harris County Jail, studied the Bible for a decade and was arrested for the last time in 1999. The stigma over Sunnyside is the reason, he said. And what you saying is, Im just gonna always look at it as low income. Not worth a damn When Anthony Frazier arrived at one of the two Sunnyside boarding homes he owns, he noticed one of his residents was missing. The facility had been locked down for months. So where, he asked, was Eugene? Ternikia McCullough, an employee of Fraziers for three years, shrugged. Somebody came and picked him up. Frazier stared at her. Who came to get him? How could she not have called? He hadnt given permission for family visits. Didnt she know there was still a pandemic? McCullough distributed vanilla cookies to the three men sitting around a high table. They go to day program; its just as dangerous. Besides, she said, the city was open. Wasnt it over? Where they go, wherever they went, someone could breathe on them. It could bring the coronavirus right there, he said, opening up his phone to call around to find Eugene. I dont know where hes going. He could come back and he got that s---, now everybody got to be quarantined for two weeks. Frazier, 52, grew up two lefts and a right from Henry Prices church, on a street where his father and aunt had built and owned nearly every house on the block. As he grew up, some of the houses on his block were torn down, and some got sold off. His brother lives in one still standing. Eleven years ago, Frazier turned one of the two-story homes from a rental property into a home for men with intellectual disabilities, substance abuse and mental health issues. On the top floor, he runs a radio station and hosts his show five days a week: High Volume Music Radio, the Pride of Sunnyside. He wipes his microphone with Clorox between segments. He saw the coronavirus cases spike, then subside, in Sunnyside by September, the neighborhoods per capita cases were around the middle of all county ZIP codes. Something about it felt off. Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but I just dont believe that the cases are as high in Sunnyside as they say. Were being told that this neighborhood is quote-unquote infected with COVID-19, he said. I feel like its just another way to get people to believe this neighborhood is not worth a damn so they can get people out of here so they can buy up a property for $7,000, build a home and sell it for $150,000. Something feels wrong about Sunnysides crime reputation, too. If Sunnysides as bad as everyone says it is, why does Frazier get so many calls from people who want to buy his property? Sunnyside is a desirable location. Its between two major highways and a hop from the Texas Medical Center. Its close to downtown and equally close to Pearland. A Sunnyside pastor said he heard a rumor that the neighborhood would be rebranded as Medical Center South once enough of the original Black inhabitants had been priced out. Its a neighborhood at the beginning of gentrification: Developers put signs on corners with a phone number and a promise to buy houses for cash, fast, as-is. Frazier has seen new townhouses go up and wonders whom theyre being built for. On June 2, Frazier posted a long message on Facebook directed at city of Houston officials. We are hurting here in Sunnyside. Violence is at an all time high in Sunnyside, he wrote. The schools were underserved. He had hosted a food distribution for families a few weeks ago where were the elected leaders? Why didn't we hear from you when the COVID19 outbreak was announced as ravaging through Sunnyside? he wrote. We NEED TO TALK. But Frazier could never abandon the neighborhood. On a trip to Las Vegas, someone asked Frazier where he was from. He said, Sunnyside, Houston, Texas. The deacons wife An hour and a half after he was released from the hospital, L.C. Killings learned his wife died. Killings and his wife, Hazel, had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Feb. 7 with 90 people in attendance. L.C. wore a white suit and hat; his wife hit the dance floor in a gold sequined top. They held a knife together as they cut a three-layer wedding cake. Four generations of the family posed for pictures. Hazel died at age 70, nearly two months to the day after their anniversary, on April 6. Of the 90 people who celebrated her marriage, only 10 her husband, her sister-in-law, her three children, four grandchildren and her pastor could be at her funeral. Killings has attended Sunnysides First Missionary Baptist Church since 1974 and became a deacon the year Henry Price got arrested for the last time. He was raised in Fourth Ward back when it was a Black community. Now, Fourth Ward is so gentrified that he cant recognize anything. He looks at the new houses going up and thinks Sunnyside will wind up the same. Killings started feeling sick in late March. He went to the emergency room and was told to quarantine at home. He only saw Hazel as she cracked open the door to leave food on the dresser table and hollered, You need to eat something! You better eat something! The last thing she ever left him was chicken noodle soup. He didnt eat it. On March 30, his daughter called. Daddy, she said, can you come to the back door? He shuffled out of bed and looked out the door that opened into their driveway. Paramedics were carrying Hazel away on a stretcher. Weeks later, he learned she called them herself. He had no idea shed been sick. It was the last time he saw her. The next day, his daughter insisted he go to the hospital. Killings was brought to a room on the fourth floor, the same floor as his wife. He and Hazel both tested positive for coronavirus. He learned only after he was discharged that Hazels lungs and kidneys were failing, that she had double pneumonia and had been placed on a ventilator. Killings daughter drove him home on April 6. She went home to shower and change her clothes. When she came back, she said, Daddy, Mom didnt make it. A few days later, he woke up and looked around their house, where a poster welcoming guests to their 50th anniversary party rests against a wall. Shes buried, but the house is still Hazels. She picked it out 13 years ago and chose each piece of wall art: a painting of a woman in church clutching a Bible, a mirror in the front hall. Her two sewing machines are still in the front room. When his daughter asked what hed do with them, Killings shrugged and said, Learn how to sew, I guess. The Word of God Henry Price II reopened First Missionary Baptist Church for its first small service during the pandemic on the first Sunday in June. It was two weeks after protests against racism and police brutality swept across the country, stemming from the videotaped killing of George Floyd. Price had moved a hand sanitizer dispenser to the anteroom. If parishioners didnt heed the handwritten instructions taped on it (Please Use Before Entering Service. Thanks.), the security guard reminded them. Price, in a white suit and his black-and-white face mask hanging off an ear, grinned down at the socially distanced worshipers from the pulpit. It feels good to be seen rather than viewed, he said, and chuckled. We gonna have a slim-trim service, amen? Ay-men. It was Deacon L.C. Killings first in-person service since Hazel died. He liked seeing people he knows and leading call-and-response reading. It took his mind off his grief. The second bedroom of their house where Killings stayed when he got sick has boxes of Hazels clothes stacked next to the bed and blouses hanging from a drying rack on the other side. When his daughter began taking Hazels things from the house, Killings took back his wifes cologne. We found out something during the coronavirus, Price said. We found out something. We found out that we dont have to be in the building to worship God! Amen, amen, that was lessons in the virus, amen, to show us we have to have the Lord in our heart. Amen, amen. He called Bridget James up to sing. James had shown up in a flowing gray blouse and a gray face mask to match. She hadnt been sure about going back. But Price had asked, How come you can go to the grocery store in a mask but cant show up for church in one? So she came. She tapped a red-felt mic, took off her mask and swayed with the music as she sang. Price took the mic back from James and led the congregation into the Word of God. You sent the pandemic, Lord if you sent the pandemic we know that youre able to TAKE IT BACK. But let us hold on until you see fit. His tone dropped to a murmur. Thank you, Father God, for allowing us to commune with you just one more time. Lord, we pray now that you will remove these pandemics, that you will remove racism and hate. We pray, Father. Service dismissed after just an hour. Bridget James went home to clean up and start cooking before her friends came over. Deacon L.C. Killings lingered. Killings is a stoic man. Everyone says so. Price commented on it a few years back, when Killings niece, sister and brother died within months of one another. Its a habit left over from his two years in Vietnam, where he was taught not to get close to anyone. Learn a first name, maybe, and move on. He carried that through nearly every death in the family. But when he thinks about Hazel, he tears up. At the church, he looked at the curtains, the small white ones in the bathroom and the flowing white drapes in the fellowship hall. Hazel had sewn them. He drove back home to their house without her. Support our journalism Help our journalists uncover the big stories. Subscribe today. Sarah Smith is a reporter on the metro desk covering housing, homelessness, mental health and poverty. Before joining the Chronicle, she worked at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she investigated sexual abuse and cover-ups in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. She was also a fellow at ProPublica, where she wrote a piece on mental illness and criminal justice in Mississippi. Another ProPublica story of hers about domestic violence victims in Connecticut getting arrested for calling the police led to a change in the states law. Sarahs a Massachusetts native and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahesmith23, or email her at sarah.smith@chron.com. Marie D. De Jesus is a staff photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle where she has concentrated on developing relationships with Houston's diverse immigrant and marginalized communities. Prior to the Chronicle, De Jesus worked for the Democrat and Chronicle located in Rochester, New York and the Victoria Advocate in Texas. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or email her at marie.dejesus@chron.com. Jordan Rubio contributed to this report. Design by Jasmine Goldband. *** Stranded Australian expats and aviation industry calls for change have reached fever pitch in recent weeks. The Australian government has finally responded, lifting the much protested international arrivals cap (which was introduced in July) from 4,000 per week to 6,000 per week. This means up to 2,000 extra Australians per week will be able to return home, hopefully putting more of a dent in the alleged 25,000 currently stuck overseas (3,000 of whom are deemed vulnerable). Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack announced this change on Wednesday, telling reporters in Wagga Wagga, It has been a difficult situation for some trying to get home and we have acknowledged that. We want those returning Australians to be able to do so I want to raise that to 6000. I have written to premiers and chief ministers to make that possible so that we can bring home 2000 more. The Federal Government reduced the number of permitted international arrivals in July, to ease pressure on hotel quarantine facilities. RELATED: Australian Hotels Horrifically Blowing Their Chance To Impress On A World Stage news.com.au reports NSW is taking the brunt of the arrivals at 350 passengers a day, while Perth is accepting 525 a week [and] Brisbane and Adelaide have a limit of 500 passengers a week. Getting more specific on cities, Mr McCormack told media, We will increase the number of Australians coming into Sydney by 500, and called for Queensland to consider increasing its intake. As well 500 more will be coming into Queensland and I urge and encourage (Premier) Annastacia Palaszczuk to look at the Gold Coast and Cairns. Likewise, WA is increasing its capacity by 500; SA about 360, Mr McCormack added. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said on ABCs Radio National on Wednesday he would be willing to raise this to 800 a week. Meanwhile, Hobart is not currently taking any international arrivals, and the suspension of international flights into Melbourne will continue, news.com.au reports. Mr McCormack told reporters he has written to Tasmania, NT, and the ACT officials to seek information on what capacity their quarantine has at this point in time. Read Next DUBLIN (dpa-AFX) - Professional services company Accenture plc (ACN) announced Thursday the formation of Accenture Cloud First with a $3 billion investment over three years to help clients across all industries rapidly become 'cloud first' businesses and accelerate their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale. Karthik Narain will lead Accenture Cloud First and join the Global Management Committee, effective October 1. Narain most recently served as the lead for Accenture Technology in North America, helping guide Global 2000 brands in using the power of the cloud and other technologies to transform their businesses. The move is expected to create new model for rapid migration to the cloud and realization of value for clients and their stakeholders. More than 100,000 Accenture cloud professionals help clients shape, move, build and operate their businesses in the cloud. COVID-19 has created a new inflection point that requires every company to dramatically accelerate the move to the cloud as a foundation for digital transformation. This announcement comes as worldwide demand for cloud computing has skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This new group integrates Accenture's wide-ranging cloud expertise, including cloud migration, infrastructure, and application services and ecosystem partnerships. According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 6.3% in 2020 to total $257.9 billion, up from $242.7 billion in 2019. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. The U.S. Treasury Department has announced sanctions against an Iranian hacking group, a front company, and more than 45 individuals accused of carrying out a years-long campaign targeting Iranian dissidents, journalists, and international travel companies on behalf of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The September 17 announcement said that the ministry used the hacking group, Advanced Persistent Threat 39 (APT39), and the front company, Rana, to monitor "dissidents, Iranian journalists, former government employees, environmentalists, refugees, university students and faculty, and employees at international nongovernmental organizations." Some of the individuals targeted by the campaign had been "subjected to arrest and physical and psychological intimidation" by Iranian intelligence for targeting hundreds of individuals and entities in 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. "The United States is determined to counter offensive cybercampaigns designed to jeopardize security and inflict damage on the international travel sector," U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The Treasury Department said that an FBI advisory, also being released on September 17, detailed eight separate and distinct sets of malware used by MOIS through Rana to conduct their computer intrusion activities. Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal in 2018 between Iran and world powers under which the Islamic republic pledged to curb its atomic ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. In addition to reimposing sanctions that were dropped under the deal, Washington has accused Iran of financing extremism in the Middle East, which Iran denies. NASHVILLE - A federal judge has sentenced an Austin, Texas, man to 30 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to stalking and sending threatening letters and emails to pop star Taylor Swift's former record label. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/9/2020 (492 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. FILE - This Nov. 24, 2019 file photo shows Taylor Swift at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. A Texas man is sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to stalking and sending threatening letters about Swift. A federal judge in Nashville, Tennessee handed down the sentence Wednesday to Eric Swarbrick, who sent over 40 letters and emails to Swift's former record label in 2018, asking the CEO to introduce him to Swift. Over time the letters became more violent and threatening. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) NASHVILLE - A federal judge has sentenced an Austin, Texas, man to 30 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to stalking and sending threatening letters and emails to pop star Taylor Swift's former record label. According to records filed in federal court, Eric Swarbrick was given the sentence during a hearing Wednesday in Nashville. The terms of the sentence, which also includes three years of supervised release, were agreed on by prosecutors in a plea agreement that Swarbrick entered in 2019. The complaint said Swarbrick sent over 40 letters and emails to Big Machine Label Group in 2018, asking the CEO to introduce him to Swift. Over time the letters became more violent and threatening. On three occasions Swarbrick drove to Nashville to personally deliver them. Annual Coastal Cleanup Day Becomes Monthlong Event in OC California Coastal Cleanup Dayan annual event where thousands of volunteers spend the third Saturday of September picking up trash near the oceanhas turned into a monthlong event in Orange County, thanks to social distancing. In a normal year, organized volunteers gather in groups throughout the state on one day to pick up as much trash as they can, to protect the ocean and the beaches. But this year, volunteers are picking up litter on their own schedules, and rather than dropping it off at centralized sites, theyre putting the trash in their own bins. Eben Schwartz, director of Coastal Cleanup Day, told The Epoch Times that the goal of the shift was to build momentum throughout the month and have as large of an impact as possible while allowing for social distancing among volunteers. In a typical year, Orange County sees anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 volunteers for the cleanup. I am hoping that were able to surpass that [this year], Schwartz said via email. Cristina Robinson, education coordinator at Orange County Coastkeeper, told The Epoch Times that her group is seeing many cleanup efforts this year in Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Fountain Valley. Robinson said in an email that her group is expecting over 1,000 volunteers to help out in Orange County alone. Additional groups will be participating in both Orange and Los Angeles counties as well, she said. Last year, we had a total of 4,920 volunteers throughout Orange County for 2019 OC Coastal Cleanup Day, Robinson said, adding that 25,681 pounds of trash were removed on that one day alone. This year, due to the pandemic, the groups goal is to pick up 5,000 pounds of trash throughout the county. Robinson said her group encourages participants to download the Clean Swell app to their mobile devices to record their cleanup locations and the trash they remove. The app allows users around the world to report the amount of trash theyve collected and instantaneously upload the information to the Ocean Conservancys global ocean trash database. We know there will probably be cleanups that go unrecorded, as well as pounds of trash will not be reflected as accurately as possible since most do not have portable scales to weigh trash, she said. But the goal remains to be as accurate as possible. Schwartz said the amount of garbage removed from the states beaches will be hard to estimate this year. Typically we pick up around 1 million pounds of trash on Coastal Cleanup Day, but that is when we have access to dumpsters and equipment that we will not have this year, he said. We are asking volunteers to pick up only what they can fit into their trash bin at home. So I anticipate that the total amount of trash will be down quite a bit from previous years. Schwartzs site also encourages participants to report their cleanups by using the Clean Swell app to log the trash they pick up, track the total distance theyve cleaned, and help meet long-term pollution goals. Many of our local coordinators use Clean Swell or other data collection apps to keep track of what theyre picking up throughout the year. The data is a vital tool in helping us address the long-term sources and impacts of plastic pollution, Schwartz said. Trash picked up during the September event can also be entered into a Most Unusual Item contest, where the participant who finds the strangest piece of trash gets a chance to win a prize package. Our local coordinator, Orange County Coastkeeper, has a great plan in place to encourage virtual cleanups, including weekly prizes and incentives, Schwartz said. OC Coastkeeper is holding its own weekly scavenger hunt to make the effort more enjoyable for volunteers. We are doing a Trash Scavenger Hunt every Saturday on social media, and people can participate by posting their trash photos to social media with the hashtag #coastkeeperclean or they can email their entry to coastalcleanupday@coastkeeper.org, Robinson said. Winners are announced every Monday, she said, adding we have lots of fun prizes to give away. Robinson said the effort to fight ocean pollution begins in a persons own backyard, and the events website encourages volunteers to clean their neighborhoods, local parks, streets, and storm drains to prevent the trash from ending up in the ocean. It is highly encouraged to clean up your own neighborhood, since 80 percent of trash seen at beaches gets there via trash in our neighborhoods being translocated through our storm drain system, Robinson said. No matter how small, every piece of trash picked up helps! The first California Coastal Cleanup Day was held in 1985. The 1993 gathering made the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest garbage collection effort ever organized, with over 50,000 volunteers, according to the events website. The ability to write is not just a minor human miracle; it is a human right and a tool whose lifelong value cannot be overestimated. Our children simply cannot afford another 10 years of decline. If this year has taught us one thing it is that, as a society, we are adaptable, tenacious and can implement new behaviours quickly and effectively. We need to act this way with writing. We need a new curriculum and an overhaul of teacher education, but we fear political agendas will slow down this change. The NSW Education Standards Authority report found educators lacked knowledge, skills and confidence in teaching writing. Credit:Louise Kennerley The Thematic Review of Writing, commissioned by the NSW Education Standards Authority, highlights a lack of teacher knowledge, skill and confidence in the teaching of writing as the key challenge. I believe there are three clear problems responsible for the writing muddle our teachers and children are in today. They are: the overuse and misplaced use of technology, a lack of purpose and relevance for students and teachers around support for writing, and a lack of skills and resources for teachers to enable them to effectively teach writing. Members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday took their recently launched 'People's Manifesto' to the stronghold of their political opponents the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region and started 'throwing punches' at the ruling party. The first salvo was fired by the NDC flagbearer, former President John Dramani Mahama, who is staging a comeback after his massive defeat in 2016 as incumbent. Even though the NPP launched its manifesto titled: Leadership of service: protecting our progress, transforming Ghana for all before the NDC members did theirs recently after a series of postponements, Mr. Mahama is now claiming the NPP is copying the ideas of the NDC. At a town hall meeting in Kumasi to explain what the NDC said was its manifesto in Twi to the people in the region, Mr Mahama said, The NPP seems to be implementing some of the policies captured in our manifesto. Recently, they revealed that consultations have begun to review the law banning the activities of okada riders. Similarly, the teacher licensure exam has been suspended after we promised to cancel it in our manifesto. In the same vein, owners of private schools are being engaged after we promised to extend the coverage of the Free SHS policy to such schools in deprived areas without government's Free SHS. Even though they accused us of not thinking through our promises, the NPP is implementing them, he added. Sakawa Comment He also described the numerous sod-cutting programmes being done by the President and his Vice with the objective to transform the country as 'sakawa' which translates into deceit. Lately, the President and his Vice have been going round to cut the sod for various projects without having contractors on site. They only bring the equipment to the site just for the sod-cutting ceremony and return them when the President leaves. So it is just for deception. It is 'sakawa'. It is 419, Mr. Mahama fired. Apart from him, every speaker that explained their manifesto tried to attack the NPP, claiming they had done nothing in the Ashanti Region. NDC General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, Asawase MP, and Eric Opoku, Asunafo South MP, all fired at the NPP and claimed the government had not delivered as they expected. Asiedu Nketiah repeated that the NPP members had 'stolen' some key parts of their manifesto and they have started implementing them already, indicating that the NPP's continuous bragging that they have competent men to manage the country is a fluke. Eric Opoku, on his part, claimed that the agricultural sector was not performing as it should have been, and he was quick to blast the NPP administration for not having the wherewithal to implement best policies to ensure food production and security. In spite of the Mr. Mahama's abysmal performance in the cocoa sector in particular, where production dropped to about 400,000 metric tonnes from almost a million metric tonnes before the NPP restored it to around 900,000 metric tonnes, Mr. Opoku claimed the agric sector flourished as food production and security were enhanced under the erstwhile NDC administration. Eric Opoku, who is a former Ashanti Regional Minister, also descended heavily on the NPP government for not doing anything significant to develop the Ashanti Region, insisting that the NPP is taking Ashanti for a ride so please vote against it. The NPP has said it is going to respond to all the 'falsehoods' peddled by the NDC in the course of time and will take sector by sector to show that the NDC members are masters of propaganda. ---Daily Guide The parents of a Massachusetts high school student sent their child to in-person classes, despite knowing he had tested positive for coronavirus three days earlier. The student at Attleboro High School, near Boston, was tested for Covid-19 on 9 September and got back a positive result two days later, but still went in for in-person classes on Monday 14 September, according to NBC News. At least 30 people who came in contact with the student on that day are now having to quarantine for two weeks, under Massachusetts coronavirus guidelines. Attleboro mayor Paul Heroux told NBC that a public health nurse spoke to the parents on Tuesday, and confirmed that they had known about the positive test for three days, but still sent the child to school. Mr Heroux said he was baffled by the decision and added: There's no question about whether or not the parents knew. The students parents told the nurse that they believed if he quarantined for three days he would be fine to go in on to school on Monday. Speaking to CNN about the reasoning, Mr Heroux said: The parents used very poor judgement, it's very frustrating, and added: The school department did everything they were supposed to do. The school's principal, Bill Runey, told NBC that officials found out about the students positive test result on Tuesday, after the child had already completed a full day of classes. I knew that we were going to end up having some cases, but I didnt expect they would be on the first day, he said. The principal added: Long story short, rumours started circulating around town, so someone contacted the bureau of health here in Attleboro and did some checking and found out that it was true, that he had tested positive. In order to minimise the amount of coronavirus cases, the school is using a model that only allows only one group of students to attend in-person lessons on Monday and Thursday, while another group attends on Tuesday and Friday. Mr Runey said that using a contact-tracing system helped school administrators quickly identify who may have come in contact with the student, so that they could be told to quarantine and monitor for Covid-19 symptoms. I was pleased that our contact-tracing protocols we put in place helped us pretty quickly ID and narrow down close contacts, Mr Runey said. He added: Thirty is still a lot, but if we didn't have greater degree of certainty with seating charts and things like that, we would have had to err on the side of caution for a lot more kids. In a big announcement this week, the Caribbean nation of Barbados is planning to walk out of the Commonwealth and remove Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state. The Queen is the constitutional monarch of Barbados since her independence on 30 November 1966. As the sovereign, she is the personal embodiment of the Barbadian Crown. Barbados walks out of Commonwealth Barbados Governor-General, Sandra Mason, gave a speech on Tuesday at the state opening of Parliament, explaining that the time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind. Mason, reading from a speech written by Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Motteley, said that the plan is for the country to become a republic, and that it could happen as early as November 2021, which would coincide with the 55th anniversary of when Barbados gained independence in 1966, reported CNN. Barbadians want a Barbadian Head of State. This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving, Mason said. Hence, Barbados will take the next logical step toward full sovereignty and become a republic by the time we celebrate our 55th anniversary of independence. Monarchy of Barbados The Queen is the constitutional monarch of Barbados since her independence on 30 November 1966, per the Royal Familys official website. As the sovereign, she is the personal embodiment of the Barbadian Crown. Although the person of the sovereign is equally shared with 15 other independent countries within the Commonwealth of Nations, each countrys monarchy is separate and legally distinct. As a result, the current monarch is officially titled Queen of Barbados and, in this capacity, she, her husband, and other members of the Royal Family undertake public and private functions domestically and abroad as representatives of the Barbadian state. However, the Queen is the only member of the Royal Family with any constitutional role. The Queen lives predominantly in the United Kingdom and, while several powers are the sovereigns alone, most of the royal governmental and ceremonial duties in Barbados are carried out by the Queens representative, the governor-general. Many in Barbados have wanted to remove Queen Elizabeths status as head of state for quite some time, as they see it as the symbolic presence of imperialism, according to CNN. Mauritius is the last country to drop the Queen as head of state, which it did in 1992. We need your support to carry on our independent and investigative research based journalism on the Deep State threats facing humanity. Your contribution however small helps us keep afloat. Kindly consider donating to GreatGameIndia. Commonwealth Realms Ongoing and severe human rights violations continue to plague several areas of Myanmar, according to a new report issued by UN Human Rights this month. Presenting the report at the 45th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that no concrete measures have been taken by the Government of Myanmar towards accountability and that national initiatives to address the situation have been inadequate and fallen short of international standards. Conflict continues to intensify in Rakhine and Chin States with increasing clashes between the Myanmar army and the ethnic armed group known as the Arakan Army. An already fragile zone following years of conflict and crisis, civilians continue to pay a heavy price. In recent years, thousands have fled their homes seeking safety. Today, there are around 860,000 Rohingya refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh, and since 2018, around 200,000 from all communities have been internally displaced in Rakhine and Chin. The UN Human Rights report details the increasing effects of the armed conflict on the Rakhine, Chin, Mro, Daignet and Rohingya communities. This includes disappearances and extra-judicial killings of civilians; massive civilian displacement; arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in custody; and the destruction of civilian property. Civilian casualties have also been increasing. According to the report, while violence affected all communities in Rakhine and Chin, ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya civilians have borne the brunt of the impact of the conflict. In 2020, at least 500 civilians have reportedly been killed, including women, children and elderly persons. A complex and delicate situation Addressing the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, Permanent Representative of Myanmar, said that the issue of Rakhine poses huge challenges for the Government, describing the situation as very complex and delicate. He said the Government is prioritising finding a sustainable solution, and that ahead of Myanmars general elections in November, exerting undue political pressure on the country should be avoided. He asked the international community to render genuine cooperation, constructive engagement and helping hands towards Myanmar. A call for accountability The Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly have repeatedly called for the Government of Myanmar to be held accountable for human rights violations, a call supported by many in the international community. We are watching, and those perpetrating violence should know that evidence is being recorded and preserved, said Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). Koumjian was presenting the second annual report of the IIMM, a body mandated by the Human Rights Council to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes. Khin Omar, a speaker on the panel and the chairperson of Progressive Voice, a Myanmar human rights organisation, also reiterated the demand for accountability. Three years have passed since the genocide of the Rohingya, said Omar. Yet there has been no justice or accountability and no sign of their safe return home. Those who remain in Rakhine State continue to endure apartheid-like conditions. Omar urged that the international community refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or establish an ad-hoc tribunal, with the purpose to pursue criminal accountability for genocide against the Rohingya, and crimes against humanity and war crimes against other ethnic minorities. November elections an important opportunity Bachelet specified that the general elections being held in November would be an important opportunity for all parties to demonstrate their commitment to democratic norms. At the same time, she expressed disappointment that the vast majority of Rohingya would not be able to vote, as they have been stripped of this right. Also expressing alarm at the ongoing crackdowns on human rights defenders, journalists, and critics of the Government and Army, she urged that action be taken now to properly remedy the serious violations the Rohingya have suffered. Given Myanmar's stated commitment to democracy, I also encourage the Government to remove the barriers that impede democratic freedoms and undermine the equal enjoyment of human rights by all in Myanmar, she concluded. 17 September 2020 Gritos around the world didnt have the same resounding impact this year. The coronavirus pandemic muffled the usually chest-thumping replies of Viva Mexico! In San Antonio, Mexican consul Ruben Minutti Zanatta struck a noble figure during virtual celebrations marking Diez y Seis de Septiembre, Mexicos independence from Spain. He mustered all he could to deliver every verbal salvo in a sparse Market Square Tuesday. The scene marked the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month and a series of virtual events. Colleges and universities, especially, have organized an impressive lineup in a city that was once on Mexican soil and remains the most Mexican of U.S. cities. For all their efforts, the best way to celebrate this year is by being counted in both the 2020 Census and on Election Day. Celebrated Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, Hispanic heritage observances recognize the citizens and residents whose ancestries stretch across the Americas, in a country thats getting browner no matter the attempts to disenfranchise them. In 2019, according to the Pew Research Center, the nations Latinos made up 18 percent of the population, or 60.6 million, up from 50.7 million in 2010. Though many make the mistake of viewing them as non-citizens, Pews 2018 data sets that straight: Four in five, or 80 percent, are U.S. citizens and, for the love of all thats sane, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Ramiro Cavazos, who leads the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and led San Antonios Hispanic chamber before that, gets to the bottom line of our contributions. The purchasing power and consumer influence of our community should not be underestimated at a $2.3 trillion contribution towards GDP, he said recently. We believe that Hispanic Heritage Month is every month of the year. Thats a very big hint to celebrate Hispanic heritage by supporting a Latina- or Latino-owned business. For me, the most celebratory factoid, also from Pew, shows U.S. Latinos are increasingly going to college. About 41 percent of Latino adults, 25 and up, had some college experience in 2018, up from 36 percent in 2010. Its still not enough. It makes sense that in a place once known as Yanaguana, more local events this year are recognizing the citys indigenous Native American history, since Mexican Americans are Native Americans. Palo Alto College will honor the indigenous heritages of South Texas, most poignantly by marking Oct. 12 not as Columbus Day but as Indigenous Peoples Day, or Dia de la Raza, with a panel on indigenous healing practices needed during times of crisis. San Antonio Colleges Raza Heritage Month will offer Raza Reflections, Reckonings and Resiliency with discussions on whether a culture of abrazos will survive the pandemic, and Resisting the Ranger Inside of Us, about its former mascot, selected a century ago at the height of atrocities against Mexicans and Mexican Americans by Texas Rangers. A month of observances shouldnt go without uplifting the nations Latino heroes. None are perfect, but United Farmworkers co-founder Dolores Huerta and U.S. Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor come awfully close. Little things count. It mattered that a Google Doodle this week honored Felicitas Mendez, who fought for a federal school desegregation ruling that predated Brown vs. Board of Education. You can have a huge national impact: First, answer the 2020 Census. The last day to do so is still Sept. 30, unless efforts succeed in pushing that back to the original extension date of Oct. 31, to account for COVID-19. Second, if eligible to vote, get registered by Oct. 5. Registration means nothing if voters dont vote. Protests and marches dont match the power that one has at the ballot box. So, three, vote. Four, vote early. Given all the affronts to voting, from Russian interference to a president vowing to fight results if he doesnt win, its best this year to exercise your right as soon as possible, whether you vote by mail or in person. Early voting starts Oct. 13 and goes through Oct. 30. Bexar County has extended night hours for early voting. The county will operate 48 early voting sites and 285 on Election Day. Participation matters. In 2020, for the first time, Latino voters will constitute the largest racial and ethnic group in the electorate, according to Pew. They account for just over 13 percent of all eligible voters, a record 32 million, up from 27.3 million in 2016. Elaine Ayala is a columnist covering San Antonio and Bexar County. To read more from Elaine, become a subscriber. eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala The wife of ex-minister Hugo Swire fled to David Cameron in 'distress' after claiming her 'pig' of a husband had an affair. Sasha Swire, who has lifted the lid on sex and political shenanigans in the Tory party, reveals in her new book that she dashed to Chequers, the prime minister's official country residence, when her marriage was in crisis. Her 'world was falling apart' because of her husband but Mr Cameron and wife Samantha 'slowly brought me back to life', she writes. Mr Cameron even allegedly gave Sir Hugo a 'ticking off'. Sasha Swire, the wife of ex-minister Hugo Swire (pictured together) fled to David Cameron in 'distress' after claiming her 'pig' of a husband had an affair The former Prime Minister and his wife Samantha 'slowly brought me back to life', Lady Swire writes Lady Swire, 57, does not state in her explosive book, Diary of an MP's Wife, that this incident related to an alleged affair involving her husband, 60. However, the Mail has been told by multiple reliable sources that she has said Sir Hugo had an extramarital relationship when he was a minister in Mr Cameron's government. Invited to respond, Lady Swire told the Mail cryptically last night: 'Three sauces [sic]? Is that Bearnaise? Peppercorn? Or Marie Rose?' Asked for a more detailed response, she did not reply. In her book, Lady Swire lavishes praise on 'family man' Mr Cameron for saving her marriage. She salutes his 'integrity', arguing he will be judged well by history, before adding pointedly, 'But he has been a good friend to me as well.' This is the preface to her moving account of the day she fled to Chequers as a result of her 'pig' of a husband. In her book, Lady Swire lavishes praise on 'family man' Mr Cameron for saving her marriage She writes: 'When in 2013 I felt my carefully constructed world was falling apart around me 'H' [her name for Sir Hugo] being a pig and always away I remember ringing him up in a distressed state and he told me to just get in a car and come down to Chequers, where Sam and he slowly brought me back to life. I can hear him now, ringing up 'H' to give him a severe ticking off, with me smiling on in gratitude.' Lady Swire's book describes a series of blazing marital rows between the couple and flirtatious behaviour by both. A year before she turned to the Camerons in despair, the couple's marriage was 'in a difficult place' and she 'barely saw' her husband, Lady Swire writes. Sir Hugo told Mr Cameron he feared his wife would to divorce him. Lady Swire says her husband joked he had 'fallen in love' with a 'gorgeous' 30-year-old female South American diplomat. Mr Cameron yesterday admitted that Lady Swire's diaries, recounting his political rivalries and alleged sexualised comments, were 'kind of embarrassing'. The new book recounts a series of marital disputes beween Lady Swire and her husband. She says that in July 2012: 'I barely see him any more; he's always in Ireland or the House or working in the constituency, and when he's home he hardly speaks to me. It is midnight when he finally comes to hide in the corner of my cage, but it's not from calm, it's from exhaustion. Lady Swire's book describes a series of blazing marital rows between the couple and flirtatious behaviour by both 'I flare up. It has an effect, because the next day he texts Kate [Baroness Kate Fall, Mr Cameron's Number 10 'gatekeeper'] saying if he is not brought back from exile [a reference to his job as Northern Ireland minister] at the next reshuffle his wife is going to divorce him.' Number 10 promised Sir Hugo he will get a new job. When the Camerons and Swires holidayed together in Cornwall in 2012, Mr Cameron asked Sir Hugo over dinner, 'How do you cope? With her? Your wife I mean?' Sir Hugo was duly promoted to Foreign Office minister in the same month. Lady Swire also recounted how in October 2012 her husband 'looked guilty' and declared to her: 'I've fallen in love.' 'Oh yes, who is it this time?' she asked. 'The Panamanian ambassador she's gorgeous, and just 30,' he replied. 'Thirty! Am I getting old?' exclaimed Lady Swire, who was then aged 51. 'Yes, Hasta la vista, baby!' he said. Lady Swire says she was 'due to meet' the Panamanian ambassador but her husband told his wife her attendance was 'cancelled' on the grounds that it was 'inappropriate' because they would be 'conducting bilateral talks'. 'Fine, I say, carry on flirting,' she writes. Later, Sir Hugo was invited to Buckingham Palace by Prince Andrew, where 'somehow conversation comes around to the Panamanian ambassador'. 'Have you met her?' asked the Prince. 'Have I!' replied Sir Hugo. On another occasion, Lady Swire flirted at a Palace banquet during a Mexican state visit in March 2015, the diaries recount. Mr Cameron admitted that Lady Swire's diaries, recounting his political rivalries and alleged sexualised comments, were 'kind of embarrassing' She tells an unnamed 'smoothie' that she is 'a very fed up MP's wife' because her husband is too busy to take her on holiday. She talks of 'getting a lover to take me', and they exchange banter about him taking her to Corsica. The 'smoothie' offers to take her there in his private plane. When she says she hates flying he says she can go in his 'super yacht'. When Sir Hugo asked her what she was saying 'to that man,' she replied: 'He's taking me to Corsica.' She jokes she doesn't care if he 'bangs her up in his harem,' she is going. Meanwhile, at a dinner hosted by the Camerons in November 2015 Lady Swire tells shocked guests: 'I enjoy sex much more in my 50s than in my 40s.' In 2015, during the 'Sexminster scandal', she notes: 'Looking back on my own younger days the only person who patted me on the bum on greeting me was one David Cameron.' At the time when a number of MPs were being accused of sexual misdemeanours, Lady Swire says she was 'assured' by Sir Hugo 'he has not partaken in any groping himself'. Sir Hugo was invited to Buckingham Palace by Prince Andrew, where 'somehow conversation comes around to the Panamanian ambassador' 'Time will tell,' she reflects, adding lightheartedly: 'He is that age where he needs more of it and is getting less.' But despite all their sniping, Lady Swire says her husband is the hero of her book for 'riding the political tiger'. Elsewhere in the book, Lady Swire claims she was propositioned by Mr Cameron in 2011 when their families were on holiday in Cornwall. 'At one point, on the coastal path, he (Cameron) asks me not to walk ahead of him. 'Why?' I ask, and he says: 'Because that scent you are wearing is affecting my pheromones. It makes me want to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one!' When the Mail went to her home in Devon last night, she declined to comment. When asked for a comment on the claims that Lady Swire had included a coded reference to an alleged affair involving her husband in her book, her literary agent Caroline Dawnay replied, 'Have fun', and put the phone down. Sir Hugo did not reply to requests for a response. More bitchy jibes from Sasha the slasher... Cameron's black dog: Lady Swire describes how the 'black dog' of despair 'descended upon David Cameron' as his premiership hit trouble in 2012, when he and George Osborne were 'at their lowest ebb'. The then-prime minister could 'see it all unravelling before his eyes' and said it was 'like watching a version of (computer game) Angry Birds: all governments in Europe falling. He's wondering whether his is next'. Lady Swire describes how the 'black dog' of despair 'descended upon David Cameron' as his premiership hit trouble in 2012 Mr Cameron backed a bizarre plan to use IKEA to stop marital rows over flat-pack furniture, the book claims. The idea was part of a Number 10 'relationship agenda' dreamed up by his ex-aide Steve Hilton. The plan was to print 'ten top tips on relationships in IKEA flat packs' to help couples deal with the stress of putting up their wardrobes, says Lady Swire. Cameron was 'genuinely excited' by the proposal but an aide told him he was in danger of 'looking like Prince Charles talking to plants'. Wives' curtain spat The ex-minister's wife risks being accused of poor taste for saying she was 'p***ed off' by Rose Paterson, the late wife of former cabinet member Owen Paterson, in a row over curtains. Mrs Paterson, 63, was found dead in woodlands near her family home in June on her husband's birthday. Lady Swire said she was 'fuming' with Mrs Paterson's 'removal of two sets of curtains' from the Swires' flat at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland in 2011. The ex-minister's wife said she was 'p***ed off' by Rose Paterson, the late wife of former cabinet member Owen Paterson (pictured together), in a row over curtains As fellow Northern Ireland ministers, Sir Hugo and Mr Paterson had grace and favour apartments at the castle. 'She decided ours would be better suited to her sitting room and promptly took them without a by your leave. We now have a frothing Colefax and Fowler floral confection completely out of keeping with our interiors. I rant at 'H' (her term for Sir Hugo).' When Sir Hugo tells her 'calm down, dear!' and reminds her Rose was the husband of his boss, Lady Swire spits: 'I don't care who she is, it's bloody bad manners! I'm going straight to the top on this one.' Incredibly, she complained to David Cameron about 'the curtain spat'. She protests: 'The truth is those Patersons really p*** me off.' Rachel the 'tornado' Lady Swire complains that Boris Johnson's sister, journalist Rachel, 'the equivalent of a human tornado', came over to 'harangue' her over government plans to shake up the forestry industry when she was dining at a 'Notting Hill eaterie' with David Cameron's Number 10 aide Kate [now Baroness] Fall. Racehl Johnson is 'a violent dangerous rotating column of air that' threatens to 'lift us off our seats', says Lady Swire in the book When Fall played down the issue, Miss Johnson said: 'That's a complete lie, Kate.' Miss Johnson is 'a violent dangerous rotating column of air that' threatens to 'lift us off our seats', says Lady Swire in the book. 'Oily' Hunt She mocks 'oily' ex-foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt for being the first to give up his official car in 'in his usual mad PR dash'. Lady Swire says sports minister Hugh Robertson said of Mr Hunt: 'It's alright for him, he's rich. He can get a taxi home.' Brad Pitt's ears When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt attended a 2014 Foreign Office seminar hosted by foreign secretary William Hague, Sir Hugo was distracted by Pitt's ears. He claims 'one of Pitt's ears doesn't match the other and he wears high heels, so there! He's not perfect'. When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt attended a 2014 Foreign Office seminar hosted by foreign secretary William Hague, Sir Hugo was distracted by Pitt's ears. 'Swivel hips' envoy China's ambassador in London is cruelly mocked as 'Old Swivel Hips' in the book. Lady Swire says she and her Foreign Office minister husband gave Liu Xiaoming the nickname because of 'his ability to turn between two opposing systems'. She says 'Swivel Hips' had Downing Street officials 'screaming at the walls' over his threat to scrap a visit by Chinese premier Li Keqiang unless he met the Queen during his 2014 trip to the UK. When Mr Li arrived at Heathrow he demanded the red carpet, which Lady Swire says was more like a 'bath mat,' was replaced by an 'Oscar-night carpet stretching all the way up to the plane. Sir Hugo told Downing Street 'Swivel Hips needed taking down a peg or two'. More brandy, bishop? The ex-archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said David Cameron 'lacked backbone' as he drank brandy with Sir Hugo during a stay at Hillsborough Castle in Belfast in 2012. The ex-archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said David Cameron 'lacked backbone' as he drank brandy with Sir Hugo Lady Swire says: 'As the brandy takes effect the dog-collarless Archbishop becomes increasingly robust. Dr Sentamu asks for another brandy to take to bed and 'rolls down the corridor glass in hand'. 'Puffed-up' Fellowes Lady Swire scorns 'puffed-up' Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and his 'eccentric' wife Emma at a shooting weekend. Lord Fellowes was 'eloquent and intelligent but faintly ridiculous' and 'obsessed with social hierarchy and nostalgia'. Lady Swire scorns 'puffed-up' Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and his 'eccentric' wife Emma at a shooting weekend She said his 'turban-wearing' wife was ' Julian's add-on and sticks up her hand to seek permission from him to interrupt'. 'Sad' Hezza At a gathering of Tory grandees at Michael Heseltine's home in 2012, the former deputy prime minister plays a prank by claiming the Queen has asked him to replace David Cameron as PM. He goes round the dinner table handing out 'cabinet jobs' to guests, including Lady Swire's father, Sir John Nott, defence secretary in Margaret Thatcher's administration. Her father said it was 'all a bit sad'. 'Mad' Dorries Nadine Dorries, now minister for mental health, was branded 'mad' after she attacked 'arrogant posh boys' David Cameron and George Osborne in 2012. 'The old criticism is back to haunt them,' says Lady Swire. 'This time it's promoted by Mad Nad Dorries who accuses DC and GO of being 'arrogant posh boys' (yes, and the news is?) Prosecutors in Washington have charged a US citizen for joining the so-called Islamic State group in Syria, according to a statement from the Justice Department Wednesday. The charges allege that Lirim Sylejmani conspired to provide and provided material support to IS, which the United States has classified as a terrorist organization, between 2015 and 2019. The department also claimed he received military training from the self-styled caliphate. The defendant is a U.S. citizen who abandoned the country that welcomed him to join ISIS in Syria, acting US Attorney Sherwin said in the statement of Sylejmani, who was born in Kosovo. He will now be held accountable for his actions in an American courtroom. Sylejmani was captured by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) last year, according to the statement, before facing investigation by the FBIs Washington Field Office Joint Terrorism Task Force. The question of how to handle captured foreign IS fighters has vexed Western governments, with the US vying for European countries to repatriate and try their own citizens. Nations such as France and Britain reject the return of battle-hardened supporters of the ultra-violent IS group, which has claimed responsibility for a slew of grisly attacks against civilians. Some European governments, including Britain, have revoked the citizenship of a number of citizens over alleged IS links. But the US has pushed back against these approaches. Leaving them in the desert is not an effective solution. It makes it more likely theyre going to find their way back to the battlefield, and accepting that risk is not being tough on terrorism, the US State Departments counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales told a meeting in Brussels last year. Plus, it could put an undue burden on Middle Eastern countries already dealing with their own former IS-fighter citizens, according to the US. The EU-backed Genocide Network this spring advocated that returning IS foreign fighters should be charged with war crimes under international law such as genocide or crimes against humanity in addition to whatever terrorism charges they may face at home. As of May, some 2,000 fighters were still detained by Syrian forces and another 1,000 were in detention in Iraq, many of them European citizens mainly from France, Britain and Germany. New Delhi, Sep 17 : US-based Rosen Law Firm has filed a class action lawsuit against HDFC Bank, seeking to recover damages for the bank's investors under the US securities laws. The development comes after the investor rights law firm last month announced an investigation of potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of HDFC Bank following allegations that the bank may have issued materially misleading business information to investors. According to the lawsuit, the defendant (bank) throughout the 'Class Period' made false and misleading statements and failed to disclose to investors that it had inadequate disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, as a result of which, the bank maintained improper lending practices in its vehicle financing operations. Further, earnings generated from the bank's vehicle financing operations were "unsustainable", as per the lawsuit and it added that all the foregoing, once revealed, was foreseeably likely to have a material negative impact on the bank's financial condition and reputation. The law firm said that the bank's public statements "were materially false and misleading at all relevant times" and when the true details entered the market, investors suffered damages. In July, reports said that HDFC Bank had conducted an investigation into the "improper lending practices and conflicts of interests" in its vehicle financing arm. Hundreds more serious criminals will be locked up for longer at a cost of around 1billion. Sexual and violent offenders will serve at least two thirds of prison terms rather than half. Under the sentencing reforms announced yesterday, whole-life orders will extend to child killers and those aged 18 to 20 convicted of terrorist killings. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland (pictured) said the changes would result in a fairer system that better protects the public This is on top of previously-announced plans for the removal of early release for those with terms of more than seven years. The sentencing white paper said these reforms could lead to 2,600 prisoners serving longer jail sentences by 2028. Last night the Ministry of Justice admitted this would cost around 1billion 385,000 per offender. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said the changes would result in a fairer system that better protects the public. The white paper also proposes 20-hour daily curfews for up to two years, community punishments and GPS tracking for burglars, robbers and thieves when they are released from prison. Killer drivers including those using their mobile phone at the wheel will face tougher sentences. In a speech for the Centre for Social Justice, Mr Buckland said the public expects child killers to feel the fullest and harshest extent of the law. He said the white paper was an opportunity to grow trust and confidence in the sentencing system in its ability to make the smart choices to protect the public from the harmful effects of crime, in whatever form they take. The announcement comes days after a parliamentary report warned prisons could run out of space to hold more criminals within the next three years, with some higher-risk inmates already having to be held in low-security jails. Meanwhile courts in England and Wales are grappling with a backlog of more than half a million cases, with delays exacerbated by the pandemic. Hundreds more serious criminals will be locked up for longer at a cost of around 1billion. Pictured: Pentonville Prison in London At the same time, temporary laws are also being introduced to extend the custody time limit for people awaiting a trial for serious crimes. The sentencing measures will also look at efforts to rehabilitate low-level criminals in a bid to reduce reoffending such as cutting the time before a conviction is classed as spent to help them find work. Mr Buckland said that sentencing failures left low-level offenders stuck in a life of crime and with little hope of turning things around. He added: Aside from the social impact, it is also a waste of money, with the cost of reoffending running into the billions every year. We need a new approach. David Lammy, Labours justice spokesman, urged the Government not to apply tougher sentences gratuitously but said his party welcomed the reforms to protect the British public. RICHMOND, Va., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Notice Agent of the settlement reached in Williams v. BASF Catalysts LLC, et al., C.A. No. 2:11-cv-01754 (D.N.J.) releases this information about the settlement. Magistrate Judge Joseph A. Dickson of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, has preliminarily approved a class action settlement reached between Defendants BASF Catalysts, LLC ("BASF") and Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP ("Cahill") and Plaintiffs to resolve claims relating to prior Emtal Talc litigation by creating a non-reversionary fund of $72.5 million to pay up to 19,000 potential claimants and agreeing to pay fees and other expenses as described in the Settlement Agreement. Emtal Talc was used in the manufacturing of industrial products. This settlement does not involve any kind of personal cosmetic product such as baby, body, or talcum powder. The settlement resolves a class action lawsuit in which Plaintiffs claim that from 1984 until 2009 Engelhard (BASF acquired Engelhard in 2006), its former national law firm Cahill, and employees of the two companies, made misstatements or concealed evidence about the existence of alleged asbestos in Emtal Talc and failed to disclose related information to plaintiffs, their lawyers, and courts in the Underlying Lawsuits. Plaintiffs claim that due to these misstatements and omissions, Plaintiffs in the Underlying Lawsuits either (1) voluntarily agreed to dismiss or settle their cases for less than they otherwise would have accepted or (2) had their cases involuntarily dismissed by court order upon motions filed by the Defendants. Defendants deny Plaintiffs' allegations and dispute that any statements about Emtal Talc affected the outcome of the Underlying Lawsuits because Defendants contend that (1) the claims in the Underlying Lawsuits were without merit, (2) the amount of asbestos in Emtal Talc, as reported in historical documents, could not have caused harm to human health and (3) many of the Underlying Lawsuits were resolved for fixed amounts irrespective of the alleged asbestos content of the talc or the number of talc defendants. Defendants further contend that many of the complaints merely named Engelhard without any specific allegations regarding product identification, exposure, or damages. Plaintiffs dispute these arguments. BASF also claims that it was not aware of the facts alleged by the Plaintiffs in this case when it bought Engelhard in 2006 and that BASF did not learn of the circumstances giving rise to Plaintiffs' allegations in this case until 2009. BASF and Cahill have nevertheless agreed to settle this lawsuit in the interest of avoiding further costs and the uncertainty of litigation. If the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey approves the settlement, then BASF and Cahill will pay $72.5 million into a Settlement Fund to pay Class Members as follows: (a) $6.25 million to those who prove they are Class Members; (b) $59.75 million to those who sustained an asbestos-related injury; and (c) $6.5 million to those who experienced an extraordinary physical injury and/or economic loss allegedly as a result of exposure to Emtal Talc, as well as an incentive award of $300,000 to six plaintiffs who helped bring the case. BASF and Cahill have also agreed to pay court-approved attorneys' fees up to $22.5 million, court-approved attorneys' expenses up to $1.2 million, and up to $3.5 million in notice and settlement administration costs. Class Members may, beginning September 17, 2020 submit claims online at www.EmtalTalcSettlement.com. The website also provides instructions for how to file a claim in hard copy through the mail. The website also provides instructions for how to file a claim in hard copy through the mail. All claim forms must be filed by January 15, 2021. The Court will hold a hearing on July 29, 2021 to consider whether to approve the settlement. Class Members have until December 16, 2020 to exclude themselves from, or object to, the settlement. For more information, visit www.EmtalTalcSettlement.com or call 1-888-401-1929. SOURCE Emtal Talc Settlement Notice Agent Related Links http://www.emtaltalcsettlement.com New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced a deal Thursday with lawmakers to hike taxes on the state's wealthiest residents as part of a plan to provide relief to the middle class from the coronavirus crisis. If it's signed into law, it would be one of the first in the country to address state revenue shortfalls caused by the economic crisis by upping collections on the rich. Murphy, a Democrat, said he aims to have the tax finalized by October. States across the country have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has forced businesses to close, sending sales tax revenue plummeting. Democratic calls for federal assistance to states have stalled, with President Donald Trump and other Republicans blaming governors and other local leaders for their budget problems. Even some Democrats have been wary of raising taxes on the rich to fill the gaps. In neighboring New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has rejected similar calls, fearing they would cause the wealthy to flee. Murphy, in contrast, said at a press conference announcing the plan that he was simply calling for "pennies on their top dollars earned" that would help "undo years of tax inequities." The deal would raise the tax rate on those earning more than $1 million per year to 10.75% from 8.97% and provide a rebate of up to $500 to households earning less than $150,000 if they have a child. The income cap for single-parent households would be $75,000. Previously, the 10.75% rate had applied only to those earning more than $5 million. The rebate checks would go out next summer and are expected to benefit as many as 800,000 families, Murphy said. His administration had previously estimated that the tax increase could bring in $390 million in revenue. "This is money our families need and money that will help spur our recovery and our future resiliency," Murphy said. State Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, Democrats who had resisted the millionaires tax, said they had come on board with the plan. "I bet a lot of you didn't expect to see me here today," Sweeney said after Murphy spoke. Sweeney said he previously had a problem with the timing of the millionaires tax, but a "pandemic hit, and things have changed." "Helping middle class families to me makes all the sense in the world at this time," Sweeney said. Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive whose wealth is estimated at more than $50 million, campaigned for governor on a plan to raise taxes on millionaires and doubled down amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has strained state coffers and left millions out of work. On Thursday, he emphasized that the new tax was not driven by animosity toward the well-off. "We do not hold any grudge at all against those who have been successful in life, but in this unprecedented time when so many middle class families and others have sacrificed so much, now is the time to ensure that the wealthiest among us are also called to sacrifice," Murphy said. State Republicans blasted the plan. Doug Steinhardt, chairman of the New Jersey Republican Party, said in a statement that "these newest tax schemes will land in the same place every other Democratic tax scheme lands: in the pockets of New Jersey's middle class." "Blink and you'll miss the next Trenton tax hike," Steinhardt said. "That's how fast Phil Murphy and his Democrats are spending your money." A meeting between East Chinas Anhui province and consulates of ASEAN countries in Shanghai was held in Hefei, capital of the province, on Wednesday, attracting some 130 participants from the consulates, ASEAN enterprises and the provinces political and business circles. The two sides had face-to-face negotiations on cooperation in trade, tourism, investment and culture. Hew Tse Hou, Consul-General of Malaysia in Shanghai said China has been Malaysias biggest trade partner for 11 consecutive years, and Malaysia encourages investors, including those from China, to invest in manufacturing and service industries, and also hopes to lure high-tech, high value-added, knowledge- and capital-intensive investments. The dialogue will help promote the bilateral trade between Anhui and ASEAN countries, enhance the understanding between Anhuis enterprises and those in ASEAN countries, and give them the opportunity to exchange and share experience, Aleiweilai Soujialun, Deputy Consul-General of Consulate General of the Lao People's Democratic Republic in Shanghai said. At the meeting, Anhui signed letters of intent with some ASEAN provinces and cities, intending to establish friendship. Memorandums of cooperation were also signed. The eastern Chinese province has carried out exchanges and cooperation with ASEAN countries in many fields in recent years. Trump announced a 'snap back' of sanctions against Iran earlier this year (Getty Images) US officials have warned they will dramatically step up global pressure on Iran in the coming days by imposing sanctions to block weapons and energy shipments to Tehran. Such a move raises the possibility of American warships halting Iranian cargo ships in international waters, which would be a further escalation of tensions between the two countries, in the run-up to the most contentious US presidential election in recent history. The hawkish US envoy to Iran and Venezuela Elliot Abrams said that Washington would spell out measures in the coming days it would take to enforce sanctions against the Islamic Republic - as well as similar measures against Caracas, where the US supports the opposition against the regime of Nicolas Maduro - an ally of Tehran. The added pressure would be in contravention of a United Nations Security Councils decision to reject the US attempt to reimpose brutal sanctions on Iran that were removed as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear accord. The administration of Donald Trump has only a few months left in its first and possibly last term. But the US may see any move against long-standing foe Iran as a potentially popular move with some voters. Mr Abrams, who recently took over Iran policy from the departing Brian Hook, is known for his foreign policy adventurism. He was once convicted for his part in a scheme to use proceeds of illegal arms sales to Iran to finance Central American militias accused of war crimes. He was later pardoned. Some fear enforcement of the sanctions could entail US warships halting Iranian or Iranian-bound cargo ships in international waters. Will they try to stop ships in the open waters that are trying to bring non-military goods? Thats a very good question, said one senior European diplomat. If the US tried to stop a shipment to Iran, I dont know what ensues. It will create another element of uncertainty in an already uncertain situation. Story continues The US already seized several Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela with cargoes of fuel but in open waters far from the Iranian military. If the Trump administration starts targeting Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf or near the Strait of Hormuz, the risk of a confrontation with Iranian naval forces will significantly increase, Trita Parsi, of the left-leaning think tank Responsible Statecraft, wrote on Wednesday. Iranian tanker Fortune docks in Puerto Cabello in VenezuelaVenezuelan Ministry of Popular P Many officials have questioned the Trump administrations legal reasoning for tightening sanctions. Under its interpretation, all the harsh UN sanctions in place on Iran before the 2015 nuclear deal are to come back into force because Washington demands an immediate snapback. Virtually all UN sanctions on Iran will come back into place this weekend at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday the 19th, Mr Abrams told reporters late Wednesday. The arms embargo will now be re-imposed indefinitely and other restrictions will return. Mr Abrams was speaking hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking alongside British foreign secretary Dominic Raab, said the US would do all the things we need to do to reimpose or snap back sanctions as part of a provision in the nuclear deal. Those restrictions include limits on Irans missile development and enrichment of uranium, which remain under international safeguards, despite Washington withdrawing from an international agreement to monitor Irans nuclear programme in 2018. So far, Tehran has only enriched uranium to power reactor levels.Iran has warned that any reimposition of the pre-2015 sanctions would have dire consequences. Other countries involved in the nuclear deal, the UK, France, China, Germany and Russia, contend that the US cannot trigger the snapback because it has withdrawn from the deal. On Thursday the hardline Iranian daily newspaper Javan warned: "If Europe does not officially and practically cancel the snapback mechanism on Saturday, it will see the end of the nuclear deal. Iran should turn off the cameras and start 90 per cent enrichment, the newspaper said. Uranium enriched to 90 per cent purity is considered weapons grade. As a possible response to Iran, Mr Abrams mentioned increased sanctions on Iran or any entity that does business with the country. But at this point, it remains unclear if any more sanctions will have any effect. There will always be more sanctions and companies to target, said Sanam Vakil, an Iran and Middle East expert at Chatham House. But the impact is negligible at this point. The US approach has puzzled and alarmed Nato partners that are struggling to maintain limits on Irans nuclear programme without resorting to armed conflict, a stated goal of the Trump administration. Some observers have wondered if the Trump administration is merely trying to appear tough on Iran in order to sate the appetite of Republican Party financiers and think tank cheerleaders increasingly frustrated with their inability to topple the regimes in Tehran as well as Caracas. Other observers and diplomats worry that the Trump administration hopes to provoke a crisis before the 3 November elections, in which Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden has an advantage in the polls. Theyve been mentioning snapback for months; it would have been a surprise if they hadn't tried to pursue it, said the senior European diplomat. Whats unclear is if it's for domestic political calculations or how they're going to pursue it. Are they going to make a speech and go home or are they going to stake to stop ships? While Mr Trump has often described himself as the president who would end Americas wars abroad, his calculations may change if he decides a military clash with a longtime adversary would help rally voters behind him. There is awareness among the [Security Council] and the policymaking community that in the run-up to the elections it could be useful to continue to demonstrate toughness with Iran to potentially achieve the aim of killing the [nuclear deal], said Ms Vakil. But I don't see the wider international community as enablers. Theyre quite clear-eyed that they are not going to be goaded. Read more Trump being suckered into conflict with Iran by US officials, claims Tehran Iran considering assassinating US ambassador to South Africa for retribution over Soleimani killing, reports claim President Ram Nath Kovind on September 18 accepted Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badals resignation from the Union Council of Ministers with immediate effect. The President also directed Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar to take charge of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, the ministry held by Badal, in addition to his existing portfolios. Badal, a senior leader of the SAD, an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had submitted her resignation from her post over the Centres farm ordinances, which have triggered farmers' protests across Punjab and Haryana. "I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister," Harsimrat said in a tweet on September 17. In her resignation letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she said that the farmer and her party are "synonymous" since SAD is "inspired by egalitarian vision of the founder of Sikh faith, Shri Guru Nanak Dev who spent nearly 20 years working in his fields at Kartarpur Sahib as a humble farmer". "It's enough to show what farmers mean to SAD," she had said in the letter, adding that she will "forever remain grateful for the trust you reposed in me to work for our great nation under your visionary leadership". "SAD member and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from government to protest farm bills," SAD Member of Parliament (MP) Sukhbir Singh Badal had had informed the Lok Sabha, where two of the three contentious bills -- The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020; The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020; and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 -- were being debated. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana have been protesting against three ordinances promulgated by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on June 5. With Legislative Assembly polls in Punjab just 18 months away, the development will have direct implications on politics in the state, where SAD has supported farmer protests. However, the party has said that it will continue to remain a part of the NDA. ALSO READ: Arvind Kejriwal terms three farming-related bills 'anti-farmer', says party will vote against them in Parliament SAD had voted against the contentious Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020 that was passed in the Lok Sabha on September 15. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills on September 17, Sukhbir Singh Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. He recalled Punjab's massive contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had dared Harsimrat Kaur Badal and SAD president Sukhbir Badal to quit the BJP-led NDA. The Grand Old Party's MPs had also burnt copies of the bills, and had staged a protest in front of Mahatma Gandhi's statue in Parliament Complex and raised slogans against the government. ALSO READ: All three farm sector bills brought by Modi govt far-sighted, will boost agricultural production: JP Nadda On its part, the BJP has defended the bills and the party's president, J P Nadda had on September 16 called them "far-sighted and revolutionary". Harsimrat was the only SAD representative in the Narendra Modi Cabinet. The Punjab-based party is the oldest BJP ally. Bringing record-breaking flooding just 24 hours after it began to dump heavy rain on the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Sally has made landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama, Wednesday. Dubbed to possibly be both life-threatening and catastrophic by the National Hurricane Center, the flooding along the areas in the north-central Gulf Coast is alarming as the rainfall could last up to two days as the storm continues to make its way going north, northeast at a 5mph speed. According to NBC News, the Hurricane made its landfall as a Category 2 storm has sustained winds of 80 mph and even stronger gusts, that tops at 100 mph making the heavy rainfall a serious threat. At 10 a.m. CT on Wednesday, a warning has been sent out for a possible storm surge between the regions of Dauphin Island in Alabama and the Walton County or Bay County line in Florida. A warning of hurricane effects was also issued to the areas between Okaloosa County/Walton County line in Florida and Mississippi/Alabama border. Moreover, a tropical storm was also sent out on the areas of Indian Pass in Florida going to the eastern part of the Okaloosa County/Walton County line in Florida. According to the local utilities, as a result of the storm over 510,000 homes and business establishments in the state of Florida and Alabama went without power at a certain time on Wednesday. Read also: Trump Touts Emergence of 'New Middle East' Amid Historic Peace Talks After Alabama Power Co. tweeted before 7 a.m. local time that the area of Mobile, Alabama will be losing power, over 150,000 customers in the area of Mobile woke up on Wednesday and found out that they cannot use any electrical services. Mayor of Mobile Sandy Stimpson begged his constituents to stay indoors and the official also reminded the people in his area to stay away from fallen power poles. Aside from the initial warning sent by him, a series of tweets on Wednesday was sent by the mayor reminding his constituents that if they come across downed power lines trees or debris immediately report it to 911 and warned them not to touch or clear trees on their own. He also stated that the city officials of Mobile are urging all of its citizens to stay home and not to venture out unless it is absolutely necessary. Due to the flooding and winds, parts of the interstates and highways were closed as officials warned their constituents to stay at home and off any roads. On the other hand, Governor of Alabama Kay Ivey also warned her constituents on Twitter on Tuesday that Hurricane Sally is nothing to take for granted as they are already looking at the records of the flooding but based on the information it is breaking historic levels as the rising water comes to a greater risk for loss of life and loss of property, BBC reported. The Alabama governor also urged her people to either to look for a safe shelter or prepare for possible evacuations as the turbulent storm made headway. Aside from the mentioned areas, forecasters also warned that areas from the western part of Florida Panhandle to southeastern Mississippi could see up to 35 inches of rain. Related article: US Blocks Import Good from Xinjiang, Suspected of Being Made with Slave Labor @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Cocoa farmers will earn more for their produce in the next cocoa season than they currently receive for the same output of beans in the ongoing season. It follows plans by the government, through the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), to raise the Cocoa Producer Price (CPI) paid to cocoa farmers by more than 21 per cent for the 2020/21 season. The 21 per cent increment will translate into GH625 per 64-kilogramme bag of cocoa beans, compared to the GH515 being paid for the same quantity of beans in the ongoing season. For a tonne of cocoa beans, the 21 per cent increment means that farmers will receive a minimum of GH10,000 for their produce. Currently, a tonne of cocoa is GH8,240. A highly placed source at COCOBOD told the Daily Graphic yesterday, that the increment would be announced in the first week of October to coincide with the opening of the next cocoa season. Living Income Differential The source, who pleaded for anonymity, said the Producer Price Review Committee (PPRC) was currently undertaking the relevant consultations, after which it would formally announce the new price. It said the increment in the price paid to farmers for their produce was the result of the living income differential (LID) that the government, through the board, adopted. The initiative, introduced jointly by Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, the two lead producers of cocoa globally, last year, requires buyers of cocoa from the two countries to add $400 to every tonne of cocoa beans purchased. The countries are hopeful that it will help raise the incomes and improve the livelihoods of farmers. Confirmation When contacted, the Public Affairs Manager of COCOBOD, Mr Fiifi Boafo, would not confirm or deny the projected increment in the amount to be paid to cocoa farmers to the Daily Graphic. He, however, said he was aware that farmers would enjoy a substantial increase in the amount of money they received for their produce. He said following the successful implementation of the LID, the board had raked in additional money that it would use to pay farmers next season. He expressed the hope that the additional income through increased prices would help augment the incomes of farmers against challenges. He said the board was optimistic that the increase would motivate farmers to produce more to help increase output, while raising their own incomes. Hoarding Mr Boafo, however, said farmers and licensed buying companies (LBCs) had started hoarding cocoa beans to sell to the board after the new price had been announced. He said the practice started in March and April and had persisted up till now, resulting in the board not getting additional beans to supply to processors of the beans. He said while the board appreciated the resolve of farmers to earn higher incomes for their produce, it was not right for them to hoard the beans, especially when that action was impacting negatively on supplies to processors. He, therefore, appealed to the farmers and especially the LBCs to rescind their decision and supply beans to COCOBOD for onward sale to processors. Background As the cocoa season approaches, cocoa farmers have stepped up their call for an increment in cocoa price in the upcoming cocoa season. The farmers claim the cost of production has increased significantly and it is, therefore, prudent that COCOBOD, and for that matter the government, respond with a price increment. In the 2019/2020 cocoa season, COCOBOD increased the cocoa producer price for a bag (64kg) from GH475 to GH515, representing an 8.42 per cent adjustment. 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 Meet & Learn From A Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine During FREE Presentation and Q&A Webinar Event SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Tribe Public announced today that Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Lou Ignarro, Ph.D. will present at Tribe Public's Zoom Webinar Presentation and Q&A Event that is scheduled to begin at today 8 am pacific/ 11 am eastern on Thursday, September 17, 2020. During this complimentary, 30-minute event, Dr. Ignarro will deliver his presentation "Nitric Oxide From Viagra To COVID-19" and be available for a Q&A session. To register to join the complimentary event, please visit the lou.tribepublic.com. Dr. Lou Ignarro, Ph.D. Background Dr. Ignarro won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1998, along with Robert F. Furchgott and Ferid Murad, for his research discoveries showing the powerful ability of Nitric Oxide (NO) to support cardiovascular health. His groundbreaking work-the basis for his 2005 best-selling book, NO More Heart Disease -established him as perhaps the world's leading authority on nutritional approaches to cardiac wellness. He sits on the Herbalife Nutrition Advisory Board, which is composed of leading experts in the areas of health and nutrition. As part of his role with the organization, he also developed the formulation of the entire Herbalife cardio line. He spent more than 40 years as a research scientist, seeking to understand the incredible role that NO plays in fostering optimal health. One of his most important discoveries was that antioxidants increase NO levels by protecting blood vessel walls from damage. As co-author of The New Heart Health and the Health Is Wealth series, he refined his research on NO to help people live healthy, active lives and support heart health. He has a Ph.D. in pharmacology and is professor emeritus at UCLA, where he received 11 outstanding teacher awards voted by the medical students in the program. He is also a part-time professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ABOUT TRIBE PUBLIC LLC Tribe Public LLC is a San Francisco, CA-based organization that hosts complimentary worldwide webinar events & meeting events throughout the U.S. Tribe's complimentary events focus on issues that the Tribe members care about with an emphasis on hosting management teams from publicly traded companies from all sectors that are seeking to increase awareness of their products, progress, and plans. Tribe's members primarily include Family Offices, Portfolio Managers, Registered Investment Advisors, & Accredited Investors. Visit Tribe's Website to join today http://www.tribepublic.com. Forward any questions to Tribe's management at research@tribepublic.com. CONTACT: Tribe Public, LLC. John F. Heerdink, Jr. Managing Partner john@tribepublic.com SOURCE: Tribe Public LLC View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606505/Starting-in-1-Hour-Nitric-Oxide-From-Viagra-to-Covid-19 The virus which causes Covid-19, called SARS-CoV-2, is mutating at an unusually slow rate, a new study finds. Analysis by experts at the Royal Society also found none of the alterations made so far to the coronavirus's genetic code are making it more infectious or severe. The findings are reassuring for clinicians and epidemiologists as it indicates people who have previously caught the disease will have protection from reinfection. It also offers hope that, when a vaccine is available, it will be effective in the long term. Other findings from the study prove the coronavirus evolved naturally in bats and was not forged in a Chinese lab, as some conspiracy theories claim. Scroll down for video Analysis by experts at the Royal Society found none of the alterations to the coronavirus's genetic code are making it more infectious or severe. Other findings from the study prove the coronavirus evolved naturally in bats and was definitely not forged in a Chinese lab A rapid review of available data has been published as a pre-print by the Royal Society's SET-C (Science in Emergencies Tasking COVID-19) task force, made up of Britain's leading virologists. They say the location and nature of mutations on SARS-CoV-2 have thus far not impacted its virulence. It had previously been suggested by experts that the virus was mutating and becoming less severe but more infectious. Now, according to the latest findings, this theory can be comprehensively dispelled. The mutations that have evolved so far throughout the pandemic have instead left markers that allows researchers to track the spread of the virus. This is a key tool in allowing policy makers to decide how best to restrict the spread of the contagion. Professor Geoffrey Smith, the lead author of the research at the department of pathology at the University of Cambridge, said: 'It is good news that SARS-CoV-2 has so far proven pretty stable, because it is easier to detect and treat a virus that is fairly stationary. 'Whole genome sequencing allows us to understand not just that someone is infected, but to define precisely the strain of virus and so work out where the infection probably came from. 'It also allows us to track strains of virus that become dominant and that might replicate or transmit more efficiently.' One downside that the researchers point out is that even a slow mutation rate could allow the virus to develop resistance to certain drugs. But these are speculative issues and, in the virus's current guise, the authors of the study are confident the disease is not becoming more severe or infectious. SARS-CoV-2, the virus which leads to Covid-19, has a protein on its surface which binds to a receptor on human cells called ACE2 and this is how it invades the body How one amino acid led to a major mutation The study by the Royal Society's SET-C (Science in Emergencies Tasking COVID-19) task force also studied the one major mutation SARS-CoV-2 underwent. It is located on the S-protein which sticks out from the surface of the virus. This spike latches on to the ACE2 receptor of human cells, tricks it into opening the cell, and allows the pathogen to infect a person. At one specific location residue 614 on the S1 terminus the original form of the coronavirus had the amino acid aspartate, labelled with a D. However, a random mutation saw this amino acid replaced with a glycine, labelled with a G. The so-called D614G mutation was seen in barely any samples taken in February. However, by March, more than a quarter (26 per cent) of isolated SARS-CoV-2 strains contained the mutation. By May this figure had reached 70 per cent. The D614G mutation i the most dominant one seen globally. This mutation appears to help more virus infect a person and for more efficient infection of cells. The D614G virus is also almost always accompanied with three other minor mutations. The role of these changes remains unknown. Advertisement As part of the study, the experts looked at the origin of the virus in the UK and traced it back to its genetic origin. They found its closest relative is a bat coronavirus found in China called RaTG13. However, it is only 97 per cent identical - an enormous difference when it comes to viral genetic material. Previous research found that it is possible SARS-CoV-2 first split from its ancestor in 1948 and has been residing in bats, who are immune, for around 70 years. According to the experts, the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses is too large for it to have been made in a lab and deliberately released. 'The degree of divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and all other known coronaviruses is sufficient to refute the assertion that the COVID-19 pandemic arose by the deliberate or accidental release of a known virus (e.g. RaTG13) and makes the unsupported claim that SARS-CoV-2 was created artificially in a laboratory highly improbable,' the researchers explain in their paper. Instead, the study confirms the virus jumped into humans either straight from bats or via an intermediary mammalian host. Professor Smith said: 'There is nothing like solid evidence to bust the myths that are spread by conspiracy theorists. 'It is understandable that when a new virus emerges there will be speculation about its origins, but the pace at which the global science community has developed our understanding of the genetics of SARS-CoV-2 has been spectacular. 'That has allowed us to trace its spread and develop diagnostic tests and candidate vaccines. 'It also allows us to debunk some of the more colourful conspiracy theories.' In the process of coming to this conclusion the authors, who are some of the UK's foremost experts, found that between February and March 2020, a total of 1,356 genetically distinct SARS-CoV-2 strains were brought into the UK from abroad. More than a third (34 per cent) came from Spain, which was an early epicentre of the outbreak, while 14 per cent came from Italy, another major hotspot in the early days of the pandemic. Twenty-nine per cent stemmed from France, while less than one per cent derived from travel between the UK and China. Sept. 20 marks the beginning of Banned Books Week, a celebration of literature deemed too taboo for American classrooms. Some books on the list contain graphic violence or blasphemy. But for Black authors included on the list, including Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, oftentimes simply writing about the Black experience in America can be controversial. In past years, the Indianapolis Public Library has commemorated Banned Books Week through programming. Due to changes caused by COVID-19, nothing is planned for 2020. However, the library system has made an effort to spotlight books written by Black authors, specifically books highlighting the importance of antiracist activism. In honor of Banned Books Week, here are three books written by prominent Black authors to pick up throughout the week, all of which are available through the Indianapolis Public Library system. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou This autobiographical coming of age story depicts growing up Black and poor in the South. In it, Angelou describes the racism and abuse she endured, examples of Black excellence and adversity. Despite being on the bestseller list for two years, the book is banned in Alabama for inciting bitterness and hatred towards white people. In Colorado, the book was challenged as a lurid tale of sexual perversion, for describing Angelous molestation as a child and the subsequent effect the abuse had on her as an adolescent. In a 2009 interview, the late author and poet said ignorance may be behind why the book was banned. Im always sorry that people ban my books, Angelou said. Many times, Ive been called the most banned. Many times my books are banned by people who never read two sentences. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin Published in 1952 by writer and commentator James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain depicts the lives of Black people in Harlem during the early 20th century and speaks frequently about religion and racism. Along with a scene depicting rape and violence against women, the book is also banned for depicting a young boy coming to terms with his homosexuality. Beloved, Toni Morrison When Toni Morrison died in 2019, she was lauded as being one of the most prolific Black female writers in the country. With dozens of novels and plays, Morrison focused largely on the role of race and womanhood in society. Her 1987 novel Beloved, however, placed her on the banned books list. Set in Ohio after the Civil War, Beloved is based on the life of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who killed her child to keep her from a life of slavery. The novel was challenged as late as 2016 when Richard Black, a Republican member of the Virginia State Senate, said the book was moral sewage and was too violent to be taught in high school English courses. In a 2009 interview, Morrison warned against censorship of literature and art. I contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people. That thought is a nightmare. Contact staff writer Breanna Cooper at 317-762-7848. Follow her on Twitter @BreannaNCooper. Read banned books! To find these books or other banned books, visit indypl.org 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:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b0eb88)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486afb708)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b0eb88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486afb708)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f0486b03c50)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486afb708)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0486afb708)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f04861ebf38)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e5198)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04869e5198)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 As the entire city held its breath during the stay-at-home order this spring, summer offered a solution for many with the approval of serving at outdoor spaces. Then, tentatively, food and beverage establishments were allowed to open indoor spaces with limited capacity. But as coronavirus cases waxed and waned, restrictions changed, and the city walked back on its allowance for bars to host patrons inside. As winter approaches, these businesses now grapple with how to operate when the weather shifts. UNIQLOs AIRism face mask, made with smooth fabric and cooling technology, is now available for order and shipping. The reusable masks, produced by the trendy Japanese fashion brand, are available in three-packs for $14.90, and can be ordered in black or white and in sizes small, medium or large. UNIQLO AIRism mask.screenshot from UNIQLO They are made with UNIQLOs AIRism mesh fabric, which feels lightweight and cool to the touch, and is breathable, according to a review by Says. The elastic isnt as stretchy as some you might be used to from other retailers, so its important you order the right size for your face. The three layer masks include washable, built-in filters and two layers of AIRism fabric to wick away moisture and block UV rays, according to the product description. The high-performance masks are made of primarily nylon and spandex, with polyester, cupro and polyproylene used in the design as well. Says reports long lines at UNIQLO brick and mortar locations, and the website crashing when the masks first became available. The sizes are as follows: Small: W: 7 x H: 4.5 Medium: W: 8.5 x H: 5.5 Large: W: 9 x H: 5.5 UNIQLO AIRism mask.screenshot from UNIQLO UNIQLO isnt the only high-performance mask available on the market. Under Armour has drawn attention with its Sportsmask, a coronavirus covering designed specifically for athletes. Here are some of the other popular coronavirus face masks you can find online: 6 face masks that are antimicrobial for added protection Sports face masks for kids: Bills, Mets, Yankees, more youth sized coronavirus coverings for back-to-school How to buy Buffalo Bills, NY Giants, Jets face masks players wear on the field, just in time for football season School Mask Pack: This color-coded back-to-school mask system is perfect for kids and busy parents Syracuse Orange face masks: Where to buy coronavirus coverings for Syracuse University fans online Sudarshan News Editor-in-Chief Suresh Chavhanke defended before the Supreme Court his TV series Bindas Bol, its UPSC Jihad episode and the claim that the Zakat Foundation, which supported Muslim aspirants for the IAS and IPS services in the country, had received funds from terror-linked organisations across the world. It is not that all contributors to the Foundation are terror-linked," Chavhanke said. "However, some contributors are linked to organisations or are organisations that fund extremist groups. The funds received by the Zakat Foundation, in turn, are used to support aspirants for IAS, IPS or UPSC." Maintaining that there was no justification for the pre-telecast ban on his remaining programme episodes, Chavhanke said the issue was a matter of grave public interest and national security must be subject to public debate and discussion. Consistent with the national security requirements of our country, there ought to be a public debate and discussion on the source of such funding," he said. There is no statement or message in the four episodes broadcast that members of a particular community should not join UPSC, which is an open competitive examination and members of every community may participate in the entrance exam and qualify. The thrust of the particular programme episode is that there appears to be a conspiracy which needs to be investigated by NIA or CBI, he said. "It appears that terror-linked organisations are funding the Zakat Foundation of India, which in turn is supporting the UPSC aspirants, Chavhanke said. He contended that Syed Zafar Mahmood, founder of the Zakat Foundation of India is closely associated with...Zakir Naik, whose Islamic Research Foundation was banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. "As per GOI records, Zakat Foundation received donations from Madina Trust UK, which is also a trustee with Islamic Foundation (IF)," Chavhanke said. "The Times, UK, reported that two IF trustees were on the UN sanctions list of people associated with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda." Chavhanke claimed that the Zakat Foundation also received donations from Muslim Aid (UK). According to Middle East Forums Islamist Watch Director Sam Westrop, Muslim Aid (Pakistan) head Gen Khalid Latif was with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. Muslim Aid (Pak) also allegedly works closely with the Hizbul Mujahideen. Chavhanke said, "Following a probe by the British media and inquiry by Britains charity regulator in 2010, Muslim Aid, UK, was found (and admitted) to have been funding a number of front organisations for terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad." Chavhanke said that the Zakat Foundation India received funds from the Zakat Foundation of America whose Executive Director Khalil Demir had signed US Internal Revenue Service 990 forms for the Benevolence International Foundation, which the US Treasury (US Govt) had found guilty in 2002 of funding Al-Qaeda. Chavhanke said, I have no ill will against any community or any individual and do not oppose the selection of any meritorious candidate in the service of the Union or the States but my thrust and endeavour is to expose anti-national activities. Among other reasons, Chavhanke expressed that he had raised a political and social issue about whether the benefits granted to OBC minority candidates must be reviewed. Chavhanke also addressed objections that he had falsely propagated the claim that Muslim candidates were granted age relaxations in the UPSC. He explained that there was a graphic of a 32-year-old General Category candidate compared with a 35-year-old OBC minority candidate and it was to look at Muslim OBCs. "If a news channel is raising an objection to Muslims taking benefit of OBC quota, the same cannot be communal and in this country, time and again these questions and these debates are in the public domain," Chavhanke said. AMRITSAR On the call of Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and Dal Khalsa, panthic bodies of different colours gathered at Akal Takht on Thursday over the issue of missing saroops of Guru Granth Sahib and resolved to go together to corner Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). In the presence of parallel Akal Takht acting jathedar Dhian Singh Mand and Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (ad hoc) president Baljit Singh Daduwal, the gathering passed several resolution to intensify the fight for bringing all the SGPC functionaries to justice. As SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal, other office-bearers and entire executive committee are appearing before the Sikh clergy at Akal Takht on Friday, the Sikh bodies demanded that the SGPC chief and other office-bearers must tender their resignations on moral grounds or they will gherao Longowals residence on September 22. It was the basic duty of the SGPC to respect saroops of Guru Granth Sahib but it failed. Lack of respect is sacrilege that has been committed by this gurdwara body. Those responsible for this sacrilege must be punished, said representatives of those called this gathering. As per another resolution passed on the occasion, it was decided to demonstrate on all the streets leading to SGPCs headquarters Teja Singh Samundri Hall on September 28 during the budget session of the gurdwara body to make every SGPC member attending the session accountable in the matter. Extending support to the Punjab shutdown call given by farmer organisations on September 25 in protest against the agri ordinances issued by the Centre, the Sikh leaders said they would take part in the shutdown call. It can be a challenge to keep a small business going and growing during regular times, but add COVID-19 to the picture, and many find themselves struggling in a whole new way. Keeping up with state mandate rules for food establishments while maintaining a strong customer base can be difficult to overcome and in Memphis, two eateries have now closed in as many months. On the Facebook page Memories of Growing Up in Memphis, Michigan there were more than 40 posts sharing the disappointment area residents have seeing a second food establishment closing downtown. The Subway store will close Sept. 26, and Moms Kitchen closed in July after being a popular eatery in town since 1992. Ruth Koppinger Suwalkowski, who started the Memories Facebook page, said she was disappointed to see the loss of two businesses in the citys downtown. A lifelong resident, Suwalkowski has long been a cheerleader for her hometown and was even known to decorate empty windows in store fronts to keep things looking nice while encouraging new businesses. Im sick about this, things were really starting to look up here, Suwalkowski said. I pray for people to see possibilities in our town and hope there wont be any more closings because its getting cold now and places like Ninas Artic Queen will be closing along with the other outdoor dining opportunities. Kelli Williams, the owner of the popular local ice cream shop, Ninas Arctic Queen, agreed the situation for businesses amid the pandemic is very sad. She posted this on the Memories Facebook page: Between being shut down for months, cant find help, not all businesses received financial help, rules up the wazoo, less customers, less capacity, higher wages and the list goes on. There will be so many more closings when the weather changes as inside is still at half capacity and pretty soon no outside seating because of the weather. The Subway store is closing but for sale and seeking a new franchise owner to take it over. Moms Kitchen closed and a new owner purchased the property and is working on reopening but not as a restaurant. So that leaves only a couple options for eating downtown, the Doghouse Tavern or the Donut Girls. Tammy Wehrum owns the Doghouse Tavern, which opened on Main Street nearly four years ago. The restaurant recently opened an outdoor patio that connects with Sage Creek Winery and provides food to diners for both establishments. While business has been extremely brisk it would normally be a great thing but with a lack of staff Wehrum said shes been running ragged trying to keep things going. I lost some employees to high school and college and Im just not getting any applications at all, Wehrum said. And the rate of the unemployment (benefits) is definitely a reason people dont want to work. While shes thrilled to see new faces trying out her place and keeping business steady, having some writing poor reviews online because the wait for food was long is disheartening. Thats just a punch in the gut to me when I read that stuff because we are working so hard and doing the best we can, Wehrum said, noting that the place has been her dream since she retired from a 23-year career with the U.S. Marines. In fact, the Doghouse Tavern is literally her life now, shes there just about every minute that its open and just hopes she can hang on to get some new employees and see the state mandates lifted for the pandemic. Meanwhile, down the street at the Donut Girls shop, Manager Melissa Opper who said they too have actually remained very busy despite the pandemic. She said they did cut back the shop hours, now opening at 6 a.m. instead of 4 a.m., but they are open until 2 p.m. every day except Sunday. Soups and sandwiches remain popular, along with donuts, and Opper said they do have people picking up items in the afternoon that they can call dinner later on. The shop did close from the end of March until the beginning of May by state mandate, but Opper said they were fortunate because they were able to keep all of their employees. Today they offer pickup and delivery service and remain a popular option for breakfast and lunch in town. They may even see a surge in their business once the Subway shop closes next week. Barb Pert Templeton is a freelance reporter. She can be contacted at barbperttempleton.reporter@yahoo.com. New Delhi: Sleuths from the Enforcement Directorate arrested Surat-based businessman Kishore Bhajiawala on Friday in connection with a money laundering case and for allegedly using 1,000 fake IDs to illegally convert Rs 1 crore in old notes into new post demonetisation. The agency said it has placed "Jignesh Kishorebhai Bhajiawala (41) under arrest as per provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at about 11:45pm on Thursday at is sub-zonal office in Surat. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a criminal FIR against Bhajiawala and some of his family members based on a CBI FIR against him, which was booked after the Income Tax department first conducted searches and seized gold and cash from his premises as part of their operation in December last year to check blackmoney post the notes ban. The case had gained prominence after investigating agencies detected the proverbial rags-to-riches ascent of the 'chaiwala'-turned-financier based in the diamond city of Gujarat. "The Bhajiawala family has converted a huge amount of their unaccounted money, post demonetisation, into new high denomination currency and other valuables through collusion with bank officials and private persons by impersonating, forgery and by using forged documents. "An amount of over Rs 1.02 crore in new currency was seized by the I-T department from his premises during searches at his home, shop and bank lockers held by them. It was also found that the accused had hired several bank lockers in benami names to stash their unaccounted assets," the ED alleged. (With inputs from PTI) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. India on Thursday said it desires to have normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan and issues, if any, between the two countries should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully in an atmosphere free of terror, hostility and violence. At the same time, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the onus is on Pakistan to create such a conducive atmosphere, including by taking "credible, verifiable and irreversible" action to not allow any territory under its control to be used for cross-border terrorism against India. The minister was replying to a question in Rajya Sabha on India's policy towards Pakistan, and its foreign policy initiatives to counter that country on the issue of terrorism. He said India has consistently raised the issue of Pakistan's continued support to cross-border terrorism in bilateral, regional and multilateral platforms. As a result of India's efforts, he said there is now enhanced concern globally on terrorism emanating from Pakistan, including the continuing activities of internationally designated terrorist entities and individuals like Jamaat-ud Dawa, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen etc. "India desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan. Our consistent position is that issues, if any, between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, in an atmosphere free of terror, hostility and violence," he said. Muraleedharan said many terrorist entities and individuals, operating from Pakistan and engaged in terror activities in India, have been proscribed by the UN, the European Union and other countries. He also referred to a decision by the Financial Action Task Force in February to retain Pakistan in the 'Grey List' due to continuing terror financing related concerns. "These vindicate India's consistent stand that internationally designated terrorist groups and individuals continue to operate from and raise financial resources with impunity in Pakistan, and use territories under its control for carrying out cross-border terrorism in India and elsewhere in South Asia," the minister said. He said India's call to condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestation and delink terror from religion has found greater acceptance among the international community, and is reflected in a number of outcome documents issued after bilateral and multilateral summits. EGLE issues emergency work order for Edenville Dam safety measures FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 17, 2020 Nick Assendelft, Public Information Officer, AssendelftN@Michigan.gov, 517-388-3135 The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy today issued an emergency order to Boyce Hydro Power LLC to perform critical repairs at the Edenville Dam. The dams remaining earthen embankment sustained significant damage during Mays flooding at both the Tobacco and Tittabawassee Rivers, requiring urgent action to increase public safety. Since the dam failed, the Tobacco River has not followed its natural path and instead has been flowing along the dam, through the breach and down the Tittabawassee River channel. This makes it difficult to temporarily repair the destroyed M-30 causeway bridge due to continuously changing river dynamics and also has had a negative impact on natural resources in now dry riverbeds. Without work on the spillway and river channels, residents downstream face a threat of another flood if the remaining portion of the weakened dam is unable to impound water from a combination of spring rains and snow melt. The continued rerouting of the Tobacco River is delaying necessary safety measures and fixes that are important to stabilize the area affected by the Edenville Dams failure, said Liesl Clark, director of EGLE. We dont want residents who live downstream to face another devastating flood. Boyce needs to step up and do whats right for the community and property owners, make sure that no further damage is done to natural resources and allow for critical infrastructure work. The Edenville Dam is still classified as a High Hazard Dam, which means that should there be another collapse it could result in severe impacts and even a loss of life downstream from the dam. Without a way to relieve pressure from water held back by the Tobacco side of the dam which could be exacerbated by just a one- to two-year flood event, which is highly likely over the next year a collapse could unleash a 10- to 15-foot wave of water that would severely affect properties and infrastructure downstream. The emergency order instructs Boyce, which owns the Edenville Dam in Gladwin County, to expedite modifications to the Tobacco spillway, which will lower the water level in the impoundment area to a safe height and restore downstream flow. Boyce must also restore the Tittabawassee River to its former channel below the spillway and divert the river away from the breach through the dam. Finally, sediment and debris in the river from the spillway to approximately 3,000 feet downstream must be removed. The time-sensitive work plan was developed by engineering firm AECOM, hired by EGLE and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to assess the dams condition. The plan will alleviate strain on the collapsed M-30 bridges, minimize upstream impacts, address dam safety concerns and relieve ecological impacts, from stagnation and potential dewatering of a part of the Tobacco River to continuous elevated levels of sediment in the diverted water. EGLE has instructed Boyce numerous times since May 22 to undertake sufficient engineering analyses and perform necessary short-term repairs and cleanups. Boyce has not adequately addressed the ongoing hazards to the public, transportation infrastructure and natural resources. The chosen work plan is the highest rated of four alternatives provided by AECOM engineers, who conducted a site inspection after Boyce submitted a report from an engineering firm hired by the company and which acknowledged it did not fulfill the requirements of a June 15 Temporary Restraining Order. The emergency order instructs Boyce to immediately hire a contractor to do the work and submit to EGLE proof of a contract by Sept. 21, complete by Sept. 25 applications for any necessary EGLE permits and start construction by Oct. 19. If Boyce fails to meet its deadlines, EGLE will have the work done and seek to recoup the costs from Boyce. The temporary safety and protective measures will be in place until a more permanent solution is decided upon for the future of the dam by its owners. The emergency work plan is separate from an ongoing independent forensic investigation of the causes behind the collapse of the Edenville and Sanford Dams and recommendations for future action. That in-depth investigation by five subject matter experts is expected to be completed next year. Keep up with developments at EGLEs Edenville Dam Failure webpage. # # # Emergency Order-Edenville Dam 09172020.pdf Britain cannot unilaterally change the Brexit withdrawal agreement, the European Commission president has said, following moves by Boris Johnson to undermine the agreement. In her annual "state of the union" address to the European Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen warned that the EU would "never backtrack" on the treaty, which ensures no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. And she quoted former Conservative UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher saying Britain should never break its word to other countries. "The EU and the UK jointly agreed it was the best and only way for ensuring peace on the island of Ireland," she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "And we will never backtrack on that. This agreement has been ratified by this House and the House of Commons. "It cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or dis-applied. This a matter of law, trust and good faith." The government's Internal Market Bill has prompted criticism both inside and outside the UK, following an admission by ministers that it would break international law. Mr Johnson signed up to implement the EU's customs code under the agreement, which the 2019 Conservative manifesto hailed as a "great new deal". But the customs code requires new controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which the prime minister first denied existed and now says he doesn't to want to implement. Addressing MEPs early on Wednesday, Ms von der Leyen quoted former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher to underline her point. "That is not just me saying it; I remind you of the words of Margaret Thatcher: 'Britain does not break Treaties. It would be bad for Britain, bad for relations with the rest of the world, and bad for any future Treaty on trade'," she said. Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Show all 66 1 /66 Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A message projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover Sky News/AFP via Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Big Ben, shows the hands at eleven o'clock at night AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Nigel Farage speaks to pro-Brexit supporters PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-Brexit demonstrators celebrate on Parliament Square REUTERS Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU The Union flag is taken down outside the European Parliament in Brussels PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU campaigners outside the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A pro-Brexit supporter jumps on an EU flag in Parliament Square PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU EU Council staff removed the Union Jack-British flag from the European Council in Brussels, Belgium EPA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A pro-Brexit supporter pours beer onto an EU flag PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pedestrians pass in front of the Ministry of Defence Building on Whitehall, illuminated by red, white and blue lights in central London AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A Brexit supporter shouts during a rally in London AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU campaigners outside the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU campaigners take part in a 'Missing EU Already' rally outside the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A large pro-EU banner is projected onto Ramsgate cliff in Kent PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU supporters light candles in Smith Square in Westminster PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man waves Union flags from a small car as he drives past Brexit supporters gathering in Parliament Square AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU The five-year old Elisa Saemann, left, and her seven-year old sister Katie hold a placard during a rally by anti-Brexit protesters outside the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Europe supporters gather on Brexit day near the British embassy in Berlin, Germany EPA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Anti-Brexit protester hugs a man while holding a placard REUTERS Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A decorated, old fashioned fire pump in Parliament Square PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Brexit Elvis impersonator performs at Parliament Square Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU An anti-Brexiteers stands with his dog in Parliament Square AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Paddy from Bournemouth wears Union colours as he sits next to an EU flag decorated bag in Parliament Square AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A pro-EU activist plays a guitar decorated with the EU flag during a protest organised by civil rights group New Europeans outside Europe House, central London AFP via Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU People celebrate Britain leaving the EU REUTERS Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A Pro Brexit supporter has a Union Jack painted onto his face at Parliament Square Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Men hold placards celebrating Britain leaving the EU REUTERS Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Brexit supporters dance in the street draped with Union Jack flags at Parliament Square Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU An anti-Brexit demonstrator spreads his wings during a gathering near Downing Street AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro EU supporters display a banner ' Here to Stay, Here to Fight, Migrants In, Tories Out' from Westminster bridge EPA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-Brexit supporters burn European Union flags at Parliament Square Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man poses for a picture on Parliament Square in a 'Brexit Day' t-shirt Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU People celebrate Britain leaving the EU Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU AFP via Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man wears a pro-Brexit t-shirt Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Anti-Brexit demonstrators visit Europe House to give flowers to the staff on Brexit day Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Brexit supporter wears a novelty Union Jack top hat outside the Houses of Parliament Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Customers Scott Jones and Laura Jones at the Sawmill Bar in South Elmsall, Yorkshire, where a Brexit party is being held throughout the day PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU activists protest Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A pro-Brexit demonstrator burns a European Union flag AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Brexit supporters Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro Brexit supporters Getty Images Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A Brexit supports holds a sign in Parliament Square AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man carries an EU themed wreath Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Ann Widdecombe reacts with other members of the Brexit party as they leave en masse from the European Parliament PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Anti-Brexit demonstrators in Parliament Square PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro EU supporters let off flares from Westminster Bridge Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU British MEPs Jonathan Bullock, holding the Union Jack flag and Jake Pugh leave the European Parliament, in Brussels on the Brexit day AFP via Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Newspapers and other souvenirs at a store, near Parliament Square Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Brexit supporters hold signs in Parliament Square AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU protesters hold placards in Parliament Square AFP via Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU French newspapers PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald with a Border Communities Against Brexit poster before its unveiling in Carrickcarnon on the Irish border PA Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU National growers organisation British Apples & Pears has renamed a British apple to EOS, the Greek goddess of dawn, to commemorate Brexit day AP Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Pro-EU protesters hold placards in Parliament Square AFP via Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Britain's departure from the European Union was set in law on January 29, amid emotional scenes, as the bloc's parliament voted to ratify the divorce papers. After half a century of membership and three years of tense withdrawal talks, the UK will leave the EU at midnight Brussels time (23.00 GMT) on January 31 Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man poses with paintings on Parliament Square Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU People sporting Union Flags gather in Parliament Square Getty Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A man walks with a St. George's flag at Westminster bridge on Brexit day Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU A British bulldog toy and other souvenirs at a souvenir store Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU British pro-brexit Members of the European Parliament leave the EU Parliament for the last time Reuters Brexit day: UK says goodbye to EU Jonathan Bullock waves the Union Jack as he leaves the European Parliament EPA "This was true then, and it is true today. Trust is the foundation of any strong partnership." The UK and EU are currently discussing the implementation of the agreement at a so-called "joint committee" where the details of implementation are worked out. In her wide-ranging speech to MEPs on Monday, Ms von der Leyen also proposed to bring forward the EU's 2030 climate target, and warned against "vaccine nationalism" in the fight against Covid-19, urging countries to cooperate and pool their resources. SYRACUSE, Utah, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Over the last few months, COVID-19 has forced different industries to make significant changes to their day-to-day operations. To stay open, following protocols to keep facilities sanitized is necessary. Elevations RTC understands that families trust the program to provide students with the utmost care the entire time. The focus has always been on helping adolescents get back on track, but the pandemic has created brand new challenges. Open and ready for business, Elevations RTC believes that they have a proper plan to keep everyone in the center as safe and healthy as possible. Trained staff Elevations RTC has always offered every student access to a superb medical staff, 24 hours a day. Led by medical director Dr. Michael Connolly, every medical professional working with the students takes the proper precautions to keep students as healthy as possible. Whether it is cleaning and sterilizing every room before a new student comes in or wearing masks while having face-to-face discussions, the staff is going above and beyond any protocols set by the state of Utah. Another change that Elevations RTC has considered is the impact on students mentally. It is important to monitor mental health with so much added stress during a pandemic. Specific training to handle these types of situations is what Elevations RTC has focused on. Every medical professional has worked on training to be prepared for new problems and warning signs that might pop up during this time. Every staff member is working together to help make this the safest residential treatment center around. Those around the students, the most must set the tone for a cleaner, healthier facility. Prepping students The trained staff will be in charge of ensuring that students feel prepared and ready for the new changes. It can be a challenge for students to learn how to change some habits, but ingraining everything, in the beginning, is one way to go. Students will be closely examined in case anyone starts to show symptoms related to COVID-19. Staff and students are monitored daily, with daily temperatures as well as checking for symptoms. If a student shows potential signs, they will be sent for testing. There is also the opportunity to socially distance and quarantine if needed. Once on campus, it is about developing habits that will stick with students and become second nature. The protocols are likely going to last at least for the next few months, so developing good habits early on will make it a breeze during the second half of a stay. Smaller groups Building a strong community from within is still an essential part of the process for Elevations RTC. With that said, some adjustments are needed during this time to protect students from spreading germs. There will be more space between students when they are in the same room, and fewer activities will include the sharing of personal items. Masks are always worn by staff when on campus and 6 ft distance whenever possible, which will help cut down on any potential spreading. Currently, all events that would include large gatherings are temporarily postponed. Parent Seminars are being held virtually. While that has cut into a regular schedule at Elevations, they are following state guidelines and staying in smaller groups to minimize the risk of a massive outbreak. Teamwork and interaction in groups is still something that Elevations still stresses quite a bit. Since the campus is their home, it cuts down on having to socially distance from each other. Staff and student interactions require a mask, but students living on campus are part of a smaller bubble without as many restrictions. Visitor limitations One of the biggest changes for Elevations RTC with COVID-19 is the limitation of visitors. Elevations follows state and licensing guidelines. All visits will need to be clinically indicated. The entire campus is under restriction to a certain degree, and every visitor will be subject to a screening process. As for potential visits to tour the campus and see if it is the right fit, Elevations RTC is offering virtual tours to meet with our team and students. Increased sanitation standards The sanitation standards at Elevations RTC have always been outstanding, but there is now even more of an increased focus to keep everyone safe. That means cleaning the entire campus throughout the day, especially in the most common areas. Certain surfaces near the entry and exit points of the campus will be cleaned multiple times a day. With so much traffic passing through, it is necessary to limit germs. Everyone is reminded to wash their hands, wear their masks and keep a proper six foot boundary whenever possible. Each employee has gone through training to cover the basics with handwashing and general sanitation. Staff members also help the students remember to wash their hands and be mindful of their own areas. To keep the facility sanitized as much as possible, everyone needs to chip in and follow everything as far as procedures are concerned. How long will the new standards last? Elevations RTC plans to have these new health and sanitation standards in place for the next few months. There is a chance that this is the new normal in some ways, and the changes will be permanent. After lifted restrictions, things might be a bit more relaxed, but there is something to be said for having a thoroughly sanitized location to keep staff and students healthy. Expect most of these protocols to linger around, at least for the next year. The changes have not increased the budget much. Everyone at Elevations is just a bit more focused. This means that as time goes on, it will not be that much different. Jeff Hansen Digital Marketing Manager Good Guy News 8016871404 SOURCE Elevations RTC Two months after staff at Hungary's top news-site Index.hu quit over alleged political interference, they are set for a comeback with an unprecedented crowdfunding effort. More than 50 former Index reporters will launch a new site, Telex, from scratch "in the coming weeks" thanks to more than 30,000 reader donations, editor-in-chief Veronika Munk told AFP. The venture is a daring new direction for Hungarian independent media, which has struggled to survive during a decade of rule by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. "Nobody has ever launched an independent news site from the ground up with a staff this big before, relying only on reader support," says Munk, 40, who joined Index as an intern 18 years ago before quitting along with 80 colleagues in July. Beyond the initial months, with independent media mostly deprived of state advertising and few private advertisers around, Telex plans a mixed part-subscription model to cover estimated monthly costs of tens of thousands of euros. - Lopsided landscape - At Telex's temporary Budapest headquarters, an apartment near the river Danube, the former Index journalists process donations and busily prepare for the launch. Munk told AFP the ambitious plan is "crucial for Hungarian press freedom and media pluralism" as the number of critical news sources dwindles. Government allies now control most private media outlets, while public broadcasters and the state news agency serve as Orban's propaganda organs. According to international election observers in 2018, the EU member's "lopsided media landscape" and "restricted access to information" helped re-elect Orban for his third straight term since 2010. The anti-immigration leader has reshaped EU member Hungary as a so-called "illiberal" state, regularly stoking conflict with Brussels where he has been accused of dismantling democratic institutions. The US state-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said last week that a "steep decline in media freedom" prompted it to restart a Hungarian service after 27 years. Index.hu was one of the few independent voices left in Hungary / AFP/File On Friday, Hungary's media authority denied the only government-critical news-and-talk radio station Klubradio a licence extension, citing technical breaches of rules. Pro-government media has also recently "ominously" attacked the owner of the largest remaining independent news-site 24.hu, according to Gabor Polyak, an analyst at the Mertek Media Monitor think-tank. "Critical voices are being killed off one-by-one, either by economic or political means like Index, or legal ones like Klubradio," Polyak told AFP. With more than a million daily readers, Index was the most popular website in the country of 9.8 million people, but Orban had long dubbed it "fake news". In March a businessman who helped turn another formerly independent news-site, Origo, into a pro-Orban organ bought a large share in Index's advertising branch. "It wasn't like in a censorship movie, no-one told us what to write, but at that moment we knew the end was near," Munk says. In July the editor-in-chief was sacked after claiming Index's editorial independence was in "grave danger" from a proposed organisational overhaul, triggering the staff walk-out. Management have since hired a former operator of Orban's official website as a deputy editor, and are recruiting new staff. Its critical content has declined while its daily readership has almost halved, according to official monitoring data. "I've deleted the Index app on my phone," said a reader comment on a Facebook site set up by the former staff. - Sustainable? - Munk said: "People were shocked by the walkout. For the first time many realised that information is worth paying for, not just at news-stands but online too. "They see that restricted information affects their freedoms and hurts democracy." Majority owned by the journalists themselves, Telex is also talking to potential investors, but Munk says a "lesson was learned" at Index. "Anyone owned by a few big external investors and dependent on advertisement revenue is vulnerable. Investors must guarantee not to interfere," she says. The independent, crowdfunded Hungarian news site Telex is staffed by more than 50 former Index reporters with backing from more than 30,000 reader donations / AFP Whether Telex can survive long-term is uncertain, according to Polyak, who points to "dangerous competition for limited reader resources" among smaller independent sites. "It's also risky," he noted, if free information is mostly found on pro-government media. Tamas Bodoky, a journalist who started the country's first crowdfunded investigative site in 2011 named Atlatszo, "Transparent" in Hungarian, suspects the crowdfunding model "works only on small scale". "But the whole cake may grow if more people support news sources with micro-donations," Bodoky told AFP. "The Telex story is a significant step towards acceptance of this business model," he said. When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S. in March, lawmakers acted quickly to pass the CARES Act, which delivered several kinds of relief for people struggling financially because of temporary shutdowns of businesses. That aid included one-time economic impact payments known as stimulus checks of up to $1,200 per eligible adult. Those payments whether they arrived as direct deposits to bank accounts, paper checks or debit cards were a hit with recipients and lawmakers, many of whom said a second round of checks could be on the way. Producing the deal that would make those checks possible, however, has been difficult. In late May, the House of Representatives passed the $3.3 trillion HEROES Act, which included a second round of payments and even increased the amount eligible dependents could receive. (The HEROES Act proposed $1,200 per dependent, while the CARES Act paid $500 per eligible dependent child.) The Senate never voted on that House bill, and the Senate's two proposals for new economic relief legislation the $1 trillion HEALS Act (which included a stimulus check) and a slimmed-down $500 billion package (which did not) failed to pass. Looming election a potential obstacle to negotiations This week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed that the House would remain in session until the election in order to reach agreement on a new round of stimulus legislation. We are committed to staying here until we have an agreement that meets the needs of the American people, she said during an interview on CNBC. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also expressed willingness to continue negotiations on a new bipartisan relief package. I think there's many areas of this where [there] is an agreement between the Democrats and the Republicans, and some of the areas we do have differences on the amounts, he said Monday. I've told the speaker I'm available any time to negotiate." A bipartisan group of 50 members of Congress dubbed the Problem Solvers Caucus on Tuesday introduced a proposal for a $1.5 trillion stimulus package. That legislation would provide a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks, among other measures. But the proposal appears unlikely to advance. "I don't think that Congress is going to vote on that anytime soon, Fucile says. But it's possible that that effort could help break the logjam, to get negotiators back to the table." The impending elections could further complicate the ability of lawmakers to produce a relief package over the next few weeks or even by the end of the calendar year. Some lawmakers who are up for reelection may be less willing to compromise out of concerns about what their base of supporters may think. "The closer you get to the elections, I think the harder it is to get a deal, Fucile says. Then after the election, depending on the outcome, it could be very difficult to get a deal before the next administrative term starts." Farmers stand at La Boquilla Dam, where they wrested control from National Guard troops in order to close the valves and reduce the flow of water toward the United States, in Chihuahua State, Mexico, on Sept. 9, 2020. (Christian Chavez/AP Photo) Mexican President Vows to Pay US Water Debt, Thanks Trump MEXICO CITYMexicos president vowed Thursday to repay the countrys water debt to the United States, even if it means asking farmers in Mexican states along the U.S. border to pitch in. Time is running out for Mexico to pay the debt by the Oct. 24 deadline, especially after protesters seized a dam in Chihuahua state to stop water transfers. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said in the past he would appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump for understanding if Mexico couldnt make the deadline, and on Thursday he once again thanked Trump for being respectful of Mexico on other issues. It is one of the things I have to thank President Trump for, that he has been respectful, Lopez Obrador said, noting the United States had interfered in Mexico in the past on other issues. Before they used to get involved, as if we were not free and sovereign, he said, adding not anymore, and for that we are very thankful. Lopez Obrador has been criticized by the left in recent months over his friendly relations with Trump; Lopez Obrador has countered that it is in Mexicos national interest to maintain friendly relations with the United States. But it is unclear how much Trump can help in an election, with Texas farmers angry that Mexico has fallen so far behind in cross-border water sharing agreed to under a 1944 treaty. More than a week ago, hundreds of farmers angry about losing water seized a dam in the northern state of Chihuahua, seeking to block the transfers that benefit farmers and towns along the Rio Grande. National Guard troops equipped with riot gear stand guard at Las Pilas dam, two days after withdrawing from nearby La Boquilla dam after clashing with hundreds of farmers, in Camargo, Chihuahua State, Mexico, on Sept. 10, 2020. (Christian Chavez/AP Photo) With just over five weeks to go, Mexico still has to transfer almost a years worth of water to meet the deadline. The United States gives Mexico four times more water from the Colorado River farther west under the treaty, and Lopez Obrador is apparently worried about the possibility of losing that. Lopez Obrador raised the possibility of asking farmers in other Mexican border statesan apparent reference to Tamaulipasto pitch in if the situation in Chihuahua cannot be resolved. If it gets difficult, we are looking for solidarity from other northern states, if nothing can be done in Chihuahua, for other northern states to help out, he said. He acknowledged that threatens to broaden the conflict, which has became a cause for the conservative opposition party National Action. Lopez Obrador accused protesters of planning to seize the offices of the National Water Commission in Tamaulipas. They want to make this (conflict) regional, for political and electoral reasons, Lopez Obrador said. National Action Party leader Marko Cortes expressed his partys total support for the protesters, who fought National Guard officers with sticks and rocks in Chihuahua, and he called for reviewing or revising the treaty. The international water treaty negotiated by Mexico and the United States in 1944 should be revised, if necessary, with a view to prioritizing the interests of the people of Mexico, Cortes said. As of Sept. 5, Mexico still owed 307,943 acre-feet (379.6 million cubic meters) of water before Oct. 24, in part because of debts built up in previous years. The United States says it still technically feasible for Mexico to meet the goal. While the bulk of Mexicos water debt is usually paid from Chihuahua, there is a dam in Tamaulipas that could be used to transfer water for use by the United States. But that runs the risk that farmers in Tamaulipas might join the protest movement. It all places Lopez Obradorwhose main stated policy is to defend the poorin a strange position, being criticized by conservatives for being too eager to please the United States. He stressed we have a good relationship with the U.S. government and we are not going to get into any political confrontation. Ivory Coast ex-rebel leader and former premier Guillaume Soro, whose bid for the presidency was invalidated by a court, vowed Thursday there would "be no election" next month, and urged opposition leaders to unite against incumbent Alassane Ouattara Paris (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Sep, 2020 ) :Ivory Coast ex-rebel leader and former premier Guillaume Soro, whose bid for the presidency was invalidated by a court, vowed Thursday there would "be no election" next month, and urged opposition leaders to unite against incumbent Alassane Ouattara. "To maintain the election of 31 (October) does not make any sense, to participate in it would be to endorse the institutional coup d'etat of Alassane Ouattara," Soro told reporters in Paris. "There will be no election" on that date. By Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) - An OPEC+ technical panel warned that a rise in coronavirus cases in some countries may curb oil demand despite signs of economic recovery and initial indications of a decline in oil stocks, according to an internal document seen by Reuters on Thursday. Later on Thursday, OPEC and allies, led by Russia, are scheduled to hold an online meeting to discuss compliance with their agreed output cuts and demand trends amid falling oil prices and a faltering economic recovery outlook. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Jan Harvey) Written by ACM *Strasbourg/Angelo Marcopolo/- Nowadays, not only "the COVID Crisis is Not Over Yet", But, on the Contrary, "a 2nd Wave has Hit Europe, and Everybody feels Distressed about How to Deal with this Virus Pandemics, and How the Democratic Institutions are going to Respond at this, Longer than Predicted, Standing Challenge", stressed from the outset CoE's Chairman-in-office, Greek Minister for European Affairs, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, (an Experienced former Long-Time CoE Assembly's Top MEP, Elected vice-President of its Biggest Group, that of ChristianDemocrats/EPP), Introducing an Interview of Stanford University Professor Josiah Ober, about the Historic InSights that can Bring a Timely Comparison Between the Plague which Killed Many People during the Ancient Greek Democracy of Athens, 2,5 Thousand Years Ago, and the Contemporary, 2020 Deadly Virus' Crisis. In this regard, the current CoE's Greek Presidency (5-11/2020) plans to Culminate, on November 2020, with an Official Declaration of the PanEuropean, 47 Member Countries-strong Organisation of Strasbourg, on the situation of Human Rights and Democracy in Times of Pandemics, (See: http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/newgreekagendaforcoechair2020.html + http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/greekcoepresidency2020.html + http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/coeleadersonhumanrightsandvirus.html, etc). I.e. an Obviously, more and more Topical Issue, of Growing Importance, as, it appears, inter alia, Also by Various Relevant Protest Popular Movements and/or Demonstrations, Including, f.ex., those in Germany, from Berlin to Munich, etc., (Even with the Active Participation of RF. Kennedy, Son of Murdered USA Justice Secretary and Pesidential Candidate Robert Kennedy, and Nephew of also Murdered US President John Kennedy : See http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/kennedyjrinberlinonvirusandweb.html, etc), which, in Fact, Extended much Further than Controversies on Virus' Policy alone, Raising, More Widely, various Interesting Issues on Democracy and Human Rights Nowadays and in the foreseable Future. -------------------------- Going well Beyond Erzats (and Potentialy Anti-Democratic, Oppressive) Banalities Against so-called "Populism" or "Conspirationism", and so on, Vaguely "Copied and Pasted" by an Establishment Medias' youngster cosy employee, it's the Main Conclusions of Josiah Ober which seem to be really Interesting, Surprizingly appearing to Back "Eurofora" co-Founder's long-time Project and Legal Research on Dialogue with Citizens during Public Decision-Making. Among others, 3 Main Points : (A) Despite some Hard Apperances, in Fact, [then Direct] Democracy is more Resilient than it seems : F.ex., it Continued to Function in Athens, Even during the Plague, and the Peloponesian War, against Sparta. (Plague killed 1 out of 4 Athenian People, even Popular Leader Pericles Died at its 2nd Year, But a Decline came Only 25 Years Later, i.e. Long After that Plague, so, it could be, probably, due also to Other Factors). Meanwhile, inter alia, Moreover, Socrates' Philosophy (NDLR : with his Famous "Dialogues", etc), Followed by Platon, etc., was being Developed... (B) "Collective Self-Government by the People" is Not Automatically, Neither Fully Identical to "Liberal Democracy"'s conception Based on "Rights and Justice". => In Consequence, a (ReNegotiable) Bargain is Needed. (I.e., something apparently, Near "Eurofora" CoFounder's Legal Research about Law being, in Substance, the "Crystalisation of a Provisional Compromise, Based on a Balance Between Different Socio-Political Forces"). (C) In Future : "Hope" for "Inventing" a "New Form", Based, Mainly, on "Humanity"'s Unique Capacity to Reasonably Communicate (= "Talk to each-other", i.e. almost as "Eurofora" Co-Founder's Project and Legal Research on "Dialogue with Citizens in Public Decision-Making", as Socrates' famous "Dialectics") ? ----- + Almost TEXTO (the Main Concluding Point, of Josiah Ober) : - "The Next Generation Needs to Think about How to ReFormulate the Civic Bargain", (Comp. "Eurofora" Co-Founder's : "Crystalisation of a Provisional Compromise Based on a Balance of Forces"). i.e. the Bargain that Citizens make among them, Deciding How Much Self Goverment, How Much Social Justice,) How much the Rich or the Non-Rich might Receive, etc. It "Needs to be Stable enough", But "Can be ReNegociated OverTime". With "Stability and Flexibility". At the Heart of such a "Democracy" lies = "Making an Agreement, Basicaly a Bargain. Not to Get Everything, but Each gets More than he had. Not All or Nothing". (Comp. Supra). => Journalist's Question : - "What gives you Optimism for the Future ?" >>> Ober's Final Reply : "Humans are Cooperative Creatures ! Compared to Other Primates (f.ex. Chimpajies, Gorillas, etc), it's Amazing how Able We are for Cooperation, at Large Scale, and Over Time". (NDLR : However, Only that, Obviously does Not Go much Further than ... the Ants, which are also very Good in Collective Cooperation, as anyone who has Observed their amazing Activities can Find). + "We (Humans) are, Also, Capable of REASON, ... and we have this Remarcable Capacity for COMMUNICATION. ... We Can SPEAK TO EACH-OTHER !" (NDLR : i.e. Hold a Dialogue). => "And, With Sociability (i.e. Cooperation), With Capacity to Reason, with this Remarkable Capacity to Communicate, We (Humans) Can do absolutely Amazing things". >>> "...That's, Basically, ARISTOTES' Conception of Politics... I think Aristotes' was Right !". (../..) ("Draft-News") The wildfire smoke inundating Oregons fields and farms this month arrived right at harvest season for many crops, presenting agricultural laborers with an impossible dilemma: Come to work in hazardous conditions, or stay away without pay. That didnt sound like much of a choice to many of the people who harvest Oregons crops. For us, one days worth of wages is significant, said one middle-aged farmworker, who spent four hour picking grapes in Yamhill County last Friday, even as conditions reached very unhealthy levels on the Air Quality Index. For some people, one day of wages might not make a huge difference, but for us it does, said the woman, who asked not to be named so she could speak freely about her working conditions. The woman, speaking through a Spanish interpreter, said she had recently recovered from COVID-19. Still, the concerns she has about the pandemic and the abysmal air quality havent stopped her from picking up shifts whenever she can, simply because she needs every cent she can earn. Even working, two, three or four hours in a day makes a huge difference, she said. Farmers, already suffering down years due to the pandemic, have faced their own conundrum with wildfires raging throughout the state. Many have sent their workers home, a concession to the hazardous conditions, but others have continued operations, knowing any delay risks their harvest. STATE RESPONSE This months unprecedented wildfires have highlighted a potential gap in Oregons workplace regulations, which dont detail how employers should respond to extremely poor air quality. Thats put farm laborers, factory workers and others in a difficult position, one that medical experts say could jeopardize their health. In California, employers are required to halt operations when the Air Quality Index (AQI) reaches an unhealthy level of 151 or else provide workers with particulate respirators, such as an N95 mask. Oregon doesnt have a similar mandate. Reyna Lopez, director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregons largest farmworkers union, sent a letter to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and state officials last Friday urging Oregon to adopt similarly strong rules to protect workers from wildfire smoke. Oregons Occupational Safety and Health division (Oregon OSHA) issued a notice the same day urging employers to stop or delay outdoor work activity while the air remains unhealthy or hazardous, allow workers with underlying health conditions to stay home and provide respirators to employees that must continue to work outside. But a spokesman for Oregon OSHA said the agencys notice constituted only a strong recommendation, not an enforceable requirement. On Monday, the air quality throughout much of the state was considered hazardous, with air quality levels in the Portland area nearing 400 and levels topping 500 in parts of the state closer to the wildfires, according to Oregons Department of Environmental Quality. Those levels were the worst anywhere on Earth. The air quality remained unhealthy or very unhealthy throughout much of the state Wednesday, but forecasters expected some improvement by Friday. While N95 respirators have been preserved for healthcare and frontline workers during the pandemic and remain scarce, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Monday that the National Guard was distributing 250,000 KN95 masks to agricultural workers and impacted tribal communities. KN95 masks are regulated by the Chinese government, but many health authorities consider them suitable alternatives to N95 masks. Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Brown, said the state was also looking into options to provide financial resources for workers impacted by the wildfires. Its incredibly important that, when air quality reaches hazardous levels, Oregonians stay inside as much as possible to protect their health, Boyle said. Governor Browns goal is to make sure agricultural workers are protected from the health impacts of hazardous air quality, which is why she directed Oregon OSHA to issue guidance to employers last week. Barb Iverson is president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, which advocates for the states farmers. She said the majority of growers that she has spoken with have been monitoring conditions daily and have asked workers to stay home since the air quality became unhealthy. That is what Iverson has been doing at Iverson Family Farms in Woodburn. Some farmers have already completed their harvests as well. However, Iverson said there are some farmers who cannot delay operations without losing their crops and have asked their workers to continue to come out during the last week. She said many farms had already secured N95 masks and similar respirators due to the coronavirus pandemic, which they have been able to distribute to laborers working during the wildfires. You dont want to expose workers much at all to this, Iverson said. Weve been looking at the Air Quality Index every morning and telling our workers to stay home. I think thats what most places are doing, but there are a few of them that cant. A TERRIBLE CHOICE Fernando Gutierrez, who oversees a farmworker outreach and advocacy program at the Oregon Employment Department, said that conditions on the ground have varied significantly at different farms. He said he has been fielding calls from farmworkers across the state over the last week who have expressed concerns about their safety. Gutierrez said he was told by one farmworker that several women, who had not been provided face masks by their employer, had gotten ill and vomited while working at a farm in Canby on Saturday. Gutierrez said he filed a complaint with Oregon OSHA after learning about the incident. This last week, its been horrible, horrible conditions, Gutierrez said. In my opinion, its been kind of an inhumane situation having those people out there in the field. We know the harvest has to be done, but the human side of things has to be looked at, too. Oregon OSHA has fielded 425 complaints from workers and advocates alleging unsafe working conditions since the wildfires began. Many construction sites shut down, but mail carriers, trash collectors and many factory workers continued working this week. Only three of the OSHA complaints were related to conditions at farm operations, two of which alleged that laborers were being forced to work in smoky conditions without being provided proper masks. At least 10 other complaints were related to conditions in food processing facilities. Dr. Eva Galvez, a family physician who works with migrant and seasonal farmworkers through the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center in Hillsboro, said that her patients understand the health risks of working outdoors when air quality levels reach unhealthy and hazardous levels, but many have still chosen to continue working over the last week because they cant afford to miss a day of work or risk losing their jobs by opting to stay home. Missing a week of work for my patients often means not being able to pay their rent or buy groceries for their families, Galvez said. Farmworkers, once again, are being faced with an awful choice. Either you take care of yourself and your health and stay home, or you go to work and risk your health, but support your family. Its a terrible choice, but a choice they have to make every day. Its the same issue weve been seeing with COVID-19. LONG-TERM IMPACTS One vineyard worker in Yamhill County said he worked six days over the last week, spending eight hours each day picking grapes. The man, married to the farmworker recently recovered from COVID-19, said his employer did not provide him with an N95 mask or similar respirator so he brought a cloth mask from home. Health authorities consider such masks ineffective when air quality is bad. The man found himself struggling to breathe normally as he worked, and the effects of the smoke lingered with him long after he returned home. He has diabetes and worries about the long-term consequences of inhaling wildfire smoke, but said he cant afford to miss work with two children to support. When I get home, I continue to have trouble breathing and Im extremely exhausted, the man said through a Spanish interpreter. Another vineyard worker in Jackson County said she continued working until the evening of Sept. 8 when she received a call from a friend informing her that her apartment building was being evacuated. She drove home and grabbed her dogs before driving to her sons house outside the evacuation zone. She later learned that her apartment building had been destroyed in the devastating Almeda fire. She had lived in a low-income housing complex with other agricultural workers, including some close friends and family, who also lost their homes. At the same time that she is trying to process the loss of her home and possessions, she is also worried that the vineyard where she works may not have survived the fire either. Earlier this summer, she was let go from a separate vineyard job she had held for three years after following a doctors recommendation to quarantine for two weeks as a precaution due to an ear infection. Losing that job had already put her in a precarious financial situation. If there is nothing left to harvest now, she will be out of a job until next year. How am I going to replace my furniture? she asked through a Spanish interpreter. How am I going to pay for rent? Similar financial concerns have compelled farmworkers, who can go to work, to continue to stay on the job over the last week, even as state officials have urged Oregonians to remain indoors. Galvez worries about the long-term impacts that the wildfire smoke and unhealthy air conditions will have on those farmworkers, many of whom dont have health insurance, sick leave or access to unemployment insurance. With climate change, every summer is becoming hotter and drier, so what were seeing is these forest fires, Galvez said. This affects people who dont have the choice to work indoors. You have this population who is working outside, who has the potential to get sick, either now or in the long-term, who doesnt have health insurance, she said. I do feel like there needs to be some larger conversations about how we protect these essential workers who are really vulnerable. -- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg John MacArthur's Grace Community Church in Sun Valley was once again notified to wear masks and conduct proper in-person service social distancing. Although most believers stated they recommended online service due to the state orders, the church has been holding in-person service for about 2 months. MacArthur and his church have been in a continual battle against what he claims are unconstitutional treatment towards churches, while the Governor Nosom encourages others to gather for protests, ignoring the same rules he's trying to enforce on believers. On September 10th, the Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted the county's request for an injunction prohibiting the Church from following specific health guidelines. Judge Mitchell Beckloff informed that Grace Community Church violated the county's health orders. The church communities state they will continue to limit in-person worship during the pandemic as they are yet concerned with a spiritual battle. To protect worshippers in a safe environment, the judge granted a statement notifying the church leaders that they must start working outside with physical distancing and masks. Pastor John MacArthur continued to hold indoor worship and said 'its nationally watched battle over coronavirus restriction.' According to Los Angeles Daily News, the church and Los Angeles County filed lawsuits as the church wanted to maintain its right to gather as a congregation indoors. However, on Saturday, the California Second District Court of Appeal issued an emergency order overturning the trial court decision. 'Due to the safety measures of the state law, John MacArthur's Grace Community Church in Sun Valley is now only allowed to hold outdoor services with correct safety measures including, social distances, masks, and temperature checked to gather. INCHEON, South Korea - The Protestant pastor's sermon echoed through a vast, virtually deserted church. A handful of worshipers took their positions, spaced out among the pews. Hundreds more watched at home over a live stream. "May they point fingers at our churches as the epicenter of the coronavirus, we will stick to our principles and stand firm in front of our God," Rev. Seog Sang-woo told his scattered congregation on a recent Sunday. In South Korea, Christians find themselves at the center of pandemic controversy, after places of worship and Christian communities were blamed by President Moon Jae-in for two waves of coronavirus infections. The ensuing dispute has mixed religion, epidemiology and politics in a nation where nearly 1 in 3 people identify as Christian and where those who do often lean conservative, putting them at odds with Moon's center-left government. As a result of the controversy, Seog's Gyesan Jeil Church - in Incheon city, southwest of the capital, Seoul - was forced to switch to largely online services last month. And the pastor is not happy. "Except for a few rule-breakers, most churches, including ours, have been carefully observing health rules at excruciating emotional and financial cost," he said in an interview. "Enforcing these restrictions unilaterally upon all Protestant churches, this is nothing short of communism." In February, the messianic Shincheonji Church of Jesus sparked South Korea's earliest and largest cluster of coronavirus infections, with 5,000 cases traced to the church. The second-biggest cluster, linked to nearly 1,200 infections, broke out at another megachurch led by a popular, conservative pastor. Health officials cited a subsequent anti-government rally led by that pastor, the Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, last month as the source of 585 more infections. Jun is accused of defying health rules to hold services and anti-government protests, while some of his churchgoers resisted coronavirus testing and aggravated transmission because of their grudge against the government, health officials say. South Korea's government banned in-person services at churches following February's Shincheonji outbreak. The restriction was lifted briefly when virus transmission slowed, but was reinstated last month after the outbreak at Jun's church. Meeting with leaders of Protestant groups in the Seoul area last month, Moon urged compliance with the coronavirus rules. "Services or prayers may bring peace of mind, but they cannot protect people from the virus," Moon said, according to a readout of the meeting provided by his office. "I believe all religions should accept the fact that epidemic prevention and control does not belong in the realm of faith but that of science and medicine." Representing Protestant leaders at the meeting, Kim Tae-young, the head of the United Christian Churches of Korea, apologized for the outbreaks but raised concerns about "government control over religious freedom" and asked Moon for flexibility for churches that have larger spaces. "Religion might be a pastime for some but for many of us, religious freedom is a value that cannot be surrendered even if it costs one's life," he said. Mainstream Protestant groups have distanced themselves from the Shincheonji church, calling it a cult. At the Gyesan Jeil church, Seog says the state-imposed ban is understandable for churches that broke health rules, but unfair on those that followed the guidelines. Compliance officers who visit Seog's Gyesan Jeil church every Sunday have not found a single breach, he said. Today, Gyesan Jeil's six-story building is nearly deserted, and the church choir has been silenced. In the basement cafeteria, giant stoves, normally used to cook meals for hundreds of congregants, sit idle. Cleaners who sterilize the church three times weekly are among the handful of regular guests. On the recent Sunday, the main 670-seat worship hall had just 20 churchgoers sitting at a distance from each other, and a dozen essential staff members setting up the live stream and other logistics. Seog says the hall can accommodate 150 people with a distanced seating plan, but he complains that the government's health rules have capped the maximum number of attendees at 20 for all churches, no matter the size of the building. Half a year into the pandemic, falling donations mean Gyesan Jeil is feeling a financial pinch, just scraping together the money to pay staff salaries, including for the choir and band that have barely performed since the spring. What hurts more than the financial hardship, Seog said, is an emerging social stigma against Christians that surfaced with the recent mass outbreaks at churches. "Following last month's church outbreak, I found myself getting conscious about other people's eyes when doing our dinner prayer at a restaurant, even though our church never reported any virus cases," he said. Christians make up about 28% of the South Korean population, but Kim Hae-kwon, professor of Christian studies at Soongsil University in Seoul, said stigma had been growing even before the coronavirus outbreaks, due to the increasing politicization of Protestant church groups. "South Korean churches where pastors exercise big influence on congregants are a breeding ground for populist Christian leaders who manipulate the power of faith for political gains," Kim said. "The conservative pastors confronting the government's virus control measures are basically outsiders, but their outspokenness leads them to overrepresent the entire Protestant church." In a pandemic, the church should not be a political battleground, but a sanctuary for Christian values of compassion, endurance and mercy, Seog said. At the Sunday service, the 20 permitted seats for in-person attendance were allocated for those with the "most urgent need." Heo Kang-ho, a 55-year-old airport shuttle driver whose day job has been suspended because of the pandemic, said he had been looking forward to coming to the church all week. "I really missed this energy at the worship hall," he said. "It's nothing like looking at the sermon on my phone." Another congregant, 80-year-old Kim Young-soon, said prayer time with members of the church is "an essential lifeline" for her. "They say the coronavirus can kill, and I am of course worried about leaving home, but this is where I need to come to feel alive," she said. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani spent midday Wednesday taking shots at the city's current administration, including schools chancellor Richard Carranza, who is from Tucson. Apparently referring to Mayor Bill de Blasio, Giuliani said "He has a chancellor that belongs in Cuba, running their school system. Maybe he should go back to Cuba, which is where he had his honeymoon." The "he" references in Giuliani's comments were confusing, but Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife honeymooned in Cuba. Carranza was born and raised in Tucson, the grandson of Mexican immigrants. He graduated from Pueblo High School as well as the University of Arizona. He led school districts in the Las Vegas area, San Francisco and Houston before being named chancellor of New York City public schools in 2018. He has taken heavy criticism over his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, from the school closures in March to the attempt at a "blended" re-opening of schools this month. The first shipments of British beef is being prepared for the US for the first time in more than 20 years, representing a 'historic moment' for UK farmers. Shipments of beef will be heading to the United States for the first time in two decades after three processing sites were this week given the go-ahead to export. The first containers are due to arrive within the coming weeks, in a deal estimated to be worth 66 million over the next five years. Numerous farming industry groups working alongside the government have worked for years to seal the lucrative deal. It comes after market access for UK beef was granted in March of this year, following the USs longstanding ban on EU beef introduced in the wake of the BSE outbreak in 1996. Figures show last year was one of the best years on record for UK red meat exports - rocketing to more than 1.5 billion. According to HMRC, the total value of red meat exports rose 13% year-on-year, with more than 661,000 tonnes of pork, lamb and beef shipped around the world. AHDB International Market Development Director, Dr Phil Hadley said beef shipments to the American market represented a 'historic moment' for British farmers. We are rightly proud of our industry, which has a reputation for producing high quality beef to some of the best welfare standards in the world," he said. The US represents an important potential market for our red meat exports and this development is the result of the hard work and persistence of industry and government to bring about this crucial next step. This important milestone will bring a fantastic boost to the sector and we look forward to seeing more of our red meat served up on dinner tables across the US in the months and years to come. Organisations that worked to complete the deal include the AHDB, APHA, FSA, Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) and Hybu Cig Cymru Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) and UKECP. T he full scale of the Covid testing crisis in London can be exposed today after an Evening Standard investigation found appointments were not available to book online in any borough. The Standard tried to arrange walk-in or drive-in slots in each of the 32 boroughs yesterday but every time received the message: No test sites found. The same problem was continuing this morning. It came as the number of daily cases increased to almost 4,000 across the UK yesterday and Boris Johnson admitted that the testing system has huge problems and that many people are deeply frustrated. A new rationing system was due to be announced shortly to place NHS patients, staff, care homes and key workers such as teachers at the front of the queue for tests. The number of patients with coronavirus being admitted to hospital in London increased to 31, the highest daily number since the start of July. Postcodes for each borough were entered at least once yesterday by the Standard in an attempt to book a test, but on every occasion nothing was available. But if a postcode in Scotland was entered into the government website, hundreds of test slots were immediately available, in locations such as Dundee and Aberdeen. The shortage continued this morning, with new slots in London being snapped up within minutes. By 10am, the nearest testing sites being offered were in Ramsgate, Kent, and Swindon, Wiltshire. Astonishingly, it was claimed today that Baroness Harding, the head of NHS Test and Trace, told a summit on Friday that a fifth of the lab capacity serving London had been diverted to serve the North-West and other hotspots. Peter John, chairman of London Councils, told Times Radio: Dido Harding told us that last week and we know that at least 20 per cent of testing capacity has been removed from the city. Health chiefs have told the Standard that about 70,000 pillar 2 community tests the nasal and throat swabs for members of the public are done in London each week. Additional tests are done in NHS hospitals and in care homes under the pillar 1 testing regime. The crisis around testing was growing in London as more families told how they were having to self-isolate for days because they were unable to book tests. Consultant Karen Mugenyi, from East Dulwich, tried for days to book a test for her daughter Siena, six, who developed a temperature at the end of last week. My husband set an alarm for midnight because we heard the Government might release more testing slots then but there werent any, she said. She was eventually offered a test in Epsom earlier this week a three-hour round trip. Tina Stevens, from Tower Hamlets, tried for two days to get a test on the government website. Loading.... Ms Stevens, who works in a school, said: I am a key worker and was given a code to say this and it made absolutely no difference. I was utterly shocked that this was how it was. I eventually was able to get a test through my sons school, which is also my employer. Infection rates are continuing to rise across the capital. Redbridge remains the worst-hit local authority, recording 38 cases per 100,000 people and 117 new infections in the latest weekly figures. One of the largest permanent Covid-19 testing centres in London opened in the borough in July. However, dozens of people had to be turned away from the site in Ilford town centre at the weekend because the centre could not cope, the council said. Loading.... A mobile testing unit that had been due to be sent today and tomorrow to Church Street near Marylebone an ethnically diverse area that suffered a number of Covid deaths at the peak of the pandemic was suddenly cancelled at short notice. The Government has also moved to shut down an alleged loophole, where people desperate for a test were obtaining QR codes necessary for having a test by booking appointments in places hundreds of miles from their homes, such as Scotland, then turning up with them at a London testing centre. The Department for Health and Social Care was today unable to say how many community tests were available in London yesterday. Across England there were 131,781 pillar 2 tests on Tuesday, the most recent data available 11,000 fewer than the day before. A spokesman said it was working to overcome the spike in demand for tests, with measures such as increasing lab capacity. A DHSC spokesman said: NHS Test and Trace is providing tests at an unprecedented scale 200,000 a day on average over the last week with the vast majority of people getting tested within six miles of their home. There has been a spike in demand in recent weeks and the message is clear only people with symptoms should be requesting a test. Loading.... Were doing everything possible to overcome this challenge including by bringing in new labs that can process tens of thousands of tests a day, opening new test sites, and trialling new rapid tests that will give results on the spot. The Devil All the Time sinks in its self-seriousness, and the cast gets pulled into the quicksand with it. Knockemstiff and its surrounding towns are the Devils dominion. He hides behind their backwoods and backroads, in their log cabins, their motels and even their churches. Seemingly forsaken by God, these hollers of Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time, now a Netflix movie, are the kind of places you take a detour to avoid. The name itself could translate to "Enter at your own risk." So many degenerates swarm here, they didn't really bother on a tourism campaign. A spider-handling evangelist, a serial killer couple and a dirty cop are just a few of the degenerates who run through their beaten paths on an average Friday night. In such places that reek of death, it's easy to forget the people simply trying to make a living, and fighting battles each day to stay alive. The paths to redemption for these good folks living on the fringes are limited. Nevertheless, they are unwilling to fold the poor hand they've been dealt. Like Tom Holland's Arvin Russell, who lives just across the Ohio-West Virginia border in Cold Creek, with his stepsister Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), Grandma Emma (Kristin Griffith), and Uncle Earskell (David Atkinson). You could call Arvin the protagonist, but a whole world with a certain lived-in authenticity takes centre stage in Antonio Campos's new film. Pollocks voiceover narration familiarises us with this 50s and 60s world of backwoods desperation, a world where everyone is susceptible to the devil's charms. To break the cycle of intergenerational misfortune and violence, Arvin becomes an unwitting vigilante, crossing paths with Knockemstiff and Cold Creek's most wicked. There's the new preacher Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), who abuses his position of power to prey on young women. There's the Hendersons, Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keough), a husband-and-wife team of serial killers who lure and kill young hitchhikers to immortalise them in torture-porn photos. Then, there's Sheriff Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan), Sandy's brother trying to cover up their crimes. As Arvin's dad Willard (Bill Skarsgard) puts it, "there's a lot of no-good sons-of-bitches out there." In this world, violence is the only defense against violence. The notion of the devil's ominpresence is not only literalised, but also allegorised. For example, the devil manifests itself in the form of a cancer corrupting Charlotte's body, pushing Willard into a vortex of sacrificial frenzy to save her. Still haunted by the war trauma of a crucified soldier he shot as an act of mercy, he turns to an Old Testament-style of prayer. With his son as witness, he sacrifices his pet dog in exchange for her life. She nonetheless succumbs to her illness, forcing him to make the ultimate sacrifice: himself. Lenora's father Roy (Harry Melling), the aforementioned spider-handling evangelist, sacrifices her mother Helen (Mia Wasikowska) to strengthen his bond with God. This illustrates Pollock's idea that being too religious is as dangerous as, if not more than, not being religious at all. Religion has been perverted to such an extent here the idea of God and death have become intertwined. Nowhere is this more evident than in Carl's case, who feels close to God only in the presence of death. Indeed, restraint is not a virtue in this world, and not in Antonio Campos's adaptation either. He develops a faithful synopsis of Pollock's expansive work, but fails to put his auteurial stamp on the material. Reading the novel, you feel Willard's trauma as he relives his WWII ordeal, you are agitated by how preachers use faith to manipulate true believers, and you feel the desperation of a young man trying to escape his karma. Watching the movie, you don't. It wallows in man's moral decay, but has nothing interesting to say about it. If Pollock gives us a lyrical condemnation of humanity trapped in a cycle of violence, Campos reduces it to hillbilly horrors. The lyrical, often probing, prose is flattened to a pulpy mush. Consider this sequence: Roy stabs his wife with a screwdriver to please God, and then desperately tries to resurrect her. He is himself then murdered by Carl. Sample this line: "Some people were born just so they could be buried." The Devil All the Time is misery porn at its bleakest. Humanity however emerges like a ray of sunshine breaking through the darkness that envelops this landscape. As reprehensible as they are, Sandy and Roy reveal some dignity buried beneath their devilish manners, or what Flannery O'Connor called "the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil." Roy thinks of his daughter moments before his death, and Sandy imagines a life without Carl's corrupting influence moments before her own. At the same time, Arvin reveals there's a dark side to his humanity. We see this when he brutally attacks the class bullies tormenting Lenora, and his wrath takes on a darker intensity in the climactic confrontation with Teagardin. Holland delivers his most compelling (and perhaps only?) dramatic turn since his breakout in The Impossible. Scroll up to the cast section. Sit back in awe of the actors assembled. It's a pleasure, all too rare, to see such talent come together, and a pity to see them simply going through the paces. The screenplay can't get a grasp on Pollock's flavourful vernacular, and prevents them from finding the heartbeat underneath. So, it turns into a contest of "who can pull off the most convincing Southern accent?" Pattinsons syrupy drawl often tips over into caricature territory, but its finger lickin' good enough for us to see him as the villain instead of a villain. He plays a man wholly committed to his sinister delusions, manipulating those around him according to his lustful desires. Some of the talent are underutilised, particularly Bennett, Wasikowska and Scanlen, whose roles are abridged to sacrificial lambs to move the story forward. The Devil All the Time sinks in its self-seriousness, and the cast gets pulled into the quicksand with it. If the Coen Brothers find humour even in nihilism, Campos finds none, as these characters hurtle towards the edge of an amoral abyss. He mistakes length for depth and after over two hours of relentless misery, like the Dude might say, it's exhausting." The Devil All the Time is now streaming on Netflix. Javorcic said most of the staff reduction has taken place through attrition of retirees since the freeze went into effect. Those steps need to be taken, he said, but the board is trying not to do anything that would affect full-time employees. DIDCOT, UK / ACCESSWIRE / September 16, 2020 / Altus Strategies Plc ("Altus" or the "Company") (TSX-V:ALTS)(AIM:ALS), announces that it has signed a definitive Purchase & Sales ("P&S") agreement and Net Smelter Return ("NSR") royalty agreements (together the "Transaction") with TSX-V listed Stellar Africa Gold Inc. ("Stellar") in respect of Altus' Prikro and Zenoula gold projects ("Projects") located in the Republic of Cote d'Ivoire ("Ivory Coast"). Highlights: Altus selling a 100% interest in two Ivory Coast gold projects Altus to receive an initial payment of: A 2.5% NSR royalty on the Projects 2,500,000 Stellar shares with a current market value of C$125,000 2,500,000 share purchase warrants, each exercisable to purchase a Stellar share for 24 months at C$0.07 Subject to the progress of the Projects, Altus will receive further equity based payments The Transaction remains subject to TSX-V approval Steven Poulton, Chief Executive of Altus, commented: "We are pleased to conclude this royalty and equity transaction with Stellar on our two prospective gold projects in Ivory Coast. Altus is focused on realising value from a high quality, diversified and precious metal focused portfolio of royalty assets. This transaction further underscores our royalty generation strategy and we look forward to Stellar's exploration progress on the Projects". Transaction Terms Stellar has acquired a 100% interest in Aeos Resources Ltd ("Aeos"), a formerly wholly owned Seychelles incorporated subsidiary of the Company. Through its Ivorian subsidiary Aucrest SARL, Aeos holds a 100% interest in the Projects. The Agreements have the following headline terms: Part 1: Consideration Upon signing of the Agreements by the Parties, Stellar will: Within 14 days and subject to any regulatory or shareholder approvals as may be required, issue 2,500,000 Units of Stellar to Altus. Each Unit will consist of one Stellar share and one 24 month share purchase warrant, with each warrant granting the holder the right but not the obligation to purchase one Stellar share at a price of C$0.07. Story continues Part 2: Milestone payments Upon the definition of a resource, confirmed by an independent NI 43-101 report, which exceeds 500,000 ounces of gold (including at least 250,000 ounces within the Indicated category), Stellar will (in respect of the first 500,000 ounces on each Project): Within 14 days and subject to any regulatory or shareholder approvals as may be required, issue Stellar shares valued (at the time of issuance) at US$250,000 to Altus. Upon the completion of a definitive feasibility study on either Project, Stellar will: Within 14 days and subject to any regulatory or shareholder approvals as may be required, issue Stellar shares valued (at the time of issuance) at US$250,000 to Altus. Part 3: Project Royalties Altus will retain a 2.5% NSR royalty on each of the Projects. Stellar will have the right to repurchase up to 1.0% of each NSR for US$0.5 million for each 0.5% repurchased. Prikro Project The Prikro project comprises a single 369.5km2 exploration licence in the Prikro and Koun-Fao Departments in eastern Ivory Coast, approximately 240km northeast of the capital of Abidjan. The project is located 40km north-west of the town of Agnibilekrou and 25km west of the town of Koun-Fao, both of which can be accessed by asphalt roads from Abidjan. The licence was selected due to the presence of historically reported gold occurrences, prospective geology, and the existence of artisanal workings in the surrounding areas including along strike of a major NE-SW trending shear zone which is interpreted to traverse the licence area. Birimian-age greenstone rocks reportedly crop out extensively across the Prikro licence and represent Paleoproterozoic meta-sedimentary units, with associated granite to diorite intrusives, which are the dominant host setting for gold deposits across West Africa. Zenoula Project The Zenoula project comprises a single 400km2 licence application which is currently pending grant in the Marahoue Department in central Ivory Coast, approximately 300km north of Abidjan. The project is located 100km north-west of the city of Yamoussoukro which can be accessed by asphalt roads from Abidjan. Zenoula is centred within a NNE trending Birimian age granite greenstone belt, 65km along strike from the Abujar project of ASX listed Tietto Minerals Limited. Mineralization hosted on this property is not necessarily indicative of the Zenoula project. Zenoula targets a 22 km long oblique ENE trending structure, interpreted by historic air magnetic data. Geologically, the project reportedly comprises metasediments, metabasalts and syntectonic granitoid intrusives. Qualified Person The technical disclosure in this regulatory announcement has been read and approved by Steven Poulton, Chief Executive of Altus. A graduate of the University of Southampton in Geology (Hons), he also holds a Master's degree from the Camborne School of Mines (Exeter University) in Mining Geology. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and has over 20 years of experience in mineral exploration and is a Qualified Person under the AIM rules and National Instrument 43-101 "Standards of Disclosure of Mineral Projects" of the Canadian Securities Administrators. For further information you are invited to visit the Company's website www.altus-strategies.com or contact: Altus Strategies Plc Steven Poulton, Chief Executive Tel:+44 (0) 1235 511 767 E: info@altus-strategies.com SP Angel (Nominated Adviser) Richard Morrison / Soltan Tagiev Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0470 SP Angel (Broker) Abigail Wayne / Richard Parlons Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0471 Yellow Jersey PR (Financial PR & IR) Georgia Colkin / Charles Goodwin / Henry Wilkinson Tel: +44 (0) 20 3004 9512 E: altus@yellowjerseypr.com About Altus Strategies Plc Altus Strategies is a London (AIM:ALS) and Toronto (TSX-V:ALTS) listed mining royalty company generating a diversified and precious metal focused portfolio of assets. The Company's focus on Africa and differentiated approach, of generating royalties on its own discoveries as well as through financings and acquisitions with third parties, has attracted key institutional investor backing. The Company engages constructively with all stakeholders, working diligently to minimise its environmental impact and to promote positive economic and social outcomes in the communities where it operates. For further information, please visit www.altus-strategies.com. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information included in this announcement, including information relating to future financial or operating performance and other statements that express the expectations of the Directors or estimates of future performance constitute "forward-looking statements". These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include without limitation the completion of planned expenditures, the ability to complete exploration programmes on schedule and the success of exploration programmes. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date of this announcement and the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Where the Company expresses or implies an expectation or belief as to future events or results, such expectation or belief is based on assumptions made in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. The forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as at the date hereof and the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information or any forward-looking statements contained in any other announcements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law or regulations. TSX Venture Exchange Disclaimer Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organisation of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Market Abuse Regulation Disclosure Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 ("MAR") until the release of this announcement. Glossary of Terms The following is a glossary of technical terms: "Artisanal" means local people conducting mining, often with rudimentary equipment "km" means kilometre "NI 43-101" means National Instrument 43-101 "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects" of the Canadian Securities Administrators "Qualified Person" means a person that has the education, skills and professional credentials to qualify as a qualified person under NI 43-101 "Shear zone" means a zone in which rocks have been deformed by lateral movement along parallel planes "TSX-V" means the TSX Venture Exchange SOURCE: Altus Strategies Plc View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606269/Gold-Royalty-Equity-Deal-in-Ivory-Coast National airline Air Zimbabwe on Wednesday announced that it will be resuming flight operations on its domestic and regional routes with effect from September 23 and October 3 respectively, as nations open up the skies for domestic and international travel. The airline had suspended all flights late March due to the Covid-19 pandemic, except a few international ones to repatriate Zimbabweans and other nationals who had been stranded abroad, Xinhua news agency reported. The Zimbabwe government has over the past few weeks been relaxing Covid-19 regulations, including re-opening the tourism sector for which the airline industry is a major player. Domestic routes to be serviced are Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, with flights between Zimbabwe and Tanzania initially operating every Tuesday and Saturday with an additional frequency expected towards the end of the year, the airline said in a statement. Also Watch: It said the airline still awaits confirmation of the opening of South African airspace and airports. Air Zimbabwe added that it would publish guidelines issued by the ministry of health, the World Health Organization, and IATA for air travel from time to time. It was a big day for residents of a complex in Dublin's inner city as they returned to their homes following a 23m redevelopment project. More than 20 families were welcomed back to St Mary's Mansions in the north-east inner city yesterday following three years of renovations. The extensive works included the addition of two new floors to create 80 modern apartments and duplexes. The remainder of the new residents moving into the 70-year-old flat complex will come from Dublin City Council's housing list. Incredible Greeting residents as they received the keys to their new home today, Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu said: "After an incredible redevelopment and significant investment, I am delighted to see this scheme completed and providing super-efficient homes to people on Dublin City Council's housing list. "Together with other local amenities here in the heart of the city, St Mary's Mansions is a shining example of collaboration and partnership. "I wish all the residents the very best of luck in their new homes for many years to come," she said. A number of key features included in the redesign were "specifically included to enhance overall quality of life" and include communal social and play areas, a community room, and socially aware landscaping. Charlene Howe, whose family has lived in St Mary's Mansions for many years, said: "Growing up in St Mary's Mansions, it was an open complex and it really had a good community spirit. "Neighbours were close to each other so with the new development we wanted to keep the open balconies. It was really important being on board from day one." Cluid Housing's new business director Fiona Cormican said: "The regeneration of St Mary's Mansions represents the beginning of a new chapter in the story of this part of the city. "I have been involved with the community in Dublin's North East inner city for many, many years now and seeing our residents receive the keys to their new home here today is a truly incredible experience." Support Cluid's 23m investment was financed through a combination of loans from the Housing Finance Agency, the European Investment Bank and financial support from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The refurbishments at St Mary's Mansions are the first of its kind in the area and were spurred by the Mulvey report, published in 2016. SUPERIOR TWP., MI Police have identified the Superior Township man who was found dead in his home after allegedly shooting a Washtenaw County deputy responding to a felonious assault. Nathan Kurt Hardenburg, 50, was found dead in his home following a tense police standoff after he allegedly opened fire on a lawn care worker and police responding to the scene, shooting one deputy, according to the Michigan State Police. Standoff ends after alleged gunman who shot deputy is found dead Police were initially called to the complex in the 8000 block of Lakeview Drive at 2:11 p.m. to respond to a felonious assault where a person shot at a neighbor during a dispute, police said. The preliminary investigation indicated Hardenburg got into an argument with a lawn maintenance worker and soon pulled out a gun and started shooting at the worker, police said. Hardenburg entered his residence and continued to shoot repeatedly from the home at police arriving at the scene, hitting one deputy, police said. The deputy was taken to a local hospital for emergency treatment and has been released and is recovering, police said. The name of the injured deputy and other deputies involved in the initial response to the scene are not being released at this time. Hardenburg barricaded himself inside the home as additional police arrived at the scene and the neighborhood was locked down with police asking residents to stay inside, police said. It is believed he was shooting at police using a rifle, but it is unclear what kind, according to the Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office. A Crisis Negotiation Team attempted to make contact with Hardenburg throughout the standoff, but was unsuccessful. After about nine hours, police entered the home and found Hardenburg dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound though his death is still under investigation, police said. The incident remains under investigation by the Michigan State Police First District Special Investigation Section. No additional information is available this time as the incident remains under investigation. Anyone experiencing thoughts of suicide can seek help from: The 24-hour National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Military veterans press #1. The Ozone House, a 24-hour hotline for youth, at 734-662-2222. The 24-hour hotline at University of Michigan Psychiatric Emergency Services at 734-936-5900. The Washtenaw County Community Mental Health crisis team at 734-544-3050. More from The Ann Arbor News: Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike From policing to cannabis: former Detroit officer says cannabis saved my life Misdemeanor convictions added to nondiscrimination ordinance in Ypsilanti Joe Biden tweeted: "We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit." (Patrick Semansky/AP) Front runner in the US presidential election Joe Biden has insisted the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland cannot become a casualty of Brexit. The pointed intervention by the Democratic Party nominee for the White House came as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces concerted opposition to Government moves that would override the divorce deal with Brussels regarding trade with Northern Ireland. As Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was visiting Washington DC to discuss the issue, former vice president Mr Biden, who is leading incumbent president Donald Trump in a slew of nationwide polls ahead of the November election, insisted a future trade deal between the US and UK could only happen if the peace agreement was respected. Mr Biden Tweeted: We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. Mr Bidens comments came as the Prime Minister saw the resignation of a senior law officer, Lord Keen, as he was forced into a compromise over controversial plans to break international law by overriding the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement (WA). Mr Bidens remarks echoed those of Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Ahead of a meeting with Ms Pelosi, Mr Raab accused Brussels of the politicisation of Northern Ireland issues in the context of Brexit trade talks. He said the EU stance threatened the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Raab said he had made clear the UK has an absolute commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. It is a great opportunity to be clear that the threat to the Good Friday Agreement as it is reflected in the Northern Ireland protocol comes from the EUs politicisation of the issue, and to be clear on how that has happened and why that has happened, he said following talks with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo. The UK action here is defensive in relation to what the EU is doing, it is precautionary, we havent done any of this yet, and it is proportionate. What we cannot have is the EU seeking to erect a regulatory border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain, Mr Raab added. Ms Pelosi has warned Congress would never pass a free trade agreement with the UK if legislation to override the Brexit divorce settlement was to imperil the peace process. The Government will table an amendment to the UK Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before it can use powers which would breach the deal brokered with Brussels last year. Around 30 Tory rebels were thought to be preparing to vote for an amendment on Tuesday which would have required a Commons vote before the provisions in the Bill relating to Northern Ireland could come into force. Downing Street relented and announced in a joint statement with Conservative MPs Sir Bob Neill and Damian Green that it would seek to amend the Bill to require the Commons to vote before a minister can use the notwithstanding powers contained within it. The statement said: Following constructive talks over the last few days, the Government has agreed to table an amendment for Committee Stage. This amendment will require the House of Commons to vote for a motion before a minister can use the notwithstanding powers contained in the UK Internal Market Bill. It came after the Governments top law officer for Scotland resigned amid reports he was unhappy about the plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. Lord Keen of Elie QC, the Advocate General, tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning. In his resignation letter, he said: Over the past week I have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a Law Officer with your policy intentions with respect to the UKIM Bill. I have endeavoured to identify a respectable argument for the provisions at clauses 42 to 45 of the Bill but it is now clear that this will not meet your policy intentions. Labours shadow attorney general Lord Falconer said: This has been a week of chaos from the Governments own law officers, whose legal advice has been renounced by its own Government and the voice of the law officers has been muted, and their authority is completely shot. This has been a farce that shames the entire Government. By PTI COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court on Thursday issued a notice to the captain of the oil tanker that caught fire off the country's eastern coast to appear before it on September 28. The Colombo chief magistrate court's order comes a day after Attorney General Dappula de Livera staked a claim of USD 1.8 million for the costs incurred on dousing the fire on board the Panama-registered tanker MT New Diamond that went up in flames on September 3. The Attorney General had also asked the CID to report the facts to the court and obtain notice against the vessel's captain. He was to be charged for committing offenses under the Marine Pollution Environmental Protection Act. The court ordered the captain of the oil tanker to appear before it on September 28. New Diamond, a Greek-owned vessel and under charter by the Indian Oil Corporation, was carrying 270,000 metric tons of crude oil from Mina Al Ahmadi port in Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip when a boiler explosion in its engine room caused fire off the coast of Sangamankanda in Ampara district. A Filipino crew member died and another was injured in the mishap. Sri Lanka Navy with the help of Indian counterparts and coast guards doused the fire after great effort. The ship is currently in the seas 70 nautical miles east of Batticaloa in the east and 129 kilometers away from the Batticaloa coast. Two Sri Lankan naval ships, one Indian naval ship, and 3 Indian coast guard vessels are currently deployed in the operations near the oil tanker. Some 5 ships of Indian coast guard and one Indian Navy ship engaged in fire fighting, the Sri Lanka Navy said early this month. The tanker had 23 crew members - 18 Filipinos and five Greeks. Twenty-two of the 23 member crew had been safely rescued off the tanker. The presidency has rebutted recent comments by Professor Wole Soyinka, suggesting that under the present government Nigeria has become more divided than ever before, saying that the administration had indeed been working hard to mend crevices it inherited. Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said that while the iconic stature of the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, is not in doubt, it is not everything he said that should be taken as absolute truth. He spoke as a guest on Channels Television's Politics Today on Wednesday. According to Adesina, Professor Wole Soyinka is somebody we respect, you don't have them too many in a country, even on a continent. Professor Soyinka is an icon, he is an avatar, we respect him, we listen to him but then we don't take everything he says hook, line, and sinker. The Presidential spokesman said that President Buhari inherited a terribly divided country and that he had been trying to reunite since he came to power back in 2015. But Adesinas position is at variance with the cross-current of views of Nigerians many of whom regard the president as ethnic bigot. The spokesman said, Nigeria had always been divided. Always. Right from amalgamation in 1914, Nigeria has always been divided. Nigeria is an inconvenient amalgamation but we have worked at it and I tell you that there is no time in the history of this country that the country was not divided but then we had kept at it and we were trying to make it work. As of 2015, when President Buhari came, Nigeria was terribly, terribly divided; divided along religious lines, divided along ethnic lines; divided along language, divided hopelessly, terribly and that is the division that the President had been working at. But you see that a lot of people instead of letting harmony return to this country, thrive and luxuriate in widening the gulf. They play politics with everything. The Nigerian Communication Commission has warned telecom consumers to desist from using illegal GSM boosters. The commission published this on its website on Tuesday. According to the notice signed by the commissions spokesperson, Ikechukwu Adinde, only licensed network operators are allowed to use GSM boosters. GSM boosters are devices that transmit and receive telecommunications signals and can therefore interfere with other radio frequency equipment. The booster, also known as amplifier or repeater is made up of three main elements exterior antenna, amplifier, and interior antenna. They form a wireless system to boost cellular reception Members of the public should note that, wilful interference with any wireless telegraphy is an offence under Section 16 of the Telegraphy Act, 2004,it said The agency said it will not condone any flagrant breach of this law. It has also enforced measures to prosecute offenders. Accordingly, monitoring mechanisms have been put in place and anyone caught using a GSM booster without obtaining approval of a duly licensed network operator will face arrest and prosecution. Any member of the public with useful information regarding the illegal use of GSM Boosters should contact the Commission on 09-4617000/7351 or send an email to cme@ncc.gov.ng, the notice said. Individuals desirous of using GSM Boosters should note that they can only do so in conjunction with licensed network operators, it added. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 11:26:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has encouraged rural primary school students to strive to grow from "saplings" into "towering trees" of the Chinese nation. Making the remarks on Wednesday at a primary school in the county of Rucheng during his inspection tour in central China's Hunan Province, Xi expected the students to study hard, make progress every day, and be well-prepared to join the socialist cause. Enditem ST. LOUIS, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In a moment of possibility where financial, consumer and societal trends are converging around the need for new action on climate change, U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA) this week issued a new report spotlighting the key role U.S. agriculture plays in reaching the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). USFRA released the report at its annual Honor the Harvest Forum, co-hosted by The Aspen Institute, which virtually convened more than 200 farmer, rancher, food, agriculture, finance, science and technology leaders to finalize a first-of-its-kind food and agriculture sector-wide vision: a future where a resilient, restorative, economically viable, and climate-smart agricultural system produces abundant and nutritious food, natural fiber and clean energy for a sustainable, vibrant and prosperous America. "Farmers and ranchers are uniquely positioned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using on-farm practices that increase carbon storage and improve soil, but they can't do it alone," said USFRA CEO, Erin Fitzgerald. "The agriculture industry is currently on a trajectory to halve its carbon footprint in the next ten years. Continued innovation and collaboration at scale is required from every corner of the food and agriculture value chain to reduce greenhouse gases and provide for our communities." According to the report, U.S. Agriculture's Opportunities to Contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, U.S. agriculture contributes to all 17 SDGs to sustain people, the planet and prosperity. The sector has an outsized positive impact on a core group of seven SDGs, reflecting both progress to-date and new avenues to address national and global challenges: Clean Water and Sanitation, Climate Action, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Life Below Water, Life on Land, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Zero Hunger. Unmatched collaboration across the food value chain is required to recover from recent events and build resiliency to manage future shocks and ensure climate-smart ag solutions are accessible and affordable for farmers and ranchers. Disaster events caused over $560 billion in damages in the United States from 2010-2019, before the global pandemic, supply chain disruptions and extreme weather events of 2020. "There has never been a more important time in our history to co-create the sustainable food systems of the future," said USFRA Board Chairman and seventh-generation farmer, Chip Bowling. "At this year's Honor the Harvest Forum, we deepened focus on coordinating efforts to ensure our food system remains resilient and adaptive to meet challenges on the farm and throughout the supply chain to continue to feed people and support communities." This year's Honor the Harvest forum builds on USFRA's 2019 convening, which brought together food and agriculture sector thought leaders to create an action framework for the next Decade of Agriculture. The 2020 event featured working sessions with farmers, ranchers, and food industry stakeholders who will advance their sector-wide vision through individual and collective commitments supporting four outcome areas: Restore our environment through agriculture that regenerates natural resources Revitalize our collective appreciation for agriculture Invest in the next generation of agricultural systems Strengthen the social and economic fabric of America through agriculture Commitments which include actions already in progress will be solidified over the next year to advance these outcomes through focused investments; optimized data, metrics and technology; authentic storytelling and workforce development. Leaders Weigh in on Bold Actions Needed for Change "Americans have a greater appreciation today, than they did prior to the pandemic, for the connectedness of our agricultural and food systems and the impact to their daily lives," said The Aspen Institute Executive Director of Energy and Environmental Program, Greg Gershuny. "Now more than ever, we need to work together to co-create and enable the sustainable food systems of the future." "Farmers are the original conservationists. We know how important it is to protect the soil. But farmers alone can't be responsible for this monumental task. The next generation of agricultural leaders is already at work with partners across the sector to bring real change," said 4-H member and USFRA Honor the Harvest Advisory Council member, Addy Battel. "We must accelerate investment in science and data to enable farmers to rapidly respond to climate change," said the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Executive Director and USFRA Board Member, Dr. Sally Rockey. "Doing so will help restore our environment, regenerate natural resources, and advance the next generation of agricultural systems." ABOUT USFRA U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA), formerly U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, represents farmer and rancher-led organizations, and food and agricultural partners, with a common vision to further our global sustainable food systems. We believe farmers uniquely contribute to nourishing our planet, people, and natural resources. Our focus is creating a proactive collaboration between the best minds in food, agriculture, science, and technology to co-create solutions that will result in environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Learn more at www.usfarmersandranchers.org. ABOUT THE "U.S. AGRICULTURE'S OPPORTUNITIES TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS" REPORT Established in 2015 and adopted by all 193 United Nations member countries, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. This report establishes that U.S. agriculture contributes to all 17 SDGs and has an outsized positive impact on a core group of seven. It serves a basis for members of the food and agriculture value chain to acknowledge their own positive contributions, align on challenges that remain and advance specific opportunities to reduce environmental impacts in the U.S. and in the developing world. In accordance with the framework set out in the SDG Sector Roadmap Guidelines developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the findings were developed through a literature review and rigorous stakeholder engagement process comprising 41 interviews and a review workshop with stakeholders from across the value chain. USFRA's partners in the creation of the report were United Soybean Board, WBCSD and ERM. About THE Honor the Harvest FORUM The Honor the Harvest (HTH) Forum, co-hosted by U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action and the Aspen Institute, is an invitation-only event, bringing together farmer, rancher, food and agriculture leaders and changemakers from across the sector value chain for expert dialogue and roll-up-your-sleeves working sessions to accelerate climate-smart ag solutions to nourish a growing population, support healthy communities and enhance the planet. The 2020 virtual HTH Forum continues the work of the 2019 inaugural HTH Forum where 100 leaders gathered on a 1400-acre farm outside of Washington, D.C., to draft a vision and mobilize priority projects for the sector. Now with more than 200 leaders and a unified vision to guide collective action, the group is shaping commitments to protect the future of sustainable food, fiber and energy in the next decade. The 2020 HTH Forum sponsors include: Bader Rutter, Bayer, Cargill, CoBank, Corteva, Dairy Management Inc., Dairy West, Edelman, EY, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Frog Design, McDonald's, Native American Agriculture Fund, National Pork Board, Nebraska Soybean Board, Nestle Purina, Nutrien, OCP North America, Ruan, Tyson Foods, United Soybean Board and Wells Fargo. SOURCE U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action Related Links https://usfarmersandranchers.org The Sweetwater County Attorneys Office is attempting to have a district court judge disqualified from a hearing for allegedly having prejudicial opinions about the case. A motion filed by Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe is seeking to have a new judge hear the hear the case between the State of Wyoming and Joshua Jae Ekstrom. Third Judicial Court Judge Suzannah Robinson is currently the presiding judge in the case. Erramouspe filed a motion to have Robinson removed from the case after a deputy county attorney claimed Robinson made comments about how the county attorneys of... The inauguration was attended by French Ambassador Stephane Romatet, German Ambassador Cyrill Nunn, head of the European Union delegation to Egypt and Gharbiya Governor A new water treatment plant was inaugurated in Egypt's Gharbiya governorate on Wednesday as part of a European Union (EU) initiative to improve water treatment plants in the country, read a statement by the EU. The inauguration was attended by French Ambassador Stephane Romatet, German Ambassador Cyrill Nunn, head of the European Union delegation to Egypt Christian Berger and Gharbiya Governor Tarek Helmy. The capacity of the plant, which is located in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, the largest city in the Nile Delta governorate, was increased by 40,000 m/daily with the aim of enabling some 345,600 residents in the area to have access to clean water. The French Development Agency (AFD), European Investment Bank (EIB) and KfW Development Bank are participating in the initiative along with the EU and the Egyptian government, with total funds of 295 million euros. According to the statement, the initiative aims at implementing the Improved Water and Sanitation Programme (IWSP1) to ameliorate potable water and water treatment services in four Nile Delta governorates Beheira, Damietta, Gharbiya, and Sharqiya. The programme targets upgrading existing infrastructure projects and establishing new ones to improve water and water treatment services in the four governorates. Egypt has been expanding its desalination projects in recent years in light of its concerns about water scarcity amid the increase in population. Search Keywords: Short link: In relentless anti-terror operations, security forces have killed 176 terrorists in 72 operations across Jammu and Kashmir this year, the police force said on Thursday. "This year so far 176 terrorists have been killed in 72 anti-terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir, said DGP Dilbagh Singh He was flanked by IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar and the new IG CRPF, Srinagar sector, Charu Sinha. Singh claims, JKP is not only involved in anti-terror operations but is also involved in getting misguided youth back to the mainstream. From January till date because of relentless efforts made by my team that 20 boys returned home after shunning the path of terrorism this year, he said while adding, I appeal more youngsters who have chosen the wrong path to return and join the mainstream. DGP claims that security forces are not only doing the best job on the ground but also trying best to avoid collateral damage as much as possible during anti-terror operations. He added that Pakistan is not only involved in huge in terror-related activities in Jammu and Kashmir but is also trying hard to review the 'Al Badr' terror outfit in Kashmir. READ | Jammu And Kashmir Records 1,590 New COVID-19 Cases, Tally Reaches 58,244 READ | Jammu-based Environmentalist Creates Vertical Garden Using Plastic Bottles Meanwhile, IGP Vijay Kumar said that the police along with the army had launched several operations in the entire valley from the beginning of the current year and were practically launching search operations on a daily basis and had inducted special forces into the areas. Charu Sinha lauded the courageous act done by Deputy Commandant Rahul Mathur, when he entered the house in which terrorists were hiding, although he sustained injuries but at the same time, he also killed one of the terrorists." She added, "There is a huge difference between the situation in Naxal areas and Kashmir especially Srinagar. In order to turn the situation normal here complete synergy is between the forces." READ | MHA Reveals 'no J&K Politician Under House Arrest'; Dip In Terrorism Since Art 370 Removal READ | J&K: PDP Holds First Meeting Since Article 370 Abrogation, Protests Against Centre Arcadian Risk Capital is launching as a new underwriting operation based in Bermuda that will initially underwrite excess casualty and professional lines insurance. Arcadian said it has received its licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority and will operate as a managing general agent (MGA). It will begin writing business on October 1, 2020. Third Point Reinsurance will own a minority stake in Arcadian and will provide insurance paper and capacity to the MGA. The new company will be led by John Boylan, a 30-year veteran of the insurance industry with AIG, XL and Markel. He will be based in Bermuda. Boylan said the current market offers opportunities for new players. This is an exciting time to be entering the insurance risk management space, with market contraction leading to tangible opportunities for a book build. We have witnessed a gradual hardening in underlying rate across many risk sectors for some months now, creating an opening for a well-capitalised company, with no legacy and an experienced team of underwriters at its helm, he said. Dan Malloy, chief executive officer of Third Point Re, agreed that the market needs new participants and said he believes this new group of underwriters can build a profitable book of business using Third Point Re Bermudas balance sheet. Boylan started his underwriting career at AIG in Dublin in 1981, before moving to Bermuda to work for XL Insurance. He then spent 15 years as chief casualty underwriter and senior vice president at XL, in Dublin, London and Switzerland. Boylan joined Max Capital in 2003 and returned to Bermuda when the company was acquired by Markel in 2013. He remained with Markel as global casualty chief underwriting officer until his departure in 2018. Source: Arcadian Risk Capital Topics Underwriting Insurance Wholesale The Cabinet has given the green light to new laws targeting organised crime gangs, including the expansion of the maximum sentence for conspiracy to murder, from 10 years to life imprisonment. Ministers have also approved long-awaited government plans to update Irelands terrorism laws to introduce new offences, such as travelling abroad to join terrorist groups. The charge of conspiracy to murder, once a rarity, has been used increasingly in recent years to deal with the murderous campaign unleashed by the Kinahan crime cartel since 2016. At least six key members of the cartel have been convicted of this offence, in full or in conjunction with firearms offences. Judges in the Special Criminal Court have pointed out that the maximum term available for conspiracy was 10 years. Term limit brings frustrations Gardai have privately expressed frustration at the limit. High-level figures within, or associated with, the Kinahan cartel who have been convicted of conspiracy to murder include gang lieutenant Liam Brannigan and hired Estonian hitman Imre Arakas. Brannigan received an eight-year sentence in April 2020, while Arakas was given six years in December 2018, after pleading guilty. Unlike murder and attempted murder, which carry maximum sentences of life imprisonment, the punishment for conspiracy to murder is capped at 10 years, said Justice Minister Helen McEntee. Announcing measures in the criminal justice (miscellaneous provisions) bill 2020, the minister added: The fact that the gardai are doing their job effectively and arresting criminals who are determined to murder should not make conspiracy to murder a lesser offence. The seriousness of the crime must be reflected in the sentence our judges can impose. The bill also adds a provision to the Mutual Assistance Act 2008 to allow the gardai to respond to mutual assistance requests for participating countries to access evidence stored in the Cloud. The Government also approved the criminal justice (terrorist offences) (amendment) bill 2020. Three new offences The general scheme of the bill provides for three new terrorist offences: receiving training for terrorism, travelling for the purpose of terrorism, and organising or facilitating travelling for the purpose of terrorism. The proposed amendment of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005 provides for the incorporation of these offences into Irish law. The proposals are supposed to implement an EU directive adopted by the European Council and European Parliament in March 2017, with a deadline of being transposed into national law by September 2018. The EU directive was aimed at combating the phenomenon of EU citizens travelling to war zones, such as Iraq and Syria to fight with militant and terrorist groups, including ISIS. While many of the offences outlined in the directive are already prohibited under separate Irish terrorism laws, the new bill will fill the gap relating to the three new offences. The Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Bill was originally listed in the Governments legislative programme for the spring/summer 2018. The Miscellaneous Provisions Bill also adds a power to the Mutual Assistance Act 2008 to allow the gardai to respond to mutual assistance requests for participating countries to access evidence stored in the Cloud. The bill also introduces a cap on the licensing of centre-fire semi-automatic rifles, as was committed by the then justice minister in September 2015. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), India's first private oil and gas company, has stunned market observers with its performance of late. Despite other oil and gas firms struggling, there has been a sharp surge in the counter to Rs 90 in August from Rs 30 in March. Considering the un-remunerative gas prices in India and internationally, the stock has piqued the interests of observers, with a number of theories doing the rounds in trade circles. Fundamentally, the parameters that are usually used for such a purpose indicate the company is not on a strong footing. The return to shareholders has been dismal the last dividend was declared in 2010-11 while the company has an unpredictable bottomline. For instance in Q3 FY20, the profit declared was up notionally by Rs 22 crore but the gains were not due to any operational expertise or rise in production but on account of reversal of invoices of ENI (Italian major) from 2010 to 2014. Operationally, the company has a portfolio of 10 assets, most of which are non-functional. Gross production from the functional assets stood at 2,118 barrels of oil in Q1 FY21. The management has been claiming for more than three years that it will begin production from its B-80 field. But there have been several false starts and it is likely that the production target will be rolled over to January 2021. HOEC is also grappling with liabilities of over Rs 600 crore. On top of that, if demand notices from the government on royalty payments and liquidated damages are to be relied upon, the net liabilities of HOEC are close to Rs 780 crore as on March 31. To discharge these liabilities using cash from operations, it may take the company nearly 12 years to achieve. On the liabilities front, HOEC Managing Director P Elango in an interview to CNBC-TV18 earlier this month said at no point of time it will be a negative net worth company. "Let us look at the facts and the breakup of HOEC as on March 31. Our current liability is Rs 214 crore against a cash balance of Rs 171 crore. Non-current liabilities is Rs 142 crore, of which Rs 107 crore is for provision for site restoration. "In the oil and gas industry, calculating the contingent liability involves a complex process. A lot of issues crop up and we have a very well established system to resolve them with the government either through policy or through a dispute resolution mechanism. Our contingent liability works out to Rs 244 crore. Of that, Rs 173 crore is towards service tax," he told the channel. HOEC has tried to reassure investors by informing it has engaged well-known drilling and other service providers such as Shelf, Lamprell, Baker Hughes, Dril-Quip, Expro, Zentech, Shipping Corporation of India and Tide Water. However, what the company has not told the investor community is that there are payment arrears worth $20 million to these vendors (some of whom have already taken legal recourse, including arbitration). This would surely be a pain point for the company and it could potentially push back the start date of the B-80 field. It is perplexing to see the run-up in the stock despite all these negative cues. The management, it seems, has tried to gloss over all these factors and tried to present a hunky-dory picture. It remains to be seen how long the company can sustain this dream run on the bourses given the tricky financial issues it faces. Follow our coverage of the coronavirus crisis Back in 2019, when a person didnt have to quarantine for two weeks each time he crossed a state border, the author and bar owner Brian Bartels cashed in all his vacation time and spent a few months visiting 44 of the 50 states. On some long weekends, hed hit three or four. His goal? To find out where people drank, what they drank and why. The result is The United States of Cocktails, a new book that enumerates, explores and celebrates hundreds of regional bars, drinking traditions, spirits, quaffs and quirks. For a small-town boy from the Midwest whose father was a traveling salesman, the book was the natural outgrowth of a curious mind. As an 8-year-old kid, the local library was my favorite place, Mr. Bartels said. I loved finding out fun facts and tidbits about the world. The 8-year-old boy grew into a 44-year-old man who, after more than a decade of running bars in New York City, opened the Settle Down Tavern in Madison, Wis., in May. So any exploration of America he undertook would necessarily incorporate the countrys watering holes. Mr. Bartels visited more than 700 of them, from fancy cocktail dens to timeworn dives. Jim Malatras, the SUNY systems chancellor, said that gatherings were responsible for the rapid spread of the virus, particularly some large parties that took place in off-campus housing. Smaller groups also got together on campus without proper precautions. A photo of one gathering, which showed a group of infected, unmasked students partying in an isolation dorm, drew the ire of parents, students and officials. Oneontas reopening plan was approved by SUNY Colleges in New York State were charged with developing plans for reopening that complied with state health department regulations, but they were given a lot of leeway. Each of the 64 schools in the SUNY system developed its own plan, some stricter than others. After the Oneonta outbreak, Mr. Malatras announced that surveillance testing is required at all SUNY schools and that next semester each school will have to develop a testing plan. Mr. Malatras, who became chancellor at the end of August, also said that SUNY will conduct a review of what happened at Oneonta. He said he was not sure why testing was not mandated at all schools in the system. Neither were many of the universitys students, like Jacob Adler, a senior. The administration expected many things from the students that went undelivered, but instead of reacting in a way that was proactive, they chose to downplay the severity, Mr. Adler said. My colleague Amanda Rosa, who wrote about the outbreak, said that such sentiments were common. Every student Ive spoken to acknowledges that partying during a pandemic is irresponsible, but they recognize that the school should have and could have done more to prevent the spread, Ms. Rosa said. SUNY Oneonta is not alone Of course, there is no perfect reopening plan, as anyone who has been following colleges across the country can attest. Willamette University and the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) announced today that they have entered into an agreement for the Northwests oldest professional school of art and design to become an integral part of the regions premier liberal arts university. This relationship will allow the two institutions to pursue deeper and more permanent collaborative engagements through academic programs and shared administrative support, as well as to create cost-controlling efficiencies. PNCA becoming part of Willamette University positions the Northwests oldest school of art and design as an integral and integrated piece of the regions premier liberal arts university, said Willamette University President Stephen Thorsett. This coming-together builds on the distinguished histories of both institutions, which were the first in Oregon to offer art instruction. Together, this combination will amplify the Northwest as a cultural and economic hub for the arts and innovative leadership. Under the agreement, which is expected to receive regulatory and accreditor approvals in 2021, PNCA will be an independent college and part of Willamette University. PNCA will maintain its name, faculty and its campus in Portland. The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, as well as PNCAs other academic centers and collections, will also become a part of Willamette University under the agreement. The decision by PNCA to enter into discussions with Willamette University was intentional and strategic for the colleges future, said PNCA Board Chair Scott D. Musch. For more than 100 years, PNCA has contributed to the cultural vibrancy of the region. We are confident as PNCA joins Willamette that the college's legacy and longstanding commitment to our students will be further enhanced. PNCA will become the fourth college within the university, joining the Willamette University College of Law, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Atkinson Graduate School of Management. It also joins the affiliated Claremont School of Theology and Tokyo International University of America. The joining of these institutions will unlock enormous potential and new opportunities for students while helping shape the art world, said James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust and a Willamette alumnus. For PNCA students, Willamette's distinguished, comprehensive programs in the liberal arts, law and management offer a practical foundation for vibrant creative fields from arts management to user-experience design and digital marketing. At the same time, PNCAs deep well of creative insight will give Willamette students a stronger, meaningful grounding in the arts to elevate their lifelong growth. Together, these communities will build up the practical application and influence of the arts across society right when we need the arts the most. The relationship will deepen the connections among art, design and the liberal arts and sciences, building a foundation for new thought and expressions in subjects such as racial and social justice, climate change and health. PNCA students will have access to the breadth of curricular offerings at Willamette, including business and science courses, and benefit from its proximity to policymaking and government in Salem. Willamette students will benefit from the broader fine and visual arts and design offerings provided by PNCA, as well as the culture and creativity of its community in Portland. Based in Salem, Oregon, Willamette University is the premier private liberal arts university in the Pacific Northwest the only university in the country that appears on both the U.S. News Best National Liberal Arts Colleges list and the Forbes and Businessweek best business schools list. With its unique proximity to the state capital, Willamette is a national leader in civic engagement, delivering an Only at Willamette education. Pacific Northwest College of Art empowers artists and designers to reimagine what art and design can do in the world. Founded in 1909 as the Museum Art School in Portland, Oregon, PNCA offers 11 art and design Bachelor of Fine Art programs, eight graduate programs including Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts programs within the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, a post-baccalaureate program, and community education courses for artists and designers of all ages. For the latest information, please visit www.willamette.edu and www.pnca.edu. The federal department responsible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme did not activate a joint plan to manage the risk of COVID-19 in the Victorian disability sector with the state government until the second wave was near its peak. Hundreds of disability care recipients and workers have contracted the deadly coronavirus, with the bulk of infections recorded in August - the same month the Department of Social Services put in place formal governance arrangements with Victoria to protect people with a disability. A plan to manage the risk of COVID-19 in the Victorian disability sector wasn't activated until the second wave was near its peak. Credit:Louie Douvis Department of Social Services deputy secretary Catherine Rule told the COVID-19 Senate inquiry it "wasn't until case numbers started to escalate" in the sector that the disability rapid response group was set up on August 2, when the state's daily new active cases hit 671. "The peak in disability hit in August and was about 130 active cases," Ms Rule told the hearing on Thursday. Facebook says that groups dedicated to health-related topics are no longer eligible to appear in recommendations. The update is part of the companys latest effort to fight misinformation. To prioritize connecting people with accurate health information, we are starting to no longer show health groups in recommendations, Facebook writes in a statement. Facebook notes that users will still be able to search for these groups and invite others to join them, but that these groups will no longer appear in suggestions. Facebook groups, especially ones that dabble in health-related topics, have long been problematic for the company. Groups dedicated to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, for example, have also been linked to QAnon and COVID-19 disinformation often by the companys own algorithmic suggestions. Mark Zuckerberg recently said the company wont take down anti-vaccine posts the way it does with COVID-19 misinformation. Speaking of QAnon, Facebook says its taking an additional step to keep groups associated with the conspiracy theory from spreading by reducing their content in News Feed. The company previously removed hundreds of groups associated with the movement, but hasnt rooted out its presence entirely. Facebook Finally, Facebook will now archive groups that no longer have an active admin. In the coming weeks, well begin archiving groups that have been without an admin for some time, Facebook writes. In the future, the company will recommend admin roles to members of groups without one before archiving. Facebook notes that it penalizes groups that repeatedly share false claims that are debunked by its fact checkers and that its removed more than a million groups in the last year for repeat offenses or otherwise breaking its rules. But critics have long said that Facebook doesnt do enough to police groups on its platform, which have been linked to disinformation, harassment and threats of violence. The company came under fire last month after it failed to remove a Wisconsin militia group that organized an armed response to protests in Kenosha until the day after a deadly shooting. And a number of Facebook groups have been credited with hampering the emergency response to devastating wildfires in Oregon after spreading baseless conspiracy theories about how the fires were started. Facebook eventually began removing these claims after emergency responders begged people to stop sharing the rumors. Six months into the pandemic, the U.S. is still figuring out how to both combat and live with the coronavirus. Virus hot spots have shifted throughout the pandemic from major cities on the coasts to the South and Southwest and now to the Midwest. The coronavirus has wreaked havoc in skilled nursing homes and other congregate facilities, in prisons, and particularly among low-income essential workers and communities of color. Also, as businesses began reopening in late spring and early summer in many places, and more people left their homes to enjoy the weather or see friends and loved ones, cases began to climb. As the pandemic has worn on, hot spots have cropped up in areas that lacked mask restrictions and reopened more quickly. Young people increasingly began falling victim to the virus, and many college campuses that have reopened are now experiencing major spikes. We looked at major metropolitan areas across the country that have been coronavirus hot spots to see how they have fared over the past six months. Heres what we found. Todd Trumbull At the start of the pandemic, the Bay Area notably Santa Clara County saw early spikes and later reported what is now considered the first known coronavirus death in the U.S. It was the first to initiate a shelter-in-place order on March 17, and was praised for keeping case counts and deaths relatively low for months, staying below 300 new cases per day until mid-June, according to data collected by The Chronicle. When summer began, more and more people were gathering socially and in groups, especially on holiday weekends. A massive outbreak at San Quentin State Prison infected more than 2,200. One by one, Bay Area counties landed on the now-defunct state watch list, which monitored counties for troubling coronavirus trends and restricted what businesses were allowed to reopen. Toward the end of June, daily new cases began to rise, and on July 6 the total spilled over 1,000 for the first time. On Aug. 10, the Bay Area hit its peak with 1,923 cases (partially attributed to clearing the backlog created by the state reporting agencys computer glitch). In comparison to other major urban areas across the country, however, the Bay Areas summer spike was moderate. From mid-July to mid-August, the average number of cases per 100,000 people was 423. Compare that to Miamis summer spike with a case rate of 2,573 over the same period. During New Yorks peak month, its case rate was 1,513. In recent weeks, the Bay Area has seen an overall decline in case counts. Under the states new color-coded reopening system, four of the regions nine counties San Francisco, Marin, Napa and Santa Clara are in the No. 2 red tier, allowing them to ease more restrictions. Overall, weekly cases in the Bay Area have declined by 64%, which experts have attributed to consistent mask wearing and social distancing. King County, Wash. (Seattle) Washington state is home to the countrys first known coronavirus case and was an early hot spot. From March 17-April 16, the average number of new cases per 100,000 was 203. The statewide stay-at-home order was issued March 23, and Seattle took a strict stance on complying with the order as well as enforcing social distancing and implementing widespread testing. Cases began to stabilize and decrease by the period of May 17-June 16, when there was an average of only 63 cases per population of 100,000. By summer, the number began to rise as the stay-at-home order expired June 1 and some businesses were allowed to reopen. In early July, a mask mandate went into effect, and by the end of the month, Gov. Jay Inslee required that masks be worn in all common areas and rolled back the reopening of many businesses. From Aug. 17-Sept. 14, the average cases per 100,000 in King County had declined to 127. Cook County, Ill. (Chicago) A Chicago woman was the second known coronavirus infection in the U.S., and on Feb.7 the state announced the first person-to-person transmission in the country. In Chicago, infections increased quickly in the beginning with an average of 837 cases per population of 100,000 from March 17-April 16. By the second week of March, Gov. J.B. Pritzker began ordering schools to close and the suspension of big events, and the stay-at-home order came on March 20. In early April, the governor advised people to wear masks in public. Cases in Cook County began steadily declining, and the county saw its best month-long case count from June 17-July 16 at 11,700. The county began reopening businesses in early June, but by the end of July pulled back on some reopenings, including indoor bars as cases ticked upward. Most recently, popular destination Navy Pier was closed on Labor Day until spring to help control cases. Orleans Parish, La. (New Orleans) New Orleans saw its first major spike at the end of March and beginning of April. Many pointed to Mardi Gras season as the culprit, as hundreds of thousands packed the citys streets, bars, restaurants and venues. The period from March 17 through April 16 was the worst in the pandemic by far, with an average of 1,443 cases per population of 100,000. The county hit its highest new daily case count on April 2 with 878 cases. The stay-at-home order in Orleans Parish was issued March 20. The Big Easy managed to bring down cases and keep them relatively low until the beginning of July, when they began climbing again and reached 540 per population of 100,000 for the period of June 17-July 16. In June, Louisiana partially reopened businesses, but on July 11 the state shuttered bars to in-person service after seeing a rise in cases, particularly in young people. The statewide mask mandate went into effect on July 13. Since then, cases have been going down with an average of 278 per population of 100,000 for Aug. 17-Sept. 14. Wayne County, Mich. (Detroit) Early in the pandemic, the coronavirus spread through Detroits law enforcement agencies, puzzling officials. Mayor Mike Duggan suspected then that the citys international airport might have helped the spread, and officials said the city was not prepared for a public health crisis of this scale. From March 17-April 16, the average number of cases per 100,000 was 720. Since the start of the pandemic, Wayne County has managed to decrease case counts significantly, but there has been a slow trend upward in recent months. The coronavirus has disproportionately affected people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos. In Michigan, despite making up 14.1% of the population, African Americans account for 24% of the states total coronavirus cases and 45% of deaths. Los Angeles County Los Angeles County was considered a coronavirus hot spot in May but didnt see its real acceleration until the summer months. Its highest weekly total came in mid-July, with more than 23,000 cases. From July 17-Aug. 16, average cases per 100,000 were 738, compared with 263 in mid-April to mid-May. In July, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer called the trends alarming and dangerous, pointing to Memorial Day weekend and more infections among younger people as factors. Images of crowded beaches throughout the summer, especially during heat waves, drew scrutiny. The countys health officer pointed to work site outbreaks in July and began sending out inspectors to check on coronavirus compliance. During the latest period, from Aug. 17-Sept. 14, the number of average cases per 100,000 population dropped considerably to 326, though still not down to levels seen in the spring. Los Angeles County is still in the states highest risk tier, color-coded purple, but with only a 3.2% positive test rate. 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. Harris County, Tex. (Houston) Texas implemented its stay-at-home order in April, but lifted it less than a month later and allowed most businesses to reopen with some restrictions, despite rising cases. Harris County saw a significant rise in infections from June 17 to Aug. 16, averaging 728 to 855 cases per 100,000 during that time. The rise of cases was particularly high in people under 50. Gov. Greg Abbott paused reopening plans in late June and at first refused to apply a statewide mask mandate, but in early July changed course. As of Aug. 17-Sept. 14, average cases per 100,000 have declined to 536.8. Maricopa County, Ariz. (Phoenix) Arizona began easing restrictions on businesses in early May and lifted its stay-at-home order after a month and a half, expiring in mid-May. During the summer, total cases doubled in just two weeks from 50,000 to 100,000. Young people going out and packing bars without masks, people gathering with families, and testing shortages were some of the factors Phoenixs mayor said contributed to the spread. Gov. Doug Ducey did not issue a mask mandate despite pushback from some mayors, and finally allowed local governments to decide in mid-June. Cities including Phoenix rushed to put mask orders in place. Maricopa County had an average of 1,521 cases per 100,000 from June 17 to July 16. On June 27, the governor halted the states reopening, particularly for more high-risk businesses, set benchmarks and proceeded to extend the pause. Maricopa County saw a steady decrease in the next month-long period, and by Aug. 17 to Sept.14, the case average was 183 per 100,000. Miami-Dade County, Fla. (Miami) Cases statewide began climbing in March, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially refused to issue a stay-at-home order. He later signed an order that went into effect in early April and lasted one month. Cell phone data showed that 70% of residents were leaving the house by mid-June. Cases dramatically shot up in the period from June 17 to July 16, when the case average was 1,940 per 100,000 people. The average increased to 2,573 during the next period, ending Aug. 16. DeSantis has refused to implement a statewide mask mandate, leaving it up to individual counties to decide. The city of Miami issued a mask order on June 25. The county implemented steeper fines in late July for those who refuse to wear face coverings in public, and also issued countywide curfews in hopes of curbing the virus spread. By the Aug. 17 to Sept. 14 period, cases had declined significantly, with just under 700 per 100,000 residents. Todd Trumbull New York, N.Y. At the start of the pandemic, the situation in New York was a coronavirus cautionary tale. People around the world watched in horror as cases and deaths soared, hospitals were overwhelmed, and bodies piled up. The citys high density, its popular international destination status, and high rate of testing were cited as causes for the skyrocketing case counts. Since late April, the East Coast city has managed to not only crush the curve, but push daily cases so far down that they are only in the hundreds. On Sept. 13 there were 583 cases recorded compared with the peak of 11,571 on April 14. From March 17-April 16, the average number of cases per population of 100,000 was 1,513. Experts said the terrifying outbreak in the beginning led New Yorkers to stay vigilant, and the state remained steadfast on not reopening too early. Todd Trumbull designed the graphics in this article. Kellie Hwang and Mike Massa are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com, mmassa@sfchronicle.com Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment We are republishing this ranking now that the writer has (safely) seen Tenet in a private theater in New Jersey. Hold up! Before you go any further, know this: Christopher Nolan is an exceptional filmmaker who has made many great movies, despite the fact that he only has 11 features to his name. As a result, any ranking of his films is bound to wind up with at least a couple of amazing titles near the bottom; thats the kind of problem most directors wish they could have. So lets take a look back over his career and figure out which of the directors films were the masterpieces, and which ones were merely near-masterpieces. Yes, this is something of a dangerous endeavor, given the fervency with which Nolans work is debated by both his obsessive fans and his quite vocal detractors. Anyway, here they are. 11. Following Nolans ultra-low-budget 1998 directorial debut was cobbled together while he was working full-time, using available light and cheap film stock. It does feel very much like a student effort: ambitious, awkward, bursting with ideas but often downright amateurish. Still, you can see the talent, and there are lots of fascinating elements here that would reemerge later: a nonlinear narrative, manipulative characters, a twist ending, the human psyche represented in material form. And the irony at the movies center about a man who robs people to make them better appreciate their lives is pure Nolan. (Also, the lead thiefs name is Cobb, the same as the head thief in Inception). Anybody interested in the directors films should check this one out. But its technical limitations, combined with Nolans own inexperience, make it one of his weaker works. 10. Insomnia This adaptation of the 1997 Norwegian crime thriller about a troubled cop with a past who, while investigating a murder in small-town Alaska, accidentally kills his partner and then tries to cover up his crime showed that the director could go from making low-budget indies to successful studio projects. (He has said that in many ways this was the most important stepping-stone in his career, because it allowed him to ease into big-budget filmmaking.) Insomnia is impressive in many regards: Al Pacino is effectively haunted as the lead, and Robin Williams, at the time eagerly trying to shed his image as a cloying funnyman, is appropriately creepy and pathetic as the suspected murderer. Plus, theres loads of atmosphere. But the movie is also, at times, dreadfully dull. The somnambulant mood may be partly intentional, but its also wearying. Nolan followed up the runaway worldwide success of The Dark Knight with a look at Batman brought low, his back broken by Bane (Tom Hardy) and thrown in a pit-prison where hes forced to watch Gotham destroyed from afar. And yes, it was a huge hit, but how could it have been anything other than a disappointment after something like The Dark Knight? That said, this one doesnt get enough credit for how effectively it captures the heros feeling of helplessness as the citys bridges and buildings are leveled, its people pitted against one another, the very fabric of society ripped asunder. For anyone whos been following Bruce Waynes efforts to try and make Gotham a better place, this is all quite heartbreaking to watch. Theres plenty of great stuff here, from Anne Hathaways jaded, sassy Catwoman to some eye-popping action sequences. It might be the most epic of Nolans three Batman entries. Until Dunkirk, it was his one film that could be called a war movie. But at times it seems as if the director has bitten off more than he can chew, as he wrestles with effectively trying to convey the villains evil plan. Plus, in order to truly show the breakdown of society, and the existential threat this represents, Nolan needs to condemn the people of Gotham a bit but he pulls back, settling instead on vagaries. 8. Batman Begins It didnt seem at all likely that Christopher Nolan would be the one to reinvent the modern superhero movie; his forte seemed to be mind-fuck thrillers, not action spectacles, and this was before young, newish directors were regularly handed billion-dollar franchises. But his take on Batman (immeasurably aided by Christian Bale, still the most talented actor ever to play the Caped Crusader) was both brilliant and deceptively simple: Batman had always been the relatable superhero the one who didnt have magic powers, just money, vengeance, and will so why not give us a Batman grounded in something resembling reality? Some will point to this movie as the beginning of turning everything into a dark, gritty reboot, but Nolans model borrowed the DNA of Richard Donners original Superman, with its matter-of-fact, ground-level approach to capes-and-tights derring-do. Bruce Waynes transformation into the Dark Knight is presented with uncommon psychological realism, set in motion by a somewhat-plausible series of events that explain how he became such a determined, effective fighter. The film only really falters in its last act, with a somewhat underwhelming final action set piece. Oh, and Katie Holmes seems strangely miscast as Bruce Waynes love interest/moral North Star. There are parts of Tenet that feel like they were crafted as a direct response to those who criticized Inception for being too exposition-heavy. You can almost hear Nolan yelling, Okay, wise guy, how do you like it when I dont explain things? Nolans most oblique film to date a sprawling, ornate action thriller in which the heroes can invert their passage through time so that they experience car chases and fights and all sorts of other things in reverse is also one of his most ambitious, and, weirdly, one of his lightest. Were told early on in the film that we shouldnt try to understand it, but that we should feel it; thats pretty solid advice. Not unlike The Big Sleep, or The Parallax View, Tenet is a movie built out of brilliant, often beautiful setpieces whose overall placement in the broader puzzle is not always clear. (It would have been so much fun to go back to the theater over and over again in non-pandemic times to experience it again and to pick apart the timeline and the story because you just know Nolans got some big chart somewhere that explains it all. Ugh.) Thats not to suggest, however, that the film is frivolous or meaningless. The idea that our future selves can hold sway over our present-day selves is an adorably Nolan-esque notion that plays out across pictures like Memento, Interstellar, and Inception. And how wonderful it is to see a filmmaker tackle a big modern genre movie in such challenging fashion and on such a massive scale. Maybe some will call it a flop, but if it is, its the kind of flop that only Christopher Nolan could have made. 6. Memento An absolutely ingenious thriller: The story, told in reverse, of a man whos been trying to avenge his wifes death; but his mind cant form memories, and he forgets who, where, and what he is within minutes, so he has to tattoo his clues on his body in order not to forget them. Its an ideal marriage of structure and subject matter, as the nature of the storytelling ensures that we in the audience never really know what has happened before any given scene, which mimics the protagonists existential haze. This put Nolan on the map with its release in 2000, and is still considered his masterpiece by many fans. Does it lose some luster once youve figured it out? Not quite, though nothing can match that electrifying first viewing. Consider this for a second: Nolan made a movie about high-tech thieves who break into peoples dreams and steal hidden ideas from them, but this time they are asked to secretly plant an idea in a persons head, so they go into that persons dream, but in order to hide their actions they have to go several dreams down, so they have to create a dream inside the guys dream so they can go into the next dream, then do it again, but they cant go too far down the dream levels because if they do theyll be stuck in a dream forever and their brains will melt, and also each level of a dream happens at a different speed, so that five minutes in the real world is an hour in dream time, and things slow down even further the deeper you go within the dreams, but anything that happens in one dream can affect the dream in the next level. Now consider this: Inception was beloved by millions and made $825 million worldwide. Fact: Christopher Nolan knows how to tell a goddamn story. One of the saddest, loneliest space epics ever made, Nolans expansive sci-fi film about Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway traveling through a wormhole to another part of the universe in an effort to find a new home for humanity was divisive when it came out, but its slowly being acknowledged as one of his best works. Its certainly his most earnest movie, and maybe the mixture of eye-popping special effects, gee-whiz scientific phenomena, environmental dystopia, and unabashed sentiment was too much for some to take, as if 2001: A Space Odyssey had been hijacked by someones therapy session. At heart, this is a story about parents and children, about the fear of letting go, about the need to reconcile your dreams with the needs of your loved ones. At the same time, its a movie about survival how planetary survival and species survival and individual survival often conflict with one another. The way Nolan ties these concepts together in a narrative that mixes heavy-duty scientific theories with nutty sci-fi invention can be jarring. But open yourself up to it, and Interstellar becomes one of the most emotionally overwhelming things youll ever see. 3. The Prestige Nolans sole literary adaptation based on Christopher Priests 1995 novel also features his most subtle, complex characters. As dueling magicians in turn of the century London, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are both charming and sinister in their obsessions with one another. Maybe thats why, unlike so many other films that rely on puzzle-like structures and big twists, The Prestige continues to work so well on repeat viewings; if anything, it improves and gains depth the more you watch it. Its also a dazzling magic trick in its own right, with an intricate plot that keeps doubling back on itself and throwing red herrings at us. As in so many Nolan pictures, the movies structure and its effect on the viewer echo the characters own psychological journeys. Nolan understands something about his audience: He lays out everything we need to figure out whats happening, but its all just a bit too macabre for us to put two and two together. So we wait until that incredibly disturbing, final image. (Aaand then a ridiculous Thom Yorke song plays over the end credits, but the less said about that, the better.) 2. The Dark Knight If nothing else, this is one of the most influential movies of our time the entire DC Universe of superhero tentpoles has basically been built around its success. But none of its imitators have come close to matching the sweep and power of Nolans second Batman entry, which is really a gangster epic masquerading as a superhero flick. And at the center of it all is one of the great performances of the decade, with the late Heath Ledgers wild, disturbing, charismatic turn as the Joker making a perfect foil for Christian Bales stolid, wounded, tormented Batman. With a story that could easily have made for three separate movies (and maybe should have) and each insane set piece topped by the next one, this is the rare comic-book film that earns the obsessive quality of its fandom. Thats also because Nolan doesnt shy away from tackling philosophical, moral, and political issues: When Batman turns all of Gothams cell phones into a citywide sonar system, is he essentially confirming Bush-era surveillance tactics? Or is he simply debasing himself and betraying his own ideals essentially falling into the Jokers trap? If so, what do we make of the fact that he succeeds? But wait, does he even succeed, or is it the people of Gotham who redeem him by refusing to blow each other up? Nearly a decade after its release, you can still go down any number of rabbit holes thinking about The Dark Knight. There are very few movies in any genre about which you can say that. An astonishing war movie, and perhaps the culmination of Nolans various experiments in editing and structure. In retelling the British evacuation of France in 1940 the result of an early, disastrous defeat against the Nazis the director intercuts three narrative timelines of differing lengths, which leads to some surprising twists and turns in the story. But perhaps more importantly, its a film that shows Nolan willing to let go a little bit to trust his audience to get what hes doing without his having to resort to lots of exposition and dialogue. In the process, it does away with many of the cliches of the war genre: no strategy meetings, no scenes of people explaining what were fighting for, etc. Instead, its tight, terse, and tense from its opening frame to its last. For what its worth and somewhat ironically it might also be the most hopeful picture Nolan has ever made. - The prisons authority put the total number of the escapees at 219 which included both men and women - The escapees overpowered prison staff and reportedly gained access to the armory from where they grabbed at least 15 guns - Spokesperson Frank Baine said the security team managed to kill three other escapees after a manhunt was launched PAY ATTENTION: Click 'See First' under 'Follow' Tab to see Tuko.co.ke news on your FB feed Ugandan prison authority has confirmed the capture of seven inmates who escaped from Singila prison in Northern region. The prison's spokesperson Frank Baine also said the security team managed to kill three other escapees during the manhunt launched on Thursday, September 17. READ ALSO: Caleb Omwoyo: Kenyans demand justice for Nairobi cyclist knocked down, killed by Kenya Mpya bus Escapees seen rushing out of the prison facility in a picture released by the police. Photo: African Stand. Source: UGC READ ALSO: William Ruto's ally Muthama crowned as new Kamba elder "By this morning (Thursday), seven of the escapees had been captured and three others are counted dead, Baine told Daily Monitor. The public relations officer put the total number of the escapees at 219 which included both men and women who had been serving various offenses at the 620-capacity facility. READ ALSO: Schools reopening: Gov't bans games, assemblies and varies breaktime in new regulations Over 200 inmates headed into Mt Moroto. Photo: Daily Monitor. Source: UGC READ ALSO: Anita Nderu confirms she's part of LGBTQ community and Twitter erupts Overpowered prison staff The inmates forced their way out of the correctional facility at around 4pm on Wednesday, September 16, after overpowering the prison staff. They reportedly gained access to the armory from where they grabbed at least 15 guns. One soldier identified as Corporal Walter Ochoria was unfortunately shot dead during the exchange of fire between the two factions. So many bullets are flying around the United Nations (UN) compound in Moroto. Over 50 prisoners have escaped after grabbing guns. They are seen running into mountain Moroto. UPDF has been called to help, a source in Moroto told the Nile Post. A joint security force comprising of the army and police was dispatched overnight to patrol part of Mt Moroto where the prisoners were heading to. In March 2008, seven prisoners were shot and injured as they attempted to run away from Moroto Prison. The group was 12 in number and eight of them were shot during the escape attempt. Help us change more lives, join TUKO.co.kes Patreon programme. The police destroyed my son's life, left him halfway paralysed then my husband left -Maureen Razoa/TUKO TV. Source: TUKO.co.ke New Delhi: A pop-up on your computer screen warning about technical problems could be a trap! Acting on a complaint from Microsoft India, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has busted a racket, booking six private firms that were allegedly installing malware on people's computers in the name of providing anti-virus protection against bogus security issues flagged through pop-up messages. The central agency has conducted searches at the premises of these accused companies -- New Delhi-based Softwill Infotech Private Limited and Saburi TLC Worldwide Services Private Limited, Jaipur-based Innovana Thinklabs Limited and Systweak Software Private Limited, Noida-based Benovellient Technologies Private Limited, and Noida and Gurugram-based Saburi Global Services Private Limited. The agency has carried out searches at the premises of the companies at 10 locations in Jaipur, Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad and Mainpuri. Live TV The companies allegedly sent pop-up messages on personal computers of users, giving bogus warnings about purported security issues and presence of malware in the Microsoft Windows system, officials said. The pop-up messages carried the phone number of a call centre, where the employees of the companies allegedly advised the victims to install certain anti-malwares, which are essentially PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs), they said. "The victims are allegedly given the option to activate the PUPs by paying a fee online or by calling a support number advertised in the interface of the programme. The victims are fraudulently influenced in this manner and allegedly fall in their trap to maintain their systems properly," CBI Spokesperson RK Gaur said. The customer care allegedly posed as the support system call centre and asked people to make payments through an online link to resolve the non-existent problems, the officials said. One of the victims of the fraud, Karl Rock, a famous YouTuber from New Zealand who is based in India for the last three years, has made a number of videos on the extent of the problem and exposed these operatives. In one of the videos, Rock posed as a recipient of the security messages from one such company and spoke to the scamsters on the phone, where he was asked to pay for the services. "I am very happy that the CBI is doing something. They are great investigators. They can do things on a national level," Rock told PTI over the phone. He said one such call centre executive cheated his 86-year-old grandmother, who is based in New Zealand's Katikati, of Rs 30,000 two months ago. Rock is relentlessly pursuing these call centres on YouTube by calling them, visiting them and even applying for jobs with them. The YouTuber said most of such calls emanate from India, bringing a bad name to the genuine call centre industry. "I am hearing about these scams since 2010," he said. LAS VEGAS Wynn Las Vegas has logged almost 500 positive COVID-19 cases among employees since the resort reopened in June. Wynn Resorts on Thursday revealed the data tied to the companys testing and contact tracing program, which tests groups of up to 700 employees every two weeks, reports the Reno Gazette Journal, which is part of the USA TODAY Network. With the help of University Medical Center, the company has conducted 15,051 tests, aiming to catch any employees who are positive for the virus but asymptomatic. Of those 15,051 tests, there have been 548 positive cases a positivity rate of 3.6%. Of the total, 51 positive cases were recorded pre-reopening and 497 were post-reopening, according to the company. Wynn Las Vegas has hosted more than 500,000 guests since reopening in early June. Six guests have tested positive, according to the company. Wynn and Encore on the empty Las Vegas Strip on April 9, 2020. In a press release, Wynn Resorts claimed the company is seeing a significant downward trend in virus positivity rates since it began its Pre-employment and Surveillance Testing Programs. In fact, in the recent round of surveillance testing conducted on Sept. 11, only one out of 285 employees tested positive, the release said. Wynn Resorts contends contact tracing results showed 98% of employees who tested positive got the virus outside of work. Ten employees are dedicated full-time to contact tracing for positive employee cases, the company said. The team interviews infected employees and works with security to review surveillance coverage. Our goal, by implementing our Surveillance Testing Program and establishing a robust in-house contact tracing effort, is to make Wynn Las Vegas the safest place our guests and employees can go outside of their own homes, Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said. In Clark County, home of The Strip, more than 63,000 positive COVID-19 cases have been recorded. Statewide, Nevada has logged more than 74,000 cases. How exactly does COVID-19 contact tracing work? We talked to 3 case investigators to find out Ed Komenda writes about Las Vegas for the Reno Gazette Journal and USA Today Network. This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Wynn Las Vegas says 548 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 An international team of astronomers using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and retired Spitzer Space Telescope has reported what may be the first intact planet found closely orbiting a white dwarf, the dense leftover of a Sun-like star, only 40% larger than Earth. The Jupiter-size object, called WD 1856 b, is about seven times larger than the white dwarf, named WD 1856+534. It circles this stellar cinder every 34 hours, more than 60 times faster than Mercury orbits our Sun. "WD 1856 b somehow got very close to its white dwarf and managed to stay in one piece," said Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The white dwarf creation process destroys nearby planets, and anything that later gets too close is usually torn apart by the star's immense gravity. We still have many questions about how WD 1856 b arrived at its current location without meeting one of those fates." A paper about the system, led by Vanderburg and including several NASA co-authors, appears in the Sept. 17 issue of Nature and is now available online. TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for nearly a month at a time. This long gaze allows the satellite to find exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, by capturing changes in stellar brightness caused when a planet crosses in front of, or transits, its star. The satellite spotted WD 1856 b about 80 light-years away in the northern constellation Draco. It orbits a cool, quiet white dwarf that is roughly 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) across, may be up to 10 billion years old, and is a distant member of a triple star system. When a Sun-like star runs out of fuel, it swells up to hundreds to thousands of times its original size, forming a cooler red giant star. Eventually, it ejects its outer layers of gas, losing up to 80% of its mass. The remaining hot core becomes a white dwarf. Any nearby objects are typically engulfed and incinerated during this process, which in this system would have included WD 1856 b in its current orbit. Vanderburg and his colleagues estimate the possible planet must have originated at least 50 times farther away from its present location. "We've known for a long time that after white dwarfs are born, distant small objects such as asteroids and comets can scatter inward towards these stars. They're usually pulled apart by a white dwarf's strong gravity and turn into a debris disk," said co-author Siyi Xu, an assistant astronomer at the international Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii, which is a program of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. "That's why I was so excited when Andrew told me about this system. We've seen hints that planets could scatter inward, too, but this appears to be the first time we've seen a planet that made the whole journey intact." The team suggests several scenarios that could have nudged WD 1856 b onto an elliptical path around the white dwarf. This trajectory would have become more circular over time as the star's gravity stretched the object, creating enormous tides that dissipated its orbital energy. "The most likely case involves several other Jupiter-size bodies close to WD 1856 b's original orbit," said co-author Juliette Becker, a 51 Pegasi b Fellow in planetary science at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena. "The gravitational influence of objects that big could easily allow for the instability you'd need to knock a planet inward. But at this point, we still have more theories than data points." Other possible scenarios involve the gradual gravitational tug of the two other stars in the system, red dwarfs G229-20 A and B, over billions of years and a flyby from a rogue star perturbing the system. Vanderburg's team thinks these and other explanations are less likely because they require finely tuned conditions to achieve the same effects as the potential giant companion planets. Jupiter-size objects can occupy a huge range of masses, from planets only a few times more massive than Earth to low-mass stars thousands of times Earth's mass. Others are brown dwarfs, which straddle the line between planet and star. Usually scientists turn to radial velocity observations to measure an object's mass, which can hint at its composition and nature. This method works by studying how an orbiting object tugs on its star and alters the color of its light. But in this case, the white dwarf is so old that its light has become both too faint and too featureless for scientists to detect noticeable changes. Instead, the team observed the system in the infrared using Spitzer, just a few months before the telescope was decommissioned. If WD 1856 b were a brown dwarf or low-mass star, it would emit its own infrared glow. This means Spitzer would record a brighter transit than it would if the object was a planet, which would block rather than emit light. When the researchers compared the Spitzer data to visible light transit observations taken with the Gran Telescopio Canarias in Spain's Canary Islands, they saw no discernable difference. That, combined with the age of the star and other information about the system, led them to conclude that WD 1856 b is most likely a planet no more than 14 times Jupiter's size. Future research and observations may be able to confirm this conclusion. Finding a possible world closely orbiting a white dwarf prompted co-author Lisa Kaltenegger, Vanderburg, and others to consider the implications for studying atmospheres of small rocky worlds in similar situations. For example, suppose that an Earth-size planet were located within the range of orbital distances around WD 1856 where water could exist on its surface. Using simulated observations, the researchers show that NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope could detect water and carbon dioxide on the hypothetical world by observing just five transits. The results of these calculations, led by Kaltenegger and Ryan MacDonald, both at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online. "Even more impressively, Webb could detect gas combinations potentially indicating biological activity on such a world in as few as 25 transits," said Kaltenegger, the director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute. "WD 1856 b suggests planets may survive white dwarfs' chaotic histories. In the right conditions, those worlds could maintain conditions favorable for life longer than the time scale predicted for Earth. Now we can explore many new intriguing possibilities for worlds orbiting these dead stellar cores." There is currently no evidence suggesting there are other worlds in the system, but it's possible additional planets exist and haven't been detected yet. They could have orbits that exceed the time TESS observes a sector or are tipped in a way such that transits don't occur. The white dwarf is also so small that the possibility of catching transits from planets farther out in the system is very low. TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia, NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California managed the Spitzer mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Spitzer science data continue to be analyzed by the science community via the Spitzer data archive, located at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information on TESS, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/tess For more information on Spitzer, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer Astrobiology Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nina Loasana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, September 17, 2020 19:23 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c457b433 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,virus-corona,virus-korona-indonesia,face-mask,health-protocol,regulation,Satpol-PP,National-Police,operasi-yustisi Free Members of the public across the country have been left puzzled by health protocol regulations issued by authorities, especially regarding the use of face masks in private vehicles. A video showing a woman complaining about being punished by authorities for not wearing a face mask properly inside her car recently went viral on social media. She claimed she was stopped by the police for pulling down her mask for a few seconds to breathe while driving. She criticized the punishment imposed by the officials, who required her to wait in line with other violators before eventually undergoing a quick trial to determine her punishment. They dont maintain physical distance. Its really not right because Im healthy and going along in my car. Now they have stopped me and asked me to wait next to strangers whose [health] conditions I dont know about, she says in the footage. #BongkarBorokCovidDKI Tilang pengendara mobil yg nurunin masker bbrp detik padahal dalam mobil cm dia sendiri. Udah ditilang dibawa ke posko yg banyak kerumunan orang mengabaikan aturan social distancing pic.twitter.com/EggcEZYYaA Gummy (@TuRtLRRJduSG4vt) September 16, 2020 A motorcyclist in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta became enraged on Thursday when authorities stopped her for not wearing her mask properly. She refused to be sanctioned as she claimed she only pulled down her mask temporarily to call her son, so she could speak more clearly. Its not that I dont wear mask. I do, she said, as quoted by kompas.com. She added that the officials should also have punished the people around her, who she said were not maintaining physical distance, among other transgressions. On Monday, the National Police launched a national operation, dubbed Operasi Yustisi, to crack down on health protocol violators. The police were cooperating with the Indonesian Military and local public order agencies (Satpol PP). During the operation, officials put violators through a quick trial to determine a punishment for them in tents set up on the side of the streets. The types of violations and the corresponding punishments varied from one region to another, depending on regulations issued by local administrations. Read also: Police launch operation to monitor, sanction Jakarta PSBB violators Jakarta, for example, requires all residents to wear a mask at all times while going out, including in private vehicles, according to Jakarta Gubernatorial Regulation No. 88/2020. In East Java, a 2020 gubernatorial regulation only stipulates that residents are required to wear a face mask while leaving their homes or interacting with other people whose health status is unknown. It does not mention specifically whether private vehicle users are required to wear a mask. A driver in Madiun, East Java, identified only as AI, told authorities that she did not know she was required to wear a mask inside her car, as reported by kompas.com. Another driver, identified only as AN, got into an argument with authorities, as she refused to be punished for wearing a face mask improperly while driving. She claimed her mask was loose so it slipped down to her chin on its own. "I didn't do it on purpose, I was driving [so I could not fix it]," she told the judge, who eventually ordered her to pay a fine. Read also: From sweeping to digging, Indonesia gets creative in handling violators of COVID-19 protocols I Gusti Agung Ketut Suryanegara, the head of the Badung Satpol PP in Bali, said many foreign tourists were upset when authorities punished them for not wearing a mask while riding or driving. They thought they did not have to wear a mask in their car or on their motorcycle because they wore a helmet, Suryanegara said, as quoted by kompas.com. Bali Gubernatorial Regulation No. 46/2020 on COVID-19 health protocols does not stipulate a requirement for drivers or riders to wear a mask while driving or riding their vehicles. CLEVELAND, Ohio Lake Eries walleye have had outstanding reproductive success in recent years, luring fishermen from around Ohio and the country to the wide-open waters. This week, Lake Erie Fisheries Supervisor Travis Hartman reported to the Ohio Wildlife Council that the booming fishery enjoyed another banner season. Well be releasing the numbers at the Ohio Wildlife Council meeting, and theyre very good again, said Eric Weimer, supervisor of the Sandusky Fisheries Research Unit. Its assurance our walleye fishing will be outstanding for the next decade. Walleye spawning success had been a roller coaster ride the last few decades. The 2003 hatch was the largest on record, but it was followed by many so-so years. Whether it has been the high-water levels on Lake Erie, or just the stars aligning in their favor, great walleye hatches have become the norm, and so has the fantastic walleye fishing. The hot August weather has caused a bit of a slump in the fishing around the fertile Western Basin of Lake Erie. Limit catches are still being reported, though, and anglers probing the Central Basin from Huron to Conneaut have had to head to the deeper waters of Lake Erie to find success. A positive note has been reports of a good spawning season by the beleaguered yellow perch population. Except for a few weeks of outstanding yellow perch fishing this summer in the Western Basin, perch are still difficult to find and catch. Northern pike spice up fishing for steelhead trout in Fairport Harbor It hasnt been a surprise that the steelhead trout have begun to gather around the mouth of the Grand River to get ready for their spawning runs up the river, or that anglers casting from the short pier in Fairport Harbor are catching a few on black-on-black jigs and maggots suspended under a float. But northern pike? Harbor Bait & Tackle is reporting that some northern pike must be hungry, because theyre taking the tiny rigs designed for the trout. Over the past few days, anglers report catching a number of the pike. Its expected that the walleye, which had been hanging around the deeper offshore waters, will also start to move closer to shore. Anglers trolling diving plugs, spoons and spinner rigs have been finding some success in the 55- to 60-foot depths lately, so it shouldnt be long before the walleye move in to feed along the shoreline after dark. Walleye Fall Brawl approaches Clevelander Frank Murphys popular Walleye Fall Brawl fishing derby on Lake Erie is just around the corner, and almost 2,000 anglers have already signed up for the Oct. 16-Nov. 29 event. Last year, more than 8,000 competed in the derby. The top prizes this year are fully-rigged Warrior and Hewescraft boats. To enter, go to lakeeriefishingderby.com. Mid-Ohio Sporting Goods in Millersburg will host a sign-up party on Thursday, Sept. 24 from 5-8 p.m. There will be lure specials, a food truck and door prize drawings. Night bite for walleye just starting to attract anglers to the piers, breakwalls Mike Chaffin at Erie Outfitters in Sheffield Lake reports that the walleye bite has been slow off Lorain and Cleveland of late, but a few pockets of nice walleye have been chasing crankbaits in 55 feet of water. The fish are suspending at about 35 feet. The night bite, though, is waking up. Chafins son, Justin, a Senior Research Coordinator at Ohio Sea Grants Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island on Lake Erie, was casting from the rocks in the Vermilion area this week just after the sun went down. Right after dark, while casting a Smithwick Perfect 10 lure, Justin quickly caught three walleye, said his dad. In the Lorain area, the south end of the sand bar has been a good location for catching walleye. The cooler nights should heat up the hungry walleye and lure them closer to the schools of bait along the shoreline. Sip & SonderNot Your Average Coffee Shop So, what happens when two attorneys meet, become friends, and develop an idea? Apparently, a space is born were people can come together in an inviting environment while sipping on some coffee. Sip & Sonder is more than a place to get a great cup of coffeeits a hub for Black culture, creativity, and community. The brains and beauty behind Sip & Sonder are co-owners, Amanda-Jane Thomas and Shanita Nicholas. As an attorney, Thomas represented an array of clients and worked with financial service industries in intellectual property, complex commercial litigation, and corporate matters. She has her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Nicholas has practiced law with general corporate start-ups and venture capital financing work. She has her B.S. in chemical engineering from the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science and a J.D./M.B.A. from Columbia Law and Business Schools. ADVERTISEMENT One day, the ladies began to discuss what they could do beyond their legal practices with Nicholas looking at the coffee industry. That has always been a passion of mine, to build a space like a coffee shop or coffee house where I was able to gain a lot of positive experiences, said Nicholas. To have that actual space, and point of connection in a community, and thats kind of what coffee shops represent and have represented in different communities for years, said Thomas. Sip & Sonder, located in Inglewood, CA, opened in April 2019, but had been a work in progress since June 2017. The ladies took their time shaping Sip & Sonder because they wanted to see what they could bring that was authentic to the community. We looked around and thought, how can we bring ourselves to this already established community and get feedback on what is wanted there, said Nicholas. ADVERTISEMENT In retrospect, in looking back, I think that it really took the amount of time that it needed to take, said Thomas. It allowed us to acclimate ourselves to the community. Sip & Sonder offers an array of brewed delights including a Rose Latte, Lavender Latte and Honey Lavender Latte Expressos. If you are more of a tea connoisseur, you can sample their Matcha Tea, Chai Latte or Turmeric Latte. And of course, no coffee shop would be complete without the appropriate knosh such as croissants, scones, cookies, and vegan pastries. Besides all the things youd come to expect, the ladies shared that Sip & Sonder is much more than your usual coffee spot. We focus on the quality of products that we serve our community in that sense, but we are coffee roasters, as in, in-house roasters with the coffee that we are providing is really carefully and specifically sourced and curated by us, said Nicholas. She continued, We wanted to be a space where entrepreneurs and creatives can come and just have a space to be, either with themselves or other people. I meanwe have really good coffee, said Thomas. Theres a coffee world that exista coffee industry that doesnt have many folks that look like us, and its crazy, because most coffee comes from Black and Brown countries. Sip & Sonder is also an event space open for a variety of occasionsthat is before COVID-19. Black businesses have taken a hard hit due to the pandemic. The ladies shared their COVID-19 story and what they are offering during these challenging times. It was a really difficult decision, probably one of the most difficult decisions weve made as business owners, said Nicholas and Thomas about having to furlough their SipSquad personnel as they closed their business initially. We were thinking, how can we be innovative? How can we pivot in the moment? said Nicholas. They were able to open for limited hours on the weekends, where they both brushed up on their barista skills and went to work. They eventually opened back up in June, slowly bringing the SipSquad family back together. Sip & Sonder, like many businesses, is currently only serving outside with storefront pickups and limited hours. Nicholas shared, Every one of our team members has been invited back and we continue to create space for that. Since May, Sip & Sonder has donated over 1,000 cups of coffee and pastries to essential workers on the frontlines of battling COVID-19. Its been an interesting year for Sip & Sonder so far, but they are becoming a hub in the community. As they navigate the rest of 2020, serving coffee, souls and more, they wanted to let the community know they want to meet them. Were still here, said Nicholas. Were still here for the community, and for the culture. It looks a little different with COVID, but we continue to have that same mindset and that same singular focus to be for the community and to be a service to the community in everything that we do, said Nicholas. We pride ourselves in being a Black-owned business in Inglewooda Black, woman-owned business in Inglewood, said Thomas. Come stop by, grab a cup of coffee, we have some really exciting programming thats coming up this Fall and Winter. We want to hear from you, we want to meet you. Sip & Sonder is located at 108 S Market St. in Inglewood, CA. You can find them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For more information, please visit their website at www.sipandsonder.com. The government of China, on Wednesday, 16 September, handed over its second batch of medical supplies to Ghana to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The Charge DAffaires of the Chinese Embassy in Ghana, Mr Zhu Jing, presented the supplies to Ghanas Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Bernard Oko-Boye, at a short ceremony in Accra. The supplies included 20,000 N95 protective face masks, 350,000 surgical masks, 10,000 disposable coveralls, 15,000 medical goggles, 15,000 pairs of disposable nitrile gloves, and 3000 pairs of disposable shoe covers. Mr Zhu spoke highly of Ghanas efforts to flatten the pandemic curve. He said that the Ghanaian government has been taking rigorous and effective measures to fight the pandemic. "The number of active cases is now under 1000. "The Kotoko International Airport has been reopened. "The government of Ghana has done a commendable job, which should be highly appreciated and fully supported", he stated. Mr Zhu said China, like Ghana and other countries, also suffered a lot from the virus but under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the whole nation has been fighting an all-out peoples war against the pandemic and they have made important progress in the prevention and control efforts so far. Mr Zhu emphasised that the virus respects no borders and friendship has no boundaries. The Chinese government and the Chinese People, including those in Ghana, will do their best to help Ghana. He believed that as long as Ghana and China stayed in solidarity, we will definitely win the battle against the pandemic. The Deputy Minister of Health commended Chinas progress in controlling the pandemic and gave special thanks to the Chinese Government for their supports. He said that Ghana has already and will continue to work with the world community, including China to fight the pandemic. A brief published earlier this summer by ExcelinEd provides recommendations to education policy leaders for the delivery of special education services during the COVID-19 school closures. Professor Elizabeth Kozleski of the Stanford University reviewed Special Education and Distance Learning: Supporting Students Through the Pandemic. She concludes that it offers only minimal support for policymakers in funding the research and development work that lies ahead as remove education continues for students with disabilities. The brief notes Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos statement that the core features of implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Act must remain in place and that no waivers for the delivery of special education services are allowable. It also notes that families and advocates are deeply worried about learning progress and loss of learning because of the national pandemic. In response, the brief provides four sets of what it labels best practices for school and district leadership. Professor Kozleski explains that these recommendations come up short, in part because they assume that current knowledge among school professionals is sufficient to make the desired special education and technological leaps. In fact, the necessary knowledge and capacity are barely emerging. Further, the recommendations do little to address the unequal distribution of resources in schools, which include access to well-prepared teachers and related services personnel qualified to teach students with disabilities, particularly using distance learning approaches. Given these concerns, coupled with the lack of research anchoring its recommendations, the brief offers little to policymakers or practitioners currently struggling to make distance learning work during the pandemic. Find the review, by Elizabeth B. Kozleski, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/special-education-pandemic Find Special Education and Distance Learning: Supporting Students Through the Pandemic, written by Patricia Levesque and published by ExcelinEd, at: https://www.excelined.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ExcelinEd.COVID19.SpecialEducationDistanceLearning.June2020.pdf NEPC Reviews (http://thinktankreview.org) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: https://nepc.colorado.edu We need to learn from whats happened during Wrexham hospital outbreak to help tackle similar likely outbreaks This article is old - Published: Thursday, Sep 17th, 2020 The Health Minster Vaughan Gething has said lessons need to be learnt, and shared across the country, to help tackle future outbreaks that are likely in different settings including, unfortunately within healthcare settings. Yesterday we reported on death figures being released that covered the period of time where Wrexham Maelor Hospital saw an increase in coronavirus cases at an outbreak at the hospital, indicating at least 32 people died during that period. Concerns had been raised at the time around in hospital transmission, with people catching the virus inside the hospital. On Tuesday the Guardian reported Tameside hospital is fighting a fatal outbreak of hospital-acquired Covid, and an incident at Weston General Hospital in Somerset where deaths have also been linked to in hospital transmission. On the 5th of August the First Minister Mark Drakeford was asked during a Plenary session about the issue in Wrexham Maelor Hospital by the Leader of the Opposition Paul Davies MS. The First Minister outlined some of the then newly introduced measures to help the situation at the hospital, noting that mandating use of face masks, new physical screening installed, a single point of entry for the public, and testing of all patients on arrival, by whatever route they arrive at the hospital were brought in as a response. The First Minister also detailed more apparently new processes brought in to tackle the outbreak, When those patients are screened, those who are suspected of having coronavirus are transferred to a side room on a COVID-positive ward and are nursed by a separate nursing team. Those with no symptoms are cohorted until swab results are available. Patients with a positive result are placed on a COVID-positive ward, and patients with a negative result are transferred to general bed use. As far as staff are concerned, all staff at the Maelor hospital are being tested. Six hundred of those tests are already booked. Staff are restricted in movements across the hospital, agency staff are restricted to particular wards, and thousands of additional items of PPE have been provided at the hospitala comprehensive suite of measures, with more measures being added every day, and, Llywydd, as I said, the success of those measures is already evident. With the scale of the deaths unknown publicly until yesterday we asked Health Minister at yesterdays Welsh Government lunchtime briefing if there was going to be a specific inquiry or investigation into what happened at Wrexham hospital during the outbreak period at the end of July and into early August. The Health Minister Vaughn Gething replied, Were definitely look at lessons learned from the Wrexham outbreak and we know there are outbreaks in other hospitals across the UK. Theres definite learning to take about infection prevention and control measures, and then how quickly we act on what we see, if we do see that taking place within a healthcare facility. We also need to transfer that learning to our care home sector as well. I spoke with the Chief Nursing Officer of Wales yesterday about exactly that subject, about how we help our care home sector to prepare for the winter ahead, and the rising challenges that we may well face. So yes, there is the learning to come from it. I think trying to have an individual sort of public inquiry into the position in Wrexham, to set up anything of that sort takes a significant amount of time. We want the learning to be dealt with transparently not just within the North Wales Health Board, but to share that learning across the country. I fully expect that well be able to have some information from that during the course of the winter to help the position in the here and now, because as I said many times before, the coronavirus pandemic is not over. We need to learn from whats happened, where things have gone wrong as well as what we have done well, because we are likely to see further outbreaks in different settings including, unfortunately within healthcare settings through the autumn and winter period ahead of us. Doctors are reporting more cases of insomnia as the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on Americans stress levels. Driftwell, PepsiCos latest drink, is pitching itself as a way to combat the problem, according to CNBC. As part of an internal competition held last year by CEO Ramon Laguarta, Pepsi employees came up with an idea for a beverage to help consumers de-stress and relax before bedtime. The concept won, and the food and beverage giant went to work to make it a reality. The enhanced water drink contains 200 miligrams of L-theanine, an amino acid thats found in green and black teas, and 10% of the daily recommended dose of magnesium. A few studies have suggested that L-theanine can improve sleep quality and can help reduce the physical symptoms of stress. Driftwell will be available nationwide on e-commerce sites in December and in grocery stores by the first quarter of 2021. According to Fox Business Network, the blackberry and lavender-flavored water will be packaged in a 7.5-ounce can. The flavoring is intended to be subtle and soothing, will not be carbonated or contain sugar or calories. Functional water beverages were a $2.97 billion market last year in the U.S., according to data from Euromonitor International. Smaller companies are making their own relaxation drinks by adding CBD to sparkling water and touting them as a sleep aid or a way to unwind, although little research has been done to back up those claims. Those companies are doing this despite the Food and Drug Administration prohibiting adding the cannabis compound to food and drinks, and large corporations like Pepsi have avoided any potential regulatory snafus by sidestepping the ingredient for now. Read more: Coca-Cola eyeing the cannabis market as trendy ingredient for new drink Stressed-out Americans are more worried about money than health Pandemic is taking a toll on the mental health of young adults: Poll (CNN) India is in crisis. Its economy has crashed, with the largest slump on record decimating millions of jobs. Its already fragile healthcare system is struggling. With more than five million cases, India ranks only behind the United States for confirmed infections. But whereas other populist leaders are feeling the political heat from their handling of the pandemic -- US President Donald Trump and his British counterpart Boris Johnson, for instance -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has largely escaped the scathing headlines and crushing opinion polls that have beleaguered his counterparts. Modi's landslide re-election for a second five-year term last year gave him a sweeping mandate to push his Hindu nationalist agenda, in a country where 80% of the population is Hindu. Asim Ali, a researcher at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research think-tank, said the Indian leader is seen as a "national messiah" who is working on a grander agenda to reshape the Indian nation and is not accountable for day-to-day government failures. "Modi has staked out for himself the role of not just the political leader of India, but also its social, moral and spiritual leader, in the mold of Mahatma Gandhi," Ali said. Over the past year, Modi has made steady headway on Hindu nationalist policies, from revoking the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, to backing a controversial citizenship law that critics say discriminates against Muslims. But his second-term aspirations to revitalize the economy now seem more distant than ever due to the pandemic. As it continues to batter the Indian economy, analysts say it's unclear if the populist leader can emerge politically unscathed. The facts Compared with other world leaders, like Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who downplayed the threat of the pandemic and dismissed the coronavirus as a "little flu" only to be infected later himself Modi took the coronavirus seriously from the beginning and acted swiftly. When he ordered a nationwide lockdown on March 24, the country of 1.36 billion had reported just over 500 coronavirus cases and 10 deaths. "You have seen how the most powerful nations have become helpless in the face of this pandemic," Modi said in a live televised address to the nation, as he announced the lockdown, warning that India could be set back decades if the outbreak was not dealt with properly. "There is no other way to remain safe from coronavirus ... we have to break the cycle of infection," he said. By taking drastic action early, Modi reaffirmed his image as a decisive leader who is able to take strict, politically tough measures for the sake of the country, said Ali, the researcher at the Center Policy Research. He is seen as a "saintly figure who means well and always acts in the larger national interest," said Ali. Indian public health experts, however, have differed on their support for the timing and effectiveness of the lockdown. Ramanan Laxminarayan, a senior research scholar at Princeton University, said it was essential because infections were increasing rapidly at the time, and that it helped decrease disease transmission. Others, including virologist T. Jacob John, argue the lockdown was imposed too early and too widely, when cases were still low and concentrated in specific regions. Consequently, more people were impacted by the resultant economic slowdown than needed to be, and not enough resources were available to support slum areas, for example, where lockdown measures including social distancing were impossible. The unsustainable nature of the nationwide lockdown merely delayed the spread of the outbreak. "Now, looking back it was clearly a mistake. We should have waited for longer. Because we didn't stop the pandemic," said economist and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee. What most experts agree on is that India's lockdown the largest and one of the strictest in the world was imposed with not enough notice or planning. Coming into effect less than four hours after it was announced, the measures brought the country to a virtual standstill and triggered a migrant crisis. In the cities, poor day laborers were suddenly jobless. Many had no choice but to return to their home villages, but with trains and public transport suspended, some walked for hundreds of miles. "A few days of advance notice would not have hurt the lockdown, but would've helped small traders plan their stocks, helped people get to places where they could be prepared to stay for a longer period of time, and big companies to shift to alternative ways of working," said Laxminarayan. "What's the point of surviving Covid-19 only to die of starvation or to be stranded without work?" he said. According to the World Bank, a large proportion of India's 40 million internal migrants were affected by the lockdown. India's Labour Ministry says there is no state-wide data available on deaths of migrant workers during the lockdown. No real opposition Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has insisted the lockdown was effective and necessary. "Had we not announced the lockdown when we did, the numbers would have been very different today," said BJP's national spokesperson, Syed Zafar Islam. India's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said Monday the lockdown was a "bold" decision that had prevented as many as 78,000 deaths. "It has been estimated that this decision prevented approximately ... 37,000 to 78,000 deaths," the minister said. The BJP's landslide victory in the national elections last year left the biggest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, dispirited and gripped by an unending leadership crisis, as well as rebellions from within. Due to a weak, fragmented opposition, Modi hasn't faced concerted criticism, analysts said. Political observers also pointed to the lack of critical coverage from India's media. "Television news stations rarely cover India's crumbling health infrastructure in the face of the fast spreading pandemic," Ali said. "For weeks, India's most watched television networks have been obsessively focused on a Bollywood actor's suicide even as India became (a) leading global hotspot of the pandemic." Unlike other democratic leaders, Modi rarely gives press conferences. Interactions with the media are usually left to his government ministers. Instead, he addresses the nation directly on live television and radio, making emotional appeals to the public to follow his lead. "I am well aware of the problems you have faced some for food, some for movement from place to place, and others for staying away from homes and families," he said in a speech in April, as he extended the lockdown. "However, for the sake of your country, you are fulfilling your duties like a disciplined soldier. This is the power of 'We, the People of India' that our constitution talks about." Compared to his predecessors, Modi has made a much bigger effort to speak directly to ordinary Indians. On the last Sunday of every month, he hosts a radio program called "Mann Ki Baat" or "inner thoughts" which usually touches on cultural issues. Some migrant workers who lost their livelihood in the lockdown have refused to blame Modi for their predicament. Subhash Das had been working as a driver in a city southwest of New Delhi for 10 years when he was sacked less than a month into the lockdown. He had no choice but to return to his home village in eastern India, and has been struggling to provide for his family. He said the lockdown was necessary and helped to control the outbreak, even though it had upended his life. "I don't blame the Prime Minister for my situation. It's due to coronavirus that people like me are suffering," he said. "I love Modi. He's done so much for my village. He's provided (us) electricity and concrete homes." Ritika Oberoi, who lost her job as a senior manager at a travel agency in May when the company went out of business, also doesn't hold Modi responsible either. ''It's Covid-19 that hit the travel industry severely," she said. When the restrictions were lifted in late May, infections started to increase at an exponential rate. It took five-and-a-half months for India to record 1 million cases on July 17. Then, it took another three weeks to hit 2 million, 16 days to reach 3 million, and only 12 days to pass 4 million in early September before arriving at 5 million on Wednesday. Laxminarayan, the public health expert at Princeton University, said it was never possible for India to contain the epidemic due to its underfunded health system, high population density and lack of public health awareness. "Social distancing is a luxury that was simply never available to most Indians," he said. "At this point the epidemic is uncontrolled and will run through the Indian population until we reach some semblance of population immunity." The economic fallout While some Indians may not blame Modi for the escalating coronavirus outbreak, experts warned that the economic fallout of the pandemic could eventually cost Modi politically. "Modi has consistently presented himself to the Indian electorate as a 'development messiah,' who will somehow transform India through his leadership from a low income developing country to some kind of a socially and economically advanced country," said Sumantra Bose, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. "He's been selling this dream for the past 6 years. However ... that makes him vulnerable to a really serious downturn in the economy." When Modi was first elected in 2014, he promised to overhaul India's economy and create millions of jobs for young people. When he sought a second term, he set the bar even higher -- in its election manifesto, the BJP envisaged to turn India into the world's third largest economy by 2032, with a size of $10 trillion. Weeks after assuming office, the Modi government pledged to turn India into a 5-trillion-dollar economy in five years. By some economists' estimate, that would require the Indian economy to grow on an average of 9% per year. But even before the pandemic, the Indian economy was already faltering. In the past three months of 2019, GDP growth dropped to 4.7%, its slowest rate in more than six years. Some of the greatest economic damage was caused by some of Modi's signature policies. In November 2016, he abruptly banned the two biggest banknotes in circulation, making 86% of the country's cash worthless. While the aim was to crack down on black money and tax evasion which many experts said was misguided, given that most untaxed wealth is not believed to be stored in cash the move wreaked havoc on the cash-dependent economy and brought several sectors to a halt. And now, the coronavirus lockdown has plunged India into a historic recession. As businesses, factories and construction sites ground to a halt, India's economy contracted by 24% from April to June, the worst slump since 1996, when the country started reporting quarterly data. In April alone, an estimated 122 million Indians lost their jobs, although the number narrowed down to 11 million in July, according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank. According to a World Bank report in July, around half of India's population is at risk of slipping back into poverty due to income and job losses. In May, Modi's government announced a $260 billion relief package to prop up the ailing economy during the pandemic, but economists say too little of it was given to the poor, who have been hit hardest. This week, global rating agency Moody's projected India's economy would contract 11.5% this financial year, down from the 4% forecast in July, citing the severe impact of the lockdown and the continued surge in coronavirus cases. Hindu nationalism With the economy in tatters, Modi has continued to pursue the Hindu nationalist agenda which helped him win a second term. But critics have warned that it could further polarize Hindus and Muslims the latter have already been subject to vigilante attacks in recent years. During the pandemic, some of India's 200 million Muslims have been targeted in Islamophobic attacks on the streets and online, and have been accused of spreading the virus, after a conservative Muslim group was linked to a highly publicized cluster of coronavirus cases in March. While these incidents have been mostly isolated, the virus seems to be amplifying existing prejudices, playing into growing Hindu nationalism which in recent years has seen India's Muslim societies increasingly marginalized. Last month, amid rising coronavirus cases, Modi attended a ground-breaking ceremony for a Hindu temple at the site of a demolished 16th-century mosque. The holy site at Ayodhya, a town in Uttar Pradesh state, has been at the center of the country's most politically and culturally divisive land dispute. With the temple going into construction, Modi has fulfilled one of his key election promises. But Bose said Modi's nationalist policies ultimately won't be enough to distract people from the reality of the economic crisis for long. Many Indians are simply too confused and worried about the pandemic and their livelihoods to express their political outrage right now put simply, their disenchantment hasn't manifested itself, he said. "The unraveling of the Modi aura has begun, it's perhaps not manifest yet, but it's there," he said. "People are not really thinking about Modi or party politics, or the next election right now. In that sense, it's really in a way premature to say that Modi's standing is unaffected." India's next general election is still four years away in 2024, and there are no term limits for the position of prime minister in the constitution. But Modi and his BJP will soon face a litmus test on their popular support the upcoming legislative assembly elections in the eastern state of Bihar, home to millions of migrant workers who were deeply affected by the lockdown and economic nosedive. The Bihar elections, scheduled to be held in October, could serve as a microcosm referendum on the Modi government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak and the economy. "The states are the building blocks of the national politics," Bose said. "The outcome of that election will be a reliable barometer." This story was first published on CNN.com "Only the US has more coronavirus cases than India. But unlike Trump, its leader seems immune from criticism" The city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has issued the final show-cause notice to 36 private hospitals for violating the Karnataka governments mandate to allocate 50% beds for the treatment of Covid-19 infected. It has warned that, any failure to comply with the same will be viewed seriously and action will be initiated under the relevant provisions of the Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Ordinance, 2020, Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act, 2017 and Disaster Management Act, 2005, which include suspension of registration, fine and even imprisonment. Among the hospitals that have been issued final show cause notice include- 21 with over hundred beds, ten with 50- 100 beds and five with 20-50 beds. It is mandatory for private hospitals to allocate 50% of the beds for the treatment of Covid-19 infected. Notices have been issued by BBMP to 36 private hospitals in Bengaluru who are denying treatment to those infected in violation of government rules. It is certain that strict action will be taken against hospitals violating law, Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar tweeted. In one such final show cause notice issued to a private hospital on Wednesday, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad has said that it has been observed that the hospital has not complied with the directions of the government to notify and make available the mandated 50% of the beds for patients referred by it. Noting that even after blocking beds on the online portal of BBMP, patients requiring Covid-19 treatment were being turned away stating beds were not available, the notice to a hospital said, this reveals that beds which are supposed to be reserved for government are being allocated to private patients. Hence, under relevant sections of Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Ordinance, 2020, Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act, 2017 and Disaster Management Act, 2005 you are hereby directed to immediately comply with provision of the mandated number of beds within 48 hours and report the same, it said. It further said if the hospital failed to comply with the directions, action would be taken against under Sec 15 of KPME Act and also under provisions of the Disaster Management Act also. Hospitals have also been directed to update on the official portal, details of all government referred patients and private patients so that the actual Covid-19 patient bed occupancy is reflected. They have also been directed to also give information about the occupancy of the beds by non-Covid patients under various categories of beds as well. When Jodi Degyansky and her 2-year-old son boarded their return flight from Florida to Chicago's Midway Airport on Southwest Airlines on Sept. 12, she says she never imagined it would end with both of them being removed from the plane. "I want to be super clear," Degyansky told "Good Morning America." "He was wearing his mask. We were following the rules. We were following the protocol set forth by the airline. And we still got kicked off the flight." The trouble began, Degyansky said, when they boarded the plane and Degyansky was getting her son situated. That included giving him a snack. She was approached by a flight attendant, "three or four times," and asked if her son would voluntarily wear his mask, which she said "he absolutely would." "He was not resistant to it, but he had the snack in front of him and every time the flight attendant came over there was a heightened level of stress," Degyansky said. "I told him, 'I promise he is going to wear the mask.'" She says it was different from their trip to Florida, which had taken place a week earlier. On that flight, she says the attendants were much more flexible. "Just do your best," is what Degyansky said the attendants told her regarding her son keeping his mask on for the duration of the flight. Related: Airlines crack down on face coverings MORE: Masks for 7 hours a day? How we can start prepping kids now At one point while conversing with the flight attendant about the mask on the return flight, Degyansky said she asked him to stand 6 feet away from her. It was this, Degyansky said, that she thinks is what ultimately got her kicked off the flight, because shortly thereafter, her son had finished his snack and his mask was in place. "I turned around and gave the thumbs up to the flight attendant that the mask was on," Degyansky told "GMA." But she was informed that she was being removed from the flight. In video captured by another passenger and broadcast on ABC's Chicago station, Degyansky and her son are seen wearing their masks and she is heard saying, "You can see the mask is clearly on his face." Story continues Still, she and her son, who turned 2 just a few weeks ago, were removed from the flight. She says she paid $600 to get on a flight home on American Airlines. And while she's requested a refund from Southwest, she told "GMA" it's not about the money. MORE: Journalist gets moving Black Lives Matter note from flight attendant "I want to see consistency across the board," Degyansky said about the seemingly different interpretations of the rules from one flight crew to the next. "Or, hopefully, more compassion on a case-by-case basis." "GMA" contacted Southwest for comment. While the airline said they would not comment specifically on the Degyansky situation, they said that "our Customer Relations Team is looking into this situation to learn more." The airline sent "Good Morning America" the following statement about their mask policy: "We communicate this policy to all Customers at multiple touchpoints throughout the travel journey including during booking, in a pre-trip email sent prior to departure, and during a required acknowledgement that's part of the Customer Health Declaration Form which appears during the check-in process on the Southwest app, Southwest.com, Southwest's mobile website, and airport kiosks." "If a Customer is unable to wear a face covering for any reason, Southwest regrets that we are unable to transport the individual," the statement continued. "In those cases, we will issue a full refund and hope to welcome the Customer onboard in the future, if public health guidance regarding face coverings changes. "Caring for others with our Southwest Hearts is at the center of everything we do, which is especially important during this pandemic," the statement concluded. "We appreciate the ongoing support and spirit of cooperation among our Customers and Employees as we collectively take care of each other while striving to prevent the spread of COVID-19." Degyansky maintains that her son was wearing his mask. "He was doing the right thing, he was being a good boy," she said, adding that she had promised him the snack for boarding the plane properly. The little boy was "distracted by the snack," Degyansky said, and just needed a few minutes to get ready to put the mask on. "I understand it's a big company with thousands of employees and they are figuring it out and moving as fast as they can," Degyansky said. "I would just ask for some compassion from their side too." Mask confrontation gets mom and 2-year-old kicked off flight originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com Add that to an overdue reckoning with inappropriate touching and abuse at a few well-known establishments that left some students leery of in-person classes, as well as disruptive platforms like ClassPass, and its easy to understand why yoga studios were starting to disappear well before the coronavirus outbreak. But the health requirements necessitated by the pandemic including physical distancing, especially indoors have robbed studios of their lifeblood: rooms full of people. Our business depended on volume to survive, and now if we say instead of putting 50 people in a room the most we can put is 10 to 12, theres just no viable way for the model to work, said Michael Patton, who left a job on Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis to start Yoga Vida, which had four locations in the city. Before the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. Patton was paying around $95,000 in monthly rent. He has since broken all his leases and is riding out the pandemic in an empty rural retreat he was developing upstate near New Paltz, for which he is now seeking a partner or a buyer. The bigger you are, the bigger the problems, said Brian Cooper, the chief executive of YogaWorks, a national chain that permanently closed all of its New York City locations in April and is now offering online classes. The pandemic has been equally tough on smaller studios. Nueva Alma, which Erica Garcia opened on the northern edge of the Bronx in 2012, would have been limited to seven students under physical distancing guidelines. So Ms. Garcia locked the doors for the last time on June 1 and is now teaching Zoom classes. Im not in it for the money, but Im not in it to lose money, either, she said. An isolation pod-equipped air ambulance (a helicopter fitted with medical equipment) that was inaugurated in Bengaluru on September 8, 2020. (PTI) Bengaluru: With political attention in Karnataka diverted towards the drug scandal in the Kannada film industry, coronavirus incidence had crept up to the verge of a significant milestone. The corona count is just one day away from touching the half a million mark. The epidemic has grown by over 9000 positive cases per day in the past 10 days. It took a mere 13 days to go from four lakh cases to five lakh. On Thursday, Karnataka accounted for 9366 new positive cases while discharged cases counted about 7268 cases. The number of deaths on Thursday stood at 93, of which Bengaluru accounted for 34. Though the government is harping on statistics like the total recovery rate (over 70 per cent) and the mortality rate (less than two per cent), the numbers are staggering. While the total number of active cases in Karnataka stands at 1.03 lakh, COVID-related deaths are up to 7629. At least three districts in the state have shown a death rate over 3 per cent. Bengaluru is worst affected district in the state, accounting for over 40 per cent of the cases. So far, Bengaluru has has seen 1.84 lakh COVID-19 positive cases, of which over 41,053 are still active. There have been 2555 COVID-19 deaths in the city. Doctors working with COVID-19 patients are fearing worse days ahead as the government has totally given up on preventive measures. One doctor who works in the COVID ward of a hospital attached to a private medical college said people have to be more careful as the symptoms are changing. "We feel that a second wave is coming. Most of the new patients are coming with symptoms of pneumonia. With the Bengaluru weather getting colder every day, pneumonia could be a bad sign,'' he said. "The worst part is that we are running out of beds in hospitals. Most of these patients cannot be treated in quarantine centres. We need more oxygen supplies and medical staff working in COVID wards are exhausted. If the inflow of pneumonia patients increases, it will be impossible to handle,'' he added. A still from Sarah Gavron's Rocks. (Altitude) This week sees the release of Sarah Gavrons new film Rocks into UK cinemas. It was hailed as one of the best films to come out of the Toronto Film Festival in 2019 and was originally slated for release before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. The new film from the director of Suffragette and Brick Lane is a witty, realist and heart-warming tale of growing up in inner city London and the impact of girl friendships. Written by Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson, the film explores the resilience, joy and spirit of girlhood through a group of inner city teenage girls. Uniquely, most of the girls including the lead Bukky Bakray are non trained actors whose first role is this film. The production team scouted hundreds of girls across schools in London and began an intense workshop process with them to explore character and story ideas, finally producing the core group: Bukky Bakray, Kosar Ali, Shaneigha-Monik Greyson, Afi Okaidja, Tawheda Begum, Anastasia Dymitrow and Ruby Stokes. Read more: Autumns most exciting new movies The quietly revolutionary production was 75% female and was a deeply collaborative project from inside out between everyone involved. Yahoo spoke to Rocks casting team, headed up by Lucy Pardee and Jessica Straker, about how they cast the film using total unknowns. What is Rocks? Rocks is a film about sisterhood, and thats what it has been like behind the camera, too. It is an example of how film should be made going forward. It has genuinely been a life-changing experience for us. And has changed the way we view collaborations. Weve found collaborators for life in this community of women and girls. What were you looking for in the cast? A still from Rocks. (Altitude) The search for the main cast was very open, which gave way to joyful chaos in the early stages. We didnt have set ideas about who our cast was when we started looking for them, because we wanted to allow space for people to rise to the occasion. We wanted to escape the tropes that can see some films about young people get stuck. Story continues Read more: Rocks: The most authentic film about British teens in years As the process went on, we realised the roles would suit people who who also reflected the energy that was starting to percolate behind the scenes. So that meant a progressive energy. The ability to grow through the process. The ability to be accountable. To trust. How did you find the cast? We found the cast in schools, mainly, with some youth clubs. For the girls, other than age, there was no casting brief. We spoke to whole year groups and inviting everyone who wanted to come forward. We found DAngelou not once, but twice! First through a social media push and then, by chance, in his primary school, when he looked up and smiled, I know you! We had a more specific guiding principle for Emmanuel, looking for someone with a really active imagination, which D had. Read more: New look at Johnny Flynn as David Bowie He shared what hes learned and observed about the world, leading us in a mini-meditation session in the middle of his audition. He told us to close our eyes and breathe, which was greatly appreciated considering we had seen nearly 200 boys that weekend. What did the auditions consist of, and how do you know what you were looking for? We met around 1,500 girls in castings, which were these epic weekends of the two of us seeing over 200 girls a day, who all came in their existing friendship groups. Sometimes theyd be groups of three and other times twenty five. It genuinely felt like a tornado of teenage energy at times, but we loved it. The poster for Rocks featuring the original release date. (Altitude) Most of the girls in the film, down the extras, came through those casting weekends. It was all talking about their friendships and improvisations. We remember really clearly every one of the lead girls auditions. Kosar and Tawheda were cracking jokes with their mates. Ruby and Sheneigha were in a room full of people they didnt know, but still brought it. We knew Bukky, Afi and Anastasia from the research, but had never seen them properly in action when it came to acting. The look on Bukkys face when she walked in the room, you could see that she had made the decision to go for it. And go for it, she did. They all did, and in different ways, which is why they work so beautifully together as a group. They all made their presences known in their own ways. How did the workshop process work? The workshopping was about giving the girls the space to grow into the process and to grow towards each other. They didnt know each other before the workshops, so one of the things we were interested in was seeing who forged connections and how they translated into chemistry on screen. We still werent motivated by the desire to find people who fit a brief. We wanted to fit around them, and not the other way around. A still from Rocks. (Altitude) In addition to working with the creative team, we were lucky enough to work with other incredible professionals during the workshops, too - Dionne Reed, an artist, expert facilitator and educator; Axa Hynes, a youth work and participation expert (now head of widening participation at Rada); Tanika Yearwood, an incredible actor and; Nanette Marcelline, also an educator. Their contributions were beyond significant. It was all about making space, and showing the girls reflections of themselves in the people who came to work with them, so that this experience wasnt just about one single route into the industry. Regardless of the outcome, we wanted to model a multitude of ways to continue making work and telling stories. What advice do you have for young actors looking to make it through the audition process? A still from Rocks. (Altitude) The advice wed give young people looking to make it through the audition process is to turn up and give it your all. There are some young people who wont show up because they think they might not fit some "industry standard". The industry is changing. If you are nervous, push through it, because even if you mess it up, the right eyes will see through that. And know that the people seeing you are probably just as nervous. But nerves mean you are about to do something that matters to you, so just go for it. And keep going. Working as an actor is a journey, not a destination. Rocks is released in cinemas on 18 September in the UK and Ireland. FRANKFURT : BioNTech expects that the experimental COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Pfizer can be stored at refrigerator temperatures for at least two weeks, seeking to allay concerns that the compound may have to be deep-frozen. Speaking at an online media briefing on the purchase of an additional German production site, Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said tests have recently confirmed the genetic compound remains stable at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for five days but he expects storability at those conditions to be two weeks or longer. He added that a good vaccine should have an efficacy of at least 70% to 75% for it to quell the pandemic and that was also the yardstick that BioNTech had set itself. BioNTech SE said it is buying a German manufacturing site with capacity to churn out 750 million doses a year of its Covid-19 vaccine, more than doubling the amount the company can produce as it prepares to help supply the world with its still-unproven shot. The site purchase from Swiss pharma giant Novartis AG shows the German biotechs confidence in the experimental vaccine its developing together with US partner Pfizer Inc and Chinas Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. The site will enable BioNTech to ramp up production more quickly than if it had relied on expanding existing sites, as it had originally planned, Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin said. Particularly in the first half of 2021, we can get more doses than initially planned," Sahin said. BioNTechs vaccine candidate and its rivals are making their way through clinical studies amid intense public scrutiny -- and in some countries, political promises. In the U.S., Paul Mango, one of the leaders of the administrations Covid-19 vaccine program, said on Wednesday that every American could be vaccinated by the end of March. BioNTech and Pfizer are seeking to ship 100 million doses of vaccine this year -- enough for 50 million people to get a two-dose course of immunization -- and with that supply already portioned out between multiple governments, it wouldnt be sufficient to cover the U.S., Sahin said. The partners expect to get initial data next month from a 44,000-person study showing whether the vaccine works. Ramping up to full production capability will take some time. The new site will be able to make 250 million doses of its vaccine in the first half of next year and then as many as 750 million doses a year once its fully operational. The shots will supply the Chinese market as well as other countries around the world. Pfizer will also produce the vaccine in the US and Europe. Together, Pfizer and BioNTech had initially said they could manufacture more than 1.3 billion doses of vaccine by the end of next year. Todays manufacturing deal will increase their joint capacity by at least 300 million doses a year, Sahin said. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Poonch: Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Balakote and Mendhar sectors in Poonch district on Thursday morning. According to reports, the ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops took place at about 6.45 am today by firing with small arms and shelling with mortars. Pakistans unprovoked cross-border firing evoked a sharp response from the Indian Army, which retaliated befittingly. It may be recalled that India has so far lost 95 soldiers, 75 of them during ceasefire violation by Pakistan and 20 more soldiers during border skirmishes with China since 2014. Live TV In reply to a question in Parliament, Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Shripad Naik gave a detailed answer. In 2015, four soldiers lost their lives when Pakistan resorted to ceasefire violation along the Line of Control (LoC); in 2016, seven soldiers lost their lives; in 2017, 23 soldiers were martyred; in 2018, 19 soldiers lost their lives and in 2020 (till September 14), nine soldiers martyred. With China, 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives in 2020, added Naik. The fatal casualties of Army personnel in battle since 2014 stands at 738, stated Naik. In 2014, 78 personnel lost their lives; in 2015, 109 personnel were martyred; in 2016, 133 personnel lost their lives; in 2017, 137 were martyred; in 2018, 117 personnel lost their lives; in 2019, 107 were martyred, and in 2020, 57 personnel lost their lives. The first volume of former President Barack Obamas memoir is coming out Nov. 17, two weeks after Election Day. Its called A Promised Land and will cover his swift and historic rise to the White House and his first term in office. The publication date for the second volume has not yet been determined. Ive spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in A Promised Land Ive tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office: the key events and people who shaped it; my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made; and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront then and that as a nation we are grappling with still, Obama said in a statement Thursday. In the book, Ive also tried to give readers a sense of the personal journey that Michelle and I went through during those years, with all the incredible highs and lows. And finally, at a time when America is going through such enormous upheaval, the book offers some of my broader thoughts on how we can heal the divisions in our country going forward and make our democracy work for everybody a task that wont depend on any single president, but on all of us as engaged citizens. Obamas book, like his previous ones, will be released by Crown. The 768-page book is the most anticipated presidential memoir in memory, as much or more because of the quality of the writing than for any possible revelations. He has been called the most literary president since Abraham Lincoln and has already written two highly praised, million-selling books: Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, both of which have been cited as aiding his presidential run in 2008 and making him the countrys first Black president. Even with a substantial list price of $45, The Promised Land is virtually guaranteed to sell millions of copies. But it will face challenges far different from most presidential memoirs, and even from former first lady Michelle Obamas blockbuster book, Becoming, which came out two years ago. Because of the pandemic, the former president will likely be unable to have the spectacular arena tour that Michelle Obama had. Barack Obama also may find his book coming out at a time when the Nov. 3 election is still undecided and the country is far more preoccupied with who the next president will be than with events of the past. LEHI, Utah, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- As more consumers turn to online shopping in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic, Podium, the leading interaction management platform for local businesses, announced today that it is partnering with Nationwide Marketing Group the nation's largest buying, marketing and business support organization for independent appliance, electronics, furniture and bedding retailers to provide advanced e-commerce solutions to its members. According to the latest Adobe Digital Economy Index (DEI), U.S. consumers have spent 14 billion hours shopping online so far in 2020. And that number is expected to rise further, with 95% of all purchases estimated to be made online by 2040. "Nationwide's independent retailers are already experts at building relationships with their customers," explains Tom Hickman, Nationwide's president and chief member advocate. "Our partnership with Podium will help them further refine their online communications, especially webchat and online reviews, to gather more leads, close more sales, share their brand message with more prospects and ultimately build more customer loyalty." While Podium already works with more than 100 Nationwide retailers across the United States and Canada, the new partnership will allow for seamless integration for members not yet signed onto the platform. So, onboarding which used to take three to seven days can now be completed within 24 hours. The only requirement is that the retailer's website be managed by one of Nationwide's two website provider partners, Site on Time or Retailer Web Services. In addition, all Nationwide members will receive a 20% discount on Podium tools, including members who were already Podium customers before the partnership was announced. "We are excited to put pen to paper and go to market with one of the most turn-key integration and buying group strategies in the industry," says Jama Featherstone, director of retail sales for Podium. "By partnering with Nationwide Marketing Group and Podium, independent retailers across North America can now instantly adapt to the new customer journey from search to sold." Katy Law, co-owner of Sweet Dreams Mattress & Furniture, a four-store retailer headquartered in Mooresville, N.C., has used several Podium features with her customers and could not be more pleased with the results. "Podium has allowed us to quickly evolve in the way we serve and communicate with our customers," Law says. "Many customers today want to do business via text, and Podium has a simple yet robust platform to be able to manage incoming website leads, reviews, customer follow-ups and relationship management all through text! Podium Payments is hands-down the best feature of the platform. It's the most important closing tool, and every business should have it in their belt!" The Podium platform has also been a gamechanger for Sherman's, a three-location appliance, mattress and furniture retailer based in Peoria, Illinois. When the company began working with Podium in 2015, their online reviews didn't accurately reflect the Sherman's shopping experience, says David Weiss, the group's marketing manager, largely because they never had time to solicit positive reviews. After signing on with Podium, though, all that changed. "Within the first month of implementing Podium, our Google and Facebook ratings jumped to 4.7 out of 5 and have held steady ever since," Weiss says. Sherman's also began using Podium's webchat service in 2019 after trialing a few other services and has seen similar success. "Nothing we tried before compares to the engagement we see with Podium's webchat; it's extremely easy to use for both our teams and our customers," Weiss adds. "From their review invitation platform to webchat and now video calls, every service we've tried with Podium is solid and simple. We highly recommend them to anyone looking to improve their online presence." To learn more or request a free demo, visit learn.podium.com/watch. About Podium Podium is an interaction management platform that enables companies with a local presence to conveniently connect with their customers at critical touchpoints to help them strengthen their business. By conveniently facilitating millions of customer interactions, such as driving customer-generated online reviews and providing improved customer messaging tools, Podium serves more than 40,000 local businesses to create over 16 million interactions with their customers a month. Headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and founded in 2014, Podium is currently backed by IVP, Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit www.podium.com or contact us at [email protected]. About Nationwide Marketing Group Nationwide Marketing Group works on behalf of thousands of independent appliance, furniture, bedding, electronics, specialty electronics, custom installation and rent-to-own dealers helping them grow their businesses and thrive on their own terms. With more than 5,000 members operating some 14,000 storefronts, Nationwide Marketing Group is the largest buying, marketing and business support organization of its kind, representing billions in combined annual sales across the membership. For nearly 50 years, the organization has remained committed to the independent channel, empowering members with the scale, sophistication and efficiencies they need to compete while delivering the unmatched business intelligence, tools and resources required to win in an ever-changing business environment. To learn more, visit nationwidegroup.org. SOURCE Podium Related Links http://www.podium.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-16 05:30:26|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Argentina's government on Tuesday announced it was extending financial bonuses for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The announcement was made at a joint press conference by the ministers of health and labor, Gines Gonzalez Garcia and Claudio Moroni, who were accompanied by the leader of the Healthcare Workers Union, Hector Daer. The 5,000-peso (about 63 U.S. dollars) bonus was paid from April through July and will now be paid for the period from August through October. "It is an absolutely necessary stimulus for the enormous effort that healthcare workers are making, although nothing compensates for the effort or the risks. They are the true heroes of this circumstance," said Gonzalez. Moroni said the government will maintain the bonus "for as long as necessary, because we are still in a pandemic and workers in the healthcare sector are fundamental." According to the president's office, the number of workers receiving the bonus grew from 434,253 in April to 558,626 in July. Argentina has reported 565,446 cases of COVID-19 infection and 11,710 deaths from the disease since the beginning of the outbreak. Enditem Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST Bazaar Corporate Radar Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar. A Durham Police forensics truck sits in front of a home on Parklane Avenue in Oshawa, Ont. on Sept. 4, 2020. Mourners will gather in Oshawa today to remember the four members of the Traynor family who were killed in a shooting earlier this month. New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea by the State Bank of India (SBI) seeking a vacation of the stay granted by Delhi High Court on personal bankruptcy proceedings against Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Group. The Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice L. Nageswara Rao, directed the Delhi High Court to consider the issue on October 6. The bench, also comprising Justices Hemant Gupta and S. Ravindra Bhat, gave liberty to SBI to seek modification of the stay order passed by the High Court on August 27. The three-judge bench said, "Why don't you go back to high court to argue the Anil Ambani case?" On August 27, the High Court's division bench had passed an interim order staying the Mumbai bankruptcy tribunal's order. The bench had said proceedings against corporate debtors will continue and issued notice to the central government, SBI and others. The bench had also restrained Ambani from selling or transferring any of his personal assets and listed the matter for hearing on October 6. The SBI in its petition before the apex court last week, had submitted that the high court did not grant the bank an opportunity to file a counter affidavit and was not justified in passing an interim order staying insolvency proceedings against Ambani "who owes to the Bank public money to the tune of Rs 1,707 crore". Ambani had moved the Delhi high court against the appointment of a resolution professional on personal guarantees given to SBI for securing corporate loans. Ambani had challenged the validity of the section pertaining to personal guarantee and asked if there was any enabling provision in the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for such an order. In March, SBI had filed a petition in the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under section 95 of IBC for personal bankruptcy based on guarantees issued by Ambani. NCLT had appointed Jitender Kothari as a resolution professional (RP). -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The district could have sought bids, even though that was not legally required, McFarland said. In his letter, he wanted to know why the district received no bulk discount from the vendor in Morris and why it paid more than the price advertised on the companys website. The WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said a September surge -- Europe set a new record last week, with some 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours -- 'should serve as a wake-up call for all of us' The World Health Organization on Thursday warned of "alarming rates of transmission" of Covid-19 across Europe and cautioned against shortening quarantine periods as countries in the region scrambled to find ways to reduce infections without resorting to new lockdowns. The WHO's regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said a September surge -- Europe set a new record last week, with some 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours -- "should serve as a wake-up call for all of us." "Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region," he told an online news conference from Copenhagen. In Britain, new restrictions will take effect Friday, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that pubs may have to close earlier to help avoid a "second hump" of coronavirus cases. Residents of northeast England, including the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland, will no longer be allowed to meet people outside their own homes or immediate social circles. The government already imposed rules across England on Monday limiting socialising to groups of six or fewer, as daily cases reached levels not seen since early May. Britain has been Europe's worst-hit country, with the government registering nearly 42,000 deaths. The city of Madrid meanwhile backtracked on a plan for targeted lockdowns and said it would instead move to "reduce mobility and contacts" in areas with high infection rates. WHO Europe said the UN health body would not change its guidance calling for a 14-day quarantine period for those exposed to the virus. The recommendation is "based on our understanding of the incubation period and transmission of the disease. We would only revise that on the basis of a change of our understanding of the science," WHO Europe's senior emergency officer Catherine Smallwood said. France hs reduced the recommended length for self-isolation to seven days, while it is 10 days in the UK and Ireland. Several more European countries, such as Portugal and Croatia, are also considering shorter quarantines. - Vaccines for the rich? - Elsewhere, a study released by Oxfam found that rich nations have already bought up over half the promised Covid-19 vaccine stocks. "Access to a life-saving vaccine shouldn't depend on where you live or how much money you have," said Robert Silverman of Oxfam America. Drugs companies are racing to produce an effective jab to counter a virus that has now killed more than 940,000 people around the world and infected almost 30 million. The five leading vaccine candidates currently in late-stage trials will be able to supply 5.9 billion doses, enough to inoculate about three billion people, Oxfam said. Some 51 percent of those jabs have been snapped up by the wealthy world, including the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. The remaining 2.6 billion have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. US President Donald Trump pledged to begin inoculating Americans within weeks. He said he would begin rolling out a vaccine as soon as next month, despite doubts expressed by a top government health expert who said a jab was unlikely to be widely available until mid-2021. Democrats have expressed concern that Trump is pressuring government health regulators and scientists to approve a rushed vaccine in time to help his uphill bid for re-election in early November. But in an implicit swipe at Trump, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that Europe would support multilateral bodies such as the WHO and a more equitable rollout. "None of us will be safe until all of us are safe -- wherever we live," she said. "Vaccine nationalism puts lives at risk. Vaccine cooperation saves them." As tragedies multiply, governments face legal action from citizens for alleged response failures. A French association of Covid-19 victims plans to file a legal complaint against Prime Minister Jean Castex over France's handling of the pandemic, its lawyer said. The 200-member group accuses the government of "playing it by ear" in its response, lawyer Fabrice de Vizio told AFP. In China, however, bereaved relatives have had their lawsuits abruptly rejected while dozens of others face pressure from authorities not to file, according to people involved in the effort. The families accuse the Wuhan and Hubei provincial governments of concealing the outbreak when it first emerged there late last year, failing to alert the public and bungling the response. Search Keywords: Short link: An American woman allegedly infected at least 59 people with coronavirus after going to the pub (AFP via Getty Images) An American woman could face up to 10 years in prison after allegedly spreading coronavirus during a bar crawl in Germany. The unidentified 26-year-old woman faces accusations that she infected 59 people thus far after visiting multiple bars and pubs through the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, even though she was displaying symptoms related to Covid-19. The woman was in Germany because she worked for a hotel resort for the United States forces stationed in Germany, according to reports. Of the 59 confirmed infections allegedly from the woman, 25 of them are staff members who work with the American at the German resort. Anton Speer, who heads the county administration, told reporters on Tuesday that they were still waiting for results from 300 tests that were conducted on Monday. There were three new infections found from 740 tests done over the weekend. The womans actions have been deemed a model case of stupidity by Bavaria's governor Markus Soeder, who said the woman knew she had Covid-19 symptoms prior to going to a series of bars and pubs in the town. He suggested the woman should face a fine because such recklessness must have consequences. Prosecutors in Munich have opened an investigation into the woman to better determine if she caused bodily harm to those around her with her actions. A spokesperson told the Associated Press the investigation was ongoing. Bavaria rules dictate that the woman could face a $2,000 fine for her actions. But lawyers speaking to The Guardian said, depending on what the investigation yields, the woman could actually face six months to 10 years in prison for her actions. She could also possibly be liable to the lost revenue from businesses impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. According to the AP, the local outbreak has resulted in a 10pm curfew on bars and restaurants in the German state, and no more than five people can now gather in public. The Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, which is reserved for members of the American military, their families, and veterans, has also been closed for the last two weeks amid the outbreak. Story continues The US military was also launching its own investigation into the outbreak. The Army said any breach of military or Bavarian coronavirus regulations would not be in keeping with our conduct and efforts to keep our communities safe. We are currently gathering the facts associated with this incident, as are our Bavarian hosts, the Army said. US civilian employees are subject to Bavarian ordinances on prevention of infectious diseases, just as any German citizen. Germany has been praised for its response to the coronavirus pandemic compared to other countries. The country has recorded more than 9,360 deaths due to the novel virus, about one-twentieth of the death toll in the US. The Associated Press contributed to this report Read more Women are 20 percent less likely to take a coronavirus vaccine, new poll shows Tucker Carlson explodes over Facebook's fact-check on his interview with Chinese virologist who claims coronavirus was 'man-made' White House denies Trump endorsed 'herd immunity' and predicts Covid vaccine will be ready this year A month later, with tempers having cooled, it would be easy to assume that everything is back to normal with Connecticuts electric utilities. Prolonged outages, after all, are rare, and for the most part in this state, the lights turn on with the flip of a switch, as weve come to expect. State legislators, though, do not seem inclined to let the rage of Augusts mass power failures following Tropical Storm Isaias subside. And rightly so, since the storm and the subsequent response left thousands of people in the state without power for a week or more. For many, that meant no running water at the peak of the summer. Just as bad was the lack of responsiveness on the part of the utilities. Not only could residential customers not get answers on when to expect their lights back until days after the storm, but town officials across the state reported a lack of information from utility representatives. Whatever preparations Eversource and United Illuminating have been doing over the past decade, building up the public-facing aspect of their responsiveness was not part of it. The question, then, becomes what legislators are willing to do to reform the system. Connecticut has some of the highest electric rates in the nation, and though its system is generally reliable, it has repeatedly proven vulnerable to major storms. Maybe theres no way to avoid that, but legislators owe it to their constituents to get as much information as possible before letting utilities off the hook. For its part, Eversource, which is responsible for the majority of residential customers in the state, says its response met its state mandate, and that complicating factors such as the coronavirus pandemic are what slowed things down. It could have communicated better, the utility allowed, but Eversource met the commitments to its customers, the company said. Separately, in response to a query about the cost of burying power lines underground, the utility cited a figure of some $67 billion to accomplish the task for the entire state. Such a move would presumably make future failures less likely, since falling trees wouldnt cut the power, but the cost of tens of thousands of dollars per residential customer could be too much for anyone to stomach. To start, the state needs its own independent assessment of those costs, not one that depends on the utilities, which are understandably interested in maintaining the status quo. Beyond that, the Legislature is expected to consider a bill in special session this fall that could mandate utilities reimburse customers for a portion of the cost of spoiled food and medicine in future power failures. It could still go much further. A notable number of legislators have said they would take on the entire deregulated system of power distribution in the state, where two for-profit companies have geographic monopolies, answering to shareholders while expecting to fulfill a public good. Its a system that doesnt make much sense on the best day, less so during a crisis. Legislators need to look at everything. Its a complicated system, so a full appraisal may have to wait for a full session next year. But nothing should be off the table. Credit: Observatory on Social Media "Kamala Harris is not a natural-born American citizen." False. "Joe Biden's family has illegal business ties with China." False. Believe it or not, large segments of the population are aware of these kinds of unsupported narratives related to the fall 2020 election and believe that at least some of these narratives are true, according to the first in a new series of reports by Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, also known as OSoMe. Researchers found that almost 80 percent of participants in a recent survey were aware of at least one of five unsupported narratives through media exposure, and just over 60 percent believed at least one of the narratives was true. About 39 percent did not believe any of the stories, which include unsubstantiated claims about mail-in election ballots, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden; his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris; and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. "The current state of hardship in our country produces favorable conditions for an infodemic," said IU Media School professor Betsi Grabe, a co-author of the study and co-leader of OSoMe. "Uncertainty, anxiety, social isolation, economic hardship and spare time create near-perfect circumstances for unsupported narratives to sweep through social media, stifling access to reliable information, deepening doubt about the trustworthiness of mainstream journalism and fueling political polarization." Grabe said the implications of the study are dire for the 2020 fall election. "Democracy hinges on well-informed citizens to select a president," she said. "And in a post-election era, disinformation narratives, like the ones we are tracking, have the potential to undermine the collective resilience of our nation to rebound on medical, economic and political levels." The research team chose five narratives that had become prevalent on social media. It asked about 600 survey participants if they were aware of the narratives and, if so, whether they believed statements based on the narratives were true. The statements were: "Joe Biden is not mentally fit to be President." "Kamala Harris is not a natural-born U.S. citizen." "Dr. Anthony Fauci funded a lab in Wuhan to develop the coronavirus." "Joe Biden's family has illegal business ties with China." "Mail-in ballots cause election fraud." The narrative about mail-in ballots was the most believed, with more than 46 percent of respondents saying they thought the statement was true. The narrative about Harris was the most widely known, but the least believed. In addition, the number of participants who said they believed the narratives about Biden's competency was greater than the number who said they were aware of the stories. The study also looked at the relationship between participants' political leanings and their survey responses. It found more self-identified Republicans and independents believed all five narratives than Democrats. The study was conducted in late August and early September. The research team will run five more surveys during the course of the fall election season. Explore further Twitter may remove unverified election result claims More information: Tracking public opinion about unsupported narratives in the 2020 Presidential election: Tracking public opinion about unsupported narratives in the 2020 Presidential election: mediaschool.indiana.edu/resear /reports/wave-1.html Central China's Wuhan, a city once hit hard by COVID-19, saw the landing of its first international passenger flight Wednesday morning after more than seven months of suspension due to the epidemic. Departing from Seoul, the flight TW615, operated by T'way Airlines, landed at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport at 10:48 a.m., marking the resumption of the regular passenger air route between Seoul and Wuhan. The 60 passengers on the flight were transferred to designated hotels for 14 days of medical observation after completing temperature tests, epidemiological investigations, blood tests, and nucleic acid tests at the airport. According to the Hubei Airports Group Company, the 3-hour route is flown by a Boeing B737-800 every Wednesday. The resumption of the Wuhan-Seoul route shows the anti-epidemic achievements of the people of Wuhan and Hubei Province, which will also help promote the resumption of work and production in Wuhan, said Li Yizhuo, an official of Wuhan's transportation bureau. So far, Wuhan Tianhe International Airport has resumed passenger routes bound for 73 domestic destinations, with about 500 inbound and outbound flights a day. The daily throughput of domestic passengers has returned to more than 90 percent of that of the same period last year. Travellers returning from Thailand and Singapore will no longer have to quarantine after they were added to the UK safe travel list tonight. But Britons and holidaymakers arriving in Britain from Slovenia and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe will face 14 days in isolation from 4am on Saturday. Announcing the latest changes to the travel corridors list tonight, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: 'Latest data shows we need to remove Slovenia and Guadeloupe from the Travel Corridor list to keep everyone safe. This means if you arrive in the UK from these destinations after 4am Saturday, you will need to self-isolate for 14 days. 'Separately, we will be adding Singapore and Thailand to the Travel Corridor list. Please check before you travel as both countries may have extra requirements before entering. 'A reminder that travellers to the UK (from ANY location) MUST complete a Passenger Locator Form by law. This is vital in protecting public health & ensuring those who need to are complying with self-isolation rules.' Travellers returning from Thailand (above) and Singapore (top) will no longer have to quarantine after they were added to the UK safe travel list tonight. But Britons and holidaymakers arriving in Britain from Slovenia (top) and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe (above) will face 14 days in isolation from 4am on Saturday A DfT spokeswoman added: 'People arriving in England from Slovenia and Guadeloupe from 4am Saturday September 19 will need to self-isolate for two weeks as the countries are removed from the travel exemptions list. 'Data from the Joint Biosecurity Centre and Public Health England has indicated a significant change in both the level and pace of confirmed cases of coronavirus in both destinations, leading to Ministers removing these from the current list of Travel Corridors. 'Data from Slovenia shows that the weekly incidence (cases) per 100,000 has increased from 14.4 on September 9 to 29.1 on September 16. This equates to a 102 per cent increase. 'There has been a sharp increase in the weekly incidence rate of COVID-19 in Guadeloupe over the past 4 weeks, with a 558 per cent increase in weekly incidence per 100,000 between August 25 and September 15.' A rate of 20 is the threshold above which the UK Government considers triggering quarantine conditions. The decision to remove the quarantine requirement for arrivals from Thailand and Singapore is unlikely to lead in a surge of people from England visiting the destinations. The countries are only allowing people to enter for a limited number of reasons, such as if they have a work permit or are the spouse or child of a resident. Denmark retained its quarantine exemption, despite its seven-day case rate being 33.8. Kannada actress Aindrita Ray (C) with her spouse Diganth at central crime branch for the inquiry in connection with drug case, in Bengaluru. PTI photo Two days after Ragini Dwivedi was sent to judicial custody and lodged at Parappana Agrahara jail, another lead actress of Sandalwood Sanjjanaa Galrani has also been sent to the same jail, after the court remanded her for two days of judicial custody in connection with Sandalwood drug menace. The Ist ACCM court directed the CCB to produce Sanjjanaa Galrani before the NDPS court on Friday, when her judicial custody ends. After her CCB custody ended on Wednesday, the CCB sleuths produced her before the Ist ACCM through video conference. Sanjjanaa's lawyer, while pleading for bail argued that the CCB was not clear as to what they were investigating and the Sections they have mentioned clearly says that their investigation was not on the right track. Besides, the CCB has no substantial evidence to prove anything against Sanjjanaa, he argued. At the same time, Ragini Dwivedi has to spend a minimum of three days in the prison since the court has adjourned hearing of her bail petition till Saturday. Ragini had applied for bail even while she was in CCB custody, but the court has remanded her to 14 days judicial custody. Star couple grilled and drug peddler arrested Meanwhile, the CCB sleuths on Wednesday grilled Sandalwood's star couple Diganth and Aindrita Ray in connection with Sandalwood Drug case and also arrested a drug peddler, who used to supply drugs to celebrity parties. Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sandeep Patil said that the CCB had questioned Diganth and Aindrita for over four hours and they would be called back for further questioning at a later date. Meanwhile, the police have also arrested Benald Udenna, am African national and confiscated 12 gms of Cocaine from them. During the investigation, the police stumbled upon information that three persons Blackie, Coke and John were supplying drugs to parties. However, during investigation, it was revealed that Benald was using three mobile phones in different names and was supplying drugs. The CCB have taken him into their custody for further investigation, Sandeep Patil added. Russia on Tuesday, Aug. 11 became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for use in tens of thousands of its citizens despite international skepticism about injections that have not completed clinical trials and were studied in only dozens of people for less than two months. (AP) Moscow: Russian scientists have belatedly published first results from early trials into the experimental Sputnik V vaccine, which received government approval last month but drew considerable criticism from experts, as the shots had only been tested on several dozen people before being more widely administered. In a report published in the journal Lancet on Friday, developers of the vaccine said it appeared to be safe and to prompt an antibody response in all 40 people tested in the second phase of the study within three weeks. However, the authors noted that participants were only followed for 42 days, the study sample was small and there was no placebo or control vaccine used. One part of the safety trial included only men and the study mostly involved people in their 20s and 30s, so it is unclear how the vaccine might work in older populations most at risk of the more severe complications of COVID-19. International experts remained cautious over the vaccines effectiveness and safety. Nevertheless, its Russian developers made some bold claims Friday after presenting the findings to reporters. Professor Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute that developed the vaccine with assistance from Russias Defense Ministry, told reporters that the vaccine triggers sufficient immune response to counteract any imaginable dose infecting (a person) with COVID-19. We are ready to assert that the protective effect of this vaccine will be detectable and remain at a proper level for 2 years, or maybe even more, Gintsburg said, without providing any evidence to back up the claim. According to the Lancet report, the trials took place in two Russian hospitals involving healthy adults aged 18 to 60, who were required to self-isolate once they registered for the trial. They remained in the hospital for the first 28 days of the study after being vaccinated. One part of the study involved a frozen formulation of the vaccine while another studied a freeze-dried variation. Scientists said the frozen vaccine would be suitable for current global vaccine supply chains while the freeze-dried version could be used in hard-to-reach areas. Both vaccines used a modified version of the common cold-causing adenovirus to carry genes for the spike protein in the coronavirus, as a way to prime the body to react if a real virus causing COVID-19 comes along. Thats a similar technology to the vaccines being developed by Chinas CanSino Biologics and Britains Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Russian researchers said all 40 participants produced a neutralizing antibody response, molecules which are key to blocking infection. The vaccines also appeared to trigger a reaction in the bodys T-Cells, which help by destroying cells that have been invaded by the virus. The most commonly reported side effects were pain at the injection site, fever, headache, and muscle or joint pain. In an accompanying commentary, Dr. Naor Bar-Zeev of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues wrote that the studies were encouraging but small. They said that the immune reaction elicited by the vaccine bodes well but that efficacy for any COVID-19 vaccine has not yet been shown. Bar-Zeev and colleagues said that proving the safety of any coronavirus vaccine would be critical. Since vaccines are given to healthy people and during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially to everyone after approval following (advanced) trials, safety is paramount, the scientists wrote. Dr. Ohid Yaqub, senior lecturer at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, said the limited study size was not enough for regulatory approval, which the vaccine received last month. The design and size of (an early) study is not anywhere near sufficient for widely recognized standards of approval. The study was not randomized, and it was not large enough to detect rarer safety issues, Yaqub said. The vaccine was approved by the Russian government with much fanfare on Aug. 11. President Vladimir Putin personally broke the news on national television and said that one of his daughters had already been vaccinated, experienced slight side effects and developed antibodies. Since then, several high-profile officials also said they had taken the shots, including Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. It remains unclear whether they were among the volunteers in clinical trials or accessed the vaccine in some other way. Russian health authorities announced advanced trials of the vaccine among 40,000 volunteers last month. According to official records, it will be a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Officials also mentioned that vaccination of risk groups, such as doctors and teachers, may be carried out in parallel but it remains unclear whether it will be done as part of the study. Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Britains University of Southampton, agreed the Russian vaccine appeared to be promising, but that further studies were needed. At this stage, we do not actually know if the vaccine works, he said. Head was not linked to the Russian research. Public confidence in any vaccine is vital, he said in a statement, calling suggestions from Russian and other authorities that a vaccine could be fast-tracked without the proper research problematic. Ultimately, we must not pour additional fuel on the anti-vaccine lobby fires, he said. Numerous public health experts expressed concern last month that Russia had approved the Sputnik V vaccine before publishing any data. The World Health Organization said last month it had started discussions with Russia to obtain more details about their candidate vaccine. But on Friday, WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris said she had no specific information on Russia ... and who is sharing what (data) with who. She said the agencys aim was to get all countries together and get all the information. STOCKHOLM, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Soluno today announced that they have been recognized as one of the top 20 leaders in growth and industry innovation by Frost & Sullivan in the 2020 UCaaS Frost Radar report. The Frost Radar is an industry analysis that reviews the European Hosted IP Telephony and UCaaS market. In a field of more than 120 European industry participants, the team of industry analysts identified 20 industry growth and innovation leaders in the report. "Soluno stands out among European UCaaS providers with its entrepreneurial culture, laser focus on shifting customer requirements and continued innovation. It delivers excellent value to businesses with its strong UCaaS, CCaaS and integration capabilities and a mobile-first approach to business communications," explained Elka Popova, Vice President of Research at Frost & Sullivan. "We're delighted that the execution of our international growth and innovation strategy is recognized by Frost & Sullivan," says Patrik Sorqvist, Group CEO at Soluno. The 2020 Frost & Sullivan UCaaS Radar report highlights a number of key strengths for Soluno, including: The industry-leading technologies in Soluno's hosted IP telephony offering The differentiated mobile-centric solution that also supports desk-bound users with desktop phones and soft clients Proprietary technologies that enable differentiated user experiences, and provide additional functionalities The great positioning for rapid growth with a strong partner network and flexible partner programs, including white-label partnerships European Expansion Ahead The Frost & Sullivan report forecasts rapid growth for Soluno with its well-positioned "Play well with others"-strategy, which has already taken the company from a strong position in the Nordics to have a local presence in the Netherlands and strategic partners in the UK and Germany. Expect more partners and new markets embracing their Mobile-First concept shortly. Innovating the customer journey Johan Dalstrom, CPO at Soluno, believes the top-right Radar positioning of Soluno highlights the relentless focus in simplifying the customer journey by digitalizing touchpoints like quoting, activation, self-service, and billing. "Initiatives that are not only highly appreciated by both end customers and channel partners, but also a necessity to stay relevant in today's hyper-competitive landscape." Download the report here. For more information, contact details: Christian Hed, CMO Soluno, +46(0)8-562 696 03, Christian.hed@soluno.se About Soluno Soluno is an operator-independent UCaaS provider on the European market with +200,000 users in the cloud. Soluno is driving the future of business communications by offering a mobile-first concept through wholesale partners in Europe. For more information about Soluno, visit www.soluno.com and follow us on LinkedIn. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1274540/Soluno_Frost.jpg Study confirms EAP counseling provides return on investment for employers by restoring lost productive work time from employee presenteeism and absenteeism CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Morneau Shepell a leading global provider of total wellbeing, mental health, digital mental health services and one of the largest U.S. employee assistance program (EAP) providers and the Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA), today announced the publication of the 2020 Workplace Outcome Suite (WOS) Annual Reports. The results identified work presenteeism as the number one employee issue, both in terms of its negative impact on the workforce, and the extent of improvement after EAP counseling. This issue also translated into the greatest source of cost savings and ROI. "The results of the 2020 Workplace Outcome Suite confirm that short-term counseling offered through EAPs work very well for employees and employers alike," said Barb Veder, vice president, global clinical services, research lead and chief clinician, Morneau Shepell. "At a time when employees need convenient and effective support for work and life issues, employers looking for a cost-effective way to both provide this benefit while countering presenteeism and absenteeism should strongly consider an EAP." Findings show EAP counseling helps concentration, productivity and more After comparing WOS measures at the start of EAP counseling and about three months after counseling ended, the study found: 56 percent reported that their issue was making it difficult to concentrate on work. After counseling, this was reduced to 28 percent of all cases. 37 percent reported dissatisfaction with life overall, indicating a level of clinical distress. After counseling, the rate was reduced to 16 percent of all cases. 32 percent reported not being engaged in their work. After counseling, the rate of all cases was reduced to 23 percent. 29 percent missed a half day or more of work time. After counseling, this was reduced to just 13 percent of all cases. 22 percent reported feelings of dread when going to the workplace ("workplace distress"). After counseling, this rate was reduced to 13 percent of all cases. EAP counseling provides positive return on investment (ROI) for employers The estimated ROI ranged from 3:1 for small size employers, 5:1 for medium size employer and to 9:1 for large size employers in the United States. The results also found cost savings ranging from about $2,000 to $3,500 per employee from reductions in work presenteeism (87 percent of total return) and absenteeism (13 percent). A break-even 1:1 ROI was possible even at a very low utilization level of just one EAP counseling case per every 100 covered employees. The findings were generally consistent across client age and sex, region, industry, clinical issue, number of counseling sessions, length of treatment, whether the EAP was provided by an external vendor, internal staff, or a hybrid model. "EAPA has endorsed and promoted the WOS as a best practice for measuring and evaluating work-related outcomes of employee assistance programs," said Greg DeLapp, chief executive officer, EAPA. "The WOS offers a standardized approach for the entire industry to use as a way to document the effectiveness and business value of EAP services. We encourage the companies that purchase EAPs and brokers who sell EAP services to support this tool and use it as a way of demonstrating the importance and value of EAP services to their clients." This study sample included insight from 35,693 employees with self-reported data collected over a period of 10 years, between 2010 and 2019. A total of 38 different sources provided valid data on all five WOS measures: 20 EAP vendors, 17 employer-based programs and one industry group of external vendors in the United States. Although 26 different countries are represented, 97 percent of the total cases were from three countries: The United States (72 percent), China (22 percent), and New Zealand (3 percent). This report has 11,330 more cases than the last report published in 2019. See the 2020 Workplace Outcome Suite Report 1 and Report 2. Information about using and licensing the WOS is available on the LifeWorks by Morneau Shepell website. About Morneau Shepell Morneau Shepell is the leading provider of technology-enabled HR services that deliver an integrated approach to employee wellbeing through our cloud-based platform. Our focus is providing world-class solutions to our clients to support the mental, physical, social and financial wellbeing of their people. By improving lives, we improve business. Our approach spans services in employee and family assistance, health and wellness, recognition, pension and benefits administration, retirement consulting, actuarial and investment services. Morneau Shepell employs approximately 6,000 employees who work with some 24,000 client organizations that use our services in 162 countries. For more information, visit morneaushepell.com. About EAPA The Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA) is the world's largest, oldest, and most respected membership organization for employee assistance professionals. With members in over 40 countries around the globe, EAPA is the world's most relied upon source of information and support for and about the employee assistance profession. EAPA publishes the Journal of Employee Assistance, hosts the annual EAP Conference and EXPO, and offers training and other resources to fulfill its mission. EAPA's mission is to promote the highest standards of EA practice and the continuing development of employee assistance professionals, programs and services. For more information, visit www.eapassn.org. SOURCE Morneau Shepell Inc. Related Links http://www.morneaushepell.com/ Dublin, Sept. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Singapore Gift Card and Incentive Card Market Intelligence and Future Growth Dynamics (Databook) - Market Size and Forecast (2015-2024) - Covid-19 Update Q2 2020" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report details the impact of economic slowdown along with change in business and consumer sentiment due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak on gift card industry in Singapore. Despite near-term challenges, medium to long term growth story of gift cards in Singapore remains strong. The gift card industry in Singapore will continue to grow over the forecast period and is expected to record a CAGR of 11.1% during 2020-2024. The gift card market in the country will increase from US$ 908.1 million in 2019 to reach US$ 1,433.0 million by 2024. Historically, the gift card market in Singapore has recorded a steady growth with a CAGR of 15.8% during 2015-2019. However, According to the Q2 2020 Global Gift Card Survey, gift card market in Singapore is expected to be impacted across retail and corporate segments due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak. Though growth of gift card industry will be impacted due to pandemic, there are certain segments such as self-use which will gain significant market share. Adoption of e-Gift cards is also expected to increase significantly over the next 4-6 quarters. There are interesting trends emerging across various segments, which are expected to fundamentally reshape gift card industry dynamics. This report provides a detailed data centric analysis of gift cards and corporate incentive cards market along with consumer behaviour and retail spend dynamics in Singapore. With over 200 KPIs at country level, this report provides comprehensive understanding of gift and incentive card market dynamics. Below is a summary of country level trend analyses covered across gift card segments: Total gift market: This report provides detailed view of overall spend on gifts, broken down by retail and consumer segments. For both retail and consumer segments, this report provides a breakdown of spend on gifts by product categories (13 segments) and retail sectors (7 segments). Gift cards: Drawing from proprietary survey results, this report provides in-depth analysis of opportunities in both open loop and closed loop prepaid gift card categories. Assesses consumer behaviour by type of consumer (retail and corporate - SMB, Mid-Tier, Large Enterprise), gifting occasion, digital gift card (e-gift card), and market share by retail sectors. Details six essential KPIs: number of cards in circulation, load value, unused value, average purchase value, average value per transaction, and value of transactions. Corporate incentive & loyalty cards: This report provides detailed market dynamics of corporate incentive cards, broadly segmented in three categories - consumer incentive card, employee incentive card, and sales/partner incentive card. It details market size and forecast at category level, by functional attribute (open loop and closed loop), and by corporate consumer segments (small scale business, mid-size business, and enterprise business). Digital gift card (e-gift card) analysis: Provides market size and forecast for digital gift cards, broken down by retail and corporate buyers. It also includes gift card spend by occasion (retail - festivals & special celebration days, milestone celebration, self-use, other; Corporate incentive cards -consumer incentive card, employee incentive card, and sales/partner incentive card). The report also includes digital gift card adoption by company size. Open loop and closed loop: Provides market estimates and forecasts to assess opportunities in open loop and closed loop gift and incentive card segments across consumer segments. Consumer attitude and behaviour: Drawing from proprietary survey results, this report identifies and interprets key KPIs related to gift card dynamics including spend by age, gender, and income level. Retail spend: Breaks down retail spend across retail sectors (7 segments) to provide detailed insights on consumer behaviour and changing dynamics of gift card spend. Market share by retailer: Provides market share of closed loop gift cards by key retailers in Singapore. Distribution channel analysis: Provides market share by distribution channel - online vs offline sales and 1st party vs 3rd party sales (sales through outlet of other retailers). Story continues Closed Loop Gift Card Market Share by Key Retailers. Key Retailers Covered Include: NTUC FairPrice Co-operative Pte Ltd Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd Shen Siong Supermarket Pte Ltd Takashimaya Co Ltd Mustafa Holdings Pte Ltd Courts Asia Ltd Al Futtaim Group LLC Yamada Denki Co Ltd Hutchison Whampoa Ltd Challenger Technologies Ltd Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd Hour Glass Ltd, The Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd OG Pte Ltd CK Tang Ltd Inter Ikea Systems BV LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA Gain City Best-Electric Pte Ltd For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ddnrk6 CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 He was speaking at the HSE's weekly briefing at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin today. "I want to start by saying we are at very concerning crossroads with the virus in this country. It will only get worse if we stay the way we are," he said. Mr Reid said there has been a 39 per cent increase in the number of positive cases in the country over the last week. It comes as yesterday 254 cases of the virus were confirmed yesterday and a further three deaths. He said one of the more worry aspects has been the increase in the number of people in ICUs. There are currently 14 people in ICUs and a further 76 people in hospital. "I don't want to be a prophet of doom but these are the facts and the data we have. If we got back to a full lockdown, it is not a good road to go down. Advertisement "We need to make a radical shift left and take stock of what is happening," he said. He did say that we are in a much stronger position now as regards coping with the virus than we were back in May. He also said that we have reached a huge milestone by completing our 1 millionth test yesterday. 1 millionth test Outbreaks and clusters Mr Reid also shed further light on how the HSE have dealt with serial testing and clusters. "We are managing a higher number of outbreaks and contacts in the countries. There has been a 70 per cent increase in volume last week with community testing," he said. He also outlined that to date 15,500 test have been carried out in meat plants, 57,000 tests have been carried out in nursing homes in Phase 2 of testing and overall 500 tests have been completed in Direct Provision centres, with just one positive test. He said they a currently ramping up their workforce for testing with the aim for a further 3,000 new staff. He also said they are looking to recruit 700 new swabbers for testing, with a plan to bring in even more over the next few months. Meanwhile, the chief clinical officer of the HSE, Colm Henry said we need to continue to take the public health advice seriously: "We are trying to suppress the virus and the best line of defense is ourselves and our behaviour. We have to make sure we do not let the virus spread from household to household." He also spoke about testing in schools and said that while there have been positive cases "Community transmission drives cases in schools not the other way around," he said. It was also confirmed by the HSE lead for testing and tracing, Niamh O'Beirne, that 96 schools have needed testing since they reopened last month and overall there have been 35 positive cases. The Obeid family was trying to negotiate a 30 per cent stake in what they thought was going to be the winning bidder for a coal exploration licence before the government had even called for a tender, the Supreme Court has heard. Solicitor Chris Rumore, a former partner at law firm Colin Biggers & Paisley, gave evidence at the criminal trial of former mining ministers Ian Macdonald, 71, and Eddie Obeid, 76, along with Mr Obeids middle son Moses, 51. Moses Obeid (left), Ian Macdonald (centre) and Eddie Obeid (right) are on trial. Credit:Sydney Morning Herald Mr Rumore said that Moses Obeid and his brothers Paul and Gerard became clients in mid-June, 2008. The Crown has alleged that on July 7, 2008, Mr Macdonald leaked to Moses Obeid the names of the resources company he was going to invite to tender for a number of coal exploration licences, one of which covered the Obeids property Cherrydale Park, in the Bylong Valley. CVS Health said on Thursday that it plans to add more than 2,000 drive-through coronavirus test sites at select CVS pharmacies across the United States. CVS Health expects to have more than 4,000 test sites operating by mid-October in the country, the company said. The drugstore chain said the new locations will open in waves over the next several weeks in 33 states and Washington, D.C. People at a shopping centre in Laval, Que., on June 19, 2020. As calls for a universal basic income have ramped up amid the pandemic, a new report outlines how much it could cost. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press) Universal Basic Income Could Cost Between $132B and $464B Annually, Report Finds Adopting a universal guaranteed basic income program in Canada could cost taxpayers between $131.9 billion and $464.5 billion per year, concludes a new report released today by the Fraser Institute. The study comes as anticipation builds ahead of the throne speech on Sept. 23, which is rumoured will outline a major ramp-up in government spending on several initiatives including a larger social safety netpotentially including a guaranteed basic income. Calls for a universal basic income scheme have grown louder as advocates say its a more permanent solution to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and could replace other social assistance programs amid the ongoing economic crisis posed by the pandemic. Implementing a universal basic income would mean that every Canadian, regardless of whether or not they have a job, would receive enough money to cover the basic cost of living. The Fraser Institute report, titled GAI: How Much Could A Guaranteed Annual Income Cost? (pdf), outlines the potential costs of four different basic income programs including different options for reducing program costs by phasing out the benefit as an individuals income rises. For example, if the federal government extended the Old Age Security benefit to all Canadians between the ages of 18 and 64providing $7,272 a year in minimum incomeit would cost $131.9 billion per year, the report notes. However, if the federal government based the basic income on CERB, providing a monthly benefit of $2,000 to all eligible Canadians, the annual program cost would be $464.5 billion per yearmore than doubling all current federal government program spending. When CERB was first launched in April, Statistics Canada reported that nearly 6.7 million Canadians had applied. That number has slowly declined as businesses have been reopening. A separate report also released by the Fraser Institute today, GAI: Illustrating the Tax Implications of a Guaranteed Annual Income (pdf), looks at how much tax would be required to pay for the various basic income schemes explained above. It finds that the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) would have to increase from the current five percent to between 26.25 and 105.35 percent to pay for a universal basic income. In order for Canadians to consider this type of new government program, its important for them to understand the true costs and tax implications, said Tegan Hill, author of the tax report. The report also calculated how much of the GAI programs could be financed by taxing top earners morespecifically those earning more than $250,000 annually. It found if all the disposable income of those earning more than $250,000 were taxes, it would cover 25 to 87 percent of the total cost of a GAI, depending on the scale of the program. Researchers from the University of British Columbia looking into the merits of a universal basic income found that the federal government would have to figure out complex details before they could move forward with a program. They include considering whether payments will be made out to individuals or families, when they would be given out, how they would be taxed, and how the existing tax system would have to adapt to finance the program. Taking a basic income seriously as an option means having an evidence-based discourse about how one would both design and implement it, concluded the study. Simple claims about the simplicity of a basic income on one side and simplistic characterizations of what proponents of a basic income are setting out on the other side do not move us toward the goal of building on what has been both revealed and achieved in this crisis to create a more just society. With files from The Canadian Press Advertisement Children only suffering from a runny nose 'absolutely' do not have coronavirus, a top expert has warned amid calls for Britons to stop getting tested unnecessarily as the government's ongoing swabbing fiasco continues. Professor Tim Spector, of King's College London, moved to reassure parents the symptom, alongside congestion and sneezing, is a 'sure sign' they have a cold and not Covid-19. Matt Hancock has claimed parents seeking tests for children merely battling colds are contributing to the soaring demand on Britain's creaking testing service, which has descended into chaos over the past week. Fears are now high that schools and offices will have to shut because people with mild symptoms cannot prove they are negative. Officials say a quarter of Britons getting tested aren't 'eligible'. It was claimed today that the testing fiasco has hit almost every school in the UK, with up to 25,000 teachers in England already forced to stay at home and self-isolate. Professor Spector, who runs the Coronavirus Symptom Study app, is behind research showing the most common symptoms of Covid-19 for school-age children is fatigue (55 per cent), headaches (55 per cent) and a fever (49 per cent). By comparison, the most common symptoms in adults are fatigue (87 per cent), headache (72 per cent) and a loss of smell (60 per cent). Neither children or adults frequently report a runny nose. The team spearheaded efforts to get loss of taste and smell registered as a symptom of the virus in the UK, after reports to the app revealed it was a sign of the virus. But their massive pool of data means they can also identify what symptoms mean someone does not have coronavirus. Professor Tim Spector, from King's College London, said his research including data from 4million people had revealed a runny nose was a 'sure' sign someone didn't have Covid-19. Matt Hancock has claimed parents seeking tests for children merely battling colds are contributing to the soaring demand on Britain's creaking testing service, which has descended into chaos over the past week Professor Tim Spector, of King's College London , moved to reassure parents the symptom, alongside congestion and sneezing, is a 'sure sign' they have a cold and not Covid-19. Pictured are the common symptoms of Covid-19 compared with a cold or bout of flu Children suffering from a runny nose 'absolutely' do not have coronavirus - but may instead be suffering from the common cold, a top expert has warned (stock) Amid anxieties over children catching the coronavirus two weeks after schools re-opened, Professor Spector reminded the public that a runny nose is not a symptom. He said there is a difference in the symptoms suffered between age groups - and that the standard high temperature, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell may not appear for those aged below 18 and above 65. 'You don't see (loss of taste and smell) in older people and in kids at all,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'They don't seem to lose that sense of smell and they don't seem to get the cough and shortness of breath as much either so it's a different picture at different age groups, presumably because the immune systems are behaving differently.' WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF COVID-19? The main symptoms of coronavirus listed by the NHS are: a high temperature this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature) a new, continuous cough this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual) a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste this means you've noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal The World Health Organization says Covid-19 affects different people in different ways. Most infected people will develop mild to moderate illness and recover without hospitalization. Most common symptoms: fever dry cough tiredness Less common symptoms: aches and pains sore throat diarrhoea conjunctivitis headache loss of taste or smell a rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toes Serious symptoms: difficulty breathing or shortness of breath chest pain or pressure loss of speech or movement Advertisement He said the standard symptoms of a high temperature, continuous cough and loss of sense of taste and smell are accurate for those aged 18 to 65, but they may vary for people who are older or younger. 'By all means keep your kids at home (if they have symptoms) but don't rush around the country trying to get a test for something that's highly likely to be a cold and not Covid,' he said. According to the Covid Symptom Study app more than half (52 per cent) of children under the age of 18 who tested positive for Covid-19 don't log any 'adult' classic symptoms (cough, fever, anosmia) in the week before and after the test. In addition, a third (33 per cent) of children who tested positive for Covid-19 never had any of the 20 symptoms listed in the app, suggesting many children are asymptomatic. They may have got a precautionary test because they were a close contact of a Covid-19 case, rather than being brought forward for a test due to symptoms. Data shows children display a different range of symptoms compared to the overall adult population. The top five symptoms in school aged children who test positive are fatigue (55 per cent) headache (53 per cent), fever (49 per cent), sore throat (38 per cent) and loss of appetite (35 per cent). The research from the app has also found that one in six (15 per cent) children who test positive for COVID also present with an unusual skin rash. For adults, the most common symptoms are fatigue (87 per cent), headache (72 per cent), loss of smell (60 per cent), persistent cough (54 per cent) and sore throat (49 per cent). Currently the app has nearly 250,000 children on the app, 198 of whom have tested positive, making it one of the largest studies of Covid-19 positive children in the UK. Significant problems in the testing system has meant teachers and pupils alike are having to quarantine at home without knowing for certain if they have the coronavirus. They either can't get a test locally or are taking time off while waiting the results, which can take several days to return. One of the reasons tests stalling are because the 'worried well' are getting swabbed when they do not have symptoms, the Government claims, alongside website glitches, overwhelmed laboratories and a genuine increase in demand. The Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed a quarter of people wanting tests do not have symptoms, which has not been proven with evidence. Mr Hancock reported whole school year groups being advised to get tested just in case they have been infected. Secondary schools 'to go part-time' if testing fiasco continues Education leaders have warned that secondary schools could be forced to go part-time if the testing crisis continues. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said that teachers may be forced to put in a rota system, where only some year groups are coming in, if cases begin to rise in their local area. Heath teachers said this could work on a two weeks on, two weeks off basis for each year group, throwing plans for parents to return to their offices into chaos. Mr Barton warned the Telegraph the current system is 'unravelling' with thousands of pupils and teachers having to stay home while they wait for test results. Hundreds of schools have already seen whole classes sent home amid fears a child has coronavirus, and following positive tests in school premises. Advertisement Matt Hancock has also warned parents that a runny nose indicates a common cold, and not coronavirus. He said: 'When schools go back, children often do get a cold - a normal illness if you like. Obviously, that is contributing to the increase in demand, as well as people who are not eligible coming forward.' In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has told parents not to ask for a test if their child has a blocked nose. And in England MPs have said nurseries are sending children home who have any symptom of the common cold. It comes amid growing concern for the thousands of teachers off work merely two weeks after school re-opened, many of whom will not have Covid-19 but cannot be sure due to a shortage in tests. One academy trust leader said 740 state schools in England were either partially or wholly closed with Covid-related issues, meaning tens of thousands of pupils were stuck at home. It has a knock-on effect with parents unable to go to work to care for their child. Some schools have reported up to a fifth of their staff having to stay home, while unions warned the crisis was spinning out of control. Headteachers have now called on the government to prioritise the education sector for tests as the crisis may make 'staffing unsustainable'. A body representing more than 16,000 pupils in Gateshead in north-east England, have written a letter to MPs warning about the effects of the testing crisis. Gateshead is on the government's watchlist because of its high infection rate and school leaders have now warned that the lack of testing capacity would 'break' some schools. The letter from the Gateshead Association of Primary Head Teachers, which represents 67 schools, cited 'significant problems' caused by a lack of testing. UP TO 25,000 TEACHERS ARE OFF SCHOOL AND IN SELF-ISOLATION The testing fiasco has hit almost every school in the UK with up to 25,000 teachers in England already forced to stay at home and self-isolate. Leaders of teaching unions warned of 'lockdown by default' yesterday as thousands of pupils are being sent home from lessons after showing symptoms of the virus. The government's prioritisation of NHS staff for tests means that pupils and teachers have been unable to get checked for the virus and have instead been forced out of the classroom. Some schools have reported up to a fifth of their staff having to stay home, while unions warned the crisis was spinning out of control. Headteachers have now called on the government to prioritise the education sector for tests as the crisis may make 'staffing unsustainable'. It was reported yesterday that at least 740 schools have shut or sent children home because of suspected outbreaks, with some sending whole year groups away. However, some private schools are paying 120 to test symptomatic students and teachers. One Guildford private school teacher told the Guardian: 'If schools can afford to take the hit, private companies don't have any problems providing tests. On the other hand, state schools are fast using up the 10 testing kits supplied by government at the start of term regardless of the school's size. Advertisement Mustafaa Malik, chair of the association and head of Harlow Green primary school in Gateshead, said a fifth of his teaching staff were isolating as well as a 'double figures' number of its 400 pupils. Schools are drawing up plans to go part-time if the testing fiasco continues, it's been reported. Education leaders have warned the Prime Minister that schools up and down the country are struggling to get a test, reports the Telegraph, and that secondaries will have to move to a rota system if cases are rising in their local area. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), told the publication that teachers may be forced into a rota system sooner rather than later if schools can't access tests. The Health Secretary announced this week that the offering of tests would be 'prioritised' with hospital patients and health workers pushed to the front of the queue, despite boasting that they would be able to carry out 10million swabs a day. The measure has resulted in angry reprimands from education leaders, warning that they also need test results quickly. The NHS advises people only to get a coronavirus test if they are suffering from a high temperature, continuous cough or loss of sense of taste and smell. But the government has claimed that people are getting tests despite not having these symptoms as a 'wave of fear' over all respiratory tract infections ripples across the country. England's ten coronavirus hotspots were left unable to access coronavirus tests after the authorities struggled to handle a massive surge in demand for swabs. Officials have claimed that problems lie with the lab capacity which is acting as a 'bottleneck', while there is still adequate space to get swabbed at testing centres. Professor Spector said today the Coronavirus Symptom Study app predicts there are currently around 6,500 new cases of the disease in the UK each day. The last official report from the research team, on September 11 and due to be update tomorrow, said there were 3,610 people getting infected per day, suggesting the outbreak has doubled since then. The figure has slowly risen since the end of August, when the figure changed dramatically for the first time since mid-June. The official Government tally suggests there are around 3,000 new cases a day. Yesterday 3,991 new cases of the disease were recorded. Anthony Costello, a SAGE scientist, has claimed on Twitter that the government thinks infections could be in excess of 38,000-a-day, far above the official tally. Government testing stands at around 200,000-a-day and is currently dealing with a backlog of swabs, slowing down their ability to detect new cases quickly. Around 90 per cent of all swabs tested are coming back negative, suggesting many people are rushing to get a test when they don't need one. This has placed additional strain on the testing system, which is already struggling to cope under spiralling demand. Around 70 armed groups have agreed to a "cessation of hostilities" in DR Congo's South Kivu province, a flashpoint in the country's troubled east, civilian representatives of the militias said Wednesday. "All the armed groups of South Kivu agree to a cessation of hostilities and to instruct their respective members," read a statement issued after a meeting in Murhesa near the provincial capital Bukavu. The three-day meeting, attended by the DR Congo's deputy defence minister Sylvain Mutombo, was co-organised by US conflict-resolution group Search for Common Ground. A similar meeting was held last December at the same venue, when 32 local armed groups agreed to cease hostilities from December 23. Since the start of the year, 139 violent deaths have been recorded in the province at the hands of militias or the army, according to the monitoring group Kivu Security Tracker (KST). Around 20 civilians were massacred in the village of Kipupu in July, KST said. Some 18 months after President Felix Tshisekedi took office on pledges of bringing peace to the volatile region, the goal remains elusive. Over eight months, around 1,300 people were killed in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, according to a UN estimate in June. More than half a million people have been displaced. The region has been overrun by armed groups for nearly three decades. Violence in South Kivu province is often between Rwandan-speaking Tutsi Congolese, known as the Banyamulenge, and other local ethnic groups, the Babembe, Bafuliro and Banyindu. Demonstrators including gun owners and open-carry advocates held a Second Amendment March featuring a gathering on the steps of the Michigan State House on Wednesday, September 17, before marching to the Michigan Hall of Justice. The 11th annual march, which was scheduled to take place through 2 pm Wednesday, on the United States Constitution Day, according to Facebook, would feature speakers, legislators, an ask an attorney panel, raffle, silent auction, music, and a vendor tent. This video shows a group of Proud Boys chanting F*** antifa on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing. Participants hold signs reading Unlock Michigan and chanted Four more years. Credit: Brendan Gutenschwager via Storyful In Sugarbread, through the young protagonist's observations, the author delivers prose that not only captures the tangles within a family, but also turns food and delicious recipes into powerful metaphors depicting complex emotions. In Sugarbread, award-winning author Balli Kaur Jaswal writes the story of Pin, a 10-year-old who is warned against becoming anything like her mother, Jini. She is puzzled and curious because nobody would tell her the reason for this and searches for clues in the food prepared by her Ma. Things start to heat up when Pin's grandmother comes to visit. Slowly, old secrets are revealed and Pin must try to face the truth. Through the young protagonist's observations, the author of works such as Inheritance and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, delivers prose that not only captures the tangles within a family but also turns food and delicious recipes into powerful metaphors depicting complex emotions. The excerpt that follows describes Jini's relationship with food and how her daughter Pin learns to spot hidden meanings in her mother's cooking. *** In our house, food was not just prepared and eaten to satisfy our appetites. Ma created meals based on her mood, the weather or unusual events. I always chewed my meals carefully, tasting for clues. Cabbage leaves soaked in sweet coconut gravy told me that Ma was feeling mellow. Perhaps it had rained that afternoon and I hadnt noticed it from the classroom window at school. Bay leaves and sour sauces were signs of sophisticationMa was inspiring me to leave the narrow hallways of this block of flats where neighbours eavesdropped and tripped over each others shoes. Cinnamon sticks were Mas way of comforting me when she noticed a flaw in the way the world worked and she was softening the blow. The sharp tang of cumin added to any dish meant that Ma was bothered about something. There were many cumin dishes. Daddy was the one who taught me how to find the hidden meanings in Mas food. He said that it was a useful skill, especially when she was upset. The first time he told me about it, I was excited. I thought I would finally be able to figure Ma out. But all I discovered were her emotions. I could taste anger in the amount of red chilli powder and mustard seeds she sprinkled in a curry and I could tell that she was happy when she roasted chicken with light soy sauce and anise seeds, and served it over white rice. But I ached to find out more about Ma. She was full of secrets. I had known that from the very first time I saw her standing at the window, gazing intently at the buildings in the distance and the sky beyond that. She did this often, becoming oblivious to everything but the wide sky ahead of her. I was never sure if she was looking at something or looking for something. Your Ma does not always say what shes thinking or feeling, Daddy said. But when she cooks, she puts her whole mind and heart into the food and youre bound to learn something about her. So I searched for Ma in her spices and sauces, her mixed vegetables and her sweet desserts. Ma had only started making the market a part of our regular Sunday routine when we stopped going to the Sikh temple. I couldnt decide which one I disliked more. I didnt mind wearing a salwaar-kameez or keeping my head covered and my feet bare. I liked the quiet peace of the prayer hall with its separate sections for men and women. I pretended I was a celebrity when I walked down the strip of dull red carpet and bowed low in front of the large Holy Book and the bearded priest who loudly read the script and never looked up. I could bear with the servicesitting cross-legged under fans that chopped the air, listening to the creaky accordions leading the hymns. But I dreaded eating at the temple, and for this I was sure that God would punish me. Temple food was charred rotiwheat flour and water rolled into a soft dough, flattened and cooked on a flat iron stove. Cauliflower and potatoes mixed with spices and lumpy dhal were stirred in massive pots and pans over huge blue flames that flared like upside-down skirts. Thin, runny yoghurt contained strips of carrot and cucumber. They hadnt been cooked by Ma. The women in the back kitchen lived on gossip, trading stories about their friends children and marriages. I always heard them talking when I walked in to put my plate in the sink. Once, one of them had caught my eye as I passed her and nudged her friend. Isnt that...? she asked. Her voice wasnt low enough. On the way home, I recalled the taste of their food in my mouth, dry and sour like their hushed gossip, and I told Ma I could no longer eat at the temple. Its Gods food, Ma always said firmly, like that was an explanation for anything. I was to be thankful for being Sikh, she reminded me, because in our religion, everybody was treated equally when it came to eating. Old and young, poor and richas long as you believe in Him, you are welcome to dine at the temple. I had to admit that it was quite generous of God to feed everyone. But I still wished He would make His food a bit more appealing. Whining around Ma was not a good idea; she didnt tolerate it. The above extract from Balli Kaur Jaswal's Sugarbread has been reproduced here with permission from HarperCollins India. SOHC Back in 2015, a gifted moto surgeon, by the name of Sasha Lakic founded Blacktrack Motors . The firm is based in Luxembourg and its activity revolves around three main projects. They debuted with a spectacular Honda CX500, followed by the launch of their modified Triumph Thruxton and last but not least, a splendid work of art based on Harley Davidson s monstrous Fat Bob 114.For each of these variants, the workshop is willing to undertake a limited production run thatll fulfill the dreams of a few select riders. While this list may be short, the projects it hosts are certainly worth your full attention and a generous round of applause. In fact, lets dive in a little deeper and examine their Fat Bob exploit, shall we?Before we kick things off, well be having a quick look at some of the donors specs, which should give you a fairly clear idea as to how far Blacktracks masterpiece has come. One things for sure; with a dry weight of just over 652 lbs (296 kg), this cuisers name couldnt be more appropriate.It is powered by an unholy Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine, with four valves per cylinder and a compression ratio of 10.5:1. The ruthless V-twinleviathan boasts a truly colossal displacement of 1868cc. At around 3,500 rpm, this feral piece of twin-cooled machinery will generate a brutal torque output of 118 pound-feet (160 Nm).A six-speed gearbox is tasked with channeling this sheer force to Fat Bobs 16-inch cast aluminum rear wheel by means of a belt final drive. The entire structure is supported by a pair of 43 mm (1.7 inches) Showa inverted cartridge forks, allowing 5.1 inches (130 mm) of travel up front, joined by an adjustable shock absorber that permits 4.4 inches (112 mm) of travel on the opposite end.Braking power is taken care of by dual 300 mm (11.81 inches) discs and four-piston calipers at the front, along with a single 292 mm rotor and a two-piston caliper at the rear. Without going into other details, it becomes quite clear that were dealing with one capable machine.To convert Fat Bob into a not-so-fat marvel thatll have just about any rider in awe, Lakics team drew inspiration from Harley Davidsons untamed XLCR, the cafe racer in this manufacturers range. Blacktracks mastermind recalls being spellbound every time he saw an XLCR cruising down the streets of Paris, where he spent his childhood.As such, his crew stripped Harleys colossus bare of its stock bodywork to make room for their very own custom units. These include a stunning fuel tank, fairing and front fender, as well as a new tail section, to name a few.Long story short, the fresh body panels were hand-crafted in-house and neatly accommodated on the bikes frame. Additionally, the workshop went as far as upholstering a magnificent leather saddle that keeps things nice and tidy.This beast crawls on a set of handsome seven-spoke Dymag wheels that wear high-performance Beringer braking modules. Suspension duties are handled by an Ohlins package, consisting of FG424 inverted forks at the front and a monoshock on the opposite end. Furthermore, the Milwaukee-Eight behemoth breathes more freely, thanks to Extreme-Flow air filters and stainless-steel exhaust headers, complemented by an aftermarket can.As a result of Blacktracks surgical interventions, Fat Bob experienced a whopping weight reduction of 105 lbs (48 kg). Itll now tip the scales at no more than 547 lbs (248 kg), which is absolutely mind-boggling, if you ask me.Whats your take on this staggering display of two-wheeled goodness? Caltrain is counting on a sales tax increase on the November ballot to keep the system running through the coronavirus crisis and fund long-term improvements to make service more frequent and accessible. If passed, Measure RR would allow a 1/8-cent sales tax increase in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It would raise an estimated $108 million annually for 30 years. The ballot measure has to be approved by two-thirds of voters in all three counties. The sales tax increase aims to accomplish two goals avert a shutdown and fund modernization. Caltrain, which is the countrys seventh largest commuter rail system and has been running since Abraham Lincoln was president, has never had its own dedicated, reliable funding. The system depends on fares for about 70% of its revenue, but has lost up to 95% of its ridership during shelter-in-place directives. The agency now faces an $18.5 million budget shortfall. Despite the pandemic, more than 3,500 weekday riders still use the service, Caltrain said. Many are lower-income workers who dont have cars and need to get to frontline jobs. Caltrain is an essential part of the Bay Area transit system, said David Pine, a San Mateo County supervisor and chairman of the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, which oversees Caltrain. We need to rescue it during these times of the COVID pandemic, and with the Caltrain Measure RR sales tax, we have the opportunity over time to potentially triple the ridership on that rail corridor, which would make an enormous difference for commuters up and down the Peninsula. Other speculative options to keep service running include hoping for more federal bailout funds or asking for increased contributions from the systems partner agencies, which already give $29 million and are also suffering financial losses, Pine said. The sales tax increase, long sought before the pandemic, isnt just about survival, its advocates say. It would also fund modernization projects to increase frequent service and could reduce congestion on Highway 101 by encouraging more drivers to hop on the train. Caltrain is currently undergoing a $2 billion project to electrify trains by the end of 2022. The project is already funded, but once completed, it will increase operating costs, Pine said. This is much larger than the threat of a COVID-19 shutdown, said San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin. This is really about the opportunity to vastly reduce pollution and particulate matter in the Bay Area and make Caltrain much more efficient and less costly. Some Caltrain critics and Measure RR opponents argue the system traditionally serves a niche of high-income tech workers commuting to the city for work no longer a need under shelter-in-place orders. Around 70% of riders make more than $100,000 a year, Pine said. Adina Levin, executive director of advocacy group Friends of Caltrain, said the board raised fares in recent years when it needed revenue, leading to riders becoming wealthier and whiter than the communities the system serves. Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Caltrain is trying to reshape its elitist image, starting by passing an equity plan this month that includes pausing planned fare increases and reducing fares by 50% for low-income riders. The reductions rely on Measure RR funding. The measure, which was approved by multiple local government and transit agencies in three counties, has little organized opposition. Some critics include the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, which also opposes other measures that would raise taxes, and former Foster City Mayor Jim Lawrence. 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. Lawrence argued that the proposed sales tax is regressive, meaning its imposed equally across income brackets. He said blue-collar workers, some who already cant afford the train, shouldnt bear the cost. I just dont feel like the general community should support a transportation service that is dying, Lawrence said. Its a dinosaur. Why do we keep propping it up? Critics also said that with no end in sight for the pandemic, working from home may become permanent for many, limiting the need for public transportation to downtown San Francisco. Half of commuters surveyed in July reported they would use the system when they returned to work as much as before although its uncertain when office buildings will fill again. Polling in June reported that nearly two-thirds of voters supported Measure RR, which motivated officials to get it on the ballot. This is something that the region really depends on to keep cars off our streets and keep pollution out of our air and increasingly help people move around and access opportunity, regardless of income, and help us recover from the recession, said Levin. Caltrain is essential. Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@mallorymoench Nationwide restrictions on social activities have not been ruled out if coronavirus cases continue to surge two to three weeks after the imposition of Boris Johnsons rule of six, government sources have confirmed. But ministers are said to be exceptionally reluctant to return to national lockdown and remain hopeful that any tightening of restrictions can be kept to a local level and tailored to the specific circumstances of each outbreak. A senior official at Public Health England today indicated that this could include curfews in London to prevent drinkers socialising into the early hours, when observation of social distancing rules is likely to break down. There are hopes in Whitehall that the prospect of a return to the kind of restrictions seen in the spring will encourage the public in England to knuckle down to the new requirement announced by the prime minister last Wednesday to limit social gatherings to six people, inside or out of doors. Boris Johnson today told the House of Commons Liaison Committee: I dont want a second national lockdown I think it would be completely wrong for this country and we are going to do everything in our power to prevent it. And can we afford it? I very much doubt that the financial consequences would be anything but disastrous, but we have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means that we have set out. So when I see people arguing against the rule of six or saying that the Government is coming in too hard on individual liberties and so on I totally understand that and I sympathise with that, but we must, must defeat this disease." Mr Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock have been troubled by the surge in Covid-19 infections from around 1,000 a day at the end of August to almost 3,500 last weekend, coinciding with the return of millions of children to school and a continuing flow of employees going back to the workplace. The increase came amid growing concern about the availability of coronavirus tests, with floods of reports of people being told to travel hundreds of miles to testing centres. Mr Johnson today blamed a colossal spike in demand from the public and urged people only to seek a test where necessary, while health secretary Matt Hancock is preparing a new rationing system to ensure those most in need are able to access them. However, officials are not yet voicing concern over the absence of an immediate dip in coronavirus cases following the introduction of the rule of six. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 20 January 2022 A jet skier jumps the waves off the coast at Blyth in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 19 January 2022 Britains Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, participate in a therapy session with individuals who have experienced the care system, during a visit to the Foundling Museum in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty Because coronavirus symptoms do not typically manifest for at least 5-7 days and sometimes longer following infection, and there is then another time lag while patients seek tests and receive their results, it is not thought possible to judge the impact of an intervention for up to two or three weeks after its introduction. Ministers want to get the message across that during that period, the public has a golden opportunity to bring cases right back down by adhering closely to rules on hygiene, face-coverings and social distancing, including the six-person rule. Two weeks is the earliest we will see if theres been an impact, said a government source. Recommended If at that point cases are still increasing at the rate they have been, we will have to look at whatever else we should be doing to bring them down. While this is likely to focus on targeted interventions aimed at specific hotspots in particular areas, whether students returning to university, outbreaks in workplaces or localised spread through bars and restaurants, nationwide restrictions have not been ruled out. Theres no appetite to do that, but you cant ever take it off the table. Professor Kevin Fenton, London director of Public Health England called on the public to pull together to put a lid on the rise in Covid cases and prevent the need for tighter restrictions on everyday life. But he said measures like curfews cannot be ruled out if numbers continue to rise. Around 10 London boroughs have coronavirus rates of 30 cases per 100,000 and infections are likely to rise when half a million students arrive in the capital to start university term, he said. Prof Fenton told the Evening Standard that the aim was to avoid lockdowns, adding: Before we get to that stage there are many other things that you can do in order to help to reduce the risk of transmission and contain your outbreak. In some areas which have seen resurgence there have been limits placed on the amount of time you can spend socialising. In some it might be local curfews so youre not out drinking until the wee hours of the morning. By limiting that you also limit the amount of time people are spending in close contact with others. Technavio has been monitoring the workover rigs market and it is poised to grow by 254.51 million during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 3% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005714/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Workover Rigs Market 2020-2024. (Graphic: Business Wire) Although the COVID-19 pandemic continues to transform the growth of various industries, the immediate impact of the outbreak is varied. While a few industries will register a drop in demand, numerous others will continue to remain unscathed and show promising growth opportunities. Technavio's in-depth research has all your needs covered as our research reports include all foreseeable market scenarios, including pre- post-COVID-19 analysis. Download a Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impacts Frequently Asked Questions: What are the major trends in the market? Use of laser technology in workover operations is a major trend driving the growth of the market. Use of laser technology in workover operations is a major trend driving the growth of the market. At what rate is the market projected to grow? The year-over-year growth for 2020 is estimated at 2.16% and the incremental growth of the market is anticipated to be 254.51 million. The year-over-year growth for 2020 is estimated at 2.16% and the incremental growth of the market is anticipated to be 254.51 million. Who are the top players in the market? Basic Energy Services Inc., Bentec GmbH Drilling and Oilfield Systems, China National Petroleum Corp., Drillmec Spa, Nabors Industries Ltd., National Energy Services Reunited Corp., National Oilwell Varco Inc., Precision Drilling Corp., Schlumberger Ltd., and Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group Co. Ltd., are some of the major market participants. Basic Energy Services Inc., Bentec GmbH Drilling and Oilfield Systems, China National Petroleum Corp., Drillmec Spa, Nabors Industries Ltd., National Energy Services Reunited Corp., National Oilwell Varco Inc., Precision Drilling Corp., Schlumberger Ltd., and Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group Co. Ltd., are some of the major market participants. What is the key market driver? The growing demand for oil and natural gas is one of the major factors driving the market. The growing demand for oil and natural gas is one of the major factors driving the market. How big is the North America market? The North America region will contribute 55% of the market share. The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Basic Energy Services Inc., Bentec GmbH Drilling and Oilfield Systems, China National Petroleum Corp., Drillmec Spa, Nabors Industries Ltd., National Energy Services Reunited Corp., National Oilwell Varco Inc., Precision Drilling Corp., Schlumberger Ltd., and Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group Co. Ltd. are some of the major market participants. The growing demand for oil and natural gas will offer immense growth opportunities. To make most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free. View market snapshot before purchasing Technavio's custom research reports offer detailed insights on the impact of COVID-19 at an industry level, a regional level, and subsequent supply chain operations. This customized report will also help clients keep up with new product launches in direct indirect COVID-19 related markets, upcoming vaccines and pipeline analysis, and significant developments in vendor operations and government regulations. Workover Rigs Market 2020-2024: Segmentation Workover Rigs Market is segmented as below: Application Onshore Offshore Geography North America MEA APAC Europe South America To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR44023 Workover Rigs Market 2020-2024: Scope Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. The workover rigs market report covers the following areas: Workover Rigs Market Size Workover Rigs Market Trends Workover Rigs Market Industry Analysis This study identifies the use of laser technology in workover operations as one of the prime reasons driving the workover rigs market growth during the next few years. Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Technavio's in-depth research has direct and indirect COVID-19 impacted market research reports. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Workover Rigs Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024 Detailed information on factors that will assist workover rigs market growth during the next five years Estimation of the workover rigs market size and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the workover rigs market Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of workover rigs market vendors Table of Contents: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market ecosystem Value chain analysis Market Sizing Market definition Market segment analysis Market size 2019 Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024 Five Forces Analysis Five forces summary Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition Market Segmentation by Application Market segments Comparison by Application Onshore Market size and forecast 2019-2024 Offshore Market size and forecast 2019-2024 Market opportunity by Application Customer landscape Geographic Landscape Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison North America Market size and forecast 2019-2024 MEA Market size and forecast 2019-2024 APAC Market size and forecast 2019-2024 Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024 South America Market size and forecast 2019-2024 Key leading countries Market opportunity by geography Market drivers Market challenges Market trends Vendor Landscape Vendor landscape Landscape disruption Competitive scenario Vendor Analysis Vendors covered Market positioning of vendors Basic Energy Services Inc. Bentec GmbH Drilling and Oilfield Systems China National Petroleum Corp. Drillmec Spa Nabors Industries Ltd. National Energy Services Reunited Corp. National Oilwell Varco Inc. Precision Drilling Corp. Schlumberger Ltd. Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group Co. Ltd. Appendix Scope of the report Currency conversion rates for US$ Research methodology List of abbreviations About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005714/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Carol Wells of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, one of the tenants of the Peace Center in Culver City, has sued to stop the evictions and planned sale of the building. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) In a land where next months rent hangs over so many like a cartoon anvil and never so much as during this job-killing pandemic the Peace Center was a dream come true. Rent? What rent? At this property, the tenants didnt have to pay a dime. For 31 years, a parade of progressive nonprofits occupied two buildings and set up shop in them first, a small spot down the street from the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles, and then a squat, two-story office complex in Culver City since 2014. They did so at the invite of owner Aris Anagnos, a Greek immigrant who made his fortune in real estate and subsequently spent it on radical causes. He palled around with Sandinistas, protested the Turkish occupation of Cyprus and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, funded peace efforts across Eastern Europe and Latin America, and served as president of the ACLUs Southern California chapter for a couple of years. Skeptics scoffed at how a Marxist like Anagnos could be interested in making money, he liked to tell friends. His stock response: The revolution needs money. Carol Wells, whose Center for the Study of Political Graphics is the Peace Center's longest-lasting free renter (since 1989), said the militant Midas was so committed to his noblesse oblige that he once yelled at her and other tenants for hiring a cleaning crew without his permission. He shouted to us, You are my guests! You are paying nothing! Wells recalled from her cramped suite, packed with file cabinets and cardboard tubes containing more than 90,000 human rights posters one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. In 2009, Anagnos created a charity named the Aris and Carolyn Anagnos Peace Center Foundation to formalize what before then had been handshake leases with his friends. Wells and other former tenants say he assured them the nonprofit would ensure they never had to worry about getting kicked out. But you know that old saying: If a millionaire Marxist promises you free rent for life, get it in writing. Story continues For Anagnos lived a long life. Ninety-five years. But he passed away in 2018. And his eldest son, Demos, did not see the world or at least part of it the way his father had. Demos Anagnos took over the Peace Center's affairs. But he wants to sell the building and dissolve the foundation. That means the tenants and their free rent would be expelled from the premises. On June 26, he sent a letter to Peace Center tenants that read, If you are one of many guests who were here at the invitation of my beloved father, I would urge you to start making arrangements immediately. Wells did: CSPG sued Demos in August in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging that hes breaching the fiduciary duty to his father's original vision. Although the lawsuit remains unresolved, Wells already scored a big victory. On Aug. 28, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerras office sent a cease-and-desist order that stopped any sale or transfer of the Peace Center. It accused Demos Anagnos, his wife and their two sons who sit on the Peace Center's governing foundation of filing false, misleading or incomplete information and fail[ing] to act in the best interest of the building and its users. The attorney general lays out a pretty convincing case. IRS law is clear that charities can't stack boards with trustees related to one another by kin or cash. Becerra alleges that the Anagnos foundation board has consisted only of Demos Anagnos and his family since their patriarch's death. So for Anagnos to sell the Peace Center, change its foundation's articles of incorporation, and seek to dissolve said foundation "violated" California law, Becerra's office says. Via email, Anagnos wrote that he couldnt comment on pending matters but added that it is an unfortunate reality that there are many false and defamatory allegations being made around this issue. While I wouldnt say Im about to pull out the worlds smallest violin who closes a Peace Center in an era like this? I do feel for Anagnos. Children are not obligated to carry on their parent's passions. Hey, I chose not to be a Dodgers fan like my papi. And we don't necessarily see the world in the same way, either. Sometimes, a thing matters to your father and mother that matters less to you. But the law has a certain, necessary rigidity. And if you run afoul of it, which Becerra argues the younger Anagnos may well have done, you pay a price. Sometimes, that price is having to honor what your late father wanted, whether you like it or not. I didnt spend 30 years with Aris to not fight, Wells said. The groups he supported arent going to disappear. But his vision might. The current Peace Center is an ideal gathering point for left L.A. off the 405, next to a bus line, with ample free parking and free meeting rooms for anyone who asks the current tenants. Its a place to feel the pulse of progressive L.A., said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center. He frequently found himself over the years showing up to one meeting, then sticking around for others. Aris really was a godsend to these groups. Half the world hated us for what we did, Theresa Bonpane said. She and her late husband, Blaise, ran Office of the Americas, a nonprofit that sent peace delegations to Central America and was a longtime Peace Center tenant. So when someone comes along and creates something where you go to work and be surrounded by people in solidarity Aris could not be more kinder for fostering that. It became a second home for most; birthdays and memorials were held alongside lectures and film screenings. Every year, the Peace Centers disparate groups held a Christmas party that Aris Anagnos always attended. He never lost his sense of justice, said Wells, who keeps a self-published Anagnos autobiography in her office. He wasnt just the landlord. He was a presence. For someone who obviously loved his fellow travelers-cum-boarders, why didn't Anagnos ever put his promise of eternal free rent in an ironclad contract? For someone willing to go so far to codify his beliefs into action I mean, free rent in L.A.! what would it have cost to get it seared into paper? No one has an easy response. The closest to a definite answer is a Peace Center directors meeting two months before Anagnos passed away. The Center for the Study of Political Graphics' lawsuit claims Aris Anagnos, Demos Anagnos and other board members unanimously voted then to grant CSPG and other Peace Center tenants free leases "in perpetuity." But there are no records or minutes of the motion, which has led to the current imbroglio. Wells said Demos Anagnos never gave any clue that the Peace Center was in any danger of folding. Yet a full month before slipping his breakup letter under the CSPG door, the Peace Center building was put up for sale for $11.5 million. Her lawsuit states that a since-deleted listing posted by Demos Anagnos' son said the "charitable trust" that held the property allowed only 20% of its tenants to pay rent (Aris Anagnos always allowed a few paying, non-activist renters to keep the Peace Center sustainable). There is massive upside for a new owner, it continued, to achieve market rents and enjoy the massive cash flow this building will produce. I dont know whats motivating [Demos Anagnos], Wells said. But I do know his father would be horrified." The attorney general's decision will become permanent unless Anagnos appeals, which is expected. Meanwhile, Peace Center supporters continue to spread the word around town. A petition to stop its sale boasts the signatures of politicians, labor activists and Hollywood luminaries like Jane Fonda and Martin Sheen. L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas wrote a letter to Becerra urging a timely review and investigation of the matter. If a millionaire Marxist promises you free rent in the City of Angels for life, you're going to fight like hell to keep it. SOCORRO JohnRay Dennis, head teacher at San Antonio Elementary School, hurried over to the bright green hurricane on the schools playground, where a half-dozen youngsters on Friday were hanging from the equipment, ready to spin. Three only! Three only! he told the kids. He urged some of the students to jump off and reminded all of them that only three children are allowed on any single piece of playground equipment at one time because of state coronavirus safety guidelines for schools. Only three at a time, he repeated as he roamed the playground, making sure kids were wearing masks and following all the new rules. San Antonio Elementary was one of three elementary schools in Socorro County that resumed in-person learning last week, which the state allowed for the first time since March in counties where the number of coronavirus cases has declined and school districts had reentry plans approved by the state Public Education Department. Parkview Elementary in Socorro and Midway Elementary in Polvadera, part of the Socorro Consolidated School District, like San Antonio, also returned to in-person learning last week. So far, New Mexico has authorized only students from pre-kindergarten to grade 5 to return for in-person learning, and they are permitted only in reduced numbers. Grades 6 to 8 will return next, depending on the status of the virus. Grades 9 to 12 will return last. Under the states hybrid phase-in of in-person learning, schools can reopen at up to 50% of capacity if they can maintain social distancing. Families are given the option of whether their children will study in person or remotely. Recess at San Antonio Elementary demonstrated how difficult it may be for schools to adhere strictly to COVID-19 guidelines in the comparatively unstructured environment of the playground. Few kids were six feet apart. Groups of boys were roughhousing around an oversized swing. Running and playing, kids forget about their masks, which sometimes slipped below their noses or further down. All of this is very new to everyone, Dennis said. We are doing everything we are required to do as best we can, but still realizing they are kids and they want to be outside, they want to run and play, and be a kid. Adhering to COVID-19 safety guidelines was easier in the school building and classrooms than it was on the playground. At San Antonio, the smallest of the Socorro districts three elementary schools, 39 of 83 students, or 47%, attended in person last week. The rest studied remotely via technology. When students and staff arrive in the morning, they must pass through a station at the front door where their temperature is taken automatically. Hand sanitizer is available on a stand just inside the door. Every classroom has hand sanitizer, paper towels and wipes available. Custodians clean throughout the day and disinfect the school with a fogger daily after everyone leaves. Because San Antonio is small, with only four regular classrooms and four teachers for six grades multiple grades are combined in each classroom the schools strategy for providing both in-person and remote learning is different than at larger schools, such as Parkview in Socorro. Each teacher taught both in-person and remote students simultaneously using large interactive screens in the classrooms to reach students not attending in person. But even within the school, there was variation in how teachers taught. San Antonios kindergarten teacher, Melanie Sanchez, chose to teach from home, so in-person students watched her on a screen in their classroom. The most visually jarring scene was that of a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher, Amy Smythe, who taught in one room while her students sat in the next room, separated by a plastic sheet that covered a small opening between the rooms. That was the happy medium that we were able to come up with that would allow her to be in class and that provided her the sense of safety that she needed, Dennis said. Within classrooms, students sat at least six feet apart and all wore masks. Each students work area was surrounded on three sides by Plexiglas that formed a small, transparent cubicle. All Socorro district schools use Google Classroom software to make interactive learning possible. Overall, Dennis said that the return to in-person learning has been beneficial. He said teachers and students have advanced considerably since spring in their use of the technology. Parkview Elementary is the largest elementary school in the Socorro district, with 415 students. About one-third of Parkview students attended in person last week. The schools large size provides advantages, but also creates additional difficulties. Because it has more teachers than San Antonio, each of its 20 grade-level teachers instruct either in-person or remote students exclusively, not both at the same time. So, in some classrooms, education looks much like it did before, except that classes are smaller, students are more widely spaced and everyone wears a mask. In other classrooms, teachers stand alone, teaching remote students via an interactive screen. The added number of students, though, forces school officials to be more careful about reducing potential interactions and crowding among students. When students arrive at school, they are escorted in socially distanced groups to their classrooms, where they spend most of their day. They dont go to most of their special classes, such as art or computer. Unlike at the smaller San Antonio or Midway schools, students dont eat lunch in the cafeteria. Instead, lunch is brought to their classrooms. The only time students leave their classrooms during the day, except to go to the restroom, is for gym and recess. We are managing the hallways to make sure kids arent gathering, Parkview Principal Laurie Ocampo said. Recess also requires extra precautions because of the large number of students. Kids are required to stay in small groups and remain six feet apart. They are not allowed to touch one other. They cant throw balls back and forth. We are being kind of crazy about it, Ocampo said. We want to make sure our kids are healthy and our staff is healthy. Teachers are also incorporating instruction about the coronavirus, and guidelines for reducing risks, into their lessons. Teachers of young children have stuffed animals in the classroom wearing masks. The Parkview principal was wary about the return to in-person learning, but she said that students have adjusted quickly to the COVID-19 world, and all the restrictions that it requires. I think we underestimate children, she said. They are totally keeping on their masks. Midway Elementary in Polvadera has the largest percentage of students among the three schools in the Socorro district who are attending school in person. Last week, 64 of 94 students, or 69%, attended in person. That percentage would seem on the surface to violate state rules, but Julie Romero, Midways head teacher, said it does not because the schools classrooms are large and can accommodate more students than are enrolled in the school. We have been able to socially distance and follow all the rules, she said. Romero said that a greater percentage of Midway students are attending in person than at other Socorro district schools because the area has poor internet service, making it more difficult for students to study remotely. In fact, more Midway parents wanted their children to attend in person than are able to do so because of the state requirements that limit schools to 50% of capacity. Were having to put a hold on accepting any more students for in-person leaning, she said. The rest are learning remotely. Its not normal, Romero said. Its not routine. Its not habit. But I think our kids in one week are doing really great jobs. Although its not an ideal situation, our students are able to participate in learning. Theyve been able to interact with teachers and their peers. Its been very exciting. I feel like were finally able to give them what they need to do well academically. New research by the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has demonstrated a clear fluctuation in the trade of wildmeat in and around the High Niger National Park in Guinea, West Africa New research by the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has demonstrated a clear fluctuation in the trade of wildmeat in and around the High Niger National Park in Guinea, West Africa. Conservationists found a significant increase in the trading of species that forage on crops including the green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) and warthog (Phacochoerus africanus), in comparison with earlier data, in spite of religious taboos against the killing and consumption of monkeys and wild pigs by Muslims in the region. These species are increasingly being killed to protect crops and farmers can gain economically from their sale, providing an additional incentive for killing. The consumption of wild pigs is prohibited by Islam, yet a marked increase in the number of carcasses recorded in rural areas from 2011 to 2017 has suggested an erosion in the religious taboo. The research team led by Dr Tatyana Humle (DICE) alongside colleagues from Beijing Forestry University, China, and the Higher Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary of Faranah, Guinea, drew conclusions after examining the wildmeat trade in three rural markets in the Park and in the nearest urban centre, Faranah, by collecting market survey data during August-November 2017, and comparing it with data from the same period in the 1990's, 2001 and 2011. Mammals, most notably small sized species, now dominate the wildmeat trade around High Niger National Park. Further findings indicate a marked increase in the number of carcasses and biomass offered for sale from 2001 onwards in rural areas, whereas in Faranah there were no notable differences with data gathered in 1994. Therefore, urban demand does not appear to be driving the wildmeat trade in this region. Instead, the wildmeat trade in rural areas could perhaps be linked to an increase in human population and limited access to alternative sources of animal protein. Dr Humle said: 'This study highlights that despite the local reduction in urban demand for wildmeat, pressures on wildlife in the Park remain. The prominence of crop-protection is increasingly being recognised for driving the wildmeat trade across rural West Africa, yet there is a need to better understand the motivations behind hunting and supply and demand dynamics. There is wider scope to investigate and improve the balance between local farmers' livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.' ### Their research paper titled 'Temporal evolution of bushmeat traded in High Niger National Park, Guinea, West Africa' is published in Oryx. DOI: 10.1017/S0030605319001443 The farm bills have evoked strong reactions from farmers of Haryana and Punjab -- the bread baskets of India. Union Food Processing Minister and Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against the three farm bills tabled by the Centre in Parliament. She had been the only SAD representative in the Modi government. The Punjab party is the oldest BJP ally. She later tweeted that she will always stand with farmers as their daughter and sister. I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 According to reports, the Akali leader, who represents Bhatinda in the Lok Sabha, walked out of the Lok Sabha when the House was taking up discussion on the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020. Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also her husband, had announced in Lok Sabha that she will quit the Modi government over the issue. "I announce that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from the government," he said in Lok Sabha. However, the party will continue to support the BJP-led government at the Centre and will also remain a part of the NDA alliance. In his speech during a discussion on two of the farm bills, Badal said the proposed laws will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. He recalled Punjab's massive contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production as he vehemently opposed the bills. The farm bills have evoked strong reactions from farmers of Haryana and Punjab -- the bread baskets of India. Farmers from these states have taken to the streets to oppose the bills, which the BJP is pitching as big-ticket farm reforms. The SAD was under tremendous political pressure after the Congress government in Punjab passed a resolution in the Vidhan Sabha against the ordinances, prompting the NDA ally to fiercely oppose the Bills after initially supporting it. The Badals party patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, former deputy CM Sukhbir Badal and Ms Badal had not opposed the government's move in June when it had brought ordinances for the same. The SAD, sources said, had told the BJP that they will not be able to support the Bills as there is massive unrest among farmers in Punjab. Hong Kong authorities on Thursday said they had discovered nine new cases of coronavirus, three of which came from unknown sources in the community, despite a controversial mass testing program since the start of September. The city's Centre for Health Protection said the nine additional confirmed cases had brought the total number of confirmed cases in Hong Kong to 4,994, while only three of the cases had a travel history. Authorities in Mong Kok district have quarantined staff at a dim sum restaurant who may have interacted with one of the cases, while colleagues of an office worker in Kwun Tong were also being tested. Contacts of the third case, an unemployed man, couldn't be traced, government broadcaster RTHK reported, adding that the three remaining local cases were contacts of known cases. Secretary for the civil service Stephen Nip said on Tuesday that a two-week U.S.$68 million mass testing program carried out by mainland Chinese company Sunrise Diagnostic Centre had achieved its policy objective, despite only detecting 32 new coronavirus cases. Nip said a total of 1.8 million people were tested, in spite of calls for a boycott from pro-democracy activists, who feared the data gathered could be misused by the mainland Chinese authorities. The testing program was also criticized for encouraging people to gather around district clinics and test centers near residential areas, which local people feared would fuel the spread of cases in their area. Meanwhile, Sunrise's parent company BGI Genomics will stop providing new local clients with an unrelated controversial DNA sequencing service after becoming embroiled in an intellectual property lawsuit. U.S.-based Illumina Cambridge last month applied for a court injunction to prevent BGI selling test kits and reagents for which Illumina holds a Hong Kong patent. The High Court ordered BGI to retrieve and destroy all sold test kits, and pay compensation to Illumina and to provide an explanation. Surge of new cases Hong Kong saw a sudden surge in new coronavirus cases in early July, partly linked to quarantine exemptions for airline staff, truck drivers from mainland China, and sailors on cargo ships. At one point, the city was reporting more than 100 locally transmitted cases a day, although daily numbers have since dwindled to single digits. The coronavirus testing program had sparked concerns that the DNA of Hongkongers would be sent to mainland China, potentially for law enforcement and surveillance purposes, prompting pro-democracy activists to advise boycotting the program. Meanwhile, researchers on the democratic island of Taiwan said they had developed a rapid COVID-19 test kit that can deliver results in about 15 minutes with an accuracy rate of 80-90 percent, the island's Central News Agency reported. A team of researchers from the National Defense Medical Center (NDMC) and the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) said several biopharmaceutical companies are now working on the kit, which should be ready to go to market by the end of the year. Reported by Wu Hoi-man and Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Had the SAD taken a stand earlier and supported his government against the farm ordinances, the Centre might have thought ten times before pushing the anti-farmer Bills in Parliament, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh said on Thursday Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday announced that she has resigned as the Union Minister of Food Processing in protest against "anti-farmer ordinances and legislation", two of which were passed by the Lok Sabha. She announced her resignation on Twitter, saying: I have resigned from Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) September 17, 2020 The Centre had on Monday introduced in Parliament the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020 to replace the ordinances promulgated earlier. Two of the three bills, meant to deregulate the sale of farm produce, were passed in the Lok Sabha on Thursday amid opposition by several farmer organisations, fearing they will lead to the dismantling of the minimum support price (MSP) regime. In her four-page resignation letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kaur said despite her persistent pleas and repeated efforts from her party, the Central government has not taken farmers on board regarding these bills. Asserting that every member of her party is a farmer, she said the SAD is merely continuing its age old tradition of being a champion of farmers' interests. It could not be immediately ascertained if the prime minister has accepted her resignation. Her resignation came soon after her husband and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal strongly opposed the three farm sector bills in Lok Sabha, claiming that they will "destroy" the agriculture sector in Punjab, and announced that the Union minister will quit the government in protest. "I announce that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will resign from the government," he had said in the Lower House. Follow Live Updates on Monsoon Session of Parliament Sukhbir, during a discussion on two of the farm bills the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill said the proposed legislations will "destroy" the 50 years of hard work done by successive Punjab governments to build the farm sector. While strongly opposing the bills, the SAD president also recalled Punjab's massive contribution in making India self-sufficient in food grain production. The Jalalabad MP said that Punjab is one of the only states to have every inch of land irrigated and the only state where droughts do not affect the produce. He also asserted that the state's Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act was the "best in the entire world". Harsimrat Kaur is the only SAD representative in the Modi government. The Punjab party is the oldest BJP ally. Congress terms Harsimrat Kaur's resignation gimmick Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday called Harsimrat's resignation from the Modi Cabinet as nothing more than a gimmick to befool the farmers of Punjab. Had the SAD taken a stand earlier and supported his government against the farm ordinances, the Centre might have thought ten times before pushing the anti-farmer Bills in Parliament, the chief minister said. "Did Sukhbir and Harsimrat and their coterie not see the damage the legislation would do to Punjab's agriculture and economy all this time?" he said in a statement, adding, "Or were they so blinded by their greed for power that they deliberately chose to close their eyes to the danger posed by the ordinances?" Amarinder also said the resignation announcement was another in a long chain of theatrics enacted by the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has still not quit the ruling coalition despite the "slap on their face by the Central Government over the farm bills". But they will not succeed in misleading the farmer organisations, he said, calling it a case of too little, too late. The resignation from the Union Cabinet has come too late to be of any help to Punjab and its farmers, the chief minister's statement said. "The SAD decision to pull out its sole minister in the Union Cabinet was motivated not by any concern for the farmers but to save its political fortunes and the fizzling political careers of the Badals, who had lost all credibility in the eyes of Punjab's people," he claimed. Healso said that it was the farmers' anger and the pressure mounted by the state's farmer organisations that had compelled the Badals to change their stance. "Now that their game plan was exposed, the Akalis were left with no option but to take a public stand against the Bills to protect their vote bank in Punjab," he claimed. With inputs from PTI Aerial photo shows fishing boats sailing to the East China Sea in Zhoushan, east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 16, 2020. Fishing boats departed from ports in Zhejiang Province at noon on Wednesday, marking the end of the four-and-a-half month summer fishing ban in the East China Sea. (Photo by Yao Feng/Xinhua) NINGBO, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- More than a thousand fishing boats departed from the Shipu Port in east China's Zhejiang Province at noon on Wednesday, marking the end of the four-and-a-half month summer fishing ban in the East China Sea. Local fishery authorities have cleaned up and dredged shipping channels in the Shipu Port and carried out safety inspections on fishing boats and crew members. China's summer fishing ban, starting on May 1 annually, is part of China's efforts to protect marine fishery resources and the ecological environment. No fishing activities were allowed in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the waters north to 12 degrees north latitude of the South China Sea during the moratorium period. Enditem 12 1 [ Editor: SRQ ] Undersecretary of State Keith Krach will land in Taiwan on Thursday - Heo Ran/Reuters A top US diplomat will land in Taiwan on Thursday, marking the second high-ranking visit of a senior Trump administration official to Taipei in two months, at a time of historically low ties between Washington and Beijing. Keith Krach, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, will attend a memorial service this weekend for former President Lee Teng-hui, known as Taiwans father of democracy. The symbolic move coincides with a call from Joseph Wu, Taiwans foreign minister, for the international community to defend the region and his country - which was on the frontline of defending democracies - from expansionist Chinese actions. We feel that like-minded countries or fellow democracies need to pay more attention to this area and come to each other's help so that China's expansionist motivation can be deterred, Mr Wu told the France 24 TV station on Wednesday. Mr Krachs trip, which may also include talks to nurture bilateral economic ties, will rile China, which has warned the US on multiple occasions against supporting Taiwan, a democratic island of 24 million, which it claims as its own and seeks to annex and isolate on the global stage. The high-level US visit will be a boost to Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen - HOGP/AP On Thursday, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson - when asked about Mr Krachs trip - underscored Beijings opposition to any official exchanges between Washington and Taipei. A visit to Taipei last month by Alex Azar, the US health secretary, prompted similar pushback. The US visit "seriously violates the One-China principle and the provisions of the three Sino-US joint communiques, encourages the arrogance of separatist forces of Taiwan independence and undermines China-US relations, and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," he said. Mr Wang added that China had "lodged solemn representations to the US side." The state-owned Global Times went further, predicting in an editorial that Mr Krachs sortie would bring misfortune to Taiwan. Story continues [The US and Taiwan] keep throwing stones into the water of the Taiwan Straits. But once they go too far, the stones may become torpedoes, increasing the uncertainties in the entire region, as well as the risks of drastic changes in the Taiwan Straits, it said. Mr Krachs visit sparked speculation in the local media that he may host the US-Taiwan Economic and Commercial Dialogue, a new forum to strengthen economic ties and boost cooperation in key industries including semiconductors and 5G technology. The dialogue was announced at the end of August by David Stilwell, assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific, who appointed Mr Krach to take the lead, pushing forward on priorities such as restructuring medical product supply chains and expanding infrastructure and energy sector collaboration. The warmest of welcomes to @State_E @KeithJKrach, @DRL_AS & the U.S. delegation. We genuinely appreciate the group's Sept. 17-19 visit, & trust it will deepen friendship & strengthen relations between like-minded partners #Taiwan & the #US. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) (@MOFA_Taiwan) September 16, 2020 However, neither Taipei - which has long sought a free trade deal with the US - or Washington has made any direct mention of economic talks during this weeks meetings, which analysts have suggested reflects caution about pushing Beijing too far. A press release issued by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT), the de facto US embassy, referred only to the memorial service, adding: The United States honours President Lees legacy by continuing our strong bonds with Taiwan and its strong democracy through shared political and economic values. In a separate move, the US plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The pursuit of seven sales at once would be a departure from previous US policies, which spaced out the supply of weapons to Taiwan in order to minimise tensions with Beijing. The bulk sale of US military hardware to Taiwan, if it goes ahead, will ramp up pressure on China at a time when Chinese fighter jets and naval ships have been accused by Taipei of using regular sorties around the island as an intimidation strategy. An image of a Chinese Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft entering Taiwan's Air Identification Zone - Taiwanese MInistry of Defence/EPA-EFE-Shutterstock The Taiwanese defence ministry said on Thursday that two Chinese anti-submarine aircraft had entered Taiwans air defence identification zone on Wednesday before being warned to leave by the air force. Similar incursions have escalated in recent months. Taiwan is a key ally for the US in the Asia Pacific region as relations between Washington and Beijing plummet over a lingering trade war, accusations of spying and bitter exchanges over the coronavirus pandemic. The island, which has its own democratically elected government, military and foreign policy, sits on the so-called first island chain that runs from Russias Kuril Islands to the Malay Peninsula, and is integral to US military doctrine and influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Washington has been eager to include it in creating a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as Fortress Taiwan. MONTREAL - Quebec regions that have seen sharp increases in COVID-19 cases in recent days will remain at a pre-alert level as health officials decide on next steps, authorities said Thursday. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Quebec Premier Francois Legault responds to reporters questions during a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic at the National Assembly in Quebec City, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020. The Quebec government is planning a more impactful advertising campaign to unconvinced Quebecers that COVID-19 is a serious health issue. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot MONTREAL - Quebec regions that have seen sharp increases in COVID-19 cases in recent days will remain at a pre-alert level as health officials decide on next steps, authorities said Thursday. In the meantime, Health Minister Christian Dube implored people in those regions which make up 75 per cent of the province's population to show restraint over the weekend to help get cases under control. "You still have the power to ensure that your region doesn't turn to orange," Dube said, referring to the province's colour-coded alert system. "This is not the time to take advantage of the weekend to have parties and gatherings without respecting the measures." Eight regions are considered to be at the pre-alert yellow level. None has yet been declared orange, which comes with unspecified stricter measures. Dube did let slip that the province will follow Ontario's lead and announce on Friday increased fines for people violating rules on gatherings. Earlier, Premier Francois Legault said the province is studying how to use police to break up large private parties that are being blamed for the recent spread of the disease. Police aren't permitted to enter a home uninvited without a warrant. "So, we have to be careful," Legault said. "It's a private property but, at the same time, if somebody is doing a big party with 50 people, which may have an impact on the public safety of the population, I think we have to, at least, look at what we can do for that." But opposition parties opposed the idea of having police go inside private homes. Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade called it a radical measure. Instead, the government should strive for transparency and explaining the rules to people, she said. "I think before the government goes ahead, they really need to explain what is the situation, how critical it is and why they would decide to go down this path," Anglade said. Aside from possible police intervention, the Quebec government is hoping a new advertising campaign with testimonials from people who've had COVID-19 or lost someone to it will persuade skeptics who question the disease's seriousness. The ads were announced as the province reported an additional 499 COVID-19 cases Thursday, including 248 previously unreported cases in Montreal that date back to Sept. 9-14. Legault said he requested the tougher advertising campaign to get the public health message across to "people who still think that there is no danger." He said skepticism surrounding COVID-19 dissipates for people who know someone who has had the disease. Quebec recorded 251 new cases of COVID-19 and two deaths in the past 24 hours. The number of hospitalizations increased by six to 136, of which 29 were in intensive care an increase of three. To date, Quebec has seen 66,356 COVID-19 cases. There have been 5,791 death, and 58,012 people have recovered since the beginning of the pandemic. Health authorities in Montreal said Thursday that a private Jewish school has shifted to online classes for the next two weeks due to an outbreak. Dr. Mylene Drouin, Montreal's public health director, said the decision was made due to 15 cases at Herzliah High School, including eight from one class. Drouin says that because the school was already offering online courses, public health decided it would be prudent to shut the school down for two weeks. Also Thursday, Dube apologized to a hairdresser from Thetford Mines, Que., who he'd wrongly said had gone into several seniors residences after testing positive. The woman did not know she had COVID-19, and while Dube corrected the record in the hours after a news conference Tuesday, he publicly apologized to her on Thursday. The woman has told various media she suffered a backlash following Dube's comments. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2020. Jenna Bush Hager has opened up about the 'sisterhood' she has with other former first daughters and how her father really felt about her getting caught sticking her tongue out at reporters during his reelection campaign. The 38-year-old Today host appeared on Watch What Happens Live on Tuesday night, and during the after show, host Andy Cohen asked her if has a relationship with Chelsea Clinton, 40, as well as Malia, 22, and Sasha Obama, 19. 'We really do, in some ways. We reach out to each other,' she said. 'Chelsea and I see each other around well, we used to. Now, I dont see anybody. But we used to see each other around New York City. And I reach out to the Obama girls and vice versa. But we do.' Scroll down for video Special bond: Jenna Bush Hager opened up about the 'sisterhood' between former first daughters on Watch What Happens Live on Tuesday Looking back: Jenna said she still reaches out to Malia and Sasha Obama, who are now college students. She is pictured giving the Obama girls a tour of the White House in 2008 'There is a sisterhood because its so few of us that we know what its like and the beauty of it and living history and also some of the difficulties,' she added. When asked if she knew Amy Carter, she admitted she hasn't had much contact with the former first daughter. 'I met Amy Carter once. I did a show on Christmas at the White House and I got to meet her,' she explained. 'But, no, I don't know her that well. I really don't. I should reach out.' Jenna's family called the White House home from 2001 to 2009, though she and her twin sister Barbara were away at college or living elsewhere throughout most of their father George W. Bush's presidency. The Bush twins also spent plenty of time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when their grandfather George H.W. Bush was president from 1989 to 1993. Old friends: Jenna said she used to see Chelsea Clinton, 40, all of the time in New York City before the pandemic Grateful: Former First Lady Michelle Obama has openly credited Jenna, her twin Barbara, and Chelsea with helping Malia, 22, and Sasha, 19, during their time in the White House Jenna and Barbara warmly welcomed Sasha and Malia to the White House with a letter after their father Barack Obama was named president in November 2008. They gave them a second letter eight years later, right before their dad left office. Former First Lady Michelle Obama has openly credited Jenna, Barbara, and Chelsea with helping her daughters during their time in the White House. 'I love those girls,' she said on Good Morning America in 2018. 'I will love them forever for what kind of support they provided to my daughters throughout that.' Chelsea also used to be good friends with Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka before he became president, but they had a falling out during the 2016 election. Considering that the current president has slammed both the late George H.W and George W. Bush during his first term, it seems unlikely that Jenna and Barbara will share a close bond with his daughters Ivanka and Tiffany as they do with Chelsea, Malia, and Sasha. Memories: Jenna also talked about sticking her tongue out at reporters during her father's 2004 campaign The former first daughter explained that she was trying to make her dad laugh Cool dad: While Jenna can't remember the public's reaction to the snafu, she said her father, former President George W. Bush, wasn't at all bothered by it and 'thought it was funny' During her after-show appearance, Jenna was also asked about how her father reacted when she famously got caught sticking her tongue out at reporters during his 2004 campaign. 'I was with my dad and my sister, and I was like, "People don't even know what's going on in here, like watch this,"' she recalled 'And Barbara and I constantly harassed [my father] and tried to make him laugh, and then I was down in the hotel gym doing the elliptical and I looked up on the TV and there was like my little face with a spotlight on it, and it was on the local news. 'I was like, "Oh no, I better get back up to the hotel room and tell Dad that this thing went out."' While Jenna can't remember the public's reaction to the snafu, she said her father wasn't at all bothered by it. 'My dad was just like, "Jen, this is so typical,"' she said. 'He thought it was funny. I think he really wanted Barbara and I to have normal childhoods, and we did until he became president.' Family: 'His reactions were always filled with grace and love,' she said of her dad. Jenna is pictured with her husband, their three children, and her parents Happy: Jenna celebrated her new book about her grandparents, Everything Beautiful in Its Time making the New York Times Best Seller list this week 'There's no guidebook, but his whole thing was like, "Y'all can be normal college kids. You go be you," and then he realized pretty soon after that that we really couldn't be normal college kids,' she added. The Bush twins were both famously caught drinking underage when they were away at college. While she was a student at the University of Texas, Jenna was cited for possession of alcohol as a minor and using a fake ID to purchase alcohol within a five-week span in 2001. That same year, Barbara was also charged with possession of alcohol as a minor while attending Yale University. Despite the public scrutiny during his presidency, Jenna said her father never judged them. 'His reactions were always filled with grace and love. He wasn't the type to shame us for acting silly,' she explained. A few days after her appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Jenna celebrated her new book about her grandparents, Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss, making the New York Times Best Seller list. Jenna, who shares a son Hal, one, and daughters Mila, seven, and Poppy, five, with her husband Henry Hager, explained on the Today show Thursday that her eldest children had a hilarious reaction to her book taking the number three spot on the list. 'Mila and Poppy were like, "You're not number one?"' the mom said with a laugh. In an annual state of the economy speech, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece will buy 18 Dassault Rafale fighters from France and well as additional weapons including Scalp EG air-launched cruise missiles, but the anticipated order for two FDI-class frigates, for which Greece signed a Letter of Intention in October, is apparently not included. In an annual state of the economy speech, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece will buy 18 Dassault Rafale fighters from France and well as additional weapons including Scalp EG air-launched cruise missiles, but the anticipated order for two FDI-class frigates, for which Greece signed a Letter of Intention in October, is apparently not included. Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link Turkey has sent a research vessel escorted by military vessels to Greek waters. (Picture source: Turkish Defence Ministry) Announcing a major military modernization package on September 12 2020, in Salonika, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis confirmed the expected order for 18 Rafale combat aircraft but did not name the supplier of four not two, as previously reported frigates that were also expected to be supplied by France. Instead of Naval Groups Belharra-class frigates, it was reported by local media over the week-end that Greece will instead buy four Meko 200 frigates, made by Germanys ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, which also supplied four older frigates that Greece now plans to upgrade to a similar equipment standard. If confirmed, this would be a major setback for France, as Greece in October 2019 had signed a Letter of Intent for the acquisition of two Belharra frigates, also known as Fregates de Defense et dIntervention (FDI). French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly announced signature of the LoI in an October 10 post on her Twitter account. More details on the cost of the programme and origin of the weapons purchases will be announced at a news conference on September 20 2020, a government source said. Oklahoma Pipeline Explodes, Prompting Evacuation of Nearby Residents A natural gas pipeline in Oklahoma exploded on Wednesday, triggering a massive fire and prompting authorities to evacuate nearby residents, local media reported. The explosion, which happened in Piedmont, Oklahoma, a city about 20 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, was the result of a rupture in a high-pressure underground natural gas pipeline, said Piedmont Fire Chief, Andy Logan in a telephone call with Reuters. Eyewitness video showed a massive fireball burning from several dozen meters away. We drive up on it after checking cattle and felt the heat and ground rumble. The explosion is three miles from our house, said Jenise Jech Culp, a nearby resident who filmed the video. Skies in Piedmont glowed with an orange hue as the fire could be seen from miles away. Fire authorities told local media that crew were evacuating people near the area of fire, but did not provide an exact tally of evacuees. The responsible party for the pipeline has shut off the gas supply, Logan said, adding that the fire has been contained. At first, The Comey Rule, writer-director Billy Rays adaptation of former FBI Director James Comeys 2018 memoir A Higher Loyalty, premiering on Showtime on Sept. 27, seems to be hedging its bets. The story is skeptically narrated by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (Scoot McNairy) to an aide. Rosenstein tells his listener (Dalmar Abuzeid, in an entirely passive and thankless role) that Comey (Jeff Daniels) is a showboat, a complaint Donald Trump lodged against the director after firing him in 2017. His evidence for this is the fact that Comeys family reads the Declaration of Independence aloud to one another when they celebrate the Fourth of July. Its not so much the custom itself, Rosenstein explains, but that despite never mentioning it himself, Comey just found a way to make sure everyone knows. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Jeff Daniels James Comey is a middle-age Jimmy Stewart figure. Even before Comey delivered 2016s October surpriseannouncing that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clintons use of an unsecured email server for State Department correspondence less than two weeks before the presidential electionhe was a controversial figure. He made himself unusually visible by breaking FBI protocol to hold a press conference in July 2016, in which he explained the bureaus recommendation to the Department of Justice that Clinton not be prosecuted. Ordinarily, the FBI does not discuss its recommendations publicly. Comeys motivations in this remain an object of debate. Comey himself insists that he took this unusual step to head off rumors of bias in favor of Clinton during an election year and to protect the agencys reputation for political impartiality. His critics charge that he loves the spotlight, crafted his congressional testimony like summer beach reading, and engages in a performative rectitude that sets the teeth of even some of his supporters on edge. According to these detractors, Comey is all lofty speeches and old-fashioned virtue signaling, as you might expect from someone maintaining a secret Twitter account named after the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Advertisement Advertisement Niebuhr, also a touchstone for President Barack Obama, is a favorite of high-minded public servants committed to abstract constitutional principles and ideals as a bulwark against shortsighted partisanship and political street fighting. Despite Comeys lifelong membership in the Republican Party, both his memoir and Rays adaptation show him bonding with Obama, implying their shared faith in such principles, particularly the need to maintain a formal distance between the president and the FBI director he appoints but who someday may need to investigate him. This is the world in which the orderly, meticulous, and rather sedate first half of The Comey Rule is set. The charactersComeys deputy Andrew McCabe (Michael Kelly), U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates (an affecting Holly Hunter), FBI general counsel Jim Baker (Steve Zissis), notorious texting lovers Lisa Page (Oona Chaplin) and Peter Strzok (Steven Pasquale), and the rest of Comeys teamspend much of the time explaining how the government and the Department of Justice are supposed to work, in the serene confidence that whoever wins whatever election, the standards and norms of their institutions will continue. Its not the most entertaining material (and it illustrates why Aaron Sorkin, when covering similar ground, had his actors talk so fast), but its not meant to be. In the perverse context of 2020, the unexciting vision of the federal government functioning as its supposed to, with a punctiliousness that can only be called bureaucratic, is strangely soothing. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Despite the soapbox it gives to Rosenstein, The Comey Rule accepts Comeys version of events uncritically. Daniels Comey is a middle-age Jimmy Stewart figure, the kind of guy who remembers to ask how his drivers daughters recital went and refrains from cutting in line at the cafeteria, as well as a popular boss, a gifted public speaker, and a man devoted to his wife (Jennifer Ehle) and daughters (Hillary supporters all). Rosenstein himselfbefore his appointment as deputy AG, when still U.S. attorney for the district of Marylandinvites Comey to deliver a speech on leadership to his staff, and leadership is just the sort of vaporous abstraction at which the series Comey clearly excels. Ray doesnt pay enough attention to the view of many who have known him that moral vanity plays a role in Comeys character and behaviorbeyond having Daniels offer a brief and not very persuasive confession that he can be self-righteous. But that doesnt seem to matter much in the world of the first half of The Comey Rule. Sure, it might make Comey irritating to those he works with (and Rosensteins complaints about Comey are later revealed to be petty and envy-driven), but how can too much integrity be a fault in a public servant? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Part 2 of The Comey Rule becomes a mesmerizing dramatization of a soul being slowly crushed. At its best, though, The Comey Rule is a horror film, and the monster is Donald Trump (played by Brendan Gleeson with a gruff manliness thats almost but not quite flattering to the whiner in chief). The first episode of the miniseries resembles those establishing scenes in which a young family unpacks its belongings in the wonderful old house theyve just bought, the kids running around the yard in glee and everyone sitting down to a meat-and-potatoes dinner just before the weird sounds and apparitions in the bathroom mirrors start. Part 2 of The Comey Rule introduces Trump as a hulking shadow who resolves into a badly dressed, orange-faced ogre who has no grasp of the intricate system of checks and balances he has inherited. Daniels Comey begins in all confidence that this apparatus will continue to function despite Trumps ignorance and blundering. The rest of the episode illustrates the excruciating disintegration of that confidence. Advertisement Advertisement If you can get past reservations about Rays idealization of Comey, Part 2 of The Comey Rule becomes a mesmerizing dramatization of a soul being slowly crushed. Unlike the blowhard anchorman Daniels played in Sorkins The Newsroom, his Comey is trapped within the very protocol that once provided structure and meaning to his life and work. In scene after sceneas Trump demands loyalty over the two mens infamous dinner at the White House or asks him to let up on the investigation of Michael Flynns ties to RussiaDaniels appears frozen in a posture of composed respect, with only his eyes reflecting the growing dread and disgust behind the mask. He resembles nothing so much as the characters stuck in Get Outs Sunken Place, their true selves and feelings imprisoned behind their fixed, agreeable exteriors. Whenever the subject of the Steele dossier comes up, Ray cuts to scenes of a Trump-shaped silhouette stepping into a room filled with Russian prostitutes and glimpses of women in miniskirts boarding a hotel elevator. In an otherwise literal film, these appear to be the sleazy images that, in Comeys imagination, have become wedded to the institutions he holds sacred. And all because, in complete confidence of the ultimate outcome, he did what he thought was right. The miniseries ends in an off-putting orgy of Comey hagiography, reuniting its hero with his wholesome family and leaving Rosenstein floating the prospect of wearing a wire to White House meetings and raving, Its so crazy in there! But however credulous Ray is about Comey, the larger truth of The Comey Rule is incontestable. Its the story of institutions run in accordance with norms and traditions that seem permanent but prove terrifyingly fragile. Comey gets out, but the rest of us are still living in the sequel. Agri-food companies are being told to get 'ready for Brexit' by the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue. The Minister has called on companies in the agri-food and fisheries sectors to urgently complete their preparations for the new trading arrangements that will pertain between the EU and UK from January 1, 2021. Speaking following his first attendance at the Brexit Stakeholder Consultative Committee since his appointment, Minister McConalogue said: I urge all operators who import from or export to Great Britain to engage with the Governments recently published Brexit Readiness Action Plan, and take the necessary steps to ensure that they are ready in good time for the changes that are coming in less than four months time. It comes after Boris Johnson announced a controversial proposal to break an international treaty by changing the agreed EU-UK special trade status of Northern Ireland after Brexit. McConalogue said regardless of the outcome of the future relationship negotiations, things will change once the UK becomes a third country. "There will be customs and regulatory requirements on animals, plants, and products of animal and plant origin from January 1, and businesses need to fully understand and comply with these requirements in order to continue trading effectively with Great Britain. "Everyone should take steps now in order to be ready, and that starts with registering with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine if you import or export animals, plants, or products of animal or plant origin from or to Great Britain. While he said stakeholders attention has understandably been focused on minimising and mitigating the impacts of Covid-19, he said urgent action is also now required in order to avoid supply chain and other impacts that could otherwise arise at the end of the transition period. The Department of Foreign Affairs gave a detailed update on the state of play of EU-UK negotiations and Department of Agriculture officials updated stakeholders in relation to the wide range of Brexit readiness work that has been completed and on further ongoing work. Stakeholders were again encouraged to ask their members who trade with Great Britain to register with the Department so that they will receive relevant information directly, and to register with Revenue to obtain an EORI number. In relation to support for the agriculture sector, as well as highlighting the existing wide range of supports for the sector the Minister added: In July the European Council agreed to establish a special Brexit Adjustment Reserve of 5 billion to counter adverse consequences in those Member States and sectors that are worst affected by Brexit. This is very welcome. I will work to ensure that the agri-food sector in Ireland gets an adequate allocation from that funding. BUELLTON, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Thousands of fishermen, processors and allied fishing businesses along the west coast thank the Pacific Fishery Management Council for taking final action on a rebuilding plan for the "northern" stock of Pacific sardine that achieves the balance between conservation and fishing communities mandated by the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). This action was required by the MSA after the "northern" sardine stock was declared "overfished" in 2019, when the biomass estimate fell below 50,000 mt. The Council decision came after many months of hard work by stock assessment scientists, modelers, the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Management Team and the Council's Science and Statistical Committee (SSC), to build and analyze a Rebuilder model based on the 2020 "northern" sardine stock assessment, which covered a period of low recruitment. The herculean effort attempted to forecast future sardine population growth and rebuilding time scenarios under various harvest alternatives. "The Council's unanimous decision to support the Management Team's recommendations shows that they understand reality, the big picture," said Diane Pleschner-Steele, Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, representing California fishermen and processors. "Our sardine harvest policy already has a built-in rebuilding plan. The Council closed the main directed fishery in 2015, and sharply reduced incidental harvest rates last year. Further cuts would drive many fishing businesses out of business, and we appreciate the Council's acknowledgement of that prospect." The environmental group Oceana immediately issued a press release decrying the Council action, accusing fishery managers of irresponsible mismanagement. Oceana and other environmental activists based their arguments on the Rebuilder model that scientists, the Management Team and the Council all acknowledged did not reflect reality because it could not model the environmental cycles driving sardine productivity, nor could it predict the future. Further, it assumed that the total harvest allowance was caught every year. Story continues Oceana's accusation, "fishery managers have failed to learn from the mistakes of history," does not pass the straight face test when all the facts are presented. During the great sardine decline in the late 1940s, the historic sardine fishery harvested 50 percent or more of the standing stock. Today's sardine fishery harvest amounts to only 0.6 percent of the northern sardine population -- very close to 0 US harvest, which was modeled as Alternative 2, and showed disastrous economic impacts to fishing communities in California and the West Coast because it curtailed major fisheries. Commercial fisheries that take sardines incidentally include market squid, anchovy and mackerel in California and Pacific whiting, pink shrimp and groundfish along the entire West Coast. In addition, the live bait fishery relies on sardines and serves a billion-dollar recreational fishing enterprise. The Council decision illuminates a dicey problem: sardine fishery management policy assumes that two sardine stocks exist along the west coast and Mexico, divided by a temperature barrier at about 62 degrees F. But the Council manages only the "northern" stock, and in recent years, stock assessments have subtracted thousands of tons of sardines found in waters warmer than 62 degrees on the assumption that those were "southern" sardines that migrated up from Mexico. Stock assessments also are now based on annual NOAA summer acoustic trawl (AT) surveys that begin in the Pacific Northwest and move south, not reaching California waters until late August, when water temperatures are typically above 62 degrees. Thus, most California sardines are now omitted from "northern" stock assessments on the assumption they are "southern" sardines. Also, NOAA research ships are too large to survey near shore, where most fishing occurs in California. For the past few years, fishermen have testified to a growing abundance of sardines on their fishing grounds yearlong. But complicating matters even further, for management purposes, all sardines landed are subtracted from the "northern" sardine harvest allowance, regardless of sea temperature. This catch-22 sets the backstory for the Council's final decision. Due to Covid-19 restrictions the Council meeting was conducted via webinar, and parade of fishermen, seafood processors and community representatives testified to the hardship they are already experiencing under current restrictions. They all voiced unanimous support for Alternative 1, "status quo" fishing regulations. The Management Team also recommended Alternative 1 as the most balanced and flexible choice. Environmental groups testified as well, and all supported Alternative 3, a static five percent harvest rate hard-wired for close to 20 years, based on Rebuilder model analysis, that would have cut current harvest levels nearly in half, precipitating harsh economic impacts. In their deliberations, Council members highlighted the flexibility of the "status quo" sardine Harvest Control Rule (HCR) that sets harvest limits based on current environmental conditions. They concurred with scientists and the Management Team that the Rebuilder model does not reflect reality; it can't model the natural high and low productivity cycles of sardines. Council members recognized that the HCR's precautionary harvest limits are designed to provide forage for predators. Respecting both the need for conservation and the needs of fishing communities, Washington Councilmember Phil Anderson commented that he would rather provide a little more harvest now to keep fishing communities viable. Otherwise they might not survive into the future. Council chair Marc Gorelnik summarized discussion with his comment, "Mother Nature bats last." Scientists and Council members alike recognize that environmental conditions are key to stock rebuilding, as they have been for eons even without fishing. The Management Team pointed out that actual fishery catches in the past five years, since the main directed fishery was closed, have averaged only about 2,300 metric tons, far short of the allowed annual catch target, and most of the catch is "southern" stock sardines. The Council also recognized that the current HCR equates to a built-in rebuilding plan because it has flexibility to reduce catches in relation to the biomass, and also includes automatic actions to further restrict fishing in low abundance years. The Council has already reduced the fishery as far as feasibly possible. Now Mother Nature needs to do the rest. All things considered, the Council made the proper rebuilding plan decision, following the MSA mandates to specify a time period for rebuilding that is as short as possible, taking into account the biology of the stock and needs of fishing communities. The MSA does allow directed fishing to continue when rebuilding an overfished stock, and does not require instant recovery or the most drastic action be taken. Optimum Yield is a long-term goal. The MSA also allows flexibility in developing a rebuilding plan. The plan will be updated when new information is available - nothing is cast in stone. In light of evidence of recruitment and the abundance of sardines that California fishermen have been reporting inshore of AT surveys, fishery representatives are asking for a review of the rebuilding plan in 2021 as soon as possible after the next coastwide sardine survey, which was cancelled in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions, and will for the first time in 2021 include a survey of nearshore waters, in a collaborative effort using fishing industry vessels. The fishing industry is dedicated to help improve the science underpinning stock assessments. "If stock assessments were accurate," said Corbin Hanson, a highline fisherman who has fished sardines as well as other CPS for more than a decade, "sardines would not be declared overfished.'" PRESS CONTACT: Diane Pleschner-Steele diane@californiawetfish.org (805) 693-5430 SOURCE: California Wetfish Producers Association View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606630/Pacific-Fishery-Management-Council-Approves-Pacific-Sardine-Rebuilding-Plan The Receiver of the 347 defunct microfinance companies, 23 savings and loans and finance houses, faced a Ghc4 billion shortfall in the asset base of the defunct companies it hoped to recover. Speaking on Citi TVs The Point of View, Eric Nana Nipah explained that the firms cumulatively said they had an assent base of about GHS 6 billion. But further checks, after securing the books and records of the companies as well as their assets, revealed the disparities. Mr. Nipah said the situation assessment to ascertain the state of affairs of the companies he conducted had a sorrowful outcome. What I found was quite sorrowful; sorrowful in terms of the fact that although the balance sheets of these companies indicated that they had an asset base in excess of GHS 6 billion, actually, based on my assessment, I do not think they are up to even GHS 2 billion, he explained. According to the checks, a lot of these assets that were purported to be there were actually not there. When we did our examination, we also noted that quite a number of them had been diverted. Because of the serious diversions, the Reciever had to contact the Economic and Organised Crime Office to assist with asset tracing. Assets worth about GHS 500 million have been recovered by EOCO, according to an update from the Receiver in July. The Receiver was called into action after May 31, 2019, when the 347 microfinance companies had their licence revoked by the Bank of Ghana as part of the financial sector clean-up. The Bank of Ghana, on August 16, 2019, also revoked the licences of 23 insolvent Savings and Loans companies and Finance Houses. These actions were in line with Section 123 (1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930), which requires the Bank of Ghana to revoke the licence of a Bank or Specialised Deposit-Taking Institution (SDI) where the Bank of Ghana determines that the institution is insolvent. Depositors affected by this action have made claims of up to around GHS 8.25 billion. The government has settled GHS 6.5 billion of this figure after validation. ---citinewsroom Call for control of HMP Berwyn to be handed to Cardiff from Westminster after new report This article is old - Published: Thursday, Sep 17th, 2020 A report into the state of Welsh prisons revealed HMP Berwyn recorded the highest number of Covid-19 infections of any jail in England and Wales. The study by the Wales Governance Centre also revealed a litany of drug and discipline problems at the Wrexham detention facility, with figures for hostage taking, weapon finds, serious disturbances, drug smuggling and violence all spiralling. The Ministry of Justice said tough new security measures are making it harder than ever to bring drugs into jails. It also said it was factually accurate to say Welsh prisons had more Covid infections but claimed significantly varying testing criteria between England and Wales had masked how infection rates were similar. Forty-one inmates contracted the coronavirus strain at HMP Berwyn along with 33 staff to the end of June the latest figures available which was more than any other jail in the UK Governments estate. The report notes There had been more confirmed cases of Covid-19 at HMP Berwyn that at any other prison in England and Wales as of 19th June. HMP Berwyn had the second largest prison population in England and Wales at the end of June 2020 One inmate died due to the infection. The report prompted Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts to call on Westminster to hand over control of justice to the Welsh Government. She called the prisons size a recipe for disaster. She added: This is an institutional problem, created by the Westminster Governments decision to build a super-prison in the first place, which Plaid Cymru warned from the outset would lead to negative outcomes for prisoners and staff. This coupled with decades of underinvestment in the wider criminal justice system and the fact the majority of those being sent to the north of Wales prison are not from the area, has clearly led to serious and currently worsening issues. These statistics only serve to underline that Westminster should not be running the Welsh justice system. The number of English inmates within Welsh jails has increased by 182% to 1,774 since HMP Berwyn opened in February 2017. Seventy percent of prisoners at HMP Berwyn were from addresses outside Wales as of the end of December 2019. The facility is the only one of Wales five prisons that isnt overcrowded, and is currently running at 91% of its 2,100 capacity. Prison inspectors raised concerns in March last year over its failure to analyse or investigate violent incidents, with no robust strategy in place to drive and monitor plans to reduce violence and improve prison safety. The report detailed a litany of problems at the prison, including: Five prison staff at HMP Berwyn were subject to either investigations or conduct and discipline for charge of Assault/Unnecessary use of force on a prisoner in 2018/19 Self harm incidents rose by 84% in 2019, to 1,015 a rate of 71 per 100 Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults rose by 143% in 2019, to 39 per 100 inmates the highest in Wales More assaults were recorded on prison staff at HMP Berwyn in 2019 (257) than the other four Welsh jails combined (240) In 2019-20 there were 16 complaints about staff to the Prison Ombudsman, nine of them from HMP Berwyn inmates Of 162 complaints to the Ombudsman from prisoners in Wales in 2019-20 49% came from HMP Berwyn Prison disturbances in Welsh jails increased by 26% in 2019-20, largely because such incidents at HMP Berwyn almost doubled to 13 In 2018-19 HMP Berwyn accounted for 11 of the 14 hostage incidents recorded in Wales Drug finds at HMP Berwyn increased by 92% in the year ending March 2020 -rising to 323 compared to 46 in 2018 19% of prisoners surveyed said they developed a drug problem while locked up at at HMP Berwyn Alcohol finds at HMP Berwyn rose by 225% in the year to March 2020 at a rate of 26 per 100 prisoners, the highest in Wales Weapon finds increased by 141% at HMP Berwyn in the year ending March 2020 on average, there were five weapon discoveries a week. It also had the highest ratio in Wales with 18 per 100 prisoners The Ministry of Justice was asked about discipline within 250m HMP Berwyn, vaunted as a state-of-the-art, secure facility. A spokeswoman said: Tough new security measures are making it harder than ever to bring drugs into jails and this is one of the reasons assaults (overall in English and Welsh prisons) have fallen 8% in the past year. She added: Health experts have praised the efforts of staff who have successfully restricted the spread of the virus in jails and saved many lives. The situation at Welsh prisons was closely monitored through outbreak control team meetings which took place weekly to discuss the management of Covid-19. This includes representatives from Public Health Wales and local health boards. Public Health Wales has been asked for comment on the infection rates at HMP Berwyn. By Jez Hemming BBC Local Democracy Reporter On September 13, 2020, NVIDIA announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion in a combination of NVIDIA stock and cash. SoftBank will retain a 10% interest in Arm. While there are regulatory issues to be resolved in the UK, the US and China, NVIDIA anticipates this process will take 12 to 18 months. The process of integrating the two companies will not start until the deal is consummated. The Basics of the Acquisition NVIDIA will retain Arms company headquarters in Cambridge, UK, and will expand Arms presence in Cambridge by establishing an AI research and education center in the UK. NVIDIA will retain Arms current business model for licensing Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP). NVIDIA intends to continue to invest in Arms Mali Graphics GPU technology, as well as all the other Arm SIP product types. NVIDIA plans to use Arms experience to license NVIDIAs GPU designs as SIP. NVIDIA intends to continue to use RISC-V CPU SIP internally. NVIDIA will continue to honor the agreement between SoftBank and the British government to keep Arms headquarters in the UK and to increase headcount in their UK locations. Industry Thoughts Regarding the Acquisition There has been much speculation about the possible sale of Arm ever since SoftBank signaled last year their intention to either IPO Arm or sell it outright. Many articles have been written that were both for and against this transaction. Companies rumored to be interested included Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and even Netflix were possible suspects for such an acquisition. The reasoning was that their purchase of ARM would lead to a custom architecture that would give them a competitive lead in the data center and the emerging AI market. Apple was also mentioned as a potential buyer given that they are already replacing Intel in their desktop and laptop PC products with their own custom architecture. Why not purchase Arm and start to enter the data center as a new market for Apple? As it turns out, none of these opinions focused on what the real motives for this acquisition were: Arm is the pre-eminent SIP company, and any analysis about the acquisition needed to take this into account as a very important point and not an afterthought! Click here to read more ... 17th September 2020 Runtime 15:01 Will Rhind, CEO at US ETF provider GraniteShares was interviewed by London South East from New York where Granite is headquartered. Granite Shares is a niche player in the $6 trillion dollar ETF industry and have $1.5 billion dollars of assets under management (AUM). Will explains to us why ETF's are a useful part of any experienced investors trading portfolio as they offer a low-cost flexible alternative to directly investing in shares, and are efficient from a trading and a liquidity perspective as they can be traded in market hours. GraniteShares innovative range of three times long and three times short ETF's were recently reviewed in the Financial Times. They allow experienced investors the opportunity to go both long or short on certain popular shares, just as professional hedge fund managers do. "We have expanded the category by offering leverage on individual companies themselves. We have 40 products in the UK, that's three times leverage both long and short to some of the most popular traded companies in the UK and in the US in tech space." explained Will. "We have oil majors such as BP and Shell, the banks Barclays and Lloyds, some of the industrials, BAe and Rolls Royce, and miners such as Rio. You can play sector against sector that way if you want." "Then you have the US tech megacap names such as Apple and Amazon, Tesla, Facebook etc. Much of the performance of the main US benchmark indices have come from these five stocks and it has been a huge megatrend for people to get behind. Covid has brought forward ten years of tech disruption into the last few months", he said. Three times leverage means you get three times the daily gain of the stock but can only lose the amount which you have invested. "There's also an inbuilt stop loss mechanism above a certain level which helps mitigate losses if the underlying goes against you." www.graniteshares.com As flames approached Francisco Maldonados homestead high in the hills, there was one thing of which he was certain: he could not leave behind his uncles goats. His family had laboured long, hard years to make them a going concern, and he could not lose them. They threw them in the back of a Dodge truck with a canopy, and drove them to Salem. We didnt have a lot of time, he said. We had to get on with getting going. This week, the 41-year-old was taking care of the 23 animals in a series of pens in Salem, having rescued the animals but lost his property to the wildfire that tore through the Santiam Valley. As he set about his work, cutting pieces of apple with a knife and feeding them to the goats, the barn was filled with the sound of cows and sheep, of pigs and llamas. A short walk away were stables half full of horses, while in another room - in which the air was particularly pungent - were hundreds of chickens, geese and ducks. It is well known that when people are forced to evacuate from disasters they often prioritise the safety of their pets above their own. Yet when the community being evacuated is a rural, farming community, officials also have to find room for their farm animals as well. Francisco Maldonado escaped with 23 goats from North Fork (Andrew Buncombe) At the Oregon State Fair Exposition Centre in Salem officials from Marion County said they were providing shelter for more than 650 farm animals people had brought with them. That number had decreased as more people had been able to return to their homes and farms, said Emily DuPlessis-Enders, a spokesperson for Salem City Council. She said among the most unusual pets people had brought with them was a ferret. In the pens close to Mr Maldonados goats were inquisitive-looking llamas, heads up and alert, some milk cows, and some steers. There were also lots of pigs, most amply built and sitting doing very little. Gary and Dana Parks, from Coltan, near Portland, arrived at the shelter when a different fire system, the Riverside Fire, threatened their home. They made use of three vehicles - a horse trailer, a truck and an SUV - to transport 38 goats, and more than half-a-dozen dogs, one of which had given birth to puppies since they arrived. Oregon wildfires: Lyons residents on evacuating homes Mr Parks, 57 whose main job is as a commercial baker, said they left Coltan fearing the worst. As it was, they had been able to return to collect some personal items - he pulled out his cellphone to show a video of red skies and falling ash around their house - but that it had survived. He praised residents of Coltan who organised to try and contain the fires until professional firefighters arrived. Everybody just pulled together. Sue Dickinson, 69, was in the stables, the air sweet with new grass and hay, and she was taking care of two horses, Hershey and Holly. Holly was a mustang from the Bend area, while Hershey was a Missouri Fox Trotter. Both were 15 or 16 years old. She had evacuated with the horses and two dogs on the evening of September 7, Labor Day, from Mill City, one of the towns in the Santiam Valley where many properties were destroyed. Unlike many others, Ms Dickinsons home had survived the fire. Yet it was unclear when she could return. Its still a Level 3, so I dont know, she said of the evacuation order still in place for several towns, wreck and still threatened by the Big Beachie Fire. The animals, and the struggle their owners to rescue them, appears to have impacted many, not least the volunteers giving up their time to care for them. Heidi Mann, a resident of Mill City, who saved her family but who lost her home to the flames, said one of the most emotional moments of their dramatic escape was when she pulled up at junction and heard the sound of geese. It was hell on earth. I mean, it was just chaos and darkness and fire, and all these people, frantic, everywhere, she said by phone, her voice breaking. We pulled into the gas station and were trying to call the Red Cross. And it was the craziest thing, because all of a sudden you hear these geese, just like a bunch of geese right next to us. And we looked around and there was a car that was full. Someone was just trying to save their animals. I realised how everyone was just trying to escape, and get what they could, and their animals and stuff. Press Release 17 September 2020 The week of September 21, the CGI Action Network will bring together heads of state with business and civil leaders to promote a sustainable recovery and investments for island states Advertisements NEW YORK, NY - From September 21 to September 24, President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton will virtually convene members of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Action Network leaders from business, government, and civil society to drive action on resilience efforts in the Caribbean. The Action Network's efforts started in 2018 in direct response to Hurricanes Maria and Irma and have been revamped to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. As the global community continues to address climate change and extreme weather events, Action Network members will continue to address the urgent need to foster economic recovery and growth in the Caribbean while also grappling with the effects of COVID-19. The virtual week of action includes: Monday, September 21 - Building Back Greener: Promoting an Inclusive and Sustainable Caribbean Recovery Tuesday, September 22 - The Future is Now: Inspiration from Youth-Led Activism in the Caribbean Wednesday, September 23 - Opportunities for Investment in Renewable Energy Thursday, September 24 - COVID-19 in the Caribbean: Public Health Challenges and Innovations Full details on the program are below. With the continued threat of the 2020 hurricane season and challenges faced amid COVID-19, leaders from government, civil society, and business continue to prepare Caribbean communities for compounding and potentially devastating impacts. Despite this threat, while efforts in the Caribbean to transform the region into a climate-resilient zone have been mobilized, many new solutions are needed to tackle the complex challenges that have risen due to the global health crisis. The region continues to balance the long-term need to invest in resilient infrastructure and economies with the short-term need to respond to COVID-19 and prepare for the hurricane season. It is more crucial than ever to facilitate cross-sector, cross-island coordination to meet these challenges. The virtual convening will include: Monday, September 21 - Building Back Greener: Promoting an Inclusive and Sustainable Caribbean Recovery The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing leaders from governments, businesses, and civil society to reimagine what an economic recovery looks like. Leaders must be guided by principles of sustainability, resource sharing, and healthier infrastructure. According to the International Monetary Fund, Latin America and the Caribbean will see economic growth contract at almost twice the global average as a result of COVID-19, underscoring the far-reaching effects of the pandemic as it halts tourism and other critical industries throughout the region. In the Caribbean, which before the pandemic produced just 1% of global carbon emissions but bore the brunt of extreme weather events induced by climate change, the shifting economic landscape offers both challenges and opportunities for a greener, more inclusive, and resilient economic and public health recovery. In this session, leaders from across sectors will outline what is required for a green economic recovery in the Caribbean during and following the COVID-19 pandemic while showcasing opportunities for investors, philanthropists, and the international community to support the local initiatives that place the Caribbean at the forefront of progressive and resilient climate action. Tuesday, September 22 - The Future is Now: Inspiration from Youth-Led Activism in the Caribbean Young people in the Caribbean are leading the way in identifying and implementing progressive strategies to promote resilience and economic independence. By harnessing the power of science and technology, leveraging collective action as a tool to spark policy changes, and imagining a more socially progressive and inclusive future, youth are well equipped to spearhead the transformation our world needs to be more just and equitable. In this session, participants will hear from youth empowerment leaders and students as they share how they are pioneering resilient, inclusive, and equitable solutions to adapting to climate change. Wednesday, September 23 - Opportunities for Investment in Renewable Energy According to a recent BCG report, COVID-19 is threatening to shutter a significant number of businesses across the Caribbean and lead to negative economic growth. Though the pandemic has ushered in new uncertainty for Caribbean economies, leaders have identified the growing renewable energy sector as a significant opportunity for green recovery and economic diversification in the region. Billions in new investment can be activated to drive the renewable energy transition in the Caribbean, but more progress needs to be made to make these diverse sources of capital accessible. This effort will require partners from across regional organizations, investors, governments, utilities, and philanthropy to collaborate on new frameworks and financing strategies to bridge the gap between capital, enabling environments, and these important renewables projects. Though the double burden of COVID-19 and climate change are daunting, strategic coordination in this pivotal moment can have transformative results - increased resilience of island grids, thousands of new jobs, and economic diversification - as we work to establish renewable energy as a pillar of the sustainable recovery. Thursday, September 24 - COVID-19 in the Caribbean: Public Health Challenges and Innovations The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique challenges for healthcare providers and public health officials in the Caribbean in providing accessible, safe, and inclusive healthcare. Existing access gaps have been exacerbated due to lockdowns and fears of contracting the virus are prompting the need for new approaches to administering basic healthcare services while providing critically needed mental health support. At the same time, Caribbean public health officials and practitioners are preparing for an emerging second wave of COVID-19 cases by doubling down on proven solutions to provide healthcare while pioneering new and innovative technologies to reach patients across the Caribbean. In this virtual conversation, speakers will identify the best practices for managing COVID-19 in the Caribbean and showcase the innovations that are promoting a safe and disciplined public health response. Featured participants will include President Bill Clinton, founder and board chair, Clinton Foundation; Chelsea Clinton, vice chair, Clinton Foundation; Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, St. Lucia; Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Barbados; Inger Andersen, executive director, United Nations Environment Programme; Gloria Guevara, WTTC President & CEO; Irwin LaRocque, secretary general, CARICOM; Joy St. John, executive director, CARPHA; Francine Baron, interim chief executive officer, CREAD; Maria Levis, chief executive officer, Impactivo; Talya Mohammed, energy and environment sustainable development strategist, Caribbean Tree Planting Project; Sydney Paul, business intelligence and marketing manager, UVI Research and Technology Park; Roshelle Pinnock, student, Caribbean Girls Hack; Angella Rainford, chief executive officer and founder, Soleco Energy; Juliette Sutherland, executive director, Queen Elizabeth Hospital; Suzanne Shaw, head of investment, Leap Co.; Dana Yaari, head of programs, IsraAid Dominica. These discussions are a part of an ongoing series of virtual events hosted by the Clinton Foundation this fall that will inspire action through the Too Small to Fail (TSTF) early childhood initiative, Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), and other events focused on domestic economic recovery in light of COVID-19. The approach of the Action Network brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to focus efforts on putting people first, including prioritizing a resilient future by helping communities to plan and prepare for future storms and the mounting effects of climate change. To date, the Action Network has engaged 896 organizations that have launched 116 Commitments to Action that, when fully implemented, will drive $385.7 million dollars in investment to affected regions in the Caribbean. A full list of commitments can be found here: https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/commitments. The Action Network, along with Clinton Global Initiative University, follows the success of CGI and the Commitment to Action model. Over the years, CGI and its partners have brought together leaders from across sectors to develop Commitments to Action that, when fully funded and implemented, will improve the lives of more than 430 million people in 180 countries worldwide. The year-round work of the CGI Action Network is made possible by the generous support of our partners: InterEnergy, LesLois Shaw Foundation, Swiss Re, Tarsadia Foundation, and Tides Foundation. For more information on the sessions, please visit: clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/building-resilient-solutions-caribbeans-future "We're honored that Forbes has recognized Yardi yet again for our industry-leading cloud solutions," said Jay Shobe, vice president of cloud services at Yardi. "To continue to rank among these prestigious companies reflects the efforts of our employees and the tremendous support of our clients worldwide." The evaluation process involved four factors: market leadership (35%), estimated valuation (30%), operating metrics (20%), people and culture (15%). The Forbes Cloud 100 judge panel weighed the factors to select, score and rank the winners. With that data, the judge panel, which includes major public cloud company CEOs, was then responsible for selecting and ranking the top 100 companies globally. "The private cloud ecosystem continues to mature in light of rapid digital transformations, making the competition to land one of the coveted spots on the Cloud 100 list steeper than ever," said Byron Deeter, a top cloud investor, and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "Private cloud valuations are getting bigger as the market's appetite for cloud continues to grow. Over the past five years, the average Cloud 100 valuation has grown by a tremendous 2.5x, from $1 billion in 2016 to $2.7 billion in 2020. In fact, our 2020 Cloud 100 includes over 87 private cloud unicorns! These founders represent the absolute best in cloud computing today." "For five years now, we have ranked the best and brightest emerging companies in the cloud sector," said Alex Konrad, Forbes editor of The Cloud 100. "With so many businesses growing fast in the cloud, from data infrastructure to marketing, it's harder than ever to make the Cloud 100 list but with more elite company if you do. Congratulations to each of the 2020 Cloud 100 honorees and the 20 Rising Stars honorees poised to join their ranks!" The Forbes 2020 Cloud 100 is published online at forbes.com/cloud100 and will appear in the September 2020 issue of Forbes magazine. Bessemer Venture Partners Bessemer Venture Partners is the world's most experienced early-stage venture capital firm. With a portfolio of more than 200 companies, Bessemer helps visionary entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to create companies that matter and supports them through every stage of their growth. The firm has backed more than 120 IPOs, including Pinterest, Shopify, Yelp, LinkedIn, Skype, LifeLock, Twilio, SendGrid, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, and MindBody. Bessemer's 15 partners operate from offices in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Israel, and India. For more information, please visit bvp.com. About Forbes The defining voice of entrepreneurial capitalism, Forbes champions success by celebrating those who have made it, and those who aspire to make it. Forbes convenes and curates the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs who are driving change, transforming business and making a significant impact on the world. The Forbes brand today reaches more than 160 million people worldwide through its trusted journalism, signature LIVE and Forbes Virtual events, custom marketing programs and 40 licensed local editions in 70 countries. Forbes Media's brand extensions include real estate, education and financial services license agreements. For more information, visit the Forbes News Hub or Forbes Connect. Salesforce Ventures Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Salesforce Ventures, the global investment arm of Salesforce, invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Ventures is building the world's largest ecosystem of enterprise cloud companies and extending that technology to customers. Portfolio companies receive funding, strategic advisory, and operating support, and can easily join Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 400 companies, including DocuSign, GoCardless, Guild Education, nCino, Twilio, Zoom, and others across 22 countries since 2009. For more information, please visit salesforce.com/ventures. About Yardi Yardi develops and supports industry-leading investment and property management software for all types and sizes of real estate companies. Established in 1984, Yardi is based in Santa Barbara, Calif., and serves clients worldwide. For more information on how Yardi is Energized for Tomorrow, visit yardi.com. SOURCE Yardi Related Links https://www.yardi.com Dirt bike and ATV riders on South Broad Street near City Hall in Philadelphia in April. Read more Thomas Gamba was eating dinner at an outside table at Pizzeria Stella in Society Hill this month when a caravan of about 10 ATV and dirt bike riders, in their teens and 20s, roared by on Second Street. Police had blocked off the entrance to South Street, where it appeared the riders wanted to head, so they turned onto Lombard Street but returned two more times in front of the restaurant, Gamba said. They kept circling and circling, said Gamba, 69, who was eating with his wife and another couple. We were on the sidewalk there. These vehicles were just revving and distracting everyone. In Center City, Tom Ayers, who lives on South Broad Street, frequently hears the loud noises of riders from his 10th-floor condo. This is a big safety issue," he said. They are menacing to pedestrians and motorists. They weave in and out of traffic, run the red lights, said Ayers, 58. They stop traffic coming north on Broad so they can turn on South. They usually start late in the afternoon, then carry on in the evening through the wee hours of the mornings. Sometimes its so loud ... I cant hear a sound except for all of this racket. Sallie Gorohoff, who lives near South Broad, started an online petition that says Center City Philadelphia has become overrun with joy riders and asks residents to help her take this issue straight to City Hall!! It has garnered more than 1,600 signatures. ATV and dirt bike riders on Philadelphia streets have been an ongoing source of complaints for years, and affect all parts of the city from the Northeast to South Philly, from Old City to West Philly. It is illegal to ride ATVs and dirt bikes on city streets, said Kelly Cofrancisco, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney. We take resident concerns seriously and understand their concerns," she said. "These complaints are investigated by police, however, with all moving violations, they are not always easy to track down. Police have been working to get these illegal vehicles off the streets. The Police Department has a no-chase policy because the pursuit itself could cause an accident or endanger someone. That also frustrates residents, who sometimes see police standing outside or in a vehicle, but doing nothing when the illegal riders roar by. We understand their frustration, and were frustrated, too, said Police Sgt. Eric Gripp. But also, we have to balance everyones safety. At City Councils first fall hearing last week, Councilmember Allan Domb introduced a resolution calling for another Public Safety Committee hearing related to illegal ATV and dirt bike riders, and to explore the idea of creating an ATV park in the city, an idea previously proposed by Councilmembers Curtis Jones Jr. and Kenyatta Johnson. READ MORE: Let em ride! Philly needs a bike park | Helen Ubinas (from 2018) In 2012, Council held a hearing to address the dangers of ATV riders, and heard about the pros and cons of creating an ATV park in the city. That November, then-Mayor Michael Nutter signed into law a bill giving the Police Department the authority to confiscate vehicles found to be in violation. We need to hear from both sides of the issue, Domb said. I definitely think its escalated in the last three to four months, especially at night, the revving of engines. Its really loud, he said. You worry about, God forbid, somebodys going to get hurt here. Were trying to find an alternative venue thats safe. The Police Department has conducted sweeps to confiscate dirt bikes and ATVs. So far this year, they have confiscated 216 such vehicles. Police routinely field 911 calls about dirt bike or ATV riders. Department officials said they have received 159 such calls this year, more than in any of the last five years. In addition to confiscating some of the vehicles, police have issued an unspecified number of traffic citations. But not everyone calls police. Chris Garrison, 68, and her husband, Stephen, 73, live in an Old City condo on Columbus Boulevard. People have called police, Chris Garrison said, and nothing seems to be deterring [the riders]. The situation seems to get worse. While walking their dog at night, theyve frequently seen and heard groups of riders on Columbus Boulevard. They tend to be more on the weekends. Gangs of ATVs, gangs of dirt bikes, she said. Their demeanor is very aggressive, very threatening, terrorizing. Garrison posted about the Columbus Boulevard racers on a neighborhood website, generating about 60 comments from other residents. In another post, she included a note from Councilmember Mark Squilla, who told her he has been working with Police Deputy Commissioner Joel Dales on a police ATV detail to address the citywide issue and also with the Streets Department on potential traffic-calming measures in high ATV areas. Squilla said in an interview that consistent enforcement by police is needed. He said he would also support an alternative site in a nonresidential area for riders, if one can be found. Mike Harris, executive director of the South Street Headhouse District, said police in the Third District have been closing part of South Street on certain Friday and Saturday nights to vehicular traffic, to hopefully send the message to ATV and dirt bike riders to not go there. Our fear is someone is going to get hurt or worse with this kind of driving," he said. "Weve had a lot of complaints, emails from business owners. In Northeast Philadelphia, Donny Smith, executive director of the Mayfair Business Improvement District, said ATV and dirt bike riders have been an ongoing problem on Frankford Avenue. Residents are disappointed, frustrated, they want to see it come to an end," he said, adding that people have been injured and killed riding unlicensed dirt bikes on city streets. For Travis Fields, an ATV park would be a good idea. Fields, of North Philadelphia, is a graphic designer who has done work for members of the Philly Hang Gang, an organized group of riders. He said hes previously ridden with them on his ATV. At 39, he says, he doesnt ride much. To the outside looking in, its just dudes riding bikes, he said. But theres a culture dude camaraderie. Dirt bikes and four wheelers attract younger guys and are more of an urban demographic thing, he said. But the Philly scene also attracts a lot of the white dudes that come down from Jersey or Poconos, they want to be part of whats going on here. To get more street cred, he said. Social media allows riders to organize and has definitely given an uptick to the number of riders on the streets, who post photos of themselves on Instagram and get hits, he said. Asked why ATV and dirt bike riders ride on city streets, he replied: Why do guys do anything that guys do? Young and reckless. Why do we go to war, why do we fly planes and race Jet Skis? ... You know a man never wrestled an alligator without an audience." Fishing boats in Da Nang rush to shore to avoid the approaching Storm Noul, September 17, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong. Central provinces where Storm Noul is set to make landfall Friday have closed public beaches and are preparing to evacuate 1.1 million people to safety. As of noon Thursday, the center of the tropical storm lay around 300 km to the southeast of Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands, packing winds of 90 to 100 kph. Tran Quang Hoai, deputy head of the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention, said in a meeting Thursday over storm response measures that Da Nang, Quang Nam and Hue, home to some of the most popular beaches in the country, have closed them since Wednesday night. Other central provinces like Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai and Quang Tri made similar moves on Thursday. Da Nang just reopened public beaches last Friday after more than a month of closure to contain the second Covid-19 wave. Over 295,000 families with over 1.1 million people in storm-hit areas from Quang Binh to Da Nang will be evacuated to safer areas, Hoai said. Authorities in Da Nang, Quang Nang, and Hue on Thursday morning banned sailing and ordered all fishing and tourist vessels to be moved to safer waters. Mai Van Khiem, director of the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, said at the meeting that the storm is moving quickly and is scheduled to make landfall in central provinces on Friday. Weather forecasting centers in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong predict the storm would reach a maximum wind speed of 133 kph upon landing on Friday afternoon. Nguyen Van Huong, head of weather forecast at the Vietnam center, said there's a 80 percent chance that the storm will make landfall on Friday afternoon, and 20 percent chance in the morning, depending on the impacts of a cold spell in the area. Due to the impact of Storm Noul, northern and central localities should expect heavy rains of up to 300 mm a day. Rainfall of 180 mm a day is considered heavy. From Thursday afternoon to Friday, central provinces from Quang Tri to Thua Thien-Hue would be hit by heavy rains of 300-400 mm a day. Mountainous areas could be affected by landslides while urban areas face heavy flooding. Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, asked authorities in storm-hit localities to allow students to stay home depending on the storm situation. Storm Noul is the fifth formed this year in the East Sea, known internationally as the South China Sea. The years fourth storm, Higos, hit last month, making landfall in China. The East Sea could see 11-13 storms and tropical depressions this year, half of them affecting the country, meteorologists have warned. On the third Friday of September, the United States commemorates the service and the extraordinary sacrifices of our POWs and MIAs in a national day of recognition. The 2020 official POW/MIA poster, A Determined Nation, is a reminder that the families of POWs/MIAs continue to push for accountability. The remains of more than fifty soldiers have been returned from North Korea since 2018. The identification and burial of our nations patriots brings closure to the families who have waited for more than 65 years to "know" the fate of their loved members of the armed forces. It is easy to forget the staggering numbers of troops who were POWs during their combat service and those who are still missing as a result of their service. According to a recent Congressional Research Service Report for the Department of Defense: -130,201 World War II service members were imprisoned; 14,072 died; -7,140 Korean War service members were imprisoned; 2,701 died; -725 Vietnam War service members were imprisoned; 64 died; and -37 service members were imprisoned during conflicts since 1991. In the same report, 83,114 Americans were identified as still missing: -73,515 World War II MIAs; -7,841 Korean War MIAs; -1,626 Vietnam Conflict MIAs; and -6 from conflicts since 1991. On this Friday, 18 September, the POW/MIA flag will be flying high at the Chattanooga National Cemetery and other government buildings. The black and white flag, representing the sorrow and hope symbolized by the silhouette of a man, was originally envisioned in 1971 by Mary Hoff in an attempt to draw attention to her MIA husband, Navy Lt. Commander Michael Hoff, whose plane had been shot down over Laos. World War II pilot Newt Heisley designed the flag based on Mrs. Hoffs vision. On every POW/MIA Remembrance Day since 1982, the flag has flown just below our nations flag at the White House, the only other flag ever given that place of prominence. Since 1998, the flag has also been included in all Armed Forces Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day commemorations, by an act of the U. S. Congress. For individuals, POW/MIA Day is a time to fly your U.S. flag, pause for a moment and remember the high cost of our rights and responsibilities as citizens and then silently say "Thank You" to the members of our armed forces and their families for their commitment to our freedom. * * * Linda Moss Mines is the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Historian, a member of the Tennessee Historical Commission and the Regent, Chief John Ross Chapter, NSDAR. She can be reached at localhistorycounts@gmail.com. In what may be India's first scientifically documented cases of Covid-19 reinfection, CSIR biologists have reported two such instances in two healthcare workers at a Noida hospital. A 25-year-old male and a 28-year-old female were detected coronavirus positive on May 5 and May 17 respectively. Though both were asymptomatic, they were hospitalised as per the policy of the Noida hospital where they were working. During the regular subsequent surveillance, the two were again found coronavirus positive on August 25 and September 5 respectively. This time the viral load was higher. Eventually after the 14th day, the male, and after 6th day, the female tested negative. For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here This is possibly one of the first scientifically documented cases of reinfection in India. The reinfection was proven with a genetic test since only a genetic sequencing can tell us whether it is a case of coronavirus shedding from the old episode or a genuine case of re-infection, Sridhar Sivasubbu, a scientist at Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi and a member of the team that detected the reinfection told DH. Genetic tests are needed to determine if two episodes (of infections) are caused by virus strains with clearly different genome sequences. The screening at the Noida hospital was carried out as a part of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's pan-India Covid-19 surveillance project in which hospitals, industrial corridors and commercial hubs will be regularly checked for any sign of the virus. Our analysis suggests that asymptomatic reinfection may be a potentially under-reported entity. Both individuals had a higher viral load during reinfection highlighting the need for continuous surveillance, the scientists said in a paper that has been released in the public domain without a peer review. Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on September 16 The reports of reinfection from India so far are anecdotal be it a lone case at the Fortis hospital in Bengaluru or the cases of two cancer-affected children at Medanta Medicity in Gurugram or the suspected cases among doctors in two hospitals in Mumbai. The two kids at Medanta had the first and second Covid-19 reinfection at a gap of 71 and 42 days respectively. In both cases, their cancer treatment had to be stopped and the kids had to stay isolated till the respiratory infection goes away. But since genetic sequencing was not done, these two cases can't be definitively described as reinfection. The hospital has now reached out to the National Institute of Virology, Pune for genome sequencing. Reinfection in Covid-19 is very very rare. It is not a matter of serious concern, Balram Bhargava, Director-General of Indian Council of Medical Research stated at a press conference here on Tuesday. The world's first documented case of Covid-19 reinfection was reported about three weeks ago in Hong Kong where an individual was re-infected after a gap of 142 days. The wife of disgraced former MP Charlie Elphicke is backing his appeal against his sex crime conviction and hasn't ruled out rekindling their relationship. Mr Elphicke, 49 - a self-proclaimed 'naughty Tory' - was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of three sexual assaults on two younger women. His wife Natalie - and successor as Dover MP - accompanied him to court throughout the trial but then announced she would divorce him less than an hour after his conviction in July. Mr Elphicke, who was branded a 'sexual predator' that 'told a pack of lies' by a judge in court, immediately released a statement following the verdict, announcing his intention to appeal and insisting he was innocent. Now, just weeks after dumping him, mother-of-two Mrs Elphicke has sensationally decided to stand by her shamed husband, who she claims had an unfair trial. Former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke, with his wife, MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London In an opinion column published in The Sun, she described hearing about her husband's infidelity in court, saying she 'couldn't believe his stupidity'. But that 'a consensual affair, however wrongful in his marriage to me, is a very different thing from being accused of sex crimes.' She gushed that her husband is 'charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful' and 'an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations.' Mrs Elphicke added: 'Following an unfair trial during the Covid-19 pandemic, I believe that Charlie was convicted in a terrible miscarriage of justice. 'It was obvious to me from reading the evidence during lockdown that the criminal allegations against him were complete nonsense, and I still believe they are. 'He is appealing his sentence and the verdict. I fully support him in that.' The MP for Dover said that after his conviction, Mr Elphicke was ordered to stay at the home he shared with his wife by a judge in anticipation of his sentencing. During that time she said he had 'so many messages of support after the verdict.' Mrs Elphicke said: 'Person after person messaged about the difference Charlie had made for our community over years of public service. Mrs Elphicke said yesterday she would fight to clear her jailed husband's name and had not ruled out getting back with him Natalie Elphicke tweeted that her marriage to the 'only man I have ever loved' was over after 25 years after he was convicted on July 30 'People wrote of his individual kindnesses and the help he had given to them. Help that had made a real difference in so many cases. 'We discussed his sentence. I looked at the guidelines. It seemed clear to me that community service should be ordered. 'A senior probation officer filed a report agreeing a community sentence was appropriate. But always the concern had to be that the court could be on a mission in sentencing, as I believed they had been during the trial.' She added that at the moment she has not decided on the couple's future Mrs Elphicke said: 'I wanted him to continue to co-parent our teenage son while he is growing up. 'But I can't consider our future together, and he can't co-parent our son, because not only was he wrongly convicted he is now wrongly in jail.' At Mr Elphicke's sentencing hearing on TuesdayJudge Mrs Justice Whipple told him: 'You made your victims come to court. They told the truth, and you told a pack of lies - not only to the jury, but your wife, the whips and the police.' The judge said she 'considered carefully' whether the sentence should be suspended. But she told Elphicke: 'Bearing in mind the gross breach of your position of power... I am satisfied that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody.' Elphicke, 49 - a self-proclaimed 'naughty Tory' - was jailed for two years on Tuesday after being found guilty of three sexual assaults on two younger women He was told he would likely serve up to half that term in prison before being released on licence. Prosecutor Eloise Marshall QC, read statements from the victims. Reading the the first victim's statement she said: 'The effect of what he did to me has had a lasting impact. 'I have found that I have a significantly increased sense of anxiety and caution when meeting and working with any man. 'I feel like things I once enjoyed have been taken away from me. 'It was not easily recovered from. It took me a long time to get back on my feet and to be able to be stable in my home and job again.' Reading the second statement, she added: 'I remember feeling trapped, frightened and constantly on edge. 'I used to freeze every time that door would open or every time I was left alone with him. 'My mental health suffered because of the emotional and psychological turmoil that he put me through. 'When he did what he was found guilty for and abused his position of authority, I was incredibly vulnerable; left with feelings of complete powerlessness and inferiority. 'Because of his acts, he stole a large part of my self-worth and my self-esteem, and he crushed a part of my spirit.' BP Plc offered a glimpse of the profitability of its huge and secretive trading arm, suggesting it makes annual returns of as much as $2.5 billion. The revelation, which came during presentations this week about the companys clean energy plans, follows the emergence of trading in the first half of the year as one of the few bright spots for BP and its peers. The operations brought a torrent of cash that partly offset the impact of the coronavirus crisis on oil prices and energy demand. BPs in-house trading business has a long track record" of boosting the companys return on average capital employed (RoACE) by close to" 2 percentage points, according to chief executive officer Bernard Looney. Unlike the closely guarded trading profit, the company does disclose the average capital it employs each year. From 2015 to 2019, that figure was $124.2 billion a year, according to last years annual report. That suggests a 2% uplift to the RoACE equates to about $2.5 billion. Thats more than Vitol Group made in 2019, which was a record year for the company. BP doesnt disclose the profits of its trading unit and declined to comment on questions from Bloomberg News about this calculation. The major published the figure this week as part of its bid to convince investors that its trading unit can help boost returns for less-profitable renewables. Trading, access to low-cost funding and integration are some ways that the company thinks it can achieve 8% to 10% returns across its renewables portfolio. We actually believe we can do better, and these returns could turn out to be conservative," Looney said. Although better known for its oil fields, refineries and fuel stations, BP is one of the worlds largest commodity traders. Alongside rivals Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SE, it bets its own money on the ups and downs of the global oil and natural gas markets. The company said it traded just under 11 million barrels a day of crude oil last year, which is more than the best-known names of the commodity trading industry such as Vitol, Trafigura Group and Glencore Plc. 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 LEHI, Utah, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Young Living, the global leader in essential oils, today announced that it was named the winner of a Gold Stevie Award in the Conferences & Meetings category for the company's unprecedented Virtual International Grand Convention. In addition, Young Living also received a Bronze Stevie Award in the Most Valuable Corporate Response category for the company's swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Young Living quickly shifted strategies for its annual International Grand Convention to a virtual event in order to keep attendees safe. The event was an astounding success . The virtual format allowed worldwide access and more than 210,000 people from 81 countries attended over a four day period. Attendees from around the world were able to interact together live via the event chat function, mimicking the interaction members look forward to each year at the annual convention. In addition to shifting its annual convention, Young Living also swiftly enacted a broad corporate response to the pandemic to help both employees and the wider community. The company was one of the first to announce employees could work from home until the end of the year. Company leaders also implemented multiple policies to ensure employees remained engaged and connected, from virtual fitness classes to extended emergency leave. Young Living has also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars via both product and monetary donations to organizations in need from frontline workers to community organizations. "This year has been a true test for our Young Living family, both within our organization and for the communities in which we operate," said Shante Schroeder, vice president of brand marketing at Young Living. "We are stronger now than we have ever been, and we proudly accept both these awards as testaments to the hard work we've put in over these past few months. We look forward to continuing to navigate 2020 and helping everyone get through this pandemic together." The International Business Awards are the world's premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small - are eligible to submit nominations. The 2020 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories. More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories. Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from July through early September. "Despite the unprecedented impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on organizations and working people worldwide, the number and quality of nominations we received in this year's International Business Awards attests to the continued outstanding performance of many organizations. The commitment we've seen through these nominations to maintaining the success, health, and safety of employees, customers, and communities is truly impressive," said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. Details about The International Business Awards and the lists of Stevie Award winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/IBA . About Young Living Essential Oils Young Living Essential Oils, LC, based in Lehi, Utah, is the world leader in essential oils, offering the highest quality oil-infused products available. Young Living takes its industry leadership seriously, setting the standard with its proprietary Seed to Seal quality commitment, which involves three critical pillars: Sourcing, Science, and Standards. These guiding principles help Young Living protect the planet and provide pure, authentic products that its members can feel confident about using and sharing with friends and family. Young Living's productswhich all come from corporate-owned farms, partner farms, and Seed to Seal-certified suppliersnot only support a healthy lifestyle but also provide opportunities for over 6 million global members to find a sense of purpose and whole-life wellness by aligning their work with their values and passions. For more information, visit YoungLiving.com, follow @youngliving on Instagram, or like us on Facebook. About the Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 nominations each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.StevieAwards.com . SOURCE Young Living Essential Oils Related Links http://www.youngliving.com PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ThroughPut Inc., the Industrial AI Supply Chain pioneer, today announced the appointment of Luke Helms to its Advisory Board. Mr. Helms is the former Vice-Chairman at Bank of America, Vice-Chairman of KeyBank, Chairman and CEO of Seafirst Bank, and a Board Member of LifeLock, ABM Industries, and Manulife. Mr. Helms brings with him five decades of deep domain expertise in the Banking, Insurance, Industrial Finance and Facilities Management sectors. He has also served as an Investor and Chairperson of several fast-scaling entrepreneurial private powerhouses, such as LifeLock, a pioneer in identity theft protection, with venture capital funding from Bessemer Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Symantec Corporation and River Street Management, before its IPO on the NYSE in 2012 and acquisition by Norton and Broadcom in 2017. Throughout his illustrious business career, Mr. Helms has also served on educational, nonprofit and philanthropic Boards, including the University of San Francisco, the Washington State University Foundation, the University of Washington Foundation, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Children's Hospital, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the University of Arizona School of Business. As ThroughPut continues to grow its strength with seasoned executive leadership, a stellar team of proven entrepreneurs, an Advisory Board of global domain experts, and a premier cap-table of global angel investors and family offices, new investors and venture capitalists have also discovered its massive market potential and product lead. ThroughPut's team is backed by some of the best domain experts from Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Artificial Intelligence and Finance, who have put that knowledge to work in over a dozen successful startups. Mr. Helms joining the Advisory Board further reinforces ThroughPut's mission to create the leading AI software platform connecting disparate data sets for Supply Chain, Operational and Financial Excellence. "So much of what we do at ThroughPut ultimately helps businesses improve their Free Cash Flow, EBITDA and Earnings Per Share Performance," said Ali Raza, founding CEO of ThroughPut. "Where contemporary data systems fail to predict, we have always advocated for strong risk management, insurance fundamentals and a holistic view of operations across the end-to-end supply chain using all data sources. Perhaps no one in our network understands this approach better than Mr. Helms, with decades of leadership at some of the world's most reputable financial institutions helping other organizations to financially succeed. This is an area we have much to learn from Mr. Helms, and it is an honor to have him on the Advisory Board to help guide ThroughPut on maximizing its positive impact on the finances and operations of global industrial organizations." "I am excited to join the ThroughPut team as a Senior Advisor," added Mr. Helms. "What appeals most to me is their approach of tying operational frontline data to financial bottom line impact, and thus ultimately profitability and a company's Earnings Per Share. This is the holy grail of the finance world where quality-of-earnings meets quality-of-operations. I am impressed by how ThroughPut's AI can analyze all the existing disparate data systems of any company to accelerate both cash flow improvements and profitability. The ability to have a dynamic dashboard at the C-Suite level to view supply chain performance and P&L performance in the same software provides a multi-dimensional view to operations management that is unprecedented and an aggregated single source of truth. The fact the operations management recommendations are built on leading operational excellence philosophies also brings digitized standardization to management at a facility level. I am eager to further contribute and remain actively involved where Industrial AI intersects with pioneering FinTech." Seth Page, the COO and Head of Corporate Development & Partnerships at ThroughPut Inc., continued, "With the recent wave of accelerated enterprise transformation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, Silicon Valley VCs have finally tuned-in to the fact that the largest operational gains actually lie across the end-to-end Supply Chain. Hence they are now looking towards B2B start-ups with unique domain expertise and proven Industrial AI solutions, versus the high-profile, growth-at-all-costs, negative-return B2C deals of yesteryear. Luke's addition to ThroughPut's distinguished Advisory Board is testimony to the fact that the greatest financial gains of AI on global industry output come from the Manufacturing, Logistics, and Wholesale sectors, where they contribute more than half of the $56 Trillion in output gains from AI by 2035. We look forward to a successful collaboration with Luke and the ThroughPut team in scaling the company to another startup juggernaut, providing a positive measurable impact on organizations worldwide, while delivering far superior investor returns long-term." About ThroughPut Inc. : ThroughPut Inc. is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Operations pioneer that enables companies to leverage their existing data systems to increase output, quality, and profitability across their end-to-end Supply Chains. ThroughPut's Operations AI Product, ELI, includes the only Bottleneck Management System (BMS) that utilizes existing enterprise data systems, such as ERP, MES, IMS, TMS, WMS, PLC, EAM, POS, CRM, SCADA, Historian, and other data systems, to solve for the $25 Trillion of annual Waste across global supply chains already today. Such constraints to the $90 Trillion global GDP could otherwise be dedicated to more productive and useful purposes to the benefit of all stakeholders. ThroughPut.AI's software is designed by Fortune 500 Supply Chain & Logistics leaders, Silicon Valley analytics and AI experts, and top global Operations & Experts in the areas of Lean Manufacturing, the Theory of Constraints, Supply Chain Automation, Total Quality Management, and over 4 dozen leading best practices now digitized in the ELI product, with hundreds of years of combined experience in the space. ELI thinks like an operations manager and automatically provides domain expertise, executable insights, quantitative cost-benefit analysis, and recommendations in real-time, which current static Business Intelligence and Analytics tools do not effectively capture nor act upon. ThroughPut.AI's dynamic insights include real-time resource allocation recommendations, granular root cause identification, and operational process stability analysis. ELI enables Process Improvement Experts and Operations Managers to reduce cycle times and operational unpredictability across some of the most advanced process industries, including manufacturing, logistics, automotive & transportation, aerospace & aviation, chemical processing, energy & utilities, oil & gas, and others. More information about ThroughPut.AI is available at: www.throughput.ai Contact: Tina Jacobs [email protected] Marketing Manager SOURCE ThroughPut Inc Related Links www.throughput.world Over 60,000 parents in Ireland have joined Facebook groups about parenting since lockdown began. The number shot up during the early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic as parents became teachers and carers for their children. According to the social media giant there are now over 300,000 members of these groups devoted to supporting parents from sharing tips and advice and links to kids art classes, to sharing information about local retail hours and how to claim allowances. Home school groups saw their numbers double with over 10,000 people coming together to share advice and practices for teaching kids who could no longer attend school. Ger Moloney, a community leader who runs the Mums of Glanmire group said they had 80 members in 2015 but the number has soared to over 7,600 news mothers in recent times. "During lockdown, the Group was more active than ever, Ger said. "Mums across Glanmire in Cork came online to seek support from one another. "One idea posted in the Groups sparked the creation of a local fairy trail to keep our kids occupied during lockdown with hundreds of members and their children creating handmade fairy doors for the trail. "Lockdown was an incredibly hard time for parents however through this Group, we felt like we were in it together. Staycations were mentioned over 400,000 times in Facebook posts and comments between March and September. Picture; David Creedon / Anzenberger With the easing of restrictions, parents began to look at ways of taking a break with their little ones before the return to school. Staycations were mentioned over 400,000 times in Facebook posts and comments between March and September. Kellie Kearney, the community leader of the Adventures of Eire group said in the last few months they saw a surge in parents asking for recommendations for family staycations and activities. "There are over 10,000 members in the Group so theres a wealth of advice for people who want to visit family hotels, camping spots, restaurants and hidden gems like playgrounds and local day trips", she said. "For me, social media is a safe space to feel connected to a community, even when we have to stay apart. Our community has helped reignite a love for Ireland for many families who chose to holiday here this year. The prospect of social media giant Facebook being hit with antitrust litigation in the United States has some wondering about the possibility of similar action in this country. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing an antitrust lawsuit against the company. Bloomberg cited an unnamed source in reporting the case could be filed by years end. In the U.S., the consequences for a successful lawsuit can be severe. In some cases, it might lead to heavy fines and in certain cases, such as with AT&T, the enforced breakup of the company. The U.S. investigation comes at a time when authorities across the world are taking a long, hard look at the impact of the worlds largest tech companies, including the role they play in allowing the spread of misinformation and their leveraging of existing media outlets for their news content. Canadas Competition Bureau often collaborates with its American counterparts with at the FTC, so its not unlikely that Canada is at least watching the proceedings in the U.S. with interest. There are differences in the approach each country has traditionally taken in such matters, experts say. The bureau is aware that other agencies are looking into certain alleged anticompetitive conduct of certain Big tech companies, said Canada Competition Bureau spokesperson Marie-Christine Vezina in an emailed statement. We closely follow the work of our international counterparts, remaining mindful of the different legal regimes in each jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction-specific facts may vary. As the Bureau is required by law to conduct its work confidentially, we cant confirm whether were investigating Facebook. At issue in the States is whether Facebook is using its pervasiveness in the marketplace to quash its competitors. Two prominent examples are often cited: In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, the photo-sharing platform, and in 2014 it bought out the messaging app WhatsApp. In between, there have been a slew of other smaller companies acquired. There have been some who have argued that by acquiring these smaller competitors, that Facebook was seeking to ... eliminate potential competition down the road in a sense, buying them when they were smaller and didnt pose much of a threat, said Anita Banicevic, a partner at Toronto law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg who specializes in competition and antitrust issues. I think the answer to that however, and Facebook has been very clear about this, is that it is extremely hard to tell whether or not any business is going to survive, particularly one in the social media sphere. In fact, said Banicevic, the strategy of many small companies in the tech sphere is to try to grow with a view to being attractive enough to be acquired by one of the giants. And that can be quite lucrative. Facebook reportedly paid $1 billion for Instagram in 2012, and, two years later, $19 billion for WhatsApp. In return, it acquired two of the biggest platforms in their market. In order for an antitrust lawsuit to succeed in Canada, said Banicevic, there are three legal requirements. First, the company in question must have a dominant position in the marketplace. Second, the company must have undertaken anti-competitive acts, or whats called an abuse of that dominance. Lastly, that abuse must lead to a substantial lessening of competition, which has a negative impact on the market. From a legal standpoint, the first criteria is relatively easy to establish; the latter two are much more difficult. In Canada, the whole area is kind of wrought with the challenges of being able to distinguish between real vigorous competition which may involve acquisitions and doing your best to just compete against everybody else and what we call anti-competitive acts, said Banicevic. The upshot, she said, is that antitrust cases are difficult to establish, and they take time to pursue. Its not a sure thing that FTC will pursue the case in the States, even after its prepared. In 2013, the commission decided not to file an antitrust suit against Google even after a lengthy investigation. According to the Wall Street Journal, the FTC has not yet made a decision as to whether or not to do so against Facebook. In Canada, the Competition Bureau tends more toward negotiating with the company to remove the undesirable behaviour, said Mihkel Tombak, professor of Technology Management and Strategy at the University of Toronto. I would say that Canadian authorities tend to be a little bit less aggressive than certainly the European ones (and the Americans), said Tombak. I think we could probably stand to be a little bit more aggressive in antitrust enforcement. Last year the FTC approved a $5-billion fine against Facebook for mishandling users personal information. By contrast, the Canadian fine for Facebook was $9 million. Facebook did not return requests for comment Wednesday. SM Steve McKinley is a Halifax-based reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: stevemckinley@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @smckinley1 Read more about: Flash Yoshihide Suga, the newly elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was sworn in as Japanese Prime Minister by Emperor Naruhito on Wednesday after being elected to succeed Shinzo Abe in an extraordinary parliamentary session. After announcing the lineup of his new cabinet, Suga was formally endorsed by Emperor Naruhito in a ceremony at the Imperial Palace. The new prime minister is scheduled to hold a news conference and convene the first meeting of the new cabinet later in the day. Suga has formed his cabinet comprising a number of ministers who served under his predecessor Abe, whose cabinet resigned en masse in the morning. Fifteen of his picks for the 20-member cabinet held ministerial portfolios in the previous administration. At the age of 71, Suga is the oldest prime minister to take office since Kiichi Miyazawa in 1991. His premiership will last through the remainder of Abe's term as LDP leader until September 2021. A discount car rental company operating out of Newark and JFK Airports has agreed to pay $80,000 in penalties, enter binding arbitration to resolve consumer complaints and change its policies and practices following New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and the Division of Consumer Affairs investigation into alleged fraudulent activity. A consent order with Drivo LLC d/b/a Drivo Rent-A-Car resolves the divisions allegations that Drivo violated New Jerseys Consumer Fraud Act (CFA). The alleged violations include: not accurately disclosing in its rental agreement all charges a consumer would have to pay if a rental vehicle was damaged; altering vehicle inspection records to falsely suggest consumers acknowledged damage to rental vehicles; falsifying accident or incident reports; billing different consumers for the same damage to the same rental vehicle; failing to disclose existing damage on a rental vehicle to the consumer; posting deceptive and misleading online advertisements and statements; and failing to honor rental rates agreed upon through online reservations. Companies that employ shady tactics to unfairly profit from their customers will be held accountable, Grewal said in a press release issued by his office. We want drivers of rental cars in New Jersey to be confident that they arent being taken for a ride. Under the consent order, Drivo agreed to reform the way it does business by, among other things: Not posting deceptive or misleading advertisements; Not making statements that suggest partnerships with corporate entities when no such partnership exists; Maintaining uniform policies for the sale of rental vehicle insurance and additional merchandise; Accurately disclosing all of the charges a consumer will be required to pay if a rental vehicle is damaged; Reporting all pre-existing damage to consumers for acknowledgement and signature at check-out and ensuring they have an opportunity to fully inspect their rental vehicle prior to their departure; Notifying consumers in writing of any identified damage to the rental vehicle that occurred during the rental period; and Providing additional training to managers and employees on the check-out and check-in procedures of rental vehicles, as well as the sale of related services or products. In addition, the consent order requires Drivo to enter into arbitration and abide by the decision of a neutral arbitrator to resolve certain consumer complaints not resolved by the consent order itself. For many consumers, renting a car can be a stressful and confusing process that they need to navigate quickly in order to get to their next destination said Paul Rodriguez, acting director of the Division of Consumer Affairs. I am pleased this settlement goes beyond civil penalties and restitution by requiring company reform, it should serve as an example of how we will continue to enforce the laws in place to protect consumers from fraud. The total settlement includes $44,524.87 in civil penalties, $2,677.88 in restitution to consumers, $9,535.25 in investigative costs and $23,262.00 in attorneys fees. Investigator Luis Zuniga of the Division of Consumer Affairs Office of Consumer Protection conducted this investigation. Assistant Section Chief and Deputy Attorney General Jesse J. Sierant from the Consumer Fraud Prosecution Section within the Division of Law represented the state of New Jersey in this matter. Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General Topics Auto Fraud New Jersey Ukraine and the EU plan to sign an agreement on the implementation of a EUR 10 million project to support innovations related to renewable energy and energy efficiency at the October 1 summit, Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Oleksiy Riabchyn has said. "I want to thank the EU for supporting the EUR 10 million project, which is called a case and which will be signed at the Ukraine-EU summit on October 1. There is great support for projects related to the European Green Deal, greening, and decarbonization," Riabchyn said at the 11th Energy Day organized by the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency on Thursday. According to him, Ukraine has a huge potential for "green" innovations, but companies represented in this direction often demonstrate insufficient institutional ability to work with grants and seek support for projects. "And it is this EUR 10 million project that will create an innovation center, which, among other things, will help increase the ability of Ukrainian institutions to work with grants. The purpose of its launch is to identify the problem and find its solution," Riabchyn said, explaining the tasks of the future project. According to him, Europe has a large amount of free funds that can be used to support Ukrainian projects, but "we do not fully use even those that have already been provided." He also announced the government's intention after the pandemic to develop a Green Recovery program that includes an action plan for business. "Green recovery will be a cross-cutting topic by which the Europeans will assess our economy," the adviser to the deputy prime minister said. At the same time, he expressed the opinion about the need for a significant expansion of powers, staff and financing of the State Energy Efficiency Agency in order to form on its basis a center for the implementation of the European Green Deal tasks. "It is necessary to transform the State Energy Efficiency Agency into a real green agency, which functions will cover both areas related to climate problems and decarbonization. It should become the main partner of the government in implementing the Green Deal," Riabchyn said. As 16 assembly bypoll bound seats in the Gwalior-Chambal region primarily hold the key to power in Madhya Pradesh, besides common election issues, sentiments like betrayal, loyalty and commitment are playing pivotal roles here. Since Jyotiraditya Scindia and his men left in March this year, the Congress party has had its task cut out of rebuilding the organisation and also keeping its flock together. As part of these efforts, the party constituency in-charges are making local leaders and workers take oaths of loyalty and unity in temples. One such video of a party event presided over by former minister Brijendra Singh Rathore had leaked on social media recently. The video showed that party workers and leaders from Sumawali constituency were inside the Ram Janki temple and were taking the oath in the name of God of loyalty and unity irrespective of who gets the party ticket for the bypoll. Sources say that assembly in-charges are holding such events across 16 poll-bound seats in the Gwalior-Chambal region where the grand old party was left feeble since Scindia and his men left. The party is desperately trying to keep the remaining cadre base intact, especially ahead of the crucial bypolls. There is another reason for the party to worry as internal rebellion could dent its chances of winning. A hint of dissent became visible after the party announced 15 candidates and several of those ignored openly opposed this. Those include former minister Mahendra Baudh from Bhander, Shakuntala Khatik from Karera, Satyaprakash from Dabra, Ramnarayan Hindoliya from Gohad and others. Hindoliya had even joined the Samajwadi Party but later returned to the Congress. Senior Congress leader PC Sharma said on the oath-taking issue that there must have been a meeting and sankalp (pledge) of loyalty, and just incidentally the meet happened in a temple. OP Saklecha, senior MLA of BJP and a minister, claimed that the Congress party has seen mass exodus in the region and is fearing more people running away. These are old leaders and workers who were with the party for years, so why do they need an oath to keep their loyalty intact," he said. The oath-taking and pledges are continuing in Congress since the March episode when the Kamal Nath government was dislodged following a rebellion even as the party kept claiming that its missing MLAs and allies had pledged support to the government. In July, when the political crisis deepened in Rajasthan, the loyalty of several MLAs plunged into uncertainty in Madhya Pradesh and later two of themRahul Singh Lodhi (Damoh) and Tarwar Singh Lodhi (Banda) met MPCC chief Kamal Nath and reposed faith in the party. However, after this, two MLAs, Pradyumn Singh Lodhi and Sumitra Kasdekar, had resigned from the party. On July 21, when the CLP meeting was held in Bhopal, an anxious party organisation had made all the MLAs pledge support to the party. However, two days later, Mandhata MLA Narayan Singh Patel too had resigned from the party. A couple of days ago, the party faced another setback as Biaora MLA Govardhan Dangi died of Covid-19. The Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) plans to open an investment office in Tel Aviv, Israel as part its plans to establish a network of international offices to support global companies looking to expand their operations in the UAE capital. The Tel Aviv office will focus on facilitating connections between innovation-focused companies and organisations in Abu Dhabi and Israel, reported Emirates news agency WAM. An international network of representative offices will enable ADIO to seamlessly support innovative international companies and individuals to grow and expand in the emirate. ADIO plans to open additional offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Mohammed Ali Al Shorafa, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, said: "Abu Dhabi is outward-looking, forward-thinking and committed to global cooperation and mutually beneficial trade. The opening of an international network of investment offices will create new opportunities to connect with innovators from around the world and work together to solve challenges of global importance." The opening of a representative office in Tel Aviv follows the UAEs expansion of diplomatic and commercial cooperation with Israel. As a leading regional R&D hub and home to a thriving tech industry, Abu Dhabi is well placed to partner with Israeli organisations at the forefront of innovation. ADIO is currently in discussions with Invest in Israel at the Ministry of Economy and Industry, and a number of other Israeli entities to unlock investment and partnership opportunities for companies in Israel and Abu Dhabi with a strong focus on innovation and technology. Amir Peretz, the Minister of Economy and Industry in Israel, said: "The Ministry of Economy and Industry is delighted to support the opening of ADIOs office in Israel, and is sure that this move will contribute to the strengthening of the economic dialogue between Israel and Abu Dhabi to promote collaboration between the nations." Areas identified for possible close collaboration between Abu Dhabi and Israel include advanced technology and R&D, across sectors such as AgTech, biomedicine and advanced manufacturing. Cooperation in these areas has the potential to create innovative solutions that will benefit the region. Dr Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, the government hub supporting private sector investment in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, said: "ADIO understands the journey that innovative international companies undertake and can help them achieve their potential in Abu Dhabi while solving challenges of global importance. Cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Israel in areas like AgTech, for instance, will create innovations that are exportable and relevant to countries with similar climate conditions. Establishing a representative office in Israel is an important next step to making that happen, enabling us to continue focusing on growing sectors with the greatest potential to positively impact the wider region." ADIOs Tel Aviv office is anticipated to be operational in the coming months, the report said. Catering to Delhi University students, YourShell was backed by the Government of India's Standup India initiative YourShell, a leading student accommodation brand in Delhi NCR, announced today that they have been acquired by Stanza Living - Indias largest managed accommodation company. The two companies have been in talks since late last year, culminating now in a deal. Established by Delhi University students; YourShell is among the youngest startups to raise venture debt under the Government of Indias StandUp India program. They were also an operationally profitable business across their 18 properties, at the time of deal. YourShell was launched in 2017 with 145 beds to provide easy to book, serviced, and affordable rental homes to students within the coveted North campus area of Delhi University. Currently, they have over 600 beds in 18 properties. Talking about the acquisition, Shaifali Jain, Co-founder, YourShell said We have been closely following Stanza Livings journey and admired their operational expertise and how they have scaled their business pan-India. When we learnt that they were looking at strategic acquisitions for growth, we believed it was the ideal time to pass on the reigns to the experienced team at Stanza Living and become a part of their rapid-scale story. Shaifali Jain comes from a business background and credits her success to the support of her father Mr. Bhushan Kumar Jain. Apart from high-quality residences, YourShell was much-appreciated for delivering a robust service support system for handling student grievances along with an exciting array of value-added features including a library, gaming zone, career counseling sessions and internship guidance. The team considers their strong resonance with the student community as their USP. Sunny Garg, Co-founder & CEO, YourShell said, As students ourselves, we had seen the primitive condition of student housing options in the city from close quarters. YourShell was launched to revolutionize the daily living experience of students through a high-quality product built around convenience and choice. Over the last couple of years, we have not only built a strong brand preference among the student community, but established a solid, hyper-growth business. The success of our venture has stoked the entrepreneur in us and we are now moving on in search of the next big idea. Sunny Garg dropped out of his admission from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad in the early days of his startup and similarly today after the sale of the company, he is determined to choose entrepreneurship over an MBA. Sunny and Shaifali are launching another company together and aspire to create a unicorn. The professional student housing segment has been on an upward surge in the last few years, attracting global investors and large-scale real estate partners. As the market matures, consolidation of local operators and acquisitions by leading players are expected to become more frequent. In the wake of the pandemic, industry confidence in growth of the sector also continues to be high, guided by gradual reopening of educational institutes, expected upsurge in demand for upskilling and higher education opportunities against the backdrop of a subdued job market and rising consumer preference for safety, convenience and quality of living options. A Govt. of India recognized startup YourShell (Lofty Ventures Pvt. Ltd.) provides easy to book, better serviced and affordable rental homes to students within the campus and thrives on building a robust support system for handling student grievances. Established in late 2017, YourShell also offers an exciting set of value-added features to students including a library, gaming zone, career counseling sessions and internship guidance. Stanza Living (www.stanzaliving.com) is Indias largest managed accommodation company, offering dedicated living solutions for students and working professionals for an inventory of 55,000+ beds across 14 cities. A tech enabled managed living concept, Stanza Living delivers world-class living experiences built on a wide array of amenities and services for convenient living and operated by a professional team. The company is backed by marquee global investors like Equity International, Falcon Edge Capital, Sequoia India, Matrix Partners, Accel Partners and Alteria Capital. Stanza Living was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in New Delhi, India. (Disclaimer: This is a featured content.) Days before New York City schools were to reopen for in-person learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio delayed classes for elementary schoolers until Sept. 29 and for middle- and high-school students until Oct. 1. Learning will begin remotely Sept. 21 for all but pre-kindergarten pupils and those with severe developmental disabilities. "We're giving schools more staff, more time and more support," Education Chancellor Richard Carranza said at a press briefing Thursday. New York, which has the largest school system in the U.S., is one of few cities to plan in-person learning this month. The city had faced pressure from teachers' unions to delay reopening until all schools met safety standards, including additional protective equipment and covid-19 testing for staff and students. A Sept. 21 reopening was part of an earlier agreement that had pushed the date from Sept. 10. De Blasio said the biggest obstacle to reopening is a shortage of teachers. He said the system is tapping the education department's substitute-teacher pool, current staff and the City University of New York system. On Monday, he had announced an additional 2,000 teachers and said there would eventually be a total of 4,500. "Staffing allows for everything else to work," the mayor said Thursday. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, said ventilation had been a problem but that "the city is really on top" of the situation now. Mulgrew said he was pleased with a command center set up to coordinate the city's response and advances on virus testing. He said more needs to be done on contact tracing. The system has a "pretty decent stockpile" of personal protective equipment, Mulgrew said, adding apportioning it "is something that should be figured out before schools open." "This is an unprecedented challenge," he said. "If we're going to do this, we must make sure we get this right." It is widely accepted that increased youth entrepreneurship is imperative when it comes to alleviating Africas unemployment challenges, as well as driving the continents over-arching socio-economic goals. Future of Work trends and digitisation have already led to a discernible shift towards more entrepreneurial ventures by youth, and the current global pandemic is further catalysing this process. While it is true that the youth themselves recognise the need to consider and actively pursue an entrepreneurial path, their success, however, relies heavily on the regulatory environment they operate within. Governmental policies, business regulations and other infrastructural concerns play an immensely influential role when it comes to youth entrepreneurship, both in positive and negative terms. For example, complicated or expensive business registration processes are barriers to entry, while incentives to private companies, on the other hand, help boost partnership opportunities for young entrepreneurs. With the global crisis having a detrimental effect on the already fragile economic climate in Africa, governments can no longer take lackadaisical approach to entrepreneurship. African leaders and policy-makers need to take swift and result-driven steps to review current rules and regulations, and begin driving robust policy reform. As stressed by the United Nations (UN), as a key driver of change, the worlds youth population must be bolstered by national policies and innovative solutions to the challenges they face. When developing national policies and regulations, and building supportive youth entrepreneurship ecosystems, the following points (among others) need to be taken into account: The economic goals of a country, and the role that youth entrepreneurship can play in helping achieve these. As stated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a General Assembly event in his discussion on transformation, young people are in the driving seat of this change Entrepreneurship is not an isolated business activity sector, but a valuable component of forward-driven economic systems. Therefore, entrepreneurial growth should be built into national strategies instead of being viewed as a stand-alone business sector Increased youth participation in parliament and policy-related decision-making. Concerning statistics by the World Economic Forum (WEF) show that although under 30s make up more than half the global population, youth representation in parliament is only 2%. The involvement of both public and private sector working together to develop solutions. Again, the youth themselves need to be given a seat at the table The building of institutional capacity in terms of education and skills development that encourages youth entrepreneurship Government-based business incubators with a specific focus on youth entrepreneurial ventures both in terms of start-up needs and the scaling of businesses Its not just about creating policies but also having actionable and practical mechanisms in place for young African entrepreneurs. Organisations and initiatives, both private and governmental, dedicated to policy reform and support of youth entrepreneurship are fundamental to shifting the needle forward. The Youth Employment Service (YES) is a business initiative, in partnership with the South African government, striving to overcome the countrys youth unemployment crisis by creating enterprise development opportunities for youth residing in densely populated and peri-urban communities. The Youth Enterprise with Innovation In Nigeria (YouWin!) is a collaborative effort from the countrys Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Communication Technology (CT) and Ministry of Youth Development aimed at job creation. The programmes goal is to reduce unemployment by supporting young Nigerian entrepreneurs through funding, mentorship and as a platform for aspiring young innovators and visionaries to showcase their ideas to a network of investors and businesses. Taking a pan-African approach to leadership development, The Anzisha Prize movement seeks to transform the continents socio-economic landscape by fundamentally and significantly increasing the number of job generative entrepreneurs in Africa. The programme focuses on identifying and mentoring high potential very young entrepreneurs (between 15 and 22 years old), and supporting them within a network that includes investors, policy-makers, educators and parents. In a report released by the organisation, titled The Very Young Entrepreneur Scenario for Africa, The Anzisha Prize lists infrastructural challenges, regulatory restrictions, lack of an enterprise culture and access to funding as some of the major factors impeding youth entrepreneurial growth in Africa. The Scenario Report also references Anzishas Policies and Strategies that Support Very Young Entrepreneurs which goes into great depth in discussing the practical policy issues affecting youth entrepreneurship on the continent. For instance, African countries vary when it comes to the definition of youth: in Rwanda, the youth age bracket is between 16 and 30 years old, while in Malawi, it is between 10 and 35 years old. This leads to a lack of consistency in matters such as the eligibility to register a business, apply for finance, qualify for youth business grants and so forth (download the full report here). It is clear that African and global bodies are actively working towards revolutionising the African youth entrepreneurship sector. However, such efforts will require the support and commitment of decision-makers and leaders at national levels in order for aspirational goals to become reality. Timing is of the essence, particularly due to the extreme economic difficulties caused by the COVID-19 crisis. African leaders are urged to take action and tap into the potential that lies with very young entrepreneurs as a means to overcome socio-economic struggles and stimulate future growth. Pacvue is the leading enterprise platform for brands, sellers, and agencies to manage eCommerce advertising "We've been able to provide valuable insights to brands and agencies to manage and optimize online advertising campaigns with other marketplaces, and we're excited to offer these capabilities with Instacart as well," said Melissa Burdick, president of Pacvue. Pacvue, the leading enterprise platform for brands, sellers, and agencies to manage eCommerce advertising, today announced full support for Instacart advertising. The expanded platform is one of the first to allow users to manage Instacart Featured Products through Pacvues combination of holistic performance data and recommended actions. Instacart is the North American leader in online grocery and provides consumers with a convenient and affordable way to have fresh groceries, household essentials and more delivered or picked up from their favorite local retailer in as fast as an hour. The company partners with more than 400 retailers to deliver from more than 30,000 stores across 5,500 cities in the U.S. and Canada. Advertisers can now use Pacvue to programmatically manage advertising campaigns on Instacart to lower costs, increase share of voice, and grow sales. Pacvues platform features intelligent automation, optimized keyword bidding, and robust reporting tools, enabling Instacart partners to save time managing their campaigns while surfacing new business opportunities. "Instacart has grown considerably over this past year and is a go-to choice as online grocery delivery demand continues to increase," said Melissa Burdick, president of Pacvue. "We've been able to provide valuable insights to brands and agencies to manage and optimize online advertising campaigns with other marketplaces, and we're excited to offer these capabilities with Instacart as well." Built by eCommerce veterans, and supported by an expert team of practitioners dedicated to guiding eCommerce advertisers through new ad strategies, Pacvue is uniquely positioned to help brands take advantage of the growing Instacart marketplace. Combining the successful approaches from Pacvues prior marketplace integrations, Pacvues Instacart platform features: Fully Customizable Dashboards: Collect all campaign metrics in a robust and flexible dashboard which can be customized to focus on specific KPIs, such as Return on Ad Sales, Cost-per-Click, and more. Detailed Reporting and Insights: Gain insights and competitive intelligence not offered anywhere else, along with scheduled reports, keyword research, and performance data grouped by product, keyword, campaign, and more. AI-based Optimization Tools: Save time without sacrificing performance with intelligent automation tools, AI-powered optimization, daypart capabilities, and page type bidding modifiers. We are thrilled that we are able to partner with Pacvue to unlock Instacart advertising as a new channel of growth for our brands. Instacart is quickly becoming a critical platform for us to reach our consumers as they make the shift to online grocery, said Laura Hyland, vice president, e-Commerce US at Henkel. We see Instacart as an integral part of our clients omnichannel retail media and ecommerce strategy. Online grocery and last mile delivery will be one of the recent consumer trends that will maintain momentum post-Covid-19, said Kerry Curran, executive director, marketing & growth at Catalyst/GroupM. Expanding to Instacart supports Pacvues vision of providing a holistic solution for advertising, marketing automation, and retail intelligence to help brands win across eCommerce platforms. Instacart is the second retail platform launched by Pacvue this year, after releasing their Walmart platform in January, with additional retailers planned in 2020. For more information about Pacvue and to demo the platform, visit http://www.Pacvue.com. About Pacvue: Headquartered in Seattle, Pacvue is the enterprise platform for brands, sellers, and agencies to manage their eCommerce advertising. Combining the power of holistic performance data with the tools needed to take recommended actions, marketers use Pacvue to programmatically manage their campaigns on Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart in order to lower costs, grow share of voice, and increase sales. Supported by the expertise of eCommerce veterans, Pacvue is the leader in competitive insights, flexible reporting, and intelligent automation, and is consistently first-to-market, empowering marketers to win in the future of eCommerce. For more information, visit http://www.Pacvue.com. International leaders from across the globe took the opportunity to wish PM Modi on the occasion of his 70th Birthday on Thursday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin were among those to convey their best wishes to PM Narendra Modi. Several Indian leaders also congratulated PM Modi on his birthday. German Chancellor congratulates PM Modi Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel wrote to Narendra Modi to wish him on his 70th Birthday. She took the opportunity to thank the PM for the 'trustful and constructive' bilateral cooperation built over the years. Angela Merkel expressed the desire to work with India in the battle against COVID-19 while wishing PM Modi success, health and happiness. Read | Surat Plants Over 70,000 Saplings Across The City To Mark PM Modi's 70th Birthday Read | Ahead Of PM Modi's 70th Birthday, JP Nadda Launches 'Seva Saptah' From UP's Chhaprauli Vladimir Putin Wishes PM Modi Read | As PM Modi Turns 70, Greetings Pour In From Near & Far; BJP To Congress & Finland To Nepal Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated PM Narendra Modi while hailing his 'personal contribution' to the stong relationship between the two countries. He also praised the PM for his leadership skills and the changes he brought in the country. The Russian President also said that he wishes to 'work closely' with PM Modi on the issues of 'bilateral and international agenda'. Russian Ambassador to India, Nikolay Kudashev also wished Narendra Modi on his 70th Birthday on Thursday. Nepal PM extends Birthday Wishes Read | Finnish PM Conveys Birthday Wishes To PM Modi, Accents Potential To Deepen Bilateral Ties The Prime Minister of Nepal, KP Sharma Oli took to Twitter to extend his warm wishes on the occasion of Narendra Modi's Birthday. KP Sharma wished the PM 'good health and happiness' on turning 70. "We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries," read his tweet. Warm greetings to Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi ji on the auspicious occasion of your birthday. I wish you good health and happiness. We will continue working closely together to further strengthen relations between our two countries. K P Sharma Oli (@kpsharmaoli) September 17, 2020 Finnish PM wishes PM Modi Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin wrote to Narendra Modi to convey her best wishes on his 70th Birthday while talking about the 'potential to deepen bilateral relations'. Marin also spoke about the need for international cooperation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She further pointed out that India and Finland recently celebrated '70 years of diplomatic relations' while recalling the India-EU Summit held in July 2020. Read | Latest News: PM Modi Turns 70; Pithani's Statement To CBI; Suga Against Vested Interests Read | PM Modi To Dedicate The Historic Kosi Rail Mahasetu To The Nation On September 18 Read | Coronavirus LIVE Updates: India's Tally Crosses 50 Lakh; Nitin Gadkari Tests Positive SAD to protest in both Houses against agricultural bills "Any attempt to unilaterally change status quo not acceptable to us" Will you bring everything under the ambit of Parliament? asks Ranveet Singh in Lok Sabha Parliament House Two days after he addressed the Lok Sabha on the issue of Chinese aggression across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, defence minister Rajnath Singh will on Thursday speak in the Rajya Sabha on the issue. Besides this, discussions will also take place in the Upper House on National Education Policy (NEP), the Goods and Services Tax (GST), economy and environment. Both houses of Parliament were adjourned in March due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and have resumed with strict protocols in place. However, already two dozen MPs have tested positive for the virus. On Wednesday, transport minister Nitin Gadkari announced that he, too, has tested positive. He had attended the session on Monday and was seated in the front row for a brief moment. Follow the live updates here: Kodak executive ringing the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on January 8, 2014. House lawmakers on Thursday questioned the findings of the law firm hired by Kodak's special committee to conduct an internal review of events surrounding a planned $765 million federal loan that sent the company's stock price soaring. Securities transactions made by Kodak CEO Jim Continenza around the time the company learned it could receive the massive loan prompted investigations by lawmakers. Suspicious trading activity around the time of the announcement has also raised concerns about the manner in which the deal was disclosed. The D.C. law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, said Tuesday in a report to a special committee of independent directors at Kodak's board that Continenza's transactions did not violate company policy or securities laws. However, the investigators did note "several flaws in the process." Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Committee on Financial Services, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said their committees will continue to investigate the contract. "The report from Kodak's lawyers raises more questions than it answers about the Trump Administration's efforts to provide the company a $765 million loan to produce pharmaceutical ingredients despite Kodak's lack of experience in the field," they said in a joint statement. "Let's be clear: this report does not represent the findings of any regulator; it is a report generated by a law firm hired by Kodak." In a statement to CNBC, Kodak said they are aware of the comments by the lawmakers and added that the company is cooperating with all "third-party regulatory inquiries on these matters." "Kodak maintains that the launch of a pharmaceutical division would: bolster the domestic response to COVID-19; help increase U.S. supply chain resilience; modernize the national stockpile of pharmaceuticals; and bring pharmaceutical manufacturing and associated jobs back to America," the company said in a statement. In July, President Donald Trump announced the plans to loan $765 million to Kodak, once known for producing camera film, in order to ramp up domestic manufacturing of drug ingredients under the Defense Production Act. In the days following the announcement, Kodak shares soared more than 2,000%. A street in New York's Chinatown is empty, the result of citywide restrictions calling for people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, in New York on March 28, 2020. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo) Pro-Beijing Businessman Exposes Chinese Authorities COVID-19 Quarantine Extortion An online post warning Chinese travelers about extortion in the guise of COVID-19 testing and isolation when transiting through Chinas Fujian Province went viral recently. The message was posted on Chinese social media on Sept. 5 by Wang Lizhi, a pro-Beijing businessman who currently resides in New York. Wang said: Relevant departments of Fujian Province make a fortune by deliberately giving false test results and transferring healthy people to Fuzhou Pulmonary Hospital for a comprehensive examination. Even when no disease is found and everything is normal, you must be isolated in the hospital for 14 days. The post also detailed the basic cost of a hospital bed as 350 yuan ($51), with a total daily cost of around 900 yuan ($132). The cost of a 14-day quarantine is over 10,000 yuan ($1,462). Calling the mayors hotline takes 10 days to get a response. Calling the CDC, you learn that it is a state regulation. He continued, I dont believe the state would regulate like that. Id rather believe that this is entirely the Fujian Provincial Government colluding with the corrupt hospital to entrap the citizens. Isnt Fujian Province ruled by the Communist Party? Is this still a government under the Communist Party? Wang hopes that people who share the same views would forward the post to let more people know about the situation. Ge Bidong, a U.S.-based Chinese economist, told The Epoch Times that the issues and doubts that Wang raised about the Chinese regime is a typical reaction among those who have benefited from being affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While the United States is decoupling from China, Ge said, These pro-Communists make choices based on their interests and needs. When they see the end of the CCP, it is possible they will distance themselves or even suddenly oppose communism. Thats not awakening, its another kind of speculation. Extortion in the Guise of Testing and Isolation The Epoch Times spoke with a reporter who looked into Wangs extortion claims. The reporter, who wished to remain anonymous, called the Fuzhou Municipal Health Commission, the pandemic prevention hotline, and the Fuzhou Pulmonary Hospital in Fujian. The answers he got from the staff were contradictory, especially regarding the fees involved, and some simply said that they didnt know anything about the situation. Staff at the Health Commission told the reporter that anyone with a positive nucleic acid test is sent to the Fuzhou Pulmonary Hospital for treatment. As for the cost of the hospitalization, ask the pandemic prevention hotline. The health committee staff on duty will answer in detail. The reporter called the pandemic prevention hotline and was told that after returning from abroad, the nucleic acid test is done before a person can enter the border. After the border check is completed, the nucleic acid test will be performed again (a second time). It takes six hours for two tests. After the second test, the traveler will go to a quarantine hotel for 14 days. This hotel charges about 400 yuan ($59) a day, so the cost for 14 days is about 5,000 yuan ($731). Those who test negative can proceed to their next destination but must be quarantined at home for seven days. If one tests positive, one must go to Fuzhou Pulmonary Hospital for treatmentthe designated hospital. The cost varies according to the treatment. If there are no symptoms, the medical assessment wont cost much. For positive (testers), the initial stay costs about 10,000 yuan. The length of hospital stay depends on when the person tests negative, which can take 20 to 30 days. Its possible. The cost of the hospital bed is the regular rate of dozens of dollars (a day), the domestic bed fee is very low, the staff said. When the reporter said that the rate is 350 yuan, as stated in Wangs online post, the staff responded, For a patient in a negative pressure ward, which means that the air pressure in the ward is lower than the air pressure outside, it is possible to charge 350 yuan. The reporter was told to ask the hospital about the fees. The staff said that Fuzhou has had more than 30,000 returnees and not many tested positive, claiming that 70 or 80 were sent to the hospital. When the reporter called the medical department of Fuzhou Pulmonary Hospital, a staff member said that their hospital is designated for the treatment of COVID-19 in Fuzhou. In other words, those returning from abroad who test positive must go to that hospital for treatment. Regarding bed charges, the staff said, Im not the person in charge, Im not sure (of the cost). If you want to know more, then call the Health Commission. They know everything about it. We arent allowed to answer any other questions. We can only answer questions about staying in our hospital. Regarding medical insurance, she said, For those returning from overseas, our policy is that if they have a medical insurance card; some people with asymptomatic infections will be reimbursed, and the reimbursement rate will be in accordance with local regulations. For those who test positive, we require information to verify the validity and coverage of the medical insurance. It involves a lot of details before the charges are finalized. Regardless, patients pay up front and then seek reimbursement. Another staffer said that the average cost for patients discharged within 14 days is about 20,000 yuan ($2,925). This 20,000 yuan applies to those who have no other diseases, and pneumonia was the only disease dealt with. She said that the average daily cost for people returning to the province is about 1,500 yuan ($219). She said that they are a state funded hospital and must receive full payment of their services. Otherwise, you will receive a lawyers letter, because the money owed to the hospital, the government, and the finance department will inevitably cause a bad credit rating, which bans people from travel by plane or train. Mr. Huang, a resident of Fujian, told The Epoch Times that people returning from abroad are a big piece of meat that the local government will prey on. For example, the government designates the quarantine hotel, which is a resource (for them). The recently collapsed hotel in Quanzhou was occupied by many people from different provinces. It costs 1,200 yuan ($176) a day, they are all pieces of meat. Netizens and Merchants Cant Escape From the CCP There were many online comments about Wang Lizhis post for directly criticizing the CCP. One netizen wrote: It seems that the communist sickle has cut its red expatriate. Sad. According to a report by Chinese media GCTV, Wang moved to the United States in 1998. His company occupies nearly 50,000 square feet of office and storage space. It has been said that for every 10 units of Chinese seasonings sold in major Chinese supermarkets in the United States, seven come from his company. A native of Shandong Province, Wang is a representative of the Shandong Compatriots Organization and president of the American Shandong Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In China, Wang owns several large agricultural bases and food processing plants. He currently serves as the Executive Vice President of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Shandong Provincial Government, the Executive Vice President of the Overseas Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of the Standing Committee of the Shandong Changyi City CPPCC (Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference), one of the CCPs rubber-stamp legislature bodies. An insider of the Shandong compatriots organization revealed that Wang returned to Shandong when the pandemic first broke out in the United States this year. He was expected to return to the United States in mid-August, but has not yet done so. Mr. Wang, a resident from Fujian, said that almost all overseas Chinese Chambers of Commerce organizations are filled with businessmen who are affiliated with the regime. Their so-called success does not come from their own talents or strengths, but from the support of the CCP. The role of the Chamber of Commerce in foreign countries is essentially for show. The same is true domestically. Every province has a Chamber of Commerce that is supported by the regime. The Chamber of Commerce is like a local underworld. CLEVELAND, Ohio Cleveland police seized nine dogs from a home in the citys Clark-Fulton neighborhood as part of a suspected dogfighting investigation. Police and the citys animal control officers seized the dogs early Thursday from a home on West 44th Street south of Clark Avenue, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said. Someone called police and reported that several people were holding a dogfight in the front yard of the home. Officers arrived and found two pit bulls fighting, including one that was injured, Ciaccia said. At least one person ran from the officers. Officers searched around the home and found seven more dogs, Ciaccia said. The citys Animal Control Services seized all nine dogs. The investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed in the case, Ciaccia said. Cleveland police will work with the Cleveland Animal Protective League in the investigation. Cleveland APL President and CEO Sharon Harvey said her organization expects to be briefed on the investigation Thursday. Read more from cleveland.com: Ex-Cuyahoga County Jail officer charged in attack on mentally ill inmate, including unauthorized chokehold One dead, two injured after gunshots fired into apartment in Clevelands Kinsman neighborhood Man indicted in random killing of Cleveland police detective, informant A report published earlier this month is proving to be an eye opener for people aware with the debates around Khalistani terrorism. Canadian journalist and researcher Terry Milewskis report titled Khalistan a project of Pakistan', published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI),has empirically and objectively deconstructed the Khalistani terror network and traced its roots to Pakistan. The report was well received and has subsequently triggered intense debates amongst the external observer. However, a group of pro-Khalistani elements, based out of Western Countries , soon came up to counter the report in order to neutralize its impact and delegitimize it. Their hurried attempt to counteract against the report is really interesting, as they floated a website on 15th September and uploaded a public letter addressed to the Ottawa based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, criticizing the report and expressing their concern on it. A close look of the website suggests that www.sikhscholarsresponse.com was registered on 15" September and the letter was uploaded on it on the same day. Most strikingly, the website has only one web-page in it and does not contain other content, links, or web pages except the letter,which has been published on its homepage. This reflects that the website was created solely for the purpose of uploading this letter. Sources told to Zee Media. Besides, making three allegations, the letter has asked MLI to reevaluate your (MLIs) decision to publish such vitriolic content under your institutes name. The letter has further expressed, we are concerned to read a report that contains a litany of conclusory statements and allegations without any substantiation. It is noteworthy that the letter has been signed by individuals from over a dozen organisations and institutions. Still, it failed to gain organizational credibility, highlighting that the Khalistani elements are eventually losing the feeble support that they had amongst the civil society organisation and educational institutions. It is also worth mentioning that most of the signatories out of 53 individuals endorsing the letter are infamous for taking an anti-India position and indulging in anti-India activities in the West. Reportedly, the letter was drafted by Harjeet Singh Grewal Instructor of Sikh Studies at Department of Classics and Religion, University of Calgary. It is believed that he reached out to other signatories under the guidance of the Pakistani ISI, as a number of the signatories have strong connections to Pak missions in the West, especially in Canada. The letter has also been signed by pro-Khalistan Indra Prahst, who has strong connections with Pakistani Consulate in Vancouver. She has previously interviewed several Pakistani Consul Generals and has been participating in anti-India events organised by the Pakistani Consulate. Another signatory who underlines the organic linkages of Khalistani extremists with Pakistan is Hafsa Kanjwal, who has pro-separatist sentiments and has been opposing Indias position on Jammu and Kashmir and has been contributing to the anti-India advocacy campaigns of Pakistani mission. Her connections with radical Islamist organizations in the in the Western countries also keep resurfacing. The Pakistani connection of this letter provides the rationale for the silence of Khalistani elements to question human rights violations of minorities in Pakistan, including the targeted attacks on the Sikh minorities. They have kept mum over exclusion of the larger territory of so called Khalistan that falls in Pakistan. In fact, all of Pakistani Punjab comes under this landmass. However, under ISIs pressure, they have failed to include that part in the map of Khalistan. said an official deployed in Central Security. In another interesting development of attacking the dissenting voices,pro-Khalistani elements along with the ISI proxies are attacking a New Delhi based non-profit organisation Law and Society Alliance (LSA). As soon as the organisation broke the news of organising a webinar on the said report and invited Terry Milewski to deliver a talk, these elements began attacking the Twitter handle of LSA - @LawSocietyAlly and mass reporting it to bring it down. They also attacked the Twitter handle of co-organiser of the event Defence Capital - @DefenceCapital. LSA plans to organise a webinar on Khalistani Terrorism and Canada on 18th September, wherein the report of Terry Milewski would be discussed along with Terry, Member of House of Lords, UK Parliament Lord Rami Ranger and California based Punjab foundations Chairman Sukhi Chahal have also been invited as speakers .Organisers anticipates that pro-Khalistani elements will keep targeting the event. The pro-Khalistani forces are trying to silence the voice of Indians and other nationalities who raise their voice against the Khalistani terrorism and how Pakistan is the conspirator of this terrorism and separatism movement. said N. C. Bipindra, Chairman of Law and Society Alliance and Editor of Defence.Capital The worst state of affairs is that the pro-Khalistani elements operate from liberal and open countries of the West but have themselves failed to provide space to opposing voices. They seemingly prefer a one-way model of communication as at numerous instances, the pro-Khalistani elements have restricted the entry of pro-India or dissenting voices to their events and Gurudwaras. Terry Milewski has been a veteran reporter, with an experience of over four decades of journalism. He has also closely covered the Khalistani terrorism in India and in the west, since its early days. Rebuttal to such an authority on the Khalistan issue had to be logical, rational and factual. However, countering not with concrete but ambiguous criticisms and umbrella allegations highlights the gagging acts of the pro-Khalistani elements to silence the voices opposing them. Authorities in four Vietnamese localities are planning to evacuate over 1.1 million residents as Storm Noul speeds up toward the mainland. The Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control organized a meeting on Thursday morning to prepare for the approach of Storm Noul, which is the fifth to hit Vietnam this year. Authorities in north-central Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien-Hue Provinces, as well as in central Da Nang City are expected to evacuate 295,859 households with 1.17 million people if wind speeds reach between 90km and 120km per hour. Most international weather stations predicted that the storm may unleash winds at the maximum velocity of 135km per hour, said Mai Van Khiem, director of the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF). Military and border guard units will mobilize 256,000 officers and 2,600 vehicles of various kinds to assist local residents as well as search and rescue missions. The navy will also ready six vessels for search and rescue efforts. About 511 fishing boats carrying 3,706 crew members were still operating in dangerous maritime areas as of Thursday morning, local border guard offices reported. All of them have been warned of the storm and directed to move to safer zones. As of 7:00 am on Thursday, Storm Noul was located about 340 kilometers southeast of Vietnam's Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago, with winds at 90-100km per hour, according to the NCHMF. It will enter the sea off the coast of Quang Binh and Quang Ngai Provinces by 7:00 am on Friday, unleashing winds of 100-120km an hour. The storm will continue traveling northwest and is expected to make landfall between Quang Binh Province and Da Nang later that same day. During its time in the mainland, Storm Noul is forecast to carry winds at 90-120km per hour and gusts at up to 150km an hour. The storm circulation will result in torrential rain in localities from north-central Ha Tinh Province to central Quang Ngai Province until the end of Friday. Between Friday and Sunday, downpours will dampen localities in the Red River Delta, as well as north-central Thanh Hoa and Nghe An Provinces. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Rhombus Energy Solutions, Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-efficiency power conversion systems for electric vehicle fleet charging, energy storage and microgrid applications, announced today that it has closed a Series C financing round from a global syndicate of advanced energy investors led by Emerald Technology Ventures. The syndicate also included Cycle Capital Management, Inci Holding, Nabtesco Technology Ventures, Greenhouse Capital Partners and existing shareholders. Emerald Technology Ventures Partner Markus Moor and Cycle Capital Management Founder and Managing Partner Andree-Lise Methot will join Rhombus Board of Directors. Rhombus develops and manufactures a line of UL 1741-SA certified bi-directional chargers for Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) applications that are utilized by electric vehicle (EV) fleets and charging network operators. Similarly, Rhombus UL 1741-SA certified smart inverters are preferred equipment in commercial and industrial building solar energy and energy storage solutions, where they enable behind-the-meter peak shaving and building-to-grid power transfer. Emerald sees high-power EV charging, and particularly Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) EV charging, as promising means to both reduce energy costs for EV fleets and to provide energy to the utility grid during peak demand hours, said Markus Moor, Partner at Emerald Technology Ventures. The Rhombus team has the expertise and technology to provide industry-leading solutions in this fast-growing and important market. The Company has demonstrated this leadership through the success of its products in a variety of demanding EV fleet deployments. Cycle Capital invests in companies that will have a meaningful impact on climate change. We believe that Rhombus is well positioned to enable this transition as a leader in the electric vehicle charging space for commercial fleets. Not only does the Company offer one of the most robust charging solutions with vehicle-to-grid capability for high power applications, the management team has extensive experience and they are widely recognized as leaders and innovators in the power sector, said Andree-Lise, Founder and Managing Partner of Cycle Capital. We are very pleased with the integrity of the firms and the shared commitment of the syndicate, said Rick Sander, President and CEO of Rhombus. With the new investment, Rhombus will continue to scale its team and operations to accelerate product development, expand sales and marketing reach and fulfill the needs of its fast-growing customer base. The EV market is expected to grow exponentially over the next several years as commercial fleets take advantage of its value proposition to reduce energy costs. The expertise of the Rhombus team in the field of high-power smart inverters and V2G-capable EV chargers has enabled the company to ship over 800 systems worldwide into the most demanding environments. About Rhombus Energy Solutions: Rhombus develops and manufactures next-generation bi-directional electric vehicle charging infrastructure, high-efficiency power conversion systems and energy management system (EMS) software for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capable electric vehicle fleet charging, energy storage and microgrid applications. The high reliability of our solutions is the result of decades of experience developing high-power systems for a variety of applications and deployment scenarios, including UL-1741-SA system-to-grid solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.RhombusEnergy.com. About Emerald Technology Ventures: Emerald is a globally recognized investment firm and strategic innovation partner, with offices in Zurich, Toronto and Singapore. Founded in 2000, it has raised five venture capital funds, completed over 400 venture investments in 67 emerging industrial technology leaders and managed five third-party investment mandates, including for the governments of Switzerland and Singapore. Emerald is a trusted open innovation partner for numerous multi-national corporations, leveraging deep industry expertise and rich global deal flow in the areas of energy, water, industrial IT, advanced materials, mobility, robotics, and agriculture. http://www.emerald-ventures.com About Inci Holding: With foundations laid by Cevdet Inci 68 years ago, Inci Holding today employs 3,000 people in nine companies, mainly in the automotive sector. As well as manufacturing batteries and wheels for the automotive supplier industry, Inci Holding also produces minibars for the hotel equipment sector and is active in logistics and the venture capital ecosystem. The groups social responsibility activities are undertaken by the Cevdet Inci Education Foundation. The Inci Group supplies global giants, exporting 70% of its output to over 100 countries. A family business run on corporate governance principles, Inci Holdings continued development contributes to the Turkish economy. http://www.inciholding.com/en About Cycle Capital Management: Cycle Capital Management (CCM) is an impact investor and Canada's largest cleantech venture capital investment platform with AUM (assets under management) close to CAD $0.5B. With offices in Montreal, Toronto and Qingdao - in continental China - and a presence in New York and Seattle, CCM invests in companies at the development and growth stages that commercialize clean technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, optimize resource use and improve process efficiency throughout North America and China. CCM is also the Founder of the Ecofuel Accelerator and the Co-Founder of the Ecofuel Fund. http://www.cyclecapital.com About Nabtesco Technology Ventures: Nabtesco Technology Ventures (NTV) is a corporate venture fund launched in 2018 by Japans Nabtesco Corporation. NTVs goal is to explore new technologies, applications and business models in areas of strategic interest to Nabtesco Corporation, such as Rhombus advanced power electronics products for electrical energy conversion and control. The EUR 75 million fund invests primarily, but not exclusively, in mobility, robotics, motors, sensors, additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things technologies. NTV evaluates and manages equity investments and joint development projects with start-up companies around the world. Investment activities are managed under strategic partnership with Emerald Technology Ventures, a global leader in technology venture capital. https://nabtesco-ventures.com/ About Greenhouse Capital Partners: Greenhouse Capital Partners is a growth capital firm investing in companies with established business models promoting health and sustainability within the areas of Food, Agriculture, Industrials and the Environment. The firm believes that an economic revolution is underway, powered by technology and simultaneously shaped by evolving system needs, that is rapidly changing the way we produce, move, consume and preserve goods and natural resources. Greenhouse is at the forefront of investing in this wave of change and partners with values driven teams building solutions to help make the world more resourceful and resilient. http://greenhousecap.com/ -------- For more information: Rick Sander, CEO Rhombus Energy Solutions, Inc. rick@rhombusenergy.com Markus Moor, Partner Emerald Technology Ventures markus.moor@emerald-ventures.com Philip van den Berg, Head of Marketing Emerald Technology Ventures philip.vandenberg@emerald-ventures.com If only Dan Goerke could hold his wife's hand. Maybe she would talk again. Maybe she would look at him and smile like she used to. Maybe she would eat and stop wasting away. Since the pandemic began, Goerke's wife, Denise - 63 years old and diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease - had declined dramatically. Left alone in her nursing home, she had lost 16 pounds, could not form the simplest words, no longer responded to the voices of her children. In recent weeks, she had stopped recognizing even the man she loved. Goerke, 61, could tell the isolation was killing his wife, and there was nothing he could do but watch. "Every day it gets a little worse," he said. "We've lost months, maybe years, of her already." Beyond the U.S. deaths caused directly by the novel coronavirus, more than 134,200 people have died of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia since March. That is 13,200 more U.S. deaths caused by dementia than expected compared with previous years, according to an analysis of federal data by The Washington Post. Overlooked amid America's war against the coronavirus is this reality: People with dementia are dying not just of the virus but of the very strategy of isolation that's supposed to protect them. In recent months, doctors have reported increased falls, pulmonary infections, depression and sudden frailty in patients who had been stable for years. Social and mental stimulation are among the few tools that can slow the march of dementia. Yet even as U.S. leaders have rushed to reopen universities, bowling alleys and malls, nursing homes say they continue begging in vain for sufficient testing, protective equipment and help. "It's like we as a country just don't care anymore about older people," Goerke said as he drove to his wife's nursing home in Atlanta's northern suburbs. "We've written them off." In recent weeks, Goerke has struggled with anger - at U.S. leaders and at people who continue to reject simple measures such as wearing masks. As long as the virus keeps spreading, Goerke knows there's no way to safely visit his wife. His worst fear is that by the time he can hold her hand, it will be to say goodbye. With cases in Georgia still high, the closest thing Denise's nursing home has allowed is for Goerke to stand for a few minutes by the front door while attendants wheel his wife to the lobby. So for months he has been traveling to that doorway and calling out - trying to get a reaction, to cut through the thickening fog of his wife's dementia. "I still believe a spark of her is in there," he said as he arrived once more at her door on a recent Saturday. He phoned the nursing aides inside. A few minutes later, they pushed Denise into the lobby, her body so frail it was disappearing into the wheelchair. Goerke took off his mask in case it would help her recognize him. And he called out. "Hi, Denise!" Inside the darkened lobby, he thought he saw his wife's lips move. - - - The United States has counted tens of thousands of excess deaths since the pandemic began. These are deaths that are not directly attributed to the coronavirus and that occur because of problems such as hypertension or sepsis. But they are occurring at much higher levels than in the past, experts say, in part because of the pandemic's indirect effects including hospitals being overrun or care being delayed. Among the sources of excess deaths, dementia has produced by far the most, more than the next two categories, diabetes and heart disease combined. For one man in Indianapolis, the rapid deterioration of his dementia made it harder to swallow. Food that went down the wrong way led to a lung infection and eventually death, his daughter said. For a woman in Boston, her body - no longer able to move - became so atrophied and frail that a slight fall sent her into a death spiral of hospitalizations, her doctor said. Other cases have been more subtle. In isolation, many are struggling with severe depression. "We have clients who have lost almost 30 pounds," said Sharon O'Connor, who runs a program for dementia patients at Iona Senior Services, a District of Columbia nonprofit. "Some just don't have reason to get up anymore, so they stay in bed all day. Others sit by themselves in a dark room." In interviews with The Post, people with dementia who are still able to communicate said they felt trapped and doomed. Activities that used to stimulate their minds - music therapy, game nights, Jazzercise - have ground to a halt. At most facilities, residents are not even able to eat lunch together anymore. One woman in D.C. - who has not seen her children, grandchildren or siblings since March - described the horror of witnessing her mind deteriorate in isolation. "I not talking with the whole sentence anymore," She wrote in a series of text messages about her decline. "Not got balance. Painful cramping." It's not just the loss of interaction, said Jason Karlawish, an Alzheimer's expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "Families fill in a lot of gaps at nursing homes. They do much of the feeding and bathing. They advocate and communicate," he said. "If you think of Alzheimer's as a disability, family members are almost like a cognitive wheelchair for patients who have lost part of their mind. They're essential." - - - In 2012, when Goerke and his wife got word of her diagnosis, Denise made him promise to never put her in a nursing home. But after four years of juggling his work as a commercial real estate broker with the full-time care Denise needed, Goerke worried constantly that his wife would accidentally hurt herself when he was not looking. The day he moved her to a long-term care facility, he felt relief, shame, guilt. The one consolation: He could visit anytime. Seven days a week, he fed her lunch, combed her hair, showed her pictures of their kids. They had been together for 23 years. Both had been divorced, and they spent their first five years taking turns getting cold feet before realizing their love was stronger than any fears about the future. Denise had worked as a saleswoman for Xerox, but she was an artist at heart. Her children recalled growing up in a house filled with projects in progress, walls constantly being painted or being evaluated for a repaint. And she was a social creature. Even later at the nursing home, with seven siblings, three children and three grandkids, there were days when they had to coordinate all their visits. More often than not, they would be greeted by the Denise they knew: eager to laugh at their jokes, interjecting with a word or nod, always reaching out for their hands. Then came the pandemic. Denise's nursing home had long struggled financially, even before the virus. At the outset of the pandemic it was suddenly fighting to buy protective equipment and retain staffers afraid of falling ill. A tiny portion of the U.S. population lives in nursing homes, yet the facilities have accounted for about 40% of U.S. deaths of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Overwhelmed, Denise's facility announced in late April that it was closing. Goerke immediately started dialing other residences. Many, desperate to keep the virus out, refused to take anyone new. It took two weeks and rejections from 15 nursing homes before he found one willing to take Denise. By then, his wife was the only resident left at her old facility. Her last four days before the move were spent alone, except for a few employees preparing to shutter the building. She stopped eating and simply lay in her room at the end of a long, empty hallway. "I wasn't sure she would live long enough for us to get her to the new place," said Goerke, who checked in daily by phone and FaceTime. "She looked ashen. Her skin became paper-thin." At the new nursing home, staff members scheduled window visits for families. That's when Goerke saw the pandemic's toll on his wife. The bright blond hair he used to comb was dull and sparse. Her face was pale and gaunt. Goerke had to yell through the thick window to be heard. The first few weeks, Denise reached out her hand. He could see through the glass that she was confused about why he would not come in, and the look on her face felt like an accusation. Worse yet was when Denise stopped reaching out a few weeks later and just sat in her wheelchair with a vacant stare. - - - "It's me," Goerke shouted from the doorway, during his recent Saturday visit. The only reply from the nursing home lobby: silence. Undeterred, Goerke kept the conversation upbeat, pausing every few words to give Denise a chance to respond: "It's a hot one out here. . . . Almost 90 degrees. . . . You're lucky to be inside." On this particular Saturday, Goerke had invited others in hopes they might jog his wife's memory. Denise's son Steve Ayotte soon arrived, along with his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. "Hi, Mom," Steve said. He turned to his daughter, "Can you say hi to Nana?" "Hi, Nis-ey," the girl said shyly. Finally, it was one of Goerke's more energetic "hellos" that seemed to hit home. The sudden response emerged from his wife's lips with a startled tone, as if Denise was surprised to find them all suddenly before her: "Hi." To Goerke, that small word was everything. It was proof his wife had not yet reached the final stages of her disease. More than that, it was a bulwark against that encroaching future. All these days he has spent talking to himself at her doorway, he said, were worth it if it helped engage her mind even a little. They were worth it if it meant some part of her heard him and felt a little less alone. - - - Goerke, who used to feed Denise daily, recently asked her caregivers about her meals. He was alarmed when they said they now have to persuade her to open her mouth. He worries that Denise, no longer able to speak, may be expressing distress the only way she still can. Most people are suffering in some way during the pandemic. But it feels at times, Goerke said, like the suffering of people in nursing homes has been shoved into a corner to make room for everyone else's. Even now, as the country debates endlessly about reopening schools and protecting the economy, there's little urgency about the plight of people such as his wife. Countries such as the Netherlands have safely reopened their nursing homes without any increase in coronavirus cases by providing protective equipment, testing and rigorous protocols. But in the United States, little of the trillions of dollars in emergency funding has gone to nursing homes. For months, the Trump administration has talked of getting more testing into nursing homes, but the effort continues to be plagued with problems. This month, Florida and Arizona said they want to reopen nursing homes, but they have yet to explain how they will do so safely given shortages in equipment, staffing and testing. The situation is especially difficult in Goerke's state, Georgia, which rushed this spring to reopen tattoo parlors, hair salons, movie theaters and restaurants. Even as the state had the country's highest rate of new cases, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, pursued a weeks-long lawsuit to stop Atlanta from requiring masks and only dropped the case last month. Desperate for help, Goerke sent a letter to the governor two weeks ago. "I am Denise's spouse, caregiver, and advocate," he wrote. "I believe the state of Georgia can help my family, and others like mine." He pleaded for rapid testing in nursing homes. He proposed convening a task force and offered suggestions. He begged the governor to rescind his emergency rules putting facilities on lockdown. As long as they remain in place, there is only one way Goerke will be able to hold his wife. The rules include one exception for families to enter nursing homes: for deathbed visits. - - - As Goerke and the rest of Denise's family wrapped up their visit at her door, they talked about what they've already lost. Goerke recalled the last time he had heard Denise laugh. It was four months ago during a video call just after the nursing home had given Denise a haircut. "I told her how good she looked, and she smiled and gave me a little laugh," he said, grinning at the memory. Later, in private, he would explain just how much that laugh had meant to him. "It's like you're a ship stuck in the fog and suddenly you see the lighthouse. It's golden. It's the world. It's the only thing I hope for when I visit," he said. "It's like there's my Denise, and for a moment, we're back home together." There would be no laugh that Saturday at the doorway. The startled "hi" murmured by Denise early on would be the only response she would give. When it came time to leave, Goerke chose his words carefully. Goodbyes were the one occasion, since the pandemic began, when Denise's dementia now worked in their favor. Instead of goodbye, he gently told her, "I gotta go run some errands. I'll be back." For better or worse, Goerke said, his wife no longer remembered him well enough to miss him. - - - METHODOLOGY The Washington Post gathered data on select causes of death by state between 2014 and early 2020, published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and used a model previously developed by a research team led by the Yale University school of public health to estimate the number of deaths that would normally be expected each week from March 1 to Aug. 16 The estimate takes into account seasonal variations as well as year-to-year variations in mortality levels but did not adjust for the flu. The mortality data is collected from state health departments, which report deaths at different rates. It usually takes about three weeks for death data to stabilize, but even then, it is not complete. As a result, it is expected that the numbers of deaths in the period The Post analyzed will increase as states continue reporting additional data to the NCHS. Details on the team's statistical approach can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/weinbergerlab/excess_pi_covid/blob/master/post%20methods.pdf. The Post has published the data and methodology on GitHub at https://github.com/wpinvestigative/excess_deaths_covid19/tree/master/specific_causes. ~ Company to use funds to pursue additional new acquisitions and organic expansions to provide added value to customers around the globe ~ ~ Investors include Oxford Properties, BentallGreenOak, D1 Capital Partners, Cohen & Steers, OPTrust, CenterSquare Investment Management, Morgan Stanley Tactical Value, among others ~ ~ Oxford Properties Group President Michael Turner to join Lineages Board of Directors ~ ~ Company to name new Board Observers, including BentallGreenOaks John Carrafiell and SOHO Chinas Zhang Xin ~ Lineage Logistics, LLC (Lineage or the Company), the worlds largest and most innovative temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions provider, today announced it has raised $1.6 billion in equity from new and existing strategic partners. Participating investors include Oxford Properties Group (Oxford Properties), BentallGreenOak, D1 Capital Partners, Cohen & Steers, OPTrust, CenterSquare Investment Management, and investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Tactical Value, among others. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005331/en/ Lineage Logistics has grown its cubic feet by 60% annually since 2008 to 1.9 billion cubic feet, making it the largest global temperature-controlled industrial REIT. (Photo: Business Wire) This significant investment -- from both new and existing investors -- is validation of our business model, our innovative strategy and our plans to continue expanding our footprint as the worlds largest temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics company, said Greg Lehmkuhl, President and CEO of Lineage. As we reimagine the food supply chain and execute on our company purpose to eliminate waste and help feed the world, we remain focused on driving value for our more than 5,000 customers by operating globally and deploying industry-changing technologies to create efficiencies across our 320 facilities. During 2020, Lineage has announced 16 acquisitions and executed on 15 new expansions and greenfield facilities. The Company also continues to develop a number of the worlds most advanced fully automated warehouses that will reduce environmental intensity, while providing flexible and expansive capacity for customers during a period where the global pandemic is putting acute strain on the global food supply chain. New capital will fuel these increasingly large investments. Since the companys founding in 2008, we have been on a mission to transform the food chain by building a global platform, fueling it with advanced technologies and putting in place a world-class leadership team to lead this industry, said Adam Forste, Co-Executive Chairman of Lineage and Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Bay Grove, which founded and manages Lineage Logistics. From the acquisition of our first warehouse, we have been able to build Lineage by having great investors -- this capital raise adds an incredible group of new strategic partners and board participants that will further accelerate our ability to grow and innovate. In conjunction with this capital raise, Oxford Properties President, Michael Turner, will join Lineages Board of Directors, bringing with him decades of commercial real estate experience. Oxford is a leading global investor, developer and manager of commercial real estate with approximately $60 billion in assets under management. Operating across four continents, Oxfords portfolio spans over 100 million square feet across both global gateway cities and high-growth hubs where it invests in properties, portfolios, development sites, debt, securities and platforms across the risk-reward spectrum. Over recent years, Oxford has substantially increased our exposure to logistics real estate by selectively investing in a series of best-in-class operators across the globe, and Lineage represents the premier operator in cold storage sector, said Oxford Properties President Michael Turner. I look forward to working with the Lineage management team and the rest of the Board, which has transformed the Company into the global market leader. Our investment demonstrates our confidence in the team, the platform it has built and Lineages growth opportunities. The Company also announced new Board Observers, each with extensive real estate investment experience, including John Carrafiell, a Founder & Senior Managing Partner of real estate investment management and advisory firm BentallGreenOak, and Zhang Xin, CEO SOHO China, one of Chinas largest and best known commercial property developers. Morgan Stanley and Eastdil Secured acted as placement agents, and Latham & Watkins, LLP served as legal counsel for Lineage. About Lineage Logistics Lineage is the worlds largest and most innovative provider of temperature-controlled logistics solutions. Lineages expertise in end-to-end logistical solutions, its unrivaled real estate network, and its use of technology combine to promote food safety, increase distribution efficiency, advance sustainability, lessen environmental impact, and minimize supply chain waste. As a result, Lineage helps customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small family-owned businesses increase the efficiency and protect the integrity of their temperature-controlled supply chain. Lineage has grown its cubic feet by 60% annually since 2008 to 1.9 billion cubic feet, making it the largest global temperature-controlled industrial REIT. In recognition of the companys leading innovations, Lineage was recognized as the No 1. Data Science company on Fast Companys Annual list of The Worlds Most Innovative Companies in 2019, in addition to ranking 23rd overall in an evaluation of thousands of companies worldwide. (www.lineagelogistics.com) About Bay Grove Bay Grove is a principal investment firm dedicated to partnering with strong management teams to invest in and build long-term platform investments. Since 2008, Bay Grove has built Lineage Logistics through acquisitions and investments completed in partnership with entrepreneurs, customers and employees. The firm has deep experience in the warehousing and logistics industry and also seeks to make investments in other attractive sectors. Bay Grove is based in San Francisco. (www.bay-grove.com) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005331/en/ As we contemplate easing back into occasional days at the office, you may be looking at your pre-March wardrobe in bewilderment. Did we really wear so many suits? What were those silk blouses for? And were we actually that bothered with high heels? The time in lockdown has made people rethink their priorities and expectations around all facets of life, including getting dressed for work. Many of us spent the last six months mining the decidedly more casual portion of our wardrobes, as leggings, tent dresses and trainers comprised our work-from-home (WFH) uniforms. This set-up is likely to continue for workers across the country, though with the weather changing and autumn collections arriving in stores, you may be considering a workwear refresh. One thing WFH has taught us is there's no point having a whole wardrobe full of 'office' clothes that we never wear outside the office. That doesn't mean you need to invest in a load of new pieces, it's just a case of figuring out how to make what you already have work that bit harder for you. Stiff blazers, tailored trousers and posh frocks may look a little daunting, but it is possible to strike a balance in your work wardrobe. Dress codes had been gradually relaxing long before the coronavirus pandemic, as trainers, dark denim and sweatshirts became regular fixtures in the workplace. Now, what we consider 'professional' clothing is set to become even more fluid. Whether your desk is at home, in an office or somewhere in between, you'll want to feel comfortable and put together. Here, we break down the staples for the new era in workwear. Office supplies The return to the office can be intimidating. We have to get used to commuting again, wearing make-up again and, of course, getting fully dressed again, all while trying to follow the latest news and regulations around the pandemic. Start by keeping things simple - you'll already have plenty to contend with without having to worry about whether this floral skirt goes with that crepe blouse. Don't feel you need to compensate for five months of underdressing by suddenly jumping back into formal attire. You may be dreading putting on that trouser suit that's been languishing in the wardrobe untouched, but consider splitting it up. Try the trousers alone with a fine knit jumper or cotton shirt, or wear the blazer open over a plain T-shirt or button-down with dark jeans. Video of the Day Stick to flat shoes - as in the 'before times', trainers are fine, though give your battered everyday ones a miss for a clean white pair, or go for this season's trending chunky-soled loafers. The commute also signals the return of the handbag, something many may have gone without in lockdown, instead favouring canvas tote bags and pockets for the few belongings we need on venturing out of the house. Now, however, you'll want something that can store all of your essentials, from masks and hand sanitiser to reusable water bottles and packed lunches, so forget the viral mini bags of yesteryear and embrace a proper bag. It doesn't need to be the regulation black leather tote - treat yourself to something with style and have fun with colour and shape, so it won't feel so much like a burden. Zoom to improve WFH gave rise to the phenomenon of waist-up dressing, as Zoom calls allowed workers to put the effort in on top while leaving slippers and leggings conveniently off screen. If there is one 'It' piece that emerged during lockdown - other than the face mask, that is - it was the Zoom blouse. It came in many forms: busy floral prints, vibrant block colours, exaggerated shoulders, ruffled pie-crust necklines, and the oversized Peter Pan collar, as seen recently on Holly Willoughby and Angela Scanlon. There's no shortage of statement blouses available second hand and on the high street, and it'll do all the work for you. If that sounds too fussy, try a swanky cardigan. Bright hues, pretty patterns and charming embroidery are particularly striking, or swap out the buttons on an old number for something a little bolder. Olivia Rubin uses crystals, while knitwear brand Hades features buttons inspired by Greek mythology and Shakespeare. These details - whether an interesting neckline, exaggerated shape or offbeat buttons - draw the eye and give the impression that you took the time to consider your outfit, while you can phone in the rest of it. When wearing your Zoom-ready top outside, it'll make even the simplest jeans and trainers look fresh and modern. Jewellery can help with this too. Something as simple as a pair of gold hoop earrings or a pendant necklace can lift the most basic outfit, while hair accessories can distract from a bad hair day. Also enjoying a moment in the limelight are your everyday glasses. As well as feeling gentler on the eyes than contacts, a distinctive pair of specs can do the talking when you don't have the time or the inclination to put on eye make-up. Think playful shapes and thick frames in bold colours - fashionable as well as functional. The flex factor Or maybe, like many modern workers, your job takes you to a variety of locations, from school drop-off to office meetings, to lunches out with clients, to video conferences at home. To save yourself changing into different outfits for Zoom and the outside world, combine the best of both by opting for laid-back shapes in elevated fabrics. Joggers have come a long way over lockdown, and once you find a pair smart enough, they won't raise an eyebrow in a boardroom or a fancy restaurant. It's safer to steer clear of obvious 'loungewear' in cotton or cashmere and opt for luxe velvet, structured wool or silky styles, which instantly take them from tracksuit bottoms to trousers. You'll want to make sure they hold their shape and don't sag at the knees or backside when you sit down. Design features like pintuck detailing, a turn-up hem (rather than elastic cuffs) and a slim fit can lend additional polish too. If you haven't given up on skirts entirely, the satin bias-cut midi skirts that were trending last year are a socially acceptable way to wear a nightgown outdoors, though they require a bit more fuss than a one-and-done piece. Shirt dresses are a great help here: the long sleeves, collar and button-down front will bring a formal finish to even casual denim versions. You can dress things up by layering a blazer over it with a pair of ankle boots, or if you've already got a posh shirt dress hanging neglected in the wardrobe, tone it down a notch with a jumper on top and finish with trainers or ballet flats. Jumpsuits also come in handy, particularly looser-fit styles that feel one step up from pyjamas. Those throw-on-and-go outfits are your best friend in the new normal: a low-effort, high-reward formula that neatly eliminates the time you'd spend hemming and hawing over coordinating separates. Working in a pandemic is complicated enough, so do yourself a favour and make those early mornings that bit easier on yourself. JASPER, ALTA.The woodland caribou herds in Jasper National Park are dwindling. An update posted on the Parks Canada website suggests that the three herds managed by the federal agency in the park in Alberta have dropped to critical levels. We have been monitoring caribou ... in Jasper for quite some time and, unfortunately, monitoring the decline of those herds, Dave Argument, resource conservation manager, said Wednesday in an interview. He said the Tonquin herd has about 45 caribou, while the Brazeau herd in the far south has 10 to 15 animals left and neither has enough breeding females to grow the southern mountain population. Argument said the Maligne herd, which only had four animals when it was last seen in 2018, is officially considered extirpated. We found the last surviving female dead of unknown causes, he said. Between March of 2018 when we located that female and the following fall survey flights, those remaining animals have disappeared from the landscape. We dont know what happened to them. Theyve either wandered away to find other caribou to join up with ... or otherwise met their demise. Officials have identified five past, current and future threats to caribou in Jasper National Park. They include altered predator-prey dynamics, predator access, human disturbance, habitat loss and small population effects. With predator access, for example, Parks Canada said the caribou can survive in deep snow, which typically drives predators to lower elevations. Trails packed by skiers and snowshoers, however, can help wolves get into the areas to prey on the herds. The agency noted that human disturbance means caribou in the park can be disrupted by skiers and hikers with dogs and they can be killed in vehicle collisions on roadways. The dire situation has the Alberta Wilderness Association calling for immediate action by the federal government to try to save the herds. This is an iconic Canadian wildlife species. Its on our quarter, said Carolyn Campbell, a conservation specialist with the Alberta-based environmental group. The federal government has a responsibility in its own backyard the national parks to really move on a good plan, which we feel is probably there. And we are just really perplexed and concerned why its moving in such slow motion when the populations are declining at speed. We just need to act now while we still can, added Campbell. She and the association have written a letter to federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Alan Fehr, the superintendent of Jasper National Park. The letter asked that Parks Canada conclude its lengthy consideration of an emergency breeding program and, if viable, proceed with urgency to stabilize and recover the Tonquin and Brazeau populations. It suggested the agency also needs to retain winter access limits in the Maligne range. In the national park, Argument said he and his team continue to try to rebuild the caribou population or at least slow its decline. Those include things like ... restricting winter access to large areas of the park, he said. That was a difficult measure to impose, to tell our visitors that they can no longer access these ... winter ski destinations or other places to prevent human-created trails into those high elevation critical habitat areas. He said they restrict flights in the area, dont handle any of the animals and manage wolves and elk differently than they had in the past to reduce predation risk for caribou. Its quite a suite of things to try to slow the decline, but ... the small population effects on the size of the herd at this point are a problem that the caribou are challenged to overcome. Argument said Parks Canada is still assessing more hands-on conservation measures, including a potential breeding program, but no funding decisions have been made. Read more about: Year 2021: Meet the CMs who Stepped Down, Returned to Power BS Yediyurappa arrives in Delhi to discuss Karnataka cabinet expansion India pti-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Sep 17: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa arrived in the national capital on Thursday to discuss cabinet expansion in the state with the BJP top brass. During his two-day visit, the chief minister is scheduled to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP national president J P Nadda as well as Union Ministers to discuss the state's issues. Sex workers in Karnataka adopt community networking strategy to meet needs during COVID times "I have come to Delhi to discuss with several Union Ministers about developmental works of the state. At the same time, I will also discuss the cabinet expansion with the party leaders to ascertain their views," Yediyurappa told reporters here. Covid vaccine in India by early 2021, Health Min raises hope | Oneindia News He is likely to meet Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday, and Modi, Nadda and other Union Ministers on Friday. The chief minister's son and BJP state vice-president BY Vijayendra is accompanying him. Yediyurappa is under pressure to expand Karnataka's cabinet at the earliest to appease disgruntled legislators although he is not keen to make any such changes right now. Evinrude outboard engines are on display during the 55th Paris International Boat show at the Porte de Versailles, southern Paris, on Dec. 4, 2015. (Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images) US Navy Officers Wife Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Ship Military Boats to China The wife of a U.S. Navy officer based in Jacksonville has pleaded guilty on Sept. 16 to charges related to her role in a scheme to smuggle military-grade equipment to a company in China. Yang Yang, a 34-year-old naturalized citizen who immigrated from China, pleaded guilty to two charges: submitting false information to export, and attempting to fraudulently export, maritime raiding craft and engines to China in violation of federal law, according to a Sept. 16 press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Yang is the wife of Yang Fan, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant who is based at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. According to court documents, her husband, born in China around 1985, became a U.S. citizen around 2006. He trained to be a naval flight officer and held a top-secret U.S. security clearance. The two got married around 2013. He and Yang Yang were among four defendants arrested in October last year in connection to the scheme. The other two defendants were Ge Songtao, 50, a Chinese national living in China, and Ges employee Zheng Yan, a 28-year-old resident of China. Yang Fan also faces federal charges in a separate scheme to run a firearm tourism business for Chinese tourists. According to court documents, Ge was the alleged mastermind of the scheme. He identified himself as the chairman of a Chinese firm named Shanghai Breeze Technology Corporation on his U.S. visa application. He was issued a B1/B2 non-immigration visa in September 2016. Yang Yang became an employee of Shanghai Breeze in November 2016. In 2019, she placed an order with a California-based manufacturer of inflatable watercraft called Wing, wanting to purchase seven combat rubber raiding craft and eight Evinrude multi-fuel engines, according to court documents. Her husband acted as her adviser, according to an indictment. These military-model engines can run on gasoline, diesel fuel, or jet fuel. Vessels equipped with these engines can operate after being launched from a submerged submarine or dropped into the ocean from an aircraft. According to court documents, no comparable engine was being manufactured in China. An unnamed Wing representative suggested Yang purchase a cheaper model, engines that only run on gasoline, but Yang refused and insisted on buying the multi-fuel engines. The scheme involved not using the name Shanghai Breeze as the company placing the order with Wing. Instead, Zheng Yan asked Yang that the order be shipped to Hong Kong, rather than mainland China, saying that Americans were more sensitive about doing business with the mainland, as opposed to Hong Kong. Yang falsely said that her order was intended for a consumer in Hong Kong, a company called United Vision Ltd. Another Hong Kong-based company, Belt Consulting, paid for the order, wire-transferring about $114,834.27 to Wing as down payments for the order, according to court documents. Neither of the two Hong Kong companies had any presence on the internet in 2019, according to court documents. And the United States did not have any records of exporting goods to either of the two companies. Wing initially indicated that it would ship two raiding craft and two multi-fuel engines by air freight on Oct. 8, but the shipment was subsequently delayed until Oct. 15, 2019. The four defendants were arrested on Oct. 17 last year, according to the DOJ. On that day, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) raided the Yangs San Jose home. According to the DOJ press release, Zheng Yan pleaded guilty to conspiring to submit false export information and to fraudulently export the raiding craft and engines on Aug. 13. Meanwhile, Fan Yang and Ge have pleaded not guilty and are set to go on trial on Feb. 1 next year. Yang Yang faces a maximum of 15 years in federal prison, according to the DOJ. The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that police, while targeting the owners of a motel business in Warkworth, went beyond the bounds of a legitimate police intelligence operation. Their actions included two breaches of privacy, an unlawful search, and inappropriate involvement in tenancy and building compliance issues. The motel business owners complained to the authority after learning that police had disclosed personal information, including photographs taken during a police search at their motel, to their landlord in December 2016. The search lead to the arrests of one of the motel business owners and another person for drug-related offending. The owners were subsequently told in early 2017 that their lease would be cancelled. They sold their business at a substantial loss. The authority determined that parts of the police search were unlawful, as they did not have reasonable grounds to suspect there was evidential material in some areas where they searched. Following the search, a police officer called and emailed the landlord, and sent photographs taken during the search of private areas of the motel. The photographs wrongly implied that public areas of the motel complex were being kept in poor condition. The officer then disclosed further personal information, with the intention of convincing the landlord to remove the motel business owners from their tenancy. The authority found that most of these disclosures were unjustified. It also found that the police officer who was responsible for the wrongful release of personal information intentionally misled one of the complainants about who released the information, and subsequently lied to fellow officers during the police investigation into the matter. While police were justified in addressing what they perceived to be a problem in the community, the actions they took were an abuse of police power that had significant consequences for the individuals involved, said the Chair of the Authority, Judge Doherty. However, Waitemata District Commander Superintendent Naila Hassan says the officer involved was acting with good intent and trying to do the right thing regarding criminal activity at the premise. Police disputed that the police officer lied. As the IPCA notes, police were justified in addressing a known issue with criminal activity at that location, she says. While some of the information released to the landlord was ill-advised, the officer believed they were acting in the best interests of the Warkworth community. Police considered this matter as an employment investigation into the officer concerned. The investigation identified lessons to be learned and the officer was spoken to about their decision-making in regards to the release of information. Mandatory training will soon be delivered to all police staff so they are aware of new reporting obligations under the revised Privacy Act (2020), which comes into effect on December 1. Martin Griffiths, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Yemen, and Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said the security, political and humanitarian situations in Yemen are getting worse. Fighting is increasing in Marib province, which has not only forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes but also jeopardised peace negotiation efforts in Yemen. Apart from economic challenges and water shortages, about more than 9 million Yemeni people are facing starvation, food insecurity and lack of healthcare services, they noted. The decline in international aid and fuel shortages have also added further complications to the problems, the officials said, adding that the UN has received only 30% of what is needed to sustain humanitarian efforts in Yemen this year. The Houthis closure of Sanaa airport may interrupt the delivery of essential goods and medical supplies. Meanwhile, the UN technical mission has yet to gain access to the Safer oil tanker to perform its duties, they said. At the meeting, UNSC members called on related parties to push ahead with implementing the Stockholm and Riyadh agreements while condemning violence against civilians, including children, especially the recruitment and use of children for violent acts. They appealed for more aid for Yemen to maintain humanitarian programmes and continue combating COVID-19, voicing support for the UNs intermediary and reconciliation efforts, including the proposal on a joint declaration on a nationwide ceasefire. In his remarks, Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, head of Vietnams permanent mission to the UN, expressed concern about the recent hostilities in Yemen as well as the recruitment and use of children for violent acts. He urged the UN technical mission to the Safer oil tanker to be permitted early and relevant sides to seriously carry out the Stockholm and Riyadh agreements. The diplomat also showed support for efforts by the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Yemen and UN agencies in promoting a comprehensive political solution in this country. Two Chinese Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft briefly entered Taiwan's air defence identification zone on Wednesday. Handout photo Two People's Liberation Army warplanes have approached Taiwan in yet another incursion that signals growing Chinese hostility towards the self-ruled island, ahead of a trip by a senior US diplomat to boost economic cooperation with Taipei. The PLA Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft briefly entered the southwestern side of the island's air defence identification zone (AIDZ) on Wednesday night and were warned off by the Taiwanese air force, the island's defence ministry said on Thursday. A host of PLA warplanes has flown into the southwest of Taiwan's AIDZ since last Wednesday in what Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen described as a serious provocation that would escalate cross-strait tensions and affect regional peace and stability. The timing of the latest incursion ahead of a planned visit by US Undersecretary of State Keith Krach was intended to serve as a warning to the US and Taiwan, observers said. Krach, who is expected to arrive in Taipei on Thursday afternoon, will be the most senior State Department official to visit Taiwan. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian met with the leadership of the French Dassault Systemes company, the Presidential Office told Armenpress. Issues relating to the implementation of special educational projects developed by Dassault Systemes in the IT sector were discussed during the meeting. The meeting touched upon the cooperation development and prospects with Armenia in the science-technology and education sectors. In particular, the meeting sides discussed the concrete cooperation directions within the frames of the Armenian presidential initiative ATOM (Advanced Tomorrow), especially considering artificial intelligence, data management, math modelling as prospective fields. Dassault Systemes is a subsidiary of the Dassault Group created in 1981. It develops and markets PLM software and services that support industrial processes by providing a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan Michelle Obama says she and former President Barack Obama 'couldve never gotten away with some of the stuff going on now' in the White House in her latest podcast episode. The former First Lady reflected on race and the expectations of black America during her husband's presidency in new episode of her Spotify podcast Wednesday. 'When we were in the White House, we could've never gotten away with some of the stuff that's going on now, not because of the public, but our community wouldn't have accepted that,' Obama said in the pocast. 'You worked, you did your best every day. You showed up,' she added. Michelle Obama says she and former President Barack Obama 'couldve never gotten away with some of the stuff going on now' in the White House in her latest podcast episode. Barack and Michelle Obama pictured together in the Oval Office in February 2010 Her comments were a dig at Donald Trump's leadership in office. Donald and Melania Trump pictured in the Oval Office in June 2017 She spoke with her mother Marian Robinson and her brother Craig and they recalled how he once got stopped by the police riding his bike down the street when he was just 10 or 11. That traumatizing shaped the rest of their lives, they revealed. 'What a lot of folks who are not in our position don't understand is that this is such a way of life when it comes to interacting with the rest of the world,' Obama said. 'When you leave the safety of your home and go out into the street, where being Black is a crime in and of itself, we have all had to learn how to operate outside of our homes with a level of caution and fear, because you never know,' she added. Obama added that 'almost everybody' she knows went through 'some kind of incident where they were just minding their own business but living Black, and got accused of something.' In Obama's latest podcast episode she reflected on race with her mother Marian Robinson and her brother Craig She said in the podcast that 'almost everybody' she knows went through 'some kind of incident where they were just minding their own business but living Black, and got accused of something' Obama said that black America wouldn't 'accept' the things the Trump administration does today if they were still in office Obama said that from a young age black children are taught that they have to exceed expectations in order to be viewed as good enough. 'Youre taught, you know, people are going to assume the worst of you. So youve got to be better than, youve got to be 10 times better than,' she said. The family discussed the protests that have unfolded in all 50 states decrying systemic racism and police brutality, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May. 'The fact that there are people out there that treat us less than, when we're working so hard to be better than, that's where the pain comes from. That's what these young people are so angry about,' Obama said. She urged critics of the protests to think twice before casting judgement on people taking to the streets. 'The notion that people are out there wondering about these protests,' Obama said. 'Its like, do you know how much it takes, that it takes to get up everyday, and be accused of being less than what you are.' She urged critics of the protests to think twice before casting judgement saying: 'The notion that people are out there wondering about these protests...Its like, do you know how much it takes, that it takes to get up everyday, and be accused of being less than what you are' In her powerful DNC address last month she said: ' Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country' At the Democratic National Convention in August Obama delivered a powerful address where she slammed Trumps leadership saying he was 'the wrong president for our country'. 'Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,' she said. 'He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is,' she added. Donald Trump has been disapproving of the protests seeking to reform the police system and end racism. Yves here. Most political analysts forget that the South once had a lot of manufacturing jobs in the textile and furniture industries. In keeping, I helped a Japanese billionaire buy some cotton spinning mills in North Carolina in the late 1980s. This article describes how the pro-business New Democrats sent a wrecking ball through those industries via Nafta and other trade deal, and with them, lost the support of lower income whites. By Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, Stanford University. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website For thirty years after the Civil Rights Act, a sizable share of white Southerners still voted Democrat. That changed when the party embraced trade deals that hurt American workers. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 revolutionized politics in the American South. Literacy tests were banned entirely in covered areas, and the Attorney General was authorized to assign federal examiners to enroll qualified voters in these areas. By the 1980s, southern black registration rates were typically higher than those of blacks in other regions, at times exceeding white registration rates in the same state and year. Progress in electing black candidates to office took longer, driven by litigation to overcome vote dilution practices by southern jurisdictions. By 1984, however, the number of southern black elected officials surpassed that in the rest of the country, and the growth continued through the 1980s and 1990s. Contrary to the widespread belief that the region turned Republican in direct response to the Civil Rights Revolution, expanded voting rights led to twenty-five years of competitive two-party politics, featuring strong biracial coalitions in the Democratic Party. Martin Luther King, Jr., advanced this prospect in a January 1965 phone conversation with President Johnson: Its very interesting, Mr. President, to note that the only states you didnt carry in the Southhave less than forty percent of the Negroes registered to voteIts so important to get Negroes registered in large numbers in the South. It would be this coalition of the Negro vote and the moderate white vote that will really make the new South. My new INET Working Paper shows that Kings vision of a successful biracial coalition was largely borne out in statewide elections over the next 25-30 years. Knowledgeable observers of southern politics during the 1970s and 1980s described a region that at long last had shaken off the race issue, freeing its politics for realignment along economic lines. Alexander Lamis published the first edition of The Two-Party South in 1984, opening with the observation that by the early 1970sone could discern a distinct lessening of racial tension in the regionthe altered racial environment contributed to the development of two-party politics (p. 5), and concluding: Party competition has now firmly settled into the region (232). The year 1970 marked something of a turning point, in which traditional racial rhetoric proved politically unsuccessful throughout the South. The 1970s saw a wave of New South Democratic governors, including such prominent figures as Reubin Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor of Arkansas, Jimmy Carter and George Busbee of Georgia, Edwin Edwards of Louisiana, and John West of South Carolina. All were moderates by national standards, and all had similar programs to replace the divisive race issue with support for economic development, through education and other infrastructure investments. Nor was this a one-generation affair. The first wave of the 1970s was succeeded by a second wave in the 1980s, featuring names such as Bob Graham of Florida, Dave Treen of Louisiana, William Winter of Mississippi, Richard Riley and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina, Chuck Robb of Virginia, and Bill Clinton of Arkansas. Historian Gordon Harvey writes that since 1970, every southern state except Alabama has elected at least one New South governor. Black voting and representation produced tangible economic benefits, most directly for African-Americans. Representation in local politics led to improved access to city and county services, such as police and fire protection, paved roads and street lights, recreational facilities, and appointments to boards, commissions and civil service jobs. Systematic evidence compiled by political scientist James Button for six Florida counties shows that the percentage of streets paved in black subcommunities was far below the white norm in 1960, but rose rapidly in the 1960s and was at or near parity with white areas by the 1980s. In the cities, political participation changed the racial composition of public-sector employment, generating black access to administrative and professional positions previously restricted to whites. The best-documented state-level study is by Elizabeth Cascio and Ebonya Washington, who track the share of transfers (chiefly for education) to counties with higher black population shares, comparing states with literacy tests (and therefore covered by the VRA) and those without. The authors estimate that the mean county in a literacy-test state saw an increase of 16.4 percent in per-capita transfers over the period. Citing contemporary testimony, Cascio and Washington interpret the result as an indication that blacks were part of new statewide coalitions. The case for positive economic benefits for African-Americans from voting seems strong. A further question raised in my 2013 book Sharing the Prize is whether these advances came at the expense of white southerners, or whether instead they were part of a broader restructuring by which most white southerners also gained. Many local studies describe precisely this outcome. Economists Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, and Cecelia Testa find that southern counties more strongly affected by the VRA those compelled by litigation to switch to single-member districts elected more black officials, gained more revenue from state and federal transfers, and provided more public goods, primarily education. Major southern cities also developed biracial coalitions in the wake of black political empowerment. One example is Charlotte, North Carolina, which struggled to an uneasy compromise on school integration and busing in the 1970s. A move to district representatives in 1977 increased black participation and contributed to passage of an airport bond issue in 1978, reversing an earlier defeat. Election of Civil Rights hero Harvey Gantt as mayor in 1981 seemed to symbolize the new consensus around economic growth, helping Charlotte to become the third-largest banking center in the nation. If this characterization of the two-party South is accurate, the obvious question is why the regions voters moved so decisively to the right from the mid-1990s onward. In the extensive literature discussing this question, it seems to have escaped attention that much of the South experienced wrenching economic dislocation at precisely this time, as the manufacturing industries that had formed the core of the regional economy began their historic descent in response to import competition. In southern politics, trade policy was front and center. One highly visible object was NAFTA, enacted in November 1993 with vigorous backing from President Clinton, and implemented on January 1, 1994. Although supported by some parts of the industry, NAFTA was strongly opposed by workers and unions in textile areas (as well as the industrial Midwest). The origins of the pact were bipartisan, but Clinton took most of the blame, and Democrats voting in favor suffered badly at the polls in 1994. Of perhaps even greater regional significance was the 1994 Agreement on Textile and Clothing, negotiated as part of the WTOs Uruguay Round. The agreement phased out the import quotas of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) over the ten-year period 1994-2004. The demise of the MFA precipitated rapid growth of imports of textiles and apparel from many countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Canada. The expansion of Chinese imports after 2001 added another inflection point to the downward spiral, helping to explain why early projections underestimated the speed of change so severely. This account should not be understood as a suggestion that switching party allegiance was a rational response to economic distress, nor that displaced textile workers were the cutting edge of southern Republicanism. The argument instead is that the political-economic basis for a biracial coalition was undermined by deindustrialization. Ruy Texeira and Alan Abramowitz show that Democratic identification among lower socioeconomic white southerners fell sharply in the 1990s, and even more dramatically thereafter. In an update to their 2006 book, Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston acknowledge a post-2000 Republican shift among low-income southern white voters, the people who for forty years rejected the new southern Republican party. The consequences of one-party Republican rule have been devastating for black and many white southerners. Racial polarization has been exacerbated, ending what had been a steady advance of black legislators into leadership positions. Tax and budget cuts have reduced support for public education in nearly all states, reversing decades of progress toward higher national norms. Policies toward the low-income population have become distinctly harsher. Responding to the decentralization offered by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, southern states have slashed welfare rolls more drastically than any other part of the country. Of all the states that have rejected expansion of Medicare coverage, the most uncompromising have been in the South. Most tellingly, although these policies were enacted in the name of economic growth, per capita incomes in the southern states have continued to decline relative to the national average. This account suggests that there is a basis for a new multi-racial majority coalition in many if not all southern states. Indeed, that prospect has been realized in Virginia, and its outlines glimpsed in statewide votes in Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina, among others. The obstacles are obviously high, but so are the prospective gains. What happened in the past can happen again. By Ayya Lmahamad Italy was Azerbaijans main trading partner in the period between January and August 2020, the State Customs Committee has reported. The trade turnover with Italy accounted for $3.3 billion out of Azerbaijans overall trade turnover of $16.5 billion in the first seven months of the year. According to the report, Azerbaijan's export to Italy amounted to $3.1 billion, while import from Italy amounted to $276.8 million. Turkey was Azerbaijan's second largest trade partner during the reporting period, with trade turnover of $2.8 billion. Export of Azerbaijani products to Turkey amounted to $1.9 billion, while the import from Turkey amounted to $983.9 million. Earlier it was reported that, Russia was Azerbaijan's third largest trade partner, as well as first largest trade partner among CIS countries. Thus, trade turnover between two countries amounted to $1.7 billion. In the meantime, export to Russia amounted to $463.3 million, while import to $1.2 billion. Moreover, the top three trading partners in terms of export during the reporting period were Italy, Turkey and Russia as well. While, top three trading partners in terms of import were Russia, Turkey and China during the first eight months of the year. It should be noted that trade turnover between Azerbaijan and China amounted to $1.3 billion, with export amounting to $419.4 million and import to $888.5 million. Italy was Azerbaijans top trade partner in 2019 as well with the mutual trade turnover amounting to $7 billion and Azerbaijan was the largest supplier of crude oil to Italy. Thus, Italy is one of Azerbaijans main trade partners in the world and some 113 Italian companies, operating in various fields, are registered in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is one of Italys three main energy resources suppliers and the implementation of the Trans-Adriatic Gas Pipeline project will raise cooperation between two countries. The volume of Azerbaijans foreign trade turnover amounted to $16.5 billion during the period of January-August 2020. The value of export amounted to $9.8 billion or 59.6 percent of the total turnover, while the value of import amounted to $6.6 billion or 40.4 percent. Thus, foreign trade turnover resulted in surplus of $3.1 billion. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Two city councillors say Mayor Diane Therrien expects them to call her before telling reporters they disagree with her about keeping the citys state of emergency in place. Meanwhile another councillor whos said publicly he disagrees with Therrien on this issue said he was never asked by the mayor to call her before expressing an opinion contrary to hers not about the emergency declaration or any other issue and that it all amounts to fellow council members grandstanding and squabbling. It is concerning to me that certain councillors seem to be putting all their energy into making headlines and actively disrupting efforts to work collaboratively, wrote Coun. Stephen Wright in a message to The Examiner on Wednesday. It is frustrating to see headlines and interviews in the media from councillors tearing each other down, or to see motions and statements made at council that were designed to grandstand and make the paper the next day, he added. Its high time for council to stop squabbling and get to work. The issue stems from a state of emergency declaration that Therrien made in late March in the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. The declaration meant city facilities could be promptly closed, and it made the city eligible for stimulus grants from the federal and provincial governments. But it also authorized mayor and a group of city staff members to make unilateral decisions in response to the pandemic, such as a redesign of the city bus routes. The redesign of the routes was meant to allow transfers at points across the city, rather than have all buses converge at the Simcoe Street bus terminal downtown. The idea was to reduce crowding at the bus terminal. However it also reduced the number of routes from 17 to nine, and has left many riders saying their commutes are longer than ever and that the system isnt accessible for people with disabilities. This type of decision occurring without council consultation has left some councillors feeling sidelined, and five of them Wright included, along with Coun. Lesley Parnell, Coun. Dean Pappas, Coun. Henry Clarke and Coun. Keith Riel said so in interviews with The Examiner earlier this month. Therrien responded by saying she didnt want to lift the state of emergency declaration because shes concerned a second wave of COVID-19 could come. But Peterborough This Week columnist Sylvia Sutherland, a former mayor, wrote that Therrien has since accused councillors of publicly undermining work she and city staff have been doing. Therrien also told councillors that if they disagree with her about keeping the declaration in place, she would appreciate it if you would call me before speaking to the media, Sutherland wrote. Two councillors Coun. Henry Clarke, plus another who didnt want to go on record told The Examiner that Therrien had indeed asked councillors to call her before speaking to reporters if they disagree about the state of emergency. Although the mayor did not respond to The Examiners request for comment on Wednesday, she posted a tweet later the same day asking for kindness in the pandemic. Too many people are trying to fabricate conflict and division among council, Therrien wrote. Councillors, staff and the public are always encouraged to contact me to discuss concerns regarding the state of emergency or any other issues. Be safe, be kind and look out for each other. Patrick Henry Turner, a book designer and art director for a number of book and magazine publishers and who was most recently co-owner of Publishers Weekly, died on September 9 after a long battle with cancer. He was 71. Born in Gaffney, S.C., Turner graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1970 with a degree in commercial art. He began his career working for Harper & Rows Hagerstown, Md., division and later joined Johns Hopkins University Press in Baltimore. In 1977, Turner worked for Springer Verlag in Germany, and returned to the U.S. in 1979 to work at Academic Press. He then began a career in the magazine field, working for PressCorps from 1995-2000 and Weider Communications from 2001-2004. In 2005 Turner formed PHT Design, which he ran until 2010, at which point he and George Slowik Jr. formed PWxyz in order to acquire Publishers Weekly from Reed Business Information. Turner served as v-p of operations for PW, helping to set the future course of the book industrys trade publication. Turner and Slowik were life partners, and were married in 2015. Away from the office Turner was an ardent traveler, traveling to more than 70 countries. He was also a passionate theater and opera fan and loved spending time in his home on Fire Island, where he enjoyed demonstrating his gourmet cooking skills. PW employees, especially longtime staffers, remember Turner for his warm nature and enthusiasm. Both made Patrick a welcomed presence in the office as he and Slowik led the turnaround of PW as an independent company following their 2010 purchase of the magazine, which had gone through a difficult period in the last few years of Reed ownership. In addition to Slowik, survivors include his brother, Michael Richard Turner (Jenny) of Charlotte, N.C.; and his sister, Sally Turner Grindstaff (Jamie) of Gaffney. He is also survived by his nephew, Michael Allen Turner of Charlotte and his nieces, Amy Turner Ludwig (Chad) of Wilmington, N.C., and Leala Patrice Grindstaff of New York City, his great-niece Haley, and great-nephews Carson and Wyatt. In addition to his parents, Patrick was preceded in death by his sister, Sandra Turner Matthews. A memorial service will be held at a later date in New York City. Donations in Turners memory can be made to the Tectonic Theater Project. CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- JLL has helped provide over 1 million meals* to Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the U.S. By converting a percentage of online catering sales to cash donations for the nationwide network of food banks, JLL and ezCater, the largest marketplace for business catering, collaborate to fight food insecurity with CaterCares, a free, charitable program that anyone can use. This announcement comes during September's Hunger Action Month and at a time when companies are welcoming employees back to their offices. "As we advise our clients on re-entry to their workplaces, we're encouraging them to consider using CaterCares, particularly in areas where restaurant options may be limited for employees returning to an office environment," said Jay Koster, JLL Group Head of Americas Capital Markets & Investor Services. "CaterCares meets a basic business need office catering while also doing good in the world. During this period of re-entry, ordering from CaterCares is a great way to both welcome employees back and also help to stamp out food insecurity nationwide." CaterCares was created in 2016 by JLL employee Lori Mabardi, Senior Director, ESG Research & Strategy, to mobilize corporate America in the fight against hunger. That fight is even more pressing today. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Feeding America estimates that 54 million people including 18 million children might face food insecurity in the U.S. this year. In comparison, the number of food-insecure individuals in 2018 was 37 million. According to the USDA**, the impact of hunger also highlights racial inequities, as 24.1% of Black children, 19.2% of Hispanic children and 11% of white children lived in food insecure households in 2019. "Reaching 1 million meals has truly been a group effort and it couldn't have happened without JLL's commitment to supporting our ambitions," said Mabardi. "I want to thank every person who has helped us reach this milestone. We know it takes a village and we invite everyone to join this unique program that proves we can do good while we do business." With companies spending more than $25 billion on catering in 2019, according to Technomic, the opportunity to help is significant. Using the free platform, a typical $250 catering order provides approximately 100 meals that are distributed locally through Feeding America's nationwide network of over 200 food banks. Anyone can participate by ordering meals at https://catercares.com/. Since CaterCares began, JLL has organized volunteer events at Feeding America food banks in cities including Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Fort Myers, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix and St. Paul. Learn more about the company's efforts to fight hunger and how to get involved here. "We're so appreciative that JLL has reached this landmark number," said Catherine Davis, Chief Marketing Officer at Feeding America. "That's one million times that we have helped to fight food insecurity and helped provide nourishing meals to people who need them most." About JLL JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL shapes the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $18.0 billion in 2019, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce of nearly 93,000 as of June 30, 2020. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com . About ezCater ezCater is the largest national marketplace for business catering with 80,000+ restaurants and caterers and 125+ million people served. ezCater provides companies of all sizes, anywhere in the country, with COVID-smart food solutions for work. Nationwide, restaurants and caterers use ezCater's platform to grow and manage their catering business. For more information or to place a catering order, visit www.ezcater.com. *$1 helps to provide at least ten meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks **Source: USDA: September 2020 Connect with us https://www.linkedin.com/company/jll https://www.facebook.com/jll https://twitter.com/jll https://www.instagram.com/jll Contact: Jessica Wozniak Phone: +312 228 3950 Email: [email protected] SOURCE JLL Related Links http://www.jll.com Gov. Greg Abbott announced a new round of business reopenings Thursday, including restaurants, gyms and nursing homes, as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations continued to decline. The reopenings apply to every region in the state except Victoria, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, where hospitals still are dealing with large numbers of infected patients. Abbott said the state will allow most businesses to reopen at 75 percent of their maximum occupancy in regions where COVID-19 patients make up less than 15 percent of hospitals total patient population. Bars still are prohibited from reopening, though some have been able to work around the restriction in recent weeks by rebranding as restaurants with sit-down service. In addition, hospitals in San Antonio and other regions that meet the 15-percent threshold now can resume normal operations including elective procedures, which had been restricted while the state fought a summer surge of coronavirus cases. Under Abbotts order, more nursing homes and assisted living facilities will be able to reopen for essential visits starting next week. The decision will come as a huge relief to friends and relatives who have been unable to come in close contact with loved ones for months. Texans have shown that we can address both the health and safety concerns of COVID-19 while also taking careful, measured steps to restore the livelihoods that Texans depend on, Abbott said in his first statewide briefing on the pandemic in months. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Abbotts new orders Starting Monday, several types of businesses can reopen in regions where COVID patients make up less than 15 percent of the total people hospitalized. They include gyms, restaurants, retail stores, offices, manufacturing facilities, museums and libraries. The businesses can operate at 75 percent of their maximum occupancy, provided they require customers to wear masks and distance themselves from patrons who are not members of their immediate families. Essential visitors will be allowed at nursing homes and assisted living facilities where infections remain low. Each resident can designate up to two such visitors, and only one visitor is allowed in at a time. Nonessential visits will be allowed in outdoor settings, without close contact. Effective immediately, hospitals in greenlighted regions can resume elective procedures. See More Collapse San Antonio officials reacted to the governors action with guarded optimism and with renewed reminders about the importance of wearing masks and practicing social distancing. The success of the reopening and whether or not we can do it safely will hinge on whether or not people are still committed to the behaviors mask-wearing, physical distancing and avoiding large crowds and staying home when you have symptoms, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. I think if we can do that, we can keep our infections under control, he said. Well be reminding folks: Please maintain those practices. Make sure you continue to wear your mask. Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, appearing with the mayor at his daily coronavirus briefing, expressed concern that people might let down their guard. I think the danger is that you start to feel like, Well, maybe somethings changed, so I can change my behavior, he said. I think the reality is we need to double down on these habits weve formed over the last few months. For Abbott, the new regional threshold based on the percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations marks a significant shift. He had previously resisted committing to a regional approach and had said he would rely on a range of metrics not just hospitalizations to determine policies. But the states health agency has been dogged by data backlogs, and officials in some counties said they had lost confidence in state metrics such as the number of new daily infections and the percentage of COVID tests that come back positive (known as the test positivity rate). Data on COVID-19 hospitalizations have been more reliable throughout the pandemic. Other large states, including New York and California, are using regional reopening plans based on multiple criteria, including new cases and the test positivity rate. Some public health experts have cautioned against relying on hospitalization rates alone because they lag behind infections and therefore provide a delayed picture of community spread of the virus. The San Antonio region is well below the governors 15 percent threshold: As of Thursday, COVID-19 patients accounted for about 6 percent of all hospitalizations, according to state data. Texas has reported nearly 700,000 infections since March and nearly 14,500 deaths, a toll similar to that in other large states, including California and Florida. In Texas, the text positivity rate has stayed below 10 percent for at least two weeks. In San Antonio, the rate reached a peak of 24 percent in mid-July. It dropped sharply thereafter and is now around 6 percent, according to the Metropolitan Health District. IN-DEPTH: Updated COVID metric shows Texas outbreak on the decline since mid-July Texas Democrats criticized Abbott for permitting further reopenings without fixing what they said were shortcomings in the states response to the pandemic. Gov. Abbotts press conference today was notable for what he didnt say, said Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, chair of the House Democratic Caucus. There was no mention of a contact tracing program, no mention of improving the states unreliable data and no mention of expanding Medicaid to increase access to health care for the millions of Texans who are uninsured. Abbotts easing of restrictions comes as the pandemic has loosened its grip on Bexar County. The growth in confirmed infections has slowed sharply since mid-July, when the number of confirmed new cases often increased by more than 1,000 in a single day. The one-day peak 2,202 was reached on July 19. The daily counts of new cases have fallen precipitously since then and only rarely have exceeded 200 since mid-August. The number of COVID-19 patients in San Antonio hospitals peaked at 1,267 on July 13. It is now slightly above 200. But Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of the Metropolitan Health District, said the favorable trend did not mean the pandemic was over or that people could abandon social distancing and mask-wearing. We just cant go back to the way things were in 2019, she said. We just dont have an effective, accessible vaccine yet. Staff writers Greg Marago and Cayla Harris contributed to this report. jeremy.blackman@chron.com T hree British friends have said they feel "abandoned" after being kept in quarantine for a month in an Italian coronavirus facility. Will Castle, 22, Rhys James, 23, Quinn Paczesny, 20, had been teaching in northern Italy before they tested positive for the virus last month. Mr Castle, from Brighton, said they were put in separate rooms, and that doctors told them they could not leave until they had two negative tests. Despite showing no symptoms for more than three weeks, the friends said they have tested positive five times and were told they cannot leave the facility in Florence. Speaking to the Evening Standard, Mr Castle said: "We have to test negative twice in order to leave, which has to be 24 hours apart. Will Castle, Rhys James, and Quinn Paczesny / Will Castle "We haven't tested negative yet - we have tested positive five times in a row. "After the third test, I asked why this was still happening. I got in touch with a doctor who came and answered our questions. "She told us we were no longer contagious, but Italy has adopted a system whereby we have to test negative even if what is being picked up is dead cells and not an active virus." Mr Castle said they can only be tested once a week, despite pushing for more frequent testing. "When we first got tested, we assumed the system would be the same as the UK. We assumed we would self-isolate," he said. The hospital room Mr Castle stayed in for a short time before being moved to another hotel / Will Castle "About two hours later, a nurse said we were going to a quarantine hotel and we would all be in separate rooms and wouldn't be able to see each other. "No reasoning was given, but we were told it was compulsory." During the last month, the three men have stayed in three different facilities. "The first was a hotel for three or four days," Mr Castle said. "We then got moved for no reason to a hospital-style place with no wi-fi - we were there for a week. The one we are in now is a hotel room - it's not very big. "The food is dreadful. The portions are tiny, it's often cold." Mr Castle described the food as "dreadful" / Will Castle Later, Mr Castle was told they could leave if they signed a "legal contract" to isolate at an Italian address until they had two negative tests. But leaving the facility was not an option for the three friends, Mr Castle said, as they had limited contacts in Italy. "Every day I'm mentally drained, it's one of those awful things where my mental state and mood relies on the food," he said. "We are not allowed to be in the same room as each other or see anyone. "We feel abandoned. I feel like we have no one looking after us. "It's like prison, except in prison you can go outside once a day." The first hotel the trio stayed in before being moved to a hospital / Will Castle Worryingly, Mr Castle said he has spoken to people on their balconies who have been in quarantine for more than two months after repeatedly testing positive for the virus without showing symptoms. "Everybody in this building is quarantined," he said. "The guy next to me on my balcony is an Italian eye doctor and he has been here for three weeks. "The guy next to Quinn, we were with in the hospital, he's been with us for a month too. "There was a guy on the balcony below Rhys who had been in here for two-and-a-half months." Mr Castle said he would be "gutted" but "unsurprised" if he tests positive for coronavirus again during his weekly test on Monday. An example of the food the three men say they have been provided with / Will Castle "We all felt gutted this week, and then we got to the point where we had recovered from that emotion and we knew we had to do something," he said. "The saddest thing is that we were loving Italy, but having to do this and force our way out, it's all tainted. "The more people we talk to, it becomes clear the average is about one month. "I do think we could be here another month." A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesman told the Standard: "We are assisting three British men hospitalised in Italy, and are in contact with the hospital." By Trend Azerbaijan will never allow even an inch of land to remain under Armenian occupation, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov said, Trend reports on Sept. 16. "Azerbaijan will never allow the second Armenian state to be created on the Azerbaijani territory," the deputy foreign minister added. The deputy foreign minister also added that Azerbaijan is constantly developing, its army is being strengthened. "Our country is steadily developing and strengthening under the leadership of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev," Khalafov added. As for the delusional statements made by Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan during his visit to Egypt, Khalafov stressed that this was another provocation. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Lenders to the Aircel Group, led by State Bank of India (SBI), have written to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seeking harmonization between Indias insolvency law and the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Securities Interest (Sarfaesi) Act, said two people, requesting anonymity. After the central bank rejected the resolution plan for Aircel by UV Asset Reconstruction Co. under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in August, the lenders were left with 19,000 crore of unresolved loans. RBI is of the view that ARCs are supposed to buy debt and not equity under the Sarfaesi Act, which is the governing law for all ARCs in India, Mint had reported. In the letter, sent a few days ago, the lenders consortium has urged RBI for some clarification on the issue and requested for it to be resolved," one of the persons mentioned above said, adding that the central bank has also held discussions with the government on this issue. Under RBI guidelines in force since 2017, ARCs can hold more than 26% equity in a borrower after debt-to-equity conversion if they meet certain norms. UV ARCs resolution plan said it would get a 76% stake in the company in the first five years, with financial creditors getting the rest. In June, the National Company Law Tribunal approved UV ARCs bid of 6,630 crore for Aircel. Legal experts said some changes to the Sarfaesi Act could be a viable option, given that ARCs are emerging as resolution applicants in many IBC cases. To make it easier for ARCs as resolution applicants, tweaking of provisions is required. The limited tweaking can be in the form of new guidelines permitting ARCs to take equity or allow them to bring in partners," said Ashish Pyasi, associate partner, Dhir and Dhir Associates. As bringing in a partner is not always feasible, allowing them to take limited equity in the corporate debtor can be a middle path, said Pyasi. The resolution plan for Aircel was subject to RBIs approval, but very few people expected a rejection, said the second person mentioned above. There were several lawyers working on the transaction for banks as well as UV ARC and the proposal was expected to sail through, considering that the tribunal had cleared it. However, RBI took a more holistic view of the matter and now all ARCs are in a fix over the resolution plans under IBC," this person said. The outcome of RBIs deliberations with the government is eagerly awaited by lenders as well as ARCs. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 Trend: Azerbaijan's Agency for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) provides support for the preparation of business plans to individuals involved in the self-employment program in cooperation with the State Employment Service under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population, the agency told Trend. According to the agency, from August through September 2020, specialists from the Khachmaz Center for Small and Medium Business (SMB) Development and SMB Friends on the Guba-Khachmaz economic region provided consulting services on drawing up business plans to over 70 citizens from the Khachmaz, Guba, and Gusar districts. As the agency said, in the coming days, via the self-employment program, citizens from Siyazan and Shabran districts will also be provided with the support for drawing up the business plans. The agency noted that following the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers dated July 25, 2020, persons registered in the local structures of the State Employment Service as unemployed, applicants and involved in the self-employment program due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in 2020 will be provided with materials, equipment, and other property without involvement in training. These funds will be transferred to the abovementioned persons based on their business plans. Jammu and Kashmir DGP Dilbag Singh on Thursday said that 177 terrorists have been killed in 72 anti-terror operations in 2020 so far. Addressing a press conference, DGP Singh said that Thursday's Batamaloo operation was a successful one but death of a women in cross fire is very unfortunate. "During midnight on specific input of presence to terrorists in Batamaloo area joint cordon and search operation was launched. Terrorists were given chance to surrender even their families were bought but they fired on party and one CRPF officer and a soldier got injured in cross fire officer got critical injuries although operation was conducted in a professional way but unfortunately a women got injured in cross fire and later succumbed to injuries which is very unfortunate," DGP Singh said in a joint press conference of Jammu and Kashmir police and CRPF. According to DGP Singh, all three terrorists killed on Thursday in Batamaloo were local and belonged to South Kashmir. The individual identification is yet be done. Security forces have also recovered huge amount of arms and ammunition from encounter spot. They ( terrorists ) keep moving from one place to another and from districts of South and north Kashmir they keep on visiting Srinagar to carry out attacks on security forces. But forces are alert and big anti terror operation are done in srinagar in recent past and we were able to killed big terrorists commanders too, noted DGP Singh. Live TV "Security forces are not only eliminating the terrorists but work on other front is also being done to counsel the misguided youth and on this front they have also got success. We have got 20 youth back from terrorism and we are working more on that, added DGP Singh. The press conference was also attended by IGP Jammu and Kashmir Vijay Kumar and newly posted IG CRPF Charu Sinha. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Minwoo Park (Reuters) Thu, September 17, 2020 09:01 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4549d97 2 Science & Tech AI,artificial-intelligence,robot,restaurant,Seoul,South-Korea Free "Aglio Kim", a trolley-like robot which uses artificial intelligence (AI), is delivering food to customers at a restaurant in Seoul, in order to minimize human contact and help ensure social distancing. Shortly after customers order through a touch-screen on the table, the 1.25-meter-tall robot, developed by South Korean telecoms company KT Corp, brings the food and uses its visual SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) capabilities to avoid obstacles and navigate around customers. The robot can deliver food to up to four tables at once, KT's AI Platform Business Team leader Lee Young-jin told Reuters. The AI robot is equipped with food trays which can carry up to 30 kilograms and an LCD screen and speaker that communicate in both Korean and English. Read also: Robots dish out the drinks at reopened Dutch restaurant "Customers found the robot serving quite unique and interesting, and also felt safe from the coronavirus," said Lee Young-ho, a manager at the Mad for Garlic restaurant which has tested the robot this month. From Monday, restaurants and cafes in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area are allowed to open after 9 p.m., but must leave two meters between tables and record patrons' names and contact details. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 106 new coronavirus cases as of Monday, bringing its total number of infections to 22,391 with 367 deaths. KT said that they aim to supply more robots for restaurants this year and will unveil a second model with AI voice recognition technology early next year. Following the no-confidence motion moved against Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar amidst allegations of corruption against her, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirit Somaiya has now alleged that Pednekar had illegally acquired a residential flat in a slum rehabilitation authority (SRA) project in Lower Parel, and also set up an office in one of the SRA buildings which was meant for society welfare purposes. On Thursday, Somaiya wrote to municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal demanding action against Pednekar. Somaiya said, The mayor has illegally acquired a flat in Gomata Janata SRA project in Lower Parel and I have submitted supporting documents as well. The office she has set up belongs to the firm her son owns and she has received several BMC and SRA contracts through illegal means. Pednekar did not respond to HTs requests for a comment. Last week, BJP moved a no-confidence motion against Pednekar, in the wake of allegations that she misused her position to award contracts to her sons firm. File image: Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi improved the lives of 60 crore poor people in the country. What the Congress could not do for the poor in its 70 -year rule, Modi did it in five years, Shah said while greeting the prime minister on his 70th birthday, and wished for his long life so that he can "serve the nation". Shah was attending the ground-breaking ceremony of a 24X7 water supply project for Gandhinagar, which is his Lok Sabha constituency, through video-conference. He said citizens of this country made Modi the prime minister in 2014 due to numerous pro-people works he had carried out as the chief minister of Gujarat. "After Modiji became the prime minister, crores of people, around 60 crore poor citizens received electricity connections, gas connections, toilets, bank accounts and better health care under the Prime Minister Jan Arogya scheme," Shah said while attending the Gujarat government's event from Delhi. "Modiji improved lives of 60 crore poor citizens. What the Congress couldn't do in 70 years of its rule, Modiji did it in just five years. He also strengthened our security by ordering surgical as well as air strikes. He has put India on the forefront of the world map," the senior BJP leader said. The Gujarat government on Thursday held the ground- breaking ceremony of its ambitious project of providing drinking water round-the-clock to nearly seven lakh people of Gandhinagar city and surrounding areas. This project is a part of the Smart City project and would be complete in 36 months at a cost of Rs 229 crore, a government release said. Apart from the construction of filtration plants, the project encompasses laying water pipeline having total length of 27 kilometres, it said. To encourage judicious use of water, meters will also be installed for each connection. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on completion of this project, Gandhinagar will become the first city in the country providing 24X7 drinking water facility in every household. Shah thanked Rupani, his government and the entire administration for implementing this project in his constituency Gandhinagar. A 37-year-old Hindu Yuva Vahini functionary was on Thursday found dead with stab wounds near a hospital he ran in Bareilly, a police officer said. The body [of Sanjay Singh] was found near his hospital in Dunka locality under Shahi police station area. The body had multiple stab wounds that could have resulted in his death, said Bareillys senior police superintendent, Rohit Singh Sajwan. We have sent the body for the post-mortem examination and lodged a murder case against unknown people. Also read: Four held in Delhi for stabbing man to death after one of them was slapped publicly Sajwan said five hospital staff members have been detained and were being questioned. Police were also scanning CCTV footage from the murder scene. Dinesh Singh, a relative of Sanjay Singh, said the latter was very active in Hindu Yuva Vahinis work due to which he had many political rivals in the area. I think his rivals are behind this incident. Singh was Bareilly district vice president of Hindu Yuva Vahini, which Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath founded in 2002. Marina Bay in Singapore, 10 September 2020 (PHOTO: Getty Creative) By Andy Mukherjee (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The more desperately Chinese firms seek a haven for their international operations, the more theyll lean toward Singapore. Will their love be reciprocated? Amid the drumbeats of a U.S.-China cold war, the Southeast Asian island-state is often talked about as a sanctuary for capital looking to flee the clash of superpowers. But aging Singapore, with excess savings of its own, doesnt want a truckload of new money. Business investments, however, are very different from potentially destabilising financial flows. They create jobs, provide new orders to local vendors, and spark optimism about the future, something rather badly needed amid the Covid-19 despondence. Thats why Singapore must be pleased to see Tencent Holdings Ltd., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. coming to the city with investment plans worth billions of dollars. All of them have their own reasons for flocking to the nation of 5.7 million people. According to Bloomberg News, Alibaba is exploring a US$3 billion investment in Grab Holdings Inc., which is pivoting from a Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm to a regional super app with finance at its core. Grab has applied for a Singapore digital bank license, and so has Alibaba-backed Ant Group, the worlds hottest fintech, awaiting its initial public offering in Hong Kong. (Ant, though, has applied for a wholesale digital bank license, which means it can't take retail deposits.) Reuters reported in June that Grab and Tencent-backed Sea Ltd., a Singaporean maker of online games, have made the Monetary Authority of Singapores shortlist. Running a regulated bank in Singapore comes with a valuable coupon: free admission into the U.S.-dominated global financial network. This may be important for Chinese fintech firms in case Beijing decides to run a parallel system of its own. The vehicle for that push might be the digital yuan, which could erode the moat built by Ants Alipay and Tencents WeChat Pay. More immediately, access to Grabs customers in Southeast Asia may help Alibaba-backed online bazaar Lazada in its fight against Tencent-backed rival Shopee app, Bloomberg Intelligence has noted. Story continues Tencent, meanwhile, may also be eyeing Singapore to skirt situations like New Delhis ban on the video game PUBG mobile, for which it had the India publishing rights. WeChat is already a Trump administration target. As escalating violence on its border with China draws India closer to the U.S., globally-minded Chinese firms need neutral addresses to avoid becoming collateral damage. Ditto for ByteDance, which is trying to save its TikTok video-sharing platforms U.S. operations by partnering with Oracle Corp. The Beijing-based firm, which has also applied for a Singapore virtual bank license, will make the city its beachhead for Asia. Singapore, which never had powerful domestic business interests to protect, isnt new to foreigners wanting a piece of it. In the late 1960s, the likes of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. came for semiconductor assembly. Young women putting together pieces of ceramics, aluminum wire and a one-inch-wide lead frame played a big role in turning Singapore along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan into Asian exporting powerhouses. Its too early to say if the U.S.-China conflict will have a similarly large and enduring impact. In areas like data centres, Singapore is benefiting. Measured by power supply, its the worlds largest repository for storing and processing data, with Facebook Inc. alone setting up an 11-story facility. Hong Kong has lost its special trading status with the U.S. over a Beijing-imposed national security law. Singapore has free-trade accords with both countries. The one with China was widened last year to include e-commerce. To be sure, Singapores population is far less willing than before to accept a never-ending stream of overseas professionals in exchange for prosperity. Still, whats the alternative? Visitor arrivals in July were down 99.6% from a year earlier. Singapore Airlines Ltd. is slashing a fifth of its workforce. As long as the new Chinese investors dont ask for too many foreign employment passes, Singapore will give them a shelter to sit out the cold war. If nothing else, the islands nascent startup economy will get a fillip. Financial capital wont be walking on the same red carpet. Hong Kong can live with private-sector credit three times the size of the economy and a property market pushed into the stratosphere of unaffordability. The same strategy would amount to political suicide in Singapore, where the bedrock of prosperity is real estate. A deflated housing bubble could prove costly for the Peoples Action Party, in power since 1959. Unlike Hong Kong, which ultimately has the protection of the bigger Chinese economy, Singapore has no parachutes. It dare not crash. Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. By PTI CHANDIGARH: The Haryana Police on Thursday said they have arrested an employee of the Military Engineer Services on the charge of passing information related to the Indian Army to Pakistan's intelligence. The accused was currently posted in Jaipur and was arrested from Dharuhera in Rewari, a press release issued by the state police department said. The accused, who hails from Rewari, has been charged with passing the information through WhatsApp and Facebook. "Upon getting information, a special team of the STF, Gurgaon, arrested the accused on Wednesday night from a bus stand at Dharuhera," the release said, adding that a case in this regard has been registered against him at the Dharuhera police station. "Investigation has been started into this case. Efforts are being made to gather more information by interrogating the accused. Complete information about the crime will be available after the police remand of the accused," the release said. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Advocates for the developmentally disabled gathered at the site of the former Willowbrook State School on Thursday to raise concerns about funding cuts. Rally attendees, including parents and some former employees of the institution, raised concerns about a possible return to Willowbrook if New York is either unable or unwilling to adequately fund programs across the state. Laura Kennedy, a parent advocate who has a developmentally disabled daughter, addressed the crowd gathered for the 33rd anniversary of Willowbrooks official closure by former Gov. Mario Cuomo and called on his son to adequately fund the needed services. We are here today as advocates to express our fears and frustrations to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration for their continuing neglect of people with developmental disabilities, she said. We gather here to protest the draconian budget cuts he has implemented and continue to implement. At least 100 attendees lined up more-than 50 cars outside the former schools grounds, which were relinquished in 1989 for the new College of Staten Island. Similar rallies across the state took place Thursday to call for adequate funding. Advocates said more than 130 cars eventually joined their drive-thru procession to protest the cuts. APPEAL TO CUOMO The group pointed to a Sept. 8 letter from members of the New York Legislature and advocates that called on the governor to use funds allocated to the state as part of the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF), which was created by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. According to their letter, the state has yet to use $4 billion of the $5.1 billion allotted to New York, and the group suggested using those funds to pay money owed to nonprofit organizations providing services to those in need including the developmentally disabled. However, the CARES Act stipulates funds from the CRF be used only for expenses incurred due to the public health emergency with respect to (COVID-19). Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for New Yorks Division of the Budget, said the state has a $14.5 billion revenue shortfall this year, and that it would spend money from the CRF on COVID-related costs like personal protective equipment, testing, and contact tracing. The Federal government has failed to provide New York and other states impacted by COVID-19 with assistance to offset any of the resulting revenue loss, he said. (The legislatures) time would be better spent joining the fight for Federal aid. Lawmakers gave Cuomo power to change the budget in April -- as a result the state has held back 20% of local funding. The governor has threatened to make those cuts permanent if the federal government doesnt act. Agencies, and non-profits across the state are facing budget shortfalls due to the cuts. On Wednesday, the states largest teachers union -- New York State United Teachers -- filed a lawsuit against the governor to restore $5.2 billion in school aid. No matter where the funding comes from or which level of government needs to act, advocates are concerned the essential non-profit organizations, which replaced many state-run institutions like Willowbrook, will not receive the funding they need. INFAMOUS HISTORY During its time in operation, the Willowbrook State School rose to infamy for its conditions and treatment of the people it was meant to be serving. A notable scandal involved experiments that intentionally infected intellectually disabled children with hepatitis. Numerous former employees attended Thursdays rally, including Geraldine Cassone and Diane Buglioli, said the things they saw at the school still stay with them. Both have become advocates for the developmentally disabled. It was horrific, Cassone, who worked on transitioning students out of the school, said. The smell in the buildings was son unbelievable -- I still carry with it me til this day. Ultimately, the facility closed after former Advance reporter Jane Kurtin and television reporter Geraldo Rivera exposed conditions at the school, and families filed a lawsuit against Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1972. Gov. Hugh Cary signed the Willowbrook Consent Decree, which began the closure process. Arthur Webb, a former state commissioner who served in Mario Cuomos administration, lent his support to the rallys cause. As the commissioner who closed Willowbrook for all the right reasons, I am in total support of your advocacy to remind the governor not to ever return to Willowbrook or anything close to it, Webb wrote in a letter to the Kennedy and Buglioli. - WAEC has confirmed that the mathematic examination questions for the 2020 BECE leaked - The Director of Public Affairs at WAEC, Agnes Teye Cudjoe, revealed that before 9:00am, the mathematics questions were all over social media - She said supervisors who had taken shots of the questions with their mobile phones have been arrested and are currently being interrogated Our manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Each passing year, examinations are fraught with many cases of examination malpractices. This year's (2020), Basic Education Certificate Examination(BECE) is no different from what happens every year be it at the basic level or the senior high level. The West African Education Council (WAEC) has confirmed that the mathematic examination questions for the 2020 BECE leaked. According to a news report filed by Kasapafmonline, the Director of Public Affairs at WAEC, Agnes Teye Cudjoe, revealed that before 9:00am today Thursday, September 17, 2020, the mathematics questions were all over social media. A cross-section of students writing an exam. Source: Daily Graphic Source: Twitter READ ALSO: Meet Benjamin Sedem Ehlah the best graduating student in UEW-Kumasi According to her, some supervisors who had taken shots of the questions with their mobile phones have been arrested and are currently being interrogated. The issue of exam question leakage is a huge problem for WAEC. Some of our officials in Obuasi yesterday arrested some teachers who had collected GHC2.00 and GHC1.00 from the students ostensibly to help them in the exams. All these are malpractices that should be strongly discouraged, she said. Ghanaians have shared their comments at the rate at which the questions keep leaking. Daniel Tetteh had a lot to say but most importantly he said WAEC is not a serious organisation. WAEC is not a serious organisation, I thought they have done their homework well after the wasce but to my surprise the BECE is even worse. All the papers leaked thus from the first paper up to today's papers leaked more than 24hrs before they were written. I think the head of WAEC SHOULD BE ARRESTED OR SACKED immediately instead of these absurd defenses they have been putting up. Theddie Abells asked when corruption would end. Until when will this corrupt practice end? When will all the faceless officials behind this crime be brought to book? Nana Sarfo Kantanka Shaira was quite peeved. Are they not ashamed of themselves????? Shameless WAEC. READ ALSO: Meet 60-year-old Elizabeth Yamoah Ghana's oldest BECE candidate for the 2020 batch In a related development, among the 531, 705 candidates sitting for the final year exam in the country, one of them caught the eye of Ghana's media and had her story highlighted. The student, Madam Elizabeth Yamoah, 60, who at a first glance would be looking to be playing 'dress-up' in her granddaughter's school uniform, is actually not playing a prank. Madam Elizabeth Yamoah is a student of Agona Odoben Presby Junior High School (JHS). The 60-year-old student is reported to be Ghana's oldest BECE candidate for the 2020 batch of students and is really looking to gain access to secondary education through the Free SHS programme. READ ALSO: Tears flow as BECE candidate sadly dies just 3 days to completion Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: YEN.com.gh Dancing with the Stars' new host Tyra Banks never realized how important her trademark 'smizing' move would be in the age of COVID-19, and she gave a tutorial on Thursday's episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. The 46-year-old self-described 'Smize CEO' instructed the 45-year-old Golden Globe winner how to smile with her eyes while wearing a mask, which is mandatory in most public spaces. 'I created smizing really just about having an intense look and gaze in a photo, I never thought in a million years it would mean so much more and come to mean so much more and be so important today with us wearing masks,' Tyra marveled. 'Smize CEO': Dancing with the Stars' new host Tyra Banks never realized how important her trademark 'smizing' move would be in the age of COVID-19, and she gave a tutorial on Thursday's episode of The Drew Barrymore Show DIY: The 46-year-old LA native instructed the 45-year-old Golden Globe winner (L) how to smile with her eyes while wearing a mask, which is mandatory in most public spaces 'How many times have you been out and about walking and you have on your mask and you think someone is being really mean to you or rude? It's not that they are, it's just that they are smiling with their mouth and not with their eyes so they just look evil. So it's important.' First, Banks asked Barrymore to think of something that delighted her. Drew replied that her two daughters - Olive, turning 8 on September 26; and Frankie, 6 - with ex-husband #3 Will Kopelman 'make me smize.' 'I want you to think about your daughters,' the two-time Daytime Emmy winner began. Tyra marveled: 'How many times have you been out and about walking and you have on your mask and you think someone is being really mean to you or rude? It's not that they are, it's just that they are smiling with their mouth and not with their eyes so they just look evil' Ponder pleasure: First, Banks asked Barrymore to think of something that delighted her Mini-mes: Drew replied that her two daughters - Olive, turning 8 on September 26; and Frankie, 6 - with ex-husband #3 Will Kopelman 'make me smize' (pictured in 2018) The two-time Daytime Emmy winner said: 'Your eyes begin to squint, your mouth becomes slightly numb and all the energy comes up here and you're like, "Yeah baby" Tyra added: 'A smize today means thank you or a smize means you go first or a smize means I'm going to be here during this difficult time you are going through right now. So it means so much and so it's so important to use these muscles here and not just the muscles here' 'Your eyes begin to squint, your mouth becomes slightly numb and all the energy comes up here and you're like, "Yeah baby." Now a smize doesn't just mean I'm fierce. 'A smize today means thank you or a smize means you go first or a smize means I'm going to be here during this difficult time you are going through right now. So it means so much and so it's so important to use these muscles here and not just the muscles here.' Tyra was on the CBS-syndicated daytime talk show to announce the launch of her ice-cream brand SMiZE Cream with flavors like 'Breakfast All Day' featuring bacon, toasted waffles, maple syrup caramel. 'It is like all-natural super-premium ice cream,' Banks described. Coming soon! Banks was on the CBS-syndicated daytime talk show to announce the launch of her ice-cream brand SMiZE Cream with flavors like 'Breakfast All Day' The supermodel-turned-presenter described: 'Inside every serving of SMiZE Cream, is an edible truffle-icious cookie dough surprise. And you have to search dig and find it, so it's like game-ification. It's all natural and it's all good!' 'Inside every serving of SMiZE Cream, is an edible truffle-icious cookie dough surprise. And you have to search dig and find it, so it's like game-ification. It's all natural and it's all good!' The supermodel-turned-presenter currently executive produces and hosts the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars - airing Tuesdays on ABC - which amassed 8.1M viewers during last Monday's premiere. 'I'm so excited to share that the ratings for @DancingABC premiere episode were up 30%!' Tyra - who boasts 33.8M social media followers - tweeted on Tuesday. 'The crew and cast brought it and I thank them for their dedication and next-level fierceness in the ballroom - in front of and behind the camera!' Airing Tuesdays on ABC! Tyra currently executive produces and hosts the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars, which amassed 8.1M viewers during last Monday's premiere Banks tweeted on Tuesday: 'I'm so excited to share that the ratings for @DancingABC premiere episode were up 30%! The crew and cast brought it' Filling big shoes: Not everyone was a fan of the SI Swimsuit stunner replacing longtime hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews on the dance competition, which features Chicago P.D. actress Anne Heche (R) Not everyone was a fan of Banks replacing longtime hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews on the dance competition - which features Tiger King star Carole Baskin, Backstreet Boy AJ McLean, and Chicago P.D. actress Anne Heche. The SI Swimsuit stunner had to restrategize her 2020 after indefinitely postponing the May 1 debut of her 21K-square Glamour Shots-style theme park ModelLand inside Macerich's Santa Monica Place. After 15 years on The CW and VH1, Tyra's original series America's Next Top Model has been off the air since April 10, 2018. And though he'd never admit it, RuPaul Charles has Banks to thank for the overall format of his Emmy-winning hit VH1 competition RuPaul's Drag Race, which concluded its 12th season in May. PARMA, Ohio -- Parma City Schools nutrition specialist Deb Saylor isnt one to seek the spotlight; however, earlier this month thats exactly where the lunch lady found herself, as a part of New York Times Magazine article, How Hunger Persists in a Rich Country Like America. Photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally was going across the United States, Saylor said. "She found out about us somehow and contacted Nutrition Service Supervisor Bob Gorman. She asked about doing a story on us. We didnt expect any of this attention. All of a sudden it was on CNN and MSNBC. It was very humbling to see that we were a part of feeding America. People just dont understand unless theyre in that situation," she said. Our own Deborah Saylor appears in the Sept 6 New York Times Magazine! The periodical highlighted our Nutrition Services food distribution throughout COVID. Congratulations to Ms Saylor and thank you to all of our dedicated staff members who feed 1500 Parma families every week! pic.twitter.com/inA2uXbP3U Charles Smialek (@CharlesSmialek) September 3, 2020 Im so proud of my team of Lunch Lady Legends that have been able to make a difference in our communitys fight against hunger, Gorman said. Food insecurity is a real thing for many families all across our amazing country, even in Parma. The legend of Saylor and her peers began in the spring, when the stay-at-home order kept students at home while the economy took a hit, leading to layoffs and furloughs. In the blink of an eye, parents were out of jobs, with hunger being yet another result of the coronavirus pandemic. Soon Saylor was one of a dozen lunch ladies putting together emergency food distributions for kids in the community and beyond. You know how you start doing something and it gets better as youre going? Saylor said. "Thats what happened to us. We started back in March when we realized there was a need in Parma, but before we knew, it turned into something bigger. It turned into 1,400 meals every week. We distribute 725 on Wednesday and 725 on Fridays. Its seven breakfasts and lunches (per child). Gorman said the district has a partnership with the Cleveland Food Bank, as well as offers food funded through the USDA. These days, the food distributions include local fresh produce, as well as different items from Cleveland-area vendors. The effort has not only helped feed families, but also kept local businesses open during the pandemic. It doesnt matter where youre from, were just feeding anybody up to age 18, Saylor said. "We never know a persons situation. For example, we had a lady who was crying her eyes out. She said, You just dont understand how important this is, because I have nothing in my cupboards to feed the kids. We started crying. It was so humbling. Its amazing. We have administrators helping out, standing in rain or 90-degree weather. Our superintendent was out there with us. We had everyone helping out. Superintendent Charles Smialek said hes proud that the districts efforts received national attention. Our nutrition services staff members have been literally heroes throughout the entire COVID pandemic, Smialek said. Theyve been delivering meals to 1,500 families a week in, literally, rain, sleet, snow and scorching heat. Their work is an inspiring show of selflessness. Read more news from the Parma Sun Post. Bay of Plenty Our client has plenty of work in the pipeline and as such they are in need of hammerhands for an immediate start.The successful... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz MEP, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee Viola von Cramon says Ukraine may lose visa-free travel preferences and financial assistance from the European Union. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, has passed a draft resolution on the appointment of commission members to select a new head of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). A total of 239 MPs have backed Resolution No. 4104, an UNIAN correspondent reports. Rada is allowed to appoint seven commission members, besides four members appointed by the Prosecutors' Council. Today, the Verkhovna Rada appointed: Olena Busol , Senior Researcher, Head of the Department of Special Legal Disciplines of the Educational and Scientific Humanitarian Institute of Vernadsky Tavria National University, Doctor of Law; , Senior Researcher, Head of the Department of Special Legal Disciplines of the Educational and Scientific Humanitarian Institute of Vernadsky Tavria National University, Doctor of Law; Andriy Hudzhal , Managing Partner at GuDeG Lawyers Association; , Managing Partner at GuDeG Lawyers Association; Oleksiy Drozd , Head of the Department of Doctoral Studies and Adjuncture of the National Academy of Internal Affairs, Doctor of Law, Associate Professor; , Head of the Department of Doctoral Studies and Adjuncture of the National Academy of Internal Affairs, Doctor of Law, Associate Professor; Kateryna Koval , first deputy chair of the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine; , first deputy chair of the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine; Bohdan Romaniuk , Professor at the Department of Transport Law and Logistics of National Transport University, Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor; , Professor at the Department of Transport Law and Logistics of National Transport University, Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor; Viacheslav Navrotsky , Professor at the Department of Theory of Law and Human Rights, Ukrainian Catholic University, Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Law, Professor; and , Professor at the Department of Theory of Law and Human Rights, Ukrainian Catholic University, Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Lviv State University of Internal Affairs, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Law, Professor; and Yevhen Sobol , Head of the Department of State and Legal Disciplines and Administrative Law of the Vinnychenko Central Ukrainian State Pedagogical University, Doctor of Law, Professor. At the same time, MEP, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee Viola von Cramon wrote on Twitter on September 17, 2020, that Ukraine may lose visa-free travel and financial assistance from the European Union over the situation around the appointment of a new SAPO head. While international community is occupied with #Belarus, #Ukraine government is hastily pushing candidates lacking experience & integrity to select #SAPO head. This will not fly Government is jeopardizing visa-free with the EU and further trance of 1,5 Billion assistance Viola von Cramon (@ViolavonCramon) September 17, 2020 Kholodnytsky's resignation, row with Wetern partners over successor's selection On August 21, SAPO Head Nazar Kholodnytsky filed for resignation. His resignation letter was signed by Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. SAPO Deputy Head Maksym Hryshchuk was appointed the agency's acting head. The European Union, key European powers, and the World Bank have written a letter to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, as well as the President's Office, over the draft resolution the parliament intended to pass on September 3 (the resolution did not pass the Rada on that day). The appeal intended to warn of the possible implications of the decision to change the composition of the commission formed to select the new chief of the Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office. The selection commission should be formed from among highly reputable candidates with significant experience in the field of combating corruption, the letter said, adding that public confidence in the selection process will largely depend on the composition of the selection committee. The ambassadors of the G7 countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan) in a statement posted September 16 stressed the need to protect the integrity of the National Anti-corruption Bureau (NABU) of Ukraine, the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), and the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC). What is SAPO The WOW + (Women of Waterford plus other great gals) Book Club met recently in the Underdown's back yard, social distancing of course Ladies who live in Waterford Estates were joined by two others to discuss The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. In summary, The Book Thief, narrated by Death, tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a nine year old German girl who, along with her brother, were given up by their mother shortly before World War II to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the small town of Moldhing. On their way to Molching, Liesel's younger brother dies and she is traumatized, experiencing nightmares about him for months. Hans is a gentle man who brings her comfort and helps her learn to read, starting with a book Liesel took from the cemetery where her brother was buried. Later Liesel befriends a neighborhood boy who falls in love with her. At a book burning, Liesel is seen stealing a book by the mayor's wife who later invites Liesel to read in her library. Jalandhar Despite free covid-19 test, convincing people who are fearful of being stigmatised, especially in rural areas, to voluntarily undergo it has become an uphill task. Jalandar authorities are, thus, finding it hard to meet daily targets. In many localities, most people with co-morbidities have refused to undergo covid tests even when teams visited their houses. Following this, local administrations in the Doaba region are now taking assistance of panchayats to ensure testing of all village residents. The administration has also asked Accredited Social Health Activists (Asha) workers and panchayats in the district to generate more awareness among locals and ensure covid testing. The biggest concern is that people are coming late for treatment and many are not willing to undergo the test. To tackle this, we are seeking help from gram panchayats and many have already submitted affidavits that they will cooperate with health officials, said Kapurthala deputy commissioner Deepti Uppal. Jalandhar had identified 35,000 people and Kapurthala over 40,000 people with comorbidities such as fever, TB and non-communicable diseases in a survey in August. However, not even 40% of these have been tested yet, with most unwilling to get tested. Epidemiologist Dr Satish Kumar said rural areas were more challenging than urban, and that SDMs concerned and panchayat members are already visiting localities with health officials to assist them in sampling. Health department officials are making efforts. There cannot be an immediate improvement and change in the attitude of people to come willingly for tests. Otherwise, we are conducting tests of hundreds of people a day, said Dr TP Singh Jalandhar nodal officer covid-19. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON WASHINGTON When Donald J. Trump first ran for the White House, he promised to come up with a great health plan, one that would repeal the Affordable Care Act but replace it with something better while maintaining its biggest selling point: protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions. Once elected, he swore he had a wonderful plan and would be putting it in fairly soon. On Tuesday night, President Trump was at it again, during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast on ABC, where he was schooled by Ellesia Blaque, an assistant professor of Africana and ethnic literatures at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She told him she had a congenital illness, demanded to know what he would do to keep people like me who work hard insured and cut him off when he tried to interrupt her. Were going to be doing a health care plan very strongly, and protect people with pre-existing conditions, Mr. Trump told her, adding, I have it all ready, and its a much better plan for you. After four years, during the worst health crisis in a century, the unkept promise may be catching up to Mr. Trump. There still does not seem to be any plan, because other than abolishing the Affordable Care Act which requires insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and which the White House is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Republican Party cannot agree on one. (Natural News) Today we are calling for the arrest and prosecution of top government officials in Nashville, TN, who have now been caught red-handed covering up the very low numbers of infections at restaurants and bars in order to gaslight the public and justify draconian business closures and lockdowns. A bombshell investigation by Fox 17, WZTV in Nashville, has uncovered once-secret emails that reveal a shocking conspiracy to deliberately deceive the public by withholding covid-19 infections statistics that would have shown that bars and restaurants are not spreading infections. While nursing homes and construction sites were found to have produced over 1,000 cases of coronavirus infections (each), bars and restaurants reported only 22 cases, reports Fox 17. From there, the cover-up begins. As Fox 17 reports: Leslie Waller from the health department asks, This isnt going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayors Office? Correct, not for public consumption, writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. A month later, the health department was asked point blank about the rumor there are only 80 cases traced to bars and restaurants. Tennessee Lookout reporter Nate Rau asks, The figure you gave of more than 80 does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesnt that mean restaurants and bars arent a very big problem? Health department official Brian Todd asked five health department officials, Please advise how you recommend I respond. The name at the top of the response is clipped off but you may find the answer unacceptable. My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site. We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be because that number is increasing all the time and we dont want to say a specific number. Neither the health department nor the mayors office would confirm the authenticity of the emails but councilmember Steve Glover had a Metro staff attorney inquire. Heres the official answer: I was able to get verification from the Mayors Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real, the staff attorney answered. Glover says this is Metro Nashville orchestrating a cover up. They are fabricating information, Glover said. Theyve blown there entire credibility Dennis. Its gone, I dont trust a thing they say going forward nothing. They were managing the propaganda to deliberately mislead the public What these emails show is that Nashville officials almost all Democrats, of course were carrying out acts of criminal fraud against the people of Tennessee. They were deliberately engineering or shaping the propaganda in order to mislead the public and try to justify lockdowns and closures that could not normally be justified if they had reported the real numbers. Brian Todd, one of the officials involved, reportedly asked five other government officials how he should respond to questions about the data, implying that he couldnt simply tell the truth and wanted to know how to shape the response to mislead the public. Its clear that the Nashville Mayors office would only share bad information with the public, while covering up good numbers that might justify reopening local businesses. This is the weaponization of government against the people, isnt it? Instead of local government working to help local citizens overcome the economic devastation of lockdowns and closures, these government officials were acting as enemies of the local people. As if they were waging a war against them! As Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, The Dem Mayor of Nashville KNOWINGLY LIED ABOUT COVID DATA to justify shutting down bars & restaurants, killing countless jobs & small businesses in the process. Everyone involved should face jail time. How many other Dem run cities is this happening in? The Dem Mayor of Nashville KNOWINGLY LIED ABOUT COVID DATA to justify shutting down bars & restaurants, killing countless jobs & small businesses in the process. Everyone involved should face jail time. How many other Dem run cities is this happening in?https://t.co/8anzs5Jgba Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 17, 2020 We are calling for the arrest and prosecution of every Nashville officials involved in this criminal fraud This story shows that Nashville officials recognized the numbers were low for bars and restaurants and therefore decided to withhold those numbers from the public. This is criminal. In a time when small businesses are being devastated by lockdowns that lead to bankruptcies, with jobs and livelihoods on the line, these Nashville government officials who all hold cozy jobs as government workers took actions that deliberately destroyed private sector businesses, almost like an act of BLM terrorism. Black Lives Matter burns your business down, but Nashville officials destroy your entire revenue model, making them worse than terrorists. Anyone who has ever wondered whether government was your enemy, look no further than Nashville. Its time that We the People started arresting these government criminals and tyrants who are abusing their power, lying to America and destroying local economies just so they can use the coronavirus pandemic to roll out their authoritarian schemes. Arrest the covid criminals in Nashville, starting with Mayor John Cooper. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:47:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOGADISHU, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- As the COVID-19 pandemic landed in Somalia in mid-March, there was rampant anxiety about how the country with one of the most fragile health systems could handle a pandemic that was wreaking havoc in wealthy nations. There was fear among local communities that the pandemic could add another layer of tragedies that had befallen the Horn of Africa nation over the years. Likewise, the international community was concerned the pandemic could erode gains made in the recovery process amid dwindling resources. But there was a section of the citizenry that had no time to worry and had to face the pandemic head-on -- the medical doctors. These were extraordinary moments that called for extraordinary courage and fortitude. As for Ibrahim Hussein Ali, a medical doctor trained in China, it was time to put into use his skills and experience gained over the years. Important for him was the humongous task of inspiring confidence on fellow doctors and encouraging them to soldier on despite the novelty of the disease and the scarcity of medical facilities. Until recently, Ali was the director of medical services in the only COVID-19 dedicated hospital in Somalia called De Martini. "During the period of April to June 2020, it was a hectic and intense situation to handle since the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 was at its climax with almost everyone in Mogadishu complaining of similar symptoms of COVID-19," Ali told Xinhua during a recent interview in Mogadishu. His monumental task involved isolating him from his family for two months as more patients were brought into the facility. Some patients left the facility alive but others succumbed to the pandemic and the virus dealt a blow to the poorly equipped facility grappling with a shortage of drugs and intensive care unit ventilators. "My medical training in China really came in handy," Ali said. "I had got the exposure to handling severe cases and the use of sophisticated machines like ventilators while at medical school in China," he added. Like stories documented in many other parts of the world, Martini's was no different since health workers were at risk of exposure to the disease. Ali was at some point taken down by COVID-19 and the dedicated medic became a patient. Luckily, he recovered and soldiered on leading a team of doctors and medical workers who too, were facing similar challenges. Thanks to donations from the Chinese government and the Chinese business magnate and philanthropist Jack Ma, the tide was changing. "We got support from China and I would like to thank the Chinese people and the government on behalf of the Somali people and doctors that fought COVID-19 in Somalia," said Ali. "Those kits were very helpful especially for those patients with severe respiratory distress that needed ventilator support," he added. The donations in the form of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were critical in protecting the medical workers from contracting the disease, according to Ali. He recently left De Martini following a significant decline in COVID-19 cases and encouraged Somali students to study in China to learn lessons from the pandemic on how important it is to return and give back to their motherland. "Study hard, gain as much knowledge as possible from China and come back and join us in the fight against COVID-19 so that we can defeat this deadly pandemic," said Ali. His selfless contribution coupled with support from China and other countries as well as the local private sector has contributed to bringing down the COVID-19 caseload in Somalia. Statistics from Somalia's ministry of health indicates the country had 3,390 cases and 2,812 recoveries. Enditem Economist Joan Martinez Alier from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) considers that ecological economics is more necessary than ever as a way to tackle today's completely "antiecological" economic model which is favouring climate change and destroying our biodiversity. The economist expressed these views after being awarded the 2020 Balzan Prize for "Environmental Challenges: Responses from the Social Sciences and Humanities", conferred onto him by the Balzan International Foundation in Milan. The award includes a cash prize of 695,000. The Balzan International Foundation highlighted the "exceptional quality of his contributions to the foundation of ecological economics". His pioneering work on the relations between the environment and the economy has made visible the unequal distribution of natural resources, and the need for environmental justice. Italian President Sergio Mattarella will award the Balzan prize to the four winners on 19 November. Born in Barcelona in 1939, Martinez Alier is Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona since 2010. His main line of research revolves around the relationship between ecology and economics, which has allowed him to research into agrarian history, environmental policies, and resource-based social conflicts. He is the current director of the journal "Ecologia Politica", and among his best-known publications are Ecology and Economics (1984) and Ecological Economics and Environmental Politics (2001) and Environmentalism of the Poor (2005). For Martinez Alier, these theories have never been more essential than now, because the "contradiction between economic growth and ecology is more evident; we can clearly see that there is a conflict which will not be solved with words. Many speak of a green economy or a circular economy, but these are all terms that seek to dissimulate the existence of this conflict". He goes on to point out that there is currently a new transition towards carbon: in India for example: "Alternative energy sources are not substituting fossil fuel, but rather adding to it, and there is no indication that this will diminish". He emphasises the importance of implementing environmental policies, carbon emission taxes, and new technologies to rapidly reduce the use of carbon fuels. Despite considering it slightly opportunistic to say that the global pandemic is fully related to environmental disasters, "because there have been many pandemics", he believes that the Covid-19 crisis does put to manifest the shortcomings of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in devising economic policies and politics in general. "The lockdown has demonstrated that our GDPs are of no use in measuring these things, because there has been an 8% reduction due to the fall in consumption and mobility, but there has been an increase in domestic work, which is not paid". He assures that the real problem is that many people have lost their jobs and money, and money cannot be distributed only through paid labour: there is a need for a universal basic income and that is something the Degrowth movement has been demanding for some time now. He affirms that we must be able to live without depending on this false and ill-measured economic growth, "but climate change and the loss of biodiversity have not yet been imposed as essential political issues... it is not possible to grow economically in an ecological manner". Martinez Alier expressed his appreciation for the award, which he considers a recognition of the causes he has defended for decades, such as ecological economy and political ecology: "It is also an aid to give continuity to our scientific project on environmental justice and our work on the Environmental Justice Atlas", through which researchers make an inventory of the socio-environmental conflicts existing around the world. They have already identified 3,200 cases on the map, most of which are caused by mining activities, land grabbing for plantations and water dams to generate electricity, which mainly affect the poorest communities and indigenous lands. Since 1961, the Balzan International Founddation has awarded the Balzan Prize to scientists whose contributions are evaluated by an international committee made up of 19 leading figures from different fields. The Balzan Prize has been awarded, among others, to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, Mother Teresa of Calcutta or the current Spanish Minister of Universities, Manuel Castells. In addition to Joan Martinez Alier, this year's prize-winners are physicist Susan Trumbore of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany; Jean-Marie Tarascon, lecturer of the College de France specialising in electrochemical energy, and the Brazilian jurist Antonio Augusto Cancado Trindade. ### This is an important recognition of the excellence of Argentinas unique, world-class terroirs, and a testament to the hard work and dedication of the 300 small growers with whom we partner." - Daniel Pi, Grupo Penaflors Director of Winemaking Trapiche, one of Argentinas largest and most historically-important wine producers, announced today that Wine & Spirits Magazine has recognized it as a Top 100 Winery of the Year for 2020. Wine & Spirits designates its Top 100 Wineries of the World annually. The magazines editors have tasted thousands of wines from around the world in 2020 to develop a list of the years best wineries based on overall performance, in addition to researching profiles on each winner in order to present the background on the vines, farming, and winemaking philosophy which helped create the top-performing wines. Trapiche earned some of the highest scores in its regional category in the magazines blind tastings this year, with one of the most consistent performances over a range of wines. The iconic producers top-performing wines for 2020 were: 2015 Mendoza Iscay Malbec & Cabernet Franc (95 points & Top 100 Wines 2020), 2017 La Consulta Terroir Series Finca Orellana Malbec (95 points), 2017 Gualtallary Terroir Series Finca Ambrosia Malbec (94 points), and 2017 El Peral Terroir Series Finca Coletto Malbec (93 points). For the first time in 17 years, the Top 100 Tasting will be a virtual event. Were excited by the new challenge and will work to ensure the virtual event has the same community feel of our Top 100 Tastings in years past, said Joshua Greene, editor-in-chief of Wine & Spirits Magazine. Representatives of Trapiche, part of Grupo Penaflor (owned by the Bemberg Family) will be joining the celebration digitally. We are humbled by this award, which is a great honor for Trapiche, says Daniel Pi, Grupo Penaflors Director of Winemaking and one of the most respected vintners in the world. This is an important recognition of the excellence of Argentinas unique, world-class terroirs, and a testament to the hard work and dedication of the 300 small growers with whom we partner. Since 1883, Trapiche has viewed the exploration of the land and its natural resources as an open door to new challenges and progressand we look forward to continuing to lead the way for Argentine viticulture for the next century and beyond. This award marks an important milestone in Trapiches history, recognizing its contributions to the Argentine and global wine industries over the past 135 years, and its impact on local wine tourism and culture in recent decades. This acknowledgment follows the achievement of many other important milestones: Trapiche has been named New World Winery of 2019 by Wine Enthusiast magazine. Trapiche is the number one Argentinian winery in exports, and the only Argentinian winery recognized six times by the renowned English publication Drinks International in its list of the Top 50 Most Admired Wine Brands (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020). Likewise, the winery has recently been ranked for the fourth year running as Argentinas Most Awarded Winery by World Ranking Wines & Spirits (WRW&S) and more recently Trapiche has been selected among the Worlds Best Vineyards 2020 Top 50 ranking. About Trapiche The Trapiche story began in 1883, in a small vineyard called El Trapiche, in Mendoza, Argentinas main winemaking region. There, the grapes for the first fine wines were grown. With more than 135 years of experience, Trapiche has earned its place as a pioneer in innovative grape growing and winemaking practices in Argentina. Exploration and discovery lie at the heart of the winery, which thrives on innovation as a guiding principle in the search for new horizons. Wine is a fascinating territory. Concentrating its efforts in groundbreaking research, Trapiche is driven by a strong will to continue uncovering varietal expressions loved and admired by the entire world. A path forged by hard work and nourished by the accolades that recognize it. A New World for Wine, where Bodega Trapiche continues to stand out. Find out more about Trapiche: http://www.trapiche.com.ar About Wine & Spirits Magazine Founded in 1982, Wine & Spirits is published seven times a year and read by over 200,000 members of Americas wine community. Consumers and wine professionals read the magazine for information on established and up-and-coming regions and producers, the art and science of viticulture, industry happenings and food and wine pairing. Wine & Spirits, the only wine publication to win the James Beard award five times for excellence in wine writing, evaluates more than 11,500 bottlings every year. Ex-Russian top investigators long prison sentence in $1 mln bribery case upheld RAPSI, Eugeny Varlamov 12:03 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) The First Appeals Court of General Jurisdiction on Thursday upheld a 12-year prison sentence given to ex-director of the Investigative Committee's Main Investigations Directorate Alexander Drymanov for $1 million bribery, RAPSI was told in the court. Moreover, the court dismissed appeals against sentence of other defendants, Colonel Alexey Kramarenko and ex-investigator Mikhail Maksimenko. The Moscow City Court convicted and sentenced Drymanov in March. In addition to the prison term he was fined 196 million rubles, prohibited from holding law enforcement and state posts for 7 years and deprived of his Major General rank. Kramarenko received 10 years in a high-security prison. Maksimenko was ordered to be imprisoned for 14 years. Earlier, the prosecution asked the court to sentence Drymanov to 16 years in prison, Kramarenko and Maksimenko to 14 and 17 years in prison respectively. Neither of the defendants admitted guilt. Investigators claimed the defendants received the bribe for mitigation of restrictive measures with respect to a member of an organized gang. The case of two other defendants, Alexander Lamonov and Denis Nikandrov, are heard separately. Drymanov was arrested in mid-July 2018. He stands charged with receiving two large-scale and especially large-scale bribes. The defendant pleads not guilty and calls the case fabricated. 'Jihad of the Womb': Watchdog details systemic abduction of Christian girls in Egypt Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A watchdog group has shed more light on the widespread abduction, trafficking and exploitation of Coptic Christian women and girls in Egypt, highlighting the cases of 13 women and girls who were kidnapped or abducted in the last three years. Coptic Solidarity, a Virginia-based nonprofit founded in 2010 that is dedicated to achieving equal citizenship rights for the Copts in Egypt and whose leader has testified before U.S. Congress, released the report "Jihad of the Womb: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt last Thursday. The new document is a continuation of the organizations work to address a troubling trend of kidnappings and disappearances that it says violate international trafficking and child abuse laws. The organization is critical of the Egyptian governments lack of action. The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies, the report argues. [T]he Egyptian government and international entities must address these heinous crimes that have been conducted with near impunity. The report, compiled from information gathered through the Coptic community, family members, religious leaders and Egyptian media reports, is to be submitted to United Nations entities as well as the U.S. Office for Trafficking in Persons. One priest from the Minya Governate told Coptic Solidarity that at least 15 girls go missing in his area every year and added that his daughter was almost kidnapped. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare, the report explains. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. According to the report, countless families have reported that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. Coptic Solidarity reasons that the lack of action when it comes to the trafficking of Coptic women is a major problem when it comes to documenting cases. Police often claim that the women and girls have gone with their captors willingly, an argument that is often made in countries where religious minorities are regularly kidnapped and forced into marriage. While few cases are genuine marriages, Coptic Solidarity estimates about 500 cases within the last decade, where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking. The kidnappings come in the backdrop of a Coptic minority population that is already marginalized as Coptic Solidarity has reported to UN bodies. The report further argues that organized Salafist Muslim groups in Egypt are engaging in a phenomenon Coptic Solidarity calls Jihad of the Womb the idea that Muslims are being urged by religious leaders to convert non-Muslim women and make Muslim children. These networks are often supported by like-minded members (including high-ranking officials) of the police, national security and local administrations, the report states. Their roles include refusal to lodge official complaints by the victims families, falsifying police investigations, organizing the formal sessions of conversion to Islam at Al-Azhar, or harassing families into silence and acceptance of the de facto trafficking of their loved ones. According to the report, the Egyptian government has maintained that the majority of abduction cases are about young women falling in love with someone from a different denomination. The problem with this defense is that the Egyptian government does not acknowledge or protect the ongoing rights of Coptic females, the report contends. Regardless if a woman is kidnapped from her home or in public, or if she agrees to elope and then discovers she has been tricked and wishes to leave, the elements of trafficking in persons and crimes against children are all still applicable. The 13 women that the report highlights represent only a fraction of the abducted women and girls in Egypt. In each of these cases, no investigative report has been completed, and none of the known perpetrators have been brought to trial meaning there is complete impunity for those who traffic Coptic women and girls, the report reads. In all of these cases, the police refuse to use words such as kidnapped or disappeared when writing the initial police report. They will only use the word absent, even when there is evidence of trafficking. Among the victims included in the report is 39-year-old Ranya Abd al-Masih, a teacher and mother of three, who was kidnapped in April in the Menoufia government. Three days later, Masih was seen in a video wearing a niqab, saying that she left her home on her own, converted to Islam and told her husband to stop looking for her. However, family members have noted that Masih did not take any of her personal belongings with her and that she is noticeably crying in the video as she recited what she was told to say. Her family and church leaders called for her to be released. She was later returned to the family in July after suffering sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse. Of note, Raynas family was directed by the police to stop talking publicly about her case, the report explains. Also in April, 15-year-old Yustina Magdy Attia was kidnapped in the Baad El Arab village of Beni Suef and was returned about three weeks later. Last November, 17-year-old Coptic Christian girl Lisa Romani Mansi was abducted in the Papillary Olive Field district near Cairo. She reportedly disappeared as she was on her way to a tutoring lesson. She has not been heard from since and her cell phone had been turned off. The childs father told Coptic Solidarity that he has received an inadequate response from the police as he seeks to find his daughter. Last October, 20-year-old Marina Sami Sahi, who had recently gotten married and was five months pregnant, was kidnapped in the Gesr Al Suez area of Cairo. There have not been any updates on her case, according to Coptic Solidarity. In July 2019, 18-year-old Nerges Adel Ibrahim was kidnapped by the cousin of one of her friends. Sarah Atef, a 23-year-old Coptic attending university in Beni Suef, was kidnapped in June 2019. A few days after her kidnapping, she reportedly made a phone call to her family to tell them that she fell in love with a Muslim man and converted to Islam. Sarahs friends have said that this it is extremely unlikely because Sarah loved her faith and was a very devout Christian, the report stresses. In May 2018, 18-year-old Vivian Adel Youssef was kidnapped just two weeks after she married her husband. Although her husband filed a police report, no updates have been made available on her status or whereabouts, the report states. Twenty-year-old Meray Girgis Sobhi was kidnapped on April 10, 2018, and was reported missing by her family. The girls father told Coptic Solidarity in a phone call that there has been no effort to investigate the matter and search for her. The phone call was apparently recorded by Egyptian national security because the father was contacted by them telling him to stop talking publicly about Merays kidnapping, the report notes. According to her father, Meray was then returned, but he was forced to write a letter denouncing Coptic Solidarity and saying that he would not give interviews to international media. Hoda Atef Ghali Girgis, 16, was kidnapped on April 8, 2018, while on her way home from an Easter party. No update on her situation has been provided. A witnessed alleged that three masked men pushed Rasha into a car and fled off, according to the report. Much like the others, there has not been any update on her situation. Coptic Solidarity also highlighted the cases of 26-year-old married Coptic woman Christine Lamie, 18-year-old Hanan Adly Girgis and a 16-year-old Coptic girl named Marilyn, who was kidnapped in June 2017 and recovered after 92 days. Her mother, Hanaa Aziz Shukralla Farag, shared about seeing a video online of Marilyn veiled, holding a Quran, and claiming to have converted to Islam, despite her obvious looks of discomfort and pressure to make the recitation, the report reads. Egypt ranks as the 16th worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution on the Open Doors 2020 World Watch List. Abuja, September 16, 2020 Nigerian authorities should immediately release journalist Ime Sunday Silas, drop the charges against him, and reform the countrys cybercrime act to ensure it is not used against the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On August 17, police in Uyo city, the capital of Nigerias southern Akwa-Ibom state, arrested Silas, an editor with the privately owned Global Concord newspaper and publisher of the news website The Profile, according to Solomon Johnny, Global Concords editor-in-chief, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Silas was arrested after he arrived in the Ikot Akpan Abia district of Uyo to meet a source, and officers detained him at a nearby police headquarters, Johnny told CPJ. On August 18, a local magistrate court charged Silas under Section 24 of Nigerias 2015 cybercrime act, according to Johnny and a copy of the charge sheet reviewed by CPJ. The court denied Silas bail on August 18, but his lawyers filed a new bail application on August 24, which was granted on September 10, Emmanuel Isangidoho, one of Silas lawyers, told CPJ via phone and messaging app. Despite being granted bail, Silas remains in the police headquarters as of today, according to Johnny. If convicted, Silas could face up to three years in prison, a fine of up to 7 million naira ($18,153), or both, according to the cybercrime act. The prolonged detention of journalist Ime Sunday Silas is yet another grave reminder of the lengths to which Nigerian authorities are willing to go to silence journalism they find undesirable, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program coordinator, in New York. Nigerias cybercrime act remains one of the laws most frequently used to prosecute journalists in the country. Authorities should swiftly act to repeal or amend Section 24 of the law, which has been repeatedly used to criminalize news distribution. Silas charge sheet alleges that he violated Section 24 of the act related to cyberstalking by sending a message that included the title of an August 9 report published by The Profile about Martha Udom Emmanuel, the wife of Akwa-Ibom Governor Udom Emmanuel. That report, titled Exposed: Okobo PDP Chapter Chair links Gov Udoms Wife with plot to blackmail Deputy Speaker, alleged a blackmail scheme related to upcoming local council elections. According to the charge sheet, Silas sent a message containing the reports title, which constituted a crime of spreading information through a computer, knowing the same to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, insult, hatred and ill will against Martha Udom Emmanuel. CPJs calls and messages to Martha Udoms spokesperson, Amayo Umoh, went unanswered. Emmanuel Udoms chief press secretary, Ekerete Udoh, told CPJ in a phone interview that he was unaware of the situation and could not comment. Since Nigerias cybercrime act was adopted in 2015, CPJ has documented its repeated use to prosecute journalists; in one case that has been ongoing since 2017, journalist Fejiro Oliver was charged with four counts of cyberstalking under Section 24 of the act for distributing reporting. Isangidoho said that it was illegal for any magistrate court to charge Silas with a federal crime, like cybercrime, and that only a higher court had the authority to hear such cases. Akwa Ibom police spokesperson N-Nudam K. Frederick told CPJ in a phone interview today that he was not familiar with the case and would contact CPJ again when he had more information; he had not done so at the time of publication. In July, the Economic Community of West African States court found that Section 24 of the cybercrime act violated the right of freedom of expression and ordered the government to repeal or amend the law, according to a copy of the courts judgement, which CPJ reviewed. The National Bank of Romania (BNR) is organizing a conference on Thursday with the topic "Working remotely - benefits and challenges". The event aims, in the context generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, to present the experience of the National Bank of Romania, as well as other institutions / companies, regarding the unfolding of the activity in a regime assimilated to working remote: its advantages, limitations, opportunities and challenges.The approached topics will aim at the solutions put in practice by employers in order to ensure the continuity of the activity, especially the critical one for the functioning at the optimal parameters of the company / institution, in parallel with the protection of the employees' health.The event will be broadcast live on the YouTube account of BNR. An Alaska dentist who pulled out a patient's tooth while riding a hoverboard has been jailed for 12 years for reckless endangerment and a $1.9million Medicaid fraud. Seth Lookhart joked about the hoverboard stunt in a video he sent to friends, and messages showed him bragging that nobody would ever uncover his crimes. But he was was convicted in January of a 'lucrative' fraud scheme in which he pressured his patients to undergo unnecessary sedations so that he could send Medicaid the bill. 'In reviewing all this over and over again, I have this visceral response - you darn near killed some people,' Alaska judge Michael Wolverton told him on Monday, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Dentist Seth Lookhart was filmed removing a patient's tooth while riding a hoverboard at Clear Creek Dental, in Anchorage, Alaska in July 2016 In the hoverboard video, Lookhart balanced on the board while extracting a patient's tooth before cheerfully zooming away into the corridor. Lookhart sent the video to friends and joked about the procedure being a 'new standard of care'. Investigators tracked down the patient, Veronica Wilhelm, who was sedated and had no idea about the hoverboard stunt. She testified in court last year that she was 'pretty livid' when she discovered what had happened. 'When did Dr Lookhart get your approval to take out your tooth on a hoverboard?,' prosecutor Joan Wilson asked in court. 'He never did. I obviously wouldn't have approved that. That's dangerous,' Wilhelm said in reply. 'If you were awake and not sedated when Dr Lookhart came into the operatory on a hoverboard, what would you have said to him?,' Wilson continued. 'I would've said hell no!,' Wilhelm said. 'No, that's unprofessional. It's crazy.' She said: 'I think you have to be pretty narcissistic, you must be pretty full of yourself to think you can pull someone's tooth out on a hoverboard.' During cross-examination, defense attorney Paul Stockler apologized to Wilhelm for the dentist's actions. 'I want you to know that as his lawyer, I apologize for what he did on that hoverboard,' he said. 'It's unacceptable and you can be assured that when I agreed to represent him, I got in his face and told him what I thought about him for doing this, which I think needed to be done.' Pictured: Lookhart riding his hoverboard in Clear Creek Dental. Afterwards, he texted the video to several of his friends and the clip was used as evidence against him Patient, Veronica Wilhelm (right), was sedated at the time with no idea she was being filmed or Lookhart was on a hoverboard Wilhelm was also angered that Lookhart sedated her son for a teeth cleaning, she said at the time. Prosecutors said the hoverboard stunt 'did not conform to minimum professional standards of dentistry'. Lookhart admitted carrying out the hoverboard procedure, but had denied the Medicaid fraud of which he was eventually convicted in January. Word of the fraud reached investigators in 2016 when a former employee told the state that Lookhart was profiting by performing more IV sedation than needed. Prosecutors said he 'placed his patients in substantial risk of serious physical injury' by pressuring them into unnecessary sedations. The state said that none of Lookhart's billings had proper justification, with the dentist giving vague and unacceptable reasons such as 'comfort' and 'anxiety'. Medicaid paid him $1.9million for IV sedation services, a third of the total paid to 57 practices in the state, and he fraudulently took $250,000 from his partners As well as the fraud, Lookhart was convicted of misdemeanor counts of illegal practice of dentistry and reckless endangerment. The Anchorage Superior Court judge said he was particularly struck by numerous text messages in which Lookhart bragged to friends about his crimes. Lookhart believed that unless 'someone was standing right next to him at the time, no one would ever know', the judge said. The dentist also schemed to cut out his partners by billing Medicaid under a different provider identification and having payments sent directly to his home. Since Lookhart obtained an intravenous sedation license in 2015, prosecutors said, Medicaid paid him about $1.9million for IV sedation services. Lookhart apologized in court while reading a prepared statement. 'While I do not doubt that I was able to render care and alleviate the pain to many people who were in dire need, I also know that I could have and should have maintained better discipline and focus while serving a patient base I came to love,' he said. Lookhart is scheduled to begin serving his sentence on December 7. His office manager, Shauna Cranford, is awaiting sentencing for her role in the scheme after accepting a plea deal. FTAs help attract more foreign investors to Vietnam Hanoi Free trade agreements (FTAs) that Vietnam has signed with its partners have been an important factor attracting foreign investments to the country. In the first eight months of 2020, Vietnam attracted 19.5 billion USD in foreign direct investment (FDI), down 13.7 percent year-on-year. There were 1,797 new FDI projects licensed, with registered capital totalling 9.73 billion USD, down 25.3 percent in project numbers but up 6.6 percent in value compared to the same period last year. The increase in value showed that new-generation investment attraction policies have proved effective despite negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam Nicolas Audier said that FTAs that Vietnam signed with Japan, the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union are helpful for Vietnams FDI attraction. In addition, the Vietnamese Governments rapid response and measures to help enterprises deal with difficulties caused by the pandemic have helped raise foreign investors confidence in the countrys business climate. The EuroCham Business Climate Index increased from 27 percent in the first quarter to 34 percent in April and has remained stable until now. The BCI, which was released in July, also found that more than 25 percent of European enterprises had benefitted from the Governments postponement of tax, while around one-in-five had benefitted from a reduction in rent and a suspension of social insurance contributions. Experts said that Vietnam will welcome big investment flows from the EU and Japan. According to the Japan External Trade Organisation, the Japanese Government increased the value of an economic support package to 2.2 billion USD, which is expected to speed up its businesses shifting of investments from China to ASEAN, particularly Vietnam. Currently, around 3,500 Japanese businesses have demand of investing or expanding production in the country. Jacques Morisset, World Bank Lead Economist and Programme Leader for Vietnam, said he himself and many governments and multinationals believe that the pandemic crisis gives an opportunity for Vietnam to attract more foreign investors. A perception that many multinationals will need to diversify because of the crisis, and Vietnam is clearly a country that can host more FDI, so that would be the first opportunity, he added. The WB said in its recent report that competitive production costs, a convenient position in Southeast Asia, strong economic efficiency and increasing domestic consumption are Vietnams advantages to lure more foreign investments. The banks 2020 Doing Business report, meanwhile, ranked Vietnam 70th out of 190 economies based on two main factors: improved access to credit information through data distribution from retailers and upgraded information technology infrastructure that makes paying taxes easier for most businesses. To attract new flows of investment, Vietnamese localities are exerting efforts to upgrade infrastructure to create the most favourable conditions for foreign investors. Georgia Tech settles with pro-life student group, revises policies on student organizations Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Georgia Institute of Technology has reached a settlement with a pro-life student group that sued the school and others for denying funding for a speaking event that would have featured pro-life activist Dr. Alveda King. As part of the settlement, announced Thursday, Georgia Tech agreed to clarify its policies regarding the treatment of student organizations to prevent viewpoint discrimination and pay $50,000 in damages and attorneys fees. Georgia Tech outlined its policy changes in its new Registered Students Organization Policy, which became effective in August. Approval or denial of a Groups Charter application, or a determination by the Center for Student Engagement that a Groups Chartering application is not complete, will not be based on the mission, goals, or beliefs of the Group or any other content- or viewpoint-based determination, the policy stresses. In April, Students for Life at Georgia Tech filed a lawsuit against Georgia Tech officials, the schools Student Government Association and the regents of the University System of Georgia after their funding request for the event featuring King, the niece of late civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was denied. The students were represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal institute specializing in religious liberty cases. In the summer of last year, Students for Life at Georgia Tech submitted a request to the Student Government Association for funding the King event out of the pool of mandatory student activity fees available for such events. Such requests are routinely fast tracked without any discussion, ADF explained. According to ADF, members of the Student Government Association expressed concern about the content and viewpoints that Students for Life and King would present at the event. Citing Kings inherently religious lifestyle and concerns that some students would be offended by her point of view, the SGA denied the request. Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, described the SGAs refusal to fund the King event as an example of hostility toward the First Amendment. He cheered Georgia Techs decision to revise their policies to treat all student organizations fairly, regardless of view point. Its so important that public colleges and universities exemplify the First Amendment values they are supposed to be teaching to students. Thankfully, Georgia Tech has shown its renewed commitment to these principles by taking quick corrective action, Langhofer said. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, also issued a statement praising Georgia Tech for establishing the Registered Students Organization Policy. We are hopeful that Georgia Techs decisive policy changes will set an example for universities around the country, she said. Now that Georgia Tech has agreed to implement the Registered Students Organization Policy, ADF attorneys have dismissed the lawsuit. Georgia Tech is not the only college in the United States to face accusations of suppressing students First Amendment rights. Just two months after the Georgia Tech Students for Life filed their lawsuit, the student senate at Florida State University removed its president, Jack Denton, after his text messages proclaiming that groups like Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union have taken positions that contradict with the teachings of the Catholic Church became public. Two weeks ago, Denton filed a lawsuit against FSU, claiming that the student senate ousted him from his position in retaliation for his private religious speech. The ADF is representing Denton as he seeks reinstatement, compensation, and the expungement of all records relating to the Senates retaliatory and discriminatory actions against him. London: A group representing the world's major airlines says there are 30,000 Australians stranded in the UK alone as a result of the cap on the number of citizens allowed to return home each week. The figure is far higher than previously cited. The high commission in London said 3800 Australians have requested to be allowed to go home while the federal government has said there were 30,000 registered in total with Australian embassies around the world. Airlines want the weekly cap on international arrivals increased so that they can bring more people home to Australia. Credit:Getty Images The body representing major airlines that service the Australian market, including Qantas, Qatar, Emirates, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines, said passengers may not be able to return well into next year. "International airlines have told the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia (BARA) that there are likely some 30,000 Australians in the United Kingdom seeking to return home," the board said in a statement. Remote Learning DC to Cover Internet Bills for 25,000 Families Washington, D.C. will be covering the internet bills for up to 25,000 students and families through the new school year. Mayor Muriel Bowser launched the $3.3 million "Internet for All," which will use funding from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, delivered through the CARES Act Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund. Those who qualify are families eligible for food stamps and other public assistance. The project will be coordinated by the District's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) and will incorporate internet streaming through Comcast's Internet Essentials and RCN's Internet First programs. Both promise "up to 25 Mbps" speed for $9.95 per month. Now, according to CTO Lindsey Parker, the office is reaching out to eligible families via email, phone and text messages. Families can also work through their own schools to get access to the program. "As schools begin classes online, students without regular access to the internet are at a severe disadvantage," Parker said in a statement. "The Bowser administration is committed to work with our partners and our community to break this cycle and create a fair shot for everyone in DC." The new program segues with the launch of OCTO's new "Tech Together" initiative, a public-private-nonprofit partnership for bridging the broader digital divide in the District. That includes: Broadcasting information about low-cost internet services; Increasing internet access; Providing training to residents; and Increasing tech savvy among DC government employees. According to reporting by the Washington Post, if funds are left over from Internet for All, the city might expand eligibility to include undocumented families who also need internet but don't qualify for public assistance. When the school program ends, Parker said the city would remind participating families to return their router to the internet service provider or pick up the monthly cost themselves. Keralas higher education minister KT Jaleel, who has been facing the heat in the gold smuggling cases, was summoned by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday. Jaleel reached the NIA office in Kochi at 6 am in a private vehicle and was questioned for two hours. His name was found in prime accused Swapna Sureshs phone call list. Suresh was arrested in July this year. Soon after the list of Sureshs calls came out, the minister said he had called Suresh as a consular employee in connection with Ramadan kits offered by the UAE consulate in the state capital. There have been widespread protests across Kerala against Jaleel and demands have been made for his resignation. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has dismissed any possibility of the ministers resignation. The ongoing agitation against the minister is a move to destroy the states spirited fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, he said. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had on Wednesday denied reports that Jaleel was given a clean chit in the case. The smuggling case came to light on July 5 after seizure of 30 kg gold from a diplomatic consignment. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Mayank Singh By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Indian Army has completed the creation of habitats for more than 20,000 soldiers foreseeing the tensions along the Eastern Ladakh getting protracted. There are two stage preparations right at the front, closer to the Line of Actual Control, and in deeper areas, to react as and when the troop beef up is required at the front. A senior Army officer said, We inducted more engineer troops to complete all operational requirements and have completed the temporary defence closer to the Line of Actual Control and also Arctic Tents have been erected to meet the conditions of high altitude and sub-zero temperatures. Also, prefabricated structures in the rear, located a little deeper, have been raised for the troops positioned to quickly react whenever the Chinese try to gain numerical superiority. These habitats have a heating mechanism to avoid the extreme cold. ALSO READ | US provided 'strong, unambiguous support' to India during border crisis with China: WH official Every soldier in the forward areas have been provided with Special Clothing and Mountaineering Equipment (SCME) with each kit costing more than rupees one lakh, told the officer. Major General SB Asthana (Retd), Defence Analyst says, For faster needs in such contingencies Director Generals of Military Operations (MO), Military Intelligence (MI) and Operations and Logistics (OL) under the Vice Chief give direction to the other directorates. MI gets the information, MO makes the operational plan and OL provides the logistics support under the Vice Chief of Army Staff, the highest coordinating agency in the Army among the various commands, and the Army Headquarter. All material requirements including fuel, ration, ammunition, and other things have been stocked at various echelons. The forwards area troops have extra stocks to meet requirements for more than 15 days, while those in the rear are equipped with an extra stock of more than a week. Also, the stocking is placed in a manner so that it reaches its point of need within 24 hours once the need is felt, briefed the officer. Indian Army is fully prepared in terms of troop requirements and the associated arms, ammunition, and equipment for winter deployment all along the Line of Actual Control. More than 40,000 soldiers of India and China have been locked in a standoff position since the first week of May. The rule of law is under attack in Britain, lawyers have said after MPs voted for a bill that violates international legislation. The Law Society, which represents 200,000 solicitors in England and Wales, said the UK Internal Market Bill would damage the countrys global standing. The rule of law is under attack, said president Simon Davis. It is because of our commitment to the rule of law that our system of justice is respected globally, that countries want to do trade deals with the UK and that we can comment on state oppression in Belarus with credibility. We have a choice about what sort of country we want to be and what we want to be known for around the world. I fervently hope we will still be respected as a country which prides itself on upholding the rule of law. Despite dissent from some prominent Conservatives, MPs voted to move the law onto its next stage by 340 to 263 on Monday evening. Two Tory MPs Sir Roger Gale and Andrew Percy voted against the bill, while 30 did not cast a vote although some may have been paired with opposition MPs. Boris Johnson said the legislation was necessary to prevent the EU taking an extreme and unreasonable interpretation of the provisions in the withdrawal agreement relating to Northern Ireland. But some senior Conservatives, as well as all five living former prime ministers, raised concern after ministers admitted that the bill breached international law. Ed Miliband, Labours shadow business secretary, questioned why the prime minister and government had backed the withdrawal agreement if it contained the issues described, adding: A competent government would never have entered into a binding agreement with provisions it could not live with." Minister admits Boris Johnson's Brexit plans break international law MPs will begin detailed line-by-line scrutiny of the bill on Tuesday, with votes expected next week on amendments to the Northern Ireland provisions which some Tories may back. In a detailed briefing sent to politicians before Mondays vote, the Law Society and Bar Council, which regulates barristers in England and Wales, had called for the removal of five clauses of the bill. The document said the provisions enable ministers to derogate from the UKs obligations under international law and prohibit public bodies from complying themselves. They represent a direct challenge to the rule of law, which include the countrys obligations under public international law, it added. There will be implications on the reputation of the UK around the world as a country with which to do business. This will be of global and long-term effect, particularly in the context of the ongoing negotiations with the EU and with other countries. The slightest threat could damage the rule of law and the perception of the UK as a credible and predictable trade partner, as well as the UKs position as a centre for international legal practice and dispute resolution, and the global use of English law. Brexit so far: in pictures Show all 53 1 /53 Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit campaign Boris Johnson led the VoteLeave campaign PA Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit campaign Boris Johnson MP, Labour MP Gisela Stuart and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell address the people of Stafford in Market Square during the Vote Leave Brexit Battle Bus tour on 17 May 2016. Their lead line on the tour was: We send the EU 350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead. Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Voting day A man shelters from the rain as he arrives at a polling station in London on 23 June 2016. Millions of Britons voted in the referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Referendum results Leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage, reacts at the Leave EU referendum party at Millbank Tower in central London as results indicated that it was likely the UK would leave the European Union AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Protesting the result A young couple painted as EU flags and a man with a sign reading Im not leaving protest outside Downing Street against the voters decision to leave the EU on 24 June 2016 Getty Brexit so far: in pictures David Cameron resigns British Prime Minister David Cameron resigns on the steps of 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016 after the results of the EU referendum were declared and the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Theresa May Becomes the new Conservative Party leader Theresa May receives a kiss from her husband Philip, after becoming the new Conservative Party leader on 11 July 2016. May became Prime Minister two days later and although she voted to remain in the referendum was keen to lead Britains Brexit talks after her only rival in the race to succeed David Cameron pulled out unexpectedly. May was left as the only contender standing after the withdrawal from the leadership race of Andrea Leadsom, who faced criticism for suggesting she was more qualified to be prime minister because she had children AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Lancaster House keynote speech on Brexit British Prime Minister Theresa May delivers her keynote speech on Brexit at Lancaster House in London on 17 January 2017. Where she spoke about her offer to introduce a transition period after the UK formally leaves the European Union in March 2019. Despite repeating the pro-Brexit mantra of no deal is better than a bad deal, the Prime Minister claimed she wanted a tone of trust between the negotiators and said Britain was leaving the EU but not Europe. She said there should be a clear double lock needed for the transitional period to make sure businesses had time to prepare for changes to their trading relationships with the EU Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Triggering of Article 50 British Prime Minister Theresa May in the cabinet, sitting below a painting of Britain's first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, signs the official letter to European Council President Donald Tusk invoking Article 50 and the United Kingdom's intention to leave the EU on 29 March 2017 Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Gibraltar nonsense Tensions have risen over Brexit negotiations for the Rock of Gibraltar. The European Council has said Gibraltar would be included in a trade deal between London and Brussels only with the agreement of Spain. While former Conservative leader Michael Howard claimed that Theresa May would be prepared to go to war to protect the territory. Spain's foreign minister stepped in only to assert that there was no need for the dispute Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Shock snap election Soon after triggering Article 50, Theresa May called on 18 April 2017 for a snap general election. The election would be on 8 June and it came as a shock move to many, with her reasoning to try to bolster her position before tough talks on leaving the EU AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Dissolution of Parliament for General Election Campaign Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street after returning from Buckingham Palace on 3 May 2017. The Prime Minister visited the Queen to ask for the dissolution of Parliament signalling the official start to the general election campaign Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Conservatives lose parliamentary majority An arrangement of British daily newspapers showing front page stories about the exit poll results of the snap general election. British Prime Minister Theresa May faced pressure to resign on 9 June 2017 after losing her parliamentary majority, plunging the country into uncertainty as Brexit talks loomed. The pound fell sharply amid fears the Conservative leader would be unable to form a government AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Labour gains Britains opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a tumbs up as he arrives at Labour headquarters in central London on 9 June 2017 after the snap general election results showed a hung parliament with Labour gains and the Conservatives losing their majority AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit negotiations begin Brexit Minister David Davis and European Commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations Michel Barnier address a press conference at the end of the first day of Brexit negotiations in Brussels on 19 June 2017 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures May speaks in Florence British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks on 22 September 2017, in Florence. May sought to unlock Brexit talks after Brussels demanded more clarity on the crunch issues of budget payments and EU citizens' rights AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU council summit insufficient progress German Chancellor Angela Merkel joins other EU leaders for a breakfast meeting during an EU summit in Brussels on 20 October 2017. The EU spoke about Brexit and announced that insufficient progress had been made AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures DUP derails settlement on the withdrawal part of Brexit DUP Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds walks off after speaking to members of the media as a protester holding flags shouts after him outside the Houses of Parliament on 5 December 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to pull out of a deal with Brussels after the DUP said it would not accept terms which see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK Getty Brexit so far: in pictures May suffers defeat over EU (Withdrawal) Bill Theresa May suffers defeat in parliament over EU (Withdrawal) Bill on 13 December 2017. The Government was defeated by Conservative rebels and Labour MPs in a vote on its key piece of Brexit legislation. MPs amended the EU (Withdrawal) Bill against Theresa May's will, guaranteeing Parliament a meaningful vote on any Brexit deal she agrees with Brussels. Ms May's whips applied pressure on Conservative rebels who remained defiant in the Commons throughout the day and in the end the Government was defeated by 309 votes to 305 Brexit so far: in pictures EU council summit sufficient progress Britain's Prime minister Theresa May arrives to attend the first day of a European union summit in Brussels on 14 December 2017. European leaders discussed Brexit and announced there was finally sufficient progress at the end of the two days AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures The game moves to transition Brexit Secretary David Davis gives evidence on developments in European Union divorce talks to the Commons Exiting the EU Committee in Portcullis House, London, on 24 January 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures Trade deal is what May wants French President Emmanuel Macron gestures to Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May after they hold a press conference at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, on 18 January 2018. May and Macron agreed a new border security deal, through which the UK will pay more to France to stop migrants trying to reach British shores on 18 January 2018 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Transition period agreed The UK and EU agree terms for Brexit transition period on 19 March, 2018 Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures No agreement on Irish border The EU and UK however failed to reach an agreement on the Irish border during the successful talks on other Brexit issues AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU attacks Mays fantasy strategy For months after the March deal is struck there is little significant progress in talks. One senior EU official tears into Britains fantasy negotiating strategy and accuses Theresa May of not even having a position on a variety of important issue Getty Brexit so far: in pictures UK releases Ireland plan Britain releases a new customs plan to solve the Northern Ireland border but Michel Barnier says it leaves unanswered questions and would not prevent a hard border EbS Brexit so far: in pictures Chequers plan agreed The cabinet agrees on a plan known as the "Chequers deal" on July 6 2018. The plan seeks regulatory alignment on goods and food, divergence on services, freedom from the European Courts of Justice and an end to free movement. Many were surprised that the hard Brexiteers of the cabinet would agree to this plan PA Brexit so far: in pictures Chequers plan sparks resignations Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and numerous ministers resign in the days following the Chequers agreement Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Davis out, Raab in On 9 July, Dominic Raab replaces David Davis as Brexit Secretary. Raab is a keen Brexiteer and was a housing minister before taking over from Davis Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Barnier's "deal like no other" EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier claims on August 29 2018 that they are prepared to offer Britain a trade deal like no other, though he stressed that they will not divide or change the single market to accommodate Britain AP Brexit so far: in pictures "My deal or no deal" In an interview on Panorama on September 17, the Prime Minister insists that any Brexit deal will be offered to the EU on her terms. She asserts this amongst continued attacks on her approach to Brexit by Boris Johnson and the European Research Group, headed by Jacob Rees Mogg BBC/Jeff Overs Brexit so far: in pictures EU leaders reject Chequers Quite the blow was dealt to the Prime Minister at a EU leaders summit in Salzburg on September 20. European Council President Donald Tusk stated that the Chequers deal "will not work" Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures May demands respect Following the rejection of her Chequers plan the day before, the Prime Minister voiced her anger that the EU had dismissed it without offering an alternative. She stated that throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same. A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it." Getty Brexit so far: in pictures People's Vote march As the People's Vote campaign and The Independent's Final Say campaign gain traction, 700,000 people turn out in London to demand a final say on the UK's Brexit deal on October 20 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures More resignations As the Prime Minister settles on a Brexit deal, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab resigns along with Work and Pensions secretary Esther McVey and many other ministers Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Final Say petitions delivered to Downing Street People's Vote supporting MPs Chukka Umunna, Justine Greening and Caroline Lucas and The Independent editor Christian Broughton deliver over a million signatures in favour of a People's Vote to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street on December 3 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures May delays vote On December 10, the Prime Minister delayed the vote on her Brexit deal as it was near certain not to pass through the Commons due to Tory rebels and lack of DUP support AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures No confidence motion Tory MPs triggered a confidence vote in the Prime Minister on December 12. She won by 200 votes to 117 Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Commons rejects the deal Following the delay, the Prime Minister's deal was rejected in the Commons by a historic 230 votes AFP Brexit so far: in pictures Corbyn tables a no confidence motion Following the rejection of the Prime Minister's deal, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a motion of no confidence in the government, which the government won by a margin of 19 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Plan B The Prime Minister won the support of the commons to return to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop on January 29. In the same sitting, MPs also voted against a no-deal Brexit in a non-legally binding motion PA Brexit so far: in pictures EU council president savages Brexit campaigners who failed to plan for departure: Special place in hell There is a special place in hell for pro-Brexit campaigners who demanded Britain leave the EU without explaining how it should happen, Donald Tusk has said. The European Council president launched the scathing attack as he accused anti-EU campaigners of pushing for Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely. Mr Tusk also dismissed suggestions that the EU could reopen negotiations over the controversial Northern Ireland backstop, dealing a blow to Theresa Mays hopes of securing fresh concessions as she tries to get her exit deal through parliament. Speaking in Brussels alongside Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk said: Ive been wondering what a special place in hell looks like for people who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely. He also tweeted the accusation moments later Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU and UK announce talks to restart after Theresa May visits Brussels Both have agreed to restart Brexit talks to find a way through the deadlock in Westminster, following a visit by Theresa May to Brussels. In a joint statement the British government and European Commission said Ms May had had a robust but constructive meeting with president Jean-Claude Juncker, and that the pair would meet again before the end of the month. But the EU again refused to reopen the withdrawal agreement and its controversial backstop with any negotiations expected to focus on the future relationship between the UK and EU instead Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit strategy lost MPs voted down May's Brext plans, with a majority of 45. The prime minister did not appear in parliament to see another defeat PA Brexit so far: in pictures Labour and Conservative MPs resign and create the Independent Group Back row of Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Chuka Umunna and Mike Gapes, middle row of Angela Smith, Luciana Berger and Ann Coffey and front row of Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Joan Ryan PA Brexit so far: in pictures Non-biding votes on amendments to Brexit motion On February 27 he house held a series of votes, unanimously calling for the UK and EU to guarantee citizens rights in a no-deal scenario AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Attorney General publishes legal advice A hammer blow for May as Geoffrey Cox said her renegotiated deal can still leave UK in backstop against its will. Mr Cox did say the prime ministers efforts had reduced the risk of the UK being trapped in the backstop indefinitely. MPs went on to vote against her deal by 391 to 242 UK Parliament/PA Brexit so far: in pictures No-deal off the table MPs rejected a no-deal Brexit by 43 votes on March 13, with cabinet ministers rebelling in another humiliating defeat for Theresa May. A day later they voted in favour of the prime minister seeking an extension to Article 50 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures House speaker bans May from third Commons vote on same Brexit deal John Bercow sensationally told Theresa May he would stop her making another attempt to pass her Brexit deal unless she has secured changes. The Speaker said a further meaningful vote would be ruled out of order if the motion was the same or substantially the same under an ancient convention to stop the government bullying parliament on issues MPs have rejected Parliament Live Brexit so far: in pictures May writes to Tusk The prime minister wrote to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, to ask for a three-month extension to give her more time to try to get her deal through parliament. However the European Commission advises the EU27 should offer a short extension to May 23 or a longer one meaning the UK would participate in European elections 10 Downing Street/AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures European Council summit Theresa Mays request to extend triggering Article 50 until the end of June was rejected by the EU, and instead offered a shorter time frame. She accepted the offer of a delay until May 22 if her withdrawal deal is approved by Parliament. If MPs rejected it for a third time, the EU said Britain must propose a new plan by April 12. Ms May said she will not support a long delay because it would mean Britain participating in elections for the European Parliament Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brussels confirms preparations for a no-deal Brexit are completed They warned that it is increasingly likely the UK will crash out. In a statement the European Commission (EC) said preparedness and contingency work, which the EC has been conducting since December 2017, was now finished. The announcement came days after EU leaders agreed to a request by Theresa May to extend the UKs Brexit date AFP Brexit so far: in pictures May resigns Reuters The briefing said the bill threatened the UKs aim to accede to the Lugano Convention, which enables civil judicial cooperation with EU countries, at the end of the Brexit transition period. The Law Society and Bar Council said there was no justification for the proposed measures. Priti Patel, the home secretary, defended the need for the legislation, telling broadcasters the government was standing by the union on Tuesday morning. She told BBC Breakfast: When it comes to preserving the integrity of the UK and clearly delivering for the people of Northern Ireland when it comes to the Good Friday Agreement, we've said from day one ... that we would always stand by our word and not compromise when it comes to unfettered access in goods and services but also standing by the Good Friday Agreement. We are ensuring the UK Internal Market Bill stays true to that principle, that is why we are bringing this bill forward. Sony has revealed a November release date for its next-generation PlayStation, marking the start of a 2020 console war with Microsofts new Xbox. The PS5 will go on sale from November 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, followed by the rest of the world a week later. The tech giant confirmed pricing of the new console which will come in two versions. A PS5 Digital Edition, which is without a disc drive, will retail at 359, while the main machine will cost 449. This puts the flagship device directly in competition with Microsofts Xbox Series X in terms of pricing also retailing at 449 but the PS5 Digital Edition is more expensive than the 249 compact Xbox Series S. Sony also showcased a number of upcoming titles due to arrive on the PS5, including a new Harry Potter-themed game called Hogwarts Legacy, an open world role player game set in the magical school before the titular wizards time in the 1800s. Glimpses of familiar franchises including Final Fantasy XVI and Call Of Duty Black Ops Cold War were shown during the live-streamed event, alongside extended footage of previously announced games such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Resident Evil Village. To a certain extent, we can sympathize with the numbers crunchers with the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, who note that its current fund balances would not cover losses from a major hurricane. By their estimate, the association has a 44% rate inadequacy for residential coverage and 49% shortfall for commercial properties. Taxpayers undoubtedly want those numbers to line up better. But the solution is not simply raising windstorm rates again, after many previous increases. Rate hikes like that simply drive away more potential customers reducing the associations income and making next years shortfall even greater. By keeping rates stable, as the board has done so far this year, the association can attract more residential and commercial customers, bringing more money into a system that clearly needs it. In our news story on this issue, Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick also pointed out that high windstorm rates will drive more newcomers and current county residents to non-coastal counties like Hardin County, where windstorm coverage is not required for mortgages. Jefferson County needs to gain residents, not lose them, and this is one more barrier it doesnt need. Branick and many others have also pointed out the disparity of coastal residents helping to indirectly subsidize insurance claims for tornado or hail damage in other parts of Texas, while our costs for hurricane coverage are not spread out statewide. Insurance is based on the concept of shared risk. All homeowners or vehicle drivers essentially pay insurance premiums into a larger pool of money that pays for losses wherever they occur. One year, you might be basically paying for someone elses car accident or roof replacement. The next year, they might be paying for yours. Right now, however, coastal residents are being shortchanged. Thats just not fair, and the Legislature and Texas Department of Insurance should address this imbalance in the new legislative session that begins in January. They should also encourage or require major insurance companies to offer private windstorm coverage along the coast. Thats happening more in recent years, and coastal residents appreciate the change. But windstorm coverage should be an essential component for the huge companies that traditionally offer virtually every other type of insurance. The state windstorm agency also believes it could build up its fund balance if Texas were spared from major hurricanes for a stretch of a few years. Wed all like that to happen, but it appears that climate change is bringing more storms and more damaging ones, not fewer disruptions. The agencys strategy cant rely on good luck. It needs solutions that work, and stable rates that provide a continuously growing roster of clients is an option that makes sense. New Delhi: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will address Rajya Sabha on Thursday (September 17, 2020) and issue a statement on the ongoing India, China border dispute. On Tuesday, Singh had issued a statement on the same in Lok Sabha. In his statement in Lok Sabha, Singh had said India has conveyed to China that its attempt to unilaterally alter the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh was unacceptable. It was also pointed out that Chinese actions reflect a "disregard" of several bilateral agreements between the two nations. "Since April, we had noticed a buildup of troops and armaments by the Chinese side in the border areas adjacent to Eastern Ladakh. In early May, the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area, which resulted in a face-off," he said in Lok Sabha. "As of now, the Chinese side has mobilized a large number of troops and armaments along the LAC as well as in the depth areas. There are several friction areas in Eastern Ladakh including Gogra, Kongka La, and North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake. In response to China`s actions, our armed forces have also made adequate counter deployments in these areas so that India`s security interests remain fully protected," Singh said in Lok Sabha. Meanwhile, Rajnath Singhs statement in Lok Sabha that India is ready to deal with any situation regarding the India-China border tensions irked Beijing and the neighbour nation has warned that ''it is ready for both peace and war.'' An article published in Chinas state-run Global Times said, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh addressed Parliament on Tuesday. Singh bragged of how righteous and brave Indian troops were while emphasizing the importance of peacefully resolving the border crisis to China-India ties. The latter part was the keynote of his speech. The two countries have been engaged in a standoff position since April-May timeframe and the Chinese have refused to vacate areas in the Finger area and other friction points in the Eastern Ladakh area. Multiple rounds of talks have also failed to yield any significant result in defusing the tensions and now the Indian side has prepared itself for long-term deployment in the high mountainous region. Former head of Globex Bank gets 3 years behind bars for embezzling 12 million euros RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 15:50 17/09/2020 MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) The Tagansky District Court of Moscow on Thursday found a former president of Globex Bank Vitaly Vavilin guilty of embezzling 12 million euros from the financial organization and sentenced him to 3 years in penal colony, the courts spokesperson Zulfia Gurinchuk has told RAPSI. A prosecutor earlier asked the court to pass an 8.5-year jail sentence upon Vavilin and a 1 million-ruble ($13,300) fine. Investigators believe that in 2015 Vavilin used his job position to give an unrecoverable 12-million euros loan to a company controlled by businessmen, brothers Alexey and Dmitry Ananyev. The credit deal terms have been allegedly changed and debt obligations to Globex have been transferred to a foreign organization, which is yet to return the money. Vavilin pleads not guilty and denies his involvement in granting the loan. In February, the Moscow City Court ordered the defendant to be released from detention and put under house arrest. The Moscow business ombudsman Tatiana Mineyeva has noted that the businessmans rights were violated in the framework of the case: firstly, he was detained, and, secondly, his actions could not be qualified as embezzlement, because a commercial court found that the bank suffered no damages. Established in 1992, Globex Bank is one of major Russian banks with most of its shares (99.9 percent) owned by the state-run Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs. VELOX Media "With everything going on in the world, consumer buying behavior has permanently shifted online and thats where we excel," Joe Rowett, CEO of VELOX Media, said. VELOX Media is an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization and paid search marketing. Today, the company is proud to announce two new accolades, ranking No. 42 on the Financial Times The Americas Fastest Growing Companies list and No. 2,630 on the annual Inc. 5000 list. In addition, VELOX Media has just purchased a new, substantially larger building for its corporate headquarters, allowing the company to further expand during otherwise turbulent times. The Financial Times The Americas Fastest Growing Companies list ranks North and South American companies based on compounded annual growth rate in revenue from 2015-2018. The Inc. 5000 list ranks the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. based on their revenue over the past three years. Inc. 5000 has now featured VELOX Media for two consecutive years. To be included on each list, companies must undergo meticulous revenue verification. Growth is a significant part of VELOX Medias mission. The firm specializes in revenue-focused SEO services, which clients trust to drive KPIs and outperform their previous expectations. Since 2015, VELOX Media has grown from four to more than 50 employees, hiring 10 since the beginning of 2020. The pandemic has accelerated many inevitable trends, including a permanent shift in buying behavior to digital platforms. With more people shopping online, VELOX Media has produced phenomenal results for clients, achieving 30% revenue growth since the beginning of March. Fueled by high demand for its services and accelerated growth, VELOX Media recently purchased an 11,000 sq. ft. office building in downtown Boise, Idaho at 518 S. 9th St. In the new building, the company can accelerate its growth trajectory even further and substantially expand its workforce in a highly desirable location. Building renovations are expected to be complete near Thanksgiving, at which time VELOX Media will move into the space. While were usually focused on the wins we generate for our clients, its great to see our work recognized among top brands, too, Joe Rowett, CEO of VELOX Media, said. Its been a pretty big year for us. With everything going on in the world, consumer buying behavior has permanently shifted online and thats where we excel. Our new headquarters will provide much more space to fuel growth, and we cant wait to add more talented people to our team. VELOX Media offers ROI-driven organic search engine optimization, paid management, web development and other creative services to enterprise B2C and B2B companies. The firms proprietary revenue prediction capabilities allow companies to see an organic SEO campaigns potential return before making the investment. VELOX Media also pairs this with impact-focused paid campaign management. VELOX Media partners with luxury lifestyle brands, consumer packaged goods companies, e-commerce conglomerates, merchant services and professional service firms. The primary objective is helping these companies achieve new revenue growth and build nationally-recognized web presences. VELOX Medias culture of research and experimentation enables its team to thrive and clients to dominate search rankings in their verticalsfrom beauty and skincare to B2B, CPG, fashion, enterprise, health and wellness, and more. Learn more about VELOX Media at http://www.veloxmedia.com. About VELOX Media VELOX Media is an ROI-focused digital marketing agency that helps companies around the world grow and unlock new revenue streams. Through its research-backed strategies, organic search engine optimization, paid management and unique proprietary model that executes revenue prediction, VELOX Media helps its clients drive sustained SEO and SEM success. Founded in 2007, the company partners with major brands such as KitchenAid, Chinese Laundry, Juice Beauty, BY TERRY, Dress Up, Dr. Axe and more. VELOX Media is a Google Premier Partner and is ranked in the top 3% of digital marketing agencies in the world by Google. Its also recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Idaho. Learn more about VELOX at http://www.veloxmedia.com. ### AM Best will present a market briefing exploring the state of the global reinsurance industry on 22 September 2020,3:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m. (CEST). During the event, AM Best senior rating analysts will discuss the rationale behind the rating agency's stable market segment outlook on the reinsurance industry and offer opinions on the key rating issues affecting reinsurers. The analysts also will explore the major strains that primary companies are facing that could have an impact on the reinsurance market. Other discussion topics during the presentation, which typically has been held in Zurich, a longstanding reinsurance industry hub, include an overview of the market segment outlooks for select European countries, and how the COVID-19 pandemic is shaping the industry. Panelists during AM Best's Reinsurance Market Briefing Global will include: Catherine Thomas, senior director, analytics; Angela Yeo, senior director, analytics head of operations; Mathilde Jakobsen, director, analytics; and Nick Charteris-Black, managing director, market development (Moderator). Register now: http://www.ambest.com/webinars/zurich20/index.html. Attendees can submit advance questions during registration or by emailing webinars@ambest.com. Playback will be available to registered viewers shortly after the event. AM Best recently released its annual market segment report on the reinsurance industry. The report, "Global Reinsurers Maintain Equilibrium Through COVID-19 Turbulence," includes AM Best's highly regarded annual ranking of the Top 50 Global Reinsurance Groups. The report can be viewed at http://www3.ambest.com/bestweek/purchase.asp?record_code=300732. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com Copyright 2020 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005084/en/ Contacts: Edem Kuenyehia Director, Market Development Communications +44 20 7397 0280 edem.kuenyehia@ambest.com Official data from the Environment Agency reveals no river or lake in England is in 'good health' due to high levels of chemical pollution. Figures were last published in 2016 and at the time 97 per cent of surface water was ranked 'good' when considering levels of chemicals from households and farms. However, stricter tests have been developed to help spot signs of chemical pollution in marine animals and exposed the shocking state of our nation's waterways. Conservationists are calling for urgent action and increased funding to tackle the issue. Official data from the Environment Agency reveals no river or lake in Britain is in 'good health' due to high levels of chemical pollution. Pictured, the River Eden While chemical pollution is revealed as ubiquitous, overall health has failed to improve despite a Government pledge that all waters will be in good health by 2027. Measurements taken last year and published today show only 16 per cent of waters in England received a 'good' rating for overall ecological health. This is the exact same as it was in 2016, a long way from the lofty progress needed to reach the targets set four years ago by DEFRA. Experts now say the 2027 target is 'all but unachievable'. The figures also show that English waters are among some of the worst in Europe, with a European average of 40 per cent surface water bodies in good health. Scottish rivers and lakes scored 65.7 per cent while almost half (46 per cent) of Welsh waterways and 31 per cent of those in Northern Ireland were deemed 'good'. Measurements taken last year and published today show only 16 per cent of waters in England received a 'good' rating for overall ecological health. This is the exact same as it was in 2016. Pictured, the River Thames Plastic pollution eaten by seabirds releases harmful chemicals in their stomachs Plastic pollution eaten by seabirds releases 'potentially harmful' chemicals within their stomachs, a study has found. Increasing amounts of plastic are ending up polluting the world's oceans and beaches where birds often confuse them for food. Eaten debris can cause blockages and remain in the intestine for long periods. Advertisement Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said: 'We need to go further and faster on reducing the environmental impact from storm overflows and other sources of pollution including chemicals and agriculture. 'More needs to be done urgently, and I met with water companies earlier this month to set out the high expectations this government has for our water environment, including in particular chalk streams. 'These results show we have a long way to go, with a new way of testing for chemicals more accurately reflecting what is in our water environment. 'While it's not comfortable reading, this will allow us to plan more effectively to tackle the scourge of pollution.' The figures come after Environment Agency chief executive Sir James Bevan raised the possibility of reforming the directive. But environmental groups warn say water health should be a top priority for regulators. Richard Benwell, chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link coalition of conservation groups, said: 'Chemicals, sewage, manure and plastic are polluting our rivers, invasive weeds are choking them, and climate change and over-abstraction are drying them out. 'Urgent investment is needed now to turn our suffering waters into thriving blue corridors for wildlife.' On Monday, PREMIUM TIMES published a 20-month investigation revealing the rotten underbelly of the Nigerian healthcare system where doctors, hospitals and medical laboratory service providers connive to defraud patients of billions of naira annually through a referral kickback scam. This kickback scam involves the payment of between 10 to 20 per cent cut to doctors and hospitals by diagnostic centres for every referral made to them. The practice violates extant regulations that protect patients from exploitation. Posing as a doctor, a PREMIUM TIMES journalist for 20 months was able to refer several people for routine medical tests to some of the leading diagnostics centres in the country and the reporters bank account was credited with kickbacks. After our story was published on Monday, some Nigerians recounted how they fell victim to this scam: Kingsley Unah I have three children, two of them were born in Nigeria and one in the US. The two of them that were born in Nigeria had unpleasant experiences with doctors. The second one is not within the scope of what you are looking at. But the first one, that was eight years ago precisely, my wife was attending Roding Medical Centre in Victoria Island. She was being seen by one Dr Nwokeoma and just close to when she was due I think by their estimation it was two or three weeks away, she went for her routine test with the doctor and the doctor said the child was not well-positioned and that it is a cause for concern. He asked us to do a TC scan at Union Diagnostics. When we were driving out, my wife was a bit curious, she was like there was this lab that is just on Ligali Ayorunde, close to Roding and the Eti-Osa Local government office. My wife was like why are we going all the way to the other part of VI when there is a lab just here. So, we got into the lab and requested a CT scan, and the lady that was supposed to do the CT scan went ballistic. She was saying all sorts of things. She was saying: We want to put her in trouble. This woman is almost nine months pregnant and they want to do a CT scan, for what? In the middle of all of this, I forgot I could call my brother-in-law, who is a gynaecologist in the UK to even speak to him about it. The lady refused to do the scan anyway. She said it was going to endanger the baby. We got in the car and were going to go to Union Diagnostics. But my brother-in-law called. I narrated what happened to him and he was like a CT scan, for what? Ordinarily, a CT scan shouldnt be injurious to anybody, but this is an unborn child, and nobody can say what would happen if you are doing a CT scan of an unborn child, especially if it is not required. My brother-in-law said he had not seen anything in his practice that will make him send a woman to do a CT scan for what I have just described, except I was describing something else. He said that it was something he could feel with his hands and if he could feel it, he could tell what position the baby was and since the child was three weeks away, things could change very quickly, i.e. the child could get into the right position. So, why would he ask us to go to a CT scan? He said I should not do it (the CT scan). He promised to call Roding and have a word with the owner of Roding. So, he called the owner of Roding and asked him why Dr Nwokeoma would do such a thing and asked the owner to examine my wife himself. He called us back and said well, different doctors have different exposure, maybe he would have done it differently and not that what Dr. Nwokeoma did was wrong. I just felt this was a nice way of saying this guy should not have asked us to go for the CT scan. So, putting all these together, I just realised that the fact that he specified that we should go to that Union Diagnostics is a scam. They would have done the test and because it is something they have all planned together, he would have received a cut from the fee. The luck we had was that we went to the other lab, Radmed, where the lab technician refused to do the test. Busola Macaiah I was involved in an accident in 2016 en route Lagos. The accident was a ghastly one and I had to be rushed to the nearest hospital to the accident scene. I spent two days there to regain consciousness and stamina to travel down to Lagos for better medical attention. Doctors at the hospital where I was rushed to confirmed that I had an injury on my left knee and ankle. They confirmed that it was not a bone fracture and advised that I seek further medical attention and also do a scan. On getting to Lagos I went to my hospital and the doctor who attended to me confirmed the same thing and asked that I do a CT scan to know the extent of the damage. I went for the CT scan (my knee and ankle) and the radiologist on duty interpreted the scan result and his interpretation conformed with what the doctor had suspected. My interaction with the radiologist and the submission of our family doctor also confirmed the same thing (I had to send the scan result to him to interpret). So, that means the report from the first hospital I went to, the report from the present doctor, the radiologist and my family doctor were the same. However, when I submitted the report to the present doctor, he asked that I visit a particular scan centre in Surulere to get interpretation because what the radiologist stated in my report was not the same as his submission. He thought I did not understand the medical terms used. Unknown to him, I had gotten clarification with my family doctor. I was in pain and needed to start medication immediately. So, I had to do what he asked. This cost was like N20,000.00 extra. And eventually, the interpretation came, and it was the same thing my family doctor interpreted from the radiologist report (I didnt send the scans to him. I only sent the result so he can explain the medical terms). Ime Etim My wife and I used Immanuel General Hospital, Eket for her delivery. We had the prenatal care there. At one time, about the third trimester, the medical practitioner that attended to us recommended a Scan. Of course, he specified the place at Eket. We searched for and eventually found the place. We went in and told them what we came for. With his (the medical practitioner) written recommendation, they conducted the scan. But before my wife went in for the scan, we had to pay. It was during this payment process I noticed the receptionist wrote down my wifes details in their logbook and that of the medical practitioner that recommended us. At first, I wondered why she would write down his name along with my wifes details. I didnt want to dig deep. The subsequent time we visited was not on any experts recommendation, we just needed to know how the baby was doing. It was then we confirmed our suspicion, as the lady that attended to us demanded to write the name of the doctor that recommended the centre to be written down. I looked into that logbook this time around (again) as she wrote down a name. Advertisements Of course, this is Nigeria and I can afford it. The Ucheji (the diagnostic centre) must survive as well as the Ucheji referee. My wife and I reasoned that there must be some form of thank you from Ucheji to those names I saw. Abdullahi. A. Abdullahi described how his sister who was recently delivered of a child was made to do multiple scans until a nurse she knew who worked at the hospital told her why she was being asked to do the same test multiple times. The hospital is a Primary Healthcare Center (PHC) at Barnawa, Kaduna State. She had done two scans and was going for the third scan when she met a nurse, who lives in the same neighbourhood as her. Each scan cost N2,500, a total of N5,000. She wondered why because when she did the second scan and brought the result, the hospital did not say anything, which suggested that everything was fine. One of the nurses who work there lives in the same neighbourhood as my sister. She told my sister that the phone number on the referral letter was to facilitate the kickback. My sister decided not to go for the third because it was obvious the scan was not necessary. She did not bother confronting the health centre. Onayemi Taiwo It was at FMC, Oyingbo. Early this year, my mum had a stroke relapse. She was to do an MRI scan at one diagnostic centre in Surulere, Lagos. I thought this was normal until the doctor requested that I should let the scan centre executive know he referred us. And of course, the scan centre also asked whether we were referred by a doctor. The same scheming scenario recurred when we were to run another one to assess if she was getting better. They know youre in one hospital, they know the doctor who could have referred you. Head of Libyas UN-supported government, Fayez Serraj, has announced that he plans to relinquish power to a new administration in October. Fayez Serraj has stated that in accordance with UN-brokered talks between the countrys rival factions, Libya will be entering a new preparatory phase wherein both factions will seek to unify the country once again and prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections. Serraj to clear way for new administration During his televised speech, Serraj announced that he will be stepping down so as to make way for a new administration. Libya has been gripped in chaos and a violent civil war since 2011. An UN-backed uprising led to the defeat of longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi who was later killed. Since the revolution in 2011 subsequent conflicts has essentially bifurcated the country into eastern and western administrations that are each backed by foreign governments and armed groups. The Libyan National Army commander commander-in-chief Khalifa Hifter controls the east and south backed by the United Arab Emirates, while an UN-supported government based in Tripoli controls the west of the country. Read: Officials Say East Libya Government Resigns Amid Protests Read: Libyan Commander Khalifa Hifter Agrees To Lift Oil Blockade Amid Ongoing Conflict As per reports, Libya will hold elections in 18 months in the city of Sirte. Sirte is currently controlled by Hifter and is the gateway to Libyas major oil fields and export terminals. Talks between the two factions are expected to resume in Geneva. The African nation has faced a recent wave of protests both in the west and the east over worsening living conditions in the country. Hundreds of youth took to the streets to protest against the crippling electricity shortages in Benghazi and other eastern while similar protests also occurred in the Libyan capital of Tripoli and other western cities. UNSC Adopts resolution United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Tuesday, September 15 adopted a resolution calling for the urgent appointment of a new Special Envoy for Libya. The resolution also contained provisions for the appointment of a coordinator that would supervise the day-to-day activities of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). (With AP Inputs) Read: Libya's Eastern Side Witnesses Rare Wave Of Protests, Parliament Calls Emergency Meeting Read: UNSC Adopts Darft Resolution Calling For Appointment Of Special Envoy For Libya A firefighter works at the scene of the Bobcat Fire burning on hillsides near Monrovia Canyon Park in Monrovia, California on September 15, 2020 California faces more devastation from wildfires that have ravaged the West Coast, authorities warned Wednesday, with strong winds and dry heat expected to whip up flames from dozens of blazes raging across the state. Governor Gavin Newsom said although firefighters had made progress in their battle to contain more than two dozen major wildfires, so-called Santa Ana winds could fuel the relentless blazes. "With wind events that we are experiencing currently and what we anticipate over the coming days, we have to be mindful that even with high containment numbers, those fires are anything but behind us," he told a press briefing. Highlighting the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, Newsom said the state so far this year has experienced 7,606 fires as opposed to 4,972 in 2019. He said the flames have devoured nearly 2.3 million acres1.5 million of them since mid-Augustas opposed to 118,000 last year. "These numbers bear fruit to that assertion that this is historic," he said. Newsom also appeared to hit out at US President Donald Trump, who visited the state earlier this week, saying he had "no patience for climate change deniers" who reject mounting scientific evidence that extreme weather events are linked to global warming. Dee Perez comforts Michael Reynolds in the ruins of his home destroyed in the Almeda Fire in Talent, Oregon, September 15, 2020 Trump during his visit downplayed climate concerns over the wildfires, saying that global warming will reverse on its own. "The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers" since 2003, said Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). He added that the fires are emitting so much pollution that thick smoke was visible over 8,000 kilometers (4,900 miles) away in northern Europe, underscoring the devastation of the blazes. The heaviest smoke from the fires remains over the US West Coast, with cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco registering some of the worst air quality in the world. 'Ripe for wildfires' Exhausted firefighters are now battling 79 large fires, with "possible critical fire weather" expected in northeast California, the National Interagency Fire Center said Wednesday. "With no significant precipitation in sight, California remains dry and ripe for wildfires," state firefighting agency Cal Fire said, adding that warmer weather expected this weekend would bring "elevated fire danger." A man stands near some of the destruction caused by the Almeda Fire in Phoenix, Oregon, September 15, 2020 One of the blazes near Los Angeles, dubbed the Bobcat Fire, closed in on a historic observatory Tuesday but crews managed to protect the structure. Apart from California, which has borne the brunt of the overall death toll of more than 30, the coastal states of Oregon and Washington have also experienced record blazes that have encroached on major population centers. In Oregon, 10 people were killed in the infernos fueled by dry conditions. Rain was expected to bring some much-needed relief for parts of Oregon and Washington on Wednesday. The flames across the West Coastsome of which were caused by lightning strikeshave so far scorched more than five million acres (two million hectares) and displaced tens of thousands of people. The disaster has brought the issue of global warming to the forefront of the US presidential campaign, with less than two months before the election. It has been difficult historically to prove a link between individual extreme weather events and climate change. This handout image taken on September 10, 2020, from Copernicus-Sentinel-3 shows the smoke plume off the west coast of the states of Oregon, Washington and California, as fires rage across the continent However, there is a growing evidence showing blazes like those in the US would not be so intense and widespread without the warming humanity has caused on Earth during the industrial age. In general, climate change has been shown to amplify droughts that dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. The economic impact from this year's fires is expected to be staggering, with one expert estimating the damage at more than $20 billion. Authorities have also warned that the smoke from the fires could worsen the coronavirus pandemic, as people forced to evacuate seek shelter in shared accommodation. Inhaling smoke and ash could also further weaken the lungs of people infected with the virus and undermine the immune system. Explore further Fires continue to rage in US as smoke reaches Europe 2020 AFP The AFWERX Space Challenge initiative is made up of four challenges targeted at creating integrated space operations leveraging the best in technology while maintaining security, being resilient and increasing agility. Four challenges were run concurrently focused on separate topics Persistent ISR, DoD Commercial Space Partnerships, Global Space Transport and Delivery and Space Asset Resiliency. Earth Observant is competing in the Space Asset Resiliency Challenge alongside a diverse group of teams that represent entrepreneurial startups, small businesses, large enterprises, academic institutions and research labs. "The solutions submitted for these space challenges represent the bleeding edge of space innovation," stated Brennan Townley, AFWERX Challenge Collaboration Lead. "We're excited to highlight these innovators and connect them with opportunities across the Space ecosystem." The Space Asset Resiliency Challenge strives to increase the longevity of our space assets by increasing their durability against the unique space environment and enemy threats. The team at Earth Observant have spent years designing high-reliability power and control electronics with a specialty in electric propulsion. This work has led to the development of Earth Observant's novel Hall Effect Thruster (HET) system that uses unique pre-ionization techniques to enable the use of non-standard propellants. At the Challenge, the Company will show its latest developments in propulsion that support Space Asset Resiliency for the Air Force and others attending this virtual event. "It's been quite a journey since launching Earth Observant in 2017," says Christopher Thein, the company's CEO. "Not only for having our propulsion technology selected for further review at EngageSpace, but to see our vision of bringing a new area in Earth's thermosphere into operational use. We believe very low earth orbits offer new remote sensing opportunities for both civilian and government use." The EngageSpace event will feature highly engaging opportunities to connect, educate and innovate with other like-minded attendees, industry leaders, individual innovators, academia, investors, as well as military and government leaders. The entire event is designed to transform and accelerate the industry and enable government buyers to pursue the most promising innovative solutions to the most pressing and threatening Space scenarios. Register for the EngageSpace event by visiting https://engage.space ABOUT EARTH OBSERVANT INC. (EOI) Based in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Earth Observant Inc. is developing a unique low-flying constellation of satellites to collect affordable "ultra-high" resolution image data supporting defense and commercial business intelligence. EOI's mission is to offer radiometrically accurate ultra-high resolution imagery for all markets to encourage widespread use. Contact: Paul Smith [email protected] ABOUT AFWERX Established in 2017, AFWERX is a product of the U.S. Air Force, directly envisioned by former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. Her vision of AFWERX to solve some of the toughest challenges that the Air Force faces through innovation and collaboration amongst our nation's top subject matter experts. AFWERX serves as a catalyst to unleash new approaches for the warfighter through a growing ecosystem of innovators. AFWERX and the U.S. Air Force are committed to exploring viable solutions and partnerships to further strengthen the Air Force, which could lead to additional prototyping, R&D, and follow-on production contracts. Contact: Tracy Skenandore / Makenzie Coombs [email protected] SOURCE Earth Observant Inc. Related Links https://www.earthobservant.com A Bexar County administrative judge recently announced he is ready to start internet jury trials in civil cases, pending approval from the Texas Supreme Court. While we have learned it is possible to successfully conduct many aspects of life over Zoom without causing much harm, a jury trial is not one of them, and we should take a moment and ask if that type of trial is in the best interest of all parties involved. This pandemic caused the administration of justice to slow to a crawl. In response, judges started holding hearings online or safely in person. Proceedings that do not require a jury are now taking place every day. In 1774, the English Parliament passed a law giving courts a free hand in selecting juries that were sympathetic to the crown, rather than a jury of peers. Among the grievances that led to the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers explicitly stated the injuries created by the abuses of King George III were for depriving us in many cases, the benefits of a trial by Jury. Sir William Blackstone, the 18th-century English scholar, noted that trial by jury was a right, not a privilege. This right was central to the founding of the United States and should be defended vigorously. Its truly a new age: Bexar County administrative judge plans for virtual jury trials in October Before Bexar County holds a civil jury trial online, we should remember that our jury trial system, while imperfect, is the envy of the world. Here, we are presumed innocent. Here, plaintiffs must prove their claims to obtain relief from the acts of another. It is the jury system that provides the right of the individual to test the facts, to listen to the evidence and to let a jury of peers decide based on the law. In a trial, jurors look to nonverbal cues to decide whether a witness lacks credibility or whether their testimony is believable. Psychologists have determined nonverbal communication accounts for 65 to 70 percent of all human communication and helps us decide the credibility and importance of a statement. Nonverbal cues, such as body movement and eye contact, have proven to make people perceive the speaker as more credible. In 2005 article on the science of courtroom persuasion, the author, Jansen Voss, wrote: Physical appearance has been found to have a strong correlation to believability. I am sympathetic to the backlog of cases and agree justice delayed is justice denied. Even so, trial by jury in name alone is not the answer during this pandemic. Judges control their court and ensure that outside forces do not tamper with the administration of justice. In internet hearings, a judge cannot control the courtroom. Judges know neither if someone else is listening in, nor if someone might be just out of view, guiding or tampering with the juror. It would be difficult to detect if a juror chooses to take a screenshot of sensitive evidence, such as crime scene photos or evidence of child abuse, and post it online. 2020 Voter Guide: A roadmap of the races, candidates and issues on the ballot We experience Zoom fatigue and shortened attention spans online. A juror on a computer has the entire internet and its distractions beckoning. How many of us can honestly say we can spend one hour online and not send a text, check email and social media or look up a news story? Regardless of how many warnings a judge issues, people just will not be able to help themselves. I applaud the courts for trying to find solutions to these issues, and I am impressed with how hard Bexar County judges and attorneys are working to maintain proper decorum and keep cases moving. However, the right to be evaluated by members of ones community is a fundamental 800-year-old individual right that should be protected. No one should be forced to relinquish those rights. Internet hearings are certainly here to stay. Nonetheless, they cannot replace a trial by a jury of peers. Our jury system has been watered down enough. For the few trials that remain, we should instead create a safe environment in the courtroom with social distancing and safety protocols in place. Lets start there before we consider eroding a constitutional right and the integrity of American justice. A.J. Bellido de Luna is the Hardy Director of Advocacy at St. Marys University School of Law. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a battle in the House of Lords over his controversial plan to break international law over Brexit despite making concessions to buy off rebels in the House of Commons. Former Tory leader Michael Howard, himself a Brexiter, promised a "rough passage" for the bill when it reaches the upper chamber and said his fellow Lords -- who have the power to delay the legislation by as much as a year -- are "highly likely" to block it as a point of principle. "It invites Parliament to use its sovereignty to break international law and I don't think Parliament should be asked to do that," Howard said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Anna Edwards. "On this issue, that's so fundamental and such an issue of principle, the Lords may well insist on blocking the bill." On Wednesday, Johnson agreed to give the House of Commons a veto over whether the government can exercise its proposed powers to override parts of the Brexit divorce treaty after meeting Conservative MPs who were threatening to rebel against him. Howard spurned those concessions, and said he expects the Lords, where the government doesn't have a majority, will reject the bill by a large margin. Johnson's plan has prompted threats of legal action from the European Union and been widely criticized for damaging Britain's reputation for respecting international agreements. On Wednesday, one of the government's most senior law officers quit over the legality of the bill. "I have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a Law Officer with your policy intentions," Advocate General for Scotland Richard Keen said in a resignation letter. He said the government faces challenges "on a number of fronts" and that Johnson's legislation "will not make these any easier." However, by appeasing the doubters in his own party, Johnson appeared to have seen off a Commons rebellion and boosted his chances of passing the legislation, ramping up tensions with the EU. The danger is that the deteriorating atmosphere between the two sides jeopardizes ongoing trade negotiations, and the threat of a disruptive no-trade-deal Brexit -- meaning tariffs and quotas on commerce, plus an economic shock -- is looming. Johnson's moves have also prompted concern from across the Atlantic, with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden becoming the latest senior U.S. figure to warn that a U.K.-U.S. trade accord would be conditional on the Good Friday Agreement being upheld, which has secured peace in Northern Ireland. The government also said it would amend its Internal Market Bill to set "clear limits" on the "scope and timeliness of judicial review into these powers," attempting to insulate itself from the kinds of protracted legal battles that have been a feature of the Brexit saga. Johnson added to the tensions with the EU on Wednesday by saying he didn't believe the bloc was negotiating in good faith in their trade talks and that he would impose "formidable" tariffs on EU products if a free-trade agreement could not be agreed this year. "We're very hopeful our friends and partners will see the logic of reaching an agreement," Johnson said to a panel of lawmakers in Parliament. "We will wait and see what they do." In other Brexit developments: - Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis wouldn't confirm that Britain would abide by the U.K.-EU arbitration mechanism in the Brexit divorce treaty. - European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the chances of a trade deal with the U.K. are fading. - A major logistics group said that a key IT system for avoiding border chaos would not be ready in time for the end of the Brexit transition period. CLEVELAND, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said his office would release state guidance on Halloween including trick-or-treating on Friday. During his Thursday coronavirus briefing, DeWine said hed received many questions about Halloween, one of the larger gathering nights of the year, especially for children. However, with the coronavirus showing no signs of slowing as well as flu season approaching DeWine said Halloween would look different this year. DeWine said ultimately, the decision on whether to hold trick-or-treating would be up to local communities. They will do that, Im sure, in consultation with their local health department, DeWine said. Parents, in turn, will do what parents do and that is make a decision about whether a child goes out trick-or-treating. DeWine implied there would be different guidelines for other Halloween staples such as hayrides and haunted houses, which tend to involve people congregating in large groups. Fridays guidelines would only be preliminary, he said. As the virus evolves, we will continue to update that if it is in fact appropriate, DeWine said. Again, in making these decisions as parents, you make that decision based on all the information that you can get. Against the grand backdrop of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Sino-Portugal Blue Partnership, Hengtong as the general contractor for the submarine power transmission, mobilized the state-of-the-art cable engineering technology, integrated global resources by joining hands with teams from various countries and made numerous technological breakthroughs. As the world's first semi-submersible offshore wind power generation project with a total of 25 MW of installed capacity in phase one, WFA, once put into use, will provide for the power demand of some 60,000 households in Europe every year. It is expected that by 2050, renewables will generate all the electric power requirements for Portugal, taking the place of all traditional fuels. With her strong systematic integration capacity, Hengtong wishes to make her contribution in this green energy cause for the sustainable development of mankind. Portugal is the first western European country to sign the BRI MOU with China. As the westmost European country and the pioneer of the Age of Discovery, Portugal serves as a critical hub at the junction of the land and maritime Silk Roads. Her support of the BRI is of significant symbolic meaning. In the documentary, H.E. Mr. Cai Run, Chinese Ambassador to Portugal endorses China-Portugal economic and investment cooperation by saying that Chinese enterprises are cooperating with their Portuguese partners not only for commercial purpose, but also for learning from each other in a mutually reinforcing manner. In this sense, Hengtong is a telling example. Save for the WFA project, Hengtong acquired Alcobre, a Portuguese wire and cable manufacturer in Ovar as early as 2016. By extending the reach of the humankind beyond "where the earth ends and the ocean begins" (verse from Luis de Camoes, Portuguese national poet) and seeking green energy from the blue ocean, Hengtong adds a tinge of her own color to the "colorful Portugal". Video - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1251909/hengtong.mp4 Related Links htgd.com.cn SOURCE Hengtong Group Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France Thu, September 17, 2020 12:45 491 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4560ab2 2 World transgender,transgender-children,transgender-rights,France Free France's highest court ruled Wednesday that a transgender woman cannot be officially recognized as the biological mother of the child she conceived with her wife, in a ruling described as "scandalous" by her lawyer. To become one of the six-year-old girl's two legal mothers, the 51-year-old transgender woman would have to adopt her, the Cour de Cassation ruled. Born male, the applicant was recognized as a woman by French authorities in 2011. She then had a child with her wife in 2014, having not undergone the operation to have her male reproductive organs removed. She has fought ever since to be recognized as the child's second mother, not father. In 2018, an appeals court in the city of Montpellier ascribed her the status of "biological parent", a new category. But the Cour de Cassation threw out most of that ruling on Wednesday, and referred the case back to a lower court for a new hearing. The woman's lawyer, Clelia Richard, described the ruling as "scandalous" and said it was a "lost opportunity." "The fight is unfortunately not over," she said. Another campaigner, Mathieu Stoclet, pointed out the "incoherence" of the woman being recognized as female by the French system, but at the same time as the child's father. "The ruling is a considerable step backwards towards a concept of parenthood that was believed to be long buried," said Bertrand Perier of the APGL association of gay and lesbian parents. Lawyers for the woman said they would take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights. By Akbar Mammadov Azerbaijans delegation to NATO Parliamentary Assembly has said that Armenias military provocations against Azerbaijan threatens the energy security of the Black Sea region. Member of Azerbaijans delegation Malahat Ibrahimgizi made the remarks during the online meeting of the Committee on Economy and Security of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly held on September 16. Malahatqizi said that Armenias military provocation in July on Azerbaijans Tovuz border region, which is only 15 km from the countrys energy lines, shows that there is a threat in the region. I call on the NATO PA to take serious steps to prevent such steps. This is very important for ensuring the energy security of the Black Sea region, she said. It is even sadder that Armenia resorted to such provocations at a time when the whole world is struggling with COVID-19. The fact that Anna Hakopyan, the wife of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and participated in military exercises with women, further ignites the existing tension, Ibrahimgizi said. During the meeting, the Azerbaijani MP also spoke about the recent escalation of tensions between Turkey and Greece. We believe that Turkey's activities in the eastern part of the Mediterranean within the principles of international law will serve peace and development in the region as a whole, the MP said. She further said that the Azerbaijani public appreciates the role and efforts of NATO in reducing the growing tension between Turkey and Greece. She suggested that the NATO PA be more active on this issue. The event was attended by representatives of NATO PA member and associate countries. Addressing the meeting, the Latvian chairman of the committee, Ivan Klementiev, commended Azerbaijan's contribution to Europe's energy security. The agenda included draft reports and organizational issues on the Gulf Crisis and Global Energy Markets by Jean-Marie Bockel (France), the Black Sea Region: Economic and Geopolitical Tensions by Ausrine Armonaite (Lithuania). --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz The authorities accuse the lawyers of supporting the Gulen network, which has been blamed for the 2016 failed coup. In fact, the lawyers offence was doing their job representing their clients. For HRW, it is dangerous to equate lawyers with the profile of those they are defending. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) also expressed concern. Ankara (AsiaNews/Agencies) Human rights organisations and Turkish and international lawyers groups have slammed the arrest of scores of lawyers in Turkey, whose "fault" is to carry out their duty representing people accused of involvement in the failed coup of the summer of 2016. Last week, the Ankara State Prosecutors Office ordered the detention of 60 people, including 48 lawyers and others in the legal sector, accused of supporting the network of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, considered the coups mastermind. According to the charge sheet, the suspects were part of a structure within the Gulenist network which sought to steer investigations in favour of the group under the guise of attorney activities, the Prosecutors Office said in a statement. Yesterday all the lawyers arrested, except one, remained in custody and were questioned on several occasions about their relationships to colleagues and clients. Equating lawyers with the profile of those they are defending is a really, really dangerous path to go down, and it absolutely contravenes the principles of what the role and function of a lawyer is, Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al-Monitor. According to HRW, the lawyers are being held in small and poorly ventilated cells, at risk of contagion from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, at a time of when the COVID-19 outbreak is spreading in Ankara. The Ankara Bar Association released a statement Tuesday alleging that the lawyers rights had been violated during their arrest. The Istanbul Bar Association described the arrests as intimidation, related to the execution of their duties as lawyers, which is to represent their clients accused of Gulen links. A lawyer cannot be identified with their client, the association said. Intimidation which hopes to restrict the lawyers duty ... will impact the public as much as lawyers and gradually destroy confidence in justice. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) also expressed concern, saying the arrests breached Turkeys obligations under international human rights law. Lawyers should never be arrested or sanctioned for representing their clients, or identified with their clients causes, said Roisin Pillay, Director of the ICJ Europe and Central Asia Programme. This attack against lawyers is not the first of its kind in Turkey, where numerous lawyers are on a hunger strike to protest violations and abuses. In late August, Ebru Timitik succumbed after almost 250 days on hunger strike in prison. She had been convicted of belonging to a terrorist organisation. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 15:59:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close An L4 autonomous bus makes its debut during the launching ceremony in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Sept. 17, 2020. A medium-sized bus equipped with autonomous driving technologies made its debut Thursday in Chongqing Municipality, a vehicle-manufacturing powerhouse in southwestern China. The L4 autonomous bus was a joint effort of Baidu Apollo and domestic bus manufacturer King Long. At the same time, Baidu obtained 10 license plates to allow road tests for self-driving vehicles with passengers issued by the municipal government. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao) CHONGQING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A medium-sized bus equipped with autonomous driving technologies made its debut Thursday in Chongqing Municipality, a vehicle-manufacturing powerhouse in southwestern China. The L4 autonomous bus was a joint effort of Baidu Apollo and domestic bus manufacturer King Long. Apollo, an open platform launched by Chinese tech giant Baidu in 2017, aims at coordinating cross-sector efforts in autonomous driving. At the same time, Baidu obtained 10 license plates to allow road tests for self-driving vehicles with passengers issued by the municipal government. After one-year construction, a test base for autonomous driving was put into use on Thursday in Chongqing. Several carmakers have carried out L4 self-driving tests and demonstrations in five application scenarios. Baidu Apollo will work together with Chongqing to set a benchmark for the self-driving industry in west China, and provide R&D test services and rich application scenarios for carmakers and auto parts manufacturers in the autonomous vehicle field, said Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu. Enditem La Paz, Sep 17 : Bolivia's Interim President Jeanine Anez has declared a national emergency after forest fires scorched more than half a million hectares in the region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. "Today, something very important and significant is happening: we are presenting two decrees. One to reinforce the fight against fire, and another to repeal the decree that allowed controlled burning," Anez said on Wednesday in the town of San Ignacio de Velasco in Santa Cruz. Anez also instructed the Ministry of Defence to transfer its civil defence team so that it could work with the Ministry of the Environment and local governments to address the crisis, reports Xinhua news agency. Minister of the Presidency of the Interim-Government Yerko Nunez reiterated that the Forest and Land Authority has been instructed to put out the fires in vulnerable areas. According to the Forest and Land Authority, 598,716 hectares of area were affected by fires in the first week of September. Scientists at the College of Biologists in La Paz estimate that regeneration of the country's local ecosystem will take about 300 years. High temperatures and strong winds also stoked the flames that began in May and intensified in August, the BBC reported. U.S. Undersecretary of State Keith Krach talks with South Korea's Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha during their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on Nov. 6, 2019. (Heo Ran/Pool Photo via AP) US Envoy Begins 2nd Recent High-Level Visit to Taiwan TAIPEI, TaiwanU.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for the second visit by a high-level American official in two months, prompting a stern warning and threat of possible retaliation from China. Beijing considers Taiwan its own and opposes all official contacts between other countries and the self-governing island. Krach arrived at an air force base in Taipei, the capital, for a three-day visit. Wearing a mask, he bumped elbows in greetings with Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Harry Ho-Jen Tseng. Krach, the highest-level State Department official to visit the island in decades, is to meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the islands foreign ministry said. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech after her inauguration ceremony at a government guest house in Taipei, Taiwan on May 20, 2020. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP) The visit by Krach, who is under secretary for economic growth, energy, and the environment, follows a high-profile trip in August by U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, the highest-level U.S. Cabinet official to visit since the United States switched formal relations from Taiwan to China in 1979. However, the United States has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan since the official diplomatic break and is the islands most important ally and provider of defense equipment. Ahead of Krachs arrival, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, had lunch Wednesday with Taiwans top official in New York, a meeting she called historic and a further step in the Trump administrations campaign to strengthen relations with Taiwan. Craft said her lunch with James K.J. Lee, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, was the first meeting between a top Taiwan official and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since 1971, when the China seat at the U.N. was passed from Taipei to Beijing. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft, right, meets James K.J. Lee, director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, for lunch at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan on Sept. 16, 2020. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo) Im looking to do the right thing by my president, and I feel that he has sought to strengthen and deepen this bilateral relationship with Taiwan and I want to continue that on behalf of the administration, she told The Associated Press. In Taiwan, Krach is to attend a banquet hosted by Tsai on Friday and hold discussions on the creation of a new economic and commercial dialogue, according to Taiwans de facto ambassador in the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim. He will also attend a memorial service for former President Lee Teng-hui, who led the islands transition to democracy and died at age 97 in July. Krachs visit and Crafts lunch with Lee are certain to exacerbate mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing over the COVID-19 pandemic, trade, technology, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea. China condemned the visit on Thursday and warned it could retaliate. By Huizhong Wu Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. Australian diplomat Pablo Kang landed himself in a soup when he shared images of savouring an endangered softshell turtle in Cambodia. The controversy concerned the endangered turtle species of Asia which are now vanishing from nature as humans continue their consumption. Kang had to face the brunt of animal rights activists and environmentalists after he posted the tweet which has been deleted now. Angered users accused the Australian diplomat in Cambodia of promoting consumption of endangered wildlife species and supporting illegal wildlife trade. Kang also tweeted his apology for infuriating netizens as he said, My intent was not to promote these dishes, but to tell people about some of the foods I was offered during my recent provincial visit. He said he did not want to prompt any kind of harvesting of endangered wildlife species and promised to be more careful in future. Hello. I have removed my tweet about soft shell turtles & eels, and apologise to all those who took offence. My intent was not to promote these dishes, but to tell people about some of the foods I was offered during my recent provincial visit. 1/2 Pablo Kang (@AusEmbPP) September 15, 2020 I certainly do not condone the harvesting of any endangered species for food or other purposes, and will be more careful about my actions in future 2/2 Pablo Kang (@AusEmbPP) September 15, 2020 However, some users still did not find his apology to be sincere. Michele Reid commented, You havent apologised for consuming endangered species, only for any offence it may have caused others which shows you clearly dont care about the ecology or the survival and protection of endangered species. Others urged Kang to be more mindful of the country he is working in and make himself aware of its social issues. You haven't apologised for consuming endangered species, only for any offence it may have caused others which shows you clearly don't care about the ecology or the survival and protection of endangered species. As an ambassador you should have known and behaved better. Michele Reid (@Bliss_On_Earth) September 16, 2020 Kangs actions have appeared to contradict an earlier statement of the Prime Minister of his own country. In April this year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had urged the World Health Organisation to ban Chinas wet markets where rare animal species which are considered foods for the rich are sold. After speculations that the coronavirus had emerged from Wuhans wet market, Morrison said these markets pose great risks" to the health and well-being of the rest of the world. Wet market gets its name from the fresh meat produce, seafood and other rare species which are slaughtered and sold on-site. Police have found a body in the search for a missing 14-year-old girl who failed to return home from school yesterday. Kekshan Rashid disappeared at around 2pm on Wednesday, sparking an urgent public appeal as the behaviour was 'completely out of character'. Detectives are not treating her death as suspicious and her family has been informed. Several members of her family were seen at the site of the search in Keighley, Bradford, being comforted by officers. Kekshan Rashid disappeared at around 2pm on Wednesday, sparking an urgent public appeal as the behaviour was 'completely out of character Several members of her family were seen at the scene of the search being comforted by officers West Yorkshire Police this afternoon revealed the body was found in Keighley, where she was from. According to a police statement Kekshan was last seen at Holly Family School at 1.50pm wearing navy trousers and a navy PE shirt. Speaking earlier today a force spokesman described Kekshan's disappearance as 'completely out of character'. They later added: 'Police searching for a missing girl have found a body in the Keighley area. 'There are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances to the incident. 'The family of Kekshan Rashid, 14, have been informed.' Saharanpur: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday saying "he would have claimed credit" for construction of the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal "had they not been built long ago". Addressing a public rally at the Gandhi Park in Saharanpur district, he also attacked Modi over his picture replacing that of Mahatma Gandhi on Khadi Udyog's calendar and table diary. Owaisi said everybody knows that charkha is run with both hands but Modi is "seen running it with one hand" in those pictures. "Thankfully the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal were built years ago, otherwise the Prime Minister would have claimed credit for them," he said. The AIMIM leader claimed the Prime Minister has not fulfilled the promise he made to the people before the elections. He also attacked the PM over demonetisation saying "nobody knows when he would scrap the 2,000-rupee note". He said the BJP and SP are "two sides of the same coin". Attacking Akhilesh Yadav, Owaisi said, the Chief Minister "snatched away" the cycle (SP's poll symbol) from his father and "they are celebrating it, sweets are being distributed". For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Pennsylvanias effort to modernize its unemployment compensation benefits system continues to be a fiasco with the latest obstacle being related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A new computer-based benefits delivery system intended to be more user friendly that would replace a nearly half-century-old mainframe computer system was expected to be ready to go live on Oct. 5. That date is now up in air. Members of House Labor & Industry Committee met on Thursday with officials from the state Department of Labor & Industry as well as members of a legislative-appointed advisory committee established to monitor the project to get an update on the projects status. Advisory committee members Geoff Moomaw and Julia Simon-Mishel both said they foresee trouble ahead if the department were to make the switch to the new system next month and recommended against that. Throughout the discussion, it was made clear that labor & industry staff has only begun to be trained on the new system. The public and employers havent been informed about it. And the system itself hasnt been sufficiently tested. Labor & Industry Secretary Jerry Oleksiak said a meeting is planned for Monday that could determine whether to postpone next months implementation and if so, possibly set a new date for when it might be ready to go. Make no mistake our commitment to [this project] is unwavering, Oleksiak told the committee. We owe it to Pennsylvanians their years' long investment in modernizing the UC system bears fruit. And it has been a years' long investment. This computer system modernization project originally began in 2005. IBM was hired to create the new system. But after the project ran $60 million over budget and was nearly four years behind schedule, the decision was made in 2013 to pull the plug on the IBM contract. By then, the state had spent about $170 million of taxpayers' money on it, which the state has gone to court to try to recoup some of that money. That litigation is still pending, Oleksiak said. In 2017, the state entered into a $35 million contract with Florida-based Geographic Information System to build the system. The contract set the completion date initially for April 2019. Further obstacles led to that being pushed back to this October. It was only recently that House Labor & Industry Committee Chairman Jim Cox said he learned its implementation would be delayed once again. I think its fair to state that everyone want this project to go forward but we also agree that it needs to be right It needs to be complete when it goes live, said Cox, R-Berks County. He said in weekly phone calls that he and other lawmakers had with the department over the past year they were told the project was on schedule. After all those reassuring phone calls, it was upsetting to hear that even repeatedly being told we were on time and were all ready that now the project was not on track to go live in October, Cox said. Oleksiak told the committee there are reasons for that, not excuses. Those reasons have to do with the pandemic and the historic number of claims for jobless benefits the department has received. He said the department had to divert more than half of the staff working on the computer modernization project to assist with processing UC claims. On top of that, he said the department has had to build from scratch new systems to implement four new pandemic-related federal programs to provide benefits to the states unemployed. We are proud of the achievements we have made so far on [the benefits modernization system] during this pandemic against incredible odds, Oleksiak said. However, we also know for the system to be absolutely ready to go live we must complete our due diligence. Among the concerns that need to be taken into consideration is the departments ability to continue to pay out UC benefits to new and continuing claimants through the transition from the old system to the new system, he said. Moomaw said as an outsider who serves on the panel to monitor the project, he doesnt blame the department or its personnel for the delay. I truly believe why, and Im speaking for myself now, why I think there has to be a delay its all pandemic-related and how the department has been pulled in 18 different directions to satisfy the requirements from Washington and the changing rules and programs we have, Moomaw said. Rep. Pat Harkins, D-Erie County, the ranking Democrat on the committee, agreed. Given the unprecedented number of UC claims that the department is processing, Harkins said its incomprehensible to him that the department would even attempt to change its IT system for delivering those benefits. The former UPS driver compared it to UPS changing its software at the height of the Christmas deliver system. Rep. Barb Gleim, R-Cumberland County, unsuccessfully tried to pin the department for a new date when the system would go live. Oleksiak said that is an issue to be discussed at next weeks meeting. Rep. Dawn Keefer, R-York County, impressed upon department officials the need for adequate notice and training to the public and employers on how to use the new system. She said if the system was to go live on Oct. 5, that education should have already been started by now. Cox said if the department goes against the advisory committees recommendation to postpone the implementation date, its going to be a mess. The people of Pennsylvania who rely on this working, theyre going to be the ones that suffer, he said. And thats who this committee speaks for. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. There have been both serious and humorous conversations on social media about the exploding trees (Trump) mentioned, as well as the fact that he claimed we live within forest cities which never catch fire, Elisabeth Koestinger wrote. As Austrians, fortunately blessed with a healthy sense of humour, we normally take such cliches about our country in our stride. Heidi Schreck's Tony-nominated What the Constitution Means to Me will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on October 16. The stage production was filmed live at the Helen Hayes Theater during the final week of its Broadway run, captured by director Mirelle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). The executive producers of What the Constitution Means to Me are Heidi Schreck, Marielle Heller, Robin Schwartz, Kyle Laursen, Peter Saraf, Marc Turtletaub. The special was directed by Marielle Heller and produced by Big Beach and Defiant By Nature, Heller's newly launched production company. The producers of the Broadway production Diana DiMenna, Aaron Glick, and Matt Ross also serve as producers of the filmed version. Amazon Studios has also signed a new overall deal with Schreck to create content that will premiere exclusively on Prime Video. In a statement, Schreck said that she will donate part of her proceeds from the filming to the Broadway Cares COVID Relief Fund and to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Voting Rights 2020 initiative. What the Constitution Means to Me is described as follows: "Fifteen-year-old Heidi Schreck earned her college tuition money by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In her boundary-breaking new play, the Obie Award winner resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women in her own family and the founding document that dictated their rights and citizenship." Directed by Oliver Butler, the cast of What the Constitution Means to Me includes Schreck, Mike Iveson (Gatz), and New York City high school students Rosdely Ciprian and Thursday Williams, all in their Broadway debuts. Ben Beckley understudied Iveson. What the Constitution Means to Me was commissioned by True Love Productions and had its off-Broadway premiere via Clubbed Thumb in 2017. It ran at New York City at New York Theatre Workshop in fall 2018. The production extended twice before NYTW transferred the production to the Greenwich House Theater. The play went on to become a 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama, and the Broadway mounting earned two Tony Award nominations, including Best Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play (Schreck). Following the publication of a study of Russia's new coronavirus vaccine named Sputnik V, the renowned medical journal The Lancet has been inundated with international criticism from scientists. The journal is now calling upon the study's authors to comment on the numerous questions and concerns, a spokesperson told dpa on Wednesday. "We are still closely monitoring the situation," she said. Russia has reported no significant side effects from the vaccine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed it, saying his daughter has used it successfully with no cause for concern. Last week an international group of about 40 scientists signed an open letter expressing considerable doubts about the study published in The Lancet and demanding full disclosure of the data. "While the research described in this study is potentially significant, the presentation of the data raises several concerns which require access to the original data to fully investigate," the letter said. One of the letter's signatories, Enrico Bucci of Temple University in the United States, said in comments carried by the Russia-based independent newspaper The Moscow Times that the international community was waiting for the complete data. "They are all talking about it, but no one is providing it," Bucci was quoted as saying. Russian state news agency TASS reported that the vaccine's developers were ready to answer questions from their Western colleagues. It described the critiques as part of usual scientific discourse. The Sputnik V vaccine is named after the first satellite to reach orbit, Sputnik 1, a triumph of the Soviet Union in the space race with rival superpower the United States in the late 1950s. The vaccine, developed by a Russian state laboratory, is the world's first to be approved by a government for use by the general public. Russia has received international orders for the vaccine, including 50 million doses to Brazil and 100 million to India, state media have reported. 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 Noah Berger/AP/Shutterstock It wasnt all that long ago that banking on a relentless array of cascading wildfires consuming generous swaths of the United States was, well, a bit alarmist. In 2006the year Al Gores documentary An Inconvenient Truth debutedwidely respected climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in her book Field Notes From a Catastrophe, In the Southwest, forest fires are breaking out earlier, and burning more intensely. Still, she noted in that same book that the frequency of fires was among the uncertainties that remain, among scientists exploring the effects of climate change. In science, consensus comes slowly, but it seems to have arrived in this caseand its not pleasant. From routine fire tornadoes to generations of kids being radically altered by inhaling the smoke borne from wildfires hitting urban areas (and not just forests), scientists are painting a dire picture of the future, one made even spookier by a dearth of unknowns. The underlying denominator tends to be the fuels, and its hard to picture, given a warming climate, how that situation is going to improve in the near term, said Neil Lareau, a physicist who researches smoke plumes at the University of Nevada, Reno. Oregon Wildfires Are So Devastating Theyve Brought in a Mobile Morgue Worse still: Generally speaking, we should expect worsening fire seasons in the future, Adam Kochanski, an atmospheric scientist focused on fires at the University of Utah, told The Daily Beast. We have to keep in mind that the current season is exceptional, Kochanski added. Five million acres have burned since August. Six of the 20 largest individual fires in California history occurred this year. The Bay Area is blanketed in an unprecedented layer of smoke, turning the skies a hellish vermilion, and dozens are dead in connection with fires not just in that state, but also in Oregon and Washington. But while we are finally getting something resembling certainty from the experts about a coming increase in wildfiresabove and beyond the already nightmarish presentscientists dont know exactly what these future nightmares will bring. Fire and smoke, to be sure, but what side effects well see as a result of those obvious new realities is still the domain of speculation and modeling. Story continues Among the under-researched problems on the horizon include untold health effects that have never been studied before. While we have consistent evidence that air pollution from wildfire smoke is associated with spikes in use of asthma medication and emergency room visits for things like trouble breathing or cardiovascular issues, we dont really know what the long-term effects are of repeated exposure to smoke every wildfire season, said Micah Hahn, assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. According to Hahn, we urgently need to know about the potential exposures from urban wildfires that are burning man-made materials in comparison to wildfires that consume forests. At the moment, Hahn explained, researchers have a bit of research on exposures from the fires at the World Trade Center [after the 9/11 attacks] and little else to learn from. There are of course the physical impacts of breathing smoke year after year, but we also do not know about the potential mental health impacts of evacuation, displacement, losing your home and property, or just living with the anxiety of future wildfires, she said. All of this is ripe for long-term health research that has yet to proceed. And scientists plea is that theyll receive the resources they need to learn how we might mitigate all this future horror. The money available for studying the effects of fire in a research setting has gone down, said Erica Fleishman, land use researcher, and director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. There are a lot of questions that are increasingly difficult to study outside of the context of an immediate fire situation. As for the physics of the fires themselves, were in for a number of rude awakenings, and we only have hints as to what the firefighters of the future will be up against. For instance, according to Lareau, the smoke plume researcher, scientists urgently need to figure out when the fire-induced windsmeaning the winds generated by the firebecome the primary driver of the fire itself, giving it a life of its own. Perhaps an even scarier question from Lareau is the one about terrifying fire-generated tornadoes like the one photographed in California that has since circulated widely on the internet. Under what conditionsbasically when, where, and whydo we develop fire generated tornadoes that are potentially deadly? Lareau said. Fire-generated tornadoes are, according to Lareau, still rare events. But we need to know the probabilities as fires increase, because as fires become more ubiquitous, they may begin to seem commonturning into phenomena that average people in the western United States must grow accustomed to. In some set of circumstances, he said, if its a one-in-a-hundred event and you have 7,000 fires burning in the Western United States, youre going to see these things, he told The Daily Beast. President Trump has stayed mostly on-message about what he thinks is causing these fires: too much flammable material out in the wilderness. You gotta clean your floors. You gotta clean your forests. There are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and theyre like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up, Trump told a Pennsylvania rally crowd in August. He repeated this theory to state authorities in California on Monday, including a bizarre remark about exploding trees. Like so many of Trumps hot takes on science, this one brushes up against hypotheses from real scientists, but its also miles from being in line with any sort of consensus drawn from evidence. Part of the problem, Fleishman said, is that research simply hasnt been carried out to prove or disprove it. The leaf-blower-toting armies Trump evokes are pure fantasy, but controlled burns are a potential optionthough not in wooded areas like Californias ancient redwood forests. It might, however, be worth it to clean away some of Californias chaparral with the careful use of intentional fires in areas like the Mojave Desert or the Sierra Nevada foothills, where indigenous people once controlled wildfires with just such a strategy: controlled burns, also known as prescribed fire. So much of Southern California, where people live, is in chaparral, and chaparral is fire-dependent, Fleishman said. So should Californians get used to the sight of controlled burns of desert brush, perhaps in the cooler seasons, or at times when theres no wind? Only if someone deigns to figure out how such a thing would work. Its been fairly difficult to conduct comprehensive research on prescribed fire, Fleishman said, noting that, There are concerns about fires escaping. Lareau agreed that scientists urgently need to know more about controlled fires. The big question is do you want the fire now, or do you want it later? And do you want to be in charge of how that fire is going to burn, or do you want it to be left to its own devices? One option for learning how to control fires like this is computer models, Fleishman said. But sadly, she pointed out, There are any number of excellent models, but its a challenge when you build models and you dont have as much ground data as you would like, to see if your modeling assumptions are accurate. Its not entirely unlike the uncertainty plaguing public health officials who rely on computer models of COVID-19 spread in order to try and contain the pandemic. Perhaps most tragically of all, we dont know, from year to year, how these fires affect the West Coasts plants and animalshumans among them. But these changes in the ecosystem arent just heartstrings-tugging factoids. We urgently need to know what the trends are with the local flora, because different species burn differently. And some living things cope better than others. As Lareau put it, Were in a warming world, and it may be favoring slightly different species to be repopulating these different environments after they burn as severely as they do. Read more at The Daily Beast. Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here 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. Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church to hold in-person services in October Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Pastor Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, will reopen its doors for in-person services next month as the city continues to see a decline in COVID-19 cases. On Monday, Osteen announced that on Oct. 18, the megachurch will resume in-person worship services at 25% capacity and require that all attendees wear masks. We have a very exciting announcement: Were going to come back to in-person services on October the 18th. We cant wait to see you guys. Weve missed you the whole time, the pastor said in a video message to the congregation. He added that worshipers must sign up before services on the church's website, and people will have to practice safe social distancing. Lakewood has remained shuttered since February due to ongoing lockdowns in response to COVID-19. However, the church has continued to hold worship in an empty chapel and stream the services online, via social media, satellite television, and SiriusXM. It is going to be so much fun to get together, to worship together, Victoria Osteen said in the video. We know weve been doing it online, but to be in the presence of God in the house it is going to be phenomenal. On its website, Lakewood identifies measures the church has undertaken to ensure a more sanitary environment for church attendees in adherence to CDC guidelines, such as restroom and touchless upgrades; interior building air purification, and sanitizing high-traffic public areas. For the past six months we have been consulting with medical experts here in Houston and adhering to the guidelines set by the Texas Governor and the Houston Mayor and feel that it is the appropriate time to begin reopening the church for in-person worship services, said Pastor Joel Osteen. We are moving forward carefully and will reopen in a steady, gradual manner. We have undertaken many effective safety precautions, as well, that are designed to create a safe environment for our members who wish to attend. The churchs announcement comes just days after Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner allowed the return of special events with a 25% capacity limit. Attendees are also required to adhere to strict guidelines including social distancing, mask requirements, answering coronavirus screening questions before entering venues, and a temperature check at entrances. According to Turner, the COVID-19 positivity rate in Houston is continuing to decrease, standing at just 6.1% positivity rate compared to 6.6% last week. Harris County Public Health announced Monday that among a population of more than 4.7 million residents, the county has seen "117,568 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Houston/Harris County and 1,578 [COVID-related] deaths. A total of 100,941 patients have recovered." Over the last few months, churches have grappled with how to safely operate amid state closure orders and the lifting of regulations to allow for reopening. Ed Young, founding and senior pastor of Fellowship Church one of the first churches to re-open in Texas after Gov. Greg Abbotts stay-at-home order expired told The Christian Post that physical worship is important to God and so it should matter to the Body of Christ. I want to applaud churches that are reopening and would encourage the ones who aren't to really think through why they arent reopening, he said. Something supernatural happens when we gather physically in a house of worship. I believe the risk of not coming together is greater than the risk of meeting." Acknowledging that there are at-risk groups, Young highlighted the importance of providing options when it comes to worship. Options are important. I am very much a proponent of having different doors of the church open, whether they be physical doors or digital doors, he said. We want to show love to those who arent comfortable with meeting physically. Thats their prerogative. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that six states California, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada and Ohio have been removed from the state's COVID-19 travel advisory list. That means that residents of California landing at airports in New York (as well as New Jersey and Connecticut) are no longer required to self-quarantine for 14 days after arriving in the area. This is big travel news in the Bay Area because New York is one of the most frequently visited destinations for both business and leisure travelers. Since June 30, Californians caught not complying with the quarantine orders faced civil penalties of up to $10,000. California came off the quarantine list this week because its daily COVID-19 cases fell below ten per 100,000 residents over the last seven days. Keep in mind that if the state's case load reverses the current trend, we could soon be back among the banned. California currently has no COVID-related restrictions on travelers arriving from other states. Ready for a flight to the Big Apple? Don't expect it to be much different than San Francisco these days, with many hotels closed, restaurants restricted to outdoor dining and many local attractions and bars closed. But if you have friends and family to visit, or essential business in the area, airfares are relatively cheap for fall trips. Checking sites such as SkyScanner and Google Flights, we found fares for fall flights for just under $250 round trip in basic economy, $320 in regular economy, and for splurgers, $900 in first class. Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE weekly email alerts. Thirty other states, including similarly populous Texas and Florida, remain on the tri-state area's COVID-19 advisory list. "When other states and territories make progress fighting COVID-19, that's good for New York and while I am glad to see areas removed from the travel advisory list, it still remains far too long," Governor Cuomo said. "Make no mistake: We must continue to be New York Tough and stay smart. Wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing are what tamed this beast in New York and we must keep it up." 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. Student project goes to Dutch Design Week The work of Joshil Naran, a masters in Architecture student, has been selected to showcase at a global festival for creatives and innovators. Narans project titled In Between Back to Back and Front to Front will be among 10 of the worlds best designs by graduates at the Dutch Design Week (DDW) 2020 in October. DDW is the largest annual design event in northern Europe and attracts interest from across the globe. Narans work will be part of the Antenna Show, a critical platform at DDW which is described as a global scan for the world's top design graduates. Only top students are selected, based on their strength to respond to the Sustainable Development Goals, using a design lens. The Antenna Show is a joint initiative of the two giants in design Design Indaba and DDW. Naran has received the news with great excitement and so has the School of Architecture and Planning. It feels fulfilling for the project to be recognised by a global design foundation. This has made me more motivated to continue with the pursuit of creating better places and spaces. It also makes me happy to see that foundations like Antenna, Dutch Design Week and Design Indaba are looking for projects that initiate conversations for creating a better experience for people around the globe. Reimagining Rosettenville The entry based on Rosettenville, an old Johannesburg suburb, was part of an honours elective in Advanced Design in 2019. The design addresses the housing problem within the Rosettenville precinct and the accommodation rental economy through illegally constructed backyard dwellings. The over expansion has caused densification problems along with health and safety issues, explains Naran. Another threat confronting residents in the area are the alleys that sometimes become dump sites or sites for illegal activities such as drug use. Through the project, Naran addresses the issues of redistributing power, safety and the creation of new economies. The project considers how the economy of leasing runs and uses the same economy that resulted in over-expansion as a process to re-empower individuals in the associated block. This is done through converting the alley/servitude into a pedestrian street in which new economies of trade and leasing are centred through new divided blocks. This means that the micro communities and micro economies are built within a single block. I believe this potential solution also would assist in managing the issues that the alley presents such as the pollution or illegal activities. Overall, the focus of the project is to reinterpret the existing in-between space using spatial design as a way to redistribute social and economic power. Participating in industry challenges brings additional pressure onto students. However, the opportunity to be part of DDW was worth the extra load, says Naran. I saw it as a platform to bring the pursuit of a design solution for South African suburbs to a global platform and one which would help raise awareness not only of the contemporary problems associated but also the means by which designers and architects are constantly striving to find solutions to better conditions. Sharing this idea was the main motivation for my submission. Ever engaged in self-empowerment activities, Naran was part of a group that presented a social housing project in Cambodia (2018), an exhibition space for developers in Abidjan (2018) and the local competition by Afrisam to reconsider the potentials of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2019) to name a few. He relishes these opportunities, adding that competing and constantly taking on the opportunities to put the work I do out there allows me to test the skills I obtained through my studies. Although it is a lot of work, it can be a lot of fun! I feel that architects have a responsibility in evaluating space and considering the ways in which their designs can affect current issues. Through space, we can begin the conversations of decolonisation and re-empowerment as well as test solutions that these concepts bring. I hope my work can contribute to these ideas and add to the global conversation. Kirsten Doermann, design lecturer in the School and Narans supervisor believes that it is great that students travel through their work and contribute to the global debate. This work is significant because it highlights the need for interdisciplinary exchange and imagination for architectural work from within a very specific, African urban context. Furthermore, it signals that the output of our research for, by and through design is internationally recognised. The Wits School of Architecture prides itself in creating an environment that pushes students to engage with industry, societal issues very early on their studies. It is common for its students to participate in local and international challenges. According to Professor Hannah le Roux this is the second time that the Wits Architecture programme has been invited to put forward candidates to the Antenna show. Last year two honours students were interviewed by Antenna, but not shortlisted. We are therefore really proud of Kirsten Doermann and Joshil Naran for bringing local design research in housing to this global stage, says Le Roux. Naran will not be travelling to the Netherlands the home of Dutch Design, however, he will present virtually to a global audience as part of the festivals are online this year due to Covid-19. While school bells are ringing again in some countries, nearly 24 million students could drop out for good next year. Editors Note: This series is produced in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). Kone Gininkita, a preschool and primary teacher in the town of Sangouine in western Ivory Coast, is worried that some of his students may not return to school this year. He estimates that 10 percent of them will drop out as their families have been pushed further into poverty due to the economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic. I fear they will fall into criminality or all sorts of vices, he told Al Jazeera over the phone. If Gininkitas fears turn to reality, his pupils will become part of the nearly 24 million students worldwide from pre-primary to tertiary who may drop out of school next year, according to the United Nations. The grim figures are part of what UN chief Antonio Guterres called a generational catastrophe in early August. The evidence of the impact of school closure on childrens learning but also on their wellbeing is absolutely overwhelming, said Robert Jenkins, global chief of education at UNICEF, highlighting that the longer children stay out of school the less likely they are to return. Children from the most marginalised communities are paying the heaviest price, so we are witnessing an exacerbation of inequalities, he explained. At the peak of the pandemic lockdowns in early April, close to 1.6 billion children were out of school as more than 180 governments imposed temporary closures, intensifying an already existing learning crisis. Today, more than 870 million pupils are still unable to attend, according to UNICEF. The World Bank predicts that if drastic remedial action is not taken to alleviate the learning crisis, the effort to halve the percentage of learning poor by 2030 will suffer a substantial setback. Even before the pandemic, 53 percent of children in low and middle-income countries were unable to read and understand a simple piece of text by the age of 10. A digital divide While some countries were able to cushion the effects of school closures by setting up online courses, almost 500 million children a third of the worlds schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning, according to a UNICEF report. This played out differently across countries, mirroring existing inequalities, including the digital divide. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where almost half of people lack access to electricity, 120 million pupils nearly half of all in the region were unable to access remote learning. Given the existing barriers, the digitisation of the learning process is only one part of the solution, and by focusing on it we would continue to miss those children in the short term, said Abdirahman Mahamud, a senior health emergency officer coordinating research into COVID-19 and children for the World Health Organization (WHO). Underscoring that online learning is not the only option available, Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead for the WHO, urged governments to prioritise schools opening despite a certain level of risk. Schools can be opened safely in situations where the virus is controlled. There are tools that are in place that are working to bring transmission to a low level, that are working to save lives. We can do this, said Van Kerkhove. Schools do not operate in isolation, they are operating in communities and if you control transmission in a community, you can open up schools with these measures that are outlined, she added. The highest price Beyond the devastating effects on the learning process, school closures have far broader consequences. Schools, especially for vulnerable families, provide other means of survival such as nutritious meals, access to health[care, such as] immunisation, safety all of which is compromised at a time when these services are even more important, said Mahamud. As a result, the absence of a safety network provided by schools makes children more vulnerable to violence, child labour, early marriage and other forms of exploitation. In a global survey of more than 25,000 children and their caregivers, Save the Children found that during school closures violence at home doubled. The percentage of children who experienced violence at home rose from 8 percent to 17 percent when children did not attend school in person. For the first time in 20 years, the world may see an increase in child labour, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said, while those 152 million children estimated to already be in the business sector face greater risks due to COVID-19. Such burdens, though, do not weigh equally on boys and girls. We are very concerned about reversing the many gains that have been made in expanding access to schools for girls, said Jenkins. In East Africa it took a lot of efforts to put girls in schools, but when you have an economic crisis affecting parents, she will be the first most affected. We are going to see the impact in the next one or two years in terms of child marriage and lost opportunities, in addition to the burden of the household, which mostly falls on girls, said Mahamud. Following the Ebola outbreak in 2014-2015, a Malala Fund report showed that following school closures in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, girls school enrolment rates dropped, while in Sierra Leone alone, teenage pregnancy increased from 30 to 65 percent, according to data gathered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The way forward The WHO, together with UNESCO and UNICEF, published a set of guidelines on Tuesday on how to reopen schools, insisting that their closure should be considered a last and temporary resort at a local level in areas with intense transmission. We all want to: -see children back at school -ensure schools are safe environments To support countries, @UNESCO, @UNICEF & @WHO updated school-related public health guidance for #COVID19. I thank @unicefchief & @AAzoulay for their partnership & for joining our presser today. https://t.co/Bs6LIasQsJ pic.twitter.com/qQPFS7VF8X Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) September 15, 2020 We are encouraging schools to be prioritised as societies reopen to ensure education continuity despite the potential risk of outbreaks, said Mahamud. If we implement all the security measures to respond to those outbreaks, we will protect the vulnerable and the community as a whole. Analysts say Taiwans disappearance from Europes agenda may be coming to a halt as blocs scepticism of China grows. Taipei, Taiwan When Czech Senate speaker Milos Vystrcil declared I am Taiwanese during a speech at Taiwans parliament earlier this month, he was met with a standing ovation. The comment was a pointed reference to US President John F Kennedys statement I am a Berliner, made in defiance of Communism at the height of the Cold War in a then-divided Germany, and while it drew applause from Taiwanese politicians, it only enraged the self-ruled islands powerful neighbour China. Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own, had already threatened to make Vystrcil pay a heavy price for his visit. And on the day of his parliamentary address, it warned the Czech legislator he had crossed a red line with his six-day trip. Vystrcils Taiwan tour was rare for a European politician. In Europe, Taipei maintains diplomatic ties only with the Vatican City, with China having whittled down the East Asian democracys diplomatic allies to just 16 globally. And although the European Union claims a right to develop its relations with Taiwan, the 27-member bloc adheres to the One China Policy, a long-standing rule from Beijing that any country wishing to establish ties with it must sever relations with Taipei. And so, it was rarer still when major European powers jumped to Vystrcils defence France called Chinas threats unacceptable and Germany urged Beijing to show mutual respect. While some viewed Vystrcils trip as an attempt to make a splash at home ahead of an election, analysts in Europe say the visit and the diplomatic row it caused are the latest signs that European attitudes towards both Taiwan and China are shifting, albeit glacially. The default solution in the past decades wouldve been Germany or the other Europeans staying silent as the Czech Republic got bashed, but we saw an actual degree of European solidarity, said Janka Oertel, director of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). In recent years, the EU has largely remained silent when under Chinese President Xi Jinpings leadership Beijing stepped up its diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, squeezing Taipei out of most international spaces, including from its observer seat at the World Health Assembly. But analysts now say Taiwans near-disappearance from Europes political agenda may be coming to a halt, thanks to a series of soft-power wins by Taipei, combined with growing Western scepticism of an increasingly assertive China. COVID-19 diplomacy Mathieu Duchatel, a policy analyst at the French think-tank Institut Montaigne, says the political space for Taiwan has continued to shrink every year since United States President Richard Nixon first visited China in 1972, a landmark visit that later resulted in the establishment of formal ties between the two countries. In Europe, while some countries have allowed visits by Taiwanese officials, the region has been overall extremely reluctant [to make moves] that could be interpreted in Beijing as touching the red line, Duchatel said. But that trend appears to be on the reverse one reason being Taiwans successful handling of the coronavirus outbreak. The pandemic brought to light the differences in Taiwan and Chinas political systems: Critics accuse China of suppressing news of the disease when it was first detected in the city of Wuhan, thereby allowing the virus to spread across borders, but Taiwan won plaudits for mobilising quickly, closing its borders and setting in place a stringent quarantine and testing system moves that have kept the islands COVID-19 cases below 500 and fatalities at just seven. The COVID crisis has really put Taiwan in a very positive light. There have never been that many discussions on Taiwan in the European media, Duchatel said. Its amazing how people talk about Taiwan, not for Cross-Strait relations and security; they talk about Taiwan as a successful model of effective democratic governance to manage such a huge public health crisis. The contrast is this creates space for Taiwan. Taipei has indirectly benefited, as well, from Beijings so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy, according to Duchatel. The term comes from a patriotic Chinese action film and refers to a recent and more aggressive style of diplomacy pursued by Chinese diplomats, including tactics such as lashing out at criticism not just from the Czech Republic, but also recently from France, Sweden and the Netherlands. That new sharper style, has not gone down well in Europe. On back-to-back tours of the region in late August and early September, Chinas top diplomats found officials and leaders from Italy to France and Germany more willing to raise Beijings human rights record from the internment of more than a million Muslims in the far western region of Xinjiang to its crackdown on pro-democracy protests in semi-autonomous Hong Kong were both mentioned. Concern is also growing over alleged security risks from doing business with Chinese tech giants like Huawei as well as the unequal terms of trading with China, and worries about forced technology transfers and copyright protection two issues that started the US-China trade war. We are where the US was probably five years ago, realising China is not changing the way we expected and deciding on what we should be doing, said Maaike Okano-Heijmans, a senior researcher at The Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael. In Europe, we are now rethinking where do we stand and how. A rethink of the One-China policy Many of Europes concerns over China have remained the same for more than two decades, according to EU archives, but many Western countries are finally coming to terms with the idea that growing rich might not as was once believed transform China into a Western-style democracy. A report by the European Council on Foreign Relations released this month found that while much of the EU sees China as an important strategic partner in terms of trade, broad concerns persist about the regions economic imbalance and growing wariness of overdependence and exposure to the political and economic risks emanating from Beijing. Member states recognise that China is increasingly adept at dominating bilateral relationships with them, and ever brasher in its violations of human rights and international commitments in places such as Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the report said. They acknowledge that this partly reflects the failure of European efforts to stand up to Beijing politically. Europe, however, is not expected to see a US-style decoupling from China, but rather a slow rebalancing act that could leave some political room to cooperate with Taiwan, particularly on non-political issues or by the media and among parliamentarians, according to Oertel at ECFR. For Europe, these things dont happen very fast, she said. What we have to underline is EU member states have pushed back in what used to be a slightly closer relationship with Beijing, where Beijing managed to squeeze the space for Taiwan even further. In a sign of the changing times, this week, a group of parliamentarians and experts including the former German Ambassador to China Volker Stanzel, published an op-ed in the French newspaper Le Monde, calling for Europe to rethink its One China policy. Stalled Eastern promises Justyna Szczudlik, head of the Asia-Pacific Programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), says countries in Eastern and Central Europe have more room for manoeuvre with China because their economic ties with Beijing are not as strong as the countries of Western Europe. Central and Eastern Europe only receive about three percent of Chinas overall exports, while Chinese investment in EU members in the region is only around $11.2bn combined, according to Szczudlik. Unfulfilled economic promises have further dimmed Chinas once-promising star, particularly with the lack of any specific tangible benefits from its 17 1 agreement with the region, according to Szczudlik. Known formally as the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, 17 1, the agreement between Beijing and a collection of EU, non-EU, and NATO states was signed in 2012. The deal was initially intended to promote Chinas ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in the region and pave the way for expanding Chinese trade and investment. Initially responsible for some diplomatic wins for Beijing, in recent years it has fared less well, says Ivana Karaskova, founder of the Czech Republic-based China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe. Chinas leverage in the region can significantly influence the policy of both organisations regarding China. It has already happened a few times, when Greece and Hungary blocked EUs joint position on the South China Sea or human rights abuses, Karaskova said in an email interview with Al Jazeera. But recently the [Central and Eastern European] countries started to shift their focus from promises of economic cooperation from China (with most of them never materialising) towards realising political and security risks stemming from cooperation with China. Although Taiwan appears to have finally found a wedge in Europe, its goals remain pragmatic for now, says Marc Cheng, executive director of the EU Centre in Taiwan. Taiwans main priority, for now, is to interest European countries in maintaining good relations with China but to explore the possibility of further relations with Taiwan, he said. Taiwan recently opened a new office in the south of France and the island remains a major destination for European renewable energy investment, Cheng said. Climate change and renewable energy, these are very good examples [where] Taiwan has the capacity and willingness to engage more with Europeans, Cheng said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 14:22:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have agreed to jointly build an anti-pandemic fortress, a Health Silk Road and a community of health, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday. The decision was made after he exchanged views with foreign ministers of Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia on deepening anti-pandemic cooperation to defeat the virus, Wang, who attended the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries in Moscow and visited the four countries on Sept. 10-16, told Xinhua in an interview. China and the four countries have supported each other through thick and thin and conducted effective anti-pandemic cooperation since the epidemic broke out, Wang said. Recalling Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga's China visit in February, the telephone talks held between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his counterparts in Russia, Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, namely Vladimir Putin, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Sooronbai Jeenbekov, Wang said China and the four countries have offered support and aid to each other to fight against the pandemic. In a bid to deepen the anti-pandemic cooperation, the ministers have agreed to take measures in four areas, Wang said. First, China and the four countries will strengthen anti-pandemic cooperation, firmly support the World Health Organization in playing a coordinative role and oppose any attempt to politicize the pandemic and attach a geographical label to the virus. Second, they will consolidate and expand anti-pandemic achievements. Wang said China stands ready to continue to provide other countries with assistance within its capacity, such as the purchase of anti-pandemic supplies, expertise training, experience sharing and cooperation in drug development, and to accelerate the building of communication mechanisms with concerned parties on pandemic information. Third, they will actively promote the cooperation in the development, production and purchase of vaccine. Fourth, they will make a concerted effort on Chinese traditional medicine cooperation as China, for the sake of people's health, is ready to promote the use of Chinese traditional medicine to meet the needs of various countries, Wang said. Enditem A German shepherd in China has been forced by its owner to eat a bowl of red chillies during live-stream as a genre of animal binge-eating videos has emerged on Chinese social media. Appalling footage shows the hound chomping down the spicy dish in front of the camera with tears coming down from the corner of its eye, appearing to be crying. The disturbing new trend became popular on the internet after China cracked down on people doing online eating shows as part of the countrys national campaign to curb food waste. A German shepherd in China has been forced by its owner to eat a bowl of red chillies during live-stream as a genre of animal binge-eating videos has emerged on Chinese social media The disturbing new trend became popular on the internet after China cracked down on online eating shows as part of the countrys national campaign to curb food waste Before President Xi launched an Operation Empty Plate campaign against food waste in August, Chinese social media users thoroughly enjoyed watching Chibo videos, or Mukbang, a popular online phenomenon originated in South Korea. Loosely translated as eating broadcast, the internet craze sees people consuming an excessive amount of food during live-stream while interacting with their audience. But China has since banned people sharing this type of content, prompting Chinese pet owners to take advantage of the situation by sharing videos of animal overeating a raft of unusual food and snacks. In one live-streamed clip, a dog owner forced his German shepherd to eat a bowl of La Zi Ji, or Chongqing Chilli Chicken, a regional dish known for its extremely spicy flavours. The hound can be seen in the video obediently munching on the dish with tears that seemingly triggered by how spicy the food was. The disturbing new trend became popular on the internet after China cracked down on people doing online eating shows as part of the countrys national campaign to curb food waste Such content has attracted hundreds of thousands of likes on video-sharing platforms, despite most animals featured in this type of videos do not appear as happy as their owners claim The Chinese owner wrote on the post: He is enjoying it very much, referring to the German shepherd. A separate video shows two dogs being forced to eat 38 different kinds of human snacks and drinks altogether as a 'food challenge'. Another sees a pet owner forcing popping candy down a huskys throat while gripping the pets mouth to keep it closed. Such content has attracted hundreds of thousands of likes on Chinese video-sharing platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, despite most animals featured in this type of videos do not appear as happy as their owners claim, reports say. But the new online trend has also faced a fierce backlash from horrified animal lovers who urge the authorities to shut down the accounts. A clip sees a pet owner forcing popping candy down a huskys throat while gripping the pets mouth to keep it closed. The new online trend has also faced a fierce backlash from horrified animal lovers who urge Chinese authorities to shut down these social media accounts One commenter wrote: This is just a new way of abusing animals. They dont deserve to keep pets, what a bunch of cold-blooded bastards! Poor animals, they trust their owners unconditionally yet the owners just use them as cash cows. Another one said: These people are so sick! They need to be censored immediately! A third netizen wrote: Jesus, cant you see its crying? How can you film him eating chillies while watching him cry and in pain? The German shepherd's owner has deleted the video after facing widespread criticism online. He claimed that he knew chillies were bad for the dog but his pet 'really enjoyed eating it', reported Chinese media. By Express News Service BENGALURU: There is no substantial evidence to suggest that the violence at DJ Halli and KG Halli on August 11 was premeditated or communal in nature. Rather, it was a spontaneous incident that political parties took advantage of with an eye on the upcoming BBMP elections, according to a fact-finding report.All we spoke to expressed that this was indeed a local and spontaneous incident that had been taken advantage of by different political parties for immediate political gains which included the upcoming corporator elections, the report, Communalising Violence in DJ Halli, stated. A 24-member team comprising researchers, activists, human rights organisations, and advocates, which visited the riot-hit areas between August 20 and September 1 released the report on Wednesday.Though a social media post by Naveen P, nephew of Congress MLA Akhanda Srinivas Murthy, that allegedly triggered the incident was clearly meant to incite violence, his motive had not been sufficiently investigated by the police nor discussed by the media, the report said. The police failed to act effectively on the post when small delegations approached the police station, and also failed to intervene in effective ways to prevent the violence from escalating.The police seem to have abandoned the situation like in Kaval Byrasandra, where despite repeated phone calls to the police station, the police either came late or when they did arrive at the site of violence, did so in small insignificant numbers. The police are responsible for delayed response in registering an FIR against Naveen, which resulted in a discontented crowd swelling at the stations, the report said, adding that the police violated the rights of the accused by not following due procedure during and after the arrests. It was accepted by various groups that Muslim youths assisted in protecting the homes and vehicles of Hindu and Christian families. They formed a human chain outside the Hanuman temple and the police station to keep the mob at bay.The report said barring a few exceptions like the English print media, media coverage of the incident was biased and largely unsubstantiated. UAPA was unwarranted The unwarranted invocation of UAPA in the present case evidences its misuse and abuse to further a communal narrative against the Muslim community, and target the SDPI. The arbitrary use of UAPA and proposal to refer the case to the NIA appears to be part of a pattern on the part of the ruling government to stereotype the entire Muslim community as being anti-national and traitors, the report said. Recommendations We welcome Tsingyuan, Lifespan, Agilent and many others as new shareholders, and we thank Serra Ventures and our other loyal existing shareholders for their continued support and trust in Cardea and our team of talents. says Michael Heltzen, Co-founder & CEO of Cardea Cardea Bio Inc., who is integrating tiny bits of biology into modern electronics, via their Graphene-based Biology-gated Transistors (Cardean Transistors), just announced the first closing in their A2 financing round. The capital will help accelerate the growth and development of the Companys proprietary Tech+Bio Infrastructure and chipsets that enable Cardeas Innovation Partners to bring Powered by Cardea" products to market with features and competitive advantages never seen before. The round was led by a partnership of VCs; Tsingyuan Ventures, Lifespan Investments, and longtime Cardea investor Serra Ventures, as well as a life science industry insiders like Agilent Technologies, Table Mountain Capital, Photon Fund, and Taihill Venture (former Skylight Investment). Dr. Biao He, Investment Partner at both Lifespan Investments and Tsingyuan Ventures stated: Cardea is one of the best cross-disciplinary science and business teams we have ever met, and their ways of using biology as technology really impressed us. Their Tech+Bio Infrastructure is a result of extremely complex, but successful pioneer work, combining molecular biology with nanomaterial semiconductor electronics, that open up a lot of applications in the space in-between biology and the digital world. We believe this will be the start of a paradigm-shift in many areas of life science and biotech, due to the multi-omics data streaming of DNA, RNA and protein signals from biology linked up to computers in near real time. The Company has achieved significant milestones since its last round of fundraising in March 2019. The company recently launched a breakthrough chipset; CRISPR-Chip that is built with its proprietary Cardean Transistors. The first of its kind chipset uses CRISPR as the transistor gate, and thereby harvests CRISPRs powerful natural ability to search through genomes for genetic sequences of interest. This is all accomplished without the need of PCR/DNA amplification, enabling the user to observe the CRISPR search activity and results LIVE on a computer screen. CRISPR-Chip became the most read Nature Biomedical Engineering paper published last year and was the cover story of the June issue of Nature BME. The CRISPR-Chip is just one of more innovative chipsets Cardea offers its partners via the Cardea Innovation Partnership Program, which is the core of the Companys business model. In just 18 month the program has received tremendous response with hundreds of companies expressing their interest in potential product development partnerships. The Company expects the first Powered by Cardea products to launch in 2020 and 2021. Cardeas Chief Business Officer, Rob Lozuk stated: We envision a future where Powered by Cardea products, all running on the same type of chipsets, will significantly impact and improve large markets from human health, agriculture, food and water safety, diagnostics, and environmental monitoring to quality control, security, and drug development. We are thrilled to have found very smart investors that understand the enormous potential of combining biology directly with electronic technology, and together with us, believe in our bold vision where one day very soon humankind will be using biology as technology, says Michael Heltzen, CEO and Co-founder at Cardea and continues, We welcome Tsingyuan, Lifespan, Agilent and many others as new shareholders, and we thank Serra Ventures and our other loyal existing shareholders for their continued support and trust in Cardea and our team of talents. About Cardea Bio Cardea is linking biology directly up to computers for the very first time by building a Tech+Bio Infrastructure and offering chipsets based on proprietary Biology-gated Transistors, or Cardean Transistors. These transistors leverage graphene, a nanomaterial that in contrast to the common semiconductor material silicon, is biocompatible and a near perfect conductor due to only being one atom thick. It that way replaces optical static observations with interactive live-streams of multi-omics signal analysis, representing a new life science observation paradigm where multi-omics data-streams will be the new norm instead of most of the current standard technologies that are single-omics frozen-in-time datasets. Together with their Innovation Partners, Cardea can link biology directly to compute power and convert real-time biological signals to digital information, allowing for immediate biological insight and a new generation of applications Linking up to Life. Contacts Investor and Partnership inquiries Rob Lozuk Chief Business Officer PublicRelations@Cardeabio.com Media inquiries Amanda Zimmer Marketing Manager marketing@cardeabio.com Assets under management totalled 25.7 billion at 30 June 2020, up 9.8% year on year Strong momentum in the asset management division throughout the first half of 2020, with net new money rising 1.1 billion over the period Revenue growth of 16.3% in the asset management division over the first six months of 2020, with an average fee rate increasing strongly and steadily from 0.84% at end-June 2019 to 0.94% at end-June 2020 The asset management division generated operating profit of 28.6 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 39.5%, and an operating margin of 32.4%, up 5.4 points Operating profit from the investment business was impacted by adverse market effects in a particularly turbulent first half Considerable success achieved over July 2020, generating an additional 1.6 billion in assets under management Tikehau Capital's ESG expertise recognised with an inaugural rating from Vigeo Eiris, one of the world's leading ESG rating agencies Target for assets under management at end-2020 of more than 27.5 billion1, and confirmation of organic growth objectives for 2022 Regulatory News: Tikehau Capital (Paris:TKO): Antoine Flamarion, co-founder of Tikehau Capital, said, "The first half of 2020 once again demonstrated that Tikehau Capital's growth strategy in the field of asset management is relevant, with a rising proportion of the Group's revenue and profit that comes from that division. Our performance in this area has remained strong and results are growing at a steady pace in spite of the particularly challenging and unstable environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. We will continue to take every effort to ensure the safety of all our employees and get back to normal in optimal health and operational conditions, in a business where maintaining close professional contact between teams and building long-term relationships based on trust with our clients are key to success." Mathieu Chabran, co-founder of Tikehau Capital, added, "Operating profit from our asset management business grew considerably, with revenue up significantly on last year, both in absolute terms and relative to assets under management, and vast improvements to our operating margin. The investment business was affected by volatility in the markets throughout the first half of the year. Nevertheless, Tikehau Capital continued to actively rotate its portfolio while increasing its exposure to funds managed by the Group, in accordance with its strategy to align interests. To do this, Tikehau Capital is leveraging its solid financial structure to support its growth strategy, which enables the Group to feel confident as it looks to the future. Consolidated results for the first half of 2020 The Tikehau Capital Supervisory Board met on 16 September 2020 to review the condensed consolidated financial statements2 at 30 June 2020. At 30 June 2020, Tikehau Capital had assets under management that totalled 25.7 billion, which represents an increase of 9.8% (+2.3 billion) on the year and 1.2% (+0.3 billion) in Q2 2020. At end-June 2020, the asset management division accounted for 24.0 billion of the Group's total assets under management, while the investment business contributed 1.7 billion. Operating profit from the asset management division surged 39.5% year on year to reach 28.6 million at end-June 2020, driven by strong growth in management fees and tighter cost management. Operating margin also improved considerably, rising to 32.4% compared with 27.0% the previous year. The investment division recorded an operating loss of 290.3 million due to adverse changes in the fair value of certain listed assets in a particularly challenging market environment over the first half of the year and as a result of the cost of derivative instruments put in place by the Group as part of its risk management policy. After taking into account the financial costs, the non-recurring cost of share-based payments and tax, net profit (Group share) at end-June 2020 came out at a loss of 240.9 million. Operating profit from the asset management division up 39.5% At 30 June 2020, the assets under management of Tikehau Capital's asset management division totalled 24.0 billion, up 2.8 billion (+13.2%) on the previous year. The first half of the year registered growth of 1.7% (+400 million) driven by solid levels of net new money, representing 1,100 million despite the particularly challenging economic and health situation. Sales performance over the first six months of the year was primarily attributable to the strength of the real estate and private equity business, which accounted for approximately 80% of net new money over the first half and thereby improving the Group's business mix and revenue generation. Distributions came out at around -500 million over the first half of the year, mainly in the private debt business, and market effects, mostly observed in capital markets strategies, totalled -200 million due to the significant degradation in the macroeconomic environment following the Covid-19 pandemic. Tikehau Capital continued to expand its international client base throughout the first half of 2020, with foreign investors accounting for 32% of the Group's total assets under management at 30 June 2020, compared with 30% the previous year, while assets under management grew strongly. Fee-paying assets under management accounted for 20.3 billion of the 24.0 billion of assets under management of the asset management division at end-June 2020, up 17% year on year and 2% over the first half. This category represented 85% of assets under management, versus 82% the previous year. Fee-paying assets under management primarily come from long-term, closed-end funds, giving the Group clear visibility of future revenue. In the context of the Covid-19 outbreak, Tikehau Capital continued to deploy funds managed within its various strategies throughout the first half of the year. Investments made in closed-end funds over the first half totalled 0.8 billion, compared with 1.5 billion the previous year as a result of the Group's particularly selective and disciplined approach. These investments were primarily carried out in the private debt business. At end-June 2020, Tikehau Capital had dry powder of 4.7 billion within the funds it manages, enabling it to take advantage of investment opportunities. Revenue from the asset management division grew considerably in the first half of the year to reach 88.3 million at end-June 2020, up 16.3% year on year. Management and arrangement fees accounted for over 98% of revenue generated by the asset management division in the first half of 2020, same level as the first half of 2019. The average management fee rate applied by the Group's funds continues to rise, as the business mix is rebalanced in favour of higher fee-generating strategies. Therefore, at end-June 2020, the average management fee rate came out at 0.94%, compared with 0.92% at end-December 2019 (up 2 basis points) and 0.84% at end-June 2019 (up 10 basis points year on year), boosted in particular by the growing contribution of real estate and private equity, where fees are above the Group average. In the highly volatile environment that prevailed in the first half of 2020, the Group exercised a tight control on operating expenses in the asset management division, limiting the rise to 7.7% in the first half of 2020. At the same time, the Group continued to invest in its platform and employed approximately 570 people at end-June 2020, versus 530 at end-December 2019. The strong growth in revenue and limited increase in operating expenses contributed to a 39.5% increase in operating profit generated by the asset management division in the first half of the year, which reached 28.6 million at end-June 2020. Operating margin came out at 32.4% at end-June 2020, compared with 27.0% the previous year, representing a significant improvement of 5.4 points. This result demonstrates that the Group's profitable expansion in asset management, which lies at the heart of its strategy, is particularly relevant. The investment division was impacted by adverse market effects in the first half The investment division's revenue were negative by 77.2 million in the first half of 2020, and can be broken down as follows: Revenue from dividends, coupons and distributions totalled 42.3 million (compared with 49.0 million at 30 June 2019), including 31.2 million from investments made by the Group in its own funds (up 31% year on year). Dividends, coupons and distributions from direct investments were down on the half year, as Eurazeo and DWS did not pay a dividend for the period. totalled 42.3 million (compared with 49.0 million at 30 June 2019), including 31.2 million from investments made by the Group in its own funds (up 31% year on year). Dividends, coupons and distributions from direct investments were down on the half year, as Eurazeo and DWS did not pay a dividend for the period. Changes in fair value were negative by 119.6 million in the first half of the year. This amount broke down as: 143.3 million in negative unrealised changes in fair value of certain, primarily listed portfolio assets 23.8 million in proceeds from realised disposal of assets completed in the first half were negative by 119.6 million in the first half of the year. This amount broke down as: The Group invests in its own strategies in order to align its interests with those of its clients over the long term, in accordance with the maturity of the various investment vehicles that it develops and manages. The exceptional nature of the first-half of 2020 does not undermine the medium- to long-term value creation potential of the investments made by Tikehau Capital in its strategies. The Group therefore confirms its normative return on capital target for the investments made in its own funds, situated between 10% and 15%. After taking into account operating expenses of 47.3 million, Tikehau Capital's investment portfolio generated an operating loss of 124.5 million at 30 June 2020. At 30 June 2020, Tikehau Capital recognised 165 million of non-current expenses related to financial instruments put in place by the Group at the end of the first quarter as part of its risk management policy, while the global economy was facing a major systemic risk. These instruments are intended to lessen the impact of any market correction that may affect the Group's investment portfolio, especially its investments in listed entities, given the high level of uncertainty regarding the future of the current health crisis and the effect it may have on the markets over the coming quarters. After taking this expense and the share of net income of equity affiliates into account, the investment division generated an operating loss of 290.3 million at end-June 2020. The Group's strong balance sheet is a key differentiating factor Tikehau Capital boasts a strong balance sheet that enables it to continue investing in its own funds and taking advantage of external growth opportunities in the alternative asset management market, in line with its strategy. At 30 June 2020, shareholders' equity came out at 2.8 billion, compared with 3.1 billion at 31 December 2019. This change over the first six months of the year is correlated to the net income (Group share) generated over the period. The Group's investment portfolio at 30 June 2020 totalled 2.4 billion (compared with 2.3 billion at 31 December 2019). Within this portfolio, the Group's investments in its own strategies rose to 1.5 billion at 30 June 2020, compared with 1.2 billion at 30 June 2019 and 1.4 billion at 31 December 2019, thereby representing 65% of the portfolio at end-June 2020 compared with 49% the previous year and 61% at end-December 2019. This proportion of investments in the Group's business lines will continue to increase over the coming years as and when future funds are launched, in line with its strategy. The Group is particularly well positioned to achieve its objective to bring the proportion of its own strategies within its investment portfolio to between 65% and 75% by 2022. Since 1 January, Tikehau Capital has also actively continued to rotate its direct investments portfolio. The Group took advantage of market conditions to complete the disposal of 54% of its stake in the German asset management company DWS, generating total proceeds of 110 million. Tikehau Capital and DWS continue to pursue their strategic partnership, which remains wholly unchanged by this operation, with several shared initiatives and projects currently being set up. In August 2020, the Group was also reimbursed for the 115 million loan granted in early 2018 to Conforama (a major player in household equipment in Europe), partially secured by the balance sheet of Tikehau Capital and partially by several funds managed by the Group. At 30 June 2020, the Group's consolidated cash position stood at 878 million3, compared with 1.3 billion at 31 December 2019. This reduction is mainly attributable to the investments made by Tikehau Capital in its own funds throughout the six-month period as well as the disinvestments made in its own direct investment portfolio, the distribution of dividends, and payments relating to the aforementioned derivative instruments. Financial debt was stable at 1 billion with a gearing ratio of 36%. Tikehau Capital remains committed to actively managing its balance sheet, by both rotating its portfolio and focusing on the level and structure of its debt. Tikehau Capital stands out with high ESG ratings that recognise the effectiveness of its strategy Since the creation of Tikehau Capital in 2004, sustainable projects have been crucial to the long-term growth and profitability of the Group. ESG and impact frameworks not only impact investment decisions and portfolio construction, but everything that Tikehau Capital does as a firm. In 2020, this proactive approach has been recognised by independent assessments that place the Group among the best players in its industry. On 14 September 2020, Tikehau Capital announced it had earned a score of 66/100 for its inaugural rating by the extra-financial rating agency Vigeo Eiris. This high rating, awarded by one of the most highly renowned ESG rating agencies globally, positions Tikehau Capital among the leading names in its sector in recognition of the effective way in which the Group manages ESG matters. Over the summer, Tikehau Capital was also awarded the highest possible score from the UN PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment). For the second consecutive year, Tikehau Capital received an A+ in the Strategy and Governance module covering the company's overarching approach to responsible investment and ESG approach. Further to these successes, the ranking published by the extra-financial rating agency Sustainalytics in May 2020 positioned Tikehau Capital in second place out of 246 asset managers and depositories globally for its ability to assess ESG risks. Share buyback programme Tikehau Capital extended to 31 December 2020 the mandate granted to an investment services provider to buy back shares as part of the share buyback programme approved by the Annual Shareholders' Meeting of 19 May 2020. The shares repurchased will be used for external growth, merger, spin-off or investment transactions, within the limit of 5% of the share capital in accordance with the law. The terms and conditions of the share buyback programme remain unchanged. A description of the share buyback programme (published in paragraph 8.3.4 of the Tikehau Capital Universal Registration Document filed with the French financial markets authority on 14 April 2020 under number D. 20-0290) is available on the company's website in the Regulatory Information section (https://www.tikehaucapital.com/en/finance/regulatory-information). Outlook After the asset management division considerably expanded its contribution to the Group's earnings and profits during the first half of the year, Tikehau Capital will remain focused over the coming months to: Continue to grow its flagship funds, as they are being raised Expand its offer by developing new strategies Reinforce its asset management platform, in particular by leveraging acquisitions made over recent years During the next few months, Tikehau Capital will continue to market its funds currently being raised in private equity (energy transition, growth equity, aerospace and medtech), private debt (direct lending, impact lending) and special situations. In capital markets strategies, the Group will continue to market its flexible and fixed income funds, in particular through the Tikehau 2027 fixed income fund launched in early June 2020. Many successes have already been notched up in July 2020: Ace Management was entrusted with the exclusive management of a private equity fund designed to support the aerospace industry, following a call for tender organised by the leading aerospace players (Airbus, Safran, Thales and Dassault Aviation) with support from the French state. An initial closing has already been completed for 630 million, in which Tikehau Capital invested 230 million from its balance sheet, in accordance with its strategy to align interests. The fund is currently being actively marketed. fund designed to support the aerospace industry, following a call for tender organised by the leading aerospace players (Airbus, Safran, Thales and Dassault Aviation) with support from the French state. An initial closing has already been completed for 630 million, in which Tikehau Capital invested 230 million from its balance sheet, in accordance with its strategy to align interests. The fund is currently being actively marketed. Regarding private debt : The initial closing for the fifth generation of its Direct Lending fund was completed for a total of 220 million, including 60 million from the balance sheet of Tikehau Capital. This fifth generation of funds will enable Tikehau Capital and its investor-clients to access fresh resources to support European SMEs by offering them a wide range of bespoke financing solutions, which is key in the context of the current crisis. A second closing for this fund is expected during the second half of 2020, primarily with international investors. A 150 million evergreen mandate was granted by a French institutional investor to Tikehau Capital, to invest in several strategies developed by the Group, primarily in private debt. An additional 55 million was raised through the Novo 2020 fund sponsored by institutional investors, which the Group was charged with managing during the first half of the year. : Tikehau Capital is also working to launch several strategies during the second half of the year, with in particular, in the private debt segment, an impact lending strategy as well as its first secondary private debt fund and, in the capital markets strategies, a long-term equity fund that is not subject to daily liquidity. The Group will also continue to expand its asset management platform by integrating and growing the various acquisitions it has made over recent years: On 29 July 2020, Tikehau Capital finalised the acquisition of 100% of the capital of Star America Infrastructure Partners , an independent US-headquartered asset management firm operating to develop and manage mid-sized infrastructure projects in North America that has more than $600 million (535 million 4 ) of assets under management. This acquisition enables Tikehau Capital to diversify its assets under management by taking on a new high-growth asset class and strengthen its growth strategy in North America. The integration of Star America Infrastructure Partners into the Tikehau Capital platform is progressing rapidly, and the Group has already committed 50 million from its balance sheet to their second-generation fund, in accordance with its strategy to align interests. The assets under management of Star America Infrastructure Partners will now be recognised alongside the assets under management of the real estate division, under "Real Assets". , an independent US-headquartered asset management firm operating to develop and manage mid-sized infrastructure projects in North America that has more than $600 million (535 million ) of assets under management. This acquisition enables Tikehau Capital to diversify its assets under management by taking on a new high-growth asset class and strengthen its growth strategy in North America. The integration of Star America Infrastructure Partners into the Tikehau Capital platform is progressing rapidly, and the Group has already committed 50 million from its balance sheet to their second-generation fund, in accordance with its strategy to align interests. The assets under management of Star America Infrastructure Partners will now be recognised alongside the assets under management of the real estate division, under "Real Assets". This year is also key for IREIT Global, a real estate investment trust listed in Singapore with 630m of assets at end-June 2020, which only invests in Europe. Since taking a stake in the company's capital in 2016, Tikehau Capital has been very actively involved in supporting the growth of IREIT Global, restructuring its shareholder base but also financing and internationalising its future growth. In late 2019, IREIT Global announced its first investment in Spain by acquiring 40% of a real estate portfolio comprising four office buildings in Madrid and Barcelona with Tikehau Capital owning the remaining 60% stake. On 7 August 2020, IREIT Global announced its intention to exercise the call option on the stake held by Tikehau Capital, and to raise 90 million before the end of 2020 that will enable it to finance this operation and reimburse a shareholder loan granted by City Developments Limited (CDL). The three largest shareholders of IREIT Global (Tikehau Capital, CDL and AT Capital) announced their intention to take part in this capital increase. Since 6 April 2020, Tikehau Capital and CDL have held 29.2% and 20.9%, respectively, of the capital of IREIT Global. The structurally positive tailwinds in favour of the market segments where the Group is positioned remain unchanged, therefore confirming investor-clients' appetite and interest for the strategies developed by Tikehau Capital. In the shorter term, the environment remains uncertain, particularly with respect to the evolution of the health and economic crisis, and could lead to cyclical effects on the pace of fundraising. Tikehau Capital has therefore set a target of reaching more than 27.5 billion of assets under management by end-20205, and confirms its core objectives for 2022, aiming to reach over 35 billion of assets under management and generate over 100 million in operating profit from asset management. The half-year results presentation will be available to watch on 17 September 2020 from 8:30 am (CEST) on the Group website www.tikehaucapital.com. Calendar 5 November 2020 Assets under management at end-September 2020 11 February 2021 Assets under management at end-December 2020 18 March 2021 - 2020 annual results Key figures for the first half of 2020 Assets under management Amount at 30 June 2020 (In billions) Change on 30 June 2019 Change on 31 Dec. 2019 Private Debt 8.3 -1.00% -3.50% Real Assets 9.6 18.80% 4.20% Capital Markets Strategies 3.8 15.20% 0.70% Private Equity 2.3 57.60% 14.00% Asset management division 24 13.10% 1.60% Of which fee-paying assets under management 20.3 16.70% 1.90% Of which future fee-paying assets under management 2.7 -1.80% 5.00% Of which non-fee-paying assets under management 1 -7.00% -10.10% Investment division 1.7 -20.10% -22.50% Total assets under management 25.7 10.10% -0.40% Simplified income statement (In millions) Income statement items 30 June 2020 30 June 2019 Asset management Revenue from asset management 88.3 75.9 Weighted average fee rate 99 bps 85 bps Operating expenses (59.7) (55.4) Asset management operating profit 28.6 20.5 Investment Portfolio revenue (77.2) 157.7 Operating expenses (47.3) (37.5) Portfolio op. profit (loss) (124.5) 120.2 Other items1 (165.8) (0.8) Investment op. profit (loss) (290.3) 119.4 Group Financial income (loss) (19.2) (22.0) Non-recurring share-based payments2 (1.3) (3.1) Tax 41.4 (17.6) Minority interests (0.1) Net income, Group share (240.9) 97.2 Simplified balance sheet (In millions) Balance sheet items 30 June 2020 31 Dec. 2019 Investment portfolio 2,371 2,335 Cash and financial assets8 878 1,307 Other current and non-current assets 711 699 Total assets 3,960 4,341 Shareholders' equity, Group share 2,784 3,139 Minority interests 7 7 Financial debt 1,007 977 Other current and non-current liabilities 162 198 Total liabilities 3,960 4,341 Gearing9 36% 32% Undrawn credit facilities 500 500 About Tikehau Capital Tikehau Capital is an asset management and investment group with 25.7 billion of assets under management and shareholder equity of 2.8 billion (at 30 June 2020). The Group invests in various asset classes (Private Debt, Real Assets, Private Equity and Capital Markets Strategies) including through its asset management subsidiaries that act on behalf of institutional and private investors. Controlled by its managers alongside leading institutional partners, Tikehau Capital employs more than 570 people (at 30 June 2020) in its offices based in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, New York, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo. Tikehau Capital is listed in compartment A of the regulated Euronext Paris market (ISIN code: FR0013230612; Ticker: TKO.FP) DISCLAIMER: This document does not constitute an offer of securities for sale or investment advisory services. It contains general information only and is not intended to provide general or specific investment advice. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future earnings and profit, and targets are not guaranteed. Certain statements and forecasted data are based on current forecasts, prevailing market and economic conditions, estimates, projections and opinions of Tikehau Capital and/or its affiliates. Due to various risks and uncertainties. actual results may differ materially from those reflected or expected in such forward-looking statements or in any of the case studies or forecasts. All references to Tikehau Capital's advisory activities in the US or with respect to US persons relate to Tikehau Capital North America. __________________ 1 At constant assets under management in the Capital Markets Strategies business. 2 The Statutory Auditors are currently in the process of auditing the financial statements. 3 Gross cash comprises cash and cash equivalents (mainly marketable securities) and cash management financial assets of 767.3m as well as the security deposit and margin calls relating to the portfolio of derivative instruments (110.2m). 4 Using a $/ exchange rate of 0.89 as at 30 June 2020. 5 At constant assets under management in the Capital Markets Strategies business. 6 Includes the impact of derivative instruments and the share of net income of equity affiliates. 7 Non-recurring share-based payments primarily refer to the cost of the free share grant (IFRS 2) of 1 December 2017, including social security costs, put in place following the IPO. 8 Gross cash comprises cash and cash equivalents (mainly marketable securities) and cash management financial assets of 767.3m as well as the security deposit and margin calls relating to the portfolio of derivative instruments (110.2m). 9 Gearing Total financial debt/Equity, Group share. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916005953/en/ Contacts: Press Tikehau Capital: Valerie Sueur +33 1 40 06 39 30 France Image 7: Florence Coupry Juliette Mouraret +33 1 53 70 74 70 UK Prosek Partners: Fiona Laffan +44 7590 524 289 USA Prosek Partners: Trevor Gibbons +1 646 818 9238 press@tikehaucapital.com Shareholders and investors Louis Igonet +33 1 40 06 11 11 shareholders@tikehaucapital.com Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Bharat Book Bureau Provides the Trending Market Research Report on Digitization in Logistics Supply Chain Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Component (Solutions and Services); Organization Size (SMEs and Large Enterprise); Industries (Automotive, BFSI, Manufacturing, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Oil & Gas) under Media & Technology Category. The report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, competitive intelligence and Market reports. The Digitization In Logistics Supply Chain Market was valued at US$ 11,794.24 million in 2019 and is projected to reach US$ 23,607.06 million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.5% from 2020 to 2027. The key stakeholders in the digitization in logistics supply chain market are technology solution providers, technology service providers, logistics service providers, and end-user industries. The technology solution providers include connected device or other hardware manufacturers and software developers. The technology service providers refer to the consultants or technology consulting service providers, integrators or implementation service providers, and others. A few of the prominent technology solution providers include Accenture Plc., IBM Corporation, SAP SE, and Capgemini. On the other hand, the technology service providers include The Supply Chain Consulting Group Ltd., REPL Group Worldwide Ltd., and Brain & Company Inc. Request a free sample copy Digitization in Logistics Supply Chain Market report @ https://www.bharatbook.com/marketreports/sample/reports/2165103 Developing countries in the world are experiencing rapid industrialization, which mainly results in the rise in number of manufacturing facilities. Various multinational companies have their manufacturing plants in several developing countries. The expansion of multinational companies to these countries generates substantial demand for strong internet capabilities to streamline numerous operations. The logistics and supply chain are among the key industries in any country, and due to the fast maturation of digital technologies in these industries, the demand for the same is escalating in developing countries. This supports the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in developing countries. IoT-enabled processes boost task efficiency and reduce accidents. In addition, the IoT enables real-time monitoring, tracking, and tracing for both international and domestic transit, thereby offering higher levels of visibility to the service providers and customers into logistics. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Digitization in Logistics Supply Chain Market The COVID-19 virus outbreak has been affecting every business globally since December 2019. The continuous growth in the number of virus-infected patients has governments to put a bar on transportation of humans and goods. The manufacturing sector has witnessed severe losses due to the temporary shutdown of factories and low production volumes, which has had a negative impact on the logistics sector. Additionally, the social or physical distancing measures imposed by governments have led the logistics service providers to limit their operations. However, the logistics and supply-chain industry players are focusing on digital technologies to curb the negative effect of the pandemic on the logistics operations based on traditional logistics concepts. This is boosting the digitization in logistics supply chain market. Nonetheless, the lower volumes of production are limiting the full-fledged usage of the fleets, which is creating tremors on the logistics service providers' business, thereby leading to slower growth of digitization in logistics supply chain market. The global digitization in logistics supply chain market size has been derived using 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. It also provides the overview and forecast for the digitization in logistics supply chain market based on all the segments concerning five primary regions-such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South America. 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 of this process include industry experts 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 digitization in logistics supply chain 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 digitization in logistics supply chain 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 global 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 component, organization size, and industry. Browse our full report with Table of Content : https://www.bharatbook.com/marketreports/digitization-in-logistics-supply-chain-market-forecast-to-2027-covid-19-impact-and-global-analysis-by-component-solut/2165103 About Bharat Book Bureau: Bharat Book is Your One-Stop-Shop with an exhaustive coverage of 4,80,000 reports and insights that includes latest Market Study, Market Trends & Analysis, Forecasts Customized Intelligence, Newsletters and Online Databases. Overall a comprehensive coverage of major industries with a further segmentation of 100+ subsectors. Contact us at: Bharat Book Bureau Tel: +91 22 27810772 / 27810773 Email: poonam@bharatbook.com Website: www.bharatbook.com The newest live adaptation of "Mulan" did not impress its Chinese viewers, receiving nothing but underwhelming reviews from the Sleeping Giant. Disney went through a lot before they were able to finally release the live adaptation of the 1998 animated film "Mulan." However, it did not take off to where the studio expected it to be. The studio relied heavily on overseas revenues, particularly in China. But according to Variety, the movie only made around $38.5 million in the said Asian country, dealing a massive impact on Disney's overall sales. Furthermore, it garnered poor reviews and an overall rating of 4.9 out of 10 on the popular user review site, Douban. Most reviews pointed out that they were left unsatisfied due to the film being "inauthentic." The worst part is that people are now seeing the live adaptation as the "worst 'Mulan' in history" although Disney cashed out $200 million to make it -- the priciest among all the studio's recent live-action remakes. What Disappointed Chinese Viewers "Mulan" lead star Liu Yifei once put the film's future on the line after she reshared a post from People's Daily reporter Fu Guohao which read, "I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now." The reporter allegedly typed the message while being tied up and attacked by protesters at the Hong Kong airport. This even led to Chinese critics starting the #BoycottMulan trend, putting the film under egative light in its target country. While some people expected that it would affect the way Chinese viewers receive the film, politics never really caused it to flop. As the film continues to air despite its shortcoming, moviegoers from China flooded "Mulan" with complaints -- from the lead actress itself up to its storyline. One of the complainants pointed out that they saw Yifei "as if she was perfect" throughout the film. This reportedly prevented the actress from expressing her character the way she should have been, causing people to call it "inauthentic." "It feels that this Mulan was born with eight-pack abs. She has no shortcomings - and even small shortcomings can be overcome immediately," Variety quoted one comment. "She's lost the complexity of the animated version of the character, who is both a cute little girl and a powerful heroine." Another one also explained how the storyline for the live adaptation was too weak that it highlighted Mulan's hero complex without sense and logic. In addition, the 1998 animated film is well-renowned for its martial arts sequences, but the live adaptation failed to deliver the same. Meanwhile, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair brought up the "Beauty and the Beast" remake to the table and compared it to the "Mulan" remake. "The new Mulan is a sweeping action movie with lots of cool fight choreography, and yet it never musters up a sense of awe," he said. Per Lawson, "Mulan" is not awful. However, it is a bland film with bland scenes. Other than the "Reflection" theme song, which Cristina Aguilera re-recorded, nothing seemed to be new. No politics or crisis should be blamed for the failure of "Mulan," and they can no longer do anything to make people love it. READ MORE: Is Jet Li Sick? Actor Reveals Truth About Alarming Health Concerns ROCHESTER, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Document Security Systems, Inc. (DSS or the Company) (NYSE American: DSS), a multinational company operating businesses focusing on brand protection technology, blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, real estate, and securitized digital assets, today announced its wholly owned subsidiary Impact BioMedical, Inc. (Impact BioMedical), through its subsidiary Global BioLife, Inc. (Global BioLife), completed efficacy testing of its proprietary 3F Antiviral Biofragrance (3F Biofragrance) at a biosafety level 3 containment facility at an independent university. The study demonstrated a 10-fold reduction in COVID-19 viral population on surfaces using 3F Biofragrance. Were extremely excited with the results of the study, which was based on a quantifiable, robust model and designed to treat high levels of the COVID-19 virus, stated Daryl Thompson, Global BioLifes Director of Scientific Initiatives and founder of advanced research company GRDG Sciences, LLC (GRDG). As the world continues to battle COVID-19, common antimicrobial compounds have the potential to be overused, leading to new health concerns. We designed 3F Biofragrance to solve this issue through a multi-focal approach to inhibiting viruses that reduces the chances of developing resistance as seen with other antimicrobials. 3F Biofragrance was designed for the Open Air Defense Initiative, a strategy to protect locations where large numbers of people gather or transit such as airports, containment areas, train stations, convention centers, hospitals, and ports of entry. The Open Air Defense Initiative was created as a solution for Event 201, a pandemic exercise conducted in 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Event 201 highlighted areas where public/private partnerships are vital to respond to a severe pandemic. In addition to COVID-19, 3F Biofragrance is effective against E. coli, MRSA, Influenza, Rhinovirus, and Tuberculosis. In the latest study, 3F Biofragrance demonstrated success as a surface disinfectant, killing the COVID-19 virus in concentrations as low as 1/5000 or 0.02%. In comparison, typical antimicrobial surface disinfectants have concentrations of 0.1% to 1.8%. Impact BioLife is currently in joint development with multiple global cosmetics and consumer products companies for the commercialization of the 3F Biofragrance technology. 3F Biofragrance has the potential to transform typical consumer products into weapons against the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses, and we look forward to providing updates on ongoing negotiations for global licensing and royalty agreements of this innovative technology, continued Thompson. The global market for antimicrobial additives, estimated at $2.2 billion in 2020 and growing at a CAGR of 8.4%, is expected to reach $4.3 billion in 2027, according to Grandview Research, and the global fragrance ingredients market is expected to reach $16.1 billion by 2027, up from $13.6 billion in 2019, according to data from Allied Market Research. GRDGs Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Roscoe M. Moore, Jr., the former United States Assistant Surgeon General and former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC commented, This latest study affirms our belief that our 3F Biofragrance technology can play an important role in the battle against COVID-19 through a wide variety of consumer applications. As a result of the profound and unprecedented global experiences surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, consumers around the world now have a newly heightened awareness of the importance of microbial-resistant products and surfaces, and 3F Biofragrance could provide an extremely effective and safe alternative to meet this growing demand, added GRDGs Chief Strategy Advisor, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Lyerly Jr., retired U.S. Army Medical Service Corps Officer who also served as a senior official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Executive Office of the President (White House). GRDG is a specialized research team that focuses on developing solutions for biodefense under the guidelines of the Project BioShield Act, Event 201, and Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. GRDG performs rapid analysis and research by using advanced algorithms and the most complete databases in the world. The team operates in a lean and efficient manner and when necessary utilizes the top contract research organizations to deliver solid results that are robust and accurate. About Impact BioMedical, Inc. Impact BioMedical, Inc. ("Impact BioMedical") is a wholly owned subsidiary of DSS. Impact BioMedical strives to leverage its scientific know-how and intellectual property rights to provide solutions that have been plaguing the biomedical field for decades. By tapping into the scientific expertise of GRDG Sciences, LLC, Impact BioMedical pledges to undertake a concerted effort in the R&D, drug discovery and development for the prevention, inhibition, and treatment of neurological, oncological and immuno related diseases. For more information on Impact BioMedical visit http://impbio.com/ . About Document Security Systems, Inc. DSS is a multinational company operating businesses focused on brand protection technology, blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, real estate, and securitized digital assets. Its business model is based on a distribution sharing system in which shareholders will receive shares in its subsidiaries as DSS strategically spins them out into IPOs. Its historic business revolves around counterfeit deterrent and authentication technologies, smart packaging, and consumer product engagement. DSS is led by its Chairman and largest shareholder, Mr. Fai Chan, a highly successful global business veteran of more than 40 years specializing in corporate transformation while managing risk. He has successfully restructured more than 35 corporations with a combined value of $25 billion. For more information on DSS visit http://www.dsssecure.com. Investor Contact: Dave Gentry, CEO RedChip Companies Inc. 407-491-4498 Dave@redchip.com Safe Harbor Disclosure This press release contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the Company's intended use of proceeds and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include: risks relating to our growth strategy; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; risks relating to the results of development activities; our ability to attract, integrate and retain key personnel; our need for substantial additional funds; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the prospectus and in our other filings with the SEC, including, without limitation, our reports on Forms 8-K and 10-Q, all of which can be obtained on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made and reflect management's current estimates, projections, expectations and beliefs. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law. A French policeman has been filmed kicking and stamping on a British man's head after he allegedly brandished a knife at officers who demanded he wear a mask on a train. Footage taken by fellow passengers shows the 42-year-old Englishman struggling on the ground while being detained by two officers at the station in Orleans. The police were called to haul the Briton off the train bound for Toulouse on Tuesday after reports that he was drunk and refusing to wear a mask. As his colleague handcuffed the Briton, one of the policemen kicked the suspect's head down onto the train platform prompting a passenger to exclaim, 'It's like the United States!' As his colleague handcuffed the Briton, one of the policemen kicked the suspect's head down onto the train platform prompting a passenger to exclaim, 'It's like the United States!' When the IGPN (the national police force) arrived the officers said that he was abusive and refused to comply so they were forced to drag him off the carriage. The Englishman then allegedly took out a Swiss army knife and is said to have lunged at the abdomen of one of the officers. However, several passengers have contradicted the official account and told French media that they believe the police overreacted. A witness called Pierre said that the Briton had tried to explain that he struggled to breathe with the mask on. But the officer pointed at his vest and replied, 'What does that say? This is marked "Police", not a damned "social worker", I do not give a damn.' It's further alleged by another witness named Clemence that one of the officers yelled: 'You're in France here, you're not in your country.' After the suspect was handcuffed one of the officers continued to hold the sole of his foot against the man's head However, the police union has poured scorn on the claims and said that it backs the officers '200%'. Police union Alliance told France 3: 'They did what was necessary to remove him from the train.' Referring to the alleged attempt to stab an officer, the union added: 'We see this as attempted murder.' The IGPN has opened an investigation into the arrest. The Briton has since been released from hospital and remains in police custody. The report says two of the people who were robbed are from Illinois and the third is from Indiana. Authorities have not said whether the male victims firearm was registered. Huawei Kenya kicked off this year's Seeds for the Future program, which seeks to develop ICT talent amid growing Sino-Kenya ties, the company said on Wednesday. Will Meng, CEO of Huawei Kenya, said that the program will be held virtually for the first time providing a five-day intensive training to 60 participants from around the country who will study 5G, big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing to empower them to understand the latest technology trends. Meng said the program aims to develop skilled, local ICT talent and bridge communication between countries and cultures. "By sharing ICT expertise and experiences in the global business environment, young people from different countries can learn about advanced technologies in the ICT industry and accumulate ICT expertise and skills through the Seeds for the Future program, contributing to the progress of the global ICT industry," Meng said during the virtual launch. The Seeds for the Future Program is Huawei's global Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) flagship program, which seeks to develop local ICT talent, enhance knowledge transfer, promote a greater understanding of and interest in the ICT sector, as well as improve and encourage regional building and participation in the digital community. The program, which started globally in 2008, has so far benefitted almost 200 students in Kenya since 2014 and is moving forward this year despite the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. "We truly believe that talent is the key to success. It is why we invest so much in supporting Kenyan ICT talent which will not only drive the ICT industry but power every other industry," said Zhou Pingjian, Chinese Ambassador to Kenya. "We hope these students will go on to play a significant role in this wonderful country's development, and drive forwards the digital economy," he added. Zhou said that China places high importance on the development of the digital economy and earnestly promotes international cooperation in this area. The envoy expressed his desire for more collaboration between Kenya and China and welcomed all the countries to step up communication and coordination, build up mutual trust and deepen cooperation with one another and as well as build a community with a shared future in the digital world. He noted that China remains committed to enhancing exchanges and cooperation and working together to narrow the digital divide and promote the building of an information society in Kenya and China. Joe Mucheru, cabinet secretary ministry ICT, commended Huawei for the highly relevant content and contribution to developing ICT talent and supporting the development of Kenya's digital economy. Mucheru observed that Huawei has been working non-stop to get the first phase of the National Data Center that is situated at the Konza Technopolis to be completed even during the pandemic-related disruptions. Lotengan Kelvin Esinyen, who joined the program in 2018 and has since become a full-time wireless engineer at Huawei Kenya, lauded the Chinese tech firm for giving him the opportunity of a lifetime by facilitating a trip to China. "It was an impressive experience in my life. We were shown all the state-of-the-art equipment, and we visited Huawei's laboratories which was priceless," Esinyen said. The Pentagon logo is seen behind the podium in the briefing room at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on Jan. 8, 2020. (Al Drago/Reuters) Missile Defense Agency Chief Sexually Harassed Employee for 7 Years, Watchdog Report Concludes The second top official at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) sexually harassed a female employee over the course of 7 years, according to a report by the Department of Defense Inspector General released on Sept. 16. From 2012 to 2019, MDA Executive Director John James made repeat unwanted physical contact with an employee over whom he had no direct supervisory role and with whom he had no reason to interact professionally, the report found (pdf). James often sought out the employee at MDA events, asked for her personal information, made inappropriate comments, and engaged in unwanted physical contact that suggested he had a sexual interest in her. James retired from government service before the investigation was completed. As the executive director, James was the senior civilian at the MDA and reported to the director of the agency. He started serving in the role in May 2011. In 2012, he began approaching the employee regularly to speak with her during her off-duty time. Over the next year, he began inviting the employee to his office. Sometime before 2015, he approached the employee in a parking lot and asked for her personal cell phone number. The inspector general approximated some of the dates due to the witnesses not having a specific recollection of the dates due to the passage of time. Sometime before 2016, James stopped the employee as she walked in from the rain and brushed water from her raincoat. He also sought out the employee at MDA events. At two events, he took the woman by her hand and led her to the dance floor. Around 2017, he shook hands with the employee and would hold her hand for extended periods of time, the report states. Ive been chasing you for 7 years, James told the woman in September 2018, according to the report. James continued to invite the employee to his office, including under the pretense of helping her with her career. She repeatedly denied the invitations, as recently as February 2019. In July 2019, he told the woman, Even though youre wearing all black, I was still able to find you. The employee supervisor told the IG that Jamess conduct was wrong. Its just wrong, the supervisor said. It is definitely harassment. The employee submitted her complaint on Aug. 5, 2019. The DOD IG opened the investigation the next month. James had also made inappropriate advances to a second employee, including by giving her two neck massages, according to the inspector general. The watchdog could not confirm a complaint for a third woman, who said that James asked to open her jacket so he could see her sweater. The effect of Mr. Jamess actions and comments created an intimidating, hostile, and offensive work environment for [the two employees]. His physical interactions and statements caused them to avoid contact with him, and both [employees] told us and others that they feared being fired or suffering other negative consequences if they complained about his behavior, the report concluded. The MDA gave James an opportunity to respond to the findings of the report. He did not submit a response. (Photo : Tucker Carlson Tonight/Facebook) Tucker Carlson Tonight Interview with Li-Meng Yan (Photo : Tucker Carlson Tonight/Facebook) Tucker Carlson Tonight censorship (Photo : Tucker Carlson Tonight/Facebook) Tucker Carlson Tonight censorship (Photo : Tucker Carlson Tonight/Facebook) Tucker Carlson Tonight post on censorship (Photo : Tucker Carlson Tonight/Facebook) Tucker Carlson Tonight Interview with Li-Meng Yan The recent interview with Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan was flagged to contain "false information" about coronavirus. The Chinese whistleblower who claims that COVID-19 came from a laboratory in Wuhan China has appeared in Fox News show "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Tuesday, September 15. The show posted a video of the interview on social media platforms with "Chinese whistle-blower to Tucker: This virus was made in a lab & I can prove it" as caption. However, on September 16, Facebook and Instagram flagged these posts as false information "that multiple independent fact checkers say is false." Screens were applied over the video along with a "false information" warning and "See Why" option which shows fact checks from various organizations against Li-Meng Yan's claim. Meanwhile, users may still opt to see the video by clicking on the "See Video" icon below the post. The video has already been viewed by 1.3 million times. Tucker Carlson Tonight soon posted about the warning. "Facebook is working hard to make sure you're unable to see our latest post regarding a coronavirus whistleblower." The post added that the social media network does not want users to share the video while limiting people who can view it. The show noted that "this is censorship" and it vowed to address the issue on the show. The video's captions have also been updated saying "Facebook is trying its best to censor this video." Tucker Carlson on censorship The show's host Tucker Carlson gave a background about Yan's claims that COVID-19 is "not from nature" on the September 16 edition of the show. Carlson said that a paper published in February from the South China University of Technology showed the possibility that coronavirus was created from a lab. The paper also noted that "safety levels may need to be reinforced in high-risk, bio-hazardous laboratories." The paper also suggested that these laboratories must be relocated away from densely-populated areas and city centers. However, the Chinese health officials and intelligence agencies just ignored the findings, despite being created by scientists. Nearly six months after, Yan exposed where the virus originated after fleeing to the U.S. in April. As one of the first scientists to study about Wuhan outbreak in December, she claims to have scientific evidences that the SARS-Cov-2 virus is "not from nature." She also confidently said that the virus was "created in the lab" from the Chinese military-owned facility. When Carlson asked whether the Chinese government released the virus in purpose, the virologist replied: "Yes, of course, it is intentionally." On the recent edition of the show, Carlson said there is no way to verify if the claims are true, but he noted that the doctor "was not a quack" who makes a very serious point. Yan has published peer-reviewed studies on coronavirus in respected scientific websites, Nature and The Lancet. Facebook and Instagram has not yet released a comment about the censorship. Meanwhile, Dr. Yan's Twitter account has also been suspended as of afternoon September 16, but Twitter said that the tweet "does not violate our policies on Covid-19 misinformation" after reviewing it. Read also: [Fact Check] Colleagues of Chinese Whistleblower Li-Meng Yan at University of Hong Kong Dismiss Her 'Man-Made' COVID-19 Allegations 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. Parliament is debating a government-backed bill seeking to introduce, among others, a spending disclosure system for public officials. Justice Minister Rustam Badasyan says the amendments to the Law on Public Service seek to have a complete understanding of the financial movements of the officials submitting the declaration. Public officials spending more than 2,000,000 drams at once or if the aggregate sum of the same type of spending totals 3,000,000 drams for expenses listed by law will have to disclose it in the report. Moreover, officials will have to disclose property which they are factually controlling but arent officially controlling. The circle of officials who have to disclose assets and spending is also proposed to be expanded and will cover city councilors of towns with a population of 15000 or more. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan Fierce fighting between Afghan forces and Taliban militants has left at least 20 government troops dead, even as peace talks continued in an effort to end the 19-year war. The fighting, in which 17 members of the Afghan security forces were wounded, took place following overnight militant attacks in the eastern Nangarhar Province. Nangarhar governor spokesman Ataullah Khogyani told the AFP news agency that around 30 Taliban fighters died in the clashes, although the militant group has not commented. Acting Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid said on September 17 that he hoped ongoing peace talks in Qatar would be successful, but warned the Taliban against using force to achieve their goals. "If the enemy is thinking that they can conquer everything by force, it is a dream, it is a fantasy, it is impossible and it is madness," Khalid said. The peace talks, part of a February agreement between the Taliban and Washington, began in Qatar on September 12 following a lengthy dispute over prisoner swaps. The Afghan government and its allies, including NATO and the United States, are calling for the Taliban to agree to a cease-fire to help advance what are expected to be long and grinding negotiations to end the conflict. The Taliban have not agreed to a cease-fire and have conducted near daily attacks on Afghan security forces since the United States and the militants struck the February agreement that could see foreign troops exit Afghanistan. Negotiations are initially expected to focus on technical details such as schedules for the talks and a code of conduct. Negotiators are due to discuss the cease-fire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarming of tens of thousands of Taliban fighters and militias loyal to warlords, some of them aligned with the government. With reporting by dpa and AFP "Given the current economic state of our world, in which we are dealing with a global health pandemic and widespread injustice against people of color, now more than ever is the time for Alpha Kappa Alpha to step upas we have done for more than 112 yearsand be of service to our historic institutions of higher education," said Dr. Glover who is also the president of Tennessee State University and an HBCU graduate. In 2019, the sorority gifted $1.6 million in grants to 32 HBCUs through the AKA-HBCU Endowment Fund based upon the immediate need of the institutions. Each HBCU received $50,000 in unrestricted endowment funds as part of a phased approach to help schools reduce student debt through scholarships, fund industry-specific research, recruit and retain top faculty and other critical operations. On Sunday, September 20, the sorority will host a virtual brunch to launch the next round of 32 HBCU endowment recipients and to recognize significant chapter and corporate donors who helped to make 2019 such a success. Four grants will be announced at the brunch, followed by four additional grants on Friday, September 25, the last day of HBCU Week. The sorority will then announce 24 more recipients -- six schools every Thursday for four weeks, providing a positive and well-deserved spotlight for HBCUs throughout October. While HBCUs have gotten much more favorable attention in the press over the past few months, COVID-19 continues to have an adverse effect on most colleges and universities as students elect to defer their admission or attend local institutions in their hometowns. Many HBCUs have adjusted to online learning, but still struggle to cover operating costs with a reduced number of students on campus. "I know first-hand the immense challenges HBCUs are facing during this time of uncertainty," added Dr. Glover. "However, I also know that these institutions are resilient and resourceful, which is why I have implored the membership of AKA and the black community to remain steadfast in our support of HBCUs which are responsible for 22% of current bachelor's degrees granted to African Americans, preparing them for a myriad of key leadership roles in society." HBCU Impact Day is part of the sorority's recognition of HBCU Week. On September 21, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority chapters around the globe will host fundraising events in support of the $1 million fundraising goal. The sorority was successfully able to reach the $1 million goal consecutively in 2018 and 2019 due to the generosity of AKA members, private donors and matching funds from more than a dozen corporations, including SHRM, Wells Fargo, Google, State Farm, and Walmart. Interested donors can make contributions by texting AKAHBCU to 44321, giving by mail or online at http://aka1908.com/hbcus/donate-hbcu during the 24-hour campaign. For more information on the sorority's commitment to HBCUs, visit www.AKA1908.com. About Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, is an international service organization that was founded on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1908. It is the oldest Greek-letter organization established by African American college-educated women dedicated to raising the status of African Americans, particularly girls and women. Through a robust international program of service, Alpha Kappa Alpha continues to institute groundbreaking social initiatives and social service programs that transform communities for the better. Today, these include Target 1: HBCU for Life: A Call To Action; Target 2: Women's Healthcare and Wellness; Target 3: Building Your Economic Legacy; Target 4: The Arts!; Target 5: Global Impact; and The Signature Program #CAPS. The sorority is comprised of over 300,000 members in more than 1000 graduate and undergraduate chapters in the United States and internationally. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated is a 501(c)7 organization. As a tax-exempt organization, AKA does not directly or indirectly participate in, or intervene in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. For more information on Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and its programs, log onto www.AKA1908.com. SOURCE Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Related Links http://www.aka1908.com A crane collision on Sept. 16 injured nearly two dozen people in a rapidly growing neighborhood in Austin, Texas, authorities said. Austin-Travis County EMS reported there were at least 22 injuries. Sixteen people were transported to the hospital, ATCEMS said on a Twitter post. At least eight ambulances responded to the scene. No deaths were reported. Authorities described it as a crane collision and a structural collapse, but they did not immediately provide more details. The accident occurred in the Mueller neighborhood in East Austin, which was developed on the site of the citys former airport. The ABC affiliate station in Austin, KVUE, reported that the operator of the construction site was Cadence McShane Construction. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Texas BART police officers used force more frequently last year than the previous year and nearly half of all incidents were against Black men, who are a small share of the trains riders, a new report revealed. The 2019 use of force report comes amid the agencys push over the past few years to address racial disparities in policing and more recently as the nation grapples with police brutality. The number of arrests also rose to 2,011. The report said use of force incidents didnt increase proportionally, although not all incidents result in arrests. Incidents dropped in 2018 following a policy change that ordered officers to use the minimum amount of force necessary and de-escalation techniques whenever possible. The most common reason for use of force was resisting arrest, according to the report. Approximately 61% of those involved in use of force incidents were Black, but only 10% of BARTs ridership was Black at the last pre-pandemic count in 2018. That number rose to 22% during shelter-in-place, but the report does not include use of force incidents for that period. The racial breakdown is unchanged from the year before, leading to calls for action from some of BARTs leadership and the agencys Police Citizen Review Board this week. Theres a problem that disproportionately African-Americans are affected by contact with the police, and we havent changed that, Citizen Review Board member Todd Davis said during a meeting Monday. The more contact we have, the more potential we have for something turning violent and deadly, and weve seen it. Kate Munsch / Special to the Chronicle High-profile deaths at the hands of BART police rocked the agency in the past decade. In early 2009, police shot Oscar Grant to death at Fruitvale Station, followed almost exactly nine years later by the fatal shooting of Sahleem Tindle in West Oakland. The police budget is $80 million, its union head said. Of the departments 351 employees in July, 34% were white, 22% Asian, 21% Hispanic, 19% Black, 2% Native and 2% Pacific Islander, the latest report said. Amid nationwide calls for police reform this summer, some of BARTs leaders have pushed to reshape the systems policing model. The Police Department banned carotid control holds and created a new bureau of progressive policing and community engagement. The Board of Directors redirected $2 million in police funds to non-armed ambassadors and anti-racism training and is formulating an upcoming plan for alternatives to tackle homelessness and mental health issues. BART Police Chief Ed Alvarez told the Citizen Review Board on Monday that we are all looking to get better and invited feedback. Deputy Police Chief Lance Haight said disparities are very complex social issues with multiple factors that stem from a number of causes. He added that individual officer bias and department culture are within the control of the police. Were looking for quick fixes, but were also for the long-term systematic things we can do in order to prevent bias on the part of our officers, Haight said. By no means are we turning a blind eye, and we are continually striving to improve. Can we fix this tomorrow? Absolutely not. Both Haight and Keith Garcia, president of BARTs Police Officers Association, pointed out that proof of payment citation data reported a demographic breakdown similar to use of force subjects. Proof of payment is enforced through non-sworn personnel, who check everyone in a train car. Garcia added that fare evasion citations given by officers, who do have more discretion, showed a similar racial breakdown. I see no racial bias, Garcia said. To me it shows that our officers are doing a good job. Theyre not being influenced by any unconscious or conscious bias. Other BART leaders said the report highlights issues that demand action. The data from 2019 absolutely disturbs everyone in our institution, said Lateefah Simon, president of BARTs Board of Directors who is also leading Gov. Gavin Newsoms task force on police reform. We need to make clear and defined goals of how we get those numbers down and how we make amends in ensuring that we are living out our goal of progressive policing. BART polices policy defines force as the application of physical techniques or tactics, chemical agents or weapons to another person. Here are the main takeaways from the 2019 use-of-force report. Use-of-force incidents rose to 277 in 2019 from 212 in 2018. Last year, officers employed de-escalation techniques 213 times. When using force, police officers most frequently used their body weight (95), took down subjects (86), placed control holds (85) and pointed handguns (64). 124 incidents were initiated by calls for service and 119 initiated by police officers. In a third of the instances where force was used, the suspect was not arrested, and 37 incidents resulted in psychiatric detention. In 78% of incidents, there were no injuries. In total, 62 subjects and 52 officers were injured. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In 2019, the second most affected group after Black men were Hispanic men (15%), white men (14%), and Black women (12%). People aged 20 to 29 were the largest share of those affected. In Mondays meeting, BARTs Police Citizen Review Board Chairman David Rizk acknowledged past reforms, but called for a bolder, more experimental approach. We cant continue to just look on as year after year we see numbers that reflect serious disparities in the way use of force targets communities of color, Rizk said. BARTs Board of Directors already voted this summer to redirect $2 million in police funds to hire more ambassadors and conduct anti-racism training for officers. The Board is working with General Manager Bob Powers to reshape the systems policing model. Simon said she will introduce a plan at the October meeting that will propose a listening tour among community members and experts, and new funding for the initiatives. A main goal is to reimagine how to address homelessness and mental health, problems that plague the train system. BART already works with counties to help homeless riders, but responding to crises often falls to police officers. Were clear that our officers should not have to do everything, Simon said. Garcia of the police union supported connecting riders to long-term help and adding resources to help police do their jobs, but said that officers couldnt be replaced entirely at scale. Were actually trained a lot on how to deal with people who are in crisis, people who are homeless and drug addicted and mentally ill, because we are the first responders, Garcia said. We can talk about ambassadors and social workers and we can add different resources that we have the ability to access, but it will never stop the reality on the ground that police officers will be responding first to the vast majority of these scenarios. Simon is running for re-election this year against a candidate backed by the Police Officers Association. She said that we cant train our way out of racism, but that she believes change with committed leadership is possible. We have to think about public safety in a completely different way than we have, she said. Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@mallorymoench Every effort to develop a new medicine is like launching a ship across the ocean to hunt for riches. Over the years, weve improved the hulls and masts, the maps are better, the sailors more experienced. But even so, vessels get turned back or new lands are barren. And, sometimes, a squall takes down the boat and all her crew. The Trump administration has set sail on one of the most ambitious vaccine development efforts in history. Operation Warp Speed is likely to deliver a Covid-19 inoculation in a fraction of the years it would usually take. If it does so, it could save ... The has made Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah's wife Bilquis Shah an accused in a 2005 case of money laundering for alleged terror financing against him and alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani. The probe agency named her as an accused in its supplementary charge sheet filed in the case on Wednesday. Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana will take up the matter for on November 10. In its charge sheet filed by ED's special public prosecutors N K Matta and Rajeev Awasthi, the agency said that there were sufficient evidence against Bilquis. The charge sheet has been filed under sections 3 and 4 Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The ED had earlier filed charge sheet against and Aslam Wani. It alleged that Wani was asked by Shah to work for him (on a commission basis) in collecting hawala money from Delhi and deliver to him at Srinagar. The case dates back to August 2005 in which Delhi Police's Special Cell had earlier arrested Wani. Wani had then claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under PMLA against the two in 2007. (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.) At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused the state departments top lawyer and the assistant secretary overseeing weapons sales of negligence on civilian deaths and of covering up the legal risks. Washington: The civilian death toll from Saudi Arabias disastrous air war over Yemen was steadily rising in 2016 when the Department of States legal office in the Barack Obama administration reached a startling conclusion: Top US officials could be charged with war crimes for approving bomb sales to the Saudis and their partners. Four years later, more than a dozen current and former US officials say the legal risks have only grown as President Donald Trump has made selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other West Asian nations a cornerstone of his foreign policy. Yet rather than taking steps to address the legal issues, state department leaders have gone to great lengths to conceal them. Even after a state department inspector-general investigation this year revealed that the department had failed to address the legal risks of selling bombs to the Saudis, agency officials ensured that details of the finding were put in a classified part of the public report released in August and then so heavily redacted that lawmakers with security clearances could not see them. At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused the state departments top lawyer and the assistant secretary overseeing weapons sales of negligence on civilian deaths and of covering up the legal risks. Legal scholars say US officials are right to be concerned. No episode in recent US history compares to Yemen, where the United States has provided material support over five years to the Saudi-led coalition for actions that have caused the continuous killing of civilians. More than 127,000 people have died in the war, including 13,500 civilians in targeted attacks, according to an estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. US officials have had full knowledge of the pattern of indiscriminate killing, which makes them legally vulnerable. Legal scholars say prosecutors abroad including those from nations like Sweden, Germany and Argentina that assert universal jurisdiction over war crimes anywhere in the world could bring charges against US officials. Although there has been no move so far by any foreign court to do so, some state department officials who shepherd arms sales overseas are worried enough to consider retaining their own legal counsel. Beyond courts in sovereign nations, charges against Americans over Yemen could also be brought in an international tribunal if one were set up to investigate atrocities in that war. United Nations investigators last week issued a detailed report on atrocities in Yemen that asked the UN Security Council to refer actions by all parties to an international tribunal for potential war crimes prosecution. State department spokespeople declined to discuss the decision-making process but issued a statement that said the agency had a strategy to lessen civilian casualties before the last major arms sale to the Saudi-led coalition in May 2019. They added that the department had continued to work tirelessly on reducing civilian harm in Yemen and elsewhere, citing redesigned policies, expanded analyses and new training for the Saudis and the Emiratis, who are part of the Saudi-led coalition. The Obama administration had its own struggles with Yemen. When a state department lawyer determined in 2016 that US officials could be charged with war crimes, the agencys top lawyer effectively set the opinion aside when he decided not to send the analysis to the secretary of states office. By then the administration was already taking a tougher line on civilian deaths in Yemen. That December, a month before leaving office, Obama blocked a shipment of precision-guided bombs that he had agreed to sell to the Saudis. But within months, the new Trump administration delivered the bombs Obama had halted. Then the administration sought to advance still more sales: $8.1 billion in weapons and equipment in 22 batches, including $3.8 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts made by Raytheon Company, to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Lawmakers blocked shipments for nearly two years until Secretary of State Mike Pompeo instructed his subordinates to circumvent Congress. They did so by declaring an emergency over Iran, which prompted the inspector general review. That investigation not only documented the long-standing legal worries but also created a critical report that could itself increase the legal risks, scholars said. The spectre of war crimes In March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition first moved to dislodge Houthi rebels who had captured Sana, the Yemeni capital, Obama agreed to support the effort. His administration signed off on the sale of $1.3 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts. But it quickly became clear that the Saudis and their partners at the time, including the Emiratis, were either using the bombs negligently or deliberately aiming them at civilians. In the first 18 months of fighting, human rights groups linked US bombs to attacks on homes, apartment buildings, factories, warehouses, a cultural centre, an agricultural complex, a primary school and other nonmilitary sites. As concerns over such strikes were intensifying in Washington, the state departments legal office examined whether US officials who approved arms sales to the Saudis and their partners faced legal risks. Drawing on an international tribunal case against Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord, that the United States has cited in Al-Qaeda prosecutions, the legal office reached the alarming conclusion that it put in writing in a memo in 2016: US officials, including the secretary of state, could be charged with war crimes for their role in arming the Saudi coalition. But the top State Department lawyer never sent the memo to the secretary of states office. Although the analysis did not advance within the state department, the Obama administration opened a policy review, and Secretary of State John Kerry tried to broker a cease-fire. Scrambling for a legal shield Over the spring of 2017, Trumps aides and some state department officials worked to unfreeze the bomb delivery that Obama had halted. Still, officials in the Political-Military Affairs Bureau wanted assurances that they could do the presidents bidding on arms sales without putting themselves in legal jeopardy. During one White House meeting, Mike Miller, then a senior state department official involved in arms sales, put the concerns bluntly: He said he was worried he could be found liable for aiding the killing of civilians. US officials set to work to address the concerns, drafting guidelines for the Saudi and US governments to follow as a condition of future arms sales. But then the officials pared back the guidelines in their effort to push through the weapons sales. After Trump abruptly fired his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in March 2018, and as Pompeo awaited Senate confirmation to lead the state department, John Sullivan, the deputy secretary, served as the agencys acting head. Officials worried about the arms sales believed Sullivan to be attentive to the humanitarian concerns in the Yemen War. In the roughly three weeks he was running the department, they sent an appeal for legal clarity. Sullivan responded by approving a memo the officials had drafted that recommended carrying out a robust strategy to reduce civilian casualties and updating the legal analysis before the bomb sales moved forward. But the agency failed to do those, the inspector general later determined. Pompeo took over soon after. That August, a coalition jet dropped a US-made bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 54 people, including 44 children. The next month, Pompeo issued a formal certification to Congress that the Saudi-led coalition was working to minimize civilian deaths, despite news reports and internal State Department assessments to the contrary. The move provoked a backlash in Congress and strengthened lawmakers resolve to continue blocking arms sales. By April 2019, Pompeo was frustrated by the delay, and senior state department political appointees were discussing a rarely invoked tactic to force through $8.1 billion in weapons sales without congressional approval: declaring an emergency over Iran. Pompeo announced the emergency on 24 May, 2019, and the stalled weapons deals moved forward, including the sale of some 120,000 bombs and bomb parts to the Saudis and Emiratis. But no updated civilian casualty mitigation strategy or legal analysis was carried out before the equipment was shipped, according to the inspector generals report. Released this August, the report said that although Pompeo did not violate the law in declaring an emergency, the State Department had failed to take proper measures to reduce civilian casualties and the associated legal risk. Since the emergency declaration, the Saudis and their partners have sought to buy more US bombs. About $800 million in orders is now pending, held up in the same congressional review process that had frustrated Pompeo and the White House. Michael LaForgia and Edward Wong c.2020 The New York Times Company By Express News Service MADURAI: A 20-year-old youth who had been summoned for a police inquiry was later found hanging from a tree in Sindhupatti police station limits near Peraiyur on Thursday. Family members alleged foul play behind his death, claiming that the police had assaulted him. The deceased youth was identified as K Ramesh (20) of Anaikaraipatti village in the district. Ramesh's brother allegedly eloped with a girl a few days back. The family members of the girl lodged a complaint leading to the police department taking him for an inquiry on Wednesday. After a detailed inquiry, the Saptur police asked him to come again on Thursday. Subsequently, he left the house on Thursday and was found dead. Madurai District Superintendent of Police Sujith Kumar rushed to the spot and spoke to the family members. Meanwhile, the police ruled out harassment and maintained that the youth killed himself out of fear. (If you are having suicidal thoughts, or are worried about a friend or need emotional support, someone is always there to listen. Call Sneha Foundation - 04424640050 (available 24x7) or iCall, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences' helpline - 02225521111, which is available Monday to Saturday from 8 am to 10 pm.) The trans lobby has campaigned long and hard for people to be given the right to self-identify as male or female without any medical oversight. And now it has attracted a powerful supporter to its cause in the shape of the British Medical Association. The doctors' trade union yesterday called for trans people to be able to legally change gender without being diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a medical professional. Gillian Philip (pictured): I know from bitter experience how easy it is to become the focus of the selfrighteous fury of woke Twitterati It is a major victory for a determined and single-minded pressure group whose more militant members stop at nothing in their efforts to quash dissent and make their voices heard. Take the experience of Harry Potter author JK Rowling. Within hours of the first review of her latest literary offering appearing online at the weekend, the vile trolling began. 'In memory of JK Rowling. She ain't dead, but she killed her own career by proudly hating trans people & no one would really miss her that much anyway,' read a typical tweet. Others were even more brutal and to the point, calling her a 'transphobic b***h' and detailing acts of violence that are too upsetting to quote here. To hammer the point home, many tweets had the accompanying hashtag '#RIP JKRowling'. It was the kind of violent, hate-filled language that has become chillingly familiar to anyone who has had the temerity to question the prevailing orthodoxy of the transgender activist brigade. Within hours of the first review of JK Rowling's latest literary offering appearing online at the weekend, the vile trolling began What sparked this outpouring of cyber bile was a plotline in the fifth book in Rowling's successful Cormoran Strike series, penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Troubled Blood features a psychotic male serial killer who, on one occasion, dresses as a woman to dupe a victim. In effect, a cross-dressing murderer another thrilling idea from the fertile imagination of one of our queens of fiction. While many fans professed excitement, believing there was nothing transphobic about this, these sentiments were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of outrage from a vast and unwieldy mob accusing Rowling of transphobia. It was a vitriolic onslaught that made me sick to the stomach, although it came as little surprise, because like Rowling I know from bitter experience how easy it is to become the focus of the selfrighteous fury of woke Twitterati. I know the life-changing consequences it can wreak. After many successful years as an author, one of a team writing animal fantasy novels for children between eight and 12 under the name Erin Hunter, I was dropped by my publishing company overnight. My 'crime'? I had dared to offer my support to Rowling on Twitter for the stand she had taken against transgender people being allowed to selfidentify as male or female. I'd added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to my Twitter handle in response to the author's essay in which she revealed she was a domestic abuse survivor and argued that letting self-identifying trans women into single-sex spaces was a danger to females. Hardly hate speech you might think not that this stopped me being inundated with abusive messages on social media. Like Rowling, I was called everything from a 'transphobe' to 'a piece of s**t' and labelled a 'Terf', ('trans-exclusionary radical feminist', the derogatory term used by transgender activists for the women they believe don't back the cause). At the same time, people were encouraged to contact my publisher, HarperCollins, to register their horror and call for me to be axed. It clearly worked: by the next morning I had been summarily fired. When it came to the crunch, my track record counted for nothing in the face of a baying Twitter mob. I had effectively been cancelled. The fact is that I'm not remotely transphobic. I believe in anyone's right to change their gender expression. But the idea that a man can simply declare himself to be a woman, fully intact, without surgery or hormones, and be allowed into women's prisons or hospital wards is a crazy situation that I sometimes want to shout about. Once upon a time, expressing an opinion would have been little more than the starting point or part of a debate. But as many writers, academics and assorted celebrities can testify, it seems that today there is only room for one sort of opinion, a subversion of free speech that has crept up on us with alarming haste. Today, the woke brigade who seem to have a stranglehold on our institutions want acceptance without exception and without extending that courtesy to anyone who doesn't conform to their way of thinking. Nor, as JK Rowling has found, is anything good enough to appease them once their anger is roused. Previously a pillar of the Leftist establishment, this author once so beloved of the nation's millennials is now in the invidious position of being able to do nothing right. Her second book in the Cormoran Strike series, The Silkworm, has also drawn fury from LGBTIQ+ activists and their allies after it labelled a trans character as 'unstable and aggressive'. But it was when she had the temerity to pick up on a campaign by an international development organisation that talked of the need to create a more equal post-Covid-19 world for 'people who menstruate' rather than 'women' that she was subjected to the full force of their rage. Her detractors, not content with tweeting death threats, seem determined to strip everything from her, including credit for the work that made her a household name. Even the Harry Potter stars who made their fortunes through film adaptations of her books Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint decried her. At least Robbie Coltrane, who plays gamekeeper Hagrid in the movies, staunchly defended Rowling's stance this week, saying he did not find her views offensive, and telling people to 'wise up, stand up straight and carry on'. In some ways it is the politics of the playground. It would be almost laughable if it were not unfolding in a near-Kafkaesque world where the truth is all too frequently distorted beyond recognition, and where a largely anonymous mob can tweet fantasies about brutal violence against a woman, or her death, in the name of 'rights' and 'equality'. Robbie Coltrane, who plays gamekeeper Hagrid in the movies, staunchly defended Rowling's stance this week Perhaps those responsible are too blinded by their self-righteousness to see the irony. The saddest thing of all is that I am convinced that the vast majority of us, from all ages and backgrounds, are bewildered by this turn of events. This is underlined by the quiet but numerous messages of support I received from a wide range of people within 48 hours of the news of my dismissal going public earlier this year. Many would have loved to speak out publicly in support of my stance but were too scared to do so in a world where, however nuanced or inclusive your language, one slip on social media can see you lose your job. Now that I am through the worst, I can see that in some ways what happened to me has been positive. No longer shackled to a corporate giant, I am free to publish my opinions as I wish, and I know new opportunities await. The crazed Twitter mob have tried to crush me but I am still standing. That does not, though, stop me having genuine, deeply felt fears about the future, both about the consequences for women whose identity is being stealthily eroded and for a country which as JK Rowling has found has allowed an extreme fringe of a lobby group to almost entirely shut down debate. Americas inflection point: four key things Africa must watch for Many political issues in the 2020 US election are domestic. But black resistance to white supremacy has long had global repercussions. African scholars and policymakers face a tough challenge in analysing how the US presidential election on 3 November might affect Africa-US relations. This is because of the extreme polarisation of politics that has been growing for decades in the US. Simultaneous national crises have made matters worse. These suddenly erupted over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, its impact on the economy, and fresh evidence of white racism towards black Americans. In deeply divided America, four clusters of political political conflicts arise over issues of national identity, sustainable democracy, international relations and electoral integrity. Crises in public health, the economy and race relations are adding to these conflicts. African countries struggle with similar political issues though in very different local circumstances. They are also afflicted by the global COVID-19 pandemic and economic crises. These four unresolved and contentious clusters of political issues have confronted the US since it declared independence from Britain in 1776 and created a federal state in 1789. In 2020 many crucial issues have yet to be resolved. Republican President Donald Trump and his deputy Mike Pence campaign for an ethnic nationalist identity. Their appeal is to white Christian racial supremacists. They also advocate a nationalist and unilateral foreign policy. They back Republican efforts to limit equal voting rights. And they threaten other actions to subvert electoral integrity. Their Democratic challengers Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris have very different goals. They are campaigning for an America that is more inclusive and equitable. A similar aspiration is enshrined in South Africas constitution: to become a country that belongs to all who live in it, united in its diversity. American inflection point Harris describes the 2020 election as an inflection point. She means a turning point in Americas long curve towards or away from democratic development. It is a nod to an adage attributed to Martin Luther King, and popularised by former President Barack Obama, that: This theme threads through the Democratic Platform, with specific promises. Biden and Harris now appear likely to be elected. Its therefore important to consider what their positions mean for Africa-US relations. Trump, by contrast, repeats his promise of 2016 to restore Americas greatness. His Republican Party doesnt even offer a new list of goals and programmes for the next four years. Instead, the party republished its 2016 platform with a covering memo praising the leadership of Donald Trump. This leaves voters and foreign governments with little new to analyse. For those trying to calculate the effects on African nations of an American inflection point, there are four areas to consider: National identity White supremacy has been the predominant national identity since America was colonised in the 17th century. Now, with ethnic diversity accelerating, exemplified by the election of a black president in 2008, Trump has stoked a backlash. Deprived of any claim to a strong economy as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, he is reduced to running again as an ethnic nationalist akin to a tribalist in Africa. In todays America there are limits to blatant appeals to racial prejudice. Trump absurdly claims to have done more for African-Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln. But there are also political limits to how far Biden can go in embracing progressive calls for more rapid and complete integration. The structural racism cited by the Black Lives Matter movement persists among liberals. But it does so as an implicit racial contract sustaining white privilege in access to housing, health care, education and employment. These are familiar issues in African countries, where a white tribal faction has historically dominated. Sustainable democracy In accepting the Democratic Party nomination, Biden focused on issues of character and leadership. He had Obama make the case for sustainable democracy and democratic inclusion. Obama pointedly referenced democracy 18 times in an address that reprised themes Africans heard in his 2018 Mandela Lecture in South Africa. Presidential hopeful Joe Biden addresses the Democratic National Convention. EFE-EPA/DNCC Trump, by contrast, did not reference democracy once in his unusually long 70-minute address accepting his partys nomination for a second term. Obamas warnings to Americans that Trump threatens the integrity and sustainability of democratic institutions has a familiar ring. In his 2009 address to the Ghanaian parliament, he said: Trump, along with his family, cronies and party enablers, appears to have achieved sufficient state capture to bring the US to a negative inflection point, as I predicted in 2018 (Chapter 10). International relations Of more immediate and practical concern to African nations is whether Trumps nationalist unilateralism will continue to dominate US foreign policy. Or will there be a turn towards the multilateralism that Biden pledges to pursue? This includes: restoring US funding and engagement in the World Health Organisation, support for climate change mitigation, immigration reform, and support for collective security efforts to help Africans implement their commitments to ending armed conflicts. African scholars also warn of a growing US-China Cold War under Trump. This would be detrimental to Africa. Former US national security advisor and UN ambassador Susan Rice has called for an early summit with South Africas president and current African Union chair, Cyril Ramaphosa, should Biden be elected. Similarly, former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carson, envisions a deepening of African-American partnerships under a Biden administration. Electoral integrity The threat to American democracy most familiar to Africans is an incumbents subversion of electoral integrity. Trump has repeatedly indicated his readiness to do something similar. African electoral violence specialist Michelle Small has noted the need to compare Trumps responses to racial protests with efforts to retain power by extra-constitutional means. All members of the African Union, despite democratic setbacks, are still obliged to hold periodic national elections, accessible to external observers. Well documented interference in the 2016 and 2020 US elections by the Russian government, favouring Trump, may also portend similar risks of foreign manipulation of African elections. What to expect For African scholars and policymakers seeking to advance their national and regional interests in dealings with the US, the 59th presidential inauguration will also be an inflection point. Should Trump prevail, there is unlikely to be any discernible change in his behaviour of the past four years. Occasional private disparagement of African nations and leaders will most likely continue. There will be continued disengagement from initiatives of concern to Africans in public health, the environment, trade and other areas. His actions towards Africa, as in other areas, lack strategy. But he could still win. Despite presidential neglect, programmes in public health, trade agriculture, health, education and young leaders launched by Trumps predecessors would likely continue with bi-partisan Congressional support. A Biden win offers a much richer field for contingency planning, although resources will be very constrained and attention will be overwhelmingly domestic. That said, Biden would enter office owing a huge political debt to the support of African Americans. His ticket indicates receptiveness to honouring it, including immigration and other reforms affecting the African diaspora as well as expanding US-Africa partnerships. Planning to take advantage of those contingencies should be a priority in Africa. John J Stremlau, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Reasons for adoption AWS WAF is a cloud-based web application firewall provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), that helps protect web applications or APIs against common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. While AWS WAF has features that allow it to be customized to the characteristics of a web application, there are also challenges, such as the need to create and fine-tune rules on your own, and the need for resources with expertise in dealing with new vulnerabilities. WafCharm is equipped with an AI engine that uses machine learning to automatically apply the most appropriate WAF rules to AWS WAF, utilizing more than 1.5 trillion big data in total, to automatically apply the most appropriate rules for each user. WafCharm automates all the necessary operations so that users can focus on their core business rather than managing security rules. Classi Corp. developed and operates its cloud service "Classi", which supports the adoption of ICT in school education in the four areas of adaptive learning, active learning, portfolios, and communication. As the de facto standard for school education, it is used by many teachers and students, and as of April 2020, there were 1.22 million users in high schools (Including some junior high and high school integrated schools), with 2,800 schools using it. The company has recently introduced WafCharm, an AI-based automated AWS WAF rule (signature) operation service provided by CSC. Comments from Mr. Shota Umeda, Cyber Security Dept., Classi Corp. Classi takes full advantage of AWS to deliver its services, and it is very important to us that the components are seamlessly connected to each other operationally in order to deliver services using AWS. Also, in order to focus on user experience, the operation of the WAF and the operation of the service must be considered as a set. When considering a WAF operation that meets these requirements, AWS WAF + WafCharm was the best choice. Since WafCharm runs on AWS WAF, it is easy to integrate with other AWS components, and the ability to seamlessly monitor and analyze WAF and other services is quite appealing. In addition, the low initial cost of the system was also a big attraction, and since we were able to verify the system without incurring any initial costs, the implementation proceeded smoothly. Classi will continue to use a combination of automated rule sets and custom rules for flexible rule management and we continue to have high expectations from WafCharm and its provider, Cyber Security Cloud, in the future. About WafCharm WafCharm is an AI-based automatic rule (signature) management service for AWS WAF, which has the largest number of installed users in Japan*1. It is equipped with an AI engine "WRAO" *2(Patent No. 6375047) that automatically selects the most optimal WAF rules using machine learning, based on trillions of Big Data cultivated through in-house developed cloud-based WAF Shadankun, which has No. 1 adoption rate in Japan. *3 The cyber threat information monitoring team of security researchers "Cyhorus" responds quickly to the latest threats, and by offering individual customization by top-class security engineers with flexible services tailored to the needs of customers, WafCharm has made AWS WAF operations easier for users. It is available to over 1 million AWS users in over 190 countries. For more information, please visit https://www.wafcharm.com/en/ About Classi Company name: Classi Corp. Address: Shinjuku Mitsui Building, Nishi-Shinjuku 2-1-1, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-0415, Japan Representative: Masaki Yamasaki, President and CEO Establishment: April 4, 2014 URL : https://corp.classi.jp/ About Cyber Security Cloud, Inc. Company name: Cyber Security Cloud Inc. Address: 3rd floor of VORT Ebisu maxim, 3-9-19 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0011, Japan Representative: Hikaru Ohno, President and CEO Establishment: August 2010 URL : https://www.cscloud.co.jp/en/ *1: Japan Marketing Research Organization (JMRO) Survey Summary: FY07/2020_Actual survey *2: Only compatible with AWS WAF Classic. *3: Market research on "cloud-based WAF services" (as of June 16, 2019) [Research by ESP Research Institute (May 2019 to June 2019)] Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA As Donald Trump continues to sow doubt about the integrity of the US election, he has found a remarkably powerful ally in William Barr, the US attorney general, who has not only enthusiastically embraced the presidents claims but also spread misinformation on his own. Barr has falsely said foreign nations could print counterfeit ballots, something intelligence officials say theres no evidence of and would be nearly impossible. After Trump encouraged North Carolina voters to vote twice, which is illegal, Barr declined to definitively say it was illegal, instead saying he wasnt familiar with the laws in every state. (A Department of Justice handbook makes it clear that its a crime to vote more than once in any election involving a federal office). Barr also lied on CNN earlier this month and said that a Texas man was indicted for filling out 1,700 mail-in ballots. That never happened and the justice department later conceded Barr was wrong. More recently, with mail-in voting underway, Barr has repeatedly said voting by mail allows government officials to see who someone voted for, a claim debunked by election experts who point to numerous steps election officials take to preserve voters anonymity, including ballot privacy sleeves, when it comes to mail-in votes. Related: The invisible voting bloc: US postal service cuts threaten ballot access for inmates The justice department has powerful civil and criminal enforcement tools it uses to protect voting rights and there are several ways a politically motivated department could bring havoc in an election where there will likely be a wait and legal fights after election day as states count ballots. When the justice department gets involved in a voting dispute, courts tend to pay attention because the agency has unmatched legal credibility. This is completely anathema to the role of the attorney general based on my experience at the justice department, said Chiraag Bains, a former justice department attorney who is now director of legal strategies at Demos, a civil rights thinktank. Story continues Barrs comments fit into a larger pattern that reflect a willingness to deploy the resources of the justice department to suit Trumps political interests. Such a posture, especially around voting, is deeply alarming, say former justice department officials and civil rights advocates. The justice department, charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act and other laws protecting Americans right to vote, has long been seen as a beacon of credibility, assuring the public of a fair election in which everyones vote will count. Barr is now destroying that reputation, former officials say. It is really dangerous, grossly irresponsible, said Vanita Gupta, who led the departments civil rights division under Barack Obama and is now CEO and president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. [The justice department] needs to be a credible institution protecting voting rights and giving voters confidence that their right to vote will be protected ... instead here we have an attorney general who uses his bully pulpit to continue to sow disinformation about voting. The justice department did not immediately return a request for comment. David Iglesias, a former US attorney in New Mexico who was one of several prosecutors fired in late 2006 in what would later become a major political scandal, said he could not recall a prior attorney general making comments around voting similar to the ones that Barr had made. The attorney general usually speaks very carefully. Normally when the AG speaks, he or she has significant information backing up everything he says. And yet, when I read these quotes, it seems as though theres nothing but smoke and mirrors backing this up, Iglesias said. Barr has offered no substantial support for his accusations, but has repeatedly said his claims about counterfeit ballots are based on logic. Barrs comments appear to be calculated, Bains said, to create the narrative that voter fraud is a widespread problem to justify voting restrictions. While the departments voting section, responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act and other civil voting laws, has been extremely quiet under Trump, Bains said he was worried the department could use its prosecutorial power to intimidate voters. In 2018, when Jeff Sessions led the justice department, a US attorney in North Carolina trumpeted illegal voting charges against 19 immigrants, even though many of them appeared to be mistakes. The mere fact of a trumped-up criminal investigation can make someones life miserable and can deter other people from exercising their right to vote, Bains said. He should be out there suing states that have thrown out barriers, not justifying those barriers in the public square. Press release Outside trading hours - Regulated information* Brussels, 17 September 2020 - 5.45 p.m. Koenraad Debackere takes up his term of office as Chairman of the Board of Directors of KBC Group NV on 1 November 2020 During its meeting of 17 September 2020, the Board of Directors of KBC Group NV appointed Mr Koenraad Debackere as Chairman of the Board of Directors of KBC Group NV, KBC Bank NV and KBC Insurance NV, succeeding Thomas Leysen who ended his term office at the General Meeting of 7 May 2020. Koenraad Debackere will hand over his duties as Managing Director of KU Leuven to his successor, Mr Wim Desmet, on 1 November. Since the General Meeting of 7 May 2020, Philippe Vlerick, as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of KBC Group NV, has temporarily taken over the chairmanship. The appointment of Koenraad Debackere as Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of KBC Group NV was approved by the National Bank of Belgium and the European Central Bank. Koenraad Debackere (1961 in Ghent, Belgium) studied at University of Ghent (Belgium) and MIT (Cambridge, US). He obtained a Master's Degree and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering - Mechanical Engineering (M.Sc.) and Management Science (M.Sc.& Ph.D.). He is a Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at KU Leuven. In addition, he has held visiting lectureships at various European universities. As Managing Director he is also board member of KU Leuven. He has held directorships at various technology companies, as well as at the Gemma Frisius Fonds NV, Essenscia Innovation Fonds NV and LRM NV investment funds. Koenraad Debackere was Non-Executive Director at KBC Group NV and KBC Insurance NV until the General Meeting of 7 May 2020. For more information, please contact: Viviane Huybrecht, General Manager of Corporate Communication/KBC Group Spokesperson Tel.: + 32 2 429 85 45 - E-mail: pressofficekbc@kbc.be * This news item contains information that is subject to the transparency regulations for listed companies. KBC Group NV Havenlaan 2 - 1080 Brussels Viviane Huybrecht General Manager CorporateCommunication /Spokesperson Tel. +32 2 429 85 45 Press Office Tel. +32 2 429 65 01 Stef Leunens Tel. +32 2 429 29 15 Ilse De Muyer Tel. +32 2 429 32 88 Pieter Kusse E-mail:pressofficekbc@kbc.be (mailto:pressofficekbc@kbc.be) KBC press releases are available at www.kbc.com (http://www.kbc.com/) or can be obtained by sending an e-mail to pressofficekbc@kbc.be (mailto:pressofficekbc@kbc.be) Follow us on www.twitter.com/kbc_group (http://www.twitter.com/kbc_group) Stay up-to-date on all innovative solutions (https://www.kbc.com/en/newsroom/innovation/innovation-2020.html?zone=topnav) Attachment The FTC is possibly preparing to launch an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook as per certain reports. In fact, for almost a year, the US Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Facebook for an alleged violation of US competition laws. An anonymous source, familiar with these proceedings, has stated that the FTC could launch the antitrust lawsuit as early as this years end. However, the source did confirm that a final decision on this matter is still pending. Major technology giants, including Alphabet Inc.s Google, are presently under the FTCs scanner. The US competition enforcement agency is primarily concerned that competition laws were flouted by these companies. Advertisement In fact, the FTC is investigating whether Facebook abused its dominant market position to curb competition. Also, the US Justice Department is preparing to sue Google shortly. Do note that as part of any standard investigation, the FTC prepares for a lawsuit. However, a majority of the FTCs five commissioners will need to vote in favor of filing this lawsuit. The FTC cannot file a lawsuit if the majority of the five commissioners disagree. The FTC started the antitrust investigation against Facebook in June 2019. In June 2019, FTC fined Facebook to a tune of USD 5 billion for violating user privacy. Almost simultaneously, the FTC had launched this investigation into Facebooks acquisitions. Advertisement The investigation is focusing on Facebooks acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The probe is trying to identify whether Facebook violated antitrust laws in these acquisitions. Both, WhatsApp and Instagram, were potential major rivals to Facebook in the social media space. The FTC believes that Facebook abused its dominant market position to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram instead. The FTC is not alone in taking this stand. As a matter of fact, in July this year, a House committee accused Facebook of eliminating smaller rival companies. The committee argued that Facebook would simply acquire any smaller firm which could challenge its market position. Advertisement The committee alleged that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg was involved in formulating this strategy. These documents allege that Zuckerberg internally discussed that Instagram could be very disruptive to Facebook. In its defense, Facebook countered saying that Instagram succeeded after Facebooks investments in the company in 2012. Facebook also argued that there was no guarantee that Instagram would become as big a hit, at the time of the acquisition. Incidentally, the FTC had initially cleared both these acquisitions. However, the enforcement agency has powers to rescind its clearance. The FTC would need to go to court against its original clearance. The competition law enforcer would do this only in cases where antitrust laws were flouted. Advertisement The ongoing FTC investigation is digging into past acquisitions by Facebook as well as asking questions related to app development and platform management. A central Pennsylvania couple was behind bars Monday, charged with killing a 12-year-old boy by starving and beating him and keeping the child imprisoned in a feces-caked and darkened and locked room for years. Update: Couple accused of beating, starving child held party the day before body found, neighbor says Update: How did we not know? Neighbor reacts to discovering 12-year-old was beaten and starved to death The boy, Maxwell Schollenberger, never received medical care, wasnt enrolled in school and was rarely seen even by his siblings, who lived in the same house in Annville, Lebanon County detectives Todd Hirsch and David Shaffer claim in charges filed against the boys father, Scott Schollenberger Jr., and Schollenbergers fiancee Kimberly Maurer. Schollenberger, 41, and Maurer, 35, were arrested little more than three months after the boys emaciated and battered body was found around noon on May 26 in their home in the first block of South White Oak Street. What investigators found was a house of horrors, the detectives said. They said the boy was completely naked and his feces-covered body was sprawled across a bed that was covered in human waste, in a room that was caked with such waste that was so old it had turned moldy. Claw marks appeared in the child victims sheets, they wrote. Such marks made indentations on the stained feces. More: When parents abuse, torture, starve a child: what the experts know The smell of human waste permeated the second floor of the home, they said. There were no lights in the boys room and the window shades were closed with duct tape so the child had no access to sunlight or even a view of the outside world, Hirsch and Shaffer said. They said metal hooks kept the room locked from outside. The only furniture in the room was the soiled bed, they said. There wasnt a single toy, and they said every piece of clothing they found was covered in feces. A cup near the bed held just an inch of water. The detectives said the boy was very thin and his stomach was bloated. Later investigation showed he weighed only 47 pounds, about half the average weight for a boy of his age and was 8 inches shorter than the norm. There were indications that he would have been too weak to stand or walk, they wrote. The child also had suffered head trauma, they said. The death was attributed to blunt force head trauma complicating starvation/malnutrition. Hirsch and Shaffer said Maurer had been a caregiver for the boy since he was 2. They said Schollenberger and Maurer denied the boy suffered from any mental or physical disorder. Maurer told investigators that she was the caregiver for the child because Schollenberger expressed extreme frustration toward the child and was afraid of hurting him, the detectives said. Schollenberger and Maurer have other children together who appeared to be healthy, well-adjusted and cared for, they wrote. Those children received regular medical care and attended school, the detectives said. The other children Reported hardly ever seeing the victim prior to his death, the investigators wrote. Some of (Schollenbergers and Maurers) family and friends also reported not seeing the victim in quite some time and some were not even aware of his existence. Schollenberger and Maurer are charged with homicide and child endangerment. Both are being held in the county prison without bail. District Attorney Pier Hess Graf was to hold a press conference on the case Monday morning. More: They didnt have to kill him: mother says son shot by Lancaster officer was mentally ill With a smile on her face and folded hands, saree clad Malti Pradhan, 37, of Madhya Pradeshs Palasi village softly requests people to pay their pending electricity bills. Pradhan is among 500 newly appointed women recovery agent of the state-owned power distribution company, MP Madhya Kshetra Vidyut Vitran, who have replaced men across 16 districts for the job. Like men, they also get five to ten percent commission of the money recovered, depending on the amount recovered, from defaulters and have been trained to use an online application to track power bills and default in payment. On average, a woman recovery agent earns, between Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 per month, which these women say is enough for rural parts of Madhya Pradesh. There are additional incentives for preventing power theft in the villages, said Manoj Diwedi, public relation officer of the company. Pradhan says because of their work they have earned sobriquets such as Vasooli Bhabhi, 440-volt current. Many villagers think that the work is not suitable for them. Also read: Union minister Harsimrat Badal resigns over Centres new farm bills Earning from my husbands grocery shop decreased due to Covid-19 lockdown. In June, I learnt about the new job opportunity for women in the power district company and I immediately joined it without even thinking how will I be able to do it, Pradhan, who has a bachelors degree in education, said. She recalled that in the first month people used to ridicule her, show distrust and some elderly advised her that the work was not suitable for her. Overcoming all odds, she made some people pay bills after a month and earned Rs 500. Now, people have started respecting me and also offer me a chair to sit, she said. Rashmi Meena, 30, of Sonasavri village in Itarsi district, has to prevent power theft in addition to recovering money. I couldnt be harsh with villagers and lodge complaints on noticing power theft because of their poor financial condition, she said. Every morning she runs into agriculture fields outside the village and urge villagers with folded hands not to steal power. I tell them that they may have to go to jail for power theft and their children will not get government schemes benefits, she said, adding that many villagers have now stopped power theft. Some of the women, like Nisha Vishwakarma, 42, of Bairasiya in Bhopal district, have got the support of their husbands in doing the job which is primarily male-dominated. When people mocked my wifes job by saying that now she would climb the electric pole too as a lineman, I just tell them that no work is gender-specific and its a matter of pride for me that women have been handed over a job which men failed to perform, said her husband Balmukund Vishwakarma. Madhya Pradeshs energy minister Pradyuman Singh said, With their soft approach and hard work, these women are giving a befitting reply to scorn directed to them by men. The scheme has borne good result and these women have received Rs 10 lakh so far. Diwedi said the agents get up to 15 percent of the commission depending on the pending amount and 10 percent on reporting power theft. More money recovered, higher is the commission. They also get commission on initiating new power connections, he added. Adding calcium to graphene creates an extremely-promising superconductor, but where does the calcium go? Adding calcium to a composite graphene-substrate structure creates a high transition-temperature (Tc) superconductor. In a new study, an Australian-led team has for the first time confirmed what actually happens to those calcium atoms: surprising everyone, the calcium goes underneath both the upper graphene sheet and a lower 'buffer' sheet, 'floating' the graphene on a bed of calcium atoms. Superconducting calcium-injected graphene holds great promise for energy-efficient electronics and transparent electronics. STUDYING CALCIUM-DOPED GRAPHENE: THROWING OFF THE DUVET Graphene's properties can be fine-tuned by injection of another material (a process known as 'intercalation') either underneath the graphene, or between two graphene sheets. This injection of foreign atoms or molecules alters the electronic properties of the graphene by either increasing its conductance, decreasing interactions with the substrate, or both. Injecting calcium into graphite creates a composite material (calcium-intercalated graphite, CaC6) with a relatively 'high' superconducting transition temperature (Tc). In this case, the calcium atoms ultimately reside between graphene sheets. Injecting calcium into graphene on a silicon-carbide substrate also creates a high-Tc superconductor, and we always thought we knew where the calcium went in this case too... Graphene on silicon-carbide has two layers of carbon atoms: one graphene layer on top of another 'buffer layer': a carbon layer (graphene-like in structure) that forms between the graphene and the silicon-carbide substrate during synthesis, and is non-conducting due to being partially bonded to the substrate surface. "Imagine the silicon carbide is like a mattress with a fitted sheet (the buffer layer bonded to it) and a flat sheet (the graphene)," explains lead author Jimmy Kotsakidis. Conventional wisdom held that calcium should inject between the two carbon layers (between two sheets), similar to injection between the graphene layers in graphite. Surprisingly, the Monash University-led team found that when injected, the calcium atoms' final destination location instead lies between buffer layer and the underlying silicon-carbide substrate (between the fitted sheet and the mattress!). "It was quite a surprise to us when we realised that the calcium was bonding to the silicon surface of the substrate, it really went against what we thought would happen", explains Kotsakidis. Upon injection, the calcium breaks the bonds between the buffer layer and substrate surface, thus, causing the buffer layer to 'float' above the substrate, creating a new, quasi-freestanding bilayer graphene structure (Ca-QFSBLG). This result was unanticipated, with extensive previous studies not considering calcium intercalation underneath the buffer layer. The study thus resolves long-standing confusion and controversy regarding the position of the intercalated calcium. ### THE STUDY The paper Freestanding n?Doped Graphene via Intercalation of Calcium and Magnesium into the Buffer Layer?SiC(0001) Interface was published in Chemistry of Materials in July 2020 (DOI 10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c01729). As well as the Australian Research Council (Laureate Fellowship and Centres of Excellence program), the authors acknowledge support of the Australian Government Research Training Program, Monash Centre for Atomically Thin Materials (MCATM), Ministerio de Ciencia Innovatio?n y Universidades, Comunidad de Madrid, and the US Naval Research Laboratory. Computational support came from the Monash Campus Cluster, NCI computational facility and Pawsey Supercomputing Facility, and research was undertaken in part at ANSTO's Australian Synchrotron. For those who loved the Mountain Brew Ice and Mountain Brew Light beers available exclusively at Stewarts Shops across Upstate New York, the news is devastating. For those who hated it, theyll have to find something else to complain about. The Saratoga Springs-based Stewarts convenience store chain announced this week that it will be discontinuing the two beers that debuted 10 years ago. In doing so, the people at Stewarts acknowledged that not everyone was a fan of the beers, which typified the term bottom shelf. A post on the chains web site included a collection of comments customers have made about the beer over the years, grouped as the good, the bad, the bizarre, and the blissfully unaware. Mountain Brew Ice and Mountain Brew Light have been a part of the Stewarts product family for 10 years now, the post said, and as we prepare for their departure, we thought wed look back at some of our customers' Mountain Brew memories. Among the good comments: I live like 15 miles to the closest Stewarts but you know already Im grabbing some mountain brew for the boys. Good comments about Stewart's Mountain Brew beers One of the bad comments: I prefer Stewarts mountain brew. Tastes like Motor oil and vinegar. "Bad" comments about Stewart's Mountain Brew beers. In the bizarre category: You should try a Stewarts Mountain Brew Float!' Its just like a root beer float, but its terrible. "Bizarre" comments about Stewart's Mountain Brew beers. And then the blissfully unaware: There is a Stewarts Beer? Comments about Stewart's Mountain Brew beers. Whether you loved it or hated it, Mountain Brew will always hold a special place in our hearts unless you were in the category of not knowing it existed in the first place, the Stewarts web site continued. There is still time to make a run to your local shop and grab your very last can! According to a review of the two beers in 2015 in the Albany Times-Union, the Mountain Brew Ice debuted in 2010 and was originally brewed for Stewarts at the Genesee Brewery in Rochester. Time-Union writer Chad Polenz suggested the beer inside may in fact have been Genny Ice. The beer, including the light version, later shifted production to City Brewing in Wisconsin, where, Polenz implies, it got worse. And it just so happens that here in Upstate New York, our beloved Stewarts Shops chain of convenience stores not only has their own brand of beer known as Mountain Brew Ice and Mountain Brew Light, but they are two of the worst beers Ive ever had in my life. I cant believe they exist, Polenz wrote. I think Mountain Brew might be so bad that its starting to develop a cult following, he continued. Not from people that want to drink it ironically (not even hipsters could stomach this on a regular basis), but of people that want to mock it. Stewarts Shops has about 300 locations in Upstate New York and southern Vermont, including stores in Liverpool, North Syracuse and Baldwinsville. Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf vowed he wouldnt heed the irresponsible demands of President Donald Trump and Republicans in the state legislature concerning the states coronavirus response, hitting back hard Tuesday after a federal judge appointed by Trump ruled many of Wolfs pandemic shutdown orders were unconstitutional. In unusually sharp language, the Democratic governor accused Trump and Republicans who control the Legislature of promoting conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation about the virus and the status of the Pennsylvania economy, which he said is reopened despite the mitigation measures he has imposed. I believe the vast majority of Pennsylvanians understand what we had to do in the beginning was necessary to buy the time to keep people safe before we got the capacity we needed to address this virus, Wolf said. And the vast majority simply dont buy into the conspiracy theories or fear mongering from the president or from the Harrisburg Republicans about this virus. Wolf spoke at a news conference in York one day after U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV in Pittsburgh invalidated key parts of his administrations early pandemic response, including his orders requiring people to stay at home and shuttering thousands of businesses deemed non-life-sustaining. Wolf had since eased many of the restrictions the plaintiffs objected to in their lawsuit, but Stickman also ruled against the states current size limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings, saying they violate citizens constitutional right to assemble. The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms in place when times are good but able to be case aside in times of trouble, the judge wrote. The governors lawyers are preparing an appeal. Trump took to Twitter to retweet news stories and commentary about the judges ruling, while state House Republican leaders said the decision offered hope to millions of unemployed Pennsylvania residents and thousands of small business owners that have seen their livelihoods permanently ended by Wolfs pandemic restrictions. On Tuesday, Wolf responded by saying hed done what was necessary to try to mitigate the health effects of the virus, which has infected more than 146,000 people statewide including more than 1,150 reported Tuesday. Nearly 7,900 people have died. Yesterday, Harrisburg Republicans celebrated while thousands upon thousands in our state continue to suffer and even more worry about what this virus could bring to them and their families this fall. The president could do nothing more than stare at his cellphone and send out tweets, share messages of hate, messages of division, messages of disinformation, Wolf said. Theyre celebrating a court ruling while refusing to help anybody but themselves. We in Pennsylvania deserve much, much better than that. House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, said Wolf has failed to work with legislative leaders in addressing the pandemic threat, opting to go it alone in a way that violated the Constitution. I think for the governor to try to spin it and spin away from issues that maybe he doesnt want to address is inappropriate, and to be attacking my members, I think, is wrong, Benninghoff told reporters at the Capitol. He added: At the end of the day, were just asking for cooperation to get businesses open where we can, get normalcy back in families. Some counties, like Allegheny and Philadelphia, enforce their own pandemic restrictions. Philadelphia City Solicitor Marcel S. Pratt asserted Tuesday the court ruling wont have much effect on Philadelphias restrictions on dining and other public activities. India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has banned China's National Bureau of Statistics' English site amid tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). "Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information," the website said. English news websites based in China, such as Global Times and state-run Xinhua, can still be accessed in India. 20 Indian soldiers died in June during a clash with Chinese soldiers at Ladakh's Galwan Valley. Since then, India has banned a large number of Chinese apps, including popular ones such as TikTok and the mobile version of PUBG. The "Norway Gift Card and Incentive Card Market Intelligence and Future Growth Dynamics (Databook) Market Size and Forecast (2015-2024) Covid-19 Update Q2 2020" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report details the impact of economic slowdown along with change in business and consumer sentiment due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak on gift card industry in Norway. According to the Q2 2020 Global Gift Card Survey, gift card market in Norway is expected to be impacted across retail and corporate segments due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak. Though growth of gift card industry will be impacted due to pandemic, there are certain segments such as self-use which will gain market share. There are interesting trends emerging across various segments, which are expected to fundamentally reshape gift card industry dynamics. This report provides a detailed data centric analysis of gift cards and corporate incentive cards market along with consumer behaviour and retail spend dynamics in Norway. With over 200 KPIs at country level, this report provides comprehensive understanding of gift and incentive card market dynamics. Below is a summary of country level trend analyses covered across gift card segments: Total gift market: This report provides detailed view of overall spend on gifts, broken down by retail and consumer segments. For both retail and consumer segments, this report provides a breakdown of spend on gifts by product categories (13 segments) and retail sectors (7 segments). Gift cards: Drawing from proprietary survey results, this report provides in-depth analysis of opportunities in both open loop and closed loop prepaid gift card categories. Assesses consumer behaviour by type of consumer (retail and corporate SMB, Mid-Tier, Large Enterprise), gifting occasion, digital gift card (e-gift card), and market share by retail sectors. Details six essential KPIs: number of cards in circulation, load value, unused value, average purchase value, average value per transaction, and value of transactions. Corporate incentive loyalty cards: This report provides detailed market dynamics of corporate incentive cards, broadly segmented in three categories consumer incentive card, employee incentive card, and sales/partner incentive card. It details market size and forecast at category level, by functional attribute (open loop and closed loop), and by corporate consumer segments (small scale business, mid-size business, and enterprise business). Digital gift card (e-gift card) analysis: Provides market size and forecast for digital gift cards, broken down by retail and corporate buyers. It also includes gift card spend by occasion (retail festivals special celebration days, milestone celebration, self-use, other; Corporate incentive cards -consumer incentive card, employee incentive card, and sales/partner incentive card). The report also includes digital gift card adoption by company size. Open loop and closed loop: Provides market estimates and forecasts to assess opportunities in open loop and closed loop gift and incentive card segments across consumer segments. Consumer attitude and behaviour: Drawing from proprietary survey results, this report identifies and interprets key KPIs related to gift card dynamics including spend by age, gender, and income level. Retail spend: Breaks down retail spend across retail sectors (7 segments) to provide detailed insights on consumer behaviour and changing dynamics of gift card spend. Market share by retailer: Provides market share of closed loop gift cards by key retailers in Norway. Distribution channel analysis: Provides market share by distribution channel online vs offline sales and 1st party vs 3rd party sales (sales through outlet of other retailers). Reasons to Buy In-depth understanding of gift card and incentive card market dynamics: Understand market opportunity, key trends and drivers along with five-year forecast (2014-2023) for gift cards and incentive cards in Norway. Develop market specific strategies: Identify growth segments and target specific opportunities across consumer segments and occasions to formulate your gift cards strategy; assess market specific key trends and risks. Get insights into consumer attitude and behaviour in Norway: Understand changing consumer attitude and behaviour and boost ROI. Get detailed insights into retail spend through gift cards for both retail and corporate consumers. Get complete perspective through six essential KPIs: number of cards in circulation, load value, unused value, average purchase value, average value per transaction, and value of transactions. Distribution channel insights: Understand gift cards sales dynamics by channels online vs offline and by 1st party vs 3rd party sales. For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/nhwi7t View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005454/en/ Contacts: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 A 15-year-old teen was thrown out of public school in Tenessee for wearing a shirt that said, 'homosexuality is a sin.' The shirt also cited Bible verse, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 which states, "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." The father of the teen, Rich Renkoski shared on Twitter, "It is not fair. She told me that she can't wear that shirt and other people can wear the stuff that they wear." Renkoski believes his daughter, Brielle Penkoski's Frist Amendment rights were violated as he is now 'contemplating legal action.' Rich Renkoski added, "She was basically censored. My 15-year-old was thrown out of school for the day for wearing this shirt. #LGBT wants to trample on your #FREESPEECH rights while they cry for special rights. #WARRIORSFORCHRIST #PRIDE #HOMOSEXUALITY #BIBLE" Penkoski strongly disagrees and is fighting againt the hate towards his bold daughter who stood up for the Christian community. Renkoski mentions on a captured video, (Twitter) "If a Christian comes up there and repeats what the Bible says, they are seen as intolerant, they are seen as hateful." Penkoski stated America is trying to recruit kids as they try to indoctrinate students with the liberal ideology, promoting sex and sexuality, normalizing LGBT, Drag Queen culture as well as passing out birth control pills. Technology resources that aid in successful rehabilitation and reentry FALLS CHURCH, VA / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / GTL, a trusted partner that connects those affected by incarceration with the resources and support necessary to achieve success, is celebrating the successes and respecting the journeys of those navigating a path to sobriety during National Recovery Month. For over 30 years, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has observed National Recovery Month in September to reinforce the positive messages that mental and behavioral health are essential to overall health, that treatment is effective, and that people can and do succeed in recovery. "It is an unfortunate fact that incarceration is oftentimes a result of lack of mental health and substance abuse treatment," said Pelicia Hall, GTL Senior Vice President, Reentry Programs. "An individual with a dual diagnosis faces even more barriers to treatment, and with only a 25 percent likelihood of receiving any kind of treatment during incarceration because of lack of resources, a lot of people are slipping through the cracks. This is why GTL is forming partnerships with respected organizations and providers to offer evidence-based programming on our tablets. We believe that people want to and will change if given the opportunity. For that reason, we wholeheartedly support National Recovery Month." GTL tablets are an effective way to provide materials focused on treatment and recovery without draining a facility's resources. Through a partnership with Breaking Free Group, GTL offers a digital cognitive behavioral therapy program, "Breaking Free from Substance Abuse," that helps incarcerated individuals achieve and maintain recovery from dependence on over 70 different substances. The application went live at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in May 2020, and over 15,000 incarcerated individuals have registered for the program and started their journey to recovery and a better life. To help improve mental health and wellbeing, GTL also offers resources focused on inner strength, meditation, and calmness. One such app is the Peace Education Program from The Prem Rawat Foundation. Through a series of ten workshops, incarcerated individuals can work to empower themselves and draw on their own inner resources: Peace, Appreciation, Inner Strength, Self-Awareness, Clarity, Understanding, Dignity, Choice, Hope, and Contentment. In addition, GTL instituted a new free communication program, which allows incarcerated individuals to make connections with their loved ones on a weekly basis at no cost. Having a strong support network is an advantage in achieving and maintaining recovery. Everyone is affected in some way by mental and substance use disorders, and National Recovery Month is a reminder that there are resources available for those that need assistance. GTL is working to be a part of the solution by establishing meaningful partnerships to bring treatment inside correctional facilities to improve rehabilitation and reentry. If you know someone who is struggling on their road to recovery, check out SAMHSA's treatment locator. About Us For over 30 years, GTL has worked side-by-side with correctional facilities and government agencies to provide imperative technology solutions to the populations they serve. These solutions facilitate meaningful connections, provide educational opportunities, enable successful reentry, and strengthen operational efficiency. GTL is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, with an employee presence throughout North America and provides solutions in support of 1.6 million inmates across the globe. To learn more about GTL, please visit www.gtl.net, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. CONTACT: Randy Brown Work: 703-215-5383 Email: media@gtl.net SOURCE: GTL View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606491/Respecting-the-Journey-During-National-Recovery-Month--Helping-Incarcerated-Individuals-Manage-Mental-Health-and-Substance-Abuse-Disorders The UK will not get a free trade agreement with Brussels if it fails to uphold the Brexit withdrawal agreement, the EUs trade commissioner has said. Valdis Dombrovskis said that Boris Johnsons government will have to correct its position before negotiations on political and economic relations can continue. The commissioners comments, in an interview with German newspaper Welt, signal a tougher EU response to Mr Johnsons controversial UK Internal Market Bill as he tries to force it through parliament. The prime minister last night made a minor climbdown to buy off opposition from Tory backbenchers in the House of Commons, introducing an amendment to require any future breach of the withdrawal agreement to be approved in advance in a vote by MPs. But this is thought unlikely to ease concerns in Brussels, which is threatening legal action over the provisions in the bill and upcoming finance legislation allowing the UK to waive paperwork and tariffs on goods passing between Northern Ireland and the British mainland and withhold information on state subsidies in contravention of the divorce agreement negotiated and signed by Mr Johnson. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 January 2022 Surfers enter the sea as the sun rises over Tynemouth on the North East coast PA UK news in pictures 17 January 2022 Bonhams Danny McIlwraith holds a Nigerian polycrome carved wood mask during a photocall for the sale of the Jim Lennon Collection at Bonhams in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 16 January 2022 The moon rises above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire PA UK news in pictures 15 January 2022 Demonstrators outside Downing Street during a Kill The Bill protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London PA UK news in pictures 14 January 2022 Ecologist Emma Smart (left) and retired GP Dr Diana Warner outside HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, following their release from the prison where Emma undertook a 26-day hunger strike during her incarceration. Ms Smart was sentenced in November, along with other members of Insulate Britain, to serve four months for breaking a High Court injunction by taking part in a blockade at junction 25 of the M25 motorway during the morning rush hour on 8 October last year PA UK news in pictures 13 January 2022 A TV presenter holds a copy of a newspaper outside 10 Downing Streetafter the Prime Minister apologised for attending a gathering of colleagues in the Number Ten garden in May 2020, while the UK was in strict lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic Getty UK news in pictures 12 January 2022 Fitness guru Derrick Evans after receiving an MBE during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 11 January 2022 A couple walk underneath an umbrella during wet weather on Westminster Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 10 January 2022 A jogger passes the Covid Memorial Wall in London AP UK news in pictures 9 January 2021 The sun rises over horses at Seaton Sluice in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 8 January 2022 Riders compete during the Veterans Men's race at the UK Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2022 in Ardingly, south of London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 7 January 2022 A dog looks out of a car window at the wintry conditions in Killeshin, Co. Laois PA UK news in pictures 6 January 2022 People walk through frost and mist alongside a frozen lake during sunrise in Bushy Park, London REUTERS UK news in pictures 5 January 2022 A skier jumps on the slopes at Allenheads in the Pennines to the north of Weardale in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 4 January 2022 Freshly-fallen snow covers houses in Corbridge, near Hexham in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 3 January 2022 Dean Morrison, 13, receives his Covid-19 vaccine from student nurse Anthony McLaughlin during a vaccination clinic at the Glasgow Central Mosque PA UK news in pictures 2 January 2022 Konastantinos Tsimikas of Liverpool with Chelseas Mason Mount during the Premier League match at Stamfrod Bridge Liverpool FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 January 2022 New Years Eve Lasers, drones and fireworks illuminate the sky in front of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich shortly after midnight in London EPA UK news in pictures 31 December 2021 Competitors in fancy dress run across the Pennine tops near Haworth, West Yorkshire, in the annual Auld Lang Syne Fell race which attracts hundreds of runners every year PA UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis has confirmed that the bill would break international law in a limited and specific way and on Wednesday refused to commit the UK to respecting the rulings of a dispute arbitration panel also agreed in last years withdrawal deal. Asked if it was possible for the EU to negotiate with an administration which had indicated it may not uphold its side of any deal, Mr Dombrovskis said: The behaviour of the British government is causing us concerns. If the UK does not comply with the withdrawal agreement, then there is no longer any basis for a free trade treaty between the EU and the UK. The British government must correct this before we continue negotiating on our political and economic relations. The development came as justice secretary Robert Buckland came under pressure to follow Scotlands advocate general Lord Keen by resigning from the government in protest at the bill. Former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve said that Mr Buckland and his successor as AG Suella Braverman should resign rather than support legislation which breaks International law. While Ms Braverman seemed to be an enthusiastic endorser of this completely warped view of international law, the justice secretary - who is also Lord Chancellor - was in an untenable position, Mr Grieve told The Guardian. He takes an oath of office to uphold or protect the rule of law, said the former attorney general. The rule of law includes international law. Although I feel some sympathy for ex-colleagues because of the position they have been put in, I think his position is untenable. He should, Im afraid, have resigned on the day the bill was published. He may have decided to stay and try and moderate (the governments position). I can understand that from a moral position but I think thats wrong. Mr Buckland has indicated that he might resign his post if the bill was used to break the law in an unacceptable and egregious way and in a way that cannot be fudged, but insists that the government is not yet at that stage. The Nest is the first feature Sean Durkin has written and directed since his formidable debut, the cult-detox drama Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). The long wait burdens the new movie with high expectations. In contrast to the dreamlike subjectivity of Martha Marcy, The Nest is a coldly observational study of a Reagan-Thatcher-era family divided in ambitions, nationality and with respect to the children parentage. The British Rory (Jude Law), a rapacious financier in the United States, talks his American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), into moving to England with their kids (Oona Roche and Charlie Shotwell). Without consulting her, he splurges on a farm mansion in Surrey whose ludicrously large and creepy grounds have little use beyond projecting ultra-conspicuous consumption. A furniture removalist has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for moving a getaway car used in the execution of former bikie kingpin Mick Hawi. But in a quirk of fate, the friend that Ahmad Doudar, 40, accepted had shot Hawi dead as part of his guilty plea - Yusuf Nazlioglu - has been found not guilty of murder. Father-of-one Doudar was sentenced on Thursday after admitting to being an accessory after the fact to Hawi's murder. Hawi was climbing into his Mercedes AMG 4WD outside Fitness First Rockdale on February 15, 2018 when he was shot several times in the head and torso. Former Comanchero Mahmoud 'Mick' Hawi was gunned down in broad daylight outside a south Sydney gym on February 15, 2018 A jury found Yusuf Nazlioglu (left, shirtless) not guilty of Hawi's murder a week ago. Ahmad Doudar (right) pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to Hawi's murder This is the moment an man with his face covered by a balaclava shot Hawi dead in a brazen daylight attack outside Fitness First Rockdale more than two years ago The brazen executioners, faces obscured by balaclavas, escaped while Hawi died of a brain injury in hospital. Doudar's role in the crime involved him picking up a hidden silver Aurion with a tow truck and intending to dispose of it, alongside others, the court heard. Justice Robert Allan Hulme said on sentencing today: '(Mr Doudar) intended to assist in disposing of the vehicle in order to assist' in the murder. A week ago, accused shooter Nazlioglu, 39, and alleged getaway driver Jamal El-Jaidi, 32, were both found not guilty of murder by a jury, following a week of deliberations. Doudar was not called to give evidence at their trial. In handing down his sentence today, Justice Robert Allan Hulme said Doudar's plea of guilty and the facts he had agreed to indicated he knew 'the brazen and brutal executioner.' 'The murder itself was horrifying. It was a dangerous and violent public execution. Mr Doudar knew this.' Hawi's wife Carolina Gonzalez gave a 'very moving account' of the grief she and her family have suffered during Doudar's sentencing Getaway car driver Jamal El-Jaidi (centre, in black) walks free after a NSW Supreme Court jury found him not guilty The bullet-riddled Mercedes that Mick Hawi was gunned down in is above in a court exhibit The judge said murders like this 'do not happen by chance... they require the involvement of multiple people.' Doudar's motive remains unknown. 'For all I know, Mr Doudar may have been motivated by one or more other purposes,' the judge said. Hawi's wife, Carolina Gonzalez, sister Zeinab and parents Ahmad and Nahdi read statements at his sentencing hearing. They gave 'very moving accounts of the loss and grief that has resulted from the taking of their loved one in the most horrendous of circumstances.' Doudar was jailed with a non parole period of three years and four months. With time served, he will be eligible for parole at the end of 2021. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. As the nation continues to battle the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, health officials tell us that getting a flu shot is more important this year than ever. But when is the best time to be vaccinated? While its true that getting vaccinated too early -- in the summer months -- is associated with reduced protection, youll want to be vaccinated before the flu starts spreading, since it takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body and provide protection. Early fall is the best time to be vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And fall begins this year on Tuesday, Sept. 23. Definitely plan to get it by the end of October, the CDC urges. Children who need two doses of vaccine to be protected should start the vaccination process sooner, because the two doses must be given at least four weeks apart. The citys Health Department is also urging New Yorkers to get a flu shot this year because of the COVID-19 health crisis. Health officials said this years flu vaccine could be the most important one you ever get. The flu can be deadly even in normal years and we know 2020 is not a normal year, said Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi. Influenza continues to circulate in our communities, and it has many of the same symptoms as COVID-19. Our friends and neighbors, particularly the most vulnerable New Yorkers, are counting on everyone to get their flu vaccine. Officials said New York City was able to secure additional flu vaccines, and will work with the citys public hospitals and community health centers to offer the flu vaccine at coronavirus testing sites and on weekends. Last year, the city saw five flu-related pediatric deaths, and there were 187 nationally, according to preliminary data. Who should get it? Basically, everyone 6 months of age and older should get the vaccine, with rare exceptions. Its particularly important for those over the age of 50, and others with a high risk of serious complications, including people with asthma, heart disease, diabetes or chronic kidney disease. Some people will develop pneumonia as a result of the flu, and that can result in death, health experts warn. Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure), according to the CDC. It can also trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the bodys life-threatening response to infection. Flu symptoms Flu symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue. Some people, mostly children, experience vomiting and diarrhea. Not everyone with the flu experiences a fever, the CDC warns. When is flu season? In the United States, flu season occurs in the fall and winter, and activity peaks between December and February, the CDC says. But, activity can continue into May. Benefits of vaccination Flu vaccination has important benefits, the CDC says. A flu vaccine this season can also help reduce the burden on our health-care systems responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and save medical resources for care of COVID-19 patients. It can also reduce doctor visits and missed work and school due to flu. Youll also protect others if you get the flu vaccine, by reducing your risk of catching it and passing it along to a more vulnerable population. Flu shots are approved and recommended for pregnant women. The nasal spray flu vaccine is approved for use in non-pregnant women from 2 through 49 years of age. People with some health conditions should not receive the nasal flu vaccine, so patients should consult with their doctor if they have a concern. New Yorkers can use the Health Departments NYC Health Map, call 311, or text FLU to 877-877 to find a flu vaccination. Flu vaccine is covered by most health insurance plans without a co-pay, city officials said. Mumbai, Sep 17 : Actor Aly Goni has clarified that he is not a part of the upcoming season of Bigg Boss, because he is tied up with a web series. "I am not doing 'Bigg Boss'. The format and concept of 'Bigg Boss' are fantastic, and this season will rock too. I may do it in future, as they say 'never say never'," said the "Yeh Hai Mohabbatein" actor. Aly will be occupied with the web series "Zidd", an action-packed war series starring Amit Sadh that he describes as a "big" opportunity. "It also stars Amit Sadh whom I am very fond of. His work on the web platform has been very well received by all," said Aly. Given the army backdrop of the series, Aly says he is "trying hard to lose weight", adding: "I am working out, running and also doing mixed martial arts". He feels OTT as a platform is the best space for an actor. "You can do a lot of creative stuff on this platform, and I always wanted to do something raw on television shows, which would not have been possible. I have never played a lead on television. I feel on OTT an actor gets a freehand to perform and that's what I have always aimed for," he said. Latest updates on Bigg Boss Season 14 With a lot being said on the use of drugs in the film industry, actor Pooja Bhatt on Wednesday spoke about the substance addiction that the lower sections of the society go through to overcome their pain triggered by poverty. New Delhi [India], September 16 (ANI): With a lot being said on the use of drugs in the film industry, actor Pooja Bhatt on Wednesday spoke about the substance addiction that the lower sections of the society go through to overcome their pain triggered by poverty. Bhatt took to Twitter to talk about the prevalent drug use in the poverty-stricken sections of the society who are too battered & broken in life and asked if anyone is interested in their rehabilitation. Does anyone care about people who live on the ultimate fringe of society, who use drugs to make the pain of living go away? she tweeted. The ones who are too battered & broken to chase dreams but chase substances amidst much poverty & squalor? Anyone interested in their rehabilitation? her tweet further read. Also read: After Jayas speech in Parl backing Bwood on drug charges, Bachchans security stepped up Also read: 1993, 1996 agreements entail China, India to keep forces along LAC to minimum level: Rajnath Singh This comes at the time when the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Mumbai is undertaking an investigation into alleged drug use and supply in the industry that had surfaced during a probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The debate around the use of drugs in the film industry was triggered after late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajputs girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty was arrested by the NCB last week in connection with a drug case. In several tweets, actor Kangana Ranaut who has been demanding justice for Rajput has also stated that there is a prevalent use of drugs in the film industry. Earlier this week, Bhojpuri actor and BJP MP Ravi Kishan urged the Centre to take strict action against the culprits involved in drug trafficking in the country. He also expressed his concern as the film industry is also undergoing the issue of drug addiction. (ANI) Also read: Amid Ladakh stand-off, Home ministry tells Parl that theres been no infiltration across LaC in last 6 months 17.09.2020 LISTEN It is indubitably the utmost desire of every citizen all over the world to live, and not to be denied of this 'imprescriptible right', through callous means; where a person, for reasons best known to the perpetrators of such crimes, decides to take the life of another person. Death is a phenomenon of life, and as mortals, we will definitely be made to bow to it one day, but must never be through a heartless way, ie through murder. Several murder cases usually occur all over the world, and Ghana has not been an exception; with some high profile murder cases as well, recorded over the years, mostly beyond the comprehension of the average person, like the very recent one where some unknown persons allegedly murdered a senior law lecturer at the University of Ghana- Professor Emmanuel Yaw Benneh, causing fear and panic, mostly as a result of the crime itself, and the 'slow pace' with which the perpetrators of such heinous crimes are fished out and made to face the full rigours of the law. This may seemingly be considered anecdotal, but cannot be doubted. In an attempt to look for some of the reasons behind this misbehaviour of some miscreants in society, I found a research article from J. Warner Wallace, published by the Fox news very worthy; where he pointed out some three main reasons why he believes murderers engage in the act of murder: financial greed, sexual or relational lust (reasons), and the pursuit of power. He (J. W. Wallace) believes all murders, upon research, are motivated by financial greed; where people are driven to take the lives of others to take possession of their belongings (ie money and other properties), sexual or relational lust; which also pushes people to rape and murder in the end, and or murder to settle lustful desires, or presumably solve relationship issues, and finally the pursuit of power (control). Attempting to propose possible solutions to this problem, and the growing trends of same, I believe a proposition from the same research article I earlier made reference to can be reflected upon by all and sundry, as we seek to solve this problem; at least to reduce it to its barest minimum, if not to stop it completely: "Unless we, as a nation, are willing to embrace and promote a worldview that helps us understand the proper role of money and financial stewardship, promotes sexual purity and restraint, and helps us place the needs of others ahead of our own desires, we can expect more of the same." "Those restorative values may sound familiar to you; they used to be part of our collective heritage and our common worldview. They are also our last and greatest hope if we ever expect to minimize and contain the only three reasons anyone commits a crime." Murder must be fought with full force !! [email protected] Utah state law allows officers to use force, but when you cross that threshold, you need to be held accountable, just like anybody else, Sim Gill, the Salt Lake County district attorney, said in an interview on Wednesday. Aggravated assault, a felony, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. Officer Pearce, 39, who is white and has been on the force for 14 years, was placed on administrative leave in August, and remained on leave on Wednesday, according to the Salt Lake City Police Department. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer. There was no answer at phone numbers listed under his name. Officer Pearce has said that he believed Mr. Ryans was grasping a fence to try to stand up and he interpreted those actions as being a prelude to fighting the officers, according to a report by the citys Civilian Review Board. He opted to use his K-9 to stop these actions, and said he told the dog good boy because dogs respond to positive reinforcement and do not naturally want to bite people, the report said. The review board concluded, however, that the critical element, the attempted standing up that led to the deployment of the K-9, was simply not apparent on the two cameras that captured this portion of the events. The board said it found that Officer Pearce had used excessive force. Mr. Ryans is filing a lawsuit against the Salt Lake City Police Department, according to his lawyer, Gabriel K. White. Were optimistic, with the criminal charges, there will be some measure of justice for Jeffrey, he said. NEW DELHI: Here is the list of top 10 stocks that could be in focus Thursday: Reliance Industries: The oil-to-telecom conglomerate hit 16 trillion in market capitalisation on Wednesday, a first, as investors continued to buy the stock anticipating higher valuation amid stake sale in Reliance Retail. Year to date, the stock has risen 56.7%. Infosys: Has begun to get things moving on salary hikes and promotions, CEO Salil Parekh told ET Now in an interview. Plans are also afoot to start massive recruitments in many parts of the world including in India soon, he said. Infosys is adding another 12,000 employees to its US headcount of 13,000 to handle an increasing number of projects and these hirings will be complete by 2022. Pharma stocks: Symptoms that prompted the University of Oxford and partner AstraZeneca Plc to pause trials evaluating their experimental coronavirus vaccine probably werent related to the shot itself, according to documents sent to participants. Bharat Petroleum: State-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd may acquire its partner Oman Oil Company Ltd's stake in Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd, a joint venture of the companies. BPCL had in June increased its stake in the refinery to 63% from 50%, after converting warrants into shares. Hindustan Petroleum: State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd will invest over 60,000 crore to develop infrastructure during the next five years, Chairman Mukesh K Surana said at the company's 68th annual general meeting on Wednesday. This fiscal, HPCL will invest 12,000 crore in capital expenditure. Vedanta Ltd: The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the foreign arbitration award in favour of Vedanta and Videocon for the development of the Ravva oil and gas fields off the coast of Andhra Pradesh between 2000 and 2007. It dismissed the Centre's appeal against the foreign arbitration award that allowed Vedanta and Videocon to recover $499 million from the government. Dr Reddy's: Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) on Wednesday said it has tied up with Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd to conduct clinical trials of Sputnik V vaccine in India. Once approved by Indian regulators, Russia will supply 100 million doses, with deliveries beginning potentially as early as December. Aviation stocks: Cash-strapped Indian carriers have asked the government to set up an interest-free line of credit of at least $1.5 billion for the sector, civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday. Airlines have also sought a six-month deferment of their loan repayments by banks and financial institutions, while not treating them as bad loans Motherson Sumi Systems: Expects to garner as much as a quarter of its revenue from new segments such as aerospace, defence, healthcare and information technology over the next five years as part of a strategy to reduce its dependence on automotive component business facing the brunt of turmoil caused by the covid-19 pandemic. Sterling and Wilson: Shapoorji Pallonji group on Wednesday said it has missed a deadline to repay dues to group company Sterling and Wilson Solar Ltd, raising doubts about the groups ability to service its debt amid a faltering fundraising plan. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Shares of Happiest Minds Technologies today more than doubled in their stock market debut, underscoring strong investor interest in technology companies amid the covid pandemic. The company is led by Ashok Soota , a veteran of India's nearly $200 billion IT industry who also co-founded larger firm Mindtree Ltd. Soota is also Happiest Minds' top individual shareholder. Its also the second time that 77-year old Soota is leading a company to a successful trading debut. His previous startup, Mindtree, went public in March 2007. That IPO was oversubscribed over 100 times. The stock opened at 351 on BSE and at day's high rose to 395, well above its initial public offering (IPO) price of 166. Happiest Minds IPO was bid for nearly 151 times the number of shares on offer. Happiest Mind shares ended at 371, up about 125%. The Bengaluru-based company derives most of its revenue from fast-growing digital IT services - such as analytics and artificial intelligence- and cloud-enabled services. Happiest Minds was followed by an IPO from Route Mobile Ltd., a cloud-communication service provider. That sale was oversubscribed more than 73 times last week. "Investors are realising the resilience of the sector as well as strong demand for IT, post the COVID-19 crisis," Sneha Poddar, an analyst at Motilal Oswal, told Reuters. "The fact that Happiest Minds comes from a strong management background also acts as a key positive ... as people have seen how Mindtree has performed." India's IT stocks have been among the few sectors to clock gains in 2020, gaining 28% so far this year. The Indian stock market has seen only a handful of IPOs this year compared with more than a dozen in 2019, as the coronavirus crisis hammered risk appetite. "A slew of more IPOs like CAMS, UTI AMC, Angel Broking, Chemcon Speciality Chemicals, etc. are likely to open in September. Besides them, Kalyan Jewellers, NCDEX, Barbeque Nation, Burger King, Bajaj Energy, Lodha Developers are some of the names likely to hit the market in CY20," says Hemang Jani, Head Equity Strategy, Broking & Distribution, Motilal Oswal Financial Services. (With Agency Inputs) Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. If we have learned anything this year it's the sheer power and ability for stan communities to mobilize their forces for the greater good. K-Pop stans managed to take down a Dallas PD tipline targeting protesters by flooding it with fancams earlier this year and not to mention the ARMY managed to match BTS' one million dollar donation to Black Lives Matter in just a day. United in a shared love and appreciation of an artist, the communities that pop up often become their own fertile grounds for collaboration and creation takes on a life of its own. Earlier this year, nonbinary experimental polymath, Alejandra Ghersi, better known as Arca, founded her own Discord server, Mutants1000000, as a place where fans could interact with her and one another. The virtual space quickly took on a life of its own, branching out in different directions with channels devoted to sharing art, music, dreams, philosophy, book recommendations and more populating the space like a pre-MySpace forum. Out of this emerged the Mutants Mixtape. A community-driven and curated compilation series released to coincide with Bandcamp Friday in order to raise funds for various organizations that directly benefit POC, queer and trans lives, the project not only quickly garnered Arca's support but direct contributions in the form of two brand new tracks as well. "Mutants Mixtape really started once the death of George Floyd occurred," Arie, one of the Discord channel's moderators recounts. "Having a collaborative compilation was already an idea floating around on the main Mutants Discord but never totally fleshed out. I somehow didn't expect many people to join, but we rapidly reached 100 members by the end of the night. It was really cool to see that many people express interest in what we were doing." After getting Arca's blessing, Arie remembers that the size of the project really snowballed, "By the next day Ale figured out what we had started. She plugged it on her social media, and we instantly jumped to 1,000 members in a matter of a few hours. From there it became obvious that I needed some kind of a plan. My original plan was to have people message me with their submissions, but it didn't take long for my DMs to blow up with dozens of people that I simply couldn't keep track of. As a result of that, a mod team was established." Having just released their second volume of Mutants Mixtape, titled RIOT, the compilation features a massive 44 tracks, covering a wide breadth of genres from deconstructed club to techno, drone, synthwave, instrumental hard rock, ambient and experimental electronic. All of it sounds like it fits within the extended Arca cinematic musical universe but given that it is the product of almost 50 different artists, it handily manages to avoid feeling repetitive or monotonous. Coupled with a 26-page booklet with just as many visual artists contributing work, the mixtape has grown into a multi-media document of the Mutant ethos. "This chat is incredibly diverse, and to see people from different types of backgrounds and creeds unite over injustice gave us a reason to start this project," Arie says. "We had no excuse to not act. We had thousands of artists and passionate progressive individuals all at our fingertips." Over the course of two compilations, the Mutants Mixtape has raised over $5,000 in funds that have been distributed through ActBlue to well over 50 different charities. Hailing from the US, Romania, Columbia, Mexico and Greece, PAPER asked the Mutants Mixtape's nine curators to better understand what it takes to put on a project like this, how they came to be involved and the importance of giving back to their community. MUTANTS VOL. 2: RIOT by MUTANTS Demeter Salvia: What drew me to helping work on this project was definitely the community it has since fostered. Having such a diverse group of artists, each brilliantly unique in their style and their process is a really refreshing thing that makes reviewing the submissions a process that required lots of decision-making. I had the privilege of being both a moderator and an artist on the project, and it was incredibly rewarding. Being able to not only support up-and-coming artists that are predominantly queer but also giving back to the community with our earnings really made this project feel worthwhile. Malvi: I'd like to say that apart from us being from so many different cultures and regions we have managed to turn the prescribed coldness of technology into a tender space for love and learning through the language of ones and zeros, proving once again that no matter how many barriers there will always be a resistance and a rebellious spirit against oppressive forces <3 Mist: It's been a great pleasure of mine having to work with such driven people behind the scenes. It opened all of our eyes to another artistic process that curating really is. Having to come up with everything as we go and find solutions to problems that occurred along, was certainly a challenging experience, but also a very educational one. Having to listen to all of this creative madness over a period of two weeks, but also working on your own art to submit, before the actual release, felt really dysphoric at times but simultaneously euphoric. We managed to complete the project on time by the skin of our teeth. At times of uncertainty it's definitely necessary for artists to come together and create for a good cause. Building a community in uncertain times is necessary. Artists are necessary. A vision is necessary. A constant flux. A creative entropy. Arie: To say the least, MM wouldn't be where we are right now without our mod team. You could call me the "founder" or whatever or the primary editor but our mod team is so fantastic and devoted to this project. The amount of passion they have for what they do is insane. Big shout outs to them. Continuing with the mixtape itself, you ask if we were aiming for a general vibe. I think having a general vibe for a project like this is entirely against what we stand for. Mutant Mixtape promotes diversity and uplifting unknown and unique artists from across the globe. Blending different cultures, genres, we can't just stick to a "general vibe". We want everyone to be represented through their own work inspired by their interests and the world around them. Mario: About the visual art, artists submit and we review each and every single piece of art. Then with the music chosen by the team we choose the artwork that stands out the most for the cover. Having the cover that will be the protagonist gives me a theme and a style to work with for the graphic concept of the volume and booklet. With the editors, we select the most eye-catching art, the artist behind, their statements and all the factors that might help to add a meaning for the people that get the album and with that build the booklet. I love to see this platform as a way to showcase art and give exposure for emerging artists that come from a lot of global contexts. Contexts that may need artistic display and humanitarian aid. Cholazo: For me the curative process was all about encompassing the mutable DIY aspect of the community we, the curators, alongside Arca built. In constructing this sort of post-genre product we looked for the authentic expression of one's artistic self while also encouraging collaboration and the pushing of boundaries in the collective. In organizing the flow of the tape I tried to shape a narrative by segmenting the tracklist into different fractions based on aspects such as BPM, mood or emotion while also making sure that the different parts are connected by using tracks that lie somewhere in the middle of the sonic spectrum. Urchin: This curative process was actually pretty hard for me because we encouraged everyone to channel their inner creative energy and challenged them to do their best to submit, the selection process was also a little difficult as everyone put their heart and soul into these tracks. Although there wasn't a specific vibe to this, we tried to organize it in a way where it flows together and tells a little mutant story, a story about our community that Arca has all built for us, a safe space. Ruben Lara: We did that! <3 and I can't wait to do it again. Evie: Within minutes of the Mutants Mixtape server being made I was approached for assistance. By the end of the day we had a Google doc to help flesh things out and clarify the vision. It evolved rapidly from there, and it has not really slowed down since. We are learning as we go and there is a great deal of trial and error- trying to balance a DIY approach with a minimum level of operational constraint required for it all to come together. After all this, I now believe you can do just about anything with a spreadsheet and a plan. Jenny1000000: I was protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis when Arie invited me to the server. I was in this weird state of panic but the art and connection were definitely a calming presence. People were connecting and creating for something bigger than ourselves. It was a difficult curative process, there were so many different styles, and vibrational energy. Evie created spreadsheets where we could house and organize the music on google sheets so we would go into that document and rate everything from 1-5 and then averaged everything out. We had a ton more submissions this time than the last time. The mixtape turned out so good I'm obsessed. I'm so excited about the attention it's gotten and our ability to keep becoming more and doing more for the community. California faces more devastation from wildfires that have ravaged the West Coast, authorities warned Wednesday, with strong winds and dry heat expected to whip up flames from dozens of blazes raging across the state. Governor Gavin Newsom said although firefighters had made progress in their battle to contain more than two dozen major wildfires, so-called Santa Ana winds could fuel the relentless blazes. "With wind events that we are experiencing currently and what we anticipate over the coming days, we have to be mindful that even with high containment numbers, those fires are anything but behind us," he told a press briefing. Highlighting the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, Newsom said the state so far this year has experienced 7,606 fires as opposed to 4,972 in 2019. He said the flames have devoured nearly 2.3 million acres -- 1.5 million of them since mid-August -- as opposed to 118,000 last year. "These numbers bear fruit to that assertion that this is historic," he said. Newsom also appeared to hit out at US President Donald Trump, who visited the state earlier this week, saying he had "no patience for climate change deniers" who reject mounting scientific evidence that extreme weather events are linked to global warming. Trump during his visit downplayed climate concerns over the wildfires, saying that global warming will reverse on its own. "The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers" since 2003, said Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). He added that the fires are emitting so much pollution that thick smoke was visible over 8,000 kilometers (4,900 miles) away in northern Europe, underscoring the devastation of the blazes. The heaviest smoke from the fires remains over the US West Coast, with cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco registering some of the worst air quality in the world. Story continues - 'Ripe for wildfires' - Exhausted firefighters are now battling 79 large fires, with "possible critical fire weather" expected in northeast California, the National Interagency Fire Center said Wednesday. "With no significant precipitation in sight, California remains dry and ripe for wildfires," state firefighting agency Cal Fire said, adding that warmer weather expected this weekend would bring "elevated fire danger." One of the blazes near Los Angeles, dubbed the Bobcat Fire, closed in on a historic observatory Tuesday but crews managed to protect the structure. Apart from California, which has borne the brunt of the overall death toll of more than 30, the coastal states of Oregon and Washington have also experienced record blazes that have encroached on major population centers. In Oregon, 10 people were killed in the infernos fueled by dry conditions. Rain was expected to bring some much-needed relief for parts of Oregon and Washington on Wednesday. The flames across the West Coast -- some of which were caused by lightning strikes -- have so far scorched more than five million acres (two million hectares) and displaced tens of thousands of people. The disaster has brought the issue of global warming to the forefront of the US presidential campaign, with less than two months before the election. It has been difficult historically to prove a link between individual extreme weather events and climate change. However, there is a growing evidence showing blazes like those in the US would not be so intense and widespread without the warming humanity has caused on Earth during the industrial age. In general, climate change has been shown to amplify droughts that dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. The economic impact from this year's fires is expected to be staggering, with one expert estimating the damage at more than $20 billion. Authorities have also warned that the smoke from the fires could worsen the coronavirus pandemic, as people forced to evacuate seek shelter in shared accommodation. Inhaling smoke and ash could also further weaken the lungs of people infected with the virus and undermine the immune system. jz/st Flash Member states of the European Union (EU) must step up and take responsibility to address migration, which is a challenge for all and not just for those which are most exposed to it, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. "I expect all member states to step up too. Migration is a European challenge and all of Europe must do its part," von der Leyen said in her maiden State of the Union speech at the European Parliament. Underlining that a solution needs compromise, she said the Commission will present next week its New Pact on Migration, which will take a human and humane approach. "Saving lives at sea is not optional. And those countries who fulfil their legal and moral duties or are more exposed than others, must be able to rely on the solidarity of our whole European Union," insisted the chief of EU's executive arm. Von der Leyen added that Europe must make a clear distinction between those who have the right to stay and those who do not, stressing that those who could stay in Europe should be integrated and be made to feel welcome. "We will take action to fight smugglers, strengthen external borders, deepen external partnerships and create legal pathways," she said. Regarding the thousands of refugees left homeless after the Greek refugee camp that had sheltered them was damaged in fire, von der Leyen said the Commission is working with the Greek authorities on building a new camp on the island. Countries on the EU's southern border, including Italy and Malta, have long been complaining about the excessive burden of migration, claiming that they were left alone to deal with the thousands of migrants fleeing Libya and other African countries in hope of finding a more prosperous future in Europe. WKMG News 6 StarFlyer A worker in Florida has died after plunging hundreds of feet off the state's tallest tourist attraction, the StarFlyer in Orlando. Jacob David Kaminsky, 21, was working on the attraction Monday morning, conducting a routine safety check when he fell off the tower all the way to the bottom platform, WKMG News 6 reported. Kaminsky reportedly fell when he was about 200 feet up the ride's tower shortly before 8 a.m. John Stine, Director of Marketing and Sales for the StarFlyer, told the outlet that Kaminsky's tragic and sudden death came as a "shock." "Its a shock and were saddened by it," Stine said. "Anytime there is an injury or something of this nature, its extremely sad." StarFlyer officials did not immediately return PEOPLE's request for comment. RELATED: Woman, 32, Dies After Falling from Roller Coaster in France Climbing 450 feet into the air, the StarFlyer, which opened in 2018, boasts to be the "worlds tallest swing ride," according to its website. The ride moves up and down for about three to four minutes in addition to rotating around the tower at up to 45 miles per hour as riders are strapped in with a harness. "No other attraction combines safety and thrills like the StarFlyer," the attraction's website says. RELATED: Emergency Crews Remove Body of 31-Year-Old Man Found Stuck Inside Waterslide Support Pipe The ride, located in Orlando's ICON Park, has been closed until further notice, WKMG News 6 reported. "At this time, the ride will remain closed while all this investigation continues," Stine told the outlet. The Orange County Sheriff's Office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. chief, Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane, who is currently on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir, reviewed the operational preparedness of troops and deployments at the Line of Control (LoC) on Thursday. In the Kashmir Valley, he interacted with Chinar Corps commander, Lt Gen B.S. Raju and discussed the prevailing situation in the Valley and at the Gen Naravane also checked the winter preparedness for the soldiers deployed at the in harsh conditions and inhospitable terrain. He also discussed the incessant ceasefire violations carried out by Pakistan. Till July, a total of 2,662 ceasefire violation cases were reported in the Valley against 3,168 ceasefire violations last year and 1,629 in 2018. This year till July, a total of 120 terror-related cases have been reported and last year during the same period - between January and July -- 188 cases were reported. Till July, 35 security personnel lost their lives in line of duty and during the same period last year, 75 security personnel had lost their lives fighting terrorists. Earlier this month, Gen Naravane visited Ladakh and reviewed operational preparedness amid the border tensions with China. The army chief also had elaborate discussions with local commanders about the strategy to thwart Chinese incursion attempts. He also went to the forward locations and interacted with the troops. Both countries are engaged in a four-month-old standoff at the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. Despite several levels of dialogue, there has not been any breakthrough and the deadlock continues. --IANS sk/vd (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.) Haiti - FLASH : New violent actions of the Phatom 509 Group in the capital Wednesday a group of "police offciezrs", armed and hooded demonstrated violently, still demanding the release of Pascal Alexandre a member of the Brigade for the Fight Against Drug Trafficking (BLTS) imprisoned [unfairly according to the demonstrators] since May 13 at the National Penitentiary, accused of murder, arson, destruction of public property and attack on state security https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30777-haiti-justice-a-police-officer-incarcerated-in-the-penitentiary-the-phantom-group-issues-an-ultimatum.html intends to multiply their actions until the release of their colleague. It was a procession of bikers, uniformed police officers and civilians, most of them armed, who demonstrated violently, amid gunfire, erecting barricades of flaming tires and causing extensive damage in their path. The partial report shows at least 7 State vehicles and a pressure truck (garbage truck) from the town hall of Delmas burned down; violent incursion into the premises of the Economic and Social Assistance Fund, the demonstrators smashed doors and windows, ransacked the premises and not destroy by fire the vehicles in the garage of the institution, before attacking the premises of the Agricultural and industrial finance and development company, located in Bourdon then to tackle the annex of the National Identification Office (ONI) for the second time this week... Faced with this violence repeated daily, Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe, while recognizing that the means used by the demonstrators are "deplorable", offers these individuals a dialogue, believing that the Government should not do the same and fight arms with arms... For Jouthe who wants to be reassuring "[...] The protesting police officers will sit down and have a dialogue [...]" See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31803-haiti-flash-outburst-of-violence-of-the-police-offciers-of-the-phantom-509-group.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31787-haiti-justice-the-phantom-509-group-issues-an-ultimatum-and-threatens.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30777-haiti-justice-a-police-officer-incarcerated-in-the-penitentiary-the-phantom-group-issues-an-ultimatum.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30755-haiti-security-the-group-phantom-509-soon-reported-as-an-terrorist-group-to-international.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30644-haiti-politic-the-group-phantom-509-target-of-the-justice.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30641-haiti-flash-violent-demonstration-of-police-officers-of-the-group-phantom-509.html SL/ HaitiLibre Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Jerusalem Thu, September 17, 2020 07:36 492 e22cd4161040e111d73a5626c4544d2f 2 World Jerusalem,Al-Aqsa,mosque,coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-infection,pandemic,SARS-CoV-2,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus Free Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, will be closed from Friday following a spike in coronavirus cases, the authority that administers the city's Muslim holy places announced. With cases of the virus on the rise in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Waqf authority held an emergency meeting with health officials. Waqf members decided to "suspend the entry of worshippers starting from Friday afternoon [September 18] for a period of three weeks". "We hope that citizens will understand this procedure, in order to preserve their health and wellbeing," Waqf member Hatem Abdel Qader told AFP. The closure coincides with a three-week lockdown to be imposed by Israel, which controls the entrances of the compound. The call to prayer will continue to ring out across Jerusalem's Old City, Qader said, while Waqf employees will be allowed to pray at the site. Jordan is the custodian of the compound, known by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Holy Sanctuary, and as the Temple Mount by Jews. It is only the second time that the Waqf has decided to close the compound since Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel has previously blocked access to the flashpoint site, which is a focus of Palestinian aspirations for statehood. The Waqf shut the compound at the onset of the pandemic in March, when sweeping closures upended religious life in a way not seen for centuries. Israeli authorities have reported nearly 167,000 coronavirus cases, with 1,147 deaths. In the occupied West Bank some 214 people have died from the virus and more than 30,200 cases have been registered by Palestinian authorities. Scent-training honey bees as if they're dogs can help boost crop production by up to 57 per cent, scientists say. Researchers in Argentina found that exposing bees to foods scented with synthetic sunflower odour altered their choices about which plants to visit later. Exposure to the scent of sunflowers created 'bee memories' that influenced the insects to seek out sunflowers and bring back more sunflower pollen to their hives. The discovery could have a global impact by increasing not only flower yields, but also food crops like almonds, apples and pears. Bees on a sunflower. Training honey bees could make bees more efficient in pollinating a desired crop 'We show that it's possible to condition honeybees to a rewarded odour inside the colony, and this experience modifies the bees' odour-guided behaviours later,' said Dr Walter Farina of Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. 'The most surprising and relevant result is that the foraging preferences for the target crop are so prolonged and intensive that it promoted significant increases in the crop yields.' The growing global demand for pollination leads producers to consider new strategies in pollinator management, Dr Farina claims. Training bees like dogs may be the answer if bee keepers want to pick and choose what type of crop they'll pollinate. Trained bees clustered on a sunflower. Floral cues learned inside the colony improve honey bee foraging activity Bees generally can learn scents inside the nest when scented food from successful foragers is unloaded and distributed among nest mates, for example. 'Such social learning is key for adaptive collective responses, as it enables workers to acquire information about different foraging options,' the researchers say in their study paper. To demonstrate bee memories and their response to training, the scientists selected sunflower an economically important and pollinator-dependent crop. Researchers developed a simple synthetic mixture that the bees associated with the natural floral scent of sunflowers and combined this with bee food in this case, a simple sucrose solution. 'We aimed to develop a simple but representative synthetic mimic odor that bees could not discriminate from the natural fragrance of sunflower inflorescence, and it is not difficult to produce,' Dr Farina told MailOnline. The synthetic odour was chosen over a natural one for the experiments because the real biological material can quickly deteriorate. The use of floral fragments also promotes the release of chemicals not commonly found in the natural bouquet of the complete flower, Dr Farina pointed out. Honey bee colonies were fed 1,000ml of the solution, placed in their hives for two days. The man-made hives were then moved to line up along a field of sunflower crops before being released. A group of beehives used for pollination services of a sunflower crop for hybrid seed production. In that image are typical commercial (Langstroth) hives. This shows the team's experimental set-ups in one of the six seasons dedicated to this topic The bees' training positively affected the density of bees on the crop and made them bring more sunflower pollen back to the hive. This increased visitation also boosted flower production by somewhere between 29 to 57 per cent, depending on the sunflower hybrid grown. While bees would have been inclined to pollinate the crops at some point due to their proximity, the bees were quicker to reach the crops after getting a sniff of the synthetic odour and in high density too. 'After moving at a new environment, the honeybees need time to know the new surroundings, and days later they initiate the foraging activity on the crop,' Dr Farina told MailOnline. The bees' foraging preferences were also indicated by their 'waggle dances' while inside the hive. Honeybees use waggle dances to communicate to their nest mates the distance and direction to food sources. Waggle dances indicating the sunflower plot occurred earlier among bee colonies fed the synthetic sunflower solution within the first hour of having relocated the hive near the sunflower plantation. However, when waggle dances were observed, hives were located much further away around 1,600 feet from the sunflower crop. 'We recorded waggle dances not in commercial beehives but in observation hives with transparent glass walls,' Dr Farina said. 'We can observe and record the in hive behaviors, the waggle dance being a very conspicuous display.' The results of the study highlight the role of olfactory learning within the social context of the hive to 'bias' foraging preferences. 'Through this procedure, it is possible to bias honeybee foraging activity and increase yields significantly,' Dr Farina said. 'In other words, pollination services might be improved in pollinator-dependent crops by using simple mimic odors as part of a precision pollination strategy.' Dr Farina's team had previously shown that honeybees could establish stable and long-term memory related to food scents inside the nest. Now the team know in-hive odor memories enhance the guiding process toward the learned stimuli. The researchers say they are now studying other pollinator-dependent crops, including almonds, pears, and apples. Ultimately, their goal is to develop an array of odour mimics to improve pollination efficiency of important agricultural crops. The research has been published in the journal Current Biology. In mid-August, 2020, an unusual heat wave fixated over California, leading to a series of lightning storms across the state and numerous wildfires. Hundreds of thousands of acres were burned and tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate their homes. Below is an account of how the fires spread and officials responded to the emergency. Read the previous updates from Sept. 12-13 Read the next updates from Sept. 16-17 Updates from Tuesday, Sept. 15: 10:30 p.m. Three more victims identified in North Complex fires: Butte County Sheriffs officials announced identities of three more people who died in connection to the North Complex fires. The death toll remains at 15. The newly identified are: Jacob Albright, 74, of Feather Falls; Paul Winer, 68, of Berry Creek; and Randy Harrell, 67, of Feather Falls. 9:05 p.m. Containment in CZU Complex grows to 93%: The CZU Lightning Complex, which has burned 86,509 acres in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, was 93% contained as of Tuesday evening, Cal Fire said. Officials expect to fully contain the fires by 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 20. 8:55 p.m. SCU Complex remains 98% contained: The SCU Lightning Complex, which has burned 396,624 acres in seven Northern California counties, was 98% contained as of Tuesday evening, Cal Fire said. The fire is now in patrol status with no fire activity noted for over a week, Cal Fire said. Officials expect the fires to be fully contained on Wednesday. 8:35 p.m. Smoke from West Coast wildfires blows into East Coast cities: Wildfire smoke from the enormous fires blazing on the West Coast has made its way to the East Coast, bringing hazy conditions for the next few days, meteorologists said. A large-scale weather pattern with a ridge of high pressure blew smoke from blazes in California, Oregon, and Washington across the country and into East Coast cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 4:44 p.m. Kamala Harris sounds climate change alarm from ruins of California fires: The Democratic vice presidential nominee viewed homes leveled by the Creek Fire in the Sierra foothills outside Fresno and redoubled the tickets new message on the dangers of climate change to peoples lives, health and property. This is not a partisan issue, the California senator said. Read the story. 3:26 p.m. Evacuation warnings removed in parts of Santa Cruz County: Evacuation warnings in some portions of Santa Cruz County have been removed for the CZU Lightning Complex, Cal Fire said Tuesday afternoon. No direct threats to property remain in those areas. 3:06 p.m. Town just north of state border flattened: Phoenix, Ore., a town of 4,500 people about 20 miles from the California border, has seen maybe more wildfire destruction than any other town this year, laid to waste by the Alameda Fire, the New York Times reports. A local pastor and school bus driver who had created a charity for his hometown, Paradise, following the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, now faced disaster in his new home. Hes thrown himself into yet another relief effort. 2:48 p.m. Portland Classic reduced: The LPGA Tours Portland Classic set for this weekend has been reduced to 54 holes because of poor air quality caused by wildfires that have been burning across the West. The course and practice facilities at Columbia Edgewater Country Club remained closed Tuesday, and Wednesdays Pro-AM has been canceled. Portlands air quality has been at dangerous levels because of wildfires. 2:42 p.m. LA observatory threatened: Firefighters burned off vegetation in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles on Tuesday to protect historic Mount Wilson Observatory from the Bobcat Fire. The blaze was within 500 feet the observatory by early afternoon and crews were waiting for it, the Angeles National Forest tweeted. The blaze was just 3% contained after growing to more than 64 square miles. 2:20 p.m. Giants foiled by smoke this time: The Giants, who endured two postponements over the weekend after a coronavirus scare, have now been sidelined by smoky air from fires in the Northwest. Tuesday nights game against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park was postponed and the Giants were flying home, according to sources. They were set to start a two-game series. Read the story here. 1:35 p.m. Point Reyes partly open after Woodward Fire: Areas of the Point Reyes National Seashore unaffected by the 4,910-acre Woodward Fire have reopened; but all southern portions of the park, including Limantour Road, remain closed to visitors, officials said Tuesday. Crews completed a small burnout operation near the parks Bear Valley Visitor Center and continued to monitor hotspots withing the 95%-contained fire. We have had people frequenting the fire site and wed like to remind everyone many trails are closed, said Jordan Reeser of Marin County Fire. 1:19 p.m. Insurance problem makes cannabis farmers more vulnerable in fires: California cannabis cultivators are racing to harvest their crops amid fierce wildfires that in some cases destroy even plants that are spared by the flames. The industry suffers more than most businesses affected by fires: Cannabis crops are more difficult to insure because growing the plant is still illegal under federal law. Read the story here. 12:59 p.m. August Complex fires rage in Mendocino, Humboldt: The August Complex fires have overtaken 794,801 acres, based on new aerial surveys, officials said Tuesday. Firefighters focused on the western edge of the blaze, aided by crews from Montana, Utah, Texas and New Jersey. The complex was 30% contained, Cal Fire said. Evacuation orders for Mendocino and Humboldt counties directed people to several evacuation sites, including the Humboldt County Fairgrounds. 11:57 a.m. LNU Complex containment holds at 97%: Fire crews were putting out smoldering hotspots Tuesday in densely-forested areas of the Walbridge Fire, part of the 363,220-acre LNU Complex, a Cal Fire spokesman said. The North Bay fires were 97% contained as of Tuesday morning, with the remaining 3% located in hard-to-reach terrains, including the northeast portion of the Hennessey Fire, Cal Fire said. 11:44 a.m. Full containment expected Wednesday for SCU Complex: Firefighters patrolled the perimeter of the 98%-contained SCU Complex fires Tuesday, with full containment expected on Wednesday, according to a Cal Fire update. Officials have reported no new eruptions within the 396,624-acre complex for the past week. The flames injured six people and destroyed 222 structures as they charged across seven counties including Santa Clara, Alameda, San Joaquin and Stanislaus. 11:20 a.m. Dolan Fire south of Big Sur 40% contained: Firefighters have made progress containing the 119,488-acre Dolan Fire along Highway 1 south of Big Sur, fire officials said Tuesday. Crews prepared for a burnout operation intended to prevent the fire from moving further south of the Ventana Wilderness Area and Los Padres National Forest. The fire was at 40% containment as of Tuesday morning. 10:35 a.m. Fires at California-Oregon border 10% contained: The Slater and Devil fires burning in Klamath National Forest on the California-Oregon border have consumed 136,030 acres and are 10% contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The fires are burning in Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in California and Josephine County in Oregon. Evacuations and road closures are in place in all three counties but evacuation orders were lifted for the town of Happy Camp on the south end of the fire. The national forest is closed along with all national forests in California. 10:20 a.m. Creek Fire torching trees on uphill run: The Creek Fire raced uphill to the northeast in the San Joaquin River drainage overnight, Cal Fire reported Tuesday. Firefighters braced for increased burning day and night with expected warmer temperatures over the next two days, and will focus on holding containment lines around communities and key pathways toward developed areas, Cal Fire said. Tuesdays primary focus was Jose Basin, where fire breached lines and threatened structures a day earlier. The Creek Fire was 16% contained and had burned 220,025 acres as of Tuesday morning, Cal Fire said. 9:56 a.m. Trump denies climate change amid wildfires: On the Fifth & Mission podcast, Sacramento reporter Alexei Koseff recaps President Trumps surreal visit to California, during which he listened to Gov. Gavin Newsoms polite plea to take climate change seriously, then assured state officials that, Itll start getting cooler. You just watch. Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot told him, I wish science agreed with you. Click here to listen. 9:05 a.m. Winds muted for now in North Complex: High winds were feared overnight in Butte County where the western zone of the North Complex blaze continues to burn near Lake Oroville. But the winds, which could spread the fire, failed to materialize and arent likely to show up for at least the next two days, Cal Fire officials said. The west zone fire has raged through 76,900 acres and is 20% contained. Its part of the broader North Complex of fires in Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties that has burned a total of 269,338 acres, with 32% containment as of Tuesday morning. 8:50 a.m. Beyond Bay Area, choking air persists: Relief from putrid, dangerous air spewing from massive western wildfires wont come until later in the week or beyond, forecasters say, and hazy and gunk-filled skies might stick around even longer. Some areas of central California are unlikely to see relief until October, meteorologist Dan Borsum said; smoke from fires throughout the West is pooling in the Central Valley. Oregon officials extended an air quality alert to Thursday that was to expire on Monday. The air was so thick that Alaska Airlines announced it was suspending service to Portland and Spokane, Wash., until Tuesday afternoon. 8:19 a.m. This has been the worst air, almost ever: Clean, fresh air is starting to seem like a vague memory from before lightning-caused wildfires exploded across California. If last weekend felt particularly awful, thats because it was. Thursday through Sunday ranked among the Bay Areas dozen worst air-quality days since officials started keeping track in 1999. Read the story here. 7:52 a.m. Minimal fire burning as CZU Complex is 91% contained: Cal Fire reported minimal fire remaining Tuesday morning over the majority of the CZU Complex fire area, as firefighters continued mop up and control of hotspots. Blackened hillsides tell the story up and down coastal Highway 1 and further inland, after the blaze burned 86,509 acres in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. The fire was 91% as of Tuesday morning, Evacuation orders and warnings remained for parts of both counties. 7:38 a.m. Inmate firefighters brave conditions theyve never seen: The 1,354 incarcerated firefighters on the front lines of Californias historic blazes represent a 30% decrease from last years crew, their numbers reduced by the states early release of thousands to prevent coronavirus spread. But the crews in the field are pushing themselves to levels theyd never imagined through long and dangerous days as Cal Fire tries to do more with less. Read the gripping details of their efforts. 7:28 a.m. Weather conditions should aid firefighters: Winds near Oroville, where the west zone of the deadly North Complex fire was burning, were light overnight and not expected to pick up until Thursday or Friday, the National Weather Service said Tuesday. A system that moves in Thursday will increase winds slightly but could also bring higher humidity and lower temperatures, said meteorologist Jim Mathews. I think it will assist firefighters in their heroic efforts, he said. 7:13 a.m. In sync?: Gov. Gavin Newsom said after meeting on wildfires with President Trump that he had wanted Trump to know that we have established an engagement we would like to build on ... And yes, frankly, to state in a way that wasnt trying to take a cheap shot ... to make the argument, we believe in climate change out here. We dont believe it just because science says it; we observe it, we experience it, Newsom said. Trump while reporters were in the room Monday did not discuss global warming, preferring to talk about forest management, except to predict it will start getting cooler. As reporters were led out he said, I think were totally in sync. Read the story here. 7:02 a.m. Improving smoke conditions, light winds: Light onshore winds are expected to blow away some of the smoke thats choked the Bay Area for the past week, according to the National Weather Service. General idea is for improving conditions today through Friday, weather service tweeted Tuesday morning. Air quality index readings in much of the Bay Area were improved but still in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range with some areas of moderate conditions. Updates from Monday, Sept. 14: 9:05 p.m. Sequoia National Park closing due to fire: Sequoia National Park is implementing a full park closure, with all entrances closed, at 6 a.m. Tuesday because of the Castle Fire of the SQF Complex. Many park staff have been evacuated. The adjacent Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra remained open, but visitors will be unable to access Sequoia National Park from Highway 198 or Highway 180 out of Fresno. The Giant Forest and sequoia trees will be inaccessible to visitors. Campground fees will be refunded. Mineral King Road remained closed. Acting Park Superintendent Lee Taylor said the closure would help ensure any pending evacuation goes as smoothly as possible. 8:27 p.m. Butte County issues update on death toll, identities: The county sheriff said Monday night that the death toll is now at 15 from the North Complex fires. Of those 15, seven Berry Creek residents have been postively identified and their families have been notified. They are: John Butler, 79; Sandra Butler, 75; Jorge Hernandez-Juarez, 26; Philip Rubel, 68; Khawar Bhatti, 58; Millicent Catarancuic, 77; and Josiah Williams, 16,. 3:15 p.m. A different global warming problem where there are no fires: As President Trump dismisses the evidence of linkage between California wildfires and global warming, another huge warming problem looms in a far different environment. Two Antarctic glaciers that have long kept scientists awake at night are breaking free from the restraints that have hemmed them in, increasing the threat of large-scale sea-level rise possibly 10 feet from the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. The Washington Post reports on the new findings published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2:53 p.m. Fire smoke creates ocean cyclone: The historic wildfires raging across the West Coast have produced so much smoke that it has billowed more than 1,000 miles across the Pacific and gotten pulled into a cyclone over the ocean. Dramatic imagery from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite shows smoke traveling west across the ocean and joining the storm as it swirls counterclockwise. Read the story here. 2:33 p.m. Wildfires have destroyed more than 4,200 structures: Cal Fire reported Monday that nearly 16,500 firefighters are working to contain the states 28 major wildfires that have cost 24 lives. Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned over 3.2 million acres across the state an area larger than Connecticut. The current spate of fires that began Aug. 15 after thousands of lightning strikes has destroyed more than 4,200 structures, Cal Fire said. 2:19 p.m. Trump stunningly states that climate will get cooler: At a briefing on California wildfires, the states Natural Resources secretary urged President Trump to recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests. Wade Crowfoot added, If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think its all about vegetation management, were not going to succeed together protecting Californians. Trump retorted, It will start getting cooler, just you watch. Crowfoot said he wished the science agreed on that. I dont think science knows, actually, rejoined Trump. 2:05 p.m. Crews bolster North Complex fire lines: Fire crews started a firing operation Monday to burn out vegetation along Highway 70 on the northern portion of the 264,374-acre North Complex in a bid to protect residencial areas of Plumas County, fire officials said. Crews gained an upper hand on the eastern portion of the complex as flames burned into the scars of 2018s Camp Fire, where vegetation is younger and less volatile, a spokeswoman said. Containment of the complex fires jumped to 38% as of Monday afternoon. 1:15 p.m. State insurance losses could top $13 billion: Ravenous western fires are damaging an economy already singed by the coronavirus outbreak, putting a strain on economic activity that could linger for a year or more. The credit rating agency A.M. Best estimates that insured losses from the blazes in California could top the unprecedented $13 billion recorded in 2017 when the state was hit by three of the five costliest fires in U.S. history. 12:49 p.m. Trump honors California National Guardsmen for fire rescue: President Trump on Monday awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross to seven California National Guard members who participated in a harrowing Sept. 5 chopper rescue of more than 200 people trapped by wildfire at Mammoth Pool reservoir in the Sierra.Trump pinned the medals on the rescuers at a Sacramento ceremony. 12:22 p.m. Firefighters work to check expansion of August Complex blaze: Firefighters on Monday bulldozed containment lines on the western and southern perimeters of the 30%-contained August Complex fire, officials said. Aerial crews dropped water and surveyed the blaze for a clearer picture of where Californias largest-ever fire has expanded. The fire was previously thought to cover 877,477 acres of Mendocino and Humboldt counties, but officials reduced that estimate to 755,603 acres on Monday, citing data from new aerial surveys. 12:02 p.m. Bay Area marks another dubious distinction as air pollution hits 30-day milestone: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has extended its Spare the Air alert into Wednesday, marking 30 days of pollution and poor air quality, officials said Monday morning. Thats the agencys longest continuous stretch of warnings ever, far surpassing the previous record of 14 days during the deadly Camp Fire of 2018. Spare the Air alerts make it illegal to use fireplaces and wood-burning devices. 11:57 a.m. Newsom emphasizes federal role: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday politely reminded President Trump who repeatedly blames Californians forest management for runaway wildfires of a fundamental fact, that half of the forest land in the state is federal forest, while 3% is state land. Newsom, however, also thanked the president for a new state-federal initiative to double forest management efforts, and said that theres no question looking back over the years that as a state we have not done justice to the needs in fire management. 11:45 a.m. Newsom tells Trump global warming is self evident: Gov. Gavin Newsom told President Trump on Monday at a wildfire briefing near Sacramento that, We feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter, the drys are getting drier. Something has happened to the plumbing of the world. Newsom said he respects political differences on the issue, but said science makes it self-evident that, Climate change is real. Trump nodded through part of Newsoms comments but then quickly turned to someone else to speak. 11:29 a.m. Poor air quality to remain through week: A deep marine layer blanketed the Bay Area in higher humidity Monday morning, good news for crews fighting to suppress fires throughout the region, according to the National Weather Service. But the air blowing inland off the ocean is filled with wildfire smoke, meaning it is unlikely to bring a reprieve from poor air quality, meteorologists said. To the southeast, parts of the Central Sierra Nevada where the Creek Fire and Sequoia Complex Fires are raging could see bouts of dry lightning later in the week as moisture from a tropical storm in the Pacific moves in. The best case scenario would bring rain showers, but at worst the moisture would dissipate, creating prime conditions for more dry lightning, meteorologists said. 11:14 a.m. Trump in California again blames forest management: President Trump arrived in the Sacramento area Monday for a wildfire briefing with Gov. Gavin Newsom and repeated that California doesnt manage its forests a large portion of which are in federal jurisdiction to curtail wildfires. He brushed aside a question about the role of climate change, which scientists see as a key wildfire factor. When trees fall down, after a short period of time, Trump said, they become very dry. They become like a matchstick ... They can explode. He said dried leaves are a problem, too. They have to do something about it, he told reporters on his way to the briefing. He also accused the state of not creating cuts fire lines to contain fires. 10:55 a.m. Biden calls Trump a climate arsonist: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed President Trump for science denial and inaction on climate change that has millions of people worried about the air they breathe and the damage to their lungs due to historic wildfires while they are also anxious about coronavirus transmission. Donald Trumps climate denial may not have caused these fires, Biden said in an address from Wilmington, Del., but if he gets a second term these hellish events will continue to be more common, more devastating, more deadly. Biden highlighted his own transformative climate change agenda, including: a return to the Paris Accord and global warming leadership, beefed up fuel and lighting efficiency, rebates and initiatives for electric vehicles, creating 1 million domestic auto jobs through EV production, and a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035. 10:19 a.m. LNU Complex containment is at 97%: Cal Fire reported Monday morning that the LNU Complex fires in the North Bay were 97% contained, having burned across 363,220 acres. Residents were warned to be alert for road closures due to ongoing repair work. 10:04 a.m. SF air quality is very unhealthy: San Franciscos air quality readings reached the very unhealthy level early Monday. Officials said children and people with respiratory diseases should avoid all physical activity outdoors. 9:48 a.m. Communities along Oregons I-5 razed: OWildfires in Oregon are reaching place that havent burned in the past: entire communities along the I-5, the main north-south interstate highway along the West Coast, have been razed. We havent had anything ever this close, said Margot Cooper, who for the last three decades has lived in Scio, southeast of Salem. Its the first time its literally in our backyard. 9:15 a.m. Creek Fire only 10% contained: The Creek Fire burned actively overnight in Fresno County, with winds pushing smoke down to the lower elevations, and flames continuing to move northeast in the San Joaquin River drainage, according to a Cal Fire update. It was threatening structures in the foothills, including in Jose Basin and Shaver Lake. The blaze covered 212,744 acres and was 10% contained as of Monday morning. In Madera County, a number of evacuation warnings were lifted in the northwestern area of the fire, including for Coarsegold and Oakhurst. 8:55 a.m. Newsom, Trump to meet in private: Gov. Gavin Newwom was set to meet privately with President Trump during his brief visit to California Monday, without a joint public appearance. Newsom, with state fire and emergency officials, planned a private wildfires briefing for Trump at McClellan Park near Sacramento, a firefighting staging area, Newsoms office said. Newsom then heads to tour an undisclosed fire area, and Trump plans an event to honor the California National Guard. Read the story here. 8:27 a.m. North Complex fire grows: The North Complex wildfires grew to 261,488 acres by Monday morning, and was 26% contained, Cal Fire reported. The situation could worsen through the day with windy conditions forecast. 8:16 a.m. Family was ready to go, but did not evacuate: Survivors are mourning three members of a vibrant family who were not wildfire novices and who were packed and ready to flee the North Complex fire that ended up ripping across the Butte County community of Berry Creek. For some reason, the ended up staying. Read the details in The Chronicles story. 7:42 a.m. Trump visit comes amid growing clash over global warming: With President Trump visiting California Monday as crews battle wildfires that have enveloped the West Coast in smoke, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders in the Democratic-led states still clash with Trump over the role of climate change. The Democratic governors say the fires are a climate change consequence. Trump blames poor forest management. Scientists say the wildfires are all but inevitable, but the main drivers are plants and trees drying out due to global warming and more people living closer to areas that burn. 7:30 a.m. Spare the Air again: Monday launched the week with yet another Spare the Air-alert day under gray smoky skies. Air quality rated unhealthy blanketed most of the Bay Area, meaning older people, kids and those with health conditions should curtail time outside and everyone else should avoid strenuous outdoor activities. Air quality is expected to improve a little after Monday. 6:34 a.m. Climate change, poor forest management collide, worsening California fires: In recent years, nearly 150 million trees died around the state as their roots delved fruitlessly for water and a devastating bark beetle infestation took hold. Both the drought and the insect spread that came with it were exacerbated by changing climate conditions linked to humans burning fossil fuels, scientists concluded. Now those trees, like so much else in the American West, are burning as California contends with a reckoning more than 100 years in the making. Read the full story here. By PTI NEW DELHI: A Pulwama-style terror strike was averted by the Indian Army with the recovery of 52 kg of explosives on Thursday in Kashmir's Karewa area which is not very far from the site of last year's dastardly attack, Army officials said here. They said the location where the explosives were recovered was near the Jammu and Kashmir highway and around 9 KM from the spot of the Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. "We have averted another Pulwama-type attack," said an Army official. The officials said the explosives were found in a Syntex water tank at Karewa area of Gadikal during a search operation around 8 AM. "There were 416 packets of explosives with each one of them weighing 125gm," said an official, adding another 50 detonators were recovered in another Syntex tank in the area in subsequent searches. The explosives are called "Super-90" or S-90 in short, the official said. On February 14 last year, a suicide bomber had rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama killing 40 soldiers. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Kashmir in recent years. Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) had taken responsibility for the attack. Twelve days after the strike, India's warplanes pounded a JeM terrorist training camp deep inside Pakistan that had triggered massive escalation in tension between the two countries. Last month, the NIA filed a charge sheet in the case, detailing how the attack was planned and executed by JeM. The NIA named Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar and several others in the charge sheet. At the most obvious level, the deal is clearly a win for US President Donald Trump, who will have something more substantial to run with in the forthcoming presidential election, as far as his Middle East policy is concerned. But if you are lured by the words "peace deal", and are joining in the celebrations because you are a lover of harmony and justice, youd better think twice. Things might not be as they seem and one might ask, whose victory is this? After all, even if it is well known that both these Gulf countries already have all but formal relations with Israel, making the alliance formal is a victory of sorts. The establishment of diplomatic ties between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel will be celebrated by many in the world, including the Australian government and opposition. At another obvious level, it is a victory for the US-Israeli-Saudi alliance. For many years now, this troika has sought to redirect regional focus on the "Iranian threat", rather than the Palestinian question. However, this is bound to increase the already large gap that exists in the Arab world between the orientation of the ruling elite and the view of the majority of the people they are ruling. Colonial and neo-colonial politics have always meant that in many countries an alliance of economic and political elite are maintained in power not so much by their ability to represent the aspirations of a majority of their people, but by their ability to enact a certain foreign policy. This has created a situation where all the main international, regional and local state powers have an interest in the perpetuation of geopolitical interests at the expense of local ones. In this sense, this deal is a victory and continuation of this tyranny of geo-political reason. It is often the case that what Arab authoritarian regimes work hard to repress is more the foreign policy orientation of their population than their internal aspirations for equality and democracy. As such, the deal will make countries such as Bahrain which already has a miserable human rights record become even more repressive. The deal will also exacerbate the tendency of the ruling elite and the state personnel to focus on geopolitical realities that are increasingly separate from peoples everyday lives. Israel has had a "peace deal" with Jordan and Egypt for a long time now. Yet it is clear to everyone concerned that these arrangements do not and will not translate into peace between people until a just solution to the Palestinian question is reached. Former Melrose Place actress Amy Locane who has already served a prison sentence for a fatal 2010 drunk driving crash in New Jersey is headed back behind bars after a judge ruled that her initial sentence was too lenient. Locane, 48, was sentenced for a fourth time Thursday in the crash that killed 60-year-old Helene Seeman and severely injured Seemans husband a decade ago in Montgomery Township. Accusing the the mother-of-two of still refusing to fully acknowledge her culpability in the crash, Superior Court Judge Angela Borkowski gave Locane eight years for 2nd-degree vehicular homicide and 18 months for 4th-degree assault by auto. The sentences will be served concurrently. State law requires her to at least six years and 10 months behind bars before shes eligible for parole. Former Melrose Place actress Amy Locane (pictured left during a hearing in February, 2019 and right in the 1990s) who has already served a prison sentence for a fatal 2010 drunken driving crash in New Jersey is headed back behind bars after being re-sentenced to eight years in prison The crash killed Helene Seeman (right) also seriously injured her husband, Fred (left) who nearly died Locane, who was driving around 20 to 30mph over the speed limit, crashed into the passenger side of the Seemans car as they were pulling onto their driveway, killing Helene on impact Locane apologized to the Seeman family in a brief statement. She was placed in handcuffs and taken into custody by court deputies after the proceeding in state court in Somerville. It was a startling development in a case that has bounced around the New Jersey court system for nearly a decade and has now featured four sentencings in front of three judges, plus numerous appeals. Locane had previously served three years in state prison, and completed three years of parole for the crash. She had been out of state prison for five years and off of parole for two at the time of her re-sentencing Thursday. The fatal crash happened on June 27, 2010, when New York Attorney Fred Seeman was driving home with his wife Helene after a weekend away just after 9pm. Locane, who was driving around 20 to 30mph over the speed limit, crashed into the passenger side of the Seemans' car as they were pulling onto their driveway, killing Helene on impact. According to witnesses, Locane had consumed several drinks before getting behind the wheel that night. The actress, who was arrested at the scene, later contended a third motorist, whose car Locane had bumped into at a traffic light minutes earlier, distracted her by honking at and chasing her. Locane wasn't indicted for drunken driving, but a state expert testified her blood alcohol level was likely about three times the legal limit and that she was driving roughly 53 mph in a 35-mph zone at the time of the crash. Locane (shown left in 2013) had previously served three years in state prison, and completed three years of parole for the crash. Fred, husband of Helene (right), celebrated the latest sentence Locane - who acted in 13 episodes of the popular 1990s Fox series Melrose Place - was originally convicted on several counts including vehicular manslaughter, and faced a sentencing range of five to 10 years on the most serious count. The state initially sought a seven-year sentence, but a trial judge sentenced her to three years in 2013. An appeals court ruled he misapplied the law, but at a resentencing, the same judge declined to give her additional time. Last year, a different judge sentenced her to five years, but an appeals court ruled he didn't follow guidelines it had set and ordered yet another sentencing. Locane's attorney and alleged boyfriend - James Wronko, had argued unsuccessfully that sentencing her again would violate double jeopardy protections since she had already completed her initial sentence and parole term. The appeals court held that Locane waived double jeopardy protections when she voluntarily began serving her initial sentence while the state was still appealing it. 'When the government timely appeals an initial sentence or a sentence imposed at a re-sentencing, a defendant is put on notice that the sentence may change and he or she cannot acquire a legitimate expectation of finality,' the judges wrote at the time. Locane (shown bottom right) acted in 13 episodes of the popular 1990s Fox series Melrose Place. She also starred in a number of movies, including Cry-Baby alongside Johnny Depp Amy is pictured in an Instagram photo with daughters Avery, 11, and Paige, 13, and her mother. The post was uploaded Thursday as a birthday tribute to her mom, in which she wrote: 'Ill be with you all... all mys in spirt' Fred Seeman, who nearly died from his injuries suffered in the crash, attended Thursday's proceeding and said Locane's shifting of blame shows contempt for this court and the jury that rendered the verdict. The judge took a similar view, and said Locane's past alcohol abuse makes her a risk for re-offending. You made a conscious decision to drink that day and continued to drink, recognizing at the onset that you needed a ride but didnt obtain one, Borkowski said. If you hadn't gotten behind the wheel of your vehicle on this night, the incident never would have happened. Wronko called the sentence outrageous. She has always taken full responsibility, he continued, before criticizing the judge for not taking into account Locane's current sobriety and her work counseling others against alcohol abuse. Locane has 45 days to appeal her sentence. Wronko said he is waiting to see if the state Supreme Court decides to hear his appeal on the double jeopardy question. She took to Instagram on Thursday morning to pen a birthday tribute to her mother, before her latest hearing took place. 'Happy BD Mom! Ill be with you all... all my[love]s in spirit. Remember: The House Dont Fall when the Bones are good.' At dinnertime, 10-year-old Clive Rodgers used to wrap his arms around his plate because he was afraid of germs at the table. "I was really scared, and if somebody tried to move my arm, I would, like, get really angry and stuff," says Clive, who lives in San Diego with his parents and two younger siblings. Clive is just one of many young people who have struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD affects about 1 in every 200 children and teenagers, which is similar to the prevalence of diabetes in this age group. The hallmarks of OCD are intrusive, unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviors in response to those thoughts, a cycle that may cause significant anxiety and hamper daily activities. As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, it's a tough time for any kid who has to stay home all day, studying remotely instead of going to school, unable to enjoy normal social activity with friends. Such stressors are making OCD symptoms worse in some children, even those who didn't specifically fear germs before, doctors say. "Their rituals and obsessions are just worse because their general mental health is worse," said Suzan Song, director of the Division of Child/Adolescent & Family Psychiatry at George Washington University. Fears of contamination and illness are generally common among people with OCD, but usually their concerns are not in line with likely threats, said Joseph McGuire, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine. With the coronavirus, which causes the disease Covid-19, there is actual danger present. He is seeing a "rekindling" of symptoms in many patients who received treatment in the past, and need a refresher. "In this post-Covid world, you're hearing from the news media and scientists all saying that this is a real fear," McGuire said. "So now, it's kind of providing validity to intrusive, obsessional thoughts that have been popping in your head for quite some time." Kids with OCD tend to be very rigid in their thinking, so when it comes to new pandemic hygiene norms, such as hand washing for 20 seconds, "there's a very fine line between safety and compulsion," Song said. Song said that in the first month of the pandemic, some of her OCD patients actually reported feeling less anxious. Because more people in the world recognized a threat - that is, the novel coronavirus - they would say things along the lines of, "I know that other people are taking care of it, so the burden is not on me," she said. But within three months into the new pandemic reality, general levels of anxiety and depression had risen. Signs of OCD can emerge in young childhood, but usually between ages 8 and 12 or in late teen years to early adulthood, according to the International OCD Foundation. Emmeline Paluck of Rochester, N.Y., was diagnosed with pediatric OCD at age 7, although in retrospect, her mother, Amy Hatch, thinks she saw signs as early as age 3. Hatch remembers Emmeline would compulsively ask her mother, "am I rolling my eyes?" And she became obsessed with her mother's safety, believing every time Hatch left the house, she would die. Emmeline also engaged in self-harming behaviors and had suicidal thoughts, her mother said. "When your first-grader is having these issues, it's pretty terrifying," Hatch said, "and I felt very alone, and so did she, and her dad did, too." Through therapy, Emmeline worked for years on managing her intrusive thoughts and behaviors. Now 15, with her routine suddenly disrupted by the pandemic, Emmeline said this spring she felt a huge spike in anxiety - almost like she was "back to square one." She worried she would fall back into compulsive hand washing - something she used to do when she was younger - and other behaviors. Emmeline said her doctor increased her medication dosage and told her that other patients also struggled and needed dosage adjustments, which reassured her. "It was kind of nice to know that not everyone is handling this well, as well as I thought they were," she said. McGuire said intrusive thoughts in people with OCD can start out small and build off normal concerns, such as, "Did I leave the coffee maker on?" But a cycle may emerge where a person feels reassured after checking twice, three times or more, and then resorts to excessive checking in connection with other obsessive thoughts. They form an association in their minds, such as, "I do this behavior and I feel better," McGuire said. And in some people, this leads to "magical thinking," in which they come to believe a particular ritual - such as knocking on wood three times - will keep their family safe. There's no single cause exists of OCD, and its neurobiology is still under study. Research has found some genetic associations, but children may also develop it if no other family members have it. In recent years, scientists have found a connection between strep infections, as well as other possible factors, and the sudden onset of OCD symptoms, but these do not represent the majority of OCD cases. Traumatic events may also trigger OCD symptoms. Gabriella Kroener's obsessions started around age 11, after a car ran over her foot in a hit-and-run incident. It may have started with a fear of crossing the street and then spiraled to concerns about her siblings crossing the street, traffic, crowds. "The fears just grew and grew and grew," said her mother, Kim Worden. Kim Worden and her 16-year-old daughter, Gabby Kroener, who has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (Photo by Kim Worden) Before that, she had been a healthy, social child taking all honors classes, Worden said. After the accident, Gabby couldn't participate in cheerleading because of her injury, but she also withdrew from her cheer friends and became much more shy in general. She nearly failed an honors biology course because she didn't want to work with lab partners, her mother said. Gabby decided to retake the class, which ended up moving online because of Covid-19. Gabby, who is now 16, says she became fixated on the idea that she was unintentionally harming others, even after she asked people and they said she hadn't. And she started washing her hands a lot because she feels like "I carry around those germs from hurting people." Her worries led her to start knocking on doors and other objects made of wood - a lot. "I always felt like I was, like, going to jinx myself and I always just felt that I needed to do it, or else something bad would happen," said Gabby, who lives in New Market, Md. About a year ago, Gabby's therapist diagnosed her with OCD but acknowledged that she was not the right fit for helping Gabby with her symptoms, Worden said. Through a Facebook support group, she learned about the telemedicine site NOCD, which connected Gabby with a specialist. It was a more accessible, affordable option than alternatives Worden had found, and the therapist has given Worden valuable advice on how to handle situations, too. "It was a relief to hear a therapist say she can lead a successful life," said Worden, who works as a 911 dispatcher. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated Gabby's intrusive thoughts, however. In recent months, she would often sit in bed all day because she feared that if she so much as passed by her siblings on the couch, she would somehow hurt them. But just before her birthday in July, Gabby went shopping in downtown Frederick, Md., with her friends. It was the first time she had seen them since around the time her school stopped in-person instruction, in March. She bought a couple of pairs of new shorts. The social interaction and activities she used to do in public, like buying new clothes, reinvigorated her mood. "That's really helped me to, like, see, like, the purpose in life and, like, why you should get out of your bed, because you can actually have fun, even if you have OCD," she said. The standard therapy for OCD is called exposure and response prevention, or ERP, in which a therapist helps a patient face their fears one step at a time. Some patients with OCD also take a class of medications that are also prescribed for depression called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Often a combination of behavioral therapy and medication works best, Song said. Song takes a "step ladder" approach to exposure and response prevention therapy, analyzing the different steps of a child's OCD rituals and how distressing each of them are. Patients feel most comfortable tackling aspects of rituals associated with the least distress - the ones they are least upset about stopping - and working up from there, Song said. Both Song and McGuire counsel young patients to view OCD as a force separate and outside of themselves that is causing anxiety and disrupting their relationships with others, and to "stand up" to it. "This is the OCD talking. It's like a bully that's talking. And we have to fight back," Song said. As part of her therapy, Emmeline used to keep a "worry jar" for her fears, which often involved people dying. She would tell her mother what was bothering her, Hatch would write it down and the two would deposit the slip of paper in the container. Once, Emmeline was so disturbed by a thought that she burned the paper. She stopped using the jar when she was about 9. There are many misperceptions about OCD. Emmeline gets annoyed when it's used inappropriately, such as "I have to clean my kitchen, I'm so OCD." Emmeline's mother said she and her daughter are passionate about being as open as possible about OCD. "You wouldn't hide the fact that you had, I don't know, diabetes or arthritis or any other chronic illness," Hatch said. "Why should we hide mental health under this stigma?" Since therapists are largely seeing patients through video chat programs now, they rely on parents more than ever to help kids practice therapy techniques and confront flare-ups of unwanted behaviors. Often, children will involve parents in OCD-related behaviors, looking to them for validation. Song's advice for parents helping kids with OCD is to have "compassion with limits," and not engage in power struggles. In Clive's case, his symptoms started in late January and early February, and his parents tried for more than a month to find professional help. Andy Rodgers, his father, said Clive, who is usually shy and mild-mannered, would suddenly become combative and angry when his father would try to talk him out of his OCD-related rituals. "I had a few nights where I kind of held it together until we separated rooms and then I cried," Rodgers said. "As a parent, it's the most natural thing in the world, if your kid's in pain or uncomfortable, you want to rescue them and you want to pull them out of that." Eventually, they found a therapist through NOCD, the same telemedicine site Gabby uses. Exposure response therapy has changed Clive's life, Rodgers said, and created "a family space of compassion and understanding." Rodgers now sees himself as a "workout partner" for Clive, providing encouragement and positive reinforcement as his son works on curbing OCD behaviors. In what his father told him was like "the last level of a video game," Clive visited a messy store that had greatly upset him before the pandemic, and spent 15 minutes inside. While taking appropriate coronavirus precautions, Clive successfully touched a variety of objects, and even sat on the floor in a dirty corner. Now, he's working on curbing his compulsion to look at the sun outdoors. Clive has never met anyone else with OCD, but if he did, he would first reassure them that their secret is safe with him, because he had wanted to keep his condition a secret, too ("I was really mad when my brother told my sister," he said). Then, he would say that exposure response therapy can be hard, but really helps. He doesn't guard his plate from germs at dinner anymore. "Even when it's really bad, it just keeps getting less and less and less and less until you're just, it doesn't really bother you anymore, only sometimes," Clive said. Bus drivers employed by Go North West, based at the Queens Road depot in Manchester, have voted by 94 percent for industrial action following a consultative ballot. The drivers are opposing moves by Go North West to attack their pay, terms, and conditions. Go North West is part of the multi-billion pound Go Ahead group. It intends to fire the whole workforce of 477 workers and then rehire them, forcing them to accept inferior job contracts including an increase in hours worked that will be unpaid, and slashing sick pay arrangements. Go North West have offered a one-off payment of 5,000 to compensate for a cut in drivers pay by an average of 3,500 a year. Last year, Go North West purchased the Queens Road depot from another bus company, First Manchester, along with its fleet of 163 buses. Local newspaper, the Oldham Chronicle, reported last month that Go North West managing director, Nigel Featham says many of the working practices inherited at Queens Road when they took over the depot last year have been in use since the 1980s. Commenting prior to the strike vote on existing working practises, Featham said, There are some real throwbacks in there and while individually these may seem harmless, together they add up to a huge waste of resource each year. He added, For us its a simple choice between continuing to sustain annual losses or improving our performance to a point where we eventually return the business back into profit. The Go Ahead group is one of the biggest bus operators in the UK. It also runs bus and train services internationally, operating in Singapore, Australia, Germany, Norway, and plans to expand operations into Scandinavia. Go Ahead made an operating profit for the year ending June 27 of between 63 million and 75 million. The company initially tried to impose the new conditions on the Queens Road depot workers during lockdown when 80 percent of the workforce had been furloughed. Senior managers are accused of bullying and harassment by drivers with complaints being made over homophobia and harassment of a staff member with mental health problems. A Unite trade union representative at the depot who did not agree to the companys demands has been suspended and faces a disciplinary hearing. Bus drivers have been forced to take on extra cleaning duties during the pandemic, putting themselves at risk without adequate safety measures in place. As with bus drivers and transport workers throughout the country, such attacks could only be imposed due to the collaboration of the trade unions with management. The Unite union declared in an August 11 statement that working practices at the Queens Road depot, Manchester which the company wants to buy-out have since been replaced by additional cleaning and cash collection duties which mean the bus drivers are working just as hard. Unite is opposed to industrial action and the mobilisation of its members against the onslaught by Go North West. The consultative ballot is a means for the union bureaucracy to delay and frustrate any industrial action and a means in which they justify further collaboration with the corporations on exactly how managements attacks on the workforce can be implemented. The question Unite put to its members on the ballot was, Do you wish to proceed to a full industrial action ballot? The union made a naked appeal to shareholders at Go Ahead on the basis that management at Go North West were a liability and were jeopardizing continued profitability! In an August 13 statement, Unite said of Go North West managing director, We believe that Nigel Feathams bull in a china shop actions are now the biggest threat to the business and its profitability. Just prior to the strike vote being announced, General Secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, wrote on September 9 to CEO David Brown that the union was launching an international campaign over the dispute. He was clear that this had nothing to do with uniting drivers in Manchester with those in Go Aheads workforce in the rest of the UK and globally. Instead he threatened to expose your companys behaviour to all of your stakeholders, partners and associates, including our significant political network in the Nordic countries, Germany and Australasia. The main demand to management at Go North West was for renewed collaboration. Unite executive officer, Sharon Graham, said, Go North Wests managing director Nigel Featham has put the company on course for an unnecessary conflict. His actions could lead to lasting damage to the reputation of Go Ahead both throughout this country and overseas. Our message to the company is fair and simpledrop the disciplinary action against our union representative, drop your fire & rehire threat and get around the negotiating table. Drivers everywhere have seen a worsening of their conditions, with an increased risk of being infected by COVID-19 and the lack of basic health and safety provision. Bus workers in Manchester must look at the pernicious role Unite have played in suppressing the struggle of their brothers and sisters in London, who have been fighting to defend their health, safety and very lives during the pandemic. To date 33 London bus workers have lost their lives due to COVID-19. Last month, bus workers at Arriva and Metroline garages in London voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action in two consultative ballots. On August 7, drivers at Arriva North and Arriva South voted to strike for a COVID payment. The yes vote was more than 98 percent, with 1,675 voting in favour. Drivers were angered at having to work longer hours on Sunday rosters throughout the national lockdown, and only receiving lower MondayFriday pay rateseffectively a huge wage cut for risking their lives as frontline workers. A separate ballot held a few days later at four Metroline West garages over the introduction of remote sign-on and a range of other health and safety issues received almost total backing among 523 drivers involved. At three garages, Alperton, Greenford and Willesden Junction, the vote was unanimous. All these votes are being sat on by the union bureaucracy, who intend to do nothing. There have been a number of protests outside the Manchester Queens Road bus depot organised by officials from Manchester Trades Council, Labours Momentum group, and supporters of the pseudo-left Counterfire. Some buses have been delayed in leaving the garage and on several occasions the police have been called. The purpose of these protests is to cover for Unites refusal to organise any real fightback. To take forward the struggle against Go Ahead, bus drivers must organise themselves independently of the trade unions and their backers among the pseudo-left milieu. This demands the building of rank-and-file workers safety committees at every bus depot. These committees must start from the needs of workers and not the best way to keep the company profitable. Workers in Manchester should emulate the move by London bus drivers at a number of garages who this week set up the London Bus Drivers Rank-and-File Safety Committee. The main resolution passed by the drivers reads, Independent action is needed because the trade unions work on behalf of the companies and the government in suppressing opposition from below. During the first wave of the pandemic, as COVID-19 was killing drivers, Unite joined with TfL and the bus companies to insist that PPE was not recommended, pledging industrial harmony. Members who criticised Unites actions were suspended from the union. The resolution concluded, We call on fellow bus and transport workers at garages in London and beyond to stand with us in this fight. Help establish a network of rank-and-file committees to take this fight forward. Some 500 Florida National Guard troops were beginning search-and-rescue efforts in the states western Panhandle on Wednesday afternoon after Hurricane Sally unleashed torrential rains that caused life-threatening floods throughout the region. Army Guard soldiers with high-water vehicles were working with local firefighters in hard-hit areas around Pensacola on Wednesday as the slow-moving storm crept inland toward Georgia, said Air Force Lt. Col. Caitlin Brown, a spokeswoman for the Florida Guard. Once the rains subside, Brown said she expected Guard troops to be tasked with other missions including route clearance and supply delivery. Were focused now only on missions that are life-saving, she said Wednesday. Were going to be there as long as were needed, and we expect that our mission may shift depending on the extent of the damage, the impact of the storm. Western Florida took the brunt of the storm, which made landfall early Wednesday morning as a Category 2 storm near Gulfport, Ala., and moved across the Florida Panhandle at some 3 mph, dumping rain for hours. Officials at Naval Air Station Pensacola reported power outages and some flooding on the base, but they did not have any damage assessment on Wednesday. The National Weather Service said more than 2 feet of rain had fallen in the areas around the naval air station. It also reported nearly 3 feet of water on the streets of downtown Pensacola. Meteorologists attributed the mounting rainfall totals to the unusually slow pace of the storm as it moved from the Gulf of Mexico onto land. They warned flooding to grow worse in the coming days for areas impacted by the storm. Like Floridas western Panhandle, coastal Alabama saw flooding and mass power outages in Sallys wake. National Guard troops were responding there with 11 high-water vehicles, said Maj. Jacqueline Whitt, a spokeswoman for the Alabama National Guard. When it is safe to do so, we will begin reconnaissance and assessments in Mobile and Baldwin counties, evaluating the situation on the ground, Whitt said Wednesday afternoon. We are standing by to support the overall Hurricane Sally response as requested by the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. National Guard troops in neighboring Mississippi who had staged to respond to the hurricane are also poised to help respond in Alabama, if needed, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Guard said Wednesday. The troops had prepared to respond in their home state but were ordered to stand down early Wednesday afternoon after Mississippi was spared the worst of Hurricane Sally. Coast Guard helicopters on Wednesday flew search-and-rescue overflights to look for signs of people in distress following the storm. The service said the flights would continue, but it did not report any rescues on Wednesday. 2020 the Stars and Stripes Visit the Stars and Stripes at www.stripes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Washington Coast Resumes Razor Clam Digging, Tentative Schedules Through Dec Published 09/16/20 at 3:41 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Twin Harbors, Washington) Clamming gleefully returns to the Washington coast after September 16 with 39 scheduled dates through December, as shellfish managers have approved the harvesting of razor clams after marine toxins tested below warning levels. Final approval is still required on the scheduled open dates, which depend on further marine toxin testing. Digging for clams is also contingent upon what is happening with COVID-19 in Washington coast communities. Meanwhile, those not living in Oregon are still not allowed to dig for clams on its coastline, leaving Washingtonians to their beaches. Close proximity can accelerate the spread of COVID-19, so were asking the public to take steps to thoroughly prepare for their visits to avoid increasing risk, said Larry Phillips, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) coastal region director, who notes that the Department is being guided by risk assessments by local and state health officials. Health agencies are asking people to: Stay home if sick, Practice social distancing of at least six feet, Mask up, Bring Personal Protective Equipment like hand sanitizer, Leave no Trace: Pack out belongings and garbage, Purchase licenses ahead of the trip, Bring non-cash payment methods to reduce contact, and Follow local ordinances and guidelines. Abundant razor clam populations are allowing for numerous digging opportunities this year, said Ayres. But, it is important that clam diggers only dig where it is allowed, pay close attention to the variable day openings on Copalis and Mocrocks, prefer weekday digging if possible to avoid crowds, and spread out while digging, especially now. Razor clam diggers can find detailed beach maps that indicate locations and local names for beaches on WDFWs razor clam webpages. COVID-19 infection rates in Washington beach towns and larger cities will be closely monitored by public health officials, possibly adjusting the digging season dates to reduce further risk from the pandemic. All diggers age 15 or older must have an applicable fishing license to harvest razor clams on any beach. Licenses, ranging from a three-day razor clam license (starting at $9.70) to an annual combination fishing license, are available on WDFW's website at https://fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov and from some 600 license vendors around the state. WDFW recommends buying your license before visiting coastal beach communities for this razor clam season. Under state law, diggers at open beaches can take 15 razor clams per day and are required to keep the first 15 they dig. Each digger's clams must be kept in a separate container. More information can be found on WDFW's razor clam webpage at https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/razorclams/. The approved razor clam digs to date, along with low tides and beaches, are listed below: A.M. TIDES: Sept. 16, Wednesday, 6:17 am, -1.0 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Sept. 17, Thursday, 6:58 am, -1.0 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Sept. 18, Friday, 7:39 am, -0.8 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Sept. 19, Saturday, 8:19 am, -0.3 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks No digging is allowed after noon for digs where low tide occurs in the morning. The tentative razor clam through December, along with low tides and beaches, are listed below: P.M. TIDES: Sept. 20, Sunday, 9:43 pm, -0.8 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Sept. 21, Monday, 10:37 pm, -0.8 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Sept. 22, Tuesday, 11:37 pm, -0.3 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Oct. 16, Friday, 7:00 pm, -0.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Oct. 17, Saturday, 7:47 pm, -1.3; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Oct. 18, Sunday, 8:35 pm, -1.5; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Oct. 19, Monday, 9:24 pm, -1.4; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Oct. 20, Tuesday, 10:16 pm, -1.0; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Oct. 21, Wednesday, 11:12 pm, -0.5; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Oct. 31, Saturday, 7:26 pm, 0.0; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 1, Sunday, 6:59 pm, -0.1; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 2, Monday, 7:33 pm, -0.1; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Nov. 3, Tuesday, 8:08 pm, -0.1; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 13, Friday, 4:58 pm, -0.3; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 14, Saturday, 5:45 pm, -1.3; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Nov. 15, Sunday, 6:32 pm, -1.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 16, Monday, 7:19 pm, -1.8; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Nov. 17, Tuesday, 8:06 pm, -1.6; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Nov. 18, Wednesday, 8:56 pm, -1.1; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Nov. 19, Thursday, 9:47 pm, -0.5; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 1, Tuesday, 7:14 pm, -0.4; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 2, Wednesday, 7:51 pm, -0.4; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 3, Thursday, 8:30 pm, -0.3; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 4, Friday, 9:12 pm, -0.1; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 12, Saturday, 4:44 pm, -0.8; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 13, Sunday, 5:32 pm, -1.4; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 14, Monday, 6:19 pm, -1.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 15, Tuesday, 7:05pm, -1.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 16, Wednesday, 7:50 pm, -1.5; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 17, Thursday, 8:35 pm, -1.0; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 18, Friday, 9:21 pm, -0.4; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 28, Monday, 5:43 pm, -0.2; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 29, Tuesday, 6:20 pm, -0.5; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks Dec. 30, Wednesday, 6:57 pm, -0.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis Dec. 31, Thursday, 7:34 pm, -0.7; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks No digging is allowed before noon during digs when low tide occurs in the afternoon or evening. More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted COLCHESTER, ESSEX / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2020 / Direct mail company Citipost Mail with marketing agency The Write Impression (TWI) and design agency Guy Clubb Designs (GCD) has been shortlisted for a national award celebrating the significant impact of shaping the perception of corporate identity can have on employee engagement and recruitment. The marketing collaboration, based respectively in Derbyshire, Essex and Suffolk, has demonstrated the capabilities of remote working to make the final shortlist for the Employer Branding Award at the 2020 Personnel Today Awards. The Employer Branding Award recognises organisations that create a flexible, accessible company identity that ultimately presents somewhere people want to work. The award is judged on the creation and maintaining of this identity, as well as its impact on employee engagement levels, retention and recruitment. The new Citipost Mail brand, created in collaboration with creative agencies TWI and GCD, consulted a series of internal focus groups involving members of staff to ensure the new branding represented the organisation's people, and what it is like to work for Citipost Mail. The results have been overwhelming, as Citipost Mail has enjoyed significant improvements across the board following their new brand, ranging from a 100% increase in applications for job openings to 280% growth in LinkedIn engagement and 95% more sessions on the Citipost Mail website. Guy Clubb, founder and lead designer at GCD, says: "The challenge was to create a brand that embodied what makes any organisation what it is - the people that work there. Working with the employees to create a visually compelling brand that they feel represents them and Citipost Mail, was a really satisfying experience. Plus, being shortlisted for the Employer Branding Award goes to show how much we've achieved with Citipost Mail's new brand and to win would cement that." Kate Everett, managing partner of TWI, says: "The Citipost Mail brand had to become people-focused, to centre on brand expertise in a way that shows that quality is delivery by extraordinary people. Citipost Mail's people are extremely skilled at translating complex industry jargon into simple, helpful communications. This language was integral to the brand guidelines and marketing communications, from the client communication strategy to in-house messaging." David Bradford, head of marketing at Citipost Mail, says: "The reasoning for replacing the single agency strategy was to swap mediocrity for specialism, to enable us to optimise high-quality innovation quickly in order to adapt to a fast-moving marketplace. This required a high level of collaboration and teamwork between agencies, which we definitely achieved on this project." David continues: "The new brand goes to the heart of Citipost Mail, representing our people, in particular their passion, expertise and pride in the services delivered by Citipost Mail. The new portfolio of brand assets also gives each employee a clearer sight of the company's overall brand vision, which enables them to do their job more effectively." The winners of the 2020 Personnel Today Awards, which celebrate the best in HR throughout the UK, will be announced at Virtual Ceremony broadcast live to the homes and workplaces of finalists on Thursday 26 November from 4 PM. View the Citipost Mail brand at www.citipostmail.co.uk or visit GCD www.gcd.agency or TWI www.twi.agency. CONTACT: Kate Everett The Write Impression 01473 326907 kate@twi.agency SOURCE: The Write Impression (TWI) View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/606562/Citipost-Mail-Shortlisted-for-UK-Branding-Award When billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign in March, he pledged to spend 'whatever it takes' to help Democrats defeat President Donald Trump. Less than two months before the election, he's finally coming through. Facing questions about whether he would fulfill his promise, Bloomberg over the weekend moved to direct $100 million to Florida alone in support of Joe Biden. It's a massive sum on par with the resources he poured into helping Democrats retake the House in 2018 and could put Trump on defense in a state that is critical to his reelection. Trump's campaign last week suggested it could win without Florida - but admitted that doing so would mean sweeping the three swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania which he took by razor-thin margins and where he is behind in polls and then picking up a state he lost, such as Minnesota or New Hampshire. Trump's campaign has put resources into both Minnesota and New Hampshire, but has seen little polling boost in either state. Biden's paths to victory are less dependent on Florida, with the three mid-western states plus Arizona just one of the Florida-free options to win. 'Investment': Mike Bloomberg's aid for Joe Biden's campaign is described by his aides as in line with his strategy in business and politics of putting money in to the best winning prospects at the best time after careful study of the data. The two were side-by-side at the September 11 commemoration in New York Knockout? Joe Biden's hopes of victory over Donald Trump would be drastically increased by taking Florida, making Trump dependent on picking up a state he previously lost Billionaire donors have long played a central role in supporting both parties. Yet no one has proposed pumping in so much cash to support a presidential campaign in a single state. Bloomberg's allies say the investment is in line with his longtime strategy in business and politics: to make the most impactful investment, based on the best data, at the right time. 'Mike Bloomberg is an impact player,' said former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who served as a co-chair of Bloomberg's presidential campaign. 'He's looking across the field. He takes in the data. He looks at the evidence, does the analysis and then determines where to best have his impact to change the course of an election. That's why he decided to invest so heavily in Florida.' Bloomberg's advisers say his Florida investment offers multiple benefits for Democrats: It frees up Democratic cash, allowing the campaign and outside groups to focus on other key swing states; it requires Republicans to spend more heavily to make up for the disparity there; and a decisive win by Biden in Florida could help tamp down efforts most Democrats are expecting from Trump to discount the results of the election. Florida election officials can start counting absentee ballots weeks before Election Day, which means they're typically able to report those results - which tend to favor Democrats - that night. And Trump has praised Florida's mail ballot system, meaning if Biden wins there, it will be tougher for Trump to reverse course on the state. 'It's pretty important for the democracy if Biden does win for us to be able to call Florida on election night,' said Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg's longtime adviser. Still, Bloomberg isn't necessarily a natural fit to help Democrats. Initially a Democrat, he became a Republican in 2000 ahead of his first run for New York City mayor. He left the GOP in 2007 and wasn't affiliated with either party until registering as a Democrat again last year. He won praise from some Democrats for his work during the midterms and in support of gun control. But his reputation took a hit during his presidential campaign when he faced scrutiny over past comments and treatment of women and Black people along with accusations that he was using his own money to buy the White House. After spending $1 billion on his own campaign, Bloomberg won just one primary contest: American Samoa. He received more negative attention after leaving the race for laying off campaign staffers he'd promised to employ through November. Previous campaign success: In 2018, Bloomberg spent millions on helping Democrats and backing his Everytown for Gun Safety campaign group, which he is giving big too again And after an initial transfer of $18 million in leftover campaign funds to the Democratic National Committee, many party leaders started to question whether he'd renege on his pledge to spend big defeating Trump as the months ticked down. His Florida investment has tempered those criticisms, but some privately still grumble that it took him until the final months of the race to engage. 'The guy has an ego as large as anybody's. It took him a while to get his feelings unbruised,' said John Morgan, a major Democratic fundraiser and plaintiffs' attorney in Florida, who added that Bloomberg nonetheless has the opportunity to deliver a 'knockout blow' to Trump if Biden ends up winning Florida. Bloomberg's aides argue that the billionaire businessman has been involved from the start of his own campaign, noting the money he spent on anti-Trump advertising - $275 million, according to their tally. And they say that, beyond Florida, Bloomberg is one of the Democratic Party's biggest funders. He has contributed $500,000 to Voto Latino to help register Latino voters, $2 million to the group Collective Future to help register Black voters, and $2 million to Swing Left, a group focused on electing Democrats in swing districts. One of the groups he has founded and funds, Everytown for Gun Safety, has committed to spending $60 million on elections this cycle, and Bloomberg himself has pledged another $60 million to support Democrats in House races. He's already delivered $11.4 million to House Majority PAC, the major Democratic super PAC helping elect Democrats to the House. Bloomberg has also invested an additional $35 million in Hawkfish, the voter data outfit he launched, to help Democrats counter Trump's massive digital organization. Hawkfish is working with the DNC and at least two major Democratic super PACs on their voter data and targeting operations. And while the businessman has not yet committed any money to helping Democrats take back the Senate, Nutter said to stay tuned. Bloomberg's team, he said, is watching the data. 'There are a lot of things under consideration right now,' he said. Bloomberg's advisers say they are still working out the details of how they will spend the money in Florida. Much of it will go to TV and internet advertising, as well as Latino-focused get-out-the-vote efforts. They also plan to invest significantly in existing groups that have already built infrastructure, and Hawkfish will be involved in making a number of the spending and advertising decisions, particularly around educating voters on mail-in voting. Some of the spending is aimed, however, at helping Biden make up for what some Democrats say is an unexpected deficit in Florida. Many say Biden, who visited the state on Tuesday for the first time since becoming the nominee, has not reached out enough to Hispanics in particular. 'It has gotten closer,' said Manny Diaz, a former Miami mayor who is advising the new Bloomberg effort in Florida. 'We see a narrowing because there is a vacuum right now. And what is going to be important over the next 50 to 60 days is to fill that vacuum.' And while national Democrats have eschewed knocking on doors because of the pandemic, some of that money will trickle down to groups that are actively doing so, Diaz said. 'People like to see that there's excitement,' he said. 'The TV at one point becomes just noise.' KIGALI, Rwanda The former hotelier lauded as a hero during the 1994 Rwanda genocide says he was duped by the Rwandan authorities into returning to his home country last month to face charges of terrorism and murder, boarding a plane he thought was going to Burundi instead. Paul Rusesabagina, whose story inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda, made the assertion in an interview to The New York Times on Tuesday as government officials listened in at the Kigali Metropolitan Police headquarters, where he has been held for more than two weeks. A prominent government critic who had been living in exile in Texas, Mr. Rusesabagina, 66, said that during his first few days of custody in the hands of Rwandan intelligence operatives, he was kept tied up and did not know where he was. His treatment has improved since then, he said. Mr. Rusesabagina said he was giving the interview voluntarily, but he appeared to be speaking under duress. Deliveries could potentially begin in late 2020 subject to completion of successful trials and registration of the vaccine by regulatory authorities in India The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russias sovereign wealth fund, and Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd. (Dr. Reddys), a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Hyderabad, have agreed to cooperate on clinical trials and distribution of Sputnik V vaccine in India. Upon regulatory approval in India, RDIF shall supply to Dr. Reddys 100 million doses of the vaccine. The Sputnik V vaccine, which is based on wellstudied human adenoviral vector platform with proven safety, is undergoing clinical trials for the coronavirus pandemic. Deliveries could potentially begin in late 2020 subject to completion of successful trials and registration of the vaccine by regulatory authorities in India. The agreement between RDIF and Dr Reddys reflects the growing awareness of countries and organizations to have a diversified anti-COVID vaccine portfolio to protect their populations. G V Prasad, Co-Chairman & Managing Director of Dr. Reddys Laboratories said, We are pleased to partner with RDIF to bring the vaccine to India. The Phase I and II clinical trials have shown promising results. We will be conducting Phase-III trials in India to ensure safety and efficacy for the Indian population and to meet the requirements of the Indian regulators. Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight against COVID 19 in India. On August 11, the Sputnik V vaccine developed by the Gamaleya National Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology was registered by the Ministry of Health of Russia and became the worlds first registered vaccine against COVID-19 based on the human adenoviral vectors platform. Detailed information on the Sputnik V vaccine, the technological platform of human adenoviral vectors, and other details are available at sputnikvaccine.com On September 4, a research paper on the results of Phase I and Phase II clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine was published in The Lancet, one of the leading international medical journals, demonstrating no serious adverse effects and a stable immune response in 100% of participants. Post-registration clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine involving 40,000 volunteers are currently ongoing. More than 55,000 volunteers have applied to take part in post-registration trials. The first results of these trials are expected to be published in October-November 2020. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global nail polish remover market is showing significant promise for growth and it can achieve a hike by 3.4% CAGR between 2019 and 2024, which can be considered as the forecast period. Market Research Futures (MRFRs) is making significant claims in the report they have published recently on the Nail Polish Remover Market Analysis. The market valuation, as per the report, can touch a valuation of USD 1.2 million by 2024. The product nail polish remover can be described as a solvent that comprises oils, alcohol, chemicals, and coloring. It is available in several forms like pads soaked in the solvent or liquid remover that needs proper applying of the remover with a pad. The market for nail polish remover finds significant growth due to the growing inclusion fashion in the daily lives. This is inspiring various consumers in trying different colors on their nails, for instance, the idea of nail art with glitters and colors, tattoos, and others. The market is witnessing a strong intake of these products and the investment in the research and development sector is expected to make a significant scope for the market to gain an advantage. The hike in the beauty industry, in terms of store counts, is also expected to make sure that the market for nail polish remover gets significant traction. Segmentation: The global market for nail polish remover can be analyzed in a better way by getting the focus on its segments that include form, category, product type, and distribution channel. The understanding of the market can inspire better strategy-making moves. By product type, the market report on the nail polish remover contains ethyl acetate, acrylic, acetone, and others. The acetone segment has better market coverage and can grow with the highest CAGR in the coming years. Get a FREE Sample Copy of Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3833 By category, the global market report on the nail polish remover can be segmented into natural and synthetic. The synthetic segment has the maximum market share and the natural segment can find growth with the highest CAGR during the forecast period. By form, the market report on nail polish remover includes cotton pads, liquid, and others. The liquid segment is in a dominant position as per the record of 2018. The pads segment can emerge as the fastest growing one in the coming years. By distribution channel, the market report on the nail polish remover comprises store-based and non-store-based. The store-based segment includes specialty stores, supermarkets & hypermarkets, and others. The store-based segment can register a better growth rate but the non-store-based segment is set to proceed with the highest growth rate over the forecast period. Regional Analysis: The North American market is showing significant market growth possibilities as people in the region are well-versed with the latest trends that can be utilized to gain better market percolation. The market in the Asia Pacific region is set to be the fastest-growing due to significant changes taking place in South Korea, China, Thailand, and others. In Europe, the remover market is expanding with growing participation young adults in various nail arts that are significantly driving the market. The same is relevant to North America as well. Competitive Landscape: There are several companies in the market for nail polish remover that are launching strategies to gain the most for the market. These companies are Elif Cosmetics Ltd (Turkey), Industrie Pagoda SRL (Italy), Colorbar Cosmetics Pvt. Ltd (India), Lakme (Unilever PLC) (India), Kara (Future Consumer Limited) (India), Maybelline LLC (L'Oreal S.A.) (US), Innisfree Corporation (South Korea), Faces Cosmetics Inc (Canada), Komal Manufacturing Chemists Pvt. Ltd. (India), Orly International, Inc (US), Kiko Cosmetics Retail Private Limited (Italy), Kure Bazaar SAS (France), Miss Claire Cosmetics (Poland), Karma Organic Spa (US), OPI (Coty, Inc) (US), and others. Access Full Report: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/nail-polish-remover-market-3833 GHI recently launched a nail polish remover that comes without the acetone. This means good news for nails as acetone is known for its adverse impacts on nail. The product is also quite known for its unique packaging technology where one only has to dip the finger in the bottle to get the nail polish removed. Note: Our team of researchers are studying Covid-19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. To stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., announced a resolution Thursday that would broadly cancel federal student loan debt due to the coronavirus crisis. The resolution calls on President Donald Trump to take executive action to forgive up to $50,000 in debt for borrowers. The economic aftermath from the pandemic, which caused unemployment to spike and wages to fall, has made it nearly impossible for many borrowers to repay their college loans, the senators said. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards A businessperson with ties to Peterborough and his own struggles with addiction is proposing to finance and build a detox and treatment centre in Peterborough to alleviate wait times in hospitals. Alex Bishop, managing partner of the Concierge Group, grew up in Peterborough and is a recovering addict. He says he understands the issues that have plagued the city during the opioid crisis. My personal connection to this is that I have been in recovery for a decade, next year, Bishop said. I have deep connections, I have had a lot of people in my life that have actually passed away from this disease, from addiction and suffer from other mental health issues. Between 40 to 60 per cent of all emergency room visits are mental health or addictions related and about 95 per cent of these visits dont meet the threshold for emergencies, he said. What that means is almost half of the visits to the ER, could be completely gone, we have gigantic wait times in ERs, we know this, Bishop said. If you drive by any emergency room in the province you will see first responders sitting and waiting to drop off their patients while on offload delay, he said. He said he wants to improve the system by providing a facility bringing together existing services throughout Peterborough to provide for the needs of people who need it during acute stages in their mental health or addictions issues. There are long-term solutions to take people from where they are at an acute stage to get them community support, Bishop said. At the centre would be an urgent care centre at the heart of it and both short-term stay beds, they could be used for detoxes, they could be used for mental health holds and then community support agencies that are already in Peterborough would be plugged into the same centre. Emergency rooms are not the place for people who are in a mental health crisis or dealing with addictions because it doesnt help anybody, he said. The centre should be located on a site within a three kilometres of the hospital and would host many of the existing services such as PARN and FOURCast that help people with addictions. There should be rental spaces for offices for various other community services for homelessness, for food security, for ongoing mental health and addictions treatment that are already in the community, Bishop said. They need to be on-site, so there can be a referral and then short term stay beds. He said this type of thing is something that is socially good for the community and that politicians across the province should want something like this in their communities to help reduce wait times and costs of an overburdened system. This proposal is not only the right thing to do, it is a socially good move, it is fiscally responsible, Bishop said. This is something that every single politician in the province should be interested in and asking how they can bring this to their neighbourhood, and this would actually reduce operational costs. He said he is hopeful the city would endorse his proposal for the treatment centre because it would be beneficial for the community. If the city of Peterborough is serious about this, we are willing to put our money where our mouth is and design, build, and finance the centre for Peterborough that would be run by the public system, Bishop said Coun. Dean Pappas said he hasnt read the proposal yet, but he introduced a motion at the Sept. 8 city council meeting that would see partnerships form around recovery beds. He said he wanted to start a conversation about the need for recovery beds to move toward a treatment centre like the one Bishop is proposing. That is why I wanted to start with recovery beds at the hospital because they (people) are there, Pappas said. People who have ODed are there thats a good time to kind of say now we are here to help you. You dont have to go far. The motion aims to advocate for the beds and start a dialogue, he said, and if council ratifies it later this month it would allow the city to start real meaningful discussions on the issue. That motion is really designed to start the ball rolling again and get the discussion off the ground, Pappas said. Because it is also about treatment, we need treatment. Tourists will be barred from visiting Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and the Fort Morgan peninsula for at least the next 10 days as those communities make repairs and assess damage caused by Hurricane Sally, a local tourism organization said Wednesday night. Our destination is closed to visitors for at least the next 10 days (through Saturday, Sept. 26) to allow the cities, businesses, and residents time to assess damage and begin cleanup and repairs. This includes Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and the Fort Morgan Peninsula, Gulf Shores & Orange Beach tourism said on its website. Visitors with existing reservations for these dates should contact the hotel or company you have reservations with to understand their policies related to storms, cancelations, and rescheduling. Sally made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane around 4:45 a.m. Wednesday near Gulf Shores, causing major flooding and extensive damage in south Alabama. One person was killed in Orange Beach and another is missing, according to Tony Kennon, the citys mayor. Visitors to Orange Beach who remain in the city can exit by going north on the Foley Beach Express toll bridge. The bridge, as well as the Perdido Pass Bridge, are closed to visitors attempting to enter the city. Only Orange Beach residents with hurricane re-entry passes and workers who can provide proof of employment through a work ID or a pay stub will be allowed to cross the bridge into Orange Beach. All of Baldwin County is under a 7 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew that was imposed because of the hurricane. (PHOTO: SBS Transit/Facebook) SINGAPORE A commuter accused of attacking an SBS Transit bus captain after being told to put on his mask was charged in court on Thursday (17 September). Jaafally Abdul Rahim, 52, faces one charge each of possessing an offensive weapon and voluntarily causing hurt to bus captain Low Kok Weng on Tuesday. The Singaporean is said to have pushed Low in the face while on bus service 21, which was had come to a stop at a bus stop along Pasir Ris Drive 1 at about 2.50pm. He is also accused of having a knife with a handle and blade, each measuring 6cm, without lawful authority or for a lawful purpose while at the same location. Jaafally will return to court for a further mention on 8 October. The case was adjourned for further investigations and for Lows medical report to be submitted to court. His case is the latest in a string of such assaults, SBS Transit said on Wednesday. What happened yesterday is unfortunately not an incident in isolation. Several of our bus captains have been abused in the last few months on account of enforcing the strict mask-up rule, said SBS Transit in a Facebook post. This is repugnant. And this must stop. The 12-minute assault involved a male commuter who boarded Service 21 along Pasir Ris Drive 6, according to SBS Transit. The man had boarded without a mask and only put it on after. Jaafally allegedly hurled vulgarities at Low for the duration it took to travel two bus stops. The 39-year-old male bus captain later stopped at a bus stop in front of Block 210 Pasir Ris Drive 1 while waiting for the police, who had been alerted to the incident, to arrive. While the vehicle remained stationary, the man grabbed the bus captains neck and collar, holding on for more than a minute and refused to let go despite pleas from the latter. Jaafally allegedly then punched the bus captain repeatedly on the head while the latter cowered with his arms shielding his face. At this point, three young men at the bus stop rushed up the bus and tackled the assailant, dragging him out of the bus to the bus stop, SBS Transit added in its the Facebook post. Story continues The men pinned the assailant to the ground shortly before the police arrived to arrest him, said SBS Transit. The company added that the bus captain had sought medical treatment at Changi General Hospital and has been given three days of medical leave. We are thankful that he did not sustain any serious injuries. He is shaken but remains in good spirits, said SBS Transit. We are especially grateful to the three Good Samaritans who gallantly stepped forward to help our bus captain. We would like to get in touch with them and would be grateful if they can contact us through our hotline at 1800-2872727 or via email at crc@sbstransit.com.sg. In response to queries from Yahoo News Singapore, Tammy Tan, SBS Transits Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, said, "This year alone, we have had close to 40 cases of public bus transport workers being assaulted more than the 33 we had in the whole of 2019. Of the numbers to date, mask-related assaults accounted for about half. If convicted on voluntarily causing hurt, Jaafally may be jailed up to two years, fined up to $5,000, or both. If convicted on possessing an offensive weapon, he faces a term of up to three years jail. He cannot be caned as he is over 50 years old. Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore Other Singapore stories Malaysian who overstayed in Singapore stole debit cards, bikes and mobile phone O-Levels cheating case: Tuition centre principal, 2 others jailed Parti Liyani case: Workers' Party chair Sylvia Lim files parliamentary motion Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 22:49:45|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHONGQING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Even before Lee John Barrett, a 53-year-old YouTube vlogger, stepped into the 2020 Smart China Expo Online, he had already sensed how "smart" China was. When Lee wanted to borrow a coin or a key to tighten up a screw of his camera bracket, he had no luck. He soon realized that keys and coins seem to have become a past in some parts of China. "Many Chinese people now use mobile apps to make payments, so coins are rare," Lee said. "I am surprised how unlocking doors with fingerprints instead of a bunch of keys is prevalent in China." "Chinese people's lives are driven by intelligence and convenience," he added. At the expo held in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Lee and his vlogging partner and son Oliver's amazement skyrocketed on learning about the country's cutting-edge tech development. A self-driving vehicle at the 2020 i-VISTA Autonomous Vehicle Grand Challenge, which was an important segment of the expo, left the vlogging-duo spellbound. At the speed of 40 km per hour on a rainy day, the car was steadily and automatically moving on a slippery, zigzag road. "Everything was unknown to us, like the changing traffic lights and the cars parked in the middle of the road. But the car navigated itself without a driver controlling it manually, and it knew when to turn around, when to stop and when to move on," said Lee. "It is really weird and surreal, but we all know that stands for the future," he added. The factory aura of Chinese automaker Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., Ltd., made Oliver feel like he was in some sci-fi movie scene. More than 500 robots were operating simultaneously in several production lines, among which hundreds of mechanical arms were flexibly picking up, putting down and assembling different auto parts. "This was so splendid. These cars were totally made by machines," said Oliver. "I barely saw people here. Where are the people?" Zou Tao, a staff member of the company, explained that almost the entire manufacturing process has been automated since 2017. "Earlier, the company needed more than 1,000 workers in these production lines, but now a workshop has only 360 workers for simple examination and adjustment," Zou said. The three-day expo that closed Thursday is co-hosted by Chongqing and Singapore. A total of 551 companies and other institutions, including 148 foreign enterprises such as Intel, IBM and Siemens, took part in the online exhibitions of smart products and smart manufacturing, among others. The livestreaming session Lee and Oliver held at the expo has garnered 11,000 views. "Tech words such as AI, 5G and big data were earlier too big for me to comprehend," said Oliver. "But, the tour made us understand how these technologies are being applied specifically. And we will create videos chronicling our experiences here and let more people know." As a former businessman who owned a bean bag factory, Lee was fascinated by the intelligent manufacturing processes. "Things are really different compared to the time when I was in the manufacturing industry," he said. "China's technology is advancing rapidly and providing fertility to all kinds of industries, thereby helping Chinese people and the rest of the world enjoy the tangible benefits of this modernization." Enditem "China has said that Zhenhua is a private company and stated its position publicly," sources said. New Delhi: The Indian government on Wednesday formally raised the issue of alleged snooping by Chinese company Zhenhua Data Information Technology with the Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong. "Government of India is deeply concerned with any report that suggests that foreign sources are accessing or seeking to access the personal data of our citizens without their consent. Government of India takes very seriously the protection of privacy and personal data of Indian citizens," sources said. As per leaked data, Zhenhua was allegedly spying on several persons globally, including Indian top leaders, judges and military commanders. "China has said that Zhenhua is a private company and stated its position publicly," sources said. Chinese Foreign Ministry later in a statement denied reports of snooping, saying the firm under scanner -- Shenzhen Zhenhua -- instead of collecting data "only mobilizes data which is open and available online." Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said: "I noticed the companys response that the report is seriously untrue. The company said clearly that its a private company, and its clients are research institutions and business groups. I would like to stress that as a staunch defender of cyber security, China opposes and fights all cyber crimes. We would like to enhance dialogue and cooperation with other countries to jointly build a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyber space." The spokesperson further said that recently, in response to prominent data security risks, China proposed the Global Initiative on Data Security to uphold data and supply chain security and advance digital economy. "China is ready to enhance cooperation and communication with all sides, make and abide by global rules that reflect the will and respect the interests of all countries, prevent all practices that use ones technological advantage to undermine other countries security, and safeguard global data security," the Chinese spokesperson said. Chinese company Shenzhen Zhenhua has been accused of collecting open-source data and evaluating known figures in targeted fields worldwide. Persons and organisations under its surveillance, include foreign politicians, their spouses and children, scholars, businesses and think tanks. A police chase Thursday morning involving a stolen Feeney Brothers utility truck spanned from Boston to Stoneham and ended in a car crash near Interstate 93, authorities said. Police started pursuing the stolen truck in Boston but eventually lost track of it near the tunnels. The suspect was apparently driving south in the north lane, Massachusetts State Police told MassLive. Officers in Somerville then picked up the pursuit but ended their chase at the on-ramp to I-93 northbound, state police said. State police patrols and K-9 units then began searching for the stolen truck. They tracked the vehicle to the Stone Zoo on Pond Street in Stoneham and found it in a parking lot shortly after 1:30 a.m., according to state police. The suspect drove away from police again before crashing on the on-ramp from the Fellsway eastbound to I-93 southbound in Stoneham, state police said. The suspect, who has yet to be publicly identified, was taken into custody, according to authorities. This story will be updated as more information becomes available. Former New Zealand fly-half Tom Taylor will take Pau to an employment tribunal after his sacking by the French club in June, sources told AFP on Thursday. Taylor, 31, who won the last of his three All Blacks caps in 2013, was fired by the Top 14 outfit for leaving France "without any prior authorisation from his employer even though all players were asked to remain available to the club and to comply with government measures in the fight against Covid-19". The former Crusaders playmaker, who has now joined Japan's Toshiba Brave Lupus after four campaigns at the Pyrenees side, has appointed a legal firm to represent him at the hearing on October 1. According to newspaper L'Equipe, Taylor is claiming around 1 million euros ($1.18 million) in salary loss which include image rights for his contract that was to run until June 2022. Pau president Bernard Pontneau refused to comment. leg-rap/iwd/mw The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to socially distance and do whatever we can digitally and remotely. For IT professionals, the pandemic likely brought a lot of unplanned headaches and long hours to ensure their organizations could remain securely operational while supporting a nearly 100% remote workforce. The pandemic has also revealed holes pertaining to digital identity, data protection and cybersecurity that expose individuals, businesses and government agencies to online fraud. Though numerous new technologies and commercial solutions are available, their value is limited to a single organization or within a trust framework, and there is a lack of interoperability for the benefit of users and organizations alike. Recently, large-scale data breaches have resulted in terabytes of consumers personally identifiable information (PII) made available for sale on the dark web. The widespread availability of personal information has brought knowledge-based verification (KBV) solutions, once reliable methods to verify identities online, closer to obsolescence. Without the ability to trust personal data in a KBV solution, organizations will need a new method of verifying digital identities that still creates a positive user experience. Unemployment agencies targeted during COVID-19 With millions of Americans applying for unemployment benefits, fraudsters have pounced on state government agencies responsible for unemployment assistance. A May 14, 2020, memo by the US Secret Service reports that Washington, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Florida were victimized by a Nigeria-based fraud ring. The Secret Service states, It is assumed the fraud ring behind this possess a substantial PII database to submit the volume of applications observed thus far. Canada is addressing this cybersecurity problem. Its Digital Identity and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) continues to develop its Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF). As the DIACC notes, the PCTF supports the establishment of an innovative, secure, and privacy respecting Canadian digital identity ecosystem. Conversely, the United States lacks a comprehensive digital ID strategy. The Obama Administration developed one with the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), but it never gained national adoption from service providers. Improving Digital Identity Act of 2020: A government-wide approach That may be changing as Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL) has recently introduced the bipartisan Improving Digital Identity Act of 2020. If enacted, the bill would establish a government-wide approach to improving digital identity. The bill leverages The Better Identity Coalitions 2018 report, Better Identity in America: A Blueprint for Policymakers, which among other things, recommends that government agencies are best-positioned both at the state level via the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the federal level through the Social Security Administration (SSA) to offer new identity services to consumers. The SSA is already progressing in this area and will soon launch its electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification (eCBSV) service. As noted on its website, eCBSV will allow permitted entities to verify if an individuals SSN, name, and date of birth combination matches Social Security records. Social Security needs the number holders written consent with a wet or electronic signature in order to disclose the SSN verification. The Improving Digital Identity Act would create an Improving Digital Identity Task Force within the executive office of the president. Its mission is to establish a government-wide effort to develop secure methods for federal, state and local government agencies to validate identity attributes and support interoperable digital identity verification in both the public and private sectors. The task force would be comprised of cabinet secretaries, heads of other federal agencies, state and local government officials, congressional committee designated members, and a position appointed by the president. Additionally, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would develop a standards framework for digital identity verification to guide federal, state and local governments in selecting their digital identity solutions. NIST would have one year to publish a final version of the framework. The legislation requires the task force to publish a report with recommendations on research and development in systems that enable digital identity verification. Upon its completion and with consent of the individual, the framework will enable government agencies to securely vouch for its citizens in real-time when online. For example, it is customary for an individual applying to open a bank account online or from their mobile device to provide a scan of a government-issued ID, typically a drivers license, and a selfie-photo to assert their identity. Behind the scenes, the image of the drivers license is verified to ensure that microprinting, holograms and other physical security features are consistent. Using biometrics such as facial recognition technology, the selfie photo is compared to the photo on the ID card to ensure they match. Process improvements to verify digital identities and identity systems The current process is good, but it can be made better with a government service. Financial services organizations will gain a public service allowing them, with the customers consent, to ping a state DMV database or the SSAs database. Theyll then receive a clear answer whether the identity data presented is contained in their respective database. This improvement to the identity management process will provide an additional layer of security in real-time to confirm that the person is who they claim to be. The Improving Digital Identity Act is an exciting piece of legislation. If signed into law, it will significantly improve our digital lives and benefit consumers and relying parties alike in the years to come with support for secure digital identity verification. Disclosure: The author represents his employer, OneSpan, Inc., in The Better Identity Coalition and the Digital Identity and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC). The Church of Iceland's new 'woke' ad welcoming people to Sunday School has sparked outrage after it featured a bearded Jesus Christ with breasts, makeup and a dress. The advert, which apparently shows Jesus shaking his 'breasts' while dancing under a rainbow, appeared on the National Church's Facebook page on September 11. The advert has since been deleted from the Church's page, but will be depicted on buses in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik for at least another two weeks. The Church of Iceland's new 'woke' ad welcoming people to Sunday School has sparked outrage after it featured a bearded Jesus Christ with breasts, makeup and a dress The Church said in a statement: 'The 2020 Assembly of the National Church regrets that the picture of Jesus in a Sunday school advertisement has hurt people. The goal was to emphasise diversity, not to hurt people or shock them.' Petur Georg Markan, media representative for the Church of Iceland, said that is positive for Jesus Christ to appear in different forms and that the church celebrates diversity. Markan added: 'In this one, we see a Jesus who has breasts and a beard. We're trying to embrace society as it is. We have all sorts of people and we need to train ourselves to talk about Jesus as being 'all sorts' in this context. 'Especially because it's really important that each and every person see themselves in Jesus and that we don't stagnate too much. That's the essential message. So this is okay. It's okay that Jesus has a beard and breasts.' However, he was also aware of the online backlash, adding: 'We know that not everyone agrees Christ should appear this way, and we do of course respect that.' Markan said that the same artist who designed the ad will begin work on a new campaign: 'Soon, we'll be introducing more personifications where, for example, you'll see Jesus making a contribution to environmental issues.' The 'woke' church representative said the cost of the marketing campaign, designed to encourage youngsters to Sunday school, will be ISK 2 million (11,335). Grafarvogskirkja church minister Guorun Karls- og Helgudottir said: 'Each person interprets something in this picture. Some people interpret it as a trans Jesus, others as a woman. Some see Mary with a beard, and others see a genderqueer person. Views within the church are just as diverse as elsewhere.' After its launch, many slammed the advert on social media. One Facebook user said: 'There was a reason I left the National Church and found another Christian congregation.' Another person wrote: 'Shame on the bishop!' Other comments included 'tasteless' and 'particularly stupid'. 'The church should be ashamed for humiliating Jesus like this,' one person argued. While talking about peace & dialogue on one hand, China has been surreptitiously upgrading its airbase just 330 KMs away from Doklam. While talking about peace & dialogue on one hand, China has been surreptitiously upgrading its airbase just 330 KMs away from Doklam. The latest satellite images accessed by our sister channel NewsX has now exposed the Chinese betrayal. These images show how China has begun upgrading its military deployments, all the while talking about peace. 330 KM from Doklam, China has begun upgrading their airport, according to fresh satellite photos. Hardened aircraft shelters are being built, which will bolster the PLA presence in the area. Lhasa Gongar Airport, China, is being upgraded. It will allow for parking of ships, loading and unloading, and refilling. China has started upgrading its airbase on the western military theater. This move will increase the speed of response of China in Indo-China border tensions, as it will boost the Air Force and aerial capability of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), in the area. By building an airbase 300 km from Doklam, China gains many advantages. Aerial or satellite recon can be avoided. It also makes maintenance of the planes much more convenient for the Chinese military. ALSO READ: Russia to supply 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to India ALSO READ: PM Modi turns 70: Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and others extend wishes Chinese military had practiced with low-caliber Howitzer at an altitude of 4,600 meters for the last few days. It was placed on a 4 wheeled car instead of 6. At the same time, the HJ-10 loaded onto the truck had 2 launchers, instead of the usual 4. These weapons may also be carried by air, and it is believed that the Chinese military has made such adjustments in order to allow them to traverse the hilly conditions easily, while still using the weapons. While China is busy upgrading its airbases, the Indian army is also fully prepared to thwart these nefarious bids by China. From Blacktop to Helmet to crucial heights at Rechin La, the Indian army is dominating almost every crucial height at the banks of S Pangong Tso. The Indian army has also increased deployment significantly at the LaC near Ladakh and is ready for a counter China in the chilly winters of Ladakh. Moreover with the aerial superiority granted post the induction of Rafales, India is fully prepared to take on China. Also read: Yoshihide Suga elected as Japans prime minister, PM Narendra Modi extends congratulatory wishes Israelis protested late on Thursday as the country is to re-enter lockdown on Friday, hours before Jewish New Year, known as Rosh Hashana and extend for three weeks over other holidays Hundreds of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv late Thursday against a second nationwide lockdown, the first such move in the world to tackle a renewed spike in coronavirus cases. The country is to re-enter lockdown at 2:00pm on Friday (1100 GMT), hours before Jewish New Year, known as Rosh Hashana, and extend for three weeks over other religious holidays including Yom Kippur and Sukkot. The Jewish state has the world's second-highest detected virus infection rate after Bahrain, according to an AFP tally over the past fortnight. Israel has registered more than 172,000 coronavirus cases with 1,163 deaths, out of a population of nine million. "The economy is in free-fall, people are losing their jobs, they're depressed," said Yael, one of between 300 and 400 demonstrators in the coastal city of Tel Aviv. "And all this for what? For nothing!" said the 60-year-old former employee of an architectural firm who lost her job in the crisis. Israel had initially been widely praised for curbing the spread of the Covid-19 disease by imposing a stringent lockdown in March, but authorities have acknowledged that they were too quick to ease restrictions subsequently. On the eve of the renewed lockdown, which was announced last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on nationwide television to try to explain the government had no choice. "The health system has raised the red flag... We did everything we could to strike a balance between the (public) health needs and needs of the economy," the premier said on Thursday. Under the new measures, residents will be limited to within 500 metres (yards) of their homes. Exceptions to this rule include residents going out to buy medicine and food, as well as to attend a funeral or circumcision ceremony. Israel's opposition chief Yair Lapid has condemned the measures. "It's a very aggressive move. It's devastating for the economy and it's not helpful in terms of stopping the epidemic," he told AFP this week. "The only reason the government is imposing a new lockdown is that it's completely lost... It's failed completely to contain the coronavirus." Attendance at synagogues, which are usually full for services during Jewish holidays, has been limited depending on the size of each place of worship. Authorities at Jerusalem's Great Synagogue have decided the building will remain closed over the New Year, for the first time in its history. Search Keywords: Short link: Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) Administrator, Mr. Richard Ampofo Boadu has debunked that the assertion by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the Akufo-Addo government has abandoned Mahamas uncompleted Community Senior High School (E-block) projects. According to him, the Akufo-Addo government did not only continue the uncompleted E-block projects but maintained the Consultants that were hired under former President John Dramani Mahama to complete all the Community Senior High School projects (E-Blocks). Briefing the press at the Ministry of Information on Wednesday, September 16, 2020, Mr. Ampofo Boadu indicated that a total of 124 Community Senior High School Projects (E-Blocks) were awarded between 2014 and 2016 of which 23 were funded by the World Bank. He added that the remaining 101 Community Senior High School Projects (E-Blocks) are supposed to be funded by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund). The Administrator said that as at the transition in January 2017 to the new management of the GETFund, the previous Mahama government and the GETFund were able to complete 29 of the E-Block Projects between 2015 and 2016. Breaking it down, he emphasized that 7 out of the 29 completed E-Block Projects within 2015 to 2016 were funded by the World Bank, and the remaining 22 completed Community Senior High School Projects were funded by GETFund. The previous government in 2015 to 2016 completed 7 E-Block Projects funded by the World Bank. GETFund however in the same 2015 to 2016 completed 22 of the E-Block Projects making it 29 in total, he indicated. He indicated that the Akufo-Addo government in continuation of the Community Senior High School Projects (E-Blocks) from 2017 to 2019 completed 14 of the E-Blocks funded by the World Bank, making the World Bank-funded project moved to 21 completed out of the 23 it promised to fund. He stressed that the GETFund under President Akufo-Addo has completed 13 of the Community Senior High School Projects within 2017 to 2019; thus, the current government has also within this period completed 27 of the Community Senior High School Projects. However, out of the 124 Community Senior High School Projects (E-Blocks), 56 have been completed and the remaining 68 are at various levels of completion. 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 Lily James and Andrew Scott featured in first look images for BBC One's The Pursuit Of Love, which were released on Thursday. The actress, 31, stars as lead Linda Radlett, a charismatic woman in search of a husband in Europe between the two World Wars. Transforming into her character, Lily put on a stylish display in a dark pink floral shirt and a dark brown pencil skirt that perfectly matched the era. The Pursuit Of Love FIRST LOOK: Lily James looked stylish in a pink floral shirt and a pencil skirt in the romantic comedy, in snaps shared on Thursday Lily's brunette locks were styled into marcel waves, and she also used a light palette of make-up to finish off her look. Andrew, who is set to appear as Lord Merlin in the show, looked dapper in an open-collared pink shirt and grey trousers. While it's unclear how Andrew's character may feature in Lily's protagonist's life, she was seen living a life of luxury and partying in her pursuit of love. One snap from the comedy saw Linda lapping up attention at a raucous party as she danced around in a white slip dress. Big names: Lily is also joined by Andrew Scott in the show, which is based on Nancy Mitfords 1945 novel of the same name Pursuit of love: Lily stars as a charismatic woman in search of a husband in Europe between the two World Wars, as she embraces her freedom and party-going ways Close: Written and directed by Emily Mortimer, the romantic comedy also features Emily Beecham (R) as Linda's best friend Fanny Logan who is also in search of a husband The series is based on Nancy Mitfords 1945 novel of the same name, which is based on the author and her family's real life experiences and is part of a trilogy. Written and directed by Emily Mortimer, the romantic comedy also features Emily Beecham as Linda's best friend Fanny Logan who is also in search of a husband. The pair's friendship is put through the ringer when Fanny decides to settle down while Linda pursues a life of wild parties in places around the world. Tension: The pair's friendship is put through the ringer when Fanny decides to settle down while Linda pursues a life of wild parties in places around the world Plot: With the changing times Linda and Fanny's choices put them at odds as they question freedom, love, sex, and the human heart (Lily pictured with Assaad Bouab) With the changing times Linda and Fanny's choices put them at odds as they question freedom, love, sex, and the human heart. Also appearing in the show is creator Emily as well as stars Dominic West, Dolly Wells, Shazad Latif and Freddie Fox. The Pursuit of Love will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in 2021, while it'll be released on Amazon Prime Video in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A-list cast: Also appearing in the show is creator Emily as well as stars Dominic West, Dolly Wells, Shazad Latif and Freddie Fox LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Fastmarkets, a leading source of price data for global commodity markets, is delighted to announce the successful completion of an independent assurance review of 28 key metals benchmarks. The external review carried out by professional services firm BDO confirmed that Fastmarkets' governance and controls framework, policies and editorial practices align with the standards defined by the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO) within the Principles for Oil Price Reporting Agencies (PRAs). The review process is comprehensive, examining all relevant documentation and processes to ensure their quality, integrity and adherence to stated methodologies. This year the review process was conducted fully remotely due to coronavirus-related restrictions, with testing and checks done over three months and covering a pricing period of up to 12 months. "We have invested extensive resources to ensure our alignment with the IOSCO Principles for PRAs and added 11 prices to the scope of this year's review despite a challenging macro-economic environment," Fastmarkets CEO Raju Daswani said. "We remain committed to grow our pool of audited prices and give our users the highest possible level of confidence in the reliability of our benchmarks." As per guidance by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), annual assurance reviews by an independent external auditor are sufficient to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR) for commodity benchmarks (paragraph 18 of Annex II). This year's review covered 28 benchmarks from our list of prices in the aluminium, alumina, cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, iron ore, flat steel and steel scrap markets. It involved 11 new prices that received the Type 1 IOSCO accreditation, including: Aluminium P1020A premium, US Midwest delivered Alumina index adjustment to fob Australia index, Brazil index, Cobalt alloy grade, in-whs Rotterdam Cobalt hydroxide payable indicator, cif China Manganese ore index 37% Mn, fob Port Elizabeth Iron ore 62% Fe low-alumina fines, cfr Qingdao Northern Europe HRC Index Steel scrap No1 busheling, index, delivered Midwest mill Steel scrap shredded, index, delivered Midwest mill Steel scrap No1 heavy melt, index, delivered Midwest mill Steel scrap HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix) US material import, cfr main port Taiwan "We are excited to expand the number of prices successfully audited to be in line with IOSCO's stringent principles," said Alex Harrison, Fastmarkets' editorial director, metals & mining. "This shows our commitment to excellence in price methodology across markets and notably in the battery raw materials markets, which are of strategic interest across the globe and likely to see a level of dynamism that will place a premium on trusted methodologies." To see the full list of prices and obtain a copy of the independent assurance report, please click here. Fastmarkets has invested significantly in resources and technology to ensure its price-assessment process aligns with IOSCO principles. View details here. To view Fastmarkets Metals & Mining price methodology/specifications, please click here. For further inquiries, please contact Katharine Kellar at [email protected]. ABOUT FASTMARKETS Fastmarkets is a leading price reporting, analytics and events organization for the global commodity markets, including metals, mining, forest products and agriculture. Fastmarkets' core activity in pricing drives transactions in commodities markets around the world and is complemented by news, industry data, analysis, conferences and insight services. Fastmarkets includes brands such as Fastmarkets MB, Fastmarkets AMM (previously known as Metal Bulletin and American Metal Market respectively), Fastmarkets RISI, Fastmarkets FOEX and Fastmarkets AgriCensus. Its team of over 400 people are located in 17 global offices including London, Boston, New York, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Brussels, Sao Paulo and Helsinki. Fastmarkets is part of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC (LSE:ERM), a listed company on the London Stock Exchange. Euromoney is a leading international business-to-business information group focused primarily on the global commodities, banking and asset management markets. SOURCE Fastmarkets Wyomings chief banking regulator has turned to Chainalysis for beefing up his divisions monitoring capabilities of illicit cryptocurrency activities. Under a one-year deal disclosed to CoinDesk Thursday, Chainalysis will train senior examiners on crypto tracing practices and grant two monitoring software licenses plus investigatory support to the Division of Banking as it eases into its new, crypto-facing compliance duties, according to Commissioner Albert Forkner. Unveiled just one day after Wyoming awarded its first special purpose depository institution (SPDI) bank charter to Kraken, the novel partnership, among the earliest pair-ups featuring a U.S. banking regulator and a blockchain intelligence firm, illustrates how even Americas fast-moving financial watchdogs are cautiously approaching oversight of an asset class that Forkner said still gives some folks the spooks. Related: Kraken Becomes First Crypto Exchange to Charter a US Bank Just the nature of digital assets and the pseudonymity of them have a lot of people concerned about illicit activity, Forkner said. When you introduce a new dynamic like this, he said, regulators have to ensure the newcomers are playing by the rules. Those rules are no different than the ones governing traditional American banks: Watch out for signs of money laundering, dont transact with sanctioned individuals, keep tabs on customer identities and uphold the minutiae of the Bank Secrecy Act. As is for cash, so too for crypto. But blockchains give Wyomings banking regulators a powerful upside that cash cannot match: an immutable, public paper trail built into its code. And while anyone with an internet connection can manually hop between Bitcoin addresses, its only with visualization and tracing tools (like those sold by Chainalysis) that regulators have long sought to unscramble illicit chains. Story continues Chainalysis is among a handful of tracers supporting governments, companies and regulators with cryptocurrency monitoring software. It has particularly deep ties to federal law enforcement. The New York-based firm has banked millions in contracts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies in need of crypto support. (Chainalysis and Forkner declined to state this deals dollar value). Related: Eastern Europe Actively Using Crypto for Illicit Purposes: Chainalysis Read more: Inside Chainalysis Multimillion-Dollar Relationship With the US Government If, say, a bank allows its customers to send crypto to a blacklisted wallet address, then weve got proof of those activities that Forkner said has held up in court. It will also make working with law enforcement easier, Forkner said. He hopes it wont come to that. Once Krakens banking business gets rolling in early 2021 and perhaps other SPDIs (and even non crypto-specific banks) start dealing in crypto, too, he said the Division of Banking will start back-tracing transaction blocks to ensure the institutions are self-monitoring effectively. Well be running our own analysis on that, and verifying that the red flags that we see are the same ones that the SPDIs see, Forkner said. Jesse Spiro, Chainalysis global head of policy, told CoinDesk the move is a first step in providing oversight of the crypto space within Wyoming. Ive told our applicants and potential applicants: My job is not to run your business and I dont want to have government overreach. But there is an appropriate level of oversight and monitoring and this is just one more of those,' Forkner said. Related Stories More than one out of three people who have been hospitalized or died from COVID-19 in Bexar County have had diabetes the most common underlying condition among people who fell severely ill to the disease, according to San Antonio Metro Health data Since the start of the pandemic, San Antonio officials have warned that the coronavirus would pose the greatest threat to people with existing medical conditions. Data released Wednesday makes that clear: 37 percent of people who were hospitalized or died from COVID-19 in Bexar County since the start of the pandemic had diabetes. One in five who died had heart disease, and one in 10 had lung disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Asthma and obesity were also common conditions among those who fell severely ill or died. Any time you have one of these chronic conditions, you are susceptible because your immune system may not be up to par, said Anita Kurian, the assistant director of Metro Health, during Wednesdays city-county briefing. Like COVID-19, underlying health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease disproportionately harm the people already grappling with existing inequities in Americas health care system: people of color and those earning lower incomes. In 2018, nearly 16 percent of Bexar County adults reported that theyd had diabetes at some point in their lives, according to a city survey. The disease is most likely to hit people with less education and lower incomes: Of Bexar County residents making less than $25,000 per year, 27 percent reported having diabetes, compared to only 8 percent of people making more than $50,000 per year. At the same time, its estimated that at least two out of three residents are overweight or obese. Conditions such as obesity and diabetes can be exacerbated by lacking access to healthy foods, while asthma can be worsened by unsafe or dilapidated housing. Many of these health conditions are common in San Antonio so you have to wear a mask and keep your physical distance to keep others safe, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. He said people between the ages of 20 and 29 account for 21.6 percent of the COVID-19 cases here. Children, meanwhile, make up about 12 percent of cases. We do want to remain vigilant, especially among our younger folks, Nirenberg said. Nirenberg said Wednesday that coronavirus grip on Bexar County is continuing to ease slightly, with three deaths and 153 new cases reported. The strain on hospitals also continued to lessen, with 210 patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 down from 228 the day before. That last time that figure was that low was back in mid-June, before more than 1,200 people sick with the virus flooded San Antonio hospitals over the summer. Of those hospitalized, 100 are being cared for in intensive care units, and 42 need ventilators to breathe. The new cases reported Wednesday brings Bexar Countys total since the start of the pandemic to 50,284 roughly 2.5 percent of the countys population. The death toll stands at 1,022. In nearby Comal County, government officials reported 34 new confirmed cases Wednesday. 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 LONDON Anna Netrebko, the star Russian soprano, is in the hospital with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, she said in an Instagram post on Thursday. I have been in the hospital for 5 days with Covid-19 and will recover soon, Ms. Netrebko wrote, adding: Everything will be fine! The devil is not so terrible as it is described. She was admitted to a Moscow hospital just days after performing at the citys Bolshoi Theater with another singer who later tested positive for the virus. Scientists have identified singing indoors as a risky activity, and the news will cause concern among the worlds opera companies, which had been closely watching the starry Bolshoi performances as they forged ahead. Maxim Berin, Ms. Netrebkos Russian manager, said in a telephone interview that the soprano had been unwell since Sept. 9, but he said she was now recovering. Evo Morales, pictured in January 2020, fled into exile following three weeks of protests against his controversial re-election to an unconstitutional fourth term last October Bolivia's government announced on Friday it has contacted the International Criminal Court to denounce former president Evo Morales for "crimes against humanity" over last month's mass roadblock movement. The government accused Morales of "terrorism and genocide" over the 12-day campaign that saw hospitals complain they were unable to receive urgent medical supplies needed to treat coronavirus patients. Bolivia's state prosecutor "is at the ICC in The Hague filing a complaint for #crimesagainsthumanity against Evo Morales and others," said interim President Jeanine Anez on Twitter. Technically states submit communications to the ICC about alleged serious crimes rather than filing complaints. Afterwards the court decides whether to investigate. Conservative Anez said that the communication was "due to the siege of the cities that caused more than 40 deaths from lack of oxygen," which could not be delivered to hospitals. Morales denied any wrongdoing and said the allegations were "a smoke screen aimed at distracting the Bolivian people's attention from the economic, health and humanitarian catastrophe" in their country" ahead of a presidential election in October. Morales, who is a hugely influential figure in Bolivia even though he currently lives in exile in Argentina after 14 years in power, had encouraged his supporters to ramp up the pressure on authorities in a bid to prevent a postponement of the election. The election was originally due to take place in May but was postponed until September 6 and then October 18. While the protests failed to force the poll to take place in September, Bolivia's main trade union called off the roadblocks after the government approved a law preventing a further postponement beyond the October date. But the 12 days of social action involving 142 roadblocks across the country severely limited the ability of trucks carrying oxygen to reach hospitals treating coronavirus patients. Story continues Bolivia has recorded more than 118,000 cases and almost 5,300 deaths from the coronavirus. Neither Morales nor his Movement for Socialism (MAS) party have commented on Anez's claim. It is not the first criminal proceeding brought by the government against the 60-year-old Morales -- Bolivia's first ever indigenous president who was in power from 2006-19. Authorities have also accused Morales of two intimate relationships with minors, including one in which he supposedly fathered a child with a girl who was 15 when she became pregnant. The government also accused Morales of "sedition and terrorism" over the civil unrest that broke out following his resignation and flight into exile in November. MAS has dismissed those accusations as a pre-election tactic. Luis Arce, the MAS candidate for president, has led polls since he was nominated in January but in the latest he was neck-and-neck with centrist former president Carlos Mesa. Morales has been barred from standing in the elections, even as a senator. He fled into exile following three weeks of protests against his controversial re-election to an unconstitutional fourth term last October. An Organization of American States audit found evidence of fraud in the election, after which Morales resigned and left the country. The public prosecutor's office said its head Jose Maria Cabrera met ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in The Hague on Friday. jac/fj/bc/acb/dw NEW DELHI: Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane will be visiting Jammu and Kashmir soon to review the operational preparedness amid the ongoing Line Of Actual Control (LAC) standoff with China. According to reports, Gen Naravane will meet top Army commanders and review the security situation in the state. The Army Chiefs visit holds significance since the armies of India and China have placed themselves on high alert mode and increased patrolling and troops deployment on both sides of the border since the Galwan Valley clashes in June. Earlier today, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asserted that no force in the world can stop Indian troops from patrolling the country's border in the Ladakh region. Replying to clarifications sought by MPs in Rajya Sabha on his statement on the border row, the minister said skirmishes and face-off with China in the last few months have been primarily over the issue of patrolling the Ladakh border. Live TV "I want to make it clear, skirmishes and face-off are because of this (issue of patrolling)," he said, adding the patrolling pattern is traditional and well defined. "No force in the world can stop Indian soldiers from patrolling. Our soldiers have sacrificed their lives only for this," the Defence Minister said. In his statement, Singh said China attempted to change the status quo along the LAC with its provocative military manoeuvres late last month and that there is a mismatch between what Beijing says and does. The Minister said India wants a peaceful solution to the boundary issue but will not shy away from any action required to defend the sovereignty of the country. While the two sides were engaged in diplomatic and military dialogues, Singh said the "Chinese side again engaged in provocative military manoeuvres on the night of 29th and 30th August in an attempt to change the status quo in the South Bank area of Pangong Lake". "But yet again, timely and firm actions by our armed forces along the LAC prevented such attempts from succeeding," he said, adding that, "Unki kathani aur karni alag hai (their actions are at variance with their words". New Delhi, Sep 17 : The CBI on Thursday said that it has registered a case against several companies for transmitting pop-ups to the victims' personal computers with warnings or bogus messages about serious technical problems including malware infections, as it carried out searches at 10 locations in several states. A CBI spokesperson said that the agency registered a case against Softwill Infotech Pvt Ltd, Innovana Thinklabs Ltd, Jaipur, Benovellient Technologies Pvt Ltd, Noida, Systweak Software Pvt Ltd, Jaipur, Saburi TLC Worldwide Services Pvt Ltd, Saburi Global Services Pvt Ltd, Gurugram and unknown others on a complaint. The official said that it was alleged that these companies transmitted pop-ups to the victims' personal computers with warnings or bogus messages about serious technical problems including malware infection in their Microsoft Windows Systems. "The employees of these companies allegedly advise the victims to install certain anti-malwares or anti-virus, which are essentially PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs). Then victims were allegedly given the option to activate PUPs," the official said. He said that the victims were fraudulently influenced in the manner that they fell in the trap to maintain their systems properly. The official said that in the complaint it was also alleged that the victims were made to pay online by clicking the link on the interface for resolving the non-existent problem or when they ask the call centres to seek resolution of the fake problems. "Searches are being conducted today at 10 locations including Rajasthan's Jaipur, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Mainpuri, Haryana's Gurugram and Faridabad at the premises of these companies and the residential premises of other persons," he said. PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Striim, a leader in real-time data integration, announced expansion of their strategic partnership with Google Cloud by offering the new Striim Migration Service for Google Cloud, or SMSGC, to help enterprises migrate existing databases to Google Cloud Database Services. The new migration service includes moving data, both in bulk and through continuous real-time replication, to Cloud Spanner, and Cloud SQL for MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL from enterprise sources such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Customers can also migrate existing databases running in other clouds such as AWS and Azure. "Striim is excited to further strengthen our partnership with Google Cloud by eliminating many of the issues customers face when considering migrating their workloads," said Codin Pora, VP of Business Development for Striim. "With this partnership, our goal is to enable organizations to drive their digital transformations by taking advantage of the scalability, reliability and cost effectiveness of Google Cloud Database Services through migrations of existing database sources. Customers can benefit from Striim's ease-of-use, data transformations, and support for zero-downtime and phased migrations to ensure minimal business disruption and risk-free cutover to the cloud." "As organizations increasingly select Google Cloud for data modernization, it is critical that they can smoothly migrate their data rapidly and seamlessly. We're committed to providing the technology and partnerships to help them do so," said Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem at Google Cloud. "Striim is an important part of the Google Cloud journey for many customers, and we look forward to working together to ensure frictionless database migrations for organizations across industries." Customers can move data from the following enterprise sources: AWS S3, AWS RDS (Aurora, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB) Azure SQL Database , Azure Database PostgreSQL, and Azure Database MySQL Databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL) deployed on GCE VM and on-premise SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Oracle Exadata, MySQL, and MariaDB into databases deployed on Google Cloud including Cloud Spanner, Cloud SQL for SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL on GCE VM Striim Migration Service for Google Cloud is available through Google Cloud for qualified customers For more information about Striim's solutions on Google Cloud, including the Striim Migration Service, please visit https://www.striim.com/partners/google-cloud-platform. About Striim The Striim platform is an enterprise-grade streaming data integration solution for moving data in real time to the cloud. Striim makes it easy to continuously ingest, process, and deliver high volumes of streaming data from diverse sources (both on-premises or in the cloud) to support multi and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Striim collects data in real time from enterprise databases (using non-intrusive change data capture), log files, messaging systems, and sensors, and delivers to virtually any target on-premises or in the cloud with sub-second latency. For more information, visit www.striim.com, read our blog at www.striim.com/blog, follow @striimteam, or download the Striim platform. For more information, press only: Steve Wilkes Striim (650) 241-0680 [email protected] SOURCE Striim, Inc. Related Links http://www.striim.com By Joseph E. Krakora Our criminal justice system is at a crossroads. Back in November, New Jerseys Sentencing Commission recommended a modest but badly needed package of reforms designed in large measure to alleviate the racial disparity in our prison system, the countrys worst. Gov. Phil Murphy called a press conference and, alongside Senate President Steve Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and others, announced his support for enacting the reforms. After all, the recommendations were unanimously endorsed by the commission members, including the attorney general, the president of the County Prosecutors Association, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, the chair of the State Parole Board, and the judiciary. Enactment of the reforms should have been easy. And yet, almost 10 months later, they are not in place. To be fair, the pandemic suspended business as usual in state government back in March. But, in the six months that followed, it has highlighted many of the inequalities in our society, including racial injustice. Social awareness and protests are important but not enough. People in positions of power must adopt policies and enact laws that take concrete steps designed to eradicate systemic racism. It is time to act. There is an opportunity, now, for the legislature to pass all of the reform bills and for the governor to sign them. The most critical reform calls for the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses, especially low-level ones. Although Black residents comprise only 13% of New Jerseys population, they comprise 70% of the men and women in prison serving mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, according to an analysis of state Department of Corrections data by Rutgers University researchers. The main culprit is the so-called drug-free school zone law that requires mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of school property. We have long known that it is a discriminatory law. It is almost impossible to be in an urban center in New Jersey and not be within 1,000 feet of school property. The law discriminates on its face against Black and brown people who are the predominant residents of our cities. The result: 77% of the prison inmates serving sentences under this law are Black people. The elimination of these mandatory minimum sentences is the first step. But it is also critical that this change in our sentencing law for drug offenses be applied retroactively to those already in prison serving these sentences. This is a simple matter of fairness relative to those sentenced in the future for the same crimes. Even more importantly, doing so has the potential to reduce the racial disparity in our prisons by as much as 15% without danger to the public. Other reforms in the package also have the potential to positively impact racial disparity without jeopardizing public safety. These reforms do not go far enough in addressing the racial inequality in our criminal justice sentencing scheme. But they are an important first step. Three years ago, New Jersey eliminated its pretrial system of monetary bail that discriminated against criminal defendants, most often Black and brown people, by keeping them in jail for months, if not years, simply because they were poor. We now have the fairest system of pretrial release and detention in the country. We can similarly fix a broken sentencing scheme; we can start with these reforms. If not now, when? Joseph E. Krakora, Esq., has served as New Jersey Public Defender since 2011. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Heres how to submit an op-ed or Letter to the Editor. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. As a result of the failures of Chris Coons and the political class in Washington, aided and abetted by their low-rent henchmen in the left-wing media, Im running for U.S. Senate to put ordinary Delawarean families and workers first, which is why Ill crush my out-of-touch, RINO primary opponent on Tuesday, and why union Democrats are flocking to my campaign to vote for me in November, she wrote. RINO is an acronym for Republican In Name Only. AMG That would be Porsche , and the Stuttgart-based automaker is only taking precedence against other competitors because were just about ready to exhaust our patience while waiting for the arrival of the 992-generation Porsche 911 GT3, GT4, and GT4 RS.It seems we are not the only ones, because Tim Burton the famous YouTuber professionally known as Shmee150, not the legendary cinematographer has decided to casually walk around the premises in search for the latest and greatest models from Porsche.And when we say casually, we mean he was there specifically to catch sight and listen to the howling sound of the flat-six engines hitting the surrounding hills. Of course, the industry pool is open to everyone, which means among the crop of vehicles theres always bound to be a surprise or two.For example, if he is correct in his assumptions, under a pretty heavy camouflage Hyundai was hiding its next high-performance version from the N division, the i20 N (take this with a grain of salt, perhaps he was mistaken and that was the recently teased i30 N ).Otherwise, we got amazing sounding looks at numerous other models undergoing Green Hell testing from the upcoming BMW M4 to hulking examples of the Mercedes-Benz roster, such as the GLSor even a possible new generation Maybach S-Class.Porsche was not shy in bringing all of its top guns at the party either, because the hot new GT3 (in Touring configuration, with retractable wing), GT4, and GT4 RS were joined by various other siblings among them the Cayman GT4, a spectacular 911 Turbo with a ducktail spoiler, 911 Targa, and even the all-electric Taycan Cross Turismo.Of course, the new GT3 Touring and GT4 RS easily stole the show visually and acoustically especially because at one point they joined forces for a little get-together. Caught from the rear, it was pretty obvious the main differences will boil down to the new type of wing the latter sports. In our book, on the other hand, the 911 GT3 Touring looks just as sensational when deploying its retractable rear wing... PEOPLE will be able to fly to Germany, Poland, Cyprus and other European destinations free of Covid restrictions for holidays and other business from next Monday under changes to Government travel advice. Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has said the Green List is to become a real green list freeing up people to travel to several European destinations, including for holidays, without having to restrict their movements for 14 days when they return to Ireland. The Governments previous overarching advice for people to avoid all non-essential overseas travel, including to Green List countries, has now been amended. A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said while Irish Covid rules would not apply to passengers flying to and returning from countries on the revised 'Green List' they would still be subject to those countries' Covid rules, including possible testing and quarantining. "There is a factor that we don't control, which is what other countries may require you to do," he said. Read More It has changed, a coalition spokesperson confirmed to Independent.ie on Wednesday. Some countries will be added and removed from the Green List tomorrow (Thursday) - but it will only come into force on Monday. The travel Green List will have a number of countries added and removed based on the latest data from the European Centre for Disease Control. Ireland is adopting the EU-wide traffic light system for safe travel but pending its formal approval next month, the existing Green List will be updated using the same criteria. This will now happen every Thursday with the changes coming into force the following Monday, the spokesperson said. This means countries with an incidence rate of fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 over the past 14 days will be green listed. Based on the latest European Centre for Disease Control data, countries on the list will likely include Germany (22.7), Poland (19), Finland (10.6), Lithuania (18.4), Estonia (24.7), Iceland (16.2), Cyprus (5.7), Latvia (4.1), and Liechtenstein (7.8) Under the changes, people will no longer be advised against all non-essential overseas travel as had been the case when the Green List was originally published in July prompting confusion. Instead, they will be exempt from Covid rules when they travel to countries on the Green List. There was widespread confusion when the original list was published in July as the coalition insisted that people should still avoid all non-essential travel, even to those locations on the Green List. The lists only purpose was to inform people travelling back from locations on it that they did not have to restrict their movements for 14 days. But the Department of Foreign Affairs travel advice now states that Green List locations are exempt from the advice against non-essential travel overseas and that normal precautions are applied. The request to restrict their movements does not apply to individuals arriving into Ireland from these locations, the advice further adds. At present the Green List includes Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway - all of which have their own quarantine or other restrictions for arrivals from other jurisdictions. Four countries on the present list Greece, Greenland, Italy, and Slovakia have no such restrictions. However their increase in incidence rate of the virus will likely see them removed from the list when it is updated on Thursday. All passengers arriving into Irish ports and airports will still be required to fill out a passenger locator form. Speaking on RTEs Prime Time on RTE One on Tuesday, Mr Varadkar confirmed the changes in Government travel advice. The travel policy has changed and with that the travel advice has changed. So we are an island nation, we do need to be connected to the rest of the world, not just for business and tourism but also so people can see friends and family and relatives, he said He said that pending the adoption of the EU-wide traffic light system, the coalition was aligning our Green List with the proposed metrics. Any country that has an incidence of less than 25 per 100,000 over 14 days is on the Green List and that is a real green list. By green it means were saying that you can travel to those countries without any restrictions and of course there is no such thing as no risk but these are all countries that have a lower incidence of the virus than Ireland. Mr Varadkar said people can if they choose to holiday in these countries. A leading support group of the ruling party, APC Mandate Defenders has commended the Federal Government for setting machinery in motion for the celebration of the country's 60th Independence Anniversary starting from October 1st, 2020 to September 30th, 2021 while also berating some ethnic nationalities and groups for opposing the initiative. In a statement released to newsmen in Abuja on Thursday by the national publicity secretary of the group, Mr. Ifeanyi Emeka, the group said, the one year anniversary celebration will afford the nation the opportunity to heal the land, pursue the dreams of our founders, renew the promise the nation holds and live-out the meaning of it's motto - 'Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.' The group, however, expressed worry over comments attributed to some senior citizens against the plan, saying opposing everything and proposing nothing is a great disservice to the nation. "Though passion may have strained, we should never allow it to affect the bond of our affections." If these people criticising government plan had spent the same amount of time and energy advising our misguided youths most of whom were born after independence and are currently fanning the embers of division and disunity in the country we all love, there would not be need for such sensitisation plan. But because the elders refused to play their roles properly, government have taken it upon itself to use the occasion of our diamond Jubilee to sensitise the people; especially those fanning the embers of discord, reminding them that our diversity is our strength and out of many, we are one. Therefore, we call on all Nigerians to embrace the newly launched logo and support the government plan because there is no other nation we can call our own. Together shall we be and live in a united, prosperous and indivisible nation, so help us God! SIGNED Mr. Ifeanyi Emeka, National Publicity Secretary, APC Mandate Defenders An assistant professor of civil engineering will access the ancient worlds of Rome, Greece and other European sites that have buildings, structures and roads that have endured for centuries. Her goal: to determine why these ancient materials have lasted so long and if they can be recreated synthetically in a laboratory. Warda Ashraf has received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA) to fund her research. Her two-year, $495,465 project, "Recreated Roman Concrete using Alkali-Activated Calcined Clays," could be extended by another $1 million and three years. "Most structures in the United States are designed to last around 50 to 100 years," Ashraf said. "There are several building structures in those European countries that are 2,000 years old and still performing well. Why are they so much better than the current building materials?" Previous research shows that certain combinations of volcanic ash and seawater were used in the composition of those ancient structures. "The goal of this project is to mimic this ancient technology to produce highly durable and resilient construction material," Ashraf said. "We will use ingredients that are easily available in the U.S. to achieve similar performance." Ali Abolmaali, chair of the Civil Engineering Department, said Ashraf's work has significant implications for the civil engineering community. "Her accumulation of projects in her young, relatively short academic career has been exemplary," Abolmaali said. "This project could rewrite how materials are made around the world." In addition to studying ancient construction materials, Ashraf also is researching the idea of using recycled plastics in road construction, a project funded by the Texas Department of Transportation. In another National Science Foundation-funded project, Ashraf will investigate ways to develop durable-environmentally friendly construction materials using biomimetic ingredients. The objective of the DARPA YFA program is to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions, emphasizing those without prior DARPA funding, and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA's program development process. These grants are highly competitive, with only about 20 to 30 awards distributed annually to all disciplines. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring and industry and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of national security needs. ### US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin sent ByteDance a revised terms sheet and the firm and Oracle accepted it, sources said. The Treasury Department, TikTok owner Bytedance Ltd. and Oracle Corp. have tentatively agreed to terms for Oracles bid for the U.S. operations of the social-media service, according to people familiar with the matter. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent Bytedance a revised terms sheet late Wednesday and the company and Oracle accepted it, the people said. They described the changes as addressing national security concerns about the transaction and asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Bytedance is trying to win U.S. approval for a transaction with Oracle that would leave the Chinese-headquartered parent company with majority ownership of TikTok. President Donald Trump demanded the sale of the service in August, declaring in executive orders that the popular video-sharing app is a national security threat. Any deal needs to be approved by both Trump who could still reject the transaction and the Chinese government, where officials have accused the U.S. of economic bullying. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is aware of the revised terms but hasnt reviewed the latest details in depth and hasnt weighed in on whether Trump should sign off on the deal, one person familiar with the matter said. The White House and Treasury declined to comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington didnt respond to requests for comment. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said early Thursday that hes concerned that Oracles bid for TikTok may be a repackaging that wont meet the presidents goals. Were still looking at the potential details of the deal, and whether it meets the national-security thresholds, the American-interest thresholds, Meadows said. My big concern is if all were doing is repackaging it and still keeping it as a predominantly Chinese-government run company, that would not sit well with the original goal the president outlined. Under the plan, Oracle would acquire a minority stake in a newly formed TikTok that would be headquartered in the U.S. with an independent board approved by the U.S. government. The new terms, which are designed to protect the data of U.S. citizens from falling into Chinese hands, include 20 pages of detailed provisions over data and national security, the people said. Under those terms, the board of directors would have to consist entirely of U.S. citizens and would include a national security committee. That body would be chaired by an American data-security expert who would be the primary contact with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which would oversee any issues of concern to the U.S. government. The previous terms hadnt included language on the formation of that committee. Terms of the proposed deal would give Oracle full access to TikToks source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the companys Chinese parent to access data on the video-sharing apps 100 million American users, Bloomberg reported. At least three shareholders in TikToks Chinese parent company General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management would take stakes in the new business, Bloomberg has reported. Walmart Inc., which had previously partnered with Microsoft Corp. to make an outright bid for TikToks U.S. business, remains interested in investing as well, and could also end up with a seat on the board, according to one of the people. With Oracle, Walmart and the continued involvement of existing U.S. investors, the new company, TikTok Global, would have a strong contingent of American investors, some of the people said. BPSC Prelims 2020 | According to a notice on the official website of the commission there are 562 vacancies for various posts in different departments of the state government BPSC Prelims 2020 | The Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) released the official notification for the 66th combined civil services recruitment examination on Wednesday. According to a notice on the official website of the commission, bpsc.bih.nic.in, there are 562 vacancies for various posts in different departments of the state government. The 66th BPSC prelims will be held on 27 December. Candidates should take into account that the announced date is tentative and hence subject to change. Hindustan Times reported that the online registration window for the 66th BPSC PT is going to remain open from 28 September till 20 October. In order to be considered for the vacant posts, applicants need to qualify for the preliminary exam followed by the main exam and then appear for an interview. The report added that candidates with a bachelors degree in any discipline from a recognised university are eligible to apply for the BPSC recruitment drive. Steps to apply for BPSC Prelims 2020: Step 1: Candidates need to visit the official website of Bihar Public Service Commission at bpsc.bih.nic.in Step 2: Select the tab Apply Online available in the left-side panel on the homepage Step 3: Click on the link that reads: BPSC Online Application Step 4: You will be taken to the site of BPSC Online Application Portal Step 5: Register yourself using your email id and password Step 6: Using the same registration number now fill the application form (once the window opens) Step 7: Enter personal details and upload scanned copies of the photograph and signature Step 8: Pay the application fee to complete the application process As per Times Now, out of the available 562 posts, 169 have been reserved for women. The other posts include the planning commissioner, superintendent of police, state tax assistant commissioner, jail superintendent, upper election officer, Bihar Probation Service officer, additional district transport officer, labour enforcement officer, food supply inspector, block Panchayati Raj officer and revenue officer. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday again delayed in-person classes for all students at the citys public schools just days ahead of the previously scheduled Monday start date. The nations biggest school system will now begin in-person classes for all students as late as October 1 and in the meantime will allow students to come back in phases according to grade level. Only students in pre-K classes and students with advanced special needs will return to class on Monday. Elementary schools are scheduled to reopen September 29, and high schools on October 1. Its the hard way, but its the right way, de Blasio said Thursday at his daily coronavirus media briefing. The mayor said schools are not yet ready to reopen. The delay marks the second time de Blasio has postponed the start of in-person classes, which were originally scheduled to begin on September 10. More from National Review The Pennsylvania Institute of Technology has gone to pot. The Nether Providence college has established a Cannabis Studies program and with it is offering two associate degrees one in Cannabis Business and another in Cannabis Health Therapy. Theyre even offering a free information session at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21. PIT said statistics for the cannabis workforce showed a 445 percent increase last year with 410,000 jobs anticipated to be added to the sector in 2021. The program is head by Lou Giannotti. A trained pharmacist, Gianotti most recently served as director of operations for Holistic Industries, known by its brand name of Liberty Cannabis. Also having served as director of dispensary operations, he worked with health care providers and the community. Research has proven that medical marijuana is an effective medical treatment for a variety of ailments, he said. The demand for people who are educated and passionate about this industry is extremely strong. There are career opportunities for dispensary management, security personnel, horticultural professionals, transportation specialists and many other yet to be determined areas of this growing business. PIT recognizes this need and will provide highly qualified individuals to fill these positions. The Health Therapy module focuses on medicinal marijuana, particularly in its relief in palliative care. PIT states there are 23 diagnoses in Pennsylvania that allow for medical cannabis. Cannabis can be used to alleviate pain in chronic conditions, such as cancer, and in effects from cancer and Parkinsons disease. It has also seen impacts in reducing spasms in those with multiple sclerosis. How it works is there are chemicals in cannabis called cannabinoids. The body has cannabinoid receptors throughout it as seen in the Endocannabinoid System. These cannabinoid receptors are found in the brain, organs, connective tissue, glands and immune cells and their primary purpose is to maintain homeostasis within the body, regardless of external factors. In the Cannabis Business program, students are prepared to start their own cannabis-related business or work for a dispensary or grow operation. In either the Cannabis Business or Cannabis Health Therapy units, graduates can transfer credits upon completion to a university to pursue a four-year undergraduate degree. Students in this business program will be exposed to a variety of business models, from small to large. They will also examine the science, botany, marketing and accounting parts associated with a cannabis-related business. Pennsylvania Institute of Technologys next semester begins Oct. 5. To register for the cannabis information session, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cannabis-degree-info-session-tickets-115754427609. Speakers will include medicla professionals working in the cannabis industry, students and instructors of PITs Cannabis Studies program and Gianotti. Canada continues to offer assistance to those affected by the tragic explosion in Beirut on August 4. New immigration measures to support Lebanon Canada continues to offer assistance to those affected by the tragic explosion in Beirut on August 4. New immigration measures to support Lebanon Canada continues to offer assistance to those affected by the tragic explosion in Beirut on August 4. New immigration measures to support Lebanon Canada continues to offer assistance to those affected by the tragic explosion in Beirut on August 4. Mohanad Moetaz Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Canada has announced additional facilitative measures to support those affected by the situation in Beirut, Lebanon. Canadian citizens and permanent residents in Lebanon wishing to return to Canada may receive priority processing if they require travel documents such as a permanent resident travel document (PRTD), or a Canadian passport. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that it is also prioritizing visitor visa applications of immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, provided they lived in a Beirut neighbourhood affected by the explosion. Immediate family members include: Spouses Common law partners Dependent children Parents or step-parents. Lebanese citizens who are temporarily residing in Canada may extend their stay if they are not able to return home because of the explosion. Canadian citizens, permanent residents in Lebanon, and Lebanese citizens in Canada will also be able to take advantage of waived fees. The fees will be waived for issuance of any of the following: PRTD ($50) Temporary Canadian passport ($110) Canadian passport (various fees) Replacement of certificate of Canadian citizenship ($75) Emergency travel document (various fees) Extension of temporary resident status ($100) Renewal of a study permit ($150) Renewal of a work permit ($155) Those requesting a certificate of Canadian citizenship for the first time will not have their fee waived. Permanent residents requiring a PRTD may still be required to pay a service fee to submit their application at the Beirut Visa Application Centre. Last month, Canada established an immigration task force in Beirut to support the delivery of consular services. Which Beirut neighbourhoods are affected? Immediate family members may receive priority processing provided they lived in a neighbourhood in Beirut that was affected by the explosion. As outlined by the United Nations, the following is a list of affected neighbourhoods: Achrafieh Ain el-Mreisseh Bachoura Baouchriyeh Beirut Central District Bourj Hammoud Jall Ed-Did Marfaa Mazraa Medawar Minet el-Hosn Moussaytbeh Ras Beyrouth Remeil Saifeh Sin el-Fil Zalqa Zoukak el-Blatt Visit the Government of Canadas website to learn more How can Lebanese citizens apply? Lebanese citizens must submit an application online before January 31, 2021. In addition, they will have to submit their documents by sending an email to the dedicated email address IRCC.SituationLebanon-SituationLiban.IRCC@cic.gc.ca. Applicants are required to submit all documents that may prove their eligibility. This includes proof that they live in an affected area, proof of their relationship with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, as well as their family members proof of citizenship or proof of permanent resident status. Individuals in Lebanon can also send their immigration questions to the same email. Immigrating to Canada from Lebanon Immigration from Lebanon started in 1882, and continues to this day. There is estimated to be between 200,000 and 400,000 individuals of Lebanese origin in Canada today. Lebanese citizens who wish to immigrate to Canada as a skilled worker, have more than 100 immigration pathways to choose from. The most popular way to immigrate to Canada is through the Express Entry system. Canada held an Express Entry draw on Wednesday inviting 4,200 immigration candidates to apply for permanent residence. Check if you are eligible for Canadian immigration by taking our free assessment form. Get a free Express Entry assessment 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved An Indian Army soldier was injured on Thursday when Pakistan violated ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani troops continued shelling for two hours in Balakot and Mendhar sectors in the district. The Indian Army gave a befitting reply. The Pakistani Army resorted to heavy firing of mortar shells for two hours targeting the Indian Army check posts and residential areas in Mendhar sub-division of Poonch district. The shelling created a panic scene in the rural areas bordering the Line of Control. Live TV The soldier was injured when he was hit by a mortar splinter. After the first aid, he was referred to Rajouri military hospital. He has been identified as CB Pawar of Army's Artillery Regiment, and a resident of Mahararutra. At the same time, 120 mm mortars fired by the Pakistani army targeting the residential areas damaged about a dozen houses in the area around the Line of Control. This nefarious act of the Pakistani army was also responded to by the Indian Army. A few moments after the Pakistani Army opened fire, the Indian Army stationed in the area started responding in a similar fashion to the Pakistani Army. Both sides received heavy shelling for about two hours that it was heard from many kilometres away on the Jammu Poonch National Highway up to Bimber Gali. The Centre on September 16 had stated that India has lost 95 soldiers, 75 of them during ceasefire violation by Pakistan and 20 more soldiers during border skirmishes with China since 2014. In reply to a question in Parliament, Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Shripad Naik gave a detailed answer. In 2015, four soldiers lost their lives when Pakistan resorted to ceasefire violation along the Line of Control (LoC); in 2016, seven soldiers lost their lives; in 2017, 23 soldiers were martyred; in 2018, 19 soldiers lost their lives and in 2020 (till September 14), nine soldiers martyred. With China, 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives in 2020, Naik had added. The fatal casualties of Army personnel in battle since 2014 stands at 738, stated Naik. In 2014, 78 personnel lost their lives; in 2015, 109 personnel were martyred; in 2016, 133 personnel lost their lives; in 2017, 137 were martyred; in 2018, 117 personnel lost their lives; in 2019, 107 were martyred, and in 2020, 57 personnel lost their lives. Details of monetary benefits/ entitlements to the NOK of battle casualty (fatal): 1) Compensation/Pension/Terminal Dues paid by the govt. (a) Liberalized family pension (LFP ): As applicable to Battle Casualty that is equal to emoluments last drawn by the deceased individual. (b) Ex-gratia lump sum compensation from Central Government:- (i) Death occurring due to accidents in the course of duties, Rs 25 lakh (ii) Death in the course of duties attributable to acts of violence by terrorists. etc. Rs 25 lakh (iii) Death occurring during enemy action in war or border skirmishes or in action against militants, terrorist. etc- Rs. 35 lakh (iv) Death occurring while on duty in the specified high altitude, inaccessible border posts etc. on account of natural disasters, extreme weather conditions Rs 35 lakh (v) Death occurring during enemy action in international war or warlike engagements which are specially notified Rs 45 lakh (c) Death-cum-Retirement gratuity (DCRG): Based on the length of service rendered and emoluments last drawn by the deceased individual. (d) Disable/war injury element of pension released by PCDA (P) Allahabad, as applicable. 2. Compensation/Pension/Terminal Dues (Ex-gratia) paid by the state govt. As applicable. Rates vary from State to State. 3. Other Benefits by the Govt: (a) Compassionate Appointment to the NOK: As per eligibility and qualification of NOK of BC through respective Line Dates (as per Govt Scheme) (b) Education Concessions: Full reimbursement of the tuition fee. Also full reimbursement of Hostel charges for those studying in boarding schools and colleges. (c) Fare and Rail Travel Concession: 75% concession on base fare by Indian Air Lines and for travel by Second Class Sleeper by train. By PTI NEW DELHI: Hailing the passage of three farm sector bills in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday described these proposed legislations as historic and asserted that they will rid farmers and the farm sector of middlemen and other bottlenecks. With ruling BJP ally Shiromani Akali Dal joining the opposition in protesting these bills, Modi asserted that many forces are trying to "mislead' farmers and assured the farming community that minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement of their produce will continue along with a lot of other options for them. These reforms will provide new opportunities to farmers to sell their produce and will lead to increased profits for them, he said. ALSO READ | Minimum support price mechanism for farmers will continue: Agriculture minister Modi also urged farmers and those associated with the agriculture sector to listen to Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar's reply to the discussion on these bills. "These agriculture reforms will provide new avenues to farmers to sell their produce which will increase their profits. Agriculture sector will benefit from modern technology and our farmers will also be empowered," the prime minister said in a series of tweets. Many forces are trying to mislead farmers, he added, while assuring them of the benefits of these reforms. ALSO READ | Nothing more than a gimmick: Amarinder on Harsimrat's resignation from Modi government Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill. It has already passed Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill. The three bills will now be tabled in Rajya Sabha and become laws after the Upper House also passes them. They will replace ordinances promulgated by the Union government. The two bills were passed by voice vote in Lok Sabha earlier in the evening amid protests by opposition parties with SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal also vehemently opposing them, calling these measures as anti-farmers. The SAD's lone member in the Union Cabinet Harsimrat Kaur Badal quit the government, accusing it of not taking farmers on board. LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Next-gen payments company Wirex fired a warning shot at competing platforms today with the launch of a comprehensive product overhaul and new card. The overhaul kicks off with the release of exciting features, including five new currencies and free foreign exchange. The company also announced the upcoming launch of their hotly-anticipated Wirex Mastercard card, along with an upgraded rewards programme. The first of a three-phase, revolutionary product update was recently made available to Wirex users in the European Economic Area (EEA), in line with a close partnership with payment solution company LHV. A range of features are now live, including five new currencies (HRK, CZK, PLN, RON, and HUF), free multicurrency individual IBANs and free SEPA multicurrency transfers and SEPA instant for EUR transfers, while foreign exchange fees or currency conversion fees when topping-up with a local currency card have been removed. Wirex also announced the upcoming release of its new multicurrency Wirex Card, supported by Mastercard. The news comes off the back of the crypto-native platform's Mastercard principal membership announcement in July. The new Wirex card is already being touted as a potential competition-killer with the potential to set a new standard in the FinTech and crypto payments space. Linked to 19 secure crypto and traditional currency accounts in the Wirex app, it allows cardholders to seamlessly spend multiple fiat and cryptocurrencies in day-to-day life without exchanging or offboarding. The company believes that these game-changing features, combined with sky-high limits and next-to-no fees, gives the new Wirex Mastercard a significant advantage over its competitors. To complete the product overhaul, Wirex has also announced a significant upgrade to its rewards programme. The new offering includes up to 2% Cryptoback rewards for all Wirex card spending (online and in-store) and up to 6% rewards on customers' WXT balance annually. The upcoming changes are the latest in a long line of payments innovations from the London-headquartered FinTech startup. Wirex not only debuted the world's first crypto-compatible debit card, but also the first crypto rewards scheme, Cryptoback, which enables users to automatically earn free Bitcoin by spending in-stores with their Wirex cards. While the global pandemic has forced many FinTech businesses to reevaluate their business models, Wirex has continued to grow exponentially throughout 2020, recording an all-time high number of transactions within the month of August. Having recently achieved a milestone of over 3.1 million users on its database, the upcoming launches are set to further solidify its fundamental goal of bridging the gap between the traditional and digital economy. "As a company, we have always believed that Wirex will play a pivotal role in the mass adoption of digital currencies and the inevitable shift from a fiat to a token-based economy; the new product confirms this. While other platforms creep towards mainstream adoption through iterative updates and improvements, Wirex makes the everyday use of digital currencies mainstream now," says Wirex CEO and co-founder Pavel Matveev. Today's announcement caps an extremely eventful few years for the London-headquartered company, which included a successful expansion into the vast APAC market, the release of their native Wirex Token (WXT) and office openings in Tokyo, Singapore, Atlanta, Dallas, Toronto and Dublin. During this period, Wirex also made significant inroads in the acquisition of local licences in Singapore, Japan and the USA - testament to its commitment to observing the appropriate regulatory practices in the territories in which it operates. About Wirex Wirex is a worldwide digital payment platform and regulated institution that has forged new rules in the digital payments space. In 2015, the firm developed the world's first contactless payment card that gives users the ability to seamlessly spend digital and traditional currencies in real life. Wirex was created in 2014 by CEOs and co-founders Pavel Matveev and Dmitry Lazarichev, who identified the need to open up the esoteric world of cryptocurrencies and make digital money accessible for everyone. With the core aim of making it as easy as possible to use digital assets in everyday life, Wirex provides a trusted and cost-effective service for digital and traditional currency transactions by integrating the next generation of payments infrastructure integrated with cryptocurrency blockchains. With over three million customers across 130 countries, the company offers secure accounts that allow customers to easily store, buy and exchange multiple currencies instantly at the best live rates on one centralised mobile app. Quick and simple money transfer options are available, as well as the freedom to spend 150+ fiat and cryptocurrencies in more than 54 million locations around the world using the Wirex card. Wirex continues to develop the product in line with market developments, whilst adhering to regional regulations and securing appropriate licencing where it exists. A proven industry pioneer, Wirex introduced the world's first bitcoin reward programme, Cryptoback, which earns cardholders up to 1.5% back in Bitcoin for every in-store transaction they make. They also launched their own native utility token, WXT, which entitles holders to rewards and incentives such as heavily-discounted fees and higher Cryptoback rates. Wirex is based in London with offices in Singapore, Kyiv, Tokyo, Toronto, Dallas and Atlanta. With over $3bn worth of transactions processed already and rapid expansion into new territories, Wirex is uniquely placed to support and promote the mass adoption of a cashless society. | wirexapp.com | Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1273437/wirex_mc_card.jpg BIRMINGHAM, Mich., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- IT-Harvest, an independent research firm covering the cybersecurity industry, has published a "Cyber Threat Intelligence Market Research Report 1H 2020" Richard Stiennon and Ron Moritz on the cyber threat intelligence (CTI) sector. The report includes 61 vendors that provide threat intelligence to the enterprise or collect and manage threat intelligence. These include, Recorded Future acquired by Insight Partners in 2019, Anomali, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, ZeroFOX, and Intsights. Key findings: Funded companies had healthy growth despite the headwinds in 1H 2020: Sixgill (+79%), SpyCloud (+59%), DarkOwl (+48%), Recorded Future (+45%). Fears of an economic slowdown due to COVID-19 led investors and their portfolio companies to restrict hiring at many firms. Overall headcount growth of 3% in 1H is a positive sign. IT-Harvest predicts that 2H growth will be an additional 10% over 1H, leading to 2020 revenue of $517 million. The 34-page Market Research Report is available at www.it-harvest.com/research. It provides a guide to the industry and a summary of each vendor's capabilities. It comes bundled with an Excel spreadsheet of all the data used to track 61 vendors. About IT-Harvest: IT-Harvest tracks over 3,000 vendors in the IT-security industry. All of them are printed in a directory in Security Yearbook an annual publication. The CTI Market Research Report uses the data collected for this Directory as a basis for our analysis. Security Yearbook 2020: A History and Directory of the IT Security Industry is available at www.it-harvest.com/shop. To contact the author, Richard Stiennon, email: [email protected] Press contact: Leslie Kesselring, [email protected], (503) 358-1012 About the authors: Ron Moritz, Contributing Analyst, is a venture partner in OurCrowd, the most active investor in Israel, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence with CyRise, Australia's cybersecurity accelerator. His career has spanned roles at Finjan Software, Symantec, Computer Associates, and Microsoft. He also helped create the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification and was one of the first to earn it. Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst, is the founder of IT-Harvest and author of Security Yearbook 2020: A History and Directory of the IT Security Industry. He has held executive roles at Webroot Software, Fortinet, and Blancco Technology Group. He was also VP Research for Gartner. Contact [email protected]. SOURCE IT-Harvest The shooting happened about 4:55 p.m. in the 400 block of West 118th Street, leaving the boy with gunshot wounds to the neck and forearm, police said. ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Iranian hackers targeted aerospace and satellite technology companies at the behest of the country's military, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court. Prosecutors say one of the three accused, 34-year-old Said Pourkarim Arabi, is a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite Iranian security force that is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. Another is the head of a hacking collective called the Iranian Dark Coders Team, according to the indictment. Arabi and the other two people are accused of using social engineering, rather than sophisticated hacking techniques, to steal sensitive information. Pretending to be employees at the companies, they would entice real staffers or associates to click links that would give the hackers access to private files. In one email, according to the indictment, the hackers pretended to be a professor who needed satellite imagery for geographic research. In another, prosecutors said they pretended to have started their own satellite imagery company and offered to share the software. Prosecutors say their target list, assembled in 2015, included more than 1,800 accounts. The hacks are alleged to have occurred between that year and 2019. A spokeswoman for a company that matches the description of one of the victims did not immediately return a request for comment. "This case highlights the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' efforts to infiltrate the networks of American companies in search of valuable commercial information and intellectual property," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement. He noted that the case is the third brought this week against alleged Iranian hackers. Prosecutors in Boston alleged that two men defaced websites with pro-Iran propaganda as retaliation for the January killing of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike. One of the defaced websites belonged to a small federal library program. Two others are accused in New Jersey of stealing "highly protected and extremely sensitive" confidential communications from universities, defense contractors, foreign policy organizations, nongovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and the governments of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Some of these attacks occurred during negotiations over the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, according to prosecutors, and were directed by Iran's leaders. Prosecutors say the men also stole financial information from Americans, which they used to purchase software that improved their own operational security. Iran was also linked this year to an attempt to disrupt water supplies in Israel. All of the accused are believed to be living in Iran, which does not honor extradition requests from the United States, or the Palestinian Authority. Experts predicted a wave of cyberattacks after Soleimani's death, saying the country would probably see it as a way to get back at the United States without triggering a major response. President Donald Trump has approved cyberattacks in response to Iranian provocations, calling it "proportionate." By PTI NEW DELHI: More than 44 per cent mobile network equipment of state-run BSNL is sourced from Chinese firm ZTE and 9 per cent from Huawei, Parliament was informed on Thursday. While replying to a question on the market share of Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei in India, Minister of State for Communications Sanjay Dhotre said that the government maintains no data of Chinese telecom gear makers. Based on information collected from telecom operators, Dhotre said that Reliance Jio Infocomm has not deployed any telecom equipment from ZTE and Huawei for providing services. "Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has 44.4 per cent of its mobile network equipment from M/s ZTE and 9 per cent from M/s Huawei. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) has 10 per cent of its mobile network equipment from Chinese equipment manufacturers," Dhotre said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. "The Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) procure and deploy telecom equipment from vendors based on their techno-commercial interests provided they adhere to the security provisions given in the licence. Hence, no such data is maintained by Department of Telecommunications (DoT)," Dhotre said. He said that the the DoT has asked telecom operators to get their network audit done by an external agency. The minister shared that Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) follows a multi-vendor strategy for procuring equipment for different requirements in its network and has always been compliant to the various security-related requirements placed upon it by the DoT notifications. "Bharti Airtel Limited (BAL), uses telecom equipment of several vendors partners including Indian, American, European, Chinese across the different network domains, radio, core and transport and follow a multi-vendor approach for its networks to build robust and secure networks," Dhotre said. He said that there are comprehensive security conditions as part of existing License Agreement for telecom service providers to address security concerns. "As per condition no 39. 6 of Chapter VI of Unified License, each licensee have to undertake an audit of their networks or get their networks audited from security point of view once in a financial year from a network audit and certification agency," Dhotre said. The DoT on December 6, 2019, had directed the Telecom Service Providers i. e. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, Bharti Airtel Limited & Vodafone Idea Limited to carry out special security audit of their network by an external agency, he said. The minister also clarified that the DoT has not issued any order regarding providing source code for security testing. Two people have been arrested after a dog mauled a 12-day-old baby to death in Doncaster. South Yorkshire Police confirmed the baby boy had suffered serious injuries before passing away in hospital on Sunday. A 35-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman have since been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, with both released on bail pending further enquiries. The dog has been removed from the property, the force confirmed. A police statement said: Police were called to an address on Welfare Road at around 3.30pm on Sunday following reports that a dog had attacked a child. "On arrival at the property, emergency services discovered a 12-day-old baby boy had been bitten by a dog and suffered serious injuries. "The child was taken to hospital, but sadly died a short time later. "A 35-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. They have now been bailed while enquiries continue. The dog has been removed from the address. The Embassy of Italy in the UAE is launching a new initiative to explore opportunities for cooperation in innovation in key sectors between Italy and the UAE. Titled InnovItalyUAE, the initiative will be launched on September 30 and will cover sectors such as cybersecurity, space research, smart cities, life sciences, food technologies, renewable energy and circular economy, reported Emirates news agency WAM. The initiative is in cooperation with Khalifa University of Science and Technology and in collaboration with the Dubai Future Foundation and will feature two sets of events: Six online forums (one per sector) to take place between September and December 2020 with speakers from the academic and business sectors of both countries, aimed at comparing the Italian and Emirati experiences in addressing the common challenges and setting the scope for an increased partnership in the above sectors Six in-presence workshops, to take place in principle in the first half of 2021. Nicola Lener, Ambassador of Italy to the UAE, said: "Italy and the UAE are longstanding political, economic and cultural partners. Italy is proud to have contributed with its technology to the development of this country." "However, also in light of the disruptive experience of the pandemic, we believe that the time has come to make a quantum leap in our relations, drawing on the depths of our cultural roots and our projection towards the future to focus more and more on a collaboration based on innovation, knowledge and connectivity. At the same time, this initiative aims to prepare Italys participation in Expo2020 Dubai, which has received the baton from the Expo2015 in Milan and to which we feel particularly attached," the Ambassador added. "We are pleased to begin this journey together with Khalifa University and in collaboration with the Dubai Future Foundation, two of the pillars of innovation in the UAE. For our part, we are ready to involve the best energies from Italian institutions, research and industry, with the view to further increase the quality of our relationships," Lener concluded. On Thursday, September 17, the United States Trotting Association issued a call to its members in regard to new legislation entitled the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (S. 4547). The contents of the release appear below. USTA asks members, industry participants to contact legislators to oppose harmful proposed legislation The U.S. Trotting Association is requesting the assistance of all members and other harness racing participants in contacting U.S. Senators and Representatives to express opposition to new legislation called the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (S. 4547) recently introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). If enacted, the new law would: Significantly increase your cost of racing Eliminate the use of race-day Lasix Place harness racing under the regulation of a new, federal Authority with little or no harness racing representation or consideration for our concerns Attached is a letter template that can be customized by individuals and organizations to express opposition to the proposed legislation. To find contact information for U.S. Senators, click here and Choose a State. To find contact information for U.S. Representatives (House), click here and enter the appropriate zip code. The attached letter can be sent by email or individuals can call their Congressmans office directly to state opposition to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020. Heres why the law is bad for both harness racing participants and the industry. Significant increase in the cost of racing The proposed legislation would establish a new fee structure approximated to be a $45 surcharge to owners and trainers for every horse in every race. This significant increase in the cost of racing will force many small horse owners and trainers out of business. Elimination of race-day Lasix The new law would phase out the use of race-day Lasix, the only known medication to treat Exercise Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage (bleeding) for all horses. Before taking any action on Lasix, the USTA has recommended an independent, large scale study to examine its effects. The USTA along with the major veterinarian organizations endorse the use of Lasix because it is in the best interests of the health of the horses. New, federal racing Authority The newly-created federal, regulatory Authority would regulate horse racing nationwide with a board made up of a majority of members who have no experience in the horse racing industry and hand-picked by the same Thoroughbred elite interest groups behind this legislation. With little or no representation on that board, the interests of harness racing will be ignored as they have been in the formulation of this bill. Following is the letter template to use for contacting U.S. Senators and Representatives: September XX, 2020 The Honorable XX XX Senate/House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Dear Senator/Representative XX: The United States Trotting Association advocates for the betterment of the horse and horse racing on behalf of Standardbred racehorse owners, trainers and backstretch personnel. In that context, the USTA and many others who are supportive of the horse industry are very concerned about, and have strong feelings against, the newly-introduced Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (HISA). If enacted, the HISA would, over the next three years, mandate a phase out of an important, protective medication, commonly known as Lasix. Lasix is the only known medication to treat a condition called Exercise Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage (EIPH), or bleeding in the lungs. Because EIPH threatens the health and well-being of many racehorses, we believe that, until an alternative treatment is developed, Lasix should be utilized on race day. Lasix is not performance enhancing, it is not doping, and due to the very sensitive capabilities of testing, it cannot be used to mask illegal medications. Science and national veterinary leadership groups continue to support the administration of Lasix on race-day. If bill sponsors truly care for the health of racehorses, they should consider an independent, peer-reviewed, U.S.-based, large-scale study on Lasix prior to implementing any ban on race day Lasix. Additionally, the HISA states that initial funding for the new horseracing regulatory Authority will come from loans taken out by the Authority. Those loans must then be repaid through a new fee structure determined by the Authority. Bill supporters have indicated that it would be funded by a surcharge to the owners and trainers of every horse in every race to cover operational costs and to repay the loans. Compounding this reality with the devastating impacts of the coronavirus pandemic would force many small, agricultural-based business owners out of the industry. Finally, the new Authority created in the HISA would regulate horseracing nationwide through a board that will have a majority of members who have no experience in the horseracing industry. This board will be hand-picked by the same elite interest groups pushing this legislation. We believe that a majority of the board should be represented by those who will be impacted by the new regulatory scheme, and it should specifically include practicing veterinarians. According to a recent American Horse Council study, the horse racing industry contributes approximately $36 billion annually to the national economy and provides about 240,000 direct jobs. Any measure which will add further regulatory and cost burdens will only harm those state and local economies that depend on the industry. Accordingly, we urge you to oppose the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act. Sincerely, [Insert Signature] Name Title To read more about the proposed federal legislation and why it is bad for you and harness racing, see the links below. In this file photo dated Monday, May 17, 2004, The World Health Organisation, WHO, logo seen at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. / AP-Yonhap Too many doctors and nurses are paying the ultimate price while battling Covid-19, the World Health Organization said Thursday as it launched a charter aiming to boost safety for health workers. The UN health agency said that the pandemic had exposed health workers and their families to "unprecedented levels of risk." While the coronavirus crisis has taken a heavy toll overall, data from many countries and regions show that healthcare workers have been infected at a far higher rate than the general population. Health workers represent less than three percent of the population in most countries and less than two percent in low- and middle income countries, but account for around 14 percent of all Covid-19 cases reported to the WHO. In some countries, the proportion has been as high as 35 percent, the body said. On Wednesday, the International Council of Nurses said thousands of nurses had likely died in the pandemic, pointing to numbers from just 44 countries showing 1,097 deaths by mid-August. "The Covid-19 pandemic has reminded all of us of the vital role health workers play to relieve suffering and save lives," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing. "We all owe health workers an enormous debt, not just because they have cared for the sick, but because they risk their own lives in the line of duty." The risks are not only physical. The WHO pointed to "extraordinary levels of psychological stress" on health workers, who have been asked to work long, draining hours battling Covid-19, living in constant fear of being infected. Many are also living separated from their families, and facing social stigma amid fear they are carrying the virus. Depression, anxiety These strains are increasing the likelihood of depression among medical professionals, who were already more at risk of suicide than the general public in a number of countries prior to the pandemic. One in four health care workers surveyed for a recent study said they were struggling with depression and anxiety amid the pandemic, while one in three said they had suffered insomnia, the WHO said. In its charter presented Thursday, the WHO emphasised the legal and moral obligations governments have to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of health workers. The charter among other things calls on countries to develop programmes that better protect the health and safety of medical workers, and to combine them with patient safety policies. It also calls for better policies for protecting health workers from violence in the workplace, and for improving access to mental health support. And it demands that minimum standards for patient safety, infection prevention and control, as well as for occupational safety are implemented across all care facilities. Access to personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as sufficient training in how to use such equipment safely should also be guaranteed, it said. "No country, hospital or clinic can keep its patients safe unless it keeps its health workers safe," Tedros said. (AFP) By Trend Azerbaijan and Turkey are linked by strong fraternal ties, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran said. Kiran made the remark at the webinar entitled "Regional Geopolitical Polarization and Turkish-Azerbaijani Relations" on September 16, Trend reports. The webinar was jointly organized by the Azerbaijani Center for International Relations Analysis and the Center for Strategic Research of the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Azerbaijan and Turkey are jointly fighting against all forms of terrorism, the Turkish deputy foreign minister said. "We express our gratitude to Azerbaijan for support in the fight against Gulen Movement (FETO), Kiran said. We are together in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic and will always be close to Azerbaijan. The brotherhood of Azerbaijan and Turkey is the guarantor of security in the region." The support for Turkey's position, which was demonstrated by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, when receiving the Greek ambassador, is the highest example of brotherhood between Azerbaijan and Turkey, the Turkish deputy foreign minister said. In turn, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov stressed that Azerbaijan and Turkey continue to cooperate successfully in all spheres. The brotherhood of Turkey and Azerbaijan serves to strengthen moral unity throughout the Turkic world, the Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister added. Khalafov stressed that cooperation between the two fraternal countries also contributes to the stability and security of the region. The jointly implemented transnational projects such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), along with improving the well-being of our peoples, also contribute to the regional and global development processes, Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister said. The successful implementation of transnational projects opens up new opportunities for the economic cooperation between the two countries," Khalafov added. The level of the Azerbaijani-Turkish relations has never been on as high of a level as they are now, the Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister said. The two fraternal countries cooperate in the military sphere at the high level. "There is the necessary legal basis for this, Khalafov added. The recent joint exercises have made an important contribution to increasing the combat readiness of the armies of both countries. Our countries also closely cooperate within the international and regional organizations." The Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister added that the trade turnover between the two countries increased by 33 percent in 2019 and the growth of trade turnover continued this year despite COVID-19 pandemic. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Academic achievement, being a member of an underrepresented population and financial need make up the criteria to becoming a Boeing Scholar at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The Boeing Scholarship Program at Embry-Riddle will allow talented, underrepresented students, veterans and their dependents to earn degrees in aviation and embark on successful careers." - Embry-Riddle President P. Barry Butler Thirteen outstanding high-school graduates will receive scholarships from The Boeing Company ranging from $5,000 to $7,500 annually for two years to pursue degrees at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The scholarships are supported by a $3 million endowment from Boeing, the worlds largest aerospace company and leading aircraft manufacturer. The Boeing Scholars at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University initiative is directed toward students interested in pursuing degrees in aeronautical science, aircraft maintenance and other fields at Embry-Riddle the premier aviation and aerospace institution. The scholarships which will fund a portion of each scholars annual tuition are part of an ongoing effort to expand and diversify the aviation workforce. This is the second year of the scholarship program. Exceptional academic achievement, being a member of an underrepresented population and demonstrated financial need determine which students are chosen annually. The Boeing Scholarship Program at Embry-Riddle will allow talented, underrepresented students, veterans and their dependents to earn degrees in aviation and embark on successful careers, said Embry-Riddle President P. Barry Butler. It is an honor to partner with Boeing to diversify the industry and enhance our aviation workforce. Boeing is proud to once again partner with Embry-Riddle as we work to develop students for future careers in aviation, said Cheri Carter, vice president of Boeing Global Engagement. Through this unique scholarship program, our Boeing Scholars will have the tools required to do great things in the aerospace industry. We congratulate the second cohort of Boeing Scholars and we look forward to seeing all that they accomplish both at Embry-Riddle and in their future careers and beyond." Students chosen for this scholarship program are also offered benefits including trips to Boeing facilities, group projects, meet-and-greets with Boeing employees and interviews that can result in on-the-spot job and internship offers. Also, interns on both residential campuses can become Boeing Student Ambassadors, who work closely with Career Services to help prepare students interested in working for Boeing and inform them of available opportunities ahead of fall recruiting. Boeing hosts some 1,400 interns each year, of which about 45 came from Embry-Riddle this past summer. In March, when the Covid-19 pandemic first prompted shelter-in-place orders, Boeing organized a plan to transition those jobs online and began shipping company-issued computers to get the interns connected. The program is known for the real-world work experience it offers, as well as compensation and benefits. Boeing offers Embry-Riddle a number of other valuable programs for students, as well. The Boeing Career Mentoring Program, a highly selective initiative that matches 30-40 students per year with Embry-Riddle alumni who work at Boeing for formal mentorship, is offered to all students at both residential campuses. The program includes career-preparation advice, as well as regularly scheduled professional development workshops. Of 31 students who participated from both residential campuses in 2019, eight were selected for full-time positions or internships. Career Services leaders at Embry-Riddles Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, campuses meet with the Boeing Core Team (Eagle alumni who work at Boeing) for status updates and to keep the line of communication open. In addition, Boeing participates in Embry-Riddle research activities, they are represented on college industry advisory boards on campus, and the university takes part in an annual Boeing summit. Boeing has also donated funds to Career Services at both residential campuses to help produce Boeing Development Days, special speaking engagements and events that promote communication and leadership skill development to all students, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. Meet the Class of 2020 Boeing Scholars at Embry-Riddle All selected scholars are high-performing high-school students with exceptional grade point averages. The Boeing Scholars at Embry-Riddle will attend both of the universitys residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona. Members of the Class of 2020 are listed as follows: ARIZONA Somaralyz (Sam) Grullon of Laveen, Ariz., Cesar Chavez High School COLORADO Isabella Martinez of Aurora, Colo., Eaglecrest High School FLORIDA Vernn Numa of Ocala, Fla., West Port High School Coral Scotland of Miramar, Fla., Pembroke Pines Charter High School GeQuan Thompson of Daytona Beach, Fla., Seabreeze High School GEORGIA Amari Charles of Augusta, Ga., Cross Creek High School Shemar Williams of Covington, Ga., Alcovy High School SOUTH CAROLINA Maya Benson of Columbia, S.C., Westwood High School Maddox Morrison of Fort Mill, S.C., Indian Land High School Ioannis (Yianni) Paraschos of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Academy for the Arts, Science and Technology TEXAS Gary Davis of San Antonio, Tex., Smithson Valley High School Krysti Veals of McKinney, Tex., McKinney North High School WASHINGTON Bella Memeo of Spokane, Wash., Mead High School About Boeing Boeing is the world's largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes, defense, space and security systems, and global services. A top U.S. exporter, the company supports commercial and government customers in more than 150 countries. Boeing employs more than 160,000 people worldwide and leverages the talents of a global supplier base. Building on a legacy of aerospace leadership, Boeing continues to lead in technology and innovation, deliver for its customers and invest in its people and future growth. About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Reporters worldwide contact Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for content experts in all aspects of aviation, aerospace, engineering and STEM-related fields. Our faculty experts specialize in unmanned and autonomous systems, security and intelligence, air traffic and airport management, astronomy, human factors psychology, meteorology, spaceflight operations, urban air mobility and much more. Visit the Embry-Riddle Newsroom for story ideas. Embry-Riddle educates 33,500 students at its residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Florida and Prescott, Arizona, at approximately 130 Worldwide Campus locations and through online degree programs ranked by U.S. News & World Report as being among the Nations Top 5. Ahead of October 18 the deadline to join Covax an initiative to ensure fair distribution of Covid-19 vaccine the World Health Organization said the race to develop Covid-19 vaccine should not lead to public fear. A total of 172 nations are now part of this global initiative. We cannot risk having an effective vaccine for COVID-19 that people refuse because of the perception that it is unsafe. We already face challenges with vaccine acceptance for many proven vaccines, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. COVAX is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the World Health Organization. Out of these 172 nations, 92 are low and middle income economies , eligible to be supported by the Covax advance market commitment. The rest 80 are potentially self-financing countries. The United States is not part of Covax; it has entered into several agreements to procure vaccines. The safety warning from WHO in the backdrop of the brief pause in Astrazenecas trial is significant as the pharma company reported an illness in a participant, triggering fear about Oxford vaccine. However, the trial has resumed after the UK authorities gave a go-ahead. Serum Institute of India, which is part of Oxford-Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine candidate trial, was asked to stop the process after concerns were raised. Now, the drug controller has given a go-ahead to SII to recruit for phase two and phase three trials. 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. On Saturday, after covering a press conference about the condition of two Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies who'd been ambushed by a gunman and were recovering from surgery, KPCC/LAist correspondent Josie Huang was thrown to the ground, pinned, handcuffed and arrested by deputies while she was documenting an arrest. Hours later, while Huang was still in custody, the department issued a statement on Twitter that Huang "did not identify herself as press," a statement contradicted by video from the scene. The news of Huang's arrest and the LASD's statements sparked widespread condemnation, including from elected officials. L.A. County Supervisor Mark-Ridley Thomas called for an Inspector General investigation and added that "the Citizens Oversight Commission must convene a special meeting on this matter." (The county Inspector General, Max Huntsman, says his office will investigate the incident.) State Senator Holly J. Mitchell called the arrest "deeply upsetting." Several media organizations and advocacy groups, including NPR, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Los Angeles Times Guild, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press condemned the arrest as an attack on press freedoms and the First Amendment. A letter from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press condemning the arrest and calling for charges against Huang to be dropped was signed by 64 media organizations. The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists said in a statement it was "deeply troubled by news reports and on-the-scene video that details what clearly seems to be inappropriate use of force" against Huang. KPCC/LAist correspondent Josie Huang being detained while reporting by L.A. County Sheriff's Department personnel on Sept. 12. (Courtesy of ABC 7 Los Angeles) False claims on social media began swirling that Huang was participating with protesters attempting to block an ambulance carrying the wounded deputies. Other false accounts said the group or Huang tried to "storm" the hospital to interfere with the deputies' medical care. In fact, the deputies had been brought to the hospital hours before the news conference. At the news conference, Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced the deputies were out of surgery and recovering. Protesters did verbally confront deputies at the ER driveway, and Huang documented the taunting by a handful of men at the scene. Many of the inaccurate statements about Huang's arrest have come from an elected official: Sheriff Villanueva. The sheriff won more than 1.3 million votes in a stunning upset over incumbent Jim McDonnell in 2018. Villanueva now leads America's largest sheriff's department, which has been accused in the past decade of biased policing and harboring violent deputy cliques; hundreds of the agency's sworn employees have histories of dishonesty and other misconduct. On Monday morning, Sheriff Villanueva appeared on KTLA's Morning News. He first answered questions about the wounded deputies. News anchors Frank Buckley and Jessica Holmes then pressed Villanueva on the details of Huang's arrest. In response, Villanueva made numerous false or misleading statements, several of which he reiterated in an afternoon press conference. The sheriff's comments come at a time when law enforcement agencies are under scrutiny, not just for the behavior of their personnel, but for the way they shape narratives, and in turn sway public opinion. On Thursday, The L.A. Times ran a scathing critique of the way LASD handled the situation, and called out Villanueva's counternarrative. Relying on video footage from the scene, witness accounts, and Huang's account of the arrest (including her own video footage), we're correcting and clarifying five incorrect or misleading statements Villanueva made about the arrest. Villanueva has not responded to four KPCC/LAist interview requests. 1. IDENTIFYING AS A JOURNALIST VILLANUEVA (on KTLA): Well, the problem is [deputies] were not aware that [Huang] was a working reporter, and she's yelling 'KPCC, KPCC', but unfortunately, it's not a household name. Sheriff Villanueva's assertion that deputies weren't aware Huang was a reporter is wrong. Shortly before her arrest, Josie Huang had been covering a Saturday evening press conference at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, about the shooting of two deputies. Afterward, as she was preparing to leave, she heard noise near an entrance to the hospital and encountered a small group of protesters chanting and taunting deputies. Video from the scene shows Huang reporting prior to her arrest, walking up to protesters and telling them "I'm with KPCC." Several minutes later, while documenting the arrest of a protester, Huang herself was arrested. Multiple videos show that she clearly identified herself as a reporter. She did so even as deputies tossed her against a car, and then to the ground -- shouting "I'm a reporter!" While on the ground, Huang then yelled out her affiliation with KPCC at least seven times, according to video from the scene. At least one deputy clearly heard Huang's statement, responding in the video: "Do what you're told if you're a reporter." Villanueva's assertion that Huang didn't identify herself as a reporter echoed the false statement by the Sheriff's Department, issued on Twitter while Huang was still in jail. On Sunday, The New York Times published an article saying the department continued to refer media to the tweet. The Times noted the Sheriff's Department statement was inaccurate. Though Villanueva claims KPCC is not a household name, the station has hundreds of thousands of listeners and a large digital audience; it is one of the most listened-to public radio stations in the U.S. Villanueva himself has appeared on KPCC's airwaves several times, before and after his election and as recently as late spring; he has even spontaneously called into our newsroom's public affairs show, AirTalk, to speak with host Larry Mantle. Villanueva also took a question from Huang at the news conference just before her arrest. 2. ALLEGED INTERFERENCE IN AN ARREST VILLANUEVA (on KTLA): The point is, she was told to keep a safe distance and she refused the deputies' instructions. So she ends up getting arrested for [Penal Code] 148 [obstructing justice]. Huang was never "told to keep a safe distance" and she attempted to comply with instructions to step back. At the :27 mark in Huang's video from the scene, deputies told Huang to back up. She appears to be repositioning herself in compliance with the officers; moments later she shouts out in pain. "Within seconds, I was getting shoved around. There was nowhere to back up," Huang writes in her account. The video does not show that Huang was encroaching in deputies' space, as Sheriff Villanueva claimed. (Her video was zoomed in, so does not give an accurate sense of her distance from the arrest.) The arrest took place on a city street, and Huang did not have to cross a police line. KTLA's Buckley noted that in his interview with Villanueva, saying: "With all due respect, Sheriff, she did seem to comply with the orders to back off." Video from the scene shows Huang had been walking backwards from deputies, as deputies appear to push her, for roughly ten seconds. As she stepped backward off the curb and onto the street, a deputy came from across the street and shoved her into a parked car. Huang's phone fell to the street as she was pinned to the ground and handcuffed. It was still recording; the video appears to show deputies stepping on the phone. A Washington Post story about Huang's arrest notes that the Sheriff's Department's claims "are contradicted by video Huang shared on Sunday showing her quickly backing away from police when ordered to do so and repeatedly identifying herself as a journalist." The allegation of interference confused ABC7 reporter Leanne Suter, who attended the same press conference and witnessed the last stages of Huang's arrest. To Suter, interfering with an arrest would be out of character for Huang, who she's known for several years. "I have never seen Josie act aggressively," Suter told LAist." She's tenacious, which is what makes her a good journalist, but I've never seen her act aggressively toward anyone." In a Monday press conference, Villanueva reiterated his belief that Huang's video shows her "way too close." He also said his agency has video that has not been publicly shared, showing Huang "rushed right up" to the deputies. Jim Ewert, General Counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, viewed Villanueva's assertions skeptically: "His previous statements were proven to be untrue. And now he's asking the community to trust him, when he tells them there's a video. Yet he's shown that he's untrustworthy, so he needs to come up with the video." 3. CREDENTIALS VILLANUEVA (on KTLA): The ID she had on her neck was not a press pass, it was a work ID, it did not help the situation ... If she doesn't have a credential, she runs up to the deputies while they're trying to make an arrest, she's actually creating a hazard for the deputies because they are, now they have, they're distracted. Huang did not need a press pass, and video evidence shows Huang did not run up to the deputies during the arrest, which was already near completion. Huang was documenting an arrest taking place on a public street, in full public view, on a Saturday night. Her video makes clear that she was not attempting to intervene or get between deputies and the man they were arresting. Huang was wearing a lanyard with her KPCC ID hanging from her neck at the scene. The credential is not a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department pass, but attorneys said that is not relevant to the criminal charge of PC 148, or obstructing justice, that she faces. "Not having a press pass? That's not a crime," said Harlan Braun, an attorney retained by LAist's parent company to represent Huang. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, agreed. "A person doesn't need a specific press pass... in order to cover a public event," he said. "Freedom of the press requires protection of gathering the news. And a reporter who's on a public sidewalk observing what's going on is constitutionally protected." Many journalists, including freelancers and reporters from small outlets, do not have press credentials. And the credentials were not a guarantee of safety for many journalists injured at protests this spring and summer. KPCC/LAist correspondent Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was shot in the neck with a 40mm foam round by Long Beach police in May -- while he was wearing his sheriff's press pass. "This is at least the second time that a journalist of color from this news organization was mistreated and injured while reporting on civil protests,"The L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists said in its statement. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented hundreds of "press freedom incidents", including arrests, physical attacks, injuries from rubber bullets and tear gassings of journalists this year. 4. CRIMINAL CHARGES KTLA's FRANK BUCKLEY: On this particular issue, is there a way to resolve this in a way that doesn't result in a reporter who is doing her job being cited for a crime? VILLANUEVA: Well, reporters are not immune from committing crime or being investigated or prosecuted for committing a crime. There's a reason why these laws are on the books. Huang was charged with obstructing justice. The Sheriff's Department will need to present its case to the L.A. County District Attorney. If the D.A. decides to prosecute Huang, the question of whether she broke the law will ultimately be up to a jury. Berkeley Law dean Chemerinsky said prosecutors should reject the case. "I don't see a basis for criminal charges against her. And I'm hoping the Los Angeles County District Attorney will agree," he said. Several other groups expressed concern over the charge, Huang's injuries, and her five-hour detention. "NPR is appalled by the arrest of Josie Huang, a KPCC public radio reporter, who was performing her job last night -- gathering facts to inform the American public," the organization said in a tweet. LAist and KPCC executives have called for the charges to be dropped. Huang was detained as new legislation, SB 629, sits on the desk of Governor Gavin Newsom. The proposed law would protect journalists' right to access areas closed by law enforcement during protests, and prevent citations of reporters for failing to disperse or violating curfew. In most circumstances, it would authorize reporters who have been detained to immediately contact a supervising officer to challenge their detention. Jim Ewert, attorney with the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said the bill is designed to prevent arrests of journalists like Huang. "It would specifically prohibit the sheriff from engaging in this kind of conduct and behavior," Ewert said. Newsom has until the end of the month to sign the bill into law. SB 629 was formally opposed by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, along with several other law enforcement associations. 5. ALLEGATIONS OF 'FAKE' NEWS ABOUT LASD VILLANUEVA (at a Monday press conference): KPCC was the same organization that did the fake Sassafras Saloon story ... It's the same organization that tried to sell that again and again ... This is where we're crossing the line between journalism and activism." The story Villanueva mentioned was not the work of KPCC. At the Monday afternoon press conference, Villanueva incorrectly attributed a story about law enforcement personnel partying in Hollywood's Sassafras Saloon in August. He appeared to be confusing KPCC with Santa Monica-based NPR affiliate KCRW, which published original reporting on the incident, as did online outlet Knock.LA. and CNN. While images of the event showed people partying without masks during a pandemic, the Sheriff's Department has said the people captured on video are not LASD personnel. The Los Angeles Police Department said it is investigating whether its employees were at the bar that night. An LAist story about the incident aggregates other news sources, including KCRW, CNN and Knock.LA, and quotes the Sheriff's Department statement that "the persons identified in the video are not employees of the Sheriff's Department and this event was not hosted by the LASD." KPCC did not publish a "fake" allegation, much less do so "again and again," as Villanueva charged. UPDATES: 9:55 a.m.: This article was updated to reference an editorial by the L.A. Times about Sheriff Villanueva's response to Huang's arrest. This article was originally published on September 16 at 1:13 p.m. WE LOVE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS WOOD RIVER Police are seeking three people in connection with a home invasion and armed robbery Wednesday, Sept. 16, in Wood River. On Thursday, charges were filed in Madison County Circuit Court against Aaron D. Harvey, 25, of Wood River; Corey W. Compton, 23, of Mitchell; and Aaron D. Pruitt, 22, of St. Charles, Missouri. Your browser does not support the video tag. The first is whether gas is good or bad. Does Australia need more of it, or should the country stop new gas fields even if this restricts supply and drives up prices? Butler is cautious about whether new gas fields make sense. Fitzgibbon calls loudly for more of them. The gulf between the two men is real, but so is their distance from the Greens. Neither is calling for a total halt to new gas. Illustration: Andrew Dyson Credit: Some caucus members fear a disaster if Labor turns into an anti-gas party. They name industries like steel, aluminium, cement, plastics, chemicals, fertiliser and glass as examples of manufacturing that must have gas. "If we don't give them cheap energy, they're all gone," says one. "They can all be replaced by imports." Only 37 per cent of Australian gas is used to generate electricity. Another 26 per cent is used in manufacturing, 22 per cent in mining and 12 per cent in households. The Australian Energy Market Operator says 120 to 285 petajoules of additional gas will be needed every year from 2024 to 2037. The gas that matters most to this question is near Narrabri in northern NSW, where Santos estimates it can produce gas at $6.40 a gigajoule a price Butler believes is too high to solve Australias energy challenges. Butler criticises the project on economics more than emissions. Loading Should Narrabri go ahead or not? Albanese is hedging. He is hoping the big decisions on the project will be settled well before the next election. The NSW regulator is due to rule on the project later this month, followed by a federal decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. But a decision on Narrabri will not spare Albanese from having to take a position. That is one lesson from Adani: candidates do not look like leaders if they cannot say what they stand for. Loading The second question is whether to burn more gas for electricity. Butler believes domestic gas will be too expensive to justify more power stations at a time when solar, wind and battery storage are getting cheaper. Fitzgibbon thinks batteries cannot store enough at low cost to be viable. He wants two gas-fired power stations in the Hunter. While AGL and Snowy Hydro both plan to build new gas power plants, the government suspects AGL is dragging its feet to keep supply low and prices high. Scott Morrison is ready for Snowy to go it alone. Would Labor go to the next election with a plan to stop that project? It seems unlikely. Although environmental groups hate the idea of a new gas-fired power station, there is no majority in the caucus to agree with them. Fitzgibbon is not alone. The third test is on carbon targets. Butler intends to prepare an interim target to replace the Labor plan at the last election, which was to cut emissions by 45 per cent cut by 2030. The updated goal, most likely for 2035, would be the stepping stone to net-zero emissions in 2050. Loading Yet the very concept of an interim target is questioned. Fitzgibbon thinks a recession is the wrong time to think about targets so far ahead. One caucus member says an "almighty barney" is not far off on what the target should be and whether to have one at all. The Prime Minister, meanwhile, knows exactly what he wants: more gas fields, more gas pipelines and more gas-fired generators producing electricity. Morrison provoked the environmental movement with his plan this week, but he also used the outrage to execute a quiet and clever shift. He no longer wants a new coal-fired power station in NSW. The man who walked into the House of Representatives with a lump of black coal has hidden the rock like it was a smoking gun in a murder mystery he has dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the seats, hoping it will never be seen again. Loading Liberals are breathing a sigh of relief at this change. The only dissent came from former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and his ally Matt Canavan, both calling for coal power rather than gas. The problem is they are fighting the last war. They lost. Morrison won. The Coalitions long internal struggle has come at a cost to the country: no clean energy target, no national energy guarantee and no settled rules for companies to invest. Instead, the future will be about government grants, loans and interventions. This is very different to just a few years ago when Labor was united and the Coalition was fighting itself over coal, emission targets and Malcolm Turnbulls leadership. MECOSTA COUNTY Health officials confirmed one new coronavirus-related death in Mecosta County on Thursday. The District Health Department No. 10 stated in an email that the individual was a man in his 60s. No additional information was immediately available Thursday. The death marks the third for Mecosta County. The first was reported March 25 and the second was reported weeks later on May 4. The health department confirmed one new coronavirus case Thursday, which brings the countys total to 164 confirmed cases. Seventy individuals are listed as recoveries. A total of 95 tests 84 diagnostic and 11 serology were administered on Wednesday. Throughout the pandemic, Mecosta County has administered 10,691 diagnostic tests and 418 serology tests with a total of 11,109 tests being completed. On Thursday, Ferris State administrators confirmed 10 new cases on the Big Rapids campus. There have been 98 confirmed cases on campus since the university reopened the week of Aug. 24. One new COVID-19 case was also reported at University and Kendall College of Art and Design, which brings its total to two confirmed cases. The DHD No. 10 serves residents in Mecosta, Crawford, Kalkaska, Lake, Manistee, Mason, Missaukee, Newaygo, Oceana and Wexford counties. This is Thursdays breakdown of coronavirus numbers in the health departments jurisdiction: Cumulative total: 1,479 positive COVID-19 cases in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction. 109 positive cases in Crawford County 65 positive cases in Kalkaska County 31 positive cases in Lake County 63 positive cases in Manistee County (one case removed due to residing outside the jurisdiction) 117 positive cases in Mason County 41 positive cases in Missaukee County (one case removed due to residing outside the jurisdiction and one case moved from Wexford to Missaukee so total remains the same) 308 positive cases in Newaygo County 479 positive cases in Oceana County 102 positive cases in Wexford County (one case moved to Missaukee) Deaths: 26 deaths from COVID-19 in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction. Deaths are included in the positive cases listed above. 5 deaths in Crawford County 4 deaths in Kalkaska County 2 deaths in Manistee County 1 death in Missaukee County 6 deaths in Oceana County 4 deaths in Wexford County Recoveries: 1,168 recoveries from from COVID-19 in the DHD No. 10s jurisdiction (based on whether individuals are still alive 30 days past the confirmed date). 96 recoveries in Crawford County 39 recoveries in Kalkaska County 28 recoveries in Lake County 38 recoveries in Manistee County 96 recoveries in Mason County 70 recoveries in Mecosta County 27 recoveries in Missaukee County 256 recoveries in Newaygo County 459 recoveries in Oceana County 59 recoveries in Wexford County As of Thursday, there are 114,692 confirmed cases and 6,632 confirmed deaths in Michigan. BEIRUT - The U.S. Treasury on Thursday imposed sanctions on two Lebanon-based companies and a man described as an official with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group The United States considers the Iran-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has imposed sanctions on many of the militant groups officials in the past. The new wave of sanctions comes as Lebanon is passing through its worst economic and financial crisis in decades. The country is also facing a political deadlock amid delays in the formation of a new, crisis Cabinet, because of a portfolio dispute. The U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, sanctioned the companies Arch Consulting and Meamar Construction for being owned, controlled, or directed by Hezbollah. OFAC also sanctioned Sultan Khalifah Asaad, saying that he is a Hezbollah official closely associated with both companies. Hezbollah leverages Arch and Meamar to conceal money transfers to Hezbollahs own accounts, further enriching Hezbollahs leadership and supporters, and depriving the Lebanese people of much-needed funds, the Treasury said. Last week, the Treasury sanctioned two former Lebanese Cabinet ministers allied with Hezbollah the ex-finance minister, Ali Hassan Khalil, currently a lawmaker, and the former public works and transportation minister, Youssef Fenianos. Lebanons Prime Minister-designate Muatapha Adib told reporters after meeting President Michel Aoun on Thursday afternoon that he will allow more time for discussions over the formation of a new Cabinet. The talks have stalled over which of Lebanons sects will get the finance ministry. Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal group of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri are insisting their sect gets the portfolio and that they get to name Shiite ministers in the new Cabinet. On Wednesday, a 15-day deadline passed without Lebanon forming the new Cabinet that would be tasked with resolving the economic crisis and carrying out reforms to pave the way for financial aid from the international community. Note: This post will be updated during the event. 1:35 p.m. After taking a few questions, organizers concluded the press conference. 1:21 p.m.: Wade-El: I am so proud of the young black and brown people who said we will not be turned by pepper spray. ... we are going on. This is an opportunity for us to follow. ... We have a responsibility to make a change in a tenable way. 1:19 p.m.: Lancaster City Council president Ismail Smith Wade-El calls the existing system of cash bail discriminatory against poor people. 1:14 p.m.: Haden Nelson Major of the ACLU of Pennsylvania is speaking. She says todays reduction of bail does not undo the fact that the initial bail orders were illegal: Make no mistake, these orders were detention orders. 1:12 p.m.: Blanding Watson, President of the Lancaster NAACP says the organization will offer help to those that have been charged. Adds they have created a resource fund for those fighting racial injustice in Lancaster County. 1:10 p.m.: Issac Etter of SafeHouse Lancaster is now at the microphone. Ive seen [protesters'] character. Ive seen their hearts ... It is completely unfair that their bail was set at a million dollars. He then reads a statement from Mary Etterline, whose daughter was one of the people arrested. She offers thanks to those working on her daughters behalf. 1:06 p.m.: Booth thanks the local community and various organizations and individuals for helping to get bail reduced. 1:05 p.m.: Eliza Booth of Lancaster Stands Up begins by reading a statement from Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Bail cannot be weaponized. 12:51 update: The Lancaster County District Attorneys office has announced that a judge has significantly lowered bail for nine people arrested after Sundays protests. Judge Dennis Reinaker has lowered their bail to $50,000 or $100,000, depending on the individual and what they are accused of. Reporter Jenna Wise has full details. BREAKING: Taylor Enterline's bail was just reduced from $1 million to $50k unsecured bail. That means Taylor is FREE, pending trial (or DA dropping the charges). Other defendants' bail being reviewed nowwe will keep you updated. Thanks to everyone who turned on the pressure. pic.twitter.com/F53FUtVhyn Lancaster Stands Up (@lancstandsup) September 17, 2020 Members of Lancaster Stands Up, SafeHouse Lancaster, and the Lancaster NAACP will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. today in Lancaster to discuss the $1 million dollar bail set for demonstrators who were arrested after a protest of a fatal police shooting turned violent. The event will be held at Faith Tabernacle, 665 S. Ann St., and will include Eliza Booth, Co-founder and Organizer at Lancaster Stands Up; Isaac Etter, Co-executive Director of SafeHouse Lancaster; and Blanding Watson, President of the Lancaster NAACP. Thirteen people were charged in the wake of Sunday nights protest in downtown Lancaster. Bail for seven of them was set at $1 million. According to authorities, the protestsdegenerated into rioting that damaged Lancasters police headquarters and produced an arson fire that blocked a downtown intersection. The charge documents for eight of those arrested show various charges against each individual, which range from arson and rioting to institutional vandalism. One person wascharged with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Charging documents for the other people arrested were not immediately available. READ MORE: $1M bail set for Lancaster police shooting demonstrators A number of criminal justice advocates and politicians have criticized the high bail amount. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman tweeted on Tuesday that bail that high is blatantly unconstitutional. Lancaster County prosecutors responded that they did not get involved with setting bail, but Lancaster police did out of concern for their officers and the publics safety. The DAs office said bail is not intended as a punishment but to ensure defendants appear at court hearings. READ MORE: Lancaster County prosecutors respond to outrage over exorbitantly high $1 million bail set for protesters The protests occurred after a police officer shot and killed 27-year-old Ricardo Munoz during a domestic disturbance call. Body camera footage showed Munoz running towards the officer while brandishing a knife at around 4:15 p.m. outside a row home on the 300 block of Laurel Street. Munozs family said he suffered from schizophrenia and paranoia and was having an episode. His mother, Miguelina Pena, said the family attempted to contact crisis intervention first, but were told to call the police instead. READ MORE: They didnt have to kill him: mother says son shot by Lancaster officer was mentally ill Link's Redline Performance Series Suspensions include a broader selection of weight capacities for its acclaimed Air Link tandem drive axle suspension and Atlas single drive axle suspension. Link has met the demands of major fire departments and equipment manufacturers with high-performance, heavy-duty vehicle suspensions for more than 20 years. Chris English Link Mfg., Ltd., the leader in specialty-engineered suspensions, announced the introduction of its new Redline Performance Series Suspensions that include a broader selection of weight capacities for its acclaimed Air Link tandem drive axle suspension and Atlas single drive axle suspension. In tribute to fire departments and personnel across North America, the company has created a dedicated charity dubbed Link Cares that will regularly contribute to firefighter-related charitable organizations across North America. Link Cares has made an inaugural contribution of $2,000 to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF). Link has met the demands of major fire departments and equipment manufacturers with high-performance, heavy-duty vehicle suspensions for more than 20 years, said Chris English, managing director, Link Suspensions of Canada. The development of our Redline Performance Series Suspensions and the establishment of our Link Cares charity represent our companys core values of servanthood and our sincere reverence for the heroic nature of the firefighting culture. Redline Performance Series Suspensions expands Links product range, offering new weight ratings as a response to market demand and the unique combinations of equipment and apparatus used by individual fire departments. The Air Link Redline tandem drive axle suspension will now be available in a carrying capacity of 62K to 85K, while the Atlas Redline single drive axle suspension will now have a carrying capacity range of 31.5K to 35K. The Air Link Redline tandem axle suspension features a unique air spring over walking beam design, patented by Link close to 30 years ago. Originally engineered to handle extreme payloads in harsh, off-highway and military environments, this rugged suspension meets the demands of aerial fire and rescue vehicles and then some. It fully integrates with Dana, Meritor, SSU and Mack axles. The Air Link Redline tandem axle suspension delivers superior emergency vehicle performance, a smoother ride, higher roll stability, maximum articulation, better traction and has lower maintenance requirements. Links time-tested air-over-walking-beam technology uses large, high-volume, low-frequency air springs that enable firefighters to experience a consistently stable and comfortable ride, whether theyre racing to an emergency on a city street, on an unpaved road or without benefit of either. The City of Syracuse has used the Air Link suspension for decades and has benefited from its reliability and ease of service, said Zach Smith, fleet maintenance manager for the City of Syracuse, NY Department of Fire. The department responds to 22,000 calls annually and operates this suspension on its Sutphen tower fleet. Links Atlas Redline single axle air spring suspension was designed from the ground up to meet the demanding life of fire and rescue vehicles. It fully integrates with Dana and Meritor axles, and when introduced, it was the first single axle suspension to have a 35K rating. It is the ideal air suspension solution for aerials and pumpers that need to carry longer ladders and more equipment on a single rear axle chassis. Engineered with extra-wide bearing surfaces, the Atlas Redline provides high yaw stability, resulting in stable and predictable cornering. The robust design of the Atlas Redline provides enhanced ride quality, superior cab protection and significantly reduces departmental maintenance expenses. The Atlas meets all our requirements for a suspension, said Drew Sutphen, president, Sutphen Corporation. We have realized significantly less long-term structural problems, and no jarring to the aerial equipment. The Atlas is rugged and dependable and is a fast installation. Link Redline Performance Series Suspensions deliver everything fire departments demand in a heavy-duty suspension, including better overall handling, maximum ride comfort and enhanced safety for firefighters. Links suspensions also improve the life expectancy of bodies and aerial equipment on the fire trucks they serve, and have been proven to isolate the chassis platform and contingent structures from stress-inducing impacts encountered on-highway and off. All Link Redline Performance Series Suspensions are 100 percent off-highway rated, all can be retrofitted on existing vehicles and all come with a six-month money-back guarantee. Both the Air Link Redline tandem axle suspension and Atlas Redline single axle suspension feature dual height-control valves that help maintain proper ride height and vehicle leveling. Convenient air dump capabilities allow some of todays higher-profile apparatus to kneel under older garage doors with less clearance. All Redline Performance Series Suspensions feature polyurethane bushings and are treated with Links exclusive Link-KOAT migratory self-healing metal treatment. Link-KOAT provides unparalleled corrosion resistance and rust protection, even when surfaces are exposed to excessive cleaning, harsh chemicals and the severe-duty environments commonly encountered. Their polyurethane bushings also resist solvents, require no lubrication or maintenance and are far more durable than rubber. Link is committed to building the safest and best-performing suspensions for fire apparatus, English said. We will never stop improving and innovating and our Redline Performance Series Suspensions and Link Cares charity are testaments to our dedication to firefighting and to the men and women who serve that profession so valiantly. Links Redline Performance Series Suspensions can be ordered through local OEM dealers. For more information on Redline Performance Series Suspensions and the Link Cares charity, please call (800) 222-6283 or visit [http://www.linkmfg.com/redline. To access high-resolution images and video of the Air Link Redline tandem drive axle suspension, please visit https://www.linkmfg.com/products/fire-rescue-chassis-suspensions/air-link-fire To access high-resolution images and video of the Atlas Redline single axle suspension, please visit https://www.linkmfg.com/products/fire-rescue-chassis-suspensions/atlas END - About Link Mfg., Ltd. Link develops and manufactures a variety of suspension systems specially engineered to address the unique needs of commercial vehicles and equipment. Link is driven to outperform as the worldwide leader in heavy-duty truck cab air suspensions marketed under the brand name Cabmate. U.S.-based Link Manufacturing is an IATF 16949 and ISO 14001: 2015 (EMS) certified company whose primary products include cab, chassis and auxiliary suspensions. Canadian-based Link Suspensions of Canada is an ISO 9001 certified company whose primary products include heavy vocational and off-highway chassis suspensions. Link also makes specialty products such as tire pressure equalization systems, ramps and other products designed to enhance the productivity of commercial vehicles. For more information, visit https://www.linkmfg.com. Link and Air Link are registered trademarks of Link Mfg., Ltd. Atlas, Redline and Link Cares are trademarks of Link Mfg., Ltd. Names of original equipment manufacturers and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) may be trademarks of their respective organizations. References to vehicle makes, models and product designations are for reference purposes only. Neither Link Mfg., nor its products are sponsored or endorsed by the referenced original equipment manufacturers or the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF), and there is nothing else in the use of these designations that should lead a reader to believe that there is an association between Link Mfg. and these organizations. While a hearty Christmas lunch is usually enough to turn anyone into a pudding-filled blob, shoppers at Woolworths could soon claim that title officially thanks to new technology being trialled by the supermarket giant. The grocery chain is gearing up for a COVID-conscious Christmas and, as part of its plans, is rolling out a new automated system for tracking customer numbers in its stores. Three-dimensional cameras will be placed at the entrance and exit of stores to track shoppers coming and going. But instead of a standard video stream, the cameras will convert humans into "blurred spherical shapes" also known as "blobs". Their mission: prevent having too many blobs in the store in order to maintain social distancing. Woolworths is trialing new 3D cameras which view customers as blobs. Credit:Janie Barrett Despite its enigmatic and rotund associations, the term blob is a technical one used in databases when referring to "binary large objects". Woolworths has partnered with global digital merchandising company Stratacache and analytics firm Walkbase to implement the technology. Just as he did each day, construction worker John Wheeler rose early on the morning of Aug. 12 and waited outside his Scarborough apartment for his ride to work. He never made it. Instead, Wheeler, 45, became the victim of what Toronto police have called a senseless killing simply because he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. On Thursday, homicide detectives announced Christopher Mitchell, 18, of Brampton, has been arrested and charged with first-degree-murder in Wheelers death. Police allege he is the shooter who came up behind Wheeler and shot him in the back outside a building near Danforth Rd. and Eglinton Ave. East. The men had no relationship, investigators said. They are complete strangers, said Det.-Sgt. Ted Lioumanis, the lead homicide detective on the case, told reporters at a press conference outside police headquarters Thursday. We want to reiterate that this was a senseless killing. Mr. Wheeler did not deserve this, nor does anyone. Toronto police on Friday released a series of videos showing the early-morning ambush shooting of 45-year-old John Wheeler outside a building at Danforth Road and Eglinton Avenue East on Aug. 12. Police say that they are looking for two suspects, both considered armed, violent and dangerous. Asked about a possible motive in the killing, including whether the shooter intended to target anyone that morning, Lioumanis said only that police had sufficient evidence to charge Mitchell with first-degree murder, meaning the killing was premeditated. Lioumanis stressed that the investigation continues, as police believe Mitchell was with at least two other people immediately before and after the shooting. Last month, Toronto police released surveillance video in the homicide, showing two men dressed in black and wearing face masks in front of Wheelers building, one carrying a long rifle or a shotgun. Noting its been a very busy week for the Toronto police homicide squad, Insp. Hank Idsinga announced police made an arrest in another homicide, a daylight shooting last week that killed Andre Rodriguez, 26, of Toronto. Mohamed Osman Daoud, 34, of St. Catharines, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Sept. 10 shooting in a Walmart parking lot in the St. Clair Avenue and Mould Avenue area. Another man, Abdelmuniem Abdalla, 33, of Grimsby, is wanted for first-degree murder in connection with the shooting. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at (416) 808-7400. Idsinga said the investigations into both homicides were helped by the cooperation of members of the public, and said both investigators and the victims families were grateful. Irelyne Lavery is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Reach her via email: ilavery@thestar.ca Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing for the Star. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis Others said attention should also be given to funding for social services and police body cameras, either in addition to the riot gear or instead of it. Aldermen committed to buying body cameras the same night they approved the gear, but city officials have cited the cost and logistics of implementing them as one reason they are not expected to be in place until next year. Taking a jibe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Bharatiya Janata Party's Tejasvi Surya on September 17 called him a 'Twitter troll' and said that his politics is 'limited to his tweets'. "He's absent from Parliament, streets, party meetings. He's like anonymous trolls. Don't think his tweets have implication beyond Twitter," Surya said, according to news agency ANI. "Difficult to comprehend how he understands unemployment when he never had a single day's job that he performed in his life. He doesn't know pain of unemployed youth. An entitled prince trying to whip up issue on which he has no moral authority to speak is baffling," the MP, who represents Bangalore South constituency in Lok Sabha, said. Earlier, Gandhi had hit out at the government over the growing rate on unemployment in India. "Massive unemployment has forced the youth to call today #NationalUnemploymentDay. Employment is dignity. For how long will the Govt deny it?" Gandhi had said in a tweet. LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Port Logistics Group, one of the nation's leading providers of omnichannel logistics services, today announced the appointment of Ryan Powell as Senior Vice President (SVP) of its Whiplash business unit. Whiplash Merchandising, Inc., acquired by Port Logistics Group in April of 2019, provides a flexible and scalable order fulfillment technology platform to service the direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace. Ryan will lead Whiplash through its next growth phase and further development of the Whiplash platform. "We are very pleased to welcome Ryan to the team," said Greg Morello, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Port Logistics Group. "With over 17 years of sales and operations leadership experience, coupled with his very relevant knowledge of the global shipping and ecommerce fulfillment market, we are confident that Ryan will accelerate growth with both emerging and established brands in this very competitive segment." Ryan was most recently the Head of Revenue for a well-known ecommerce shipping and fulfillment platform company where he was in charge of global growth strategy with a North American focus. "The opportunity Port Logistics Group created with their recent acquisition of Whiplash is immense. Their commitment to innovation and technology better positions the company to evolve alongside the brands they service," said Ryan Powell, SVP at Whiplash. Today, a growing number of brands are requiring comprehensive direct-to-consumer (D2C) capabilities. Port Logistics Group's ability to provide greater customization capabilities for labeling, packaging, reporting, returns management and value-added services has solidified its foothold in the industry as a true omnichannel fulfillment provider serving retail, wholesale and ecommerce. About Port Logistics Group Port Logistics Group partners with established and emerging brands and retailers to express their brands through exceptional order fulfillment. The company offers a full spectrum of logistics services including retail distribution, wholesale distribution, and ecommerce fulfillment. With a strategic mix of 6.5 million square feet of warehouse space backed by intelligent technology and automation, Port Logistics Group provides the critical link between international transportation and the last-mile supply chain. For more information on our end-to-end services, visit www.portlogisticsgroup.com. SOURCE Port Logistics Group Related Links http://www.portlogisticsgroup.com SNL casts Jim Carrey as Joe Biden Saturday Night Live is going big with its casting for the upcoming election. Former In Living Color star Jim Carrey will play Joe Biden on season 46, which begins next month, and will likely appear opposite Alec Baldwin as President Donald Trump in skits. SNL creator Loren Michaels also confirmed Maya Rudolph will return to play Bidens running mate Kamala Harris and current cast member Beck Bennett will continue to play VP Mike Pence. The long-running comedy show also named three new cast members: Lauren Holt, Punkie Johnson and Andrew Dismukes. Street Outlaws star dead at 39 ET reports Street Outlaws star Chris Ellis is dead at age 39. The car mechanic and reality TV personality died Sept. 9 at his Oklahoma City home after an apparent heroin overdose. Friends said they hadnt heard from him in two days when they called police, who found him dead for several days. Ellis, also known as Kentucky, appeared on the Discovery Channel show from 2013 to 2018. Hes survived by his mother and six siblings. MORE BUZZ: Carrie Underwood, Thomas Rhett tie for ACM Awards Entertainer of the Year ( E! Taylor Swift performs 'Betty live for first time at ACM Awards ( RS Taylor Swifts stalker sent to prison ( BB ABC cancels Stumptown season 2 due to coronavirus pandemic ( ET ABC cancels 'United We Fall after 8 episodes ( E! The Go-Gos introduce new 80s-inspired American Girl doll ( BB Elton John to release career-spanning box set Jewel Box ( RS Jurassic World gets kid-friendly in Netflixs Camp Cretaceous series ( ET Netflix investigates Chris Watts in American Murder documentary ( E! Pentatonix covers Tears for Fears' Mad World ( BB The Croods 2 release date moves up to Thanksgiving ( SF Angel Olsen covers Mr. Lonely for movie soundtrack ( RS Buzz is a daily roundup of entertainment news from movies, TV, music and celebrities. Nearly 30 police officers in Germany have been suspended after members of a force shared pictures of Adolf Hitler, black people being shot and depictions of refugees in gas chambers, prompting alarm at the extent of far-right infiltration within law enforcement networks. Some among the 29 North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) officers are also accused of using far-right chatrooms where extremist content was shared that breaches Germanys constitution, such as Swastikas and other Nazi symbolism, Reuters reported. Eleven of the suspects could be charged with disseminating Nazi propaganda and hate speech and 14 will likely be dismissed from the police. Eighteen are accused of failing to report their colleagues. This is a disgrace for the NRW police, said NRW interior minister Herbert Reul. Mr Reul described the 126 images shared to at least five online WhatsApp groups used entirely or largely by police officers as the ugliest, most despicable, neo-Nazi, racist refugee baiting. One of those groups apparently was set up in 2012, and the one that contained the most images, in 2015. The most recent message was sent on 27 August. While politicians and officials have so far been reticent to acknowledge far-right infiltration within law enforcement as organised networks, insisting those uncovered previously were individual cases, Mr Reul was reported as saying: Today, I can no longer speak of individual cases. The minister pledged to set up a special inquiry in Essen, where most of the suspects worked, and voiced plans to appoint a special envoy for far-right extremist tendencies to devise ways of detecting extremism early within the states police force. We have to ask unpleasant questions of ourselves, he added. Who knew about this? Why was this tolerated for years? By whom? I'm appalled and ashamed, said Frank Richter, chief of Essens police force. It is hard to find words. The WhatsApp groups were discovered when a 32-year-old NRW police officers personal mobile phone was confiscated during a separate probe into whether he had passed confidential information about an organised crime group to a journalist, local media reported. Some 200 investigators raided the homes and workplaces of 14 of the 29 suspended officers in at least five towns and cities on Wednesday morning, seizing phones and extensive evidence on memory devices. Mr Reul said he expected more cases were likely as the seized evidence was investigated. Most of the officers allegedly involved worked at some point at the same police precinct in Muelheim an der Ruhr, Mr Reul said. All 29 were suspended with immediate effect on Wednesday, and disciplinary proceedings opened. It comes amid growing concern that far-right nationalists may be gaining a foothold in Germanys uniformed services. 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 Some 600 soldiers were said to be under investigation over allegations of extremist ties in July, when the German government disbanded an entire elite military unit after reports that officers used Hitler salutes and privately stocked weapons. Twenty of the KSK units 1,400 soldiers were placed under investigation over suspected far-right ties. One sergeant major suspected of having extremist links was found to have a cache of weapons in a bunker at his home. And last month, German prosecutors said they were investigating a retired police officer suspected of sending threatening emails, signed with the name of a gang of neo-Nazi killers, to prominent figures with foreign heritage. The emails, including some sent to politicians with a Turkish background, were signed NSU 2.0, a reference to the National Socialist Underground neo-Nazi gang, which killed 10 people, mainly immigrants, between 2000 and 2007. Following the case, the interior minister in Hesse publicly raised concerns about a far-right network in his police force, The New York Times reported. And in Baden-Wuerttemberg, seven police cadets were also investigated for exchanging right-wing extremist content in a private WhatsApp group, the dpa news agency reported. A similar group brimming with anti-Muslim sentiment was also found in Bavaria last year. In July, Germany's top federal security official, Horst Seehofer, rejected calls for a probe into the extent of racial profiling by the police, insisting that there was "no structural problem". On Wednesday, Mr Seehofer's spokesperson cautioned against making sweeping allegations against the whole German police, which has 300,000 officers. But of course it's clear, as the current case shows, that we're not talking about individuals, he said. The battle against right-wing extremism is in the DNA of the police, said regional deputy chair of the GdP union, Michael Maatz. The fact that there are, nevertheless, officers who share radical, far-right and xenophobic content in chat groups is unbearable, he added. Additional reporting by agencies When I was first assigned to teach U.S. history nearly a decade ago during my second year as a social studies teacher, my first stop was to a Black-owned bookstore around the corner from where I taught. A month before the school year began, I had decided that I couldnt use the old course textbook. It was the same sort of Eurocentric textbook from which I was taught U.S. history as a student, focusing on the accomplishments of the English-speaking Western world while offering little to no acknowledgment of those oppressed by that same population. That textbook hadnt reflected my history and heritage as a Black man, nor that of the predominately Black and Latinx students I was preparing to teach. So at LaUnique African American Books and Culture Center, I purchased Africas Gift to America, a text written by historian Joel Augustus Rogers. It was because of that text that my students learned about Crispus Attucks, the African American man who was the first colonist killed by British forces in the massacre that sparked the American Revolution. It was from this book that they came to understand the extent to which enslaved Africans were the foundation for Americas wealth. While it wasnt the only book we used in my history class, it helped establish a foundational truth that allowed my students to understand their world in a proper historical context. There is a racial reckoning happening in America now. The names of racists are being removed from school buildings and colleges, the statues of men who fought to maintain Black enslavement are coming down, and universities and school districts are even severing ties to police departments. Simply put, students like books where they can see themselves. That's not happening for Black children in your average U.S. history textbook." Thankfully, the percentage of white people who express support for the Black Lives Matter movement has increased by half in the past four years , to 60 percent in a June poll from the Pew Research Center. That support is even higher among white educators , 83 percent of whom say they support Black Lives Matter. However, is simply saying so enough? I dont think that it is. Particularly if you believe current history textbooks are suitable for students to learn from. According to a recent Education Week survey , when asked, To what extent if any do the textbooks used in your district, classroom, or school accurately and fully reflect the experiences of people of color?, 13 percent of educators of color answered none while only 5 percent of white respondents said the same thing. Those survey results suggest a discrepancy between what a white educator means by saying Black lives matter and what that actually looks like in practice. Research demonstrates a relationship between positive racial identity and academic achievement for Black children. Simply put, students like books where they can see themselves. Thats not happening for Black children in your average U.S. history textbook. Recently, I decided to check how much had changed since I left the history classroom in 2016. I borrowed a 2018 high school U.S. history text that is still in use from my district. I scanned it to see if I could find positive images of Black people or even any mention that explains why Christopher Columbus statues are coming down across the country or why Juneteenth received mainstream attention this year. There was no mention of Christopher Columbus murder and enslavement of Indigenous peoples and there was no mention of Juneteenth. There were a few other glaring omissions. There was no mention that George Washington originally opposed Africans joining the fight for independence. There was no mention that there were hundreds of armed and unarmed rebellions of enslaved persons. There was no mention that the Texas Revolution was prompted by Mexicos abolishment of slavery. There was no mention of the significance of the Haitian Revolution in the American acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. Perhaps these omissions were to be expected, considering five of the six authors were white, and 10 of the 11 textbook consultants were white. And, for good measure, the cover features a picture of Thomas Jefferson, a man who enslaved African peoples, repeatedly forced himself on an enslaved woman he held in bondage, and wrote that Black people are inferior to whites in the endowments of both body and mind. It is not enough for teachers to say that Black lives matter. Teachers must live those words; school districts must live those words as well. But not all teachers believe that Black lives matter, and not all teachers believe that Black lives matter enough to abandon textbooks that devalue Blackness, elevate whiteness, and seek texts that portray American history accurately. School districts must abandon the use of any text in any content area that fails to reflect Black life in a way that does not affirm Black children. They must abandon texts that fail to portray history accurately and that fail to tell the humanizing stories of the Black experience. Every white educator who believes that Black lives matter should think critically about how Black students will see themselves in curricular materials that devalue or omit the contributions of Black people, that overly emphasize the contributions of white people, and that portray the history of Black life as pitiable. We dont need more educators whose valuing of Black lives comes with the condition that history remains whitewashed. Houston SPCA Two bonded dogs evacuated from Louisiana ahead of Hurricane Sally were reunited in Houston after they were sent to different parts of Texas. The pups, 1-year-old Whisper and 2-year-old Sassy, were part of 100 cats and dogs flown from southeast Louisiana on Monday ahead of the hurricanes landfall. Sassy, a Kai Ken, was taken along to Fort Worth while Whisper, a deaf shepherd mix, stayed behind in Houston. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Todays archive page is from Oct. 19, 1932. Navy Day, observed throughout the United States on the birthday of former President Theodore Roosevelt on Oct. 27, will be marked by the 33rd Fleet Division, New York Naval Militia, and the U.S. Naval Reserve aboard the training vessel, the U.S.S. Briarcliff -- moored at Pier No. 7 in Tompkinsville. Residents of Staten Island will be able to visit the ship on Navy Day, according to Lt. Charles R. Jacobsen, commanding officer of the Briarcliff and the Reserve Division. Naval vessels and stations on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will be open to the public on Navy Day. If you have trouble viewing the page below, click here to enlarge it. MEXICO CITY - President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico will respond softly, softly and with love and peace to the finding by the U.S. government that his country needs to do more to stop drug trafficking. Lopez Obrador said he did not agree with all the findings in the U.S. annual report, which listed Mexico among major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries. He said Mexico is working every day to fight drug trafficking and our conscience is clear. The Foreign Relations Department is going to issue a statement, but what I told the secretary this morning was peace and love, softly, softly softly, the president said. This is a report that the U.S. government brings out every year, and it has some good things and some we do not accept, Lopez Obrador added. We are not going to get into a political confrontation, we have a very good relationship with the U.S. government. The Trump administration noted in the report Wednesday that Mexico has made progress, but said it must clearly demonstrate its commitment to dismantling the cartels and do more to combat the synthetic opioid fentanyl and reduce methamphetamine production and smuggling. Mexico is the main U.S. supplier of meth, and along with China, the main U.S. source of fentanyl. Next year, the U.S. might consider issuing a determination that Mexico failed demonstrably to uphold its international drug control commitments, which could revive resentments similar to the U.S. drug de-certification procedure of decades past. But Lopez Obrador said: We have nothing to fear, and moreover, we have to be very careful because there are elections in the United States. So it is better to wait for a month and a half there is not much time left and this does not merit an angry or energetic response. Read more about: In a statement, the Trump campaign denied Ms. Dorriss account. The allegations are totally false, Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement. We will consider every legal means available to hold The Guardian accountable for its malicious publication of this unsubstantiated story. This is just another pathetic attempt to attack President Trump right before the election. Mr. Trump has consistently denied the accusations from more than two dozen women who have come forward with stories of unwanted groping, kissing and assault, dating back to the 1970s. In the case of Natasha Stoynoff a journalist who claimed Mr. Trump assaulted her when she was conducting an interview with his wife, Melania Trump the president made her claim a punchline at a rally. Look at her. I dont think so, he said. Mr. Trump is currently the subject of a defamation lawsuit from the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In an unusual move last week, the Justice Department moved to replace the private legal team defending the president with government lawyers. Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump last November, claiming that he lied by publicly denying he had ever met her. In her interview with The Guardian, Ms. Dorris explained that the reason she had waited so long to come forward with her story was because she felt protective of her twin daughters. But they had also inspired her to speak out, she said. Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you dont let anybody do anything to you that you dont want, she said. And Id rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didnt stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable. New Orleans, LA - A team of researchers from LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence and the University of Copenhagen provides the first evidence that patients with ocular hypertension may exhibit superior antioxidant protection that promotes resistance to the elevated intraocular pressure associated with glaucoma. Their findings are published online in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, available here. In general, glaucoma patients are vulnerable to increased intraocular pressure. However, a particular group of patients has no glaucomatous neurodegeneration despite high intraocular pressure -- patients with ocular hypertension. The paper reports the discovery of a new mechanism to explain why patients with ocular hypertension do not have glaucoma. This is the first study evaluating oxidative stress and antioxidative agents in patients with normal-tension glaucoma and ocular hypertension during oxygen stress. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, ocular hypertension is when the pressure inside the eye (intraocular pressure or IOP) is higher than normal. The authors found that patients with ocular hypertension have increased antioxidant capacity and higher levels of anti-inflammatory, omega-3 derived chemical messengers involved in sustaining cell function in their plasma compared to patients with normal-tension glaucoma and age-matched controls. The abundance of these omega-3 fatty acid chemical messengers provides antioxidant defense, and as a consequence, potential resistance to elevated intraocular pressure and glaucomatous neurodegeneration by eliminating increases in systemic oxidative stress. "The study opens avenues of therapeutic exploration highlighting the significance of the omega-3 fatty acid chemical messengers' antioxidant capacity as a potential diagnostic biomarker and as a novel treatment to prevent glaucomatous neurodegeneration," notes Dr. Nicolas G. Bazan, Boyd Professor, Ernest C. and Ivette C. Villere Chair of Retinal Degeneration, and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine. Glaucoma is the most common cause of irreversible blindness. The sight-threatening disease is defined by a progressive loss of the innermost retinal neurons with corresponding visual field losses. Despite current treatments to lower the intraocular pressure, 15% of glaucoma patients go blind, and as many as 42% will lose sight in one eye. The study is a result of a collaboration between Dr. Bazan and Professor in Translational Eye Research, Chief Physician, and Glaucoma Specialist at the Copenhagen University Hospital, Dr. Miriam Kolko. Their collaboration began many years ago when, as a medical student from Denmark, Dr. Kolko worked with Bazan at LSU Health New Orleans. "I began developing my interests in neuroprotection and ophthalmology working under Nicolas Bazan, who mentored, motivated and guided me, as a medical school student from Denmark supported by a Fulbright Scholarship (1994-1996), and from 2000-2003," says Dr. Kolko." I was lucky to work with and be inspired by Dr. Nicolas Bazan. Later, he also became my PhD thesis director." "Professor Kolko is a brilliant and innovative clinician-scientist who bridges a clinical career treating patients with glaucoma medically and surgically with basic and translational research to understand the pathophysiology behind it," concludes Bazan. "We are so proud that this international superstar's roots are here at LSU Health New Orleans." ### Other members of the research team included Mia Langbl, Sarkis Saruhanian, Thisayini Baskaran, Daniel Tiedemann, Zaynab A. Mouhammad, Anne Katrine Toft-Kehler, and Rupali Vohra form the University of Copenhagen; as well as Bokkyoo Jun from LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence. The research was supported by grants from Lion's Prize; Fight for Sight, Denmark; Jrgen Bagenkop Nielsen's Myopi-Foundation; the Synoptik Foundation; the Hrslev Foundation; and Novo Nordisk Foundation. LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's flagship health sciences university, LSU Health New Orleans includes a School of Medicine with branch campuses in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSU Health New Orleans faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSU Health New Orleans research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSU Health New Orleans faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu, http://www.twitter.com/LSUHealthNO, or http://www.facebook.com/LSUHSC. Ohio Judge Richard Frye, writing in a verdict that declined to loosen restrictions on absentee-ballot drop boxes. The ruling means that there will continue to be only one ballot drop box per county, regardless of population differences. ( Reuters September 15, 2020) A Salt Lake City police officer was charged with aggravated assault Wednesday, five months after he ordered his police dog to attack a Black man who was on his knees with his hands in the air, prosecutors said. The officer, Nickolas J. Pearce, ordered the dog to bite the man, Jeffrey Ryans, even though Ryans was doing nothing to resist officers during a domestic violence call April 24, according to the Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office. Repeatedly saying good boy, Pearce encouraged the dog, Tuco, as it sank its teeth into Ryans leg, and Ryans cried out in pain, the district attorneys office said in a probable cause statement. The episode came to light in August, when The Salt Lake Tribune published a report on the encounter that included body-camera footage. Utah state law allows officers to use force, but when you cross that threshold, you need to be held accountable, just like anybody else, Sim Gill, the Salt Lake County district attorney, said in an interview Wednesday. Aggravated assault, a felony, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. Pearce, 39, who is white and has been on the force for 14 years, was placed on administrative leave in August, and remained on leave Wednesday, according to the Salt Lake City Police Department. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer. There was no answer at phone numbers listed under his name. Pearce has said that he believed Ryans was grasping a fence to try to stand up and he interpreted those actions as being a prelude to fighting the officers, according to a report by the citys Civilian Review Board. He opted to use his K-9 to stop these actions, and said he told the dog good boy because dogs respond to positive reinforcement and do not naturally want to bite people, the report said. The review board concluded, however, that the critical element, the attempted standing up that led to the deployment of the K-9, was simply not apparent on the two cameras that captured this portion of the events. The board said it found that Pearce had used excessive force. Ryans is filing a lawsuit against the Salt Lake City Police Department, according to his lawyer, Gabriel K. White. Were optimistic, with the criminal charges, there will be some measure of justice for Jeffrey, he said. The encounter began when several officers responded to a report of domestic violence and found Ryans in a backyard, the probable cause statement said. Pearce told Ryans to get on the ground or he would be bitten, while other officers ordered Ryans to come to the fence and asked him how they could enter the backyard, the statement said. Ryans complied with officers commands, raising his hands and telling them they could enter through a gate, the statement said. Ryans kept his hands visible and stayed where he was, as instructed, the statement said. When Pearce came around the corner of the house with his dog, he once again told Ryans to get on the ground or he would be bitten, the statement said. Three seconds later, he kicked Ryans in the leg, even though he was not resisting, the statement said. Ryans dropped to his knees and kept his hands raised. While Ryans was on his knees with his hands in the air, Pearce ordered Tuco to bite Ryans and then repeatedly praised the dog, while Ryans expressed extreme pain and questioned why he was being attacked, the statement said. Ryans was taken to a hospital with two lacerations one about 4 inches by 3 inches, and the other about 5 inches by 1 inch, the statement said. He experienced the prolonged loss of the use of his left leg after surgery to treat the wounds, the statement said, adding that complications from the dog bites have resulted in protracted impairment of Ryans leg and visible scarring. In August, Mayor Erin Mendenhall of Salt Lake City said that the use of police dogs to engage with suspects would be suspended until officials could review city policies and practices. That suspension remains in effect, pending the outcome of reviews by the Police Department and a commission on racial equality in policing, Mendenhall said Wednesday. I appreciate the district attorneys quick work on this investigation and remain committed to the mandate before us to make progressive change in the way we approach policing, Mendenhall, a Democrat, said in a statement. We will not back down from the work that must be done in evolving our policies, culture and budget to ensure that SLCPD is the gold standard in law enforcement. In a statement Wednesday, the Salt Lake City Police Department acknowledged the charges against Pearce and said it had also received the Civilian Review Boards report. The department takes the district attorneys decision and the Civilian Review Boards findings very seriously, the statement said. Both will be evaluated and taken into account as the department is finalizing its internal affairs investigation. If the internal affairs investigation finds that Pearce violated policy, the police chief will follow the disciplinary process required under state and federal law, the department said. This can take some time, the department said, but we will carry this out as expediently as possible to bring a prompt conclusion to this matter. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Trial results including overall survival and safety profile warrant further clinical development of NOX-A12 plus immunotherapy combinations Regulatory News: NOXXON Pharma N.V. (Euronext Growth Paris: ALNOX), a biotechnology company focused on improving cancer treatments by targeting the tumor microenvironment (TME), presents today a poster with the final clinical results from the Phase 1/2 study with CXCL12 inhibitor, NOX-A12, and pembrolizumab in patients with microsatellite-stable, metastatic colorectal or pancreatic cancer at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020. The enhanced immune response and long survival times for certain late-stage patients combined with the good overall safety profile confirmed in the final data support further development of the combinations containing NOX-A12 plus pembrolizumab and established standard of care regimens in earlier lines of therapy. The poster presentation is complemented by a video presentation with remarks highlighting the trial's most significant data provided by Dr. Niels Halama from the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) in Heidelberg, Germany, the first author of the poster presentation and the principal investigator of the trial. "In this trial, we observed a number of patients 25% of the total who experienced disease stabilization and many with prolonged survival also during the follow-up period, which is particularly noteworthy in patients at such a late-stage of disease progression. In fact, we saw multiple cases of 4th line pancreatic cancer patients, who did not respond at all to their prior therapy, surviving for more than one year," commented Dr. Niels Halama. "The patients in this study were, on average, receiving their 6th line of therapy in colorectal cancer and their 4th line of therapy in pancreatic cancer. In addition, all patients had liver metastases and, in 95% of cases, were completely non-responsive to their last therapy before entering this study. As such, the data from this study provide signals that support a beneficial impact of the combination of NOX-A12 with pembrolizumab for patients with extremely limited options. Thus, we are planning to advance NOX-A12 into the next stage of clinical development in at least one of these indications," added Dr. Jarl Ulf Jungnelius, Senior Medical Advisor of NOXXON. The trial called for all patients to have a baseline biopsy of tumor tissue, two weeks of NOX-A12 monotherapy and then a second biopsy to assess changes induced in the tumor microenvironment by NOX-A12. After the second biopsy, it was planned to move all patients to a combination therapy of NOX-A12 plus pembrolizumab (MSD's anti-PD-1 antibody) and continue combination therapy until tumor progression or safety issues. CXCL12, the target of NOX-A12 which is thought to exclude immune cells from the tumor microenvironment, was found to be abundantly present in all tumor samples at baseline. NOX-A12 penetrated cancer tissue in both pancreatic and colorectal cancer patients where it neutralized its target, CXCL12. NOX-A12 monotherapy resulted in induction of a Th1-like immune response in patients when baseline biopsies were compared to post-NOX-A12 monotherapy samples. The extent of CXCL12 neutralization in tumor tissue correlates with a Th1 immune response and disease stabilization and based on the obtained results, an optimized dosing strategy for NOX-A12 will be used for future studies. As would be expected if the immune system were better coordinating a response against the cancer, T cells in the cancer both moved together (aggregation) and moved towards the tumor cells in responding tissues. The combination of NOX-A12 plus pembrolizumab resulted in stable disease in 25% of patients, and prolonged time on treatment vs. prior therapy for 35% of patients. Overall survival was 39% at 6 months and 20% at 12 months. Three of the stable disease patients (15% of the starting study population) survived for more than a year. In addition, the combination of NOX-A12 with pembrolizumab appears to be safe and this allows exploration of further combination approaches in earlier line patients combining an optimized dose with standard of care. Taken together, these data thus support a role of CXCL12 in resistance to immunotherapy and suggest that NOX-A12 may be able to counter this effect by boosting the immune response in tumor tissue. Further studies of NOX-A12 in combination regimens are warranted and currently the company is exploring strategies with external experts to combine NOX-A12 with anti-PD1 agents and established standard of care regimens in earlier lines of therapy than those explored in this clinical trial. The poster presentation #1537P is available for registered delegates to view on demand on the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020 program page starting today from 09.00 a.m. CEST until 08.00 p.m. CEST on September 21, 2020. Additionally, Dr. Halama's video presentation as well as the poster have been published on the NOXXON website. The poster abstract is openly available on the Congress platform. About NOXXON NOXXON's oncology-focused pipeline acts on the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the cancer immunity cycle by breaking the tumor protection barrier and blocking tumor repair. By neutralizing chemokines in the tumor microenvironment, NOXXON's approach works in combination with other forms of treatment to weaken tumor defenses against the immune system and enable greater therapeutic impact. Building on extensive clinical experience and safety data, the lead program NOX-A12 has delivered top-line data from a Keytruda combination trial in metastatic colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients and further studies are being planned in these indications. In September 2019 the company initiated an additional trial with NOX-A12 in brain cancer in combination with radiotherapy. The combination of NOX-A12 and radiotherapy has been granted orphan drug status in the US and EU for the treatment of certain brain cancers. The company's second clinical-stage asset NOX-E36 is a Phase 2 TME asset targeting the innate immune system. NOXXON plans to test NOX-E36 in patients with solid tumors both as a monotherapy and in combination. Further information can be found at: www.noxxon.com Keytruda is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp Dohme Corp https://www.linkedin.com/company/noxxon-pharma-ag https://twitter.com/noxxon_pharma Disclaimer Certain statements in this communication contain formulations or terms referring to the future or future developments, as well as negations of such formulations or terms, or similar terminology. These are described as forward-looking statements. In addition, all information in this communication regarding planned or future results of business segments, financial indicators, developments of the financial situation or other financial or statistical data contains such forward-looking statements. The company cautions prospective investors not to rely on such forward-looking statements as certain prognoses of actual future events and developments. The company is neither responsible nor liable for updating such information, which only represents the state of affairs on the day of publication. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200917005100/en/ Contacts: NOXXON Pharma N.V. Aram Mangasarian, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer Tel. +49 (0) 30 726247 0 amangasarian@noxxon.com Trophic Communications Gretchen Schweitzer or Joanne Tudorica Tel. +49 (0) 89 2388 7730 or +49 (0) 176 2103 7191 schweitzer@trophic.eu NewCap Arthur Rouille Tel. +33 (0) 1 44 71 00 15 arouille@newcap.fr In August, during a 17-day wrap-up of the 2020 legislative session, a frustrated Sen. Steve Lathrop lamented the invisible, but really not-so-invisible, influence of partisanship on the Nebraska Legislature. In his 10 years in office, he said, he served with people who respected the institution of the unicameral Legislature. They would say there's not a Republican way or a Democratic way to solve 90% of the problems that come before senators. "But that's not what we're doing any more," he said. "Nobody's exercising judgment in this place anymore. We don't care. We're waiting for somebody to give us orders, for god's sake. And they're partisan." That partisan lean of the Legislature has bothered a young man in Kearney for several years, too. Nathan Leach, 24, has written on social media about the benefits of a nonpartisan Legislature since 2017. And he's testified a few times at the Capitol on the topic. Now he's put together a group of like-minded people to form Nonpartisan Nebraska, a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving the nonpartisan structure and traditions of the unicameral Legislature. At last count, it had 10 board members, including himself, of mostly independents, three Democrats, a Republican and a Libertarian. The group, he said, will try to combat the eroding civility and increased partisanship in the Legislature, in part by educating Nebraskans through civic engagement, hands-on learning, forums for organizations to further nonpartisan reforms. How did Leach arrive at the place where this was such a priority? In his early teens, he said, he followed the ideas of tea party conservatives. He would visit his dad in Arizona, traveling with him to his job sites and listening in the truck to Rush Limbaugh, one of the early conservative radio hosts. At age 15, before his freshman year in high school, he went on a trip with his cousin to Denmark, Sweden and Finland. "And that completely changed my world," Leach said. "I went from being this super conservative-minded person to someone who said, 'Hey, the world is working in a different way somewhere.'" He also came out as gay that year, he said, which contributed to his way of thinking about how politics worked. "Through experience you kind of see things a different way," he said. Now he's a proud independent, he said. In high school, he was in various groups and clubs, including Student Council, and became somewhat passionate about parliamentary procedure. "We live in a state with a very unique legislative system, and you get a young person that's extremely passionate about our nonpartisan unicameral," he said of his study of the Legislature and politics in high school. He said he saw firsthand the destructive nature of partisan politics while working as a page in the Arizona State Legislature in 2015. Everything lawmakers did was determined by the D or R next to their name, not what was best for their constituents. This was in stark contrast to Nebraskas unique nonpartisan unicameral," he said. He went from a semester there, in 2016, to working in South Dakota on a statewide nonpartisan elections initiative, going door-to-door from July to November talking to people about Nebraska's unicameral Legislature. But he came to Lincoln in 2017 to find the Legislature embroiled in a rules debate and takeover of committee chairmanships by Republicans and conservatives, he said. "That's when I started protest testifying," Leach said. The Legislature is close to a breaking point and once broken, it will not be easy to put back together, he said. The idea of Nonpartisan Nebraska was formed then. Leach will serve as the groups executive director and is joined by a diverse group of Nebraskans who will serve on the board of directors, he said, including former state Sen. Al Davis of Hyannis, a Republican, and Kearney City Councilwoman Tami James Moore, an independent. My stint as a Nebraska state senator was a great lesson for me in how good government can be when much of the partisan bickering is stripped away, Davis said. George Norris' creation has been a model for how people can work together when not constrained by the iron shackles of partisan politics." Davis said he believes the Norris vision is under threat and educating both the public and those in power about the strengths and virtues of Nebraska's unique approach to civil discourse, genuine problem solving and putting the needs of Nebraskans ahead of those of party bosses is essential. Moore said the political division nationwide is alarming and the partisanship in the Legislature has reflected that in recent sessions. "As a local elected official, and the only female on the City Council in 20 years, I look forward to focusing my attention and energy on community and state issues, and working with the newly formed Nonpartisan Nebraska," she said. Nonpartisan Nebraska will be an educational-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. A virtual launch meeting with guest speaker Charlyne Berens, author of "One House," along with several former state lawmakers, is scheduled for the end of October. Board members, beside Leach, Davis and Moore, are: Samantha Chavez, legislative staffer, Democrat; Kate High, retired, Department of Health and Human Services, Democrat; Rev. Chris Morton, regional minister, Christian Church In Nebraska, Democrat, Justin Otoski, Army veteran, student, independent; Dexter Schrodt, attorney, lobbyist for the Nebraska Medical Association, independent; Chris Snurr, internal auditor at Ameritas, Libertarian; James Woody, University of Nebraska, independent. Other interested parties can sign up to join Nonpartisan Nebraska at nonpartisanne.com. Reach the writer at 402-473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSLegislature Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Taiwan US FILE - In this May 20, 2020, file photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech after her inauguration ceremony at a government guest house in Taipei, Taiwan. U.S. Undersecretary of State Keith Krach is due to meet Tsai and other senior officials, the island's foreign ministry said Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. Krach is the highest-level official from the State Department to visit the island in decades. Keith is due to arrive in Taiwan on Thursday afternoon to begin a three-day visit that has already drawn a warning from China. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP, File) TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for the second visit by a high-level American official in two months, prompting a stern warning and threat of possible retaliation from China. Beijing considers Taiwan its own and opposes all official contacts between other countries and the self-governing island. Krach arrived at an air force base in Taipei, the capital, for a three-day visit. Wearing a face mask, he bumped elbows in greetings with Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Harry Ho-Jen Tseng. Krach, the highest-level State Department official to visit the island in decades, is to meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials, the island's foreign ministry said. The visit by Krach, who is under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, follows a high-profile trip in August by U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar, the highest-level U.S. Cabinet official to visit since the U.S. switched formal relations from Taiwan to China in 1979. However, the U.S. has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan since the official diplomatic break and is the islands most important ally and provider of defense equipment. Ahead of Krach's arrival, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, had lunch Wednesday with Taiwans top official in New York, a meeting she called historic and a further step in the Trump administrations campaign to strengthen relations with Taiwan. Craft said her lunch with James K.J. Lee, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, was the first meeting between a top Taiwan official and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since 1971, when the China seat at the U.N. was passed from Taipei to Beijing. Im looking to do the right thing by my president, and I feel that he has sought to strengthen and deepen this bilateral relationship with Taiwan and I want to continue that on behalf of the administration, she told The Associated Press. Story continues In Taiwan, Krach is to attend a banquet hosted by Tsai on Friday and hold discussions on the creation of a new economic and commercial dialogue, according to Taiwan's de facto ambassador in the U.S., Hsiao Bi-khim. He will also attend a memorial service for former President Lee Teng-hui, who led the island's transition to democracy and died at age 97 in July. Krachs visit and Crafts lunch with Lee are certain to exacerbate mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, trade, technology, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. China condemned the visit on Thursday and warned it could retaliate. At a daily briefing Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Krachs visit violates U.S. commitments to China and bolsters the separatist forces of Taiwan independence and undermines China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, adding that Beijing had lodged solemn complaints with Washington over the matter. We urge the U.S. to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue ... immediately stop official exchanges and actions of improving substantive relations with Taiwan, and handle Taiwan-related issues cautiously, Wang said. China will make necessary responses in accordance with the development of the situation. Abhishek Dutt, the Andrews Ganj councillor in the BJP-led South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), has sent the proposal to the civic body's road naming and renaming committee. SDMC Congress councillor Abhishek Dutt has proposed to name a stretch of road in south Delhi after Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The Andrews Ganj councillor in the BJP-led South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has sent the proposal to the civic body's road naming and renaming committee. In the written proposal to the committee, Dutt said that a large number of people living in the area abutting Road No 8 hail from Bihar, and claimed that "they have been demanding" to name the stretch from Andrews Ganj to Indira Camp as Sushant Singh Rajput Marg. So, it is proposed that Road No 8 be named after the Patna-born actor in his memory, Dutt said. Meanwhile, a Trinamool Congress member demanded a law to regulate coverage of such sensitive cases, saying Indian media marked a "new low" while reporting on the case. Speaking during the Zero Hour, where members raise issues of public importance, TMC's Pratima Mondal accused the media of "heartless reporting" and asking insensitive questions to the deceased's family and close contacts which increased their pain, anguish and suffering while being "extremely disrespectful" to the late actor. "This form of heartless reporting causes severe impact on young minds who are inspired by persons who have passed away," she said, alleging that some people have already taken the extreme step. Major countries around the world either follow WHO guidelines or have formulated their own laws for sensitive reporting of suicide cases, she said. Mondal said, "It is high time that India also formulates a law in these directions and until that happens the government must issue a set of guidelines for the coverage of sensitive cases by the media." She also asked the government to give importance to the issue of mental health and said that having a national suicide helpline number is an "undeniable need" of people. The 34-year-old actor was found dead at his Bandra residence in Mumbai on 14 June. (With inputs from Press Trust of India) * Seven years ago, Facebook chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg launched her Lean In initiative to empower women in the workplace. Hoping to break the cycle of male domination and the condemnation of ambitious women it generated, Sandberg urged women to speak candidly about their ideas and to step forward fearlessly into leadership roles. Her book-that-created-a-movement established women's networks that survive to this day. Too bad that the concepts Sandberg articulated particularly with respect to the importance of speech do not prevail at the company through which she exercises enormous power. Censoring conservative female writers like Michelle Malkin and Pamela Geller appears not to be enough for Facebook hacks. Instead, articles that feature women many of them highly qualified are up on the chopping block when their brilliant protagonists arrive at conclusions contrary to the narrative Facebook seeks to promote. Consider the COVID crisis. When America's Frontline Doctors, including Simone Gold and Stella Immanuel, spoke about their patients' encouraging results with hydroxychloroquine, Facebook posts featuring their Washington press conference were flagged as "fake news," with the video surgically excised from most internal locations. Posters including this writer were told we'd shared false information and were encouraged to click a link to the WHO for the real story. Given that the WHO messed up the contagion calculus in the first place, who'd trust it for more advanced work? It's noteworthy that while Lean In circles promote diversity in race, religion, and culture, Frontline Dr. Immanuel's status as an immigrant woman "of color" did not spare her from Facebook's censure. How might women be empowered to speak when their voices are stifled? If female doctors who promote hydroxychloroquine raise the ire of Facebook censors, imagine what might happen if a female M.D. implicated the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the virus's creation. You don't have to. On Monday, September 14, Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who recently fled her native Hong Kong for the West, posted a link to research in which she and her colleagues suggested that COVID was created in a laboratory not in a "wet market" as the CCP regime has told the world. As a medical scientist working in Hong Kong, Dr. Yan had firsthand knowledge of the researchers and their studies, and had been told, by her own superiors, to keep quiet about what she'd learned. As expressed in her paper, Dr. Yan's knowledge also encompassed the steps taken by researchers at the Wuhan, China laboratory to ensure that the "infectivity and pathogenicity of the laboratory-made coronavirus" were enhanced. Dr. Yan spoke up! Facebook's response? "False Information," read the text on Facebook's dark window shading the article I'd shared from The National Pulse. Facebook offered a "See Why," and I clicked to find that "Fact Checks from Multiple Organizations" proved its assertion. In chronological order, Facebook noted articles averring a "bogus conspiracy theory" (Jan. 24), a "baseless conspiracy theory" (Feb. 7), and a virus that was "not man made or engineered" (March 21). In other words, all refutations of Dr. Yan's groundbreaking research occurred about six months, or more, before she'd posted her link. And all were refuted by those anonymous guardians of the public interest, Facebook's fact-checkers. When might Facebook air a conscientious rebuttal of Dr. Yan's arguments? Probably not until the cows come home. Or until the bats fly back to their Wuhan caves. Meanwhile, Lean In, women! Please read our list of approved topics before you find your nametag at our leadership table. Barbara G. Grant is an electro-optical engineer, author, and teacher. Her website is www.grantdrone.com. ONTARIO, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kickstarting the autonomous bus revolution in the US, the city of Houston is set to receive the first Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Buy America-compliant mid-size autonomous bus in the US. Jointly developed by Phoenix Motorcars and EasyMile, the self-driving bus will be deployed in real-life traffic conditions and is set to revolutionize last-mile transit connectivity. Furthering its success in powering traditional medium duty shuttles and trucks with its cutting-edge electric drivetrain technology, Phoenix Motorcars will integrate EasyMile's driverless technology to its range of zero emission vehicles. The news comes as part of Houston Metro being selected among projects to receive funding from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Accelerating Innovative Mobility (AIM) grant of nearly $1.5 million. It will develop an autonomous vehicle technology prototype for private or public roads at 12-15 mph in 12 months from launch date, with further operation for 12 months of testing. The autonomous bus will serve Texas Southern University, the University of Houston, and Houston's Third Ward community connecting to Metro buses and light rail. "We are proud to be selected by the FTA as the OEM zero-emission vehicle provider and look forward to adding the Level 4 Autonomous EZ ZEUS into our product catalog. As the world moves toward net zero carbon goals and prioritizes clean air quality, the self-driving ZEV is the next step in Phoenix Motorcars' quest to provide future technology today," says Thomas Allen, Sales Manager at Phoenix Motorcars. Phoenix Motorcars and Easy Mile will develop this Class 4 Medium-Duty Zero-Emission Shuttle Bus with Level 4 Autonomy that aims to: Introduce autonomy in a variety of bus depot use cases and, ultimately, deploy on public roads; Provide invaluable initial feedback in the development of this industry; Leverage prior experience in launching EasyMile's driverless technology Provide integration with Phoenix Motorcars' industry-leading and proven Class 4 zero-emission drive system Support existing agency initiatives around improved safety and energy efficiency via innovative technologies; and As the inaugural class of AIM incubators, provide industry leadership in sharing project outcomes with the public transportation community. More about the FTA's AIM: https://cms7.fta.dot.gov/AIM BACKGROUND ON PARTNERS Phoenix Motorcars: Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Ontario, California, Phoenix Motorcars develops, deploys, and services all electric drive systems for Zero Emission Commercial Vehicles. The company's electric vehicles have logged over 2.3-million zero emission miles, reducing over 6.5 million pounds of carbon emissions, equivalent to the amount of carbon sequestered by over 3,400 acres of U.S. forests. Phoenix Motorcars strives to provide fleets with clean transportation and renewable energy through advanced technology solutions and remains committed to excellence in electric vehicle innovation. EasyMile: A leader in driverless mobility, EasyMile has developed and deployed autonomous mobility solutions worldwide based on vehicles manufactured by recognized industrial partners. The company has already deployed over 300 driverless projects in 30 countries and travelled over 450,000 miles. AECOM: The world's premier infrastructure consulting firm, AECOM, supports the adoption of emerging technologies, including AV shuttles, connected/automated/electric vehicle and ITS solutions for our partners by providing feasibility studies, analysis, planning, engineering, construction, deployments, management and marketing of new solutions. AECOM recently formed the Automated Bus Consortium, bringing together transit and transportation agencies to investigate the feasibility of deploying full-size, full-speed accessible Level 4 automated buses across the United States. AECOM is currently supporting several DOTs using their Connected Roadway Classification System (CRCS) tool, which assesses ADS complexities and existing infrastructure impacts of an AV deployment. Contact: Jo Anne Avelar, 909-987-0815, [email protected] SOURCE Phoenix Motorcars The reality is climate change is going to continue to disrupt communities through extreme heat and weather and affect our insurance markets, said Lara. Using my authority as a regulator to look at these key areas is really going to be critical. The state insurance commissioners office is now pushing for new rules allowing insurers to consider rate increases that are more reflective of their risks rate increases that could go higher than 7%. In exchange, the commissioner would require insurers to provide more information to homeowners on how they can reduce their wildfire risk. Time and time again we heard from consumers, How do I appeal my score? How do I know what I need to do to lower that score? And right now, theres nothing, the commissioner said. By improving insurer-customer transparency and allowing homeowners to address their wildfire risks, insurers can better limit their exposure and be more encouraged to continue doing business in California. Were incentivizing the consumer and incentivizing the local community to bring down the risk and keeping the insurance market vibrant where theyre competing for peoples businesses, said Lara. The Los Angeles Times reported that the state Department of Insurance will be hosting an investigatory hearing on October 19, where homeowners, industry experts, and insurance providers can give their opinions on Laras planned regulatory changes. Shah Rukh Khans daughter Suhana Khan is a born star like her father. She is one of the most loved star kids of B-town and enjoys a massive fan following. She has been quite active on social media and often grabs attention with her stunning pictures. Recently, she grabbed all the limelight with a stunning throwback picture of her as she was missing spending time with her friends. Sharing a picture of herself chilling with her friends, she simply wrote, Missingg with a sad emoji. View this post on Instagram missingg A post shared by Suhana Khan (@suhanakhan2) on Sep 16, 2020 at 12:13pm PDT In the picture, Suhana looks astonishing in a black tank top and skirt. The photo appears to be from her school days at Ardingly College in the UK. Suhanas BFF Shanaya Kapoor took no time to praise her. She dropped a comment on the post, calling her beauty. Suhanas other friends also dropped comments on her post. One friend wrote, We there are three stunning ladies!! and u guys I miss u!!! to which she replied, miss u more. Suhana keeps treating her fans through her social media posts. Recently, she shared a series of pictures of herself in which she can be seen expressing various emotions. The caption of the pictures reads, Congrats if u havent seen me crying~ quarantine filming. It seems like Suhana has inherited the acting skills from her father and is on the way to follow his footprint. Earlier, she flaunted her acting skills in a short film The Grey Part of Blue, shot by her friend. It was released on YouTube last year, and Suhana received many compliments for her acting skills. She also has been taking part in multiple school plays. The star kid is pursuing a film studies course at New York University. Currently, she is living with her parents in Mumbai amid the COVID 19 pandemic. The controversial shortlist for the prestigious 2020 Booker prize was announced earlier this week. It has proved unpopular with its lack of British authors (just one, Douglas Stuart) and four debut authors on the list, squeezing out the twice-winning Hilary Mantel's third and final volume of the Wolf Hall trilogy and the much-praised latest Anne Tyler. The prize is worth 50,000 but much more than that in terms of international recognition and sales that can change the course of a writer's career. There's plenty of time to read several, if not all, of the books before the winner is announced on November 17, so our literary critic Claire Allfree gives you a guiding hand with this useful crib sheet to the books, authors and odds of winning. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart has odds of 4/1 to win the Man Booker prize SHUGGIE BAIN - ODDS: 4/1 by Douglas Stuart (Picador) The plot The story, which is partly autobiographical, follows young, effeminate, bullied Shuggie Bain growing up in jobless, macho 1980s Scotland with his abused, alcoholic yet spirited mother Agnes, whom he loves despite his chaotic life. What the critics said Universally praised, the Daily Mail called it 'A rollercoaster of misery but also tender and unsentimental' while The Times praised it as 'a novel that aims for the heart and finds it'. The Guardian points out that it 'shows a world rarely portrayed in literary fiction'. REAL LIFE - ODDS: 5/1 by Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books) The plot A gay, black, graduate student at a university in America's Midwest, who is mourning his father's death, navigates his way through sexual and racial politics and professional ambition that is built on white entitlement. Real Life by Brandon Taylor has also made the Booker shortlist and has odds of 5/1 to win What the critics said The Observer called it 'brilliant . . . psychologically compelling and incisively satirical'. The Sunday Times said it is 'a deeply moving study of race, grief and desire'. The Guardian praised it but thought Wallace, the central character, was 'frustratingly out of reach'. THE SHADOW KING - ODDS: 4/1 by Maaza Mengiste (Canongate) The plot Set against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and drawing on the author's own family history of resistance, it follows the fortunes of a maid and her mistress as they unconventionally take up arms against the enemy, defying traditional female roles. The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste is set against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and has odds of 4/1 to win the Booker BURNT SUGAR - ODDS: 6/1 by Avni Doshi (Hamish Hamilton) The plot In modern-day India, the toxic relationship between an increasingly senile artist, who had a wayward sex life in her youth, and her daughter, who was brought up in an ashram, is unpicked through myths and memories. What the critics said The Daily Mail said it 'bristles with sharp, chilly aphorisms . . . but it's not exactly fun to read'. The Sunday Times described it as 'frank and witty' with 'fiercely intelligent ideas' but agreed that the novel's 'overarching sadness' means that it's 'not exactly holiday reading'. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi is set in modern day India and has odds of 6/1 to win the Booker THIS MOURNABLE BOY - ODDS: 5/2 by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Faber) The plot The final part of a trilogy, which began with Nervous Conditions in 1988, this sees the now middle-aged, drifting, impoverished and unemployed protagonist Tambu contend with the post-independence struggles of Zimbabwe. What the critics said The Guardian called it 'a magnificent novel' with 'rich and impressively precise' sentences that add up to 'another classic', while The Observer described it as 'a brilliant portrayal of contemporary Harare with its energetic worldliness and violence'. This Mournable Boy by Tsitsi Dangarembga has odds of 5/2 to win the Booker THE NEW WILDERNESS - ODDS: 5/1 by Diane Cook (Oneworld) Bea, a mother concerned for her ailing daughter Agnes, volunteers to join a social experiment in which they swap the polluted city that is making her daughter ill, for a feral new life within the last remaining Wilderness State. What the critics said The Observer called it 'a soulful urgent' novel in which the push-pull ambivalence of the mother and daughter bond 'forms its beating heart'. The Sunday Times said it has a 'familiar American preoccupation with survivalism' but is 'visceral and elemental in performance'. The entire BJP is celebrating PM Narendra Modis birthday as Seva Saptah". Since the beginning of his innings as the prime minister, Modi has made it clear to his party as well as the government not to celebrate his birthday with much fanfare, but devote time in the service of the people. As a result, Sewa week has become an annual feature now. Even as Gujarat chief minister, he started his day visiting his mother Hirabas residence in Gandhinagar. The birthday routine continued even when he was named BJPs PM candidate in 2013 when apart from blessings, he got a copy of Gita as a gift from his mother. On his last birthday too, PM Modi sought the blessings of his mother as he was in his home state. This year he is turning 70. But the year is likely to be different due to coronavirus pandemic. With more than five decades of public service, there are many aspects of life that is hidden behind his aura and his tough administrator attitude. As a journalist, I have covered PM Modis political journey from General Secretary organization to his 24/7 action-packed tenure as PM. He never shies away from taking tough decisions or breaking all norms to get the things going. Two years ago, in an informal interaction with the Director level IAS officers, one officer asked the prime minister how was he able to take decisions so quickly. PM Modi instantly replied: If you dont have any agenda and clarity about things that are yet to come up, you can also make quick decisions. The officer, perhaps, got the clue to succeed in life. There are many other hidden facets of the prime ministers life. How Modi tamed Bureaucracy Modi always said that when he became the CM he was afraid to face the bureaucracy, or to be precise, IAS officers. But slowly he gained his composure. Started calling shots. He set the agenda to be pursued by the bureaucracy for the benefit of the common man. After taking oath as PM, he has different ideas. Here again he has broken the norms that continued since the British empire. A bureaucracy that was called steel frame of British empire and that controlled the successive governments in independent India, was now coming out of age old shackles. PM called a meeting of all secretaries on the evening of December 31, when usually people prefer partying out. The message percolated down well. PM ensured that for top officials, its not a 10am to 5pm job but they are public servants and have to work 24/7. The PRAGATI meetings, his interactions with all levels of IAS officers, new IAS recruits getting training as Assistant Secretaries in different ministries have proved that steel frame has broken and for now bureaucrats are also public servants and have to work round the clock. Becoming Ministers in Modis cabinet doesnt accord a superior status In 2014, many new faces were sworn-in in PM Modis cabinet. But things were never going to be the same again. Modis era was different from Vajpayees era. At one of the public functions, late Finance Minister Arun Jaitley narrated that as a minister in Vajpayees cabinet, he left ministry at 6pm, sipped coffee at India International Centre and reached home. But in PM Modis cabinet these are things of past. Gone are the days when ministers were out on foreign tours during summers. He said that Modi ensured that ministers programme are set by the party and the government, even for the weekends. This led to increased visits of central ministers to north-eastern states. The message was clear that it was due to party and ideology that they have got their place and now its time to pay back to the party and ideology both. Now its not the question of overworked ministers, but ministers serving round the clock. Strict disciplinarian He is always on time. Even if he has to address five rallies, once the timings are sent, he is always there on time. This he expects from his team as well. He makes his displeasure known if any of his colleagues or officials fails to remain punctual. Punctuality in India meant era of emergency when trains reached on time and officials reached offices on time. Now call it fear of PM Modi, the timing issues has gone down well into all grades of government employees. Fond of using modern Gadgets I still remember covering CM Narendra Modis campaign trail way back in 2002 Gujarat assembly polls. While sitting beside him in a chopper on the way to Dang, I saw a small gadget in his hand on which he was using a pen to write and later using the same to talk to someone while flying in a chopper. For me, who started using a mobile phone a year ago, it was a pleasant surprise. Even as General Secretary, Modi was among the firsts to use mobile phones and internet in the BJP office when Press releases were prepared on type writers. This passion continues even today. He is the most followed Leader on the social media and during the coronavirus period, he has advocated and promoted virtual meetings and offices. PM Modi now dreams of laying optical fibre in every village of the country, which proves that he wants to make India Aatmnirbhar and 130 crore Indians tech savy. Of course, India is a big market, but PM Modis passion for latest gadgets is not new. At least, I am witness to it since the days of typewriters. An unmatched Memory He has travelled through-out the country as a pracharak and as a leader. After becoming the PM, he has travelled across the globe. One remarkable thing is that he never forgets the names or the incidents that happened long ago. He can recognise any party worker by his name and even recall the time when they had met. He can surprise anyone with his memory. Family Values Everybody has seen and remembers PM Modi sitting at the feet of his mother seeking her blessings not only on his birthday but whenever he gets time to be in Gandhinagar. His old house in Vadnagar still reminds of the days of struggle for the family, but never allowed any of his family members to take the benefit of his position or clout. I visited his Vadnagar home during 2002 assembly polls and met his mother and family and friends there. His friends fondly remembered his wit and humour along with his memory. On PM Modis 70th birthday, all I can say is that system has changed and it has started functioning as well. Gone are the days of policy paralysis. But still, miles to go a homework for which PM Modi has geared himself up. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. A West Brighton man who fired a gun on a street near his home last year will soon have some new living arrangements. Anthony Jackson, 44, faces prison time after pleading guilty to a weapon charge stemming from the July 13, 2019 incident. A criminal complaint said Jackson fired the gun in front of 1075 Castleton Ave., outside the West Brighton Houses, at around 3:55 a.m. The complaint did not say why Jackson discharged the weapon. No injuries were reported. Police said Jackson lives in a neighboring building. The defendant was arrested several weeks later on Aug. 7, 2019. He was indicted on charges of criminal weapon possession, criminal firearm possession and reckless endangerment. On Tuesday, Jackson pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court, St. George, to a lesser count of attempted second-degree criminal weapon possession to resolve the case. He also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for possessing an imitation pistol on June 30, 2019, outside 1077 Castleton Ave. In exchange for his pleas, Jackson will be sentenced on Sept. 30 to two years in prison, plus three years' post-release supervision. Defense lawyer Biju Koshy declined comment. Assistant District Attorney Kate Malloy is prosecuting the case. The tug-of-war over who will get to power Century Aluminum's smelting plant in Berkeley County continued Thursday, with attorneys for Santee Cooper and the city of Goose Creek facing off in state court. Santee Cooper, which is South Carolina's state-run electric utility, has provided electricity to Century's operations at the Mount Holly facility since the 1980s. But it's contending with a unique challenge from elected leaders in Goose Creek. The town's residents voted last year to create a new municipal electric utility. The mayor and city council officially formed that utility earlier this year with the expectation of supplying power to a single customer: Century. That effort has since exploded into a bitter legal dispute, which was on full display during the hearing Thursday. The legal questions in the case are complicated but the core issue is whether Goose Creek can take over control of Century's power supply. Executives for the aluminum maker have suggested they will be forced to close the plant and layoff its workforce if the city is unsuccessful in that effort. Goose Creek filed its lawsuit in Berkeley County earlier this year, arguing the city is allowed to form a municipal utility, buy power from outside South Carolina and resell it to Century. "The law is very clear. It's not what Santee Cooper wants the law to be," Mitchell Willoughby, Goose Creek's attorney, said during the hearing. Santee Cooper maintains it has an exclusive right under state law to serve Century's plant and the property it is located on. Santee Cooper's attorneys pointed out that other power customers in South Carolina aren't allowed to pick where their electricity comes from. That fact is determined by what area of the state they live in and which utility serves that territory, they contend. "That's the public policy. That's the regulated energy market in South Carolina," John Lay, Santee Cooper's attorney, said. "We don't allow customers to shop for power in the open market," Lay added. Recent evidence and allegations made in the case, however, go far beyond the underlying legal disputes. Goose Creek's attorneys have accused Santee Cooper of trying to illegally influence the referendum last year and said Santee Cooper's leaders are pursuing a strategy of slowing and obstructing the city's plans. "They have done everything to obstruct and kill this," Willoughby said during the hearing. "They are mad. They are angry they are losing this customer." City attorneys leveled those allegations based on an email Santee Cooper employees shared last year. In it, Ray Pinson, manager of local government and community relations, spelled out how the state-run utility should respond to Goose Creek's plans. "Obviously, this is a bad idea for the City of Goose Creek and has economic impacts to Santee Cooper as well," Pinson wrote in the email that Century obtained through the S.C. Freedom of Information Act. "To convolute matters, Santee Cooper cannot be seen as an obstructionist, nor should we invite a legal battle with a local stakeholder," the note said. Pinson added, "Our mission, as I see it, is this: Identify as many obstacles on as many fronts as possible in their plan to form a (city-run utility); quietly relay those obstacles to the Mayor and Administrator; and pursue a short-term goal of delaying this process with a long-term goal of killing it." Santee Cooper spokeswoman Mollie Gore said the email was meant to lay out the issues and concerns the state-run utility had about Goose Creek's plan. She also said the Monck Corner-based utility publicly shared those concerns at a city council meeting, but those public comments were in no way meant to interfere with the referendum. Santee Cooper also has some new evidence of its own, focusing on the annexation agreement between Goose Creek and Century's property, which is just outside the city limits. The agreement, Santee Cooper alleges, shows what the city created this year is a "sham" utility. The agreement says Century will have "sole discretion" over which power plants Goose Creek buys electricity from and the rates the city charges. Santee Cooper attorneys said that language proves the municipal utility would effectively be controlled by Century, which has sought for years to escape its power contract with Santee Cooper. "It's not a Goose Creek utility. It's a Century utility," Lay, one of Santee Cooper's lawyers, said Thursday. Circuit Court Judge Roger Young ended the hearing Thursday without issuing a ruling, but said he would move quickly to resolve the lawsuit. In the meantime, Santee Cooper is appealing a recent decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordering it to allow Goose Creek to use its power lines to serve Century. But that was before the annexation agreement between the city and Century was made public. Santee Cooper is now arguing the federal regulatory agency didn't have all of the information it needed when it ruled earlier this month. October will mark the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Gilmore Girls. While the show has been off the air since 2007, it has steadily gained fans thanks to its tenure on Netflix. The shows creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Dan Palladino, managed to capture life in a small town in New England. Believe it or not, the inspiration for the series arose from a single trip to Connecticut. Even the inn where Lorelai Gilmore worked was inspired by a real business. Neither Sherman-Palladino nor her husband, Daniel Palladino, grew up on the East Coast Gilmore Girls expertly captured the feel of small, New England towns. The series also managed to craft believable characters who personified the old money found on the East Coast. Strangely enough, neither Sherman-Palladino nor her husband ever called the East Coast home. RELATED: Alexis Bledel Wasnt Crazy About How Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Ended Sherman-Palladino was born and raised in California. The daughter of a comedian and a dancer, Sherman-Palladino, got her start writing for Roseanne. The series focused on a midwestern family, something that Sherman-Palladino, admittedly had little experience with. Palladino also spent his formative years on the West Coast. He was raised in Reseda and graduated from a private high school in Van Nuys, California. He started his television writing career on Whos The Boss?. According to IMDb, he wrote ten episodes for the show. Whos The Boss? Was also based in Connecticut. Amy Sherman-Palladino was inspired to write Gilmore Girls after a trip in Connecticut Sherman-Palladino always intended to pitch a show about a mother-daughter duo who were more like best friends than mother and daughter. Still, she didnt have the backdrop for the show until she visited a small town in the middle of Connecticut. Shes spoken extensively about the inspiration for the town of Stars Hollow, claiming to have borrowed elements from multiple villages and hamlets in the state. Everything, apparently, clicked in Washington Depot, Connecticut, though. RELATED: Gilmore Girls: Where Exactly in Connecticut Was Stars Hollow? According to Mental Floss, Sherman-Palladino once said, Were driving by, and people are slowing down saying, Excuse me, where is the pumpkin patch? And everything is green, and people are out, and theyre talking. And we went to a diner and everyone knew each other That small-town feel ended up in the series, and, in a lot of ways, became a character in itself. Washington Depot, a small hamlet within Washington, CT, even looks like Stars Hollow. The one element the real town is missing is the famed gazebo. Several towns nearby, however, have pavilions in their town centers. The Independence Inn was based on a real inn Not only was Gilmore Girls inspired by the existing town of Washington, Connecticut, but the inn that Sherman-Palladino stayed in served as the inspiration for Lorelais job. Sherman-Palladino stayed at the Mayflower Inn and Spa during a trip her fateful trip to Connecticut, and within 24 hours, managed to map out the general idea for Gilmore Girls. The inn factored heavily into the shows first two seasons. RELATED: Gilmore Girls: How Many Rooms Were in the Dragonfly Inn? The inspiration business has a full dining room and serves up top-notch dishes, just like the Independence Inn. While Sookie St. James isnt on staff, the inns executive chef is said to be just as celebrated. Unlike the Independence Inn, the Mayflower is owned by a larger parent company. In fact, it can be argued that the Mayflowers current management is reminiscent of what Richard Gilmore suggested Lorelai could do with the Dragonfly Inn after she got the business off the ground. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:01:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- As Japan remains in deep economic recession, whether the country's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's administration can provide a new prescription for the country's economic recovery has come under spotlight. Suga, president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was elected Japan's new prime minister on Wednesday to succeed Shinzo Abe. Since announcing his candidacy for LDP president, Suga has reiterated that he will carry forward the "Abenomics," continue to fight the COVID-19 epidemic and promote economic recovery, and also safeguard employment and promote recovery. He also said while doing his best to overcome the immediate crisis, he will continue to challenge structural problems such as the issues of aging population and falling birthrate. However, "Abenomics," a mix of measures including monetary easing and fiscal stimulus aimed at easing deflation and stimulating growth in the Japanese economy, has been running for nearly eight years. Although it led Japan's economy to recover quickly, the ultra-long and low-speed recovery cycle brought by the policy ended in October 2018. "Abenomics" has already become a spent force and left too many unanswered questions for Abe's successor. To pull Japan out of its deep recession and restart recovery, inheriting "Abenomics" is clearly not enough. On Sept. 8, the Cabinet Office decreased Japan's real economic growth in the second quarter to an annualized rate of minus 28.1 percent from minus 27.8 percent, as the latest statistics showed a sharp fall in the contribution of equipment investment to growth. On the same day, a report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications also showed that Japanese household consumption fell again in July after picking up in June, showing negative growth both on a monthly basis and year-on-year basis. Japan's economy is facing a severe situation of internal and external difficulties, on the one hand, equipment investment was sluggish and household consumption has been decreasing for 10 consecutive months on a year-on-year basis, on the other hand, exports have been falling for 21 consecutive months on a year-on-year basis, while inbound tourism is difficult to recover. Economists here have said the economy is expected to grow at an annual rate of more than 10 percent in the third quarter, but the rebound will not be strong enough to pull the economy out of recession, and recovery may slow sharply after the third quarter. At the same time, the Japanese economy still faces the threat of a wider COVID-19 epidemic, and the possibility of a "double dip" in the autumn remains. It could take three to four years for Japan's economy to recover to pre-epidemic levels. In addition to inheriting "Abenomics" to revive the economy, Suga has expressed determination to reform the rigid rules and bureaucratic sectionalism to improve Japan's competitiveness and lead the country back to recovery. He has said that Japan's underdeveloped e-government has been highlighted in the epidemic, however, the lag in digital administration will become a restricting factor of economic development. In order to promote the development of digital administration, Suga said he will devote himself to breaking bureaucratic sectionalism and studying the establishment of a "digital ministry", which will be considered as a top priority. Therefore, Suga, a former minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, said he would continue to push for competition among telecom operators. Japan's three largest telecom operators now dominate about 90 percent of the market and constitute 20 percent of operating profits. The high level of communication expense of mobile phones in Japan will not only become a heavy burden on household expenditure, but also an obstacle to the development of digital economy. Suga said Japan's labor productivity is among the lowest in the nations of the Group of Seven. Against the background of the falling population of children and aging population, it is an inevitable choice to improve labor productivity. There are also high expectations that Suga's cabinet will push forward reforms. However, it remains to be seen whether Suga will be able to make a difference in his limited term as LDP president, with only a year left in office. Enditem President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday sent a congratulatory message to the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, following the latter's appointment in office, stressing that Romania is determined to conclude the Bilateral Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2021. "I am certain that the remarkable wisdom and experience you have at the head of Japan's government administration will ensure the success of your mandate, despite the complex context created by the severe evolution of the pandemic generated by the novel coronavirus," the president says in his message. Klaus Iohannis assures that the Romanian Government remains firmly committed to advancing the Romanian-Japanese bilateral relations, in accordance with the lines of action established in the meetings with the Prime Minister of the Japanese Government in 2018 and 2019. "In this respect, Romania is determined to conclude the Bilateral Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2021, the centenary year of diplomatic relations between Romania and Japan. We are convinced that this Strategic Partnership, based on the community of values that our countries share, will benefit our citizens and contribute to strengthening international peace and cooperation," the message from President Iohannis reads. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 By Zeyni Jafarov Trend: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused unprecedented damage to the global economic development, trade flows, as well as health and social security systems both around the world and in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani Minister of Finance Samir Sharifov said. Sharifov made the remark at a webinar organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) within the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors entitled "Results and ways of development", Trend reports. Presently, the problems related to the economic development and trade flows are not a top priority requiring a first-priority solution, the minister said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the countries of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program (CAREC) are primarily fighting the pandemic to ensure human health and safety, and that is why the issues of economic development and trade flows fade into the background, Sharifov added. Nevertheless, the minister stressed that each crisis creates new challenges for development, and thus Azerbaijan supports the ADB initiative, which is implemented under the CAREC program to organize such events. The views on the promotion of regional cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a negative impact on global and regional trade were exchanged during the webinar. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @jafarov_zeyni Three militants and a woman were killed in an encounter in Batamaloo area of Srinagar on Thursday morning. A CRPF deputy commandant and another jawan were also injured in the encounter which was the seventh operation in the Srinagar city this year. Police and the CRPF launched an operation in the Firdousabad locality of Batamaloo early in the morning after they received a specific input about the presence of militants in a house, the police said. According to the police, militants opened fire on the search party which led to injuries to two CRPF personnel, including deputy commandant, who have been referred to the 92 Base Hospital. Three local terrorists were killed in the operation; they had joined militant ranks recently. Stone-pelting also broke out during the encounter and additional forces personnel were deployed in the area. Director-General of Police Dilbag Singh said that three militants were neutralized in the operation. Unfortunately, a woman also died in the cross-firing. We regret her killing. The woman has been identified as Kounsar Jan of Batamaloo. The lady was hit in a lane as she was out to fetch bakery at the early hours. Also read: 23-year-old man detained by Sopore police found dead, magisterial probe ordered CRPF spokesman said that at about 0315 hours, the party zeroed in on the target house and upon finding the gate closed, a CRPF personnel, under command of Dy Commandant Rahul Mathur, scaled the wall and made an entry into the house from the rear. As officer and his buddy started tactically searching the rooms of the house, one of the terrorists, who was hiding inside, suddenly opened fire on the party and officer received gunshot wound on his upper chest and abdomen. The injured officer retaliated the fire and gunned down the terrorist on the spot. The injured officer was evacuated to 92 Base Hospital of Army where he is in a critical condition. The DGP said the militants killed in the operation were locals from south Kashmir, arms and ammunition were also recovered from them. He said the militants from other districts of South and north Kashmir keep attacking the security forces. On August 14, they targeted our party and killed two policemen at Nowgam. Before that, they had killed two BSF men at Pandach on city outskirts. And then they made another attempt at Pantha Chowk where we lost a brave SoG man, The DGP said that since the woman killed in the encounter had no links with militancy her body will be handed over to her family. He said in seven operations in Srinagar city this year 16 militants were killed. Five of them were residents of Srinagar. He, however, termed the operation in which Hizbul Commander Junaid Sehrai was killed, the biggest success of this year. DGP Singh said that so far this year, the forces have conducted 72 operations in J&K. This year has been successful for us compared to last year. We have killed 177 terrorists, 12 in Jammu and 165 in Kashmir. 22 terrorists from Pakistan were among those killed which shows the direct involvement of Pakistan. He said that there are large numbers of Pakistanis in the ranks of Jaish and Lashkar militant outfits. DGP Singh said that even if any militant wants to surrender during an exchange of fire they give him a chance and opportunity to do that. There are many such examples when militants who wanted to surrender were given a chance. Singh said that many boys, after joining militancy, have returned in south Kashmir. Due to security reasons, we dont mention about those cases, there are 20 such youths who have returned after joining the militant ranks. In a telling commentary on the Delhi Polices investigation into the communal riots in the national capital in February, the Delhi High Court, while granting bail to Devangana Kalita, an accused, severely pulled up the police for not producing material evidence to show that she instigated women of a particular community that led to the death of a youth in the riots. The court pointed out that Kalita had neither tried to evade arrest nor had she tampered with evidence and influenced witnesses as charged by the police. Although the trial into the more than 700 cases is still in the initial stages and there is much to be proved, the courts observations only seem to buttress what activists, the media and opposition parties have long saidthat the police investigation is biased, motivated and one-sided. The riots took place in the backdrop of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. It speaks of the bias of the police that BJP leader Kapil Mishra, whose incendiary speech to his followers on February 23 is alleged to have sparked the communal clashes, has not been named in any of the riots cases while anti-CAA protesters like CPM leader Sitaram Yechury, Yogendra Yadav and academics Apoorvanand and Jayati Ghosh find themselves in a supplementary charge sheet. It is, therefore, not without reason that many have alleged that it is an attempt to deny citizens their democratic right to stage protests. It is well known that the police and other law enforcement agencies are completely subservient to the ruling party of the day. The only way to make the police abide by the Constitution and the oath that they take to serve without fear or favour is to insulate them from the political class. Transfers, postings and promotions have to be free of political interference. In a far-sighted judgment in 2006, the Supreme Court had ordered the setting up of state boards to decide transfers and postings, fixed tenure for police officers and separation of investigation from law and order. None of the states have implemented any of the suggestions, ensuring that the police remain a pliable tool in the hands of the politicians to browbeat and silence critics. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews faces a motion of no confidence in parliament over his handling of COVID-19. The motion is expected to be tabled in the state's lower house on Thursday. 'I will be moving a motion of no confidence in this premier. Victorians have had enough,' Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien said. The premier brusquely dismissed the move when asked in his daily media conference. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured on Thursday) faces a motion of no confidence in parliament over his handling of COVID-19 'Cheap politics is no vaccine against this virus, and that is all I will say about him and that,' Mr Andrews said. Victoria has been hard hit by coronavirus, leading the nation's case numbers and deaths. Victoria recorded another eight deaths on Thursday, taking the state's death toll to 745 and the national figure to 832. Most of the deaths can be linked to Victoria's bungled hotel quarantine system, which is under investigation. Strict lockdown measures designed to stem the spread of the virus have resulted in business closures and job losses. 'This is a government that has proven itself to be incompetent, dishonest and with no vision or hope for Victorians,' Liberal-Nationals leader Mr O'Brien said. 'By moving a motion of no confidence, every member of the legislative assembly will have to make a decision - are they going to vote to protect Daniel Andrews' job? Or are they going to vote to protect Victorians' jobs?' On Wednesday Liberal MP James Newbury called Mr Andrews 'Premier Pinocchio' and claimed the Victorian leader had been caught in a lie. Pictured: A general view of Lygon Street in Carlton, Melbourne, during Stage Four lockdown on September 16 'For weeks, Daniel Andrews has claimed the federal government didn't offer Australian Defence Force support to run Victoria's hotel quarantine,' Mr Newbury said. 'Despite irrefutable proof, the premier is still denying the offer was made. Premier Pinocchio is a massive fibber with a very long nose'. Labor has a clear majority in the lower house and Mr O'Brien's motion is not expected to pass. It will be tabled on Thursday and debated next month. Emails shown to an inquiry on Tuesday revealed the prime minister's office repeatedly offered troops to man Victoria's hotel quarantine program. The evidence appeared to contradict Mr Andrews' claim in August that: 'It is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there were hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow, someone said no.' But on Wednesday, Mr Andrews stood by that statement and said he would explain why when he appears at the inquiry into the quarantine program next week. 'I stand by those statements and I'll be providing evidence,' he told reporters. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-18 04:45:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ROME, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) on Thursday issued a formal call for nominations for its next president. The term of the current president, Togo's former prime minister Gilbert Houngbo, is set to expire on April 1, 2021. IFAD is one of three major United Nations agencies in Rome, along with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP). IFAD is focused on reducing poverty and hunger in rural areas in the developing world. IFAD rules require nominations for the presidency must come from one of its 177 member states before Nov. 23. According to the IFAD news release, following the nomination process, the appointment of the next president will take place on Feb. 17, 2021, during IFAD's annual Governing Council meeting. The president of IFAD serves a four-year term, renewable once. Enditem If you could gaze back through 500 million years of history, you'd find the oceans of prehistory swarming with microscopic life. Tiny floating plant and animal life drifted through the seas, spurred on by cooling ocean temperatures and an atmosphere that was rapidly reaching the levels of breathable oxygen we can't live without. Ironically, the humans that eventually evolved out of these primordial waters now depend on another byproduct of this early era: petroleum. For millions of years, these vast clouds of plankton burned through their brief lives, littering the ocean floors with their dead. In time, mud and sediment covered these plains of decaying organic matter. Sealed off from oxygen, heat and pressure very slowly cooked this dead matter into subterranean reservoirs of petroleum in the form of liquid oil, natural gas and oil shale. Advertisement Today, Earth's petroleum reservoirs are buried under massive layers of rock. And on a planet that's 71 percent water, much of that petroleum is also underwater. Humans have spent the last century developing better ways to extract these precious deposits, but we're still discovering new offshore petroleum reserves. Plus, environmental laws, treaties and the limits of human technology continue to keep some of these reservoirs just out of the reach of the global oil industry. But, in a world that consumes more than 80 million barrels a day, you can rest assured no one has forgotten what riches these off-limits regions may contain [source: CIA]. Under the United Nations' Law of the Sea treaty, a coastal country can lay claim to coastal waters extending up to 200 nautical miles off its shoreline. A country can request up to 350 nautical miles if officials can prove the area is part of the country's continental shelf by May 2009. The continental shelf is the sloping undersea plain that runs from dry land to the deep, open ocean. Oil companies are frothing at the mouth to sink their drills into the ocean's untapped fossil fuel riches. In this article, we'll look at the five offshore petroleum reserves they'd most like to drain dry. Another 860,000 Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week as the nations economic recovery continued to strain against the challenges of the coronavirus. That number is down slightly from the previous week, the Department of Labor said Thursday, revising that figure to 893,000 people claiming benefits. Workers in California have particularly struggled in the pandemic-induced recession. In the state, 230,225 workers filed new claims for assistance while 204,690 more self-employed and contract workers filed for help under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Across the country, 658,737 made claims under the self-employment aid program. Claims filed since the onset of the pandemic in mid-March now top 61 million, underscoring the blow suffered by the labor market even as some firms have begun hiring again. The California Employment Development Department said Thursday that it has processed 13.1 million claims during the pandemic and paid out $86.2 billion in claims both for regular unemployment claims and the program for self-employed people. About 1.4 million nonfarm payroll jobs were added by employers in August, a recent government report showed, as reopenings brought some workers back. Even with that hiring, the labor market has not made up for the widespread job losses since March. Still, there were signs of improvement for many. The report found that in August, more than 24 million people reported they had not worked at all or worked fewer hours at some point last month because of the pandemic, down from 31 million in July. Its honestly been better than expected, Alex Lin, a U.S. economist at Bank of America Global Research, said of the recovery since the virus and lockdown orders knocked more than 6 million people onto unemployment rolls in a single week in March. Lin said his group originally predicted that unemployment would settle around 10% nationwide by years end. That number stood at 8.4% in August, according to a government report. While layoffs continue at a pace far above any modern recession, there are a significant number of job openings, according to Laurence Ales, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. We still have a high number of vacancies, which speaks well to reabsorbing those unemployed workers more quickly than previous recessions, Ales said. A question is always how many of those are real vacancies, he added. Some companies may be listing jobs they do not plan to fill anymore, he explained, which is common during recessions. Lin said many of the jobs lost have been in lower-paying, lower-skilled positions, which could significantly shape the recovery in the longer term. Correction An earlier version of this story misstated the recent unemployment rate. It was 8.4% in August. See More Collapse Ultimately, those (jobs) are the ones that could see more permanent damage, he said. If the higher-paying, higher-skilled industries win out, there is going to be a shift toward jobs that require higher skills, which could lead to more income inequality and a jobless recovery, where the economy stabilizes but many people continue to struggle, Lin said. Despite loosened restrictions for gyms and hair salons in some parts of the Bay Area and an explosion in outdoor dining, many workers in industries hit hardest by the pandemic, like restaurants. are still struggling to make ends meet. Mona Leena Michael was working as the head chef at Oaklands Dyafa restaurant before taking some time off to attend her brothers wedding in March. When she came back, the restaurant was already struggling and was forced to close, at least for the time being. Three days into shelter-in-place, I found myself jobless and applying for unemployment, Michael said. An extra $600 a week in added federal benefits, part of a federal coronavirus relief package passed in late March, helped her and her husband pay for essentials. When that ran out at the end of July, she began selling Palestinian food like manaeesh flatbread at a pop-up in Emeryville until the Alameda County Public Health Department shut it down for not having the proper permits, she said. I didnt really have a choice, Michael, who is in the process of obtaining permits for her pop-up, said of her decision to go forward without the permits. She said the minimum-wage jobs available pay so little that the salary would scarcely cover the high cost of living in the Bay Area; she has been referring former co-workers more desperate than she is for those positions. I have so many undocumented ex-employees reaching out to me for work, Michael said, including one former co-worker who had been living out of their car. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Michael said she has also been without insurance since she had to stop working. When a blow to her face required medical attention, she opted instead to have a friend who is a nurse patch her up with stitches and superglue. Had I not, I would either have had a split open face or I would be $2,000 in debt at the ER, she said. Despite the better-than-expected unemployment rate, some economists said the job market is still historically bad, even compared with the 2007-09 recession and its aftermath. Were over the hump, I guess, but over the hump means its still pretty darn bad out there, said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. The number of new people still applying each week for unemployment because they were let go is almost double what it was at the worst point of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, Rupkey said. He agreed a jobless recovery is possible, noting that companies are likely to be slow in rehiring because of continuing uncertainty about the virus and the timing of a potential vaccine. Fewer people are regaining their jobs or getting a job then you would have hoped for, Rupkey said. In a recession, when sales turn down, (companies) realize they didnt need as many people as they thought, and slow or freeze hiring. I think thats whats going to happen here, he added. This may be the slowest, most jobless recovery in the economy weve ever seen. Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice Quantum Xchange today announced the Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Inc. (CAMI), Marylands only nonprofit organization dedicated to bolstering the growth of the states cybersecurity industry, named Quantum Xchange the Cybersecurity Company to Watch in the 2020 MD Cybersecurity Awards. Now in its 4th year, these competitive awards recognize leading-edge cybersecurity product and services companies headquartered in Maryland for their innovations and contributions to the states cybersecurity ecosystem. Quantum Xchange is delighted to be named a winner in the category of Cybersecurity Company to Watch, said April Burghardt, head of corporate communications at Quantum Xchange. As the 2019 winner for Innovator of the Year, the past 12 months has proven that we have an awesome technology that is addressing a real market need in a unique and innovative way. Behind this recognition is our teams determination to provide commercial enterprises and government agencies with crypto agile, quantum-safe solutions for securing data in transit and protecting critical communications channels now and in the quantum future. In total, 84 nominations were considered across seven categories for the 2020 MD Cybersecurity Awards. Entries were evaluated by 12 independent judges whose roles range from Vice Presidents to Founders. We are pleased to name Company as a winner in the 2020 MD Cybersecurity Awards, said Gregg Smith, Board Chairman of CAMI; CEO of Attila Security. The winners comprise an elite group of cybersecurity leaders in the State of Maryland and have contributed immensely to Marylands growth as a national cybersecurity powerhouse. About Quantum Xchange Quantum Xchange gives commercial enterprises and government agencies the ultimate solution for secure communications. Its complete key distribution system, Phio Trusted Xchange (TX), is uniquely capable of making existing encryption keys quantum safe and supports both post-quantum crypto (PQC) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for true crypto agility and quantum readiness. As the operator of the first quantum-fiber network in the U.S., Quantum Xchange also holds the unique distinction of being the only company in the world to make QKD commercially viable by solving the distance and delivery limitations inherent with all other offerings. With a dynamic security infrastructure in place, organizations can enhance their existing encryption environment, select the level of protection needed based on their risk tolerance, and seamlessly scale to QKD at any time, across any distance, between multiple transmission points. To learn more about being quantum-safe today and quantum-ready for tomorrows threats, visit QuantumXC.com or follow us on Twitter @Quantum_Xchange. About CAMI The Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Inc. (CAMI) is a statewide, 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization established in 2015. CAMI is Maryland's only organization solely dedicated to the growth of Maryland's cybersecurity industry. The organization strives to help members form connections with each other, industry resources and potential private and public sector buyers. Additionally, CAMI provides free cybersecurity incident response advice to Maryland businesses with its Cyber SWAT Team, composed of select organization members. Nicholson Law Firm, PLLC is pleased to announce its newly launched website and brand since completing a successful ownership transition. Our mission at Nicholson Law Firm is to deliver experienced and compassionate legal support, so it was extremely important to our team to provide a wealth of information related to personal injury and our other practice areas, Neil B. Nicholson, Esq., Managing Attorney, Nicholson Law Firm. Nicholson Law Firm, PLLC is pleased to announce its newly launched website and brand since completing a successful ownership transition. As the firms practice areas include personal injury, traffic accidents, civil litigation, and church and nonprofit law, the website features a robust resources library for users to access detailed information about specific concerns from boat accidents and social security disability, to property disputes and church formation and incorporation. The websites streamlined and intuitive navigation allows visitors to quickly locate data about relevant case results, news stories about state laws impacting practice areas, frequently asked questions, and links to local, regional, and national resources. An interactive chat feature offers users the opportunity to connect with a live agent, 24/7, at no cost or obligation. Our mission at Nicholson Law Firm is to deliver experienced and compassionate legal support, so it was extremely important to our team to provide a wealth of information on our new website, to aid in research related to personal injury and our other practice areas, Neil B. Nicholson, Esq., Managing Attorney, Nicholson Law Firm. We consider this an opportunity to empower our fellow community members with knowledge that can assist them today, or in the future. The website leverages the latest functionality and programming features, providing an improved, user-friendly experience. Both the website and brand were designed and developed by Just Flow Events & Marketing (justflownh.com) of Manchester. The Nicholson Law Firm website is accessible at https://nicholson-lawfirm.com. ABOUT NICHOLSON LAW FIRM, PLLC Nicholson Law Firm, PLLC is dedicated to delivering experienced legal services at a fair price. With a focus on compassion and collaboration, the team works to provide satisfactory outcomes to clients in its four major practice areas: personal injury, traffic accidents, civil litigation, and church and nonprofit law. Headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire, Nicholson Law Firm has additional offices in Keene, Manchester, and Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The firm is also licensed to provide services to clients in Massachusetts and Vermont. For information about Nicholson Law Firm, visit https://nicholson-lawfirm.com. In a video recorded in 1989, the choreographer Trisha Brown demonstrates a few restless seconds of movement, as dancers in her studio try to follow along. An arm darts across the torso; the legs appear to slip and catch themselves. It happens fast. As the dancers attempt to do as she does, a viewer can imagine how useful the video would be for anyone learning this material. Theres no easy way to explain what shes doing; you just have to keep watching. In her decades of dazzling experiments with the body, gravity and momentum, Brown invented movement so complex so capricious yet precise it could be hard to remember from one day to the next, let alone years later if the work were to live on. As if to keep tabs on her discoveries, the camera became a regular presence in her studio, a tool as pragmatic as her choreography was wild. By recording the building of a dance, she could revisit what had rushed forth in a solo improvisation, or retrace how a group of dancers had achieved an improbable lift. Her movement is so sequential, and theres a whole logic for how it spills through the body, said Cori Olinghouse, a former dancer with Browns company, who served as its archive director from 2009 to 2018. I think recording it was a way to try to recover something of that logic when nobody could remember. The transaction further solidifies Vortex Energy's track-record in creating value for its investors and paves the way for plans to launch Vortex IV, a global clean energy platform. LONDON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Vortex Energy, a global renewable energy platform managed by Beaufort Investments S.ar.l ("Beaufort"), a subsidiary of the private equity arm of EFG Hermes, has completed the sale of its controlling and managing stake in Vortex Solar ("Vortex III"), a 365MW solar PV portfolio, acquired in 2017 from TerraForm Power, at an enterprise value of c. GBP 500m. The stake was sold to TNB International Sdn Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tenaga Nasional Berhad ("TNB"), an existing shareholder in the business and one of South East Asia's largest utilities with an installed capacity of c.15GWs globally. Vortex III is one of the largest standalone portfolios in the UK, with an average asset age of 6 years, PPAs with major European energy companies and utilities, an attractive ROC regime and a long-term debt package from major lenders including Santander, RBS and ING. The portfolio achieved an EBITDA of c.GBP 39mn in 2019 with an 84% EBITDA margin, exceeding its budget and providing attractive cash yields to its shareholders. It continues to meet its targets in 2020, despite the global challenges. Karim Moussa, Head of Private Equity and Asset Management, at EFG Hermes said, "This is a major milestone for Vortex. The exit of Vortex III delivered a 1.5x cash on cash multiple to our investors and an IRR of c. 14%. We continue to demonstrate our ability to pursue the full cycle of raising capital, investing strategically and exiting major renewable energy portfolios. Since launching Vortex in 2015, we have combined net 822MW of premium assets while investing more than EUR 1.3bn in the sector in developed markets. We have been consistently delivering attractive returns to our shareholders and partners by aggregating and enhancing assets and then selling portfolios to strategic long-term owners of renewable energy assets. This is the second major exit following the disposal of our 49% stake in a 1GW wind portfolio to funds managed by J.P. Morgan last year." Bakr Abdel-Wahab, Head of Energy, at EFG Hermes Private Equity said, "This transaction demonstrates Beaufort's skills as a leading investment and asset manager of large scale portfolios and businesses. Since acquiring the UK assets, we have improved their performance and capital structure via a major refinancing; revamping all key portfolio agreements, partnering with Lightsource BP and establishing a strong London based asset management team. This active management strategy has generally enabled us to return to our investor across our three Vortex Energy platforms since inception, a net average annual cash yield of 5%, cash-on-cash multiple of 1.4x and IRR of 13%. We look forward to continue growing Vortex Energy's footprint and investing in energy transition businesses and portfolios globally over the coming period." The Beaufort team is currently planning to establish Vortex IV, a renewable energy platform that will target global generation, storage, distribution and technology businesses. Moussa concluded, "We are excited about future global opportunities in renewables and the wider clean energy space, we shall aim to commence our fundraising efforts by the end of 2020, with anchor investors already showing increased interest in our next endeavor Vortex IV." About Vortex Energy Vortex Energy was established in 2015 as an investment platform, sponsored by the Private Equity arm of EFG Hermes, via Luxembourg-based Beaufort Investments, to pursue renewable energy investments globally. Beaufort Investments and its affiliates comprise of a team of 15 dedicated infrastructure and private equity specialists, with wide experience in global infrastructure and renewable energy, that manage all Vortex Energy investments and initiatives. As of the end of 2018, Vortex had a portfolio of wind and solar assets of 822MW acquired through various investments amounting to approximately EUR 1.3bn, spanning the UK, Spain, France, Portugal and Belgium. Currently, the company has a full operational asset management team based in London. Learn more about us at www.vortexenergy.ae About EFG Hermes With a current footprint spanning four continents, EFG Hermes started in Egypt and has grown over 35 years of success to become a leading financial services corporation with access to emerging and frontier markets. Drawing on our proven track record and a team of more than 5,500 talented employees, we provide a wide spectrum of financial services that include investment banking, asset management, securities brokerage, research and private equity to the entire MENA region. In 2015, EFG Hermes launched the NBFI Platform, EFG Hermes Finance, which will overlook activities in the non-banking finance field through EFG Hermes Leasing, Tanmeyah Microfinance, valU for instalment sale services and EFG Hermes Factoring. This falls in line with the Firm's strategy to focus on two main pillars: product diversification and geographic expansion into non-MENA markets, which has seen the firm establish a physical presence in Pakistan, Kenya, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States. Learn more about us at www.efghermes.com & stay connected with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/efghermes YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/EFGHermesHolding LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/efg-hermes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EFGHermes/ For further information, please contact: EFG Hermes Media media@efg-hermes.com May El Gammal Group Head of Marketing & Communications melgammal@efg-hermes.com +20 1001330480 Note on Forward-Looking Statements In this press release, EFG Hermes may make forward looking statements, including, for example, statements about management's expectations, strategic objectives, growth opportunities and business prospects. These forward-looking statements are not historical facts but instead represent only EFG Hermes' belief regarding future events, many of which, by their nature are inherently uncertain and are beyond management's control and include among others, financial market volatility; actions and initiatives taken by current and potential competitors; general economic conditions and the effect of current, pending and future legislation, regulations and regulatory actions. Accordingly, the readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1275854/Vortex_Energy_Logo.jpg Related Links https://www.vortexenergy.ae/ SOURCE Vortex Energy Bengaluru, Sep 17 : The Bharatiya Janata Party's newly elected Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka Ashok Gasti is in a critical condition due to Covid-induced complications at a private hospital in the city, an official said on Thursday. The ruling party and its leaders, including a Minister, however, declared Gasti "dead" and began mourning him even as the Manipal hospital maintained that his condition was critical. "Gasti is in a critical condition. He was admitted in our hospital recently after he tested Covid positive," a Manipal hospital spokesperson told IANS. Gasti, 55, was elected unopposed to the Upper House on June 12 along with Iranna Kadadi of the BJP. He also took oath as a member of the Upper House on July 22 at Parliament House. "Gasti was admitted with severe Covid-19 pneumonia. He is critically ill with multiple organ failure and was on life support system in the intensive care unit (ICU), Manipal Director Manish Rai said in a statement here. An advocate by profession, Gasti hails from the barber community and belongs to Raichur district in the state's northern region, nearly 490 km from Bengaluru. Gasti is the party's former Zilla Parishad President from Raichur district. Soon after the party's state unit tweeted in Kannada that Gasti died due to Covid, state Health Minister B. R. Sriramulu and the party's Lok Sabha member from Chikkamagaluru Shobha Karandalaje both tweeted condolence messages. "Even Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu and Union Home Minister Amit Shah condoled Gasti's death through tweets," a party official admitted. Terming Gasti's "death" as unfortunate, Sriramulu tweeted that someone who dreamt of doing social service had passed away untimely. "May his soul rest in peace and may God give his family strength to bear the loss," said Sriramulu in his tweet. Shah in a tweet said,"Shocked and pained over the untimely demise of Rajya Sabha MP and senior BJP leader Ashok Gasti from Karnataka. Over the years, he served the organisation and the nation in multiple roles. My condolences are with his family in this hour of grief." Naidu also tweeted that he was saddened to learn about the demise of Rajya Sabha member Ashok Gasti. "He was known for his simplicity and commitment for the upliftment of the downtrodden. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members," said Naidu who is the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Expressing shock at the sudden "demise" of Gasti, Shobha said,"May the Almighty strengthen his family and friends to bear this loss. May his soul attain sadgati." Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) The National Insurance Commission (NIC) has advised the insuring public to verify the authenticity of any insurance entity before conducting business with them. The caution comes after the Commission in collaboration with the police arrested two officials of an unlicensed insurance brokerage firm operating under the name Family Fountain Insurance Brokers. UBA Loans A statement issued by the NIC said the company had been operating as an intermediary, with the connivance of an underwriting company. The suspects, according to the statement, were operating from the premises of the Aayalolo Transport Terminal in Accra Central and served as an intermediary between the unsuspecting insuring public and a known licensed underwriting insurance company. The Deputy Commissioner of Insurance, Mr Michael Kofi Andoh said the public could verify the authenticity of any insurance entity in good standing by visiting the NIC website. See the list of the insurance and reinsurance companies at published on the NIC website below; Life Companies Allianz Life Insurance Ghana Limited Beige Assure Company Donewell Life Company Enterprise Life Assurance Company Esich Life Assurance Company Ltd. Exceed Life Assurance Company Limited First Insurance Company Limited Ghana Life Insurance Company Ghana Union Assurance Life Company Glico Life Insurance Company GN Life Assurance Limited Hollard Life Assurance Company Limited Metropolitan Life Insurance Ghana Limited MiLife Company Company Limited Old Mutual Life Assurance Company Ghana Phoenix Life Assurance Company Prudential Life Insurance Ghana Quality Life Assurance Company Saham Life Insurance Ghana Limited SIC Life Company Limited Starlife Assurance Company Limited Vanguard Life Assurance Company Limited Non-Life Companies Activa International Insurance Company-Ghana Limited Allianz Insurance Company Gh. Ltd Bedrock Insurance Company Limited Best Assurance Company Limited Donewell Insurance Company Limited Enterprise Insurance Company Limited Ghana Union Assurance Limited Glico General Insurance Company Limited Heritage Energy Insurance Company Limited Hollard Insurance Ghana Limited Imperial General Assurance Company Ltd. Loyalty Insurance Company Limited Millennium Insurance Company Limited Multi Insurance Company Ltd. NSIA Insurance Company Limited Phoenix Insurance Company Limited Prime Insurance Company Limited Priority Insurance Company Limited Provident Insurance Company Limited Quality Insurance Company Limited Regency Nem Insurance Ghana Limited Saham Insurance Ghana Limited Serene Insurance Company SIC Insurance Company Limited Star Assurance Company Limited Sunu Assurances Ghana Limited Unique Insurance Company Limited Vanguard Assurance Company Limited Wapic Insurance (Ghana) Limited Reinsurers Ghana Reinsurance Company GN Reinsurance Company Limited Mainstream Reinsurance Reinsurance Contact Offices WAICA Re Corporation Plc 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 New Delhi: Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut's tiff with the Maharashtra government has just gone from bad to worse. It all started with the actress calling out Mumbai Police and saying she feels scared in Mumbai. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut then asked her to refrain from coming to the city if she feels scared. Later in an interview, the political leader even addressed the Manikarnika actress Kangana using a derogatory term. Now, in a recent interview, Kangana Ranaut has reacted to the remark. Kangana Ranaut stated that she searched the dictionary to know the meaning of the word, and said it means, muftkhor, one who eats for free. She then went on to say that she is the highest-paid actress and that she has paid Rs 15 to 20 crore as tax. She further stated that she has generated employment for her staff members, for crew members of her films and the people working in theatres when her films release. She says she pays a hefty tax to the Maharashtra Government to stay and work here, so she is not muftkhor. Kangana also broke her silence over Maharashtra governments alleged vengeful demolition and the personal remarks made against her and stated that a lot was said about her post her statement against the Mumbai Police. However, the actress has clarified that she didnt target Mumbai Police instead she was talking about the administration of Uddhav Thackeray led Maharashtra government. I want to question Uddhav Thackeray that while he has inherited Bala Saheb Thackerays properties, power, Shiv Sena and peoples loyalty, they have left behind his ideologies. So, who is muftkhor? I have been using my hard-earned money for the betterment of the country, the state of Maharashtra and have always made donations, how can I be muftkhor? she added. Today, it has become Sonia Sena. "Who is muftkhor then? I told you that everything I earn is being utilised for Maharashtra. She went on to question, what Sanjay Raut had contributed to the economy, adding that she wanted him to apologize for his remarks. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 21:13:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Several foreign financial institutions have raised their forecasts of China's economic growth for the rest of the year as the country's key economic indicators point to strong recovery amid COVID-19 prevention and control. Quick containment of the epidemic and effective monetary and fiscal policies have largely contributed to the country's stronger-than-expected rebound and will further boost gross domestic product (GDP), the institutions have said. Global credit rating agency Moody's raised its growth forecast for the Chinese economy this year to 1.9 percent from 1 percent in a report on China's economic recovery earlier this week, representing the firm's only upward revision of growth of major economies in 2020. Chinese policymakers have increased the emphasis on reforms in some areas of the economy, facilitating access of foreign firms to the industrial and finance sectors, which if effective would contribute to increasing competition and supporting productivity, Moody's said in a press release. The ongoing shift toward consumers and the services sectors combined with the continued upgrade of technology and digitalization support a shift toward higher value-added sectors, it said. China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released a series of indicators Tuesday, showing improvement in retail sales and industrial output among others. Retail sales of consumer goods, a main gauge of China's consumption, returned to growth the first time this year, rising 0.5 percent year on year in August. The value-added industrial output increased 5.6 percent year on year last month, accelerating from a rise of 4.8 percent registered in July. If the recovery momentum sustains in September, the country's GDP is expected to see "an evident acceleration" in the third quarter, said Fu Linghui, an NBS spokesperson. Earlier NBS data showed China's GDP expanded 3.2 percent year on year in the second quarter, rebounding from a contraction of 6.8 percent in the first quarter. The Asian Development Bank expects China's economy to increase 7.7 percent next year in its Asian Development Outlook 2020 Update released this week. In a research report, analysts from global financial giant Standard Chartered Bank summarized China's measures to enhance financial support for foreign trade companies, facilitate domestic sales of export products, boost demand with new infrastructure and investment in urbanization and support part-time employment growth. The infrastructure investment, real estate, finance and IT sectors are key growth drivers of China's economy, and there is sufficient room for the country to expand fiscal stimulus in H2 as per the budget, according to the report. Enditem Dorothy A. Finch, 73, passed away peacefully in her sleep, Tuesday, September 8, 2020. She was a lifelong resident of Green River. Dorothy was born on October 7, 1946 in Rock Springs, Wyoming; the daughter of Arthur W. Deichmueller and Dorothy Bingham. She attended schools in Green River, Wyoming and was a 1965 graduate of Lincoln High School. She attended Secretarial School for one year in Boise, Idaho. She returned to Wyoming to help care for her ailing sister and began working at Little America and the Cowboy Restaurant where she baked many of their desserts. Dorothy married Norman L. Fi... Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. By clicking I agree below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. You also agree to our Terms of Service. DOHA, Qatar and NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Credit Suisse and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) are pleased to announce that QIA will partner with Credit Suisse Asset Management to form a multibillion dollar direct private credit platform that will provide financing primarily in the form of secured first and second lien loans to upper middle-market and larger companies in the US and Europe. The platform is part of Credit Suisse Asset Management's Credit Investments Group (CIG), which is led by Global Head and Chief Investment Officer, John Popp. The CIG team is one of the largest and most experienced providers of leveraged finance solutions in the industry, with approximately USD 60 billion in non-investment grade credit positions. For more than 20 years through various market cycles, CIG has maintained a disciplined approach and demonstrated leading experience in sourcing and servicing credit relationships. Eric Varvel, Global Head of Asset Management and Chairman of the Investment Bank at Credit Suisse, said, "We believe this strategic partnership with QIA presents unique opportunities for borrowers seeking credit solutions to partner with our Asset Management and Investment Bank franchises. The Credit Investments Group, within Credit Suisse Asset Management, has extensive industry and lending relationships that, when combined with Credit Suisse's unmatched leveraged finance and financial sponsors franchises, uniquely positions us to provide capital and liquidity to the private credit market." Commenting on the announcement, Mr Mansoor Al Mahmoud, CEO of QIA: said, "We see significant potential in the growing private credit market and we are excited to once again work with Credit Suisse. This strategic partnership, with one of the foremost leaders in asset management, is aligned with QIA's objectives as a long-term diversified investor across asset classes both in the US and globally." Mr. Popp added, "This private credit platform is a natural extension of our business as a leading provider of capital solutions to non-investment grade companies in the US and Western Europe. The current market environment presents an ideal entry point into the private credit space, with capital and liquidity now at a premium." Press Contacts Credit Suisse Candice Sun +1 (212) 325-8226 candice.sun@credit-suisse.com Credit Suisse Media Relations +41 844 33 88 44 media.relations@credit-suisse.com Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) +44 (0) 20 7353 4200 Media@qia.qa www.qia.qa Credit Suisse AG Credit Suisse AG is one of the world's leading financial services providers and is part of the Credit Suisse group of companies (referred to here as 'Credit Suisse'). Our strategy builds on Credit Suisse's core strengths: its position as a leading wealth manager, its specialist investment banking capabilities and its strong presence in our home market of Switzerland. We seek to follow a balanced approach to wealth management, aiming to capitalize on both the large pool of wealth within mature markets as well as the significant growth in wealth in Asia Pacific and other emerging markets, while also serving key developed markets with an emphasis on Switzerland. Credit Suisse employs approximately 48,800 people. The registered shares (CSGN) of Credit Suisse AG's parent company, Credit Suisse Group AG, are listed in Switzerland and, in the form of American Depositary Shares (CS), in New York. Further information about Credit Suisse can be found at www.credit-suisse.com. Credit Suisse Asset Management Credit Suisse Asset Management is a multi-specialist boutique manager operating within a leading global financial institution. Our multi-specialist boutique approach is combined with the institutional quality, governance, stability and opportunity of Credit Suisse Group AG's worldwide franchise. Qatar Investment Authority Qatar Investment Authority ("QIA") is the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar. QIA was founded in 2005 to invest and manage the state reserve funds. QIA is among the largest and most active sovereign wealth funds globally. QIA invests across a wide range of asset classes and regions as well as in partnership with leading institutions around the world to build a global and diversified investment portfolio with a long-term perspective that can deliver sustainable returns and contribute to the prosperity of the State of Qatar. Important Legal Information This document was produced by and the opinions expressed are those of Credit Suisse as of the date of writing and are subject to change. It has been prepared solely for information purposes and for the use of the recipient. It does not constitute an offer or an invitation by or on behalf of Credit Suisse to any person to buy or sell any security. Any reference to past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future. The information and analysis contained in this publication have been compiled or arrived at from sources believed to be reliable but Credit Suisse does not make any representation as to their accuracy or completeness and does not accept liability for any loss arising from the use hereof. Copyright 2020, CREDIT SUISSE GROUP AG and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276000/Mr_Mansoor_Al_Mahmoud__QIA.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276001/Eric_Varvel__Credit_Suisse.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276002/John_G__Popp__Credit_Suisse__2x2.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1276010/Credit_Suisse_QIA_Logo.jpg BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Visiqua was named the winner of a Silver Stevie Award in the Achievement in Product Innovation category in The 17th Annual International Business Awards today. The International Business Awards are the world's premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small - are eligible to submit nominations. The 2020 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories. As the ongoing COVID-19 crisis will prevent winners from receiving their awards on stage during a traditional gala IBA banquet, winners will be celebrated instead during a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, 1 December. More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories. Visiqua won in the Achievement in Product Innovation category for Advertising & Marketing. Visiqua was recognized for being innovators in the performance marketing industry. With the creation of Call Ping Tree and Clicks to Convert, Visiqua has been able to take the market landscape from static to robust. Using industry-leading innovation and fast execution, both products offer features and benefits that leverage Visiqua's tech-stack. By creating platforms that offer dynamic bidding, Visiqua can ensure better returns and results for their clients. The judges agree, one commenting that "Visiqua is surfing a new wave of success." Another judge also celebrates Visiqua for "good innovation and quick execution." "Call Ping Tree and Clicks to Convert were born from a deep understanding of the marketplace and the team's ability to build products that improve on what currently exists. 2020 is proving to be a formative year in our long-term success," said David Walsh, president, Visiqua. "When we think about the development of new products and processes, we always put those concepts to the test by determining whether we are truly creating a meaningful improvement for our industry. That is why it's such an honor to have those products and ideas validated by our peers from around the globe," said Jamie Sutton, chief revenue officer, Visiqua. Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from July through early September. The judges panel consists of international CEO's and C-level executives across multiple industries. Details about The International Business Awards and the lists of Stevie Award winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/IBA. About Visiqua Visiqua is a panoramic performance marketing company hyper-focused on producing quality results for our partner brands, agencies, and clients. Visiqua offers a series of products, including lead generation, CPA-brand awareness campaigns, CRM development, product launch support, owned and operated websites, and Clicks to Convert, a click-based marketplace for publishers and advertisers. Visiqua is the performance marketing unit of Boulder Heavy Industries (BHI), a leading provider of digital marketing services and software solutions. About the Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 nominations each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.StevieAwards.com. Contact: Erica Glick [email protected] SOURCE Visiqua Related Links http://www.visiqua.com Officials in Nashville, Tn. concealed from the media how few coronavirus cases had been traced to bars and restaurants in the city, according to emails sent between the mayors office and the citys health department. Emails obtained by FOX 17 News appear to show that the two offices seemingly conspired to conceal data showing that while construction and nursing homes led to more than a thousand cases each as of June 30th, only 22 cases had been traced to bars and restaurants. In a discussion of the numbers, Leslie Waller from the health department asked, This isnt going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayors Office? Correct, not for public consumption, replied senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. The next month, in response to rumors that only 80 cases had been traced to bars and restaurants, a Tennessean reporter asked, The figure you gave of more than 80 does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesnt that mean restaurants and bars arent a very big problem? Health department official Brian Todd asked five health department officials for assistance in responding to the reporter: Please advise how you recommend I respond. An unnamed sender responded, My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site. We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be because that number is increasing all the time and we dont want to say a specific number. A city staff attorney, at the instruction of council member Steve Glover, was able to verify that the emails are real, the report said. Glover accused the city of covering up the data and fabricating information. Theyve blown their entire credibility, he said. Its gone, I dont trust a thing they say going forward nothing. The councilman said many bartenders, waitresses, and restaurant owners from downtown Nashville have reached out asking why officials wouldnt release those numbers. Story continues We raised taxes 34 percent and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes, their apartmentsand we did it on bogus data. That should be illegal, Glover said. The mayors office did not confirm or deny the report, but told FOX 17 News to file a freedom of information act request. More from National Review Mr Yussiff Zimbe Badia, the Assembly Member for the Sigri Electoral Area in the Wa West District, has appealed to the government and Non-governmental Organisations to help provide farmers with a tractor for ploughing purposes. He said through the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme, there was an abundance of farm inputs such as fertilizer for the farmers, but that farmers could not derive the maximum benefit of the programme due to the lack of timely access to ploughing services. Mr Badia made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Dorimon on the sidelines of a fertilizer distribution fair organised by the Co-operative Development Foundation Canada (CDF-Canada) for beneficiaries of its Access Project. If the government could help us with a tractor, it would have been good. The Assembly Member also appealed to the government to provide the Electoral Area with a dam under the One-Village-One-Dam project to enable their livestock to have access to drinking water. On her part, Madam Tagaasori Dampuori, a farmer at Maase explained that women in the community could not engage in meaningful farming due to their difficulty in accessing tractor services. You look for the tractor and will not get, the time you will farm it is already late and you will get a poor harvest, so we really need a tractor to plough on time to enjoy good harvest, she explained. Mr Joseph Dary, a farmer at Nyose, also told the GNA that though the Wa West District Assembly had a mechanisation centre for farmers in the district, the tractors were not enough. "The time the tractor will move from one community to your community, the ploughing period will have passed, Mr Dary noted. 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 LA MIRADA, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- California-based furniture retailer, Living Spaces, today announced it will host its second annual pop-up blood drives across seven of the store's California locations this fall. These blood drives mark the one year anniversary of the furniture retailer's national partnership with the American Red Cross which began with blood drives in July 2019. Beginning September 30 through the end of October, Living Spaces will host seven blood drives at several Living Spaces stores across California to provide a safe and convenient way for shoppers to donate blood and help save lives. What's more, those who participate will also receive a free COVID-19 antibody test at the time of their donation, with results to be provided in the week to follow. The furniture retailer hopes to secure at least 30 donors at each site. "Donated blood has a limited shelf life, and coupled with the world's current pandemic, the need for more donations is paramount," said Living Spaces CEO Grover Geiselman. "We're proud to continue our partnership with the Red Cross through hosting these blood drives for the betterment of our local communities." The days and locations for each blood drive are as follows: Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Living Spaces requests that those interested in donating sign up online for a specific time slot by visiting Redcrossblood.org using the sponsor code LivingSpaces. Walk-in appointments will not be available. To determine blood donation eligibility, please view the following link: https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/how-to-donate/eligibility-requirements.html For more information about Living Spaces, visit www.livingspaces.com About Living Spaces Living Spaces is a California-based furniture retailer providing an unmatched selection at an affordable price. Founded in 2003, Living Spaces has over 24 retail locations and distribution centers throughout California, Nevada, Texas and Arizona. For more information, visit www.livingspaces.com. Media Contact Gab DePietro [email protected] 267. 589. 9160 SOURCE Living Spaces Related Links http://www.livingspaces.com CPP Stalwart, James Kwabena Bomfeh has slammed the Presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama for promising to legalize the riding of motorcycles for commercial purposes. The NDC flagbearer has appealed to Ghanaians to elect him as President again during the December 7 polls and one of the things he intends to do should he come back to power is to ensure commercial motorbike riders, known in local parlance as ''okada'' riders, will have their business legitimized. However, the law that bans okada business has been passed and it was enacted by the erstwhile Mahama administration. Discussing the issue on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', James Kwabena Bomfeh, popularly called Kabila expressed shock that the former President would pass a law to ban okada business but today, for political expediency, makes a U-turn to promise legalization of a business he vehemently abhorred. Kabila kicked against the former President's decision to legalize okada business explaining it is difficult to regulate the riders and also dangerous to ride a motorbike in the country. "Even as it has not been regularized, the Police are having a hard time applying the law." He also likened Mr. Mahama's quest to trying to say he will legalize prostitution or armed robbery when he makes a comeback to the Jubilee House, the seat of government. "You know that people feed from prostitution. You know some people feed from armed robbery. With some, there's evidence to show that they alone don't feed from armed robbery but also embark on charitable projects. Some people are living on illicit drug trade, Pablo Escobar . . . So, because people feed from that and people live on that, you're going to regularize and legalize armed robbery? Can you?'', he stated. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The government has constituted a committee to look into reports of China snooping on Indian citizens, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has told Congress leader KC Venugopal in a letter as the Grand Old Party plans to corner the government on the issue. In the letter accessed by News18, Jaishankar reassured the MP, who had given a notice on China snooping on Indian VIPs, that the matter was taken up by the Ministry of External Affairs with the Chinese ambassador. Our embassy in Beijing also raised it with the Foreign Ministry of China. The Chinese side conveyed that Shenzen Zhenhua is a private company and had stated its position publicly. On their part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry maintained that there was no connection between the company concerned and the Chinese government, the letter said. It added, The government of India takes very seriously the protection of the privacy and personal data of Indian citizens. It is deeply concerned at any report that suggests that foreign sources are accessing or seeking to access the personal data of our citizens without their consent. The Government has constituted an Expert Committee under the National Cyber Security Coordinator to study these reports, evaluate their implications, assess any violations of law and submit its recommendations within thirty days. Reacting to the letter, Venugopal told News18 that he and his party would continue raising the issue despite reassurances from the government. We want to know whether there was any lacunae. Asking questions doesnt mean we are against the government, he said. The Congress had walked out of Lok Sabha because they were not allowed to respond to Defence Minister Rajnath Singhs statement on Chinese transgression in Eastern Ladakh. We too wanted to speak out against China and send a strong message to them that all India stands as one. We wanted to support our armed forces but were not allowed, said Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the leader of Congress in Lok Sabha. With the Rajya Sabha having limited discussion, Congress leader Manish Tewari and his party have appealed to Singh for a similar interaction in Lok Sabha. The government, however, says while clarifications can be sought, to have a full-fledged discussion would mean a threat to security and China getting to know the trade secrets. The latest political slugfest has been triggered by a report by the Indian Express which details how a Shenzen-based technology company with links to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party is keeping tabs on over 10,000 Indian individuals and organisations in its global database of foreign targets. Some of the names under the scanner include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Cabinet ministers like Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman and at least 15 former Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force among others. Police Group Places Gun Target on Image of Black Elected Official America is still healing from several violent murders of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of law enforcement officers across the country. But that climate in the country, volatile and fraught with distrust and disagreement, did not stop members of the California Correctional Peace Officer Association (CCPOA) from placing a gun target on the photo of a Black lawmaker in California. The CCPOA, in a two-minute political video, clearly displayed an image of a crosshair symbol over the face of State Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) at the 1-minute-20-second mark of the clip, which was widely circulated before it was deleted. From what I saw, there were no Black correctional officers in the video, no Black representation, the Rev. Jonathan E.D. Moseley, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Action Network, told California Black Media (CBM). It was a despicable piece of propaganda. It was not just targeting elected officials, it targeted an elected Black official, he continued. ADVERTISEMENT Glen Stailey, a correctional officer and CCPOAs state president, posted the video on Facebook. CCPOA is supporting a candidate who is running against Jones-Sawyer in the November General Election. The crosshair symbol is commonly used figuratively to connote that someone or something is being targeted. Whether its a sniper, police officer, or a citizen practicing at a range, shooters rely on actual crosshairs in firearm viewfinders to mark the object of their impending gunfire, before they squeeze the trigger. It is unconscionable that the president of a peace officers association would use such a scare tactic that could incite someone to take action and cause harm, said Jones-Sawyer, who has asked the Assembly Sergeant-at-Arms for additional security. He has also requested that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra investigate. In the video, Stailey is shown staring at a wall lined with photos. Other individuals are standing by him. He is specifically pointing his finger at the photo of Jones-Sawyer, which is covered by the crosshairs target symbol. CCPOA is prepared to take the lead and speak the loudest. We are going to demand that the increased violence and assault on peace officers are addressed and the perpetrators are held accountable to the highest degree, Stailey says in the video, pointing to Jones-Sawyers photo. Alice Huffman, president of the California-Hawaii branch of the NAACP, watched the video. She told California Black Media (CBM) that it was heartbreaking. This is hurtful and despicable, she said. At its best, this video shows a violation of the trust that we place in our law enforcement authorities. At its worst, this is a dangerously suggestive, racist, calculated and terrifying act perpetrated by people who should know better. These are people we count on to protect us not to use symbols we all can identify to instill fear in us, said Brown. An apology just doesnt cut it. ADVERTISEMENT After a slew of comments on Twitter and Facebook reacting to the video, most of them in opposition, the CCPOA deleted the video. The CCPOA posted a video that showed we are targeting several legislative districts, Stailey said in a statement. It would require a great stretch of the imagination to believe that we meant anything other than our clear intent, which was to demonstrate that we are mounting political campaigns against certain legislators. However, to put this controversy to rest, we are moving the video from our official channels and editing it. Jones-Sawyer is the chairperson of the Assembly Public Safety Committee. This is unacceptable. Putting crosshairs on a sitting Assemblymember with whom you have political disagreements crosses a line big time. Reggie Jones-Sawyer is a great leader for CA, particularly on criminal justice & prison reform, State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), wrote on his Twitter account. After two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies were shot at close range while sitting in a patrol vehicle on Sept. 13 in Compton, Jones-Sawyer called the crime cowardly. The two deputies survived the ambush. Im against police violence, Jones-Sawyer told a Southern California radio station on Monday, Sept. 14. And thats not only police violence when it involves African Americans or Latinos, but also when violence goes against law enforcement officers. That act was a cowardly act. Jones-Sawyer, who represents the 59th Assembly District, is currently in a fight to hold on to his seat. He trailed Efren Martinez, also a Democrat, in the primary election, which forced a runoff in the Nov. 3 General Election. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, established in 1957 as the California Correctional Officers Association, has over 30,000 members. The labor union advocates for enhancement of wages and other benefits for its members. California correctional officers are responsible for the custody, safety, security and supervision of inmates in prison. This is outrageous. Law enforcement says they care about public safety and then create media that threaten a public official, Rebecca Weiker posted on Twitter. Weiker is the program director for Re:Store Justice, a non-profit organization that facilitates encounters between survivors and individuals who commit violent crimes. Disgusting! Putting a gun target on a Black elected official endangers him and his family, the California Legislative Latino Caucus tweeted. Reggie Jones-Sawyer, as chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, is a great leader on criminal justice reforms. The CA Latino Caucus stands with Reggie in denouncing these tactics. Jones-Sawyer says his family has a history of involvement in the 1960s civil rights and other social justice movements, so hes aware that threats like the CCPOAs are not always idle or harmless. He also has an uncle who was one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students who famously integrated Arkansass Central High School in 1957. The men and women of the CCOPA deserve better representation and a board that communicates their needs rather than personal biases and hatred, Jones-Sawyer said. See full video: CCPOA Threat Video (Target symbol can be viewed 1 min 20 second mark) File Photo Chandigarh: To aggressively promote higher education in the state, the Punjab Cabinet led by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday decided to reduce the requirement of constructed area from 50,000 sq. mt. to 30,000 sq. mt. for multi-domain University, and from 20,000 sq. mt. to 15,000 sq. mt. for single-domain University. It has been decided to accordingly amend the Punjab Private University Policy-2010, an official spokesperson said after the cabinet meeting held through video conferencing. The move will encourage the establishment of more private universities in the state. Advertisement Capt Amarinder Singh This decision has been taken in line with the recommendations of the committee, constituted under the Chief Secretary by the Higher Education Department with the approval of the Chief Minister, to consider the representations received from various sponsoring bodies for relaxation/amendment in various clauses of the Policy-2010 for the establishment of new Private Universities in the State. According to a spokesperson of the Chief Ministers Office, as per provision 4.5(iv) of the aforesaid policy, the constructed area required for setting up of multi-domain University in Punjab is 50,000 sq mt. which is the highest in India. Advertisement Thus, the state government has decided to amend the existing provision 4.5(a)(iv) of the policy for reducing the requirement of constructed area to 30,000 sq mt. for multi-domain University and 15,000 sq. mt. for single-domain University. Punjab governmentThe amended policy would further facilitate higher capital investments in the field of higher education and it is expected that two more Universities, which have tie-ups with globally acclaimed Universities, would set up campuses in Punjab. The Cabinet also gave the nod to amend the existing provision 4.3(g) of the Policy-2010, making sponsoring body eligible for setting up of private university on leased land, subject to the lease being a long-term one, for at least 33 years, from a government authority or gram panchayat. Advertisement It may be noted that the Punjab Private University Policy-2010 had no provision for taking land on lease for setting up a university, while most of the states in India have such enabling provision of land requirements. Education Under the Punjab Private University Policy, 2010, aimed at bringing in private high quality education in the Higher Education Sector, the state government has so far approved 14 Universities. Apart from these, proposals to establish four more private universities are under process. Advertisement PUNJAB COOP AUDIT (GROUP-B) SERVICE RULES TO BE AMENDED The Cabinet also gave approval to amend the Punjab Cooperative Audit (Group-B) Service Rules, 2016, by merging the post of Senior Assistant (Accounts) with that of the Senior Assistants, to pave the way for promotional avenues to the Senior Assistant (Accounts) working in the Audit Wing of the Cooperative Department. These rules will come into effect from the date of notification in the Punjab Gazette. An aerial view of the Tan Cang - Cai Mep International Terminal in southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. Photo by Shutterstock/Hien Phung Thu. Belgian and Dutch firms have expressed interest in funding part of a $984 million seaport logistics complex in southern Ba RiaVung Tau Province. They proposed Wednesday to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to invest in Cai Mep Ha Logistics Center to oversee large container ships at the Cai Mep port complex, which in recent years has been one of the fastest-growing ports in the world. The state-owned Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) has committed to financing 10 percent of the project, and the Belgian Corporation for International Investment has planned to play a role in the investment. Ba RiaVung Tau authorities in July approved the 1/2000 project planning scheme that covers 1,763 ha. Construction is planned between 2021 and 2040. Vietnamese real estate developer Geleximco and logistics firm International Transportation and Trading Jsc (ITC Corp) last year had also proposed to invest in this project. Syracuse, N.Y. Syracuse has been named one of 12 up-and-coming housing markets, according to a new analysis by Zillow. The real estate website says mid-sized cities like Boise, Syracuse, and Portland (ME) are now leading the country as the top markets poised for growth, replacing expensive coastal metros such as San Francisco and Seattle that have led the way in the past. According to Inman.com, homeowners may be looking to leave the congestion of New York City for more spacious areas due to the coronavirus pandemic. Smaller cities offer more room for social distancing and more affordable housing amid economic uncertainty, plus a potential bigger space for people in jobs allowing people to work remotely from home. As a result, Syracuse was named No. 9 out of 12 up-and-coming mid-size cities. The Salt City has seen home values increase 6.8% from last year for a typical price of $154,596; Zillow anticipates those may rise 4% more within the next year. Zillow says its analysis is based on home value growth year over year, forecasted home value growth, days on market, share of homes sold above list price, and month-over-month sale counts. Mid-size cities are ranked between 75-125 of all U.S. metros. 12 most in-demand, mid-sized housing markets to watch (according to Zillow): 1. Boise, Idaho 2. Huntsville, Alabama 3. Ogden, Utah 4. Spokane, Washington 5. York, Pennsylvania 6. Colorado Springs, Colorado 7. Lancaster, Pennsylvania 8. Modesto, California 9. Syracuse, New York 10. Visalia, California 11. Portland, Maine 12. Lansing, Michigan How the coronavirus pandemic created a historic housing market in Syracuse right now Despite pandemic, hot 2019 real estate market hikes 2020 property assessments For more information on what makes Central New York a great place to live and work, please visit our sister site, The Good Life, CNY. Two people were arrested in Uttar Pradeshs Ballia on Thursday for posting objectionable pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social networking sites, police said. Mannu Ram and Ankit Yadav were arrested and booked under the IT Act for sharing objectionable pictures of the prime minister on Facebook and WhatsApp, SHO Sukhpura Virendra Yadav said. Prime Minister Modi is celebrating his 70th birthday today. As the leader of the worlds largest democracy, he enjoys immense popularity within the country and abroad. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) on Wednesday called for convicted cop killers in America to be sentenced to the death penalty. For months, the radical Lefts defund the police movement has promoted violence, chaos and anarchy in cities across our countrywhile villainizing and attacking the brave men and women in law enforcement who risk their lives to keep us safe. Now, these dangerous Leftists have started putting words into violent actiontargeting and brutally attacking law enforcement,she said. Thats why today, I am calling for convicted cop killers in America to be sentenced to death. President Trump is exactly rightwe have to get tough, and we have to draw the line. If were going to be a nation of safety and security, we must be unified in our commitment to ending the senseless violence against law enforcement officers once and for all. Australians living in China are being urged to return home and be 'extremely careful' abroad after a Chinese consular official was named in a national police investigation. Former senior Defence official and diplomat Allan Behm issued the stern warning on Thursday after documents revealed the Australian Federal Police were investigating China's Sydney consulate, Sun Yantao. Officials were looking into whether he conspired with John Zhisen Zhang, a policy adviser to New South Wales Upper House Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane, to infiltrate the Labor Party and influence voters. Yantao is responsible for managing relations with the Chinese diaspora and pro-Beijing organisations, ABC reported. Mr Behm said Australia-China ties would worsen due to this and 'the Australian Government needs to act right now.' Former senior Defence official and diplomat Allan Behm (pictured) issued the stern warning on Thursday after documents revealed the Australian Federal Police were investigating China's Sydney consulate, Sun Yantao Australians living in China are being urged to return home and be 'extremely careful' abroad after a Chinese consular official was named in a national police investigation. Pictured: An expat and locals in Guangzhou 'It needs to warn Australians who are in China that they must be extremely careful - that they must do nothing that attracts attention or that might otherwise provoke the Chinese Government,' he said, ABC reported. 'If they have no real reason for conducting business in China at the moment, they would be pretty well advised to return to Australia.' Mr Behm added Australia's diplomacy with China was 'absolutely in the pits' and it was time the government worked towards building a 'proper diplomatic policy and a strategic plan in the management of our relationship with China.' The Chinese Government, however, condemned allegations Beijing tried to infiltrate Australian politics. The Chinese Government, however, condemned allegations Beijing tried to infiltrate Australian politics. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin (pictured) said 'some people in Australia are bent on hyping up anti-China sentiments' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: 'Some people in Australia are bent on hyping up anti-China sentiments and trying to grab headlines by smearing China and attacking China.' He added in a press conference on Wednesday China had 'never conducted and will never conduct any interference or infiltration against another country'. 'Some in Australia are doing whatever they can to fan up anti-China sentiments and catch eyeballs by smearing and attacking China, which only poisons China-Australia relations,' Mr Wenbin said. 'We urge some in Australia to reject their Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop politicizing or stigmatizing the normal fulfillment of duty by Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia, and stop creating new obstacles in bilateral relations.' People standing at the gates of the Australian Embassy in Beijing, China, following Australian TV anchor Cheng Lei being arrested on August 14 Mr Behm and Mr Wenbin's comments follow the evacuation of two Australian journalists - ABC correspondent Bill Birtles (right) and the Australian Financial Review's Michael Smith (left) - due to the diplomatic crisis between Australia and China Mr Behm and Mr Wenbin's comments follow the evacuation of two Australian journalists - ABC correspondent Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Review's Michael Smith - due to the diplomatic crisis between Australia and China. It also follows the arrest of Australian TV anchor Cheng Lei in Beijing on August 14. She has not been active on her once heavily-documented social media account since March. 'The Australian Government has been informed that an Australian citizen, Ms Cheng Lei, has been detained in China,' a statement from Foreign Minister Marise Payne read. 'Australian officials had an initial consular visit with Ms Cheng at a detention facility via video link on 27th of August and will continue to provide assistance and support to her and her family.' Mr Behm and Mr Wenbin's comments follow also Australian TV anchor Cheng Lei (pictured) being arrested in Beijing on August 14 Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told ABC News on Wednesday: 'My understanding is that investigations that might be underway relate very much to potential foreign interference activities by publicised figures, who have been identified in the media, who are Australians. 'Now, obviously, those investigations will stretch in ways that it's appropriate only for the authorities to comment on but, as I said, our approach is purely to uphold the laws of Australia and they include bipartisan foreign interference laws that are designed to protect our democracy, protect our systems of Government from undue interference, wherever it may come from.' Mr Birmingham's comments came as Morrison government adviser Andrew Liveris encouraged Australia to keep its criticisms of China private to protect the economic relationship it was a good listener and had a culture where saving face mattered. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham (pictured) comments came as Morrison government adviser Andrew Liveris encouraged the government to keep its criticisms of China private to protect the economic relationship Morrison government adviser Andrew Liveris (pictured) said encouraged the government to remember saving face mattered in China and 'you don't want to embarrass cultures' 'You don't want to embarrass cultures,' he told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. 'I think you have got to be very careful with how you say things and what you say.' Several trade strikes against Australia have been launched by China following Scott Morrison leading calls for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. Mr Liveris said Australia should stand up for its moral beliefs and standards but stressed the need to balance the nation's diplomatic relationship with China, alongside its trade ties. 'Especially with an economy do dependent on China, we have to be very careful until we diversity,' he said. 'When we diversity, we'll be fine.' It was revealed on Monday a Chinese military company amassed the personal details of more than 35,000 Australians as art of a giant global database targeting influential figures including politicians, business people and entrepreneurs. Kabul, Sep 17 : Pakistan opened another terminal for trade with Afghanistan at a border area in Balochistan province, it was reported on Thursday. Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan Alyani inaugurated the trade terminal in the border area of Badini on Wednesday, reports Dawn news. The business community, Chamber of Commerce and Industry and importers and exporters had been demanding the opening of a new terminal for trade between the two counties at Badini for a long time as the Chaman gateway was overburdened due to the Afghan transit trade, import and export and Nato supply for the US troops stationed in Afghanistan. Speaking at the ceremony, Chief Minister Alyani said the opening of the new trade terminal and establishment of markets in the border areas of Balochistan would boost economic activities and create job opportunities for the local people. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Kernes will reportedly undergo a complex surgery. Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes has been flown to Germany for hospitalization over a flare-up of a "chronic condition." His lung was punctured and the liver was hurt after he was shot at back in 2014, as reported by the local Kharkiv NOW Telegram channel. Kernes was taken to a Berlin clinic Charite overnight Thursday, Newsroom reports, allegedly on board the Bombardier Challenger 604 plane that earlier brought Russian opposition's Alexei Navalny, poisoned with the novichok nerve agent, to the same hospital, as reported by Suspilne. Kharkiv NOW claims Kernes had almost recovered before his condition deteriorated sharply on Monday. "There was no coma, no cerebral edema. No ventilator was connected. Having got out of the ambulance, Kernes was boarding the plane only with the oxygen cushion on," the report says. According to the publication's sources, the mayor will undergo a complex surgery, which "only German doctors are capable of performing." Businessman Pavel Fuks said Kernes had been admitted to the Charite clinic in grave condition. Also, he posted a short video clip from the plane. Kernes illness: behind the curtains The Royal Mint is set to go more than a decade without producing any new 2p or 2 coins after cash usage slumped over the last 10 years and the country handed back its old change, an official report claims. Figures published in a National Audit Office report into Britain's cash usage found the number of coins produced each year fell by nearly two-thirds between 2011 and this year. In March, the Royal Mint was sitting on 26 times as many 2 coins as it needed to, six times as many 1p coins and eight times as many 2p pieces, with all its excess coins worth around 89million. While the storage cost of the excess stocks is relatively small, the Mint's production of UK coins will be reduced over the next decade, as it balances maintaining production capability with steady stock reduction, the NAO said. Coin production shrank by 65% in the last decade to 383 million UK coins a year in 2019-20, from around 1.1 billion in 2010-11. To drive efficiency, the Mint and the Bank should maximise opportunities to learn from each other's experiences of cash production and align production capacity closely to future needs, the report added. The Royal Mint is set to go more than a decade without producing any new 2p or 2 coins after cash usage slumped over the last 10 years and the country handed back much of its change Running the cash system incurs costs for taxpayers and businesses and the decline in cash use in transactions is putting pressure on the system as many costs involved in cash production and distribution of cash are fixed. In 2019-20, the Bank incurred note production and distribution expenses of 119 million and the Treasury, which pays the Mint to produce coins, incurred expenses of 23.6 million. Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: 'As society progresses towards the wide use of digital payments, the use of cash in transactions is dwindling. It may become harder for people to access cash when they need it and those without the means to pay digitally will struggle if cash is not accepted. 'HM Treasury now works more closely with the public bodies in the cash system to achieve the Government's goal of safeguarding access to cash. 'However, the approach is fragmented, and it is not clear that the action being taken will keep up with the pace of change.' Ten years ago, cash was used in six in 10 transactions, but by 2019 it was used in fewer than three in 10. Forecasts suggest it might be one in 10 by 2028. Due to a mass return of coins in 2017 following the release of the new round 1, the Mint was found in March to be sitting on 26 times more 2 coins than it needed to Covid-19 has potentially accelerated the decline. Industry data suggests market demand for notes and coins from cash centres plunged by 71% between early March and mid-April. The same wide-reaching report also revealed banknotes worth 50billion have gone missing in circulation. The National Audit Office said the unaccounted cash was not being used in transactions or stashed in savings. The watchdog's report on cash comes as the use of notes and coins has fallen sharply over the last decade. And it warns the bodies responsible for the country's cash system need to work better together to ensure enough coins and notes are produced and circulated more efficiently to avert a crisis. The NAO said the missing 50billion could be held overseas, used in the 'shadow economy', or held in savings that haven't been declared. Banknotes worth 50billion have gone missing in circulation, according to the National Audit Office In July 2020 the number of notes in circulation reached a record high of 4.4billion, with a monetary value of 76.5billion. The Bank of England had estimated that 20 to 24 per cent of the value of notes in circulation were being used or held for cash transactions, with UK households holding a further 5 per cent as savings. Little is known about the remainder worth about 50billion. The report found there was enough cash being made to meet demand, but raised concerns over how it was being distributed. Ten years ago, cash was used in six in ten transactions, but last year it was used in fewer than three in ten. Forecasts suggest it might be one in ten by 2028. Covid-19 has potentially accelerated the decline. Industry data suggests market demand for notes and coins plunged 71 per cent between early March and mid-April. However, cash use appears to have been recovering as businesses have reopened. Five public bodies the Treasury, the Bank of England, the Royal Mint, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator all play a role in the cash system. But they lack a shared view of what was a good outcome for the consumer, the NAO said. It added that older people and those on low incomes are particularly likely to rely on cash. In March, the Government unveiled legislation to protect access to it. Labour MP Meg Hillier, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: 'Too many people already have to go out of their way to get their hands on cash.' The Treasury said: 'We're developing new legislation to ensure people can get hold of cash when they need it.' Black Dems Prod Californias Elected Officials to Take Emmett Till Pledge The California Democratic Party African American Caucus (CDPAAC) is calling on all elected officials in California at the local, state and national levels to take a firm stand against racism. By signing the Emmett Till Anti-Racism Pledge, the CDPAAC says politicians, who are the most important decision makers in California, can demonstrate in a public and symbolic way that they denounce racism and support a society for all Californians that is fair, just and safe. The Democratic party and the people of California must never forget about the murder of Emmett Till. It ignited the first civil rights movement. He was that generations George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, said Taisha Brown, chair of the CDPAAC. ADVERTISEMENT Brown, who lives in San Diego and was elected last year to lead the statewide group that represents Black registered Democrats across California, said standing up against Racism in all of its forms is one of the top priorities of the caucus. The Black Caucus continues to serve in its historic role as the conscious of the California Democratic Party, Brown told California Black Media. Many in this country and around the state of California are trying to find out what they can do to contribute to this historic time in our nations history. The caucus wanted to assist individuals and elected officials in doing their part to fight against racism. It is a public health crisis. In California, about 73% of all likely Black Voters are registered Democrats, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Named for the 14-year-old African American boy who was brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a White woman, the Emmitt Till Pledge calls on elected officials to direct their energies to combat bigotry and hate in our great state. We are committed to standing up for equality, safety, and justice for ALL of the citizens of California, the pledge continues, before asking the politicos to sign. We pledge to take the bold and aggressive steps to combat bigotry and racism throughout our state to ensure that every individual is able to claim their unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness as our Declaration of Independence states. The cruelness, barbarism, and brutality of his murder were heartbreaking, a statement the CDPAAC released said of Tills murder. ADVERTISEMENT In 2017, Tills accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, told Timothy B. Tyson, an author and Duke University professor, that she lied when she reported that Till of assaulted her 65 years ago. After a five-day trial, a jury in Sumner, Miss., acquitted Tills killers. The CDPAAC pledge asks elected officials to make seven affirmations, which include not allowing racist conversation in their presence; protecting all people who face discrimination; contracting with Black-owned businesses and vendors for campaign and government-related events; enacting policies that promote all Californians; among other positive actions. The Black Caucus will work with the Democratic party to email the petition to elected officials and encourage our members to request that their elected representatives at all levels sign it, said Brown. Pankaj Saran has been given one-year extension as the Deputy National Security Advisor (Dy NSA), according to a Personnel Ministry order issued on Thursday. Saran, a 1982-batch officer of Indian Foreign Service, was appointed as the Deputy NSA in May 2018. He was then serving as India's envoy to Russia. The competent authority has approved the extension in tenure of Saran as Deputy National Security Advisor for a period of one year beyond September 3, 2020 on contract basis, it said. Saran had previously held different positions, including the country's High Commissioner to Bangladesh. He has also served as the Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office between 2007 and 2012. Former chief of the Intelligence Bureau Ajit Doval is the National Security Advisor. New Delhi: The Delhi Police questioned two men allegedly linked with three accused arrested in Bihar for a suspected terror-angle in the derailment of Patna-Indore Express in Kanpur last year. The special cell had picked up Zia-ul Haq and Zuber were from Okhla area in south east Delhi on January 16 for questioning but no clues have been found to suggest their involvement in the derailment so far, sources said. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is looking into the claims of three arrested persons in Bihar that the derailment of Indore-Patna Express, in which at least 150 people were killed, was carried out at the behest of Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The trio -- Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar and Mukesh Yadav --were arrested earlier this week by Bihar Police from East Champaran district of the state. The Uttar Pradesh STF and Railway Police, who are investigating the terror angle in the derailement, are not "convinced" by Bihar police's claims so far, sources said. Read | ISI role in Indore-Patna Express train mishap? NIA team to probe claims of three arrested persons The special cell has also not been able to link either Zia or Shoaib with the three arrested in connection with the case though it was claimed that their phone numbers were saved in the mobile phone of Paswan, they claimed. A Dubai-based Nepali citizen named Shamshul Huda had allegedly recruited Moti Paswan and others suspected to have been involved in what the police claim was a sabotage to derail Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur. Zia-ul is a distantly related nephew of Huda, sources said. A report is said to have come from Nepal confirming the Bihar Police's claim that Pakistan's ISI had paid money to its agent Brajesh Giri for triggering blasts on railway tracks targeting trains in Bihar, they said. Bihar police had claimed to have unearthed a suspected ISI link to target the railways with arrest of three persons in East Champaran district of the state bordering Nepal and they are being interrogated to find out if they had a role in the derailment at Kanpur Dehat in November and elsewhere. Police claimed the trio had confessed to having worked for a Nepalese contact suspected to be connected to ISI to target the railways. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. At least 81 killed in Boko Haram attack in Nigeria; civilians shot, bodies run over Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Authorities in the Borno state of Nigeria said Wednesday that at least 81 people were killed in an attack on a nomadic community believed to have been carried out by militants aligned with the Islamic extremist groups Boko Haram or Islamic State West Africa Province. The Borno government in northeast Nigeria released a statement Wednesday explaining that residents described how militants in armored tanks and trucks attacked the Faduma Kolomdi community in the Gubio local government area on Tuesday morning. Along with killing dozens in the community, it's believed that the militants also abducted seven individuals, including the head of the village, and women and children. A video posted on social media shows dead bodies scattered out across a dirt field. These are not Animals, they are human being kills by Boko Haram insurgents in the village of Gubio local gov't of Borno state. President @MBuhari, you were voted to protect the lives and properties of the electorates, these people need your attention, they too are human. pic.twitter.com/AngROLEIyh Abubakar Sadiq Kurbe (@iamKurbe) June 10, 2020 The incident reportedly lasted hours. Borno State Gov. Babagana Umara Zulum traveled to the community on Wednesday in the wake of the attack. According to the government's statement, a male witness told the governor that the armed men came to the village at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday. They gathered us and said they wanted to deliver religious sermon to us, the unnamed resident was quoted as saying in the statement. They asked us to submit whatever arm we had. Some villagers gave up their dane guns, bow and arrows. The survivor said the militants then began shooting at will. Even children and women were not spared, many were shot at close range, the man said. Many started running. Five people were evacuated to a hospital for treatment, according to the state. We have buried 49 corpses here while another 32 corpses were taken away by families from the villages around us, the resident said. The insurgents abducted seven persons including our village head. They went away with 400 cattle. A resident of a nearby village also verified what the survivor told Zulum, the government said. Zulum described the attack as barbaric and unfortunate. He also noted that around the same number of individuals were killed in an attack last year in Gajiram. The only solution to end this massacre is by dislodging the insurgents in the shores of Lake Chad, the governor said. Doing so will require collaborative regional efforts. The Nigerian government has faced criticism over its inability to thwart attacks on civilians carried out by Islamic extremist groups, including Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province. While the Borno governments statement placed blame on Boko Haram militants, other reports have implicated militants aligned with ISWAP. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Since its insurgency began over a decade ago, Boko Haram has killed and abducted thousands and displaced millions from their homes. The group has killed Muslims and Christians. In 2016, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State but splintered soon after amid disagreements over leadership. According to the government, the militants did not set the Gubio village on fire as often happens during their attacks. There are also fears that the death toll could be higher than 81. "The bodies were strewn over a large area as the insurgents pursued their victims, shooting them and crushing them with their vehicles," Ibrahim Liman, a member of a government-backed anti-jihadist militia, told AFP on Wednesday. He said the death toll was around 69. Gubio resident Modu Ajimi told The Washington Post that he lost four cousins in Tuesday's attack. He found their dead bodies in the dirt field. Their bodies bore a bullet hole in almost every part, Ajimi said. The coronavirus pandemic has not stopped Boko Haram or ISWAP from carrying out attacks against villages in both Borno and Adamawa in recent months. The Nigerian government has also faced criticism from international activists for failing to thwart attacks in Middle Belt states where thousands have been displaced. The most essential responsibility of any government is the protection of its own citizens, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Commissioner Johnnie Moore, an evangelical human rights advocate, wrote in a tweet. Nigerias government keeps failing at this. It is time for the U.S., U.K., [European Union] and others to evaluate every single area of cooperation until the Nigerians fix this. According to The Washington Post, ISWAP has continued to stage attacks on Army bases and is collecting taxes from residents in villages where it's attempting to take control. The International Crisis Group reported last year that ISWAPs approach to law and order is extraordinarily harsh and violent. It metes out the full range of punishments it believes the Quran to mandate, including cutting off the hands of alleged thieves and killing adulterers, though some units are reportedly more lenient than others, a May 2019 report states. It meets perceived threats to its fiscal base (fishing without authorization, failure to pay requisite taxes) and security (using mobile phones in areas where they are forbidden, which is interpreted as spying) with brutal beatings, sometimes even executions. Nigeria is listed on the U.S. State Department's watch list of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom. Advocates in the U.S. are calling for the appointment of a special envoy to assess the human rights crises in Nigeria. In Nigeria, ISIS and Boko Haram continue to attack Muslims and Christians alike, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday. ISIS beheaded 10 Christians in that country just this past December. There arent many press conferences held when activists, supporters, and city government leaders can both celebrate and condemn existing judicial procedures, but thats what happened Thursday at Faith Tabernacle in Lancaster. Thirteen people were arrested earlier this week on charges that ranged from arson to rioting to institutional vandalism following a protest in downtown Lancaster Sunday night. Bail was set at $1 million for seven of them. Prior to the press conference, the Lancaster County District Attorneys office announced that a judge had significantly lowered bail to $50,000 or $100,000 for nine people, depending on the individual and what they are accused of. During the event outside the church at 665 S. Ann Street, speakers shared with media, as well as a handful of city residents, emotions of anger, disapproval, injustice, and hope that centered on a call for a change of the cash bail system. Make no mistake these orders were, in fact, detention orders, said attorney Hayden Nelson-Major with American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Protests erupted Sunday evening after an officer shot and killed Ricardo Munoz, 27, during a domestic disturbance call on the 300 block of Laurel Street. Body camera footage showed Munoz lunged at the officer with a knife. He was shot moments later. Munozs family disagreed with the officers decision to shoot, citing the 27-year-olds struggle with mental illness. The protests led to rioting that damaged Lancasters police headquarters and produced an arson fire that blocked a downtown intersection. The $1 million bail announcement was met by criticism from multiple angles. In a tweet, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman called the ruling blatantly unconstitutional. The changes in bail do not undo the fact that $1 million bail orders were flagrantly illegal, Nelson-Major said. It also doesnt change the fact that the people detained could have been at risk for exposure to the novel coronavirus, she said. The decision by Judge Bruce Roth to set the bail as high as he did is just another example of the injustices that have become all too commonplace throughout Pennsylvania, Nelson-Major said. The first reason they were illegal is that they were exactly the same, she said. The rules of criminal procedure mandate that a judge consider an individuals circumstances of the particular person appearing before them when setting bail. The rules of criminal procedure were violated, she said. The rules of criminal procedure in the Constitution require that a judge consider a persons ability to pay," Nelson-Major said. It is inconceivable that MJD Roth believed or concluded that each person possessed the present ability to post $1 million. Counsel was also not permitted to the individuals arrested, she said. The Constitution mandates that a person be afforded robust procedural protections before they may be stripped of their right to pre-trial liberty, Nelson-Major said. Young people are standing up to say no more, said Lancaster City Council President Ismail Smith Wade-El. He emphasized that people of all ages are putting themselves at risk to demand a change to policing." They are pushing back against a criminal justice system that treats them unfairly on the basis, not only of their race but their socio-economic status, he said. "And, let me be clear, the existing system of cash bail is discrimination against poor people, Wade-El said. People in the citys community scrambled to come up with funds to support getting those arrested out of jail, he said We are not talking about folks who have private jets and, or are immediate flight risks who get to stay in federal country clubs," Wade-El said. "We are talking about black, 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-olds, who did their best to move their community forward. Wade-El said he witnessed on Sunday evening protesters remove burning objects from the county coroners car, which prevented the fire from spreading, among other feats of bravery. Judge Dennis Reinaker cited public opinion and several of the protesters' petitions for modification in his decision to lower bail amounts. Reinaker acknowledged the $1 million bail was set on the spur of the moment, but said these are all serious matters we are dealing with, according to a news release from the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office. First Deputy District Attorney Travis Anderson was not opposed to modifying bail, but asked that some protesters receive substantial monetary bail to be held responsible for their actions, according to the district attorneys office. This was a mass event. A lot of people contributed to the alleged bad things that happened, Anderson said. Some contributed more than others that will be factored into our specified recommendations. In addition to bail, Anderson requested the suspects receive a supervised release and stay at least a block away from the Lancaster police station. Reinaker agreed to place several on house arrest pending release. Four of the protesters will be placed under house arrest if they post bail. Five were granted $50,000 bail; three were granted $100,000 and one $25,000. Activists said they believe all of the protesters will now post bail with additional help coming from the National bail Fund Network. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab hold a news conference at the State Department in Washington on Sept. 16, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/Pool/Reuters) Irans Violations of Nuclear Deal Deeply Concern European Participants The E3 Urge Iran to Comply With Its Commitments The three European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal expressed on Tuesday their extreme concern about Irans violations of the agreement, which have undermined its objective to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and called on Iran to comply with its commitments. France, Germany, and the UK (the E3) said in a statement that they are extremely concerned by Irans continued violation of its nuclear commitments under the JCPoA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as Iran nuclear deal] which seriously undermines the non-proliferation benefits of the agreement. Irans non-compliance with its nuclear commitments is putting the JCPoA at risk, the E3 said in the statement delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, and asked the Board to urge Iran to return to full compliance of its commitments under the JCPoA. The E3 states remain committed to the preservation and full implementation of the nuclear agreement and have worked hard to preserve it, the three signatories stated, despite U.S. withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, which they said was regretable. After Washington pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions exerting maximum economic pressure on Iran by cutting off its oil exports and reducing its main revenue source to zero, Iran began violating the nuclear deal. President Donald Trump has often criticized the JCPoA, which reduced sanctions on the Iranian regime, because it gave Iran more breathing room to pursue military action in the Middle East. Following the Trump-approved airstrike to kill Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in early January, Tehran announced it would pull back from key components of the nuclear deal, including the limit on centrifuges, thus breeching its obligations under the JCPoA even further. Irans Nuclear Activities The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran released a photo of a building after it was damaged by a fire at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, some 200 miles south of the capital Tehran on July 2, 2020. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP) The E3 said that they triggered the mediation mechanism provisioned by the Iran nuclear deal in response to the Iranian violations in January, according to the statement. Now, they are calling on Iran to refrain from its intention to install new advanced centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz as this would increase Irans enrichment capacity and cross JCPoA limits on the types, number, and locations of centrifuges. Iran has also amassed a stockpile of low-enriched uranium that roughly exceeds the limit set by the JCPoA by ten times, the statement said. Another violation of the nuclear deal is uranium enrichment, which Iran said it is carrying out in its underground Fordow facility but that the E3 said has no justifiable civilian use, according to the statement. The E3 pointed to the fact that the U.N. nuclear watchdog has already reported that Iran is making preparations to install advanced centrifuges at a previously unused part of its pilot enrichment plant, contravening the nuclear deal. Iran must halt any research and development of advanced centrifuges prohibited by the provisions of the JCPoA, the three signatories demanded. JCPoA Should be Broadened: UK Foreign Secretary UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the press after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The UK shares the concerns of the United States regarding the Iranian threat both on the nuclear side of things but also the wider destabilizing activities in the region, Raab said. He also agreed that the JCPoA is not perfect and should be broadened. The UK always welcomed the U.S. and indeed other efforts to broaden it, he added. The UK and the United States share the view that the diplomatic door is open to Iran to negotiate a peaceful way forward. That decision, that choice is there for the leadership in Tehran to take, Rabb said. Pompeo said at the press conference that the sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States after its withdrawal from the JCPoA have been successful. Iranian resources to finance Hezbollah and the Shia militias operating in the wider region has been greatly reduced along with their capacity to inflict harm around the world, he added. EU Trade with Iran Heads of state of the E3 group of countries: (L) French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on April 25, 2019. (Philippe Wojazer/Reuters), (C) German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Germany, June 18, 2018. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters), (R) Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London on Oct. 29, 2019. (Toby Melville/Reuters) To preserve the JCPoA and continue trading with Iran, the E3 created in January 2019 a special mechanism called the Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), which allows EU companies to facilitate legitimate trade with Iran, the statement said. INSTEX was initially going to handle trade only in food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods permitted under the sanctions imposed by the U.S. after its withdrawal from the deal, Ziad Abdelnour, CEO of the New York-based private equity firm Blackhawk Partners, and chairman of the Financial Policy Council, wrote for The Epoch Times. The founders of INSTEX also attached a critical condition to its operation and possible expansionthat Iran fully comply with anti-money laundering and terrorism finance standards set by Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, Abdelnour wrote. But Iranian hardliners have prevented Iranian President Hassan Rouhani from adopting FATF standards, fearing that it will conflict with the regimes illicit financing of terrorists and proxies abroad, Abdelnour said. Even if Iran meets this condition, however, INSTEX will likely prove ineffective because circumventing the U.S. financial system doesnt protect those who engage in illicit transactions with Iran either from detection or penalties, he explained. Before the establishment of INSTEX, the European Union urged its constituent governments not to abide by the U.S. sanctions and even provided some incentives for those EU members which did not comply with U.S. sanctions, Abdelnour wrote. The first transaction facilitated by INSTEX did not occur until March this year, when Europe exported medical goods to Iran. Jack Phillips contributed to this report. NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ambassador Nathan Sales, the U.S. State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, announced today on an American Jewish Committee (AJC) Advocacy Anywhere program that Hezbollah weapons caches, including significant stores of ammonium nitrate, have been discovered and destroyed across Europe. "Hezbollah is active in Europe right now" and it is important for European governments and citizens to know the extent of Hezbollah's reach on European soil, said Sales. "Since 2012, Hezbollah has established caches of ammonium nitrate throughout Europe by transporting first aid kits whose cold packs contain the substance," said Sales. "I can reveal that such caches have been moved through Belgium, to France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. I can also reveal that significant ammonium nitrate caches have been discovered or destroyed in France, Greece, and Italy. We have reason to believe that this activity is still underway. As of 2018, ammonium nitrate caches were still suspected throughout Europe, possibly in Greece, Italy, and Spain." Sales said the only reason Hezbollah has been stockpiling ammonium nitrate on European soil "is to conduct major terrorist attacks whenever it, or its masters in Tehran, decide." European designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization is imperative for regional security and for Lebanon's future, said Sales. "The European approach to Hezbollah since 2013 has not worked," said Sales. The EU in 2013 adopted a measure that bifurcated Hezbollah into "political" and "military" wings, designating only the so-called "military" component. "There is a growing international momentum to designate or ban Hezbollah as a terrorist organization," he said. "It is fiction that terrorist activities can be cordoned off from the other activities of Hezbollah." Sales noted that an increasing number of individual European states, led by Germany and the United Kingdom, are taking decisive action against Hezbollah. The U.S., which designated Hezbollah in 1997, has maintained an approach that both combats the terrorist organization and helps Lebanon. The U.S. has invested $2 billion in Lebanon security services since 2006, and $1 billion in economic aid, he said. "We do not believe it's helpful to engage Hezbollah as if it is a legitimate political actor. It's a terrorist organization that exploits the Lebanese people," said Sales. Also appearing on the AJC Advocacy Anywhere program, "The Case for Banning Hezbollah," were Sajid Javid MP, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (2019-2020) and Home Secretary (2018-2019); and Hans-Georg Engelke, German State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Director of AJC Europe, moderated the hour-long conversation. Engelke was emphatic that any funds Hezbollah raises in Germany are banned because they inevitably support the group's terrorist activities. On April 30, 2020, Germany announced a ban on all Hezbollah activities in the country. Javid noted that there has been no problem for the United Kingdom in dealing with the Lebanese government since the Hezbollah ban was put in place in 2019. Contrary to what some European diplomats asserted, "the aftermath of our decision to designate Hezbollah was nothing like what all the doomsayers had said before. Our relationship with Lebanon didn't suffer." For well over two decades, AJC, the leading global Jewish advocacy organization, has been urging governments across Europe and around the world to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization and take concrete measures to contain and push back its activities. SOURCE American Jewish Committee Related Links http://www.ajc.org Narendra Modi New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on Thursday. The prime minister turned 70 today. Rahul Gandhi tweet Advertisement "Wishing PM Narendra Modi ji a happy birthday," Gandhi said in a tweet. President Ram Nath Kovind also greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday. Ram Nath Kovind tweet Advertisement "Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji congratulations on your birthday and best wishes. You have presented an ideal in showing commitment to India's life values and democratic traditions. My compliments and prayers that the almighty keeps you healthy and joyous always, and the country keeps getting your valuable services," Kovind tweeted in Hindi. Home Minister Amit Shah hailed Modi as most popular leader of the country and said he connected deprived sections of the society with mainstream of development. Amit Shah tweet Advertisement Shah said Modi has dedicated his entire life for the welfare of the country and is laying down a foundation of strong and self-reliant India. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said India has benefited tremendously from his astute leadership, firm conviction and decisive action. Rajnath Singh tweet Advertisement "He has been working assiduously towards empowering the poor and marginalised. Praying for his good health and long life," Singh said. By MICHAEL BALSAMO Associated Press WASHINGTON The Justice Department explored whether it could pursue either criminal or civil rights charges against Portland city officials after clashes erupted night after night between law enforcement and demonstrators, a department spokesperson said Thursday. The revelation that federal officials researched whether they could levy criminal or civil charges against the unspecified officials exploring whether their rhetoric and actions may have helped spur the violence in Portland underscores the larger Trump administrations effort to spotlight and crack down on protest-related violence. The majority of the mass police reform demonstrations nationwide have been peaceful. For many nights, federal officials were told that Portland police officers were explicitly told not to respond to the federal courthouse as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside, some throwing bricks, rocks and other projectiles at officers, and not to assist federal officers who were sent to try to quell the unrest. Portlands mayor and police chief have both said they want police to engage as little as possible with protesters to avoid provoking more and more violent protester acts against property and police. The federal agency researched whether it could pursue charges against city officials, spokesperson Kerri Kupec said. She declined to comment on the status or whether charges would be brought. But bringing criminal civil rights charges against city officials for protest-related violence would likely present an uphill court battle for federal prosecutors. Justice Department officials disputed news reports that Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors in the departments civil rights division to explore whether they could bring charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing some residents to establish a protest zone this summer. President Donald Trump has blamed Democrats, and specifically pointed to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who he says have not done enough to stop nights of looting and unrest in cities across the U.S. Trump has called Wheeler a wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat Mayor and has said the city will never recover with a fool for a mayor.... Trump has heaped blame for the unrest on Democrats who are leading the cities where violence has occurred and tried to keep focus squarely on pockets of protest-related violence, instead of on the point of police reform and the larger movement of racial injustice. More than 100 people have been arrested in Portland on federal charges related to the unrest in the last few months. The FBI has said it was also shifting the agencys resources to focus more heavily on violence and federal crimes committed during nearly three months of unrest during nightly racial injustice protests in the city that often end in vandalism, clashes with police and dozens of arrests. -- The Associated Press (Newser) A whistleblower's claim of mass hysterectomies performed at an ICE detention center in Georgia will be investigated by multiple groups. Nurse Dawn Wooten made waves with her report that multiple female immigrants held at the Irwin County Detention Center have had their uteruses removed without consent, though neither the New York Times nor the AP have been able to independently verify those claims, which the AP calls only "lightly substantiated." Even so, more than 170 lawmakers have called for a probe, and House Democrats said they would launch an investigation. The Department of Homeland Security is also investigating. story continues below A top medical official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement "vehemently" denies the claims, and says just two women at the facility have been referred for hysterectomies since 2018 and that both surgeries were approved by ICE officials. "To be clear, medical care decisions concerning detainees are made by medical personnel, not by law enforcement personnel, he said in the statement. Detainees are afforded informed consent, and a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed against a detainees will." He noted that ICE will cooperate with the DHS investigation. Meanwhile, the doctor alleged to have performed the surgeries tells the Intercept he has only performed "one or two hysterectomies in the past two [or] three years." (Read more Immigration and Customs Enforcement stories.) She is currently transforming her mansion after first building it five years ago. And Charlotte Crosby cut a casual figure on Thursday as she got stuck in to redecorating duties at her property in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. The Geordie Shore star, 30, was seen greeting workmen as she helped carry in large wooden doors for her new kitchen. Busy bee: Charlotte Crosby cut a casual figure on Thursday as she got stuck in to redecorating duties at her property in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear Charlotte displayed her toned torso as went braless in a white crop top with the words 'dreams in heaven'. She teamed the item of clothing with a pair of blue jogging bottoms and fluffy white sliders. Charlotte styled her brunette locks into a sleek sweptback low ponytail and appeared to go makeup-free. Helping hand: The Geordie Shore star, 30, was seen greeting workmen as she helped carry in large wooden doors for her new kitchen Toned: Charlotte displayed her toned torso as went braless in a white crop top with the words 'dreams in heaven' The star was seen getting stuck into renovation duties as she helped carried items into her home and greeted workmen outside her property. Charlotte has been sharing her renovation journey on Instagram, revealing she is moving back into her first home that she built five years ago as part of a 'brand new chapter'. The star explained that as much as she loves the original design, it lacks natural light and has old window fittings. Casual: Charlotte styled her brunette locks into a sleek sweptback low ponytail and appeared to go makeup-free Getting stuck in: The star was seen getting stuck into renovation duties as she helped carried items into her home and greeted workmen outside her property Updates: Charlotte has been sharing her renovation journey on Instagram, revealing she is moving back into her first home that she built five years ago as part of a 'brand new chapter' Charlotte is also extending the downstairs by making it more 'open plan' and is getting a complete new kitchen fitted. The reality star has even set up her own home account on Instagram to keep fans updated, it is called thecrosbymanor and already has nearly 100K followers. Charlotte's mansion has featured regularly on her MTV series The Charlotte Show and she left the property to move to Bolton, Manchester, in 2019 with her now ex-boyfriend Josh Ritchie. Changes: The star explained that as much as she loves the original design, it lacks natural light and has old window fittings Progress: Charlotte was seen checking on the progress during its renovation through the window Impressive! The reality star has even set up her own home account on Instagram to keep fans updated, it is called thecrosbymanor and already has nearly 100K followers The reality star is now loved-up with Liam Beaumont and the two are said to have moved in together during lockdown. Charlotte's new home will no doubt be making an appearance on television as she recently revealed that she is returning to Geordie Shore for the first time in four years for a special series. The reality star, 30, and some of her fellow OG castmates, including her ex Gaz Beadle, will talk about their childhood journeys to life in the spotlight separately each week. Educators and parents in at least three states have shared frustrations in recent days with glitches and connectivity issues as they have tried to access the widely used MAP Growth assessment from NWEA. A spokesperson for NWEA told Education Week on Wednesday that the issues first cropped up last week and have been affecting students and teachers only intermittently, even within a single district. The majority of our school partners have been able to successfully complete their testing sessions, said Simona Beattie from NWEA. Regarding the issue, its sporadic in nature, making it difficult to nail down and address. A quick Twitter search reveals educators in Illinois, South Carolina, and Texas who have posted about negative experiences with the MAP test. Ive been giving the MAP test for nearly 20 years, and its never been this frustrating, wrote one user . Another called the test a giant fail. NWEAs Twitter account has been responding to the frustrated users and urging them to check the company website for status updates . The company shared on Tuesday that it had tapped a third-party vendor to diagnose the outages. The online MAP assessment gauges K-12 students progress in math, reading, language usage, and science. Approximately 10,000 schools and education agencies use the tool, Beattie said. Some schools have chosen to delay the scheduled date for administering the assessment in order to give more time for the technical problem to be resolved, Beattie said. As it is, the problem is sometimes resolved when users refresh their browser or join a make-up test later, according to Beattie. The company hasnt found evidence that the glitches stem from a higher-than-usual number of students accessing the tests from home computers, she said. Still, the NWEA problem adds yet another technology challenge for hundreds of districts in full- or part-time remote learning mode. Cyberattacks have temporarily shut down school servers in several districts; students and teachers have reported login issues as the new school year begins; and many students still lack the necessary technology at home to even access remote learning opportunities. Image: Tony Berastegui, 12, left, and his sister Giselle, 9, do their schoolwork at home on the dining room table last spring after schools moved to remote learning. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) Cleanup continues after Hurricane Sally pounded the Gulf Coast. Sally, the first hurricane to make landfall in Alabama since Hurricane Ivan in 2004, has tracked north from the Alabama coast and into Georgia. At least one death in Orange Beach has been blamed on the storm. Widespread damage and flooding was reported in Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Mobile. There are widespread power outages and many schools in south Alabama are closed. Tourists are banned from Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and the Fort Morgan Peninsula until Sept. 27 and cleanup and recovery continues. The Holmes Bridge on Highway 59 crossing the Intracoastal Waterway is closed until further notice, except for residents and property owners with valid hurricane reentry passes. Here are the latest photos, videos of storm damage and recovery: This road has been partially washed out in northern Coffee County. Why you NEVER drive through flooded roads; you would never see this at night. Video from J.W. Lambert pic.twitter.com/gf8ZhFoaph James Spann (@spann) September 17, 2020 Extensive flooding is happening in downtown areas of Brewton and East Brewton, Alabama as water levels of Murder Creek and Burnt Corn Creek continue to rise. Full aerial HD video here: https://t.co/WlD4cQL8yz@StormHour @spann @WeatherNation @ALcomMobile pic.twitter.com/7XTTO5LQLV Spinks Megginson (@rzweather) September 17, 2020 Sally is a post-tropical depression that continues to be a rainmaker while moving through Georgia toward the Carolinas. As this video shows, areas along the Gulf are still dealing with flooding and damage. Drone footage courtesy of @CharlesPeekWX pic.twitter.com/TKXLkm4Nt9 Pattrn (@pattrn) September 17, 2020 One of the major stories with #Sally is going to be the amount of marine vessel damage. This is Ono Island, AL, just on the other side of Perdido Key, where boats were washed ashore almost every 50 yards.@NWSMobile #Drone #OnoIsland #Sally #HurricaneSally #PerdidoKey pic.twitter.com/N33HsGNVlt Alex Forbes (@AForbesWx) September 17, 2020 The sun is now up and we can see some of the damage left behind in Gulf Shores. The pictures were taken near Hwy 59 and Beach Blvd. #HurricaneSally #Sally #alwx @FOX10News pic.twitter.com/CLtCPNWe4Z Tyler Fingert (@TylerFingert) September 16, 2020 The Sportsman Marina in Orange Beach, Alabama, was left in ruins after Hurricane Sally made landfall nearby as a dangerous Category 2 storm. https://t.co/Mc99zACSZu pic.twitter.com/S9tDevV8h8 ABC News (@ABC) September 17, 2020 Hurricane Sally certainly left an impression on all of us in Lower Alabama. Thankfully, after a lot of hard work and... Posted by Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo - "The Little Zoo That Could" on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Anchor Bar & Grill in Orange Beach #HurricaneSally pic.twitter.com/mJYZetcloc Laura Buchtel (@Laura_Buchtel) September 16, 2020 Damage from #HurricaneSally at the Chevron gas station in Daphne off the Malbis exit. You cant get gas here but the food mart is open @mynbc15 @spann #alwx #alabama #gulfcoast pic.twitter.com/ToOckadqw5 Jaysha Patel (@Jaysha_WPMI) September 17, 2020 WATCH: Widespread power outages forcing a run on gas at this shell gas station off the Foley Beach Express @abc3340 @spann @mynbc15 #alwx #HurricaneSally pic.twitter.com/Up2rWRRoOK Stephen Quinn (@StephenQ3340) September 17, 2020 Damage at Bear Point in Orange Beach video from Brack Tommie pic.twitter.com/X3p55bDR6b James Spann (@spann) September 16, 2020 A boat and a jet ski were spotted sitting in an apartment complex in Orange Beach, Alabama, after Hurricane Sally pummeled the area yesterday. https://t.co/SQStvW5Raw pic.twitter.com/JcwXZGQiQS AccuWeather (@accuweather) September 17, 2020 UPTON, NY--An international collaboration of theoretical physicists--including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the RIKEN-BNL Research Center (RBRC)--has published a new calculation relevant to the search for an explanation of the predominance of matter over antimatter in our universe. The collaboration, known as RBC-UKQCD, also includes scientists from CERN (the European particle physics laboratory), Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Edinburgh, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Regensburg, and the University of Southampton. They describe their result in a paper to be published in the journal Physical Review D and has been highlighted as an "editor's suggestion." Scientists first observed a slight difference in the behavior of matter and antimatter--known as a violation of "CP symmetry"--while studying the decays of subatomic particles called kaons in a Nobel Prize winning experiment at Brookhaven Lab in 1963 [see: https://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/nobel/1980.php]. While the Standard Model of particle physics was pieced together soon after that, understanding whether the observed CP violation in kaon decays agreed with the Standard Model has proved elusive due to the complexity of the required calculations. The new calculation gives a more accurate prediction for the likelihood with which kaons decay into a pair of electrically charged pions vs. a pair of neutral pions. Understanding these decays and comparing the prediction with more recent state-of-the-art experimental measurements made at CERN and DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory gives scientists a way to test for tiny differences between matter and antimatter, and search for effects that cannot be explained by the Standard Model. The new calculation represents a significant improvement over the group's previous result, published in Physical Review Letters in 2015. Based on the Standard Model, it gives a range of values for what is called "direct CP symmetry violation" in kaon decays that is consistent with the experimentally measured results. That means the observed CP violation is now, to the best of our knowledge, explained by the Standard Model, but the uncertainty in the prediction needs to be further improved since there is also an opportunity to reveal any sources of matter/antimatter asymmetry lying beyond the current theory's description of our world. "An even more accurate theoretical calculation of the Standard Model may yet lie outside of the experimentally measured range. It is therefore of great importance that we continue our progress, and refine our calculations, so that we can provide an even stronger test of our fundamental understanding," said Brookhaven Lab theorist Amarjit Soni. Matter/antimatter imbalance "The need for a difference between matter and antimatter is built into the modern theory of the cosmos," said Norman Christ of Columbia University. "Our current understanding is that the present universe was created with nearly equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Except for the tiny effects being studied here, matter and antimatter should be identical in every way, beyond conventional choices such as assigning negative charge to one particle and positive charge to its anti-particle. Some difference in how these two types of particles operate must have tipped the balance to favor matter over antimatter," he said. "Any differences in matter and antimatter that have been observed to date are far too weak to explain the predominance of matter found in our current universe," he continued. "Finding a significant discrepancy between an experimental observation and predictions based on the Standard Model would potentially point the way to new mechanisms of particle interactions that lie beyond our current understanding--and which we hope to find to help to explain this imbalance." Modeling quark interactions All of the experiments that show a difference between matter and antimatter involve particles made of quarks, the subatomic building blocks that bind through the strong force to form protons, neutrons, and atomic nuclei--and also less-familiar particles like kaons and pions. "Each kaon and pion is made of a quark and an antiquark, surrounded by a cloud of virtual quark-antiquark pairs, and bound together by force carriers called gluons," explained Christopher Kelly, of Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Standard Model-based calculations of how these particles behave must therefore include all the possible interactions of the quarks and gluons, as described by the modern theory of strong interactions, known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In addition, these bound particles move at close to the speed of light. That means the calculations must also include the principles of relativity and quantum theory, which govern such near-light-speed particle interactions. "Because of the huge number of variables involved, these are some of the most complicated calculations in all of physics," noted Tianle Wang, of Columbia University. Computational challenge To conquer the challenge, the theorists used a computing approach called lattice QCD, which "places" the particles on a four-dimensional space-time lattice (three spatial dimensions plus time). This box-like lattice allows them to map out all the possible quantum paths for the initial kaon to decay to the final two pions. The result becomes more accurate as the number of lattice points increases. Wang noted that the "Feynman integral" for the calculation reported here involved integrating 67 million variables! These complex calculations were done by using cutting-edge supercomputers. The first part of the work, generating samples or snapshots of the most likely quark and gluon fields, was performed on supercomputers located in the US, Japan, and the UK. The second and most complex step of extracting the actual kaon decay amplitudes was performed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But using the fastest computers is not enough; these calculations are still only possible even on these computers when using highly optimized computer codes, developed for the calculation by the authors. "The precision of our results cannot be increased significantly by simply performing more calculations," Kelly said. "Instead, in order to tighten our test of the Standard Model we must now overcome a number of more fundamental theoretical challenges. Our collaboration has already made significant strides in resolving these issues and coupled with improvements in computational techniques and the power of near-future DOE supercomputers, we expect to achieve much improved results within the next three to five years." ### The authors of this paper are, in alphabetical order: Ryan Abbott (Columbia), Thomas Blum (UConn), Peter Boyle (BNL & U of Edinburgh), Mattia Bruno (CERN), Norman Christ (Columbia), Daniel Hoying (UConn), Chulwoo Jung (BNL), Christopher Kelly (BNL), Christoph Lehner (BNL & U of Regensburg), Robert Mawhinney (Columbia), David Murphy (MIT), Christopher Sachrajda (U o Southampton), Amarjit Soni (BNL), Masaaki Tomii (UConn), and Tianle Wang (Columbia). The majority of the measurements and analysis for this work were performed using the Cori supercomputer at NERSC, with additional contributions from the Hokusai machine at the Advanced Center for Computing and Communication at Japan's RIKEN Laboratory and the IBM BlueGene/Q (BG/Q) installation at Brookhaven Lab (supported by the RIKEN BNL Research Center and Brookhaven Lab's prime operating contract from DOE's Office of Science). Additional supercomputing resources used to develop the lattice configurations included: the BG/Q installation at Brookhaven Lab, the Mira supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Class Computing Facility (ALCF) at Argonne National Laboratory, Japan's KEKSC 1540 computer, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council DiRAC machine at the University of Edinburgh, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Blue Waters machine at the University of Illinois (funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation). NERSC and ALCF are DOE Office of Science user facilities. Individual researchers received support from various grants issued by the DOE Office of Science and other sources in the U.S. and abroad. Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://www.energy.gov/science/ One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization. Follow @BrookhavenLab on Twitter or find us on Facebook Related Links An online version of this news release with related graphics Scientific paper: "Direct CP violation and the I=1/2 rule in K ? decay from the standard model" Supercomputing the Strange Difference Between Matter and Antimatter Media contacts Karen McNulty Walsh, (631) 344-8350, or Peter Genzer, (631) 344-3174 Ravi Singh, formerly of the Arlington Police Department, was indicted by a Tarrant County grand jury on criminally negligent homicide charges Wednesday A former Texas police officer has been indicted in the fatal shooting of a homeless woman last year after he opened fire at a dog racing towards him and inadvertently struck her. Ravi Singh, formerly of the Arlington Police Department, was indicted by a Tarrant County grand jury on criminally negligent homicide charges Wednesday in relation to the August 2019 shooting death of 30-year-old Margarita Jones. Singh, 26, had been responding to a call of a woman reportedly passed out in a grassy area near the intersection of Cantor Drive and North Collins Street on August 1. Bodycam footage shows that as the rookie cop approached Jones, he notices her unrestrained dog, which then begins to bark. Hello, are you OK? Is that your dog? Singh is heard calling out. Jones replies that shes fine, but suddenly her dog begins racing towards the officer. Get back! the officer yells, as the barking dog charges toward him. He begins to back up and then fires three shots. The mother-of-three is heard screaming what the f***. Oh my god the police shot me! and continues to cry out in pain. Scroll down for video Ravi Singh, formerly of the Arlington Police Department, was indicted by a Tarrant County grand jury on criminally negligent homicide charges Wednesday in relation to the August 2019 shooting death of 30-year-old Margarita Jones (left) Bodycam footage shows that as the rookie cop approached Jones, he notices her unrestrained dog, which then begins to bark As Singh walks toward Brooks, he tells her: 'Maam, get ahold of your dog.' Jones suffered a single gunshot wound to the upper torso. She was taken to Medical City Arlington Hospital but later died from her injuries. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Brooks' cause of death a homicide and the case was handed over to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorneys Office for presentation to the grand jury. The dog, described as a 40-pound lab mix, survived the shooting. Three months after the incident, Singh resigned from the Arlington Police Department amid an internal administrative investigation in to whether he followed departmental policy and training standards. Singh joined the department in 2012 as a detention officer. He graduated from the police academy in February 2019, and completed field training on July 1 exactly one month before the shooting. He had been placed on leave while the internal investigation was carried out. Brooks family say they welcome the charges against Singh but recognize this is only the first step in getting justice for her. We are pleased that the Tarrant County Grand Jury has returned an indictment for the officer who killed Maggie, the Brooks family said in a statement to CBS Local. Officers responding to welfare checks should not be so quick to use their deadly weapons in situations that do not call for use of force. Our hope is not only that this officer is held responsible for Maggies death, but that the Arlington Police Department is also held accountable for its lack of training and procedures in responding to welfare checks. Get back! the officer yells, as the barking dog charges toward him. He begins to back up and then fires three shots The mother-of-three is heard screaming what the f***. Oh my god the police shot me! and continues to cry out in pain Brooks (above) was the daughter of an Arlington Fire Captain. She died from her wound in hospital Her father, Troy Brooks, an Arlington fire captain, said in his own statement to FOX4 that he believes the charges shouldve been more severe. Its a puppy. This is a grown man afraid of a puppy. Who is the paid professional in this encounter? Every child, every mailman, every runner, jogger, bicyclist has dealt with a dog running at them and no one ends up dead. Why do you go to deadly force immediately? We were hoping for a manslaughter indictment. We got what we got, he added. Brooks leaves behind three children ages nine, 11 and 13. The eldest child lives with their father, with the two younger children live with Troy Brooks. Rule number one, dont kill the citizens, Troy said, adding that he believed his daughters death was completely avoidable. Her father, Troy Brooks, an Arlington fire captain, said in his own statement to FOX4 that he believes the charges shouldve been more severe Going forward, Troy Brooks is not only lobbying for accountability in the Arlington Police Department, but across the country. He wants money to be poured into other services to help the community directly, rather than inflating police budgets. Brooks said the police work for the community, but his experience coupled with hundreds of other incidents across the country make him believe that isnt true. Its not a blue life. Its a blue shirt. And we paid for it as taxpayers, he told the Star Telegram. You should work for us. We should define your job, not you. Under Texas state law, a person is criminally negligent with respect to the result of his or her conduct when he or she ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a particular result will occur, according to a news release from the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorneys Office. If convicted of the charge, Singh faces a maximum of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. His attorney, Kathy Lowthorp, responded to his arrest in a statement. Well, when you deal with a dog thats ready to attack then the person in any one of those careers would have to do what they have to do to protect themselves. And there was malice against the daughter she was just in the wrong place. The dog shouldve been on a leash. Xiaomi is about to unveil a new phone with a 108MP camera, called Mi 10T Pro. Bringing a 144Hz screen and a 5,000 mAh battery, it's shaping to be an exciting one and now we have a price to add to the list of known bits. An image taken in a Xiaomi retail store reveals that the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro will cost 699. It comes from usually reliable leakster Digital Chat Station, so it's very likely the real thing. It does confirm the Mi 10T Pro's Snapdragon 865 chipset, and 144Hz display with adaptive refresh rate though. Source (in Chinese) | Via The head of Libya's unity government, Fayez al-Sarraj, who plans to resign as part of peace efforts, has held his post through five years of economic crisis and deadly infighting that has drawn in foreign powers. A political novice when his Government of National Accord was established with UN support in 2015, Sarraj successfully faced down his rival Khalifa Haftar, an eastern-based military leader accused of seeking to re-establish a dictatorship. In April 2019, Haftar launched a devastating offensive against Tripoli, seat of Sarraj's government, saying he wanted to cleanse it of "terrorists and mercenaries". But in June this year, Sarraj's troops forced Haftar's fighters to fall back on the east, after driving them out of their last western toeholds. The two sides have since met for peace talks in Morocco, after last month announcing a surprise ceasefire and pledging to hold national elections. Sarraj said during a brief televised address late Wednesday that he was willing to leave his post in favour of a new executive determined by the talks. "I announce to all my sincere wish to cede my functions to the next administration before the end of October at the latest," he said. Sarraj, tall and often elegantly dressed, with a grey beard, was born in 1960 into a powerful, conservative family with large business interests and swathes of real estate. His father, Mustafa, played a key role in founding the state after independence in 1951. An architect by trade, Sarraj was elected to Libya's parliament in June 2014. Just two months later, an alliance of militias called Libya Dawn seized control of the capital. The government and members of the new parliament were forced to seek refuge in the country's east. Sarraj moved to Tobruk, where the parliament is still based, and sent his wife, also an architect, and three daughters to safety abroad. Described by a childhood friend as "very calm", in 2015 he was appointed head of the GNA, established under a UN-brokered deal signed in the Moroccan city of Skhirat. After being stranded for months in Tunis, as Libya Dawn forces controlled Tripoli, in March 2016, Sarraj finally boarded a Libyan navy vessel to Tripoli, where he won the recognition of key political and economic authorities. But throughout his term, Sarraj was unable to win the confidence of the country's parliament. Elected in 2014 and based in the country's east, the legislature had backed Haftar until his attack on the capital in 2019 prompted dozens of MPs to move to Tripoli and establish another parliament there. Successes and failures Sarraj's arrival in Tripoli, nominally held by the GNA but in reality controlled by an array of armed groups, had raised hopes for a solution to the violence that has ravaged Libya since the overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. He made concerted efforts to put the institutions of the Libyan state in order and start a process of national reconciliation, but he was thwarted -- not least by Haftar's offensive against the capital. Haftar, who has long presented himself as bulwark against jihadists, had won the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. The GNA has been backed by Turkey, whose military aid -- notably drones -- was crucial in pushing back Haftar's forces and reasserting the unity government's clout across western Libya in June. That turnaround was a second key victory for the GNA, which in December 2016 had retaken the city of Sirte -- Kadhafi's birthplace -- from Islamic State group jihadists. But those military successes have been accompanied by a string of failures. Unable to establish functioning police or military forces, the GNA has been forced to rely on a handful of powerful armed groups that eventually found their way into the corridors of power in state institutions. It has struggled to provide Tripolitans with services, security or jobs or to tackle a biting economic crisis -- despite Libya sitting on Africa's largest oil reserves. Hundreds of fed-up Libyans protested in Tripoli in August to denounce not just electricity and water shortages, but also official corruption. Members serving on the sub-Metropolitan District and Town Councils should demonstrate patriotism and commitment to duty, Mr Osei Assibey-Antwi, the Mayor of Kumasi, has advised. He tasked them to work within their terms of references, saying they should not usurp their responsibilities and duties. Mr Assibey-Antwi cautioned that the local government concept and practices should always be devoid of seeking ones parochial interests and lukewarm attitude to work on the part of stakeholders. Availing yourself to serve as a councillor shows how prepared and committed you are in serving your community, he told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Kumasi, after the inauguration of sub-Metropolitan District and Town Councils under the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA). The occasion was also used to elect and swear-in Chairpersons for the various Councils under the supervision of the Electoral Commission (EC). Mr Assibey-Antwi said the work of the Town Councils was to help enumerate and keep records of all ratable persons and property within their communities and being responsible for the day-to-day administration of the urban area or town. Additionally, they are expected to make proposals to the Assembly for the levying and collection of special rates for projects and programmes within the urban area or town. They are also to prepare short, medium, and long-term development plans for the urban area or town for approval by the Assembly. Mr. Assibey-Antwi reminded the councilors that they were to provide, operate, and maintain community services within their areas of jurisdiction. Therefore, it is appropriate for them to always involve the electorate in the decision-making processes regarding development projects and programmes for the wellbeing of the people. Mr. Eugene Boakye-Antwi, Member of Parliament (MP) for Subin and Deputy Minister of Works and Housing, in a brief message, asked the newly inaugurated Councils to work in promoting development in their 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 Sleeping was not an option for Syed in early September last year. For three days and night, the Bangladeshi shop owner in central Johannesburg said he had to stand guard to protect his store during an outbreak of xenophobic violence that saw rioters throw stones and other objects at him and other businesspeople in the area. Syed said the shopkeepers had called the police but they showed up only on the third day. By then, more than 1,000 Bangladeshi shops were looted, he added. His account is one of the dozens included in a report released on Thursday by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), documenting mob attacks on migrant communities in South Africa by people who are angry at the dire economic and living conditions they are experiencing. According to the findings in the HRW report, xenophobic harassment and violence against other Africans and Asians living in the country are routine and sometimes lethal. Foreigners are scapegoated and blamed for economic insecurity, crime and government failures to deliver services, the report said. Non-South Africans are also being accused of stealing jobs and women, depleting the countrys basic services, spreading diseases and running crime syndicates. The xenophobic actions constitute a betrayal of the South African constitutional promise, said Kristie Ueda, an HRW researcher and author of the report. The constitution promises human dignity and non-racialism. Non-nationals come to South Africa because there is this promise that they will be live freely and equality. But this idea has been betrayed, she added, referring to the overarching trend of indifference towards victims of xenophobic incidents. This sometimes take the form of flat-out denial and sometimes even the form of tacit approval. Fire and blood At least 12 people were killed and thousands displaced in a week of violence from September 2 to 9 when foreign-owned businesses were looted in different parts of Johannesburg. The rioting was accompanied by protests calling on foreigners to leave. HRW said interviewees forwarded it WhatsApp texts and voice messages they had received in the days before the violence threatening it would become deadly and that there will be fire and blood if foreigners did not leave. It was far from the first such incident in recent years. In 2017, violent anti-immigrant protests broke out in the capital, Pretoria, while in 2015, another wave of xenophobic attacks in different parts of the country killed several people and displaced thousands. Angela Mudukuti, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, said, Xenophobia affects all Black foreigners in South Africa. It permeates every layer of society creating a uniquely hostile society that does nothing but drive a wedge between the rest of the continent and South Africa. A woman wails as law enforcement officials move in to disperse a group of immigrants who had occupied an historic church and a square demanding to be moved to another country as they felt unsafe because of xenophobic attacks, in central Cape Town, on March 1, 2020 [File: Mike Hutchings/Reuters] Counterfeit and documentation raids For its report, HRW interviewed 51 people including victims, lawyers and activists between March 2019 and March 2020 in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal provinces, the areas hit the hardest by xenophobic violence since the end of apartheid in 1994 until 2018, according to the Xenowatch monitoring group. Non-South Africans interviewed by HRW also said the government and law enforcement officials have used counterfeit goods and documentation raids as a cover for xenophobic harassment and attacks. They believe their shops have been disproportionately targeted by authorities conducting raids, during which police have used tear gas and rubber bullets, according to the report. Police would storm shops suspected of selling counterfeit goods with the goal of destroying or removing such goods from the market. But while the government says such operations protect the local economy and jobs, shopkeepers and sellers in central Johannesburg told HRW that the police sold confiscated goods back to them after ransacking their shops. Al Jazeera contacted the Department of Home Affairs for comment but has not received a response at the time of publication. On January 14, Aaron Motsoaledi, health minister at the time and the current minister of home affairs, said, We are not xenophobic as a department and as a country. Plan to combat xenophobia In March 2019, the government launched the National Action Plan to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (NAP). The five-year plans goal is to improve the protection of foreigners and their access to justice, as well as raise public awareness and understanding of xenophobia. The NAP recommends creating mechanisms to ensure foreigners receive services they are entitled to, facilitating their integration and embracing a humane and dignified approach to managing migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Still, xenophobic violence has continued in the first year of the plans existence. The NAP is more of a description of the problem with very broad and vague recommendations for anti-prejudice initiatives. Its not a series of programmes with budgets, said Steven Gordon, a senior researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), decrying a lack of measurable instruments that can be said to be implemented. Commenting on the HRWs findings, Gordon said what is particularly striking is their similarity to the documentations included in a report released by the HRW back in 1998. Many of the issues are the same, he said. For example, the issue of government underplaying the problem and the problems faced by vulnerable migrants like refugees and asylum seekers as well as the institutional resistance from officeholders. Sharon Ekambaram, the head of the refugee and migrant rights programme at Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), which runs walk-in law clinics for refugees and migrants in several cities, described South Africas asylum system as failed. Ekambaram said over the past year the refugee reception office in Musina, a town in Limpopo province, had a 100 percent rejection rate of asylum seekers and of people seeking refugee status. The quality of decision-making by officials is informed by xenophobia, Ekambaram argued. According to Ekambaram, xenophobic sentiments are increasingly spread through social media. Certain statements by politicians have also exacerbated the problem, she said, referring to a November 2018 statement made by Motsoaledi that the South African health system is overburdened by foreign nationals. The government is in denial of the xenophobia in our country. It has to recognise that hatred of foreigners is being fuelled in communities. There has to be consequences for those who loot and attack, she said. Ueda, meanwhile, recommended urgent measures to improve the situation for foreigners. One barrier to basic services is obtaining the right documentation. The government should extend the validity of an asylum seeker permit to alleviate challenges foreigners face with the renewal of documents. Other HRW recommendations include the formal monitoring of the NAPs implementation and the establishment of an accountability mechanism, as well the government acknowledging the existence of xenophobia in public statements. By Arshad Mohammed and Michelle Nichols WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it plans to impose sanctions on those who violate a U.N. arms embargo on Iran, which Washington says will now stay in place instead of expiring in October as agreed under a 2015 nuclear deal. U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela and Iran Elliott Abrams said Washington could deny access to the U.S. market to anyone who trades in weapons with Iran, which President Donald Trump's administration accuses of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied it is developing nuclear weapons. In 2018 Trump quit the Iran nuclear deal - under which Tehran limited its nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief - and reimposed U.S. sanctions. Washington also says it has triggered a return of all U.N. sanctions on Iran, which would take effect this weekend. But the other parties to the nuclear deal - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - and most of the U.N. Security Council have said they do not believe the United States can reimpose the U.N. sanctions. "It's like pulling a trigger and no bullet comes out," a senior U.N. Security Council diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "There will be no snapback, the sanctions will remain suspended, the JCPOA (nuclear deal) will remain in place." Asked if Washington is "making concrete plans now for secondary sanctions" to enforce the arms embargo, Abrams told reporters: "We are, in many ways, and we will have some announcements over the weekend and more announcements on Monday and then subsequent days next week." Diplomats say few nations are likely to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran. Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, "We'll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced." Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday described the opposition to Washington as a "victory of the Iranian nation and the disgraceful defeat of the United States in activation of the snapback mechanism." (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Doina Chiacu and David Brunnstrom in Washington, Michelle Nichols at United Nations and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Matthew Lewis) Dear Editor: I am writing to alert readers to the ongoing and unprecedented court case initiated by the Trump administration against Julian Assange, the courageous, truth-telling Australian journalist and whistleblower. Assange told the truth about American war crimes back in 2010 when he released, among other things, a video showing an American helicopter gunship murdering civilians and two Reuters journalists in the streets of Baghdad. The Trump administration seeks to imprison him for 175 years. Assange is 49 and in poor health. Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, visited him in prison and wrote that he is being tortured. Assange is the father of two young children. He now sits in solitary confinement, entombed in Londons infamous Belmarsh prison as he suffers through his extradition hearing. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for a trial and successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act, which heretofore was used only against spies, it will be the death of free journalism. As an American lawyer who practiced for 45 years, I have joined the National Committee to Defend Assange and Civil Liberties. It is chaired by Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and Alice Walker. Go to defendassange.org. Please help draw the line and defend free journalism, the First Amendment and our right to read, watch and learn. Michael Steven Smith Kerhonkson, N.Y. Lawyer challenges challan for not wearing mask when driving alone: High Court seeks govt reply India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Sep 17: The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought response of the Centre and AAP government on a lawyer's plea challenging the Rs 500 challan issued to him for not wearing a mask while he was driving alone. Justice Navin Chawla issued notice to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Delhi government, Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) and the police seeking their stand on the petition which seeks quashing of the challan, refund of the Rs 500 paid as fine and compensation of Rs 10 lakh for mental harassment suffered by the petitioner. The petitioner, Saurabh Sharma, has claimed in his plea that on September 9 while driving to work he was stopped by Delhi Police officials and was challaned for not wearing mask even though he was alone in the car. Sharma, represented by advocate KC Mittal, has contended that there is a Health Ministry notification clarifying that wearing of mask was not compulsory while driving alone in a car. Advocate Farman Ali Magray, appearing for the ministry, said that such a notification has been issued. Mittal also argued, during the hearing, that the guidelines issued by DDMA only states that the mask has to be worn in a public place or place of work and a private vehicle is neither. The DDMA, during the hearing, contended that its guidelines issued in April and June this year makes its mandatory to wear a mask in a public place and added that the Supreme Court has held that a private vehicle is a public place. PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News It also said that under the guidelines issued by it, there is penalty of Rs 500 for first time breach of quarantine norms as well as for not wearing masks and for every subsequent violation there is a fine of Rs 1,000. The court listed the matter for further hearing on November 18. Queen Letizia of Spain stunned in a royal blue midi dress as she joined King Felipe at the opening of an exhibition for the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes tonight. The Spanish royal, 48, arrived alongside her husband, 52, at the event at the National Library in Madrid, with the couple donning protective face coverings for the grand opening. Queen Letizia opted for a midi length blue dress for the occasion, matching the stunning gown with a simple navy bag and set of heels. Miguel Delibes was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor who became one of the leading figures of post-Civil War spanish literature, winning numerous literary prizes before his death in 2010. Queen Letizia of Spain stunned in a royal blue midi dress and protective mask as she joined King Felipe at the opening of an exhibition for the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes tonight (pictured, with Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, third left, and the regional president of Castilla y Leon, Alfonso Fernandez Maueco, third right) The mother-of-two opted for a relaxed midi dress for the occasion, pairing her stunning blue gown with navy accessories The mother-of-two appeared effortlessly elegant in the blue gown, which featured ruched detail and floral embroidery on the bust and a pleated skirt. Letizia kept her smooth locks loose in a bouncy blow-dry and sported a dash of mascara and eye-shadow to compliment her natural glow. She wore little jewellery, apart from a favourite ring and a pair of silver hoop earrings, which matched her belt. Felipe VI looked dapper in a navy suit and a crisp white shirt. His navy tie was reminiscent of his wife's outfit. The royal joined husband King Felipe at the opening of the exhibition at the National Libary tonight to mark what would have been the 100th birthday of the author Queen Letizia stunned in the relaxed blue gown for the occasion, which featured ruched detail on the bust and a pleated skirt The royal also opted for a medical protective mask as she joined King Felipe at the event in Madrid this evening The couple looked relaxed as they arrived at the reception and posed for pictures outside with Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes and the regional president of Castilla y Leon, Alfonso Fernandez Manueco. The exhibition is opening on what would have been the author's 100th birthday held at the National Library in the city. It comes amid a busy period for the royal couple, with Queen Letizia and King Felipe marking the 125th anniversary of local paper El Heraldo de Aragon (Aragon Herald) earlier this week at the newspaper's headquarters. Felipe VI praised the newspaper's 'integrity' and 'dedication to inform' as he and his wife received the Extraordinary Heraldo 125th Anniversary Award to mark the event, the newspaper reported. The couple could be seen standing at a distance as they spoke with Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, and the regional president of Castilla y Leon, Alfonso Fernandez Maueco during the opening Looking in her element surrounded by journalists, Letizia, who used to be a reporter and newsreader, went for a co-ordinated look, matching her accessories to the dashing pink dress, which she first wore in July 2019. Days before, Queen Letizia headed to the Nuestra Senora del Patrocinio College in Milagro, Navarra to mark the start of the Spanish academic year. Wearing a pair of stylish black culottes and a grey top, the Spanish royal toured the premises with school staff, who were also wearing masks. The group posed for pictures outside the opening of the exhibition at the National Library in Madrid this evening The Spanish school term began last week on Wednesday 9 September and saw Letizia's owner daughters return back to school after months of studying from home. However, it was not long before a classmate in Princess Leonor's year tested positive to the virus, sending the royal sisters into a two-week-long quarantine period. It was said at the time that Leonor and Sofia would have to take coronavirus tests themselves. The national capital on Thursday recorded 4,432 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), even as the number of more accurate RT-PCR tests again slipped below the 10,000 mark despite the high daily tests in the city. The city also reported 38 deaths on Thursday, which is the highest in 63 days, taking the total number of people who have died in Delhi to 4,877. The Capitals tally of total infections is now at 234,701. To be sure, daily tests in Delhi have increased over three-folds over the past month, according to data shared by the Delhi government. The rise in testing came after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal held an emergency meeting in the final week of August to address the resurgence of cases in the city. The CM had said that the government would at least double daily tests to 40,000 a day. Delhi has conducted almost 58,000 tests a day on average during the last seven days. A month ago, this number was around 17,000. Also read: Covid-19: What you need to know today However, much of this increase in tests has been because of the rising number of antigen (or rapid) tests, while RT-PCR tests have not increased as much. According to Thursdays bulletin, of the 60,014 total tests in Delhi, only 9,564 were RT-PCR. This is in keeping with the overall trend of RT-PCR tests over the past week at an average, every day 9,490 RT-PCR tests have been conducted in this time period. Only 16.7% of all tests conducted in the last week have been RT-PCR. A month ago (when testing had not been spiked to this level) this proportion was over 30%. On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court had asked a committee appointed by the lieutenant-governor to immediately convene a meeting on priority to chalk out a strategy to increase the number of RT-PCR tests. RT-PCR test is more sensitive and less likely to throw up false negative reports than the rapid antigen test, but it is more expensive, time-consuming, and needs a lab with proper bio-safety measures to be processed. Being cheaper, quick, and easy to deploy in the field, the government has preferred the rapid antigen tests that are now offered at all government mohalla clinics, dispensaries, and hospitals. When you are using a test for diagnosing an individual, the sensitivity has to be high so that you are sure that the infection gets picked up. That is the reason RT-PCR should be the test of choice outside of containment areas. With rapid antigen test, there is a possibility that it will miss out on positive cases, especially if the person is asymptomatic. The person may then pass on the infection to others, said Dr Lalit Kant, former head of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Also read: Safety first, cautions WHO as 172 nations join Covid-19 vaccine distribution plan Recent testing guidelines by ICMR recommend using the antigen test for routine surveillance within containment areas, and RT-PCR tests for non-containment areas and hospitals. If the rapid antigen test is used for routine surveillance, we know the sensitivity of the test and the error margin can be multiplied to estimate the number of infections in the population. However, when it comes to the diagnosis of one person, it is better to be accurate... So, RT-PCR test is better for that. An RT-PCR test should definitely be done if there are any clinical symptoms, said Dr Shobha Broor, former head of the department of microbiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). However, it is not practical to scale up the RT-PCR test to the current level, she added. Even with the high number of tests, the positivity rate fraction of samples that return positive among those tested continues to hover just over 7%. On average a daily positivity rate of 7.18% was recorded in Delhi over the last seven days, a decline from 8.6% recorded in August end. To be sure, due to the fact that antigen tests can miss positives, expert say this may end up artificially dropping the positivity rate. A positivity rate of 5% is indicative of the transmission of infection being in control. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The intervention by the Democratic Party nominee for the White House came as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces concerted opposition to Government moves that would override the divorce deal with Brussels regarding trade with Northern Ireland. As Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was visiting Washington DC to discuss the issue, former vice president Mr Biden, who is leading incumbent president Donald Trump in a series of nationwide polls ahead of the November election, insisted a future trade deal between the US and UK could only happen if the peace agreement was respected. Mr Biden tweeted: We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. Advertisement We cant allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020 His comments came as the Johnson saw the resignation of a senior law officer, Lord Keen, as he was forced into a compromise over controversial plans to break international law by overriding the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. The remarks echoed those of Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Before a meeting with Ms Pelosi, Mr Raab accused Brussels of the politicisation of Northern Ireland issues in the context of Brexit trade talks. He said the EU stance threatened the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Raab said he had made clear the UK has an absolute commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. The UK action here is defensive in relation to what the EU is doing, it is precautionary, we havent done any of this yet, and it is proportionate, he said. What we cannot have is the EU seeking to erect a regulatory border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain. Advertisement Ms Pelosi has warned Congress would never pass a free trade agreement with the UK if legislation to override the Brexit divorce settlement was to imperil the peace process. She said in a statement following her meeting with Mr Raab that she welcomed his assurances but reiterated the same message that we delivered to the leaders of the UK in London last year: if the UK violates its international agreements and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade agreement passing the Congress. Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Mr Raab, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he had great confidence the British Government will get this right in a way that treats everyone fairly and gets a good outcome for what it was the people of the United Kingdom voted for now several years back. The ovgernment will table an amendment to the UK Internal Market Bill, giving MPs a vote before it can use powers which would breach the deal brokered with Brussels last year. Around 30 Tory rebels were thought to be preparing to vote for an amendment on Tuesday which would have required a Commons vote before the provisions in the Bill relating to the North could come into force. Advertisement Downing Street relented and announced in a joint statement with Conservative MPs Sir Bob Neill and Damian Green that it would seek to amend the Bill to require the Commons to vote before a minister can use the powers contained within it. The statement said: Following constructive talks over the last few days, the Government has agreed to table an amendment for Committee Stage. This amendment will require the House of Commons to vote for a motion before a minister can use the notwithstanding powers contained in the UK Internal Market Bill. But Mr Johnson risked further conflict with the EU when he said Brussels was not acting in good faith. He told the Sun: We assumed our EU friends and partners would want to negotiate in good faith. Weve been paid up members for 45 years. The governments top law officer for Scotland resigned on Wednesday amid reports he was unhappy about the plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. Lord Keen of Elie QC, the Advocate General, said in his resignation letter: Over the past week I have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a Law Officer with your policy intentions with respect to the UKIM Bill. I have endeavoured to identify a respectable argument for the provisions at clauses 42 to 45 of the Bill but it is now clear that this will not meet your policy intentions. Labours shadow attorney general Lord Falconer said: This has been a week of chaos from the Governments own law officers, whose legal advice has been renounced by its own Government and the voice of the law officers has been muted, and their authority is completely shot. Source: Xinhua| 2020-09-17 23:23:45|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Raheela Nazir ISLAMABAD, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- After the passage of three Financial Action Task Force (FATF) related bills on Wednesday by a joint session of Pakistan's parliament, the country has wrapped up the important task of legislation concerning FATF, which experts believe will not only prevent the country from being blacklisted by FATF, but also have salutary effects on the national economy and revamp the global image of Pakistan. FATF put Pakistan on its grey list in June 2018 and gave Islamabad a final deadline in February 2020 to implement the remaining 13 out of 27 action points by June 2020, but the deadline was extended up to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, over the past few months, dozens of laws have been passed by the national assembly and the senate to prevent Pakistan from being blacklisted by FATF and pave the way for the country to get out of the grey list. The final three FATF-related bills passed Wednesday were Anti-Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Bill-2020, Anti-Terrorism (Third Amendment) Bill-2020, and Islamabad Capital Territory Waqf Properties Bill-2020, according to government officials. Speaking with Xinhua, Ahsan Hamid Durrani, a public policy analyst and senior programs manager at Icarus Incorporated, an Islamabad-based research, strategic planning and advocacy organization, said the enactment of bills over the last few months is a watershed moment in Pakistan's efforts against terror financing and money laundering as these amendments seek to update investigation techniques, and are critical in enhancing Pakistan's anti-money laundering frameworks to further strengthen compliance to the FATF recommendations. "I think the passage of these important bills should serve as a testament to Pakistan's resolve in its fight against terror financing and money laundering. Pakistan wants to maintain its status as a responsible state in the world, therefore this legislation was required," the analyst said. These policy reforms resulting in Pakistan's removal from the grey list will ultimately help the country in putting its economy on the right track, Durrani said. "In today's globalized world, like all other countries, Pakistan's economy is not insulated and dependent on international investors. Foreign direct investments (FDI) are vital for Pakistan's economic revival, and I believe Pakistan's exit from the grey list of FATF will boost the FDI given right economic policies are enforced," he said. Durrani thinks that if Pakistan managed to get out of the grey list, it will be much easier for it to acquire financial aid or loan from global lenders like the International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and European Union, improving its faltering economy. Terming the passage of the bills historic for the larger interest of the country, member of Pakistan's National Assembly Saleem Rehman said that the legislation will assist in the government's efforts to make the economy documented, as people have come under more financial scrutiny and the requirements for documents pertaining to money transactions have been greatly increased. Under the anti-money laundering bill, all banks and financial institutions across the country are now required to conduct a thorough investigation of each account holder. Any person sends or receives a large amount of money, will be asked by the concerned institutions about the source of income, and authorities will keep a close eye on more than expected transactions, the lawmaker told Xinhua. Rehman said a powerful national executive committee is being set up under the supervision of the Pakistani finance minister, which will ensure effective implementation of these laws and set rules and regulations in this regard. "The new rules are promising for Pakistan's economy, as they will allow the government to keep a record of illegal money. Similarly, the number of taxpayers will increase and tax evasion will be discouraged," he said. Under the enacted laws, the conditions to receive money from abroad is not that complex when compared to sending it out of the country. "Overseas Pakistanis can send remittances back without much hustle, which is largely contributing in maintaining the foreign currency reserves of the country," Rehman said. Under the Islamabad Capital Territory Waqf Properties Bill-2020, the federal government also intends to control terrorism and religious extremism in the country. "The bill would greatly contribute to root out the menace of terrorism as the administrators of mosques and seminaries in the federal capital Islamabad could be charged if found involved in terror financing, religion-based hate speech or any act that undermines national sovereignty and unity," Executive Director of Center for Research and Security Studies Imtiaz Gul told Xinhua. It will consolidate the gains of the country's crucial war on terror to achieve enduring peace and stability both for Pakistan and the world, he said. Enditem Press release Paris La Defense, 17 September 2020 Capital increase reserved for employees Albioma announces the carrying out of a capital increase reserved for eligible employees and former employees of the Group, as from 21 September 2020. As a reflection of its commitment to expand and, in the medium-term, establish a solid employee shareholding, the Group is hoping that this programme, which allows to indirectly invest in Albioma stock on preferential terms while also benefiting from a favourable tax regime, will ensure staff have a real stake in its future performance, by aligning their interests with those of shareholders. The main terms of this programme are set out below. Issuer Albioma, a limited liability company with a share capital of 1,216,676.35, with its registered office at 77 Esplanade du General de Gaulle, 92081 Paris La Defense, and registered as number 775 667 538 with the Nanterre Trade and Companies Registry (hereinafter, the Company). Listed on Euronext Paris (France), Compartment B. ISIN Code: FR0000060402. Purpose of the programme This purpose of this programme is to give employees a stake in the Groups results and future success by aligning their interests with those of shareholders. It allows eligible Group employees to directly invest in Albioma stock on preferential terms while also benefiting from a favourable tax regime. Framework for the programme Resolution 17 of the Company's Combined General Shareholders Meeting of 27 May 2019 empowered the Board of Directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities convertible to share capital, immediately or in the future, to members of company or group savings plans established jointly by the Company and French or foreign affiliates in accordance with the provisions of Article L. 225-180 of the French Commercial Code and Article L. 3344--1 of the French Labour Code, up to a maximum of 0.75% of the Companys share capital. Pursuant to these powers, at its 2 March 2020 meeting the Board of Directors resolved to issue, with waiving of preferential subscription rights in favour of members of the Albioma group savings plan established in accordance with Articles L. 3332-18 et seq. of the French Labour Code by the Company and its subsidiaries with registered offices in France, a maximum of 156,600 Company shares. Story continues These shares may be subscribed via a pass-through mutual fund, called FCPE Albioma Relais 2020, that will be reserved for employees and former employees (retirees) of the Company and of its subsidiaries with registered offices in France that are eligible under the rules of the Albioma group savings plan. Following the subscription period, the plan is for FCPE Albioma Relais 2020 to merge with the Company employee savings fund, FCPE Albioma, following the corresponding decision of the Supervisory Boards of the aforementioned funds. Terms and conditions of subscription Offer beneficiaries This capital increase will be open to employees and former employees (retirees) of the Company and of its subsidiaries with registered offices in France, with at least three months service with the Company or one of its subsidiaries by the end of the subscription period. Former employees (retirees) of the Company and of its subsidiaries with registered offices in France must continue to be investors in the company and inter-company savings plans to qualify for the offer. Subscription process Beneficiaries must subscribe via FCPE Albioma Relais 2020, which is to merge with FCPE Albioma following approval by the Supervisory Boards of said funds. FCPE Albioma Relais 2020 received authorisation from the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF - Autorite des Marches Financiers) on 10 March 2020. The employees investment will thus track the Albioma share price, both up and down. Subscription for shares will allow employees subscribing for the offer to obtain a matching contribution from their employer subject to the terms and conditions and limits set out in the rules of the Albioma group savings plan and applicable laws and regulations. Maximum subscription The total subscription of each participant will be limited to 25% of the gross annual compensation received in 2019 from the Company or one of its subsidiaries. The position of employees whose contract has been suspended and thus received no compensation in 2019, of employees who retired or took early retirement from the Company or one of its subsidiaries in 2019 is assessed in accordance with the rules of the Albioma group savings plan, this maximum subscription notwithstanding the provisions of Article L. 3332-10 of the French Labour Code. How shares are held Exercise of voting rights Subscription to the share capital increase will be via FCPE Albioma Relais 2020, which will merge with FCPE Albioma following completion of this programme. Voting rights on the securities held by this fund will be exercised by the Supervisory Board of FCPE Albioma in accordance with its rules. Subscription price The subscription price is set at 34.48. This is the average opening price of the Albioma stock over the 20 trading sessions between 19 August 2020 and 15 September 2020 (both inclusive), net of a 20% discount. Subscription period The offer beneficiaries may subscribe for the offer from 21 September 2020 to 12 October 2020 (both inclusive). Lock-up period The fund units subscribed as part of the offer must be retained for five years, except in the event of one of the early release scenarios provided for in Articles L. 3332-25 and R. 3324-22 of the French Labour Code. Capital increase and listing of shares The capital increase and the delivery of Albioma shares as part of the offer should take place on 30 October 2020. A request for admission to trading of Albioma shares issued as part of this offer on Euronext Paris will be done as soon as possible after the capital increase, on the same market listing as the existing shares. Specific references This press release is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to subscribe for securities. Contact details Should beneficiaries have any query regarding the offer, they should contact their human resources manager and/or any other person as specified in the offer documents provided to them prior to commencement of the subscription period. This press release constitutes the information document required to benefit from the exemption from publishing a prospectus provided for in Article 1 (4) (i) and (5) (h) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of 14 June 2017. Next update: Q3 2020 revenue on 28 October 2020 (after trading). About Albioma Contacts An independent renewable energy producer, Albioma is committed to the energy transition thanks to biomass and photovoltaics. The Group, which operates in French Oversees Departments and Regions, Mauritius and Brazil, has developed a unique partnership over 25 years with the sugar industry, to produce renewable energy from bagasse, a fibrous residue from sugar cane. Albioma is also the leading generator of photovoltaic power in French Oversees Departments and Regions, where it constructs and operates innovative projects with integrated storage capabilities. Investors Julien Gauthier +33 (0)1 47 76 67 00 Media Charlotte Neuvy +33 (0)1 47 76 66 65 presse@albioma.com Albioma shares are listed on EURONEXT PARIS (compartment B) and eligible for the PEA equity savings plans and for deferred settlement service (SRD) (ISIN FR0000060402 ticker symbol ABIO). www.albioma.com Attachment Facebook is building a wearable augmented reality device, it has announced. During the Oculus Connect live stream on 16 September, the social media giant revealed Project Aria, which will add a 3D layer of useful, contextually-relevant and meaningful information on top of the physical world according to the companys blog post. Facebook says the device could help with everyday tasks, such as finding keys, navigating a new city, or capturing a moment. Imagine calling a friend and chatting with their lifelike avatar across the table. Imagine a digital assistant smart enough to detect road hazards, offer up stats during a business meeting, or even help you hear better in a noisy environment, Facebook says. This is a world where the device itself disappears entirely into the ebb and flow of everyday life. However, Project Aria is not yet designed for consumers. Instead, it is a research device that Facebook will use to work out the kinks of real AR glasses. Project Aria will not display information on the inside of the lens and wearers cannot view or listen to the data captured by the wearable. Instead, it will capture audio and video from a first-person perspective, as well as eye movement and location data, to help Facebook determine how augmented reality should work. Starting in September, it will be made available to a limited group of Facebook employees and contractors in the United States, trained in both where and when to use the device, and where and when not to Facebook says, encouraging wearers to use the devices at home, on Facebooks currently-closed campuses, and in public. Facebook is, of course, not the only company to develop smart-glasses. Google Glass was infamously developed in 2013, and was met with criticism from privacy advocates. In preparing Project Aria, Facebook is providing transparency tools to highlight when data is being gathered and when it is recording. This includes the devices displaying a prominent white light when data is being recorded, a physical mute button, and will only collect data in Facebook offices, wearers private homes, and public spaces unless they have permission from stores and venues to record inside them. The company is also using this technology to develop LiveMaps, a project which will be used for navigation. AR glasses will download the most recent data from the 3D map, and then only have to detect changes like new street names or the appearance of a new parking garage, and update the 3D map with those changes, Facebook said. In a separate announcement, Facebook is also collaborating with Ray-Ban for another kind of wearable, but one that will not be classified as an augmented reality device nor have an integrated display, the company confirmed. That product is scheduled to launch in 2021, for an as-yet undisclosed price. Findings of a report by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) show that the implementation of some pro-poor projects under the $1 million per constituency promised by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 2016 electioneering campaign lack local content. The report monitored the implementation of that campaign promise, which later became government policy dubbed Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) and found that contractors working on the various IPEP projects were not from the beneficiary communities. This finding of the report of the IPEP Tracker, is captured under Level of community involvement and transparency in IPEP project implementation which is one of four categories into which the findings of the report were grouped. The report also found that there is low community engagement in project selection and prioritisation: Decisions are usually taken at the national level and the district level by few officials such as Members of Parliament and District Chief Executives. Further, the communities indicate that the use of local labour was very minimal. Other findings of the report, which was made public on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 in Accra, include the following: - Minimal or no community involvement in project initiation and implementation at the district level. - Very low community awareness of IPEP project in the constituencies/district: Majority of informants in the beneficiary communities report of not being aware that the projects are been provided under the IPEP or the $1 million per constituency program. IPEP Tracker The NPP promised in its 2016 elections manifesto to allocate the Ghana Cedi equivalent of $1 million to each of the 275 constituencies. The promise dubbed the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) seeks to enhance capital infrastructure provision at the district/constituency level as a means to accelerate growth, create jobs and reduce poverty, particularly in rural and deprived communities. Upon assumption of office, the NPP Government established the Ministry for Special Development Initiatives (MSDI) in February 2017 to implement the IPEP. It also set up three Development Authorities (DAs) and their governing boards as well as an inter-Ministerial Oversight Committee. Also, the government set up a ten-member ad-hoc committee to undertake constituency infrastructure needs assessment. After that, the MSDI in 2018 began selected government priority infrastructure projects across all the 275 constituencies under the IPEP CDD-Ghana in 2017 launched the IPEP Tracker project to monitor the implementation of IPEP. The overall goal of the IPEP Tracker project is to contribute to efforts to eliminate corruption by ensuring transparency and accountability in the implementation of the IPEP. Source: ghanaweb Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video At least 620 Nigerian Christians killed so far in 2020 by Boko Haram, Fulani: NGO report Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A Nigerian civil society organization estimates that about 620 Christians were killed and hundreds of homes, as well as churches, were damaged in Nigeria since the beginning of the year as attacks carried about by Fulani radicals and Islamic terrorists continue. The Anambra-based nongovernmental organization International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law, headed by Christian Emeka Umeagbalasi, released a statement Thursday highlighting the impact of the atrocities committed by terrorists across Nigeria thus far in 2020. The report, based on days of forensic research, warns that militant Fulani herdsmen roaming the countrys rural Middle Belt states and terrorists affiliated with Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province in Nigerias northeast region have intensified their anti-Christian violence. The group reports the killing of no fewer than 620 defenseless Christians and wanton burning or destruction of their centers of worship and learning" in 2020. According to the statement, Fulani radicals are responsible for killing over 470 people in the first four-and-a-half months of 2020. The group reports that Fulani killed 140 Christians from the beginning of April until May 14. Meanwhile, Boko Haram is believed to have killed 150 Christians since January. The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the countrys security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists, the organization argues. Houses burnt or destroyed during the period are in their hundreds; likewise dozens of Christian worship and learning centers. Intersociety relies on what it deems to be credible local and foreign media reports, government accounts, reports from international rights groups and eyewitness accounts to compile its statistical reports and updates. The organization reported in a March statement that at least 350 Christians were killed in January and February, with Fulani radical attacks in the Middle Belt of Nigeria accounting for 250 of the deaths and Boko Haram terrorists accounting for between 50 to 100 killings. Additionally, the group reported at the time that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since June 2015. According to Intersociety, radical herdsmen accounted for the killing of over 7,400 Christians and Boko Haram groups accounted for 4,000 killings. While conflicts between Fulani herdsmen and predominantly Christian farming communities in the farming-rich Middle Belt states have existed for decades, advocates warn that Fulani attacks in recent years have increased in severity as well as quantity. Fulani radicals are often armed with firearms when conducting their overnight attacks on sleeping farming villages. As a result, many farming communities have been pushed off their lands. Intersociety projects that by the end of 2020, no less than 32,000 Christians will have been killed across Nigeria by Boko Haram and Fulani radicals combined since 2009. The killings covered 2009 to 2020, with projected figures for Boko Haram and its offshoot ISWAP and Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in the coming seven months and half of 2020, the report explains. Intersocietys findings come as the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated last year that at least 27,000 people have been killed by the Boko Haram conflict in northeast Nigeria since 2009. During the years that Boko Haram rose to prominence in the northeast, Intersociety notes that there were 6,000 Christians killed by radical herdsmen between January 2009 to December 2014 in the Middle Belt states. This is an average of 1,000 Christian deaths per year, Intersociety reports. [T]he Jihadist Fulani militants must have accounted for additional 9,000 Christian deaths, or 1,500 deaths per year [from January 2015 to end of December 2020]. In the end, the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen must have accounted for total Christian deaths of 15,000 in 11 years, Intersociety estimates. The organization also contends that most of those killed by Boko Haram from January 2015 to December 2019 about 60% are Christians and that all those killed by Fulani radicals during that timespan are Christians. This past week, suspected Fulani radicals conducted a series of attacks in the Kaduna state district of Kajuru, killing over 20 people and injuring several others. [S]ince the COVID-19 lockdown on March 25, these Fulani herdsmen have killed 38 Southern Kaduna people, as of yesterday, Kajuru resident Alheri Magaji, who leads the nonprofit Resilient Aid and Dialogue Initiative, told The Christian Post. Thats more than the coronavirus. In addition to the killings, millions in Nigeria have been displaced from their homes and farms due to the violence in the northeast and Middle Belt. While some have returned, many are still homeless with no timetable for when they may be able to return to their farms and homes. Nigeria ranks as the 12th worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors USAs 2020 World Watch List. According to Open Doors, Nigeria is one of the most violent countries in the world for Christians. Nigeria was added to the U.S. State Departments special watch list of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom for the first time last December. It is a dangerous situation in too many parts of Nigeria," U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told reporters at the time. "The government has either not been willing to or have been ineffective in their response and the violence continues to grow. International advocacy groups have also raised concerns that the violence against Christians in Nigeria has reached the level of genocide. Since Cheer premiered, Harris has amassed more than 1.2 million Instagram followers and partnered with various brands. A representative for the Schmidts deodorant company said Thursday that its partnership with Harris has ended, saying Schmidts is firmly committed to ensuring a safe environment for everyone. While we partnered with Jerry from May through July of 2020, we are no longer working with him. When Catherine Comuzzi bought an apartment on dead-end Montclair Avenue more than five years ago, she chose it over a house as a perfect place to age quietly and safely. Her unit is one of 28 in an eight-storey building where the condos range from about 1,200 to 2,200 sq. ft. the size developers seldom build any more. Its a couple minutes walk to the St. Clair West subway station entrance on Heath Street. The shops and cafes of Forest Hill Village on Spadina Road are a block to the east. I thought Id be here forever and have renovated accordingly, said Comuzzi, a psychotherapist. But she is having second thoughts since learning about what Montclair residents say is a nightmare proposal to build 634 condos in two towers directly in front of Comuzzis building. The planning application calls for a 21- and 23-storey tower connected by a five- to eight-storey podium. Seventy per cent of the apartments would be bachelor or one-bedroom units and there would be 205 parking spots. Building it will require the demolition of 15 detached and semi-detached homes, including two rental units and the removal of 35 trees, according to a city planning report. The residents and city councillor say they have no quarrel with condos. After all, the neighbourhood near St. Clair Avenue West and Spadina Road is zoned for apartments and most of their street is composed of smaller condo and apartment buildings. Development fights arent rare in the growing the GTA. What distinguishes their opposition, say the Montclair residents, is the unacceptable precedent this development presents in terms of its scale and intrusion on a narrow, low-rise street. What is different is this is a development proposal ideally suited to a major arterial roadway or the intersection of a major arterial roadway where the building can breathe, said Gordon Harris, a veteran urban planner and developer, who lives on Montclair. Downtown redevelopments such as Mirvish Village, he said, work because they are half the proposed density and theyre on major arteries. The Montclair condo proposal by Parallax Development Inc. would be like building a giant house on a 25-foot lot. You just know its not a good fit, he said. He warned that other neighbourhoods will be vulnerable to the same kind of development if the Montclair project proceeds. Were going to see a darkened, shadowed street. Were going to see all the trees and birds here gone. Were going to see traffic congestion and were going to add 634 suites all in one spot, said Harris. As for the senior population that dominates Montclair, It wouldnt matter if this was a street of young families, the building is still out of whack with its surroundings, he said. Im all for good quality development but this is not that. Montclair is blocked on the west by an apartment building on Forest Hill Gate. There is a pedestrian access to the east but cars cant get through. There is an entirely separate section of Montclair Avenue further west, accessible by Bathurst Street to Lonsmount Drive. Context matters, said Coun. Josh Matlow (Ward 12, Toronto-St. Pauls). Residents understand the street wont likely stay frozen in time but the transition needs to be done in a reasonable way, he said. Of course there are streets where there should be greater intensification. Forest Hill Village is unique. It is one of the few remaining neighbourhoods that has still kept the historic village, he said. But of greater concern is the scale on Montclair, which is so small it already presents challenges to emergency vehicles, said Matlow. Spadina (Road) is already packed to the brim. During rush hours it is tight and slow and there are people jostling for parking spaces. Its congested during normal times, he said. Brad and Donna Brown and their daughter Greta, 12, love the areas mix of single-family houses and low-rise apartments, the village and subway access. We have a car but we dont use it all that much, said Brown, who runs an IT consulting company. Development, even on Montclair, is not necessarily a bad thing. We need more people here to better support the businesses in the village. Its to my advantage as a resident to have a vibrant business community, he said. My objection isnt the development its 600 units. Really? On a dead-end street, said Brown. But the developer says that subway access is exactly why Montclair is the right place for the proposed condos. When a site like this one exists close to transit, in an area designated as an Apartment Neighbourhood, that has a context of tall and mid-rise buildings it is the right place to build, said Parallax principal Stafford Lawson in an email to the Star. COVID-19 has delayed widespread community consultation, he said. But Parallax is working on it and in the meantime has posted some information at https://www.63montclair.com/. Lawson said the condos will be framed by townhouses in keeping with the scale of the street and that the towers fit within the citys guidelines. He said that truck loading for the site would be located within the building and that trucks would enter on Montclair and exit on Bantry Avenue, directly to the south. Parallax plans to improve pedestrian amenities along Montclair by widening the sidewalks and providing mid-block connections to Bantry. We are also currently evaluating the opportunity to further enhance pedestrian connections from the neighbourhood to the subway entrance on Heath, he wrote. John Artibello, 93, lives in one of the only single-family homes on Montclair that hasnt been bought by the developer. He says he too is thinking of moving on. Its going to be hell, he said. Who wants to live through three years of not being able to get your car out of the driveway? Youll have a line of trucks all down the street. Developers come into a beautiful little village and they just tear it down. We dont have any heritage at all here. Theres no personality anymore, said Artibello, a womens fashion designer. His son, John, 72, also lives there. He doesnt put it past his dad to move and said his is not the only multi-generational household on the street. If the proposed development was downtown, it would be a whole different kettle of fish, said the younger Artibello, a retired philosophy professor. This is really a seniors community, he said. All the older people around here are getting up there in years. What kind of life are they going to have when the construction starts because there are several projects planned for the village. Oct. 15 has been set for a community consultation following a Toronto East York Community Council meeting on Wednesday, said Matlow. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be required to quarantine himself for 14 days before entering Queensland if he wishes to join the state election campaign. Speaking on the Today show, Mr Morrison said he didn't think there should be "double standards" over the state's border exemptions, and expected he would quarantine himself for the mandatory 14 days if entering Queensland ahead of the state election. Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "The same rules should apply to me as anyone else," he said. "Those rules should be fair, they should be sensible, and they should be compassionate too, I think. If conditions of war are created, China will face better prepared and psychologically hardened India India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: Amidst the tense standoff along the Line of Actual Control, the Chinese media has been on overdrive mode with propaganda activity. The Global Times reported that India's operational logistics is not geared up adequately and its will not be able to fight through winters effectively. However, the Indian Army said that while it always stands for peace, it could fight back if China created conditions for war. In fact China will face better, trained, better prepared, fully rested and psychologically hardened Indian troops. The Chinese troops are mostly from urban areas and not used too hardships of prolonged deployment under field conditions. On the other hand, the Indian troops are physically and psychologically battle-hardened, the Army's Northern Command headquarters said in a statement. Indian soldiers remained undeterred as China resorts to Hindi warnings, Punjabi music "India is a peace-loving country and wishes to have good relations with its neighbours. India always prefers to resolve issues through dialogue. While talks are in progress to resolve the border issues with China in eastern Ladakh, at the military level it is well prepared for the prolonged stand-off," the spokesperson said. He said altitudes in Ladakh range from "high to super-high altitude" and there is a lot of snowfall - up to 40 feet after November. "Coupled with this, the temperature dipping down to minus 30 to 40 degree Celsius is a usual phenomenon. Wind chill factor makes matters even worse for the troops. The roads also get closed due to the snow. But despite all this, the most encouraging part for India is that the Indian soldiers have a huge experience of winter warfare and are psychologically tuned to operate at short notice," the spokesperson said. While these facts are known to the world, he said, adding the operational logistics capabilities, however, are hardly known. "Logistic capability relates to mobility, habitat and billeting, quality services for health, special rations, repair and recovery, heating systems, high-quality weapons, ammunition, quality clothing, and so on. While much of these capabilities existed earlier and troops could simply plug and play, a lot has also been boosted since May this year when China showed first signs of aggression," he said. The spokesperson said it is important to understand that the Army has the experience of Siachen, the highest battleground in the world, where conditions are much more demanding than the frontiers with China. "Traditionally there were two routes for moving into Ladakh, that is through Zojila (Srinagar-Leh Highway) and Rohtang Passes (Manali-Leh). Recently India commissioned a third road from Darcha to Leh which is much shorter distance-wise and less prone to closure," he said. The spokesperson said completion of Atal tunnel on the Rohtang route has force multiplied the logistic capacities. "In addition, we have a large number of airbases with the help of which we can maintain the Army well. Modern snow clearing equipment has also been placed on these routes to keep them open beyond November, thus giving us more time for daily maintenance of the troops," he said. The spokesperson said special fuel and lubricants for tanks and armoured personnel carriers have also been stocked adequately, including spares for their maintenance. "Water points and tube wells have been established for the troops and animals like mules and yaks. The living barracks have also been prepared which are comfortable and warm," he said. He said facilities such as the central heating system are some of the high points of these facilities. "Ammunition of various types including small arms, missiles and tank and artillery ammunition have also been adequately stocked. The medical system is also in place for any eventuality." Indian Army ready to fight full-fledged war with China even in winters PM Modi's birthday: Russian President, German Chancellor wish PM Modi on 70th birthday|Oneindia News The spokesperson said "China's concept has always been to win the wars without fighting, hence if they create conditions for war, they will come across better trained, better prepared, fully rested and psychologically hardened Indian troops. "These worries have been percolating in the minds of Chinese troops and are visible in Chinese media," he said. (With agency inputs) No fewer than 41,000 health workers across Africa have been infected with the novel COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. The WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti made this known in a press statement to commemorate the World Patient Safety Day. She said the figure accounts for 3.8 per cent of all reported COVID-19 cases in the region. In the WHO African region, more than 41,000 health workers have been infected with COVID-19, accounting for 3.8% of all reported cases. Some countries, like Sierra Leone and Cote dIvoire have made progress in reducing the proportion of health worker infections. Others such as Eritrea, Rwanda and Seychelles have not recorded a single case of COVID-19 among health workers, she said. The World Patient Safety Day is marked annually on September 17 to increase public awareness and engagement, enhance global understanding and spur global solidarity and action to promote patient safety. This years theme, Health Worker Safety: A priority for patient safety, is a strong reminder of the vital role health workers play in relieving sufferings of patients and saving lives. Health workers at risk Ms Moeti noted that frontline health workers are at greater risk of infection because of the care they provide to patients. She said the international agency has trained 50,000 health workers in the African region in infection prevention and control, with plans to train over 200,000 more. Around 31 million items of personal protective equipment have been shipped to member states and guidance documents on best care practices are in-development, to support the creation of enabling environments for safe health workers and safe patients, she said. The WHO director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus earlier said that COVID-19 has exposed health workers and their families to unprecedented levels of risk. He said data from many countries across WHO regions indicates that COVID-19 infections among health workers are far greater than those in the general population. He noted that although health workers represent less than three per cent of the population in the large majority of countries and less than two per cent in almost all low and middle-income countries, around 14 per cent of COVID-19 cases reported to WHO are among health workers. In some countries, the proportion can be as high as 35 percent. Thousands of health workers infected with COVID-19 have lost their lives worldwide, he said. Healthcare workers are at a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 virus as they are usually the first responders to patients. Universal health coverage Ms Moeti said patient safety is an essential component in strengthening health systems to achieve universal health coverage. This, she said, requires collaboration and open communication between multidisciplinary health-care teams, patients and patients organizations, professional associations and other stakeholders. She reiterated that action is needed to understand the magnitude of patient harm. The regional director noted that patients and their families must be enabled to take preventive measures to reduce risks to all individuals, including people with disabilities and older people. Ms Moeti urged everyone to work together to protect health workers, so they can protect patients, in supportive, enabling environments for the delivery of quality health care. In the Rajya Sabha, Union minister Harsh Vardhan said that a coronavirus vaccine is likely to be available in India by early next year and added that the Centre is aiming to bring down India's COVID-19 mortality rate Lok Sabha passed two bills related to the agriculture sector on the fourth day of Monsoon Session of Parliament amid vehement opposition to the legislation, with Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigning as Union minister "in protest against anti-farmer" legislations. The bills Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 by voice vote in an extended session. "Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter and sister," Harsimrat tweeted, after SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal announced in the Lok Sabha that the party would withdraw its member from the Union Cabinet. Harsimrat is the only representative of SAD in the Union government, and the regional party is one of the BJP's oldest allies. Opposing the bills, SAD said, "Punjab has spent its last 50 years to develop the state's agriculture situation. The Bill will allow corporate and private companies to interfere in this, which Akali Dal will never allow." Other Opposition MPs in the Lower House also countered the Centre's farm legislations. The parties said the bills will "facilitate the interests of corporations" and that farmers will "suffer huge losses" due to the proposed laws. However, Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that the legislations will "help to develop" the agriculture sector. Responding the MPs' arguments on the issue, Tomar said that the bills will equip farmers to "get better prices". "This bill will lead to more traders competing for farmers producution, so farmers will get better prices now," he was quoted by The Hindu as saying and added that the it "will bring an end to license, Inspector Raj and corruption". Addressing the criticism over the inclusion of contract farming in the legislations, Tomar said the concept is meant to "help farmers". He said that the bill will ensure that many services will reach small farmers. "Contract will not lead to taking over of land. If the corporates build some infrastructure, it will only benefit the farmer in the end," he added. Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha saw a detailed discussions on the LAC border issue with China, and the Centre's COVID-19 management strategy. Farm bills aim to facilitate corporate interests, say LS Opposition MPs The Opposition parties against the bills included the Congress, DMK, Trinamool Congress, RSP, Bahujan Samaj Party, AIMIM, TRS, AAP, and the Samajwadi Party. Congress MP Ravneet Singh from Punjab's Ludhiana emphasised on the importance of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and said, "75 percent farmers in Punjab are not so affluent. We collect about Rs 3,631 crore at mandis (markets), which are used for the farmers' welfare infrastructures and are created and maintained using the funds. "Agriculture does not come under your legislative competence. Under the proposed law, will the small time farmers be able to resolve disputes with big players? Businessmen would set up mandis and operate without any licence. The Food Corporation of India procures grains for the entire country, you are now doing away with it." Meanwhile, Revolutionary Socialist Party MP NK Premachandran was quoted by The Hindu as saying that the bills have been introduced to "deregulate agriculture farming". Quoting farmer suicide statistics, he added that "aggressive" agricultural reforms have harmed the farmers. "NCRB reports show more than 3 lakh farmers ended their life in between 1995-2005. (With these bills)..farming community will be exploited. All the ordinances aim to facilitate the interests of corporates," he said. Meanwhile, TMC MPs Mahua Moitra and Kalyan Banerjee said that the bills are "thoroughly unconstitutional" because the Lok Sabha "cannot legislate on the issue of agriculture produce". Stating that poor and marginal farmers will be affected, Banerjee added, "Small and marginal farmers will be forced to enter into agreement. Effect of the Bill is that such farmers will be forced to enter into agreement under the conditions set by the superior bargaining parties, big industrialists. They will be forced into litigation. "It wouldn't be possible for them to pursue litigation up till Supreme Court. The proposed provisions will also lead to hoarding and black marketing, profiteering, consumers will suffer..The entire agriculture industry will move towards privatisation." Meanwhile, while the BJD asked the Centre to send the Bill to the Standing Committee for scrutiny, the BSP said that if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, "farmers would have been in the streets of Delhi". Additionally, the BJP's estranged ally, the Shiv Sena, supported the bills but sought clarification on how the Centre plans to merge the existing agriculture framework and the the framework proposed in the bills. Similarly, the TDP was also quoted as saying that the party supports the bills, but is concerned about whether the Parliament has the competency to make laws regarding agriculture. "On the other hand, Agricultural Produce & Livestock Market Committee (APMC) is already in place, so how will this be integrated. There's no clarity on it, " Party MP Ram Mohan Naidu said, according to The Hindu. On the other hand, the JD(U) and AIADMK joined BJP MPs in supporting the bills. Earlier on Thursday, the Congress staged a protest against the farm bills in front of Mahatma Gandhi's statue in the Parliament complex. The party said that the bills defeat the purpose of the Green Revolution and will be "a death knell for the future of farming" as it alleged that the Modi dispensation, akin to the coronavirus pandemic, was attacking lives and livelihood of farmers. Some Congress MPs from Punjab also burnt copies of the farm bills inside the Parliament Complex. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana have been protesting against the ordinances promulgated by the Centre in June. COVID-19 vaccine likely by early next year, Centre tells RS In the Rajya Sabha, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said that a coronavirus vaccine is likely to be available in India by early next year and added that the Centre is aiming to bring down India's COVID-19 mortality rate to less than one percent from the current 1.64 percent, which is "still the lowest in the world". Replying to a debate in the Upper House, he said the country's recovery rate of 78-79 percent is one of the highest in the world, adding though the total cases may have crossed 50 lakh, but the active cases are less than 20 percent. Deaths in India due to coronavirus pandemic are less than many nations in Europe and the government was determined to better the testing rate of the US, he said. Vardhan emphasised that efforts were being made to produce a vaccine by the ICMR, the Science and Technology ministry and drug companies, but it was still necessary for people to follow social distancing and wear masks. "Vaccines can come in future. Extensive planning is underway to execute how to manage the scenario, " Vardhan said. He said there are three vaccine candidates which have reached phase one, two or phase three level. "Under the prime minister, an expert group is studying this. We expect by the beginning of next year we can have a vaccine in the country. In this regard we are also coordinating with WHO and global organisations," he said. India is among few countries globally which has been able to isolate the virus, Vardhan noted. He said that various international experts had predicted that the cases in India will rise to 300 million by July-August, resulting in death of 5-6 million people. "In the country of 135 crore people, we are doing 11 lakh tests now and are second to the US only. It has been possible only due to the united fight against the disease," he said. Terming the lockdown a historic step, he said the measure taught people to fight the pandemic. In the backdrop of criticism over the Centre claiming that it had no data on deaths of migrant labourers during the COVID-19 lockdown, Vardhan on Thursday said, "There is no doubt that for some time migrant workers faced problems... during the COVID19 period, 64 lakh of our migrant workers were sent to their native places by trains, buses." Meanwhile, the BJP and Aam Aadmi Party sparred over the issue of COVID-19 management during a debate in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, with the AAP terming as "foolish" Modi's call to clap and beat utensils in honour of coronavirus warriors. BJP's Sudhanshu Trivedi hit back, saying the prime minister's move was symbolic and sought to unite the country socially just like Mahatma Gandhi chose the symbol of 'charkha' for national cohesion during the freedom struggle. China violated peace in Ladakh, says Rajnath Singh in RS over LAC issue Defence minister Rajnath Singh addressed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday regarding the border row with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. "China has shown complete disregard for bilateral agreements and violated peace in the east Ladakh," he said in the Upper House, days after Congress MPs in the Lower House had staged a walkout claiming that the Centre is unwilling to discuss the India-China border row. Rajnath said that China has, in the recent past, illegally occupied 38,000 square kilometres of India's territory in Ladakh, added that Beijing has undertaken significant infrastructure construction along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). "Our government too has stepped up the budget for border infrastructure development to about double the previous levels," Rajnath said. The defence minister added that amassing of troops by China along the LAC goes against the 1993 and 1996 agreements. On their part, Opposition leaders in the Upper House asked the Centre to restore status quo ante on the India-China border. Cutting across party lines, members expressed their solidarity and support to the armed forces, which are facing a standoff situation against the Chinese army in eastern Ladakh. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anad Sharma and former defence minister AK Antony of the Congress asked the government to take efforts to restore the status quo ante of April and resolve the over three-month-old border standoff. Some members such as Prasanna Acharya of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena cautioned the government while entering into any agreement with China over the present situation. PDP MP demands release of leaders under detention in Jammu and Kashmir Rajya Sabha MP and PDP leader Mir Mohammad Fayaz demanded the release of all detained political leaders and workers, including his party's chief Mehbooba Mufti, saying they are under detention in Jammu and Kashmir for over one year. Raising the matter during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Fayaz said Article 370 was abrogated on 5 August last year and thousands, including political leaders, were arrested on the same night. "...a year has passed. Still many leaders are detained under the PSA (Public Safety Act) or under house arrest," he said. Mufti, a former chief minister and three-time Member of Parliament, has been booked under the PSA alleging she is a "threat" to the country, Fayaz said. He further said while many have been released, still hundreds are under detention. He also said that mainstream political leaders fear of being arrested in raising public issues. With inputs from agencies Rabat, Morocco (PANA) - Coastguards of the Moroccan Navy last Tuesday intercepted 186 illegal migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan countries, on board makeshift boats in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean, the official agency MAP news agency reported on Wednesday, citing a military source We're answering your questions about the pandemic. Send yours to COVID@cbc.ca, and we'll answer as many as we can. We publish a selection of answers online and also put some questions to the experts during The National and on CBC News Network. So far, we've received more than 53,000 emails from all corners of the country. With more of us wearing reusable, non-medical masks, CBC readers have had some good questions about how to keep them clean. Also, some of you are wondering how to get to a testing centre safely if you don't own a car, whether you can get COVID-19 twice, and whether infrared thermometers are dangerous. Here are the answers. Is heat or soap more important for cleaning reusable masks? Health Canada recommends cleaning masks in a washing machine using a hot cycle and then drying them completely. Colin Furness, a professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, notes that, in fact, viruses can't reproduce outside the body and don't survive well on fabrics, so cleaning reusable masks is mainly to get rid of potentially smelly bacteria. For that, he said, heat works better. There are some simple ways to hand clean your mask with heat. Dr. Anand Kumar, associate professor of medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba, suggests one of the following: Steaming for 10 to 15 minutes. Heating at 70 C for one hour. Immersing in boiling water for 30 seconds. However, he notes that from the perspective of killing coronaviruses, even washing in cold water should be fine, as long as you use detergent or soap, which damages the capsule of coronaviruses. WATCH | How to safely wear and clean a mask Are damp masks less effective? That depends on what they're made of, experts say. The protection offered by masks comes mostly from the physical barrier created by the fibres in the fabric. "Most damp masks shouldn't be less effective," said Kumar. However, he said the filtration abilities of N95 masks may degrade when they go beyond damp to "out-and-out wet." Story continues Furness said in some fabrics, fibres could potentially cling together when damp, leaving larger gaps. On the other hand, some fibres might swell up when damp and may make the mask more effective, he suggested. But that might also make it harder to breathe through. Regardless, in general, public health officials recommend changing masks when they become damp or dirty. Kumar notes that damp masks allow bacteria to grow, although most of the time that results in them becoming smelly "but not really dangerous by and large (within reasonable limits)." WATCH | Washing tips for reusable masks What's the safest way of getting to a testing centre if I don't have a car? Many car-free readers, including a number of seniors, have written to us wondering this. Diane Fairfield, 77, of Vancouver, B.C., recently completed a two-week quarantine after being exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19. She was asked by provincial health officials to go to a COVID-19 testing site. "I have no way to get there," she said. She was advised to take a taxi, but called the taxi company to make sure that was okay. She found it disconcerting when they told her it wasn't a problem, and they regularly transported airport travellers returning from high-risk COVID-19 hotspots. To help people without cars, Sudbury, Ont., sent paramedics to do COVID testing house calls, something Fairfield herself suggested be done in Vancouver. Kitchener, Ont., offered free rides to testing centres in old ambulances. But in most communities, those options don't exist. So what to do? According to Dr. Matthew Cheng, an infectious disease doctor at McGill University Health Centre, "the safest thing would ideally be to walk." However, if that's not possible, it's okay to take a taxi, get a ride from a friend, or take public transit, he said. If a friend is offering a ride, he recommends making sure that person follows public health guidelines, so as not to expose yourself to more risk. A ride from that kind of friend may be safer than a taxi or Uber driver, who is potentially exposed to many people a day. In any case, he recommends that to reduce risk during the ride: Wear a mask. Clean your hands. Keep the windows open. WATCH | What to expect in a taxi or ride-hailing service Can you get COVID twice? There are still knowledge gaps when it comes to understanding our immune response to the virus that causes COVID-19, including how well, and for how long, someone who has recovered from the disease is protected from reinfection. "In most cases you would expect those antibodies to provide you with protection for a period of time," said Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's head of emergencies. But we don't yet know how lasting that protection is against the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers are now considering at least four confirmed cases of COVID reinfections that were reported in late August including one in Hong Kong, two in Europe, and one in Reno, Nevada. In most of these cases, the patients contracted a different strain of the virus and their reinfection symptoms appeared to be relatively mild. However, doctors said the Nevada patient developed more severe COVID-19 symptoms the second time around. Reinfection "may represent a rare event," the Nevada researchers wrote. But, they said, the findings implied that initial exposure to the virus may not result in full immunity for everyone who has been infected by it. In other research, one small study on COVID-19 immunity found that people who were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic had their antibodies diminish within two to three months. Though larger studies are needed, the findings also cast doubt on whether "herd immunity" will ever be achieved with COVID-19, where enough of the population is protected that the virus it has nowhere else to spread. You can learn more about that study in this video. Stephen Lam/Reuters Can infrared thermometers used for COVID screening damage your pineal gland? You've probably seen no-contact, gun-shaped thermometers being pointed at people's foreheads to screen for COVID-19-related fevers at locations ranging from supermarkets to airports to daycare centres. We've had at least one worried reader write to CBC News asking, "Is having an infrared thermometer pointed at your forehead dangerous to your brain ... specifically the pineal gland?" The answer is no. Infrared thermometers work by focusing the heat infrared light emitted from your skin onto a sensor. So your body is actually beaming infrared rays into the thermometer and not the other way around. "The infrared devices don't actually emit anything," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Alberta in an email. There is sometimes a laser that helps focus the beam, but it needs to meet the same safety regulations as lasers in other consumer products such as toys and laser pointers. As for the pineal gland, which produces hormones such as melatonin, it's not even anywhere near your forehead, Dr. Haris Sair, director of neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins University noted in an interview with the Associated Press: "This thing is smack dab right in the middle of the head." If you're still nervous about getting the thermometer pointed at your forehead, it will actually work on other parts of your body. In fact, a recent study posted as a preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) found that pointing the thermometer at the wrist instead of the forehead gave a more stable measurement and both forehead and wrist measurements had great fever-screening abilities. The Ministry of Health of Armenia has posted the following on its Facebook page: There is no cause and effect relationship in regard to the problem with the visual acuity of the female minor. News under the title A female minor blinded after receiving Gardasil vaccine in Yerevan is being actively disseminated on social networks and through various media outlets, but the news is complete misinformation since there is no medical justification and the young girl has not been blinded. The Ministry of Health informs that on September 14, a 17-year-old girl was hospitalized at Surb Astvatsamayr Medical Center with the preliminary diagnosis of optic neuritis. At the medical center, doctors conducted several laboratory-instrumental examinations, including an MRT 3T examination to specify the diagnosis. They also held consultations, as a result of which they refuted the optic neuritis. The ophthalmologist detected a problem with visual acuity, which doesnt originate from neurology and there is no cause and effect relationship with the vaccine (examinations continue to specify the diagnosis). Currently, the girl is in satisfactory condition and is preparing to be checked out. The Manitoba government reported 23 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, none of which located in the Prairie Mountain Health region. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/9/2020 (491 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us The Manitoba government reported 23 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, none of which located in the Prairie Mountain Health region. There are now 38 active cases in the region, of which 23 are located in Brandon. Two people remain in hospital. A total of 493 cases of COVID-19 have been reported for the region since March, including 454 recoveries and one death. Of the 23 new cases identified Wednesday morning, 20 are located in the Winnipeg health region, two in the Interlake-Eastern region, one in the Northern region and zero in the Southern Health-Sante Sud region. Early public health investigations indicate the two cases identified in Interlake-Eastern are linked to close contact with a known case. Seven cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed at John Pritchard School in Winnipeg as of Wednesday morning, Manitobas chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said during a joint press conference with Education Minister Kevin Goertzen that afternoon. Roussin confirmed this is the first instance of COVID-19 cases being acquired at a Manitoba school. The outbreak has affected the following grades and cohorts: Grade 4/5 split, Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 8 as well as Henderson Early Learning, a before and after-school program. Roussin said that close contacts of the known cases have been asked to self-isolate for 14 days. Other people who were at the site are asked to monitor themselves for any COVID-19 symptoms. Approximately 250 students in the affected grades and cohorts have been sent home and are attending school via remote learning, Goertzen said during the conference. Other students will continue to attend in-person classes at the school. Eleven cases of COVID-19 have been identified at schools in Manitoba and approximately 450 at schools across the country, Goertzen added. "We are living in a pandemic and so things are going to be different ... clearly this is something every province, every school division and virtually every school is dealing with in some way or the other." The school has been moved to level orange (restricted) on the governments Pandemic Response System. Neither Roussin nor Goertzen would provide additional information about the people who tested positive at the school. "We are not specifically identifying any of them at this time," Roussin said Public health is advising of possible COVID-19 exposure on Sept. 11 and 12 at Parkerview Place Long Term Care Home in Winnipeg, involving a health-care worker at the facility. The facility has been moved to level red (critical). Possible exposure in Winnipeg has also been reported at Tavern United, U Putz, McPhillips Street Station and Hampton Inn by Hilton Winnipeg (airport) on Sept. 5 and CF Polo Park mall on Sept. 6. These exposures are related to a previously identified case, public health said. The province performed 1,266 tests on Tuesday bringing the total number of tests to 158,706 since early February. The five-day test positivity rate as of Wednesday morning is 1.5 per cent. Roussin re-emphasized that only people displaying symptoms of COVID-19 should go for testing. Asymptomatic people should not get tested unless public health has specifically advised them to do so. Employers were also reminded not to send asymptomatic employees for testing, but to have protocols in place so that employees can stay home when sick. There are now 283 active cases in the province. Nine people remain in hospital with three in intensive care. eklatt@brandonsun.com Twitter: @emdashklatt During Wednesday evenings conference call, D.C. Water committed $1.5 million in cleanup relief for those who havent been able to dewater dry out their homes, up to $5,000 per property. The company will also install backflow valves, which can cost up to $6,000 per property, to prevent the stuff that should be flowing out of homes from finding its way back in. FOR the first time in its history, Kilbeggan will host 10 race meetings next year, beginning its recordbreaking season with a two-day event in April. The Co Westmeath venue will host its ninth and final meeting of 2020 on Friday, October 12 next and confirmation that an extra race day has been added next year represents a vote of confidence in the track by the Horse Racing Ireland (HRI). In all, there will be 380 fixtures across the country in 2021, up from a scheduled 370 this year, though this year's programme was impacted by Covid-19. Dates have been announced for six of the additional meetings. They are Gowran Park (Flat, April 8), Kilbeggan (National Hunt, April 22), Punchestown (Flat, September 14), Bellewstown (Flat, September 29 as part of new two-day meeting with a fixture moved from August), Killarney (Flat, October 2 with a fixture also moved from August to create two-day weekend meeting) and the Curragh (Flat, October 26). The HRI said these new fixtures have been allocated in industry-focused slots and are targeted at meeting the anticipated requirements of the horse population at that time. There will also be an increase of three in the number of all-weather track (AWT) fixtures at Dundalk in 2021, thereby providing two AWT meetings per week through November and December when demand is normally at its peak. Wednesday fixtures at the course will be held in the late afternoon, while Friday evening meetings will be held at their traditional times. Jason Morris, HRIs director of racing, said: The 2021 fixture list has very largely reverted to the original 2020 schedule with the number of blank Sundays being retained at six to help ease pressure on stable staff and trainers. As we all know, 2020 was severely impacted by the 11-week cessation of racing from March 26 to June 8 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, after which it has featured a heavily revised schedule with 330 fixtures being retained overall. The HRI Board recognises the uncertain times we are facing, but wanted to produce a full year fixture list at this stage to assist owners, trainers and racecourses with their planning. In the event that racing is disrupted or attendances are not permitted or heavily restricted for a prolonged period in 2021, it is recognised that revisions to the schedule may be necessary. In such circumstances, HRI will be flexible and respond to the circumstances as we find them with regard to dates, venues and codes of meetings, however the strong preference will be to run the full schedule of fixtures as published today. Also today, the HRI has said race horse owners will be allowed back to racecourses from Monday, September 21. The HRI said Government guidelines now permit racing and other outdoor events to have a limited number of spectators on the racecourse in addition to those necessary to stage the event. With owners a stated priority for HRI, the decision has been taken to allow two people per owner to attend from next week. Pre-meeting health screening and temperature checking will be required. Brian Kavanagh, HRI chief executive said: We are delighted to confirm that for the first time since March 13, owners will be permitted to return to the racecourse from Monday next. Owners play the most important role in Irish racing and they have had to wait quite some time to return to the racecourse to see their horses run. We have always said that getting owners back on the racecourse was our first priority and we have been working closely on this with the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners and their representative Caren Walsh. As all key personnel who have been racing behind closed doors since June 8 will testify, these are not race fixtures as we used to know them, and given the ongoing public health risk, it remains as important now as it ever has been, that all those attending racecourses adhere strictly to the race day protocols. Since we resumed racing in Ireland, the level of care and compliance with the Covid-19 protocols has been excellent and it is vital that everybody continues to comply with the rules on the racecourse around pre-health screening, social distancing and the wearing of face masks or coverings at all times. The dates for Kilbeggan races in 2021 are April 22 and 23, May 14, June 6 and 14, July 9 and 16, August 7 and 20, and September 3. U.S. President Donald Trump told Republicans on Wednesday to accept a larger coronavirus stimulus package. Trump seconds White House chief of staff Mark Meadows' optimism on striking a deal with Democrats. The president told GOP lawmakers in a tweet to "go for much higher numbers" in legislation aimed to boost the economy and healthcare system struggling during the pandemic. Many Republicans have proposed limited relief as the major parties try to break a stalemate over a fifth stimulus package bill. Trump said he supports something like the roughly $1.5 trillion legislation proposed by a bipartisan House group. He added that he likes "the larger amount" of spending. Trump also said that some Republicans disagree, but he thinks he can convince them to agree on that. Meadows said he is "probably more optimistic about the potential for a deal in the last 72 hours than I have been in the last 72 days." Meadow's statement was followed by a Tuesday release of the plan from the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Democratic House committee chairs rejected the proposal on Tuesday as party leaders call to add at least $2.2 trillion into the coronavirus fight. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., again rejected a more limited relief proposal. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement that they were encouraged by what Trump said. The two Democrat leaders said that they look forward to hearing from the president's negotiators. Moderate Democrats have also implored Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to keep the House in sessions until another stimulus package is passed. Pelosi told the moderate democrats that the Senate has refused to heed the needs of the nation seriously. Pelosi said she would not budge to Republican demands than an aid bill be smaller than she proposed. Pelosi had earlier announced that she would not send lawmakers home without a deal. The House is set to have a recess for October's month ahead of an election to let lawmakers campaign. House Democrats have approved new relief legislation. However, talks between Pelosi and the White House has resulted in no resolution. Negotiations on more assistance to Americans stopped last month despite the expiration of financial lifelines, which includes the $600 per week unemployment benefit. This also includes a federal moratorium on evictions. Reports said many people would feel sharp pain with a jobless rate a little above eight percent. Meanwhile, Senate Republican leaders have tried to pass their own stimulus package bill last week. This, with hopes to put pressure on Democrats to ease the burden on vulnerable GOP senators. However, Democrats blocked the legislation, saying that it was inadequate to address the crisis. Meadows said he was willing to stay engaged in talks, but he wants to see a deal happen to withe a week to 10 days. State and local government's funding have posed a stumbling block in negotiations. Democrats want more than $900 billion in relief for states and municipalities. The White House wants $150 billion in new spending. Check these out: GOP Proposed New Stimulus Package. Who Will Be Included? Are You in the First Line of Receiving the Second Stimulus Check? Student Debts Excluded From Second Round of Stimulus Package, Should Be Scrapped UN independent experts call on Algerian authorities to release Khaled Drareni after he was handed 2-year jail sentence. United Nations independent experts have called for the release of an Algerian journalist jailed over his coverage of pro-democracy demonstrations in the country. Khaled Drareni, an independent journalist who has extensively covered the year-long protest movement calling for an overhaul of the countrys political system, was handed a two-year jail sentence by a court in the capital, Algiers, on Tuesday. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this two-year prison sentence imposed on a journalist who was simply doing his job and call on the Algerian authorities to reverse it and set Mr Drareni free, the experts, who do not work for the UN but report its findings to it, said on Wednesday. Drareni was initially handed three years but his sentence was reduced to two on appeal. Still, lawyers and fellow journalists decried the ruling and said it should not have been in the first place. He was convicted of inciting an unarmed gathering and endangering national unity linked to coverage of the protest movement. Although Drarenis sentence was reduced, it is still grossly inappropriate because the charges brought against him are a blatant violation of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and of association, the experts said. The eight signatories included the special rapporteurs on peaceful assembly, freedom of opinion and human rights defenders, along with members of the UN working group on arbitrary detention. They said they were alarmed that the Algerian authorities were increasingly using national security laws to prosecute people who were exercising their rights. Drareni, and all the others currently in prison, or awaiting trial simply for doing their job and defending human rights must be immediately released and protected, they said. Last years demonstrations initially began after longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced he would seek re-election for a fifth term in office despite his failing health. Protests, however, continued well after Bouteflika, under pressure from the military, resigned, with demonstrators demanding the departure of the countrys ruling elite. Ryanair boss Michael OLeary has seen off a major revolt against his pay, after shareholders voiced concern over his nearly 500,000 bonus even as staff were sent home on furlough. Shareholders voted through a package which handed Mr OLeary 3.5m in the financial year that ended in March. However, many voted against the proposals, weeks after advisers raised worries over the chief executives 458,000 bonus, and the remuneration plans only passed with 65.8pc support. Read More Mr OLearys bonus is calculated based on Ryanairs profit and his personal performance. The maximum he was entitled to was 500,000. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an advisory group, said earlier this month that shareholders should vote against the companys remuneration plans. It said that during the pandemic Ryanair has taken 600million (655million) from a Bank of England support scheme, put many of its staff on furlough, and plans to cut around 3,000 jobs. Many of the larger UK listed companies in less-challenging circumstances than Ryanair have either deferred or cancelled executive bonus payouts altogether in light of the current climate, in a show of solidarity with key stakeholder groups such as employees and shareholders, ISS said. It added: Given the current state of upheaval in the industry and the uncertain outlook, as well as the wider stakeholder experience, it is difficult to justify a payment equal to c. 92pc of maximum opportunity to the CEO, regardless of performance against 2020 financial year targets. Last month the business was forced to slash a fifth of its flights in September and October as bookings dropped because of new Covid-19 infection rates. It is the second year in a row that Mr OLearys pay has been only narrowly passed by shareholders. Last year his pay package was even more controversial, with only 51pc of shareholders voting in its favour. Since then Mr OLearys base salary and the maximum bonus he can receive, has been halved. At the start of the pandemic Mr OLeary agreed to further reduce his base salary by half to 250,000 for the current fiscal year, because of the Covid-19 uncertainty. ISS said that slashing executive pay had become expected practice for companies getting taxpayer support and it does not address concerns around his bonus. President Donald Trump is greeted by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida upon his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport President Donald Trump is greeted by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida upon his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport on Sept. 8, 2020. Credit - Doug MillsThe New York Times/Redux This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIMEs politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be President Donald Trumps favorite Governor. Trump claims ownership of DeSantis based on a crucial endorsement in his 2018 primary, and DeSantis has fully embraced Trumps style of politics. DeSantis heeded the White Houses calls to re-open the economy before it was safe for Floridians. He offered to host the Republican Partys nominating convention despite warnings against mass gatherings. DeSantis state is now perhaps the fulcrum on which Trumps prospects of a second term hinge. Republican has won the White House in a century without Floridas 29 electoral votes. So when Florida became the first apparent state this week to withdraw from a Trump-signed order to extend unemployment benefits to workers shut out of jobs because of the coronavirus, more than a few heads turned. In what may be the ground zero of the 2020 election and in a state that is tied for the tenth-highest unemployment rate in the country a Republican Party rising star is publicly breaking from his partys President and ending a $300 bonus for unemployed Floridians. The reason behind the sudden break is something many state leaders have been warning about since the spring: their state budgets just dont have enough slack to handle the Presidents demands. Earlier this year, Congress approved a first round of federal unemployment back-up to state-run insurance, which could run up to $600. But that plan expired on July 31, and Congress didnt backfill it. Trumps response was to propose a $400 plug, as long as states could pony up $100 of it. For every 75 cents offered in Trumps new plan, states had to come up with 25 cents. An analysis released today from the progressive The Century Foundation finds that seven states have now blown through their federal share of help, and 20 didnt even start the program because of the prohibitive costs. Story continues DeSantis, whose state is one of the least generous when it comes to unemployment benefits, tried at first to keep the Trump extension plan going. But after four weeks, his team ultimately concluded Florida couldnt stay in the mix. As Politicos Gary Fineout writes, the cost to Floridas budget would have topped $200 million for every two-week pay period at the moment. States simply dont have that kind of cash simply at the ready. (Unlike Washington, states cant pass budgets laden with red ink.) And they shouldnt expect help coming anytime soon. Republicans have been steadfastly opposed to funding state and local governments since the earliest days of the coronavirus crisis. Big cities are largely the providence of Democratic politicians, and Trump isnt exactly a fan. The President was back kicking local leaders again on Thursday morning, along with their pals in Congress who are trying to send them billions in the next pandemic relief package. Democrats only want BAILOUT MONEY for Blue States that are doing badly. They dont care about the people, never did! he tweeted. What he doesnt mention? The states that are the most reliant on federal dollars happen to be Red. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More ICICI Direct's research report on Automotive Axles Strategy Buy Automotive Axles in the range of Rs 725.00750.00 for target price of Rs 870.00 with a stop loss of Rs 673.00. Time Frame: Six months Technical View The auto ancillary space is witnessing fresh momentum after the downtrend of the last two to three years as most stocks are witnessing a structural turnaround backed by accumulation pattern at the long term support zone, followed by breakout above key resistance area .The share price of Automotive Axles has generated a resolute breakout above the falling supply line joining the highs since November 2018. This signals a structural turnaround and offers a fresh entry opportunity .The 52 weeks EMA was acting as a major hurdle in the stock in the last two years. It has reversed its role and acted as a strong support during the recent breather (currently at Rs 684) as can be seen in the adjacent chart highlighting strength. We expect the stock to continue its positive momentum and head towards Rs 870 levels in the coming months as it is the 80% retracement of the previous major decline of September 2019 to March 2020 (Rs 1019-336) placed around Rs 870 levels Fundamental View Automotive Axles (AAL), a joint venture between the Kalyani Group and Meritor Inc. (US), is the largest manufacturer of rear axle drive assemblies (primarily for CVs) and the second largest brake manufacturer in India. Its product profile includes drive axles, front steer axles, non-drive axles and drum & disk brakes for applications in the M&HCV, off highway and defence segments. The company has recently also ventured into manufacture of light duty drive axles. AAL has a diverse customer base and counts marquee OEMs like Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors, Daimler India, Volvo India, VECV, MAN, M&M, Escorts and Caterpillar in its clientele. Parentage of Meritor (leading global supplier in areas such as drivertrain, braking, mobility and aftermarket for CV and industrial applications) enables AAL to procure strong technological support for its products. The company derives ~90% revenues from the M&HCV space, with second largest domestic OEM i.e. Ashok Leyland alone comprising ~60% of its revenues (as of FY19). The domestic CV industry (M&HCV, in particular) has witnessed sharp deterioration in volumes from FY19 onwards (i.e. ~18 months of decline currently) amid a host of demand-side (slow economic activity, reduced freight movement, tighter credit availability, strain on public transport post Covid) and supply-side (overnight increase in installed capacity due to new axle load norms, high installed based) issues. Historically, it has been observed that the CV space is quite cyclical, with performance linked to overall economic environment in the country and 2-3 years of upturn followed by 1-2 years of downturn. On the balance sheet front, Automotive Axles is a net cash company with a history of profitable operations and robust return ratios with RoCE>20% over FY17-19. It also has a strong cash generation track record (CFO positive in each of the past five years, FCF positive in four of the past five years; present CFO yield at ~17%). With domestic M&HCV cycle expected to bottom out in the next three to six months, we expect the companys demand prospects to mirror the domestic M&HCV segment cyclical recovery, going forward, over FY22-24E. At the CMP, the stock trades at ~ 28x P/E and ~2.2x P/B on FY20 numbers For all recommendations report, click here Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Read More P-Fleet, a leading provider of fuel card and payment management services to commercial fleets, announced that it has been named to the annual Inc. 5000 list of the nations fastest growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at some of the most successful private companies in America. Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other well-known names gained national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000. P-Fleets threeyear sales growth from 2016 to 2019 of 105 percent has earned it a ranking of 3534 on the list. To see P-Fleets listing, go to http://www.inc.com/profile/p-fleet. We are honored to be back on the Inc. 5000 list for a third time, said Jake Zuanich, President of P-Fleet. I am so thankful for our team and their dedication to supporting the success of our customers. It is because of them that we are an honoree. About P-Fleet P-Fleet is a leading fuel card and payment management solutions for commercial fleets, including those with owner-operators. With P-Fleet, customers realize productivity improvement, expense controls, payment facilitation and information management tools to increase their bottom line. P-Fleet is headquartered in San Diego, Calif., and provides its solutions to business fleets across the United States. For more information, visit us at http://www.pfleet.com. About Inc. Media The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States, and the global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. For more information, please visit http://www.inc.com. Work has begun on fixing portions of the Bolgatanga-Bawku highway at Kubore in the Upper East Region that were washed off by floodwaters. The road had been rendered impassable to vehicles, both private and commercial, including heavy-duty trucks. Some residents of Kubore and others living along the stretch have had to resort to the use of canoes and other means to get to their destinations. A Brazilian construction company, Queiroz Galvao, which is already working on the highway, is currently on-site to address the challenge. The Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), Mr Philip Samwini, told the Daily Graphic in his office in Bolgatanga that work would be expedited to ensure that the road was opened to traffic by the close of day today. He said about 180 heavy-duty trucks filled with goods were parked at both ends of the road because they were unable to continue their journey, necessitating the quick fixing of the road. This is because some of the trucks may be carrying perishable goods and this may affect their businesses, he said. Mr Samwini said he would be able to provide a better assessment of the situation by Friday, September 18, after the road had been opened to traffic. Background Hundreds of private and commercial vehicles and commuters got stranded between Kubore in the Bawku West District and Bazua in the Binduri District in the Upper East Region last Monday, September 7, when a bridge over the flooded White Volta at Kubore was submerged. Officials from the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and the police had to move in quickly to control the situation and to prevail upon the people not to try to wade through the floods but consider their safety first, instead. When the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, visited some of the flood-affected communities in the region last week, he promised to liaise with the contractor to get the road fixed immediately. 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 BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: Kazakhstan has exported 1.6 billion tons of crude oil worth $725.8 million to Romania in 1Q2020, a source at Kazakhstans oil and gas market told Trend. The exported volume was 8.5 percent less than during 1Q2019 (1.8 billion tons), whereas the value was 13.7 percent less than in 1Q2019 ($841.2 million). During the reporting period, Kazakhstan has also exported 4,450 tons of petroleum products to Romania, for a total of $1.7 million. No petroleum products were exported from Kazakhstan to Romania in 1Q2019. Kazakhstans overall export of crude oil stood at 33.3 million tons worth $15.08 billion in 1H2020 which is compared to 34.6 million tons worth $16.4 billion in 1H2019. Kazakhstans overall export of petroleum products stood at 364,459 tons of products worth $1.04 million in 1H2020 which is compared to 574,297 tons worth $1.6 million in 1H2019. The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Romania amounted to $779.4 million over 1H2020, compared to $885.4 million during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export to Romania amounted to $738.7 million over the period from January through June 2020, compared to $848.5 million during the same period of 2019. In turn, Kazakhstans imports from Romania stood at about $40.6 million over the reporting period, compared to $36.8 million during the same period of 2019. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh Boris Johnson has said people should not report their neighbours for violating the new rule of six coronavirus measure unless they are having huge parties, contradicting controversial statements by his ministers earlier this week. Mr Johnson encouraged people to discuss the issue with their neighbours, rather than going directly to the authorities. The prime ministers words stand in sharp contrast with Priti Patel, the home secretary, who said on Tuesday she would report her neighbours for breaking the new coronavirus law, which came into effect on Monday. Under the new restriction, introduced in the wake of a surge of new coronavirus infections, any social gathering of more than six people in England is against the law and those in breach may face fines of up to 3,200. The rule applies to both gatherings held inside and outdoors. Ms Patel also said two families stopping for a chat in the street could be in breach of the new measure. I have never much been in favour of sneak culture, myself," Mr Johnson told The Sun. What people should do in the first instance is obviously if they are concerned is raise it with their friends and neighbours. But I think what is reasonable for anyone to do is if they think there is a serious threat to public health as a result of their neighbour's activities if there is some huge kind of Animal House party taking place, as I am sure, hot tubs and so forth, and there is a serious threat to public health then it's reasonable for the authorities to know. Animal House is an American comedy about a hard-partying frat house. This was also a marked departure from the crime and policing minister, Kit Malthouses urging to call 111 on groups breaching the rule of six. Meanwhile, John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, has said that police officers on the front line were "trying to interpret" the rules. Responding to a question about having "more guidance" on Good Morning Britain, Mr Apter said: "Maybe we should have 'guidance', because we haven't had any yet". The prime ministers comments follow a summer that has seen police breaking up raves across the country, with more than 500 illegal parties held in London alone during July. The civil servants who enforce immigration rules have no idea how many illegal migrants are living in Britain, MPs said yesterday. The Home Office has not assessed the total number living here without permission for 15 years a period in which there has been an unprecedented influx. It has no grasp of the damage done by illegal immigration or of the criminals associated with it, and it has only a disturbingly weak understanding of the effects of its own efforts to stop illegal immigration or deport people with no right to be in the country, MPs said. Home Office has not assessed the total number of illegal migrants for 15 years. The findings come amid growing concern about the failure of Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured) and her officials to stop the arrival across the Channel of illegal immigrants in small boats Last year, officials released 62 per cent of detainees it had intended to remove from the UK up from 56 per cent in 2018. The findings from the Commons public accounts committee the public spending watchdog come amid growing concern about the failure of Home Secretary Priti Patel and her officials to stop the arrival across the Channel of illegal immigrants in small boats. MPs said the Home Office was unprepared for the end of co-operation on immigration with EU nations after Brexit, and this could boost illegal immigration and make it harder to deport those who shouldnt be in Britain. Referring to the increasing numbers of immigration detainees released instead of being returned to their country of origin, the committee, chaired by Labour MP Meg Hillier, said: The department does not really understand why this figure is so high or what it can do ensure these returns are completed as planned. The department does not make decisions based on evidence, it instead risks making them on anecdote, assumption and prejudice.' Committee said Home Office 'has no idea of what impact it has achieved for the 400million spent each year by its immigration enforcement directorate'. Pictured: Migrants picked up by UK Border Force arrive into Dover The MPs added: The department believes this rise reflects abuse of asylum claims... but it did not provide any systematic analysis to support this. Given the strong passions on all sides of the immigration debate, a Government department making unsupported claims of this kind risks inflaming prejudices against legitimate immigrants and bona fide asylum seekers. The committee also said of the Home Office: Worryingly, it has no idea of what impact it has achieved for the 400million spent each year by its immigration enforcement directorate. There are major holes in the departments understanding of the size and scale of illegal immigration and the extent and nature of any resulting harm. Its findings undermine confidence in the Home Office as it prepares to supervise the Governments new points-based immigration system, which will only allow well-qualified, high-skilled people from abroad to move to the UK. Former Home Office officials have suggested at least a million illegal immigrants are in Britain. The committee said the Home Offices failure to carry out assessments could allow exaggerated estimates from others to inflame hostility towards immigrants. The MPs said the Home Office gave the impression that it made decisions based on preconceptions, lack of curiosity and even prejudice, and warned it had to do more to change the behaviour from civil servants that led to the Windrush scandal in 2018, when the Government was forced to apologise after deportation threats were made to the children of Commonwealth citizens. There remained a risk of harm and distress to innocent people who are here perfectly legally, the committee said. The findings undermine confidence in the Home Office as it prepares to supervise the Governments new points-based immigration system, which will only allow well-qualified, high-skilled people from abroad to move to the UK The MPs report added: The significant lack of diversity at senior levels of the department means it does not access a sufficiently wide range of perspectives when establishing rules and assessing the human impact of its decisions. 'Professional judgment cannot be relied upon if an organisation has blind spots, and the Windrush scandal demonstrated the damage such a culture creates. Alp Mehmet, of the Migration Watch UK think-tank which has produced consistently accurate estimates of legal and illegal immigration over the past two decades said: This is a scathing report that pinpoints the failings of the Home Office its failure to make available more data on the effectiveness of enforcement, about the scale of illegal immigration and on what the department itself believes to be increasing abuse of the asylum system. 'It is in everyones interests that immigration decisions are based on accurate evidence. Clearly, the committee does not think this is happening. Fury as top judge stops asylum seekers being deported to Spain A High Court judge was accused of lacking common sense last night after stopping the Home Office from deporting three asylum seekers who arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel in small boats. The men were due to be sent on a charter flight to Spain, the first European country they entered on their journeys to Britain. But Sir Duncan Ouseley ruled that they had to stay in Britain because there was a danger they would be destitute in Spain. The three men, a Syrian and two from Yemen, had travelled to Britain from north Africa, but first set foot on the European mainland in Spain. EU rules say illegal immigrants should be deported to the first EU country they arrived in, and Spanish authorities had agreed they should be returned and make asylum claims there. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: We are bitterly disappointed with the courts ruling, which has prevented us from returning people who have no right to be here' Asylum seeker campaign groups welcomed the ruling, but Alp Mehmet, of the Migration Watch UK think-tank, accused judges of taking an unreasonable approach to asylum law. He added: This is a clear example of a case where the courts seem to have forgotten to use common sense. 'They have consistently avoided doing what most people in this country would expect them to do. 'It is not the first time this has happened and it wont be the last, but that doesnt make it any more acceptable to the majority of people in this country. Lawyers representing the three men said there had been criticism of Spanish reception facilities, with reports of asylum seekers being forced to sleep rough because the border post at Madrid Airport had been overwhelmed by demand. The men were also said to be vulnerable and have mental health issues. Sir Duncan said this was a serious issue and the risks they faced should be investigated at another hearing. His decision is also thought to affect the removal of other asylum seekers due to be deported on the same flight. Bella Sankey, of the immigration campaign group Detention Action, said: This is a landmark victory for human rights, our common humanity and the rule of law. Of course the UK must not deport those fleeing persecution to near-certain homelessness and destitution. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: We are bitterly disappointed with the courts ruling, which has prevented us from returning people who have no right to be here. This case has not abated our determination and we have more flights planned in the coming weeks and months. This September has already become the busiest month ever recorded for migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, with at least 1,490 making the treacherous journey across the worlds busiest shipping route. The total for the year is 6,515. Dan OMahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said: These migrants are leaving France a safe country where those seeking refuge can and should claim asylum, rather than attempting these perilous crossings to the UK. A Home Office spokesperson said: 'The Home Offices ultimate priority is to keep people safe and that includes having a strong border. 'We have developed a balanced and evidence-based approach to maintaining a fair immigration system. 'Since 2010, we have removed more than 53,000 foreign national offenders and more than 133,000 people as enforced removals. 'On a daily basis we continue to tackle those who fail to comply with our immigration laws and abuse our hospitality by committing serious, violent and persistent crimes, with immigration enforcement continually becoming more efficient.' Representative image Amid rising COVID-19 cases, the Mumbai Police on September 17 extended the restrictions on movement and gathering in the city under Section 144 starting from September 18 midnight. ".. Mumbai city continues to be threatened with the spread of COVID-19, it is considered expedient to issue prohibitory order for restricting any presence or movement of one or more persons in public places or gathering of any sort anywhere, including religious places..." the order stated. However, the exemptions provided by the state government under the Unlock rules will continue and there will be no new restrictions. The order has been issued as per guidelines of State Govt on August 31 regarding easing of restrictions and phase-wise opening of lockdown and no new restrictions have been imposed by Mumbai Police, an official spokesperson said. Movement of one person or more persons will be prohibited within the city except for the listed emergency and non-emergency service, Mumbai Police said. "All movement of one or more persons in the areas designated as 'Containment Zones' by the Municipal Authorities is prohibited, except for essential activities, supply of essential goods and medical emergencies," the order states. Apart from emergency duties and government or semi-government agencies and their officials on duty, other services exempted from the restrictions include: >> Food, vegetables, milk supplies, ration and grocery stores. >> Hospital, medicine, pharma and related establishments, pathology laboratories, medical nursing colleges; >> Telephone and internet services. >> Electricity, Petroleum, oil and energy related. >> Banking, Stock Exchange, Clearing Corporation, depositories, Stock Brokers and SEBI registered participants operating through these institutions. >> IT and IT enabled services and data centres. >> Media >> Ports >> Services providing home delivery of food, groceries and essential commodities. >> E-commerce activity for essential and non-essential items and materials. >> Drinking water supply and maintenance. >> Godowns and warehousing related to all of the above. >> Trucks/tempos carrying goods and manpower related to the above services. ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Porte Brown LLC, www.PorteBrown.com, a Chicagoland accounting firm, is pleased to announce the firm was named a national Best of the Best firm by INSIDE Public Accounting (IPA). IPA, an award-winning news source for the accounting profession, releases annual ranking of the nation's largest accounting firms and the select top 50 Best of the Best firms. Porte Brown The top performers within the profession are ranked on more than 50 KPI metrics. The 2020 Best of the Best firms are selected based on specific key areas of management, growth and strategic vision and are singled out as some of the highest-performing public accounting firms across North America. In 2020, more than 540 firms were eligible for this accolade by participating in IPA's 30th Annual Survey and Analysis of Firms. The IPA Best of the Best firms are located across the U.S. and Canada and employ from 9 to nearly 3,000 employees. In addition to being named to the top 50 list Porte Brown has ranked as an IPA Top 200 firm for several years and is currently ranked at 143 in the nation. "We are honored by this coveted mark of distinction, and we are incredibly grateful to have clients with high expectations and the desire to challenge the status quo," said Bruce Jones, CEO. "Being recognized by Inside Public Accounting is a pretty big deal for us and especially meaningful as we approach our firm's 75th anniversary next year," Jones continued. A full list of the 2020 IPA Best of the Best firms can be found on the INSIDE Public Accounting website. About Porte Brown Porte Brown LLC is a full-service accounting and consulting firm headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. For more than 70 years, Porte Brown has focused on providing the highest level of service to individuals, businesses and organizations throughout the region. In addition to the traditional accounting services such as tax planning and preparation, audit, business valuations, and retirement plan administration. Porte Brown also provides strategic consulting and leading-edge technology implementation for clients in cloud and non-cloud environments. Wealth management services provided by Porte Brown Wealth Management LLC.* Porte Brown serves accounting and consulting clients from offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Texas. For more information, visit www.portebrown.com or call 847-956-1040. *Wealth Management Services provided by Porte Brown Wealth Management LLC. Securities offered through Avantax Investment ServicesSM, Member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory ServicesSM. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Contact: Pam Metzger, [email protected] 847-956-1040 www.portebrown.com SOURCE Porte Brown Related Links http://www.portebrown.com TROY, Mich., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Aquasight's CEWS is a full-service solution of sewage samplers, logistics, testing and a digital platform to track the presence of viruses in sewage using biomarkers, geographical insights, community level monitoring, heat maps, and dashboards which allows county officials to track the spread of infectious diseases for both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals. Healthcare response teams to mobilize faster and resource planning will be started earlier to reduce PPE shortages and make sure area hospitals are prepared for higher caseloads. Government leaders can develop targeted business opening plans for greater economic stability. Michigan State University provides world class microbiology research expertise and standard testing protocols. Oakland University has a sewage testing facility to serve not only communities in Michigan but throughout the country. "We believe this testing can be a critical addition to the toolbox for our community and hopefully for many communities as we continue to engage in contact tracing to limit the impact of the pandemic. My team has made this their number one priority, working with experts from public health, academia and other units of local government," said Honorable Candice S. Miller, Macomb County Public Works Commissioner. "Part of our mission is to be good community partners and better the world through knowledge," said Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, Oakland University president. "As a physician-scientist, I also understand that if we can monitor infectious diseases through this process, it will give government officials and health care providers a big advantage in controlling the spread of disease." "The state of Michigan is really leading the way in establishing advanced technology laboratories and these unique partnerships are essential as we advance our knowledge in the fight against this virus," Joan Rose, Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University. "We are the first company to have an industrial scale turnkey sewage surveillance program with actionable insights that can provide early warning on COVID-19. We operate at the intersection of public health and wastewater agencies. We are implementing at the wastewater treatment plant, community sewersheds, college dorms, nursing homes and correctional facilities. Our model is flexible to operate with any network of labs nationally," said Aquasight Founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani. Media Contact Vito Curcuru Marketing Lead 586-215-4270 [email protected] Aquasight SOURCE Aquasight Here's how to view funeral service for Deputy Hendrix A funeral service at 2 p.m. Friday at Mud Creek Baptist Church for Ryan Phillip Hendrix will be for law enforcement officers, first responders and family members only but can be viewed on Facebook or at the sanctuary of First Baptist Church, the sheriff's office announced. Visitation for the public to pay their respects to the Ryans family will be from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at Mud Creek Church, 403 Rutledge Drive For the public wishing to view the funeral service, the funeral will be live streamed on the Henderson County Sheriffs Office Facebook page and at First Baptist Church sanctuary, 312 Fifth Avenue W. The graveside service at Forest Lawn Cemetery will be open to the public.The cemetery is at 538 Tracy Grove Road. The procession carrying Deputy Hendrix will leave the Mud Creek Church traveling Rutledge Drive to Greenville Highway. It will travel to South Main Street in Hendersonville and turn right on Barnwell Street. From Barnwell Street it will turn left on Grove Street. The procession will travel on Grove Street to U.S. 64, turning right and traveling to Dana Road. After turning right on Dana Road, the procession turns right on Tracy Grove Road, then turns right into Forest Lawn Cemetery. * * * * * Click here to donate to a fund for the children and family of Ryan Hendrix. HM Shah seeks suggestions of MPs, other stakeholders on move to amend IPC, CrPC, Evidence Act Congress has forgotten: Shah on decision by Modi sarkar to install Netaji Bose statue UP Polls: Amit Shah to conduct door-to-door campaign in Kairana on Saturday PM Modi is devoted to the service of nation and welfare of poor: Amit Shah India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Sep 17: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday extended birthday greetings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the country's most popular leader is devoted to the service of the nation and welfare of the poor. PM Modi's Happy Birthday:What were his top 10 fashion moments when he grabbed eyeballs|Oneindia News Shah also said that under Modi's leadership, the poor and deprived sections of the society have been given a respectable life. "Birthday greetings to country's most popular leader Prime Minister @narendramodi, who is devoted to the service of the nation and welfare of poor. On PM Modis 70th birthday, wishes pour in from all corners "In the form of Modi ji, the country has got a leader who has connected the deprived class with the mainstream of development and laid the foundation of a strong India," he said in a series of tweets in Hindi. The home minister said the poor of the country, who have been deprived of their rights for decades, have been provided with houses, electricity, bank accounts and toilets, while poor mothers were provided with gas connections through Ujjwala scheme. "All of them have been given a respectable life. All this have been possible only due to the unwavering determination and strong will of Prime Minister @narendramodi," he said. Shah said it is a privilege to have the opportunity to serve 'Maa Bharati' under the leadership of "such a great leader @narendramodi ji who spends every moment of his life making a strong, secure, self-reliant India". "I, along with crores of people of the country, wish Modi ji good health and a long life," he said. The prime minister turned 70 on Thursday. Nitish Kumar greets PM: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar too greeted PM Modi. Apart from Kumar, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai and other NDA leaders in Bihar wished good health and long life to the prime minister. "Greetings to honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday. I wish for his good health and long life," Kumar tweeted in Hindi. As part of the celebrations on the prime minister's birthday, the state BJP doctors' cell has organised a health camp at the party office, BJP media in-charge Pankaj Singh said. K P Oli wishes PM Modi on his birthday Also, a blood donation camp will be organised by the Patna unit of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the saffron party's youth wing, at Sahitya Sammelan Bhawan here. It will be inaugurated by state BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal, Singh said. BJP Minority Morcha national president Abdul Rasheed Ansari will offer 'chadar' at Mazar Sharif near Patna High Court, praying for the prime minister's long and healthy life, he added. Delhi LG extends greetings: Delhi's Lt Governor Anil Baijal and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal greeted the PM Modi and wished him good health and a long life. Baijal tweeted in Hindi, "Hearty congratulations to the honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 70th birthday. I pray to the Almighty for good health, and a long and dynamic life for you." "@narendramodi Wishing you a very happy birthday sir. I pray for your long and healthy life," Kejriwal tweeted.